This book is not my usual genre, but thought I'd stretch a bit. A few chapters in, I felt that I should not be reading Barbara's private diary. Several chapters later I was wondering WHY I was reading Barbara's private diary. Several more chapters in, I was wondering why Barbara felt we all should be reading her private diary. I am confident that Barbara got more out of writing this book than I got out of reading it.

While I was aware that this was a memoir, my assumption was that something interesting must have happened to the author, or her immediate family, or her friends, or her neighbors, or her not so immediate family, or ANYONE! But that was not the case. While Barbara does a very good job of recalling various parts of her childhood, the reader is not really provided any reason to care about any of the characters. Unless you grew up in the Midwest, or were divorced once or twice, or had a parent die young or commit or attempt suicide, there was no real "hook," no connection to the author or her life. We don't really learn anything or take anything away from this book, nor do we learn that the author learned anything but a few missing facts about her past. We don't get any inkling of how that information and/or revelations will benefit her or the reader.

Despite her inclusion of geographic maps and genealogical family trees I had no idea who was related to whom, nor which generation was involved with which other generation. I'm sure it all made sense to her extended families, but to the moderately engaged reader it was very disjointed.

Though this volume was self-absorbed and narrow, Barbara's other volumes may be worth a read assuming that she has an actual story to tell in them.

i thoroughly enjoyed this book. i am not an expert critic, but i found myself wanting to go"home" again after reading her book. very nostalgic and bittersweet.

Hughes has picked out an interesting subject to write a book about--namely the rise of large scale technological projects in the post WWII world. Unfortuantely, I don't think he's enough of a writer to bring it off.

The best popular science/history hybrids bring you a sense of the excitement of the technological advance, a new knowledge of the problems faced and solutions found, and an insight into the characters and personalities behind the science. Hughes doesn't really do any of this. The book is extremely dry and reads like a laundry list of facts rather than a compelling narrative. None of the characters ever come alive. And for the most part, I didn't feel he did a very good job presenting the technological challenges faced. I think he perhaps tried to do too much with the book, telling four stories instead of one or two in the depth required to really draw the reader in.

I really wanted to like this book, especially as a former worker in operations research/systems analysis. But unfortunately, Hughes doesn't deliver on the promise that the subject has.

The chapters on SAGE, the Atlas missile program, and ARPANET were outstanding expositions of project management. What hit home for me was the depiction of the ultimate success of the visionary scientist/engineers associated with these programs, especially Licklider.

It's interesting to note there was quite a bit of fallout rather recently regarding problems with the Boston CA/T project; it seems there will be lessons to take away from that in the future and might make for a good reason for Hughes to revisit this work in a second edition.

Published by the same press as "Attics" (Creative Homeowner Press) this book has lovely color illustrations, but adds little to the simpler book.

The title should give it away, but this book is more on giving you the equations you need rather than giving explanations. That is not to say that the equations are not there. They are, but there are less than other books in the series.

This is also not the typical book in the series because there are no problems for you to check your understanding of the equations. This seems to be intended more for a reference. What is helpful, however, is the list of references at the end of each chapter.

The main topics covered here are fluid mechanics, elasticity, electromagnetic theory, and dynamics. Since this is more of a reference, I would not recommend this if you are learning the information for the first time.

Good review of successful and unsuccessful marriages. Only beef was with the writers somewhat traditional views on marriage that spilled over into this analysis.

I liked the book because it has baseball in it and baseball is cool, but the book was great because i just like reading the books because there great and the auother just writes them great to stay in the book and read but there are some boring points in it. It just makes me want to be in that game there playing and do an asome catch or hit a winning grand slam. Read this book if u have a range from 3.0 to 4.5 because this book rules

Steve Wintress studied the passengers on the New York to Los Angeles flight carefully. In his business, one couldn't be too careful. The pale gold girl beside him -- the niece of a prominent Hollywood director -- might be after the same Davidian Report he was looking for. So might the overwhelmingly handsome man across the way, whom he recognized as Haig Armour of the Justice Department. Or even the young and crumpled soldier who didn't look as if he would ever be mixed up in this sort of thing. Any one of them might be after the secret document -- and Steve had to get there first.

When the Communists, the FBI and the CIC are all after the same report -- which had been smuggled out of Berlin by the wily Davidian and was for sale to the highest bidder -- you can expect some fast footwork in the cloak and dagger department. With the deft touch of an expert, Dorothy Hughes unravels the tangled skein of this story of master sleuths and desperate adventure.

THE DAVIDIAN REPORT marks a departure for a Dorothy B. Hughes mystery; here quiet terror is the lesser ingredient and the suspenseful, spine-tingling spy chase offers the major thrill. Inevitably the reader will be reminded of the best Eric Ambler and Manning Coles. But perhaps no other mystery writer has Miss Hughes' unique flair for the bizarre and the incongruous; typical is the passage where two Communists try to make contact amidst the confusion of the Hollywood Santa Claus parade.

This collection includes the whole gamut of short stories from pretentious but weak parable ('O'Kelly's Angel') to real gem ('The Deadfall'). The author is a famous poet, and I believe his poems are excellent. His language is rich. But his prosaic works, cloyed with numerous images and metaphors sometimes rather complicated and unnecessary, force to recall the Ockham's Razor. Nevertheless his ardent aversion to abominable massacre of God's small critters hypocritically named 'hunt', expressed at least in three of his stories, takes all my sympathies.

Hughes' take on Germany is a pretty solid representation of general revisionist scholarship of early modern Germany. He clearly shows the trends and ideas that flowed through the period, particularly territorial sovereignty and anti-Imperialism. Important in his work is an assessment of the decentralization of the empire as a continual process throughout the period, not a consequence of Westphalia. He also puts a lot of attention of the anti-Hapsburg elements in the empire as driving much of the conflict of the time, and the dynastic attitudes of the Hapsburg rulers.

Hughes tries to take on too much in his book, however. He essentially tries to cover more than three centuries in about 170 pages, and in doing so comes across as writing more of a textbook-style overview than strong historical scholarship. It still remains a convincing work, he just perhaps should have either expanded the size or condensed the scope.

The book covers electrical concepts right from the basics of resistors and capacitors and then moves on to the fundamentals of electronic circuits . The coverage of mdifferent types of motors is lacking in the mathematical and design approach although it does cover the theoretical aspects well . Overall an ideal book for beginners but look for another one if you really want some details.