A good audience for this book would be any college graduate who has to write (and that's most college graduates). The book tries to undo the damage colleges have done to our students in the writing classrooms.

Some key principles:

1. Don't write to impress; write to express. If we write to express, and if we do this well, we will impress our readers with the clean language we use, that is, the clean way we express ourselves.

2. "Prefer Clear, Familiar Words." This advice echoes the Fowler brothers' Rule 1 in 1908, "Prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched." Far-fetched words in these times are often officialese.

3. "Keep Most Sentences Short and Simple." Albert Joseph advises us to keep one major idea in a sentence (Bernstein gave the same advice in the 1950s). This is better than advising us to average 15-20 words per sentence.

4. Use first-choice words and repeat them or use pronouns. This is contrary to what most English teachers advise us. They normally say never to use the same word soon after its previous use. Albert is right; English teachers are wrong. (The first to come up with the writing principle, as far as I know, is Fowler. In 1926 he called this principle "Eloquent Variation.")

I suggest another audience for this book besides college graduates: Writing Instructors. This book will keep them focused (perhaps give them a focus) on what's important in expository writing.

The only bad criticism I have of the book is its failure to give credit to people like Bernstein and Fowler.

Frank E. Keyes, Jr. Senior Editor TRW, Arizona

You may need to skip over some parts of the book to leave some suspense, especially if you're a first-time player of this game. The walkthroughs detail the maps in every hub, including the weapons and other units that could be gathered. One limitation is the elevation in the maps; you can't discern altitudes. Walkthroughs give you specific pointers on how to go to your objectives the most efficient way.

As for the book's multiplayer tips, use of keyboard and mouse is stressed for efficiency. It needs a little working-on on positioning in maps to give you a competitive advantage.

This book gives a comprehensive introduction to the Medjugorje story - the phenomenon of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, appearing to six Croatian youths. It has topical chapter divisions (e.g. "Signs and Wonders") which makes it useful when you want to find a particular piece of information or explore a certain aspect about Medjugorje.

It is objective, written in a reporting style, yet it is quite readable. It is written, I believe, with an American audience in mind, but it does not have the insider feel that the books by Wayne Weible and Fr. Svetozar Kraljevic have. It is not my favourite Medjugorje book, but it gives a well-rounded and balanced view of the apparitions.

This is a personal account of a largely untold story from the history of WW1- the arrival of American destroyers in Ireland at the height of the U-boat terror, when Allied losses were counted in tonnage sunk per day, and the strangling of Britain by cutting off all sea trade was a real possibility. Into the Irish port of Queenstown (now Cobh) steamed a flotilla of American destroyers- not the sturdy ships of WW2, not even the "Four Pipers" that appeared later in the war, but aging 750-ton boats barely able to make the trip across the North Atlantic. But when they arrived in port, and their commander was asked how long it would take to repair and refit before being thrown into grueling convoy work, he answered "We are ready now, sir!" Their arrival in force and addition to the war against the U-boats helped turn the tide of the war even before one American soldier arrived in Europe. Taussig's account tells of the the exhausting work of convoying ships in terrible weather, often shouting orders from ship to ship with megaphones; of chasing submarines without sonar or even "hydrophones"; and of shore leave in an Irish port that was in the throes of an entirely different war- a civil war against British rule.

Joe Flanagan knows his stuff! This books covers the entire book Insight we clarity. While not a replacement for Insight, F's book helps to unravel what can be at times difficult in Insight. For example, as F. said in the Lonergan Web Site interview, his book's first goal is to provide the links to understanding Insight's first five chapters. It is these chapters with their heavy mathematical and scientific import that can be discouraging to first-time Insight readers. Having F's book along side Insight helps manage these chapters. In this sense, it is a must purchase book. But, here's a warning: Don't rely on F's book. It is a means not an end. The pricipal aim of Insight is YOUR self-appropriation. If F's book helps toward this goal then fine. If not, then drop it and move to another source.

Most philosophy books deal with trying to find the axiom of uniting reality & thought. To Plato the axiom was the "Good" or "Ideal", to Descartes the "Thinking Self", to Kant the "Categories of Thought" etc...this book is completely different. Karl Jaspers started out with a psychiatry degree but after World War I became Professor of Philosophy at Heidelberg, but during the mid 1930's with the raise of Hitler & Nazi Germany, he had to leave his post due to his Jewish wife & anti-Nazi stand. After World war II, he returned to Heidelberg to give a series of lectures dealing with "The Question of German Guilt", this book being a written version of those lectures. Karl Jaspers writes very clean & precise while not using the difficult words like Kant's "Transcendental Manifold" or Heideger's "Dasein" etc...therefore sit back, get a cup of coffee & enjoy another very well written, easy to read philosophy book. Within these lectures Karl Jaspers tries to help his fellow German people to struggle through their current defeat & the Nuremberg trials by giving the reasons behind the raise of Nazi Germany, the dates when certain people either left or were trapped within the new social system, & the defeat & current responsibility of certain individuals or the German people as a whole. Karl Jaspers then lists 4 categories of guilt & degrees of responsibility: Criminal guilt (the commitment of certain acts & judgment by trial), Political guilt (how involved one is within one's government), moral guilt (your own private or circle of friends consciences), & metaphysical guilt (an universally shared responsibility to choose to live rather than protest evil). Each category is then explain in great detail of its pros & cons of legality, & which categories have more of a proof of guilt. I enjoyed the book, I hope you will too.

Very quickly: This is what you might get if you successfully mixed James Ellroy ("L.A. Confidential") and John Grisham ("The Firm"). It's a neat, gritty, intricate piece of mystery about a lawyer who really wants to believe his client didn't commit the murder. He's pretty sure she didn't... pretty sure...

I liked this one because I figured out the killer's identity, but only after reading nearly the whole thing, and after giving it lots of thought. To me, that's the best kind of mystery. It's not as violent as Ellroy, nor as austere as Grisham, but it has the feel of the better parts of both those writers, blending hard facts about the crime and those it affects with slick law-practice maneuvering. Good fun.

Quiet Moments is a wonderful gift for yourself, friends and family members. John Powell's poignant insights about life and love offer clear guidelines for personal growth, self-acceptance, and improved relationships. The selections chosen, sequenced, and edited by Nancy Sabbag allow the reader to savor Powell's insights and to see ourselves and others in new ways. The book's quiet, meditative style provides for enjoyable and easy reading at any pace -- a few pages at a time or all at once -- and can be read over and over with new learnings and insights each time.

This "pint sized" book is a wonderful aide in helping those of us who are poor spellers. It is difficult to look up the correct spelling of a word, when you don't know how to spell it correctly, or even close to correctly, to begin with. This book is the answer to that problem.

I only wish it contained more words.

Karl is an important Conradian scholar, yet there are points at which he makes claims that are almost indefensible. For example, in this treatise, he claims that there is no "cosmic significance" to The Secret Sharer." "The Surface," he writes, "is in this case the story." The novella is, despite Leggatt's protestations to the contrary, merely "a tale for boys,' devoid of any ulterior meaning. How a respected writer could make such a claim about any Conrad narrative is beyond the pale. The Secret Sharer is amongst Conrad's deepest and most symbolically rich excursions in any genre. It is a veritable cornucopia of symbolism and divergent meanings. To reduce it to a story "about growing up," is to miss the boat entirely.

To give Karl his due, he does allow as how "The Secret Sharer" is "one of Conrad's best." But his criterium misses the mark when it comes to the multi-demensionality of the narrative. He states that as far as its "suggestiveness, it is paradoxically, one of the most straightforward and obvious works. Its narrative is a model of clarity, like those uncomplicated narratives "Youth," and "The Shadow Line." In other words, if one accepts Karl's reading, "The Secret Sharer" is the kind of "traditional" text that Roland Barthes calls "sterile," since it becomes "wholly predictable and obviously intelligible" - a sophomoric tall tale easily digested and expunged in countless high school English classes from now 'till doomsday.

I could also expound from now 'till doomsday why this is justifiably not the case and that "The Secret Sharer," like its counterpart "Heart of Darkness," are in fact fraught with meaning and enigmatic depths. Both offer rich lodes of symbolism and psychological investigation, just as Conrad's other meaningful creations invite. To dismiss "The Secret Sharer" as a book for boys undermines and in fact almost torpedos an otherwise valuable treatise.