BKUNDCDS.RVW 940120 Addison-Wesley Publishing Company Kelly Ford, Promotion/Publicity Coordinator Heather Rignanesi, Marketing, x340, 73171.657@Compuserve.com P.O. Box 520 26 Prince Andrew Place Don Mills, Ontario M3C 2T8 416-447-5101 fax: 416-443-0948 or Tiffany Moore, Publicity tiffanym@aw.com Bob Donegon bobd@aw.com John Wait, Editor, Corporate and Professional Publishing johnw@aw.com Tom Stone, Editor, Higher Education Division tomsto@aw.com Philip Sutherland, Schulman Series 74640.2405@compuserve.com 1 Jacob Way Reading, MA 01867-9984 800-822-6339 617-944-3700 Fax: (617) 944-7273 5851 Guion Road Indianapolis, IN 46254 800-447-2226 "Undocumented DOS, A Programmer's Guide to Reserved MS-DOS Functions and Data Structures", Schulman et al, 1994, 0-201-63287-X, U$44.95/C$57.95 If you want the deep secrets of DOS internals, this is the book to get. For those interested in the inside dope, this is the only game in town. Many other authors would rest on those laurels. You want it? Come and get it. You don't like how it's done? Tough. Not so, with Schulman and company. As the preface points out, the real purpose here is to show you how DOS works. The repeated refrain is that if there is a way to do it with the documented stuff, don't take the undocumented shortcuts. In addition, the book is carefully and clearly presented in all places. Indeed, with the added bits of history and trivia, even the non-programmer can find several enthralling items per chapter. I may, of course, be predisposed to it by my work in virus research, but the opening material on the investigation of Microsoft under the antitrust laws was absolutely rivetting. (I said in a prior review that I had a hard time imagining a data security text as a page-turner: now I find myself making almost the same claim for an internals text.) (All very well for you, some people will be saying at this point, you're a techie. Interesting you should bring that up, particularly in view of Schulman's assertion that any really competent technical writer would rather code than write. My appreciation for the book stems partly from the material, it is true, but also from the presentation and clarity. I actually have rather a low tolerance for code, as my many tiny and abandoned-with-the-last-few-bugs- unfixed programs will attest.) This book is, definitely, for programmers, and preferably those easily comfortable with both C and assembler. Unlike many useful texts, though, it won't be a drag to read. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1994 BKUNDCDS.RVW 940120 ====================== 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" (Oct. '94) Springer-Verlag