Lee has written a wonderful book that takes on all the myths about dietary and lifestyle health that have been support for years by economic interests at the detrement of our society. I have used this book as a reference since it came out and a resource to those who might challange with so many erroneous dietary cliches (e.g. "drink milk to have stronger bones"). If every adult read this book and digested it, what an enlightened, healthy society we would become...if only. Great job Lee!!

When I have a question about health, diet or food. This is the book I always turn to first. I've read and re-read this book many times and it's one of my most used references.

Lee covers dietary components like proteins, fats, carbohydrates, additives, dairy, seafood and vitamins. He also summarizes some of the different diets around the world and correlates them with different levels of disease and sickness--in the process finding those diets which are the most healthful. Lee then provides recipes and cooking strategies to integrate the best foods into your own diet.

Weight control, exercise, biological age, seniors, heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes and more are examined and Lee quotes research and the plain facts concerning each. The ladder half of the book is devoted to the food and drug industry and their interactions with government organizations like the FDA, RDA, USDA and APA. He writes allot about chemicals, pesticides and toxins found in most foods and their is a chapter concerning Organic vs. Conventional growing.

Throughout the book you will find very amusing and often absurd quotes by industry leaders touting the benefits of their toxic foods. These snippets of corporate propaganda and government idiocy are often rendered disturbing when they punctuate the actual truths which Lee sites.

It's a real shame the vast majority of American's are mindless of the harm they are doing to their bodies with their diet. A book like this is a great education and wakeup call to most anyone. My thanks to the author for sharing his knowledge.

Also, if you've read this book and liked it check out "Milk : The Deadly Poison" by Robert Cohen, Jane Heimlich. Kinda poetic title, huh. :)

If you believe that your health is the single most important asset you own then the book "Long Life Now: Startegies for Staying Alive" by Doctor Hitchcox is for you. Well written, well laid out - designed to be read "Long Life Now" is the most comprehensive round-up of profound and accurate information compiled to inform and educate us on what is going on with our culture when it comes to health. This book is a must have in all libraries. This book is a major reference book for all concerned individuals and activists.

Doctor Hitchcox has throughly researched and verified his facts and is to be commended for the time he took and the throughness of his work. He has written a highly insightful and at times terrifying account of the current cultural practices and values in this country around health and environmental issues.

This is a book worth the time to read - don't plan to read it all at once. You will need time to digest what he says. If you can only read one section in the book read his discussion on diet and its relationship to long life. This discussion alone is well worth the read. Read this book if you value your life and quality of life

Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) is an offshoot of systems thinking and has its roots in Peter Checkland's seminal 1981 book, "Systems Thinking, Systems Practice" (now out of print). This book shows how to apply SSM to the problem sets for which it was designed: the unpredictable behavior of human actions, which are often counter to the logic we apply to "hard" problems such as computer systems behavior and other systems that follow predictable laws of physics.

As a consultant who aligns information systems to business processes this book provided me with a streamlined approach to dealing with the human factor, especially organizational politics and resistance to change - both of which I routinely deal with. The approach is reasonably straightforward, and involves the following steps:

- Frame the problem and surrounding situation
- Use 'rich pictures' portray the situation. A 'rich picture' is an informal rendering, and should capture issues and thinking, systems and interactions.
- Develop a root definitions and perspectives from which to view the situation (Clients, Actors, Transformations, World-view and Environment). A 'root definition' is a process that transforms an input into an output - a typical process flow.
- Build a conceptual model of what the system to remedy the problem or situation needs to accomplish. The basis of the conceptual model is human activity.
- Compare the model to the ideal, examine alternatives and select the best option.
- Design and implement the system or solution.

The approach taken by the author is to provide the knowledge needed to employ SSM in a sequence of chapters that lead you through models and methodology, the principles of human activity modeling, system selection, business process reengineering issues, the consensus primary task model, the relationships to training and HR, and generic model building.

Consensus primary task model (CPTM) is a key element of the approach in this book and is crucial to successfully employing SSM, which, after all, is designed to deal with the ambiguities of people. The CPTM is an aggregation of the conceptual models, which results in a 'strawman' model that is used to build consensus. From this evolves into the agreed upon model and approach.

The key differences between the usual 'committee' approach and SSM are the structure and framework, ensuring that viewpoints are systematically examined, and the emphasis on consensus instead of compromise. While the book makes SSM appear to be easy, which is a function of the author's clear writing, employing it in the real world requires training and discipline. It's especially well suited to organizational change management projects as well as strategic planning.

Overall, I enjoyed Mr. Bonavolonta's story of the breaking up of the Italian Mafia. There were many facts I did not know, especially those told from an insider's perspective, plus interesting insights into the day to day operations of both the F.B.I. and the Mafia.

However, I found several of what I considered glaring weaknesses.

First, the excess profanity. Believe me, I am not a prude by any measure, and I definitely believe that profanity has its place in literature, especially when used in quotations. However, I found Mr. Bonavolonta's excessive and promiscuous use of it to be, at first offensive, then boring, and finally insulting to my intelligence. Is it that Mr. Bonavolonta felt that his audience is made up of the dense and unsophisticated, unable to understand frustration with the burocracy and unimaginative, stodgy time servers within the F.B.I. unless he calls them motherfuckers and the system bullshit, over and over and over again? Mr. Bonavolonta needs to be aquainted with the concept that, sometimes, less is more.

Second, I found that Mr. Bonavolonta's apparent view that the F.B.I. operated in a virtual vacuum while investigating organized crime and the Italian Mafia to be ridiculous and pedestrian in the extreme. There were many other law enforcement organizations involved in these wars, and to minimize or exclude them from the telling of this story does a great diservice to them, to Mr. Bonavolonta's reputation as a accurate reporter of facts, and especially to the reader.

Very few Americans realize the reach of the Mafia. For decades, the FBI even refused to admit to the presence of a Mafia. The Mob thumbed their noses at law enforcement. Punks like John Gotti became cult heroes. Then came an incredible confluence of a new breed of FBI agents and a new law, the RICO statute. RICO only required that the government prove a pattern of racketeering activity. This allowed them to go after the bosses, who had only issued orders. "The Good Guys" is an enthralling story of how a group of FBI agents in New York, and a few prosecutors, made an all-out assault on the Mafia, using wiretaps, bugs, undercover agents, and surveillance. How they brought the Mob to its knees.

The author of the book, FBI agent Jules Bonavolonta, grew up in an Italian family in which his father's tailor shop was a target for Mafia intimidation and extortion. Some of the other players you know well. Rudy Guliani, now Mayor of New York. Louie Freeh, now director of the FBI. Not known at the time, but agent Joe Pistone played a key role. He was undercover in the Mob for six years and got so tight with one of the bosses, that he, Joe Pistone, FBI agent, was asked to carry out a contract for a Mob killing!

And my favorite, Jim Kallstrom, who was the FBI agent in charge of the squads that did the bugging and wiretapping of the Mob in the New York City area. Kallstrom is the sometimes gruff, and always intimidating, spokesman for the FBI on the TWA flight 800 crash. I relate more to him because I did some lock picking and bugging of the Mafia as a criminal investigator for the U.S. Treasury Department - and later the same kind of work as a CIA agent in several foreign countries.

The book is a behind-the-scenes look at how Mob figures were targeted, bugged, wiretapped, and surveilled, and is like no other real-life story I have seen in print. It is full of gripping suspense and unexpected humor, like when an agent got caught under the bed of a bigtime mobster and told the wiseguy that he was the exterminator man. And the guy bought it! No Einsteins in this group.

But too, this is a remarkably frank book in which Jules Bonavolonta and other agents express their complete contempt for the "pencil-necked geeks" at FBI headquarters. They rail against the bean counters who want instant statistics to parade before the Congress and the press. This group of mutineers put their careers on the line every day in their passionate belief that they had to do some long-term work to infiltrate and expose the Mob. As a man who worked for both Treasury and CIA, I respect this small group of FBI agents as much for their willingness to tell the bosses to go climb a rope, as their determination and courage in finally making the cases that brought down the Mob families in New York.

I'm a novelist, but I would have a tough time topping the story told in "The Good Guys." At times, it is hard to believe that it is a true story. It would be impossible for you not to enjoy this book.

Richard C. Rhodes rcr@gte.ne

The author grabs your attention from the opening words and you are sucked into the inside workings and politics of the FBI as you have never before seen. The book does an excellent job of describing what makes the mafia tick, how agents from the FBI made it their job to figure this out and develop a strategy to bring down the mob. Jules Bonavolonta tells an emotionally charged personal account of his war against an organization that gave all good, hard working Italians a bad name. By the end of the book, you are cheering for Jules and revelling in his eventual triumph. This book is filled with exciting first person stories which take you on a roller coaster ride - from hearbreak to fear to discouragement to elation. A must read

The best thing about this book is it takes the perspective of people involved in investigating the cause of the crash. It shows what kind of sacrifices these people have to make in order to get relaible information about the crash to the public. It also shows what its like when two different countries are involved in an investigation. If you want to know what it is like to be a disaster investigator, buy this book.

I studied out of 7 different preparation books, and this one, by far is the worst one! The questions in this book are really difficult, tricky and unlike the CLEP exam! The questions in the actual CLEP exam arent tricky like the SAT or GRE, they are straightforward. For some reason, Peterson's has decided to put in SAT-like questions on their practice exam. This book should be thrown out of the market because its NOTHING like the real exams! I would recommend Princeton Review's Cracking the CLEP, and Review for Clep Examination by Comex Systems. The REA also writes really accurate practice exams. If you are taking English, I also recommend you purchase "The Writer's Reference" by Diana Hacker. That was probably the most helpful book in brushing up on your English.

I found the practice exercises in this book to be very helpful, and I did really well when I took the CLEP afterwards.

Looking to maximize my ability on the CLEP tests to avoid taking numerous classes that I have no interest in. If you'd like to get practice on these tests, than this book may help.

This long out-of-print book is useful beyond its intended purpose, which is to prep 'poor' (read 'middle-class') American males in the art of marrying into wealth.
Since subject matter of this type seems crass when presented as a straightforward manual (and did even in the 'greed was good' 1980s), it is packaged as 'humor.' It should not be read as such. Anyone picking up "The Poor Boy's Guide to Marrying Rich" in search of laughs will be disappointed. What humor there is is heavy-handed and suggestive, like the color commentary in a bad men's magazine, and seems incidental to the rest of the book, as though it were added as an afterthought.
In fact, I would be surprised if that weren't the case. No respectable mainstream publisher would put out a book on how to marry a rich girl (what would be next -- 'Gold Digging for Dummies'?) except under the guise of humor. I imagine that Brian Ross Duffy's original conception was a serious work on the subject, but that he was persuaded by the publisher (or someone) to rework his original manuscript and "lighten it up." This is unfortunate, because his attempts at levity come across as rather seedy, while the rest of the book is fairly innocuous. The bawdy humor seems doubly out of place since Duffy has not yet accomplished what he purports to teach the rest of us, and one imagines he would wish to avoid biting the hand he hopes someday might feed him.
What Duffy has written is purely a practical guide. He explains simply and earnestly how the wealthy spend their days; how they eat, how they court, even what they read and where they vacation. The terms and concepts he introduces here may be common currency in wealthy circles, but they were Swahili to this middle-brow Midwesterner. When friends of mine talk about their 'swim,' they mean their trip to the local pool, not their circle of friends.
The book has obvious flaws. It begins by painting the moneyed class -- and particularly its daughters -- in broad strokes. But it spins off into such arcane topics as classic horse show events and the Fertile Crescent, covering the latter in such agonizing detail that the casual book browser might mistake it for a travel guide. Incidental information of this sort might be useful to someone planning to 'pass for rich' for a weekend, but a person looking to make a permanent move up in society would be better off studying etiquette, economics, and his own psychology than memorizing the names of country clubs and celebrity diseases.
The book touches only lightly on the psychology and ethics of marrying above one's station, citing the concept of noblesse oblige while failing to explain it. One subtle obstacle to "marrying up" is the enormous social gulf it must create between the two sets of in-laws (and, by extension, within the marriage itself). Duffy only hints at this intriguing topic before moving on to more fluff. Another tantalizing angle is the self-loathing that must beset many social-climbers, particularly men, when faced with the constant realization that they are their spouses' economic inferiors. Does this situation tend to produce a sort of financial eunuch? Does that husband become an angry rebel who condemns his benefactors at every opportunity while continuing to live off of his in-laws' bounty? The author doesn't venture into these waters, though there is comic potential there. Then there is the distracting use of personal anecdotes: "I've summered in the Fertile Crescent for almost thirty years and (modesty aside) feel well qualified to conduct this important although abbreviated tour..." Is Duffy attempting to gratify his ego? If so, he loses the sympathy of the reader in the process. Is he trying to build credibility on his subject matter? His claims are too vague to prove or disprove. Who, besides Duffy himself, really cares how many yacht clubs he's been to or rich girls he's bedded? The writer does, however, display an obvious affection for the subject. He is not engaged in class warfare. He is not out to mock the wealthy or destroy them from within; he merely wishes to number himself among them. He readily admits that doing so constitutes a tradeoff, however, and that joining the ranks of the rich means giving up a private existence for one of constant activity, most of it apparently philanthropic in nature.
Why did I read the book? After all, I already have a wife, and no aspirations of replacing her with anyone named Muffy or Mimsy. I read 'The Guide' (as Duffy calls it) because it is an honest, if casual, look at the lives of the American upper-crust, and it serves as a useful primer to anyone hoping to someday operate -- however peripherally -- within that rarefied environment.

A Look at How the Other Half Lives; Forget the Humor
This long out-of-print book is useful beyond its intended purpose, which is to prep 'poor' (read 'middle-class') American males in the art of marrying into wealth.
Since subject matter of this type seems crass when presented as a straightforward manual (and did even in the 'greed was good' 1980s), it is packaged as 'humor.' It should not be read as such. Anyone picking up "The Poor Boy's Guide to Marrying Rich" in search of laughs will be disappointed. What humor there is is heavy-handed and suggestive, like the color commentary in a bad men's magazine, and seems incidental to the rest of the book, as though it were added as an afterthought.
In fact, I would be surprised if that weren't the case. No respectable mainstream publisher would put out a book on how to marry a rich girl (what would be next -- 'Gold Digging for Dummies'?) except under the guise of humor. I imagine that Brian Ross Duffy's original conception was a serious work on the subject, but that he was persuaded by the publisher (or someone) to rework his original manuscript and "lighten it up." This is unfortunate, because his attempts at levity come across as rather seedy, while the rest of the book is fairly innocuous. The bawdy humor seems doubly out of place since Duffy has not yet accomplished what he purports to teach the rest of us, and one imagines he would wish to avoid biting the hand he hopes someday might feed him.
What Duffy has written is purely a practical guide. He explains simply and earnestly how the wealthy spend their days; how they eat, how they court, even what they read and where they vacation. The terms and concepts he introduces here may be common currency in wealthy circles, but they were Swahili to this middle-brow Midwesterner. When friends of mine talk about their 'swim,' they mean their trip to the local pool, not their circle of friends.
The book has obvious flaws. It begins by painting the moneyed class -- and particularly its daughters -- in broad strokes. But it spins off into such arcane topics as classic horse show events and the Fertile Crescent, covering the latter in such agonizing detail that the casual book browser might mistake it for a travel guide. Incidental information of this sort might be useful to someone planning to 'pass for rich' for a weekend, but a person looking to make a permanent move up in society would be better off studying etiquette, economics, and his own psychology than memorizing the names of country clubs and celebrity diseases.
The book touches only lightly on the psychology and ethics of marrying above one's station, citing the concept of noblesse oblige while failing to explain it. One subtle obstacle to "marrying up" is the enormous social gulf it must create between the two sets of in-laws (and, by extension, within the marriage itself). Duffy only hints at this intriguing topic before moving on to more fluff. Another tantalizing angle is the self-loathing that must beset many social-climbers, particularly men, when faced with the constant realization that they are their spouses' economic inferiors. Does this situation tend to produce a sort of financial eunuch? Does that husband become an angry rebel who condemns his benefactors at every opportunity while continuing to live off of his in-laws' bounty? The author doesn't venture into these waters, though there is comic potential there. Then there is the distracting use of personal anecdotes: "I've summered in the Fertile Crescent for almost thirty years and (modesty aside) feel well qualified to conduct this important although abbreviated tour..." Is Duffy attempting to gratify his ego? If so, he loses the sympathy of the reader in the process. Is he trying to build credibility on his subject matter? His claims are too vague to prove or disprove. Who, besides Duffy himself, really cares how many yacht clubs he's been to or rich girls he's bedded? The writer does, however, display an obvious affection for the subject. He is not engaged in class warfare. He is not out to mock the wealthy or destroy them from within; he merely wishes to number himself among them. He readily admits that doing so constitutes a tradeoff, however, and that joining the ranks of the rich means giving up a private existence for one of constant activity, most of it apparently philanthropic in nature.
Why did I read the book? After all, I already have a wife, and no aspirations of replacing her with anyone named Muffy or Mimsy. I read 'The Guide' (as Duffy calls it) because it is an honest, if casual, look at the lives of the American upper-crust, and it serves as a useful primer to anyone hoping to someday operate -- however peripherally -- within that rarefied environment.