I saw Buzz Patterson on C-Span and felt I really needed to read his personal account of the Clinton White House debacle. After reading his first hand account I was sickened by the Clinton's as human's let alone representatives of our wonderful nation. I hope everyone of voting age reads this book and makes it a point of never again electing a president that has so little regard for the American people. Both Clinton and his wife are amoral at best and true liars in every sense. We can be assured that she will run for her place in the Oval Office and we must take every measure possible to prevent this from happening. Thanks Buzz!
Kay Clark
Flagstaff, Az.

For people who are already familiar with the case against the Clinton administration made by writers like Barbara Olson, Ann Coulter, or Gary Aldrich, "Buzz" Patterson's "Dereliction of Duty" adds few new arguments. He does, however, bring a wealth of corroborative details and an eyewitness account from inside the Clinton White House.

This title is really more of an essay than a book-length work. Once you take out the long foreword, three appendices (including a lengthy excerpt from one of Cap Weinberger's books), notes, and index, you've got about 120 pages of widely spaced type. I read most of this on a Memorial Day afternoon, and still had time for yardwork. It would probably have worked as well as a long magazine article, though the fact that it's a book (and a best-selling one, here on Amazon.com) should help give his account the wide distribution it deserves.

I suspect that in these post-9/11, post-Iraq War days, Patterson's description of the Clintons', and their administration's, "loathing" of the military will strike the strongest negative response. Worse even then their systematic, deliberate weakening of the military (as Patterson describes it) was the anti-military attitude that pervaded the White House, from the top down (and apparently including even Chelsea). Uniformed officers and men were routinely abused, sneered at, or ignored, used as caddies or go-fers, or treated as some sort of federal jobs corps that could be better spent "doing something" like public works projects or caring for the homeless. Patterson concludes Clinton saw international policy, particularly the deployment of the military, entirely through the lens of domestic politics -- what Patterson calls "CNN diplomacy." Conservatives, especially, are likely to value Patterson's military background and high value he clearly places on duty, honor, and country.

As we get further and blessedly further from the Clinton years, more and more titles are likely to appear showing us that dysfunctional administration from the inside out. While Clinton acolytes like Sid Blumethal will continue to put out their massive, unreadable apologias, men and women like Colonel Patterson will give us the quiet but powerful testimony of their own experience. This isn't a big book. And taken on its own, it's arguably not even an important book. But it is another brick in the massive and growing wall of evidence arising around the historical memory of the Clinton administration. And that, certainly, is a very important, and even essential, thing.

Dereliction of Duty is a brief but telling account of the Clinton Administration's blatant disregard for national security and its contempt for the military in general. The book illustrates the administration's shortcomings in three respects: (1) its dangerous decision to cut manpower by as much as 50% in some areas while simultaneously increasing deployment by 300% through a variety of ill-conceived and ineffective missions, (2) its carefree attitude towards the growing threats of terrorism abroad, and (3) its believe that the military should ultimately serve a "social petri dish" instead of serving as an elite and professional fighting force to protect Americans from foreign threats.

Patterson for the most part maintains a professional and matter-of-fact tone throughout most of the book, illustrating the numerous foreign policy blunders that Clinton made while in office whose gravity is only being realized today. The growing threat of terrorism in the 90's was ignored by Clinton, whose response time and again was one of words instead of decisive action.

Scandals aside, the administration blundered again and again because of an overwhelming priority on media and public perception instead of long term strategy and results. This book provides fascinating anecdotes coupled with insightful observations that remind us of the many mistakes made in the past. We can only hope that our electorate doesn't again put a man in power who considers national security important only when it raises his standing in opinion polls.

I really enjoy the Using Series, and look for them whenever I want to learn more about a certain topic. However, this book is deplorable. It is not made for anyone looking to write their own code, or anyone who actually wants to program. All this book tries to do is show you how to use someone else's code. I do not mean another module, such as the infamous CGI.pm moudle, but rather using another script and "tweaking" it for your needs. It also does not seek to explain the theory behind the code. I was also quite disappointed in how it was organized. The Using Seies are good books, but this one doesn't belong in the family. There are much better books out there that will serve your needs.

I found this book to be hard to read and poorly written. The examples are very difficult to follow because most are only code segments not the full code. This makes it very diffcult to follow. As any experienced programmer will tell you "Nothing helps more than a good example.". This book is highly lacking of good examples. I have several years of experience with programming in several languages, which allowed me to fill the gaps in the examples, how ever a beginning programmer would be lost. In conclusion I do not recommend this book to a programmer of any level.

I found this book to be hard to read and poorly written. The examples are very difficult to follow because most are only code segments not the full code. This makes it very diffcult to follow. As any experienced programmer will tell you "Nothing helps more than a good example.". This book is highly lacking of good examples. I have several years of experience with programming in several languages, which allowed me to fill the gaps in the examples, how ever a beginning programmer would be lost. In conclusion I do not recommend this book to a programmer of any level.

This volume purports to be an account of how early AA members depended on the Bible as their primary source of spiritual guidance. But, as in so many cases, the "historian" here has a definite agenda. In this case the agenda is to advance the author's religious beliefs by attempting to use the "historical record" to show that AA is today minimally successful (a "tiny" recovery rate in the author's words on page #8) compared to the "early days" when the author purports the Bible was widely used as the primary spiritual sourcebook.

A great example of the "scholarship and objectivity" of the author's research is on page #7 where he makes his first and chief argument concerning the success rate of early AA. I quote his first paragraph of that section exactly:

"Early AA claimed at least a seventy-five percent success rate among those who really tried. Early AAs, who were "medically incurable" in the late 1930's, actually recovered from their seemingly hopeless disease at that very high percentage rate."

This quotation is footnoted specifically with footnote #20. At the bottom of page 7, footnote #20 is there as expected. It looks quite impressive. Again, I quote exactly:

(20) Big Book (3rd ed., 1976), pp. xiii, xv, xvii, xxiii, 17, 20, 29, 45, 90, 96, 113, 132, 133, 146, 165, 309, 310.

There are exactly 17 pages referenced in that footnote. Anyone can open up that most widely distributed edition of the "Big Book" (Alcoholics Anonymous, ISBN 0916856003) and find that there is not one single reference to AA's success rate on any of those pages. Not a single one. I checked each page referenced, just to be sure, and so can anyone else. On most of the pages referenced, there is nothing even remotely related to the author's footnoted subject-matter.

A typographical error perhaps? Seventeen of them in a row? Historical scholarship? A desperate attempt to document a tidy revision of AA history? You be the judge.

In contrast to this author's "scholarship", here's an actual fact that can be easily verified by thousands upon thousands of AA members, including my own 25 years of AA experience. Every day in AA meetings all across the world, people are happily sharing their personal spiritual success stories and their authentic relationships with God and the resulting relief from their addictions. A significant number of those people (if not most) do not find it necessary to claim any religious affiliation whatsoever, or dependence on the Bible, or any other particular religious text. This state of affairs is evidently very, very disturbing to the author. It shakes his particular "the Bible is the only way" belief-system. I believe that undeniable reality motivated him to write this book.

If this book had stopped with researching early AA's spiritual roots, it would have been a success. When it crossed the line over to evangelism, it failed, especially when its foundation is built on the unstable sands of research of the quality of the above example. Definitely not recommended, unless it is reclassified as fiction.

The A.A. program came into being by breaking away from the Oxford Group. There have remained splinter groups which attempt to practice 'pure' Oxford Group programs. Such groups regularly claim that their special version of AA is '100% successful.' This is easy to claim if all failures are rationalized away as failure to comply with this religious program. One pamphlet makes this clear by stating that drinking cancels AA membership.

AA states: 'The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking.' There is NO religious requirement for AA membership.

The A.A. pamphlet "44 Questions" includes the following:

"Is A.A. a religious society?

"A.A. is not a religious society, since it requires no definite religious belief as a condition of membership. Although it has been endorsed and approved by many religious leaders, it is not allied with any organization or sect. Included in its membership are Catholics, Protestants, Jews, members of other major religious bodies, agnostics, and atheists.

"The A.A. program of recovery from alcoholism is undeniably based on acceptance of certain spiritual values. The individual member is free to interpret those values as he or she thinks best, or not to think about them at all.

"Most members, before turning to A.A., had already admitted that they could not control their drinking. Alcohol had become a power greater than themselves, and it had been accepted on those terms. A.A. suggests that to achieve and maintain sobriety, alcoholics need to accept and depend upon another Power recognized as greater than themselves. Some alcoholics choose to consider the A.A. group itself as the power greater than themselves; for many others, this Power is God - as they, individually, understand Him; still others rely upon entirely different concepts of a Higher Power.

"Some alcoholics, when they first turn to A.A., have definite reservations about accepting any concept of a Power greater than themselves. Experience shows that, if they will keep an open mind on the subject and keep coming to A.A. meetings, they are not likely to have too difficult a time in working out an acceptable solution to this distinctly personal problem."

There's a whole new rush to find out what early A.A.'s did with the Bible. I'm a Christian and a Bible student. And I'm delighted to see the trend. I've read Dick' book; and it think it meets the growing need for information that's been missing in 12 Step movements for many years now.

This is another example of a person who has no experience drafting legislation presuming to tell the professionals who do that kind of writing how to perform their difficult task. Most such intruders into the field, including Martineau, base their recommendations on Plain Language principles. Martineau clearly reveals his lack of knowledge of statutory drafting and the havoc that is caused by mechanistically applying the allegedly universal but actually simplistic and counter-productive princples of Plain Language to this form of writing. If you are looking for useful advice about drafting, read something by a professional who has thought about the subject.

The best reason to get this book is that the author has great credentials. He has drafted at the state and city level for over 30 years. That kind of experience, when combined with a commitment to plain language, makes for a valuable and authoritative text. And the book is, indeed, clearly written and thorough. The only drawback is the format--it's somewhat clunky, archaic, and slightly unprofessional in appearance. But if you need guidance on drafting rules and legislation, this is an excellent book that focuses on those skills.

I found this book very useful. The writing is direct and the advise practical. The stucture of the book also makes it useful as a desktop reference. It is the closest thing to a "Strunk and White for Legislative Drafters".

I found two main flaws:

1. The cross-references are strangley inocorrect - the author keeps sending us to "see further" in the wrong place.

2. The sections referring to specific clauses (definitions, penal clauses, tax clauses, clauses creating an administrative entity etc.) are not substantial enough.

However, this is still a book worth owning and reading for anyone who deals with legislative drafting, even for those who (like myself) draft in a language other than English.

Some of the flaws to a modern reader can be attributed to the era this was written in: There only was hedge magic, and the other White Wolf games weren't in their final stages. Fine. That makes the specific examples it cites fairly useless, but that's to be expected.

The real problem is that this only adds slightly to the definitions given in the Vampire basic game of each of the groups of hunters, padding with typically not-so-great "fiction." (It must be great to have friends at a game company, and not have to be a good writer to have your fiction published.)

What's good in here could be squeezed down into about eight pages. But even those concepts have been expanded in more recent supplements. Either stick with the core rules or buy "The Inquisition," "Project Twilight," "The Arcanum" and "Ghouls" (for the masterless ghouls who prey on the Kindred) as your interests dictate.

This book is not that bad. As another review said, it was written in the early stages of the other White Wolf games, so theres a lot of info thats not that meaningful anymore. What it is good as it as provoking your imagination to make your own Hunter characters. After all this is a Storyteller game, so it makes sense to make your own character using broad concepts to flesh it out. Overall, its just ok but not horrible.

This book is of major importance for every Hunters-Chronicle. It begins with a nice short-story you can use as a chronicle, followed by different methods and approaches to hunt vampires. You might be a Hunter by plain accident or by profession, anyway the book provides background information for you and/or your hunters organisation. What is known about supernatural beings? How to fight them? Etc. It contains new Merits&Flaws for mortals, some Thaumaturgy spells, psychic abilities and True Faith (though the latter is a bit too powerful in my opinion). It usually provides good overviews on all the various concepts. Nothing to reprove. Recommended for players and storytellers alike.

Color is such an important element in Mr. Scharf's work that it's difficult to believe this monograph was published without it. There is not a single color photograph aside from the cover. And the book is so tiny [Dimensions (in inches): 0.26 x 7.85 x 5.28] that color photographs wouldn't do Mr. Scharf's work justice anyway. I recommend that interested parties try to find a copy of one of his out-of-print books at their local library. Mr. Scharf's work is amazing, and well worth viewing in full color, as he intended it to be viewed.

The whimsical paintings of Kenny Scharf could never truly be captured on the pages of some book- but this one comes very close! It's the best I've seen in the genre of Pop Art books and has some very interesting interviews with Kenny. But the artwork speaks for itself!

As the author, I recommend the new 7th edition (1999), retitled "Moon Handbooks: Arizona." It offers many new sights and practicalities as well as a major revision of the old reliables.

The author is to be commended for writing about a an important event in our nation's history -- the formation of the Bill of Rights -- that has to date been the subject of very few book-length studies. While I liked much of the historical account, it seems to me that the treatment of James Madison's ideas was lacking in some respects.

Goldwin argues that Madison's principal purpose in proposing the Bill of Rights was political. Madison, Goldwin says, was concerned about Anti-Federalist opposition to the Constitution and the risk that the Anti-Federalists would succeed in calling a second constitutional convention that might undo all of the important structural features of the Constitution. Goldwin believes that Madison hoped to steal the Anti-Federalists' thunder by offering amendments whose substance was uncontroversial, but whose inclusion would help solidify support for the new Constitution in a public that was still nervous about the way it centralized national power.

Goldwin reinforces his argument about Madison's political motivations by suggesting that Madison regarded a Bill of Rights as being practically useless in preventing governments from encroaching on the liberties of its citizens. Instead, according to the author, Madison thought that the structural elements of the Constitution (separation of powers, bicameral legislature, etc.) afforded the best mechanism for securing rights against infringement by the majority. Goldwin goes so far as to suggest repeatedly that Madison was willing to propose a Bill of Rights precisely because he believed it would "leave the original Constitution unchanged . . . ." (p. 101; see also p. 153).

Goldwin may be right about Madison's political motivations in proposing a Bill of Rights; others have drawn similar conclusions. But the author's positive assessment of Madison's ideas about the intrinsic inefficacy of a Bill of Rights is unpersuasive. If Madison truly believed that including specific restraints on governmental power in a written constitution would do little directly to advance the cause of freedom, and that the Constitution as originally written would serve those ends well, in my view he was fundamentally mistaken. It is certainly true that the will of the majority would be frustrated less often if we had no Bill of Rights, or if the Judiciary had no power to enforce its provisions. But it is precisely for that reason that the freedoms set forth in the Bill of Rights would have been less secure if they had never been made a part of the Constitution.

In light of the widely held contemporary view that the Bill of Rights is an essential (even if sometimes misused) restraint on governmental power, this book would have been better if, instead of uncritically praising Madison's contrary view, Goldwin had subjected it to searching analysis. Madison's view of the role of the judiciary in enforcing the Bill of Rights, a subject not even broached in this book, would in my view be central to such an analysis. Raoul Berger pointed out in an article written several years ago that during the debates over the ratification of the original Constitution in Virginia, Madison joined John Marshall (who later became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court) in maintaining that the Judiciary had this power. And in his speech to the First Congress proposing a Bill of Rights, Madison (echoing Jefferson's sentiments in a letter written to him from France) asserted that "independent tribunals of justice will consider themselves in a peculiar manner the guardians of those rights." Madison's support for some form of judicial review is also evidenced in statements he made in the Philadelphia Convention and in The Federalist Nos. 39 and 44. Since Madison believed that the courts would have a large responsibility for enforcing the Bill of Rights, then a question which needs to be addressed is why he nevertheless regarded the amendments as a mere "parchment barrier." And what makes the other, structural elements of the Constitution which Madison looked to as the main protector of our liberties (e.g., separation of powers, limitation of Congress to enumerated powers) anything more than "parchment barriers" themselves? Finally, it would have been useful to consider not only what Madison thought immediately before and after the formation of the Constitution, but also the extent to which his views may have changed as he observed the Constitution in operation over the course of his long political career.

I also think that Goldwin's insistence that both the Federalists (including Madison) and the Anti-Federalists believed that the Amendments "changed nothing in the Constitution" (p. 177) is misleading. This characterization not only distorts the views of both groups and obscures their important philosophic differences, but also trivializes the subtantive import of the Bill of Rights. How can it be said, for example, that the privilege against self-incrimination set forth in the Fifth Amendment "changed nothing," when in its absence Congress would have been able to compel the defendant to testify in a federal criminal proceeding?

I know that Bruce G. Hallenbeck, Robert Bartholomew and William Brann co wrote this book with Paul. All in all a great read!

I found the book very good. What he did to her was horrible. It is not one of my favorite true crime books but I did like it. But have recommended to friends to read and would recommend it to more people. Very good book.

I don't feel this book was the best true crime I've ever read, but it certainly doesn't qualify as the worst, either. It doesn't deserve the single star that other reviewers have given it. While I agree that it's lacking in depth and detail, it is not boring or dry. I would have liked, however, to have read about both the killer's and the victim's backgrounds. I never really felt that I got to know any of the characters.

Unlike the other review I do feel the Author did a good job he told enough about the backgrounds and stuck with the story...I am an avid true crime book reader and many books i have read although they have been good they tend to drag on ...This story didn't the author got right down to the story giving the reader some background on each person...This story is really sad because what it tells you is that you never know a person...This women Farah thought she met the man of her dreams and winded up with this sick pathetic sadistic unfeeling lunatic...What Bob did to Farah was unspeakable and he deserves the worst possible sentence of life...This is a must read book !