Peter Books

In the book there is a girl named Amy Namey. Judy doesn't like her but as the book goes on they become friends. If you like Judy Moody books, you will like this one. I think it would take weeks to go around the world. Will she do it in 8 1/2 days? Read to find out!

I read Judy Moody Around the World In 8 ½ Days. It was great for the following reasons. I think whoever reads this book will understand it very well because it had very clear writing. Second of all, Judy is very creative because she could make pickle flavored gum. Third of all, this book is funny and you see that in the chapter headings. Some of these are "Eatsa Pizza," "Club Snub," "Heebie Jeebie" and "Bratellino Frattellino." Last of all I think one of the illustrations is fuuny. It is a striped furry spider with 8 legs.

I think Judy Moody Around the World In 8 ½ Days was bad because there was some name-calling in the book. Also because there is a fight between Judy Moody and a guy named Frank who was playing her dance music too fast.

In summary, these are all the reasons that I felt this book was bad and good.

Beautifully done pen and ink drawings set the mood for this light read with a serious story.

Judy Moody meets a girl whose name also rhymes, and also shares her dedication to offbeat interests. With Judy suddenly feeling that she's lost her identity -- she's no longer one-of-a-kind -- we all wonder if Judy will make this girl her nemisis, or become her pal!

Young readers will read Judy Moody: Around the World in 8 1/2 Days over and over again. Kudos once again to Megan McDonald for a great read!

My third grader just LOVES Judy Moody. These books really got her back into the habit of reading.

My kids have all Judy Moody and Stink books. They love them, and I know for the fact that they help kids who struggle with reading in 3rd grade. They are easy to read and have a good story, are funny and appealing to that age group. A must have!

I have been sailing on an C2 (Antilian Baron) and T2 tanker.(William T Steele) (The Cabins) On board I have heard about the stories around these ships. With this book I get an complete vieuw about the tremendes job done during ww2.Realy an excelent book

John Vermeulen Netherlands

My father sailed as Chief Radio Officer on Liberty ships in several convoys, including to Murmansk in 1942. He reports that this title is "the best book [he's] ever seen" about the Liberty ships and their missions, with research that "must have taken years" to assemble and virtually no factual errors.

This is far the most interesting and complete book about the mercant marine in the wwII era. It realy describe the hole story about the libery project.
Tommy Andersson Sweden

If you are interested in Liberty ships and the critical role they played in WWII then you owe it to yourself to purchase a copy of this book. The author has accumulated a massive amount of information describing the design, construction, role, problems, and victories of the Liberty ship as a class of vessel as well as descriptions of epic adventures and misfortunes of many individual ships. This is certainly a "must own" book for anyone who has an interest in WWII merchant shipping.

The very concept of a mass produced ship was unknown before World War II. But with the German subs sinking more ships than could be produced. With these ships being built faster than the Germans could sink them the supplies, men, and weapons got through to England and around the world.

This is really two books in one.

The first half or so of the book is on the plans of the ship and the design and construction of the plants to build the ships. One critical point was that these ships were welded rather than riveted as had been done before. This caused a good bit of conversation. 2710 Liberties were built and they worked literally around the world.

The second part of the book is a collection of stories of some of the ships. About two hundred were sunk due to enemy action. A few hundred more ran aground, collided, caught on fire or whatever. Several of the ships simply broke in two, for no known reason. One ship, sinking just outside of London is still loaded with 3,000 tons of explosives.

Only two Liberties remain afloat. They were not the collectors items that got preserved, just a reliable workhorse. But by post war status they were to small, to slow. and one by one they were scrapped.

This is an excellent, very readable book about a non-glamorous but very important aspect of World War II.

This is a very handy book to have around very well organized and easy to use not to mention jammed full of wonderful drink ideas.

Fabulous little book!!! I bought it as a gift for a friend and almost kept it for myself. It's an essential book for mixing up great cocktails at home. I plan on buying more as hostess gifts.

I bought this book as a Christmas gift for my son. He's delighted with it and spent an hour perusing it's pages and finding drinks he'd never heard of before. Since his career involves a lot of entertaining, it's something he looks forward to using for many years to come. I highly recommend the book for anyone who wants to dazzle visitors with their expertise in cocktail making.

We recently had a cocktail party, and put this book on the bar so people could check it out and try something new. It was a hit with all, which included 20-somethings to 50-somethings.

I got this gift for a best friend's 21st birthday (in addition to the Little Black Book for Smoothies). Such a great book! It is hardcover spiral and has an elastic band so you can store it wherever without bending the pages. Cute cover: black book (of course) with circular green label that says the title (whereas the Smoothie book has a pink label). Very chic, cute design, something anyone would absolutely love! Had to buy another set for me!

Great book! Well-written tales of growing up Irish American; NYC based, but rang lots of Boston bells too.

Peter Quinn is a master storyteller and with his prose he tries to keep alive the enduring and rich legacy of Irish-American contributions to the history and foundations of American life.

The great Irish labor leader and 1916 rebel James Connally once said,"It's easier to explain socialism to the Irish than to explain the Irish to the socialists." I've always found depictions of Irish Americans--even more that the Irish in Ireland--to be riddled with stereotypes, both favorable and unfavorable. Why, I've wondered, couldn't anybody "explain" Irish Americans to their fellow Americans--i.e., capture all the confouding complexity of this people in their long day's journey from famine and rural serfdom to the top of the New World? Maybe no one story can ever capture the whole journey, but for me "Looking for Jimmy" comes as close as anyone will ever manage. I was deeply moved by this book, and though, unlike the author, I no longer have any association with organized religion (I describe myself as a "disorganized Christian"),I found his observations on faith to be filled with truth. If you're not Irish American but want to find out about them, read this book. If you are Irish American and want to find out about yourself, do the same.

A big fan of Quinn's historical fiction novels "Banished Children of
Eve" and "Hour of the Cat," I knew I was in the hands of an expert
author and historian in "Looking for Jimmy." Quinn gets personal in
this collection of essays about the Irish in America. As he shares
stories of his family, I'm reminded of my own, or the lack thereof.
The older generations didn't speak much about Ireland or the trials
and harsh tales of their immigration and integration into the new
world. Quinn notes the silence and dearth of artifacts. The phrase
"Watch the quiet ones" comes to mind. May as well say, watch the
Irish ones. Thankfully, Quinn is not quiet. He watches them all,
researches, studies and considers, takes account and conveys the story
and motivation of a people across generations.

It's all too common for modern society to neglect its ancestry. The
melting pot warrants, yet makes it harder to figure identity. Quinn
bravely and enthusiastically explores one important and special
ingredient in that pot, the Irish. He takes us to the movies with
James Cagney, to the legendary story of hero Michael Corcoran, to many
places the Irish permeated and permeate. What it means to be
American, has a lot to do with what it means to be every other
culture. Quinn's "Looking For Jimmy" helps us find him and appreciate
the Irish element in the fabric of America. If we're lucky, there's a
little bit of Jimmy in all of us.

This book answers the question once and for all; Are all the NY Irish dead and buried in Calvary Cemetary??? Not so.....Quinn's book riveted me from the first word written. So many of the reflections were identical to my own family and their experience in New York. The silence of our past, the quest for respectability, the fierce fidelity to the faith. I was torn between laughing and crying at the similarities.

Besides the magnificent analysis and brilliant prose, I appreciate Quinn's indebtedness to the parochial school system; I too am a product of a Christian Brothers high school, then Fordham (much to the dismay of my high school teachers, no Manhattan College in my future...my father had the Jesuits at Xavier and Georgetown)

If you are a New Yorker of Irish descent, this is a must read. Too few of my generation appreciate the sufferings and sacrifices of our ancestors; we have succeeded upon their shoulders. This book crystalizes that fact, and challenges us to keep faith with that past as we look to the future

Marine Corps officers would call this a collection of sea stories -- tales of seedy fortune, hard-knock education, and derring-do that leaves readers in stitches, tears, or both. After three decades of globetrotting on behalf of America, this is a book that Ralph Peters has earned the right to write. All his hallmarks are on display in "Looking for Trouble": Kissinger-esque insight, Jeremiah-like candor, and a wit (and karaoke partner) that Mark Twain would envy. Reading this is the most fun I've had with travel writing this side of Robert Louis Stevenson and John Steinbeck.

A cynical bookbuyer might discount the five stars and voluminous accolades as just a literary comrade's pep talk. However, this is Peters's first work of nonfiction that I thought rated five stars. His strategic tomes were interesting, colorful, and well-written. But Peters wrote those books with urgency, attempting to square away the post-9/11 U.S. military and educate the Pentagon's minions to prevent them from doing anything stupid (well, at least he tried). They didn't quite have that extra spark.

"Looking for Trouble" does. And then some.

I had thought about ending this review with quotes from the outstanding statements I found in the narrative. If I was going to grant Peters a perfect score, I figured I should at least show him off a bit to justify my judgment. As I was reading, I folded back each page that I found a remarkable sentence, unexpected insight, or laugh-out-loud outrageous illustration.

I bookmarked 53 pages.

Ralph Peter's book should be required reading for every Marxism-besotted and multiculturalism-drunk humanities department in the United States. He stumbled upon an elemental truth in a youthful visit to Tito's Yugoslavia with its communism-lite: "There was nothing like firsthand exposure to the dialectical materialism to teach that the dialectic rarely delivered the material. Leftist rhetoric is wonderfully seductive. The tragedy is that those stirring promises are worthless." Most of the book adventures over the center of that contagion, or as Peters likes to describe it, "across the rotting corpse of the former Soviet Union."
This book gives that fingertip feel of anecdotal truth to this marvelous combination of memoir, travelogue, and social and strategic commentary. Not since the Comte de Custine traveled across Russia in the late 18th century (pegging the Russians as blond Orientals, by the way) has there been such a deft and insightful portrait of that immense and wasted land. Tongue in cheek he opines that he is convinced there is no word in Russian for maintenance; certainly the epitaph of the Soviet Union is "seventy-four years of deferred maintenance." But it is the lives blighted on the altar of ideology that draw out his empathy in the penetrating human portraits he sketches with his prose and everywhere is the waste of human potential, the lives emptied of a future.
Yet, he does not overlook the beauty. Peters has a magic inkwell, I am convinced after reading almost everything he has written from his thrillers to his strategic essays to his incomparable Owen Parry series of Civil War murder mysteries. He dips his pen into a poet's ink of beauty and writes a description of the Baltic coast. "The route traced the Amber Coast, a stretch of cold, white sand as beautiful as Heaven on a holiday. Dark blue waves lapped a coastline of low dunes adorned with stunted trees, worn rocks, and golden reeds. Birds rose broad-winged from marshes, black against the blue-enamel sky. No end of books praise the palette of the south, the lemon light of Italy, or the hues of an Arab souk. But there are no colors so true and piercing as those of an early summer day I the north, when the white clouds temper the brightness, lulling your eyes before the sun reappears. The world grows deep and detailed: the gnarl of driftwood, talcum sand, the vast, competing blues of sea and sky. A walk on the shore becomes a stroll with God."
Peters reserves a special contempt for that group of arrogant, Ivy-League amateurs in the Clinton years who bungled our relationship with the bewildered fragments of the old Soviet Union. Prisoners of their own delusions, they insisted that the old Russia of czar and commissar had vanished in a dawn of good intentions, a breathless, evolutionary leap worthy of the crackpot Marxist genetics of that fraud Lysenko. Peters more realistically noted, "We had passed through the Soviet sickroom just before the hour of death. Our inheritance was a grasp of reality that . . . but my views of Moscow were on a collision course with the optimists who knew Russia only from books or brief delegation visits. . . . But so many dreams vanished in the Soviet twilight and its savage aftermath that it is hard to have confidence." For his forthrightness, he became a prophet without honor in his own country and the object of senior policy-maker vendetta.
But not all the obtuseness was in the White House. Peters' warnings about the new Russian being born were of no interest to the intelligence community. "If the data didn't come from a satellite, no one in the U.S. intelligence community was interested. The human factor was messy and unpredictable. Better to count tanks and ships and wait for a revival of the Cold War." It is a crushing indictment but one that rings with the clarity of a fine bell tone. Peters is not attempting to claim retroactive prescience. He was right on target for those of us analysts steeped in Soviet/Russian affairs. My own contemporary analysis on the same themes was dismissed as "fluff" by the technocrats.
I served with Ralph Peters on one of his adventures, the search of American POWs who were consigned to the Soviet GULAG. I attest that everything Ralph has stated in both detail and essence is the simple truth. He said that we failed, and that was no more than a painful but honest fact, but it was not for the want of gallant and intelligent efforts on the part of men like Peters. Without his facility in Russian and his knowledge of the country's people and history, we would never have got as far as we did. It would have been a miracle had we succeeded, but it would have required us to outwit both the stubborn Russian determination to admit nothing and the desperate collusion of the U.S. Government not to look under that very nasty rock.
Peters' final journey took him on a speaking tour of the Pakistani Army as a special guest of its chief of staff. Again he sounds the bell in the night as flames lick the dark horizon. Pakistan's great inheritance from the British Raj was the English language which gifts an incredible advantage to any people attempting to fully connect with the dynamism of the global economy. Instead he describes the loss of facility in English among the officer corps under the influence of Islamism. With that loss comes a haze of ignorance that cuts them off from the free flow of information and ideas and forces them inward to a closed circle of Islamist fanaticism and obscurantism. Considering Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, this is no little problem. He points out that the United States has abetted this problem by prohibiting the training of Pakistani officers in U.S. military schools in retaliation for their nuclear program, a classic act of cutting off our nose to spite our face.
If you want insight into a maddening world told by a master story-teller, buy this book. There are thousand and one treasures here. Pete Tsouras

This book is not, as some might expect, a collection of past Op-Eds, but rather an extraordinary retrospective at the 1989-1996 time frame when officers like Ralph (and General Al Gray, myself, and a number of others in the Army and the Marines) were seeing the writing on the wall: the end of big war and the emergence of global instability in every clime and place). Ralph actually walked the ground and had "eyes on."

I was immediately charmed anew by the poetic writing and the visually elegant turns of phrase. I have in my notes: chuckled, amused, reminded.

This review is going to combine my fly leaf notes with as many short quotes as I can fit in within my 1,000 word allotment.

Notes first:

Deep reading of Tolstoy and others set the stage for *understanding* today's culture and mindset in Russia. Earlier in his life, a subscription gift from an aunt to National Geographic opened his eyes to the rest of the world.

Early on, disdain for how we spend billions on satellites and nothing on officers walking the ground. He notes that overt human intelligence can absorb and articulate what no satellite can provide: "the temper of the people, the taste of the land."

USSR in 1991 was potholes and rust. In his "walk-about" he gained direct invited access to an MVD commander's office, to all of the local "secret" messages, and had invited "eyes on" the MVD special intelligence communications room.

In the Bosnia-Kosovo run-up, which he and others anticipated, he learned that Europe cannot be trusted to act in unison or decisively in the absence of strong US leadership--France, Germany, and the United Kingdom all revert to their historical animosities, and despite their large standing armies, lack the political will or the deep strategic analytics necessary to use those armies in a coherent manner.

His respect for Armenia is deeply rooted in his on the ground experience among them.

Col Stu Herrington, whose book Traitors Among Us: Inside the Spy Catcher's World I have praised, is strongly praised in this book. He and the author were part of a team that worked with the Russians to address the long-standing concern over Americans being held in the Gulag, and the pages in this book, covering each of the wars from World War II onwards, are a complete surprise and essential reading for anyone interested in POW/MIA accounting.

He blasts the US policy of crop eradication, and his devastating criticism of arm-chair politicians and ivory tower diplomats warms my heart.

Late in the book he focused on Pakistan and I find this chapter especially vital for the public understanding of how the US is destroying its once-close ties to the Pakistani officer corps. The older officers are fully trained by the British or the US. The company and field grade officers are not, and are so delusional about Islam and so ignorant about the rest of the world as to be very dangerous to us.

Throughout the book he laments the lot of women across most Islamic countries (with Indonesia and Malaysia as notable exceptions; I add this from my own knowledge and Ralph's official report to the Marine Corps in the 1990's).

Now the quotes. Page number, then words:

8 On [the Russian and Central Asian] frontiers, humanity is a brotherhood of smugglers.

29 Only its women allowed the Soviet Union to endure as long as it did.

38 ...I am convinced there is no Russian word for maintenance.

45 ...worry too much about dead facts and too little about their antagonist's delusions.

66 Artist and intelligence challenges similar: an eye for detail and ability to reduce complexity to coherence

73 ...no one in the US intelligence community was interested. If the data didn't come from a satellite, it didn't count.

87 What Belgrade lacked ... was human dignity.

108 I knew we could overpower [Iraqi] military....I had seen...his officer corps...drunk and whoring.

132 Conquest of Central Asia is a chronicle of...cruelty....Soviets are the champs....[others] tortured human beings. The Soviet Union tortured the earth itself.

141 Bukhara is where Islam turned dark...

146 The Clinton Administration was run by intolerant dreamers... With neither self-critical faculties nor experience of the world ...

151 Islam froze by the mid-fifteenth century when science-fearing zealots....

172 And there you have our diplomats. Unwilling to talk to our enemies... Unwilling to learn.

200 Azerbaijan was the first place where I got n inside look at the nastiness of our Saudi "friends."

204 Everywhere, the Saudis took an interest in human suffering only if it offered them an entry point for missionary activities. And any Muslim who wouldn't sign up for ... Wahhabi Puritanism was welcome to die.

218 ...the callousness with which our government had treated the family members of our MIAs...

231 [General McCaffrey] wasn't getting an adequate tie-it-all-together picture of the cocaine problem. Not from his staff, and not from the alphabet-soup agencies...

239 You cannot take away the livelihood of the poor [coca crops] unless you have the wherewithal to replace it immediately and enduringly.

244 Found wealth, when immature countries...hit the natural-resources lottery, is uniformly destructive of the souls of men and nations.

251 [Army saw the future coming.] It was impossible, however, to persuade the Clinton White House, the intelligence establishment, or even our own services (except for the Marines) that our enemies, rather than our desires, would shape the future security environment.

319 [Drug Czar] was not allowed to differentiate between hard and soft drugs.

335 [At the Plain of Jars] I saw my country's dark side....we go mad now and then. And when we do, we leave desolation behind.

This is an amazing book and for anyone who is concerned with strategic warning, honest intelligence, strategy, force structure, the need to rebalance the instruments of national power, and the future of humanity, will find this book inspiring.

E Veritate Potens--From Truth, We the People Are Empowered

See also:
Wars of Blood and Faith: The Conflicts That Will Shape the 21st Century
Robert Young Pelton's The World's Most Dangerous Places: 5th Edition (Robert Young Pelton the World's Most Dangerous Places)
The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War
The Warning Solution : Intelligent Analysis in the Age of Information Overload
None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam
On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political--Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption
Information Operations: All Information, All Languages, All the Time
THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest

LTC Peters' best work thus far---and I've followed his writings (fiction, non-fiction, columns---and the Army War College Quarterly, Parameters) for years. Peters lays bare the world as it is (or was during the late 80's/early 90's) warts and all. This isn't a collection of columns but a record of travel to places most people will never, nor would ever want to see.
I spent a great deal of time in the Former Soviet Union in the early 90's and can vouch for the conditions Peters' describes and the crack-pot/thug/mafia wannabes that rushed into the vacuum the communists left behind (in most cases---the communists changed hats/affiliations). One story which mirrors Peters experience in the FSU was during a humanitarian aid mission in the early 90's in Kazakhstan. We were delivering food-stuffs and medical supplies, but had no idea "what" was in the delivering railcars before the railcars appeared. One car was full of canned pork---and concerned about the Muslim populations dietary restrictions, we informed our counterpart---he quickly assured us that the product would be described as "American "white beef"". We laughed at the time, but truth is, we had no idea what happened to any of the "relief" supplies after our Kazak counterpart signed for custody----but we all guessed the materials ended up on the black-market and there was subsequent evidence to bear this out.
Back to Peters---great story of reflections/impressions and clear judgements. If policy-makers still did their own reading---this book would be high on the list. Perhaps someday, Peters will return to government as a SECDEF or CIA Director---now, that would be interesting.
Many thanks to LTC Peters for a great read. Highly recommended!!

"Looking for Trouble:
Adventures in a Broken World
by
Ralph Peters
(367 pages, Stackpole Books, 2008)

Reviewed by
Frederick J. Chiaventone

One of my favorite tales from childhood, and one which I've happily shared with my own sons, is Rudyard Kipling's marvelous tale "Rikki Tikki Tavi." A story of a plucky young mongoose who embodies the insatiable curiosity of his breed and their collective motto "Run and find out!" Rikki is the favored guardian of an English family in India and his natural instinct is to seek out and destroy the threatening serpents in his family's house and garden. Krait or cobra each is dealt with summarily in Rikki's enclave. Ralph Peters is about as close as we come to a latter day Rikki Tikki Tavi in human form. A retired Army intelligence officer with an insatiable curiosity and a scintillating intellect to match, trouble has almost a magnetic attraction for Ralph.

I must admit to having had Ralph as a close friend for decades now and can recall while we were both still on active duty a number of his friends would gather in a quiet office at the Foreign Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth to read Ralph's letters out loud. Be they from Tajikistan, Moscow, or Azerbaijan they were priceless. His private letters invariably contained the intimate and telling details of a life on the road that would never make it into his official reports and yet were as revealing as anything one could hope for. Ralph is blessed with an insatiable curiosity, a crusading belief in justice and fair play, and a stubborn determination that is legendary. His ability to assess a situation and anticipate violent changes in society is exceptional. Take for example his assessment of the former Soviet Union just before it began to come apart at the seams;

"The USSR was a hopeless case, in need of a mercy killinig. We sensed that its hour was coming, perhaps in months, certainly in a year. Later that summer, as I sat in a staff-college classroom in Kansas, tanks would fire into the Russian parliament and the face of the tall white building would burn black. The Soviet Union would die overnight and Boris Yeltsin would begin his reign in a fit of exhiliration that ended, as things Russian so often do, in drunken exhaustion."

Repeatedly and with incisive and well-documented proof of his enights Peters would submit written reports of what he had seen and experienced up the chain-of-command. All too frequently his input was ignored, pigeon-holed, or relegated to the circular file and the bureaucrats responsible for our international relations would plod blindly ahead into catastrophe. Time and again, upon returning from a trip of exploration and inquiry Peters would find..

"...no one in the U.S. Intelligence was interested. If the data didn't come from a satellite it didn't count. The human factor was messy and unpredictable. Better to count tanks and ships and wait for a reviva of the Cold War. Intelligence failure is as old as it is willful."

Anyone who has followed Peters' career can only marvel at the prolific nature of his writings. He has written books on political and military affairs, countless articles for the New York Post, American Heritage, The Washington Post, and a host of other periodicals, not to mention his marvelously imagined novels to include the masterful series on Civil War soldier-cum-detective Abel Jones penned under the name of Owen Parry. This latest work however, is the equal of anything which has gone before and here I include such stalwarts as Bob Kaplan's marvelous "Balkan Ghosts."

In "Looking for Trouble" Ralph chronicles his adventures and misadventures doing precisely that. In his unending quest to find out he wanders to the back of beyond with little more than a backpack, a keen sense of observation, his own powers of self-preservation, and an insatiable curiosity. The tales which come from these myriad, diverse and frequently risky experiences are incredibly revelatory and nothing less than priceless. Over the years he has traveled extensively in over 70 different nations on 6 continents and not a one of them particularly peaceful - from Moscow to Tiblisi, from northern India to South America, and from Kurdistan to Thailand Ralph Peters has an unerring nose for trouble and strife and he follows it like Galahad following the Holy Grail. His philosophy is neatly summed up in an early chapter when he says; "The way in which the finest artists see more acutely than others mirrors a top-of-the-game intelligence analyst's ability to block out humanity's white noise and listen to the revealing undertones." Nobody does it better. Nobody.

In this, what we can only hope is a first volume of several, Peters chronicles his wanderings through Russia, Eastern Europe and the Caucusus - first as a long-haired student and erstwhile musician with wanderlust and later as a commissioned Army officer - sometimes with official sanction but all too often on his own hook. Administrative Leave, as the Army calls it, allows the individual rather a broad latitude and Peters takes full advantage of this convenient loophole. Thus, when his duties permit, Peters heads for the back of beyond -- be it Yerevan, Samarkand, Bukhara, Grozny, or Nagorno-Karabach. Steeped in the literature, languages, lore, and culture of the places he visits Peters is equally at home in an ancient mosque, the eerie quiet of the City of the Dead, the mind-numbing noise of a local disco, or careening through Tblisi at four in the morning with a drunken local madman at the wheel.

It is these encounters and his enchanting ressurection of them which mark Peters as a true visionary in the worlds of both intelligence and human relations and as a writer of the first order. The people he meets on his travels are as diverse and complex and worthy of study as anyone limned by Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. In these pages, which fly by all too quickly, you will meet the brilliant Soviet artist, the grieving young father, and the faded yet imposing songstress who was beloved by Stalin. Here also you will meet Boris Yeltsin on the cusp of his historic run in history and a disillusioned MVD officer - the MVD being Russia's dreaded security police - who is more interested in finding out about the ins and outs of venture capitalism than the fact that his new mentor is an American intelligence officer who has simply stumbled into his station. With Peters as our guide we are transported to a safe-house in Mexico, a meeting with a corrupt mayor in South America, a frightening warlord in Thailand addicted to karaoke and Elvis, and brilliant army officers in Pakistan. Compared to Peters, the famous network 'talking heads' and foreign correspondents are superficial dilettanttes without a clue as to what comprises the real world around them. Peters lives by a creed which makes him seek out what "...no academic texts or intelligence documents can give you: the scent of daily life, the temper of the people, the taste of the land. Traveling, you take in far more than you understand, calories of knowledge waiting to fuel some future intellectual labor."

"Looking for Trouble" is the contemporary Holy Grail of travel literature. Peters' descriptions of the world he experiences and the people he encounters are true gems of the genre. Humor, pathos, awe, and incisive powers of observation are here for the reader who is lucky enough to discover this volume. One can only imagine that the shades of Peters predecessors -- Sir Richard Burton, John Hanning Speke, and Fitzroy MacLean -- would heartily endorse (and secretly envy) this marvelous and timely work. This book should be required reading for all Army officers, network anchors, foreign correspondents, and State Department officers. If there is a sober and sensible head left in Washington DC after the upcoming election they would do well to look towards Ralph Peters as the next Director of Central Intelligence. Yes, he is that good.

Frederick J. Chiaventone, novelist, screenwriter and commentator on international affairs is a retired cavalry officer who taught National Security Strategy, Counter-insurgency and Counter-terrorism at the U.S. Army's Command & General Staff College.

Now Los Gatos in Spanish means The Cats. I just would like to say Waaaaasssssssssssuuuuuuppppppp to all my homedoggs. EEEYA I have learned a lot from the grate scool district. It is absolootey the best in the wurld. YA! I go to highschool and I is gettin the beest education that this here town can offer. bi guyz

I live in Los Gatos and this is the most fun I have had looking at a book in a long time. I wish there was such a book for everywhere that I have lived. The research that went into it is incredible. The detail and the photos are great. People interested in writing a book about someplace should use this as a model. I learned a lot about many places that I have wondered about for a long time. Great fun!

I moved to Los Gatos in 1996. Before I read this book I had virtually no idea of the town I lived in. Now I understand it very well. It's actually interesting! By the way, this book was obviously created as a labor of love by someone with a genuine interest in their community.

This book displays a wonderfully compiled history of Los Gatos. The photography is beautiful, and just about every fact is historically accurate. A good section of the book is where the buildings are shown today downtown, and then their original use is displayed below the photo. Anywone who lives in Los Gatos or anywone who loves Santa Clara County history will love this book!

I also live in Los Gatos,and was surprised and pleased to see my house pictured, and written about in the book! I have always wondered about many of the homes shown in the book, and especially about where I actually live. This book has sparked my curiosity even more, and I am looking forward to having more detailed conversations with the owner of the house, to get additional information! A must have book for anyone who lives in Los Gatos, or has visited and enjoyed the town. Also a great book for California history buffs! My only suggestion would be to possibly print some in hard back!

I'll give 5 stars for the content of the book, but why is it so small in dimentions and so THICK. I don't understand why it was made this way. Along with this book, I have ordered four more Drucker books and the paper quality of all of them is AWFUL.

I had originally rented this book from the library with an intention of zipping through it to obtain a general idea and feel for the concepts presented. I found myself constantly stopping to take notes and unable to finish the entire book during the loan period. After renewing twice and hardly making it a quarter of the way through I decided I would have to purchase the book.

As the General Manager of a small business with no formal training and little prior experience in managing a company this was the best investment I could have ever made. I'd recommend you take notes as you read in order to get the most of this book. Read it a second time a year after you finish it.

This is the book on how to make a business WORK! I am president of a small company and immediately took the ideas and practices out of this book and applied them to great success. This is not a quick read, and every item will not pertain to each individual person, but the observations presented explained a huge number of obstacles I was facing. If you are trying to manage any form of modern organization, buy this book and spend the time reading it. It made me a huge Drucker fan.

this book is just great. i find it a straightforward and no frills book. yet reading it makes business interesting and encouraging. a truly indispensable reference and guide to management, better than any textbook i have come across in terms of giving clarity to the big picture. for that i have huge respect and admiration for peter drucker.

peter drucker is just "the man" in management in my book.

This is a heavyweight tome with clear insight. Every manager should read this.

For example, Drucker writes what strategy planning is not:
a box of tricks;
nor modelling;
nor forecasting;
nor masterminding the future.

Methodically, he explains what it is: Analytical thinking & commitment of resources to action.

Drucker is famous for his simple questions which resonated across the corporate world for 50 years, and was especially influential with Jack Welch at GE.

In this book Drucker poses these questions as the framework for creating a business strategy:
*What is our business?
*What will it be?
*What should it be?
...And the killer: *If we were not committed to this today, would we go into it?

Written in '73. Valid today.

I've been giving this to my dad for the last seven years and he loves it. This book is never a disappointment and is full of tradition and nautical lore. The illustrations are beautiful. My family have all been sailors and have always loved the traditions and lore of the sea. This gets better each year.

My husband, an avid sailor & builder of his own sailboat, asked one year after we were married for this book. It has become a tradition every Christmas to purchase the Book of Days. And no matter how many years have passed, he enjoys each new book as much as the last. If you know a sailor, or someone who simply enjoys sailing lore & facts, this book is a treasure.

As we can all use calendars for the upcoming new year, they often become merely repositories for written appointments and reminders for such events as family's and friend's birthdays, and concert and luncheon dates. The Mariner's Book of Days 2008 Calendar is a much different calendar. One that satisfies those of us who simply use a calendar to keep our busy lives in order and also a calendar that does much more than that. Education, insight, history, technical tips of traversing the sea, humor, family, love, and memories. This special calendar is all that and much more. This very special calendar is dedicated to the late Robb White from Thomasville, GA. Robb, was a very special person who comes from a very special family, a family which I have become a part of over the past year. In spite of my obvious bias for this wonderful calendar, I feel that even if I had never met Robb's family, this is a calendar that would have captured my imagination, my excitement, and my curiosity about a subject that we all have an interest in, from our younger years into out adult lives. My only complaint of the calendar (which has been published for several years) is that each new year brings more fascinating information built upon the previous year's calendar, thus begging for a much longer multi-year calendar (maybe a boxed set?). Although, maybe we should just take life one year at a time, fully enjoying and living that year to the fullest, something that I'm sure Robb White did and would suggest to the rest of us.

If you have an interest in nautical history this is the calendar/journal for you. Have been purchasing for 8 years and have never seen a repeat of information. Fascinating!

This is a lovely way to keep track of your appoinments while also enjoying fascinating bits of maritime history and other often little known nautical facts. There is enough space to keep a short diary entry for each day.

Even though this is my first dinotopia book I've ever read I'm sure it's one of the best I'll ever read! This book takes place in the magical land of Dinotopia, where talking dinosaurs and humans live. This is about a girl named Gwen who goes on a challenging quest to save her father from a deadly disease. Jason her friend goes along with her. Along the why they also meet a young raptor named Booj. The only hope for Gwen's Father is for the trio to find Odon a great healer. A very long time ago Oden went under ground and dug a maze so no one could find him. Now they must find Oden inside the complicated and dangerous maze. But what if they can't find the way through the maze? And what if Odon isn't there anymore? You'll have to read the book to find out!

Dinotopia The Maze by Peter David

Would you like to go on an adventure with talking dinosaurs? If you like adventures you'll like this book. This book is about a girl trying to save her dad from a deadly disease and a dinosaur can cure it. But will the girl be able to find the dinosaur to cure her father?
This book was amazing! It was full of adventure. If you like adventure this is a book for you.
The author wrote this book to show you that you should care for one another and be brave. The lesson in this book is you should help each other and you shouldn't be mean.

The characters in this book were fun to read about, and the plot itself was interesting. Older readers might enjoy this as a nice quick read, as I did. Younger readers will love this well-written and nicely paced adventure.

THIS IS THE MOST EXCITING BOOK I HAVE READ IN A LONG TIME. THE SUSPENSE AND THE THRILLS ARE VERY HARD TO HANDLE IF YOU LIKE EXCITNG, SUSPENSE, AND THRILLING BOOKS. SO IF YOU ARE ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE WATCH OUT IF YOU READ THIS BOOK. YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO PUT IT DOWN!

I think that the Maze was a very good book it was one of the best. I really liked the suspense and fun. I really liked the characters Gwen, Jason and Boogie to. I would suggest this book to somebody who enjoys thrills and fun filled adventure. It was a very good book.

I really enjoyed reading this book because the story was great. I'm 16 years old, just like Nick so I can relate to him. The only problem was I thought it was kind of repetitive. She just kept repeating the story about her and Sonny and by the time I finished reading the book I had the story completely memorized. I just think there should've been more to it, the author should have been more creative with that part of the book. But, overall I liked it.

This is one of those books you can't put down. The emotion is even and believable and the characters true. Jennifer Archer delivers a winner with THE ME I USED TO BE.

This book explores the consequences of choices made at a very fragile time in the life of the main character. I was faced with similair choices and have often wondered what whould have happened.This author hits those emotions with incredible accuracy and pulls you thorugh the turmoil of dealing with the fallout thirty years later. This is a fabulous read.

I couldn't put this book down. It's not easy to find books that can capture a reader like this. Not only does it explore real life issues and questions, but it does so in a way that is realistic and will touch readers. The Me I Used To Be is a great read for women of all ages.

I predicted stardom for Jennifer Archer after reading her first book, and I haven't changed my mind. I read THE ME I USED TO BE in two sittings and hated to put it down. Every emotion rang true, and even though the novel is told only through the eyes of Ally, the main character, Archer does such a masterful job of showing the emotions of the other characters, you don't realize you're not inside their heads, because you absolutely know what they're thinking and feeling. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.