From Kirkus Reviews A friendly yet not uncritical biography of the secretary of state in the Lincoln and Andrew Johnson Cabinets. Taylor--who chronicled his father's life in General Maxwell Taylor (1987)- -offers neither much original scholarship nor a fresh approach, but writes smoothly and with balance. Why did Seward, front-runner for the 1860 GOP presidential nomination, lose his party's nod to the relatively unknown Lincoln, and why has he been so completely eclipsed by him since? Taylor depicts a politico whose manifold talents were often undermined by his own ambiguity...

One man--Capt. Raphael Semmes--dominates the history of Confederate naval operations in the American Civil War. Although the Confederates were hopelessly outnumbered at sea, Semmes roamed the oceans first in the CSS SUMTER and then the CSS ALABAMA, capturing nearly 100 Federal merchant ships and precipitating a flight from the American flag that decimated the Federal merchant marine. Revered in the South as a hero, the North reviled and feared the Yankee-hating Semmes as a pirate. Regardless of his reputation, his wartime exploits were remarkable.

Noted historian and biographer...

A survey of idempotency, the developing area of mathematics.

This volume consists of fifteen chapters by prominent authorities in the fields of cetacean law, policy, and science. The overarching purpose of the book is to assess the challenges faced by cetacean species in the 21st century, and the role of legal, political, and scientific institutions to meet these challenges. The book also contains several chapters that address the abiding ethical questions dividing those who seek to continue to exploit cetaceans as resources and those who maintain that direct exploitation should be permanently banned on the grounds of sentience or intelligence....