I had hoped to consider this as a supplementary text for a Freshman class (college) in Environment and People. Unfortunately, Dunn focuses too much on the "standard" negative issues without considering the political, social, and economic aspects--or that there are significant alternate views. She does allow that some issues are in doubt, but the overall flavor is on the negative side. If you want a text that will give you a quick overview of many more issues, I suggest "The Reporter's Environmental Handbook" by West, Sandman and Greenberg [Rutgers University Press](1995). It covers issues more objectively and on a local basis. We have to educate the students, not indoctrinate them.

This is a collection of lectures, given by John Dunn, a Professor of Political Theory at the University of Cambridge. In the first one he argues for the importance of a historical perspective in political thought. He also examines contractualism, socialism, racism, governments and states' interdependence, the European Union, the nation state and the heritage and future of the European political left. Professor Dunn provides a stimulating overview of current historical and political thought, which provides a thought-provoking starting point for students of political theory. Unfortunately, he writes in an almost impenetrable, long-winded academic style which would be completely off-putting to anyone except the most committed scholar.

This six-volume book deals with the England's Civil War of the mid 1600's. It is extremely descriptive and detailed, but I give it three stars because some of the information is digressive and redundant. If you want to learn more about this time period, I suggest an encyclopedia.

I would have given 5 stars for a valuable booklet for its time. Now it is superseded by "Improved Test Scores, Attitudes, and Behaviors in America's Schools : Supervisors' Success Stories" (Nov. 1999). The last chapter: "Analysis of Change and Leadership Style" is still interesting. Planned change is supposed to go through 8 stages. 1. Awareness. 2. Knowledge. 3. Personalization. 4. Implementation. 5. Consequences. 6. Collaboration. 7. Refocusing. 8. Evaluating. The change agents tend to be idealistic pragmatists--persons who are receptive, open, goal-directed and adaptive. The management style is collaborative, followed by benevolent despot, and a general rejection of middle-of-the-road approaches. "What is most strongly denounced is laissez-faire, which suggests a chaotic, permissive approach characterized by the educator who buries his or her head in the sand of the organization on a regular basis, allowing staff members to do their own thing." (pp. 66-67) The world needs good leaders. This booklet gives some models.

DS Poorman, something of an underground celebrity in his hometown of Louisville, has written an entertaining mystery novel. Macky Dunn is fast and furious. At times the reader can smell Poorman's whiskey and herbsmoke and sweaty frantic writing billowing off the pages. A good time and a must-read for anyone who's been through Louisville.

I suppose this is an o.k. book for anyone wanting a general encyclopedia-type reference book of quotes from the world's most "popular" spiritual writers. There is nothing overtly bad about it, and the hard cover looks nice. The index of the writers that the quotes were taken from also contains a brief description of who they were, which was perhaps the most interesting and useful parts of the book. Many of the quotes the editors chose to include were in my opinion, not really worth the paper, but I guess they wanted to put together a thick book. There is a bit of 'wisdom' contained in the book, but if you took all the good quotes, the book could have been half the size. Overall, a good reference book for popular (yet often redundant) spiritual sayings. Better off to read entire works to gain any real insight though; like the Dhammapada, Tao Te Ching, or if you're feeling extra ambitious, try War And Peace.

If you have always wondered what life could be like - realistically - for the dependents of the men who gamed and womanized their lives away in London, try this book. Thea's Marquis is the third and last book in a trilogy - A Lord For Miss Larkin, The Road to Gretna, and Thea's Marquis.

The heroine of this book - Thea - is the daughter and sister of two men who have wasted their small estate's income in London, leaving the mother and sisters to scrounge for a living as best they can. At the start of the trilogy, the father is long dead but the son Jason, Lord Kilmore(Thea's brother) has followed in his footsteps. It is not until his attempted abduction/ seduction of an heiress falls through that he begins to mend his ways. He is still not completely reformed in Bk 2 (The Road to Gretna) when he is eloping to Gretna with an old friend, but switches brides on the journey. By the end of Bk 2, he has visited his family estate and been completely shocked by the lifestyle of his mother and sisters. Bk 3 - Thea's Marquis - is the story of his sister Thea Kilmore who falls for a Marquis (actually a Marquess - Roderick, Marquess of Hazelwood). She is convinced that her family's wretched financial condition and the ambitions of her relatives prevent her from accepting his offer. Furthermore, she herself is not interesting enough to keep his interest.

I have to say, in the interests of truth, that I was far more interested in the ongoing character development of Thea's brother Jason than in Thea herself. Even in Bk 3, Jason's marriage is not running smoothly (so good to see that "happily ever afters" need a lot of work). I read this trilogy some months back, and while I liked Thea, her romance was not that much of a standout. I did enjoy the trilogy as a whole, and I though Jason (Lord Kilmore) one of Dunn's more memorable characters - along with Miriam Jacobsen (in another trilogy).

This was a competent Regency, ruined slightly by a melodramatic ending (with the villain of Bk 2 back). For stronger books by Carola Dunn, I recommend the following in this order - Miss Jacobsen's Journey (Bk 1 of another trilogy), His Lordship's Reward (Bk 2 of this trilogy; set partly in Waterloo-time Brussels); The Fortune Hunters, Crossed Quills (a politically-oriented book), and A Susceptible Gentleman (a farce about a hero with three mistresses and too many fiancees).

Rating for Thea's Marquis = 3.3 (C+)
Trilogy rated slightly higher = 3.7 (B-)

I was hoping for a book about Confederate mail service in the Trans-Mississippi area, which is a pretty tight specialty area in itself, but this book goes a notch further--it's about the _stamps_ used in the Tran-Miss. 1862-65.

The book is 1984 copyright, a small press publication, so looks dated in font and layout, but there's nothing wrong with the info--if this is what you're looking for. Lots of b&w images of Civil War Confederate letters and postage. Short, but interesting, intro info. Total length about 70 pages. The copy I got was rather dirty and faded, so I don't imagine there's been a huge demand for copies!

It's not nice, it's not pretty, it's missing all the fluff.. BUT! It's alpha-ba-tized!!!! If you develop programs for CLIPPER, dBASE and FoxPro, this is an indispensable tool for cross-referencing. Actually, if you are/were/is a serious xBase developer, this is a must have in your technical reference library. Not for the novice. Your mileage may vary!!

Whatever you wanted in a book about KURSK will NOT be found here! With all of the data being declassified, I would have expected this book to contain much, much, more than it does.

The German conduct of Operation Barbarossa against the Russians along the Eastern front was an incredibly massive and at first very successful campaign which slowly but fatefully turned against the Wehrmacht due both to an underestimation of the strength and resiliency of the Russians on the one hand, and the Germans' over-confidence and arrogance on the other. Indeed, nowhere was their conduct more self-defeating or more disastrous than at Kursk, in one of the most fateful conflicts in the war. In this book, author Walter S. Dunn concentrates tellingly on relating the stunning particulars of the epic exchanges at Kursk that, when the smoke and dust finally cleared, fatefully altered the entire balance of World War Two, not only for the so-called Eastern front of the war, but for the entire Allied war effort in Europe. One might argue that in this regard, if Stalingrad was that point in the conflict at which the fortunes of the Wehrmacht were first so fatefully reversed, then Kursk was the point of no return, where the specter of unavoidable eventual defeat and the horrific destruction of the Nazi Wehrmacht was all that lay ahead.

The Battle of Kursk was one of the most pivotal and epochal struggles in the Allied war against the Germans, and comprised one of the largest tank engagements in military history. Through its devastating destruction in terms of the number of functional and operating armored vehicles left for the Wehrmacht to continue their prosecution of the war, it was the turning point in the war, the catastrophic defeat the Nazis could no longer afford to absorb. In this regard, considerable controversy has revolved around the extent to which Hitler himself was to blame for the terrible defeats at Kursk, given his fabled micromanagement of the Eastern campaign in general and the battle at Kursk in particular. The author engages such arguments both quite directly and forcefully, and readers will appreciate the intellect, accuracy, and details contained in his overview of the events at Kursk, as well as their import for subsequent events along the Eastern front.

Too many Americans familiar only with the Cold War aspects of Russian history tend to be ignorant of the critical contribution the Soviets made in winning a war so essential to the survival of democracy. It is an uneasy truth that without the Russian contribution in battling up to 200 divisions of German Wehrmacht troops for over four years, our entry onto the continent in France would not have been possible in 1944. Indeed, risking such a large sea borne assault would have been problematic against a force of the numbers of troops who would have been available had they not been otherwise preoccupied and engaged in an epic effort attempting to stem the terrible onslaught they were receiving at the hands of a resurgent Soviet Army. This isn't to claim the Russians could (or would) have won the war themselves, although there are serious and scholarly arguments forwarding such propositions. Rather, it is to contend that the Russian front became the real-life tar baby requiring so much German energy and resources that the Nazis were unable to adequately defend against the Allied invasion in Normandy in June 1944.

Many historians now contend that the Russians single-handedly repeatedly smashed (and cumulatively diminished) the vast and critically important war-fighting capabilities the Wehrmacht continued to thrust against them, and that in doing so they changed the course of the war both along the Eastern front and for the war against the Allies in general. The evidence of just how formidable, ferocious, and inexhaustible opponents they had become in the two short years since the inauguration of Operation Barbarossa is detailed and documented herein, showing how a series of hasty, chaotic, and disastrous German attacks at Kursk led into the largest armored confrontation in the war and precipitated the devolution of the once proud Wehrmacht into a fragmented, fractious, and mortally wounded fighting force soon compelled to retreat, foot by foot all the way back to Berlin, losing millions of soldiers along the way. This is an authoritative, carefully documented, and absolutely entertaining account of one of the most important battles of WWII, and I highly recommend it. Enjoy.

This is an interesting and challenging work. Rather than write a conventional military history of the cut and thrust of battle the author tries to analyse the forces prior to the battle and to calculate the realistic position. Previous historys have not done this. The reason for that was that previous historys depended on German sources for a narrative of the battle. The Germans at the time of the battle had little idea of the strength of the Soviet forces or the fact that even if this battle had succeeded there were five armies ready to plug the gap. Dunn points out that Soviet histories of the battle have been based on these same German accounts. They have only differed in who they have made the hero's and villians.

Through examining the strength of both armies, Dunn clearly shows that the German army was doomed from the start. His work goes through Soviet and German sources to work out actual casualty rates for each part of the battle. He finds that several of the accounts are wrong. The Soviets for example did not fight heroic last-ditch battles losing vast numbers of men. They in fact defended the Kursk position in an elastic way not losing many men at all. Further Dunn examines the German tank losses and finds that most accounts until now have wildly overestimated the German losses.

Some of the Amazon Com reviewers have been disappointed with this book. The reason for that is that the book is not what they expected. The reality is that the work is fascinating in its detail and is a fine example of a "method of history" which aims at understanding the truth of an event rather than looking at the legends.