After reading John Cook's Rescue Under Fire: The Story of DUST OFF in Vietnam, I decided to see if The Advisor was as good. I'm here to tell you, this guy is fantastic. He doesn't talk down to the reader. Rather, he pulls the reader into the action in a way that the reader is actually there. Told in the first person, this is the very personal account of a young man who grew to hate the communist Viet Cong. However, he very clearly explains why. The Viet Cong murdered innocent villagers, blew up market places, and killed children in front of their parents. In a bold, direct style, Cook makes no apologies for the way he felt. He took on the enemy with a vengance and eliminated them from his district. This is a story you never heard on TV and that's a pity. However, this is a book that every American should read. Then, they could be proud of what the US did in Vietnam. Without John Cook, I never would have known the truth.

The Advisor: The Phoenix Program in Vietnam, was a real eye-opener for me. I have never read a more personal, compelling account of the Vietnam war than the one provided here by John Cook. He takes the reader through every aspect of living in this country as an advisor. In short, he makes the Vietnamese real and makes it very easy to choose sides. Cook very easily brushes aside all the liberal hog-wash about how the Viet Cong are really not all that bad and exposes them for what they are--a bunch of murdering thugs. When I read this book, I found myself out there on an operation or ambush and hoping to God that I would be able to kill a whole bunch of Viet Cong. This book is not objective and is not intended to be. Clearly, John Cook has an agenda and he executes it extremely well. He hates the Viet Cong and explains why, in very graphic language. This is a book you will not put down, once you pick it up. Thank you, Colonel Cook, for cutting through all the crud and giving it to us straight.

The Advisor is, by far, the best written, most insightful book of any type I have seen on Vietnam. It describes the heroic actions of the most respected district chief in Vietnam, Major Nguyen Minh Chau, of Di An District, Bien Hoa Province, and his team of advisors. This book also includes actions involving 1/4 Cav troopers and 1st Infantry Division during the period 1968-1970. Written in the first person by the young senior advisor to Chau, John Cook, this book is a must read for any Vietnam vet or serious student of the war. Col (Ret) William C. Haponski Quarterhorse 6, Jan-Jul 69

An excellent collection with great writing. Edgy, evocative, atomshpereic with fully developed character studies that are made even more fascinating by the fact that these are real people and events. The crime reporters explore the conjunction of everyday life and the many faces of pathology. Could not stop reading; can't wait for the next edition.

Although I'm a fan of true crime, most of the genre doesn't meet my standards. Too often I find that it focuses on the criminal and the macabre, gruesome, or sensational aspect of whatever story is being told and appeals to a certain prurience which I find distasteful. Often, the victims are forgotten or neglected in favor of the criminal, whose story may be more interesting or titillating. This remarkable collection, however, includes only well-told stories from respectable publications. Most of the 17 stories are riveting and will linger with you long after you've finished the book. These are true human interest stories which never ignore the real tragedies involved. Kudos to the editors for managing to find such quality stories. I can't wait for the next edition!

This book is a wonderful read!! It contains 17 articles written in the past year by excellent journalists from various magazines such as: GQ, SPIN, THE NEW YORKER, ATLANTIC MONTHLY, ESQUIRE, VANITY FAIR and more. The variety makes it nice because you get to read different styles of writing by different authors on different subjects. The subjects too are a variety in range: "The Cheerleaders" focuses on a town in New York hit by tragedy after tragedy; "A Prayer For Tina Marie" is a wonderful article about a woman who murdered her two kids in an unthinkable way (much worse than Andrea Yates); "Flesh and Blood" is about the murder-for-hire by pro football player Rae Carruth... AND MUCH MORE!! With such quality of writing, you don't want to miss this book. I am really hoping that more of these will be published!!

I've liked all the Garrett novels, but this is my favorite. It's got everything a good, hardboiled detective novel should without succumbing to boilerplate and an ending as bitter as day-old coffee. Cook is always a writer worth reading, but here he goes beyond himself.

Laughs and Jokes, along with intriquing characters makes this a wonderful series. I hope it comes back in print. The book follows the adventures of Garrett, a private eye, in a world that has elves, dark elves, Trolls, and Centuars. I read and re-read this series for enjoyment.

Second, as I recall, in the "Garrett" series of cross-genre mystery/fantasy novels "Bitter Gold Hearts" gives us a hard-bitten, independent, and highly ethical private eye in the mold of Philip Marlowe...in a world of Wizards, Giants, Trolls, Grolls (A breed between Trolls, Giants, and the Thing That Dares Not Speak), and other traditional fantasy staples thrown together in the medieval equivalent of '40's Los Angeles.

Far from the clash you would expect, in Cook's capable hands over a series of six novels and counting, the Sword'n'Sorcery and "Hard-bitten Detective" complement and renew each other, making "everything old, new again". Highly reccomended.

A great cookbook. The recipes are straightforward -- some are downright easy -- but Rozin always gets the flavors right. The cookbook is a good read, too, stuffed with interesting information about food and food history.

This was my first cookbook by Rozin. Now I also own Ethnic Cuisine and The Universal Kitchen. I like, and use, all three, but Blue Corn and Chocolate is my favorite.

The wild-rice and dried corn turkey soup is a post-Thanksgiving tradition at our house.

Of the many cookbooks I own, I have probably actually made more of the recipes from this one than from any other. The accompanying information about the different foods is as interesting as the recipes.

This is the best cookbook I have ever owned.
Elizabeth Rozin has an amazing ability with flavor, I have yet to hit a dud and I use the book all the time. I made two totally untested recipes from this book for a dinner party, and they were the best things I served.

This book for a diabetic cook book uses the run of the mill ingredients and every recipe has been just great - tastes good too. Only the banana bread and I think I did not cook it long enough.

I grew up having these recipees rested on me (and my brother David). My mother invented the idea of low-fat good taste cooking. I watched her painstakingly test and re-test every recipee. She always insisted on honest feedback. And you'll reap the benefits by buying this book. A true Godsend for diabetics and dieters.

Calculating cook is the book for people who like to eat good food, don't want to eat boring stuff, and like to cook. Recipes fit into diabetic exchanges (lots easier to keep track of than calories) and include extras for nondiabetics. All recipes come with calorie, exchange, fat content worked out by portion. I lost weight without grumbling too much by following the reccommended daily exchange. I am so sorry this is out of print. I lent my copy and it vanished. Hope it gets reprinted!

This superbly presented history charts all of Cook's voyages of exploration; from his mapping of the Pacific Islands and travels through Antarctica to discoveries of New Hebrides and Australia. His many adventures receive lively coverage in a title which explains how Cook changed the Western map of the world - and reveals that he was not the first to do so. An involving re-examination of Cook's achievements.

THIS WAS A WONDERFUL BOOK ON CAPTAIN COOK ALSO THE UNKNOWN GEORGE COLLINGBRIDGE, AND VANESSA COLLINGBRIDGE THE AUTHOR
Look at the subject first then read on. How I came about this book was I saw preview for History Channel's reality series on called the ship which was based on Captain Cook's first voyage...Mrs. Collingbridge is James Cook's distant cousin, and George Collingbridge's neice or cousin I forgot what which it was. The book was about how their lifes became almost the same not everything about (sorry for my grammar). This book was though (however you spell it) research, well written, and so on...

For various reasons, there continues to be substantial interest in great explorers such as Ernest Shackleton, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, Robert Falcon Scott, and James Cook. This the first of two books about Cook which I recently read and thoroughly enjoyed. (The other is Tony Horwitz's Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before.) They discuss a common subject but from different perspectives. I highly recommend both. Of special interest to me is what Collingridge learned about an ancestor, George Collingridge (1847-1931), while consulting an abundance of research resources. He was among the first to challenge the generally accepted belief that Cook was the first to "discover" Australia during various voyages. (Cook traveled more than 200,000 miles during the years 1768-1789, limited by crude navigational instruments but sustained by his superior skills as a seaman.) Of her ancestor Collingridge observes: "He was eccentric and colorful and too given to whims of fancy and dreadful puns, but the bulk of his [own] research is basically sound." Both Horwitz and Vanessa Collingridge seem to agree that Cook was -- as was Shackleton -- a great leader. Also, that he treated the native people "with a decency that shattered all convention." Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to read Horwitz's.

Rochelle Brown has captured the essence of these chefs and along with the wonderful photography of Michel Arnaud, she has really written an amazing book. It is so great to catch a glimpse of some of the behind the scenes action...This is the perfect gift for the food lover in your life. I bought it for my mom - she loved it!

This book is a must for all serious foodies, working in the food world I thought I knew most of the backgrounds of the great chefs noted here, ah! but I still learned more about them. The recipes are top notch, and must be tried. The beautiful shots of each chef can be framed they are so well done, capturing each personality. This is a book that the reader will go back to again and again if not for the recipes then to reread the stories.

The Chef, The Story and the Dish is one of the most interesting cookbooks I've read (and used!) in a long time. It not only has great recipes by some of my favorite chefs, but there's great background stories and pictures of each of them. I just had a dinner party and made 5 dishes from the book -- it was a huge hit!!!!! And I love the way she writes about the chefs. It's clear she knows them all personally. I'd love to be a fly on the wall for her next book!

I've had this book since 1983, when I was living in California. What I like about it is that the recipes use ingredients which are pretty easy to get, both in the US and Europe, and the recipes are easy to follow. I'm about to buy it as part of an engagement present for a friend; she's always asking about the chinese stuff I cook! My own copy is falling apart but I wouldn't trade it for the world.

This is by far the best Chinese cookbook I've ever had. This is the third time I've bought a copy, I keep wearing them out!

My current copy of this book is so worn out that I need to get a new one. The recipes are simple and delicious, the organization of the chapters makes sense, and the index is complete. The photographs are good too. All in all, the best simple chinese cook book I have used.

I've seen some collections of the "best" poetry and among others, Edna St. Vincent Millay's work is not featured. Perhaps her work is regarded as too "light weight" or perhaps structure and an ear for how a poem sounds is not as important as it once was - I don't know. But I recommend this book to help correct the lack of Edna St. Vincent Millay's poetry.

I think that Edna St. Vincent Millay is one of the best poets ever, male or female, of any time period. So of course it would follow that I think this book is great, too.

Treat your senses to her wonderful lyrics and you will see what I mean. The sonnet form is a strict one, one that few poets master yet M's Millay makes it work so wonderfully for her.
There are love sonnets, of course - but there are just as many that have nothing to do with love. All of these sonnets are great, of course I have my favorites - read throught the book and you'll probably have your own picks, too.

Millay was a master of prosody, and her gifts are on brilliant display in this collection of her sonnets. Form and diction that have sometimes been dismissed as out-moded or affected were tools that Millay was able to use deftly and in service of deeply felt and considered experience. Her work hasn't really been given its due yet, but why wait for the academy to catch up? This is wonderful, unforgettable work.

In this work of sonnets, selected for inclusion in this volume by Millay herself, the reader will find genius with heart and soul. Millay wrote many more kinds of poems than just sonnets, of course, but even when restricted to the old, old pattern of 14 lines and strict meter, she manages to convey profound and intimate thoughts on a wide variety of subjects: love, life, death, injustice, war, beauty, and the nature of humankind as a race of beings, to name a few. In this work one finds that some of the poems carry a dedication. There is a pair of sonnets written in memory of Sacco and Vanzetti who were executed in 1927; Millay records the tragedy of that injustice as she experienced it then, long before the more recent pronouncements of justice gone awry that we have heard during the past 25 years. Another sonnet of hers was read in the U.S. capitol in 1923 at the dedication of a statue of three feminist leaders who crusaded for equal rights. That same statue made the news in recent years, having been relegated to the Capitol basement on account of its weight and because of a proposal to hollow out its base so it can be replaced on the main floor. I was suprised -- and gratified -- to learn that Millay was part of its inauguration. Vincent, as her family and friends called her, held issues of justice close to her heart. Her greatest gift, I think, was the ability to write about intensely personal experiences and disclose them to the reader as common to everyone who is willing to look inward to the self. I've read other poets who have lived and worked since Millay's death in 1950 and I venture to say that we have not seen the like of her since. I wholeheartedly recommend her words to everyone because, having read them, I find myself more of a human being and more deeply committed to those things that really matter, given my ultimate mortality. --Todd Victor Leone

Combinaorial Optimization is one of those rare books that is an instant classic. The authors weave a readable fabric of intuition and theory that is unmatched in this exciting discipline. The choice of topics covered begins with two fundamental optimization problems, namely, the minimum spanning tree and shortest path problems. Next, maximum flow and minimum cost flow problems are discussed, followed by matching problems, polyhedral issues arising in combinatorial optimization, and the famous traveling salesman problem. The text concludes with chapters on matroids and NP-Completeness. The exposition on these topics is very well written and the proofs are rigorous. There is a terrific blend of theory, algorithms and applications without overwhelming the reader with computational details. The authors also do a good job of developing an accurate historical perspective of the material, most of which evolved during the time period 1955 to 1995. The book is suitable for an upper-level undergraduate, or a graduate course. The exercises are very well thought out and are at an appropriate level. I have taught undergraduate courses in combinatorial optimization for over 10 years and have always struggled to find an appropriate text. My problem has now been solved.

This book was thoroughly written by great-minded Masters. It is well-organized in their topics and presentation. However, the book details is unbalnced, some chapters are overwhelm the data, and some others are insufficient. By the way, I graded this book a Very Good one. Worth Reading !!

A good introduction to Combinatorial optimisation and integer programming.

Especially recommended are the chapters on minimum weight matching and the TSP.