Anatomy is an indispensable foundation for any artistic portrayal of human beings. Without such knowledge, it is impossible to observe with understanding the various attitudes and movements that the human body is capable of.

Anatomy for the Artist has become a classic in its field - a reference work of unparalleled importance for all professionals and students of art, and an invaluable aid for those learning to draw. Professor Barcsay offers a detailed portrayal of the human body for the artist in 142 full-page plates, illustrating magnificently a subject that has fascinated artists for centuries.

In What Is Thought? Eric Baum proposes a computational explanation of thought. Just as Erwin Schrodinger in his classic 1944 work What Is Life? argued ten years before the discovery of DNA that life must be explainable at a fundamental level by physics and chemistry, Baum contends that the present-day inability of computer science to explain thought and meaning is no reason to doubt there can be such an explanation. Baum argues that the complexity of mind is the outcome of evolution, which has built thought processes that act unlike the standard algorithms of computer science and that to understand the mind we need to understand these thought processes and the evolutionary process that produced them in computational terms.

Baum proposes that underlying mind is a complex but compact program that corresponds to the underlying structure of the world. He argues further that the mind is essentially programmed by DNA. We learn more rapidly than computer scientists have so far been able to explain because the DNA code has programmed the mind to deal only with meaningful possibilities. Thus the mind understands by exploiting semantics, or meaning, for the purposes of computation; constraints are built in so that although there are myriad possibilities, only a few make sense. Evolution discovered corresponding subroutines or shortcuts to speed up its processes and to construct creatures whose survival depends on making the right choice quickly. Baum argues that the structure and nature of thought, meaning, sensation, and consciousness therefore arise naturally from the evolution of programs that exploit the compact structure of the world.

Software development projects can be fun, productive, and even daring. Yet they can consistently deliver value to a business and remain under control.

Extreme Programming (XP) was conceived and developed to address the specific needs of software development conducted by small teams in the face of vague and changing requirements. This new lightweight methodology challenges many conventional tenets, including the long-held assumption that the cost of changing a piece of software necessarily rises dramatically over the course of time. XP recognizes that projects have to work to achieve this reduction in cost and exploit the savings once they have been earned.

Fundamentals of XP include:

* Distinguishing between the decisions to be made by business interests and those to be made by project stakeholders. * Writing unit tests before programming and keeping all of the tests running at all times. * Integrating and testing the whole system-several times a day. * Producing all software in pairs, two programmers at one screen. * Starting projects with a simple design that constantly evolves to add needed flexibility and remove unneeded complexity. * Putting a minimal system into production quickly and growing it in whatever directions prove most valuable.

Why is XP so controversial? Some sacred cows don't make the cut in XP:

* Don't force team members to specialize and become analysts, architects, programmers, testers, and integrators-every XP programmer participates in all of these critical activities every day. * Don't conduct complete up-front analysis and design-an XP project starts with a quick analysis of the entire system, and XP programmers continue to make analysis and design decisions throughout development. * Develop infrastructure and frameworks as you develop your application, not up-front-delivering business value is the heartbeat that drives XP projects. * Don't write and maintain implementation documentation-communication in XP projects occurs face-to-face, or through efficient tests and carefully written code.

You may love XP or you may hate it, but Extreme Programming Explained will force you to take a fresh look at how you develop software.

Here is a comprehensive guide to a fast-growing technology for Web developers. JavaServer Pages (JSPs) let you embed server-side Java into Web pages, while also offering full access to other features such as JavaBeans, Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB), and JDBC database access. The reference JSP implementation is the freely available Apache Tomcat server, so it does not cost anything to get started. All the example code in this book has been tested on Tomcat.

The first part of JavaServer Pages covers the essentials of HTTP and Java Servlets, on which JSPs are based. There is also a guide to installing Tomcat on your Windows or Unix system. The next part, which is aimed at Web page designers as well as programmers, covers JSP application development. There are chapters on scripting elements, error handling, managing user sessions, database access, security, and the use of XML and XSL with JSP. Part III is for programmers, and broadens the scope to include EJB and other Java components, developing custom tags, and achieving highly scaleable applications using database connection pools. The book concludes with a comprehensive reference section.

The author has been an active participant in the official Servlet and JSP working groups, and his book is both well informed and well organised. It provides experts with invaluable tips and insights, while newcomers will find all they need to assess and implement their first JSP applications. —Tim Anderson

-The word is out: with Ruby on Rails you can build powerful Web applications easily and quickly! And just like the Rails framework itself, Rails applications are Ruby programs. That means you can't tap into the full power of Rails unless you master the Ruby language.

Ruby for Rails, written by Ruby expert David Black (with a forward by David Heinemeier Hansson), helps Rails developers achieve Ruby mastery. Each chapter deepens your Ruby knowledge and shows you how it connects to Rails. You'll gain confidence working with objects and classes and learn how to leverage Ruby's elegant, expressive syntax for Rails application power. And you'll become a better Rails developer through a deep understanding of the design of Rails itself and how to take advantage of it.

Newcomers to Ruby will find a Rails-oriented Ruby introduction that's easy to read and that includes dynamic programming techniques, an exploration of Ruby objects, classes, and data structures, and many neat examples of Ruby and Rails code in action. Ruby for Rails: the Ruby guide for Rails developers!

What's Inside Classes, modules, and objectsCollection handling and filteringString and regular expression manipulationExploration of the Rails source codeRuby dynamicsMany more programming concepts and techniques!

The Power to Remake the World
In an age long gone, mortals dethroned the gods and seized the heavens for their own. And for it, they were flung down into the world of clay, their minds clouded by ignorance. Only a bare few remember their birthright — the power of magic. If they cannot claim the heavens, they will make their own kingdoms on Earth.

A Storytelling Game of Modern Sorcery
* Provides everything you need to tell your own stories in the occult world of the Awakened, including details of the various orders and paths of magic, and many secrets of the World of Darkness.
* Presents the most comprehensive and freeform magic system ever achieved in gaming, allowing characters to cast nearly any spell imaginable.
* Features Boston as a fully fleshed-out, ready-to-play setting
* Features artwork by the acclaimed Michael William Kaluta