Burroughs's book is a wonderful tale of exploration into the dense, winding, wonderful Waccamaw River in SC, and into the mostly forgotten past of his native Horry County. His marvelous sense of detail, poetic sensibility, and grand sympathies with all things natural and human make this a memoroble book indeed. I know Prof. Burroughs might hoot at the comparison, but I enjoyed this book as much as anything I've read in Thoreau.

A human life, I think, should be well rooted in some spot of native land, where it may get the love of tender kinship for the face of the earth, for the labors men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that early home a familiar, unmistakable difference amidst the future widening of knowledge: a spot where the definiteness of early memories may be inwrought with affection, and kindly acquaintance with all neighbors, even to dogs and donkeys, may spread not by sentimental effort and reflection, but as a sweet habit of the blood. -George Eliot (Daniel Deronda)

This sentiment and the chance discovery of Nathaniel Holmes Bishop's The Voyage of the Paper Canoe (1878), detailing a canoe trip down the East Coast which included a side trip on the Waccamaw River, were the twin impulses that lead Burroughs to return to his native Horry County, SC and make his own trip down the Waccamaw. Burroughs, a professor at Bowdoin, published a terrific collection of essays Billy Watson's Croker Sack in 1991 (it even made Mr. Doggett's Suggested Summer Reading List for Students) and this book is every bit as good.

Whether he's detailing the history of the county, the river and his own family or relating his encounters with the river's unique residents or describing the wildlife he encounters, Burroughs has a sharp eye, a sympathetic ear and a silver tongue. Here is his description of one bird he meets:

Yesterday a red-shouldered hawk had called the day to order, and got its business underway. Today it was a pileated woodpecker: a staccato drum-burst against a hollow tree, then the bird itself. It flew across in front of me, with its peculiar alternation of flap, swoop, and collapse, and its last swoop fetched it up against the trunk of a cypress. It clung there a moment, cocked and primed, a perfectly congruous mixture of Woody Woodpecker, frock-coated nineteenth-century deacon and pterodactyl. Then it gave the tree an abrupt, jackhammer strafing, rolled out its lordly call, and swooped away, leaving the day to its own devices.

If you've ever seen one, you know that a pileated woodpecker has never been described better and if you haven't you must almost feel that now you have.

This is a wonderful bucolic look at the history and nature of the Waccamaw, which will leave you wishing that you too had such a place coursing through your blood.

GRADE: A

A good read for a complete novice on the world of Wall Street and corporate America. We benefit from the indepth research of the authors, clearly close to their subject, and, from their good journalism, as they know how to tell a story without losing the layman. My subtitle for the book would be 'all I ever needed to know about LBOs' -- the RJR Nabisco buyout is an excellent case study. There's little too much extraneous detail on the characters -- it's distracting -- but perhaps that's an effort to give them some depth. Indeed, it's a pity that many of the main protagonists are so reprehensible -- I found it hard to empathise with any of the characters. And the story does leave the reader with a sense of disillusion on two points: the sheer waste of money and resources squandered for the sake of egos; and clearly, contacts (especially amongst the 'jocks') are as, if not more, important than diligence, competance or intelligence

For starters I would like to say that I saw the movie of the same title (several times - but I like James Garner) before I read the book. The movie is a comedy which successfully captures the spirit of this book, but this book is not a comedy.

The authors do an excellent job of developing the characters by telling how they rose to their respective positions at this focal point, and telling the story as it unfolds.

It is like all of the worst traits of humanity - greed, ego, pride, vanity, a hunger for power and conquest and victory - are played out in this true story of the LBO (Leveraged BuyOut) of RJR Nabisco. Companies being tossed around like commodities, while the little guy who works hard to make a living suffers.

This is the only book I have read on this subject to date. Some of the other reviewers have suggested other titles, and many of them are probably worth reading as well.

Five stars.

This book is a description of the largest leveraged-buy out of the 80's. The book covers the management buy out of RJR and all the financial moves that took place to get it done. It covers the winners and losers and the tactics they used. The authors are investigative reports so they have the ability to provide the reader with a very well constructed and easy to understand story. They really bring the reader into the negotiations and all the high pressure and tension is coved to the reader. The most fun was when the authors took to describing all the financial players involved, their egos and ways of life and doing business. The excesses of some of the companies detailed are really something.
If you are interested in this topic then I would suggest you also read "Den of Thieves" and "Predator's Ball", both of which cover the 80's M&A and Junk Bond world. To get a better understanding of KKR, I would suggest "Masters of Debit" and if you are looking for more info on this particular deal I would suggest "True Greed".

What happens when business people start to act like 5 year olds at the playground - I'm taking my ball and going home. This is a great story about the desire of American Express to move into the world of private banking and the bank they tried to by - Republic Bank run by Mr. Saffra. Not only does the book provide us this weird story but also it gives the reader a great back ground on these two companies - the American Express information was very interesting. The story of the two companies coming together and then having a lovers spat is just darn interesting and a little tabloid TV. The book keeps your interest and is a nice little find if you pick it up.

Burrough's fabulous research is rarely matched, the marvelous style is consistent with his previous work on 'Barbarians at The Gate'. Few business authors will thrill you as much as Burroughs or James B. Stewart.

The story of how the custodian (Jim Robinson) of one the worlds most recognized names, American Express launched a defamation campaign against a Swiss banker (Edmond Safra). Their efforts would've succeeded if they didn't rely upon an eccentric master of PR (Harry Freeman), a neurotic conspiracy theorist (Susan Cantor) and what could only be described as weasel of a man (Tony Greco)to execute it all.

The portrayal of Safra as an innocent is a bit misleading. Admittedly he took advantage of his post holocaust Jewish peers by purchasing their gold for obscenely below market prices to resell at market prices. In addition, Safra isn't without blame in American Express's paranoia that he would exercise unscrupolous tactics himself.

Read the book to find out why.

I am a fan of the authors writing in general. If you're a person who enjoys reading stories in the Wall Street Journal etc then this book may very well be for you (the author works at WSJ).

This is a fascinating story of international intrigue and business. The author provides historical background for both AmEx and Mr Saffra and then proceeds into the meat of the story.

What's interesting here is that the Vendetta alluded to in the title raises some serious ethical questions on the part of some folks. All I'll say is as you read it do a name search on the web and see where some of them are today, it's not the poor house and it's not jail either.

The book exposes high finance, high power, bare knuckled business street fighting taken to an internation stage.

Brian Burrough's DRAGONFLY covers the entire "Phase One" program to put NASA astronauts aboard the Russian space station Mir in the mid 1990s. The project was fraught with problems and near-disasters, and it is an example of how not to conduct an international space partnership, or any other project, for that matter.

The book is well researched, and Burrough is not afraid to delve into the dark waters of NASA's bureaucracy to round out the story. He dug deep to interview many of the significant figures of the book, including the likes of astronaut Jerry Linenger, Phase One director Frank Culbertson, NASA administrator Dan Goldin, and NASA's Johnson Space Center director George Abbey. Almost no one comes off unsoiled, and yet the author treats each subject fairly. Burrough makes extensive use of American and Russian flight transcripts, and he takes care to document the stressful lives of Russian cosmonauts, who are severely overworked and underappreciated. The author's narrative and reconstructed dialogue are well written, and he always allows the story and the people, rather than commentaries, to propel the book. I think Burrough achieves a good balance in presenting the material, which must have been difficult given the myriad personalities and politics involved.

However, I was disappointed in the choppy layout of DRAGONFLY's major sections. Burrough takes a hundred pages to outline the beginnings of Phase One and its troubles from 1992 to 1997 ... the problem is, this critical background is actually Part Two, and it appears in the middle of the book, which interrupts the tumultuous events of 1997. By that point, this section does the reader little good, because we are already up to our ears in Phase One's trials and tribulations. As I was reading, I couldn't help but ask myself repeatedly, "Why am I reading this now?" Phase One's dysfunctional operation in Russia and its harried, undersupported astronauts Shannon Lucid, Bonnie Dunbar and Norm Thagard provide an ominous prologue to later events. But Burrough's failure to present these stories at the book's outset only serves to downplay their significance while disrupting the natural line of the story, and that's a shame.

Fortunately, that's the only significant criticism this book deserves from an outsider. DRAGONFLY is a landmark space history book by an author who has certainly done his legwork. Future space projects can learn a lot from Phase One's missteps, and DRAGONFLY provides a full accounting of those events. This illuminates the space business like no other account before it, and I think space history is better off because of it.

(My last comment goes to the publishers at Harper Perennial: Whoever decided to display a 1965-era photo of a Gemini spacewalker on the cover of this trade paperback set in the late 1990s ought to be fired for incompetence. I might as well write a book about the Persian Gulf War and put Audie Murphy on the cover.)

This book documents the middle of the MIR/NASA joint program. Lots of detail. Highly critical of NASA politics and management. The author has interviewed many of the people involved and gained access to a great many documents. The non-chronological ordering makes the reading unnecessarily difficult.

The picture provided is of a joint venture that was primarily politically motivated with scientific research, and even crew, as after thoughts. It is implied that NASA learned little from the experience because they weren't watching closely. Which is too bad if true because what can be learned is the importance of attention to minute detail and extensive planning.

The dramatic discription of the various accidents on MIR makes exciting reading. The view given of political manipulation in NASA's management and the bitter and acrimonious personal conflicts are disturbing (but interesting to read).

The insight into political chicanery in NASA management is alarming for the space program if accurately portrayed.

What sets "Dragonfly" off from so many other books about space exploration is that the author understands that technology, unlike space, does not exist in a vaccuum. Like few other authors on the subject, Burrough realizes that complex technical systems, like Mir, interact with the variables of human personality, cultural background of the astronauts/cosmonauts, and indeed, the 'culture' which imbues organizations like Nasa and Energia.

This book is totally absorbing, and I agree completely with the comment that it makes the reader feel, at times, as though he or she is actually aboard the Mir. In fact,"Dragonfly" should be required reading for ALL personnel who will be involved with the International Space Station. The author is right on target when he predicts that such a project will experience inevitable crises, and that how these are responded to will depend as much upon *human* as technological understanding.

Finally, I must put in the supportive words for cosmonauts Tsibliyev and Lazutkin. These cosomonauts were heroes, facing and overcoming difficulties much greater than those encountered by Glenn and Gagarin. They deserved far better treatment upon return from Mir than being blamed for circumstances beyond their control. This book shows how much courage and ingenuity these men really had -- and that their safe return to earth and the saving of the Mir was due to their brave efforts. After reading "Dragonfly," I have the deepest respect for the leadership of Tsibliyev and Lazutkin. I hope they are given a chance to go to the new ISS -- their experience would be invaluable!

This book pertains to the bidding maneuvers by the junk bond brokers that led to the fall of the RJR-Nabisco conglomerate. The book builds up on the histories of both RJR and Nabisco from their beginnings, their union and later the stock buy out. I enjoyed the first part about the stories of both companies and how they got built. I did not enjoy towards the end the increasing profusion of names of junk bond traders and other companies that made everything suddenly hard to keep track of. In the end, about half of the time the book focuses on the bids and counter bids and building up on 'suspense' on who is going to get the final bidding. This might have been more interesting in the 80's but nowadays, it may be too long.