One of the few books I read twice. Some characters that (like me) tend to melancholic observation of their surroundings will easily be absorbed by this book. Others won't understand it.
For the language: the book is 40 years old (which makes it one of the originals of a genre, only copied over and over). Especially the word "phoney" appears disturbingly often, but it's easy to get used to it.

I found this book in a box outside a house that I was passing by near Hamburg. I thought I might read it one day to train english comprehension. What a lucky break. This book helped me change my life. It's so full of life, of freedom and spirit that I treated it as a medicine rather than as a book.
Miller recapitulates his years in Paris somewhere in the 1930s. He chose to be a writer and to go to Paris after quitting his job in New York. What he chose was a life in poverty and hunger, but also in freedom and lust for life. Free of attachments, he was free to imagine everything there is. The book was illegal in the States for 30 years, because of several sexually explicit scenes. But that isn't the offending part in my eyes. Miller is constantly ranting against the people he hang out with, and is never in doubt about his own abilities, to become a great writer mostly.
He was living to the fullest, and reading his memoires reminded me of all the things I had let into my life, that were suppressing my freedom and my will to go where I wanted to go.
I can't say anything more than just recommend to get over the first 20 pages of this book. They are hard to get by, and that may be because you realize there is no story here. But maybe it's because you have to accept what Miller is about. He is not explaining it to you and he is not waiting for you. He doesn't need you. He became a true artist by starting to live to the fullest and never stopped believing in it. He is one of my heroes.

I read this book because I wanted to know what Knowledge Management was about. I got a book from the business side. The authors are from the University Of Michigan and give a lot of examples how companies should establish a culture of error alertness - every employee should be looking for the unexpected all the time.
I recommend this book to MBA students...

I bought this book to get into XML. A lot of authors contributed to the chapters, so there might be good or bad chapters, but mostly the style of writing is pretty good and professional.
The book introduces XML itself, explains what metadata is and explains a lot of XML standards, such as XML Schema or Relax NG. It also contains some case studies that deal with XML meta data. There, the book stops being really helpful. A number of the introduced standards have never again made it to come up anywhere I looked (and I don't mean Relax NG here, I can't even remember their names). I think they tried to cover a lot of promising approaches and made a few wrong picks. That's ok, but it isn't really helpful if you're picking up the latter half of the book any later than 2001.
But I must say, I did pick up the first half of the book a few weeks ago to learn XML Schemas again and have a few examples, so I'm glad I have it on the shelf.

If you don't really know what XML is, this book is too hard for you. If you do and you're sick of all the introductory books and tutorials, give this a try!This book is a really useful book full of useful tutorials. It deals with the possible ways you can work with XML. It has examples in scripting languages (ASP and JSP) and a lot of XSLT. I particularly got a lot inspiration by the XSLT part. Some of the XSLT examples get pretty sophisticated, for example with the use of the key() - function.
If you don't really know what XML is, this book is too hard for you. If you do and you're sick of all the introductory books and tutorials, give this a try!

Ein Versuch, jedermann zu erklären, warum Computer nicht alles können. Ein israelischer Informatikprofessor erklärt in aller Ruhe, was Informatikstudenten im ersten Semester auch begreifen müssen:
Was sind Komplexitätsklassen von Algorithmen und was bedeutet es, wenn ein Problem NP-hart ist?
Was bedeutet es, wenn ich nicht weiß, ob ein gegebenes Programm jemals anhalten wird?
Im späteren Teil wird es ziemlich komplex und am Ende diskutiert Harel Anwendungsprobleme für die Zukunft wie Sprachprogramme und dergleichen.
Man könnte es auch "Computerkomplexität für Dummies" nennen (wobei das nichts Schlechtes ist, Bücher der "... für Dummies" - Reihe hat auch mancher Experte im Schrank versteckt :-) ).
Es gibt ein bisschen Abzug für die etwas komische deutsche Übersetzung.

Dieses Buch ist umsonst als PDF im Netz erhältlich (allerdings auf Englisch). Ich habe es mir dann nochmal auf Deutsch gekauft (aber leider noch nicht gelesen), weil es mir auf Englisch gut gefallen hatte. Rothbart ist Schüler des berühmten von Mises. Beide sind meines Wissens Vertreter der sogenannten "Österreichischen Schule" der Wirtschaftswissenschaft. Diese geißelt den Einfluß, den Regierungen über Zentralbanken auf die Wirtschaft nehmen, indem sie den Zins künstlich beeinflussen und Scheingeld (sogenanntes Fiat-Geld) ausgeben. Sie fordert die Rückkehr zum Gold-Standard, die Bindung der Währung an ein wirkliches Konstrukt (anstelle eines unwirklichem wie Fiat-Geld).
Es ist sicher interessant, jetzt, da der Dollar an Kraft verliert und Yen und Euro an Bedeutung zunehmen, zu sehen, wie das System überhaupt entstanden ist. Rothbart geht auf die Geschichte der Geldwirtschaft ein, von der Steinzeit bis ins 20. Jahrhundert und der Abkehr vom Goldstandard. Nachdem er seine Theorie eines funktionierenden Systems erörtert hat, folgt abschliessend eine Übersicht über die großen Wirtschaftskrisen des 20. Jahrhunderts und Rothbarts Interpretation derselben.
Wenn man im Kopf behält, dass dies keine neutrale Sicht ist, sondern eine recht extreme Position, wird man viel mitnehmen können und dann vielleicht in Ruhe entscheiden, wie überzeugend man es findet. Vielleicht sind beim Thema Wirtschaft überhaupt nur stark vertretene Positionen lehrreich...