Spencer Books

The mind-numbing studio shots of numerous soldiers in various costumes are quite boring, revealing interesting details in some cases and frustratingly obscuring some details in others. It would have been better, if specific items of dress were also photographed in detail to give context to the photos. As a broad reference, the collection of photos do represent a good source of info, provided that there is clarity on the specific item of dress.

I have also rated Spencer Coil's Austro Hungarian books and the Czarist Russian book. Mr. Coil has great photographs and all of his books are outstanding. Schiffer publishing has done an outstanding job too. Thank you for coming out with these books.

The history of Vietnam is obscure to most Westerners, at least prior to the Indo-China war of the fifties. This book attempts to fill that gap, and provide a short overview of the history of the nation over the last thousand years or so. Given that it's a short book (text runs to just over 200 pages) it does a good job.

Vietnam has been wracked by wars and conquests during most of the period covered by the book, and make no mistake, that's the author's focus. There's nothing about culture, literature, art, science, or ordinary life in this book: it's about politics, and warfare. The author spends one chapter dealing with the period pre-French conquest, and a second covering the period of French colonialism. The rest of the book covers the Vietnam Wars from 1946-1975, with a brief chapter after chronicling the country's history since the end of the war.

This is a good book, given its limited scope. The author has much to say about the war, most of it critical of American and South Vietnamese leadership. Hey, they did lose the war! The book also doesn't flinch from recounting atrocities by both sides, recounting them judiciously, and not taking sides.

If I have a criticism of the book, it's that it's too short. Two hundred pages doesn't do justice to the history of the war at less than an overview level, and trying to fit the last thousand years in there too was perhaps a bit much. I found myself wishing for more.

As someone who grew up during the Vietnam era, I wanted to read a book that would give me some understanding of what went on during the Vietnam war. I was a bit too young to really comprehend the current events as they were happening but too old for the Vietnam war to be covered in the history books I studied in school.

This book provides a good, succinct overview of the military aspects of the war. While there are allusions to events outside the military realm (the protests back in the U.S., Kennedy's assasination, etc.) the focus is definitely on the war itself. While the main focus is on the period in which the U.S. was involved in Vietnam, a significant part of the book is devoted to setting the context for that period (wars in Vietnam during ancient times and, especially the French Indo-China wars). There is also a short section on what happened after the U.S. left Vietnam. This context is interesting since the author points out how many of the mistakes made by the U.S. had been made by others during earlier times.

The book is quite brief (204 pages), so the author does not go into great depth on anything. For example, the My Lai massacre takes up only a very brief paragraph. If you're looking for an in depth analysis of the war, you would probably be better off with another book. However, as a brief overview, I thought the book was quite well done.

Blais' drama, undergoing a new resurgence of interest, mostly in the U.S. (U. of Miami., Washington, etc.,) is seeing increased performance in both English and French.

WINTERSLEEP presents the unique shorter, or "chamber", plays of an intimacy and a subtlety that are unique and may suggest new directions for the modern theatre, especially for directors who are not afraid to blend different media and life-size puppets with live actors, and evoke fluid and shifting states of consciousness.

IN AN EXCELLENT INTRODUCTION, NIGEL SPENCER, THE TRANSLATOR,CONTEXTUALIZES THESE LYRICAL, ELLIPTICAL WORKS...ALL FIVE PLAYSFEATURE FEMALE VOICES ASSERTING THEMSELVES IN PAINFUL DIALOGUE WITH MALE PARTNERS. OSCILLATING BETWEEN INTIMATE PERSONAL DETAIL AND PHILOSOPHICAL ABSTRACTION, BETWEEN TENTATIVENESS AND AGGRESSION, EACH PLAY PROBES A DIFFERENT SENSIBILITY, A DIFFERENT TENSION.

. . . THE DIALOGUE IS RENDERED EVEN MORE POIGNANT BY THE ACCOMPANYING MUSICALITY OF BLAIS' LONG POETIC LINES. . . . PERHAPS THE MOST EVOCATIVE OF ALL IS THE STUDY IN CONTRASTS, "FEVER"--A BEAUTIFULLY ORCHESTRATED DIALOGUE BETWEEN A WIFE AND A HUSBAND IN WHICH SHE UNVEILS HIS HYPOCRISY AND HER COMPLICITY AGAINST THE EXOCITICIZED BACKDROP OF MOROCCO.

. . . READING THESE ENIGMATIC MUSINGS SET AMIDST HIGHLY VISUALIZED BACKGROUNDS OR SETS, ONE PARTICIPATES IN THE EQUIVOCAL, TENUOUS RELATIONS BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN, SPEECH AND SILENCE, OPPRESSSION AND FREEDOM. AS BLAIS, THROUGH THE VOICE OF HER TRANSLATOR, SO ELOQUENTLY PUTS IT: "BUT HERE I AM, AND HE LISTENS. IT IS LATE. AT LEAST, HE SEEMS TO LISTEN."

This book is very good and interesting. I'm very much into the paranormal. If you are 2 you have to get this book.

After years of thinking how helpful a book about weeds would be, I was delighted to find this one. Included in Spencer's text is a layperson's description of each plant, as well as where it grows, how it is spread, who its relatives are, how to get rid of it and any known uses or lore associated with it. At the end of the "common" information for each weed is its technical description and formal names. The illustrations are excellent, although color photographs would have been more useful for weed identification. Overall though, a great find, and one I have already passed on to others!

A great book for anyone with an interest of the life and stories of Josua Slocum.I have read & Re-read "Sailing Alone,Around The World". A natural extention, "Alone At Sea",discibes "situations",not before written about.

I found this book to be quite useful as I started studying for my APICS exam. As far as reference textbooks go, this is nicely laid out and easy to use. It is a neccessary evil because to make sense of the materials, you have to have a guide. This dictionary seems to be a good guide for getting through the material.

The book had a very nice dicription of the bassoon. The different kinds and about taking care of it and your reeds. The only problem I had with it is that the fingering chart was confusing. Overall I think it was good.

The book is very funny. We saw it at a local bookstore as a display. My wife and I could not stop laughing and chuckling. We immediately came home and ordered it. It has served it's purpose and made us LAUGH.

This is a terrific guide for the amateur bird enthusiast, and comes complete with lots of primer information on how to go about bird watching. By focusing on the most common representatives of each family branch of North American birds, the book makes classification far easier than a more comprehensive guide. For the typical bird watcher, the species covered in this book will allow for accurate identification at least 95% of the time, and you won't be wasting time agonizing over the slight differences between two subspecies. Each entry has a short descriptive paragraph that includes the size of the bird, a map displaying the range of the bird, and a beautiful color illustration that amply displays all of the identification points. A hard-core birder will no doubt prefer something more in-depth and comprehensive, but this is a great book to ease oneself into this captivating past-time.