I own all of the Top Secret books from Tood Wilbur, and this one is the absolute worst of the series. Contains repeats from previous books, and some from his website. A few new, but I was not impressed. If you are new to the Top Secret series, I would recommend the Restaurant Recipes, and the Soda/Smoothies one. They are the best of the series.

I love the Todd Wilbur books, and this one is as good as the rest, with all new recipes. If I'm really hungry for a KFC, I'll probably go to KFC, but it's also a lot of fun to make these recipes at home, especially if you're having a party. I like the blueprints - they make it really easy to make the food.

These recipes cover common brand-name favorites which are now reproducible in the home kitchen, from Girl Scout cookies and Cinnabon to candy bars and Wendy's chicken filet sandwich. Even More Top Secret Recipes will prove particularly intriguing to fans of brand name items and fast foods, who will enjoy the dash of humor added to the recipes and food descriptions.

If you have programmed in another language before, but not Delphi, this is the book for you. After a quick overview of general programming concepts, Pascal data types, etc., it goes into a thorough description of the Delphi 3 language and features. I did wish that it had more info on database programming--5 chapters wasn't enough for me!

This is one of my favorite Delphi 3 books, as it covers material not easily found elsewhere. This is not a beginner's book by any means. The coverage of DLLs, COM, and threading is outstanding. This is a book for those who want to delve more deeply into the relationships between VCLs and the WinAPI.

I purchased this book with a view to learning more about OLE and COM which is covered very comprehensively. But I found that once I started reading the other chapters I could not put the book down. Some people have commented that this book is a poor teaching aid. This is not what this book sets out to do. QUE's guide puts this book at Accomplished to Expert level. If you are an experienced, professional programmer who needs an excellent reference book, buy this. You will not regret it.

I'm a huge fan of straight ahead noir from Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett & David Goodis to contemporary writers like Andrew Vachss, Nicola Griffith & Colson Whitehead. This is, unbelievably, even darker but more deeply satisfying the way the best literay fiction is. Komarnicki's prose and storytelling is incredibly daring, risky and I guess "experimental" but also thrilling and uniquely effective. What sounds gimmicky when it's described really works when you're reading it, perhaps at least in part because it's so visual, cinematic. I look forward to reading what Komarnicki writes next.

Indeed, the first 30 odd pages are a bit self-conciously angsty, but after that--fuggheddaboudit. Komarnicki knows and is able to boil down the most sad dark places--sans po-mo "hip" /"cool" hoohaw--into a few terse sentences that leave you, quite literally, stunned. And looking at your own life, and wondering. What higher praise is there for a book than that?

This book is great. It is not a linear detective story as many who are into the "mystery" genre might hope for, but a wonderful psychological story along the lines of Kundera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or, more recently, Arundhati Roy. Part of the beauty of the book is that it is as maddening and enchanting as living itself can be. Kudos to the author.

The book is really basic in nature and tries to cover what the title conveys. I am disappointed that the math involved in most futures and options is not even touched upon (it could have been even without calculus). There are plenty of other books out there that do a much better job in introducing futures with math.

I've read many futures trading books and I think this is "the" best book for beginners. The language is easy to understand and the author explained things step by step in a very organized matter. If you ever consider learning about futures, this is the book you have to read. I still use it as reference and it's one of my favorite books.

Thank you Todd Lofton. I cannot tell you how relieved I was when I read your book. Having to learn an awful lot about futures trading for a new job fairly quickly, this book was a godsend. I first learned about it from a "strong buy" recommendation at tradingmarkets.com. Between the two, I have made my boss a very happy camper.

When I read a book with 'Mastering' in the title I expect something that gets down and dirty -- you know -- DEEP. This book doesn't do that.

Although it would be a great book if I were completely new to NT Workstation, I've been using it for several years and I had already picked up 90+% of the contents of this book through osmosis.

I felt the early chapters on the apps bundled with NT (such as wordpad and pbrush) were a total waste of time. The book is over 1000 pages long and I can write all the new/useful stuff I learned from it on one page.

This is not 'Mastering' so much as simply 'Basics'.

This is a thorough treatment on NT Workstation 4.0. No doubt about it, it's all here. My criticism is the structure of the book, not it's content so my gripe is with the editors not the writer.

Well there is not much to say, except that this is the book for you for mastering Windows NT Workstation 4.0. Whether you want to know NT just to know it, or put it to work for you for your MCSE core requirements. This book was highly recommended by all of my peers who were studying for there MCSE certification.

One of the worst books that I have read about Afghanistan. Initially I was really excited about this book, but after reading half it I realized that author had gone to his local library, collected all the books about Afghanistan and copy and pasted...

The author gives 1900 years of afghan history not even half of the book, concentrates too much on Anglo-afghan wars, with a lot of quotations to fill pages, really unscholarly work.

This is anything but a "military" history book. The author does not talk at all about the afghan battle tactics throughout the history. No map of battles, and their formations... this is probably one of the worst books about Afghanistan ever.

Good only for scanning, and casual reading. And off course buy the second hand version of this book.

Like others, I read Tanner's book in order to gain a greater familiarity with Afghanistan's military history. In this respect, the book succeeds. Tanner's provides a basic overview of the subject without devling too deeply. At times I did get the impression that the author relied too heavily on secondary sources not just for historical details but analysis as well.

The rich and turbulent history of Afghanistan's history kept my attention until the final three chapters as the author moved away from historical narrative into a contemporary review of recent events which are still too close to offer any real historical judgement. That analysis must be left to the next generation to undertake comprehensively. The book lost further continuity as events related but external to Afghanistan itself were incorporated, including a somewhat detailed account of the events on 9/11 and later terrorist activity throughout the Middle East over the past two years.

I was also troubled by the author's inaccurate characterization of certain events (the most glaring being the US intervention in Somalia and Bush/Clinton's roles in the affair) that I have studied. These flaws place some doubt in my mind as to the accuracy of the rest of the book, especially concerning subjects I am less familiar with and the authors own opinions concerning the US military campaign expressed in the afterword.

This book provides an excellent start for someone looking for an introduction to Afghan military history. Read all except the last 2-3 chapters. Anyone looking for a review and analysis of the US military campaign since 2001 should look elsewhere or wait for a more comprehensive treatment of the subject with better sources thant Western press accounts.

September 11th, 2001 brought about an unprecedented chain of events. The world's most powerful nation is now deeply intertwined with one of the poorest and most isolated countries in the world: Afghanistan. What happens in Afghanistan now directly affects us, and will continue to affect us for some time to come.

In light of this, I picked up this book because I knew next to nothing about Afghanistan. What I found was a truly excellent book that covered all of Afghanistan history and paints a very rich tapestry of Afghan people, and how we have come to this point in history that is the American War on Terrorism there.

Throughout this book, you will read examples of foreigners conquering Afghanistan, only to face the reality that in the end the Afghans can not be conquered. The most compelling example in this book is the first Anglo-Afghan war in the 1840s, where British forces marched in with huge numbers, but in the end, they were fleeing back to India starved, frozen, and totally panicked. The Soviet-Afghan war is equally compelling, and really provides insight into the current conflict we face where Mujahideen veteran fighters from that era have now reassembled into what is now Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Regardless of your views of the War on Terrorism, people will really benefit from reading this book. I think that by reading about Afghanistan and how it came to be will give readers a greater appreciation for what is going on there now in the current conflict, and also the War as a whole. Enjoy!

This book is not very good. The numerous authors attempt to cover too much in this book and as a result don't cover anything worthwhile. The book isn't well focused and has lots of mistakes.

Having read over two-thirds of this huge volume, I am now of the opinion that it probably is not the best place to begin exploring Java database development. The word "Beginning" in the title is a bit misleading: you shouldn't approach this book without a solid grounding in Java and databases in general. True, the introductory chapters cover essential SQL and other database concepts, but there is a steady ramping-up in the difficulty level as the book progresses, and it doesn't ever really level off. For example, Lauinger's treatment of his own Java Layered Frameworks open-source project in Chapter 16 is long-winded and daunting. And the later chapters assume complete familiarity with XML, JavaBeans, Servlets, and other more "advanced" topics. So, all in all, for the JDBC beginner I think that this is not the best book to begin your explorations of JDBC.

On the other hand, this is an exceptionally thorough book, very well written and with few typos. The authors are likeable, the price is affordable, the presentation and the coding are laid out well, the printing and binding excellent. So it may be just the book for you if you have the patience to plod through its 900 pages. Certainly, the book makes an excellent reference. However, it only covers the business logic of Java database applications. Most of the examples in the book are console-based programs for testing the business logic. There is no coverage of GUI-related topics, for example how to present data in a grid. As one of the authors remarks somewhere, their purpose in writing the book was not to present "pretty GUI's" but rather to concentrate on the internals, the business logic. While I can understand the importance of business logic, I also would have liked these experts to have given me some good pointers on how to present data in various data-aware controls in a GUI. After 600+ pages, I'm still waiting....

I thought that this book was quite good at explaining Java programming of databases. Many of the examples in the book, though, use the Oracle personal edition database. This is a 600MB file that you download from Oracle. Or, you can pay them [money] to send it to you on CD-ROM. Alternatively, you can use another database - like SQL Server - and modify the examples to work with that database.

These comics are a great glimpse into the mentality of the market at the time. It was all about the artist. But even the art isn't that good, as I think it got to the point where even McFarlane didn't know what he was drawing half the time.

The premise is insulting in it's simplicity. A witch, who is miffed at the wall-crawler for the death of her man, Kraven, conjures up some junk to control the powerful Lizard. Not Curt Connors, no, forget that the Lizard is actually an interesting character with any history or even humanity. He's just a killing machine. That could be overlooked as an essential part of McFarlane's story, if there was a story at all. It's as if McFarlane made up the story he did for the express purpose of drowning out any personality in the characters. He has Spider-Man drugged up so he's scarcely even going through the motions. Mary Jane is relegated to the role of worrying little wife. The Lizard is mind controlled.

There is really nothing to recommend this inane story. Maybe if you want to see where the early days of Image Comics started, you can check this out. But even Spawn is more engaging than this junk. Its one accomplishment is how well it shows why artists generally should draw and not write. But then again, no one will ever confuse McFarlane with Frank Miller, that's for sure.

Dear Todd gave it his best shot, and frankly I thought that it was his best work before he jumped ship from Marvel. I own two copies of this book. There isn't much of a story, But I do love the artwork. Peter Parker a.k.a. as Spider-man is infected with a kind of poison and has to stop a monster on a rampage.

Normally I would not give a book such high praises solely for the artwork. But I was so impressed with it that I have to!

Spider-Man Torment is a book by Todd McFarlane. This man got his start working for Marvel Comics. He was a very good writer and drawer then. Then he went on to create Spawn and so then he left Marvel Comics. But the one HUGE THING HE DID WAS WHEN HE WORKED ON SPIDEY! He took "spidey" to great hights and sales. Then he did work on the "Torment" line and now it is all in one EXCEPTIONAL READ! Pick it up, will ya'?

This author lacks credibility as he cites the Gun Owners of America ... as a terrorist group - right next to Hamas (page 285, in the appendix)...such an allegation, without more to back it up borderlines on defamation. This test is used by Blue Ridge Community College (Weyers Cave, Virginia) in a counter-terrorism course. The instructor advised me that he's giving up the text in future classes because of this one erroneous allegation in the book.

Dr. White is direct and to the point. I recommend this book to all of my friends.

This is an introductory book. As such, it is designed for an audience with little or no background in this topic. Despite this limitation, I have found many people who are well read in this topic, prefer this book over others. I use this book in classes I teach on terrorism because it is, hands down, the best overview of terrorism on the market.