This book tells the story of a soldier that rose from being a foot soldier to he became a General. Charles De Gaulle did see combat and conflicts from several different positions during his life - from being a scared soldier with a rifle in his hand to being a high ranked officer that ordered his soldiers into war. I think this is a very interesting book, since it tells a specific story about a very special man. I would recommend this book to everyone that are interested in European politics, Military history, or just the Great Man Charles De Gaulle!

This book is outstanding for its literary, even poetic, power. De Gaulle thinks of France as a person fated for tragedy and greatness. His biggest problem is achieving recognition as the political representative of France after France has signed an armistice with the Germans: Churchill tells him that although he claims to represent France, neither England or the US will recognize him as such; De Gaulle steadily replies that it is sufficient for him if the French people recognize him. This is the story of a man standing against the entire world for the sake of an ideal. Reminded me of Nelson Mandela!

As one might expect, De Gaulle's memoirs of the Second World War are deeply concerned with self-justification, if not self-glorification. More surprisingly, they are good reading. De Gaulle writes in a formal, but clear and elegant style. The period covered is from the fall of France, through De Gaulle's flight to England and formation of the Free French, to the liberation and a bit of the postwar period. Obviously, this is not objective history. The chief interest of the book is that De Gaulle's personality and opinions colors every page. The reader may indeed be irritated, or he may be amused, by the author's undisguised self-regard, but in any case there are compensations. There is revealing detail on events such as the fall of France and the invasion of North Africa. With great candor and sharp perception De Gaulle assesses his own and others' strategies. There are good pen-portraits of Churchill and many other contemporaries. And there is the fascination of viewing great events through the prism of a commanding mind..

Good overall technical writting,
lots of fully worked mathematical
examples. Only book like it available
in print today.

Well written, using language easily understood by the average technical reader with an interest in the field ( unlike many engineering tomes in my experience ). Also unlike many texts, proofreading and editing are skilled and thorough. Shapiro ackowledges in the preface to the first edition the roles of his co-author sons as "militant proponents of the clearly expressed thought". The success of that effort is obvious.

A very balanced presentation with generous references to actual experience, practical examples, some theory, and lots of photos and illustrations. The authors' subtle humor makes the normally dry genre very readable.

I was disappointed learning it is currently out of print and am hopeful of a future reprinting so I won't have to keep borrowing my boss' copy !

I found this book most informative towards my work on heavy lift planning. It discusses in depth various aspects of lift planning and crane selection. However, a more detailed discussion on planning on congested sites would have been useful

In the Gulf War the full technical advances in the gathering of electronic and signals intelligence were so impressive that Allied Governments were led to believe, that machines and satilites alone could do the job of man. This book proves that such assumptions were incorrect. What has been made plain in "Desert Storms" was that for certain tasks in most places of the world, there is still no substitute for the human intelligence agent. A good read.

World leaders should have the wit to learn that all wars teach lessons. If they do not have the sight to do so, they were faught for naught and those who have died in them did so in vain. What this author made plain was that for special tasks in unusual places, there is still no substitute for the world's oldest information gathering device: the "humant". The author's product (secretly gathered intelligence) should be highly regarded.

"Desert Storms" is a haunting and original story woven about two very different traditions, moving from opulent palacial rooms of financial diplomacy to private clubs. Where Emir's and King's patiently and effectively transform their enormous wealth and natural resources into political and military power. The ultimate participant in the story finds himself suddenly involved as a covert warrior among Middle Eastern strife. Told with historical accuracy, "Desert Storms" is cast in a nostalgic glow and, is the result of a massive research project and investigative journal. It would be hard to find another book as comprehensive and meaningful.

Over a hundred sweet treats for diabetics use no sugar or fructose, relying on recommended sugar substitutes instead. An introduction on the pros and cons of various 'sugar substitutes' would have been nice; many of the recipes call for this generic substitute without mentioning brand names - or the fact that sucrose turns bitter under heat. Still, the recipes provide a range of options and with a little extra research, diabetics will find them easy to work with.

When I was first diagnosed with diabetes type 2, I thought I would have to give up all sweets. I had to lose weight and dreaded a diet of no sweets. This book has changed all that. It has everything - cakes, cookies, pies, candies, etc. All with low calories per serving. I have only tried a few receipes so far but they are great. This is a must have book.

I acquired my first copy of this book when my dad was in the hospital and was placed on dialysis and we had to make sudden and radical changes to his diet. Critical to us was that his diet required we monitor all dietary content. We were impressed with this book because listed for each recipe is a detailed breakdown of nutritional values including such things salt, iron, potassium, vitamins, calories, fat, sugar, fiber and a lot of stuff I never knew existed, but is critically important for someone on a controlled diet.

Impressed with the variety and simplicity of the recipes and the extensive use of fruit, I later got a copy so I could try some of these delights for myself. Ms. Howard must have been psychic - I like apples, nuts, berries, chocolate (carob), and bananas and I need to keep an eye on my own diet. The recipes rarely take much time but are so tasty I need to exercise control.

Included are over 100 recipes for sweet goodies, cakes, cookies and pies. This book may be the best thing to happen to someone on a restricted diet. Especially if that someone has to monitor their diet.

But that's not all, it's really good for everyone, including someone like myself with a sweet tooth who simply needs to watch calories.

Ms. Howard shows us that a restricted diet doesn't mean everything you eat has to taste like boiled cardboard! Her recipes are easy to prepare and taste great!

Our two fourth classes were lucky enough to have our principal read Ding Dong Ding Dong aloud to us. We found the book to be very entertaining and inspiring to us as future authors. Margie Palatini's writing style has become a favorite of ours since Piggie Pie and Zoom Broom. In fact, we feel this is her best book yet! Our class would recommend this book to children and adults of all ages!

I think it is extremely funny and is great book for all ages.It even has some jokes for adults.The author always makes it a big laugh.I hope you will read it.

Ding Dong Ding Dong is a very funny book. We like the way Margie Palatini put lots of jokes in the book using plays on words and puns. She also uses lots of alliteration to make it a fun book to read and listen to. Howard Fine's illustrations are terrific. We especially liked the part when the ape climbed the Empire State Building. We won't tell what happened next, but we loved it! Our class recommends this book to children and adults of all ages.

Hunt is a skilled storyteller who takes China seriously as a threat to world peace. His characters are often interesting and sometimes very complex. The villainy he describes in high places is sure to make many readers nervous.

Picked up this book on vacation. Never read any of his authors books before. I'm hooked. There were many twists and turns- some you figured out right away - some were less obvious. Enjoyable reading. If you enjoy Clive Cussler, Stephen Hunter and Alistair MacLean, here's a new author for you.

At forty-seven years old, Mark Brand knew that it was time to retire as a CIA operative and accept a desk job as an expert in Asiatic affairs. He accepts a job at a Washington based think tank, GlobEco, figuring that his life should become more ordinary and routine. Mark expects to date and court women (his spouse died over two decades ago) in normal relationships. He even advises his twenty-four year son, Peter, to stay away from the government and take a safe job in banking. ...... All seems to be going smooth for Mark until he learns that his son has disappeared in China while working for the Agency. It seems that Peter was spying on a Chinese movement of missiles loaded with deadly gas being aimed at Taiwan. Peter is sentenced without western knowledge to eleven years in prison. The United States government walks a thin line as it tries to resolve Code Name: Dragon Teeth. They need to stop the Chines from firing on Taiwan while not alerting the budding western business interest know what is happening. Mark has a different agenda. He plans to free his son from his captives even if he has to run over his own government and his former bosses in the process. Even if Mark alludes the Agency and similar western ilk, he still has to contend with China's government. If caught, he may not just join hi son in an accompanying cell, he may forfeit his life. ..... DRAGON TEETH is a palpitation a page geopolitical thriller. Mark is a great character, and China and the American policy towards the country is described in exciting and interesting manner. E. Howard Hunt scores big time with this fabulous tale of intrigue. .....Harriet Klausner

Although Kierkegaard had written other books before this one, mainly some literary critical works as well as his dissertation THE CONCEPT OF IRONY, this is the book that begins what he calls his "Authorship." The works constituting his Authorship have two main things in common: 1) they are all written by Pseudonymous Authors that represent points of view that do not precisely correspond with Kierkegaard's beliefs and 2) they are intent on delineating what Kierkegaard called the three stages of existence: the aesthetic, the ethical, and religious stages.

Of all the great philosophical writers, Kierkegaard was one of the greatest masters of literary form. In each work, he adapts a style and form that is appropriate to the particular point of view he is attempting to illustrate. In EITHER/OR I, he is concerned with showing various aspects of the Aesthetic Stage of Existence. Unlike the later stages of existence, the Aesthetic is extremely diverse, and can take more forms and be expressed in a larger number of shapes. Kierkegaard therefore writes a series of essays that bring out various aspects of the Aesthetic stage. Some of these are among his most famous writings. His essay on Mozart's DON GIOVANNI, "The Immediate Erotic Stages or The Musical-Erotic" ranks among the most famous pieces of musical criticism ever written. Perhaps even more famous is "The Seducer's Diary," in which an individual records his attempts to snare a young woman, though more in the sense of a Mephistopheles than a Don Juan. My favorite section, and the one that illustrates an especially developed form of the aesthetic is "The Rotation of Crops," in which our anonymous author attempts to deal with the one great difficulty facing the Aesthetic Mode of Existence: boredom. As he writes, "Boredom is the root of all evil." Therefore, the challenge to the Aesthetic is to thrust away continually boredom, and in this essay our writer provides a guide to making life as interesting as possible. We are required to continually find new friends, new jobs, new interests, since all obligations lead to tedium. Marriage is, of course, to be avoided, since this is boring (the contrary to this will be asserted in EITHER/OR II). That this task is impossible is taken up in later works by Kierkegaard.

EITHER/OR begins in classic Kierkegaardian fashion. Kierkegaard was probably the greatest master of the Preface in the history of literature. His Prefaces are such masterpieces that they can profitably be read on their own, and he himself delighted in writing them to such a degree that he wrote one book that consisted in nothing but Prefaces. In the one to both volumes of EITHER/OR, a gentleman by the name of Victor Eremita explains how he accidentally discovered the papers filling the two volumes that had been hidden in a desk. He separates them into two groups, "A" and "B". He possesses no great certainty as to the authorship, but believes that one person may have written the first group, and another the second group. Or, alternately, that the author of the "A" papers may have written the "B" papers later in life. The latter is probably what Kierkegaard wants us to believe, for it is his fundamental belief that the Aesthetic mode of existence is doomed to failure, and that it is possible (though not necessary) that this could lead to a higher level of existence, The Ethical. This new stage is dealt with in the second volume of EITHER/OR.

You will have the most fun reading the first book of Either/Or. The book is actually the master fisherman's best hook -much like Socrates was a midwife of thoughts- to bring you out into reflection of the question at hand: Either the esthetic or the ethical life. This book and the second part is this elaborate question concerning two opposing ways of life. This first book is ironically and seductively entertaining. He deals with various subjects like Mozart, Drama, unhappiness, Boredom and finallly the seduction of young girl. If anything else, read the last two portions of the book. One of the things that I like about the way K writes is his ability to use words from other disciplines and to incorporate them into his language so beautifully that reading him is literally an excursion.

Kierkegaard's brilliance lies in his ability to take such deeply personal experiences--love, lust, sorrow--and comment universally in a way that is at least unmatched in philosphy and probably in all of literature. He understands life in a way that seems obvious but is in actual fact merely fundamental to all of us. The book is a collection of papers and texts on a variety of subjects that at first seem disconnected but in the end all tie perfectly together with the truly brilliant "seducer's diary". Philosophy is a literary discipline that generally provokes either intimidation or a feeling of pointlessness (by this I mean that people wonder why should I care what someone else thinks if it is all unprovable anyway). I feel that Kierkegaard represents everything that is good about philosphy and is worth an attempt at least even if one is trepedatious. This book will not overwhelm you in complex language or termanology, rather it will leave you invigorated with fresh ideas and new questions about everything around. Everyone should read this book.

Of all the parenting books I've recommended in my 20 years of counseling parents & families, this is the one from which my clients have benefitted the most. The Family Contract really works! Even with the toughest kids, eventually these techniques do work. It is very parent friendly and Dr. Leftin gently guides the troubled parent with humor and personal experience.

This is an excellent book for parents struggling to do what's right. The author provides the tools to accomplish what you know your kids need to be as happy as kids can be in this world. The techniques will make discipline much more matter-of-fact and much more effective. If the parents aren't yelling, the kids will discover that yelling is useless and, in fact, hurtful. And, in the long run, children will learn how to communicate in a mature way which, I would hope, would translate to happier marriages in the future. Why this book is out of print is quite bothersome to me...I was about to order 50 for some parenting classes. If you can get a copy--do so. It's a great gift, too!

I read this book after meeting the author's wife. It made lots of sense and I used a modified version with my students at school. I only have one child. He is well behaved and knows we very seldomly just "give" him money. I have used the ideas from this book to keep communications open between us as he enters his teen years. It has been great and we are still very close because of Dr. Leftin's ideas.

In addition to the parallels between this story and SK's relation with his father mentioned by previous reviewers, another important parallel is his failed engagement with Regine Olsen. She is his Isaac, who he must sacrifice. Perhaps he thinks his own calling, means that he too can "teleologically suspend" the ethical (duties to Regine). Its remarkable, that we now should be so concerned about the private live of a pseudonymous author. Is Johannes de Silentio a poetic side of Kierkegaard? Poetic yes, but paradoxically he also says he is purely dialectic.

The different takes of the Abraham story, remind me of Rabbinical midrash. The four different accounts did not happen, but they might have. It is a way of stretching the story, and a way to introduce his "faith by virtue of the absurd". The tragic hero remains in the ethical, but Abraham is different that this, and is related to the Absolute. Very thought provoking!

These two books are twins: published on the same day, with the same purpose: the failed explications of an essential Kierkegaardian concept: Repetiton. Why, when an author clearly knows the meaning of a concept in his own terminology, would he fail to be able to explain it? Why would an author make failure part of the purpose of a book? There is a reasons. The authors of both books are pseudonyms. Kierkegaard does not use nom de plumes. He creates characters and then writes the book from that perspective. Johannes de Silento (the author of "Fear and Trembling")is a poet. Constantine Constantinus (the author of "Repetition") is an experimental psychologist. These characters attempt to define repetition, but their methods will not allow them. Repetition is not reducible to poetry (romanticism) or science (reason). Now why is that? It is necessary to Kierkegaard's project (the book "Repetition" shows that it is necessary) because his project is essentially Christian and Revelation cannot be derived philosophically (Hence Constantine Constantinus' failure). But how do you get to discuss Christian ideas, then? By an elaborate method of importation and laundering. For instance, Constantine Constantinus introduces Repetition by comparing it to Platonic recollection. But the real source for importation is the Old Testament. Fear and Trembling is an elaborate interpretation of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac. Repetition ends with the Young Man (the guinea pig for Constantine Constantius' psychological experiments) writting on the Book of Job. In each case, something is sacrificed and yet the one who sacrifices finds the sacrifice restored to him. Much ink has been spilt showing how this copncept relates to Kierkegaard's abortive engagement or his relations to his father (and I am sure SK appreciates this muddying of the waters; he never liked an audit trail), but the primary image is that of God the Father sacrificing his Son, and, through the Ressurrection (as Johannes de Silento would say, by virtue of the absurd) receiving him back again.

SK once claimed had he written no other book, Fear and Trembling would have sufficed to make his reputation as one of the greats of literature. A fair assessment, but he did indeed write other books and Fear and Trembling needs to fit within that context. This is especially the case in relation to its twin: Repetition. This is even more urgent when you recognize Fear and Trembling's subject matter, which is: Repetition. SK introduces the concept with typical irony: neither Constantine Constantinus nor the Young Man, nor Johannes de Silento actually achieve repetition. Repetition is negatively defined: we are told not what it is, but what it is not. We are told that repetiton occurs "by virtue of the absurd." Sartre took this construction directly into his philosophy and made himself a laughing stock. This goes to show that either you keep you sense of humor fully operational in reading SK's books or he will make you look like a jerk. People who do not laugh long and loud at these books will not be able to interpret them without claiming for themselves absolute idiocy. And people who do not understand Repetition may as well stop wasting their time on Kierkegaard. Perhaps the can do Nietzsche and perspectivism instead?

This book and Coaching Basketball by Jerry Krause are the two best coaches books out there. 5-star has drills that we use daily in our practices and coaching basketball as some great plays and ideas regarding the game. Get both these books ASAP!

This book is a classic. I can not believe that there are not more reviews giving this book the priase it deserves. If you want to become better at basketball you must not only practice consistantly, but you must know the correct techniques and moves to practice. This book is basically a complete reference of drills for every position that have been used at the nations premire basketball camp - five star. When Trajon Langdon started out as a freshman at duke this book recieved a lot of attention because Trajon, being from Alaska, did not have great exposure to a wide variety of basketball camps. Trajon bought this book and used the drills in it to make him the player he became. Every highschool player and coach should own a copy of this book if they are serious about improvement.

I used this book, after being placed on the J.V. team at my high School my junior year. I had very little skill at all, but wanted desperately to become a better ball player. After purchasing this book, I used the drills in it for only 2 months and improved my game to a whole new level. I not only made the varsity team that next year, but was a starter and had a very good senior year. Since graduating, I have coached at the high school level, and this book worked wonders for the team. I have also used this book to work with younger individuals, and seen drastic improvement in their abilities. I would recommend this book to any young person who wants to better his/her skills, and to any coach to strengthen their teams fundamental abilities