This is an excellent reference. Its best feature is that all ( or most ) chemical synonyms. including tradenames, for a specific substance are listed alphabetically. This usually lets you find a substance in one attempt.

This book is widely considered to be the original rapid prototyping text for the relatively young RP industry. Charles Hull, Dr. Jacobs, and the other authors do a good job taking the reader through the developmental stages of Stereolithography and give valuable insight into the system design and process development of the SLA system. Other highlights include an informative chapter on SLA part accuracy, specific case studies from early users of the technology, and decent coverage of competing technologies.(circa 1991)

Some of the information is outdated due to the developments in RP over the past nine years, but it is still a valuable reference tool for any student of the rapid prototyping industry.

This is a good text for beginners and slight intermediate users of VHDL. The text specifies the Altera UP1 board (which was the board I used as I atttended my EE program). I discovered this text a little late...when I have graduated and am now using VHDL on the job for CPLD programming. It is a good text for familiarizing with VHDL constucts. Examples are very good compared to the Student Guide to VHDL by Peter Ashenden. If you wish to learn VHDL, My suggestions are to get this text and either of the following:

VHDL for PROGRAMMABLE LOGIC by Kevin Skahill

Digital Design and Modeling with VHDL by K.C. Chang

With a solid background in digital logic, these text will provide you an excellent background in digital design. Good luck.

Very short but still informative. Starts with a test of present skills and moves into various reading techniques. Goes into grouping words, pacing, building comprehension through reviewing and finishes up with a self test. The book is more like a "Cliff" book with only 135 pages in medium type. I've read several books on speed reading from "Evelyn Woods" to "Reading Smarts" and the one thing I've found is that all of the books are formatted to make it "easier to speed read"(medium text, easy words, low words per line counts). After finishing the book at rates of 700 to 800 wpm I go to "normal" books only to be shocked by lines that are twice as long, big words, and various text sizes. Loved the idea on taking notes. I'll increase my cash return reselling my old college books to the book store. Dots are less noticeable. I avoid hand scanning in public due to the amount of attention it attracts from bystanders. I recommend this book only as a refresher book or as a companion book.

What the book mostly focuses on is comprehension, what readers have difficulty with, and how to escape from reading mind blocks. During each chapter the book offers small reading tests for you to find out how you're doing, which helped me a lot. It should have covered more on speed reading techniques than just on comprehension, but the book is worth a try anyway.

Having read the UML books, full of special notations and characters to cover all the possible modeling combinations, it is refreshing to find in this smallish book a simple and yet productive right-to-the-matter guidance to start analyzing a business process to model in a software application.

I found this book very understandable, very concise way to teach students of all levels how to increase speed and comprehension. I presented a great way to teach vocabulary.

Graham give a good insight into the pitfalls and problems in requirements engineering with object-oriented technology. Espacially interesting are the remarks and advices the author gives regarding commonly used oo-techniques such as use cases. With Semantic Object Modelling Approach (SOMA) a method for modelling is introduced, which focusses on seaminglessness between the different models. SOMA blends also into the Object-oriented Process Environment and Notation (OPEN).

Scott Molloy is Rhode Island's foremost labor historian. Now a history professor and the University of Rhode Island, Molloy worked his way through graduate school working as a bus driver for the state's bus company. It was there that he began researching and studying the history of Rhode Island public transportation and the people who worked there.

In preparing this work, Molloy interviewed retired street car workers, poured through yellowed newspapers and dug through boxes of records sitting in the dusty corners of the bus driver's union.

His efforts have paid off. Trolley Wars tells the story of the rise of public transportation from the experiences of the people who made it work -- the workers.

All good chess teachers suggest studying tactics. Here in "Rapid Chess Improvement" is a powerful systematic program of study that will certainly improve your chess. He suggests basically going through 1000 tactical chess problems seven times, each time getting through the lot faster and faster until finally doing 1-1000 of the same problems in one day. It's hard work, but I'm sure it's worthwhile (I just started the program).

Some of the beginning exercises are a bit elementary, but might be an OK warm up.

It's also nice to have a book geared toward class players.

The major problem of this book is that its outlook on chess is superficial, gearing one toward looking for cheapshots instead of having any deep understanding of the game. What is telling is that the author no longer plays chess. Yes, study tactics, use or alter de la Maza's methods, but balance this with the study of endgames and master games. I highly reccomend the book "GM-Ram" by IM Rashid Ziatdinov as well as Alekhine's book of best games.

Another thing I disliked about this book was all the corny testimonials. Half of the book is composed of them.

I always find it interesting to read the reviews of books on Amaazon.com. Since different people have different opinions, it is sometimes hard to figure out if a book is worth buying. I think the point of this book (and the drills in it)was missed by a couple of reviewers.

The book asserts that the study of tactics, not memorizing openings, not learning middlegame theory, not endgame study, is the way to improve for adult class players. This is the main claim the author makes. Traditional methods of chess study did not work for him. He figured out what would work for him, and he is simply sharing his method with the reader. A rather time-comsuming, seemingly mind-numbing method, to be sure, but the author never says it will be easy. Let's face it: if you want to be good at something, you have to put some time and effort into it. This is how this particular person did it. He is a non-master writing for other non-masters, telling us how he improved at chess.

Basically, the guy spent five months of his life studying tactics. It did wonders for his game and for others he shared it with, so why not write a book? I give it four stars because it is written well, and it does exactally what the author wants it to: tell us how he improved at chess. I do not agree with everything he says, but I won't let that bias my review.

Should you buy it? Well, this is certainly a good, methodical way to study tactics. And there is no doubt your game will improve if you follow it. Spend this kind of time and effort doing anything, and you will get better at it.

This book confirmed for me what most of us probably know but don't act on-that is, for chess players below Expert strength, studying tactics is the best way to improve your game. After completing only the first 600 or so problems he recommends in the first circle (you'll learn about the 7 Circles in his book) I won the B section of a regional chess tournament a few weeks ago. Next month, I'm playing in the A section. I'm convinced I would have missed a few key tactical ideas in games that I won had I not been studying tactics as de la Maza recommends. Here's the thing though, it takes hard work, dedication and discipline to follow the program that de la Maza recommends. Most of us are lazy and we want things easy. Many chess players will find it much easier to make excuses than to put forth the effort it takes to follow de la Maza's program. For the record, I am college educated working professional and I have a wife and daughter and I have made the time and effort to follow a modified version of de la Maza's program. It might be late at night, early in the morning, or at a lunch break but I'm doing it. So put away your excuses, if I can do it so can you. It's no different than finding the time to take a graduate course or coach little league. Even though I may not get through the program quite as fast as de la Maza recommends I believe my game will be much stronger than if I had coninued to play mindless blitz games on ICC and make excuses. Albert Einstein said "Insanity is continuing to do the same things and expecting different results." Let me ask class players this question "How long have you been doing what you are doing and you are still at the same level of chess strength?" Try de la Maza's suggestions. I believe they will work for me and I believe they will work for you too.