I myself am not a big fan of war novels. HOWEVER, this book was amazing! It was written so personally that it was incredibly touching without being soppy. Written from the point of view of a medic sent into Vietnam, you see the conflict from a non-combatant's side instead of the soldier's side. The intense description of some of the scenes he saw may turn the stomachs of the more queasy among us, but they simply enhance the atmosphere around his situation. Although the day-to-day occurances could have become boring, Parrish picks out the things that you need to know, and discards the rest. Without focusing on places, or specific times or layouts of camps, instead he talks about the people, the events, the things personal to him - even talking about a touching conversation he has with his young daughter on the telephone. This book gives you a well-rounded view of the war in Vietnam without being too political in it's perceptions. It also isn't a veteran's list of the fallen - instead it is a touching account of one man's time in a hostile country and his fight to keep others - and himself - alive. Definately worth the read.

I haven't read many books on Vietnam, I prefer fiction, but I picked this book up at a booksale and read it out of curiosity. The writer, who had not yet I believed graduated from medical school, was sent to Vietnam and served as a doctor at a first aid camp. The author does an excellent job of depicting the horror of Vietnam and also the stress that he goes through. His description of a furlough filled with adventure is one of the most vivid sections of the book and the one that still stands out in my mind. If you can track it down I'd reccomend reading it.

Chabon's narratives can sometimes go endlessly rambling along to the poient where meaning is completely lost! For instance on page 63 you will find a sentence with 124 words! (Yes, I counted). I also found the ending of the bood to be a bit abrupt, and I was left with alot of questions. What I did like the photo on the book, it was quite cool. And you should of put alot more stuff about his family and life.

This book was pretty good but there was one part in the book that you didn't put. You should of listed where he lived, how old he is, what his life was when he growing up, whats his mom's like and what his friends were like.

Art is a social institution. So it can't be insulated from social influences. Artists are sellers in market. They earn their bread by selling their products, artworks.
Art is a language shared by social actors. Artworks can't be read without shared code to interpret the meaning of the text. They call it as convention. Convention is established through the power relationship in the market among producer (artists), intermediary (critics) and consumer (audience).
In this regard, art is just another medium like mass media. The author questions when the mass media dominates the culture, what is the status of pure art? In this vein, following questions, which have haunted the field of artistic production since the 19th century, gains renewed significance. Could art secure its autonomy as modernists dreamt of? What is the social role of art?
To answer those questions, the author probes into the language and market of visual art from pop art to postmodernism. Various avant-garde movements since pop art has borrowed and exploited material, subject and strategy of mass media. In turn, mass culture has utilized the art as high culture. But the position of pure art is still restricted to institutionalized sanctuary like museum, university. It's no more than high culture protected from below. It's utilized to distinguish from others by high society. It's not clear whether artwork is different from luxury goods in its utility. Adorno's word still reverberates in the circle of artists: "Today, it goes without saying that nothing concerning art goes without saying, not much without thinking. Everything about art has become problematic: its inner life, its relation to society, even its right to exist".

Albert Burton Moore in his 45-year teaching career was the embodiment of a Southern scholar-gentleman. Born and raised in Alabama, he was a descendant of Confederate veterans, and he wrote and taught at a time when many of them were yet alive. His teaching career, except for four years in Iowa, was entirely in the South (as a footnote, he also served two terms as president of the NCAA).

"Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy" did not have to be an interesting book, but it is one because Moore's writing style is assured, easy, understated. He has a keen eye for the pithiest quotes from his sources. And he knows his Latin. His Southerners regarded their battlefield victories with sincere "gratulation," and Moore cannot bring himself to write "conscripted" when he knows Cicero would only have approved "conscribed."

Moore's book is still valued by historians for both parts of its title. The 1996 introduction to the University of South Carolina edition rightly praises the book as still the fundamental introduction to Confederate conscription, as well as a groundbreaking exploration of internal divisions in the CSA. That was a topic which had been given short shrift by the Lost Cause version of the Civil War which prevailed in America at that time.

Moore views Southern conscription as a flawed, but ultimately successful system that kept the Confederacy's will to fight for independence focused in an effective military effort for four hard years. He finds no inherent shame to the Confederate cause in the mere fact of conscription. "President Davis told the Mississippi legislature that there was no more reason to expect voluntary service in the army than voluntary labor upon the public roads or the voluntary payment of taxes," he writes.

Yet he appreciates the challenge of applying a system of compulsory service "among a proud and free people." He writes that the South's general public was "gradually reconciled" to the idea, though "strong opposition" remained.

His assumption that secession was principally about states' rights is no longer shared by most historians. But because Moore felt the South's cause was states' rights, the "conflict" in the book's title is largely that between Davis' central government and state authorities, notably the states'-rights governors Brown and Vance.

The book avoids statistics as much as possible, and the author always alerts his reader, if he delves into numbers, that all the figures are estimates at best, that they are often in dispute, and that surviving Confederate records are very incomplete.

Moore does not compare Southern conscription with the North's parallel messy venture in it, and he makes no attempt to place the CSA's experience in the flow of military history. This is, to me, a serious oversight.

This book considers the impact that the fine arts and mass culture of the United States had in Britain afer World War Two. Those influenced included British artists, art students and critics (including the author of the book when he was an art student). It's a fascinating social and cultural history. It is also an account of America's Cold War cultural offensive and the role played by American artists living in Britain (such as Kitaj). It documents the variegated responses of British artists to postwar America and its art, criticism and mass media. Their reactions ranged from Americanism - enthusiasm and compliance - to Anti-Americanism - criticism and resistance. Covering significant art movements such as Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art, the author digests information from hundreds of published sources and interviews to paint a vivid picture of a crucial period in British culture. Many of the critics, painters and sculptors featured - Lawrence Alloway, Peter Blake, Reyner Banham, Anthony Caro, Clement Greenberg, David Hockney, Richard Hamilton, R.B. Kitaj, John Latham, Claes Oldenburg, Eduardo Paolozzi, Herbert Read, Bridget Riley, Larry Rivers - are now internationally famous. The study is brought up to date with an overview of the decline in American influence during in the 1980s and 1990s and the rise of Brit Art. Walker is a scholar, an academic but he writes in a lively, accessible way. This book is well illustrated (but no colour unfortunately) and should be of interest on both sides of the Atlantic.

I used this book for a course in ODE's. The edition that was available for purchase at our school's bookstore also included a book by the authors for using MatLab for solving ODE's, The combination of the two were great. The book is logically structured and generally easy to read. The authors use many examples from a variety of fields. The MatLab book was a phenomenal help: it's the best intro to MatLab that I've found, and was very useful in helping to solve problems. My only beef with the book is that since this is a first edition, there are several errors in the odd numbered solutions at the end of the book, which caused many sleepless nights.

One of the places that most inspired Matisse was Morocco, a country of huge contrasts, vivid colors and dramatic landscapes .
I missed the landmark exhibition for which this book served as the catalog, but I purchased it after vacationing in Morocco. Matisse's view of the country emphasizes the colors of Moroccan cities and landscapes -- intense orange-reds and azure bluesz. It is also informed and inspired by Moroccan design, which combines Mediterranean and Islamic elements to beautiful effect.

I used this book in a course by the same name and it was a helpful source to read. It gives good explanations that sometimes are a little too short. I still use this book and it is a great place to jump off from when trying to understand a topic. One problem is that somtimes it gets too much into the biochemical steps and falls away from the concepts of the pathway. But all in all, it is a helpful book if this is your field or if you want to start and understand bacteria from a entire bacteria level and not just one gene at a time. The parts on genetics and genetic regulation of systems (focusing on transcriptional regulation) are also great. It is due for an update though.

Set in upstate New York in colonial times, Cooper here tells the story of the stolid colonial scout Hawkeye, nee Natty Bumppo (don't ask), who, with his two Indian companions Chingachgook (the Big Snake) and his son Uncas (apparently newly come to manhood), stumble on a party of British soldiers conducting two fair maidens to their father, the commander of British Fort William Henry during the French and Indian War. Under the watchful eyes of the young British officer who has the girls in his charge and led by a Huron scout, Magua, the party appears, to the indomitable Hawkeye, to be at greater risk than they realize as they trek through the wilderness toward the safety of the girls' father's garrison. And, indeed, Hawkeye's judgement is soon proved right as the scout Magua treacherously betrays the hapless girls in repayment, it seems, for a stint of corporal punishment inflicted on him previously by their absent parent. Since the Hurons, Magua's native tribe, are culturally akin to the Iroquois who are the herditary enemies of the Algonquin Delawares, from whom Chingachgook and his son hail and among whom Hawkeye has made his home and friendships, a natural antagonism has arisen almost at once between Hawkeye's party and the Huron and this proves salutary, when danger finally strikes. The tale quickly becomes a matter of flight and pursuit through thickly overgrown primeval forests, over rough mountains and across broad open lakes as the beleagured travelers first elude and then flee the dreaded Iroquois (allies of the French) who have joined the renegade Huron in an effort to seize the two girls. After a brief respite within the safety of William Henry however, the tables are once again turned as Magua's perfidy puts the girls once more at risk. And now the story shifts to a manic pursuit of the fleeing Magua who means to carry off his human prey in order to finally have his revenge on the girls' father, on the British and on the Europeans, generally, whose presence in his native country he blames (not altogether unjustifiably) for his myriad travails. Written in the fine tradition of the 19th century romance (which, of course, is what this book is), Cooper picked up where Sir Walter Scott (the venerable founder of this particular novelistic tradition) left off, creating a rich historical tale of adventure, nobility and marvelously sketched characters set against a brilliantly detailed natural landscape. If his characters are less keenly drawn than Scott's they are no less memorable for, in the quiet nobility of the scout Hawkeye lies the strong, silent hero of the wilderness which was to become the archetypical protagonist of the American western. And the Indians, Chingachgook and Uncas, are the very prototypes of the noble savage, so much used and over-used today. This is a tale of action first and foremost without much plot but so well told that you barely notice, as our heroes flee and pursue their enemies in turn until the very quickness of the prose seems to mirror and embody the speed of the action. Nor is this book only to be read for its rapid-fire rendition of flight and pursuit, for it touches the reader on another level as well, as the bold young Uncas moves out ahead of his comrades to place himself at risk for the others and the woman he loves. Although we never see Uncas at anything but a distance and never get to know the man he is supposed to be, he is yet a symbol of that people of whom he is the last chiefly descendant, the Delaware Mohicans. Nobly born into the finest of Mohican bloodlines, Uncas faces his final trial with heroic energy and resolve in order to defeat the nefarious and twisted Magua. Yet this struggle is also the final footnote in the story of a people, marking the closing chapter for all those Indians who, with the Mohicans, have seen, in Cooper's words, the morning of their nation and the inevitable nightfall which must follow. The book is a bit short on characterization and plotting and the prose is heavy for modern tastes, but the action is richly visualized in the flow of the narrative and the images are compelling. In the end, despite its flaws, this book of Cooper's is, in fact, the classic we have been told it is. -- S. W. Mirsky

Set in upstate New York in colonial times, Cooper here tells the story of the stolid colonial scout Hawkeye, nee Natty Bumppo (don't ask), who, with his two Indian companions Chingachgook (the Big Snake) and his son Uncas (apparently newly come to manhood), stumble on a party of British soldiers conducting two fair maidens to their father, the commander of British Fort William Henry during the French and Indian War. Under the watchful eyes of the young British officer who has the girls in his charge and led by a Huron scout, Magua, the party appears, to the indomitable Hawkeye, to be at greater risk than they realize as they trek through the wilderness toward the safety of the girls' father's garrison. And, indeed, Hawkeye's judgement is soon proved right as the scout Magua treacherously betrays the hapless girls in repayment, it seems, for a stint of corporal punishment inflicted on him previously by their absent parent. Since the Hurons, Magua's native tribe, are culturally akin to the Iroquois who are the herditary enemies of the Algonquin Delawares, from whom Chingachgook and his son hail and among whom Hawkeye has made his home and friendships, a natural antagonism has arisen almost at once between Hawkeye's party and the Huron and this proves salutary, when danger finally strikes. The tale quickly becomes a matter of flight and pursuit through thickly overgrown primeval forests, over rough mountains and across broad open lakes as the beleagured travelers first elude and then flee the dreaded Iroquois (allies of the French) who have joined the renegade Huron in an effort to seize the two girls. After a brief respite within the safety of William Henry however, the tables are once again turned as Magua's perfidy puts the girls once more at risk. And now the story shifts to a manic pursuit of the fleeing Magua who means to carry off his human prey in order to finally have his revenge on the girls' father, on the British and on the Europeans, generally, whose presence in his native country he blames (not altogether unjustifiably) for his myriad travails. Written in the fine tradition of the 19th century romance (which, of course, is what this book is), Cooper picked up where Sir Walter Scott (the venerable founder of this novelistic tradition) left off, creating a rich historical tale of adventure, nobility and marvelously sketched characters set against a brilliantly detailed natural landscape. If his characters are less keenly drawn than Scott's they are no less memorable for, in the quiet nobility of the scout Hawkeye lies the strong, silent hero of the wilderness which has become the archetypical protagonist in our own American westerns. And the Indians, Chingachgook and Uncas, are the very prototypes of the noble savage, so much used and over-used today. This is a tale of action first and foremost without much plot but so well told that you barely notice, as our heroes flee and pursue their enemies in turn until the very quickness of the prose seems to mirror and embody the speed of the action. Nor is this book only to be read for its rapid-fire rendition of flight and pursuit, for it touches the reader on another level as well, as the bold young Uncas moves out ahead of his comrades to place himself at risk for the others and the woman he loves. Although we never see Uncas at anything but a distance and never get to know the man he is supposed to be, he is yet a symbol of that people of whom he is the last chiefly descendant, the Delaware Mohicans. Nobly born into the finest of Mohican bloodlines, Uncas faces his final trial with heroic energy and resolve in order to defeat the nefarious and twisted Magua. Yet this struggle is also the final footnote in the story of a people, marking the closing chapter for all those Indians who, with the Mohicans, have seen, in Cooper's own words, the morning of their nation and the inevitable nightfall which must follow. -- Stuart W. Mirsky (mirsky@ix.netcom.com

Set in upstate New York in colonial times, Cooper here tells the tale of the stolid colonial scout Hawkeye, nee Natty Bumppo (don't ask), who, with his two Indian companions Chingachgook (the Big Snake) and his son Uncas (apparently newly come to manhood), stumble on a party of British soldiers conducting two fair maidens to their father, the commander of British Fort William Henry during the French and Indian War. Under the watchful eyes of the young British officer who has the girls in his charge and led by a Huron scout, Magua, the party appears, to the indomitable Hawkeye, to be at greater risk than they realize as they trek through the wilderness toward the safety of the girls' father's garrison. And, indeed, Hawkeye's judgement is soon proved right as the scout Magua treacherously betrays the hapless girls in repayment, it seems, for a stint of corporal punishment inflicted on him previously by their absent parent. Since the Hurons, Magua's native tribe, are culturally akin to the Iroquois who are the herditary enemies of the Algonquin Delawares, from whom Chingachgook and his son hail and among whom Hawkeye has made his home and friendships, a natural antagonism arises almost at once between Hawkeye's party and the Huron and this proves salutary, when danger finally strikes. The tale quickly becomes a matter of flight and pursuit through thickly overgrown primeval forests, over rough mountains and across broad open lakes as the beleagured travelers first elude and then flee the dreaded Iroquois (allies of the French) who have joined the renegade Huron in an effort to seize the two girls. After a brief respite within the safety of William Henry however, the tables are once again turned as Magua's perfidy puts the girls once more at risk. And now the story shifts to a manic pursuit of the fleeing Magua who means to carry off his human prey in order to finally have his revenge on the girls' father, on the British and on the Europeans, generally, whose presence in his native country he blames (not altogether unjustifiably) for his myriad travails. Written in the fine tradition of the 19th century romance (which, of course, is what this book is), Cooper picked up where Sir Walter Scott (the venerable founder of this novelistic tradition) left off, creating a rich historical tale of adventure, nobility and marvelously sketched characters set against a brilliantly detailed natural landscape. If his characters are less keenly drawn than Scott's they are no less memorable for, in the quiet nobility of the scout Hawkeye lies the strong, silent hero of the wilderness which has become the archetypical protagonist in our own American westerns. And the Indians, Chingachgook and Uncas, are the very prototypes of the noble savage, so much used, and over-used, today. This is a tale of action first and foremost without much plot but so well told that you barely notice, as our heroes flee and pursue their enemies in turn -- until the very quickness of the prose seems to mirror and embody the speed of the action. Nor is this book only to be read for its rapid-fire rendition of flight and pursuit, for it touches the reader on another level as well, as the bold young Uncas moves out ahead of his comrades to place himself at risk for the others and the woman he loves. Although we never see Uncas at anything but a distance and never get to know the man he is supposed to be, he is yet a symbol of that people of whom he is the last chiefly descendant, the Delaware Mohicans. Nobly born into the finest of Mohican bloodlines, Uncas faces his final trial with heroic energy and resolve in order to defeat the nefarious and twisted Magua. Yet this struggle is also the final footnote in the story of a people, marking the closing chapter for all those Indians who, with the Mohicans, have, in Cooper's own words, seen the morning of their nation and the inevitable nightfall which must follow. If you give this book a chance and bear with some of the heavy nineteenth century prose, it will prove out in the end. An exciting and worthwhile read.

I read this book when it first came out in hardcover, and was very impressed by Dunlap's beliefs and methods. Now that the smoke has cleared with Dunlap's fiasco at Sunbeam and the recent biography "Chainsaw", I find this book to be fairly shabby. For one thing, Dunlap only seemed to be concerned with the price of the stock, rather than the rate of return on the investment. He says that one should not cut jobs just to increase the share price, yet he boasted about improving the share price (which at Sunbeam, crashed after he was sacked). A share price should reflect the profit which a company makes, not by what type of actions the chairman makes. He sold Scott to Kimberly Clark for a fairly hefty sum, but now that buyout seems to have less value than originally anticipated. Rather than building up what's best in a corporation, he seems to cut them down to size (which speculatively increases their value) and sell them off while the going's good. Good value for him, provded that he sells off his shares, but for the long term shareholders, it's a rip off. Second, I admire the idea of corporations streamlining the management process, and thowing away the corporate toys. He feels that executives should not be excessively paid, and i admire the idea of executives being paid in stock, having to buy stock out of their own pocket, and accepting term limits and conflict of interest rules. However, according to "Chainsaw" he seemed to have many of the perks (like a bodyguard and room for his dogs at a hotel) which he claims an executive should be denied. He feels that executives should not be excessively paid, and I admire the idea of executives being paid in stock, having to buy stock out of their own pocket, and accepting term limits and conflict of interest rules. Yet, his infatuation with the value of the share (rather than the rate of return) forces the executives to focus more and more on the short term, rather than the long term. This seems to be in contradiction to his marketing idea of a high margin, rather than an high volume of sales. Third, his autobiography seems to be a fraud. According to Chainsaw, his father was not a dock worker/union steward, but a boiler maker. The family had a nice middle class lifestyle, not the poverty which Dunlap has described. Dunlap makes no reference to his sister, his first wife, to whom he seemed abusive, or to his son Troy, to whom he refused to help with his college tuition and whom he wrote out of his will. Finally, Dunlap claims to have admiration for his parents, yet he did not even attend their funerals. Mean Business really hints at what type of ego Dunlap has, through his continual boasting about his accomplishments in creating shareholder value. Chainsaw, on the other hand, expands on this, showing what type of a tyrant this man is, ruthlessly screaming at employees for hours on end (and even sexually harassing one of them) and expecting them to at his beck and call. In theory, his ideas seem fairly sound, but in practice, I feel that focusing exclusively on the value of a share price will have extremely dire long term consequences.

The only reason this book doesn't merit a full five stars is its relentless tone of braggadocio and self-promotion. Yes, Al Dunlap did a good thing. He turned around a company and channeled the money to the shareholders, but let's not go overboard. He didn't win a war, or find a cure for a disease, or create a beautiful work of art. He just did the job he was paid to do, and he did it well. When he plasters his face four times on the cover of his book and talks about his work with words like "revolution" and "conquest", it's too much. It makes me think he's got a publicist telling him what to do. Hubris, overweening pride, has from ancient times been a trait that wise men and women were taught to avoid. Dunlap is probably a wise man, so he should dump whoever's urging him to, like a rooster, take credit for the sunrise.

That said, I can go on to the ideas in the book, which are very good and long overdue. First, simplicity. Dunlap says it several times: business is simple. Contrary to what the gurus and B-school touts would have you believe, business is not rocket science. Business is the part that comes after rocket science, when you try to make rockets as cheap as you can and sell as many as you can at the highest possible price. In Dunlap's case, paper had already been invented. It just needed to be marketed and sold at a profit. An opulent headquarters and an elitist bureaucracy did nothing to attain that goal. So Dunlap fired most of the managerial class and sold the headquarters. Simple. He then sold all of the companies in the Scott conglomerate that didn't have any relation to tissue paper. Then he dumped most of the consultants because, he reasoned, why would a high-priced so-and-so know more about running a paper company than a person who'd spent years working in a paper company?

One of Dunlap's greatest strengths is his common sense. He was able to see, and had the nerve to say, that Scott's consultants were too brainy and pricey for the tissue paper business, and that Scott executives could work in less luxurious offices. He was able to see that a power plant was not a sensible part of a paper products company. Most important, he was able to see that Scott was not serving the people who owned it. None of these things are profound insights, they're just common sense.

It is the core of Dunlap's philosophy that I find most agreeable. The job of the employee, whether great or small, is to enhance the value of the shares of the company. Dunlap blasts away at the fashionable notions that one by one have replaced the idea that the goal of a company is to make a buck for the people who invest in it. Many of his critics believe the object of a company is to provide a steady income and benefits package to its employees. Not so, says Dunlap. Those things are secondary to a company's mission. They only make their income and benefits because the owners put up their money in the first place. The owners deserve priority. Others believe a company is a vehicle for social change, something akin to a legislature or philanthropic foundation. In this view, an executive is a mere conduit for the money which must flow from consumers to company and eventually to the institutionalized panhandlers known as fund-raisers. This class, which includes everything from college presidents and grant "writers" to fundamentalist preachers and social activists, has come to believe that they are the proper beneficiaries of corporate profit. Incredible to relate, so do some CEOs! Dunlap went into Scott with his chainsaw, and severed the link between them and his company. It's not that greed is good and charity is for suckers, as Hollywood would have us believe is the credo of business. It's that charity is the responsibility of the individual.

Dunlap doesn't mind executives doling out largesse to charity, as long as it happens after shareholders have been served.

The logical thing to do is to make sure your executives are shareholders. In this, Dunlap put his money where his mouth was. Upon becoming CEO of Scott, he invested $4 million of his own money in Scott stock. Then he summoned all the executives who hadn't been fired, and ordered them to invest heavily in Scott. By making sure his executives were shareholders, he assured himself that they would keep the shareholders interests foremost.

After these drastic steps were taken, the rest appears to have been easy. Whether it really was easy, and whether the drastic steps were easy, we may never know. Mean Business makes it sound like going into a corporation and changing deeply-rooted habits is like George Patton going in and whipping the US Army into shape. The book makes no mention of any opposition to Chainsaw Al that lasted any longer than a few minutes. Employees and directors were dismissed by the hundred, assets were sold, habits were changed, and never once did Dunlap receive a setback of any kind. It is marvelous if true. But I suspect some has gone untold in the interest of creating a legend.

It may be that the story of Sunbeam and Dunlap, if ever told, will be more interesting than Scott and Dunlap. For as Bill Clinton illustrates, an egomaniac is far more interesting when squirming than when trumpeting.

Coporate America is filled with non-leaders who can't make decisions. Al Dunlap's common sense direct approach to solving problems is refreshing. If you look at many new successful companies today (i.e Mindspring, Amazon) you will find that they are practicing "Mean Business". They keep costs low, tie employee compensation to company stock, make lightning fast decisions and keep their operations streamlined. They attach less value to a college degree than to ability and work ethic. They don't lay-off people because they don't bloat themselves up to begin with. They also don't build unnecessary opulent corporate headquarters. By following "Mean Business", they kick the crap out of the competition. If you want to succeed, read this book. These principles can be applied at any level.