Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940

Average customer rating:

An engaging and informative book

History at its Finest

A treasure chest of forgotten lore

Fresh Thinking About Gay History

A new era in queer theory.

Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940
George Chauncey
Manufacturer: Basic Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

History | Gay & Lesbian | Subjects | Books
General | Nonfiction | Gay & Lesbian | Subjects | Books
General | Sociology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Gay Men | Special Groups | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Social History | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0465026214

Book Description

Winner of the 1994 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History, this brilliant work challenges the conventional wisdom that before the 1960s gay life existed only in the closet.

Customer Reviews:

An engaging and informative book.......2007-09-22

George Chauncey has written an engaging and informative book that provides entry into another American era's conceptualizations of what we today think of as homosexuality.

Gay New York takes great pains to debunk what Chauncey terms "the three myths" of isolation (gay men led solitary lives prior to Stonewall), invisibility (the gay world was difficult for isolated men to find) and internalization (gay men were self-loathing and universally accepted their denigration by the dominant culture). In addition to gay men's diaries, the book provides a glimpse into a bygone world through personal interviews, meticulous documentation by police investigators and arrest reports, sensationalistic newspaper accounts of police raids, cartoon illustrations from popular magazines, advertisements for drag balls, medical writings and other ingenious and esoteric sources. Combining serious scholarship and humor, the book capably documents the perspective of a culture that defined sexuality and gender roles using criteria that are altogether different from those we use today. In demonstrating the fluidity with which human beings define their own sexual behavior, Chauncey provocatively stirs the postmodern debate between essentialist and social constructionist explanations of sexuality.

In reading Chauncey's book, one appreciates how a culture makes sense of sexual activities. In the days of Gay New York, the terms pansy or fairy were used to define a gender role, what we would today refer to as effeminacy, rather than a sexual orientation. Effeminacy was presumed to indicate that a man was sexually available to other men. In that cultural nosology, the man who had sex with another man was not stigmatized as long as he did not act effeminately and if the homosexual acts in which he engaged were masculine, meaning insertive.

Some sex researchers treat sexual orientations as irreducible traits or markers while many cultures, like the one described in Gay New York, treat gender role behavior as such. Today, many laypeople are willing to accept a sexual orientation as the basic component of human sexuality that can be studied, dissected and for which an eventual etiology will emerge. The incorporation of this newer view into the culture has had interesting political ramifications. On the left, if a homosexual orientation is defined as an intrinsic, genetic trait over which a person has no control, then denying people equal rights because of that trait is akin to racism or discriminating on the basis of a disability. On the right, even if a homosexual orientation is intrinsic, it is considered part of man's baser nature and should be controlled, like a genetic tendency to drink or take drugs. Further on the right, religious and historical beliefs condemn homosexuality as a transgression of rigid, gender roles defined by ancient texts and customs presumed to go back to the dawn of civilization. These latter beliefs totally reject the modern classification of orientations and as in the world of Gay New York, they conflate sexual attraction with gender identity.

In his successful portrayal of a once-thriving same-sex culture, Chauncey makes the point that the oppression that immediately preceded Stonewall was not always the norm. He ably does the job he set out to do in disproving the myths of isolation, invisibility and internalization. He makes the case that "the excoriation of queers served primarily to set the boundaries for how normal men could dress, walk, talk, and relate to women and to each other" and that "the normal world constituted itself and established its boundaries by creating the gay world as a stigmatized other" (pp. 25-26). He argues, somewhat ominously, that an increased visibility of the homosexual culture ultimately led to its own demise. Starting in the 1930's, restrictive and sometimes violent enforcement of laws against gay men evolved in reaction to the openness of their lives. Although the nature of the debate has changed, today we see a backlash in response to the increasing numbers of gay men and women coming out. History teaches us many lessons and Gay New York is highly recommended reading for both the historical facts that it provides as well as for the scientific, political and cultural questions that it raises.

History at its Finest.......2006-08-29

George Chauncey gave himself an incredibly daunting task when he set out to reconstruct the sexual and gender landscape that Gay Male New Yorkers inhabited from the fin de sielce until the beginning of World War II. In order meet this challenge, and make sense of the awe inspiring amount of research he was able to amass, Chauncey finds it necessary to set himself up with a mega question--what did it mean to be a gay man in New York during the period in question?--with a series of much smaller topical questions. From the myriad of smaller questions I have mined Chauncey's work in order to concentrate upon four questions. First, what was the dominant understanding gender, male sexuality and sex practices during the period in question? Second, how did Gay men in New York negotiate their way through a city that was largely hostile to their existence and make themselves visible to each other? Third, how were Gay men able to appropriate public and private spaces for their own purposes? Fourth, how did the increasingly draconian laws and regulations that followed in the Great Depression's wake affect Gay life? Only by exploring these questions can we even begin to understand how Chauncey was able to construct Gay New York.

Chauncey asserts, quite convincingly, that we have a fundamentally different understanding of sexuality and gender than the generations that he studied. Most peoples' understanding of sexuality is a binary one based on the anatomy of the two sexual actors--homosexual if the actors have the same anatomy and heterosexual if they do not. A person attracted to both sexes fits within the small space left between the poles known as bisexual. In sum, our definition is based solely on sex actors' biology. Though by the end of the nineteenth century, this view of sexuality had made some in roads among the medical community and was beginning gain credence among the middle classes, it was not the dominant view of sexual practice of society as a whole and was not the view of huge swathes of working class men from many backgrounds. The understanding that working class men had of sexual practice, as well as the one that much society had, was a gendered view that fit under the rubrics of normalcy and deviance. This understanding allowed normal men to play the penetrating or fellated role in same sex acts and not have their masculinity questioned. The dominant understanding regarded all men who played of gratifier as feminine. Ours is a world where men and women are gay or straight. Theirs' was a world wherein men were men and women were women, but men were also women because sexual aim took precedence over sexual object. This view allowed for a great deal of sexual contact between men where only one of the actors would be viewed as a homosexual.

Gay New York existed as a city within a city. Words were part of an intricate code that, along with dress and affectation, allowed gay men to recognize each other while remaining largely invisible to the outside world. The dropping of certain words in a conversation; a loud suit with a red tie; bleached hair and tweezed eyebrows; the gait of one's walk or the rhythm of one's speech--all these and many other things played their part in allowing gay men to operate in public surreptitiously when the need to do so arose, but they also allowed straight men (or those who were defined above as normal) to identify gay men within realms that were dominantly straight but allowed for a large amount of intermingling between straight and gay men. Putting aside the person of the fairy--a hyperbolic form of gay affectation that most gay men could not maintain without a the threat of ostracism--the great body of gay men had a tenuous position within the communities lived in and sought partners because communities and private vigilance groups hostilities towards their existence, and law enforcements official virtual outlawing of their sexual behavior. To be gay during this period meant knowing how to behave in ways that signify homosexuality to other gay men (and those interested in affairs with gay men) while having that behavior appear ambiguous enough to those of ill will to avoid censure or worse.

Gay men did not always have to operate through the use of coded behavior. In the worlds of rooming houses, or with the connivance merchants, restaurants and saloons, gay men were able to turn much of what would be regarded as public spheres into primarily gay spaces or at least gay friendly. This was certainly the case with several YMCAs' throughout Manhattan. As Chauncey points out Y's had a legendary aura around them regarding gay activity: "some New Yorkers," he writes, "took rooms at the Sloane House for the weekend, giving fake out-of-town addresses."(156) In the case of the YMCA's security could be bribed, indifferent, or it could be the job of gay men to enforce managements rules that would have the effect of hindering openly homosexual behavior. Since it was not until the 1930's that serving gay people became a business liability, many bars and restaurants were happy to have their business. Being a public space, but in point of fact private property these venues allowed for more overt forms of same sex courtship and interaction. Like the YMCA's and rooming houses Gay men were able to operate here under the sufferance of only unofficial supervision and were therefore only obliged to worry about the community where the venue was located and the proprietors. Although there were occassional police raids, or a proprietor could enlist the help of police forces to make his establishment more or less off limits to openly gay people, these venues would still generally allow for a greater freedom of movement and interaction.

Gay life in New York always had to operate underground, beyond both the official and unofficial radars of society because of the possibility of harassment, arrest and sometimes long prison terms. If the first third of the twentieth century was a time where cunning, code, and great circumspection would have to be employed in order to build an actively gay life, then these tools would become doubly necessary to keep the edifice of gay life from crumbling in the period that immediately followed it. With the end of prohibition putting a huge venue, bars, of gay life under the microscope of a newly vigilant law enforcement community--both the police and a new and militant State Liquor Authority--that was becoming more and more hostile to gay life. New Yorkers of this period, because of the economic calamity all people suffered as part and parcel of the Great Depression, also knew a gender anxiety which they had not know immediately before this because of the massive number of men who were no longer bread winners. Coupling all of these factors together with the election of the dynamic, but moralizing Fiorello La Guardia, in 1933 and the campaign to sanitize the city in time for 1939 World's Fair (especially the areas where the greatest number of gay friendly haunts were) and a situation was created where gay life was severely circumscribed.

At the very least, Chauncey is able to thoroughly dispels the notions that Gay life as we know it today began with the Stonewall revolt and the history of Gay life is one of unimpeded progress. As his narrative shows the history of the oppressed shows, we never live in the best of all possible worlds and very often the past can seem much rosier than the present because it was just that.

A treasure chest of forgotten lore.......2003-12-31

This book was preceded in my conciousness by high critical praise and so I approached it with great expectations. And in great part it met these expectations.

More than anything else, this is a work of love, being the excavation of forgotten facts in the history of gay life as it was lived by decades of gay men, experiences now mostly forgotten or scattered in obscure and fading documents. It is an extraordinary work of social archeology, resurrecting a world I never knew exisited. And Chauncey does this in exceptional detail, using clear prose, so that by the end the geography of this world has been salvaged and reconstructed, like Combray from Marcel's teacup.

As the book proceeds, the writing becomes stronger, particularly as the facts become more readily available, and the arguments and conclusions become more convincing. The last chapter is especially good on the submergence of gay life after Prohibition. This book is clearly one of the masterpieces of gay history, on par with John Boswell's work especially in it's dependence on primary sources.

The only criticism I have lies in the fact that Chauncey often has trouble shaping his information and often can't create a forest out of the trees. Especially in the earlier chapters, he often fails to make a summary statement without such a host of qualifiers that you wonder why he bothers in the first place. And as a previous reviewer has noted, there are alot of repetitions that a good editor should have corrected.

Despite all these reservations, for those interested in discovering a lost world, this book will be a revelation.

Fresh Thinking About Gay History.......2002-06-15

Chauncey's book offers serious and original thinking about queer history and about general urban history as well. Freed from the myths that have persisted about the place of homosexuals in U.S. society, the author paints a new portrait of what transpired just before the turn of the last century and into the early decades of the 20th century.

The most important idea he explains is that the concepts of "homosexuality" and "heterosexuality" as we understand them today didn't exist one hundred years ago. Chauncey's research shows that it was adherence to traditional gender role, rather than choice of sex partner, that labelled a man as either a "fairy" or "normal." The author provides detailed descriptions of the process by which working class men in particular could have sexual relations with other men and perserve a "normal" identity so long as the sex partners were effeminate. He uses extensive supporting materials that undergird his conclusions, including accounts of the "pansies" who were not, in fact, demeaned or ostracized but instead were tolerated, courted, and may even have served a vital purpose to working men who had relocated alone to the city to support families that lived elsewhere or to make their way into adulthood.

Chauncey shows how the definition of "invert"-- detour from standard gender role-- shifted gradually to the notion of "degenerate" or "homosexual"-- men who chose other men as sex partners. He makes clear how the emerging definition of homosexuality depended on a similarly new definition of heterosexuality. These subtle but powerful social mores are detailed at length, in convincing prose.

The book explains that there were places in early 20th century society for gays, countering the mistaken belief that the 1960's rebellions brought people out of the closet. The author hints, but doesn't explicitly state, that societal needs may have some not insubstantial effect on how prominent the gay people will be in our communities, or even how many young men may experiment with homosexuality for identity, financial need, or other reasons.

Chauncey's prose is vivid and evocative. He many times, especially in the early parts of the book, uses a hair-splitting preciseness with terms that can become tiresome to a reader. He also shows an academic's obsessiveness with source material: his book is chockful of lengthy source notes in the appendix and footnotes at the bottoms of the pages. These practices make his work explicit for purposes of academics but also tedious for general reading.

He employs other techniques that I believe weakened the impact of the reading. Chauncey summarizes a great deal at the end of each chapter, which dilutes the momentum of his historical survey. He is prone to repetitions of concepts and quotes. He also divided his themes such that each chapter covers expansive times. This has the reader continually moving back to the beginning of his chosen era, which diffuses the reader's sense of progressions over time. My sense is that he was not able to decide if the book were to be textbook for teaching, academic document for university colleagues, or general historical account. Nevertheless, his interesting prose, his unique perspectives, and his strong synthetic thinking make this an important work.

A new era in queer theory........2002-04-15

Great book that has ushered in queer theory. Great for gay history people and NYC history people. Great evidence. Great everything.

Book Description

Chile was the first major Latin American nation to carry out a complete neoliberal transformation. Its policies—encouraging foreign investment, privatizing public sector companies and services, lowering trade barriers, reducing the size of the state, and embracing the market as a regulator of both the economy and society—produced an economic boom that some have hailed as a “miracle” to be emulated by other Latin American countries. But how have Chile’s millions of workers, whose hard labor and long hours have made the miracle possible, fared under this program? Through empirically grounded historical case studies, this volume examines the human underside of the Chilean economy over the past three decades, delineating the harsh inequities that persist in spite of growth, low inflation, and some decrease in poverty and unemployment.

Implemented in the 1970s at the point of the bayonet and in the shadow of the torture chamber, the neoliberal policies of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship reversed many of the gains in wages, benefits, and working conditions that Chile’s workers had won during decades of struggle and triggered a severe economic crisis. Later refined and softened, Pinochet’s neoliberal model began, finally, to promote economic growth in the mid-1980s, and it was maintained by the center-left governments that followed the restoration of democracy in 1990. Yet, despite significant increases in worker productivity, real wages stagnated, the expected restoration of labor rights faltered, and gaps in income distribution continued to widen. To shed light on this history and these ongoing problems, the contributors look at industries long part of the Chilean economy—including textiles and copper—and industries that have expanded more recently—including fishing, forestry, and agriculture. They not only show how neoliberalism has affected Chile’s labor force in general but also how it has damaged the environment and imposed special burdens on women. Painting a sobering picture of the two Chiles—one increasingly rich, the other still mired in poverty—these essays suggest that the Chilean miracle may not be as miraculous as it seems.

Contributors.
Paul Drake
Volker Frank
Thomas Klubock
Rachel Schurman
Joel Stillerman
Heidi Tinsman
Peter Winn

Book Description

This new book takes a look at the tourism industry in Australia and examines a range of best practice cases that will increase awareness of what is being done and what can be done in meeting the challenges of sustainable tourism.

Included in the casebook are discussions of the concept of sustainable tourism, and the role of industry and government bodies in this area. The three major issues in sustainability which the authors have examined through their choice of cases are -
environmentally sensitive building and associated infreastructure design; the development of integrated management systems designed to control operational impacts; and the enhancement of the physical environment through operational activities.

examines a range of Australian best practice cases
real life case studies include : the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, the Namadgi National Park and Seven Spirit Bay.

Average customer rating:

GREAT PURCHASE

Listening To Music

Perfect for beginners and those who want more understanding

Listening to Music, Fourth Edition
Jay Zorn
Manufacturer: Prentice Hall
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
Appreciation | Theory, Composition & Performance | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
Entertainment | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
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Listening to Music (with CD)

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A Writer's Reference: 2003 MLA Update

ASIN: 0131773151

Book Description

Written in a lively and appealing style, Listening to Music provides the foundation for acquiring a lifelong knowledge and appreciation of music. It concentrates on the effective listening skills needed to identify composers and to recognize their styles and some of their representative works. Readers are encouraged to become informed consumers of music and active supporters of the arts. An accompanying 4 CD set provides selections that will reinforce the book's written material. This comprehensive book covers the musical process, the materials of music, the common style periods of concert music (from the Baroque period to the present), and adjunct music, including North American popular music, broadway musical theater, and music in the movies. A useful reference work for those in the music industry.

Customer Reviews:

GREAT PURCHASE.......2005-09-08

I'M SURE GLAD I ORDERED...JUST WHAT I NEEDED AND RIGHT ON TIME FOR SCHOOL..THANKS! A ++++

Listening To Music.......2000-08-02

I like this book because it is concise and uncomplicated. Itpresents the material in a logical sequence. I am impressed that it stresses the importance of becoming an "aware" concert goer. Most musicians discount the fact their audiences must be educated to really enjoy and support the arts.

The book covers many major works and gives listening guides to help the student follow and understand the works. The works selected show a very nice cross-section of different styles. I am considering using this book, at least as a reference source in an introductory music literature course that I teach.

Perfect for beginners and those who want more understanding.......1999-08-26

Very well organized. The reader will never become lost in it. Excellent choices of musical examples. Martin Bookspan's commentary is superb.

Intelligent Listening to Music: a guide to enjoyment and appreciation for all lovers of music: Fourth Edition. 1946 Edition

Average customer rating:

Intelligent Listening to Music: a guide to enjoyment and appreciation for all lovers of music: Fourth Edition. 1946 Edition
William W. Johnson
Manufacturer: Sir Isaac Pitman
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000KPLBTE

The Norton Scores, An Anthology for Listening, Volume II: Schubert to Glass (Fourth Edition Expanded)

Average customer rating:

The Norton Scores, An Anthology for Listening, Volume II: Schubert to Glass (Fourth Edition Expanded)

Manufacturer: W W Norton & Co Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0393953106

Book Description

In Ohafia, Nigeria, histories are danced. John McCall's richly textured and sensuous ethnography, Dancing Histories, focuses on these performative representations of history and ethnicity to suggest new possibilities for theorizing social processes.

Tacking between ethnography and theory, McCall makes the case for heuristic research--research that treats ideas operative on-the-ground as a body of indigenous social theory with explanatory potential equivalent to ideas derived from academic knowledge. Thus, for example, the narrative of a "brave woman" of Ohafia who dresses as a man, has wives, and participates in men's initiatory rites frames the question of transgendered individuals in terms strikingly different from those determined by academic interests. Likewise, rituals that invoke the head-hunting warriors of old in celebration of Ohafia men who succeed in business and higher education challenge assumptions about modernization.

Dancing Histories confronts the intellectual apartheid that has privileged western views, opening a dance of interpretations that resist reduction to a single master narrative. Rather than merely formulating formal models of Ohafia culture, the book uses evocative prose to move the reader toward an understanding of what it is like to live in this part of Nigeria. It will be an important addition to courses on research methods and ethnographic writing as well as more general courses in African peoples and expressive culture.

John C. McCall is Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

Book Description

Writing for Broadcast News makes the storytelling elements that comprise a broadcast news story for radio or TV accessible to beginning broadcast writers. Its step-by-step approach shows how to structure a story with a clear beginning, middle, and end through a framework that ties together the anchor lead, reporter narrative, and actualities or sound bites. Emphasizing that people are interested in people, this handbook highlights the human element and putting a face on the story. It gives practical advice to aspiring broadcast reporters and writers toward becoming effective storytellers.

Customer Reviews:

Mixed Bag.......2007-09-16

A strength of this book is the last chapter which discusses convergence and online journalism. Students need to be prepared for the reality of preparing copy for myriad delivery systems. Each medium has unique requrements for writers seeking to get their messages across. Some media forms are more visually oriented than others, for example.

The beginning of the book is another strong area as he discusses writing in conversational style and goes on to identify key terms in the industry. Chapter three on "people-izing" gets to the essence of what broadcast journalism is all about. If it isn't relevant to people there's no point.

While the book has a lot of valid things to say about the subject matter, the author has a blind spot. He's biased. This comes out in his examples. This illustrates how bias enters news when instructors and textbook writers are unaware of their own prejudices. I don't think it's intentional, but it's there nonetheless.

Book Description

Over a decade ago PowerBuilder introduced the idea of rapid Client/Server application development and, for much of that time, was the leader in both technology and sales in the enterprise development market. Although PowerBuilder has lost significant market share to Visual Basic and Delphi, it still enjoys an intensely loyal developer community of close to 300,000. Version 9 of PowerBuilder continues the tradition of introducing leading-edge technology to these developers. PowerBuilder 9 Client/Server Development zeroes in on the most important aspects of building client/server applications in PowerBuilder, including PBNI (native interface), PFC (foundation classes), and database connectivity.

Customer Reviews:

Good resource.......2007-09-05

This is a good reference/resource book.
Amazon is always great to deal with as well.

The only problem I had was that it was shipped unwrapped, in an open box, no packing, so the corners of the book were damaged. Unusal for Amazon.

outline power builder 9.......2004-05-21

I want to see detail in book power builder 9

Excellent Choice.......2004-03-19

This is one of the best books PowerBuilder client-server programming books that I have ever read and is probably one of the most well-received books for PowerBuilder yet. Every person I know, who own these books, experienced or not, find it a
very handy reference.

I recommend all the PowerBuilder developers to invest in this book. It's really cheap for the quality of it's contents.

PB9 Advanced C/S Development.......2003-10-14

Authors

The 2 main authors of this book are Bruce Armstrong and Millard F. Brown III. If you are readers of the PBDJ magazine you will probably be familiar with these names. Both have also been involved with previous PowerBuilder book releases, are members of TeamSybase and have presented at user conferences around the world. Other contributing authors include a list of well known PowerBuilder experts such as Dave Fish, Bill Green, John Olsen, Roy Kiesler et al. The credentials of all the authors and co-authors of this book read like a Who's Who in PowerBuilder.

Book Overview

There are numerous books now available on PowerBuilder - this one does not aim to compete with these but to plug the gap in contents covered. PowerBuilder 9 - Advanced Client/Server Development zeroes in on some of the new features in this version including PBNI (native interface), XML datawindows, reworking of the source control interface, improved IDE and automated application builds using OrcaScript. Other subjects covered include PFC, an in-depth look at database connectivity, advanced coding and DW techniques, 3rd party tools and OLE.

Target Audience

The user level of this book is Intermediate - Advanced. The back cover states that this book is aimed at developers who know and use PowerBuilder and are looking to maximize their productivity. I would say that about half of the book succeeds in its aim, covering familiar subjects such as datawindows but with more detail and giving a few tips and techniques; covering new PB9 subjects and giving some useful productivity tips on the IDE for example. The remainder of the book serves as a point of reference such as the 200 pages on database connectivity which would be very useful for users developing for multiple database platforms.

Content

I would split the book into 3 main areas - an advanced look at existing features; an introduction to new PB9 features and a database connectivity reference.

The advanced look at existing features didn't uncover anything new for me but would serve as a useful reminder to someone who hasn't used PowerBuilder for a while. There are some good real life clear examples with supporting code and a few undocumented and therefore unsupported techniques.

The chapters on the new PB9 features would have been better if they had been more detailed. For example the chapter on XML datawindows assumes you know XML which is fair enough but it is a short and not very detailed chapter. In fact the PowerBuilder user guide provided with the product is much more detailed and useful than the chapter in this book. No tips or techniques are given in the chapter either. The chapter on the IDE and source control integration is useful especially if you are coming from PowerBuilder 7 and haven't used PowerBuilder 8.

The section on Database Connectivity is a useful reference point if you are developing for multiple database platforms but doesn't fit very well into the title of PowerBuilder 9 - Advanced Client Server Development. It does give a good amount of detail on an area that has previously not been covered particularly well in the past.

Writing Style

The writing style of the chapters vary because of the number of different authors. In general most of the chapters are written in a clear and concise manner with some good realistic examples. However some are a little too brief especially some of the new subjects areas such as XML Datawindows and OrcaScript. There is not enough detail and clear examples given for these new features.

Conclusion

If you haven't used PowerBuilder for a while or you are still using a version prior to Version 8 then you will find some useful information in this book, likewise if you are developing for multiple database platforms then the Database section will be very beneficial. I believe the book is more aimed at the intermediate level of knowledge rather than the advanced. Personally I wouldn't buy this book for myself because I wouldn't get enough new material from it that is not covered in the PowerBuilder User Guide.

Karen.baker@seabass.co.uk (www.seabass.co.uk)

Good for advanced beginner or journeyman level.......2003-10-07

If you are an advanced PB programmer you will not find much here unless you have been stuck in versions 6.5 (or maybe even 7 but less so) and earlier. The authors give a reasonable overview of the new IDE and source control integration. There is also discussion of the newer features such as Powerbuilder Native Interface, XML datawindows, command line deployment, and error handling. Over 200 pages are devoted to database connectivity which may be of interest if you support multiple platforms.

Aside from some minor factual errors and the occasional typo, the information and examples are concise and to the point (although many leave out even rudimentary error checking which is vital in any 'real' application).

I bought the book since there haven't been any 'real' PB books since version 7 and this one details the new IDE.

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