Yes, it really is a game of life and death. This book shows, though, that you can still have a laugh or two along the way. The stories which James tells distill the lessons of recovery down to good old boy stories you might have heard on the porches and at the picnics of the Georia country society.
The sincerity with which he sheds the trappings of ego and explores new heights of self depracation, are nothing if they are not touching. He tells in the book that it started as a way for him to leave something for his children as a way of explanation that the man they knew as father was not alcoholically absent from their lives because of anything they did.
The home spun philosophy and rural anecdotes may proove hard for some to grasp in their symbolic entirity. The language of the heart and honesty that is employed is understandable to those before and after him who choose not to drink or use, one day at a time.
This is a fine piece of work and belongs on any person with an interest in recover's bookshelf.

This book may appeal to a small niche audience: folks with sub-urban homes in planned communities who have a great deal of money and want "instant beauty." No doubt, the pictures are lovely and the spaces shown have been creatively transformed, but I found the examples out of reach for one with a mortal-size wallet. The authors have suggestions in getting around CC&R's in planned communities, which are helpful. However, this book seems to be a portfolio of Glassman's work, rather than a plantsman's book. In an early edition I had, the index was non-existent and some of the plant labeling was incorrect. The title held such promise (good job, editor!), but the book failed to do its job.

Michael Glassman's landscaping ideas, which are presented in this book, take their inspiration from very classical sources. There is nothing kitschy or trendy here, so if dramatic to you means 'funky' you should look to other sources. The designs show immense skill and judgment. The examples for seemingly hopeless spaces are a joy to behold, and the problem yards are both small and large. If you can't afford a landscape designer of Glassman's stature (and many of us can't) you will still enjoy reading the book many times over, and probably will find at least one or two ideas that you can adapt for your own yard.

In northern California -- where we pay a fortune for a small plot of land -- we want to maximize every inch, regardless of the cost. I found "Gaining Ground" inspirational and extremely useful for maximizing my tiny little plot. The pictures are beautiful and the text does a good job describing the design and the use of the different objects in the design. These are not inexpensive gardens, but they are beautiful!

The diary is an excellent way to look into the eyes of a young woman during the Civil War years. She sounds like a typical teenager today, writing about boys, socializing, familys issues, lonliness, happiness, body image, sexuality, and just life in general; however, it also contains information related to the time, such as her views on slavery and the war. Unfortunately, what is missing from this book is an historical examination into the people, places, and events she wrote about.

For those of you like me who are not general history buffs but enjoy personal stories from bygone eras, this is a wonderful book. Reading along with Lucy, sharing her joys and pain during the days of the Civil War, she becomes a friend, and we her confidante. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the Civil War, particularly women's views. In reading her story, we can relive a piece of America's past through the eyes of a young woman.

John's reviews are interesting. While I agree with many of the points he makes, I disagree with some. And I found a few to be self-contradictory.

He says, for instance, that "This is a good solid book that will get you up to speed quickly on all the important ideas in STL, and many of its basic usage idioms", but then naievely claims that "there aren't any higher level ideas than those presented here". Does the book cover only basic concepts, or is it that if the book doesn't cover it, it is not knowledge?

The book is full of concrete examples. But my problem was that they were trivial. Reversing or sorting or finding characters within a string is great fun. But it doesn't help me understand who owns the memory within a container. Or how to directly and safely reference an element at an arbitrary position within a container outside of an iteration loop. A majority of the examples use trivial intrinsic datatypes for contained elements; how is using a struct or class different?

All of those issues are important aspects of using the library, and not something I think a busy reader should leave to "a little imagination". While most of the disputed facts are eventually available in the text, they're not easy to find. The organization of the book isn't quite intuitive enough to make it a thoughtful reference or a breezy tutorial.

And, in many cases, once found, they're not clear. John cited page 151 for an explanation of the differences between some of the collections. There, it says "With maps an multimaps, the data items are pairs of keys and data of some other type..." What's that mean? Two keys and data of some other type? Or a key and data of some other type? Does "pairs" mean "two", or an instance of the "pairs" utility class?

The book really is missing information. None of the examples do any error checking whatsoever, and the exceptions that the templates throw aren't described. (Maybe, like priority queues, error handling was formalized after the book went to press. It is showing its age, and there's now a 2nd edition. I haven't purchased it.)

It's ambitious to write a book that tries to serve as both a tutorial and the reference. (Me, I think it's just impossible.) This book does very well, but falls short of adequately completing either goal.

I think that there's a bias against this book because it doesn't fit well with the way these reviewers would have liked to learn the subject at hand. I know that's where I landed. While true masters do indeed make it look simple, making it look simple doesn't help learning. Otherwise, we could all watch Tiger Woods for a few Sundays before taking home a Buick and a six-figure check.

As an advanced programmer, I must say that I'm disappointed that the level of information provided is not as deep and meticulous as I had hoped.

Additionally, both the index and the overall organization of the book leave much to be desired.

The book, however, is a valuable reference for beginning and intermediate programmers. It explains the STL (Standard Template Library) from the ground up, explaining when, where, and why you would use any particular aspect of the STL, how to use the STL, and sufficient examples to understand correct syntax. This book also contains a detailed section of applying the STL to real-life programming examples. Furthermore, the book also contains a comprehensive reference guide for quick and easy access to pertinent information about STL aspects you frequently use and modestly comprehend.

If you are a beginning or intermediate programmer, this book is worth adding to your collection.

Just a few more points, to refute earlier incorrect reviews:

One reviewer said: "For instance, in the detailed presentation of sets and multisets, nowhere is it mentioned what the difference between the two is. You have to go to the "Overview of STL components" to get the information."

This is incorrect: the authors cover the difference numerous places (and most people can guess what the difference is). See for example pages 118 and 151 (the latter being the section explaining set, multiset, and map).

Another reviewer said: "...it fails to mention several large chunks of STL that you could immediately use, including the functionals and some very useful pieces (strings (with iostreams), bit sets, fstreams, locales, limits, etc)."

This also is incorrect and misleading. Most of the items above are not part of STL, but rather the standard C++ library, so of course the authors don't discuss them. Also, presumably by "functionals" the reviewer means function objects, or function adaptors. Both of these are well coevered in the book.

Another review stated: "If you look for some concrete examples then this book isn't it."

This is hard to accept: almost every page of this book contains carefully chosen example code illustrating the point at hand. Even a little imagination should suffice to adapt it to your particulars.

And finally: "While this book might help you use STL containers in straightforward circumstances, it doesn't contain enough theory to give you mastery of the topic."

Also hard to accept. This book covers as much theory as there is to present; there aren't any higher level ideas than those presented here. For example, they take great pains to explain why there is a separation of algorithm and data structure, and to illustrate the pivotal role iterators play in organizing the library, to ensure (mostly) that the right algorithms are used with the right containers. If one looks for even deeper meaning, well, most of us don't know any, so feel free to write a book on it when you find it.

Seems like people are really biased against this book. Again, it's a really good introduction to the fundamentals. Sorry to see it get trashed.

In fact, it's been said that likely didn't write most of it. The production of this play performed at my university is generally considered to be the worst play performed on our stake in the last five years. Plot threads are left untouched, dialogue is uninteresting for the most part, etc. People in the audience either slept, left during the intermission, or pretended they were enjoying themselves. When you are in a play, usually people you run into on campus have something polite to say about the play. The best comment I got was, "You were OK, but I didn't understand what the play was trying to do with your character." Pericles does have some good scenes, but they are so scattered that the play isn't worth sitting through to get to them. Only for those who feel a compelling need to read all of Shakespeare's works. Even those may want to avoid it, because it isn't wholly the work of the bard.

I don't feel "Pericles" represents Shakespeare's best efforts. It lacks the profound aspects and suspense of his better (4-5 star) works. In my opinion, some characters like Cleon are handled less than fairly. The play seems to delight in his death, when he had nothing to do with the wickedness of his wife. Nor did he approve of it. Nevertheless, it is easy to see why this play has always been very popular. Pericles is a well developed character. First we see him as a youth jousting for the love of his life. Although not much time passes, we are somehow given the impression that he has aged. He becomes a father and he 'believes' he has become a widower. It is interesting how he changes from a typical teenage lovestruck youth to an adult concerned over his 'motherless' daughter. When he thinks his daughter is dead, he is reduced to an old man's solitary state. When he is reunited with his wife and daughter, it is almost as if he is young again. Marina is memorable as Pericles' virtuous daughter. Helicanus is striking as Pericles' loyal servant who is no flatterer. Cleon is sympathetic as the decent man who is destroyed by his wife Dionyza's wickedness. So, we have some interesting characters, a man's growth, good images, comical touches, a sudden dilemna, and a happy ending. In my opinion, this was Shakespeare's attempt at a fairy tale. If you read this (knowing not to expect his best efforts) you may be pleasantly surprised.

This least known of Shakespeare's romances was enormously popular during his day judging by handbills and other evidence--though not, of course, as much as his all time blockbuster; Romeo and Juliet.--And Pericles continued going strong for quite a while.

Immediately after the Restoration, when the Puritans (bless their hearts) fell from power and the theaters opened for business again, guess which play was the first the court wanted to see?

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So what happenned?

Oscar Wilde once said there were two ways of disliking poetry. One was to simply dislike it and the other was to like Pope.

Preicles did not do well with the 18th century pundits because it deviates from the 'Aristotalean unities'. Unlike The Tempest, for example, which takes place in one locale over a couple of days, Pericles takes place over 10 to 15 years all over the ancient Mediterranean. It has the form of an epic. What can I say? Homer would have dug it.

It's the story of a prince who screws up. Partly from his fault, mostly not. It's got tyrants, incest, treason, murder, knights, wizards, teenagers, kings, pirates, brothels, young love, a great hero and The Goddess Diana.

Oh yeah, the poetry's not too shabby either.

The theme is what to do when everything goes horribly wrong. How to weather sorrow and get through your life. How to be honorable and not give in to despair.

Someone once remarked that the romances are tragedies turned upside down e.g; The Winter's Tale begins as Othello and then has a happy ending. At least if it's performed by a good cast who commits to the miracle of the statue coming back to life.

If they 'apologize' for an outlandish miracle, it's doomed. Likewise, Pericles also has a happy ending if it's produced by a company who loves the play rather than by a group who views it as a rare curiosity in the Shakespeare canon.

It might interest some readers to know that the nonsense about Shakespeare only writing part of it is, God help us, a compromise position from a few scholars who don't want to get into an argument with unorthodox loons about who really wrote Shakespeare's plays.

Pericles was left out of the first folio. For that matter so were 100 lines of King Lear and there's 300 lines that appear in the folio version of Lear that aren't in the quarto (having fun yet?) which, of course, is positive proof that de Vere or Queen Elizabeth or Bacon or Lope de Vega was really the true writer and never mind that while William Shakespeare lived and for 200 years later no one thought to question his authorship, what did those Elizabethans know , anyway?

Besides he never went to college, so there.

(sigh)

As James Barrie, the author of Peter Pan once remarked: I do not know if Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare' plays, but if he didn't he missed the opportunity of a lifetime.

In the hands of the right director, Pericles, Prince of Tyre is pure gold.

There are two ways to view historiography. The first is relatively straightforward (how does the author research and relate the facts) and the second is more contextual (how does the author's style, voice, etc., relate to the works of his/her contemporaries and how has this book influenced the study and writing of history.) Edward Creasy's book is less valuable in the former view of historiography and more valuable in the latter.

Creasy presents few if any new facts or analysis of the battles and leaders discussed in Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World, which is disappointing. More attention is devoted to some battles at the expense of others. The Greek victory at Salamis, first first chapter, is engaging but the following chapter, on the Athenian defeat in Sicily is sparse and detached. Flaws in Creasy the historian appear in his description of the victory of Arminius over the Roman legions in Germany in AD 9. Creasy connects the Germanic tribes' defeat of the Romans to the nature of the Germanic nation as a whole, then linking it to that of the English. At that point, Creasy emerges from a facade of objective analysis as a historian, and the book never truly recovers. Creasy never outrightly claims that decisive battles are consistently won by superior societies or races, but this is implied throughout. I do not mind that viewpoint as I do the poor historiography that emerges in the book. That is its major detraction.

That said, however, Fifteen Decisive Battles is an intruiging study in that 1) it is considered a landmark work in history - although now students of history are usually told to avoid it, 2) Creasy introduced the concept of the decisive battle into the Western study of military history, 3) Creasy's assumptions/notions have remained influence despite lack of real, hard evidence to the modern day, to include "Carnage and Culture," etc. Given this context, I found the book a little more palatable, at least I felt that when reading it, I had to look at the context in which it was written and its influence since its first publication.

I rated this book as a three, because although the prose is often engaging, the historiography is lacking yet the book's impact is such that a serious student of history should read it and judge it on its own merits