"North Carolina has done nobly in this army." What did Major General J.E.B. Stuart, the famed Confederate cavalry commander, mean when he wrote these words? Did he refer to the Tarheel infantrymen in the Army of Northern Virginia? Or the gunners in North Carolina artillery batteries? In Stuart's Tarheels: James R Gordon and His North Carolina Cavalry, author Chris J. Hartley shows how Stuart first found evidence for this statement in his own ranks-beginning with one man.

Brigadier General James Byron Gordon was a protege and kindred spirit of Stuart himself Often overlooked or confused with cousin General John B. Gordon in Civil War literature, Gordon was the consummate nineteenth century landowner, politician, and businessman. When Civil War came, the citizen became a soldier. After he helped form an infantry company, Gordon joined the Tarheel cavalry. He rose to lead two regiments, two brigades, and (temporarily) a division, before he finally settled into permanent command of the North Carolina Cavalry Brigade. When he died just a week after Stuart, he was one of the greatest cavalrymen ever produced by the state of North Carolina.

In Gordon's men Stuart found more to admire. Through them Stuart's Tarheels takes a fresh look at the vaunted cavalry of the Army of Northern Virginia-its battles, its controversies, and the lives of its troopers-from the previously unexplored
438 pages, illus, maps, notes, bibliog, appendices, index.

Anyone who is interested in complementary medicine or natural medicines and cancer treatment should get John Boik's new book, Natural Compounds in Cancer Therapy. John presents the scientific evidence for all natural compounds, gives excellent educational backgrounds on vitamins and natural compounds, and is unfailingly honest. His work is a superb reference guide, as well as clarifying what may or may not be helpful. I have no connectio n with him, other than his help in curing my best friend of Stage IV non small cell lung cancer. This is not "alternative" medicine fru-fru.

Gordon's book is a very thorough study of the appropriate marriage between conventional cancer treatments and the miriad of alternative treatments. Through this book he acknowledges the pharmaceutical approaches yet offers explanations of alternative approaches that can be blended with them. He makes reference to many of the cutting edge therapies which include nutritional supplements. A source for such supplements which also offer corroborative documentation is iHerb. Of course they aren't as detailed as Gordon's book so owning this book is a must, but they do have a wide variety of products and follow up with exemplary service and quick response to any queries you might have. If you or a loved one has cancer, make a thorough study of Gordon's book.

"Comprehensive Cancer Care" offers a superb overview of the many alternative and complimentary cancer treatment options currently available. Dr. James Gordon, who chairs a White House task force on alternative medicine, brings to the table many of today's top clinical researchers and practitioners to share their most recent studies and results. The book makes fascinating and informative reading for anyone struggling to better understand the competing claims made by different alternative cancer approaches, ranging from traditional Chinese medicine to recent research into enzyme treatments. Dr. Gordon has done all cancer patients a great service with this clear, level headed and much-needed book.

This was either the first or second guide that I started out with when I was very young. I will always have respect for it. It contains full-color drawings of the most common birds that a person is likely to see. A total of 129 of the most common American birds is included. Text and range maps are also included in this pocket-sized guide. The drawings display spring plumages of adult male birds, and normally females or young if they are very different. The text is good and gives the common name, length, description, behavior, verbal descriptions of vocalizations, and sometimes abundance. The text also points out the differences between males and females, and related birds that are similar. This guide contains some nice introductory information. Some of the information deals with how to use the guide, how to identify birds, equipment, where to look, bird classification, and attracting birds. There are also two illustrations that detail the parts of a bird. I find all of the drawings throughout this guide to be pretty good. Most of the drawings share the same page as the text and range map, but a few of the drawings are on the right page, while the text and range maps are on the left page. This guide has some very useful information that is located in the back. For each bird that is illustrated, there is information dealing with migration, eggs, nests, and feeding habits. The back of the guide also contains a listing of scientific names for the birds illustrated and an index. I used to take this guide out with me when I first started birdwatching. I still have the older and also the newer edition. Whenever I would identify a particular species of bird, I would write all of the important information about it on the page. Even though I don't take this guide into the field anymore, it's not because I don't like it. I feel confident with the organization, drawings, and information; however, this guide does not contain all of the birds of North America--only the common ones. That aside, I still think that this guide is a good choice and starting point for beginners.

This was either the first or second bird guide I ever owned. It's a birding guide that contains the most common species of birds that you'll see. The maps are good, the drawings are excellent, and the information on each bird is great. Greater starter guide for beginners and children.

This was a moderately interesting real-life account of a British sea captain contemporaneous with the Hornblower books. As such, it makes for an interesting comparison between fact and fiction, and, as the author says, sometimes the former is even more extraordinary than the latter.

The author doesn't fully prove his case that Hornblower was based on Gordon, though there are some striking parallels. The most notable one is that Gordon came up the Chesapeake as a commodore with a small fleet very similar to the one that Hornblower led into the Baltic. (What the author finds suspicious is that Forester wrote a naval history of this period that glosses over this incident, perhaps due to the similarities with Hornblower.) The author uses footnotes and an introduction to point out other points of commonality.

As I said, moderately interesting, particularly to a Hornblower reader, but not particularly a page-turner.

"The Real Hornblower" is a surprisingly in-depth book following and examining the life of Admiral Sir James Gordon. Perrett has obviously researched Gordon under a microscope, as there is very few sections of his life that are not covered. The book begins with a short examination of C. S. Forester, and his creation of Horatio Hornblower, and then delves into Gordon's life, through newpaper articals, personal letters, ship logs, and Gordon's own unpublished auto-biography. In addition to following Gordon, Perrett gives a very acurate historical account of the wars and politics (which revolve around the European and American naval fleets) during the time that Gordon was alive, make this an excellent naval history or reference book as well. For anyone who has read C. S. Forester's series on Horatio Hornblower, this book is an excellent supplement, allowing you to see a different side of 'Hornblower' in Admiral Sir James Gordon.

Althought I love the entire series of these books this one only grabs your attention at the end of the book. Admittidly this has a very exciting ending but the body of the book was much slower than the rest. Of course I still enjoyed the battle of the Jim and Brian but it seemed to stray too far away from the other books. However if you have come this far you have to keep going becuase the following books raise back up to the usual standard that is expected. So in short, read the book. It isn't bad but you have to do it to get to the next two which are much better.

The book was pretty good but nothing stands out in my mind when I think of it. Sorry I couldn't be more helpful

After the first two books in this series, this was the best. We finally get to see what happened to Geronde's father. And there's a wonderful moment when Angie seemingly defies the rules of magick (and upsets Carolinus quite a bit in the process)--delightful! The only pssible way it could have been improved is if Daffydd had had a nice large role, too. *sigh* (Okay, I'm obsessed with Daffydd.) Great book!

I'm working toward becoming certified as a software quality engineer (ASQ's CSQE). While researching learning materials, I found that this book is considered to be a solid overview of the CSQE body of knowledge.

Achieving CSQE requires a certain level of experience. You should be similarly experienced before you read this book. To understand it, you need to have solid experience as a software quality practitioner and exposure to effective software quality processes. This book unabashedly favors defect prevention through effective process, process measurement, and continuous process improvement - all widely considered Good Things - with a thick Capability Maturity Model accent.

The book's perspective comes from its authors' experience producing large, complex software for very large corporations, frequently on government or military contracts. They've worked on these kinds of projects for 20 years or more. Because of government requirements and the nature of these projects, they've watched the need for process turn into process implementation, expansion, and continuous improvement. As a result, they write as though the audience contains people facing similar situations, seldom creating a bridge to quality practitioners in less stringent environments. I'm a 13-year veteran of small software companies, most of which had comparatively featherweight software development processes. Even with my exposure to effective software processes and CMM, I found it difficult to relate to the authors' perspective.

Making this book even more challenging to understand is the authors' cumbersome, awkward text. I strongly encourage the authors to consider investing in a rigorous developmental edit to get rid of stilted structure and acres of passive voice, and to help them express their thoughts in a more expository manner. You'll find yourself reading sentences and even whole paragraphs twice as you try to decode the meaning. I read the whole chapter on Pareto analysis twice, but still didn't understand much of it because the text was so hard to penetrate.

Despite these difficulties, I've benefited from this book. It has helped me build my knowledge and has shown me possibilities I'd never considered. I'm sure it will be an important reference book while I take my CSQE exam. And then I'll be glad to put it on my shelf and let it sit there, because I'm never in the mood for a good text-wrestling match.

Everybody knows that people usually stumble into SQA. So, once you get started, you will want to have some reference material.

This book is easy to read & understand, and I'd recommend it to people eager to know a little more about Software Quality Assurance...

This book is one of the most comprehensive treatments of SQA on the market. It is a collection of essays that cover every imaginable aspect of SQA with an overall focus to prepare candidates for the American Society of Quality's software quality engineer certification (CSQE). Each author is an acknowledged expert in the field, and each essay is well developed and gets to the essence of the topic.

Although the primary intent of this book is to prepare readers for the CSQE exam, this book contains the building blocks to develop a world-class software engineering process group and/or to move up the capability maturity model (CMM)ladder or achieve a higher level of capability within the context of SPICE (Software Process Improvement Capability dEtermination). In particular CMM and SPICE are 'assessed' levels of capability maturity with no prescribed techniques. This book provides a collection of techniques that will fit nicely into goals for increasing the maturity level of an organization regardless of the framework (CMM or SPICE) that is selected. What I like about this book is that it also addresses in detail how SQA aligns to ISO 9000-3, and the coverage of ISO/IEC 12207 and IEEE-STD-1074 (both of which are important international standards that should be considered as a part of an organization's strategy with respect to CMM or SPICE).

Chapters that provide excellent material supporting CMM and SPICE initiatives are: 1 & 2, SQA-Coming to Terms and How Does SQA Fit In? (a complete picture of the many components and considerations of an effective SQA function); 5, Software Quality Program Organization (great advice on organizing SQA within your company and aligning it to development and project management); 9, Inspections as an Up-Front Quality Technique (how to integrate inspections into a comprehensive, proactive quality posture); 10, Software Configuration Management (essential to any quality initiative regardless of whether the end goal is CMM, SPICE, ISO 9000 or compliance with international standards); 15, SQA Metrics (the foundation of SPICE and higher CMM levels); 19 & 20, Statistical Methods and Software Reliability Management (another set of foundation areas that are essential to SPICE and higher CMM levels).

Other chapters provide material that is specific to preparing for the CSQE examination or implementing any quality program that is focused on software quality assurance. I particularly liked the chapter on personnel requirements, which covered the people and process elements of SQA, and the cost of software quality. The latter gives you ample information for justifying SQA from a business perspective. This material is further augmented by a chapter on effective methods of IS quality assurance, which bridges the applications delivery (development) and service delivery (support and operations) domains.

SQA is not easy to organize and implement. Moreover, it is a highly technical discipline that is more engineering focused than most disciplines in development and operations. As such this book is definitely not for the faint-of-heart. It is intended for CSQE candidates and organizations that have attained some level of maturity and are striving to move higher up the capabilities ladder. If you are looking for a more basic book on SQA I recommend Customer Oriented Software Quality Assurance by Frank P. Ginac. However, if you are an experienced SQA practitioner, heading a software engineering process group, devising a plan for improving capability maturity for CMM or SPICE, or are preparing for the CSQE examination the Handbook of Software Quality Assurance is the best book you can have. It is a classic and earns a solid 5 stars.

Silly me. I thought perspectives meant more than one view. This book, while claiming to be an indifferent look at the New Age Movement, obviously is written by staunch backers of the Movement with too few exceptions to be considered balanced. People shouldn't pretend to be scholarly when they're simply being cheerleaders for an idea.

The essays in this book provide scholary insight and terrific references for the religious/spiritual side of the New Age movement. An essay drawing strong parallels between Christian Charismatic Movement and the New Age Movement to be impartial and very enlightening.

Although it is not a comprehensive work (compare with Marilyn Ferguson's "The Aquarian Conspiracy"), it is a great place for a serach for the more responsible features of New Age mysticism and spirituality.

This is not a review. The Jim Melton interview you run in relation to this text has nothing to do with J. Gordon Melton. Two different people. It would be a good idea to do an interview with J. Gordon Melton, one of the foremost academics on modern religion, cults and the New Age

If this is a sequel to a first book written by this author, perhaps he should stop here and start in a new direction. Where does he get the ideas for an Amish boy in a T-bird and Elvis impersonators and Admiral Peary's expeditions? Not only do they not add up together, but they are not relevant. My suggestion is to find a theme like boy meets girl or Good vs. Evil and give it a Charles Dickens onceover.

This is a sort of pathetic effort. Why would anyone write a sequel to an earlier book that nobody was ever interested in the first place? Just how does two army brats translate into anything even remotely universal. Two stars because this was a little better than the first one.

A book of sheer quality and splendor. My Fathers Geisha. I wish some people could read it and find it to be an utterly down right pleasing novel. Even though this book looks like it barely sold any copies at all please don't think it's bad. Some of the best books are hard to come by. If you liked Thelma And Louise read this book. You'll like it a lot.

this book opens with blackwood's great story: the wendigo. B is the master of the setting, noone can create the background and atmosphere like him. a very well written story from Brennan here. and Meloff's story is also an interesting read. derleth is at his best here. i don''t care that much for the guy, have never considered him to be HPL's great successor or anything, but he knows how to write, and i have always considered his story about Ithaqua to be his best contribution. the rest of the stories are well written. i don't think any of chaosium's anthologies contains of so much good writing than this. but good is not great. and the rest of the stories never turns out to be really good. the suspence killed by irrelevant writing going on for too long, mostly. sad. but the book is still wort reading

This was an excellent fantasy novel published in April 1993 about Sheela Queen of the Thorgon's (a northern barbarian tribe). The story begins with the defeat of Thorgon by Rhodia, and centers on Sheela's growth as a queen and her quest to gain allies needed to free her people. Unfortunately, after she gains the first of her requisite allies, the book ends with "Chapter One" of the sequel, "The Palace of Evil". Because the sequel slated for July 1993 was never published, it leaves the reader with the frustration associated with reading part of a novel.