The reader becomes mesmerized and impressed by the thorough and meticulous process of constantly checking witness testimony with known topography and horse/walking/etc. mph rates, then time/motion studies with all possible data examined to see what plausible explanations can be more pushed forward as likely scenarios.

At the center here is the infamous Indian scout, Mitch Boyer and the testimony of the young Curly, survivor with Custer.

Amazing how the evidence Gray presents turns Custer 180o around from what is historically bantered, an aggressive disobiendent hawkish leader. Gray's reconstruction reveals soldier who emphasized and implemented what orders were given to him, to pin the Indians from left flank escape, and all the time awaiting Benteen's company and ammo train, which never arrived in time.

Disappointed that no chronology chain here shown how the followup takes place to discover the battlefield. Possibly Gray's other books on this subject cover that.

Remarkably well written, able to keep this reader's attention easily even with all the careful calculation checks, etc.

Most historians would be happy, nay overjoyed, if they located a diary, a journal or a set of letters by a participant in some historical event. In tracing some relatively unimportant activities, Gray is not satisfied unless he can find three or four itineraries, four or five journals and diaries, and two or three sets of letters! Another reviewer commented that the writing of this book took 25 years! I can well believe it. With the well-known fallibility of eyewitnesses, this overwhelming mass of documentation is barely enough to allow Gray to sift event from confabulation.

What we have here are two books in one. The first book, in 180 pages, traces the life and career of guide and translator Mitch Boyer. At first one might dismiss such a goal as impossible, but Gray is equal to the task, and Boyer emerges as a convincing, consistent and competent historical personage.

The second book, in about 200 pages, uses what Gray calls "time-motion studies" to trace the troop movements from June 9, 1876 to and through the culminating Battle of the Little Bighorn. His "time-motion patterns" are what physicists call "world lines," with one space dimension as the vertical axis, and time as the horizontal axis. Where these diagrams indicate the interactions between a dozen separated groups they virtually amount to the classical equivalent of Feynman diagrams--- tools used by theoretical physicists to disentangle the various processes occurring in the realm where relativistic quantum physics hold sway.

The Mitch Boyer connection between the first and second parts of the book occurs because Boyer was the only scout who chose to stay with and die with Custer's columns. Much of Gray's reconstruction of Custer's movements and strategy depends upon Gray's extraction, from the mass of confused interviews with Curley, the 17-year-old Indian scout who was the last to get away alive from Custer's troops, of a fairly consistent and highly plausible set of events.

There is one place, at the book's end, where Gray's thought patterns betray him. With no documents to guide him, he chooses a completely absurd counterclockwise movement of Army forces, from Calhoun Ridge, to Custer Ridge, to Custer Hill (where Custer was found), on to the "South Skirmish Line" (where Mitch Boyer's body was found) and thence to the "West Perimeter," where the last survivors (Gray assumes) died. But this movement actually takes the troops TOWARD the river and the Indian camp, from which braves and even squaws were literally boiling, like thick clouds of hornets from a disturbed nest, in the last half of the battle!

In this case, I think the reconstruction by Gregory F. Michno, based on a collation of a vast number of Indian accounts, is infinitely more plausible. It shows Custer's surviving companies driven roughly northwest, parallel to the river, along Battle Ridge to Custer Hill, with companies on Finley Ridge and Calhoun Hill being cut off and quickly destroyed, leading to a traditional "Last Stand" indeed being made on Custer Hill. See Michno's LAKOTA NOON for details. I might mention that comparison of all accounts of troop movements in the six or so "Little Bighorn" books I have read is made incredibly difficult by a complete lack of consistent nomenclature for the topographic features of the battleground!

Grey is remarkably even-tempered in his discussion of the many command problems and highly questionable command decisions that arose in this campaign, including the inexplicable behavior of Gibbon and Benteen. Somewhat ironically, it is Custer who comes off best from this all-around debacle. He was about the only commander who made any effort to follow orders, and about the only commander who tried to strike a balance between total inaction and suicidal total commitment of his forces.

I can't praise this book highly enough.

I absolutely agree with the other reviewers on the quality of Gray's work--it is astounding. I would like to emphasize what I took away from the book: a new picture of G.A. Custer. For a hundred years it has been the "customary wisdom" that Custer, being a flamboyant, egocentric, arrogant commander, rushed into battle at the LBH because he wanted the glory of defeating the Sioux all to himself, and met his doom because his hubris blinded him to the Indians' superior forces. Part of this "customary wisdom" came with an implied view that this hubris was due to a belief in racial superiority of the white soldier vs. the Indian. As is so often the case, the "customary wisdom" is superficial, and when held up to rigorous analysis, proves wrong. Gray's trenchant logic make it clear that Custer was attempting to follow his orders from Terry, found himself in a battle situation that was not favorable, but due to the perception that the 7th Cavalry had been discovered, had no alternative but to attack. His battle plan was improvised at the moment, and was thwarted not because of Custer's hubris, or his false belief that his soldiers were fighting "only Indians", but for the reason many battles are lost: the failure of one of his unit commanders (Benteen) to follow orders and coordinate his actions with the actions of the remainder of Custer's command. I expect, however, that the old, comfortable, politically correct view of Custer will die hard, if at all--to some, logic means naught.

This book can be a good addition to your C++ library. But, you will need a good C++ programming book which explains contents of this book in more details. This book does have good examples but what good are the examples if they are not explained very well.

I recommend getting:

The C++ Programming Language Special Edition
by Bjarne Stroustrup with this book.

With so many c++ books on the market, not one explains c++ the way programmers like to lean. At least until now. I found this book a well worth addition to my library. You lookup the functionality you want, then look at a fully working - short - program showing how to code the functionality. Best of all the authors use callouts to describe every aspect of the syntax. I really like the programmer's notebook style.

I read many books while trying to learn c++ and I found the C++ programmer's notebook one of the best on the market. There are hundreds of little programs with each having callouts that point to syntax and tell you what's happening. You don't have to read pages and pages of text to understand how to use c++. This book gives you c++ programs in a "picture" like way. More book should be written this way.

Gray provides an outstanding insight into all troop movements before and after the showdown at the Little Big Horn. He is particularly harsh in his assessments of Col. John Gibbon, Gen. George Crook, and Capt. Frederick Benteen. On the other hand he is fairly charitable to Maj. Marcus Reno while others have been more critical of Reno. He fairly glows in his treatment of Custer.

As with many historians in their treatment of the Battle of Little Big Horn, he jumps to dogmatic conclusions fairly easily when he seeks to cast blame (as on Benteen for "dawdling") and when he attributes to Custer the wise deployment of his troop resources. See for example at page 177: "---he (Custer) was relieved to see that Reno had halted to form a skirmish line and was only lightly engaged. He should now be able to hold out until Custer's larger force could get into action". Gray does not tell us how he managed to communicate with Custer in the after life in order to ascertain these feelings of Custer. He further ignores the testimony of John Martin (the trumpeter who took the message to Benteen) to the court of inquiry that Custer exulted over catching the Indians "napping".

In reaching some of these dogmatic conclusions, Gray simply buys into the overstatement of many historians who find some thin support for their fictionalized conclusions.

However, this book is an excellent narrative of the troop and scouting maneuvers leading up to and following the battle. He also writes at the beginning of the book an excellent summary of the cultural conflicts that led to this tragedy for all involved----the soldiers and the Indians.

This is a great book to learn everything about the 1876 Sioux War from the political and economic situations that fueled the conflict (gold and the Black Hills, dissolving the 1868 Peace Treaty), the behavior of the independent Sioux, Grant's ultimatum, the Sheridan three prong attack on the Sioux, the political (Custer and Grant) and weather problems hindering he start of the campaign and General's Crook and Terry's frustrating attempts to catch the Sioux and Cheyenne who fragmented into smaller groups after the Little Big Horn. Also covers Crook's March campaign that resulted in a controversial but failed battle on the Powder River and the critical battle of the Rosebud in June 30 miles southeast of the Little Big Horn which occurred just 8 days prior to Custer's annihilation. Crook, the great Indian fighter with twice Custer's number, becomes displaced out of the Sheridan attack plan due to the furious attack by the Sioux and Cheyenne. Gray also documents how the winter roamers left the agencies to join the summer roamers (Sitting Bull, Gall, Crazy Horse, Two Moon) which peaked with one of the largest villages ever on the North American continent at the time of Custer's attack. The book completes the story by detailing the aftermath of Custer's battle with Crooks and Terry's joint and separate campaigns and the addition of General Nelson Miles. Not a total story on Custer, for that you should read Gray's "Custer's Last Campaign" but start with "Centennial Campaign" to get the complete picture.

In 1981 I made a phone call to a retired medical doctor named John Gray. I told him I had just finished reading his book, CENTENNIAL CAMPAIGN, and would love to talk with him. I figured we would talk on the phone, so I was surprised when he invited me to visit him in his home in Ft. Collins, Colorado. I accepted his invitation without hesitation.

We spent the entire afternoon talking about his book. There was one question that I was anxious to get answered. Why did he write less than a page about the Custer fight itself? Gray didn't really know what happened during that battle, so there really wasn't much to say. I laughed but it made sense.

This book is not about the Custer fight, but about the entire campaign of the Sioux War of 1876 and it is filled with new revelations about the causes and events of this war. Most interesting is Gray's narrative about the White House meeting between Grant and his aides concerning how they should deal with the Sioux problem and why they started a war.

The book is filled with detailed maps of the Indian movements during the campaign, where and when they camped and for how long. The same is done for soldier column movements.

There is an excellent analysis of the size of the warrior force at the Little Bighorn that historians accept to this day. The numbers will surprise you.

If you have not read much on the Sioux war, then I highly recommend this book. You'll learn that the Custer fight was just one of many events of a long brutal, bloody war.

This is a well written book that thoroughly covers the subject of IPC in UNIX. Gray carefully explains each topic. The chapter on sockets has sufficient information and examples to get the reader through a graduate level client/server course or familiarize the professional with these topics. I used the material on a LINUX platform with no problem.

I've been looking for a book that explains and provides useful examples relating to unix processes, and threads. I wanted to learn how to implement parallel programming. This need is fullfilled in this book.

This book is also easy to understand. I thank the author for his endeavor in this area.

No worthless examples.
Each source example provides information to compile and link into an executable program.

This book will not end up as a door-stop or sit beneath your monitor.

I'm the sort who prefers a well done quick reference guide to a textbook. If the material is presented clearly enough, I don't need or want to wade through page after page laying the groundwork for things I either already know or can figure out for myself. This book seems written with me in mind. It covered almost every aspect of Unix interprocess communications in sufficient detail for me to begin writing useful code. In addition to the nuts and bolts, the commentary provides useful tips and caveats, while noting which flavors of Unix/Linux support which functions, as well as which are supported in Posix.1 and Posix.4.

I think this viewpoint is reflected in the other reviews of this book - people either seem to really like it or really hate it. As someone who's made his career in embedded systems for some 20+ years, it was a great guide to fill in the blanks in my education, giving me the fundamentals and pointing me to the appropriate header files to learn the details.

In summary, if you generally know what you're doing, but need to quickly get up to speed on the things you may not already know, this is an excellent book. If you're a beginner, you may be more confused than enlightened.