E Books

I should have ordered this book sooner. It gives great ideas on how to keep a nature journal with scetches and notes. I have been keeping a journal for years and this book sent me in a different direction that I am really enjoying.

This book has been very helpful in teaching me how to journal. My preconceived notions on journaling have been changed. The tips and techiniques given in this book have improved my journaling and helped me to teach my children that is is not an art project, but an activity to record what you have seen, heard and experienced. Not written from a Christian world view.

This book is so not what I thought it was going to be. I thought it was a journal to write in with some tips and things to get you started. But it is an entire, huge book telling you how to keep a scientific nature journal. I'd send it back except I don't want to have to pay shipping costs. HOWEVER, if you are looking for a very detailed book on how to keep a scientific nature journal, then this would be great for you. It is a lovely book to look at, and I might find some nice suggestions, but it wasn't at all what I had in mind.

I bought this book unseen hoping to get some good ideas for a curriculum development project for elementary school kids I'm working on. I wasn't disappointed. This is a beautiful book. It's well written by 2 authors who are obviously passionate about the subject matter. Reproductions of Leslie's journal pages throughout the book also help you see the sorts of things that are possible and are a real inspiration. Her images are often quickly drawn and a little on the rough side, suggesting that anyone with a few minutes, a few colored pencils, a blank book, and a love for nature is capable of making a gorgeous nature journal. The book covers ideas for how to start a nature journal, the kinds of equipment you need, things you might want to keep an eye out for, and suggestions for improving your artistic skills. As I'd hoped, there is also a section for eductators who wish to use nature journals to teach people, young and old, about nature and the environment in which they live.

This book contains a lot of great information and the images from Leslie's journals are amazing. I think anyone who is into nature journals (as I am) would appreciate this book, as well as those who wish to start one.

I love this book- the art is absolutely beautiful and the general layout really shows it off. It talks about how to begin nature journaling, giving tips on both starting the habit and learning to draw! I love the approach it takes, fostering a closeness and syncronicity with nature and its cycles!

Killer Germs is comprehensive study of human pathogens that weaves in enough history and human interest stories to make it fascinating reading. I use it as my textbook in my Infectious Diseases course at the University of Missouri and the students actually read it. One student said in my course evaluations, "Thanks for picking a textbook that is enjoyable to read! I read it twice this semester and bought a copy for my Dad for his birthday."

Believe it or not, I found this book in a basket of "things to do," at a home of a friend, while using the lavatory. Needless to say, the title caught my attention, as my mind swiftly took stock of all the potential creepies and crawlies lurking in the very bathroom I had exposed myself to. Picking it up with a nervous chuckle, I soon found myself hooked and fascinated by the medical information which was being presented. It's not difficult reading material, nor is it boring. If you like criminal shows, forensic sciences and the like - you should really enjoy this.

This book is easy to read and informative. I underlined a lot of excellent information. Chapters can stand on their own. This makes it a very useful book if you are interested in pathogens.

I am in Mr. Zimmerman's class and he is a great teacher. He uses excerpts from his book killer germs to teach us about microbiology. I believe he spant a lot of time writing this book and it was definetly worth reading. Two thumbs up.

I used this book for one of my classes and I was dreading having to read a book about biology and diseases. After reading the first chapter I got hooked, and couldn't set the book down. I read it in three days while I was out hiking in the woods and it made me a little paranoid about ticks that might be in the grass and other insects! The book definitely makes you think about every living organism that is around you, on you, and inside you.

This is by no means a detailed book about any particular disease, bacteria, or virus. However, it is the perfect book for somebody who has never taken an interest in diseases or epidemics. It is very easy to read and entertaining.

As a Flight Engineer with the 362Avn.Co. and having served under Col. Dunn I could not be more proud. After reading The Last Hookers I can honestly say I felt pride for the job we did in Vietnam. If anyone wants to know what Vietnam was like this is the book to read.

The Last Hookers provides us with a compelling inside look into the historical facts that shaped the Vietnam War (going all the way back to the earliest events in Europe and WW II). Colonel Dunn has truly authored a comprehensive, well written and definitive war story. The story details not only the politics involved behind the scenes, but how families from all sides were affected and coped with the strain and tragedy of the war.

While this is a work of fiction the historical facts woven throughout the story really bring the characters to life. This realistic book was a thoroughly enjoyable read that gave me insights into the events leading up to and including the war itself that I had not even considered before.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is even remotely interested in the Vietnam War! You will come away with a much deeper understanding of the conflict and respect for those individuals and their families who were directly involved. Great stuff!

LTC Carle Dunn has written the most comprehensive book on what the whole Vietnam War was really about. His book is a study in history with the causes and effects of policy and conflicts. "The Last Hookers" is very scholarly written but reads like a novel. I learned things about our history that I never knew happened--like how we almost got ourselves into a nuclear war over Vietnam when the French were losing the battle for Dien Bien Phu. His book gives inside information on the CIA operations that took place in Asia and we get an inside look at how policy and war are what shapes future wars and battles.

If you only could get your hands on one book about the history of the Vietnam War, this would be a good book to start with. You certainly get your money worth of information in 658 pages. The author shows his skills at putting together facts and data and connecting the dots to see the results on how it all fueled the fire for the decade's long problems in Asia.

This book is a history classic already; make sure that you get to read it.

This is a high tech book Tom Clancy would admire. It takes the reader from battle torn Europe of WW2 to the end of America's involvement in the war in Viet Nam. Told from the French,American,and Vietnamese points of view, the reader will have insights of the war from several perspectives.Any student of history, aviation buff, or avid reader will not be able to put this one down!

Carle E. Dunn has done the hookers and anyone who is interested in what really happened in Vietnam a great service in pointing out the good and the bad, the brave and not so brave, the strife and the glory. Having "been there, done that", the book brings out the history, the fights, the family of yesteryear long buried. It should not, for our brave who have given their all should not be forgotten. This book brings it well into the fore-front.

Carle clearly separates a bad war from the good warriors who faught it. The Last Hookers suggest a much more positive view of not just the outcome of the war, but also of American morale, competence, and performance. A must read.

Ex Hooker, (Recovery)

James Parker's blood and tears narrative joins dozens of other Vietnam War books but deserves the top shelf for its breadth and sheer readability. Parker was one of the few who came early and stayed late, leading an Army platoon through firefights, death and occasional glory during the early U.S. buildup and watching, as a CIA case officer, the chaos and humiliation at the end, when the war had long since lost the support of most Americans.
Parker never wavers from believing that the cause - keeping a country free from a ferocious invader - was noble. He hangs the war's failure on a corrupt and inept South Vietnamese government and failed U.S. decision-making. If some readers find that thesis too uncomplicated, it hardly detracts from Parker's unflinching prose and relentless focus on the people that are the power of this book - youngsters he led who fought and died, fellow officers he loved as brothers, superiors good and not so good, tough and honorable South Vietnamese generals, officious Saigon bureaucrats and ordinary traumatized Vietnamese.
Parker captures the sense of fear and menace, the unreality and futility that are a soldier's daily grind, and in many instances what he calls the "randomness of war." A single misstep off a path and an officer friend is blown to bits by a mine. A fine tank commander laid into a body bag as his tour is soon to end. A fresh young private shot mistakenly by comrades. A stone-faced villager who trips a deadly explosion. Naked terror squirming through tunnels chasing wounded Vietcong. A trusted Vietnamese bodyguard left to fate unknown as the enemy tightens a noose around Saigon.
Parker's straightforward chronology makes compelling structure: unfocused young Southerner joins the Army, finds he has the stuff of an officer, earns medals and manhood in the jungle, survives his one-year tour, comes home to a strangely discordant nation, marries and goes back to college, joins the CIA, returns to Indochina for the end game of the "secret" war in Laos, then finally helps the frenzied exodus from crumbling, beaten South Vietnam - and from a spent and discredited policy.
The men stalking the jungle, firing the artillery, driving the tanks and piloting the jets and choppers will always be heroes to Parker, an unabashed fan of the concept of duty and country. When you meet the men in these pages - Peterson, Dunn, Woolley, Bratcher, Crash, McCoy, Castro, Ayers, Slippery Clunker Six, Duckett, Spencer and many more, it is hard not to buy into Parker's idea that there were indeed good and honorable aspects of this war.

Easy reading, fast-paced action, pithy, incisive commentary. Does not dwell on brutal details. James Parker presents the Vietnam war from the inside--not a pretty picture but a very good book from an author who is a gifted writer into the bargain.

From the humorous to the horrific...from tragedy to triumph...and a somber assessment of what really happened in Southeast Asia, this short and powerful book is essential reading for those considering work in the patriotic service.

I borrowed this book from a friend at Airborne School this past May, and tore through it in about three days. What a great read! It's so entertaining and gripping, I kept checking the inside flap of the book to make sure it wasn't fiction.

More than just a war story, this is more or less a biography of James Parker. Since the Vietnam conflict was so lengthy and controversial, it's worthwhile to see how it affected his life after James left combat. This is a guy who saw it all: he hit the beach in knee deep water in the early years, and was one of the last CIA guys to leave the island nation years after the U.S. had abandoned the country militarily.

The best features of this book are James' crystal clear recollections of his war buddies and his involvment in the CIA effort. What other book out there has a detailed personal account of the positively heroic efforts of the secret combat operations after the Army left? Also excellent is James' tense telling of a huge operation to lure the VC into attacking a dummy convoy.

This is a man who has done it all. If you're interested in the Vietnam War, this is requred reading.

Last Man Out: A Personal Account of the Vietnam War by James E. Parker, Jr. is the best book I've read in a long time. If this author didn't have a tape recorder or a diary that he wrote in everyday then I have to say he has a most remarkable memory. James takes the reader back to his home in North Carolina and introduces his family and friends. He continues as he makes the decision to enlist in the Army at a time when others were already doing everything they could to avoid serving their country. The reader goes through Basic Training with James and his buddies at Fort Gordon, Georgia in February 1964. Two months later after being named "Outstanding Trainee" James reiterates some of his time while at his Advanced Infantry Training. You are there when he signs up for Officer Candidate School and while he waited to be selected. You go through that six-month course with him too beginning in November at Fort Benning, Georgia. Upon graduation James goes to Jump School. From there the book gets even better. James first Permanent Party duty station was at Fort Riley, Kansas with the 1st Infantry Division. Then through his Tour of Duty in Vietnam. James told about an encounter with General William Westmoreland following a mission. The general flew in to review the troops, present medals and then was gone. It was a mere media event. When the general departed, another officer walked the line and took back the medals. After Nam James next assignment took him to Fort Ord in Monterey, California. He became the Officer-in-Charge of the 6th Army Area Drill Sergeant School. It was a great assignment. BUT James was thinking about leaving the Army but he "felt guilty about forsaking my duty, abandoning my obligation to country at a time of war." Unable to find a job that suited him he applied for and was accepted as a member of the Central Intelligence Agency. By September 1971 James was headed back to Southeast Asia "as a case officer in the Lao program, the CIA's largest covert operation." James was involved with several operations before heading stateside in 1973. He spoke openly about them. By January 1975 James was the only American left in Vi Thanh province. At that point he secured himself a "bodyguard." James wrote of the fall of Ban Me Thout, Hue, Da Nang, and Saigon. He took part in the evacuation of the Vietnamese who worked as agents for the CIA. He spoke of the problems encountered onboard the USS Vancouver and the transfer to the USNS Pioneer Contender. James Parker Jr. wrote an incredible account of his military and civilian service to our country and the people of South Vietnam. It is a book well worth reading. I'm glad I had the opportunity to meet the author in person in 1998. AND I'm glad I took the time to read his book. You will be also.

The "Rowan Gant Investigation" series by M.R. Sellars is an excellent mystery/suspense/crime series. Mr. Sellars's writing style is a bit different than most other authors' but it makes for compelling, page-turning drama. Every time I pick up one of his books, it's nearly impossible for me to put it down. This particular installation brings into focus the idea that whatever you send out will come back to you three times over. And, oh boy, does something come back for one of the characters!
Pick up the series if you want a great summer read!

What a roller coaster of a book - I literally could not put it down until the very last page. Good plot, great characters and the witches are the GOOD guys for once. A must read, but only with the lights on!

This is a great series of mystery books that deal with Witchcraft in a very respectable way. The main characters are witches who help the law decipher occult symbols found at a St.Louis murder site. It's a fairly realistic portrayal of wiccans. Christians won't approve, but the book gets heavily into the craft and it's tenants.

Check this one out, it was a rollercoaster ride.

MR Sellars is a deliciously addictive author. The Law of Three is his best work yet (although I'm sure I'll ammend that once I finish Crones Moon- the first two chapters are certainly promising!) Anyone looking for a spine tingling whirl wind of a read is sure to find MR Sellars works to be superb. The only negative thing I can say is that they just don't come out fast enough- but like all good things- they're WELL worth the wait!

I have just finished this book and really loved it! Once again, M.R. Sellars has scared me silly. I think the thing that makes the Rowan Gant series so good a read is that unlike some books that have fantastical bad guys, trolls, and wizards (oh my) he gives us rather ordinary folks and completely plausiable bad guys. There really are crazy fanatics in the world, we all know it. Sellars just shows us what they are capable of doing. Read it with the lights on!

Excellent book, easy read, full of life lessons and wisdom. Great book to share with others.

This book is one of the most powerful, yet easy to read books on the market and it's principles are timeless! It's truly a "SIB KIS" work of art. I have had the pleasure of hearing the author speak and most recently a 90 minute private tour of his business where he personally directed me to classics by Oswald Chambers, Spurgeon and could quote passages and find their location from memory. This visit was unannounced and Charlie had just returned from a chemo treatment! Charlie is living proof of his claims and if any one doubts the connection he makes with our creator to these principles needs to spend just five minutes with him to understand their validity. Charlie is "suffering" with terminal prostate cancer. Yet to see him, be hugged by him and hear the energy in his soul would put most young people to shame. Charlie has no fear of his future and actually is looking forward to this next phase of his "journey". I have read many books that "tell" people how to live. Charlie actually lives his philosophy and tells them to stop trying to be perfect and enjoy the one who is! If you read this book years ago and found it helpful, read it again as odds are you situation in life has changed, but fortunately these principles have not. Even better purchase several books and share them with your friends, family and business associates, it's a great way to pass on the powerful message that can benefit anyone who dares to take them to heart.

I have heard Charlie Jones speak many times. His program designed to turn his kids into readers worked in my family too. This little book is a real gem. It can be a lifesaver on days when there seems no place to turn to for encouragement. His persaonal responsibility attitude is much needed today. Rather than looking for the most fulfilling job or purpose in life it is far more useful to be responsible and turn our lives into positive and purposful examples for others. Life truly can be tremendous if one has the right perspective. Charlie can help you there!

This is a great book that is simple, to the point, and something that you can pick up for a quick read almost every day. Highly recommend.

I saw Charlie "Tremendous" Jones live and in person back in 1978 in Harrisburg, Pa. when the old PMA rallies were going strong. He appeared along with Dr. Peale.

What impresses me about Jones is that he is funny, charismatic but has a powerful message too.

Life is Tremendous is another one of those small books that sometimes gets overlooked because of it's small size. This book is only 105 pages and can easily be read in one evening or even in less than an hour. But it should be read over and over. It is outstanding. Charlie will get you laughing and provide a very powerful message.

To really appreciate Charlie Jones, listen to one of his cd's or audio cassette tapes. He will get you rolling and you will come away with ideas you never thought of before. One of my favorite quotes from Charlie is:

"It's not how hard you fall, but how high you can bounce back
from adversity that counts."

AND...

"All leaders are readers."

Want to be good leader? Then become a good reader.

This has been one of the most engaging works of fiction I've read recently. Beginning with a made-up country and a fictitious civil war, in simple language Alarcon takes us through what feel like real dilemmas of people involved in a time of crumbling government and rural flight. But beyond this, the story is intriguing - a radio host, a hidden history, a mysterious boy. Enough to drive the story. Unlike many other books read recenly this doesn't just start well - it keeps the momentum going through the end of the book.

I was astonished by this novel. I thought it started off a bit slow, I thought the main characters Norma and Rey a bit dull at first, and some of the main plot twists were foreseeable. But even if the main characters didn't enthrall at first, many of the secondary ones did. Adela, Trini, Rey`s father and even the ambiguous Zahir and Manau are touchingly rendered. For me, the book really started to pick up during the first full chapter in "1797" - the jungle village were key events involving Adela and and her son Victor happen. But towards the final chapters the tension builds and even Norma and Rey grow in humanity: the last chapter in particular is devastating. The at times semi journalistic style with which the wartime events are described is also very effective.

All in all, this was a fantastic book. I look forward to more by Alarcon. Readers who enjoyed this book are encouraged to try Nathan Englander's "The Ministry of Special Cases" - an equally engaging, impecabbly written and emotionally gripping novel set in somewhat similar context of Latin American political instability.

Daniel Alarcon's debut novel chronicles the lives of three people -- Rey, Norma and Victor -- in an unnamed country, probably Peru, where Alarcon was born, during the monstrous 10-year civil war in the 1980s. Norma works at a radio station where she hosts the program "Lost City Radio," which lists the names of people lost in the brutal conflict. Rey is her husband who goes missing when the police nab him for not carrying ID. Victor is a street urchin who gives a list of the missing to Norma. Alarcon's prose is very well written, terse and visionary. The chronology of the novel is nonlinear, which makes it difficult, at times, to follow what happens and when. And since the name of the country and time period are not given, the historical context of the story cannot be provided. Of course, if this novel is meant to be applicable to all such conflicts throughout the world, who needs a context? However, I wanted one, though this is not necessarily a failing in the novel. Altogether, it was refreshing reading an American novel(Alarcon was raised in Alabama and graduated from Columbia University) with little or no figures of speech, slang or cliches. The best praise I can give the novel is that it could be considered "literature." Look for more material from this very talented young man!

This is a very good book, is easy to read and catches your interest as soon as you start reading so that you cannot stop! I had to read it in a couple of days cause I needed to know what came next in the plot...
When you have lived in Peru during those years, you get the feeling of this story, it has also used an actual radio program as a model but the mastership of the author is to join all those stories and create a new one that have a little bit of multiple stories but is in itself different but very nice. I highly recommend it.

Set in an unspecified South American country, "a nation at the edge of the world, a make-believe country outside history", people are still reeling after ten years of war between the government and guerillas, their spirits broken by incessant violence, legions of the disappeared unaccounted for. In one small place of hope, the Indians in the mountains and the poor of the barrio listen with rapt attention to Lost City Radio. The voice of consolation to her devastated listeners, Norma reads lists, the endless names of the missing, hopeful that some may be reunited with their families. But in the last year of the long absence of her husband, Rey, one of the missing, Norma's advancing grief and impending hopelessness has grown burdensome, the expectations of the audience weighing on her every waking moment.

Hugely popular, Lost City Radio flourishes in spite of a repressive government, spies everywhere, questions rebuffed by officials who allow no independence of thought. The prisons are filled with the captured insurrectionists, their leaders all but buried in the smothering confines of underground cells. Norma hopes to find Rey in one of these prisons, but it is impossible to discern him in a sea of gaunt, determined faces. Other than his profession as an ethnobiologist, Norma has no idea of Rey's other interests, his life carefully compartmentalized. They met under romantic, mysterious conditions, Rey hinting at a more obscure identity. By the time they are married, Norma accepts her husband's eccentricities; but when he fails to return from the jungle village 1797 (names have been replaced by numbers), Norma has no way to track his activities or learn of his fate.

Then one day, ten years after the end of the war, his teacher delivers a young boy to the radio station, eleven-year-old Vincent from village 1787, perhaps a key to Rey's location. Certainly, as time and events unfold, Norma is confronted with the unthinkable: "She had a husband, he was dead or gone... the war had ended, or perhaps it had never begun." Norma's memories are fresh, alive with the spirits of the lost, some of the names still too dangerous to mention on the air. Wracked by loss, clinging to the child, Norma blindly navigates the present, the forbidden names whispered into the dark night. The emotional journey of a grieving wife and an innocent orphan permeate the novel, their stories shadowed by Rey's duplicitous past and devotion to his wife. This otherworldly tale of strength in the face of a confusing war speaks to the vital issues of out time. Such a scenario no longer seems the stuff of fantasy, given the human faces of these poignant characters, Alarcon's novel a grim reminder: "People disappear, they vanish. And with them the history, so that new myths replace the old." Luan Gaines/2007.

Weick and Sutcliffe provide exceptional insights into high reliability organizations (HROs) and how lessons learned from HROs can be applied to other organizations that are not satisfied with just being good. The authors address the five hallmarks of mindfulness that distinguish HROs from all other organization types. The authors provide detailed checklists through which company leaders can audit and assess organizational readiness for dealing with unexpected events. The authors address the critical value of organizational culture in dealing with unexpected events and how organizational leaders can build the capacity to "manage mindfully". The text is well-documented and well-indexed. Each of the six chapters is summarized for rapid review; however, with ony 173 pages of substantive text, this "must read" can be completed in only a few hours. Knowledgeable leaders who are interested in creating resilient organizations should also read Ian Mitroff's "Crisis Leadership" (John Wiley & Sons) as an accompanying text.

This book is to be read by anyone really interested about how organizations work.

The main point could be explained in a single sentence: We can get valuable lessons if we pay attention to organizations who work in high risk and unpredictable environments.

This is my own view and, actually, I tried to show this using aviation as a kind of learning field. That is why I hope the authors will be lucky. My own experience was unsuccessful and that itself shows that the authors are right.

When I started to get conclusions from aviation to business management, I found that the more interested people came precisely from aviation. I'm afraid the authors could suffer the same experience and people interested in their concepts could come from air carriers, nuclear-powered plants and some other examples they use.

The authors could be three or four steps in advance of the present situation in business management. They try to extract the right lessons from other fields. However, they would not be surprised if their intent "bounces back" and it is picked-up precisely from the fields that they try to show as examples, not from business management.

In this well written, easy to read, analysis of organizations in highly complex and dangerous settings that persistently have less than their fair share of accidents - High Reliability Organizations - Professors Weick and Sutcliffe provide the recipe for a `learning organization'. Noting that HRO's share the hallmark of "mindfulness", the authors' define this characteristic as consisting of five key elements that every organization can use for dealing with the unexpected. The authors' call these five elements:
1. Preoccupation with failure - treating any failure (often small ones) as a symptom that something is wrong with the system, they are continually updating their understanding.
2. Reluctance to simplify interpretations - ensuring a more complete and nuanced picture, simplifying less and seeing more.
3. Sensitivity to operations - paying attention to relationships at the front line, where the work gets done.
4. Commitment to resilience - maintaining a deep knowledge of the technology, the system, one's coworkers, and one's self as avenues for improvising and keeping the system functioning.
5. Deference to expertise - cultivating diversity to do more with complexities, they push decisions down to the people with the most expertise, not the most rank. They also move issues around/across the system, migrating problems to someone with the knowledge and capabilities to address them.

Together, these elements give the organization `mindfulness', and this organizational mindset allows it to handle the unexpected with more responsibility and thus a higher probability of success in the face of change. Although the HRO's analyzed (aircraft carriers, nuclear power plants, and others) operate in more dangerous environments than the average business, today's rapidity of change causes the unexpected to happen to every organization and it would seem that the five elements of mindfulness could benefit nearly every organization today.
Dennis DeWilde, author of "The Performance Connection"

I was please with the writing of this book. Not only is it a good easy read, but Weick presents the material in an intersting fashion. SO far, it has been most helpful in understanding the components of managing a situation that is completely unexpected.

Like lots of business books, this one is a bit repetitive -- it feels a little bit like an HBR article expanded into a book. That said, it's discussion of high reliability organizations is invaluable -- not from an academic or theoretical perspective, but for its practical utility.

There are elements of high-reliability organizations, like sensitivity to operations and reliance on expertise that would help any organization -- i.e., you don't have to be on an aircraft carrier or in an emergency room to take lessons from this book and apply them to your organization to increase performance.

Plus it provides an end to a continuum that starts with organizations with purely repetitive operations and continues to high reliability organizations -- allowing you to evaluate where your organization fits on this new continuum, and therefore what level of applicability these practices have to you.

This book is the origin of information theory (then called "communication theory"). Explaining measurement of information in both discrete and continuous variables, this historic work defined one of the most important watershed moments in science, and serves as an excellent introduction to the subject.

This book doesn't need any presentation: it is well known by all the scientific community as the "start point" of Information Theory. Roughly speaking, today we would not have cell phones or internet without Shannon's work.
With his fundamental theorem, in 1948, Shannon prooved that it was possible, under some conditions, to have reliable communication. Since that moment, the research on Information Theory has become more and more important and has continued to develop in many different ways.
So, this book is historically fundamental for all those people interested in Communications.

Typically, a paper which defines a new field of science is not the best introduction to new researchers in the field. This is not the case with The Mathematical Theory of Communication. If you are interested in information theory, this is the one and only place to start.

This book is the best technical book i've ever read. It's clear, concise and logic. It explains all the fundamentals of communication theory, a basic for telecom and electronic engineers. All technical universities of everywhere must explain their communication theory subject following exactly this text. Above any other technical book. A gem.

The origin of this book lies in the Bell Telephone Laboratories initiative in researching how wireless and telecommunications can be improved. The problem it deals with is a classic one for electronics, telecommunications and computing - noise vs. fidelity of data transmitted. The solution it propounds is simple and yet so revolutionary that it charted the course of these fields since it was published.

The basic premise of the book is that 'redundancy' or elimination of noise occurs at infinite time. 'Entropy' or shuffledness allows for some noise and produces more information because it requires reconstruction at the receiving end.

The authors support their arguments with simple statistical formulae which explain how entropy and redundancy are inverse of each other.

This book has been highly debated by both the people involved in the fields concerned and the people outside the field.

Most of the debate surrounds the controversial aspect of Shannon and Weaver's definition of information in engineering terms, which excludes issues like relevance, meaning etc.

A great deal of debate also got carried into social sciences and humanities where a new celebration of 'entropy' occured.

I inherited this book my second year of teaching in 1989 when the librarian was throwing out old books (imagine!)....
In any case, I read it out loud for the first time to my class of third graders and could hardly read it for laughing so hard. My class and I loved it. I read it to my own children in the 90's. I have the book and have thought of selling it on e-bay (as it fetches a great price), but my boys want to keep it to read to their own children one day. Now, that's a classic!

I recall reading and enjoying Me and Caleb in the 5th grade. Now I want to read it again...

Anyway, if you liked Me and Caleb by all means read the Penrod books by Boothe Tarkington!

POSTSCRIPT: THIS WONDERFUL BOOK AND THE FOLLOW-UP (ME AND CALEB AGAIN) ARE ONCE AGAIN IN PRINT! [...]

Back in the late 1960's, my wonderful sixth-grade homeroom teacher, Mr. Broglie, would read to us each morning. Tradition dictated that "Where the Red Fern Grows" would be one of the first books read that year (and it is indeed a great book), but he added a new book when I was in his class, one my older sisters had not heard: Me and Caleb.
I really wish I could find this book again, not just for my own enjoyment, but that my own kids could read it, too. (and a PS -- all these years later, I still shiver when I remember the poisonous snake in the river!)

My sixth grade teacher read Me and Caleb and Me and Caleb Again to our class. I remember her laughing so hard she cried. And so did we. Later, I would check these books out from the town library and read them over and over and over again. I've read a lot of books in the 30 years since, but I will say that these are two of my all time favorites.

Both my wife and I read this book as children, and were so impressed that 25 years later we named one of our own children Caleb. Bud just didn't seem to work. We have borrowed it from the school library and read it to our kids, who also loved it.

This is a timeless classic that is completly politically incorrect, and a total joy.

It needs another printing.