History is usually written by the victor, or at least from the victor's perspective. To some extent this is unfortunate, since historical "truth" requires a balanced perspective. If one is truly interested in understanding the American Revolutionary War, then one must actively seek out the perspective of the losing side. That is why books like, Piers Mackesy's The War For America, 1775-1783, David Syrett's The Royal Navy in American Waters, 1775-1783 & Edward Cashin's The King's Ranger are so important. The first two put our revolution in overall geopolitical perspective from the British point of view. The latter focuses exclusively on the often neglected "southern campaign". With the excitement generated by the 1999 movie, "The Patriot", this book is re-released at an opportune moment. While the beginning and ending portions focusing on Thomas Brown's pre- and post-american life, respectively, are somewhat dry and could stand more judicious editing, the central meat of the book is an excellent and scholarly contribution to the study of the American Revolutionary period. In this book we gain insight into the significant role of tories in America as well as the american indian contribution to the campaign in the south. We learn what happened to most tories after their cause was lost and come to realize just how close we came to being on the losing side. This is a scholarly work of history, portions require concerted effort and concentration to wade through. However, the "pearls" contained within, particularly in the central portion, are well worth the effort.

Very Interesting book for those avid readers interested in the few years before and after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The book shows how England decieved the Arabs by making false promises of independence once the Arabs completed thier revolt against the Ottomans. Arabs ended up with British and French mandates instead. Lawrence was himself betrayed by his own government. The book gives a lot of detail on the daily life of bedouins, so some might find it interesting. The author should have dealt more with Lawrence's view of Zionism and the Balfour declaration and British policies in the region.

I liked very much each one of the final parts of the book. I'm a fanatic reader of this books, of the "Choose your own adventure". I live in Argentina, so I've only read half of the collection.

The Maltese Goddess is a film-noir musical done as an Audio Play. It has exquisite sound, and was recorded in kunstkopf binaural 3-D sound. For those of you that have not experienced, you are in for a treat. It MUST be listened to on headphones. The story literally moves around in your head. It is amazing.

The story itself is good, but not great. It involves a private eyes daughter attempting to solve her dead fathers last case, the missing statue of the Maltese Goddess. Personally, I would have preferred it without the songs. I love musicals, but they do not seem to fit an audio mystery. The voice acting is good, and my favorite character is the dead father heard on notes recorded before his death.

ZBS rarely goes wrong, and this is no exception.

In a series of conversations with English music critic Edward Seckerson, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas shares his thinking on diverse musical matters, from the influence of technology on listening, to composers, including Mahler and Stravinsky, to his friendship with Leonard Bernstein, to his own composing. For those who don't know much about "classical" music (or think they don't like it), he provides friendly guidance, amusing anecdotes, and an unabashedly American point of view. Walt Whitman, James Brown (whom he worked with briefly in the '60s) and Steve Reich are as important to him as the European masters. Tilson Thomas' descriptions of symphonic music and the art of conducting are honest and de-mystifing. On page 195, he says, "The performers' instinct to find whatever is necessary to put the piece over is a reflection of music as a part of show business... there is still a platform, performers, an audience, lights, ushers and tickets. That's a show. Sometimes the show may have a prayerful intention which can unite people in a spiritual way. There is nothing more wonderful than the moments of silence that the audience and orchestra share together at the end of Tchaikovsky's Pathetique, or Mahler's Ninth Symphony... In this spectacle the conductor can be a kind of master of ceremonies, celebrant, cheerleader, drill sergeant, band leader..." Seckerson's questions and comments are also interesting and at times provocative. The text is accompanied by a generous number of photos of Tilson Thomas with composers, soloists, orchestras, and friends.

Everyone intrigued by the tale of Lawrence of Arabia as told in David Lean's epic film, will want to get a grip on this disturbing end to the story. T.E. Lawrence may have been the most successful and famous real-life spy who ever lived. He could have been Prime Minister or Parlimentarian as was his less celebrated contemporary, Winston Churchill. Why did he instead enlist as a lowly private in several military regiments under assumed names, avoiding his fame? These are some of the questions Matthew Eden explores in this fascinating and well-researched novelization. It does not speculate endlessly, as many recent Lawrence books do, on the soldier's possible sexual preferences. But speculates plausibly on the possible uses others might have had for Lawrence, on Lawrence's own political interests, and the reasons why certain parties in 1935 might have wanted Lawrence dead. Best are the sequences of Lawrence and his beloved Brough Superior motorbike. Here are some of the best motorcycle riding descriptions I've ever read. I found it a very provocative book which inspired me to read further.

This is a nice book. Describes how stuborne T.E.L's friends were when any critic wanted to publish anything that contradicted their belifes. Mostly just a combination of the letters Aldington and others wrote while he was trying to publish his book on T.E.L.

We are still awaiting a truly great biography of T. E. Lawrence. Easily one of the most fascinating and complex individuals of the past century, Lawrence remains in many ways a cipher and an enigma. I found Peter Brent's volume in a used bookstore, and bought it for the superb illustrations as much as for the text. Luckily, the text provides a solid and useful treatment. Brent doesn't dissipate the mystery of Lawrence so much as introduce the reader to it. For instance, he juxtaposes Lawrence's apparent asexuality and revolt at physical contact with others with his pleasure in physical masochism, without a serious attempt to provide a solution to this mystery. He makes several suggestions that many of Lawrence's difficulties in life may have been related to a sense of being an illegitimate child and a consciousness of being rejected by his father's family, but he is not able to systematically relate this to specific instances of his life. At the same time, the book doesn't degenerate into psychobiography, something that could happen all too easily with someone as complex as Lawrence.

The bulk of the book deals with the Arab Revolt against Turkey, and Lawrence's role in it. The discussion is solid without being outstanding. Brent does a fine job of outlining the major issues in the conflict, describing the major figures in the conflict, and depicting the difficulties in any happy resolution. He treats Lawrence fairly, not minimizing his role, but not buying uncritically into the Lawrence legend. He neither tries to erect an idol nor destroy an icon. He also deals with Lawrence's life before WW I, and to a much lesser extent, his life after it. I wish the latter part of the book had been a bit fuller. I found the final years of Lawrence's life to be dealt with far too brusquely.

The illustrations make the book. There are photographs of nearly all the key figures, color reproductions of many of the illustrations from the original private edition of THE SEVEN PILLARS OF WISDOM (including a number of cartoonish depictions of Lawrence), and fascinating photographs of Lawrence from all stages of his life. Even if one did not wish to read the text, I could recommend this volume as a great visual companion volume to anyone reading THE SEVEN PILLARS OF WISDOM.

This book is a blood cloated adventure. Each line of this story filled with greate adventure. This book is really an amazzing one.

I found this book delightful reading. The clear exposition, program examples with detailed explanations, clear definitions, and well stated principals makes this a must have book for those wishing to use Java with Oracle8i. The detailed style is reminiscent of the well-known text books by authors Harvey and Paul Deitel.

This book is suitable for both database application programmers and undergraduate students. My undergraduate students, who have had a strong course in Java, would love this text. I am using it as a supplement in this fall's Database Systems course.

Java has really come into its own and Oracle8i strongly supports it. The Oracle8i database server supports both PL/SQL and Java. Oracle's Jserver, which includes a JVM (Java Virtual Machine). The authors provide a clear overview of how Java and now SQLJ fit into the database world.

This book presents very clear explanations for people new to database programming. They discuss JDBC and SQLJ and compare the approaches for accessing a relational database server. The authors give a detailed explanation of how a SQLJ program gets translated into Java source code. Nothing is skipped in explaining what the SQLJ translator does. For example, there is a fine discussion of the SQLJ iterator (which is essentially a Java class; the SQLJ translator actually replaces the SQLJ iterator declaration with a Java declaration for a class.) There is a detailed explanation about how the Java class contains a next() method and has accessor methods for columns in a particular table. The discussion of SQLJ stored programs is clear. Pros and cons of loading/compiling on the client versus the server side are given. There are fine examples of both ways of doing things. They give a very good explanation of how a SQLJ program connects to a database using an instance of a connection class, which is really a Java class that is defined in a SQLJ connection context. In conclusion, this is a very refreshing book that gives theory and detailed programs with great explanations. Java is an exciting language and SQLJ makes database work very interesting. These authors are doing a super job in promoting this new and relatively easy way of developing for Oracle databases. I have not found any other book to come close to what they have done for the database community.

If you are serious about learning SQLJ, I strongly recommend that you get this book. Both a tutorial and a reference manual, this book takes the guts of SQLJ and spelled it out in layman terms. Full of well-designed and well explained code based on real-world applications, this book is a MUST for any Java developer.

I got this book when I attended the Oracle OpenWorld 99 conference. I have been programming in Java for about a year and I was accustomed only to JDBC. This book is an eye opener on what you can do with SQLJ as well as JDBC. Unlike other Java books that are just reference books, this book gears towards application developers who wish to develop database applications. I highly recommend it to Java and Oracle programmers.