Research Books

The service that I received when I ordered this book was outstanding. Materials were in perfect condition, just as advertised. I have always been pleased when I use Amazon. I use Amazon very frequently, all through my undergraduate classes and now into my graduate classes. The savings over the past several years have been incredible...

Many books have made efforts - more or less successful - to "debunk" the complex topic of statistics. This book avoids condescension through humor and dryness by offering real life examples. At the same time, Dr. Keller's discussions delve deep enough into the subjects to provide a genuine level of understanding for his readers.

And for those with a liking for Haiku, the writing is delightful for its own sake.

I am a young professor who teaches statistics to sociology and nursing majors at a Washington, DC area university. "The Tao of Statistics" was the first book of which I ever received an unsolicited evaluation copy. I am so glad I did. After I made this book required reading grades have risen among the students who actually read it. The most telling incident was when I over heard the captain of one of the athletic teams telling several teammates in the class, "Dude, you gotta read this book. It explains it all." If you are an instructor, require this book. If you are a student get a copy and read it.

An excellent introduction to the ways information from statistics can change the way one looks at the world. Understanding something about probability and base rates, for example, can enlighten how one interprets the presence or absence of individual events. Understanding distributions and sampling can further enlighten. The same could be said about correlations, covatriances, and statistical models. Keller's book covers only the introduction to these ideas, but does it in a nice way, and motivates readrs to continue their journey along the path he describes. A must read for persons wanting to know what statistical knowledge can and cannot do.

If you use statistics in your daily work, but are not a statistician and are always meaning to read or reread your statistics book from that one course you took or the new statistics book you ordered, but you fall asleep a couple of pages into the first chapter, then this book is for you. If you have an idea that means are not always a good measure of central tendency for a population, but you would be hard pressed to come up with the exact reason, then this is for you. This book covers all the major statistical concepts that most of us non-statisticians use (confidence intervals, correlations, regressions, etc) and makes them all understandable. Believe it or not, this statistics book is FUN to read and you will remember the delightful Haiku and the illustrations which drive each concept home. I recommend this book, ordered my own copy, and now am ordering copies for my staff.

If you are teaching at the college-level or higher, this book is full of great ideas on everything from setting the tone in the first class to assessing students. Making your classes ones they look forward to attending.

This book came recommended to me from my Professor as a valuable reference for my first year teaching college students. The books description matched the condition.

This is a must-have book for college faculty. I use it to assist new faculty in developing their teaching abilities and I found many good ideas to improve my syllabus, enhance classroom interactions and help in creating an effective program for evaluating teacher effectiveness. My only complaint is that it is hard to get--too bad that such a valuable resource can't come via overnight express!

This book is a great resource for teachers in general and college profs in particular. It presents solid, innovative pedagogical ideas in a practical context. My copy is becoming worn out from nearly constant use.

Linda has done an excellent job of compiling and explaining some of the best available techniques for teaching and survival as a professor in the modern university environment. The text is highly readable and extremely practical. I have taught for 24 years in a variety of colleges and each time I open the book I find something new to try.

This is a wonderful book! It also with Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television have inspired much of my research and thought.

Take steps towards enhancing the quality of your life - explore FlowNet and exchange ideas and experiences associated with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow theory @ http://www.flownetwork.com

Take steps towards enhancing the quality of your life - explore FlowNet and exchange ideas and experiences associated with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow theory @ http://www.flownetwork.com

This book is an exploration into the effect television has on the viewer's state of mind. The organization and style of the book read very much like a dissertation that has been reworked slightly for publication. The style of writing is very academic, and is geared to academic rather than general audiences. The first two chapters are pure literature review covering information reception and previous research about television viewing. The next chapter discusses the research methods. The main study involved a group of about 100 adults living near Chicago in the 1970s, who were asked to keep activity and mood diaries over the course of a week. The data from this study were combined with data from a number of other studies that examined television viewing habits of mostly Americans and Canadians. The remaining chapters cover various aspects of the results and discussion, including: how television fits into the scheme of leisure time, how television affects viewer's moods, how television affects family life, why some people view more than others, uses of television, television and marketing, and television and personal growth. As with a dissertation, sources are cited within the text and each chapter has extensive endnotes for further explication and references. The questionnaires used in the study are reproduced in the appendices. A full list of references is included, as well as an author index and a subject index.

So what did they find out from their study about viewers in the 1970s? First, participants in the study watched about 1.4 hours of TV each day, which represented 6.6% of the participants' total waking hours. TV viewing was the most time-consuming activity engaged in at home, and TV viewing absorbed 40% of all leisure time, or another way to look at it, 25% of all time spent at home was spent watching TV. Ninety-three percent of TV viewing occurred in one's own home. Most viewing occurred between 7:30 and 10 PM on weekdays. Twenty percent of the time, people watched TV because they had nothing better to do, giving TV the highest nothing-better-to-do ranking of major home activities including reading, eating, cooking, chores, talking, and grooming.

People tend to watch more TV when they are in a bad mood or when they just want to relax with something mindless. When compared to work, other leisure activities, or meals, participants reported that TV required the least concentration, challenge, and skill of all, and people were most passive when watching TV than when engaging in any other leisure activity. Watching TV had the lowest mood and activation ranking of fifteen common daily activities that included such items as resting, transit, and chores. When compared to sports and other leisure activities, it was found that TV required much less concentration during the activity, and that participants found it harder to concentrate after watching TV than before they began. TV viewing is quite relaxing while participants engage in it, but once they turn the set off, they tend to feel less relaxed than when they began, which is the opposite of what happens with sports and other activities. Marketers are well aware of the fact that people watch TV for relaxation and try to keep people in front of the set by offering soothing or entertaining programs rather than material that will require concentration or upset viewers. The difficulty that people have eliminating TV viewing altogether from their lives suggests that some aspects of TV viewing may be addictive.

For the most part, I found the results of the study to be quite predictable- -we all hear from many sides that TV viewing is not good for our mental health. There were a few interesting points that Kubey and Csikszentmilhalyi uncovered that weren't fully explored, however. They note that families that watch more TV tend to get along better, and posit that one possible reason for this could be that TV watching helps to diffuse tensions, as well as provide an activity whose skill level is so low that children and adults can participate in it together. The authors note that surprisingly, the most well-adjusted teenagers have the highest levels of viewing, but they point out that teenagers with problems don't tend to spend a lot of time at home, and since most TV viewing is done in the home, there is probably no cause-and-effect link between level of adjustment and TV viewing. They note that heaviest viewers tend to be women living alone and married men living with families (married women with families give up some of their potential TV viewing time to do housework). Elsewhere in the book, they note that Blacks seem to watch more than Whites, and that viewing time increases with education. I have a hunch, however, that the most educated people in their study may have been precisely those married men whose wives were doing the housework, and that their level of education was predicted by their gender, and that their gender and family status determined how much TV they watched, not their level of education. It would have been worth it to pair up people of different family status and similar educational backgrounds to see if the observation that educated people tend to watch more TV really holds water.

By now, the data from the study are quite dated, with our cable TV possibilities far out-numbering the 3 major networks of the 1970s, as well as the advent of the Internet and development of the computer game industry to compete for leisure time with TV watching. It would be quite interesting to re-do the study in light of these developments, to see how TV relates to our leisure time and mental state today.

This is one of the most intense and empirical studies of how people relate to television (not focusing on television's content), nothing judgmental here folks, the data is presented in text and charts. We get to see the surveys, the responses, we are informed of the study methods used...

Various psychological traits are measured before, during, and after television viewing in the subjects homes. Things like concentration, cheerfulness, challenge, memory, and other traits are measured at various times using a self-reporting mechanism. The merits and faults of the methods used to study the subjects are also discussed. The book is intense.

I'm sorry I can't encapsulate it better than this. The authors (Mihaly and Robert) do an extremely admirable job of presenting the information in a readable and complete format.

Again, it should be stressed that this study was empirical. No judgements are made. Content of television was not part of the study, content of the subject's psyches was.

A landmark work.

I own the affordable paperback version, and I'm glad I do because this is one of the best books out there on terrorism. Sure, the writing is a little scattered with snippets or profiles of different terrorist groups to illustrate various points, but the flow is great and the insights are just at a very high level. I particularly enjoyed how the book seems to read like a series of intelligence estimates, but this is due to the author's background, I guess. It's not only a great book on terrorism, but one that a reader may come back to time and time again to get some new insight out of it.

Within the broader framework of outlining the goals, motives and strategies of modern terrorist groups, Harmon documents some very specific examples of people, places and events.

This is not a catalog of terrorist groups or a chronology of individual terrorist acts. Rather, it is an in-depth look at the problem as a whole. Harmon uses examples from groups all over the world and in the process discredits such notions as "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."

In the chapter dealing with future threats, Harmon all but predicted the events of September 11th.

Anyone interested in a scholarly look at the terrorist threat since the end of the cold war, should read this book.

difficult subject explained in terms a non-Jesuit can understand.

The market for books on terrorism has flourished in the months following September 11th. This has been a mixed blessing. On the one hand, quality works of enduring value have had increased exposure, on the other hand we have seen a flood of books of extremely dubious merit and sensationalism. This book belongs in the first category and deserves more exposure than it has had.

Harmon (a lecturer at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College) provides a readable and wide ranging overview of his subject; with coverage of the politics and effectiveness of terrorism, terrorist groups, counter-terrorism methods and a section debunking some of the many and varied misconceptions and popular myths regarding terrorist groups. The text is scattered with thumbnail descriptions of various leading terrorist groups, terrorists and important works of literature in the terrorism canon.

This book serves as an excellent general introduction to the subject and acts as a solid foundation upon which the newcomer to the subject can build. It belongs alongside the serious academic texts on terrorism rather than the sensational journalistic mush that is now common on the shelves of mainstream book shops and yet is still readable and easy to get into.

If you only ever read one book on the general theme of terrorism you could do worse than making it this one. Undergraduate students studying terrorism should make a point of giving it a look too.

Terrorism authority and foreign correspondent Ronald Payne reviewed TERRORISM TODAY in the August 18, 2000 edition of the prestigious "TLS"--Times Literary Supplement (London). Payne calls this book "a masterly survey of the big picture of world violence" and "a comprehensive survey of what can be done to cope with the problem..." The book "provides many useful strategy recommendations which Western governments would do well to study. It also provides an up-to-date glossary of operational terrorist groups." -CCH

This is a well written book, code is easy to download, and a number of topics. All in all though, the writing is clear and easily understood so it's well worth the money...

Text mining is one of the most exciting subjects of the web, and too few books are dealing with it. This one is one of them, and it gives quite a few examples of text mining applications, like spam filters or search engine ranking algorithms. The style is easy to follow, and the concepts easy to understand given some maths background.

However, I expected more details, and a richer content overall, thus the four stars. This is still a good book.

I am a Java web/search programmer who wanted to "get into" text mining. I found this book an excellent resource for this. Text Mining is a field in which active research is still going on, and other Text Mining books I have looked at reflect this - the authors expect you to have a certain degree of mathematical background to understand what they are saying. This book explains briefly the math behind each of the approaches, but it focuses more on the algorithms that result from the math, so it is easier to read.

Of course, a side effect of this is that the approaches described are not necessarily the state of the art for solving any given problem, but once you get the basic approach to solving a problem, it is relatively easy to find and understand the documentation on the web for the more advanced approaches, since you now know what you are looking for and how it differs from your basic solution.

The book does have a (fairly long) chapter where it covers the math background necessary to get started with Text Mining. If you understand the stuff in there, you will actually be able to think up solutions to text mining problems that are unique to your own situation.

The algorithms in the book are in pseudo-code, but the book comes with a CD (or download from the author's sourceforge project textmine.sf.net) where you can see working Perl code.

Overall, I think this is one of the most useful books that I have purchased in a while. It should appeal most to programmer types who have programmed in their language(s) of choice for a while in areas other than text mining, wants to get into text mining, and doesn't want to spend a lot of time relearning high school and college math before starting off.

Software developers learn how to mine information on the Web and turn it into valuable data; but developers need to understand how data mining works. For a programmer's application-oriented review, Text Mining Application Programming is the item of choice: it reviews text data, how it's found, and how search engines locate and gather it. Next, it teaches how to build spiders to crawl the Web, how to use the information, and how to monitoring it. Perl developers will find its Perl-based code useful, but it's not necessary to know Perl to run the software herein. An excellent guide to mining the Net.

There is an old expression that half of knowing anything is knowing where to find it. And there is little more frustrating to be looking at 'My Computer' trying to find what you know you have stored in a file somewhere. Well, perhaps just as frustrating is to go to one of the search engines and try to find something that you know is there but just don't know the proper words to find it.

In this book Dr. Konchady talks about how to go find data that is in text form on your system, on your network or out on the web somewhere. It talks about search engines, but also about other techniques that can be used only by programming.

The CD that comes with the book contains several Perl software snippets that help to find named entities, parts of speech, phrases and gives a summary of text documents. This area includes developing web crawlers that can be adapted by individual users to go out and find specialized information. It further contains an Open Source software package called Text Mine that is designed for mining operations. In addition it has utilities to build and enhance Text Mine and utilities to build and manage MySQL database tables. This is an excellent book on everything from the basic hints and types through some of the mathematics that underlies text mining.

His section on the nature of an English language Question and Answer system is the best I've ever seen.

This book has everything that you could possibly want to know about Adult Contemporary music. It gives you a whole new slant on The Beach Boys, Beatles, John Lennon, George Harrison, Elvis and many many more. I've discovered hits about these artists and many more that I never knew exsisted. Highly recommened!

Billboard Books & Joel Whitburn & his Record Research team have Indeed come up with a treasure trove of AC chart INFO. This body of work is a must have for those of us who Love"Soft Rock".Or Better Still,as the Record Research motto on the back of the book says"for those who have a HEART for the Charts.Has Listings of the 200 most succesful AC Artists.This book also cross references w/ Pop Chart Information under ea.Artist.I Love This Book!I can't Wait for updates to this,It'll be Awhile!ENJOY!

As always with Joel Whitburn's Record Research books, the detail is spot on - exactly what it says on the tin. A fascinating insight into the changes that have occurred in what is considered "adult" music over 4 decades. Way back in the sixties, the phrases "easy listening" and "middle-road" were applied to what is now called the "adult contemporary" chart - that gives you a good indication as to the sort of music that generally qualified in those days.

I particularly like the fact that B-side details are also given, which seems to be the case with the latest issues of the RR singles books.

Whether or not this volume is of interest or use to you depends on what you want to use it for. If you merely want to scan it for interest and entertainment, then get the volume that addresses the Hot 100. If you need it for research purposes, or your interest goes beyond the pop charts, then this is a fabulous book.

An excellent book with tons of information and insight. It's great to see the many different types of artists who have landed on the Adult Contemporary charts and also great to see my favorite AC group the Carpenters ranked as one of the most successful of alltime.

What a great book. Almost as great as other RR books. It's always cool to see rock stars of the past like Clapton, Stewart and Billy Joel make great strides on the Adult Contemporary chart. In this book you will see how well all the pop acts have done with soft rock radio in the last 40 years. From Perry Como to Jim Brickman, from Rita Coolidge to Enya. The book even has a great section of the AC hits from 1955-early 1961.

My only complaint is that with the growing success of adult-rock music, I kind of wish Record Research would have put a special bonus Adult Top 40 section (based on research from Billboard's Adult T40 chart). It would have fit in well with this book. It may be another ten years for another revision of this book but enjoy this one while it is totally up-to-date to 2002.

An awesome story. Multiple plots all winding around today's questions and everyday struggles dealing with the realities of cancer, abortion and infertility. Strong Christian questions and bitter sweet decisions. A great read. Couldn't put it down.

I could hardly put down this book after reading the first few pages. This is an outstanding suspenseful book by a new writer. We can only hope for many more from him.

Couldn't put it down! Topical, reverent, and up to date... this novel makes you think.

Great literature should flow, from start to finish this captures your interest and flows like a river.

I recommend to anyone and everyone.

I bought this book because I recognized the name of the author as a seminary classmate of mine and so I ordered it as much out of curiosity as anything else. I am happy to report that I am now an official member of the "couldn't put it down" club. I had the luxury of reading it during the great blizzard of '03 that struck the northeast so I had a couple of days to read it while being snowed in.
The book is fast paced and it grabs you immediately. The plot brings together a wide range of elements - there is the spy/suspsense/FBI angle, the tragedy of lost love dimension, moral dilemmas, medical research and the ethical questions associated with certain types of research, and a little danger to boot. I have read a smattering of the popular Christian fiction out there, so although I don't consider myself an expert in this genre but I have read enough to know that this book is as good or better than most of the popular Christian fiction out there. I highly recommend it.

Wow! I made the mistake of taking this book on a 6 day business trip to fill up my spare time. Once I picked up the book I had to force myself to put it down to go to bed. I finished it in two evenings. Then I had to find another book to fill up my spare time.

It is a fast action detective thriller with several interesting plot twists. Mr. Delk sprinkled just enough politically incorrect humor in the book to keep me wondering when the next joke was comming. Without giving too much away it is fun to see how he constructed a story with knowledge from a number of different disciplines.

The most fascinating thing about the book, however, was Mr. Delk's developement of the characters. Most everyone in the book was far from a one dimensional character. He explores several sides of each of the main characters. I found myself learning a lot about human nature as well as being entertained.

It was one of the best books I have read in the last couple of years.

Quite an interesting read. Laurel presents her experiences into the technological world in an easy to understand, stream-of-consciousness way. She details her journey into starting a company that focuses on girl-based computer games, Purple Moon's success and eventual demise due to "outside-the-box" thinking.

Utopian Entrepreneur is both intectually and visually stimulating reading. The M.I.T. Press has paired up an author with a designer, in this case Brenda Laurel and Denise Gonzales Crisp, to create what they like to call a pamphlet. This is the first in the Mediawork Pamphlet series, which will focus on differenct aspects of our society and how technology is effecting them. Two more have been published since this one in 2001.

I don't work in the tech industry but a friend of mine referred this book to me. Laurel's message is significant to anyone interested in the betterment of planet earth. In a scant 100 pages she speaks volumes to those up against the wall that divides commercialism and art.

Like Nathan, I also know Brenda well, so my endorsement has a bias--but so does everything I say. This is one of the most enjoyable *business* books I've ever read. Not because it's short. Not because it's extremely well-written. But because it's honest, it's real and it's heartfelt. Brenda's not the type to populate her pages with catchy slogans and new paradigm models. Instead, she shares what it feels like to be an entrepreneur trying to do the right thing and make money at it. Her voice is humble, her perspective is fresh and funny, and her message is well worth considering.

First off, I'll cop to knowing Brenda Laurel, but I don't feel obligated to review this book because of it. I read the manuscript many months ago and was moved by Brenda's ablity to describe her personal experiences in a way for everyone to both enjoy and learn from. It's not a long book and it will definately leave you wanting more--not because there's not enough there but because what is there is so nice to read.

I think most of us in the tech industries--especially designers--often have conflicts about what kind of work we do vs. what kind we WISH we could do. Brenda's book is optimistic, funny, touching, and enraging at times because she describes her experiences navigating these conflicting forces. What happened to Purple Moon was a travesty and anyone who envisions building a company with any social goals in addition to making money should treat this as an important piece of research.

Note -- i tried to change this to 5 stars, because 2 years later, i still draw quite a bit from this book. the system doesn't seem to want me to change it though.

At its heart, Utopian Entrepreneur is a Purple Moon post-mortem -- what can be learned from the life and death of Rockett Movado, the spunky heroine of the Purple Moon games. Born from concerns about the technological gender gap, Purple Moon sought to build a suite of games based on solid research. Why didn't more girls play games? What are the differences in how girls and boys approach digital media? How might designers create interactive digital entertainment that would appeal to girls? Purple Moon spent months on these questions, interviewing and surveying thousands of girls. Educators, game designers, media theorists, gender scholars, or anyone looking for a good cocktail party quote will find some of these facts fascinating. Girls don't mind violence as much as a lack of good stories and characters; girls are more likely to blame themselves for computer failure than boys are. Good, useful stuff.





(...)this little gem is a bargain. As the initial book in MIT's new Mediawork pamplet series - "zines for grownups", Utopian Enterpreneur offers concise prose, compact design, and short segments that make it perfect reading for between meetings or waiting at the airport. The unique layout helps break up the text and enrich the reading experience. Pulling off such a personal book is not easy, and the graphic design definitely contributes to the book's success. At times though, the interplay among images, space, and type feels superfluous failing to add nuance or underscore the meaning of the text.



Checking it at just around 100 pages, Utopian Entrepreneur is so readable and engaging, that I only wished Laurel had more space to share more of her experiences at Purple Moon and lessons learned from the past twenty years in software design. Whether it's expanding this book, starting a new company, or helping invent a new digital industry, I, for one, am eager to see what she does next.

Written by James R. Mancham (the founding President of the Republic of Seychelles, a small island nation in the Pacific), War On America: Seen From The Indian Ocean is a cold, hard, factual look at American foreign policy and its ramifications since the 1960s, from this island nation's point of view. Covering events up to and including the September 11 terrorist attacks, War On America is a straightforward, candid, outside perspective that reveals the sometimes arbitrary and self-serving aspect of America's view toward the world, and its repercussions. Informed and informative, War On America is strongly recommended as a very insightful book and important, timely reading for students of contemporary international studies in general, and the non-specialist general reader wanting background information on how we as a nation became embroiled in a long term war upon "stateless" terrorism.

In a letter dated 31st March addressed to the author President Chirac of France wrote " It is with great interest that I have noted your analysis of the international situation against the background of your experience and wisdom. Like you I aspire that be built, from day to day, a world which is more balanced, equitable and peacful. In this way, France contribute, where ever she can, to promote priciples essential to peace and to the well being of our humanity."
Weekend Nation Seychelles 4th May 2002.

I loved your book!

It is a masterpiece of inspiration, historical relevance, and the candid reality of post modern politics.

War on America As Seen from the Indian Ocean is a must read and must be discussed handbook for every Academic Honors Program student and demands its own course within America's High Schools and Universities as a study of Global Politics, Global Economy, Global Human Rights, and the Global cry of a people through her founding President and impassioned leader...my friend, HE Sir James Mancham.

At times I cried as I walked through the pages of your experience...

Unless our nation's Honors Students comprehend the complexity of a visionary's role in making history with desirable outcomes for the greater good, and step into that role, even to make a brief wrinkle in the fabric of time, our students are destined to repeat small town thinking, small town politics, small town isolation...and end up somewhere that is called nowhere with no one to care...

This timely book is written by a former president with personal experience with the projection of US interests overseas. It looks at America's capability to lead the world in a campaign against terrorism after September 11. He uses sources friendly to America, or Americans themselves--including Henry Kissinger's "Does America Need a Foreign Policy?" to show why America needs to ground the use of its power in a consistent moral policy, promoting peace and human rights not by caprice but by willing acceptance in a world desperate for true leadership.

The major themes in 'War on America seen for the Indian Ocean' are woven around two key themes: 'Seychelles' strategic location and the naivete of US foreign policy. It describes the recent past of the country at the height of the Cold War and the enormous sacrifice paid by the First President, Sir James Mancham, who was forced into exile following a Marxist-inspired coup that could have been prevented in the first place had the then US Administration paid a little more attention to its smaller allies. The author believes that Seychelles can serve as a model for other countries that are grappling with post-colonial divisions amid a unipolar world. More than simply a political statement and argument on a flawed US foreign policy, this book is also an affirmation of Sir James' love for the people of Seychelles in its quest for peace, stability and reconciliation. Small island countries should take note. An excellent publication.

What a great look at our nations wars from the political perspective. Pearlman's writing style and personality pull you in and give you the impression that you are getting a look behind the scenes of American history. This is an important piece of work for those that want to understand the why of many wartime decisions.

This profound study, worthy of an Einstein, a Kafka, or a Monica Lewinsky, is the most important thing that has happened to the evolution of the universe since the discovery of the Milky Way; I men the galaxy, not the candy bar. Everybody alive (and 90 percent of those dead) should buy at least five copies, every other week. Oh yes, if you have trouble sleeping, you might try reading this book, not just buying it.

This book is original, well written and well researched. It tells the story of how domestic political decisions have affected American war-making since the Revolution. It must be read by anyone who is interested in defense, politics or history. Engagingly written with eye-opening revelations on each page, this book is one of the few books on any subject which can truly be said to be indispensible.

From my review of this work published in the Naval War College Review, Spring 2000:

Warmaking-the pursuit of political objectives by military means- ineluctably involves trade-offs not only in determining appropriate goals but also in determining the means by which they may be best pursued. While recent military action in Kosovo highlights the truth of this statement, the struggle to achieve a coherent military policy is not simply a contemporary problem for this nation. In this work, Michael D. Pearlman, a historian and associate professor at the U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College, traces this problem from the pre-Revolutionary colonial wars through to the present, providing a comprehensive survey not only of America's wars but of the continual push and pull between the practitioners of military art and the politicians who direct them. In doing so, Pearlman demonstrates the difficulties faced by a pluralistic democracy in obtaining a consensus on either the most effective means for fighting a war or on justifiable ends of the wars being fought. While pursuing an explanation of the sources of these difficulties, he also illuminates a warmaking goal that is perhaps peculiar to America-that of fighting in order to banish doubts that a democracy can win its wars.

The timeliness of this work can not be overlooked. It sheds light on the recent debates on the use of force in Kosovo, as well as on the general discussion about the effectiveness of the application of military power in the pursuit of limited political goals, by opening up new avenues of understanding into the formation and execution of military policy. Written in a highly readable style that eschews both political science jargon and "military-speak," this work is a valuable addition to the bookshelf of anyone interested in seeing how strategy has been determined in the actual rather than the abstract/theoretical world. It is essential reading for those who would understand the why of military strategy as well as the what.

This is a splendid and original book. It examines the faultline between military strategy and political considerations. It is an engagingly written product of a superb and fairminded thinker and thorough researcher. No matter how much you have read about military history, you are guaranteed to learn many new things. I have two faults with it - both major, but localized: first, in his analysis of WWII, he does not discuss the allocation of resources enough. Joel Davidson showed how we ended the war with a larger Navy and a smaller Army than we should have had, largely because of FDR's Navy bias, Adm. King's aggressiveness and Gen. Marshall's willingness to back down, even when he was right. I would have liked to see Mr. Pearlman direct his considerable talents to this subject. The second failing is somewhat perplexing: the author's willingness to accept the argument of a handful of JFK partisans that JFK wanted to abandon South Vietnam after the 1964 election. The only sources for this canard are a handful of intensely loyal Kennedy insiders who made these claims only after the war had become unpopular. If there were any truth to these claims, they would have surfaced when these same people were in counsels of war with the reluctant hawk, Lyndon Johnson. I'm not saying that these people are liars exactly, but that they so wanted JFK to have done the popular thing, that they created these conversations in their subconscious and came to believe them as gospel. Recent studies suggest that JFK ordered the coup against Diem because Diem was talking to Ho Che Minh; surely JFK would have let that continue if he planned to pull out. At any rate, once he had had the CIA depose Diem and completely disrupt the established government of an ally, there was no way he could bail out. Forget getting Bobby elected, there were too many people committed to Vietnam and who were privy to the coup to let JFK pull such a stunt without facing an impeachment. Despite these two shortcomings, this is one of the best works of military history that I have ever read.