This is an excellent work. Practically everything you ever wanted to know about Edson's vaunted Raider Battalion can be found here. The book is jammed packed with facinating anecdotes and the maps and illustrations are first rate.

The book does have flaws, though. Serious errors on the Japanese OB are littered throughout the text. For instance, the 4th Infantry didn't fight in the 2nd Matanikau, only the 124th. And Col. Alexander's narrative doesn't flow smoothly in places.

Minor quibbles aside, though, this a superb work--the most detailed book you'll find on the Raiders, even better than Peatross' Bless 'Em All. Get this book!!

Edson's Raiders, the 1st Marine Raider Battalion, engaged the Japanese in seven battles, five of them on Guadalcanal. This well researched and footnoted work by retired Marine Colonel Joseph Alexander tells the story of this remarkable group of men. Trained and conditioned by the founding commander, Merritt Edson, their baptism of fire was on Tulagi against the Japanese Special Naval Landing Forces, the rikusentai. This landing occurred simultaneous with the invasion of Guadalcanal twenty miles to the south. Completing the removal of enemy forces at Tulagi, Edson and his men were quickly moved to Guadalcanal. Glorious pages of their history were written there along Edson's Ridge, a three day-two night struggle, often hand-to-hand, against an enemy force under General Kawaguchi, which out numbered them by a factor of at least five on the second night. The enemy attacked remnants of the Raiders and the 1st Paratroops, a total of less than eight hundred men, without let up. Forced to fall back to a second line of defense, "...grossly outnumbered, back-to-back, nearly out of ammo...Edson could count less than three hundred men defending Hill 120." Their action in that engagement and subsequent battles along the Matanikau secured their place in the proud history of the Marines. The US Navy named twenty-four ships after raiders in recognition of their valor. The need for highly trained volunteers in special, lightly armed commando units were soon deemed unnecessary with the advent of the fast fleet carriers of the Essex-class along with new fast battleships. But not before the successes of the 1st Raider Battalion carved for themselves a monument in Military history. This is an excellent telling of their too brief story.

Col. Alexander's work bring to life one of the Corps less talked about, and somewhat enigmatic, yet truly heroic figures - Red "Mike" Edson. He was a visionary with the good sense to not let his vision be clouded. A focused officer and combat leader without whom the war in the Pacific might have turned out a little different.

This man deserves his place in our nation's memory with those of Patton, Bradley, Nimitz, Halsey and a thousand others.

Let's hope that Col. Alexander is busy on a book about General O.P. Smith, USMC now!

I purchased Dauntless Marine out of curiosity since my father was a member of VMSB 133 - another USMC scout bombing squadron in WWII. I really enjoyed the book. Dauntless Marine is an interesting account of U.S. Marine Corp. action in America's first major offensive against Japan in World War II. It also provides a fascinating look at the dangerous tactic of dive bombing - a lost "art" so to speak - and the nature of a dedicated and skillful pilot. It should appeal to those interested in military history, WWII, and aviation.

A meticulously researched tribute to a loved one lost. Alexander White undertakes to tell the story of his late uncle: Navy Cross winner, Joseph Sailer Jr. "Dauntless Marine" is the story of an American hero's life and death. The book takes the reader from a survey of Sailer's Philadelphia roots, through his academic and career accomplishments (including a top secret mission to the UK) before finally landing at the far flung shores of Guadalcanal. Anecdotal gems are liberally spread throughout the text. Dauntless Marine is an American story through and through and a testament of one man's courage and devotion to duty. Be sure to check out more World War II aviation reviews at "The WWII Aviation Booklist": http://www.ampsc.com/~prophet/booklist.htm

If you're looking for a detailed, factual analysis of the major Pacific amphibious battles in WWII, this is the book for you. If you're looking for something with "personality" or more of a human angle, there isn't much here. This is no "Flags of our Fathers", nor is it as accessible as the Time-Life books.

This book has very few pictures, drawings or maps. I think more graphics would aid in envisioning what was going on.

Once again Retired Col. Joseph Alexander has penned a superb text. In "Storm Landings" he captures the essence of seven violent island assaults and the planning of a eighth; Kyushu in the Japanese home islands. These epic battles spearheaded by Marines were the core of the Central Pacific drive. Tarawa, Saipan, Guam, Tinian, Peleliu, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, amphibious landings all, were distinguished as storm landings by the Japanese commanders. They were so called as they contained six additional elements: extreme danger, long-ranged, large scaled, self-sustaining, against defended positions under the protection of fast carrier forces. Col. Alexander's strength is his prodigious research skills and an ability to preceive the over all connection between diverse elements. Drawing on these skills the author reflects on the five separate landings on D-Day, Guadalcanal. In an interesting introduction to the main battles, Alexander notes that on Gavutu and Tanambogo the 1st Parachute Battalion, subsequently reinforced by B Co. 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines, engaged in the first opposed landings. To Alexander's perceptive eye, the Gavutu-Tanambogo landings represented a microcosm of opposed landings to come. All were violent, relatively short, thoroughly decisive and always bloody. One can not read this work without coming away with a profound awareness of the increasingly fierce determination of the Japanese defenders the closer the din of combat came to the Japanese home land. 100,000 Japanese died defending Okinawa along with 150,000 native Okinawans. On Kyushu alone, 600,000 defenders awaited the invasion force that was to come but for the bomb. Obviously, for both combatants, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, were saved.

The epilogue, quoting war correspondent Robert Sherrod adds, "...no man who saw Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima, or Okinawa would agree that all the American steel was in the guns and bombs. There was a lot, also, in the hearts of the men who stormed the beaches." Lt.Col. Robertson after watching the Marines landing at Iwo Jima during the worst of the shelling asked himself, "What impels a young guy landing on a beach from the very first craft in the face of fire?" Reading this book, Marine or not, one has a deeper understanding of the answer to that question. It lies in the Hallmark of Marine pride: "Semper Fidelis".

The debacle of the British amphibious assault at Gallipoli during WWI caused conventional wisdom to say that amphibious assaults were too risky and too bloody to attempt. Between the wars, the Marine Corps developed a theory for making them work. They tested and refined this theory in the bloody crucibles of Tarawa, Saipan, Tinian, Guam, Pelileu, and Iwo Jima, with their magnum opus being Okinawa. Success came at a high price, and Alexander pulls no punches in describing the horror.

As a teenager, I once expressed the opinion that it was wrong to drop The Bomb on Japan. My father, a veteran of the Third Marine Division who saw combat at Bougainville, Guam, and Iwo Jima, quickly informed me that I would never have been born if The Bomb had not been dropped. The Third Marine Division had been chosen to spearhead the amphibious assault on Kyushu, an isle of the Japanese homeland, and my father sincerely believes that he would not have survived the assault. Alexander dissects the plans for that invasion, and sums up the anticipated carnage. The assaults from Tarawa to Iwo Jima had this in common. Each was bloodier than the last. Kyushu promised to be a mini-Armaggedon. We can never really know what the bodycount would have been had The Bomb not been dropped. From Alexander's description of what was expected to happen at Kyushu, one could make the case that the death toll would have been much, much higher, both in Japanese and American lives.

The first half of this is a pretty good read, as the author provides some decent context about the development of baseball around the turn of the last century.

The second half has a tendency to degenerate into repetitive and awfully superficial chronicle, and doesn't bring the 20's and 30's to life in the same way as the earlier sections--even though there were colorful characters galore available.

(I noticed the same flatness in large sections of Alexander's history of baseball, Our Game. There too he often retreats to mere narrative, and away from insight.)

If you've read the 50 or so better baseball books available, or if you enjoy hearing oft-told tales told once more, this is a pleasant enough way to kill two or three afternoons.

This is the first book I have read from the many that Charles Alexander has written about turn of the century baseball players and I have to say that Mr. Alexander is a voracious researcher as he has facts and events of McGraw's life down to every little detail. For this, he is to be commended as he has certainly put to paper, atleast to this point, the definitive book on John McGraw.
However, this is not a short or an entertaining read by any stretch of the imagination as Alexander's book is decidedly bland in its detailed accounts of seasons past. After detailing McGraw's many outbursts on and off the field, Alexander chronicles McGraw's gambling misdeeds and even possible corruption (to the degree of the 1919 Black Sox). But Alexander does not write with a lot of imagination. His work reads exactly like you might expect a chronological account might: vanilla.
Although I enjoyed reading this book and appreciated all of the facts and research Alexander did on McGraw, I cannot say that this is one of the better baseball books I have read. Still, it remains the only book of any substance on McGraw, so if you want to learn about one of the most important men in the history of baseball, this is your book.

John McGraw dominated the landscape of baseball from 1890 until 1933. He came to demolish the enemy in score and spirit- and often succeded. He was the Master of an age where sportsmanship was considered a negative. From his days as a star and ringleader of the dirty & scrappy (NL)Baltimore Orioles until his death soon after managing the first NL all-star team, McGraw played key roles in nearly every major event in baseball's most formative years.

In 1901 he helped formed the American League, then tried to kill the AL in 1902. Why no World Series in 1904? McGraw. Inventor of the Hit-and-run? McGraw. Originator of collarless uniforms? McGraw. First to use Relief specialist in the bullpen? McGraw. First in 3 World Series in a row? McGraw. 4 in a row? McGraw. Only his pupil Casey Stengel has matched McGraw for total pennants. His career placed him in a pennant race NEARLY EVERY YEAR in 5 DECADES! (As Manager 10-1st, 10-2nd, 4-3ed place finishes in 32 years.)

Alexander presents the events of McGraw's life in chronological order- enabling the reader to use 'John McGraw' as a reference book for what happened in baseball in any given year due to the detail provided by Alexander. Charles C. Alexander writes history books about baseball; not mere collections of tales and legends set to prose. His facts are throughly researched and documented. However, even well written history books sometimes become tedious in detail. This book is no exception. Personally, I prefer an overkill of facts to haphazard story telling. Not quite as well written as the masterful 'Ty Cobb' and compelling 'Rogers Hornsby' by Alexander, but still the cream of baseball biographies.

Written in 1854 and published the next year,this book is fascinating in providing personal sketches of distinguished Americans Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Jackson,Henry Clay and John Randolph with many references to other prominent men who were their contemporaries. The author's
analysis is interesting not only in the spirited description of the individuals profiled but in his comparison of each of them with their political antagonists. The unique perspective he brings a man whose life overlapped some of these figures is worth a read for history or politics buffs. His admiration and defense of some he buttresses with argument. His passion is clear.
His oratorical style is typical of the time yet conveys a vivid impression of his subjects, and reminds one of a time before soundbites and simple words geared to a mass audience.

As an introductory book its fine but as a 'Most Complete' you want it to expand beyond basic examples into e.g. interaction between the cartridge types, practical implementation advice etc.

I'd have used the money back guarantee if there was one as I expected a bit more from it.

Does a reasonable job of covering Oracle Web Application Server 3.0, but the Oracle Press book is better.

This book does a good job of providing an overview of the architecture surrounding OAS 3.0, but certainly does not hold to its claim as "The Most Complete Reference." Its biggest shortfall is its lack of detail concerning Inter-Cartridge Exchange (ICX). It mentions this topic at least a few times, and explains the premise behind ICX, but doesn't provide any examples of how ICX is accomplished from a PL/SQL cartridge to a C cartridge, for example. A good book for people who are just learning about OAS and want an introduction and then some.

This book has more errors than should ever be allowed in a professional product. There are typo's in both text and examples. The CD does not contain the source code from the book and I vote this the worst source ever of any computer based information I have found to date. It has left me very unsure of the publishers (QUE) standards and I may never purchase another QUE book again. I simply do not trust them. Spend your hard earned money on a different choice

"Special Edition Using Java, Second Edition" is an excellent reference to JDK 1.0.2. However, today (April 15), only a month and a half after being billed as "Computer Programming Expert Editor's Recommended Book, 03/01/97", it is a dated reference and the cover claims of JDK 1.1 coverage fall short--they are preliminary and peripheral to primary Java programming topics. For example, there is no coverage of the major changes in the Java event model of JDK 1.1, which permeate almost every application. I recommend waiting for better JDK 1.1 coverage, hopefully in Joseph Weber's new version, "Special Edition Using Java 1.1" which has not yet been released, but for which Amazon is taking orders today

This book is nothing if not large. This was QUEs attempt to capture the entire spectrum of JAVA and make it easy to understand (a task that they accomplished) but then the standards changed again. This is still a great book for learning Java; but, you will have to move on to other resources for news on the updates

This was my first book in the Exam Cram series, and I'm truly stunned over the absolute rubbish this book contains.

Luckily someone else has reviewed and posted most of the stuff that is highly questionable in this title, so I can soon throw it away and get on with my life...

It's packed with syntactical errors, wrong answers, typos, ambigous and subjective scenarios that doesn't rely on facts and blatant statements that are just not true...

'There is no such thing as a unique clustered index'..???

I almost fell out of my chair reading that explanation in one of the answers...

The authors also apparently have no knowledge of SQL Server's security model, as they fail to recognize that one of their 'correct' answers regarding the usage of a view, would not work because of a broken ownership chain..

and on and on and on...

I can't reccomend this title to *anyone* - it's so bad that if I could I'd be tempted to sue for mental damage...

I have never asked for my $ back for a book, but I am on this one. I took Practice Test 1: Almost 1 in 4 (13 out of 55) questions either have typos that would make the "correct" answer syntactically invalid, outright wrong "correct" answers, or very questionable "correct" answers. Q3. Typo: "VALUE" instead of "VALUES" Q7. Question is "What is relationship between Actors or Directors and Title." Answer incorrectly says "Many to Many". This would be true if question was "What is relationship between Actors and Directors." (One Actor can be directed by many Directors and one Director can direct many Actors). The title table is the resolution table for the many-to-many relationship between Actors and Directors. But per the question, one Actor can act in many titles; one Director can Direct many Titles. Q11. What is meant by the words "main" or "independent" entities? Where do these words come from? PaintScheme and OptionalEquipment should indeed be entities, but main? or independent? Also, recommends Customer table be keyed on Social Security numbers. These are not really unique (as they are supposed to be). Most pros would say this is a bad idea for a primary key. Q14. Since when is "Many to One" not a valid relationship cardinality? By convention, most people look at relationships like this as One to Many. It depends on which entity is your point of reference. Many to One is simply the inverse of One to Many; both are equally real and valid. Q16: Question refers to data type "text" generically in the question, but in the DDL mixes type text with type varchar. Q17: Question about relationship optionality. "Self-Recursive" is a word? Isn't that a tautology? What does recursive have to do with optionality? Q20: ">" sign is wrong for all answers according to the wording of the question. Should be "<" or "<=". Q22: Typo: "ANDprice" instead of "AND price" Q26: Adding memory to remote clients is not a hardware solution for poor performance? In a client/server environment? What about large, locally cached cursors? Q27. Question presupposes that we know and remember the exact schema of the (I assume) pubs database. Option "b" won't work because of ambiquous column names. This is true only because the particular data model chosen for pubs. It has nothing to do with SQL Server. This data model view is not given to us in the question. Also, the query has no join or where clause so we get nonsensical results (every author's name with every city/state we have & vice-versa). Q32. We are asked to insert 001001001 into an INT column. This is a bogus thing to do, but it works anyway. the value 1001001 is inserted (see Q34). Q34. This question is *exactly* the same as Q32, however this time, we are told the answer is "String or binary data would be truncated..." (see Q32). Which is right? Q40. Two of the answers given are 32,734 (this is the "correct" answer), and 32,768. According to SQL Server Books Online, neither is correct. BOL says: "A maximum of 32,767 databases can be created on a server." Q43. Asks a question about the 401K_Amt column of the Benefits table. All answers incorrectly transpose this to read 401K_Amt.Benefits instead of Benefits.401K_Amt. Q44. Maximum number of files used by a single database. I could not find answer anywhere, BOL, etc. Maybe this book is right. Correct answer given is 32,768. One option was 32,767, which, would agree with BOL's max number of DATABASES (Also incorrectly given in this book). What is a file? I hope they mean physical file, as in mydb.mdf. Q49. Each answer has a DDL statement that will not execute because it refers to a column that does not exist: prod_type(prod)

I just recently passed the 70-029 test on my first attempt with this book as one of my resources for practice. The questions are thought provoking and difficult, but with many errors in the questions and answers I would hesitate to recommend it. I spent too much valuable study time trying to figure out whether their questions were wrong or not. The publishers need to add erata to their site to help with this issue. That aside, this book did help me to identify some areas where I needed more study.

Save yourself the waste of money you will inccur if you purchase this book. If you're looking for a decent book I suggest the Sybex or Microsoft line of books.

There's a reason why so many used copies are for sale....

Straight to the point: I don't recommend this book.

The descriptions of components and services in Windows 2000 were vague, there were multiple grammatical and spelling errors in the text, and (based on all the sample test material I have seen so far) this book really does not prepare you well for the 70-221 -- rather, it would seem to be better used as a "reference" should you need a quick definition on what something is. But, the book's use of acronyms without spelling them out or listing them in a glossary even makes that difficult sometimes.

All in all, this book really dosen't prepare you for the test very well. Your money would be better spent on a book that tells you how things can and should be configured, and gets into the nitty gritty about whatever topic is being described... rather than give you a brief description of what something is. As busy as they are in this book trying to define every single computing term, they tell you very little about how to configure them, and almost nothing about the scenario(s) in which specific configurations would be helpful.

I passed exam because of this book. Recommend for all beginners.

This book is certainly cute. However, it tells the readers that during at lightening storm you should put up your umbrella and huddle under it. This is a dangerous thing for children to see their Sesame Street heros doing because they think everything these heros do is ok. Hiding under an umbrella during a lighting storm puts your life in danger of being electricuted. I was very disappointed in this book. I read it at a Dr.'s office and I requested that they remove it from their book rack.