Book Description
Master the essentials of concurrent programming,including testing and debugging
This textbook examines languages and libraries for multithreaded programming. Readers learn how to create threads in Java and C++, and develop essential concurrent programming and problem-solving skills. Moreover, the textbook sets itself apart from other comparable works by helping readers to become proficient in key testing and debugging techniques. Among the topics covered, readers are introduced to the relevant aspects of Java, the POSIX Pthreads library, and the Windows Win32 Applications Programming Interface.
The authors have developed and fine-tuned this book through the concurrent programming courses they have taught for the past twenty years. The material, which emphasizes practical tools and techniques to solve concurrent programming problems, includes original results from the authors' research. Chapters include:
* Introduction to concurrent programming
* The critical section problem
* Semaphores and locks
* Monitors
* Message-passing
* Message-passing in distributed programs
* Testing and debugging concurrent programs
As an aid to both students and instructors, class libraries have been implemented to provide working examples of all the material that is covered. These libraries and the testing techniques they support can be used to assess student-written programs.
Each chapter includes exercises that build skills in program writing and help ensure that readers have mastered the chapter's key concepts. The source code for all the listings in the text and for the synchronization libraries is also provided, as well as startup files and test cases for the exercises.
This textbook is designed for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students in computer science. With its abundance of practical material and inclusion of working code, coupled with an emphasis on testing and debugging, it is also a highly useful reference for practicing programmers.
Download Description
Master the essentials of concurrent programming,including testing and debugging This textbook examines languages and libraries for multithreaded programming. Readers learn how to create threads in Java and C++, and develop essential concurrent programming and problem-solving skills. Moreover, the textbook sets itself apart from other comparable works by helping readers to become proficient in key testing and debugging techniques. Among the topics covered, readers are introduced to the relevant aspects of Java, the POSIX Pthreads library, and the Windows Win32 Applications Programming Interface. The authors have developed and fine-tuned this book through the concurrent programming courses they have taught for the past twenty years. The material, which emphasizes practical tools and techniques to solve concurrent programming problems, includes original results from the authors' research. Chapters include: * Introduction to concurrent programming * The critical section problem * Semaphores and locks * Monitors * Message-passing * Message-passing in distributed programs * Testing and debugging concurrent programs As an aid to both students and instructors, class libraries have been implemented to provide working examples of all the material that is covered. These libraries and the testing techniques they support can be used to assess student-written programs. Each chapter includes exercises that build skills in program writing and help ensure that readers have mastered the chapter's key concepts. The source code for all the listings in the text and for the synchronization libraries is also provided, as well as startup files and test cases for the exercises. This textbook is designed for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students in computer science. With its abundance of practical material and inclusion of working code, coupled with an emphasis on testing and debugging, it is also a highly useful reference for practicing programmers.
Customer Reviews:
Concepts are nice but reading it is terse.......2007-08-14
I think it was a pretty decent writing but certain parts can be hard to follow and i thought a combination of code + graphics would make it an even better read
Good ideas but badly presented.......2007-08-10
Some background first as it is relevant to the review - I have over 20 years software development experience, including extensive multi-threading (on Windows, UNIX and other operating systems) developing high-performance data feed handlers etc. I've read many books that are either about multi-threading or touch on multi-threading, but bought this one because of the "Testing and Debugging" in the sub-title as this is an area the others tend to skip.
Now about the book - four negatives first, but do read the positives afterwards as well as they are big positives...
The first thing that hit me when reading this book was how old-fashioned it looks. For a book called "Modern Multithreading" you would think that Wiley (the publishers) would have presented the book better. The drab brown cover doesn't really matter, but the formatting of the text inside does. Source listings are shown in the same typeface as surrounding text, with no border etc to differentiate them. Worse is that if the text refers to a listing, the listing is likely to be on the next page wrapped in text about something else. The whole presentation is really poor.
The second thing that hit me, which is more significant, is that the authors simply do not write well. There can be no doubt that the authors are academics and that this book is a text book - it is not an easy read and comes across as being a bound version of all of the photocopied hand-outs that you can imagine being given out at lectures during a computer science degree course. If you think of hand-outs as being notes that are typed up to support what was said during the lectures then you can imagine how they read. Put over 400 pages of them together and you get a feel for this book. Difficult (but worth persevering).
The third negative, is that the code samples are described as a library, but they are not seriously useable as such. Maybe we've been spoilt by some of the excellent C++ and Java books that have been produced over recent years, but it has become common to be able to lift useful bits of code from books and reuse them without change. The code in this book is not like that. Good for research but not for serious use without being reworked. I have downloaded the full source code from the author's web-site (it doesn't all appear in the book) and found that for serious use it (a) needs some bugs fixed, (b) needs better error handling, (c) need optimising, (d) needs general reworking (it wouldn't pass code review the way it stands).
Fourthly, the index is incomplete and there is not a glossary. Why is this a problem? Well, given how difficult a read this is you can imagine how easy it is to glaze over. I clearly did that somewhere as I missed the meaning of an abbreviation that was then used repeatedly later on. I must had seen that same abbreviation used half a dozen times before thinking that I really should find out what it means as it seemed to be getting increasingly significant. I looked for a glossary but there isn't one included. I looked in the index to find the first page the abbreviation was used. Unfortunately the index didn't list the first page it was used, so I ended up scanning all the way from the start of the book to find the meaning. I'm very glad to have found it, because the moment I did the whole intention of the book started falling into place (although that wasn't confirmed until more than 140 pages in - see below).
Now for the plus points - well, one anyway...
This book covers something I have never seen any other book attempt to do. Most books say something along the lines of "multi-threading is hard, testing and debugging multi-threaded programs is really difficult and we're not going to give you any advice about how to do it". Well not this book. You may need to get more than 140 pages into the book before it reaches the really interesting ideas, but this book attempts to explain how to trace the interactions between different threads and to provide a way of replaying the same sequence in order to test/debug problems. As well as that it gives methods that will help to identify race conditions and deadlocks (where most books describe what they are and then go no further). Given that pre-emptive multi-threading gives you a system that is inherently non-deterministic, to attempt to provide repeatability by building a layer over the usual synchronisation mechanisms is a really interesting idea. It slows your code down so you don't want to put it into production code (another change required to the code), but during development it could be really handy. It doesn't give you a completely deterministic system, but helps to make the main interactions between threads more repeatable.
So to summarise - a couple of very interesting ideas that are incredibly badly presented, but given that I have never seen any other book try to describe the same material I'm afraid that there is no better book to recommend (please tell me if there is!). I've started using the ideas presented in this book in my own code, fixing/enhancing the code from the book in the process. Given that getting this code into a "professional" condition is a non-trivial task, that should give an idea of how useful I think the ideas are. Its taken a couple of weeks to integrate into my own threading library, but tracing, race condition detection and deadlock detection are working, though the deadlock detection mechanism is pretty primitive - I may do further work on that to make it more useful. Although I have coded the replay mechanism I haven't tested that yet - will update this review with the result when I have time to test it.
If you are new to multi-threading buy something easier to read as a tutorial, but if you already have good multi-threading experience and want to build your own framework combine the material from this book, with ideas from "Programming with Hyper-Threading Technology" and (for Windows) details from "Programming Applications in Microsoft Windows".
Like a grad. level paper: Helpful, if you can read it........2006-10-06
I got this book hoping for helpful ideas on how to debug multithreaded programs. This book has them, but the writing isn't that clear or readable. It reads like a grad. level paper more than a standard technical book that most of us are used to.
The book lightly covers standard multithreading concepts and objects, but you're better off learning those someplace else because I'm sure it's explained in more "laymen" terms elsewhere. The one thing this book does do well is offer a way for you to write mutexes, semaphores, monitors, etc. in a way that would allow you to replay a given run of a multithreaded program (assuming you also can reproduce the input to said program somehow). If you know how to debug a single threaded application, this ability makes it easier to debug a multithreaded program. (As things become determisitic.)
However, if you already have a program that you're trying to debug, you end up out of luck, unless you want to port your program to use these new libraries.
Also note that all the examples in this book are for C++ or Java. C doesn't have the object-oriented abilities that would be needed to easily use the examples.
Book Description
The material for these volumes has been selected from the past twenty years' examination questions for graduate students at University of California at Berkeley, Columbia University, the University of Chicago, MIT, State University of New York at Buffalo, Princeton University and University of Wisconsin.
Book Description
The material for this series was selected from the past 20 years' examination questions for graduate students at the University of California (Berkeley), Columbia University, the University of Chicago, MIT, the State University of New York at Buffalo, Princeton University and the University of Wisconsin.
This volume comprises 165 problems. The section on Solid State Physics includes crystal structures and properties, electron theory, energy bands and semiconductors. The Relativity section covers both the special and general theories. Topics that were not appropriate for the other 6 volumes in this series appear here under the heading of Miscellaneous Topics.
Customer Reviews:
Invaluable.......2002-10-07
All of these books titled "Problems and Solutions on (subject): Major American Universities Ph.D. Qualifying Questions and Solutions" are invaluable tools for a physics graduate student, in my experience.
It is difficult to find solved problems concering the topics in this text, so it is smaller than some of the others. However, it is still invaluable.
Criticism: Sparse index. You might find yourself adding a lot of notes of your own to the index as well as the contents.
If you are a student in physics, I suggest that you get your hands on these books.
Not useful for review of special relativity.......1999-03-17
I have not reviewed the Solid State portion of the book, and my review is limited to the relativity portion. I have been very pleased with the other books in the excellent series, but in the area of special relativity, I found this one somewhat disappointing. There were only seven problems in this area, and three were essentially the same thing. One was the basic derivation of the Lorentz transformation, which can be found in any relativity textbook. As I mentioned, I can not speak for the Solid State part of the book, but if you expect a variety of useful problems on special relativity, you will be disappointed. The general relativity part is OK, but I do not know of many schools which include general relativity on their qualifying exams.
Book has lots of problems. Good for a quick review.......1998-03-06
This book has LOTS of sample problems. Though the solutions are not indepth, they do point you in the right direction. A good book to have if you need to study for a PhD exam, though your school should have it's own library.
Customer Reviews:
A Treasure.......2002-10-07
All of these books titled "Problems and Solutions on (subject): Major American Universities Ph.D. Qualifying Questions and Solutions" are invaluable tools for a physics graduate student, in my experience. For quantum mechanics in particular, solved problems often illustrate difficult concepts better than any explanatory paragraph in a text.
Criticism: Sparse index and contents. You'll find yourself adding notes to pages in the book quite often.
If you are a student in physics, I suggest that you get your hands on these books.
An excellent handbook on the subject.......2002-01-17
Sometimes it is very difficult to teach a course in quantum mechanics because there are few problems that have solutions that do not require months of research and numerical methods to solve. I have found that in my own courses on quantum mechanics, I take a lot of notes and I do a lot of homework assignments, but I don't have a whole lot of concrete, well-explained problems and solutions to show for all of the work. Since I found this book and those that accompany it, however, I have a very good source for problems and their solutions in QM. These problems are an excellent study aid for the solutions provide insight into the basics of the field. Strongly recommended.
The Editor Needs Glasses.......2001-11-08
I study physics in Chile, and this book has been pretty useful for a first course in QM, but I have to note that the first 170 pages are titled "Problems and Solutions on Electromagnetism"! I hope someone gets word to the editor....
Other than that, I'm pretty sure this book will find a place on your private shelf.
This book is over priced.......2001-10-10
This is a good book, although it's hard to use, and the reason for that is simple: with such a great variety of problems in Quantum Mechanics it's next to impossible to conveniently systemize the content. I did find this book useful in preparation for my Ph.D. qualifying exam, but looking back I can tell that I would have passed without it. I think it's a great book for those looking for an easy way of doing homework, whereas educational value of this book is questionable.
Book Description
The spellbinding saga of the future continues in the year 2211. The Seven T'ang, the ruling dictatorship of the solar system, is weakened by the birth of a special child, and the forces of rebellion and change are spreading from the mega-cities of Earth to a secretive, planet-wide conspiracy on Mars. For generations the T'ang have controlled with mind manipulation and teams of black-clad assassins. But the human urge for freedom cannot be stilled by murder or seduction. Now, as a mad, blood-thirsty ruler plots a coup from within the T'ang, Hans Ebert, his famous face obscured forever behind a mask, begins a new fight for power and love on the red soil of Mars. Revolution may finally free the long-shackled masses, or it may spread unimaginable destruction sufficient to level a world--and the hopes of all worlds to come. The Chung Kuo series brings future centuries to life, portraying men and women caught between great powers fighting for dominance...and yearning for ageless passions for all that life holds dear.
Customer Reviews:
A must have.......2003-04-18
Take the chance and embark on a long journey with David Wingrove. You will not be let down. Problem is, you will see nothing of your friends or family for the next three months.
But, that is what you are looking for in a book, isn't it?
Another satisfying book about Chung Kuo.......2000-06-08
David Wingrove's series continues to keep me coming back for more. The characters are well developed, the intrigues are captivating and the possibilities are scary... Can't wait until the next volume arrives at my door.
A gripping what-if book,.......1997-03-08
What if in the 21st century the western powers were degenerate and the Chineese filled the leadership vacuum. This is another of David Wingrove's well written and researched novels of the world of Chun Ko
Book Description
The Year is 2190. China has once again become a world unto itself and this time its only boundary is space . . . The world is City Earth, ruled by the Seven, China's new kings. Beautiful, controlled, sensual, this high-tech society is rushing toward war between the forces of West and East, between the rebels who hunger for change and the overlords who demand stability, between the very powers of darkness and light. It will be an era of violent conflagration destined to expose the basest elements of human nature . . . and the highest dreams. An epic that draws us into an alternative world so real, so complete that we become denizens of the new Middle Kingdom, touched by longings we never imagined. . . driven by forces as ancient as man's first breath. Not since Asminov's Foundation books and Herbert's Dune has there been such a majestic and powerful vision of a believable other world. . . seductive, chilling, unforgettable!
Customer Reviews:
NOT Sci-Fi. Rather it is hard-core Political Fantasy-Porn........2007-07-29
NOT Sci-Fi. Rather it is hard-core Political Fantasy-Porn.
Seriously, I was not expecting this.
Its one thing to write about an alternate possibility of the world and to present it in a science-fiction or a fantasy story. But this is not it.
I was NOT expecting to read detailed hardcore violating porn in the middle of these stories. The first incident completely ambushed me, and I didn't bother to continue to read to see if there was a second.
The book went in the trash.
I'm sure there are better authors who can tell an interesting alternate political story of the world, with stooping to what this author does.
I mean come on, Stephen Kings novels are part Science-Fiction too, but they are put in the Horror section. This should have been in the Porn section of the bookstore.
Absolutely Vile - AVOID!!!.......2007-07-28
After I read this book I wanted to scrub out my brain.
Why? Because of the many thousands of books that I've read in my life, Chung Kuo was the sickest and most vile. I'm open-minded, but Mr. Wingrove's joy in sex-torture is truly sociopathic. Words fail me.
This was the worst book I've ever read in my life. I can only assume that those who compare Wingrove to Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert (as the blurb on the back suggests) have never READ Asimov or Frank Herbert. Either that, or they are seriously, seriously confused. And I'm being charitable in my choice of words.
Wingrove is a mediocre stylist, his characters are all unappealing and flat, and the plot is awkward at best. But all of that is secondary. This is simply a vile book, and I hope that anyone considering it will move on to something better - such as the Foundation or Dune series (with the caveat that the Dune series should NOT be considered to include anything written by Frank Herbert's talentless son Brian). Or, if you really want to read Chinese- or Asian-themed fiction, why not read the wonderful science fiction of Cordwainer Smith? I'd also recommend the ancient China fantasies of Barry Hughart. James Clavell's Shogun is also far superior to the execrable Chung Kuo.
Life is far too short to read a twisted piece of garbage like this.
Science Fiction Book of the Century?! Maybe..........2006-01-08
Underappreciated science fiction masterpiece; on par with Dune or Foundation. Probably the most ambitious exercise in imaginative world-creation ever attempted; Wingrove manages to pull it off with ease. But what really sets Chung Kuo apart is that it is so entertaining while still grappling with important religious, social, historical and philisophical issues. Jump in, and be prepared for a wonderful ride that you will not soon forget.
Interesting but Possibly Flawed Premise.......2003-10-15
Okay, ditto everyone's glowing reviews -- so I'd like to just critique the premise of this whole series. Historically, Chinese rule has meant peace and prosperity. This series uses a kind of Yellow Peril sentiment as a premise, but the historical record thus far shows that so peaceful and prosperous had the Middle Kingdom been that Europeans were able to mercilessly exploit Chinese complacency and self-satisfaction. For example, the Chinese invented gunpowder, but had no real military use for it since they were the strongest power by far in Asia, and save for border barbarians every so often, everyone was at peace, relative to Europe during the same epoch. Another example is the fact that the Chinese were the first to make grand sea voyages of discovery to Africa, under the Muslim admiral Zheng He, and unlike later European sails, these ships were truly on good-will missions -- their objective had not been to plant flags, but simply, a la Star Trek's Enterprise, to boldly go where no Chinese subject had gone before!
One last note along these lines: no less a person than Theodor Herzl, widely honored as the Father of Zionism, pointed very specifically to the fact of general Imperial Chinese peace, enlightenment, and meritocracy, such that Chinese Jews had totally assimilated into the wider Chinese population out of all physically distinct characteristics -- so tolerant were the Chinese of other faiths -- as a reason for establishing a uniquely Jewish state (to wit: not only was the survival of World Jewry threatened by pogroms in hostile communities).
So, if anything, Chinese rule in the future should prove just as enlightened as it had been in the past! Which is to say, all the bloody melodrama founding the premise of Wingrove's series of vaguely Yellow Peril Science Fiction (or Speculative Fiction -- take your pick of labels) is very much flawed. Again, I liked this book well-enough, but I was a little disappointed at Wingrove taking the easy way out (I mean, anybody can simply imagine an extension of comtemporary Chinese authoritarianism into the future -- more interesting is how China, say, could become a true "Middle" Kingdom again, given its many, many problems now, and how science and technology might be involved in such a development...).
A must have.......2003-04-18
Take the chance and embark on a long journey with David Wingrove. You will not be let down. Problem is, you will see nothing of your friends or family for the next three months.
But, that is what you are looking for in a book, isn't it?
Average customer rating:
|
Chinese qigong essentials: Chung-kuo ch'i kung ching yao
Manufacturer: Distributed by China International Book Trading Corp
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 General
| Exercise & Fitness
| Health, Mind & Body
| Subjects
| Books
Tai Chi & Qi Gong
| Exercise & Fitness
| Health, Mind & Body
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Health, Mind & Body
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 7800053008 |
Book Description
In the spring of 2232, hopes for a more humane world become manifest in the red-roofed houses of "China on the Rhine." There, Emily Ascher, once a freedom fighter, lives as Mama Em, mother to the orphans of a war-devastated land.
But unto the people of Chung Kuo, two children will be born: "Coffin Filler," a baby girl smothered and thrown away but not yet dead, and baby boy Josef, delivered into a hostile land, yet determined to fight for his life. They are part of a new generation who will see more death than any who have gone before.
While peace seems to reign, the puppet master of an army of giant androids plans one final, absolute destruction. And while the great T'ang, the dictators of Earth, are gone, the mega corporation GenSyn remains. And soon its pleasure drug called "Golden Dreams" will make Chung Kuo a funeral pyre for golden corpses--until the only escape lies in sending the survivors toward new stars. . . or joining Emily Ascher in a battle for liberty and a new Earth.
Customer Reviews:
Books I-V excellent, then this.......2003-08-23
While Wingrove has always been kinda mediocre in his writing, his imaginations and characters made the first 6 books good.
And I felt he should have STOPPED. There was a fairly satisfying ending at that point. Stop. Stop
Book VII is so irritating that I've tried to read it 3 times, and failed. Consider that I commonly read 1000s of pages of fantasy/sci-fi a year, and the number of unfinished series [because of apathy] over the last 30 years is countable on one hand.
Stop with Boook VI. You do NOT need any thing else
A must have.......2003-04-18
Take the chance and embark on a long journey with David Wingrove. You will not be let down. Problem is, you will see nothing of your friends or family for the next three months.
But, that is what you are looking for in a book, isn't it?
Good... but not great.......2001-11-13
I liked the way this book was done. Once again the Chung Kuo series manages to capture my attention. However, i feel that David Wingrove lost something in writting this, and the end of the last book. Some aspect of realism or such was lost.
Bit of a let down.......2001-08-29
I discovered this series in 1993, I devoured the first five books and absolutely loved every page of them. It was exciting, original, fun, and interesting. Then I read Days of Bitter Strength and abosolutely hated it. I felt the author completely lost his way and I really did not enjoy where he took this once-promising series. It was one of the biggest literary letdowns I have ever been dealt.
Don't bother.......2001-07-28
Don't bother with this book or its sequels. David Wingrove started out great with this series, but he got lost somewhere. By the end of this opus the author blatantly uses a "deus ex machina" . I felt betrayed because of all the time I spent reading the last 3 books.
Customer Reviews:
A must have.......2003-04-18
Take the chance and embark on a long journey with David Wingrove. You will not be let down. Problem is, you will see nothing of your friends or family for the next three months.
But, that is what you are looking for in a book, isn't it?
A must have.......2003-04-18
Take the chance and embark on a long journey with David Wingrove. You will not be let down. Problem is, you will see nothing of your friends or family for the next three months.
But, that is what you are looking for in a book, isn't it?
This is one of the best series I've ever read.......2003-04-18
Take the chance and embark on a long journey with David Wingrove. You will not be let down. Problem is, you will see nothing of your friends or family for the next three months.
But, that is what you are looking for in a book, isn't it?
This is one of the best series I've ever read.......2003-04-18
Take the chance and embark on a long journey with David Wingrove. You will not be let down. Problem is, you will see nothing of your friends or family for the next three months.
But that is what you want from a book, isn't it...
The fall of the seven.......2000-03-18
While I still finished the book, the stereotypical characterisations and lack of coherant editing makes me question bothering to continue reading the series.
Book Description
Chung Kuo VI: White Moon, Red Dragon sees the reign of the Seven T'ang in a time of great, bloody upheaval. The rebel leader DeVore, thought dead by his enemies, has returned and is readying a terrifying flotilla to fight against the T'ang, the dictators of Earth. On Mars, another rebel, the long-exiled Hans Ebert, is formulating an audacious plan to bring a lost African tribe home again, and on Earth, the continental mega-cities of the T'ang begin to crumble as war ripples across the planet.
It is a time of endings and beginnings, when the last of the T'ang, Li Yuan, will make a terrifying alliance...when chaos will strike in the form of human-looking androids programmed to kill...and when Emily Ascher, a woman dedicated to liberty for the billions the T'ang have kept in chains, will see her vision blossom in blood red.
Customer Reviews:
Fantastic serie, bad book.......2004-06-01
I love the Chung Cuo serie. Great sweaping concepts, detailed and vivid persons, super grip on technichal details and thrilling plots. And then I read "White Moon, Red Dragon".
The first 400 pages are the usual thrilling page turners and then it just starts falling apart. The development, which is normally harmonich and logical suddenly fails details and reasons are missing. Persons reacts illogical and against their established personallity. Plots are build and suddenly abandoned. Other are suddenly pulled in from the left without any plausable explanation. Psychic powers and supernatual phenomenas suddenly enters the game.
You constantly ask yourself; "But why?" and the answers never comes.
The books "climax" completes this trend; a sea is drained just so that an invinsable army can be landed by a space amada on the opposite side and marched through the now empty basin and (surprise, surprise) 8 indians from Mars without really doing anything creates a flood, saving the world while a 9th indian talks in tongues. How and why the book as so many other things completly fails to explain.
Maybe this is just a very clever plot, building to the ultimative climax in book 7... or the book is just bad. I tend to conclude the second.
I'm likely gona get no. 7 in the seris just to see if Wingrove gets his act together.
A must have.......2003-04-18
Take the chance and embark on a long journey with David Wingrove. You will not be let down. Problem is, you will see nothing of your friends or family for the next three months.
But, that is what you are looking for in a book, isn't it?
Picture living in a humongous crawlspace..........1999-11-09
...underneath a city almost the size of a continent, and you've got "the Clay". We learned in earlier volumes that this was scientist Kim Ward's homeland. But now, in this volume, we get a closer look at the place--much of this book is set there. This is an "underworld" with none of the romance of the Sewers Of Paris as depicted in "Les Miserables". Two hundred years of the Seven's rule have created an underclass of people in both a social and a geographic sense, and it's beginning to boil up into a conflagration we couldn't begin to imagine in present-day ghettos and barrios. Meanwhile, the rule of the Seven has been on the skids since the previous volume--the only T'ang who's still a viable ruler may be the most decent of the original Seven, but that fact doesn't help a bit. Arch revolutionary Howard Devore--a Stalinesque type who as a cure for tyranny is worse than the desease--has come back from his exile on Mars. In the words of James Baldwin, it's "the fire next time", and next time is right now.
Wingrove's cycle builds to an impending climax........1998-11-23
Wingrove's Chung Kuo cycle has been compelling for a number of reasons, not the least of which is its believability. Despite his daring intent to combine politics, science, sexuality and history into one dangerous mix, his tale has never sunk into the category of easily-dismissable science fiction. He has done this by refusing to follow the lead of popular SF trends; he has, for the most part, eschewed the technical-laden side of SF storytelling, preferring to anchor his tale to the human element.
"White Moon, Red Dragon" departs somewhat from that formula, however, in its greater reliance on technology to progress plot and to solve problems, almost deus ex machina. But the masterpiece of the previous five books encourages me to expect a sublime and profound climax in Book 7, followed by an audible denouement that will bring Wingrove's vast vision to fruition.
This book is but a preliminary step to that greatness. Though paler than its predecessors, it nonetheless reflects their glory and brilliance.
EXCELLENT!!!.......1998-01-16
Filled with fast pace intrigue ,that kept you glued to each page ,book 6 countiued with the all the emotions that were so wounderfully expressed in all the prievous novels ,love,war,loylty,honer which ultimately led up to the disaterous confrontation between what was left of a fairly stable socity ,against total barbaric anarcy .I thought this finale war should have ended the seris ,but it seems mr windgrove has other plans .The big but is that he seemed to have run out of ideas the ending was to sudden after getting to the point of the grand climax then it all spirled down ward I was totaly disappointed ,however trusting in mr windgrove`s never ceasing to amaze me imagination the next installment ,should (I hope)make up for the disappointing ending in a otherwise excellent scifi novel.
Books:
- Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member
- Osman's Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire
- PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives
- Pure Sea Glass: Discovering Nature's Vanishing Gems
- Ricky Ricotta's Mighty Robot Collection: Box Set (Books 1-4)
- Rogue Threat
- Sandra Brown CD Collection 2: A Treasure Worth Seeking, Shadows of Yesterday, Prime Time
- Scourge of the Seas: Buccaneers, Pirates & Privateers (General Military)
- Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower
- Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- Radical Forgiveness, Making Room for the Miracle, 2nd Edition
- History: Fiction or Science
- 52 Pickup
- Beyond the Camellia Belt: Breeding, Propagating, and Growing Cold-Hardy Camellias
- CSI: Miami: Harm for the Holidays: Heart Attack
- Finite Mathematics for Business Economics, Life Sciences and Social Sciences
- Finite Mathematics for Business, Economics, Life Sciences and Social Sciences
- Bestiary: Being an English Version of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Bodley 764
- Alaska Odyssey: Gospel of the Wilderness
- Blackwell Handbook of Global Management: A Guide to Managing Complexity
Multithreading Applications in Win32: The Complete Guide to Threads
The C++ Standard Library Extensions: A Tutorial and Reference
Programming with POSIX(R) Threads
Beyond the C++ Standard Library: An Introduction to Boost
Windows System Programming (3rd Edition) (The Addison-Wesley Microsoft Technology Series)
