This is the best book about Intrusion Signatures published yet.
I teach computer security at a local university, and with the only help of this book, I could take care of all the practical aspects of my last course. If you have already a good background on this field, and read and understand thoroughly the book, then you can afford any related security certification test.
Chapters 3 through 17, present several well documented cases, which, in turn, are discussed following the same standard:
- Presentation
- Source of Trace
- Detect Generated by
- Probability the Source Address Was spoofed
- Attack Description
- Attack Mechanism
- Correlations
- Evidence of Active Targeting
- Severity
- Defense Recommendations
- Questions

Chapter 1 introduces the reader to Analysis of Logs (including Snort, Tcpdump, and Syslog), IDS, and Firewalls. Even being a quick review, it is quite useful, though.
Chapter 2 explains the way the cases are studied.

The covered vulnerabilities and attacks include:
- Internet Security Threats
- Routers and Firewalls Attacks
- IP Spoofing
- Networks Mapping and Scanning
- Denial of Service
- Trojans
- Assorted Exploits
- Buffer Overflows
- IP Fragmentation
- False Positives
- Crafted Packets

At the bottom line, this is one of the 5 best computer security books I ever read. Even for non experts, the book can be a valuable tool to improve the understanding on this field.
Try it.

I read this book out of general interest and a need to dig deeper into the technical aspects of security, and intrusion detection in particular. For that, this title is perfect!

It's great to learn intrusion detection, packet analysis, forensics, attack methodologies, attack recognition, and similar topics. And oh, by the way, if you have any interest at all in certification, Intrusion Signatures and Analysis is the study guide for one of the hottest new certs there is: SANS GIAC Intrusion Detection In Depth.

A must-have for the serious network security professional, Intrusion Signatures And Analysis opens with an introduction into the format of some of the more common sensors and then begins a tutorial into the unique format of the signatures and analyses used in the book. Readers will find page after page of signatures, in order by categories as well as a case study section on how attacks have shut down the networks and web sites of Yahoo, and E-bay and what those attacks looked like. As an added feature, the collaborative authors Stephen Northcutt; Mark Cooper; Matt Fearnow; and Karen Frederick included review questions with throughout the book to help readers be sure they comprehend the traces and material that has been covered. Intrusion Signatures And Analysis is a recommended resource for the SANS Institute GIAC certification program. 448 pp.

For anyone who has worked - on an assembly line, as a bureaucrat-in-a-box - the greatest workplace nemesis is a nonexistent ideal: the theoretical person against whom your "efficiency" is measured. Often, not even a boss or office rival is as irritating as this cold standard, the product of stopwatch-wielding efficiency experts and industrial psychologists who claim to have a scientific measure of "average output." In The One Best Way, science writer Robert Kanigel examines the first so-called efficiency expert of them all: Frederick Taylor, the turn-of-the-century engineer and pioneering management consultant.

Taylor's idea was simple: break down all jobs into their smallest component tasks, experiment to determine the best way to accomplish them and how fast they can be performed, and then find the right workers to do them. It was called scientific management, or "Taylorism" -- a formula to maximize the productivity of industrial workers. "The coming of Taylorism," Kanigel writes, took "currents of thought drifting through his own time -- standards, order, production, regularity, efficiency -- and codif[ied] them into a system that defines our age."

Though he had an enormous impact on our everyday lives, today Taylor is little known outside management circles. This is curious: in his own time, Taylor was a world-class celebrity, advocating an organizational revolution that would link harder work to higher wages -- as well as instituting shorter working hours and regular "cigarette breaks." His books and articles were translated into all the major languages and passionately studied, even in the Soviet Union, as guides to a future industrial utopia; he was, in many ways, Stalin's prophet. Yet Taylor was also reviled as a slave driver who devalued skilled labor and despised the common worker, and he was ridiculed as a failure in many of his business undertakings.

Much of Kanigel's book is devoted to descriptions of the shops that Taylor worked in: a ball-bearing factory, a paper mill, and machine-tool plants, to name a few. It's dramatic how different the world he describes is from the work environment of today. Here were no highly educated managers attempting to exercise minute control over relatively unskilled employees. Instead, craftsmen dominated these oily pits -- spinning steel-cutting lathes, constructing elaborate sand molds for machine tools, and maintaining the gigantic leather belts that harnessed the energy of central steam engines. THis was in many ways the most fascinating part of the book for me: I learned what people did in the decaying mills that surrounded my New England home.

To all but the most practiced eye, such a workplace was a chaotic scene. What the craftsmen did -- and what they were capable of -- was largely a mystery to management, which deprived the managers of control and power, leading to a number of stunningly counterproductive practices. If tool and die makers produced jigs beyond a certain threshold, for example, 19th-century foremen would dock (!) their pay per item -- an obvious incentive for them to slow down. And because ball-bearing inspectors in a Fitchburg mill worked slowly and talked too much, they were forced to put in 101/2 -hour days, without breaks.

Taylor witnessed such practices and decided to change them. In one of his most famous experiments, on "Schmidt", he got a common laborer to double the number of bars of pig iron he transported down a plank each day. All he did was pay the man more, linking higher output directly to higher wages -- hardly a revolutionary thought today. His solution for the gossipy ball-bearing inspectors was to separate them, shorten their working hours, increase their pay, and allow them to relax occasionally; in return, they were expected to work harder, and they did.

Once Kanigel establishes that Taylor's method worked well (to a certain extent), the book becomes tough going. Despite his elegant prose, Kanigel's exhaustive treatment of his subject's life and experiments strained my interest. Do we really need to know, for example, that Taylor once spent months alternating the size of coal shovels in the name of furnace-stoking efficiency? Or the entire list of his vacation companions for one summer? Such biographical detail can add spice to a compelling narrative, but to include them only as an exercise in thoroughness, as Kanigel does, is simply tiring. Taylor simply is not interesting as a personality.

Kanigel also glosses over many important issues. Taylorism really did devalue certian kind sof skilled labor, and the costs have been high. The "Taylorized" doctors of the HMO era, for example, must work with administrators peeking over their shoulders, dispensing pills at the expense of empathy and other unmeasurable healing skills. And once factory workers lost their control and even their comprehension of manufacturing processes, many ceased to take pride in their work and stopped making suggestions for improvement. This may be one reason why Japanese and European design is often superior to American. Taylorism also spawned the rise of management consulting, with its sham exercises and goals -- often a huge diversion of managerial talent in the name of efficiency. Kanigel, however, largely ignores this darker side of Taylorism; the true impact of his legacy gets lost in the details. The result is a 600-page profile of a narrow and compulsive man with a single, if influential, idea.

Recommended, but only for scholars and specialists.

Kanigel illuminates the life and times of both Fred Taylor and the revolution his ideas spawned. Without explicitly understanding how Taylor's ideas have shaped our lives we cannot understand the profound impact this 19th Centruy man continues having on our day-to-day lives. With the often misplaced notion of efficiency so deeply ingrained in the very fabric of our lives, we often ignore the profound impacts of blind quests for efficiency.

Who do you know who can reliably recognize the tipping point where efficiency destroys effectiveness (and with it competitiveness)? Who do you know who would challenge changes in the name of efficiency because the changes would impair quality, effectiveness, morale, or labor relations? Without understanding Fred Taylor and efficiency, how can you avoid mistaken applications of the notion? What will keep a 19th Century man from being the most influential man of both the 20th Century and the 21st Century?

This is a wonderful book. You shouldn't reject this book based upon your opinion of its subject. The books is written very well and evokes enough of the times in which Taylor lived to give us a more nuanced portrait of the man within the context of his world.

Nowadays, F.W. Taylor is often portrayed as either a villain who has all but enslaved us or he is defended as not really meaning what he said. Instead, this book shows us Taylor's nineteenth century upper middle-class background and spends a good amount of time on character development and work habits.

Once all this is understood, Taylor's seemingly obsessive goals become more understandable. He did have many important insights in making work efficient. When he began manufacturing was done in thousands of very small shops. It was horribly inefficient. His work did help our economy and helped the average worker become more productive. However, I still can't understand how someone could think having a human body physically haul 47 tons of pig iron per day is a good thing. There is a definite quality of life aspect that still wasn't grasped by these early efficiency experts.

Another extremely valuable topic the author clarifies is that Henry Ford's assembly line had more to do with meatpacking than Taylor's Scientific Management. Taylor's critics have unjustly used Henry Ford's manufacturing techniques as evidence against Taylor's methods when Ford himself made statements denying Taylor's influence. Also, like many original thinkers, Taylor was ill served by many who came after him and used his name but not his methods. This is all clearly laid out in this valuable book.

This isn't a whitewash or a book of simple praise. It paints a complex portrait of Taylor, but gives us enough context to understand him within his time. We get to know something of his character and that helps a great deal. It is a big book but reads short and is surprisingly engaging for a book on manufacturing. This book gave me insights into the early twentieth century that I needed to make certain pieces fall into place. It has a prominent place in my library and I hope a lot of people read it.

Published in 1923, this first volume in the Jeeves series is a collection of short stories, all loosely tied together. Most of the stories in this collection center on Bertie's old school chum Bingo Little and his extraordinary propensity for falling in love with 'every second woman he meets.' Notable in this book is Jeeves's constant displeasure at some ill-chosen article of clothing belonging to the young master, and his haughty way of expressing his disapproval - and, of course, Bertie's constant giving in to Jeeves's wishes. Although not the funniest or wittiest of Wodehouse's books, it is a wonderful introduction to the characters and the unique humor and style of Wodehouse. The story that stands out to me in this collection, on the strength of its purely ingenious premise, is The Great Sermon Handicap, followed by The Purity of the Turf.

See next: Carry On, Jeeves

This was my first Wodehouse book, and it remains my favorite. I have read it at least 10 times, and still chuckle audibly when I do so. It never gets stale. Every single chapter is hilarious. If you love humor and love the English language, you will treasure this book!

One of the earlier Jeeves and Wooster collections, this is a series of very loosely linked short stories generally following the same template: young, wealthy airhead Wooster or his pal Bingo Little gets in some sticky situation, and it is up to his genius butler Jeeves to devise an ingenious solution to the quandary. Here, the somewhat repetitious misguided amorous ramblings of Bingo make for the lion's share of troubles, although the high spirits of Bertie's cousins Claude and Eustace also make plenty of work for Jeeves. The stories can fairly be compared to contemporary TV sitcoms, as they to reply on recurring (often over the top) characters, a rarefied setting, a single type of humor, and recurring situations. Simply put, if you like one Wooster story (and don't get sick of them), you're going to like them all. Much of this can be explained by Wodehouse's mastery of the language and constant deft turns of phrase, period slang, and comic timing. Those who deride the shallow subject matter and milieu of the Jeeves and Wooster series need to recall the context in which these stories appeared. Only a few years removed from the horrors of World War I-an event barely alluded to in the series, despite the loss of an entire generation of British young men-the stories can be viewed as a bandage of sorts, an attempt to transport the reader to a world far removed from the traumatic recovery from the Great War. Not to mention Wodehouse's clear depiction of the upper classes as wastrels and idiots of the highest order when compared to the street savvy of the servants (as exemplified by Jeeves). Of course, one doesn't read Wodehouse for social commentary or as a salve these days, but for his dry wit and keen command of the written word.

This title barely qualifies as a "telecom book", but sounded amusing enough, so thought that I would give it a try. I'm glad that I did.

Secrets of a Telephone Psychic turned out to be an amusing look inside the world of telephone psychics. Written by a veteran telephone "psychic", the book seems to confirm our worst fears... that people at the other end of psychic hotlines aren't really psychic!

This is not a journalistic expose' of the telephone psychic industry, but the personal account of one man who made his living as a telephone psychic for several years. Over time, he began comparing notes with fellow psychics and learned all the tricks of the trade. The author exposes himself as much as anyone else, and actually makes you feel some sort of empathy for the trials that these low-paid independent contractors are forced to go through.

Besides giving an overview of the industry in general, and an insight into the minds of telephone psychics themselves, the author also delves into psychological issues surrounding hotline callers. After answering thousands of phone calls, the author has been able to gain great insight into what type of people call these numbers, why they call them, when they call, why the general public is fascinated by them, etc. The book reveals just as much about psychic hotline callers and the general public as it does about the telephone psychic industry itself.

For anyone considering calling a psychic hotline, this book is a must. The chapter titled "How to Call a Psychic and Not Go Broke" should save you much more time and money than this book sells for.

For anyone considering becoming a telephone psychic, this book will reveal the sometimes dark world that you may be getting into, and provides tips on how to handle difficult situations. It isn't exactly a "how-to" guide for aspiring telephone psychics, but it comes darned close.

About the only downside of this book is the author's occasional meanderings into new age culture, psycho-babble and spirituality. If you are in to that kind of stuff, it may make the book more enjoyable. To me, it was just a temporary distraction from the rest of the story.

Overall, the book was extremely educational and enjoyable to read. The author's wry sense of humor is prevalent throughout the book, and his colorful stories are ones that you will end-up repeating to your friends. Carrying a cover price of only $$$, this book is a bargain. Well worth your time and money. I'd recommend it to anyone that is curious about the telephone psychic industry, or who just needs a good laugh.

I expected a major debunking of the whole tele psychic phenomenon, but this book made me take pause and reconsider the subject in a brand new light. In short I lost my cynicism and came away with a different opinion on the subject. What did I discover? The telephone psychic biz serves a genuine function in our culture; helping people access the mystical and magical side of life as an alternative approach to problem solving. I also developed a solid understanding of how astrology and the tarot work. And WHY they work. The author really knows his metaphysical subjects well and elaborates on them with just the right mix of knowledge, humor and psychological insight. Considering the topic, this is a smart, spunky and wry book -- not at all cynical -- and a real page turner to boot. Don't miss it!

This psychic expert lays bare *his* soul and invites you to contemplate the mysteries of the caller. On the ride, you'll be up at 2 AM with Mr. Woodruff, waiting for the next ring on the next page. Very funny, sometimes a little heartbreaking, Secrets of a Telephone Psychic reveals what it is like to call and what it is like to answer. The book shows Fortune working in the lives of the seekers *and* the oracle. It lets you in on the inner operations of telephone work. Plus, you get to listen to the gossip of just exactly what those eclectic callers want to tell their expert. Let me tell you, they don't hold back, and the author knows how to tell a story.

Frederick Rolfe styled himself Fr. Rolfe to write this book, to make it look as if he was a Priest. Rolfe himself failed to enter the RC priesthood, rather like Mr Rose/Hadrian (the hero)... and from there on, you can see from his life that Hadrian VII is really Rolfe's wish fulfilment... not only to become a priest, but a Pope! Like Hadrian/Rose, Rolfe was an oddball in real life.

Mr Rose is a reclusive, catty & bookish Englishman, who excels in verbosity and likes showing off his skills in Ancient Greek. Through a chain of coincidences, this autistic "hermit" ends up becoming a priest, and then Pope. He renames himself Hadrian as the last English Pope before him, Nicholas Breakspear, had. Once in power Hadrian takes two conflicting courses, first reforming the Vatican to become less worldly and selling off some of its treasures for charity, harmonising RC factions etc and secondly getting right into world politics... this novel was written before WWI so some of his solutions are a little quaint. He gets France and Russia "sorted out", and hands over most of the world to his native England (see end). Hadrian has a strong anti-socialist bent, but this book came about 8 years before the Bolshevik Revolution occurred.

The other characters are less appealing... least convincing is Jerry Sant, who is supposedly some kind of Scottish socialist, but who speaks neither like a Scot nor much like a socialist (devious or otherwise). Cardinal Ragna, who might be presumed to supply some decent opposition, is also a cardboard cutout.

Rolfe has an odd style of writing... for example he refuses to talk of people being "Scottish" or "Irish", but prefers talking of them as Pictish, Erse or Gaelic, or Keltic (with the K). Despite being a pompous quoter of Classical Greek (and more oddly not mentioning much Latin to go with it), he shows a great prejudice towards living languages of his country's neighbours. -

"England is the dominant race: her language is the language of all her colonies. Why a triplet of little conquered countries [Scotland, Ireland and Wales] should refuse to learn English - should be permitted to insist on their barbarous and unliterary languages, we could never understand. They are conquered countries annexed to their conqueror"

Rolfe evidently needed educating in this area. Gaelic monks taught the Anglo-Saxons how to read and write, and the Irish Free State began a mere six years after the book was written, but I digress. Here is a specimen of the book's style, which goes on and on, page after page -

"The Supreme Arbitrator provided the human race with scope and opportunity for energy. The provisions of the Epistle to princes were drawn up in the Form of Treaty dividing the world, til Midnight (G.T.) of December 31st (N.S.) of the year 2000 of the Fructiferous Incarnation of the Son of God into the Ninefold Kingdom, the American Republic, the Japanese Empire and the Roman Empire."

(This is his cabbalistic way of saying Hadrian handed over Africa and most of Asia to England "the Ninefold Kingdom", naturally, and had given Siberia to Japan. The Roman Empire he speaks of is Continental Europe controlled by the Kaiser.)

To the other reviews here, I'd like to mention Corvo's disconnection from the real world. He seems to believe that kings and popes still really ran the world like they did in 1300. His Hadrian VII persuades Europe to be carved into an Empire of the North, ruled by the King of Prussia, an Empire of the South, by the King of Italy. The American Republic, is given all of South America; the Japanese Empire, gets Siberia; and the rest of the world goes to the King of England. Uh, yeah.

This really is an astonishingly modern book. He shows in part a Church capable of corruption and deceit, but also shows a Church which has what we now call a preferential option toward the poor, and a Pope also works diligently for peace.

Here we have the hero, a poor, scholarly eccentric, who has been ill-treated by Church officials. His bishop did not like him and did not support his vocation to the priesthood, and told lies to boot. However, finally, a couple of bishops, one an Archbishop, look into his case and decide he has been dreadfully wronged. Rolfe delineates a structure of secrecy, deceit, and cover up. He did not anticipate the scandals of the cover-up of child abuse, but the structures of deceit are there, and one can still see them at work today.

Well, the old Archbishop, after much careful and challenging questioning, determines that our hero really does have a true vocation to the priesthoood, and that his studies were sufficient. He ordains him. It just turns out that the Archbishop has come back from a Papal Conclave which is in deadlock, unable to choose a new Pope. He returns to Rome with the new priest in his entourage, and lo and behold, it turns out that his ill-treatment and his case have been discussed. By the Holy Spirit, he is chosen Pope, much to his surprise. However, the Spirit no doubt gave him strength and he accepts the office, choosing the title of Hadrian VII.

Well, what kind of Pope is he? He first of all wants to be a Pope of the people, and so ensures his elections and first appearance is to the waiting crowds outside in the world. He likes going among the crowds, even though there is some danger of assassination, though he was not the traveller that J. P. II is. He insists on having his quarters built and decorated in a utilitarian way, eschewing grandeur. Having experienced poverty, he is very solicitous towards the poor and devotes a lot of Church resources towards ameliorating poverty. So, he anticipated the preferential option towards the poor.

Some have pointed out that his Pope has a great deal more influence in the world than any modern Pope has had, Hadrian VII showed himself as vitally interested in peace. Truly, the Pope would not be able to engineer a division of the world into spheres of influence for various favored powerful nations.

There is good and bad in the Church, and Rolfe's Hadrian VII sets out much of both.

Rolfe himself was quite an eccentric, and so is his Pope. The style is full of archaisms and wierd bits of learning, but Rolfe was theologically astute, too. His Hadrian is a very complex and facinating character, somewhat depressive, hard working, kind, and strange. This novel is so interesting I can forgive it a few faults. Some of it is a hoot.

Extremely witty book! The story follows "Equality Jack" Easy, a Midshipman with a rather unusual philosophy. Yet, while you're laughing, you get a good taste of what life was really like on a British man o'war. Marryatt lived these times, so writes of them better than any of the others. But you should also read: Horatio Hornblower, Dewey Lambdin, and Patrick O'Brian.

If you like the more modern Patrick O'Brian novels you will most likely like enjoy "Mr Midshipman Easy" even more. The author, Frederick Marryat, was a real Post Captain on a British man-of-war and an excellent writer as well. The days of ship warfare in the Napoleanic era come alive as does the day-to-day life onboard a man-of-war.

I very much very much recommend this book.

Considering the era in which it was written, this book is remarkable! Fast paced, uproariously funny at times, "Midshipman Easy" is a delight to all who enjoy seafaring novels. True, it is far-fetched at times, but it was never intended to be a true grit novel. The satire involved gains perspective if you understand Marryat's position for naval reform after he retired from active duty as a British Naval Captain. Marryat's use of a black man as Easy's guide and balance is something else ahead of it's time and I applaud him for that. The real purpose of this book is to provide a good read and it does it beautifully. The best of his novels,although Peter Simple ought to please the Forrester crowd.

I have always been a fan of the intellectual debates in the New York Review of Books letters to the editor pages. This book consists of two articles by Crews and the subsequent debates surrounding them. I would have liked to see better defenses of Freud, but none of the eminent defenders of psychoanalysis is able to mount a serious challenge to Crews's devastating attacks.

This devastating book has two parts: (1) The Unknown Freud, where the reader gets a picture of Freud as a dictator, a megalomaniac and egotripper. A pope who alone knew the truth and who founded a secret commission to protect his 'church' against the heathen. He was a bad psychoanalyst (e.g. the Wolf Man case) and a venal man (e.g. the catastrophic Horace Fink case, where he tried to get his own hands on some money of the heiress).
I agree with the author that psychoanalysis is a pseudoscience - statements cannot be tested and the research results cannot be verified uniformly. Although it is not totally without meaning (Karl Popper), it is not a science.
(2) the revenge of the repressed
A frontal attack on the caste of the psychoanalysts, depicted as 'religious zealots, self-help evangelists, sociopolitical ideologues, and outright charlatans who trade in the ever seductive currency of guilt and blame, while keeping the doctor's fees mounting.'
The author is particularly severe with their latest 'school' : the 'recovered memory movement', based on the rape of children by their parents (really!). This lead to false accusations and condemnations of innocent people. No wonder the author predicts an accelerating collapse of psychoanalysis as a respected institution.
A much needed and courageous book to halt a profession riding at full speed on a misty highway. And a much needed angle on Freud as a person, written in a style to slaughter the not so innocent father of psychoanalysis.
After reading this book, I agree with Peter Madawar, who called doctrinaire psychoanalytic theory "the most stupendous intellectual confidence trick of the twentieth century".

Frederick Crews really knows how to tap that deep reservoir of hostility found in modern Freudian psychoanalysts. In 1993 and 1994 FC wrote two essays in the New York Review of Books debunking Freud in the first, and tearing to shreds the recovered memory movement in the second.

These two essays and the letters in response to them have been put into the book The Memory Wars. As someone trained in experimental psychology you can guess my own personal bias in this matter. Crews discusses Freud's botched cases; his frequent vacillation in theory formation; some of his sillier theories; and his serious interjection of personal bias into the formation of his beliefs. The main problem with the whole Freudian system is the total lack of scientific evidence supporting it. Freudian psychoanalysis is founded on anecdote and supported by anecdotes. To be fair, much current non-Freudian therapy is also based on anecdote. Indignant Freud followers write back, and their letters are indeed interesting (and often pompous).

The second half of the book takes on the recovered memory movement. It would be great to poke fun at this movement if it weren't for the fact that it has caused so much damage to all parties involved. Symptoms checklists are published with the statement if you suffer from these symptoms you may be a victim of sexual abuse. Read the list and you will find that the majority of Americans will find that they have been abused. It's all a patient seduction game with the intent to make big money. Hospitals have even set up units to treat such patients (Having worked in the psychiatric hospital industry I am well aware of the "product lines" that such facilities set up in order to fill beds). Crews does an excellent job of dissecting the memory movement, and once again we get to read the indignant responses.

Those who believe that psychological therapy should be based on sound scientific evidence will love this book. Those who have accepted Freudianism with a religious like faith will, of course, hate it. To me this whole subject is analogous to the evolution vs. creationist debate. It's science versus pseudoscience.

The Oakland Statement teases the potential reader with a fascinating and current political plot topic, but utterly fails to deliver with content.

Insipid character development, seemingly non-existent editing (or even basic copy editing) and inane dialogue combine to make the book unreadable. Authors Ellis and Frederick present their tale, set between 2000 and 2006, with condescending piety and child-like simplicity. The story bumbles through the telling of a fictional "leaderless movement" to effect revolutionary constitutional change in the United States without overthrowing the power structure. Autonomous domestic terrorist cells form at the directive of the Americans for Revolutionary Democracy to attack power infrastructure to bolster a published demand for constitutional conventions to be called to affect two amendments to the US Constitution. The first is wealth distribution via employee stock ownership schemes, and the second pertains to election reform.

Published prior to September 11th, The Oakland Statement presents ideas that are powerful and germane to ongoing events in the world. However, Ellis and Frederick do not even attempt so much as a plot twist in the book. The story begins flat-with an average citizen's reaction to the emergence of the movement presented in

Ellis and Frederick present a host of characters, both actual players on the political scene and purely fictional. Unfortunately, all of them seem to be from the "weed" smoking, socialist, anti-establishment arch-liberal perspective. This is the case in fictionalized characters in the book, from Lani Guinier to Al Gore, as well as the invented ones. Everyone agrees and is presented as mutually intuitive all the time, making the already straight forward, no-surprises rendition of the story even more mundane.

All of the characters in the book share unlikely, "gimme a break" dialogue. This is most evident with the fictionalized players, most notably conversations between Pat Buchannan and Jesse Jackson that make the reader cringe with disbelief. Disgustingly little research is evident in the development and presentation of the myriad people introduced. It appears that the authors mirrored everyone in the book after one person and just gave them different names and cursory, uninspired profiles.

Furthermore, the book is entirely under edited and unbalanced. The authors run on for pages after points are established without adding anything pertinent to the plot. Information that is clearly stated once is oft repeated in what can only be an editorial oversight. There are paragraph breaks in mid-sentence, as well as other glaring gaffs in the book, such as potato spelled "potatoe." Punctuation is frequently misused also, in a seeming blatant affront to Strunk & White.

The Oakland Statement is an excellent example of extremely poor writing. Period. It offers predictability, unconvincing dialogue and uncreative presentation as opposed to the "action-packed American political adventure novel" promised on the back cover. One can't skim through the pages quickly enough to inevitably reach the ending that is embarrassingly evident by the second page.
*****

oh yes..the oakland statement is a great political adventure novel....does the good old u.s.a. need fixed?....you bet!.....can it be fixed?...of course!...and who can do it?...you!...and the guy next door....really....pick up the oakland statement, and see how...............you won't put it down until the country is transformed into the greatest place on earth....once again.

As a professor of history at a small liberal arts college I read many different texts and novels in the genre of politics. This book not only offers an innovative philosophy of restructuring our political system but does so with a wonderfully creative and exciting storytelling that reminds one of Grisham, Chrighton or Elmore Leonard. The book is well paced with complex characters bringing a real life to both the action and the espoused political philosophy. As I stated, the pacing of this book is just right-slowly but surely the book escalates right along pace with things getting more and more tense until the climactic ending. This is definitely, as they say in the book reviews, a page turner. I really enjoyed the knowledge of politics displayed by the author. I will absolutely look up the author to see if he has written other works as I completely enjoyed this book and it's fluid writing style.

Although this book is very well-written (at times it feels like a novel), I cannot help feeling that at times there was something missing. The sections that deal with Frederick's upbringing and home life are compelling, but as soon as Mitford dives into Frederick's battles (which were so numerous they almost defined his later life!) the discussion becomes very dense and hard to follow. While I loved hearing abour Voltaire's visit to Potsdam, and the interaction between the two luminaries, I felt that this short time was dwelt upon for a bit too long, perhaps to the detriment of other events in Frederick's life. The book is very sympathetic to Frederick William I (Frederick's father), who I feel is one of history's least likable characters. When it gets to Frederick's later life (after the Seven Years' War), the coverage becomes sparse. However, because at times it is so readable, I recommend this book to those who have little to no knowledge of Frederick and his times.

I am a picture person and this book is jam packed with many color plates depicting various aspects of Freddie and his environment. One plat shows a map of Frederick's battles. For collectors there is a picture of A gilded snuff-box set with diamonds with a miniature of the King. To know some one you must know their background and environment. Then when you read about their actions you get a feel for the reasons behind these actions. What was going on the world around Freddy that help mold him?

In this book Nancy Mittford takes the blur of many wars and focuses them through the eyes of a single great leader.

This book is divided into twenty to chapters usually separated by wars, a section on resources, and an extensive index.

This book is, in my opinion, the essential starting point for anyone interested in the life of Frederick the Great and his times. More of an in depth personal and at times extremely heartrending portrayal of a complex, to say the least, and enigmatic figure. At the end of this study, it is as though you have gotten to know and then, tragically, lost a great friend. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in history.

In Man Plus, the protagonist has his body transformed to survive on Mars. Like many of his novels, Pohl does a good job of focusing on the emotional aspects of the story, not just trying to be "action-packed" (George Lucas, are you reading this?).

Anyway, there are some gaps, the most annoying being this - HOW WILL ROGER TORRAWAY REPRODUCE? I mean, they surgically removed his genitalia for crying out loud. He is supposed to be a new breed of upgraded humans who can survive on Mars, but what good does it do if they have to literally build a new Roger every time? This should have been thought out better IMHOP.

Another less glaring fault is that Pohl rips off Isaac Asimov's concept of psychohistory from the Foundation series. In Man Plus, scientists determine through their mathematical calculations that the only way to stave off the earth's destruction is through extraterrestrial colonization. This was disappointing to see Pohl borrow so blatantly from another sci-fi author.

Finally, the book takes place around 2003 or so (which was the "near future" when the book was written back in the 70's) and we are still fighting communists. This obviously isn't Pohl's fault, as the USSR looked pretty strong back then, but it does detract from the read a bit.

That being said, this is a quick read and is at least worth checking out from the libary.

Man Plus is the story of a project to adapt (a) man to be able to live on Mars. Thus, this man would have to be able to survive in a carbon dioxide atmosphere, at very low pressure, and be able to extract water and oxygen from the soil. In addition, the extreme temperatures would have to be overcome. Pohl proposes that such a man would have to be extensively modified with robotics (creating a cyborg) - a modern writer might use genetic enngineering - with the result that the Man Plus of the title scarcely resembles a human by the time he's fully modified.

The strength of the book is the scientific setup - some of the problems of creating such a cyborg are addressed, from both the physical and emotional points of view. It's fascinating to watch the creation of the Man Plus - Pohl obviously put a lot of thought into the process and what should be involved.

Unfortunately, the use of this new creature is inadequate. At 270 pages, there's not a lot of room for detail, and the end of the book seems very rushed. A lot of that precious space is also used up in describing a future world where communism has taken over all of Eurasia and a virtual state of war exists between these states and the United States. From our post-Cold War viewpoint, it seems quaint, and I can't help being impatient with it. There is a crisis at the end that is artificial and is never explained (perhaps it was a "teaser" for a future sequel?), and there is far too much of the soap opera lives of some of the scientists. Therefore, I give the book 3 stars on the strength of its novel idea and care of implementation, the other 2 stars are lost because it doesn't follow through particularly well.

I read Man Plus as part of a compilation that combined Man Plus and Jem in one book, so this review may be affected by the contrast created between the two stories. I found Man Plus to be far superior to Jem, though Pohl makes use of many of the same devices and themes in both books. Pohl's adept handling of the scientific end of the story was reason enough to read this book. Unfortunately, he spends far too much time with the political situation on Earth and some of the more superfluous details of the scientists' sex lives. This angle succeeds because it grants the characters a personality that extends beyond vague political goals and imparts a sense of urgency to the project. And it is obvious that Pohl is comfortable with the characters, as they surpass the stereotypes of ivory tower scientists too involved with their work to show any real emotion. Some believe the ending was too abrupt and ambigiuous, but I think Pohl did an incredible job concluding the story. The ending provides a new dimension to the proceedings of the project, a goal higher than human self-preservation. The thing that keeps Man Plus from getting a five star rating is its length. The book is too short to have anything less than a totally focused vision for the characters and the plot. Despite Pohl's efforts, we don't get to see enough of the characters to truly relate to them, though Pohl's limited description does wonders with the pages he devotes to them. Man Plus is a great book, but the story is too hurried and the plot too unfocused to be considered epic.