Related Subjects: Author Index Reviews Page 1 2
Book reviews for "Cafferky,_Michael_Edwin" sorted by average review score:

Son Thang: An American War Crime
Published in Hardcover by United States Naval Inst. (1997)
Authors: Gary D. Solis and Edwin H. Simmons
Amazon base price: $32.95
Used price: $6.98
Buy one from zShops for: $26.32
Average review score:

[A Review]
I Just got through reading the book for the second time,and it
was just as good to me the second time as the first.
I will never understand the disparagey in the verdicts.To me the one that was most guilty got off scott free, while the least
guilyy got the worst punishment.That militarry justicefor you though.

Justice in the Field
"Son Thang" is both an important work of legal scholarship and a compelling, well-written story. Col. Solis documents, step by step, exactly how the Marine Corps treated its own suspected of war crimes in Vietnam-they were quickly tried, and if convicted, imprisoned. There were no coverups and no excuses. Marines accused of killing non-combatants were swiftly brought to book and the chips allowed to fall where they may. Here, it appears that several of the Marine Corps prosecutors were out-lawyered by civilian attorneys. That doesn't matter; a trial is, after all, a contest. What matters is that the Marine Corps had-and has always had and will always have-the will to try those accused of atrocities.

rayjoy@iap.net
A very interesting book.The author was not afraid to put the blame where it belonged. I wonder how many more such incidents happened in the time we were in Nam.As a Nam vet I know to well what it was like to be in a situation where you are damned if you do and damned if you don't. Hind sight is always 20 - 20,but sometimes our boys were put in a situation like that and were killed if they didn't take the nescesary steps. I am not condoning any senseless killing, but when it is kill or be killed you do what you have to do.


First on the Moon: A Voyage With Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins [And] Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr.
Published in Hardcover by Little Brown & Company (1970)
Authors: Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin E. Aldrin Jr.
Amazon base price: $11.95
Used price: $10.49
Collectible price: $15.00
Average review score:

An inspiring read
I've borrowed and read this book over and over again during my undergrad years which copy I think was a rare first edition of it. The book really was one of its kind in describing moon landing from the eyes of the people who live it. Read and be inspired.

First On Moon--by far is best non-fiction space book
i'VE JUST FINISHED READING THIS BOOK FOR THE 100TH TIME, SINCE PURCHASING IT 10 YEARS AGO! Ihave always wanted to meet these men [Apollo 11] and this book helps me to know more --especially about Neil Armstrong! When I wrote Neil Armstrong back in 1987, he suggested this as the main book to read from the three Apollo 11 astros. Tells about their lives, the training, how being an astronaut affected them and personal lives, all leading upto, and to splashdown! This book deserves a 10 plus star rating! I'll probably read it another 100 times!

AWESOME!!
This book is one of the most intriguing books on the Apollo 11 missions i have ever read, and i HIGHLY recommend it to anyone interested in the Apollo 11 mission


You Can Do It: How to Boost Your Child's Achievement in School
Published in Paperback by Warner Books (1997)
Author: Michael Edwin Bernard
Amazon base price: $10.39
List price: $12.99 (that's 20% off!)
Used price: $1.45
Collectible price: $6.35
Average review score:

You can do it! How to boost your child's achievement in scho
This book gives simple, straight forward ideas from both a professional point of view, as well as the point of view of various children. It provides excellent motivation techniques, as well as warns of common distractions, and influences that deter children from success. It has inspired me to do better for my children, in hopes of them achieving great goals. The simple but thought provoking worksheets inside are wonderful tools to assist both parent and child! A must read for all parents, educators, and even for children!


Will Work For Peace: New Political Poems
Published in Paperback by Zeropanik Press ()
Authors: Brett Axel, Sherman Alexie, Marge Piercy, Carolyn Kizer, Martin Espada, Diane di Prima, W. D. Snodgrass, Bob Holman, Peter Viereck, and Leslea Newman
Amazon base price: $13.50
Used price: $21.00
Buy one from zShops for: $25.00
Average review score:

Will Work for Peace is a triumph of poetic Davids.
As one of the poets featured in Will Work for Peace, one might expect me to be a bit biased, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Most poets work in a virtual vacuum, only tenuously connected to each other by the occasional workshop or shared membership in a 'poetry society'. When Brett Axel first approached me for a submission to an anthology he was considering, the names Marge Piercy, Lyn Lifshin, Moshe Bennaroch and so many others were abstractions to me as a fledgling poet. I knew these tremendous writers were 'out there' somewhere, beating down doors with their words and keeping a struggling artform alive. But to think that someday I would ever share a credit with these dynamic modern poets would be a pipe dream at best. It is through the sincere efforts of Brett Axel that many newer voices like mine have an extraordinary opportunity to appear with Pulitzer Prize winners and other poetic heavyweights. By way of an honest review, however, I will say this- not everything in this book will be to your particular liking. I myself came across some works that did not move me in the way the author may have intended. Some imagery can be raw and visceral, using shock value in place of craft at times. But to ignore those voices would be an even more shocking turn of events, so praise be to the editor for not sacrificing his vision to a senseless conformity. As Pete Seeger so aptly put it in his quote, trying to read all these poems at one time would be like trying 'to swallow Manhattan whole'. I say to you- buy this book, read this book, but understand that it's what you do after reading this book that will ultimately define who you could be. Poetry is alive and well, and lives in the blunt pages of Will Work for Peace.

Thumbs Up
Just amazing start to finish! I like the disregard for fame used in putting the book together. That great poems got in even if they were writtenby nobodys. Look at Roger Bonair-Agard's poem on page 74. Shortly after Will Work For Peace came out he won Slam Nationals, becoming Slam Champion of 1999, which will be getting him lots of offers. But Zeropanik Press didn't need to be told he was good by an award. They could tell by his writing! Good for them and good for all of us because Will Work For Peace is a literary milestone. It's a new standard for all future anthology editors to try to live up to. Thumbs up to Brett Axel and Thumbs up to Zeropanik Press for their guts and integrty.

You have to read this book!
Brett Axel visited my Church and I bought a copy of Will Work For Peace from him, not for poetry, but because I care about working for peace. I started reading through it thinking It'd just go on my shelf and that'd be the end of it, but the book grabbed me and kept me rivited. If I had known that poetry was this alive I'd have been into poetry. I've been reading some of the poems to my friends who also didn't think poetry was important and they are saying the same thing. Fantastic! There's no way to get through this book without having your old mindsets challenged. It's funny, powerful, sad, and uplifting. A book that deserves to be read by everyone. A book that really can make the world a better place!


Oxford French Dictionary
Published in Library Binding by Bt Bound (1999)
Authors: Michael Janes, Edwin Carpenter, and Dora Carpenter
Amazon base price: $13.85
Used price: $11.63
Buy one from zShops for: $11.63
Average review score:

An Average Dictionary
I've just started to learn French, and I picked up this dictionary before classes started because it was cheap and I figured I would need something to get started.

This dictionary does a pretty good job for the money. The verb tables could have been fleshed out a bit more, as there isn't many conjugations at all to rely on. Also, the instructor I have is big on phonetics, and many times this dictionary has had inaccurate or missing phonetic characters. Still, the scope of the dictionary is good, and it does give plenty of words to help somebody get through some French translation or sentence construction. It even includes a few short phrases in many of the word definitions, which always helps. It wasn't long before I picked up a huge Larousse dictionary, and I would recommend upgrading quickly for anyone interested in pursuing French past a basic level.

The Oxford French Dictionary is a Great Help
I got this dictionary to help me with some translations that I needed to make. Language studies is a hobby of mine and French for me was a great place to start. I have some friends from France and my aunt speaks the language fluently. Plus I'll be taking French as a high school course. So I got this dictionary and it was a great help for me and our foreign-exchange student. It contains pronunciations for the words both English and French. If you know how to use it, this is a great help with your basic French.


Clinical Applications of Rational Emotive Therapy
Published in Hardcover by Plenum Pub Corp (1985)
Authors: Albert Ellis, M.E. Bernhard, and Michael Edwin Bernard
Amazon base price: $104.00
Used price: $12.49
Average review score:

topic-focused help for cognitive interventions
Although no photographs by Ellis are provided, this book is helpful for therapists who are familiar with RET or at least cognitive therapy. It touches on many therapeutic topics, basically providing the handful of irrational beliefs that are likely to be encountered in each problem area. Of course, these are always variants on basic irrational beliefs or faulty thinking, but the book is helpful guidance for eliciting and working to change these irrational beliefs. The range of topics is the real value in this book: super-romantic love/obsessive love/jealousy, divorce, healthy lifestyle, substance abuse, excessive religiously-based concern with sin and guilt, and death.


Colbert's Evolution of the Vertebrates: A History of the Backboned Animals Through Time
Published in Hardcover by Wiley-Liss (15 December, 2001)
Authors: Edwin H. Colbert, Michael Morales, and Eli C. Minkoff
Amazon base price: $155.00
Used price: $85.25
Buy one from zShops for: $122.76
Average review score:

Badly dated--should not have been published
I knew and liked Ned Colbert, and loved the early editions of this once-classic book. He passed away on November 15, 2001, shortly after this edition appeared, so it makes it even more difficult to be honest and frank. But it is necessary, since this is a clear case of a publisher trying to push an outdated, badly conceived project on the market, and few but professional vertebrate paleontologists will realize how problematic this book has become.
In its first edition (written in 1955), Colbert's Evolution of the Vertebrates was an excellent non-technical review of vertebrate evolution as it was known almost 50 years ago. The second (1969) edition and third (1980) edition began to become more and more outdated, since Colbert retired in the 1960s, and became less and less connected to the latest developments (both in discoveries and in philosophy) that had occurred in vertebrate paleontology. By the time of the fourth edition (published in 1991), the publisher brought in Mike Morales as a younger co-author, but it made no difference-the book was badly out of date in both its approach and its facts. Most of us hoped that this would be its last edition, since there was little that could be done to salvage it. But in this edition, they have added a third author, Eli Minkoff, a biologist who is not a vertebrate paleontologist and who clearly has not kept up with the important developments that have occurred in the past decades. Consequently, the book is full of errors of both omission and commission in every chapter, and should not have been published, let alone used by anyone to teach a modern course in fossil vertebrates.
The problems are so numerous that I cannot list them all in a brief review, but I will mention a few of the more important ones here. It starts with the authors' ambivalence toward the cladistic revolution, which in the past 20 years has completely transformed the way we think about fossil vertebrates. In places, they attempt to be current by paying lip-service to cladograms, but their fundamentally old-fashioned philosophy is unchanged everywhere else. On page 16, they mention (but never explain) cladistics in one brief paragraph, and then throughout the book they place Colbert's 50-year-old diagrams (with no resolution of phylogenetic relationships) side-by-side with a cladogram of some of the same taxa-or use one of the outdated diagrams with no attempt to show more recent hypotheses at all. Again and again, they make anachronistic statements suggesting that we can't know anything about phylogeny because of a lack of a suitable ancestor, or statements like "no clear indication of relationships among gnathostomous fishes can be determined from their stratigraphic order of occurrence in the rocks" (p. 48)-as if it ever could in a group with such a poor fossil record!
Certainly, they have a right to disagree with the prevailing philosophy in their profession if they so choose, although they end up painting a very unrepresentative and inaccurate picture of what we have learned as a consequence. Even more disturbing is the clear evidence that none of the authors keep up with the new discoveries made in past 20 years. Certainly, I haven't seen any of them at the meetings of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology during that time, and apparently they don't read the journals, either. It is jarring to read, page after page, statements, ideas, or taxonomic concepts that have become grossly outdated, and should have disappeared long ago. Among the numerous examples are: the discredited notion that jaws are derived from gill arches (p. 38); Romer's idea that tetrapods left the water to escape drying pools, or chase prey, when all the recent discoveries of Acanthostega show that the tetrapod limb appeared in fully aquatic animals long before there was any need to crawl out on land (p. 85); the idea that anthracosaurs like Seymouria had anything to do with amniote origins, when recent discoveries like Westlothiana (not even mentioned in this book) have shifted the focus elsewhere (p. 105); the failure to note (p. 154) that the latest fossils show that snakes are descended from mosasaurs; a grossly antiquated approach to Mesozoic mammals and their relationships in Chapter 19, with almost no mention of the last decade of amazing discoveries; a carnivore "phylogeny" (p. 379) that treats "Fissipedia" as a natural group, and fails to show that pinnipeds are clearly descended from bears, not from the carnivoran stem; no mention (p. 394) of Ambulocetus and all the other recent spectacular transitional whale discoveries (all published long before this book went to press); the outdated notion (p. 428) that protoceratids are related to tragulids, rather than camels; the idea that perissodactyls have anything to do with phenacodonts (p. 452), instead of the recent discoveries of Chinese taxa like Radinskya, which point in a whole new direction; the outdated idea (p. 467) that brontotheres survived the Eocene (thanks to revisions of the time scale completed a decade ago), or that chalicotheres dug up roots (p. 469) with their peculiar claws (debunked by Coombs 20 years ago); the complete failure to mention (p. 480) all the new primitive elephants like Numidotherium and Phosphatherium, which push proboscideans back to the Paleocene of North Africa. The list could go on and on, but these are among the more glaring examples of a failure to recognize or incorporate any of the past 20 years of discoveries.
Equally jarring is the repeated use of taxa that were manifestly unnatural even in 1955, and have not been used by vertebrate paleontologists in many years. The examples are too numerous to mention, but it feels like going through a time warp to read about "chondrosteans," "holosteans," "labyrinthodonts," "thecodonts," "Prototheria," "eupantotheres," "condylarths," "palaeodonts," as if anyone still practicing vertebrate paleontology took those taxa seriously. Symptomatic of this problem is the use of the archaic term "mammal-like reptiles," a misnomer that reflects several serious misconceptions. Synapsids (the "mammal-like reptiles") and the true reptiles are two distinct lineages that originated separately and simultaneously in the mid-Carboniferous, so synapsids have never been members of, or descended from reptiles (in even the broadest sense of the word). Call them "protomammals" if you will-but they are not, and have never been, reptiles!
These problems might not matter if this were just a trade book intended for the popular audience, who might not care if it is accurate or up-to-date in every detail. But I know of several institutions where paleontologists (not vertebrate paleontologists) still use this book to teach classes in vertebrate evolution, completely unaware of how grossly outdated this book had become. Nor is it the only choice on the market written at this level. Michael Benton's Vertebrate Paleontology (2nd edition, 2000, Blackwell) is fully up-to-date and much more affordable (especially since Wiley is charging $145 for this book!). Clearly, the editors at Wiley-Liss are trying to extend their franchise long beyond its useful life, and instead of consulting with qualified vertebrate paleontologists who could have made the book up-to-date, they foisted this sad shadow of a former classic on the unsuspecting profession ...

Clear and Insightful
"The book points out very cleary the climatic and geological conditions, and environment that allowed the various taxa of vertebrates to evolve and thrive. The clarity and insightfulness of the authors are highly recommended." --W.H. Tam, University of Western Ontario

Great Book!
"Eminently readable and lavishly illustrated (with Lois Darling's classic drawings of reconstructed species plus up-to-date cladograms), Colbert's Evolution of the Vertebrates is the perfect book for students of vertebrate paleontology. Unlike encyclopedic reference texts which are full of confusing jargon, this is a book that can be read by the non-specialist. Colbert tells--and shows--the fascinating story of vertebrate evolution and diversity, with all of the major groups represented. With thorough yet uncluttered text and well-chosen figures, with complete coverage of paleoecology, stratigraphy, and taphonomy, this book is perfect for anyone who wishes to learn more about our "extended" family tree." --Alexander J. Werth, Ph.D., Hampden-Sydney College


The Oxford Color French Dictionary: French-English English-French = Francais-Anglais Anglais-Francais
Published in Paperback by Oxford University Press (1996)
Authors: Michael Janes, Dora Carpenter, Edwin Carpenter, and Dora Latiri-Carpenter
Amazon base price: $7.95
Used price: $1.69
Average review score:

A decent book, but lacking in some areas
I thought this book was pretty good if you have a good understanding of the french language, otherwise it does not tell the correct usage of words and can get rather confusing.


Alamance: The Holt Family and Industrialization in a North Carolina County, 1837-1900
Published in Hardcover by Louisiana State University Press (2000)
Author: Bess Beatty
Amazon base price: $47.50
Used price: $30.00
Collectible price: $26.47
Average review score:
No reviews found.

American Potters: Mary and Edwin Scheier
Published in Paperback by University of Washington Press (1994)
Authors: Michael K. Komanecky and Arizona State University
Amazon base price: $29.95
Used price: $158.75
Average review score:
No reviews found.

Related Subjects: Author Index Reviews Page 1 2

Reviews are from readers at Amazon.com. To add a review, follow the Amazon buy link above.