Twenty-five years after the fall of Saigon, The Center For National Security Law of the University of Virginia Law School hosted a seminar designed to determine the "real" lessons of the Vietnam War. In doing so they assembled a distinguished team of twenty-one scholars, each an acknowledged expert in his field. The results were then compiled and published in this work. The conclusions reached included, but were not limited to the following:

Vietnam was a small "hot-spot" in a global "cold war" It was important because the great powers of the day chose to contest it, if for no other reason.

Ho Chi Minh was a dedicated agent of international Communism, not a Vietnamese Nationalist fighting for his people.

While the "Peace Movement" greatly aided the Communist efforts, they did not lose the war. Our flawed, "no-win" strategy did.

American forces were not given a free license to rape, kill, pillage and burn at will. Soldiers and Marines were indicted and vigorously prosecuted for war crimes in Vietnam.

Our involvement in Vietnam WAS necessary. Had we meekly capitulated when the Russian bear growled, we could not have remained credible as an ally.

The war was NOT unwinnable. In effect we DID win. Only Congress' refusal to provide the support promised our allies caused South Vietnam's capitulation and the subsequent blood bath that left millions dead.

The authors authenticate their findings with well-researched data. These facts will be contested by some and ridiculed by others. However, mere hype cannot refute their research. Facts are facts. The carefully prepared and skillfully perpetuated myths by some in government and many in the media cannot change them although they can be fully expected to try.

In the preface, editors Moore and Turner say that, "Obviously, this small volume is not intended to be the final word on the Vietnam War." Inevitably, more facts will emerge from such diverse places as Hanoi, Washington, Moscow and/or Beijing. However, until more facts emerge, this work is the most complete review of the conflict available. It deserves a place on the bookshelf of every serious student of the war for that reason.

Since Vietnam the world situation has changed completely. State sponsored terrorism has replaced Communism as our major threat. Knowing when and how to use force are more critical today than ever. Being too eager and too reluctant to use force when necessary are equal evils. This work provides valuable insights on the when and how of using force. It is an invaluable tool for today's national security planners for that reason.

I was privileged to attend the Conference that inspired this work and eagerly awaited publication of this book for two years. It was well worth the wait. I am much better informed for having read it. You will be as well.

I have found this book to be very easy to read. It really help me to refresh some of the basic concepts and understand how to do arithmetic in bases different than the decimal. I really liked the fact that it used what I already knew about arithmetic to teach me the new concepts. I highly recommend thls book. Plenty of exercises and nice introduction to statistics.

Practical, realistic approaches to developing more effective school improvment strategies, from some of the leading specialists ni the educational community.

A friend of mine gave me this book as a gift. Looking at it, I thought, the civil war? It's not a subject I have any great interest in. However, I found Southern Homefront to be extremely interesting, especially the role of women on the homefront: how they made do with few supplies, what kind of war work they did, and how many took charge when their husbands were away. Highly amusing were the "scadalous" things that went on among Charleston's young people--some were actually waltzing, allowing their bodies to touch, instead of square dancing!

Also in Charleston, some ladies were apparently shocked that free black women would dare to take their carriages out during the day. I find such stories funny now, but imagine what it must have been like then.

Especially interesting is the first chapter of the book, which is mostly diary entries and letters of people on the homefront. It is difficult to imagine today what those people must have gone through. What was incredibly fascinating to me, and carries on as a theme throughout the book, was the suggestion that the apathy of the southerners was, in part, why the war was lost. It seems from the information presented that southerners started off the war gung-ho, but quickly lost their enthusiasm and their will to fight. Desertion, the exemption that if you owned 20 slaves you didn't have to fight, and the habit of buying substitutes were rampant problems.

From what I've written, Southern Homefront sounds like a history lesson, but it was really very readable and quite interesting. I encourage anyone, especially people like me who don't really care much about the war, to read this book. Fascinating.

The author is a theological professor, news reporter and free lance editor...book has solid material-brief, quick and easy to read...recommended most for those getting started in this field. As a "how to" writer about writing, Moore performs well.

I cook and my significant other collects wine. I found the recipes in this book to be tasty, relatively easy, and a good way to find out how to construct meals around specific wines. Or how to find the right wine for a meal. I particularly liked the explanations of what ingredients can create bridges with wine flavors. The author even gives spicy Indian and chili recipes which can work with the right wines. I hope the author is working on a second volume right now, and will offer some suggestions recipes for other wine varieties, particularly for red wines!

I love this cookbook. The wine and food pairings are awesome, the recipes always are wonderful, the pictures are beautiful. I have yet to be disappointed by a recipe from this book. Yes, they take a little time and maybe more ingredients than some people prefer to use, but they are most definitely worth it.

This cookbook is absolutely fabulous. I've owned the book a year; I bought it last Christmas for my sister who raved about it so much I bought it for myself. Everything I've cooked from this cookbook has been really good! I've learned alot in this book, not only about the wines themselves but why certain wines pair well with certain foods, tastes to look for when pairing wines and foods, and wines to use as a substitute if you don't have a recommended bottle on hand.

The recipes are relatively simple, some more complex than others. But each is very distinctive in flavors and instructions are clear and easy to follow. Also included are recipes for salads, appetizers and desserts which makes it a well rounded book! I highly recommend it. I wish they had another book out! I'd buy it in a second.

John Gatto received the "New York State Teacher of the Year " award for 1991. He describes what he feels is happening in the state of education and the changes he feels need to occur. He writes of seven lessons that he believes are taught all over the country. His first lesson is confusion, which means teachers teaching everything out of context. He also talks about the lesson of class position. This is the belief that all students belong in a certain class and the is no space to move from one part of this system to another. The next lesson that he discusses is the issue of indifference, wherein children are led to believe that the only thing they are to believe in is what the teacher teaches. His next lesson is the issue of emotional dependency, meaning that students do not have rights within the walls of the school. His fifth lesson is the intellectual dependency wherein students depend on their teacher to make all the decisions. Provisional self-esteem is also one of these lessons. These means that students are dependent on adults for the way they feel about themselves. Finally he talks about the lesson of one can't hide, meaning that students are constantly under surveillance.   All of these lessons lead to Gatto's total disbelief in state of our educational system. He sees the national curriculum we use as producing paralysis in the educational setting. He sees students being taught how to remain within a caste system and never being given the chance to move out of their placement. He observes students as not being able to find what they are special in or their strong areas. The whole book supports Gatto's beliefs in providing sound evidence of why there needs to be a reform in our educational system. This system needs the student have a choice in their education, designing a self- curriculum that best matches their personal needs not the needs of a nation.

You may be able to read this book in only a few hours but it may just change the way you view public schooling forever. John Taylor Gatto makes a compelling case for eliminating public "schooling" and returning education to the parents were it belongs. In one profound paragraph he neatly sums up the reason public schools don't educate. "The debate about whether we should have a national curriculum is phony. We already have a national curriculum locked up in the seven lessons outlined (Confusion, class position, indifference, emotional dependency, intellectual dependency, provisional self esteem, and one can't hide) such a curriculum produces phisical, moral and intellectual paralysis, and no curriculum of content will be sufficient to reverse its hideous effects. What is currently under disscussion in our national histeria about falling academic performance misses the point. Schools teach exactly what they are intended to teach and they do it well: how to be a good Egyptian and remain in your place in the pyramid." Clearly Mr Gatto knows the difference between "schooling" and real education and how to achieve the latter.()

John Taylor Gatto was an award-winning public school teacher when he wrote much of the text for this book. He reveals the curriculum of public schools nationwide under the headings: Confusion, Class Position, Indifference, Emotional Dependency, Intellectual Dependency, Provisional Self-Esteem, and One Can't Hide. He asserts that the true goal of childhood learning should be to discover some meaning in life...a passion or an enthusiasm that will drive subsequent learning pursuits. Instead, schools cram irrelevant facts into young minds, substituting book-knowledge for self-knowledge. This book explains a lot for anyone who got good grades, went to college, and then didn't have any idea what to do with his life. It's also a wake-up call to parents with school-age children. Do we really want our children to grow up to be good factory workers and do as they're told? Do we really want them to buy into the "Good grades=good jobs" myth? Do we want them to believe that the goal in life is to acquire more and more stuff to fuel consumerism? Or should we give them more reflective, unstructured time in childhood to find out who they are, what they like, and how they can contribute to their communities? Dumbing Us Down is a quick, worthwhile read.

Here is the message of "Dark Night Of The Soul": God wants our will more than anything else. To get it, he may allow us to stumble on without any sense of his presence or obtaining any pleasure from our spiritual exercises or even our life. All that will be left us is our decision to continue doing our duty despite not receiving any apparent gain from doing so. According to St. John, this is what pleases God more than anything for then we will serve God solely for Himself and not for any good feelings, sensations, or rewards we might experience by doing so. Whatever the validity of this spiritual approach (and I wonder about the value/point of sanctifying depression in this age of anti-depressants), St. John wrote this detailed book to explore it and did it better than anyone else has ever done. That makes it an important contribution to the literature on spirituality. But it also makes it something that most people will not be able to fathom or have any use for. The hours of daily prayer required by the school of thought that produced this book seem to me excessive and to miss the whole point of the Christian life. Most of us would be driven mad by such intensity-and I don't doubt that some have been. I tend to think that doing our duty is sometimes just work (true) but also sometimes will give a great sense of fulfillment and satisfaction because there are intrinsic rewards that come with being a good worker, spouse, parent, friend, etc. There is little point in getting this book unless you live in a cloister or are planning to do so and only if God is calling you to the depths of contemplative prayer. That leaves out 98% of the human race, including me. This is a dry treatise; admirable without being in the least bit inspiring. It is best left to graduate courses in spirituality or medieval Spanish literature (the poem is reportedly excellent Spanish poetry).

Yes, John of the Cross is hard to read. I have not read all translations, and have it in mind as a project, but I don't expect ever to take a book by him to the beach for a quick, entertaining read.
What John is, and the reason he is still read and studied and, in fact, treasured, is a scientist of prayer. If you are genuinely determined to climb Mt. Carmel, to pray and live your way into God, you need to read and re-read John. Like the Gospels, his work is dense and allusive, and full of layer upon layer of meaning. It is well to read present day authors who write about his work, too. But by no means should you leave him aside in your search for information and inspiration. There is no one else like him. He is the real thing.

review by Janet Knori, author of Awakening in God

St. John of the Cross is truly a superb Saint and Mystic. Through his writings You can see how your own spiritual journey may not always be easy. If you are looking for a book that will not only inform you of the dark night, but also give you a self evaluation of your own life, then this is the book for you. In parts it may seem that St. John is peering into your soul and speaking directly to you. The wonderful thing about this book is that no one will have the same experence of it. Everyone who reads it will read it in light of where they are in their own lives. the reflection and thoughts of this Holy man will force you to look inside yourself to find what you need to do to reach the Ultimate union with God. St John of the Cross...Pray For Us!

I am 40 years old and just read this book for the first time. I found this story to be a page-turner and very absorbing. Excellent local color and superb character development. You know, I think today's younger generation could take a few lessons from this story - the stocism these people demonstrated throughout their ordeal was fascinating. The simply did what they had to do and only complained periodically (with exception of Rosasharn - who bitched and whined all the time). This is also a great review of a bleak period in American history.

My advice to people who haven't read it is: by all means, read it, learn something about history and the human spirit.

Now for the oddities:

1. Maybe this was symbolic and I just glossed over it, but several times in the book, drivers (including the protagonists) are squashing with their vehicles animals who have the misfortune of using or crossing the road they use. Well, that was kind of strange I thought.

2. Why Connie left Rosasharn is sort of a mystery. She was pregnant for crying out loud. Was her constant carping about her wanting a house and nice things just driving him bug-s---?

3. Noah left and was never heard from again. I suppose you could argue that this was symbolic of a family disintegrating and how they dealt with it.

4. Now the really odd thing. It ended at a weird spot. Not much closure. I had to check to make sure pages weren't torn out of this old paperback. Wonder if other reviewers thought that was kind of dissatisfying....?

Quite simply, The Grapes of Wrath is THE Great American Novel.

This is the powerful story of the Joad family, "Okies" who are forced from their bank-foreclosed farm during the depression.

John Steinbeck's writing is sheer literary art. There is beautiful description, incredibly realistic dialogue, and a compelling story that captures the heart and seeks out the very core of one's conscious. And the beauty of it is that it's thoroughly understandable. The eloquent writing and flawless story can be savored by anyone from a junior high school student to a PhD.

The book is also innovative, intertwining short chapters that capture the plight of the dispossessed with longer chapters that follow the long road traveled by the Joad family to California. This is accomplished without at all disrupting the flow of the story.

No wonder that this book won the Pulitzer Prize and was the key work cited for Mr. Steinbeck's Nobel Prize.

It's a mighty piece of literature.

This book cannot but be considered one of the greatest works of American literature. Its plot is simple, almost literally pedestrian, but it magically conveys the feelings not just of its characters, but of an entire social movement and era.

The device of alternating chapters between the tale of the Joad family and descriptive narratives of the society around them only strengthens things. This is no academic, dusty view of history; this is reality, as people lived and thought and experienced.

The human attachment to the soil, the desire for home and community, the struggle for social justice, the tyranny of property, the myth of the Promised Land, the hope and dreams of a new life - there is something here on every level, the social, the spiritual, and the emotional.

The beginning of the novel is a bit slow, but it slowly picks up momentum as it travels west. By its end, one cannot but be riveted by the Joads and the struggles they endure. And one can feel the grapes of wrath building, the knowledge that some way, somehow, the human will to survive can never be defeated.

But, despite its clear social messages, this is not a political tract. The novel's ending takes one of the most intimate of human actions into a bare, stark necessity. Eroticism, motherhood, generosity, desperation - what is it? We cannot tell for sure, but we know only that it is human. The most horrific of our trials only serve to bring out our humanity. A haunting and unforgettable message.