R Books

This is great book, It has a lots of example and explained really well. Great Work!

The book is good but many solutions are not tested fully so its not that they can be cut and pasted directly out of the book. you may have to troubleshoot many of them. Otherwise a real good book.

As a Developer working predominantly with Oracle Databases for over five years, I'm always looking for books to help me produce better code. I have to say this is one of them. The author has produced a book that explains concepts in a practical manner that is also easy to read. I began reading this book just before starting a major development project and the code insights and examples assisted me greatly in this project.

Probably more a information and guidence book rather than a reference book. I found I read it from cover to cover and used the information as a platform for future developing. Some great code examples which I have used to great effect though!

With 15 years experience in Oracle as DBA and developer, I wrote a lot of packages and found in this book true advices and practical solutions, wich sound good to me. The best feature is that you can experiment all the code found in it and see by yourself the advantage of using the way proposed by McDonald. I like these books where autors breaks some common ideas ans show by "A + B" that the right solution is not the most common. A real useful book written by a true professional.

The book takes a bottom-up approach: the first part shows useful coding and optimizing techniques, while the second one gives real world applications and tips on program design.

I have two minor complaints, however:

Most chapters assume at least a good knowledge of PL/SQL and build on that, which I think is fair for a book titled "Mastering ...". On the other hand, two of the chapters (Triggers especially, and PL/SQL Debugging to a degree) take a different approach and start from the beginning, explaining the basics, too. It may be just me, but I think those pages are wasted.

Furthermore, there is a certain amount of overlap with Tom Kyte's Expert One-on-One Oracle, also from Apress.

Sheriff Clint Richards went looking for a woman wandering on the back roads of Vaquaro, Texas.
He sustained a shock when he discovered the blooded, wandering woman turned out to be Darlene Remington, the woman who had broken his heart.

Darlene had escaped a violent attack that had stolen her memory. Through confusion and drug induced sleep she didn't know who to trust. The attack in the hospital frightened her even more, forcing her to accept Sheriff Clint Richards protection. But was she safe?

In trying to discover what happened to Senator James McCord, Clint and FBI agent Darlene Remington was sinking deeper and deeper into the twisted secrets of the Senator.

Were the Senator's war buddies trying to protect him or maybe they didn't know the whole story.

What was Clint's secret that he refused to tell Darlene about?
What was the secret the Senator kept from Clint?
Would Darlene be headed back east again? Maybe for her own protection!
What had brought about the split up between Clint and Darlene six years before?
Who was trying to kill Darlene and the Senator? Would they find out in time? Would the Senator ever reveal his secrets?

To find out the answers to all of the above questions you will have to grab MEMORIES AT MIDNIGHT and spend a little time enjoying following the clues to the story's conclusion.
Darlene turns out to be another wussie [whoops, one time lover of Clint]

Definitely Recommended --M - You should really enjoy this series.

Joanna Wayne never disappoints. Memories at Midnight is a super read with old secrets causing new dangers. I loved the romance between Clint and Darlene. In fact I have loved the entire McCord series! One of the best Intrigue has done.

Joanna Wayne's books are the best. Great stocking stuffer for this Christmas. If you want a book that's packed with suspense, then this is your book. It's a seat of the pants read you'll really enjoy. Keep up the good work, Joanna. Renee

In Memories at Midnight, Joanna Wayne blends thrilling mystery and heart-tugging romance to create another page turner! Her characters are complex and involving. I felt their frustration, shared their pain, and most importantly, fell in love with them! Add this one to your collection!

Joanna Wayne gives the McCord saga a boost in her latest Intrigue, "Memories at Midnight." An FBI agent has returned to her hometown at the urging of her mentor, only to wind up in the middle of an attack that leaves her with amnesia and her mentor mysteriously missing. She's forced to turn to the town sheriff, with whom she had a relationship she can't remember, and who has more than a few secrets of his own.

A page-turner to keep you up all night, "Memories" is an able blending of past and present, love and danger, that shouldn't fail to capture any reader. Clint and Darlene's previous love affair is intertwined with their current flirtation very effectively, making it clear this is a couple with a future. The tangled web of relationships between everyone involved adds another layer to the tale, although the impact of Wayne's story is diminished somewhat through Harlequin's atrocious decision to spell out the relationship between Clint and McCord in all of the ads for "The McCord Family Countdown," when she keeps it a studied secret through much of the book. Still, there's enough danger and action, as well as a complex mystery, to overshadow that minor annoyance.

Unlike so many books, it's refreshing to see one set in the two weeks before Christmas that barely mentions the holiday. (Not surprisingly, the characters have better things to do). And how's this for a Christmas present: next year will finally bring the sequels to "Family Ties" (still my choice for her best book) when Wayne offers a new trilogy about the Randolph family in the summer. If they're as good as this, her fans will be waiting on pins and needles until they arrive.

This book is great as a resource for anyone who helps victims of abuse. It should be a resource in every church. This book is also a valuable tool for any sufferer of abuse seeking help.

This book is helpful for healing abuse victims of any age, but also is helpful in preventing abuse. Verbal abuse is addressed as well as physical abuse. It describes warning signs of potential abusers and has sample forms to screen future employees that will be around children.

This book is an outstanding resource for understanding what abuse is and the steps required to overcome abuse through faith and forgiveness. I purchased the Mending the Soul Workbook that goes along with this book from the Mending the Soul website.

This book has been and will continue to be, a very helpful resource for me to use on my own road to healing.

I highly recommend this book.

I am a Christian survivor of incest. I have read many books on dealing with and healing incest issues. This is the first book I have read that presents material for Christians, and it has had a profound effect on the issues I have faced. Not only does it address the nature of abuse, it also addresses the aftereffects of abuse: shame and powerlessness. In my opinion, the most important section of the book is The Healing Path. It gave me hope and explained the steps needed for the survivor to know God can indeed heal the soul.Other books address the mental and emotional aftereffects of incest. This book addresses the most important part of abuse: the damage it does to the soul. As a believer in God, it gave me a path to follow to heal my soul. For anyone raised in a church and felt abandoned by God because of incest, this is a must read.

This book really helped me to view forgiveness & reconcilliation from a true biblical perspective. Joe in the previous review states it so clearly & logically, especially in the last paragraph of his review. I think we can unintentionally draw people towards us that continue this cycle of emotional abuse. By abandonment, betrayal, lies or avoidance which can be the most difficult to overcome. With any abuse or negative issue in life, our self-esteem can take quite a hit,it also makes us feel if we are not forgiven or loved by someone & how can God love or forgive us? that's why the recovery is such a challenge & this book deals with this healing process, moving forward & growing in Godly love.A very insightful encouraging positive biblicaly based book that deals directly with many of lifes challenges, especially the very common emotional abuse so many of us have experienced.I highly recommend this book.

As a new believer, I found Stott's book to be a treasure. His elaboration of Jesus' basic teachings in the Sermon
on the Mount of how He wanted his disciples (then and now) to think and act was very illuminating. Stott's choice of the term "counter-culture" for this manifesto seems very fitting since the details of the Sermon show
how the believer's way is so at odds with the ways of the secular world. Stott writes with voice that is insightful
and inspired. This is the first book of his that I have read and studied. It will certainly not be the last!

I bought this on the advice of Jim Rosscup's book, Commentaries for Biblical Expositors. He is absolutrely correct in his assessment. This book is right up there with D. Martyn Lloyd Jones' works on the Sermon on the Mount. Very thought provoking. Well worth the money and the time to read! If I had only one book to buy on the subject, This would be the one.

I'm not quite sure I've read such an in-depth study book as this one, let alone on the Sermon on the Mount. Stott writes with such vigor and authority that left me feeling he knew exactly what he was talking about, and it helped to put the perspective of the Sermon into more realistic, less difficult terms.
It made the Sermon a message that was new, even though we've all heard it before. Stott makes it seem that he wants all his readers to forget what we've learned about the Sermon, and read it and hear it as if for the very first time.
Though I'm not too big on Bible study books, and I looked around quite a bit before finding this one, Stott's study definitely helped me to look at Jesus' Sermon on the Mount with a fresh and energetic perspective.

John R. W. Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount. Christian Counter-Culture. Leicester/England and Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press. First edition 1978; regularly reprinted in this format since 1984. 238 pages.

Although this book is, in the meantime, almost 30 years old, it remains as timeless as the Bible chapters on which it is commenting - and as a reminder of what a tremendous gift John Stott has been to the church in his role as teacher and author. His "Message of the Sermon on the Mount" has a number of characteristics which make it more or less ideal as a guide through three of the New Testament's most fascinating, but also most difficult chapters. The first of these characteristics is its intellectual plausibility and good sense: Stott nowhere speculates, never goes off at a tangent, but always gives a thorough, intelligent, well thought-out explanation of the text that takes account of opposing views but counters these with irrefutable arguments. The second characteristic is its theological orthodoxy, coupled however with broadness of scope, awareness of other positions and honesty in the face of difficulties. Stott is never dogmatically narrow-minded, but always loyal not only to the ipsa verba, but to the very spirit of the Biblical text - something that should warm every Christian's heart. A third characteristic is Stott's familiarity with the literature and his adeptness in providing apt quotes at just the right moment. And he does not limit himself here to other commentaries or to parallel Bible verses; there is a liberal sprinkling of pithy comment from Augustine and Chrysostom from the early church period, from the great reformers Luther and Calvin, and from more modern theologians and thinkers of various schools, e. g. Joachim Jeremias, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, A. B. Bruce, Alfred Plummer, even C. S. Lewis. And of course, Stott has read and digested Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones's massive volume of sermons on Matthew 5 thru 7 Studies in the Sermon on the Mount. A fourth characteristic would be Stott's balance between the more "evangelistic" type of approach and the social aspects of the Christian faith. And a fifth characteristic would be his insistence on the supremacy and sovereignty of Jesus Christ as the Son of God and only Saviour.

If you are looking for a book of "manageable" size on the Sermon on the Mount, and assuming you require a volume which is really faithful to the words of the text, you could do no better than turn to Stott's classic exposition. This is one of the absolute highlights of the "The Bible Speaks Today" series (which, in itself, has proved, in my opinion, rather uneven).

I am preaching through the beatitudes right now, and next year, I plan on preaching through the rest of the Sermon on the Mount. I already had all the heavy duty technical books on this section of the Bible. So I really needed a book where the writer explained the text in a way that people could understand it.

Stott's book fills that void. He masterfully explains and applies the text to life, and he always gives you something to chew on in digestible form. In addition to owning one or two technical commentaries on Matthew, I recommend picking up this little book if you are preaching or studying Matthew 5-7.

Rev. Marc Axelrod

This book has saved me a lot of time that I would have otherwise spent combing through huge Exchage reference books. As an Exchange Administrator, I have already found this book to be an invaluable asset in my reference library. Answers to many common administrative questions and "How To's" are easily found in this handy little volume. You gotta love its size.

Out of all the Exchange 2000 Server books I purchased, this one is the only one I used regularly. I have since purchased Stanek's Exchange Server 2003 book and it is equally as good if not better. For admins, it provides the essential details with clear, precise steps for implementing common features. For devs, it provides the cut to the chase info you need to get in there and get out quickly. I would recommend this very highly.

I bought this book for our Exchange admin when we were moving to Exchange 2000 from 5.5. Two months later I was going to be the one implementing Exchange and this book came to the rescue in a big way. As a total Exchange newbie I learned everything I needed (and now know) about Exchange from this book. Sure there are bigger books but not better books. If you are a Exchange guru, this book will be a little on the basic side for you. However, if you are anything less than a guru or if you are a new I would highly recommend this book.

I had a need to quickly resolve a problem with Exchange 2000 Server, having never worked with it before. This book was an excellent resource for that purpose. Not because it gave me the exact answer I needed (which I doubt many books would do) but because it clearly and concisely explained what you can do with Exchange 2000 Server and how to do it. It showed how to do things properly and from that it was fairly easy to deduce what was wrong.

Because the book is well structured (no excess verbage, no "chattiness") it's easy to read, clear and to the point. It gets to the point and stays on target.

All in all an excellent reference you'll use over and over and, I think, an excellent place to start learning Exchange 2000 Server. I find that this book tells what Exchange 2000 Server can do and how to do it. With that knowledge I think you'll be better grounded if and when you go for more in depth understanding of architecture and the like. After this book, if you want more in depth information you can move on to other (bigger) books but I think you'll get the biggest bang for the buck from this one..

This is excellent when used for quick reference and only for the experienced and knowledgeable. This is inappropriate for beginners since Exchange is intertwined with Active Directory. Without knowing all the implications of performing the various tasks outlined in the book, it can be detrimental to a company.

It gives children the chance to speak out without the noise while driving. It's a safe interactive program for wireless acess. Home networking and studying tips for children is awesome. My children love to be creative and has submitted request in childrens magazine that offers this type of program. It is good for mom's on the road.

Thank you,
Latamra Williams
Independant Beauty Consultant
Carson, Ca.

Mompreneurs Online is a great book for those who want to work from home but just don't know where to start and what to do. It is full of resources and success stories! A definite must-have if you want to join the Mompreneur industry!

Mompreneurs is a MUST HAVE resource for anyone wanting a home-based business. Everyone from start-ups to savvy entrepreneurs will benefit from their practical advice on working from home. It covers everything from discovering your passion, finding the right business, telecommuting, marketing, and work-from-home survival tips. Their "slice of life" interviews with real work at home moms offer valuable insight into conquering the challenges of working from home. Keep this one on your desktop for handy reference - you'll use it often!

I purchased this book because I wanted to add an online component to my home decorating business (and I am a mom of two great boys). This book has been very useful. Now that my online business is flourishing, I continue to look through the book for more ideas. It is the kind of book that the first read through you get the plans to implement, then you read it again and get different ideas to use. Because the publish date was 2001 and the Internet evolves ultra fast, some of the information is a little old but that is only for a small portion of the book. This book is also useful for moms trying to decide if an online business is right for them and what it really means to work from home, (like we don't work already). I also keep this book handy for the inspirational stories of moms like me.

Although this book has a lot of good information in it, this type of book should be updated frequently in order to keep up with the times. Most web sites are no longer in exsistance, and a lot of them are not legitimate either. The book tells you never to pay for information or in order to gain employment, however, most sites or potential employers listed require just that.

"Murrow: His Life and Times" is a superb biography about Edward R. Murrow. No one had a greater impact in defining and shaping broadcast journalism than Murrow, and in highlighting the responsibility of journalists, broadcasters, government and citizens in a democracy. Television, he observed in 1954, "can teach, it can illuminate...but it can only do so to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends...otherwise it is merely lights and wires in a box." Whether his brilliant and breathtaking radio coverage from London of World War II, or his confrontation with red-baiting Senator Joe McCarthy, he was always principled, strong and courageous. Speaking of the anti-communist hysteria sweeping this country in the early fifties he would turn to Shakespeare, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars, but in ourselves." As mass media races onto the Internet and enters a new digital era, the experiences and issues raised during Murrow's life become even more relevant. In the mid-fifties he warned, "the frontiers of knowledge have been pushed back, and the more that comes to be known, the less is understood...looking ahead to a time when human destinies are to be determined by the uses or abuses of new sources of almost unlimited physical power, one may ask if democracy will be able to develop the competence to deal with these complexities." He concluded, "If so, it must be through a broadening of education and the use of communications not yet realized, or perhaps even conceived." Murrow is a man for all times.

Edward R. Murrow was elusive. He was a pioneer radio and television broadcaster. His career arc did not include print journalism. His success was modern. Murrow, b. 1908, had a golden natured man for a father and a shrewd and enterprising woman for a mother. He ws the youngest of three sons. Black moods dogged his whole life. In the 1930's Murrow worked for a committee placing European scholars in American academic posts. He had contacts at CBS. At college, Washington State, he had been a speech major. At CBS, 1935, he became the Director of Talks. Murrow was also responsible for education and religion.

Radio was changing the world of politics. Overseas radio was primarily a novelty act. NBC had Alistair Cooke and so its coverage of the abdication crisis was better. Murrow was asked to take a job in London as the European director for CBS. William Shirer was offered the job of continental representative of CBS. When Germans invaded Austria, Murrow traveled to Vienna. His immensely successful career as a radio reporter, commentator, had begun. Murrow and Shirer used stamina and imagination to cover the developing crisis in Prague and elsewhere on the continent. Listeners were taken to Nuremburg to hear Hitler. At the end of September NBC and CBS radio braodcasts reported on Munich. Murrow sat with Jan Masaryk.

War finally came over Poland. CBS staff positions in the European capitals were filled. Murrow put in time everywhere. In the spring, blitzkrieg tactics caused the occupation of Belgium, the Netherlands. Norway fell. The Dunkirk evacuation took place. Churchill assumed office as Prime Minister. Commentators crowded into London. As neutrals CBS staff faced endless delays and red tape. A stringer, Vincent Sheean, became Murrow's boon companion. The reader is immersed with Murrow and company in rather delightful fashion in the events leading up to America's entry into World War II. A reader is able to sense in the author's careful descriptions the immediacy of war as brought to the radio listeners. Broadcasting brought facts and analysis to the audience in real time.

London was under air attack. Janet Murrow busied herself with the evacuation of children to America. The BBC moved broadcasting underground. Murrow inhabited freely both the upper class and the London ghetto. Eventually daytime operations ceased. It was not known at the time, but it was an RAF victory. Night bombings continued. With the approval of the censors American audiences were permitted to hear the sounds of a raid. Murrow conveyed the impersonal nature of the new technology of killing. Home news editor at the BBC, R.T. Clark, became a mentor to Murrow. He was versed in the classics and military history. In the fall of 1940 Shirer left for home from Portugal. He and Murrow had built up radio news from nothing. Home leave, 1941, proved to be a case of culture shock for the Murrows. In America there were no shortages. Murrow was effective because he did more than his job. Through happenstance he met with FDR Pearl Harbor night. He sat on the scoop that the President was determined to go to war. In the spring of 1942 the Murrows returned to London.

Murrow, disappointingly, had to coordinate CBS staff reports at headquarters during the operation of Overlord, the Normandy Invasion. In the end he was cut up with rage seeing the camps, Buchenwald and others. The Nazis had done a more thorough job of brutalizing the people than he had deemed possible. After an eighteen months' stint as an executive, Murrow returned to broadcasting. He was bitter over the death of George Polk in Greece in 1948. Polk had modeled himself on Murrow. In 1950 he took an unequivocal stand against Joe McCarthy and lost his sponsor. Regional sponsorship was arranged. Owen Lattimore commended Murrow for keeping the record straight on his case.

Fred Friendly and Murrow were ready, in 1951, to convert I CAN HEAR IT NOW to television. ALCOA sponsored SEE IT NOW. It needed to brighten its image. At the beginning of 1953, after doing an historic piece, 'Christmas in Korea,' he was exhausted. His view of the US was changing. Murrow's attack on McCarthy on SEE IT NOW was considered an act of courage by most people. It resulted in FBI scrutiny, he became a watched man. After McCarthy's demise, employers and news broadcasters were still treading gently. By 1957 Murrow was a celebrity, but SEE IT NOW was cut and he and Friendly were given SMALL WORLD. After speaking in Chicago to an association of journalists about the need for independence in television news, Murrow lost clout at CBS. Informally he was demoted. Fred Friendly became the sole executive producer of CBS Reports. One of the programs in which Murrow participated notably was 'The Harvest of Shame.' Murrow was appointed to head USIA under Kennedy. He resigned in 1964 and died in 1965.

Thank Heaven that this book - long out of print, I had my copy nailed down - has now been re-issued, and thank Heaven for the current renaissance in interest in this magnificent journalist and iconic human being. Murrow's speech to camera at the end of the McCarthy expose ought, if there is any justice, to be committed to memory by every American in the same way that the Gettysburg address is now.

As for the book itself - well, I bought my first copy in the early 1980s, Murrow having been a childhood hero. It's bit, it's beautifully written, and is it enough to say that my original copy is falling apart? And that all my Christmas present problems are now solved?

There are other good biographies (I'm a Murrow fanatic, if this isn't clear already)and I wouldn't fault any of them; and the newly-reissued DVD set of the Murrow Years is also essential and full of the most wonderful surprises. I guess that Sperber wrote the ur-text, and so this is probably the place to start. But thank you to everyone who remembered that he should not be forgotten. Meet a true American hero.

By the time most of us baby boomers were old enough to watch more substantive television fare than Felix the Cat, Edward R. Murrow was an aging icon without portfolio. He did not have the regular exposure of a Douglas Edwards, Chet Huntley, or David Brinkley. He would on occasion do spectacular work-as elementary school students we would discuss his "Harvest of Shame" documentary on the sufferings of migrant farm workers. But it was from our parents and older relatives that we inherited something of a sense of his importance in an earlier time, in the same fashion that they might speak of a Bob Taft or an Adlai Stevenson.

What we could not know in 1959, what biographer A.M. Sperber makes abundantly clear, is that we were watching the shell of a driven man who had exhausted his incredible stores of emotional energy to international cooperation, then to radio coverage of the horrors of World War II, and on to shape the formation of the CBS new department during the explosion of the television era and the age of McCarthy. Sperber traces the rise and decline of this charismatic, almost manic, entrepreneur from the most unlikely of origins, that of a lumberjack named Egbert who quickly realized the liabilities of his given name in the male work camps of Washington State.

Egbert, now Edward, chopped wood only long enough to scratch and claw his way into Washington State College. A student with fingers in many campus pies, he joined an organization called the International Institute of Education in 1931. The IIE in the early 1930's was a form of college student exchange program, one of its sponsors being the not-quite-ready-for-prime-time Columbia Broadcast System. When Murrow spoke at a West Coast gathering of IIE representatives, he earned himself election to the national office of the IIE in New York, a paid position there, and free air time on CBS radio. Murrow produced Sunday afternoon radio lectures and round table discussions, demonstrating a flair for attracting international speakers. As Murrow learned more about the plight of Jews in Germany from reporter [and later close friend] William Shirer, he used the machinery of the IIE in the United States to rescue as many Jewish intellectuals as possible and place them in American colleges. It was a tactic not universally appreciated, nor would his close cooperation with the Russians be forgotten by J. Edgar Hoover.

By the beginning of the Battle of Britain, Murrow was assigned full time by CBS to provide radio coverage of Hitler's assaults and to coordinate the company's European reporting network. It is impossible to capsulize here the horrors of those eighteen months for Murrow and for England generally, when every night brought a terror at least as awful as the World Trade Center bombing. Murrow created a network of European radio correspondents-many of whom would become household names in their own rights. He overcame industry biases against putting reporters on the air and using taped reports from the fields. But most of all, he revolutionized the very style of radio news into "factual storytelling" by his nightly accounts of German bombings that by happenstance occurred during the East Coast's prime time 7 P.M. radio news hour. Later, as the theater of war shifted east, Murrow was among the first western reporters to see first hand an operating extermination camp. He could not bring himself to talk about it over the air for several days.

Murrow returned to CBS in New York a conquering hero of sorts, the network's hottest property. Sperber does a good job in explaining why the postwar Murrow-CBS marriage was a stormy one. For one thing, the war years had reshaped Murrow into a cross between an Old Testament prophet and a posttraumatic stress sufferer. He would never be quite at home in an industry moving toward television, increased advertising dependence, and escapism. Secondly, Murrow was too much the prophet to claim objectivity. He would never be confused with, say, Bob Trout. Long before Woodward and Bernstein, Murrow crafted the art of investigative reporting for a presumably concerned nation, particularly through the medium of his weekly "See It Now" series, a rough and tumble forerunner of "60 Minutes." His most controversial television piece, his hour-long exposure of Joe McCarthy, was out and out editorializing, albeit accurate. In Murrow's mind, he was serving the common good. Others were not so sure. Thirdly, Murrow himself had a past that made him a potential network liability. When he produced his "Harvest of Shame" documentary, for example, hardly a paean for capitalism, those with long memories would recall his enthusiastic embrace of Russian intellectuals in the late 1930's with the IIE.

The great irony in the breakup of Murrow and CBS is that the deciding infidelity may possibly have been unintentional. In 1960, with quiz show scandals threatening the credibility of the television industry, CBS President Frank Stanton announced a policy to eliminate the appearance of deceit in any of his network's programming, not just quiz shows. When pressed as to the extent of this policy, the network cited other programming, including rather surprisingly Murrow's own "Person to Person" prime time home visits to celebrities. In one reading of this event, Stanton may have simply been protesting the pre-scripting of interview questions and the staged walk-through of the homes. Or, there may have been a subtler message. A young Harry Reasoner inquired of Murrow on air, in so many words, "why are you, the Jeremiah of the industry, wasting precious prime time with the innocuous drivel of fighters and starlets?"

Unlike Reasoner and Howard K. Smith, who felt no compunction about switching networks, Murrow lived and died CBS. Illness and ultimately death interrupted his stint as window dressing for the Kennedy administration in 1965. Perhaps his prodigious cigarette smoking had finally claimed him. More likely, it was the pressure of living so many lives in one frail human shell.

Since its publication in 1986, no other biography on Edward R. Murrow has been written that can depose A.M. Sperber's magnificent work. "Murrow: His Life and Times" is, by far, the best biography written to date on America's first, and possibly last, great broadcasting journalist.

Sperber's book captures the essence of Murrow's life from a young intellectual to his rise from college campuses to directorship of the "Institute of International Education" and to Murrow's début at CBS where he broadcasted the bombing of London during World War II. It was during this period that Murrow demonstrated, so clearly, his finesse with the American audience as they listened to his broadcast of the traumatic events as they unfolded in World War II Europe.

Sperber's methodical research, numerous interviews, attention to detail, and her writing give the reader a close and personal look at the extraordinary triumphs and tragedies that made up Murrow's life. Readers are able to follow Murrow's footsteps and virtually see into his world, as he became the voice of World War II and the voice for America. Murrow's denunciation of Senator Joseph McCarthy's treatment of Americans during the HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) hearings set into motion the senator's decline and closed a dark chapter in American politics -- all with his rational, yet forceful manner of speaking.

Sperber writes of Murrow's journalistic integrity and his struggles for openness and frankness in the media -- ideals that brought Murrow into constant conflict with CBS. The author also illustrates Murrow's battle with tobacco addiction - an addiction that would have devastating affects on Murrow's health. An entire life flawlessly researched and written in 705 captivating pages that will embrace readers today as it did when the book was first published 1986. After reading Sperber's book the reader will understand why CBS headquarters in New York City still displays a plaque in their lobby which contains the image of Murrow and the inscription: "He set standards of excellence that remain unsurpassed."

"Murrow: His Life and Times" should be required reading for students of communications and those working in media. There is no better chronicle of America's greatest broadcasting journalist. Readers will find this book hard to put down once they begin reading it. It is superb in every respect and the very best biography on Edward R. Murrow.

This book nicely introduces readers to the topic of sanctification. We need to confess & renounce our old lifestyles, habits and hangups to live in peace and calm with God.

This book is very small, but has a hard cover. It is just right to tuck in another gift as an extra surprise. Even though I have read this book before, it still has the power to touch me and help me take inventory of my walk with God. Sometimes we do tend to leave Christ out of certain areas of our lives, and this book opens your eyes to see these areas, but it is done in a very loving way. I was going to order some more copies as gifts, but have not been able to find this particular edition on Amazon again. Perhaps, I will take another look to see if I have missed it.

I realize that this booklet has been highly reviewed by others, and I can understand why. "My Heart-Christ's Home" is essentially an extended analogy between our lives and our homes. Munger translates the common evangelical idea of inviting Jesus to live in our hearts into a situation in which Jesus is invited to physically live in our house. He walks through the house and describes how Jesus would interact with each part.

It's an interesting analogy, relatively well-executed. My critique is that it definitely enters the world of cheesiness a few times, going overboard with the "Christ as my buddy-buddy" idea. Though personalizing Jesus is helpful, there is something hokey about a picture of Jesus in bathroom slippers sitting in my living room reading the newspaper and sipping a cup of coffee. Maybe this is just a reflection of the pamphlet showing its age.

I was also overwhelmed by the brevity of this "book." It can easily be read in one sitting, which is convenient. However, I would have preferred something more substantive. Ultimately, this booklet is solid and worthwhile, if somewhat incomplete.

My Heart-Christ's Home is a clear, easy-to-read book that talks about how you should refine and shape your heart for Christ's home. Pastor Munger uses his home and Christ as his guest for an example . If you are struggling with finding room for Christ in your heart, I highly recommend this book. It teaches you how to "clean your heart" and only set it aside for God.

My Heart, CHrist's Home is an excellent booklet, so easy to read and so convicting. It helped me get my focus back on track.

Few veterans describe themselves as "heroes." It's a painful word - filled with aspiration, horror and loss. Many veterans who write memoirs avoid the most devastating echoes of war - their own perceived culpabilities. It's understandable. Who wants to poke a finger into a festering wound?

Douglas Bergman is a brave man. Using a magnifying glass, he focuses a scorching sunbeam onto his own soul - allowing the reader to see his demons in great detail. It is unsettling in a world where few want to accept responsibility for their mistakes - where confessions are whispered litanies of shame washed away with a few penitential rosaries. My initial reaction was to look away but I soon found myself examining the author's broken heart like a curious onlooker drawn to a fiery car wreck.

This book is many things - a memoir, an adventure, a tribute, a confession and a sob. From the shiny hearse-white cover to the imagery-dense prose, Mr. Bergman's tale perplexes and intrigues. Vietnam was a conundrum for everyone. For the men who fought there, growing up was like peeling a scab off a half-healed wound. Boy soldiers drawn to the service to resolve other problems found new sorrows to occupy their nightmares. "Names I Can't Remember" is a close up view of a Vietnam Veteran's reaction to war - and a description of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) that still torments many who were mere babies in the 1960s.

The author plunges into his story with profane vigor. He amuses and shocks with an almost adolescent glee - as though he has returned to his rebellious, angst-ridden youth and is set on taking the reader with him. He uses literary flourishes that complicate the read like a translucent veil draped over lovers laboring together for their love. You can see the movements, hear them moan - but their faces are dim behind the silken sheen of the fabric. Mr. Bergman peoples "Names I Can't Remember" with garish characters that touched his life but have now faded into ghostly symbols - a motherly whore, a man with a cat on his shoulder, a doofus unable to function in the jungle, an alcoholic CO who confuses courage and foolhardiness -- a nun and a Vietnamese child trying desperately to survive. Despite this distance - or perhaps because of it, this book is powerful and literate. I found myself lingering over the pictures the author created in my head - almost as if this was a novel. It was easier to appreciate this work on that level than to acknowledge the reality of Mr. Bergman's anguish.

The Vietnam War was not a Disney Movie -- neither is this book. However, if you are a student of psychology, a poet - or someone who wants to understand the warrior in your life, this is a wonderful read.

"Names I Can't Remember" is a tough, brilliant read of one man's journey into Dante's Inferno. All human foibles and flaws are put out for display. Mr. Bergman dares the reader to forgive him as he hasn't been able to forgive himself for thirty years. A piece de la triumph! 5 military gold stars - Lillian Cauldwell

"...there is something Keseyesque or Hunter Thompson - like about Bergman's prose: often profane and at the same time, image rich." - Daily News, Clem Richardson 7/8/05

This is not a book filled with words on a page, it is a capturing of a mans inner guts spewed upon pages from his tortured memory. We see the ramblings of a young boy yanked from the unsafe world of his home and the bottle, to be immersed into the world of drunking decisions, adult behavior expected from a still nursing infant. You need to digest every word and feel his feelings. Some of his experiences will fill you with disgust, horror, the need to nurture, but your diet will never be the same after you digest this meal of feelings.
Devour it...chew it... spit it out if you need to... But dont just sit there and read it........

"You'll be on an emotional roller coaster ride while reading this work. The author has given us a very raw look at a young life destroyed by a dysfunctional family drowning in alcoholism and how he carried that with him during his No Slack tour. Doug was in the same company as I was and we walked the same villages, but never met, the places he describes are familiar to me as they will be to others who read him. I wasn't ready for the constriction I felt in my chest as parts of this book made me wonder how he slipped through the cracks as he performed his duty as a platoon leader in an alcoholic fog. Read the book, it's a raw look at a personal battle with a life almost destroyed by abuse, mingled with war. Names I Can't Remember will shake your senses and make you ill but you will find that once you start reading it you can't put it down."
"Yankee Jim" Simchera - A Company 2/327th Infantry,101st Airborne Vietnam: 1969-70

Aquellos que les guste un poco de historia es un buen libro para conocer más alrededor de Napoleon Bonaparte

Delerfield's engaging history of the men who led Napoleon's armies across Europe is essential for anyone who is interested in this period of history. While not an in-depth study, the author did an excellent job of bringing the marshals to life, especially the larger-than-life Ney and Murat. These men made their imprint upon Europe as no one before or since. The reader practically becomes a part of the great campaigns of the Grand Armee across Europe and the torment of the Peninsula War.

While this book is not exceptionally well written it is very readable and keeps the reader engrossed in the events of the time. Even for any accomplished student of the Napoleonic Wars this is a must read.

My only gripe is that it wasn't 2000 pages so it could have really covered all of the ground. As it was the book offers lots of good insights into many of the lesser known Marshals like Suchet and Davout, two fighting marshals who were sorely missed at Waterloo.

Buy and read this book.

You will give Delderfield credit for his vision, his ambition and his broad coverage to the Age of Napoleon. This book is a synthesis of the age and a complement to all your other Napoleonic reading. It is an enjoyable book which weaves back and forth and round and round as the author tells about the personalities of and interrelationships among the 26 men who became Marshals of France.

There are many reasons I like Delderfield himself. The leading reason is that he values selflessness, effort, merit and ability. Though British, he could have hardly been more American in that respect. He was not the often encountered British snob who promotes the view that Napoleon was an ogre.

I share Delderfield's view, unabashedly, because I am a Son of the American Revolution and I hope also a true Patriot. While we owe our cultural heritige to the English in very large measure, I believe we owe our freedoms mostly to the French.

Delderfield is critical about the 26 men and their Emperor when needed, but he understands the great achievements of the time. He appreciates the blows that the French made and took in the name of liberty and progress.

I thought I was buying a book biographical portraits like Aubrey's Brief Lives, Seutonius' Twelve Caesars or Plutach's Lives. But, what I got was the whole story of the Age of Napoleon retold in a dramatic serial fashion (it would be a great HBO story) and in the action story form of Delderfield's own fiction Seven Men of Gascony.

The book organized according the normal conventions around the coalitions and campaigns. The story line begins at the end of the Age of Frederick the Great in order to bring the early lives of the oldest Marshals, such as Augereau, into focus. The story finally ends about 70 years later with the Funeral of Napoleon led by Marshal Soult to the tomb in the Invalides.

The story revolves around the twelve or so basic campaigns and the role of the respective Marshals. The book is fresh and it does not repeat known erroneous myths or trite cliches.

From this book we get insights into the interacting character of the 27 men (Napoleon included and chief among them). Very few of the faults of the Marshals are left unexposed by the end of the story. Those who achieve the highest place in Delderfield's pantheon and remain relatively unscathed are Davout the Iron Marshal; Ney, the Bravest of the Brave, Lannes, the Roland of France; and Poniatowski, Prince of Poland.

The other Marshals are treated well and complimented for their roles and abilities -- though depreciated for their weaknesses and vanities. They are put on a lesser shelf revealing more than anything the values of the author. I happen to agree with Delderfield that adherence to duty, bravery and loyalty are the three highest standards to judge these men.

All of the Marshals have an interesting personal story. We have to give all of them credit for ability and bravery beyond the common varieties. None of them became Marshals of France because they were incompetents or cowards. The abiding values of the Napoleonic Creed were merit and joie de virve or elan. The Marshals, on the whole, personified these values.

The Emperor could forgive vanity as in Murat; disloyalty as in Bernadotte and greed, as in Messena. He forgave them all, and many times, in the name of merit (also probably in the name of necessity which is often a reflection of the same thing).

I recommend this book for three reasons. First, it is organized. It gives a compact lucid picture of the chessboard of the age. It tells us a about how the campaigns and politics were structured. Second, it is complementary to other work such as Gallo, Tolstoy, Chandler and so on. It provides an additive perspective on the events which can enhance and enrich your reading of all the other literature on Napoleon. Third, it is literate and enjoyable. As I have already said, I share strongly the values and sensibilities expressed by Delderfield.

I suspect Delderfiled's perspectives on the French and Americans were shaped by interactions in World War II and World War I. The 20th Century Delderfeld, if placed in the 18th Century, would have been a political sympathizer in the American Revolution and he might have crossed the Channel to march with Davout, Lanne, Bessieres, Oudinot or Ney.

I don't mean to say he would be a traitor to England, I do not wish to dishonor him that way. What I mean is, from the benefit of perfect hindshight, he would have seen the vision of marking men by ability. He he would have marched off of the old Road to Serfdom, as Hayek called it, and onto the new Road to Freedom which was then being beaten across Europe by the French.

As will all books about this age the principal subject is Napoleon himself, who by any objective standard was the greatest leader of men in battle the world has evern known. As is usually the case with a leader, you will see in this book that any given leader cannot do everything in a complex enterprise and so must organize around himself a way that expresses his own goals, interests and competencies.

By examining the complexities of the individual Marhals and their interactions, you will be looking into the heart and mind of the Emperor himself. You will see why at Waterloo Napoleon was no longer himself. He was no longer able to articulate his visions without his Marshals of years gone by. You can speculate, for example, that if Berthier was present at Waterloo, the calvary would have stayed in reserve for the coup de grace and that Grouchy would have not been lost, hence blocking Blucher from the field, while Napoleon finished Wellington -- who was at the time already beaten on the hillsides of Waterloo.

While Richard the III would have given his kingdom for a horse, Napoleon lost his Empire for want of his Marshals.

I flew through this book. The narrative style of writing lent itself to a quick and enjoyable read. I came away with a better overall picture of those who were surrounding Napoleon.

Although the subject is broad in the sense that the author tackles so many people. He none-the-less does an excelent job of rounding out a solid picture of Naploeon's marshals, their personalites, their ambitons...flaws and credits.

There are several marshals that I would like to read more about based on the information gleaned from within these pages. Understandably the author could not devote as much time as he may have liked to each and every member of this group. He did, however achieve the goal of introducing us to all of them and more than just a basic glossing over.

What I liked most is that the author took the events and let time itself introduce and develop the marshals rather than simply lining each one up and giving the reader an encyclopedia type synopsis of each individual. This really brought each marshal into better focus in terms of what was going on at the time and why they entered the picture whent hey did, as well as what they were doing prior to entering into the service of the Empire.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in Napoleon and also intersted in getting a better feel for those around him and what drove them to thier positions.