First of all, this is not a Mormon-propaganda book. It is a scholarly work, a study of law. It is an account of the legal proceedings that took place as a result of the murders of Joseph and Hyrum Smith at Carthage, Illinois in June of 1844. This book makes no attempt to convert anyone to Mormonism--in fact it doesn't even focus on the Smiths. Instead, it critically examines the trial of five men accused of participating in the murder of these two men.

I cannot praise this book enough for its objectivity. The authors remain completely aloof from bias, and focus instead on an analysis of the trial. One should not read this book with the intent of learning every detail about the Smiths' murder. For those interested in knowing about the legal proceedings that followed their deaths, however, this book will be a valuable tool.

This book is an invaluable resource--it unearths many facts and circumstances that I have not encountered anywhere else, and manages to make sense of just what happened inside the Carthage jail on that fateful summer day. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Mormon history.

The footnotes in this book are extensive and as insightful as the contents. The legal actions and procedings surrounding the trial are given attentive details. I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to know more about Mormon history, American legal history, or history of the 1840's in Illinois.

I found this book to be thoroughly researched and documented. Oaks and Hill have written this book in a way that the reader can understand the legal process of the trial of the alleged assassins of Joseph Smith and Hyrum Smith. With many footnotes to back up their research, Oaks and Hill have effectively given the reader a clear picture of the events that led to the assassination of Joseph and Hyrum and the subsequent trial, without getting too carried away with "legalese" language. My complements to the authors on this excellent book!

I recommend this book to anyone who has interest in Trial Law, as well as Mormon History.

Since the founding of the Society of Jesus by Ignatius Loyola, the Jesuits have been a powerful force in the areas of missionary activity, teaching, and preaching. In THE FIFTH WEEK, Father O'Malley writes of renowned Jesuits in the past, and also describes the Jesuit training process. For anyone seeking general insight into the Society of Jesus, THE FIFTH WEEK is a very apropos introductory survey.

After my son had studied "The Fifth Week" in his high school religion class I told him to retain it at the end of the class for my reading. It was one of the best literary decisions I ever made.

"The Fifth Week" is divided into three sections: Jesuits of the Past; Jesuits of the Present; and Jesuits of the Future.

It was the first two sections which primarily attracted me to this book. Jesuits of the Past and Jesuits of the Present consist of brief biographies of Jesuit heroes. As a product of Jesuit education, I had heard many of these names, either in sketchy legends or on the nameplates of schools or buildings. This book put stories to these names.

The first and longest biography belongs, fittingly enough, to St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society. During a forced convalescence from battlefield wounds, a reading of the Lives of the Saints transformed this servant of the King of Spain into one of the most illustrious servants of the King of Heaven.

Other biographies bring the brightest stars in the Jesuit sky to life. St. Francis Xavier, after whom my College Church is named, was the great missionary who took the Faith to the Orient. St. Edmund Campion had to me been merely the patron of a building at college. From this book I learned that he was a 16th century Jesuit who trained in Prague before returning to his native England to minister to Catholics during the height of the Reformation persecution of the Church until his martyrdom in 1581.

Another interesting English Jesuit of the Reformation era was St. Nicholas Owen. St. Nicholas was a Jesuit brother who's main ministry was the building of priestly hideouts in the great houses of English Catholics until he was captured and tortured to death in 1606.

One of the most notable exemplars of the Jesuit charism is Matteo Ricci who followed in the footsteps of St. Francis Xavier in bringing the Gospel to the Orient. In keeping with the Jesuit theme of using all things to bring people to God, Matteo followed St. Paul's entreaty to be all things to all men. Immersing himself in Chinese culture and adopting Chinese dress, he obtained acceptance into the Chinese Imperial Court. From this position started a movement which in 50 years was to include 150,000 Chinese Catholics.

Among my favorite heroes are the North American Martyr, St. John de Breboeuf, and Peter DeSmet, the St. Louis based western missionary and patron the high school at which my son studied this book.

The explanation of the suppression of the Jesuits occurring in various places from 1759-1814 was a movement of which I had heard and read but which I did not understand until reading this book..

The Jesuits of the Past section concludes with the biography of Blessed Miguel Pro, "Jesuit Clown.". My family and I had first heard of Miguel Pro during a passing reference in a homily to "Viva Christo Rey-Long Live Christ the King!", his last words while facing a firing squad. His story was, actually, similar to that of St. Edmund Campion. Driven from his native Mexico by anticlerical persecutions, Pro studied in California, Spain, Nicaragua and Belgium. Sneaking back into Mexico after ordination, his skillful use of a series of disguises permitted him to minister to the faithful for 2 years during which he avoided capture by the authorities.

Section 2 highlights contemporary Jesuits. Daniel Lord used teaching, writing, theatre and social action to bring God to his people. World War II made heroes of Carl Hausman, a prisoner of the Japanese in the Philippines and Joseph O'Callahan, a chaplain aboard the U.S.S. Franklin during a devastating Kamikaze attack. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a paleontologist who brought the faith to the world of science.

Fr. O'Malley begins the transition from Section 2 to Section 3 by introducing the story of his own vocation.

Section 3 is the story of the Jesuits of the Future. An inquiry into the Society of today, the challenges of the world and obstacles to a religious vocation are viewed reflectively. The book concludes with the questions a man must confront in discerning whether he has a vocation to the priestly or religious life. The final pages are devoted to the practical steps one must take in order to explore the possibility of living the Jesuit life.

I began this book I with high expectations. At its conclusion my expectations were fulfilled. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the stories of Jesuit heroes as well as anyone who wants to understand what has attracted so many outstanding men of the past to the Society of Jesus and what continues to attract the Church leaders of tomorrow.

The Fifth Week is meant to be a book to inform those who are interested in becoming Jesuits. However, I feel that this book is meant for anyone at any level of spirtuality. This book provides examples of heroism that anyone can look up to and become inspired, I know that I was. The heroic Jesuits portrayed in the book were real men, with real weaknesses, with real strengths. This authenticity is further strengthened by Fr. William O'Malley's own vocational story, which entailed struggle, hardship, love, and peace. These are realities that we all face, so the book has the ability to coincide with some of our own experiences and trials. The most important thing that this book offers the reader is "the hope for man." We may have hope in the fact that The Society of Jesus will set the world on fire by living out the Good News.

If you are looking for a property text, you cannot do better than this book. It is not only the best property textbook published right now, it is one of the finest legal textbooks I have had to read.

The writing is clear and comprehensible, and the cases are well chosen: provocative while remaining good examples of Black Letter Law.

My property class was the only section using Singer's book, and we are the only section that actually enjoyed the area of property law. This was not a coincidence.

... all you need is this textbook! Logically organized, comprehensive and explains complex concepts in a down-to-earth, easy-to-understand manner. The emphasis on the policy behind the rules is also extremely helpful. You won't need to buy a commercial outline with this book.

The true greatness of this casebook is that it renders hornbooks and other guides superfluous. It is a truly great casebook in an area of the law I thought would bore me to death. It is so good it makes some of those New Jersey cases almost palatable.

British General William Slim commanded English/Indian forces during most of the "forgotten" war in Burma from 1942 to 1945. Slim is now regarded as the finest English general of the Second World War (yes, better than "Monty"). In this book, written some time after the war ended, Slim tells the reader about the early mistakes which lead to the near total defeat of the English army in Burma in 1942. ----- Slim's efforts to rebuild his army and then take the offensive against the Japanese comprise the majority of the book and it makes for a very interesting story. Considering that the terrain over which most of the fighting occured was even worse than Vietnam, I learned a great deal. Contrasting his experiances in Burma with the U.S. war in Vietnam is a good thought experiment. ---- Of most interest to military historians and people interested in the Second World War. As to personal matters the book is almost completely devoid of details. Slim was very much the English Gentleman and all the interesting personal details of his life you will have to find elsewhere. ---- P.S. It contains an interesting side note about the father of the Burmese Nobel Peace Prize winner: Aung San Suu Kyi. Her father fought against the British in conjunction with the Japanese but later turned against the Japanese when he discovered that they were just going to be new imperial masters, even worse than the English. ---- Colin Glassey

Field-Marshal Slim's memoir of the Burma campaign is one of thefinest generals reports from the Second World War. He outlines thebitter and decisive British defeat by the Japanese in 1942, the slow, painful rebuilding of the British-Indian-African Army and its collaboration with the Chinese and Americans in a see-saw campaign against the Japanese in 1943, the decisive battle of Imphal in 1944 and the crushing victories of 1945. In the mountainous and jungle terrain of the Burma-India theater Slim pioneered in the use of airpower for logistical support and the development of airbridges built around air fields. In many ways this under-supported and often neglected theater fought the most modern campaign of the second world war. Slim is a revealing and deliberate author-teacher who intended this book both as a report on a great campaign and as a series of lessons for future students of the art of war. The opening hundred pages are a little slow and the place names are never easy but the book is well worth reading for anyone who would seek to understand leadership and victory in warfare.

William Slim is virtually unknown today - even among the history buff circles, he is a rate footnote. Yet, among those who have studied World War Two - and those few remaining who had direct experience beyond a limited theater view - Slim is regarded as one of the finest army commanders to have served on any front during the course of that war. Slim was among the few that endured defeat in the war's beginning - the agonizing, protracted withdrawal of Burma Corps over a thousand miles of jungle, mountain, swamp and river terrain in Burma and India in 1942 - and survived and had the opportunity to lead revitalized forces to victory in the end (British 14th Army). Revenge was sweet. Slim's memoirs are a treasure - full of criticism and praise in fair measure - with intelligent and honest commentary throughout. His assessments of the critical elements of a successful campaign are worthy of textbook study. Not only did Slim's men have to fight a fanatical, relentless foe in the Japanese - he had to contend with debilitating tropical disease, lack of air and land transport, non-existent infratstructure, shortages of all types of food and supplies, as well as neglect from his own country and army. Burma was in many ways the forgotten theater. Controversial figures such as the American Stilwell and the British Wingate are men that Slim knew well in Burma - and he does not shrink from giving his candid assessment of these figures - strengths and weaknesses. Above all, Slim's book is a testament to the courage, intelligence and fortitude of the fighting men - soldiers, airmen and sailors - of all nationalities (majority of the fighting on the Allied side in the Burma-India theater was by Indians). His comments on the nationalist movements of the Burmese, Indians and Chinese are also of interest, in view of post-war events in these countries, including the expulsion of British rule. Slim was a rare figure - an Army Commander bent on winning for all the right reasons - while always maintaining his touch with the front line solider. He was eager to assign glory to those that deserved it - those that did the fighting as well as those that toiled anonymously behind the lines to keep the forward troops supported. He was also rare in that he was ready and willing to admit mistakes were made, and how those mistakes were overcome. With so many critical decisions to be made in such desperate circumstances with such limited information - it is a wonder that any informed directives could be issued at the command level in that environment. His perspective on the Japanese is also worthy of further study. Slim had a distinguished war record prior to World War Two - he had served in several operations in World War One, in the Middle East between wars - he was familiar with how soldiers fought and died all over the world. His contempt for the Japanese - the atrocities they committed on a routine basis against not only captured, wounded soldiers but civilians held helpless in conquered territory, and the unconscionable treatment of prisoners by Japanese - was thoroughly justified by his experiences. His willingness to continue to fight and kill Japanese and his refusal to treat defeated Japanese with anything other than contempt (he ignored MacArthur's accommodating gestures after the surrender) were measured responses - a reading of this book communicates that point very well. Slim understood his assigned was role was not just to retake Japanese held territory, but to kill Japanese soldiers - destroy Japanese armies. He was the man for the job.

It's the most complet guide of parrots and raptors publicated in the world.

This has been a great book for reference. It is very organized. I wrote a report about a Scarlet Macaw and it was a big help. I hope bird-lovers everywhere read this book!

My mother bought me this book for my tenth birthday and my appreciation of it has grown each year as I am now twenty. As a child I enjoyed it's fantastic illustrations and as an adult I've used it as a reference in my college research papers. I recomend it highly to anyone of any age with a love for parrots.

Most books on how to write better English are pretty near to useless. Many of them scare you into worrying that you might use "which" when you should use "that" (never mind that an extra "which" never caused any reader the smallest bit of confusion). Others demand that you strive for "clarity" or "brevity" or "coherence"--but then somehow never provide any useful advice on just how, exactly, to do so.

Joseph Williams's Style: Toward Clarity and Grace is an exception. It is the only truly useful book on English prose style that I have ever found. Even Strunk and White cannot compete with the quality of the advice that Williams gives. Perhaps more important, the advice that Williams gives can be used. As Williams puts it, his aim is to go "beyond platitudes." Advice like "'Be clear' is like telling me to 'Hit the ball squarely.' I know that. What I don't know is how to do it." Williams tells us how to do it.

Williams's advice is particularly useful because it is reader based. Most books on style are rule-based: follow these rules and you will be a good writer. Williams recognizes that clear writing is writing that makes the reader feel clear about what he or she is reading. This difference in orientation makes Williams's advice much more profound: he has a theory of why the rules are what they are (and what to do when the rules conflict) that books that focus on rules alone lack.

His advice starts at the level of the sentence. Williams believes that readers find sentences easy to read and understand when the logic of the thought follows the logic of the sentence: the subjects of sentences should be the actors, and the verbs of the sentence should be the crucial actions. The beginning of a sentence should look back and connect the reader with the ideas that have been mentioned before. The end of the sentence should look forward, and is the place to put new ideas and new information.

His advice continues at the level of the paragraph. The sentences that make up a paragraph should have consistent topics. New topics and new themes should be found at the end of a paragraph's introductory sentence (or sentences). Readers will find a paragraph to be coherent if it has one single articulate summary sentence, which is almost always found either at the end of the paragraph or as the last of the paragraph's introductory sentences.

His advice concludes with four chapters on being concise, on figuring out the appropriate length, on being elegant, and on using constructions that do not jar the reader. I think that these last four chapters are less successful than the other chapters of the book. They contain much sound advice. But the argument of the book becomes more diffuse. The first six chapters present and illustrate overarching organizing principles for achieving clarity, coherence, and cohesion. The last four chapters present long lists of things to try to do. (However, the fangs-bared attack on "pop grammarians" found in the last chapter is fun to read.)

So, gentle reader, if you want to become a better writer of English, go buy and work through this book. I, at least, have never found a better.

I'm an economics professor who started teaching writing courses as a spare time activity when I discovered that our English faculty was doing such a poor job of it.

My writing class is directed at college undergrads and grad students. I tried a number of books, but settled on Williams and have been using it since the 2nd edition. I find that students can make an enormous improvement in their writing in just ten weeks.

If your goal is to learn the kind of writing that will help you explain a process, change someone's mind, or write the winning proposal, Williams is your man. Don't read it all in one session, and you must actually do the exercises.

Try a chapter a week. It works.

Charles Lave, University of California, Irvine

Joseph Williams' book, "Style: Toward Clarity and Grace" is the best book on writing I have ever read, by far. Williams himself describes the emphasis of the book on page one: "Telling me to 'Be clear' is like telling me to 'Hit the ball squarely.' I know that. What I don't know is how to do it." But Williams does know how to write well, and his explanations are precise and concrete.

This book takes a sort of linguistic, almost scientific approach to improving your writing style. I first learned of Williams' work in "The Language Instinct," by the Stephen Pinker, the acclaimed professor of linguistics from MIT.

Unlike every other writing book, this one is more than a laundry list of grammatical shoulds and shouldn'ts. This book is about HOW-- how to write to suit the human brain's innate method of processing information.

I am a professional writer, and I have a whole book case filled with grammar books. But this book is worth more than all the others combined. If you're a writer, this is the book you've been looking for.

I started the process of researching German-American internment for a English-101 assignment. I found the author's web site and various other materials on internment. My schooling consisted of learning about Japanese relocation, and as 40-year-old adult, I never knew of the internment of others, called enemy aliens of the United States.

Locating Mr. Jacobs' book in my library, I read a fascinating account of what the author and his family endured during World War II, and after the war with the expatriation and repatriation to Germany.

Interviewing Mr. Jacobs for my research paper, culminated in a better understanding of what our government did, and may do once again with Arab-Americans in the attempt to prevent future terrorism. It is tragic when a government does what it thinks right at the time, but then refuses to apologize for the injustices committed against its own citizens.

I recommend this book to every German-American, as well as all Americans who never learned the whole story during their formative education.

Mr. Art Jacobs, the author of "The Prison Called Hohenasperg" writes his story out of love. Love of life, country, friends, and family. Unfortunately, Art, at the age of 12 was separated from these very basic essentials of life.

He narrarates this true story detailing his youth in school, boy scouts, and support for his ball club, the Brooklyn Dodgers. However, life will soon change for young Art and his family as his father is illegally taken from them and interned at Ellis Island as a "Nazi criminal". This is just the beginning of the Jacob's family internment journey that takes them from Ellis Island, to the Crystal City Texas Internment Camp, then to Germany where Art spends his 13th birthday in the Hohenasperg prison.

I believe that his intention and motive for writing his story is NOT for compensation, revenge, or to denounce the United States. As I read his story, I felt his sincerity, compassion, and most importantly his intention to MAKE THE TRUTH KNOWN. Because of Art's story, The United States Government has an opportunity to acknowlege Art and other internees that wrongdoings to Americans of German decent did occur.

I recommend this hard to put down, well documented book to those who are interested in WWII history, post WWII Germany, internment life, as well as those interested in reading a boy's burning desire to overcome and succeed under any circumstance to come back to his "Country 'tis of thee".

... A young boy marched back and forth before the hangman's tree with his hands above his head, ordered not the speak, turn his head the wrong way, or even sit to eat - unless he wanted to be hanged - treated like the worst criminals the world has known - and called a little Nazi - He was an American Boy Scout! One day of such treatment, even if corrected immediately, is inexcuseable. We must stop thinking that the United States make mistakes, but the rest of the world makes criminal acts.

I believe this book should be an eye-opener. We need to be concerned that our government can give such power to one man such as Edward J. Ennis, that our military could treat even criminals the way this child was treated, and that most Americans still know nothing about the treatment of German Americans during World War II.

Make no mistake: "Agape Agape" is not the mammoth achievement of prior Gaddis novels. However, it still is a worthwhile read brimming with ideas on every page.

A man is dying and from his bed he struggles to put his papers in order, to try to give shape to his last book. His mind races with all manner of thought mainly about society: the mechanization of the arts, society's dumbing down, player pianos, the Pulitzer Prize, school violence. All these thought threads come together in one overarching theme, and Gaddis's genius is not only in the ideas put forth but in his prose style: a style of fits and starts, sentences that run on incessantly, others that end abruptly to go on to the next thought. It is the perfect representation on paper of the thought processes of a dying intellectual man.

Admirers of both Gaddis's work as well as the work of Thomas Bernhard will gain much from this slim volume. Joseph Tabbi's afterword at the end puts this novella in context when viewed against Gaddis's entire ouevre.

Readers new to Gaddis might start with this one or "A Frolic of His Own."

Either way, treat yourself to this little book, one that deserves to be read more than once, one that deserves to be admired, one written by a largely overlooked American giant.

I have seldom if ever revised my opinion of an author based on a posthumous work-until now. I confess to having found the late William Gaddis' other (and in some circles, classic) novels (J.R., Frolic of His Own, The Recognitions, and Carpenter's Gothic) theoretically interesting and probably brilliant, but always far too long, very self-indulgent, difficult for its own sake and almost unreadable-in other words, they bored me, what I could get through of them.
This prejudice of mine is coupled with a general dislike for posthumous works in general-the kind where a Major Author left a work unfinished at death, and which is years after released and edited with an introduction or forward by some noted Scholar: ("This really IS a great book, all of Fitzgerald's/Hemingway's/Duras'/McGowin's major Themes are here," etc., etc.). Well, they very seldom are great works, and just as the act of Revision seems contrived to some (your Kerouac wannabes, perhaps), I, conversely, find the act of posthumous publication to itself be contrived-again, in general. Glenn Gould, the great pianist, once expressed his intense dislike of "live" recordings being released on record labels with the surrounding hoopla, and said he planned to do a "fake" live album, recorded in the studio, complete with mistakes and overdubbed with audience coughing, etc. Sony of course wouldn't go for it, but I've often wanted to write a "fake" posthumous novel, the Final (unfinished) Work of a Great American Novelist-I'll make it about 100 de-contextualized pages, with 200 pages of forwards, introductions, afterwards, and footnotes. Now that Dave Eggars is a Publisher, he should get in touch.
But in the case of Agape Agape, the Afterward is totally superfluous. The book was finished when Gaddis died, and I don't need to have that explained to me, nor do I care what Joseph Tabbi et. al. Think of it in the overall context of Gaddis' other novels or what it started out as or what Gaddis wanted it to achieve. It's 125 pages, and all of a piece, without section or chapter breaks, the perfect length for what is the most cohesive and affecting book the man ever wrote-the free-associations of a dying narrator who's afraid his lifelong goal to write the definitive history of the player piano will never come to fruition. Into this frenetic and breathless narrative, then, is woven...everything. What begins with the narrator's opinions concerning several aspects of the History and Future of Technology becomes a fictional autobiography the likes of which has rarely been achieved, cemented by the character's grasp of mortality and humanity, and by Gaddis' seamless and masterful narrative drive. He is ON.
This is a one or two-sitting book, and the reader will come away from it reeling. It's too brief for me to go into specifics, for the specifics are the book, the book is the plot-but if you've never read Gaddis, START HERE. And if you need to picture a Literary Precedent, think of Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground, perhaps, or of the best shorter work by Camus or John Hawkes-but only think. Because this book suceeds where Gaddis' other novels drag in that it also makes you feel.

William Gaddis' Agape Agape is a brilliant, philisophical rumination on the nature of contemporary society and its relationship to art and the artist. It's not really a novel, but rather a 100 page diatribe of a dying man trying to get his affairs in order before the end. He is in a bed somewhere, spilling water, bleeding slightly on his notes, his books. He talks to us about everything from the mundane (the blood) to the deeply philisophical (Plato and many, many others). I read this one one sitting in about an hour because it's that compelling and enjoyable. The conversation seamlessly moves from real estate matters to artistic matters. His commentary will make you chuckle, will make you shake your head in agreement. This is an interesting work and if you are looking from a step up from your average novel. Enjoy.

This is an old book, but none has surpased its scope since. Readers will find simpathy for Casey, but still Patrick Leahy and Monyihan both give good reviews for its accuracy. The bottom line that Persico threads is that Casey always wanted to be a foreign affairs statesman but was never given any credit for his abilities because he was too ugly and incoherent so when the best Casey could get was the DCI, then Casey turned the intelligence community into his own little state department to live out his dream.

Persico has done a wonderful job of capturing Casey's magnificent complexity and intellectual voraciousness. Oddly enough the best quote in there, part of a really excellent over-all description of why the DO does not succeed, comes from Herb Meyer when he was a special assistant to Casey: "These guys have built a system that shuts them off from any intelligence except what you can steal. These people needed to be reconnected to reality."

This is a great book that not only documents the life of one of our importatnt leaders but it documents very clearly the thought process used by Casey to find and work his magic in the "gray" areas of politics, business and the law. The book provides insight into the real world of politics from Nixon to Reagan and right through Capitol Hill.

It's difficult to find original material in most security books. "Hack Proofing Your Network, 2nd Edition" (HPYN2E) breaks that trend. Responding to feedback on the first edition, the authors have made numerous improvements in the second edition. If you're looking for relatively novel content in a security book, read the sections of HPYN2E I discuss next.

HPYN2E shines in many respects. The "laws of security" in chapter 2 are accurate and enlightening. Chapter 4 helps teach secure programming techniques by comparing insecure and secure code snippets. Chapter 4 also demonstrates debugging and disassembling code, usually not seen in security texts. Chapter 8 probably contains the most advanced coverage of buffer overflows I've read in a book. By actually showing and explaining stack traces, the authors share a level of detail sufficient to satisfy all but the most elite coders. Chapters on "diffing" (5) and format strings (9) are robust. Hardware hacking, thoroughly described in chapter 14, is fascinating. The author cared enough to include numerous clear photographs of disassembled equipment, and mentioned many helpful external web references.

While these great chapters comprise more than half of HPYN2E, the remainder is not exceptional. I was not happy with the rambling, wordy chapters on spoofing (12) and tunneling (13). Spare us the quotes from Dante's "Divine Comedy"! Still, this material is easily skimmed.

Because HPYN2E is written more from an intruder's point of view, the title doesn't seem to reflect the material. The book isn't exactly a "how to hack" manual, but it expertly illuminates many facets of compromising information resources.

When I read the first edition of this book, was truly disappointed. I was wondering how such people could have written such book. Not that the book was worthless, but too 'standard' to met the expectations I had from these guys.
Still the idea was very interesting (information directly from the real experts), and I kept waiting for a new edition.
Well the second edition is now out, and not only fulfills, but exceeds all my original expectations !!

Let's take a look:

The Approach:

Understanding attacks and vulnerabilities, by understanding 'how to hack' (good hacking of course. . . .ahem )

The Book:

Rewritten, expanded and improved, the book consists of 800+ pages well structured into 18 chapters (against 450+ pages and 15 chapters of the first edition).
Well written, well presented, with a real fancy table of contents, the chapters include url's, a FAQ section and a SOLUTIONS FAST TRACK one.
A lot of CLEVER code is included as well as helpful 'Tool & Traps' and 'Notes from the Underground. . . ' outlines.

The new sections (all outstanding) include:
- Hardware Hacking (otherwise only found in papers)
- Tunneling (excellent)
- IDS evasion (very easily explained)
- Format strings attacks

The Intended Audience:

People willing to become network security pros.

Contents:

- Introduction to Security, Attacks and related Methodologies.
- Cryptography.
- Unexpected Input, Buffer Overflow, Format Strings.
- Sniffing, Hijacking and Spoofing.
- Tunneling, Hardware Hacking, Viruses (et al.).
- IDS Evasion.
- Automated Tools.
- Reporting Security Problems.

The Bottom Line:

It is not just a good book, it is the best book among high level network security books, and the only that compares with specialized papers. Only quite easier.
I got more than 60 papers on buffer overflows. None compares with the classical 'Smashing The Stack For Fun And Profit' by Aleph One. IMHO, however, the corresponding chapter from this book, does compare and is really easier to understand.
Finally, the 'piece de resistance' of the book, is the chapter about Spoofing. Really enjoyed it, and by the way got surprised reading the innovative (to me) technique to 'Spoof Connectivity Through Asymmetric Firewalls'. Good Job Dan ;-)
As an added bonus, as an owner of this book, you'll find a lot of code files, applications and links...

I have the first edition of this book also, and I was really glad to see the second edition come out. There are some great hacking books out now, but I really think these ones are the best. I found in depth coverage on a lot of stuff you just can't find any place else. Some very cool info. on administering hosts locked behind a firewall and tips for making a "poor man's VPN". I also like that a lot of big names wrote the book, and their personalities really come through. A lot of tech. books can be a little dry even if they are well written. This one is actually entertaining also.