gamble

Deadly Gamble
$7.99
I really enjoy the twists in the story and how everything ends up. I hope she continues with this series of books they are entertaining. After reading this book, I bought Deadly Intentions which was fun too. I cannot wait until she thinks of another one with her new "partner". Read both books you will love them.

Communication Works with CD-ROM 4.0
$60.89
Seriously, this book is utter garbage. It is simply a rehashing of psychological hypotheses, sociological correlations and worst of all, management skills.

I can't believe that this is what Communications majors actually study. It appears to be common sense. Here's a quote for you: Attraction is affected by the attractiveness. WOW! Gamble & Gamble actually bothered to write that down somewhere, and people are supposed to read this and feel smart from it?

All this book has taught me is a severe distrust of the social sciences. Their overuse of the word "theory," a legitimate scientific word referring to a thorough explanation of a particular phenomena, is horrifying. What they really have are not theories in the scientific sense, but are closer to hypothesis or worse, conjectures. Little evidence is found in any of these "theories," besides vague percentages indicating correlation between two sets of data. Rarely is the percent astonishingly high that would indicate a valid hypothesis.

Sorry guys, but this book is garbage. All I've learned is that one should not trust Psychology, Sociology, Business or Communications majors. And that is a shame for the first 3, because they are more legitimate than this written swill.

With much disgust,
Pope Clement.

The Big Gamble
$7.99
Some days Kevin Kerney is better off if he doesn't get out of bed. When an old abandoned fruit stand burns down, the body of a transient is found and thought to be the cause. But, investigation turns up wounds in the corpse and then another body that has been exposed by the water used to put out the fire. The second body has a crushed skull and has been there for at least ten years. Kevin turns out to be the original responding officer to the 'missing person' and his son Clayton is the primary investigator on the transient homicide.

Are you surprised that some how at sometime the two murders will in some way tie into each other? Does Alphonse play outfield with Gaston, does Abott Costello, does Martin Rowan? Of course. By the time everything is said and done, almost every law enforcement agency (federal and state) in four states become involved. Very nice procedural lead-up but the ending seemed like McGarrity left off a couple of chapters or the editor did.

Oh, also, Kerney has an argument with Sara (probably related to hormonal changed from the pregnancy), lays out the house footprint, adds a pool, speaks to his grandkids, spends some time with his son, names his ranch, and gets a new prostetic knee. Close to great but no cigar.

Zeb Kantrowitz
zbestblogaround.blogspot.com

The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan
$15.99
Greg Feifer's "The Great Gamble" is one of only a handfew of books written in English that examines the USSR's occupation of Afghanistan from a Soviet perspective, peeling back the layers of officialdom and historical narrative to examine the real-life people and interactions that shaped that horrendous ten-year conflict. Given the dearth of previous material, Feifer relies on primary sources, primarily interviews with actual war participants, unearthing the real human tragedy of what Willam T. Sherman succintly described as 'hell." Tackling such a gripping subject is a gamble of its own, but the author is able to present the authentic thoughts and emotions of those involved without the trappings of turning bloodletting soldiers into sympathetic, order-following actors on an infernal stage. Although tremendously incisive when dwelling on its cental theme, Feifer's "The Great Gamble" repeats the all-too-common mistake of recent books on Afghanistan by straying off-topic and ultimately misrepresenting the Afghan side of the conflict in an attempt to bring cohesion, consistency, and present-day parallels to a complicated story.

This insightful work begins by diving into the Soviet decision to invade Afghanistan. It examines the Politburo power brokers participant to that decision, including in the discussion their various backgrounds, prejudices, and motivations that contributed to one of the greatest tactical blunders in the history of Communism. Rather than being the result of a thoughtful, expansionist military decision based on history and facts, it is revealted that Brehznev practically stepped backwards into the conflict, clearly not anticipating or even truly understanding in what the Soviets were getting involved. From there, the book relays the stories of combatants who were involved in the actual execution of the war plan. This is the truly fascinating component of the book, as all the miscommunication, blunders, and battlefield triumphs and failures are revealed from the perspective of those on the ground. To take as a example, the drama of Hafizullah Amin's disposition by his Soviet patrons is particularly eye-opening, from the failed attempt at poisoning to Russian doctors who were unaware of their country's intentions and mistakenly tried to save Amin's life only to give up their own in the ensuing chaotic firefight that happened at Taj-Bej palace. Stories like this expose how doomed the Soviet invasion was from the start, regardless of the resources or brutality utilized to quiet the unrest. Also revealed through such candid recollections is how incogruent and ultimately unachievable Soviet goals were on the ground. Soldiers imbued with a sense of duty to prop up a Communist system meant to improve the lives of everyday Afghans were also responsible for some of the most reprehensible and cruel acts known to humanity, utterly destroying a people and country in the process. Seen from this vantage, "The Great Gamble" uncovers hidden wisdom and meaning that paints the potrait of a doomed Soviet misadventure.


The book itself fails when it attempts to describe events, people, and comparisons less well-researched. The author spends disproportion time on Soviet incursions into the Panjshir valley, which has enjoyed much notereity in the years after the war but enjoyed no special tactical importance at the time of the occupation. Much is made of the Ahmad Shah Massoud and his defense of the valley without doing what the author does best, which is revealing hidden truths about that portion of the conflict from Soviet sources. There are in fact are multiple Russian accounts of Massoud's questionable loyalty to the greater Afghan struggle as witnessed through well-documented side treaties he had with Russian forces throughout the course of the war, and this important, given the post-conflict legend of Massoud, yet overlooked fact of the conflct is glossed over in one sentence. Much of the commander's heroism is supplied to the book by his own supporters, and the discerning eye of the author fails to catch mistakes that contribute to the cult of Massoud: a defense of the town of Sarawbi in the direction of the eastern city of Jalalabad is attributed to Panjshiri rebels, as well as the fall of Kandahar in 1992 being attributed to Massoud's forces who played no role in either event. This emphasis on one particular person ultimately deprives the unnamed Afghan villagers, freedom fighters who gave their lives in defense of their country, from their rightful positions as heros of the conflict. In his epilogue, and most relevant to the current situation, the author misses to compare Soviet relationships with their Afghan counterparts, which he portrays in-depth, with American relationships in the country today. The obvious lesson gleaned from the book, and any study of occupation, is that regardless of the force involved, losing the people will lose the conflict. However, there is no discussion of the lessons to be learned from the Soviet interaction with Afghan leaders at the time, and how the decisions made on who to support and not support have almost as much influence in the endgame as do any particular battle or military strategy. These lessons have become increasingly important today as dubious decision-making in terms of which locals to support has created an impervious cadre of drugdealers and warlords who counted on outside support to establish themselves internally.

Despite its peripherial shortcomings, Gregory Feifer's work shines when focused on the relatively unknown element of the conflict, actions on the ground seen through the Soviet soldier perspective.