REVIEW: WALKING THE WORLD WIDE WEB - Your Personal Guide to Great Internet
        Resources  by Shannon Turlington  Ventana Press 1995
ISBN:  1-56604-208-9   paperbound 322 pages includes CD-ROM  $29.95

Its interesting to see the number of quality books on the World Wide Web and
WALKING THE WORLD WIDE WEB is one of them.  Since it us essentially a
directory of many WWW sites and subject to constant change, this innovative
guide has an interesting feature that tries to address the problem.  More 
about that later.  There are other goodies too.

WALKING THE WORLD WIDE WEB will take the reader from zero WWW knowledge 
to that of comfortable user.  In this respect it is a "newbie" book - or for
someone who has been using e-mail and USENET and has not enjoyed full Net 
access or had the time to explore it.  However, in order to fully enjoy 
the treasures the Net has to offer, you must become familiar with this 
"invisible network" called the World Wide Web, WWW or just "the Web".  
It is by far the fastest growing Internet component.

A quick tour through the book shows five sections, beginning with How to
Get There From Here, which introduces us to Web basics, URLs, NCSA Mosaic,
Lynx and some "must-see" sites.  The remaining four sections are indexed
WWW sites where you can visit and get wonderful stuff.  The main 
classifications are See The World, People & Places to Visit, News & 
Entertainment and  Services, Shopping & Dining Out.  Three appendices -
Mosaic and the WWW, WWW Search Tools and an index of Web servers round 
out the book.  

As mentioned earlier, there are aditional goodies -  a CD-ROM containing a
Hypertext version of WALKING THEWORLD WIDE WEB and a special version Ventana 
Mosaic which allows you to browse the book offline at will.   You can develop 
an off-line "itinerary" at your leisure, log on and point and click your way
through some of the best sites the Web has to offer or automatically connect
to a live WWW site from the CD-ROM listing.    Another "perk" is
the Online Companion that is free (for a year) once you've registered.  
There is a "secret" password sealed in with the CD that you must enter
when prompted.  The only mention of "credit card account information" is as
an option, should you wish to purchase from Ventana's online catalog or to 
add more Companion Access time (presumably once the free year is up).  You
can use this on-line feature to check for updates to the listings in the
book, including new or changed URLs and brand-new sites for you to explore.

I liked WALKING THE WORLD WIDE WEB - its a fun book filled with interesting
things to do and provides useful tools on the CD-ROM.  Don't worry if you
don't presently have a CD drive - there's plenty for you here without it.  
In my opinion this is an excellent value for $30.00 as a learning source
first and reference source later.  I hope this will be a regularly
revised and updated work.


%T      Walking the World Wide Web
%A      Shannon R. Turlington
%I      Ventana Press
%C      Chapel Hill NC
%D      1995
%G      ISBN 1-56604-208-9
%P      322 pp
%S      Internet, World Wide Web, CD-ROM
%O      $29.95  includes Hypertext version on CD-ROM

(C) 1995
Michael Crestohl
Nahant Massachusetts  USA
mc@shore.net

DISCLAIMER:  I have no interest, financial or otherwise, in the success or 
failure of the book or materials reviewed herewith, nor have I received any 
compensation (other than a review copy requested by me) from anyone who has.  
All opinions expressed are strictly my own.

Other Internet and Aviation book/software reviews by me can be obtained 
by anonymous FTP from:  x2ftp.oulu.fi in the /pub/books/crestohl directory.