Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home
by David Shipley and Will Schwalbe

Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home

This book starts out with a tale of Michael Brown, FEMA chief, sending questionable e-mail messages during the Hurricane Katrina crisis. That's about the highlight of this book.

It is the most basic coverage of e-mail. Anyone who has even visited the Great Lakes Geek site is way beyond this book. And their grandparents probably are too.

It is painfully simple. Is there anyone out there who still doesn't know that typing in all caps is considered to be shouting in e-mail?

And do we really need to be told in excrutiating detail the difference between To, CC and BCC? Sure, even seasoned veterans will make an occasional mistake. But it's a mistake, not lack of knowledge about what the fields mean.

If you really don't know when it is appropriate to e-mail, fax or show up in person maybe you will get something from this book.

E-mail is, along with the web browser, the killer app of the Internet age and this book could have and should have tapped into its power. But it didn't. It provides a complete, albeit grade school, coverage of e-mail.

Unless you are just getting your first e-mail account, you can skip this disappointing book. Disappointing because of the author's credentials. David Shipley is deputy editorial page editor and op-ed page editor of the New York Times, and Will Schwalbe is senior vice-president and editor-in-chief of Hyperion Books.

What are you reading?  Let us know at dan@greatlakesgeek.com