There is a new book on them every year. This work includes Theodore sr., Bamie, the Eliots, Quentin, Kermit, Anna & all the rest. This is not American history. It is family history: one family two clans, Hyde Park & Oyster Bay. Their orgins from the 17th century are discussed briefly including the split. Then it proceeds with Teddy's childhood. He was sickly, almost dying several times, except for his father Theodore sr. He was a great man & loving father. He undoubtedly made Teddy the man he was to become. He was worthy of the veneration TR carried for him all his life. Theodore sr. died early. So did Eliot "the golden boy" TR's brother & Eleanor's father. The impact that Eliot had on his daughter was huge & mostly negative.
Being a son of TR was tough. He & wife Edith were good, attentive, loving parents. They had four sons, all filled with a passion to measure up to TR. It wasn't enough to enlist in World War I but to see action & if possible get wounded. Talk about pressure! TR probably didn't see things in such a harsh light but the sons felt this was the way to please their father. It killed the youngest son, Quentin. Of course they never rose to TR's heights. But a cousin did: Franklin Delano. His life started out differently with an older father he didn't know & a domineering mother. He studiously followed TR's path: state legislator, under Secretary of the Navy & govenor of New York. As good parents that TR & Edith were FDR & Eleanor were terrible & neglectful. The way their children turned out was somewaht predictable, racking up 15 divorces amongst them. The Roosevelts rank up there with the Adams, Kennedys & Bushes(?) as great American political families. This was from the the audio version & throughly enjoyable.

As a U.S. History teacher I often get this question when my classes reach the early twentieth century: "How are Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt related - were they brothers, or father-and-son"? When I point out that they were distant cousins, the students are amazed, and I suspect that many Americans with only a minimum knowledge of history would be, too. As this excellent book by Peter Collier and David Horowitz points out, there were two distinct branches of the Roosevelt family. One branch became Republicans and settled into the wealthy neighborhoods of Manhattan and Oyster Bay, on Long Island; while the other branch became Democrats and lived on a huge, English-style estate along the Hudson River in upstate New York. Although the two branches of this Dutch-descended family got along fairly well in the nineteenth century, in the early twentieth century a venomous feud erupted between the children of Theodore Roosevelt and their distant yet ambitious cousin, Franklin, and his revenge-minded wife, Eleanor. The first part of this book focuses on the rise of Theodore Roosevelt to fame and power in politics. In many ways "TR" represented the best of the American past - he was young (at 42 the youngest ever to become President), dynamic, and progressive. His large brood of children were no less energetic and flamboyant (in particular his eldest child Alice, who shocked polite society by smoking in public and making "unladylike" comments - Theodore himself said that he could "be President or control Alice, I cannot possibly do both"). As their beloved father grew older and his political star began to wane after 1909, his children assumed that the mantle of family and national leadership would be passed on to his oldest sons, especially Theodore, Jr. But they soon discovered a "nemesis" - Franklin D. Roosevelt of the Democratic Hudson River Roosevelts, became an assistant to President Woodrow Wilson and began manuevering to oust Theodore's children from the throne. He was assisted by his wife Eleanor, who was the daughter of Theodore's tragic brother Elliot. Unable to keep up with his wildly successful older brother, Elliot simply gave up and fell into a life of drinking, gambling, and womanizing and died at an early age. Young Eleanor always blamed the Oyster Bay Republican Roosevelts for "destroying" her adored father, and she vowed revenge. In the 1920's she derailed Theodore, Jr's attempts to become Governor of New York by smearing him with a political scandal, thus ending his political career and earning Eleanor the embittered ridicule of Alice, who thereafter often enjoyed making fun of Eleanor's buck teeth and nasal accent for her dinner guests. (She also took numerous verbal swipes at her cousin - after hearing that Franklin was having an extramarital affair, Alice snorted "He deserves to - he's married to Eleanor"). The second half of the book describes the rise to power and Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the career of his wife Eleanor, and the many problems and failures of their children - largely brought on, Collier and Horowitz argue, by the neglect of their famous parents. This family feud doesn't really end until decades after Franklin D. Roosevelt dies in 1945, and both branches of the family have left politics for the quieter pursuits of business. My only disappointment with this book is that it skims over many of the great accomplishments of both Roosevelt Presidents - this book is NOT a comprehensive history of their Presidencies! However, it is an extremely well-written and engrossing account of the rise and fall of two branches of one of America's greatest families.

"The Roosevelts" is the fascinating, 75 year long tale of two branches of an American dynasty during its of era prominence.

The main characters are Theodore Roosevelt, patriarch of the Oyster Bay Branch, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, patriarch of the Hyde Park branch, and Eleanor Roosevelt, who bridged the two branches.

Theodore was the founder of the dynasty who set the pattern for the others to follow. Assistant Secretary of the Navy, hero of San Juan Hill, Governor of New York, Vice President and President, TR blazed the trail which others attempted to follow.

This book follows TR through his career, focusing on the themes which made him the Lion that he was. TR's love of family, love of country, martial ardor and thirst for the limelight are all well explained. The post-presidential years of frustration with Taft and Wilson are shown as hard times for TR. TR's call for entry into World War I made him the leading opposition figure to Wilson's peace policy. U.S. entry merely brought more frustration as TR was refused an Army Commission while his four sons all saw combat. TR was proud of his sons, bled with them when they were wounded and grieved when Quentin was killed.

The story is more than just the stories of the main characters. It is, in essence, the story of a family, the relationships of parents and children, brothers and sisters, cousins and in-laws. The role that family life played in the lives of each individual is skillfully woven throughout the book.

With his passing, TR left an idol to emulate and a trail to follow. All of his sons, in war and peace, tried to carry on TR's ideals through public service.

The two family members who most clearly tried to follow the trail blazed by TR were Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., and his distant cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Like TR, both would serve in the New York legislature, serve as Assistant Secretary of the Navy and run for Governor of New York. Both attempted to run for vice-president and both as aspired to the presidency. It was the rivalry of these two which split the branches of the family into a bitter feud.

Theodore, Jr., Ted, was the first to try to journey down the trail. Nominated for Governor of New York in 1924, he was beaten by Al Smith, due, at least in part, to his unjustified guilt by association in the Teapot Dome scandal. The prevailing wisdom of the day was that there was room for only one Roosevelt in New York politics at a time. A tantalizing "what if" of history is that had Ted not been tarred with Teapot Dome, he could have been elected governor. This probably would have made him the front-runner for the 1928 presidential nomination, leaving FDR frozen out of politics. As fate had it, Ted's gubernatorial service would occur in Puerto Rico and the Philippines whereas FDR would be elected Governor of New York in 1928. Despite vice-presidential speculation in 1924 and 1928, Ted's career as a public official ended with FDR's election as president in 1932.

Although Ted's political career was ended, he continued to play a role as an opposition leader who contested FDR's claim to TR's spiritual legacy and who consistently reminded the public that FDR was not TR's son.

FDR also idolized and emulated TR. After a vice-presidential run in 1920, his political career seemed to have been ended by his contraction of polio. Initially depressed by his illness, FDR, "Feather Duster" to his Oyster Bay cousins, overcame his handicap and was able to return to the arena after a long convalescence. The recuperative days at Warm Springs are given ample attention by the authors. The reader follows FDR's long road back to public life.

Although the fathers of TR and FDR had been friends, the strongest link between the branches was forged when TR, standing in for his deceased brother, Elliott, gave his niece, Eleanor, in marriage to Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Eleanor and Franklin are portrayed as a misfit match. Unable to find satisfaction in Eleanor, Franklin sought it in other women. Eleanor, for her part, found companionship in a series of confidants, both male and female. Their union became more of a business partnership than a true marriage. Eleanor gave Franklin the appearance of a stable marriage, while he provided her with an avenue into public and political life rare, or even unique, among women of her day.

The effect on their children of the Eleanor and Franklin's partnership is portrayed as disastrous. Unable to maintain a normal relationship among themselves, Eleanor and Franklin could not build a nurturting family environment. As a result, their children drifted from one relationship to another, in and out of shady business deals and had, what was for them, small success in politics.

One test of a book is whether it presents facts which leads the reader to a conclusion. "The Roosevelts" passes this test. Although many other Roosevelts play roles in this story, we are basically introduced to two families. Theodore Roosevelt headed a family bound by love and devotion to duty. Although the hand of history weighed heavily on later generations, TR's family is portrayed, for the most part, as remaining loyal to duty, honor and each other. Eleanor and Franklin, by contrast, begot a set of related individuals, for whom their heritage was not a call to service, but merely an asset to be sold. Before reading "The Roosevelts" I had a much greater respect for Theodore than for Franklin. This book has widened the gap immeasurably. Read and see if you come to the same conclusion.

We don't need to see the Little Mermaid's nipples.
(I can never understand why the people who cry out that the nudity is "JUST art!" don't notice that it is never underdressed males, but little girls that we have to look at.)

Amazon.com rates this book for ages 4 - 8, but the text is difficult and violent, and the admittedly lovely art is appropriate for graphic novels in the _Sandman_ vein, not for kids.

Yes, it is a lovely story, yes, it was dark to begin with, and no it is not a children's book.

Good translation, pretty (aside from the gratuitousness) illustrations earn 2 stars.

Sulamith Wulfing's art is gorgeous! Unfortunately, most of the reviews I see here are NOT for her book! They are reviews of the version Rachel Isadora illustrated (see the "nipples" and violence comments); or even for Disney's Little Golden Book adapted from the cartoon. I don't understand why reviews for other versions are displayed here; it's very misleading! If you like Sulamith Wulfing's art, you'll probably like this book.

The Little Mermaid. Illustrated by Sulamith Wulfing; text by Hans Christian Andersen. Translated from the German by Petra Michel.

Sulamith Wulfing is a fantastic artist whose work has been sold as books of plates, calendars, and even decks of cards. This book is special because it is one of the few times that her works illustrate a story. Each page has black and white line drawings and there are ten full page color plates. The color plates are the type of work for which the artist is most known and the ten in this book have been reprinted in her calendars and other collected works. The color is vibrant and the themes of each are sublime. The cover illustration is also the last illustration in the text and shows the mermaid transformed into The Immortal Soul.

An epilog called "The Sacrifice" written by the artist's son, Otto Schulze, states that a new translation of Andersen's story was used and that "parts of the story have been summarized." While staying true to Andersen's original plot, incidents and characters have been left out and parts of the story have been changed. These changes raise the story above being a children's fairy tale and highlight its allegorical theme about the role of love in the quest for immortality. The modified text and the mystical art go together excellently to make this the best rendering of this story I have ever seen. Originally published in German in 1953, this work is as vibrant today as when it was first conceived 50 years ago.

At the end of the book is a brief one page biography of the author with an early photograph of her and a self portrait painted in 1953.

Without using unappropiate language, this book [was really bad].... Like what I read, this book was not packed with action. I do not recommend this book to the people out there who want nonstop blood and conflict after conflict. I would recommend this book to those people who always want happy endings. Really, to me this book was really boring. I had to read this for school, and the title looked good, and when I read the back, it sounded good. Well, shows that the saying, don't judge a book by it's cover got me this time. The vocab of this book is kind of weird. You would have to be at least a teen to read this. Other than that, don't even try.

Without using inappropriate language, this book [was not good]. Like what I read, this book was not packed with action. I do not recommend this book to the people out there who want nonstop blood and conflict after conflict. I would recommend this book to those people who always want happy endings. Really, to me this book was really boring. I had to read this for school, and the title looked good, and when I read the back, it sounded good. Well, shows that the saying, don't judge a book by it's cover got me this time. The vocab of this book is kind of weird. You would have to be at least a teen to read this. Other than that, don't even try.

The Bloody County is a magnificent book. Sometimes it gets boring by telling to much informantion at one time, but then becomes good by picking up the story really quick.The story is based on a young boy named Ben Buck and his family that move from Connecticut to a placed called the Wyoming River Valley. The government one day comes and tell them that they have to move because another family rightfully owns this land, but the family won't leave. The next week Indians that work for the government come and scalp Ben's mother and his sister's husband. This scares the whole family and they split up. This book has its ups and downs but in the end comes out to be a pretty good book. The best part of the book is when the river floods, pulling a family and their canoe into the raging stream and then the Buck family saves them. I recommend this book to a person this book to a person that likes to read about early settlement in the U.S.

As far as I know, this is a unique book. It is an important document for those who want to understand the politics of the Sixties and what has happened since. It is also an antidote to the romanticized versions of the period that are all too common in books, movies, and personal storytelling.

At its best, when the authors provide reportage on the events of the period--and keep their commentary to a minimum--it is a devastating indictment of the nihilism and recklessness of some of the leading actors. The chapters on the Black Panthers and Weatherman are particularly strong.

In the later chapters, the sweeping statements about "the Left" become too broad and tend to condemn too many for too much. Not everyone who protested the Vietnam War was a Stalinist or endorsed terrorism. And not everyone who views the period differently than the authors is motivated by dishonesty and moral cowardice.

To the authors' credit, they include a telling annecdote: t! ! hey confront the writer Susan Sontag at a book festival, and finally, she refuses to talk to them any further, expressing frustration with their "Manichaean" view of politics. A fair-minded reader can appreciate Sontag's comment, even agree with it, without dismissing the book.

By the time they wrote this book in the late 1980s, Collier and Horowitz had a lot to get off their chests: "second thoughts" about their radicalism in the Sixties, disgust with the refusal of former comrades to critically examine their own political involvements, and a need to settle scores with those who had shunned them since they broke ranks with their radical friends.

That striving for vindication, and the need to be listened to, has an obsessive quality that comes through in this book. Many readers will not be persuaded to embrace conservative Republican politics, as Horowitz (at least) has done. (I, for one, see more shades of gray than do these authors.) Nonetheless, t! ! his book is one that anyone who cares about the subject sho! uld read before drawing conclusions about the Sixties.

In Destructive Generation, Peter Collier and David Horowitz put together an account of 60s radicalism that acts as an excellent antidote to the songs of U2 or Howard Zinn's chic People's History of the United States. The book goes a long way toward discrediting the fantasy of the 60s as a time of idealism and harmless rebellion, and resurrects the nearly forgotten "dark side" of the 60s.

At times, the book reads almost like a latter-day version of Dostoevsky's classic, the Devils. Like the Devils, the radicals portrayed in Destructive Generation -- notably Huey Newton, Bernadine Dohrn, Billy Ayers and Tom Hayden -- seem to behave the way they do not because they believe in revolution, but because they hate the system and they seem to be fascinated by nihilism and violence. The chapters on the Panthers and the Weatherman are the most instructive, while Horowitz's "letter to a political friend" is the most moving part of the book. If you are looking for the antithesis to Noam Chomsky, you will find it here.

The only drawback to the book is the way in which it uses sources. Footnotes are sparse, and paraphrases are often vague. Because of this, the book reads like one long editorial, rather than a work of history. One hopes that Collier and Horowitz will return to this work and create a second edition, with better notation.

This book is exceptional and unique, in that it does honestly look back at the furthest fringe of the '60s left wing, even at the writers' own expense. "Destructive Generation" is strongest when it sticks with the facts: The Black Panthers, The Weather Underground, Berkeley. It gets a little shaky when it veers into sweeping statements for an entire movement (yes, I'm sure that there were many agents for Moscow in the hierarchy, but many at the base of the pyramid truly believed in what they were doing ... particularly if it was stopping an illegal war in Indochina). The information on 1980s Central America is chilling and worth the price of admission. No matter what your political beliefs may be, though, it is well worth reading, and will definitely not leave you quickly.

Written in the same style as COSMOPOLITAN magazine, BAD BOYS is a simplistic, but somewhat useful survey of the major Bad Boy archetypes.

This book was great fun to read. I got exactly what I wanted from it: a lighthearted look at why women choose inappropriate, or possibly destructive partners to share their lives with. Each chapter begins with a well-known fairy tale and goes on to show how life choices mirror that fairy tale in real life. Dr. Lieberman shows us how human insecurities and unfavorable experiences guide us to choose partners no rational person should want. For me as a man, it shed light on why some ostensibly sensible women date and marry men I would not trust to wash my car. I hope Dr. Lieberman writes a similar book for men, for we do the same thing, although the motivations are somewhat different.

Clearly this is not an academic treatise; it is pop psychology and makes no pretenses to be anything else. It is, however, a lot of fun to read. And it could help the woman who consistently chooses inappropriate partners discover why she does this and work toward curing herself of those demons causing her to take in the wrong men.

This book is a fun read; but furthermore, it provides great insight into why bad boys act the way they do, and even more importantly, why we'd be interested in spending time with someone who acts this way!! Nice read ;) .

This was a very disappointing book. I only got through the first 3 chapters before I gave up on it. There were numerous typographical and grammatical errors that made it almost impossible to read. I finally started reading "Windows 2000 DNS" by Roger Abell, etc. by New Riders publishers and found it to be exactly what I wanted.

Take the above reviews with a grain of salt. They are reproduced almost verbatim on other bookseller's sites. I believe that they have been written by friends of the authors, and do not reflect the actual content of the book.

When I saw the review before this, I wasn't sure I should buy this book, but am glad I went ahead and read it. I'm not sure whether the first few reviews were written by friends or not, but they are on target. This is a great DNS book, and is very helpful for understanding, installing, and maintaining DNS. I would have liked for the RFCs listed to be provided on a CD, and would have liked the text to be a bit larger, but other than that, this book rocks!

Of course, this is not Dune. It's a series of episodes loosely bound together, with uninteresting humanoids going to and from nowhere and a cameo human observation space station. It makes one think when the most memorable character in the book is the revenge - seeking phagor. A classic? Classic books have plots.

In this first book of the Helliconia trilogy, Brian Aldiss has created what appears to be a Dune-like epic taking place over many centuries. It certainly is a creative concept. - an Earth-like world with a long orbit in a binary star system, with an extremely long revolution and seasons that last for centuries. Here the "people" of Helliconia have lived a hard life in winter conditions, much like the Neanderthals or Eskimos, and believed that the world had always been that way. But springtime slowly begins in this book, and the people become more cultured and learned with the easier life, but also less healthy and vigilant. This obviously represents the transition in the real world from hunting and gathering to agriculture, or from the dark ages to the renaissance.

These grand concepts are definitely robust, but at the more immediate levels of plotline and character development, Aldiss delivers little more than a very typical fantasy/adventure yarn with a little bit of sci-fi mixed in. There are some creative settings and weird features like animals that are born by eating their way out of their parents, and trees that grow underground during the winter then literally explode into the spring. But these are undermined by a very predictable tale of epic journeys, strange creatures, and complex but courageous leaders, straight from a million fantasy novels. Also Aldiss has a very - shall we say - "outdated" conception of the female characters. The worst aspect of this novel is something that really looks like a tacked-on afterthought. It turns out that Helliconia is being observed by a team of Earth scientists who ludicrously have been hanging around the planet for centuries and making very quiet analyses of this primitive world. This seems like merely a convenient way for Aldiss to provide a detached narrator to the story, and the Earth scientists' presence is hard to take seriously. This first book ends predictably with little to make you running to the following books in the trilogy. The Helliconia tale tries to be a vast epic but turns out to be small in scope.

It must be more than fifteen years since I first got my hands on a copy of Helliconia Spring. I read it in an afternoon. Summer and Winter were gobbled up with equal enjoyment. I go back to Helliconia every few years and row the "Great Wheel" along with the devout to "its rightful port beside Freyr".

Everyone is different so I assume some writers did not see the value of this book. I used the advice and received a request to see my cookbook manuscript. The only thing I thought would have been nice - is that the author would have appeared to want to help new writers more by answering questions or by putting up a website with links to relevant topics, etc. Any help is however a good thing when you are starting up! Maybe a reprint is in order to update the information - but who are we to say! I would also like to recommend you visit my member page to see my review on Michael Larsens book called How to Write a Book Proposal.

This how-to covers in somewhat coherent detail the process and practice of submitting query letters to editors and publishers and the unique requirements of both. There is some advice on the submission of queries concerning manuscripts, but the majority of the book covers subitting ideas for articles not yet written. There are some very good tips and it is a fine introduction to query writing, yet it is far from comprehensive.

.... with instruction and a different slant for so many different mediums. The beginning of the book serves up a valuable lesson on how to develop an idea that may sell, how to slant for different markets, hooking the editor and selling yourself. Then there is a short section on research and interviews. This dynamite little book not only tells you how to write and slant your query to different markets, but give concrete examples by using sample letters. This is a nice little introductory book with a concrete process that'll help you write a great query letter.

In 1955 Philip K. Dick was a prolific and moderately successful writer of SF short stories, but I seriously doubt that anyone really paid attention when "Solar Lottery" hit the shelves that year. They should have. It was one of the opening moves in the game that eventually tore the SF world wide open.

There were plenty of notable exceptions, of course, but early SF largely concerned itself with great men of tremendous vision and extraordinary ability who got in there and solved problems - the kind of man Robert Heinlein liked to write about. PKD was among those later writers who noticed that most people in the real world aren't like that, and wrote stories about them instead. "Solar Lottery" lacks his later interest in what makes something real (although it does include a conspiracy in which a man with no real personality drives a whole crew of telepaths crazy), but in Ted Benteley it contains an early example of his interest in regular guys.

As is often the case with PKD, Ted Benteley finds himself in a classic SF plot turned inside out. In this case, the classic SF plot in question comes almost directly from a true genre classic, "The World of Null-A" by A.E. van Vogt. In both novels, a man tries to make his way in the world by gambling his future on the game that forms whatever government exists around him, only to find that someone is cheating. Van Vogt's protagonist is a typical post-World War II SF superman; PKD's is a talented but endlessly ticked off functionary who spends most of the novel trying to figure out what's going on.

Everything in his world depends on the random activity of an atomic device that determines the fates of millions - a lottery indeed, with one man at the head of it. What's more, for most people, the best fate they can hope for is to bind themselves in servitude to someone of a higher social position, if any such person will take them. Merit, ability and hard work count for nothing here, and there's no way up or out except by random chance for Benteley or for almost anyone else. If most early genre SF was about men of vision and courage saving the world by their own efforts, "Solar Lottery" was that SF's polar opposite.

Benteley is not as strong a hero as later PKD characters would be, partly because of his aforementioned nasty temper. He's got plenty to be annoyed about - he gets a chance for escape at the novel's beginning and misses it because someone misleads him at a critical moment. Nevertheless, dwelling in the mind of a character who's always complaining about something can wear on one pretty quickly.

Indeed, it's no easy task to sympathize with any of these characters. In addition to their unpleasant traits - uncontrollable rage, treachery, lust for power, cowardice - these people switch attitudes so quickly it can make you dizzy. The coward, for example, suddenly acquires a titanium backbone when the men who want to kill him actually show up. Of course, PKD wrote "Solar Lottery" at a time when SF novels had to end at about 180 pages by the decree of the age's major publisher, so he probably did not have space to develop his characters more fully, but it's a flaw nevertheless.

The same can be said for the novel's plot elements - there are so many seemingly unrelated ones that the central story loses its focus a good deal of the time. PKD was always among our least disciplined writers, and in addition to "Solar Lottery's" conspiracies and betrayals we also get telepaths, robotics, space travel and hints of nuclear catastrophe thrown in. When we read a longer novel, these kinds of details can add a lot to the richness of the writer's world - in 180 pages it can give you indigestion if you read it too fast.

That overstuffed quality robs "Solar Lottery" of a good bit of its velocity. I mentioned A.E. van Vogt - his take on this kind of story never lost energy for a second. His stories picked up speed from the very first word and never stopped any longer than dreams do. PKD missed out on that, but where he tops van Vogt is in the strength of his underlying theme. "Solar Lottery," for all its speed bumps, eventually makes you stop and think about what it takes to maintain one's integrity in a corrupt world. Benteley spends a good deal of time complaining about the lack of decency all around him, and his carping can get old, but isn't that a particularly important thing to complain about? And isn't it satisfying to see the protagonist of any novel, even a cheap genre piece, stand up and shake a fist at the thieves and the traitors no matter how much pressure they put on him? Isn't that the kind of person you aim to be?

Oh yeah, people should have paid attention when "Solar Lottery" came out. After all, it's about a regular person with no special powers or gifts, thwarting a great evil through the strength of his convictions alone. After this, even Superman and his overpumped muscles looked a bit silly.

Benshlomo says, Sometimes it's enough to just tell the truth.

One of Phillip K. Dick's lesser read books, Solar Lottery is an interesing genre piece, but not much more than that. The book is full of alegorical/metaphorical content that works fairly well, but this short novel lacks the punch of his later work. For someone just discovering PDK, this book might serve as a good foundation, but compared to Valis this is small time. Still, better than most SF and certainly not a bad read. If you have a spare couple of days it is worth it to pick this book up. Especially engaging is Benteley's quest to find somewhere he can work that is not corrupt and his disappointment to find that neither the public nor private sectors can live up to his idealism.

A nice short little novel that you can read in 2 days time. Not perfect. I'm not a huge sci-fi buff, and there were parts of it that bugged me, mainly the way it seemed very 1950's (when it was written) even though it's set in the year 2203. For example, women still have a fairly subserviant role to men, everyone smokes (even on airplanes) and drinks scotch at work. Nice to know that in the future we'll be able to smoke and drink scotch in the office! None of the characters are ever fully fleshed out (though Dick seems obsessed with describing all the female character's breasts) and their behavior is sometimes unnatural and unexpected, but overall an entertaining book with a nice little twist at the end.

This book reads a lot like watching a soap opera, or a Lifetime movie. In fact that might be a good way to characterize it: the made for TV movie of Kennedy books. That does not mean, however, that it is not enjoyable. It is an easy and entertaining read, and a great introduction to this famous, or infamous family. The best that it has to offer is the parts about the third generation, which cooperated with the authors and granted them interviews. However, in the rush to seek an explanation for why the young ones turned out bad, the authors blame everything on Senator Ted Kennedy, which is not quite fair to a loving father and uncle, and a legislative giant, who is passed off in this book as a moron who rides his family's coattails. This book is a good read, but not a one-stop place for information.

This book is by far one of the most telling stories about the Kennedy dynasty I have ever read. Having read Thomas Reeves profile of Jack Kennedy in "A Question of Character" I found that "The Kennedy's" gives much more information on the inner workings of the Kennedy family. I especially enjoy the stories of old Joe Kennedy, how he made his fortunes, and his political power. The book is very well done, and I recommend everyone interested in politics, real politics, to read.

An excellent account of the Kennedys from the beginnings up to 1984, when the book was written. This book gives you a blow-by-blow history of the family and the kids. I found it most interesting learning about the little known real story of Camelot. There has been so much written about the Kennedys but the authors did some serious research and told some never before written stories, such as the JFK's back problems and Rosemary's retardation, also stories about the Kennedy kids and their drug problems. Quite informative and thorough, this book is excellent history.