Active Reviews

Sleeping In A Sack (Acitvities for Kids)

Published in Paperback by Gibbs Smith, Publisher (2000-04-21)

Author: Linda White

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Sleeping in a Sack

Helpful Votes: 19 out of 19 total.
Review Date: 2000-03-09

I found this to be a great resource for kids new to camping. Checklists, ideas for low-impact camping, and activites abound in a very user-friendly format. Not necessarily great for more experienced campers, but perfect for my first-grade Girl Scout troop!

Useful book

Helpful Votes: 5 out of 9 total.
Review Date: 2003-01-01

My children and I were introduced to this book through a friend who'd heard the author speak. We've used several of the ideas in our latest camping trips and found it very useful.

Title doesn't fit subject matter

Helpful Votes: 65 out of 69 total.
Review Date: 1999-07-10

This is where ordering a book through the internet is a little disappointing, as you can't browse the book before purchasing it. "Camping Activities for Kids" is very light on the "activities." It does a good job of laying out items that should be brought along on ones first camping trip, but falls short on suggesting outdoor activities for kids. The activities that are suggested are a little simplistic. For example, "laying sticks apart from one another and pretending it's a river, and then have the kids jump over it and playing golf with sticks and using pine cones as balls." I was hoping for more endepth activities. If it's your first time camping this books okay, but if you've camped for awhile and your kids are a little older the book falls short so look for something else.

Great starter for pre-teens

Helpful Votes: 7 out of 7 total.
Review Date: 2005-07-27

A great book for pre-teens and their parents. It has ideas on how to involve your child in the planning of a camping trip. They tell you not to hesitate to make a trip first just to your own backyard, something that I always reccommend as a test run of your skills and your gear. And you can have repeat visits to the yard anytime you like, cause the kids just love it and it's easy on you. Naturally it has advice for longer trips into the real woods, from gear selection, to packing lists, how to pack it all in, how-to put it toghether, how will you cook, how to light a fire, and more. But it also has a great emphasis on what to do when you get there, how to plan fun for the kids, (or how to keep them busy) and includes nature activities, games, and songs. It also has some great but simple camping recipes. 64 pages with full-color illustrations. Try the other book from theses authors, "Cooking On A Stick", it is mostly recipes but a great book for any camping library.

50 Fabulous Planned Retirement Communities for Active Adults: A Comprehensive Directory of Outstanding Master-Planned Residential Developments

Published in Paperback by Career Press (1998-03)

Author: Robert Greenwald

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informative

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2002-06-03

When trying to choose a retirement destination no one should relie on just one book.It was helpful in that it gave me an understanding of what I want and a idea of what I don't want.I will look at other books and videos before I have a clearer picture of what I desire.

50 Fabulous planned retirement communities for active adults

Helpful Votes: 2 out of 3 total.
Review Date: 2004-07-06

Great book but somewhat dated. Need additional medical HMO or other program information. Maybe employment and volonteer situations. Also note if a very high percent of ethnic or religious orientation. Would be helpful in a positive way.

50 Fabulous planned retirement communities for active adults

Helpful Votes: 5 out of 6 total.
Review Date: 2004-07-06

Great book but somewhat dated. Need additional medical HMO or other program information. Maybe employment and volonteer situations. Also note if a very high percent of ethnic or religious orientation. Would be helpful in a positive way.

The ABCs of Avalanche Safety

Published in Paperback by Mountaineers Books (2003-10)

Authors: Sue A. Ferguson and Edward R. Lachapelle

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Good summery to avalanche

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2008-12-22

If you have already some knowledge about the subject, it's a good and fast way to review it.
Using this book maybe give you enough information, to alert you about danger.
As with some other books which give you a lot of information, when you got too much information, finally it become difficult to decide and maybe your most important information is lost between all these details.

Small book, which can be read really fast.

Good read

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2008-02-25

Have read, but have yet to been put any where in avalanche territory yet to actually use information in the book. Good information and easy to follow and remember.

A good refresher

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2004-04-13

This book is not comprehensive enough to teach you what you need to know. There is no substitute for an avalanche course with a real instructor. However, if you have taken a course but haven't used your knowledge as much as you wished you could, and are therefore trying to refresh your memory this is a great book. Because it's short it's a quick read: you can read it cover to cover to review the details of safety in avalanche terrain. It's also a useful reference book or intro to use before or during your Avy course.

Active Galactic Nuclei

Published in Hardcover by Princeton University Press (1998-12-14)

Author: Julian H. Krolik

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MUCH better books available

Helpful Votes: 3 out of 3 total.
Review Date: 2007-12-01

I think the other reviewers must have confused this textbook with another one. This book sucks. They must have been enrolled in Krolik's class on AGN and were brown-nosing to get better grades. This textbook is overdense and you will find yourself reading pages and pages, but learning little about the physics of active galactic nuclei. At times, the work reads more like a philosophical treatise on observing methodology than a textbook to explain the observations and science behind active galactic nuclei. The material is outdated and some of the conclusions found within have since been disproven. The textbook does not discuss the current observations and controversies involved in the study of active galactic nuclei. Typically, when authors use graphics (pictures, plots, etc) they serve to illuminate the material and make it more understandable. Not so with this textbook, it is better to skip the graphics altogether because they do not help in the least. The mathematical proofs are not well-developed here and do not aid in the understanding of the physics.

I highly recommend Bradley Peterson's "An Introduction to Active Galactic Nuclei" over this textbook. Peterson's book might be thinner (because he sticks to the material and does not digress), but it is much better. It is more up to date and clearly explains observations of AGN and then develops the science behind their operation. The mathematics in this textbook are started at a more fundamental level, but are better developed to allow for a clearer understanding of the physics.

If you read Krolik's tome, you will walk away with a a great dislike of AGN. I was required to buy this book for the course Krolik was teaching at Hopkins. My greatest regret was that I was unable to sell this textbook back to the bookstore.

Great astrophysics by Krolik

Helpful Votes: 5 out of 6 total.
Review Date: 1999-04-15

Prof. Julian Krolik has done it again! His new book "Active Galactic Nuclei: From the Central Black Hole to the Glactic Environment" is a great reference source for astrophyisics, especially in Active Galactic Nuclei. While the reading can be a bit dense and convoluded, the topic is so involving that I couldn't put the book down. If you, like me, love Active Galactic Nuclei, then this is a MUST BUY book. Also, if you are taking one of Prof. Krolik's graduate classes at Hopkins, then I strongly suggest that you read up on his favorite topic. Anyone who buy's the book will NOT be dissapointed with it!!!

Complete coverage of a fascinating topic

Helpful Votes: 7 out of 8 total.
Review Date: 1999-12-14

This book provides an amazing amount of depth on the exciting topic of AGNs. Although a bit heavy on theory at times (which is to be expected from Krolik), the book covers every topic imaginable, from black hole physics to accretion disk structure. If you work in the field of AGNs, or you want to learn more about the subject, this book is a MUST READ. However, I would only recommend it for advanced undergrads or above.

Active Server Pages Solutions: An Essential Guide for Dynamic, Interactive Web Site Development

Published in Paperback by (2000-03-23)

Authors: Al Williams, Kim Barber, and Paul Newkirk

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Not just ASP.

Helpful Votes: 5 out of 6 total.
Review Date: 2000-10-19

This book is not just about ASP. This book contains chapters on just about everything you can put on a website. (dynamic) HTML, client (in vb) and serversidescripting (vb & jscript). Building components, java-applets, database-access. You name it, and it's there. The downside is that this quite expensive book it not detailed enough. The only chapters that are reasonably complete are the ones about Jscript and VBscript. The others will not get you much further than some "hello world"-like application. The other thing that I don't like about the book that it is very Internet Explorer oriented. The chapters on HTML are completely unusable for netscape-browsers, and this is the only book I know that boasts Vb as a client-side scripting language. Add the very irritatng introductions of the chapters and there you have it. Not a book for pro's, but I can imagine it being usefull for people who wish to know a little about a lot of things and are prepared to buy seperate books for the items they are actually interested in.

Wonderful Starting Point for ASP beginners

Helpful Votes: 6 out of 7 total.
Review Date: 2001-01-19

You will find this book very helpful if you are new to Active Server Pages. The book describes very clearly what ASP is, how it works, what it does, etc. This book will also make the beginner comfortable with how to write basic VBscript or similar in order to code their Active Server Pages. Wonderful coverage is given to all the basic ASP objects, their properties, and methods and how to invoke the power of each. This book has some funny prose to it and is not overly in-depth, but it will make a newcomer comfortable with integrating their current html skills, client-side scripting skills, and ASP into useful applications.

Excellent book for both advanced and beginners

Helpful Votes: 8 out of 10 total.
Review Date: 2000-05-26

Excellent guide for developping dynamic, Interactive Web Site. This book goes into relevent details and guides you through the process of development without assuming that you have 20 years of development experience behind you.

I would recommend it for junior developpers

Adventuring in New Zealand, Second Edition

Published in Paperback by Sierra Club Books (2000-03-21)

Author: Margaret Jeffries

List price: $20.00

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Average review score:

Good Guide to Outdoors New Zealand

Helpful Votes: 2 out of 2 total.
Review Date: 2006-08-01

I am inclined to agree with reviewer Jaffe and the Editorial Reviews. As a native Kiwi I know Auckland and Fiordland well having hiked extensively in both areas.
The Auckland sections covers the well known outdoor main attractions of the region well: the islands of the Hauraki Gulf and the extensive network of regional parks, many of which are coastal and have fantastic views from the walks in them.
Fiordland is the "honey pot" for accessible wilderness hiking in New Zealand. The description of the History, National Parks, short day walks and longer multi-day treks on well formed tracks is quite good. The maps are a bit scant, but you will buy better maps when you arrive in an area. And NZ does publish a wide selection of very good maps of all our park network. For a day-by-day detailed guide to the walks you are better to buy the Lonely Planet "Tramping in New Zealand" (even us locals use it). The book index is not so good, even the Routeburn "Great walk" (the finest 3 day walk in NZ in my opinion) is not listed but you can find it on page 457 with a 1/2 page description of it. After 5 years the book is not really dated. The one new development in NZ is private walking tracks and I can recommend the Banks Peninsula Track just out of Christchurch (page 388 of the book).
So as a one volume "outdoor type" guide to NZ the book is worth buying and fills a niche not quite met by Rough Guide or Lonely Planet.
So come and visit us.

Not up to Sierra Club's usual standards.

Helpful Votes: 25 out of 27 total.
Review Date: 1998-11-05

Adventuring in New Zealand turns out to be a fairly pedestrian travel guide, with little to recommend it. While claiming to be an "adventuring guide", there's little more about hiking, parks, fishing, climbing, etc. than any of the standard guidebooks. Design, illustrations, and indexing are second rate. Give this one a miss.

Best NZ guide for the environmental traveler

Helpful Votes: 4 out of 4 total.
Review Date: 2004-04-19

My partner and I found "Adventuring..." the single most useful guide for our visit to New Zealand in January 2003. I disagree with the prior negative customer review and wonder if M. Goldstein actually used this book for travel to New Zealand or was merely an armchair traveler seeking amusement.

It's true this isn't the kind of general guidebook so ably done by Lonely Planet and others. Jefferies doesn't refer the reader to specific restaurants or lodgings. What she does superbly is to introduce each region of the country with a detailed essay on its flora, fauna, terrain and history.

Her knowledge of New Zealand's parklands runs much deeper than a conventional guidebook. While not neglecting famous tourist attractions, she takes you far off the beaten path to smaller forest preserves that harbor natural treasures. The book is not a detailed trail guide, but it points you to the access points for the back country with useful general descriptions of many hikes.

Jefferies doesn't glamorize. Her descriptions of the deforestation and other environmental abuses that New Zealand has suffered might unsettle a conventional sightseer. For the environmental traveler with a serious interest in the natural history of the islands, it's just right.

American Academy of Pediatrics Guide to Your Child's Allergies and Asthma: Breathing Easy and Bringing Up Healthy, Active Children

Published in Paperback by Villard (2000-06)

Authors: Michael J. Welch M.D. and American Academy of Pediatrics

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Pediatrician Recommended

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2005-05-26

I just attended a lecture given by my pediatrician's office and this book was recommended as a guide by the doctor facilitating the lecture. I haven't read the book yet but it was referred to quite a bit during the lecture and I do plan on purchasing it as it sounds like a good reference.

Guide You to Your Pediatrician�s Waiting Room

Helpful Votes: 11 out of 24 total.
Review Date: 2003-04-08

Just because mainstream pediatricians can't cure allergies or asthma does not mean that they are incurable. Nowhere in this book is any understanding about why people get allergies and asthma in the first place, aside from a genetic tendency. What brings out this tendency in your child? Apparently, the American Academy of Pediatrics doesn't know. This book is dedicated to keeping allergy medicine in the dark ages of throwing drugs at the symptoms without much attempt to understand their cause. Environmental approaches to allergy and asthma are almost entirely ignored, or contradicted in another part of the book.

The lies in this book about the dangers of allergy and asthma pharmaceutical medications are criminal. The lies about complementary (natural, alternative) medicine are just as criminal. Though the forward of the book promises to review alternative treatments and therapies, natural medicine in its entirety is given only two pages in the entire book, labeled as "not scientifically proven" (a blatant lie for many types of natural medicine) or vaguely implied to be somehow dangerous or threatening, which is immensely exaggerated and generally unfounded. Only pediatricians who push toxic protocals are actually threatened by natural medicine, whom they view as competition when laypeople wise up to the vast failings of pharmaceutical-based medicine, especially when it comes to allergies, asthma, and other chronic illnesses. The party line is hammered home in this book as you are reminded time and again to seek your pediatrician's advice, especially when it comes to alternative modalities he or she may know nothing about, may view as threatening competition, or may be brainwashed into lying about. You must not make any choices on your own if there's a pediatrician to be consulted!

It is curious that nobody even claims authorship of any specific part of this book-typical for propaganda. There is a list of "contributors and reviewers," with no reference to who did what, or with what part. This book's aim is to get your child into the pediatrician's office frequently, and to get and keep your child on medications, some of which are extremely toxic. Steroidal medications are some of the most toxic pharmaceuticals available today, and the thought of poisoning an infant with such things, without even considering natural options, is simply heartbreaking. It almost goes without saying that iatrogenic causes of allergy and asthma are not even mentioned anywhere in this book, though it does admit that allergies to antibiotics do occur.

"Guide to Your Child's Allergies and Asthma" inadvertently demonstrates just how little the American Pediatric experts in allopathic biomedicine really understand about allergies and asthma. The results are frustrating: loading children up on toxic meds indefinitely, treating the symptoms without "wasting time" trying to understand the cause, and a drastic, all-around failure to relieve the suffering of children. Preventing the onset of allergies in the first place doesn't even seem to be an option, aside from the advice to breast-feed your babies-just what natural health professionals have said all along! Perhaps the infant formula companies haven't been keeping up on their membership dues?

If you would like to think like a mainstream, conservative MD does about allergies and asthma, and view allergies from the narrowest possible definition; if you prefer to ignore all the progress made in modern times and in other cultures around allergy theory and treatment (such as by Theron Randolph, MD, whose books I highly recommend, or Doris Rapp, MD-a pediatrician, or Dr. Firshein's "Reversing Asthma" book which details the hazards of asthma medications and a variety of alternatives, or Bob Flaws' book "Curing Hayfever Naturally with Chinese Medicine" for example); if you can stomach the case studies of children's suffering which is hardly alleviated by the poisonous chemicals they ingest, inhale, and absorb through their skin; if you can sort through the shocking and baffling combination of sound advice, half-truths, misinformation, blatant lies, and cover-ups of the truth; if you can fathom the bizarre claims that global pollution is improving and that allergies and asthma may inadvertently result from people being too healthy because of modern accomplishments in allopathic medicine, then this is the book for you. Otherwise, there are other books on allergies, asthma, and pediatrics that are much more accurate, vastly more insightful, and far closer to the truth.

Very Informative

Helpful Votes: 18 out of 21 total.
Review Date: 2000-08-01

After finding out my daughter was diagnosed with Asthma I read this book. It was very informative and it clearly described Asthma. It was very helpful in explaining different treatments, medications, and steps to take to limit Asthma attacks. I have a much better understanding of Asthma and how to control it.

Analysis of Algorithms : An Active Learning Approach

Published in Hardcover by Jones & Bartlett Publishers (2001-04-06)

Author: Jeffrey J. McConnell

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Average review score:

Unacceptable errors

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 3 total.
Review Date: 2007-11-14

I recently obtained the second edition of this text, since it seemed like it gave a fresh approach to the topic. I happen to be teaching this topic this semester, and so I went to the chapters dealing with computability and complexity theory. I found several glaring errors in terminology there, and this is simply unacceptable in a text. Apparently, the reviewers didn't do their job here. For example, in chapter 10, the author attempts to treat the classes P, NP, and NP-complete. Unfortunately, the term NP is used in many cases where NP-complete should be used. This leads to several areas of confusion. (Just because a problem is in the class NP, doesn't mean it is intractable -- it could be trivial, since P is a subset of NP.)

In summary, there are several other texts out there that are relatively readable and accurate. Among them are Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen et al, and Introduction to the Design and Analysis of Algorithms by Levitin.

That is the book

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2006-05-10

For a long time I have been searching for an algorithm book which is comprehensible, easy to follow. This is the book, I am really looking for. The other books like "Introduction to Algorithms" and most of the others do not give the point of the subject, full of mathematics, strange symbols many unneccessary details, I think that the other authors must follow the approach like in this book.

I wish that the author had also written other books containing the other advanced algorithm issues like network flow, linear programming... I would have bought without hesitating...

Good Basic Textbook

Helpful Votes: 8 out of 8 total.
Review Date: 2001-12-12

I am a professor of computer science and used this book for my Algorithms class. Although it had a few errors, there were many things I liked about it. First, the size of the book is just right; it covers all of the major subjects and I was able to use the entire text in one semester. Other textbooks cover topics in so much detail, I often had to leave many topics out of the course. Second, the active learning approach is great; having students do in class exercises and group projects helped them grasp the material more quickly. Third, I liked the omission of higher level mathematics; our college offers a degree in computer science but also other computer-related degrees which do not require a knowledge of calculus. Any student should be able to grasp the math in this book. In conclusion, I will use this text again and look forward to other authors writing books that "get to the point" quickly like this author did.

Beyond the National Parks: A Recreation Guide to Public Lands in the West

Published in Paperback by Smithsonian Institution Press (1998-02-17)

Author:

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An excellent resource for explorers of the out-of-doors.

Helpful Votes: 18 out of 19 total.
Review Date: 1998-04-21

This is a fabulous guide to the Bureau of Land Management public lands, published by the Smithsonian Institution in honor of the BLM's 50th anniversary this year.

In my experience, even as an employee of another federal land management agency, it is tough to get good information on the public lands managed by the BLM - even their offices tend to be hard to locate. Hence my opinion is that this book is a FOUND TREASURE! of little-known places to go and things to do in the outdoors, including nature viewing, unparalleled outdoor recreation, historic sites, and fabulous prehistoric sites.
Neither the Forest Service nor the Park Service have anything the BLM doesn't have, and the BLM is generally less crowded. If you feel like you've "been there, done that " on America's public lands - seen all the Parks, camped and hiked in all the Forests -then you need this book. You just won't believe what you've been missing.
My only concern, and I haven't really had a chance to test it yet (I just found this book last week myself), is that the directions to some of the locations may be a bit sketchy. It may be a good idea to call the local office before you visit, you wouldn't want to get lost in some of the locations that are a long way from anywhere.
There are a lot of summer vacations waiting in this book!

Highly professional, lovely, and usable

Helpful Votes: 35 out of 35 total.
Review Date: 1998-11-17

A 1998 book with about 400 6x9" pages on high-quality semi-gloss stock. The book is put out by the Bureau of Land Management and published by the Smithsonian Institution Press, and is replete with lovely pictures and color maps. This is a very professionally finished book. There's an introduction, which explains about the BLM lands and gives some general tips about camping, hiking, etc. The next series of chapters gives two (facing) pages each to various "partners", such as Nature Conservancy, Scenic America, National Geographic Society, Garden Club of America, etc. Each has one full-page picture, plus a description of the organization's agenda and a list of some favorite BLM spots. Then comes the state-by-state treatments - 18 in all (including Alaska, but not Hawaii!), plus a catch-all section to handle the "Eastern States" (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Tennessee and Virginia). Taking Arizona as an example to illustrate it's contents, it starts out with a color state map with shaded areas representing the areas to be discussed. Then each area (there are 22 of them) is described, starting with a more detailed map of the immediate vicinity. The description is extensive, usually taking about a page, and sometimes including a picture to give you an idea of the surroundings. For each area, the following subheadings are provided (this list might vary from area to area): Location, Description, Mailing Address, Phone/Fax Number, Directions, Visitor Activities, Permits/Fees/Limitations, Accessibility, Camping and Lodging, Food and Supplies, First Aid, Additional Information, and Sponsoring Partner. The Additional Information section discusses weather considerations, etc. Finally, there is a list of icons at the end of the description to summarize the types of activities you can look forward to (birding, hiking, boating, sightseeing, etc.). Since this is an official publication, of sorts, I presume the information is quite reliable. This is an engaging book, with useful treatments of the BLM areas.

Beyond the glossy print, your guide to lame information

Helpful Votes: 8 out of 9 total.
Review Date: 2001-03-17

I bought this book after reading a glowing review in a magazine. I was disappointed minutes after I turned the first page. Oh sure it has nice glossy print and pretty pictures but content? You won't find it here. You will find all the info in this book and much MORE at recreation.gov. Won't cost you a dime either. My copy gets sold at my next garage sale.

The Building Environment: Active and Passive Control Systems

Published in Hardcover by Wiley (2006-05-19)

Author: Vaughn Bradshaw

List price: $105.00

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Average review score:

For School

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2007-10-11

Hi, I got this text book for one of my classes.
it is very helpful, and explains in details and in a simple way, what we need to know.

Bad

Helpful Votes: 2 out of 24 total.
Review Date: 2002-02-14

I really needed this book and after I ordered it I thought great. Then days later I got an email saying They didnt have it so I was being credited. If you dont have the book DONT POST IT!!

An excellent book crammed with information

Helpful Votes: 4 out of 4 total.
Review Date: 2006-11-10

Mr Bradshaw does an excellent job in presenting an enormous amount of information in a very clear manner. It is an overview, yet it gives very detailed information. It is aimed at architectural students, which I am not, but I needed information and this has helped me enormously.

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