If you don't already own the original stormbringer rulebook, this book is not for you.

I found the book to be easy to read, up to date, and pertinent to my practice. I found the images and illustrations to be of the best quality and easy to understand. I strongly recommend this textbook to any surgeon in practice or resident in training.

Maybe I should look for the purely intellectual interest, I don't know. My best advice is this: if you read to find recipes, read something else. Read this only out of curiosity.

And yet again, I was just curious about the US Army chapter but got little out of it - gruelling experience, after-action review, and all that - we did it in volleyball and basket training twenty years ago ... what's the big deal?

I think there are plenty of great lessons within the book. Its not only a book about strategy, but a new framework to think in terms of. The world has changed greatly in the last 20 years and a lot of the old management frameworks have less significance. Complexity science is the new way to think and this book does a fantastic job of relating the "complex" topic to business. And the rules apply to all areas of the organization: strategy, organizational design, etc. If you want to be prepared to lead the complex globlal organizations of tomorrow, then this is a must read.

The authors do an excellent job of contrasting their approach (adaptive leadership) with more traditional reorganization (operational leadership). But refreshingly, they also acknowledge that in some cases, the more traditional approach might be more appropriate. There are many interesting concepts being developed by complexity theorists and this book manages to capture many, if not most, of them.

They show repeatedly the need to increase the stress on an organization in order to break past patterns of behavior. Their use of fitness landscapes (the idea that a successful company rests on a peak, and that in order to reach a new higher peak, often you must go down into the valley) is very powerful and at least partially explains why so many successful companies subsequently struggle, or fail, to adapt. Importantly though, the authors also spend a great deal of time talking about the unintended (or second and third order) effects of change. The point is not that you will be able to predict all of them (which is what chaos theory explicity says you cannot do), but rather that you must be flexible enough to roll with those unanticipated consequences.

Does that mean that every idea in this book is new? Of course not, but to be successful, a new theory often must combine the old with the new. And this book does a masterful of applying the ideas of Chaos/Complexity theory to business, of providing a new framework to think about both old and new problems. You may not agree with everything that appears in this book, but you will certainly come away with much food for thought.

Twain completely dissects the "good ol' days" of Arthurian Britain by exposing the vicious social practices of the time: white slavery, le droit de seigneur, confiscation of property in event of suicide, the complete lack of impartial justice, the degrading influence of the Church on the mass, etcetera etcetera etcetera...

The Arthurian legends are wonderful tales, but they are a mythic literary production; Twain deals with the brutal reality of daily living in the Dark Ages, and points out that the good ol' days were not so good, anyway.

As for its applicability to modern America, I am not fit to judge. Perhaps it's there. But "The Connecticut Yankee" is a wonderful tonic for those prone to romanticizing the past. Twain seems to agree with Tom Paine that the English nobility were "no-ability", and simply the latest in a series of robbers.

And, of course, the book is stuffed with wonderful Twainisms... My favorite is his observation that a conscience is a very inconvenient thing, and the significant difference between a conscience and an anvil is that, if you had an anvil inside you, it would be alot less uncomfortable than having a conscience.

Twain also mentions the beautiful mispronunciations of childhood, and how the bereaved parental ear listens in vain for them once children have grown.

You'll never look at castles the same again...

The title of the Book is "ASP XML", and from this title I choose this book, because I wanted a book that would help me to use XML in ASP. That wasn't the case in some of the book examples.

The book content (without the case study) is only 15 chapter that spans 366 pages covering all different aspects of XML and XML integration of ASP. The information presented is very basic and lacks basic knowledge of XML, for example XSL was covered very poorly in the book ( MSDN was more helpful to me than the book). Chapter 11 through 14 were very useful though, especially chapter 14 that covers useful XML procedure libraries.

The case studies spans around 180 pages, there are 6 case studies. They were very confusing to me and none of them helped me solving any of the business requirements I was tackling.

The rest of the book contains appendices that are useful to have them all in the same book, but you can get them over the Internet for free.

Last word to say is that I was disappointed with this book.

After reading this, the only thing I wanted to do was re-read A Gathering of Saints, Robert Lindsey's book about the same period.

Turley begins his account by reviewing the canonical account of the Church's origins and a history of other prominent forgeries intended to discredit the Church. Turley then goes over the history of the Hofmann case. An appendix lists all known documents acquired by the Church from Hofmann. Unlike other writers, he had access to a wealth of Church documents. The result is a well-documented account presenting the Church's side of the story. Though he is hardly objective in his account, he avoids the sensationalism characteristic of the so-called true crime novel. His tone is mainly that of a scholarly historian.

The Hofmann case is extremely complicated, involving Church officials, Mormon historians, document dealers, journalists, law enforcement officers, attorneys, and others. Turley attempted to keep the major characters in focus, but the reader is still liable to get lost. I found myself going back over previous material several times to keep everything straight. Fortunately, this book contains an index.

Complicating things further, Turley often digresses from the narrative. Sometimes, the digressions are faith-promoting stories more suited to Church magazines. In others, they seem like personal attacks against real or perceived enemies of the Church. Turley also occasionally pauses to score an apologetic point. Turley should have omitted these things entirely or relegated all of this to the notes. This material is not very appropriate to what is supposed to be a scholarly history.

Hofmann said he was not afraid of being caught by divine inspiration (316). Some people have raised the question of why the Church's "prophets, seers, and revelators" did not detect Hofmann's forgeries. To his credit, Turley does not attempt to answer this question. While this is perhaps an interesting theological question, it would be out of place to try to answer it in a historical work.

This book exists in relationship to other books on the Hofmann case. Turley has relegated most of the direct interaction to the notes. Discerning Turley's intent concerning these books is not easy without reading them. It seems clear he wants to refute the work of Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith (The Mormon Murders [New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988]). Other sources tell me this work is most distorted account of the Hofmann case. Richard Lindsey's A Gathering of Saints (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988) is not mentioned as often. Turley may be correcting misconceptions, but does not accuse Lindsey of willful distortion.

Though Turley perhaps comments on Linda Sillitoe and Allen D. Roberts' Salamander (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1988) the most, the relationship is harder to discern. Some Latter- day Saints portray Signature Books as an anti-Mormon press, but Turley is rarely dismissive of the book. At times, he may be trying to refute it. Sometimes he treats it as though its perceived misconceptions were due to lack of information available to him. At other times, he accepts its information at face value. It will be interesting to see if and how the second edition of Salamander deals with Victims.

The weaknesses aside, Turley has given us a well-balanced account of the Hofmann case. What it loses in complexity is more than made up for by its thoroughness. It is remarkably free from speculation, and highly recommended for those looking for a book placing the focus of the Hofmann case there it belongs: on Hofmann's victims.

You want info on UFO's? Rent seasons 1-9 of "The X-Files" on DVD or the X-Files movie, "Fight The Future". At least you'll be able to stay awake, and it won't cost you nearly as much money.

CE-5, the newest book by internationally acclaimed UFO expert Richard Haines, Ph.D. (with Steven Greer, M.D., and Mark Rodeghier, Ph.D.), is a professional, riveting, and in places, mind-boggling resource for serious UFO researchers.

For me, reading CE-5 was an absorbing and engrossing experience.

In 435 pages, in two major parts, CE-5 chronologically presents abstracts of 242 of the world's most fascinating UFO sighting reports. Part I discusses apparent communications between witnesses and UFOs; Part II discusses apparent communications between witnesses and alien beings.

But what exactly do you get when you read CE-5? A lot.

Case 14: A disk 1,000 feet in diameter and 12 feet thick was seen by multiple witnesses as it crossed 150 miles of Minnesota countryside over a period of five hours. The moment a witness switched his truck's headlights on, the object changed color from white to red.

Case 35: A witness ran to within about 20 feet of a landed UFO. Two days later he became very ill - reduced body temperature, black vomit, diarrhea with blood in the stool - and two weeks later he died, supposedly from gastroenteritis, although a nearby scientific organization said his symptoms were similar to those caused by a lethal dose of gamma radiation.

Case 39: Two witnesses shined their flashlights at a mysterious aerial object that had landed. The flashlight beams bent up 90 degrees about 18 inches in front of the object.

Case 49: The crew of a US Army tank in Germany, at night, saw a bright UFO flying beneath the overcast. When the object approached, the tank driver flashed the tank's searchlights, and the UFO echoed the flashes. At one point the UFO appeared extremely bright but even then it did not illuminate the clouds above it or the ground beneath it.

Case 75: A medical doctor flashed a 500,000 candlepower spotlight at a UFO, in sequences of three, two, and five flashes. The UFO echoed each sequence, and this apparent communication was witnessed by 39 bystanders.

Case 110: Russian jet fighters intercepted a UFO, fired their machine guns at it, but the UFO zig-zagged and out-maneuvered the interceptors.

Case 183: A police officer drove up to within 40 feet of a landed UFO and saw red lights inside the object. When the police car's headlights finally illuminated the object, the red lights began flashing. Then the police car's engine died and the officer's flashlight failed to work. The officer was unable to account for about 30 minutes of his shift around the time of the sighting.

Case 207: A priest and several dozen other witnesses waved to human-like "people" standing on a UFO that hovered near the mission. The "people" waved back. This apparent communication continued for about three hours.

(Another report in this Part of CE-5 describes a man who jabbed his knife at a "creature's hairy body," only to feel the knife glance off as if it had struck a rock. Still another UFO-related fight involved a young man and a being the witness said "felt like metal." And a South American truck driver fired his pistol at three 13 to 16 feet tall "beings in human form" that exited a landed UFO.)

Case 216: In Italy, a farmer saw a UFO land and then saw three "dwarfs" emerge from it. The farmer, who heard the "dwarfs" talking to each other in an unknown tongue, got his shotgun. It failed to fire when he attempted to pull the trigger, and the gun suddenly felt so heavy that he had to drop it. He felt paralyzed. The "dwarfs" took some of the farmer's rabbits, jumped back into the UFO, and as it flew away, the farmer fired his shotgun at it.

Case 218: (This event is too frightening to describe here, but it is one of the most well-documented UFO-alien-gunfire cases on record.)

Case 223: (This event is also too frightening to detail here. It culminated in the witness' death from leukemia two months later.)

In spite of its often terrifying content, CE-5 reads quickly and easily because its abstracts are short and concise. Abstracts are followed by citations, and often by rhetorical questions or comments. (Those comments helped me see a couple of technical subtleties I'd overlooked.) More references and citations are given at the end of chapters and major parts. The book is indexed and has tables of statistical data.

CE-5 is clearly the best review of the world's most intriguing communications-related UFO reports, all condensed to essentials and accompanied by photos, sketches, and diagrams. (Even though I've been an avid UFO researcher since 1947 and have read about 125 books on the subject, most of CE-5's reports were new to me.)

But while I think CE-5 is vital reading for most adults, I also think its reports are too frightening for elderly people susceptible to stroke or heart attack, and for children.

(To underscore my concern here, please understand that I'm a military veteran, a pilot, I'm well grounded in the physical sciences, and I'm a technical researcher and writer -- see http://www.principiapub.com -- but I confess that I found myself _quite_ disturbed by several CE-5 reports.)

In summary, CE-5 is more than a compelling and often stunning series of UFO reports. It is also more than an enormous feat of technical research by Drs. Haines, Greer, and Rodeghier.

My hope is that the public and the scientific community will soon recognize CE-5 for what it really is, the most professional contribution yet toward understanding and solving this century's greatest scientific mystery.

Bob