Excellent book; incredibly useful
591790
Excellent book; incredibly useful. Only wish that it was available in hardcover to match the rest of my ACKS collection. :)
682092
There are some imperfections in the text as some review already mentioned, but I could not care less. This book is packed with great and very useful information. It manages to compact it well and give you the juice. In some parts it is repetitive, but it is because it's the same effect under a different scope.

In short, packed with great information and very useful. It also seems convincing because references are everywhere, and the author avoids exaggerations and bold statements.
4076764
This is an extremely useful book - so useful that I'm sorry that there's only one volume. As a former Artistic Director of a theater company, I would love to have had access to this volume when trolling for great plays deserving of revival. More than an encyclopedia, the book offers a thorough multi-page description of every conceivable crime and punishment play - whether penned as serious drama or for pure entertainment.  The author writes in an informal, conversational style and though I'd intended to thumb through the book, I found myself reading it from cover to cover. It's very thorough - summarizes recent and past productions and their reviews, and gives information about the authors; in that way it resembles a textbook (fortunately, unlike the dry texts I suffered through as a theatre major, this one manages to be thorough as well as entertaining). But it (and its cousin, "Sherlock Holmes on the Stage") is also an excellent reference for theater professionals searching for great material. Or, for that matter, to anyone looking to learn a bit more about the history of theater.
2503218
I found Mr. Freeman's book to be overwhelmingly informative.  So many practical applications in these pages.  I have taken far longer to read the book than I do other books simply because I find myself stopping to implement his suggestions.  Thank you, Mr. Freeman, for writing a book that actually gives the reader sound advice.
240799
This book is incredibly useful. Additionally, I've checked out Mike's website, and the YouTube videos are fantastic. I love how he gives you little tasks (h/w assignments) and builds off of those in later posts.

This has helped me feel more confident about my blog and more confident in its ability to GET NOTICED. His tips are great. Highly recommend checking out his website/videos. You will NOT regret it.
416649
I love this book. Not only does it illustrate the concepts well, but it's well-written (funny even) and very concise and informative. I bought it to review stats concepts and see the python programming examples, but I think it could serve as a first/ introduction to stats book as well. The author has a wonderful ability to really distill information and teach via examples. This book served me well and I still use it as a reference all the time.
1679599
This is an excellent book, which very rapidly takes the reader to the heart of this very important field. While its title is "Introduction to.." is is definitely NOT a book for beginners. It starts with the assumption that the reader has the knowledge level of a recent CS graduate and proceeds to build on it rapidly. In the key chapters dealing with classification, the vector space model, etc. it is highly mathematical.

A must-have resource book for graduate students and anyone working seriously in the IR and text-mining fields. The references alone make it worth buying.

My only gripes are:
- the layout (LaTeX driven?) which has placed all the figures and tables at the tops of pages;
- the occasional lapse in proof-reading, e.g. "becuase". CUP could perhaps have taken a little more care. The book is worth it.
1349558
I've been following David Gaughran's blog for some time, and he is easily one of the most informed and reliable champions of ebook self-publishing. In this guide, he meticulously answers the chronic question of indie authors: "But...how can I effectively PROMOTE my self-published book?"

I use the word "meticulously" in both a positive and negative way. On the plus side, Gaughran's guide is comprehensive in explaining all the details about how ebooks are discovered by online customers, especially Amazon customers. Citing examples and drawing data from successful indie authors, he provides a lucid, exceptionally valuable presentation of how Amazon's mysterious "bestselling" and "popularity" book ranking algorithms function, and how they may best be exploited.

On the negative side, I felt at times that he was meticulous to a fault. I sense a fair amount of repetition or belaboring of certain points, and also an awful lot of unnecessary foreshadowing, of the "I'll discuss this point further in chapter X" and "as you'll see in the next section" sort of thing. Such distracting stylistic quirks were the only things that prevented me from giving his book a full five-star rave.

This is an excellent guide for authors seeking to enhance their books "visibility" and "discoverability." Many writers will find it indispensable. It is a fine follow-on to his earlier book, "Let's Get Digital," which is probably THE best introduction to all aspects of the new world of independent e-publishing. I highly recommend both books to all authors, whether aspiring, indie, or traditionally published.
3414790
This is a wonderful book, with a wealth of information, and very clearly written. I regret having overlooked it for several years. It also contains many worked examples, from a large variety of references.
4830195
I love this book for several reasons.  First, the author, who obviously knows what she's talking about, writes clearly while covering the topic thoroughly.  There's a lot in this book, but it's well organized, so easy to navigate.  I like how I can read through several chapters or randomly pick out a small section - either way the book provides value.  And while I was expecting a glorified list of things that are bad for you accompanied by a "don't do this" admonishing, what I got was a well explained context for good and bad mental health habits with real usable tips/suggestions for implementing each.
4373615
This is an outstanding, excellent book. I've read a lot of business books in my days, and this is one of the best ever.  As to the price - it's a bargain for what you get!  What's more, you don't have to be in the recruiting business to get a lot out of it.  If you do any sort of "consultative selling", especially where there is a lot of phone work involved, you will find this book enormously useful.  It provides an excellent, step-by-step methodology that guides you through many different aspects of working in the recruiting field that will help lead to your success.  The skills one can learn in this book are clearly transferrable to other industries to sell a variety of other products and services.  This book isn't some sort of generic overview from a braggadocious executive preaching from on high about how smart and successful he is.  Rather, it offers the reader comprehensive guidance and a carefully laid out series of instructions from an author who provides terrific "hands-on" advice.  It's like having the world's leading expert on this topic standing there with you in your office, giving you great, heartfelt advice.  What you have in this book is the voice of experience - and of a man who clearly has a passionate desire to help others succeed just as he has, as well as the gift of being able to write it all down so clearly and elegantly. The book is dense with useful material, yet almost effortless to read and absorb.  It begins with simple things - things that might sound so obvious (like how to organize your desk and manage your time), that you might read this and other reviews and say to yourself: "Heck, I don't need to buy a book to know how to organize my desk!"  To the skeptics I can only say: trust me - buy the book (and a good highlighter), find a quiet spot, and start reading.  You'll be glad you did.
4595275
I'm finding this dictionary to be extremely useful in providing concise, understandable, and practical definitions of a myriad of statistical concepts. Wish I had had this book in hand all along, starting in college. I make it a practice of flipping the pages while commuting, just to learn/refresh my mind on the vast world of statistics.
1551664
I strongly recommend this book as a reference book for those who apply probability theory in their work: computer scientists, applied statisticians, industrial engineers and so on. This book is very comprehensive: in every topic this book discusses, from very basic undergrad facts to modern probability theory results are all covered. What is remarkable, is that Prof. DasGupta has managed to explain all of these in very high level, avoiding messing up the intuitive message with mathematical jargons. In particular, he avoids the use of measure theory as much as possible, and it is amazing that such a comprehensive book on probability can be written with this much use of measure theory! Therefore, for non-probabilists this is an wonderful reference to extract useful results and intuition from probability theory, without investing too much time on struggling with mathematical techniques. For hard-core mathematics people, this is still a good book for both learn and reference, but for rigorous proofs you should follow the reference given in the book.
1227508
This book is full of valuable information in a well organized form.  It integrates with most of interpersonal psychology, and especially Internal Family Systems.  I enjoyed reading it -- and I am already using it as a constant reference source.  An amazing accomplishment.  After reading it, I ordered a second copy to loan out to friends, because I don't want to lose my copy but I want to share it with others.  I also ordered several of the sub-books that develop further some of the topics in this book.  Highly recommended.
2849418
This is a fantastic guide to HTML5 and CSS3. The explanations are thorough, and the examples are very useful. A great strength of this book is its focuses on progressive enhancement, which is a strategy that has been a lifesaver on many of my projects. This book is a must-read for any web developers and designers who want to keep their sites current with the modern web!
2088177
The books is logical and incredibly useful. I refer to it often.

There are concepts which are incredibly difficult to understand, but Aldrich takes you through in a linear manner and builds on the information from chapter to chapter to create a complete and useful picture of Nyquist Theory and digital audio such that you are better able to make informed decisions when making recordings and buying equipment and software.

No regrets. I bought my copy in 2008 and I have it in front of me again now, which is why I thought to post.
1362602
This is one of the most helpful software engineering books I've ever read.  It is most useful for people who have some real world experience in .NET development. I couldn't have gotten so much out of the book without my last year of work developing API services for a major thermostat manufacturer.

I've encountered a lot of the pain this book hopes to remove. I devoured this book. I read 10 chapters of it while on "vacation" and don't regret a minute spent reading it. I'm excited about taking the concepts one bite at a time and trying to integrate them into my real work. Great book.