If you are looking for detailed maps of the Roman Empire you will be disappointed. Only the major towns are listed, a far cry from the thousands that existed. The book is really not a map book but more of a reference book. There are a few maps but the majority of the book is written material with the addition of some nice pictures. For die hard history buffs like myself I would instead recommend the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (ISBN 069103169X).

This Atlas is not just a picture book in the general sense, but rather a broad overview of the Roman World from the birth of the city of Rome to the rise of Justinian in the 6th century AD. Every part of the Roman World receives some attention and the result is an easy to read survey of the Roman World. In my opinion the best part of this book are the reconstructions of certain cities such as Alexandria and Palmyra as well as the beautifully illustrated maps(exactly what a historical atlas should have).

Although you won't find here the 'history' of Rome, you'll be travelling around the then civilized world. No customs, just a huge Empire encompassing almost all of Europe and parts of Asia and North Africa. The Emperor Hadrian traveled extensively across his Empire, he could have written it. We are able to see what he saw.

And everywhere there's so much to be seen ! Great theatres in Africa, amazing monuments in Asia, swimming pools, taverns, etc. Rome was the heart, but it's body was large and thrilling.

The geographical approach is a hit. You literally travel and arrive at the provinces. In each there's a guide waiting for you. If something is missing, it's because it is not there.

Compared with two other books of similar aim and scope, Baines' Ancient Egypt, and Levi's The Greek World, this is definitely the best. A pleasure to read and keep reading. You will end longing to physically retrace the travel, at least a part of it being the whole so vast.

Do you like racing? Do you cherish it, live for it, and would you die for it? Well if so you have something in common with this book. You crave speed. The great thing about this book is how Lou Mathews puts a spin on this racing story to relate it to a persons life. The story takes place in L.A in the late 1960's. The main character a man named Charlie is the one who loves drag racing. Charlie loves racing so much that he sets up street races around L.A. Not much for driving himself but handling bets starting off the cars ect... Well life for Charlie is not just a picnic though. Charlie has other important things in his life he must handle with, but will these events in his life effect the game he so desperately loves? Will Charlie half to choose between friends and racing? Read and see! Note: I would recommend this book for mature readers due to language and content.

Lou Mathews' work seems to function on the level of touch and smell, with an electric, atmospheric sense of what lies just beyond the skin. The writing is spare but fraught with a complexity of emotion all the more powerful because it is neither dissected nor explained away; it is simply there. The obsessions and irrational choices of these young working-class mechanics, their humor, the joy taken from careful, painstaking work ratcheting up their cars, their vicious infighting over rank, the adrenaline rush of the race, the bitterness of thwarted desire, the "fun" stubbornly snatched in the face of financial hardship, abuse, the dictates of family, Army and Church, all merge in a fleeting snapshot of the moment when youthful hope gives way to the grim uncertainties of adulthood.

As a voracious and serious reader of modern fiction--mostly by women--I would not normally pick up what looks like a "guy book" about cars. I would have missed a great treasure. L.A.Breakdown captures a time and place perfectly and is peopled by memorable characters. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys an engrossing story, superbly written.

If you don't have any security background then this book is a good place to start. Be ready, however, for most of the links to be out of date (the book was published in 2002). This can be circumvented by a little help from Google to find the utilities you need for the exercises. There are also a few inaccuracies in the syntax provided. These can be resolved with help from "man" (i.e. 'man ipchains') or the help for the particular utility.

I really liked this book. I liked how it did not just inform you about these tools but actually had you use them to gain understanding. Any good systems/network admin should be familier with the tools in this book. Both UNIX and Windows admins will gain great experiance and understanding of their systems weaknesses.
I have read many books on "hacking" and security and this one is the only one that actually has you use these tools.
It is setup in a very easy to follow and understand format. This book is a must for EVERY Admin, not just for preparing you for a test. Even if you never take a security exam, this book will give you great intro and experience with the use of the tools described.

The GIAC Certification: Security Essentials Toolkit (GSEC) is an excellent reference to use for the SANS GSEC certification.

The book is quite different from most other, if not all certification prep guides. Rather than simply provide the reader with reference material and acronyms to memorize, the book has exercises that the reader uses for their preparation.

Each chapter has a separate hands-on exercise that is used to solidify the knowledge required for the exam. The exercises are well laid-out and organized, and proceed in a methodical way.

The only think I personally did not like about the book was its size, it is 11 x 8.5''. I found it to be cumbersome at times to use.

But its main point, content, is first rate. Anyone planning on obtaining GSEC certification should definitely invest the money- in the GIAC Certification: Security Essentials Toolkit, it is well worth it.

I purchased this in a Nantucket bookstore because I wanted to read a mystery with a local setting while on vacation. It rewarded me with well-drawn characters, a good sense of the seasonal changes on Nantucket and an interesting plot. I lowered the rating one star because I thought the killer's motivations were not sufficiently developed--maybe to prolong the suspense of who was the killer. Nevertheless, I would like to read the author's other titles including the Jane Austen mysteries.

This series is set on Nantucket Island and the author is skilled at capturing the ambience of island life so much so that you may find yourself thinking about packing your bags. In this outing, a skeleton is found buried on the beach. Detective Merry Folger takes this as a personal affront since it's her territory and dead bodies, even if they are old, shouldn't be turning up on her beaches. The only thing the crime lab can tell Merry is that the skeleton is a woman who was strangled between two and ten years earlier. Not much to go on, but something. This series is as cozy as they come and deserves a wide audience of cozy readers. Suprisingly, non-cozy lovers can enjoy this series because it is also an excellent procedural - especially since Merry doesn't have access to many experts like city cops do, and must solve the crimes on her island with brains and deduction.

Reading is not my favorite pastime. I tend to shy away from reading as much as I can, until I found Death In A Mood Indigo by Francine Mathews. Sitting all alone on a shelf at my work I thought I'd pick it up and read it - I did. Right from the beginning, Mathews enlightened me with excellent vocabulary and in-depth descriptions of the current happenings. Throughout the book, Mathews displays excellent character construction and well thought out scenes with bone-chilling suspense - a logical novel that needs brain power to conjure the twists and turns written on each page. Death In A Mood Indigo is defintely a page turner that will keep you reading and reading and reading and reading...

The imagination runs wild in this book -- rather like a chariot with a wheel slipping from its axis. A maddening read -- I couldn't finish this book in one sitting , as someone commented above. One chapter a night was all I could handle, and with the plot and locales veering all over the map, I had a hard time remembering what I had read the night before. And yet, I knew that I absolutely HAD to finish Tlooth, and when I did, I was glad; the end reveals what this book is about (and it is about something after all). Erudite, staggeringly digressive, subversive, dreamlike, pansexual: TLOOTH gives mainstream fiction a rousing slap on the behind. (Expand that metaphor into something more knuckle-y, and you'll get the gist of what I really mean.) It's not a book in the usual sense of the world. It's a disorientation. Either you are up to it, or you aren't. NOT an Oprah Book Club selection (thank God)!

Damned if I know, but I'll lean towards the latter. Fascinating stuff; this novel is like a jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing, pieces from other puzzles thrown in, or maybe just a few too many pieces to make a cohesive whole. Is it genius? It certainly is one of the most unique books I've ever read, and one of the most difficult; the innumerous games spotted about the text almost makes me feel as if the author is challenging us. "Go on, you stupid idjit," he says, "Come along and figure me. If you can." It shure as hell beat me...but even if I can't figure it out, there are enough moments of Heller-esque lunacy to make this book worthwhile...such as the savage tribe whose numbers are dwindling because they believe the sun will not rise without a human sacrifice...or the mysterious bog which utters...er, well...or the ingenious baseball game played with a rigged ball set against the somber backdrop of a siberian prison camp. Lovely stuff...so, it comes highly recommended, but try not to get too frustrated when the book just seems to be written expressely for that purpose. One more game: how do you visualise the narrator? Are you so sure that's who the narrator is? Do you really know this character? (Note: those who finish the book fair and square should know what I'm talking about...Sure caught me by surprise. Hee...)

Wow! This is the first book in a long while that I sat down and read straight through in one sitting, and then read it again the next day. This book is layered and layered again, twisting through puzzles, puns and wordgames that revolve back into itself. It's wildly imaginative in its style and content, and the over the top humor would suit fans of Pynchon and Barthelme, but his control of the language and playfulness is even more extreme once you allow yourself to dig in. This is not a quick read for the subway, but a novel that will challenge your expectations and ideas on what a piece of fiction should and should not be.

This book serves as a good introductory to .NET Reflection. The book doesn't cover the Reflection.Emit class which is primarily what I was looking to learn about. I am some what disappointed.

The book comes with an 'excellent' set of real world examples, solutions and a lot of information you simply can't do without! If you're interested in 'really' unleashing .NET's true power, this book is just what you need! Once you're done with it, you'll wish the book never ended :) Yes, it's THAT good!

One of a growing series of books, this is the second that I'd picked up and even better than the first one (which was the Remoting). This book covers reflection in all its glory - giving all the details that we need to use reflection to the full. Where the book stands out from others is that it not only gives the technical details but also puts all the examples into a real world situation giving an insight into why we're using reflection in the first place. Definitely worth the [money] ...

For its greatest part, the book is about Ulam's encounter with other scientists. It's thus a must-have for all historian of science, with great details about the three important Ulam's acquaintances: Banach, Von Neumann and Fermi. However, it's not what is making this book an invaluable document.

Ulam was a pure mathematician, like Banach or ErdÆs, not like Dirac or Einstein. Yet he had the ability to escape from formal abstract considerations to think about how other sciences could show him a path to new mathematical considerations. In this regard, the Monte Carlo method and all his proposals to non-linear systems and usage of computers for exploring them may be are his greatest achievements (his H-bomb papers are classified, and I like to think Monte Carlo is still more useful).

For that matter, this book is of the greatest interest for he who wish to deepen his understanding of links between mathematics and physics, that are usually discussed by physicists often having very poor idea of what mathematics really are about. The chapter "random reflections" is a jewel which by itself makes worth buying the book, explaining for instance how practical problems can lead to new mathematical concepts, how mathematic theories link altogether, or advocating the use of computers to help mathematicians view new spaces of new objects. Many aside jokes or peculiar reflections--like how mathematics change according to what language one is exploring them with (English, Russian, French, German...)--make the book very entertaining, seldom boring. This "mathematician's mathematician"'s overview of this century's science (he also had some contributions to biology) is thus highly recommended.

(caution to purists: the book has been edited by Ulam's wife from recorded tapes, he didn't write it.)

The very first time I heared from Stanislaw Ulam was reading a book by Otto Robert Frisch (What little I remember). In this book he said that a polish mathematician called Ulam was doing mathematics for the Hydrogen Bomb but his maths were deviating so much from abstract that he even used numbers with decimals in his formulas. This funny comment opened my curiosity to know more about this guy doing maths. Well, years later I bought this book and surprisingly he mentioned the comment by O.R Frisch. What a coincidence! I liked the book. He details his life and other genius lives: John von Neuman, Paul Erdos, Fermi, etc. No necessity to know maths. No formula within the book. Easy to read. Stan Ulam was co-father of the Hydrogen Bomb but everybody knows Edward Teller but not him. He makes especial emphasis in Alamos times (Ulamos times). Enjoyable book.

Monte Carlo simulation was discovered by Stanislaus Ulam and today is used by millions in all walks of life. It is the basis for planning and decision making in for corporations and in all issues of public and private life.

Ulam says "The idea...occurred to me when I was playing solitaire during my illness. I noticed that it may be much more practical to get an idea of the probability of the successful outcome of a solitary game...by laying down the cards, or experimenting with the process merely noticing what proportion comes out successfully..."

The advent of computers removed the need for "hiring several hundred Chinese from Taiwan" and made the progress of rational thought ubiquitous.

It is the most striking example of the triumph of mathematics in real life.

Andrew Vazsonyi, Real-life mathematician

I found this book to be very poorly written and unsatisfactory. It contained lots of bad algorithms and poor coding. Much of the code was unusable and the methods explained were very simple. I could have done without it to be honest. Avoid this book if you want to learn how to program properly

Im not an advaced programmer, but reading some parts... I learned a lot of good things. I couldnt describe them here, but i will implement them on the future projects ahead. Things that I think are essential to the industry grade programmer and to becoming one.
The material was delivered clearly, not necessarily simple... but it is clear. The book is worth all my hard saved money... and im glad to have it, and its fun to read too...

When seeking a reference, most experienced programmers will rather buy a reference that focuses more on the advanced issues than the language concepts itself. Mainly because almost all decent compilers come with extensive help files that cover most of what the programmers might need regarding the language itself. This book doesn't explain much about C, but instead uses C as a tool to explain some very useful issues that are crucial to almost all advanced programmers.

The book wastes no space on trivial stuff like how to open your compiler or use a non-standard C function. Instead, it goes directly into what's important, explaining the concepts and giving concrete examples where appropriate, all using ANSI C.

Since most of the issues aren't dependant on the implementation schemes, almost any advanced programmer would benefit from this book, even if he/she is not programming in C (assuming advanced knowledge of C, of course). The only exceptions are the topics that talk about the ANSI C rules and code organization and optimization. The only disadvantage here is that this book doesn't cover object oriented concepts, but that's not a surprise of course as the book is titled "C Unleashed." But still for anything else other than that, this could be a great help even to C++ programmers.

The book chapters have been written by more than 10 experienced programmers, 6 of them are really good, which makes each chapter standalone as a small tutorial on some issue. The writing style of Richard Heathfield and many of the co-authors is very nice to read and clear to understand. Some parts, of course, do not have that nice writing style, but throughout the book, the technical information is very clear and easy to comprehend.

I wouldn't recommend this book to any new programmers. But for the more advanced ones, this is something they would want to check.

-Mokhtar M. Khorshid

This book is good--certainly better than many college admissions books--but it's far from being great. First, while much of the advice seems solid, the details are sparse. We could use more facts and examples to back up the advice. Second, while the author has some opinions on colleges, he doesn't explain many of them. Allen, in College Admissions Trade Secrets, has loads of strong opinions but usually explains them and gives facts to back them up. Third, what about the kids who just want to go to Harvard or Princeton? Taylor's advice is often more "why do you want to go to Harvard?" than helping kids understand how to get into Harvard. Once again, if you want insider tips for getting into a top college, you'll need to buy a book by Allen, Hernandez or perhaps Toor. Taylor's book does a great job of convincing applicants that being rejected from Yale isn't the end of the world -- but other books do a better job of explaining how to get admitted to Yale.

Mathews' biggest points are to find a college that fits, be your self, and you can be, as many others have done, a success without an elite school degree. "A college, like a new suit, has to fit. I don't care if it is number one on the U.S. News & World Report list and has an endowment of $20 billion. If it does not offer the courses and activities that feed your soul, it is no good. If the dorms are awash in alcohol and you only drink tea, if there is no football team and you ache to yell your lungs out on Saturday afternoon, if the economics department is Keynesian and Milton Friedman is your man, go somewhere else."
"Unfortunately, many seventeen-year-olds don't enjoy analyzing their likes and dislikes in such detail. I was like that when I was their age, and the teenagers I know today are the same. They will latch onto two or three things that strike them as pleasing or annoying but not conduct a full audit. And they will let other people set their agenda for them, including the college recruiters and tour guides who want them to choose a particular school."
Earlier this week I was thinking about my early encounters with Bill Veeck, the outspoken White Sox owner and author, who had some unconventional fan-oriented ideas about improving baseball. I started this book with its challenge to conventional wisdom sounding title and its early telling of how the author had started out at Occidental and did not appreciate how good an education he was getting until he transferred to Harvard where his courses "were full of contradictory theories that gave me a headache."
Mathews continued his outspokenness with "Your friends may tell you being admitted to a college with a luminous name will guarantee a life of happiness, but all the available evidence suggests they are wrong. Getting into a brand-name school like Yale, Stanford, or Amherst will not alter your occupational, financial, and romantic future any more than buying that French colonial on Elm Street. As we shall see, the notion that the brand-name schools can guarantee high salaries and satisfying careers for all their graduates is a scam. The success of many graduates of Ivy League schools is a matter of qualities established long before they ever got to college and has little, if anything, to do with what they learned or whom they met at those great universities."
Even if what he says is true about Harvard, his being a Harvard alumnus makes his statements more credible. If he was a state university graduate criticizing Harvard he might be regarded as jealous. While he continues
"While at Harvard I learned that many Ivy Leaguers, including me, assumed that we would one day wield great power. But once out in the real world, I've learned that my faith in the triumph of the elite was not well founded. Elite school graduates are not more immune that anyone else to the widening gap between youthful expectations and adult lives."
Mathews quotes a Harvard professor about the great importance of learning outside classes: "When we asked students to think of a specific, critical incident or moment that had changed them profoundly, four-fifths of them chose a situation or event outside of the classroom."
Mathews openly admits some biases: He prefers larger schools because they offer more surprises although he preferred the education he received at Occidental to that at Harvard. He dislikes the SATs although he does suggest that they might help a student with weaker grades.
Some of Mathews' theories I agree with such as the importance of fit. His theory that colleges are looking for students with a passion.
Some the aspects of college admissions that outrage him are not very well known such as the massive wait lists with very little movement off of them at many elite schools.
A former Harvard professor, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, died this week. He like Mathews had a provocative effect on many as he "never shrank from following evidence wherever it led and speaking his mind when he got there." Some of Mathews' comments about elite schools and the disadvantage of going to elite high schools will enrage many who are deeply invested in those institutions.

This is a marvellous book. It will make a college search fun and successful.I highly recommend it to both parents and college seekers. The advice on what to do if you are wait-listed at the college that is your first choice is worth the price of the book alone.The back of the book contains ratings on 100 colleges and smaller universities where a student can get a high quality education. Start at the top and work your way down the list. Their is a school on this list that is just right for you.

Rope Burn is a great book for all ages. My daughter, Jennifer thought that it was true in the fact that most children relate to not wanting to write stories for their teachers. I like that he overcame a fear by practicing.

What an excellent book for any young person! It is especially good for a young person experiencing divorce. As an adult child of divorce, I could relate to Richard's feelings about the break-up of his parents. And as a teacher, I can see how students could relate Richard's feelings about being at a new school, making new friends, etc. I especially loved the ending - it gave great closure to the story and left me with a strong message...finding your voice in writing (or just as a young person) can be so powerful. A great read for a child or adult!

I loved this book, it was heartwarming, and everyone should read it. It was a "Texas Bluebonnet Award" Winner. It deserved every single qualifacation that you need to be a bluebonnet! You'll absolutely love it! A MUST READ!