For those who visit the Alamo and want to know more, for those who have seen the classic "Alamo" movie with John Wayne and are interested in the true story, or those who need to get a fast and basic knowledge for the classroom, this book is an excellent choice.

For reenactors, military miniature modelers, non-professional historians, etc. here are some concerns: The book was published in 1986. Recent excavations & documentary discoveries make the Mexican uniform depictions incorrect. For one example, shako plates and brestplates have been found which vary greatly from those shown & Piping was not white on coats. Sources of information are largely non-Mexican. Lt.Col. Enrique de la Pena's diary and J. Hefter's works are cited for Mexican forces, but there are many more which should have been used to give greater balance.

Since this book is not intended to be a deep scholarly explanation the short-comings can be overlooked.

Read and enjoy this book!

During the 1950's, numerous North African nations were granted independence from colonial rule, but France maintained a hard-line in regards to Algeria. After Tunisia was granted independence, nationalists throughout Algeria began to attack French citizens, properties, and government troops in the hopes of securing their own freedom. General Aussaresses was given the task of stopping the attacks on French citizens living in Algeria, and subsequently destroy the nationalists as an entity.

The majority of the book discusses how Aussaresses developed a program of executions, assassinations, and torture in order to stop the FLN. He discusses how his secret mission was hidden from the majority of the French populous and even from some major government officials. Then, the book abruptly ends, with out giving the reader a real conclusion. There is no real explanation as to what occurred following the departure of Aussaresses, or what happened to Algeria as a nation. Certainly an epilogue would have been appreciated.

Nevertheless, the book did provide food for thought. How does a nation fight terrorism? It would seem that Aussaresses would argue that we fight terror with terror. Kidnapping and summary executions solve the dilemma, Aussaresses would say. But with the use of these tactics, a different dilemma arises. Who is the terrorist when both parties act so similarly?

It's important to understand the context of the situation. French Algeria was a colony populated by a number of ethnicities. Many muslims were pro-French and wanted Algeria to remain a French department. In addition, you had a significant French colonial population, the Pieds Noirs (the black feet) that wanted Algeria to remain French. Additionally, there were groups that wanted independence - those willing to work within a political framework, and those willing to engage in terrorism.

Aussaresses and his methods (as described in the book) were successful in subduing the rebels. France voluntarily left Algeria. De Gualle made the decision to give Algeria its independence in 1962-- the French were not forced out. In fact, many elements of the French army mutinied against De Gualle as a result of his decision -- but that's a different story.

This book describes the means by which information was gathered and applied in order to combat a foe that was willing to bomb civilians, engage in what we now call terrorist acts, and could conceal themselves within the population. The methods included torture and summary executions. But these were not the only methods employed. What Aussaresses established was a process of intelligence gathering and the application of military and police resources to act on that information. He used torture in interrogations in order to gather information. Aussaresses used the information gathered from these interrogations to eliminate operatives, foil terrorist plots, and systematically dismantle the FLN. These methods succeeded.

I think there are tough lessons to be learned from this book. How are our intelligence and military forces fighting the war on terror gathering their information to prevent further attacks? Are America and its allies prepared to do what is necessary to protect our populations? Do the ends justify the means?

The poems are dense and full of Civil War references, so it would behoove the reader to brush up on his history. Likewise, the reader will quickly realize why Melville's poetry didn't receive the critics' acclaim. They are melodramatic, with an overemphasis on composing within the traditional (some would say archaic) rules of poetry: rhythm, rhyme scheme, etc., which does not translate well into our time and makes it not the most entertaining style to read...

These are interesting poems, but seem to have more historic value (U.S. history and the history/development American poetry) than poetic.

My personal favorites include: "The Stone Fleet," where Melville experiences romance for the whaling ships sailing out of harbor and which, consequently, he never sailed on; and, "The House Top," from where he overlooks the New York enlistment riots, where he implies that those who don't fight for our country aren't for God.
--ross saciuk

First, _Battle-Pieces_ should be credited as artistic, sometimes beautiful, poetry. Some of the poems are somewhat doggeral, and would be much improved by a few less forced rhymes. Others, however, are truly moving.

In these latter poems, Melville conveys the horrors of the war--and occasionally the humanity that shone through, uniting the brothers across the battlefield. Few men or women of the time had the experience (he participated in a chase of a Southern soldier) and writing ability to show us this time so effectively. As a result, he produced what, in my opinion, is a book at least as good as his most well-known novel.

At the end of the book he includes an essay on Reconstruction, in which he pleads for an easy reconciliation with the conquered South, more along the lines with Lincoln and Johnson's plans than the Radicals'. While somewhat disappointing (we'd like the man who created QueeQueg to support Southern blacks' rights a little more), the essay is well-written, and allows us to read the nonfictional beliefs of a man we usually associate with fiction--just as the poems let us read the verse of a writer of prose.

very highly recommended

p.s. i dont know how _accurate_ sartres psychoanalysis actually is (at times he does seem to be way too sure of his opinions as to why baudelaire did what he did; and he has unique opinions, to put it kindly), but i advise the reader to just take baudelaire as a fictional character created by sartre and based on his conception of the actual baudelaire.

"The Book of the Still" is a classic example of what "Doctor Who" book devotees call the "first-novel syndrome". Paul Ebbs' debut is bursting with three, seven, oh... eleven different plots. It's so busy being fresh, raw, inventive, and in-your-face, that it's not quite up to the task of remaining coherent, or particularly enjoyable. The ending makes very little sense upon first reading, which isn't a fatal defect in and of itself, but if you're going to go that route, you need to make the book appealing enough so the reader wants to take a second stab at it.

At heart, this is a book about the actual Book of the Still -- a lifeline for stranded time-travelers. That's a great concept! At heart, "Still" is also about a "Total Recall"-esque escort agency on the debauched planet Lebenswelt. It's about the waltzing cotillion planet of Antimasque. And about a race of brutal, naive time-travelers called the Unnoticed (ha!). Also about a woman's touching search for her lost-in-time father -- and about another woman's addiction to the energies stored in frequent time-travelers. With all this going on, it's a wonder why the back-cover blurb sees fit to spoil the story all the way up to about page 162 -- other blurbs in this series only give away the first 40 pages, and "Still" could have benefited doubly well from such parsimony.

The writing style is very inventive and visual. The prologue and epilogue are switched around. The opening chapter is titled "Obligatory Spectacular Opening" (so fey, it hurts!). There's an extended fantasy sequence of "Highlander"-type swashbuckling. Two delirious chapters are done as an Indian movie musical -- an idea so funny, you can't believe it hasn't been done before.

All this is the book equivalent of "Being John Malkovich" (or better, "Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie: The Novel" by Norman Mailer). The book never goes where you expect, and relies on a lot of smoke and mirrors to conclude. The problem is, visual as "Book of the Still" is, it's not a movie -- or a TV show -- it's a novel, and thus requires a little more patience. Not on the reader's part, but on the author's.

I adored the beginning and middle sections of The Book of the Still. So enthralled was I by the writing in these parts, that I rushed through and finished the book in much less time that it usually takes me to get through the 249-288 pages of the modern EDA. Unfortunately, I didn't feel the ending was up to the high standards of the rest of the novel, which is more frustrating in a book that is great up until the end rather than a book that is lousy all the way through. But despite the problems with the ending, I still quite enjoyed the entire experience. There's a lot of good writing on display, and the story was told with a lot of panache.

There are a lot of fairly high level science fiction concepts present in the book, and they are all handled with so much care and ease that I had to do a little bit of thinking before I fully realized what was going on. It has a quick feel to it, with many of the set-pieces serving well as standalone little mini-adventures. But don't get the impression that this is a throw-away or a shallow book. It's deceptively slick, but there's a lot of very interesting stuff going on beneath the surface. The prose is written with confidence and manages to convey a surprising amount using fairly little. The setting is described very well, and the scenes set there were so interesting that I wish we had stayed on the initial planet for longer. The "Unnoticed" aliens mentioned on the back cover are an interesting idea that, thankfully, are fleshed out quite well. I was a bit worried that they would come across as a generic threat, but Paul Ebbs managed to make them interesting enough to motivate the plot without coming across as mere ciphers.

It took me a quite a bit of thinking to get to grips with the ending. After much consideration, I concluded that while it did make logical sense and every character had a motivation for acting, it just wasn't quite satisfying. For a story that had been ambling on in an enjoyable, laid-back sort of way to suddenly switch gears so drastically was something that I found very distracting. It was quite a mental shift needed on my part to adjust. Even after I had worked everything through, I still felt vaguely unsatisfied. The final pages do adequately conclude the plot, but I don't feel that it properly gave us a conclusion to the story. It left me with a solid feeling of, "Is that it?" and not in a good way.

The style of The Book of the Still is very entertaining. Each page pulled me in deeper, leaving me eager to see what was coming next. The ending doesn't quite work on all levels, and it feels rushed, but the whole of the book shouldn't be ignored because of those weaknesses. It's quite a fun book to read despite some of the deeper issues that it deals with, and the characters are an entertaining bunch. Just be prepared to have to do a bit of thinking to understand the end.

"Memory" acids and a glimpse at how science can transform the traditional "sex" business into a real "feeling emotion experience" business in a distant future; the concept of a race that created themselves by accident; the socio-economic state of a culture where nobody has to work for a living; and the thinking that the most valuable, guarded, and sought-after object conceivable in a culture of excess is a lifeline for stranded time-travellers which cannot even exist according to the laws of time.

For these and the impressive scenes (like a planet-buster type time bomb that's warming and lighting up on top of a mile-high tower while an unlikable, incompetent governor tries to diffuse it by shouting orders to his entourage, while below the teeming partygoers dissolve into riots and chaos since there's a power-out and nothing works), well bravo Paul Ebbs. It's good to see that someone's actually thinking about the Doctor Who books they're writing nowadays and are putting their creative talents to work making something that's actually new.

All right, the ending was a little bit of a disappointment because I didn't understand all of it, but anyway, I didn't feel I had to. Who cares, this is just how the Doctor's companions feel too:

"I'll explain later" and we don't understand because the Doctor's busy right now, but not we're not insulted because we don't have a doctorate in temporal engineering.

It is sad indeed to report that the book is a total disappointment- at least so far as the images themselves are concerned:

One: The source material and printing of the picutres are truly second-rate - without richness, luster, or dimension. Many look like photocopies from magazines or other books. They are oddly glossy but flat. Compare these to the incredible matte reproductions in PARIS BY NIGHT and the contrast between what can be done with with what is here is nearly heartbreaking.

Second: What is with the recent tendency to print photographs in an oversized, right-to-the-edges format with no sense of border or space to let the composition breathe and no sense of frame lines. The bleed-over simply kills the impact of many of these photogrpahs. It's a ruinous way to present great imagery. (It afflicts Abrams' new Bill Brandt book as well but to a lesser extent because the printing of that book is so much better.)

Third: There is very little that is new here. For such a major undertaking it comes across as a routine collection of well-known images, a greatest hits, that ends up delivering little emotional punch or insight into this great artist. Compare this to Abrams' own exhaustive works like Walker Evans: The Hungry Eye and you'll see what I mean.

With so many great photographers receiving deluxe treatment in the past few years from Abrams' W. Eugene Smith book last year to Bulfinch's Lartigue mongraph, it is a real shame that someone as seminal but poorly represented in print as Brassai should receive such a well-intentioned but unsatisfactory tribute. PLEASE BRING BACK PARIS BY NIGHT!

I found the book generally helpful. But at the time when I was struggling with my career decision, I found the book inadequate. The book tried to cover too many areas of professions. It includes not only life scientists, but also medical doctors, accountants, engineers, psychologists, and even English-major... These people, like me, all want to make career changes. This book is too general. It does not give me enough information for my particular case. In reality, there are "alternative career" opportunities which are open to an English major but closed to a Biochemist.