Too wide a topic, covered poorly
930479
Perhaps they tried to cover too much material in one book, but they gloss over too much and simply ignore other necessary topics. You'll need to do quite a bit of further research before you have enough information to even trouble shoot existing code. The attempts at humor are quite weak as well.
3446572
This book is massive!  Two to two and half inches thick foot wide and tall...huge.  It weighs about 10 lbs.  Every single page has names, brief history, brief meaning.  It is a huge mess of names, and unfortunately someone neglected to make it very functional.  There is a section in the back with meaning ideas and lists, unfortunately they are limited and general (ie, Saturn, Black, Aries, Virgo, Earth, Fire, Water, Spirit, Gold, White).

The biggest thing I hate about this book is the producers did not provide a concise list for searching by origin/country.  I personally like to view the names that originated from my ancestral background.  I like choosing at least one option with that atavistic feel to it as an honor and acknowledgement of where our family came from and how we got here today.

I would also have liked the book to have better division between sections it is a real solid search to find where one ends and another begins.  The cover also should have been hardbound since the size is so massive.  The cover as it is lacks the support to keep the book looking nice and neat also you can never set it upright unless you have other books holding it in place.
4905003
I just finished browsing Carla Emory's "Encyclopedia of Country Living".  And when I say "browse", I mean it.  It is too painful to read directly.  The seventh edition is almost 600 pages.  But size is not the issue -- organization is.  For instance, there's a section entitled something like "why to move to the country."  Fine.  4 paragraphs start in on that, then the author starts writing about breast feeding, which goes on for 15 paragraphs or so -- how to, why to, Jesus this, and Holy Spirit that.  Ugh.  I'm a man, so my decision to move to the country is not so that I can breast-feed, thanks.  If the topic had been entitled "Breast-feeding and the Holy Spirit", I'd be fine with it, because being a man with grown children whose a Buddhist and Atheist, I'd know to just skip that part.  But when that takes up the majority of a section entitled "Why to move to the country," it indicates a problem.

However, there is plenty of useful information in this book.  Imagine 8 or 9 other books, about subjects like basic gardening, butchering, dairy farming, canning, candle-making, beekeeping, raising chickens/goats/cows, skinning rabbits, printing and selling your own book, how to live on pennies per day, bed-wetting, doing laundry by hand...  Okay, imagine maybe 20 small how-to books, and another 50 two to five-page "information pamphlets".  That type of content is what you will find here, and it's very useful.  Unfortunately, a good half of the book is her wandering off mentally, talking about whatever is on her mind, or whatever is happening in her life as she's writing: observations about her neighbors, or other random off-topic ranting or preaching.

It's annoyingly unfocused and unorganized.  She lost 1 stars for being wildly unfocused, and another for injecting Christian mythological and philosophical nonsense everywhere she can wedge it in.  If those two elements were removed, and the remains organized better, she'd get 5 stars.  There is indeed much good information throughout, and when it comes to the how-to subjects, no glaring misinformation.

For the modern back-to-the-land movement, there are some omissions, maybe because the book is now 30 years old.  But for the amount of coverage for the price, it's hard to beat.
2559913
The chronological histories in the series are generally superb. This effort to cover a topic rather than a period is not. I think there are two major flaws in the work. First, the allocation of pages is vastly disproportionately geared toward more current foreign relations. Part of that might be explained by the increased importance of America in foreign relations during the past three-quarters of a century, but the disproportionality is extreme. Second, with the end of World War II and the coming of the Cold War, the book gives up all pretense toward objectivity and even-handedness and lets a liberal bias adversely affect coverage.
1566890
Lots of talking ...unnecessary stretching of the subject. ...
2546102
I agree with the other negative reviewers.  This book covers an interesting area of topics, but with no depth or where there is depth-- its poorly described.  Here's my impression of each section:
1) I start reading, and the intro paragraphs grab my attention and I'm happy to learn about the topic!
2) It presents a vocab section -- perfect! This is really a great way to start a new domain of discourse
3) Everything gets hazy-- we talk about some useful information...some theory is glossed over...some logical information is plain missing to take the reader on a useful, continuous exploration of the topic.
4) He introduces an example, but then runs through it without explaining the diagrams and numbers well -- he glosses over them.  It feels very disconnected in the places that matter, and too verbose in the places that don't matter at all.

At the end of the book, I felt like I learned some good terms and got about 10% of the information I would've expected from the number of words I read.  So its good to skim for an overview of the space and get some topics...but that's it.

To be honest, I was very disappointed with the fact that it was a Morgan Kaufman book! I usually have a lot of respect for that name on a book.
792047
I did not expect a very in-depth coverage, but I'm afraid this is severely lacking in both depth and breadth. I was hoping for some details of how to find or operate various functions; this is sadly lacking here.
1111909
While this book covers a wide range of topics, I found it to be shaky on some topics.  In particular, modern developments such as quantum cryptography, electronic warfare terms (SIGINT, ELINT, and especially RADINT--book description is wrong).  Perhaps the author's strength is in historical cryptography, and he has not researched or does not understand modern developments. My overall impression is that the book covers an enormous range of topics, but in a shallow way.  Cryptanalysis is not discussed in any depth, unlike other code/cipher books I've read.
311328
All about the author, poor coverage of the places.
1143739
I used this book, which came highly recommended, to teach a graduate-level course in Family Therapy.  At first glance it seemed like a useful text, having earned a great deal of praise from other professors.  However, the book was a disappointment to both myself and my students.
While I would not go so far as to say that the book contained no useful information, much of the book's potential utility was overshadowed by the authors' transparent political agenda.  An example of good clinical advice provided by the authors was to ask wealthy families, in an initial interview, how they are using their funds to help the poor.  Coming across with this overtly judgmental and clinically irrelevant question in the first interview is clearly not the way to win over a troubled family.
When studying the book, it was often possible to forget that families seeking therapy may actually have troubles of their own.  The articles in the book focused largely on sociopolitical issues.  Obviously, one cannot discount the influence of the larger context; however, struggles with gender unfairness in the workplace are rarely the presenting problem which drives an entire family into a therapist's office.  Perhaps it was for this reason that focused, practical clinical advice for the budding clinician was nearly absent from many of the articles.
Pragmatics aside, the book was also lacking in terms of scholarship.  A variety of grand claims were made by various authors with limited citations to support these claims.  Despite the reference lists at the end of each chapter, I found it jarring to read several consecutive paragraphs without footnotes describing, for example, the "typical" presentation of clients from different cultural groups.  There was also a surprising tendency on the part of some authors to make detailed references to their personal lives in the article.  While anecdotes can certainly be illustrative, they should not serve as the basis of an article.
Overall, I was very disappointed in this book and would not assign it again.  While there was some useful information embedded in a few of the articles, on the whole this book attests to the need to keep textbooks agenda-free.
2692437
James Vance may have been the world's preeminent historical geographer focusing on transportation.  I enjoyed reading his "The Continuing City" and "The North American Railroad".  But this book -- now titled "Capturing the Horizon" -- is way too much.  Chapter 2, for example, covers canals during the renaissance and early industrial periods.  It is 114 pages long.  Overkill!  It was all I could do to force myself to read it.
  In his "Postface to the 1990 Edition", Vance traces the history of this book, which evidently began life as a textbook that "enjoyed modest academic and mild commercial success."  Perhaps it would have done better if an editor had forced Vance to cut perhaps a third of its content.
245830
another important subject that's becoming more highly tested, unfortunately this book fails to find a good middle ground for covering the majority of the topics. a few subjects are effectively covered in this book; the lac operon, blotting techniques, some oncogene stuff, but overall, riddled with not-so-high yield info.
2247191
This seems like a topic that would've made a terrific, long-form article, but doesn't quite merit being stretched out to a book. A sprinkling of interesting/surprising historical factoids and anecdotes buried in a bone-dry, mostly boring whole.
3616052
This book would have been much better if it had been kept to 200-250 pages.  I am disappointed in myself that I kept reading the same thing over and over thinking that eventually some new content would appear.  It was tedious how the author had to point out how many famous people he knew.  To some extent, this can add credibility, but it was taken to extreme levels in this book.

The book is very partisan, blaming republicans for many problems without making a very strong link.  Far from a fair and balanced analysis.

That said, the book is a good summary of technological developments in the last 10-15 years.  There were some good insights, however, I can't wholeheartedly recommend given how repetitive the book is.
4531465
Richard Cohen attempted a major feat with this book and I believe that it was not up to the mark in all respects because of the breadth of subjects covered. An analogy would be writing a history of driving and having readers interested in one aspect complain that their pet subject was not covered enough. I fear that I am one of those readers. I bought the book with an interest in the combat use and development of the sword. While Cohen does write about that, it seemed that several thousands of years of western history were brushed over in a chapter with little coverage of the development and use of the sword. I also felt that he brushed over too quickly the early theorists and authors of sword fighting. The combat aspects werealso confined to mainly Western military history, while Napoleon must have seen something in the Mameluke sword as I believe that he carried one on many of his campaigns after Egypt.

I did enjoy the chapter on the making of swords with its background on Toledo and Solingen. It was interesting to hear about the fate of these sword making centres and the impact that gunpowder had on them. In Solingen's case in Germany it was obviously on the losing side in the First World War and only salvaged by the Nazi desire for ceremonial daggers before another more fatal demise of its swordsmithing under the occupation of Germany by the allies after the Second World War. He has probably not won any favours from the tourist councils of either region for destroying the image that some sword fans may have of these once famous centres of sword making.

In my view, Mr Cohen spends most of the book dealing with duels and individual fencing. For a book on such a broad subject it would have been a key question of balance on what to cover and what not to. In the interest of full disclosure I admit that I did not finish the book, as I was not really interested in the technicalities of duels nor in sport fencing, although I did read most of it. I personally would have found it interesting to see how the swords of different cultures fared when they met on the battlefield. I have read some stories of British officers foregoing firearms in India during battles to test their sword arms against native exponents.

The author does have a good writing style and the book was easy to read. While I am no expert like the others who have criticised the author for historical inaccuracies I thought that I had come across a few. I did not take much note of them, as Richard Cohen was travelling down a long path and he could be forgiven for missing the occasional minor fact.

If you are looking for a book that does focus on duelling and fencing then this is the book for you. If you are interested in the combat use of swords, especially in a non-western setting then this book will not satisfy you. I agree with the reviewer who said that there was not much from a non-western setting; samurais were essentially dealt with in a single chapter. Again, when contemplating purchasing this book think about a history of driving, it could not cover everything in depth and Richard Cohen's book is the same. I have given it three stars, mainly because I felt that it focused too heavily on duelling and fencing at the expense of combat and non-western swords. That may speak more about me than the book and I would add that I was torn between three and four stars.
863217
I bought this book because I am interested in cultural changes in our society that presage possible future problems. Thus, I am very interested in such related topics as: the growing female predominance in colleges and universities; the growing gap in reading abilities of boys and girls; the decline of the traditional family; the prolonged frat-boy attitudes of young males in our society.

This book goes into depth only on the latter of these topics.  The exposition is mostly the sort of stuff you might get in people magazine.

The author had an idea and a catchy title and she wrote it as hurriedly as she could.

Not good. Save your money
1408441
Really, how can you describe any of the cities profiled in this book in just a few pages?  It is a very difficult task, so I have to give the author "props" for being able to even bring something together.  Granted, all of the cities discussed have had a huge impact on our world, it seems to me that some cities have been "left out".  The Spanish and the Portuguese had a huge impact on history, yet why wasn't Madrid or Lisbon profiled?  What about Boston and the American Revolution?  How about Tokyo and the Japanese and the rise of Imperialism in the Pacific?  What about Paris?  Paris "ruled" the worlds of art and culture for centuries, and I find it strange that it would be omitted.  The publisher might have been better crafting a more lengthy series of individual volumes.

I felt like the book lacked a central theme.  I wish that the author had connected the cities better.  It seemed to me that it was just short chapters are various cities that said too little and needed to say so much more.  Too much was left out to make this book a useful resource, but if you're looking to bone up on your history and perhaps connect with these cities for further study, then this book at least does that.