Ronald Searle in Perspective

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Ronald Searle in Perspective
Ronald Searle
Manufacturer: Random House Value Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Humor | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0517658577
Release Date: 1988-02-03

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Ronald Searle in Perspective
Ronald Searle
Manufacturer: The Atlantic Monthly Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000VY5ET2

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Ronald Searle in Perspective 1ST Edition
Ronald Sear
Manufacturer: ATLANTIC MONTHLY @ PRESS
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000TNGPHU

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Searle in Perspective
Ronald Searle
Manufacturer: Hodder & Stoughton General Division
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0450060500

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Costumes of India and Pakistan: A Historical and Cultural Study
S. N. Dar
Manufacturer: Stosius Inc/Advent Books Division
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Fashion | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0865901910

Book Description

Even challenging Dubya to a "pronunciation bee" can't save Uncle Duke'sweird horse race for the White House. In the end, the formerAmbassador passes out in a snowbank while the Cheney Administration kicksinto high gear. Predictablistically, the new presidential syntax isn't theonly thing that's tortured and strange. Take myvulture.com, an Internetcompany born and born-again, worth $1 million or $500, depending on whetheryou ask the CEO or his mother; or look at Joanie Caucus as the turnover inWashington casts her career into play, if not into midlife crisis; orconsider J.J. and Zeke, whose pay-per-view, online wedding yields mucho buzzbut zero bucks -- just like the rest of the Net. Yes, it's a Dubya DubyaDubya world. Doonesbury just downloads it.

Customer Reviews:

From A Long Time Reader.......2002-06-02

While looking at our society and lifestyles, politics and foibles, Trudeau once again tweaks us, as a whole. Either you love his work or hate it and the anthologies are for his most die-hard fans. These characters are the people you have watched evolve and this is a visit with old friends.

Fine political satire and commentary.......2002-01-11

Revolt Of The English Majors is a collection of G.B. Trudeau's black and white Doonesbury cartoon strips and offers fine political satire and commentary. The classic characters of Doonesbury are entering middle age and re-thinking commitments and lack thereof - enjoy a set of strips which includes a center selection of full-color panels.

Doonesbury Redux: Duke 2000 and Revolt of the English Majors

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Doonesbury Redux: Duke 2000 and Revolt of the English Majors
G.B. Trudeau
Manufacturer: Gramercy
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0517224070
Release Date: 2004-09-07

Book Description

While the results of the 2004 elections remain at the forefront of current events, Doonesbury lays out the backstory with this trenchant and timely two-volume punch—now in hardcover for the first time. In DUKE 2000: WHATEVER IT TAKES and THE REVOLT OF THE ENGLISH MAJORS Trudeau's top-drawer satire tracks the ever-morphing zeitgeist of our Dubya Dubya Dubya world with irreverent insight and affectionate outrage.
•Includes 96 pages of color Sunday strips
•The perfect gift for the Doonesbury fan/newshound/pop-culturist in your life

Book Description

What does camp have to do with capitalism? How have queer men created a philosophy of commodity culture? Why is cinema central to camp? With chapters on the films of Vincente Minnelli, Andy Warhol, Kenneth Anger, and John Waters, Working Like a Homosexual responds to these questions by arguing that post–World War II gay male subcultures have fostered their own ways not only of consuming mass culture but of producing it as well.
With a special emphasis on the tensions between high and low forms of culture and between good and bad taste, Matthew Tinkcom offers a new vision of queer politics and aesthetics that is critically engaged with Marxist theories of capitalist production. He argues that camp—while embracing the cheap, the scorned, the gaudy, the tasteless, and what Warhol called “the leftovers” of artistic production—is a mode of intellectual production and a critical philosophy of modernity as much as it is an expression of a dissident sex/gender difference. From Minnelli’s musicals and the “everyday glamour” of Warhol’s films to Anger’s experimental films and Waters’s “trash aesthetic,” Tinkcom demonstrates how camp allowed these gay men to design their own relationship to labor and to history in a way that protected them from censure even as they struggled to forge a role for themselves within a system of “value” that failed to recognize them.
Students and scholars of cinema, queer studies, Marxism, modernism, popular culture, and political economy will enjoy this book.

Customer Reviews:

"Working" requires a bit of labor on the part of the reader.......2003-02-08

Tinkcom's text is hard to digest at times, especially the lengthy introduction that exposes the manuscript's origin as a dissertation. Work through the intro pays off for tenacious readers, as the book is an insightful inquiry into camp using Marxist theory and a menagerie of examples drawn from both "high" and "low" forms of filmic art. The author does a decent job of historicizing different types of cinematic queer cultural production while engaging his assertion that camp forms a critique of capitalism. If one can muddle through the excessively exhaustive introduction they will find the cinematic examples the author uses and the research he has undertaken compelling. One can only hope that Tinkcom's work is indicative of forthcoming scholarly inquiries critically engaging queer subjectivity in the vein of Richard Dyer's recent and more accessible volume of essays, The Culture of Queers (2002).

Matthew Tinkcom, Working Like a Homosexual: Camp, Capital, Cinema.(Book Review): An article from: Labour/Le Travail

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Matthew Tinkcom, Working Like a Homosexual: Camp, Capital, Cinema.(Book Review): An article from: Labour/Le Travail
Steven Maynard
Manufacturer: Canadian Committee on Labour History
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B000ALPN06
Release Date: 2006-07-14

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Labour/Le Travail, published by Canadian Committee on Labour History on March 22, 2005. The length of the article is 1130 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Matthew Tinkcom, Working Like a Homosexual: Camp, Capital, Cinema.(Book Review)
Author: Steven Maynard
Publication: Labour/Le Travail (Refereed)
Date: March 22, 2005
Publisher: Canadian Committee on Labour History
Issue: 55 Page: 253(2)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

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Saxons : Wolves in the Fold of Arthur's Britain (King Arthur Pendragon Role Playing, 2722)
Various
Manufacturer: Impressions
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Of Knights

ASIN: 1928999069

Book Description

The Romans fortified the southeast coast of Britain and called it "the Saxon Shore" to defend against the piracy of these wolves of the sea. The tyrant King Vortigern invited them into Britain as mercenaries to fight his enemies. Ambitious and treacherus, they siezed Vortigern as a hostage and slaughtered his nobles at Stonehenge during the "Night of the Long Knives." Now, forced forever from their homelands on the continent, the Saxons are in Britain to stay. Some work for peace. Most others for war. Not even the combined armies of King Arthur can eradicate them, though their power will be broken for a generation after the epochal Battle of Badon. This is the story of the rise to power of the proud and energentic Germanic peoples who rule the south and east coasts and renamed their new domain "England."

Saxons! is a supplement for the King Arthur Pendragon(TM) roleplaying game, describing the Germanic invaders of Britain. It provides the history, heroes and culture of the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes, plus rules for Saxon character creation and Magic. The full 70-year campaign begins in 449 AD with the advent of the Saxons in Britain and culminates at the Battle of Badon in 518 AD. Discover the detailed geography and politics of the "Saxon Shore" area--Essex, Kent, Sussex and Wessex--described with extensive maps and notes

A Pendragon supplement for Dark Ages Britain. Your must have a copy of "Pendragon" to understand and use the roleplaying game systems presented within this supplement.

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One guy's system for evaluating the financial soundness of businesses so it canbe determined if they are undervalued or growing!

Great book on analyzing stocks on your own..........

A Practitioner's View of Stock Analysis

Solid guide to fundamental analysis

Some very good sections!

Fire Your Stock Analyst: Analyzing Stocks On Your Own (Definitive Guides (Financial Times/Prentice Hall))
Harry Domash
Manufacturer: FT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Neatest Little Guide to Stock Market Investing (Revised Edition) (Neatest Little Guide to Stock Market Investing)

ASIN: 0132260387

Download Description

"Pick your own stocks¿and outperform the experts! San Francisco Chronicle investment columnist Harry Domash has crafted a start-to-finish approach to stock selection that draws on winning techniques from the world's best money managers, uses readily available information, and is easy to learn if you're willing to invest the time. Whether you're a growth or value style investor, this book will show you exactly how to identify the best stocks for your portfolio. You'll learn to assess everything that affects a company's stock price¿profitability, underlying financial strength, competitive position, industry, business plans, management competence, upside/downside potential, and more. Like no other book, Fire Your Stock Analyst! cuts to the chase, capturing the essence of today's most successful stock-picking strategies. It's all you need to liberate yourself from the ""experts"" and become a more successful investor.

You'll find

Disciplined, step-by-step strategies for every intelligent investor
No ""get-rich-quick"" formulas; just practical techniques you can really use
Separate selection strategies for value and growth investors
Assessing valuation, risk, profitability, management competence, and long-term growth potential
Using the analysts' recommendations for your benefit¿not theirs
Crucial issues most investment books ignore¿including when to sell

Consistently picking winning stocks isn't magic¿you can do it. It simply takes knowledge, skills, and discipline. If you've already got the discipline, this book will give you the knowledge and the skills."

Customer Reviews:

One guy's system for evaluating the financial soundness of businesses so it canbe determined if they are undervalued or growing!.......2007-08-19

I liked this book very much. But I did not love it. Hence, the 4 star rating. To me the book sounded like a crash course in what is involved in doing due diligence during a merger and acquisition project. People who are interested in learning a lot of what must be done during due diligence will greatly appreciate this book. And I suspect any wanta-be entrepreneur will get a lot out of this book, too.

The book is overflowing with content. And I thought it was very logical and pretty straightforward. However, if I really want to get the full benefit this book has to offer me, then I will have to go back and outline each of the chapters. There are just too many asides thrown in during the writing that I feel as though another drafting or two of the book would make a world of difference in how easily it can be read and digested on a first read.

Arguably there were too many examples of real companies because they tend to date the book. And the title was off a little for me since all the subscriptions necessary to do what the author suggests can cost a bit. Probably my favorite aspect of the book was all the online resources that were cited and explained to be used as tools when researching and analyzing companies from a value (undervalue) or growth persepective.

Certainly this book provides one way (and a good one at that) to look at stock analysis. But there are other takes on this same subject. I recommend someone interested in the subject matter definitely read this one, but also seek out some other tomes, too. 4 stars!

Great book on analyzing stocks on your own.................2007-08-18

This book is well written, simple and easy steps to analyze any stock traded. It is written in easy language and very simple steps. I use it in my investments class with my college students and I have had great feedback from my students. So much so that many of my students have moved on to banking jobs and they carry this book to their trading desks with them.

A Practitioner's View of Stock Analysis.......2007-02-13

Harry Domash, entrepreneurial investor, has laid out methodologies for analyzing stocks that any investor can follow. I would recommend his book to anyone who manages his or her own investments. Everything of importance for stock analysis seems to be covered with descriptions of where to find data and how to manipulate it. Of special interest to myself were his sections on estimating stock values and on determining a business' financial fitness and profitability.

In his section on stock valuation he expresses disdain for conventional intrinsic value methods based on discounted earnings flow, claiming that stocks have no intrinsic value other than what someone will pay for them. In their place he offers two alternative methods: (1) implied earnings growth and (2) growth at a reasonable price, (GARP.) In both methods earnings growth is key. For (1) he obtains implied earnings growth from Benjamin Graham's intrinsic value formula by equating that value to current market price and solving for the (implied) growth rate. A reasonable approach but any such valuation formula could be used, including one of the maligned discounted earnings flow formulae. Domash gives no reason for his choice, but Graham's formula is simpler - a questionable criteria in the age of the computer. For (2) earnings growth is obtained from analyst's forecasts. The use of this alternative to his implied earnings growth is unexplained.

In his sections on financial fitness and profitability he compiles a collection of recipes for determining both. His `cookbook' approach seems to be the industry practice. (see B. Graham & C. McGolrick, "The Interpretation of Financial Statements") I had hoped for a more logical flow to the process, but since there may not be one Domash can't be faulted for lacking it. Maybe he could develop such a flow for his next edition.

In sum, Domash's book left me a bit perplexed, but what I found was comprehensive, informative, useful, interesting, and well worth the price.

Solid guide to fundamental analysis.......2006-09-19

This book will help you to evaluate and decode the stock information available on free financial websites likeYahoo! Finance and MSN Money. This is a thick book, very detailed and in-depth, with tons of useful information to help you can find the stocks that will generate solid returns. For example, Domash explains the difference between Return on Equity (ROE), Return on Assets (ROA), and Return on Capital (ROC). The author is obviously a very experienced stock analyst with a wealth of practical techniques for readers to use.

The main weakness is that Domash never really gives the reader a practical strategy for choosing stocks. He does give a generic "value" and "growth" approach, but never says which approach he uses or why. Also, there are many different kinds of value and growth investing; the strategies he lays out are so generic that they are of quite limited usefulness. Hardly anyone uses a "pure" value or growth approach.

Overall, this is one of the best books available on fundamental analysis, along with Pat Dorsey's FIVE RULES FOR SUCCESSFUL STOCK INVESTING.

Some very good sections!.......2006-03-21

I would not consider this book as a master piece but a good addition to your library.

Chapters dealing with accounting are excellant.

Check out my listmania lists on good investment books,which takes precedance over this one.

Average customer rating:

thought provoking

a great coming up memoir.

I get it now, Le Ly. Thank you.

one of the greatest books i've ever read

Borrow It, Please

When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: Tie-In Edition
Le Ly Hayslip , and Jay Wurts
Manufacturer: Plume
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Sacred Willow: Four Generations in the Life of a Vietnamese Family

ASIN: 0452271681

Customer Reviews:

thought provoking.......2007-06-09

An honestly told story by an author able to see both sides. This is a also a story of forgiveness. Her story is a heroic journey and the author gives the reader a perspective into the many ways the Vietnam War has affected Americans and Vietnamese Americans.

a great coming up memoir........2007-02-19

Le Ly Hayslip has gone through one of the worst wars in American history. And she has lived. Past the rape, past the sexual inequality, past the emotional destruction of her family, past the threats and brushes with death. Le Ly Hayslip now is an accomplished author and owns several real estates throughout California.

This is a powerful memoir and I will not rob it of that. However, the only reason I gave it 3 stars (an "It was OK" rating) instead of 4 is because I feel that Hayslip could have cut out about... maybe 1/6th of the book out and nothing will have been missed. Not that it didn't relate to the story, but Hayslip does occasionally go off about this or that, her re-arrival back to Vietnam as an adult also heads towards the digressing end of the spectrum a lot of time and sometimes she goes from reporting her troubles and potential sympathy to just plain whining. Perfect for the college kid looking to dig as much quotes and intangibles to write an essay (as was I) but as a reader I felt it was too much.

Overall, still an excellent read.

I get it now, Le Ly. Thank you........2007-02-01

Not having lived a very memorable life, my own writing has leaned toward fiction. Nevertheless, I tend to judge memoirs--and this is a good one--by the same standards I use for great literary fiction. One of those standards is the opener, or first line, in this case, "SUFFOCATE HER!" the midwife told my mother when I came into the world.

This is what we in the business call a 'zinger,' the equal of Camus' "Mother died today." or Melville's "Call me Ishmael." What a beginning! On trial for her life right from the git-go. This opener effectively signalled the continuous trials and potential consequences Le Ly would face for the rest of her life. She would have to come from stern stock if she were to survive, and her mother held her genetic end up with her smokin' response to the midwife, "I will bury her when she stops breathing. Now get out of here."

I have been a student of the Vietnam War since I first joined the Army as a chopper pilot in 1967--ironic because I've never set foot in that unfortunate land. I suppose I'm motivated by survivor's guilt. Anyway, Le Ly's fine memoir anchors a good bit of my newly won understanding of that longest and strangest of American wars. Coming from a Republican military family and growing up in the Cold War as I did, I believed at the time that everybody knew about and accepted the Domino Theory. And with my father a Korean War veteran (as well as WWII and Vietnam) I believed that any communists that were brazen enough to encroach from the north could be pushed back with a proper dose of American military muscle. I served in S. Korea myself many years after that war and things seemed to be plugging along rather nicely, thus preserving in my mind the validity of the Domino Theory. Then came Vietnam and the awful realization that we were not invincible. Hell, we got our butts kicked! Initial study from an unbiased source--General Westmoreland--suggested that America didn't lose the war, the South Vietnamese did. And he was right in a sense. Marvin the ARVN was quite content to sit back and let Joe slug it out with the VC and the NVA. I couldn't understand this. How could they take such a lackadaisical attitude about the fate of their nation when they had so much at stake? Did this mean they were for communism??? How could anybody with half a brain be FOR communism? I am not and never have been a practicioner of 'Jane Fonda logic' wherein if America makes a few mistakes, then the injured party must be lily-white, Q.E.D. I could see what rats the VC and NVA were. I knew they were just a front for a repressive dictatorship. Why couldn't the South Vietnamese see that? I was baffled.

Well, along comes a nice lady with the incongruous name of Le Ly Hayslip, who writes a book about those very South Vietnamese who didn't care about their government, or their nation (at least as we Americans tried to define it for them), or to my great surprise, communism or democracy or freedom (again as we defined that term). All they really cared about was getting the rice crop in and raising a few sons to do the same. Then the VC came into their village and beat everybody up, so they felt obliged to follow communism. Most of them didn't really know what that meant, but if the VC would stop beating them up, they'd learn a few songs and dig a few bunkers, then get back to the rice crop. The VC would leave and the Vietnamese Republicans would come in and beat them up again. So they were obliged to pay a few bribes and act 'patriotic' so the new bully would go away and again they could get back to the rice crop. This bizarre pattern only seemed normal to them. Throughout their recent past they had always been plagued by one bully or another--the French with their Morrocan allies, the VC, the NVA, the Republicans, the Americans--they were all the same to them. There was always somebody trying to get between them and their rice paddies. Deep down inside they were as apolitical as the grains of rice they were so diligently trying to harvest. You can eat rice. you can't eat dogma. The rice had fed them for generations. The VC et al. only fed them baloney. I get it now, Le Ly. Thank you.

--Ejner Fulsang, author of "A Knavish Piece of Work." Aarhus Publishing, 2006

one of the greatest books i've ever read.......2007-01-04

I chose this book because, being Vietnamese and having left the country since I was 5, I knew little about the experiences of the war. This was an eye-opening book, and its message of peace and forgiveness, from the very chapter to the last, should be the advice we all must take out of it.

Borrow It, Please.......2006-11-19

I was not impressed with this book. While the subject matter was quite interesting, many elements in this memoir were quite lacking.

Ms. Le and her co-author constructed the book in a series of flashbacks, which were sometimes detrimental to the readability of the text. It would have been better if they provided some detail which would have connected one Vietnam War Era flashback to the next Vietnam War Era flashback, but they didn't--so sometimes you had to flip pages to find out what event/ time/ place about which you were reading. In addition, since the Ms. Le's lifestory is so complicated, the flashbacks weren't in chronological order, which made things more confusing.

One issue Ms. Le did not fully answer (for me at least) was why she continued to support the Vietnamese communists even though they were killing her neighbors. In fact, as a young girl, one of Ms. Le's neighbors--a man who she described as being a "good" person--was dragged out of his home and shot, and yet Ms. Le kept on actively collaborating with the Communists, especially as they continued to carry out executions and to purge her village of Republican supporters.

It was the suicide of her parent, rather than the vicious Communist executions, that made her turn her back, so-to-speak, on any future missions on their behalf. It was ironic how it took her depressed father to kill himself, in part because Ms. Le had to go into exile due to a misunderstanding with the local Communists, to make her relinquish her activism (for any side of the Conflict), while midnight killings of Republican informants and--she implies--their innocent family members did nothing to hamper her ferver. It doesn't really matter if you happen to be pro-Communist or pro-Republican, concerning this issue. The inconsistency is quite jarring and I hope Ms. Le will resolve it for her readers.

One aspect with which I had serious qualms was the way they included the Vietnamese language in the book. I thought they could've explained the naming of the Ly children better (first born: Hai, second child: Ba, etc.) because I had some difficulty trying to figure out the unaccented names of the Ly siblings, and I'm Vietnamese! Also, whoever did the translations for the memoir sometimes went beyond the meaning of the original Vietnamese so it could sound more "American". That is, when someone says , "Me con di nhe (Mom, I'm going, okay?)", in the book it's "Bye, Mom." I know the difference can seem a bit trivial, but in cases of Vietnamese songs and proverbs--which are often present in the memoir--the difference becomes quite large, as any literary translator can tell you.

The first half of the book was interesting enough for me to find it somewhat enjoyable, but the part when she finally meets her long-lost relatives should have been left out. There were a lot of new individuals being introduced, and it was difficult to keep track of them and their relation to Ms. Le. Also, I found the presentation of her conversation with Anh's two Vietnamese officials to be very sympathetic toward the administrators of Vietnam pre-Doi Moi, but Ms. Le might have an altruist reason for doing that, so I'll not comment on it further.

Overall, I think you should save your money and check it out from a public library.

Average customer rating:

The Human Side of Kelly Johnson

Read it for general background, but see Rich's book for more on Skunk Works methods

Excellent summary of Kelly Johnson's life & accomplishments

Kelly: More Than My Share of It All
Clarence L. Johnson
Manufacturer: Smithsonian
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0874744911

Customer Reviews:

The Human Side of Kelly Johnson .......2006-11-26

The prior reviewers are right, the book is short on details of the of that flood of technical innovation ( beyond the leading edge of what was thought possible ) that characterized Kelly's work. One only has to walk through the Smithsonian to understand his impact. Not just the advanced design of the SR-71, now older than most of the visitors, but the hushed awe its black hulk imposes of visitors from those in kneepants to gray haired veterans.

Kelly, the book, offers perhaps a more important gift to those who follow. Looking at his technical achievements is like driving down the highway at 120 staring out the side window at the double yellow line. You get the sensation but no useful guidance.

The gift of the book is that it sets forth in simple terms the vision and principles that led to these incredible achievements. Kelly focused on simplicity - simplicity in mission statement, simplicity in concept, simplicity in leadership and simplicity in execution. Of course brilliant engineering was also the order of the day.

We live in a business world increasingly dominated by individuals holding advanced degrees in business management. I was part of the process, spending a number of years as adjunct faculty in a leading MBA program. The challenge in business, and politics, is not the lack of sophistication in our analytical techniques, but rather in our leadership, ethics, vision and communication. Kelly not only had these virtues, but left a priceless journal of his voyage through some of the greatest achievements of the 20'th Century.

For those with little interest in aircraft or technology, the book offers insights on how to overcome complex challenges in remarkably short periods of time and at a fraction of the accepted cost levels. For that alone the book is a gift to future generations if they are willing to consider the wisdom. In one page Kelly sets out his "rules" of project management which should be read by every student of science, engineering, business or politics.

The message of the book is both timeless history and the secrets of the ethical achievement of that which 99.9% of the experts deemed impossible. Now is a good time to locate a few used copies in hardcover for future generations.

Highly recommended.

UPDATE - After writing this review I checked the availability of used hardcover editions - around $500 which says something about the value of the book.

Read it for general background, but see Rich's book for more on Skunk Works methods.......2006-06-08

The other reviewer is correct that the main problem with Johnson' autobiography is simply that there aren't enough details. It doesn't really give as much insight into the Skunk Works philosophy and methods as one would hope.

For that, see Ben Rich's Skunk Works. And you might want to also check out my blog AeroGo, where I wrote recently about Johnson and the Skunk Works approach to advanced technology development.

Excellent summary of Kelly Johnson's life & accomplishments.......1998-09-05

If you want the definitive account of Kelly Johnson's life - this is the book. If you're looking for detailed technical information on the various aircraft he designed, look elsewhere. In my opinion this is the only real problem with this book - there are not enough details. Too many subjects that should warrant complete chapters are only mentioned in passing. This book would have to be over 1,000 pages to really do justice to Kelly Johnson's achievements. It's too bad that this book was written before the major declassification reviews of the past several years. With the passing of Kelly and Ben Rich, many interesting details have been lost forever.

Average customer rating:

Kelly More Than My Share of It All
Smith Maggie Johnson Clarence L.
Manufacturer: Smithsonian
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000UF3JWG

Average customer rating:

Kelly: More than My Share of It All
Clarence L. Kelly; Smith, Maggie Johnson
Manufacturer: Smithsonian Inst Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000MBR276

Average customer rating:

The Best Book You Will Find On The Prussian Army

A Classic

A Sweeping, Detailed Account

Essential for military and German historians

A Fine Book by a Man who Knows A Lot about Germany

The Politics of the Prussian Army: 1640-1945 (Galaxy Books)
Gordon A. Craig
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0195002571

Customer Reviews:

The Best Book You Will Find On The Prussian Army.......2005-05-23

This work of Craig's is the definitive one volume history for the Prussian Army. You can read lots of books about the different Prussian wars or Prussian history - but they will ALL list this book in the bibliography. So do yourself a favor and read this first.

A Classic.......2003-01-03

Gordon Craig's history of the Prussian officer corps and its relationship with the state it served is a true classic of military history. The primary focus of the book is on the civil-military relations of the Prussian state beginning with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 and tracings its evolution and influence to the Second World War when Hitler and the Nazis crushed the political influence of the officer corps. In addition, the book also addresses a number other issues in exquisite detail, including the formation of the German General Staff, the strategy developed before the First and Second World Wars, and the social conflict of the unified German states.

Craig's conclusions on the Prussian officer corps, their reforms and their performance are rather "standard" as far as historical interpretations go - but that is due in no small part to the fact that the author in many ways set the standard. The most salient theme of the book is that for all the German military got right in planning, strategy and innovation, it was never able to effectively solve the civil-military relationship issue, and it was that failure that led to the disasters of the First and Second World Wars.

In Craig's opinion, the opportunity for success was formulated but squandered early in 19th century. After the devastating defeat at Jena in 1807 at the hands of Napoleon, the once vaunted Prussian military had to assess how and why the disaster had occurred. The solution presented by the great military reformer Scharnhorst was the institutionalization of military genius in a centralized, elite general staff and the accountability of the armed services to the German people through an oath of allegiance to a republican constitution, rather than personal fealty to the monarch. The former was adopted and proved a stunning success, especially in the wars against the Danes, Austrians and French in 1866-1872. However, the conservative officer corps' unwillingness to embrace the more liberal reform set forth by Scharnhorst kept the military at odds with the nation it served and ultimately led to the military's political dominance in World War I and political subjugation in World War II.

If you have a keen interest in civil-military relations, German history, or the development of the General Staff system this book is simply indispensable.

A Sweeping, Detailed Account.......2001-06-11

This excellent volume was one of my textbooks in college, and I completely underestimated its importance for years. Being deeply involved and interested in Napoleonic military history and the campaigns of the Grande Armee, I have again started to use this book as there is now a 'revisionist' (read 'excuse')school of Prussian history beginning to emerge, revolving around the disastrous, for the Prussians, Jena campaign of 1806. For this period, and indeed for the periods up to the end of World War II, this book is invaluable.

The author uses myriad German source material for his references, and the story he tells is accurate, lively, and riveting. He knows his material, and his subject, and is unflinching in calling a spade a spade when necessary. While I am only interested in those portions relating to the Napoleonic period and its immediate aftermath, students of the Prussian/German Army will find this book invaluable.

Craig's bona fides are impeccable and he writes with authority, verve, and accuracy. His analysis of the Prussian Army's beginnings in the aftermath of the Thirty Years' War set the definition and trends for what the Prussian Army would become, something apart from the people of Prussia and an army supported by a dynastic state. His demonstration of the effectiveness of the instrument under the Great Frederick, and of his policies, and those of his successors after the Seven Years' War, tell the tale of why is became nothing more than a 'parade ground facade', made up of half-foreign mercenary strength, which were two of the many reasons for its defeat and destruction by Napoleon and the Grande Armee in 1806.

The coverage of the Prussian reformers is also excellent, and dispels many myths, some of which unforunately are resurfacing under the guise of 'recent scholarship.' The War of Liberation from Napoleon was in actuality a war of liberating whatever German territory Prussia could grab in the chaos of the aftermath of French hegemony in western Germany (they took the Rhineland, most of Westphalia, and about half of Saxony, keeping the Saxon king, Napoleon's ally, as a prisoner of war). Additionally, force had to be used in Prussia to get the manpower required to fight the Grande Armee. The end of the tale is also excellently told-that of how the reformers, so necessary to Prussian resurgence, were treated and eventually disposed of politically, the Prussian monarchy almost completely retrenching to pre-1806 'values.'

All in all this is an excellent volume for students and historians of the period or of the Prussian/German army in particular. It is highly recommended.

Essential for military and German historians.......2000-05-13

Gordon Craig is the doyen of America's historians of Germany. Now retired from academic life, he is highly respected at home and in Germany, and is sought after for sound and temperate reviews and commentary in the media. No other survey has superceded The Politics of the Prussian Army, although it is now over 40 years old. (However, Gerhard Ritter's important, multi-volume "Staatskunst und Kriegshandwerk" covers a lot of the same ground, with a more conservative viewpoint. There's an English translation) There are two basic reasons for this, I think. One is of course the book's very high quality. Craig became throughly familiar with all the most important source material available, and his fundamental conclusions are unquestioned: that the army was the keystone and guardian of the Prussian monarchy and its conservative social order, and always at work to hinder the progress of democracy and the achievement of popular over monarchical sovereignty. The authoritarian (N. B.: as distinct from totalitarian!) sympathies and traditions of the Prussian officer corps survived after the end of the Prussian monarchy in 1918 and carried on in the Reichswehr of the Weimar Republic, and then in the Wehrmacht. Eventually the officer corps sold its soul to the "Austrian corporal" (Hindenburg's disdainful reference), Hitler, believing they could control him for their own ends, and that he was in any case the best available political option. But Hitler was nobody's fool, and his ultimate aim always remained to undermine the social authority and prestige of the regular army and in its place install himself, his party, and an absolutely fanaticized and obedient military force (the Waffen-SS). A sense of duty not to Hitler but to the German people and their civilization flamed up and extinguished in the assasination attempt of Oct 1944, led by Wehrmacht officers of the old Prussian nobility. Recent research (in English, cf. for example Omer Bartov) has tended to see more ideological sympathy for Nazism in the officer corps of the Wehrmacht more than Craig does here, though his focus is less on ideology than on the army's involvement in political machinations at the highest level. German historians and journalists are debating this issue at the moment, as new publications argue that the Wehrmacht committed war crimes on a greater scale, esp. on the Eastern front, than previously admitted, and that it fought unrestrained by professional ethos or conscience. A second reason for the book's longevity is that most of the Prussian military archive was destroyed in a 1945 bombing raid, which makes significant new discoveries impossible for the period before World War II. One has to rely on published sources, and as I noted, Craig read the most important of them. New histories of the Prussian army would be new interpretations of the same sources. One could, for example, to take a more sympathetic view of the army's 19th-century ideology and ethos - that it was defensive - in view of Prussia's vulnerable geographical position, the hostility of its neighbors, and the rise of the socialist movement. But in the early 20th century Germany was far and away the dominant power in Europe, and the question arises of what "went wrong" and led to Germany's (in my view) unprovoked attack and reckless strategy in World War I. Note: Despite the title, the book is really a history of the army after 1806, with an introductory chapter on the period before.

A Fine Book by a Man who Knows A Lot about Germany.......2000-02-18

I had to read this book for a History of Germany Course at Mary Washington College. I remember my Professor, Blakemore, hyping the book. He was right. Based on this book, it is easy to see why Gordon Craig is considered one of the best Historians when it comes to Germany. This book is not only a history of the German army, but it is really a history of Germany it self. It was especially interesting to read about the importance of the Blood Oath of Loyalty taken by the German Army to Hitler before WWII. If you are interested in Germany, I highly recommend this book.

The Politics of the Prussian Army 1640-1945

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The Politics of the Prussian Army 1640-1945
Gordon A. Craig
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Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan: Together with Those of Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka Volume 4: Frogmouths to Pittas
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