This book made me realize that radio is not just about playing music. It is about sending and reciving waves to make the public happy.

This book focuses on the history of radio from 1899 to 1954 and thus has nothing to do with RCA's CED VideoDisc system, but one of the key figures in the account is David Sarnoff, so a lot of the early history of RCA is covered. In addition to Sarnoff, the book focuses on the technical radio pioneers Edwin Howard Armstrong and Lee de Forest. In some respects this book is a reflection on the development of the modern computer, as parallels can be drawn between these radio pioneers and computer industry figures Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Larry Ellison.

Read some years ago & book now lost. Fascinating in that it vividly displays the genius, sometimes luck, unstinting effort, inspiration, and often the "happy" accident that is part of basic effort when one breaks ground in a new quest in pursuit of a dream. Much of this history could not be repeated in our 2000 world because those opportunities no longer exist. An example is Sarnoff's success in getting meaningful work at the tender age he did in the story! Mankind's unflagging quest goes on but in different ways. The first way of making news available at the instant it occurs certainly shrunk the world. The process continues. Recommended highly for the radio buff of any age!

The book is very nicely written and has lots of practical tips, rule of thumbs which a practicing high speed CMOS circuit design engineer needs. Its conscise and works as good referance.

The IBM authors wrote a concise reference manual on circuit
design, process variation effects on circuits, and time borrowing. What is missing? Sections on sequential circuit design, transistor sizing techniques, or modeling circuits through mathematics, spice and verilog. However, this is among the most lucid texts written on circuit structures to date.

It's concise but deals the topics in depth. It's much better and practical than usual vlsi text books.

when will come new publish of this book ?

There are many excellent textbooks about Internal Medicine on the market, and I own a lot of them. But the Kelley's book is the one I look up more often. It stands out, since it gives you the broadest and deepest clinical coverage of the internal medicine you can find in a two-volumes textbook. The forthcoming 4th edition, which is scheduled for 8/2000 and will be edited by Humes, will expand furter the coverage, reaching an unprecedented range, at least as can be judged by the anticipated index. For the sake of clarity and completeness, each subspecialty (cardiology, endocrinology and metabolism, and so forth) is divided in three parts: the first group of chapters is devoted to the pathophysiologic foundations, the second to diseases and the third to the diagnosis and treatment. This format is clever, because allow you to study each section separately without being overwhelmed by the astonishing amount of information it contains. A lot of chapters are devoted to the approach to the patient with different symptoms, to the interpretation of instrumental data and to the treatment: they are another distictive feature of the book, making it invaluable. If you are a physician or a serious student searching for an authoritative, encyclopedic textbook with broad pathophysiologic coverage and wide sections about the management of the patient, the Kelley's textbook will not disappoint you. For many of us, it is a must buy. For all, it is a bargain. This textbook is the gold standard as Internal Medicine textbook: it got 5-stars from Doody, and as far as I know, it was the only one awarded with such a high acknowledgement. I agree: five stars.

most comprehensive work ever.an edge over Harrison &Cecil.must buy.

Reading this book reminded me of attending a good conference where lots of company executives provide detailed examples of the issues they faced, and how they went about dealing with those issues. Since such conferences usually cost several hundred dollars, this book is a real bargain -- and you don't have to get on an airplane and fly someplace!

One of the strengths of the book is that you receive several perspectives on the context for each case history. The editors describe what each case means, and the conclusions section summarizes general patterns. Also, each case is presented in the same format which makes it easier to understand what is being shared. I was particularly grateful for the exhibits (which exist in electronic form in the CD enclosed in the book). I also appreciated that the cases were primarily written by Human Resources professionals inside the companies, rather than being a consultant's take on what happened.

Having said all those positive things, let me share some concerns. First, I looked in vain for my favorite examples of outstanding work in recruiting, retention, knowledge encouragement, and executive development. If this book is about "best practices" where were GE, Disney, Motorola, Ritz Carlton, and SAS Institute? Second, many of the cases involved companies that are better known for their poor performance than for excellence. If they are developing their people so well, what happened? Third, a lot of these cases involve new initiatives where the long-term consequences are hard to see. Fourth, the profit impact on the organizations was not well documented. That makes it hard to use these cases as examples to encourage your own company to follow suit. Fifth, as change management processes, most of these cases are far behind the curve of what is described in Peter Senge's various books of case histories such as The Dance of Change. Part of the reason seems to be that a number of these cases aren't very new.

Of the cases in the book, I recommend the ServiceMASTER, Westinghouse, Johnson & Johnson, Allstate, and Case Corporation examples as the most helpful to me. I mention that because there's a lot of material in this book. I read a lot and rapidly, and I found this book hard to tackle. By being more selective in what you go after, you can help avoid some of that problem. Naturally, if your own issues are only in a few areas, just look at those cases.

Develop the full potential of everyone, beginning with yourself!

"The principal goal of this book is to provide you with the key ingredients taken from best-companies to help you create and enhance your organization and human resource development (OD/HRD) initiative. Through a case study approach, this book provides practical, easy-to-apply tools, instruments, training, concepts, and competency models that can be used as benchmarks for the successful implementation of your specific OD/HRD initiative (from the Introduction)."

In this context, Louis Carter, David Giber, and Marshall Goldsmith (editors) divide core part of this book -Organization and Human Resources Development Case Studies- into following five OD/HRD topic areas:

I. Organization Development and Change: In this section, W. Warner Burke says, "Seven rich cases (Kraft Foods, Nortel, ServiceMASTER, SmithKline Beecham, Westinghouse, CK Witko, and Xerox) of organization development and change are discussed...The cases cover a wide range of change from how OD occurs every day to deep change in an organization's culture...Without doubt we can learn from these cases. And learn we must. Changing organization is too intricate to be left to novices. We have indeed learned and noted at the outset, but we still have much to learn. As one who has been involved for more than 35 years, helping organizations change is both thrilling and very satisfying. Learning, however, is the most exciting part (pp.6-8)."

II. Leadership Development: In this section, Jay A. Congerwrites that "In the cases that follow, we look at three companies (Boeing, Johnson & Johnson, and Sun Microsystems,Inc.) that have dedicated serious time and resources to leadership development...In addition, all three of the company cases make extended use of competency models, 360-degree feedback, and action learning (p.186)."

III. Recruitment and Retention: In this section of the book, John Sullivan writes, "you'll learn how three diverse companies tackled their retention and recruiting problems. Two of the firms are high tech (AMD and Cellular One), while another (Allstate) is in a more traditional industry. Both AMD and Cellular One focus on solving the hot issue of retention while Allstate takes a new look at the recruiting and selection processes. All three of the case studies use a scientific approach to identify which solutions have the most impact...All three of these case studies are worth examining because of their scientific methodology as well as their results. All are full of powerfull 'lessons learned' for those who are soon to begin a major recruitment or retention effort (pp.303-304)."

IV. Performance Management: This section examines performance management systems of Case Corporation and Sonoco. Edward E. Lawler III says that "the performance management systems in most organizations are contoversial, ineffective, and constantly under construction. They are so problematic that critics argue many organizations would be better off if they simply didn't have a performance management system, particularly one in which performance appraisals are tied to pay actions. But-and it is an important but- if individuals are not appraised, counseled, coached, and rewarded for performance, how can an organization pruduce the organized, coordinated, and motivated behavior that it takes to perform well? The answer most likely is that it can't (p.393)."

V. Coaching and Mentoring: Introduction of this section, Beverly Kaye writes, "the last 5 years have seen a groundswell in both arenas. And it's not just been more of the same; organizations have begun to use mentoring and coaching more purposefully. HR and OD practitioners have worked to utilize both interventions to meet pressing business problems having to do with the development and retention of talent, as well as the growth of future leaders. These interventions have been more systemic, more thoughtful, and more innovative than ever before. The case studies (Dow Corning, and MediaOne Group-AT&T) illustrate this trend. Both were motivated by specific business drivers, both were preceded by intensive research, both were implemented over time, and both were evaluated seriously. Readers will find them instructive, detailed, and engaging (p.438)."

Finally, Louis Carter (editor) says that "contributors were asked to indicate where they envision their organization is heading with its initiative within the next 5 to 10 years. Responses indicate that the contributors want to keep the organization on a track to continuously learn and develop its capabilities. Comments from some contributors indicate that they want to leverage lessons learned from this experience. Some contributors commented that they want to firmly ingrain the initiative into the organization to the point that it is almost invisible to the user, making it an accepted part of life at the company. Other contributors will continue to refine the present initiative in place, while others will expand their efforts into other business lines. Survey results clearly indicate that the present state of the initiatives represented in this book represent snapshots of moving targets. Further growth and innovation is inevitable for these best practice organizations, as they work to stay ahead of their competitors by embracing change and continuously learning and improving (pp.531-532)."

Strongly recommended.

Here in a single volume is about all that is needed to design, implement, and then monitor a program through which to achieve organizational transformation. Moreover, the editors have selected both information and wisdom which can help to ensure that such a program is comprehensive, cohesive, and cost-effective. The phrase "best practices" is apt but should not be misconstrued to mean that strategies and tactics which have been highly successful in some organizations are necessary going to be successful in all others. Moreover, I urge the reader to keep in mind that, although the organizations featured (e.g. Boeing, Johnson & Johnson, Kraft Foods, Nortel Networks, ServiceMASTER, SmithKline Beecham, and Sun Microsystems) are among the largest in their respective industries, much of the material in this book is also relevant to small-to-midsize organizations. My own rather extensive past experience with all manner of organizations (including non-profits) has convinced me that most people do not fear change; rather, they fear the unfamiliar. Hence the importance of three on-going initiatives: communicate, communicate, and communicate.

Part One consists of Acknowledgments, About This Book, How to Use This Book, and an excellent Foreword by Richard Beckhard. Carter, Giber, and Goldsmith then shift their attention in Part Two of "Organization & Human Resources Development Case Studies." The individual case studies are distributed within this thematic structure:

Organizational Development & Change

Leadership Development

Recruitment & Retention

Performance Management

Coaching & Mentoring

Part Three: Conclusion consists of Research (OD/HRD Trends and Findings), Endnotes, About Linkage, Inc., About the Editors, Index, and How to Use the CD-ROM, terrific value-added benefit.

Back to Beckhard's Foreword for a moment. In it, he identifies six (6) "elements" which are basic to each case study; all are central to and sequential within the change process associated with organizational development/human resource development (OD/HRD). They are: Business Diagnosis, Assessment, Program Design, Implementation, On-the-Job Support, and Evaluation. It is helpful to keep these six "elements" clearly in mind while working your way through the abundance of information which the editors provide. Fortunately, they have organized the (sometimes daunting) material with meticulous care and write exceptionally well. I also urge you to use the same six "elements" as guidelines when determining what the design of your own program for organizational change should be, and, when selecting those strategies and tactics discussed in the book which are most appropriate to the implementation and evaluation of that program. This is especially true of decision-makers in small-to-midsize organizations.

Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out O'Toole's Leading Change, Katzenbach's Real Change Leaders as well as his Peak Performance , Kaplan and Norton's The Balanced Scorecard and The Strategy-Focused Organization, Quinn's Deep Change, O'Dell and Grayson's If Only We Knew What We Know, Isaacs' Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together, and Senge's The Dance of Change. Those especially interested in Six Sigma are encouraged to check out (and read in this order) Pande's The Six Sigma Way, Breyfogle's Implementing Six Sigma, and Eckes's Making Six Sigma Last.

Although it is a 2nd ed., still too many mistakes. Very few explaination. Ridiculously expensive. Not a good buy.

This is a great book and should be widely available as a reference/textbook. Unfortunately, it is difficult to get a copy of the book and the book is ridiculously priced for a student (and therefore is unlikely to be purchased by a library). It's a shame that such a great piece of work isn't more easily purchased online or directly from the publisher. I've tried to buy a second copy of the book after finding the first in a book store and am still waiting for it to arrive after ordering the book two months ago.

I would ask the authors to demand, from the publisher, that this outstanding book be made more accessible.

As for the content of the book, the selection of topics and coverage are no less than outstanding. The authors will discuss a topic and then provide an example to illustrate how the topic is applied. Most, if not all, of the fundamental topics in digital communications are covered. Well documented references are provided if the reader desires more information than what's given in the book.

Used at many universities such as Georgia Tech, and as reference as in Valencia Polytechnic University, this is a must read book for every engineer in the world of communications...later it will serve you as a great reference, a good volume for your library. Wish there were more book like this one!! Adeu!

This is not a true biography as the title let's on, although it is almost always filed as a biography in any Christian bookstore. Jonathan Edwards, who knew Brainerd personally writes a short biographical sketch, but the book is largely Brainerd's on writings and journals. The journals were not written to ever be published, and the reader will recognize this right away. Therefore they contain honesty and transparency that a typical biography would never come close to.

Largely a prayer journal, it communicates Brainerd's wrestling with God, his confusion, and his incredible heart for holiness. Your heart will be thrilled as you work through this great work. You will refer back to it years after you read it.

We live in a day of "easy belevism". The days we live in are also sadly characterized by a christianity, which implies when it doesn't declare, that life is supossed to be easy for the child of God. The reader will see both of these dilusions dispelled in the life story of David Brainerd. Brainerd,was willing to undergo great hardship to take the true gospel to the natives of his day. His life shows all christians what happens when "glorifing God and enjoing Him forever" becomes ones chief aim in life. This certainly is not a chicken soup for the soul book that can be read with little thought. This book, however, will challenge every christian to live for the glory of God.

Beware! Danger ahead! This man's life and death will change you.

Are you comfortable with your "lot" Christian reader? Content with your religious practice? Satisfied with your progress in things spiritual? Should you be led to feast on the diary of David Brainerd with mind open (to God) and heart sensitive, you won't be. Do you sense that God must be quite pleased with you and all of the efforts you expend for His kingdom? Should you persevere and finish the book, such a sense will be dismantled by God's Spirit!

Buried within the private, personal journals of a young missionary (chronologically speaking - he went home to heaven at age 29) is a depth of spiritual wisdom, fervor for God's kingdom and glory, and love for the Savior, quite unparalleled (if not unrecognizable) in modern Christianity. The mystics would acknowledge in Brainerd what they themselves longed for, a wholesale abandonment to God - His purposes and His will.

Brainerd's growth in grace began with his conversion in 1739. His own words best describe: "My soul rejoiced with joy unspeakable to see such a God, such a glorious divine Being...My soul was so captivated and delighted with the excellency, loveliness, greatness and other perfections of God, that I was even swallowed up in Him...I wondered that all the world did not see and comply with this way of salvation, entirely by the righteousness of Christ."

One who has been so entirely apprehended by the Almighty is enabled to see his own soul very clearly; and this Brainerd did. The depth of his own depravity was before his eyes each day of his new life and most certainly played a part in his frequent melancholy. But it was balanced and fueled by the awareness of Christ's perfection and the beauty of His perfect remedy for sin.

The missionary was fixated on the promotion of God's kingdom; among the heathen Indians in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, ignorant settlers, and even the clergy, whom he endeavored to instruct, exhort and encourage, even on his deathbed. The hardships and privations he endured in the preaching of the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ are quite beyond our ability to imagine. Total self-denial marked him clearly. He faced death at many turns. He was willingly and joyfully spent for his Savior. But, oh what fruit God brought forth! Read and see.

Listen, as he describes for us the essence of true Christianity and its counterfeit, from his journal entry on the Lord's day, May 24, 1746: "Could not but think, as I have often remarked to others, that much more of true religion consists in deep humility, brokenness of heart, and an abasing sense of barrenness and want of grace and holiness, than most who are called Christians imagine; especially those who have been esteemed the converts of the late day. Many seem to know of no other religion but elevated joys and affections, arising only from some flights of imagination, or some suggestion made to their mind, of Christ's being their's, God loving them, and the like." Another entry; June 18,1747, just months before his death in Jonathan Edward's home: "Especially, I discoursed repeatedly on the nature and necessity of that humiliation, self-emptiness, or full conviction of a person's being utterly undone in himself, which is necessary in order to a saving faith; and the extreme difficulty of being brought to this, and the great danger there is of persons taking up with some self-righteous appearance of it...being never effectually brought to die in themselves, are never truly united to Christ, and so perish."

Can we at all identify, dear reader?

Take a journey through the early years of our great land with a courageous servant of God. This is a book to touch the soul, to be re-visited time and again, to be worn out with handling.

But perhaps what makes this journal so compelling, is not the chronicling and inspiration of a remarkable missionary life, so much as the MESSAGE that God anointed. The Church mystical and corporate needs to recover this message today. Delve in and be changed!

David van Adelsberg and Edward A. Trolley are experts in developing innovative workplace learning solutions, in other words, training. Their book presents their program, "Running Training Like a Business." This book is enormously detailed, if jargon-heavy and somewhat bureaucratic in its language. It is filled with flow charts, graphs, and other visuals that will appeal to anyone who wants thorough strategies that can improve training programs. We [...] recommend this book to executives who design, oversee, coordinate, or purchase employee training and education programs. One caveat: the reader does get some sense that, with this volume, the authors are also marketing their program to potential clients.

I found this book very insightful, and a MUST READ if you want to develop a competitive enterprise workforce for today's business challenges and marketplace!

This book is unique. I found it provocative, informative and actionable. Transforming learning inside companies from a function to a business has long been needed, particularly in today's world where learning is fast becoming a key element to sustainable competitive advantage. This book nails the issues and provides the plan, based on real world experience, for crossing the chasm. I recommend it highly for business people with an interest in extracting value from the money they are spending on developing their people.

This is a catalog for a show currently at San Francisco MOMA, launched in Chicago last year. (Weston came from Illinois and did most of his work in California.) It is essentially a re-edition of Weston's My Camera On Point Lobos, published in 1951 and again in 1968. The major change is text by David Travis replacing excerpts from Weston's daybooks in the original.

The text is intended to humanize someone who is mostly mythical by describing and interpreting events in the last years of his life at Point Lobos. It presents the author's analysis of Weston's career, state of mind and the evolution of his late style. There is little or no new material here and the analysis is strained, but thoughtful.

There are some intelligent comparisons presented of Weston's late and early views of the same subject. As a collection this is not a good introduction to Weston. It is a good final chapter to the Daybooks and a beautiful collection of reproductions. It is also a good companion to Ansel Adams at 100, showing how these two friends viewed many of the same subjects so differently. It would be a good addition to reading Charis Wilson's Through Another Lens, showing many pictures of domestic life including Weston's children, cats, and many of Charis Wilson. There is a lot of "inside baseball" here, both explicit and implied.

There is at least one important image in the show that is not in the catalog and there are many important omissions from the show itself, which make this a poor place to start studying Weston's work. For the record, both Weston and Adams experimented with color in the late 40s, shooting the same images in color and black and white. The color images aren't good but they are a very good way to show why their respective monochrome images are so strong.

It is worth repeating that while the printed images are as good as any you'll see, they are not even close to the 8X10 contact prints in the show. This really matters in Weston's work. If you have a chance to see the San Francisco show, before it is put away for another 10 years, you will also see additional earlier prints from SFMOMA's outstanding permanent collection which put the theme of the show into context that is missing from the book.

This is Weston when he was only satisfying his own search for meaning, not making statements or presenting his vision to the world. These are his final meditations and he knew it. They are by far his richest and most abstract work and worthy of a lot of study.

Edward Weston was one of the most squirelly, yet most talented photographers in the history of the medium - he rarely smiled, wore women's clothes, never learned to drive, married a woman 30 years his junior, lived in a shack in Carmel and loved philandering with Tina Modotti and others. He died with $300 in the bank in 1958, yet his photograph of a Circus Tent went at auction a few years ago for $266,000. His influence on photography and photographers was immense. Two of his four sons, Brett and Cole, became accomplished image makers and his grandson now carries on that same tradition, even living in the same shack on Wildcat Hill in Carmel. This book covers roughly the last 10 years of his photographs 1938-1948. The images are superbly produced and well-chosen but the text was a bit overbearing and heavy on the theory that in the last years Weston was overly concerned with death which was represented in his images. Certainly his images of Point Lobos are a bit dark and morose with pictures of dead trees and pelicans, but that's Point Lobos! During this period he also made whimsical images of his wife wearing a gas mask in the nude and playing a flute while a cat looks on with a surprised glance. Weston was full of LIFE, not death. Thirty years before his death in 1958 he made an image of a corpse at a time when his relationship with his future wife was rosy and he was spending time with his beloved sons. His final work does not seem any more concerned with death than it was in his earlier years. But, forget the text! Photography books are similar to Playboy magazines anyway - we buy them to look at the pictures, not read the text!! This is a terrific book and I can't wait to view the actual images at The Art Institute of Chicago.

A finely printed book that features more than the regular images that every other book has. The essay is a very worthwhile read. It offers wonderful insites to the photogrpaher at the end of his working career.A real must to any Weston colection of books.

Differential equations are difficult to teach (though not conceptually difficult), and that fact becomes obvious when you look at most DE books. However, there is the occasional text that teaches the subject in a most comprehensible way. I have used other DE books, among them S. Goode's "Introduction to Differential Equations and Linear Algebra", and let me tell you -- it [is bad]. Plain and simple. It was the only math class I've ever taken which left me with what felt like an incomplete understanding of the subject. And then I used this book for a course at MIT and I realized why I hadn't learned anything previously. The old book [was bad]. And this was pretty good. The only reason I give it four stars instead of five is because it doesn't have any particular line of development. But that's not that important, and this book is a great way to learn differential equations.

This book will tell you everything you need to learn on differential equations. It covers thoroughly the methods for solving first and second order differential equations. The book also extends into Fourier transforms. I used this book at MIT for the differential equations class and found it very useful. Within its contents, matlab exercises are present and some simple projects which lets the student apply its knowledge. The only problem with the book is that it can be hard to read at certain points. Also the author assumes a strong background in calculus.

Fast and its just brand new, he never opened the books

I'm far from an expert, but an interested novice in this field... Crane's book is interesting for the unique take it presents on the people and events.

On the other hand, his language is flowery, his opinions unsupported by his own evidence, and his patronizing superiority sometimes beathtaking. Byron is held up as a person of judgement and moral probity -- at least in Greece. The Greeks are dismissed as grasping, brutal and mendacious -- and this is attributed to their national character. The Turks are brutal and cold -- again, a "character" trait.

As far as Trelawney himself, I've never read a biography in which the author had such patent and intense dislike of his subject. Without much to go on, Crane gives us a pathological liar and cold-hearted manipulator of people and events. There are many paragraphs which open with the phrase "it's impossible to know given the scanty evidence... but in this case we can be sure that..." or its variant.

At the same time, I'm compelled to read on, if only to see what verbal atrocity the author will commit next. What a ride!

In his book "Adventures of a Younger Son," Edward Trelawny set down the facts of his youth as he had told them for years: how as a teenage midshipman he began his adventures by breaking the skull of his commanding officer and deserting into the pirates' paradise of the Java Sea; of Zella, his fawn-like, thirteen-year-old bride; fearless, bloody years of piracy and rape; and the stirrings of conscience (if not calmness) which led him back to Europe to seek out the Pisan Circle and its "Dioscuri," Shelley and Byron. Shelley's social conscience and intellectual boldness attracted him; Byron, his former idol, repelled him, because the poet could see through his lies and his posturing. Byron was both a dreamer and a cynic, and the spectacle of a Lara or Childe Harold parading unironically in the real world unleashed all of his contempt. (Try to picture Ian Fleming confronted with a fan who's modeled himself on James Bond).

"Lord Byron's Jackal," the title of David Crane's biography, is from a remark by Keats' friend Joseph Severn, who suggested that Trelawny had glutted himself on Byron and his anti-heroes until nothing of the man remained. (Severn might easily have used a different phrase, had he read a certain novel by Trelawny's friend Mary Shelley). Another view, though, is that Trelawny responded to Byron's work because its bold palette mirrored his own abilities and panache; all that had robbed him of the bloody youth of his dreams was bad luck. Now, with the help of the Pisan Circle (most of whom believed his tales), all that would change. Trelawny is not the first man in history to lie his way to the truth, but as Crane tells it, he may be the most fascinating.

I can't think of another non-fiction book that I've enjoyed as much as this one. This has as much to do with Crane's language as with the vivid times and personalities he brings to volcanic life. (In many ways the 1820's was the last gasp of Romanticism, when great poets and writers trumped their own words on the world stage, staking everything on their ideals). A previous reader described Crane's writing as "flowery." No. Crane's sentences are often dense, but never with ornamentation. There's not a word out of place, and I often found myself rereading certain passages just for their beauty and perfection of language--and being rewarded with new meanings and insights. That this amazing book is the author's first is almost unbelievable: Trelawny lives in Crane's words as vividly as in his own.

Equally moving is Crane's portrait of the "Philhellenes": the idealists/adventurers who poured into Greece from Western Europe and America in the 1820's to fight the Turks. Many were on fire from Byron's verse; some were spoiled, self-dramatizing youths, victims of a 19th-century version of Jerusalem Syndrome; a few were cold pragmatists; none of them had the slightest idea what they were in for. Devoured by the savage infighting and double-crosses that typified the war, many of these naïfs died ingloriously and in great confusion and pain. As Crane puts it: "There were young Byronists absorbed in a designer war of their own invention, charlatans attracted by the hope of profit, classicists infatuated with Greece's past, Bethamite reformers, aging Bonapartists--and then all those there for a dozen different motives, who might just once have known why they came but had long forgotten by the time they died."

Trelawny himself was immune to disillusion, because his one cause was the test of his own courage and strength, and he seems to have known from the start what stuff he was made of. What makes Trelawny unique (at least until George Orwell) is that eventually he cut as great a figure with the sword as with the pen--though he seems sometimes to have confused the two. We (and Trelawny too) are fortunate to have another great storyteller, David Crane, to tell us which was which.

A companion to this book would be Trelawny's own "Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron," a great work covering some of the same years as Crane's--by turns hilarious, thrilling, moving, and wise--one of the masterpieces of nineteenth-century fiction.

They may now call it the Romantic period, but it was a brutal period, and Crane makes it clear that a scoundrel like Trelawny -- seducer, adventurer, poetaster -- was in his element. The other people in the area at the time, whether Greek, Turk, or Englishman, weren't so admirable either, and if you're looking for straight-arrow heroes this isn't your book. The "heroes" that populate LBJ are of the Heathcliff variety.

This amazing history brings to mind the current conflict in the Balkans, complete with backstabbing, massacres, self-important generalissimos, singleminded nationalists and bandits. An extraordinary trip into a time almost as scary as our own -- with the added benefit of star players like Byron and Shelley. I loved this book and recommend it highly. (And unlike the previous reviewer, I note Crane's clear sympathy for Trelawny -- despite his disapproval of the man's actions: he details Trelawny's brutal upbringing by his father and the torture inflicted upon him by the British Navy.) It seems to me you don't need to admire someone to find him fascinating.