The author, a member of the German segment of the New York Police Department's "establishment" teamed with a Jewish psychiatrist police officer to introduce the concept of organized hostage negotiation into the United States. The principles they taught and practiced are fleshed out in the real case stories that Bolz has collected.

In addition to the cases themselves, the collision between the newer practices, vastly weighted toward saving all lives in the situation, and the older lines of thought, in which prevailing quickly was foremost, offers useful insight into how some police think about the issue.

As well as information, "Hostage Cop" offers a good read for the time invested. Some standoffs are tense and exciting and others offer wonderful absurdities, often the very essence of a successful end to a crisis.

If you like the big roundup and shootout, this book will probably bore you silly. If, however, you like tales of the power of the state calmed, idiocy avoided, and nasty situations brought to benign ends, this one will suit you down to the ground.

Paolo delivers a no-nonsense, concise guide to great presentations. Many, immediately useful tips on the oral (& aural)--oft neglected--, side of presentations. A must for those who get too heavily involved in theatrics or presentation tools (like Powerpoint, handouts, and so on). Down-to-earth advice for nervous types and know-it-alls, too, based on experience with Xerox, Kodak and oter large corporations/Fortune 500s. He illustrates the productive side of a rhetorician's arsenal. Why then, only 4 stars? The book's sloppy layout isn't doing Paolo any favours. Fortunately, his message is loud and clear. A reliable read.

This is a surprisingly useful book. It is a quick read (about an hour or two); the basic format is a question, answer, and illustrative anecdote. I was pleased with the stories presented in the book and picked up a number of pointers. While the book starts out a bit on the obvious side (Q: When should you call a meeting? A: When a meeting is the best way to achieve your objective.), it moves into some though provoking issues such as dealing with interruptions, staggering attendance for optimum use of peoples' time, how to deal with those who want to go into depth on everything, etc. While some of the material on audio/visual material is amusingly out of date, the principles behind them are sound. The corporate world would be better off if everyone read and applied the principles found in this book.

As a former pastor, I read many books on public speaking and preaching. In simple, easy to understand instructions Frank Snell almost makes public speaking easy! This is a marvelous book to read before your first speech (or sermon)

Frank Polite"s _Hyde_ is a complex longpoem in a stanzaic form called panthera -- which he claims is Turkish, but which may be his own tongue-in-cheek invention. Like the cat for which the verse form is named, the poem/story prowls and pounces through many countries as it hunts down Hyde, the assassin/bodyguard hero, and MiLady, the gorgeous heroine. Villains, Malador (get it?) and Fatoush are repeatedly foiled by quick-witted Hyde.

Like Polite's previous work, this is a lot of fun. It tricks and traps like a panther, and Hydes many clever word plays in its narrative.

This is one of my daughter's favorites and mine too. Bubbly Katie turns shy and forlorn when Jessica Jean takes over the usual Saturday routine in the apartment building. But when Jessica Jean reveals a secret, she and Katie become friends and learn to share the Saturday routines. Charming. Nicely done. Find it at the library!

This is a slim introductory book but not just another liturgy and art book. The author takes exception with including visual art as "liturgical environment" arguing that the visual language should be part of the liturgy.

An example of the direction his thoughts take us: the events in the life of Christ are appropriate for depictions on the church walls as they are integral to the liturgy; the stations of the cross are appropriate only in the season of Lent. This brings us back to the eastern rite iconastasis for the narrative material of the art, although he does not specifically make this connection.

A second example: he makes an interesting distinction between three dimensional depictions of saints which leave them in this world and hence are devotional vs. icons which depict them glorified and hence can be liturgical.

This is a thought provoking and practical book that should be read before any building or renovation of a church.

This is an extremely brief overview of the term "ideology." But in these few pages, David McLellan manages to trace the concept as it was interpreted by many different people and schools of thought from Marx and Marxists to structuralists and postmodernists. Usually, "ideology" is a word used very liberally without much thought given to its meaning, but McLellan shows us the political meanings and intricate history that lie behind it.

This short but fascinating book looks at eugenic programs in China, both past and present. China, with its one-child policy is in the perfect position to start a genetic war with other nations to breed a superior race. That is, the state has already taken control of all reproductive rights, and with the recent eugenics laws past in 1995 for the collective improvement of the quality of the 'yellow race', they could be destined to surpass other nations in the quality of their people --- that is the average intelligence in China will surpass all other races except the Jewish race (with and average IQ of 117 due to their own form of eugenics practiced over the last 2000 years as part of the Jewish religion).

Few voices in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) question eugenic practices. Historically they have always understood the need for racial hygiene, and more so than in the West they shun deformations or inferior offspring. And with a centralized government, with its support of its eugenic programs, the few voices who believe in the sanctity of life over the betterment of the race can be suppressed, not unlike the reverse in the United States where concerns for dysgenic trends by the underclass are ignored or suppressed. In the United States, we propagandize and redistribute wealth to the underclass under the pseudoscientific claims of radical environmentalism as promoted by Gould et al. and now proclaimed by President Clinton. "Anyone can rise to be anything they want to be with enough will and determination!" Bunk! Nations rise and fall on their genetic quality, typically their average intelligence.

The Chinese firmly believe that there will be biological competition between the 'white race' and the 'yellow race' and they are moving forward to win. They want to develop the 'model race' and in fact are in a unique position to win. They already control reproduction; all they have to do is continue to suppress the births of low intelligent/genetically defective couples while encouraging multiple births by 'gifted couples.' They can discourage some marriages, use forced sterilizations, while providing incentives to others. They have complete freedom to promote and national eugenics program without criticism from the press or independent voices if they so choose.

Even minor defects like harelip are aborted. In a country with poor medical care, the costs to correct the condition are greater than the worth of the child. It is more cost effective to just have another child. Euthanasia and infanticide are openly discussed condoned from strong voices in the government for the benefit of the nation. The health of the race supercedes any moral questions with regards to 'zero worth' individuals.

This book goes a long way in showing that eugenics as viewed in the West is radically different than in Asia. With a more collectivist perspective, individuals are willing to make sacrifices now for the benefit of the nation later -- that is an investment in the genetic capital of the people. We are getting a peak at the future eugenic wars that will be an integral part of competition between nations in the decades to come. Will the West join third world status as Asian nations actively embrace eugenic programs?

Improper Bostonians bravely leaps to conjectures which gaydar identifies as gay personalities, missing no few of course in a small work. One miss, however, is Boston's International Homophilics Institute and its enormous Encyclopedia Homophilica -- now coming out at South Bank University in London, neither of which the authors bothered to consult (and missed much for that reason). One can only surmise that this was intentional and because IHI is Essentialist rather than Effeminist and would have offended the postmodernist sensibilities of the compilers (as well as the politician). The attempt to force present-day 'genderality' upon the 17th and 18th centuries is hopelessly acontextual. Multicultural postgenderists can't toss 20th-C bodies into a 17th-C spider and expect to get the same chowder, obviously; but resultantly, we get a stew, a Mitteleuropaisch adaptation of Novanglian culture that tastes startingly foreign -- and all the more interesting to Yankees for that I'm sure. Notwithstanding, there are few errors and many sure-footed aurexical leaps which will leave the reader breathless. The compilers have done a remarkable job salvaging homophilica which homophobes should never have attempted to suppress. Sooner or later, all homophobes get caught out with their lies -- and in this Improper Bostonians is a triumph.