This, the Restored and Annotated version of 20,000 leagues, is a VAST improvement over previous English editions. The translation is very well done, and the annotations explain what has been changed and what previous translations accomplished.

Highly recommended!

I loved the main character, a strong, independent bisexual woman, whose innate love of life of all kinds finally leads her to seek treatment and learn to once again love herself. McComas' vivid writing and insightful understanding take the reader on a wonderful roller-coaster ride of emotions. This book is a fulfilling read and a real page-turner.

The story starts with thousands of whipped-up music fans chanting for Danya Clay to deliver her smashing encore song. The story starts fast and keeps rolling. Anyone unsure about whether they'd like this book should just start with the first few pages. If that doesn't "click" with you then the book is not for you. I was hooked from the get-go, and many readers will probably discover the same feeling.

One gets the sense that, at heart, the writer has genuine affection for his characters and for most people in general. This underlying good nature helps a lot when a scene turns dark or violent. The light of good nature can help show the darkness of evil -- the way a great song blends dissonance and harmony.

Highly recommended.

Chapter 14 discusses the death of Davy Crockett. Contemporary reports said he surrendered, then was executed. This also happened to the Anglos after the defeat in Zacatecas, the state that also rebelled against the seizure of power by Santa Ana.

Chapter 15 discusses the battle of Gettysburg, and how General Lee hoped to use JEB Stuart's cavalry. He didn't mention that George Armstrong Custer's cavalry defeated Stuart and helped the Union victory.

Chapter 18 deals with Sacco and Vanzetti. Dr. Henry C. Lee's "Famous Crimes Revisited" has a chapter that tells of the forged ballistic evidence. It also has a chapter on the Lindbergh kidnapping: Hauptmann did not write that ransom note! Why did the dog do nothing on that night?

Chapter 22 asks if FDR knew about the attack on Pearl Harbor in advance; the answer is YES. Curt Gentry's 1989 biography of J Edgar Hoover notes that in July 1941 Ian Fleming brought in a Nazi spy who was assigned to scout Pearl Harbor to see if an attack was feasible. Robert B Stinnett's "Day of Deceit" finally solved this question when he discovered an action plan from October 1940. It listed the steps necessary to provoke Japan into war. When the last step was taken in July 1941, Japan decided to go to war.

Chapter 23 asks if dropping the atom bomb on Japan was necessary. There was a secret protocol to the Yalta Treaty. Stalin agreed to break their Peace Treaty and attack Japan 90 days after the end of the European war. The first bomb on August 6 did not end the war. Russian declared war on August 9 and swept through Manchuria. The Japanese Militarists then knew that resistance was futile.

Chapter 25 ask "Who Killed JFK?". It took hardened criminals to pull the triggers, experienced agents to plan this executive action, and high-level members of the ruling class to cover it up. The 1974 novel "Winter Kills" by Richard Condon provides a symbolic solution. Mark North's "Act of Treason" builds on the work of others.

Chapter 29 discusses the missing 18 minutes on that Nixon tape. About twenty years ago I saw a TV interview of Nixon; he said the missing minutes were "about the Bay of Pigs". H R Haldeman's "The Ends of Power" explain this code word.

Chapter 30 deals with the Reagan's selling government property (military arms) to the Iranians, and then diverting this money to private parties (rebels in Nicaragua). This violation of the law could have been used to impeach Reagan! Reagan's chosen biographer said "Reagan was senile in his second term"; he was truly the Acting President.

This book is somewhat different instructure from Unterberger's previous work in that it is focused on many fewer artists and allows each one much more space. This really does benefit the book because the reader can know each artist mentioned much more than in "The Unknown Legends Of Rock'n'Roll". One gains a true understanding of each artist, the people who formed them, their ideals and the music they made in a way one does not with "The Unknown Legends Of Rock'n'Roll".

Moreover, Unterberger tries to explain the fact that there are so many undiscovered gems from the 1960s in terms of the culture of the decade. On the whole, he is fairly successful, even though he is careful to avoid claiming that the bands discussed were better than such acts as the Beatles, Rolling Stones or Velvet Underground. He is very successful, though, in explaining what has attracted certain groups of people to the undiscovered music of the 1960s, and tries to avoid the very common critical viewpoint that only those sixties bands who were predecessors of punk and new wave (Velvets, Stooges, MC5, Beefheart and the garage bands) are important today.

Some of the artists did actually have a major hit or fair success on album charts, unlike "The Unknown Legends Of Rock'n'Roll", where there are very severe qualifications for inclusion. Such artists are re-evaluated in terms of other work that did not succeed of the charts. Distribution was not as regular in the sixties as it is today so that many bands could have had a hit locally that never became a hit nationally. This was particularly true of some "blue and brown eyes soul" groups such as Thee Midniters and The Rationals, the latter of which could never break out of their hometown in the era before the "Detroit sound" of the Stooges, MC5 and Alice Cooper became established.

As mentioned earlier, the artists mentioned receive a good description and one is able to track what the members of each groups discussed were doing (or collaborators in the case of artists like Tim Buckley) and to the way in which they evolved throughout their careers. This is, I feel, a better way of doing thins than the brief profiles of "The Unknown Legends of Rock'n'Roll", and gets into one's mind more easily. At the same time, it is no more revealing for some who reads incessantly about music than "The Unknown Legends of Rock'n'Roll", and the artists do not require as much to be written about them as the artists in "The Unknown Legends of Rock'n'Roll" (Unterberger admits this).

On the whole, this is worthy reading and rather better presented than "The Unknown Legends of Rock'n'Roll".

The Venus depicted in this story is bizarrely alien, and it is interesting to watch the (more or less) human Doctor's emotional grief in comparison with the tragedy of a dying world and its inhabitants. The way the Venusians cope with the forthcoming end of their world, ranging from a fatalistic acceptance of the end to a wide variety of seemingly hair-brained schemes. Different groups of Venusians are in conflict with each other.

While this isn't the Doctor's first trip to Venus, but his companions Ian and Barbara have a very difficult time coping with the alien society. In fact, the Venusians way of "remembering" their dead family members (by eating them, which passes on some of the memories) makes their experiences even more strange than they might have been.

While the conflict continues, another group of aliens arrive offering to save the Venusians by moving them to Earth (billions of years before humanity evolved). Can the travellers allow this to happen? Are the Sou(ou)shi as benevolent as they appear?

(During Jon Pertwee's period playing the Doctor, he used what was often called Venusian aikido. These odd five legged aliens are supposedly who this martial art was learnt from. Now that's bizarre!)

There are a lot of questions, and reading this book to find the answers is (in my opinion) an excellent use of your time.

Set on Venus 3 billion years ago, this is the best-evoked alien civilisation I've read of in a Doctor Who novel, and the only novel not set in Earth's history which reads like a 'historical'; there's an epic sweep of tragedy in the world inevitably heading for destruction. It's almost impossible not to sniffle - but parts of it are very funny, too (such as the imaginative ways in which some Venusians attempt to escape their dying planet), or brilliantly imaginative (such as the whole nusiness of 'eating brains').

The regular cast - Barbara, Ian and a chianti-serving Doctor are well-rendered, too, and there's a cracking story (despite names which are a bit of a mouthful) which makes the best of the breathtaking background.

This book is extreemely well organized and carries the reader through the entire management process. It reinforced and validated many aspects of managing this type of technology that were I personally had to learn by trial and error. Likewise, it provided new alternatives and other key learnings that made reading the book a worthwhile experience. It provides an alternate and improved framework for evaluating this new type of technology, while exposing the pitfalls of applying traditional evaluation techniques.

Mr. Miraldi seems to have fallen into the trap of over-expanding material to pad out the book. There are a number of faults with not only the material, but the layout of the book. Text referring to photographs often overlaps to following pages, requiring one to continually flip back a page to see what the text may be referring to. Considering the easily followed layout the author used in his magazine articles it is puzzling as to why he did not utilize it here as well.

Miraldi's heavy reliance on the works of Kevin Lyles and Shelby Stanton is evident in the material and confirmed by his footnotes, unfortunately he has opted not to expand on their work for the most part but merely emulate it using items from his own collection. He has borrowed Lyles' style of chronological depiction by year when I feel that if the content would have been more logically ordered by item type (eg. showing transition of the jungle fatigues from OG-107 to 1st, 2nd, 3rd OD then ERDLs.)

Many photographs are wasted. He has included individual close up photos of such inane items such as technical and field manuals, sewing kits, issue bibles - and even the back of a presentation plaque! It would have been better if several of these less important items were grouped together and all placed in one shot. The figure photos aren't all that much better. Some photos appear in different hues and would confuse the beginner collector. Many photos seem to have been done merely using a flash rather than professional lighting (the author even thanks a supermarket 1-hour photo stop in the credits!). Although this works for some photos this tends to create confusing hard shadow outlines and does not properly illuminate all areas of the uniform. Lyles' photos are superior.

Between Lyles and Miraldi, I think every permutation of VN webbing layout and OD uniform has been illustrated! There are some fanciful combinations - a LRP sporting a MP-40, a combat grenadier wearing camo shorts and if Miraldi and Lyles are to be believed, every pathfinder sported a radio and mike/headset and most grunts in 1971 had cut off sleeves and a 'Peace' attitude!

There are too many shots of the one figure - an overall perspective can be done in 3 shots - ¾ left, ¾ right and rear. Lyles covered very adequately in 2 shots - Miraldi needed up to 5 shots in some cases! Some photos are even close to being duplicated. There were also too many detailed shots illustrating minor points or points done before. There were also too many individual photos of standard insignia. Insignia comprise part of the uniform but I felt there are already enough publications dealing with them and the photos should be focussed more towards uniforms and equipment. Miraldi has also included many period pictures, some of which are very good but a lot comprise 'buddy' photos and contain very little information or show content which has been previously illustrated.

Unlike Lyles, who largely used pristine items, Miraldi has included some 'salty' items which does not detract from the overall effect. However, I would have preferred that if he was going to take close-ups of uniform labels that he use mint examples as the faded condition of some of the tags render them close to illegible. Additionally, his examination of the different camouflage employed would have been more credible if he had used mint items for every pattern. I remain unconvinced of his argument of a 'Transitional' versus 'Brown Dominant' ERDL pattern on the basis that the 'Brown Dominant' sample he illustrates looks merely like a faded 'Transitional' pattern. At this point Miraldi also states that ALICE gear and 'RDF' pattern camouflage were not used in Vietnam but he is only right to the extent in that they were not used in the period covered by his book. Some photos of operations 'Eagle Claw' and 'Frequent Wind' (the evacuations of Phnom Penh and Saigon respectively) quite clearly show a few US Marines wearing 'RDF' pattern helmet covers, uniforms and sporting ALICE pouches.

The footnoting leaves something to be desired. In some cases the footnotes do not correspond to the correct chapters. In several instances the attributed author's name is spelt wrongly ('Lyels' rather than 'Lyles') and to top it all off in one instance there is a remark, from the publisher to the author, asking for a missing footnote!

Some positive points must be noted however. I liked the period photos illustrating some uniform points. There were some truly interesting items - the mesh 'Delta' boot (illustrated but not explained) and an intriguing ERDL ammunition vest. Unlike previous authors Miraldi also attempts to distinguish Vietnam-era from post-war items.

In conclusion, I would have to say I was disappointed with this book, especially after paying a premium price. It is definitely not a monument to the high standards I know both Schiffer Publishing and the author are capable of. Too much of the material has been duplicated in previous (and cheaper) texts and there is very little new information for the experienced Vietnam collector - I for one did not learn anything new. The author writes that he will be working on further books on the subject and I hope that his future efforts will not be padded out with superfluous material - and employ a proof reader! This book is suited more to those who are starting out in the Vietnam uniform collecting field and I would recommend that the experienced Vietnam collector has a thorough look through the book before committing to buying one.

My suggestion is to try to own ALL three works, but if you must start somewhere, then Mr. Miraldi's book is a good place to start!

Why do I suggest his book over a more technical and textbook-like work such as Stanton? Stanton is an excellent source and a must-have book, but Mr. Miraldi's book takes it one step further and shows you how everything is worn and ties together! The reader is not just shown a pristine example of an item, but is shown an item being used as it would have been used in a particular time frame of the war. This is a better approach for the novice--it is more "user friendly".

Overall this is a well done book and I look forward to the new book on advisors that he has put out!

This Sun author presented this book truly unbiased on choosing the Web services implementation. The book chooses to use Apache Axis 1.0 for illustrating the architecture of Web services and applying patterns for development.

With Web services specifications still evolving, I feel this book dictates the patterns for the early adopters. In the next two years, this book may require a revision based on the upcoming SOAP 1.2 specs and a series WS-* specs.

I strongly commend this patterns book for architects and tech leads who wish to build Web services and related projects.

The authors managed to introduce all patterns while anchoring the presentation with a practical and interesting discussion of real world case study. This approach makes this book succeed on all levels, both in presenting essential patterns and demonstrating how these designs often work together in real Web services.

This book is a perfect companion guide for choosing patterns in real implementation. This book does not introduce and walkthrough Web services standards and Java APIs, for that we chose to use "Developing Java Web services - Wiley Press" book, very helpful.

In all, this book will be absolutely required reading for anyone who lays claim to be an Architect on today's Web services.