I rate it as "mostly" accurate because of little things like the Eagles playing the Phoenix Patriots. (I read the first edition, maybe that error was fixed in a later edition.)

Dr. John Pemberton, an Atlanta druggist and doctor - he held two degrees and had created a master reference work containing over 12,000 tests - was anxious to create a drink that would be healthful and profitable. He was not immune to the vast literature hailing cocaine as a wonder drug. "The use of the coca plant not only preserves the health of all who use it, but prolongs life to a very great old age and enables the coca eaters to perform prodigies of mental and physical labor," he wrote in 1885. It was a time when patent medicines and elixirs were all the rage. Soda fountains would often offer as many as 300 different combinations of drinks. Advertisers tried to influence consumers to purchase one in favor of others, and huge signs were erected along railroads and roads to get the traveler's attention. It was not unusual for a patent medicine "advertiser of the era to clear-cut an entire mountainside to that he could erect a mammoth sign for Helmholdt's Buchu." A contemporary traveler described, "enormous signs are erected in the fields, not a rock is left without disfigurement, and gigantic words glare at as great a distance as the eye is able to read them."

Pemberton's first product was French Wine Coca. It was loaded with cocaine, an extract of the kola nut (very high in caffeine) and damiana, the leaf of a plant with supposed aphrodisiacal powers. The concoction was advertised as a cure for virtually everything from nerve trouble and dyspepsia to impotence and morphine addiction.

Opiate addiction was a huge problem after the Civil War. Known as the "Army Disease" because so many veterans were addicted. Pemberton himself was an addict trying to break the habit. He was convinced that cocaine was the best treatment for morphine addiction.

In the meantime, by 1886, temperance was becoming a movement in the Atlanta area, so Pemberton began experimenting with a new beverage that excluded the wine. By adding citric acid, he eliminated some of the sugary sweet taste and eliminated the damiana but kept the coca and kola, hence the alliterative choice that his colleague Robinson came up with: Coca-Cola. They advertised it both for its medicinal benefits and as a new soda fountain drink. One ad read, "The new and popular soda fountain drink containing the properties of the wonderful coca plant and the famous cola nut." As it gained in popularity, the business convolutions kept pace, with Pemberton selling his rights to the business several times over. It was soon a mess.

Asa Candler finally wound up with ownership of the trademark. He remained committed to quality and insisted that his distributors (a rather unique arrangement for the time) not tinker with the syrup recipe, although some of them did, one adding saccharine in an attempt to preserve the drink -- it was also an ironic attempt to make the drink as sweet as possible. Candler never thought bottling the drink would amount to much, so he virtually gave away the bottling rights, a prognosticatory failure that was to cost the company millions in later years to purchase them back. He and Frank Robinson (the real marketing genius, who invented the script logo for the drink) soon were collecting huge amounts of money as Coke took off.

By 1900, Coca-Cola had become so popular it became a target for those who were terribly afraid someone might be out there enjoying themselves, i.e., the self-righteous, and soon pulpits all over attacked the nefarious qualities of the drink that was addicting children, of all people. It had also become a popular drink among the black population, and soon the KKK was suggesting that the black population was drinking Coca-Cola, becoming "drug fiends" and roaming the countryside in search of white women to ravish. Some white farm owners had indeed paid their sharecroppers, mostly black, with cocaine, since it was cheaper than alcohol, and cocaine addiction had become a serious problem. Ironically, Candler had already removed the minute traces of cocaine that had been in the formula. (The purity of the formula was somewhat of a joke, as several of the bottlers had added saccharin to make it sweeter, but also as a preservative.) The company by 1902 was promoting Coca-Cola as a healthful drink and the official Coke line is that the drink never contained cocaine, a typical PR prevarication, and not a particularly astute one since earlier company brochures had bragged about the healthful benefits of cocaine. In any case, the do-gooders, who wanted Coke declared an adulterated product because it contained caffeine managed to enlist the mighty forces of the FDA. Many expensive years later the suit finally died although Coke did reduce the amount of caffeine in the formula. They spent massive amounts of money on advertising, plastering the Coke logos on the sides of barns and giving out millions of items with the Coke logo. It was widely successful and soon Coke was the most popular drink around.

Pendergrast's section on the infamous New Coke marketing disaster - or was it really an enormous accidental success - is fascinating. The outrage was enormous, but the publicity that resulted showed tremendous loyalty to a drink. Odd hype occurred almost everywhere. A study at Harvard Medical School compared the douche properties of the old Coke to those of the new, and found that the old Coke killed five times as many sperm as the new Coke. That's weird. The company completely failed to recognize that Coca-Cola had become an American institution, an icon. "They talk as if Coca-Cola had just killed God," moaned one executive. Coca-Cola had come to symbolize America; it was "associated with almost every aspect of their lives - first dates, moments of victory and defeat, joyous group celebrations, pensive solitude."

Businesss journalist Mark Pedergast writes an objective account of Coca-Cola's history from its inception to mass production to symbol of American purity, with the attitude of de-mythologising some of the stories the company has sold to the public. I found the writing not only to be clear and concise, but remarkably well told considering all of the footnotes, appendices, and citations that Mr. Pendergast has accumulated to tell his tale. While the myths that Coca-Cola was developed by some poor root doctor in some chemical accident and that Coke never had cocaine in it are dispelled not to illuminate the company as a sham or to be looked down upon, but with integrity for the achievments of the company, yet, at the same time, not ignoring Coke's influence on American way of life and the individual psyche (making for it, in actuality, a better history than Coke dreamed of). Certainly, the myths that the company purports seem to be as nice as Haddon Sundblom's Santa Clause paintings where, everyday is Christmas, America is pure, and stories are taken out of history and placed in a Neverland of happy endings. Mr. Pendergast does a wonderful job of placing Coca-Cola back into American history writing how a company, such as Coca-Cola, did not arise to power by accident or love by the American people, but by greed, shrewd marketing, and religious fervor for their product.

Unless one is not interested in knowing about such histories as this, or any other commercial empire, then there is no doubt one will enjoy this book thoroughly. One point I will make on this book is its title. This edition being the second titled, "For God, Country and Coca-Cola: Second Edition: Revised and Expanded: The Definitive History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company That Makes It." For those that are fortunate enough to buy the first edition, one will speculate and wonder about the radical and decisive change in the title. The original title reads: "For God, Country and Coca-Cola: The Unauthorized History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company That Makes It." Moving from "Unauthorized" to "Definitive" made me wonder why Coke changed their attitude about their own myths to the historically accurate. Perhaps this book makes that reality hard to argue.

Pick up this book if you are looking to add to your reference collection however, due to the nature of the articles and due to the price, you might find yourself heading to the library to pick up this book. In the end, a solid addition to a programming library.

Note:
I am an amateur game programmer, not a professional
In addition, many of the articles are not relevant only to games.

Like the first volume, Game Programming Gems 2 features an exceptional collection of articles written by a knowledgeable group of authors, most of whom are well-known and respected in the area they write about. This series (the third volume is already underway, as are related books focusing on AI and design) isn't intended to be a complete guide to all aspects of game development, but rather, a resource you turn to when you need help with a specific problem. As such, the series truly shines, and this volume is a worthy follow up to the first.

The articles, or gems, included in the book cover intermediate to advanced topics in the areas of general programming, mathematics, artificial intelligence, geometry management, graphics display, and audio programming, each edited by an expert in the field. Most of the gems assume that you have a fundamental knowledge of the issues related to the topic, and get to the point quickly. As a result, on average the gems are shorter than the previous volume. Both of these things could be viewed as either positives or negatives, depending on your experience level. Regardless, almost all of the gems are well written and relevant.

Most game programming books these days come with CDs packed full of demos, source code, and other information supplementing the book. Unfortunately, the CD that comes with this book isn't one of those. It does have source code from most of the chapters, but there are very few demos and no extras (unless you count GLUT and the DX8 SDK, which I don't since you can easily get those elsewhere). However, I'd count the CD as only a minor disappointment, since the book itself is so good.

If you're serious about game development, I'd highly recommend adding Gems 2 to your library. You'll definitely find things in it that you can use.

Tessler, an American professor, writes in a straight-forward style that is easily understandable. Although the sheer volume of history covered in the book was considerable, I never found myself bored by the writing. I wish my high school history books were written so well.

Like a good academian (in the very best sense of the term), he presents the facts clearly. For each historical event, he cites several credible sources stating the event, and for retrospective analysis of its importance, he cites opinions from multiple sides. The build-up to the 1967 war, for example, consumes 20 pages and 50 citations. His use of references is so thorough that of the book's 900+ pages, 93 pages are endnotes.

I only have a few minor negative remarks about this book:

1. Obviously, since the book was published in 1994, it is not up to date and does not cover the break-down of the negotiations from the Oslo accords. However, historical facts prior to 1993 have not changed (at least not in the Orwellian sense, thank goodness), and this book does an outstanding job for its time frame as I have said.

2. There are no photos at all, save for the picture on the cover.

3. For a topic so centered on geography, the quality of the maps is surprisingly poor. There are 20 maps showing the important boundaries and such, but these look like they were drawn by a high school art student. A single high-detail, atlas-quality map from 1994 would have been appropriate as well. Instead, I found some colour maps on the web that I printed out and keep folded in the book to use as a quick reference.

A much more recent book that I also highly recommend that covers these three points (recentness, photos, and maps) is _The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Crisis in the Middle East_ by Reuters journalists. That book is filled with beautiful photography, nice maps, and is up-to-date to March 2002. It makes a great companion to this book.

Overall, this book by Tessler is outstanding. Although its size may be a bit daunting, you will thank yourself for reading this book.

As a graduate student, what I find useful about this book is that after you study a particular disorder---from the DSM-IV-TR itself, a good psychopathology text (see Davison & Neal's Abnormal Psychology), and the DSM's Diagnostic Criteria handbook, The Adult Psychotherapy Treatment Planner completes the loop.

I bought this book after taking a case studies class where the instructor did an absolutely miserable job in showing us the rhyme and reason behind a good treatment plan. Not satisfied that I knew enough about this critically important piece in the counseling process, I did some research and found this book to be the most highly regarded in this genre.

As subsequent classes deal with child and adolescent psychopathology, family psychopathology, etc. etc. I will be getting the treatment plans that correspond with these issues.

The stories in Ellis Island and Other Stories offer the same enticing overdose of goodness but in smaller doses. Lest you be thrown off by the cover or the title, these stories are definitely not history or even historical fiction. They are not exclusively about immigrants, Europe or the War, although threads of these subjects do run through them.

The title story, Ellis Island is the longest and the last. It is about the Ellis Island and immigration, of course, but it is also fantastic fantasy complete with a wonderful machine that melts the snow from the streets supported only by its own jets of fire, the Saromsker Rabbi and his glorious sermon on bees, the lovely Hava, and Elise, whose hair is nothing less than a pillar of fire. Of the eleven stories, Ellis Island comes closest to Winter's Tale in its spirit of fantasy, although A Vermont Winter best describes the perfection of a deep Northeastern snow. As in Winter's Tale, in Ellis Island, Helprin is not averse to destroying beautiful things for the sake of a larger good, even if the logic of his narrative does not demand that he do so. But that, you see, is Helprin; for him death is just another part of art.

All of these stories are brilliant and all of them are beautiful. In The Schreuderspitze, a photographer deals with tragedy in the luminous beauty of the Alps; in Letters from the Samantha, questions of humanity and guilt are dealt with on an iron-hulled sailing ship in 1879; in Martin Bayer, we get to know a small boy on the eve of war; in North Light and A Room of Frail Dancers, we glimpse the devastating effects of battle on soldiers. La Volpaia is wonderful, wise and witty and Tamar is nothing if not lovely in the extreme. White Gardens and Palais de Justice defy any sort of description; you simply must read them and then savor them yourself.

Anyone who has read any of Helprin's other works knows he certainly has a way with words. Here are words from the end of Tamar that not only describe the story's beautiful seventeen year old protagonist, but serve to sum up this volume as a whole: Perhaps things are most beautiful when they are not quite real; when you look upon a scene as an outsider; and come to possess it in its entirety and forever; when you live in the present with the lucidity and feeling of memory; when for want of connection, the world deepens and becomes art.

These stories are nothing if they are not art.

Marlowe's plays, while not on the same level as Shakespeare's best, are far and away superior to any other Renaisance era dramatist (See also, Thomas Kyd, Ben Johnson, or Richard Wharfinger--if you can find him hehe.)

The best thing about Marlowe's plays is the level of respect for the audience. Judgement of the characters is (for the most part) left to the reader. Tamburlaine can be viewed as hero and/or villian.

And, it being Renaisance drama, there are some spectacular death scenes--Edward II's anal cruxifiction, Brabas's boiling alive, Faustus's dismemberment, and the Admiral's hanging/shooting to name a few.

One complaint, and this is really more of a preference, but the textual notes are in endnote format, rather than footnote format, and they're not numbered notes--all of which makes finding latin translations a little more time consuming.
But, for fans of the genre, this is the way to go.

The other plays present no major textual problems (except for The Massacre at Paris, which is pretty hopeless) and this is a fine place to meet them.

The first three chapters say the same thing over and over again but with different word patterns. The gist is we¹re under attack and you better get ready for it. When your computers go down, so will your business. True, but that could be covered with one paragraph, and perhaps a couple war stories.

Ernst and Young's experts Mark W. Doll, Saiay Rai and Jose Granado propose that we can achieve homeland security with their 3 R¹s of the Security Agenda: Restrict, Run and Recover(SM). While it certainly is not that simple in practice, I really like the catchy slogan, it is perfect for communicating with senior executives.

The writing style is a bit dry, the repetition and lack of depth hurt the work, but the topic is very important. It does a great job of convincing a CEO class executive that they need a well founded security program. It just doesn't help them get it started. I want to be very specific with my concerns since I am scoring the book lower that the other (mostly anonymous) reviewers. I am a senior manager, the target audience for the book. People ask me for decisions or try to sell me on their product or solution all the time. It isn't that they tell me lies, they just do not give me all the information I need to make an informed decision. After a while you learn to be very careful about making decisions without all the facts. This work needs more case studies, more specific, proven examples. It also needs more takeaways, information I can use. Granted it is very unfair to ask E&Y to give away intellectual capital that took them a lot of sweat and blood to create, but at least give the reader enough information to assess our condition and understand what the next steps are.

I encourage Ernst and Young to do a second edition with some "show me the beef" hardnosed technical reviewers and produce a great book.

"Defending the Digital Frontier: A Security Agenda" is the first book i've read, and I've read plenty, that is written so the right people can understand it. The "techies" already understand this stuff, but the people who make the decisions (e.g. how much budget those techies get to keep your netwrok secure), like the CEO and CFO, have never had it portrayed as a priority, like Mark Doll has been able to do in this book.

I usually don't review books, but with all of the recent news about networks being compromised, like the 8 million credit cards stollen this past week, I felt it was my responsibility to make sure I said my piece.

Buy it, read it, and use it, for yourself and for your customers.

I liked the book so well, I have bought this publisher's books for JavaScript and Flash. I'm hoping they will be as easy to go through and I'll be developing training systems on the web in no time!