This book serves its purpose well. It clearly walks the reader through elements of national security, the actors, processes, and how Americans have traditionally approached it. With a unique perspective on the military element of power, the book also covers regional security issues and early twenty first century topics. As a senior level undergraduate text or as a basis to launch into discussion in graduate level seminars, American National Security conveys the fundamentals of U.S. security policy in a clear, articulate manner.

Jordan and Taylor both taught in the Department of Social Sciences at West Point in the early 1970's. Mazaar joined them for the 5th edition after directing the Millennium Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The book was designed to convey the basics of policy and process in American national security. The fifth edition is currently in use at the Army's Command & General Staff College for officers at the rank of major enrolled in strategic studies. It serves well as a foundation to discuss national security strategy and policy.

The book has two weaknesses. It is due for a revision given the dynamic nature of the post Cold War environment, especially since 9/11. It also lacks the standard amount of pictures, graphs and charts that normally accompany today's college texts. The book contains all black and white text with limited charts, maps and cartoons. Although this has not been a problem at the master's level, it could be perceived as a drawback to generating undergraduate interest in the subject matter.

Notwithstanding the above criticism, Taylor, Jordan and Mazaar have created a text that lays out the basics of national security policy, actors and institutions. Highly recommended.

I study Human Geography and for a long time I have been searching for a book such as this. The Geo-economic,political,social,cultural and environmental characteristics of global change are all explored and organised into 5 doorways. I found that the chapter on Geo-Politics was exceptionally good going deeply into the Cold War and the Welfare State. My enthusiasm for this text is not only from what it says but how it has said it. It is clearly written and provides a succinct commentary, making a very good book for anybody interested in Globalistation or for first year students studying it.

The main contents of the book,please

An excellent reference, however, the pictures are black and white, and rather small, though there are plenty of them. Also the print is rather small, which my father found impossible to read.

Excellent book. Clear, concise information, definitely a worthy alternative to the pricey Jane's books. The addition of more missile drawings was a welcome addition.

This is a huge book, this size of a world atlas, and 670 pages long. It has information on all of the military and civil aircraft currently in production worldwide. This includes rotorcraft, gliders, and homebuilts.

I think this is a better book than "Jane's All the World's Aircraft".

It is nice addition to anybody aircraft library.

I originally meant to buy Exam Cram not Exam Prep. When using Exam Prep I thought it did not prepare me for the tests. I have used one of the Exam Cram books for TCP/IP and thought it prepared me quite well. If your looking to take your MCSE test buy EXAM CRAM not Exam Prep.

I've been teaching the MCSE courses and on of my students brought the Exam Crams and Exam Prep books in the class, asked me to read and rate them. After reading through these books, I found these books are just excellent. They are full of technical stuffs, written in real English, and in a readable manner. I have even "talked" to one of the authors of the book as well (and his name is Ed). Ed was expert in the field and he was very fun to" talk" to. I definitely would recommend the books to all my students, friends.

I am a MCSE who looked at this book for use when studying for my tests. Now, a networking class is using this as a manual and I have to say something. This book does not cover the material well enough to take the tests nor in depth enough to actually do Enterprise networking with NT.