This is really a great book for an in depth architetural and archeoligical review of the Vijayanagara site... It does a great job reviewing and descriping some of the pertinent buildings to this study. A little light on pictures, though, and probably pretty heavy for the casual student.

As far as it goes, Born Royal is an interesting view into the lives of George V's children. The problem is that it doesn't go far enough.

The author spends far too much time on David (the Duke of Windsor) and his younger brother Bertie (George VI), who have already been the subjects of numerous biographies, and gives George V's other children short shrift. It's unfortunate, given that there isn't much written about them. Hough apparently referred mainly to research he undertook while writing his books on the Mountbattens; since Mary, George, Henry and John didn't figure much in those books, they don't figure much here.

OVERALL THIS BOOK IS QUITE NICE, GIVES A GLIMPSE OF THE CHILDHOODS OF THE CHILDREN OF GEORGE V AND QUEEN MARY. I WOULD HAVE LIKED MORE INFORMATION ON THE PRINCESS MARY AND HER YOUNGER BROTHERS. THE BOOK TENDS TO DWELL ON THE DUKE OF WINDSOR AND GEORGE VI.

It's too bad this book is out of print because it's a tale relevant to the current British Royal Family. Richard Hough wrote this easy-to-read book on the six children of King George V and Queen Mary out of the notes he took for his books on the Mountbatten family. King George (and Prince Philip) was a rigid martinet who could only criticize his children so they grew up to fear him. George (and Prince Philip) adored his daughter Mary (Princess Anne) who grew up self-righteous. Queen Mary (Queen Elizabeth II) was not a warm and loving mother. She put her duty to the monarchy above her duties as a mother and neglected her children. Her eldest son Edward VIII (Prince Charles) sought love with a married woman who became a mother-figure for him, a necessary balm for his immaturities. Her son George was the Randy Andy of his era and a bisexual (Prince Edward), too. Among the Windsors, it can be said that history truly repeats itself.

This book is not for everyone. If you wish to understand, as I did, the politics and economics of the era, you will be disappointed. You will learn more about George's amours and clothing than you ever wanted to know.

George IV has always fascinated me as one of those monarchs who both impress and disgust. He was born George Prince of Wales eldest son of King George III and Queen Charlotte of England. to a world which offered all possible luxury and inherited a country which looked up to its royalty, yet poor george was to die for the most part despised. Mr. Parissien writes a sensitive and readable biography which shows both the causes and results this king's life. Realtionship with his parents were always strained and lacking in complete love or affection. No wonder George was only too eager to enjoy his power as regent when his old father the king was pronounced mad. Geroge's spending habits were phenominal, he would only have the very best no matter what it cost the country. Yet George was respected and loved by those in the arts especially admired by the architects of his time. One only has to look at the enterior of Carlton House or the Brighton Pavillion to realise this man's astetic sense. George's marriage was a disaster and events leading up to his niece Victoria becoming queen was nothing short of a miracle. A true caricature of his own self he gave his name to an era where good taste went hand in hand with infidelity and corruption. A highly readable book with some excellent illustrations.

The title is not all together indicative of what the authors try to accomplish in this book. The book attempts to be both a tutorial and a reference for programmers and administrators. The book consists of four major parts. The first part is the Introduction, which contains chapters on MySQL in general, installation on Unix and Windows, SQL for MySQL, and general Database Administration. This is accomplished in less than eighty pages which makes for brief explanations, limited illustrations, and examples. The second part is the MySQL Administration. This part has chapters on Performance Tuning, Security, and Database Design. The third part is MySQL Programming. The chapters' topics include general database applications, Perl, Python, PHP, C API, Java, and extending MySQL. Part four is the MySQL Reference. SQL syntax for MySQL, MySQL data types, Operators and Functions, MySQL PHP API Reference, C Reference, and Python DB-API are the chapter topics included in this part.

The authors do not assume that the reader is knowledgeable about relational databases in general, SQL, or the related topics. For example, the chapter on SQL on MySQL does not just describe the subset of SQL-92 that MySQL supports, but rather it contains a tutorial on the SQL for the commands that MySQL supports. Chapter seven on Database Design contains a tutorial on taking a database to third normal form complete with Entity-Relationship diagrams, unique identifiers and relationships. In part four, the PHP chapter contains a mini-tutorial on PHP and a complete PHP application. While the level of thoroughness is nice in the sense that you do not have to refer to other volumes to comprehend the subject, it makes for some very intense reading because of the size of the book versus the topics covered.

Overall, I like the book as a general tool, however there are certain omissions, for example: there is no reference phpMyAdmin or WinMySQLadmin. These tools are very easy to use and helpful in working with MySQL. In addition, the topic of creating InnoDB or BDB tables for transaction support is not addressed. The explanation of granting privileges in MySQL was a little confusing. Some supporting illustrations or diagrams would be well received there. The book is fairly successful in covering its broad topic domain. In conjunction with the MySQL manual, the book should meet most of my needs, but if I were a full time database administrator, I would probably want a dedicated reference book.

The security chapter is well written and the reference section is comprehensive.

This book is an excellent reference book for MySQL. In fact I'd rate it the best MySQL reference out there when using MySQL as a coder. But if your looking for this book to tell you how to manage MySQL look on, this book is not for you! It's pretty weak in that area (as is the official MySQL documentation). But again, as a programmer I've found this book invaluable as a resource and would never be without it. I'd recommend it for novices and advanced users.

As a 1st generation greek-american I was initially very excited to read this, but found it very difficult to get through. I waited chapter after chapter, hoping it would flow better but found it difficult to get through. It's such a shame as I've got every reason to read it.

This book provides an excellent overview of the history of the Greek monarchy.

How exactly did the Greek people come to be reigned over by a Danish prince and his heirs? Did a King of Greece really die from a monkey attack? The story of the Greek monarchy has a good mixture of everything that intrigues the typical royal-watcher, and Van Der Kiste tells it well.

You might find it refreshing that, in the chapters dealing with World War One, Van Der Kiste doesn't take a typical (jingoistic) pro-Allied stance. He presents the Hellenic involvement in that war from a Greek royalist perspective.

If the book is lacking, it's in the final chapters. As the author points out, a historian can only do so much justice to a topic as fresh as the royal family's current standing. The subject of the Greek monarchy in the past 60 years could fill another book.

Overall, this is a fine addition to Van Der Kiste's body of work, and a good starting point for anyone researching the subject.

A different look at George V & British royal family...written from a psychologist's POV...I enjoyed the book & recommend it. It has interesting insights into why the current family has behaved the way they have. It's interesting how the past influences the present, in ways we don't consider. I especially was intrigued by the thought that Queen Elizabeth II has married a man very similiar to her grandfather!

John Halperin takes Lytton Strachey as his model and provides four short lives of people he views as emblematic of the "second Georgian" era - King Geroge V himself, Elizabeth Bowen, St. John Philby and Nancy Astor. The results are interesting without being particularly memorable. Halperin tells his stories in a plain documentary fashion, without much analysis and with none of the mordant wit or strong opinions of Strachey's nasty little classic. Such a straightforward approach works best if bolsered by extensive research, but the slim bibliography indicates a newspaper profile rather than an original and insightful work. All this being said, Bowen, Philby and Astor are interesting enough as people to making reading "Eminent Georgians" worthwhile. As for the good King George, it will take a much more persuasive writer to bring that admirable but dull monarch to life on the page.

Richard III remained a hated king on par with John, the original wicked uncle, until Sir George Buck undertook this revisionist work in 1619. He has been accused by some modern authors as biased and partial, viewing the last medieval king's life with too much romanticism and not enough objection. For those examining the conundrum Richard's life presents, Buck is a balance to More, Vergil, and the modern Ross and Weir. He relies mainly on contemporary chroniclers such as Mancini and de Commynes, while keeping the Tudor historians' accounts firmly in the time in which they were written. His work is a prime example of the many scholarly defenses of Richard III.

While I respect the authors as programmers since this book does contain some valuable information, they have no business writing books. This book spends all of its effort discussing how COM works and then how ATL was implemented and provides little insight on how to actually use ATL. After reading this book I was very discouraged from using ATL. Few things are adequately explained. I wonder who the target audience for this book is? It is certainly not ActiveX developers. The second half of the book is superior to the first half. Inside COM, by Rogerson, puts Inside ATL to shame.

I had just about given up hope of finding one single book that could help me understand ATL - then I found this book. As an experienced C++ programmer, but a newcomer to ATL, I looked for a single source of information on the hows and whys of ATL. There are many good books out there, but each seems to fill a niche. But with this book I found, in one place, answers to all the questions I've been wrestling with for months now. Besides covering ATL, it contains a wealth of tips and tidbits that you'll likely run across during coding and testing that arent covered anywhere else. This fact alone justifies buying the book. I'm resigned that one book cant cover everything a programmer may need to know about ATL, but after digesting this one I'm confident that I'll be able to digest the others as well. I paid list price for this one, but I dont regret it. Neither will you.

I feel sorry for any author who has to explain ATL. It must be a miserable job.

C++ Templates, COM, Registry entries, in-process and out-of-process servers-- these subjects each have to be discussed before you can really get into ATL, and learn what it does and how it can help you. Quite a bit of prep work there.

Like other ATL books out there, this one has it's confusing parts. After about the first 100 pages or so, the authors start explaining the internal workings of ATL objects, and man, does it make for a tough read. Various ATL classes are briefly mentioned here and there, this one is used as a template parameter for that one, and pity the poor reader who's new to the ATL game!

Still, I can't blame the authors here, but rather the subject matter. If you keep cool, and don't worry whenever the authors expand those ATL macros and try to explain their inner workings, you can progress along fairly quickly.

Most parts of the book are very well explained, and if you're someone who *must* know about ATL's internal workings in depth, then this book is a good one to start with. If you're new to ATL, you can definitely profit by reading this, but look for a beginner's companion to keep close by.

The books was my first introduction to MySQL ( I never read anything about mSQL out of choice) and I felt it started of well, but as I got further the book lacked depth both in examples and content. The second half is more like a reference manual probably good for someone with prior knowledge. I guess O'relliy could do better having more detailed examples and an online reference code / cd with ready examples from the book.

I have to agree that this is not one of O'Reilly's better titles. I think the second edition if there is one should be carefully reviewed and edited.

In the authors defense I do not think this book was meant to be an intro text to database programming. If that is what you are looking for in a "language" book try "Access Database Design @ Programming" by Steven Roman, Also published by O'Reilly. His Relational Database tutorial is thorough and succinct.

The mixture of mSQL and MySQL in the discussions regarding more DB administration and capabilities is excellent and possibly the best part of the book. If you are trying to decide which DB to use you should definately buy this book.

As far as typos and accuracy I have never read a book in 35 years that did not have both problems. I know a lot of software bugs get blamed on examples but I haven't noticed anything wrong with the JDBC or C implementation material that I used.

Overall I give the book three stars:
1. It's too expensive for what is in it.
2. It fails at being Rigorous like I expect from O'Reily.
3. Youv'e only got two choices on MySQL as a far as I know and O'Reilly was cool enough to print one.
4. I have 6 1/2 feet of OReilly books that I have collected over the years. This is not up to their standards in my IMHO.

This books provides a good all around introduction to databases, SQL and the mSQL and MySQL database servers. It tends to favor MySQL a bit more, but this seems appropriate given that MySQL is now far more advanced than mSQL.

It also serves as a pretty good reference for both servers (though, by no means a complete one). It explains some database building basics, as well as what 2NF and 3NF mean (and how to make your database 3NF). It contains several useful chapters on different APIs to MySQL and mSQL including a very helpful introduction to the Perl DBI.

I still find the reference pages pretty helpful, but for people looking for an advanced reference, I'd say look elsewhere (perhaps "Managing and Using MySQL" (ASIN 0596002114)).

If you're just learning SQL or MySQL, this is a great book!