Yet another great volume from Brian L Davis. Intelligently-written well-documented text, along with the usual high-quality photographs and illustrations we expect from Mr. Davis provide an excellent sourcebook for military collectors, military historians, or anyone interested in 20th century history.

After several years of reviewing management books and observing live education sessions for managers, I found this book. It is a great reference; distilling useful information that is usually only found in small doses in other books and classes. It also contains a bibliography of other useful books at the end of each chapter.

I enjoyed every part of this book and I highly recommend it. It's easy to read and covers all the relevant areas of management. Very impressed with the breadth of topics.

Also recommend a companion book for this, which focuses on leadership and management as an ensemble: "The Leader's Guide: 15 Essential Skills."

With a thorough examination of the issues a business faces, this book is as close as it comes to distilling a complete MBA degree into a single useful book.

The book breaks the critical areas of business into four basic areas: Thought Leadership, Results Leadership, People Leadership, and Self Leadership. In addition it breaks down those four areas into nine core factors that determine business success. These core factors include Strategy, Judgment, Business Knowledge, Planning and Execution, Motivation and Courage, Leadership, Interpersonal, Communication, and Self-Management.

The organization of the information was logical and useful. Some of the subjects covered include Strategic Advantage, Customer Loyalty, Sound Judgment, Thinking Strategically, Applying Expertise, Managing Technology, Planning, Managing Change, Influence, Coaching and Developing Others, Building Relationships, Managing Conflict and many, many others.

This is by far the most thorough and useful single reference book on managing that I have ever come across. For ease of use it can't be beat with each section having it's own introduction and a list of the most valuable tips in that section. Then to make it even more useful, at the end of the book is a listing of resources by chapter. These resources include available books and seminars that relate directly to the items in that chapter.

If you are involved in business management pick up a copy of this book and keep it close at hand you will find yourself referring to it often.

What an excellent read. "The Leaders" is just another addition to this wonderful trilogy (The Legacies, The Leaders, The Battles) Try to read these three great books. "The Leaders" offers refreshing insights into many great characters of the period.

As a Civil War buff, I was pleasantly surprised at how much depth is covered in these short, biographical chapters. I know quite a bit about many of the leaders included in the volume and I did not find any glaring errors or oversimplifications. Each chapter has a team of writers and the editors did an excellent job of melding their contributions into a coherent, readible finished product. In short chapters, the writers and editors did a remarkable job in capturing the characters of their subjects. Furthermore, the book casts judgment on the success of characters such as Jefferson Davis and Georgwe McClellan. I like the fact that it takes a position and, in my opinion, these positions are fairly arrived at. For example, the editors unequivocally declare McClellan to be a failure. In a short chapter, they support their conclusions well. Indeed, they did a great job in seeking the answers to what made McClellan tick. The writing is lucid, the illustrations and captions are illuminating and the conclusions drawn are interesting. I enjoyed this book wholeheartedly.

This book is an excellent resource for both the amateur and professional Civil War historian. This book provides the key facts with some insight into the lives of some of the main figures of the American Civil War. As a professional Civil War Historian it can be admitted at times that there are certain things that we all forget and this book makes it a lot easier to refer to than trying to page through a 1000 page biography. This book is a very good refresher and is extremely easy to read and understand. I also like the choice of photogrpahs that are used throughout the book. These are some of the more famous photographs taken and in this sense it provides a good introduction for the amateur Civil War Historian. I recommend this book as a must for any Civil War library. This along with the other two books in the series are a must for every Civil War Historian regardless to the degree of study of that individual.

You have to really enjoy this subject to find value in this book. Overall the author did a good job, although I would have liked to have more background on some of the topics. I have found the book to be a good guide while visiting WW 2 museums that have uniform collections.

Very thorough, very detailed, plenty of pictures. Indispensible if you are more than casually interested in the subject.

I found the text well written and learned a lot that I had only guessed about previously--and was way off base. Several chapters deviate from the broadcast episodes, but they seem to benefit in doing so. (A few of these topics were never even broadcast by A&E and I haven't seen them on the History Channel either.) Some of the photos I had not seen before, and the Confederate flags on pages 340 and 341 (but did we need the lyrics to the "Bonnie Blue Flag"?) and the African-American regimentals on pages 346 and 347 are very special. My pet peeve about this book and its companion volumes is that some of the interesting photos are reproduced too small to appreciate. Others are too big. In this book, much more than the other two, the pages look like they've been thrown together carelessly. Ovals are thoughtlessly reproduced in rectangular boxes when they should have been reproduced as ovals. Some things are silhouetted beautifully, but a few that should have been handled that way are just pitched onto the page. Somebody needs a lesson in perspective. In general, this book looks "sloppy" compared to the first two in this series. In too many chapters these illustrations jump around as if no one knew what to do with them. For instance, in the Alexander Gardner chapter, the text just stops for a bunch of photos and then resumes with nothing to indicate what's going on. And the artillery and prison camp chapters look like alphabet soup. Apart from the illustrations themselves, in way too many instances the captions just repeat the text whereas most of the descriptions in the other two volumes had some neat information not in the text. I recommend the book for the text anyway--don't judge it by the weird arrangement of the photos and the mundane captions.

This is an excellent read. This book takes you to places and things that you may not have read much about. Any serious Civil War reader needs this in his library.

A very interesting reference book, however I would not recomend it to the reader who is more interested in the battles or leaders in the war. The book touched on a lower level not often heard about the Civil War, such as women in the war, slaves, trains in the war, and photogriphers in the war. I for one am not to interested in these topics but still found the book very readable. It is a fine conclusion to the other two books in the History Channels three volume set.

This is an okay book. I don't know why this is a separate book from "Badges and Insignias of the Third Reich." I didn't like the format. I was disappointed.

This book is pretty useful for all those interested on German militaria and that want to reproduce or customize German World War II uniforms. The second section of the book explains the uniforms depicted.

None one book can be the be-all end-all on any subject. However Brian Leigh Davis and Pierre turner did a good job of narrowing this down to just German uniforms between 1933 and 1945.They do a good job of describing the person that would be warring the uniform. This book describes 240 uniforms and has a Chart of Comparative Ranks at the end.

I "I Smell Honey..." is a tasty treat of color, rhyme and familial togetherness. A favorite of my two year old, she never tires of hearing this beautifully written story of cooking a "feast" with mom; full of colorful food groups. Your five senses will be tantalized by a preparation of catfish, beans, collard greens and--who can resist sweet potato pie?! A cultural must read! My only criticism lies in the illustrations. Though vivid in color, the people pictured were a bit visually stilted.

Brian Dirck's new book on the U.S. and C.S. presidents establishes a surprising amount of continuity in American political thinking between the ratification contest of the late 1780s and the sectional conflict of the 1850s and 1860s. In doing so, it goes a long way to tie together the American Revolution and the Civil War.

In 1787, advocates of ratification of the federal constitution argued that without it, they Union would dissolve. Their vision of American Union was, as Dirck puts it (I paraphrase here), one of impersonal association, a community of strangers. Their opponents, the Antifederalists/Republicans, doubted that the Federalists' apocalyptic rhetoric accurately described reality, because the Antifederalists could not imagine that mere breakdown of the Articles of Confederation would destroy the America they knew in their hearts. They were at times downright blase' about the problems the Federalists perceived in the 1780s because of their sanguine faith in American nationality.

As Dirck shows, Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis had essentially the same understandings of America: Lincoln, the Federalist, and Davis, the Antifederalist. It makes for a very engaging argument, and one that will be of great use for undergraduate teaching.

The only shortcomings of the book come at the very end, where Dirck says that Davis laid the ground for the idea that blacks were depraved and inferior by depicting the Yankees (that is, northern whites) that way. (p. 239) I for one find it unconvincing that anti-black sentiment had its origins in anti-white propaganda. Secondly, he says that Davis' statement that the United States had set upon a policy in which "no quarter is to be given and no sex to be spared" had an innovative "sexual" undertone. (pp. 238-39) Yet, Davis' claim certainly was not innovative, but was a paraphrase of a claim Thomas Jefferson had made about the British king in the Declaration of Independence (Jefferson claimed that George had sicced the Indians, whose rule of war knew no discrimination of age or sex, upon the Americans). These are minor objections, however, and the book certainly repays a careful perusal.

My son received this book as a first birthday present. We read it at the party and it became his absolute favorite right then and there. If you have a child who is musically inclined or even if you just want a book that can link you and your child with your African heritage without being dogmatic and boring, this is the book for you. But beware! The rhyme is so catchy, you'll have to read it at least 6 times per sitting! Oh yeah, and you'll probably want to go out and get a shekere yourself...

I read Silent Thunder. I thought it was a great book. Because you can learn about war and how most slaves got free. I think everyone who wants to learn about slaves and how to people got free. This book is based on a real story about a boy that is around 13 and an unidentified girl. I recommend it to kids around the age of 10 to 14.I think others that like civil war stories then take a peek or you should read it if you want a great and interesting book about action, thrill and sadness. If you want all of that stuff then you should read this great book.

This story tells about a brother and sister growing up during the time of the civil war. Read this book to see life from a slave childs perspective during war.

Searching for a book in my school's library. I did what anyone kid would do randomly picked a book of the shelf. It wasn't like what I thought it would be. I felt like I was in the book. I love how Andrea Davis portrays the characters, it really does make them seem real. The author really did her job on researching the facts for this book. She gave the characters such vivid description I felt like I knew them. It was creatively written. It was definetely a book I couldn't put down!