This slim volume of "At Issue" targets a crisis that is as urgent as it is complex - juvenile violence and its contributing factors. The book adopts a pro-con dichotomy to illustrate the varied opinions on the subject. However, this style quickly degenerates into a clash of liberal and conservative ideologies. Ultimately, the "dual" expository approach conceals more information that it reveals, as the articles' authors cite increasingly ludicrous "evidence" to hammer in their dubious assertions.

Consider, for instance, Robert W. Lee's "The Availability of Guns Does Not Contribute to Violent Behavior in Children." What, not at all? Lee cites a handful of "positive" cases, where the guns are used for self-defense, and bluntly ignores cases of the opposite. His closing argument is a Confederate victory at the cost of armed 15-year-olds' lives. Admire Wade F. Horn's "Fatherlessness Contributes to Juvenile Violence" article, which poses religion as the ultimate tool in parental authority. He proceeds to "trace" the exact "road" children take from upright to promiscuous. Next he rigidly defines both parents' roles - with father as the "hands-on" authority of risks and punishment. This isn't controversy - this is simple poor taste!

The articles originate from several backgrounds: academic, testimonial, media. Unfortunately, this is easy to divine only because of the spectrum of flaws each approach exhibits. The reader is faced with almost everything imaginable - from some articles' failure to organize raw statistical data in a useful manner, to others' dismissive nature (sorry, Mr. Males, but no matter how much I sympathize with your way of thinking, I cannot tolerate ignorance of basic facts). A few articles weren't subjected to a rigorous enough selection process, which leads to their lack of relevance and failure to address the task at hand (Tom Kalinske's article comes to mind). Several articles are obtuse exercises in showmanship - like Steven Barr's dramatic presentation of a videogame experience ("You can't get away!" the boy said with a maniacal sneer...). Lastly, we've all heard some of these arguments - namely, Joanne Cantor's "Television Contributes to Violent Behavior in Children", which is a flagrant case of the "we can build you" methodology, which denies children an active role in their own formative experience (though her "Momy, I'm Scared" is handy enough).

Sadly, the editor never takes the time to sum up the basic known facts, and all articles cite them differently. Without some defined point of departure, this "At Issue" ultimately becomes a Rorschach test. Though designed to give the reader a passing familiarity with the subject, this volume only manages to communicate one thing - confusion.

If I take this pile of bibles and increase it's number by 25%, how many bibles will I have afterwards? What's that? You say you need to know how many bibles I started out with? That if you don't know the starting point, the meaning of the change is lost on you?

That's my main problem with this book which was set as part of the bibliography for the "Liturgy & Worship" module of my theology BA. The book is filled with historical and liturgical references that one has to have had prior knowledge of in order to read it profitably. As an example, the section on the Eucharist makes reference to the fact that the Roman Eucharistic Prayer (EP) number 2 and EPs 1, 2 and 3 of the ASB derive from the same historic source. Absent a library where one can access current and historic worship books and liturgies of all the major liturical traditions, this sort of passing reference makes the book quite hard reading.

The book traces the source of the liturgical movement back to the 16th century and rushes through references of liturgicists over four centuries without actually explaining their positions in one coherent manner such that the reader can say, for example "Gueranger had these views."

I have no way of knowing whether this book would be profitable for experts or not. In my opinion, it should not have been included on the bibliography of an introductory liturgical module without some prior background having been given.

While not the absolute worst review book I've read it runs a close second. There are many errors in this book. A couple that come to mind are this books still says we prophylacticly dose our PT's with lidocaine and that management of an impaled abd object includes removing it so you can inflate the MAST pants (Question #165 Section 4). These are just the 2 I remember most. This is NOT The book for 1st time paramedics takeing National boards.

as i'm getting ready fot nremt-p, I found this book to be the worst..Hardly any scenerios, but many definitions and some wrong..(Give D50 for DKA?) Hmmm....It will make you think you don't understand what you were sure about before..Stick with the others: learning express,mosby refresher, and mcgraw hill pre-test..Then again I have yet to take the test. God Speed & Good Luck...rog

As an older medic I was amazed at how much I had forgotten. It is very humbling at first to realize that your street knowledge does you very little good when it comes to your clinical base. How 9 years can erode your pathophys. This practice book will flat dial you in to your weaknesses. If you are not sure which book to get to study for your Nationals this is the one. You MUST get BRYAN BLEDSOE'S "EMERGENCY CARE IN THE STREET" 3rd EDITION. They go hand in hand. She refers to this book/edition w/ page #'s, so it takes you right to the answers that you missed. Also makes a great refeference for later. Very HARD CORE, but so is the test. Thank You Charly for doing all the work.

This book has NOTHING about Java 2 and all the changes that came with that release: RMI over IIOP, Java IDL, and the rest.

If you want a book that describes the ORIGINAL RMI only, then this is the book for you. Otherwise, keep looking.

Java RMI is a good refernce work for determining how to use the Java RMI API. After reading several other texts and chapters on RMI, Java RMI is by far the most direct and concise explanation of this sometimes elusive technology.

The book is divided into four logical parts. The first part describes the Java RMI API as a conceptual framework. Code examples illustrate the important points of using remote methods. The description is very clear and covers topics like creating a registry, defining remote interfaces, and setting up a distributive model.

The second section builds on the academic and theoretical descriptions presented in the first chapter. Through some simple (contrived) examples, a better understanding of basic distributed design methods is evident.

The third section gives a couple of "real world" examples of RMI usage. While the examples are simplistic, they do illustrate the material covered in the first and second sections of the book and do provide good code examples. One part of the book I like, althought it is a waste of space, is a summary of the entire code examples presented after a detailed analysis of the code samples is given. This allows the reader to see how the code fits togther without needing to look at the code on the CD-ROM.

The fourth section is a series of appendices describing the RMI API. While this is normally "fluff" material, in the context of this book, the appendices serve as a worthwhile reference.

Good points of the book: -- clear writing -- good explanations -- plenty of code examples -- the book stys focused on one topic -- RMI (too many other texts get involved with serialization, messaging, CORBA, etc.)

Bad Points: -- this is not a distributed programming how to book (but does not intend to be) -- Distributed design is not covered. The author assumes that you have an understanding of distributed design and want to USE RMI to implement a distributed design.

Summary: A good how to guide to RMI.

I started reading this book without knowing anything about RMI. By the time I was done, I started getting an idea what RMI is all about.The examples are good and the book is worth atleast two readings. In the first reading, what is RMI etc. is put in place. In the second reading one may want to place emphasis on what goes into the stubs and skeletons etc.

That said, the book does have certain things going against it. The first is the fact that it does not talk about Java2 (You'll understand the evolution of RMI when you start reading about RMI/IIOP etc.). The second is that the author does not really delve into clarifying the definitions. Also, the book is verbose and the author tries to tell you a lot of stuff which may not be quite the thing you are looking for when you start reading it. This, though, is what makes the book worth a second reading.

Finally, the examples don't always work. You will need to use a bit of ingenuity (for example convert the chat applet into text based chat client etc. to avoid the problems associated with getting the server running etc.). The popular browser when this book was written was Netscape, which supports RMI, while with the current versions of IE (5.0) you'll find that the examples don't work at all. You'll need a plug in etc.

In my opinion this book is certainly worth reading.

As for buying the book you are probably better off buying a book on J2EE which integrates RMI and puts it all into perspective.

I hate to say it, but a lot of advice in this book is downright wrong and some of it is actually bad for your cats. If you love your cats, keep away from this book.

This book was an amusing and enjoyable read. The vet clearly likes cats, and it comes across in his narrative. The biggest difference between his stories and the Herriot books is that Dr Padwee couldn't seem to decide whether to write a book of amusing anecdotes, like Herriot, or one of basic veterinary advice. It works better as a book of stories, as the advice has a tendency to get a bit preachy at times.

From what I can see, what the other reviewers seem to be objecting to is that Padwee is pro-declaw and pro-indoor/outdoor for his patients. As a veterinary technician of 15 years, I found nothing wrong with his advice or opinion, just that it differs from mine in some areas. The other reviewers seem to ignore the fact that Padwee began his practice in the late 60s or 70s, and declawing was pretty defacto for indoor pets back then. He wouldn't have much of a practice if he refused to do it. Several also seem to have not paid very good attention--he also recommends spaying and neutering, plus vaccinations for Leukemia and Rabies, even though a vaccine for Leukemia was only developed in the 80s. And indoor-only cats are a particularly American affectation--cats in the the rest of the world, including Europe, are 95% indoor/outdoor.

Several of his clients are determined to have exotic pets, or to breed their cats, despite his recomendation to the contrary--he still treats them with respect and understanding, and still cares for thier pets. Would he be a better veterinarian if he treated them with disdain and condemnation for their decisions? No, he would instead be a vet that *I* would not want to go to, nor work for. Like any MD, his own prejudices or opinions don't matter if that's not want the owners want--he has to treat the pets, not his opinions.

Anyway, I do recommend this book as both an amusing afternoon reading and a good book full a bits of advice. Anyone who loves cats should get anjoyment out of it.

I find books like this usually difficult to read. But this one is different. I couldn't put it down. Padwee shows the concern of a compassionate and lover of cats and people. It is nice to know that a vet like this is out there. The stories are warm and clear. I wish he would write more of his adventures and interactions. His writing is very easy to get in to and become apart of... Thanks!!

I'm part of a team implementing 4 sub-modules of the HR Module - Personnel Admin, Org Management, Benefits and Payroll. This book was useless in helping to explain (from a functional or a technical standpoint) how to implement or use those four pieces. It was useless in helping to understand how Payroll interfaced with FICO.

This is not a book for novices. I'd be surprised if it was a book for experts, but maybe in a couple of years it will be a handy reference. Until then, I'll be using it to press flowers.

If you need information attend the SAP courses.

This is a terrible book. You can not make any sense out of this junk.

This book is nothing more than a copy (literally) of SAP's help with a few add-ons. If you have access to SAP online help, you would be wasting your money on this book.

In this book, Wilson Bryan Key claims that advertisers spend millions of dollars a year inserting subliminal, racy images into advertisements. By unconsciously appealing to our prurient interests, Key claims, these ads make us want to buy the product.

An interesting idea. Problem is, Key neglects to tells us where he got the "millions of dollars" figure; he doesn't provide us with any whistle-blowers who have done this alleged work; and he never provides any proof that even if this "subliminal seduction" were taking place, that it actually works.

The thing is, ads of this sort (though much more innocent) were indeed tested in the late 1950s in TV commercials. In the middle of a commercial the words "Buy Coke" would appear for a split second, too fast for the conscious mind to register. But the test results were inconclusive, and the idea was abandoned.

But here comes Wilson Bryan Key, who claims to see breasts and decapitated heads in photos of ice cubes (I have owned this book for 20 years, and I still can't find them). He produces a fashion ad with two women in it, and deduces that they are secretly lesbians. He has also found secret dirty lyrics in pop records; he cites the 1973 hit "Hooked on a Feeling," and claims that the opening goofy refrain "Oooga-shucka" later changes to a quieter "Who got sucked off" as the rest of the music fades in. I have that record, and nothing of the sort ever happens.

I worked in New York advertising for five years, on both the creative and business sides. Nothing like this was ever done. Key has no concept of what the advertising world is really about, which is trying to come up with an interesting, honest way to attract someone to a product. It's also about meeting client and printer deadlines. Outside of that, there simply would not be any time to engage in the type of shenanigans Key espouses.

In short, Key's claims come straight from his imagination. He simply has found a niche audience who will believe his ideas without so much as an ounce of proof or critical thinking.

an **extraordinarily** silly book. a caketaker. is there a weiner in yr ice cube? is sex written in lemon juice (therefore invisible. just ask a boyscout) all over the advertisement for baby food? why didnt i think of this myself?
marvellous excreta.
similar to the wm castlesque gimickry of inserting "drink coke" frames during movies, which influenced absolutely no-one to drink coke or anything else, "subliminal seduction" combines this subtlety w/ the blatancy of the true wm castle gimmick, "percepto," which wired the seats to give every several moviegoer a shock in the behind during a 4th rate horror flick.
knowing disgruntled designers as i do - & believe me, i do - i can imagine well things like the "little mermaid" "fiasco" (i believe a weiner in an, um, state o' erectile grace hidden on the videobox. goodness it is often not fun to work for a disney subcontractor! anyway) & have seen similar (while having not perpetrated similar. dont get me wrong), done purposefully as sabots thrown amongst the gears of commerce. i have a hardtime imagining some tired & otherwise preoccupied ad execs either deciding or being compelled to insert peculiar, if not obscene, effluvia into their hardwon advertisements. designers would get a kick out of doing this, but it would be known all over town if they did.

An ground breaking book that finally puts most of the subliminal theory and practice into a very readable and informative format.

Mike Bryan starts with the premise that the true soul of America is to be found along its interstates, which have replaced its small towns as the true heart of the nation. This is a perfectly reasonable premise, but then he botches it by limiting his search to, of all places, west Texas, with some forays into New Mexico and Arizona. There is also a memorable stopover in the quirky community of Laughlin, Nevada, which is sort of like Vegas for people without teeth (see, I can be a witty travel writer, too!). The problem at the heart of this book is that Bryan has focused his narrative on a part of the US that is just too darned boring and soulless (and this coming from a customer-reviewer in Saskatchewan - oh well).

The best passages are when the author interviews law enforcement personnel. He rides with the highway patrol, and spends time with border patrol officers and trucking enforcement officers, all of whom see humanity from a different perspective than the rest of us. Any travel writer must strike a balance between revealing too much versus too little of one's personal life, and Bryan errs on the side of revealing too much. I really don't care about his sperm motility, and his accounts of how he and his wife visited various fertility specialists fall under the label of "too much information." The book's premise is a sound one - the interstate system is quintessentially American, and a better place than most to measure the pulse of the nation - but a broader geographic scope would have been a plus.

Mike Bryan doesn't like Blue Highways.

He doesn't like the book of William Least Heat Moon, and he doesn't like the concept, either. For Bryan, the Interstate is what we've become and the real place to acquire knowledge.

Although the book is entertaining in spots, the revelations are shallow and the writing, for the most part, uninspired. And the road trips themselves are not very comprehensive: the book revolves around roads between Dallas and El Paso, with brief excursions elsewhere.

If you're looking for something in the road trip genre other than Blue Highways, I'd suggest the books of Dayton Duncan instead.

The first thing I noticed about Mike Bryan's UNEASY RIDER was a review proudly displayed on the back cover. "Easily the best road book since Blue Highways" I believe it said. Of course anyone who has enjoyed William Least Heat-Moon's classic journey across America knows that is would be almost impossible to repeat his brilliance, though Bryan gives it his best shot. At times his constant need to remind us of his love for the interstates can get a little old and i believe he would have been better off attempting to tone down his distaste for the "blue highways" so many have come to know and love. I personally am ambivalent about the subject, any road that can take me from here to somewhere else is alright with me. What Bryan does accomplish is an in depth look into some of the quirky (strange) people and places lying on the interstates (or in some cases, the back roads). At times I believe he gets too caught up in the supposed significance of some event and could stand to lighten up on the philosophical underpinnings of some of his subjects. All in all, I enjoyed the book. I particulary liked Bryan's ability to weave history and information together as he did in the chapter about Texas Highway Construction. Anyone who spends their time reading road books has to accept them as creations of the author who has his own set of beliefs and feelings about the greatest creation in the modern world, highways. With this thought in mind (it is Bryan's trip, not yours) Uneasy Rider is one of the better road books out there. Please let me know if you find any better.

I was hoping to find more in-depth information in this book, such as how to brush up on science if you've been out of school for awhile and how to juggle family and med school. Instead, it was just a bunch of interviews with med students who, as the other reviewers have noted, all went to the same medical schools and had similar backgrounds. Besides, most of the info you need can be found online for free - just Google "medical student" and see what comes up.

I bought this book, as a non-traditional student, with great hopes of hearing stories of people who have had the same anxieties as myself. Unforunately, what I found was a poorly put together group of people who almost all came from some kind of health-care background or medical legacy. The only thing that made these people non-traditional was the fact that they were older. I was hoping for a book full of artists and business people who decided to switch paths, but all I found were stories of phamaceutical reps and EMTs. Aside from subject matter, there isn't a wide range of questions or answers. Basically, if you read one interview, you've read them all. There are so many other books that give an eclectic view of the non-traditional student. Save your money. You'll need it in med-school.

This is not a book that tells you how to gain acceptance into medical school, or what kind of MCAT score or GPA you should have. It is a collection of interviews with different people who all decided to go to medical school after they had completed their undergraduate degree. As a nontraditional prospective medical applicant, I enjoyed reading how other people came to the decision to go to medical school and how they went about it. It would have been nice if the author had interviewed people at different schools. The majority of the people in the book went to Northwestern Medical School and did their post-bac premed work at Loyola. However, the author does interview an interesting mix of people, and each one of their stories is unique. Again, this book is only for those who want to read interviews about people who have already gone through the application process and been accepted to medical school. There is scant information on how to get admitted yourself.

While I know what Web Services are and how they could help me, the code examples in the book are really bad. For one, it feels that some of the code was written by one person and explained by another. Also, the lack of continuity in code style decreases after each chapter (obviously from all the different people that wrote this thing). Some of the introduction chapters were well written, only because they didn't talk about code so much. This book's major failure was the lack of case studies. So Wrox.. with no case studies or quality examples, why should we buy your cheap book?

I think it's a nice book, good job! It introduces wide range about the relationship between PHP and the web services, it's a good base to start. However I have to tell, that there are some bugs (or the descriptions are not clear, don't know) in the example sources, for example I've found one in the chapter about security (Chapter 6).

This is a problem, but with it, I still could recommend this book for everybody not familiar with Web Services, and would like to learn all the related technologies. As it is true at other books, too: you can learn all these things from the web, but you can just find these together in this (or other) book, and you can read it conveniently at your bed with your girlfriend. :)

The content in this book simply rawks - all the latest information on how you can do web services using PHP.There is a wealth on information on how you can use PHP and SOAP (using popular libraries such as NuSOAP, PEAR::SOAP and ezSOAP), PHP and SOAP's front-runner (XML-RPC), how you can discover web services using UDDI. Infact, there is a quality library for PHP::UDDI, that was created for the book, and which the authors have very kindly hosted on sourceforge (phpuddi.sourceforge.net/).

This is *the* book on the subject. Check it out today.