This is by far the best book I have ever read about David Duchovny, and Shakespeare aside, my favorite book EVER! I truly view it in the biblical sense. It is indispensible! I carry it with me practically everywhere, and am constantly flipping through my dog-eared pages for quick reference into something. There is a funny internet section, instructions for the X-Files drinking game, a complete David Duchovny filmography, several candid interviews, an exceptionally well-written biography, color photos, a fabulous episode synopsis, lots of gossip about David's personal life (written in a polite, non-voyeuristic fashion), Mulderisms/Scullyisms, etc. I could go on and on! David Duchovny is so interesting and poetic, and Paul mitchell does an excellent job with this book. A difinative masterpiece!

Hey, it's about David Duchovny, what more do you need? If you are a Duchovny fan like myself, this is a definite must for your collection. It tells his whole life story: from wanting to be a bathtub to his career in the X-Files and beyond. Although from a couple of years ago, you still get a feel of Duchovny's personality and the way he is on and off camera. A extraordiarly brilliant man, Duchovny shares the ups and downs of his life as told by Paul Mitchell. I hope more biographies on Duchovny will be available in the near future, but until then, read the Duchovny Files!

I liked this book very, very much. It leads you through David's whole entire life, not leaving out a detail, in my opinion. It's a wonderful source of information, and even has a place for interviews and comic strips. It gives you a list of all the summaries of The X-Files episodes in the first three seasons, which is very, very cool. It also tells you the plot of every sigle movie David has been in. If you want to know more about David Duchovny; actually getting to KNOW him better, I highly suggest that you buy and read this book. It has some really nice pictures in it, too.

The most subversive thing that Famous Builder does is to retell family history from a queer perspective. Thus, the young narrator's painstaking journey toward an adult queer life is implicitly compared and connected to the father's movement up the social ladder. From Paul Lisicky's point of view, both are quintessentially American acts. How refreshing to read a book in which gay identity is not THE subject of the story but one of its narratives. Every reader will find an aspect of her story mirrored here, regardless of her background. I've come back to it again and again, always with something new to ponder.

Lisicky's Famous Builder is one book that can be judged by its cover which is beautiful, precise, subtle,and nuanced. Hemingway noted that "writing is architecture, not interior decoration," and in this startling collection of essays and memoirettes that trace Lisicky's emotional development while they simultaneously recreate, re-invent and reevaluate the South Jersey towns he loved and moved away from, Lisicky builds a lasting work of art. Sentence for sentence there is nothing frivolous or expendable in Famous Builder. Its emotional range is astonishing. A must read for anyone who has looked closely (or longs to look closely) at the worlds around and inside him. One of the more cohesive, unusual and engaging collections of essays to come along in recent years. It deserves serious attention. Lisicky is a fresh and innovative architect of the form.

I love this book. Paul Lisicky's exploration of his youthful obsessions is sometimes hilarious, sometimes poignant, sometimes both at the same time. It's as animated as anything I've read in years. If you're at all interested in innovations in creative nonfiction, this book is for you. Every sentence sparkles on the page. It deserves to be sung.

This book is a "You Were There" looking over the shoulder of one man through his career in Naval Aviation. It is a continuously interesting experience from his first flight to his last sea tour.

He not only conveys the excitement of the flying, but paints the details of the background of aircraft carrier operations in a simple and easy to understand style along the way. Because he was flying off of carriers during the critical period of transition to jet aircraft he provides a good feeling for what the problems were and how they were solved. Anyone who wants to understand how the Navy flies jets on the high seas should read this book.

Despite the wealth of information I don't want to make this book sound like a dry technical manual. It is still predominantly one of the best told tales of true life flying adventure.

This book is an absolute must have for any naval aviation buff. If you want to feel your heart racing as you are in the cockpit with the author when he is making that first qualification landing aboard a teak deck...... YOU'VE GOT TO READ THIS BOOK! A 10+ !!!!

If u like anything with flying, naval flying, this book is the best. it has all of his expereiences and makes u feel like u are really there. i would recomend this book for anybody but if u would like to become a naval aviator like me, then this book is especially for you!!! The best book i have ever read Admiral Gillcrist. thank you especially for writting about your career! i plan on reading the other books by you. i rate this a 10 on a scale of 1-5

If you're going to work in the area of Cryptography, you can't afford
to neglect this book.

We used this in a course, and even though it's a handbook, it doubles up
pretty well as a textbook, since it has all the underlying mathematical
theory, presented in a clear and concise manner.

For sheer breadth and depth of coverage, this book is unmatched in the
field. It may not have enough on some topics to satisfy everyone, but
then i suspect most such topics were not so prominent in 1996, which
is when the book was written.

Starting with number theory, it goes on cover pseudorandom bits and
sequences, stream and block ciphers, hash functions, and digital signatures,
establishment protocols, implementation, patents and standards - you name
it, you got it.

On the one hand, there's enough theory to make you wonder whether it
should be called 'applied', but then it indeed qualifies as implementations
are discussed as well.

And of course, there's an exhaustive bibliography, with more pointers to
the literature than one could possibly follow up.

One word of caution, though : it requires hard work. If you want a more
'relaxed' coverage of comparable breadth (but not depth), you can do
worse than look up Bruce Schneier's 'Applied Crypography', which is a
delightful read, but nowhere as rigorous (read academic) as this one.

All in all, this is an indispensable reference for those in the field -
rigorous and exhaustive, yet eminently readable.

If you still haven't made your mind up, here's one final piece of advice :
visit the authors'(rather the book's) website, where you'll get the
implementations of all the algorithms in the book, and a (presumably)
pleasant surprise :-)

A thorough coverage of topics in cryptography is only one of many features which make this book invaluable to computer scientists. While not intended to be a textbook, this handbook includes enough background information to be of use to those with minimal theoretical computer science knowledge. The chapter organization is logical and very modular so that after reading the introductory chapters, one can skip ahead to the chapters of interest with little difficulty.
The second chapter provides a concise review of probability theory, information theory, complexity theory, and number theory. This chapter would be helpful to anyone in computer science who already has some discrete math background. For readers with no discrete math background I would recommend first reading "Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications" by Kenneth Rosen, the editor of the series this book belongs to.
The coverage of number-theoretic problems in chapter 3 is very easy to follow and provides a handy reference to the average case performance of the best known algorithms for each.
The next few chapters are very math-intensive and outline the most common encryption algorithms and standards with examples. The chapter on block ciphers includes a section on classical ciphers and cryptanalysis which, as a sidenote, might be of interest to students of linguistics.
The later chapters present protocols for authentication, digital signing, and key management which build on the algorithms of the previous chapters, but can be understood independently.
One of the final chapters presents methods of effecient computation which again would be useful to anyone in computer science, not just those who are interested in cryptography.
Overall, the development of the topics in the book is complete (although by no means rigorous) and concise, including examples only where necessary. I highly recommend this book to students who want to learn more about cryptography, anyone whose job requires some knowledge of standards for authentication, digital signing, etc., such as internet security, and any computer scientist who has an academic interest in algorithms and their applications.

I have read a few book on cryptography and this is by far the best book I have read. If you have never taken a course on discrete math this book does a great job at explaining some of the topics. If you think you may need a book to help with the discrete math I would also recomend "Concrete Mathematics : A Foundation for Computer Science" by Ronald Graham and others.
"Handbook of Applied Cryptography" takes you from basic number function to public key encryptions, I highly recomend it!

The subtitle, "A Documentary Novel," is accurate. The author's novel (pun intended) approach to writing this book was to use only historical personages, and to take no literary license. Fiction there is, but no historical fact is contradicted, and the fill-in fictionalizing is done on the most probabalistic lines. This genre of work is just a few degrees removed from that of Edmund Morris' "Dutch," the Reagan bio into which the author inserted himself as a ficticious person. The detailed notes appended to the story validate the scope and many of the details of the plot. The minute research and command of all surviving historical works from the period, down to unpublished inscriptions found on ruins across the breadth of the Roman Empire, mark the author as among the most deeply versed Classicists alive. As literature, the book's readable and fast-paced plot does not rise to the level of "Quo Vadis?" or "Ben Hur," but easily compares with "The Robe." A stimulating and enjoyable read - all the more facinating because all of the named characters are authentically historical. -Lloyd A. Conway

That start of the church is fascinating time, and Maier is adapt at capturing this by adducing from history (which he is a prominent scholar of) and then placing this history in excellent prose, story form.

The spread of Christianity to Rome and the troubles Nero is having with the ghettos provide the backdrop here for Luke's writing to Theopholis (Acts 1, Luke 1).

The spread of the church via the diaspora was central to its launch outside the Middle East, via the Greek language and commerce on an ever growing world.

From the author of A Skeleton In God's Closet. Outstanding historical fiction, telling the story of Nero's rise to power as emperor of Rome, why he "went bad," and climaxing in the infamous burning of Rome that was blamed on the Christians. This book takes a plethora of historical research, uses that as its foundation, and fills in the blanks with some fine speculation and character enhancement by Maier. It makes history come alive, with vivid brush strokes. This is a definate hidden gem, and one that anyone interested in this era will want to search out.

More than I ever wanted to know about DNS! I purchased this book in preparation for Win2K Active Directory and DDNS- anyone planning a companies name space needs to have a thorough understanding of DNS. In the absence of a Win2K DDNS guide book I read DNS on Windows NT and it was worth the time. Chapter 4 is all you need to setup a NT 4.0 DNS server, but the book goes way beyond the basics. It thoroughly covers subdomains, advanced features, troubleshooting and nslookup. Also, if you never really understood the in-addr.arpa domain, you will after this book. With the knowledge gained from this book, I know I am better prepared for DDNS and Active Directory.

Altough the first chapter started off extremely chaotic in writing style and comprehension, the authors settled down in the technology discussion. The authors also did a good job with examples and went through a step by step process you could not screw up. Is it DNS and Bind? No. NT DNS isn't as difficult a subject as Bind is. This book is an easy read and makes for a painless implementation of DNS, except for the Internic side of things.

Being somewhat new to running a DNS server on the Win/NT platform, I thought a new book would be helpful. I found this book to be very useful and a 'must have' for anyone wanting to run a DNS server on an Windows NT 4.0 Server. The book is kind of broke into 3 sections; Chapters 1 - 2 talks about DNS theory, Chapters 3 - 10 how to set-up and maintain your own domain, Chapters 11 - 13 common problems and troubleshooting. I will keep this book forever like all of my O'Reilly books, and use it as a reference tool. Probably the best documentation you can find on Win/NT and DNS, and why not use it, its free and comes with Win/NT 4.0....

So, I liked the book; I could relate to the characters, just because they seemed so real and not fake. Paul Zindel I believe Is an author with true talent, and links real life into his books, to make his characters come alive. The title alone got me interested in it. it took me an hour and a half to read it because it was so intreging I couldn't take my eyes off of it. I It really upset me when their mom killed their rabbit though. So it's filled with laughter and tears, murder (the rabbit), and lieing. Truley a surreal book.

The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-moon Marigolds, is just as interesting as its title is if not more. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for drama, this book illustrates the story of Tillie, a young girl who escapes through science the bitterness of her surroundings - her featherheaded, thanatophobic sister Ruth, the unstable mother Beatrice who doesn't seem to find any meaning in life. The author, Paul Zindel, takes you through a short play of laughs and tears as you realize that beautiful marigolds can bloom from compost heaps such as Tillie's home... and the story behind the compost heap.

"Atom... ATOM... what a beautiful word." - Tillie, "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds" by Paul Zindel.

So, I liked the book; I could relate to the characters, just because they seemed so real and not fake. Paul Zindel I believe Is an author with natural talent, and links real life into his books, to make his characters pop alive. The title alone got me interested in it. it took me an hour and a half to read it because it was so intreging I couldn't take my eyes off of it. I It really upset me when their mom killed their rabbit though. So it's filled with laughter and tears, murder (the rabbit), and lieing. Truley a surreal book.

I came across this book on the Internet one night when I was hurting and crying and didn't know what else to do. I believe it changed my life because up until now no one could tell me how to stop hurting. Everyone diagnosed with fibromyalgia should read this only if to understand yourself.

When I first started to read this book, I felt like it was me they were describing in many of the chapters. It gives many of the common diagnostic & treatment methods as well as some alternatives to try. The section on lifestyle modification was the most helpful for me. There is also an excellent section for younger patients.

This book gives coverage to all aspects of FMS. There are sections on finding the right doctor, suggestions for helping sleep, reducing brain fog, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Irritable Bladder Syndrome, how to make your diet help you, and many more. Every person who has been fortunate enough to be diagnosed with FMS, and every person who thinks s/he has FMS needs to have this book on the bookshelf at home.

Having read several books on apologetics myself, I found Little's book quite good. His presentation is easy to follow and the beginner will find it very manageable. It is a short book that new Christians or Christians approaching apologetics (the rational defence of Christianity) for the first time, will find useful.

Little's methodology is good as well. His dispels presuppositions that a priori prevent one from even considering Christianity. Little also has some ability to come up with memorable epigrams (though he is not as good at this as G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis are, in my opinion).

Little covers the following questions: Is Christianity Rational? Is There a God? Is Christ God? Did Christ Rise from the Dead? Is the Bible God's Word? Are the Bible Documents Reliable? Does Archaeology Verify Scripture? Are Miracles Possible? Do Science & Scripture Agree? Why Does God Allow Suffering & Evil? Does Christianity Differ from Other World Religions?

Is Christian Experience Valid?

In a book that is only 171 pages in length (excluding study questions), Little covers each topic quite quickly. Thankfully, he includes a "For Further Reading," section at the end of every chapter. Little's section on Science & Scripture was good as well (as one might expect, he covers the issue of origins). Little is careful to define terms (i.e. micro-evolution vs. macro-evolution) and I think he wisely notes that science is constantly changing (whereas the Bible is static), so one must be cautious not to absolutely weld contemporary scientific theories to the Bible.

The section on Christianity and other religions was mediocre. However, most Christian apologetic materials that read have suffered from the same problem. The standard approaches usually starts with a few thoughts on the nature of truth (especially the logical law of non-contradiction), then assert and prove the deity of Christ and then assume all other religions fall. While I see that this approach definitely works, I think it would helpful to interact with other religions and analyze them at a deep level. Anyway, I am demanding too much from a popular level book here. Little discussed (in 3-5 paragraphs each!) Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam and pointed some of their beliefs and the difficulties associated with them.

The nature of Christian experience is not a philosophical issue in the same way that the issue of miracles are, so the question must be approached differently. Little's explanation that Christian experience is based on historical facts (the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ) provides the context for understanding Christian experience.

Little ends with a challenge to personally commit oneself to Christianity.

The extensive study questions (about 10 per chapter) at the end of the book may be useful if one wanted to use the book as a study tool for a Bible Study group or something similar.

I would recommend this book as an introduction to the defence of Christianity or as a short review for old hands. However, the experienced reader may want deeper works to digest. Two good books for more advanced study: Reasonable Faith by William Lane Craig and Scaling the Secular City by J.P. Moreland.

For the Christian who is scared of "apologetics" because he thinks it means he has to "apologize," here's a book that doesn't get too technical but has plenty of good information about the defense of the faith. So often Christians don't have adequate answers to give to those who ask of them, as 1 Peter 3:15-16 commands, and so a book like this that is so readable and understandable can provide some ammunition the next time the skeptic questions the faith. Included at the end of each chapter are questions that can be used in a group or individual study.

I enjoyed Little's book. It contains great information in an easy-to-read style. Although a bit old, it has relevant information for the believer and the sceptic alike. I particularly enjoyed the chapter dealing with the resurrection. The worst chapter was the one dealing with science. In this chapter, Little doesn't really offer any information as to what the Christian should believe, but rather he only lists the various views of the day. I believe that Little didn't want to scare off the audience by offering only one view of how science and scripture relate, but the end result is a bit weak in my opinion.

However, I think this book deserves five stars for some excellent chapters dealing with the Christian faith. I'm glad I had the opportunity to read it.

Since "Class" and "The Dumbing of America" are the only two of Fussell's books I've ever read, I was expecting more cranky musings of the "Catch-22" variety. This book both delighted and surprised me. It takes to task the revisionist history that American soldiers in WWII were intrinsically noble and motivated only by ideals. While this is a comforting notion, it is also an unlikely one. It may cause discomfort that Fussell refuses to deify the American vet of the second world war, since the "goodness" of that conflict is an idea embraced by our culture. The fact that incompetence and cowardice were also part of the story may not be palatable, but I'm impressed by the author's honesty in presenting his own experience. To those who take exception to some of the "facts" in this book, it is important to point out that this is a memoir not a history. In whatever way the author chooses to remember "his" war is entirely legitimate.

My only objection to "Doing Battle" is that it seemed to be two books. I would have preferred that it end with his release from the army. While the last chapters were engaging, they were to me somewhat gratuitous. The author's adventures in academia could be a book in itself.

I read it in one sitting and was sad to finish it.

Other reviewers here seem to be approaching this book from the perspective of WW II experiences, or from reading Fussell's war books. I chose to read this book because I had already read two of his other extremely entertaining and thought-provoking books, "Class" and "Bad". This book is never boring. It took me awhile to read it, because every few pages I would have to stop and think about things he had said. One can always depend on Fussell for honesty and frank discussion. I am happily making my way through all his books, and look forward to reading "Uniforms" next. His discussion of the hot summer spent in training near Gainesville, Texas, was especially interesting to me since I grew up in a town 30 miles east of Gainesville. This book is worth reading.

Fussell's work is searingly honest and forthright. He treats war as the unrelieved hell it is, not from the position of those who favor war, or those who are opposed to it, but from those who are on the ground doing the fighting and the dying.And more than this, his book also addresses the corrosive influences of money, advertising, and authoritarianism that has replaced critical thought and learning in this country. We have become the Faustian culture that we were warned about half a century ago---the culture that replaces all its values of honesty, integrity, achievement, learning, for material gain that eats away at the foundations of culture. And yet we will survive; for like the lonely priests who in the year 1100 kept the ancient world alive in remote places like Ireland and Spain, thinkers and writers like Fussell are preserving culture and ideals against the onslaught of modern day Visigoths who have decamped in the courtyard. A singular achievement that is moving and provocative. Only ninnies at the Kirkus Review would be bothered by such blatant honesty.