Simon P. Chappell writes "It used to be that a website could be standards compliant or it could be attractive and impressive to prospective customers, but it could almost never be both. Now with the rise of CSS compliant browsers, a new generation of web designers are finding that the old wisdom is ready to be retired. CSS technology allows a website to have both excellent, semantically indicated content and attractive layouts. Core CSS (2ed.) positions itself as a complete guide to all of this standards based goodness." Read on for the rest of Chappell's review.

John Miles writes "It's been almost thirty years since young Laura and Sandy Crowther sat down at a Teletype and took their first steps into the mysterious subterranean world their father, Will, created for them. Now, if Nick Montfort's Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction is any indication, Crowther and Woods's pioneering computer game Adventure and its descendants are finally beginning to garner the critical recognition they deserve. At only 286 pages, Twisty Little Passages is a small, accessible book that addresses a deep and complex subject. The author's stated intention is to bring us the first book-length consideration of interactive fiction (IF) as a legitimate literary field, and he has certainly succeeded." Read on for the rest of Miles' review.

Chris Cowell-Shah writes "If David Foster Wallace can't explain infinity to us, nobody can. At least, that's what I told myself while anxiously waiting for his Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity. The book promised to be an intellectual history of the mathematical concept of infinity, with heavy doses of history, math, and philosophy. And while it proves heavy going at times, I'm pleased to say that it delivers admirably on this promise." Read on for Cowell-Shah's lengthy review of Everything and More.

Raymond Lodato writes "For the past six years, I've been responsible for the installation, configuration, and maintenance of the firewalls at my company. I was surprised and annoyed at the caliber of documentation supplied by Check Point. Six years ago, you really needed a reseller with the appropriate expertise to teach you how to design and implement a firewall. A year or so later, I found Phoneboy's website (phoneboy.com). It was an oasis for someone drowning in the sea of confusing literature and advice. In the time since, I have frequently referred to Phoneboy's site, as well as his fw1-gurus mailing list, as an unsurpassed source of information." Read below for Lodato's review of Phoneboy's recently updated book on the subject.

raceBannon writes "The book surprised and fascinated me. I thought it was going to be solely about the Golden Ratio. Mario Livio does cover the topic but along the way he throws in some mathematical history and even touches on the idea that math may not be a universal concept spread across the galaxy." Read on for the rest of raceBannon's review.

Ursus Maximus writes "Eagerly awaited by many, this book reached bookstores just after Christmas, and updates the 1999 edition. Learning Python is O'Reilly's introduction to Python programming and at 591 pages, this is a major upgrade to the 366 page original. Furthermore, the Python language has undergone extensive improvements and additions in the last five years, and the new book does a good job of covering these changes."

emmastory writes "It shouldn't really surprise anyone that David Pogue has once again produced an unqualified success in the third edition of Mac OS X: The Missing Manual. Since OS X came out, I've read and reviewed some dozen Mac books, but when it comes time to pick a single volume to recommend to friends making the switch, I invariably choose Pogue's. It's true that OS X beginners can understand it without any problems, but that shouldn't suggest that it's somehow too simple for veteran users - it's just that the text is exceptionally clear, meaning that even beginners won't find it too scary or confusing. While other books are bigger (Mac OS X Unleashed) and others are written specifically for a more advanced audience (Mac OS X Power Tools), the Missing Manual is the best all-purpose book on the subject, and one that should be in the library of pretty much anyone who runs OS X." That answers the question of "Did she like it?", but read on for the rest of Emma's review, including a mini-interview with David Pogue.

Sethb writes "For Us, The Living, Robert A. Heinlein's first novel, written in 1938, is not a lost masterpiece. It is, however, a fascinating piece of writing for the Heinlein fan to ingest. It's not a book you should give to a friend to introduce them to Heinlein, in fact, it works best as what it is, the last piece of Heinlein's work to be published, and it should almost certainly be one of the last pieces someone starting to read Heinlein should attempt." Read on for Sethb's review. M : CBC also has a feature about the book.

doom writes "The general concept of Robert Ehrlich's book is absolutely superb: Nine Crazy Ideas in Science: A Few Might Even Be True. Here, someone with a technical background (Ehrlich is a physics prof at George Mason) and an open mind investigates in detail a number of 'crazy' ideas, to see if there's anything to them. The execution of the idea is not quite as superb, but Robert Ehrlich has done better at this difficult job than anyone else I know of. This book is highly recommend as a good review of the evidence on some scientific controversies." Read on for doom's review, in which he goes through Erlich's nine-part list, but mind the spoilers.

William Ryan writes "If you are new to the .NET Compact Framework, you are about to embark upon a challenging yet rewarding path by writing CF applications. For the experienced CF developer, you know there is a lot to learn, and that it's constantly evolving. However, Dan Fergus and Larry Roof's new book, The Definitive Guide to the Compact Framework (available from Apress) is something you'll want in your library regardless of your familiarity with the CF. The book is just short of 1,000 pages including the index, tables of contents etc. It's composed of 22 chapters and 6 appendices. It also includes Microsoft's UI Design guidelines for the Compact Framework, which was a really nice touch by the authors." Read on for the rest of Ryan's review.

Michael Bennett Cohn writes "Everything about Cisco Networking Simplified screams accessibility: the landscape layout, the softback cover, the illustrations drawn without a ruler that literally take the sharp edges off of computers, servers, and switches (router icons, fortunately, are already round). A note on the cover indicates for the curious that the book is in full color. Each short chapter is broken into 'at-a-glance' subsections on each topic, headed 'Why Should I Care?' and 'What Are the Problems to Solve?'" Read on for the rest of Cohn's review of what he calls an imperfect but good beginner's guide to networking generally, not just Cisco products.

Rathumos writes "The network security world has been waiting patiently for a definitive study of internet worms and defenses against them. Defense and Detection Strategies against Internet Worms by Dr. Jose Nazario has arrived to fill that space with a clear and concise analysis of the current state of worm defense." Read on for the rest of Rathumos' review.

Michael Yuan writes "Enterprise JavaBean (EJB) is one of the most widely used technologies in enterprise Java. It is designed to be a scalable and flexible distributed framework. In EJB, almost everything can be done in several different ways and it offers the developer the maximum flexibility to choose the right approach for the project in hand." Yuan provides a review, below, of Bitter EJB, to guide programmers interested in large-scale Java development. Update: 10/27 18:27 GMT by T : Peter Wayner provides a somewhat deeper look at the book as well, also below.

doom writes "For those of you who haven't been paying attention, when the The Perl Cookbook by Tom Christiansen & Nathan Torkington came out in 1999 it immediately became one of the primary references in the perl world. It's one of the first places you should check before making a move with perl, right up there with search.cpan.org, itself. Now we've got the second edition. What's the diff? The diff is 58 new recipes and program examples (list provided below), plus two new chapters on mod_perl and XML (which provide an additional 27)." Read on for doom's complete review.

Alex Moskalyuk writes with the review below of John Viega and Matt Messier's Secure Programming Cookbook for C and C++, a book which he says is useful -- but only if you have the background to use it. Read on for the details, including Alex's alternative reading suggestions.

carl67lp (Carl Anderson) writes "I was recently charged with redesigning my University division's Web site. I hadn't designed a Web site in quite some time, and I wanted to ensure that I did so with everything being 'proper'--the nature of our projects require as large an audience as possible. When I saw Designing With Web Standards available on O'Reilly's Safari bookshelf, I knew I had to snag it. And now, after finishing the book (the first IT book I've ever read beginning to end!), I'm here to preach the book's virtues as the author preaches those of Web standards." Read on for Anderson's review of the book.

honestpuck writes "To say that understanding HTTP is crucial for web development might seem like saying water is wet, yet many people don't take the time to fully understand the protocol. This book could be a good help. HTTP Developer's Handbook from SAMS gives you a great deal of information about the protocol in a clearly understood fashion." Read on for the rest of honestpuck's review.

Simon P. Chappell writes "Now, I enjoy a good technical book more than the next geek, but it's been quite a while since one left me quite so excited with the possibilities that it presented. Code Generation in Action is beyond interesting, it is a masterful tome on its subject matter, written by one who is obviously an experienced practicioner in his craft." If "code generation" isn't a familiar term to you, this enthusiastic overview on devx.com is a concise introduction to what code generation is about, though it makes no pretense of ambivalence about its importance as a programming tool. Read on for the rest of Chappell's review.

SpookWarfare writes "To be completely honest I'm good friends with Tom Spurgeon and Jordan Raphael, the authors of Stan Lee: The Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book." So take your grain of salt, and read on below for "an unbiased review of a the most important book ever to be written about the subject of comic books, or any subject for that matter."

Mahrin Skel (Dave Rickey) writes "When I wrote up my Engines of Creation column for August 12th with a focus on Dr. Richard Bartle's Designing Virtual Worlds , I had no idea it was the closest thing to an independent review the book had yet received. I hadn't intended my column as a review, but simply as nit-picking over an almost theological point of disagreement between my philosophy of game design and that of Dr. Bartle. My intended audience was the normal readers of my column, mostly other people already working in the Online Games industry." Rickey provides a review of Bartle's book for a more general audience below, and explains his reasoning for doing so.