This quick-and-easy read provided me with the ammunition I needed to combat and overcome injustice in my workplace. This book helped me to not only learn my rights, but also to gather my courage during a difficult and trying time. Anyone who suffers from discrimination, or thinks they are suffering from discrimination, should read this book.

With all of the recent attention paid to employment discrimination in the media and in the courts, I thought I should read Job Discrimination II. I'm really glad I did. I now feel like an expert on the law and I am fully armed with the information I need if I should ever have problems at work. So far I haven't had any problems but I have some friends who have. I recommended this book to all of them. Bernbach manages to illuminate the reader on all aspects of employment law without ever sounding like a legal textbook. He also provides many examples from real life situations that make the book enjoyable as well as informative. This is a must read for anyone who works for a living.

This is the best and most moving account I've ever read of life in a concentration camp, better by far than Primo Levi, better even than Viktor Frankl, and better even than One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, all of which are saying a lot. The book pulled me into the daily life in a way I've not encountered so strongly before. Antelme has a gift for providing details that immerse the reader in the experience, and he has a novelist's skill with characterization. This is a powerful, meaningful work.

This is a good and compelling, but not a great, book. The author needs a little bit more polish in his writing style. As another reviewer points out, he swears a bit too much. The parts of the book about drug abuse among dog sled racers, the insensitivity of reporters to native Americans, and the coming end of frontier life in Alaska were also a little disheartening (although these are not the author's fault). Nevertheless, the author does a great job of taking us into this amazing race. His description of the absolute dedication that dog sled racing takes was excellent. He does more than just talk about the race and the racers; he really uses the race to show what life is like in rural Alaska and Yukon. The author does a particularly good job of describing what cold temperatures do to the body (his "walk down the thermometer") and the sleep deprivation that sled racers experience. His analysis of animal rights and dog sled racing was also quite good, walking the fine line between the opinions of animal rights activists and the dog sled racers. I'll also never forget that one of the main goals of dog sled racing is carrying as little as possible on your sled (the author uses a curse word to describe this, by the way). I also appreciated this book because it describes the sub-arctic experience, as opposed to the many books on arctic and antarctic expeditions; you really come away from this book thinking of those two different climates as being distinct from one another.

John Balzar is first and foremost a reporter, with a reporter's unerring nose for news. So it should come as no surprise that word of the Yukon Quest, a 1,023-mile dog sled race through some of the coldest and most challenging terrain in the world, would capture his attention and get him started on the trail of a good story. What was a surprise, as much to Balzar as to his readers I suspect, was the degree to which the race and its participants came to matter. Quirky, devoted to a sport that doesn't translate well to television, and immersed in a way of life that 90% of the population can't begin to fathom, the people Balzar meets when he first heads north have "the power to fascinate."

Following the advice of George "Skip" Brink, a construction worker who volunteers at the race, Balzar stops taking notes, sets aside his writing tools, and asks what he can do to help out with the race. Thus begins his stint as a pooper-scooper and veterinary assistant at the race, in which he slowly comes to realize that he is there to learn as much about himself as about the race.

Yukon Alone is full of Balzar's characteristically insightful and amusing observations on life as he sees it, but it is not as polished or self-assured as some of his other work. In fact, the reader gets the distinct impression that Balzar is flying by the seat of his pants, figuring things out as the story progresses, which lends an immediacy and intensity to the writing. We are there, for instance, when he loses control of his dogsled team and ends up in a heap on the side of a trail with a nasty gash in his head. We stand by and watch with embarrassment as he asks a friend to fly him to see a woman friend, even though he knows he is risking both their lives. Here is a story that has much to say about what motivates and sustains us, and the importance of meaningful relationships with other creatures and the land. No doubt you will be amused and disgusted, shocked and dismayed, thrilled and touched by this book. The one thing you will not be is bored, which is one of the highest compliments I can pay Balzar.

I can't imagine a book that could describe the Yukon Quest any better. Balzar captures the race, the mushers, and the country just perfect. There are times when he puts you on the trail with your own team as you feel the thrills and spills! A must read for anyone interested in dog mushing and the north country.

Race's book describes why the peasant population of a strategic province near Saigon revolted against the South Vietnamese government. He explains by means of interviews and analysis of Communist and non-Communist documents and intelligence data how the National Liberation Front was able to build a base of support for its war against the South Vietnamese government. He also reveals why various counter-insurgency efforts against the NLF failed so badly. The book is full of anecdotal, quantitative, and documentary support, but suffers somewhat from a dry, academic style of analysis. Nonetheless it is one of the true classics on this subject.

Twenty-eight years has not diminished the value of this brilliant study. Jeffrey Race wrote War Comes to Long An as his doctoral dissertation. Also a former US Army officer, Race served as a district advisor in Vietnam. After leaving the Army, Race returned to Vietnam as an independent researcher. He is fluent in Vietnamese-which opened many doors that would otherwise be shut to an American in rural Vietnam. All of these qualifications enhance Race's creditability. Furthermore, they help explain why War Comes to Long An achieves its stated purpose: to show how the Communist revolutionary movement was able to succeed in the South Vietnamese province of Long An. /// Saigon's fatal flaw was their perception of the revolutionary movement, according to Race. The overthrow of the "local elite" at the village level-not the expulsion of the French-was the most significant accomplishment of the Vietminh during the Resistance (p. 40). Vietminh strategy had fused anti-imperialist and anti-feudal themes, resulting in an economic revolution for the countryside. But Ngo Dinh Diem alienated the peasantry by returning the corrupt village councils that had been exiled with the French. Therefore: "... to say that the government later [after the First Indochina War] 'lost control' is misleading, and any analysis which proposes to answer the question of why the government 'lost control' or why there was an 'erosion of mass support for established institutions' is addressing the wrong question (p. 41)." /// Race acknowledges that there were some gains made by the government-as well as internal conflict within the revolutionary movement. But he devotes the majority of the book to analyzing the Communist exploitation of Saigon's ill-conceived policies. Diem's centralized method of government provides an example. South Vietnam was better characterized as a conglomerate of hamlets than as a nation state. Culture varied throughout the country and was largely shaped by local customs. The majority of the Vietnamese population equated "government" with their local village council. Yet the province chief was the first government administrator with any true decision-making authority. (This is one of the reasons the author chooses the province as the basic unit of his study.) In contrast, the Communist Lao Dong Party established their executive agent (the chi bo) at the village level. /// Land is the single most important factor to the peasant in Long An. In addition to its economic value (particularly in the fertile Mekong Delta region-where Long An is located), land is the focal point of family life and religion in Vietnam. It is where a family buries and worships their ancestors and where each family member expects to be interred. For these reasons, concludes Race, the agroville and strategic hamlet programs-by separating the peasantry from their land-were doomed from the start. Furthermore, Race correctly asserts that the revolutionary movement was more successful in "maneuvering the government to overthrow itself" than simply "overthrowing the government" (p. 159). /// Saigon's land reform policy and its effects on the population of Long An receive careful scrutiny. Race successfully applies an analytical methodology to support his assertion: "it is hard to see how the government's land reform could have fulfilled its stated purpose of turning a dissatisfied peasantry into a satisfied one, even if it had been implemented to the fullest" (p. 60). Meanwhile, the Party exploited the government's ineptitude by garnering support from the population. Land was promised to the peasant that supported the revolution. Thus the countryside became inextricably tied to the Party's cause, concludes the author. /// Race presents his evidence effectively. Oral histories from three former province chiefs are introduced in the first chapter. Their recollections are compared with similar accounts from contemporaneous Long An peasants. The results illuminate Saigon's single-minded mandarin approach to "securing" the countryside. These oral histories also demonstrate the conceptual differences between the government and the Party's approach. The government felt the unrest in the countryside was simply a "security" problem. In reality, the Party-in addition to its use of violence and terrorism-was successfully leading a multidimensional socioeconomic revolution. Likewise, the Communists truly knew what motivated the average Vietnamese. Race succinctly illustrates the logic and simplicity of the Party's strategy: "... the accuracy of the Party's judgment was to be proved over and over again in Long An after 1960, as outpost after outpost surrenderedwithout firing a shot. In the Party's view a man will not risk his life only for the sake of his pay, or because he has been drafted. He will only do so for clearly perceived interests involving himself, his family, or his own idea of country (p. 95)." /// There are shortfalls to this book. It is not an easy read. A typical passage: "Whereas the [1968 rural construction effort in Long An] correctly recognized the need for redistributive measures, the program actually adopted by the Saigon and the American governments ignored the redistributive issues and concentrated instead on 'development' and on certain suppressive and intelligence functions." (p. 249) /// Race's methodology also compounds the problem. He quotes extensively from his sources (interviews and documents). (Race does so ostentatiously because the material remained in Vietnamese.) Although this technique is helpful for the researcher, it detracts from the narrative. Race also favors the analytic approach-with his conclusions frequently resting primarily on numerical data. He even offers a "graphic presentation" of his concepts in one of the appendices. Although these tools are effective, they narrow the scope of the book. Additionally, there is no bibliography and the reader is given little direction for further research. /// In summary, War Comes to Long An is a fine piece of scholarship. The author's observations and conclusions regarding the revolutionary movement in Long An extend far beyond the Mekong Delta. The book is best suited as supplemental reading for the graduate or undergraduate student of Vietnam.

This book is an excellent, thorough study of the strategic Long An province, located just south of Saigon. Jeffrey Race looks at the activities of both sides in the formative years from 1954-1965. Unlike most books on Vietnam, Race spends little time looking at events after the US troop commitment. Race attempts to be an unbiased observer as he reviews the historical record. Also, by looking at one province, Jeffrey Race presents this major conflict at a human level.

Filled with top-notch research and a number of insghtful interviews, this book is a little-known but superb resource for anyone truly interested in the Vietnam War.