Kurt Wallander is both the main character and setting of Mankell's 'procedural' crime series. While based in southern Sweden, "The Fifth Woman" is in fact grounded in the rugged landscape of Wallander's interior life - his memories, hopes, shopping lists, prejudices and anxieties. Not since Lawrence Block's Matt Scudder have I read such an angst-ridden and ethically driven protagonist. This is the ultimate introverted hero - he solves crimes using weapons of solitude, intuition, memory-interrogation and a phenonomenal eye for detail. How could you not love a policeman who reminds himself in the midst of the chase to book the laundry room, alert his superiors to a colleague's excessive workload or take time to grieve for his father. Mankell also provides a vivid account of the broader issues that confronted Swedish society in the 1990s - refugees, law and order, social capital and shifting moral foundations. Wallander characterises the times as an age where people have forgotten how to darn their socks, preferring to discard a blemish rather than repair a resource. And the storyline of "The Fifth Woman"? Like Laurie King's "Night Work", "The Fifth Woman" explores issues of violence, revenge and enforcing justice when the system cannot deliver. It is, like Mankell's other Wallander titles, a monumental chronicle of detail, connection and the unfolding of a tightly-bound investigation. The Swedish atmospherics will also help take one's mind off an endless summer.

I picked up "The Fifth Woman" by Henning Mankell because a reviewer favorably compared it to the classic "The Laughing Policeman" by Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo (Swedish wife/husband writing team). It doesn't disappoint. This is a book that is worth the price of a hardcover -- meaty, substantive, intricately/well plotted, with great characters.

The three things I noticed that bind all three authors in their works are: 1) the Swedish people's dislike and distrust of the police, 2) the chill and loneliness that seems to pervade human relationships, and 3) police inspectors who are brilliant, meticulous, conscientious, introspective and given to depression. These Swedish police procedurals are not a barrel of laughs, but rather they are thoughtful, well written, and original.

"The Fifth Woman" starts out with the murders in Africa of 4 nuns and a female visitor. The rest of the novel takes place with these murders' ramifications in Sweden where a serial killer is dispatching men, each very differently. The title refers not only to the 5th woman murdered in Africa, but also the 5th woman in Sweden who leads police inspector, Kurt Wallander, to the Swedish serial murderer.

American police procedurals tend to reveal more murder motives from the get-go. In this novel the motive is a core plot element and isn't revealed until later in the book. The reader also knows a few things about the killer early in the book that the police don't know and it is fascinating to watch the police reach the "same place in the book" as the reader. I was reading a well regarded American mystery writer and stopped the book to read "The Fifth Woman". When I returned to the American book after finishing Mankell's opus, it was sophmoric in comparison. This is a book for the serious mystery reader and well worth the effort.

Henning Mankell really nails you to your reading chair from page one with his subtle and quiet horror stories where there is a minimum of the graphical violence you so often see in American thrillers these days. Mankell has an ingenius way of building up his stories which will keep you mystified till the end. He is also weaving into the fabric a honest description of Sweden on the social level and of how police work is developing in the Scandinavian countries. You get to like this Wallander and his Swedish colleagues so much that you are sad when the last page is turned.

To the best of my knowledge, this is one of the first books to try documenting the StarOffice suite. A bold challenge since much of the exhaustive documentation is either in German or scattered in a several newsgroups. This book has met that challenge rather well. If you are working with StarOffice, and need more than just the online help (who doesn't?), this book is currently (as of 10/99) probably one of the best out there.

The problem that I usually encounter with references which cover the entire "suite" is that there is very little coverage of of the advanced features. This book is only partly guilty of these kinds of omissions. The advanced features ARE covered but just a tad lightly (I suppose we'll be seeing very in-depth, application-specific books someday in the future). Having used StarOffice for about 8 months now, this book made me aware that StarCalc had its own version of Microsoft Excel's Pivot-Tables.

This covers version 5.1 as was released by the original StarDivision or as is available now from Sun Microsystems. It covers both the Windows and Linux/Unix/Solaris versions and identifies subtle differences which you might encounter. Overall, it's a very good first reference with enough advanced topics.

Unfortunatly this was the third Star Office Help Book that I bought - I wished there was a review that discussed the book, instead of the progam - prior to my two other purchases.

The Special Edition book is a volumous tome of information that every skill level can use. The book is written in a manner that appeals to both the computer expert and the newbie user.

Each section of the book discusses the basic techniques that are used on a regular basis and then it progresses to more powerful techniques. Examples and illustrations are plentiful - which many people find helpful.

The index and table of contents is written is plain english - so it is not difficult to find the answer to any question you may have. The book also discusses the compatibility of StarOffice and other major office suites.

For expert level user tasks - macro designing, the book offers very little information on this area. But to find the answers on building the macros - I simply went to the Sun Microsystem's (The Makers of StarOffice) website and did some poking around until I found my answer.

Sadly, StarOffice 5.2 will debut this year and this book may be obsolete by teh time you read it - but if you plan to use or continue to use StarOffice 5.1 - then consider buying this book.

The price may be a bit higher then some of the "thinner" books - but in this case - you get what you pay for. Don't be a "Dummy." Purchase this book!

This book is an in-depth reference to the StarOffice functionality. The book is huge, fine print; and still the book does not touch on the new database capability of Adabas.

The StarBasic programming section is particularly instructive. The book's programming tutorial nicely complements the SO Online Help system and the SO SDK downloadable from the internet.

For old hacks, like me, this material (and Linux) is the best of times for computing.

Here is ftp site for the missing files from the CD.

ftp://ftp.sybex.com/2561/

The Author

As the author of this book, I understand and share the frustration of missing files. Those that purchase the book can contact me directly and I will immeadiately forward a CD with any missing files to them, at no extra charge. (My contact info is in the book.)

But the great thing about the book is that the wealth of information in the book not reliant on the files on the CD. As an experienced 3D Studio Max Trainer for Discreet, I am exposed to hundreds of new users a year. They all have common threads of knowledge they are seeking. I have tried to summarize all those bits of knowledge in this book.

Of course no book is perfect, and experience on this program is never found in a book. But I believe this book serves its purpose of raising the level of knowledge about 3D Studio in a different way from other Max books. And those that read it are looking to learn something new, not be told how to do something different. Those people will benefit and be better Max artists because of it. Of course, I am biased because its my book. If you do purchase my book, I encourage constructive comments and feed back. - Good Reading.. CM

I pretty much learn every feature of software that I set out to learn. I chose this book because it seemed like it would get me closest to learning it all for a first book, knowing that it wouldn't take me all the way. It's a great book by all means. Sure there are some missing files on the CD but things like that are easy to fix with the internet at our disposal. I've read almost the whole thing now and it hasn't disappointed me at all. I'll probably be a bit more disappointed with other books that I buy because I'll be trying to find out things that this book didn't cover. I'd have to say that this is a great first book for someone who plans to peg the whole program down to a professional level within a few years. I can't understand why it would ever get bad reviews because it seems like the authors really cared to bring the most info across in the most straight foreward way possible. You don't even have to read this baby from front to back. You can open it up and start doing something advanced using step by step instructions right away. Very simple and concise. Good reference tool also.

The author applies standard project management techniques to object-oriented projects. In particular, the assumptions and techniques underlying UML and the Unified Process are to be found in the various chapters in the book. For example, the author advocates managing complexity by using packages, use cases, encapsulation, inheritance and aggregation.
The main strengths of the book are: It attempts to integrate OOT with project management techniques using the standard UML and this integration process lasts for the duration of the full software lifecycle.
The book may or may not be useful depending on what you are looking for. For example, it is (very) superficial in places and in general I would say that it lacks 'meat' in the following places:

Traceability issues
Useful checklists and tables
Quantitative treatment (measurement)

Furthermore, the chapter on lifecycle models is not convincing. The author suggests that we should NEVER use the Waterfall model while he suggests that the Controlled Iteration model. Why? I have not understood this latter model when reading the boook. I think that it is too complex.

Concluding, this book serves as a baseline for further research and should be complemented by other sources, for example from Boehm, Air force and IEEE.

Finally, the title is an attention-grabber and in my opinion incorrect. Project management is independent of the technology used (in this case OOT). A better name would have been "Project management of software projects that use UML".

Murray Cantor's Object-Oriented Project Management with UML is of value to both the young manager looking for guidance and the seasoned manager looking to ground one's practices. The book is an engaging read that blends best practices with personal opinions. The author is careful to distinguish his personal opinions from the rest of the text and is conscientious to appropriately cite the work of others. Some 70 plus references are listed in the bibliography. In fact, what comes across is Mr. Cantor would prefer software managers to have a repertoire of books on one's shelf. I myself keep returning to Walker Royce's Software Project Management, a Unified Framework, Grady Booch, James Rumbaugh, and Ivar Jacobson's The Unified Modeling Language User Guide, as well as Mr. Cantor's O-O Project Management. Managing great software teams within projects is tough in today's environment of complex solutions, anxious customers, and shrinking time-to-markets. It takes more than just common sense. It requires a game plan and an awareness of when to be flexible. Mr. Cantor lays out a series of methods that focuses on attacking project complexity, leveraging team dynamics, and what needs to be accomplished when in the controlled, iterative development lifecycle. The underlying theme is risk management. Software projects will likely be adventurous for the foreseeable future as we seek ever larger scale systems, but if more engineers and customers were grounded in the techniques espoused by this book a lot more businesses would achieve their goals.

Government agencies provided the motivation for improved software program management (PM) techniques and this effort, lead by Carnegie-Melon University, produced the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model (CMM). The premise and underlying structure of the CMM techniques is the waterfall model (though they claim to be agnostic in this regard). Commercial entities led the development of modern object-oriented (OO) methods that are taming some of the complexity of software development, but their methods for software PM weren't as mature as those of government agencies. Until Murray Cantor's and Walker Royce's books there was no structure that effectively combined solid project management techniques with OO's best-of-breed development technology. Dr. Cantor's book is easy reading, but that belies the underlying complexity of the message. The importance of the Unified Modeling Language, an OO product, is to provide communications among the members of the team (engineers, customers, and management) and the importance of the iterative process is to maintain control of the project. Dr. Cantor shows the program manager, particularly those in charge of very large (millions of SLOCS) developments, how to combine project management tools (earned value, WBS, and integrated schedules)with strong risk management (iterative development) to significantly reduce the risk of unmanageable cost or schedule problems with that software development project. This is a breaktrhough book in this regard and Dr. Cantor deserves thanks for his work.

This book is well organized, making it easy to find information. There's a short introduction to nutritional supplements and lengthy sections on vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids, accessory nutrients and glandular products, as well as a quick reference guide to a number of specific health conditions.

The book traces many of its health claims to medical journal articles in a list of references at the back of the book. Its index is good too.

This is an excellent reference book on vitamins and other nutritional supplements and a "must have" for those interested in learning more about improving their health naturally. It is very well laid out and chock-a-block full of useful information on the dosage, available forms and reasons why each supplement is beneficial. It makes me more confident when I'm shopping for supplements and I'm able to avoid making mistakes buying "snake oil" or empty supplements that have little nutritional value. Thank you Dr. Murray

I have been intending to get around to writing a review of this great book, but, alas, life is soooo busy. However, I have turned to this book time and again over the past couple of years and each time find it informative and dependable. Dr. Murray does consider the consumer's pocketbook, yet doesn't skimp on clear, intelligent information. We have to face the fact that in order to keep healthy longer in this fast paced life, we can't get by with just food. We need to add nutritional supplements to our daily regeime. About the same time I discovered Dr. Murray's book, a friend told me about a site, PapaNature, that carries a whole array of supplements - even several brands and/or dosages of the same supplement. Each is offered with documentation, and often links to great books such as this Encyclopedia are included. Even though I don't give credit where credit is due in a timely manner, I have successfully used an array of products from PapaNature that Murray recommends and feel healthier than I did five years ago! Buy the book. Try the recommendations.

I thought I'd never learn to use this program. It's HARD. Not impossible... but not easy, either. I'd almost given up when a friend told me he'd found this one book which made Max4 seem pretty tame; I was, frankly, skeptical. But, I've gone through the *entire* book (with the exception of small parts of the final chapters), and feel I have the measure of the program.

It seems that some others who've used the book claim to have had certain problems with it. All I can say is that this is the clearest documentation I've seen and, as for problems: zero. Although no MAX book is going to make the program trivial, this comes as close as possible, with no stumbling blocks.

To put it mildly, 3ds Max is a daunting program to learn. Those looking for the ideal introduction to REALLY using the program - understanding its logical workings and wide range of capabilities - need look no further than this marvelous book. While it's suitable for beginners, it is especially superb for those with at least a passing familiarity with 3D modeling and complex software design (the authors, to their credit, are very clear about this). That the authors devote their first chapters to reviewing concepts and context (areas utterly lacking in slapdash software guides written on a "Topic X for Dummies" level) speaks volumes about their philosophy for the book: that you will learn not only how to use 3ds Max, but to 'understand' it, to get inside it.

That some might find the book anything but exceptionally well-written is a mystery, and suggests they've never encountered literature outside the driest of engineering texts. In fact, it's rare to find ANY technical material as thoughtfully laid-out and beautifully phrased as this. The book is sensibly divided into 14 chapters covering everything one might want to know about the program's capabilities, and an additional 6 on scripting, a nice bonus. Although it might seem frivolous to comment on it, the Index is the most comprehensive you'll encounter, making locating just about anything in the main body of the book a snap.

Also rare is the inclusion, in a book ostensibly covering so vast a terrain as this, of detailed treatment of a number of advanced, specialized topics, like character animation and post-production. These are presented in enough detail that the reader can use them right out of the box, and can 'learn how to learn' more on his or her own. In short, this is indispensable.

Unlike a lot of people using MAX, I was close to a beginner, and was trying to learn it along with a graduate course in animation and design. A friend recommended this book to me, after I had trouble with another...book which was our course text. I can't say whether "Mastering 3ds max 4" is the best MAX book on the market, but it's light years ahead of what our instructor chose.

If you were to open the book, you might get the impression -- the wrong impression -- that it was 'dumbed down', because there are so many illustrations. In fact, I almost didn't buy it for that reason. Only later it hit me that this is a book *about* graphics, so of course it would be graphical, and not like some book teaching you about, say, databases. Once I got used to the way the material was presented, I found the book really easy to follow, and was able to create real animations, from scratch, on my own. I think almost anyone can learn to do it from this book, if they stick with it.

The writing is (for a book like this) almost entirely free of jargon and always clear, even if sometimes, due to my lack of experience, I had to go over things a few times to get the knack of them. I can't say whether this would be the optimal guide for a professional animator, but it seems ideal for people with a good general background in using graphics software, and for 'advanced beginners' like me (and a bunch of other people in the class who borrowed it from me... and didn't want to give it back).

This book used to be the bible of image formats. Unfortunately, this bible is starting to show its age. Depending on what your interest is in graphics, you might find all the formats you need or be really disappointed. Most major image formats (like those used in web pages) are in there, but some very important ones that have appeared in the past 5 or so years are missing: Avid's OMFI, Softimage .pic, Maya's .iff, Pixar .tx, etc. The lack of an extensions index is an area where the book fails for me as an encyclopedia. While the final index does lists extension names, having a separate index for them would be nicer. So that if you had a file with extension .pic which you cannot read, you could easily figure out what formats it could correspond to. This is a problem with AVI, which is listed as Microsoft RIFF. Funny thing the book mentions that most people know AVIs by their extensions, but unless you look in the index, you will think it was missing. Still, some Microsoft image formats are missing (.ico files, for example). Other contradictions like those are listing the format for Pixar's .rib files, but not for their .tx files. Yes, the book also has descriptions of several popular non-image formats, such as 3D scene & object formats (Wavefront, Inventor, Radiance, etc), which can be either an annoyance or an added bonus depending on what you are looking. Animation formats (Quicktime, etc) are introduced but not covered in detail and given web links to search for more information. Formats not covered in the book are VRML, font formats (TrueType, etc), or Audio formats. If you are looking for source code or a library you can use to plug into your application, you will be very disappointed. The CD-ROM is just a web reprinting of all the info in the book, and the only software provided is Mosaic, a first & now slowest web browser, which in this day and age of Netscape and IE, is a big annoyance and a waste of disk space (you have to install it, since the installer looks for it & pages are named .ht_ instead of .htm or .html!). On a more positive note, the book offers beginners a good introduction to coding image loaders -- warning & providing solutions to problems such as byte ordering, alignment, etc. RLE encoding is given a very thorough description with several of its possible variations. The principles of other types of encoding (LZW, Huffman, CCITT, JPEG & Fractal) are described but not in so much detail. Wavelets are not even mentioned. In summary, most of the information is nothing you cannot get on the web if you spend enough time searching. The book & CD needs to be updated for the new millenium and since it is already pretty heavy, I would vote to split it in two: one for image formats and one for 3D formats.

My only negative comment: The section on GIFs doesn't discuss animated GIFs. There's just a little note that "the format supports multiple images in a file, but this is rarely used". If only they knew back then...

I've kept this book next to my computer desk for quite some time because I consider it an essential reference. There has never been a question about graphic file formats that I haven't been able to answer using this book. I feel the authors have done an outstanding job describing everything from the basics to complex file format features in a language that someone who isn't an artist can understand. As an application developer, I often need to know what's going on behind the scenes and this book makes everything clear.

This book is getting a tad dated, but still extremely valuable and a good buy. I'd love to see the authors update it. I know that I'd be the first in line to get the next edition.

I purchased this book when I enrolled in College Algebra in the hopes that it would be a good reference guide to use if I was unable to grasp the concept of a particular problem. Instead, I found that it was basically echoing what my textbook was saying. I was hoping that Schaum's Outline of College Algebra would break things down into basic explanations, but instead, I remained lost.

"The Schaum's Outline Of College Algebra" like almost all of its counterparts in this superb series of text books, provides an efficient path to mastering its subject matter.

But beware of the so called "Digital Edition" which contains only half the number of pages as the paperback edition. As a student of mine recently discovered, the digital edition does not include the numerous examples which are the heart and soul of all the Schaum's outlines.

Amazon, by listing the digital edition as simply another edition of the book the way it would list both hardback and paperback editions of a book that both contain the same text, is misleading those who think they are are loading the entire text of the original book.

I suggest that digital and non-digital versions of a book that are substantially different be presented separately or better yet, the digital version should have the complete text. Amazon has built up a deservedly good reputation of truthfully presenting its products. Why spoil it?

I've been away from college for 4 years and did not want to spend a lot of money and time learning the Math I needed to get into Calculus. When I went to the bookstore, what impressed me about this book was the number of solved problems and the additional supplementary(unworked) problems. Also it looked very concise. I got bogged down on some parts because I just didn't get some of the things the author was trying to say, but after I stuck at it and worked through some of the solved problems I never stayed stuck. If you want to get through Algebra fast I do highly recommend this book.

How many times do we see a movie with so many special effects that the story is lost and we walk away saying "if they had only done this". Mike Murray does that, the characters are smarter and don't just respond to what happens, that's why they are in the elite forces to begin with. Sometimes I wonder if "Rogue" warriors have a brain, not the case in "RED", they come accross as real people with just different views. The book is a page turner wether it's an action scene or character study. GOOD BOOK.

If you like the Rogue Warrior series then this is the series for you. It is packed full of action and adventure. A great read!

I am so hooked on these books it's crazy. I have now read the series twice and am waiting for the next book to come out. This series would make a GREAT movie.

Anyone who loves action packed military books with tons of surprises will love this series. I highly highly recommend these books to everyone who loves being entertained intelligently!