Repetitive, poorly organized, and unenlightening
343457
I think the author sought to exploit his meetings with Ted Bundy, and the result is a story lacking pace and as rambling and uninformative as Bundy in full out stall mode. If all of the quoted sections from the Bundy interview were stitched together, very little would be insightful. The author's assumption seems to be that anything Ted Bundy uttered is worthy, no matter how often Bundy repeats himself or jerks the author's chain. The author also repeats his own passages multiple
times in the book. The final quarter of the book is simply a recitation of the findings of the task force included in Ridgway's plea bargain.  I finished the book and felt taken, not informed.
4688420
I agree with previous reviewers who stated that this book is rambling and poorly organized. I attempted to use it to review for the PRAXIS and comps, but it has been pretty useless thus far. Very difficult to locate major concepts and get in-depth information regarding those concepts. I was planning on keeping this book for reference during practice, but I'll be selling it in exchange for a different text.
4151667
If this book was not required for the course, or I could not resell it (may the gods have mercy on whoever repurchases it), I would no doubt take my sweet time, dismembering and taking out my frustrations on it.

There are so many problems with this book I don't even know where to begin.

1.)Unorganized and convoluted.  It is written in a style that does not go step by step, explaining each concept and giving examples as it goes along.  Rather, it is as if the authors merely dictated what they knew of the subject matter and someone just typed up their words.  It's written that way, like a long winded, dictation about statistics, and NOT like a textbook.
2.)The authors will go on long tangents of topics which you will NEVER come across on homework assignments or an undergraduate statistics course.  But will often have merely 2 or 3 SENTENCES on IMPORTANT TOPICS that often saturates homework assignments and exams.  In a nutshell, the authors DO NOT EMPHASIZE THE IMPORTANT TOPICS AND GO TOO FAR INTO TOPICS WHICH ARE UNIMPORTANT.
3.)All good math textbooks have no confusion at all about what the most salient information is for each chapter.  But in this book, and the wordy style the authors have written it in, make it very difficult to pick out the important formulas and concepts.  Like I said before, it's long winded, and unorganized.  With words taking up about 90% of each page.
4.)THE EXERCISES ARE NOT LIKE THE EXAMPLES GIVEN.  The examples given in this book are EXTREMELY simple, the most basic case imaginable for each topic.  There is probably an average of 3 or 4 examples per section, each one for a topic (if you're lucky) and they are the SIMPLEST case.  They do not begin to prepare you for the exercises which sometimes require knowledge not covered in the chapter (example, in the first chapter of the book, several of the exercises required knowledge of independent events before they were even covered.)
5. NO SOLUTIONS MANUAL.
  How did this book became so popular among professors is beyond me.  If the student wishes to learn from his/her mistakes how is that even possible if they don't know what they did wrong in the first place!?  The back of the book is no help either, they just list the answers.

There are much more things I absolutely hate about this book.

The number one thing I hate most is that it makes mathematics seem frustrating, inelegant and lifeless.
208143
This book is full of repetitions and appears to be dashed off with little or no editing.
2400955
Reading this book is kind of like untangling Christmas lights while wading through a swamp. It is wordy and disorganized, with at least "but you'll read about that later" on every page. The author claims knowledge of C is not necessary to make use of this book, yet unleashes on the reader a deluge of constant comparisons to C.

Ultimately, even though it was a textbook required for a course, I wound up replacing it with Sams Teach Yourself C++ in One Hour a Day, to understand the general concepts, and when I needed a better understanding of all the minute variations and possibilities, I would refer to this book.

The quality of the book itself, as in the stack of paper glued together, was lacking. The pages in one section had been dogeared at some point in the printing process, resulting in them being cut improperly, and the spine broke rather severely around chapter 9 or so before I was halfway through chapter 1.
2343287
I'm using this book right now for a graduate nursing pathophysiology course in a FNP program, which in reality demands a great deal of time dedicated to learning various pathology. I found this book very disorganized--within the subsections, the information will be repeated in different words with more or less details. It's like the two authors each wrote a manuscript individually and the editor forgot to edit it before it was published. Hence, two repetitive, yet varying ways of saying the same thing. It is also lacking in the depth of information. I had to supplement with a great deal of other resources, instructional videos, and research articles to build on the poorly presented content in this textbook. Is is a decent resource to pass a graduate college course? NO, not on its own. Would I recommend this book? NO.
1553327
It is literally an alphabet soup of review topics, in COMPLETE disarray. I kid you not I just read, in order, topics such as "evaluate quality of life" then HTN goals then liver tests then "diabetes burnout." Who wrote this book? Why is there NO ORGANIZATION?

Also, goals are not up to date. You will be MUCH BETTER OFF reading some (don't try to kill yourself reading all) of the materials suggested by the NCBDE.

Good luck!
2500230
the author used too many examples to illustrate the same thing,  all of which are boring - like a self indulgence professor who has been at his job way too long.
I started to resent the time spent reading this thing, and after a few chapters, tossed it out.  It offers not much that it new or insightful, beyond Psychology 101 or, perhaps, 201

in a sentence:  the book compared conditioned forethought with analytical thought, and cognitive dissonance,
eg. first impressions VS time to think through based on facts gathered after.
that's the whole book,  actually I would love a refund.
writing style is so stiff, that I kept thiningk of starch.
it reminded me of a self published text book, that no one actually wanted to read.

the title sounded intriguing, but that is where is ended

poor
754429
As someone else already noted, if you're here, it's because the book was assigned and you have to buy it. But in the slim chance some professor out there is reading this and trying to make a decision, I'll just say this book is terrible. Of course, I can only compare it to other casebooks I have used this year, but this is by far the worst. A few of the main issues:

1. Unedited Cases - As others have noted, the cases could be edited down substantially to isolate relevant legal issues. The failure to do this results not only in wasted time (the enemy of the law student), but also confusion. The confusion arises because a case will include discussion of ancillary issues to the resolution of the case that are discussed elsewhere in the chapter (frequently later) in greater depth, and there's no contextualization about which is the majority, outdated, etc. Because they are often irrelevant to the "point" of the case, this confusion and delay could be easily avoided through more judicious editing. (Also, there are a lot of "throat-clearing" cases, which just announce a new rule. Editors, here's an idea: instead of wasting my time by making me read 6-8 pages of bull, why not just provide a paragraph explaining the historical development, policy, and the new rule? Oh yeah, because the more pages, the more we pay.).

2. "Notes" - I suppose the authors deserve some credit for attempting to do what many casebooks don't by occasionally providing brief snippets explaining black letter law. But it was almost as if the authors just couldn't bring themselves to complete this pedagogical sacrilege, and the result is confusing passages which obliquely discuss legal issues without offering satisfactory or even organized explanations. The entire tone of these passages can best be described as "coy." My advice would be to just read the real thing: an actual treatise designed to be helpful, rather than "prodding" (read: confusing).

3. "Problems" - Closely related to the "notes" are the problems, which are simply infuriating. The book will pose a question, which you are quite justifiably incapable of answering, because it applies some doctrine or exception which you have not yet learned, or reaches a novel conclusion. And instead of offering an explanation, the vast, vast majority of these questions taunt you by directing you to a case dealing with the issue, usually without a parenthetical explanation. Let me put this simply: there is no way I am going to use what limited spare time I have in law school to go read an unassigned case just to get an answer that is put plainly in a hornbook or E&E.

In conclusion, this book is terrible. For an example of a well-done text, check out Glannon and Raven-Hansen's new CivPro book.
115208
For being nearly 1300 pages, this book is barely sufficient. While there is plenty of information, the book is poorly organized with sparse and general headings followed by paragraphs of wordy explanatory text. A better use of headings and sub headings would allow for better reference.

Turning for help in the index is also disappointing. The book is poorly indexed and seems to have been given little thought or personal attention to its organization.

The last place to turn is to code samples, but these are so sparse and abbreviated that you have to search for them among pages of text. I'm all for having copies of the code on the accompanying CD, but for even a neophyte, sample code is essential to grasping all the detail.

I feel sympathetic that the author obviously spent a prodigious amount of time writing 1300 pages of prose, but the bottom line for technology books is that you need to show me, not just tell me about it.
4271982
This book is a scattershot hodgepodge of sweeping generalizations.  No one really knows what is in the future, but at least these guys could have done a better job of analyzing the past.  I found the introduction of the saeculum and cycles of history in the first few chapters to be an interesting concept, and the most engaging section of the book.  Unfortunately, after reading another 100 pages or so, I kept feeling like the authors were not making a very compelling argument for why I should believe anything they were saying.  Don't be fooled by the bullet lists, tables, and apparent organization of the chapters - there is not any sort of cohesive argument that the authors make.  Instead, they meander about, trying to convince you with terrible analogies and by randomly grouping historical events together that conveniently fit into their idea of the saeculum.  After reading about 150 pages, I could not finish this book because there was no forward progression in the evidence the authors tried to present.  This book feels like bad science - the authors have tried to make the data fit their hypothesis, instead of letting it speak for itself.
2198149
Extremely disorganized. This information might be ok, but it's so badly presented it doesn't matter because it's almost incomprehensible. Where is the editor?
3514461
I'm no scholar and can't comment on the accuracy, But I can judge whether or not text is organized. This one is not. I've made many attempts to force myself to read it. It reads like a stream of consciousness with no organization or coherence around themes. The chapters are long with no breaks, sub-headings or indication of any kind that the topic is about to change. I've had it over a week and I'm still in the first chapter desperately seeking its end. I'd return the book, but alas there is no option for that.
3288635
This study guide is very poorly put together. The organization is terrible, skipping back and forth between subjects. There are numerous typos, and some obvious errors. (Many of the errors I caught because I already knew the material very well off the top of my head, makes me nervous that there are other areas I don't know as well that also have errors which I'm not able to detect and now am studying as "facts". There were multiple times the book talked about things the "NP" should do, which is very odd in a CNS book. Also...it is the exact same content, word for disorganized word as the Pediatric CNS exam flashcards. (I guess I should have realized that by the fact they are made by the same company.) There is no need to get both. I did pass the exam, but I am not sure this helped.
1439932
This book has no new content, looks cheaply formatted, and they didn't even move the citations to the bottom of the page. Yes, each page is often a clutter of content and citations that look similar enough that it's confusing to sort through.

I'm glad to support the show, and I like it so much I'll likely still support the book. But unless you're the kind whose watched lots of these episodes, of their own free will, in their spare time (like me), this book will not be worth it. You're better off watching the episodes online, since some info from them is even omitted from this book, resulting in the choppy sentence structure in many areas.
3512325
I'm a fan of the Head First book series, and I really wanted to like this book, but I couldn't.

It is disjointed and inconsistent. In some places, the explanations seem geared toward readers with no computer knowledge whatsoever, and in other places the explanations assume knowledge that a networking novice won't have.

There are typos, grammatical errors, and just plain wrong information throughout.

Many of the exercises make little to no sense.

Again, I'm a fan of this book series, and I don't write many book reviews, but this one was so disappointing that I had to post my opinion.

I would not recommend this book to others.
2333142
I expect more from my reading than this. Content is interesting, but poorly organized and miserably written. Look elsewhere, there's plenty out there.