Shamms is decent as far as all that stuff goes. Not a con artist. Hrm... but then, not an artist either? ;P His techinical stuff, "this is how you do this" is great. My only problem with his one book I had is his sense of aesthetics. It got hard to read it after a while with my eyes closed :) But then, I hear that dorky ugly style of composition and renderings is his trademark look ;p