Wimmel has put together an impressive account of the rebirth of the US Navy under the guidance of Teddy Roosevelt. No other US president before or since has had such an impact on the Navy and its role in US foreign policy. Wimmel charts the course from the depths of naval ruin in 1880 (when Peru had a bigger Naval presence then the US) until the capstone adventure of the world tour of the 16 battleships composing the Great White Fleet in 1907. While I do find that Wimmel story line occasionally wanders, he has a habit of bring you right back on track. It is a story full of TR and the men who helped him shape the Navy (Sims, Mahan, Long et all). An amazing story about an amazing future and then serving US President. This is also a very readable work that saves the scholarly details for the appendix, a good source of further study in its own right peppered with comments by the author on those sources. A must for TR buffs and Navy fans alike.

For some strange reason I want to give this one 4&1/2 stars although I can find no faults with it. The book perhaps could be called "The Rise of T.R. & the G.W. Fleet". Actually I think I may be confused as I think I read the "Rise of T.R." at the same time and now have a hard time remembering each book separately. Anyhow it's a good book and gives a good overview of naval considerations from 1880 to 1900 as well as telling the story about the 1898 war w/ Spain. It doesn't go into extreme depth but then it's only 200 pp or so.

This book combines a general love for Teddy Roosevelt and many similar style people like Robley Evans with a good explanation of naval affairs.

I was impressed with the agility and ease with which the author elucidates complex naval issues clearly and concisely. Many of the other books on the Spanish-American naval war and similar topics are overly technical and make the topic formidable to beginners.

This book was much better than the others I've read in making the subject as interesting as it is, pleasing grognards but not being obtuse to non-military types.

Very worthwhile for Teddy fans.

I picked up this book ...., thinking it'd make a great present for a child... but then I decided to open it myself and have a look.

The holograms are OK -- not spectacular, but nice enough and would probably impress a child. However, the books are nice for novice stargazers. The books tell a child how to go about readying for an evening looking into the night sky, even mentioning safety issues and common sense things like having permission to go out at night. It explains a bit about the way we see the sky (btw, the book is geared toward North America), why the constellations in the North go around in a circle, yet those toward the South rise and set, where to find interesting things to look at using the naked eye or binoculars, and even what to do when the inevitible occurs, and the little red flashlight that comes with the kit stops working.

Using the book, I found the Orion Nebula and would think that any child of 8 or 10 could do the same. I never would have known that the smudge as it describes it, in that particlar area of the sky was a nebula! And there are other objects to look for which I've yet to do.

There's enough science, myth and history in the booklets to give a good overview of astronomy, particularly about the most famous constellations. Overall, a very nice book, written in plain english, to get a child with an interest moving in the right direction. Add binoculars or a telescope and who knows where your budding scientist might end up!

Mr. Monroe does an excellent job of explaining how the Native Americans live in Nebraska. His examples are true to life, and are believable. I was also suprised that I know some of the people that Mr. Monroe wrote about, and the troubles that they have had in Alliance, Nebraska, because they were Lakota.

Out of the "new" Doc Savage adventures being written, this one probably stays closest to the fold. This may be because it was written from Lester Dent's original idea, or maybe just due to the care and skill of the author: Warren Murphy. At any rate, it is a good read, and other than being a tad long (especially for Doc pulps) and with a few overly graphic scenes of violence (a little of Murphy's previous career as the actionadventure serial writer peeking through), it is true to the Doc legend. The best parts of this book are the tiny details, the little nuggets of realism that he plants which firmly establish the setting of the book in New York City's gritty 30's and 40's. With writing of this quality, Doc Savage may yet continue to live within the pages of new adventures beyond the year 2000

The Online Teaching Guide I am sorry to say does not live up to its cover. It unfortunately does not cover in any depth the conceptual and practical issues as they relate to the online classroom and as for helping you overcome the challenges that confront all online instructors, sorry the book misses the mark totally. Most of the chapters are weak and tenuous to say the least and will offer little help to any on-line tutors or facilitators. The book has a rather macabre fixation with 'flaming' and the Wizard of Oz and the attempts at humour are to say the least somewhat strained. There are also a number of elementary mistakes in the actual text, for instance ' Human begins are "sense making" creatures', Chapter 2 page 14 and they get worse throughout the book. Maybe the authors were so emotive about the subject that he couldn't be bothered to read what they had written. Unfortunately I did and I wish I had not bothered. Don't be a mug like me and buy this book I am sure that there have to be some better texts on this interesting subject around.

This book is a compendium of white papers, by academics, of academics and for academics. It discusses "what" is Online Teaching, and the authors throw in a few common sense suggestions (although these may seem like revelations to those who don't know Internet Technology well).

It is appropriate for secondary and college teachers who are not sophisticated I-Net users. It is not that helpful outside of an academic setting.

To date most books about online learning have focused on academic research or institutional policy. White and Weight have now added a solid practitioner's guide to the literature. The Online Teaching Guide, published in October 1999, consists of a collection of 14 individually authored essays and articles on the art of being an online instructor. Each of the authors borrows on his or her own experience teaching for the University of Phoenix's online campus to shed light on different aspects of how to facilitate a classroom environment in cyberspace. Ken White begins the collection by writing on the importance of understanding that the virtual classroom is first and foremost not a lonely place created by technology but a crucible for human communication. "As in any social venture, people are imprecise, unclear and unpredictable," writes White. This theme, that the virtual classroom is an experiment in human communication, is repeated throughout the individual essays. The job of the online instructor, argues each of the authors, is to understand and direct non-verbal communication so that students experience a learning environment that captures a high level of student interest and enjoys high levels of student retention. The book is rich with real life examples and practitioner's tips for executing them. In the essay "The Elements of Effective Online Teaching," Anita Bischoff, Director of Academic Affairs at the University of Phoenix, outlines a communication matrix that requires the online instructor to communicate presence by providing regular feedback, maintaining public course visibility, selecting and directing students to high quality learning materials, and removing obstacles to student retention. Bischoff provides helpful, practical examples of how an instructor can achieve each of these elements. This book contributes a great deal to our practical understanding of how real-life instructors are successfully creating and maintaining e-classrooms using asynchronous platforms. The only disappointment of the book is that contributions were limited to instructors who have practiced at a single college, The University of Phoenix Online. A diversity of institutional voices would have resulted in a richer, more eclectic reader for use in educating the next generation of virtual professors. Summary evaluation: This is a top-notch, e- instructor's survival guide. Don't go virtual without it.

Many Americans have grown increasingly disenchanted with the quality of national news coverage and journalist Kenneth Walsh is one of them. Taking aim at the vindictiveness and sensationalism that pervades coverage of the White House in particular, Walsh attributes much of the blame, not surprisingly, to shorter news cycles that encourage reporters to "advance the story" with "hard-edged" analysis and predictions, fierce competition for ratings, and the public's appetite for entertainment over hard news. The strength of the book, I believe, lies in his interviews with White House reporters and network news anchors. Their reactions to Walsh's questions struck me as running the gamut from surprisingly self-aware and candid to hopelessly defensive, sarcastic and naive. The weaknesses of the book, while not outweighing the strengths, are manifold. Walsh takes too much time to detail how, at the outset, Clinton and his youthful press secretaries needlessly antagonized the press; in the end, he concedes that Clinton's aversion to "gotcha" journalism is well-founded, and that even deft handling of the White House press would have done little to curb rampant negativism. And while he criticizes the Clintons for failing to reveal enough of their private personas to the media, Walsh also acknowledges that the unquenchable press appetite for this sort of information exceeds the limits of human toleration. My most serious reservations concern the author's conclusions. After identifying the competitive pressures that drive the news business, Walsh seems to forget about them as he lamely calls on journalists to restore professional standards. And although many would agree with him that Washington reporters often seem out of touch with the public, his cliched recommendation that reporters reconnect with the "real" America, MIddle America, seems to contravene his own agenda. If Middle America had a greater predilection for hard news and reasoned presentation, as offered for example on public radio and TV, it seems to me that commercial news sources would be only too happy to oblige them.

Kenneth Janken hads written a very informative book about Walter White. What's good about it is that it rectifies the dearth of good books that really delve into the gravity regarding the history of America's racial sickness. Walter White had a front row seat to this reality. He was able to investigate some of the most gruesome lynchings in American history because most people thought he was Caucasian. The extent of the racial pogroms detailed in this book is amazing. It dramatizes how throughout U.S. history African Americans have had to beg, borrow and steal our way to a modicum of respect. It is especially revealing with regard to the condecension displayed by Jews who called themselves helpful in advancing African American civil rights. And it shows how all people labled as oppressed minorities strive to join the majority group where ever they live. Yet African Americans are the sole group in U.S. society for whom a concerted effort has been made (and continues to be made) to keep on the outside. There are flaws to the book, however. For example, like so many Caucasians, Janken refuses African Americans any right to complexity. By that I mean that he denies us the right to class distinctions by chastising White for looking down his nose at African Americans at the bottom who didn't do their best to improve themselves. This is a common attitude amongst so-called liberal and leftists Caucasians, who seem to feel that all African Americans at the bottom are noble. Yet these same Caucasians do their best to identify themselves as "white," as in separate from African Americans, the implication being that racial distinctions that really aren't legitimate, indeed, are legitimate. Such people simply can't seem to accept the fact that ever since the end of slavery there has been a significant cadre' of African Americans at the bottom who have no interest at all in improving themselves. It is this "noble savage" element which continues to fascinate most Caucasian Americans, who just can't seem to accept any African Americans who seek assimilation and self-improvement as "true blacks." In addition, there is at least one error in the book. Janken discusses the struggle to build the VA hospital in Tuskegee Alabama at the end of World War I. In his discussion he erroneously states that efforts to ensure that the staff of the hospital was all Caucasian were temporarily successful. This was not true at all. From the very beginning, the president of Tuskegee, Robert Moton, and school physician John A. Kenney Sr., successfully resisted all efforts to staff the hospital with Caucasians. The other criticism I have of the book is that in many passages it is overwritten (example: "[White] was no Pollyanna, and he was the angry black soldiers' amanuensis." What the h... does "amanuensis" mean?). Too often Janken strives for words that make a reader run to his dictionary unnecessarily. In this he is like fellow historian, David Levering Lewis. Overall, I recommend this book for informativeness only.

A Horrid book! As usual, Cameron is overly, overtly subjective in his views. The text is crammed with minute details regarding film, yet it lacks any real analytical scope. Cameron has done his research, but the work is dry, dull and uninviting. He makes claims based on this research, but he does not argue them persuasively or elegantly.

For $48 I expected a substantial book loaded with solid information. Instead it is in narrative form, a series of opinions, speeches to a forum, congressional testimony, many opinions contradictory to one another, most with a speaker bias or selling a point of view. I felt I did not learn anything nor use it for self education nor could I use it to guide others.