I read with amusement the review from the MIT student. Probably a sophmore.

This book is adequate for the practitioner looking for the low-down on nonparametric techniques. It contains lots of examples and gives a feel for when to use nonparametric tests. At the time of publication, SPSS and Minitab aren't what they are now, but the book still illustrates some helpful computer output.

Gibbons' book was more useful to me than my other reference on nonparametric methods, which was the classic text by Conover. From Gibbons I was able to discern which methods I could apply immediately, whereas Conover sacrificed lucidity for rigor. However, when I needed to adapt a test to my situation, Gibbons didn't contain the theoretical basis I needed to extend a test.

The only downside is that the book is SO verbose. I used to have a six volume set in differential geometry which explained fully what an author meant in a half-inch thick manual. For this you need a half-inch thick manual to explain what Gibbons meant in this pagey volume.

This was a page turner. I couldn't wait to see what the next density would look like. And all those Riemann summations!!! I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to sit down for a captivating weekend of great reading. You won't be able to put it down.

This is one book that combined it well! "Professional ADO.NET with VB.NET" is the text to grab, if you are a .NET programmer who wants to learn more about .NET data access technology.
The book has a consistent practical approach to issues. It is full of grounded information, which would ensure that programmers execute their tasks with unflinching confidence.
This book has a result-oriented outlook. Its authoritative analyses of cross-platform programming issues are flawless. All the important classes, (DataSets, DataAdapters, e.t.c.), which constitute ADO.NET received generous attention. However, all these expanded ADO.NET tutorials came at the expense of VB.NET, whose underlying parameters received little attention. Still, this is a valuable book to have.

This book is typical Wrox: it offers a comprehensive coverage of the subject in a very easy to follow fashion. It starts with several chapters covering the core ADO.NET classes - DataReaders, DataAdapters, DataSets. As the ADO.NET DataSet is a class with very rich features, this book discusses each facet of it - from the ADO Recordset-like generic disconnected in-memory data presentation with constraints, relationships to strongly typed DataSet, and finally to the built-in support of XML. The later chapters then introduces advanced features such as web services, SQL Server XML support, Performance, Security, etc.

A minor inconsistency is that some examples in the book use Console Application interface, while most others use Windows Application, perhaps reflecting the fact of this being a multi-author book. But as far as learning ADO.NET is concerned, this is really not a issue.

Oh, if you already owns its predecessor - Professional ADO.NET, which is written with C#, you might want to keep it and skip this one because it's mostly the same contents in different language (VB.NET). But if you haven't got either, it's definitely worth a very close look at this title.

I liked the legend part of the book and the book is quite compelling

Peter Dickinson's skilfully woven tale of fictional Varina's attempts to become independant is an excellent story. Its bitter, deceitful history becomes evident as Letta, an English teenager, visits Varina with her Varinian grandfather, only to be met by soldiers and guns. A must-read

For the very beginner in astrophotography( like me) it is all you need( at least for a while).Dickinson and Newton used a clear text adding their expereance. The book begins talking about the universe, then goes to the basic camera on tripod( comets, moon and Earth shine, star trails, etc). To follow the Earth's movment(for those 10 minutes exposures), I learned and built my on Star Tracker - It is very precise and useful because I could find the south celestial pole in my first try as I learned from page 70. As I still didn't buy my own "good telescope", I am not the best person to say about Part 3: Probing Deeper- through the telescope; but it covers all the inicial steps,adaptation, films and filters for lunar /solar photos.The last part tell us how to use the CCD tecnology:choosing a CCD camera,how to color the image and to process it.For the one who want more detail on digital imaging, this is not your book. Bad points are: it does not teach you where(all) the "subjects" are ,missing on CCD shoftware; almost anything on Southern emisfere sky. Good point: a lot of amateurs photos, showing that you can do it. Finally, this is a very good inicial book FOR THE BEGINNER ASTROPHOTOGRAPHER.

I really like everything about this book. It offers great, practical advice on learning how to take "astro"photos. Many beautiful pictures also. I am currently building my own camera mount based on guidelines in book. Anyone interested in astronomy and/or photography should get it!

The book is great. Terry and Jack did a wonderful job. By the way I am on page 64 with the camera tracker. I noticed a typo on this web page under table of contents. You have Sides versus prints and should be SLIDES verses prints.

Clear skies Gary Boyle Observer's Group Chairman Ottawa Centre, Royal Astronomical Society of Canada

In this story this little girl is curious about her neighbor and this letter her mother recieved. He say footprints coming from her neighbors house to her door. This neighbor hasn't left her house in 20 years. This lady is Emily. Later in the story they decide to go visit her. They went to play music for her. Emily just wanted spring that is why she asked them to play her music n the letter. The little girl keeps thinking about the mystery of Emily when spring has come. This Emily is Emily Dickinson and she is shut in the house for so long because she is writing poetry. She has the little girls mother come to play music becase it inspires her. This is a very good story and might even be true story. I enjoyed it.

The book "Emily" was an ok book for me because I'm just not into mystery books but you other kids may like it. Its about a myth that a person is living in a yellow house and has never came out for 20 years. This little girl, Emily, has always wanted to go there and give the person some bulbs that grow into lillies in the spring. Will she do it? Who knows? You need to read the book to find out what happens next.

"There is a woman on our street they call the Myth. She lives with her sister in the yellow house across the road. Her room is the one up on the left at the front. If you stand on tiptoe, you can see it peeping over the high hedge as you pass. She hasn't left her house in nearly twenty years. If strangers come to call, she runs and hides herself away. Some people say she's crazy. But to me she's Emily..." When our young narrator's mother is invited to cross the street and play the piano for the elusive Emily, the little girl can't wait to accompany her. Emily is nowhere to be seen, but Mother sits and nervously begins to play. "When Mother stopped she turned to me. A sound of clapping rippled down the stairs, and then a small voice like a little girl's. "Dear friend, you put the robin's song to shame. Play more. Already I can feel the spring." As her mother continues, the little girl creeps up the winding stairs to investigate, and at the bend at the top, finds a small woman dressed in white, sitting and listening to the beautiful music from below. From her pocket, our narrator takes out two lily bulbs. "I brought you some spring...If you plant them they will turn to lilies." Quickly Emily dashed off some words on a scrap of paper and handed it to her guest. "Hide this away, as I will hide your gift to me. Perhaps in time they both will bloom." And so as spring arrived, so did the lilies, and a young girl's special poem from Emily Dickinson..... Michael Bedard has captured the quiet and intriguing reclusive nature of Emily Dickinson in his well researched historical story. "In writing this book, I went to Amherst to visit the house where she lived. I sat in the parlor with the piano, visited the room where she wrote. I stood beneath her window and she lowered this story to me." His simple, eloquent, and engaging text transports the reader back in time to nineteenth century Amherst, Massachusetts, to spend an afternoon with Emily Dickinson. You can almost hear the piano drifting up the stairs, and the scratches of her pen as Emily dashes off a poem. Barbara Cooney's beautifully evocative oil paintings are rich in period detail, and complement the text with their quiet settings. With an Afterword to complete and enhance the story, Emily is truly a masterpiece of word and art, and a fascinating story that shouldn't be missed.

Peter Dickinson is slowing down a bit, but all his unique talents are on display in "Some Deaths Before Dying." The book is his usual mix of mystery, psychological insight, and social history. The central character is an old woman, Rachel Matson, dying and paralyzed, who attempts to solve the central mystery of her life and marriage. A perennial bystander to life, Rachel is aided in her task by voluminous albums of photos she has taken throughout her life -- even at her own wedding!

The drama unfolds slowly as more characters are introduced and we learn more about Rachel, her family, and her husband Jocelyn. In the end, the mystery is solved and, while it proves to be appalling, one can't help be impressed by the intellectual ingenuity of Rachel's laborious reconstruction.

The characters are finely drawn; the novel itself was elegantly written and well-structured using the tricky flashback technique in which Dickinson excels. I was disappointed, however, in its moral emptiness. Ultimately Rachel was concerned only with knowing what happened, not in understanding the events and certainly not in forgiving anyone, either herself, her husband, and those who betrayed them.

This was a nice quick read and Dickenson does a great job of carrying the reader into the active mind of a terminally ill old woman. Rachel is confronted by her avaricious son about the appearance of one of Dad's antique pistols on Antiques' Roadshow of all places. This sparks an investigation by Rachel through both her loyal nurse and her own active mind as to the actual events of over 40 years ago. Every family has a story repressed somewhere in the subconscious of the most experienced generation. These are the interesting stories that don't seem to be recorded for subsequent generations in the family bible. The Matson mystery is particularly horrific and I couldn't wait for it to unravel. Rachel uses her extensive collection of photographs to spark her memories and we are all transposed back to the lives of Jocelyn and Rachel Matson before and after he was a prisoner of war in WWII. The main characters are all dead and she is forced to contact their surviving relatives for little bits of information. The only remaining witness to the events is Sergeant Fred and he prefers to leave the whole sordid mess dead and buried. The characters are beautifully crafted and realistic. On the whole, I enjoyed this novel very much. It is wonderful light summer reading at its finest.

Peter Dickinson is a writer who couples great insight into human character with a quirky genius for special effects. This latter talent has been evidenced more in his wonderful childrens books over the last few years, than it has in his mysteries. No longer are apes the sole witness to horrendous crime; or households of somnulent children the background to sensitive explorations of life and death. In Dickinson's last two adult novels he has concentrated on the imagined lives of his characters, and they take central stage. I think these books are equally accomplished, though less pyrotechnic. I suspect I will return to them, perhaps more often through the years.

I urge any readers of Dickinson's adult works to try his children's books. Tulku is very fine, as is The Blue Hawk, Annerton Pit, The Dancing Bear, and Bone from a Dry Sea. The other children's books, such as the recent Kin series are equally wonderful, but are aimed at a generally younger audience.

Like all of you who read this review,you're Everest junkies who probably won't even get near this mountain, but are hooked on all books about it.
High; Stories of survival from Everest and K2 is NOT what you're looking for. This book is nothing but one-chapter excerpts from other books. It's like walking into a movie half way through: You have no idea what's going on. Also, there are no maps of either Everest or K2, so if writers of these chapters (and some of them are BORING writers!) describe trouble on Everest's north col or K2's Abruzzi ridge, we can't picture these places in our minds.
This book (unlike all the other Everest books I bought and immediately read) has been sitting on my bedstand for months. I only read it when I wake up at 3AM and can't go back to sleep. Just reading from this book puts me back to sleep reeeeeal fast!
Don't bother with this one. The Everest season is happening right now. Maybe more books will come from this year's hikers.

I very much enjoyed and highly recommend this book. I've read many of the books from which these chapters are selected, yet there was much fresh material for me. The editing was so masterful that even though the chapters are from different writers, mountains, and times, they flowed together seamlessly

High does for climbing what the movie The Thin Red Line did for combat: It explores not the details of the event, but the inner thoughts of the participants. You read what it feels like to have a climber dying in a tent next to you. You learn about the humilation of having frostbite while back at home. You are with the widows who trek in the paths of their husbands to glimpse the mountain graves of their loved ones.

While I can understand that some reviewers felt the selections dropped one into the middle of a big problem high on a mountain without the broader context of the expedition, I didn't feel this was a problem. I don't need the beginning, middle, and end to enjoy a brief tale. There are plenty of books that give all those details, yet few that are gripping to read from the first page to the last.

This is the first book i've read that was a collection of excerpts from other books. The only thing i didn't like was that the book itself was big and bulky. Well anyways, just buy it. you won't be disappointed.

I enjoyed reading this book, when I could under stand it. The main charcter is Paul Kindom. This book is about an army [Deathsingers], trying to take over Dugoum,Nagala, but some gangs in Dugoum they try to get to get to together a big group to take and try to defeat the deathsingers [they do]. They also free Paul's so called dad Micheal Kindom. I would not recommend this book to a kid under 13 like me because there are to many names and different languges.

AK is truly a book worth reading; it has action, adventure, drama, and friendship in it. With never-ending suspense around the corner, its hard to stop reading this book until you've finished it! With historical fiction embedded in the pages, you'll find it hard to believe that this is history!

AK happens to center on a boy of 12 named Paul Kagomi. He is an orphen in the civil war of Nagala, where the NLA (Nagala Liberation Army) fostered and cared for him. Paul was schooled in violence, and has put his trust onto his little AK to protect him. With an overseer named Michael Kagomi, Paul and his fellow Warriors help liberate Nagala piece by piece. Then it happened. Just as easily as the war had begun, it ended. Now Paul can have a real family with his foster father: Michael. But in the midst of the delicate peace, Michael is kidnapped and taken to a concentration camp. Now Paul must free his father and destroy the corrupt African Government."My mother with the war.She was a witch, a terrible demon, eater of people, but she looked after me. It's not my fault that I loved her."-Paul Kagomi

I kind of liked this story because of its adventure and the cover art, which I thought was cool (and a tad bit funny), but I really like the main character. It sort of reminded me of myself. In a way, Paul and I are alike because we both want to prove to others that we aren't just children. We are the future, the next generation. Anyways, AK is always a thriller, a book that gets you on the edge of your seat then makes you want to come back for more.

Dickinson's novel of coming of age in the midst of civil war is far more than an adventure novel for teenagers. This is a very sensitive appraisal of the emotional costs of conflict that are all too real a part of growing up in many parts of the world.

Wuthering Heights is a disturbingly dark book about love, obsession and revenge. It is a romantic novel full of twists and turns that nearly requires the reader to keep a running dictionary of characters, especially since names have a tendency to pop up in different places and on different people throughout the novel. I read this novel for a class assignment in Victorian Literature but it is helpful to know that the book employs many themes of the Romantic literary genre as well. Victorian ideas of social class are brought up as well as the fantasies of adolescence. Some of the Romantic ideas found in the novels include the idea of the tragic landscape. The landscape of the novel is foreboding and isolated, borrowed most likely from the gothic novel. The characters are extreme in their varying passions and the concept of the dream is used in a type of ghostly communication. One of the story's narrators has a dream of being visited by the ghost of Catherine, which causes a startling and dramatic reaction in Heathcliff. The belief that the reader cannot fully hate Heathcliff because of how he was mistreated as a child is also a Romantic ideal.
The story contains a great deal of darkness and some cruelty, which may turn readers away. Love is often extreme to the point of violence in the novel while the romances themselves are nearly incestuous in tone. Cousins marry and adopted siblings hold lifelong affections and obsessions for each other. The novel also illustrates an element of cruelty that can be slightly disturbing at times. Heathcliff, the novel's antagonist, goes as far as to string up the beloved dog of the young woman he courts after Catherine rejects him.
The main focus of the story is the rather twisted love story element that develops between Catherine and Heathcliff. Heathcliff is adopted into Catherine's family at a young age and the pair become close, though Catherine rejects him because he is poor and instead marries a rich neighbor. Though throughout the novel, other romances develop between the two highly inbred families, they are side stories in comparison to the main romance.
The love of Catherine and Heathcliff eventually develops into an obsession that lasts, and in fact becomes even stronger with the eventual death of Catherine. Her spirit seems to haunt Heathcliff and further fire his obsession. Even before Catherine's death this obsessive love broadens to include an equally obsessive drive to ruin the lives of all the people who mistreated him and stood between him and Catherine, including her husband and older brother.
These obsessions eventually lead to the last of the major themes of the novel, revenge. A good part of the book is spent upon Heathcliff's attempts to destroy the lives of anyone and everyone who mistreated him or got in the way of his relationship with Catherine. His need for revenge does not lessen as the book moves on and Heathcliff continues to take his revenge even upon the next generation, including Catherine's daughter and his own son. Whether or not Heathcliff succeeds in his attempts I leave to the reader.
Personally, I enjoyed this book a great deal, if for no other reason than the simple fact that it was quite different from the usual school assigned reading. I was pleasantly surprised by how well woven and engaging the book was. The calculating lengths that Heathcliff goes to in order fulfill his quest for revenge are nearly reason enough to read the book. The old style language of the book, which I expected to be a hindrance, was hardly noticeable. In short, if you can handle (or enjoy) the book's darker aspects, then I highly recommend this classic to you. (And I'm not just saying that because I have to! ;))Enjoy!

Perhaps it's the winsome imagery, perhaps the profoundly real characters one switches between loving and hating, or maybe even the dry humor that is the style of the British, but Wuthering Heights is my all time favorite book. How can words possibly do it justice...the only way to surely judge it is by reading it. Never before have I been so moved by a story; it might be Heathcliff's overflowing love for Catherine that drives him mad yet, ingenious in his revenge, or Cathy's shallow duty to society that denies her the power to be true to herself (I believe the main point of this novel is to not deny your feelings; go with what you feel rather than what should be), but I always find myself reading it on days I need to be cheered up or am really lusting after a good book. If one's not paying attention, you know, one of those days where you just read to take your mind off of something, it can get rather dull and confusing (the diction isn't as simple as say...Ethan Frome), but if you're concentrating, Bronte's words are so amazingly beautiful, it's hard to put it down. When read aloud it sounds like Shakespeare, and I like Emily's work a lot more than Charlotte's, for some reason. Gothic literature is so peculiar and wonderful: a class of it's own, and she really masters it. At the same time she avoids stereotypes and entertaining happenings (the spectre that appears to the somewhat insecure Lockwood early on foretells the chilling story, while at the same time hinting there is something deeply wrong about Wuthering Heights that needs to be corrected), actually writing the book with a purpose behind it. All the characters have very cool qualities about them; all have the potential to be irritating, but hey, we're all human. By imperfecting her people she has perfected the novel, and I'm so thankful I've had the privilege to read such a piece of art. This book forever remains with me; it's a part of me.

I read what the self-proclaimed "immature" reader wrote, and I beg to differ. I love this book not because I'm supposed to, but because I just do. The austerity of the language, which you term "dull", is what sets the whole tone for such a troubling work. I doubt that Bronte set out to write a classic romance; I believe she was denouncing the sins of her characters. This novel is multi-faceted with its never-ending parallels: two houses (Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange), two love stories, two heroes, two heroines, two narrators, etc. The inexplicable love that two heartless people like Heathcliff and Catherine share is fascinating to say the least. When Catherine cries out, "Nelly, I AM Heathcliff," I'm sure many a girl's heart has thudded in her chest. This book sweeps you away to a place and time far removed from us and gives us a view into a harsh and distant world. You don't have to like the book. But don't be so dumb or immature as to assume that no else does either. The longer you study literature, the more you'll see that some books have passed the test of time, because, well, they're just that damn good.

Emily Dickinson lived her life in a solitary room; a place where she found amazing insight writing letters an poems. She marks her verses with simple phrases that show the reader a vision and not its personal interpretation. In some cases she puts into words what most of us attempt to capture with our thoughts. This extraordinary skill is a mark of only the best poets, but not all can write consistently as Emily can. Despite the mellow tone of the majority of her work, Emily still captures the flavor of life without compromising its tranquility. Emily never suffers from redundant confusion and her poems reflect a love for solitary beauty.

It can be fairly said that Emily Dickinson is the most sensible American poet up to this date. Her themes range from love to death, but she prefers the latter; and her poetic artistry is far more musical than Baudelaire's, more vivid than Christina Rossetti's. In her way of writing her soul and senses in a poem, she can only be compared to Spanish Romantic, Gustavo A. Becquer; both in themes, and metaphorical pictures, although not in style. She is one true American classic. I am rating the book with nine points, not because the selection is poor or weak; rather because a selection is not enough when dealing with Dickinson. Her minor poems are her finest and, because each person has his own favorite, a title having the words "Complete Works" is more appropiate. However, it is a good start for a poetry lover, and Dickinson's Poems are esay to find.

Just as a prism breaks up light into a band of colors - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet - and their infinite gradations, so do Emily Dickinson's poems become, as it were, a prism which captures the white light of reality, a reality which as it flows through the prism of her poem explodes into a multiplicity of meanings.

It is the rich suggestiveness of her poems, a suggestiveness which generates an incredible range of meanings, that prevents us from ever being able to say (to continue the metaphor) that a given poem is 'about red' or 'about blue,' because her poems, as US critic Robert Weisbuch has observed, are in fact about _everything_. This is what makes her so unique, and this is why she appeals to every kind of reader (or certainly to open-minded ones) and even to children.

Emily Dickinson's poetry is one of the wonders of the world.