Were I to tell you what the "difficult subject" is, I might spoil your reading experience, as the author doesn't introduce the topic immediately in this standout first novel. But I can tell you that you'll find in this book a warm and insightful treatment of an intelligent young woman, her coming of age in London, and her sometimes painful, but always interesting and unusual relationship with someone important in her life. I found myself caring a great deal about the characters and their challenging situation. Ms. Berkeley writes with style, humor, wisdom, and heart. A great read!

The "Berkeleyesque" dance number is one that "depends on sheer spectacle, on the deployment of hordes of chorus dancers in a grandiose setting." Ever since I became aware of Busby Berkeley's spectacular musical productions during a film history course in college 20 years ago, I've longed for a comprehensive look at his films and career. Showstoppers is the Berkeley Bible!

Showstoppers is divided into three parts, the first of which describes Berkeley's inimitable style, the elements that distinguish his work from others, and it's roots. Part II looks at his Broadway theater career during the second half of the 1920s. The meat of the story is presented in Part III, comprising 3/4 of the book, which describes in 7 chapters his cinema career spanning from 1930 to 1962. Each of his films is examined and includes references to the photos which are presented in two groups.

Showstoppers contains 248 pages of text plus 62 pages of production still photos of Berkeley's numbers. Although the black and white photos are not enlargements of actual frames from the films, they depict real sets and actors and, in some cases, show production equipment not visible in the film such as camera tracks in one instance. They are professionally lit, well printed and the captions informative. I highly recommend this book to any Berkeley buff, film fan, or lover of the musical spectacle on film.

Need to replace the propellar in the stern drive. I own a 228 mer. stern drive . Do I need to replace the houseing as well

Jill Smith enjoys being a homicide detective in Berkley. However when Detective Jeffrey Buckner, who has return rights, comes back from another assignment, she is demoted back to the streets as a patrol officer. Jill resents Jeffrey's return just as he resents returning. While patrolling her beat, Jill sees a nude protester which is a violation of a local ordinance. Jill gives chase, but stops when former Olympian Bryn Wiley asks for her help. Bryn, a local heroine, claims that someone fired a shot at her car. ........ Jill begins to investigate Bryn's claims. The vehicle does have bullet hole in the window. Bryn believes that her aging hippie neighbor Sam Johnson is the culprit. As Jill looks deeper into the case, trying to figure out who is actually the culprit in this not so neighborly spat, Bryn disappears. Jill, realizing that this case could return her to homicide, digs deeper. However, the case is about long term hatreds that are never forgotten and sometimes leads to murder. Jill must set aside her personal agenda and solve the case before someone is actually killed. ........ SUDDEN EXPOSURE brilliantly and tenderly exposes the Berkley counterculture in a humorous who-done-it. Jill is a great police officer/detective, who in her ninth entry, remains one of the best female characters in a continuing mystery series. This reviewer enjoys all of Susan Dunlap's novels (including her other two series: O'Shaunessy and Haskell) and strongly recommends them to anyone who enjoys a quirky female detective surrounded by eccentric heroes and antiheroes (especially the latter). Exposure to Ms. Dunlap's works is good for one's health. ........Harriet Klausner

This is a great reference for anyone just getting on the fitness track. It is put out by UC Berkeley and most of the programs they suggest are backed up by research. The programs that they offer are well thought out and take our busy lifestyles into account

We love this book. We bought it on a whim when it was new and have used it hard ever since. We were looking for an every-day cookbook that was healthier than the ones our Mom's used. We liked this one because the recipes use primarily ingredients we already have on hand. Preparation times vary from quick to long, allowing for recipes to use in a variety of situations. This cookbook contains chapters on appetizers, main dishes with meat, main dishes without meat, and desserts as well as other sections. We appreciate the diversity, nutritional information, clear instructions, and lists of ingredients, most of which are readily available in our grocery store. We have not tried every recipe in the book, but we have liked and repeated almost all the recipes we have tried.

This is one of those books that you can dip into time after time and always find something new and fascinating.. It examines a huge range of topics eg advertising, Barbie, baseball, Hippies, Marilyn Monroe,yo-yos, giving historical background and adding interesting follow-up activities such as fan clubs, appreciation societies and places to visit as well as reading lists. The compilers enthusiasm shines through. Pop culture is often trivialised and looked down upon by many but this shows just how vibrant and fascinating it really is. I think most people would have at least one passion, however secret, among the many topics covered here.

As a fan of Breathed's "Bloom County", I felt the urge to buy this book for my four years old daughter. She, her sister, her mother and her father love it.

The story is narrated by a frustrated girl who receives no attention from her brother "Edwurd", the biggest liar alive. One day, one of his lies goes too far, bringing even an upset creature from "just two galaxies down".

The illustrations are gorgeous, with the usual funny style of Breathed, in which characthers look as stretched by superior forces.

Regarding a complaint from another reviewer, here is the discussed dedication: "The author wishes to thank President Bill Clinton, without whose daily inspiration this particular story just plain wouldn't have come to mind".

That's it. I will not call it a "political statement", but just plain humor.

Highly recommended.

Edwurd Fudwupper Fibbed Big shares a [partial] moral with The Boy Who Cried Wolf, but has cosmic consequences. Dedicated to Bill Clinton, this is the story of a little boy who lies and lies and lies, until one day a whopper of a lie catches up with him. It is also the story of an unnoticed sister [the narrator], who lies to save her brother and gains his notice. The story isn't a black and white story against lying - the sister saves the day with a lie and is both punished and rewarded - and would be a good starting point for a conversation about lying with a child, especially a child who has discovered that adults don't always follow their own edicts [never lie-lying is WRONG!]. The art is Berkeley Breathed [Bloom County, Outland, A Wish For Wings That Work] at his best. I enjoyed the book and figure a lot of adults will also enjoy the book [if you don't like some ambiguity, you probably won't like the book]. I don't envy the jobs of parents with sharp kids [I'm childfree by choice-I've never had to untangle the issue of lies with a child-yes, I do deal with lies and my 9th graders, but most of them have already developed their feelings about different levels/types of lying by the time they come to me], because you want to steer your kids in the correct direction and not lie to them at the same time. I think that the story of Edwurd Fudwupper and his sister Fannie would be a good place to start.

I bought this book for my sister in law, who is the Fannie to my husband's Edwurd. Whoever wrote that this story is detrimental to young girls is foolish. This story is about a young girl who wishes her brother would notice her, and for all his faults, she loves hime. Enough to fib for him so he wouldn't get into trouble. Well, they BOTH wind up in the corner, and it brought tears to my eyes. Breathed has NEVER written a story detrimental to anyone.

bloom county is a most wonderful comic.

HOWEVER, this reprint of the book is unpleasantly cheap. most annoyingly, the sunday strips inside are reprinted in black & white, obscuring a lot of the detail visible in the originals. the cover is also noticeably cheap, flimsy and low-resolution.

i was very disappointed to discover these attributes when i bought the book. one would be better served by a copy from the original printing of this collection.

Remember when we were all tempted to vote for Bill & Opus? Some folks actually did, you know. Do you remember when "Billy and the Boingers" became "Deathtongue"?

I really miss Bloom County. It was a way of life, a uniquely 1980's perspective on our country that will never come again. The brilliance of idea, the sheer glee of Breathed's word choices, and the happy, bouncy parallel universe his characters all boinged around in are unforgettable.

This book is the equal of all the others, though it is longer. The first few characters and situations show that Breathed has not yet found his voice-- but once he does, look out, world!

My apologies, on behalf of the company for which I work (I'm sitting on the print floor as I type this!), for being forced to print this book without Breathed's color. I look through our print-on-demand rendition and I see clearly how much has been lost. I agree that it is not fair, but you must understand: had it not been done this way, the street price would have been ridiculous. Perhaps you will agree that it is better that the book never go out of print and stay inexpensive, rather than be forgotten and unread in color.

Unlike most "coffee-table" retrospective books, which consist mainly of collected strips already reprinted in other volumes, "Bloom County Babylon" is something more. While there are several strips here that appeared in earlier collections, over 50% of the book is material never published in book form before or since. The very earliest days of the strip (with "The Major," Milo's grandfather, as the main character) appear here, just to show you how far the strip had progressed. Also, the year 1985 is recounted, including the complete run of strips that trace Opus and Cutter John's ill-fated balloon ride to Washington, Opus's subsequent return with amnesia, and Bill the Cat being exposed as a Communist spy. The volume also includes "The Great LaRouche Toad-Frog Masacree," a great prose story ostensibly written by an adult Binkley in that "Lake Wobegon" style. All in all, this is a great book to add to your Bloom County collection, provided you can find it.

The author seems to have had two main themes to the book: first, the description of the crime, the people involved, the investigation, and the trial; second, the description of the culture of Glen Ridge.

I am writing here to comment on the second theme, from the point of view of a person who was born and raised in Glen Ridge, contemporaneously with all of the people involved. Regarding the first theme, I will therefore be brief: the book was phenomenal in this respect, and the perpetrators were indeed known scumballs well before the crime took place.

However, I could imagine, if I were not born and raised in Glen Ridge, reading this book and believing that the author's take on the culture of Glen Ridge was accurate as well. This is simply not the case.

The book claims that sports were the be all and end all of the town's existance. Highest on the totem pole were football and wrestling, the sports in which most of the perpetrators participated. Any boy in Glen Ridge who was not a jock was either a jockette (i.e. a wannabe, a boot licking hanger-on; "-ette" does not imply gender), or nothing. Male atheletes were portrayed to be the town's darling sons, who enjoyed all the priveleges and accolades, while boys who were not atheletes had no respect and no social lives, and their Ridger parents probably wondered why they couldn't play football like those nice Scherzer kids.

The town's collective view on girls is portrayed as being that they are nothing more than trophies that rightfully go to the jocks, to be used as they saw fit.

In reality, our football team was considered a joke, our wrestling team was largely unknown (I couldn't tell you anything about it, other than the fact that it existed), and while there was certainly this group of jocks and jockettes who acted like they owned the school, they were just their own little clique who were usually laughed at by all the other cliques - just like any clique.

I never felt pressure to join a sports team; I never felt that nobody respected my non-atheletic skills; I never felt that the school didn't care about academics (quite the opposite, actually); I never felt that the town as a whole treated girls like subhumans.

Perhaps these things were just my opinion, not shared by others, but I think that I would have noticed if nobody but me thought that the football team was a joke, for example.

The book makes a big deal of things like the fact that the school's principal, vice principal, and atheletic director were all ex-football coaches. Well of course the atheletic director is going to be something like an ex-football coach; as for the principal and the vice principal, I never knew that they had been football coaches, until I read this book. That is, they didn't let it noticably influence them in their jobs; it was not a big deal.

I would have absolutely hated growing up in the Glen Ridge described in this book. I did not hate growing up in the real Glen Ridge. I liked it.

"Our Guys" is a frightening account of a bunch of football players who sexually abused a mentally impaired girl, and how people in their social orbit rose to support them after the crime came to light.

Anyone from a high school where football players were special beings, or who is familiar with that phenomenon, will appreciate the focus of "Our Guys." The power these kids exercised in Glen Ridge was atrocious, as was their behavior. Enabled by their parents, teachers and peers, they dominated social situations, treated girls like trash, turned parties into destruction derbies and pretty much behaved like animals.

The story is told very well, making for interesting reading. And particularly if you have kids approaching or presently living their teen years, it will scare the H out of you.

This is a frightening and important book. The author's perspective reminds us that this horrific rape of a retarded young woman was not an aberration, but a consequence of a white, rich, patriarchal value system embodied to extreme degrees by Glen Ridge. Families, teachers, and finally, the judiciary, regarded the crime as a minor incident, a "coming-of-age" ritual for their thuggish, sociopathic fair-haired sons who, were it not for their race and social status, would certainly otherwise be viewed as a violent gang. This book is imperative reading for anyone still so naive as to think that race, wealth, and gender don't determine one's fate in the United States. On the less distressing side, there are some inspirational portraits here, especially of the New Jersey deputy DA who fought to get the case even brought to trial. He emerges as a hero for women, the disempowered, and the mentally challenged. Sad to say he seems one of very few. It amazes me to this day that people still up in arms about "OJ" have totally forgotten this tragic case.