Book Review:
Cisco Press
We
haven’t done any book reviews in a while.
That isn’t because we stopped reading – my goal is to
read one book a day – fiction or non – and I usually manage
that, plus some of the 200+ paper and on-line business and technical
publications that arrive at our office every month.
I admit to only skimming many of those, although I’m a very
faithful daily reader of the Wall Street Journal, the New York
Times, and a handful of daily on-line publications.
Rather,
it’s because you have to read in a particular way to write book
reviews. We don’t
generally review a single book.
We like to review a few related books at a time and tell you
about not just the books, but their relationship.
It takes planning.
This
book review is planned around a different idea. We have been checking out some of the technical publishing
companies with an eye to telling you about them. Many of them correspond with us on a regular basis, offering
us catalogs, books, and a chance to talk with authors.
As
you might guess, each company has a different emphasis or specialty.
We thought we’d start this exploration with Cisco Press,
because we’ve been finding one of their books particularly useful.
I generally tell vendors and prospective clients right away
that one of the fields we don’t cover is technical communications,
especially telephony. But it’s hard to know nothing about as more and more of
what I am interested in depends on communications.
Authors
Bradley Dunsmore and Toby Skandier have written a very useful guide
to telecommunications standards, Telecommunications Technologies
Reference (Cisco Press, Indianapolis, IN, 2002), which made it onto
the shelf over my desk. If
you’ve ever been to my office you’d know what that means – I
have several thousand books and only about 2 dozen get to live that
close to where the action is.
This
is where I go for definitions and explanations of everything in
telecommunications – ISDN, DSL, T1, you name it. It is at that wonderful level where a beginner can understand
it, but everything a professional might need is there.
Cisco
Press is a partnership between Cisco Systems and the
Pearson Education division of Pearson plc.
It is the official publisher of Cisco® networking technology
and Cisco certification self-study materials for networking students
and professionals, with products designed to help users prepare for
Cisco certifications and master the implementation and support of a
diverse range of networking technologies.
That means it’s a very good source for anything on Cisco,
telecommunications, or networking. Cisco Press products can be
purchased at local bookstores, computer/electronic store, online
booksellers, or at www.ciscopress.com.
It is also possible to access Cisco Press books through
Safari, an on-line information retrieval system that creates
personal searchable IT libraries.
You can view their scheme at http://safari.informit.com
We’ll
be commenting in the future on some of the other industry publishers
we frequently use, including O’Reilly, Microsoft Press, and
others. Do nominate
your favorite publishers for inclusion and send your comments along.
