Solid intro, covers diverse topics, but written poorly
592379
I had high hopes for this book, as the topics outlined in the table of contents seemed thorough and well organized.  Unfortunately, the writting and editing are only fair, which makes the book read as if intended for a grade school audience.
 In the next edition, a section describing the NASDAQ and how it functions would enhance the value of this book.
  Would have been a plus if this book included a list of additional titles for further reading on the topics covered.
1838267
Overall I really appreciate that this book covers C using a pragmatic-first approach that feels modern and treats the toolchain as a first-class citizen (unlike most C books which err on being generic and "timeless"). The content here is really good and it's nice to have it all in one bound copy. My problem with the book is with the writing however. The book is written with a focus on personality instead of with clarity at times which I found distracting and out of line with O'Reilly's usual fare. The examples cross-reference one another at times instead of being replicated and modified which makes following along tougher if a previous example was hand-wavy. Lastly I felt that some of the content was really unnecessary and should have been cut (like compiling through heredocs). Overall an excellent concept for a book and unique enough to be worth picking up, I just hope the third edition tightens up the writing
2571897
Pros

On the good side, the author (Shreeraj Shah) does a good job of establishing the foundations. He covers all the concepts, the alphabet soup (SOAP, WSDL,UDDI, etc.. There's plenty of real, live XML in the text. Although it sometimes feels like fluff, most of the time I find it helpful. Since I'm pretty unfamiliar with this subject, it was handy to have some of the examples written out. I have to perform software assessments for a living, and sometimes I run across web services. I'm better armed for those services having read this book.

Cons

There's a lot to be said that is negative about this book.

  * It's very "hack" focused. Duh, that's the title of the book. But at the same time, I don't find it that useful to have yet another book that shows you how to break an application. What about fixing them? He has some suggestions there. I'll get to that.

  * Everything is Microsoft and .NET focused. He makes mention of J2EE-based web services, and Perl and Python based scripts, but no significant part of the book is built on those things. If you're totally Windows-centric, this book will be fine. If you're on another platform, it's up to you to adapt what you learn here.

  * He has a suite of tools that look to be really useful for monkeying around with web services. They're written in .NET, but unfortunately, they're closed-source. Even though lots of .NET apps run on MacOS and Linux under Mono and other emulations, he hasn't released his tools that way. One tool is released in a "Linux" binary that runs under mono. What about the rest of us?

  * The text is poorly typeset. This isn't a nit picking criticism. When you're displaying lots of XML or .NET code, indentation is important. Some specifics:

  *  o Most of the XML is indented well when it shows up in the text, but if it has to wrap from one line to the next, the indentation is usually poor. The second line might begin right at the left margin.

  *  o The .NET code is almost always not indented at all. That is, everything is lined up on the left margin. That makes reading example code harder than necessary.

  *  o Some line breaks are just handled badly. In the chapter where he introduces HTTP headers, one of his example HTTP headers is too long to fit on a line, so it wraps to the next line. This, of course, is not what it really would look like.

  * He gets definitions and word usage wrong in a few places. For example, his definition of a web service is really awkward and needlessly complex. He calls hashing a value with SHA1 "encryption" in at least one place.

  * There's a lot of motherhood-and-apple-pie security in here. It's the same old tired advice like "developers need to code securely" (whatever that means) and "go build a threat model." These are not new ideas, they're not specific to web services, and they're a waste of paper in this book. It's not this book's job to teach those things, so just don't bother mentioning them in an impotent way.

  * His example code for using WSEsecurity (p. 277, Chapter 11) is vulnerable to SQL injection, a hack he has been demonstrating over and over and over. This just goes to show how (a) it's not easy to get it right, and (b) when authors focus on demonstrating one piece of functionality, they can overlook another. It's just especially unfortunate in this book, since he's theoretically telling you how to be more secure. Woe to the developer who simply copies and pastes this code and doesn't realize the SQL injection error lurking in it.

  * Finally, there are lots of little places where it's clear that the editors were asleep at the wheel. The author has written at least one other book, but his vocabulary and grammar are awkward sometimes.

So, the final analysis is: I like it as a starting point, but I found myself mentally noting a lot of flaws as I went. Since I'm not a Windows user, I also found it a lot less relevant than I had hoped. Web services are not .NET or Windows specific, but this book really is.
2424907
While the author is a very engaging communicator, to my mind he hasn't actually written a true introductory book for those with little or no prior knowledge of physical chemistry here.  Like all too many writers of "introductory" books, what he's written is more of a re-introductory booklet for those already familiar with the field and its jargon, who simply want to go back and re-visit the fundamental concepts of the field in a more romanticized and philosophical way.

But even at that, the writer is apt to confuse you, for he starts using terminologies well before he's even defined them and before you even know that any explanation of those terms is forthcoming.  And so, in the interim, if you don't just give up on the book, you're muddling through, completely confused and feeling quite bad about your intelligence.

Atkins' explanations of Gibbs free energy, entropy, and enthalpy, despite his efforts to speak plain English, are about as confusing as any I've ever read on the subject.  I'm giving this book three stars only because I feel like his heart's perhaps in the right place, but if I didn't suspect that, I'd give it two.
2598186
My kindle sample included the preface and first chapter, which I thought were the most interesting parts of the book. The authors lay out their thesis that, contrary to popular opinion, human evolution has actually been accelerating in the last 10,000 years due to increases in population and changes in lifestyle. The book assumes no background knowledge and is not that technical, although it does attempt to include names of particular genes and it tries to explain basic probability using gambling. It gives a good introduction to ideas like natural selection and introgression, but the bulk of the book is dedicated to providing examples of human evolution. The writing is solid, a mix of history and science.

Contents:
The authors describe agriculture as a driver of human evolution in that it changed human dietary needs and personalities (towards being able to look for long term goals, being less generous, more possessive, more hardworking). Agriculture also changed human society, which led to evolutionary change, and the authors describe the history of lactose tolerance (stating that because dairy cows generate 5x the calories per acre as beef cows the more efficient energy source dominated and those lactose tolerating genes then dominated those societies). There's also an overview of how human genomes have adapted to various diseases and how various populations have been destroyed when they first encountered these diseases because they had not evolved to live with them (Aztecs, Europeans in Africa). The last 30% of the book argues that natural selection caused higher intelligence in Ashkenazi Jews due to their historical roles as moneylenders and their cultural aversion towards intermarriage.

My main takeaway from this book is that human social, cultural, and technological factors are as much a driver for evolutionary change as environmental factors. Furthermore, the greater the population, the more potential there is for various genes to arise, be selected for, and spread. The intro gave me these ideas and the rest of the book did not contain many new ideas for me.

My personal dissatisfaction with this book is that it raised many questions in my mind, specifically many questions about race, but does not address any of them- this is probably my fault for looking for more than what was promised, although the book had alluded to the distinct physical differences between various human races in the intro. Another question I wondered about but which the book does not venture into was how human evolution was changing in modern "first world" countries, say the last 200 years in places where most people do not die, vaccines abound, and it is the poorest who have the most children.
The book is more concerned in addressing the possibility of racism in suggesting that modern man had mated with and thus has genes passed down from Neanderthals than the idea that modern Ashkenazi Jews are more intelligent than other modern people. I am surprised the book didn't venture into even more controversial aspects of modern human evolution, but maybe the other topics are so racially and sexually heated that there is no funding for research in those areas, whereas questions of racial differences regarding Jews are somehow fair game. My personal reaction to these questions of differences between races is that while these topics are fraught with social and moral consequences (such as racial profiling and discrimination) if the research is done scientifically we can learn a lot and the human race could benefit. I am not offended by the idea that Jews are smarter on average than the rest of us because like any trait there are costs, which the book talks about in terms of genetic defects specific to Ashkenazi Jews. It would be great if we were all gorgeous geniuses who could run like Kenyans but all of these traits require resources and the body is constantly facing this complicated optimization problem in the context of its environment.
4428580
It seemed to me that the author collected a checklist of things to cover, added some details on each item, and sat back satisfied that the list was covered.

  No topic is covered really well, in my opinion. I do not mean by this that each topic should have been covered exhaustively, as this is an introductory book. Rather, I mean that many topics are covered to such a low extent that there is nothing much to do with them. The reader is basically only made aware that such a topic exists, and then needs to find an alternative source for this topic.

  I think the most striking example of this (one out of many), is a 10-page chapter explaining C++ from scratch. I don't see the point for this. A reader familiar with the language would be interested in linux-specific aspects of C++ (for example, linux programming environments), which are not covered. A reader unfamiliar with the language would find a 10-page chapter useless.

  Curiously, the book, even when considered as an extended checklist, is not very good. I could not find any material on archiving and compressing, and had to search the Internet for this.

  I Heartily recommend this book for people who enjoy spending time on Google.
2241395
An excellent primer on the biggest pitfalls that will propel agents to immediately toss your work to the trash bin. However, the writing examples he gives are extreme and almost childish. He definitely gets his point across though, but if you've already spent time trying to avoid these issues, teaching solutions and discussing nuanced issues would have been more useful. That said, I'm still glad I read this book as it pushed me to search for fixes, particularly to some "try to hard" issues I had with my opening pages like too much alliteration.
4440013
Social Security is a complex mess, something only the federal government can create and pretend to operate.  Orr's book supplies an adequate analysis of the basics of this system and discusses how to get the most income from social security.  Many examples are helpful in following the factors that determine whether your social security will be higher or lower during retirement years.

Unfortunately some typos and bad grammar get in the way of understanding the text.  This is especially true for his examples, as they are terse to begin with, making a few of the examples difficult if not impossible to follow.  He should employ a copy editor in the next edition of the book.

The book comes without pagination and without an index.  This makes things hard to look up; for example, I wanted to re-read one of the sections on spousal benefits but had to flip through the book several times before I could find the right section.  Also, Social Security comes with a lot of acronyms, such as AIME, FRA, COLA, and PIA.  As I don't know these terms--after all, I did buy the book to learn this stuff--an index or a glossary would have helped enormously.  I spent too much time trying to look up the meanings of these acronyms.

Finally, the book is another shameless infomercial in which this author makes extravagant claims of his superior ability to help clients better than other financial planners, including CPAs and CFPs.  Maybe this is so, but more likely it is hot air.  However, the book delivered enough substance to make it worth while, so I won't ding him too much for the self-promotion.
1510676
This is a very good introduction to the history of the Spanish language, especially for English speakers. It is engaging, interesting, with lots of historical information and very accessible to a general audience. The authors, however, should have used a good editor or editors. They have several mistakes in both English and Spanish and that caused a lot of distractions for me. There were times when I had to really pay attention to understand what they were trying to say (in either language.) At the same time, there were other times when they shared information that was not necessarily accurate. For instance, on page 362 (of the print edition), the say that Puerto Ricans call the US dollar "washington". I am *from* Puerto Rico and have never heard the dollar being called that on the Island or among Puerto Ricans living in the USA. (There were several mistakes like this, in which the authors make the generalizations about words used by certain nationalities that are completely inaccurate.) Finally, the authors fail to mention the most important changes in Spanish language in contemporary times, namely, music. They failed to mentioned how words that were regionalisms have spread throughout Latin America and other parts of the Spanish-speaking world thanks to music. An example would be the use of very specific lingo by Puerto Rican reggaeton groups that has disseminated throughout the Spanish-speaking world. But there are other examples, especially with Cuban, Mexican and Colombian musicians and musical groups. But in general, a good introduction to the history of the language. Certainly not an academic work and not one that should be used in academic settings.
2110553
This is a fairly approachable book that does a good job of covering the basics. Programming books frequently fall into two categories: those that dwell too much on the minutiae, and those that gloss over details that are useful. This tends toward the latter.

There also seems to be a language/editing issue. Sentences like "Ping, in turn, when its done, calls pong with that finished response with res.end()" slipped through, and occur every dozen pages or so.

Also, on the Kindle app, the code is horribly formatted. This is the greatest failing, and makes long code sections effectively illegible. Shorter code samples can be puzzled out but require more effort than they should.

At this price point, despite the enormity of the topic, I expect a better finished product. That being said, it still contains valuable information, it's just a chore to get it from the page to one's brain.
4403092
In an article he wrote in 2014 for the Huffington Post, McLaren explains his motives for writing this book and how he decided to structure it. The book comes out of a lifelong desire to search for a new kind of Christianity, the same motive at the heart of many books he has already written. This book is specifically meant to provide a coherent introduction to Christian faith for people for whom traditional framings aren't working.  Additionally, the book aims to introduce readers to a new and better approach to reading the Bible, which he calls the critical/literary approach. He describes this approach as applying critical thinking to the Biblical texts, somewhat similar to kicking your cars tires.

 The contents in fifty-two chapters (one for each week of the year), grouped into four sections that are meant to loosely resemble the typical scripture readings and rhythms of the liturgical calendar. Further, each chapter is written as a short sermon, which could be read aloud in approximately ten minutes. At the end of each chapter, there is a list of questions meant to stimulate further discussion and reflection. At the back of the book there is an appendix listing Liturgical Resources and one with Guidelines for learning circles.

 McLarens aim is to present that coherent, comprehensive narrative in an accessible and constructive way. By accessible, one can assume that he means easy to read and understand, and in this respect, McLaren fulfills his promise well. His prose is clear, engaging and refreshingly congenial. The goal of presenting a reasonably coherent and comprehensive narrative [of the history of salvation] is fulfilled in a necessarily superficial way.

 So far, it would seem as if this book promises to be every pastors answer to small group ministry. Not so. The biggest problem is McLarens goal of providing the material in a constructive way, which he understands as material that is aimed to simply present those better understandings so they could stand or fall on their own merits. Nevertheless, once one starts to read each chapter carefully and with attention to detail, one finds oneself feeling irritated, baffled, and seriously skeptical of McLarens (or anyones) attempt to make sense of the entire Bible in essentially 262 pages. There are many occasions in which misinterpretation or sloppy thinking has produced howlers that would or should shock anyone. In fact, McLaren frequently falls into common habits which I caution my students against, namely: (1) conflating Biblical texts, especially the four gospels, and (2) reading meanings into a Biblical text which are clearly not there. Further, McLaren tends to treat the Bible as a unified story, and not as a collection of individual texts with different points of view and with distinct literary and historical contexts. Last but not least, I found the questions at the end of each chapter to be unimpressive. Thus, in McLarens handling, the Bible becomes as harmonized, sanitized, and seamless as a popular TV mini-series. It should be no surprise that this is the sort of dumbed down approach that is prevalent among conservative evangelical Christians. Without Biblical substance, faith and theology can easily go down a slippery slope which produces Christians who don't know why they are Christian or how to be one.
744433
In "When We Die," Biology Professor Cedric Mims provides a succinct overview of all things macabre.  He touches upon standard death and dying subjects such as embalming, burial, cremation, organ donation, and bereavement, as well as more unusual topics, including cannibalism, cellular suicide, mummification, compostoriums, acid baths, and necrophilia.  No stone is left unturned in his discussion of death, dying, and "the science, culture, and rituals of death."

As much as I enjoyed "When We Die," it was not without its flaws.  For starters, it doesn't seem as though the book was properly edited.  I wouldn't go as far to say that Mims is a BAD writer, but it could have been better.  His misuse of commas, for instance, is atrocious.  He also tends to have trouble transitioning between topics.  Some of the awkwardness probably stems from the fact that Mims lives in England and spent some time in Australia and Africa.  His phraseology can be clumsy and cumbersome, and I'm willing to bet that it's due to cultural differences.  The book was initially released in the UK, and it doesn't appear to have been "cleaned up" for its US edition.  Spelling and word usage differences remain intact, when his editor really should have changed them in the US version to reflect his new audience.

Additionally, I found some of his statements to be questionable, while other claims were just plain incorrect.  For example, he says that $6 million, "spent over 10 years," is enough to clean all the water in third world countries and eliminate deaths due to diarrhea (that estimate seems awfully low, no?).  He also refers to the 1978 Jonestown massacre as a "mass suicide" (despite overwhelming evidence that many members were murdered outright), and makes the dubious claim that, "in all cases [of sensational homicides] the murderer is mentally deranged."  Taken together, these errors made me question the rest of the information Mims included in "When We Die."  Though he does list 4+ pages of references, he does not use footnotes in his text - so it's usually impossible to tell what information he pulled from which sources.

Nonetheless, "When We Die" is a fascinating and largely enjoyable read.  Serious scholars may want to pass this one by, but it's an interesting and manageable discussion for laypeople.
1823103
I was excited to receive this book as I had had my eye on it for a while. I had read some of Paul Gamble's work in journals previously and had generally been impressed at his approach to important problems and issues in strength and conditioning.

When starting this book, you can see that the author's intensions were good as he obviously took a lot of time to review the literature. This is the way that it should be done, but questions are raised a little when you look into the quality of some of these references.

As we all know, there are many schools of thought on topics in strength and conditioning such as periodization, unstable training, rotational strength, and the development of power. The author seems to have attempted to present evidence backing the majority of these "schools". Again, the intention behind this is probably good, but I can see a young strength and conditioning coach new to the profession being extremely confused about the optimal way as there is little into how to bring all of these forms together into a long term plan. Essentially everything works, as far as this text is concerned, even though many of these forms of training may be contradicting and result in sub-optimal adaptation. More theoretical and practical information on periodization may have helped avoid this. The important periodization section is just 18 pages long.

Looking at the title, one would expect to see extensive sections exploring the challenges that face us when working in team sports: a long competitive season, extensive on-field training (and how to quantify this and react to it), and long term athletic development when winning every game is important. This is what being successful with team sports is all about. Sadly these subjects are barely touched upon which is disappointing.

There is some really good information in this book, but it is surrounded by a myriad of conflicting advice. If you have a good grasp on training theory and on periodization and therefore can pick out the useful info, then pick this up. If you are new to strength and conditioning then I would not recommend it, not because it is an advanced text, just because it may be difficult for you to apply what you are reading to a yearly plan.
2166281
I'm new to PHP and thought this book might serve as a decent introduction. Up until Chapter 6 on Objects, I was right. Then things got very hairy very quickly.

Since I'm a beginner, it might be best to take my review with a grain - or several - of salt. But immediately after introducing the basic concepts of OOP, the author launches into four pages of very dense code. It includes some very sparse comments intended to be helpful. However, the code continues on and concludes without much in the way of explanation. The author does say that he only intended a brief introduction showing the power and simplicity of OOP. I was left feeling mostly clueless; luckily I know from other languages just how powerful OOP can be.

I'd be interested to see what the author has to say about this and update the review then. After looking through the final chapters, it's clear that the book returns to its good form, so at least worthy of four stars for doing what it set out to do. I just feel that this chapter interrupted the stride of the book and could use some improvement in future editions.
931396
If you really want to understand what is written about in this book, you may find that many pages are some combination of poorly researched, poorly written, and poorly edited.

The book has excellent illustrations and covers a number of interesting topics, and I would very much like to enjoy the content, but it has been difficult to read more than a few pages at a time. So many things early on in the book were incorrect or misleading that it became hard not to be defensive and frustrated when the content was accurate but clumsily written.
1831998
This book is a decent introduction to transsexualism, and is written from a compassionate and understanding point of view.  As other reviewers have noted, however, it does have its shortcomings.  For one, it is a tale of the "typical" transsexual experience.  This probably makes sense in an introductory text, but it is certainly worth noting that many people who transition have not lived the standard talk-show story.  Also, it is a little confusing to read about the authors' patients being referred to in their birth gender, though this is likely for the convenience of the novice reader.  Other than that, it does a pretty good job, and I think it's worth a read or handing over to loved ones who might need a little help understanding the condition of their transitioning family member.  It's a good place to start from, although our understanding of transsexualism has come a long way since 1996!
3019970
The content of this well written book has been covered in other reviews and I agree it is a solid, introductory text at a decent price. However, I find it a little too "coffee table" for my tastes with big type and lots of pretty photos, rather than a lot of breath or depth. If you haven't been introduced to bed gardening and creating a "living" fertile soil, it would be a nice intro, but easy to outgrow (no pun intended).

Notably lacking is content on more than a couple herbs, most salad and Asian greens, as well as some of the less common crops and pest/disease situations that you might encounter. Also, while a prescriptive "how-to" guide, it doesn't educate as to the "why" of things as well as other texts I have read, which let you transfer the techniques to your own specific situations.

I'd recommend picking up a good seed catalog that is at least partially aimed at commercial growers (e.g. Territorial and/or Johnny's) both for cultural and growing suggestions, as well as knowing what cultivars are available (since most of the books are 10-20 years out of date on that), and considering instead:

<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Golden-Gate-Gardening-Year-Round-Food-Gardening-in-the-San-Francisco-Bay-Area-and-Coastal-California/dp/157061136X/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Golden Gate Gardening: Year-Round Food Gardening in the San Francisco Bay Area and Coastal California</a>&nbsp;-- Although written for one geography, both the general information on gardening, as well as the extensive sections on vegetables, herbs, fruit, and flowers make it a "go to" for me.

<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Grow-Your-Own-Vegetables/dp/071121963X/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Grow Your Own Vegetables</a>&nbsp;-- Great general information on gardening as well as tons of specific information on a very wide range of vegetables. A well-respected British author, so you have to get used to some difference in language, like "marrow" and "beetroot". Also be aware that "organic" is different in the UK, so some US practices, like insecticidal soaps, aren't covered.

<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Oriental-Vegetables-The-Complete-Guide-for-the-Gardening-Cook/dp/1568363702/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Oriental Vegetables: The Complete Guide for the Gardening Cook</a>&nbsp;-- If you are interested in "salad greens" or "baby greens" then this covers well a lot of the "fancy" leaves you'll find in mixes or at the market. (I don't recommend Larkcom's "Organic Salad Garden" as it is not much more than an extract from "Grow Your Own Vegetables" on high-end paper with lots of glossy pictures.)

<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/How-to-Grow-More-Vegetables-and-Fruits-And-Fruits-Nuts-Berries-Grains-and-Other-Crops-How-to-Grow-More-Vegetables-And-Fruits-Nuts-Berries-Grains/dp/1580087965/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">How to Grow More Vegetables and Fruits: (And Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains, and Other Crops) (How to Grow More Vegetables: (And Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains,)</a>&nbsp;-- Covers "intensive" bed gardening and has a lot of good reference information on crop timing and yields. Sometimes a little "earthy" or "preachy" in style and content, and perhaps not as well researched and supported as the above (or&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/The-New-Organic-Grower-A-Master-s-Manual-of-Tools-and-Techniques-for-the-Home-and-Market-Gardener-A-Gardener-s-Supply-Book/dp/093003175X/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">The New Organic Grower: A Master's Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener (A Gardener's Supply Book)</a>, for another "second" book) but worth adding to a collection (as I prefer the previous as broader, more balanced texts). Revised and reprinted regularly, so make sure this links to the most recent.