Fool
I read the first edition many years ago and while I don't remember the contents in detail, I get the impression that this edition has a much smoother opening than its predecessor, and is thus an easier book to read for less experienced programmers. The first few chapters teach the core techniques, with could recaps and summaries, as well as a lot of useful examples.
The second half of the book is much more advanced and focuses more on the technical aspects of regex engines, ways of maximizing efficiency in regular expressions and chapters on the implementation of regular expressions in various programming languages, including Perl, Java, and PHP.
It is really a classic work and a must for anyone who wants to learn how to think about regular expressions instead of just viewing a list of metacharacters found in a language documentation file.
This book is, like many in the “Learning...” series is a very compact introduction to the language. It is primarily, it seems to me, targeting readers who are familiar with at least one other programming language and need only become accustomed to the syntax of this new language. For this audience, which fortunately includes myself, this book is a decent and very compact introduction to all the most common elements of the language.
There are plenty of examples but they seem to get less obvious and assume more of the reader as the book goes on. The most annoying element of the book is that the author seems to delight in teaching you the 5 least common and most difficult ways of doing everything before telling you the easiest and most common way of doing something. This ought to be reversed.
This translation of Yu Yonghe's writings from his trip to Taiwan in the 17th century is great for those interested in Taiwan, in Qing dynasty travel literature and in Qing perceptions of non-Chinese (including Westerners).
The book can be read quickly and different parts of the journal entries by Yu Yonghe will be interesting to different people.
The translation strikes me as a bit too literal but that will be appreciated by more scholarly readers who may want to consult the original.
Some of the essays in this collection depend a lot on the context of time in place. They are mostly written in the 1960s and, depending on the essay, may require the reader to know a lot about Italy of that time or have read certain works of literature.
My favorite essays in this collection, in order of preference are: Letter to My Son, Regretfully, We Are Returning Your..., Fragments, and The Latest from Heaven.
Letter to My Son is a wonderful essay by a father who justifies his looking forward to giving his son toy weapons and playing violent warlike games with him. I couldn't have argued it better myself.
Regretfully... is a hilarious collection of letters from a publisher who has to regretfully turn down the proposed publication of such works as the Bible, Kafka's Trial, Dante's Divine Comedy etc.
The lectures will be of most interest to students of literature, those who are interested in writing fiction themselves, and also general fans of Eco's amazing world.
While the lectures were of mixed interest to me, they were full of personal anecdotes from Eco's life and writing and also much useful advice for aspiring writers.
A good attempt at a synthesis with lots of interesting anecdotes worth reading. Sources include a large number of US, British, French, and some Japanese archival docs, as well as others, and a lot of memoirs and other early postwar reminisces some of which are unpublished or took the form of letters to the author.
I can really appreciate how hard it is to bring this all together given the geographic and linguistic scope of the target. It really calls for a collaborative effort, especially in order to better bring in a larger number of voices since this work inevitably has a larger number of Western (and especially military voices) and only some voices from among those who experienced the occupation and its aftermath. However, given the restraints, there is a lot of meat in the book that is really worth looking at.
The section on saving POWs was a bit too long for my liking but will certainly be of interest to many Western readers. Somewhat weak attempt to tie the early postwar situation into an argument about military occupations and US in Iraq. Not enough space to really go into the issues and felt like an afterthought. I also felt the author struggled with the question of where to stop telling the story in each location - since each of the early postwar crises continue for years if not decades after the initial postwar experience.
Of great interest to anyone studying early postwar East Asia - and could well accompany Bayly's & Harper's even more dense Forgotten Wars, which is published around the same time. Whereas Spector's book gives you more of a collection of rich snapshots to accompany the politics of the aftermath of the Japanese empire, B & H's book gives a very detailed narrative of the political and violent struggles that follow. There is room now for another book which focuses more closely on the social and cultural legacies and changes that followed the collapse of the Japanese empire on a large regional scale.
While full of references and footnotes and the authors have clearly done a great deal of research the style of the book weaves an elaborate web of conspiracy that makes me very reluctant to buy the whole story.
The book depends on the kinds of guilt-by-association and pointing out of coincidences that should always only point a historian to issues that need to be confirmed with further research, rather than form the key hinges in a complex accusation. If you are interested in Japanese and East Asian history of the period, however, the book at least brings up personages, events, and potentially damning connections that can send you to other sources or if you are a historian, spark interest in new topics.
Learned a lot and enjoyed it immensely but the chapters are each very separate projects, some far better than others. For those who have read Judt's later works, they will recognize earlier versions of many of ideas here.
Wonderful range of essays. Exceptional but for one or two of the less argumentative essays. Covers a range of key topics while also has a useful opening introduction which plays with the ideas of “myths of nationalism” but in this case “myths of internationalism”
Really enjoyed most of the chapters here and learned a lot. I do feel that the whole work could have been tied together somewhat better.
The quality varies quite a bit from review to review within this text but as a whole this was an incredibly useful volume for a newcomer such as myself to get oriented in several decades of debates in human geography. Wish the various reviews connected to each other somewhat better.
Fast easy read, nice for its summaries of the existing research of sleep across a broad range of issues by a leading contributor to the field. Includes an appendix with some straightforward tips for sleeping better.
An interesting, provocative, and as always with Moyn, a beautifully written book. The scope of the argument is a lot less than the title might suggest, and its constituent parts could have told a more cohesive story. There was not enough engagement with the variety of literature on this already.
A fun and informative book if you are already interested in the topic, while others will find it dry and missing out on the potential for a more overtly spatial history of the teahouse. With all the rich material you find in the book it would not be difficult to compose such a book.
Great translations and detailed notes. Great to have the works together in translation. No fault of translators but these five major works plus some misc. materials has a lot of repetition.
I was pleasantly surprised by this older work. A wonderfully clear presentation of the central problem of Japanese Zen's relationship to society and moral reasoning. Provides an overview of some of the major critiques and defenses and has two chapters with the authors own suggestions on how to address moral questions with the “material” available to Zen approaches. For more detail see later work by Ives.
Nice work with some great chapters of wide interest and others that are probably most helpful for those with a deep technical background.
Probably the most important memoir from early postwar Taiwan, cited in almost every work I have read about Taiwan on the post 1945 period. As with all such memoirs needs to be read and used with care but I am interested to see that this book, published long after the events he describes match contemporary reports I saw filed by Kerr in state department archives I came across from when he was based at the consul in Taiwan.