The exploits of the Black Sheep Squadron may have dimmed in popular memory in recent times, especially outside the US. This is the story of their most famous pilot, Pappy Boyington, beginning with his stint with the Flying Tigers in China and ending with his capture by the Japanese in the latter stages of World War II.
Boyington's prose is prosaic to say the least, however at least it seems to be his own words, unpolished by the editor or ghostwriter. Predictable hell-raising type antics involving booze and fighting are plentiful, the questionable veracity of some of the particular facts is probably unimportant if you take it for granted that in general Boyington was an outstanding pilot, had problems with authority etc.
The best part for me was the description of his time in captivity, especially his relationship with an elderly Japanese lady. These passages I think raise the book up a level, as he displays remarkable insight and personal development. There's a genuine character arc here. Hollywood executives take note, it could be time to revisit this particular story. The Godfather was fashioned out of original pulp material, I think equally this book is worth more than the sum of its parts.

I found this book to be a fascinating historical look at the Pacific theater during World War II from the eyes of a marine combat pilot who experienced it first hand. Boyington was indeed in the thick of it during the war, and to his credit he shot down 28 Japanese planes during his time in combat. Once in a single mission, he shot down five planes over Japanese territory. This book is an auto-biography of his time before, during and after the war. It is quite an interesting read. I enjoyed the pilot's viewpoint this book carries from the cockpit of a Corsair during combat. Boyington was an incredibly adept pilot and taught the other pilots in his famous 'Black Sheep Squadron' how to beat the Japanese in air combat. Boyington describes first hand aerial dogfights over the Pacific Islands that comprised well over 100 planes at a time with the skies glowing like fire flies filled with tracer fire, a truly remarkable period in aerial combat history. He portrays his experiences as a pilot and later as a 'Special Captive' instead of a prisoner of war, with finesse so as not to make it too heavy of a read, but it leaves the reader with a deep respect for the American service man. During his time in a Japanese prison of war camp, his courage was undaunted and he emerged as a true American hero receiving national recognition after the war was over having won the Navy Cross and the Congressional Medal of Honor. This book is relayed by the author in a first person narrative, and is a sincere and down to earth account of his experiences. It is very interesting and enjoyable.

Boyington's autobiography "Baa Baa Black Sheep" is, in my opinion, the best WWII fighter pilot autobiography available -- and I'll tell you why.

Calling this book the 'best' is not something I say haphazardly or without reason. I've read a number of other WWII fighter pilot autobiographies including: Yeager, Forever Flying, Thunderbolt!, First and Last, and View from the Cockpit. Boyington's book is as good as these books on their terms, and offers a good deal more.

First, Boyington projects an openness and humility not found in the other books. But even more importantly, Boyington's character exhibits incredible growth.

The book starts with his joining the American Volunteer Group, knows by the acronym AVG, and even better known as the Flying Tigers. At this point, Boyington is essentially a mercenary. And the appeal of this section is the insight on Chennault, China, and the P40 Warhawks.

The next section of the book is his time with VMF 214 flying F4U Corsairs in "The Slot" near Guadacanal. This section of the book is interesting in it's comparison to the TV show. This is the section of the book that most people know Boyington for, and buy the book for. And if this is you, then you will not be disappointed. For this section has all the air combat, pranks, and drunken revelry that you expect. But it is also interesting that Boyington's character begins to change....in ways that I'll leave for you to interpret.

The next section of the book is his time as a POW in Japan. This section is interesting in it's content. But I was completely amazed at Boyington's growth, maturity, and lack of hatred or generalizations of the Japanse people. It is also the section where he is not drinking, and he attains an almost spiritual maturity that took me by suprise.

The final section deals again with his drinking problems, and recovery. By this time, his drinking antics have any frat-house appeal, and he realizes his drinking for what it is.

Like I said, I've read a number of WWII fighter-pilot autobiographies, and I think this is the best of the genre.

This work is a collection of important interpretive essays about antebellum reform. It includes the brilliant C. S. Griffin's original "Religious Benevolence as Social Control," written while he was still a graduate student and first published in 1957. This essay, as well as his THEIR BROTHERS' KEEPERS (published a few years later), shaped the historiography for years to come. In it, Griffin argued that reform was the means used by Eastern religious elites to control the fast-changing society. Even as late as the 1980s, some believed (somewhat doubtfully) that the "social control" school was still the dominant interpretation of antebellum reform. Also included is the most controversial chapter from Avery Craven's THE COMING OF THE CIVIL WAR, in which he claims that fanatic abolitionists, motivated by psychological maladjustments, were responsible for the Civil War. Martin Duberman's excellent "The Abolitionists and Psychology" is included to provide a counterpoint. Rounding out the collection are other essays and chapter excerpts from such eminent scholars as Silvan Tomkins, Frank Thistlethwaite, William McLoughlin, Lee Benson, Joseph Gusfield, David Brion Davis, and John L. Thomas. All in all, this is an excellent compilation of interpretative essays from (mostly) mid-century scholars. Books like this, however, are becoming obsolete as the internet makes journal articles more widely available to students and academics. Nonetheless, any serious student of antebellum reform needs to be familiar with the contents herein, and nothing beats a good book for convenience.

May be it's personal but I believe that those who are not geeks of their professions - shouldn't
teach others as well. If you're not fascinated by the topic you talk about - how do you expect
to write a good book ?! I think that this book was written by someone who learned Enterprise Java
just to pay his rent. Writing a book seemed just another possible income ..

Why do I think so ?

Well, topics are explained on the very primitive level and I can actually "smell" that authors
just don't know the material good enough to dig in - they repeat the same basic ideas many times
but leave lot's of questions unanswered (like "Why do some methods in this table return a variable
of a primitive type and others their object wrappers ? Is it just typo or something else ?"),
their code examples take pages but contain only couple of useful (and, again, trivial) lines and ..
typos everywhere (make up your mind already - is it "javax.naming" or "java.naming" ?).

Whatever I look at - I see Java dilettantes, not Java geeks and not even Java professionals
(excuse me, but one who compares two Strings for equality using compareTo() instead of equals()
doesn't have a clue about Java for me !).

I think it is still useful for getting the idea about major J2EE technologies (JDBC, JNDI, servlets,
JSP, RMI, EJB, JMS and JTA) but *on the very basic level*. That's what I keep it for.

P.S.
The title should be changed to "Developing Java Enterprise Applications *for dummies*" because
authors DO treat their readers like a 14-year old kiddies - "type and press ENTER".
Folks, who do you think you're talking to in this book that you need to remind me about pressing ENTER ?

This book provides an excellent overview of the core Enterprise Java technologies for building 3 & N-tier application servers. Though it does not go into too much depth, it did provide enough information (sample code sniplets) and understanding of how each of these technologies play within a distributed OO application service - JMS, JTS, EJB, JavaServerPages, Servlets, and JDBC.

Each chapter provides useful information about the technology and its role in an enterprise application.

Although there are many sources that will provide you with the same kinds of information on JMS, JTS, EJB, ... this book is a very nice single source reference for all these technologies.

If you are new to Enterprise Java or simply need an overview of how all these technologies play together in a distributed intra/internet application server - this is a good book to start with.

It covers the most important Java APIs that the enterprise developer who uses Java.

The books covers JDBC, RMI, JNDI, JTS, JMS, JSP, EJB, and a few other technologies. The book tends to alternate between explanatory and example chapters. So first, JDBC is discussed and then the next chapter walks through an example.

Given the number of topics in this book, each topic is not covered in full detail as most of the topics are worthy of a book all their own (and many of them already have one). However, this book's goal is to cover just enough so you can understand the technology and get started using its core features.

Therefore, this makes the book excellent for trying to figure what these technologies do. In fact, this book is readable by managers as well as developers, if the managers skip the example chapters.

From reading this book, you get the impression that the authors have quite a bit of experience, have used the technologies discussed, and know what they are talking about. On the whole, this is a great book for getting your feet wet with Enterprise Java.

David Brion Davis is a leading American historian best known for his superb trilogy on the problem of slavery in western culture. This book promises us a fourth volume on the problem of slavery in the age of emancipation. In the meantime we have a collection of assorted articles published over the past fifteen years or so. Some historians have been able to develop this genre into important works: one thinks of Perry Anderson's "A Zone of Engagement" or Eugene Genovese's "In Red and Black." But such works often say little of originality or importance and often have an artificial unity imposed on them. Such, unfortunately, is the case with this book. This book consists largely of book reviews, most of which come from The New York Review of Books. In it we read reviews of such leading scholars as David Garrow, C. Vann Woodward, Eugene Genovese, Bernard Lewis, David Eltis, Robin Blackburn, Herbert Klein, Jacqueline Jones and Brenda Stevenson. There are also a couple of articles which introduce other, more scholarly articles on the nature of racism. Arguably these are the most important chapters in the book. There is also a useful piece which demonstrates the important if stunningly obvious point that the Jewish role in the Slave Trade was virtually non-existent. (In 1830 less than 0.3% of major American slaveholders were Jewish)

Davis' first essay is on the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, and I have to say what one thinks of the book depends on your opinion of that most respected of theologians. If you think Niebuhr was a man of deep realism and profound theology you will appreciate this book. If, however, you think that instead of being "the American Jeremiah" (Davis' phrase) Niebuhr was more the American Tartuffe or the American Vicar of Bray, there will be something off about this collection. I have yet to encounter any liberal or socialist who has vigorously waved the banner of human perfectibility. Such technocratic shortcuts to happiness tend to be associated more with the right such as Larry Niven, Robert Heinlein, Edward Teller and Newt Gingrich via Alvin Toffler. Yet Davis (in the age of Clinton no less!) feels it necessary to warn several times against the chimeras of utopianism and perfectability. Although elsewhere Davis writes of the need for government aid to solve poverty, his book is enfeebled by the NYRB fear of appearing too liberal. An article on the relationship between blacks and Jews looks more at the philanthropic activities of Jewish organizations as opposed to the racial views of the Jewish population. At one point Davis, with some pride, points out that a couple of Jews assisted John Brown. Yet at another point, in trying to show that C. Vann Woodward was not a sentimental deracinated liberal, he notes Woodward's distaste for those who engage in "uncritical worship of fanatics like John Brown."

Davis is a bit too indulgent about Genovese's truly awful "The Southern Front," and endorses a misleading point about Southern antebellum tolerance for Jews. (It is true that the first Jewish senator came from Louisiana, but Louisiana is the least Protestant of the Confederate states and no-one has ever argued that New Orleans is a triumph of the quasi-Calvinist Protestant hegemony that Genovese has recently championed.) Discussing the Moynihan Report he wonders how it would possible to support affirmative action and other remedial programs for Africa-Americans without it. But this ignores the manifold problems with the report. By emphasizing the damage slavery had done to the family, Moynihan left the impression that any weaknesses in the African-American family were the result of something that had ended a century and left the idea that the non-Southern majority of the United States was off the hook for anything that had happened since 1865. At the same time there is the perversity, as pointed out by Ruth Feldstein, of how Moynihan, in an age of segregation, disfranchisment and systematic discrimination, singled out the weakest and poorest segment of society, black mothers, and criticized them for, in effect, having too much power and having a bad influence. Similarly, Davis show more "realistic" Niebuhrian concern about the underclass and its mass unemployment and social disorganization than actual knowledge about it.

The reviews themselves are respectful, intelligent and usually thoughtful expressions of Davis' scholarly liberalism. But at the same time they do little to advance Davis' own scholarship. Individually the essays have some value, taken together it is a bit like reading a thirty page historiographical essay extended to 378 pages. Reading this book you will learn more about recent scholarship on the economics of slavery, the nature of abolitionism and the origins of racism. Like the readers of the New York Review of Books you will be updated more than you will be informed. The reviews are only a partial substitute for the monographs themselves.