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 Trial Of The
Century
HE notorious SS Lt.
Col. Adolph Eichmann was a no-show at the Nuremberg
tribunals that judged and condemned the perpetrators of the
Nazi rape of Europe at the end of World War II. He was
nowhere to be seen until Israeli agents found him hiding in
Argentina and brought him to justice in Jerusalem in 1961.
Deborah Lipstadt,
Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust
Studies at Emory University, has produced a masterful
account of the Eichmann affair, his crimes and punishment.
In
THE EICHMANN TRIAL, Lipstadt gives us a gripping story
of the capture of Eichmann, and an absorbing account of the
trial of the century, that enlightened a new generation
about the horrors of the Holocaust.
It proved to the
Israelis that they were not really "the new Jew." They were
no different than the shtetl Jews who were slaughtered so
easily. The sabras were simply lucky, lucky that they were
born outside Europe, lucky like the Jews in America and
Canada who were lucky to be born in countries far from the
killing grounds.
Lipstadt concludes
with a story of her encounter with a group of Rwandans in
Jerusalem. These survivors of a massacre visited Yad Vashem
and were guests at the homes of Holocaust survivors. They
learned the valuable lesson that, as one of them put it,
"Future generations, those who were not there, must
remember. And we, who were there, must tell them." (Nextbook/Schocken,
237 pages,
$24.95,
Amazon.com Price: $15.96)
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 War Of
Survival
HE author of
OSAMA BIN LADEN,
Michael Scheuer, chief of the CIA’s bin Laden unit from 1996
to 1999, presents the world’s foremost terrorist whom we
have almost willfully misunderstood. With this wealth of
information about him, we need no longer deceive ourselves
about his aims and strategy. This is a war he started with
the aim of bringing down the United States and integrating
it with the umma, the Islamic world.
Scheuer, a skillful
counterterrorism analyst, refrains from describing bin Laden
in terms of mass murderer, Islamofascist, criminal or
madman, as that does no good in understanding him and
defeating him. In order to bury him "we need a fair-minded,
clear-eyed assessment of who and what he is."
That’s what Scheuer
succeeds in his book — an assessment of the enemy, how he
was raised, how he was educated, and how he operated since
declaring war in August 1996 in the belief that he is
following God’s plan for a world that will eventually be
entirely Islamic. Knowing that, we can proceed to defeat
him.
Bin Laden wants to
overthrow not only Israel but also Saudi Arabia, Egypt,
Algeria, Jordan and other such corrupt, un-Islamic regimes
which are all propped up by the military and economic
support of the United States. By concentrating on attacking
the U.S. first, he intends to topple the Muslim tyrannies
countries in turn.
And so he continues
to lure America closer to him, making it easier to defeat
it. Bringing the infidel troops to the Muslim world, to the
Afghan barrens where he can bleed them with a steady flow of
casualties, causing political dissent in the U.S. and
breaking Washington’s will to fight, will result in American
withdrawal, as happened in Lebanon (1983) and Somalia
(1994). Bin Laden hopes it will happen in Afghanistan and
Iraq, and every other Muslim country with an American
military presence. Once America is defeated he will turn to
overthrowing "Arab tyrannies, destroying Israel, and,
eventually, to fighting Shia" (Iran).
Is Bin Laden
succeeding? His impact on American society is staggering.
"His actions," Scheuer writes, "have caused Americans to
doubt their government’s ability, and at times its desire,
to defend them; he has made them wary of growing police
powers at all government levels; he has made them suspicious
of neighbors, immigrants, and tourists; he has recast the
military they might have once admired as a the world’s best
as an enormously expensive entity that can do anything but
win wars; and he is waging a religious conflict against them
that utterly confounds Westerners."
Scheuer concludes:
"We are, I believe, fighting a war for survival; if we do
not win outright and irrefutably, we will surely lose in the
same manner." (Oxford University Press, 278 pages,
$19.95,
Amazon.com Price: $11.52)
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 Help For
Programmers
ILL KARWIN,
a software engineer with 20 years of experience, has written
quite a helpful book for database programmers. As a software
programmer, you know that an antipattern is "a
technique that is intended to solve a problem but that often
leads to other problems," so you definitely need Karwin’s
guidance. His book,
SQL
ANTIPATTERNS: AVOIDING THE PITFALLS OF DATABASE PROGRAMMING,
describes "the most frequently made missteps I’ve seen
people naively make while using SQL."
The author has a keen sense of
humor so software experts will find it a joy to study with
him. Some of his antipattern chapters are titled
"Reinventing the Wheel: and "Design by Committee" to drive
home a point or two. (Pragmatic Bookshelf, soft cover,
340 pages,
$34.95,
Amazon.com Price: $23.07)
 PAUL BUTCHER, who’s worked in
all fields of abstraction (as his bio says), is here to help
professional developers to avoid bugs (or diagnosing and
repairing) when writing codes in his important book,
DEBUG IT!
Debugging is
excruciatingly difficult.
"Sometimes," Butcher says, "it
will seem as though what the software is doing is clearly
impossible. Every piece of evidence contradicts what you’re
seeing. If it wasn’t for the fact that it is happening, you
would swear that it couldn’t."
Fortunately, Butcher is easy to
read, and follow, as he instructs how to get the job done.
(Pragmatic Bookshelf, soft cover, 218 pages,
$34.95,
Amazon.com Price: $22.66)
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 Page Turners
XPLORING NORTH AMERICAN
LANDSCAPES is a big
book packed with stunning captures from the National Parks.
Simply study these eye-opening photos and you’re sure to
enhance your photographic technique. For Marc Muench not
only offers saliva-inducing landscape pictures but guides
you in improving your skills so you can shoot similar
excellent and wondrous pictures when you’re next in the
mountains or forests of this great country. He will help you
recreate the emotions you experience, "not the scene in
front." That differentiates the novice snapshooter from the
professional artist. (Rocky
Nook, large size soft cover, 220 pages,
$39.95,
Amazon.com Price: $26.10)
 MERRIAM-WEBSTER’S COLLEGIATE
THESAURUS is the
second edition of a work first brought out in 1976. It’s a
dream book offering more than 275,000 word choices to
satisfy for everyone who puts words on paper or on the
screen. What stands out is the inclusion of a sentence or
phrase for every synonym in the book. That’s a great help in
deciding whether a certain word will work in your context.
(Merriam-Webster, 1162 pages,
$21.95,
Amazon.com Price: $14.35)
 MERRIAM-WEBSTER’S ELEMENTARY
DICTIONARY is an
invaluable guide for the meaning of words for elementary
grade students, ages 8 to 11. Profusely illustrated with
colorful photos, artwork, sidebars that give the history of
certain words, derivations from the Latin root, synonyms,
and even headscratchers (e.g., "The word level is
spelled the same forwards and backwards"). A fun word book
that young readers will love.
(Merriam-Webster,824 pages, $17.95,
Amazon.com Price: $10.40)
 PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS 8 FOR WINDOWS
is the ultimate guidebook for your app. This is part of the
Missing Manual series under the direction of John Pogue, the
distinguished technology columnist of The New York Times.
The author, Barbara Brundage, has been teaching Elements
since the beginning of Elements in 2001. You’ll find the
chapters engaging from the start, with the welcome
screen right on to the end dealing with online albums and
slideshows. Of course, there is also Photoshop Elements 8
for Mac. In addition you get the online edition free for 45
days. (Pogue Press/O’Reilly,
soft cover, a whopping 626 pages,
$44.99,
Amazon.com Price:
NEW from $28.54)
 PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS 8 ONE-ON-ONE
teaches you the basics, the fundamentals and the
sophisticated features in 12 tutorials by the accomplished
technology maven Deke McClelland who’s written more than 20
books on Photoshop, co-author Colleen Wheeler, editor of the
One-on-One series. So you’re in good hands here. Every
lesson is accompanied by a video lesson that’s entertaining
and instructive. It’s like being in class, with practice
exercises and summaries of what you learned in each lesson.
(deke press/O’Reilly, soft cover, 373
pages,
$39.99,
Amazon.com Price: $26.12)
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