Extension Books

This was a very well done book. It requires some experience with PHP (and even with, there are some new conventions used). The book takes you through building a component piece by piece. Without knowledge of PHP, you might get lost because you have to modify the code repeatedly - chapter by chapter.

Read up on your PHP syntax and functions first, then give this book a try.

This is a very good starter book that explains a lot of newbie questions you may have about Joomla development. It does kind of pull you by a nose rings in some spots by telling you you need to do this but no real explanation of why. But considering how much information is packed into this small book, its acceptable. This book won't make you an expert Joomla developer but it will have you picked up by your boot straps and capable of asking the right questions to find any answers it didn't contain.

Although light on detail and lacking in the background necessary to help the reader work out how to find more information effectively, this is a good introductory lesson and can be worked through in just a few hours, giving the reader a good grounding in how to develop 1.5 extensions.

I think this book is an excellent start to learning about J!1.5 extensions development. It has real examples that are easy to follow and adapt to suit a variety of purposes.
Please note that the book is much thinner than you would think - about 170 pages cover to cover - so initally I was somewhat disappointed, but the book covers the topics you need to get started and I can still heartily recommend it!

At first sight this book looks great. It is concise and gives a good introduction from the start to build Joomla extensions. It does not waste pages explaining how to program in SQL and PHP. You are supposed to have mastered that. The book has a major weak point. For the main part it just shows lots of code, but does not explain anything about the API classes and how they relate. After reading the book and trying to create your own extension, it feels like you have not understood anything really.

A second drawback is that the author seems not to bother about testing the sample code. It contains several very obvious bugs, eg using a functou JOutputFilter instead of JFilterOutput. This is annoying.

Summarized, the book may give you a small start but is insufficient for seriuous development. The sad thing is that the official Joomla documentation is in a very alpha stage of development.

I think this novel, a debut for the author, was a really very good read. Its hard to find a suspense novel that actually focuses on the lead character, Paris Murphy. You do have a couple of scenes with the love interest but thank goodness the main attention stays on the pursuit of the serial killer. It also shows Murphy interacting with her male partner in a non sexual sense which is so great! Finally we can read a suspense story that is not all wrapped up in sex (that always gets in the way) and see a heroine who is actually strong, without having a man to be there to support her every step of the way! Bravo!

I bought all 3 of her books since I saw they all had 4 stars. I'm not as impressed & can't believe her books got such positive reviews. It's not a bad book, but it's not that good. It took me 4 days to read it - that's a long time. The book bored me & was unoriginal. The heroine bored me even more.

My big complaint was the priest's language. Language doesn't normally bother me, but when a priest is using the effword. That just didn't seem to fit.

I'd recommend Tami Hoag's books & if you want to read Theresa Monsour's bks. go to a library.

Monsour's first novel is pretty awful. It is extremely predictable--so much so that it read like a college writing assignment to compose a generic serial killer story.

Paris is the heroine--and of course she's thin (yet buxom), intelligent, feminine, horny, etc, etc, but also tough as nails when she needs to be. Please excuse me while I vomit. We have a thoroughly unoriginal sidekick, Gabe. The killer and his background are corny and unbelievable. The police could have solved the crime in about a half hour, but Monsour artificially prolongs a showdown and arrest--even though the police know who the murderer is and have appropriate evidence with which to detain him.

Let's spice up this blah story with some sex, shall we? Monsour has two studs trying to sleep with our heroine throughout the novel; and because she and stud #1 are officially separated (for thoroughly unbelievable reasons), she can enjoy stud #2 with a minimum of guilt. The final showdown with the killer is as predictable as death and taxes--a 10-year-old could have finished the story after reading the first half.

John Sandford, who writes police procedurals 100 times better than this and is a Twin Cities author, tries to make us think Monsour deserves our attention. Unfortunately, he's wrong.

Good characters and plenty of suspense. Michael's character was a little hard to believe. He would have been alot easier to catch in today's reality. It was fun to read but not the best.

"Clean Cut" is essentially about two detectives trailing a serial killer who likes to cut up prostitutes, and that's really as complex as it gets.

First of all, a serial killer offing prostitutes has been done so much already that most crime authors steer well clear of it. Did Monsour dream this plot up in the mid-90s? Secondly, the hot, spunky female detective/older, fat male counterpart is derivative beyond words. They don't even seem to be especially intelligent. The blurb states that they "piece together the clues", but it plays out more like psychic phenomena. Paris spots the bad guy at a funeral and immediately deduces that he's the guy. And it isn't exactly difficult to catch a criminal who leaves so many clues behind even a Blues Clues fan (i.e. four years old) could catch him. Our heroine likes to run and is a great cook. Where have I come across that before?

The lack of plot is further made evident by the presence of at least three too many endings. The number of times the villian pops back up to have a go at Paris rivals the worst slasher movie.

What works in the book's favour is that Theresa Monsour is obviously a good writer. The dialogue is believable, the characters (while cliched) are well-drawn, and the pace rarely flags. But she needs to come up with a plot that doesn't play out like a comfortable connect-the-dots puzzle. And, most importantly, she needs to come up with a few ideas that haven't come from a hundred writers before her.

"Oh, Play That Thing," is the followup to "A Star Called Henry" and is entirely complementary to the first part of this three part trilogy. I can't wait for part 3. The characters in these first two parts of the trilogy are unique but oh so fitting to the best (and worst) of Irish and American cultures and mythology. Love the tie in with Louis Armstrong, New York, Chicago, and other places (not to spoil the story before you read it). Roddy Doyle has a great ear and ability to write dialogue fitting of places and time. He combines the toughness of life with the greatness of life in people who live it fully and then some. Really enjoyed this book, and before it A Star Called Henry and can't wait for the next and final in the trilogy.

Yes, 'Oh, Play That Thing' is different than 'A Star Called Henry'. It shows Henry during the next 20 or so years of his life but frequently references events from the first book. I don't agree with people getting upset about the change in Henry's personality - no one's (hopefully) the same when they're 30 as they were when they were 15; people grow and change and that is what Doyle has shown in 'Oh, Play That Thing'. It has been said that Henry isn't as likable in this book as he was in the first, but I didn't find that to be true. Coming from the background he did and living through some of the most tumultuous events of the early 20th century, it's only to be expected that he would develop some degree of a hardened exterior and put up some sort of protective barrier between himself and others.

I loved it and can't wait for the third one!

I purchased this book on the recommendation of another author (in her review of her book she said her writing was influenced by the author). "Oh, Play that Thing" takes place in the 20's and through the dust bowl disaster, The main character is a savvy Irish immigrant who has landed at Ellis Island to start a new life in NYC.

The author's way of writing is like a stream of thoughts and words. Reading the first few pages, I wasn't sure I liked the book, but as I got into the head and life of the Irish man, I got into the rhythm of his thoughts and the way the writing in the book worked so well.

I found the story fascinating and the beat of time and his life very hypnotizing. How Roddy Doyle, the author, manages to insert a famous celebrity into the mix and engage you in the story is entirely successful, and I couldn't put it down.

After reading both Henry Smart books, I think Doyle possesses great skill to write but fails to deliver an acceptable novel. Oh, Play that Thing has moments that display his eloquence and prose that could lead to a 5-star book. But he fails to put it all together to form a traditional novel with the important features of plot, climax, character development and theme that appeal to readers.

Doyle's characters are morally bankrupt, flaky, and create no connection to readers who will not be able to develop empathy for them. Further, the scenes and timeline are difficult to follow. I think that I am a seasoned reader but at times I did not know what was going on in the story.

Yet, Doyle's skill was enough for me to at least stay with the book and finish it. If you have not read "A Star Called Henry," the previous Henry Smart book, I would advise you to stay away from both it and this one. If you read the prior book and have an interest in Smart, you may be interested in this book. Doyle does provide a glimpse of prohibition America that is interesting though I don't know how accurate it is. He lists numerous books on the age that were helpful to him, so I assume it is. Likewise with the character of Louis Armstrong in the book.

It's hard to imagine Roddy Doyle followed up a book as wonderfully rich and entertaining as A STAR CALLED HENRY with the flop OH, PLAY THAT THING.

Where was Doyle's editor???

In A STAR CALLED HENRY, Doyle took the reader on an action-packed ride through turn-of-the-century Ireland with Henry Smart - a hero as incorrigibly loveable as any you'll meet. But in this sequel, where Henry escapes to America and finds himself in trouble with the mob, Doyle's writing suffers from three serious problems: confusing writing, boring plot, and shallow hero.

My first criticism: The writing is overly tangential and difficult to follow. I found myself re-reading page after page, wracking my brains trying to understand what the heck was going on and continually wondering whether I'd missed something. I kept at it, hoping to discover a gem hidden in all the confusion. But I'm a die-hard reader; I seriously doubt many others will try as hard to make sense of prose that comes across as lazy rather than worthwhile.

My second criticism: The story goes nowhere. A summary of this book is as simple as this: Henry Smart's on the run again and again because he keeps pissing off the mob. And then there's the almost magical coincidences Doyle tries to pull off - i.,e., out of all the houses in Chicago Henry might rob, he breaks into the one house where his wife (who he thinks is still in Ireland) is working as a maid. And if that's not enough, after Henry is treated to coinsidences so unbelievable the reader is left groaning at the absurdity, the guy squanders each and every one of them.

My third criticism: Henry Smart's character is flat. While the first intallment (A STAR CALLED HENRY) treats the reader to a hero who's as loveable and exciting as any you'll come across, in OH, PLAY THAT THING Doyle squanders each and every ounce of Henry's charisma. Henry's choices and motives don't make sense anymore, and he comes across here as stagnant and shallow. Early in the book, because of Henry's arrogance and greed, he makes enemies with the mob. For the remainder of the book Henry's character goes nowhere. He runs from city to city making the same mistakes over and over again, never seeming to learn a thing about himself. Henry's character never grows.

What makes all these problems so sad is the obvious effort Doyle put into writing OH, PLAY THAT THING. The book is infused with well-researched 1920's American culture. Along the way, Henry meets up with and befriends Louis Armstrong - and Doyle's enthusiasm and passion for music shines through here. Hands down, Louis Armstrong steals the show - Doyle infused his character with all the depth, passion and steam missing from Henry's.

I kept reading this book, hoping if I sifted through the confusing writing and slow story I'd uncover a gem. I never did.

Why do I have to review the book before I can read others' reviews

This is one of three books I purchased to help me find and choose a 3rd graduate degree. Bear's "College Degrees by Mail & Modem" was not helpful. The data was too superficial, although the format allowed for more specific information. I got the impression that the authors were more interested in getting a title to market than taking the necessary time to gather more exact data required by the reader. The most helpful was "The Best Distance Learning Graduate Schools" by Vicky Phillips and Cindy Yager, c. 1998. The third book, "How to get a college degree" was less focused on graduate programs, but still provided me specific information about some of the same programs mentioned in the previous book. I have in fact gone to the campus of Boise State University and inquired further and found a wonderful program, yet with parameters that do not fit my needs and situation. I have been able to prioritize my criteria and focus on the programs that fit my objective as a result of these two books.

After reading this book I'm not sure why it's listed as a college guide. It only lists 100 colleges and I had never heard of most of them. Best Distance Learning Graduate Schools lists 195, and that's just graduate schools. Peterson's includes satellite and cable and lists many more accredited undergraduate colleges than this guide. I got the feeling that Bear just lists schools that he personally likes or that he maybe forgot to update the book in the last 5 years or so.

Good grief! I cannot believe the reviews that are complaining because a book subtitled "100 Accredited Schools that Offer Bachelor's, Master's, Doctorates, and Law Degrees by Home Study" does not list thousands of degrees!

Okay, so maybe they should change the title to "The Top 100 degrees by Home Study." Maybe Amazon.com should include the blurb on the back cover that makes it very clear that this is a selected nonexhaustive listing.

It is true that the entries do not carry a lot of information. In fact, it looks as if the publishers simply took the quarter-page entries from Bear's other book and changed the type face so it would take up a whole page. But none of the directories are exhaustive treatments. I know: I've read them all. An exhaustive directory would be a thousand pages long and cost hundreds of dollars.

Bear's entries do carry enough information for you to know if you have any interest in following up on the ample contact information. (Unlike many other references in the field, Bear's contact information is very accurate.)

If you want a listing of thousands of schools, look into Bear's Guide to Earning Degrees Nontraditionally.

I've read Peterson's, Thorson's, and Princeton's; and I'm here to tell you: Bear's is best. If you want behind the scenes stuff and honest opinions rather than just listings, if you want a good general education on the distance education scene today, buy College Degrees by Mail & Modem or Bear's Guide.

I am very happy with my piddling ... investment and feel I got way more than my money's worth.

I found this book to be somewhat helpful, but there appear to be some omissions in it.

For example, the authors didn't mention the Columbia Video Network at all, even though they do give Columbia University one sentence in the book. I was able to find CVN on the web myself, almost a year before I bought the book, and it appears to be one of the better programs.

A better book is "College Degrees Through Distance Learning" by Eric Shaunheid. The information is up to date, and includes listings for 300 schools. Unfortunately, this book is only available through their website.

You would think that a PHP book that actually mentioned "Extensions" as part of the title would cover extensions wouldn't you? Well in the case of this book you would be wrong. The index has exactly 1 entry for 'extensions' and even that is a 1 sentence footnote! Compare that to the 45 pages devoted to the subject in George Schlossnagle's book "Advanced PHP Programming" and you can get an idea of actually how deficient this book is in this aspect.

I bought this book with high expectations.

It is a very good book, well written, and David Sklar really has done a good job writing it. However, I didn't find it that useful. It wasn't even remotely close to comprehensive about what it covered, and made only footnote mention of other tools that are out there.

I ended up returning it -- something I rarely do. I didn't think it was worth the money. Most of this info is available for free online anyways.

This book does alert you to many useful modues, extensions and accelerators and given that many of these are open source and their documentation can be skimpy, it's good to have examples and documentation from another source.

However, this book is not comprehensive in it's coverage of said modules, extensions and accelerators and in areas where it covers material already explained in the documentation, I preferred the original documentation's style and explanations. The book does mention things that the original documention does not, but the original documentation talks about things that the book does not.

In short, I had to read both the documentation and the book to fully understand the code.

I have found HTML & Smarty chapter very useful. You will also find other chapter useful if you have to work on them in real life projects. Overall very practical book.

This is really only for advanced PHP programmers. If you are one, it maybe will render in 5 star.

I live over 8,000 feet and had basically given up on baking certain things, like bread. The recipes in this book are great! My bread actually came out the size of a normal loaf, and my biscuits popped up like they are supposed to. My boys said, "You mean biscuits aren't supposed to look like lumps of dough?"

The recipes are also healthy--lots of them have whole wheat options, or ways to cut back on sugar. Many are also fruit or vegetable-based.

I've made so many of the recipes in the book, and only a very few have not been delicious.

I've had this book now for about 3 years, and haven't made a recipe that did not come out. Pancakes, breads, cupcakes, everything I've used in this book has come out great. I say this is my favorite high altitude baking book, but it's actually the only one I have. I've found I don't need another. This is a great starting point for high altitude baking, and I've been able to use the ideas here to adjust other recipes I loved when living at (much) lower altitudes. We currently live at slightly over 7000 ft.

Some recipes are just awful tasting and some recipes are just amazing. All the recipes by Melissa Craven are so good. There is a recipe of Chococlate Chocolate Chip Cookies that is always a hit at the parties and people beg me to make them all the time.

I moved from sea level to over 7000 ft. I was a very talented baker. But none of my sea level recipes work at the new altitude. I was hoping this book would help me find a way to adjust my recipes. It does not . The 4 recipes I did try from this book tasted like dirt. I did follow the recipe fully and had high hopes. I moved from the USA to the mountains of Mexico. Not only does it take longer to cook any thing at a higher altitude, flavor is lost at a higher altitude and needs adjustment. This book does not explain that.
I can not tell anyone to purchase this cook book and expect to be able to bake successfully at high altitudes.

Me and my wife moved to Colorado from sea level, and were big bakers using Betty Crocker baking books. We have tried many of the recipes in this book and have yet to come across one that tastes even halfway decent. We live at 9100 feet, and there are many recipes in the book that don't require any further adjustments for higher altitudes (so they say), and we've tried a few of the cake and cookie recipes, but none of them worked, the cakes flopped,and the cookies always flattened out completely. It was hit or miss with this book, and that's aside from the awful taste of the recipes. They claim that all the recipes will work to 6500 ft elevation, and higher altitudes require further changes, but even making the changes they have in the book under the recipe's, a lot of the recipes failed.
Save your money and get any baking book and make adjustments for high altitude, using any of the adjustments you can readily find on-line for your altitude.
We were very disappointed in this cookbook.

Much of what Fischer claims about Nazi Germany has been discounted by legitimate historians. For example, the Lebensborn program was not a stud farm for SS supermen and Nordic women to create a new master race, and Ilse Koch did not create lampshades and book covers from the skin of dead Jews.

Every significant figure in the Nazi regime, even those who ultimately had little to do with the persecution and destruction of the Jews in Europe, is portrayed as either a sexual deviant or a sociopath. I seriously doubt the most educated people in Europe would have tolerated such a regime long enough for it to plunge Europe into its most destructive war.

I guess surrendering historical objectivity is a small price to pay to make money and avoid being bullied by the ADL.

Any author who thinks that Hindenburg was loyal to the Weimar Republic is out of his mind. There wasn't a German alive who liked it and to say that somebody was loyal to it is ludecrous. He also implies that Hitler outwitted Hindenburg to gain the chancellorship. That's also crazy. Hitler just got lucky that Papen underestimated him when he used him in his plot to try to gain the chancellorship for himself (which failed obviously). In fact I don't believe that Hitler and Hindenburg had any interaction at all on the subject (except of course when he was sworn in). The matter was proposed to Hitler through Papen. If Fischer could be so off base on such a basic concept, I shudder to think about how acurate the rest of the information in this book is.

NOTE: This is not an uninformed opinion. I have compared this book with others by Burleigh, Kershaw, Machtan, and Turner on similar subjects.

My recomendation is to forget about this book and get Kershaw's book Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris. It's actually more of a biography of Hiter's power. I found it to be a much more logical, coherent, and enlightening book.

Klaus Fischer's account of Nazi Germany succeeds as a source of basic information, particularly regarding the early roots of the Nazi movement. Since this is its main purpose, it merits consultation by anyone seeking a solid basic grasp of those world-shattering events. However, the reader should be prepared to wade through some fairly archaic, and at times deeply disturbing, ideological baggage that pops up along the margins of the main historical narrative. First, Fischer's fleeting references to Marxism and Communism as historico-social phenomena are shallow, unsubtle and dismissive in a manner only possible for a scholar trained in America (as Fischer was), and thus saddled with that peculiar cultural blind spot of ours. However, this blind spot does not much compromise the narrative, beyond giving the misleading impression that the ideas of Marx are somehow "natural" (as opposed to historical and contingent) breeding grounds for totalitarianism. More disturbing by far is the extent to which Fischer's account of the psychological makeup and personal characters of Nazi party members echoes and reproduces some of the same archaic ideologies for which they themselves were so notorious. For example, Fischer makes frequent use of the term "deviance" to describe Nazi operatives, and explicitly includes under this rubric not only sadism but homosexuality! In his desire to paint the Nazis as twisted fiends, he ends up demonizing gays in much the same way that Jews were demonized by the Nazis. Equally archaic is his reference to facial physiognomy as evidence of criminal character among Nazis. Clearly, Fischer is unaware of the large body of literature (best represented by SJ Gould's The Mismeasure of Man) which documents the intellectual bankruptcy of such thinking. Both of these ideas played a role in the racist, homophobic thought complex which National Socialism inherited from the late nineteenth century and put to such deadly effect. That an historian writing in the 1990s could continue to use ideas that have been so thoroughly discredited by scientific research is unfortunate, and given Fischer's topic, gruesomely ironic. The problems noted here do not distort Fischer's account of matters of public record, but they do raise serious questions about his interpretive competence. In the end, some readers might not have the moral stomach to reap the factual rewards undeniably offered by Fischer's book.

Perhaps Fischer's greatest achievment here is in how much he tells us in so short a book. He covers Nazi and German history from the 19th century to 1945 in under 600 pages!! He shows a special gift for writing the most with the (relatively) fewest words. Even those knowing much about the subject will learn a lot from this volume. And Fischer knows what should and should not be included in a book of this kind. This work will be a valuable addition to any historical library.

I particularly enjoyed the section on the Weimer Republic and the 20's. Most books skip over this period, saying only that the Republic was democratic and flawed, and that Hitler sought to destroy it. Fischer gives us an in depth look at this society, and explains how its insecurities contributed to the disaster to come.

I only wish the book had been a bit longer. There is only so much one can include in a one volume work, I know, but a few hundred more pages would have made it truly outstanding.

For a comprehensive overview of the Third Reich, Fischer's book is one of the best single-volume works on the market. It's eminently readable on all aspects of Nazi society: the sham politics, the ruthless military ethos, the imposition of one man's psychosis on the policies of an entire nation. The opening chapter, "The Origins of Totalitarianism" is a cogent synthesis of the historical strains from which the darkest period of the 20th century emerged: Germany's anti-modernism, which stretched back to the Enlightenment; the economic breakdown, political instability, and unraveling of civil society which the Versailles Treaty wrought; and the scapegoating of two groups which Hitler believed were a mortal threat to the country--the Communists and the Jews.

This book is very insightful, like other reviewers I do not agree with a few things, but over all the book is filled with interesting and historical views on Angels, dreams, resurrection, and religion. I really enjoyed the section on near death experiences, and Freud's ideas of dreams were a bit strange but I am not well read on Freud's psychoanalysis work however sometimes I wonder if he was drinking a bit too much Absinthe. I am also far from anything of an expert on Judaism, Islamic Sufism or basically any other beliefs outside of Catholic or Christian, so the chance to learn a bit on all of them was a wonderful opportunity. The last section there was some part that he brought up the fact that some religions predict the end of the world, like Millerites and Jehovah's witnesses by the way how many times did they predict the world was going to end? I have to ask them the next time they come to my door. Over all I have to say what a wonderful book.

Omens of Millennium is a consistently enjoyable, delightful work. Bloom is especially insightful when discussing Freud, and in his focus on the relationship of Enoch and Metatron. I don't agree entirely with everything Bloom says, of course, but still, this has been an enormously influential, important and loved book for me. I highly recommend it.

Harold Bloom, as I imagine most everyone reading this review knows, made his mark with a work of almost unbelievable insight and genius, The Visionary Company. In it, Bloom effectively disemboweled and laid to rest the dried up "New Criticism" and "Neo-Classicism" that was in the ascendant at the time. He did no less than knock T.S. Eliot off his critical pedestal: a dragon-slayer indeed! The Visionary Company took its title from a line in a Yeats' poem referring to several poets (some, like Lionel Johnson, of exquisite merit) who shunned material success and followed their own visionary and masterful style of poetry and ended up dying young, drunk and destitute. (L. Johnson, for example was such a classical languages genius that he was offered a position at Oxford when he was barely over 20! Instead, he decided to pen his masterful poetry while drinking himself to death. He died after falling off a barstool at around the age of 30).- The full line from the Yeats' poem is "I would be one with the visionary company."-But the reader will take note that neither Yeats nor Bloom consumed himself with his genius in such a way. This, in Bloom's case, is somewhat unfortunate (I'm not going to delve into Yeats here.). After The Visionary Company, his prolific works can be graphed onto a parabolic downward swoop ending with this book...In the middle of said swoop, you can find works such as The Western Canon which, while idiosyncratic and a touch pompous and presumptuous(understatement?), still makes one catch one's breath at times at the profundity of the insights contained therein....But OK, first of all, Omens of Millenium is not truly Bloom's book at all, but a kitschy rip-off of The Gnostic Religion by Hans Jonas (Note how many times Jonas is mentioned in Bloom's book.). The problem is that Jonas was a painstaking scholar and wrote as such, and most readers will find him inaccessible to some extent, just as some readers found The Visionary Company. SOOO, Bloom solves everything by writing this nice little book relating Gnosticism to Western literature...Right?....Wrong!!...Bloom himself is guilty of what he dismisses the New Agers and such for: ill-informed boot-licking of the mass culture's obsession with all sorts of ridiculous things.-Sorry Harold, if you can't take it, don't dish it out.-My advice to readers is just to go back and read any of the great Romantic poets. They and the Gnostics are essentially the same on a spiritual level, and the writings of the poets are much more beautiful.-But please go ahead and check out Hans Jonas if you really are interested in the historical and technical aspects of this fascinating worldview.

While I disagree with Bloom on a great many topics, his opinions are always thoughtful and challenging. Such is the case with this book which, to me, represents an acme of such thought before the millennium. His ideas, of course, are far more refined and careful than your average streetside shaman but a proof of the point that all such thought on angels, resurrection, and magic is superfluous; the trophy of our imaginations.

In early 2000, after the roaring crashes of worldwide electronic mayhem, the second coming of Jesus, and our long awaited deliverance from the mire of this world we should reconsider the prophetic tone of this work. Just kidding. As we all know, January 1, 2000 was no different than any other day nor will there be any supernatural interventions into world history. World history has been, is, and always will be a history of geology and protoplasm engaged in the evolution of species. The quote from Durrell that opens Bloom's book is terrible and true--there is no supernature behind all this hubbub. Shall we then drift into our wildest imaginings: ancestral mythology, Christian sci-fi and the like? Or shall we create a new philosophy of man?

Find out Bloom's answer by reading this interesting book.

Omens of Millennium is a personal and erudite synthesis of Gnosticism, Hermetism, Sufism, and Jewish Kabbalah (and Emersonism). Prof. Bloom writes with the conviction of a "believer" and the rigor of a disinterested scholar. I first read this book three years ago and since then I have come back to it in many occasions. Omens of Millennium is a wake-up call to Knowledge. The book also introduced me to the extraordinary works of Hans Jonas, Mose Idel, and Henry Corbin.

Like others have said, the pictures are very beautiful BUT scary. Animals are chasing unhappy kids who apparently were happily playing moments before, but drop their toys and run in terror from the animals.

My other complaint is the choice of animals. Seriously there is an "Umbrella Bird" and a "Xoona Moth". What? Xoona moth?! OK, it's hard to come up with an animal that starts with X, but come on, go with X-ray fish. At least X-ray is a word they might know!

The illustrations for this book are not scary. The situation for each letter is as follows "(Letter) is for (name) but who is chasing him/her?" The animal's name begins with the same letter. It is possible to be "chased by" an animal and not be in abject terror. It's all in how the parent presents the situation to the child. If you read the book in a way that makes it seem Sita is afraid of the Snake, it's your interpretation. If you make it light and funny that Ruben is chased by a Rabbit, that's how your child will take it. At the end "Zoe" and her "Zebra" seem to chase off all the "scary" animals anyway. It's no more frightening than your average Disney movie (in fact, it's much less).

Don't let the idea that "chased by" is "scary" keep you from enjoying this book with your child. The applique and embroidery work is exceptional and makes this book different from any other children's book I've seen. The colors are bright and each illustration is different. As other reviewers have said, the names and skin tones of the children are cross-cultural and the animals are diverse as well (not your usual menagerie).

The book is also well-constructed and large for a board book. It's easy for toddlers' hands to manipulate and the pages are large, allowing for enjoyment of the details even by the tiniest infant. I read this book to my Zoe from the time she was a wee baby and she still loves it. And it doesn't frighten her one bit.

I was hoping for a story (my baby is named Zoe) but instead it is another standard Alphabet book only featuring children with names that try way too hard to be diverse. Maybe my baby will grow into the illustrations, but right now she is confused by them.

My 6 year old had this book in paperback for a year and read it so much it lost pages and I had to buy a new board book! He can recite it in the car on trips, and I hear him speaking the alliterations under his breath as he draws. Beautiful pictures and diversity. Thanks!

Without question, Clare Beaton's appliqué illustrations are gorgeous, and it's great that the text emphasizes diversity, but stick to her other books, like _How Big Is a Pig?_ or _One Moose, Twenty Mice,_ which are excellent and in the same visual style as _Zoe and Her Zebra._ This book is likely to frighten younger kids, with its depictions of frightened- and unhappy-looking children being chased by snarling animals.

I don't understand what Beaton and Barefoot Books were thinking with this book; what exactly is the point of using scary pictures to introduce the alphabet?? No doubt some people will point to Grimm's fairy tales and the like, to demonstrate that fear has a place in children's literature (which is absolutely true, it does have its place), but it's a poor rationale in this instance. First of all, most of the Grimm's fairy tales aren't intended for as young an audience as this book, and secondly, the Grimm's tales are *stories,* with plots and morals and some context for the scary parts, whereas this book has none of those things. The element of fear here is gratuitous; the author could just as easily have used non-threatening language and images without changing the substance of this book.

The fabulous illustrations are the only real redeeming factor with this book, and that bumps it up from a 1 star rating to a 3 star rating, in my opinion, but overall I would not recommend this book.

This is a reasonable introductory text and it gave me what I needed when I read it after Learning Joomla! 1.5 Extension Development: Creating Modules, Components, and Plugins with PHP in the same series.

However, it is let down by a poor index and the fact that the coverage is too much 'type this' and 'do this' rather than helping the reader understand why things need to be done in a certain way and how to find the necessary resources to address new problems.

It's a good book. But it's got some short-comings that makes it not a complete reference for Joomla 1.5. The organization is a little bit fragmented. All the examples are snippets and are never complete listings. This makes it a difficult book to use for a brand new learning Joomla developer. If it was a complete reference tutorial, it being the only book that you would ever need, that newbies and experts alike could pick it up and gleam from it I would have given it a 5 stars. I would have given it a 4 if the Appendix that has a quick look up was clearer on what section your in and the section titles were more distinguishable. But it has produced a decent amount of answers to my periodic questions. It's a nice book to have but far from the only book you'll ever need on Joomla. So I gave it 3 stars.

The book was a good resource for me to get to grips with the Joomla 1.5 API, having had very little experience of Joomla and PHP development in general, however having a good background in programming. I feel the book has been written with developer's like me in mind, i.e. people who have knowledge of general web application programming but little or no knowledge of Joomla. The way the book has been sectioned progresses nicely, starting with a brief intro to Joomla (for completeness' sake), a Joomla programming Getting Started chapter and then delves into the API per se. It introduces the general classes Joomla uses, and how they relate to each other. Each chapter then introduces and describes more enhanced functionality, such as accessing the database, developing components, the MVC model, and keeps on building, with each chapter building and adding to the knowledge learned in the previous chapters.

Overall I think this book is a good start for anyone delving into the Joomla Development world. It introduces the concepts, explains, and with that knowledge you can go ahead and dive into your development.

The really frustrating thing about this book is the style and lack of indexing. When I buy a technical reference, the most important thing is being able to look up any relevant term or function name and immediately find the place to read about that. This book has the terms subcategorized under other terms that only make sense if you already know Joomla programming! I seriously almost never find the term I'm looking for in the index. This really drives me crazy. When I have found the area I'm looking for, however, I've been pretty happy with the quality of explanation provided. Indexing is all important.

If I didn't already know MVC, Joomla 1.5 and had made components before I think this book would be useless.


If you have dabbled in developer code however and Joomla 1.5 this is a great resource.

This book lacks examples of building finished components.

If it combined the style of other books like learn joomla 1.5 as well as having this great resource of information it would be worth solid gold.

Without it and without a good index It takes time to find what you are after. Once you find it however it always provides great, accurate information.