Lacking is ease of use. Chapter 8 (critical chapter) especially dense. Did not like.

This book was very easy to read, it can be classified as an intro to Econ. It is used in the 201 class at UTK. It is however not that great when it comes to examples.

The second edition of Economics: Principles and Tools by O'Sullivan/Sheffrin provides a good introduction to both macro and microeconomics. This was especially true for me since my math skills aren't up to par. It was manageable and understandable for those who don't do well with numbers. The CD was helpful in understanding the graphs that were involved in textbook. In addition to providing an introduction to economics, it does a good job of helping you understand how you can use economics in your everyday life. Especially in chapter two where they introduce five economic principles you will reuse throughout your economic course and in your daily life: (1) principle of opportunity cost, (2) marginal principle, (3) principle of diminishing returns, (4) spillover principle, (5) reality principle. Economics: Principles and Tools is an excellent resource and textbook for anyone who has a limited knowledge of economics and is willing to learn these five economic principles.

When I bought this book,I was convicted that all my problems with
monsters are over...I was wrong. Fantasy Bestiary is a compendium of uncharismatic monsters of unnusual cultures.The good ones like beholders and goblins aren`t present on this book.
One more time the Gurps team don`t look for tradicional fantasy RPG style and the players need to do adaptations for a good session

Only about 1/3 monsters have an illustration, which is particularly disappointing since most of them are obscure monsters from (non-Greek) mythology whose names mean nothing to me. There aren't really any guidelines about the monsters' relative power either. Additionally, monsters you'd expect to find (goblins, orcs, minotaurs) are absent. On the whole, a very disappointing product.

This book provides a wealth of game-relevant information on creatures from the myths and legends of many different cultures. It's not the Monster Manual; if you're looking for "typical" fantasy races (such as the aforementioned orcs, goblins, and minotaurs) pick up a used copy of GURPS Fantasy Folk. You'll find them all there. Or just wait: Fantasy Folk is due for a reprinting before the end of the year.

I found the book fascinating and very appropriate for my games. Having all of the creatures cross-referenced not only by name but also by type and native habitats makes it very quick to find a genre-appropriate beast for your players' situation. Need a tough challenge for your players that fits in a Chinese-style game, and naturally appears in the mountains? It's just a quick glance at the included tables to find three.

Another very useful point of the book is the entire chapter devoted to dragons. Fantasy Bestiary goes far beyond the typical Tolkien-style dragons, encompassing them in addition to dragons from many different cultures around the world.

As noted in another review, one of the weaknesses of this book is its sparse artwork. However, while disappointed at this at first, I've come to realize that I never show creature illustrations to my players anyway; anything I come up with will pale in comparison with what they will create in their minds from just a few well-chosen descriptive words. See any Call of Cthulhu reference book for more detail on this GM method.

In conclusion, I highly recommend this book to any GM interested in exotic creatures, or beasts from cultures other than our own. If, however, you need GURPS stats for lizard men and orcs, GURPS Fantasy Folk is the book you want.

I consider myself lucky that this was clearance priced. . . at my local [computer super-groovy store].

These books are reasonable in content, but they cost far too much to justify their content. I've read other books which cut through the hammy and fluffy text and give me what I need to know. In fact, buying four books on Backoffice ranging from $30 to $50 offers exponentially more information from more diverse sources - and typically come with their own CDs as well. I could care less if they are "Microsoft biased or not" Que has a habit of hyping up products they cover and oddly they cover non-Microsoft products, too.

Lots of padding, and here's one reason why. The TCP/IP section is nice I suppose, but it's not teaching me anything as to how it relates to Backoffice so far. It's going into the history and how the numerology is structured (DNS, subnet mask, et cetera), but if I want to know about TCP/IP protocol theory, lots of books devoted to that [and in greater depth] exist. This book acts as if it wants to be a be-all solution, but has to cut content in some areas to make up for it.

It's no wonder that both books are included on CD in HTML format. I'm hoping that the other reviewer was wrong about his CD not including the goodies for both books. Unfortunately it makes sense as many a company will change a product's content and legally find ways to justify it.

If you're not Richie Rich or Bill Gates, go find and buy up to four books which would effective equal the ridiculous cost of this two-volume set. The Que set is nothing more than a [not quite] cheap attempt to acquire revenue by providing heaps of padding.

Some of the chapters are heavily Microsoft biased. I was expecting more of a reference manual so I was disappointed. And even the reference chapters aren't that clearly written--though some are.
For the price, I'd look somewhere else for a BackOffice reference. (P.S. The included CD didn't come with all the books that the cover claimed it came with...)

This book is a great place to start learning about the different products that make up Microsoft Back Office. It is full of Tips that even today (as an MCSE), I find extremely useful

Perhaps the best way to deal with this book is to examine the author's main themes: 1) the idea that Joan's trial allegedly revolved around differences in education and perspective (layperson vs clergy) rather than military rivalry (Armagnac versus Anglo-Burgundian); and 2) the notion that Joan used language "miniaturizing" her Voices, thereby allegedly indicating that she rejected them in the end.
The first point ignores the many documents, including English and Burgundian sources, which bluntly show that her trial was, in fact, paid for by the English (as even English financial records show in great detail), and the tribunal was stocked entirely with clergy who were members of the Anglo-Burgundian faction and who, in many cases, were actually paid officials of the English occupation government. There are English documents throughout late 1430 and early 1431, dated Sept. 3rd and 14th, Oct. 24th, Dec. 6th; Jan. 31st, March 1st, April 2nd, 9th, 14th, 21st (etc) detailing payments given by English officials to the judges and assessors, and documenting the taxes levied to pay the cost of obtaining Joan from John of Luxembourg. The chief judge, Pierre Cauchon, had long been a salaried official of the English occupation government (paid 1,000 pounds annually) who also served for a time as Chancellor for the Queen of England. Before that he had been in the service of two successive Burgundian dukes, who often tapped him to commit other crimes aside from his conviction of Joan: for instance, there's a letter from Duke Jean-sans-Peur de Burgundy dated July 26, 1415 authorizing Cauchon to bribe Church officials in order to corrupt justice in favor of the Burgundian faction.The other members of the tribunal are also known to have been partisans of the same faction: the reason why the University of Paris changed so dramatically (as the author herself notes) after Paris came under Anglo-Burgundian occupation is the simple fact that all the pro-Armagnac members had to leave, with the result that the University was thoroughly Anglo-Burgundian by the time of Joan's trial, and therefore rabidly opposed to her because she was defeating their faction's armies. All of the above corroborates the testimony of the Rehabilitation witnesses. It is this corroborative evidence (and much more of a similar type in numerous chronicles, letters, etc) which has moved historians to accept the Rehabilitation as the more credible of the two transcripts - not for 'partisan' reasons, but simply because the preponderance of the evidence confirms the latter. This book, on the other hand, tries to dismiss the prevailing view by accepting at face value the very Condemnation transcript which is proved unreliable by so many other documents. This brings me to the second main point that the author tries to make, concerning Joan's view of her Voices. The book's version of this issue is based on a handful of phrases in the alleged confession mentioned at the end of the transcript, a section which is dated June 7 - a full eight days after Joan's execution. If you look at the original manuscripts you'll see that this section was never signed by any of the purported witnesses nor by the notaries, a fact which the notaries themselves later explained when they testified that the "confession" had never been witnessed by them and in fact did not appear until after she was already dead. This is why historians have viewed it as fictional. But the author of this book accepts it at face value, then engages in a bit of word play in relation to a few phrases in which Joan is made to say that her Voices appeared to her in "great number and small size" (or variations on that theme). The author interprets this as an attempt to "miniaturize" her Voices and thereby "objectify" and in essence reject them, an interpretation which would be dubious even if these quotes were authentic: even those who still believe in this sort of psychoanalysis would say that you cannot psychoanalyze someone who you've never met. But the quotes are not authentic, nor would there be any reason to believe that the phrase "small size" reflects 'feelings' at all. Information that was never signed by either witnesses nor notaries (as required under medieval law) cannot be accepted as valid, especially when the notaries themselves cast doubts on its authenticity.
In much the same vein, the book claims that Joan did not initially identify her voices as specific saints, and only "chose" specific saints during the course of the trial. Not only is this purely subjective, but it ignores the fact that the Condemnation transcript itself includes an explanation of why Joan was initially unwilling to reveal the identity of her Voices to her judges. Unless you can show that this portion is not authentic, you cannot replace her own recorded words with arbitrary speculation about her "real" motives.
This is the problem with Sullivan's methods throughout the book, and the problem with such analysis in general: once an author has decided to reject the plain meaning of recorded statements and to ignore all correlative evidence from other documents, while accepting precisely those portions which are known to be fraudulent (the exact reverse of the proper procedure), a process of invention is followed in which even the smallest word can be manipulated to mean whatever the author wants it to mean and then be used as the basis for an elaborate theory. It's as if someone were to rewrite the life of, say, Abraham Lincoln simply by interpreting his use of a few commonplace words in a dubious text, and then publish a book making the splashy claim that the author has come up with a startling new theory on the subject. This is a good marketing technique, but dishonest scholarship.

Since I'm translating the trial transcript which this book analyzes, I thought I would comment. First of all, the author doesn't seem to realize that the Condemnation transcript has never been considered to be a reliable document, for a number of reasons: it doesn't follow the correct form and procedures of an Inquisitorial process (the trial was conducted by a political kangaroo court, not a valid court of the Inquisition); it contradicts itself at numerous points; one section was never notarized; and, most importantly, a number of the clergy who took part in the trial later testified that crucial sections were 'creatively edited' (so to speak) in order to gratify the English who were running the trial, thereby falsifying and distorting Joan's statements. If the author truly had an exhaustive knowledge of all of the texts related to Joan of Arc's life, the author would compare these texts to each other rather than dealing with one in isolation and treating it as if it were a "collaborative work" written jointly by Joan and her accusers (of all the strange notions connected with this subject, this has got to be one of the strangest). Additionally, the claim that her trial was not a political matter reveals a profound lack of understanding of the subject: the Rehabilitation witnesses testified that it was entirely a political charade, which involved intimidation of both the defendant and many of the clergy who had been forced to take part in it.

In short, this book seems to be little more than the latest attempt at sensationalism, billed as a "radical reassessment" as a selling point; and it seems to be based on the currently trendy practice of pretending that historical documents are works of fiction, thereby giving authors an excuse to make up their own alternate version of events. "Literary analysis" is purely subjective, and therefore a convenient vehicle for anyone who wants to invent their own fantasized view of an historical person or event; and as such, it has no academic value.

As Joan often said at her trial in response to irrelevant questions: "passons-oultre" (which we may colloquially render as "let's skip over this one").

It is apparent that Karen Sullivan has a keen analytical mind and thorough knowledge of her subject. The negative reviews posted on this site are ridiculously partisan, not taking into account that the pro-French accounts (and possibly witnesses) are at least as politically motivated as the English, which Sullivan deals with masterfully.
Perhaps the best and most insightful modern book on the topic.

This book has numerous addition and multiplication errors aswell as grammatical ones. I counted more than twenty in the first 100pages, then I stopped counting. There were even several concepts that were incorrect. I would be ashamed to put my name on this book. Buy one endorsed by the National Society of Professional Engineers.

I used this book in my preparation for the FE exam and had
no problems. I ended up passing. The book provided me with
a good comprehensive overview of the concepts tested.

I believe in a God and She had no part in the making of this book. The editing is horrible. One random thought after another it didnt help at all during my trip to Ireland. Too bad

This book helped me greatly in one of my projects. It has everything you might need for a project on Ireland.

I bought the book hoping it would help me find a way to study in the US because I am not wealthy and can't afford the extortionate fees of universities in the US. The book was more useful for people who are looking to study as a post graduate. As an undergraduate nursing student looking for full funding, it was pretty useless.

The book was quite useful and I'm so glad I bought it. It features detailed descriptions of fellowships, grants and scholarship for both undergrad and post-grad studies. I especially like the way it categorised the awards, i.e. by field of study, academic level, average number and amount of award, destination instution among others. All these help to make searching easy and productive. Though I'm not yet succesful at getting support, I have no doubt that I will. I highly recommend it for international students wishing to study in the U.S.

This book is too verbose, painful to read, out of date, and will simply gain dust on your bookshelf until you finally throw it away. Don't waste your money on this piece of junk. As worthless as the MEDEX program Ballweg heads, I'd say.

I felt this book is worthwhile to supplement studies for certification and recertification for national boards.

The name of the book suggested a complete guide to the JMF, but in fact it's a book about the Java Media Player ONLY. It contains almost nothing about the very important media broasdcasting and conferencing part of the JML. It's an disappointment to me. Well, to be fair, it could be a pretty good book for developers who want to use the Media Player part only.

I am a programmer in JAVA , I found there is too little document about RTP in JMF, and the book also doesn't include much information about it.

Dear Amazon.Com,
I wrote the one star book review for this book which is currently on file. The review is incorrect and should be deleted or modified. I ordered "A Short History of Western Civilization (paperback), but received "A Short History History of Western Civilization since 1600 (paperback)". I wrote the review and then discovered that I had the wrong book. I have returned the book for a refund and reordered the hardback book of the same title. You might want to note that the paperback version is a Study Guide and not a History Book. If you wish you can move the review to the correct book or delete the entry. Thank you

A Short History of Western Civilization (paperback) is a study guide and not a history book. It's great if a study guide, complete with questions, is what you are seeking. The volume was written by Joyce E. Salisbury, not Richard Sullivan as listed in the web site and published in 1994, not 1993. It's Volume Two: since the year 1600, and not a complete guide to the hardback book. The guide is about 128 pages and includes some maps. I give it one star because a study guide is not what I'm seeking.

This book traces the history of the western world, from ancient Egypt up to the fall of the Berlin wall.

The book is divided into periods of history, then further subdivided into sections about that period. You can 'dip-in' to a section easily, I find myself picking the book up for a light spot of reading with a cup of tea. I also use this book heavily in my Classics course - so it has a multitude of uses.

Overall, a thorough, unbiased, but easy to read account of western civilization. If you live in the western world, and are wondering where you came from or why things are the way they are, then get this book!