Embelished. Know inside story. Should NEVER have been shot down in the first place. Laundry list of errors on ground starting with basic rescue procedures.

This is a well researched book, but it is slow moving and got very boring at times. If you want to read the story from the folks who planned and executed the mission this is the book that tells their side, but it lacks a certain excitement. Capt O'Grady is quoted only a few times. I was surprised that certain mistakes made during the planning and execution of the rescue were disclosed.

As a wife of one the members of the TRAP mission it was great to finally read something about the men that risked their lives to save Capt. O'Grady. America views O'Grady as a hero, when in truth the Marines are the heros. Imagine, for a moment reading all of the quotes, from the men and not just reading a meaningless name, but actually remembering BBQs, nights out together, and watching their children grow before your eyes. This book gave an insight on the men. Everyone knows everything about O'Grady, but what do you know about the men that made it possible for him to live?

As a footnote: my husband (in the book Cpl Lindsey--he has continued his faithful service and has been promoted)doesn't not share my sentiments. He sees it as a job--that's what he is paid to do. He doesn't even like talking about it.
I am proud that names were put to the other key players in this story!

Lucky to have found this one in a "salvage store" that was copyright was 1953. Contains so much information amd simplified that its hard to put down. Enjoyed Mr.Weaver's prospective and I am curious to know more about the author...

At a time when fundamental economic understanding appears lacking, this book (though simplified) makes basic economic principles easy to understand. It is written in a simple format easily understood by all age groups, young folks (junior high school) as well as adults.
I have introduced all of my children to this book and they all agree that it enabled them to have a much better grasp on the realities of economics. If you find Econ 101 boring, read this book. It will provide ample incentive to "dig into" the subject. A "must read."

This book can create a general framwork around human history like not too many books that I have read. Expressed in clear language and organized in short, thought provoking sections.

What does an expert on rocks know about biology? Not much. This little book consists of several short essays, is only 120 pages in length and much of that consists of pictures. That it is so short and is mostly pictures should not be surprising as the author is not a biologist and has no expertise in astrobiology, genetics, evolution, or the nature of life. Because the author knows very little about the subject she has written a very little book. So why has an expert in meteorites published a book on Astrobiology when that is not her area of expertise? Beats me.

Monica Grady is a world renowned expert and is probably best known for her edited volumes, Catalogue of Meteorites, which have generated rave reviews. Dr. Grady's text, Astrobiology, is a wonderful little book, which provides an excellent overview of the field and which contains numerous photos. It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words, and is this book is well worth reading and would be of interest to anyone desiring a brief but thorough introductory overview of the field of astrobiology. -Rhawn Joseph, Ph.D. author of: Astrobiology, the Origin of Life, and the Death of Darwinism

This may be only a small book but the text is accurate and the illustrations well chosen. Indeed, it's an ideal introduction to the subject for a young person interested in science or for a layperson wanting to know the basics of our quest to find life in the universe. I think the earlier reviewer was being unkind and a little mischievous in questioning the author's credentials. Monica Grady is actually head of petrology and meteoritics at the Natural History Museum in London and has carried out extensive research on the Martian meteorites and interstellar grains - topics of central importance to our understanding of what life might be like elsewhere. The truth is that astrobiology is a multidisciplinary science and its experts are drawn from fields as diverse as oceanography, planetary astronomy, origin of life research - and meteoritics.

Despite some contrary comments, this book does live up to its title. The 32 chapters and three appendices, divided into eight parts, cover the full spectrum of web site analysis. The "Analysis" part of the title is addressed in the following parts of the book: (I - Web Site Design) in which you're shown how to analyze your own site for page effectiveness and accessibility, (III - The Web Engineering Process) that provides guidelinees for evaluating your internal processes and your site's projected ethics and trustworthiness, (V - Creating Engine-Friendly Web Sites) in which you're stepped through both competitive analysis and technology selection techniques, and (VII - Tracking Traffic to Benefit Your Site) that covers log analysis.

What I especially like about this book, and what sets it apart from other excellent books on the topic, is the part on security - a rare topic that needs to be highlighted in more such books, and Part II, which provides techniques and advice for capitalizing on return traffic.

Overall, this book may fall short of your expectations if you're looking for in-depth treatment of how to mine, analyze and report traffic data. However, for the big picture this book stands out as one of the most complete and comprehensive I've read.

This book effectively outlines the essential steps to assure the effectiveness of your e-commerce web site. It considers various aspects of a small commercial site beginning with site design, security measures, transaction methods and tracking options to branding and marketing strategies, search engine visibility, user-friendliness and interactivity.
Even if the information available in this book can be obtained elsewhere (or you can hire a professional to deal with the all the little details) this book is a handy guide and time saving tool to make sure you are not missing any of the important points. It would also be useful for those who are designing an e-commerce site from the ground up to assure a smoother workflow. If you like things organized so it is easier to troubleshoot later on, you would appreciate a reference like this. I especially appreciated the checklists which outline the suggested analysis process. The accompanying CD is a nice addition since it is easier to access the links featured in the book even if the trial versions of some of the software mentioned were not particularly useful for me. Overall, I would consider this a very good buy.

If you ever felt totally overwhelmed about how to write a compelling title tag, non-spamming meta tags and how to make your web site search engine friendly without paying mega bucks to someone else to optimize it for you then this book is for you. It is to the point, easy to understand, has tons of great examples and yet is detailed and innovative enough for even the pros to learn new tricks. I liked it so much that a bought a copy for work and one for home too. Save yourself a lot of frustration and buy this book. You won't be disappointed.

I'm always amused to find people from distant places trying to tell our people our history. McWhiney knows of what he speaks, and though his brushstrokes are broad, his essential thesis is strong.

My people were southerners, and were English, Scots and Irish. The point that many miss is that "English" is not itself a singular cultural group, and was heavily influence by the so-called "Celtic" ways as well. This is where McWhiney's thesis stumbles; I'd like to see him deal with the poor English versus the southern English, perhaps. My grandmother's mother still used the term "sothren" with considerable disdain.

To the German gentleman (and others reading this feeling similarly), please read a true account of the south, and know that your stereotypes of southerners are quite wrong. It's a far more complicated story, however the history books have been written by the victors in the war of northern aggression (aka the "American Civil War").

Why is the South so different from the rest of the country? It wasn't always so. In our revolutionary period, Southerners were just as angry at British offenses in the North as Northerners were, while Northerners cheered South Carolina's victory at Sullivan's Island just as passionately as Southrons did. Virginians like George Washington and Daniel Morgan fought in the North while the greatest general of the Southern theater was the Rhode Islander Nathaniel Greene.

Why did Northern and Southern unity quickly become mutual suspicion and eventually dissolve into hostility? Was race the only reason? To Grady McWhiney, the question is largely a cultural one. McWhiney feels that Southern culture was and is Celtic. Most of the original settlers in the North came from England, while most of the South's early settlers came from the most Celtic regions of the British Isles(Ulster, Scotland, Cumberland, the West Country, etc). These settlers put a Celtic stamp on the South, influenced all who settled there, Celt or not, and brought with them their age-old hostility to the English, a hostility that was(and continues to be)reciprocated by the "English" of the North.

Celtic influence on Southern culture cannot be seriously disputed. Anyone who has ever heard bluegrass or country music can hear just one aspect of it. And that North and South are still mutually hostile is also unarguable. The uneducated bigot in the movies usually has a Southern accent and prominently displays a Confederate flag. But I think McWhiney oversimplifies. Celtic influence was there, but it was not alone. As Charles Hudson pointed out in The Southeastern Indians, Native American influence on Southern culture(which McWhiney ignores)was considerable, a fact well known to many of us with families from the southeastern US who have unsuccessfully tried to untangle our genealogies.

In short, Cracker Culture is worth your time. Just don't stop with it.

Dr McWhiney's book is a classic. It states the obvious, i.e. in the course of early American history and the movement of Europeans into the New World,the Celtic fringe of the British archipelago peopled the American South; which has had a profound influence of Southern society. Native Irish, Ulster Scots, Welsh, Border English, Hebrideans, etc., sort of a Celtic soup of sorts, peopled the early South. His book is only controversial to Anglo-centric historians who are still in denial that Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, etc., are actually part of our history and who like to pretend they are just footnotes of English history. And also, controversial to politically minded people who use 'history' to further political objectives. The book is great; a good read, with quantitative research and anecdotal research. It is just pure research with no agenda, a pleasant change in fact. It can be read straight through or by jumping around by topic. Great nighttime reading, full of full facts and oddities of the Old South. One wishes more histories were like this.

To those who are interested in Czech poetry: Please get another translation of Jaroslav Seifert's poetry. Mr. Jagasich' efforts in translating the Nobel Prize-winning author are hampered by the fact that he lacks a/ a command of Czech and b/ a literary talent. There are a number of obvious mistakes in this book--not a good introduction to a great poet!

I have this book in czech and I am sure it is one of the best czech books of poetry. It is so emotional, lovely ... you must read it. Seifert is the biggest czech poet of 20th century.

I would not buy this book because the Monitor fought a Confederate Ironclad called the C.S.S. Virginia. The Virginia was built upon the salvaged hull of a union ship called the Merrimack (with a "k"). There was another ship built by the union, called the Merrimac (without a "k") but it was a paddle wheel boat and it never fought the Monitor.

This is a very well-put-togther, informative book about the ironside USS Monitor and its Confederate counterpart, the CSS Virginia. The title of the book was obviously off-putting to one reader, since it referred to the Merrimac (the name of the Virginia before it was re-fitted and re-christened by the Confederacy), but don't let that stop you!. This book delves into a fascinating part of American military history. The battle between the Monitor and the Merrimac changed the course of naval history, and had repercussions all over the world. This book is a great introduction into that period in history.
For those who are still concerned about the use of Merrimac as opposed to Virginia: 1) the US gov't never formally recognized the Confederacy as a sovereign state, therefore the Confederacy would have had no authority to re-christen the ship (ergo, the original designation of Merrimac is, in fact, correct); 2) even during the Civil War, in both the North and the South, the name Merrimac was still widely used to describe the ship -- and remains the more widely recognized and acceptable of the two.

The story of these two ironclads is one of the most famous incidents in naval history. As stated in the Ken Burns Civil War Series, "for a moment, every other navy in the world stood obsolete." This book is very effective in chronicling the story of these ironclads, and should be viewed as such, instead of focusing on petty details.

Its hard to take Grady Gammage seriouly in this book. As a real estate lawyer, he has done little else besides acting as state cheerleader for the development industries.

While providing a pretty good history lesson on the city of Phoenix (thus the one star), this book does little but glorify and exaggerate the contributions the developement industry has had on the growth and prosperity of the Valley of the Sun (he credits the low-cost housing industry on the population boom...oh yeah...and air conditioning).

He discounts the notions of "sprawl" and blames any negative aspects on Phoenix's growth to market demand and a wonderful climate. He finds a way to absolve the develpment industry from any of the poor planning, tract housing, and characterless suburbs that blanket the Sonoran landscape.

While agreeing that there will someday be a limit to how large Phoenix and its outlying suburbs can get, he sees little use for any type of growth management and describes growth boundaries as "draconian." Portland is proof enough that growth boundaries do in fact work, and that they are hardly "draconian."

Gammage's solution to growth issues in Phoenix relates to water supply. Yet he fails to see that dealing with growth management via the water supply is like realizing that its time to go on a diet once you've already reached 400 pounds. By that time its too late. How do you tell a city of 5 million that the water supply has dried up, and now its time to start conserving....or limiting population? If growth boundaries are draconian, how does Gammage describe stopping growth because of a lack of water?

This book offers a neat history lesson on the Valley of the Sun, but outside of that, it offers little in the form of solutions to Phoenix's problems related to growth, pollution, traffic and its now characterless landscape. I'd give it a half star if I could.

This is truly a disappointing and shocking book; and, for that reason, a must read in any city where residents want to stop or at least curtail the destruction of their community by developers whose only motive is greed.

Grady Gammage Jr. is the son of one of Arizona's great families; Gammage auditorium at Arizona State University, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, honors decades of contributions by his family. Instead of community service, he became a wealthy lawyer for developers and was instrumental in creating the urban blight he so skillfully outlines in this book.

A hundred years ago, Phoenix was the smallest of the four major Southwestern cities (the others are Tucson, Albuquerque and El Paso). Now it is the largest, and is growing by an acre of new homes per hour. At that rate, as Gammage notes, growth can continue uninterrupted for another 672 years.

What is the new Phoenix? In Gammage's words, "A small narrow lot, a relatively large house, and a two- or three-car garage combine to produce neighborhoods with a different feel than those of even ten years ago. Houses seem squeezed together by non-existent side yards. Garage doors, lined up to a mandatory setback line, become the dominant feature of the streetscape. Front yards are shallower, with less grass . . . the desert is covered by acres of concrete tile."

Everything is geared to growth, at the lowest possible cost to developers. When the first Interstate freeway was built through Phoenix in the 1960's, it went below ground in elite neighborhoods and then soared to 25 feet above ground in low income areas. The elevated portion was often called "our Berlin Wall" and it destroyed poorer neighborhoods, providing cheap land for "slum clearance" and industrial space. No interchange was ever built to serve Guadaloupe, a low-income Yaqui village on the freeway; but, when a developer was appointed to the highway commission, bulldozers were at work within six months building an interchange for his speculative subdivision.

Obviously, as an attorney for developers, Gammage doesn't highlight problems. Yet, two out of three new residents to Arizona leave the state within five years. The Phoenix downtown crime rate is five times the national average. Arizona has the highest percentage of children without adequate medical care of any state, including Texas. It has the second-highest high school dropout rate. Believe it or not, here in the Sonoran Desert, it's against the law to grow sagebrush in your front yard.

It's what makes this book so worth reading. It's a lesson in every sweet-talkin' word that you'll ever hear from developers and their lawyers. Read it in conjunction with 'The Death and Life of Great American Cities" by Jane Jacobs, often regarded as one of the great urban thinkers of the past 40 years. This book clearly and proudly offers the opposite of everything Jacobs advocates.

For Phoenix residents, it's a chilling account of change from "the city that Los Angeles wishes it could be" into a mass of urban sprawl that even LA wouldn't tolerate. Gammage does an excellent job; he is articulate, knowledgeable and one of the best lawyers developers can hire. As one of the local asphalt companies proudly says on its billboards, "We really lay it on thick." So does Gammage.

For outsiders, it explains why two of every three newcomers flee within five years, most within a year. Read it, then decide if you're safe to assume in your city, "It can't happen here."

Grady Gammage provides readers with an accurate and insightful account of the development of the Phoenix metropolitan area. More important his book presents a sensible review of the problems of urbanization and suburban growth. Most important it avoids uninformed theories, irrelevant Utopian visions, or public action action that has neither political support nor financial justification.

I agree with other reviewers that this is more of a book about using Rational Rose than UML itself. Problem is, Rational Rose itself is not at all difficult - it's the UML modeling that is hard!

It is readable, well-written, and covers all the basics. In a few places it does offer some very insightful explanations of UML concepts (like how one should think of a control class, for instance). On the other hand a lot of space in the book is wasted in pedantic walkthroughs like, "to create a use case, click on such-and-such, then choose so-and-so from the file menu, then drag it here...")

The level of detail for examples is about the same as in Rational's Rose 2000 tutorial from their web site. Serious developers will hunger for more thorough examples and discussions; while I do not know of a good Rational Rose book, I recommend O'Reilly's "UML in a Nutshell" for a more comprehensive, interesting treatment of UML.

This book is appropriate for those who have little knowledge of Rose or UML. Serious developers will eventually need another book.

I found this text easy to read and very informative. I remain unclear on some of the steps outlined in the book. For instance, why would anyone want to use external files to describe use case text? This belongs in a requirements management system like Rational Requisite Pro which just happens to link quite nicely to Rose use cases.

Second, I'm not sure why the author has the use cases copied from the Use Case view to the Logical view. Anytime such replication is required, beware.

Regardless, this was an excellent introduction to UML and Rose. I now need to find other texts to elaborate on proper Use case development in UML.

I've been working on word templates for my project based on the Rational Unified Process (RUP) web pages for my project. We will use these templates to create concept models, design models, code reviews, and inspections.

While the RUP web page provides a great overview of a development process in the large, it lacks much of the details needed when the rubber meets the road. Exact templates for design documents and detailed step-by-step instructions are not provided. Such detail is not the purpose of the RUP pages. This is the primary reason that I am melding RUP and other standards to produce the templates listed above.

I have found that "Visual Modeling with Rational Rose 2000 and UML" by Terry Quatrani is an excellent guide for moving from the inception phase through the elaboration phase and into the implementation phase. The book is a step by step description of the details involved in using Rose 2000 (or 98i) to create use-cases, tie them into design, and move to implementation.

I highly recommend using the Quantrani book as the guide to fill in the details not present in the RUP pages. This edition, while somewhat focused on a single example, is significantly better than the previous edition.

This is among the most unique perspectives on the the Confederate Army that has ever been written; which leaves one wondering whether the authors started off writing about the American Civil War and via some mystery of histography wound up with Caesar fighting the Germanic/Celtic hordes in the American South.

They obviously forgot that there wasn't that much difference in the basic demographic structure of the two armies as far as ancestry is concerned. And the argument is not even coherently expressed and absolutely no "hard" evidence presented that the Confederate Army was composed of suicidal maniac "Huns" intent upon blood and death. It is indeed dangerous when historians delve into the dangerous ground of genetics - it has to do with using "numbers" I think - and come with the idea that red hair and blue eyes spells doom and madness upon the battlefield. Is it any wonder the "hard" scientists really don't take the "social" sciences seriously after one has read a book like this. I pick it up every now and again hoping that I discover it was just a parody afterall.

But nay, it indeed attributes the aggressive and impetious attacks of the Confederates to their Celtic inheritance, and thus dumbly were driven to their doom because they had no choice - it was in the "blood".

As King Lear would say, who truly was a Celt - "That way lies madness!"

Get it for fifty cents and then think no more upon the matter.

McWhiney and Jamieson use Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage to effectively stage a war between the American Englishman of the North and the American Celts of the South. The authors engulf themselves in the heritage and culture of the South and its ties to its Celtic ancestry. Their viewpoints on how and why the Confederacy lost so many men are saturated throughout the book. Their exposition on Civil War tactics and how they were altered or rendered ineffective by technology allows the reader to examine the challenges faced by the Confederate commanders and soldiers in a war being fought solely with spirit and ambition.

McWhiney's thesis is much more of a stretch. He examines the disastrous Southern military tactics which cost the Confederacy its independence and argues that the reason the South stuck to these tactics for so long had to do with the Celtic ancestry and folkways of Southerners and of Southern culture. He contends that "the Confederates bled themselves nearly to death in the first three years of the war making costly attacks more often than did the Federals. Offensive tactics, which had been used so successfully by Americans in the Mexican War, were much less effective in the 1860's because an improved weapon, the rifle, had vastly increased the strength of defenders. The Confederates could have offset their numerical disadvantage by remaining on the defensive and forcing the Federals to attack; one man in a trench armed with a rifle was equal to several outside it. But Southerners, imprisoned in a culture that rejected careful calculation and patience, often refused to learn from their mistakes. They continued to fight, despite mounting casualties, with the same courageous dash and reckless abandon that had characterized their Celtic ancestors for two thousand years. The Confederates favored offensive warfare because the Celtic charge was and integral part of their heritage....There was no glory to be gained from fighting out of a hole in the ground."

Probably better suited for more serious students of the Civil War, "Attack and Die" by Grady McWhiney and Perry D. Jamieson, provides an excellent expose' about how the Confederates "bled themselves nearly to death..." by attacking with greater frequency than their Northern counterparts. The book also presents a very compelling argument about how the use of outdated offensive tactics, learned during the Mexican War, and antiquated in the face of major technological improvements to muskets and cannon, had a devastating effect on the South.

Another interesting, and controversial, aspect of the book is the authors' conclusion that the tendency for offensive warfare was deeply rooted in Southern culture, and Celtic heritage. While the authors lacked sufficient evidence to be convincing on this point, they were far more convincing about how the advent of the rifle made bayonet attacks obsolete, the offensive use of cavalry ineffective, and entrenchments and fieldworks highly prized by Northern commanders.

Although, as the authors point out that there were good reasons for the South to adopt a defensive strategy, they elected to pursue the offensive to the detriment of their cause. Certainly, it is difficult to argue with the fact that the South lost 175,000 men during the first 27 months of the war due to their propensity for offensive action, or how they lost 97,000 men vs. 77,000 men for the North during the first twelve major battles of the war, or how Pickett's famous charge resulted in the loss of 62% of his command at Gettysburg.

It's no wonder that these tactics prompted D.H. Hill to respond with, "it was not war, it was murder," in reference to the losses the Confederates took after repeated attacks against heavily entrenched Union troops on Malvern Hill on July 1, 1862.

This book is an insightful and worthy addition to the study of Civil War strategy and tactics.