This book is organized for the beginner (by color) but it is one of the most acurate field guides I have found. The evergreen and broadleaf keys are worth the price of the book.

I am restoring 72 acres of wetlands on South Whidbey Island, WA... We have just put in over 4,800 plants, 59 species, as part of a 500-year plan to restore the property to mature old growth and promote maximum biodiversity. This is our guide for identifying and learning all the trees, shrubs, and flowers.

When I first picked up this UFG for the TRIGUN series, I was unimpressed with how thin the book is. However, when I opened the fan guide, it revealed all my favorite characters in rich color from various episodes from the series. In the back (last few pages), the characters were drawn in black & white so if the reader wished, they could easily take a stab at tracing, copying or draw the characters free-hand. I am extremely interested in re-drawing these characters such as Vash, Wolfwood & Meryl...so the book really began to catch my eye with not only a creative outlook on interesting b & w poses, but cool facts & descriptions (that I only breezed over) that appeared to be pretty neat.
All of this is based on the Anime not the Manga, so if you are interested in the cool series (that you may have seen on Cartoon Network) then I suggest this guide as an interesting read, but try and find it for $10...maybe $15 at most, as this is all it is really worth.

The book is overall very inclusive and addresses a broad range of topics necessary in environmental application of GIS. The only weakness for student use would be in fundamentals of the science and need for more definition of terms and practices. This is one of the few good compilations of actual GIS use.

George Ella Lyon has been inspiring writers and teachers for years. Her writing exercises and her lyrical way of talking about writing keep her in demand as a workshop leader and speaker at schools. At last we have this book! I have used her exercises for years in my writing workshops, always with results that far exceed the writing that students have have done up to that point. Those same exercises have led me into writing poems I didn't know were waiting to be written. No one is better at evoking the voices of real people or helping a new writer really see what she is trying to get on paper than Lyon. The exercises in this book are wonderful, but a close reading of Lyon's poems is perhaps the most rewarding part of Where I'm From writers and teachers alike. Highly recommended.

Short and to the point. Full of Great Information. and Pictures

This book was a little difficult to get into at first, but after the first chapter, was even harder to put down. The story is easy-to-follow and entertaining and Lyons does a good job of giving those who don't follow the comics a detailed background story for the events in the book. Gives a very good look at the X-Men's personalities and weaknesses as individuals and has very believable villians. All in all, a great opening to a trilogy.

I just got back from a month in Mexico. The book was probably quite impressive back in the early 90's. However, many of the hotels and restaurants listed in the book have gotten so much business that they have lost what good attributes they originally had. Also, many of the prices quoted in the book were way off. The book prices were frequently one-half what the concierge or waiter quoted. The peso has not changed enough for a 5 dollar hotel room to become 12 or 15. Perhaps that is the risk one finds with any guidebook.

Museum hours were consistently incorrect, especially for Mondays, weekends and evenings.

This book might keep you out of trouble, but it is not the guide for a budget traveler.

I have just returned to Norway after backpacking around in Latin America for a year (of course accompanied by the Lonely Planet book). I do not claim to be an expert, but I do know what I am looking for in a travel guide.

The Mexico guide is a good, complete guide. Filled with information, history and beautiful pictures about almost every corner of this gorgeous country. Reading the whole book gives you a good update on your history and geography knowledge! (Something to do if you are trekking around by bus like I did!)

I have always been satisfied with the LP guides. The information given is good, just what you need to get around. The only negative with this book (and the reason I give it 4 and not 5 stars) is that it was completely outdated on prices etc. Another thing (that goes for most of the travel guides) is that many of the hotels that are listed in the book has gotten so much (too much?) business so that the service is down to a minimum. This we found especially in Isla Mujeres where the price was the double of what the book said, and really lousy customer service, if any.

Lonely planet guides are absolutely invaluable for the independant adventurous budget-minded traveler, and LP Mexico is no exception. Included are informative sections on pre-departure info, cultural tips, etc. I travelled extensively throughout Mexico with the 5th edition last year, and it really got me to explore some of the remote places I otherwise wouldn't have found- such as the silver towns of Guanajuato, Zacatecas and Taxco. Plus, out of the way beaches, hard-to-find ruins, centotes, you name it. They're covered. Don't borrow you'r friend's old dog-eared copy of the 3rd of 4th edition. Spend the money on the latest edition, because price info is almost always out of date within months after printing, and an older edition is usually hopelessly out of date. I found myself disregarding their accommodations recommendations, because once a place finds its way into the LP Guide, their visitor traffic usually increases exponentially, the staff gets surly, and prices go up. If you're just going to Cancun, Mazatlan, etc, skip this book, but if you're not afraid to venture out into the 'real mexico', grab it.

I've found that the brief overview of practical techniques (such as convolution kernels) are useful.

Otherwise:
* The book formatting is terrible (pages are 3/4 blank sometimes in the middle of chapters)
* It appears unedited. Grammatical errors, especially ones where the error changes the meaning of the sentence (like leaving out the word NOT!) plague this book
* The author specifically chose Java as the implementation language, then proceeds to discuss the weaknesses of the language which he clearly does not understand. He offers the worst object model for image processing that I could have imagined. The code examples printed in the book are riddled with errors (though the code included on the CD-ROM may not... I haven't tested anything except for the Fourier Transform algorithm. I have no use for this book other than that algorithm, which is in fact why I bought it in the first place).
* The author is introduced as a teacher of Java, yet the code examples which deal with image processing are invariably wrapped around GUI classes. Who ever heard of an image sharpening algorithm extending java.awt.Frame?

If you are looking for a book that talks about different kinds of concepts, this book may be okay, but I'm sure there are better ones. If you want to use the code provided by this book in a production environment of any kind, you will need to copy-and-paste the appropriate code into a more sane and reusable structure before you begin.

Well, I felt like adding a review after seeing that actually some people don't find the book of quality, for what I would call inconsistent reasons.

The book is a tremendous contribution to the JAVA world, and in short is unique in its content. Very rich in image processing algorithms of all flavors, at their finest quality. The text is surprisingly clear, the code implementation intuitive and easy to follow. I rarely find quality code that does quality things. Some algorithms that once required me to go through hard to understand microfilms or research papers, I find them here implemented and approached in a very elegant manner. Of course, you might have to adjust them a little if you're going to use them in your own code, but the work left is so trivial that I would call them "plug-n-play". You do not need to take care of porting any libraries to your platform, the code is pure JAVA. It is Kahindu. The classes are based on frames, dialogs, standard JDK, nothing can get simpler than that. You might find the GUI a bit messy if you are a graphics user or the everyday homepage applet writer, but for a programmer it should appear as common sense.

As conclusion, you DO NOT want to miss this book. Whether you are to instruct yourself, teach, use the code for yourself or just simply stare at some sweet algorithms, this book is a blast. Too bad there are very few books like that out there yet, hopefully this will change. As far as the price, you can consider it a donation from the author. Great great great.

What an enjoyable and useful book! Digital image processing is a subject that is best understood by implementing, seeing the picture result, modifying the parameters, and running the program again. "Image Processing in Java" makes this approach easy. The book provides a practical coverage of the methods that are most useful and widely used. From basic filtering to the Fourier transform and wavelets, this book provides easy-to-understand description of the spectrum of image processing subjects. The Java code by which the methods are provided makes the code portable - but mostly this makes it fun and appropriate for computer science and engineering students now learning this language. I'd recommend this book to professors especially as a supplementary project book for students taking a first course on image processing.

Unfortunately, the publisher seems to have abandoned most of their previous authors and recruited rookies with dubious qualifications and almost no experience in South America. The chapters done by the authors of their individual country guides are reasonably accurate, but the ones by new authors are appallingly bad.

It is hard to concentrate so much information in a single book, covering all of South America from Colombia to Chile. Lonely Planet have tried and have done a good job, but the target was too ambitious... If you are literally running through South America with little time, and perhaps you don't want to carry the weight of too many guides, then do get this book. It is of some use, and offers interesting reading. Yet, if you plan to get to know each country more thoroughfully, you are much better off with Lonely Planet's (or other publishers') single guides on each individual country, and there are lots to choose from.

This book is an absolute must for the budget,adventurous,willing-to-stay-in-a-funky-hotel-with-lumpy-beds traveler. In a writing style as colorful as the cover, Lonely Planet helps you plan your trip with concise information on: restaurants (with many references to vegetarian places), lodging, festival dates, nightclubs, local language and customs, safety information and more. Lonely Planet South America can also lead you to out of the way villages and towns where you are thrilled at the sight of a real toilet after a five-hour bus ride which left you covered in dust. Nothing comes more in handy after starving on the long bumpy ride than grabbing your guidebook out of your backpack to find out the best fried plantain stand and cheap posada (inn) in this block-long town. And I was very grateful for those tips the book gave on where to ask for that guy "Juan" who is the only person who sells stamps within miles! From the Amazon to the Andes to the Caribbean, Lonely Planet was there for me. Seeing other tourists leafing through the same guidebook, brimming with over 1000 pages of invaluable information in a small book you can cram in a purse, was always a comforting sight in such different-from-home lands.