"The Spiritual Journey of J. C. Penney"

Book Description

Much has been written about James Cash Penney as both a business genius and man of great influence during the 20th Century. Now, for the first time, Orlando Tibbetts, a retired Baptist Minister, looks behind the scenes of this fascinating figure in American history and charts J. C. Penney's spiritual progress.

Finding self-fulfillment through helping others, the merchant millionaire overcame struggle and sickness, financial devastation during the Great Depression, the loss of loved ones, and his own personal crisis of faith, which led him to the discovery of a new sense of purpose.

The Spiritual Journey of J. C. Penney is the story of a man who was born into poverty, inspired by spiritually-minded parents, and driven by a dream which was never diminished even in his advancing years. The influence of his parents stayed with him long after their deaths and the support and motivating power of Mr. Penney's wives has not been adequately told until now.

Because his father was poorly treated as a clergyman of a country church, J. C. Penney had difficulty relating to the institutional church throughout his life. Fortunately, certain significant people touched him in ways that led him to discover his own spiritual potential and to manifest it in the creation of a retirement community, exclusively for clergy, that would provide its members with meaningful and happy golden years.

J. C. Penney led a truly philanthropic and exemplary life. For readers who already believe that the achievement of success and wealth is not everything. "The Spiritual Journey of J. C. Penney" will serve to provide support. Orlando Tibbetts has written a fascinating and inspiring book that opens up new insights into Penney's dynamic personality, and, by example, will affect the reader's life.

Customer Reviews:

Very interesting and enjoyable to read........1999-05-06

I found this book to be very interesting and easily read. It describes the inner feelings and beliefs of J C Penney and how he applied this to his everyday life and management of his business. I would rate it excellent reading for everyone.

Amazon.com

Donald Ross, one of Scotland's great exports to America, has designed or remodeled some of the most magnificent and challenging courses on the planet. His commentaries on the rationale behind his architecture, penned before World War I but only recently rediscovered, present a continuous fairway of graceful and thoughtful insights into the game. Is there a golfer alive who can't make use of such gems as "Holes should be trapped so that par golf depends upon skill rather than upon strength," or "Hazards are placed so as to force a (golfer) to use judgment and to exercise mental control in making the correct shot"?

Book Description

Many years before his death in 1948, legendary golf course architect Donald Ross wrote a book that was never published. Within the manuscript, Ross offered many of his thoughts on the game that he so dearly loved. In the mid-1990s, the book was miraculously rediscovered and published to great acclaim.

Golf Has Never Failed Meis an insightful look at the game by one of its most famous and beloved people. And what may surprise you is that many of the astute observations that he made so long ago still hold true today.

Customer Reviews:

Concise and to the point.......2004-11-21

Although the only real written work Ross has left us, it is a wellspring of information regarding his thinking on good (and bad) course design. There are also comments regrading how the game was played in his day and a number of other informative and enlightening segments.

The overall style of the book is a collection of short comments on concepts, courses, and techinques of course building. As such, it lacks the flair that we see in other books written by the same generation of architects to illustrait a greater story (as with, for example, Macdonald's Scotland's Gift). Even so, Ross' character comes out.

In addition to the rare look we get at the thinking of a master course architect, there are also numerous photos and design sketches that bring into clear view what is being discussed.

Lastly, for those hoping to hunt down a Ross course near you, there is an index of Donald Ross designed courses and clubs included.

It should be kept in mind that this is a book for the architecture crowd. People looking to "shave off a few strokes" will need to look elsewhere. It is hoped, though, that this book will be available before the 2005 US Open at Pinehurst, as there will no doubt be an increased interest in Ross and his courses.

An Architect's Eye-View of Golf Course Design Strategy.......2000-08-28

In the introduction to this book, Donald Ross's daughter says, ". . .he approached every new course with the idea that the golf player, champion or duffer, should complete his round challenged by the layout and enriched by the beauty of nature."

In his career, Donald Ross designed more than 400 courses in the United States. His most famous is Pinehurst No. 2, considered one of the ultimate tests of tournament golf.

This book was created from an old manuscript Mr. Ross wrote in 1914 that was never published, intended as a guide to future golf architects, supplemented with other published commentaries by and about Ross.

Mr. Ross had an unusual background for a golf course architect. In a time when engineers usually designed and built the courses, he had served as the pro and greenskeeper at Dornoch in Scotland, after training at St. Andrews with Old Tom Morris and at Carnoustie. The lure of much higher income and the opportunity to build lots of golf courses drew him to the United States with his first job of rebuilding Oakley in Watertown, Massachusetts.

Here are some of the ideas he shares in the book:

"These are my standards to laying out a golf course.

Make each hole a different problem.

So arrange it that each stroke must be made with full concentration and attention necessary to good golf. Build each hole in such a manner that it wastes none of the ground at my disposal, and takes advantage of every possibility I see."

A sandy loamy soal is best, with very little humus. This gives you better playing conditions and a longer season. Long Island and Cape Cod are best.

Avoid clay soils because they are hard to drain. Unfortunately, most land around major cities is clay soiled. Favor fan-shaped and oblong tracts of land so that the clubhouse can be returned to with little wasted land after 9 holes.

Start out with two or more easy holes.

Favor par 4s unless people insist on par 5s. Par 4s make a better test, especially 425-450 yard ones.

On par 5s, provide two paths to the green -- one for reaching in 2 and one for reaching in 3.

"Select your putting green locations, if possible, to give desirable undulating surfaces."

"Make all the short holes difficult."

"The holes should be trapped so that par golf depends on skill rather than physical strength."

"Bunkers should so be placed as to be clearly in view, and in such locations as to make all classes of golfers think."

He recommends designing from the land, rather than on paper. He also suggests building the best few holes the land will allow, because golfers are attracted and retained by memories of great and challenging holes. He ends humbly with "I am not much of a writer. I find my thoughts run far ahead of my hand and figures when I sit down to write."

There are about 60 pages in the book that will be valuable to architects and greenskeepers, but will not do much for golfers. You may choose to skip those.

The book lists the known Donald Ross courses, and has many beautiful black and white photographs and illustrations.

One of the pleasures of reading this book for me relates to having played on many Donald Ross courses, and belonging to a country club (Brae Burn in West Newton, Massachusetts) that has a Donald Ross course. The book features 3 photographs from our course (the 1st, 2nd, and 17th holes). I will certainly have many new thoughts whenever I play this course after reading this interesting book. To golf's pleasures, I can now add thinking about what the architect was trying to accomplish.

I also came away with a greater appreciation for Donald Ross, because he was trying to make golf more challenging and less frustrating for the average club golfer like me. This made me want to play many more Donald Ross courses in the future. I hope you have that reaction, too.

Use this book to help you pick courses that will improve your enjoyment of golf!

What else do you enjoy doing where the designer or architect makes a difference to you?

If you like this book, there is a new book out with color photographs of 18 of Mr. Ross's finest holes that you should see entitled: Golf as It Was Meant to Be Played which I also reviewed.

An essential read for those interested in golf course design.......1999-07-29

Donald Ross was the pivotal figure in the establishment of golf as a recreational sport in the U.S. His courses remain as challenging today as they were during his times.

This book gives the reader insights into how to view a course with a critical eye. And after reading it, one can quickly identify the trademark features of a Ross design and perhaps score a little better on it.

The book also provides a comprehensive listing of courses.

--The man who is going to play every Donald Ross course.

great insight about golf's greatest architect.......1997-10-17

This book is timeless. Written over fifty years ago the text and accompanying photos and sketches are well done. If you want to understand a Donald Ross Golf Course then you need to read this book.The photographs are from a time gone by - you can picture yourself there.

Amazon.com

Presenting the history of a film genre as complex as horror is a formidable task. In Legendary Horror Films, Peter Guttmacher gives us a coffee-table treatment of the subject that does the job quite creditably in just 120-odd pages. Like any coffee-table book, this one boasts abundant illustrations, including many unusual, often stunning posters, lobby cards, stills, and portraits, beautifully reproduced. Guttmacher also sprinkles his text liberally with sidebars (e.g., makeup techniques used by Lon Chaney and Jack Pierce) and some amusing quizzes.

The point of this book is the artwork, not the uneven text. Yet, the text has its strong points: an interesting account of the earliest days of film horror, including Chaney's groundbreaking work; background information on the making of many classic films; and the author's enthusiasm. Unfortunately, Guttmacher goes somewhat overboard in his attempts to be both breezy and literate, frequently producing comma-spattered, rambling sentences stuffed with parenthetical phrases, as well as the occasional malapropism or mangled metaphor. ("A bedraggled Bette Davis tackled one of the trickiest roles a fading star ever grabbed to rise and shine with.")

More distressing than Guttmacher's stylistic lapses, however, are the errors of fact. Incorrect movie titles, credits, and spellings abound; even the well-known rhyme about Lizzie Borden is misquoted. But for the neophyte or casual horror fan, Legendary Horror Films provides an entertaining overview of the genre. --M.V. Burke

Customer Reviews:

Witty and entertaining look at the horror genre.......2004-03-12

This colorful volume investigates the horror movie genre, including its history and the early pioneers like Lou Chaney and Peter Lorre. It covers all aspects of interest, including themes like the evil genius, the mad scientist, aliens and beasts, animals gone wild, insect attacks, killer plants, cults, etc.

Lavishly illustrated with color and black & white photographs, the amusing and informative text contains a feast of fascinating facts, trivia, revealing quotes and quizzes plus a look at special effects.

The chapter titled Old Masters Of Mayhem looks at inter alia the movies Der Golem, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu and the Phantom Of The Opera, whilst the Frankenstein and Dracula movies are discussed in the chapter Universal's Golden Age, which also contains a Dracula family tree listing the original movie and all its offshoots.

King Kong, Godzilla, The Fly, Altered States, the Thing, The Man Who Fell to Earth and Aliens are amongst many film discussed under the title Science Has Its Pitfalls, while in Unnatural Nature movies like The Birds, The Swarm, The Stepford Wives, Demon Seed and others are investigated.

The other chapters are Human Monsters (Halloween, Night Of The Hunter, Psycho, Texas Chain Saw Massacre, etc.) and Dark Roads Are Better Left Untraveled (The Shining, Poltergeist, Exorcist, Omen, Rosemary's Baby, etc.)

This witty and entertaining look at horror films as a popular cinematic form concludes with a bibliography and an index. The book is a great read and an indispensable reference guide to casual fans of this genre.

Terrifyingly Amazing.......2002-04-18

The book was excellent. It explained to me everything about tons of horror films of the past. It was extremely informational and I loved reading the book. I have watched almost all the horror films mentioned in the book and everything in the book matched the movies. Anyone who insults the book is wrong because it was an amazing book. I loved every page.

Filled with errors and lack of knowledge.......1998-07-03

I was shocked to find this booked riddled with simple errors and basically a lack of knowledge about the horror genre. There are plenty of comments and remarks made by the author which really shows that he doesn't know squat about the horror genre. So if you want book that gives you lots of wrong info, here you go.

Average customer rating:

Cinema Secret Special Effects

Manufacturer: Book Sales
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 9991800484

Average customer rating:

Cinema Secrets, Special Effects
Dan Millar
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B00005VLQ5

Average customer rating:

Cinema Secrets: Special Effects
Dan Miller
Manufacturer: The Apple Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000KPIXIQ

Book Description

Offers an interrogation of Jameson's critical legacy.

Average customer rating:

a Family-oriented sourcebook

Underworld Sourcebook (Shadowrun)
Stephen Kenson
Manufacturer: Contemporary Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Mr. Johnson's Little Black Book (Shadowrun)

Target: UCAS (Shadowrun RPG)

Target: Smuggler Havens (Shadowrun)

Paranormal Animals of North America/Shadowrun 7105

Aztlan: A Shadowrun Sourcebook

ASIN: 1555603157

Customer Reviews:

a Family-oriented sourcebook.......2002-05-15

In _Portfolio of a Dragon: Dunkelzahn's Secrets_, the great dragon Dunkelzahn was assassinated on the night of his inauguration as president of the UCAS. The murder shaped much of later Shadowrun history - in large part due to the Big D's will, the full text of which can be found in _Portfolio of a Dragon_.

As with the other really great Shadowrun sourcebooks, this volume is organized as an electronic document from the fictional Shadowrun world, as posted at that spiritual home of shadowrunners everywhere: Shadowland. Captain Chaos (sysadmin extraordinaire) begins by pointing out the massive turmoil caused in the underworld by the sudden appearance of so much valuable stuff (and subsequent legal and illegal redistribution of wealth) - art forgery, for instance, got a big boost thanks to all the treasures turned loose by the Big D's will. Captain Chaos begins with the newly-murdered Mafia capo of Seattle and ensuing power struggles within the Finnegan Family of La Cosa Nostra. Of course, the Mafia in Shadowrun Seattle has to compete with the Yakuza, the Seoulpa Rings, and the Triads...

The subsequent Shadowland chat takes the form of articles interspersed with commentary, primarily between X-Star (an ex-Lone Star employee from their orgcrime division) and the Chromed Accountant, between them making the point that in terms of money, most crime is organized crime. (A druggie might get a few bucks in a holdup, while a Seoulpa Ring decker could use the same store's computer system to divert a few million nuyen; the organization gets more bang for its buck.) And, of course, the Chromed Accountant helps explain financial aspects such as fencing and money laundering. (Most if not all fences will be affiliated with an organization, since they need information networks to find buyers and sellers; the same for fixers.)

Each major organized crime entity receives its own analysis: the Mafia, the Yakuza, the Triads, the Seoulpa Rings, including organization charts, where each is dominant, and how their areas of influence have changed over time. The Seoulpa Rings are solely a Shadowrun phenomenon. (In the game universe, the Yakuza put aside some anti-Korean attitudes for the sake of expanding its territory and opportunities, and absorbed various Korean organized crime entities. In Seattle in the mid-21st century, however, one bigoted Yakuza chief so mishandled the various Korean leaders within his organization that eventually they were purged from the Yakuza for "disloyalty". The survivors split into lots of tiny groups with a classic cellular organization and went underground, and thus the Seoulpa Rings were born.)

After the 4 major organized crime groups, there are lots of little pieces about various gangs, concluding with a section about various under*ground* - rather than under*world* organizations - policlubs, eco-terrorists, and rebel groups. (The final section advises the GM on how to run all of the above in a campaign.)

Lots of ideas for GMs here, but no pre-packaged adventure scenarios. However, the commentary from Shadowland users scattered through the formal articles often gives examples of "yeah, that kind of thing happened to me" - e.g., somebody's friend (now deceased) ripped off the Yakuza and didn't bother to check who his fence was affiliated with, somebody else did freelance work for the Yakuza in exchange for a first-class cyberdeck (but are they *really* free of the obligation?). In one such story, the Yakuza began shaking down a small company, but when it was bought out by a bigger, tougher company, the bigger company hired shadowrunners to teach the offending crime group an object lesson, which appears to have worked - for now.

Book Description

A guide to unit testing Java applications (including J2EE applications) using the JUnit framework and its extensions, this book provides techniques for solving real-world problems such as unit testing legacy applications, writing real tests for real objects, automating tests, testing in isolation, and unit testing J2EE and database applications. Using a sample-driven approach, various unit testing strategies are covered, such as how to unit test EJBs, database applications, JSPs, and Taglibs. Also addressed are testing strategies using freely available open source frameworks and tools, and how to unit test in isolation with Mock Objects. Testing J2EE applications by running tests from inside the container for performing integration unit tests is discussed, as is how to automate unit testing in automated builds (such as Ant and Maven) for performing continuous integration.

Customer Reviews:

Good book, but needs new version........2007-03-10

With the new Junit4, the book needs a new version.

Good Introduction to UNIT testing.......2007-02-28

I read this book pretty much from cover to cover. I found it to be a nice introduction to the unit testing strategy now widely employed in software development projects. This book does put the testing procedures in perspective and it touches upon different types/levels of testing that need to performed to ensure that the code is as bug-free as possible. I really got interested in writing unit tests after writing this book. The concept of Test Driven Development made a lot of sense and I will certainly try to incorporate this strategy into future projects. Most of the time explanations are consice, clear and to the point. Several open source frameworks such as EasyMock and DynaMock are introduced briefly - although the level of detail is not as good as I would like it to be, it is nevertheless good to know where to look for frameworks (that someone already developed) you might need for your projects.

The only downside to this book is that it is out of date. The JUNIT used in this book (3.8) is not the latest version available. I tested all of the code after downloading it from the web and I found that some of the samples did not work. In some cases, the software is dated. For example, in some chapters, the author uses Maven 1.0 instead of ANT as the build tool. However, for Maven to work, it needs to download several jar files from remote repository to the local repository on your machine. The very first time you run Maven, it is supposed to do this automatically for you before building your project; however, Maven 2.0 is out and the remote repository links with Maven 1.0 is broken which means that you need to download several jar files from google manually and put them in relevant folders - since there are several of them, I eventually gave up after doing a partial configuration. Note that the build files that use Maven 1.0 will not work with Maven 2.0 - you will need to do significant configuration changes in order to get this to work. I am new to Maven (although I am very experienced with ANT), so I did not bother with trying to get these code samples to work. The other thing I noticed is that some of the Cactus examples are not working in this book. In some cases, I had to do configuration changes and in others such as the chapter on unit testing the EJB, I was not yet able to figure out what went wrong. In any case, you can't simply expect to run the code and expect it to work especially in the later chapters!!! Be prepared to spend time to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it.

All in all, it is a nice book on introduction to unit testing and I will certainly recommend it to newcomers to this arena. Also, note that the level of detail and treatment provided in this book is not sufficient for real world projects. I am planning on getting a more advanced book (JUnit Recipies) to complete the picture.

Since this book I am a unit test enthusiast.......2006-09-28

Before reading this book I seldom wrote unit tests and when I just did it to make the project manager happy. I didn't really grasp what unit test is all about. I suppose many programmers in the industry know that unit testing is important. But they don't write any unit tests as it is boring and the next deadline is very close any way.

I started reading this book because a customer made me frustrated. He complained that stuff which worked in the last release doesn't work any more in the current release. This is of course a very unsatisfying situation. This stems from the fact that every software modification may lead to side effects. E.g. something which was OK before is now broken. Worst of all programmers don't know that something is not working any more. Programmers concentrate on what they are paid for and that is writing code. Most programmers are too optimistic as they assume that everything is working properly. And therefore they rarely test the same features again. How nice would it be to have "something" which tells the programmer that a feature is not working any more !

Well this "something" is called "Unit Testing". This book makes a good introduction to unit testing. It explains why you need less time to fullfill your tasks when you write unit tests and why there are fewer bugs. It is shown how stub and mock classes are used to break dependencies to other classes and other systems. It is pointed out how unit tests simplifies refactoring and how this leads to better design.

This refactoring approach is what me made enthusiatic about unit testing. Let's assume your task is to extend a poorly designed, undocumented application. The programmer who created this application left the company. So you have nothing else than undocumented code. What you do about it ? Well you can start writing unit tests to figure what the application does and how it works. Once you have a unit test suite you start refactoring and documenting the application. Thanks to your unit test suit you can perform the refactoring without fearing to break something which worked before.

Even though all examples are written in java the concepts and ideas layed out can be applied to other object oriented programming languages such as C++, VB.NET and C#.

However, this book fails to mention that unit testing is not a replacement for proper requirements engineering. Even with unit testing you still need to find an agreement with your customer on the features he wants to order.

Besides that, this book provides a good reading on a topic which will become even more important in the future. Let's hope that more programmers will read this book as this will improve software quality in this industry.

Great for JUnit - intro to intermediate topics.......2006-07-14

This book is a great intro to JUnit and quickly advances to intermediate level stuff (Cactus etc.). Lots of best practices are littered throughout the book and there's a good balance of code and discussion. A combination of this book with "Junit Recipes" by Rainsberger and "Java Development with Ant" by Hatcher will take you from newbie to JUnit guru in no time. Written in 2004 it's begun to get a little dated with JUnit 4.0 released (using annotations is quite a change) - however I'm sticking with JUnit 3.8 which this book is great for.

An ACTION packed thriller with JUnit. Must Read.......2006-04-22

First things first --> Test Driven(First) Development (TDD) is a *beaten to death* buzz phrase in the IT industry today. There are various proponents and opponents to this agile concept. Let me tell you that this book is neither a proponent nor an opponent to TDD, it just teaches you plain vanila unit-testing and how it will make you develop quality solutions.

Won't you agree if i say that we see or hear a few of the following during our typical work day.
1. JUnit, HttpUnit, DbUnit etc
2. Mock/Stub testing strategy
3. Repeatable tests, Continuous Integration
4. Innovative Testing frameworks like EasyMock, TestNG, Cactus etc
5. Designing and writing code for testability

Often, when we try to find out what exactly they are and how they are used in real projects, we are left with uninspiring documentation(if there is one) or we are left with a plethora of frameworks that do overlapping tasks. Without knowing *what, when and why's* of unit testing, we thrash it at the end of the day.

This book is an excellent resource in that it addresses the above questions and the questions that follow really well in a developer friendly manner.

1. Why to unit-test code? What advantages do you get by doing so? --> Quality, Confidence, Merciless Refactoring
2. What are the different types of tests that a software needs and how does unit testing fit into the overall picture? --> Unit, Integration, Functional and Acceptance tests
3. What is JUnit and how it fits into the unit-testing phase of our development process? --> Makes unit-testing a breeze
4. What tasks are not do-able with JUnit and how other frameworks and JUnit extensions address these issues? --> Cactus, EasyMock, HttpUnit, DbUnit etc
5. What are the different testing strategies that are available and when to use them? --> Stub, Mock, In-Container
6. What are the problems that you will encounter while unit testing and how to overcome them? --> Demotivation,
7. What are the different reasons that you will find to not do unit testing? Why and how to overcome them? --> Time Pressure, Not Applicable in my scenaro etc
8. How to test different types of artefacts? --> POJOs, Servlets, JSPs, Taglibs, Database Access, EJBs
9. How unit testing can be made fun? --> Profiling, metrics
10. All of these in a simple yet effective case study. --> Adminstration App.

There are a few *nice to have's* that this book missed:

1. Though it covers a lot of detail, i think the authors tried to cover too much ground in 350+ pages. Cactus was covered, but very superficially, particularly in the TestRunner area. I would expect greater detail in that area, because that is the most diffuclt part of cactus.

2. It would have been better if the authors concentrated more on *what to test* after the initial *how to test* chapters. I mean, since the authors are expert in this arena, it would have been better if they identified a few patterns on what gets commonly tested and put it forward to us. That would have been very useful.

Overall, this is a very well written book. The authors are not only technical experts, they are good writers as well. If you are even vaguely interested in trying out unit testing for your projects, you owe yourself to try this book and get enlightened.

Any program feature without an automated test simply doesn't exist. -- Kent Beck

GWT in Action: Easy Ajax with the Google Web Toolkit

Average customer rating:

It's the best.
Book has very little substance
hard to follow and understand

GWT in Action: Easy Ajax with the Google Web Toolkit
Robert Hanson , and Adam Tacy
Manufacturer: Manning Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1933988231

Book Description

The Google Web Toolkit is a new technology that automatically translates Java into JavaScript, making Ajax applications easier to code and deploy. GWT in Action is a comprehensive tutorial for Java developers interested in building the next generation of rich, web-based applications. This book was written by Robert Hanson, creator of the popular GWT Widget Library and Adam Tacy a major contributor to the GWT Widget Library.

There is a new emphasis on building rich, web-based applications. These applications can be difficult to build because they rely on JavaScript, which lacks the sophisticated object-oriented structures and static typing of Java, they are tricky to debug, and they require you to manage numerous browser inconsistencies.

In May of 2006 Google released the Google Web Toolkit (GWT). GWT enables developers to create Ajax applications in Java. With GWT, you can build your applications using a real object-oriented language and take advantage of Java tools like Eclipse that are already available. Instead of trying to bring tool support to Ajax, Google brought Ajax to a place where the tools already existed.

GWT in Action shows you how to take advantage of these exciting new tools. Readers will follow an example running throughout the book and quickly master the basics of GWT: widgets, panels, and event handling. The book covers the full development cycle, from setting up your development environment, to building the application, then deploying it to the web server. The entire core GWT library is discussed, with details and examples on how it can be extended.

GWT helps you make the most of Ajax in your web applications and GWT in Action helps you get more out of GWT. Readers can download Early Access Chapters of GWT in Action now and participate in the Author Forum by visiting at the Manning site.

Customer Reviews:

It's the best........2007-09-09

GWT in Action is a good read, with the pace and depth of instruction just right, suggesting these guys enjoy writing. They like explaining stuff, and the book's editors would have been hard-pressed to eliminate a paragraph without losing an interesting and useful tip or aside. And these guys are GWT software library developers themselves (see the GWT Widget Library at SourceForge, by Mr Hanson). I was enthralled by the GWT presentations at the Google Developer Day 2007 in Sydney, and immediately bought Google Web Toolkit: GWT Java Ajax Programming by Prabhakar Chaganti. I liked it, but GWT in Action is significantly better, which I bought soon after. It's the best.

Book has very little substance.......2007-07-14

This book is very basic. I was exploring the GWT RPC functionality. I found RPC example hardly useful to do anything with it. If you are looking for a book to develop RPC applications, I do not recommend this book.

Get the Dashboard example source code first and try out before buying the book. I was not impressed with the Dashboard example. Book spends most of the time building the example application.

hard to follow and understand.......2007-07-05

Usually, I really like the "in action" series, but "GWT in Action" disappointed me. The book focus on examples "in action" almost to the exclusion of having the reader understand the concepts. It wasn't until the end of the book that I really understood what was going on.

I did like the step by step instructions on how to get started. The examples were good if you needed to do what the example did. It was tough to extrapolate to other scenarios though. Some of the code examples were rather long and involved. The end of the book was also good. It went into detail on HTML form controls, JSON, testing, deployment and most importantly - how GWT works. These would have been nice earlier in the book. Especially the HTML form section. The majority of AJAX at this time is related to forms. Since the cover says "easy AJAX with GWT", I expected more on form based AJAX examples.

I felt that the book was trying to reach too broad an audience. For beginners without an understanding of JavaScript/HTML/DOM, I think it is overwhelming. The book provides "what's new in GWT 1..4", but the book is overkill for someone already using GWT. Most of the time the book treats what happens under the hood of GWT as magic and other times it becomes important. This switching of focus is a bit confusing.

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