Applications come and applications go, but Unix remains a constant force. Knowledge of this reliable, eminently scalable operating system will never go out of style, and you"ll never regret having a high-quality Unix reference like Unix User"s Handbook around. This supersized, hardback volume contains (in a logical structure) everything you need to know in order to become a Unix guru. Which means that by having this book around, you can do a reasonable job of faking your guru status until you absorb the body of Unix knowledge. Marty Poniatowski has done a great job of integrating straight type-this-to-get-that tutorial material with more holistic text about Unix"s design. A typical chapter begins with a command you can issue at the command prompt. The text then explains the command"s output, what it means, and how it fits into the larger Unix scheme. The chapter then expands individual points of its explanation with further digressions into other commands, with tables that explain alternate syntax and switches as appropriate (the book includes some helpful diagrams, too, but its screen shots of graphical interfaces are of poor quality). You can learn a lot by reading the chapters straight through, or in most cases you can rely on the index to steer you right to the explanation you want. This book doesn"t attempt to rebuild Rome, by the way. Each chapter concludes with the HP-UX man pages for commands discussed there (the contents of the man pages, however, aren"t indexed). The chapter on the fundamentals of software development with C and the one on TCP/IP networking are both particularly strong, making this a great buy. --David Wall Topics covered: The Unix operating system (generically, with perhaps a slight tint of HP-UX), treated comprehensively for the benefit of new users in need of introductions and more accomplished users who need a reference. Chapters deal with the file system, several shells (bash, korn, and c), the vi text editor, network setup and management, and graphical user interfaces. A couple of excellent chapters introduce the reader to Windows NT integration (with Samba, among other tools) and Unix software development.