Professor Les Benedict lays out the case for President Johnson's impeachment in this 1972 monograph. The narrative is highly sympathetic to the radical-Republican impeachers, and unsympathetic to Johnson: Les Benedict embraces an emerging theme among historians who "now speak in terms of well-meaning efforts of conscientious Republicans to establish national security on the basis of equality before the law" in the highly volatile post-Civil War era, and he complains that "[o]nly one event has resisted this historical reversal--the impeachment and trial of President Andrew Johnson." The book paints the congressional Republicans as conscientious and rational politicians interested in restoring the Southern economic base (and securing their own political ascendancy) after the War, and Johnson as a power-hungry executive who thwarts the congressional policy using his military authority and other constitutional powers--all to the point where the restrained and long-suffering congressional majority is left with no choice but impeachment (the chapter leading up to the impeachment is titled "Johnson Forces the Issue"). The book paints the politics with a very broad brush, and unfortunately gives short shrift to Johnson's motives, even though Johnson himself is portrayed as a capable and determined politician and not as the out-of-touch bumbler that some histories have made him out to be. But the book tells an engaging story from the congressional viewpoint, and offers a detailed and balanced view of the legal issues on which the trial ultimately hinged.

Now Andrew Johnson may not have been hiding with an intern in the oval office, but this book has a lot more to offer. Drama in the House, drama in the Senate, verbal fights, threats, it sure beats the heck out of blue dresses and cigars. I don't think people have any idea how close Johnson was to being kicked out of office, let alone for what reason. Benedict does a remarkable job chronicling the times surrounding the day. Going in I found the battle to purely partisan, but after reading I agree with Benedict, the impeachment was justified.

Riveting. I really didn't know how it was going to end. Was the internal temperature of the heap high enough to kill the pathogens yet let the aerobic decomposers work? Was the carbon to nitrogen ratio correct? Was the worm population going to survive or was there to be another mass die off? Wow. A real page turner.

Actually, this does have some useful drawings for making your own composters including worm based composters and turning devices. It also has a decent source list at the back where you can find the names and addresses of places that will help you recycle kitchen and garden waste.

I could have done without the political activism parts of the book. It polarizes the reading audience. It should have focused on helping those who are interested in starting compost heaps rather than trying to encourage a particular environmental policy.

This book has tons of info on composting. I personally was interested in vermicomposting (great for people who live in apartments or rentals) and this book gave me a lot of good information to start my compost bin.

I tried "Learning Perl" by Randal Schwarz and got bored after about 5 chapters ; too many cutesy references to 60's cartoons and not enough relevant info. So I turned to this book and finally started learning Perl. The author doesn't assume you have any programming experience at all ; hence the title. A person who has never programmed before could probably get through this book( but not without some effort) but they will be well rewarded.What is really excellent is that the author has a home page where you can post questions, concerns, whatever and he will respond within 24 hours (almost always) with clear, concise answers. For others who come from other languages and need to learn Perl quickly, this is an excellent tutorial and they will be up to speed in no time. I had to learn Perl quickly for a project I was on at work - within 2 weeks after starting this book I was well on the way to writing scripts using regular expressions.
This book should be thought of as an initial stepping stone on the path to Perl knowledge , so its not as encyclopedic as say the famous Camel book(Programming Perl). After going through this book, doing the exercises, reading and posting on the authors website, you will be very well prepared for more advanced topics in Perl. After this book, I picked up "Object Oriented Perl" by Damian Conway (from same publishing company) and I had no problem at all thanks to the fine intro this book provided me.

I came to this book with some experience in Javascript and Lingo, but no foundation in programming concepts and a desire to learn Perl. This book was perfect for me.

It focuses on programming practices from the beginning, using Perl code for examples of major concepts. By the time it deals directly with the language, you're already familiar with the way Perl looks and works.

For me, some of the early material wasn't necessary, but the author's style is transparent enough not to become obsequious. It's refreshingly free of "now let's do ____; but first let's do ____" idioms that insult and baffle simultaneously.

Anyone who wants to learn programming, but doesn't plan to actually use Visual Basic in the future, should consider this book. It makes a primer on programming concepts unnecessary, and it give a solid introduction to a widely useful language.

There are an enormous amount of self-taught programmers that program with perl, especially in the areas of system administration and web development. If you are one of these people you must read this book.

When I bought this book I considered myself a capable intermediate level perl and javascript programmer. I had read a number of O'Reilly books including Learning Perl and Programming Perl, and use as references the Perl Cookbook and Perl in a Nutshell. I had realised that the slowing of my progress in learning more advanced perl was due to my lack of understanding of general programming principles, so I was looking for a book that could (gently) teach me this in the context of using perl.

Elements of Programming With Perl was the book I really needed, and I don't think there is another book out there that meets the same need.

If you are a self taught perl programmer, you should read this book, if not for your own sake, for the sake of the other people that have to deal with your code after you!

I won't try and say that the book is perfect because it's not, but it is excellent, and one of a kind.

It also provides a good introduction to object-oriented perl, and an ideal primer before moving on to the other Manning publication Object Oriented Perl by Damian Conway (which I also recommend).

Have fun programming perl :-)

(b.t.w. take no notice of the Amazon review, it completely takes the book out of context, the other reviews testify to the book's quality. Great book, thanks Andrew!)

The information presented is fairly easy to understand, interesting, and seems to be thorough. So what's the problem? I have to say, I would absolutely love the textbook and its corresponding workbook if it wasn't for one truely frustrating aspect - there are way too many errors. It's incredible! Here's an example - a question regarding roman numeral conversions (pg 38 wkbk)- what is 14 in roman numerals? well, anybody who's gone through grade school could tell you it's XIV - the answer key tells you it's CIV (104!!). How about this one (pg 85 txt) - convert 1mg to g: ok, i'm thinking - DUH - .001g - correct answer, according to the answer key is .011g -- Now, this is not quite a big deal when it's very easy to tell the book is wrong (yet, again) - but then, when you get into more difficult calculations and you can't trust the answer key, it becomes very frustrating. When you take into account the fact that you've spent over $60 for the text and workbook and you can't count on the information to be correct it becomes enraging. There are also a plethora of idiotic typos to furthur insult you for sending these people your money. Example (pg 108 txt) convert 120 mcg to mg - answer according to the key: 120 mcg = 0.12 mcg - that's 0.12 MCG not MG. Or, how about his - convert 50% to a decimal. Answer according to the key: 50/100. Now, the last time I checked that was something called a fraction - a decimal looked more like this: .50 - This isn't even the tip of the iceberg. I just have one question for Morton Publishing Co...Do you guys happen to employ anyone there called an EDITOR? I just hope to God you all don't have anything to do with the answer keys the PTCB is holding in their possession. If you do, I quit now.

If you have never worked in a pharmacy before and want to pass the pharmacy technnician certification exam, then you need more than just a certification review book. You will also need a textbook that explains comprehensively pharmacy laws and the operating procedures of a typical pharmacy. Because it isn't a certification review, be aware that it doesn't have enough practice problems. Overall, it is an excellent textbook to use with a workbook.

This wonderful book combines text and visuals to provide the most complete Pharmacy Technician book ever written. The authors of this book have done an outstanding job in bringing us an easy to read, easy to understand book on this subject. Take it from me a Pharmacy Technician student if you buy only one book BUY THIS ONE !!

WROX books used to be the only ones I'd buy; after having a grand ol' time with the ASP and ASP Databases series. The Professional series has been a real disappointment (and waste of money!). The books tend to be more wordy than necessary and spend too much time on the obvious and too little on the abstract. Cold Fusion is a fairly straight-forward programming language. WROX has somehow managed to make it much more. Perhaps too many cooks in the kitchen; looks like they had 18 authors put this beast together.
Look elsewhere...

Being a ColdFusion user group president, I give this book my seal of approval. This book is well written with easy to understand examples. It will help someone with no CF knowledge all the way to the experts. This book is well laid out and is enjoyable to read. I didn't know what to expect from Wrox on this. I have been a huge Ben Forta fan but this book is just as good as his (if not better)! If you want to learn CF, or just want to get better, buy this book. You will be very happy with it.

This is a very good book!
Vale a pena galera!

Andrew has written an interesting and informative book about some of the programs that created vital opportunities for indigent people to escape poverty. Andrew discusses the key laws Johnson passed to improve the lives of Americans, including Civil Rights Act of 1964, Medicaid, Medicare, Head Start and many others. As a historical account of legislative acts it is excellent, and on that point it deserves five stars. However, when Andrew discusses how the Great Society affect later laws, the book becomes quite week. In fact it seems like Andrew wrote the bulk of the work in the eighties and only later interspersed a few sentences about the nineties. The index is also a bit sparse and could have been more detailed. This book is, nevertheless, a good read and deserves the attention of persons interested in the Johnson administration.

Anyone who reads this book will find that LBJ's Great Society was far from a failure, as Republicans today characterize it, but a mixed bag with many successes and a few long term failures. Yet, overall, it was - and still is - positive for America.

Just look at the record -- Clean Air and Water bills, Medicare(health insurance for the elderly), Medicaid(health insurance for the disabled and poor), The Elementary and Secondary Education Act(for the first time the federal government gave K-12 schools funds), Head Start, labor law reform, Minimum Wage increase for the working poor, housing expansions through HUD, the Department of Transportation, increased farmer aid, wage supplements for the poor, job training expansions, the National Endowement for the Arts and Humanities, public broadcasting, consumer protection laws etc. The list goes on and on and on. These successes benefited - and benefit - everyone. The middle class and poor benefit from Medicare and education, as well as job training. The poor are given dignity in Medicaid and the Minimum Wage. All benefit from public broadcasting, as well as with clean streets, aid and environment and consumer laws. Working people support pro-labor labor law reform. And, let us never, ever forget, LBJ passed 3 monumental civil rights laws which benefit all persons of morality and conscience.

Yes, as the book points out, there are some failures here. Welfare policy for the poorest of the poor - as well meant as it was - was a failure. Yet, I suspect it failed not because of what Great Society liberals intended to do long term, but because of what they expected the program to become with more funding. That is, funding was decimated for AFDC, and liberals in the 1970's wanted public works instead, which never came, so they settled for AFDC. In regard to Model Cities, the same rings true - failure.

Yet, the positives outway the negatives by far and away - as this book shows all too well. Long live the Great Society!

I read this book some time ago for a college course and it is one of those rare books that sticks with you. It came to mind again recently since Andrew Johnson is the only other President other than the current occupant to undergo impeachment. Toward the end of the book there is an excellent summary of the impeachment proceedings brought against Johnson in the winter/spring of 1868. It is enlightening to compare that process with what has gone on today. But the book is much more than about the impeachment. It covers a variety of topics centering around the way in which Andrew Johnson squandered many opportunities to make Presidential Reconstruction work and to cooperate at least somewhat with the Republicans in Congress. My history professor always said that McKitrick reached a little far with some of his comparisons and analogies. In this book, for instance, you will find comparisons of the defeated South and how the North related to it in terms of the U.S. and Japan after WWII. There is social psychology in the book regarding symbolic requirements that a victor in war expects in order to consider his victory complete. There is imaginary scenario making with John Andrew and Wade Hampton. Far reaching some of these techniques may have been, but they also always serve to make the authors' points and the book is quite focused despite its scope. I will also say that it is a very entertaining book. Some of its accounts will make you smile, if not laugh. For example, you won't find many better descriptions of Lorenzo Thomas's attempts to become Secretary of War as Stanton refused to leave his office. Where else can you find a description of Congressman Ashley, rabidly pro-impeachment, as an "occult mixture of superstition and lunacy" or a description of Ashley, Boutwell, and Ben Butler as a "baleful trio of buzzards..." Andrew Johnson's disastrous "Swing Around the Circle" in the Congressional elections also, though tragic in ways, has some very funny descriptions.

I do not want to end with people thinking this is a light-hearted work, though. It is a serious analysis of the way personality can affect great national issues. The chapter on the tortured path taken to get to the 14th Amendment is alone worth the price of the book. This book was originally written in 1960 and though some of its findings may have been modified by later research by other authors, it is still very valuable. I noticed that Professor Eric Foner used parts of it not long ago in a course at Columbia, so it obviously still has value in teaching and respect within the historical profession.

You will spend quality time in reading about an important aspect of our history if you purchase this book. I highly recommend it.

I can remember the impression gained from American history textbooks that Andrew Johnson was impeached because of the vindictive radical Republicans who were themselves betraying the ideals of the assassinated Abraham Lincoln. In the intervening years Andrew Johnson's political reputation has taken a decided down turn. His chief political liability is now seen as being his stubbornness and his ideological position has clearly been defined as more anti-planters than pro-freedmen. In this juvenile biography for the Our Presidents series, Judith E. Harper takes a more middle of the road approach to telling the story of Johnson's life. Acknowledging Johnson's stubbornness, Harper's most critical comment is that Johnson "believed that African Americans should be free, but he did not agree that they should have all the rights of white people." Johnson's thinking is characterized as being similar to a majority of Americans in the 1860s, in having "the mistaken belief that African Americans were not as capable or as smart as whites." Of course, this opens up a major can of worms in terms of defining a major paradox with Americans freeing the slaves without really wanting to give them equality. Teachers are going to have some questions to answer from their students after they have read this biography.

As with all of the volumes in the Our Presidents series this one has four chapters: (1) Poverty and Ambition covers Johnson's early years as he turned from a tailor to a politician in Tennessee; (2) On to Washington looks at Johnson's political career on the national level, where he was the sponsor of the Homestead Act and achieved notoriety as the only Southern Senator who did not resign when the South seceded from the Union. It was because of this latter distinction that Johnson, appointed Military Governor of Tennessee by Lincoln, was chosen as the President's running-mate in the 1864 election. Lincoln was a Republican and Johnson a Democrat, but they ran on the "Union" ticket (great trivia question, since that means Lincoln was the last President who was elected as something other than a Republican or Democrat). Johnson's tenure in the White House is divided into the two key issues of his administration: (3) Reconstruction looks at the hornet's nest that Johnson was thrown into following Lincoln's assassination. Harper makes an interesting point, that Johnson's plans for Reconstruction were premised on needing Southern votes to win the election in 1868. Johnson's objections to the efforts of Congress are based on Constitutional objections and it is clear that his decision to violate the Tenure of Office Act (which was clearly unconstitutional) was deliberate; (4) Impeachment! covers the details of the impeachment and the Senate trial, the verdict, and the end of Johnson's political career. Although he was re-elected to the Senate (the only President to return to public office other than John Quincy Adams), he died of a stroke after serving only a few months.

Andrew Johnson is certainly a mixed bag as a political figure. On the one hand he was clearly the least educated man ever to become President and his stubbornness clearly overwhelmed his intelligence at key moments, but he had an innate faith in the Constitution that is certainly admirable. Then again, it is not like anybody this side of U.S. Grant would have looked good to the public (or historians) after Lincoln. The margins of this book contain all sorts of Interesting Facts, such as how Johnson hired men to read to his workers in his tailor shop and debated Mordecai Lincoln, a cousin of Abraham Lincoln. Each chapter includes a side-bar on topics from Johnson's love for the spoken word to explaining impeachment. The book is illustrated primarily with historic photographs and etchings. The entire Our Presidents series is an excellent introduction to the nation's leaders. There are other, more detailed, presidential biographies for juveniles out there, but this series does an excellent job of providing the basics.

I still have not really made up my mind about Andrew Johnson. Although I continue to think he has to be on everyone's list of five worst presidents and his culpability in his impeachment stems mainly from the man's stubbornness, there was some notion of principle in Johnson's character that was of value. In this juvenile biography of Andrew Johnson for the Encyclopedia of Presidents author Zachary Kent begins with the key example of Johnson's principles, when he became the only Southern member of the United States Senate not to resign when the South seceded, declaring, "I am a Union Man."

Kent looks at how Johnson rose from poverty as an illiterate tailor to become a U.S. Senator and war Governor of Tennessee before Abraham Lincoln picked him as his running mate in the 1864 election. Lincoln was a Republican and Johnson a Democrat, and so they ran on the Union ticket. However, when Lincoln was assassinated Johnson became President. Kent details how Johnson used executive powers in an effort to restore peace, only to be confronted by the radical Republican's anti-southern agenda when Congress reconvened. An entire chapter is devoted to Johnson's impeachment and his brief return to the U.S. Senate shortly before he died.

Certainly this volume gets well beyond what little would be found in standard American history textbooks regarding the antagonism between Johnson and the radical Republicans. Students assigned to do a report on Andrew Johnson would find this to be an informative volume. It is illustrated with historic photographs and etchings, and several wickedly caustic editorial cartoons, most of which attack Johnson and his administration. However, when the Alaska Purchase is described as "Johnson's polar bear garden" as well as "Seward's Folly," you do get an indication for how much Andrew Johnson has been erased from American history.

This is a great book to keep as a reference. It covers all of J2EE, and has some interesting ideas on application design. However, if you already have a lot of Wrox "professional" titles, such as "Professional JSP" or "Professional XML", stay away. This book just repeats excerpts from those, and is more confusing because it doesn't contain all the information. For example, the section on XML namespaces was a hodgepodge editing job on the section from the XML book, and confused me even though I already had a basic understanding of the topic.

But, its worth a look if you don't have any of the other contained content.

This is NOT a book for beginners who wish to learn JSP/servlets and EJBs and the techniques of J2EE. On the other hand, if you already have some knowledge with these techniques, the book may help to improve your background of J2EE and its components.

1.The strong points of the book are:

- the book does a wonderful job in explaining different key points of J2EE techniques especially at the beginning of each chapter; although the discussion sometimes becomes pretty vague and less clear at the end.

- the book's code examples use j2sdkee1.2.1, orion and jboss which are available for you free with unlimited time.

- the book looks quite impressive, 1600 plus pp. hardcovered.

2.The weak points of the book:

- all the code examples are fairly easy. In fact, too easy to do much help to the readers who need a better workout to pay attention to some key points of the techniques.

- Since only half of the book is devoted to really J2ee techniques, people who already experienced with jsp/servlet may find the other half of the book unecessary.

In conclusion, you may want to check this book out if you alread know jsp/servlet and j2ee( through the Sun's tutorials and examples and wish to have a better understand of this popular but pretty complex technique.

As lots of wrox book, this book does provide some interesting information. UML diagrams are used for better explanation, design issues for JSP, using XML with JSP, how interface object, control object and entity object fit EJBs, JMS, Corba, Unit test, are all well explained.

However, as the non J2EE edition, the code still contains errors: for all the Primary key classes in examples of EJB, hashCode and equals are not defined, you have to add them yourself. There are errors for package names, for the example, in Chapter 20, Order and Product classes are defined in book.order and book.product classes, and other classes imported them from factory.order and factory.product classes. You have to change "book" to "factory" class by class manually!

They used jBoss and orion server to implement EJB examples, I am not against these two servers, but I think it may be better to test the examples with Weblogic as well, since it is the most popular application server, they did not. And they never mentionned Weblogic in the book, not even in the appendix.

In split of all these errors, there is no serious error, this is a good and interesting book.