Atlantic Monthly Books

Hesh Kestin's book was given to all Computer Associates employees when it was published. It is a look at a company that has a fairly strange internal culture. There is a breathless, tabloid quality to much of the writing, and you will not find much analysis here. On the other hand, it is a more measured source of information than the occasional article and postings on various chat and/or message boards.

Rarely have people outside the computer industry heard of Computer Associates, "CA", even in the tech-hyped investment community. Even in the software industry, many are unaware that it has been in the top 5 software companies by sales for many years.

This book, written in the early 90's provides a snapshot of how CA's management has created a specific corporate culture, very different than the typcial fast-moving software company.

Some points that were of interest to me:

1- The company growth is largely through acquisitions.

2- The company is an East Coast software company, not a California or Austin based company.

3- The company has been in business since the 70's.

4- The founders are still the managers and they still use the same basic business philosophy that they started with.

The book is brief and somewhat dated, but I think it provides an insight into a unique part of the technology industry. If you have read books on more prominent companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Intel, this is a good book for expanding your view of successful technology companies.

Im sorry but if you were expecting a thrilling conclusion to Yearwood and Undersea, Winterking is not it. Basically, Hazel abandons the celtic/fantastic genre for some modern story about some people in a house arguing about an inheritance. If there is subtle meaning to it, I didnt get it. Its almost like comparing Queen of the Damned to Interview with a Vampire and the Vampire Lestat (although this is much much worse -- not even related). Anyway, I could not even bring myself to go beyond page 10. Truly sad since I thought Yearwood was great and Undersea decent.

I think the other review here is unfair. Another thing that is unfair is that this book has only two reviews. In 1986 it was a runner-up for the World Fantasy Award; Hazel garnered accolades from many fantasy greats including Robin McKinley, Andre Norton, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Peter S. Beagle, Patricia McKillip, John Clute (the list could go on at least a few more names) before apparently falling off the face of the planet; being swallowed up by the void of obscurity; unjustly forgotten in this reviewer's confident opinion. What happened?

I don't know. "Winterking" is a brilliant novel, a very opaque one it is true, but well worth reading. It continues the story of "Undersea", following the dogboy Wyck--now no longer such, but a mysterious figure that has lived through countless ages in a world hauntingly like ours but vastly different. This story begins in an alternate world, in New England, part of an America where the Revolution never took place; a world in which Wyck, now Wykeham, must fight a final battle with Duinn the god of death. There space and time play tricks, and crows talk, and houses hold the souls of suicides, and men and women suffer, though in that respect at least it is not so different from ours.

This book is almost overwhelmingly sad in parts. The relationships between characters are very nuanced; in this respect "Winterking" does tend to segue into the style of Hazel's later (and last?) book, "The Wealdwife's Tale." The view of sexual relationships is almost unremittingly bleak with a break at the end of the novel, a kind of catharsis--the kind that struggles to gasp out in "The Wealdwife's Tale" but just doesn't in that one. It's hard to explain to someone who hasn't read these things: and I wonder if it is an attractive vision to be putting forward when I want to get somebody to read them. I also wonder if maybe it's just an impression I got from the time I was reading the book, and not something that would hold true for all.

The writing style is competent and in parts brilliant. There is a lucid poetry in the best parts that paints pictures in your head as you read. It's not all frippery and pointlessness inserted at the expense of real atmosphere, it is very powerful and well-done.

The cover of my edition, indeed of all the Bantam Spectra versions of this trilogy, is quite fitting. My advice to these publishers is to reissue these books. But another part of me is quite perverse and wants them to remain obscure for a while longer, so I can enjoy my delicious enlightenment alone. The "Finnbranch" trilogy is a treat, a fantasy series for people with brains and good taste. They will find there audience someday without my help I think.

yeah, its dated alright. I suppose gritty realism means mentioning tampons, menstruation and cramps each chapter. boring beginning, picks up by the end as the women are on the run after the house the group was living in is demolished in an accidental explosion. Spray painting graffiti is one thing. Blowing up govt. bldgs can come back and bite.

This book is an attractive introduction to its subject, and features some excellent articles. I especially liked the sections describing how working with the environment (including the local people) can be more profitable than destructive methods now in use. (For example, big game hunting parks versus poaching.)

However, there are a large number of obvious errors, and who knows how many non-obvious ones. In my initial reading, I was struck by several: 1) the cost of remote sensing satellites is not $50 billion and up, as even the US wouldn't build them at that cost; $50 million makes sense [this translation was published in NY, not London]; 2) Gen. Philip Sheridan was not a Confederate general; right war, but he was Union; 3) the solar influx is not 1.35 KW/minute/square meter; the units are clearly wrong, it is ~1.35KW/square meter (measured outside the atmosphere, normal to the radiation). A ten or fifteen minute scan in review prior to returning this book revealed several other questionable to ridiculous numbers.

The compilers of this book are 3 journalists and a graphics specialist, not specialists in the subject. However, between the compilers, the original Deutsch editors, and the editors of the ENglish translation, it would be nice if at least one competent fact checker was employed.

A decade has passed since this collection was first published, so it's a little difficult to still consider these voices "new", especially when you consider that all twelve writers fall firmly within what is known in American as the "Baby Boomer" generationýhaving been born between 1944-64. It's also hard to consider them "new" voices since all had written multiple novels when this book was published. As such, it should come as no surprise that while the stories are almost all set firmly in modern Japan, none of them is particularly surprising or edgy in any way.

Ten years on, most of the writers in the collection remain unknown in the Westýwith the notable exceptions of Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto who both have many novels in translation. Their two piecesýMurakami's a quick riff, and Yoshimoto's an excerpt from her novel Kitchenýare quite good. Two stories about children, Shiina Makoto's "Swallowtails" and Itoh Seikoh's "God Is Nowhere" are among the more promising ones, and make one wish for more in translation. Mariko Hayashi's story "Wine", about a young women on a vacation who mistakenly purchases an extremely expensive bottle of wine which then becomes a social burden to her, is an interesting piece. Tamio Kageyama's "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" is the only story that can be considered comic, and makes a nice change of pace.

Genichiro Takahashi's "The Imitation of Leibniz" starts promisingly with a star baseball player faced with the conundrum of being in a slump, yet not in a slump, but suffers from an awful translation that interferes with the philosophy that follows. Two stories (Sei Takekawa's "On a Moonless Night" and Kyoji Kobayashi's "Living in a Maze") meander into magical realism of a sort with rather unsatisfactory results. The other three stories are fairly forgettable pieces. All in all, the anthology feels somewhat dated, but is worth skimming for a few pieces here and there.

For some reason when I started this book, I couldn't put it down, but when I finished it, I was very upset because NOTHING happened in this book at all. There was no plot, or anything, it was like a bunch of things put together that had nothing to do with each other. I guess the reason I kept on reading this short novel was because I was hoping that something would happen, but as I closed the book when I finished, nothing happened. I mean she was hit by a truck and broke her leg in Paris, she was in a hospital, and she talked about her husband, and her father, and stuff that made no sense what so ever. It was well written, but it was lacking in so much other details. I mean maybe if the author actually spent some time on this novel and actually developed a story, then I would give it more then 3 stars. The reason I am even giving it that, was because even though nothing exciting happened, this book was so well written, like a long poem. And for some reason, I didn't put the book down. Usually if something doesn't happen by the 7th chapter I put the book down, but I kept on reading this one which was strange. There are some funny parts in the book which I chuckled at and was nice. But I could have spent the time actually reading a novel I could talk about. There is nothing to talk about in this book. It is a very fast read, so if my review or anyone else's doesn't satisfy you, then read it yourself and maybe you will like it, but I didn't.

This is one man's story of his battle with cocaine, and I found the facts to be fascinating. He is a from a strict traditional, Mormon, background, which he completely rejects. Having few, if any, guidelines for his life, and having a deep, deep drive for prestige, power, and wealth, he finds cocaine to be his perfect companion. He does a masterful job of describing how it gave him tremendous self-confidence when he had none. He graduated from Yale law school, and was a top speech writer for Robert Kennedy in his Calif. campaign, but after the assassination, the author was despondent, his marriage broke up, and he didn't know where to turn: so he turned to white powder. It got him everything, or so he thought. He explains how he would stay up all night thinking up eliborate financial investment schemes, and how he managed to deceive those closest to him, absconding with a tremendous amount of money. However, I would have liked him to elaborate more on why he thinks he got hooked (he also describes turning to booze for relief). Besides his background, he doesn't get into the relationship with his parents much, etc. In addition, this book could have been much better written. It is heavy with repetitive facts, and the section on his reaction to Kennedy's assasination was crying out for more emotion, more drama. Although, one highlight in the book for me was his second wife, a French woman. She first comes across as a golddigger, but when the author hits bottom (and he hits it hard; the two of them end up in a ramshackle apartment sleeping on air mattresses for beds), she not only sticks with him, but helps him get his life back together more than anyone else, prescribing yoga, meditation, and a growing spirituality. A fascinating look at how the chic, upwardly mobile, get hooked on cocaine.

If you want to know about what the life of a furnace worker is like, this is probably the book for you. It's got plenty of long words and some quite good pictures, but the writing was a bit small for me. I like big writing. Anyway this has a lot of steel in it, which is probably a good thing for a steely sort of author like Charles Rumford Walker. Enjoy enjoy!

Often called the second oldest profession, spying is as old as war itself. Espionage became something a quiet person could do for God and his/her country. Giving reports of overheard conversations, purpoined correspondence, even actual battle plans during the Civil War like that yankee spy in Richmond, Crazy Betty Lew. Her name was similar to my maiden name, shortened last name but I would have been Confederate; the South had more more spies (younger males called scouts) than the Union. President of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis interrogated suspected spies personally. There was an assassination plot by Kilpatrick's men with the approval of Abraham Lincoln to kill Jefferson Davis in 1864 in Richmond, Virginia. The son of Admiral John Dahlgren had the papers when he was killed during the raid. John Surratt was a Confederate spy, a courier for the "secred Service" using his mother's boardinghouse in Maryland for assignations. It was L. C. Baker from California who hunted down John Wilkes Booth and B. Corbet who illegally shot him. The Civil War did not end with Lee's surrender but on June 28, 1865, after Lincoln's funeral. Naval action continued until August 2.

At first, women were considerated less discreet and not smart enough to report what they they heard. Rebel Rose was Confederate's top spy, a Maryland widow with southern charm. She'd been married to a lawyer and a "society lady" who held lavish parties for the Union army officers even though her Sourthern sympathies were well known. After she became a widow, James Buchanan visited her quite often. John C. Breakeridge, Buchanan's Vice President (1857-1860) became a Confederate general. The Battle of Bull Run was a Confederate victory. General Robert E. Lee quoted "The chief source of information to the enemy is through our Negroes interested in their freedom and the Underground Railroad."

Bell Boyd was no beauty but other attributes to "please young federal officers" in exchange for information. She was an eccentric spinster with a crazy hairdo. She was died facing North, ever on the alert for Yankees approaching. Pauline Cushman was a double agent; an actress though not of Booth's caliber, she was expelled from Nashville as a dangerous secessionist. It was assumed that Mary Surrat was a spy; on the contrary, it was her son John who was connected to the Confederate spy network.

The Gray Ghost was Major John S. Mosby, a young lawyer who originally suppoorted the North; later, he became a Virginia calvaryman and began a raid on Union positions. Like the Lone Ranger, he became a hero of the South and became a t.v. icon. Acted by a New Yorker, Tod Andres, who visited the site of the last battle of the Civil War at Mobile, Alabama, and posed on the actual war embankment for a fan, he was considered a hero of the South.

Allan J. Pinkerton had his own operatives to catch rebel spies. Secret couriers on horseback behind the enemy lines used insted of the telegraph. Commanders on both sides used scouts to gather information. The Northern newspaper correspondents were older men. Railroad bridges were destroyed by the Union cowards at Fredricksburg, Virginia, and attempted the same in East Tennessee. For a year and a half, 50,000 troops from both armies fought from Strawberry Plains Bridge on the wwest and Lick Creek on the east which enclosed Crockett Tavern near Morristown, Russellvill, Kentucky and on to the Cumberland Gap where three states meet (as at Harper's Ferry). Fourteen unknown Confederates were buried in E. Jarnagin Cemetery in Morristown and remembered with a large stone erected in 1910 by the Sam Davis Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Other Confederates were laid to rest in Morristown Cemetery on a hill used as outlook.

George Armstrong Custer, before confronting Lee, was fighting at Hanover, Pennsylvania, supplied with Spencer rifles, as John T. Wilder did at Hoover's Gap, Tennessee. The Rebels used double-barrel shotguns in the Shenandoah Valley. General Nathan Bedford Forrest used rifles, whille General J. E. B. Stuart relied on sabres at Brandy Station. Rebels marched down Chambersburg Pike into the Battle of Gettysburg.

Lee surrended on April 14, 1865, same day Lincoln was shot in Ford's Theatre by John Wilkes Booth's derringer. Jefferson DAvis retreated toward Texas in hopes to recoup and carry on the war. Resistence would continue in the mountains of North Carolina. However, he was caught, arrested and imprisoned.

OK, Chuck Yeager didn't break the sound barrier in the X-15. It was the X-1. They made a movie about it called "The Right Stuff."

After reading "For All Mankind" a couple of times right after Chaikin's "A Man on the Moon" and Murray's "Apollo", I'm really disappointed by the number of obvious errors. Some have already been pointed out above (including a couple that I missed in casual readings). This isn't like a Star Trek convention -- some of these things are blatant and easily corrected. And we're talking about common things that anyone can look up in an encyclopedia.

I actually like the style of the book, and the perspective from which he writes. I'm just not sure I can trust the facts in it when I know so many of them to be wrong. I believe though that all space fans that know the difference need to read this book, just to make sure they'll appreciate the others.

This book is written from a different point of view than most books about the Apollo program. Taking the readers through the trip to the moon and comparing the experiences of the various flights at each step of the way from lift-off to splashdown to life afterward for the astronauts. Usually most books describe each flight one at a time. The idea works quite well.

The problem is that sprinkled throughout the book are atrocious factual errors. These are not little errors but gigantic whoppers to anyone who knows anything about space travel and technology. Besides the things mentioned by other reviews the author seems to think jet propulsion and rocket propulsion are the same thing and I'm sure Steve Wozniak would be astounded to know that he invented the floppy disk and that that was the key to inventing the Apple. The original Apple didn't even have a floppy disk. Where were the editors and fact checkers? I was actually surprised that the author got right the fact that Velcro and Tang were NOT created for the space program.

Even with all the mistakes I did enjoy the book. But realizing that I recognized so many errors I have to wonder how many I did not pick up on. To me those mistakes make this book on the verge of fiction since I don't know what facts to trust.

I would give the book 3 stars based on the text, but I have to take away 2 stars for the errors.

First, the three biggest mistakes, most specific to the book's theme (not the Steve Wozniak/Apple/floppy disk mistakes).

And, contrary to one reviewer who complained about negativity, the three mistakes I cite do NOT require "geekness" to recognize as mistakes.

1. The brightest star in the sky? It's "Sirius," not "Cereus."

2. The astronaut on Apollo 16 is "Charlie" Duke, not "Charley."

3. Jack Schmitt never flew on Gemini. He wasn't even selected as an astronaut in time for it to have been POSSIBLE for him to fly on Gemini.

The first mistake makes me wonder just how much Hurt knows about astronomy. The second and third make me wonder just how much he knows about the astronauts he supposedly interviewed as the core of this book.

That is seconded by things such as his unsupported claim that astronauts hated their geology courses here on earth. Totally untrue. Early astronauts may not have liked boring, chalkboard lectures, but ALL the astronauts who went on the last three, "scientific" missions, LOVED the field geology classes they took before flight and were gung-ho about applying this to lunar geology upon landing.

Throw in the fact that this book doesn't have an index, has only citation footnotes, not explanatory ones, and also has a fairly thin bibliography, and you get the impression this was some stream-of-consciousness type writing.

A MUCH better book is Andrew Chaikin's "A Man on the Moon."

I was torn between one and two stars for this book. I finally gave it 1 because the tidbits of learning in here just can't offset a poor style of writing and an uninformed one to boot; it might actually be worth two stars, but people rating it unnecessarily high had to be offset.

You know the guy who attends Star Trek conventions and grills the actors about the various small holes in the plot....

The space geeks are really having a field day with some of the errors in the book. So be it. This is not a book for the most highly knowlegeable space geeks, anyway. What the book delivers is a compelling and very interesting drama that is far more personal (more quotes from astronauts and others in the program) than other books published at the time of this book's release.

I'm glad Harry Hurt III wrote this... it was a good read and was very enjoyable.

When this book came out late in 1988, the 20th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing was approaching. As you might expect, many books were published to commemorate--or capitalize on--this anniversary. Some of the books were quite good (Murray and Cox's excellent "Apollo: The Race to the Moon," for example, which came out at about the same time). "For All Mankind," however, is not one of the good ones.

The number and magnitude of errors in this book is nothing short of astounding. Like other reviewers, I wonder where the fact checkers were. I actually kept a list of errors as I slogged through this book, until the list got too long and I got tired of the exercise in frustration. It is obvious that the writer knew absolutely nothing about the technology that got us to the moon. It is beyond me why someone with so little knowledge of rocketry and spaceflight would undertake a book of this nature.

Don't believe me? Here's a little sample (as Dave Barry would say, "I swear I'm not making this up"):

On the technique used to ignite the Saturn V's five first-stage F-1 rocket engines: "A five-hundred-volt charge was shot through the ground cable on the launchpad, and into the trunk of the Saturn 5, where its spark ignited a mixture of highly flammable turboprop gases."

That is so wrong that I don't know where to start to correct it. Or how about this one, explaining why rockets work in space (where there is no air to "push against"): "The theory of jet propulsion...was a method for tapping the power of the entire universe...[t]he rocket got its power by exchanging the finite momentum generated by its own motors for the infinite momentum generated by the gravitational forces of the solar system."

That should make anyone who even slept through a high school science class cringe. And where are the astronauts while all this "momentum exchanging" is going on? "They literally had to hang upside down from the rafters with their feet locked in titanium clamps bolted to a crossbeam directly above their heads." Does this conjure up images of the intrepid Apollo astronauts blasting into orbit like so many bats in a church steeple?

It's hard to describe just how bad "For All Mankind" is. It's inconceivable to me that such a massively flawed, scientifically and technically inaccurate book could find its way to print as the purported story of perhaps the most significant scientific achievement in history. If you have a morbid fascination to see how badly an author who clearly knows nothing about his subject can mangle the facts, check "For All Mankind" out of a library. Otherwise, don't waste your time.