If that is the case, where's the infamous #52 cover I ask you, if there are rejected covers?!

But apart from that slight problem, this is a good book. I've been a fan of Glenn's artwork for a long time, and have got into PREACHER through the trade paperbacks, so there were two reasons for me to get this.

The final version artwork- free of text, Vertigo logo, etc., is cool. I have covers like that in the trade paperback, but gathered altogether in one book is different...I like the sketches a lot. It makes you see where the idea(s) came from, and what could have been.

One nit-pick that I do have, is with the commentary. This, I was looking forward to A LOT, and to me, I found that there just was too little

All in all though, a great book if you overlook the #52 issue. No Preacher fan's collection would be complete without it.

Too often these days a comic book series is plagued by shifting writers, interior artists, and cover artists; it's a rare case when a unifying vision keeps a top team together for a full run on a series. It's even more rare when the team (writer Ennis, interior artists Steve Dillon, and cover artist Glenn Fabry) produce one of the more controversial, black-humored, anarchic, and *human* comic books in the past ten years. It's Ennis's writing that kept me coming back month after month, but it was the vibrant, vaguely unsettling Fabry portrait of Jesse Custer on the first issue that got me to pick the series up in the first place (well, that and my friend J.C. telling me I'd be a wanker if I passed on this series).

This gorgeous color collection of the original painted covers to the recently-concluded "Preacher" series is a great overview of how, month after month, Fabry's powerful art unified the series and made it one of the most distinctive and outrageous on the comic book stands. Plenty of original sketches show how covers evolved, and the covers themselves are reproduced without logos or sales information to give you the full effect of the art. Ennis and Fabry comment on (and critique) each cover. My only complaint is that the commentary is sometimes somewhat skimpy commentary.

A fair warning: like the series itself, this collection is not for everyone. Black-humored, blasphemous, sometimes physically grotesque but always powerful, these images have the power to offend...well, just about everybody. It helps to be a Preacher fan and understand these images in context, and to come to this collection with an open mind and a sense of humor.

For a "Preacher' fan this is a necessity; I'd even recommend it to graphics people or budding artists as a great overview of design and anatomy that straddles the grotesque and the fantastic. You'll proudly display it on your bookshelf next to your paperback bound volumes of the Preacher comic. (Now, DC, now about issuing the comic volumes themselves in hardcover much like the Gaiman "Sandman" volumes?)

What I found between the covers of "Verdict of History" was a thick skulled and fatuous account that, in a nutshell, said "this stuff just happens, and no one is to blame". As anyone who read "The Valor of Ignorance" (Homer Lea), "Strategy", by Lidell Hart, the writings of Thucydides (a successful ancient Greek General) or other books on military strategy and the nature of warfare realized, the Japanese attack on the US Pacific Fleet was predictable -- and in fact was first discussed in military and political circles as a likely event as early as 1905.

The author [...] asserts that Roosevelt's administration was not derelict in exercising its duty or responsibility to defend the United States, and then he provides hundreds of pages of text indicating that they were (At Dawn, They Slept ... and in the afternoon and evening as well, apparently). Mr. Prange seems to have done a great deal of research but learned absolutely nothing from it. Regrettably, that's par for the course with academic writers.

[...]

Part of the problem is the title, which I hope Prange himself didn't have a hand in. As Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn sagely pointed out in 'Liberty or Equality,' the verdict of *history* and the verdict of *historians* are two (often very different) things. I would hope a historian of Prange's skill would not be so presumptuous as to claim to speak for all history. The opinions of talented historians are valuable. But relatively few judgments can ever be final (Henry Clausen's Pearl Harbor book has this problem in spades).

The larger issue seems to have been the release, after Prange's death, of John Toland's 'Infamy,' which breathed new life into the so-called 'revisionist' theory that Franklin Roosevelt knew of and/or deliberately provoked the attack. According to their introduction to this volume, Goldstein and Dillon deliberately expanded and refocused Prange's work in order to respond more thoroughly to the 'revisionist anti-Roosevelt thesis,' which they reject.

They concede that Roosevelt 'might have been ill-advised' or insufficiently 'dynamic' in his leadership. But their central thesis is the mainstream one that Pearl Harbor was due to sub-standard naval and military intelligence systems and failures by the on-scene commanders.

In the end, though, Prange is at pains to point out something that often is overlooked in the 'who do we blame' debate: the magnitude of the Japanese achievement. Pearl Harbor was a massive strategic undertaking -- one the Imperial Navy executed nearly to perfection. Students of the attack do well to remember that attention rightly focuses on the Japanese side of the equation as much as on the American.

I've read a lot of Pearl Harbor history, and recommend Stinnett's recent 'Day of Deceit,' which I think is the most important piece of new Pearl Harbor scholarship in some time. But I readily admit I don't believe anyone has all the answers yet. Prange's seminal work (the sum of his three volumes) is an important part of the dialectic that presents arguments and interpretations and helps us get a clearer picture of what really led up to the Day of Infamy.

A society which employs Certified Public Accountants presupposes that people will be able to keep track of certain things, certainly money, for sure, and who people are, though this book finds a certain glory in how easy it is to fool official guardians of the identity assumptions with simple tricks. Obviously, this works best at places like Numec, a company specializing in reprocessing nuclear waste, in Apollo, Pennsylvania. Anybody ought to be able to figure out how likely it is that the following events, prior to December 1982, but reported as background information, might have actually occurred:

His two companions were described on their cards as scientists from `The Department of Electronics, University of Tel Aviv, Israel'.
There was no such department.
The men were LAKAM security officers whose task would be to see the best way of stealing fissionable waste from Numec. All three spent four days in Apollo, passing many hours touring the Numec plant, sitting for more hours in Shapiro's office. What they spoke about would remain a secret. On the fifth day Eitan and his companions left Apollo as unobstrusively as they had arrived.
A month later the first of nine shipments of containers of nuclear waste left Numec. Each container would bear the words: `Property of the State of Israel: Ministry of Agriculture'. The containers would carry a stencil stating they had full diplomatic clearance and so were exempt from customs checks before they were stowed on board El Al cargo freighters to Tel Aviv.
The containers were destined for Dimona, Israel's nuclear facility in the Negev Desert. (pp. 55-56)

One way to be a Mogul, buying companies close to bankruptcy and investing enough to turn them into successes, is described in this book as just the starting point for how "Robert Maxwell was the Barnum and Bailey of the financial world, the great stock market ringmaster able to introduce with consummate speed and a crack of his whip some new and even more startling financial act. But increasingly his high-wire actions had become more dangerous - and long ago he had abandoned any idea of a safety net." (p. 34). Maxwell's arrangements with Vladimir Kryuchkov, head of the Soviet KGB, who had been involved in the August plot to oust Mikhail Gorbachev from office, made certain bankers insecure enough to want Maxwell to pay some of their loans. Maxwell thought 400 million pounds might be enough "to stave off his more pressing creditors. He asked Mossad to use its influence with Israel's banker's to arrange a loan. He was told to try to do what his fellow tycoon, Rupert Murdoch, had done when he had faced a similar situation. Murdoch had confessed his plight to his bankers and then renegotiated his debts, which were almost twice what Maxwell owed." (pp. 13-14). Actually, Maxwell must have owed far more than he told the Mossad. A Daily Mirror headline in the photographs section, after the "Maxwell Dies at Sea" picture, reported, "Maxwell: 536m pounds is missing from his firms/ The increasingly desperate actions of a desperate man."

Assuming that much, the rest of the book is written around questions raised by Efraim.

`If the truth about Robert Maxwell surfaces and he is destroyed in the process, who else will be compromised? How great will the damage be to Israel?' (p. 15).

Americans might be interested in this book for judging the current chances for success of American policies that seem to parallel the desperation of Robert Maxwell, but might cause Bill Casey even greater pain, if he were still in charge.

This book is anything but boring--calling this book boring strikes me as a desperate subterfuge by someone who want to keep its explosive contents from fuller circulation. This book is *fascinating* and explosive, not least because of the very well documented coverage it provides of how Israel's intelligence service, the Mossad, used Robert Maxwell to penetrate not just the U.S. government, including the Department of Justice, the military, and the national laboratories, but many foreign governments including the Chinese, Canadians, Australians, and many others, with substantial penetration of their intelligence service databases, all through his sale of a software called PROMIS that had a back door enabling the Mossad to access everything it touched (in simplistic terms).

Also shocking, at least to me, was the extensive detail in this book about how the Israeli intelligence service is able to mobilize Jews everywhere as "sayanim," volunteer helpers who carry out operational (that is to say, clandestine) support tasks to include spying on their government and business employers, stealing documents, operating safehouses, making pretext calls, and so on. I am a simple person: if you are a Jew and a US citizen, and you do this for the Israeli intelligence service, then you are a traitor, plain and simple. This practice is evidently world-wide, but especially strong in the US and the UK.

The book draws heavily on just a couple of former Israeli intelligence specialists to address Israeli use of assassination as a normal technique (and implicitly raises the possibility that it was used against Senator John Tower, who died in small airplane crash and was the primary "agent" for Maxwell and Israel in getting PROMIS installed for millions of dollars in fees all over the US Government).

Finally, the book has a great deal of detail about the interplay between governments, crime families, Goldman Sachs and other major investors, and independent operators like Robert Maxwell who play fast and loose with their employee pension funds.

This book is not boring. Far from it. It is shocking, and if it is only half-right and half-accurate, that is more than enough to warrant its being read by every American, whatever their faith.

This is a loving book. It is a pleasant place to be -- with elements of disturbance, as you would expect. It is an addition to what you already have.

Don't be confused...the story is still great. A brief and rather funny, one-sided "team-up" between Spider-man and the Punisher against a familiar and unexpected enemy adds some great humor to the book. The Punisher finds himself later heading to a remote island where a traitorous para-military American force is planning a horrible terrorist act to deal out some indiscriminate justice.

The Ennis/Dillon duo, along with Jimmy Palmiotti, manage to once again weave an engaging and action-packed story with its fair share of blood, violence, and wicked sense of humor. Its a great book because it takes itself seriously, but at the same time has just enough humor to get you to laugh to yourself. I would say this falls short of the standards set by the first one only because there are a few aspects about it that are a little silly, and some parts of the story just don't add up too well. Nevertheless, in the end, we have a good, solid story with great artwork and entertaining characters. Definitely worth the purchase.

It's one of those books that you tend to wish you had written (compiled) yourself and done a better job of searching and editing. But still, I get a kick out of it and am glad I have it for "reference". Cynics and curmudgeons who still have a few discretionary dollars to spend might want to add this volume to their "I know what's REALLY going on/underneath the spin" collection. NOTE TO WRITERS: this book will challenge you to come up with your own, better (obviously) definitions...

Inside Director tries to teach general multimedia rather than the fundamentals of Director. The book attempts to teach you how to create sound and digital movies in other programs(Which has nothing to do with learning Director), yet it severely lacks in explaining how to handle sound and movies in Director. The book also teaches you more about how to write HTML(Which also has nothing to do with learning Director), then how to create streaming shockwave movies with net Lingo.

Save your money and buy a different book.

The other stories aren't earth-shattering, but they are enjoyable. John visits his old friend Brendan and meets Kit in a flashback to his days at Ravenscar (the mental hospital he was in and out of for three years). John also meets Brendan, now a hard-drinking ghost, in the present. And back in London, Chas tells his mates about one of the many times Constantine was apparently killed, and how this time there was even a funeral for him. The entire Ennis cast was present (Header, Kit, Brendan, Rick the Vic) as well as the Delano cast (Ray, Chas, Ritchie, Cheryl), and Moore's little-seen Emma.

By the way, if the sight of John F. Kennedy walking around with his hand pressed against the hole in his head to keep his brains from falling out isn't enough incentive to buy this book, check out his best line from the story:

"To be seen in a historical context as the conscience of the United States is not the honor one might think. It is, in fact, a burden, and one that I was...at the time...loath to shoulder. My chief concerns were, to set the record straight, immediate political survival, and regular extramarital sex with as many women as possible.

What I liked about this book is, like an old B-movie, it never slows down. Dillon and his connections have almost no time to solve a mystery and prevent an international crisis...and he's only in it for the money and the fact that he would hate to see a nice woman like the President's daughter get rubbed out by a crazy man.

Reserve this book for the beach. Don't expect Wuthering Heights and prepare to turn some pages real fast.

In this action adventure thriller, Higgins reprises former IRA enforcer Sean Dillion, Brigadier Charles Ferguson and Scotland Yard Chief Inspector Hannah Bernstein. Later on in the book, the author also recalls from retirement that old IRA legend Liam Devlin. His cunning, wit and skill (despite his advanced age) were a welcome intrusion into the story line as it moved toward its conclusion.

The President's Daughter is another one of those Higgins stories that really requires a major suspension of disbelief. The plot's premise is that the US President, as a young Army officer in Vietnam, met a beautiful French woman who was searching for her husband thought lost when ambushed by the NVA. It just so happens that the woman is married to a French Foreign Legion captain who retains a noble title and significant wealth. Thinking her husband dead, she has a one night affair with young Lt. Jake Cazalet. The very next morning, she finds out that her husband, Captain (Count) de Brissac is alive and out of a sense of duty, returns to him. Jake is heartbroken but the two of them agree to part. What neither one knows is that the one night liaison has resulted in the conception of a child. After the child's birth, the Comtesse de Brissac convinces her husband that the child is his and life goes on.

As the years pass, Jake Cazalet returned to Harvard where he completed his doctorate and law school. He enters politics and eventually becomes a Senator. Later, he is elected President. After he becomes President, Jake finds out that the Count de Brissac, a former French general, has passed away. He eventually meets his long-lost love and she tells him a secret, her daughter was not 'the general's daughter,' but his own. Jake's wife, who had died years earlier of leukemia, had never been able to bear children and now the POTUS has one 28 years old, who he cannot acknowledge.

Enter the complication. Someone else finds out Marie de Brissac's identity and they kidnap her. The kidnappers are not the usual PLO, IRA or former Communist thugs Higgins has employed in these roles in the past. They are Israelis who want to force the President to sign an order that will result in the nuclear destruction of Syria, Iran and Iraq. They give him a time limit and with that clock ticking, the tension also starts to build.

In his own way, Higgins chooses to involve Sean Dillon, Brigadier Ferguson and Hannah Bernstein. He also introduces a new character, Blake Johnson, an FBI agent who runs "The Basement" in the White House. He is the President's special action team and as a result of the kidnapping, he and Dillon join forces. Readers will meet him again in THE WHITE HOUSE CONNECTION.

While the entire premise for this book is truly far-fetched, the way in which Dillon and Blake Johnson resolve the crisis is what makes for the most interesting reading. It is in the problem solving stage where Higgins provides most of the action, tension and enjoyment. That is why he has so many fans around the world. This is not great or memorable literature. What it is is an enjoyable, mindless, escapist way to pass some time.

Higgins is spare with his wording and his details. That is also another factor in why his books are so quick and fast paced. If you're looking for a quick way to escape your everyday existence, then Higgins (and this book) is a good place to start. Sean Dillon and the rest of the characters in these books have become like old friends. It's always good to visit with them every once in a while.

Higgins fans will like this installment. It's full of everything they expect from this extremely prolific author. Cast aside the critical eye. Sit back, put your feet up and visit with old friends.

This is the first Catherine Coulter book I have read. The story line is good and there are multiple mysteries going on at the same time that kept me interested and guessing until the end. However, the interaction between the weakly built characters was astoundingly trite. The dialogue was embarrassingly silly and amateurish. It remains a toss up as to whether the plot and story line are good enough to offset the characters and the dialogue.

For Dane, this case is personal. He is guarding the only witness to his twin's shocking murder in a church confessional. His investigation of his brother's death, leads him to find that the killing is eerily similar to the latest episode of a new TV series. Somebody, connected to the show, is recreating the show's murders and Dane must find out who it is and keep his witness alive.

Complicating this case is the fact that the killer knows about the witness (Nick). There is also a convoluted sub plot dealing with Nick's own secret past.

Eleventh Hour is a good suspense mystery that revists favorite past characters. I read this book without having read most of Catherine Coulter's past FBI novels and felt that this book could stand alone. For fans already familiar with the series, I am sure it is a welcome reminder of the now married Sherlock/Savich.