I need to do some parameterized expectation work. I read Chapter 7. It is not well-written. The authors first introduce the general framework, and then introduce a series of examples. People would be stuck at the general framework part. They don't know WHY do we do that.

A better way to introduce this method would be to use one or two completely worked out examples, paying particular attention to explain the ideas behind doing what we are doing. This way people will know the ideas behind the method, even though not necessarily the general framework (who need to know the general framework anyway?) Then introduce the general framework, and more examples.

with the reviewer from Chile. This is a very good book covering a fairly wide range of material at a level that is surprisingly accessible. It is well edited, and makes solid use of the internet to provide programs for buyers to download and try for themselves. Highly recommended.

This book has the merit of collecting many major recent contributions from authors that continuosly make serious research in numerical and computational methods of solving the now basic problems we face in macroeconomics principally (but that serves in other areas in economics too), that put them in a simple theoretic and practical way for the economist. It perfectly serves as an introductory book for graduate studies in this area and as an complete reference book for further research.

Just because it boasts the "American Film Institute" name (and just because Clint Eastwood penned the intro) doesn't mean this book is the ultimate reference tool it claims it is. There are too many omissions (no career info on Julie Harris?) and the type is much, much too small to be read or taken seriously. The photos are pedestrian (nothing new, really) and the book is much too heavy to make for "easy" reading. Stick to Halliwell.

This is a good book with lots of beautiful pictures. It's not something I want to sit down and read through, I'd rather flip through it and look for interesting things. The facts on the sides of the pages are the most fun to read.

This is a great reference book and one that is very reader friendly. Plenty of infomation and the book is designed for flipping about for quick reference. It isn't an encyclopedia, nor should it be but rather a great book for my desk at work and I have another next to my DVD. It was a gift and I went out and bought another one for myself.

If you have even spent a little time in your life reading newspapers, magazines, the net, etc you will have seen 99% of these trivia lists and items. Save your money so you can buy a better quality toilet paper.

The only reason this book gets four stars instead of the full five is because it is kind of heavy on the typographical errors. They seem noticeable and frequent. Otherwise, this latest installment is awesome!

I'm a great fan of the Bathroom Institute books, but with this volume, they are beginning to get a little thin. (It seemed there was a lot of Canadian trivia--interesting for a Canadian but not so much for an American). Hopefully they are taking their time with the next issue to give us material that is more in line with their tradition of great trivia.

Katsuichi's investigation is useful when used as a historical complement to (and NOT a replacement or refutation of) Iris Chang's "Rape of Nanking", which courageously and correctly examines the top-down imperial framework that made the genocide possible, as well as exhaustively detailed firsthand accouts. Former CIA officer, thinktank chief and CIA asset/apologist Frank Gibney attempts, laughably, to discredit Chang, and UTTERLY fails. It is easy to see Gibney's agenda: a limited hangout that pins the genocide on 1. ground troops under pressure and 2. the "right wing".

This book was apparently published to disprove Iris Chan's claim that Nanking is a "forgotten" Houlocaust. For better and for worse, it is definately NOT forgotten - if only because some people are still quite noisily denying that it happened at all.
But today, most people in Japan - including the majority of rightists - believe that it happened, thanks in part to the works of the equally noisy leftist people like Honda.

But this translation seems to hold back some of Mr Honda's most biting comments. The pro-communist, anti-capitalist harangues seem softened for the American public. It may make the book easier to read, but if it carried the spirit of the original it would have given the reader an idea of the extent of the author's courage as well as a better understanding of why he was threatened so much.

Also, it is a shame that the introduction did not describe the author's shortcommings. For several years, Katsuichi Honda refused to believe in the genocide by Kumer Rouge in Cambodia and, although he was stationed there to cover the story, denied that it was happening. He even ridiculed those writers who take "American propaganda" at face value as "laughable". When it became no longer possible to deny that genocide was happening, he silently deleted the passage from the second printing of his book and got busy denying that he ever denied it. His wig and sunglasses, often explained as a cover to protect him from Japanese rightists, may in fact offer equal protection from angry survivors of the Kumer Rouge genocide. All of this poses an interesting symmetry with his position on the people who are denying the Rape of Nanking.

As courageous as the book is, it still has the same shortcomings of the books by earlier historians and journalists on the same topic that left ample room for rightist denial. For example, he never found any of the victims and survivors that he interviewed. They were prepared for him by the Chinese communist government and their testimony is uncritically reproduced in his book. He never compares Chinese testimony with the actual Japanese troop movements and logistics records. He never once mentions if there were any children born of all those rapes. He also uses photographs of questionable provenance. (They come from the same government that famously airbrushed the "Gang of Four" out of existance.) The post-war execution of a few ranking Japanese officers are described, but he totally ignores what happened to the vast number of footsoldiers who were the arm of the genocide. People who commit atrocities at war tend to screw up in civilian life later on, which is better evidence than any, but Honda totally neglects to track them down. Most damning of all, these criticisms had been made decades ago and Honda has yet to produce a rebuttal to address these charges.

We really have yet to see a truely scientific historical documentation of the Rape of Nanking. That would be hard to pull off because Nanking is still governed by people who claim the Tienanmon Incident never happened and the Tibetians were never massacred. Honda should be applauded for trying. But inevitablly, he falls short.

Mr. Honda has produced a courageous account backed by irrefutable interviews and thorough research into the atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese Imperial Army in Nanking in 1937.
It is indeed shameful that 66 years after that episode and 57 years after the end of the war, Japanese rightists continue to deny that it happened. Imagine if Germans continued to extoll the virtues of their invasion of Western Europe and Russia! Or if they called the Poles liars for mentioning the Warsaw uprising or the horrors of Auschwitz! It is bad enough that so many Chinese died at Nanking (some Japanese and American apologists of the massacre continue to quibble about numbers of dead: let me ask them: does 40,000 dead make it acceptable versus 250,000 dead ???) It is equally horrible that the Japanese government continues to deny compensation to the victims of that massacre and further insists in erasing all knowledge of the event (We have apologized enough !!!) Others claim that the Chinese themselves caused millions of deaths during the communist regime as if to excuse the Nanking massacre! One massacre should not be used to condone another!! I continue to believe that in this atmosphere of apathy, amnesia and coordinated erasure of history that justice will in the end prevail.

I am reading this book and aside from the hidious reacing car obsession by the author, I found that it has good suggestions for reading faster. However, seeing more words-per-minute does not mean comprehending what you just read! This book could become valuable if it had also information about how to retain information read at high speed. my two cents...

I am reading this book and aside from the hidious reacing car obsession of the author, I found that it has good suggestions for reading faster. However, seeing more words-per-minute does not mean comprehending what you just read! This book could become valuable if it had information about how to retain information read at high speed.

my two cents...

I worked through the 10-day program illustrated in the book. The result is amazing! With continuous practice after the program, both my reading speed and comprehension improved dramatically. The author offered many different ways to develop skills to achieve two major goals: faster reading and better comprehension. I've tried all the methods and found the ones that best fit my own needs. I am sure for those who need to read a lot everyday (especially non-fiction material) will be treasured by this simple self-training guidebook.

Every time the Naval Institute press publishes a new edition of this book, I am astonished at the many errors that creep in. I am not sure whether the fault lies with the author or an editorial department that seemingly knows nothing about the Navy. Errors abound within this edition. A few examples:
On P.107, A photo of an aircraft carrier is described as being USS KITTY HAWK, when in reality it is USS INDEPENDENCE. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of carriers should have been able to identify the ship by class features alone--anyone who was not careless that is.
In the section on Navy organization, carrier air wings from both the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets are described as being based at NAS Miramar (now a Marine Air Station) and NAS Cecil Field (closed 3 years ago). Obviously, the author could not be bothered to check the accuracy of his data and it makes the reader wonder how many other mistakes are contained within this VERY expensive work ...One would think that as the USN shrinks in size, so would a reference book on that subject, but Mr. Polmar succeeds in burying the reader in overblown and excruciating minutiae to pad his book so that it is even larger then his previous editions published at the height of the 1980s when the fleet comprised nearly 600 ships!
Everything contained within this book is available on the internet for free--with the exception of Mr. Polmar's usual egomaniacal State of the Fleet essay, which always predicts the sky is falling for the US Navy.
In sum, little here is new or useful, most of it is padded to expand the book and jack up the cost and errors abound. An amazingly average to below average work. Great pictures however--just with incorrect captions!

The 17th edition was just released (5/2001), so beware of the prior reader reviews dated 1999 & 1998. The 15th & 16th editions were excellent books, and this (the 17th) should be just as good (although sadly, it will chronicle the delisting of many major combatant vessels that projected power during the Cold War), but until reviewers actually read or scan the book, these reviews are not authentic.

this book is filled with litteraly everything you need to know about navy ships and other key elements.must by for naval buffs

This comprhensive book is insistant on teaching a conservative method of craps and ignoring, indeed vehemently disdaining, the more tempting and colorful craps bets that the author proclaims to be money loser tbat glitter like tempting gold coins on the craps table. These and other tips are forcefully ingrained into the reader until they are nearly mantra-like in the mind. Still, by the time I arrived at the craps table I found myself wishing I could reach for this book to help me out with a bet or a question. I don't think the dealers and other players would have appreciated my referring to a "How To Play Craps" paperback in the middle of a roll. So later I read the book again and I'm still referring to it. Only complaint; the depiction of women as less than perfect craps players. I'm a less than perfect craps player. My first roll went flying off the table and sailing across the room like I was throwing darts. The author attributes such a wild throw to women and often refers to them as some kind of good luck charm.

I have won money using the techniques outlined in this book. Need I say more?

I liked this book so much, I usually keep two copies just in case
I loose one. Just bought another copy again this year to give to another friend, thats about the fifth copy given away in the last three or four years. (For the money), I'll guarantee the only way you could not win your investment back is if you stood at the craps table with you eyes closed. The book is straight forward but not dry with just a touch of humor. It explains every thing you should know, or could want to know about Craps,
yet is extremely easy to read, and hardly even a half inch thick.
I've read the book several times from cover to cover, and wouldn't think of going near a craps table without first brushing through the book one more time...

Cortina can be hit or miss. The German, French, Italian and Spanish books have superb (albeit a bit outdated in some cases) lessons for beginners, whereas the Greek, Brazilian Portugese and Russian books are simply lists of examples that are clearly designed to be used with tapes.

This one gets three stars for the grammar section alone, which is a superb reference - but unless you've got the tapes, which cost a fortune, the 20 lessons are of EXTREMELY limited value to a beginner. I advise beginners to buy the book anyway just for the grammar reference, but they should try to get their foundation in the language from another source.

Perhaps the print seems spartan, but the examples in this book are great and so numerous.

I especially like the grammar section in the back. You can find numerous stock phrases that can be memorized for various conversations you may anticipate:

e.g the section on prepositions "po" and "v" alone has instantly useable examples (pp 302-303)

'po ponedelnikam' 'on Mondays' 'v vremya voini' 'during the war' 'vo vremya' 'on time' 'po moemy mneniyu' 'in my opinion' 'v ety noch' 'on that night' 'v etom sluchae' 'in this case'

These are just a few of them I thought off the top of my head.

The line drawings seem dull but on closer observation they are authentic if minimalist views of Soviet/Russian life which test your knowledge of the culture.

Check out the equestrian statue of Peter the Great (p. 31) Can you recognize the line to Lenin's Tomb? (p. 192) The spire of one of the Stalin-era skyscrapers of Moscow State University? (p. 135) The mezzanine of the Gosudarstvennii Universalnii Magazin (p. 140)

Before I go to a party with Russian friends I memorize various phrases. My knowledge of the language has noticeably improved.

For around $10 this volume is a bargain!

I probably would have given this book four stars, but I felt the need to make up for the previous reviewer's one star. This really IS a good book - The type is a little bit hard to read but if one is familiar with the Cyrillic letters it will not be hard. I'm sure with reading glasses you'd have no trouble. This book basically teaches in several ways. It has a dialog or conversation at the beginning of each lesson, and gives the English translation. Then, it has "Exercises," where an example is given of a type of sentence and then more sentences are given in just Russian. These are done at an easy pace, so it not hard to understand them. Finally, for the last third of the book there is a grammar reference, which is VERY helpful - The lessons have footnotes pointing to these grammar notes. All in all, this book is fairly, well, textual (not many pictures!), but if you're commited to learning more than just "traveler's" Russian, definitely check out this book!

I don't understand how this book can be so good if its title is incorrect. On its cover it appears as translation for seguros "securities" but so far I know seguros is "insurance". If anyone could someway explain this to me, I would appreciate it. My e-mail is: imex@sinectis.com.ar Thank you very much!

I work as a consumer advocate for the Department of Insurance in Florida, and my office has to deal with a large number of complaints and requests for assistance from the Hispanic community in this state. While I found this book very useful in some ways, there were some drawbacks, at least from my point of view.

For one thing, it is not a general dictionary of insurance terms; it would be better described as a general dictionary of life & health insurance terms. While there are some terms from property, casualty and marine insurance in the book the overwhelming preponderance of the entries deal with life and health insurance, and fairly basic terms on P&C issues and particularly on P&C claims handling were missing.

Secondly, many of the terms included seem to be almost literal translations of the English. Sometimes this is necessary because there is no Spanish term (e.g., MEWA's), but this only brings to the fore the fact that insurance procedures, and the resulting terminology, vary considerably from one country to another.

In connection with this, it appears that the Spanish terms included in the book are based primarily on Mexican usage, and the user should be aware that the terminology may be quite different for the same thing in other countries. There are a considerable number of terms that are rather common in the Hispanic world which I did not find in the book, such as "franquicia", "caduco", "rescate", etc.

Having said all that, the book does fill a gap between the standard business dictionaries, which often appear to not even know what a word means in English, much less being able to define it in Spanish, and more specialized books which will bowl you over with detail. You can use it effectively in the office and on the street, and agents involved with the Hispanic community will probably find it useful.

The word for securities is bursatiles and the word for insurance is seguros. Despite the comments of another reviewer, the title of our book is correct. In fact, if one would look at our dictionary series they would know that we have both and insurance and securities dictionary. Thank you.

Though this book is listed as out of print, it is evidently considered public domain and is available for perusal online at both the Department of Defense & National Defense University Press websites.

Hitler and his leaders are not credited with the creation of this military concept. However, I am not sure what "A Reader" from New Orleans means by claiming in his review the Blitzkrieg is *not* depicted by the book's authors as an example of Shock and Awe in action. Nor am I certain how anyone can read this book now without recognizing its current implications. To quote from the book itself:

"Fourth is the 'Blitzkreig' [sic] example. In real Blitzkreig [sic], Shock and Awe were not achieved through the massive application of firepower across a broad front nor through the delivery of massive levels of force. Instead, the intent was to apply precise, surgical amounts of tightly focused force to achieve maximum leverage but with total economies of scale....

"To the degree that this example of achieving Shock and Awe is directed against military targets, it requires skill if not brilliance in execution, or nearly total incompetence in the adversary. The adversary, finding front lines broken and the rear vulnerable, panics, surrenders, or both. Hitler's campaign in France and Holland and the seizure of the Dutch forts and the occupation of Crete in 1940 are obvious illustrations. The use of Special Operations forces in significant numbers is an adjunct to imposing this level of Shock and Awe.

"....The lesson for future adversaries about the Blitzkreig [sic] example and the United States is that they will face in us an opponent able to employ technically superior forces with brilliance, speed, and vast leverage in achieving Shock and Awe through the precise application of force.

"It must also be noted that there are certainly situations such as guerilla war where this or most means of employing force to obtain Shock and Awe may simply prove inapplicable. For example, the German Blitzkreig [sic] would have performed with the greatest difficulty in the Vietnam War, where enemy forces had relatively few lines to be penetrated or selectively savaged by this type of warfare."

(Blitzkrieg is misspelled throughout the book on all but one occasion, so my confidence in the editors at National Defense University Press is not the highest; I have a few doubts about the fact checkers, too.)

The book behind the catchphrase is certainly worth a look, but no amount of Pynchonesque curiosity can change the fact that it's rather queasy reading.

Shock And Awe were the foundational concepts put forth by Hitler's military leaders as a new and lethal way of rapidly overwhelming opponents. Setting aside considerations of the violence visited on civilians and non-combatants or the damage done to infrastructure, Hitler suggested that inducing "shock and awe" through his "lightning war" system would lead to rapid military victories. WWII showed that, at least at the level of individual battles, he was right. The authors suggest this is a powerful strategy for any nation that wants to absolutely and rapidly overwhelm its opponents, and doesn't much care who gets killed in the process. Interesting reading, although it rambles a bit and blitzkrieg is often misspelled. Good instruction to any military that wants to undertake fascistic extranational adventures.

This book is a brilliant analyziz of 21st Century warfare. The argument that Hitler conceived shock and awe has no merit. De Gaulle, not Hitler, conceived the idea of lightning war. The concept was based on the military technology available in the mide 20th Century. By contrast, the shock and awe concept is based on military technology available in the 21st Century. The concepts are compleyely different. The argument that shock and awe is "fascist" also has no merit. Fascism is a political system, not a military strategy. Unlike fascism, the purpose of shock and awe is to decapitate dictatorial regime, cause minimum collateral damage to noncombatants. and install a democratic regime.