Conferences Books

It would be quite a physical fete to hold this hefty tome throughout a Pontifical Solemn High Mass!Perhaps some thought should have been given to issuing the Psalter in a second volume. The one over riding dissapointment was the omission of appropiate front matter i.e., a preface, introduction etc. This would have been of special interest to collectors of liturgical works and others interested in liturgy. Cost is always a factor in publishing however I like to see the rubrics printed in red.
On the positive side it will much appreciated by former Episcopalians who are now within the Roman fold.

This is the principle liturgical source for the 'Anglican Use.' For those of you who haven't heard of it, the Anglican Use is a pastoral provision in the Catholic Church that allows for an Anglican parish that converts to Catholicism to retain elements of the Anglican liturgical and spiritual tradition. Sadly, Anglican parishes seeking to become Anglican-Use-Catholic ones need the approval of the local Catholic bishop, which is almost never given.

This book contains the order of mass plus all the collects (opening prayers) and secrets (prayers over the gifts) throughout the year. It also contains the order of matins and vespers and has two psalters in the back -- one Coverdale (archaic language) and the other in contempory English.

The binding is quite beautiful and the text is very well set out and is easy to read. Its only real let-down is that it is physically quite bulky and cumbersome.

MacMillan's The Peacemakers fails to live up to its promise of providing a fresh look at the Treaty of Versailles.

`In many cases the peacemakers found themselves dealing with faits accomplis', says MacMillan and `Hitler did not wage war because of the Treaty of Versailles'. True, and very right for a historian to point her finger at commonplace views that only reflect hindsight. The trouble is that this appears in the conclusion, and that the rest of the book gives the opposite impression.

The Peacemakers read to me like a laundry list indictment of the Versailles treaty. On each issue, the problems the treaty set in store take centre ground. It is blamed for an endless list of ills ranging from Eastern Europe in the 1930s to the Middle East today. And the peacemakers' own private weaknesses, elaborated on in colourful detail, systematically add to the impression of failure. Perhaps this is where MacMillan provides a fresh view: behind the scenes analysis, portrayal of the actors as well the action. While that is indeed the book's most interesting feature, however, it makes an already confused account even more so. The book's scope is broad, but by trying to draw even broader consequences, it inevitably veers into superficiality.

There were deep flaws in the treaty, which everyone is taught at school: the war guilt clause, the reparations, the make-up of the League. These would have been worth examining in more depth (For example how high were the German reparations really? My own guess is a huge 25% to 75% of German GDP. Just providing a well-researched estimate of that would have been illuminating, rather than sounding once again like debatable hearsay), and could have been set against some of the more positive achievements of this momentous peace agreement.

A superb and very readable account of the policies and personalities of those who concocted the peace settlement at the end of the First World War. The general story will be known to most who have an interest in the period, but here we have details that will be known to only a few. The pen portraits of Woodrow Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau are excellent and flesh out the picture that many readers will already have of them, but so are those of participants the names of whom figure in few text-books, like Billy Hughes, the coarse prime minister of Australia, or Prince Saionji and Baron Makino of the Japanese delegation, to mention just a few. And there is a wonderful set piece near the end about the closing scenes at Versailles.

The negotiations and the differences between the peace makers are set out in lucid detail, together with the nicely ironic comment, often as asides in brackets. The author pilots us skilfully through the complications of the Balkans, and only the treatment of the admittedly tortuous developments in Syria and Mesopotamia (Iraq) are a little on the stodgy side. There are model succinct summaries of the past history of the areas under discussion, and equally succinct ones of what happened to them after the peace treaties, right up to the present day.

As at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, there is constant mistrust among the peace makers: France did not want a strong Italy; Britain (looking back to the rivalry before the Entente of 1904) distrusted France; Italy constantly tried to thwart the new Yugoslavia and was in competition with Greece. It should be no surprise to any student of politics that double standards were constantly in evidence: statesmen who had got what they wanted described the demands of others as `greedy' (except, unfortunately, for Lloyd George who was bewitched by Venizelos of Greece, possibly the greediest of the lot). There was the sordid haggling over the allocation of reparation payments from Germany, with contempt being shown to little Belgium's claim for a fair share of them. The high-minded and high-handed Wilson simply overruled the majority vote in one of the commissions that the Covenant of the League should include a racial equality clause proposed by the Japanese. He then compensated the Japanese with another betrayal of his own principles by accepting the Japanese claim on Chinese Shantung.

Macmillan is particularly illuminating on the Japanese. They were initially included in the Supreme Council which made all the decisions, but were then simply dropped. The service chiefs in Britain and the United States were already contemplating that one day they would have to go to war with Japan - not altogether surprising, since Japan was clearly already set on expansion.

But the Supreme Council often gave only cursory attention to areas outside of Europe, and did not listen carefully to what experts could tell them. This accounts to a large extent to the shambles they made in the Middle East. The consequences, as far as the Arabs were concerned, took some time to show themselves; but the stupidity of the peace makers' dealings with Turkey proper were quickly exposed by the success of Kemal Ataturk, who swiftly destroyed the Treaty of Sèvres which had been imposed on the Sultan.

Only Clemenceau wanted the League of Nations to have `teeth': he saw it first and foremost as an organization to prevent future German aggression. The other members of the Supreme Council were not prepared to sacrifice any of their sovereignty; and even President Wilson, for whom the League was of greater importance than anything else, knew that Congress would never stand for giving the League real power and did not press for it.

Macmillan concludes that Germany was actually better placed after the Versailles Settlement than it had been in 1914: Poland was now a barrier against Russia, and in the South East there were only small states instead of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This is presumably what Andrew Roberts had in mind when he commended the book as `splendidly revisionist and daringly politically incorrect'. Splendid though this book is, I can see only one other sentence, on p. 476, that would merit that description, and it is one of only two sentences in the book with which I disagree: if you read article 231, you can hardly say, as she does, that this has been inaccurately described as `the war guilt clause'.

My other disagreement is that the Sykes-Picot Agreement had not promised Palestine to the French (p.427): only the Upper Galilee. The rest was to be under joint British-French-Russian protection.

I cannot fully agree with the author's conclusion, which might perhaps be called revisionist. So many parts of the Peace Settlement left time-bombs, many of which detonated in the Nazi period and some of which (Kosovo, Iraq, Israel-Palestine) are still detonating today. Some of the advice which the peace makers received, but ignored, warned them of the dangers. But Macmillan thinks that the main responsibility for allowing them to detonate lies with the decisions taken or not taken by the next generation, not with the peace makers: `They tried, even cynical old Clemenceau, to build a better order. They could not foresee the future and they certainly could not control it. That was up to their successors.'

These very few criticisms aside, I have nothing but praise for this fine achievement.

This slim volume consists of six essays, one on the historiography of the Second Polish Republic, two on the post-independence strife, one on treatment of ethnic minorities, one on freedom of the press in Poland and one on Poland's defence preparations in 1939. The subjects are narrow and they are discussed in an apologetic manner on behalf of the conservative authoritarian leaders who ruled Poland during the twenties and thirties. The book is representative of a larger problem in Central European historiography. Historians of France, Germany, Italy, Russia, or Spain will recognize that these countries are often divided by class, ethnicity, religion, region, political persuasion and a large number of other factors. People who are not particularly sympathetic to these countries will still study them because they are intrinsically important. There is a certain expectation that historians will learn foreign languages, and historians will learn Italian, French, German or Russian without necessarily being enamoured of the nationality's government.

By contrast people who study Poland are likely to be highly sympathetic to Poland and are likely to study under Polish emigre scholars. The problem that arises is that many of these scholars are sympathetic to an authoritarian regime. And no matter how better the Second Polish republic may been compared to the Postwar Communist regime, support for authoritarianism does not encourage the critical approach needed to study history. It also means that one is studying under scholars who are not only very conservative, but are also unimaginative historically. The result is that they will ignore every trend that has revolutionized history over the past forty years. Gender, class, the revolution in intellectual history, the whole complex history of nationality; all ignored in a narrow and apologetic concentration on diplomatic and political history.

The result of this can be best seen in Stachura's essay on National Minorities. Stachura argues that if there was conflict between the government and the minorities, it was all the latter's fault. In particular he says How does he go about this? He does so by self-contradiction, omission, and question begging. At one point he claims that the Jews isolated themselves from Polish society, at another he claims they dominated many leading professions. He does not mention the prominent Polish cardinal who before 1939 linked the Jews to prostitution and white slavery (see Arno Mayer's Why the Heavens did not Darken). He does not mention the post 1945 pogrom in Kielce. And he does not mention General Sikorski's January 1942 meeting with Anthony Eden in which the General suggested to Eden that "It is quite impossible...for Poland to continue to maintain 3.5 million Jews after the war." (see Anita Prazmowska, Britain and Poland, 1939-1943: the Betrayed Ally at 122). He makes much of Jewish sympathies to Communism, although such support was electorally insignificant before 1939 and was dwarfed by Belorussian support. The most astonishing passage in Stachura's account occurs on page 75. He challenges the conduct of Zionist leader Yitshak Gruenbaum in the following way: "The destructive nature of Gruenbaum's creation was revealed all too starkly in December 1922, when it tipped the balance of botes in the presidential election in favour of the leftist candidate Gabriel Narutowicz, who was immediately stigmatized by the Right as a `Jewish president' and assasinated a few days later by an ultra-Nationalist. The ensuing poisonous atmosphere in Polish political life, which threatened to break out into civil war, owed much, therefore, to the nefarious activity of Gruenbaum and his fellow Zionists..." One is struck by the sheer non-sequitur, in which it is the exercise of one's democratic rights, and not the foul political motiviated assassination, that is blamed for undermining civic harmony. But it is all of a piece with an author who could write of Gruenbaum that "He exploited press freedom to mount his propaganda attacks," a phrasing more suitable to Franco and Pinochet than of a scholar published by St. Martin's Press.

Rather than reading Andrzej Suchcitz's indulgent essay on Poland's defence preparations, one should read A. Prazmowska's tougher Britian, Poland and the Eastern Front, 1939. She points out that the amazingly complacent attitude the British had on the vital question of getting Soviet aid, while the attitude of the Poles "was not merely one of obduracy but even more so of unrelieved reality." All in all we have not progressed beyond Antony Polonsky's study, now more than a quarter-century old.

This book has been mischaracterized as a nationalistic tome, one which attempts to blame prewar Polish minorities for all their problems. This is manifestly incorrect. Stachura never says that minorities' conflicts with Poles are all of their own making. He merely says that their steadfast enmity towards Poland, and constant rebuffing of positive Polish overtures, influenced their fate.

There is no contradiction whatsoever between the self-chosen nonassimilated status of most Polish Jews and the fact of their overall economic dominance. Also, Jewish involvement vis a vis the Bloc of National minorities and relative to Narutowicz was hardly a free-speech matter. It was, as described by Stachura, nothing less than "a declaration of political warfare against the state" (p. 75), and one with intrusive German involvement to boot. Finally, complaints about Stachura not mentioning Sikorski's 1942 comments and the Kielce pogrom of 1946 are doubly ridiculous in that they both occurred after the stated time scope of this book (1918-1939), an elementary fact obvious from even its title. (Parenthetically, Sikorski was not the only one who contended that Poland had far too many Jews. This opinion was shared by the Zionist Vladimir Jabotinsky, among others. As for the Kielce pogrom, there is ample evidence, from Russian and Jewish sources alone, that it was a Soviet Communist staged event).

Instead of being nationalistic, Stachura repeats the common criticism of nationalist Roman Dmowski being an anti-Semite, and one whose views, when repeated in the US, created an unfavorable reaction that had to be countered through the efforts of Ignace Jan Paderewski (p. 68). Far from trying to whitewash Poles, Stachura does not spare them from criticism [e. g., their disunity (p. 51), the slow pace of their military industrialization stemming from overconfidence following the stunning Polish victory over the Soviets in 1920 (p. 55), etc.]. Throughout his book, Stachura cites numerous sources that exhibit a diversity of viewpoints, not only pro-Polish ones. He is just as condemnatory of source materials that exhibit an adulatory attitude towards Polish figures and policies as he is towards those which are one-sidedly critical of them (e. g., Communist ones).

A major shortcoming of Stachura's book is his inadequate treatment of the agendas behind the demonization of Poland vis a vis her minorities. He does mention the Soviet-imposed Communist puppet government's need to appear legitimate by trying to make prewar Poland as bleak as possible. However, Britain and the US also needed to belittle prewar Poland in order to rationalize their dirty, stinking doublecross of Poland at Yalta. Finally, the emergence of the Holocaust Industry has created a need to blur the distinction between prewar Poland and Nazi Germany as much as possible in the public eye, and even to create an artificial continuity between the experiences of Polish Jews in prewar Poland and their subsequent genocide in Nazi-German ruled Poland.

Stachura depicts the Zionist leader Yitshak Gruenbaum in a very negative light. In this respect, his opinion is somewhat shared by the Jewish author Joseph Marcus, who in his SOCIAL AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE JEWS IN POLAND, 1919-1939, sees Gruenbaum as an unnecessarily polarizing figure in Polish-Jewish relations.

As related by Stachura, the Jewish hostility to the Polish state took on nothing less than staggering dimensions. A "Jewish lobby" at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 had opposed the creation of the Polish state. Jewish collaboration with the Communists was extensive, and was much more significant than any Byelorussian-Communist cooperation owing to the economic and political power of the Jews. Indeed, numerous world Jewish organizations and personages spared no efforts to continually defame Poles and Poland Reading this, it sounds so familiar to what occurs today under the auspices of Holocaust programming and Holocaust education. All we ever hear about is Polish anti-Semitism. Yet Stachura documents many specific examples of Jewish Polonophobia. For instance, bogus accounts of pograms in Poland were created and circulated, only to be almost entirely discredited later through the investigative efforts of a delegation headed by Henry Morgenthau, a Jew himself. The so-called Minorities Treaty presented a platform for Poland's allies and enemies to meddle in her internal affairs. An ironic situation developed wherein, for instance, Britain, with her global empire, dubious treatment of the Irish, and having almost no local Jewish population to deal with, used the Minorities Treaty to moralize Poland on her treatment of minorities!

Polish anti-Semitism had been the reason given by many Jewish organizations and individuals for refusing to support the emergence of an independent Polish state. However, Stachura misses the opportunity to call the bluff on this excuse. The fact is that, if anything, czarist Russia had been far more anti-Semitic than the Poles. On the basis of this alone, Jews should have preferred Polish self-rule over continued Russian rule. As for Communism, its totalitarian and barbaric nature had, if nothing else, been well demonstrated by the Russian Revolution. The reluctance or refusal of Jewish organizations to support the independence of Poland, even after its inception, owes, in actuality, to long-term Jewish financial and economic interests in Russia (and also the other partitioning powers, Austria and Prussia).

Stachura makes it clear that, in general, Poland was very tolerant of minorities. The Jews enjoyed a flourishing economic, cultural, and economic life unparalled in any other nation. Although there were necessary repressive acts done by Poland against her seditious minorities, they were never systematic nor continuous. Stachura could have mentioned the commutation of the death penalty against Ukrainian nationalist leaders Bandera, Lebed, and Shukevych, who had been involved in assassinations of Polish and pro-Polish Ukrainian leaders. How did they return the favor? By organizing and implementing (during the later German occupation) an unspeakably sadistic genocide of 100,000 Poles (and thousands of Ukrainians who desired good Polish-Ukrainian relations or otherwise refused to submit to the fascist dictates of the OUN-UPA leadership). Stachura's work needs to be expanded, and it is hoped that a future edition will do this.

This book is a transcript of the Joint Fighter Conference along with related materials--photos of the aircraft involved and their data and "comment" cards. It is a difficult read. Basic reference material on aeronuatical and engineering terms may be necessary for the average reader and helpful for the informed reader. An overall impression is that this book is still timely. One point that comes to mind is that the qualities of a good day light dog fighter, are unchanged and may be timeless (good visibiility, maneuverability, and acceleration [think F-16]). Also there was criticism of aerodynamic add-on shortcuts to solve a problem-- something that is happening currenntly with the Super Hornet. Topics of discussion are varied ranging from maneuverability to cockpit visibility to armour and armament with stops at stroboscopic effects of propellers, to external fuel tanks. What would come to be called ergonomics was discussed in regard to making the cockpit more comfortable and usable for the pilot. A fair number of those in attendance and a large number of those flying the conference aircraft were manufacturer test pilots and reps. I got the impression there may have been some company one-upsmanship going on. Incidentally the "comment cards" are based on "one hop" impressions, so if your favorite aircraft is disrespected a little, don't worry too much. I was surprised by a number of things such as the mention of some fairly obscure aircraft (eg. the G.M. P-75, Curtis XF-14) and the absence of any discussion of enemy aircraft then being encountered. I was shocked by a comment near the end of the conference that the air war is being won by "quantity rather than by quality" (the P-38 and P-51 are specifically mentioned) and at least one contractor agrees. I have never read of heard anything before suggesting quality was lacking in late War U.S. aircraft as a whole. If you're a WWII fighter buff and don't mind having to put some research and effort into your reading you will be rewarded by this book.

Despite a title to fill the mouth ( _Report of Joint Fighter Conference, NAS Patuxent River, MD 16-23 October 1944_) this book is a gem to those who have a serious interest in understanding the deeper layers of air combat during WWII. Briefly, the Joint Conference was a gathering of 400 Allied combat pilots, engineers and test pilots. They had a "fly off" of every major US aircraft at the time. The British delegation brought a Seafire II and a Mosquito. The evaluators even had a late model Zero to use for comparison. Edited by noted aviation author Francis Dean, the book is in two parts. The 250 page report itself is a transcript of the discussion among experts that took place each afternoon after the morning's fly-off. Each session centered on one topic or another, although the tangents were numerous. I should warn that the conversation is far over the head of the material presented in garden variety books about aircraft. But I found it fascinating being a "fly on the wall" as the men who made and flew the great fighters of WWII dissect them piece by piece. The last 100 pages is made up of technical evaluations of the respective aircraft. This is not a work for the casual reader. However, if you know the rudiments of aviation and have the WWII "Warbird" bug, there's really nothing like this. (The Conference Report provided Mr. Dean with some of the material used in his splendid _America's One Hundred Thousand: US Production Fighters of World War Two_ [Schiffer, 1997])

I've used this book to train tutors, and it is one of the better books out there for the purpose. Not only is it easy to read and understand (in other words, it is accessible even to undergraduate tutors), but it also supplies a wealth of research, theory, and history of the best tutoring writing practices. My favorite chapter is near the end of the book where the authors provide short sections highlighting tutorial advice from masters like Muriel Harris, Peter Elbow, Donald Murray, and Nancy Atwell.

What the previous reviewer may not have understood is that the authors were merely reporting the impact of feminist theory and research on the field of tutoring writing. Any intense reading of composition academic journals would show that, yes, feminist theory has had an incredible impact on the evolving understanding of best practices in the teaching of writing, in general, and in tutoring writing, specifically. As in everything, a field of study develops from a conversation. The feminist contribution to that conversation in composition studies has been a rich one. The authors would have been remiss to leave it out of their overview of tutoring writing.

Great book overall. I highly recommend it.

Tutoring Writing by Donald A. McAndrew & Thomas Reigstad is a composite of methods in tutoring students in writing.

At first, the book was good. It summarized my college education (my degree is in English and Education). It's always good to read about methods.

As I read on, it read like a college term paper from a B plus student. It was concise, reviewed well, but... (the "but" kept showing up in my mind when I read it).

Finally, the marker of bad writing came to pass. "Feminism."

The scar of leftist agenda took over the book with an entire cry of how women (sepcifically "feminism") teaches us the best way to tutor teaching.

Feminism is a political dance and has nothing to do with good writing. It would be the same as saying "Conservatives teach good writing methods because, by nature, they..." which would be just as false.

Too bad the education world can't teach reality and just rely on leftist agenda to produce. It could have been a good book.

Once upon a time, D.B. Wyndham Lewis and Charles Lee compiled "The Stuffed Owl: An Anthology of Bad Verse." While bad verse is everywhere so abundant that a collection of it may seem de trop, this is not just any bad verse. It is bad verse by good poets, and that of course is the point. "Hitler's Peace" is a bad book by an excellent writer; so bad that it's difficult to believe Philip Kerr wrote it. The style, the subtleties, and the context that informs "The One from the Other" and his superlative Bernie Gunther books is nowhere in evidence. In fact, he makes so many contextual mistakes that one suspects a malevolent ghost writer. His protagonist is fictional, so Kerr was free to draw him however he chose. But the historical characters upon whom the plot depends are real people; men about whom far too much is known to excuse the major mistakes in evidence here. Philip Kerr is an extraordinary writer. He's far too good for something like this. Read his good ones. Pretend this one never crossed your path.

Hitler's Peace is not one of Kerr's Bernie Gunther series, but a free-standing novel set in World War II, specifically around the time of the Big Three conference in Teheran, in occupied Iran, in 1943. Kerr uses a wide cast of real characters as well as a few fictional characters to tell a what-if story built around Schellenberg's and Himmler's peace feelers to the Allies of around that time.

Kerr's strength in all his books is character development as well as a stickler's attention to historical and atmospherical detail, and this book is no exception. He fleshes out the characters of his protagonist and (partially) first person narrator Willard Mayer, philosopher with an ambiguous past attached to FDR's retinue; Schellenberg, Himmler and Canaris; FDR, Churchill, Stalin and Hitler; as well as countless minor real or fictional characters along the way, and the trip takes us from Washington to London to the trip across the Atlantic on the Iowa with FDR, spending time in Tunis, Cairo, and of course Teheran. One can quibble with some of the characterizations of one or the other person, but on the whole I think Kerr gets all of this right. It is, after all, fiction.

Kerr's plot is based on the various motivations of all the key players, and they are, shall we say, many and multifarious. Murders follow Willard Mayer from Washington across the Atlantic, until the final climactic conference; Kerr weaves a complicated mess of a tale. If I have a problem with the book, it's that the ending is more than a little of a copout.

But on the whole, Hitler's Peace is not meant to be literature, and remains a very entertaining page-turner of a World War II novel. Kerr's powers as a writer lift it well above the average for that type of work.

I was hooked almost immediately and planned to give it 5 stars. The absurd plot shift near the end, however, led me to shave off 2 stars. Still, it was an exciting, well written novel, and I look forward to reading "Berlin Noir."

Hitler's Peace by Philip Kerr ***

Interesting enough to keep you reading, but the problem lies in motivating yourself to actually pick up the book and get going. This wanna-be espionage story is not worthy of Kerrs name. Where his previous work, such as the Berlin trilogy was exciting and well detailed that all seems lost here.

The premise of the book is interesting enough, in fact it's more than that and is actually one of the more original ideas in WWII fiction genre. As Hitler realizes he has no shot at winning the war he is cunning enough to formulate a plot to turn the allies against each other which would in turn take heat of him and open up holes the the fuhrer. Sounds fascinating, huh? not quite.

The plot at times becomes lost and loses focus more than a few times. The idea not being that far fetched that it could have really happened. Thought the authors slight exaggerations some of the real life characters' real relations with each other make the whole thing seem highly implausible.

Kerrs writing at times seems childish and not thought out. The lack of detail leaves the reader scratching their head in wonder rather than amazement as with his earlier work. Though as said before the story is interesting enough to keep the reader interested even though the book never really delivers.

Fans of the excellent Berlin Noir trilogy and other of Kerr's earlier books will be disappointed by this. In the overflowing field of what-if books on the Second World War, "Hitler's Peace" offers one of the more improbable plots and will soon be forgotten.

Tell the truth, an interesting comment / policy coming from a political spin master. I had no perceptions about this book when picking it, as I had not heard anything about it. In my experience that usually means the book is rather run of the mill and dull. Well it turned out that this book is absolutely nothing like that. I really enjoyed the book. It was well written, snappy and interesting. He walks the reader through his time in the media relation's portion of the White House during the campaign finance issues and right before Monica. He does a great job of explaining what his job entailed and making it very interesting.

One thing that came to me as an extra was the details of the press and the way they work up a story. It makes you look at the new in a different light. The author detailed some of the phases to watch out for when reading a paper, which will make me trust political reporting even less. The points he raises has been one that every arm chair political junky has been yelling at the TV for years. Just tell the truth, it is always going to make it easier in the long run and eliminates the never-ending story about one little bit after another. The book is also rather positive. It is not a kiss and tell with nice bits of gossip. Overall I really enjoyed the book and would recommend it to anyone interested in the way the Clinton White House dealt with the media.

Lanny Davis takes you inside the spinmeisters den at the White House and tells how the news is made through leaking to the press and how the professionals blunt negative reporting about the President. Overall a quick read, but according to Lanny nothing President Clinton or Al Bore did is incorrect or wrong. Nothing at all; it is all part of the vast right wing conspiracy. I thought the lack of critical analysis shot the wheels off as a commentary, but as a how-to manual on spinning the message this a must have.

Ever wonder how Clinton gets away with his chronic criminal behavior? How does he control the television media so it won't report the truth about him? This book will tell you. It has a spin, as you can tell by the title, but it still reveals the basics of media control. It does not, however, mention all the liberal reporters who spoke up after being blackmailed by Clinton. Nor does it mention the financial benefits Clinton gave to the three main stations (deregulation) or the promises of power in the new global government.

Some of these reviewers apparently have not read the book. They seem to have filed reviews for the sole purpose of ranting about Bill and Hillary Clinton. In Mr. Davis's account of his meeting with the President regarding Miss Lewinsky, his advise was to tell it all and tell it now whatever the truth is.

The bulk of his book is dedicated to the campaign finance "scandals" where he had to continually contend with other White House counsels who took the tack of not exposing their client to undue risk, often with disastrous results, such as with the White House coffees.

If you are interested in the dynamics between the White House and the press, this is the book for you.

I gave Lanny two stars because his actions cannot be praised only given our pity. On the other hand, Lanny was forthright in explaining his mistakes of telling and giving out misinformation a tender way of saying lying. An admission of this kind of failure deserves neither recognition or commendation. But I am glad he explained it. The book only reinforced my belief that this is a President with fatal flaws of character and should have never been elected. He accomplished nothing but country club travel, cheating at golf and humiliating his wife, daughter and nation. The book shows that politics makes good people do bad things to cover failure, meanness and embarrassment. I expected more of Lanny and the entire Democratic party by having them call for Clifton's resignation when he was found lying under oath. They did not act except by saying he did not lie, well, here is the result, it will be sometime when I trust and vote for another Democrat. And here is the worse aspect from their actions and this book, I am and always will be a Democrat but no longer in the primaries. I will let them keep picking candidates with failures of nerves and then vote the other side in all general elections. It is like Moses and the Israelites, no one who worships falsehoods can enter the Promise land until that generation is dead and gone. All people who engineered this cover up of deceit to remain in power must leave before gentlemen like me return. I speak for many who read this book. This is the legacy they are leaving and none to proud. All of them need to go away for a long time, just like the book.

this is not a book, merely a package of pages copied for the siddur. very dissappointing. don't buy!

Based upon my limited work with this Siddur, I would say that it bridges the gap between the 1975 G.O.P. and the new Siddur expected to makes its arrive within the decade. This Siddur does not have the variety of services which the 1975 G.O.P. offered, and requires congregations to keep the 1975 edition, which is a terrable waste of space.

When the editors created this book, they should have considered including some of the services (or at least special readings) for the Holidays (i.e. Sukkot, Passover, etc.). This would therefore end the need for the '75 Gates of Prayer.

However, I must say that the title of this review best explaines my feeling toward the newest "Gates" book for the Reform Congregations. It is a good book if one does not mind having only a limited option of services to use.

This new gender-sensitive siddur reflects the changing face of American Reform Judaism. The first change, of course, is the gender language issue. The God-language chosen for this volume is certainly theologically defensible but poetically bland. It is, in fact, the least interesting aspect of this siddur. Far more remarkable to this reader is the inclusion (finally) of rubrics left out of previous Reform prayer books. Specifically, it is exciting to see a Birkat Hamazon included. It is also positive to see useful transliterations of prayers on the same page as the Hebrew text. This innovation has been lamented by idealists within the Reform movement who see transliterations as a an admission that the majority of our congregants will never be able to read a Hebrew text. Perhaps, but now those who wish to recite with the Hebrew readers can now do so easily, increasing opportunies for full participation in worship (afterall, how many of us who actually understand the Hebrew concentrate on the meaning as we pray?). One criticism I have is for the typeface choices, especially the Hebrew. The narrow, thin style does not reproduce well and can be difficult to read in poor light. Given that this is an interim edition, one hopes this shortcoming will be corrected in future versions. All in all, a useful volume which heralds promising new developments in America's largest Jewish religious movement.

This book is really pretty lame. It has virtually no choice of services, the so-called "translations" (actually cheesy semi-poetic synopses) try so hard to be politically correct that they virtually lose all meaning, and the transliterations are virtually unintelligible. (In my experience, even the poorest hebrew-readers have an easier time following the Hebrew text than trying to puzzle out the choppy and unnatural latin-alphabet version. You'd probably do better to just attend services often enough to memorize the hebrew.) I would strongly encourage you to lobby your synagogue board to invest in the full-length siddur, and certainly don't buy this for your own personal use.

I find this book a good start to any Jewish prayer book collections. I just moved away from home and need a prayer book for my own use. I found this prayer book a good start and it is easy to carry around and take with you to Temple and on business trips.

I was excited when I received this book, but my interest soon turned into anger. What a rip off. There's little information about the grants and awards, and worse yet, I found....by doing some research which the author certainly didn't do....that some of the awards no longer exist! Pity the poor writer who uses this book as a reference. Terrible.

This book opens up some opportunities for people like myself. That is, someone who loves writing but has no experience with it. Without this book I would have no idea that there are actually things I can do with my work. Besides file it and read it to friends and family. But I do feel the book lacks some important content when dealing with organizations. And maybe some more ideas on presentation and subject are needed.

I was excited when I ordered "Money for Writers" in mid-1997. I've been freelancing full time for 17 years and I thought I might be able to land a grant or project that would let me concentrate on a "from the heart" project. No such luck -- the info in "Money for Writers" is profoundly disappointing. Billot doesn't provide enough info about the listed grants and fellowshops for serious writers to be able to make smart decisions about whether it's worthwhile to apply. Introductory chapters provide no helpful advice on successfully applying. Worst of all, when I returned the book, Billot ignored my request for my money back...it wasn't until several writers from the American Society of Journalists and Authors started clamoring together for refunds that any were forthcoming. Overall, a great idea torpedoed by its execution.

As a professional journalist, let me describe this book as economically as I can. It sucks. I was fooled by the title. It is a book that the author could have had compiled by an intern. I would be surprised if she spent more than 45 minutes of her own time on it. It is nothing more than a list of available grants, with names and addresses of the sponsoring organizations. No information about the award. What good is a book like this without giving a few paragraphs about the criteria for each award, or a few examples of recent winners. Arghhh! It pains me to think of the editing and severe scrutiny I have endured by editors, while this piece of crud made it onto the shelves. Who does the author know?

I found "Money for Writers" extremely helpful. It lists hundreds of grants and awards with small snippets as to what they fund -- i.e poetry, fiction, drama, etc. The purpose of Ms. Billot's book is to provide writers with a consise listing to contact for more information, it is NOT a listing of federal grants, or what is known online as "free money". If you are looking for specific details ... merely type "grant money" in your browser search box.

As to some of her entries no longer existing, Money for Writers' copyright is 1996, and 1997... 6 and 7 years ago. Take a look thru WRITER'S MARKET 2003, or POETRY MARKET 2003. Find a trade journal and join or write to them.... do a search for an award, etc you're interested in -- find their dotcom; whatever you can think of. But Money for Writers is not a detailed guide.

That would be the federal government, or private funding sources. Try Grant Seeker Pro's site. Or the Guru of Grants, Mathew Lesko. [I must warn you however, that Lesko's book is 800 pages long]

Anyway, I have been writing FOR YEARS, and found "Money for Writers" very helpful. Just take what you find in it's pages as a "short list" that you need to investigate and follow up on.

Hang in there, and good luck, I know what a writer's life is like.

The Mercy Center Guidelines reflect the highest standard of care in the chiropractic profession.

This is merely a consensus of a limited number of people, many of whom do not practice and others with apparent private agendas. One of the supposed contributors was deceased long before it was even published. Makes me wonder how they even published it.... Pretty much a waste of time and paper.

This small group of 'experts' on chiropractic completely misrepresented the facts involved. They set out with an obvious purpose and this book is their attempt at a professiopnal takeover. A new guidelines book has recently been published and has been approved by the National Guideline Clearinghouse (a branch of US gov't). If this subject interests you, get the other one and save yourself some money.

A group of well respected Chiropractors got together to determine which techniques and proceedures are accepted and which are not. It is gives general guildelines for treatment protocols. Read by most Chiropractors, used (or abused) by many insurance companies. Not very interesting for those not in the field. I wish the medical specialties would have the same.