Nobody was reporting on the changes in the newspaper industry as the chains were becoming larger and more dominant, owning 80% of the nearly 1,500 newspapers in the US. In the middle 1990s, journalists no longer working for newspapers (to avoid conflict of interest) launched the Project on the State of the American Newspaper, projected to produce some 20 articles that would appear in the American Journalism Review and be the foundation for two volumes.

Leaving The Reader Behind: The Age Of Corporate Newspapering surveys a generation of relentless "corporatization" that has radically transformed journalism and newspaper publishing. Unprecedented in the 300 year history of American newspapers, the blitz of buying, selling, and consolidation of newspapers has effected the industry from small town weeklies to the nationally renowned dailies. Gene Roberts (an immensely respected newspaper reporter and editor) has provided the reader with a unique and documented history that is as engaging as it is informative. Leaving The Reader Behind is essential reading for aspiring journalists and students of American newspaper publishing.

I just found out about this book today and spent just a few minutes leafing through it and that was enought for me to decide that it would be a great atlas to have on hand for general reference on all the major organ systems and their disease manisfestations. It seems like it would be a great (broad/generalist) review for the boards. I hope to acquire this book soon...!

The planet EARTH houses well over 600billion people... and in the land on which they are housed under cloak of gases we call ATMOSPHERE are natural potentials for disaster. The same elements that form disaster are often the elements that provide us our sustenance. REMOTE SENSING and AERIAL INTERPRETATION allows us to plan HOW we use these landforms and elements WISELY.

The book provided by Avery and Berlin is a must have for any land developer or engineer who intends to maintain equilibrium with nature in his design. The book provides first hand knowledge of basic instruments and technology used in locating sources of precious commodities and for streamlining expense of damage/progress survey used in Agricultural and Energy careers. Acquisistion of the skill offered by this text enables VISION beyond the facade. It was one of many required texts in my own field of study.
Carmen Cross

This is the best version of the Malory tales that I have read. One has to have a grasp of Middle English pronunciation and grammar to follow the text, but with that knowledge, the reader will find Vinaver's text to be supreme. I would recommend this volume to anyone pursuing study in Medieval or Arthurian literature, or the Medieval enthusiast looking for a good read. If I could give it six stars, I would.

This is the classic scholarly edition of Sir Thomas Malory's _Le Morte Darthur_, the classic tale of King Arthur and his knights. It is based upon the Winchester manuscript instead of Caxton's 1485 edition. It is Prof. Vinaver's contention that Malory did not translate his sources as a single work but rather treated each one as a separate tale. He therefore entitled his edition _Works_ rather than the more usual _Le Morte Darthur_. Readers should be warned that the spelling and grammer of this edition have not been modernized. Like most Middle English texts it is best to read it aloud. The unfamiliar spelling and structure can be easier for the ear to understand than the eye. After all spelling in this period (about 1469) was not standardized and scribes wrote as they spoke.

This is a marvelous work. You must teach yourself to read the 15th-century English, but once you have gotten the knack, it's not hard at all. Malory lived in a simpler time, and spoke a simpler language, than we do today. There is a vigor and energy to the prose that leaps off the page - I remember one knight threatening that he would "fetch [his enemy] out of the biggest castle that he had." This volume, which gathers Malory's work over many many years, also tells the story of a man learning how to be a writer, and also, I think, growing in his emotional understanding and inteterest in his own characters. The characters are so much more real and interesting at the end than at the beginning!

If you want the original Middle English version of Le Mort D' Arthur, this is it. It is the Winchester version. I bought this book while in England and it's the best version I have due to the original spellings. It's a challenge to read, but I enjoy it because it is more authentic. Since you don't have somebody "correcting" the text, you get to see what the original actually looks and reads like. I believe this is the only middle English version available. You won't be disappointed!

For those of us who want to read the original tales of King Arthur and the Round Table, but can't speak French, this is the place to go. The 15th century English makes for slow going at first, but provides a more authentic tale than the Caxton version. Malory grows stylistically throughout the Works, and by the Morte D'Arthur he tells as engaging a tale as any in Arthurian literature. This is a must read!

I purchased this book hoping I might be able to use it in the course I teach on the Holocaust. It includes a vast and rich body of testimony that would be invaluable if it were placed in context. However this work is a list of statements, usually identified only by an individual's name. For most of the statements, it is impossible to determine which camp is being described. This book suggests that there was a general concentration camp experience, and that it is not necessary to distinghish one camp from the other. I believe that premise is problematical on both counts. Even the photographs have generic captions that do not identify the camps they depict. While the first-person accounts of the Nazi order of terror are often gripping, this book should be used with caution by those seeking a precise historical understanding of the Holocaust.

This book is a compilation of statements made by hundreds of different Holocaust survivors. The statements are pieced together in a way that makes the readers feel they are reading a story told by one person. The book takes stories from survivors of all the different camps and compiles them to depict the horror felt by all victims of the camps. I would say this book is an excellent introduction to what life in the camps was like.

It is hard to believe that this book is only now available in English. Consisting entirely of eye-witness accounts of life in German concentration camps, the work served as an important source of evidence during the Nazi trials. The accounts, however, are compiled so that they form a narrative that is roughly chronological, beginning with the experience of deportation and ending with the grim business of counting bodies. In between lies the whole experience of the prisoner: the forced and brutalizing work, the whimsical or studied methods of torture, the grisly medical experiments, the routine executions, the gasing of ever larger groups, the ovens that burned night and day, and constantly, throughout the story, the capricious beating, kicking and whipping. Primo Levi, who wrote so eloquently about the danger of forgetting, would have appreciated this book.

And Thomas Whissen, the translator, has performed an admirable and selfless job. He has rendered this story in a language that is so clear, so transparent, that one forgets that one is reading words on a page. The book leaves one feeling bruised and battered, and not quite willing to go back into a world of comforts. It leaves one deeply suspicious of humanity. And this perhaps is a good thing.

Incidentally, it is difficult to imagine a book better suited for university courses on the holocaust.

Carmine Di Biase, Ph.D. (cdibiase@jsucc.jsu.edu)

The Secrets of Inchon is a remarkable war story complete with suspense, hair-raising escapes, death, education about the Korean culture and some romance mixed in. Navy Lieutenant Eugene Clark tells the story very capably.

Combat is treated as a necessary evil and he is not afraid to say he was scared during his many incursions into hostile territory. The Korean people working with him are patriotic and hard working. They understand the chances they are taking, but know that their entire country is in the balance as they assist the Americans in their preparations for the imminent Inchon landing.

I echo the editorial review that lamented the absence of maps. While I am not a big fan of map reading during most books, the number of islands and their proximity are key elements of the story and the book suffers from the lack of a single usable map.

The most striking feature of this story is the fact that Lieutenant Clark locked it away in a safe deposit box and never revealed its existence. In other words, it wasn't written for self-aggrandizement or enrichment, but out of a desire to tell the story.

I recommend this book to fans of military history and espionage.

This is a gripping adventure story. Lieutenant Clark was the man responsible for checking, updating, and correcting information on tidal channels, mudflats, seawalls, beaches, and defenses during the two weeks prior to the Inchon landings of Sept. 15, 1950. He landed, with two key Korean aides, on the island of Yonghung-do - just 12 miles from the city of Inchon. His team took the isle, organized its 1,000 inhabitants, and maintained control of his looking post during the last days before the invasion which broke the back of the North Korean supply line. From the base camp Clark conducted repeated clandestine probes of enemy defenses (frequently dressed only in mud!). There is enough action and exploits here to satisfy any reader! Paradoxically, this book's biggest problem is not Lieutenant Clark's fascinating narrative. It is the inadequate way this book was put together. Most bothersome are the curiously inadequate maps! It only has two: one of the entire Korean peninsula, and another of the islands and channels around Inchon. The first is unnecessary; the second is simply infuriating. Of the many islands shown on the second map, only four are identified by name. This is unconscionable since careful reading of the text allowed me to identify several others: Sin-Do, Sinbul-Do, Chongna-Do, Yui-Do, and Sammok-Do. (I carefully penned the names of each of these onto map next to each island for my own future reference!). I was also forced to create my own detail maps of the islands of Palmi-Do (the lighthouse island), and of Yonghung-Do (the base island) from Lieutenant Clark's narrative! The book features eight pages of glossy photos in the center (15 photos) only some of which bear directly on Clark's narrative itself - too bad the money used on these was not spent on adequate maps! (An index would have been very appreciated, too.) Despite all these annoying flaws, I would still buy this book - simply to read Clark's captivating and extremely well written story. Those who have slogged around in small boats, contending with tides, sandbars, mudflats, shell banks, shifting channels, and so on will especially relate to the challenges facing those Koreans who lived in these waters and who assisted the American 'spy!' Those who have served in the U.S. military (both naval and ground) will appreciate the knowledge and capabilities of this man, who seems a prototype for Navy Seals or for Green Berets of later generations. Sadly, many who could learn from this man will never read a book like this, thinking he lived "too long ago" for anyone now to learn from. Not so! "The Secrets of Inchon" is worth every moment spent reading it!

This is a great story. Most of it takes place in the few weeks preceding the U.N. landing of troops at Inchon in September, 1950, only a few months after the Korean war started. The author, Gene Clark, was supposed to send as much information as possible to Tokyo prior to the landing date. Fortunately, he was highly aware of many aspects of such operations from his previous service in the American invasion of Okinawa in 1945. In 1948, he served as an interpreter at Japanese war crimes trials on Guam, and his account of his weeks in Korea is filled with information about how well ideas were translated from one language into another. A short paragraph in which he quotes himself is capable of showing how quickly his mind operates on many levels in the midst of complex situations, thusly:

"Can't we get some clothes for these men, Kim? And get that doctor to take care of those splinters right away," I directed. Min's back and arms were a bloody mess. We couldn't afford to have this man hospitalized. (p. 150).

That's from a page in the middle of the book, where the 15 pictures are located. Back in 1950, Gene Clark was not transmitting pictures in his reports to Tokyo. His radio communications were quite limited, and a lot of the spying took place after dark. Even the picture of his ten men on the island about eleven miles from Inchon, showing Clark with his shoulder holster and Youn standing "with the pistol in his belt," doesn't use the nicknames which were constantly used in the story "in case they were captured by the Communists." (p. 18). Clark had a knack for picking names for his top buddies that could be confused for major Asian figures: Yong Chi Ho and Kim Nam Sun. My confusion about which Kim was part of this story was greatest on page 129, after a digression about "a certain doom for more than a hundred of the innocent peaceful inhabitants of Taemuui-do, sacrificed on the blood-drenched altar of Communism to the ambitions of the traitorous and false Korean prophet, Kim Il Sung, the Soviets' puppet president of North Korea," as related to Clark by Kim after his interrogation of the mother of Political Officer Yeh of the North Korean People's Republic. Yeh had been assigned to impose order and collect rice for the Red High Command on an island a mere five miles from where Clark was able to observe things like, "Down the beach, a sampan was shuttling back and forth between beach and junk, landing the people from Taemuui-do." (p. 128). Yeh's father had been a close friend of Kim Il Sung and had been captured and later executed by the South Korean counterintelligence organization for which Kim Nam Sung had previously worked, "But Syngman Rhee had fired him for failing to predict the North Korean invasion." (p. 24). The attempt to capture Yeh to extract whatever information he might have about Red High Command intentions on the defense of Inchon is barely plausible, but it was an exciting episode.

General of the Army Douglas MacArthur is mentioned a number of times in this book. There is no index, so this will not be an easy source to use for those who are looking for details about how well General MacArthur did in 1950, but a picture of how pleased he was, sitting on the bridge of the USS Mount McKinley on September 15, and walking ashore on September 17, are great evidence of this operation's success. The Epilogue, written by another after this manuscript was revealed by Clark's surviving family members in 2000, gives Clark the credit for flashing "earthshaking news to headquarters in Tokyo" (p. 324) from islands in the mouth of the Yalu River at the end of October, 1950. A million Chinese troops, with human wave tactics that are easy to imagine, after the number of casualties that begin to mount up in the actions reported in this book, changed the situation enough to confine the UN army mainly to South Korea. In noting the medals won by Gene Clark, the Navy Cross which he received for an action behind enemy lines in early 1951, escorting Brigadier General Crawford Sams, a doctor, to determine if Chinese troops were dying of bubonic plague, which might have required "the daunting task of vaccinating their entire army against the plague," (p. 325) seems most modern.

There must be hundreds of translations, retellings, and reinventions of Thomas Mallory's works available. Unfortunately, this one is not high on my list of recommendations. Only nine stories are presented here, and many essential tales, such as the "Death of Merlin" and "Tristram and Isode", are omitted completely.

Vinaver's translation is cumbersome because, although he claims to modernize spellings and standardize names, there are still many words and phrases he chooses not to translate, so the reader has to constantly refer to footnotes at the bottom of the page. If I wanted to do all this work, I would have read the original version with no modernization at all!

The only redeeming addition to this book is the preface which discusses the difference between Mallory's version of the Arthurian romance and the French Vulgate Cycle upon which he drew his material. Instead of this edition, I would refer readers to Keith Baines' modern prose edition (ISBN: 0451625676). It contains all the stories and is much easier to read.

Eugene Vinaver is the editor of the standard version of Mallory, "Works." Here he has selected a few of the author's tales, largely the stories leading up to Arthur's death. However, this remains essentially a skimming of Mallory's work, somewhat akin to a condensed version, collected I suspect for academics wishing to teach the Arthurian romances without having to delve too long or deeply into Mallory's entire narrative. As such it provides a glimpse into Mallory's version of the legend, yet remains in part fragmentary---especially the story of Pellas and Ettard---thus limiting its impact.

Also, Vinaver continues his practice from "Works" of footnoting certain words he has chosen not to translate. I found this annoying as I could perceive no apparent reason in his choice not to complete the translation, and though in most cases I was able to interpret their meaning within their context, their footnoting continued to drag my eye to the translation provided at the bottom of the page, interrupting the flow of the narrative. If a credible reason for this practice can be provided, I would love to hear it.

Those who wish to read only what the editor has chosen to highlight in Mallory's tale may be satisfied. For all others, I would direct you to Vinaver's complete edition, "Works."