In Pursuit of the Ultimate Good

After an overwhelming succession of tragedies, life has finally, mercifully ended for Orlene, once-mortal daughter of Gaea.

Joined in Afterlife by Jolie — her protector and the sometime consort of Satan himself — together they seek out a third: Vita, a very contemporary mortal with troubles, attractions, and an unsettling moral code uniquely her own.

An extraordinary triumvirate, they embark on a great quest to reawaken the Incarnation of Good in a world where evil reigns — facing challenges that will test the very fiber of their beings with trials as numerous, as mysterious, and as devastating as the Incarnations themselves.

An All-New Xanth Adventure

First Paperback Edition!

A fickle flux in the fabric of space has allowed a horrendous hurricane to blast into Xanth, stirring up mischief and madness wherever she goes. Trapped in a preposterous form by a cosmic wager, the Demon X(A/N)th must join forces with a vexatious vixen named Chlorine to save Xanth from this terrifying and tempestuous threat.

Their companions on this haphazard quest are a hapless human family - Jim and Karen Baldwin and their two teenaged sons, David and Sean - gusted into Xanth from the mundane world beyond. Together they encounters a host of turbulent misadventures as they struggle to keep Xanth from being blown off the map forever.

A brisk and breezy adventure in the grand Xanth tradition, Yon Ill Wind is sure to bring gales of laughter and excitement to Piers Anthony's legion of loyal readers.

Written by several of Java's inventors, The Java Programming Language, Third Edition provides a nearly indispensable guide to basic and advanced features in today's hottest programming language. Perfect for the intermediate or advanced developer, this book delivers a wealth of information on how to do more with Java. The first sections provide a nicely compact tour of Java basics. If you're a beginner, you'll get a glimpse of the fundamentals of Java quickly. (Most of this new edition has the more experienced reader in mind.) Subsequent chapters delve into basic and advanced language features of what can be done with classes, interfaces, and other design features in Java. The authors' explanations are notably clear and never pedantic. Many examples are illustrated by using simple mathematical problems, and the class-design samples for inheritance and interfaces all use comprehensible class names and concepts.

This title is outstanding when it comes to class design. It will definitely let any reader do more with classes, whether you want to make use of such features as "anonymous inner classes" and reflection (for loading classes dynamically), or do more with interfaces (including extending interfaces and tricks on changing data members in interfaces).

Prominent sections here include a complete guide to Java language statements, including keywords, literals, and support for Unicode. Later sections feature a nice, clear explanation of Java's complicated I/O classes, a fine tutorial on threading, and a solid introduction to using Java's collection classes. The book closes with a tour of some additional "core" Java packages that are available in the language.

In all, this up-to-the-minute guide to some of the more complex features in today's Java fills a valuable niche for any Java developer. Besides providing a glimpse into what the Java team at Sun is up to, this authoritative resource can help you master the finer points of class design, as well as make the most out of newly added features in the new JDK 1.3 standard. —Richard Dragan

Topics covered: QuickStart overview of Java, class and object design in Java, access control, construction and initialization, static methods, method overloading, class inheritance, redefining members, the protected keyword, the strictfp keyword and floating-point processing, cloning objects, interfaces (constants, methods, and modifiers), extending interfaces, marker interfaces, nested classes and interfaces (including static nested types, inner classes, and anonymous inner classes), tokens, operators, and expressions in Java, literals, keywords, operator precedence, control flow, Java exception handling, exception classes, the String and StringBuffer classes, threads, synchronization APIs and techniques (scheduling, thread groups, and thread local storage), the wrapper classes for Number types, Java reflection, loading classes, garbage collection (GC algorithms, finalization and reachability states), packages, JavaDoc documentation tags, tour of Java I/O stream classes, serialization techniques, new and legacy Java collections, miscellaneous utility classes, system programming with properties, processes and JVM shutdown; internationalization and localization techniques, and tour of additional Java "core" packages.

Learning to apply CSS is the HTML Web publisher's next developmental step toward a professional and stable Web design. A prerequisite to learning higher-level languages like Javascript, Java, and Flash, CSS is gaining increasing support among major browsers, including Netscape, Internet Explorer (together 94% market share) and newcomers Opera, Mozilla and NeoPlanet, and backwards-compatibility with older browser versions and specialized browsers.

The key to successful CSS implementation is in understanding how different browsers use and interpret CSS. This tutorial takes the unique position of teaching the reader how to make smart decisions about how and when to apply CSS, based on browser support and intended effects. In 24 straightforward, hourly lessons, the reader learns by accomplishing hands-on tasks that can be applied to his own site in every hour.

What a delightful book about books and people who love books! As a second generation bibliophile, a possible bibliomane who had several people move out of my house a year ago because they erroneously believed that my books were taking over the household, and a devout employee of "Earth's Biggest Bookstore," I can vouch that Basbanes accurately describes the glorious role of book collectors as archivists of human knowledge, and — in continual counterpoint — sometimes pathologically obsessed book junkies.

Berekeley Breathed's favorite Outland strips from 1980 to 1995. As he himself says about his often bizarre sense of humor, "what seems funny to a sleep-deprived brain at 4:00 A.M. often reads as merely hallucinogenic when laid down on the sober newsprint of a newspaper comic page. This may explain my initial popularity on college campuses around the country."

Millennia ago the Five Galaxies decreed the planet Jijo off limits. But in the last thousand years six races have begun resettling Jijo, embracing a pre-industrial life to hide their existence from the Galactics. Overcoming their differences, the Six have built a society based on mutual tolerance for one another and respect for the planet they live on. But that has all changed with an event the Six have feared for hundreds of years: the arrival of an outside ship. Author David Brin has returned to his popular Uplift universe in this, the first book of a new trilogy.

This second volume in David Brin's new Uplift trilogy is an epic tale that artfully combines dozens of unique characters and their individual stories. The planet Jijo, which has been settled by six separate races despite a decree that it remain barren for a million years, is about to change. The exploration ship Streaker, on the run since discovering the secrets of a two-billion-year-old derelict fleet, has arrived with virtually the entire universe in pursuit. Overnight the peaceful, technologically backwards Jijoan society erupts into civil war, creating a chaotic tapestry of grief, sorrow, joy, love and, ultimately, hope.

Perhaps more than anywhere else, Silicon Valley in the latter part of the 20th century has come to represent the essence of the American dream. Its economy has resembled the various rushes and booms of the 1800s. The Valley is a unique place in a unique time, where just about anyone with a good idea, an aptitude for hard work, and a boatload of luck has a chance to make it big—really big. In The Nudist on the Late Shift, Po Bronson intends to capture the spirit of the Valley, leading us through a series of vignettes that takes us from a "near brush with sudden wealth" to a $400 million buyout; from life on the edge with a group of Java programmers to the plight of a futurist writer with the looming deadline for a 9,000-word article. For Bronson, the appeal of the Valley is this:

Every generation that came before us had to make a choice in life between pursuing a steady career and pursuing wild adventures. In Silicon Valley, that trade-off has been recircuited. By injecting mind-boggling risk into the once stodgy domain of gray-suited business, young people no longer have to choose. It's a two-for-one deal: the career path has become an adventure into the unknown.

Like Tracy Kidder's Soul of a New Machine, what makes Bronson's book work is a talent for narrative. He presents compelling stories about those who make it—for example, Ben Chiu (Killerapp.com, C/NET) and Sabeer Bhatia (Hotmail)—as well as those whom we'll never hear of again: the database salesman working on the "hockey stick" at the close of the quarter and the "kiss-ass entrepreneur" who's taken up COBOL programming to make ends meet. The Nudist on the Late Shift is for anyone who has wondered what life on the modern frontier is like—and for those who are already there, the reflection might be revealing. —Harry C. Edwards