As a former intelligence officer I appreciate espionage novels perhaps more than the next guy, but I'm also far more critical of their content, as I know what the intelligence business is really like. Ian Fleming never wrote an accurate line in his life, let along a whole book. Clancy isn't bad, probably as good as one can be who hasn't actually been there, but he still tends to go for the Hollywood melodrama thing. Fitzmaurice has written the most accurate description I've ever seen of the real CIA. If you want to see the real deal of how the intelligence game really works read Operation: Sergeant York. This should be on the required reading list for anyone contemplating a career at Langley.

A comprehensive collection of reproductions of images of the City of New York since the city's founding to the present in the collection of The Museum of the City of New York. Detailed, informed descriptions written by the museums' curators and historians accompany each reproduction.

While some art buffs may find it hard to believe that anything new could be said about the unquestionably great and unquestionably over-publicized Pablo Picasso, this Museum of Modern Art catalogue actually manages to re-invigorate the discussion of an artist whom some might say the MOMA (having held four colossal exhibitions on Picasso within 15 years) should stop shoving down the public's throat. While the paintings are, for the most part, quite familiar to Picasso enthusiasts (with some delicious exceptions), the catalogue contains several excellent essays which approach the works of art from a personal, rather than art-historical perspective. Picasso's relationships with his various women, and the effect each wife/mistress had on his vision of reality, are thoughtfully and, for the most part, intelligently explored, despite some occasional descents into blatant "National Enquirer"-type celebrity gossip on the part of these supposedly "scientific" critics. Fortunately, Picasso's art stands above the possibly-too intimate concerns of the authors (a careful perusal of the gossip-filled footnotes will amuse you for hours). Page after page of excellent reproductions stun, startle, amuse and amaze the beholder through their sheer perversity. Nearly 30 years after Picasso's death, his art still shocks and challenges the public. My personal favorites are the paintings of the sad and sensual Dora Maar, which are unmatched anywhere in Picasso's oeuvre for sheer, brutal power. Their distortions haunt the mind, although the joyous and often semi-pornographic pictures of the teenage mistress, Marie-Therese, possess an equal charge. This book is a definite must in any art library.

Reflective Practice To Improve Schools: An Action Guide To Educators defines reflective practice (approaches to teaching that require personal commitment to continuous learning and improvement) and discusses how reflective practice and continuous learning can be spread among teachers and applied throughout school systems to create a better educational base for our children's future. Tables, figures, point-by-point bulletins and black-and-white diagrams help illustrate the benefits of reflective practice. Collaboratively written by Jennifer York-Barr, William A. Sommers, Gail S. Ghere, and Jo Monite in an effort to present difficult undergraduate level concepts in clear language that can be easily grasped, Reflective Practice To Improve Schools poses a challenging, compelling argument and is highly recommended for any educator in search tips, tricks, and techniques for self improvement on the job.

Being a sucker for great dog stories is a difficult task. Simon the Pointer moves Jock of the Bushvelt to number two on my list of great dog stories. An elegant 20 minute read that will leave you at best misty eyed and at worst blubbering. Illustrated with wonderful line drawings. I ordered this on a whim and ended up ordering more copies for gifts. Just a great all around dog story.

I was not very enthusiastic about taking a Sociology course. As I started reading this text I began developing a more informed view of the world we live in and how it works. The book is certainly a masterpiece that tackles issues of global relevance in an objective way. I would recommend anyone to buy this book and teachers to use it as their text.

"Strangers in the Land of Paradise" by Lillian Serece Williams is a brilliantly written book about the creation of an African American community in Buffalo, New York from 1900-1940. Illuminating with new information, pictures and graphs, it answers many questions about the daily life experiences of a group of Americans adjusting to political and economic changes. The family support system that Williams delineated in this turn-of-the-century community is one of those strengths that too often are overlooked in contemporary literature on African Americans. Yet these are important strengths that are present in contemporary African American communities across the nation and upon which I frequently draw to treat some of my patients.

This timely, outstanding blend of scholarship and humanity places this work in the category of a genuine classic. The book is a "must" for every serious scholar of American history. "No Shame in my Game" by Katherine Neuman would be a wonderful contemporary companion.

The book talks about the 1987 baseball, football and basketball seasons in New York. Lupica's sections are interesting analyses of the various suplots that make up a season and Goldman provides some hilarious "Fan Notes," which, in my opnion, make the book a keeper. If you are a New York sports fan, expecially a baseball one, give this book a try.

This is one of the most original books of criticism ever to focus on William Faulkner. Baker interprets Faulkner's work in a completely fresh and untraditional way by paralleling the author's intentions and accomplishments with such other "traditional" post-colonial writers as Chinua Achebe, Sean O'Casey, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and Salman Rushdie. While this work will prove useful for those academics looking to "read" and "teach" Faulkner from a new perspective, it will also prove useful to those readers located outside of academe since Baker provides a cogent overview of the dominant issues and themes of post-colonial theory.

The first paragraph of this book is perhaps one of the finest examples of modern English diction ever written, inescapably drawing the reader into the lives of a young writer from Dixie, a Gentile holocaust survivor with a haunted past, and her mad Jewish lover. Styron's mellifluous Southern voice weaves an unforgettable story of Stingo, the struggling Thomas Wolfe-in-waiting, cast adrift in the postwar boroughs of New York City. There, in the "kingdom of the Jews," he is witness to his neighbor Sophie's tortured recovery from her own and the world's Holocaust nightmare. Never preachy, Styron nonetheless teaches us about the darkness, the fragility and the strength of the human soul. Despite its macabre subject matter, the book is a paen to delirious, doomed hope, a raised Grail upon the Brooklyn Bridge to the unrelenting forgiveness in a spindly blade of grass emerging from a charred patch of Earth. Unwittingly or not, Styron has truly captured the tragedy and triumph of the Jewish experience: It is not about Judgement Day, only morning, beautiful and fair

William Styron has written a profoundly moving and disturbing novel with 'Sophie's choice'. The story of Sophie, a beautiful Polish Catholic who survived Auschwitz and was left with no family, and Nathan, her schizophrenic American Jewish lover, as related by Stingo, a naive but sensitive 22 year-old Southerner wishing to be a writer, is, perhaps, one of the most harrowing stories one can manage to read. Styron evidently conducted a considerable amount of research on the Nazi occupation of Poland and the hideous dynamics of their concentration camps, and his synthesis through Sophie (whose name, etymologically, means knowledge) is convincing and compelling. But what makes 'Sophie's choice' go beyond a mere historical novel is the excellent way in which Styron weaves Sophie's story with those of Nathan and Stingo and the deep ruminations on the nature of evil and madness and their consequences. Although Styron sometimes gets long-winded, especially when he has Stingo ponder about sexual matters, the novel succeds in making us understand a sad historical event in more humane terms. Perhaps a creative university professor teaching World War II history would be wise enough to assign this novel to make students realize that history is not, as somebody once facetiously said, 'one damn fact after another'.

The first paragraph of this book is perhaps one of the finest examples of modern English diction ever written, inescapably drawing the reader into the lives of a young writer from Dixie, a Gentile holocaust survivor with a haunted past, and her mad Jewish lover. Styron's mellifluous Southern voice weaves an unforgettable story of Stingo, the struggling Thomas Wolfe-in-waiting, cast adrift in the postwar boroughs of New York City. There, in the "kingdom of the Jews," he is witness to his neighbor Sophie's tortured recovery from her own and the world's Holocaust nightmare. Never preachy, Styron nonetheless teaches us about the darkness, the fragility and the strength of the human soul. Despite its macabre subject matter, the book is a paen to delirious, doomed hope, a raised Grail upon the Brooklyn Bridge to the unrelenting forgiveness in a spindly blade of grass emerging from a charred patch of Earth. Unwittingly or not, Styron has truly captured the tragedy and triumph of the Jewish experience: It is not about Judgement Day, only morning, beautiful and fair