One minor quibble, plus could use an updated edition, otherwise excellent
935855
I spent a great deal of time with this book. It opened some doors for me. I'm a person who likes to get "under the hood" and have absolute control over formatting, and this book definitely shows you how. It walks you through just enough information to give you a fundamental understanding, leaving you plenty of room to be creative. One little issue I have is with his list of required/recommended software. It does not include MS Word. One of the most important steps in the process is taking your text and wrapping formatted font selections in html tags (i.e., <i> for italics). Hence, you need to be able to search for formatting and then use a regular expression to wrap it in the appropriate tags. He uses Word to do this. And there's a good reason -- as best I've been able to determine, MS Word is the only word processing software out there that can do this reliably (i.e., search by formatting, then replace result using a regular expression). He even says in this book that Apple Pages won't do it, and Open Office won't do it (which I can confirm -- I tried). Yet, MS Word is not listed among the software he uses, even though there are screenshots of the use of MS Word in almost all of the examples. It's a bummer, as I'm a Mac user (like the author) and don't care to dip my toe back in the MS world. I even tried Google Docs, which cannot do this natively, but I experimented with a plugin for advanced regular expressions. I also couldn't get that to work.

This book is pretty authoritative, and I just now noticed the "2nd Edition" banner on the cover. I guess we could use a third edition. Anyway, I did figure out that the easiest thing to do is to simply export your book from your word processor (Scrivener, in my case) directly to html. You'll have loads of extraneous code, but it's not too hard to use find and replace to remove it pretty quickly.

It might also be nice if the author could post the code samples on his blog/website. Because they appear in a Kindle book, they cannot be copied and pasted, so I've spent a lot of time manually typing them in, flipping back and forth between screens. Ok, so that probably has educational value, I get it. Maybe he does have examples on his website -- I can't tell because his site is down at the moment.

Overall, highly recommended. I don't think you'll find a better book about ebook formatting.
401050
I bought this book in Dec. 2010, just after it appeared in O'Reilly's web page and read it all from cover to cover in a few days. I liked it a lot, particularly for its breadth and its insight into first-hand approaches as finding power-laws and graphical analysis, which I believe are extremely important aspects in operative day-to-day data analysis. On the other hand I believe the book could have been much better had the author avoided some unfortunate pitfalls. Errors in some formulas, as other reviewers pointed out, are unforgettable and show a bit of trepidation on the part of the author and the editor. Other are comparatively minor but still make the book fall a little short of my expectations, for example (but this is my personal opinion) I hoped that the section on principal component analysis would have more mathematical detail. The choice of software is understandably limited, but I found the omission of PDL, the Perl Data Language, a bit unfortunate given its enormous capabilities for data processing. Overall, a good and relatively inexpensive book that is worth the data analyst bookshelf.
1584622
My wife got me this book because I had seen a hardbound version of it in a men's clothing store but did not want to pay the large markup.

The book is spot on with many suggestions but it could be spot-checked a little better.  There are a few instances where the same suggestion is made again (and it's a proofreading error, not for emphasis).

Nice to see the book is starting to incorporate more modern technology.  It would be great to see a chapter emphasizing cellular and email etiquitte in any updated editions.  Beyond a gripe about how it is rude to text when with others, it seems like the younger generation (myself being in it and teaching college students also in it) does not realize that it is not appropriate to use the same language or symbols in an email that might be common while texting.  A series of these kinds of suggestions would help make a newer edition appear timely rather than a book that has a few random sentences added to it so a newer edition can be published.

This book could be expanded in several topics that do not change often: like how to pair or use certain dresswear.  I appreciate the diagram on tying a bowtie.  From the description and the picture, I figured out how to fix a problem I had been having with my knot (and that I picked up in several online videos as well as a diagram I had seen before).  I was a bit surprised not to see something similar for a few types of normal tie knots or at least a mention of how to use some of them (depending on a particular collar or jacket).

Overall, this book was a pleasant and helpful read.  I will eventually get a version of this kind of book for my son or daughther (in addition to passing down the tips they will encounter).
989592
I found this book to be a good update on the new stuff in HTML5, including good information on some accessibility issues. However, some things are already out of date, since HTML5 & HTML5 browser support has changed since this book was written, and a 2nd edition is soon to be available.

It's important to note that this book is not for the beginner. The reader should already be somewhat familiar with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Also, this is not a reference book, so don't count on that. If it were a reference book, it would be A LOT bigger and probably less beneficial.

Some have mentioned the humor in this book. Let's just say it is "childish" and "sophomoric"; the authors must have an underlying desire to be "megahunks". But many may find this type of humor funny (depending on the type of humor they like), and some could find it offensive and/or annoying and/or unprofessional.

But I wouldn't buy this edition with the 2nd edition coming soon. HTML5 and user agent support for HTML5 have changed and HTML5 is still not final (though it's true that a lot is still the same and would still be useful). I would recommend waiting for the upcoming 2nd edition, unless you have to have this now for some reason.

Because this book is already out of date (it was written Nov 2009 to May 2010) & the 2nd edition is upon us, I only feel comfortable giving the 1st edition 3 stars, but if the 2nd edition is just as good as the 1st edition was when it was first released, then I would probably have to give the 2nd edition 4 or 5 stars (leaning toward 5)... so I recommend the 2nd edition instead (I have the 2nd edition on order).
1212178
I enjoyed this book quite a lot. However, I would hesitate to recommend it because the exercise answer key contains a number of errors (e.g. referencing a rule about comma usage with quotations when there are no quotations in the question). Hopefully, the author will release an updated, corrected version, as I would like to be able to accurately check my work. It would also be nice if the author created another set of exercises, especially if it contained questions for all of the rules. I would certainly purchase such an add on if he did.
2878362
I found this guide helpful for its concise introduction, history, sights, and practicalities to the city. This 2011 edition does need an update, and I would like to see a simple map to show where the neighborhoods are. A better table of contents would make navigation easier. For the price, I think it is worth getting.
1066125
Excellent and helpful illustrations, large typeface and plenty of white space make each page easy to read. However, I don't retain information as well as I used to (even after the end of chapter skill quizzes) so I found myself constantly skipping around through the book to complete a task. I guess the sequence in which the the chapters are presented isn't very intuitive to me. But this is a minor criticism. Not immediately locating what I need leaves me more annoyed than frustrated. But please don't misunderstand: considering other instruction manuals I've paid for and used, mere annoyance is a desirable outcome. Bottom line, I continue to find the book useful and think it's well worth the money.
4833948
This newest edition of Newton's Telecom Dictionary is a solid upgrade. Among the nearly 1,000 new terms in the 28th edition are G.fast; VoLTE; IP transition; IP tunneling; double SSID; Gigasphere; sponsored data; off-cap; hard cap; on-net service; off-net service; regulatory creep; regulatory lag; regulatory overhang; device convergence; network convergence; protocol convergence; industry convergence; fog computing; data center tiers 1, 2, 3, and 4; local exchange carrier tiers 1 and 2; wire center tiers 1, 2, and 3; wireless carrier tiers 1, 2, and 3; and Internet service provider tiers 1, 2, and 3.

Still puzzling, however, is the dictionary's continued omission of terms such as Wi-Fi access point, Wi-Fi hot-spot, payload filtering, URL filtering, in-band interference, and out-of-band interference; as well as the omission of newer terms such as LTE broadcast and LTE Direct.

Commendably, many definitions that first appeared in earlier editions have been updated to reflect evolving technologies and changes in the market place. That said, many other definitions still need to be updated.

On the down side, hundreds of definitions -- maybe even thousands -- have factual errors, and there are tons of spelling errors. In a dictionary of this size, with nearly 28,000 definitions, even if 90% of the definitions are fine, that still leaves a lot that need fixing.

Bottom line: if you need a dictionary on telecommunications and networking, get this one, even in spite of its flaws. It's by far the most comprehensive telecom dictionary on the market.

UPDATE: A newer edition (30th) of this dictionary is now out. Many of the flawed definitions that marred the 28th and earlier editions have been fixed, and many new definitions have been added. Get the 30th edition. Hands down, it's a MUCH better product.
3568372
The layout of this text is very helpful for keeping the material straight. It is written with clarity. The real-world sample problems are interesting. I have just one concern, which kept me from giving it 5 stars: there are errors in some of the answers to practice problems. I don't see why these would not have all been carefully checked. (For reference, I have the international edition.) Nonetheless, a great text!
4709952
I am really enjoying this book and am learning a great deal, especially about the Old Testament, that I never knew before.  I would give this book five stars except that there are some formatting and proofing errors that seem odd.  Some paragraphs or sentences are cut-off and don't continue onto the next page.  There are also some box or side-bar notes where the words are run together into one long word. These errors are fairly infrequent, but still noticeable.  Even with those small issues, I would definitely recommend the book as an extremely readable and user-friendly introduction to the Bible. The graphics and illustrations are very nicely done and informative.
540775
I used this book for an introductory ethics course I was teaching, and on the whole found it good. The range of philosophers is excellent, the texts selected are good, and the excerpts from the texts are well-chosen.

You get a solid grounding in the history of ethical literature from Plato through Kierkegaard and Sartre, as well as plenty of contemporary philosophical writing on ethics in the second half of this large volume.

My major gripe is that the book badly needs a revision. The latest edition is 2010. It needs to be reissued for this reason: there are a LOT of typos. Misspellings abound throughout the translations, and stray punctuation marks pop up often. It degrades student respect for the text when I constantly have to apologize on behalf of Mr. Marino for misspellings in the text.
569522
Terrific book that didn't get enough notice since published. Paperback is fine, but a few mistakes from the hardback haven't been corrected. E.G. Chiang Kai-shek wasn't at Foster's funeral and has never been in the U.S. (Madame Chiang was in attendance). That error is in the first paragraph of the Introduction and was quickly noted in an Amazon review. Both the author and the publisher should have seen it and corrected it. A quibble, I know. But c'mon.
1258701
The latest edition has been brought up to date on many counts, though it would readily stand on its own legs with regards to an overview of a variety of pagan relgions/beliefs as well as to paint a historical picture of where/how many different systems have come/evolved from.  It gives you plenty of brainfood to mull on as well as a lot of historical perspective (even if it is limited to the lens of one author and several hundred different practioners of various systems).
3307836
As with Matthew, I really think this is a great value.  I also have the American Library version (I paid $30+ for).  The table of contents and the format is great except for one small problem.  When you download all four volumes, the Kindle Home Page will show:  "The Collected stories of H. ..." for each book.  It might have been better to show "The Collected Stories (1) of H...." or something to indicate which volume.  Of course, as my better half suggested, simply highlight the edition in the Kindle's Home Page to find which of the four you are looking for -- it does spell it out for you.  I still would like a quick way of knowing which volume I'm looking for.  Again, a small nitpick.  My beautifully bound American Library Edition is staying on the bookshelf.
2080168
I love all the free editions of classic (and not-so-classic) literature that Amazon has made available for the Kindle.  The free edition of Dead Souls is very readable, with a helpful introduction and linked footnotes that explain some of the more exotic terms used by Gogol.

There is just one flaw that readers should be aware of.  Book II (as is well known) was never completed by Gogol and ends partway through chapter 4.  In addition, much of chapter 4 exists only in fragments, with connecting material missing.  The problem is that this edition of Dead Souls does not give the reader any indication of where the gaps in chapter 4 occur.  At first I thought that this edition was missing text.  When I went to Project Gutenberg to check, I discovered that the gaps actually occur in Gogol's manuscript.  So be forewarned that when you get toward the end of chapter 4 in book II, the setting will suddenly jump without warning.
4119340
I was very pleased with the content of this book except for a few editorial issues.  The subject matter was covered well for a novice interested in learning more about technical analysis, and I am sure I will be reading it multiple times due to the amount of information it offered.  My only complaint is that evidently no human read it before it was published, the editing was all done by spell-check. There were VERY often substitution words that caused me to have to pause with what I was trying to understand in the book and say "What?". There was a substitution of "ass" for "as ", "peeking" for "peaking", "trades" for "trends" (out of context), "of" instead of "or"(also a context problem); the list goes on.
This may not be a problem for many, but I have a mental red pencil. Otherwise the book is well written and very accessible for the interested reader.
1191664
I just wanted to add my voice to the many positive reviews of this book on Braxton Bragg. Readable, informative, unbiased, Martin does a nice job with this book.
It begs for a 2nd edition that can correct the many spelling and other errors of dates (like the map for Monterrey on page 45, the date of 1847 should be 1846 or on page 44 stating that they arrived near Monterrey Sept. 29, 1846...which would make them arrive after the battle!)

I also agree the maps could be better and there should be more. So a fine book that can only get better with a good edit, better maps, perfect for a 2nd edition.