Comprehensive, but Incomplete
922975
I would give his book five stars, but for the fact it ignores what Queen Sonja of Norway (and, in fact, her entire lineage from the time of her Druidic/Hindu accestors from Atlantis) is secretly doing to all of us.
My neighbor told me about this, and now his cat has died.
Beware!
4214777
Very interesting; however, it did not contain the information I was looking for.
3802169
I  belong to a group of people who are learning Mah Jong.  We found this book to be useful, but incomplete.
2395830
The intro was very interesting but the book is mostly just a list of names and, I suspect, not very complete. In any case, the intro is the best part of the book, unless you might happen to find the name of an ancestor.
While not a waste of time, it certainly would've been more worth it were the contents a) more complete and b) more context and background given.
4928498
This is a beautiful survey of phylogentic algorithms and mathematics.  The book focuses on the justification and logic of each method, and that's what I want--I want to understand the foundations of the methods.  There's unevenness in the details in this book, however.  Some mathematical or conceptual points are laid out with complete clarity, and others require more insight on the part of the reader.  For me, this is frustrating.  I'm drawn in by the book because it focuses on what I care about, and is often very clear, but then I get stuck.  Sometimes, I just have to think about it a bit more. On other pages, I keep hitting a wall.  Others will have less of a problem, but I wish Felsenstein had included a few more intermediate steps in his presentations of both mathematical and conceptual points.  Nevertheless, I think this is a classic, and that anyone who wants to understand the foundations of phylogenetic methods can benefit from it.  However, getting the full benefit from it may require prior experience with phylogenetic methods, a pretty thorough grounding in relevant mathematics, or a course with a professor who can help you over the humps.
1058960
The publisher makes the disclaimer that "This book may have occasional imperfections such as blurred or missing pages... ."
So it does; the final pages of the conclusion, a place good authors routinely drive their points home with maximal force, are missing.
If this is the only available edition of Hopkins' pamphlet, it is certainly a worthy addition to a library collection.  But had I known it was incomplete, I wouldn't have purchased it for my home collection.  As ever - caveat emptor.
Such text as there is - forty-six pages - is readable as long as one is willing to deal with Eighteenth-century spelling and grammar.  Hopkins mind was clearly formidable.  It's simply a shame that the last pages are missing.  If that's because of a bit of carelessness in scanning, it's unfortunate.  If it is because no text extant is complete, that would be information worth including in the description.
2238750
This is a well written book, but I imagine that it got a bit tedious to write.  There's just no way one book can cover all facets of the product suite and all the components as well.

There are a number of GAPS; nothing on Workplace, BAM, Active Case Managment, etc. Also, the product itself is in constant flux, new versions, new labels, new features and functions and while he does touch on technologies primarily with regards to compliance issues it's often doen in the barest fashion.  Certain functions and tools such as ICC and eFormsfor P8, IBM forms are notable in the lack of detail.

The book is actually pretty pricey when you consider and compare it the the IBM Redooks which are free and to which William also contributed.

It is a good primer though, especailly if your focus is ECM as a compliance solution.

I have the ebook in my library and recommend it, but with some caveats, after two years in print it's starting to age.  But it's a good primer, there are few options and I hope he's active on a new version that might be a bit more complete and perhaps offer some best practices, deployment and planning guides.
2430732
I have nearly completed a year of biology with this book.  In general it is well written and comprehensive.  There are errors here and there; a few terms which appear in the glossary are not in the index, for example.  It's rather distressing when all I can find is the glossary entry for a term.  In a book that's 1200+ pages and on a topic this huge and complex, a properly cross-referenced index is an absolute essential.

The interviews at the beginning of each unit are worthwhile, if only to give one an idea of biology career possibilities.  It's interesting that one of the people interviewed is Dr. Nancy Hopkins of MIT, the same scientist who stomped out in a huff during Dr. Summers' talk at Harvard because of a speculative remark about women and science.  Her excuse was that his ideas "nauseated" her.  Is this a scientist we should all emulate?

The real weakness in this book is the CD-ROM, which lists comprehensive resources such as animations and tutorials on the book material.  Unfortunately, many of these are simply links to the publisher's web page, which requires registration and a 12-month limited access password.  After 12 months you need to purchase access by the year, similar to subscribing to a magazine.

In this day and age, a CD-ROM is plenty big enough to store tons of animations, tutorials, documents, html, etc.; clearly the publisher is trying to make a quick buck off the students.  Having already spent upwards of $120 for the text and study guide, I am reluctant to sink even more money into this publisher.  What's more, other textbook publishers such as Pearson/Prentice Hall provide splendid supplemental websites that are freely accessible.

I wrote Benjamin Cummings a letter about this but did not receive a reply.  My advice, therefore, is to buy this book used if possible and do like me and complain vociferously to the publisher to discourage this kind of shoddy practice in the future.
3233928
An excellent, comprehensive (and easy) read.  Covers subject matter extremely well.  Plenty of cites and a great bibliography.

However, lack of cites from primary sources such as Massu's books, Soustelle's, etc.
1477375
I am quite conflicted in my thoughts on this book. The pluses are that it is comprehensive, thorough and comes with a useful pedagogical simulator. The minuses are that it is covers a vast range of subjects with a skimpy coat of mathematical and theoretical glue.  When I found myself looking for more maths and theory, the text usually directed me towards the simulation.  The simulations are good but the coding is invisible to the user due the range of NN widgets included (analogous to programming using the Lego Mindstorms visual programing tool).  This is a downside for those hoping to learning coding techniques - there are not explored here - but will suit users that want a workbench to visualise concepts in the text.  I confess that I became bored with the simulator about midway through the book.

The authors set themselves a formidable task in producing this book, and depending on the reader's needs thaey have either excelled themselves, or else have concocted a animaed dodo - interesting but near extinction.
3126820
This is a very comprehensive listing of steamboats, where they were built, their size, who was Captain if known, etc.  It also includes some, but not a lot, very nice photographs of steamboats. The only drawback is that the index is not comprehensive.  My gg grandfather had only two listings in the index by his name, but he was actually mentioned in one additional listing for a total of three. So a bit of due diligence is required.
1671649
So, I'm not 100% complete on reading this book, but I can say that it's definitely comprehensive!  It's intelligently written, but I found the constant reference to THE ACT to be annoying.  While I'm not generalizing all KISS fans, I do know that this book has moments of higher intelligence that might be lost on SOME fans.  Campion uses some big words that might have some readers scrambling for google to get definitions!  Also, If I wanted to read the Alice Cooper story, I'd buy an Alice Cooper book.  I skipped over many, many pages that were detailing Cooper's albums.  I felt that this was detracting from the story of the making of a KISS album.  I understand that it's detailing Ezrin's involvement and attention to detail, but that could be summed up in perhaps a couple of pages?  Maybe I'm nit picking, but I felt like the non-KISS detail was simply filler.  I want to read about making this album, not Corky Statsiak or Jay Messina's career PRIOR to this album.  Seemed superfluous and unnecessary.

There are many tremendous insights regarding this album that I found very interesting, and I came away learning new things and in the end, that's what I want in a book of this nature.
291600
For the occasional reader or gun aficionado this book has it all; a wide range of weapons from around the world, detailed illustrations and basic data. But as a gun recognition guide it falls short of being complete in any sense.

To be really useful you'd need more info on safety features (preferably with schematics), more raw data on markings and serial numbers, photographs covering more angles, production data and manufacturing locations. And so on.
2543741
This book is very comprehensive and has many excellent photographs, but if you are looking for a book with several pages of information about each breed, then keep looking. Some of the breeds have more information about them than others; most have little more than a handful of lines about them. I am particularly disappointed with the fact that the book does not give much information about the unusual way in which the Saarloos Wolfdog was developed, as well as the fact that it does not include the Dingo (despite the fact that it includes the New Guinea Singing Dog; another kind of dog that cannot be kept as a pet).
Put short, this is a good book for those who are interested in the diversity of dogs, but it is not for professionals.
2911023
I found this to be an excellent reference to the world's battleships, but not without some reservations.  On the positive side, I liked that it included all of the ships considered to be Dreadnought-type battleships.  I particularly liked the scale profile drawings, which gave me a ready way to visually compare one ship with another.  On the negative side, I was disappointed with the lack of even one photograph of some of the ships.  I also thought the author spent an inordinate amount of time discussing the armor of each class of battleship and not enough discussing the armament.  Also, there was only the briefest mention of the service records of most of the ships.  Overall, for what its subtitle says it is: a 'visual reference' I find it a worthwhile purchase and worthy addition to a naval historian's library.
202920
The book is good, but it's far from a "complete guide". A better title might have been: "A layperson's guide..." or "An Overview and Introduction to...."  What it has is good, it's just not living up to my expectations.
4612313
I lecture undergraduate courses in community ecology and use this book supplemented with articles. The two stars are for the Kindle edition, which is missing many figures, I assume because of copyright issues. It is, however, no mention of this on the Amazon information that I could see before ordering. This makes many chapters incomplete, for example in chapter 4 about predation, 5 out of 20 figures are missing.

I also have the paperback edition, which I give 4 stars due to its great detailed overview of community ecology, it must be the best out there so far. It is clearly written, but it could have been more pedagogical, as it sometimes feels like patterns and theories are being listed up. But I guess it is up to me to make it exciting for the students. A plus for the ability to download slides with figures (some of them) from the publisher's website.