This book is specifically focused towards teachers who conduct workshops but I found it useful for anyone who is in charge of running a workshop or making presentations to adults. It differs from most manuals intended to train the trainer, because there isn't a set formula for an effective workshop but ideas that any facilitator can use no matter what their subject or style of presentation. I especially found the appendix useful with forms that could be removed and copied just as they are. I immediately used the Evaluation Form to hand out to participants at the end of the session and a self-evaluation for me to use to record what worked and what didn't. Of all the books I bought and read when I spent a summer conducting public relations workshops, this book, intended for teachers, turned out to be the most useful of all.

Just looking at the summary of this book, I was already interested. This book kept me interested till the end. It had a surprise in store for me, but even when I figured it out, I was still intersted. Very good suspense. I recommend it for any John Farris fans.

Back in the early 1950s a movie starring Donald O'Conner called "Francis the Talking Mule" was a big hit that spawned several sequels. As a young 2nd Lt. in his first combat zone, an island in the South Pacific, O'Conner was befriended by a practical but chatty U.S. Army mule named Francis, who gets the young shavetail into and out of several scrapes, but also helps him capture a Japanese sniper.

I thought of Francis often while reading Essin's History of the U.S. Army Mule. For one thing I learned that the term "Shavetail", which by the Second World War meant a green officer just out of O.C.S., actually referred to untrained mules during the Indian wars of the late 19th century.

In those days of the horse cavalry, mules were trained to follow a mare with a bell around her neck, and usually did not require a handler with halter line in hand. These were the Bell Sharps. Untrained mules who did not know to line up at their own aparejo (pack saddle) and which might kick without warning, had their tails shaved.

From the Mexican wars of the 1840s to the China-Burma-India and Italian Theaters of World War II, the mule, and especially the pack mule, was a stellar performer in a wide variety of combat applications. Essin traces this history, and by giving a view of warfare from the standpoint of moving supplies to the troops, he subtly changes some opinions we may have of military leaders, and perhaps confirm suspicions we may have had about other leaders.

A history professor at East Tennessee State University, in the heart of traditional mule territory, Essin makes an unfortunate assumption that modern readers know where mules come from. I don't recall him ever stating that the mule is the sterile offspring of horse and donkey, even though he dances all around the subject by describing how mares were held in shallow pits to allow their breeding by smaller jackasses.

He does not lapse into sentimentality, but ever the historian he lets the data tell the story of the Army's use and misuse of the mule in a factual, but dispassionate manner. In every theater where mules performed their qualities were appreciated, even extolled by officers at all grades, but individual mules were considered to be expendable. No doubt this sort of thinking is what made the term "military intelligence" into an oxymoron.

To read of case after case through over a century of service until the last mule units were disbanded in 1956, is to marvel at how many times the Army found itself short of enough mules to do the job, but so little valued them that they were worked to the point where they died in harness.

Perhaps the mule's greatest champion was General George Crook, a cavalryman in the Indian wars, who actually used mules as his personal mounts, recognized the value of the custom-fitted aparejo (Mexican pack saddles) and double-diamond hitch means of tying packs to the mules. Crook was one officer who realized mules needed to be trained to the rigors of the trail, given a means of loading that would not disable them with pack sores, and rested in shifts from remount depots.

The techniques devised by muleteers (mostly borrowed from the Mexicans) under Crook were refined to the point that by the time of the Spanish-American War, the U.S. Army and its mule-centered system of supply, primary by pack mules, was the envy of the world, and the lesson was quickly taken up by the horse-loving English. We failed to learn our own lesson, and much of our front line supply in World War I was by English and French mules. The U.S. Army had still not learned the value of field veterinary care, and was still in a mental fog that dictated replacing rather than healing sick and wounded mules.

When one views the callous attitude of wasting its badly needed pack animals, it is easy to understand how this same attitude by general staff officers extended to the common soldier, who was considered to be cannon fodder in the Civil War and wasted in suicide charges against machine gun emplacements in World War I.

At least when the war was over, the men were returned home, probably so they could breed another generation of cannon fodder, sired by survivors. Not so lucky was the sterile mule. Most of the mules who supplied Merrill's Marauders and "Vinegar Joe" Stillwell's campaigns in the Burma campaigns of World War II, were simply shot at the end of the war to prevent them from falling into Chinese hands. Yet one old survivor of this campaign with a U.S. Army brand was captured from the Chinese service during the Korean War, and re-enlisted into U.S. Army service.

Essin's account is very readable, in spite of his occasion lapses into supplying pedantic information. It is entertaining and informative. I do wish he had a bit more of a sense of symbolism in history.

During the Burma campaigns he mentions the discovery that mules were terrified by the presence of elephants, which were used as pack animals by the Japanese. Whether tame or wild herds of elephants were detected, the mules would bolt. Given that the mule is sired by the donkey, symbol of the Democratic party, this is an understandable attitude, which might have helped Essin to understand why, when President Ronald Reagan declared that defense spending was not a budget item during the 1980s, that the prospect of re-establishing mule units for Special Forces or National Guard Mountain Battalions never got off the ground. Clearly the GOP elephants were not about to let donkeys in any form back into the Army.

It is refreshing to see military history written from the viewpoint of supply 50 years after Dwight D. Eisenhower, a specialists in logistics, mounted the greatest logistics-based operation ever in the Normandy invasion. I take issue with Essin's one lapse into sentimentality in the final line of the book, "We have yet to win a war without mules." Although Francis would have approved, I find it difficult to see how he could have overlooked so recent an event as Desert Storm.

- James Brooks

I picked up _Sliceforms_ in England, and got it home without much ado. However, on a bored Saturday night in October, I constructed my first Sliceform. The "slices" are extremely detailed templates, and cutting has to be exact, but when I completed the 'Form by sliding the cuts onto one another, I was amazed and perplexed. This three-dimensional shape can be folded onto itself in a synesthetically pleasing way. I carry my Sliceform with me whenever I sense I might get bored -- or need a handy conversation-starter! _Sliceforms_ is pretty easy to understand and a great joy to experience, especially if one is as detail-oriented as I. The only drawback is the less-than stellar explanations if you're not hugely geometrically inclined.

Good mythtelling is poetry of the highest order, and it takes a poet to translate it. Robert Bringhurst's renderings of the verbal masterpieces of classical Haida storytellers are truly astounding, as it is his reconstruction of the facts surrounding their collection by American anthropologist John Swanton. As someone who works in the same field I must say that this book has been a great discovery for me. It is an example to follow, both in the style of the translations and in the wide range of the commentary.

Langness condenses in one small volume (181 pgs.) the major theories and writers of cultural anthropology. The book features extensive quotes from famous writings and profiles of important theorists like Lewis Henry Morgan, Edward Tylor, Bronislaw Malinowski and Marvin Harris. Graphs illustrate theoretical structures and a useful glossary is provided. A good choice for university and college level courses.

This book highlights the complexity of the decision making process of one of the most 'hot' topics of EU policy. The historical review of the development of the technology programs is very helpfull to understanding the process of their creation.

Here is a collection of a dozen short essays, in a variety of moods and styles, on the history, natural history, and para-history of Texas. We have straight historical narrative, as when the author tells the story of the "Lively", a ship carrying hopeful American settlers to Stephen F. Austin's colony in the then-Mexican province of Texas in 1821. Few voyages can have been as amazingly ill-fated as this one. In the book's longest piece we learn of the Mission of La Bahia, founded by the Spaniards in 1722 on the ruins of the first European settlement in Texas, Fort St. Louis, which had been established by the Frenchman LaSalle and destroyed by Indians 35 years earlier. The mission was moved twice, finally ending up at the place called Goliad. Those who know Texas history will remember Goliad as the site where 342 Texans were slaughtered on the orders of General Santa Anna, victor at the Alamo and vanquished by General Sam Houston at San Jacinto in the battle that made Texas an independent nation. The author does more than tell the story, though he does that very well. He probes the morality of imposing a foreign religion and culture on native people. He puts us in the shoes of the generals and men; we see and feel the emotions of fear and hope, courage and cowardice, faith and betrayal.

There are lighter pieces too. The author claims to have conducted personal interviews with Cheetwah, ghost-guardian of buried treasure in the Franklin Mountains near El Paso; and with the chief of the Texas branch of the Sasquatch ("Big-Foot"), in which he reveals the truth behind the failure of the Dallas Cowboys' attempt to recruit Sasquatch for the team.

For this reviewer, the most affecting piece was also the most personal. Anyone who lived through the terrible drought of the 1950's will feel a pang of sympathy for the teenager who watched the spring-fed creek that watered his grandparents' Cottle County ranch dry up to a sere and dusty wash; and will share his joy when the waters return.

Jay Sharp is Texas born and bred. He is cur ious about the natural world -- the weather, the landscape, animals, plants, birds (there is a short but wide-ranging treatment of hummingbirds); and the people -- the Indians, the Spanish, the Mexicans, the American settlers -- who became the Texans. He is fascinated by the legends; the tales of lost treasure, the ghost stories, the oral history of the Indians, the "unexplained", such as the mysterious Marfa lights. Above all he is interested in human character. This little book delivers more than its size and simple appearance would suggest. Mr. Sharp, how about a sequel?

Not a working hand book per se as in other works, but an extremely well presented set of case studies. With so little published on this topic this book is certainly a good, if not expensive ($/page or word) addition to any engineers' libraray

I may have the dubious distinction of having read every published book on C# from cover to cover (well, almost). That said, this book was one of the first I encountered when I started learning C# (in its first edition, of course), and I still return to it several times weekly in its second edition (usually to clarify an exposition by another author).

For my money, this is as good as writing gets when the subject is THE LANGUAGE, PERIOD. The writing style is lean, focused, and rigorously accurate. While you might not take it to bed with you, you'll turn to it over and over when you're actively stuck on a concept and want to get it right and OWN IT.

A careful reader could gain all the confidence they need by reading this book first, and then Troelsen's *C# and the .NET Platform* (also an Apress book; no, I don't work for them). That's not to say that there are other gems out there (including Liberty (O'Reilly; download the latest version of the code!) and Robinson et al. (WROX; generally excellent, but some chapters are SO BAD, and the typos are EVERYWHERE). But if you have a limited budget and can stay focused, Gunnerson and Troelson (in that order) are all you need.

While not the best tutorial out there for intermediate level programmers with a C++ or Java background (Liberty's book is better as a pure tutorial), this book is much better at explaining style and C# idioms than Liberty. I bought both books and am glad I did.

Gunnerson is very clear at what is good C# style and what is not and why you should choose one idiom rather than another. Also, unlike Liberty's book, Gunnerson leads you through the process involved in developing (including adding multithreading) a serious application where Liberty's samples are much smaller and much less interesting.

The downside is the order Gunnerson chose for his topics is strange whereas Liberty 's order is much more straightforward and traditional and I think easier to understand. Note that people coming from a VB background will have an even harder time with Gunnerson than Liberty. (People with this background should probably choose Archer's Inside C# book from Microsoft Press.)

Summing up: Buy both books if you can, if not buy Liberty's book for a pure tutorial and buy Gunnerson to learn C# style plus how to develop a serious multithreaded application.

Gunnerson's on the C# design team and know the language as well as anybody - and his experience shows in this really really nice book. This isn't a "quickie book" which is a rehashed white paper, like the book by Wille from Sams! At this stage it is hard to imagine a better book on C#.

What about C# itself? First off you can get the language free as part of the .NET SDK from Microsoft's MSDN web site, it's a command line interpretor like the one in the JDK. Then use your favorite editor to create C# code.

Next, although C# certainly bears a family resemblence to Java it has some truly unique and exciting features that make it the best language yet. For example, it is the first language in the C/C++ family to handle versioning. (For experts the fragile base class problem is gone.) There's also cool stuff like automatic conversion of value types to objects and back again and little things like == doing what it should for strings.

All in all this is a great book that I highly recommend.