Research Books

John Lewis Gaddis is probably the foremost historian of the Cold War.

Strategies of Containment provides a complete basic overview of the subject of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War. It is specifically a history of the U.S.'s containment policy toward the Soviet Union and the Communist-bloc and its evolution over time.

It begins with U.S. diplomat George Kennan's famous memomorandum or "long telegram" from the Soviet Union which provided the guide for interpreting the intentions of the Soviet that was used by the State Department and the Executive Branch in formulating U.S. foreign policy towards the Soviet Union and the Communist-bloc nations - especially during the early stages of the Cold War. If a U.S. foreign service officer or other U.S. official wanted to understand the Soviet Union's foreign policy or history and the considerations which would impact the Soviet leadership's behavior - he or she was directed to read it.

The initial assessment by Kennan and his subsequent use of the term "containment" in a Foreign Affairs magazine for the first time, was controversial and volumes have been written on what he meant.

His approach basically was to advise against a wholesale reordering of the world order based on U.S. values which would cause consternation in the Soviet leadership and trigger Soviet defensive diplomatic (and potentially more drastic measures) in opposing the new international framework.

Kennan wanted diversity in the international system, to allow the Soviet Union to participate within it, and not undermine or be alienated from it, and thus transformed by it over time. The history of the Soviet Union's participation in the UN and its institutions confirms his analysis.

Kennan initially argued for a particularist approach as opposed to a universalist approach. He also argued for strong point as opposed to wide-scale perimeter opposition to expanding Soviet spheres of influence.

Kennan's writings set the stage for an interpretation of Soviet behavior and intentions. He studied Soviet and Russian history and knew that the Soviet Union would seek to build buffer zones between it and any potential adversary. The Napolean invasion, Germany's invasion, etc. as well as the Crimean War, and the Russo-Japanes War of 1905, and the U.S. and European intervention in the Russian civil war, all shaped the Soviet leadership's thinking.

Kennan wanted to restore a balance of power at the interface between the East and West in the European theater as well as in Asia, but without contesting every Soviet move for influence along its borders and without alienating the Soviet Union from the new international order.

Truman subsequently instituted a policy review process that led to NSC-68 which expressly stated that the U.S. policy was to promote U.S. values of freedom and human dignity. Containment then moved into the shape of a perimeter-type defensive strategy in which Soviet moves on its periphery for political and military influence was to be contested.

The book then describes U.S. national security policy and how U.S. containment evolved over time into Eisenhower's "New Look" policy in which no further Soviet expansion of its power into other nations was to be uncontested and then later into "flexible response" under Kennedy and Johnson and then detente under Kissinger.

The book is an excellent introduction to the Cold War, the U.S. policy of containment and its evolution.

This book show us the strategies of Containment in the Cold War Era; an important beginning had been made with the Truman Doctrine and the Containment thesis, which established a defensive position holding back Soviet expansionism.
In 1947 the US had an exclusive monopoly on the ultimate weapon, the atomic weapon, and this monopoly should be used -the bomb "makes politically possible....the domination of the world by a single sufficiently large state". The architect of containment was George Frost Kennan, best known as "the father of containment" and as a key figure in the emergence of the Cold War.
He later wrote standard histories of the relations between Russia and the Western powers. The NSC-68, the most important of all Cold War documents, was "a plan of military rearment and development is at present going forward". It's the central document of the Cold War that transformed containment into a global crusade. Approved by Harry Truman in April 1950, it still lacked Congressional funding and support, and Truman was too weak a president to push it throught in the absence of a major crisis.
It would have been interesting if the author of the book had also used an approach from the Soviet point of view, as well as one in the West and the United States. In addition, Henry Kissinger has been widely studied and detailed, but it seems that is not mentioned in the book the figure of the first Secretary of State of the Nixon presidency, William Rodgers.

Now in a revised edition, Strategies Of Containment: A Critical Appraisal Of American National Security Policy During The Cold War is a revised and expanded edition of Bancroft Prize winner and Cold War expert John Lewis Gaddis' classic on understanding the history of containment as a policy, its role in bringing the Cold War to an end, and its possible value or pitfalls in the future. Originally published during the Regan presidency when the Soviet Union was still a superpower, Strategies Of Containment includes a greatly expanded chapter on Reagan, Gorbachev, and the completion of containment, as well as a new epilogue. A welcome scrutiny of history with the advantage of post-Cold War hindsight.

This book is still useful even 20 years after publication. Gaddis view US policy toward the USSR as a pendulum that swings between"symmetrical" and "asymmetrical" approaches. The periods are split into: Kennan's original containment, NSC-68, Eisenhower's "New Look", JFK and Nixon's détente. There is a coda covering Carter, but it is less helpful.

The symmetrical approach confronts the USSR wherever the USSR chooses to probe. In this approach, wherever the Soviets seek to advance is, by their very actions, a US interest. In contrast, the asymmetrical view seeks to identify those areas that are inherently vital US interests and protect those.

The first seeks to build a fence (containment) around the Soviets. The second approach builds its fences around US interests and lets the USSR do what it wants - within reason - elsewhere. Heck, why let them do that? The answer is "means." Gaddis stresses the point that US means are not unlimited. The US must balance means and ends and this leads to the pendulum swings.

The reasons I do not give the book the last star are: It does not cover the Carter-Reagan-Bush era and Smith over draws the magnitude of the swings. The book makes it sound like there were tremendous differences between the various administrations and does not pay enough attention to the essential consistency of US Cold War strategy. Smith acknowledges this in a retrospective on his own book available at the Hoover Institute web site.

Strategies of Containment, by John Lewis Gaddis, is a description of the evolving strategy of containment that was the basis of US policy toward the Soviet Union from 1946 through 1989. Gaddis traces the concept of containment from its inception by George F. Kennan through the modifications applied by five administrations and assesses the strengths, weaknesses, and effectiveness of each version. This book is more than another chronology of the cold war; it provides deep insights into strategic thinking and is essential reading for any serious student of the cold war. Here's a brief summary:

Kennan's Original Doctrine of Containment

* Identify and defend vital interests based on the centers of industrial strength - Britain, Western Europe, Japan -don't try to defend the entire world.
* Use all instruments of power: economic, diplomatic, political, and cultural power as well as military power. Rebuilding the economic vitality of the above areas is a high priority.
* Seek to divide the communist world. Our primary adversary is the Soviet Union. Other communist countries, if not actively supporting Soviet policy, may be led to serve as quasi-allies by depriving the Soviets of their support.
* General war with the Soviets is unlikely, so we can afford to take risks. We can limit our defense spending and not try to defend the world. A point defense of our vital interests is probably adequate.
* Define threats in light of US vital interests, not in terms of Soviet capabilities

Truman and NSC-68

* The policies articulated in NSC-68 moved toward a perimeter defense covering the entire world rather than a point defense of vital interests.
* Primary emphasis was switched to military power and to the entire spectrum of war
* US interests were redefined in response to perceived threats (anything that is threatened must be an interest).
* US strategy became based on a symmetric response to threats - responding in the same time, place, and with the same means as the adversary (e.g., the Korean War).

Eisenhower, Dulles, and the New Look

* Eisenhower's guiding philosophy was that defense is not just defeating the enemy - it is the preservation of our economic and political systems.
* Spending too much on defense could destroy these systems by leading to either inflation or the imposition of autocratic controls. He reduced the defense budget by 33% from Truman's last year and held it at about that level for eight years.
* Alliances relied on allies for ground forces with the US providing Air and Naval support.
* The nuclear threat became the cornerstone of deterrence across the spectrum of conflict - with goal of avoiding war - in belief that any war was all too likely to escalate to nuclear.
* Asymmetric response to threats - response need not be in same place or using same methods as Soviet threat
* Anti-colonial Conundrum: The communists are fomenting wars of national liberation while the US is trying to rebuild Europe (the colonial powers). If the US backs decolonization, it undermines the European allies it is trying to rebuild. If the US backs the colonial powers, it loses any chance of support from the colonies. The Soviets really put us in a no-win position on this issue.

Kennedy, Johnson, and Flexible Response

* Kennedy and Johnson return to NSC-68 reasoning by lowering threat of nuclear response and replaced it with flexible response, requiring a direct, symmetric response to threats - a respond in same time and place using the same means.
* These administrations applied a circular logic: Threats create interests which demand responses which require capabilities even where no interest previously had been identified. This was articulated in the "bear any burden, pay any price" rhetoric.
* This strategy necessitated greater reliance on military response versus economic, political, etc which increased demands on the defense budget.
* Kennedy abandoned Eisenhower's commitment to a balanced budget and relied on Keynesian fiscal policy to stimulate the economy. Spending was predicated on the potential of the economy rather than its actual performance. Lack of budgetary constraints led to inability to prioritize, to distinguish the essential from the peripheral, the feasible from the infeasible which encouraged more "bear any burden, pay and price' reasoning because it wasn't real money.
* Flexible response led to graduated escalation in Viet Nam which became "never enough to defeat the enemy, just enough to prolong the war". Stakes were repeatedly raised to prevent the humiliation of a defeat but this only made the eventual defeat more humiliating.
* Calibrated escalation yielded the initiative to the enemy - allowed him to define the terms of conflict. Deterrence can be made effective only if the adversary can be made to doubt that he can retain control of the situation. Taking the nuclear option away encouraged adversaries to call our bluff.

Nixon, Kissinger and Détente

* Nixon and Kissinger moved the US government from a bi-polar to a multi-polar world view by positing the existence of five significant power centers: US, USSR, Western Europe, China, and Japan. They recognized that these five power centers were far from equal. Only the US and USSR were superpowers able to exert substantial influence via military, economic, political, or diplomatic means. This strategy was a return to the balance of power envisioned by Kennan.
* In the military arena, they focused on sufficiency rather than superiority over the Soviet Union and sought to persuade Brezhnev that a similar policy would be in his country's best interest as well. Sufficiency won the logical argument over superiority because the latter invariably provoked the other side into matching every military advance, producing and endless and unwinnable arms race.
* Conceptually, Kissinger and Nixon changed the country's strategic definition of US interests and threats to those interests. For most of the interval between Kennan and Nixon-Kissinger, the US strategic view had started with the USSR, its capabilities and intentions, then identified the impact these capabilities could have. These impacts became viewed as threats and US interests were defined as anything thus threatened. Nixon and Kissinger reversed the logical flow, much as Kennan did, starting with the identification of US interests, independent of any adversary. They then identified as an adversary an entity with capability and intent to harm these interests.
* Again returning to Kennan's approach, Nixon-Kissinger sought to use negotiations to influence Soviet behavior. They took a long-term approach to negotiations, discarding the tendency of previous administrations from Roosevelt on to use negotiations and agreements with the Soviets for domestic political purposes. They discarded the approach of seeking agreements on specific areas where they could be reached and adopted a strategy of linkage - maintaining that Soviet unwillingness to negotiate in good faith on military and strategic issues of importance to the US would result in US refusal to accommodate Soviet desires for economic and trade relations and recognition of the post war division of Europe.
* The next step in the Nixon-Kissinger strategy was to seek an accommodation with China to reduce US-Chinese tensions and, thereby, free China to take a more assertive stance in its own dealings with the USSR. This was a return to Kennan's goal of dividing communism and redefined our prime enemy as the Soviet Union

Reagan

Reagan continued the return to Kennan's original concept of containment:
* Adopt an asymmetric strategy - don't let the enemy determine the time, place, and terms of conflict
* Apply economic, political, diplomatic, and moral power more than military power. A prime example was his Berlin speech: "Mr. Gorbachev! Tear down this wall!" He put the Soviets in the same kind of no-win position that they had inflicted on Eisenhower over colonialism in the 1950s by setting the Eastern Europeans at odds with the Kremlin.
* He recognized that Soviet system was bankrupt financially, intellectually, morally and turned up the pressure until it collapsed.
* Reagan was also lucky. Kennan had hoped to transform the Soviet Union with the help of a new generation of Russian leaders. Gorbachev turned out to be the leader Kennan had hoped for. He and Reagan together ended the cold war and transformed the Soviet Union from a totalitarian system to one that might have evolved into a more liberal one had the 1991 coup d'état not destroyed it first.

This book was required reading in my high school biology class, and I loved it. It is very readable, so you don't even realize you are learning about science and the scientific method. And the cartoons are priceless!

Title: To Know A Fly
Author: Vincent G. Dethier
Publisher: Holden Day; New Ed (June 1963)
Paperback: 119 pages
ISBN: 0070165742
Language: English

The complexity and simplicity of the "fly" has been ingeniously revealed to readers of all ages and breadth of scientific knowledge in Vincent G. Dethier's To Know A Fly. While the general reader may not be attracted to a book about flies due to the associated cultural stigma that brands flies as disgusting, ugly, useless pests this book brings attention to their value in regards to the advancement of scientific research.
To Know a Fly is a painless approach to the nature and value of the scientific method with the capability of exciting even the non-scientist. The employment of creative yet simple experiments are conveyed with both humor and wit. While trying to explain the importance of experimental controls Dethier tells a story of a man who believed he had trained a flea to jump. The man prepares an experiment where he progressively removes different appendages. First the feelers are removed and when the man requests "jump" the flea jumps. He continues to remove different parts and the flea continues to jump on command. Eventually only the flea's hind legs remain at which point he removes them and the flea fails to respond to the command. The man concludes that fleas hear with their hind legs. This statement is of course silly yet a great illustration that if experimental controls had been in place a more accurate conclusion could have been generated.
As the author artfully leads the reader on a journey of wonder exploring the many idiosyncrasies of fly, the reader is presented with many simple experiments that can be preformed at home. For example, in one experiment the reader is guided to answer the question: Do flies taste with their feet? First the fly is frozen in the freezer to immobilize him and then swiftly attached at the wings to a pencil that has been coated with hot candle wax. The fly is then lowered so that his feet touch the top of a bowl of water - if the fly is thirsty he will lower his proboscis. When he is done he will retract the proboscis. If the fly's feet are then lowered into a bowl of sugar-water he will quickly extend his proboscis and when quickly dipped into the water again he will retract the proboscis. I'm looking forward to trying some of these experiments myself once the snow melts and I can actually find some flies.
In addition to wondering if flies taste with their feet Dethier asks and answers some other silly yet curious questions, throughout the text, concerning fly behavior and physiology such as: Does the fly land on the ceiling by executing a half roll or an inside loop? To which Dethier reveals the answer is quite interesting. Flies actually hover below the ceiling, reach up above their bodies and attach their front legs to the ceiling and then flip their body over and attach the other legs. A more complicated question presented in the text is: What mechanism causes a fly to select different proteins at particular stages in life? Dethier not only provides several possibilities to explain this phenomenon but also suggests possible experiments to test these hypotheses.
Dethier asserts that the acquisition of fancy equipment and a college degree may help foster a great scientist but that there are two essentials: an insatiable curiosity about life and an experimental organism. He asserts that flies are the ideal experimental organism made up of over 50,000 species. However, today, 44 years after the publishing of this book, there are over 100,000 known species of flies. The validity of some facts in this book can be questioned due to the major advancements in technology that have taken place in the last 50 years. It is recommended that the information in this book be used as a guide rather than as a reference book for it is much too old and out of date.
However due to his credibility it is likely that information in this book was presented accurately based on the current information at the time it was written because Dr. Vincent G. Dethier was a prominent insect physiologist, research entomologist and an expert in his field. He wrote over 170 scientific papers and 15 scientific books of which To Know A Fly and several other books that were written for individuals that did not have a scientific background one of which, Crickets & Katydids: Concerts and Solos, won the John Burroughs Medal for distinguished Nature Writing
Dethier's common sense approach to science makes it enjoyable for anyone with a curiosity for the way the world works. This would be a great book for students starting out in science or students with an aversion to science because it is presented in a humorous tone with interesting antidotes to keep the readers attention. Because this book was written for a non-science audience there is not a lot of technical language among the 14 short chapters making this book easily read within two sittings.
From start to finish there are intertwined stories, experiments, facts, observations, cartoons, questions, and even excerpts from plays. This compilation of different types of writing within one book allows the reader to not only walk away with some noteworthy facts about the fly but also insight into the mind of a scientist. In addition, the simplicistic manner in which the information is presented is capable of provoking thought in even the most advanced scientists.

I assigned this little gem of a book to my psychology students when I was teaching at Antioch College in the late 1960's. I am now asking the teachers who are offering a Science and Math Summer Camp for Alaska Native middle school students to read it, to re-ignite their sense of the fun and excitement of scientific inquiry. Truly a timeless book, it is similar to "The Little Prince" in its capacity to stay in one's thoughts for decades.

An absolute classic little book that uses humor and cartoons to illustrate the joys of science and the scientific method. Perfect for students from junior high through university. I only wish it was still in print so I could assign it for the students in my animal behavior lab course.

"To Know a Fly" is very well known among researchers in the life sciences, but almost completely unknown to the general reading public. That's a great pity, as this is one of the clearest and wittiest books ever written about how science is actually done. Dethier does a superb job in conveying the excitement of discovery, even in as mundane a subject as the common housefly.

Amidst entertaining passages describing how to anethesize a fly (pop it in in the freezer) or make fly scapels (break up razor blades) or surgical probes (drop dressmaker's pins on the floor) you'll learn, in passing, a lot about the neurophysiology of the fly.

If you're student in the life sciences, you owe it to yourself to hunt down a copy of this book. If you're a reader with even a casual interest in science, grab this one if you come across a copy.

There is no information on how much sugar is in anything in this book, it's lumped in with carbs but I want to count sugar specifically. Otherwise this would be an amazing book.

I purchased this book on the advice of a friend who has diabetes. It is great for making careful eating and food shopping choices. I highly recommend it. I can use it when making a shopping list or choosing meals out in a restaurant.

Very informative, has helped alot with my eating out. Didn't realize how many calories foods have.

I have to watch my starch and sodium intake-This book was a great reference. Especially because it listed alot of the brand names. It has saved me alot of time reading labels. I just wish it were bigger -large print with a binder binding. The paperback is handy for my purse, but I loose my place alot, and have alot of post-it note markers.

This book is endorsed by The American Diabetes Assn. & The American Dietetic Assn. It should also be endorsed by The American Heart Assn. Not only does it help give the reader information needed for a diabetic, it also gives information needed for a person with heart disease.
My husband has diabetes, high cholesterol, quadruple bypass, heart disease, stroke, 100% occluded carotid artery on one side and 60-70% occluded on the other side, just to mention a FEW of his problems.
This Guide not only addresses the diabetes & carbohydrate issue, but also addresses the cholesterol issue. I use it in conjunction with several Diabetes/Cholesterol Cookbooks. For every item, 11 columns of information as follows are listed: Serving Size, Calories, grams of Carbs, grams of Fat, % Calories of Fat, grams of Saturated Fat, mg. of Cholesterol, mg. of Sodium, grams of fiber, grams of Protein, and # of Servings/Exchanges.
The foods are grouped according to category. There are 28 categories. The categories are presented in a logical, systematic way, making this book an easy reference guide for a clueless novice like me.
I highly recommend this book not only for diabetics but for people with heart disease, for people on Weight Watchers diet and especially for the rest of us making up the majority of America who are overweight.
According to John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for Human Nutrition, by the year 2015 ---- that's only 7 YEARS FROM NOW ---- 75% of American adults will be overweight, 41% will be obese and nearly 24% of U.S. children or adolescents will be overweight or obese.
In 2004, 32% of Americans were obese. Forty years ago, in 1964, only 13% of Americans were obese.
At risk are women ages 20 - 34 years old, regardless of race or ethnicity; 80% of black women age 40 and above are overweight while 50% are obese.
Wake up, America and do it now, not 7 years from now. The Diabetes Carbohydrate & Fat Gram Guide, 3rd Edition, used as a starting point gives you basic information needed BEFORE you go to the grocery store. Buy a few good cookbooks in addition to this book you're good to go.
This book gives you 4 meal-planning approaches: carb counting, fat gram counting, food exchange system and calorie counting. So if one approach confuses you, you have other options. What a deal!
Buy the book. Use it. Don't end up like my husband.

[A review of the SECOND EDITION, 2005.]

In the last 15 years, GPS has moved from an expensive and specialised application to a mass consumer market. There are numerous books on GPS; mostly directly at that mass readership. These typically concern how to use a device with a GPS receiver.

By contrast, this book is meant for the engineer who has to design such a device. It is a compendium of technical papers covering many aspects you are likely to need. And undoubtedly some you won't, which should be reassuring. Because it means that you do not have to read all of this book for it to be useful.

The sensitivity of the GPS satellites and the resultant GPS ground resolution is amazing, as can be appreciated from some of the papers in the book. Due mostly to the stability of the satellites' orbits and their onboard atomic clocks. Chapter 7 describes how GPS requires corrections due to Einstein's Theory of General Relativity! Not just Special Relativity. As a physicist, I found this fascinating. GPS is perhaps the first field where General Relativity is used, not to be tested, but as providing a necessary quantitative model for getting correct results. Akin to how Newton's Equations have been used for 300 years in ballistics. Granted, most readers will be engineers, who might find GR a trifle exotic.

The book also has good coverage of the Russian GLONASS system. Perhaps for those who also want to use this for redundancy. Or to combine the signals from this with GPS for enhanced resolution.

I've been an engineer and PM working with GPS and GPS systems since the inception of GPS in the mid-80s. While employed by a major DOD research lab I was fortunate enough not only to have access to practically every GPS book and article available, but I also had the opportunity to meet many of the key people responsible for the design and development of the system (many of whom contributed to this text). From system design to receiver architecture, this is by far the best general reference I have found on GPS.

If you are looking at the first edition, please note that the publisher plans to issue a second edition in December 2005.

This is a great book to read if you plan on developing any type of GPS tracking system. While the book covers the the basics, you'll need some further resources on interfacing GPS receivers and such hardware to real-world devices.

An interesting article entitled "Tracking a Vehicle With GPS" can be read at www.closerworlds.com

A lot of mobile solutions are soon to hit the market such as mobile phones using GSM or GPRS to track a person. This book will help to understand how it all fits together. It would have been nice if the book could have touched on how older communication systems like VHF radios can transmit GPS data. For that you'll have to visit www.closerworlds.com or some other website with such resources.

I'm an aerospace professional that is very close to the GPS system. This book is one of the best in depth references that I could recomend. I am not a novice and this text may intimidate some.

If you have never read any of the slave narratives, get this book as a start. The slave narratives written down in the 30s are amazing in the insight they give the reader. This is a reasonable selection. (There are many, many, more.)

Thanks to this book, I look at my people, Black people, in a deeper dimension. A lot of what we do today, whether food or clothes, comes from what was forced upon us in slavery. Black slave families torn apart, is the reason why TODAY, we Black people are family.

Extremely enlightening. First person acounts of the daily lives of real slaves in an undramatized style.

This is one of the most startling yet enlightening books I have ever read. Remembrances, recollections and memories of ex-slaves were gathered by Mr. Yetman and reproduced unedited (except for clarity) as a project developed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Written in the 1930's when a few very elderly slaves were still living and taken directly from them, the reader gets a true sense of the inhumanity of slavery.

Althugh some slaves were treated decently (I cannot say "kindly" - that word didn't exist when it came to slaves), most were simply a product or asset on a plantation or farm.

Families were ripped apart and sold at the owner's whim - never to see brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers again.

Husbands and wives suffered the same fate.

Many were starved and beaten. Many had no place to sleep at night.

It was forbidden for them to learn to read.

The treatment, tortures and torments these poor souls endured will break the hardest of hearts.

This was not just a "Southern" way of life. There were Northerners equally guilty of these crimes against humanity.

There is simply no way to describe the less-than-human conditions that slaves endured except to read their travails for yourself.

We owe a great debt of gratitude to Mr. Yetman for preserving these remembrances of "our eternal shame".

I feel that this should be required reading in schools. And included in some way in the test for citizenship.

The book is slim and the memoirs are short and quickly read.

Although it is revolting, slavery is part of our American heritage and
every American should know that slavery was our legacy of dishonor" and will foreveer remain our eternal regret.

Norman Yetman has done every researcher of African American history a great service by his splendid compilation in "When I Was a Slave." Yetman used a precise formula for inclusion and/or exclusion in order to compile these narratives out of more than 3,000 interviews performed by the WPA in the 1930s. They are clearly representative of the entire 3,000, while at the same time of greater length and providing more detail than the 2,900 others.

Here the reader hears first-hand the voices of the ex-enslaved African American--telling his or her story with startling imagery and amazing detail. This is a one-of-a-kind collection well worth buying, reading, and re-reading.

Reviewer: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., is the author of Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction , Spiritual Friends: A Methodology of Soul Care And Spiritual Direction, and Soul Physicians.

'Advanced Excel for Scientific Data Analysis' is one of those niche books that is absolutely the standard in the field. Warning/fact #1 is that this books is NOT NOT NOT for the every day regular Excel user. Repeat, this book is NOT for you. Jam-packed full of mathematical equations without a high amount of screen shots, this book is for mathematicians, physicists, econometrics people, statisticians or anyone that needs to go way way past the normal 'AVG' and 'SUM' functions found in Microsoft Excel. This is not light reading and its about as pinpointed to a specific audience as can be.

If you are a power Excel user go buy this book immediately and you will learn how to release its power better than ever before!!

***** HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION

Do you need a spreadsheet tool to analyze experimental data? If you do, then this book is for you! Author Robert De Levie, has written an outstanding book on advanced Excel that shows you how to conduct the numerical analysis of experimental data, such as are usually encountered in the physical sciences.

De Levie, begins by describing some of the standard mathematical methods, such as numerical integration and differentiation, and how to perform these most accurately on the spreadsheet. Then, the author examines precision--with random fluctuations and their reduction or removal. Next, he shows you how to apply the least squares methods to polynomials in the independent variable x, and to multivariable functions. The author continues by describing the nonlinear least squares method, where one compares a given data set with a model expression that depends on one or more numerical parameters.
In addition, he also deals with the application of Fourier transformation in numerical data analysis, rather than instrumentation, where it is often built in. Then, the author discusses the use of time-dependent signals. He also describes particular types of errors: The algorithmic deviations caused by replacing a differential equation by an approximation thereof. Next, the author will show you how to copy spreadsheet data into a macro, manipulate them, and return the result to the spreadsheet. He continues by looking at some common mathematical operations, often encountered in scientific data analysis, and their numerical implementations on the spreadsheet. In addition, the author shows you how to extend the set of tools available for matrix operations in Excel. Finally, he focuses on three types of spreadsheet-related errors: those that are rather easy to make on a spreadsheet, those that result from Excel's adherence to the IEEE-754 protocol, and those that are in hidden in Excel.

The author of this most excellent book has made a great effort to make it as broadly useful as possible to the reader, and to incorporate examples from different areas. More importantly, the author believes that this book offers instead, an attempt at the synthesis of different areas, thus illustrating how many numerical problems can be fitted comfortably in the convenient, user-friendly format of the spreasheet.

Every modern scientist and engineer relies upon some type of software for the analysis of data. Many software programs are available in the market today and each seems to have its own unique code and learning curve. In the PC world, perhaps no other software for data analysis is more common and easier to learn than Microsoft Excel. Many high school students are already using Excel for their homework assignments. All of these features make Excel an attractive analytical tool for scientists and engineers at university and afterwards. All such tools need reliable tutorials in order to train users to harness their full capabilities. Most available literature on Excel is introductory in nature, and therefore not appropriate for advanced applications. Robert de Levie's "Advanced Excel for scientific data analysis" helps fill in this void.

Prospective readers should be aware that this text is not appropriate for beginners. The author clearly alerts readers to this point in the preface. This is also readily apparent from browsing the Table of Contents. I was skeptical at first with some of the more advanced applications such as solving differential equations in Excel. Many scientists use higher-level programming languages such as Mathematica and Matlab to solve differential equations. While such software packages are quite powerful, they also have steep learning curves. I previously thought that Excel is not capable of solving differential equations, but Chapter 7 turned me into a believer.

The major emphasis of the examples is on least-squares and Fourier transformation. Chapter 2 does a nice job of contrasting Excel's three available routines for linear regression. The author does a very thorough job showing how Excel can be effectively used for Fourier transformation, and gives many examples. However, some other useful mathematical topics are either covered minimally or omitted entirely. For example, I was disappointed by the lack of a routine to calculate eigenvalues and eigenvectors. Excel's array structure makes it well-suited to linear algebra and the author should consider adding more on this topic in a future edition.

One of the greatest strengths of the book is its detailed coverage of Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). Advanced data analysis require the use of special user-defined functions, and VBA allows one to extend Excel capabilities to satisfy this need. Unfortunately, VBA code sometimes conflicts with Excel code. For example, the square root operation in Excel is SQRT, but in VBA is SQR. While the author certainly has no control over this, he does an excellent job alerting the reader to these pitfalls.

Chemists definitely need a reliable tool for the analysis of experimental data. de Levie's book covers most of the techniques we use in our lab. The book clearly demonstrates how Excel is not just a convenient tool for plotting data from the stock market or keeping track of students' grades, but a powerful tool for scientific data analysis. This book is highly rercommended for all students and research workers in the areas of analytical and physical chemistry.

If I had written this book I think I would have called it Scientific Excel rather than Advanced Excel. To be sure, the book is certainly for advanced Excel users, but it won't help you do an advanced business application.

You'd best have some knowledge about Excel before starting this one. There's a brief survey of Excel at the beginning that starts off comparing a spreadsheet to an accountant's ledger. That's pretty basic. Anyone with any Excel experience at all can follow the first three pages. On page four he is talking about making a thousand point plot with random numbers, normal distribution -- no longer something from Excel for Dummies. By page 5 he's calculating averages and standard deviations. By the end of this Survey chapter he's talking about the accuracy of the calculations performed by Excel.

Subsequent chapters discuss various types of mathematical manipulation that are often needed in the analysis of scientific data.

There are three chapters on Least Squares. This is the fitting of a curve to collected data so that the trends might be more easily visualized.

There is a chapter on Fourier Transformations, which is the probably the most frequently used analysis tool when working in signal processing. Geophysical seismic data, radar receivers, cell phone systems are all processed primarily using Fourier Transforms. This kind of data is of course too voluminous for Excel, but the techniques used here would be ideal for quite a number of laboratory applications.

A couple of chapters cover convolution, deconvolution, and time-frequency analysis as well as Numerical integration of ordinary differential equations.

All of these processing tasks are done using macros. These are described in the book, or can be downloaded from the author's website -- www.bowdoin.edu/~rdelevie/excellaneous/. This web site also includes some additional macros that enhance Excel's computationability when handling numbers of higher precision.

The final four chapters of the book are on writing your own or modifying existing macros, with an orientation to scientific analysis.

I consider this to be almost a mandatory book for anyone interested in using Excel to analysis scientific data.

This book does not give much info on Excel itself. I think the book is outstanding in that it opens one's eyes to using Excel for tasks like non-linear least squares fitting of data to models, signal deconvolution, etc. In retrospect, that one could use Excel for this should not be too surprising, but I have found myself resorting to MathCAD for many of these things when a solution implemented in Excel would have been easier to share with colleagues since Excel is more available. There is a bias towards biological/chemical examples, but nothing too egregious.

Wow!! No one should walk into the AP Spanish Language Exam without having studying and prepped with these practices.

I have a large collection of books for learning spanish and this book turned out to be one of the very best of them. I know that it is a book angled toward preparing students for the AP exam but
it just so happens to be one of the most user friendly, well designed and comprehensive books for learning spanish out on the market today. I am an advanced college spanish student and therefor I didn't get the book to prepare for the exam. I got it because it offers a well structured and comprehensive review as well as many helpful drills and practice tests. I think a book structured like this is probably the best way to study a language on your own. So to all you who may have been put off by the fact that it is an exam preparation book please do yourselves a favor and buy this book.

Absolutely the best book around. The subject review is a big exhaustive, but well worth your money. Going through the entire book will guarantee you a 4 or a 5!

First, I should say that I didn't actually use the book as a review, but my teacher did use two of the practice exams (not sure how many come with it in total) in class. We did one full length exam on a Saturday morning (I got a 5) and there was another one that we did in sections over a few days. This morning, I took the real College Board AP Spanish Language exam and it was a little different. Not completely different, mind you-REA got all of the basics right-but something about the tone and feel of the exam was different. The reading passages weren't actual narratives, but factual writings, two of them were reprinted from newspapers. On the listening section all of the accents in this book were from Spain (use of "ceceo") but none of them were on the actual test. This isn't a bad test, but some of the other review books are probably a little better. Again, I did not use this for review of grammar or look at the book at all, just the practice tests.

I really enjoyed using this book as a form of supplementary preparation for taking the AP Spanish Exam. I found it to be an excellent source of information for all of the material covered on the exam, and some of the practices excercises actually more than prepared me for the material on the exam. The audio CDs were essential in preparing me for the oral component of the exam, and made studying more fun. I Am grateful to the authors of the book, since their work helped me to score a 5 on the exam. I would strongly recommend this book to test takers.

I was looking for a book that deals with details about regression analysis, simple or multiple, and advanced topics of statistical. I found it!

I recommend to buy this book. It's a excellent book!

Applied Linear Statistical Models

As a PhD student in management, I found this book (5th edition) to have the perfect balance between clarity and rigor. If you are looking for a book that covers both the theory and application of linear regression methods, this is a terrific reference. It is not a light book, in content or weight, so be prepared to work through it slowly. I agree with other reviewers that it is not a book you can jump into without either an intro to stats or a good professor to take you through it (and I had both, which helped a lot). However, the time spent reading this book is well worth it. I read it cover to cover...a first for any math book I've owned (and I've had a lot of math classes...but none of it ever stuck). The chapters present information in layers, and if you still want more detail (for you PhD students in stats and finance), the footnotes are excellent. I bought it as a course text, but I have returned to this book many times. (You will get more out of the book if you are familiar with a little bit of basic matrix algebra.)

This textbook is excellent. The examples are clear and are very valuable in connecting the theory to reality. The assigned text for my regression course, Introduction to Regression Modeling by Abraham and Ledolter, is horrible. I ended up using the Neter text to learn the material for the regression course as well as the design of experiment course for which it was assigned. I know I will keep the Applied Statistical Models forever as a highly valuable reference book. I highly recommend it.

This book was a required text for my Data Analysis course. I am not a stats person and have had only a rudimentary introduction to the subject, so I was surprised to find that this is a very approachable book. It is A TOME, but only because the authors are so thorough in their explanations. If you have seen hypothesis testing and are comfortable with the normal distribution, you will be able to face this book. If you are not, be aware that the exercises in the first chapter refer to the prerequisite material not covered by the book.

After the introductory chapter, the authors gave just the right amount of theory to explain the topic at hand and give extensive footnotes for further information. Lots of graphs and example software output are included, all very helpful. I found the text to be well-organized, with coverage given to explanation and examples of each topic.

My one complaint with the book is that it included no instruction on how to work with software programs to get the desired results, so if you are entirely new to the area and do not know how to use Statistix (which has a thorough and self-explanatory help system), R, Minitab, and SAS (which do not), going will be rough. One of the other reviewers mentioned a SAS guide. You may need it if your professor does not demonstrate software use in class.

Second year Ph.D. student in Statistics at Iowa State University

I can't think of a single better non-theoretic linear models book. You need to have at least one semester of undergraduate statistics under your belt to follow this book, but it's useful and readable for everyone else. Undergraduates, graduates, professionals...whoever. Given its non-theoretic approach and extremely clear explanations, it can be read by undergraduates with only a minimal background in statistics, but it is comprehensive enough to be useful to anyone. There is no better linear models reference. The textbook is thick (almost 1400 pages) and covers most linear models topics in great detail including regression, ANOVA, and analysis of covariance. My only disappointment regarding content was the rather slim coverage of random and mixed effects models and GLM's. On a positive note, the book provides excellent coverage of diagnostics and remedial measures, which is very often skimmed over in linear models books. Additionally, it has exceptionally well-written, though fairly brief, coverage of model selection and validation, another topic that is a little lacking in many linear models books.

The explanations and choice of exercises are both well-done. The explanations and examples are both clear and thorough, although I would have definitely preferred to see more graphs. It's the kind of topic where visual illustration greatly increases understanding. Generally, the exercises seem a little bit too easy, especially for graduate students, but they do mix in a few harder problems and they pick good, non-contrived problems.

Whether you want a linear models book for learning purposes or if you just want a reference, this book is an excellent choice.

In an ocean of business books, Beyond e stands out as a prize catch. Too often, today's "gurus" write books that trumpet their personal accomplishments conveniently leaving out practical applications to specific business category needs. If we want real solutions, the cost raises from a $25 book to $25,000 per day consultation fee. Steve Diorio gives it all away in his book. Beyond e can also be called beyond best practices. He is the one guru I would invite to help my organization apply new technologies to our sales and marketing efforts. Read the book, pick up the phone and give him a call.

Steve Diorio has written a meaty and relevant book about selling technologies. In an age when there is so much E hype and fluff that only serves to confuse, we needed a book that was born from practical, everyday consulting and research in the offices of the best companies. The salient ideas about which Mr. Diorio expounds are absolutely critical for growth and profit. They carry with them an imperative that to ignore the protocols of this newest e technology will lead to peril and a fatal falling behind the power curve.

I read the excellent reviews in which professors recommended Beyond E. They were impressive. But, this book was written for executives and senior managers who have the very life of their corporations in the palm of their hands. It is obvious that Mr. Diorio has spent considerable time with his clients and sweat blood with them to achieve the best e-practices in marketing, promotion and selling.

I believe the book is about stretching the IT and Internet sales budgets so that busineses can grow at an accellerated rate. The book Beyond E is truly futuristic because it clearly outlines what the best companies have been doing and what the leaders of tomorrow (the followers of our leaders today) will be doing in late 2002 and in 2003. The blueprint is drawn up, the creation of dynamic selling technologies has been built, but, sadly, few understand it, and even fewer have actually implemented it. Companies like Dell Computer, IBM, Charles Swab, Amazon and e-Bay are only a few of these futuristic leaders that Mr. Diorio writes about. They "get it". How long will it take others? Mr. Diorio lays out in detail what needs to be done right now.

Mr. Diorio is like a drum major for executives to immediately order "the engineering of sustainable technology innovations into the sales and marketing process", to quote Stve Diorio. The traditional software analysts and programmers in companies are not prepared for the accelerated rate at which customer service and marketing creativity must be coded to stay abreast of changing customer needs and wants.

It is about knowing the mind of the customer and changing systems at every level of the company so there can be real-time change. I got a distinct sense of urgency in reading the book. As a management consultant, I now feel driven to alert my clients that "getting it" is urgently critical. Steve Diorio virtually screams out at us that positive results can be realized only from the implementation right now of dynamic marketing, selling and customer service e-systems.

Mr. Diorio understands how important all of these ideas are in order to create cutting edge business models and viable ways to turn IT chaos into order and opportunity. I am glad I read the book. I've recommended it to many of my clients and colleagues.

Finally a book that doesn't force-feed you candy-coated customer experience stories that are interesting but don't tell us anything we do not already know.

Having read most of the more celebrated sales and marketing books of the last decade, this one actually has some substance behind it. I was thoroughly impressed by the amount of research and experience that stands behind this book. Instead of providing a few nice anecdotal cases about customer-centricity or customer loyalty, this book provides a comprehensive view of how technology is changing sales and marketing practices throughout an organization and across all brands. Most importantly, it provides you with actionable insights into modern sales and marketing best practices.

If you have been as frustrated as I have with the superficiality of recent sales and marketing books, then you should definitely give this one a try.

Having taught a variety of marketing courses at the undergraduate, graduate and executive levels, I am always looking for books that present the ways in which new technology (and the Internet in particular) are affecting market relationships. Often these texts are full of exaggerrated "war stories" or can be easily summarized into a few general points. Steve Diorio's book, in contrast, is current, meaty and well substantiated. He not only provides several examples of recent successes and failures but synthesizes this new information into the age old framework of serving the customer and firm by adding value to both. I highly recommend this book to any marketing professional as well as any professor who wishes to bring their marketing strategy or course content into the 21st century.

Steve Diorio, outlines in 12 ways how technology is transforming the way the customer and the company will interact in the future. He has done an outstanding job of making sense out of all the e hype over the last three years and makes clear what works and what fails as e business becomes more of a digital business strategy. I highly recommend his book to any executive that is thinking about building a sustainable business strategy.

This is a great commentary. In an expository manner, he explains each book of the Bible in detail. Wiersbe gives background information on topics that help make each passage more clear. It is always beside my Bible when I study! I highly recommend it.

I have found Wiersbe's commentaries very helpful in my study of the New Testament and in particular our recent study of Revelation - the Commentary on Revelation had many very helpful thoughts which I found very useful as I prepared Bible studies for my group.

I have not completed reading these books but so far they are exceeding my expectations. Great books for anyone wanting a greater appreciation of the word of GOd and seeking to know him(God) better.

As a Bible college graduate and youth pastor, I could not do without this commentary set. Wiersbe uses everday illustrations and gives a good explanation of the text. However as with many commentators, some difficult passages are skipped.

I use these all the time in my studies. Wiersbe writes at a level anyone can understand and provides many insights that his years of study and devotion have provided.
I would recommend both volumes to anyone wanting to gain a deeper insight into the New Testament.