This book is a easy read, filled with many many facts previously not read, and the short stories of various battles, with specific people was EXCELLENT. Best author since Ambrose I've read in years.

I'm an avid reader of WWII history, and found much to like in this volume. It covers 10 significant battles and key people who's actions were important to the eventual Allied victory. Covered are both Pacific and European Theatre battles, giving a good balance. This is a fine book to read if you're looking for a single volume that covers a lot of ground that can lead you to more in-depth books covering the battles that interest you most. The author works with Stephen Ambrose, and this volume is reminiscent of Ambrose' works. Enjoy!

This book contains accounts of 10 actions in WWII; some famous, some unknown. Some of the more famous actions covered are Doolittle's raid on Tokyo, the battles for Iwo Jima and Betio, and the 82nd drop into Normandy. My favorite account in this book is the little known stand made by Lt. Lyle Bouck and an I&R platoon from the 99th Infantry Division. This untested unit just happened to be at the town of Lanzerath when the Battle of the Bulge started. They were ordered to hold until relieved. The men fought hard until they were killed, overrun, or surrendered when out of ammunition. Although badly outgunned and outnumbered, they managed to hold up advancing German infantry and armored units long enough for engineering units at critical points behind them to blow up bridges and further delay the German advance. Their gallant stand bought time for reinforcements to arrive and stem the tide of battle. This is an enjoyable read and will appeal to anyone with an interest in WWII. The author was instrumental in the research for Ambrose's book, "D-Day June 6th, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II".

My wife and me are deep lovers of poetry, and we thought this collection of poetry was absolutely fabulous. We're actually still passing it back and forth and reading its poetic contents to each other before we turn out the lights! So give it a try! I'm sure it will spice up your love life.

Mr. Dondiego is one of those rare poets who speaks to the heart and soul of a reader. I found these verses to be both profound and elequent in their warm, lyrical quality. It's sad though, that there are so many poets whose voices are seldom heard above the maddening din of this world. For "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

This frank verbal self-portrait reveals the forming of the epitaphal poet. His early years are seen against the backdrop of his midwestern roots, his law training, and emergent writing. Particularly of interest are his anecdotes of life in the Chicago of Clarence Darrow, the White City, and his romantic ventures. The text gives insight into what formed the voices of Spoon River Anthology. It's haunting, wistful and funny. Tender nostalgia, particularly for Illinoisans.

Best known for his 1915 bestseller "Spoon River Anthology", Masters writes in a style simple and intimate; something that almost anyone can read.

This personal portrait paints a picture of the attorney/author's life, loves, pinnacles, and misfortunes, and gives us a clear view of life as it was at the turn of the century.

Born in Garnett, Kansas, and raised in the Petersburg, Illinois region, Masters tells the story of the famous and not-so-famous people who touched his life and left their marks on this celebrated author.

Adoptees Come of Age is an excellent book for anyone who wants to better understand how the adoptee feels and acts as a result of being placed for adoption. While adoptees are not the only people in life who have issues - their issues have a unique set of circumstances that makes is extremely difficult for people to understand who have not experienced being adopted for themsleves. This is one of the best books that I have read on the subject.

Mr. Nydam's well doumented book provides sensitive and sensible information for the adult adoptee. It is also pertinent for other adults touched by adoption; parents, partners, children and siblings. Of special interest is the scholarly research that Nydam has done as a foundation for his ideas. Nydam captures the essence of the adult adoptee dilemma and offers some loving resolution. Not easy to read, as the content raises emotions, this book is important for all parts of the adoption world. Nydam comes at his subject from a pastoral counseling point of view without undue religious overtones or dogma.

An excellent book.

Christian books often become cliche, filled with the same old rhetoric and dogma that leaves us cold and searching; however, "Against an Infinite Horizon" is very fresh in its approach to seeing God in every moment.

I can't think of one aspect of living that Rolheiser omitted. He discusses social justice, marriage and sexuality (His assertion that sex is a sacrament still has me thinking!), death, the gender of God, and the simple act of being grateful.

I didn't always agree with his premises, but Rolheiser gives so many unique perspectives from which to view the ordinary in our lives that you will simply devour this book. He challenges the reader to reconsider our lives and how we view ourselves "against the infinite horizon" of God. There were times when, with my mouth open, I had to stop mid-paragraph and think about what he had said. Nothing revolutionary, just a fresh approach.

This is an excellent book for group discussions,or, like me, for personal growth. Read it and think!

Fr. Rolheiser has given us a wonderful gift in this compelling spiritual guide. I was especially inspired by his use of the stages of motherhood of the Virgin Mary and our own stages of faith. I loved his book "The Holy Longing" but I think I like this one even better. If you're on a spiritual journey, Catholic or otherwise, this is a real treasure.

Anthropology grabbed me early and it has never let go. Why do people behave so differently from one another ? Why are they so similar too ? What would I have been if I had been born in Afghanistan instead of in Boston ? What would my life have looked like if I were an Australian Aborigine ? Why would I think what I think ? These and a myriad other questions intrigue me like no others. Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish novelist, often strikes the theme of "I want to be somebody else, therefore I am." This resonates very well with me. Finally, though, you can only be whatever you are. Travelling, working abroad, making friends among different peoples---these help you answer some of those questions, but only in part. Reading ethnographies, village studies, autobiographies, or novels can also provide some answers. When such books are excellent, you plunge into somebody else's world and emerge changed---you have almost known what it is to be somebody else. When those books are about lives that began many decades before yours, you open a corridor to the past, as well.

Ronald Blythe's AKENFIELD is one of the best ethnographies that I have ever read, and I have read a lot. It certainly does not fit the academic mold and perhaps never figured in many anthropology course reading lists. More's the pity. Blythe, from East Anglia in England, wrote this beautiful, penetrating study of an East Anglia village in the 1960s. It is constructed almost entirely as narratives by the inhabitants, ranging from WW I veterans to housewives, young farm laborers to schoolteachers. Bellringers, blacksmiths, and the vet--the list of characters is comprehensive. Blythe gives description when needed and added a short, almost lyrical introduction, but has worked the interviews into a seamless whole. Arguments could be made that AKENFIELD is more social history than anthropology, but this is a barren field to sow. As the years go by, all anthropology turns into social history, as the world changes and leaves memories of what used to be. I would say that this book is one of the handful that inspired me to write anthropology, that encouraged me to avoid the jargon-strewn wastelands of academic strivings. I have never been able to reach the heights of AKENFIELD, but it has stayed with me for thirty years. Who could give this book enough stars ?

Ronald Blythe's Akenfield is a book about the past. And approaching the past always involves both sadness and exhilaration. The latter because, rightly or wrongly, we see ourselves in the past, feel at home there, and know the pleasure of its kinship; the former because we know the past is irretrievably lost, its faces vanished, its words and songs and experiences, its life and laughter, its sharp pain and flashes of joy irredeemably gone.

This is the experience of the reader in Akenfield. And this is the book's blessing. Even after thirty years, Blythe's book about the people who live in a small rural village in Suffolk, who told him candidly and completely the history of their lives and their village, restores to us a world we still know, but barely. It reminds us of an England that--along with single-family farms, hedgerows, village pubs, and rural silence--has seen its time pass, and its depth and flavor lost.

But neither the book nor the people whose lives are captured in its pages should be romanticized. That would be injustice. Akenfield is peopled by characters from farrier to farm student, from ploughman to pig farmer, from saddler to schoolmaster, who without adornment or pretension tell the stories of their lives, of its bitterness and struggle, along with its victories and unexpected moments of pleasure. We hear the voices of the nurse, the schoolteacher, the poet, the wheelwright. We hear the magistrate, the apple-picker, and the gravedigger.

These are the voices--and the lives--of the generations that came before us. Voices of the Great War and after, of the growing middle class between the wars, of the incursion into rural existence of electricity, the telephone, the main road to Ipswich and then London, of the Second World War and the soldiers' return. They are familiar, they are friendly. They are also heartrending, and the lives they tell--particularly of conditions in agrarian English society in the early 20th century--can be appalling.

Yet this is also a magical work, a work of art--one invaluable to any ethnographer but transcending ethnography or anthropology because of its simple humanity. The book's preface refers in passing to the Domesday Book of 1086; and, because Blythe insists on remaining a recorder instead of an author--because he transcribes the words of others instead of describing what they say--he has created consciously or not a documentary history of life and society at the end of our last millennium as similarly important as we received from the Normans at its beginning.

Akenfield is a remarkable, enduring achievement; it surely stands as one of the finest examples in English history of the living, breathing spirit of late 19th- and early 20th-century culture.

This remarkable anthology brings together texts from 15 Alaska Native languages with facing translations, and contemporary Alaska Native stories, essays & poems. The book seems to me to be a great service to the native peoples of Alaska, and should be of interest to any reader with a concern for preserving the native literary heritage. An unusual and exciting reading experience.

I was amazed to find a book that looked unpromising turn out to be a fascinating read. I discovered new voices and intriguing ideas from kinds of people I've never met. The oral tradition people seemed to be from a different planet, and the contemporary native writers like Susie Silook and Diane Lxeis Benson read like very sophisticated moderns with a distinct native style.

While most marketing books talk at a very high level (targeted towards high-level managers in the organization) this book is the first of its kind that talks at the implementational level. This is a MUST READ for anybody interested in putting together action plans that can be used to get some real-world real-work done. I cannot stress enough how helpful this book has been to me in putting together my marketing plans (product/service based, product/service line based and brand based). Whats fascinating is how easy it is to read this book and quickly start to formalize executional plans. It covers varied topics in small concise chapters detailing different methodologies and where they can be applied. Topics covered range from competitive sets, industry analysis, customer analysis, forecasting markets, segments and everything a marketer needs to develop working marketing plans.

I constantly keep coming back to this book to evaluate how I am organizing my action plans and if I'm doing the right thing (from a process perspective).

BUY THIS BOOK AND BUY IT NOW.

A whole marketing planning course into 200 pages! I am a MBA who was required to read this. This should be required reading for anyone in business - students and professionals. It covers everything from Competitor Analysis to Market Potential and Forecasting. You can become a marketing guru in less than a week.

Ronald B. Allen's guide to worship in the Psalms: "And I Will Praise Him" silently asks the implied question "And will you?" This text is a technical and personal experience in the study and practice of Worship in the Psalms. Certainly the Psalms represent too large a subject to tackle in a brief work, and yet the reader finishes the book with a sense of "being there" in the Psalms. "And I Will Praise Him" is a great aid for those who are on a quest to gain greater understanding and benefit from this daunting and often perplexing book of poetic praise. A mountaineer needs the proper gear in his pack before he climbs a mountain, and so also anyone seeking greater spiritual heights through the Psalms must first load their pack with the equipment necessary for a successful journey. By way of introduction Ronald B. Allen begins with not only a definition of what a Psalm is, but goes further to explain "how a Psalm is". Here we gain the understanding of a genre of Psalms including Psalms of praise and Psalms of lament. Following, the text includes a detailed, but manageable explanation of the poetic devices of the Psalms, because "We must learn to read poetry well if we are going to read the Bible well. " Our next piece of equipment is a proper understanding of the ancient Hebrew's practice of praise; vocal, public and loud! Allen thoroughly establishes that the Psalmists intend praise to be congregational and vocal "to share with those who will understand best our excited boastings in the wonder of knowing the living God. " The reader is also equipped with a telescopic sight so that the praise of God might be seen "on target" as the Psalmists saw it. Finally Allen takes into account the origin of the mountain of the Psalms so that in understanding its creation we can appreciate the beauty, depth and might of the praise written by God and man. "And I Will Praise Him" fills the pack with the equipment needed for the journey into the Psalms. Praise is an Imperative! This is the one singular point that is established throughout this book as the basic understanding of the Psalms. Ronald B. Allen's book seeks to place praise in the context of life, or is that "place life in the context of praise"? This is the thesis of this book; that we should, no... we must, praise Him throughout all our days no matter what our circumstances may be. "Praise is a matter of Life and Breath. "

Rarely can you find a book that will both touch your heart and challenge your mind. Dr. Ron Allen does both in this study of worship in the Psalms. A tender scholar, Dr. Allen lets us see God's passionate heart for His people that leads God's people to the appropriate response-worship! If you're looking for a book that will inspire you or a group to grow in love with God with your heart, soul and mind, choose "And I Will Praise Him." Interactive questions makes for easy discussion. Hebrew-made-simple explains the greater depth. Ask any of Dr. Allen's decades of seminary students if his life matches his message and you'll know why his classes and books take an honored place in their understanding of God's Word.