Warren's book tells a story, packed with suspense, of what happens when a doctor concocts a method to reverse the human aging process. The regimen, requiring only a few days, could change a deathbed, eighty-year-old person to age twenty-five. The treatment would give this youngster an endless, disease-free life. The main character, Mark Langer an elderly retired former World Health Organization director, locates Dr. Susan Bastian who has fostered the scientific breakthrough. Susan gives him the treatment.

Mark suggests that Susan ascribe to his plan, a method that would include humans of all levels and a system regulated by a world wide government. The villains have different ideas, and two other methods of using the anti-aging scheme become a source of conflict. A wealthy industrialist wishes to preempt the doctor's secret and offer the treatment to those able to pay big bucks. Another faction from the criminal element plans to seize the doctor and take the full advantage of the regimen. Warren takes the reader through several creative and gripping twists as he weaves his thriller story into supprise ending.

This novel assumes that almost everyone would opt for new life through the anti-aging procedure. The premise being that, without controls, a serious population buildup would result. This reviewer began to question the assumption at mid point of the book when war over the aging cure broke out. What would I do if offered a chance to regain my youth and secure a boundless life? Is the fear of death at work here? These questions provoked some strong thoughts. I resolved that I would refuse the offered regimen. Death has no sting, considering what Christ tells us and what John says about the hereafter as recorded in Revelation 7:9-17.

I recommend you read this book; it will make you think.

Growing Young by Dean Warren is an adventurous and intriguing science fiction novel about Dr. Mark Langer, an old man who is presented with a cure for aging. Langer undertakes the treatment and reverses his aging body to one the status of a robust and health 25 years. Yet in a world already crushed with overpopulation, how is he to see that this magnificent achievement is not abused for malevolent ends? Growing Young accomplishes what science fiction does best -- provides the reader with a profound and thoughtful saga about how the possibility of immortality could affect human society as a whole.

Dean Warren's Man Over Mind is a hard-core, well written science fiction saga about a young man pitted against horrible Minds, former human beings who merged their dissected brains with computers and reaped the power to rule the galaxy in utter depravity. The hero's fight takes him across space and time and against the workings of his own brain before he can challenge the dread nexus of the Mind's superhuman power. Man Over Mind is an exciting, whirlwind of an adventure tale and enthusiastically recommended reading for all SciFi buffs.

Although new to Sci-fi, I have studied human brain-power and its relationship to creativity. Dean Warren offers the reader a great story plus an even greater insight into how the brain works. Warren's hero, Tol, meets with many situations, each of which helps to explain the brain's intricate functions. Tol displays the mark of a born leader as he employs his tremendously logical brain in deadly combat with its silicone counterpart.
I recommend this book. It may, or may not, foretell human life in the year 3300, even so, it tells me that I have been missing something. I'm becoming a sci-fi fan!

Having actually lived in the country and visited the Amazon rain forest, this depiction of the destruction of the Atlantic rainforest and the effects there is highly factual and rather interesting. It is one of the only successful ecological histories about a forest! If you want a good read about the disappearance of one of Brazil's most historical aspects, then this book is for you.

This book is bound to change your view of Brazilian history, and of environmental history. A must read for anyone interested in either. A good Portuguese language translation is available.

This is easily the best crit care handbook around. Well written chapters - the one on mechanical ventilation is the best I've read in a handbook - and hits most topics you need to know.
Downsides - it can use some updating, and I think most chapters can be a little more detailed. (better to have more detail than less)

Another good option would be Joseph Varon's Handbook of Practical Critical Care Medicine.

If you're going to buy a crit care handbook it should be one of these.

Dean's work is an historical geography of a coffee growing region in São Paulo state. Issues of land ownership, including squatters' rights, the granting of sesmarias, and land speculation are of interest in this text. Dean also examines the frontier's allure in that social distinctions seem to disappear on the frontier. The reason Dean gives for the lack of social distinctions and privileges is that land ownership determines one's social status.

I read this book when it first was published, so I am obviously not in the best position to critique it at least a couple years later. However, when it comes to James Dean I am an admitted addict and have read almost everything that has been published about him over the past 30 years. What makes this book a standout is that it concentrates on Dean's death as opposed to his life. It provides very detailed information re: his last ride and how his death and the subsequent hoopla surrounding it was handled. It also provides quite a lot of previously unpublished material in regard to the period immediately before and after his death. The author has saved us all a lot of pain and irritation by researching this material in a factual and precise manner.
What makes this book a positive departure from the other Dean book is that there is no psychological stuff about Dean's tortured youth or attempts to affix a death wish to him, just a lot of good hard facts. Joe Friday couldn't do a better job in that area.
The best part of this book? It sticks to the truth and makes for an interesting read.

Beath makes the death of James Dean a very personal experience for the reader. This is not a book one reads and forgets - the reader has participated in the author's passionate search for the substance behind the tragedy and the reader is changed. I'm ready for more from this author.

The most amazing aspect of Beath's book is the original and innovative research. Basically, Beath was the first Hollywood biographer to dig into public records--traffic reports, lawsuit testimony--and uncover facts about Dean's death that had been previously overlooked. If Pulitzer Prizes were not the preserve of Manhattan writers and their pals, Warren Newton Beath of Bakersfield, California would have won one for this book.

Anyone intrigued by stem cell research, genetic engineering or how the brain works must read this book. Warren has added many ideas to the cutting-edge of today's science research and wrapped the data into a gripping story of the future. The protagonist, Quiet Griffin, elevates himself from the welfare ranks to become a leader who saves the underclasss from the excesses of the world's Achievers. Griffin also shuts down the operations of genealogists who transplant old Achiever's brains into the vibrant bodies of murdered young Welfies.

THE LAST UNDERCLASS tells a story and has the basic traits of a super movie. I give the book top rating.

Mr. Warren has the uncanny ability to think and work in a continuum of scientific facts taken to the next logical step. There is no fiction in a two class society; we have it throughout most of the world now! It is a fact that scientific data reaches the general public 8-10 years after the original research has been done. In The Last Underclass,there is a clear well-thought out, message that we are here but no leader will try to change the status quo.It is not to his advantage! As long as the masses remain ignorant of the truth ("fiction"),epidemics,like AIDS,will continue to affect minorities, until the"Acheivers" are in control of the worlds population.I was one of Dean's "welfies" who escaped into the "Acheivers class through a fluke in the system- knowledge. This is Dean's main thrust.

Dean Warren's The Last Underclass is a visionary science fiction novel set in 2152, when galactic settlement is one of few hopes for a severely overcrowded Earth, yet severe class stratification and genetic experiments that cannibalize the bodies of the lower classes threaten to eradicate any claim to "humanity" that mankind has. One ghetto class individual alone has the opportunity of changing this brutal system of injustice for the better, in this riveting account of social stratification in the not-so-distant future. The Last Underclass is enthusiastically recommended for hard core science fiction fans.

I bought this book after reading Roger Lowenstein's book 'Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist' (1996) to read on value investing. Unfortunately, this book covers very little about techniques. And I mean VERY little.

If you want to get to know the person Graham is, get this book. You can skip this book and still produce superior investment returns (this, known as rational allocation of capital). For value investing, read Intelligent Investor, by Ben Graham.

This book gets 3 stars bcoz it serves its purpose as a biography but at the same time managed to discourage me from spending time finishing it, despite my passion for Graham's investment principles.

The Dean of Wall Street confesses. That would be a great lead, except that Benjamin Graham has little to confess. Rather, Graham, considered the father of modern security analysis, tells us about his life, career, and his intellectual passions. He shares his thoughts about a range of issues, and about his experiences. For instance, did you know that he valued his intellectual pursuits more than making money? Or that he was a Broadway playwright? These memoirs are more concerned with Graham's story than with his investment techniques. We [...] recommend this book to those who want to learn more about Ben Graham, the man. It is not for those who want to learn more about Ben Graham, the founder of value investing.

The book is very appropriately titled. The story is told directly by Ben, and it covers his life from his family when his father passed away to his education at Columbia after losing his scholarship the first time.

Ben was a colorful person, and reading an autobiography like this allows the reader to see the paths a great person chose in life to really become what we remember him for.

Of course, the fact the Warren Buffet was his best student and biggest advocate was probably the reason I picked the book up in the first place, but after reading it, I discovered the Ben was wise in more than just Wallstreet. My favorite wisdom derived from Ben is on the subject of sex and relationships, as he had so many of the latter while becoming the great investor that we first associate with him.

I feel that I learned skills that will help me grow to be wiser by reading his bio. I definitely suggest the book to anyone who is interested in not only Ben's life but in contemplating how to improve his or her own.

Written in 1980, this was the first full length assessment of Dean Rusk. Since then, there have been only three other books published on Rusk. This is surprising for a man who was the second longest serving Secretary of State and a key actor in the Vietnam War. At the time, Cohen's book filled a gap in the literature and it remains an important work for anyone seeking to understand Rusk, his approach to foreign policy, and his role in the Vietnam War.

Cohen begins his book with a short chapter on Rusk's early life. The next fourteen chapters cover Rusk's rise from Under-Secretary of State in the Truman administration to Secretary of State in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. The main part of the book, chapter six through chapter fifteen, focuses on the Kennedy and Johnson era with particular attention on the Vietnam War. Other important foreign policy events, such as the Bay of Pigs, the Berlin Crisis, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the 1967 Mideast War, are covered, but the Vietnam war is central. While still an important book, it now shows its age. Broadly speaking, this can be seen in two areas: its historical context and its historical scholarship. I will address each of these concerns in turn.

By historical context, I mean that the war is still fresh in Cohen's mind. Although his scholarship is excellent, there are moments where his interpretation of the Vietnam War contends with the objectivity of his scholarship. Fortunately, these moments are rare. As Cohen said in his preface, he rarely touched on matters of interpretation and neither he nor Rusk sought to coner the other to his way of thinking regarding the Vietnam War. Even with thse infrequent issues of interpretation, the book's scholarship is still solid.

In the central part of the book, Cohen examines Rusk's approach to the Vietnam war. His work in this area is quite good. This is noteworthy considering he did not have access to recently released documents on the Vietnam War or the latest scholarship on American policy. Cohen uses the term liberal exceptionalism to describe Rusk's view of American foreign policy. Roughly understood, Rusk believed America should uphold a decent world order based upon liberal principles found within the UN Charter and the American regime. Although he is in broad agreement with these principles, Cohen argues that they led to the mistaken commitment to South Vietnam. America became immoderate in pursuit of these ideals. On p. 128 Cohen shows that Rusk extended the promise of the Truman Doctrine to include South Vietnam. A regional doctrine was now global. Cohen argues that Rusk's belief in America's liberal exceptionalism blinded him to the imprudence of defending South Vietnam. In the end, this liberal exceptionalism and the post World War Two foreign policy consensus, ruptured over the Vietnam War. Americans confronted with the horrors of an undeclared war in South Vietnam began to question the exceptionalism that jusitified the war. Rusk committed to liberal exceptionalism, could not see the error of his ways. Cohen ends with the following judgement.

"Rusk, however, remained loyal to his President and to an earlier vision. He thus betrayed his own better instincts, the interests of his country, the principles of the UN. Much may be said in mitigation, but never enough" (p. 330)

With the end of the Cold War following the Soviet Union's disintergration, Rusk and America have been vindicated to some extent for their stand in Vietnam. (See for example Michael Lind, The Necessary War, 1999). While the war and its effect on American society will be debated for years to come, Rusk's stand in the 1960s appears justified to some extent by developments since the war ended.

The second area where the book shows its age is in its historical scholarship. New material on Rusk has ben released and new scholarship has emerged on the Vietnam War. Three books on Rusk hae been published since Cohen's book. Rusk's early life is discussed more fully in Thomas J. Schoenbaum, Waging Peace and War, 1988 and Dean Rusk's own book As I Saw It, 1990. Moreover, these books offer a better understanding of Rusk's time as Under Secretary of State in the Truman administration. Thomas Zeiler draws on this material to develop a fuller understanding of Rusk's approach to the Vietnam War. See Dean Rusk: Defending the American Mission Abroad, 1999.

Scholarship on the Vietnam War has also developed since Cohen's book was published. Recent works, drawing on the latest Foreign Relations of the United States volumes concerning the vietnam War, offer a more detaild understanding of events in the era. An exampole of how the literature has changed since Cohen's book was published can be seen in chapter seven. There he relies upon Roger Hilsman's To Move a Nation, for the events and policy concerning the Diem coup. Hilsman's work, which now appears more self-serving, rather than an objective assessment, has been eclipsed by more recent scholarship. See for example David Kaiser's An American Tragedy, 2000. Althought such examples can be distracting for those interested in specific policy decisions, the overall scholarship and assessment of Rusk's approach to foreign policy remain relevant.

One point where Cohen is wrong must be noted. In the preface, he states that there are no Rusk papers. the papers that do exist are held in the Richard Russell Library at the University of Georgia. While these are not official appaers in the sense of private memos and correspondence during his time in office, they do shed light on Rusk's early life as well as the period after he left Washington.

Warren Cohen's book is over twenty years old, but it remains a good starting point for understanding Rusk.

This book, while well written and very thorough, is a bit out dated. Many of the examples are very helpful, but much of Mr. Benfield's writing isn't very current with the bassists of today (I can't possibly believe that any orchestra would hire a bassist based "soley on his ability to play solos" and I also can't imagine that there are that many bassists that would play the Eccles Sonata at a major audition). This is a nice reference guide, but by no means the "final word".