Looks like the reviewers are pretty much split down the middle on this book -- half of them think it's lame, the other half thinks it's nothing short of a masterpiece. Pencil me in with the latter group, Franklin Parlamis has hit the nail on the head with this one. To start with, it's insightful and, at times, thought-provoking. On just about every page I had to stop and think about what he was saying. Not because it was hard to grasp (that's actually part of the beauty of The Passive Man's Guide, it's an easy read), but because it was mind-opening and made me think in terms of myself and my social life. Secondly, it's funny -- downright funny. He had me laughing non-stop.

The bottom line is you shouldn't miss out on this book. It's one of the better self-help dating books that works. The advice is practical and the techniques aren't throw-aways. And you will get better with women -- with this amazing book who couldn't?

Dating books are usually funny by default, full of lame tips that are unintentionally humorous. Finally, a manual on approaching women that doesn't insult the intelligence- this book assumes that its audience understands the value of a laugh. Meeting people isn't easy, and Parlamis mines the humor within the struggle with an easy charm. This is a manual for the shy, the tongue-tied, and the guy that wants to move up a level in the dog-eat-dog world of intersexual relations. For those that don't think that they need a manual, relax and enjoy the riffs of a shrewd observationist. For those men out there who are longing for female companionship- don't waste eight bucks for another lonely movie night alone or with the guys- read this book, relax and apply its wisdom. This book is more entertaining than Must See TV, funnier than a drunken cat, and more useful than a can opener. Put down that porno and get passive. It's not as fun at first, but pays greater dividends over the long term. Plus it's not as sticky.

As it says in the introduction by Franklin Parlamis, if you want to pick up stupid girls at your local dive, this book ain't going to be for you. But if you want to attract pretty and intelligent women, the type of women you can maybe have a long and sustained and fun relationship with, well them, it's time to plunk down some cash for this amazing book. I did, and let me tell you that the commentary is actually incisive and right on, two traits that you never attribute to self-help books, or rather, most self-help books. Mr. Parlamis truly knows what the modern man and modern woman is thinking about, and his delivery of the theories he expounds upon are no less genius than the telephone or white bread. It's simple technology that can have profound results. Try reading it and you will succeed.

'By Order of the President' is a book that attempts to show how involved Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the internment of a group of Americans during World War II (more specifically, the Americans whom ancestrally came from Japan). The book starts out by detailing FDR's youth and pre-presidential opinions of the Japanese portion of the American population, as well as his position on the Japanese of Japan's population. It then proceeds to present the events that led to the internment and how the president contributed to the process. After the preliminary details on internment, Robinson goes on to bring forth facts and information in accordance with the continuation and eventual dismemberment of the internment as well as Roosevelt's involvement in the process.

Robinson's work presents many facets of popular and unpopular interpretations of FDR's involvement in the events leading to, and beginning the internment - as well as presenting details as to why each opinion is in existence. His book notably allows the reader to see into the meetings and investigations that went into the original initiation of the internment, as well as the misinterpretations and lies that led to the ongoing existence of internment. Robinson sets out to show the true circumstances and events surrounding the prosecution and incarceration of the so-called Japanese American population as well as the involvement of the president in the matter, who seems to have actually been in support of the internment.

The book presents its literary style in a very attractive manner and will keep the reader involved, despite the fact that the author does seem to use commas a bit excessively. Despite the title of the book, however, the book mostly centers on the positions and deliberations of the president's advisors - something that needs to be presented, but is focused on exceedingly in this case. Nevertheless, the factual evidence about FDR that Robinson does present is compelling and is demonstrative of the true nature of FDR. The facts are largely presented in such a way as not to force an opinion on the reader, but rather to allow the reader to come upon their own conclusions - a writing style that is seemingly growing rarer with every passing year.

Overall, 'By Order of the President' is a work that should not go ignored and which presents the opinions of the president on internment, as well as how these opinions led to the internment of Americans under the pretext that they were dangerous due to their ancestry. Robinson presents a pleasing literary style and I personally look forward to any future publications by the author. The book is therefore highly suggested for anyone interested in Franklin D. Roosevelt, civil rights, American history, or the World War II era in general.

While United States pop culture has tradditionally portrayed the 40's as a binary of freedom vs. facism, this book exposes the truth that had long been supressed behind ideological walls.

The United States was in fact guilty of it's own internment of an entire group of people based on their involuntary membership in a subordinated group. Although taken to a lesser extent than that of the Nazi's, the actual reality of the country's actions severely clashes with the images of freedom and justice used to marshall support for the war effort.

Paranoia and bias about the potential actions of a few people led to the stereotyping of millions. Their only crime was being of Asian descent in a world where racism and fear was rampant.

The actual event in itself is still shocking, but what is even more shocking was that it happened under one of the great liberals whose presidency had been irevocably cross-referenced with the quest for social justice. FDR had openly built his presidency on advocating for the disavantaged and giving them access to the American dream, something which obviously did not happen here.

to whoever wrote the review about "sickening anti-americanism"- that is completely ridiculous. the conditions in the internment camps are not the issues i am speaking of; it was the concept of forcefully interning american citizens that i find disgusting. that you defend this action is even more disgusting. perhaps you should rate the book- which i found extremely interesting- more on the basis of the information it gave rather than your view of American presidents being unable to do any wrong.

The Secret Agent on Flight 101 is the worst of the original 58 Hardy Boys stories.
It was written to cash in on the secret agent craze of the mid-60s and finds Frank and Joe joining forces with SKOOL to fight the evil minions of UGLI.
There's plenty of frenzied, pointless action and inane dialog which do virtually nothing to further the rather thin plot.
Most Hardy Boys enthusiasts find this title laughably bad and you might just be able to enjoy it on a camp level.

Most Hardy Boys enthuisiasts will tell you that this was their least favorite book in the series. And that the book is "disjointed" in it's writing. I do not quite agree. This is one of the worst in the series, but certainly not "THE" worst! I find it a book relatively easy to follow with a decent amount of action to it. The ending I found poorly written. There was a fair amount of interaction with the criminals. RATED C-

This must be the best book Franklin W. Dixon has ever written. Mr. Hardy is kidnapped by UGLI agent Hexton and the boys find themeselves working with Dell who works for SKOOL. They go to a lighthouse to find that the world famous slueth has escaped leaving no trace to his whereabouts. Chet, Joe, and Frank inavade the magician's castle and later unmask the secret agent on Flight 101. This book was great bacause my favorite kind of mysteries have complex plots.

Seeking to reprise his earlier success with The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper went on to write several other tales built around his heroic character Natty Bumppo (called "Hawkeye" in Mohicans and "Pathfinder" in the book of THAT name). In this one our hero is known as "Deerslayer" for his facility on the hunt and is shown as the younger incarnation of that paragon of frontier virtue we got to know in the earlier books. In this one, too, we see how he got his most famous appellation: "Hawkeye". But, this time out, our hero comes across as woefully tiresome (perhaps it's because we see too much of him in this book, where he's almost a side character in Mohicans). Yet some of Cooper's writing skills seem sharper here (he no longer avers that Natty is the taciturn type, for instance, while having the fellow forever running off at the mouth). But, while there are some good moments & excitement, this tale really doesn't go all that far...and its rife with cliches already overworked from the earlier books. The worst part is the verbose, simple-minded self-righteousness of our hero, himself, taken to the point of absolute unbelievability. He spurns the love of a beautiful young woman (though he obviously admires her) for the forester's life (as though he couldn't really have both), yet we're expected to believe he's a full-blooded young American male. And he's insufferably "moral", a veritable goody two-shoes of the woodlands. At the same time, the Indians huff & puff a lot on the shore of the lake where Deerslayer finds himself in this tale (in alliance with a settler, his two daughters, a boorish fellow woodsman, and Deerslayer's own erstwhile but loyal Indian companion Chingachgook -- "The Big Sarpent," as Natty translates his name). But the native Americans seem ultimately unable to overwhelm the less numerous settlers who have taken refuge from them in the middle of Lake Glimmerglass (inside a frontier house built of logs and set in the lake bed on stilts). There is much racing around the lake as Deerslayer and the others strive to keep the few canoes in the vicinity from falling into the hands of the tribe of marauding Hurons who have stopped in the nearby woods on their way back up to Canada (fleeing the American colonists and the British at the outbreak of English-French hostilities -- since these Hurons are allied with the French). And there are lots of dramatic encounters, with some deaths, but the Indians seem to take it all with relative equanimity, while trying to find a way to get at the whites who are precariously ensconced out on the lake. (It seems to take them the better part of two days, for instance, to figure out they can build rafts to make up for their lack of canoes -- and why couldn't they just build their own canoes, in any case -- and how is it they don't have any along with them since it's obvious they'll have to cross a number of waterways to successfully make it back to the homeland in Canada?) The settler and the boorish woodsman, for their part, do their stupid best to attack the Indians unnecessarily, getting captured then ransomed in the process, while Deerslayer and Chingachgook contrive to get the loyal Indian's betrothed free from the Hurons (it seems she has been kidnapped by them -- the reason Deerslayer and Chingachgook are in the vicinity in the first place). In the meantime the simple-minded younger daughter of the settler (Cooper seems to like this motif since he used a strong daughter and a simpler sister in Mohicans, as well) wanders in and out of the Indian's encampment without sustaining any hurt on the grounds that the noble red men recognize the "special" nature of this poor afflicted young woman (Cooper used this motif in Mohicans, too). In the end there's lots of sturm und drang but not much of a tale -- at least not one which rings true or touches the right chords for the modern reader. Cooper tried to give us more of Hawkeye in keeping with what he thought his readers wanted but, in this case, more is definately too much. --- Stuart W. Mirsk

"The Deerslayer" is, chronologically, the first of Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, although the last to be written. It takes place in the early 1740s on the Lake Glimmerglass. Natty Bumppo, called Deerslayer, and his friend Hurry Harry March go to Tom Hutter's "Castle," which is a house built on stilts on a shoal in the middle of the lake, and it is practically impregnable. March intends to get Tom's daughter Judith to marry him. More love is in the air, for Deerslayer plans to meet Chingachgook at a point on the lake in a few days in order to help him rescue his bride-to-be, Wah-ta-Wah, who is a prisoner of the Hurons.

War breaks out, Tom and Harry are captured by Hurons, and the untested Deerslayer must go on his first warpath to rescue them. That sets up the plot, and there follows many twists and turns, ending with a very haunting conclusion. Although the book drags in parts, it's still pretty good.

I would caution you not to expect realism in this book. "It is a myth," D. H. Lawrence writes, "not a realistic tale. Read it as a lovely myth." Yes, Deerslayer is fond of talking, but take his soliloquies the same way as you take Shakespeare's: characters in both men's works meditate and reflect on what they are going through. So toss out your modern preconceptions aside and just enjoy the myth!

Cooper's final Leatherstocking Tale, The Deerslayer, depicts young Natty Bumppo on his first warpath with lifelong friend-to-be, Chingachgook. The story centers around a lake used as the chronologically subsequent setting for Cooper's first Leatherstocking Tale, The Pioneers. Tom Hutter lives on the lake with his daughters and it is here that Deerslayer (Bumppo) intends to meet Chingachgook to rescue Chingachgook's betrothed from a band of roving Iroquois. A desperate battle for control of the lake and it's immediate environs ensues and consumes the remainder of the story.

Throughout this ultimate Leatherstocking Tale, Cooper provides Natty much to postulate upon. Seemingly desiring a comprehensive finality to the philosophy of Bumppo, Cooper has Natty "speechify" in The Deerslayer more so than in any other book, though the character could hardly be considered laconic in any. Though the reason for this is obvious and expected (it is, after all, Cooper's last book of the series), it still detracts a tad from the pace of the story as Natty picks some highly inappropriate moments within the plot to elaborate his position. And, thus, somewhat incongruently, Cooper is forced to award accumulated wisdom to Bummpo at the beginning of his career rather than have him achieve it through chronological accrual.

All things considered, however, The Deerslayer is not remarkably less fun than any other Leatherstalking Tale and deserves a similar rating. Thus, I award The Deerslayer 4+ stars and the entire Leatherstocking Tales series, one of the better examples of historical fiction of the romantic style, the ultimate rating of 5. It was well worth my time.

I enjoyed Angel at Troublesome Creek as a light cozy, and was looking forward to the second installment.
Unfortunately it is disappointing. There is not enough of the charming angel, and not enough mystery.
Clues appear without effort on the part of the heroine. She just follows the path laid out before her. Her reactions to learning secrets about her sister seem unreal. There is no grief, no discovery, just rotely following the clues where they lead.
The basic plot is OK, but it is great need of a rewrite to fill in the characters, the emotions, the people we are supposed to care about.

The concept is brilliant (an angel helping out) and the book was entertaining however I just wished there was a bit more of the otherwordly included in the book. So much is made about the angel when in actuality you hear or see very little of her or her powers. She doesn't seem all that angelic.Phila

Prentice Dobson is spending time at the old family house. Her father and sister have died recently, her mother has moved away to the city,her reporter boyfriend has moved to London, and she's lost her job at a magazine in Atlanta. She has lots of time to reflect on how her life is going. On a routine visit to the family cemetery, she finds that her Uncle Faris' grave has been dug up and a strange corpse is in it's place. Fill in Guardian Angel Augusta Goodnight arrives to assist her with her troubles, when she finds out that her deceased sister may have had a child, and the child's crazy grandfather will do anything to find him.

There is alot going on in this book, and the various mysteries are not necessarily connected. I read this one from start to finish in one night. The characters are wonderful and quirky, and the angel isn't too angelic. Good, fast, read!!!

Mr. Hardy asks Frank And Joe to help him with his case concerning a gang that is stealing mercury. He asks them to call a shipping company in New York; however, a mistake with the area code causes them to reach the Pentagon, instead, just at the precise moment that a robbery occurs. These events lead Frank and Joe to Baltimore, where they attempt to track down the gang. The premise for this book is rather ridiculous considering that the area code for New York is 212 and that for Washington D.C. is 202. The 0 and the 1 are nowhere near each other on either a touch tone phone nor a rotary dial phone, so I don't see how a mistake like that could happen if you know the number you are calling. If your willing to accept this and just read the book, it's not that bad. The mystery is fairly well paced and there is quite a bit of action. The ending is somewhat silly, but mostly the book isn't that disappointing.

Not sure what to say regarding this book. The scene with the accidental phone number mixup always sounded a bit far fetched to me. The cover art was poor, but yet the book was a decent read. The brothers seemed to limit their travelling somewhat in this one. Worth reading but far from the series elite. Give it a weak 3 star rating. RATED C

I really enjoyed reading this book because the story makes you think about what is happening to the boys and figure out what is really happening. As you read the book, you discover many clues that you have to use to act like a detective and try to solve the mystery. You also have to figure out what the criminals are doing and planning. You really have to learn to think like a detective to slove the mystery.

Brad Steiger has been cranking out monster books since at least the 1960s. Most of his stuff was published in the form of lurid, mass-market paperbacks, heavy on breathless prose but light on actual research. This book is no different. For an indication of the level of research in this book, consider that Steiger actually footnotes articles from The National Enquirer! The editors at the publishing house should have had the good sense to remove those passages. They didn't, so you should take this book with a big grain of salt. The tome feels like a cut-and-paste job. Why all of the irrelevant junk about serial killers? What does Jefferey Dahmer have to do with werewolves anyway? This book has one saving grace: It contains a lot of good data about werewolf movies (although someone needs to tell Steiger that "The Howling" was not quite the "Citizen Kane" of horror films that he seems to think it is)--and it does have a lot of cool photographs in it. Overall, though, it's a disappointment. It's a shame because werewolf lore is interesting, and there's certainly no shortage of material. This could have been a good book. Sadly, the project was turned over to the wrong man.

Werewolf movies tend to be the most seedy, cheesy, ridiculous, formulaic, and nonsensical waste of celluloid. Werewolf books tend to fare a little better, at least in the fiction category. Nonfiction books like this however, especially to become as bulky as this volume is, tend to have a lot of fluffery, and information which a critical reader will not be able to swallow.

This book is one such volume. I do like it because it does touch on some more contempory phenomena (like the Werewolf: The Apoclypse RPG and werewolf web sites). It lacks in covering the gentler side of werewolves, such as the furry community, fursuiters, and various virtual personalities who assume some lycanthropic persona of one stripe or another.

The insistance that certain mass murderers, serial killers, and other human predators are werewolves is a bit too much of a stretch, and shows how the author was working in facts that just don't fit in order to meet their word quota for this tome.

I recommend you only consider this book when your appetite hasn't been satiated by the various works of fiction you can find here, and the better nonfictional works on lycanthropy.

_The Werewolf Book_ is entertaining, but I am going to have to go with the "too many serial killers" critics. I can understand Steiger including one entry about serial killers, but the book seems overrun with inappropriate information. I can even understand including entries for killers labelled "The Werewolf Killer" or whatnot, but many of the killers featured (such as Albert Fish or Charles Manson) have no connection whatsoever to the subject at hand, werewolves. Human monsters should only be included when they have a connection to the shapeshifting beast of film and folklore. Steiger's personal beliefs linking unconnected serial killers to the werewolf legend should be confined to the introduction, or perhaps an entry of their own. What's truly annoying is that more appropriate information has been excluded.

My first thought, after seeing this book, was what a small book for 40 bucks. After thumbing through the pages, I still think it is a bit small, but I am more impressed with its content.

This book, much like "Designing Visual Basic.NET Applications", is as much a book on the Visual Studio .NET IDE as it is on Visual Basic .NET. Unlike the aforementioned tome, this book has plenty of screenshots to help you navigate the IDE.

In all fairness, there is a good amount of code in this book, for its size. I just wish there were more. If you are looking for an advanced book, look the other way.

The saving grace of this book is its help in navigating the Visual Studio .NET IDE. If you want to learn the tool as much as you want to learn the language, this is not a bad buy. For books in this price range the O'Reilly Nutshell book is much better.

The trouble with most books on technologies like .NET is they try to be all things to all people, and end up being either too shallow or far too long.

This book is a very welcome exception. This is how technical books should be written: no messing about, no unnecessary repetition, but all the material is covered clearly in about 250 pages. A very clear target audience (experienced VB6 developers), and clear objectives help - the book's intention is clearly to communicate the essentials, and the practitioner will then get more detail from other sources. It's one of the few books of its type which can be read from cover to cover.

The book isn't perfect: I spotted a few proof-reading errors (in an early copy based on the Beta version of VS.NET); some examples are a little difficult to follow, and some topics inevitably rather sketchy.

However, I can thoroughly recommend this book, although I suggest that the serious VB developer will probably need other volumes as well: I also purchased "ASP.NET for Developers" by Amundsen & Litwin, and "The Visual Basic Programmer's Guide to the .NET Framework Class Library" by Powers & Snell, both in the same series from Sams.

I am a project lead and have been struggling with various resources on .NET and had a tough time determining where to begin my venture into this new technology. I found this to be a terrific book and it has helped me learn various features of the new IDE and language. I particularly appreciated the before and after style of written that was done. For example, you will find many topics explained similar to, "In VB 5/6 this is how you would implement a class. In VB .NET the implementation would look like this..."

My project team was looking for a common point to begin their learning as well, so I encouraged (made...) them purchase this book. The fact that we have this common ground to begin our development has helped us tremendously.

I would highly recommend this book for those looking into .NET development. The book reads well, the examples thoughtful and straightforward, and the material covered is quite extensive. Enjoy!

The legacy of one of the Civil War's greatest leaders is shamelessly misrepresented in this book about one of the war's forgotten battles. Rather than present the reader with an unbiased and accurate depiction of the Battle of Franklin, the authors relentlessly rant about John Bell Hood, smothering
unsuspecting readers with unqualified speculation, rumor mongering, and unflattering conjecture under the guise of historical fact.

Hood's almost superhuman accomplishments as a brigade and division commander under Lee and Jackson, and his short but successful tenure as a corps commander at Chickamauga made him Jefferson Davis' candidate to save the fading fortunes of the Confederacy in late 1864. Replacing the tentative
Joe Johnston as commander of the Army of Tennessee, Hood launched several bold attacks on Sherman in an unsuccessful attempt to save Atlanta.

Burdened by disloyal and incompetent subordinates, and troops unaccustomed to offensive warfare, Hood nevertheless embarked on an ambitious invasion of Tennessee, in a last ditch effort to destroy Sherman's supply lines, and provide relief for R. E. Lee's exhausted Army of Northern Virginia. At Franklin, with the Federal army fleeing to the safety of Nashville, and having absolutely no other realistic alternative, Hood ordered a frontal
attack. The assault failed, with the Confederates suffering frightfully high casualties.

Authors McDonough and Connelly deny readers the mountain of historical record that clearly and concisely details the quite rational and logical reasons for the attack. They mislead readers with overt mischaracterization of historical facts, and present opinions that are not supported by facts or statistics.

It is bad enough when readers invest time in nonfiction literature and gain no knowledge, it is even worse when readers are provided inaccurate information and propaganda that results in incorrect knowledge. Reading this work will result in an inaccurate understanding of the Battle of Franklin, and General John Bell Hood.

This book, awash in prejudice and misrepresentation, should be avoided!

In a telegram to J. Davis dated 12 July 1864 from his headquarters near Petersburg Va

Telegram of today received. I regret the fact stated. It is a bad time to release the commander of an army situated as that of Tennessee.We may lose Atlanta and the army too.

Hood is a bold fighter.
I am doubtful as to other qualities necessary

This is a well written, easy to read account of the Battle of Franklin. The authors put the battle into focus, not only in a geographic sense but from the state of mind of the men and commanders who fought there. This work helps to explain much about General Hood (a proven leader and fighter of the war's earlier days) and his decisions made there. From this book it is easy to see the "why" and "how" of the fight at Franklin.

This review concerns the revised 1965 edition. Frank and Joe help the U.S. government foil a plot by a small South American island dictatorship to steal a top-secret spy camera. Anybody who read the summary to this book would think that the book was going to be really good, but; unfortunately, the summary was probably the most exciting part of the book. The plot sounds good on paper; however, I thought that the book lacked action and excitement and many of the events that sounded so good in the summary do not end up to be much at all. The revised edition is better than the original, which was a complete snore, but it isn't a good book either.

This review is for the Applewood 1930's text reprint. This story is probably not for the young, it should be read with the understanding that it was written in the 1930's. It is a decent mystery, but if you are offended by Charlie Chan movies you will want to read the revised re-written version from Grosset & Dunlap.

This is the first Hardy Boys book that I ever read. It was very enjoyable to read. Some parts of the book are more exciting than others. Like when they Hardy Boys went to South America to look for a spy.
I would recommend this book to kids my age and older that likes adventure and mystery.
This book was good enough to make me want to check out the rest of the series.