What Homebuyers Should Know about Buying a Home

Book Description

Garfield dreams of a luxury vacation in Hawaii, but Jon is cutting corners (did someone say tight wad?) so it's off to paradise instead -- ticky tacky Paradise World, that is. The pool is empty and there's only one car at the rent-a-car counter (what a specimen!), but it's an adventure Garfield, Jon, Odie -- and you -- will never forget!

Customer Reviews:

One of the better Garfield full-color stories........2002-06-03

When Garfield learns that John is taking him and Odie on vacation he dreams of a wonderful paradise escape but that isn't to be. They're travelling 3rd class to an El-Cheapo resort on an island where the natives worship the only car the rental place has to offer.

Why do the worship it? Because once, many years ago, the local volcano threatened to go off and destroy their tribe. A stereotypical 50's rebel teen drove his classic car (the exact same one John has rented) into the volcano to keep the gods happy.

Now the volcano is getting angry again and the natives expect John to drive into the volcano just like the James Dean guy did before!

The book is full of bright and colorful pictures and Garfield's orange and black fur definitely looks better here than in the black and white pocket books. There are other full-color Garfield stories (such as Garfield in the Rough, Garfield on the Town), but this is one of the best.

Recommended for adults and children who love that cat.

Great, Funny - you were expecting different?.......1999-07-17

This was a great book! Cute. Funny

This book is awesome, it even has colored pages........1999-01-24

This book is one of the better Garfield books because it is in color. It gets crazy, but who cares? Garfield and Odie's escape from the volcano was really cool!

Average customer rating:
Stick to the Music Scores of Orchestral Tales
John/ Harpur, Merrily (ILT) Boyden
Manufacturer: Souvenir Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000ORRCD2

Book Description

Details Hale's long and close relationship with the famous comedian.

Customer Reviews:

Romantic and Sweet.......2007-08-05

This is a very beautiful memoir about Charlie Chaplin. Hale fell in love with Chaplin's tramp character, "Charlie." In her memory, it happened as a young girl when she first saw him at the movies, but one can suggest that it really happened when she co-starred with him in the "Gold Rush" in 1926. They had a close off-and-on romantic relationship for the next 17 years.
Hale wrote this in the 1960's, when she was in her 60's and had not talked to Chaplin for over two decades. Still, the pain and pleasure of her relationship with him seems quite fresh.
Unfortunately, she seems to be seeing the relationship through the prism of her Christian Science ideology. It is hard to say if she really loved "Charlie" the artist, but hated "Mr. Chaplin" the Hollywood businessman, as she insists. This might be a later interpretation that she imposed upon the relationship to suppress the very real contradictions that the relationship must have held for her. We should remember that she was in constant competition with hundreds of beautiful women for his affection and companionship. She desperately wanted to be special for him. The only thing that seems to have made her special was her love for Charlie the tramp character. One can say that Chaplin loved her for her love of Charlie.
She does give a fascinating dream account towards the end of the book in which she marries Chaplin and moves to a small village in Greece with him. Obviously, there, she would not have faced the terrible competition for his affection that she faced in Hollywood.
Heather Kiernan has done a wonderful job of editing this work into a narrative whole from what was apparently very choppy and incomplete manuscripts.

A Loving Tribute.......2005-10-10

This book is everything I expected it to be and more.

Too many books on famous faces are filled with stories of their sexual exploits. Too many of these books lose their credibility due to bad writing, unrealistic situations, and a tell-all attitude which cheapens the information presented. This book is not like that. It is classily put together like an old movie that never showed sex but smartly implied it. Hale does not blatantly throw her longtime love affair with Chaplin in the reader's face; she forces one to read between the lines and to still realize that there were barriers like marriage that she did not cross.

Along with stories about Chaplin, Hale reminisces on her life before and during stardom. She tells of winning a beauty contest that took her to Hollywood and meeting Chaplin on the street one day. She tells about filming The Gold Rush and her passionate love for Chaplin ever after.

More than anything else, though, this book gives its reader total insight into Chaplin as a man. He was tempestuously moody and difficult, yet insanely insightful. This all comes from a woman who knew him well for much of his life. So many books dismiss his personality to dissect his genius as a film maker but only glance at his behavior outside of that. This book looks into what Chaplin was like socially by a woman who was not only close to him, but is representative of the many women in the comic's life.

Miss Hale comes off as an annoying know-it-all bragging about Chaplin having an attraction to her during The Gold Rush in the Unknown Chaplin series. However, reading this book gives a whole new perspective on her. It helps one to understand that she was not bragging about Chaplin's affections; she was simply reveling in a tiny glimpse of hope that he might feel even a fraction of the love she felt for him. This is an honest, emotional account.

Totally misleading title.......2004-09-22

From the title of the book, one would expect intimate (i.e., sexual) tid-bits to be explored in this book. Forget it, Georgia Hale was almost without doubt Chaplin's mistress for several years but this prudish, virginal woman inexplicably chose to present herself as a chaste, untouched maiden, all the while living in Charlie's Summit Drive estate in Hollywood. Georgia Hale was Charlie's co-star in his immortal 1925 film "The Gold Rush;" she was discovered by Chaplin and she owned her entire career to him. She also fell madly in love with him but claims that she held off sleeping with him because of his (miserably unhappy) second marriage to Lita Grey. Her morality supposedly prevented her from taking the plunge with the Little Tramp. Yeah, right.

Georgia writes poorly, wanders all over the place in her style and tells the reader very little about Charlie besides the fact he was moody, brilliant, beautiful, sexy, maddening and immature. Oh yes, let's toss in genius to the mix, but we already knew all of that. Hale was in a unique position of revealing much about Charlie during a pivotal period in his life; she was undeniably close to him and he trusted her and treated her better than he treated many of his other paramours. But she muddies the water with an insipid and irritating style and the absolute crusher is the final chapter. It's an idiotic dream sequence which goes on forever and is both banal and bizarre.

The most interesting story in the entire book is when she briefly reunites with Charlie at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 1972. Oona leaves the room and Chaplin asks her, "Have you ever married?" Even after 40 years, Georgia is still hopelessly besotted with Charlie and breathlessly intones, "After you, Charlie, no man could compare." Naturally Chaplin adores this line and showers her with kisses. One senses this was Georgia Hale's greatest moment since Charlie threw her over in the early 30's.

In short, a poorly written book, a tome of missed opportunities. Oh, what could have been!

Intimate Close-ups: Charlie Chaplin.......2000-04-11

I'm a huge fan of Charlie Chaplin's and I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. Georgia Hale was a "hidden" love of his and this book gave me a lot of new info on him. If you like Charlie Chaplin and want to learn about another part of his life, this is the book to read.

Georgia Gets Her Man- For A Time.......2000-02-01

I am a big Chaplin fan, so I try and read whatever I can get my hands on. Georgia Hale was Charlie's leading lady for The Gold Rush, and unbeknownst to me, one of his major loves off-screen. Their relationship was on-and-off again for several years, but he kept coming back to her. I enjoyed reading about Georgia's childhood and her search to meet the man (she claims) who completely saved her life. Her accounts with him are surprising, endearing, memorable. I only wish she would spend more time talking about herself as an individual, instead of Charlie's companion. This accounts for gaps in time and information since it is apparent that she feels the times not spent with Charlie are not worth mentioning. She also ends the book on a rather uneventful and abrupt note which is dissatisfying. You learn more about Georgia's post-Chaplin life (but not much) in the introduction by the author. However, it is a touching recollection of her times with this amazing man, hence my 3 stars.

Book Description

David Rodinsky lived above a synagogue in the heart of the old Jewish East End of London. Sometime in the late sixties he disappeared. His room, a chaos of writings, annotated books and maps, gramophone records and clothes, was left undisturbed for twenty years. Rodinsky's world captured the imagination of a young artist, Rachel Lichtenstein, whose grandparents had escaped Poland in the thirties, and over a period of years she began to document the bizarre collection of artifacts that were found in his room, and make installations using images from his enigmatic bequest. She became obsessed with this mysterious man: Who was he? Where did he come from? Where did he go? Now Lichtenstein and Iain Sinclair have written an extraordinary book that weaves together Lichenstein's quest for Rodinsky. Part mystery story, part memoir, part travelogue, Rodinsky's Room is a testament to a world that has all but vanished and the celebration of the life of a unique man.

Customer Reviews:

Lichtenstein, and Sinclair, fit-up Rodinsky to an imagined past.......2005-07-17

More a story about the author than the subject, ignore Sinclair's part.
This book is actually a projection of Rachel Lichtenstein's search for a particular type of Eastern European, Jewish past. It begins with a tale of an room, undisturbed since its solitary occupier - the Rodinsky of the title - mysteriously abandoned it in the late 1960's. Rachel Lichtestein begins the tale by trying to rediscover her Jewish origins, and discovers Rodinsky's abandoned room above a desolate synagogue in a part of the East End of London which was a Jewish area in the first half of the Twentieth Century.

While the narrative moves along Rachel's attempts to find out more about the life and circumstances of Rodinsky, however it becomes clear that she is overtaken by her imaginings and projects her increasing interest in cabbalistic thought and Jewish mysticism. Her search in London is rather mundane, however the book comes alive when she travels to Poland to visit abandoned Jewish villages in the borderlands of the present-day Poland and Ukraine. It was from this area that a significant number of the East End Jews arrived, following pograms in the late 19th Century. The impact of the devastation of the Second World War and the Nazi genocide is still palpable in the area, especially to Rachel and her companions. There are interesting insights into the devastated folk culture, in particular the Golem - a fictitious, menacing ogre, and the lamed vavnika, a collection of righteous, learned men, whose identities are secret. Their presence and their anonymity, prevent the world from being destroyed. It's a highly evocative tale of vengeful Deities, secrecy and scholarship. Rachel associates this with Rodinsky's fevered,multilingual note taking, and this is where the story is at its most tenuous.
The balance of the story is a straight-forward description of the twists and turns involved in Rachel's quest to piece together Rodinsky's last movements and, finally, his last resting place. Her motivation is to offer a prayer - Kaddish - over his grave, as she has done for others in Eastern Poland, is very moving. Usually Kaddish is offered by the deceased's next-of-kin, however both Rodinsky and the victims of genocide had no one to pray for them and Rachel feels the weight of this desolation. The book can be very deflating in terms of the cycle of woe which befalls the Jews - the Polish pograms of the 1890's, the genocide of the Second World War, and there are mentions of subsequent anti-Semitism in Poland of the 1960s. There is a hopelessness about the fate of the Jews in the storytelling which is belied by the energy of the storyteller in her research and in her real life. This does not gel with my experience of Israel/Palestine, which I know to be a highly energetic, cosmopolitan, diverse and troubled society, whose energy is its most appealing characteristic. That being said, the part of the story told by Rachel, while being somewhat incredible, is sincere and well told.

Have you ever experienced a bore at a funeral? Someone who is so intent on telling his/her own story with only glancing references to the deceased? For a reason, which is inexplicable to me, the story of Rachel's quest is periodically interrupted by irrelevant chapters by Iain Sinclair which completely break the flow of the narrative. He mentions `waiting for Godot', Bob Geldof, Harold Pinter, his own writings, the writing of some of his obscure friends, other Jewish legends, other people who are dead or missing - all tangentially related to Rodinsky or Rachel. Why? Sinclair shows up at the launch of the book and its readings, but he does not carry or contribute to the story. I can only surmise that Rachel was not confidant in her abilities to get the book started without him, but surely an experience editor should have intervened at some point in the books creation and dropped Sinclair;s contribution. As it is, the book can be quite usefully understood without bothering with Sinclair's pieces - indeed each chapter's author is listed, so perhaps the editor is making some effort at guiding us through the dross.

Through Rachel's recounting of the story, it is obvious that the room, abandoned by Rodinsky in the 1960's, has been used as a powerful metaphor by both writers and photographers since it's `rediscovery' in the 1980's. It becomes clear from the photographs of the room that various photographs have rearranged the `undisturbed' room to fit their own needs for a story over the years. I think Rachel is also guilty of the same transference, it is possible that Rodinsky saw himself as an autodictat, in splendid isolation or it may be that he was a disturbed, isolated and frightened man who lived and died in extreme poverty and loneliness. Once it becomes clear that Rodinsky's actual personality and possessions are not knowable at this remove, the story could have focussed more on the social life of the Jewish area of the East End, the story could have included social progression, increasing affluence and assimilation; instead I believe the narrative explores Jewish tragedy and isolation, the necessity to acquire and disseminate knowledge so as to leave a record which may survive the inevitable disasters that will be visited upon the population.

A misunderstood (and misread) classic.......2004-02-19

I just finished teaching *Rodinsky's Room* and was amazed to see the variety of misreadings posted here as reviews. Among the many contemporary works of historical recovery or revision, *Rodinsky* stands out because of its alternating -- and often warring -- authors, each of whom has a different purpose in recovering Rodinsky's history, as well as a different form and style through which to accomplish this recovery.

Sinclair, the experimental London novelist and essayist, draws on a pastiche of languages and approaches: the short, grotesque sentences of crime novels; classic gothic imagery of the uncanny; filmic montage and surrealist juxtaposition; gossip and rumor and arcane whispers. As he follows Lichtenstein's quest for Rodinsky's history, Sinclair questions traditional ways of fixing history that overexpose, erase, or create a fictional simulacrum of the past. While he is quite aware that his early writings on Rodinsky were the stuff of romantic urban legend, he is also insistant that heritage trusts and yuppie preservationists are no better than the City developers who want to erase the multiple layers of time sedimented in Spitalfields. The latter erase history, while the former use urban myths to increase property values.

Lichtenstein's style, while more straight-forward than Sinclair's, is comparable to Paul Auster: a clean, seemingly transparent surface, with a plot built on unexplainable coicidences. If Sinclair is obsessed with the Room as a set for his own fictional musings, Lichtenstein wants to demystify the room, unfix energy from a fetishistic attachment to Rodinsky's objects and redirect it onto the human story of David Rodinsky.

And to those reviewers who see Rodinsky as ultimately an ordinary man or a mentally disturbed recluse, I can only ask: did we read the same book? Rodinsky apparently taught himself several ancient languages, was at work on a treatise on the origins of language itself, definitely studied Kabbalah, and maintained himself in near obscurity in the closely-knit Jewish community of Spitalfields. Lichtenstein also debunks the mental illness theory: the behaviors that seemed "crazy" in London would have been totally normal in the Polish community of his grandparents. The very complexity of Rodinsky's identity is used to evoke the heterogeneity and brilliance of a Jewish immigrant community the history of which is currently elided in the pursuit of parking garages, office blocks, and silk weaver garrets.

Ultimately, *Rodinsky's Room* is thematically similar to works like Sebald's *The Emigrants* or Amitav Ghosh's *In an Antique Land*, works that explore the porous boundaries between fiction, history, and myth, works that seek to protect history without romanticizing it or cutting it off, museum-like, from the plurality of possible fictions.

The right story, the wrong storytellers.......2002-12-23

Having lived in London, where I came to know the Spitalfields neighborhood where the book is set and heard much about the "urban legend" of David Rodinsky, I expected to enjoy this book. Reading Liechtenstein and Sinclair's evocative impressions of Spitalfields took me back, but otherwise "Rodinsky's Room" was a disappointment.

The perceptive reader senses the truth behind the mystery of David Rodinsky early on: Rodinsky was neither a genius nor a scholar, but a man of limited intelligence who lived most of his life with his protective, reclusive mother. After losing his mother, the sheltered Rodinsky couldn't make a life for himself in an unfamiliar world and was ultimately institutionalized. The authors find witnesses and documents who tell the truth about Rodinsky, but against all the evidence they dutifully record in the book the authors persist much too long in the belief that Rodinsky was some kind of inspired cabbalist mystic.

The Rodinsky story is an interesting one, but Liechtenstein and Sinclair are not the right authors to tell it. Sinclair veers between disjointed autobiographical ramblings (none of which bear any apparent relevance to Rodinsky) and repetitive efforts to psychoanalyze Liechtenstein, asking over and over, "Why is this woman so interested in David Rodinsky?" While she writes more coherently than Sinclair, Liechtenstein comes across as flighty, self-absorbed and ludicrously naive; the story of Liechtenstein's rediscovery of her Judaism, the real heart of the book, gets old very quickly. Also, one does not need to be a former Londoner to notice Liechtenstein's factual errors (many of which don't even involve London; for example, she places Massachusetts' Brandeis University in California), the large number of which led me to question the publisher's editorial competence.

Despite its many shortcomings, I can recommend "Rodinsky's Room" as a well-written memoir notwithstanding its content. However, readers looking to learn something about David Rodinsky's milieu - the disappearing Jewish East End - should look elsewhere.

Enchanting mystery, but inadequate and a bit parochial.......2002-12-15

Lichenstein and Sinclair have taken a fascinating and perplexing mystery and have raised it to the status of urban legend. On many levels, their collaborative attempt succeeds admirably: Lichtenstein skillfully (with some elements of a suspenseful detective story) presents her search for David Rodinsky, whose room was rediscovered, virtually untouched, two decades after it had been abandoned, and Sinclair places the story in its many cultural contexts. Yet, in other ways, their narrative falls short: more questions are raised than answered by their book, and Sinclair's contributions occasionally suffer from a parochialism that makes his discussion difficult for the general reader. As Sinclair himself admits, "The more the mystery of Rodinsky was discussed and debated, the dimmer the outline of the human presence."

The book alternates between chapters by the two authors, and Lichtenstein's contributions are far more straightforward. She weaves her investigation into Rodinsky's identity with her own quest for her Jewish identity and ancestry, and I found her chapters to be far more compelling. Unfortunately, Lichtenstein seems a bit out of her depth when discussing Rodinsky's writings. She confesses she doesn't have the background necessary to understand or translate most of the scraps of papers and journals found in Rodinsky's rooms, yet both she (and Sinclair) repeatedly refer to Rodinsky as a talented linguist and scholar (or a cabbalist). This claim would have been greatly supported by reprinting or summarizing some of the texts left in the room, but we are given only four examples of Rodinsky's apparently prodigious output: two grammatically inept notes to his aunt (including one notable for its venom), the translation of a page of Chinese characters that turns out merely to say "I am David Rodinsky" over and over, and a journal entry on the study of the Assyrian language that could have been written (stylistic errors and all) by a college freshman. Was Rodinsky truly a scholar and a linguist, or was he just a reclusive dabbler? The evidence presented in the book is hardly convincing either way.

Sinclair's nonlinear meditations are also absorbing; he finds parallels to the mystery of Rodinksy in a broad range of literary themes and cultural myths, and he aptly illustrates the East End neighborhood where Rodinsky spent nearly all his life. Although he is a wonderful stylist, Sinclair seems to be writing for his fellow members of the East End literati (and for the critics) rather than for the general reader. Time and again, he mentions London-based semi-celebrities without any introduction whatsoever; I can't imagine many American--or even British--readers knowing most of the people and friends Sinclair mentions. If, before you begin this book, you can't identify Steven Berkoff, David Gascoyne, James Fox, George Melly, John Harle, and dozens of other similarly obscure artists and writers, you will know even less about them after you finish reading Sinclair's chapters. Even better-known writers like Kathy Acker and Arthur Morrison deserve some sort of identification.

Furthermore, Sinclair's chapter placing Rodinsky's story within the context of the mythology of the golem seems far-fetched; the parallels just aren't there. Indeed, most of those who knew Rodinsky clearly find this comparison odious ("There must be no talk of golems, cabbalists, interdimensional voyages, invisibility," says one. "Rodinsky was a man to be pitied, an inadequate [who] unfortunately attained nothing . . . due to his low IQ.") But such objections hardly keep Sinclair from attempting to substantiate this analogy for nearly 30 pages.

Nevertheless, in spite of my rather significant reservations, I found this book overall to be an affecting celebration of the life of a man who otherwise would be one of the many reclusive loners and social outcasts who disappear in the world on a daily basis.

Deceptively simple.......2002-01-11

Gradually this story of one apparently fairly ordinary old Talmudic scholar and how he became emblematic of the diaspora
and then of the holocaust. Deceptively simple in the way the
story is slowly revealed, I found this one of the most moving books I have read in several years. Without any dramatic special effects, the authors make the mysterious occupant of Princelet
Street at once far less of a mystery and far more of a human being. This is a wonderful picture of Jewish immigration to London's East End, but it also helps us understand the kind of loss and sense of yearning which the immigrants from Eastern Europe brought with them into their new place of exile.
Anyone interested in Jewish life in London should read this.

The frummer in the attic: Rachel Lichtenstein and Iain Sinclair's Rodinsky's Room and Jewish memory.: An article from: International Fiction Review

Average customer rating:

The frummer in the attic: Rachel Lichtenstein and Iain Sinclair's Rodinsky's Room and Jewish memory.: An article from: International Fiction Review
Ruth Gilbert
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

Book Description

This digital document is an article from International Fiction Review, published by Thomson Gale on January 1, 2006. The length of the article is 5393 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The frummer in the attic: Rachel Lichtenstein and Iain Sinclair's Rodinsky's Room and Jewish memory.
Author: Ruth Gilbert
Publication: International Fiction Review (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 33 Issue: 1-2 Page: 27(11)

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Lichtenstein, Rachel and Ian Sinclair. Rodinsky's Room.: An article from: Women in Judaism

Average customer rating:

Lichtenstein, Rachel and Ian Sinclair. Rodinsky's Room.: An article from: Women in Judaism
Elaine Margolin
Manufacturer: Women in Judaism
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

General | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Women in Judaism, published by Women in Judaism on January 1, 2001. The length of the article is 1698 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Lichtenstein, Rachel and Ian Sinclair. Rodinsky's Room.
Author: Elaine Margolin
Publication: Women in Judaism (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 2001
Publisher: Women in Judaism
Volume: 2 Issue: 2 Page: NA

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Average customer rating:

Rodinsky's Room
Rachel Lichenstein
Manufacturer: Granta Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000K7LZDE

Book Description

"[It's] enough to drive experienced chess players to insanity, but they will enjoy the ride....The author warns the reader from the start anything goes....Buy this book...and have fun!"--Games
It's outrageous and amazing and irresistible: these brainbusting chess problems are the devilish inventions of the world's greatest puzzle creators. Chess mavens won't believe what they'll find, because in these games, the usual rules just don't apply. For example, there's Billiards Chess, where pieces can carom off the board at a right angle and return. In Checkless Chess, check is an illegal move...unless it's checkmate. Refusal Chess allows a player to refuse an opponent's move and demand an alternative. There's even a variation called Collaboration, in which both sides must cooperate to achieve checkmate. And, the coup de grace: the world's hardest chess problem ever posed.

Average customer rating:

Outrageous Chess Problems

Manufacturer: STERLING
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000H0I4E2

Book Description

Create dynamic, interactive Web pages with the latest upgrade to this flexible development tool. Coverage includes event handling, object oriented programming, IE specific content, XML, and sample code that lets you work through projects and provides groundwork for your own creations. Provides information for new and non-professional developers and also more advanced coverage for experienced JS developers who want a comprehensive reference.

Customer Reviews:

A decent book.......2007-06-13

This is a fairly comprehensive book. This is not the best "beginner" book. The "beginner" info is in there - but it's mixed with so much advanced stuff that it can seem overwhelming. If you have previous experience, there's a lot of good stuff here. This is an excellent "second book."

thorough coverage of the language.......2005-11-18

The text is a very good and complete explanation of JavaScript. It describes the best usage of JavaScript with the latest common browsers at the time of writing (early 2004). There are numerous examples which express the programming ideas in a simple fashion.

If you have programmed in other languages, JavaScript should be an easy learn with this book. Programs written in it tend not to be very long, as they are associated with a single web page. While JavaScript deals nicely with the various objects in a browser, like a window or document, the programs tend to have a procedural flavour.

Not a a very good language guide.......2005-10-25

The book is pleasantly written and easy to read, but unfortunately there are some important ommissions as far as describing the JavaScript language itself.

Inheritence is barely mentioned. There is no explanation at all of how to invoke the parent constructor with parameters.

Exceptions are not explained at all in the first part of the book, which is the language guide. Instead they are mentioned at the very end - in the applied programming examples.

There is no good explanation of the internal logic of the language - why certain things are as they are and how they fit together.

Considering the recent trend of writing full blown JavaScript applications, there is a lot to be desired.

The book is much better as a guide to applying simple JavaScript. It covers a wide variety of topics in sufficient detail - DHTML, XMLHTTPRequest, etc. The example scripts do not seem to be production quality, but they serve the purpose of illustrating the ideas well enough.

Outstanding reference and tutorial.......2005-09-26

As a CIS student with some prior programming experience, I find this 948 page tome both thorough and clearly written. The double table of contents, one brief, and the other very detailed, makes it easy to find what you need. Much attention is paid to cross-browser issues. You could concievably teach yourself JavaScript with this book alone.

The best reference for developing.......2005-09-22

I have found a lot of utilities and tools for building programs.

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books