Manufacturers Books

Boy was MI5 asleep at the wheel. It is really something that this level of KGB penetration could take place, especially in a government that was so focused on the issue of stopping the spread of communism. This book details the Blunt, Burgess, Philby, Maclean and Cairncross USSR spy ring inside the British intelligence services. This books main theme is trying to increase the roll one of the 5 spy's from one that has been traditionally thought of as a lower level pawn to one of the leader of the whole enterprise. The book basically unfolds as a biography of Blunt, instead of an overall review of the full ring. Blunt being the subject of the book, the author goes out of his way to increase his involvement in the spy ring thus increase the readers interested in the book. He does a good job here, both with the detailed history and the way Blunt interacted with the others in the spy ring. I just did not believe this book that fly's in the face of all the other literature on the topic. I was a little put off by all the detail of Blunt's best know personality trait, homosexuality

Regarding the telling of the story the author does a good job. The book was a bit jumpy, not the best construction of a story. It also tended to drag at times; the author did not have the skill to present a laundry list of facts in an interesting way. The author did do a very good job in documenting his sources. I have read a few books on this topic and this one would probably not be my first choice, I suggest Spy Catcher. This is a good book if you are deeply interested in the topic.

John Costello's premise in this book is that Anthony Blunt's role in the Soviet Cambridge spy ring was not a minor one but that Blunt was, in fact, the first man of the ring, the lead recruiter of the others including Burgess, Philby, Maclean and Cairncross. I found his theory plausible, yet not perfect, upon my first read of this book. However, Costello's premise is simply wrong, as the author himself admits in a footnote in his subsequent book Deadly Illusions, co-authored with Russian Intelligence Service press officer Oleg Tsarev in 1993. Deadly Illusions was based upon the post-cold war disclosures of the former KGB's files, particularly that of "defector" Alexander Orlov and those KGB files reveal that Philby, in fact, was the principal recruiter of the others in the ring.

Mask of Treachery serves several roles, as a biography of Blunt, as a history of Cambridge and the English upper classes in the 1930's and 1940's, and as a history of Soviet espionage in Britain. Setting aside the book's primary fault, it does provide a thorough biographical and historical view of Blunt and his surroundings. Costello clearly did very thorough research into the background of Blunt and the others at issue and does present a number of facts and anecdotes about the Cambridge Five that do not appear elsewhere in the numerous other sources on this topic. Additionally, Costello has taken very painstaking steps to provide the sources for his information, footnoting frequently throughout the work; Costello's concern for academic-level historical accuracy is in sharp contrast with that of the cursory, more sensationalistic and conclusory writings on this subject by British journalists such as Knightly, West, and Pincher.

Costello does make one interesting suggestion: that Guy Liddell, a senior officer in MI-5, might have been the elusive top level mole sought after by Peter Wright and Arthur Martin for so many years. There is some degree of plausibility to this theory - Liddell spent so much time socializing with Blunt and Burgess during years in which he was emotionally unstable that he could well have been a prime target for recruitment. Liddell also had access to some of the information that was allegedly leaked to the Soviets, although he probably retired too early from MI5 to fit all of the the major "serials" listed by Wright in his Spycatcher. Many of those in MI5 who knew Liddell vehemently denied any suggestions that he could have spied against Britain, but not much of substance has ever surfaced to support those statements of loyalty. If it were possible to obtain such information (perhaps in a decade or two from the old, as-yet unreleased KGB files) it would be curious to learn if there was another mole in MI5.

Ultimately, though, Costello falls into the same bad habit as his journalistic competitors in this field of espionage history: he develops an hypothesis, supports it with some facts, and thereafter treats his theory as the gospel, proven truth. Other specific criticisms of this book are that Costello spends too much time and too many pages describing the aesthetic influences on Blunt from his public school and his days at Cambridge, and spends a bit too much time on describing Blunt's homosexuality, which tend to drag on rather than provide useful, interesting information. Additionally, Costello's organization of this book is not the best, as he tends to change topics without a logical, relevant segui between them.

All in all, this is a mildly important work for serious historians of Soviet espionage in Britain, but readers must keep in mind that Costello simply made a serious overestimation as to Blunt's importance in the Cambridge ring.

This gets a two star mainly by virtue of Edgecam's own help files being even worse than this book, and this being the ONLY book written on Edgecam. Fed up with the obtuse help files provided with the program, I bought this.

It's supposed to be 'for manufacturers' but spends way too many pages describing the ins and outs of the modeller - few manufacturing engineers are going to struggle with edgecam's antique modelling system (primitives anyone?)- they use Inventor or Solidworks. The three chapters of use to manufacturers cover milling and turning, and do the job adequately, but they don't cover the things working engineers need to know - How do I create accurate datums so I can create code I can run straight away - G10 and G54 and so on. How does the tool store work? How do I use job manager? How do I use PCI's? How do I generate a post processor? How does code generator work? What's technology assistant? How do I set up my machine comms? How do I create a machine in simulator? How do I create a custom menu? How can I copy a sequence to another operation? How do I create a CPL?

You won't find the answer to any of this with this book.

If you're a student working through a CAM system for the first time, this could be a useful textbook and it's definitely better then the appalling literature supplied by Pathtrace. If you're a working Manufacturing Engineer though, you won't get anything from this.

Totally unseen was the great collection of data found in the authors previous book- A Field Guide to American Windmills. As it took us through the different descriptions of the trade literature i was disappointed to find that i was not taken back to the late 1800's as i was when reading about the different kinds of windmills in the field guide. I felt that there was no historical interest in this book and did not enjoy reading it. I learned little but did find a few facts that were descriptive enought to give it a better than terrible rating.

This is an unassuming booklet of 80 pages. Some booklets can be real gems but this one is just what it appears. Apparently it was intended as the inexpensive alternative for those who felt the textbook by Panshin & de Zeeuw was too much. As such it is OK. With its small b&w pictures of somewhat indifferent quality it is no match for Hoadley's "Identifying_Wood".

To but it bluntly: if anybody interested in identifying wood were offered his choice between this booklet for free or Hoadley's book at full price the value-for-money choice would definitely be to buy Hoadley's "Identifying_Wood". In its day this could pass, but 1980 is a long time ago.

this book definitely cover as many manufacturers as it can within 300+ pages, but the data for each manufacturer is so limited that hardly useful for anyone. Definitely a "Registry" kind of a book. Some info are quite dissapointing, too. For example, Volvo, the info the book includes are like this "S (for Sweden) 1927-present, AB Volvo, Goteborg. Passenger cars." How good can these info be?

However, one can still see the effort of the author has put into this book, but I wonder how good can this book be. Besides, I have a book in similar kind 10 years ago, which is much better than this one.

As a manager of a small manufacturing firm, I was captivated by the title of this book, thinking there would be concrete methods for improving my business. This book is nothing more than the findings of a 100-member committe of small manufacturers called together to address manufacturing in America. It reads like an Engineering student's term paper and suffers from "committee-itis" by being hopelessly general. The book describes the manufacturing environment, identifies typical problems: regulation, isolation, scarcity of capital (as if I didn't know that already) and goes on to promote expansion of government into assisting small manufacturers. There is not a single solution or practical issue discussed. This book sounds like the justification for spending a whole lot of somebody's money (and since the National Research Council / National Academy of Sciences is responsible for this absurd book, it is likely my tax dollars at work). Not worth anyone's time or money (outside of beauracrats and politicians).

life cycl

I have been searching the above books since 4 internet hrs on your site.. kindly let me know if it is available with you...