As a Special Forces cadre,I observed the Marine Recon teams working the Laotian border around our base at Lang Vei. Their 4 man teams provided much needed information for everyone. We knew of massive enemy build ups in the area prior to Tet, thanks to these brave men. There is no mention of those days in any of these books. Sadly, the story of Marine Recon's greatest feats will probably never be told.

I believe Col. Norton pretty well encapsulated the climate over there...I wasn't in Recon, but he did a great job of explaining how counter-recon tactics of the NVA evolved, beginning in Force Recon Diary 1969 and on through Force Recon Diary 1970. Both books were great...real keepers.

Force Recon Diary, 1970, picks up where FRD, '69 left off, with "Doc" Norton returning to Vietnam and his second tour with 1st Force. The detail of his work is exceptional, and brings the reader right into the "harbor site" with the team. Major Norton has the ability and talent to capture the moment and spares no expense in "telling it like it was." For anyone interested in the tough business of Marine Reconnaissance during the Vietnam War, the Force Recon Diaries, written by Doc, are as good as it gets. Get this book, sit down with a stiff drink, and read what it was like to be a member of a Marine Force Recon Team in combat. Trully, a great source of information. I give it 5 Stars!

Death and the King's Horseman is a play written by Wole Soyinka, whose main focus is on the difference between the Western culture as opposed to the African culture. In his play he demonstrates how the western culture feels superior to the African one by supposing that they can interfere in their customs. The westerners from the play, the Pilkings, invaded Nigeria where the tribe of Yoruba inhabits. Throughout the whole play, there was a constant struggle between the Pilkings and the people of the Yoruban tribe to stop a certain traditional ceremony practiced by the Yorubans. This consisted of the king's horseman commiting suicide one month after the king died. It was so customary and natural for this to occur, but for the westerners it was totally insane and inhumane. The end is very unpredictable and will keep you on the edge of your seat while reading this book. I highly recommend this book because it exhibits an abundant amount of insight on human nature and it also helps us attain a greater understanding of the African culture.

This play is a must read for anyone seeking the truth about race relations around the world. Especially between African people and europeans. I think the author's account of how the europeans tried to rob the Africans of what little pride, religion and culture they still had left spoke of the horrible genocide that existed then and continues now. It's also most disheartening to know that African people can't even have their freedom in death.

I have read the other 6 reviews and I am sorry they got it so wrong. Even if what they say is very true but not related with the subject (Yoruba tragedy) that matter to us. "Death and..." is more related to the person who was asking help because she/he could not understand what was about. I would advise this person to read attently Nietzsche's "the Birth of Tragedy" and "the Antichrist" and if he has some more time, Shopenhauer as well (yet less influencer on Soyinka than Nietzsche). Soyika understand the terrible problems Africa and specially Nigeria has. However, the theme of this play is fare more universal. Is related with the creation and recreation of art and the human being in a turbocapitalistic society. It is about to cross the "abyss"ÿ

Smith has written a good book that rightly focuses on Washington's building of our national government through careful consideration of precedent and the ability to balance factions through the force of his dignity and integrity.

Our new American government need not have stuck by its Constitutional structure. Indeed, that document was a plan on paper that could arguably have been observed more in the breech had Washington had anything like Napolean's thirst for personal power.

Yet that marvelous document was strengthened by Washington's desire to observe its structure and strictures. Smith details how our first president was keenly aware that his organization of the government and almost every action were setting the precedents that would determine whether his successors would be preside in his spirit or in a vein more threatening to the liberties he had helped purchase during the Revolution.

He also had the help of very intelligent men in his cabinet -- principally Hamilton and Jefferson -- who had opposing views as to the nature of the federal government and its goals and desired relationship to the individual, states and the economy. That Washington was able to keep them both in his employ during the critical period of his first term reveals him to be a very good politician who was adept at balancing interests, using his prestige, and satisfying the egos of men who thought they were destined to design the nation in this first presidency.

I would have liked a little more detail on the actual organization of the government and it's establishment. Smith focuses more on the personal and relationships of Washington and his key subordinates -- somewhat of a style over substance analysis of his two terms. Yet at this period, style and nuance were critical to setting a positive tone for the presidency and Smith's focus is certainly a good lense through which to shed more light on this important historical era.

This book is really well written and focuses on Washington's presidency. It is incredibly interesting to learn how Washington dealt with the supposed greats of his day like Hamilton, Jefferson, and Adams. We should all realize that GW was a much better politician and thinker than he gets credit for. ENJOY!

What I'd like you to do now is to go to the James Thomas Flexner's "Indispensable Man" review I wrote, read the first paragraph and come back here.

Now that I've established the importance of learning about GW, I must recommend to you R.N. Smith's book. He focuses on Washington's presidency and helps us to understand why he is consistantly ranked by historians as one of the top three U.S. presidents. Smith focuses on his precedents and the respect he commanded from all, including Jefferson and Hamilton who, without Washingtons' leadership might have destroyed each other and the country in their political intrigues. Highly recommended.

The Blithedale Romance is a somewhat dark, depressing tale of idealism gone awry and of friendship and love torn asunder by private ambitions. The romance of these pages is not what many modern readers may expect to find here; there is no penultimate consummation of love among these characters, nor is there much happiness indeed to be discerned from the complexity of their relations one with another. Much has been made of Hawthorne's own temporary residence at the utopian-minded Brook Farm a decade previous to the publication of this work; it is true that some of the experiences derive from his own memories, but Hawthorne went to great pains to make clear that this is a romance first and foremost and bears no direct relation to the experiences of his own life. Those who would read this novel in an attempt to get at Hawthorne's true feelings about the utopian socialism he flirted with and watched from afar during his pivotal creative years may well miss out on the thought-provoking treatment of such wonderfully literary, fascinating characters as Hollingsworth the idealistic philanthropist, Zenobia the modern feminist reformer with a fatal flaw inimical to her self-realization, and the sweet and frail Priscilla.

The first-person narrator of this story is Miles Coverdale, a man difficult to come to terms with. He joins with the pioneers behind the utopian farming community of Blithedale and truly takes heart in the possibility of this new kind of communitarian life offering mankind a chance to live lives of purpose and fulfillment, yet at times he steps outside of events and seems to view the whole experience as a study in human character and a learning experience to which his heart-strings are only loosely bound. The drama that unfolds is told in his perspective only, and one can never know how much he failed to discern or the degree to which his own conjectures are correct. His eventual castigation of Hollingsworth cannot be doubted, however. This rather unfeeling man joins the community on the hidden pretext of acquiring the means for fulfilling his overriding utopian dream of creating an edifice for the reformation of criminals. This dream takes over his life, Coverdale observes, and his once-noble philanthropic passion morphs him into an overzealous, unfeeling man who brings ruin upon those who were once his friends. It is really Zenobia, though, upon which the novel feeds. She is a fascinating woman of means who makes the Blithedale dream a reality, a bold reformer seeking a new equality for women in the world who ultimately, at Hawthorne's bidding, suffers the ignominious fate of the fragile spirit she seemed to have overcome.

This is not a novel that will immediately enthrall you in its clutches. The first half of the novel is sometimes rather slow going, but I would urge you not to cast this book aside carelessly. The final chapters sparkle with drama and human passion, and you find yourself suddenly immersed in this strange community of tragic friends-turned-foes. You care deeply what happens to such once-noble spirits, and while you may not find joy in the tragic conclusion of the ill-fated social experiment of Blithedale, you will certainly find your soul stirred by the tragedy of unfolding events.

vintage is always a pleasure, presuming of course that we're talking about the real thing. there's a regal pace about hawthorne's prose that is undeniably hawthorne and no one else. there's that rigid, regimental quality uniquely hawthornian, a sense of iron discipline, utterly lacking in modern american prose. if vintage is what you seek, check out the blithedale romance: it'll set you straight.

This is not only a book with which any Hawthorne fan should be familiar, it is a necessity to anyone who is studying the Romantic Tradition. This text is an elegant commentary on the ideals that the Romantics held dear, such as the authenticity of a life close to the earth, the superiority of existence outside of common society rather than within it, and our innate ability, with enough well-directed effort, to transcend our own humanity. Like a breath of fresh air after Wordsworth, Thoreau, Keats, and both Shelleys, Hawthorne's cynicism and pessimism on these topics shine clearly through this work. Though admittedly he has failed in his announced effort to make the text cheerful and lighthearted, this is not such a complete failure as one may initially suppose, when this novel is contrasted with his others. Much of the humor that is in the book is centered around the narrator, Coverdale, whose nature forces him to fit in with his surroundings in a way which is a bit askew, precipitating enjoyable scenes which the reader can appreciate, if he or she has refrained from judging this main character. The treasure in this book, however, is not mainly in its humor, but rather (for me at least - each person presumably takes from it something different) in the elegance with which so many universal truths are exposed (often only partially, so that the reader can feel a sense of triumph when they wholly uncover them) to our conscious awareness. As you have no doubt already surmised, I highly recommend this novel.

Set aboard a Mississippi side-wheel steamer in the 1850s, Melville's novel charts the progress of the American character at a time when the old frontier was giving way, albeit slowly, to a new, urban frontier.

"The Confidence-Man" works at so many different levels that it is no wonder Melville's readers weren't quite sure what to make of his ninth novel. It is a call-and-response of idealism suborned for the purposes of sheer humbuggery, material theft and moral sophistry.

I think readers would do well to always keep the word "confidence" in mind as they read the novel; it recurs time and again in different contexts throughout the book. Melville's purpose is to highlight the rift between what things seem to be and what they truly are. It is eerily existential in tone and readers familiar with Kierkegaard and Camus will be delighted by Melville's keen appreciation for the absurdity of the human condition.

The wretched reception of "The Confidence-Man" undermined what little was left of Melville's own self-confidence as a writer whose work could support his family. In one sense, this was a grievous shame, because Melville lived for nearly four more decades and, presumably, could have spent that time producing more great literature had his contemporaries simply recognized the intellectual genius of his work.

In another sense, though, "The Confidence-Man" is a fitting send-off to a literary career hobbled by critical inattention and plain bad luck. Melville's America is not an America where dreams come true (note how China Aster is destroyed by his) and where confidence -- optimism -- is rewarded or even warranted. Yet, it is an America recognizably closer to the one we live in than those crafted by Melville's contemporaries -- Emerson, Thoreau, Irving.

"The Confidence-Man" is a very complex novel of ideas. This particular edition is very useful because it provides fairly thorough annotation throughout the book. I would highly recommend it for use in a graduate course on American intellectual history, particularly juxtaposed against Emerson and Tocqueville's analyses of American society and culture.

With "The Confidence-Man," Melville offered a final novelistic expression of his hopes, doubts, and frustrations about the American nation on the verge of Civil War in the late 1850's.

Many critics and reviewers take a negative point of view on this novel, saying that the narrative instability and episodic nature of the novel represents Melville's anger with the increasingly poor reception of his later novels, including the brilliant "Moby-Dick".

Over the course of the novel's first half, we are presented with a string of characters who spout the virtues of charity and trust, all supposedly different manifestations of one Confidence-Man. The confidence-man engages passengers of the riverboat Fidele from St. Louis to New Orleans in philosophical, literary, personal, and business-related conversations. This is the heart of the novel, even in the second half, where only one confidence-man appears. As in Cervantes' "Don Quixote," you are able to tease out more about the ambiguous purposes of the novel through speeches rather than actions.

At points amusing, horrifying, and sad, "The Confidence-Man" is difficult, if not impossible to categorize in any simple fashion. An extremely worthwhile read, especially if you read it as a prophetic work of the American Civil War and try to figure out for yourself if Melville thought things would turn out alright, or if the US was due for an apocalyptic judgment.

Quite an Original

The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade
I am specifically reviewing the Northwestern University Press edition of Melville's "The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade."

There is a Norton Critical Edition of this novel edited by Hershel Parker, but it doesn't seem to be offered by Amazon.com. It is offered at at W.W. Norton's website... The Hendricks House edition edited by Elizabeth Foster is another good edition, but it seems to be out of print at the moment.

On November 12, 1856 Herman Melville and Nathanial Hawthorne took a walk among the sandhills near Liverpool, England. They smoked cigars, and Hawthorne wrote about a week later that Melville spoke of Providence and futurity, and he, Melville, had pretty much made up his mind to be annilated.

"The Confidence-Man" is the last novel that Melville published during his lifetime. I agree with Newton Arvin, who called "The Confidence-Man" "one of the most infidel books ever written by an American; one of the most completely nihilistic, morally and metaphysically."

About 150 years after the book was first published, and about fifty since the book was first taken seriously by literary critics, The Confidence-Man is not a settled matter. In fact there remains excessive discord among readers and critics about the worth of this novel. Some compare it to Swift's "Tale of the Tub," others will tell you that this book is static and formless.

The idea is simple enough. On April 1 a devil in the guise of a deaf mute goes aboard a Mississippi river steamboat, and begs for charity. In rapid succession he transforms himself into a crippled Black man, a man with the weed, the man in the grey coat , the gentleman with the big book, the man with the plate and finally the Cosmopolitan. In these different guises he gulls and diddles people. He asks for trust. He is not always successful, but he can take solace in his failures. The reason for the devil's failures is the cyniscim, mistrust and mysandry of his marks. It is their human failings that accounts for his failures. And that's not so bad for the devil.

Melville's control of his material was never greater. I recommend the Northwestern Newberry edition because it contains draft fragments of chapter 14. You can see how carefullly Melville wrote this novel. The blandness of the prose is deliberate. If you read the surviving drafts you will see how Melville purposedly silenced and muted his message. Perhaps Melville was too successful for even close readers get lost sometimes.

At the end there is an increase of seriousness. An old man closes his Bible and asks for a life preserver. The Cosmopolitan hands the old man a chamberpot which appears to be full, and calls it a life preserver. The Cosmopolitan then extinguishes the lamp, and then leads the other into the darkness.

The first part of the book when Hawker is at Castle Dracula is the best part of the book. It's creepy, it's gothic, it is the best written part of the book. Unfortuanetly it goes down scale from their. I think the problem is that Stoker is that great of a stylist. If your looking for an extremely well written horror novel check out Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes. If you are willing to make allowances at times this is a good book. It still more worth your time than anything on television though.

When I started to read Bram Stoker's Dracula, I thought that I wouldn't enjoy the style that it was written in. I was worried that the book being written in the form of letters would make it boring and dull. I was wrong. Bram Stoker's writing the book in the form of letters makes it very exciting. Reading about the plot through a first person viewpoint gives the book a thrilling suspense that would have been difficult to achieve otherwise. It is a perfect Gothic story, full of romance, love, horror, and human emotions. The only disappointment that I had in the book was the ending. It was slightly anti-climatic, and was a bit of a letdown. Previously to the ending there had been a large and drawn out build up of suspense and excitement. The book ended far too suddenly. Other than that I enjoyed the book immensely. Anybody who likes a good thriller filled with suspense will enjoy Bram Stoker's Dracula.

"Dracula" is not a great novel, it is just a great story. Stoker's device of trying to let all of the characters tell their own story in the first person gets a bit trite after a while, but what is important here is that he sets the rules for what everybody knows about vampires. The first half of the book, while the Count entertains Jonathan Harker and first comes to London and preys upon Lucy and Mina, is the best part of the book. The final chase and staking of Dracula ends up being somewhat anticlimatic. Still, I think this book reads better than "Frankenstein." Oh, and I do know enough about science to recognize that someone drained of blood cannot receive a transfusion from everybody. A minor error given the times, but it still makes me smile. "Dracula" remains the standard by which Anne Rice and the rest who have followed in his footsteps are necessarily judged.

If I were pressed to use one word to describe this book itwould be dark. However, Crane's novel is a moving piece with momentsof transcendence and rampant dark humor.

Basically, it is the story of Maggie, an undeveloped character who takes the back-seat to her loud and abusive parents, her swaggering, self-confident brother Jimmie and his friend, the boastful Pete.

The novel chronicles the injustices that surround Maggie, who is quiet and doesn't fight back. A chilling look at poor, urban life in the late 1800's, it is also a tale critical of society's judgmentality and questioning of morality. A more complex novel than it seems on first look, it is wonderful to take apart and examine the relationship between Maggie and Pete, Maggie and her mother, and Maggie and Jimmie.

Most importantly, however, are the quiet moments of transcendence in this novel.

Crane's first book is always a pleasure to reread for the new discoveries I have always made; it might be a sentence I had not seen before, a humorous line, or simply, the wonder that an semi-educated writer--really just a boy--could write this short novel, one that was so instinctive in its forebodings of genius (Anyone wishing to chat about this book or Crane's "Red Badge"--I have a review there--or simply literature, please send e-mail: it will be pleasurably read and commented on).

Hart Crane's first novel is the tale of a pretty young slum girl driven to brutal excesses by poverty and loneliness. It was considered so sexually frank and realistic, that the book had to be privately printed at first. It and GEORGE'S MOTHER, the shorter novel that follows in this edition, were eventually hailed as the first genuine expressions of Naturalism in American letters and established their creator as the American apostle of an artistic revolution which was to alter the shape and destiny of civilization itself.

I found the book to be well laid out and written to allow a wide range of users to understand the operation and configuration of Windows 2000. The examples contained are precise and step by step so that the novice or expert can easily find the path to a well structured operating system in their home or office PC. The forward references found in the initial chapters allow the reader to fast forward to places of special interest or need and delve into the details or specific functions they are searching for. I believe this will be a valuble addition to any Windows 2000 users library.

I found this book to be exactly as advertised. The indexing was easy to follow and the book well written in plain English. There seems to be an understanding for the people that buy this book really need it. My enjoyment of Windows 2000 improved 100% and is still on the up swing. I can, without a minute's hesitation, recommend this book for the beginner and up; I was a beginner in Windows 2000 after all. Thanks for a great book.

I bought this book expecting the usual coverage of how to work with Windows and some theory. I got a lot more. When I ran into problems with my printer, I was able to go into the troubleshooting section and get useful advice on how to fix it. I also found the MSMQ coverage helpful. The company I'm working for is looking at this technology and knowing how to set things up is a real plus.

The book does not cover very good examples on each topic specially on Datatypes. Also it is not exclusive on detailing schemas. The kind of material/information provided by this book can be read from any core xml book. XML Bible describes the Schemas very well in one chapter.

At first glance this book impressed me by its sheer volume and the fact that there seemed to be some interesting topics discussed that went beyond the schema spec itself. However, as I looked at it more closely, I have two big problems with it:

1. There _are_ a lot of errors, and they're not just harmless typos. I found numerous examples that are incorrect, and not just because they are missing a quote or something. It makes me wonder if anyone bothered to validated the examples with a parser.

2. It was very obvious that the book was written by multiple authors, with little coordination between them. There is a lot of overlapping and even contradictory information in the book, which is frustrating. It is also not organized well - I had a hard time finding the simplest of concepts - for example, what attributes are allowed on the "element" element if it is a ref vs. a name, whether it's global vs. local, etc.

Overall, I was not impressed.

I had to create an XML schema out of an XML file that was already existing (I am sure that rarely happens:-)) and I could get the job done by reading half of this book. Would be a five star if not for the typos.

This is a much better way of learning to write XML schemas compared to formal language at the XML schema specification site.

The selection of poems in this anthology, although it includes many of the great poems of English literature, is very poor. About a third of the book is devoted to relatively mediocre 20th century poetry, written by poets practically unknown now, who will be completely forgotten 50 years from now. The book could be much lighter and hopefully less expensive if it included fewer of these poems, which are not really appropriate in a book intended as a survey of English poetry (that is, poetry in English, of course). There must be better anthologies.

Another annoying thing is that the editors have given glosses to explain the simplest concepts and terms. These glosses interrupt one's reading of a poem, and for people who do not know the words explained, a dictionary would be much more useful.

The third edition, with a black cover, made the best of its slightly shorter space available by honing the reprinted poets and poetry down to the essentials. The fourth edition still includes most of that material, but the fourth edition is beginning to include too much chaff with the wheat, digging up obscure seventeenth and eighteenth century poets and placing them side by side with Donne, Milton, and Pope. The obscure figures are only going to suffer by comparison; there is not going to be any sudden Eliot-like revaluation of these obscure poets' reputations. It's even worse in the contemporary period -- dozens of second-rate poets, sampled with one or two poems apiece, which only takes away from the space that could have been granted to Wilbur, Ashbery, Geoffrey Hill, Derek Walcott, etc. -- not to mention Auden, who is still given too few poems to grasp his entire achievement. It's too bad the third edition isn't available any longer.

Are you remotely interested in poetry then you should buy The Norton Anthology of Poetry by Margaret Ferguson(Editor), et al. This book is a wonderfull presentation into world of poetry and presents a wast array of poets, i.e., everyhting Anna Laeitta Barbauld to William Shakespeare. Being a fan of the older style of poetry, e.g., William Shakespeare, John Milton and Geofrey Chaucer, I was happy to see that these parts had the space that they righly deserve. The index is very well developed and it was an excellent idea to pu each poem under the name of poet since otherwise finding a particular poem would have ben almost impossible. The font selected is very easy to read. The only downside is the quality of the paper; being almost 2000 pages long in paperback the quality of the paper is so-so and next time I will buy it in hardcover.