To the other reviews here, I'd like to mention Corvo's disconnection from the real world. He seems to believe that kings and popes still really ran the world like they did in 1300. His Hadrian VII persuades Europe to be carved into an Empire of the North, ruled by the King of Prussia, an Empire of the South, by the King of Italy. The American Republic, is given all of South America; the Japanese Empire, gets Siberia; and the rest of the world goes to the King of England. Uh, yeah.

This really is an astonishingly modern book. He shows in part a Church capable of corruption and deceit, but also shows a Church which has what we now call a preferential option toward the poor, and a Pope also works diligently for peace.

Here we have the hero, a poor, scholarly eccentric, who has been ill-treated by Church officials. His bishop did not like him and did not support his vocation to the priesthood, and told lies to boot. However, finally, a couple of bishops, one an Archbishop, look into his case and decide he has been dreadfully wronged. Rolfe delineates a structure of secrecy, deceit, and cover up. He did not anticipate the scandals of the cover-up of child abuse, but the structures of deceit are there, and one can still see them at work today.

Well, the old Archbishop, after much careful and challenging questioning, determines that our hero really does have a true vocation to the priesthoood, and that his studies were sufficient. He ordains him. It just turns out that the Archbishop has come back from a Papal Conclave which is in deadlock, unable to choose a new Pope. He returns to Rome with the new priest in his entourage, and lo and behold, it turns out that his ill-treatment and his case have been discussed. By the Holy Spirit, he is chosen Pope, much to his surprise. However, the Spirit no doubt gave him strength and he accepts the office, choosing the title of Hadrian VII.

Well, what kind of Pope is he? He first of all wants to be a Pope of the people, and so ensures his elections and first appearance is to the waiting crowds outside in the world. He likes going among the crowds, even though there is some danger of assassination, though he was not the traveller that J. P. II is. He insists on having his quarters built and decorated in a utilitarian way, eschewing grandeur. Having experienced poverty, he is very solicitous towards the poor and devotes a lot of Church resources towards ameliorating poverty. So, he anticipated the preferential option towards the poor.

Some have pointed out that his Pope has a great deal more influence in the world than any modern Pope has had, Hadrian VII showed himself as vitally interested in peace. Truly, the Pope would not be able to engineer a division of the world into spheres of influence for various favored powerful nations.

There is good and bad in the Church, and Rolfe's Hadrian VII sets out much of both.

Rolfe himself was quite an eccentric, and so is his Pope. The style is full of archaisms and wierd bits of learning, but Rolfe was theologically astute, too. His Hadrian is a very complex and facinating character, somewhat depressive, hard working, kind, and strange. This novel is so interesting I can forgive it a few faults. Some of it is a hoot.

The most attractive feature of this new edition of Rolfe's bizarre classic is the introduction by Alexander Theroux, perhaps the only writer today with the fire, erudition, and vocubulary to carry on the tradition of Corvine invective. (If you like Corvo, you must read Theroux's novel "Darconville's Cat.")

This book has some stories about bomber crews but not as many as I would like.

Excellent book on all the big bombers,it's all here,excellent photos. Very nice.

This book is full of excellent photos of three of the main bombers in World War II. It is set up so that each plane has its own section with a seperate author. The text is good as an introduction but what really makes this a good book are the photos. It's hard to find such a nice book at such a reasonable price and I recommend it.

BENTEEN'S SCOUT GIVES GREAT VISUAL ACCOUNT OF CONTRVERSIAL EVENT THAT IS RARELY EXPLORED IN DETAIL,USUALLY INACCURATELY. THIS BOOK IS A MUST-ADD TO ANY SERIOUS CUSTER COLLECTION.EXPLAINS BENTEEN'S ACTIONS AND ROUTE ALLOWING BETTER INVESTIGATION OF LITTLE BIGHORN DEBACLE.

Roger Darling has done such an excellent job that it makes one wish that you could saddle a horse and ride across the bluffs as Benteen and his battalion did after leaving the divide. While touring the LHB I was personally able to see where Benteen turned to the left on his scout on what appears to be pretty broken county. Darling's logical determinations finds the three lines of bluffs that Lt. Gibson and his platoon crossed including his final viewing point on the thrd bluff before returning to Benteen and the Battalion in a valley and starting the oblique to the right to join Custer. Excellent four page fold out of a detailed map of the route indicating landmarks, and the geography of the land including elevations, streams, valleys, the morass etc. Although Custer sent messengers to Benteen authorizing him to advance to the next bluff, Darling makes an excellent case that Benteen the expert soildier failed to inform Custer by courier that he found no Indians in the LBH valley to the south or that he was progressing for a return to Custer. Darling notes the land is not as rough as generaly perceived and the book continues to make one think that Benteen could have been a major contributor to Custer's final scene whether the conclusion would have been different is a major question. Short book in pages but concise detail with lots of pictures and the outstanding map.

The book should read to "Letters by Theo. Goldin" to and from various different people, E.A. Brinistool, Albert Johnson, Phillip Cole, Fred Dustin and eventually Capt Frederick Benteen. Most of the letters were written when Goldin was very old and blind. Interesting insight into Benteen and a scathing by Benteen of Custer and his preported "conduct". Worth the reading if you truely "understand" what happened on June 25th 1876. Not for the first time reader... you'll be lost within a matter of pages unless you understand the "who, what and where" of different people.

This book is the printing with minimal commentary of letters between Goldin and Benteen. Frederick Benteen was an officer and Goldin an enlisted man in the Seventh Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Correspondence between officer and enlisted man is unique in itself. In the case of first hand participants their direct insights into events is always fascinating. This book does not answer any outstanding questions but it does add insights especially relative to Benteen. Anyone interested in the history of the Seventh Cavalry and the personality of Frederick Benteen, a major participant in the Little Big Horn scenario will be interested in this book.

This is a rare look at a regular guy in the Civil War. You get to read the letters of the rich and famous often enough as every letter they ever wrote was saved but here is a collection of letters from an ordinary guy. He tells about his life, battles, and how he wants the money he sends home spent. You get to know him almost too well as you feel the pain of losing him. This is well worth reading.

Infantryman Pettit is the civil war through the eyes of a teenager gone off to war. He goes into battle at 19 with the naivety that speaks of youth seeking glory. He becomes a hardened veteran that loses none of his morals in the process. Here is the epitome of the American G.I., no anti-hero stuff here, just out and out reasons why we should respect our soldiers and the terrible situations they must endure. You ever wonder why people jumped on handgrenades to save their fellow soldiers in World War II? Read about Pettit and his civil war experience and you will understand.

This large format atlas is roughly equivalent to the Delorme New Mexico atlas, but isn't nearly as pretty. There are no contour lines or land-use boundaries, just B+W road maps. The base data is different, however, so it could be a useful supplement to Delorme. This one comes from official State of New Mexico maps, so it contains information on the status of dirt roads that Delorme doesn't have (since Delorme comes from USGS sources). If you do a lot of dirt road exploring, this atlas could be very helpful. Outside of big towns, this atlas even shows individual houses and windmills.

This is an excellent backroads atlas to the state of New Mexico. We have used it on several backroads adventures since it was published in 1990 and have found it indespensible. It's similar to the DeLorme atlases, but a little easier to read, I think.

In keeping with Professor Potter's work about Admiral Nimitz, this, IMHO, is the definitive work about one of the most controversial admirals in naval history. I consider this book as a THE reference work about Halsey.

Kept me interested from cover to cover. E.B. Potter does an excellent job of bringing history to life with this biography of Halsey.

I read all three of EBPotter's naval biographies and found the Halsey biography to be on par with Nimitz and Burke. While not as lengthy as other Halsey biographies, I could not put the book down because I found it so interesting and compelling.

The chapters on object -> RDBMS mapping and implementation using non-OO languages are worth the whole book!

It's outdated because it uses the OMT, I would really thanks Rambaugh if he could write a new edition!

Lets face it, this is the best book to get started on Object Oriented Programming. An object is still an object, whether you show it in a cloud or in a box. Plus this book has some valuable tips on programming the right way, and puts reusability in perspective. Its written in extremely readable fashion, quite unlike some of the UML documents out there. The only thing that bothers me is the price tag, which seems to be a bit high.

A landmark in OO literature: always was and always will be. Taking things from step zero to discussing very advanced issues. The notation used is the one where UML has borrowed most of its elements (especially the class diagrams). The process it describes has become the typical process for OO development (especially 2nd generation OMT as described through a series of articles in JOOP by Rumbaugh). In all, a book that leaves nothing uncovered from notation to process and more importantly in depth discussions on OO concepts and techniques that will always be true. Finally, this is one of the few books that discuss how to implement an OO design into a non-OO language such as C, Pascal, Fortran etc. END

An intriguing account of how Winterbotham single-handedly made the planet safe for democracy during WWII. One is left with the impression that the great generals and admirals may have had an ace up their sleeves, but also with the impression that Winterbotham is in love with himself. Despite his shameless name-dropping and self-aggrandizement, this book is a must-read for any serious student of WWII, because of the important context it provides for events of that time.

This book tells about the Ultra operation that broke the Enigma cypher. The author operated as a secret agent in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, then was placed in charge of the Scientific Intelligence Unit. The code breaking operation followed.

Their man in Warsaw learned of the Enigma machine from a Polish mechanic, who was then exfiltrated to Paris. He duplicated the machine in wood. Next, a new cypher machine was acquired for study. They were able to break this unbreakable coding machine. He tells how carefully this information was guarded, and used. With radar and Ultra, Britain was able to efficiently use their scarce resources against larger forces. Only a small number of fighters were sent against the bombers and fighters to minimize losses to the RAF. It worked well; but afterwards Dowding was criticized for not using more fighters earlier.

Why was the Battle of the Bulge a surprise? They had come to rely on Ultra so much that they disregarded other indicators that were not confirmed by Ultra. And these plans were not broadcast by the enemy.

This was written from his own recollection, so it is not the complete history. It has nothing about the code breaking by other forces. This book provides new light on the previously known events.

In 1976 "A Man Called Intrepid" was a best seller in the US. In 1977 Frederick William Winterbotham published "The Ultra Secret", about the decryption of the German Enigma systems. In 1978 "Room 3603" was reprinted. They all are important books about WW2, altho "Room 3603" starts in the 1930s and has important information about intelligence activities. Did you know that they knew how to forge typewritten documents in the 1930s?

This book tells about FWW's involvment in solving the Enigma encryption system. Like any good history, it is well written. I would recommend it highly to anyone. A later book tells more of his personal history in the 1930s. Working for the Air Ministry, he travelled to Germany to sell aircraft parts, and met many high Nazi officials. He was such a good friend of Goering that he was the only foreigner allowed to fly his airplane thru the Third Reich! He was one of the top British Nazi sympathizers at the time, until 1937: he was summoned to the Berlin Foreign Office, and given 48 hours to leave the country, "or else". They finally discovered that FWW really worked for Military Intelligence!

In agreement with what other reviewers have said, I enjoyed The Quest for Corvo primarily because of the ways the book displays the author's quaint but intense enthusiasm for his subject. This is, to me, the most interesting aspect of the biography, for the most defining (and perhaps most important) thing about Fr. Rolfe was not his literary exploits (relatively few, mostly unnoticed) or indeed anything he ever accomplished, but rather his eccentricity of character. And Symons' enthusiasm for Rolfe's eccentricity is infectious, and it lends not only authenticity but genuine merit to his choice to structure the book as a "quest" instead of as hagiography.

Nonetheless, despite his intrinsically fascinating character, Rolfe should be approached first through Hadrian the Seventh, and not directly through The Quest for Corvo--if only because then the reader will be following in the biographer's footsteps.

As for the content of the biography, I found its wayward structure refreshing, but confusing, especially with regard to the author's depictions and analyses of Rolfe's literary output. A bibliography or chronology would have been quite helpful. Also, echoing other reviewers, Symons's reluctance to speak at length about Rolfe's homosexuality (especially the elements that might still be considered deviant today) leaves too much of Rolfe's character and contemporary reactions to him concealed.

One summer afternoon in 1925, A. J. A. Symons and Christopher Millard, each somewhat obscure and eccentric literary figures in their own right, were sitting in a garden discussing books and authors that had never received proper recognition from the arbiters of literary history. Millard asked Symons whether he had ever read "Hadrian the Seventh." Symons acknowledged that he had not and that he was unfamiliar with the book. "To my surprise, [Millard] offered to lend me his copy-to my surprise, for my companion lent his books seldom and reluctantly. But knowing the range of his knowledge of out-of-the-way literature, I accepted without hesitating; and by doing so took the first step on a trail that led into very strange places."

Very strange places indeed! Symons began reading "Hadrian the Seventh," a book written by Frederick Rolfe, also known as Baron Corvo, and originally published in 1904, and quickly felt "that interior stir with which we all recognize a transforming new experience." Symons went on to spend the next eight years of his life tracking down the details of the life and writings of Baron Corvo, one of the most eccentric, original and enigmatic English writers of the last one hundred years. The result was "The Quest for Corvo: An Experimental Biography," a fascinating book that has been in- and out-of-print since its first publication in 1934 and has enjoyed a literary cult following akin to that of the text ("Hadrian the Seventh") and the author (Rolfe, aka Corvo) that originally inspired it.

As one reads "The Quest for Corvo," it seems that Symon's text represents the outermost of three concentric circles of eccentricity.

The innermost, core circle is "Hadrian the Seventh," a strange and imaginative novel that tells the story of an impoverished, eccentric and seemingly paranoid writer and devotee of the Roman Catholic faith, George Arthur Rose. Rose, a brilliant, self-taught man whose candidacy for the priesthood had been rejected twenty years earlier, is unexpectedly approached one day by a Cardinal and a Bishop who have been made aware of his devotion and his shameful treatment by the Church. Rose is ordained and ultimately becomes the first English Pope in several hundred years. While a work of fiction, Symons' biographical investigations disclose that much of the story of "Hadrian the Seventh" closely parallels the life of its strange author, Frederick Rolfe.

The second circle of eccentricity is, of course, the life of Frederick Rolfe, Baron Corvo, himself. It is the telling of this life that occupies Symons in "The Quest for Corvo," and the result is a fascinating, if perhaps not always historically accurate, detective story cum biography. Starting with his obsessive search for information on Rolfe and his meetings and correspondence with those who knew him, Symons brilliantly recreates a life-the life of a strangely talented artist, photographer, historian, and writer who led a life of seemingly paranoid desperation, ultimately dying impoverished in Venice at the age of forty-five.

The third, outermost circle is the eccentricity of the author of the "Quest for Corvo," A. J. A. Symons, a founder of The Wine and Food Society of England, a collector of music boxes, and a master at card tricks and the art of forgery. Like Corvo himself, Symons died at an early age-he was only forty years old-and his life and his book is seemingly as eccentric as its subject.

"The Quest for Corvo" is one of those little gems that deserve a cherished, if perhaps minor, place in English literature and the literature of biography. Happily, it is back in print again, courtesy of New York Review Books. Read it, and then read "Hadrian the Fourth" (also brought back into print by NYRB) for a fascinating turn in the world of the imaginative and the eccentric.

In recent years we've been treated to many thoughtful and highly readable studies on the nature of biography itself, such as in Richard Holmes's FOOTSTEPS and Janet Malcolm's THE SILENT WOMAN. Symons's THE QUEST FOR CORVO could almost be a sketch for these later, deeper studies in its very metatextual approach to what it means to compose a biography of Frederick Rolfe, one of the strangest figures in fin-de-siecle British letters. Although later biographies took this work to task for its errors and omissions, that shouldn't dissuade you from enjoying how Symons juxtaposes differing perspectives on the quarrelsome and paranoid Rolfe's actions and behaviors, and his desire to get at the "real man." Greater drawbacks, I think, might be Symons's homophobia--which, while very common for its time, seems a bit hysterical today--and the fact that Rolfe (or "Baron Corvo," as he liked to style himself) as a person either enchants readers completely or eventually becomes as tiresome to them as he did to his contemporaries. Still, even though Rolfe's antics do grate on some people's nerves a bit after a while(as they did mine), the fascination of his personality remains quite compelling.

This edition features a beautiful cover and paper stock (as do all NYRB editions) and an intelligent and thoughtful introduction (which, unfortunately, they do not always).