I have more "quotation" books than I should admit to. This slim volume has more "global" and unique perspectives than any mainstream book. It gives me inspiration to continue to live life on my own terms. I really like this little book.

For all the hype surrounding the celebrity revelations in "American Rhapsody", its biggest shock is the excellence of its writing. This book will not languish on a shelf; the pages turn themselves as the narrative gains its thrilling, roller-coaster momentum. Form follows function: Joe Eszterhas has produced a deleriously self-indulgent read about the most self-indulgent public figures of our time.

Eszterhas's language is more than bawdy, but thanks to characters like Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky and even Sharon Stone, so are the events it narrates. The minutiae of the Lewinsky scandal is made surprisingly fresh when written over with Eszterhas's super-snide commentary, as he parses the contents of the "Starr Report" to produce vivid character studies of all the players. It is soon difficult not to regard the actual historical players as mere sock-puppets, only capable of speaking freely through the mouth of Eszterhas.

Eszterhas has an extraordinary gift for appearing to voice the cynical subtext behind the most famous political utterances of the 1990s. Bill Clinton is Eszterhas's alter-ego, he believes, a fellow rock-n-roller who concealed just enough of his nature to make it to the White House. Nicknaming Linda Tripp and Lucienne Goldberg "The Ratwoman" and "The Bag Lady of Sleaze", Eszterhas plumbs the Clinton years for a whole new depth of black comedy. (Indeed, given Goldberg's wealth, I'm not even sure what "The Bag Lady of Sleaze" means, strictly speaking, but this new appelation locks in with the permanence of a well-chosen middle name.)

Reaching into Election 2000, Eszterhas's outrageous portrait of George W. Bush as a rattlesnake, Alpo-male version of his father is unforgettable. You will never see W. Bush the same, once you have seen "com-pay-ssionate conservative" printed as it is spoken, which is an act of startling subversiveness that none of the zillions of Campaign 2000 journalists dared to perform. A single, Texan-accented word becomes the keyhole through which we peer into W.'s "philosophy". As W. is fond of saying, perhaps we should "take him at his word".

Fact or fiction, in the final analysis? Who cares, when the reading is so diverting. Eszterhas taps into some deep poetic truths yielded from his close study of the American political scene. These poetic truths are larger than those yielded from any single historical text, hewn of majestic, marble fact. In a solitary volume, Eszterhas brings us all the essentials of the politics of our time.

Sure it's sleazy and overemphasizes the gory details (and that's putting it mildly!). But Eszterhas can write in a way that is not immediately apparent from having seen Showgirls et al. This books is SATIRE and like it or not captures a spirit of a generation that puts the whole Lewinsky fiasco in the proper perspective. This book reminds me of Wolfe's "Radical Chic", Thompson's "...Hell's Angels" or even Roth's "Our Gang".

I actually felt sorry for Clinton after having read this book. He's a creature of his own appetites and is unfortunately all too representative of his own cross-section of society. Eszterhas makes the observation that Clinton's true peer group is the rock-n-roll, far left set that ended up invading hollywood, music and almost every other segment of society---why not the white house, too?

You gotta love the "Rat Woman" caricature. It sums up many people's feelings so well. My personal favorite was his not-so-subtle characterization of Nixon as "The Night Creature". I liked his Nixon much better than Oliver Stone's.

I might be smoking something (without inhaling, of course), but I think that this book shows real talent and a deft hand at skewering that has been absent from the literary scene for a couple of decades.

I enjoyed it very much, even though I was prepared to sneer. It did however, need some serious editing and would have been a much, much better book if about 25% of it had been cut.

Just when we thought we were out, they pull us back in!! (With apologies to the Godfather!) So you thought you'd had enough of the Clinton/Lewinsky shenanigans? Nah! Not till you read this wickedly funny account. Joe Eszterhas has written a big nasty hoot of a book. It's a "take no prisioners" account of the sorry and sordid affair that shook the sacred halls of DC and scared the pants back on some of Washington's more notable philanderers. The pace is fast and the book leaps back and forth in time, telling the story in two voices, that of Eszterhas himself, and in boldface type, that of his demented alter ego, the little man who lives inside him. I don't even want to think about WHERE inside him this little guy has taken up residence. Eszterhas slashes and burns indiscriminantly, trashing both LA and DC. He knows where the bodies are buried and does not hesitate to tell us. Over and over he makes the point that Hollywood is the place Clinton really belongs, saying that his kind of behavior is the norm there. The gossip is hot and lowdown and probably at least 75% true. If you like your tell-all books wicked and witty this will definitely be to your taste. I loved it even though I hated myself in the morning!

The Lost Battalion was originally written in 1938 and has been re-issued with minor editing in 2000. For those readers seeking a companion volume to the 2000 A&E film by the same title, this book is more than a bit disappointing. However, the lost battalion is an interesting journalistic account of the seven companies of the American 77th Infantry Division who found themselves cut off behind German lines for six days during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in the First World War. About 550 US soldiers under the command of Major Charles Whittlesey were trapped in a small river valley under constant German fire. As the authors point out, the unit was neither a single battalion nor was it ever "lost," merely isolated. By the time that Whittlesey's command was finally relieved, the unit had suffered 65% casualties. Whittlesey himself was awarded the Medal of Honor for his stubborn defense. Yet the main lesson of this tale of combat heroism is that, "the human capacity for endurance, for mere passive defense, exceeds all belief and possibility as long as there be a leader to say, don't give up, we're not licked yet."

The book is divided into chapters that cover each day from 2-8 October 1918, with events arranged chronologically. Edward M. Coffin, a modern-day historian at the University of Wisconsin who arranged for the work to be re-printed, provides a short effortless forward. There are several photographs and a few totally inadequate maps that supplement the text, but only weakly. Unfortunately, Mr. Coffman made little effort to update or augment the original narrative and while the story flows smoothly, a lazy and jingoistic style might annoy after awhile. The authors are comfortable with using non-words like "ploying," or "funk-hole" [i.e. foxhole] and attacks that "corkscrew (the soldiers twirl around while advancing?).

Readers expect a hero may be perplexed by Major Whittlesey. Initially, the Harvard-educated lawyer seems comparable to Joshua Chamberlain, the soldier-scholar who won the Medal of Honor at Little Round Top in 1863. Certainly this book paints Whittlesey as a man devoted to duty, who was the only battalion commander to reach his objective and then refused to be budged off by repeated German counterattacks. While Whittlesey demonstrated determination and obstinacy, his actual command abilities are less certain because there were few decisions for him to make after his initial un-opposed occupation of the objective. Thereafter, Whittlesey's role became rather passive - encouraging resistance and vigilance - but not making any critical decisions. Furthermore, Whittlesey's post-war suicide three years later compared poorly with Chamberlain who went on to live a long, productive post-war life. The author's allude to Whittlesey's post-war guilt, particularly sentiments he expressed that his unit's sacrifices served no useful purpose. If this was so, then why did Whittlesey not retreat before the German ring closed around his unit? Having been ordered not to give up ground without direct orders from the division commander, Whittlesey was content to await rescue, but he demonstrated little initiative or imagination. Certainly Whittlesey 's actions merited a Medal of Honor, but the accusations that the price of two virtually destroyed battalions was hardly worth the moral victory that was achieved bears consideration. Apparently Whittlesey himself doubted the value of this sacrifice. Given the inability of Whittlesey to live with the decisions he made and the losses his unit suffered, it is also possible that Whittlesey was fundamentally un-suited to making the kind of life-or-death decisions required of a combat leader. While some of these questions are addressed in the book, the reader should recognize that important questions about combat ethics and psychology have been given short-shrift in the interest of story-telling.

Certainly one of the most interesting aspects of the book is the perspective provided from the German side. The authors were able to obtain interviews with many of the Germans who fought against the Lost Battalion and their side of the story indicates that desperation was not unique to Whittlesey's intrepid band of doughboys. In fact, the German front was beginning to crumble and they never had sufficient reserves to crush Whittlesey. Indeed, while German attacks were constant, the worst damage to the Lost Battalion was done by friendly artillery fire and hunger. One odd omission in this account is that the author's fail to mention that Corporal Alvin C. York of the 82nd Division won his Medal of Honor in the attempt to relieve the Lost Battalion.

Modern readers should also recognize the subtle anti-military bias, common to America in the 1930s, which pervades these pages. The authors want to honor these men as heroes, but not as soldiers. In trying to put the Lost Battalion incident in perspective, the author's conclude, "that the men of the 77th Division lacked not for courage, intelligence, patriotism or any other fundamental quality, but simply that they were poorly trained and insufficiently experienced. Seen from this angle the ultimate responsibility rests on the Washington authorities who sent such soldiers to a major war, and the lesson is that democracies should not engage in mass wars, for when they seek a universal competence they tend to lose democracy." This pro-isolationist hogwash asserts that despite the heroism of soldiers such as Whittlesey, military effort and preparedness fundamentally threatens and debases democracy. In fact, the lesson of Whittlesey and Alvin C York should be that democracies can produce soldiers every bit as good as totalitarian states, but without the need for militarized cultures. Unfortunately, America's enemies also failed to note our ability to produce heroes such as Whittlesey and York and instead perceived the United States as soft and unwilling to sacrifice. Three years after the Lost Battalion was published, the Axis powers demonstrated what happens to democracies that eschew military preparedness.

If you are at all interested in WWI or the US Army and it's traditions, read this book. It was written in the 30's based on documentation and interviews with the living participants. One of the writers was a correspondent. They spin a very lively tale about the "Lost Batallion", a group of men that advance "without regards to their flanks" during an offensive in WWI and get cut-off.

The story is grand. It's filled with heroism, cowardice, triumph and tragedy.

Now, on to the history. While the story is a great read and very good supporting documentation comes with the book. Sometimes the story telling gets in the way of the history. Also, the author's didn't explain the physical location of the events well enough to visualize and the pictures provided are, while interesting, unhelpful. These are the only things preventing this from being a 5.

It's interesting that the sort "cauldron" battle that takes place is similar to the one that the Germans one on the Eastern Front, Tannenburg. It also brings into mind all the cauldron battles that were to take place during WWII. It's a shame these authors didn't write this book after that war, just to see if they compared and contrasted the different events.