Any person or small group of people in business for themselves should apply the basic principals that this gentleman, Peter Montoya, suggests. Simply think of any celebrity or success, and their "brand" labels them immediately. Included in examples given in the book are Michael Jordan, Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey, but also consider Jim Carey, he stuck with his outlandish antics through the years and marketed those antics - look where he is. Consider Thomas Kinkade, he stuck to painting light, look what he's known for - "The Painter of Light". A last example is Weird Al Yanchovic - enough said in the name.

This book is easy to read and easy to apply with an advertising company available to help put its applications into the life and future of your self and your business.

Not being one trained in marketing, I hoped Peter Montoya's book would guide me in developing a marketing strategy for my small business. It did much more than that. I now see how every area of my life influences my personal brand whether I am aware of the principles and insights in Peter's book or not. It has inspired me to take action.

I expected a serious book such as this to be work to read but it entertained me throughout. I particularly enjoyed the insight into why the personal brand of a person like Martha Stewart is vulnerable to revelations inconsistent with their image.

Peter really gets to the point of self-differentiation with his newest book. Personal branding is a topic the author knows well and shares with the reader the essential how to's. The topic is timely as well as easy to follow. This is a MUST HAVE book on how to MARKET. It should be the only book you read on Marketing.

Nobody writes more evocatively or enthusiastically about 17th-century Holland as Simon Schama. His 1987 masterpiece of interpretive social history, The Embarrassment of Riches, brought that age throbbingly to life. Throughout this hefty tome Schama is, as the title suggests, desperately keen to see through Rembrandt's eyes. He achieves, with a verbal abundance and an appreciative delight of textures, the world Rembrandt's paintings so lucidly evoke. The chapter entitled Amsterdam Anatomised which describes the port-city, in probably the most eventful era in the entire history of art, the Dutch Golden Age, is itself worth the price of admission.Rembrandt himself steps on centre-stage only on page 202. Schama devotes the first 200 pages to Peter Paul Reubens the Flemish painter ( this could easily have been an entire book on its own! ) as Schama contends, convincingly, that it is impossible to understand Rembrandt unless we understand his desire to emulate Reubens. Why does Rembrandt matter? To Schama and to us? Because, as Schama affirms, Rembrandt is the greatest painter of the human experience ever to have lived - "Which is why he will always speak across the centuries to those for whom art might be something other than the quest for ideal forms; to the unnumbered legions of damaged humanity who recognise, instinctively and with gratitude, Rembrandt's vision of our fallen race, with all its flaws and infirmities squarely on view, as a proper subject for picturing, and, more important, as worthy of love, of saving grace." Eschewing the arid dogmas of academia that infect and stultify art biographies, Schama celebrates all his emotions and beliefs about Rembrandt in this overlong and memorable book. It should be essential reading for anyone who has ever set eyes upon a work by Rembrandt. Take a bow, Simon Schama.

Rembrandt left behind more self-portraits than any artist before or since. With his new book Rembrandt's Eyes, historian Simon Schama has added a new portrait of the artist, this one in meticulously and exhaustively researched, rhapsodically written prose.

Schama's heavy tome makes every attempt to be a definitive work on the painter, and it succeeds. First and foremost it is a narrative of the life and work of Rembrandt van Rijn, although calling it a "biography" somehow sounds reductive. It is equal parts analysis of Rembrandt's painting, documentation of his life, and history of seventeenth century Holland, so sections of the book can be read with profit by anyone studying the artist, his art, or the social history of the times.

The Rembrandt of Schama's book is a complex man, with hubris, greed and an enormous talent for portraiture. Early on he takes the monumentally cocky step of signing only his first name -- no "van Rijn" -- as if he knew his paintings would be studied for centuries to come. His understanding of humans and their personae was without parallel, Schama writes. "No painter would ever understand the theatricality of social life as well as Rembrandt. He saw the actors in men and the men in actors."

As his title suggests, Schama finds special messages in the eyes of Rembrandt's subjects. He notes that in art education painters were taught to put special care into their depiction of the whites of eyes, yet in many of Rembrandt's works -- Schama points to "The Artist in his Studio" (1629) -- the eyes are dull, dark pits. "When Rembrandt made eyes," Schama says, "he did so purposefully," and so in Rembrandt's Eyes he continually returns to the haunting eyes the painter painted.

Most of all, Schama's book is a meditative, entranced attempt to get behind the faces we see in Rembrandt's self-portraits. Schama reads Rembrandt's self-portraits in various costumes -- as a merchant, as a soldier, for example -- as indications of his elusiveness, as if each portrait were meant to conceal rather than reveal its subject. In analysis of one self-portrait, Schama writes that the painter "has disappeared inside his persona," inscrutable beyond the dead dark eyes of the painting. The artist's disguise hides his true self, and the critic is left to speculate. It seems that in this case Schama is grasping (as art historians must) at facts and attitudes that can never be certainly known, constructing and imputing elaborate guesses that fail precisely because the painter has succeeded.

Schama's reverence for Rembrandt and art in general winds up being both a virtue and a vice. The book begins with an epigraph from Paul Valery: "We should apologize for daring to speak about painting." It is difficult to imagine a guide through this world who is more well-versed and in love with his subject. But do we really want our biographers to be respectful to the point of silence? Nobody wants to learn about the masters from a guide who finds them too sublime to defile with comment. Granted, a hefty book like this is hardly "silence," but Schama's hushed tones do get distracting.

This book has the virtue of being as close to exhaustive about its subject as one could hope. There is little psychological interpretation that Schama leaves undone, and little consequential biographical detail that he leaves unmentioned. Rembrandt's Eyes, a mammoth book that takes on with grace the equally mammoth task of explaining what is behind the brooding eyes of Rembrandt's portraits, will be a definitive work on the painter and his work.

Simon Schama's REMBRANDT'S EYES is undoubtedly one of the authoritative works on Rembrandt's life and paintings. Schama vividly depicts the unparalled and tortured genius of Rembrandt, a man who was brilliant in success and even more so during tragedy. To understand Rembrandt's paintings is to understand the man behind each brushstroke: strong-willed, prideful, and uncompromising in his art. Schama conveys the essence of Rembrandt with such force and effectiveness that we cannot help but appreciate Rembrandt's tragic life and artistic genius.

REMBRANDT'S EYES contains beautiful illustrations of all of Rembrandt's major works; the analysis of each is detailed, clear, and interesting. Through the course of the book, you will be fascinated by Rembrandt's self-portraits and the level of understanding with which he painted himself. Perhaps no other artist has given us such a powerful autobiography without the use of a single written word. This deep understanding of the human soul is evident in all of his works. Schama explains Rembrandt's paintings and his techniques in a comprehensive and powerful manner. If you are interested at all in the truly unique and fascinating genius of Rembrandt, REMBRANDT'S EYES is a must.

I would highly recommend REMBRANDT'S EYES to any person interested in art history, Dutch painting, or just Rembrandt. This book also serves as a powerful autobiography of a man with a very interesting story. Be forewarned though: this book is very long, and putting it down may be hard.

This covers only the basic concepts .UIX is completely omitted.
Coverage of BC4J is good.

I have to be honest, when I first picked up this heavy
book (with two hands mind you) I sighed at noticing it was almost 1000
pages. Those discouraging feelings were short lived after a quick look at
the Table of Contents.

The book accurately delivers everything a developer would need to get
started in writing and designing production quality applications. I cannot
say enough about how well organized the content and examples are with this
book. Below are only a small handful of the reasons I will be recommending
this book to my colleagues.

1.) Great flow. Many books with multiple authors don't effectively flow. In
some cases, the authors often contradict each other. Not the case with this
book. The writing style is extremely consistant.
2.) In depth coverage on BC4J, application development methodologies with
JDeveloper, debugging, Java Client / JSP development, and deployment
considerations.
3.) The examples are first-rate. All of the examples accurately clarify the
subject matter.
4.) It covers EVERYTHING you would need to know and nothing more.

In short, this book is the most efficient way to learn Oracle JDeveloper.

Regards,
-- jeff
---------------------------------------
Jeffrey Hunter, OCP
Senior Database Administrator..

i have only studied the parts on oracle's business components for java. the concepts and the use of bc4j are explained very good and useful for people who are not j2ee-experts.
it helps me alot in developing bc4j-based applications.

trevi

The reason I only gave this book 4 stars is because of out of the 5 Edith Nesbit Books I have read so far...this is my least favourite. I think it is beacuase of how it is written. It, to me, was lacking something all the other books she wrote have. I also did not particularly enjoy the beginning of the book, as it started out dull etc. But as it went on...I fell in love with the four children. One thing that is very evident in this book is the thing of good magic. Evrything thing seems to be filled with it, therefore making the story all the better and all more exciting. I loved how it showed each of there adventures, and each of there luck with the magic ring. I also got a few laughs out of the children's injinuity. This is truly a classic, but not my favourite Nesbit book. It certainly is worth getting though.

Although written around a century ago, this still remains one of the great classics of Children's literature. I have not read Harry Potter yet, but I would suspect this book is at least comparable. The plot is actually fairly complex -- there's humor, drama, romance, and magic. It can be read by both children and adults and both will enjoy it.

The story deals with a number of children who find a magic ring that can make your wishes come true. But this only gives a small idea of the wonders that lie within.

Other great Nesbit works -- Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet.

My children and I have been reading this as our bedtime book. My son, age 8, was going to read it himself, but we soon found his sister, age 6, wanted me to read it instead (so I could do the "voices") so it has been turned into the nightly story. The characters: Gerald, Kathleen, and Jimmy are each drawn clearly and individually. My children are fascinated with Gerald's way of speaking as though he were telling a story. And they love Kathleen's way of alternating between being practical and yet longing for all things "magical". Jimmy is funny and endearing, as he is at that age of Not believing and yet eager for adventure. Their friend Mabel is full of mystery and make-believe and soon pulls them into a grand escapade. The author is able to vividly paint each person and each scene. It is with great reluctance we put the book down after a couple of chapters each night, wanting to finish all at once, but wanting the magic to last a little longer. When we finished, we all decided it was one of our favorites. Extremely well written. I did not find even the beginning dull or slow. From start to finish, this is one of the best children's books I've found. And we've read very many.

Flash MX Application & Interface Design explores advanced flash navigations built with Flash MX. The first chapter of the book details everything you'd ever want or need to know about pre-loading. The last chapter contains some handy tips for dealing with Flash video. The meat of the book covers advanced navigations built with flash-sometimes so advanced it borders on useless. However, the value is not so much in what the authors built using Flash, but how they built it using actionscript.

Some authors from the book obviously assume their readers possess expert-level knowledge of OOP, classes, inheritance, and creating objects. As I waded through a couple of scripts, I felt as if the authors expected a certain level of familiarity with OOP from me. In addition, the examples in the book are quite complex. If a reader wishes to take the examples and use the lessons found within them, he or she will either need extraordinary persistence or advanced scripting skills.

Nevertheless, the book contains a wealth of code for the advanced scripter; enough to keep an enthusiastic reader busy for many weeks. The book also showcased the drawing API through several chapters and gives great coverage of creating text fields in Flash MX. I enjoyed the varied perspectives offered by the different authors, particularly the chapter related to using an XML document to populate an interface/navigation.

i haven't seen a single book that sells the role flash mx should play in interface design and applications development as this one.

a definite must have for every designer/developer.

note: if you don't even read it... display it proudly on your shelf.

At first I have to admit when I seen this title, I thought hmmmm a book about flash and designing, can't be too interesting, but after reading it and lookinig at the case studies, I quickly changed my mind. I have to say this is one amazing book. If your a flash designer, then this book is a must! It has case studies from preloaders (ah you say whats the big deal with that?) believe me, just the prloaders alone are worth the price of the book, then it goes into how to make a website that is not just appealing visually but some totally amazing coding to go with it, then it goes into projects like the totally insane family tree (I have yet to see anything coded or visually appealing as this project is, you have to see this one to believe it), then how to use xml to create an insane directory (or it can be used as a menu) then comes php (Ok this is where it starts to go into orbit, a full website thats easy to navigate and extremly eye appealing). You want stickiness? check out the growing plant case study. Unbelievable project! then also theres the t-shirt designing art program (which can be converted into an online art program for various purposes) and also the use of video (now this is not just a normal video case study) on the side it shows you what steps a karate guy is making top view in graphics as the karate guy does his moves (one great how to do karate tutorial for online) which can also be converted into other things as well. So there you have it a book jammed packed full of totally insane case studies. Some have surpassed anything Ive seen yet! I was thikning of giving this book a 4 star rating when I got about halfway through it, I have no choice but to give it a 5 star rating, it's just way to good not too.
If your a flash designer or just a flash programmer, you need this book!

Tillich's ultimate concern is what determines our being or non-being. The "shock of nonbeing" and the ensuing anxiety allows Tillich to categorize three types of anxiety (fate and death, emptiness, and guilt). I thought his history of anxiety, starting with the Stoics ("the only real alternative to Christianity in the Western world") was remarkable (though at times a rough read). Influenced by Heidegger and Kierkegaard("to confront his existence alone") he drives on to the inevitable search for God. For Tillich, the "Courage to Be" is partly the courage to despair, and avoid the "Neurosis is a away of avoiding non-being by avoiding being". He is also influenced by Freud and psychoanalysis (called "depth psychology" in the book), which in our day of Prozac and behavioral psychology is refreshing.

The nature of the discussions, being, nonbeing, subjectivity, objectivity make for difficult reading with double negatives (eg. "Nonbeing is no threat because finite being is, in the last analysis, nonbeing"). If one can wade through the language, there a lot of insight.

I first read this book in high school, then in seminary, in graduate psychology classes, and several times since then. Each time I read it I gain insight and growth. Tillich will challenge your intellect and force you to think. He defines courage in a way that will change you if you take it to heart. This is a book that you will need to read several times to apperciate it's depth, but it is well worth it. I often feel I obtain a higher leval of consciousness and often I feel in an altered state after reading and pondering Tillich's writting. Tillich outlines fundemental concepts for existentialist and modern theology. Starting with Tillich's books of sermon is a good work up to this book.

This book has more good ideas in it than clam chowder has calories. It's packed into every page, every line. Tillich is concerned with how the question of finding the courage to face up to existential doubts about death, meaninglessness, and guilt are tied to the ontological questions of being versus nonbeing. How can we affirm our existence when it seems so temporary, meaningless and full of moral failure? Tillich explores with incredible freshness and insight age old strategies, from Spinoza to the Stoics (his discussion of the Stoics alone is worth the price of the book). He gives a brilliant account of how people find the courage to overcome existential anxiety through particpation in groups and through individual strategies like existentialism. Finally, he explores the theological implications in a way that may challenge anyone who has stereotyped Tillich as a mouthpiece for Christianity. The book is excellently written, never dumbed down but always graspable. He also litters the book with brilliant asides on subjects like the history of existential angst and its relations to social relations and a great exploration of existential art. Don't pass this one up.

Designed for the intermediate users of Windows XP, this book, "Peter Norton's Complete Guide to Windows XP" is well-written and well-detailed.
With the analyses that covered both the Home and the Professional editions of Windows XP, it contains every information any intermediate user of the software would need. However, the more acquainted a user of this book is with any of the Windows 9x editions, the easier he or she will find this book. Even power-users appreciate the helpful annotations that are found in most of the sections.
But given the listed price of this book, it is a shame that Norton did not back it up with a CD-ROM. Nearly all comparable texts come with attached easy-to-use CD-ROMs, which serve as comprehensive e-books. And although that I still agree that this is a good book, I will say that its value for money ranks lower than those of many comparable texts that come with CD-ROMs.

Peter Norton's Complete Guide To Windows XP will introduce and discuss all of the new XP features in a style that is both conceptual and informative. Topics include why and when to upgrade to XP and if so, how to do it, understanding services and their configurations, explanation of the new internet options, such as third party cookie alert, firewalls, and web publishing wizard. Value information included on registry configurations and why the configurations work as they do, networking topics and integration ideas for home networks as well as explanations about using the networking wizards and understanding how XP works with software and hardware.

I purchased this book because Win XP Professional as it is preinstalled is very slow and I sought answers on how to enhance performance. This book had the most thorough section on performance enhancement which I followed with great success. I did have one problem and emailed the author who was kind enough to respond and solve it.

This is one of those books that makes you wonder if anyone attempted to proof or edit it before publication. A couple of the exercises referred to in the workouts cannot be found in the exercise descriptions. Sometimes, the written descriptions of the exercises contradict the accompanying photographs. Don't get me wrong, the routines provide tough and credible workouts. But reading the book requires some interpretation and assumptions.

This book gives a simple but effective way to get in shape, using calisthetics, weights, running and boxing to achieve it. It offers three levels of training, all basically the same format but with different intensity levels.
I have used this book several times over the last 2 years and enjoy the workouts. I break up the daily routines into 3 segments-the calisthetic part in the morning, the weights in the afternoon and the ad work in the evening. On running days, a similar pattern-running in the morning, weights at lunch and ab work in the evening. The routines don't take long that way but adds to fat-burning and muscle-building without exhaustion.
There are some negative points: they show exercises that they don't use and suggest exercises that they don't show.
But overall, I recommend this book to everyone who wants to get in shape without joining a gym.

I bought this book 2 years ago and still use the routines. This is a good book for beginner to intermediate trainers who want variety. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to get in shape quickly and effectively.

I read Tarot professionally and have studied it for 32 years. I also collect decks and have over 200 different ones...so far. While I do not use this deck, it is one that stands out in my mind and I like it quite a lot. The bright sunset colors the artist used and the subtle black outlines of the pictures lend a stained glass look to the cards. There is a lot of turquoise, purple, magenta, and bright pink in these cards that one doesn't often see in the more common or popular decks. I go back and forth in my mind trying to decide if it is cloying or a fantasy touch of innovation. Some of the characters have a Botticelli look to them. Most of the men have long hair and a medieval look, but inexplicably the Emperor seems to have just come from the barber. There are far too many cherubs on these cards to suit my taste and they don't seem to have much rhyme or reason to them, just popping in there where you don't expect them, like leaning over the scaffold on the Hanged Man card, sticking up out of the goblet on the Ace of Cups, or four of the chubby little rascals flying around the solar disk on The Sun card, but I'm sure others will enjoy them. The illustrations are for the most part quite striking and always positive. The pips are all illustrated as well as the major arcana. There is a Judeo-Christian thread of symbolism but it is not overwhelming. The more traditional Death and Devil cards have been changed into Transition and Materialism, respectively. The Fool, dressed in magenta and pink stands at a purple crossroad with a tuquoise sea and white chalk cliffs in the distance with a Spuds MacKenzie look-alike at his feet, the symbol being changed it seems from the more traditional carefree naivte to cautious contemplation of the road not taken, but still the artwork is GOOD and all of the cards are engaging. I really love the suit of Wands which features oak staves complete with green oak leaves and sometimes acorns. The artist and the designer have given refreshingly new viewpoints while also maintaining imagery that will be familiar to those experienced with Tarot. The very fact of the different imagery encourages study and meditation. All in all this is a most worthy deck.

Totally different from the original Rider-Waite. The color picutre has bring you to the more spirtual. Enjoy! I would recommand to use the Connolly Tarot Deck to bring your journey.

I've been reading Tarot for over 30 years and since the early 90's I have insisted that all of my students use this deck. The illustrations are richly detailed without being "noisy". The colors give strong vibrational input and the images are not so overly "styled" as to be useless. I know some Pagans will hesitate because of some of the Christian images, but within the context of a primarily Judeo-Christian culture, I find them useful and descriptive of most of the "seeking" public. The fact that the "Devil" is now "Materialism", and "Death" is "Transformation", makes them particularly useful in reading for the public. I've seen clients nearly faint at the sight of either card and it can be nearly impossible to convince some of them that they aren't doomed or cursed. Overall, I find this the most useable deck for teaching and reading.

I'd been dying to read this book since I first heard Rosselson's song Ballad of a Spycatcher (basically the plot and best lines of Peter Wright's book). The book more than lived up to expectations. Although the style is sometimes dry and methodical, for the most part Wright takes the reader from the early "flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants" stages of his work in counterintelligence as his branch of MI5 takes on a Soviet spy network 15 times its size, through the middle years when brilliant inventions and tactics are leaked to the Russians by an unknown, high-level source, through his heartbreaking autumn years when proving or disproving suspicions means long interrogations that can ruin the reputations of good men or let traitors slip away. Wright is a great guide through the arcane world of real MI5 work, and he has a splendidly British sense of humor that breaks the tension when needed. This book totally changed the way I thought of the British Secret Service.

After the first hundred or so pages, this book is non-stop thriller- similar to the best investigative journalism. This is the sort of specific insight history that prefigures the current global standoffs. As such it speaks reams to how the two former cold war superpowers continue to function on outdated paradigms for intelligence and espionage. We are not really certain if the former Soviet Union and its subparts are indeed, as they urge, our allies. The current state of global affairs indicates our lack of adequate information and comprehension of the dynamics of the so-called `New World {dis?} Order.'

`Spycatcher' reveals how extensively the KGB infiltrated the government and secret services of post WWII Great Britain. Much of the second half of the twentieth century's divided loyalties were born in the 30's and 40's when many of the Western intelligentsia in Britain and to some degree in the states supported Marxist ideals and the Soviet system. The most dramatic recruitment occurred in the 30's at Oxford. There, a group of `Apostles,' an elite, upperclass group of homosexual males insinuated themselves into the government to become the scourge of the reputation of the once-superior British secret service. Three of the infamous Oxford 5 would defect to the Soviet Union; Maclean and Burgess in the early 50's, and Philby, who prevailed through one interrogation, that was really nothing more than a cover up according to Wright, defected later. The 4th spy, Sir Anthony Blunt, the Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures, was `outed publically' in 1979, after having been granted immunity decades earlier. He was unrepentant throughout his lifetime and in retrospect, treated uncommonly well for the sparse information he supplied. Indeed, the high regard by which these British spycatchers upheld the law, not bending it as their American counterparts would do, was at once frustrating and laudable. Those were the years when Britain was racked with scandals; the other famous one, the sex/spy game of the Profumo Affair. The government and the crown were terrified of another embarassment and thus were easily used by the highly placed moles within the system to obstruct investigations. This, to the great chagrin of the United States and to Peter Wright. Wright spent many thousands of hours in grueling research, looking for the 5th spy that had been variously revealed through several Soviet defectors and captured spies. Wright, and then others, was convinced, following the glaringly obvious failures in their top secret operations, that the spy was none other than the Director of the Department, M15, Sir Roger Hollis. Wright pursued evidence doggedly for over twenty years. His tactics, his tenacity and his brilliance were remarkable; his actions, heroic.

This autobiography is a narrative of the murderous espionage game of that period where massive military takeovers went hand in hand with atomic weapons secrets and the ever-present threat of nuclear war. The time was also marked by the end of British Imperialism, where the home rule would be restored to various former colonies. In that too, many agents and plans were covertly put in place for the primary reason that should the new government not be well fortified, the respective militaries would grab power, destabilize the country further and remainder it vulnerable to Soviet interference. Philby's last assignment to the Middle East was one of this nature. Some, but by no means all of the foreign policy makers understood the need for a smooth transition to democratic government in order to retain a global balance of power. It was through the British Raj, after all, that spawned the country of Pakistan and Kashmir, the current hottest spot on the globe. Separated from India at Independence, the division has witnessed hundreds of thousands dead and the potential of a nuclear nightmare.

We were often gullible in the West, and falsely convinced that everyone wanted to defect to "better lives." Amazingly, the Eastern bloc defectors were still Russian agents. The CIA and the FBI even then were at odds. These were the halcyon days of Richard Helms, J.Edgar Hoover, whose number Wright had, and the maven or maniac whichever way you look at it of James Jesus Angleton. He practically went mad when the former intimate Philby defected. Because of that treachery, Angleton imprisoned and some say tortured innocent defectors. There were quite a few cowboy operatives in the U.S., big time drinkers and often running their own little shows. Some speculate that things in that regard remain the same. But others, insist that the CIA has become too risk aversive. History will no doubt tell. in the 60's, the CIA questioned Peter Wright about methods for assasinating or, the `wet' areas. Wright said the British were out of that game and they should submit the question to the French who were involved in that manner in Algeria among other places. We do know for certain that the CIA got heavily involved in what was `wet.' American secret services even tried to foment a revolt in the M15 to leak some information on Labor PM, Harold Wilson that they hoped would bring down his government. This was post-Bay of Pigs when the `Agency' was struggling, and Labor was too far left for comfort, no matter where it was. It was also a time of reckoning for many older British who had flirted, as did so many of their peers, in their youth with Marxism. Unfortunately, the labels, were often damning and the fear that McCarthyism would spread across the Atlantic was ominous- although as it happens, it didn't.
There were suspicious deaths that mimic current Anthrax scares and even some James Bondesque devices for recording that were created largely by Wright himself. Ian Fleming, Bond author, had of course worked in British Intelligence.

The book was unsuccessfully censored in England, with a stolen copy printed anonymously. It was most absorbing to read as a non-citizen so I can only imagine the excitement it engendered where the players were all well known. I highly recommend Spycatcher as both a historically incisive and entertaining book. I can't help but feel that as much as we can learn about the various secret information agencies will help us in our understanding of the current state of affairs.

From the end of WWII until 1965 when Roger Hollis left as head of MI-5, British counterintelligence was almost completely compromised. The Soviets outmaneuvered them continuously with a flood of diplomatic and illegal agents. This was a constant source of embarrassment as people like Kim Philby, Burgess and McLean defected to the USSR. The agents defecting in the opposite direction were frequently clever disinformants sent as ploys creating a "wilderness of mirrors." As former assistant director of MI5 the author was directly responsible for investigating the infiltration and gives a blow by blow account of how morale suffered as one by one potential moles were grilled and either cleared or ousted. Many interesting and authoritative asides keep interest high throughout the work.