This coffee table book is wonderful if you love the scenery of the Yorkshire Moors and Dales. The photography is excellent and the written comments are interesting and informative, although quite brief. The book's only shortcoming is the lack of a good map to locate the many beauty spots which are included.

This book is a waste of money It is irrelevant to the issue at hand which is SCANNO of course.

This wonderful little book contains some very interesting stories that would be of interest to the third/fourth generation Italian-Americans, Italian-Canadians or Italian-Australians. It provides brief insights to life in the Abruzzo. Naturally, some of the stories are better than others. For those Abruzzese-Americans, Abruzzese-Canadians or Abruzzese-Australians who do not read Italian and who want to understand a small part of their roots it is recommended reading and the price is reasonable.

I found this book amazingly involving. The stories made me feel at home. My roots are in Abruzzo, and everithing for me starts from there.

The new edition of this book fails to deliver in every aspect. I've used Lonely Planet books in the past, and they've proved to be reliable and useful, but not this one. I live in Banff, and so the observations are from this region.

Firstly, the "new" edition is terribly out of date. I purchased it after seeing the publication date was October 2002. It's accepted and understandable that things change, but there is information that was wrong well over a year before the publication date. A hostel that burnt down in 2000 (Hilda Creek, page 701), and reference to Banff and Jasper as "townsites" (Banff was incorporated in 1991, Jasper in 2001) are examples.

The description of Banff is laughable. There is no possible way anyone could describe the town as a "small, alpine-style village that consists of essentially one main street" (page 686), as this book does. The following history section doesn't get better: "The Bow River forms a class-distinctive boundary that is still evident today." In the first instance, the side of the river that LP tells us "caters to the wealthy crowd" comprises mainly of subsidized housing. And "Many people complain that the townsite is too crowded and argue that more hotels and streets should be built." Aside from the fact a 12 year old could have written the sentence, it's just simply not correct. In an effort to include an environmental slant, the authors have touched on current issues. Readers are informed that a convention center at Lake Louise is controversial because it's "in grizzly bear habitat-good goin' guys" (page 696). Bad goin' I say-it's controversial due to water issues, not bears.

The book is riddled with inaccuacies. Not information that is out of date, but straightforward mistakes. Page 688 talks of canoe rentals at Banff's Central Park. There has never been a canoe rental place here. How could a trained writer even imagine there was? Golden is "just outside the park" (page 692) No, it's over an hour's drive away along a treacherous road. There are literally dozens of similar mistakes in just the few pages on Banff. This is also reflected in the maps: Banff has no "Mamoth St." (page 687). As all Banff streets are named for animals, I guess they meant "mammoth" street, but there is no street of this name either. The mapmakers can't even correctly spell an incorrect name, or something along those lines anyway.

Most surprising for me, the good, solid travel information these books were once renowned for has been replaced by useless, fluffy text that serves no purpose at all. For example, the restaurants listed are not recommendations as such, but simply listings. And where there is a description it does little to inform. Four lines are used to explain the source of the name of an Irish pub (page 694) that has absolutely no relevance to Banff or the mountains, including that the original Guinness Brewery is still open and that it was "founded by 34 year old Arthur Guinness in 1759." The next listing is for Bruno's, named for one of Banff's most famous and respected mountain men. This name isn't explained, just that the restaurant has a "wide-ranging menu." There is an excellent reason why renting a vehicle in Banff, as opposed to Calgary or Canmore, is a bad choice (no unlimited mileage is offered, even by the majors), yet, this important and useful information isn't included (page 696).

My original purpose of buying this book was for travel around my own country, not so much to rely on every word in print but to get a feeling as how Canada is portrayed by these books. The litany of inaccuracies and uselessness seems to continue beyond the Rockies section. On page 34 readers are told brown bears are "actually a black bear but brown in color." I just wish I could ask the author how he came up with this unique theory.

I imagine picking a Lonely Planet book as the guide of choice is habit more than anything for many travelers. It's reflected in the attitude of those I meet on the road and the reviews I see here at Amazon. It seems somehow ironic that Lonely Planet has evolved from the likes of an Africa book I relied on for every word in the 80s, written by a guy whose biography had him living in a hut brewing mango wine somewhere I can't recall, to this worthless tome that relies on name rather than content to generate sales.

Lightbody, Huhti and Ver Berkmoes have produced the definitive travel guide on Canada. Up-front, this review is based on my trips to B.C. and Nova Scotia. To say that Canada is vast is an understatement, but, if these, to polarized Canadian provinces, are typical of the rest of the guide, this is a "must have" purchase.

Lightbody, Huhti and Ver Berkmoes' writing is both engaging and descriptive. "Lonely Planet Canada" has a solid introduction section that covers Norway's history, government, economy, ecology, climate etc. An informative practical travel section and, most important, a reliable and up-to-date listing of recommendations that each of the contributors has checked out (lodging, restaurants, entertainment, places to see and things to do). At the start of each section is a regional map, more maps, and a list of highlights or "must see" for that region. Great!

In my "must have" list to qualify a guide as "excellent", are easy to read maps. This book has the best maps found in a Canada travel guide. High marks go to the city maps that help the reader by numerically locating the recommended restaurants and accommodations on the maps.

The superb information and recommendations are reliable and though the publication date is 1999 (thus the information is pre '99), I did find some restaurants and inns closed or sold. As a whole, accommodations prices have increased an average of 15% to 20%.

A weak area, which I am sure will be corrected in the next edition, is the sparse use of email/web site addresses (Halifax, N.S. had no addresses out of the 20 accommodations listings). As computer users know, website and email addresses are very helpful, especially for hotel quotes and reservations.

Lonely Planet Canada is comprehensive enough to have even if you are just visiting one province and, with its excellent introduction and reliable accommodations and restaurants recommendations, you find that this may be the best buy in Canada Guides. Strongly recommended.

I used this guide while travelling on the east and west coast of Canada. It's most complete and accurate and also fun to read. The recommendations are all very reliable and good. If you don't want to carry around a handful of guide books, this book helps a lot. Even if it might not go as much into detail as a guide that zooms in on a particular city or region. But you'll find everything a backpacker's (and budget traveler's) eye is looking for. Highly recommended.

Looking over the reviews as I always do for a book I consider buying, I came across the authors extremely stupid review in which he actually gives his own work a 5 star rating. How can anyone do that? Okay, next thing I'm looking at is the way he tries to complain about other reviews; get over it and deal with it. I don't see other authors doing that. It's very incompetent and furthermore the language used gives me very poor hopes for the authors abilities to write in a competent manner. No way I'll buy a book from this author!

This is not a good first book on ADO.NET but could be useful for someone wanting to learn some advanced techniques and willing to tolerate far too many typos. On the positive side, the typos are of the obvious kind and easy to spot. Unfortunately, they show that very little attention was placed on proof-reading. Also, I found that new concepts were introduced with little of no explanation.

This critique isn't so much about Mssrs. Chand and Talbot as it is about Apress. The quality control used in the publication of this book was atrocious. The book was obviously rushed to print (come on guys, you're new to a market with some tough competition, so use your spell checkers and hire professional proof-readers with experience in technical publications!) The writing style is too conversational and colloquial, reading more like an undergraduate end-of-semester project report than a professional reference text. Properly presented, the approximately 850 pages of information could be reduced to about 600.

That said, there is a lot of good information here. The authors have tackled some tough subjects (the section on creating custom data providers was especially helpful, but their treatment of the currency manager could have been more in-depth). My advise, however, is to wait for the second edition.

I bought this book for my trip to Kenya Uganda and Tanzania. I thought that I might want to travel to Ethiopia or down to Zambia and Zimbabwe....this guide is much too condensed to be helpful, and most travelers I met hated this guide and would borrow or end up buying the LP East Africa guide. You would be much better off buying a regional guide rather then this monster. Just the weight of the book alone isn't worth carrying around with you. I actually ended up ripping this book to shreads and keeping only about ten pages of it then buying the more in depth East Africa Guide.

Don't get me wrong, I love the lonely planet guides. Just not this one. I can whole heartedly recomment the East Africa guide and the Trekking East Africa guide.

This book, "Africa on a Shoestring, 9th Ed" has a broad coverage; although its chapters are not as detailed as many tourists would expect them to be.
Again, this book would have been of better psychic value, had its authors showed confidence in the sections they dealt with. Its 'information' became a wet blanket for me. Many readers who intend to visit African countries are likey to be discouraged by its relentless pessimistic approach. Its outlook is more critical than 'touristical'. The general impression is this: "something good may not come out of Africa". That is shameful! The term "bush-taxi", which was used over and over again, in lieu of a more cordial 'local-taxi' sounds offensive.
I think that if written (or revised) without assumptive bias, this book would be of better quality and value to its users.

Africa is large, and it's hard or impossible to concentrate so much information and advice into one book. Yet, Lonely Planet - as always - managed to do this with great muster. Unless you have time and money to buy the many LP guides to single regions and countries of Africa, this is the book you want before you even plan of visiting the black continent !

I recently had to work on our project's make file. The first look at it made me nervous. Fortunately I found this book. This book is a great introduction to unix' power tool 'make'. The authors clearly had enough experience to tell us what,how and whys. The first chapter generates excitement to continue on to the next ones. Chapters two and three must be read with lots of patience. Remember, 'make' is a complex tool used for complex projects. Its not an easy go.Troubleshooting section listed some common problems, which, by the way, are really helpful. The project management is good too. The only complaint I have with this book is it is a little pricey.For thirty bucks, I expect more bang. The authors could have updated the book with new breed of make tools like Apache's 'ant'. An example of building a project could have really helped. The man pages listed for 'make' on my unix system didnt take me far enough to grasp this tool. I highly recommend it to beginners.

Unfortunately there is nothing quite like this book (at least that I have ever found) for Windows nmake. In a former life I was a Unix programmer and I found this book invaluable, especially for creating custom suffix rules and recursive makefiles. Now that I am a Windows developer, I still refer to this book on occasion.

There is a lot of information packed in this book. Read it carefully, as it is easy to miss important information. I have marked up my copy with a highlighter pen and have a number of Post-It's stuck on those important sections. Perhaps a better layout, with wider margins and bulleted notes in the margins would have made it more readable and easier to find things after it has sat on the bookshelf for a while.

For the most part this book also applies to the Microsoft nmake utility (comes with Visual C++). I have yet to find anything equivalent for nmake, and the MSDN information on nmake is severely lacking. Apparently the folks at Microsoft believe everyone uses the built-in development environment in VC++, but for managing and building complex projects it is absolutely necessary to write and maintain your own makefiles.

The style of the book is somewhat dry, but it covers all of the information that one would expect of a thorough book on the subject. Clear comparisons are made between different versions of make, and test scripts are available for download to test your version of make.

However, a section is needed which provides a clear answer to the question "What features can I use to have truly portable makefiles?" Also, a commons tips and tricks section, which could cover some of the ways that make can be used to accomplish other tasks (related to the building of an application). The information is all there, but the organization needs some work.

Overall, a good book. Read it once, and then keep it close by on your shelf for reference. Anyone who has had to re-write makefiles because of porting issues will find this book very useful.

I believe that this book is much more of a picture book than anything else. Within the text, it describes Brother Cadfeal more than it does his gardens or how he planned them or used them. This book is nicely done but it is not worth the price if you are looking for a comprehensive reference for how to grow and use herbs. Please look somewhere else. There are many out there which hold better information.

This is most useful as a guide to Elis Peters' novels. The index of plants is oriented toward the fictional Cadfael and his uses, rather than to mediaval practice.

The pictures are coffee table book quality.

A must for gardeners who are Brother Cadfael fans, or Cadfael fans who are gardeners, but not a serious work.

Not only is this gorgeous books with excellent pictures of plants, it shows a deep insight into Brother Cadfael's herbarium and his respect for plants. I loved the excerpts from the many Brother Cadfael books. I would have liked to have seen a bit more on the layout of Brother Cadfael's garden and perhaps some recipes and potions. Still the authors produced a beautiful book at a reasonable price with the pages crammed with in-depth information on herbs.

The book is heavily referenced and is not easy to read.

I have read this book, always optimistic in the hope that I will come across even better accounts on this much misunderstood subject, but sadly that is a wish that remains unfulfilled after many long years. Ian Talbot has meticulously documented and provided scholastic information that will otherwise be useful and handy for students and interested readers alike, but I--for one--would like to add through this review, a synopsis of what I feel he has left out. This concerns the crux of what needs to be sorely known about Pakistan's basic realities.

Pakistan is definitely in many ways a historical "stepchild" of India, whose creation is owed to some complex situations evolved in India due to extensive invasions from its Northwestern side, and the arrival of Islam here through those invasions. Unlike other "standard" nation states of the modern era, however, Pakistan is enveloped in an aura of artificiality. This is not simply because of the fact that it was carved "artificially" out of India on the demand of one man for apparently fudgy reasons; but
this artificiality is more apparent in the fact that when its 54 year history is studied, Pakistan is seen as a state which seems to exist primarily in order to fulfill the predatory aims of its ruling elite classes, unlike most other countries in the world. (This elite has been rated as among the most rapacious by the world's premier anti-corruption think-tanks and watchdog bodies). The prime reason of this elite's existence and rule of the Pakistani state all along has been corruption and misappropriation of wealth for their own enjoyment. It was for this reason that they lost East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh in 1971 after a landmark struggle. Then, they have literally been using Afghanistan as an unofficial "backyard" of theirs since 1992, after it had endured 14 years of ravages due to the Soviet intervention there and prolonged civil war. And they have been fuelling the fires of war and terrorism in neighbouring Kashmir since 1989 especially--and have "adopted" it as their "cause"--not out of any conviction about Kashmiri independence, but to focus attention there and to have something "to live for" in order to keep their topsy-turvy and unnatural system alive and going. In other words, they thrive not on a fair social base or development, but on mischief and destruction. This speaks volumes for their true nature, to the incisive analyst.

In all of this, and in fact for their lifeblood and their existence, this elite of bandit rulers has been parasitically dependent wholly and solely on the largesse and aid of America and Western Europe--which was fuelled by the formers' own greedy and myopic motives. In the '80s and '90s of the past century, this elite acted shamelessly as the willing sycophants and henchmen for America's dirty games against the USSR and progressive governments in the region. Now when that Islamic terrorism and atmosphere of corruption sponsored here by the US and its allies have finally begun to backfire on them, the "poor" Pakistani ruling classes are out in the dark cold night, between the devil and the deep blue sea. They deserve it, for the nature of their character and what they have done. I would like to remind Mr. Talbot that no authoritative history of Pakistan would otherwise be complete without an unfazed judgement on its ruling elites. They are a blot on the face of the earth.

Another valuable differentiation which I feel that Talbot has not pointed out with the analysis needed, is that from among the four main nationalities which constitute Pakistan, the Pathans (Pukhtuns) are the most offensive. In fact, their cultural mores proudly "sanctify" criminal practices and lawless attitudes, by backing them with the sanction of custom and tradition. The Punjabi nationality are in the majority, but the copying of Pathan behaviour is regarded by them as a matter of prestige.

South Asian histiography is beset by three main problems: firstly, it is highly partisan especially books that purport to cover formation of Pakistan and partition of British India. Secondly, these histories tend to concentrate on works of the good and great, or they are based on rather mechanistic structuaral accounts. Thirdly, far too often they are indebted to out-moded epistemologies. It is to his great credit that Ian Talbots overcomes these three problems and produces what is currently the best history of Pakistan availible. He points out that the creation of Pakistan has to take account the scale of popular support that the idea of Pakistan enjoyed among Muslims- something most critics of the creation of Pakistan neglect in their effort to maintain that Pakistan only came to being because of the vanity of handful of individuals. Talbot's account is through and rigourous. Anyone, interested in the history of Pakistan could do no better than read this book.

Apparently created by adolescent video game players, this book features asprin bottle text, poorly organized, displayed, and explained graphics. Fortunately for the reader, some web designers efforts shine through the poor book design and typeography. Save a tree by avoiding this book.

A handsome and practical book, chock-full of useful tricks and tips for WWW graphics design, Although the book was created for already-experienced graphics designers moving to the Web medium, there's plenty of good information for novices as well. This book is especially strong in helping you solve the mysteries of working with transparency, interlacing, imagemaps, and bit-depths to create effective and compact images that work on the web. Recommended!

This is a reprint of a book first published in 1935. While it has historical information about Isaac Jogues, it comes packaged in the author's cultural baggage of another era. It is full of derogatory references to the native peoples as "savages," and lacks an appreciation of inculturation. Since Vatican II the Church has forged new directions in missiology and an awareness of culture in evangelization. Speaking to a group of native Americans, the pope himself has stated that "The early encounter between your traditional cultures and the European way of life...was a harsh and painful reality for your peoples. The cultural oppression, the injustices, the disruption of your life and of your traditional societies must be acknowledged..." (Speech in Phoenix, AZ, Sept. 14, 1987) This book presents quite a different picture. The heroism of the martyrs can only be admired. But it is ironic that they themselves practiced a form of inculturation far ahead of their time, and so they would presumably be in the vanguard of the Church's missionary outreach today. Publishing this book now can only do them a disservice, as it does to the native peoples whom they loved enough to give their lives for.

This is a thoroughly researched and enthralling biography of what would have to be one of the most extraordinary lives of all time - the life of a highly educated Jesuit of the 17th century golden age of France, sent as a missionary to the native tribes in the jungles of America. St Isaac Jogues' heroism, holiness, perseverance and indomitable courage, in the midst of the Native Americans, shine out in a well-told story.