S Books

Although the title of this book is catchy the implication of "trapping" a spouse comes across as a negative. The book really isn't about trapping a spouse and it is indeed a good book. The subtitle is more appropriate "A Street-Smart Dating Strategy for Men Who Have Lost a Love."

This book is written by a Board Certified Trial Lawyer from Newport Beach along "with" a Beverly Hills based psychologist who specializes in couples counseling.

Being myself recently divorced and having lost a love I found this book to be very realistic in terms of describing what losing a love is like and what the recovery process is like.

The chapters are:

1.) Coping with Loss
2.) How Life Goes On
3.) Getting Serious about a Relationship
4.) Into the Future

I found each of the chapters to be intelligent, realistic and honest. I felt that the author really has felt what I am feeling and has a pretty cutting edge approach to his understanding and to his perspective on solutions. He is frank about depression, about not being able to get out of bed etc.

The guts of the book are about forming a dating strategy to find your next spouse. The apporach is very structured, precise and well defined. Although that type of approach may have appeal to a limited number of personality types I found the chapters on Coping and How Life Goes On to be worth the price of the book.

In a nutshell this is the only book I've found that is sort of like having a 40 or 50 year old uncle or father give you very accurate, useful, practical advice on the most intelligent way to find a spouse and not screw up your life and end up in divorce.

Having read "Spouse Trap" out of interest in how men think, I can say this is one excellent book for anyone, male or female, interested in REAL LOVE. No psychobabble here, rather real hands-on tips based on personal experience. The author's sincere and helpful stand that one has to do the work on one's self first is unique from most other books on finding love. Wonderful insights on grieving and getting on, good step by step procedures for personal evaluation on what one really wants in love. Highly recommended by this reader.

I've been divorced for 3 years now and trying to find a way to "get moving". I read the sample pages, (and the reviewers' comments)from this book and I got the impression that it would perfect for me. Like the others I've read, it had a few things that explained feelings I've had that I could not put into better words. The "dealing with the grief" part was good but not the "dating again" chapters. In the book, he makes several referneces to "Chapter 11, (I think thats the right number), that is the most important chapter in the book. I was looking forward to getting to it to see what the big deal was. All it dealt with was giving tips on getting a good counselor and how important it is to get someone with a solid background to help. If you're like me getting over a lost, you probably have or had a counselor to help you cope and get moving on with your life.
At the end, it discusses ideas when relationships get serious and also when they go bad. It also gave warning signs of unstable women and good reasons to get away from them. The last chapter has an example pre-nupital agreement.
Anyway, it had some decent stuff but weak on the dating aspects.

As a man and as a Marriage and Family therapist I feel "Build a Better Spouse Trap" is an important book. To me there are two underlying themes that Mr. Wentworth is conveying to the men he talks to so clearly. First, Think! My office is full of men who didn't think. They reacted. They are now in trouble, and they are sorry.

The second important point the author makes is to encourage the reader to Feel! Or better yet, identify feelings that are already there. Too many men make serious relationship mistakes because they don't know how to feel the feelings they already have. The author makes this point well when he encourages men to "stop living on automatic."

The result of following the advice in the book is to make the relationship process conscious. He says we should actually become conscious in the process of finding our life partner.
Finally, encouraging men to find a good therapist is great advice. I find that with a straightforward approach that is cognitive and logical, men make great progress in therapy and they really enjoy the process.

Beyond that, they learn about themselves, what makes women tick, and in doing so gain enormous confidence.

The book is honest, fun to read, and practical. But the phrase from the subtitle "Street Smart" says it all. The book hands you exactly what you need to have on those dark nights as you are forcing yourself to get out of the car and nervously walk up to her door. One is tempted to take the book along and feverishly flip through the pages for the right advice when she is in the lady's room. It doesn't get any more real than "Build a Better Spouse Trap."

I think "Build a Better Spouse Trap" in a shot in the arm to those of us who otherwise would be lost and depressed hoping the random forces of the universe will finally make us happy.

Every patient and male friend, to whom I have recommended this book, has found great straightforward advice that tells it like it is. Wentworth doesn't waste a reader's time with fluff and explanations, he gets right to the point of how to get over the loss of love and work a practical plan to bring real connection and relationship back into one's life.

He points out the pitfalls that many men fall into in new relationships. He talks directly about psychological "landmines" of character-disordered women (i.e. beautiful borderlines) and how to fight fair, break up respectfully and when and when not to use the Internet for dating. He uses humor and refers to a great many resources for further research, if readers want to know more about any topic.

The women I have recommended this book to have also truly enjoyed the practical and easy-to-understand suggestions. It seems both men and women are tired of groping blindly in the dark and just hoping that love will find them. Taking a proactive approach is far more appealing.

This is a great gift for any man you care about who is really interested in finding a healthy relationship!

Choose to Lose: A Food Lover's Guide to Permanent Weight Loss I have used two other books by the Goors. This is a very helpful book for those who want to have a permanent change of eating style. It is NOT a diet book, but a whole new way of eating that results in a full tummy and weight loss.

I struggled with my weight especially after having a child 16 years ago. I am a registered dietitian so that made it even more humiliating--knowing what I should be doing, but not being able to do it. I picked up an earlier edition of this book 13 years ago and it changed my life. I walked 6 days a week religiously. I felt the diet was very easy to follow and loved some of the recipes in the book. After 3 years and 40 pounds later, I started running and have been running ever since. Thank you Choose to Lose for transforming my life. I love who I have become.

This is the only plan that has ever worked for me. I had always been vastly overweight and tried every diet. Just do it..it works even without salads and exercise and you are not hungry. You choose your weight with every decision on what goes into your mouth. Just do it.

I read this books years ago, and when I found out the book was revised I had to have it. This book teaches you how to make a healthy eatting change for life, or just to lose those unwanted pounds. It tells you the importance of why you should not avoid carbohydrates, and it is very easy because you choose what you eat to loose weight, as long as you dont exceed your daily calorie or fat intake per day. It also teaches you why on 1000 caloried diets dont work because your body think it s starving and you dont loose weight because of so few calories. You can also save up for splurges. I think the hardest part in following this diet is eatting more than I am use to, when most diets you hardly eat. If interested in a positive eatting change where you can eat what you want, lose weight, drop your cholesterol level, and make this change for life, this is the book for you, I just love it, and the new me, because of it. Thank you Ron & Nancy Goor M.D. and Katherine Boyd R.D. for writing and sharing this book.

This is a great book, I've lost about 15 pounds using the techniques outlined, and have gone down from a 38 inch waste to a 35!!!! And I'm Still loosing. I'ts simple, keep count of those pesky fat calories, you will see results!!! This Book is a way of life for eating.

I have to say that this is a true classic. It gives a very nice treatment of what is NP-completeness in a fashion that really defends the topic well. It gives nice illustrations to show different situations and how to deal with it. But after the first couple of chapters it does get a little out there with the proofs it does. It is still approachable, but it assumes that the reader is already familiar with the basics of combinatorial complexity, especially in reductions. I would only recommend this book to readers who has gone through such books as Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen et al. or Combinatorial Complexity by Papadimitriou and Steiglitz. Those two books are more for beginners and this book should be one to help anyone interested in NP-complete problems to get more practice and depth understanding. Overall a great book for anyone interested in the topic. The grand challenge is to reduce everything to at least something within the 150 problems listed on your own.

The book is excellent in explaining NP-completeness problem. Take it as a reference if you would like to do research in this field.

This is a rare example of a textbook where the authors actually go to the trouble of considering the fact that the intended reader is a non-expert. Published in 1979 and still the best.

The book arrived in time, in good condition, and adequate packing.

This is among the most eloquently written books that I have ever read in my life. Highly recommended.

Some readers might find some parts slow going, but this classic work remains an excellent introduction into how and why our understanding of the heavens (and ourselves) changed so radically following the work of Copernicus. Those interested in reading Kuhn's seminal and more famous "The Stucture of Scientific Revolutions" will enjoy reading "Copernicus" to see how his thinking grew from this earlier work.

I asked my son when he was 4 years old why the Sun moved across the sky over the day. He answered me "because the earth turns". This seems like an obvious answer even for a 4 year old, but 400 years ago his response would be meet with ridicule and even worse would be considered heresy. Thomas S. Kuhn is able to beautifully and logically describe from a scientific perspective the ideas and discoveries through the ages that lead to the enormous conceptual leap from a geocentric to heliocentric world. This alone makes this book a great read. But what I valued more from the book is Kuhn's revealing of the impact of the "Copernican Revolution" outside the scientific world. It's influence on religion, society and the entire scientific process is still felt today. The idea of a heliocentric universe was not only a great scientific theory, it was really a turning point in the human race and how we see ourselves in the universe. I would also recommend "The book nobody read" and "Galileo's Daughter" as more modern follow ups to "The Copernican Revolution".

Kuhn's The Copernican Revolution was written as a text for an undergraduate course in the intellectual history of science. As such, its approach is focused and temporally expansive. The drawback of such an approach is the deficit of analysis in key areas. The analysis of the Church's role in science during the late middle ages and Renaissance was rather one-dimensional, but this obviously is not Kuhn's focus. Instead, he would like the reader to realize that any set of data can be modeled to an infinite number of paradigms (in anticipation of Structure of Scientific Revolutions). The heliocentric argument solved some qualitative problems but was largely Ptolemaic in articulation. Its aesthetic and geometric harmonies were extracted by astronomers who could could apply a mathematical rigor to it, in a post-Ptolemaic tradition (Kepler and Newton).

Kuhn challenges the reader's imagination to decipher the heavenly phenomena in the same way Ptolemy might have, without being hampered by the technical minutia of astronomy. He writes so lucidly as to pick the reader up and drop him or her under the ancient sky, and to follow a long, through time. Paramount to Kuhn is the practical importance of astronomical data and the logic of its categorization.

Perhaps the most persuasive analysis that Kuhn endeavors is that of the progression of the Renaissance neo-Platonics: Brahe, Galilei, Kepler, Descartes, and the mutation of the Copernican system into Newtonian synthesis. In one sense, his analysis is very non-Kuhnian as it can't point to a singular moment, and involves more of a patchwork of adopting new features (that is until Newton).

A concise introduction to the evolution of astronomical thought from antiquity to newton and a compelling classic.

This is a great overview of the development of the Copernican system. The main text is very clear and readable and the "technical appendix" has good expositions of key mathematical arguments. Nevertheless, I think Kuhn's interpretation of "the Copernican revolution" has some shortcomings. Kuhn wishes the Copernican revolution to conform to his idea (as presented in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions) of a revolution brought on by a crisis: "[Copernicus'] famous preface still provides one of the classic descriptions of a crisis state" and "Ptolemaic astronomy had failed to solve its problems; the time had come to give a competitor a chance." But Kuhn does not support this position very well. For instance he writes: "When Copernicus listed the aspects of contemporary astronomy that had led him to consider his radical theory, he began, 'For, first, the mathematicians are so unsure of the movements of the Sun and the Moon that they cannot even explain or observe the constant length of the seasonal year.'" Here Kuhn is using a rather underhand trick. He is implying, of course, that this calendar issue was Copernicus' primary motivation, but fails to address two crucial counterarguments. First, Copernicus' preface is addressed to the Pope and he is clearly interested in emphasising that "my labors contribute somewhat even to the Commonwealth of the Church, of which your Holiness is now Prince," mentioning specifically how the calendar issue was a concern for Leo X, etc. Second, when Copernicus says "first...", he does not mean "first" as in "most important," for he continues with a "second" and then reaches "the chief point of all." This chief point of all is the fact that the Copernican model has a beautiful implication: the planetary distances. A geocentric model cannot give such information because we could scale the orbit of Saturn, say, to make it twice as big and it would still look exactly the same seen from earth. But in a heliocentric model the distances are determined because if we scaled the orbit of Saturn then it would look the same seen from the sun but different seen from earth. So with the earth in the center we cannot determine planetary distances because we are the center of scaling, but with the sun in the center we would notice scaling and thus the planetary distances are locked, or, as Copernicus puts it, "this correlation binds together so closely the order and the magnitudes of all the planets and of their spheres or orbital circles and the heavens themselves that nothing can be shifted around in any part of them without disrupting the remaining parts and the universe as a whole." Thus he can claim triumphantly that earlier astronomers "have not been able to discover or to infer the chief point of all, i.e., the form of the world and the certain commensurability of its parts. But they are in exactly the same fix as someone taking from different places hands, feet, head, and the other limbs---shaped very beautifully but not with reference to one body and without correspondence to one another---so that such parts made up a monster rather than a man." (I'm using the translation from Goldoni's excellent article in the Mathematical Intelligencer.) Kuhn admits that the Copernicus' determination of the planetary distances is "crucially important" but dismisses it as the main reason for the acceptance of the theory: "'Harmony' seems a strange basis on which to argue for the earth's motion... Copernicus' arguments are not pragmatic. They appeal, if at all, not to the utilitarian sense of the practising astronomer but to his aesthetic sense and to that alone. ... New harmonies did not increase accuracy or simplicity. Therefore they could and did appeal primarily to that limited and perhaps irrational subgroup of mathematical astronomers whose Neoplatonic ear for mathematical harmonies could not be obstructed by page after page of complex mathematics leading finally to numerical predictions scarcely better than those they had before." The correct reading---beauty before truth---is staring Kuhn in the face but he refuses to recognise it, opting instead to dismiss Copernicus as "strange" and Kepler as "irrational."

"The Copernican Revolution" tells the epochal story of how the earth-centered cosmology of Ptolemy was replaced by the sun-centered cosmology of Copernicus and Kepler. The book is a classic. Kuhn understood how ideas influence each other and hang together in a system. He could write with equal erudition about observational astronomy, medieval theology, astrology, and Aristotelian physics.

"The Copernican Revolution" is a trove of historical and intellectual insights. Perhaps the main lesson is that scientific progress is not a simple matter of theory being adapted to observation. Multiple theories can account for the same observations, theories have complex non-observational bases of support, and extra-theoretical assumptions provided by "common sense" (such as the immobility of the earth) can be highly contingent products of a culture. Scientific progress is never guaranteed. Erroneous theories -- such as the theory placing the earth at the center of the universe -- can hold sway for centuries and generate a vast body of supporting evidence, only to fall out of sync with new observations and a new climate of opinion -- at which point they can hang on tenaciously, or collapse "suddenly" over the course of a generation or two. It all comes down to history.

Kuhn's great contribution to thought was to situate the history of science within the history of ideas -- he treated scientific theories as the products of cultures, institutions, and sheer accidents, not as deliverances of pure logic. "The Copernican Revolution" is fantastic and should be ready by anyone who enjoyed and learned from "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." It's become fashionable to bash Kuhn lately but his books have a secure place in the canon of history and philosophy of science. Six stars!

This is an excellent and much needed book. Gray Lynch courageaously takes on the JFK apologists and lays it all out so folks can see what really happened at the Bay of Pigs. His front-line service with the Brigade during the invasion gives the account credibility. As a CIA operative attached to the exiles he had first-hand knowledge of the planning and decison making that led to its failure. Lynch doesn't mince words either, he clearly articulates where the blame lies - at the feet of JFK and his administration. The account is from his actions during the initial landings and later while running operations from one of the transport ships that made up the exile force. Consequently, you won't get much coverage of the battles on the ground. However, he does an excellent job of giving the reader the overall picture and all the events that led to the failure. He also provides some interesting observations about the battle and some of its participants that I had not seen before. In the final couple of chapters he superbly blows away all the people that cast the blame on the CIA or the exiles in an attempt to cover up the true culprits. You'll come to realize how politicized the whole project became once Kennedy and the Democrats took over in 1960 and how their cowardly approach to foreign policy finally led to the betrayal of Brigade 2506. This is a quick, easy, yet powerful read that helps to dispel the conventional wisdom that has been developed about the incident. Basically, a well-planned opportunity to remove Castro from power was squandered due to politics, cowardice, and betrayal.

Grayston Lynch was one of two American "advisors" who stormed the Bay of Pigs with the 2506 Assault Brigade on April 17, 1961. In Decision for Disaster, Lynch attempts to set the record straight on what caused the mission to fail. He offers a unique perspective in that his position privileged him to the inner happenings of CIA and White House planning, yet he can also give a firsthand account of the battle itself, having fired the first shots of the invasion himself. Lynch is clearly not content in the contemporary historical account of the Bay of Pigs, proclaiming in the preface that "the true story has never been told, until now." Lynch goes on to tell his story with reasoned contempt for Castro and Camelot, and a deep reverence for the 2506 Assault Brigade.

Lynch became a player in the Bay of Pigs in December 1960. The Texan had just retired from a 22 year career with the US Army, most recently as the captain of a US Army Special Forces A-Team in Laos. He had seen combat and was wounded at Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge and Heartbreak Ridge in Korea. He was awarded two Silver Stars and a Bronze Star with Valor. The Cuban cause was something that Lynch took to heart; even after the Bay of Pigs he continued to play a major role in anti-Castro commando raids. His decision to write this book now came from the recent passing away of his fellow "advisor" William "Rip" Robertson and the declassification of items essential to the telling of the story. Besides using his first-hand account, Lynch enlisted the knowledge of commanding officers and 2506 Assault Brigade survivors in writing this book.

Lynch had his book published by Potomac Books which was founded in 1983 as a part of British publishing house Brassey's. Since this books publishing, Potomac was purchased by American book distributor Books International. Potomac has strong roots in military history, but has broadened its range to include general history, world affairs, foreign policy, intelligence, memoirs, biographies, and even sports. Its most successful book to date was Michael Scheuer's American Hubris. Potomac's usual offerings come with a strong dose of realism backed with a healthy dose of knowledge and first hand experience; Decision for Disaster is no exception.

Lynch gets off to a rough start in his account. He attempts to weave together several concurrent stories that will eventually lead to the invasion. A difficult enough task by itself, he attempts to do it as a flashback story while on his voyage to invade Cuba. This continued flashback-fastforward-recollection-juxtaposition can give the reader a mild case of mental whiplash. His constant foreshadowing and alluding to the invasion gave me a strong case of deja vu by the time he was invading in real time. However, whatever Lynch lacks in authorship, he makes up for in laying out an intriguing fact-laden journey through all relevant events leading up to the invasion.

One of the stories Lynch tells exceedingly well in the build up to the invasion is Castro's initial revolutionary undertakings in Cuba. Lynch robs any Bolivarian Romanticism from Castro's invasion, likening him and his cohorts more to a buffoonish F-Troop, who shortly after arriving are gunned down from eighty-three men to twelve. What is especially amazing is that through some perfect storm of idiot journalism, Congressional nativity, and Batista's yellow belliedness, Castro still somehow manages to seize power in two years time. This is something that the US backed 2506 Assault Brigade would fail to do.

When all members of the invasion force meet in Nicaragua, Decision for Disaster takes off. From here Lynch takes command of the story and tells it with an earnestness and humorous wit that allows the reader to experience a real empathy for him and the 2506 Assault Brigade. The story that follows is so outlandish and multi-dimensional that it left me wondering why fictional war stories exist. The politicking, bravery, cowardice, mutiny, and chance that make up the Bay of Pigs invasion is mind numbing. There is no way an academic or bureaucrat could deliver a better synopsis of the Bay of Pigs Invasion.

All good stories have a villain, and Decision for Disaster's is not who you might think. Though Lynch makes no doubt about his contempt of Castro, he dismisses him as a thuggish opportunist who only reigns due to the failing of our true villain: JFK. Lynch begins his case against Kennedy during his presidential race with Nixon. He quotes Kennedy arguing with Nixon, "If you can't stand up to Castro, how can you stand up to Khrushchev?" Kennedy played this weakness card throughout the election, and was befuddled to learn of the extensive invasion plan already in place when he arrived in office. From here, Lynch documents action after action that Kennedy takes to push the project closer and closer to failure. Against the heeds of all military advisors, Kennedy relocates the invasion spot, restricts Air Force use, and delays the project enough to allow Castro to receive his first shipment of Soviet tanks and arms.

What is especially frustrating about Kennedy's actions is that not only did they doom the invasion, but they did absolutely nothing to meet his misguided intention of hiding the obvious US involvement. Kennedy's inexcusable pussyfooting around the invasion offers a case example of what happens when the US tries to placate international concerns. A more Machiavellian approach, using overwhelming power to achieve decisive victory, would have brought success and avoided the missile crises that followed due to its failure. Lynch succeeds in painting Kennedy as an incompetent boob, who should be held ultimately responsible for the deaths and loss of American respect that resulted from the Bay of Pigs fiasco. For those who would like to place blame elsewhere, Lynch starts his book with the following quote, "For the greatest enemy of truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, pervasive, and unrealistic". This is quoted from none other than JFK himself.

Decision for Disaster is an excellent book that succeeds in telling the story in a believable manner. There is no circular logic or excuses made in Lynch's book. His humbleness while telling the story makes it clear that he has no agenda outside of relating the story as it should be told. Though Lynch occasionally stumbles to tell his story coherently in the beginning, he builds enough momentum through humor and insightfulness that it is easily overlooked. With Decision for Disaster, Lynch offers a great opportunity to relive the macrocosm of the Bay of Pigs with a genuine and witty tour guide, highly recommended.

I share the author Lynch's disgust for the attitude of John F. Kennedy and how he treated the Cuban exiles. In his campaign, Kennedy stated he would pay any price for freedom. He also chided Nixon about being tough on Castro. When it gets his turn to decide, he waffles on how to deal with Castro. He dumps the 2506 brigade on the beach and then refuses them air support either from the exile aircraft or U.S. aircraft. He states it would give a bad impression in the world.

Fortunately Kennedy toughened up in a year and faced down the Soviets and Cubans. He would not have had to if he would have supported the Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs. Lynch details his work in the Cuban exiles training. He also details the exploits of the brave 2506 Brigade and their heroic defense. The U.S. should have supported these people more forcefully.

This book is definitely an eye opener. I remember as a child my father telling me of the cover-ups and distortions created by the Kennedy administration. The real truth about what happened at the Bay of Pigs is finally out. JFK's mistake caused untold missery to millions of people. Not just Cubans, but also Nicaraguans, Guatemalans, Colombians, and now Venezuelans. Cubans, and Americans as a whole, should be extemely grateful to Mr. Grayston Lynch for writing this book. I know I am. Thank you, thank you Mr. Lynch.

This is an excellent book. Finally an author speaks out against "Camelot." America's love affair with the Kennedys is sickening. The CIA has gotten a bum rep because of the Bay of Pigs and this book finally points the finger in the right direction

If you decide to buy this book take a good deep breath. You should be good enough in algebra, and you should be quite comfortable with some six sigma basics. This book gives a good explanation in TRIZ and in the DFSS algoritm.
The axiomatic design could be better (lack of examples). It is well written.

This is a book with a lot of information. Each chapter can be used as a starting point for a specific six sigma technique. However, this is the worst edited book I have ever read. You can hardly find one page without errors/typos.

While the concept of six-sigma is a very popular one, it is not often that one can find such a comprehensive yet clearly-written volume devoted to the most important topics of six-sigma. A book that contains so much information and not just hot air is especially hard to find. Yang and El-Haik have successfully written one of the most impressive and useful reads I have ever encountered within this field. Especially intriguing and novel concept of TRIZ. A very worthwhile book, in any case.

I have not found such a comprehensive book for design of six sigma. I started using this book for advanced experimental design and taguchi methods, but ended understanding the complete roadmap for design of six sigma. The systems approach allows an enthusiast reader to start anywhere, without having to spend time refering back to earlier chapters. The relatively newer trends as TRIZ and axiomatic design have also been nicely dealt with.
Overall, this is a very nice and easy read book, with excellent and well defined examples. A must for everyone who wants a quick refresher on the design principles of six sigma.

This is an outstanding DFSS book for production development. It contains integrated information and some of which you could hardly find anywhere else, thus with one book in hand, you have all the tools to get to your destination. This is also a easy to read book providing the reader with a solid understanding- Concepts are clearly defined, real world examples/ case studies are fully described and the chapters are well organized. It can serve as a textbook for students/beginners and also can serve as a handbook for experienced engineers.
The title says it all- this is a roadmap for you to find the way correctly and easily. I am reading the book right now, and the book is really beneficial to me.

This Book is not only regiments history and a lott of beautiful accurate illustrated uniforms, is history alive. The only thing this book lack off is sound but thanks to the hands of Don Troiani the paintings are so full of live you can hear it in the back of your mind. Art by Don Troiani, text by Brian C. Pohanka. This book presents in a beautiful landscape format his unique view of the war and the men who fought it. Each painting is accompanied by an extensive background text by noted historian Brian Pohanka The good thing about this book is that if you consider yourself a Civil War historian or reenactorss a just a fan beginning to study the civil war, you won't find the typical error of other authors, this would help you enjoy the painting one by one so you can understand better who and how was this War fought. One last thing DO NOT PUT THIS BOOK ON YOUR COFFEE TABLE people fall in love with this book so fast that they can even stole from you, believe me this is the third time I buy this book. If you enjoy this book you would love Don Troiani's Soldiers In America, 1754 - 1865.

If you are any kind of amateur Civil War historian than you probably grew up looking at the American Heritage or Golden books about the civil war. They were chock full of illustrations from the Harper's Weekly sketches to the bursting with color lithographs of Kurtz & Allison. Yes, these images were full of fully uniformed boys in blue and gray gathered in massive lines firing point blank at each other. And even as a child gazing at these...you wondered...was it really like that?

Then you glimpse your first Troiani painting and you know you are in the presence of the real deal. Don Troiani sweats the details and doesn't just throw something on the canvas and attach a name to it. The event depicted is so vividly and realistically portrayed that you almost know what moment in the American Civil War you are seeing without having to be told.

This wonderful book finally brings together in one place some of Troiani's greatest Civil War paintings. It is a book that no Civil War library is complete without. This is perhaps as close to witnessing the actual event as we are ever likely to achieve.

I only wish the Ken Burns had taken advantage of these paintings and used them in his series on the Civil War. His insistence on utilizing contemporary images reduced his otherwise wonderful documentary to a rehash of what I had already seen a thousand times in my Golden book. Imagine how much richer the story telling as his camera zoomed into a Troiani painting.

It's time to see the Civil War as it was. Trust Don Troiani to show you.

Every Civil War enthusiast should have this book. It's beautiful, enjoyable, as well as educational. Troiani's attention to detail and historical accuracy is astounding. Most of Troiani's work is of active battle scenes with anonomous characters, unlike John Paul Strain's work which focuses on specific leaders in non-battle situations. I recommend both books.

What a nice book, both to the artistic and literary eye. I am fortunate enough to own three Don Troiani signed Civil War prints. This book is dessert, providing a thorough if not complete collection of all the Civil War art I will never own but can now enjoy. Troiani, an avid collector of Civil War uniforms and gear, provides perhaps the most accurate representation of soldiers, regiments and engagements normally limited to what the mind's eye can conjur from words on a page. Troiani not only excells at the equipment's detail, but paints a vivid image of the topography and climate as well as the determination, anguish, fear, and heroism of the soldiers. These are not charactures but the images of people who seem to walk off the page and out of your imagination. Pohanka's commentary complements the art by placing the action within the broader context of the battle and the war. I made this book a gift to myself and, if you appreciate art - either in a historical context or for arts sake - you should as well.

A quick glance of the customer reviews tells one that this book is something special. Page after page of astounding paintings complemented by capable text. The detail of Don Troiani's artwork is such that you can literally spend hours examining them, and if you let others look at the book you can grow impatient trying to get it back!

There are 2 parts in this book. Matrix spaces etc are discussed in one and the second part covers topics like Lebesgue integration. After looking through some other text books, I have to say that this is probably the best book I read. I finally understand the topic very well. Also another important thing I like is the way proofs are written. If you have a class to follow, then this book is the perfect combination. If you have read the basics elsewhere that can also help. But overall it is very well written

I own the book in Spanish language. Some content in the book is not easy stuff, if you study by others books, but Kolmogorov has the gift to make easy things that aren't quite so easy. Perhaps some theory is "old", because all the new books use some diferent approach to the subject, like the chapter dedicated to the Lebesgue integral, the book give the definition of a simple function in a different manner that we use today. The book is a must to have in your library, when you need to work with Functional Analysis.

This book is not quite up-to-date, but still very good as a starting point in (functional) analysis. The virtue of Kolmogorov and Fomin is their user-friendly writing style. I am delighted to find their book being available for less than ten dollars.

This book is better than his fabulous Real Analysis book. It is one of the best, if not THE best, functional analysis book out there and the price is low. Quality to price ratio is approaching infinity here (as Dover reduces the price more)!!!

Kolmogorov knows how to arrange topics and introduce them at the proper spots throughout the book. Everything is broken down into bite sized pieces and you are given enough examples to digest what's going on. Reading the book is like reading Kolmogorov's mind, as he has tried to teach HOW TO THINK about the material, not just DO IT. It's also very addictive, even though it's rigorous.

Name a better functional analysis book? Not sure if that's possible.

A concise, well-readable book for as much money as every textbook should cost. There's only one problem I found, but I wouldn't take a star for it, because the book is really very good: since the book is quite old, the nomenclature is very different from the current one. (Eg. the empty set is called ``void set'', Cauchy sequences is called ``fundamental sequences'', etc.) One should always look up the ``up-to-date'' name of every important concept that is introduced in the book.

Jess Walter has written an unbiased book about the standoff on Ruby Ridge.

Paranoia and fear played a large part in the conflict, for both sides.

The author detailed the religious influences,beliefs, and motivating factors for the Weaver's move to Idaho. A simple weapons charge could possibly have been beaten and the whole situation avoided.

But for the F.B.I. to have such unconstitutional rules of engagement was arrogant and incompetent at best. The Justice Department report admitted that while the F.B.I. continued it's attempts to cover up and promote those that were most involved. I was amazed to read that the Marshals that were involved in the original shootings weren't interviewed by the other law enforcement agencies and the false reports of the Marshals being in danger after they had in fact,already retreated.

"Every Knee Shall Bow.." is a book I recommend if you want to read about the tragedy of Ruby Ridge.

Like others I contend that this book is far in a way the very best of all the retellings of the events on Ruby Ridge percisely because of the way the author decided to present the material.

The background data is nearly perfect providing just enough information to the reader while never hindering the flow of the story. The Weaver family come off at the same time as nice folk but terrible misguided, ill informed, and increasingly responsible for the self-fulfilling prophecies of destruction.
The seem so sympathetic that the reader almost feels pity for them because it is their ill founded fears and feeling based, unreasoning conviction in their own delusions that bring on the very things they fear. I related to the jury foreman(Jake Weaver - no relation to Randy) who said, "If I could have convicted him(Randy Weaver) for gross stupidity I would have."

However, compaired to the government blunders the Weavers look fantastic. The FBI is especially bad, not so much the agents as the leadership. The whole government response from the very first is overblown, fraught with worry, conspiracy thinking, and made things markedly worse than they already were and digresses into terrible infighting and intr-agency sniping while everyone fears liabiliy from the whole mis-handled affair.

The trial was excellent and a nearly perfect demonstration of how our criminal court system works trying to protect rights but often having to walk a tightrope on evidence and testimony, not to mention attorney behavior.

It this book is not the truth of what happened it is as close as we are ever likely to get. I highly recomend it without reservation other than warning the unsuspecting that in truthfully presenting the story there are occasional bits of colorful language, and some very distasteful and unbecoming verbalized racism of the worst sort and that I personally had hoped we as a nation had left far in our past.

I found it fascinating. It's about crackpots (The Weavers) and F***ups (The Government). I found Randy Weaver to be lazy and maybe a coward. But I do believe that he loved his wife and family. Vicki was interesting. Her family almost lost their family farm as a kid due to eminent domain. They were going to build a freeway right though where the house was. I can understand why she didn't trust the government. She was also very bright and capable. Could sew clothes without a pattern (self taught), cook, can food, roofing, and learned to be an executive secretary. I think she was the one who did most of the building of the house on Ruby Ridge. I had to admire her even if her beliefs are wacky. She was the one who did the research trying to figure out "God's will". Randy would even ask "Is that what we believe now?" She was definitely head of the family. What she needed was someone who would keep her thinking from going off the deep end instead of Randy who would believe whatever she believed.

Randy seemed to know the Ayran Nations people because he held some of the same beliefs. But I think he was more interested in spouting his religious beliefs to them. I think he probably hung around them some because he was a talker. And that area of Idaho is full of odd people like himself and constitutionalists, survivalists and other people on the far right.

I don't like entrapment, which happened to him. There is plenty of people to catch that are lawbreakers without paying snitches to look for them. Just IMHO. Once law enforcement picked him up using entrapment again (this time pretending to need help looking like the vehicle broke down) it was just one mistake made after another. So many I can't describe them all even if I wanted to.

As much as I found the Weavers personal beliefs disgusting it's obvious to me the government went overboard trying to bring Randy to face charges. There was no reason that their son Sammy, Vicki and the dog got shot. Just overzealous U.S. Marshals.

Jess Walter delivers a dramatic, thoroughly reported, well written account of the standoff at Ruby Ridge. Compared to the other two major books on this incident, this book plays it the straightest. He points some fingers, but only when deserving.

Even if you know the final outcome, this book is written well enough to still build some suspense to keep the reader readiing.

Overall, a very good book.

This book is probably the best known of all the books about this case.It is the book the 1996 Mini-series starring Laura Dern and Randy Quaid was based on. It is well researched and put together.
The book makes a fair attempt to stay neutral, but I think it was a bit too critical of the Weavers and too sympathetic towards the government on a couple of points.That does not at all diminish its value for someone seeking to learn about this case.Its an invaluable resource.The coverage of the trial is astounding. It spans several chapters and is intricately detailed.
The whole trial is covered from the pretrial preparations to the day Randy walked out of jail.

At the end of the book, I felt like I had just been on a long journey through these tragic events .I felt emotionally wrung out. I have been following this case for a long time and already knew a lot about the case but I ended up feeling even more saddened and outraged at what happened to the Weaver family, and I think reading this would make the majority of people marginally sympathetic to the Weavers, no matter how much we disagree with their religious beliefs.If you want to hear the story reported from both sides, this is the book for you.

This is simply a GREAT book. I am not a scientist! The book is technically more than sound and yet accessible for the natural history buff, bug fans, those interested in flower/insect symbiosis. Anyone curious about the natural world "must-have" this book on their shelves--or rather in their hand. The book is beautiful. It is also an appropriate "gift" for a PhD specializing in etymology, although he probably already has it? Or the bright, curious high-school girl. I couldn't put it down!

The book was in our hands before the predicted day and in excellent conditions. It is the recommended literature to the PhD course of Entomology, in this field.

The illustrations are stunning.

The writing is judicious and comprehensive, but never tedious or stale.

The citations are comprehensive and up-to-date, and the discussion based on them synthesizes the views of naturalists, entomologists, paleontologists, biologists, and systematists, but without ever burying important contemporary controversies.

The authors are active researchers, who somehow found the time to put this gorgeous volume together for the rest of us while pursuing their own fresh interests.

You need not be a professional to read, enjoy, and benefit from this volume. Any intelligent layperson with an abiding interest in science and the deep evo-devo connections between ourselves and this most successful animal group will gain enrichment and goggle at the photos, paintings, charts, and other graphic content. Recent fossil discoveries are particularly well discussed and displayed, but the graphics are superb overall--the illustrations of grasshopper dentition are alone worth the price of admission!

Really, what more could you want?

Any tome of this size and production quality is bound to be pricey. But there are solutions to that--encourage your local public library system to obtain a copy, or indulge in a "guest researcher" membership at your nearest university library, or simply grit your teeth and get a copy now.

Because you know volumes like these don't stay in print forever, and are not the kind that diminish greatly in price over any reasonably near term.

It is difficult to understand how such an extraordinary book can be published for such a good price. The production values for this volume put to shame nearly every other book on evolutionary history I own. It is hard to imagine how the authors secured this level of support for publishing a relatively narrow-interest book. I assume significant grants must have been involved.

I can only hope that future books by different authors on the evolutionary history of different organisms (chordates, molluscs, etc.) will be afforded this level of support.

This book was a textbook for a course on insect fossils I took a few years ago and we read it cover to cover. My fellow classmates and I (all professional entomologists) had mixed reviews of this book. While it undoutedly provides a lot of good information and is a tremendous contribution to the field of insect fossils, it also contains several mistakes and leaves out a lot of important information. For example, the professor for my fossil insect course is one of the world's experts on giant water bug fossils and was appalled to see what was clearly a giant water bug fossil, from a formation in Germany he has studied himself, labeled as a naucorid, a completely different insect. A description of a dryopid beetle fossil on another page said that all stages of dryopids are aquatic when the larvae are terrestrial. My classmates and I found several such errata throughout the book and felt they seriously undermined the reliability of the information it contains. We were also all annoyed by the lack of molecular support for the arguments presented by the authors. While morphological data is certainly important to consider in systematic studies, it is blatently obvious that the authors don't think much of molecular phylogenetic data. This is unfortunate because in several cases, molecular data has cleared up long standing controversies over taxnomic deliniations where morphological data alone could not. It is clear from the text that the authors are more comfortable with the morphological data than molecular (as expected - they're experts on insect fossils), which would be fine if the book was called Insect Paleontology. However, this book is called Evolution of the Insects. Molecular data is a huge part of modern insect systematics and phylogenetics and any book purporting to canvas the subject of insect evolution should take advantage of the entire wealth of knowledge available and report on it all. That said, this book does what few other books does: it contains information on both extant and extinct linages and it covers the groups we know only through fossils as thoroughly as it does the living taxa. For me, that information alone makes this book worth reading, and is the reason I give it 3 stars insted of 2.