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Frankly, heft was the deciding factor in my decision to read Shopgirl. It's a slip of a novel -- a novella, as the cover proclaims -- slight and ever-so-slightly precious, like most self-proclaimed novellas. It feels good in the hand, though, much like I imagine the gloves that introduce its two main characters must feel.

It is undeniably elegant on the inside as well, both in its faintly-stilted prose and the strange, spare atmosphere it conjures up. Shopgirl evokes a Los Angeles more like the one depicted in 1950s L.A. Confidential than the post-millenial version I tool through daily. The archetypes are modern, but they feel quaint, like girdled Suzy Parkers instead of juicy Carmen Electras.

It's not so much that the characters are unreal as it is they are remote--real seen through glass, real seen from one cool remove. What the novel(la) did more than anything was make me want to see the movie; I wanted to see actors inhabit these characters and bring them to life because I could not connect with them on the page: this Seattle millionaire, this alt.rockboy, this Silver Lake artist/shopgirl. Everything is a clean, sleek surface, with no grubby human bits to grab onto.

Steve Martin has the dark side down, like most funny people. He sketches out a sad, beautiful, believable story of two people running up hard against their limitations. But like Capote, it's curiously unaffecting given what the characters are going through. I suspect Martin is a fan of order, and imposes it where he can, thinking the discipline serves the storytelling.

But it's the mess that makes a good story interesting. A writer can clean it up; a writer and director and editor can't.

Which is why I enjoyed reading Shopgirl. And probably why I enjoyed Shopgirl, the movie, just a little bit more.

By penning a novella, Steve Martin allowed the true emotional roller-coaster of joy, sadness, the bitter truth and heartbreak of love to drive the story. Three people from such different backgrounds are each shown struggling and grasping for something - anything - which can come to their emotional rescue.

At the apex of the triangle is an aspiring artist who is a sales person in an upscale designer clothing store in Beverly Hills and alone in all that is not real. Her suitors are a millionaire who collects lovers - but must ultimately keep them at arm's length - and an artist who is good at doing nothing all day.

In a place where image is everything, loneliness may rule the day. So simple a story yields such complexity in the vast parking lot of life.

This short book is a reasonable attempt by the author to offer commentary on the disaffections of modernity through stereotypical characters: the cute and pleasant, underemployed retail girl who has to operate on anti-depressants to handle her dead-end job and life; the wealthy middle-aged man who can only buy pseudo-relationships; the cynical, yet desperate, girl who is in a race with the years to remake and sell herself; and the self-absorbed, clueless techie.

The author's focus is on Mirabelle, a 28 year old from Vermont, who is totally bored in her job at the glove counter in the Neiman Marcus store in Beverly Hills. She has a Masters in fine arts, but finds it to be an immense struggle to find a way to utilize her artistic talents or to meet desirable guys. The low point in her life has to be the inept, unappreciated relationship she has with the techie Jeremy who she meets in a laundromat.

Enter Ray Porter, a wealthy entrepreneur, who just happens to notice Mirabelle one day in her store. Despite the immediate improvement of Mirabelle's economic condition due to the largesse of Ray and of her love life, neither wants to dig beyond the surface and admit that the other one cannot be or give what is wanted.

The book is not comedic with one exception. Lisa, a co-worker of Mirabelle and intent on using her physical assets to attract men, mistakenly gives Jeremy the time of his life after mistakenly thinking that he is Ray, who she is trying to steal from Mirabelle.

As said, the characters are rather stereotypical, yet the author does share some of their thinking. The focus is kept on the personal level with wider ramifications mostly implied. Even though the characters are recognizable types, the story itself is a bit contrived with a predictable ending. Nonetheless, the book is a quick and enjoyable read.

I was expecting to enjoy this. my flatmate raved about the book, saying how moved she was by it and how wonderfully touching the story was. I had read 'the pleasure of my company' and had loved it and so look forward to this one.
And in truth one can understand why a reader would be effected by it. Steve Martin is a wise and philosophical writer, full of nuggets of original insights into our world. He explores the lives of lost people, people whom as he says appear for the most part as chalk outlines of themselves to others and he reveals the wealth of beauty that can be found where you would least expect. For these qualities alone, Steve Martin is worth reading and admiring.
However, the book doesnt work. And that actually because of his insights rather than despite. It is not just that the book has no story, and no compelling action. The book is a character study after all and its slender plot might be forgiven. But this is the point, the book with all its sensitivity and intelligence, fails to create the sensation that these are real people living real lives. I could not engage with any of the charactors, whilst admitting that i recognised all of them for there was much truth to them, but nothing that made them whole. This might be because Steve martin uses limited dialogue and the narrative sits quite flatly on the page. All in all though, for all the poetic gestures, which are delicate and finely tuned,one feels as if one is reading a very smart treatise on the nature of romantic relationships. As a work of philosophy the book is successful but as a novel written to engage and fascinate it does not.

Ok, so the first half was pretty good. A little confusing but I got the idea, but then the ending was just so fast. All the sudden she quit her job then the next thing you know he got her own gallery? And it feels like the movie was mainly focused on steve martin and claire danes while the weird jeremy guy just got left out forgotten. Great acting by Claire Danes however. After all it is just Sad, so the Jeremy guy got her advice of "just do it" and became what she called "successful"? switched from a all banged up volkswagen to a hyundai? because he read some wacky book on some bus?

and the fact that the old dude just wanted to sleep with her? scratch that both the old guy and the weirdo Just wanted to sleep with her and, huh?? she's that desperate? it's a little disturbing.... very disturbing

the plot just sucks, but i think the actors did a good job acting i guess.

I took the GRE in August of 2007 and this book did an excellent job in preparing me for the exam. It had plenty of Practice problems as well as several practice exams including a CD with a simulated computer based exam. I have recommend to anyone that I have met that is preparing to take the GRE.

Great Book. The math section is esspecially useful. The tactics will save you in terms of time managment on the actual test.

I liked this study manual better than any of the other brands out there. It mimiced the real GRE pretty closely.

I bought this book to review for the GRE after being out of school for four years. I liked it well enough through the verbal section, but verbal has always been my strong suit. Then I got to the math section, and I ABSOLUTELY HATE this book. For one, the way the reviews are divided up are illogical. They begin with geometry and review basic principles of shapes, but don't explain how to solve anything within those shapes until 3 or 4 chapters later. There is no easy way to follow the pagination (e.g. "I'll flip to section J") so you waste a ton of time digging for the review. Even worse, the math "explanations" assume that you remember far too much, and they skip entire parts of their processes, leaving you to ask "How the heck did they get from this to that?"

What also annoys me is the book contradicts itself; they spend 1 chapter on tactics where they stress "Don't spend too much time on this," but another stressing "Be sure you look for all the ways the test will try to trick you." So then every question you start to answer, you're paranoid that you're being tricked. Also, they stress that 0 is neither positive nor negative, and yet in one of the questions that asks for all the POSITIVE intergers between two particular numbers, it says "Don't forget that 0 is an integer!" Finally, they give a review section but then do not limit the practice questions to what you reviewed in that section, so rather than help you, the book just keeps putting the test farther out of reach and making you feel more hopeless.

I do not recommend this book, and as someone who works in educational publishing, I could write my own book about why this one is terrible. You're better off using the test prep materials from GRE.org.

This book's verbal section is well organized and will definitely help you in the real GRE's. However, Mr. Barron clearly has no understanding of the GRE Math. The graph questions are simply aweful and do not reflect the real GRE questions whatsoever. Moreover, the grammer on Math questions is extremely sloppy, often leading to obvious confusions about what the questions ask. If you are trying to score perfect on the math like I am, this book will only frustrate you with its consistenly aweful graph questions and grammer ambiguities.

Did I pass the SPHR exam on the first try? Yes! Did I use this book as a study tool- also, Yes! Would I recommend using this book to study for the exam... yes. Sort of. This book was helpful in that it laid out a pretty good foundation to build a course of study. However, given the abbreviated length of time given to prepare coupled with the amount of material covered on the exam, my belief is that you will need more than this book to pass the test. Certain subjects (which were covered extensively on the exam), were only skimmed in this text. Use this as a RESOURCE only, but don't depend on it alone to pass.

I purchased this book to expand my knowledge in the H.R. field. It's a great resource!! C.Zingiris

I did not review this study guide because I am not in an HR position. I learned that you need to have worked in an HR position for 2 years in order to take the PHR test. I didn't realize that when I purchased the book. I may be able to post it on E-bay.

A colleague of mine was taking a PHR class in New Jersey and her Instructor recommended this book. I could not afford the $1,000 for the class, so I bought the book and studied like mad three days before the exam. I used this as the main study guide with a 2001, yes, 2001 SHRM learning system. It is important to note that I also have more than 8 years of management experience in human resources, which I know helped me to pass the PHR last January.

This December I will embark upon the SPHR, but don't believe that I will use the same materials. I am researching other sources as I found the book lacking in terms of strategic planning for HRM.

I was late signing up with the PHR exam and I didn't have a lot of study time by the time I received this book, like a month. I used this book as my only source of information (I did graduate with my Bachelors and have worked in Staffing/HR for 9 years) and passed on my first try. I was very nervous because I kept hearing that it's difficult to pass on the first time, but this book helped me out a lot. I would recommend this to any experienced professional that is taking their PHR, I don't know about the SPHR though.

This has been one of the most disappointing adventures in reading that I can remember. Normally I would not bother to write a review, but this book was such a downer that a comment was needed. Why the author felt that any American would want to see our guys be out smarted, maneuvered and gunned by Muslim terrorists is beyond me. To my dismay I actually read to the end in hopes that some uplifting thing might happen. Only to have it jerked away on the last page.

If you liked "The Lions", you will love this book. Typical 'Thor', fast paced, keeps your interest. I can't wait for the next book from Brad thor.

Takedown is a thriller from start to finish. It will keep readers on the edge of their seats for the whole ride.

It features counterterrorist operative Scot Harvath who is a master at hunting down the bad guys and stopping more destruction. This novel was set around a horrific attack on New York City. The action ranged from Morocco to D.C.

Fans of Thor will find this book to be much like his others: a page turner with non-stop action. There are also some characters that appear in some of his other work including 'The Troll'.

If you have not read Thor before, do yourself a favor and read this one and several of his others. If you are already a Thor fan, you will experience another one of his great stories.

The book was enjoyable for a summer read. Of course it's a one man army against the evil terrorists and everyone else is just backdrop. The worst thing about it was the killing of the girlfriend at the end, just plain stupid. I'm going to get back at you for trying to kill me by hunting you down across the ocean just to kill a woman you've known what, a week??? And leave you totally uninjurred?? Yeah that hurts!! So as long as you don't take it too seriously and don't think too much you can read it and enjoy it.

great summer read, thriller, fast paced and love the central character scot harvath. am a robert ludlam fan and thor's books are similar in the intrigue, mystery, action. right now reading a fourth book of his. can't beat it for reading on the deck and we all know there is nothing on tv.

As my first read on the topic, I found this book extremely captivating, enjoyable to read, and leaving me with wanting more knowledge on the Supreme Court and Constitutional Law, particularly the opinions on some of the more noted cases of the last century. The author seemed to be rather fair and balanced but certainly the focus was more on the conservative nominations and justices. I would have liked to learn more about Ginsburg and Souter's personal and professional lives. The final notes make mention that this work is based on over one hundred interviews including nine supreme court justices, many of their law clerks, and high ranking officials from the White House to federal appeals court judges. Crawford also noted that the book relied heavily on the papers of Justices Marshall and Blackmun. Along with this extensive research and the authors academic and professional background, I believe that this book is a credible source of information. While the focus is on the struggles and conficts surrounding the nominations of the Supreme Court Justices over the past 25 years, the book particularly keys in to the nominations, hearing, and backgrounds of the more conservative justices and most recently, the important nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito that may prove pivotal in changing the direction of the Supreme Court to a more limited role of interpreting law rather than creating it. The political and ideological battles that surround the nominations is quite interesting as the expectations and the stakes involved have become politically and ideologically crucial. Further, the fear and skepticism that a supreme court justice will change his/her opinions once sworn in has become a relevant factor worth vetting the candidates for in a more extreme and embattled fashion than ever. All this makes for extremely good reading.

Fine popular account of the jostlings, jarrings, and jealousies behind the marble pillars. The reader will discover--mirable dictu!--that the justices and the politicians who put them in place are filled with human sensibilities and foibles.

Greenburg mastered the Woodward techinque of badgering everyone for solo interviews so that each feels they must talk to her in order to cover their, um, flank. Astonishingly, she got nine justices to give interviews, only two (O'Connor and Kennedy) on the record. She also made much use of Justice Blackman's papers which, it seems, contained the internal case memos circulated by the justices.

Three-quarters of the book is an insider account of the selections and confirmations. We learn, for example, that Reagan made a tactical mistake in nominating Scalia before Bork.

Reagan was at the height of his popularity when the first vacancy (after O'Connor) came up. He did not need that muscle to get the prickly but brilliant and affable Scalia (the first Italian-American nominee) confirmed. By the time the second vacancy came, Reagan was beseiged by Iran-Contra, his popularity waning, his Senate majority diminished. The brilliant but haughty Bork ran into a public-relations ambush. Reagan and his people scrambled to put up Douglas Ginsburg, who was done in by youthful marijuana use. Only after this double debacle did Reagan settle for Anthony Kennedy, almost no one's preferred candidate. The error was historically decisive. With the malleable Kennedy in place rather than the steely Bork, the conservatives never consolidated a reliable majority.

Greenburg explains why conservatives were so sharply split on the nomination of Harriet Miers. There are two varieties of conservative in this arena, she explains: "social conservatives" who want to be sure the candidate reaches the "right" result on abortion, affirmative action, and marriage; and "judicial conservatives", who look for a committment to constitutional originalism, and are appalled at the idea of a "right" outcome in any kind of case. When Bush signaled that Miers woud be "right" on the social issues, the judicial conservatives were offended, and it triggered their open revolt.

Disappointingly, only a small part of the book goes into the conference room to reveal the case deliberations. The debates are presented more to illluminate personal dynamics than legal substance.

The biggest revelations concern the advent of Justice Thomas. First, Greenburg disposes of the myth that Thomas was Scalia's puppet. From the start, he went his own way, and more often it was Scalia who changed his vote than the other way round. Contrary to the public perception, Thomas was a forceful conservative voice in the deliberations. The effect was to move O'Connor and later Kennedy, who had initially been reliable conservatives, to the left. Perversely, therefore, Thomas's replacement of the liberal Thurgood Marshall shifted the court leftward.

Greenburg's writing is smooth and crisp and often delightfully vivid (Democratic Senators' efforts to rile the easygoing Sam Alito "was like trying to strike a match off a smooth surface"; by the end of Roberts' and Alito's first year, the outmanned liberal justices were relegated to "shouting from the sidelines that the umpire blew the call").

If you want to know Greenburg's political bias, you will not discern it in this book, which is refreshing. And you don't have to be a lawyer to become absorbed in her narrative. As for the justices themselves and those who aspire to join them, "time and chance happeneth to them all."

This book is excellent. I wish all books that touch upon political matters were written so objectively. Sadly, one can often determine an authors political affiliations (and, perhaps, agenda) when reading a book but that is not the case with Ms Greenburg's book on the Supreme Court. She presents a fair story that is very readable. The 'inside' information gleened from interviews and the writings of the Justices makes the book especially interesting. It really adds a warm and human element to the history. I'd strongly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the history and workings of the Court.

I'm a second-year JD/MBA student at one of the nation's best law and business schools, and I picked up on the conservative bias in the book by about 50 pages in.

I have three reasons so far for saying the book is biased in favor of the right. The book sets out to portray the court's shift rightward, first of all, and focuses on conservative justices, sources of information, and issues.

Second, liberals are usually not mentioned for long, and Greenburg takes care to point out personality flaws in the liberals more than the conservatives. Blackmun, for example, is described as "touchy" at one point for no reason, without it being relevant to the topic, and without Greenburg providing a supporting quotation or evidence. She also spends a lot of time on how big of a disappointment justices like Kennedy, Souter, Blackmun, etc. turned out to be, and even talks about Rehnquist failing to turn the Court sufficiently rightward. Greenburg is supposedly an impartial journalist, but her bias is revealed because of the book's heavy reliance on conservative sources of information.

Thirdly, the book casts Kennedy and O'Connor as "moderates," when both were/have been/are solid conservative votes, except for some high-profile cases on social issues. If you don't believe me, just look up vote counts and see how often Kennedy and O'Connor vote and voted with Rehnquist and company. The only people who would try to label O'Connor and Kennedy moderates would be staunch conservatives, in order to shift the perceived spectrum of American politics rightwards.

This is a book by what I figured must have been a conservative, and my research corroborates it. I'm not saying the book is bad or anything; it still provides a lot of insight into conservative thinking. For example, it gives illuminating looks into the workings of the Justice Department in aiding nomination processes.

--------------------

UPDATE: I finished the book, and my view of it as being biased in favor of the right is cemented. Greenburg spent two pages on each of Clinton's nominees to the court; the vast majority of the book is spent on conservatives. The justices on Rehnquist's court are criticized heavily for failing to stop the "liberal agenda." I could go on.

The stories of how the Justices were selected, who else was considered, who made the decisions and how are fascinating. In particular the story of John Roberts is something anyone can relate to if you've had a 'dream job' that you've been close to getting.
The author clearly has much better connections with Republicans than Democrats, as evidenced by the thin coverage of Clinton's appointments. She repays her Republican assistants by employing terminology used only by the most extreme anti-abortion zealots, and by praising Justices like Scalia and Thomas as defenders of the Constitution, then vilifying Justices like Ginsburg or Souter for their adherence to the Constitution's first and fourth ammendments.
Still a great read, and I wish I could read another version of it with a leftward bias to balance this one out.

Since I became so intrigued with Fannie Flagg's description of southern and midwestern life, I was pleased to find the Bottom Dollar Girls series at my library. This time, I was transported to the tiny South Carolina town of Cayboo Creek, near Augusta, Georgia.

The narrator, Elizabeth Polk, is an intelligent young woman managing the Bottom Dollar Emporium. Her coworkers at this discount store know she's destined for much more. She's stuck this job thanks to the misjudgment of her high school guidance counselor, who placed her on the vocational track. After failing out of Future Cosmetologists of America, Elizabeth takes a part-time job at the Bottom Dollar Emporium, which eventually blossoms into a management position. And the novel begins with her nearing her twenty-sixth birthday.

Elizabeth enjoys her job at the Emporium, but she's heart-broken. Her high school sweetheart, Clip Jenkins, recently jilted her for the town floozy. Luckily, Elizabeth has a support system of lovely older women, including Gracie Tobias, a wealthy woman from Augusta. Why would such a wealthy woman frequent a discount store in Cayboo Creek?

At Gracie's insistance, Elizabeth agrees to befriend grandson Timothy, a Stanford dropout and Zen Buddhist student. She enjoys his company, but will they ever fall in love?

Elizabeth has her Meemaw, who has raised her since Elizabeth's mother died twenty-five years ago. Her uncouthe father has taken up with an ex-stripper in a fancy part of Augusta. Elizabeth has an ex-felon for a stepbrother. Elizabeth is dedicated to her family.

But, are these people really her family? After reading her mother's diary, she begins to wonder if the object of her mother's desire, B, is really her father. It's not as simple as B, though. Elizabeth finds out who she thought her family was not her family.

And this is why the book gets 3 stars. Elizabeth's real family is completely farfetched, really unbelievable. There is so much else going on in the story that she doesn't need a different family. Her friendship with Timothy was a bit overblown, seeing as they are complete opposites. However, that would have been much easier to stomach if Gillespie didn't throw in the whole mystery about the family!

I deducted two stars from my rating because many of the characters are cliched. We have the African - American Methodist preacher who also divines with tea leaves. The hipster book worm with the VW bug. The elderly woman who forgets to wear her dentures. The floozy with the big hair, tight pants, and long acrylics. And, of course, the Baptist preacher who can't stop talking gloom and doom.

The book earns its three stars from Gillespie's handling of a major socioeconomic problem: corporate stores in little towns. The Bottom Dollar Emporium must battle with the large corporate discount store in its neighborhood. We are informed that the local clothing store shut its doors due to competition from a big-name store. And now, we have the employees of the Emporium attempt to save their business. Will they succeed? You will be quite pleased with the resolution.

I recommend this book for ladies who are looking for light reading.

The Bottom Dollar Emporium was a store run by the owner Mavis, who put everything she had into it. Her workers, Elizabeth Polk the main character of the book mostly told in her first person, and then Attalee, were like a little family. But their world was about to go down the tube when they received news that a new store right next door to them was opening. It was to be a great big Super Saver Dollar Store with thousands of items in it, and that would mean the end of the Dollar Emporium for sure. Mavis just knew she was going to have to close up shop, unless she and the girls could dream up a few clever ideas to keep it going that Super Saver didn't offer.

Liz Polk is unmarried, but not by choice. Her ex-fiance, Chip, ran out on her with another woman, and Liz was devastated when she found out. Then when Mrs Tobias comes to the shop, and introduces her grandson, Timothy Hollingsworth who was part of a very wealthy family, comes into the picture, she develops a very keen interest there, Timothy was quite the eccentric when he first meets Liz, and is a Buddhist. He came in in a white robe only, and wasn't allowed to talk for a certain length of time as part of this religious agreement. So all he did at first was keep nodding his head. He comes out of his shell though, as they get to know each other and secretly get married.

More problems happen later in the book when Liz's grandmother dies suddenly of a sroke. Liz is heartbroken as her "Meemaw" was the one who raised her all her life as Liz lost her mother when she was only a baby. She finds out though later in the book, a terrible secret that had been kept from her all these years and is devastated again by it. And Timothy's mother who is very cold in nature, will have to learn to warm up to Liz when an event that nearly ends Daisy Hollingsworth's life, is spared by Elizabeth, the person Daisy thought was so far beneath her.

I look forward to the next book in this series, A Dollar Short.

Entertaining story set in small-town So. Carolina. Made me wish I could go for a visit.

After reading the other reviews on this book, I thought I would try the series. I am glad I only bought the one book as I found it only mildly entertaining and had to force myself to finish it.

Based on other reviewers, I was hoping for romantic comedy, but got neither. I didn't laugh or chuckle. I wasn't surprised or delighted. The relationship that developed did not draw me in enough emotionally to be able to categorize this as a romance novel. Some of the plot points concerned family secrets, which were somewhat predictable. The characters were not interesting enough.

Story brief: Smart, nice and humble girl Elizabeth helps solve problems for people in the small town of Cayboo Creek. A wealthy woman in nearby Augusta, Georgia, asks Elizabeth to be a friend to her grandson, Timothy, a Buddhist oddball who recently moved back to town after his father's death. Sexual language: none. Number of sex scenes: none. Setting: current day Cayboo Creek, S. Carolina. Copyright: 2005. Genre: human relationships fiction.

Love this book; have read it over five times. The best part is her description of fighting fires..you can actually feel the heat of the fames as she fights the fire from the nozzle point. She could be a Joseph Wambaugh or Gina Gallo of fire fighting if she wanted to be. I think she's trying to go in a more literary direction, but I'd really like to see more fire fighting books out of her. The part of the book that surpised me was the "east coast" idea that a fire fighter was a "lowly" blue collar job. I'm from San Francisco, and here everyone looks up to the position of fire fighter as a very special job, that only a few chosen can do. It never occurred to me that people looked at fire fighters in any other way.

This and other books like this that focus on the minorities are the types of books that try to destroy the brotherhood of being a fireman. All the othe men that have had books written about them did something heroic to get that book about them these women did not when they do i will be more then happy to read their book.

I really enjoyed reading this book. I think everything that was written had it's place in the book. It was her book her story, told the way she felt it needed to be told. I think this would be a good book for anyone interested in becoming a firefighter.

I would recommend this book to anyone in the field who has friends that are curious about the profession. While it's certainly one person's opinion, look past that and it's still a good read. Overall, it gives a good picture of what it's like to fight fire, save lives, and most importantly- live with the tragedy that you witness. I've given this book as a gift to friends who wonder what my job is like. It's entertaining and well written.

This book had all the potential to become one of my favorites. As a young, aspiring female firefighter I anticipated finding in Paul a trailblazing mentor I could look up to. Instead I found myself faced with a colossal disappointment.

First of all, she begins the book by mentioning her sexual escapades with a girl in college. Is that really necessary to the tale of becoming a firefighter, or did she just throw that in to sell a few extra copies of this book?? Next, not only does she take her testing with SFFD lightly, she repeatedly insults the profession throughout the book, all the way to the end. She grimaces with distaste and embarrassment that it is "blue collar work", god forbid! What will her Stanford friends think? Gasp!

Furthermore, she seems high maintenanced and hyper sensitive when relating to the men of the department. She waxes on for years about some stupid fire station prank that a captain pulled on her. In my department, if you never have any good natured pranks pulled on you, you basically are not perceived as part of the family! It's a GOOD thing to be part of the jokes, and a healthy boost to morale.

For a Stanford graduate, she seems to really have a hard time grasping simple concepts. "What does this mean?" seems to be her mantra throughout the book. This is not rocket science, it's firefighting. While academy certainly gives us a lot of information to process, it's pretty basic concepts!

Finally, I find it hard to like her as a person due to her seemingly high level of conceit, which she unsuccessfully tries to disguise as modesty. She never fails to inform the reader of how beautiful or talented she is. Granted, the female firefighters of yesterday deserve to pat themselves on the back for making it a bit easier for us now, and I am truly humbled when in the presence of those female captains today. But Paul is a far cry from those aggressive women who refused to let a boys club like the fire department keep them out, fighting for their profession because they saw it as a noble and meaningful one. Paul is the opposite of the kind of women I seek out to train and mentor me, and I feel she gives women in the fire service the kind of negative press that anti-diversifying departments crave.

Doug Feith's book is a welcome respite from much of the self-serving memoirs written by former Bush Administration officials. Although he has harsh criticism for the CIA and State (particularly Powell and Armitage), his enunciation of the reasons for going to war in Iraq is lucid and cogent. He may not convince his critics (of which there are many), but Feith's arguments should be taken seriously. He uses documents and notes from high-level meetings to try to correct a number of myths that have arisen over the decision to invade Iraq; he will not dispel those myths in the broad public conscience, but future historians will find his book a useful counterpoint to many of the anti-Bush Administration works.

Feith does not white-wash history, nor is this book an apology. He attempts to explain the reasons he and others made the decisions they made. At one point I recall him wishing to write a "gentlemanly book" (full disclosure -- I worked for Doug Feith, though as a career civil servant, not a political appointee). In these partisan times he may have come as close as any one can to having done just that.

This book is not an attempt to revise history, but rather to set the record straight. It was written by an author who was in a unique position to observe the Pentagon decision making process leading to the war in Iraq. Feith's attention to a detailed timeline and the facts as then known at the time in question, and his extensive documentation references are most impressive. I predict this will become recognized as a historically important work. Those who believe in "Cowboy Bush" and "Bush Lied" will not like this book. Many strategic and tactical mistakes are documented, and should be lessons learned. The war on terrorism seems destined to go on for a long time, and knowledge about it's beginnings is important.

Although General Tommy Franks famously referred to Feith as "the f****ng stupidest guy on the face of the earth.", this book demonstrates that he is in fact one of the most brilliant defense strategeists who ever walked the face of the earth. Feith has openly admitted that he had no desire to serve in Viet Nam because he was afraid of getting killed or having his beloved hair mussed up. But as undersecratary of something-or-other at the Defense Department, Feith was one of the fiercest proponents of going to war with Iraq for no good reason. In this great great book, Feith chronicles the monumental efforts he undertook to fabricate evidence of WMD in Iraq and of Saddam's connection to 9/11. Feith's detailed recounting of how the White House and the State Department were determined to go to war with Iraq for no other reason that to demonstrate U.S. military might to the world, is simultaneously chilling and comforting.

Although Doug Feith and John Bolton and George Bush and Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz and the many others who took this country to war have never had any desire to fight for their country when they had the opportunity, nobody can deny the patriotism and courage that these brave men have demonstrated in taking this great nation to war for no good reason against a country with a weak military but lots and lots of those Arab looking people who hate our freedoms.

Feith may be the f*****g stupidest guy on the face of the earth, but he's our f*****g stupidest guy on the face of the earth and thank god for that.

This is an essential fact book for every person curious about the U.S. government's decision making that led to the Afghan and Iraq wars and their pursuit in the early years.

Douglas Feith's memoir includes the period in which he served as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. He covers discussions in which he was personally involved and clearly identifies information that he did not personally observe. As such, important pieces of the puzzle are left to the observations of the actual participants. One hopes that more books will provide additional first-hand information about the Iraq war and avoid the imaginative judgments of the uninformed. Michael Yon does well on the ground in Iraq, but all too many have built a big scaffold on which to hang President Bush and ignored their own limited perspective.

Feith provides appendices in which he outlines the Washington decision apparatus, shows the memos that provided outlines of decision options, a series of charts used to brief the President on the Iraq transition, the implementation outline for the President's March 2003 policy for an Iraq Interim Authority, and a policy briefing on training the Iraqi opposition. All told good evidence for the decision process used.

Feith explains that the chain of command goes from the President to the Secretary of Defense to the regional commander (Centcom's Tommy Franks handled the invasion of Iraq). The Centcom commander can (and regularly did) react negatively to any suggestions for change that did not come directly from the President or the Secretary of Defense.

The Pentagon staff and the Joint Chiefs provide support and advice only, and are not in the chain of command. Thus Wolfowitz (the Deputy Secretary of Defense), Feith and General Myers (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) in the Pentagon made suggestions to Rumsfeld and the President. These advisors supported the President's vision of the terrorist threat as a world-wide phenomena. They noted many separate organizations, but recognized their common goal of injuring America and their deadly danger to Americans. They shared the President's view and designed policies to reduce that threat, deter terrorism around the world, and did not narrow their vision to only Afghanistan, as many recommended.

Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld appears as a very demanding boss who was trying to refocus this largest of American bureaucracies into a leaner more flexible force. When the secretary's vision collided with officials who disagreed with him, he met a great deal of foot dragging. Never-the-less, he did move the army's divisional structure farther along the path toward brigade organization.

Mixed into the debate were multiple opinions about the force levels necessary in Iraq. In retrospect it is very clear that the force levels in Iraq were too small to permit a traditional occupation. Feith suggests the President's selected occupation policy might have made a large force less necessary, but it never had a chance. Head of the Coalition Provisional Authority Paul Bremer III caused shock across the administration when, without consultation, he published an article in the 08 September 2003 Washington Post headlined "Iraq's Path to Sovereignty." The seven steps Bremer outlined effectively aborted the President's plan for early and piecewise transfer of sovereignty to Iraq. The planned Iraq Interim Authority was not to be.

In retrospect it is easy to fault the President and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld for not immediately replacing Bremer. They must have felt "the man on the ground" had better information and in any event the shockwave from replacement would have been too high.

Bremer's dismantling of the Iraq Interim Authority had serious repercussions. Feith quotes Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari in his chapter title "from liberation to occupation;" a very brief summation. Our support in Iraq dwindled. Our casualty figures soared to new records in November 2003, April 2004, and November 2004 before easing back and then running up again to May 2007.

On the other hand Rumsfeld's continual insistence on careful written arguments for and against many policies should help produce a wonderful historic record of his thinking as Secretary of Defense. Would that the Secretary of State would create such a record. Many government departments try to impose their policies with leaks and innuendo. Right or wrong Rumsfeld was clearly working very hard to produce a policy that was in the country's best interest and not necessarily just his turf. He regularly suggested that State be given more budget to handle some to the work that had fallen to Defense by default.

It appears that both the President and the Secretary of Defense over-reacted to the disastrous experience of a President and Secretary of Defense micromanaging the Vietnam War. Possibly because of this unfortunate history they were extremely reluctant to reverse decisions made at the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and Regional Command (Centcom) level. They can be faulted for failing to push the Army to adopt a counterinsurgency strategy at an earlier date.

Early mistakes in a war are a foregone conclusion since your enemy has studied your previous tactics and made adjustments to counter them. We usually bumble along, adjust and eventually get tactics that work inside the enemy's decision-response envelope.

Adjusting strategy must be done more slowly, with much greater care, and requires careful communication to all levels. This takes time and can be seriously impeded by unclear or unrealistic goals. Rumsfeld did his best to generate clarity but some subordinates in Iraq were not able to operate at his level.

Feith is to be commended for producing a very readable book that contains a great deal of important history of the Washington decision making for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was indeed refreshing to read an account of the Washington decision making by an actual participant that is not clouded by wild suppositions or accusations.

Our present success in Iraq has built on the best efforts of a large number of men including the main characters of Feith's book. This success may not have been possible several years ago even if the troop surge had occurred then and General Petraeus had been the boss.

This reviewer considers it unfortunate that the President's many critics do not share his vision of the war's scope, but it is a point on which reasonable men can fail to agree. To me the debate closely parallels the European debate in the mid 1930's, but this time Churchill was in power.

Feith's book is largely an attempt to justify his actions and policies as #3 in the Pentagon under Rumsfeld, more specifically with regards to the Iraq war.

Well, if your boss calls you in to grill on some mistakes you've made you can:

- admit failure and throw yourself at her mercy
- justify every single issue by saying that it wasn't your fault
- tactically admit some failures and defend your record on the rest.

Most people, but not Feith apparently, would recognize that rejecting any notion of having made a mistake is counterproductive. That is my main complaint with the book. It is very very defensive in nature. If mistakes were made, it's because Feith wasn't listened to. All the mistakes were made by Colin Powell, at State, or by the CIA. Later on, Paul Bremer, the 2nd US envoy to Iraq, becomes the book's scapegoat. Rumsfeld is brilliant throughout, except for _slight_ misgivings about his management style.

Feith states that Rumsfeld, correctly in Feith's view, decided to achieve unity of command by having DoD in sole and exclusive charge of post-war Iraq. Given that DoD was now running the show, why is everybody, except for DoD to blame for what went wrong? Note that I am not really criticizing the military here, more the Pentagon. Bremer was reporting directly to Rumsfeld, except that well, he wasn't - according to Feith.

Another interesting aspect is the focus on Iraq. The book starts at 9/11 and then takes about 150 pages (out of 520) to cover the invasion of Afghanistan and events up to mid 2002 at most. Past that? Nothing, no coverage of the decidedly mixed results in stabilizing the country. Just occasional pats on his own back to show how much better Afghanistan worked out than Iraq.

Feith bemoans the lack of outreach to the Muslim communities but then dismisses Powell's insistence on finding an Arab-Israeli solution as a bunch of wishy-washy irrelevant thinking. I really don't think you can have it both ways. Feith neglects to mention his contributions to the 'Clean Break' paper in 1996, advocating war with Iraq and halting the Oslo peace talks. Odd that he forgot.

Bremer's actions as head of the CPA are presented as mostly his. Well, who authorized things like the laws liberalizing Iraq's economy? I am pro free-market myself, but there is no justification for imposing capitalist laws on a country you occupy.

Feith's regrets the insistence on WMD as the cause for war. I think that is hypocritical. WMD was the easiest way to convince the electorate to go to war. No more, no less. The intelligence was faulty but I give Feith the benefit of the doubt when he says that that only became clear after the fact. Regardless, if Colin Powell chose to emphasize WMD rather than other factors, I can't really believe it was over Bush's objections.


Enough bad mouthing. This was a hard read - I don't like Feith and I don't like this administration. But there are some good reasons why this book is interesting:

- Feith occasionally makes good points. For example, lack of nation-building capability in the US institutions. Lack of funding for the Department of State.

- Difficulty of funding important initiatives by friendly foreign governments, as opposed to very loose purse strings to fund the Pentagon. I dunno about that one - what are the Cold War precedents?

- Where the information is coming from. When Feith states that the President was already thinking about Iraq on 9/12/2001, it is coming from him. Not from some foaming-at-the-mouth 9/11 conspiracy theorist. It presents the administration's side.

- Colin Powell looks a whole lot better coming out of Iraq than Bush's inner court. Rightly or wrongly, this book presents an alternative view of him as not having had the courage of his convictions.

Finally, I find it sadly amusing that, coming as #37, mine is going to be the first 3 star review. Apparently, as is customary in debate about the Iraq war nowadays, Americans still can't get over the Democrats/Republican split. Everyone loves, or hates, this book. "A Drink In the Desert" vs. "Don't reward this war criminal by buying his book". This lack of common ground doesn't look good for future US foreign policy maturity.

GRE sample test scores before using this book for review:
Verbal - 450
Quantitative - 620

Test scores after studying with this book:
Verbal - 620
Quantitative - 710

As you can see, there's quite a difference. The book covers all important topics tested on the GRE and has numerous practice questions. It has a list of 333 high-frequency words and a master list of 3,500 vocabulary words. I studied all the words at a rate of 10 words a day for several months.

An important concept briefly mentioned in the book is that on the test, it is important to quickly skip difficult questions and move on to the ones you can answer. From experience, doing so can dramatically improve your scores.

The key to the quantitative section on the GRE is to realize that most of the questions are easy if you can remember the basic concept being tested on that question. Each question can be solved in about 1-3 minutes, except the data interpretation questions which usually take longer. Out of 28 questions, there are 4 data interpretation questions. Take the practice tests (there are 6 of them) to see which questions take you the most time. Then you may choose to skip (guess on) those questions on the actual exam and focus on the ones where you do best.

I gave the book 4 stars instead of 5 because it did not give enough strategy for the analogies and reading comprehension on the verbal section. For example, how does one improve reading and comprehension speed under exam conditions? The reading questions can take long to answer, so a bit more study and exam strategy would have helped.

But overall, it was a very good review book.

This is a solid overall prep book -- I used this and the Princeton Review book, and between those two and the free materials ETS offers online, it was more than enough to self-prepare for the test.

Thats a great book to have a general idea about the test. It was a great help

This is the single best review book for the GRE on the market, at least as far as quantitative review and vocabulary. I recommend using this book's information along with another book that teaches you a bit more about the format of the GRE and tactics, like Kaplan, but DON'T depend on Kaplan for a good review of math, they only help with tactics. The math review in this book is very dense and can be hard to sift through. -But if you dedicate yourself and learn all the concepts, you'll be all set for quantitative!

If anyone out there is in need of ramping up their quantitative score and is willing to put in the hard work, this is my study plan and I highly recommend it. It involves 3 books; this book, the Arco GRE/GMAT Math Review book and the Kaplan GRE & GMAT Exams Math Workbook (I recommend 3rd or 4th edition).

1) Go through the arithmetic chapter in the Arco GRE/GMAT Math Review book. Take notes if necessary, and do all the practice problems. This is an excellent BASIC review.
2) Go through the arithmetic chapter in this book (Barron's). Again, take notes if necessary and do all problems. If you get any of them wrong, review them until you know how to get the right answer.
3) Go through the arithmetic chapter in Kaplan GRE/GMAT Math review book. This is NOT so much for you to review math concepts; you already did that with ARCO & Barron's. This is just for you to REINFORCE what you learned from the previous two books.
4) Take one of the math tests in the ARCO book.
5) Repeat steps 1-4 for every math subject chapter (ie algebra, geometry, word problems, etc.) There should be 6 math tests in the arco book which is perfect for the roughly 6 sections of math review in all three books.

I am intending to complete this plan in a month with roughly 1.5 hours of study per weekday and a little more on the weekend. You may not need as much time for review if you are good at math and know your weak points. If so, then just work on your weak points.

ALSO, don't forget to go over CAT strategies before the test and TAKE SOME CAT tests to help you with your timing! Be sure to do your powerprep!

After studying with this book my GRE verbal score increased by 140 points. The high frequency word list was particularly helpful. However, if you want to study all the words it would take weeks.

James Carroll is clearly an intelligent, thoughtful man who is no doubt armed with the most important attribute for any historian - an iron butt. Carroll has exhaustively researched America's nuclear age and has attempted to tell that story using the Pentagon as its focus.

The result is an impressive yet frustrating work of history that is ultimately doomed by Carroll's self-indulgence.

James Carroll's life, he says, is wrapped up in the Pentagon because they are roughly the same age and, thanks to his dad's meteoric rise in the military, the Pentagon was Carroll's childhood playground. That playground, Carroll argues, was actually the largest force of evil at work in the latter half of the twentieth century because it was the home of the American military-industrial complex. For Carroll, this is an act of personal betrayal and destruction, which is why he keeps referring back to the metaphor of Ahab and the White Whale, with the Pentagon featuring as the titanic force of nature.

The problem with this book, for all its exhaustive research, is that Carroll has become almost completely unhinged in his criticism of the United States. I have no patience for anyone who says that the U.S. has always been right, much less "my country, right or wrong." But Carroll believes that ever since FDR demanded "unconditional surrender" in WWII, America has been a purely destructive force throughout the world.

The examples of Carroll's bending over backwards to show how devious and evil we have been are too many to list here, so I'll just pick a few choice ones. Ever wonder why Joseph Stalin built the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain? Carroll writes that Stalin really wasn't envisioning a conflict between East and West after WWII, but had to throw up blockades thanks to the American economic attack against the Soviets in the form of the Marshall Plan and providing West Germany with a stable currency. Stalin is continually referred to as reasonably reacting to Western antagonisms, even though Carroll concedes Stalin was a genocidal monster who didn't care how many of his own soldiers he lost in his march against the West.

And Carroll argues first that Soviets really weren't that paranoid - the Americans were more so. But then Carroll also provides reasons why the Russians (whom he occasionally conflates with the Soviets) had good reason to be paranoid - because Russia had been invaded a lot since the 16th century. (By that standard, every country in Europe should be extremely paranoid!)

In Carroll's reading of history, every U.S. President made the world more risky by promoting - directly or indirectly - nuclear proliferation. Even Jimmy Carter did so by trying too hard to rein in nukes! Of course, the only exception is the sainted JFK, which puts "House of War" into the pantheon of Kennedy-worshiping histories. Haven't we had enough of those? Harry Truman, to cite one example of a President Carroll has no time for, alternately made an easy decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima or was powerless to stop it. And even though Truman later refused to use nukes in Korea, Truman nevertheless promoted their use.(?)

But while U.S. Presidents - the lackeys of the Pentagon, according to Carroll - made the world more dangerous, Carroll argues that we were saved by thoughtful Soviet leaders and the Peace Movement. No doubt Carroll wishes we could have made John Lennon Secretary of Defense.

Carroll also argues that the Pentagon turned the U.S. into "fortress America" through such dastardly means as shunning the draft (because a volunteer military desensitizes most citizens from armed conflict) and allowing senior officers to wear civilian clothes (because too many people in D.C. in uniform would be disconcerting). One wonders what Carroll would think of mandatory military service and uniformed soldiers being seen on every street corner and office in D.C.

I am very critical of "House of War" because it could have been so darn good, if Carroll had just kept a little perspective. The world is more balanced and nuanced than as Carroll shows us, and after 500+ pages (plus dozens of pages of endnotes) of reading his screed, I am completely exhausted by what can only be described as shrill, hyperbolic wishful thinking.

If you are a conspiracy theorist who believes the U.S. engineered 9/11 or if you believe that there is no role for the U.S. military at all, you are going to love this book and hate my review. I am no fan of the Cold War. But as one reviewer observed in the New York Times, if Carroll didn't like the Cold War, imagine if it had been hot.

Still, this book has value. Carroll extensively and passionately argues his points and has a lot of research to back them up (although a surprising amount of his footnotes refer not to sources but merely continue Carroll's screed). This book provides valuable evidence of American mistakes - and there have been many - and should be read by anyone who subscribes to the John Wayne school of American history.

But this story is too one-sided to be taken seriously by anyone as anything other than a polemic, and a shrill one at that.

The author traces the terrible rise of Pentagon power as seen from the perspective of the son of General Carroll, a former head of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI). Yet, he makes absolutely no mention of a key (but aggressively denied) "security problem" that is just now coming into sharper focus: the surveillance of U.S. nuclear weapons installations by a more advanced technological force, popularly known as flying saucers or UFOs.

Before you laugh and move on (as you have been quietly trained to do by the CIA and its "media assets") go back and re-read the hundreds of newspaper accounts from the 1950s and 1960s to see just how big a public-relations problem this was for the U.S. military, and how much energy the CIA and Air Force were putting into managing public perceptions (an effort that has by no means stopped). Or, go to any good public library in Montana and read about how these "UFOs" were often seen over our Minuteman ICBM complexes during the mid-1960s and again in the 1970s.

Or, if you don't have the time for this, read Richard Dolan's UFOs and the National Security State: Chronology of a Coverup, 1941-1973. Or my own book, The Missing Times. Then see what former Air Force personnel have since admitted was going on beyond the heavy curtain of official censorship in Faded Giant

Then you will start to understand that there was a very tightly held secret driving the Pentagon's paranoia that went far beyond run-away fears of the Soviet Union.

The author's father was very much involved in keeping the lid on all this, yet no mention of it is made in "House of War." This is an essential missing piece needed to understand the growth of military power and secrecy. One day, history will be re-written in light of what military authorities do not want the American public to know: someone else has had an interest in their nuclear toys and how they planned to use them.

In this book Carroll, winner of National Book Awards, and working for a number of academic institutions with their full support and assistance, records a complete history of the Pentagon from its birth until publication in 2006.

Carroll fully documents this history with reliable references and historical records, and includes his own insider's view as the son of a major player in this history. He further brings to this verifiable and comprehensive history of the deceit and horrors and sins of the Pentagon the perspective of a trained Catholic theologian, ethicist and moral authority in absolutely condemning the depth of sin in which the military industrial complex has plunged us to their pyrrhic profits, forewarned by General Eisenhower (with whose words this book begins).

The scholarship is impeccable and undeniable and the moral voice a prophecy and a warning as fierce and as true and as holy as Isaiah (see Isaiah: Spirit of Courage, Gift of Tears.

For example, on page nine and ten we may read:

"What is to be made of such horror? In fact, there is an entire intellectual discipline devoted to parsing them. The war theorist Thomas Schelling has observed that 'pain and shock, loss and grief, privation and horror are always in some terrible degree among the results of warfare, but in traditional military science that are incidental, they are not the object.' But 'traditional military science' averts its eyes from the harshest fact of war - that it includes a savage momentum operating apart from the intention of the warriors. In the modern age, that momentum is compounded by technology, when killing becomes both more efficient and more impersonal. When the distance between attacker and victim increases, the psychological effects of battle can become lass restrained. Momentum and technology together erode the moralities of the battlefield, even as persons far from the killing continue to expound them. All of this, in addition to rational strategies, is built into the impulse to demand unconditional surrender."

Thus we find the recent and influential Pope JP II condemning all war, as the present machinery of warfare makes just conduct of war impossible, and the total, indiscriminate and disproportionate suffering and death of innocent civilian populations unavoidable, and in fact an objective of the war. Modern warfare is by definition genocidal. And thus we find the present and past Pope condemning absolutely the Pentagon's invasion and occupation of Iraq.

We find here not only the germination of the Pentagon, but also the recurrence of such war criminals as Rumsfeld and Cheney in its upper echelons, men who