Fred Thompson's "Iced Tea" is a small and likeable volume filled with not only recipes, but everything you ever wanted to know about this summertime drink. He covers everything from the rules and techniques for brewing a great glass of tea (from which a great glass of ICED tea may be made) to what other countries like to serve in their iced tea glasses.

I learned quite a bit from this slim volume. For instance, why Southerners like their "sweet tea" so sweet (read the book to find out!) and how tea can be used in a fantastically good smoothie (again, read the book!). This would make a lovely hostess gift for some summer weekend at the beach!

I chose to read this book for a university history class where we had to find a book and make a presentation on HOW the book was written and presented rather than the history that was in the book. Thompason did a marverlous job at letting the public know what exactly happened during the uprising of Bloody Sunday 1916. I recommend this book to everyone and anyone interested in the politics of the time.

Julian Thompson's "The War at Sea" is an excellent study for all World War-II collectors as well as researchers. In the book, there are selected memories which were taken from major and minor naval actions during the Second World War. The book has a valuable photo-archive of Royal Navy, including some opponents' photos. Although the information level was shadowed by book's visual effects (also have some color paintings), you can find good statistics. Ten chapters of book were formed in the chronological way, having struggle of Royal Navy, not only in the Atlantic and Mediterranean but also in the Pacific and Indian Ocean. Unfortunately, there are only five basic maps showing main naval bases and a detailed diagram. In sum, excellent and different.

The Cossacks are best known as the roving horsemen of the Russian steppes, famed for their ungovernability and violence, epitomized by tales of wild fighters like Stenka Razin and Yermak. In the 20th century, one of the most famous portrayals of Cossacks was in that early classic of Russian cinema, "The Battleship Potemkin", in which a body of these perennial soldiers, dressed in the white jackets of the Tsar, gun down a crowd of civilians on a set of steps in Odessa ("Cossack massacre on the steps" in English works well as a pun).

A little-known aspect of Cossack history is explored in Claudio Magris' pseudo-novel, "Inferences from a Sabre" (1986). In June 1941, shortly after Hitler's invasion of Russia, German agents persuaded General Pyotr Krasnov, "ataman" (chieftain) of a band of Cossacks, to command a battalion of these fighters, famed for their aversion to communism. Krasnov, then 72 years old, was one of the most colorful figures of the 20th-century. As Neal Ascherson writes in his engrossing book, "Black Sea", Krasnov's hatred of "Bolshevism" was matched "only by his contempt for the Judaeo-democratic West." After joining the White Russian armies in the civil war, he fled to Paris, "where, to the astonishment of this tough old soldier's friends, he became a prolific novelist." After World War II, so the story goes, Krasnov was betrayed by the English, handed over to Stalin, and hanged as a traitor.

Magris' "novel" takes the story up in October 1944. Hitler had promised the Cossacks a homeland in Carnia, that mountainous part of northeast Italy wedged between Venice, Austria, and Slovenia, and, the end of the war approaching, these exiles of the steppes were fighting it out with the Italian partisans. The book is a letter by Father Guido, a priest from Trieste, to one of his superiors.

In 1944 Guido was sent to interecede with the Cossacks and try to mitigate the cruelty meted out on the Carnians. While he was there, he thinks he met Krasnov, whose life and death intrigue him from then on. The crux of the book is the "enigma woven around the death of Krasnov", an enigma that begins on 2 May 1945. As the Cossacks flee on horseback through the Val di Gorto to hide out in the forests of Austria, one of them is shot dead by the partisans. His companions bury him in a poorly marked grave and throw in a broken sabre. Father Guido explores the possibility that, contrary to the official story, this soldier was Krasnov.

Blurring the lines between fiction and reality, Magris plumbs the depths of Krasnov's character. Apart from the fact that Guido never existed, this lyrical "novel" would be an interesting work of speculation. Magris "plays through the pathetic coda to Krasnov's life". We see the Cossack commander and his men as living contradictions, romantic figures ("the flash of the blade in the air evoked for a moment the vague yearning glow of certain brief, blustery evenings, of curling sea-waves that seem to shine with the promise of everything we lack"), medieval men, "untamed and feudal" who "saw the revolution as the anonymous assault of modernity, the sunset of the individual, the end of adventure", yet also as anti-Semites, butchers, and the enemies of their own dream ("the Cossacks reached that corner of the world [Carnia] to build themselves a house and to take shelter from the indeterminacy of nothingness, and instead they destroyed the hospitable order enclosed by these walls and delivered it back to formlessness.")

The novel is a great read, one of the best I've read this year. I also recommend Magris' depressing book, "The Other Sea", about an Italian on the plains of Patagonia, plus Ascherson's book mentioned above.

If you are a thoughtful person and a reader of the Bible, you have probably come across some pretty tuff stories to digest. Thompson tackles these tough issues with an honest perspective. He also deals with questions about how we should regard the inspiration of the Bible, which is an ever pressing issue among most Christian denominaitons.

This is a pretty good book on international economics. Another one is International Economics by Henry Thompson published by World Scientific Publishing. The writing is straightforward and the topics are covered with an eye on sound economic analysis.

This book magnificently outlines the intricacies of the world of mass communications and various mass media outlets. It glorifies the broadcasting industry to the extent of offering wonderful career insight, methods of mass media dissemination and broad-based spectrum of the glamorous industry.

The title, "Introduction...," is a tad misleading -- while this book is certainly a perfect introductory for those who know next-to-nothing on the subject, the modern "introduction" usually means abridged, concise, or containing only the bare essentials of material. Thompson's book is a complete overview of Europe from the Roman Empire to the Renaissance, containing analysis of art, philosophy, literature & religion, culture & lifestyle, warfare & politics: in short, every facet is explored indepth. This book is refreshing in its natural view of the development of Western society: Thompson defies the conveniant partitioning of history, and shows us the emergence of Western culture that climaxed during the Rennaissance, which he posits correctly as beginning well into the "medieval" period. It spares us from that troubling thrift of so many historians who often want us to believe that European culture and civilization all but disappeared in the 1,000 some years between Rome and Rennaissance.

Exhaustively researched, intelligently written, and great as both an introduction and as a reference source (designed as such). The only problem is that its a bit dated, which still hasn't devalued it in any major way.

This book is very available for microlithograph

This book is written on a basic enough level for the beginner to understand, but it is also comprehensive enough to give the intermediate level wrestler a good grasp of the fundamentals of the sport. A must read for all beginners and intermediate wrestlers.