Aviation Books

This is a very detailed book about not only the shootdown of the RC-130 over Armenia but also other shootdowns of reconaissance aircraft since the end of WWII. I recommend this book to persons who are into the history of this subject, but it can get very dry at times. Overall a good read, but long.

THE PRICE OF VIGILANCE was very meaningful to me. It refreshed many memories I have of those day when I flew from Det.1,6911th RGM in Europe, Yokota, and Kadina AFB's in Japan, and Danang and Camron Bay , Vietnam. I am also glad that I can now better answer the question "What did you do in the Air force?". Thanks again to the authors for some proud memories.
Braxton Lockett

As one of those impressionable youngsters who heard JFK's inaugural speech and foolishly thought he meant it, I was naive enough to join the Air Force and volunteer to "pay any price, bear any burden" yadda, yadda. This led me to nearly two years in various NSA sponsored schools from language, crypto analysis, and other skills and many assignments around the globe as a member of various USAFSS squadrons including those detailed in this book. Reading this book brought back many memories of long hard days and lots of adrenaline filled hours making sure we had the best possible insight into what the Soviets and their fellow enemies of freedom were up to and capable of to keep them from being able to pull off Khrushchev's vow to "bury" Western Civilization.
Much of this book focuses on specific airborne missions, out of probably hundreds of thousands flown since the beginning of the cold war, up to and including the ongoing missions flown today. It also deals with other divisions of NSA, such as ASA (Army) and NSG (Navy) but not in as much detail as USAFSS (security service) missions. (All of which have been renamed over the years)
This book does not get into as much detail as Bamford does in his books about NSA, but it isn't politically driven, as much of his material has become over the years.
While I gave this book five stars, it really could have used a serious editor to excise at least 50 pages worth of redundancies, but the book rates a good review because it covers a lot of information that is little known by the general public, and does not reveal any secrets which could damage national security as is done by some newspapers every day.
Much of the technology has changed since the authors of this book left the military, but from a historical perspective, it shows that technology is only a part of the process, and in many respects, the technology has advanced at the expense of the analysis aspects of the communications intelligence (comint) and signal intelligence business. And as the agencies such as NSA and CIA have become populated by partisan bureaucrats with a political agenda, we are actually far too often not as well served today as we were decades earlier by the men who gave their lives in a more idealistic time.
This book honors the fact that these were all men who voluntarily put themselves in harm's way, and shows they were real people and not part of the some military machine that was "loathed" by a certain ex-president who dodged the draft and never wore a uniform of any branch of the service.

The Price of Vigilance is one of the most informative and historical books of the Cold War that I have had the pleasure to read. I have used this book for researching my own book, THESE GUYS, to come out in about 18 months. The unit 6901st in Zweibrucken (West Germany at the time of Cold War) is mentioned many times, which is difficult to find, if at all. The transcript of MIG Pilots shooting down our C-130 - tail # 60528 is hair raising. This is reality. This is military history at it's best. Writing is superb!Citations are as good as the book! Well done, Larry Tart and Bob Keefe. I salute you.

"The Price of Vigilance" would probably be a great PhD dissertation in military history. The reporting is very detailed, and the analysis seems to be objective. The last 50 pages of the book are appendices, reference notes, and an index. Included are many excerpts of letters, reports, and interviews. These excerpts give the book a human touch and help liven up the at-times monotonous recitation of facts and timelines.

The first chapter of the book was written after most of the manuscript was complete, as a review and partial analysis of the EP-3E incident on Hainan Island, China, in April 2001. The book went to press before the plane was returned to the U.S., but the authors comment on changing attitudes in the world of airborne surveillance as compared to the height of the Cold War.

If you're a SERIOUS student of surveillance activities in the the Cold War, you'll find this to be a worthy textbook. More casual readers will probably have trouble getting all the way through.

I purchased this book as a gift for an elderly friend, who is familiar with this series. She thoroughly enjoyed it.

I absolutely loved Bostwick's other book, River's Edge and was eager to read this book. Like River's Edge, this book is beautifully written and has wonderful, expressive characters. However, the first 100 pages contain such a sappy love story and I was so disappointed. Once I got past that part, it became a much better read and surprised me with a few plot twists. All in all, a good book but not 5 stars.

I'm a tad late reading this book but it didn't diminish from the wonderful story and great writing.
Filled with emotion and characters that felt like I knew them. I was very impressed with the way the author took a real person and weaved a clever plot of fiction.
Now I need to "catch up" and get the rest of Bostwick's books that have been released since this one.
If you haven't read Fields of Gold yet....don't wait any longer!

Loved it, loved it, loved it. I couldn't put it down. I am an avid quilter, so I loved reading how she made that into a business for herself. The book includes great themes, love, true love, friendship, hope, hopes crushed, and a few surprises to boot. I look forward to reading her other novels and am excited to have found another author to list among my favorites.

I just loved this! Unlike anything I have ever read. I had to go buy copies for each member of our book club, and thank you Marie, for signing the book-plates for each one. A good choice for a readers group, there is much to discuss - relationships, history, values, etc. We had a wonderful discussion about this book last night at our meeting.

Marie is an amazing writer. I read her newest first, River's Edge, 2006 which was so very good, that led me to seek out her first effort. It did not disappoint. In this historical fiction, the author meshes a main fictional character to a significant historical character, and with well-researched accuracy. The unfolding storyline grabs the reader at the onset and doesn't let go. You will be reading far into the night.

The main character is Evangeline (Eva) an innocent and crippled young woman who was born with a physical defect. You will admire her, and love her parents - her mother's determination and her fathers love as they raise her. You will get attached to all of the wonderful characters in this novel, which is primarily set in the time prior and during WWII and revolves around historical events of the era. Eva is a talented quilter, and throughout the novel we see how quilting helps her deal emotionally and financially with the events of her life, and assists in her maturity as she struggles with her parents to survive the hardships on her parents Oklahoma farm.

I had one slight complaint about the ending - I wanted more information about one conversation. I was pleased to hear from the author that this is being addressed in the sequel which should come out in fall of 2007. One of the things I loved best was at the end of the book there is a section called "A Chat with Marie Bostwick" that gives the reader so much insight into the writing, the research and the author. I highly recommend this book, and her River's Edge as well, for anyone who appreciates a well-written novel, and a whole lot more than just "romance" - don't miss this. Both these novels make my "favorites" list.

Gloria Bernal
January 2007

Good book. Very entertaining and educational. I wish it were smaller or a board book. It is a very large book.

Airport was a fantastic pictoral that realistically prepares any child for a trip to the airport, for their first experience on an airplane. My
grandchild is Autistic, and the pictures were very detailed... From arriving at airport, to waiting in line to check luggage, to boarding the airplane, flight preparation...... An awesome book for visual learners, with simple language, so they can process ahead of time what to expect.

I read this book to my 2 1/2 yr old son over and over again in preperation for his first airplane trip. He loved all of the sounds that the airplane made on our trip and wasn't scared or startled at all by the loud engines etc. I highly recommend this book for little first time flyers.

Our son is 27 months old, and loves this book. As soon as I finish reading it, he wants to read it again. I think it would be great preparation for a toddler's first airplane flight.

This book is great to prepare for a trip on an airplane. We were getting ready to move to Australia and this book along with the "Shae by Air" DVD made a huge difference for us with our 2 & 3 year old boys.
Now that we are settled abroad, we just went on a short flight and brought the book with us to the airport-- they could not believe they were actually in the airport while looking at the pictures in the book of the check in counter, security line, and waiting area-- it was great!

The All American All The Way is the best book I ever read!!!
There is no foul language that I remember. It takes you through training to Berlin.
The 82nd Airborn Division stood and hooked up to jump the first mass combat jump in history, on July 10th 1943. Badly scattered on the drop,they looked at their maps to see if they knew where they were. Finally they arrived where they needed to be and in do time were fighting a small band of forces so they thought, but turned out to be tanks accompanied by infantry.
If you want to know more about the 82nd Airbore buy this book!

My father served in the 82nd with 504th parachute regiment from its inception to the war's end. He talked very little about his experiences. Mr. Nordyke's marvelous book, with its accounts by the men who fought the battles, helped me to know my dad better. It will help anyone to understand what combat is really like and the great heroism of these ordinary Americans - almost all of them mere boys. Highly recommended.

I've just finished reading "All American All The Way" and I must say that this book is by far the very best book written on any WWII unit that I have read. With many veteran accounts, Mr. Nordyke takes the reader along from airborne training, the formation of the division, and the actions that the division participated in from Sicily through Germany.

One can almost hear the roar of battle as the author, and the veterans describe fighting in the hedgerows in Normandy, or street fighting in Holland. I very highly recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in WWII history.

What can I say... This is one of the best works of military non-fiction, I have ever had the joy of reading. At first sight of the book, I was a little daunted by it's size. However, due to the fluidic quality of Phil's excellent writing, I found it to be an effortless read. The research involved behind this book is immense, and it thoroughly gripped me, all the way. I've not read such a book of this calibre, in a very long time. The action and information contained within, left me feeling that I had personally been fighting along side with these brave men, all the way!

This book provides a superb, first hand, graphic insight into the life and hardships of the 82nd Airborne campaigns, throughout the European theatre of operations. Sicily, Italy, Normandy, Holland, Belgium and the German `Siegfried' line, breakthrough.

It's difficult to find criticism, other than the accounts of life while they were camped in England, during 1944, are a little vague. And my interest in the Division stems from the fact that the 80th Anti-Tank and the 325th Glider Infantry Regiment were billeted only a mile or two, up the road from me, in Leicester. However, this doesn't detract from the fact it's an excellent read.

The quality of this hardback it of the highest, along with the inclusion of excellent maps illustrating the campaigns, and many archive photographs from the time.

I'm now at a loss as what to read after this book. This book's a tough act to follow. It's clear, exciting and most thought provoking. A must read for anyone interested in the 82nd Airborne Division, and the European theatre of operations during the Second World War.

This is a very extensive, impressive and total history of the 82nd airborne division, what was called by Generals in WWII as the greatest division of the time (of course the 101st airborne would probably argue that). The scope of this book is amazing. In its 776 pages (yes, it is long but very interesting), it lays out all the campaigns fought in WWII including Sicily, Salerno, Italy, Normandy, Netherlands, the Bulge, and Germany. And, the book tells the story at the individual unit (down to company and platoon) and individual level. It is told in the words of the heroes who fought in the 82nd during the war. As mentioned in one review, this should become the standard for not only this division but for any division for laying out the story of the heroism and the tragedy of this war.

I AM AN AUSTRALIAN AND I VISITED OSHKOSH IN 1997 WITH MY WIFE AND HAD THE PRIVILEGE OF SEEING BOB HOOVER FLY.I HEARD BOB AND CHUCK YEAGER TALK AND RIB EACH OTHER, AS ONLY GOOD FRIENDS AND PEOPLE WHO HAVE THE GREATEST RESPECT
FOR EACH OTHER CAN DO.THIS BOOK IS A REAL TREASURE.IT REVEALS THE SKILL AND BRAVERY OF THIS VERY SPECIAL MAN.IT ALSO SHOWS THE CHARACTER ,FORTITUDE AND STRENGTH OF BOB HOOVER,COUPLED WITH HIS LOVE FOR HIS COUNTRY; AS INDICATED WHEN HE TOLD TWO YOUNG BOYS ,WHO WERE SEATED, TO STAND WHEN THE NATIONAL ANTHEM WAS BEING PLAYED...SOMETHING PEOPLE TODAY NEED TO VALUE.I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK TO EVERY PERSON WHO LOVES FLYING ,BECAUSE BOB REALLY COVERED IT ALL.

This well written book is a must read for all pilots. When you read this you will be taken back in time to WWII, to landing on the moon, breaking the sound barrier, and the first man in space. Mr. Hoover has been an active participant in many historical events, he even tells why he was not the first to break the sound barrier. The book chronicals his exploits and then he backs up the stories with photos. I gave the book to my youngest son, who is going to fly in the USAF, and he could not put it down. If you like flying or airshows or history you need to read this book.

BUY IT !!

You'll love it. This is a page turner if ever there was one.

I did not know who Bob Hoover was before I started reading this book. Wow! What an amazing human and pilot. It's on my A list of autobiographies.

And, if you are a pilot, you will definitely want to read Forever Flying.

Some years ago I was at an airshow and watched Bob Hoover do things with a Shrike Commander that no twin-engined commuter airliner should be able to do. Afterwards he was amazingly modest and easy to talk to. Hoover is one of the greats - a life dedicated to flying and as a war pilot, a test pilot and an air display pilot he's done it all. Everything is faithfully recounted in this book. Yet there's something missing. True, it's an easy read. But it's also a bit sterile and I don't think it truly captures the man. Sadly the 'ghost' writer has done a less than brilliant job and the endless testimonies that appear would have been much more convincing had they been incorporated in the text. Also, they keep saying Lindberg was the first man to fly the Atlantic, but of course Alcock and Brown did it many years earlier. It's a great story but might have been better told.

This book by Gene I Basel is one of the most riveting stories I have read since Thud Ridge. G.I. tells it like it is in true first person experience. I will read it again and again.

One need look no further than the back cover of this book, and at the picture of the man that wrote it, to be able to comprehend what this memoir meant to him. Thirty some odd years later, the steely glare seems to say "I still have unfinished business. 78 1/2 missions wasn't what I was sent ther for..." A short one, but filled with "I was there" stories that anyone can relate to, and appreciate. An excellent account of flying and fighting in an unpopular war. We are lucky to have such warriors in our midst.

I've pretty much gone through the literature on the F-105 in Vietnam at this point. This machine fascinates me; it was beautiful, like a supersonic aluminum aardvark. It was insane; a flying deathtrap, at least with the way it was used over Vietnam. The men who flew it grew enormous moustaches to protect them from evil and bad luck. All the men who wrote about their adventures in these fantastic machines have unique voices. Basel is the poet of the lot of them. It's the shortest of the books on the subject, and also the sweetest. Others tell the basic facts, or tell an allegory which relates to what happened to them. Basel sings it. He's a modern Homer.

"Sing to me o goddess of the might of the Thunderchief, son of the Super Sabre, that brought countless ills upon the bretheren of Korat. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures..."

The book was on par with most Sierra Hotel pilot accounts of the Vietnam air war. . . .the indestrucible feeling, etc. The accounts of the authors trips "over the fence" are good, but the book, overall, lacks a cohesive feeling. It feels very scattered about, and ends with a fizzle wrather than a bang. A good book for die hard aviation and vietnam buffs.

As others have pointed out, Pak Six is a short book compared to most combat memoirs, and has an unusual layout, but it nonetheless is one of the most intense and powerful air combat memoirs I've read in a long time; the raw emotional impact the book conveys was stunning.

Basel definitely has a way with words; even his descriptions of more mundane events are told in a way that captivates the reader. His accounts of air combat in the F-105 flying against the most devastating air defences ever assembled, fighting his way through SAMs, AAA and MiGs are some of the best I've read, and truly do make the reader feel they are right there in the cockpit.

Well worth the read.

When Gordon sent me the book, I was excited to dig into it, but life is busy, and I didn't get a chance to read it right away. I am sorry I delayed reading it as it is an excellent story. I couldn't put it down once started. Gordon's undying passion and perseverance in the recovery of these WWII relics is impressive. I thought that I have had some pretty crazy adventures moving aircraft around here in the United States, but they are nothing compared to the situations that Gordon and his group had to endure. It makes me very thankful to live in America. Warbird Recovery is a well written story that I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone, even if you are not an aviation fanatic like me. Thanks Gordon!

I just finished reading Warbird Recovery by Gordon Page and throughly enjoyed the entire book. It starts out fast and never looses its quick pace. The author makes you feel as though you are right there with him in his quest for these rare WW11 aircraft. I am fascinated by the aircraft and that aspect is wonderfully detailed, but of equal value are the descriptions of the inner workings of the Russian Business world. This is a fast read, and very informative about Russian culture as seen through the eyes of an avid aviation enthusiast. This is a fun book to read and will give you a great sense of adventure and accomplishment.

This is an excellent book for anyone with even a slight interest in aircraft.

Although the book won't tell you much about WWII planes (hey you can get that in a 1000 boring tomes on the subject), it is a gripping and well-written read. You get a true sense of adventure and wonder if Gordon Page was either brave, lucky or determinedly stupid in his quest for the ultimate wreck!

I enjoyed it immensely from the first to last page.

Warbird Recovery is a great, true story of a journey to bring some WWII aircraft to the US for restoration and display. This journey starts with Gordon Page's childhood dream of flying a Messerschmitt 109 and grows into a real life adventure.

After the break-up of the USSR Russia was open for business with the West for the first time in decades. Buyers were looking for treasures and just about anybody was willing to take their money. As the author goes on his own treasure hunt for vintage aircraft he encounters the Russian mafia, the KGB and questionable dealers who always want cash in advance. Along the way he experiences the breakdown of just about everything in Russia. His focus on what he wants and a willingness to follow his dream when it looks like there is no hope brings the search to a surprising end.

Recommended for high school, college and public libraries particularly where there is an interest in aviation and recent history.

This is a great read. Gordon's adventures in Russia fall into the category of "someday we'll laugh about this". By sheer coincidence, I was traveling in Russia in 1993 just a few months before Gordon's first visit. Alas, I was cheated; I experienced no bedbugs, no shakedowns, no raw cod liver, no KGB tails, no self-promoting hookers, no rotgut vodka, no cold showers. I guess I was lucky to be in Moscow and not Siberia.

Gordon does a great job of describing his trials and tribulations in dealing with various shady characters, all out for a buck. Or more often, 5,000 bucks. His quest to get the WW2 crashed aircraft back to the US is described in fascinating detail, and you get that feeling of "I'm glad I'm just reading about this and not doing it". A lesser man would have given up in frustration.

An extra benefit for readers living in the Denver area is being able to visit Gordon's excellent little air museum and see many of the artifacts from his trip, both aircraft and non-aircraft related.

An excellent history of the B-36 and its variants, including the YB-60 jet version. Plenty of detail, along with many pictures and drawings. A worthwhile book for students of aviation history, especially those with interest in the B-36.

To those B-36 and SAC fans, this book is well worth it and fantastic. I find it hard to believe all those so fine pictures contained in this book. I am a man of short words, but the only disappointment for anyone is if they did not buy it. So take heed to my advice: do not put off buying it. In conclusion, do not make me say, "I told you so."

"Uncle Sam's newest, biggest bomber -- the B-36 -- is a long, slim gal with a wiggle in her rear. She's a little on the skinny side, but she's beautiful", gushed the New York Daily News.

My earliest memory of her was Jimmie Stewart's arctic crash landing in the Hollywood epic, "Strategic Air Command." Later he falls in love with a younger, sexier plane -- the new B-47 Stratojet.

Looking back, we remember the B-36 as a colossal cold war relic, but the massive B-36 was originally conceived to fight another foe -- Adolph Hitler's 3rd Reich. Describing the Peacemaker, author Dennis R. Jenkins relates, "The story of the B-36 is unique in American history. The aircraft was an interesting blend of concepts proven during World War II combined with budding 1950s high tech systems."

Mr. Jenkins reveals, "The B-36, despite its seemingly conventional appearance, pushed 1950's state-of-the-art further than any other aircraft of its era. Its sheer size brought structural challenges, while its high-altitude capabilities brought engine cooling and other problems. Sophisticated gun and bombing systems presented development, maintenance, and operational headaches."

"Magnesium Overcast: The Story of the Convair B-36" is a high quality, glossy, format book with a jackpot of intriguing photographs (many in color), instructive drawings and tables. Many of the wonderful interior photographs, diagrams and engineering drawings were taken from U.S. Air Force technical manuals. The graphics alone make this one of the finest aircraft books I have ever seen. Mr. Jenkins had done a superior job of presenting all the modification programs in great detail with a clear, concise style. He has meticulously researched and presented the life cycle of the B-36 from conception through scrapping out.

To meet the extreme requirements of its mission, several outlandish design features were tried -- bunks for the off-duty crewmen and a gallery complete with oven to prepare hot meals --- a complex system of 8 retractable remote control dual 20mm gun turrets -- various parasite fighter planes that could be launched from aboard the B-36 when needed -- a nuclear reactor to power greatly modified turbojet engines.

Nuclear powered aircraft theoretically could stay airborne for years. Unfortunately, very heavy radiation shielding was imperative for crew protection.

Thankfully the B-47 Stratojet and the B-52 Buff became operational and finally put an end to the expensive Frankenstein experiments with the outmoded B-36.

A great long range bomber that served in SAC to perform as a bridge between the "prop" planes and the pure jet. This book is throughly
researched and easy to read. Many photos.

"Magnesium Overcast" is just what an "airplane book" should be: large, attractive, detailed, with a wealth of superior illustrations, many in color. I'd hazard a guess that there are more than 300 high-quality photos and drawings, including a rare chart of the Convair production line.

In any case, it's all here: something for "rivet counters" and "number crunchers" alike. The authors deserve full credit for the thoroughness of their work and the obvious care they lavished on this project. Kudos also go to Specialty Press for producing this significant volume in such lavish style at a reasonable price.

Programming Language Pragmatics 2nd Edition (PLP2e) is a fantastic book that covers a great deal of information. It starts with explaining lexing and parsing, and then goes into scope, target machine instructions, control flow, data structures, a number of paradigms, and building a runnable program. It touches on pretty much every aspect of computer programming, and with deep and insightful knowledge.

While it's not as specific as some other books (language specific references, compiler construction texts, etc), it is a great beginning and reference for a wide range of topics. The bibliography of this book is incredible. I have marked a large number of papers/books from the bib that I now want to read in full.

The bonus information on the CD is also very good, including all the source code from the book, extra sections, and links to other resources.

This is among my favorite computer science books. I read the first edition straight through from cover to cover, even though I had some prior knowledge of the subject. I have since purchased the second edition, which exceeds the high standards set by the first edition. Scott's book would have made the programming languages course I took as an undergraduate much more enlightening, had it existed at the time.

As a software engineer, I tend to be picky about my books, but this one is very in depth and a good read. You will learn a lot about different programming languages, and why certain languages are better than others for solving different types of prroblems.

Overall, "Programming Language Pragmatics" (PLP) is a very good book. According to the Preface:

"It aims, quite simply, to be the most comprehensive and accurate languages text available, in a style that is engaging and accessible to the typical undergraduate....

At its core, PLP is a book about how programming languages work. Rather than enumerate the details of many different languages, it focuses on concepts that underlie all the languages the student is likely to encounter, illustrating those concepts with a variety of concrete examples, and exploring the tradeoffs that explain why different languages were designed in different ways."

I'm not knowledgeable enough to pass judgment on "the most comprehensive and accurate" part. But, I'm pretty happy about the book meeting the rest of those goals. I read through the book on my own and have only a few significant gripes:

- Chapters 2 (Programming Language Syntax) and 4 (Semantic Analysis) are tough to get through. They're basically trying to teach enough about Alphabets, Languages, Regular Expressions, Context-Free Grammars, Finite Automata and Push-Down Automata for the reader to understand what the rest of the book is based on. I've read Cohen's Introduction to Computer Theory, which is dedicated solely to this material and I still had some trouble. With an instructor in a class to walk through the things, it should be doable. But, for a person reading the book on his own, ugh.

- All of Section III: Alternative Programming Models, seems to depart from the format of the rest of the book (as noted in the Preface) where the author talks about the concepts and then how the different languages implement them. Instead, he focuses on the languages themselves and almost seems to be trying to cram a primer into his text. Since the section seems to be a special case, it wouldn't be so bad except that the languages covered are a bit out of the mainstream and so that degree of depth gets pretty unreadable at times. Again, with a professor around, things would be better.

- At a more pedagogical level, the author has a tendency to merely explain what his example Figures are doing in general terms. The problem is that a lot of the code/pseudocode involves fairly advanced structures in several languages (many of which most people won't have run across). It would have made things a lot easier if he had walked his way through each of those Figures line-by-line and explained what each line did. Once again, this wouldn't be that much of a problem in a normal teaching environment since a professor could do it.

Other than those three things, this is a very good and readable book. I rate it at four stars out of five.

Every good programmer should know more than one programming language, that much is almost a consensus. But more than that, every programmer should educate himself about programming languages in general, what they mean and how they work. It's important to know at least the major programming paradigms, because they form the "mental model" of computation that is available to a programmer in a language from that paradigm.

And then it's always illustrative to know about the differences in many common languages, to see where different decisions have been made and what are the consequences. To know that certain legacy languages (e.g. C, Fortran) have features that were not designed because they were the "best" option (for some definition of best), but because the design was constrained by what technology was currently available.

This knowledge is not only required of compiler writers. It should be required of every good programmer. Compiler writers, of course, must know this, and probably in more detail. But Scott's book is a good resource about programming languages, in a level of detail that I believe adequate for all programmers.

There are two main kinds of books on programming languages: they are "survey" and "implementation".

Survey books show how things work in a lot of languages, comparing them along the way. Often the comparison gets down to small details that can affect the meaning, or semantics, of similar programs written in these languages. These books contain one individual chapter for every major topic, and inside such a chapter all languages are compared in relation to the topic. For example, one such chapter covers "subroutines" and then compare a host of different languages on how they implement subroutines.

Implementation books are different: they show how to implement many language features, usually by presenting code for interpreters and compilers. The reader doesn't learn that Ada permits nested subroutines, but instead how nested subroutines really work and how to implement them in a language, for example. A very good book of this kind is "Essentials of Programming Languages" by Friedman, Wand & Haynes.

I normally prefer the implementation books. I'm not really interested if Standard Pascal permits functions to be passed as parameters or not; if I do need to write a Standard Pascal compiler I'll look for a reference manual. I much prefer to know how to implement functions as parameters, and be done with it. Comparing minutiae about extant programming languages can sometimes be very enlightening, and sometimes be mostly dull.

Scott's book, however, really shines because it mixes feature descriptions and implementation details in the presentation. It does the usual routine of comparing a lot of different languages, most of the time the more popular ones like C++ and Java, but it then shows how the implementations differ because of differences in features. The book strikes a good balance between "language design" and "implementation" approaches, although it is clearly slanted towards design, and so more of a traditional "survey" book.

It wins over other survey books by including implementation information about almost every topic, and by the clear writing and style. Also, most survey books concentrate on mainstream imperative languages (nowadays C++, Java, C#) and leave other paradigms to chapters at the end. Scott's book is a bit better in this respect: the presentation often includes Common Lisp, Scheme and Standard ML in the comparisons. There are separate chapters about functional and logic programming too, but considerations about functional programming are spread in the whole book. This is important because paradigms change, and a good programmer must be able to adapt.

It's a good reference for language implementors and good education for most programmers. I look forward to the next editions.

More of a reference book than anything, this is a must have for fixed wing air crew veterans of the Viet Nam era. The alphabetical listing of personnel involved directs you to the proper date to read about the incident. I found a few of what I know personally to be small errors but this book has made it possible for me to get in touch with guys whom I thought were lost. I also particularly like the breakdown of losses by aircraft model, squadron, aircraft carrier etc.

This is an excellent book. The only ommissions I can see are the losses experienced by the RAVEN FACs in Laos

Excellent source book. I spent hours reading one excerpt after another. Consists of a short excerpt describing in the briefest possible manner each incident. There are longer sections that describe aech aircrafts history in VN. The print is small and my eyes aren't what they use to be but I found the book fasinating. This one is a keeper.

The book provides chronological capsule summaries of aircraft shot down or involved in accidents in SEA. Excellent concise reference source for anyone begining research on the various units involved. Took me awhile but I located the web pages from which the author obtained his information.

As history researcher for both 12th TFW and 35th TFW, the book is a welcome edition to my library of 4,000 books.
Norman Malayney

Growing up as an Air Force brat during The Viet Nam War, I found this to be a very interesting and historical book. I was able to learn what happened to some of my friend's fathers who were shot down, KIA or captured. My dad flew combat and I thank God that he made it home safe!
This was a very emotional book for me. God Bless all of our military men and women who paid the ultimate sacrifice to serve our country, both past and present!