I recommend this book to any customer service professional or anyone interested in public service. In fact, almost any profession can benefit from practicing good customer service described in this book.

Cons:
* No finished professional edit of the project
* More detailed info on professional techniques would be nice

This is a wonderful book, not a typical novel in the sense that it does not open questions in the beginning and then answer them by the end. Instead, it is a linear narrative that ends on a cliff-hanger just begging for a sequel. O'Brian's writing is crisp and spare. The characters are fully-developed human beings, the action is exciting. The book is hard to put down, but the best thing is that there are eighteen more to follow.

I read the first book in the series, Master and Commander, and was disappointed. I enjoyed Post Captain more. Perhaps that was due to knowing what to expect and perhaps it is because Post Captain is better than its predecessor. However, it is not your typical naval action adventure. In fact, the first few chapters sounded a bit like Pride and Prejudice from Mr. Darcy's perspective. The fact is that O'Brian writes well enough to pull it off. Post Captain does pick up when war is declared and Aubrey goes back to sea.

One area of conflict that I found strangely missing in Master and Commander was that between Aubrey and Maturin. I had expected that Maturin would be critical of Aubrey taking the ship into actions that caused wounds Maturin would have to treat. There is a serious conflict between the two in Post Captain although it's not over Aubrey's naval actions. Since the series has 18 more novels one knows that the conflict will be resolved.

The main problem that Aubrey faces in the novel is not the French navy but his own indebtedness and the inability to obtain a suitable command. Paradoxically, Aubrey is safe from creditors while at sea. The problems that a person faced while in debt in 1800 are explained well and the reader has great empathy with Aubrey.

The naval activities in Post Captain seem similar to those in Hornblower and the Hotspur to the point that the climactic action appears to correspond to the same point in history. While O'Brian did not appear to value the Hornblower novels greatly it is obvious that he owes Forester a debt of gratitude for creating the genre. Without Forester it is doubtful that O'Brian would have been able to develop his own unique niche and this excellent novel would not have been published.

"Come grow old with me / The best is yet to be..."

Browning's lines from "Rabbi Ben Ezra" apply nicely to O'Brian's great Aubrey/Maturin series (although I understand that the last couple of volumes in the series are not quite up to the standard). Partly because so few writers can create vital and interesting characters any more, O'Brian stands out with his correct Tory Naval captain (Jack Aubrey) and his British intelligence agent/scientist friend (Stephen Maturin), who show here that they can age gracefully.

But don't begin here. You have to have read the series in order to understand their tangled love and financial relationships and how the situation in THE COMMODORE came to be. If you have read the others through THE WINE DARK SEA, you are in for a real treat.

Aubrey and Maturin combat pro-Napoleonic forces at home and abroad. In the process, they deliver crippling blows to the West African slave trade and prevent a French landing in support of Irish independence.

Now that he has risen in the ranks, Aubrey must deal with issues raised by an incompetent spit-and-polish commander like Captain Thomas and by an otherwise talented sodomite in the person of Captain Duff whose officers rebel against favoritism shown to his catamites. Throughout the book, our heroes are uncertain of the welcome they will receive from their wives and families -- yet they are driven onward for King and Country.

I liked this book, and if I could I would give it 3.5 stars, but I didn't love it as some do. The second book is much better but you really must read the first book first. I recommend this to anyone, even women like myself.

I teach the subject out of my own notes (draft book) where the development follows that of Gelb, Applied Optimal Estimation, and all of the computations are done in Matlab. I first read Kalman's original papers in great detail, and rederived his work before the Gelb book (MIT Press, 1974) was published. Since the advdent of Matlab (1984) I have continued to used Gelb's derivations, and augmented that work with extensive Matlab examples.

I still find Gelb more usable as a text than other, newer books, and will continue to use it along with my Matlab supplements.

I was able to program filters for three of the examples that
most closely match my own applications and exploit what I
learned in a matter of hours. The MATLAB code was useful, but
not critical.