Harlow Unger's book covers a biography that is stranger than fiction, starting with LaFayette's unique marriage and continuing with his fanatical dedication to the remote American struggle for freedom; his close relationships with Washington, Franklin, Jefferson and other world leaders; his exceptional military leadership; his continuing voluntary work for independence in his own country (including 13 months in a horrific prison) all the way until he died at the age of 77. Throughout the story, the mutual, unabated love between the Marquis and his very capable wife, Adrienne, provided even more dramatic episodes. Nearly every event was more amazing the the one before.
This is a detailed and eye-opening history of both the American and French revolutions and their great contrast. If the reader has trouble believing it is truly factual, he will be convinced with the frequent, verbatim letters and voluminous, documented historical references. This is absolutely a must read for anyone with an ounce of interest in western civilization.

This book swept me away with its twists of adventure, romance, and military scenes. It is definitely the best biography I've read on Lafayette with its thorough detail and gripping narrative. Lafayette's story combines French and American history, and captures the moving love story of his marriage. It has been a long time since a book transported me like this one did.

I was fairly educated in the paranormal before I read this book, but because of the examples and information he includes from the wide perspective in the paranormal field, I found it to still be a most interesting book. He brings up a lot of research that gives us an indication to that we have still a long way to go to use our full potentional. And I sure loved the show as well... :)

This books do I highly recommend to everyone, but especially rookies and skeptics. As I think they would get the most out of this book, and maybe it will spark a curiosity that will lead to further research in the area...

It is rare that one finds readable a book by a celebrity. Mr O'Bryen has done a wonderful job.

I don't agree with the other reviews. This book is a serious one and it is a "smooth" version of "Algorithms: Theory and Practice" from the same authors, which has a 5 stars rate. The book don't teach how to program, but the main kind of techniques in algorithm design (Greedy, Divide and Conquer and Dynamic Programing techniques, and others like Backtracking, Probabilistic Algorithms, etc.). I teach a course of Algorithm Design with this book (having the Sedgewick and Cormen books like additional very good references) and I think that it is a very instructive course on algorithmics (but NOT in programming, of course).

One of the few books organising algorithms around design techniques instead of application areas (see "Algorithms" from Sedgevick). Though both approachs have pros and cons, I've found the former most convenient for people learning to design algorithms. Many problems admit several solutions depending on the design tecnique involved. This fact is emphasized by the authors.

The book is self-contained, plainly written, so that an undergraduate can read it after taking a prerequisite course on programming.

It's also mathematically rigorous, while mantaining simplicity. This allows analysis of algorithms to be really "analytic" (no more guessing the solution to a recurrence relation).

One main drawback (certainly usual) is the lack of excercise solutions.

This book is written in a simple style: algoritm class description, related proofs, examples, variations and exemples. Because of this clean approach, you can basically read it in a couple days if you have the necessary background knowledge, and in a couple weeks if not. I strongly recommend this book to everyone who are calling themselves "programers", either graduated or not, it will teach/remind them what are the elegant fundamental algorithmic approches to common problems; it's seems that today's software could use a bit of this elegance. As for all the negative reviews, I'm astonished. I own several books on the subject, and I find this one the easiest to read, no question. It must be some sort of personal vendetta against the author, a failed undegraduate course with this book as teaching material, or some other personal reason; that's probably why this/these person(s) whish(es) to remain anonymous.