A weekly review of politics, literature, theology, and art.

World War I was the crucible of antisubmarine warfare (ASW), and the years of trial and error between 1914 and 1918 gave rise to the weapons and tactics used by today's ASW forces. With this study, military historian Dwight Messimer examines the weapons, tactics, and organization used by all the belligerents during the war and provides some surprising findings. Because he draws heavily from personal accounts as well as from official records, his book will appeal to both serious readers seeking hard facts and to general readers who like stories about war at sea. Messimer tells the story from both sides. German survivors who escaped from sunken U-boats explain what it was like to face the newly developed ASW weapons beneath the surface, and pilots tell what it was like from above. The author describes the German's well-organized and efficient ASW organization in the Baltic and the Helgoland Bight. He also discusses the weapons developed during the war that proved to be largely ineffective or outright failures. While his evaluations of the contributions made by aircraft and Q-ships put them in the category of only marginally effective, his analysis of the effectiveness of politics deems that ASW "weapon" the most effective of all. Solidly grounded in the best primary sources available in England, the United States, and Germany, this book is the first to address the ASW of all World War I belligerents.

FREAX – the biggest book ever written about the history of the computer demoscene. The book tells the complete history of the Commodore 64 and the Amiga, both about the machines and about the underground subcultures around them, from the cracker- and warez-scene to the demoscene, from hacking and phreaking to the ASCII art scene. Interviews with scene celebrities, former key persons of the computer industry, citations from contemporary magazines and fanzines make the narrative history of the big adventure complete. The book contains 350 pages and is illustrated with 480 color photos and screenshots. This is the comprehensive guide to the golden era of home computers.

Play dates, soccer practice, day care, political correctness, drudgery without facts, television, video games, constant supervision, endless distractions: these and other insidious trends in child rearing and education are now the hallmarks of childhood. As author Anthony Esolen demonstrates in this elegantly written, often wickedly funny book, almost everything we are doing to children now constricts their imaginations, usually to serve the ulterior motives of the constrictors. Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child takes square aim at these accelerating trends, in a bitingly witty style reminiscent of C. S. Lewis, while offering parents—and children—hopeful alternatives. Esolen shows how imagination is snuffed out at practically every turn: in the rearing of children almost exclusively indoors; in the flattening of love to sex education, and sex education to prurience and hygiene; in the loss of traditional childhood games; in the refusal to allow children to organize themselves into teams; in the effacing of the glorious differences between the sexes; in the dismissal of the power of memory, which creates the worst of all possible worlds in school—drudgery without even the merit of imparting facts; in the strict separation of the child’s world from the adult’s; and in the denial of the transcendent, which places a low ceiling on the child’s developing spirit and mind. But Esolen doesn’t stop at pointing out the problem; he offers clear solutions as well. With charming stories from his own boyhood and an assist from the master authors and thinkers of the Western tradition, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child is a welcome respite from the overwhelming banality of contemporary culture. Interwoven throughout this indispensable guide to child rearing is a rich tapestry of the literature, music, art, and thought that once enriched the lives of American children. Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child confronts contemporary trends in parenting and schooling by reclaiming lost traditions. This practical, insightful book is essential reading for any parent who cares about the paltry thing that childhood has become, and who wants to give a child something beyond the dull drone of today’s culture.

Sarah J. Maas hit the New York Times SERIES list at #1 with A Court of Wings and Ruin!