The Afghan defeat of the Soviet Union caused the Arab fighters to believe they had destroyed a super power. Sadam's incursion into Kuwait was opposed by the U.S. to guard the Saudis' eastern oil fields. Famously, Richard Clarke served Reagan, both Bush presidencies, and Clinton. He was the man in charge in Washington at the time of the 9/11 disaster.

Clarke headed several terrorism funding studies between 1995 and 2000. It is fascinating to see how a national security assessment works: for example, the summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia. Afterwards there was a plan devised called National Security Special Events. The first years of the Clinton administration saw terrorism increase. There had been an escalation in counter-terrorism funding. By 1993, 1994 it seemed that Osama bin Laden had a greater role in events than just being a donor.

The book is both interesting and heavy-going. Clearly, as could be observed in the news programs several months ago, the author is a contentious personality. There was a rumor that Clarke was a bin Laden target. Surveillance revealed that the threat was probably bogus.

In 1998 U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were struck. Richard Clarke did not think a number of people cooperated in his counter-terrorism efforts including Louis Freeh and the FBI, Robert Rubin, many officials in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Barbara Bodine, and Paul Wolfowitz. The FBI was straitjacketed by guidelines promulgated after Watergate.

C. Rice was the fourth National Security Advisor Clarke had worked for and the seventh he had worked with. Clarke believed that she and her deputy Steve Hadley were still working in the Cold War paradigm. She viewed the NSC as a foreign policy coordination mechanism. She also decided to downgrade the position of National Coordinator for Counter-terrorism. Iraqi sponsored terrorism against the U.S. had ceased in 1993.

Terrorism is laced with subtlety, nuance. President Bush is results-oriented. The problem was the inner circle was not interested in analysis.

Acadian people brought superstition and ghost stories with them in the 1760's the author states. The volume contains both original and traditional stories.

A bass fisherman encounters ghosts in the "Haunted Bayou." Burning balls of light are involved in "The Fifolet." Rapadeen's demise happens with a fifolet. A soldier sees the ghost of Jean Lafitte. Delmar Gulley is a character analogous to the ones found in Mark Twain. Some boys seek his assistance as a spirit tamer. The Theriot brothers claim the fifolet has led them to treasure. In the end the fate of Gulley is unknown.

A story of onions is a fable pointing to the adage that great riches do not insure happiness. 'Stepmother killed us, papa ate us,' is a song in the story of bones. "Madame Longfingers" or Madame Grand Doights is a witch children fear according to the introduction to the selection. Rufus tries to build a witch trap with crawfish.

A cauchemar is a personification of a nightmare. Tony Benoit possesses a souped up '57 Chevy. He is the most popular boy in his high school. His friend Irene says she does not fear the bayou bogeyman or swamp creature. Tony wants to scare her on lovers' lane. Perhaps a real ghost appears. The Cajun werewolf is loupgarou. Guillaume and Dupre love the same girl. One is a werewolf.

There is a glossary in the back of the book. Readers will enjoy the stories.

There were airstrike warnings. Alan Campbell, professor, found his sleeping compartment on the train to Glasgow. Campbell was involved with another person of the same name in a dispute currently lining the letters pages of an historical journal. He met his adversary, a woman as it turned out, on the train. Unwillingly they had to share the compartment since there had evidently been a mistake in the booking of the train and no other seats were available. They were both going to the Castle Shira. A distant cousin, Angus Campbell, had been murdered. By accident they took a journalist named Swan with them to the castle, they had believed that he was also someone distantly related to Angus.

Angus would not have committed suicide, he had insurance policies with suicide clauses; nevertheless, it seemed that he could not have been murdered, either. Angus had had a common law wife, but she was so filled with the idea that she must be respectable that she had probably filched Angus's diary to prevent others from seeing his private musings and discovering his relationship with her.

Not finding the diary impeded the investigation of Dr. Fell and others called to the scene. Amusingly a journalist, a lawyer, and an insurance agent were all present to sort out the details of Angus's death. In the course of their highly interesting stay at the castle, the two Campbell cousins become interested in each other to a great degree. Two other men encounter danger and the death of one ensued and the near death of the other occurred prior to the ultimate unraveling of the mystery.

The story is clever and highly satisfying to the reader. The Scots atmosphere is delightful.

Most decisionmakers make the same kinds of error. There needs to be a frame for each problem. There should be avoidance of plunging in and relying too heavily on supposed good judgment. Drawing boundaries are part of framing the questions. Managers are apt to draw narrow boundaries.

Sometimes there is a failure to draw a boundary line. There is the sunk cost fallacy, basing current and future changes in operation on past expenditures for equipment. One is influenced by reference points in the the problem frame. Some decisions make sense through several different frames. In such a case there can be certainty that the decision is a good one.

Good communicators align their communications with the listeners' frames. Virtually all people put too much trust in their own opinions. Most people favor data supporting current belief. Wrongly we associate confidence with competence. One should be a realist when making a decision and an optimist when implementing it. Rules of thumb and other decisionmaking shortcuts are called heuristics. The disadvantages of intuitive decisionmaking are more profound than people realize.

Members of groups may agree prematurely on wrong decisions. Groups may suffer from too much cohesiveness, harmony, pressure, insulation, and strong leadership. In group think people practice self-censorship, pressure others, give in to an illusion of invulnerability and erroneous stereotyping. Groups composed of people of mixed types of personality are useful--receptive versus focused and thinking versus feeling types.

The book is written in veritable outline form, presumably to get the attention of busy managers. It has a extensive notes supplementing the text giving a student of business and other fields an opportunity to pursue related lines of inquiry.

The author, Kate Chopin, began to write when she was age thirty six. She had a ten year productive career the introduction by Nina Baym discloses. She died at age fifty three. Her work went out of print to be revived in the early 1960's. She wrote two novels and close to one hundred stories following the death of her husband and her mother.

Women, including Kate Chopin, writing after the Civil War turned to regionalism. By 1893 railroads had wrought a tremendous change. Regional writing, as the introduction points out, is tourism of the imagination. The stories are short and skilfully done. Even the use of dialect for the Cajun and Creole speakers is not off-putting. The stories have a wonderful stripped down to the essence quality. One is reminded of Chekhov.

In THE AWAKENING it is noted that the summer colony staying at the Lebrun cottages are almost entirely Creole. An exception is Edna Pontellier. She came from old Presbyterian Kentucky stock. Even as a child Edna tended to live in her own world. She feels a sense a of exaltation when she learns to swim. She has children, a husband, and becomes infatuated with a young friend, Robert Lebrun. Later Robert leaves to go to Mexico. Returning to New Orleans, Edna spends time with the people she has met at Grand Isles. Her husband is caught up in his household furnishings. When she decides to leave to live by herself in a smaller house, he prudently closes their large marital house to avoid gossip. Her absolute disregard for her duties as a wife shocks her husband. Her doctor can find no trace of the morbid condition ascribed to her. Robert Lebrun returns. He shows reserve. Leonce her husband and her children are part of Edna's life. She yields to the water of the gulf.

Kate Chopin was a writer of major achievement. One regrets, as outlined in the introduction, that there were no literary works produced by her in the last five years of her life. She was discouraged by the critical and moralistic response to her masterpiece, THE AWAKENING.

To fans telling the story again and overwriting are cause to rejoice. The main character is a widower of one year. He has a young daughter and determines to move to Europe. Jack McCall has been blamed by his wife's family for her death. His sister-in-law seeks him out in Rome. Jack had been in love with his wife's mother when he was a boy. Jack survives in Europe by writing about beautiful cities and great places to eat.

Mike, Capers, Jordan, Ledare, and Jack were students in the same high school group. Mike Hess is doing better than anyone. He has appeared in PEOPLE MAGAZINE. Capers Middleton is running for Governor of South Carolina. Jordan Elliott has joined the Benedictine Order. For all intents and purposes Jordan has vanished. There is a suspense build-up as the reader wonders what it is that Jordan has done to make him hide away in various monasteries.

Jack has four brothers-- Tee, Dallas, Dupree and John Hardin. Their father used to be a man of substance. Unfortunately he was the town drunk, too. The father had loved Tolstoy but could not bring himself to love his own family. Jack returns to South Carolina upon learning that his mother is hospitalized. Mike sets up a meeting that includes Ledare and Capers in order to obtain the help of his classmates to create a miniseries. (Actually the author uses a delightful conceit here, that of having a group of high school friends gather together to produce a miniseries.) Capers begs Jack to support his political career. It turns out that Capers took child custody from Ledare through the use of private eyes and other machinations and even arranged to kill her favorite tree.

Jack thinks that if Italy survived the Huns it could survive a visit from his mother. Jack does make peace with his deceased wife's parents and his daughter Leah gets to know her grandparents during a visit to North Carolina after Jack's mother's visit to Rome which ended in a shoot-out at the airport. Jack's mother is a story teller. His father married the shape of a woman and had no particular clue to her nature. Jack's parents inherited a notable house from a woman with ties to South Carolina history who had been a friend of Jack's mother.

Leah, Jack's daughter, finds Waterford, South Carolina comfortable. She wonders why her father took them to Rome, (where he attempted to come to terms with his demons). Leah's maternal grandmother Ruth Fox had come to Waterford as an orphaned teenager. Jack's father had loved drink too much to provide his sons with a happy childhood but his friend Jordan had an even worse time with his Marine officer father. Once in boyhood though Capers, Jack, Jordan, and Mike were lost at sea. Jrodan's survival skills learned from his father ensured their safety. They landed at Cumberland Island, Georgia after fifteen days at sea. It seems that Jack's wife's father served on the Judenrat. In the camp he lived in his head and concentrated on music.

Mike restages their college years for the participants in a mock trial setting. After the shooting at Kent State Jack and his friends were arrested for attempting to destroy the South Carolina draft records. Capers, it was discovered, had been working for the state investigative body all along. They had received a suspended sentence from a generous-spirited judge. The writing is sensuous. The story is very very moving.

Mrs. Pargeter is at a health spa, but she does not seem to dislike her body. The health spa business relies upon the emotions of guilt and envy. Mrs. Pargeter and her friend Kim Thurrocks are attending gratis. The late Mr. Pargeter had had business connections with the owner. Mrs. Pargeter is not inclined to eat the diet food. Eating creme brulee pleases the chef.

There are shady characters at the spa, but only Mrs. Pargeter seems to notice and she is not concerned. She witnesses an overly thin girl being wheeled from the premises. She hires a detective to find some answers. The supposed decedent is an only child. The detective has the name of Truffler Mason. At the spa the Dead Sea Mud Bath treatment is based on a book. The difficulty with mud is keeping it muddy. The basement of the place is divided into cubicles for the mud treatment.

The boyfriend of the university student, the thin girl, is located. Eventually Mrs. Pargeter travels to Cambridge to interview some of the girl's fellow students. At the spa the customers aree dressed in Mind over Fatty Matter leotards. These costumes accentuate their bulges.

Mrs. Pargeter discovers an employee disabled by the mud and finds the response of the physician suspicious. Mr. Pargeter had been involved in questionable schemes and so Mrs. Pargeter's frame of reference is broad-based, liberal. It is discovered a whole line of goods has emerged from the concept of Mind over Fatty Matter. Mrs. Pargeter uses an investigative journalist to challenge the creator of the concept in search of clues to explain the doubtful scenes she has encountered at the spa.

Along the way it is discovered that the owner of the spa, Arkwright, acually belongs to a Rotary Club. It turns out an experimental treatment to alter body shape underlies the problems at the spa. The writing is accomplished and merry.

The author's death gives rise to another look at his collection of essays. The late William Manchester wrote history interestingly. He wrote the longest Presidential obituary in history. Jacqueline Kennedy preferred that Manchester write the history of her husband. At the time William Manchester was working on the Krupp project. Surrogates of the family read the manuscript when completed. There had been some overwriting and revisions and rewriting were undertaken. There was anxiety over Johnson's reaction. The book was to be serialized in LOOK MAGAZINE. The essay "Controversy" details the travails of the historian as Manchester sought to guard the text from frivolous editorial changes. Manchester found being a celebrity difficult business.

He puts to rest the popular assumption that newspapers were responsible for the Spanish American War. Manchester contends the newspapers reflected the times. The irregular forces in the war included aristocrats and journalists. There were thousands of casualities at San Juan. When the Spanish surrendered reporters wanted the honor of running up the American flag. There had not been any real fighting in Manila. Cuba was free, Guam and Puerto Rico were ceded to the United States. Later the US got the Philippines for twenty million dollars. The war against the Filipinos seeking independence lasted for three years. Death from disease reached an horrendous level.

In the Great War the Americans joined forces in England and France on the verge of collapse. The world was perched between Victorian times and the machine age. There were military cliques, stodgy officers. The tank, airplane, submarine and poison gas were deplored. The great armies squatted on the Western front year after year. After Nivelle and Passchendaele American reserves were welcomed. US Marines took Belleau Wood. Camouflaged transports were ferrying American troops across the Atlantic. German hopes faded with the summer poppies in 1918. At Amiens a corner was turned toward allied victory.

The Treasury Department has seven different police forces. During World War II the Treasury Department basement was President Roosevelt's air raid shelter. The Customs Bureau is older than the department. Smuggling still exists. Persons turning in tips are rewarded by twenty five percent of the value of goods seized up to fifty thousand dollars. The Federal Reserve System is not part of the Treasury. In 1863 a third of all American money was bogus.

The Great Bank Holiday was an idea of at least a year's duration. Arthur Krock thought that Washington was like a capital in wartime at the time of the Hoover-Roosevelt transition. As the week of the holiday wore on, the absence of change became crippling. People used credit, barter, and improvised scrip. Everyone assumed that at the end of the holiday there would be the formal adoption of scrip. To the Treasury Secretary the idea was appalling. New legislation was enacted. Hoarders were to be punished. New currency was to be issued. Prying open the rigid fists of hoarders was the real trick. In one week they had taken fifteen percent of the currency. Congress could not make an ex post facto law and so publicity had to be used. Banks opened for the return of gold, the Federal Reserve Board had declared ominously that it had a list. Money was removed from mattresses. The Federal Reserve Bank sought information on withdrawals during the previous two years. More money was brought in and the money supply rose dramatically. The national moratorium was extended while strong banks were separated from weak. The panic ended without currency chaos or the nationalization of the banks.

Other essays in the collection concern Mencken, Reuther, the Marines, Stevenson, The New York Times, Rockefeller, and fraternal organizations. Each topic is an occasion for the presentation of new material and pertinent observations.

A church is a heterogeneous community. Irenaeus wrote that many people came to Christianity for miracles. Christians were generous. To join the peculiar Christian society a candidate often had to repudiate his or her family. Various groups interpreted baptism in different ways. Communion was a misunderstood ceremony. It was described by critics as a sort of cannibalism. People struggled to reconcile Jesus's divine mission with the crucifixion. Jewish tradition suggests a wealth of associations with sacrifice. The gospel writers sought to connect Jesus's death with the Passover.

The Nag Hammadi texts are transforming what we know of Christianity. The author learned Greek in college and in graduate school learned of the existence of the Nag Hammadi texts discovered in 1945. They revealed a diversity within the Chrisitian movement. The discoveries were an intellectual and spiritual challenge.

Research establishes what the Gospel of John is for and what it is against. It is the claim of John that Jesus is God manifested in human form. The Gospel of John and the Gospel of Thomas are similar. They do take Jesus's private teachings in sharply different directions. John pictures Jesus as a divine being who descends to earth.

Christian teaching about Jesus does not follow a simple evolutionary pattern. Pagels considers the question how did John prevail over Thomas. Irenaeus championed the Gospel of John. He believed that only the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were eye witness accounts of the events described. The early church had a plethora of secret writings and revelations. Egyptian monks treasured the writings, but in 367 C.E. Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, ordered the secret writings destroyed. Only the canonical writings were supposed to survive, but someone disobeyed the order and the cache at Nag Hammadi is the result.

Irenaeus, two hundred years before Athanasius, detested the writings and denounced them. The Gospel of John shines with paradox, mystery. Irenaeus insisted upon the cannon of truth. Irenaeus sought a united and unanimous "catholic church". Irenaeus was dismayed at the way certain practices were dividing Christians from each other. Christianity involves belief and practice. What Irenaeus invisioned was accomplished by the Emperor Constantine and the Council at Nicaea.

The book is a distillation of the author's research for the general reader. It is wholly successful in conveying the fascinating information concerning the various strands comprising the development of the early Church.

Kate Fansler attended the memorial service for Patrice Umphelby, a professor at Clare College. At the time she did not think that she knew Patrice but later she learned from Patrices's biographers Herbert and Archer that she had met her once in Scotland.

Kate is someone who evades memories. Her husband Reed works in the office of the DA notwithstanding the fact that most people over forty pursue other legal careers. By the end of the book it is learned that Reed plans to begin teaching at Columbia Law School.

Kate is asked by the president of Clare College to serve on a board of advisors for an institute being set up by her friend Madeline, a psychoanalyst, and to investigate the death of Patrice. Patrice wrote in a journal that the human mind has trouble taking in aging.

Madeline is of the opinion that Patrice was appreciated insufficiently at Clare College. She was eccentric but sane. Clare College it is charged was not receptive to the unorthodox. Indeed, foul play is uncovered by Kate Fansler evidencing professional jealousy and a different view of middle age. The book is a nearly perfect mystery story. The views of the issues and the personalities are expressed in interesting and cogent language.