So well-documented and persuasive that it is certain to be quoted extensively by the defense industry lobby for years to come. But the truth it presents is a simple one. A more complex truth would want to examine the doctrines that require the US to outspend the next 6 largest armed forces in the world COMBINED.

The Two Theater War Doctrine that was established during Cheney and Powell's last tenure (back when they were SecDef and C-JCS, rather than the VP and SecState) is the benchmark that all of these defense "requirements" are based on. Scrap that doctrine and the perception of a train wreck diminishes drastically. A less partisan examination of American defense spending would start by asking why the US is still spending at Cold War levels, why non-US military aid is a joke (in Pentagon terms, the amount of aid given is a rounding error, no more than that), and why weapons are seen as the be-all and end-all of security. The fact that Goure did not answer the hard questions puts this book on the same level as propaganda.

Dr. Defenestrator's Prescription: Don't read it; there's a good chance that US policymakers have already read it, and you'll no doubt hear it repeated verbatim repeatedly. Cindy Williams' "Holding the Line" offers an alternative view on the issue, and you should at least read the two books together if you must read Goure.

The central argument of Goure, et. al., is pretty straight forward: the Clinton administration has not spent enough money on "recapitalizing" the US military -- that is, hasn't replaced enough of the tanks, ships, and airplanes -- so everything will wear out about the same time, leaving the United States undefended, unable to defend its interests, and unfriended. That's the "pending train wreck." The argument is not new. Indeed, the analogy to a "defense train wreck" emerged shortly after the Clinton administration took office in the early 1980s, touted, strangely enough, by some disgruntled low ranking members of the preceeding Republican administrations. Partisanship aside, how does the argument stand up in the face of nearly a decade since it first emerged? The answer is mixed. When first voiced, the train wreck was going to take place before the end of the century. Goure's most recent warming over of the gruel now pushes it into the new century, suggesting that he and his predecessors might have let their resentment of the current administration cloud their understanding of the actual dynamics inside the Pentagon. But that noted, some of the trends they note do ring true and do support the contention that the US will face an unfortunate situation in which the relative lack of procurement over the last decade will reduce the readiness of the force because its equipment is wearing thin. To Goure and his fellow authors, this is a great shame, for it will make the world's most powerful military a hollow force. Here's the real limitation of the book, for it assumes the Cold War force the United States built and honed over half a century should be the standard for the future. But this Cold War force was built for an era that has passed, and has characteristics that make it ill suited to the present and future. It is a ponderous force, dedicated to a concept of "overwhelming" might, rather than a "smart" force that is agile, swift, and suited for the problems we face now. Goure and his colleagues are right about the remnants of the Cold War force running down (even though they seem to be wrong about the immediacy of the train wreck). Where they're significantly wrong, however, is in the notion that we need or want the kind of force they're so concerned about losing.

The authors provide compelling evidence of a forthcoming "train wreck" in U.S. defensive capabilities, and make a compelling case for increasing the defense budget by $60-100B a year for a mixture of preserving readiness; acquiring mid-term capabilities needed to replace a 20-30 year old mobility, weapons, and communications base force; and implementing the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). This is a well-documented and heavily fact-laden book-the authors as individuals and the case they make in general terms-must be heeded by the next President and the next Congress. Where the book does not go, and a companion book by the same authors would be of great value, is into the detail of WHAT threat, WHAT force structure. They accept, for example, the Navy's 304-ship Navy that keeps adding gigantic carriers and does nothing for littoral warfare or putting Marines within 24 hours of any country instead of 6 days. Similarly, they accept Air Force emphasis on fewer and fewer bigger and more sophisticated platforms of dubious utility in a 21st Century environment that requires long loiter, ranges of several hundred nautical miles without refueling, full lift in hot humid weather, and survivability in the face of electromagnetic weapons in the hands of thugs. This book demonstrates a clear mastery of defense economics, and it is an important contribution to the bottom line: our national defense is desperately underfunded, and this must be in the "top three" issues facing the 43rd President and the 107th Congress. What we buy, and why, has not yet been answered to my satisfaction.

I highly recommend this book to masochists. The lack of any coherent plot really allows the book to go into compeltely unpredictable areas.

Earthling is an amusing little read but that's about it. The idea is not especially original and the execution is poor. Written in three sections, Earthling lacks coherence and refuses to yield a single remarkable character. If you want good science fiction, look elsewhere.

This was a surprising, fascinating read. I am turned on by his stark, earthy and pure poetry. Daniel is immensely imaginative, intelligent and courageous writer. I was moved and inspired. I definitely enjoyed 'Earthling'. Looking forward to the sequel of 'Metaplanetary'- another must read!

Unfortunately, this Yale edition leaves out about half of what Newman himself published in 1873 as the definitive edition of THE IDEA OF A UNIVERSITY. Published here are only the nine "Dublin Discourses" from Part I on "University Teaching" and but four of the ten chapters of Part II, "University Subjects Discussed in Occasional Lectures and Essays." For the hundred-page displacement of Newman's essays, the editor substitutes five interpretive essays supposedly inquiring into the relevance of Newman's book for today's higher education debates. These interpretive essays have major inconsistencies and repetitions among themselves and are of mixed quality, with inaccuracies and serious misunderstandings of some of Newman's central ideas. As accurate forays of the Newmanian mind into the twentieth- and twenty-first century university, only the engaging and intellectually challenging essays by George Marsden and George Landow succeed. (COMPLETE paperback editions of Newman's IDEA are available from Loyola University Press, 1987, and University of Notre Dame Press, 1982).

A wonderful work, too bad that this edition by Regnery is chock full of glaring typographical errors. Detracts from Newman's otherwise brilliant prose.

Newman's work is not only an eloquent, erudite, and careful defense of the virtue of knowledge and the value of a liberal education; it is also a brilliantly reasoned and felt argument for the prevention of hubris on the part of any particular branch of knowledge.

Newman's sound warnings against the overreaching of scientific fields and the triumph of smug materialism and positivism are still urgent, of course. Newman is also careful to point out that the liberal arts and even theology may attempt to establish a single, inadequate framework for the discovery of truth.

Newman's complex epistemology does not fall prey to the heresy that truth is not one, but reminds us that in our present state, truth present various aspects and that the tyranny of any particular branch of knowledge is the victory of ignorance.

This book was the worst LSAT book I used to prepare for the test. It's compact size made it stressful on my eyes and the book was hard to keep open during a practice test. The questions were misleading and sometimes irrelevant. I would estimate my score went down from using this book.

I would recommend this book to someone who is wanting to narrow down their trouble spots and then move on to another source to tackle them. This book is excellent at helping you sort out your problem areas and gives questions that are about the same as those found in other test prep books. I found this, combined with a pile of prep tests availble from law services prepared me well for writing the lsat. I wouldn't suggest one use this book on its own and expect to get gleeming scores. It works great to a point, but another study aide is essential to compliment it.

This book is great. I've taken a lot of these standardized tests, and I've found that for a test like the LSAT, the best preparation is to know the format of the test well, to practice each section (timed and untimed), and to finish with taking a few full length practice tests. There is no need to buy a big ... book for the LSAT. There's no need to take a course. Simplicity is the key and this book is all you need. It's a ... good little book.

I've always been a great fan of Joe Gores, and found this effort really painful because he's let his readers down.

Many authors use the technique of relating, in parallel, stories from the perspective of several people. The fun comes when these stories become intertwined, leading to a combined climax to the action. It seems at first that Gores is plotting this kind of action, but the reader gradually realizes that there is no interconnection between the stories except that they happen at the same time to different DKA operatives. In effect, what we have here is a half dozen short stories of varying quality spliced together. It doesn't hold together, and I was ultimately unsatisfied.

The individual components of the book range from an overly complex death threat, a bloody union scheme, surreal-comic reposessions, and a distasteful DKA op who gets his kicks taking sexual advantage of illegal alien girls.

Enjoy 32 Cadillacs or other earlier Gores works and pass on this one.

Too disconnected. Gores flits here and there and everywhere never giving enough to string a story. It's like a day in the life of a repo man only it's a day in the life of ALL the repo men and women who work for DKA. Very boring and pointless. There wasn't enough local atmosphere or story to hold my attention.

And another thing that's beginning to grate on me after 20yrs of reading mysteries is ALL THE WOMEN ARE ALL flawless KNOCKOUT PERFECT...blond, blue eyed, boobies & brains and long legs. Ah..the guys are normal. I'm still going to try 32 Cadillacs.

Joe Gores is one of the most entertaining mystery authors around, no argument. He can write really tough, noir stories, but my favorites have always been his "DKA" novels, featuring Daniel Kearny, king of the San Francisco repo men, and his crew of talented and slightly strange operatives: Larry Ballard, good-looking white-bread and black belt in assorted martial arts; Bart Heslip, black ex-boxer and Larry's best friend; Giselle Marc, beauty combined with brains and organizational smarts; O'Bannon, elder statesman of repo artists and inveterate lush; Ken Warren, Vietnam veteran with a serious speech impediment; and numerous others who come and go throughout the series. Gores's specialty is to combine this retinue of fascinating people with complex -- but reasonable and logical -- multiple plots, an eye for telling detail and description, and a droll style of delivery that will have you laughing out loud on the bus. This time, the overlapping plots include Bart going undercover in the Tenderloin District, Giselle talking Dan (who's been thrown out of his house by his wife) into taking on a personal security job for a young computer geek who is about to become a semi-billionaire, Ken becoming the sexual target of the geek's aging society mom, Jacques Daniel trying to uncover union corruption and being run off a Marin cliff on his racing bike, Trin Morales trying to balance his repo load with his desire to become both a Latino godfather and the bane of underage chicas, and Larry getting involved with a gorgeous, feisty Italian labor union official who just may be more than he can handle. And then there's the two cops who have been a team so long they're known as Rozenkrantz and Guildenstern, automatically dressing alike and keeping up an endless stream of off-color jokes and patter. The pace is fast and steady, and ten pages from the end of the book, you'll shake your head and wonder how Gores can ever bring all the threads to a conclusion. But he does, and very tidily, too. This would make a wonderful film!

The recipes in this book turned out to be the same old ones you get over and over but here, the author has cleverly cushioned them with "stories" that hype them up and flush them out to make up for a lack of culinary skills. Nice try, but I can get better recipes, and stories, off the internet.

I found the recipes to be nothing new. Yes, there were stories thrown in to disguise Ms. Wells lack of culinary skills. The illustrations and the photography were quite pleasant, I found myself looking for these two things. Ms Wells I think needs to try again.I was sorry I purchased this book.

In my view this is a good book for someone who remembers home and wants to duplicate some of home in a far away place. I grew up in New Orleans and now live in Texas. If you don't know it, we New Orleans people are picky about our food. I have also spent a lot of time in a lot of places outside the US. Sometimes you just want to taste some of those simple things you grew up eating. The hardest thing is finding the "stuff" you want and deciding on a reasonable substitute when you can't find it. So, I really appreciate the list of where to get the "hook-up" in Paris. There is noting worst than being in Paris or Lisbon for a few weeks and just wanting some red beans, greens and corn bread and not knowing where to go to get the dish or the ingredients. Now I know it is not just me. I love the art work and the background material.

I am new to the OOLanguage world. I have about 5 Java books on my desk. When I try to get an explaination I read until I find one that has examples and speaks plain enough for a novist. Out of all my books this book was the only one that addressed JProgress Bars and it was plain enough for me to apply it to my code.

I also used this book - from all my others to explain interfaces and abstracts.

Good reference book and in plain english for someone coming from the structured language field.

I was looking for a book that would explain some of the more abstract and undocumented areas of the JFC like using the Action interface. I'm still looking. This book is a little too basic for me. To be fair, I haven't read the chapters on printing and JDBC.

Some of the tips are helpfull but I find that reading the javadoc and the swing connection provides a great deal of more information. However, I'm looking forward to Geary's JFC book when it's released. His Java 1.1 AWT book was the best book about the AWT that I've read.

I'm looking for a book that would explain how to design Java UI's from an architectural perspective rather that the details and placement of widgets. More details about desining and changing the models associated with the delegates would be nice. Maybe I should write it.

The best way to learn about a new tool (which is what the JFC are) is to watch someone work with it. Though it's not a comprehensive reference, this book does explain how to perform lots of popular JFC tasks.

There are some cool examples involving network resources and displaying raster graphics.

Code is presented in an example-and-commentary format, so you can see what he's doing overall before he explains it piece-by-piece.

I regret wasting money on this book. It is even worst than the online help menu

The title of the book is misleading and the book is disappointing. It it the other way round. If you want to find out the tricks of using Inventor or to discover the "tops" of Inventor, don't buy this book. It is simply of replica of the help menu found from the application

I have completed beginning and advanced Inventor classes using this book. I have held an A average with very little confusion of how to use the knowledge from this book. It covers all the most necessary topics, detailed enough for me and all of my classmates to master.

Now I know why some governments burn books. Use your copy for your next campfire.

Well, if I still refer to this text after having taken Intro to Biostats almost 3 years ago, then this book can't be all that bad. For the money, however, the publisher could have at least made the book more durable. This book starts to fall apart after only about a month of use- I kid you not!

The title is very appropriate - this text provides a solid foundation in biostats. I used it for an intro course in grad school, and working through the text was very worthwhile. Previously cloudy concepts are now more clear, and I have a great reference for future use. More in-depth biostats deserves a consultation with a statistician, not a longer text. I agree with other reviewers that there are occasional mistakes (which need to be fixed - this is not even the first edition), but overall I would still highly recommend it.

resource.

The point of writing the application essays is to emphasize your candidacy while presenting yourself as unique "fish" among the "school" of applicants. While the examples and critiques are mildly interesting, they don't do that much to help you be yourself.

A better, and more holistic analysis of positioning your entire application is presented in the Richard Montauk book, "How to Get Into the Top MBA Programs."

If you're interested purely in the essay portion, the Harry Bauld "On Writing the College Application Essay" is much better because it adds a human (and humor) element to writing. (Don't be misled by the undergraduate flair: Harry Haggard and Sarah Bleary review B-school applications, too!)

These essays are outdated, answer irrelevant questions and are entirely too long. They are good only to read and say - "I can do better than that." Besides, reading other people's essays is not as useful as a good book full of advice on which topics to cover and how to write. Save your money.

While not as good as Montauk's "How to Get Into the Top MBA Programs," this book is much shorter (1/3 the size) and may be better if you're on a tight deadline. Found that the essays provided some good guidelines. Helped me get into UCLA, so it was definitely worth the read.