This book offers an excellent analysis of the policy concerns that have and will continue to dominate the Australian political landscape.

The editors, and in particular, Madelaine Chiam, have compiled and useful and interesting collection of perspectives, covering the spectrum of IR issues, whilst being able to maintain a political narration which draws a vivid and interesting picture of how Australia has and should approach its international commitments, both legal and moral.

5/5

This is a brilliant piece of work, and extremely relevant today. Had America had an Operational Intelligence (OpIntel) Plot (24/7 operationally-oriented put it all together all the time watch center), I daresay the terrorist attacks on America would have been prevented in good time.


I started reading this book the week prior to the attacks, having bought it off the shelves of the Army War College bookstore, whose judgment I have always respected, and I have been absolutely absorbed--thrilled--with the deep insights that this work provides on how best to manage an operationally-oriented watch center that does "all-source fusion" against a constantly changing real-time real-world threat.

It became clear to me as I worked through every word of this superior work that modern intelligence has become too bureaucratic and that all-source analysis has become too distant from both the sources and the consumers. The Operational Intelligence Center (OIC) whose story is told here worked with no fewer than seventeen distinct sources streams, each with its own idiosyncrasies, its own fits and starts--and it worked directly with its operational clients, fully appraised of friendly plans and intentions and able to provide workmanlike inputs at every turn. We need to get back to this approach!

There are a number of vital lessons to be learned from this book, which I recommend in the strongest terms as one of my "top ten" relevant *today*. Among them:

Sharing Secrets Matters. It was the Russians who helped the British get started in 1914 with a gift of a German Naval Signal book, and it was the Poles who saved the day early on in World War II with a gift of two working Enigma machines.

Ops Must Sleep With Intel. Too many times I have seen operators ignore intelligence because they do not understand it-there are too many breakdowns in communication along the way, and if the operators have not trained with, lived with, slept with, caroused with, their intelligence counterparts, the two cultures do not come together effectively in times of crisis.

Ops Cannot Do Raw Sources. The corollary of the above is that Ops simply cannot keep up with the nuances of sources and is not able to evaluate sources in context to good effect.

Intel Must Sleep With Ops. The intelligence propensity to compartment everything to the point of meaningless, and the "green door" mentality that is especially characteristic of the crypto-analysis community, amounts to a death wish. Some secret sources must be "ultra" secret, but some form of bridge is needed-the OpIntel Center (which the U.S. Navy, alone within today's US secret bureaucratic archipelago, does well) appears to be a vital and relevant solution.

Plots Must Be Co-Located and Ideally Integrated. Early separation and distance between the intelligence plot, the commercial shipping plot and the operational plot leads to waste and death. Ultimately an integrated plot, or at least a blue-green plot next door to the red plot, is absolutely vital to effective prosecution of real-time war.

Lose the Old Guys. The first thing that needs doing when preparing for a long war is to lose the old guys. No disrespect intended, but as has been documented time and again, those that get promoted in peacetime bureaucracies tend to be too conformist and too subservient to peacetime protocols to adapt well to unconventional and very fast-moving wartime conditions. [Present company always excepted!.]

Hire the Retired. This is not a contradiction. Old guys with big egos and high ranks have to go-but bringing in the best of the retired, generally at the field grade level, can have an extraordinary positive impact in the rapid maturation and stabilization of the full-speed-ahead wartime watch.

Doctrinal Disputes Kill. Unless there is a homeland defense doctrine that fully integrates and exercises the capabilities and internal cultures of the Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard, and civilian agencies (and civilian agencies!) there will be a year or two of major and almost catastrophic losses until it gets sorted out the hard way.

Home Arrogance Kills (UK Version). The persistent unwillingness of home side personnel to admit that their own security measures can be broken by clever enemies, and the general sloppiness of all hands with respect to Operations Security (OPSEC) will take a heavy toll.

Home Arrogance Kills (US Version). There is a theme with regard to the Americans. While their money and their manpower are gratefully accepted, their arrogance knows no bounds. They entered the war believing that there was nothing the British could teach them-further on into the war, the Americans risked Ultra by acting too aggressively on its information.

Red Cell Oversight Needed. One thing that jumped out at me from this book was the urgent need for having a very senior person-a retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for example, managing a Red Cell to provide oversight over operational decisions to exploit the most sensitive sources. [By this I mean, a senior authority who can overrule and forbid operations whose success might endanger the special source.]

Negative Reports Matter. I was really struck by the circumstances surrounding a German break-out up the Channel, in which a number of normally reliable and overlapping intelligence collection endeavors all were forced back by weather, broken down or what-not. From this I took the lesson that negative reports matter. By failing to report to the OIC on their non-status, they failed to focus the OIC on all the possibilities. Thinking the flank covered, the OIC left the flank open.

Tommy Brown Matters. The book ends on a marvelous note, pointing out that without the heroism of Tommy Brown, a 16 year old cabin boy and youngest recipient of the George Medal as well as two other adults who died in the process of grabbing vital enemy signals materials off a sinking vessel, the allies would have been deaf for much of 1943. At the end of the day the best technical intelligence comes down to a brave human who risks all to make it possible.

This is a great introduction to one of the most outstanding photographers of all time. The author obviously understands Smith's genious!!

When I first read this book years ago I was dreaming of travelling and its attraction was the wide range of places it could take me. This book has become a treasure because it offers so much more than that. From its very moving introduction provided by Salman Rushdie (written just a couple of years into his now lengthy life in hiding) Writing Away delivers insights that put it a step above your average travelouge. The people and places described are vivid, thanks in part to the fact that these piece were all provided by seasoned Canadian authors, many at the top of their craft. Particularily notable are the pieces my David Adams Richards, Margaret Atwood, Timothy Findlay, and Joyce Kyluk Keefer. This is one of those collections I come back to time and time again. A true gem of travel writing.

This review is not of this volume of the study alone, but of the four I know of in the series. The books on written languages give as complete a survey of every useful index of the languages presented, as even any layman, in addition to scholars, can desire in research upon the factual elements reletive to any discussion or understanding of language and linguistic based political conflict
It's format allows easy briefing on essential facts: population of speakers, both as first and second language, script(s) in use, when the language enters written history together with the first titles of works known, modern language probable descent from dead languages, and the array of usage: schools that teach it, broadcasts in the language, legal status, sometimes even in very small districts, whether the language is promoted, tolerated or suppressed. There's a discussion of publications in the language, and how many foreign language publications are translated into the subject language, in addition to translations of the subject language into foreign languages. It is one of the most supurb linguistic surveys ever undertaken. I rate it 11 out of 10 possible points. No library can truly call itself cosmopolitan without these books. Kisses, rainbows, and flowers to all who are responsible for its production. The only improvement I could suggest from my needs is if they were to include percentages of literate speakers of the languages. Kudos. The Academy Award statue for Language.

Right before I began taking yoga, a friend gave this book to me as a gift and, now into my second yoga session, I still find myself referring to this little manual.

101 ESSENTIAL TIPS: YOGA is a perfect handbook to use when trying to get an understanding of the world of yoga and why it's so useful for the body. It doesn't bombard the reader with too much information, but explains what the beginner needs to know about breathing techniques, various exercises, yoga poses and the importance of meditation. The photographs and illustrations are an important feature of the book and serve me as a reminder in how to achieve a pose that I'm learning in my class.

Highly recommended.

If you want to start practicing yoga and don't know where to start, or have been doing yoga, but want an idea for a basic routine, this is the book for you!

It have very good pictures, and explanations on postures. It shows the Sun Salutation (basic warm up), shoulder, headstand and other sequences.

Very comprehensive at such an amazing price.

I found this book to be precise and informative. It starts with the 1st step, the 'Sun Salutation', and illustraits various other yoga stances, and how to get to those stances. It is a must have for anyone who wants to know more about yoga and streching.

The Oxford English-Hebrew Dictionary contains "Comprehensive coverage from slang and colloquialisms to technical and scientific terminology." This mammoth of a book contains over 1000 pages. However I was slightly disappointed by this English-Hebrew dictionary. Besides the fact that it is only English-Hebrew & not Hebrew-English this can be a hard to follow enigma. The words are so numerous the reader can spend hours searching for the correct word. Most every word has sub phrases e.g. at random I chose the word collaborate & below it I found "work together" & "work for the enemy." I also noticed as I was flipping through this book that it contains many curse words. Not only does this book contain a plethora of words but it contains associated phrases. Besides containing words that I never thought I'd hear & probably lay in the deep ravine of my mind this book doesn't contain much of anything. There is a short 3-page pronunciation guide & a 4-pages introduction. Overall if you're looking for an English-Hebrew dictionary that will contain almost any word you can think of then this is the dictionary for you. I believe this dictionary is for the advanced scholar & not for the average student. However in its field there is no better English-Hebrew dictionary, just beware that is for the advanced scholars.

This is a phenomenal dictionary. Some things that make it so great:

1) Huge numbers of usage examples, at a wide range of levels of
formality. The examples give information that's lacking in most dictionaries, such as which preposition(s) to use with a given verb. They also contain a wealth of idiomatic constructions. I'm amazed at how much time I've spent just browsing through the examples in this book.

2) Excellent differentiation between multiple meanings of a word. If there are multiple Hebrew words that correspond to a given English word, they are very clearly differentiated, often with examples that further clarify when to use which (see above).

3) The vocabulary covered is VERY comprehensive and covers all ranges of style, from literary to colloquial (including, I was happy to discover, many obscenities).

This dictionary also is not necessarily for beginners. Some reasons that it's not necessarily for beginners:

1) It's English-to-Hebrew only; if you're looking for a very first dictionary, you might do better with a bilingual one.

2) It doesn't list the gender of nouns, nor does it list irregular plurals. (Gender and plurals can generally be figured out, if you know the rules, but it's nice to have them made explicit.)

Since this dictionary is published by Oxford, the English is overwhelmingly British. This is most obvious in the fact that many British idiomatic expressions are included, while American ones seem less well-represented...

It has what is probably the most important feature of a foreign-language dictionary: it explains the different contexts of a word, idiomatic usages, and expressions containing the headwords, not just the quick one word definitions many pocket dictionaries offer. A dictionary that simply tells you that three words equate to one English word without telling you where which word should be used is useless, and the Oxford dictionary avoids that trap. It's a must-have for students of Hebrew. I wish the Hebrew-English side was available, though.

I found the idea of an anthropologist having the opportunity to observe operations in a French biotech institution as things unfolded very enticing. At times I wished that I had a better background in philosophy since Rabinow makes frequent references to certain philosophers in a few chapters which I found a bit challenging to read. Nevertheless, the event that Rabinow covers is an interesting one, and he gives a very good picture of how the French view bioscience, the human body, and the commercialization of biotech products. In particular I enjoyed his descriptions and insights on the interactions of the people involved in the event and how they fit in the overall context of French society.

I really loved Rabinow's MAKING PCR, about the process of developing this major biotech tool (and probably a more accurate look at Kary Mullis than he gives in his own autobiography). FRENCH DNA is a terrific book in a different way. Rabinow tells an exciting and sobering story, virtually a who-done-it, and along the way he raises important questions about what genetic material really is, who owns it, what it means to have international research collaborations, and what biotechnology means to individuals and nations. A fascinating book.

Journey to the Center of the Earth is another Science Fiction by Jules Verne (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Around the World in 80 Days) Like most of Verne's other works, Journey is told from the perspective of someone reminiscing about a great adventure. Becuase the story is told in a journal-like fashion, the action sequences are abridged somewhat; but there is still some excitement in this book. Though somewhat dated (many of the theories Verne relied on when writing his descriptions about the center of the Earth have since been disproven) this book is still an excellent read. Visit http://www.michaellegg.com for more reviews.

I liked A Journey to the Center of the Earth, because it was filled with action. I recommend it to anyone into science-fiction. A good knowledge of geology would better help people understand parts of this book, because Jules Verne uses a lot of science terms and phrases. If you like crazy things this book is for you, because a lot of wierd things happen and are seen (sea monsters, humans, large mushrooms) while the main characters are in the interior of the earth. This book is filled with action and adventure. There is not more than two chapters that go by without a major event occuring. If you cannot read very long you can still enjoy this book, because most of the 44 chapters are around 5 to 7 pages in length. Overall this book is easy to understand and very interesting.

Reading this book is an amazing adventure, as evidenced by a century of avid readers. I picked it up on a lark and decided to read the first five or ten pages to see if it was my type. It was easy to read, enjoy and visualize, and I quickly finished it.

The story revolves around a young man and his uncle, who is a scientist. They discover a route to the center of the earth (hence the title), and the novel is about their journey. Once you get 100 pages into this book, you aren't able to stop. The things they find boggle the mind, but seem so real.

100 years from now, people will still be enjoying Jules Verne, because he captures the imagination of the young explorer.

The recipies in this book were submitted by French magazine readers, and cover a wide variety of traditional preservation techniques: preserving with vinegar, oil and sugar; preserving with alcohol; preserving by lactic fermentation; and several other techniques.

If you're looking for straightforward, easy, safe recipies for preserving food, you'll find this book a mixed blessing. Many recipies omit quantities, and few of them have been tried in any sort of test kitchen. Most importantly, a number of these traditional recipies involve important food-safety issues--as the book itself repeatedly makes clear. You will, however, find many excellent ideas in the chapters on oil, vinegar, sugar and alcohol.

If, however, you're interested in traditional food-preservation techniques, this book is uniformly excellent. The chapter on lactic fermentation of vegetables is fascinating, and the diversity of preservation techniques is remarkable.

"Keeping Food Fresh" is a compilation of recipes for preserving food contributed by readers of a French gardening magazine. It was originally published in French and has been translated to English with care. Recipes for frozen or canned products were omitted to allow a focus on older, more traditional methods.

The material presented is perhaps best used by the American reader as a point of reference when evaluating other recipes. It also could serve as the starting point for experimentation. It is not a cookbook in that the recipes come from many sources and do not appear to have been checked in a test kitchen. Some of the quantities betray their metric roots, since few recipes in this country would call for 11 pounds of an ingredient.

Some recipes clearly do not meet USDA safety guidelines, as is pointed out in the editorial comments.

Those who appreciate Eliot Coleman's writing should realize that his writing in this book is limited to the introductory material.

Overall, I found the book to be an interesting read, with much unique knowledge not available elsewhere. It approaches "primary source" material in that the traditional family recipes have undergone little editing, thus their historical fabric is more effectively captured.

I can't recommend this book highly enough! If you are interested in delicious, safe ways to preserve food without the need for a freezer, canner, or other equipment, this is the book for you. Written in a wonderfully personable style by gardeners and farmers who've been using these recipes all their lives.