JT Martin writes with his review of Barrington Bayley's The Knights of the Limits. Fans of obscure science fiction should thank JT for the service thus rendered.

Steve MacLaughlin wrote this review of Web ReDesign: Workflow that Works , a book which transcends its title to address much more than workflow, and more generally than just on the Web. Steve promises that your copy will soon be tattered and marked -- and that's a good thing.

Compulsive reviewer chromatic takes a break this time from the ultra-serious by reviewing a kids' book to help fill the need for reading material aimed at kids which don't treat them as idiots. It also sounds like good reading for post-kids, in the same way that Dr. Seuss is.

Reader Steve MacLaughlin (you can visit his blog here) contributed this review of Gonzo Marketing: Winning Through Worst Practices, which sounds like an interesting followup to The Cluetrain Manifesto. Whether micromarketing of this sort really takes off will depend chicken-and-egg-like on whether a few companies escape being annoying and actually get people interested in what they have to offer.

Reader Luke Tymowski gets the credit for this review of another O'Reilly book, one whose subject probably would be useful to more people than books on any single programming language. The book is Managing Mailing Lists -- read on to see how Luke thinks this book stacks up even a few years after its release.

Reader Bob Johnson wrote this detailed review of Hacking Exposed followup Hacking Linux Exposed -- especially in light of the various color-coded Windows viruses still on the loose, this might be a good present for your your local Windows administrator as well, but both Bob and the authors are clear: GNU/Linux systems may be more resistant, but are not immune to cracking.

Danny Yee wrote this review for everyone who likes reading physics textbooks. Danny says: "If you studied physics at uni and are interested in a different kind of text at that level, read on. If not, you might prefer my review of Measured Tones: the Interplay of Physics and Music or other popular science reviews.

Stephanie Black contributes this review of a book which might be nice to have around if someone suggests that Open Source is "not for business use." Managing Open Source Projects is one of a class of books that will probably expand hugely in the next few years.

After World War II, the family of J.R.R. Tolkien, who was teaching philology at Oxford at the time, encouraged him to use his intense imagination for mythology to deal with more wordly topics. Having already written The Silmarillion, at their prodding Tolkien produced The Hobbit, then The Lord of The Rings. This year, partly in preparation for the trilogy of films to be released over the next two years, Tolkien lovers and discoverers are visiting and re-visiting Middle Earth, thanks to a flood of new books. From time to time, in advance of the movies, I'll present some of them here. Tolkien's World is one of the best so far.

The indefatigable chromatic wrote this review of what sounds like another solid offering from the hard workers at O'Reilly & Associates. If you're in the market for dead-tree references to XML, it probably belongs on your list of candidates.

Long-suffering Slashdot reader WrinkledShirt contributes this review of John Hall's Programming Linux Games, and lays out the good and the bad in a book that's one of the few of its kind. More games are always good -- hopefully books like this one will spark some inspiration.

Craig Maloney contributes the below review of a book he claims is long overdue -- the second edition of Gary Feld's The Book of SCSI. Probably it won't be long until someone is reviewing The Book of Firewire, but SCSI remains probably the most widespread standard for high-quality, reasonably priced storage. I know it's gotten better since the last time I struggled with termination issues and bad cables, but if you rely on SCSI every day, you may need this book.

J.R.R.Tolkien succeeded both in creating fabulous new worlds and rendering them utterly believable. Reading his trilogy has become a rite of passage for many in several generations. An updated atlas of Middle -Earth provides a definitive guide through hundreds of maps and drawings. (In advance of the movie Lord of The Rings scheduled for release in December, we'll be writing and talking about the trilogy itself as well as other works the original books have inspired.)

Slashdot reader Adam Jenkins contributed the review below of John P. Mulligan's Solaris 8 Essential Reference. If you operate a Solaris box for fun or profit, this book may prove be a useful reference, though Adam has some reservations about the book's completeness, especially regarding the new features you'd expect a book updated for Solaris 8 to cover.

Reader Steven MacLaughlin, CKO of Expidant, Inc, contributes this review of From Bricks to Clicks: : 5 Steps to Creating a Durable Online Brand, a book which straightforwardly appeals to readers' interest in the marketing and cash-flow side of online business rather than the programming side. If you have established (or are just working for) a site with the goal of making money from it, you may want to pay attention to this stuff, because the last year especially has shown that the best laid sites of mice and men need a lot more than a clever idea to succeed.

With Open Source software projects, understanding why certain features are developed while others aren't, or even why entire projects split apart into contending factions, is often as simple as reading mailing list archives and web sites where the involved parties hash out (or at least air) their differences. Within a large corporation, it's a lot harder. Slashdot reader (and "former Microsoftie") Adam Barr contributes this review of Breaking Windows, which he describes as an imperfect but revealing look into the internal politics of Microsoft, and how clashing groups within the company have struggled to get their vision of Windows on the desktop -- sometimes a messy process.

Chromatic slipped this review under our door. You need a few laughs at this point in the summer (ok, Northern hemisphere residents at least) to distract you from the heat of summer and the cost of air conditioning, and Joy of Linux has some esoteric geek humor in store, even if it's intended mostly as a mostly serious field guide to Linux nerddom for amateur anthropologists, like parents, girlfriends and bosses.

Chromatic has done it again, with his tripartite review below -- this time, he presents a trio of books designed for easy digestion. They won't teach you to program in obscure languages, how to track down (and hopefully garrote) abusive kiddies, or make better looking web sites. But hopefully, these three books from the pens of Ian McDonald, Peter Abrams and Bill Holbrook (and all from the network-aware Plan 9 publishing house) will still lighten your day.

Duncan Lawie brings to the stage another dark-and-creepy sounding Science Fiction work: this time it's Bruce Sterling's latest, Zeitgeist, which may mark a departure for someone looking for "just another Bruce Sterling book." Hint: it's set in the past, not the future.

Systems administrators -- good system administrators -- are worth their weight in coffee beans weekly, probably more if you count overtime. Getting to be a competent admin for a network of GNU/Linux machines isn't easy, especially when so many organizations rely on Windows. Today, chromatic reviews a book that can give a boost to Windows administrators learning to step up. It's definitely Red Hat-centric, right down to the title, but may be useful even if you're using some other flavor of Linux.