Book Reviews

Autotools by John Calcote is, as he says in the introduction, the only book of its kind. If you want a tutorial-based approach to understanding automake, autoconf, and libtool, this book is your only option. And it's pretty good, too. The author is a bit wordy, but the explanations and examples are comprehensive, and the pacing is fairly good, so you won't feel like you are forgetting everything as you rush on to a new topic.

Finally, the chapter-by-chapter organization of this book is really superb. When I started reading, and this organization was explained, I was skeptical. It begins with a chapter on a simple example that doesn't use any of the autotools. Then, the autoconf chapter adds just autoconf, without automake. The next chapters add automake and then libtool, in succession. The point of this organization is to demonstrate just what exactly the autotools are automating. By showing the redundancies and difficulties that motivate the autotools, it is much easier to understand why they work the way they do. Some historical information about the way each autotool originated is also helpful in understanding their designs.

If you have looked inside configure.ac or Makefile.am and felt horrified by the use of ugly, incomprehensible macros, this book is for you. I may not have become an autotools fan, but at least I'm not afraid of them.

I picked up a copy of The Art of RAW Conversion, by Uwe Steinmueller and Jürgen Gulbins because I wanted to learn about the benefits of shooting RAW photography and how to set up a good post-processing workflow. I was not disappointed by this book in the slightest. The authors have done an excellent job at giving a basic overview of why you should shoot in RAW mode along with presenting a fairly generic workflow for processing your images. They then go on to spend the majority of the book discussing how to adapt that workflow to various pieces of software such as Adobe Camera RAW, Apple's Aperture, Adobe Lightroom, and several others. I found that the book did an adequate job of comparing the advantages and disadvantages of the applications, although there did seem to be a bit of favoritism towards Adobe Camera RAW. They then close out the remainder of the book by looking at a variety of topics such as advanced post-processing techniques, the .DNG format, batch processing, and B&W conversions.

Overall, I felt that this book was at the perfect level for someone who is looking to step up from just taking photos and posting them online to actually perfecting your images in the post-processing stages. I think they do a great job of presenting you with the basic approach and then showing different tools that can be used to accomplish this. They also give a few tips throughout on how to improve your composition skills as well. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is looking to take this step.

Another title from my favorite publisher, Packt; however, this book let me down. It is advertised as a practical guide to setting up a Linux email server. Although it does excel at advanced email server configurations, especially those regarding SpamAssassin, SquirrelMail and general email security, this book seems to skim over the the basic yet essential steps. You will probably need to read some internet tutorials to master the basics of an email server before tackling this title. Despite its shortcomings, this is still the best single resource that I have found for advanced email configurations.

PowerShell is a language that tries to be everything to everybody, so it's full of both cool features and dark corners. But you can write a good book about any language, and "Windows PowerShell in Action" is pretty good. It does suffer from a minor glitch: like the language, the book tries to be everything to everybody. This is perhaps not surprising, since the book was written by one of the key designers of the language.

In the end, the book is great for someone who wants to become an expert PowerShell user. If you, like me, are interested more in the design of the language and its innovative features than in practicalities, you may be somewhat disappointed. That information is in the book, but the wonderful tidbits are hidden in unexpected places, so you really have to read the whole thing cover-to-cover, which involves skimming over a lot of stuff you probably don't care about.

But let me repeat: as a way to learn PowerShell, this book is well-organized and presents just the right level of detail. Once you read it, you will know what you are doing.

If you are familiar with the Manga Guide series, you will be right at home reading the Molecular Biology edition. Molecular biology suits itself well for being presented in a comic format. The pictures and diagrams of the numerous processes and structures greatly aid in the understanding of the topic. For those new to molecular biology, the Manga Guide is a great introduction. The story begins with explaining all about cells and proceeds to describe DNA and its replication, protein and its interactions, and concludes with discussing genetic technology as well as research. By no means is the Manga Guide more than a basic introduction to the subject, but it makes a great introduction that is very readable and offers some humor to accompany the learning.

For those interested in getting a brief introduction to molecular biology or wanting to review basic concepts, the Manga Guide is a good choice. Throughout each chapter there are breaks from the manga form and the information is presented in a question and answer dialogue between the characters. The question and answer form helps to explain some of the more complex material in an efficient manner and is referred back to many times. Included in the information are applications to read dieses and disorders which relate to the topics that are being discussed. My only criticism is that there are no quizzes at the end of each chapter to test your knowledge. Other than that, The Manga Guide to Molecular Biology is a great introduction into the field and an enjoyable read.