As a life member of the Knife & Fork Club of New York City, I don't normally read books like this. In fact, my idea of a great dinner is a thick, juicy Porterhouse from Peter Luger's Steakhouse in Brooklyn. As we say here in the Big Apple, "it cuts like buttah!"

Speaking of butter, when I go to Luger's I always order my Porterhouse with a side of baked potato with extra butter and sour cream, along with a side of the creamed spinach. They use this special triple-fatted butter there that makes the steaks and side dishes just unforgettable, arterially-speaking.

For dessert, you gotta get the triple-cream cheese cake. They serve these huge slabs of it.

I'll tell you, you never walk out of Peter's hungry!

Anyways, I stopped in there not too long ago and showed the maitre d' a copy of Miss L'Esperance's book. He gave me a funny look like I was being a wise guy or something. But I asked him, "Do your cows get fed a diet of seasonally-adjusted grains before they get whacked? This here lady says that's the healthy way to eat."

I thought the maitre d', his name is Joe, was gonna whack me. "What the hell are you talking about?" he says. "You got a screw loose or somethin?"

I got a little testy with Joe. I told him I was thinking of fasting to rejuvenate my body and spirit, but before I started the fast, I wanted one last great meal at Luger's, but I did not want to eat a cow that had been fed out-of-season grain that would disrupt its natural rhythms before the packing-house chopped its head off and hung it on hooks in a giant cooler in Nebraska before putting it on a long-haul diesel tractor-trailer to Brooklyn where I could eat it, swimming in butter.

Joe says to me, "Look pal, we serve super-marbled, ultra-high cholesterol beef to men who don't give a s___ about what kind of a gut they have, cause they hate their jobs and hope their life insurance pays off the wife and kids before they get too old to afford the premiums. Do you think they care if the damn cow had alfalfa or millet before it got decapitated? Much less when it was grown, for Chrissake!"

"Well, Joe, I don't know," I says. "But this lady says it's better if we eat foods that are natural for the season, and I'd like to be sure the cows I'm eating do the same. It's the least we could do before we carve 'em up into steaks."

Joe looked at me long and hard. He said, "Ed, if you want to 'rejuvenate your body and spirit'" -- he kind of spit those words out -- "I suggest you forget the hippie food and step over here to the bar and have a double Tanqueray martini and a nice chat with your waitress Tammy, who will be your server tonight. Next question?"

I think Joe's a pretty hard case, and I was wondering if any of you readers of this book could stop in at Luger's next time you're in Brooklyn and try to persuade him.

A gourmet cook, permaculturist, and certified iridologist, Carrie L'Esperance has studied healing systems for more than a quarter-century. She uses her knowledge to develop health programs for her clients. Now, she has blended her research and experience in a book, The Ancient Cookfire: How to Rejuvenate Body and Spirit Through Seasonal Foods and Fasting.

L'Esperance says "clearly our physical, psychological--even spiritual--well-being depends largely upon what we eat, how it is cooked, and the way we eat it."

She discusses the benefits of regular fasting, and offers detailed instructions on safe fasting. She provides numerous recipes for teas and juices to drink while fasting.

The first part of the book is concerned with restoration of the body and a discussion of how the four seasons can affect the body. Each season, spring, summer, autumn, and winter, has a chapter devoted to recipes best suited to that season. L'Esperance says "the beauty of eating seasonal foods and using cleansing diets is their simplicity and their ability to help balance the systems of the human body."

Another chapter provides recipes for internal and external water therapy, and the chapter on herbs is filled with directions for preparing various teas. The final chapter discusses food balancing and combining, digestion aids, and cookware recommendations. She also provides a bibliography and a listing of sources for those wishing further information.

L'Esperance wrote her book "to make it easy to explore these many techniques that have been, and still are, essential for health and self-healing. They are all tried and tested to help ensure a pleasant and/or rewarding time." Readers who have wondered about safe and healthy fasting and rejuvenating their bodies will find answers to all their questions in The Ancient Cookfire.

Excellent text book for someone who wants to take care of the their health. Extremely easy to follow guide lines to the 'procedures' with full descriptions and complete recipes. All recipes contain only natural herbs and foods, which are easy to find in the natural foods stores. Simply must to have at home book.

A nice little book about a battle between U.S. and Imperial Japanese Navy ships in Iron Bottom Sound. During this brief encounter the U.S. Navy sunk a Japanese cruiser and destroyer at a cost of a destroyer. Subsequent action by airplanes out of Henderson sunk an additional two Japanese destroyers.
Cook was a participant in this battle and goes into great detail about what happened. The U.S. Navy which had been rather lackluster up to this point, showed they were brave and ready to confront equal or superior forces. The result was the Japanese were bested in this battle, with moderate losses. They withdrew after completing their mission.
Since the book is short at only 150 pages, the reader can easily read this in a few hours and understand a little on the Guadalcanal campaign, especially the naval side.

Popular mythology of the Solomons Campaign holds that the Japanese Navy was invincible at night and hopelessly outclassed the United States Navy. Read the average account of the battles in the Slot and you come away with the impression that the Japanese won them all, or at least all up until Second Guadalcanal.

Cook's book provides a fine, straightforward narrative of one of the early engagements which the US Navy, in fact, won. It's a readable, exciting book which also contains information useful to serious students of the war and campaign.

Others have commented on the literary merits of this book, so I'll address its complex intermixing of reality and fiction. The author is pretty accurate on minor (sometimes unnecessary) details, but warps the big picture a lot. A major element of this novel is the outrageously poor performance of US Navy torpedos during 1941-43. In the real WWII, the major impetus for exposing this incredible scandal came from the submarine sailors. The destroyer force seems to have been mostly oblivious to the worthlessness of their major weapons system, even after the unbelievable "battle" against the burning hulk of USS HORNET described in Chapter 39. Yet Gobbell has heroic destroyer sailors uncovering the torpedo scandal. Furthermore, the fundamental cause of the defects was the monopoly on torpedo design and testing held by the Navy's own torpedo factory. Gobbell has invented a private corporation to take the rap instead, for no apparent plot purpose. Loyalty to the old school can be carried too far. Still, the book provides a timely reminder that overwhelming superiority in wealth, science and technology won't win wars unless these factors are converted into viable weapons handled by trained and motivated personnel BEFORE the war starts.

Like Gobbell's first book "The Last Lieutenant," "A Code for Tomorrow" is exciting and fun to read. The story moves at a quick pace and the action never stops. And any book that teaches me more about World War II is, in my opinion, a good book. "A Code for Tomorrow" accomplishes this, as Gobbell places Lt. Todd Ingram at the center of fierce naval battles at Santa Cruz and Cape Esperance.

Though the story is exciting and full of intrigue, I could not help but think that Gobbell based it on a James Bond movie. There are too many quick escapes and bizarre coincidences. For instance, a scene towards the end when Ingram and others are placed on a barge to be killed in a Japense torpedo practice exercise. That sounds more like a James Bond movie than anything have to do with World War II.

Still, I eagerly await Gobbell's next book "When Duty Whispers Low." Gobbell has a gift with his story-telling ability and knowledge of naval history. I very much recommend his books.

John Gobbell continues his characters and his premise in this latest book--forming fiction, suspense, espionage, and naval combat based in real, WWII history--and does so with the same flare and catch-and-hold-your-interest writing that can be found in "The Last Lieutenant" (his first book of the series).

As a connoisseur of techno-thrillers, suspense and espionage novels, I think Gobbell ranks up there with the greatest: Clancy, Coonts, Brown, et al. His weaving of actual WWII actions and history with some fictional characterizations is on-target and makes for a fun, can't-put-it-down reading. I highly recommend this--indeed all--of his books to the WWII action buff or general suspense-fiction reader alike.