I am most grateful to your reviewer from Plano, TX, USA for pointing out that the book is not by THE Raymond E. Brown. As a great fan of the Scholar I would have been tempted to buy the book, but not now. Thanks 'Plano TX'. Bill Fawkes, North Yorkshire England.

Other reviewers of this book have restricted their comments to the fact that the author is not Fr. Raymond Brown, SS, of blessed memory, one of the premier biblical scholars of the 20th century. These reviewers dismiss this book out-of-hand simply and simplistically on the ground of "misleading" authorship. This is not helpful. This "other" Raymond Brown has important things to say, too, in a way very different from Fr. Brown. I urge that folks carefully examine the pages available and make their own decision based on what this book wants to say, not who wrote it. In that regard, it should be noted that this is a theological and practical exposition of the themes of the Letter to the Hebrews, written from of conservative-evangelical, Baptist confessional perspective. It is written for the non-academic, non-specialist, Christian reader. It is a combination of anecdotal reflection and scholarly insight. It is concerned with the canonical text of Hebrews, and places it in a late first-century, Jewish-Christian church setting in a time of persecution and consequent temptation to apostasy. These are the sort of observations and questions by which this book should be judged, not the pedigree of its author.

This commentary series is geared toward a theological perspective and not a technical one. It is very much like the interpretation series but written from a much more conservative point of view. The other reviewers are correct; this book is not written by the liberal false teacher Raymond Brown who hated Christ and his Gospel. Unlike the other Raymond Brown, this writer was not a papist who attacks the accuracy of the bible. The other brown was a false teacher and is now dead. No loss to the Christian Church. Good riddence you false teacher.

This book has the wrong title - it should be "The bit I learned about JFK's assassination while chasing bad men, riding horses and eating chicken fried steak". It is faction of the worst sort - full of homely anecdotes and purportedly accurate conversations but hardly a checkable fact or date in the book. The reason given briefly in an epilogue is that the author's notes were all destroyed in a disastrous fire (of which there is no mention in the body of the book). This should not however have rendered him unable to give verifiable dates. Surely he remembers the date of the death of his best friend and mentor - "his rock of stability"? Descriptions of events and people are homely to the extent that they sound as if they come from a Country and Western collection. Men are men, women are pretty and virtuous and animals are trusty companions. Even Jack Ruby: murderer, and Mafia connected small time hood (and corrupter of women) likes small dogs and nearly starts a fight to protect one. You can almost hear the steel guitar soundtrack. Despite the lack of timelines one anachronism is notable: the linking of JFK & Camelot in his lifetime which never happened.

Not for the serious reader of the Kennedy period - file under Westerns.

In the book "Broken Silence" Ray "Tex" Brown states that the assassination of JFK was a conspiracy masterminded by Lyndon B. Johnson. Ray "Tex" Brown talked about the involvement of Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald in the conspiracy. Mr Brown spoke about his secret meetings with Lyndon B. Johnson. He talked about the deal that was made, arranged by LBJ the then New President of The United States, to keep him (Ray "Tex" brown) from talking to the Warren Commission and revealing what he knew. I truly question the accuracy of the information in this book. Why was Ray "Tex" Brown so lucky to stay alive for thirty three years, when as he stated many of his friends were mysteriously dying? Not a recommended book.

This is a very good book. I still believe what he said was true. The people that don't want us to know the truth will say it is not so. It is worth reading.

I picked up this book, and I am very dissappointed. It doesn't have much organization nor aim for what level it wants to teach. Some of the stuff is very easy; other parts are difficult. But it's not presented in any kind of order, so first-timers will get very intimidated, while experienced players will get next to nothing, provided they have the patience to mine for the information. A detailed table of contents and subject breaks would have helped tremendously.

My only comment is the fact that this book is not for beginners. The title is very misleading. In the preface it is described as a book for a second or third year student.

The CD that comes with this book is incomplete. Plus the book is not helpful!

Very disappointing. Had I paid the full price, I would be enraged.

I'll pass the book on to a junior dba-wannabe, and the CD-ROMs will most likely join the pile of unused stuff that I should, but don't, throw away. I'm so relieved that I didn't pay more, it almost makes up for the loss of the $.

I do not agree with other reviews. This book has been the backbone of my success to OCP. I have learned a great deal and without it i would not have pass the exams. For the basic hard working begginer. strongly recommended.

This book is one of the worst I've come across about the Civil War era. The chapters on Lincoln will suffice in showing the overall value of the work. While some characterizations of Lincoln are on the money, the author completely and inexcusably overlooks the fallacies in Lincoln's views on slavery. For example, during the Lincoln-Douglas debates the author ignores Lincoln's view that blacks should be free yet shouldn't vote, intermarry, serve in the militia etc. The author also invokes too many times the worn-out cliche of the stereotypical southerner who wants to lynch blacks at every turn. Also a negative point in the book is the weird inclusion of a chapter on the myth of the Old West. The author strangely attacks John Wayne and Paul Harvey (!?) for daring to believe that individualism reigned in the Old West. Also the author exposes some liberal racism in implying that blacks and Indians don't need to "make it on the own." Pick up some other book on the Civil War and it will surely be worth your time.

This work of essays about Civil War era people isn't well done at all. While some material, especially on Lincoln, is good the tome lags in many areas. For example, the author entertains the asinine theory that the Southern states were plotting to extend slavery into the North prior to the Civil War. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Also the author ignores the possibility that the reason that the South seceded from the Union was not that they didn't believe Lincoln's promise about not interfering with slavery but that they were afraid of loosing the balance of power in the senate. This scenario would have surely happened if slavery was prevented from spreading. Another example of how lackluster the book is the chapter on the Old West included for no apparent reason other than to provide the author an opportunity to needlessly attack John Wayne, Nixon, and Paul Harvey about individualism. The author contends that it didn't exist in the Old West but he is wrong. While certain things brought people together, most settlers were too far away to do this on a daily basis. This is a prime reason why the pioneers were such easy pickings for Indian war parties, outlaws, and others like them. General Sherman, who was in charge for the defense of the West for a time, stated this as a prime reason why the army couldn't protect all of the settlers. There are many more books worth a serious reader's time than this book.

This unfocused, self-published book meanders between imagined dialogue, emotional diatribes and reminiscences of the author's historical travels. It makes no sense whatsoever to this reader.

For instance, the author claims that the book's title, Aramenta, is Harriet Tubman's African name, stolen by "Europeans." The biographies of Harriet Tubman--including the one written during her lifetime by her friend, Sarah Bradford--state that her basket name (or birth name) was Araminta [not Aramenta], and that upon reaching womanhood she took her mother's name of Harriet. Harriet Tubman was born into slavery in Maryland, and none of the biographies suggest that Araminta was an African name.

The author claims that her book is the "righting" of history. The text, referring to her assumption that "Europeans" changed Harriet Tubman's name, includes lines like: "This demeaning behavior stemmed for the most part from egotistical arrogance combined with ignorance about the world's rich idigenous cultures and their values systems"

The list price is $199.95 with an Amazon price of $19.95. When I ordered the book, I assumed it was a close-out of a fine pictorial book. It is instead, a 200 page (double-spaced) trade-book-sized paperback. The photographs range from a street sign in Williamsburg, VA at the corner of Harriet Tubman St. and Armistad, to oft-published Harper's illustrations to travel photographs.

Perhaps the author sees this book as a journal of her admiration for Harriet Tubman, but anyone purchasing the book to add to their history library will be disappointed.

found this collection of fotos so boring I actually returned the book for a refund. Perhaps inclusion of color fotos would have helped, but considering the gay subject matter, the images came across as flat and extremely uninteresting.

I reviewed this book for Technometrics in 1991. I would not recommend it for anyone! It is a cookbook of techniques that were selected by the author because he viewed them as useful in engineering or manufacturing. Almost no attention is given to the fundamental concepts and theory underlying the techniques.

Probability distributions are introduced without motivation giving the readers the misimpression that statistics is simply a set of tools to systematically apply. All the student needs to do is learn how to read a given set of statistical tables. This is a terrible impression to give in a first course and it makes for a very dry and boring course!

Analysis of variance is given some treatment in chapter 9 on experimental designs but the important topic of robust designs that had emerged in the 1980s specifically for manufacturing processes inspired by the work of Taguchi is not even mentioned.

Another problem with the book is the order in which topics are presented. Rather than being the 5th chapter, Chapter 5 on data gathering and problem solving should come first to motivate the methods and lead in to a discussion of probability distributions. Furthermore moments such as the skewness and kurtosis are discussed with reference to the Normal distribution before any formal presentation of the distribution and its properties. Sequential test procedures are thrown out to the student before even defining what a formal statistical hypothesis test is. Earlier classic books such as Bowker and Lieberman (1972) "Engineering Statistics" 2nd Edition or the two volumes of Johnson and Leone (1977)"Statistics and Experimental Design in Engineering and Physical Sciences" serve the students much better even if they do not have a strong background in mathematics.

Other problems with the book include vague definitions of such terms as central tendency, variance, skewness and kurtosis. Distributions such as the Normal distribution are referred to without a formal definition. Probability density functions are introduced without development of any probability concepts. There is a very poor description of the binomial distribution and its relationship to the binomial expansion.

In Chapter 2 operating characteristic curves are introduced but there is no discussion of power of tests. Hypothesis testing and type I and type II error probabilties are deferred to Chapter 8. In short this is book without foundation and will be very confusing to the audience it professes to teach. It can be used as a cookbook for those who want to run statistical procedures without any basic understanding, a very dangerous venture.

I have many more examples of specific problems with the book. If you want to see the details, go to the library and read my review on page 356 of Volume 33 of Technometrics (the August 1991 issue).