I first read "Great Comedians" in 1972 when I was starting out as a comedian. I found it to be just what I needed as a young aspiring comedian. The interviews of Woody Allen, Shelley Berman, Jack Benny, and Phillis Diller resonated with me and helped me immensely in my standup comedy development. It also inspired me to write my own book probing the methods of my generations great comedians ("Comic Insights") in order to help today's young comedians get a better idea of what it takes to do quality standup. I recently read "Great Comedians" again, and my original verdict still stands. This book is still of immense value to all aspiring comedians.

It's no secret that comedians -- great and not-so-great -- are influenced by the WORK of other comedians. The advent of film in the 20th century made this a lot easier since when a comedian died the work was still available...and now with videos etc. it's easier than ever.

But what about HOW these comedians made laughs...how they were inspired...what specific techniques they used and did not use...and what advice they would give anyone interested in going into any area of comedy?

Those have been tough answers to get. To do it you'd have to buy a slew of good and sometimes rotten bios, many of them out of print. Until now. Stand-up comedian Larry Wilde's Great Comedians Talk About Comedy brings it all together.

Great Comedians is a superb, singular achievement that collects within one lively, 402-page, info-packed volume, detailed interviews done over several years with some of the 20th century's greatest comedians and comedy actors.

The selection is absolutely mind-boggling: Woody Allen, Milton Berle, Shelly Berman, Jack Benny, Joey Bishop, George Burns, Johnny Carson, Maurice Chevalier, Phyllis Diller, Jimmy Durante, Bob Hope, Dick Gregory, George Jessle, Jerry Lewis, Jerry Seinfeld, Danny Thomas and Ed Wynn.

Each interview is presented in straight Q&A format so you get to "hear" the question and "hear" the response, from what the comedian/comedy actor says to his/her own speech pattern. These folks worked in venues from vaudeville, to radio, to night clubs, to radio to early silent movies to talkies to TV. And their responses to questions contain revelations and constant inspiration.

A key theme: how "making it" in comedy requires timing, good material, dogged persistance, constant analysis of jokes/laughs and being LIKEABLE to an audience. Copying someone's stage personna or stealing their jokes just won't do it.

My favorite interviews were with Woody Allen (how he writes ten jokes on everything from matchbooks to napkins and only uses a few; how he won't try jokes out on friends since they're often too negative; how audience appeal MATTERS...and his pointing to Jackie Gleason as someone who often had a lousey show but people loved him), Jack Benny (the importance of learning comedy and advancing step by step...an explanation of his legendary timing), Joey Bishop ("...Luck cannot sustain you.Only talent can sustain you.."), George Burns (tips on timing, attitude and the importance emulating but not copying other performers), Phyllis Diller (five truly SUPERB short inspirational tips that can advance MANY careers...Her high laugh per minute standards), and Jerry Seinfeld (timing, getting into a focused mental framework and how his love of comedy as a kid blossomed).

This book an essential for ANYONE interested in comedy, or for students of comedy, public speakers, or anyone who simply wants to be funny in public. It's ALL HERE: the inspiration, the tips, the stories, the bios...the TOOLS.

It's now a cliche to say "comedy isn't easy" and the whole process is mysterious. Larry Wilde's Great Comedians Talk About Comedy makes it less mysterious and -- a a bit easier.

Anyone interested in stand-up comedy Must read this book. Especially the people who hang out at "The Improv" bar who THINK they are a comedian. The Woody Allen interview is more important today than it was 35 years ago. About time the neophytes learned some history of the art form. A GREAT BOOK!

This book has been a great help to me. I am on my 4th digital camera but the first three worked fine in Auto mode and I never challenged myself to learn how to use all the features of the cameras. Having no photography background with advanced film cameras, I was not familiar with using white balance, f stops, depth of field, etc. This book has helped me to understand how to really get the most out of my more advanced "prosumer" camera and it is also full of tips and techniques for taking better photos of all types from landscapes to portraits, panoramas, pets and kids, using off-camera lighting and tripods. Highly recommended for anyone who wants to take better digital photos!

As an experienced 35mm user just switching to digital, I found this book to be the perfect complement to my camera's instruction manual.In a clear and straightforward manner, it addresses a wide multitude of picture-taking situations and accessory choices, from the most basic to the more complex. Each of the 50 techniques is concisely explained and extremely well illustrated in a most logical progression of sections ranging from 3 to 10 pages each. The table of contents and index are wonderfully comprehensive and make finding what you want as simple as possible. The included CD-ROM and associated web site are a beautiful bonus. My only wish is that more of the illustrations were in color, but at the price that would have been too much to expect. All in all, most highly recommended for both the beginner and advanced user.

Greg's new book helped me "move up" to a more complex digital camera and better understand what I just bought. Nothing is really "automatic" in taking pictures anymore. He helped me understand the relationship between various digital functions, and provided me some basic steps and new techniques to follow on how and when to highlight some functions over others - something the manufacturer of my camera failed to provide in its technical description of my camera. He's an expert in this technology and through his book provides an extremely valuable mentoring service to help me become a better photographer.

This book is about the decision making surrounding the our fateful engagement in Vietnam. Berman adopts a highly analytical approach and dissects the events, players and political back-and-forth behind the scenes. He has access to a trove of recently de-classified documents and cogently builds the following points: 1) While hard analysis of our goals in Vietnam was present, (e.g. what do we do if we get the North Vietnamese to the barganing table? What do we do if limited escalation does not bring about a change from North Vietnam? What do we do if the political situation in South Vietnam does not stabilize?)major policy players chose to ignore this type of anlysis for gretaer and greater involvement. 2) The personality and deportment of LBJ made it much more difficult for dissenting views (other than George Ball's) to get a fair hearing. 3) Dissenters, such as there were, were generally lower level memebers of the state department and were on a drastically unequal footing with the Sect. of Defense and White House staffers in terms of prestige and authority. This made there points of view suspect and thus, disregarded.

This is somewhat of a technical book as it deals with the structure of decision making during a very tense and important period of our nations history. However, if one sees it as a description of our road to folly, it is a fascinating read.

Larry Berman's "Planning a Tragedy" covers the early critical years when America's Vietnam policy was being planned and executed. It serves as the first installment leading up to the period after Nixon took over as president in 1969 to the conclusion of our Southeast Asian military involvement, which Berman encompasses in his recently published, "No Peace, No Honor."

The book is a necessary primer on the "what might have been" aspects of a policy that, like a runaway freight train, developed a pattern and trail of its own, leaving Americans from policymakers on down groping for answers. One observes a Lyndon Johnson, a master of domestic politics and known for his ability to put together compromises to secure needed bread and butter objectives, caught dumbfounded, feeling helpless in an area concerning which he had no expertise. Johnson fell into the trap of rightist Republican thinking of the fifties, which saw Communism as an international monolith. Johnson became convinced that America's survival was at stake in a small Asian nation some ten thousand miles away. He embraced the domino theory, believing that Vietnam constituted a potentially critical loss that would propel thenceforth to an accelerating series of defeats for America.

At a time when Johnson needed valuable input from a State Department strategic hand who saw Vietnam from a balanced international perspective, George Ball, the one operative with a broad European portfolio, who advised the president not to get trapped in Vietnamese quicksand, was outranked by his boss, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, as well as hawkish Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. As a result, Ball, who had listened to French President Charles De Gaulle's warnings of the dangers of an extended Vietnam military involvement, saw his advice spurned as the Rusk-McNamara tandem prevailed.

Meanwhile speculation continues over what President Kennedy might have ultimately done had he lived. One thing was certain. Had Kennedy, like Johnson, decided to escalate American involvement, he would have made the decision basically on his own. Kennedy used Rusk more as an administrator since foreign policy was one of his major areas of interest, unlike the case with Johnson, who, from Berman's and other accounts, deferred heavily to Rusk and McNamara.

The story that Larry Berman tells of Nixon-Kissinger diplomacy is a familiar and unpleasant one. Just before the 1968 election the Nixon campaign contacted President General Thieu of South Vietnam. In returning for Thieu opposing peace talks that had just started, and subsequently ruining Hubert Humphrey's election chances, Nixon and Kissinger promised him a better deal. Four years later Kissinger, while keeping Thieu largely in the dark, finally came up with an agreement in October 1972. The Americans would withdraw, American prisoners of war would be returned, the North Vietnamese army would allow to keep troops in the south, and instead of being the sole government of South Vietnam, Thieu would now have to share this with the National Liberation Front (NLF). Thieu was extremely upset about this and in order to appease his feelings the United States claimed, falsely, that the North was trying to seek major changes in the agreement. They bombed the North (the infamous "Christmas Bombings"), returned to the negotiating table, made token changes to the agreement, and falsely proclaimed "peace with honor" in January 1973.

Much of this has already been well known, and has been detailed by such writers as Gareth Porter, Seymour Hersh and most recently Jeffrey Kimball in Nixon's Vietnam War. Berman argues something new however. Nixon and Kissinger claimed that they had won a viable agreement which was undermined by Watergate. The collapse of presidential authority let a cowardly Congress ruin their farsighted policy and allow the North to win. By contrast, their many critics claim that Nixon and Kissinger had obtained nothing but a "decent interval," allowing them to extricate themselves knowing that the North would conquer them in a few years.

Berman, by contrast, argues that what Nixon and Kissinger really wanted was a peace agreement that they knew the North would violate. Once they did they could invoke American airpower aggressively and continually until the end of Nixon's term. The agreement was nothing but a sham, only a necessary stage in producing what would be a new Gulf of Tonkin resolution. I am skeptical about this argument. First off, it only really appears in the last 100 pages of the book. The statements that Berman cites from Nixon, Kissinger and Haig can be interpreted in a variety of ways. It could be self-delusion, especially on Nixon's part. It could be simple belligerence designed to buck up their south east Asian allies and their own anti-communist beliefs.

The second weakness with the argument arises from the deal itself. The United States had already conceded a Northern military presence in the South, the essential unity of the country, and some form of NLF presence in the government. Given these concessions it would be tricky to argue that the North had broken them and then get from Congress the blank cheque to attack them. Even more problematic was the fact that the United States and the South also violated the agreement. Thieu had no interest in any kind of national reconciliation, and Berman himself admits that the United States violated the agreement by transferring bases to the South. Berman also notes that neither Kissinger nor Thieu wished to free the thousands of political prisoners in the South. The key point is that if both Thieu and Nixon violated the agreement, they could not reasonably expect to mobilize Congressional support when the North did.

There are other weaknesses in Berman's book. The book is poorly annotated, which becomes increasingly irritating as one goes further into the books and where one wonders what the source of Berman's statements are. It is really appalling that publishers are allowed to show such contempt for endnotes and footnotes. Berman does have access to new documents, but there is a tendency to overquote them. This gives the book a "cut and paste" tendency. Most serious of all is Berman's treatment of the military situation and his attitude towards the Thieu regime. It is less South Vietnam, let alone Vietnam, but the Thieu regime who is viewed as betrayed. Berman's book insinuates that by withdrawing on these terms, Nixon and Kissinger doomed Thieu to inevitable conquest.

Thieu's defeat was probably inevitable, but not for the reasons that Berman suggests. He quotes the right wing critics of the deal, like Admirals Zumwalt and Moorer and Ambassador Negroponte. But he does not explain why Vietnamization failed to rebuild or reinforce the Southern Army. He does mention that the NLF rallied remarkably after the 1972 Easter Offensive (other scholars think they rallied even earlier) but he says little more about them. But as Arnold Isaacs pointed out in his invaluable Without Honor, the South Vietnamese Army always had enough arms to defend itself. Before the final offensive it had the third largest navy in the world and it had twice as many tanks as its enemies. As late as 1974 when already guerilla forces were weakening it, it outshot the enemy by a margin of 60 to 1. What the ARVN lacked of course, was an army with leaders who were honest or competent or courageous (anyone of these qualities would have worked) and an infantry who were willing to fight for their causes. For this failure Thieu was especially responsible, as were for that matter his disgruntled and belligerent countrymen.

In 1973, soon after the Nobel Prize Committee announced that Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho had won the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts in bringing about the treaty that ended United States military involvement in Vietnam, former US Ambassador to Japan and Harvard history professor Edwin Reischauer said that the Nobel Committee had apparently changed the award to the "Nobel War Prize." Among other things, Professor Berman's latest book certainly demonstrates that no one deserved a peace prize for the Viet Nam War (what the Vietnamese call "the American War"). That Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon constantly engaged in duplicity with the South Vietnamese government and with the American people is not exactly news today. However, Berman's prodigious research demonstrates beyond all doubt that Kissinger and Nixon knew very well that whatever peace agreement they reached with the North Vietnamese government would be at best temporary, and would result in the collapse of the South Vietnamese government. Furthermore, Berman demonstrates that Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon were only interested in getting the US out of Viet Nam,and were not at all concerned with what would happen to the South Vietnamese people afterwards. "No Peace, No Honor" is an important and readable book on the last years of US involvement in the Viet Nam War, especially the behind-the-scenes negotiations that resulted in America's less than honorable exit from Viet Nam.

Larry Berman is the perfect person to expose President Richard Nixon's duplicity regarding his Vietnam War policy, wherein Nixon sought to promote a peace agreement he and Henry Kissinger both knew would accomplish nothing in thwarting North Vietnam's design to achieve a unified Vietnamese Communist nation. In the typical Nixon fashion, design was preeminent over ultimate reality as he heralded the agreement ending U.S. participation in the nation's most controversial war with the glorious phrase, "Peace With Honor."

"No Peace, No Honor" is the logical sequel to Larry Berman's earlier penetrating work, "Planning a Tragedy," which was a fascinating look inside the Johnson Administration and the mindset which brought about America's entry into the Vietnam conflict. Robert McNamara, despite his earlier assurances, proved to be a naive administrator, making mistake upon mistake in forcing America into an ever deepening hawkish posture. The wise counsel of State Department operative George Ball, who provided the beneficial hindsight input of French president Charles DeGaulle, whose country fought a war in Indo China between 1946 and 1954, was unfortunately spurned.

With Johnson gone and the Nixon Administration taking over in January of 1969, the scene is set for Berman's latest work. Taking advantage of recently declassified government documents, Berman presents a chaotic scene in which Nixon and Kissinger seek to find a way out of the Vietnam morass without conveying the impression that the U.S. was running out on an ally and leaving it vulnerably exposed to a successful Communist insurgency. Despite ferocious bombing, Nixon was ultimately confronted with a situation wherein public support for the war in America had reached its lowest level while his anticipated strategy of helping build Vietnam's fighting forces into a team formidable enough to hold off the insurgency from the North had notably failed. As a result, Nixon sought to convince Americans that the agreement he was able to achieve embodied "Peace With Honor" when Communist troops remained in place in the South, prepared to finish the job and achieve a unified Vietnam. Debate had persisted over the years over whether Nixon and Kissinger were aware of what ultimately would transpire, and that the agreement signed and put into place was nothing other than a facade meant to disguise an ultimate result of which they were well aware. The documents unearthed by Berman demonstrate an awareness of Nixon and Kissinger of the tragic nature of circumstances and the inevitability of a Communist triumph.

William Hare