Kenneth Clark gives an unpropogating look at Da Vinci. All too often Leonardo's name has been attached to support a variety of causes of this or that nature. Being, seemingly, irreligious and unphilosophic while being the quintessential Renassaince Man. His name is often used as a mascot to justify the ideals of this or that group of whatever. He was clearly an animal rights lover, possibly a closet Franciscan, in all probability a homosexual (although not much of an activist). Leonardo was into his thoughts and had little patience for something that was already complete in his mind. He left scores of unfinished works, and minons of angry patrons - contrary to Bornstin's book that Leonardo was in constant search of patrons - Clark says he had many unhappy patrons. Leonardo was an animal lover who hated violence (although he designed armaments of various sorts). His depth of religious devotion could be argued, but he was not irreverant, as some have claimed. Leonardo was rather Franciscan and had a fondness for animals and individuality. He was free and valued his own individualism. Other than Da Vinci's notebooks nothing much authentic comes down to us. Every other work of Leonardo has been severally retouched or destroyed, what there is left of Leonardo's work is highly speculative - what bit is in his hand ect. Clark gives a healthy, vibrant, nonproselytizing look at a genius - something anyone might find interesting.

Kenneth Clark's book is probably the best available introduction to Leonardo da Vinci. It is both a good biography and an insightful analysis of Leonardo's art and artistic career. The text is appropriate for both laymen and students of art history. Clark's writing is concise and extremely engaging (to the point where I would recommend reading this book for fun), but it is also intelligent and very informative, with a clear thesis that ties the vast body of matieral covered together into an easily comprehensible package. This book is slightly out of date now, but Martin Kemp's introduction and revision help to ammend for that. I particularly recommend this most recent edition as it is well-illustrated.

This is the best book available in English on Leonardo da Vinci. True, the book was first published several decades ago, but the art historian Martin Kemp has added footnotes that bring the text up to date. Kenneth Clark made a tremendous contribution to the study of Leonardo da Vinci with this book - Science and Technology Museum notwithstanding!!!!

This book should be updated on a regular basis as the Doctor should know medications are changing quickly and his information is now outdated.

Doctors don't always know medication either. While vacationing in Annapolis a doctor over medicated me and I slept for hours. I hope he buys this book!

I think both patients and doctors should buy this book. I was once over medicated by a doctor while vacationing in Annapolis and slept for hours! I sure hope he buys this book!

If you're a medical student, DON'T BUY THIS BOOK !!

I was so unlucky to get this book recommended for my pathophysiology studies, but clearly this book is for nurses or the average taxi-driver who want an easy introduction to the topic. There are a few lines about everything, so you won't understand anything and won't remember anything. This despite it's the bulkiest book I have! I can't even have it in my bookshelf, so now I use it as a stand for my bedroom alarm clock!

Going from studying a good physiology book to reading pathophysiology like this is a waste of time. Pathophysiology can't be explained by a few lines of text and reviewing clinical symptoms! For medical students used to study things in-depth this book would be a step back.

If I could sell it I would, but the shipping costs would double the prize of the book, and I would have to lie better then a Kirby-salesman to convince the buyer.

My advice: Stay away from this one. (Even if you're a nurse student.)

This was the required textbook for my undergrad patho class. I agree with previous reviewers in regard to the lack of detail and organization. It is a book written mostly by RNs for nursing students and is not very well suited for anyone else.

There really is no reason anyone should buy this book. Clearly the Robbins book is the leader in the field of clinical pathophys. Medical and other students with more than a passing interest should head immediately toward that text. If Robbins is to expensive/intimidating, there must be a more concise and better organized book than this one.

Also, this book is just too damn big. It's unnecessary.

Excellent pathophysiology book for the nursing student or experienced clinician. Evreything is in here with plenty of pictures and tables. Great organization.

Historians strongly disagree with this book's claim to be an "authoritative historical" work: there is very little 'history' here. As a researcher myself, I would make the following brief comments on a mere handful of the book's distortions to serve as examples: 1) There was no accusation of cannabis possession or other drug usage in the trial of Joan of Arc: the transcript of that trial is one of those which I myself have translated from the original manuscripts, and no such charge is listed anywhere in either set of articles against her (not in the initial 70 articles nor in the final 12), nor was it ever mentioned in the course of the trial; the author simply made that up. There was never any suggestion that she used cannabis to produce her "voices": instead, her judges claimed (in Article XI of the final set) that the beings which she identified as angels and saints might be fallen angels instead.
2) The oft-cited claim that the presence of "unique" THC receptors is evidence of some sort of crucial link between human evolution and pot usage shows a profound misunderstanding of the way such receptors work: they do not typically bind only with a single "unique" substance, and in fact the receptors with which THC interacts (CB1, CB2, and an interaction with the opiate receptor which is still under study) were designed for chemicals in the body (anandamide and 2-arachidonoyl-glycerol); the opiate receptor was designed to react to endorphins and similar chemicals in the body. Just as certain drugs happen to bind with the opiate receptor due to a chance similarity in molecular structure, THC binds with CB1 because its structure happens to be just close enough to "fit". Arsenic and other poisons happen to interact with certain sites in the body for the same reason; presumably, we will now have to deal with the claim that the body was designed to consume arsenic, too.
3) Medieval books were expensive because they had to be painstakingly hand-written (and later, printed using a clumsy and laborious process), not because of any ban against paper, hemp-based or otherwise. This should hardly need to be said.
4) While the author is correct in saying that the ancient Scythians (for example) did use a cannabis-based substance, there seems to be a persistent attempt to add other ancient cultures to the list by deliberate distortion of the context (such as misinterpreting certain Hebrew words in order to claim that early Jews and Christians were using cannabis, too).
5) In another obvious gaffe, the book tries to claim that the Bible (of all things) supports pot usage by deliberately misinterpreting certain English translations (such as the one which uses an archaic definition of the word "herb" to translate Hebrew words such as "zara'on", which means "vegetable"), or by taking out of context Paul's comments about Jewish dietary laws (which banned certain meats, such as pork, which were common in the Greek-speaking world in which Paul was trying to win converts; hence the statement that any "creature" or "animal" ("ktisma" in the Greek version of the original manuscripts) is valid for consumption. Marijuana is not an "animal", although I've literally seen people try to argue that it somehow qualifies as such in order to support the author's views on this particular subject). A similar argument is invoked when dealing with a passage preaching against the outlawing of foods, with smoked marijuana suddenly being reclassified as a "food" in this case so the claim can be made that the Bible is hostile to current drug laws, all the while ignoring the passages which specifically forbid people to be under the influence of any such substance. The list can go on.
It's hard to know what to say in summary to a book like this: as many scholars have pointed out, it's little more than fiction and fluff, and certainly does not qualify as "history" in any sense of the term.

I believe that this book is a wonderful resource in learning the truth and facts about hemp. You wouldn't believe everything that this plant can do for you and the planet. If you find this to be wrong because of what you heard, try reading this and you will learn the truth,and will wonder why the government has been keeping this plant illegal even with all of its resourses that it has for us to use. I have learned a lot from this guy and I really would like to thank him for all his dedication and efforts to making it legal! Also try his video too! Very Useful!!!!

This guy speaks the truth. Before reading forget all prior knowledge to hemp and marijuana. You are in for an enlighting experience. So sit back, take a toke, and be prepared to learn. :)

I didn't know C++ last week. I went to the local retailer and bought this book because it proclaimed itself to be the complete reference-it isn't. I see now that the books I probably want are those by Bjarne Stroustrup, creator of C++. Especially his Annotated Standards Document. I paid $ for the download of the standard (ISO/IEC 14882 from ansi.org); it was a good deal. I started comparing this "Bible" book with the standard and making notes of errors and ommissions, but there were just too many. Stevens didn't even get the operators right (XOR). He left out the grammer for specifying wide constants. He hardly touched on the USING statement. He left out major string functions. etc.

The only thing this book has going for it is that it was obviously a more complete reference than any other C++ book in the store. If you want the real C++ Bible, download the ANSI Standard.

I have 3 or 4 other C / C++ books on my shelf next to this one. I might as well throw them away (except for K&R - you HAVE to own that, but alas that's the OLD days of C).

Through this book I finally understood STL - Standard Template Library (which thankfully is gone in C#). It covers all the important topics for any C++ programmer - inheritance, overloading, standard libraries (such as iostreams), etc.

You won't get a lot (any) platform dependent stuff like GUIs.

However, I wish my college prof's had used this as the intro to C++ programming text book. Granted, there are not any exercises at the ends of chapters, but any prof worth his paycheck can make those up easily enough.

Get this as your introduction to C++, or just your reference for dealing with pesky STL.

All Bible books are for intermediate and above readers who have a solid grasp on computers and their hardware. Bible books have always dominated all books in the computer scene no matter what. Therefore, this book is the best of all C++ books. You won't regret buying this book, I guarantee it. It has exammple programs for every lesson and reminds you of previous concepts so you don't become confused and skim back to the earlier chapters, no wonder it's so thick. I'm an advanced web designer and a beginner in C++ and I know which books are worth buying. Trust me on this........buy this one for C++ scripting. It will expand your wisdom and knowledge of C++ concepts.

I tried to read the MTG books in the order they were published, and after reading Arena, I was very surprised by the difference. Also, you can't expect all the books to be the same. I think the book was good -- the plot was almost too predictable and the main characters are developped nicely. The name of the characters is another matter: they are way too "green" related. I used it with my students, and they seemed to have liked it more than I did.

I have been an avid magic player for seven years now and this book captures the essence of the game more than any of the other books do. In Magic players summon creatures without thinking twice about them, but this book explains, for the first time, where they come from. Every creature has a story. The newer Magic books do an excellent job of keeping the storyline for the game together, but this original story (along with it's two sequels "Shattered Chains" and "Final Sacrafice") are the best of the lot. They tell the story of Gull, a simple woodcutter and his sister Greensleves and how wizards change their lives forever.

Clayton Emery writes the most exciting fantacy books I have ever read. He describes every detail of the battle scenes.

Not what I had first expected, really good book to be used as a reference guide, rather than a book on showing you more features of vb.

The other reviews sum up the book nicely. It is much easier to use then the MSDN CDs. Here is some of what it does not include taken from the preface to the book: "This book does not cover the many additional controls (such as DataGrid,MonthView,MSChart, and Winsock) supplied with some editions of Visual Basic, as well as all events, methods, properties, and objects associated with these additional controls. Moreover, this book does not cover any controls, objects, properties, events, or methods used in Visual Basic database programming." They estimated a book covering all of VB would be twice this book's size. So if you are looking specifically for database help, you'll have to look elsewhere.

This book has everything I need. I found browsing(?) the book helpful as I encountered methods and code used in other books. It provides a good description of properties and what objects use them. The gigantic number of properties in VB at first intimidated me when VB1 came out in 1991, but this book helps greatly to overcome fears. The example code is good, but I would like to see much more sample code ( as we ALL would ). Buy this as a Reference tome to backup the other books you buy about VB.

I am sorry to see a few reviews where I think the readers missed the point of John Claytons Book. I would highly recommend attending one of his Seminars on the subject which are given throughout the U.S. This book is not trying to solve all the mysteries of God. What it is doing is showing that it takes tremendous faith to belief in science without God and that our faith in God can be supported by what we know and see in creation. Romans 1:20 "For since the creation of the world God's invisible quailites-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made." Yes, faith is the most important part of the equation in our belief of God but we do not have to be afraid to look at ways science can support that faith. This book is very helpful for the Christian and Non-Christian in understanding that faith in God is not just blind but includes logical, scientic thinking. Great gift for a college student.

The description of the author and book say it all. A second generation atheist and scientist who approached the topic from "the opposite direction". Some have criticized this book with the admonition that potential readers should simply "stop doubting and believe"--an absurd proposition when reaching out to atheists. The OT and NT spend little time on the creation of the universe, and rightfully so. The message is the word of God, not an complete explanation of what we know of his entire creation. This book starts from the mindset of a curious nonbeliever and provides compelling evidence of God's eternal design and forces the reader to re-examine their nonbelief. He also details his own study into the religions of the world and how his study led him to become a Christian.

This book is an excellent compilation of the evidence for a divine creator in the scientific record. My husband and I read it together and found it to be easy to understand. We also found it read quickly despite the complicated material. I highly recommend this if you are interested in the subject of our earth's origins and the basis for God.

First of all, Garth beat a Planeswalker in the previous book, without anyone's help...but somehow, Greensleaves and her idiot brother, Gull, he was able to fight Garth to standstill...Pathetic and stupid.

I was about to put the book back on my bookshelf when I read the chapter where some of the characters of Arena appeared. I liked this, because it gives a sense of continuity in a series. As for the rest, well... I am not sure where the story is going.

I liked how the book was written and the use of good words. I liked how the book flowed. I also enjoyed the many battles in the book.

I was looking forward to using this book as a refresher course, but I am extremely disappointed in the way the book is put together. This surprises me as I have the book on Intro. to EMC and it is nothing but excellent. The problems I experienced with this book are 3 fold. 1) The authors consistently lose this reader in each and every example in grueling mathmatical calculations. I understand when studying EM the student must be adept at the mathmatical concepts, but other books seem more adept at not losing the reader in the middle of trying to teach a concept. 2) The end of the chapter problems suffer with the same problem. It seems to me you start with problems that teach the concept and then procede to more difficult ones to establish the theory firmly in the students understanding. But not this book the end of the chapter problems right away lead you into endless mathmatics and by the time you come up with the answer you are more aware of what you learned in previous math classes then the actual concept trying to be taught. 3) Finally, right off the bat some of the problems in the back of the book had the wrong answers. In any event I would suggest a first time EM student look more toward Hayt rather than this book. Once again I have been very pleased with this author in the past, but in my opinion this book fails to accomplish what it sets out to achieve.

this is a great book. it is written clearly with abundance of examples and problem sets that will help you to understand this rather gruesome topic.

best thign about this book is its organization. it begins with a review of relevant topics in vector calculus then goes on to electrostatics, magnetics, electromagnetics, then various applications. topics are covered integrally so that you get a growing sense of a coherent whole as you get further into the book. its well suited for undergraduate text and for self-study alike.

this is a great book. it is written clearly with abundance of examples and problem sets that will help you to understand this rather gruesome topic.

best thign about this book is its organization. it begins with a review of relevant topics in vector calculus then goes on to electrostatics, magnetics, electromagnetics, then various applications. topics are covered integrally so that you get a growing sense of a coherent whole as you get further into the book. its well suited for undergraduate text and for self-study alike.