4 comments about Nuclear Reactor Analysis.

1. A good, solid, book for a undergraduate student in nuclear engineering or anyone with a physical sciences background who is interested in learning more about nuclear power operations and analysis. Very clear text with plenty of information on topics (i.e., reactor design) that often confuse students. -Mike Walker Thorsvedtt



2. This book is one of the two "Bibles" of Nuclear Engineering. LaMarsh's "Introduction to Nuclear Engineering" is the other IMHO. For those interested in a broad overview of Nuclear Engineering, it is my opinion that you should start with the LaMarsh book. Duderstadt's book contains a lot more math and can be difficult to follow without some solid math background and a few Nuc Eng courses under your belt. There are a few cases in the book where a series of equations leading to a conclusion skip a few steps. It's not as bad as the old "A=B and from this we see that e = mc2!" joke, but some work is required.

   That said, this books drawbacks are also its strengths. It has stood the test of time [my copy is over 20 years old] and will probably remain relevant for another 20 years. It is to my knowledge well prepared and error free, and a must-have for anyone interested in nuclear reactor engineering.




3. This is a great introductory textbook for Nuclear Reactor Analysis/ One-Speed diffusion model/Multigroup Diffusion method and core design. It was published a while ago - in 1976, but remains to be one of the best textbook on the topic.



4. Everything went right and smooth with my order. I got the book on Amazon way cheaper than in a library... Good value!

5 comments about Sound for Film and Television, Second Edition (Book & CD-ROM).

1. An easy to read, logical guide to practical production sound. If you only ever read one book on audio this should be it.



2. This is an excellent book though it contains many errors in the mathematics of decibels. The other 2 greats books are: Audio in Media by Stanley R. Alten and Sound for Picture by Tom Kenny.



3. The book covers comprehensive topics about its subject: from psychoacoustics to (for example) sound editing techniques to (for example) film sound synchronization methods to (in the last chapter) dynamic range for various media for master prints. First that comes to mind when I remember the accompanying CD is the demonstrations of various microphone directivity patterns (but there is something more in it).
   
   The topics aren't discussed in very deep levels (but are good enough), but are reinforced with author's wide experience I would like to admit (examples how the sound was worked out are taken from such films as "Jurassic Park", "Star Wars"). I found this book very interesting as I didn't know very much about film sound techniques, for specialists this book is of lower interest I think (although it contains some handy material, e.g. comparisons of various sound recording formats, etc.)
   
   Contains some errata, but I cannot find it right now.



4. This book is an excruciating read and, if it didn't hold information I need, I'd toss it from my book stacks with satisfaction. Holman is clearly not a gifted writer and appears to have little interest in attempting to achieve such status. What you get with SOUND for Film and Television is like a condensed instruction manual for the study, technical names and mechanics screwed together with lazy, careless language. Forget skipping through to the middle to read up on a particular microphone, the crammed description will be completely composed of references to complex information from past chapters. You will have to read it through, as arduous (and potentially impossible) as the task may be, to access any of the valuable details buried within.



5. Great book, very easy to read and follow... it's like a boot camp course. It's written by an eminence in the industry, Tomlinson Holman, who has a vast experience within the audio industry. If you are serious about post-production, this book is a must have.
   
   Raúl Torres
   Puerto Rico

5 comments about Motorcycle Basics Techbook (Haynes Manuals)(2nd Edition).

1. This book is not and does not try to be a shop manual. What it is, is a well-done primer on the theory behind the various systems in a motorcycle. The chapter on engines was fascinating to me. It explains, in rough historical/chronological order, the development of various engine designs, and how each was a reponse to weaknesses in previous designs and how each one introduced it own problems (while at the same time older designs were tweaked in various ways to minimize problems). The design variations include number of cyllinders, number of crankshafts, orientation of cyllinders with respect to each other, orientation of the crankshaft with respect to the motorcycle, ratio of bore diameter to stroke length, various arrangements of valve trains, etc. Two stroke engines are also covered. Illustrations are extensive, but tend to be pulled from other books or from manufacturers manuals, so sometimes include unnecessary detail, especially in the carburation chapter (which was very complex and a little over my head). Some chapters (e.g., exhaust systems) were not as detailed as the engine chapter and were slightly disappointing.

   I followed this book up with Keith Cameron's Sportbike Performance Hankbook, which explains some systems in more detail. Cameron's book is ostensibly a book for souping up your motorcycle, but in the end managed to convince me that I want to keep my bike stock unless I don't plan to use it on the street: the manufacturers generally know what they are doing.

   One caveat about Motorcycle Basics Manual: the book was authored in England and uses U.K. terminology. A glossary at the end gives U.S. equivalents, but a few things are left out.




2. 
   
   I'm a young(ish) woman who is absolutely new to the world of motorcycles. I bought this book from Amazon after reading through the posted reviews, and am pleased to say that it was an excellent purchase.
   
   
   I really don't have anything to compare this book to, but I can say that it has been a wonderful introduction to the nuts and bolts of motorcycles. I never really understood what constituted an engine before picking up this book, but now I can talk intelligently on many mechanical matters with my grease-monkey mates. It's also a great reference when you're struck by a killer question about the intricacies of gear shifting, or whatever.
   
   
   The book's only drawback, from my point of view, is that the text is rather dense, which makes it slightly daunting to sit down with. All in all though, my thanks and congratulations go out to the author.



3. Aside from the occasional spelling differences (tyre instead of tire, etc.) this serves as the perfect introduction to the inner workings of your bike. It's not too complicated, nor does it treat its readers as idiots; rather it's a great blend of information and photos that allow you to learn the core ideas behind the metal and plastic. What I really liked was the build up of old to new styles of all the various systems it covers. As the title plainly states this is a basics book, and it won't get you to the point of being a mechanic, but after reading this you should be able to begin a study of motorcycle repair without a problem. This is money worth spending if you aren't already educated about engine systems.



4. I found this book an extremely interesting read and a great introduction to the basics of motorcycles. A must read for motorcycle enthusiasts looking to get a grip of the basics!



5. For Begineers who want to understand the basiscs of their machine..
   
   I found it very easy to follow in the most part, not to use on a certain bike, but with a bike manual it will be great help.
   
   It covers a wide variety, but I sensed speceific hostility to my baby (Harley Davidson), but oh well, Loved by few, respected by many :).

5 comments about Volkswagen Vanagon Official Factory Repair Manual 1980-1991 Including Diesel Syncro and Camper (Volkswagen).

1. this book is quite interesting : you can find information that you cannot find anywhere else. nevertheless, it is not really a bible since some explanation are not enough detailled & the black & white pictures are not always very accurate.
   I think you'll not use 50% of the book depending of your vanagon type & age
   It is good to have this book if you can afford it since you'll always use it one day or another.



2. I bought my vanagon new in El Paso, Tx and have been at the mercy of dealers and their mechanics ever since. This has allowed me to repair at least some of the simpler things and understand a whole lot more about some of the others. I have had to shuffle around in the book a bit because it covers a lot more than my van but everything that I've looked for has been there. Great for the shade tree mechanic!



3. I found this manual after my sister asked me to order it for her from the manufacturer. Well, I decided to browse around a little and found that, yet again, Amazon delivered the goods so to speak. Needless to say, it was considerably cheaper. The end result - brother-in-law said it is perfect for his needs as he usually does a lot of the work on their VW van himself, but occasionally gets stumped. This manual fills in a lot of the gaps. Those are his comments as I know zip about anything mechanical.



4. This manual has ben a great help when working on my vanagon.one of the bast repair manuals that I have used.



5. In Vanagon circles, this is known as the " Bentley Bible ". If you plan on doing any work on your Vanagon. even simple maintenance, this manual is a must have.

5 comments about Fundamentals of Vehicle Dynamics (R114).

1. Most dynamics books are kinda hard to read or dont give adequate examples/problems. I found this book to be useful and easy to read. It covers nearly every topic of the automobile from tires to ride and handling, braking conditions and aerodynamics. All pretty concise but worthwhile. The $100 or so will definitely be worth it. Makes a great reference book for any basic auto dynamics needs.



2. If you are into equations, knock yourself out, this book has a lot of them, and for me, it explains them enough to understand them. I had to remember my days at the university, but it has definitely what I was looking for. I guess is a must for anyone trying to build a car seriously



3. Professor Gillispie did an outstanding job with this book. He provides a comprehensive introduction to the mechanics of tire forces, handling, ride-quality, noise, vibration, and durability. The level of detail is just right for those new to the field, or needing an occasional reference book. A judicious mix of theory and practice. Highly recommended.



4. This is an excellent book for the basics of vehicle dynamics. It covers the main topics in a straightforward, easy to understand way and has good examples. The only thing preventing a 5 star rating is that the book is a little dated having been written in the late 1980's. Some of the references therefore need to be updated.



5. I first have to say I am surprised that I am the only one to give this book such a poor rating. From a "reading for leisure" standpoint, this book explains the basic concepts of vehicle dynamics pretty well; however, as a engineering book (from SAE no less), this is probably one of the worst books I have ever purchased in my entire educational and professional career.
   
   As one of the reviews mentioned, the "unexplained 'magic numbers' in formulas" take time to get used to. I am not one to just accept formulas as is. As a graduate student, I like to know some thought behind the formulas I am using. In addition to the 'magic numbers', the author poorly explains many formulas. As an example, the author does not explain whether the sprung weight or total weight should be used when determining steady-state cornering. In all the formulas, the total weight is used; however, when determining changes due to body roll, only the sprung weight should be taking into account. Since unsprung weight only accounts for 5% of the total weight, maybe the author decided that was "close enough"; however, he should explain his reasoning in his assumptions. The author does this throughout the book.
   
   This brings me to my next point: poor examples and very few examples. The review from the individual who said this book had great examples must have been a review for another book. I can count on one hand the number of examples in this entire book. The few examples that are used are grossly over-simplified and very poor in explaining the steps involved in finding a solution.
   
   Additionally, the author rambles on too much. His wordy explainations could easily be condensed into fewer pages. As an engineer, I like conceptual explainations, but I don't like wasting my time either. One particular example that comes to mind is a formula written in paragraph form. Instead of just typing out the formula, the author takes a paragraph to write out the formula. After taking about 30 minutes of reading the paragraph and trying to find out the meaning of it (along with 2 other graduate students), I finally gave up.

2 comments about Deformation and Fracture Mechanics of Engineering Materials.

1. I bought this book for a one-credit course at Virginia Tech and hardly ever used it. That, I believe, chiefly reflects excellent teaching methodology and not insufficiency of this book.

   Back in Switzerland, I took a big, long course in deformation and fracture mechanics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, and all of a sudden this book came in handy for extra illustrations and alternative explanations. While it is particularly excellent when treating fracture and devotes much space to this subject, deformation mechanics are often simplified or contain omissions in the derivation. Unfortunately, my course went into further detail than Dr. Hertzberg's book, so for the interesting details on deformation (e.g. a good explanation of the Lüders Bands) I must search elsewhere.

   However, readers will appreciate the last chapter of case studies, which is instructive and sometimes even humorous (though it might require black humor to find a bursting tank of molasses funny).

   In short, if you're into things that break, this book will make you happy. If you want to know what happens before, this book will help, but won't by any means be exhaustive.




2. Many of the explanations used in the book were well written but a bit hard to understand. Equations jump out of nowhere without any elaboration and the problems asked at the end come with no supplement or explanation in the chapter to help you out. I mostly had to look up the subjects on wikipedia to really get a better understanding of much of the material. Although I acknowledge this to be a book for an upper division class, so I'm not too disappointed overall with it, seeing as how I've already taken the introductory course to material sciences and it was my fault for really forgetting the minor details needed to fully comprehend the subject.

4 comments about Probabilistic Methods of Signal and System Analysis (Oxford Series in Electrical and Computer Engineering).

1. As a professor in Electrical Engineering, I highly rate this book, describing it as the best text for an introductory course on prabability theory, statistics, random signals, and the analysis of systems with random signals as inputs. If you teach from this book, you can't go wrong!



2. While probably not the worst book I've had to learn from, it seems like the people who wrote this book subscribe to the same philosophy of teaching that my professor uses, which is namely to keep closely to theory and not use too many examples. At least not any fully worked out examples, and hardly any with actual numbers. As a result, it's difficult to learn and easy to get lost.

   At the same time, I've looked in some other books and they're not much better. Woe is the student who has to learn solely from such an obtuse book (woe is me)




3. I read this book several times and I can say that it is the best statistical&probability book for engineers or for computer scientist. My major is Image Processing (DSP, DIP, DVP) and reading this book helps me to increase my professional knowlege and rise my skills. I sincerelly recommend this book for any non-math major person. Now this book becomes desktop book for me like "Numercal Recipes in C" for any algorithm developer.



4. My school uses this book to teach random signals, and I feel that the content is quite lacking. The theory presented is too basic, and the authors don't provide any further explantions. The examples presented are too simple and too few. Additionally, they don't show how harder problems can be solved. The end-of-chapter problems aren't very easy to solve if you're only consulting this book. There are exercises presented for you to try during the chapter in addition to the end-of-chapter problems, but the book doesn't show how to do these problems and only gives you the final answers instead. On top of this, sometimes, the answers for the exercises are switched, leaving you wondering for a few minutes what you might have done wrong.

   As a comparision to other books, the chapter about several random variables in this book was approximately 35 pages long, while the book by Papoulis (another book I've consulted) covers this material in 70 pages. I've taken a look at some other books, and one book that comes close to my tastes is Schaum's Outline of Probability, Random Variables, and Random Processes since it provides a whole lot of examples I can work through.

5 comments about VW Beetle & Karmann Ghia 1954 through 1979 All Models (Hayne's Repair Manual).

1. I recently purchased my first Beetle, a 1961 model year. I intend performing a ground-up restoration. I just received my copy of this book and have read it cover to cover. This is a very honest book and offers easy step by step guides in servicing the vehicle and carrying out all mechanical repairs. What it doesn't cover in sufficient detail is any sort of body / interior restoration, but then it doesn't claim to do so. A great book and I'm looking forward to getting my hands dirty.



2. the book is fantastic explanation is good ,may be some diagrams in showing all components in order will help people that dont like reading much
   thanks



3. Its been almost 40 years since I last owned a beetle. I wanted to drop the engine on my 71 super beetle. It gave great instructions on how to do that with the least possible pain. Success.



4. I own a 1967 Karmann Ghia and my dad owns a 1968 Karmann Ghia. We are both very disappointed in this book. I did a lot of research before I bought it, and it seemed to have all the information that I needed. The wiring diagrams are weak, and it does not give any direction for rebuilding any of the components. The wiper motor went bad, and the book only said that it would be easier and cheaper to replace it. Once I opened it up it took me less than half an hour to fix, and that's including the it took my to fabricate one of the parts.
   This book does have a lot of good general information (torque specs, type of oil/ gear lube needed, etc.) but it is far from a full restoration guide.
   I have never used this book for a Beetle, but I imagine I would run into similar problems



5. Over the last ten years or so Haynes manuals have steadily gotten more and more generic and unfortunately useless, with that comment in mind this particular manual on the beetle scores as above average. It still has a few weak areas but the other reviewers covered them well enough.

4 comments about Schaum's Outline of Strength of Materials 4th Edition.

1. This book is very good. First year students will find it very user friendly. Even a graduate engineer may need it to brush up previouly learned skills. All topics - e.g. material properties, stress, beam deflection, bending moments, columns, etc. are covered in very lucid manner. A must book for EVERY engineer.



2. I have already finished courses in strength of materials etc., and am using this book as a reference, instead of those voluminous handbooks. The book is very well written and William Nash has an excellent, straight forward way of putting forth the key points. The book has all the information you might need for a first course in strength of materials. I also use this book in conjunction with a finite element text to give me the theoretical values for comparison. In summary, if you need a solid backup for your textbook and a useful reference, you won't go wrong with this one.



3. I found the book to be very useful in that it summarizes my class textbook and offers many worked out example problems. I have since purchased Schaum's for my other classes and I find them equally useful



4. This is an excellent book. Very well written and with very explicit examples for a beginner or a pro.
   The new facts are the programs for some beams, columns and typical elements of strength of materials.
   The reading is easy and the processes are very simple and the exmaples are very clear.

5 comments about Robin Williams Web Design Workshop (Robin Williams Design Workshop).

1. I borrowed this book from the library to see if it was worth purchasing. It has some great design tips and ideas but nothing that can't be found in other books in greater detail. The glossy color pages make it fun to browse through, but there isn't enough detailed information on the various design topics.
   
   I skimmed through the book within two or three days and don't see it as an item I will bother to purchase for my personal Web design library.



2. Several years ago I met with the main designer at company that created the web pages for several pharmaceutical distributors in Canada. At the time, I was well versed in creating web pages using several of the professional programs including Dreamweaver, as well as writing code. The designer, however, said that they did all of their designing in Photoshop and then used a slicing technique in ImageReady before editing the site in Dreamweaver. I hate to admit it, but I had never heard of creating web pages that way, so I went home and began looking through all of my web designing books to see if I could find a description of the technique. Yes, I found it in this book.
   
   I don't want to give the impression that this book is all about Photoshop, it clearly isn't. But, at least for me, the Photoshop information has been extremely useful! Though I do not design the majority of my sites using Photoshop, there are some that I could not have created as easily with out it. I have not used other applications that supposedly are similar to Photoshop/ImageReady, so I can't say if they can or can not do the things that Photoshop/ImageReady can.
   
   Nevertheless, since the time I opened this book and took a real look, I have used this book more than any other web books on my shelf. Sometimes it is to simply look at the pictures to spark a new idea, sometimes it is to review a specific designing technique.
   
   Honestly I do not think Robin can write a bad book.



3. Robin Williams does an excellent job of providing clear suggestions, good rationales, and lots of examples to make her point.



4. Because web sites are made with computers, somehow it seems that the vast majority of authors of "how to make a web site" books focus almost entirely on the technical aspects, as somehow devoid of relation to the practical art of making sites that work.
   
   This book is remarkable, because it is written from the point of view of working, experienced web/graphic designers.
   
   As the authors make clear, making a web site is a lot more than just using a computer and making pretty pictures. They clarify what you really need to know about the entire process. It covers everything about the development cycle, from clarifying the site requirements with the client, to making thumbnail sketches, to practical, nitty-gritty details of how to make an interesting, "non-boxy" site.
   
   If you want to really understand the entire process of developing effective, beautiful web sites for people as a business, this is the best book I have ever seen on the subject.



5. I love Robin Williams' books and this one was no exception when it came out. However, anyone doing web design in 2007/8 needs to have a companion book to counter the now incorrect suggestions in this book. Tables are not longer considered the only way, or really even "a" way to build web pages. Web standards have become essential if you want to comply with accessibility or just be able to make changes to your site. And if that sounds like only geeks would care, that's just not the case anymore. I would recommend finding this book used, look through it for some good ideas, and have a copy of one of Eric Meyers' books around for understanding CSS (an essential these days) and web standards in general.
   
   I'm hoping Robin comes up with a new edition taking out nested tables and adding in more than the 4 pages of CSS. That's not to say it needs to be a CSS book (there are more than enough of those out there), but since we have to go in that direction, we could use a little more help in applying the principles she's advancing with the standards of the day. As soon as it comes out, I'll have my order in.