General Books

The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition (2nd Edition)

Frederick P. Brooks

Amazon Price: $33.11 List Price: $39.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Addison-Wesley Professional Amazon Marketplace: 88 new & used starting at $18.24

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Computer Science -> Software Engineering -> General
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Computer Science -> Software Engineering -> General AAS
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Computer Science -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 128 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Software Development 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering is a book on software project management by Fred Brooks, whose central theme is that "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later." This idea is known as Brooks's law, and is presented along with the second-system effect and advocacy of prototyping. The work was first published in 1975, and republished as an anniversary edition in 1995 (ISBN 0-201-83595-9) with the essay "No Silver Bullet" and commentary by the author.

Brooks's observations are based on his experiences at IBM while managing the development of OS/360. He had mistakenly added more workers to a project falling behind schedule. He also made the mistake of asserting that one project -- writing an Algol compiler -- would require six months--regardless of the number of workers involved (it required longer). The tendency for managers to repeat such errors in project development led Brooks to quip that his book is called "The Bible of Software Engineering" because "everybody reads it but nobody does anything about it!"

Editorial Review:

No book on software project management has been so influential and so timeless as The Mythical Man-Month. Now 20 years after the publication of his book, Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. (best known as the "father of the IBM System 360") revisits his original ideas and develops new thoughts and advice both for readers familiar with his work and for readers discovering it for the first time.

Making Things Talk: Practical Methods for Connecting Physical Objects

Tom Igoe

Amazon Price: $19.79 List Price: $29.99 By: Make Books Amazon Marketplace: 48 new & used starting at $14.98

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Hardware -> Microprocessors & System Design -> General
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Hardware -> Microprocessors & System Design -> General AAS
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Hardware -> Internet & Networking

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Building electronic projects that interact with the physical world is good fun. But when devices that you've built start to talk to each other, things really start to get interesting. Through a series of simple projects, you'll learn how to get your creations to communicate with one another by forming networks of smart devices that carry on conversations with you and your environment. Whether you need to plug some sensors in your home to the Internet or create a device that can interact wirelessly with other creations, Making Things Talk explains exactly what you need.

This book is perfect for people with little technical training but a lot of interest. Maybe you're a science teacher who wants to show students how to monitor weather conditions at several locations at once, or a sculptor who wants to stage a room of choreographed mechanical sculptures. Making Things Talk demonstrates that once you figure out how objects communicate -- whether they're microcontroller-powered devices, email programs, or networked databases -- you can get them to interact.

Each chapter in contains instructions on how to build working projects that help you do just that. You will:

• Make your pet's bed send you email
• Make your own seesaw game controller that communicates over the Internet
• Learn how to use ZigBee and Bluetooth radios to transmit sensor data wirelessly
• Set up communication between microcontrollers, personal computers, and web servers using three easy-to-program, open source environments: Arduino/Wiring, Processing, and PHP.
• Write programs to send data across the Internet based on physical activity in your home, office, or backyard
• And much more

With a little electronics know-how, basic (not necessarily in BASIC) programming skills, a couple of inexpensive microcontroller kits and some network modules to make them communicate using Ethernet, ZigBee, and Bluetooth, you can get started on these projects right away. With Making Things Talk, the possibilities are practically endless.

123 PIC Microcontroller Experiments for the Evil Genius

Myke Predko

Amazon Price: $16.47 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: McGraw-Hill/TAB Electronics Amazon Marketplace: 27 new & used starting at $12.32

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Hardware -> Microprocessors & System Design -> PIC Microcontroller
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Hardware -> Microprocessors & System Design -> General
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Hardware -> Microprocessors & System Design -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

wicked cool PIC MCU projects and games,where are you? 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Even though there are few if none at all projects for the "evil genius", this book contains a pretty good course to learn about the PIC microcontrollers and their programming. Everything explained is in clear and simple language, even familiar most of the time. I found the content of it very helpful and I developed my own projects with a different PIC MCU, modified the code with little pain and finally everything worked fine. Unfortunately I could program only in assembler because the C compiler "HI-TECH PICC LITE" suggested by the book is too complicated and giving me a hard time to make it work properly.

Editorial Review:

Microchip continually updates its product line with more capable and lower cost products. They also provide excellent development tools. Few books take advantage of all the work done by Microchip. 123 PIC Microcontroller Experiments for the Evil Genius uses the best parts, and does not become dependent on one tool type or version, to accommodate the widest audience possible. Building on the success of 123 Robotics Experiments for the Evil Genius, as well as the unbelievable sales history of Programming and Customizing the PIC Microcontroller, this book will combine the format of the evil genius title with the following of the microcontroller audience for a sure-fire hit.

USB Mass Storage: Designing and Programming Devices and Embedded Hosts

Jan Axelson

Amazon Price: $19.77 List Price: $29.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Lakeview Research Amazon Marketplace: 25 new & used starting at $18.56

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Databases -> Database Design
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Databases -> General
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Databases -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Hardware and Software in One Book 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 10 people found this review helpful.

This is a very well done book on a very topical subject. USB mass storage has gotten so inexpensive that its use in dedicated embedded systems has become almost a given. And here is one book that talks about all aspects of putting such a system together.

The book basically covers three subjects:

First there is a general discussion of mass storage in general. This includes hard drives which may be the most economical for your application, and it includes various types of flash memory devices.

Second the book covers the hardware interface down to the level of giving a sample circuit.

Finally there is a description of the software that will be needed to get the devices to operate. This goes from the simple structure of the commands down to the definition of file systems.

In short, here is a complete guide to USB Mass Storage in one, fairly small, book. This is all the engineer/programmer needs. Ms. Axelson has written a number of books on USB in general and clearly knows whereof she speaks.

Editorial Review:

This developer’s guide for designers and programmers of mass-storage devices that use the Universal Serial Bus (USB) interface provides developers with information on how to choose storage media, interface the media to a microcontroller or other CPU, and write device firmware to access the media and perform USB communications. Comparisons of popular storage-media options to help users choose a media type for a project are included, and the types described cover hard drives and flash-memory cards such as the MultiMediaCard (MMC), Secure Digital (SD) card, and CompactFlash card. Helpful tips on developing an embedded host that can access USB mass-storage devices are also covered.

ARM System Developer's Guide: Designing and Optimizing System Software (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Architecture and Design)

Andrew Sloss, Dominic Symes, Chris Wright

Amazon Price: $63.16 List Price: $78.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Morgan Kaufmann Amazon Marketplace: 25 new & used starting at $56.95

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Computer Science -> Software Engineering -> Design Tools & Techniques
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Hardware -> Microprocessors & System Design -> Computer Design
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Hardware -> Microprocessors & System Design -> Microprocessor Design

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Over the last ten years, the ARM architecture has become one of the most pervasive architectures in the world, with more than 2 billion ARM-based processors embedded in products ranging from cell phones to automotive braking systems. A world-wide community of ARM developers in semiconductor and product design companies includes software developers, system designers and hardware engineers. To date no book has directly addressed their need to develop the system and software for an ARM-based system. This text fills that gap.

This book provides a comprehensive description of the operation of the ARM core from a developer's perspective with a clear emphasis on software. It demonstrates not only how to write efficient ARM software in C and assembly but also how to optimize code. Example code throughout the book can be integrated into commercial products or used as templates to enable quick creation of productive software.

The book covers both the ARM and Thumb instruction sets, covers Intel's XScale Processors, outlines distinctions among the versions of the ARM architecture, demonstrates how to implement DSP algorithms, explains exception and interrupt handling, describes the cache technologies that surround the ARM cores as well as the most efficient memory management techniques. A final chapter looks forward to the future of the ARM architecture considering ARMv6, the latest change to the instruction set, which has been designed to improve the DSP and media processing capabilities of the architecture.

* No other book describes the ARM core from a system and software perspective.
* Author team combines extensive ARM software engineering experience with an in-depth knowledge of ARM developer needs.
* Practical, executable code is fully explained in the book and available on the publisher's Website.
* Includes a simple embedded operating system.

Building a PC For Dummies (Building a PC for Dummies)

Mark L. Chambers

Amazon Price: $16.49 List Price: $24.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: For Dummies Amazon Marketplace: 51 new & used starting at $8.61

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Computer Science -> General
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Computer Science -> General AAS
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Hardware -> Microprocessors & System Design -> Microprocessor Design

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 33 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Computer building for the hardware technophobe... 4 out of 5 stars.
10 of 10 people found this review helpful.

(This is a review of the 5th edition)

I'll admit it... I buy my PCs when I upgrade. I'm getting more at ease with hardware since I've started doing all these book reviews, and I probably *could* build a PC now without too much angst, but I still buy. But if I were to decide that my next PC would be "home-built", I'd be comfortable with using the book Building a PC for Dummies by Mark L. Chambers.

Contents:
Part 1 - Can I Really Do This?: What's in a Computer, Anyway?; What Type of PC Should I Build?
Part 2 - Building Your PC: Building the Foundation - The Case and Motherboard; A Bag of Chips - Adding RAM and a CPU; The Three PC Senses - Ports, Mouse, and Keyboard; Images "R" Us - Adding Video and a Monitor; Make Room! Your Hard Drive and Other Storage Devices
Part 3 - Adding the Fun Stuff: Putting the Spin on CD-ROM and DVD; Let Your PC Rock!; Modems and the Call of the Internet
Part 4 - Adding the Advanced Stuff: Attack of the SCSI Monster; So You Want to Add a LAN?; Life in the Fast Lane with Broadband; Input and Output - Scanners, Cameras, Video Capture, and Printers; More Power User Toys
Part 5 - The Part of Tens: Ten Reasons Not to Buy a Retail PC; Ten Tools and Tasks for a Power User's PC; Ten Important Assembly Tips; Ten Ways to Speed Up Your PC; Ten Things to Avoid Like the Plague
Part 6 - Appendixes: Choosing Your Operating System; Glossary
Index

This book is most likely going to appeal to the hardware-phobic computer owner (like I was for quite awhile) or the first-time PC builder. Chambers has an amusing writing style which will make you smile as you figure out the next steps to take in your PC adventure. If you've already built a PC or you dwell in the land of needing to know every last technical spec of a device before you install it, there's probably not much here to offer you. Even I know most of the material *about* each device and what type of rationale you should apply (buying new vs. refurbished, why hard drive capacity is important, RAM is king, etc.). My downfall would be actually having all those devices spread out on a table with an empty computer case in front of me. But I'm pretty confident that I'd be able to stand a pretty good chance of getting everything to actually work the first time if I followed the information here. There's even a center section with color pictures to show you what to expect. It's a nice touch...

If you're looking for an approachable book on getting past your first computer build, this one would be a good choice. Easy to follow, fun to read, and the intimidation factor is nonexistent.

Editorial Review:

• Shows tech hobbyists how to build the perfect PC, whether they want to create the ultimate gaming machine or combine new and recycled parts to construct an inexpensive computer for a child
• The do-it-yourself craze is sweeping through the tech community, and this guide is now significantly revised and updated to cover the wide array of new hardware and accessories available
• Step-by-step instructions and dozens of photos walk first-time computer builders through the entire process, from building the foundation, and adding a processor and RAM, to installing a video card, configuring a hard drive, hooking up CD and DVD drives, adding a modem, and troubleshooting problems

Programming the Cell Processor: For Games, Graphics, and Computation

Matthew Scarpino

Amazon Price: $55.99 List Price: $69.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Prentice Hall PTR Amazon Marketplace: 38 new & used starting at $53.96

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Computer Science -> Software Engineering -> Information Systems
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Graphic Design -> General
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Graphic Design -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Make the Most of IBM’s Breakthrough Cell Processor in Any Gaming, Graphics, or Scientific Application

 

IBM’s Cell processor delivers truly stunning computational power: enough to satisfy even the most demanding gamers and graphics developers. That’s why Sony chose the Cell to drive its breakthrough PlayStation 3 and why Cell processors are at the heart of today’s most powerful supercomputers. But many developers have struggled to create high-performance Cell applications: the practical, coherent information they need simply hasn’t existed.

 

Programming the Cell Processor solves that problem once and for all. Whether you’re a game developer, graphics programmer, or engineer, Matthew Scarpino shows you how to create applications that leverage all the Cell’s extraordinary power. Scarpino covers everything from the Cell’s advanced architecture to its powerful tools and libraries, presenting realistic code examples that help you gain an increasingly deep and intuitive understanding of Cell development.

 

Scarpino illuminates each of the Cell’s most important technical innovations, introduces the commands needed to access its power, and walks you through the entire development process, including compiling, linking, debugging, and simulating code. He also offers start-to-finish case studies for three especially important Cell applications: games, graphics, and scientific computing. The Cell platform offers unprecedented potential, and this book will help you make the most of it.

 

• Mastering the Cell SDK, including the GCC-based buildchain, ppu-gdb/spu-gdb debuggers, IBM Full System Simulator, and Cell IDE
• Understanding the Cell’s central processing core, the PowerPC Processor Unit (PPU): structure, programming libraries, and AltiVec instructions
• Programming the Synergistic Processor Unit (SPU): vector processing, communication, caching, assembler coding, and more
• Leveraging SDK vector and matrix libraries, including the Large Matrix Library, BLAS Library, FFT libraries, Multiprecision Library, and Monte Carlo API
• Coding basic 2D graphics using the Linux frame buffer
• Building 3D graphics with the new Gallium OpenGL library 
• Constructing 3D games with Ogre3D and packaging them using Collada digital content interchange
• Optimizing the performance of your Cell applications
• Developing on standard PCs and transferring code to Cell systems such as the PlayStation 3

 

Foreword xv

Preface xvii

Chapter 1: Introducing the Cell Processor 1

Part I: The Software Development Tools 13

Chapter 2: The Cell Software Development Kit (SDK) 15

Chapter 3: Building Applications for the Cell Processor 35

Chapter 4: Debugging and Simulating Applications 53

Chapter 5: The Cell SDK Integrated Development Environment 83

Part II: The PowerPC Processor Element (PPE) 97

Chapter 6: Introducing the PowerPC Processor Unit (PPU) 99

Chapter 7: The SPE Runtime Management Library (libspe) 125

Chapter 8: SIMD Programming on the PPU, Part 1: Vector Libraries and Functions 153

Chapter 9: SIMD Programming on the PPU, Part 2: Methods and Algorithms 195

Part III: The Synergistic Processor Element (SPE) 217

Chapter 10: Introducing the Synergistic Processor Unit (SPU) 219

Chapter 11: SIMD Programming on the SPU 239

Chapter 12: SPU Communication, Part 1: Direct Memory Access (DMA) 285

Chapter 13: SPU Communication, Part 2: Events, Signals, and Mailboxes 317

Chapter 14: Advanced SPU Topics: Overlays, Software Caching, and SPU Isolation 345

Chapter 15: SPU Assembly Language 367

Part IV: Mathematics and Computation 409

Chapter 16: Vectors and Matrices 411

Chapter 17: The Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) 439

Chapter 18: Multiprecision Processing and Monte Carlo Methods 463

Part V: Graphics and Games 489

Chapter 19: Programming the Frame Buffer: Linux and the PlayStation 3 491

Chapter 20: OpenGL on the Cell: Gallium and Mesa 503

Chapter 21: Building Games with Ogre3D 529

Chapter 22: Packaging Graphics with COLLADA 559

Epilogue 581

Part VI: Appendices 583

Appendix A: Understanding ELF Files 585

Appendix B: Updating the PS3 Add-On Packages and Installing a New Linux Kernel 609

Appendix C: The Accelerated Library Framework (ALF) 617

Appendix D: SPU Instruction Set Reference 649

Appendix E: A Brief Introduction to Tcl 661

Index 669

 

PCI Express System Architecture (PC System Architecture Series)

Mindshare Inc., Ravi Budruk, Don Anderson, Tom Shanley

Amazon Price: $48.50 List Price: $76.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Addison-Wesley Professional Amazon Marketplace: 54 new & used starting at $37.00

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Hardware -> Microprocessors & System Design -> Computer Design
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Hardware -> Microprocessors & System Design -> Microprocessor Design
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Hardware -> Microprocessors & System Design -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"We have always recommended these books to our customers and even our own engineers for developing a better understanding of technologies and specifications. We find the latest PCI Express book from MindShare to have the same content and high quality as all the others." --Nader Saleh, CEO/President, Catalyst Enterprises, Inc. PCI Express is the third-generation Peripheral Component Inter-connect technology for a wide range of systems and peripheral devices. Incorporating recent advances in high-speed, point-to-point interconnects, PCI Express provides significantly higher performance, reliability, and enhanced capabilities--at a lower cost--than the previous PCI and PCI-X standards. Therefore, anyone working on next-generation PC systems, BIOS and device driver development, and peripheral device design will need to have a thorough understanding of PCI Express. PCI Express System Architecture provides an in-depth description and comprehensive reference to the PCI Express standard. The book contains information needed for design, verification, and test, as well as background information essential for writing low-level BIOS and device drivers.In addition, it offers valuable insight into the technology's evolution and cutting-edge features. Following an overview of the PCI Express architecture, the book moves on to cover transaction protocols, the physical/electrical layer, power management, configuration, and more. Specific topics covered include: *Split transaction protocol *Packet format and definition, including use of each field *ACK/NAK protocol *Traffic Class and Virtual Channel applications and use *Flow control initialization and operation *Error checking mechanisms and reporting options *Switch design issues *Advanced Power Management mechanisms and use *Active State Link power management *Hot Plug design and operation *Message transactions *Physical layer functions *Electrical signaling characteristics and issues *PCI Express enumeration procedures *Configuration register definitions Thoughtfully organized, featuring a plethora of illustrations, and comprehensive in scope, PCI Express System Architecture is an essential resource for anyone working with this important technology.MindShare's PC System Architecture Series is a crisply written and comprehensive set of guides to the most important PC hardware standards. Books in the series are intended for use by hardware and software designers, programmers, and support personnel. 0321156307B08262003

VBA and Macros for Microsoft Excel (Business Solutions)

Bill Jelen, Tracy Syrstad

Amazon Price: $26.39 List Price: $39.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Que Amazon Marketplace: 48 new & used starting at $14.95

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Hardware -> Microprocessors & System Design -> General
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Hardware -> Microprocessors & System Design -> General AAS
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Microsoft -> Applications -> Excel

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Run the other way...quickly!! 1 out of 5 stars.
2 of 4 people found this review helpful.

If I could give 0 stars, I would.

This book is poorly written and poorly edited...and I have the version "Reprinted with corrections." Flipping through it in the bookstore, it seemed promising - enough so that I actually bought it. After three chapters, however, I am ready to throw in the towel.

This is a technical book. It's about programming. It contains examples of actual code. The examples have to be correct to have any credibility. Once you lose that, every line becomes suspect. Let me provide you just a few examples.

On page 32, the colorindex for "yellow" is given as "6"; on page 33 it is "30".
On page 41, "Selection is actually a property and not an object." When I reach page 50, "Selection" has become an object again.
On page 62, in the third example within Table 3.1, the delimiting comma is inside the quotes.
On 67, " Notice that that the offset..."
Also on that page, the resizing example at the bottom is wrong. If I have a column and add two more to it, I end up with three. Maybe Mr. Excel is using a higher level of math when he says "Range("Produce").Resize(,2) and says "Remember, the number you resize by is the TOTAL number of rows and/or columns you want to include."

What really rolled my eyes back in my head was on page 63, when I encountered .range(.range, range) with insufficient introduction. A relatively simple statement with a single range reference suddenly morphed into a triple range reference with an indecipherable comment about "an extra range at the beginning of the code line." This makes absolutely no sense, and coupled with the authoring or editing miscues mentioned earlier, it is not even possible to determine if this is a typo or simply a badly written passage.

Whether I ultimately can gain any value from this book remains to be seen - assuming I am able to actually make sense of the content. For me, it was a total waste of the purchase price.

Editorial Review:

Everyone is looking for ways to save money these days. That can be hard to do for businesses that have complex needs, such as custom software applications. However, VBA and Macros for Microsoft Excel can teach you ways to customize pre-existing software to meet your specific needs. A variety of topics are covered that are sure to give you a solid knowledge of the VBA language. Event programming, user forms, carts, pivot tables, multi-dimensional arrays and Web queries are just a few of the areas you will learn about in this book. You'll also be able to download 4 MB of sample spreadsheets, project files and code from the publisher's Web site. Written by the principal behind the leading Excel Web site, Mrexcel.com, this book is sure to save you time and money!

Upgrading and Repairing Laptops (2nd Edition) (Upgrading and Repairing)

Scott Mueller

Amazon Price: $34.64 List Price: $54.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Que Amazon Marketplace: 36 new & used starting at $20.00

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Hardware -> Maintenance, Repair & Upgrading
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Hardware -> Microprocessors & System Design -> General
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Hardware -> Microprocessors & System Design -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Great Reference! 4 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

This book is an excellent tool to have on hand for anyone even remotely interested in working on laptops, whether for a living or just because your personal machine is out of warranty.

Very thorough, it informs you without talking down to you on numerous topics relating to laptops, from where most laptops are built, the components inside, specific things to look for when purchasing, and how to fix it if a problem occurs.

Editorial Review:

Scott Mueller has gone where no computer book author has gone before — right past all the warranty stickers, the hidden screws, and the fear factor to produce a real owner's manual that every laptop owner should have on his desk. Upgrading and Repairing Laptops, Second Edition shows the upgrades users can perform, the ones that are better left to the manufacturer, and how to use add-on peripherals to make the most of a laptop. This second edition has been updated to include:

• The latest processors and motherboards
• Complete assembly and disassembly information
• Updated memory standards
• Upgrading your hard drive to increase performance
• Changes in networking and firewalls

The included DVD contains one-of-a-kind video showing just what's inside a portable PC. If you have ever wondered what goes on inside your portable PC, how to upgrade/repair it, or how to live on the road with it, this is the one must-have book of the year!