Pearl Harbor 1941 is graphically very appealing. If one ignores the first 35 pages and the final few pages, one might even call this an excellent summary. For readers with only a general interest in the Pearl Harbor attack, this volume will suffice, but historians will probably only appreciate the excellent maps and order of battle information. Particularly troubling, given the immense primary and secondary sources available on this subject, is the author's tendency toward misleading and erroneous facts.

The opening introduction and background section is totally inadequate. While the author takes time to mention Hawaii's historical background, he makes less effort to paint the immediate causes of the attack. There is no mention of either the Chinese invasion of China in 1937 that led to the deterioration of US-Japanese relations or the Russo-Japanese border fighting in 1939-40 that shaped Japanese strategic conceptions away from further Eurasian entanglements. The statement that the "US Pacific Fleet was a deterrent" is misleading; that was how FDR viewed it, not the Japanese, who saw it as a threat to their expansionist ambitions in the Pacific. Even Admiral Kimmel, who commanded the Pacific Fleet, felt wholesale transfers of men and vessels to the Atlantic undermined its deterrence value.

The section on opposing commanders is more than a bit rambling and has odd choices of individuals, some of whom were not military commanders involved directly in the campaign. The US section has Kimmel, Short, Stark, Marshall, Hull and FDR. The Japanese section has Yamamoto, Fuchida, Genda, Nagumo and Nomura. Certainly politicians and diplomats such as FDR, Hull and Nomura do not belong here. Noticeably absent are the US air commanders in Hawaii, Bloch and Martin, who certainly bore some responsibility for the defeat. The entry for Nagumo is misleading, implying that he committed suicide at Saigon in 1944 "when the inevitable result of the war became clear." Instead, Nagumo was commander of the naval base on Saipan and committed suicide when US troops overran the island. The entry for Yamamoto that claims he was, "a man who fought but wanted peace" is nauseating. Just what did he ever do for peace? The chronology section, although detailed, is also marked with misleading or erroneous entries, further complicated by the fact that the author does not specify what time zone he is using. For example, he states that the Japanese fleet sailed on 25 November, but local time was actually 26 November. The crucial 27 November "war warning" is falsely delivered as advising Kimmel and Short that negotiations had failed and to "be prepared for any eventuality." It said no such thing.

Although there is a section on the Japanese attack plan, there is no section on US defensive plans or the Rainbow War Plan. The author should have mentioned the Martin-Bellinger studied which addressed the vulnerability of Oahu to air attack. In the Japanese section, there is no mention of the vociferous opposition to the raid and how Yamamoto had to threaten resigning in order to get the operation approved. The whole approach to Japan's strategy is euphemistic: "Japan expanded into Asia..."and the US "thwarted every Japanese attempt to extend Asian influence," instead of, the US sought to contain Japanese aggression. There are many other errors in this section, some so mundane, like claiming that the Japanese task force sailed from "Tankan Bay" instead of Hittokappu bay, that it is a wonder that the author even bothered to peruse secondary sources.

Amazingly, the sections on the actual attack are quite good. To be fair, they are better than Gordon Prange provides in his long-winded At Dawn We Slept. Smith provides excellent maps and graphics for the attacks on each air base and the naval facilities, as well as a decent textual summary. Three-D maps are provided for the first and second wave attacks, as well as the attack on Hickam Field. There is even a map depicting US naval movements in Pearl during the attack, which is most unusual. Several excellent illustrations and many photos complement the text. Overall, these 36 pages that cover the attack (one more page than Prange) are excellent.

Unfortunately, in the aftermath section the author reverts to his misleading tendencies. He claims "all eight [US] battleships [were] sunk or heavily damaged," which is totally wrong. The USS Maryland and Pennsylvania were only slightly damaged and soon available for service, USS Tennessee was moderately damaged. His follow-up conclusions are overly generalized and ignore the immediate affects of the raid.

Overall, this a handy, colorful summary volume, but it should not be used as a substitute for serious history. Unfortunately, the author has taken far too many liberties with the historical record for this to be considered a reliable summary.

An excellent review for the novice as well as the reader well read about the Pearl Harbor attack. Maps and diagrams reveal the placement of each aircraft and ship. This book also does a good job about detailing how severe this battle hurt the US military. Shocking to realize how little strength the US had in the Pacific on Dec. 8, 1941. Highly recommended.

This conference proceeding is quite focussed on fuzzy logic applications and theoretical considerations for applying fuzzy logic for some real applications.

Jack was a friend of mine. I first saw him perform Thanksgiving night, 1979, up the stairs at the O-P Screen Room in lower Manhattan. He called it a Jungle Jack radio adventure and he read into a big old microphone from pages stored in a shoebox. He had a belly dancer whom he called Scheherezade Thompson read from Somerset Maughn's Rain. The audience was tiny and appreciative, but it went on for hours and hours. I felt privileged to be there, like I was watching the dust settle at the edge of eternity. This collection of essays about Jack is a necessity, because it can evoke his world, and it was a fascinating one. His humor and his eccentricity and his seriousness are all reflected in this collection. Today he is spoken of as a gay icon, but Jack did not regard his gayness as political. He was about glamor. I wish this book wasn't so expensive, because that will put off some of the folks who would benefit most from this. But it's worth it, folks. And, by the way, thanks a lot, Jack.

French and Smith edit and contribute to this collection of recent research on Bayesian methods. The book is intended to advertise to the community of potential users the great advances and advantages of the Bayesian approach to decision making. Some articles emphasize applications and the specifics of computation. Each article contains its own references but an index for the entire volume is included in the back of the book. 23 authors contributed to this volume.

Although this book doesn't cover the most sophisticated aspects of pruning in detail (like grafting), it will give you a firm grasp of the basics, including when to prune, and how to do it. Various general types of trees are treated, like conifers, deciduous trees, fruits, bushes, etc. Simple yet attractive line drawings fill the book and are very helpful.

Now that fantasy RPGs are looking for new cultures to exploit, Russia has finally come into its own. Mystic Russia is, as the back of the cover states, about "...Russian Myth, but given that ol' Rifts® twist." It does a servicable job of bringing Russian monsters to life, and to a lesser degree, the O.C.C.s of Russian folklore.

The monster section is the best part and obviously the primary reason for the book, as they're placed in the front (which seems peculiar to me). Most are pulled right from Russian folklore, but a few seem like someone thought the picture looked cool and threw in some statistics for it, like the Demon Claw. Of particular note are the Koshchei (remember that guy from the AD&D Monster Manual II?) and the Kaluga Hag on page 27, my vote for what the Blair Witch looks like. The artwork throughout the book is above par.

Speaking of witches, as usual, this book heavily emphasizes that magic isn't real and neither are witches. Unless you are a practicing witch, in which case, please don't be offended. Mr. Siembedia points this out on page 1. And page 10. And page 72. And 73.

Perhaps the biggest flaw of all the books Mr. Siembedia writes are the finger-wagging, condescending quips that are littered throughout the rules. For example, on the topic of the evil Necromancer as an O.C.C., he advises to "...please respect the G.M.'s decision and move forward with the game." Move forward with the game? We were in the middle of an argument and the author's narrative made us stop, turn to that passage, and suddenly realize we should all just "move forward with the game" and stop arguing about the rules? This kind of condescending blather is presumably due to the younger target audience, but I'm sure they find it insulting too.

The Pact Witch, Hidden Witch and Old Believer O.C.C.s are interesting looks at Russian folklore and magic, although occasionally the spells are so specific as to be of questionable value (spoil water, curdle mlik, spoil wine, and spoil eggs could probably be grouped under spoil food). The Necromancer and Fire Sorcerer are reprinted from other Rifts books. It's disconcerting to see (NEW!) in front of the Bone Magic section. So the rest of the spells aren't new? Of all the O.C.C.s, the Mystic Kunzya stands out as truly unique, super-smiths with a penchant for super weapons. Super-powerful unbalancing weapons, but hey, you don't play Rifts for game balance anyway.

The Gypsy section is suspiciously generic. While the first crop of O.C.C.s delve into very specific spells of limited usefulness, the Gypsy section is devoid of detail. Professions like the Chovihani are missing completely, unless you use the Hidden Witch, which is not what Chovihani were about. This would be a perfect place for such spells as steal liver and a variety of thief protection spells that Chovihani were known for.

The last section seems like an afterthought about Sovietski tanks and war machines. This is Mystic Russia, right?

All in all, this book is a servicable resource for most role-playing games. However, as a Rifts supplement, it's fluffed out with a lot of material in other books under the guise of being reprinted for the "player's convenience."

This book is an average supplement for the RIFTS role-playing game. I own most of the supplements for RIFTS and I don't use this one too much in my campaigns. Most of my players have shown only marginal interest in the contents of this book. It is an okay companion to the Warlords of Russia worldbook, but otherwise probably not worth the price of the book. This book is similar in character to the England world book. There is a lot of information about the folk lore of the region with a few characters thrown in. If you enjoy reading world books just for the information, then buy it. If you are looking for a world book for Russia, get Warlords of Russia instead.

This book is an excellent book for all Rifts players. In most of my campains I have used this book to make NPC villans and also it is an excellent world book for choosing player characters. This is one of my favorite Rifts world books out there along with Warlords of Russia another excellent book.

I was excited to read this book because I enjoy time travel books and have always been impressed with L. Ron Hubbards writing. According to the introduction of the book, Hubbard wrote the story as a screenplay and then Dave Wolverton converted it into a book. Usually, things go the other way and people say "compared to the book, the movie stunk!" In this case, unfortunately, the book stunk. I read about 50 pages before I began wondering if it was a pre-teen book. I read 50 more and began wondering if I was wasting my time. I was certainly wasting my time. The characters are preposterously simple and unrealistic. The scenarios they encounter are never set up well and the characters reactions are out of a saturday morning cartoon. The protagonist is a near imbecile and he is by far the most intelligent character in the entire story. Save your time and money, this one misses the mark.

I like L. Ron Hubbard's style and have read many of his books. This book may have had his name on it, but it didn't even come close to being a Hubbard novel.

The premise of time travel with a military vehicle was an interesting one. The story went along fine until three indian squaws came into the picture. Dave Wolverton depicts the squaws as being illiterate, dumb and drunk. I did not appreciate the way he portrayed them.

The novel has some interesting sequences and isn't a bad read if you just want light reading.

A VERY STRANGE TRIP By L. Ron Hubbard & Dave Wolverton. This is a most unusual book, a work that could fit into several different genres or else fall in the cracks between. Though it features time travel, it's not exactly science fiction. It's often funny, but it's not purely a comedy. Though it has sociological overtones, it is by no means a textbook guide to past civilizations. It's actually exactly what the title says, a very strange trip. The book was written by Dave Wolverton, based on a short story by L. Ron Hubbard. Wolverton has written eleven science fiction and fantasy novels, including a couple of Star Wars books, and can always be counted on for solid, all-inviting prose. Hubbard should need no introduction to even casual readers, as he is famous for such works as Battlefield Earth, Final Blackout, and the Mission: Earth series, as well as his works on Scientology. The story opens with the hero, Dumphee, transporting secret military equipment across the country. The all-terrain vehicle he is driving gets bumped and Dumphee finds himself several hundred years in America's past, at a time just before the French and Indian War. There, he meets up with three Native American women, and takes them along as he continues his bounce into the past. The group makes stops along the way in the days of the Mayans, a time when mastodon and sabertooth tigers roamed what are now the Great Plains, and then farther back. At one point, the group even goes on a Tyrannosaurus Rex hunt, using rocket launchers and other modern weapons. During the time-spanning, Dumphee continues his trek toward his original destination of Denver, even though the Denver of the past is not the military base it was in "his" time. Along the way, he learns about love and life from his companions. Then the group bounces back toward the present, with a layover in the early days of the westward sweep and the European push of Native Americans from their homes. Dumphee finally makes it to his base, both in time and space, where he learns that he is in jeopardy because of his knowledge. This book is great fun to read. It's an adventure story of the type that was common in the era when Hubbard learned his chops, a style that mostly died out with the advent of the motion picture industry. Happily, Wolverton recaptures that sense of innocent wonder and delight in a book that will keep you turning the pages.

At first Bond Films, co-authored by Jim Smith and Stephen Lavington, looks simply like a brief outline of each of the James Bond films. However, delving deeper reveals that compiled within the Bond Films is actually quite a wealth of information from a variety of sources.

Each film has a standard set of sections devoted to it, which are all discussed in the books introduction. Some of these sections include information on fashion decisions in the films, the advancements of particular continuing characters including M and Miss Moneypenny, the box office returns for the films, award nominations and film trivia. The most interesting sections, and those which make this a successful book, are those which discuss scenes cut from the film, source to screen information, real world influences and parallels, product placement details, critics responses to the film and social references in the film. It is the latter which may prove to be the most interesting to Bond fans as they summarise information which hasn't previously been made readily available.

Despite some 'gem' sections there are two which could easily have been left out. The first is 'quotes', everyone enjoys particular quotes for varying reasons and it seems unnecessary for the authors to attempt to define which are the best of a particular film. Also unnecessary is a section called 'The One With'; a section that informs you how to remind a friend which film you mean. For instance, The Living Daylights is given as "The One With: the rock of Gibraltar, the milkman and the cello". Some may find the section interesting, the 'hardcore' Bond fan will find it a statement of the obvious.

It is obvious that a lot of work has gone into summarising material to include in the book, particularly for some of the aforementioned sections.

It's good to see areas dedicated to the majority of Bond films, Never Say Never Again included. While 1967's Casino Royale is included in the book it is disappointing to see that the 1954 version of the book is not. While, admittedly, it was only a telemovie it is undoubtedly an important part in the history of the cinematic James Bond.

Bond Films, co-authored by Jim Smith and Stephen Lavington, isn't the best Bond book ever, but it's obvious that the authors never intended for it to be. They had an intention from the start, stuck to it and in doing so successful created an interesting source of information.

An above-average book on the Bond series. In my opinion, the book's major lapses are when it tries to put the Bond films in historical context. The most notable howler here is a lengthy discussion of the effect of the 1973 OPEC oil embargo on the UK (page 139). This whole analysis is flawed because the UK was exempted from the OPEC embargo! The book also stumbles when it discusses the Thatcher government. For one thing, it claims (page 177) that the Thatcher government was elected in September 1979 (it was actually May 1979). Secondly, the book makes much of the fact that the same Defence Minister appears in the Bond films pre- and post-1979. The book claims (page 169) that for the character Frederick Gray still to be Defence Minister after the 1979 change of government, he "has pulled off the biggest party political defection in British history." In fact, it was not unheard for a minister to serve in both the late 1970s Callaghan Labour government and in the Thatcher government--for proof, see page 546 of Kenneth Morgan's book CALLAGHAN: A LIFE.

Another flawed discussion occurs when the authors claim that DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER "was very much ahead of its time" because "the idea of space-based lasers was not seriously mooted until US President Ronald Reagan's 'star wars' program of the 1980s" (p. 114). In fact, space-based weaponry was the subject of international diplomacy well before the 1980s--it was even covered by a 1972 arms treaty. Another space-related error occurs when the authors give the wrong year for the first space shuttle mission.

The book takes a decidedly rose-tinted view of Timothy Dalton's box office performance. You would not know from this book, for example, that all of Roger Moore's 1980s Bond pictures scored higher US admissions than either of Dalton's films. More generally, the authors take a scattergun approach to the reporting of box-office results, sometimes reporting world grosses, sometimes only US grosses. Moreover, for both OCTOPUSSY and NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN, box office rentals are incorrectly given as box office grosses. Many of the other box office comparisons in the book are misleading because of the failure to adjust for inflation.

As far as the reviews themselves are concerned, I was pleasantly surprised to see some kind words said about A VIEW TO A KILL and some reservations about GOLDFINGER. Otherwise, the reviews report quite conventional views about the films; indeed, the opinions expressed here about the first eleven movies are virtually interchangeable with those in John Brosnan's classic book on the Bond series. Sometimes the influence of previous books, while understandable, is TOO intrusive. For example, Barnes and Hearn's judgement on THE SPY WHO LOVED ME in their book KISS KISS BANG BANG was that it was "a slick...'greatest-hits' package" (page 129 of 1997 edition); Smith and Lavington's judgement on the same film is: "A slick, pacy 'greatest hits' package" (page 154).

There are numerous misquotations from the films as well as misspellings of names of characters, cast members, and historical figures. Most of these errors are minor but avoidable. On other issues, such as the running time of ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE and how many of the Bond films are solo-scripted, the book's errors are more serious.

The Moore films are repeatedly criticised for making the James Bond character well-known throughout the world rather than a secret agent, ignoring the precedent for this in two Connery Bonds--Bond made the papers in YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE and was world-famous in DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER. (Barnes and Hearn's book on the Bond films was also guilty of this double standard.) Other inconsistencies appear to be a by-product of the book being written over a long period. For example, page 33 claims that "throughout" the Bond film series, Soviets were never Bond's main enemy--ignoring FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, which is acknowledged on page 176 as a film where the main villains are Soviet-backed. And the statement on page 177 that "politicians had been either anonymous or not obviously based on any one person" in the films before FOR YOUR EYES ONLY seems at odds with the authors' own account of the conclusion of GOLDFINGER: "[the] plane Bond is taking to meet President Johnson..." (page 41).

You know, typically people don't make you pay to read their advertisements. This is an exception. Each of the self-serving articles in this book is followed by a 1-2 page advertisement for the author that, not surprising, offers a service to solve the problem outlined in the article. How convenient! This book is a glorified collection of vendor-sponsored white papers.

This book was a valuable resource. Many tid bits of info that can really make a big difference for your success.

This is a collection of messages left on a close friend's of Jonathan Winters answering Machine. All of it right off the top of Jonathan Winter's head. He would call to talk to his friend about something, get the machine, and just start up another rendition of something, that was on his mind at the moment. While the subjects may seem random to us, it was usually something his friend could relate to, and Mr. Smith gives a short preface, about the most of the messages. Some are Very funny! Jim Smith was a close friend to Jonathan & his wife, and worked with him over the years on various projects, including Hee Haw. There is a very nice introduction to the book, and many pictures throughout... It's a different kind of book, because it was all quoted from a caller, that didn't know he was building a book. I guess it made it even all the better.