Just a bit of warning for purchasers of this book! This account almost appears like it was written for a juvenile audience. Indeed, the preface denotes hope that it will serve as an "inspiration to the youth of today". Hence, keep in mind this is not a very scholarly read - although a glossary of artillery terms and diagrams is very helpful. Nice starter text, but this effort by Mr Hassler wasn't quite what I wanted - nor expected.

John pelham is truly a remarkable figure of the American civil War. reading this book allowed me to better understand the sterling character and superb strategical skills of this "Boy major" recommended for anyone who wants to learn more about "The gallant pelham"

Middle to High Schoolers as well as adults will pick this book up out of curiosity and immediately become engrossed. The question and answer format encourages browsing, and the book includes lots of nice features such as an index, a section for related reading, a section of web addresses and mail addresses for space related organizations. Students will find useful report information presented here in a fun format. The book also includes a number of photographs and drawings relating to the questions it helps answer. Students will discover the many effects of living in space from one of the men who has spent the most time there!

Great book for a middle school or high school library. Answers lots of frequently-asked questions about astronaut's life in space.

A rich and facinating account of how China made the decision to build the bomb. The origins of the Chinese nuclear program were made during the Eisenhower administration desion to reduce American troops in Korea. During this period, Eisenhower decided to increase American strategic forces (nuclear), thus adding to Chinese insecurity. According to the book, Mao wanted a paper tiger and the nuclear bomb was the answer.

The book also details how Soviet advisors provided the Chinese with baseline technical information for theroretical experimentation and fabrication of the first bomb. The book makes clear that the Sino-Soviet alliance was a shakey mutual military agreement at best. Moscow wanted total control of Soviet/Chinese military operations and how Chinese military leaders resisted these attempts by Moscow and decided to expel Soviet advisors. The book also explains how the CIA blew the call: They predicated a pultonium core and in fact the Chinese built a uranium-235 core.

A must for anyone interested in understanding American/Chinese Foreign policy in present day Chinese-Amercian relations

Sidney Bechet was not only one of the greatest jazz musicians ever, he was one of the most facinating characters in the music. He wrote his own poetic autobiography, "Treat It Gentle". After reading "Treat It Gentle" you might want to know even more about Bechet, and wonder how much of his stories are fact or fiction. If so, "Sidney Bechet The Wizard of Jazz" is the book for you.

British musician and writer John Chilton is one of the very best jazz researchers. His carefully gathered information is presented well in this book. Find out about Bechet's personality, the real story of his time in French prison, insightfull analysis of his recordings, and more.

This book is an example of what a well researched and written jazz biography should be.

-- DCM "Froggy"

This is a handy if somewhat eclectic little collection, with works by some poets who are hard to find elsewhere, such as Henry Howard. If you don't have a copy of the long-out-of-print Hebel and Hudson anthology of English Renaissance Poetry, pick up this.

I read the hardcover of this book and was thinking to myself when Sheldon had started to write 6th grade books. The writing was a dobule spaced 12 font or something like that, I could have fit the entire book into one half it's length with proper type setting.

I mention this, because I think it was a ruse by the publisher to try and make this book more imrpessive than it really was. This book didn't have very good character development, and the plot twists were contrived; it seemed as though Sheldon wrote this book under duress, and didn't really care how it turned out so long as there was a final product.

I have read many of Sheldons books, and have enjoyed most if not all of them, I am really surprised at this book falling below the level of excellence that his other books have established.

This book is signature Sheldon with the plot twisting and exciting plot and setting, but is a pale shadow of some of his better work.

Read another one of Sheldons older works before you judge him from just this book, I feel that his earlier work is far better.

This book is another typical Sheldon thriller filled with suspense, intrigue, murder, revenge, and mystery. Sheldon once again leaves the reader clueless until the very end on who the actual killer is. The title of the book is a double whammy as several best laid plans, well . . . you will see!

I am big Sheldon fan and the only disappointing aspect of this book was the ending. I felt the ending was very flat and boring! The characters were intriguing and several sub-plots were occurring which contributed to the increasing suspense of the tale.

If you are a Sheldon fan, you won't be disappointed with this thriller! Sheldon leaves you hanging until the very end! This book is a fast read and you won't want to put it down either!

As a long time fan of Sydney Sheldon, I have enjoyed all of his books including this one. I'm glad I purchased it on a Friday because I had all weekend to read it. The book was very exciting and I can say that I was glad to see both Leslie and Oliver get what was coming to them. I feel that what happened to Leslie in the finale was a bit hard, but I guess a hard head makes for a soft behind. In addition to "what i think", the only problem i had with the book was the extremely coincidental nature that President Russell and his Chief of Staff had in common regarding women, timing, and ecstacy. Overall, though, the book was quick enjoyable reading. As a side note, i was happy to hear Sheldon was born in Chicago. If he ever reads this, it would be GREAT if he could write a book where the primary setting was in the Windy City!!!! That would probably be the one to blow me away!!!

First off, that's a 3.5, not a 3, but whatever. Perhaps I am just not one for reading philosophy, or as I like to think, many philosophers simply do not understand how to write in a clear fasion. At the bottom of it, Dewey's ideas for ethics in education are as vital now as they were when he wrote it back 1909, but perhaps if he could have made his points in some way more coherent (at a little over 50 pages, this still feels bloated, I imagine it could be clearly stated in about 10 pages), the entire US educational system would have been where it is now by the 20's--and that truly would have been something revolutionary. Dewey goes so far as essentially voicing his own primitive theory of constructivism, along with revolutionary concepts such as 'those who do the doing do the learning'--namely that teaching should be more student oriented and should first and foremost engage the student. There even seems to be a bit of the 'content versus process' debate here, and yet I think there must be more modern writers who have stated this with greater clarity. For people who enjoy reading terse philosophical monologues (and this certainly is still quite readable--I've seen much worse), then certainly pick up this book both for its historical value and a relatively interesting exploration of the ethics in teaching. If your a busy grad student like me though, this may not seem like it is worth the frustration--especially when you can open up almost any teaching journal and see the same ideas. Sure, they didn't say if first, but I don't fall asleep reading it.

This collection is a travesty indeed. Great poems no doubt, but abysmally read. Furthermore they should have put all the introductions together separate and apart from the poems. It's nice to hear intros the first time around. But who wants to hear the intros everytime you listen to the poems? Sometimes I want to hear just a stream of poetry without any interuptions and this format makes that impossible. It's incredible that such a great concept could be so terribly executed.

I could not get this back to the store for a refund quickly enough. While the poem selection is great and the poem introductions are narrated well, the choice to use "modern poets" as the readers made this compilation utterly unlistenable. The only one that I found acceptable was Anthony Hect--the others were notably bad. In particular, I found Jorie Graham's "readings" to be abysmal. She reads each poem as if it were simply a string of unconnected words, giving equal stress to each, with halting pauses between them, never breaking out of a drowsy monotone. Other readers were not much better.

There are three major flaws in the readings:

1) The readers are no better than the average untrained person, and often much worse. (You've just got to hear them for yourself to appreciate how bad they are.)

2) Successive poems by the same poet are read by different "readers." It's jarring to hear 3 or 4 poems from Poet X, each in a wildly different voice.

3) No regard is given to matching the sex of the poet and reader. In general, it is really annoying to hear your favorite poet read by the wrong sex. In particular, making this mistake on "gender specific" poems (like having a woman read Poe's "Annabel Lee") is unforgivable.

Why is this all so upsetting? Because it is practically impossible to find poetry collections on CD, making this a serious waste of limited resources. If you are looking for a good collection on CD, buy "81 Famous Poems CD" by Audio Partners (ISBN 0-945353-82-0). It's a good collection on two CDs and is read by professionals: Alexander Scourby, Bramwell Fletcher, and Nancy Wickwire. In the meantime, we can only hope that the producers of this collection will eventually come to their senses and re-record the poems with the services of trained professionals.

If you are prepping for the GRE in literature or are trying to gain a basic understanding of literary periods and poets, this audio-collection is a must. It features a brief introduction about each poet's life. It also includes a brief introduction about the theme of each poem. The fact that you have to listen to these introductions before listening to the poem inculcate the poem and aids retention. If literature has turned into a cumbersome and overwhelming task, this collection will not only provide you with a sense of direction but will also make literature far more pleasurable.