Collier's book on Goodman is okay, but it could have been better. He has a bad habit of rarely if ever seeking primary sources. Instead he relies on past published materials, acting as an assimilator rather than a biographer. This leads to the needless perpetration of myths and errors rather than (as a biography should) the clarification and correction of facts. He also tends to psychoanalyze too much, sometimes making some huge leaps, while to the best of my knowledge he has no degree in psychology. A far better book on BG is Ross Firestone's "Swing Swing Swing," which breaks new ground and sheds some real light on Goodman and what drove him and what made him behave as erratically as he did, particularly in his later years.

I wanted to read this book because I had seen the movie and loved it; and as everyone knows, the book is always better than the movie right? WRONG!!!! This is the only time that I've ever liked the movie better than the book in any situation. However, I did enjoy the insight into Iris that reading the book provided. I connected with her character on a deep level, but in the book Paula is a very washed out and unidimensional character. She has all the spunk and life of a dishrag and her character was really much better in the movie. I would recommend seeing the movie and not really bothering with the book....

I thought that some parts of this book were a little boring and stretched out. The main storyline was good. It described a normal teens' life as normal, untill the teen got into alcohol and drugs. It then described how the teens' life would never be the same after the fatal accident.

The book was strong on some of the major sports, baseball, football, soccer, etc.. But it gave such short shrift to sports like Figure Skating, Boxing, Track and Field that the reader feels a bit cheated. A few more term definitions would have made it a better read as well. I don't know if there will be a second edition but it could easily expand by an additional fifty pages. All in all if you are a fact pack rat you will find it a tasty morsel but not a satisfying meal.

The book seems to have lots of information for UK citizens but little for US citizens. Caveat emptor, I guess, but I would've appreciated more than just token references to the particular difficulties of non-EU citizens trying to live in and/or find work in Germany. I think for UK citizens it's probably quite useful.

The content is otherwise fairly interesting and potentially useful, though grammatical errors and typos pervade the book (comma splices galore!).

If you haven't read the first book, this one stands on its own very well. However, I really enjoyed the first book a lot more. "Rich and Famous" was more like a copy of the first book, same general beginning, same plot twists, etc. It was fun as a break from real life for a few hours, but it definitely was not the original story "The Teddy Bear Habbit" was.

In case the editorial review wasn't enough detail, here's my summary:
George Stable is back! After his last adventure, he's now a regular client of Camelot Records. He doesn't expect to be rich and famous, but it's fun to hope he will be. Just when Woody finds him an idea that is "on fire, baby!" his father goes on vacation, sending George upstate to live with relatives. George has to come up with a more and more complicated plot to escape his relatives and continue his carreer in show biz.

Mr. Collier is absolutely right that contemporary American society is far too self-centered and disorganized. European nations put a very high priority on things like health care, education and other basic services. Americans are more concerned with maximizing private consumption. Why is consumerism so important in their eyes? Mr. Collier traces the history of hedonism in America and finds that it has a lot to do with the mass media in the last Century (20th) which created a preoccupation with the isolated self and its manufatured wants. This led people to identiy less with their community and more with a private fantasy world. The idealized self--tough, ruthless and outrageous must be catered to at all costs. Mr. Collier is right to attack these aspects of society today. But the book has a fatal flaw. Mr. Collier has a truly strange fixation on the Victorian period and holds its shrill self-righteous prudery up as a vision of healthy human community. The Victorian period was the age that INVENTED consumerism and social isolation. Its inflecible code of morality was often an excuse for misanthropy. It set up an ideal no living creature could even honestly aspire to and then condemned us all for failing. It made people uncomfortable with each other and thus affirmed radical individualism. Mr. Collier seems to equate high levels of social interest with inhuman rigidity and total abstinance from alcohol and dancing. In these monents he becomes just an absurd puritan. Look at groups of people like the Eastern European Jews who have a great commitment to social justice as well as neighborhood and family. They also love dancing, wine, and intense emotional expression. Pleasure isn't the problem. The problem is seeking pleasure in isolation from a warm, loving community. The Victorians were notorious secret drunkards and secret sexual fetishists. Not good role models. Read Erich Fromm for a better pean to community and responsibility.

Grade 6-8 Twelve-year-old Jesse flees his frontier community home to live in the mountains after he strikes his father with an axe handle during an argument. Initially, Jesse struggles as he faces life in the wild and as he tries to conceal himself from others. Gradually, with assistance from a patient mountain man, Larry, Jesse learns to hunt, to skin and cure animal pelts, and to build a cabin. He also learns about Billings, a dangerous mountain man determined to drive Jesse off the mountain. As Jesse begins winning the battles with his environment, and even hunts and kills a bear with Larry, he also begins to conquer his inner turmoil, brought about by thoughts of his mother, who abandoned the family several years earlier. As lost memories return, Jesse realizes why she left and is able to gain control of his temper. His inner wild boy then becomes tamed as he reconciles with his father and decides to go home.
Collier provides vivid details about frontier and mountain life while he describes the brutality of living in the wilderness. The author's use of dialogue and inner-monologue help develop Jesse's character. However, Collier's twangy, first-person dialect makes it occasionally difficult to wade through the book. But the danger Jesse confronts and action that takes place will keep readers interested in the "wild boy" and his battles with the mountain and himself.

This book is very hard to read because of its dullness.

As I read it, I was thinking that the book read as if written by an undergraduate: A compilation of a bunch of facts from many sources (usually without a reference) and with some remarks that lack any analysis (like blaming on neo-liberal policies the increase in Smog in the city of Santiago (!)) -if only we had followed the soviet union, we would have clean air-.

This doesn't look like the work of a scholar (or of someone with a talent for writing for that matter), but rather of a couple of foreigners with an interest in Chile who said, "hey, we could write a book about this country".

The real problem with the book is not its bias (or lack of it) but rather that it is just very hard to get oneself to read through it because it lacks insights, parallels with other situations in the world, witty remarks, etc. (i.e. what makes good books good).

It reminded me of why I hated history in high school.

It is very important that foreigners study the history of Chile. But sometimes it is better to know the reality of the country and have an impartial view towards recent historical facts. For instance, the book does not tell how Alende's regime was driving the country to become a communist state, and how the extremist forces of the "Unidad Popular" were preparing a civil war against the bourgeois institutions. The military uprising of September 1973 was invoked by the Chilean Supreme Court and the Chilean parliament, as the only way to avoid that my country would be turned into a second Cuba. That is the real fact, and the origin of the military government. Said government commited some abuses, but restored Chile's economy and by its own will reestablished democracy. And we, Chileans, will always remember that were saved from a communist-started civil war, which would have brought not 3.000 (the total number of victims of represion) but millions of deads. So, when foreign historians write regarding Chile, they should be more careful when taking into consideration the true realities which we lived in the sixties and seventies.

I only want to inform you that this book was translated to spanish by Milena Grass K. and published in 1998 by Cambridge University Press in 1998. ISBN 84 8323 033 X rústica

Disappointing. You should refund out purchase price for this little book of nothing.

This book has 365 one-liners which should boost your creativity, but I found most of the tips uninspiring and lacking any depth. Most of the tips are in the area of a)doing something different than usual; b)doing things you should have done a long time ago and c)doing something ludicrous. Without the inspiration (like giving me the reason why I should accomplish a certain task) I can't see myself buying time to do this.

Read this small little book jointly with the author's other book entitled Whack-a-Mole Theory. The latter book, which has more depth, will put all the 365 ideas into a much broader and meaningful application perspective. Although this book contains mostly fun-filled one-liners, stretching over 365 days if you apply one per day, it's filled with excellent and yet practical stuff on paradigm-busting. Remember, adding fun, joy and play into your life - and business - will certainly give you more perspectives when looking at the same problem situation. The 365 ideas in this book will change - and reshape - your paradigms!