The First Amendment allows freedom of the press, which I am totally in favor of. However, [I was unprepared for ]the ...graphic depiction of sexual encounters in the first part of the book.
Perhaps the author felt that readers would be bored by the tale, so he decided to interject numerous sex scenes into the book. For me, it ruined the tale.
This is definitely not a book which should be on the shelves of any school system.

Reads as a history of the original inhabitants of Newfoundland, beginnnig 1000 a.d. ending 19th century.

I found the first half of the book to be pretty gripping, well-written and very active. However, by mid-book things were reading like a re-hash of prior pages, especially the mindlessly repetitive sex scenes noted by the other reviewer. The story went through revolutions along these lines: noble people lead idyllic, "free love" lives including living efficiently with the land and exploring all manner of sexual congress, only to be betrayed and slaughtered by european colonists, repeat cycle every 50-100 years, etc.

Overall, I enjoyed the book but it really got tiresome at times, especially the redundant sex passages and characters endlessly reflecting on sexual matters. Unbalanced book in this regard.

Let me first state that I purchased this book because I have been a fan of the movie for twenty-eight years. I felt it was about time to read the book on which the movie is based. Expecting, as is usually the case, more character development, more well defined motivation, intrigue, suspense and a plot, I was disappointed to discover that none of these exist in the book. The characters are flat, and behave as no one would in a real life-or-death situation. Coincidence is used extensively to tie the disjointed story line together. A novelization of the screenplay would be finer literature. This is the first time that I can say with all conviction that the movie is better than the book.

Condor reads spy novels for a living, picking out the neat twists and checking that no spooks have spilled the beans on sensitive government information. He doesn't seem too bothered by the fact that he works for the CIA, until he gets back from buying lunch one day and finds everybody dead.

From that moment things get hectic, first he is hunted and then he becomes the hunter as he figures out how to use his skills and knowledge against a shadowy coalition of G men and assassins, and tries to discover why they want him dead. The story rattles along and drags you with it, and whilst the movie is better paced, the book is still well worth the trip.

Mr. Grady blends Arctic history with the historic 1994 Arctic Ocean Section Expedition. However, in addition to the flaws in his science, Mr. Grady also got much wrong about icebreaking and shipboard operations -- in addition to the vetting by a scientist, as mentioned in ecpielou's comments, the book needed a vetting by someone who knew icebreaking and shipboard life. Given the number and scope of the science and icebreaking errors, one has to wonder about the accuracy of his historical references as well.

Some examples: he makes the concept of icebreakers being designed to ride up on top of the ice to break it downwards with the ship's weight sound like it's relatively new when icebreakers on the Great Lakes have been designed to work this way since 1900. Information about the fuel capacity of the Louis is off by an order of magnitude, a fact easily verified by a glance at the Canadian Coast Guard's website on the Louis S. St-Laurent (the tonnage of the fuel Mr. Grady reports exceeds the total displacement of the Louis!). Finally, he states that the Captain of Polar Sea was "in his early 60s" -- in actuality, Captain Brigham was, and looked, fifteen years younger.

This is too bad -- I also was a participant in this historic expedition and it deserves an accurate rendering. Unfortunately, this book is not it.

The book should have been vetted by a scientist before publication. It's inexcusable to spread misinformation such as this: "Phytoplankton produces chlorophyll by photosynthesis." And "the troposphere,.., 10 to 15 kilometres above the earth's surface." And other blunders equally bad. The only way to dispose of the book is to shred it, I wouldn't want to give it away for fear of misleading unsuspecting readers.

Scientists are becoming the new explorers and this book takes that point of view. In the same way that the photographer Hurley was taken aboard the Endurance to chronicle their achievement to the Antarctic in 1914, Grady is brought along on this trip to chronicle the exploration and discovery of the effects of global warming on the Arctic--the seeming linchpin of the climate change debate. If global warming is happening, it is happening here. Because scientists aren't always the best writers, they bring along Grady because of his experience in writing science and communicating to a larger audience. They don't want their discovery to go unheard, slipped into a report on some bureaucrat's desk. They want you and me to know so that we can make choices. Here's the evidence, Grady says, and--while we're at it, because I know you might like the adventure--here's the story, complete with characters, action and suspense. He also gives the reader--as the modern day exploration happens--a short history of Arctic exploration, global warming, and Arctic travel. I found myself making notes of all the original works he mentions, so I could read them later in their completed form. Deftly woven so that the reader becomes educated and enthralled, The Quiet Limit of the World is no ordinary travel adventure. This adventure has consequences for everyone, and Grady makes sure you are taken along for the ride.

These books are usually dull and this one is no exception. Now i understand: if writers of private eye novels stuck to the truth and the way it really is no one would buy their books--so they "improvise." This thing was written close to 30 years ago. If you're interested in the way it really is, buy it, otherwise forget it. O'Grady name-drops a lot. Dated, etc. I don't regret buying it, though, as I got it used at a discount.

We were trying to replace the heater core, the instructions were foggy to say the least. Further repairs or maintenance just as foggy, its a good book if you have a lot of experience with repairing the vehicle and don't need a how to. Amazingly the "Ford Tempo Mercury Topaz 1984-94" book by Mark Christman, which is by the same company, was a lot better for repairs and maintenance. But neither book helped with replacing the heater core, we eventually used other resources for more ideas on how to actually get to the heater core to get it out.

I've used this book for nearly three years now, and keep wondering why I go back to it. (Actually, it's because it's the only Tempo/Topaz book I own.) I have found several major errors in the illustrations, usually due to showing a 2.0 engine setup as a 2.3 or vice versa. Some instructions, like how to change a water pump, are just plain wrong. Electrical schematics, particularly of the instrument cluster are sketchy to the point of being useless when troubleshooting anything other than a hard failure. I suspect that much of the text in this book was a quickie cut-and-paste job of info that pertained to these same components as installed in other Ford products. It really doesn't do justice to the model-specific problems of navigating the limited space of the engine compartment or tracing an intermittent electrical circuit. Proofreading was spotty at best. It's better than doing a repair job blind, but not by much.

Chilton's Ford Tempo and Mercury Topaz Repair Manual 1984-94 is not for the average car owner. It is probably not even for the average mechanic. It is written in difficult language and at times seems to display unnecessarily complicated methods of performing simple tasks. From beginning to index it offers low quality information and instruction. There are too many diagrams and not enough photos. The photos available are poor. Overall this book was not very useful to me. I have used the Haynes manual for the same car and found it much more useful.

This "Ultimate Cyber Classroom" brought back those days in college where the instructor droned on and on using very precise language whose words had only meaning within the context of the class. (Why couldn't they use the word 'hidden' rather than 'elided'? Same number of characters...)

Be fair warned that the reading level of this course is over that of most people.

This would have been a far better course if it had spent more time on the why's and how's rather than almost totally on syntax.

I cannot install the CD, I am using Windows 2000. I clicked on the setup and nothing happened. Could I get some help.

Thanks

This product is basically a chapter by chapter monotone narration of the UML user guide that it is based on. It advertises a multimedia experience, when in reality it is a bunch of poorly written HTML pages with some animated slides. The animated slides consist of regurgitation, almost to the letter, of the text surrounding the slides you would have already read before hitting the play button to run the slide.

The practice tests were frustrating to say the least. They were riddled with: incorrect answers to questions, bugs (The wrong diagrams come up in some cases), annoying navigation and poor design. Probobly the worst design flaw was with its handling of incorrect answer feedback. When you got an incorrect answer, it was not specific as to why it was incorrect. It just linked you to the chapter where the topic is discussed. It is ironic that a class that is supposed to teach a tool for doing proper design/requirements gathering/use case creation etc. is so poorly designed from a user experience perspective. This looks like it was put together by a college student for a class.

Another flaw in this package is the fact that my virus protection software (Norton Anti Virus 2002) finds a virus every time I try to take the course (Called win95.corrupt). After closer examination of the contents in the box, there is a flyer stating that they are aware of this issue, and not to worry about it, there is no virus. They hint that there was once a virus, but they removed it. I guess its signature is still in the product but it is dormant. I have been purchasing software for 14 years and never have I seen a product present itself this way. Of the hundreds of software packages I have purchased in my career, never have I seen one with these symptoms.

So my final recommendation is to stay away from this course. It is boring, poorly written and a complete waste of money!!

I returned this product for a full refund.

Not recommended.

Sad to say, the book looks like an academic textbook of specifications, definitions, glued together with paragraphs and diagrams. I've seen Internet RFCs and STDs far more informative, interesting and useful than this.

If the book is actually recommended reading to use or implement SET, then SET must be the ISDN [1] of e-commerce! ;-)

Cheerio,

Link.

[1] ISDN: a complex standard designed by a committee to primarily solve committee issues, and not technical issues.

I don't know whether this book adds much to the specs of SET that are publicly available available on the web.

Furthermore, the book is hard to read due to bad lay out and contains several typos.

I am afraid that this book was published quickly to gain from the hype, but I think, but hope at least, that better books are available on this subject.

I would agree with the other reviewers that the book is a dry read, but I found it to be a useful reference manual.

This slim book attempts a history of Europe focused on the Western Church during the five centuries from the Emperor Constantine to Charlemagne. After reading the first five chapters I set the book aside. Those five chapters include a confusing array of names of emperors, popes, bishops, Latin poets, Greek philosophers, Roman senators and their dinner guests, often with little explanantion of their significance for the story. Political forces, military campaigns and theological disputes are all identified, but if the author has sorted out how they all worked together to shape the history of the period he has failed to convey any clarity to the reader. Social trivia seem to be given equal weight in his account with the succession of emperors and popes, disputes between secular and papal authority, and conciliar articulations of the nature of the Trinity. The author quotes extensively from contemporary sources without identifying the sources -- there are no footnotes -- nor, in most cases, are the sources listed in the scant bibliography of mainly secondary works. To add to these problems, the author's style is turgid: the book cries out for an editor. I found the first five chapters a tedious read without any profit and have decided to donate my copy to the trash collector.

As a long-time Christian but new Catholic, I found Fr. O'Grady's book to be extremely liberal in its outlook. He presents a spectrum of possible beliefs and moral stances, but I felt as if he favors the most liberal end of the spectrum: on abortion, homosexual behavior, birth control, even apostolic succession, his views seem calibrated to the "lowest common denominator". Possibly this represents an attempt to enhance ecumenical dialogue, a worthwhile goal, but not at the expense of declaring optional the v ery beliefs and teachings of one's own church.
For American Catholics interested in falling right in with current society's norms, this book is for you. For those trying to learn what Catholicism is all about, and for new believers, I would stay away.

This book is a total desaster. The main CD is full of viruses (W95.CIH.damaged & W95.CIH.corrupt). Its really frustrating to pay a fortune and to get such a bad piece of work.