This fictionalized history of Alexander Alekhine's life is an exciting read. I don't usually go in for history or biography, but the inclusion of conversations between Alekhine and the people whith whom he interacts give real life to this book. While it helps to have a basic knowledge of chess, the reader does not have to be a world chess champion himself to understand the excitement and frustrations of pursuing a career in the game.

The author develops a character that is so real, so tragic, yet so talented that I was unable to put him out of my mind. Although Alekhine was a real person, the author fictionalized him in the most creative and unpredictable ways. Just when I thought I knew what was going to happen next, something totally unexpected occurred. The plot was exciting from beginning to end. It is truly a must read book!

This book is a page-turner from beginning to end. For those who love chess, twentieth-century history, or simply an exciting story, this is a wild and fascinating ride.

I was born in 1951 & read Cobb's autobio around 1961. My 1st baseball biography. I like it now as much as then. It's considered "in" today to cut it & Cobb up & call it "self-serving". Well, I've read hundreds of "autobio's" since & never come across one that isn't self-serving. Isn't that the point of writing your story? I find Cobb's book no more dishonest than any other. It's true value is to get you to think as a ballplayer & offer a window into his times, how they played the game. Whether or not you like his book depends on if you like him. And I do. I think he's the greatest player ever by a long shot. So did all the players from his & Ruth's time. Ruth ONLY wins the nod among those who never saw either one play. Although Ty was emotionally unbalanced, wrapped way too tight & was wired to go off at most anything, he also was the most honest guy, and also generous. He helped dozens of guys on other teams improve their hitting & play. I highly recommend Ty's book & also Stump's later Cobb bio. Together they're something else!!

Of all the books that are out there about Ty Cobb, this one rings the truest. Although ghostwritten by Al Stump (author of "Cobb"), it is written from audio recordings, interviews, and time spent with Cobb while he talked about his fellow players and his life. Its content and wording are glossed over by Stump, but the basic Cobb still comes through. If you want to get a feel for the man, read his book and get it straight from the horse's mouth.

When you think of hard nose, intense play to win ball players, the first name that comes to mind is Ty Cobb. This book, which is one of the best books about Cobb, shows the side of the man who was most hated in the game he excelled at, baseball.

The story of Tyrus Raymond Cobb is one that will forever be both myth and fact blended together. What this book does is gives the reader a greater understanding and appreciation of a man who ruled baseball for more than 20 years.

You look into the history of more than baseball; you'll see the life outside of baseball, and the life most people never knew. Walk through the past and relive the glory of the game with the greatest hitter of all time. What this book reveals is more than sports history, it's far more.

Ty Cobb is baseball and Ty Cobb the man is more than the legend. The book is must have for those that love baseball. You'll find yourself captured from page one. A real hall of fame book about a real hall of fame player.

The book, the Venus Hottentot, by Elizabeth Alexander, is a powerful conflation of what it means to be an african-american woman artist in a space that is dominated by the aestheticized science of the white male patriarchy. Within her writing, Alexander combines beautiful imagery with potent politics. Much of Alexander's poetry involves a renaming. The poems titled with names involve an elaboration of those names into a series of images, a collage of interconnected senses, places and objects. The poet's active role as historian reawakens the components of history, allowing them to shape and be shaped by the poetic encounter. Through the restructuring of names within history, Alexander renames herself. History becomes a menagerie of colors rather than the juxtaposition of black lettering on blank paper, making her poetry a sensual compilation of rhythms, colors and rescripted historical themes.

"All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born." --W.B. Yeats, "Easter 1916"

"a terrible beau- ty a terrible beauty a terrible beauty a horn" --Elizabeth Alexander, "John Col"

The parallel of Ireland's War for Independence to John Coltrane's jazz at first may strike some readers as a stretch. However, through the pen of Elizabeth Alexander, an African-American poet who manages to discuss at once important issues of race and myriad topics within history, art and music, any connection is elucidated with eloquence and power. In "The Venus Hottentot," Alexander's first book of poems, the subjects range from personal memory to entire cultural memories to human subjects: John Coltrane, Romare Bearden, Claude Monet, a rare black cowboy. In the fourth section of her book, Alexander's essential message is one of unity in difference. "I could go to any city/ and write a poem" she states in "Miami Footnote." And she does, writing out of Boston, Philadelphia, Brooklyn. Her subjects are black, Hispanic, and the eye with which she paints them has its own form of the Monet's xanthopsia in "Monet at Giverny." Colors fade from the black and vivid blue of Bearden's collages into "yellow freesia," "red notes." In "Today's News", she states that "blackness is" is a poem she does not want to write, because "we are not one or ten or ten thousand things." The reader stands looking up and around at the montage, a Diego Rivera mural surrounding one with "walls and walls of scenes of work." The "Painting" is effusive, so why not include the Irish? Out of the clashes of culture, the curious, though ignorant, manipulation of a race in "The Venus Hottentot," a "terrible beauty is born." Alexander sees this beauty in all its colors and musical shadings, none of which alone can describe a situation. Shading her vision with Irish green or Monet's blue, she lives true to the words of "Today's News": "Elizabeth,/ this is your life. Get up and look for color,/ look for color everywhere." Perceptive readers would do well to join Alexander in her search; they just might find something unexpected and lovely.

If you're looking for an energetic, political, feminist poet who calls it like it is - you've got to read this book. It is beautifully provocative, and tightly written - very exciting stuff.

There are certainly not enough autobiographies of Native Americans, and few that can compare with Eastman's story and journey to find civilization. As Eastman follows Christianity and the White Man's Civilization, he finds himself realizing the paradox of the two worlds. Upon returning to a more civilized world, he gives a captivating look at how Jesus was an Indian and how different the White world and Native American world was during his life. A perfect self-enlightenment book.

If you have read the writings of Ohiyesa (Charles Alexander Eastman); I HIGHLY recommend this book to you.

It helped me understand the forces that shaped this man.

My favorite areas are

The assorted photos of his father "Many Lightnings", his wife, his son Ohiyesa at the age of 5.

Events that occured while he was attending school in the East, and the bigotry he encountered from "SOME" white people.

Events where he served as a medical doctor on the Pine Ridge reservation, and caring for the survivors of the Wounded Knee masacre in 1890.

Events where he traveled among various indian nations to get items used by indians for museums.

Events where he worked with the Boy Scouts and Campfire Girls.

And much more.

If this book is your introduction to the writings of Ohiyesa; I would recommend that your next purchase would be "The Soul Of The Indian".

Wah doh Ogedoda (We give thanks Great Spirit)

This book covers the main issues of Limnology, and compiles them into an easy to read, well descriptive text. Also includes good diagrams for the more complicated aspects. Suitable for those with a fair knowledge of Biology and Chemistry.

Well done, explanations at times are a little too technical, fun book to read

I enjoyed this textbook. Unlike most texts it was engaging AND informative. The text and diagrams are well integrated and a number of important concepts are covered well. This text could be improved by adding additional color photographs.

To learn of some of the obscure and not-so-obscure baseball history lessons, this is a good read. That's worth 3 stars. The self-gratification and self-indulgence the author does throughout the book left me wondering if he was not just a bit full of himself while he penned about our pasttime. I enjoy some of the facts of baseball included here but would have enjoyed a thinner version without all of the bragadocious ways of the author.

Good book for a baseball fan to learn the history of the game.

Charles Alexander's book Our Game is a straight forward historical account of the national pasttime. In an age where very few people are interested in "pure" history, Alexander has managed to pen an intelligent and informative book that gets to the point quickly and provides the reader with a complete histroy of baseball.

This is the third book I've read by Alexander, which I suppose is evidence that his books are readable.

In the end they all share the same strengths and weaknesses.

For a straightforward narrative of the key points of Hornsby's career and life, this is perfectly OK.

But the book really stays on the surface. For example, there is never any in-depth discussion of techniques of batting or fielding. It's like reading a book on Napoleon without finding anything about the nature of warfare in the period.

Also, there is very little meangingful discussion of Hornsby's relative baseball greatness. Alexander doesn't need to become a zealous SABRmetrician, but some basic statistics about Hornsby and others (beyond saying what the average batting average for the league was in a given year) seems called for. Alexander doesn't even include a table or appendix with Hornsby's basic statistics.

I've given this 3 stars, because for the general reader it's OK. If I were rating it as serious history, I'd give it a 1. You come away from this book unaware that there have been lots of serious books written about baseball and its relation to society. Alexander's attempts to provide historical context are embarassing--on the order of, "The same continued hot, dry weather than made the Great Plains a Dust Bowl was present on Opening Day 1936 [my paraphrase, to be honest]".

In short, there is the same strain of intellectual laziness in this book that I saw in his others.

Alexander captures Hornsby and his times perfectly. While not as readable as the author's previous "Ty Cobb", this is due more to Hornsby's general colorlessness than in Alexander's writing. As enigmatic as Hornsby was, Alexander does a great job in telling the life of the man who hit for the highest average in the 20th century.

Mr. Alexander extensivly researched the life of Rogers Hornsby. This book represents the fruit of his labor. The book can get dry in places while describing Hornsby's on field achievements-letting the feats speak for themselves; just as Hornsby would have wanted it. This is hardly a flaw for those who want to know the truth and not the myth of the best righthanded hitting machine EVER.

While not hated like Ty Cobb, Hornsby certianly had just as few friends. He was cold, short with people, humorless and offensivly blunt. His personality got him traded, fired, divorced and shunned. Alexander doesn't try to add personality where Hornsby didn't have one. He let Hornsby's baseball tunnel vision be the focus. Blunt- just like Hornsby.

After an internal review at the NASM, the Executive Director ordered "Taking Fire" to be removed from the gift shop due to fraudulent claims and highly racist rhetoric. For example, the back cover of the paperback states that Mr. Alexander was the "second highest decorated helicopter pilot of the Vietnam era." That would come as a big surprise to the nine helicopter pilots who were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. If you like lightweight, highly fictionalized accounts of the Vietnam War, then read this book. However, it makes a mockery of the sacrifices made by members of A Troop, 1st Squadron, 9th Cavalry and Company H, 75th Rangers. How do I know? I flew with Alexander throughout his entire tour and I have firsthand knowledge of the missions he describes so poorly and inaccurately. I wish I could give it zero stars but the format doesn't allow it.

very enjoyable... and well written.. only negative was too few pictures of a personal nature, would have liked to see more photos of Ron, his family and his crews. He and Mr. Sasser have a written a book that gives a great flavor of the war... no p.c. revisionist thoughts in this one..

I have read approximately 200 books on the Vietnam war, and I have to say Taking Fire is the best of all. I never realized how dangerous the helicopter pilots jobs were. This is absolutely the most exciting book I have ever read. It is one of those books you can't put down. I have the most respect and admiration for Ron Alexander that I have ever had for anyone else. What a remarkable man. I just wish I knew if he had an e-mail address where I would be able to correspond directly with him. Thank you Ron for publishing such a terrific book.

The book is far too easy for professionals and for university students. The blanks exercises are really stupid. If you are not experienced in mathematics or statistics you will probably like the book because there are no derivations of formules or demonstrations of theorems.

The person I bought this book for found it very useful for his studies and the attached Cd-ROM very useful with its chapter reviews and tests.

Because of the deep grade themes are studied. Basic for student and professionals...

For those who know any web based programming languages, this book is for you. It gives you the scoop on WAP and what makes it tick. It presents the basic syntax of WAP in a fairly easy to understand format (put it this way, if you know HTML you practically know WAP). It also has an awesome section on how to integrate it with what you already know (In particular the Cold Fusion section was awesome! I leave it to those who know ASP, JSP, and XML to judge the other pieces).

In short, don't buy this if you're just starting web development, I would recommend you learn HTML and one server side language (ASP, ColdFusion, etc.). If you do that, then you're ready to learn WAP with this book and build some truly awesome stuff for the ever blooming wireless world!

This is a great book in this topic. If you are a beginning WAP programer and you want to understand: .the WAP's architecture .what means the terms WAP GATEWAYS, WAP SERVER, WML, XML .what the difference between WAP SERVER and WAP GATEWAY .what are the relations between HTML and WML (or XML)

this book was made for you.

Very good!

This is my first book on Plain WAP and I found it very easy to use and to read! - I also bought the XML for Professionals by wrox which gave me a very good WML Background.

The writing style is absolutely excellent and gives clear tips on code optimization and performance. I have read literally dozens of different books on WAP, and none has been so specific. Although this book is not for total beginners, it is, in my opinion, good for anyone who wants to advance their career on the web or become an WML developer. This is definitely a book you will want to read from cover to cover, and use as a reference!