Active Books

My children's school offered a parenting class which used this book. After taking the class, I have ordered several copies of this book for my family and friends. Contains practical, handy charts and reference diagrams. This is real world information that works! Wish I had seen it when they were two!

While the content is indeed good advice, the book refers to video that obviously the reader may not have seen and has no clue what the content of that video is. I think the overview is somewhat misleading as this book is actually a parents guide to be used with the main program. But........ I will agree that the methods advised are solid.

The first time i glanced at this book I thought that i was looking at 'The Backpackers Handbook', also by Townsend. This seemed, and still seems to be, more or less a duplication of that previous guide. If you don't own the 'Handbook', then definitely check this out, I really like Chris' open-minded writing and hiking style.

The only new information in 'Advanced Backpacker' is brief; and can be found on the internet or in your library for free. But if you really want a wholesome guide to carry with you, then this should be the one.

The author's experience in long distance backpacking is obvious when he shares his knowledge in an honest and enlightening way.
The section on inspiration and reality is well worth reading. He gives a nice little description of the long trails, with his comments and experiences. His food choices and ideas alone make the book worth the price. He includes the best description of chemical purification I have seen in some time. He covers boot fitting (one of the most important items, I think, in backpacking) like no one else I have ever read. Not a rehash of what has already been written (I admit I haven't read his other books), but some critical and important original views on the subject.
This book delivers excellent information for the long-distance hiker.

Recently I took a trip from Perth to Cairns by rail and this book was my primary source of information that helped me prepare my itinerary. I spent a few days in all major aussie cities on my way to Cairns. This guide helped me in two ways, first it helped me to quickly gather general information about particular place where I took a break and it's surroundings. Second, it helped me to narrow down day trips, sightseeings and walks (which are *plenty* to choose from local tourist kiosks in hotels, YHA...).
One thing that I didn't find in this book was enough tips for budget accomodation - if I didn't by an accident find the official YHA Australia web site I would never know how good this organization is in this country (at least compared with YHA in most part of Europe). So, if you need budget accomodation then certainly checkout YHA web site before booking any 'budget' places mentioned in this book.
Otherwise I can't say anything bad about the book, it does a good job covering all aussie states and I beleieve that the content will satisfy the adventurers as well as tourists.

I saw the book in the hands of one of your US tourists and at the quick look I had, I liked what I could see HOWEVER!!! the information on the area south of Hobart in Tasmania was sadly not only not good, it was in fact not there. As a tourist operator at Cygnet in S Tas I was disappointed - for me and the fact that some of your people would be possibly missing out on one of the nicest corners of our state.

No doubt interesting reading. Whether it's relevant... Well, yes, this could be great advice for those adventuring in the Pacific, but only with huge amounts of money which few of us have. Unless you have your own yacht(s) etc, you may be better off with one of the more 'conventional' travel guides.

"Adventuring in the Pacific" is the only book I've found, to date, that covers information about the South Pacific and Oceanic Islands from as far east as Tahiti in Polynesia, to as far north-west as the Northern Mariana's in Micronesia, covering many of the more remote or unfamiliar islands in between. The book contains a wealth of information that is vital to the traveler such as travel tips, length of stay considered adequate for each island, flora & fauna, native foods, and even important information about crime and health issues that may be encountered. Additionally, it includes an in depth look at the culture and history of each island. I would have preferred seeing more detailed maps, more weather information and pictures of the islands, but for anyone planning to visit or sail throughout the South Seas, or if you're just an island "buff" it is well worth the purchase.

Tavares and his co-authors present a specialised guide to the latest version of Active Template Library. It's for the C++ programmer on a Microsoft machine, who is also familiar with the Component Object Model. The authors specifically state that you really do need expertise in the latter.

The book deals with various legacy issues, mostly dating back to MFC, which is now largely deprecated. But there are also other aspects that are grubby and mostly unavoidable. For example, when dealing with character types, there is an abstraction called OLECHAR. Under Win32, it maps to wchar_t, while under Win16 [and the Mac] it maps to char. The need for this was due to the hardware improvements that took us from 16 bit CPUs to 32 bits. A transition that occurred mostly in the 80s. But for Microsoft, the legacy code remains in use. So there has to be low level logic that maps the character type to an actual appropriately sized memory allocation.

By the way, don't think this issue is confined to Microsoft. C code from that era that was developed for Unix machines, and which might still be in use, often has a similar problem. C macros dealing with this are a notorious source of porting errors.

The text deals with many other aspects of ATL. Some, like collections and enumerations, are very cleanly done. These classes are inherently meant to be high level abstractions. And the C++ code examples that use these are very easy to follow. The discussion of this also includes some sample Visual Basic code. (Most of the book has C++ code.)

Most reviews on this book were very good. It was the reason I bought this book. This book covers topic on the ATL 8 as its title says.

However, I don't like this book although I will read this book to the end.
The reason is this. Each chapter discuss about its own topics like strings, and so on. However, it just describes each methods of a given class. It is like that of the MSDN. Why doesn't it show some sample code lines which shows how to use some of them and what the result is? By doing so, it is much easier to understand and read. After reading a few chapters, I started skipping explanations because of the pattern.

Also, just like other books nowadays, it is too descriptive. It will be good if it is a book about explaining concept of the COM, or if it should give some idea on the topic. However, readers of this book already knows about the COM and if they consider "COM", they are already fairly experienced programmers. Then explaining things like the MSDN documents do is not helpful. Probably it would be better if it can explain thing more clearly than the MSDN do, but I guess it is not the case for this book.

Also, what lacks seriously among most COM books is that they fails to describe the automatically inserted macros and their relationship.
Also, for the Visual C++ 2005 IDE, there are some peculiar things. For example, the IDE displays the same interface under class and under interface on its solution pane. You may wonder where to put codes for a certain interface. It could be better if this book explains about them too.

Because COM is designed very confusing way, the Objective-C remote messaging, it needs good explanation. However, this ( and most ) book fails in doing so.

Additionally, it would be better if it has some tutorial chapters.
By following step by step, you can figure out things more clearly, but this book fails in that too. At least the first chapter seems to be written for that purpose. However, it omits some declarations and it is not implied where to put those. So, I gave up writing codes for the chapter.

However, as for the coverage of the topic, it seems to be chosen well.

I know.. people are moving to the C#/C++ .NET remoting.
Nowadays many books on COM/.NET interop are published. So, probably the important of COM is diminishing.
However, COM is still the core of the technology, and I'm not sure if the .NET stands for long-time. Even MS changed things about .NET abruptly so much, and people using .NET seem to use C# instead of C++ generally, I think it is not good idea to rely on proprietary technology. Yeah.. COM is proprietary. But your code using COM doesn't totally rely on proprietary code... at least C++ part...

I hope this book would be improved.

Had heard McKibben talk recently in Concord MA, but had never read any of his writings. Found this book to be both well written and an excellent introduction to his position on sustainability. Has inspired me to read more of his works.

Excellent writing, some of it already in his new Deep Economy. Mckibben has the ability, now he needs to focus his attention on where the American community should be going now that everyone except Exxon knows that global warming is for real.

Great for those that are interested in doing things that require the use of some kind of Rope.

Peter Owen has put together 70 of the most common knots and illustrated them quite nicely. The book uses line drawings to show how to tie the knots and provides a short historical and descriptive paragraph on each knot.

I felt more verbage should have been given in describing how the knots were tied, and the sections on Choosing and Caring for Rope were inadequite at best. To his credit, the illustrations Peter used were good enough to overcome the shortfalls in describing how to tie the knots. This book is a handy guide to tying common knots and knowing their uses, but is definitely not a complete guide to all knots.

None the less, as an editor for a Scouting Magazine, I still feel it is a book worth buying and I do recommend it.

At 99 Cents I didn't expect much, but agreed with the first reviewer that it would still be a worthwhile download. However, everything had an active table of contents - both books and individual stories. I reread the first review, and saw that the publisher commented, and fixed the problem.

As a comprehensive collection of fairy tales, Andrew Lang's Colored Fairy Books are hard to beat. To have all twelve in one volume is five-star worthy. The unfortunate aspect is that the Kindle version's "active table of contents" applies only to the titles of the twelve books, not to the stories within them. The reader must search each book for a particular story, since those tables of contents are *not* active. Still, for the price, this may be a petty peeve for most people.

UPDATE: The publisher has reissued this file and now the table of contents is amazing. Click on the title of one of the fairy books and you see a list of all of the stories it contains. Another click takes you to the desired story. Richard Seltzer, your attention to readers' needs is impressive. Thank you!

Mostly, this is indeed a book on geology, as befits the title Earth Science. Within geology, it summarises seismology, hydrology, oceanography and other topics like weathering and plate tectonics. Presented with attractively laid out pages, well illustrated with photos and diagrams that should make the ideas come alive for you.

But the book also encompasses astronomy. One chapter focuses on the Earth-Moon system, while another takes a look at the rest of the solar system. With a final chapter that goes out to the galaxy. The idea is to give you more perspective on our planet, and that these days, geology is not confined to this planet.

The authors treat each of Earth's Systems in a very straightforward manner, using clear and illustrative graphics. They also do a fine job of tying together Earth's systems and processes into an interrelated package, as opposed to simply a series of disconnected chapters. I use this text in my Washington Online course. Al Friedman, Everett Community College

Set in Australia, Ek Chuah blends the freaky and fantastic with police procedural. The characters and plot provide plenty of surprises along the way, with the action ratcheting up to an all-hell-breaks-loose ending.

With short stories in pubs such as "Bare Bone" and "Red Scream" already among his credits, Australian horror writer James R. Cain tackles the longer form with skill and passion in "Ek Chuah." Cain foreshadows expertly, and keeps you hanging between scenes that follow a cast of flawed, sympathethic protagonists as they are dragged (and seduced) into the bowels of hell where a final showdown ensues. The police shootout scenes are as sharp as any I've read. Just when you think the story may be coursing into a police procedural, it materializes into this Robert Rodriguez-esque lanscape/vision with a uniqueness entirely its own. Cain is one of those fearless and imaginative writers who's worth watching.