BKINT21D.RVW 941006 %A Neil Randall %C 201 West 103rd St., Indianapolis, IN 46290 %D 1994 %G 0-672-30519-4 %I SAMS Publishing/MCP %O U$25.00/C$34.95 317-581-3718 fax: 317-581-4669 %O 75141.2102@compuserve.com 75141.2104@compuserve.com %P 676 %T "Teach Yourself the Internet: Around the World in 21 Days" "Teach Yourself the Internet", Randall, 1994, 0-672-30519-4, U$25.00/C$34.95 Randall is aware of the fact that there are many Internet guides out there. Thus, he is eager to distinguish this book from the rest of the pack. He does not, as one might suspect from the title, suggest this as a workbook for a three-week course in Internet exploration. Instead, he stresses that this work demonstrates the use of combinations of tools. In fact, he repeats his assertion that you need not have access to the Internet in order to use this book. The volume is structured into twenty-one chapters, named "Day 1" through "Day 21". The first two give an overview of the Internet's scope and background. Days three through seven are basic (and sometimes *very* short) introductions to email, mailing lists, newsgroups, ftp, archie, WAIS, gopher and World Wide Web. If you work through the whole book, one chapter per day, then by the end of three weeks you should have a reasonable understanding of the tools. If, however, you do not have both gopher and W3 access, then you will spend significant portions of most days reading instead of doing. The remaining fourteen days basically "net surf" in the topics of the Internet; travel; art; colleges and universities; jobs; special interest online magazines; Star Trek; professional information; business information providers; education; AIDS, HIV and women's issues; government; and, science. About a third of the book appears to have been written by other contributors, but the style, layout, and format is consistent throughout. The book is very heavily "full Internet" biased, and makes no concessions to those who do not have a full set of Internet client tools. As noted, the accessible parts should provide a fairly solid grasp of standard tools. This is a decent Internet guide--but not a great one. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1994 BKINT21D.RVW 941006 ====================== DECUS Canada Communications, Desktop, Education and Security group newsletters Editor and/or reviewer ROBERTS@decus.ca, RSlade@sfu.ca, Rob Slade at 1:153/733 Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" 0-387-94311-0/3-540-94311-0