News and Media Books

I picked up this book after my dog died, and I was feeling really lousy and depressed. My heart was warmed by these tales submitted by ordinary folks just like me. This book put a smile on my face. It also will remind you to be thankful for what you have, which will make you feel good no matter what. The stories will not disappoint. Often they seem like made up miracles, but they are all true! The authors found people with uplifting tales from daily life, proving that truth is more inspirational than fiction! If you are feeling down this is the book for you, it helped me immensely!

I personally have not read the entire book because I purchased it for my sister as one of her christmas gifts but the stories are both comforting and encouraging a good book for those in the snow belt to curl up with a nice hot cup of cocoa and read by the fireplace

For me, there is no better medicine than a cup of chamomile or orange ginger tea and a book of inspirational stories. So it is with A Cup of Comfort : Stories that warm your heart, lift your spirit, and enrich your life. This book, slices of life of those, who stop and honor what still matters in this country, the commonality and wonder of the human spirit.

Some of the stories are several pages long and others like Lynn Ruth Miller's Sing Your Song, is only two pages long, yet packs a powerful message of perseverance. The Crying Chair by May Marcia Lee Norwood tells of a teacher's compassion for her students' need to express their pain and The Lady in the Blue Dress by Edie Scher is a testament to the power of faith.

This book is by my bed and I indulge myself in one of the stories several times a week and promises to be a mainstay in my collection of inspirational reading. I applaud the editor, Colleen Sell for her vision for the Cup of Comfort concept and the Adams Media Corporation for believing in it, which has branched into a series. There is also A Cup of Comfort for Friends and the upcoming A Cup of Comfort Cookbook and A Cup of Comfort for Women of which I am proud to be a contributor.

With a new introduction and several new stories, A Cup of Comfort Classic Edition will bring joy and inspiration to another decade of readers. This is the book that started the Cup of Comfort series, and it is as good as it was years ago when first published. The stories are so varied- some funny, some warm, some sad, yet all carrying a message of hope and inspiration. You can read the book from cover to cover when feeling blue, or pick it up and read a story a day - either way your spirits will be lifted when reading the words in this classic book about real people who experience miracles or the simple joy of human compassion and kindness.

Boy, talk about timely books! A Cup of Comfort is what this nation needs to heal. I picked up this book and couldn't stop reading. The stories are truely amazing! It is in times like these that we need a pick me up and this is a cup we acan all share. I was particularly impressed with The Lady in the Blue Dress by Edie Scher and Crossing Paths by Jamie D'Antoni. These stories show that anything can happen if you are open to the possiblities. I hope to see more from these two ladies...they are very talented and have a good grasp on storytelling. I would recommend this book to everyone!

Moles abound.


The last book in this trilogy is probably not quite as good as the other two, you could call it a 3.75 if you like, but there is some entertaining commentary on what goes on in the spook office with the whole clueless management versus the footslogging hardworking spy in the field.

MI6 is still a bit worried about Benard because of his traitorous spouse, so when he finds out about what he thinks is yet another mole, he isn't looked on too favourably, particularly as it might just be one of the higher-ups.

People who like the others should still enjoy this.

This book can standalone as a good spy story, as can the others in this trilogy, but the storyline attains excellence when read in series - Berlin Game, Mexico Set, and London Match. The tension ebbs and flows throughout the trilogy, but it isn't until the climax of London Match that we see the full scope. I honestly think this is the best book of the three, but maybe that's just because all the threads finally come together. Highly recommended!

This is the third of the Bernard Samson trilogy set in London, Berlin, Mexico and East Germany. I think that Mr. Deighton possibly felt that the first of the series was meant as a solo effort. Perhaps not. Both Berlin Game and Mexico Set stand on their own and could have been solo efforts; London Match is possibly the weaker of the three, but leaves us with that gritty taste in our mouths that recalls the anti-Bond stories of Harry Palmer, Bernard and the others.

The office wit characterized by working with management types unfamiliar with the "field" is not uncommon to many of us who spent time in the military or big corporations. We toil for those who have never experienced what they ask us to do. Hence Dickie Cruyer and Bret Rennselear. Of course for most all of us the result of the inequity of working for management is several antacid tablets; Bernard is quick to point out for him it may be death.

Len Deighton writes wonderful stories about the Cold War a long time ago. Or was it? 5 stars. Larry Scantlebury

It's one of those hall-of-mirrors British spy stories in which the puzzle is to figure out who is working for whom, and who is double-crossing whom.
I was rereading my Len Deightons, partly to see how much impact they still have post-cold war, and I picked this one up out of order. After the first few pages I remembered that this was third in the Bernard Samson series, set in the 1970's and 80's, but it has close affinities to the Harry Palmer series of the 60's, especially Funeral in Berlin. (This has a 1985 publication date). If you're completely new to Len Deighton I'd start with those, and of course you should read Berlin Game and Mexico Set before this.
Some people think Deighton deteriorated in the later spy books. They contain fewer wisecracks and less descriptive scene- setting. In compensation there's a lot of subtle humor in the portrayal of the Dilbert-like atmosphere of office politics, and the plots are more sharply focussed and draw naturally to a climax. The earlier books tend to jump from episode to episode with a tidying up of plot in the last chapter.

The best of the game, set and match trilogy. Exciting, lean and suspenseful.

i thought this book was great and also pretty sad at the end but i enjoyed it.from the first time i started reading it i could'nt put it down.

Vada is eleven years old and her mother died when she was born, and Vada thinks that it is her fault her mohter died. Her dad owns a funeral home and thats where Vada loves. Her best friend Thomas J. is allergic to everything. Thomas J. and Vada are always doing something together, like riding bikes, or playing at the lake. One day this lady named Shelly shows up at Vadas house in a camper wanting a job at the funeral home and be the person that when someone dies she puts on the make-up and does their hair. She gets the job. Vada likes her and everything is going great. SO one day Vada and Thomas J. ran into their teacher, Mr. Bixler Vada wants to marry him, and he had told them that he was going to be having a writting class in the summer, and Vada wants to go. So she has to try to find money and her dad won't give it to her so she takes it from Shelly. Then Shelly and her dad start dating. Then one day her dad said they were going to get married. So now Vada hates them both. So she tells Thomas J. and they go to the lake and they find a bee hive and they try to hit it with rocks, THomas J. collects them, they finally hit it and bees go everywhere.

Vada Sultenfuss is a typical 11 year old girl who has to learn to face her fears and get on with lfe even when bad things happen. She lives in a funeral parlor and has a boy (Thomas J.) for a best friend. Her mother is dead and she only has a father. Living in a funeral parlor for all her life, Vada keeps thinking she has cancer and is going to die, and her father could care less about this issue. One day Shelly comes in and ends up working for Vada's dad. Their marriage takes Vada by surprise, and when her best friend gets stung by bees she learns to cope with Shelly even though she doesn't have her best friend to always ride bikes and play with her anymore.

Vada is 11 years old and she has never met her mother and her dad is a caretaker and her bestfriend Thomas J never wants to come into the house because it is a funeral parlor. Thomas J and Vada are always riding around town on their bikes and Vada thinks that she has cancer in her throat. Though everytime she goes to see the doctor about it he says she is just fine. All the time Thomas J and Vada go sit up in a tree and one day they were going to the tree and saw a bee hive. Thomas J wanted it because he had a wasps hive and he wanted a bee hive to go with it. They were throwing rocks at it and knocked it down and bees started swarming and they ran and jumped in the lake, but before they did Vada realized she lost her mood ring and the next day Thomas J went back to where Vada had lost her ring and he got it, but when he went back the bees attacked him and of course Thomas J is allergic to everything he got stung and died from it. After Thomas J's funeral Thomas's mother went to Vada's house and gave her the ring. And though Vada was sad about Thomas J she just pretended that he was at summer camp or on vacation. Vada new that Thomas J would be taken care of because her mother would take care of him. She new that she would see him again.

I really enjoyed reading this book about my favourtie movie of all time. If you loved the movie My Girl I would deffenently recomend this book because it follows the movie so well. Pick it up today you'll be glad you did because it is such a marvelous book.

This was a Social Studies book. The book is interesting as it describes a day in the life of a Pilgrim girl using text and photographs from Plymouth Plantation. Anthony D. Fredericks recommended it in Social Studies Through Children's Literature and you can find accompanying questions and activities there. Recommended for grades K-3rd.

My daughter studied colonial history in fourth grade, in Virginia, and I ordered a few books for her on the topic and as soon as the books arrived, she chose this one first and sat down and read the whole thing! She loved it.

....then you will enjoy purchasing this book. This book is a real-life look at a day in the life a of pilgrim girl. It shows great photographs of a little pilgrim girl's clothes and her day to day living conditions. This book will say in pictures what a hundred descriptions cannot convey to a kid. A great teaching book.

Sarah Morton's Day: A Day in the Life of a Pilgrom Girl is an exceptional teaching tool for the young "history detectives" in your circle. Textbooks are never enough. What better way to understand that the "story" of history happened to real people who looked just like us, had needs and families just like us, but lived a different lifestyle because of the time in which they lived.

Follow this up with a visit to a museum, and the story of our history becomes very real!

This is a wonderful book, and I highly recommend it.

Sarah Morton's Day: A Day in the life of a Pilgrim Girl and its partner books about Samuel Eaton a Pilgrim boy and Tapenum"s Day about a Wampanoag Indian boy are excellent. I used all three in teaching about Massachusetts history. The books are well researched. The setting is Plymouth Plantation where reenactors wear authentic clothing and use authentic reproductions of tools, furniture, etc. The books depict children's work, play, families, homes and clothing. The books should be in every school library.

Sheehy claims that her writing of this book was the breaking of silence on a taboo subject. Her aim is to provide information which will help woman better understand what they have been going through. She claims that traditionally women have been poorly informed on the subject. She claims reliance on friends, on mothers does not bring the kind of full knowledge of the subject required.
She provides many stories and examples, and gives a real sense of how varied this 'silent passage' is. A minority of women go through it seemingly without problems, but for some it is wholly unbearable. One question which is central to the book and really unanswered regards Hormone Replacement Theory , and its advisability. Recent studies have pointed to increased levels of cancer of those who have taken the hormones.
Sheehy repeats herself often, beats her own drum, but is a clear writer whose work no doubt has been of real service to many women who have suffered without understanding what exactly they were going through, and why this is not something to feel guilty or be stigmatized about. Sheehy's strong believe that knowledge and understanding can be of great help seems to me correct and fair.

This book is an excellent overview of menopause but needs further updating in light of the current controversy over Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT). The author is still all aglow over HRT, and it is heralded within the pages of this book as if it were the end all, be all for menopausal women. While this was the general prevailing medical view, it seems that further research has put its value in question somewhat, and HRT is now at the heart of some heated medical controversy.

Still, if the reader is aware already of this budding medical controversy over HRT, the book does offer some insights into menopause in an informative and fairly concise fashion. This should prove to be especially helpful to the hordes of baby boomer women who are entering this phase of their lives. The book also provides information into holistic, alternative ways of addressing some of the issues attendant in menopausal women. It appears that nature may provide some palliatives that some women may find preferable to the drug-infused approach of some medical practitioners.

Overall, this is an excellent, well-researched book and one that a lay person can read with ease. It provides interesting insights into the emotional, psychological, and medical concerns of peri-menopausal and menopausal women and discusses some of the remedies that are available, if necessary, to ease women through this major life passage. The book has clearly been a labor of love for the author, and she has endeavored, with success, to remove the mystery that has enshrouded menopause for so long.

Chapters are short and easy to read. This book deals not only with the technical aspects that most books do, but primarily with particular women's experiences with those various aspects--especially their feelings. This is what is left out of most of the other books. I recommend this book together with a more techinical book. But if you can only buy one book, buy this one instead. The main thing this book left me with was a feeling that instead of menopause being something that will just happen to me, there are a lot of things I can do, in a proactive sense, to manage the menopause. This is the most positive book I have seen on the subject, and helps me decide about all the questions to discuss with my doctor. Without reading this book, instead of being ready with a list of questions for my doctor, I would have passively listened to whatever he said, and thought that was it.

but I feel better now, and I attribute my new outlook to having read The Silent Passage.

Those of us approaching or in the midst of our passage into menopause owe a great debt to the pioneering women who lifted menopause out of the dark ages and brought it into the broad light of day. One of these early pioneers was Gail Sheehy. With the exception of her views on Hormone Replacement Therapy (as other reviewers have pointed out) this book offers a lively, energizing, well-researched overview of menopause. I read the original edition about ten years ago and have considered the deeper meaning of the title of this groundbreaking book. "Silent Passage" carries echoes of another revolutionary work, Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson. Silent Spring foresaw a day when pollution would destoy the reproductive cycle of birds, and they would no longer sing their songs. The Silent Passage echoes that notion. It not only implies that in menopause women suffer in silence but also that the clear, vibrant voice of women at midlife and older had been silenced. Now, thanks to pioneers like Gail Sheehy, we are demanding that our collective voices be heard!

--Suza Francina, author, Yoga and the Wisdom of Menopause and The New Yoga for People Over 50.

Loved it, loved it, loved it. I am not a teenager anymore but I still loved it. I could relate. I read it in one evening and wished that there was book 2 to read. Please keep writing these great, funny books.

Finally! My 3rd-grade daughter used to dread reading, and the first book "Matt the Brat" got her hooked! This is the first time she has wished that there were more books in a series. Carol Weston, please write more!!

I LOVED this book. it was great. all of the Melanie Martin books are great. In this one she goes with her parents to Spain. her dad has business in Spain to do so her mom used frequent flyer miles to have the whole family go with him. In Spain Melanie's mom meets up with her old boyfriend Antonio. When there. melanie falls for Antonio's son Miguel. In this book many adventures come in with love between Melanie and Miguel. Also surprisling Matt the Brat helps out to keep Melanie and Miguel alone or gives Melanie tips, like when Miguel's cousin comes and Melanie thought it was Miguel's girlfriend. This book was great and I'd recommend it for all ahges.

I bought this book from amazon.com and read it the day it came. It's so sweet to see Melanie in love! Stocked with bullfights, fireworks and of course, ROMANCE, this book rocks! It's almost like being in Europe yourself! This book is a must-read!

The Martin family band together for a two-week Spring break vacation as seen through the eyes of 11-year-old Melanie. Readers join Melanie through the pain and confusion of first love as she fills her senses with the compelling Spanish landscape. This is an amusing linguistic travel adventure written in diary format. Because the author phonetically spells the Spanish words Melanie learns, I found myself saying some of the words aloud and learning quite a few things along the way. An appendix of all the foreign words Ms. Weston used would have been an added benefit to the book. With Love From Spain, Melanie Martin will make you want to take your kids on a European adventure of your own, no matter where you live in the world! The potential for this book is it's "that's me" value for Tweeners making the transition beyond being big kids.

I have read a number of Chicken Soup for the Soul books but felt I'd read some of these stories before. Probably not the best collection I've read.

Every time I find it Amazing!
How much Magic, Love & joy are in those books!
Every story- is a Gift!! :-)

I recommened you to read the introduction..
It is most touching, special and wonderful! :-)
"Good stories touch your heart in a special way no others can
and can transform your life forever!" (in my own words..)

If I could.. I would buy ALL of the books available!
(well maybe I can pass the one for Golfer soul.. ha ha!)

Thank you so much Jack and Mark- you Have changed the world!
Even here (in Israel) some people read your books..
and by now I have about 16 Chicken Soup books!
Not bad huh? :-) And I try to make those books known!
Optimism and good endings- is what needed here! :-)

Many of the stories are so touching- they can fix a whole day.
They can make me tear and appriciate my life more..
Make me want to Change The World for the better!
And also show all of my Love to the ones I love-
Not wait to another day or be affraid to show it!
and never forget the kindness of strangers!

Thank you Thank You Thank You! :-)

And for all the people here who don't know what to do- buy it! :-)
It's worth is! I promiss you! :-)

With Love and Joy!
Gil :-)

The stories in this edition of the book are my favorite. All of my friends have loved the autographed copies that I have given them. So many touching and tender stories, and even ones that make you chuckle.

I have purchased a number of the Chicken Soup series am I am quite pleased with them.

A 4th Course of Chicken Soup for the Soul

By Melody Beattie, Bob Greene, Edgar Guest,
Harvey Mackay, Pat Riley, and many more

Stories, motivational excerpts

Chicken Soup for the Soul is a fantastic, true book with hundreds of stories inside all about people's real live experiences. The sections covered in here are about love, kindness, parents and parenting, teaching and learning, death and dying, matter of perspective, overcoming obstacles, and elective wisdom. Everyone and anyone who reads this book can find stories that they can relate to, while enjoying them. Happiness and sorrow is merely a speck of all the emotions felt throughout this amazing book. When reading this you are able to learn the different kinds of situations there are and the everyday people who go through them. This book is extraordinary and unique; how it slams real life into your face and shows exactly how unpredictable life can be. It also shows us how we should value those around us, for we do not know when it is anyone's time to go.
All of the characters are real people who have gone through an event and have decided to share it with us. Each story has a beginning, middle, and end to it; just like life. Their stories are there to help others or to send a powerful message across that has once touched them. Each and every story is unique, interesting, and 100% true. So be prepared for any kind of emotions, because in real life you don't always know what the outcome will be.
The stories in Chicken Soup for the Soul are all directly from those who experienced the story. They are all easy to understand and follow. The voice in each story is so strong that it actually feels as though the person is right there telling you their story; it's unbelievable! Though not all stories may be your type or make you feel comfortable, just skip them and move on to those that interest you more. There is something for everyone in this original book. After reading Chicken Soup for the Soul you will be able to truly see how precious life really is.

Al-Jazeera is the all-Arabic TV news channel which burst on to the international scene in the wake of September 11 and the war in Afghanistan. Its unfettered access to that country during the war and its showing of the bin Laden tapes made it an automatic force on the world stage.Based in the Gulf state of Qatar, it came from the remnants of the BBC Arabic TV service. With the help of startup money from the Emir of Qatar, Al-Jazeera was to have complete editorial independence.In a part of the world where the press is usually government controlled, Al-Jazeera is not afraid to get specific and name names. At one time or another, it has been criticized or condemned by seemingly every government in the Arab world, for broadcasting things that the local government would prefer not be broadcast. Every local editorial of condemnation and every denial of press credentials to Al-Jazeera reporters just increases its audience all over the world by satellite.One of the things that Al-Jazeera is most known for is its talk shows, especially a nightly, two-hour show called The Opposite Direction. Two guests appear on the show, with totally opposite opinions on a certain issue, and with help from live phone calls, the sparks fly. Even by American TV standards, things get pretty loud and lively. Arab governments have noticed, and have begun imitating the format on their tame and boring government TV channels.Even though Al-Jazeera is an Arab TV channel, it has tried very hard to be impartial, hosting members of the Bush Administration, after September 11, and government officials from Israel.For those who want to decide for themselves if Al-Jazeera is a legitimate news broadcaster or a terrorist mouthpiece, this book is highly recommended. It's comprehensive, clearly written and is quite enlightening.

All the reviews I've read for this book have been unequivocally complimentary. One newspaper said it should be required reading for Bush's entire cabinet! Quite bold, but rightly so. After reading this book, I came to the realization that everything Al-Jazeera is courageous enough to air, my own country's media is petrified of. I wonder why our government is so afraid of a democratic Arab world? While the dozens of titles coming out on the Middle East are regurgitating the same history and concepts, this book is a refreshing new look at a MODERN Middle East, not a primitive and orientalized one.

This is a great book and I highly recommend it for everyone striving to know about the Arab media from an objective perspective. The book will inform you about the Arabs' struggle for freedom of speech through an unbiased Arab network that is not subject to the control of any government. The authors have succesfully portrayed the true picture of the Arab media scene through Arab eyes.

Al Jazeera is giving us a vivid and moving picture of a New Arab World in the making. There is no way to go back in times. This media channel is succeeding to keep one step ahead of many others advancing, foreign or local, TVs.
Live transmissions are notably courageous in their way struggling so hard to persuade local (and influential) governments to let them work into the `heart' of the stories being anchored, against the background of petty local political bickering and futility.
It is not easy, but the beauty about it is that it is also challenging, and a source of pride to millions of Arabs

Collaboratively written by Egyptian born Middle East journalist Mohammed El-Nawawy and Middle East media expert Adel Iskandar, Al-Jazeera: How The Free Arab News Network Scooped The World And Changed The Middle East is a fascinating and informed history. This is a superbly presented account of Al-Jazeera, a modern, independent, entirely Arab television news network based in Qatar, which since the September 11 attacks, gained high profile prominence through daily exposure on CNN. This is also the compelling story of Al-Jazeera's struggle to keep its independence as an international news network, beholden to none. Overall, Al-Jazeera is an engaging, unique, detailed study of the origin of the Al-Jazeera network, its broadcasts, its effect on Arab viewers, and its struggle for a free press. Al-Jazeera is very highly recommended for Journalism Studies and Mideast Studies supplemental reading lists and academic reference collections.

This book was so awesome.I finished the first day I got it!...I really enjoyed this book and I think that you will too!

This is the review of my eight year old daughter, who loves Mary Kate and Ashley enough that she checks out all their books at the library and begs me to buy them in the store.

Who ever knew that Cheerleading Camp could be so vicious? Someone is trying to sabotage Ashley in her quest to become the square leader for the Cheerleading Camp. Who was doing it? You were given so many suspects that it was impossible to know. You were given 1 clue as to the true villain and that was clue was misleading. It's no surprise that the ending was a surprise!

It was a Mary Kate and Ashley book and that almost got it 4 stars alone, but she just didn't think it was good enough for that.

I was amazed by the depth of character development and the allegory presented in this learned thesis. Its brilliance in appearing as a novel for adolescence is soon usurped by the clever machinations of the protagonist which belie the stories darker, yet socially important, nature. This work has opened up a whole new world of understanding regarding the subconscious stratification of social oligarchies in secondary institutions of education. Any would-be existentialist would be remiss if they did not read this (or the original work in Latin).
While somewhat hard to digest if perused flippantly, meticulous and seriatim analysis of this tome will ameliorate its initial opaqueness and even aid the most recalcitrant misanthrope to gain an incisive, if abstruse, vignette into the potential of the human psyche.

This is a great little mystery book. I just read this to my 7 year old son who is a mary kate and Ashley fan.

This mystery kept us both guessing til the end. Just when we thought we have it figured out the twins found more clues!!

I thought this book was great. In this book Ashley wanted to to be captain of the cheerleading team but 3 other girls wanted to also. So they had a vote. That's when Ashley started having problems. Someone stole her lucky pom-poms. Someone had written nasty cheers for her. She found itching powder in her sneakers. And that was just the beginning! Someone was trying to make sure Ashley lost the vote-no matter what! My favorite part of the book was when Mary-Kate and Ashley kept think some one did all of the things to Ashley, they find clues that lead to someone else! To find out what happens next and who wrote the nasty cheers, who stole her lucky pom-poms and who put itching powder in her sneakers, read The Case of the Cheerleading Camp Mystery.

DEFINING VISION by Joel Brinkley is as comprehensive as any history behind the development of HDTV/DTV can ever possibly get. The text of this book will surely be required possessions for technological historians for at least the next 1000 years.

I'm reading this book a second time (a year later) because it's such a great introduction to players in the HDTV world. Brinkley chose a suspense style, and it really works well. I am excited about HDTV and turned each page holding my breath - hoping for a successful conclusion. Now I'm looking for more works that go beyond 1998, and can't find any more fulfilling...and the story isn't over yet!

Having had the opportunity to check the authenticity with several of the principles in the book, my hat's off to Joel Brinkley. He ties all the factions together that brought us DTV. It is a story with more twists and turns than you expect that comes mixing an industry that hates to change with new technology. Add in the governments of the U.S. and Japan, and it really becomes fun. Mr. Brinkley did a masterful job telling the story. This is a must read for anyone interested in television.

In the early 1980s US broadcasters faced two major headaches spawned by greed and jingoism. Their comfortable, tidy, oligopolistic-and profitable-broadcast world was about to be shaken by the digital revolution, where foes and friends were often indistinguishable. New York Times reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner Joel Brinkley takes the reader on a roller coaster through boardrooms, bureaucracy, technocracy, and hubris (individual and national) in "Defining Vision." It is a ride worth taking for broadcast students, educators, historians, and international political economists.

Represented by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), radio and television companies considered the broadcast band spectrum their personal property. This largesse suddenly came under assault from the land mobile industry that wanted more spectrum space for a variety of public interest broadcast services such as police, firefighters, ambulance, quick response units, and other emergency services. Broadcasters, too, saw a new threat from across the sea. The Japanese spent $300 million and hundreds of thousands of engineering man-hours developing high definition television (HDTV). NHK unveiled its Muse system in 1986 to US policymakers and consumers. The picture quality was superior to the current analog systems in the United Sates, and Japanese-made monitors were designed to fit the wider formatted movies without the annoying letterbox effect.

Brinkley chronicles the scrimmages involving development of HDTV in the US like a general writing his wartime memoirs-if that general had access to the thinking of his opposition, that is. First the grand alliance-RCA, Zenith, AT&T, Phillips, General Instruments and MIT-had to admit that a victory by any one of them in the costly race to develop HDTV would be a defeat for the others. They were able to convince a willing FCC Advisory Committee that cooperation was possible in building a single system. Committee chairman Richard Wiley's role in HDTV cannot be understated (and Brinkley doesn't). His single-minded pursuit of high definition television as the national (and, it turned out, international) standard most probably resulted in its acceptance.

US broadcasters had worried privately and publicly as well, that the future of television would be dictated by a consortium of Japanese electronics magnates and NHK, the world's second-largest broadcasting company. Across the Atlantic, the European Union was equally concerned, and promised up to a billion dollars to Europeans to come up for a system on its own or else adopt the Japanese HDTV, since the Americans seemed not to be players in the game as the century's ninth decade unfolded. But the European effort never got off paper. US broadcasters at first fretted about a new "yellow peril" that posed as great a threat to them as it did to the automobile industry a decade earlier. Ever opportunistic, however, broadcasters found the Japanese an unlikely ally in their fight to snatch the unused frequencies from land mobile companies. HDTV, as the Muse system showed, required additional bandwidth space. Obviously, they reasoned, Congress and the FCC could not allocate precious broadcast spectrum space to land mobile users when they, the "rightful frequency heirs," needed the frequencies for HDTV.

At the same time, MIT's Nicholas Negroponte, who Brinkley treats somewhat derisively, was telling anyone who would listen that "HDTV had to be digital," not analog, which would allow for signal compression that would fit into existing frequencies. One naysayer echoed a common broadcast engineering complaint at the time: "we will have digital HDTV when we have anti-gravitation machines." Broadcast engineers at the major manufacturers nodded in agreement: digital high definition television technologically could not be done. The NAB, in its attempt to protect its space band largesse, inadvertently kicked off a race to develop HDTV in the United States that took on the trappings of a crusade to "rescue" the future of television in the United States from the hands of foreign interests. Along the way, General Instruments research engineer Woo Paik invented digital television (because, as a non-broadcast engineer, he didn't know that "it was impossible").

HDTV uses a compressed digital broadcast signal that not only remained within a single frequency but allowed broadcasters additional capacity to sell secondary services such as pager services, email, Internet connections, digital music, and pay-per-view movies. With such an entrée to new revenue flows, the reader would be surprised to learn the depth of NAB's animus to HDTV. Simply put, broadcasters used the HDTV concept to wrest away additional public airwaves spectra and then, among themselves, grumbled that they were unwilling to invest in new high definition cameras, monitors, and other equipment that would allow them to broadcast signals in both progressive scan (favored by the computer programming and manufacturing sector) and interlaced (favored by broadcasters) modes. Another opponent of a high definition television standard was the fledgling computer manufacturing industry in the mid-1990s, which didn't want the additional expense of adding interlacing decoding to what essentially was a dedicated proscan system.

After seven years of ups and downs in a process that often threatened to sputter, splinter, and spin totally out of control, HDTV in a digital form arrived in the US shortly after Thanksgiving in 1997. Despite all predictions to the contrary, the HDTV "turkey" arrived fully stuffed with enough goodies to ease its transition into the marketplace. The result was acceptance of the Americanized international standard by the European Union and the final, if not sad, acknowledgment by NHK that its analog Muse system was outmoded before it even got much beyond a toehold in its native land.

In "Defining Vision," Brinkley has crafted a highly readable, almost techno-mystery story with well-defined characters: heroes, villains, and rascals alike. At times he seems to get into the heads of the key players, which he explains as a literary device borne from extensive interviews with the principals who told him what they were thinking at the time. The effect rounds the edges of what could have been a highly technical, heuristic, and sloggish recitation of engineering reports, public hearings, and dreary diary entries from the participants. To his credit, the author explains his process to readers in an epilogue, thus enhancing the book's credibility. Furthermore, in this paperback edition, the author has updated and expanded several sections over the hardcover version, including an appendix and FAQ that are instructional.

I work in the television broadcast industry and this is a must read if you want to learn about the origins of HDTV, the players who made HDTV a reality, and how the standards for HDTV were defined. The author is an authority on the subject and provides an excellent description of the systems, history, etc. that both technical and business professionals can understand. At my company this has become required reading. I highly recommend this book.