Security Books

In the past, I've approached all investment primers with the same enthusiasm I reserve for visits to the dentist. But after my first half-hour with this one, I was happily hooked! Not only is the investment advice top-notch, but the method of delivery outstanding. O'Shaughnessy exhibits an amazing ability to make sophisticated concepts digestible. Her breezy writing style makes the advice seem like it's coming from a trusted friend, and her sense of humor keeps you smiling while you learn how to make that first -- or second -- million.

The Unofficial Guide to Investing is wonderful. If it wasn't, I wouldn't be dragging this fat book around in my brief case as I travel around the world on business. I'm too busy to spend a lot of time reading or even thinking about my own finances, which is why I especially like this book. It covers all the bases and the author writes in a style that is fun to read.

This book is engagingly written with wit & humor as well as lots of factual material and sound advice that you can actually use. Clear and straightforward for the novice, there is also lots of information and advice on on-line investing information and tools for the web-accessing sophisticated and savvy investor. Whether you are a novice or an experienced investor, Ms. O'Shaughnessy serves you up lots of good advice and information with respect and gentle humor. A good read, and a keeper for later reference with wonderful resource and reference material as a supplement at the back. - A San Diego cardiologist

This book has everything for those of us who are timid about investing. Ms. O'Shaughnessy shares insights and information which help both the novice and experienced investor navigate the world of stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. She uses anecdotal and even personal stories to inform and amuse throughout the book. There is an incredible amount of valuable information and tons of resources for the reader, and Ms. O'Shaughnessy covers the pros and cons of many investment topics. This user-friendly guide is a winner!

Over the years, I've concluded that most financial books are unrealistic in the marching orders they give us, their poor readers. I'm a long-term investor (not a day trader!), so I don't appreciate a lot of fancy financial formulas that require a great deal of thought or time. Thank goodness the author of The Unofficial Guide to Investing understands that. She provides solid advice that makes an awful lot of sense to me. I also appreciate all the tips she sprinkles into the book's margins. For instance, I discovered how I could very easily determine how much my savings bonds are worth. I also learned the phone number to call to find out how much my Social Security benefits will be worth someday.

Honeynet solutions were seen just as a research technology a couple of years ago. It is not the case anymore. Due to the inherent constraints and limitations of the current and widely deployed intrusion detection solutions, like IDS/IPS and antivirus, it is time to extended our detection arsenal and capabilities with new tools: virtual honeypots.

Do not get confused about the book title, specially about the "virtual" term. The main reason to mention virtual honeypots, although the book covers all kind of honeynet/honeypot technologies, is because during the last few years virtualization has been a key element in the deployment of honeynets. It has offered us a significant cost reduction, more flexibility, reusability and multiple benefits. The main drawback of this solution is the detection of virtual environments by some malware specimens.

The detection of honeypots has always been one of the main concerns in the honeynet community, basically because if the attacker can identify them, they are useless. For this reason, one of the chapters is just focused on providing some light, tips, and tricks about what an adversary can really accomplish. In fact, we have not seen lots of real-world incidents where the attacker actively checks the existence of honeynet setups.

I have been working with honeynets during the last 5 years. We founded the Spanish Honeynet Project on 2004, and almost at the same time we became part of The Honeynet Project and released the Scan of the Month 32. The main honeynet/pot book reference till last year was the book published by the Honeynet Project. As this is a rapidly evolving field, definitely it has been replaced by this book, written by two project members.

The first chapter is a very brief introduction to honeynet technologies and basic tools. You can jump through it if you are not new to this field. Then, the book covers the main two honeypots types: high and low interaction. The high interaction section provides details about the tools to virtualize your honeypots: VMware, UML, or more specific solutions, such as Argos. The low interaction section provides details about some the most relevant honeypot types to cover lots of detection scenarios: worms, traditional server attacks, Google Hacking, Web-based attacks, etc. It is a wide overview that will give you lot of ideas for new deployments.

The whole book has been cooked with a how-to mentality , and it explains in detail how to install and configure the different tools and software elements covered. Additionally, it provides guidelines, best practices, and analysis recommendations for each tool based on the authors experience. However, for the how to portions take into account that most of the solutions are Linux-based, and the installation and setup process will vary based on the tool version and the Linux distribution you are using (library dependencies, etc). In any case, the step by step guides are very useful as a general setup reference.

From my perspective, the most valuable part of the book is chapters 4 to 6. The authors, Niels Provos and Throsten Holz, are the lead developers/architects for honeyd (chapter 4 and 5) and nephentes (chapter 6), respectively. These two are the most famous and advanced low-interaction server-based honeypot and malware honeypot. They know what they are talking about :), and you cannot find a better reference out there for these two tools. The book is an excellent guide, covering from the design principles and innovative deployment ideas, to all kinds of configuration options and possibilities, including limitations on real-world scenarios. Chapter 6 is complemented with other less popular malware-based honeypots (except for Honeytrap).

The book includes some extra material, covering academic and research hybrid solution, still on their early stages, but that can give you and idea of where these technologies are evolving to and the major challenges we are facing nowadays. This pretty much theoretical content is well balanced with the case studies chapter, where real incidents involving different honeypot types are presented. These are always a fun read and a way of getting experience and learn how to deal with intrusions.

Finally, one of the main expansion areas we are involved today is the creation of new client-based honeypot technologies. This book section (highly recommended) does a great job introducing multiple high and low interaction honeyclients currently available, their benefits and drawbacks (chapter 7). This information is perfectly complemented by the last two chapters, focused on tracking botnets and analyzing malware with sandbox environments. Once a client is compromised, it typically becomes a member of a botnet, and for easy and quick categorization, we start by performing a malware analysis of the specimens. I recommend you to add all this knowledge to your incident handling and response capabilities.

Something I would have liked to see in the book is a section about a fully virtualized honeynet environment, showing how using VMware, you can build up a virtual Honeywall (just slightly mentioned on chapter 2) and different honeypots, creating a complete, cheap, mobile and multi-purpose virtual honeynet infrastructure. Also, we receive multiple questions related to this kind of setup in the Honeynet Project mailing lists, because all the previous whitepapers are obsoleted now. I've been deploying these type of solutions for fun and professionally during the last few years and I strongly recommend you to start using them. You won't be disappointed about how much you can learn of what is going on in your networks and systems, and this book is the best starting point.

If you have any relationship with the intrusion detection, incident handling and forensics, threat analysis, or SOC and CERT security side of things, definitely this book is for you. Go through it and improve your capabilities with easy to deploy virtual honeypot solutions. You just need a (not so new) computer, virtualization software, and some time!

The book is well written and I feel that I will be successful in setting up my first honey pot once I get my network segmented for security purposes.

Excellent, really good, sorry for my bad English, but is EXCELENT BOOK.

Regards

Carlos

I have relatively little to add to the praise that has already been given of this book, but I found it extremely enjoyable. In particular, the chapters on collecting and analyzing malware were quite good, in my mind. I think the book delves a bit too deeply into man page territory with the level of detail provided on the minutia of utilities, but that doesn't detract from the book, as it is very clearly segmented away from loftier topics.

Overall, I found this book to be quite excellent, and very informative and accessible to those new to the arena of Honeypots.

It's fairly difficult to find good books on digital defense. Breaking and entering seems to be more exciting than protecting victims. Thankfully, Niels Provos and Thorsten Holz show that defense can be interesting and innovative too. Their book Virtual Honeypots is your ticket for deploying defensive resources that will provide greater digital situational awareness.

A security technician with some degree of proficiency should be able to read Virtual Honeypots and then implement at least one of the solutions presented. This sounds like a fairly common event, but too often technical books do not provide the detail required to transform theory into practice. Virtual Honeypots offers installation and operational guidance for a variety of deception and analysis systems, primarily for server-oriented technologies. I especially gained a better understanding of Honeyd and Nepenthes, the two applications about which I cared the most.

While I liked the first 2/3 of the book, I have to say I really enjoyed the last four chapters. These covered Detecting Honeypots, Case Studies, Tracking Botnets, and Analyzing Malware with CWSandbox. Of these the final chapter was superb. Ch 12 has probably the clearest explanation of hooking I've read anywhere. I am not a rootkit writer or Windows kernel programmer, but the text was so well written I had zero problems following along.

I gave Virtual Honeypots five stars because it is so unique and well-written, but I do have a few minor issues to mention. First, I was somewhat disappointed by the honeyclients section (ch 8). I was not as confident that I could implement a honeyclient solution after reading the great material on server-oriented honeypots. Perhaps the second edition or a separate book will give greater attention to this area. Second, I found a few small technical items. On p 4, it isn't accurate to say "TCP...[gives] each packet a sequence number." Bytes of application data are numbered, not packets. On p 13 we are told to use a snaplen of 1500 bytes, but this will cut off the last 14 bytes of many Ethernet frames. Try it with ping -s 1472 while sniffing with Tcpdump. As you can see, these minor issues are easily fixed in a future printing and do not justify dropping a star.

If you are at all interested in potentially deceiving intruders, buy and read Virtual Honeypots. You'll learn about more than VMware (QEMU, UML, etc.) as well as numerous open source tools you can download and try for free. I look forward to reading more from these authors -- perhaps a book of true case studies?

Written in language that anyone can understand. Many people in modest income brackets that are having trouble with finances will want to read this book and then utilize the principles and ideas that Penelople recommends for their particular problem.

Penelople applies real life situations i.e. problems to help the reader identify with the solution. The book does not dictate or talk down to the reader (like so many similar books do) but instead attempts to educate people that have financial difficulties through positive encouragement and tangible, traditional solutions but with a twist. This is not simply another book that relies upon charts or graphs to reinforce a point but instead it makes you analyze your problems and then develop solutions for the individual. Chapter 2 was by far the best chapter in my view and I was able to use a couple of these ideas myself.

Any household that is experiencing any kind of budgeting difficulties, regardless of the level should consider adding this book to their collection.

Dr. Penelope Tzougros's book Wealthy Choices: The Seven Competencies of Financial Success is brillant, insightful and thought provoking. It is a "must read" for everyone as it depicts, in an easy to read fashion, ordinary people in ordinary situations.

There are so many wonderful stories in the Gifting Chapter that I identified with. I totally agree that "the card" is a gift of caring. I have saved cards for years that special people have sent me.

I also have learned that what would be appreciated by the recipient in a gift giving situation is extremely important. Regardless of whether it's an item or money, the gift needs to be what the receiver wants, without any condition imposed by the giver and what would give the receiver the most pleasure. Dr. Tzougros gives many excellent examples of this common situation and suggestions on how to make it a pleasurable experience for everyone or to come to a common agreement that is acceptable to all parties.

We can all identify with Dr. Tzougros's perspective on the "whole of gifting" and its importance and the delightfullness of it. We have all gifted a smile to someone, gifted a compliment, called a family member long distance, spent time with grandchildren in a fun and loving environment and gifted a percentage of our income to charities to help others.

In the Valuing Chapter, Dr. Tzougros asks questions and encourages the reader to think and evaluate ordinary situations and ways that they have handled money matters. She clearly wants to help the reader to improve their financial situation. I am in total agreement with her as I also believe that we are genetically coded from before birth with a "money blueprint." I believe that as we grow, it affects all of our values surrounding money and our whole life in a positive or negative way.

Dr. Tzougros has captured the human spirit and her compassion, understanding and caring comes through in such a way that the reader will surely become a more enlightened human being.

I'm amazed at the amount of thought-provoking, potentially life-changing ideas contained in Dr. Penelope Tzougros' excellent book. The practical aspect of dealing with money is covered in depth; but so is the broader concept of how we think and feel about money and how that affects our relationships and our lives.

It begins by leading us on a fascinating self-discovery voyage, where we learn how our values translate into our money behaviors. Then Dr. Tzougros leaves no stone unturned in addressing all the major areas involving money. In addition to the values evaluation, she covers day-to-day bill paying; how we lose money and how not to; making our dreams and goals a reality; growing money, and even a thoughtful section about gifts. The advice is simple and doable, and can be used immediately, regardless of your financial status.

Many books in the area of financial planning can be heavy-handed. Not so here. Dr. Tzougros' style is natural and unassuming. She uses real life scenarios and typical conversations about money to illustrate the concepts she discusses. This enables the reader to relate in a way that's immediate and practical.

What I found most appealing and unique about this book, however, is the underlying current of real concern for people on the part of the author. Dr. Tzougros has a purpose larger than simply doling out dry, utilitarian financial advice. Her commitment to helping people live better lives comes through in every page. As one example, she offers insight and advice as to why people fight about money and how to solve this problem.

Dr. Tzougros' sincerity in wanting people to live fuller, more joyful lives makes her book stand apart from many other books on business and finance, and is what makes it a pleasure to read. I never expected a book in this genre to be a page-turner, but this one is.

Wealthy Choices: The 7 Competencies Of Financial Success by Boston-based financial planner Penelope S. Tzougros is an impressively accessible financial self-help guide to easy and small steps that any for non-specialist general reader can take to improve his or her financial situation. From dealing with problems paying the bills; to guarding against financial losses; to realistically evaluating financial dreams and lifestyle aspirations; to dealing with gift obligations in a thoughtful yet affordable way, and so much more, Wealthy Choices is a superbly presented resource for people of all financial standings which offers a wealth of tips, tricks, techniques, and insights to balancing fiscally related responsibilities and conserve hard earned dollars.

Amidst the proliferation of books purporting to help us with our finances, WEALTHY CHOICES stands head and shoulders above the others because of its accessibility and practicality. The author approaches her subject in a unique manner. This is no dry as dust discussion of the mechanics of stocks, bonds, options adinfinitum. The author divides money concerns into 7 different categories - called life compentencies - Valuing,Paying the Bills, Losing, Leveraging, Growing, Dreaming, and Gifting. She then humanizes these experiences with believable vignettes of people's encounters with money in their lives. Each one is followed by her analysis to bring home salient points to the reader. This unsuual approach to the volatile ,complicated, and often anguished encounters with money tht we all have had in our lives is tremendously refreshing. It makes learning and thinking about money an enjoyable experience.Anyone who wants to learn how to use and control their money, rather than having thir money control them should read this book.

This book makes for interesting reading. Anyone who wants to know why there is so much dissension between muslims and other relighons should read this book. It provides insight into their beliefs, the war and many other issues.

Human civilization has not always had a smooth path. We've had our share of natural disasters and self-inflicted wounds. As recently as the fifth century, we had a Dark Ages in Europe, in which reason was virtually repudiated in favor of tyranny. There was a threat of a repeat of that in the 1930s and 1940s in Europe. And there may be a similar threat at present.

Walid Shoebat, a former terrorist, shows, in this somewhat scary book, how serious the problem is. Quite a few people are being trained as destroyers of society. And if they succeed, that will be bad for virtually everyone.

What do the Islamic fundamentalists say? Well, they say whatever they please. And they come up with all sorts of demonizing propaganda against Western society. But to me, it all reads pretty much like a repeat of the refrain "we're going to slice and dice you." No, that's not a quote from Shoebat's book. But that's my summary of how I read Islamist propaganda. I'm a Pagan, not a Muslim, so that puts me on the wrong side of the slicing and dicing. But there really is no right side of that.

How does one reply to the Islamists? Well, there are plenty of ways. One can come up with a reasoned rebuttal. Or one can simply describe reality and warn that what goes around can come around. Or one can even answer insults with insults. But none of it does much good. We all need to value truth more in order to combat this threat to society. Right now, there's plenty of pressure on many Muslims to support the Islamists, and the main question seems to be how much support to give them. I think this book shows that we need to draw the line at demonizing untruths. I think agreeing with such lies, as a matter of course, as a matter of loyalty, as a matter of principle, as a matter of laziness, as a way to avoid trouble, whatever, is a giant leap over the line. That's what leads to the recruitment of terrorists, and we see the pattern of behavior described in detail in this book.

Shoebat makes a few specific points that I especially like. One of them deals with the "right of return." Arabs, Jews, and others lost their homes in the 1940s. What ought to be done about it? I basically agree with Shoebat's solution: nothing. No one should have a "right of return" to them. Not Arabs to the Levant and Israel, not Jews to Europe, Africa, Iraq, Yemen, and elsewhere, not Germans to Poland and the Czech Republic, not anyone. I would add that very few people who lost their homes in the 1940s are still alive. Oh, sure, people who lived in those homes are still alive. But most of those were kids, not owners. These kids never owned the homes, they never developed them, they never paid property taxes on them, and they may not ever have been the actual heirs to them.

Shoebat also discusses "reversalism," which is just one more way in which pro-tyranny thugs use words as weapons rather than as tools of communication. This is a way of simply making things up as one goes along, and it generally involves a fair amount of projection. Is one a big fan of the National Socialists? Then why not call the Jews National Socialists? Why not call liberation "occupation," why not call sorrow "joy," why not call victims "terrorists," and why not call the conspirators to terror "victims?" And we see plenty of examples of this process.

Is Islamist terror a problem for Muslims in general? You bet it is, just as National Socialism was a problem for Germans in general. And it is, of course, a problem for non-Muslims, just as National Socialism was a problem for non-Germans. One example Shoebat gives is a poll of Indonesian Muslims (Muslims are a big majority in Indonesia). "Sixteen percent of Indonesian Muslims (almost thirty million people) supported bombings, while a further twenty-five percent declined to offer an opinion." That impressed me: one would think that folks would know that suicide bombings are not doing anyone much good and that what goes around can come around. Shoebat says that a more recent survey showed that only ten per cent supported these bombings, but that is still eighteen million people. That's a problem for society. As Shoebat explains, that same survey showed that sixty-five percent of Indonesia's Muslims "do not believe that the September 11 attacks on the United States were carried out by Arabs!" That is a very big problem as far as I am concerned. This is a key untruth, and if it stands, I think it helps put civilization at serious risk.

What's the goal of the attacks on Israel? A new Arab state? No. As Shoebat tells us, it is the prosecution of jihad against the West. And what do some Western academics have to say about all this? Shoebat does mention that there is a problem here, and he quotes a few, including a couple who are at Columbia University. Yes, Columbia has a problem, but there are some other universities that probably ought make a more serious attempt to enforce academic standards.

What is to be done about the threats posed by radical Islam? Shoebat has some ideas, including removing the leaders and dismantling hate-filled mosques. He also favors presenting truth in the media and in academia.

I highly recommend this book.

One day at the school we were talking about different cultures and one of them was about the muslims. This book has been very helpful to me because it talks about reality. When I started to read I said oh common is this the book for which I payed ?? dollars, I say this because i don't remember how much I payed but when I started getting deep into it i realized that I had made a good investment. It's really helpful.

For anyone that loves to know another cultures this is the right book to start to know the muslims and why they do all of this. You'll find out

Mr. Shoebat describes a frightening "death cult" that has emerged from Islam. A nice analogy I use is that the Jihadis are to Islam as the Inquisitors were to Christianity. There are ways to interpret religious texts in such a way to justify great cruelty in the service of human lust for power. Shoebat describes this phenomenon in Islam. What is scary is that most Islam in the Middle East is under the sway of these Jihadis, either to preserve the political order where loyalty and connections trump merit, or as a reaction to the speed of change in a modernizing world. Shoebat has converted to Christianity, so has a convert's zeal in seeing the flaws of his previous belief system. However, he details the abuse of women and non-Moslems, and the demonization of all who do not follow the path of whichever charismatic leader has killed his way to the top of the heap. To paraphrase him, evangelical Christians annoy you by wanting to change your head. Islamists want to cut off your head. There are other more scholarly works about the dysfunction in Islam, but Shoebat provides a raw insider's view that makes this danger very clear.

Finally, someone from the inside has been willing to share the truth in spite of death threats, including from his own family. I believe this is a book that everyone outside Islam should read, especially our elected officials that only want to talk peace or throw money at the problem. The war on terror is exactly like Mr. Shoebat listed it. This is a war against a form of Socialism that is to the extreme. I give him great credit, not only to his faith but to his courage in writing this book.

Harlan Carvey's book, Windows Forensic Analyisis, is an invaluable resource in any computer forensic examination of a Windows based computer. In real-life experience, I had a case where I had to determine file use by a former employee. The company never took the computer out of service and continued to use the machine after the employee left the company. By using the information in Windows Forensic Analysis on system restore points and MRU registry entries, I was able to determine not only what files were used but on what days. This book is one of the first I look to when I have questions on examining Windows systems. If you only have one reference book for Windows examinations, this should be the one. A must-have for any computer forensic examiners library!!

Once again Harlan Carvey has provided a resource worth every penny. The chapters detailing registry and memory analysis alone were extremely valuable to me. The accompanying DVD provides countless Perl scripts to assist in the collection and sorting of data.

This book is essential for understanding how to analyze memory dumps, albeit many forensic investigators will usually turnoff a computer instead of getting a memory capture to do a more traditional analysis.

The included scripts are very helpful. This book unlike many other books in this genera is designed for the technical professional. Forensic analysis is often like a who done it mystery, and having some more tools in your toolkit will assist you in thinking outside the box. The registry analysis was thorough and essential for a recent project. The memory dump analysis scripts were helpful in a recent Defcon Capture the Flag Competition. A sample chapter is avaliable online.

I purchased this book a few days ago, and as soon as I read the first chapter, I realized that I needed to read the entire book as quickly as possible. This is a wonderful book, and parts of it truely invoked a state of "nerdvana" in me!

PRO's:

First, I will say that the information in this book is tightly packed. There is no unnecessary verbage, and the writing is direct, to the point and understandable. There is a high ratio of technical content to noise, and this greatly contributed to my enjoyment of the book. Even in the technical areas that I was already familiar with, I found the summary of the information to be precise, accurate and helpful. I can see keeping the book around as a reference guide for years to come. The general structure of the book, for example the sections in grey boxes with the [!] annotation, works well, and the end-of-chapter summary and review (particularly the Q&A) are good.

There were several sections, ones that I was personally weak in to start with, that I found particularly helpful, such as the sections on analyzing packed or compressed executables and malware. I had just never gotten around to reading the whitepapers on these, and I'm glad I didn't as those chapters of the book summarized in a few pages what would have taken many more to pick up by reading other original sources. I personally thought that the chapter-to-chapter flow of the narrative was fine for anyone who does incident response on a regular basis.

Through the years, Harlan Carvey has developed and made available his tools in an open (perl) format with no need for compensation. The tools on the DVD alone are worth the money of the book, and are a great addition to any IR toolkit. The references to third party tools, many of which I hadn't heard of, were also particularly helpful.

CON's:

If you are not very technical, or not very familiar with the Windows operating system, you may be overwhelmed by the level of technical detail. If you are an experienced administrator, however, you should be able to adapt what you know about other operating systems (e.g. file structures, process execution, etc.) fairly easily. There were a few typographical errors in the book that didn't detract from its readability or technical accuracy.

All in all, and excellent book, and a must-have for ANY windows incident responder.

Harlan poured his clear love of incident response and of the forensic profession into this book. Windows Forensic Analysis dives into many exceptional topics that are routinely overlooked in similar material. The entire book covers many novel analysis techniques and topics, the registry analysis chapter and the file analysis chapter discusses many detailed artifacts and areas of examination during forensics that up until this was published was only discussed deep inside forensic circles or discovered through hard earned on-the-ground experience. The book's only drawback is that it covers too many topics and the chapters do not flow together as well as I would have hoped. A single chapter is excellent, but in many cases it doesn't lead you to the next one. I also found that the entire book could have been written on just registry forensics. However, in order to create broad appeal, the registry section was probably shortened. You can tell Harlan has a lot more to tell. Finally, the CDROM companion could have had more polish to the file layout as finding some of the tools is slightly confusing upon initial glance. Even with these minor drawbacks, the information in each chapter is phenomenal. I recommend this book to anyone looking to advance their understanding of the Windows analysis environment.

This book is easy to read and very informative. It gives you an insiders view of the hardships of getting caught "in the system." He is a true expert on the shortcomings of how, as a society, we handle challengin youth. He has not only studied the topic in a traditional academic way, but lived through the challenging experiences himself. Despite the subject matter being heavy, Dr. Kipnis interweaves hope throughout the narative. He makes many suggestions for changes within the system, in how we teach and work with boys, and overall suggestions to have compassion for these kids. As far as readablity and an overall exploration of how innocent boys can become angry young men, you can't get much better than this.

I first checked this book out at the library somewhat reluctantly. It looked like a text book, in other words, necessary information but rather dull and difficult to read through. I couldn't have been more wrong! It was absolutely excellent information from someone who grew up as one of the boys from "the wrong side of the tracks." I am aspiring to be a Juvenile Probation Officer and this book was just so informative. It is a must read for anyone working with or raising young men.

I teach remedial English and reading at a middle school with a high poverty rate, a 40% latino population, and a big gang problem. All of my students are Latino, most are boys, and most are constantly in trouble at school, if not with the law. This book doesn't have all the answers, but it went a long way towards helping me understand where my troubled boys are coming from and why they act the way they do.

This book is excellent! I work in a correctional facility and it has really helped me to understand the young men that I work with. I plan on reading it with them and having discussions on the information presented. Many of these young men come from the "5-H club" mentioned in the book. They need people who understand where they have come from and what they have gone through. I'm not saying they shouldn't be punished for their crimes, but I feel we need to find alternative solutions for these young men, rather than putting them in an adult prison where they only learn new and more dangerous crimes from the hardened criminals.

This book is a moving interweaving of autobiographical anecdotes, patiently accumulated facts (did you know that more is spent in the US on prisons than on college educations? See malepsych.com for more such data), and concrete suggestions for understanding our national epidemic of angry youth and doing something constructive about it.

Don't let the impotence of current national solutions and quick-fixes ("just say no"; "bring your child to work day"; etc. ad nauseum) convince you that the problem of angry young men is insoluble. It's not. In fact, the suggestions offered by the author throughout the book are relevant, doable, sensible, and verifiable. Grouping the outside forces that make for violence into six Pathways to Prison, Dr. Kipnis goes on to explain what they look and feel like from inside the young rager--and it is that part we sorely lack in our sorry stabs at "explaining" youth violence from the outside, its perpetrators objects to be warehoused for a profit as slave labor.

Most of the violent males I've counseled have already done jail or prison time--and yet even with them, listening carefully, confronting them firmly and respectfully with the consequences of their behavior, educating them about basics like managing addictions and painful emotions, and showing them that strong males can be gentle, patient, and nonviolently assertive gave our counseling center (Cornerstone) close to a 90% success rate (meaning: 90% men who completed the full program never reviolated their probation). I wish I'd had this book available then, for them and for me. So much more can be done with young men before they ever get to this point!

Dr. Kipnis is President of the Fatherhood Coalition, a nonprofit that among other things encourages fathers to be an active, available part of their childrens' lives. I can tell you that of the hundreds of violent men I've worked with, not one--not one!--had had an adequate, let alone loving, relationship with his father. Given our country of unavailable dads (and moms, of course), do you begin to see why more young men are imprisoned in the US than were locked up in pro-aparteid Africa?

This and other dynamics behind the immense problem of young male violence are explained in this book with clarity, erudition, and personal experiences convincing far beyond the usual theoretical models.

The Talmud talks about the "Master of Return," the man who took the wrong way and then found the right way; in the eyes of God such a man stands higher than even the angels in heaven. One such man has penned this book, as you'll see for yourself when you read it. If you spend any time at all around young males, or if you simply want to understand what's going on in their world, then this resource is indispensable.

I am a graduate student of finance and I am now writing my degree thesis about implications of behavioral finance for individual investors. Pompian's book is a great inspiration for me. It is just a guide how to use results of behavioral finance research to be a better investor.

What I mostly appreciate is a very deep description of 20 behavioral biases. Each of these chapter starts with General Description of the bias, Technical Description. Then there is a Practical Application, Implications for Investors, Research Review, Diagnostic Testing and a Final Advice. I have alredy read Shefrin's Beyon Greed and Fear and I must say that this book was kind of research review and survey. Pompian's book is very practical. Novice investors and also professional traders and portfolio managers will greatly appreciate this book.

There are really a great bunch of practical advice. Pompian is just a great teacher. Every serious student of finance and every investor must read this book!!!

I'm hard to please. So when I say this book is superb, that's really saying something. It is a well organized reference of twenty cognitive and emotional biases, and I refer to it frequently. Yet it's engaging enough to read cover to cover. You will probably recognize yourself being described a bit more often than you might expect. But with an open mind you will learn how to mitigate the tempting errors of thought that have in the past steered you wrong. And most fun of all, you can use your new knowledge of these biases to take advantage in the marketplace, and all the way to the bank. Game on.

A very good book that summarises the key theories very clearly and in a very easily readable manner. It has been written for private investors and their wealth mangers although I'm not sure how many would actually delve so deep. As a professional investor dealing with currencies I also nevertheless found the book very useful. Clearly the same behavioral mistakes bedevil the professional market and the concepts cane easily be applied top a broader setting.

This book covers most of the important cognitive biases that affect investment decision. It makes a great read. The only thing that can be improved is on the aspect of "objective truth". When talking about bias, the author has to assume there is an objective truth out there that is ex ante and easily oberservable to everyone. While this may make it handy for his discussion, it could be misleading if one digs deeper into the market nature of uncertainty.

I first read this book, and then a few weeks later read Jason Zweig's Your Money and Your Brain.

Pompian's book wins hands down from a practical viewpoint......how you can use behavioral finance findings as an investor or investment advisor. Pompian lists all 20 common biases, and then gives examples of how to deal with them. I also enjoyed his section on using Briggs Myers test results coupled with behavioral finance principles.....to develop better financial plans which fit people better.

Zweig's book is a fascinating read.......but when I got done......my question was.....How to I apply these behavioral finance findings to my investments or my client's financial plans? I would have to re-read Zweig's book......and develop the practical uses myself from his book.

It is interesting that Zweig's book at $17 has an Amazon sales rank of 2,075......and Pompian's book at $38 is only ranked 38,940. I have always enjoyed reading Zweig's columns in Money magazine. It is interesting to see where future research is headed in Zweig's book.......but in my opinion; you get more practical advice (or value) for the dollar from Pompian's book than Zweig's book.

To compliment this book.....I would suggest a couple good books on index fund investing and asset allocation.


Index Mutual Funds: How to Simplify Your Financial Life and Beat the Pro's
The Richest Man in Babylon
Bogle on Mutual Funds: New Perspectives for the Intelligent Investor
The Millionaire Next Door
The Four Pillars of Investing: Lessons for Building a Winning Portfolio
A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing, Ninth Edition
The Coffeehouse Investor: How to Build Wealth, Ignore Wall Street, and Get On With Your Life
The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing

"William Shakespeare in 'Measure for Measure' wrote 'The law hath not been dead though it hath slept'. In 2004 the Supreme Court of the United States revivified the 215 year old Alien Tort Claims Law in deciding that aliens who are victims of human rights abuses deserve protection when the abuses cannot be redressed in the country where they occurred. The case that earned the court's thoughtful attention was Filartiga v. Pena-Irala. The thrilling and dramatic story behind this case is very well told by Dr. Richard Alan White in his book Breaking Silence: The Case That Changed the Face of Human Rights. The book takes on added significance because Dr. White was an active participant in the drama, and his first person knowledge has produced a historically accurate and outstanding thriller of a story. The book is a well written, true story of the abuse of a man and his family by the military dictator of Paraguay and his henchmen. Richard Alan White puts you in the middle of the unfolding tragic events, beginning with the torture and murder of the son of a noted and admired Paraguayan physician, poet and artist. This is non-fiction at its best! "

Let me start by saying that I am NOT a non-fiction book reader in any way shape or form. BUT, this book was so amazing that (unfortunately) it read like fiction. You were mesmerizied by the drama, gripped by the human emotion and sorrowed by the resulting tragady. It is really the truth when we say that "true life is stanger than fiction". Richard Alan White can testify to it. He lived it. He suffered through it with the Filartiga family and we feel it in his words. DO NOT MISS READING THIS BOOK BECAUSE OF IT'S CATEGORIZATION; A WORTHWHILE BOOK CAN BE FOUND ANYWHERE! AND THIS IS ONE OF THEM.

Richard Alan White's account of the heroic Paraguayan physician Joel Filartega is a is an extremely captivating and well written account of fact that reads like the best of fiction. The story documents the case that affirmed that the US court system can protect aliens who are victims of human rights abuses that occur in other countries and can not be fairly adjudicated.

The author, a close friend of doctor Filartiga and his family, writes not as an observer but with the fervor and conviction of a participant in a remarkable drama. A must read.

In Breaking Silence: the Case that Changed the Face of Human Rights Richard Alan White tells the story of the family tragedy that led to the ground-breaking case of Filartiga v. Peòa. The case affirmed that the US court system provides protection to aliens who are victims of human rights abuses that cannot be redressed in the countries where the abuses occurred.
Elegantly written, Breaking Silence is a page-turner that should appeal to any reader. It's a great gift book because, published by a university press, it is not yet widely known.
The details of the Filartiga story come alive because White himself was part of the drama. While he was a graduate student living and studying in Paraguay, Richard Alan White became a close friend of a Paraguayan doctor, Jose Filartiga, and his family. A deep friendship continued long after White's return to the United States. When Dr. Filartiga's son was tortured and murdered by authorities, Dr. Filartiga contacted White instead of ignoring the torture/murder, as Paraguayan custom and politics dictated. White immediately flew to Paraguay to be with his friends. Breaking Silence is a story of the resulting search for justice.
Not only will this book appeal to lawyers and others familiar with the Alien Tort Claims Act and the Filartiga case, but also to those working or otherwise interested in the field of human rights. The book has special importance for those who hope to work in an NGO or to work internationally at the grass-roots level, because it shows how committed individuals can learn to use governmental systems to make a difference. It should be a must-read for students.
Breaking Silence recently received an "Outstanding Book" rating from theAmerican Association of University Presses Books Committee. University presses published 6,000 books this past year, and Breaking Silence was only one of six political science books to receive this award.
A longer review of this book is the feature story in Lawyers Weekly USA, April 26, 2005: "Family Tragedy Leads to Revival of Pirate Law."

Outstanding!!!! Extremely readable, educational, thought-provoking, inspirational, a mystery -- everything rolled into one. Having been in Asuncion with the author shortly after Joelito's murder, I can personally attest to the horror of this tragedy and its effect on the Filartiga family. My mother read the book, too, and liked it so much that she wants to join my Paraguay/Uruguay tour next year. I'll definitely put "Breaking Silence" on the recommended reading list for that trip.

This concise book is very helpful for people who would like to know cryptography. The book uses a lot of diagrams to make complicate concepts easy to understand. One improvement the author may want to do is to fix the errors in the book.

It usually takes me a while to understand new things, this book was very informative and easy to understand. I now understand cryptography! Read this book!

The goal of this book is to provide an introduction to the basic concepts of cryptography to non-technical people, and to illustrate how cryptography can be applied in e-commerce applications. The author has succeeded admirably in this endeavor.

The first part of the book provides a gentle introduction to symmetric-key encryption and authentication, public-key cryptography, key managements and PKI. The detailed explanations are accompanied with intuitive figures. For the most part, the mathematical intricacies are omitted from the main chapters thus enabling the reading to grasp the important concepts without getting bogged down with technical details. For those interested in the underlying mathematics, the second part of the book provides a tutorial to some of the mathematics. Finally, the third part of the book describes two crytographic architectures designed by the author.

I highly recommend this book to the people with nontechnical backgrounds who are interested in learning how cryptography can be used to secure their applications. Once the basic concepts are understood, the reader can then proceed to one of the many available technical books on cryptography.

The goal of this book is to provide an introduction to the basic concepts of cryptography to non-technical people, and to illustrate how cryptography can be applied in e-commerce applications. The author has succeeded admirably in this endeavor.

The first part of the book provides a gentle introduction to symmetric-key encryption and authentication, public-key cryptography, key managements and PKI. The detailed explanations are accompanied with intuitive figures. For the most part, the mathematical intricacies are omitted from the main chapters thus enabling the reading to grasp the important concepts without getting bogged down with technical details. For those interested in the underlying mathematics, the second part of the book provides a tutorial to some of the mathematics. Finally, the third part of the book describes two crytographic architectures designed by the author.

I highly recommend this book to the people with nontechnical backgrounds who are interested in learning how cryptography can be used to secure their applications. Once the basic concepts are understood, the reader can then proceed to one of the many available technical books on cryptography.

The basics of the usage of symmetric and asymmetric cryptography are explained here step by step in a precise way visualized by clear drawings of a sender, (evil) observer and recipient. Starting with the simplest case and showing what's faulty about it, the author develops an understanding of why it needs message digestion, public and private keys and either Kerberos or a certification authority.

A small part of the book is reserved for some mathematical expostions which do not go very far. Two case studies, one awkward, one profound, round off the book.

The term e-commerce in the title is somewhat misleading. The book deals rather with B2B, the other subcategory of e-business.

A possible audience for the book are people like me, who are supposed to know what excatly a digital signature is and therfore cannot really ask someone.

really a great analysis! I had no clue about EU affairs beforehand, now I understand a bit better what is going on. And, I know that the official media outlets would not have helped me to understand what is going on behind the scenes.

I am not a news junkie but I liked the way Ralph T. Niemeyer presented facts in this book. It was quite entertaining although it was about EU finances, politics, strategies etc, which I usually couldn't care less about. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to know a bit more about what is going on in our democracies. The author is right: The Information Age is over, the only question is whether it ever existed?!

It's true what other reviewers said: the analysis is unbeatable! I like the facts-based style of the articles and although I am neither an economist nor educated in political sciences I am able to understand complex issues raised by the author. I felt as if my granddad took my hand and explained the world to me without being teacherous.

This is really the best ever analysis of what is really going on! Everyone who is really interested in the present financial crisis after August 11 and the upcoming war against Iran should read this book as it gives a credible account of the strategies and hidden agendas when China let's the Myanmar military dictators shoot at the monks of Burma. One can learn from this book how the West and China fight proxy wars in Africa (Sudan) and Asia (Burma). Read it and spread the word for democracy for all of us is at stake!

Gorgeous! Well done, Ralph T. Niemeyer! You really made someone like me who normally wouldn't care too much about politics read through the whole book in one go and find tears in my eyes, most of them because of laughter, some because the state our society is in makes me sad, but then again, you tell me about it with a twinkle in the eye.