that I've ever read. I'm not quoting the previous reviewer---I'm wholeheartedly agreeing with him. William Arrowsmith (deceased) was a classical scholar and award-winning translator whose depth of knowledge, keen perception, and sheer talent as a writer are fully evident here. This is a poetic work of criticism. Beautiful.

Arrowsmith's fascinatingly wide-scoped analysis of Antonioni's classic films is one of the best books of criticism I've ever read. You will not find a single line of cliche film criticism in this entire book, no jargon, just insight and more insight into the how and why of Antonioni's greatness based firmly on cultural and philosophical imperatives. No self-respecting Antonioni fan should miss out on the tonic of Arrowsmith's pivotal achievement.

This book is a question and answer book about cosmetic surgery. I used the book before my facelift and was able to properly select a real plastic surgeon, not one of those wanna-be's. I checked out his background, like this book says to do. I knew what questions to ask during my consultation. Everything worked out well and I now look 20 years younger! I can't wait for the author's next book.

This book tells it like it is! If you're going to have cosmetic surgery, you've just got to read it. It reads easily and I have bought a bunch of copies to give to friends.

As a nursing student I am finding this book very comprehensive and easy to understand. Examples are helpful and the language is very clear and unintimidating. Very friendly. I will probably hang on to this one as a reference for a few years.

Potter and Perry have done an excellent job of describing and detailing the general information that a first year nursing student needs. Clear definitions,easy to read and understand tables and graphs,accurate and understandable diagrams and photos. This is a book that anyone can use no matter what your knowledge base is in the beginning.The study questions,key terms, and objectives are very helpful in studying and test preparation. This book also details steps for procedures in a clear and concise manner.With subjects from development to death covered, there really isn't a need for any other reference material.

This is by far the best alternative health book I've ever read. It tells you everything you needed to know about your health but were never told. All those niggling little ailments that we all get yet brush away until something bad goes wrong with our health - it gives symptoms and remedies. I have been consulting it for 23 years to fix up heaps of conditions.

Anyone who wants to understand why certain foods, herbs etc. heal all kinds of disease should read this book. It shows what the cell salts are, how they work and why any disease is attributed to a lack of certain cell salts. This is the best book of its kind and is required reading in many alternative health colleges. A tremendous resource for understanding why food, herbal and other therapies work, plus giving a ton of practical information.

Mac Perry seems to catch the intensity of a new world as some of the first European explorers set foot on the North American continent. He has blended drama and well researched history to entertain and educate at the same time.I found this story intriguing and informative as to one of the important early contact episodes in Florida history.This volume is a great addition to any history buffs collection, and will also please anyone who likes a good story.

A true history novel with a smattering of sex, violence, and language for authenticity. The author begins with the fall of Granada and continues with a 600-man expedition departing Spain under ruthless Panfilo de Narvaez's command The adventure continues from the point of view of Estevanico, an African slave who is one of only four men to survive the trek. After a violent storm off the coast of Cuba, the ships land at Tampa Bay where the action begins. With four hundred men marching north toward today's Tallahassee, the ships return to sea never to be seen again. The foot soldiers encounter Indian attacks, starvation, disease and sleep deprivation. To compound things, Estevanico falls in love with an Indian maiden. The author writes several chapters from the Indain's point of view so we get to see how 16th century Indians lived. This is an exciting true story written in easy to read novel format and I recommend it to anyone interested in the Spanish conquest, prehistoric Indians of Florida history or archaeology.

I'm the kind of person that reads a lot and has learned to put down books to do other things. I just couldn't do it with this book! I opened the book to start reading it and I couldn't close it until I was finished. Then I went back and read it again.

Before reading any book one must consider one's expectations of it. Black steel was, for me, a book I would read during my 30 minute commute to school. I can honestly say that I enjoyed it immensely. The writing is smooth (if simple), The characterization sufficient and the action superb. What more do you need ?

The Case of the Angry Mourner is one of Earl Stanley Gardener's best works in his Perry Mason series. The premise of the book is very simple, the action is straightforward and suspenseful, and plot keeps you guessing until the very end. The book is a real piece of classic detective fiction because the reader is never lied to and is given all the evidence so that a cunning reader could potentially solve crime before Perry Mason. In fact, Gardener repeatedly gives clues to the ending, but uses his literary genius to present them in such a way that the reader jumps to a false conclusion. In The Case of the Angry Mourner, Perry Mason finds himself on vacation when his rest is suddenly disrupted by a murder. The millionaire Arthur Cushing, who was an infamous playboy, was murdered in his own home. A woman from a neighboring cottage, Belle Adrian, calls upon Mason to defend her daughter Carlotta, who she believes shot Cushing after he became too insistent during an intimate dinner. Carlotta believes that her mother killed him in a vindictive fury and police agree with her conclusion. Its is up to Perry Mason to sort of the clues and determine which woman, if either, killed Arthur Cushing. This book is a great murder mystery because of its presentation of the evidence. Unlike many Agatha Christie and Murder, She Wrote mysteries, the reader does not have to spot a single line of dialogue where the killer slips up and reveals himself or herself. Instead, The Case of the Angry Mourner depends heavily on circumstantial evidence. Gardner laying out a set of clues that can be interpreted in numerous ways and quickly deflates the "experts" who narrowly interpret the evidence against his client.

Background: The stylistic heritage of the Perry Mason mysteries is the American pulp magazines of the 1920s. In the early Mason mysteries, Perry - a good-looking, broad-shouldered, two-fisted, man of action - is constantly stiff-arming sultry beauties on his way to an explosive encounter that precipitates the book's climactic action sequence. In the opening chapters of these stories, Gardner subjects the reader to assertive passages that Mason is a crusader for justice, a man so action-oriented he is constitutionally incapable of sitting in his office and waiting for a case to come to him or to develop on its own once it has - he has to be out on the street, in the midst of the action, making things happen, always on the offensive, never standing pat or accepting being put on the defensive. These narrative passages - naïve, embarrassingly crude "character" development - pop up throughout the early books, stopping the narrative dead in its tracks, and putting on full display a non-writer's worst characteristic: telling the reader a character's traits instead of showing them through action, dialogue, and use of other of the writer's tools.

Rating "Ground Rules": These flaws, and others so staggeringly obvious that enumerating them is akin to using cannons to take out a flea, occur throughout the Gardner books, and can easily be used (with justification) to trash his work. But for this reader they are a "given", part of the literary terrain, and are not relevant to my assessment of the Gardner books. In other words, my assessments of the Perry Mason mysteries turn a blind eye to Erle Stanley Gardner's wooden, style-less writing, inept descriptive passages, unrealistic dialogue, and weak characterizations. As I've just noted, as examples of literary style all of Gardner's books, including the Perry Mason series, are all pretty bad. Nonetheless, the Mason stories are a lot of fun, offering intriguing puzzles, nifty legal gymnastics, courtroom pyrotechnics, and lots of action and close calls for Perry and crew. Basically, you have to turn off the literary sensibilities and enjoy the "guilty" pleasure of a fun read of bad writing. So, my 1-5 star ratings (A, B, C, D, and F) are relative to other books in the Gardner canon, not to other mysteries, and certainly not to literature or general fiction.

"The Case of the Angry Mourner": A+

"The Case of the Angry Mourner" is Gardner's masterpiece, one of the two or three best pure detective story he ever wrote. He is at his deftest in presenting the actual murderer's motive and opportunity in such a way that the reader is looking the other direction for the villain. Against the rural setting of this story, he plays by all the "rules" of detective fiction, never lying to the reader, and above all never hiding evidence that is crucial to the solution of the puzzle. He even one-ups us by repeatedly returning to important clues to the solution, but returning to them in such cunning ways that we constantly misinterpret them to arrive at the wrong conclusion.

The story is straightforward enough. Perry is on vacation at a cottage in the woods when a woman from a neighboring cottage calls upon him to defend her daughter against the charge of murdering a playboy who had become a bit too insistent after an intimate dinner at his rural retreat on the other side of the lake. The scene of the crime is positively cluttered with clues suggesting how the wheelchair-bound bounder met his end. Gardner uses one of his favorite detective story devices: a forensic "expert" who reads the clues and weaves them into a net that snares Perry's client. In this case the expert has two stages on which to strut his stuff: the interior of the murder cottage, and the back-road where the snow around the automobile abandoned by Perry's client tells the expert who came and went on the fateful night. Gardner truly enjoys laying out a set of clues that can plausibly be interpreted in a number of different ways, and his own guilty pleasure is in gently making fun of these experts and deflating the pomposity and closed-mindedness with which they typically deliver their chiseled-stone-tablet conclusions.

Fine stuff all around, with the only letdown being minor: the courtroom scenes are quite good in their own right, but they don't pack quite the punch of some of Perry's urban encounters.

Very well plotted mystery entangled with discord among heirs, missing property, suspicious death of the millionaire, two murders and the caretaker's cat. Mason often uses unconventional tricks to make a cat's-paw of authorities, and the trick he uses in this book is extremely superb.

Della and Drake try to stop Mason from skating on thin ice. Mason retorts "What a hell can a man lose? He only has a lease on life. All that really counts is a man's ability to live, to get the most out of it as he goes through it, and he gets the most kick out of it by playing a no-limit game." Anyway, Perry Mason gets a lot out of life; he lives a full life and he really enjoys it. How I envy him!

Once again, the lawyer-detective solves the mystery. This is a classic with a slightly unusual ending for a Perry Mason novel. I cannot say more without ruining the mystery. David Stern

I loved this book! I hadn't read a Perry Mason book in several years (although I re-read all of Gardner's books written under the AA Fair name every couple of years), and I was caught offguard. A great plot that had some twists that really surprised me, an unusually suspenseful (for Gardner) opening, and a dash -- just a soupcon! -- of romance between Perry and Della. Mm-hmm! I think it's time Perry Mason got remade into a good movie, keeping the 1940s or 50s setting, but with new actors. The Perry in the book was tall, granite-faced, and wore a three-piece suit -- but wasn't afraid to use a little muscle now and again. Plus he knew how to keep Della warm on a cold night! Sounds like a role for Pierce Brosnan! (Can he do an American accent?)

this was the first perry mason book i've ever read (i'm only 13), and i think it is one of the best books i have ever read. i haven't read any others, so i wouldn't know what to compare it with. this book had a lot os twists and surprises. i plan to read as many perry mason books possible.

Typical Perry Mason mystery with the speedy and thrilling development and the superb revelation of the real murderer at the trial. And Mason's character as "a cross between a saint and a devil" is well described in this book. He does everything he can to save the poor redhead girl who can't pay the fee at all. On the other hand, he uses a devilish tactics and stirs up the trial into a complete mess. D.A. Burger get furious as always. Even the judge loses his temper and they accuse each other. That's unusual and very amusing.

This book is exciting. It was just as exciting as tha tv show. Evelyn Bagby is accused of killing Harry Marow. She asks Perry Mason to defend her. I would recommend this book.