Atlantic Monthly Books

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" generation�having 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 West�with the notable exceptions of Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto who both have many novels in translation. Their two pieces�Murakami's a quick riff, and Yoshimoto's an excerpt from her novel Kitchen�are 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.

What could have been a good book is truly disappointing. Beyond the missing elements mentioned in other reviews -- no bibliography, photos, or substantive evidence of any research -- the text is poorly written and badly edited. Dates fly around with no consequece to linear events. A visit of October 8, 1866, is described as concluding a few days later, on October 11, 1867. Diaz engaged in a battle in 1876, and the next sentence refers to his death in 1872. What kind of writer does this? What kind of editor allows this?
Innuendo aplenty, facts not so much. Save your money and save your time; don't bother with this book.

I have picked this book because I wanted to learn about the Princess Charlotte of Belgium who was raised her entire life to one day assume a position of a sovereign. She gets to be an Empress not of one, but two different countries. Her reign is short lived in both instances and she spends another 60 years of her life locked up in comfortable surroundings, insane and alone.
Princess Charlotte is married at age 15 for the second in line to the Austrian Hungarian throne. As a consolation prize, her brother-in-law awards his brother Maximillian, Charlotte's husband, reign over Italian northern provinces. Shortly after unification of Italy, the couple is forced out of country. They were in position to choose if they wanted to reign over Greece, or assume new position in the new world and become Emperial couple of Mexico. They chose, to their doom, to go to Mexico if for no other reason than for the reason of not giving up their Catholic faith for Greek Orthodox Christian faith. As North American and Mexican rebels fight for their independence from European monarchies, the young couple looses their standing as Emperor and Empress of Mexico. Emperor Maximillian is executed, while Charlotte spends the next 60 years of her life in European exile insane. Her insanity is a reason for fight between powerful European royal families. Assuming guardinaship over her well-being means assuming control over her enourmous financial fortunes.
This is one of the books that takes us thru fascinating times in both European and North American history. Both continents were being defined by the changing world. That element alone gives book unpresedented twist. However, writing is not as strong. As times it almost feels that Prince Michael of Greece is getting bored with his task of writing this biography. He uses phrases such as "Empress fell of her chair" many times to describe her surprise in certain situations and he describes her neurotic personality by drawing a picture of an Empress who is pacing around the room chewing on her handkerchief, tearing up the lace and damaging the monogram on it. The ambigiuty of the marriage between Maximillian and Charlotte is apparent. They seem to live separate lives, often away from each other for the long stretches of time. Rather than having children of their own, it is Maximillian who decides to adopt Mexican child of royal Actec heritage. Charlotte is marginalized to the point that she has no influence to the matters of state. It seems that all those factors, isolation, lack of cultural life and lack of intellectually stimulating ladies-in-waiting, all contributed to her nervous breakdown and ultimately to her insanity. She gets to live thru it all and she dies at an old age, alone and pieceful. Charlotte's own life story is definitely sad and touching. Book however, could have been written much better as it has errors in couple of chapters that cause interruptions in any attempt of reading the text flawlessly.

An overly simplistic attempt at history, this book is definied by its failure to satisfy on any level.
Initially I was disappointed by the lack of pictures, and maps, always useful when reading history. As I reached the middle of the book, it became clear that such trappings would have done little to improve matters.
Written with the inexplicable self-confidence of a nineteen year old, the author hovers at fingertips length over history, all the while dispensing with moral judgements, and grand pronouncement of little to no value.
Pass this one up. You will thank me.

This book should have been more informative....and it really wasn't. Charlotte was a daughter of the King of Belgium, 1st cousin to Queen Victoria, sister-in-law to the powerful Emperor Franz Joseph, and yet the book was just an empty shell at points. There was no genelogical table for reference, and no pictures except on the cover to even think about how truely beautiful Charlotte was until she went insane. There is evidence that says it might have been easier for her to do so to escape her brother, but she was certainly (and who could blame her) never able to handle the loss of Maximilian the way she did.

Check this out @ the library, buy it if you really think you need to add it to your collection, but this was not the steller book it should have been. Heres to hoping someone else will do it better next time!!

Like many of the other reviewers here, I bought this book because I knew something of the history, and wanted to learn more. (Having lived in Mexico from first grade through high school, I had often visited the Castle in Chapultepec, and had studied Mexican history in grade school.) My first disappointment with the book was to see that it was intellectually lazy, with no index, no sources identified. One of the Amazon reviewers generously awarded the book three stars, "because it was an easy read." It was an easy read, but not a particularly pleasant one. Another Amazon reviewer mentioned apparent anomalies in speech -- I wondered as I read the book how much of the responsibility for the slangy and/or pedestrian language lay with the translator. Finally, are there no editors or proof readers at publishers any longer? Not everyone would catch the fact that Michoacán, referred to in the book as being east of Mexico City, is actually west of Mexico City, but anyone who was awake while proofreading should have been brought up short by the statement that "Porfirio Díaz seized power in 1876 and held it until his death in 1872." Porfirio Díaz did seize power in 1876, he held it until 1910, and he died in 1915. So not only did he not seize power after his death, his death was not the cause of his relinquishing power. Whenever I read a book where I catch such errors, I wonder how much I can trust the areas I don't know as much about -- such as European geography, history, etc.

Some incidents draw lots of media attention and there are a whole host of books written about the case, some good and some bad (the Lindbergh baby kidnapping for example.) Other incidents, such as the Cheryl Pierson case draw a goodly amount of media attention, but only one book is written on the case and it isn't all that good. Such is the case of "Deadly Silence" and Dena Kleiman. I lived on Long Island for almost forty years and I know quite a bit about the case of Cheryl Pierson. She was sexually assaulted by her father after her mother developed cancer and the abuse continued after her mother's death. When it appeared Mr. Pierson might start abusing her younger sister, Cheryl hired a classmate to have him killed. The story is a horrifying one, yet Ms. Kleiman manages to drain the life out of it. The book comes off more as an extended newspaper article, rather than an in depth investigative story of Cheryl and her abuse. You never really get a sense that you know who Cheryl or her brother are. And neither do you really get to know Sean Pica, the young man who did the shooting and still sits in prison for it. Had Ms. Kleiman done a little more investigative research and reported on in depth interviews with the principles, this could have been a very powerful book. Maybe she will do a rewrite at some future date or maybe an experienced investigative reporter will do a better book on this tragic case.

I tend to agree with the other reviewers that there is simply not enough facts to support the topic of this book. Cheryl Pierson happens to be a distant cousin of mine. Her grandmother and my mother were first cousins. There was a lot more in the family background than was written about, which would perhaps shed some light on the personalities of the famly members. The characters were not fleshed out whatsoever, leaving them to be somewhat emotionless. It seemed just be be a book to grab your attention and leave you hungry for more.
The TV movie mirrored this book.

And it simply sickens me that what some call "book filler" is more than likely how this person needs to express the pain, horror and reality of a lost childhood. Child abuse is hard enough to live with without being insulted because of the way you relate your story as an adult. "Creative Writing 101" doesn't apply to real life events. I'm sure the author wanted to tell her story in the most factual way she could. If you want creative writing or a book to entertain you, I suggest a fantasy genre instead of a book about child abuse because there shouldn't ever be a feeling of pleasure or joy reading about how adults victimize children.

This is the true story of how after years of sexual abuse by her father, a teenage girl kills him. Read this over 10 years ago, but nothing really stands out about this book. I can't remember any names or even the locale, it may have been New York or New Jersey, maybe Ohio. ...

Author needs to go back to Creative Writing 101 and dismiss two-thirds of this book. That two thirds has little or nothing to do with the subject at hand- it's just book filler. The other third of the book is on target.

Wow - what an extremely frustrating novel. On the one hand, for the first three quarters of the book, I thought it was absolutely delightful. Goldman's an excellent writer, is able to evoke the world he's writing about, and mixes both the comic and tragic elements masterfully. And then, about seventy pages before the end, it all goes off the rails.

The mystery which most of the book has been building up to is resolved with an unlikely deus ex machina. The heroine and her supporting cast start acting strange and uncharacteristicly. And the last chapters make an awkward, poorly written shift from the third person point of view to the first.

Really, as much as I liked Goldman's first two books, I can't recommend The Divine Husband at all. It should have been longer or it should have been rewritten one more time or whatever. Let's hope the next one is better...

The historical details in this book are quite interesting. Other than that, the book is excruciatingly dull. Though Maria (the main character) is supposed to be a sort of rebellious femenist character, her actions don't really back up that facade. In addition, it takes so long for the action to develop that even after a hundred pages, I still could find nothing in the book that grabbed me. In general, most of the characters are flat, one-dimetional and rather unlikable. Their motivations are unclear and murky; Maria makes a pact with her friend Paquita that stipulates that Paquita cannot lose her virginity until Maria loses hers, principally because Maria cannot abide Paquita's much older, revolutionary fiance. Maria intends to thwart the union by becoming a nun. Ridiculous? Yes, especially because the religious faith of the girls seems to be quite superficial (and of course, the plan does not work). Although it sounds silly, I really wanted to like this book (...mostly because the quality of the paper is so nice and the cover is quite attractive!)However, for someone who enjoys everything from Krantz to Thackeray to Rushdie, I was quite shocked that there was a dearth of qualities that I could enjoy in this book.

I've made it to page 46 and that's it. I just can't justify spending any more time with this detail heavy tale.

Francisco Goldman's THE DIVINE HUSBAND is an epic novel set in an unnamed Central American republic in the late 19th century. The protagonist is Maria de las Nieves, a teenaged novice nun forced out of the convent when anti-clerical revolutionaries ban the religious orders. Her subsequent life as a young woman trying to scratch out an independent living as a translator is narrated in part through the point of view of the men who are fascinated with her--until she has a child out of wedlock and refuses to name the father.

Like the previous reviewer, I was thoroughly enchanted with the first three quarters of the book. The writing is absolutely vivid and beautiful, wonderfully researched and full of quirky characters and dashes of magical realism, such a nuns who can bi-locate and be in two places at once.

However, after much build up, we finally learn the story of Maria's secret love affair with the young "Mosquito King," and this is the least convincing part of the book. Everything that happens afterward seems clumsy and anti-climactic. The author seems to lose focus at the end of the book, spending more time describing the life of Jose Marti, exiled Cuban poet, than fully developing Maria's story.

However, it still gets three and a half stars because the beginning and middle of the book are so strong.

-Mary Sharratt, author of The Vanishing Point

Worth wait 30 years for this one! Well done "Paquito"! Well documented. Many new unanswered questions...

Incredibly boring, uninteresting book. With no experience in the aviation or airline industry, the author relies on few interviews and going through the memoirs of some executives. He has no passion for his subject. It would be an OK book if the author had any writing talent. But he is a lousy writer and it shows on almost every page of this book.

...

A fine brushstroke look at how Boeing got started, the men who built the company and its entry into the jet age.

This book did not interest me at all. It takes first about 200 pages to come to the most important time for Boeing in the commercial airline industrie and even this is not well documented. Written by someone with obvious no feeling with the airline industrie and could have been well written in no more than 100 pages.

Nothing epitomizes modern industry in the United Statesin this century more effectively than the Boeing Company in Seattle. After nearly ninety years it remains the leading builder of transport aircraft in the United States and one of the two most significant in the world. Eugene Rodgers' "Flying High" is a fact-filled, interestingly written, and sometimes insightful popular history of the company started by William Boeing in 1916. Capitalizing on the assistance of normally reticent corporate executives, Rodgers has written an adequate--but nothing more--history of the aerospace giant.

Rodgers concentrates on Boeing's post-World War II airliner business. As such he tells stories of the design and building of jet transports from the 707 to the recent 777. Much of this is well-known, but he turns phrases well and tells illuminating anecdotes. There is only a little new information from corporate elites who provided him information.

As a result, this is far from the final word on Boeing. One looks hard to find systematic analysis of the role of the company in the larger aerospace industry. And almost nothing is said about Boeing's space operations and its systems integration efforts such as the TIE contract with NASA during Project Apollo.

I hope someone will write an honest, insightful history of this enormously significant aerospace corporation. Such an effort would require active support from Boeing leadership, something that does not seem likely in the near term. Would that it were otherwise.