I am a Trinida­di­an liv­ing in Con­necti­cut, USA and I re­cent­ly learnt some­thing that made me burst with na­tion­al pride. I was speak­ing to a friend who is do­ing com­put­er sci­ence at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty, an Ivy League in­sti­tu­tion rat­ed one of the best uni­ver­si­ties in the world. He ca­su­al­ly men­tioned that one of his pre­scribed text­books in a course called "da­ta struc­tures" was writ­ten by a Trinida­di­an. Fur­ther in­quiry re­vealed that the book was Da­ta Struc­tures in C writ­ten by Dr Noel Kalicha­ran of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine. I was thrilled (and proud) that a "low­ly" Tri­ni could write a book in an im­por­tant field such as com­put­er sci­ence and have it se­lect­ed above all oth­ers as the text­book of choice for its stu­dents by one of the finest uni­ver­si­ties in the world.

This is not my field but a ca­su­al search would show there are hun­dreds of "da­ta struc­tures" books writ­ten by very em­i­nent com­put­er sci­en­tists. For Kalicha­ran to be cho­sen is a sig­nal achieve­ment in­deed. I did won­der if any oth­er Trinida­di­an (or even Caribbean) au­thor has ever ac­com­plished such a feat for a book in a gen­er­al sub­ject area. I do not know Kalicha­ran per­son­al­ly but I some­times read his ar­ti­cles in the lo­cal news­pa­pers on the In­ter­net. He is ob­vi­ous­ly a very tal­ent­ed writer on a wide va­ri­ety of sub­jects but it seems that he is es­pe­cial­ly good at writ­ing in his own sub­ject area, com­put­er sci­ence. Don't take my word for it. Out of cu­rios­i­ty, I looked up on the In­ter­net what oth­ers had to say about his books. The fol­low­ing are some typ­i­cal com­ments: From France: "The on­ly way for me to de­scribe Prof Kalicha­ran's style of writ­ing and teach­ing is the fol­low­ing quote at­trib­uted to Al­bert Ein­stein: 'Make every­thing as sim­ple as pos­si­ble, but not sim­pler.' Sim­plic­i­ty and (crys­tal) clar­i­ty are his trade­mark."

"The clear­est ex­pla­na­tion of sort­ing and search­ing al­go­rithms I've read. A gem, the best kept se­cret on the In­ter­net."

From Brazil: "I have to agree with the ma­jor­i­ty. This is the best in­tro to C I've read (I've read three or four, in­clud­ing Dei­t­el's). Tal­ent­ed au­thors are hard to come by." From the US: "The au­thor seems to have a knack for boil­ing the top­ic down to its barest es­sen­tials and ex­plain­ing those ideas in a way that makes it easy (and ac­tu­al­ly fun) to un­der­stand." "I've al­most com­plet­ed the ex­er­cis­es in the book and am ex­cit­ed about read­ing Kalicha­ran's next two books in the se­ries, Ad­vanced C Pro­gram­ming and Da­ta Struc­tures in C." From Aus­tralia: "Un­like oth­er C books, Kalicha­ran gives a bril­liant dis­cus­sion of point­ers. What is dis­missed as 'too hard' in oth­er texts is cov­ered with ease and again, nu­mer­ous ex­am­ples to il­lus­trate. For this chap­ter alone, one should buy this book."

From Scot­land: "This book gets the C be­gin­ner un­der­stand­ing com­plex da­ta struc­tures quick­ly. It has the best de­scrip­tion of point­ers (one of the pit­falls for C be­gin­ners) I have ever read." From In­dia: "This book is one of the best books ex­plain­ing AN­SI C. The writ­ing style is very nice, the au­thor has done some fine ef­forts in keep­ing his threads of thought clear and easy to fol­low." There's much more but you get the idea. Kalicha­ran's achieve­ment will not make the news but it made me every bit as proud as I feel when our sport­ing he­roes bring us glo­ry on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage.

J Ram­c­hand

Con­necti­cut, USA