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Helpful combo
The cd was only helpful in that it it made me aware that it was futile to try to learn the language. How sounds are made by the vocal chords and tongue in Arabic is totally different than English. But the phrase book that comes with the CD was helpful.

Great basic book
I ordered this book as a manual to teach basic orienteering from and it served me well. The exercises are best suited to middle school ages, but will work for all with some modifications.

My opinion on this
I love the SmartFrench products with native French speakers in conversation, but the Introduction to French, Vol 1 and 2, I, personally, would skip, because they are "explanations" of grammar, and I think it is more effective to go right to listening to the conversations, and absorbing the sound and flow, and than speaking. Even with no previous French, I think this is the best way to learn, because this is how I learned the language years ago. So, while this is a good product, I personally would invest in the CD-ROM or CDs with the conversations by native French speakers....and would bypass the CDs which explain grammar.

Molto bene
This is great especially on the long commute to work I love to put in a cd and actually do something progressive. These are easy to repeat and follow along.

Fear of Dying
I started out having this book read out aloud to me on the beach; it was so engrossing that by the time we were headed home I had commandeered it and didn't stop reading until eleven that night, when I had finished it.

Into Thin Air probes mountaineering pretty deeply, and gives an absorbing factual account of the disaster and the personalities that caused it. It's impossible to imagine that you won't enjoy and be gripped by this well written and emotionally charged book.

As someone who climbed a number of very easy 14,000-foot peaks in Colorado as a boy, though, it's surprising that Krakauer leaves virtuall undiscussed one of the most interesting and revealing aspects of climbing: the panic of the descent. Whereas summiting even a modest mountain is driven by dogged determination, descending from a high peak when conditions are worsening is driven by fear.

Of all the emotions explored in the book, Krakauer strangely fails to explore this one. Anyone who's ever been cold, hungry, and exposed on a high peak knows this fear. It's the fear of death, and it's translated into a mad scramble, or numbingly frozen unthinking stumble back to the safety of the tents. The climbers who were too physically wrecked to aid in the rescue attempts on Everest, including the Kazakh guide, were also terrified out of their minds at the prospect of dying. Their actions were driven by the panic and fear of being at the outside limit of human endurance and by the knowledge that choosing to help a companion could well result in their own demise. It was every man for himself.

In that context, the actions that people took to hurry down the hill and hole up in their tents was understandable and reasonable. When Shikegawa said that there's no place for morality over 8,000 meters, he was of course wrong--but he was near the mark, which Krakauer phrased beautifully by quoting Yeats: [at 8,000 meters]... things fall apart, the center cannot hold.

Understanding the fear of death and the panic that drove the climbers pell-mell down the hill and into the safety of their tents make the additional rescue efforts of Hutchison, Bedreev, and others even more heroic, not to mention Hall's decision to stay on top and die with his client. If Krakauer had delved more deeply into the fear perhaps it would have made the whole endeavor seem less crazy and pointless.

The other part that is discussed but not dealt with fully is the effect of Krakauer's presence on the decisionmaking of Hall and Fischer. They knew that their every move would be reported, they were in a battle for clients and publicity, and they had pride on the line. Almost nothing else explains why both leaders completely abandoned their turn-around deadlines, risking their clients' lives and ultimately costing them their own. This isn't Krakauer's fault, but like the terror of death and panicked descent, delving more deeply would have made the decisions easier to understand.