DEEP RIVER is about much more than a Missouri bottom-land farm, although that farm and the author's family who worked it are central. Hamilton delves back in time to the days of Indian tribes and of slavery, and along the way spins some great stories about Frank and Jesse James, Blind Boone (a virtuouso pianist), and other colorful characters. He gives a memorable account of growing up in rural Missouri and of his school days. I found the book absorbing, and relished the author's shrewd insights and morsels of wisdom. It's the nearest thing to Thoreau's WALDEN I've seen in a long time, and it too deserves to last. Not incidentally, Hamilton, for many years the editor of THE IOWA REVIEW, writes like a dream.

I can't recall ever reading a memoir similar to David Hamilton's Deep River. I don't know if that's because I've just haven't read the whole range of this kind of literature or because his book is unique. What I do know is that I enjoyed it, that I found myself reading it again, that it is beautifully written and that it is still kicking around inside of me.

The book is not organized around any immediately recognizable principles. Yes, all right, there are sections where Hamilton leads us to believe that he is now going to concentrate on the issue of slavery in western Missouri, or on the movement of pioneers through western Missouri, or the Civil War as it affected western Missouri, as well as, of course, on his memories of growing up on a farm next to the Missouri River. But the problem is, or perhaps I should say, the delight for the reader is, that all these various themes keep slipping into one another, folding in and folding out, forming a kind of fabric. The reader starts with one thread and then is diverted to another, and then another, until he meets the first thread again, now somehow changed.

Contradictions abound. Hamilton's careful scholarship is hedged with cautions than none of these "facts" may be supported by careful scholarship. He floods us with handed-down stories of the region, but asks us the question: How is he to compose a readable book except by choosing the most readable stories -- whether they are true or not? His detailed, graphic and beautifully written accounts of how he learned to hammer a nail, dig a fence post hole or which objects his uncle carried in the back of his pick-up truck, are set against a sweeping historical and pre-historical panorama that takes us back past the Missouri Indians to possible evidence that this land was inhabited by humans 35,000 years ago.

And on and on. Although I have read nothing else of Hamilton's (he is a professor of English literature at The University of Iowa and the editor of THE IOWA REVIEW), I suggest that this book can most successfully be approached as poetry writ large, and in reading it, above and beyond its engaging parts, we are being offered Hamilton's very personal take on the nature of reality.

A very interesting book. Thoughtful and fun. Amazing sentence structure - I do not remember reading anything quite like it - it was rather refreshing. I note that the author is a Prof. of English at U of Iowa - I do wish I had had someone like him teaching fourty years ago. Hope we see more of his work.

This book was my first in-depth introduction into the intricacies of the Viet Nam War. I feel like I've only scratched the surface of this monolithic subject.

In the final chapter, Mr. Bui lists the main reasons why the war was so unmanageable and why the US (and coincidentally S. Viet Nam) eventually lost it. The reason listed last (the problems resulting from US intervention) is the focus of his book.

"The South Vietnamese people, and especially the South Vietnamese leaders, myself among them, bear the ultimate responsibility for the fate of their nation, and to be honest, they have much to regret and much to be ashamed of. But it is also true that the war's cast of characters operated within a matrix of larger forces that stood outside the common human inadequacies and failings. And it was these forces that shaped the landscape on which we all moved."

"First...was the obduracy of France, which in the late forties insisted on retaining control of its former colony rather than conceding independence in good time to a people who hungered for it. Second was the ideological obsession of Vietnam's Communists. Not content with fighting to slough off a dying colonialism, they relentlessly sought to impose on the Vietnamese people their dogma of class warfare and proletarian dictatorship. Finally came the massive intervention by the United States, inserting into our struggle for independence and freedom its own overpowering dynamic. These three forces combined to distort the basic nature of Vietnam's emergence from colonialism, ensuring that the struggle would be more complex and bloodier than that of so many other colonies which achieved nationhood during mid-century."

In this book, you definitely will get a S. Vietnamese diplomat's point of view. I was hoping for more on the common man's outlook, the characteristics of the Vietnamese people themselves, and the demographics of the country, but it is not provided at all in this tome. I think this would have done a lot to make the actions of the S. Vietnamese government understandable, if not excusable.

Also, another weakness of the book is that Mr. Bui is always quick to point out American missteps, but rarely expounds on S. Vietnamese imperfections. For example, he writes that one huge problem was corruption. But he never fully elaborates on the nature of this corruption.

The story is easy to read except for when you start to get towards the end. The reason being that no more new insights will be given, and you already know what the disastrous outcome will be.

"In the Jaws of History" is most valuable for Bui Diem's account of his early years in the North, when the "great dilemma in the lives for all nationalists was coming to a head". Nationalists saw collaboration with the French as "repugnant", but then so was "giving the nation ... over to a future ruled by Ho Chi Minh, Vo Nguyen Giap, and the Indochinese Communist Party" who were then murdering nationalist leaders in Hanoi and along the Red River. Giap's role in the purge of the nationalist Dai Viet and VNQDD needs to be kept in mind by those who tend to accept as fact the popular communist myths woven around its leadership figures. "In the Jaws of History" is perhaps best read along with Bui Tin's memoirs "Following Ho Chi Minh: The Memoirs of a North Vietnamese Colonel".

This book offers a compelling and fascinating read. The perspective is one we don't see in most of our histories of the Vietnam conflict: the view of a South Vietnam nationalist who tries to save his nation from the Communists. The absence of bitterness, the appraisals of both the weakness and strength of his South Vietnamese compatriots, his views on the American intervention: all are fascinating.

Overall, this is one of the best books I have ever read about the conflict: it's right up there with Stanley Karnow's well-regarded book.

Mollenhoff and Hamilton have done a great job doing research for this book. The background on how Monona Terrace came to be is fascinating. The people and relationships important in Madison's architecture and politics eventually get discussed in this book. About the only thing you could possibly criticize is the rehash of FLLW biography which doesn't need to appear here. This is a minor criticism, as I realize that for some readers this may be the only FLLW book they own.

The story of Monona Terrace, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and updated by Taliesin Architects (led by Wright apprentice Tony Puttnam) to conform to current code and requirements, here receives the sensitive and perceptive treatment it deserves. The book's many excellent features include clear and graceful writing, beautiful illustrations integrated aptly into the text, and balanced consideration of controversial subjects. The authors' account of the life of Frank Lloyd Wright and their treatment of the political history of Madison provide the context that make the Monona Terrace story so fascinating. This is a valuable book indeed.

This book is a good introduction to programming in the Windows NT environment. A good starting point for those new to Windows NT.

This book represents an exemplary survey for the C++ programmer on how to develop for Windows NT. It starts with an excellent survey of NT architecture then proceeds with several chapters on an overview of the Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC). The strength of this work is that each chapter is succinct and relatively complete. Since MFC is so rich with features, it is extremely difficult for a programmer coming from another environment (i.e. UNIX) to see the NT landscape. This book is outstanding in this regard. After going over a chapter in this book, one can approach the Microsoft documentation without feeling intimidated.

I puchased this book for my wife who brought home some pottery when she was in Umbria. I was hoping for a book that had a lot of pictures of the different kinds of Deruta pottery. This book was a history of the pottery from 1200-present. Although it was not what I thought, it was still very informative and enjoyable. I would recommend to anyone who wants to find out the history of this beautiful Italian pottery

This book is an excellent source of study, for the ones who want to know a little bit of the history of Deruta and its pottery tradition. For artists, it provides some wonderful pictures of many kinds of pottery in bright colours. The publishing quality is also very good.

This is a beautiful book! I highly recommend it to anyone enchanted by Italian majolica and interested in it's history. After I read it, I thought I'd leave it on my coffee table for easy reference...but so many people at work have asked to borrow it! Even as I rode the train to work with the book in my lap, people next to me couldn't resist staring at the pictures and commenting on its beauty.

The cleverly named "Using Visual C++ 6" is good for those who have never used Microsoft Visual C++ before. Most of it is pretty basic how-to, not very specific to the new version 6. It goes through explaining basic AppWizard functions, dialog design, the basic resources, graphic drawing routines (?), documents, views, using external data, code libraries, ActiveX, and basically everything all the other MSVC books have plenty of.

This book is far from being a prize-winner in the way that it's written. The tutorials are incomplete, missing a few steps here and there, forgetting to tell you this and that. And if you're looking for a book that will teach you consistent MFC coding, then this one is not for you. The author doesn't take advantage of some important MFC classes, and uses hard top-down code instead where a class instance would definitely be in order. I am a relatively inexperienced C++ programmer, and I found myself making corrections to the code in the book, actually converting it to MFC. There are also places in the book where the author uses hard code when he could have used a couple of keystrokes and a mouse-click instead. The book is littered with typos and minor oversights all round.

But it's not entirely bad, either. It is very well set up, with clear pictures, sidebar notes, comments and excellent layout overall. The author assumes that the reader learns as he reads, so repetitions are few and short, whereas several other books fall into the endless spiral of repeating a detailed description of every trivial action whenever the reader is required to perform it.

All things considered, it's a good beginner's book that teaches by example. If you're beginning object-oriented programming, this book won't teach you any good OO discipline, but it will teach you some of the basics of Windows programming and application design. If you are an experienced C++ programmer or OO developer wanting to learn to use MSVC, you might be amused or irritated by the author's lack of object-oriented discipline, or simply by the book's little inconsistencies.

It really should get 3 stars, but I gave it 2 because the first rating was so rediculously high.

I liked this book. I knew C++, but had no clue about Visual C++. Hell, I even know Visual Basic, but when it came trying to figure out VC++, I was lost. If you are in the same boat as I am, then I HIGHLY recommend this book for a first VC++ book. It has many great step through examples that are easy to follow. It is true that it doesn't get into too much detail about the inner workings of Windows or C++, but I wasn't expecting that. It goes over most major topics with VC++ though. COM,SDI,MDI,ActiveX even a bit with some DirectX stuff. At the moment I am going though the ENTIRE book, and learning about more of these topics that I initially skipped. I HIGHLY recommend this book if you already C, or C++ and want to learn VC++ rather quickly and easily.

This book was written to teach the reader how to use the Visual C++ for code development. That is, the book shows you how to use Visual C++'s auto code generation, resource editing, and code management features to quickly write programs that use Microsoft menus and code libraries.

Unlike a manual, each chapter in this book builds on the prior chapter. Early chapters explain in detail how to use various interface widgets to build simple dialog-based applications. Later chapters explain how to use these skills to build more complex applications.

In general, I had an easy time following the examples and learning the concepts. I was quite surprised how much I could do in so little time. Reading the book makes me appreciate the product much more than I had imagined.

Cautions: A few sections of this book appear as if written by a different author or at a different time (i.e., parts of Chapter 7). Here, vague and error-prone discussions are used in place of firm examples. At best, these chapters serve as clever puzzles to those who enjoy debugging other people's code. Others should ignore these small tidbits of non-information.

First - it's tough to argue with any book with a foreword by Sean Connery, the best 007 ever. Still, David Hamilton's summations of Scotland's better courses are spot on. There are lots of websites out there these days and lots of "coffee table" tomes that are mediocre at best, but Hamilton's reviews and opinions are born of experience. And that's what's important.

Short capsule descriptions of the golf courses in Scotland, including comments on the courses, directions and booking information. A very personal guide with all of the obvious selections, plus some very personal favorites....lovely.

In each volume of The Best American Poetry, there are usually a handful of really good or great poems, but on a whole, I find them to disappointing. It's generally not the best American poetry in any given year. Nor is 1995's volume the 'best' but it does have a higher number of good or great poems in it. Richard Howard (1995's guest editor) does a better job than most of the other guest editors I've read. You find poems by Margaret Atwood, Rafael Campo, Ginsberg, Marilyn Hacker, Anthony Hecht, Andrw Hudgins, Kizer, Kumin, Mary Jo Salter, and a great series of poems by Molly Peacock. There is also a wonderful poem by Sally Ball. I wish the series would get back up to this level of quality.

"Warning . . . Breaking a heart is one thing -- breaking the law is another." In the spirit of fun, this book does describe all sorts of illegal activities that you should not indulge in (being an ax murderer, escaping restaurants without paying, and making whoopee in an airplane lavatory). But you will probably enjoy the fantasy of escaping from these circumstances while reading the book!

The book's key point is that you will "find out how to survive dozens of physically and emotionally threatening situations in bars, restaurants, bedrooms, or airplane lavatories." This is important because "human nature is much less predictable than Mother Nature."

Like the other two worst-case survival handbooks, this one comes with many helpful illustrations to help you follow the advice.

Here are some of my favorite sections: How to determine the gender of your date (without removing any clothing); how to tell if you date is married; what to do if you run into an obsessive ex on a date; how to fake an intense sexual experience; how to find out the name of the person you are in bed with when you've forgotten their name; how to stop a wedding of someone you want to marry; a section of useful excuses; pick up lines not to use; and fending off unwanted admirers in a bar (which includes many ways to spill drinks on them).

More than the other two handbooks, this book is filled with advice that you may actually want to use some day (like how to stop someone from snoring, getting rid of excess gas, dealing with a declined credit card when you have no cash with you, and breaking up with someone in a considerate way).

I only found one area where I thought the advice was wrong. There's a section on how to tell if another person is a con artist. There is advice drawn from neuro-linguistic programming that suggests that people who look to the left are lying. Actually, in most right handed people, looking left or up to the left usually means that they are remembering a visual image, or something that they have heard. If a right handed person looks right or up to the right, there is some imaginative activity going on . . . not necessarily a lie. The person may not have an experience in this area. Reverse these directions for most left-handed people. For ambidextrous people, good luck!

I think that this book is not only valuable for most people who are dating, it would also make a wonderful gift for roommates to give to each other (when of an appropriate age to appreciate the references to sexual situations as well-meant humor).

For guys, if the advice doesn't work out, you will also find out how to handle black eyes, meeting with police officers, and getting out on bail!

Appreciate the potential humor of every situation . . . even on bad dates!!

If you loved "Worst Case Scenario and Worst Case Scenario travel, you will absolutely love the latest version on dating and sex. If you didn't catch them, this is a great place to start. Once again, the authors have taken a light-hearted approach to serious situations and offered up some advice on how to get out of them.

While most of us would hate to find ourselves in the situations in the three books, I find Dating and Sex to be the most useful. It covers a wide range of topics, like how to deal with bad dates, all the way to how to tell if your date is an axe murderer (something we all need to know). For the sometime downright hilarious to the lighter-hearted side of dating, this is a great book to own.

This is my favorite "Worst-Case" book and probably the most practical. I think it will make a great gift for the holidays. It makes for interesting reading and is a conversational piece. If you wanted to, I'm sure that you could read the whole book in a couple of hours.

Some of the advice is very practical, helpful and important for serious dating like: How to Determine If Your Date is Married, How to Deal with Bad Breath, How to Deal with a Drunken Date, How to Survive If You Are Stopped by the Police, and How to Survive Snoring.

Others are mostly amusing (especially the diagrams!) like: How to Determine the Gender of Your Date, How to Escape From a Bad Date, How to Spot a Fake (Boob job and hair pieces), How to Fend Off Competition For Your Date, and How to Remove Difficult Clothing...and of course the faking of the Big "O".

Some things that are in the book may not be such a good idea in the first place like How to Have an Affair and Not Get Caught. Maybe you can avoid the whole problem by not having an affair, right?

And the bit about How to Determine if Your Date is a Con-Artist...the entire thing about the eye patterns is such a bunch of neuro-baloney. Trust your intuition and if he seems kind of weird then he probably is.

All in all this is a fun read, a great gift, a practical guide to a few situations that may apply to you or one of your friends, and if you live on the dating "edge", this probably can save your behind....at least temporarily until you wise up.

Like a professional baseball player, this book helps an enlightened woman anticipate rare situations so that she can respond with action instead of react in panic. And for this, we can be thankful that this book exists.

In today's pop culture society, I'm sure this is destined to be a National Best-Seller.

Pretty amazing -- David Hamilton takes some pictures of some very attractive subjects, in extremely attractive backgrounds, with extremely expensive equipment, and manages to make them look worse than the worst of my holiday photos. Boring, self-conscious... basically, not worth a look. If you like the subject matter, I highly recommend Jock Sturges (for some very laid-back, pretty pictures) or Sally Mann (for some slightly more disturbing overtones.) But skip Hamilton, he's a waste of paper

This collection of Hamilton's work contains bland landscape photography that would fit the formulas of the Sierra Club desk calender; bland images of young girls in the same poses we've seen dozens of times in his other work, saying nothing new and with all the personality of a jeans ad; and self-conscious photos of some Beautiful People that look like they were intended for ads in a fashion magazine. Of course, none of this should be surprising considering that most of Hamilton's work is blatantly commercial and self-indulgent, but some of his earlier books -- Sisters, Private Collection, and so on -- contained genuinely unique, well-composed, and evocative pictures. (Age of Innocence was as boring to me as this book.) The only images that worked for me in Place in the Sun were the photos of flowers, which are very pretty. Seeing one photo of a "native" couple titled "The Noble Savage," and another of a young woman holding handfuls of fruit at crotch level titled "The Fruits of Love" (or something similar) gave me a laugh. For some reason, Hamilton has never gotten over his addiction to silly quotes and captions that cheapen his images. I would certainly prefer that he let them speak for themselves, but then the viewer might have a chance to experience his own response to them, rather than being directed by Hamilton to Hamilton's own narcissistic fantasy.

This book is absolutely brimming with gorgeous pictures. I bought it the minute I finished looking at it for the first time four years ago. All photographs are tastefully done and convey a sense of wonder at what God has put here on this earth for us all to enjoy. You absolutely have to have this book!!!! It is stunning!!!!!