Based on research done for a TV documentary of the same name, this book covers the same ground that Elizabeth Longford's "The Royal House of Windsor" does but with a more objective than personal view. This is to be expected because neither author shares the intimacy with the Royal Circle that Lady Longford does. As a result this book focuses more on the historical events that swirled around the Royals than on the personalities of the Royals; yet by their actions, the book still tells a lot about them as individuals.

Both books should be read if you want to make sense of current events in the House of Windsor. Read Elizabeth Longford's book first, and this book second. Both sets of authors conclude that the House of Windsor will survive. That is to be expected of a dedicated royalist such as Longford. That Brendon and Whitehead came to the same conclusion appeared more to be a lack of nerve in the end than of reasoned conviction.

It's true that the information in the book is not groundbreaking, but it was encouraging, and practical, and reinforced all the things I've been telling myself to do but not really doing. The Duchess looks fabulous on the cover, and she has included some very embarrassing photos of herself to make a point. I can't help thinking that if she can do it after all she's been through, so can I.

This book offers sensible dieting and nutritional advice along with recipes and exercise tips. It's motivating. The Duchess writes candidly about her weight problems, offers a new slant on diet issues, and inspires women to deal with the sources of their weight problems.

While this book does not really offer anything new, what she says is true. Weight Watchers is one of the best ways to lose weight sensibly.

Verdant motherland, your people are ancient and noble. They neither need the bible nor any kind of hebrew connection to be supremely worthy of praise. When I think of all the ancient wisdom that pours forth from the all directions in the motherland, I do not see why anyone would need to justify a people or their myriad spiritual virtues and wisdom by insisting they must be descended from some other people from some other place. Roots, roots, roots. Return to the true roots. When you hear the call of the orishas, answer it, and the gate of truth shall be opened. Wisdom comes up from Mother Earth, wisdom comes down from the stars, wisdom purifies in the heat of the noonday sun, and wisdom heals in the sweet coolness of mother waters. When the People of the Book(could be any people and any book really) put down their books and start listening to the wind as it whispers through the trees, they shall hear the eternal Voice then and be free.

Mr. Windsor has done his research well. If anyone has any doubt, I refer him to the biblical text Deut. Chapter 28. The only group that fulfills the prophesy in this text is people of the African diaspora. There is simply no dispute. I challenge every black American to read this book and judge for themselves. I guarantee that as you read the text, a 'light bulb' will go off...

Shalam,Shalam-Greeting peace unto you.
This is a excellent book and it has plenty of knowledge one can understand.In no way is the book an attempt to give the black race false knowledge its the truth about the orginal man of the planet dont let people tell you anything bad about this book other people should read it for themselves and be the Judge!

It has a deep rundown on the Hebrew race and how it ties in with the black man in America and alot of people can except that,but whats stated in this book is the honest truth.Take a look at this book for yourself and dont let anyone tell you bad about it I give it a perfect five stars!
Selah
Shalam

I have many of Sharyn's books and love them but this one was way below par. It was slow and very boring. It is mostly about Elizabeth getting everything ready for her wedding & her cousins who are weird. The jest of the book that was any good at all was at the end of the book. I almost put it away more that one.

not my favorite

The way she swapped point of views was aboultly wonderful. I enjoyed how she could swap between people and how easy it was to folloe that.

The dialogue is not stilted and flows like natural conversation. McCrumb builds her characters so that their actions seem logical. She has a descriptive use of language.

I BORROWED THE BOOK FROM MY LOCAL LIBRARY AND I'M GLAD I DIDN'T BUY IT. I COULDN'T GET INTO THE BOOK. BESIDES READING AND REREADING PASSAGES I FOUND THAT THE BOOK HAD SO MANY ERRORS NO WONDER I COULDN'T UNDERSTAND HALF OF IT. I GAVE UP IN THE 4TH CHAPTER I COULDN'T DEAL WITH IT. SO DON'T BUY THIS BOOK SAVE SOME EXTRA MONEY. IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE WHAT I SAY THEN BORROW IT FROM YOUR LIBRARY AND SEE WHAT I MEAN. IF YOU WANT TO READ A BOOK WITH LOVE, ADVENTURE AND MYSTERY READ BOOKS BY JULIE GARWOOD, ANDREA KANE, AMANDA QUICK AND JACLYN REDING. NOW THAT IS GOOD READING.

I thought the book to be terrific. Once I started I could not put it down. I belived Rose to be a very head strong woman who knows what she wants and will do anything to get her wants. Rose is sneaky, seductive and stubborn ,but that makes it even more interesting when she meets up with an old crush who now is her enemy!

I am normally fairly picky about the books I read, but picked this one up just on a whim. It is really rare to find a set where the second and third books are better than the first, but this one does in shining colors! Her characters are well rounded and believable. Her story flows easily and often times has you covering your eyes at some of the situations this heroine gets herself into! It does well as a stand alone, but the the first two are also definitely worth reading first!

As far as it goes, Born Royal is an interesting view into the lives of George V's children. The problem is that it doesn't go far enough.

The author spends far too much time on David (the Duke of Windsor) and his younger brother Bertie (George VI), who have already been the subjects of numerous biographies, and gives George V's other children short shrift. It's unfortunate, given that there isn't much written about them. Hough apparently referred mainly to research he undertook while writing his books on the Mountbattens; since Mary, George, Henry and John didn't figure much in those books, they don't figure much here.

OVERALL THIS BOOK IS QUITE NICE, GIVES A GLIMPSE OF THE CHILDHOODS OF THE CHILDREN OF GEORGE V AND QUEEN MARY. I WOULD HAVE LIKED MORE INFORMATION ON THE PRINCESS MARY AND HER YOUNGER BROTHERS. THE BOOK TENDS TO DWELL ON THE DUKE OF WINDSOR AND GEORGE VI.

It's too bad this book is out of print because it's a tale relevant to the current British Royal Family. Richard Hough wrote this easy-to-read book on the six children of King George V and Queen Mary out of the notes he took for his books on the Mountbatten family. King George (and Prince Philip) was a rigid martinet who could only criticize his children so they grew up to fear him. George (and Prince Philip) adored his daughter Mary (Princess Anne) who grew up self-righteous. Queen Mary (Queen Elizabeth II) was not a warm and loving mother. She put her duty to the monarchy above her duties as a mother and neglected her children. Her eldest son Edward VIII (Prince Charles) sought love with a married woman who became a mother-figure for him, a necessary balm for his immaturities. Her son George was the Randy Andy of his era and a bisexual (Prince Edward), too. Among the Windsors, it can be said that history truly repeats itself.

This book is a reproduction of three Popular Mechanics Magazine publications from before WW I, at the height of the Mission furniture craze. It includes about 100 projects. Each one consists of a parts list, one to two pages of text (a total of about 200-500 words), a black-and-white shaded drawing of the finished piece of furniture (sort of like a bad photo) and minimalist plans. The plans are simple front and side elevations. Don't expect exploded views like one would find in a modern woodworking magazine.

A paragraph from the text for a five-drawer dresser/mirror combination is illustrative of the brevity of much of the instructions:

QUOTE: In working up the various parts, proceed in the usual manner. If not thoroughly familiar with the various tool processes involved, it will be necessary to investigate pieces of nearby furniture and to read up some good text dealing with the processes involved.

In other words, don't buy this book if you are a novice woodworker looking to have your hand held, step-by-step through the construction process.

What one really gets with the purchase of this book are two things. First, an interesting look at turn-of-the-century America and the arts & crafts period, from the perspective of a middle-class magazine for home craftsmen. Second, one gets a collection of designs for generic mission or arts & crafts furniture. To me, the vast majority of the designs are unappealing. At best, they seem just a little off target, as though a high-school woodshop class student were given an assignment to make an original mission furniture piece. However, there are a few interesting pieces.

I bought this book because I buy *EVERYTHING* about Stickley/Mission/Roycroft furniture. I do not regret the purchase, but I will probably never make any of the projects, and if I did I would have to spend a half a day (at least) making production drawings of the parts for the furniture.

I recently bought this book because I was intrigued by its old-time style. It is a reproduction of three old how-to manuals from the early 1900's. The preface states that the writing was left alone, but that the indexes and page numbering were altered to make sense in this volume. I am well pleased with this purchase because of what it is and what it is not:

IT IS - a great collection of Mission Style furniture plans, complete with materials lists and drawings to give a modern furniture maker plenty of ideas for design.

IT IS NOT - a basic how-to manual which spends half of the book explaining the basics of tools and workshop safety. It is also not a step-by-step cookbook for building the furniture listed. In many places, this book states that you should save time by having the lumber dealer surface and cut all of your stock to size to save time and effort! (apparently this was cheaper in 1910!)

The real value of this book is as an idea generator and an aid to someone trying to design their own furniture. It also provides some interesting insights into finishing practices common to this furniture in the good old days. Check it out, its worth a look.

I purchased this book expecting to find plans for various types of Mission-style furniture and that is exactly what I found. In addition, information on finishing wood in the authentic style is included.

After hearing Theo Aronson talk about the pending publication of his latest book on a radio show, I hastened to order it. It sounded like it would be a lively insider's account of less-known incidents and anecdotes about the British Royal Family. Instead it turned out to be a thinly-disguised autobiography of Mr. Aronson with very few interesting stories and some very hissy jabs at the Windsor family. Perhaps his other biographies may be more interesting, but this one was very disappointing.

Theo Aronson is a well known biographer of European royalty past and present. Royal Subjects is a description in diary form of twenty years or so of contacts with British Royals both well known (The Queen Mother, Prince Charles) and almost unknown (Colonel Sir Henry and the Lady May Abel Smith). Aronson clearly enjoyed meeting these people and likes most of them quite a bit, but he is not blind to their character flaws and is on the whole refreshingly unidolatrous. (Not to say he isn't loyal, as he obviously has little truck with republican sentiment)

Royal Subjects will appeal to you even if you are not a royal aficionado because Aronson very humorously describes the day to day sillinesses he puts up, from inane phone calls and letters to being interviewed by people who have obviously not read his books. Most appealingly of all, Aronson never takes himself or his subjects too seriously, even when he has to deal with prostate cancer. He has had a full life which he has enjoyed immensely, and you will enjoy this glimpse of part of it, too.

Based on the annotated information in the journals he's kept for years, Theo Aronsono has written a light and interesting book on the English Royals. As he's interviewed many of them for his other books, this is a chronoligical walk through his memories (from 1979 to the present). It's fascinating. I ordered this book after I heard an interview with him on the radio. It arrived yesterday, and I read it in its entirety last night. If you're interested in the Windsors, this is a slice of life from a man who doesn't pull any punches. And yet he still remains a gentleman. I really enjoyed it.

Barry Windsor-Smith was one of my favorite comic artists when I used to collect comics in the 1970s and 80s. His sense of detail steeped in Art Nouveau and Symbolism combined with strong storytelling pacing pulled me in another world and lingered with me after I turned each page. His sense of the supernatural was always spellbinding to me.

When I found out that a new book of his was out, I eagerly purchased it without knowing anything about it based on how much I loved his work from before. His storytelling skills and pacing were as keen as ever. Barry Windsor-Smith still knows how to set a mood and sustain it throughout the story.

His drawing is still beautiful. But it was so detailed, that it was very hard to read and see what was going on in some of the panels. There's a couple panels where he uses a solid black background with a beautifully detailed face in front. These were my favorite panels. I could focus on the excellently rendered facial expressions. In a lot of the full size panels without any solid blacks to counter all the ornate pen and ink detail, it was hard to absorb what was going on. I may be wrong, but I get the impression this is a reprint from a comic. Perhaps the original was colored with a simple color scheme to help distinguish figures from foreground and background.

Aside from that, the story was okay. I don't know Adastra's background and wished an introduction was provided. There is an "interview" in the back, as well as some "outtakes", but I thought they were silly and destroyed the wonderful mood that was set up in the graphic novel. If this graphic novel was created only for those who know the background of the original comics, then it probably succeded. But it doesn't stand on its own.

This story was originally created by Barry Windsor-Smith over a decade ago as the third and final installment of the "Lifedeath" issues of Marvel Comics' The Uncanny X-Men. Marvel's editors declined to publish the story and Windsor-Smith revised the story to be an episode from the earlier life of Princess Adastra, one of the members of the Young Gods serial presented in the STORYTELLER series.

Consequently there are two important things to realize. First, the heroine was originally intended to be Storm and the tale is obviously a better fit for her character than for Adastra. Second, the artwork was originally intended to be presented in color. Taken in combination these two points explain why this work is not as satisfying as it might be. If you compare these black and white pages to the two X-Men comics you will easily see how these overly detailed drawings of people in the rain forest was supposed to look and how much more effective they would be in color. One of the hallmarks of Windsor-Smith's later work is that color is as much a part of his illustration as the finely detailed artwork. If you look at some of his posters you can see what he can do focusing on dominant colors (e.g., the blue in "Mitras," the reds and browns in "Sybll," or the lilac in "Psyche"). The artwork in "Ad Astra in Africa" is intended to emphasize a blending of colors and can not truly be appreciated in black and white.

Ultimately this volume is of interest to those who not only admire Windsor-Smith's illustration style but those who remember the original "Lifedeath" series. The "interview" with the main character, which includes a couple of very tongue in cheek "outtakes" from the story are certainly in keeping with the Young Gods serial, but they also seriously undercut the serious nature of the original X-Men story, which is almost as serious a concern as the absence of color in this volume.

I was disappointed at the factual errors in this book as well as the poor proofreading. On the edition I read the jacket itself refers to Edward as King Edward VII rather than King Edward VIII. The name of Wallis's chauffeur is spelled both Ladbrook and Ladbrooke on successive pages. The decorator Stephan Boudin is said to be with the Maison Jensen rather than Maison Janson. The most egregious error was on p. 395 where the author states that the motto of the Prince of Wales is "Dieu et mon Droit" when the correct motto is "Ich Dien."
One hopes these errors were corrected in subsequent editions of this book.

For those readers who have an inherent interest in the British Royal Family, and especially the late Duke & Duchess of Windsor, much of this book will be repetitive. However, this book's author approaches his subject as though she were a real, living, breathing individual, with complexities and contradictions in her makeup. Wallis Simpson has almost always been portrayed as a ruthless, calculating woman bent upon becoming Queen of England. While I think she must have had a tremendously strong personality, and that the former Edward VIII might have had a somewhat weak character, common sense tells us that most people are neither all one way or the other, that they are capable of bad - and good - motivations. I came away from this book feeling that while Wallis Simpson may not have been 'in love' with the Duke, she truly did love him. Evidently, that was enough for him, and seeing her portrayed as a believeable human being rather than some shrill, cardboard characture made this book an informative and enjoyable read.

Greg King's thoroughly-researched and highly readable biography of the Duchess of Windsor's life is simply excellent! At the outset the author explains that his book is a "sympathetic" portrait of the Duchess, and is not a re-hashing of old gossip and rumors.

Rather, this is a very balanced and highly interesting look at not only the lives of the Duke and Duchess, but of the time and world they inhabited with such joie de vivre, glamour and above all, humor and compassion for others. So many books have emphasized the lavish lifestyle, the Duchess' wardrobe and jewels, her society friends, etc. Here, we are privy to the other side of their lives: one in which Wallis and Edward devoted enormous amounts of their personal time and money to helping those persons less fortunate than themselves. Of particular interest is their years spent in the Bahamas, when the Duke was Governor-General, and Wallis spent years coordinating efforts to improve the lives of native Bahamians. It is sad that Buckingham Palace ignored not only their charitable efforts, which the British Royal Family is so eager to promote in the UK with their "Civil Duties", but that Edward's brother, King George VI, and Queen Elizabeth (now the Queen Mother) ensured that Edward and Wallis were not allowed to represent the Royal Family within the UK itself. King George lived in great fear that their popularity with the common people of Britain (and all over the world) would usurp his authority as monarch supreme.

All in all this is a story to be remembered for all time.