Stanley Williams, Life in Prison

The intended audience of this book is young men who admire prison convicts and aspire to put a prison experience on their own resumes. If you are such a person, yes, by all means do read this book.

But this is a good book even for those of us who are, at best, minimum-security material. The most impressive part, for me, was what Tookie has to say about loneliness, isolation, lack of privacy, lack of control over one's schedule, and the gradual disappearance of personal connections to people outside the big house.
 

(amazon.com: "49 people found this helpful")

Gary V. Vaughn, Gnu Autoconf, Automake and Libtool

As a guide to Gnu autoconf, automake and libtool, this book is quite useless. It is utterly and totally disorganized, and much essential information is just not there at all. There is amazingly little in the way of examples. So don't bother with it if you want to learn about any of those subjects. The book is not entirely without merit, however. Its redeeming features are scattered sensible comments about software portability and software architecture.

The authors are obviously very knowledgable and experienced about software. I encourage them to "throw this one away" and try a rewrite from scratch. Short of that, they could provide a road map through their book; first read this chapter, then skip to the second half of that one, etc.

The sad news is that there may not be any good guide to autoconf etc anywhere yet. Like the DNA in your body, all autoconf files are very likely descended by an evolutionary process from a few original viable specimens.

(amazon.com: 18 people found this helpful)

Thomas Sowell Inside American Education

Seven years ago, my wife and I thought we were going to be clever and original if we named our daughter "Hannah". We didn't know any Hannahs in our generation. But now it seems every other family had a "Hannah" in the 1990s. After reading Lieberson's book, I understand that we got swept up in one of the many waves of name-fashions that he so ably chronicles. 

This is an entertaining book, remarkably so considering the author's intention which was to write a serious work of academic deep-think. So there's a great deal of sociologist talk, which is decidedly not entertaining. But, just as the cartoons redeem even the worst issues of the _New Yorker_ , this book is worth getting just for the many statistical charts. You can follow the spectacular career of "Jennifer", the ups and downs of Biblical names, learn about names and social class, and so on. Finally, I recommend this book to economists who are interested in fads and herd behavior. 

(amazon.com: 8 people found this helpful)

Thomas the Tank Engine game by Atari

My first impressions were not good. The game console didn't work with my keyboard. Once I found a suitable keyboard, the game itself seemed like a bunch of frustrating dead ends; I couldn't find anything, go anywhere (except the pointless laps around the island), or get anything done.

I would have gladly chucked this game, but for my Thomas-crazed 4-year-old's insistence that we persevere. We do the landslide repair pretty competently now. We can do the mailbag sorting game too, when we can get there (some days it seems we're doomed to go around and around the island).

I suppose that if I, or any of the many other frustrated reviewers, spent an hour alone with this game, we could figure most of it out. The problem is that so far I've only played this game while competing for the controls with said 4-year-old and distracted by his impatience with my ineptitude.

Considering the age of the typical Thomas fan, this game is unsuitable for use as a baby sitter. You'll need to learn the game, and then probably always be there to help your kid with it. Ultimately, maybe that's not a bad thing.

(amazon.com: 3 people found this helpful)