Media Courses Uk 1998

Book Description

Open your notebooks, sharpen your pencils, and get ready for a history lesson like none you've ever experienced. Yes, that's right: you're about to learn everything you could ever want to know about the world history of men's magazines—not sports, not fashion, not hunting or fishing or how to build a birdhouse in ten easy steps, but those titillating periodicals embracing the subject dearest to all heterosexual men's hearts and other organs: the undraped female form. A twenty-five-year veteran of the genre, former men's magazine editor Dian Hanson traces its development from 1900 to 1980 in six massive and informative volumes.

Volume I explores the period from 1900, when sexy magazines first started to appear in France and Germany, through the decades of subterfuge and censorship up to the great global change wrought by WWII. Along the way the USA, England, Argentina, and many other countries join the publishing fun.

Volume II starts in the post-war period of the 1940s when the US surged ahead in magazine production while the rest of the world rebuilt and recovered, and ends in 1957 when censorship at last began to ease.

Volumes III and IV cover the short but crucial transformation period of 1958 to 1967: ten years in which the world and its men's magazines changed out of all recognition to anything that had came before. Volume III begins with the redefinition of American obscenity laws and follows the flowering of mass distribution, or newsstand, men's magazines around the world. Volume IV traces the roots of "special interest" and under-the-counter publications during this same period, ending with the Scandinavian sexual/social revolution that resulted in the repeal of all obscenity laws for most of Northern Europe.

Finally, in Volumes V and VI you'll find the years 1968 to 1980: the post-sexual revolution era of sudden publishing freedom. Volume V covers the newsstands of the world, showing everything from homemade hippie `zines to periodicals for big bottom fanciers.

Volume VI, the final word in this encyclopedic series, is reserved for the most daring and extreme edges of the publishing field. Here you'll peek inside the adult bookstores of Denmark, Sweden, Germany, the US and Japan to see what sexual freedom really meant.

Customer Reviews:

A MAJOR oversight in Volume 1 of this six-volume work.......2007-08-03

I already have Volume 2 of Dian Hanson's encyclopedic _History of Men's Magazines_, detailing what I believe to be the golden age of that genre (the 1950's), so I was really looking forward to getting Volume 1. This volume is presented just as beautifully as the other five volumes in the series, with lots of gorgeous full-page color and B&W photos.

However, there is a very big oversight, not to say error, in the material contained in this volume. Let me explain; Volume 1 bills itself as covering the history of men's magazines from 1900 to the period immediately after World War II. OK. So where are all the pictures from 1900 to the beginning of the 1920's? Certainly, there weren't very many magazines specializing in girlie art or photography before the Roaring Twenties, but France did have several, most notably the famous "La Vie Parisienne", which started publishing in, I believe, the 1870's and ran almost continuously for seven or eight decades. There was a LOT of first-class girlie art in that 'zine from the 1870's to the 1910's (including some classic art produced during World War I) that Hanson could have located and reproduced. Also, what about the Gibson Girl in "Life"? That's not strictly "girlie" art within the parameters set by this series, to be sure, but she was such an iconic figure that she should have gotten at least a couple of pictures. Or what about all the "French postcards" of the Gay Nineties and after? Those directly adumbrated the later girlie magazines, and also go unrepresented, at least in the pictures.

Furthermore, Hanson errs seriously in putting a large number of pictures from the 1950's and 1960's in a volume that is expressly _not_ dedicated to those decades (the 1960's, in fact, get two volumes later on in the series). She may have intended to show how girlie photography developed over the decades, but there was plenty of room later on in the series to do that. The space misappropriated to those pictures would much better have been allocated to the kind of imagery I described in the previous paragraph.

Sorry, Dian. I really like Volume 2. Volume 1, however, is a rather disappointing introduction to what should have been a definitive reference work on a little-studied genre.

The sort men like.......2004-11-27

I can't think of another publisher, other than Taschen, who would risk publishing a six-volume, extravagantly produced history of men's magazines and who better than Dian Hanson to write it. She has had plenty of experience in this section of the magazine trade.

This volume covers the fourteen years from 1945 and really it is not too interesting until Hefner starts Playboy in 1953. Until then the market was basically down-market cheesecake and burlesque oriented magazines though there are chapters devoted to John Willie's 'Bizarre' and Lenny Burtman's 'Exotique' but these were hardly mass-market titles. Chapter three, nicely, features titles from Argentina and Mexico and chapter six covers England. Playboy was the title that makes this history interesting, unique when it first came out but not for long, titles like Nugget, The Dude, Swank, Rogue and others made this genre of publishing sort of respectable.

The seventeen chapters follow the same format, a few hundred words of copy and then pages and pages of covers and spreads from the various titles. Chapter sixteen features the Top 5 Cover girls, Diane Webber, June Wilkinson, Jayne Mansfield, Bettie Page and predictably Marilyn as number one. Chapter seventeen is a neat finale, devoted to the tacky ads that appeared in the back of many men's titles. Major advertisers totally shunned most of this market for obvious reasons.

Fascinating though the book is I do have a major disappointment (so four stars) and that is the paper, a matt stock that soaks up the ink so that none of the covers sparkle. I've bought several other pop culture Taschen books this year and they have all had semi gloss stock that reproduces covers and illustrations so well. There are a few hundred color covers in 'The History of Men's Magazines' and frequently the whole page ones look soft and grainy, they are, after all, reproduced from something already printed, a different paper would have mostly avoided this. Another slight annoyance is the three-language text (English, French and German) all set in the same typeface so at the end of a column one naturally goes to the next column and it is German. To my mind it would have been preferable to run each language in its own text block.

Apart from the paper I thought the book was well worth having and if you
read the Product Description you'll see what the other five volumes cover.
When complete I think this will become the definitive work about this
corner of the publishing world. I'm already making shelf-room for the set.

Book Description

The 2nd Edition of The Billiard Encyclopedia is the only complete book ever written on the sport of billiards, pool and related accessories. Tracing the origins back to the ball and bat games of the Egyptians, the co-authors have provided a complete history of the billiards sport as we know it today. Lavishly illustrated with hundreds of stunning color-plates, many B&W photos, and numerous graphic illustrations, much of the visual imagery of this tome has never been seen by the public before. Taking over 8 years to assemble, this publication also includes important chapters on the legendary pool players, cue makers, table manufacturers, and important accessories which have allowed the sport to achieve a world-wide status.

Customer Reviews:

Reference book COMPLETE!!!.......2002-06-18

This is by far one of the most extensive books concerning the sport of billiards and pool. I often go to this resource before writing for pool publications; I also use it as a guide when shopping either online or traveling. There is more information here than perhaps EVER gathered in one book. Excellent photos and history in the wonderful reference material. If you are interested at all in this sport this is a must have! Worth every penny.

a must for all.......1998-05-25

This book captures the vivid history of a sport that has until recently been relatively unknown. Not onlyu in my opinion does this book capture the origins of the sport in a way never seen before as a piece of art it is relatively uncomprimised in the industry today.

Amazon.com

Thinking in Java is a printed version of Bruce Eckel's online materials that provides a useful perspective on mastering Java for those with previous programming experience. The author's take on the essence of Java as a new programming language and the thorough introduction to Java's features make this a worthwhile tutorial.

Thinking in Java begins a little esoterically, with the author's reflections on why Java is new and better. (This book's choice of font for chapter headings is remarkably hard on the eyes.) The author outlines his thoughts on why Java will make you a better programmer, without all the complexity. The book is better when he presents actual language features. There's a tutorial to basic Java types, keywords, and operators. The guide includes extensive source code that is sometimes daunting (as with the author's sample code for all the Java operators in one listing.) As such, this text will be most useful for the experienced developer.

The text then moves on to class design issues, when to use inheritance and composition, and related topics of information hiding and polymorphism. (The treatment of inner classes and scoping will likely seem a bit overdone for most readers.) The chapter on Java collection classes for both Java Developer's Kit (JDK) 1.1 and the new classes, such as sets, lists, and maps, are much better. There's material in this chapter that you are unlikely to find anywhere else.

Chapters on exception handling and programming with type information are also worthwhile, as are the chapters on the new Swing interface classes and network programming. Although it adopts somewhat of a mixed-bag approach, Thinking in Java contains some excellent material for the object-oriented developer who wants to see what all the fuss is about with Java.

Book Description

The legendary author Bruce Eckel brings Java to life with this extraordinarily insightful, opinionated and downright funny introduction. Thinking in Java introduces all of the language's fundamentals, one step at a time, using to-the-point code examples. More than virtually any other book, Thinking in Java helps you understand not just what to do -- but why. Eckel introduces all the basics of objects as Java uses them; then walks carefully through the fundamental concepts underlying all Java programming -- including program flow, initialization and cleanup, hiding implementations, reusing classes and polymorphism. Using extensive, to-the-point examples, he introduces error handling, exceptions, Java I/O, run-time type identification, and passing and returning objects. He covers the Java AWT, multithreading, network programming with Java -- even design patterns. The best way to understand the real value of this book is to hear what readers of the online version have been saying about it: "much better than any other Java book I've seen, by an order of magnitude..." "mature, consistent, intellectually honest, well-written and precise..." "a thoughtful, penetrating analytical tutorial which doesn't kowtow to the manufacturers..." "Thank you again for your awesome book. I was really floundering, but your book has brought me up to speed as quickly as I could read it!"For both beginner and experienced C and C++ programmers who want to learn Java.

* From the basics of object development, all the way to design patterns and other advanced topics.

* By the author of the best-selling Thinking in C++ -- winner of the 1995 Jolt Cola Award!

* On-line version has already received tens of thousands of hits -- there's a huge built-in demand for this book!

Customer Reviews:

Simply Put, This is the best of the best........2007-09-09

Only thing you have to keep in mind: don't try to read this book like a novel, never try to read it fast, it's a HARD and LONG commitment. you have to put aside at least 3 months to digest fully, read several pages together with several examples, read the comment for those examples, try it out yourself....

compared to other so-called 'good java' books, which all put fancy graphics and stuff, this one is plain but 'THE BEST', you will gain a lot from reading it.

I have been a java progammer for several years, this books still give me so many surprise ....

trust me, you won't regret buying it if you are really want to learn...

Java done right.......2007-08-29

This book - nor the author - needs any introduction for those who have read any of the previous editions of this book, or read other books written by Eckel (Thinking in C++ series). If you are new to Java - this is the book to get you going and get you started with the latest version of Java SE5 and 6. It covers everything, literally. The book is over 1400 pages, and it covers the JAVA programming language from the beginning to advanced topics such as parallel programming with threads and even GUI and user interface design. The topics are comprehensive and field with examples demonstrating the topic which is being discussed. The examples are relatively short in length, and get to the point. There is no one example that the author builds upon, making each chapter a discourse that can easily be read separately.

There have been many important improvement and new features added to Java SE5 such as Generics and such things as Enums and better String manipulation (StringBuilder class being a prime example). Generics - or programming with Templates if you are a C++ programmer - are the most important and complicated addition to this version of Java and the author spends plenty of time explaining it. As you may very well know, programming with templates is a very challenging and somewhat daunting task in C++, and it does not get much easier in Java. The challenge with the Java programming language is that the language must be backwards compatible with the older versions of Java. This has caused the language designers to make some rather difficult choices of how generics are used in Java. Bruce covers the topic very well, and takes about a quarter of the text to talk about generics and containers in Java.

Let's not forget the other things that make Java great; things such as its Object Oriented design and its ease of programming. The good-old topics such as polymorphism, interfaces, exception handling and I/O are covered in detail as one would expect. Improvements and additions are made to the topics are needed to cover advancements made to the language. Much of the semantics of C++ are slowly making it to Java; things such as Enums, formatting of the output as one does in printf(...). One of my favorites must be the concept of annotations, similar to pre-compile directives in C, and almost exactly the same as C#. Annotations are metadata that is added to your code which tags your code with information that you can use later. You can such things are suppressing warning messages, and denote deprecated methods and other user defined tags when needed.

Threading and parallel programming, graphical user interface design and libraries, runtime type information and design patterns and their implementations mark some of the other topics that are covered throughout the book. As with his other books, you can download an electronic version of this book from Bruce Eckel's web site. All the source code is also provided, and tested with JSE5.
This book marks another great achievement for Bruce - right next to his other books. Thinking in Java is easy to read, concise, complete and filled with examples and howto's. The author covers the latest advancements to the Java programming language, and does so with ease and clarity for the beginner to advanced readers.

Awesome Java book.......2007-07-03

A perfect book for ancient programmers seeking to update their skill to incorporate Java SE 1.5/1.6 programming

Don't buy this book to learn Java ..........2007-06-27

... if you want compare your solutions to the exercises with the author's. You will have to shell out another $20 directly to the author for solutions to the exercises -- if he ever gets around to completing the writing of those solutions. At the time I am writing this review, almost 15 months have passed since the book was published -- but still no solutions to the exercises. The author's last newsletter, circulated four weeks ago, said their publication was "imminent". I wonder what "imminent" means to him?

Barely adequate.......2007-04-23

I know many people think this book is excellent, but for me it was tedious, dull and impractical. And heavy! What's it weigh? 10 pounds? The pages are padded with -- I'm sorry, I just don't know a more tactful word for it -- drivel. Whatever marketing value a big thick programming book may have, it correlates negatively with usefulness, as in the present case.

Each of the examples and exercises seemed devised to illustrate some theoretical abstract aspect of OOPS (Object Oriented Programming Systems). I would have been more pleased with learning something that I might readily put to use. Compare this more abstract approach with the exposition of Perl in Wall's "Learning Perl". Wall dives right in to a loginid/password authentication application. Too simple for an e-commerce site, for sure, but sufficiently practical that you can imagine some use for it, to help cooperative coworkers avoid inadvertent interference, for example. Or consider Kernighan & Ritchie's "The C Programming Language", in which the first lesson following the "hello world" program is a Fahrenheit - Celsius conversion. Eckel is content that we print a few debugging lines indicating that a function -- er -- method (in OOPS-speak) -- executed. While showing that the method main() should accommodate some string arguments, Eckel doesn't mention using the arguments in the first dozen chapters (I didn't finish the book), although this is the sole input technique introduced.

Eckel should have started early with some kind of little project, like a craps game, or a shopping cart for a sporting goods merchant website, or even Fahrenheit - Celsius redux.

From time to time, Eckel mentions that there are situations in which the theory he presents has good use, but he leaves the reader to guess what those might be.

In short, the problem with this book is motivation. Should the reader ask "Why is this important?", there's no answer.

Average customer rating:

Superb
Good for students, less for real world
A good book on recursion implemented in Java
can be elegant and concise

Thinking Recursively with Java
Eric S. Roberts
Manufacturer: Wiley
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0471701467

Book Description

Updated and revised to include the use of Java for programming examples, this book provides readers with a thorough and clear introduction to the difficult concept of recursion
Uses a broad range of examples to illustrate the principles used in recursion and how to apply them to programming
Features imaginative examples along with various exercises and their solutions

Customer Reviews:

Superb.......2006-12-03

I don't program in Java, mainly c++. If you program in any c-style language you will find this book insightful in Thinking about recursion. The examples are great and the book is written in a very nice style. I came upon this book by chance. I owned a second hand copy of the original with included examples in Pascal. I much prefer this edition. To get the most out of this book, I'd recommend you attempt and think about the questions at the end of each of the chapters. The mathematical induction related chapter was eye opening and very enjoyable. I'd recommend any text that Eric Roberts has written, he is obviously gifted in his ability to educate and make it so rewarding in the process.

Thank you
Gary

Good for students, less for real world.......2006-05-29

Many pages spent in academic formulas make this book good for students only.

A good book on recursion implemented in Java.......2006-03-26

In mathematics and computer science, recursion specifies a class of objects or methods by defining a few very simple base cases or methods, and then defining rules to break down complex cases into simpler cases. Of the books out there on recursion, this really is a very good one. This is the 20th anniversary edition of the author's classic book "Thinking Recursively", which was published in 1986, with all code illustrations now done in the Java programming language. In fact, this book has the exact same number of chapters with the exact same names as the original edition with improved and expanded material.

The author does a good job of comparing the procedural approach to the recursive approach while showing an example of a producing a "context-free grammar" in which the procedural approach fails. This is not only a good discussion of the shortcomings of the procedural approach, it has some concrete examples that explain the concept of the context-free grammar better than programming language textbooks that are dedicated to the cause. Next the book offers up the recursive solution for the familiar and classic Tower of Hanoi problem. This section uses index cards to illustrate the solution. Necessary tasks for each subgoal are listed on the index card and are gradually marked out to indicate progress in moving the disks from one tower to the other. There are also discussions on permutations and sorting that are best solved by recursion. Of course, you can find this information in most good algorithm textbooks, but you can't usually find in those textbooks the code examples that show the complete solution to the problem that you find in this book.

Where the book is particularly excellent and unique is in later chapters when it includes recursive solutions to graphical applications and even introduces the GPen class, which is defined in the acm.graphics package developed by the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), for this purpose. Drawings of fractals are used as an application to show how one carries out this recursive drawing. It is also explained that Java's graphical classes, though extensive, are not suited to recursive drawing.

This book contains quite a bit of mathematics as well as Java code, so the reader should already be proficient in Java programming as well as discrete mathematics. This book could serve as a textbook since besides its many examples it includes exercises with solutions.

can be elegant and concise.......2006-02-10

This little book is a minor classic. First published 20 years ago, it gave an extended explanation of recursion, which is a vital concept in computer science. Of course, Java did not exist back then, so that edition used Pascal for the example code. But Pascal has undergone a severe downturn. Hence this second edition has code in Java.

Classic pedagogic examples like the Towers of Hanoi are shown to yield to a recursive assult. The code examples are concise. Not atypical of recursive methods. If you find the entire idea of recursion to be a little weird, you can focus on the text's examples. Unlike code for, say, GUI building, which is often voluminous, recursion is subtler. And far more elegant, if you appreciate this type of abstraction.

Roberts also brings up fractals. Another trendy topic. He shows that recursion and fractals are a very natural fit. The concept of self-similarity that underpins fractals is so easy to express in a recursive routine. If you understand recursion by this point in the text, a bonus may be the nice insight this gives into fractals.

The only minor dissenting point is that there seems to be no discussion about when you should not code a recursive solution, even if such a method is possible. If you have a large data set, that triggers a stack or heap overflow, due to repeated, recursive method calls, where each call pushes return address information for that method onto a stack. I have had to rewrite sections of my own code, that were originally recursive, due to this.

Thinking In Java & Eval Online Resrces P (3rd Edition)

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Thinking In Java & Eval Online Resrces P (3rd Edition)

Manufacturer: Prentice Hall PTR
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0131080822

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THINKING IN JAVA (2ND EDITION)
Bruce Eckel
Manufacturer: Pearson Education
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OIA97M

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Excerpt from Thinking in Java
Bruce Eckel
Manufacturer: Powersoft
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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Thinking In Java
Bruce Eckel
Manufacturer: Prentice Hall PTR
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OIW9H0

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Thinking in Java
Bruce Eckel
Manufacturer: Prentice Hall PTR
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OHX1J6

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