I enjoy reading good children's books even though technically I've "outgrown" them. This one was very absorbing and a wonderful story that every child should read - or have read to them by a parent or relative or somebody, because adults can enjoy it and benefit from it as well.

I won't say anything about the story, but the characters are all very nice. Jimmy's sister is helpful, his teacher and friends are kind, and Jimmy is ultimately forgiving and goes on bravely - very good role-models for young readers to acquaint themselves with.

I don't know exactly what else to say except that I recommend this book very highly.

This book had such and impact on my life. No, I know no one who is blind and has a seeing-eye-dog. But still, I learned that everyday in life is a challenge and anything can be done by anyone, no matter who they are. I highly recommend this book to anyone, all ages. I read it in the 6th grade and am glad Amazon is here to help me find it again. EVERYONE READ THIS BOOK AND PASS IT ON TO YOUR CHILDREN!!!

I must say that I've rarely seen a book that has impacted so many people. I, too, read the book in elementary school, pulled out my dog-eared, brown 1958 hardcover version out of a box in the basement recently, and gave it to my 9-year-old. Needless to say, she loved it. She asked me whether James B. Garfield had written anything else. Unfortunately, an Amazon search brought up no additional books.

Follow My Leader is a great children's story.

A publishing event of the most signifigance for 1997. The long establisher bible for medical doctors and almost everyone in the field of medicine, is for the first time written specifically for the non-medical reader. Over 1500 pages covering diseases, causes, treatments, drugs etc. this is the finest 1 volume medical authority every home should have. A layman's medical book has been long overdue. Who but the editors of Merck Pharaceuticals could take on this daunting task. At AMAZON's discounted price of less then $21.00 the bargain in hard cover publishing. WE RATE IT A BEST BUY !!!!!!!!

This reference book is easy to use and understand. When I first leaned of this home edition version of the Merck manual I was hesitant. Over the years many books have been published that are medical in nature, some published by doctors, but the content is watered down or so vague that a layperson doesn't derive much information from it. Some books are actually condescending in attitude, some patronizing. So many books briefly skim symptoms and then caution to call a physician for more information.

Recently my son was diagnosed on the phone by our pediatrician with chicken pox and it was made clear that they did not want to see him for a physical exam. I was given a tiny bit of information by the office staff but was still curious for more information. I spent over an hour surfing the Internet looking for information but found watered down information, repeated many times over on multiple websites, including some written by physicians intended for laypeople to use. I looked at my parenting books written by doctors (one titled "The Portable Pediatrician", no less) and was still lacking any substantial information. When I consulted the Merck Manual home edition, (which I had forgotten I bought recently and had not yet used), I was surprised at the level of information given. There are many details that I had not found elsewhere, such as number of days from exposure to outbreak, how long it takes the pox to change from first appearance to crusted over, about how long the infection lasts, and treatment suggestions. Reasons why some children have a mild outbreak vs. a severe outbreak were even provided, something I had not found anywhere else.

The information here is not dumbed down in that it is not so vague that it is not useful. There is a lot of information here but it is written in a style for the layperson to understand. I appreciated the writing style, which presents information to the non-physician without putting on airs.

Anyone who, like me, prefers to gather information and learn about things rather than making a call or office visit to their doctor to get just one opinion will appreciate owning this book. At about 1500 pages it covers many illnesses and ailments. If you are interested in this book I suggest you buy it so that you have it at your fingertips 24 hours a day, for whatever may arise. I am not suggesting this take the place of a doctor, but I know from working with physicians that there are certain calls that are non-emergent in nature that are not appreciated when the office is closed!

If you are looking for a book about children's ailments that encompasses not only western medicine but lists an array of other treatment methods, I suggest Smart Medicine for a Healthier Child: A Practical A-To-Z Reference to Natural and Conventional Treatments for Infants and Children by Janet Zand. I found this to be an excellent companion to the Merck manual, home edition. The Merck manual gives more information about the disease or ailment itself through a Western medicine viewpoint while the Zand's books' specialty is sharing treatment options grouped by category (herbal, homeopathic, western, etc.).

Let me start with my own qualifications for reviewing this invaluable book: 25 years' editing and indexing of professional medical texts and reference books; 20 years of creating "translations from the medicalese" for the rest of us; 3 years as consulting reviewer for an online health publication.
In this work, I use both the "senior" Merck Manual, which is written for professionals (though many nonprofessionals have been referred to it by librarians and such), and this recently developed "home" version, which I can't praise highly enough. It is literally the first text I have encountered that provides essential medical information in terms the average educated person can understand, WITHOUT writing down to people. It covers all the basic diseases and conditions and many unusual ones, including prevention where prevention is possible. Clear, understandable charts cover such topics as common blood and laboratory tests. The index is superb, so finding things is easy, whether you are coming at the topic by way of some medical jawbreaker your doctor has mentioned (myocardial infarction) or by way of what most people call it (heart attack). Any household would benefit from having this reference on its bookshelves. Even as a professional, I look in this edition first and tackle "Papa Merck" or a specialized textbook only if I need more than the basic information.

Robert Strassler has done a remarkable editing job with Thucydides' Peloponnesian War. He has included three key features which provide the reader much luxury:

One, he has provided maps throughout the text, to the extent of repetition, to ensure that textual geographic references are always accompanied, in close proximity, cartographically.

Two, he has provided paragraph summaries on the margin throughout the work so that a reader, who has put the edition down for any length of time, may refresh their memories quickly by reading as many of these one to two sentence summaries as necessary.

Three, as Thucydides provides his narrative in chronological order, he must often leave one narrative to begin another. Strassler has provided a thread to follow each narrative through to its' end by way of footnotes.

These editorial enhancements greatly enrich the reading experience and would be a welcome addition to any historical text.

Thucydides, himself, presents the reader with a narrative unromanticized, strictly adhering to the events of the Peloponnesian War. His work possesses many passages that rivet the reader, but also contains areas where the sheer and voluminous recitation of fact can render one foggy. This is not a book for the light-hearted, though Strassler's editorial enhancements make for a pleasurable experience. It is, in short, a classic which has been classically edited.

Robert B. Strassler's edition of the famous Richard Crawley translation of Thucydides is a remarkable work, not only because of its intrinsic merit but also because it is quite simply unique. Mr. Strassler has provided the ultimate in critical apparatus, an exhaustive series of tools with which to understand and appreciate one of the great books of world civilisation. I have never seen anything like it. First of all, there is the index; if an index can be said to be a work of art, the Strassler index is a work of art in the way it organises and informs the text. Next there are the maps - dozens of them - not clumped together in the middle of the book or hidden away at the end, but strategically placed throughout the appropriate points in the text, right at the reader's fingertips when he or she needs them. The footnotes (yes footnotes, not those pesky and inconvenient endnotes!) would fill a small volume of their own and add immeasurably to one's understanding. And as if this were not enough, there are 11 appendices - short essays by prominent classical scholars on different aspects of the Greek world in the time of Thucydides, from "Athenian Government" and "Trireme Warfare" to "Religious Festivals" and "Classical Greek Currency." As far as I am concerned, the only problem with Mr. Strassler's edition is that is has made me greedy for more of the same - a similar edition of the Mahabharata, say, or Gibbon! Any takers?

I bought the Landmark Thucydides because it was the only hardback edition I could find. I was pleasantly surprised because it happens to be the best modern edition available. The editor, Robert Strasser, set out to make the most authoritative book on Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War, and I believe he has succeeded brilliantly.

Strasser uses Richard Crawley's translation, apparently revised and updated. In any case the text is very good, though Thucydides syntax is sometimes complex and even a bit confusing. Strasser uses marginal notes besides each paragraph to summarize the events described in the text. The most valuable additions are the maps- there are maps every few pages, illustrating the geography described in the text as needed. Other welcome additions are a timeline, breaking down the events of the book according to date, appendices covering topics such as Athenian and Spartan government, trireme construction, land and naval warfare in ancient times, and even an essay on the monetary units and religious festivals used in the ancient world. There is also an introduction, discussing both the text and the author in detail and in the context of their time. There is also a full and complete index. If you want Thucydides, this is the book to buy!

This book is a collection of theoretical summaries, reports, analyses, and strategies all quite useful to anyone interested in generating some thinking and action around change. The team of five writers (Peter Senge, Richard Ross, Bryan Smith, Charlotte Roberts, and Art Kleiner) provide some original work, but also serve as editors to a vast quantity of material drawn from practitioners, theorists, and writers in the field of organizational improvement. According to Senge, "great teams are learning organizations - groups of people who, over time, enhance their capacity to create what they truly desire to create." (p.18) This book is really about creating and building great teams. The learning organization develops its ability to reflect on, discuss, question, and change its current and past practices. To do this, people and groups in the organization need to meaningfully pursue the study and practice of the five disciplines - personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, and systems thinking.

The learning organization - Senge's vision for the productive, competitive, and efficient institutions of the future - is in a continuous state of change. Four fundamental questions continuously serve to check and guide a group's learning and improvement (see page 49): (1) Do you continuously test your experiences? ("Are you willing to examine and challenge your sacred cows - not just during crises, but in good times?") (2) Are you producing knowledge? ("Knowledge, in this case, means the capacity for effective action.") (3) Is knowledge shared? ("Is it accessible to all of the organization's members?") (4) Is the learning relevant? ("Is this learning aimed at the organization's core purpose?") If these questions represent the organization's compass, the five disciplines are its map.

Each of the five disciplines is explained, and elaborated in its own lengthy section of the book. In the section on "Systems Thinking" (a set of practices and perspectives, which views all aspects of life as inter-related and playing a role in some larger system), the authors build on the idea of feedback loops (reinforcing and balancing) and introduce five systems archetypes. They are: "fixes that backfire", "limits to growth", "shifting the burden", "tragedy of the commons", and "accidental adversaries". In the section on "Personal Mastery", the authors argue that learning starts with each person. For organizations to learn and improve, people within the organization (perhaps starting with its core leadership) must learn to reflect on and become aware of their own core beliefs and visions. In "Mental Models", the authors argue that learning organizations need to explore the assumptions and attitudes, which guide their institutional directions, practices, and strategies. Articles on scenario planning, the ladder of inference, the left-hand column, and balancing inquiry and advocacy offer practical strategies to investigate our personal mental models as well as those of others in the organization. In "Shared Vision", the authors make the case for the stakeholders of an organization to continually adapt their vision ("an image of a desired future"), values ("how we get to travel to where we want to go"), purpose ("what the organization is here to do"), and goals ("milestones we expect to reach before too long"). The section offers many strategies and perspectives on how to move an organization toward continuous reflection. In "Team Learning", the authors rely mostly on the work of William Isaacs and others, and make a case for educating organization members in the processes and skills of dialogue and skillful discussion.

This book is enlightening and informative. It has already found a place on my shelf for essential reference books.

Everyone who reads THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE comes away excited about the benefits of having a learning organization. Yet many get stuck in a rut as they try to implement what they learned in that superb book. THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE FIELD BOOK helps fill in that lack of understanding with dozens of questions, examples and exercises. You'll have a ball with this, even if you only use a little part to focus on where you need help. A great related book for building a learning organization is THE 2,000 PERCENT SOLUTION, which teaches a new thinking process that simplifies and speeds up learning for an organization. It also shows you where you need to get rid of old thinking that is holding you back. You should read and use both.

Bridging the gap between text and context, The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook offers everyone a deep and refreshing look at what work can be and should be. The authors ground their stories, examples, exercises in five conceptual touchstones--personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, and systems thinking. And these disciplines accurately reveal three core tasks in leadership: looking at self, developing others, and seeing the larger picture in order to chart a meaningful course. Stories enliven the ideas while examples and exercises offer practical models to use in any organization. Generous side margins, different colored ink, and graphic icons are visual treats as well as immediate graphic guides. And the narrative references to related issues make reading the book more intuitive, more interesting.

In fact, these physical details model the whole point of the book--that learning is essential for sustainable growth, for organizational and personal development.

"The Ultimate Competitive Advantage" provides business leaders with real-life examples and the rudder necessary to shift the course in a stormy, ever changing environment and find the most direct way to new opportunities. This is a useful toolset necessary to develop a winning business model in a globally competitive environment. The authors of this foremost book understand business models and how to make them a source of adequate competitive advantage. The primary idea of Don Mitchell and Carol Coles is simple and rather practical at the same time: improve the effectiveness of everything you do. The authors show how strategic innovation can emphasize your business from the stack and deliver stronger.

The book is well organized and the writing is clear and concise, all making for an informative and enjoyable read. It is an excellent book for a strategic planning point of view. It is an absolute necessity for the 21st century business owners and CEOs. The book is teaching you about Business Model Innovation and the ideas might become useful as your business direction changes. The book offers help to anyone looking to improve theirs chances for success. And it is quite readable. I highly recommend it for senior and mid-level managers, entrepreneurs, consultants, and business students.

Alexander Petrochenkov

Of all the books I've read on change management this is the most precise in its statement about how corporations need to manage the continuous innovation of their business model in order to survive and thrive in our global, competitive marketplace. Replete with real world examples of successful business model innovation, traps, and pitfalls, this clearly written book provides definitions, case studies, and "rules to live by."

Continually provide more benefits for your customers; ". . . business model obsolescence is the major unperceived opportunity for and threat to all businesses now" is the self-proclaimed "Big Idea" of this book. Indeed it is. From that theme, Mitchell and Coles go on to build an air-tight case for continuous business model improvement. And the business model is simply defined as the: Who, What, When, Where, Why, How, and How Much for your product or service. But the simplicity of this concept of a business model should not mislead the reader. There is a significant amount of introspection and work that a leadership team must go through to really understand the answers to these questions in order to map where they are today and what they might do to positively change the model.

Mitchell and Coles keep our interest through real live case studies as well as tracking the growth of a child's Lemonade Stand business. The book is divided into four major parts: 1 The Most Productive Areas for Business Model Innovation; 2. Provide Sustained Benefits for All Stakeholders; 3. Expand Business Model Innovation; and 4. Pursue Higher-Potential Business Model Improvement. Each of these sections use real life case studies and hypothetical Lemonade Stands to illustrate the business change management principles. Those examples also provide hope and encouragement to leadership teams in all kinds of businesses that they are not alone in keeping change management from becoming an oxymoron!

After reading this book, you will want to keep it handy for reference, ideas for new paths to explore, and to loan to others who seem simply not to "get it!" What I appreciated most was the honest focus on providing what customers and end users really want in a product or service. Starting there, we can drive our companies to greater achievements by continuous business model innovation. Rarely do I rate a book a five on a scale of five, but Mitchell and Coles get that rating for The Ultimate Competitive Advantage!

Dave Kinnear, CEO, dbkAssociates, Inc.

The ultimate competitive advantage is defined as being the best at business model innovation. The winners will be masters of an ongoing business model change as only change is a constant in today's business environment. In fact we already meet some of the winners as the authors came to this conclusion via a ten year research program that looked for a common thread behind successes of 100 top performing companies.

The book offers one of the best sets of real life examples and cases in the recent business literature, all with insightful observations by the authors. The examples range from the smallest of businesses to GM's and Enron's of this world (and from one concise passage I learned about the business model fundamentals of the US steel industry turn-around). Also, there is a new look at the changing virtues of leveraging equity with debt and CAPM.

For me the most valuable in this book is the attention given to rules of dealing with a company's stakeholders. It's high time that stakeholders received this kind of coverage in a work on competitive advantage ! The 100 leading companies' innovations stemmed from deep interest in stakeholders needs. As the authors state - a bad business model will usually favor a few stakeholders at the expense of others thus causing cooperation to decline. If one were to structure the book in another way, alocating one chapter to what can be done for and with each stakeholders' group to enhance business model might be an option for this reader (customers, shareholders, employees, suppliers, lenders).

The book is a call for thinking innovation as an every day job. Clearly, if new business model elements are thought about and tested on a continuous basis there is a better chance that something of a breakthrough calibre will be decided even at annual strategic meetings.

I love physics, but I used to think that it was difficult. Most authors of physics books are too smart to explain it to other people. Feynman is one of the few who realized that not every student is brilliant and that some of us never paid attention during calculus classes - my observation is that people who really like physics don't like mathematics. He takes his time explaining calculus and he pays attention to the smaller steps that in other books are neglected since the author seems to think that readers can do these steps by themselves. We don't, we are stupid!

Feynman's famous three-volume set is an edited set based on his lectures to the introductory physics classes at Caltech, which are widely considered to be among the best lecture series ever published. Feynman takes a different approach from the typical introductory physics textbook. His point of departure perhaps assumes a higher level of mathematical sophistication than most introductory or survey texts. Also, his choice of topics is not as broad and comprehensive as many modern surveys of introductory physics. What makes Feynman's work remarkable is the his manner of explaining physical principles underlying a topic, instead of simply presenting the traditional expression of a rule and its formal mathematical expression. When one completes reading a section of Feynman's lecture, if one has the mathematical sophistication one will obtain a "feel" for how the topic fits in the broad context of physics as a whole. As a note of caution: most introductory physics surveys do not present material with use of matrix mathematics. Feynman assumes familiarity with the basics of matrix algebra, and this fact makes his presentation challenging to many students. In various sources I have read that his lectures were well attended by students in the upper division portion of their education and many graduate students and faculty, while the freshman audience intended may have been poor. That reflects the series as being a high-level conceptual overview reflecting the unified structure of physics. Perhaps not suitable for introductory physics instruction to any but the most advanced students.

Unlike my fellow reviewer above (below?) I *have* a PhD in physics, yet these books taught me more basic physics than I ever learnt in 4 years of undergrad. The quantum mechanics book is especially clear...I honestly wish my first 1st year phyics lecturer had of simply said 'read Feymnam'..I would have learnt so much more than I ever did in lectures/other texts. Give these books to a child starting science/maths and let them grow up using it and learning from it...there could be no better gift.

Written by a husband and wife team, PC Hardware in a Nutshell proves that technical books don't have to be dry. This book touches all the bases that you'd expect in a PC book but it goes much further. Beyond the purely technical stuff it focuses on what you need to know to make good purchase and upgrade decisions, and it's obvious that these people know what they're talking about. I bought this book intending to use it as a reference but this is a very easy book to get into as a straight-thru read. It's sometimes funny, at times outrageous, and never boring. It's refreshing to read something that ignores all the marketing hype. When a product is great, they say so. When a product sucks, they tell you that too.

My wife bought me this book for Christmas. I was impressed just flipping through the book and reading random sections so I decided to sit down and read it cover to cover. This is clearly the best PC hardware book on the market. Solid coverage, factually correct, and the opinions expressed are never contrary to my own experience. It's not as big as those huge compendium PC books with twenty different authors but there's more real information in it. If you're only going to buy one PC hardware book this is the one to get.

I'm getting ready to do a major upgrade of my home system. It's been a few years since I'd done much work inside a PC so I ordered this book to catch up on what I'd forgotten about. I'm glad I took the time to read it. This book recommends stuff by name, and that advice turns out to be on target every time. I was planning to buy an HP CD burner. Not the best choice says this book. It recommends buying a Plextor, which I'd never heard of. So I searched the Internet for hours reading about Plextor and HP CD burners and it turns out the authors are right. Plextor makes the best burners on the market and lots of people have problems with HP burners particularly with Win2000. And to top it off the Plextors are cheaper than the HPs. If you're planning to buy, build, or upgrade a system, buy this book. It'll save you its price many times over.

Graves writes with the sparse, absolutely precise prose of a Latin scholar. This alone makes it worthy of recommendation; the style 'classic' on its own. Claudius is an engaging figure. Born with a number of physical birth defects, he survives in the rarified and frequently lethal atmosphere of the imperial court. He lived in the time of the great Augustus, the brutal and lacivious Tiberius and the totally mad Caligula. The malicious thread of Livia, Augustus' consort and a woman who was surely an early incarnation of Lucretia Borgia, runs through the three reigns. With a host of engaging cameos, the book is essentially describing a tragedy, the slow descent of the first true superpower of the West into self-destruction. If you accept that the USA is the sole remaining superpower, then many of the horrors and follies of the recent past and present are illuminated through this book. For the desparate attempts to regain the Eagles of the Roman regiments lost in Germany, read the rebuilding of the US Armed Forces after Vietnam. Meditate on the real dangers to freedom when a state is perceived by its citizens as the best. Notice how the power of the chief executive is always increasing, and always more ill-used. And how an appetite for spectacle and violence can keep even an educated population subjugated and uncaring of the worst excesses of the ruling elite. This book is really, really important. It is probably the most accessible discussion of power and how a Republic can turn into an Empire. And how an Empire can tear itself apart.

I first found "I, Claudius" in my school library when I was 15, and 7 years later it is still my favorite book. This is Roman hstory from a unique yet accessible point of view. I believe Graves wrote it based on his translation of Suetonius's "Twelve Caesars" (which is quite an enjoyable read in itself,) and as Suetonius seemed to be the "National Enquirer" of Roman historians, 'I, Claudius" and its companion piece, "Claudius the God" are not only replete with fascinating trivial bits of the Roman Empire's history, but wonderfully full of human interest aspects. This book makes two-thousand-year-old history live and breath today. The 14 or so hour long television adaptation is also marvelous, although I was glad to have read both books beforehand because it made the intricate palace/power/family relationships easier to decipher. Overall, a perfect ten by which one can judge all other historical reality-fiction.

There isn't a single negative comment that can be raised against Robert Graves' magnum opus, the "I, Claudius" series. The work is sublime, transcendent, spectacularly well-written...and always engaging. Every page is dripping with humor and intrigue, kings and pretenders, savages and aesthetes. This is the quintessential work by an amazing classicist, scholar and man.

"I, Claudius" recounts Imperial Rome (from Augustus to Nero) from the perspective of a stuttering, half-lamed, studied dim-wit, the Emperor Claudius. Using Suetonius and Tacitus as his main sources, Graves constructs a marvelous narrative of the precocious and turbulent time that was Rome's imperial birth, childhood and adolescence. Certainly, Octavian (later Augustus) was the father of Imperial Rome, but it is with plots and debauches of subsequent rulers that Graves' story really comes alive.

At the close of the first book, we're presented with the death of the completely deranged, self-styled god, Caligula, and the rise to power, as long prophesied, of Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus (Claudius), the "fool" of the ancient Claudian family, the stammerer...and, at long last, the Emperor of Rome!

Reading Tacitus and Suetonius, it's easy to see why Graves would be inspired to fictionalize such a history. The pages...these so-called histories read like tabloid sensations, military annals and superstitious prayer books all rolled into one. Graves does a marvelous job of capturing the essence of one of the most famous periods in Western history.

Livy, Tacitus, Suetonius, Pollio: eat your heart out. Graves wins the day!

This is one of my two favorite Spenser books (The other is A Savage Place.) Early Autumn was the first Parker book I ever read and also the first suspense/mystery. My parents and brothers all read Spenser but I shunned them, preferring scifi. I was desparate for a read one summer night and my mother pressed this on me, saying "You'll like this if you just give it a chance" I was 15 and I read it that night, reporting back to her bedroom and saying, "Next Book! More! More!"

This book is about Spenser's surrogate fathering of a lost 15 year old boy named Paul who is a pawn in his own life. It is sort of a coming of age novel, but really not because it is told from Spenser's perspective like all the Spenser books.

This is one of my favorite books of all time. I highly recommend it to any Spenser fan or to any one who remembers 15 and that lost in your own life feeling.

This is the seventh novel in Robert B. Parker's Spenser series and by now it is quite clear that whenever you start one of these stories the question is what is the new twist this time around. You can never call one of these novels an unconventional Spenser novel because they all tend to be unique in some key way. in "Early Autumn" our hero is hired by Patti Giacomin to find her son Paul, kidnapped by his father. Spenser finds Paul almost immediately and it quickly becomes clear that neither parent really cares about the boy, who is just a pawn in the wake of an ugly divorce. Paul needs someone to teach him, well, just about everything (except how to shrug; the kid does that really well in response to every question asked by Spenser). "Early Autumn," a metaphor for a 15-year old kid who has to grow up really fast, finds Spenser talking more than any of the previous books, although at the end his detective skills will again come into play. A large chunk of the book is Spenser and Paul talking about a whole bunch of different topics. In doing so, Spenser explains his view of the world, a task usually left to Susan Silverman. There is also an unforgettable twist as Hawk lends a hand at a key moment. As always, Parker's novels are quick reads, perfect for commuting or nice hot baths.

This is my first Spenser novel and my first Robert B. Parker novel. Parker's writing style is sparse, quick and fun. It's an easy read and so far, thoroughly enjoyable. Last night A&E aired Thin Air, a made for TV Spencer movie. I was going from watching spencer to reading spencer. Robert B. Parker now ranks up there with my other favorite authors, Trevanian, Conor Creggan and Donald E. Westlake. I'm glad that I discovered Parker so late as there is so many old books I can back and read!

Robert Morgan had fame thrust upon him for being the pilot of arguably the first air crew to complete the obigatory 25 missions alive and in one piece. The Memphis Belle flew early on in the war, without the benefit of effective long-range fighter escort, a time of heavy losses for the US 8th Air Force, and the US government, looking for a way to publicize the successes of the US bombing campaign, decided to put together a film about one crew--the Memphis Belle was selected. William Wyler masterfully put together one of the finest documentaries of World War II, and a legend was born. In this respect, Morgan was somewhat of an accidental legend, as was his plane. However, Morgan's willingness to return to combat as a pilot of a B-29 in the Pacific when he could have taken it easy and rested on his laurels, proves him to be a man of true heroic qualities. This book deserves to be read, if for no other reason that that it is written by a man who experienced aerial combat in both theaters of combat in World War II. Morgan and his co-writer have done a masterful job of telling the story of what it was like to be a bomber pilot in World War II. The human element is there as well, as Morgan reflects on his personal successes and failures, on his agony at writing letters to the families of crewmen shot down, of his coming to know God after being a Hell-raiser, his problems with alcohol and a failed business, and eventual success and contentment later in life. The Memphis Belle and her crew are living legends, and the story Robert Morgan has to tell goes way beyond a surface treatment of that legend. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in the true story of the Memphis Belle, and anyone who simply likes a good biography, honestly told.

This book was not a typical day by day look at the missions this plane flew. It was a review of Bob Morgan's life before, during, and after the war. He analyzes, with humor, his life before he entered the Army Air Forces; the search for love after his mother died; his baptism to war; the endless tour of the plane and crew after their 25th mission; his role in the Pacific theater; and how he handled life after the war. The book is excellently written and has enough humor to keep the reader smiling. But, there is enough to make one know that war was serious and Bob Morgan certainly lets you know that war is deadly serious.

He tells how war changed his life and talks about the treatment the soldiers faced after the war. Finally, he describes the ghosts he chased and drowned in drink trying to forget. And, he sadly chronicles the near fate of the Memphis Belle and how the US nearly relegated the plane to the scrap heap.

Just an incredible book. I highly recommend it.

Reading the bio of Col Bob Morgan has made history come alive for me. I have never been much of a military history buff, but this book was worth reading. Anyone who had family serve in the Air Corps in WWII should read this book. It is well written by a man who states that the Memphis Belle may be the most famous B 17 ever but she was not the only one and her story is the story of all the Air Corps not just one crew. Bless them all!