If this book had been titled Pittsburgh: an Architectural Portrait I may well have rated it at 5 stars. Of course, had it been titled such, I probably wouldn't of picked it up. It was not until I read a previous reviewers comments that I understood the inclination of the author to include extreme architectural details of many specific buildings in Pittsburgh. I found myself wading through much of the architectural descriptions searching for other points of interest. Had I been reading the book from the point of view of a student of architecture, I'm sure I would of found the book interesting. Instead I found much of it tedious. I did find the historical and social commentary interesting but lacking, leaving me feeling wanting more, which is why I sought such a book in the first place.

Pittsburgh is a city of surprises, most of them positive for out-of-towners. This book capably explains how the city became what it once was and what it now is.

Although the author is an academic (Professor of Architecture at Pitt) the writing style is reasonably warm and pleasant. Tales of individual buildings and neighbourhoods are told with passion and a precise eye for landscape and cityscape. There are more places celebrated in this history than people, but that's for another volume I suppose.

There are illustrations aplenty and the book is a marvelous guide for anyone who wants to explore one of North America's truly unique urban environments.

A teenage boy asks Frank and Joe to go come to his home in Vermont to investigate a series of forest fires which he believes have been set by a zombie. Also, a circus owner asks Frank and Joe for help when his Big Top is plagued by accidents. Perhaps I expect too much from those books with titles like "Track Of The Zombie", "Night Of The Werewolf" or "The Witchmaster's Key", but rarely have the books ever lived up to such appealing titles (that is not to say that the books were bad, though). This book was mistitled because the zombie parts could have easily been eliminated without changing the plot much. The story isn't bad, it is fairly fast-paced, and has a fair amount of action, but for anyone anticipating a story about a zombie, you'll be disappointed with this one.

Well, overall this book was good. The zombie was definitely human, and it's hard to say if it seemed real or not. The other parts of the story are okay, and some are hilarious. If it had a few more funny parts, I'd think this book wasn't a mystery book at all. So it's hard to say wether I liked it or not. Especially because of the characteristics of some sort. And really, the Hardys didn't seem their best in this one. I can't believe I wasted my time on this...but it seems good...

Book contains many useful lists / charts / comparisons to define giftedness. Many helpful hints about raising a gifted child. Main criticism is that the book is more about raising children in general -- and may push those with "normal" kids into thinking they have gifted ones and down that track -- when they should not. Gifted kids are the exception, not the norm as this book makes it seem.

I first read this fine book when it was published in 1989. Because of the abundance of timeless, insightful ideas it contains, I gave it to my daughter when she became a mother. Potential readers looking at the Contents page will immediately see the wide range of topics discussed on the subject of giftedness, and how to recognize and nuture it during the critical developmental years of birth to seven. The chapters abound with ideas on stimulating the creativity, curiosity, social, emotional and intellectual development of this young individual.

Services which are available and what to expect upon school matriculation are discussed. My daughter found the Appendix section especially useful. It contains helpful developmental checklists. By matching the lists to the child's ability parents have a practical way to identify strengths and weaknesses of their child. Parents and grandparents who are curious to know if their child is gifted and/or how to effectively deal with that special individual will find this book to be a treasure chest of ideas.

This is a good book to go along with all the policitcally correct studies of Mr. Franklin in our public schools. This is the more controversial side, the cantankerous side, the mischievous side of our great American patriot.

Mr. Franklin's writings on choosing a mistress are both funny and eye opening. His letter to those holding a scientific competition asking that they find a way to improve the smell of 'human wind' is absolutely hilarious. His perceptions on what happens when you try to please everyone are very insightful but seldom taught.

Mr. Franklin's article that tears down the actions of the free press of his day are also relevant today. He was a great believer in freedom of speach but a watch dog of press.

Although this book is short, it is worth the read. We should be teaching our children the entire Ben Franklin (as we should with all historical figures) not just the politically correct view that we now teach to them. Read this book, decide for yourself.

This is truly a fun little book. It's worth having on your shelf when friends come over and peruse your collection. Without fail they'll pull this one out thinking it's nothing but potty humor. Then they see WHO?!?! Ben Franklin?!?!!? WHAT?!?!?

This very small book is a collection of the satire of Ben Franklin. Those of you looking for a good book of fart jokes will be deeply disappointed. Those looking for a good laugh will not be. Those looking to learn more about Ben Franklin will learn a great deal.

A few must-reads are "Rules on Making Oneself Disagreeable" (though farting is not mentioned), "On choosing a Mistress" (again, no farting, but it's hilarious), and the best of all "A Letter to a Royal Academy" in which Franklin makes a suggestion to a group of scientists: throw away all your abstract theory and find a way to make farts smell nice. It is the most subtle and disparaging piece I've ever read, and it rides that line between "is he SERIOUS?!?" and "is this is a joke!??!"

There are actually historically important pieces in this book, believe it or not. Don't let the title throw you. "Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced" is cutting satire from right before the American revolution. It ran in papers of the time and made an impact. "The Speech of Miss Polly Baker," about a woman having children out of wedlock, was reported as fact throughout the colonies until Franklin admitted the joke.

And finally, for those looking for good fart humor, there's "The Dream" from which the book takes its title. Read and giggle 'till you cough.

Something the book does not mention is that many of these pieces were originally published anonymously, as was the custom in the 18th century. You would not have seen "'Fart Proudly' by Benjamin Franklin" in the press. Instead there would have been no name on the piece or a false one. Franklin assumed numerous false names throughout his life, as did most authors of the time. Writing was more about what was being written than who was writing it. This has changed drastically in the intervening centuries.

Hopefully this selection will whet your appetite for more Ben Franklin. He wrote an incredible amount, much of it is very funny as well as significant. He was no stodgy old professor, as this book more than proves. If you enjoy this collection, go out and get more, or read a biography. You'll find there's much more to Ben Franklin than you ever thought.

Fart Proudly is a collection of Ben Franklin's lesser known but most interesting writings. They cover a variety of subjects but all exhibit Franklin's questioning nature and many show a sense of humor I never guessed present in Ben. The book's title is derived from a letter he wrote to the scholars at the Royal Collages in England, whom he considered petty and constipated. Highly recommended.

Carl Franklin is an outstanding writer and speaker. His book is very informative, but it requires third-party tools to access the Internet and doesn't give you much "how does it work" information.

Visual Basic really isn't the right language for Internet programming, anyway, but if you're in need of writing tools for your own (or company) use, this is not a bad buy.

this book gives you a shareware 3rd party control to do all internet access with .... it teaches nothing about winsock and how to use it just how to use this 3rd party control.... if i had know this ahead of time i would not have wasted my money

Sorry, I must disagree. Yes this book was well written, and yes the program samples were nicely layed out, but the whole scheme was not a practicle learning tool. The majority of the internet protocols were handled by the demo ocx called dssock32.ocx. I did not see any code of this ocx, well perhpas bits and chunks but nothing that could be of use. This book showed how to become reliant on someone elses hard work without giving you, the programmer, the ability to create your own internet applications. I would suggest this book to everyone if they are looking for a well written book that lacks in practicalities in the programming world.

This book was good for understanding the basics of all the concepts, but if you wanted to go more in depth, it was not a very good learning resource. The explanations were not very clear and detailed, and there were also not enough examples. Often, I felt that it would have been much more helpful to have detailed explanations of the more difficult problems.

If you want to learn calculus from first-rate experts and also first-rate explainers, you will love this text. The authors have gone to great lengths to motivate and elucidate the ideas behind calculus, and they do so in a brilliant and very readable fashion. They take the reader by the hand and explain, step by step, what you need to know. Countless applications from science, engineering, and economics let you get an idea of how calculus is really used out there in the field.

If this book should be your first calculus text, you may consider yourself fortunate because you will not only get an extremely well explained introduction into calculus, but will also be exposed to a wealth of colorful background information. Many math texts go into dry theorem-proof treatments; everything's there, but the subject does not come to life. You will find this book refreshingly different.

One caveat. You need to bear in mind that this book is an introductory text, though a very complete one that tells you about Lagrange multipliers and vector calculus and triple integrals. If, however, you are an accomplished mathematician looking for post-graduate information on integration in topological vector spaces, you need to look elsewhere. But even then you would be likely, in this excellent and exciting book, to stumble upon some interesting information that you may not have known about before.

Finney and Thomas calculus textbooks are perhaps the most popular textbooks in high school and college courses, and for good reason. Finney and Thomas write the definitive text for the subject, and this edition continues their tradition of excellent textbooks. I feel there truly is no better calculus textbook or calculus reference book than one written by this pair. This is the one I grab from the shelf when I need a refresher - and believe me, being a math teacher there are a lot of calculus texts on those shelves!

Stinnett constructs a strong but circumstantial case that FDR knew in advance of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Copious footnotes refer back to the extensive research underlying his claims -- I don't know why another reviewer claimed the book is based on "discredited sources" when 90% of the footnotes are to declassified military documents obtained via FOIA.

The book does have a couple of weaknesses. First, the evidence as to FDR's knowledge is circumstantial. Clearly, Navy officers knew or had every reason to know that Pearl Harbor was to be attacked, and for whatever reason the Navy failed to warn Adm. Kimmel and in fact actively discouraged him from shoring up his defenses. Clearly, FDR's intention as of 1940 (at the latest) was to provoke Japan into attacking the US, giving him the excuse he needed to enter the war. What is not as clear is whether Roosevelt knew specifically of Pearl Harbor in advance. Stinnett builds a strong circumstantial case that FDR knew, but it's not a smoking gun.

Second, Stinnett lays out reams of documentary evidence, but he often fails to satisfactorily explain and interconnect the evidence to the reader. Compounding that problem is Stinnett's failure to tie all the evidence together in a closing chapter. Having read the book, I feel as if I were a juror who sat through 6 months of detailed testimony about a murder, but was denied hearing a closing argument from the prosecutor to "connect the dots". I know he's guilty, but I'm not exactly sure why.

Despite these weaknesses, Stinnett's work is a valuable contribution and gives enough evidence to justify the commonly-held belief that FDR, for better or worse, is responsible more than any other party for getting the US into WWII.

Mr. Stinnett's book contains valuable documentation showing that the U.S. had decrypted both diplomatic and military codes of Japan. As a result, Stinnett shows that FDR not only knew of the coming attack on Pearl, but he ensured its success by clearing the northern Pacific of U.S. Navy reconnaissance vessels. Further, he arranged communications so that Admiral Kimmel would not be informed of the approaching Japanese fleet -- thus setting him up to "take the fall" for the attack. That FDR would adopt such a course of action is not surprising when one considers his betrayal of his closest associates -- not least of whom was his own Vice President Wallace (in the 1944 election) in favor of Truman. Remember that he kept assuring Wallace even as he solicited Truman. Further, his attempts to ignore information about Stalin's actions in the Ukraine (starvation of 10 million) and to suppress information about the Katyn massacre of Polish soldiers by Stalin -- this time so that he would not alienate Polish-American voters -- bear further witness to his lack of character if a course of action would help him obtain a goal. Stinnett claims that FDR sought war against Germany and that he could do this by provoking war with Japan. This claim is supported in two ways: First, FDR was aware of an intercepted diplomatic message between the Japanese ambassador and Von Ribbentrop, the German foreign minister. In the message, Von Ribbentrop states that Germany would join Japan immediately if Japan went to war with the U.S. Furthermore, FDR's cabinet member, Harold Ickes has stated: "For a long time I've believed our best entrance into the war would be [via] Japan...which will inevitably lead to war against Germany." This clearly answers the objection of many -- and a correct one if one does not consider the agreement just described -- that Germany did not otherwise seek war with the U.S.
Furthermore and not surprisingly, many critics of this book who post at this site prefer to use illogical and emotional attacks instead of reason. For example, simply to call something a "conspiracy theory" is not enough to damn Mr. Stinnett's book. In children's circles, this is simply called "name-calling." In adult circles and in debate, this kind of thinking is usually dismissed for what it is -- as an example of either: (1) card stacking since it seeks to prevent consideration of "inconvenient" information or (2) an appeal to the gallery, which seeks to capitalize on the prejudices, ignorance, or preconceptions of the hearers without addressing Stinnett's content at all. This type of statement should immediately remove from serious consideration the opinion of those who offer it because a sneer is not an argument. It is the very same type of behavior used by the pope when he instructed Galileo Galilei to deny what he saw when he looked through his telescope and observed a number of celestial phenomena that did not correspond to the "approved" facts of the time. Critics of this book would -- at another time -- have insisted upon a flat earth.

Stinnett's "Day of Deceit" is, without a doubt, the most important book ever written about World War II. His spectacular research effort, in the now declassified intelligence files preceding Pearl Harbor, reveals an evil that corrupts Washington to this day. Every premise, every assumption, every statement by military and political leaders-nearly every "fact"- about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor are now proven to be lies. Stinnett proves that FDR and other leaders were actually tracking the Japanese fleet across the Pacific- right up to the moment of attack. They were fully aware the purpose of the fleet was to attack Pearl Harbor. It is a stunning tale of horror and betrayal that cost the lives of more than 2000 soldiers who perished on Hawaii. Worse yet, tens of thousands of American soldiers and sailors would perish as POWS under the Japanese. They died as a direct result of FDR's deliberate plan to place our military in harm's way- then deliberately hiding the Japanese plans to attack. Their lives were sacrificed for FDR's political agenda to force America into war on behalf of England.

Stinnett should be awarded every accolade for his yeoman work. He has cracked open the door for the truth to emerge.

I want to learn REAL internet programming. This book relies too much on the dolphin systems dll. It is like telling someone you are going to teach them how to write a browser program, and then having your instruction be "go to microsoft and download IE6. Voila! you have a browser!".

I realize that Carl Franklin is a VB authority, which is part of my disappointment. He's the kind of guy that an intermediate guy like myself would love to have around to ask questions and seek guidance from. Overall it's not a bad book, but I was VERY put off by this one thing: When you buy a book titled "Visual Basic 6 Internet Programming" you would think it safe to assume that it would teach you using the tools made available by VB6. Not so. Instead, (and you have no way of knowing this until after you buy the book) it dismisses the winsock tool made available by VB6 altogether and teaches you using a shareware control that you have to purchase if you're serious about using it. In other words, you pay for the book only to learn that the book is useless unless you are also willing to pay for the shareware. Which might be a good thing to do, but you feel cheated by the fact that you're not given that option up front. It wouldn't be so bad if Carl had at least spent some time explaining the use of the winsock control on some level, but instead he dismisses it completely. It felt like a cheap marketing ploy for the shareware. That might not have been Carl's intent, but it felt that way.

What is the most annoying thing? Buying a book and finding out it is over your head or filled with simple procedures you learned back in VB 101. Not here.... take a look....

Carl wrote an excellent teaching aid while learning VB6 w/ the internet. I am disturbed by the previous critiques, Carl not only offered a 3rd Party Socket control for those who wanted a quicker solution without getting dirty in the nitty gritty, but he also went above and beyond covering my favorite WinSOCK. In fact, he provides a FULL library of utilities, most common errors you will receive and the RFC's. SMTP, POP3, NNTP, it's all here! If you are even considering creating your own email program and don't have a clue as to what I've mentioned, START HERE.

The examples and FULL SOURCE code he supplies was documented and written WELL. He did not skimp on comments within the source code which you can easily modify and compile into your own .DLL, thus including it your application.

This book has saved MONEY if you consider what books cost. The book may look thin, but it offers more information on books twice it's size. There is no....try this or try that....it's....this is how you do it... a relaxing and refreshing approach.

Looking for sending/receiving email? Even a newsreader? How about FTP? If this doesn't entice you, take another step, because Carl teaches you how to send/receive arrays via the internet! Create that client/server program for your company, easily!!!

Before I end this..... after having a problem unrelated to his actual code, I took a stab and emailed Carl asking him a question. Within five minutes, he replied, with suggestions AND another utility!

Thank you Carl! I will be purchasing your next book, and eagerly add it to my collection!

This book tries to be a tour book and a rail schedule. Buy a good tour book for the countries or regions you want to visit and use the train schedule you get with your Eurail pass to plan your travel itinerary.

The book gives tips on how to travel in Europe. It think that the tips are generally not useful.

The author's base city philosophy is sound, but in several instances, I would stay in smaller villages outside the large cities. You can easily commute to the center of the large city, but you will have a more "native" experience in the smaller towns. Trains run so frequently in Western Europe that you will have no trouble getting around.

Europe by Eurail 1999 seems to me to be a most welcome addition to the field of travel books.

As we all know, the train has all but disappeared from the travel scene in the USA; in Europe, however, the train is alive and well. In using this book, you come away with the impression that not only is the train a viable alternative to other forms of intra-European travel, but it the preferred way to go in many instances.

Following an introductory chapter giving lots of valuable information on train travel in Europe, the rest of the book is divided into chapters by country. The author has set up a certain number of Òbase citiesÓ (at least one in each country). For each base city reachable by nonstop flights from the USA, the book provides some very useful information about the airport of arrival, including the location and hours of things like the banks or foreign exchange counters, baggage storage facilities, and most importantly, the different means of transportation between the airport and the center of town (time, cost, etc.) In point of fact, the entire cost of the book can well be amortised by using public transit, rail link, or shuttle service rather than taxis.

The heart of the book is found in the sections about rail travel, and the rail stations which the tourist is likely to use. If one is the type of traveler who needs very precise and specific directions to find things, this book does it all for you. Detailed information for each station is provided, including the location of the tourist office (if there is one), the currency exchange facilities, the location of baggage lockers and/or baggage check room, where to have oneÕs Eurailpass validated, etc.

Furthermore, the author suggests, for each base city, a brief description of the major places to be visited, as well as a certain number of one-day sidetrips to points of interest easily reachable by train from the base city.

Finally, the book provides train schedules for trains between different base cities. While these are, of course, subject to change over time, they do provide useful information for the traveler, in particular the length of any given trip (in hours and minutes).

A useful book for anyone planning a European trip including train travel.

Without pretending to be a universal guide, this book enables you to plan long and short trips to Europe using the Eurail system and making convenient stays in major cities to use as bases for traveling to sites around the cities. If you want an experience of European cities, and want to cover other places inexpensively, this book will help you plan the days. We found it precise and well thought out, and with a good sense of what is a worthwhile experience for the traveler, and excellent judgement about timing train connections and some bus and boat connections for maximum enjoyment. It provides a strong base on which to add your own adventures and additional attractions, once you have gotten to the cities and other sites. And it will take you step by step through some marvelous days if you just want to follow its lead.

The problem with this book is it has a lot of content, tries to explain just about everything there is in controls and does not care to explain out the details ... its pretty tough if are do-it-yourself kind... But many of the things in this book are not in other books (or are better explained in advanced control books). It literally took out my interst in Controls. Certainly not a book for beginners.

The book is very good for individual study because of its step-by-step approach. However, it is difficult to use for classroom instruction. By teh way, there is an excellent Solutions Manual available from the publisher, which I would recommend for instructors.It uses MATLAB extensively. ISBN 0-201-59937-6,Addsion Wesley 1994.

We used this book for our undergrad course.. Having read other Control books by authors such as Ogata, Franklin & Ben Kuo, I think this is quite a well written book.

This book covers quite a bit of more advanced control theory (such as state-space concept)... It might not be suitable for an introductory course on control.