85 of the 120 pages deal with the use of specific statistical procedures, with brief comments on the meaning of selected output. Most of that will be better covered in the statistics text which the reader should have. The software itself has menus that are easy to use.

There is little information about data manipulation and NO information about editing output, yet these are precisely the things that a novice user of SPSS needs advice on.

There is no information about interactive graphics, which was the major innovation in Version 8. The book has no index.

I use SPSS for evaluation research and have found that it is the perfect reference tool to find out what type of test I need to use and how to use the menu and syntax methods for data analysis.

The keywords in the title are SIMPLE GUIDE. If you need to learn how to do statistics or learn what some statistical terms mean this is not the book for you.

It is a great book for individuals who have had intermediate statistics classes and have some knowledge of using SPSS. It has helped me more than any other stats. book I have.

Brooke de Ocampo has hied herself to London and produced a book that does for the brilliant, educated, and exceptionally wealthy young elite of that city what her earlier title did for their counterparts in New York. The difference this time, unfortunately, is that she decided to let other Bright Young Things do the writing as well as open their homes and pose for photographs. And so while the writing in the original BYT was relatively unobjectionable celebrity journalism, a good deal of the writing in BYT London doesn't even rise to that level. On the other hand, the introduction by Nicholas Coleridge runs rings around its BYT counterpart by William Norwich, if only because it's so much less gushing in its praise for the people being profiled.

Apart from the writing, though, this book is a lot like the first one. Beautiful people, beautiful homes, beautiful children, beautiful photos. The selection of people covered seems, if anything, slightly broader than that in BYT. Whatever your reaction to the first book, I imagine it'll be about the same to this one ... unless, perhaps, you happen to be, or be related to, one of the people featured in it.

Those looking for a book on heraldic design, accompanied by text on its historical development and meaning, will be disappointed. While there is some text that accompanies the forty full color plates which are the highlight of this book, it is merely plate specific. Other than the brief introduction that appears at the beginning, there is really nothing substantive for the reader. It is, in essence, a poster book, as it devoid of any meaningful text. If one is a rabid fan of heraldic design, however, then perhaps one should add an additional star to my rating.

This book was a slaughter of the original by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick - a masterpiece and wonderful for children. This version should never have been published. I am sorry but it is a disgrace to the original author and illustrator (Edward Caldwell)....

What a travesty; from the cover which looks NOTHING like the Stafforshire that Jock was, to the "PC" nature of the narrative, the book is an insult to the orginal. My grandchildren will read the original.

This book is a very big dissapointment after reading the origional Jock of the Bushveld by Percy Fitzpatrick. My son will be growing up on the origional book, not this one.

If you're purchasing this book to price your coins--don't. All coin photos (black and white) are in the back of the book. You then have to page through to find the reference number that corresponds to it; which brings you to some useless information. Finally, you'll resort to the index (between useless information and photo's) in hopes that it might shed some light on...anything. It's doesn't. This book is poorly put together. I reluctantly give it a star.

More of a list than a book. Contains mostly photos and only a few sentences about each fight. Even some of the basic facts it lists are incorrect.

Although this book provides some insight on the electoral strategies of Mike Harris and Ralph Klein, the book is full of lies and conjecture about conservatives.

Case in point: the author acknowledges that Mike Harris' policies were based on a platform which he got elected but goes on to say "for many Ontarians the immediate shock was how ruthlessly the Harris team set about implementing their promises" (p. 195). What is so beautiful about this passage is that Mike Harris was re-elected with the same number of votes in the same year that this book came out, thus refuting her claim.

Another interesting passage: "As for the Reform Party, the pictures of male-dominated party gatherings tell the tale. At the elected level, the number of women in the Official Opposition's caucus actually declined, from 7 in 1993 to 4 in 1997." (p. 389). What the author BLATANTLY fails to mention is that the Bloc Quebecois (a separatist party whose mandate is to break up Canada) was in power was in power in 1993 and Reform (now Canadian Alliance) replaced them in 1997. I guess what the author is saying here is that it is better to have Separatists as Official Opposition than a moderately right-of-centre party because they have more women in their caucus. And a year after the publication of the book, MP Deborah Grey became the interim House Opposition leader when Preston Manning stepped down thus refuting her claim again.

This book is so laughingly biased, it is hardly credible. I could write a rebuttal that would actually cite sources instead of making false statements without citing them. (To her credit, the author cites sources in a separate chapter, but most of her sources are from left-wing editorials in MacLean's and the Toronto Star).

By the way, I received this book as a gift from my girl friend, and I am reading it to be respectful. Had she known about the slant from which this book was written, she would not have bought it. But it is an interesting read if you want some insight of the mindset of the Far Left.

Having taken a couple of stats courses, I didn't find this book to be helpful very much. True, there were some illustrated examples, but nothing too advanced that could be of any use to upperclassmen. There is another publication on SPSS that I found much better, Easy Use and Interpretation of SPSS for Windows, by George Morgan and Orlando Griego. I would recommend this book very much, but I'm not sure if it is still in print.