Little is known of Jewish participation in the history of the United States: even less of Jewish involvement in American armed forces. To read a history of our public schools, one would scarcely know that Jews have been American citizens, much less soldiers. Footsteps of David acquaints the reader with dozens of stories of Jewish-American heroes, their roles, service, and sacrifice in the military. Some of the participants are well known; most are obscure, unnoticed, and unpublicized. Other than their own circle of friends and family, few know of their heroic and unselfish service. Footsteps of David corrects that oversight.

The first, and possibly hardest descision that a biographer must make is to choose someone new and interesting to write about. All too often the focus of a biographer's gaze falls upon well established household names such as political 'heroes' or Silver Screen 'personalities'.

Praise must go therefore to David Leigh for the subject of his biography: Howard Marks; an international drug runner, who naturally, due to the nature of his business does everything he can NOT to become a household name. Leigh follows Marks' career in the drug trade from its very beginning, in the 70s, through to its present day conclusion. Writing with a clarity of prose and an intensity of purpose that creates a breath-taking pace and begs not to be put down. Leaving questions of morality up to the individual reader Leigh shows Marks as human, intelligent, fallable, but most of all likeable. A man with whom you could comfortably have a drink.

Leigh didn't have to work hard to make a story out of his chosen subject material: it is a compelling story by its self. But he did need to steer his research and keep it capped. (He has to cover nearly 30 years worth of material, with each drug run having fascinating complications and intricate requirements) And for this too, congratulations are due. He handles the subject well, informing the reader without preaching; the end result being a thoroughly good biography.

David Howard's photojournalism in "The Last Filipino Head Hunters" does an excellent job of documenting these tribal people and their way of life. Along with photos of their wonderful and often ancient faces, the book captures their jewelry, carvings, fabrics, and tattoos.

As tattoo reference, Howard's book stands alone in its thorough photo documentation of many traditional Filipino male and female designs. This tattoo documentation holds special significance as the elders (some over 100 years old) who wear them are beginning to die out.

The first person narrative text is fun and informative but a little sparse. It is part history and part travelogue, including wonderful tales of people from the Kalinga and Ifugao tribes.

Sadly, the print quality is slightly substandard and some of the photographs are noticeably low in resolution, but the stunning content largely makes up for this.

One of the more daunting challenges for US nonprofit board members, officers, and senior staff is setting compensation and benefits for existing and prospective employees. They are faced with the challenges of navigating not only the "usual" employment-related laws that all employers face, but also those laws peculiar to the nonprofit sector.

There is also the related challenge of setting compensation levels and benefits high enough to compete for the most talented candidates, but not so high as to run afoul of the intermediate sanctions rules.

Unfortunately, there is no single book that I've found that combines both the legal and practical elements involved in such important decisions. However, I have found two books that, taken together, substantially cover the territory: Nonprofit Compensation, Benefits, and Employment Law, covering the legal aspects, and Nonprofit Compensation and Benefits Practices, covering compensation levels.

This review covers Nonprofit Compensation, Benefits, and Employment Law, a reference that focuses mostly on the legal aspects of employee compensation and benefits. It not only covers those laws unique to the nonprofit sector, but, thankfully, addresses workplace-related statutes of broader applicability such as workplace discrimination, sexual harassment, the Family and Medical Leave Act, and so on. It even covers 401(k) plans, which until recently were unavailable to nonprofit organizations.

Importantly, the book offers a solid treatment of the intermediate sanctions law -- a topic that is critical for these reasons:

--Board members, officers and other "managers" can be individually "fined" a 10% excise tax for participating in an excess benefit transaction. Voting on a compensation package that exceeds reasonable levels of compensation could give rise to such penalties.

--The employee who is over-compensated can be hit with 25% or, in some cases, 200% penalties.

While the book is comprehensive and well written, I would like to have seen model or sample employment agreements to help in drafting. Had it provided these samples, I would have given this a 5-star rating.

A good basic introduction to Lebesgue integration, but a little sketchy in some places. Each chapter concludes with a good set of exercises. This book is good for getting the "idea" behind Lebesgue integration, but comes up short on many of the details. An excellent companion volume would be Jones' "Lebesgue Integration on Euclidean space".

I am using this book with two advanced undergraduates, after working through a basic introduction to analysis text the previous semester. Each section is about 3 or 4 pages long, giving the main results and most proofs, although some are left as exercises. Each chapter ends with a nice set of exercises, most of which are accessible to students who feel comfortable with epsilon/delta proofs. The book is very short and concise, 145 pages plus an appendix summarizing basic analysis results on sets, countability, functions, and sequences.

Chapter 1 reviews the Riemann integral and some of its drawbacks. Chapter 2 introduces the idea of outer measure and measurable sets, all on the unit interval. The next two chapters discuss properties of measurable sets and measurable functions. Chapters 5 and 6 then cover the Lebesgue integral and convergence theorems. The last three chapers introduce L2 spaces, Fourier series, and proofs of convergence.

All in all this is a good, very cheap way to learn the basics of measure theory and the Lebesgue integral, before moving on to something like Rudin or Royden.

This assumes some advanced calculus and then introduces enough Lebesgue integration amd measure theory to explain and prove the basic convergence results for (generalized) Fourier analysis. Second half of second year and above.

Everything is very well motivated and the book is not long, but quite a lot is "left as an exercise for the reader." This really hurts the book for self study in my view. If you have a bigger book on real analysis and want another treatment, or need a refresher this will do nicely. On its own -- you've been warned.

I had to buy this book for two of my English Literature survey courses. I'm sure that most people who buy this volume do the same--they buy it because they have to. Still, it is an excellent volume and a very thorough survey of English Literature, from the middle ages on down to the nineteenth century.

Highlights from this volume include Seamus Heaney's exceptional translation of Beowulf (in its entirety), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, many selections from the Canterbury Tales, lots of Shakespeare, and Milton's masterpiece Paradise Lost, reprinted in full.

As I said before, many who buy this volume will do so because they have to. Still, I think most people will find this anthology to be one they will not be selling back at the end of the semester. I know I'll definitely be keeping mine. This is a great place to start a study of English Literature.

For some as-yet unknown reason, I feel compelled to defend the Norton Anthology against the various charges being brought against it here. So far, it's been accused of being a tool for "academically lazy" professors, [essentially] a superfluous moneygrubbing update, and something which (somehow) renders authors "boring." Another person feels that it's too poetry- and essay-heavy to be representative of the covered periods.

I'll confess that I don't really understand these accusations. It is both what it looks like and what it claims to be: 3,000 pages with as much bang for your literary buck as is possible. The only novels included are those which are exceedingly important and/or representative of a period... which is as it should be.

And frequent updates (which take place every few years -- hardly a serious issue for most people) are absolutely necessary. A static canon would be boring, and likely would leave scholars with nothing to do. I, for one, am happy with the authors added in the seventh edition.

It's an outstanding introduction to two centuries of English lit.

Of course as a student one is bound to hesitate before spending fifty quid on a book, but this one is absolutely worth ist. Abrams and Greenblatt have not just gathered what is indispensable in English literature; the Norton Anthology features brilliant introductions and short biographies, which are concise and readable. All the works presented are scrupulously annotated. And finally the reader gets suggestions for further reading which really help.

There may be a bias towards poetry and high literature in the selection. Poetry, however, is the only genre in which an anthology of this size can give you almost everything you want to know. Individual edititons of classic novels or plays, however, are a lot easier to get hold of than books of poetry, so I feel the editors' choice is fully justified. You will find yourself turn back to the Norton Anthology even long after you have finished college; it is a book that opens up new worlds.

A book such as this is somewhat valuable, but I was disappointed by the narrowness of the people included. It's as if only Leftists in universities had any experience of the Cold War, and since we know this to be false, why not call this book "Leftist Academics and The Cold War University" or something? What about the old guys reading Latin texts in their offices who thought the world was going mad? What about old-fashioned Liberals who were profoundly ambivilent towards both the American Right and the Stalinist (and post-Stalinist)American Left? The editor was more interested, I suppose, in gathering lefty celebs with high name recognition than he was in getting a ground level view, and that mention of Studs Terkel in the above editorial comments made me yearn for some of Terkel's interest in the folks who are usually overlooked in the rush to sign up the people who've already had their say. Until a good oral history of that sort comes around, I guess this will have to do.

Viewing a political era from a particular point of view, from a subjective perspective can often manage to shed light on much more. The experiences reported by the individuals in this book are extremely well written stories that transcend the bounds of what at first seems a narrow topic. Still, if you have a particular interest in education and the politics of universities and colleges, you will find this book even more intriguing.

I find it very disturbing that people consider these professors as "Marxist Zealots". By your comment, A READER FROM THE USA, you demonstrate who is really misleading the public. Noam Chomsky is NOT a Marxist, he is an Anarchist. Get your facts straight. And to say that these people thought Pol Pot was a "great guy" only shows to which degree you are willing to fabricate lies in order to advance your own political bias. These people are against all forms of genocide and oppression, whether it be Stalin, Pol Pot or JFK and Richard Nixon.

This book is a collection of SOME of the works of William Howard Taft but the title is quite misleading, as it does NOT include State of the Union Addresses. Also the author has not taken the time or effort to provide the reader / researcher with an INDEX, which, of course, means that one has to read the entire collection to find references to a particular subject matter. In short, this book is merely a reprinting of some of Taft's speeches and addresses and nothing more!

This collection of Taft's public papers is the first such endeavor, and a praiseworthy one. Readers looking for analysis won't find it here any more than any other "letters of" or "papers of" any other historical figure.

What they will find is William Howard Taft in his own words. The Taft papers at the Library of Congress number into the tens of thousands, and as such are useful only to serious researchers. The student or casual reader of the Taft era will benefit enormously from David Burton's collection of Taft's public papers.

Taft was a proficient and thorough speech writer, and one can follow his era precisely according to this collection. History shall benefit tremendously from these volumes.

A future edition will make available State addresses and, one hopes, a full and final index.

I ordered this book because I thought it would provide an introduction to the politics of the Dominican Republic. When I got it, it reminded me more of a mixture between a tacky guidebook and an elementary school social science book. It does present some insight into the historical, economical and political conditions of the country, some of them even differing from the mainstream image, but it is all very limited in scope and not very useful. If you want a guidebook, I'd suggest Lonely Planet a million times before this one. When it comes to a political review of the country, I have unfortunately had difficulties in finding one. But surfing the web for a couple of hours will certainly provide more useful information than a copy of this book.

This book has dealt well with subjects like the economy, politics, and local places to visit. Unfortunately, I found the information on the history and cultural identity of the Dominicans to be lacking information. For example, When Howard spoke too briefly of the Taino Indians or how the Dominicans have a need to be more "Indian". He was totally incorrect. The author does not hold a strong enough argument or facts to support this. He leaves the reader with much confusion about the Dominican identity.

This book is a much needed new insight on Dominican Republic where I travelled a lot a few years ago. It is very interesting situation with haiti and the author adresses cultural issues sensitively but informatively. The book is very easily to read and has a good order.

Can any kind soul tell me which 4 exams are covered by this book? it received only one star for lack of this vital information. Thanks.

This pack is a collection of 3 books:

MCSD Training Guide: Visual Basic 6 Exams (70-175 & 70-176) ISBN:0735700028

MCSD Training Guide: Solution Architectures (70-100) ISBN:0735700265

MCSE Training Guide: SQL Server 7 Database Design (70-029) ISBN:0735700044

The average rank of these books is 4 stars (better and cheaper than Microsoft's books). It may not be sufficient for the exam. I think I am going to buy: -MCSD in a Nutshell: The Visual Basic Exams ISBN:1565927524 -Exam Cram Vb6 Core Three : McSd 70-175, 70-176, 70-100 ISBN:1576103935

Hope it's helpful

4 in 1! This is really good, I appreciate. However the ultimate goal is passing exams. I hope this have not been forgone for the price. As I can see all in one helps reduce redundancy and above all provides greater level of consistence. I even value the book much higher for hitting the points straight while maintaining its readability. The techniques used to represent the precepts are not only being suitable for providing exams concepts but also intellectually refreshing, since for most professionals studying means discoveries of new tricks, ways and knowledge to accomplish daily challenges. By the way: thanks to the author.