Anyone interested in the White Mountains of New Hampshire will be fascinated by this compelling account of Joe Dodge, the real Old Man of the mountains. Putnam weaves humor and tragedy with his own personal knowledge of the man who was perhaps most responsible for the modern perception of the Northern Peaks. AMC Hutmaster, pioneer SAR organizer, co-founder of the Mount Washington Observatory, organizer of the legendary Inferno races from the summit of Washington to Pinkham Notch, it's all told in this wonderful book.

Not much can be said about this book: you get exactly what you have in mind. First part of the book lists every problem from 1985-2000 Putnam exams, the second part provides hints to each of the problems in case you are stuck. The last part contains detailed solution(s) to every problem. It is an excellent book... Good luck on the test if you will be taking it.

This book has the problems and solutions to the Putnam contest from 1965-1984. The editors/authors have taken time to carefully put this book together.

The solution to each problem is given, and often times, more than one solution is given. The solutions presented are generally concise and elegant (and correct, of course) - in other words, they are mathematically well written.

The book also gives the results - the names of the top five individuals and the top five teams for each year. Also given with each solution is the number of contestants among the top 250 or so who scored 10 points (a perfect score), 9 points, 8 points, ... 1 point - this is useful in estimating the degree of difficulty of the problem.

I didn't find any typos, errors, etc. The editors have done a good job with the book.

The language in this book is incredible-- the metaphors perfectly capture the essence of what they describe, and the melodic rise and fall of the sentences mirrors the tragic (but in the end uplifting) plot into which the reader is drawn. As I read the book, I felt I was becoming an active participant in it, taking part in the story and not just observing it, and it was so hard to put the book down when I didn't know how things would turn out!

The elegant simplicity of the solutions presented to the seemingly complex problems that face the characters is a biting comment on our own society's predilection for grinding out the answer to everything, when in reality what we need when confronting humanity's great issues is a sense of perspective.

However, I found the characters somewhat flat. Why, for example, does the set N choose to define himself in such narrow terms? Has he no dreams, no fantasies, no weaknesses, nothing but a recursive definition? Many of the characters had similar problems; I had difficulty relating to the motives behind some of their self-simplifying actions.

Overall, though, this is a brilliant social commentary and a heartrending story. It is truly a new American classic in the tradition of Pynchon, Vonnegut, and Faulkner.

A true story about the exploits of a soldier in the development of a new military division of mountain climbers and skiers during WW2. Begining with the call up and training of new recruits to the embarcation to the Pacific and then onto Italy. Good personal glimpses of the innner workings and thoughts of the military command during that period of time

But much of the book, which reaches just 150 pages, strays merkedly from the purported subject. The author has a pithy writing style, but his efforts are sometimes misdirected.