Before this one, many other books provide the one-sided view from Washington by war historians, scholars and analysts (who did not know off-hand the combat and strategic position at the time nor the moral, spirit and willingness to fight by the young and heroic Special Branch Commandos). These books were based largely from declassified War Department MACV-SOG material since 1995, with few interviews with actual SB personnel. The sacrifice these Commandos made (in secrecy from 1956 to 1975) were not told the way it deserves in these books.

At Paris, in 1972, the Lost Commandos had been totally ignored by Henry Kissinger. Their American team members got released while the Vietnamese are kept 10 years or longer in prisons. Years later, these Commandos are betrayed again and cheated of the praise they deserve in many books by American writers.

Finally this is one of the two books (the other is by Ken Conboy and Dale Andrade) about the secret war waged by the CIA and Colonel Ngo The Linh's Special Branch. Mr. Tourison interviewed the Vietnamese side and have made great effort to provide a more complete and accurate account of success and failure of CIA & Special Branch and SOG & Coastal Security Service.

Many of these young SB Commanods died in North Vietnamese cruelest prisons. The rest spent between 15 to 22 years in hard-labor prisons until 1982.

Their stories are now finally told...

Before this one, many other books often provide one-sided view from Washington by war historians, scholars and analysts (who did not know off-hand the combat and strategic position at the time nor the moral, spirit and willingness to fight by these young, heroic and patriotic Special Branch Commandos). These books were based largely from declassified War Department MACV-SOG material since 1995, with few interviews with actual SB personnel. The sacrifice these Commandos made (in secrecy from 1956 to 1975) were not told the way it deserves in these books.
At Paris, in 1972, hundreds of these Commandos had been betrayed by Henry Kissinger and their American allied. The American team members got released while the Vietnamese are kept 10 years or longer in prisons. Years later, they are still cheated by many books that often lack the acknowledgement of their heroic sacrifice.

Finally this is one of the two books (the other is by Ken Conboy and Dale Andrade) about the secret war conducted by the CIA and Colonel Ngo The Linh's Bureau 45B (or Special Branch). Mr. Tourison interviewed many Vietnamese commandos & case officers and have made great effort to provide a more complete and accurate account of success and failure of CIA & Special Branch and SOG & Coastal Security Service.

Many of these Commandos died in North Vietnamese cruelest prisons, the rest spent between 15 to 22 years in hard-labor. Their stories are now finally told.

I highly recommend this book to everyone.

Thank you Mr. Tourison.

Before this one, many other books often provide one-sided view from Washington by war historians, scholars and analysts (who did not know off-hand the combat and strategic position at the time nor the moral, spirit and willingness to fight by these young, heroic and patriotic Special Branch Commandos). These books were based largely from declassified War Department MACV-SOG material since 1995, with few interviews with actual SB personnel. The sacrifice these Commandos made (in secrecy from 1956 to 1975) were not told the way it deserves in these books.

At Paris, in 1972, hundreds of these Commandos had been betrayed by Henry Kissinger and their American allied. The American team members got released while the Vietnamese are kept 10 years or longer in prisons. Years later, they are still cheated by many books that often lack the acknowledgement of their heroic sacrifice.

Finally this is one of the two books (the other is by Ken Conboy and Dale Andrade) about the secret war conducted by the CIA and Colonel Ngo The Linh's Bureau 45B (or Special Branch). Mr. Tourison interviewed many Vietnamese commandos & case officers and have made great effort to provide a more complete and accurate account of success and failure of CIA & Special Branch and SOG & Coastal Security Service.

Many of these Commandos died in North Vietnamese cruelest prisons, the rest spent between 15 to 22 years in hard-labor. Their stories are now finally told.

I highly recommend this book to everyone.

Thank you Mr. Tourison.

This book is absolutely a must if you love to read. It has everything from funny quotes and happenings to the history of late-night TV. Also, there is a little known or interesting fact on the bottom of every page. Since I received this book for Christmas last year, I have increased my knowledge of completely irrelevant, but interesting facts by at least 40%. This is great not only for when natures calls, but for long car trips, and whenever you run out of good reading material (which, despite all the magazines I get, seems to happen much too often.)

I though that this was a fantastic book. It was informative and amusing, filled with trivia and history. If you have ever wondered about anything around you then this is the book for you. You never know what you are going to find on the next page.

This book along with all the Uncle John books just make the time in the bathroom go so much faster. With Stories about presidents to rock stars to average people. You can open to any page and just read. If I could give it 10 stars I would. I would give it 12 stars if I got a free copy of their new book!

This book is a well researched classic on the horrors of the state. Tediously footnoted and well organized, the book offers the concept of the "ratchet effect"- government taking advantage of (sometimes creating) "crisis" as an excuse to dramatically increase government power, and fails to reverse this after the so called emergency passes. Higgs succeeds at proving his hypothesis beyond any doubt with history backed by many, many sources and does this in a way that is both readable and academic. In today's world, few books could be a more relevant warning about government

Robert Higgs presents an interesting and painfully obvious thesis: that government takes advantage of crises in order to grow larger, but then never shrinks to its previous size once the crisis has ended. As a case study, Higgs analyzes the growth of Big Government in the United States - a horrendous story of the degradation of constitutional values and the seemingly inevitable growth of the Leviathan State.

The book is more significant now than ever, since its publication in the 1980s. Government has grown substantially, especially the various "wars" on drugs and terror that have greatly increased the size of government and US government involvement in several aspects of domestic life and foreign affairs.

The scholarship is particularly good - mountains of empirical evidence, all relevant to his thesis, are well documented and presented concisely in this book. The book is straightforward and easy to understand; it should be accessible to economists and intelligent non-economists alike. If you've wanted to understand how government insidiously (or naturally) becomes larger regardless of constitutional constraints, read this book. It might fill you with rage, but maybe you can put that rage to good use. Are the ideas of limited government destined to be considered a failure in the far future, or can leviathan be chained down? If this is all government is about, in the United States or anywhere, do we really want a government at all?

Read this book. Libertarians will consider it a great read and invaluable intellectual ammunition; everyone else should read it, if for nothing else, to better understand the nature of the beast.

As of this writing the president of the United States is prosecuting a war with admirable objectives. But at what cost to American society?

Within weeks of the initiation of the U.S. effort the administration has announced steps that will curtail the civil liberties of citizens and visitors alike, even circumventing the right to proper trial. There appears to be a good chance that U.S. citizens will be required to carry so-called national ID cards.

Higgs explains why this should come as no suprise since war is the grand historical excuse offered by politicians to increase their powers and diminish those of their subjects, whatever the merits of their original objectives. This is one of the essential books in the literature of liberty, and it could not be more pertinent as a siren and antidote to the threat to freedom posed by ever-larger government.

As an Air Force Family Readiness Director, I wholeheartedly endorse these books to use for separations of military service members. They are truly beneficial in keeping our members who are deployed or on a temporary assignment, connected with those family members and friends. Great addition to my library! I give them out to each of my customers!

I am in the Air Force and my children live with their mother 900 miles away from me. This book is an absolute treasure to go to. It has given me so many ideas of fun things we can do together while not being together. Phone conversations are important but we all know they can get monotonous. This book opens a world of activities that my children absolutely love. I hope there's a sequel! The price is such a steal!

At times when I can't dream up a good project to do with my two children who live far away from me, I refer to this book.

Some of us living with the gender biased legal system which allows young children to be moved away from their natural father, have a unique situation with which to contend. This book helps.

It is a simple and good reference source for non-custodial Dads to help with the problem of being separated from your children.

Frankfurt school is now a part of history. Not much of its arguments are reproduced now a day. For example, their critical cultural theory opened up the vast terrain of cultural study in capitalism. But their characterizing cultural consumer as dumb passive receiver is too much extreme to be real. Now nobody hold up such a position. Its perspective seems locked in the interwar period. Indeed, the power of the school comes from the distinctive problematic derived from such a peculiar era. But the strength is the source of weakness. But even we don¡¯t follow their lines, we should know what they said at least in cursory manner, for their theories are now classic in each field.
This book must be still the most authoritative history of Frankfurt school from its inception to 1950. but it deals with not only chronological events but also what the first generation of the school, such as Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Walter Benjamin, and Fromm, worked. This book is the intellectual history of the school. The author illustrates the school against the time of school. As Hegel said, thought is the child of its time. So the thought should be located in the right context to understand. The society of Western intellectuals faced a crisis in the interwar period. The impact was severe especially to German intellectuals. The thought of Frankfurt school is one of the reactions to the crisis. Marin Jay succeeds in reconstruct their time in front of us. This book is the ¡®must¡¯, if you want to be oriented to Frankfurt school.

28 years after its initial publication, Martin Jay's "The Dialectical Imagination" is still the best introduction and most indispensable guide to the Frankfurt School's history and thinkers. Jay can easily be forgiven his occasional historiographer's dryness and insistent reminders of the boundaries of his project (I would be a rich man if I had a nickel for every time he writes that "such considerations fall outside of the area of the current inquiry" or something to that effect). Moreover, even if subsequent publications of the translated correspondence and unpublished papers of figures like Benjamin and Adorno have robbed Jay's book of some of its potential for novelty and scoop, Jay still provides the best and most pithy assessments of the major points, and he does so without sacrificing the scholarly rigor that organizes "The Dialectical Imagination."

The book could certainly better fulfill its role as research tool if the publishers would sponsor an updating of the notes and citations; now that everything has been published and republished by presses like Fischer and Suhrkamp in Germany and by the likes of Continuum, Columbia, Harvard, etc., in the English-speaking world, Jay's opus might be more helpful were it not to insist on citing the original issues of the institute's journals, to which most of us simply don't have easy access.

That's a small bone to pick, though, with such a thorough book. Jay's chapter on the philosophical roots of critical theory moves quickly but surely (despite the occasional dependence on disciplinary argot that may slow down readers not steeped in the vocabulary of "isms"), providing a crucial backdrop to his reading of the Frankfurt School's entire intellectual contribution. This chapter grounds Jay's book safely, and the subsequent chapters make good on this very promising start.

"The Dialectical Imagination" is sure to remain the best available introduction to the thought of the Frankfurt School on the whole. I cannot recommend it highly enough for those interested in the history of philosophy in the 20th century, in radical politics, or in developments in literary theory.

A wonderful introduction to and overview of the works of one of the only coherent intellectual "schools" of the 20th century. Jay describes the penetrating insights (and weaknesses) of the thought of Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse et al., with mercifully little of the psychologizing that one often finds in intellectual history. Ideas and their relation to historical context are the focus, rather than personalities and psyches. The book is readable enough to be attractive for non-academics and academics alike. It would have been nice to have more on the post-1950 period, but the as the subtitle makes clear, this is beyond Jay's purview for this book.

Do not expect more than ID from the book. It is excellent at ID but that is all you will get for sure. I bought it for ID and it serves the purpose very well. One must also question the range maps since as explained in the text of the book they are compromised.

It might interest the reader of this review (since your looking at the book) to know that while fresh water only represents about 1% of the available aquatic habitat on earth over half of the known species of fish live in it. I'll leave it up to you to find out why. Peterson Field Guides have a winning formula, find an expert, set them up with a good illustrator and see what comes out. This book finishes the trio that covers all of the fishes likely to be encountered by a North American fisherman, diver or naturalist. Like the Fishes of the Atlantic Coast and the Fishes of the Pacific Coast it is well organized, well written, all inclusive (of species) and as informative as space will allow. If you are curious about fishes in general or encounter fresh water fish with any kind of regularity you owe it to yourself to find out what they are. And, if you live in North America you should have this book.

This book has informed me on the many fishes I catch ranging from California to New York. Every year when I go down to Arkansas I alwyas bring it with me on my fishing journeys so that I no whati am catching. It has over 700 illistrations and over 300 maps. In all of my searching for book this has been the most helpful book I have used. I recamend buying it for yourself. It will help you alot.

I read the Chinese version of this book for several years, I am quite sure it's the best chinese book i have ever read.

Limited Views could be seen as an anachronistic (but no less brilliant) work of Classical Chinese philology, but as another reviewer has already remarked, it is startlingly modern, deconstructionist, and even tips its hat to the melee of cultural studies. For those who lament the death of philology in the modern American university, Qian proves that, at least in its Chinese form, philological studies is still firmly at the centre of the humanities and liberal arts. Qian's extraordinary command of the languages and literatures of six or seven literary traditions should leave modern cross-cultural studies in tears of shame. But beyond that, it is Qian's familiarity with the scholarship and the intellectual history of those traditions that is most breathtaking. For a scholar emerging from the chaos of the Cultural Revolution to pen such a work is a fete none can match. This isn't to say that Limited Views is necessarily a model for reconstructing a philology, but what Qian has achieved is something that the modern division of disciplines in the humanities can never achieve while still divided. And the value of Qian's work is hard to deny.

Like the previous reviewer, I'm only familiar with the original version of this work, which is something like 2000 pps, written in a classical Chinese utterly incomprehensible to your ordinary Chinese college graduate. Qian carried out what Benjamin, dying young, failed to complete, a book not written, but quoted. That is, at least 90% of this immense book is made up of quotes, in Latin, Italian, German, French, English, and of course Chinese. This sort of undertaking requres imagination as well as learning, not to say a real appetite for reading practically anything. By the way, Qian wrote one of the few good Chinese novels of this century, and pretty good traditional verse.

This book was preety much like i expected, a display of the greatest architectural works for the last 20 years of the 20th century. As a Rogers, Piano, Gehry and Calatrava admirer the works of other architects that you wer'nt aware of their existance certainly open your eyes, some possibly inspiring, as i know they were for me.

For those people not practicing or learning architecture but admire the beauty, a display of SOME of the worlds most fabulous buildings open your eyes to look beyond the street you live in.

Although this is a fantastic book there are many other fabulous buildings left out, which you would expect. There arn't a lot of images of each building, but how thick can a book be? if you love the guggenheim in bilboa, 5 images certainly arnt going to show you the whole story, as is the same with the getty, or the creativity of calatrava BUY THEIR BOOKS there is so much more to an architect than just one building. How they can award a single prize to someone out of so many masters must be the hardest job in the world.

As a student of architecture who hopes to one day win the Pritzker, this book in invaluable to me. The variety of architecture in this book gives the reader great insight into many different kinds of architecture. It's great even to just flip through the pages and look at the pictures... Of course, the written content is also very insightful and enjoyable to read. This book inspires you to learn more about the 20 architects featured in the book, as well as the future winners of Pritzker Award.

I first saw this book at The Getty Museum. My boyfriend, an architect, picked it out as a great architecture book. The pictures are absolutely beautiful. The architecture represented in the book are some of the most famous in the world and a wonder to look at. From the famous Guggenheim in Bilbao to Falling Water, it's my best buy. It's worth more than the money that you'll pay at Amazon!

I liked this book. A compilation of many people this details every aspect of the famous death camp. From the design of the ovens to the lives of the women. Yet I think it is missing crucial information. It claims only 1.5 million died at the camp, I think this figure has been dispuited and is low. It also does not detail the resistance as I've understood it. Apparently in 1944 the Sonderkommando rebelled, leaving 70 S.S dead and wounded. In the chapter on resistance the author only says 3 S.S were killed. The reality is that Dr. Miklos confirms the data of 70 dead in his book 'Auschwitz: a Doctors eyewtiness account'. Now the reality is that the rebellion destroyed two cremetoria and that Miklos witnessed these events. I dont think the chapter on resistance focus's on this profoundly heroic act enough. The book is very detailed and examines all aspects of camp life. But I felt that it did not detail the crimes of the Nazi Doctors enough. I felt it glossed over the torture perpetrated on the guinea pigs(humans), Miklos glosses over it too but the reality is other accounts detail the horrors of the experiments. It also glosses over the treatment of women. It does not mention the rape of women(or men). But we know from accounts that during 'selections' many Jewish women were subjected to rape and barbarism. SO why does the book cover this up? I think these issues should have been addressed. But nevertheless this is a great book about the machinery of murder. It will make you wonder how it was all possible.

I purchased this book along with BELZEC, SOBIBOR, TREBLINKA: The operation Reinhard Death Camps.

I find it a cold study of what took place here. It does not give us any feeling about the people who operated this horrible place.
Other than a cold statistical study of the SS guards there is nothing. You don't get the feel of Hoess, Mengele, or Marie Mandel, or Irma Grese that the Reinhard book gives us of Globocnick, Stangle, and their vile ilk. Just as it does not give any real feeling for the millions of innocencts who were slaughtered here.

It is a very informative work, but a cold autopsy of a hellish place.

This book contains several studies by different scholars, about the workings of the Auschwitz killing machine. Very well researched, it addresses different moral, legal, sociological and psychological issues about the people that worked (S.S. and Sonderkommando) and those who died in the camp. It also provides valuable insigths and enough documented information about Auschwitz's infrastructure, that clearly eliminates any possibility to deny the reality of this tragedy.
If you are a historian or a scholar of the Holocaust or the S.S, you should have this book in your library. If you are a Holocaust denier, you must read this book, with an open mind. Then, you will be able to perhaps move on, to deny Pol Pot's killing fields...

This collection of book/tape is the best instructional I have yet to try. I have tried 5 others and discovered that this one is more "complete". I would recommend to others. However, for improvement, the vocabulary section needs to be translated into english on tape also. The conversation is realistic, lively, useful and general sufficiently to cover a wide range of activities in our daily life which really what I was looking for.

This is a marvellous book for anyone studying the Chinese language. I wish there were more language books like this one. The style is organised, tidy and undaunting and I found the accompanying tapes particularly invaluable. The text similar to "Japanese for Busy People" with more depth. I truly recommend it.

I had to buy this book for a Chinese class I took last fall, and it's a perfect byline for an immersion course. When all you're allowed to speak is Chinese, you're in good hands with this one. I didn't get a tape with it (they shipped off a bunch with no tapes), I can now speak a nice annoying amount of Chinese. If you want to learn, get it. If you're not sure yet, hold off.