A good introduction to Xanth, I guess. I haven't read any other Xanth books, though. If you know, could you e-mail me at wibsatp@hotmail.com?

This is a good book for getting you acquainted with the Xanth series. I have been reading them for years, but get confused which comes next as they are not all numbered. I like them as one leads into another. Maybe someone has these listed somewhere from start to most recent? ...

The Xanth stories are full of wonderful puns and jokes. It also is filled with action, romance, and young women whom, for some reason or another show their panties to creatures. This is not a dirty book however. This is perfect from young adult to ancient adult.

John Maxwell Hamilton, in Casanova was a book lover, obviously researched his material extensively. Yet a credit to him is the fact that this book is the opposite of dry. Casanova was a Book Lover is wetter than the Amazon(no pun intended) Rain Forest, as he adds dashes of wit to his wisdom regarding his subject matter. There were passages I literally laughed out loud even as my uneducated (respectively speaking) brain soaked up his tidbits of knowledge. This text isnt perfect obviously, and confession time I skimmed a page here and there. Overall though it is arguably the best book on books writtin within the last decade. Perhaps the greatest compliment is his ability and agility in appealing to both the Literrati, and layperson in this book;s text and factiods. A fine touch of irony in that he seems disparaging of the Amazon review process, and I see his point in many ways, yet his work gets glowing reviews(mine isnt first or hopefully last). Well done Mr Hamilton, though you may snort if you happen to come across this review teehee, I stand by my critique.

Hamilton can be witty or hilarious depending on the subject. He is erudite, but plain spoken. His book is well researched. Unfortunately, he can occasionally be a bit dry. If you like books on books than this is worth your time, if not than you may still enjoy the humor within.

Mr. Hamilton dedicates this book to all reviewers, on the theory that only someone very ungracious would pan a book dedicated to them. At least in my case, he need not worry. I loved this book.

The theme connecting these diverse chapters is the writing, selling and reading of books. Hamilton brings a scholar's learning and a sharp-edged wit to the page, making the journey both educational and fun. Here you'll learn about the most frequently stolen books, why politician's shouldn't write books, what goes on behind the scenes at the Library of Congress, how and why authors abuse dedications and acknowledgements, and lots more. In fact, except for a rather greedy wish for more, I don't see how I could have enjoyed this book to a greater degree.

I own several different books on sign language. This is worth the money. I am learning sign because I like it, my friend has 2 deaf children, I am a sub- teacher for a Para for a boy who is non-verbal, I am teaching my children for homeschool, and I want to be able to witness to deaf people. This is in ABC order and seems easier to use than the other books I have that are not. But I am hearing and this is probably why I like it better. I am looking for my friend the signs for the names of all the states.

My son is currently nine and is nonverbal. Further, the chances that he will become verbal are very slim indeed. When I purchased this book, it was recommended by his speech teacher. I first thought it was a book teaching me "A, B, C" etc. In fact, signed English allows you to speak in words instead of letters. My son will never get letters but he certainly relates to words. This book has a basic vocabluary but still is quite thick. The number of words is amazing and very useful. We use the book daily and my son's vocabulary has increased dramatically since we began using it. I have read the other reviews stating the alphabetizing is a problem but I can't think of a more practical way to organize such a book. Regardless, this is the book for those wanting to speak to a nonverbal person. Additionally, our son is developmentally delayed but he still is able to communicate with us thanks to this book. Those of you with nonverbal children will think you've discovered gold if you haven't been able to communicate in the past.

My son is currently nine and is nonverbal. Further, the chances that he will become verbal are very slim indeed. When I purchased this book, it was recommended by his speech teacher. I first thought it was a book teaching me "A, B, C" etc. In fact, signed English allows you to speak in words instead of letters. My son will never get letters but he certainly relates to words. This book has a basic vocabluary but still is quite thick. The number of words is amazing and very useful. We use the book daily and my son's vocabulary has increased dramatically since we began using it. I have read the other reviews stating the alphabetizing is a problem but I can't think of a more practical way to organize such a book. Regardless, this is the book for those wanting to speak to a nonverbal person. Additionally, our son is developmentally delayed but he still is able to communicate with us thanks to this book. Those of you with nonverbal children will think you've discovered gold if you haven't been able to communicate in the past.

FLATLANDER is a collection of the five "Gil the Arm" short stories that Larry Niven has written between the late sixties and today. Set in the 2120s, these stories chronicle the adventures of Gil Hamilton, an agent with the UN police force, who fights against "organleggers," criminals who commit murder to sell the organs for transplant. Gil spent seven years mining in the asteroid belt before an accident resulted in the loss of his arm. He found out, however, that he had developed the psychic power of telekinesis, which he calls his "invisible arm." These stories are part of Niven's "Known Space" universe and revolve around the themes Niven thought important in that series, such as organ transplanting, psychic powers, and the ramifications of fusion power. These are also the only mysteries that Niven has written.

The first three short stories are decent reading, and highly entertaining. In "Death By Ecstay," the reader is introduced to Gil as he investigates the murder of an old friend while working to bring down a major West Coast organlegging ring. In "The Defenseless Dead," the UN decides to liquidate people placed into cold storage decades before to harvest their organs; the plentiful supply of legal organs drives organlegging temporarily unprofitable, and Gil tracks down a retired organlegger, with a surprising ending. In "ARM," Gil investigates the murder of a famous inventor, and tries to unravel how a new time-accelerating invention was used in the crime.

The final two stories are highly disappointing. "Patchwork Girl" and "The Woman in Del Rey Crater" date from after Larry Niven's decline in the mid-70's. Both set on the moon, they suffer from goofy, lackluster writing and don't have the gritty edge and emphasis on novel ideas that made Niven's late-60's works so revolutionary.

The book has an afterword by Niven in which he explains how organ transplanting will inevitably lead to a future in which even petty crimes are punished by death. Written in 1995, this afterword is already out-of-date with the advances in cloning and alloplasty.

If you enjoy Niven's writing, especially the Known Space series, I'd recommend FLATLANDER. The first three stories are really gripping reading. The last two stories, however, will probably disappoint.

This book is in Niven's truest tradition. Excellent!

SF/Mystery is one of the hardest subgenres to write convincingly - as Niven points out in his introduction to this book, SF/Mystery, to work, must follow the rules of both genres, which makes for quite the writing challenge. But in Flatlander, the collected stories about Gil "The Arm" Hamilton, Niven does a masterful job of meshing science, technology, and mystery.

These stories were written over quite a range of time, and that's obvious, in both the social and moral overtones and the writing itself. However, the quality is fairly consistent, and it ranks up there with the very best Niven work. Most important, the puzzle aspect - the mystery component - is very well done, in every case; the mysteries are fair (the reader could solve them with the information given) and good (the reader has to work fairly hard to solve them before the main character does).

It's a pity there aren't more Gil Hamilton stories; I'd love to see another book of these. Whether you're a fan of mystery, or SF, and especially if you're a fan of both, you'll love Flatlander.

While Ammianus Marcellinus is an excellent source, the Penguin edition is abridged. In spite of the maps, etc., included by the publisher, I was disappointed. I had to buy a better version.

"This is the history of events from the reign of the Emperor Nerva to the death of Valens, which I, a former soldier and a Greek, have composed to the best of my ability. It claims to be the truth, which I have never ventured to pervert either by silence or a lie. The rest I leave to be written by better men whose abilities are in their prime. But if they choose to undertake the task I advise them to cast what they have to say in grand style."

Thus ends Marcellinus's history of Rome. Although we have extant only the period from Constantius II to Valens (354 - 378 AD) it is enough to establish Marcellinus as one of the great ancient historians. It chronicles a troubled time near the end of the Roman Empire in the West and the advent of a new order in Europe. Beginning with the paranoid reign of Constantius II, the arian son of Constantine the Great, Marcellinus then focuses on Julian the Apostate and his meteoric rise to the purple. A throw-back to the time of the "virtuous pagans" like Marcus Aurelius, Julian attempts to reinvigorate the moribund corpse of classical paganism, moves steadily to put Christianity on the outs, and even attempts to rebuild the temple at Jerusalem. However, all his efforts come to naught in portentious ways, ending in his death while on a calamitous campaign in Persia.

The work climaxes at the destruction of a Roman field army and death of the Emperor Valens at Adrianople by the Goths in 378. This catastrophe ranks along with Salamis, Pharsalus, Manzikert, and Lepanto in terms of being a battle that effectively changed the course of history. After the defeat, Gothic tribes roamed practically at will throughout the Empire, even sacking Rome in 410 AD and laying claim to all of Italy less than 100 years later.

Though criticized by later historians, Marcellinus maintains a vivid style throughout the work that holds the reader's attention. This Penguin edition is abridged, giving greater weight to the reign of Julian than to Valentinian I or Valens. The translation manages to preserve well the "grand style" urged by Marcellinus. All in all, it is an excellent resource for the student of late classical history.

Even the most confirmed buffs of ancient or medieval history generally take a while to get around to reading Ammianus. Part of the problem may be that his history falls into the transition period between the ancient and medieval worlds, and thus lies outside the principal sphere of interest for confirmed buffs of either period. Another problem is that of the the four Roman emperors who dominate this history - Constantius II, Julian, Valentinian I and Valens - only the second is a particularly sympathetic character. No matter. This history covers a fascinating epoch - the hinge between the ancient and medieval worlds - and it is full of both intriguing details and unforgettably vivid set pieces, many of which are derived from the author's own personal experience.

Ammianus Marcellinus was an emblematic figure of these transitional times - a Greek army officer who wrote his history in Latin; a man of the east, born in Antioch, who spent most of his military career facing the Persians along the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire, but who finished his life as a man of letters in Rome itself; and a pagan who viewed the rise of Christianity with detached objectivity.

The quarter century covered by the surviving books of his history - the years 354 to 378 A.D. - begins with the Roman Empire in its late antique heyday. The Empire is still the greatest military power of its time, but is wasting its strength in massive civil wars. At the beginning of Ammianus's narrative, the Empire's main external enemy is still Persia, but his history covers the critical years in which the Roman frontier defenses in the west first began to show signs of cracking under the pressure of the German tribes east of the Rhine. His history recounts the final years of the competent, but superstitious and insecure, emperor Constantius II, the last surviving son of Constantine the Great; the rise in the west of Julian ("the Apostate"), who succeeds his cousin Constantius in 361 and launches two quixotic and ill-starred enterprises -- his attempt to restore paganism as the official faith of the Empire and a massive invasion of Persia that ends with his own death; and the beginning of the divided rule of the Empire under the two brothers Valentinian I and Valens. Ammianus's history closes on a night of blood and fire with the appalling Roman defeat by the Visigoths and Ostrogoths on the plains of Thrace near Adrianople - a portentous event that would lead, in less than a third of a century, to the fall of Rome itself.

For the first ten years covered by his history, Ammianus was serving as an intelligence officer on the general staff of the Roman Army of the East. He was an interesting personality: a military man with an intellectually curious and wide-ranging mind; an unsentimental realist about human nature, but intensely loyal to those he respected; and a man who could pay appropriate tribute to those whom politics or international rivalries made his enemies. These qualities come through in his account (from 355 A.D.) of a chillingly effective covert operation in which he and a small group of officers were sent by Constantius to find a way to eliminate the commander of the Roman Army of the Rhine, who had been forced to declare himself emperor. The mission was a success: they bribed some of the commander's German auxiliaries, who as Ammianus recounts, "made their way into the palace, dragged Silvanus, who was on his way to a Christian service, from the shrine in which the panic-stricken man had taken refuge, and butchered him with repeated sword-thrusts." Then he eulogizes his victim: "Such was the end of a commander of no small merit, who was driven by fear of the slanders in which a hostile clique [at the court of Constantius] had ensnared him in his absence to adopt extreme measures of self-defense."

As an example of the vivid first-person accounts that make this book so memorable, I offer the following passage, in which Ammianus describes his adventures in 359 A.D. as the undermanned Roman outposts west of the Tigris brace for the onslaught of an immense Persian army:

"[We] marched in haste to make ready for the defense of Nisibis, fearing that the Persians might disguise their intention to besiege it and then fall upon it unaware. While the necessary measures were being pushed on inside the walls, smoky fires were seen flickering from the direction of the Tigris past the Moors' Fort and Sisara and the rest of the country in an unbroken chain right up to the city, in such unusual numbers that it was clear that the enemy's raiding parties had broken through and crossed the river. We hurried on at full speed in case the roads should be blocked, but when we were two miles from the city we came upon a child crying in the middle of the road. He was a fine boy, apparently about eight years old, and was wearing a neck ornament. He told us that he was the son of a man of good family, and that his mother, panic-stricken at the approach of the enemy, had abandoned him because he was an impediment to her flight. Our general pitied him, and on his orders I set the boy before me on my horse and took him back to the city, but I found the walls already invested and enemy parties scouring the neighborhood.

"Dreading to find myself involved in the mysteries of a siege, I put the boy in the shelter of a postern gate that was not entirely shut, and galloped back half dead with fear to rejoin our column, but I only just avoided capture."

The informative and often puckishly witty notes accompanying this volume by Andrew Wallace-Hadrill also merit commendation.

I read through this book, and found some good points, but also some serious failures to treat the issues adequately -- probably because to do so would reveal the flaws in the authors' exegesis. While they reference the Kroegers and their "women in Ephesus" argument, as well as other egalitarians, they glaringly omit any reference to the book Women in the Church: A Fresh Analysis of 1 Timothy 2:9-15, by Andreas J. Kostenberger (Editor), Thomas R. Schreiner (Editor), H. Scott Baldwin (Editor), ISBN: 0801020204, perhaps the definitive critique of the egalitarian position. Until these authors reference and rebut what Kostenberger, et al, write and document, Why Not Women will not and should not merit more than 2 stars.

In the Christian Church there are four particular Scripture passages referred to when dealing with women in ministry:

<1> Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God. (1 Corinthians 11:3)
<2> As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. (1 Corinthians 14:34, 35)
<3> For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. (Ephesians 5:23)
<4> I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. (1 Timothy 2:12)

The traditional conclusion in the modern Church is that of an hierarchical structure of men having authority over women/wives in both religion & society.

WHY NOT WOMEN? takes a good at these Scripture passages within the context of their surrounding Scripture, original language, the culture for which they were intended, and their grammatical structure. The result is an exciting new understanding of these Scriptures and how the apostle Paul actually wrote them to free women from the oppression of a social & religious system of hierarchy.

But in order to achieve this equal freedom in Christ for both men & women there are two foundational issues that must be understood:

<1> The relationship of Adam & Eve (to each other and to God) as read in Genesis 1-3.
<2> The relationship of the three persons of the Trinity in mutual submission as read in John 1:1-18 and Philippians 2:1-11.

I gave WHY NOT WOMEN? four stars. It's an awesome eye-opening book but there were points where it was vague or used faulty reasoning. Though, most of that was in the first half of the book as where the second half really got into the good stuff. I emphatically recommend it. WHY NOT WOMEN? is the third best book I've ever read (1. THE BIBLE, 2. THE FORGOTTEN TRINITY).

Loren Cunningham and David Hamilton give a very clear picture of women's rolls as defined by scripture. They also give an excellent historical perspective on the maltreatment of women around the world. Before this book, I knew that I didn't believe God had created women to be subservient to men, but now I have scripture I can clearly understand to refute the arguments. Grab your highlighters and get going! Just a helpful note, you may not want to read this right before bed. I would get so worked up, I couldn't sleep!

Disturbing, but sensitive and thoughtful. Is it really just a judgement call between "normal" and "insane?"

I am always interested in novels that are transformed into films to use in my film classes as a case study on screenwriter and the decisions that have to be made by writers, directors and actors. The "Girl, Interrupted" screenplay by James Mangold and Lisa Loomer and Anna Hamilton Phelan (you have to love the proprities of screenwriting credit) based on the book by Susanna Kaysen offers just such a case study. Kaysen's book was set in the 1960s, arguably the most turbulent decade of the last century. After one meeting with a psychiatrist she is sent to a mental institution for troubled young women where she spends a year dealing with ideas of normal and crazy, not only for herself but for others there.

This volume includes not only the screenplay for the film, but also an interview by the film's director, James Mangold, with Tod Lippy that focuses on the film-making process by which this screenplay was transferred to the screen. There are also storyboards for several key scenes: the opening sequence, supermarket flashback, and the death of Daisy. Consequently, the "Girl, Interrupted" screenplay volume is well above-average in terms the extras that will help with this type of case study. The fact that the film has Winona Ryder and Oscar winner Angelina Julie will get students interested, but when they read Kaysen and look at how the story was adapted to the screen, they will be even more impressed.

book is good...makes me think about bacon.

I particularly like the Shell Extension part which is very
useful to understand somthing more advanced in Windows Shell.

However, what disappoints me is that I found the sample codes from
Chap 11 (Both sample projects DemoSpace and RegSpace) crash in
machines running Win2K. This means that if you want to use the
techniques taught from the book to implement a Shell Extension
by VB, you can only support platforms below Win2K. That will not
be much useful at all.

As far as I know, the author has not yet figured a solution
(through private communications with Orielly's book support).

First off, if all what you want to do is to add an icon to the systray, go find _any_ Win32 API book or even search on the web. This book does not cover simple tricks like this. But if you want to write your own namespace extensions or property sheet handlers, read on.

Many people think VB and windows shell programming don't mix very well. Honestly, I was one of them. But after reading this great introduction, I figured I was wrong. Well, mostly wrong.

There are two issues that make shell programming hard in VB:

(1) As in most "advanced VB programming tasks", the first realization must be you _can't_ do it in pure VB. You need to import Win32 APIs and then fake you are writing your program in C. But that's a very old and well-solved problem, and in fact this book assumes you know how to do it: it shows the import statements without explaining how to get them. But that's fine, for I think most advanced VB programmers have already picked up this old trick.

(2) The windows shell is built heavily on COM, so must be the shell extensions. But this book is not about writing COM servers in VB... Apparently the author did not expect the readers to know COM before, so he offered a short chapter on COM basics that I find too short to be sufficient for the purpose of this book. For example, later on he started using jargons like "in-process COM servers" and "apartment threaded" (these are COM jargons) without explaining what they are. I tried to look up these terms in the index to quote the page number. They are absent---yet another proof of insufficient coverage of COM. I admit that shell extensions are in-process COM servers and so in most cases the readers are not expected to do anything else anyway, but this kind of treatment much weakens a reader's understanding of what he/she is doing.

And there are other problems that plague this almost excellent book:

(1) There is no separate treatment of what should the programmer do when a new shell extension comes out. As an example, icon overlay is not covered in this book. I think this is really the major reason I have to take half a star off: this book is more like "how I wrote those shell extensions" rather than "how you can write your own ones". For example, it does show many examples of how to turn a given IDL into more VB friendly, but not how can the programmer obtain the IDL of an interface that's not covered in the book. (OLE View won't answer all such prayers. Go check the platform SDK or, _cough_, wait for the second edition of the book to have a new chapter on that extension. :P)

(2) There is no coverage of debugging shell extensions. It's not as easy as one may expect, especially as VB will automatically re-register your COM servers when you execute your code while Explorer loads some registry entries only once...

Overall, this is a more than decent introduction to shell programming using VB. If you want to do some typical shell programming like having your own property sheet or namespace extensions, then this book is really good for the job and is worth every single penny. I would rather say it's 4.5 star, but I have to round down for the minor problems I mentioned.

This book is very good.

I was looking for a way to build those fancy IE toolbands and was really disappointed with the Microsoft site, since all the reference about this subject there is on C++. Since those bands are COM objects, I was wondering whether someone had implemented it on VB already. Tried all the search engines and got nothing. Well this book is the only place (by now) where you'll find this information!

Programming the windows shell is a HUGE topic and certainly would require one of those "brick-sized" books to cover it properly. But J.P. Hamilton made a great effort on abridging the most "juicy" stuff, and then it's up to the programmer to develop on top of that information.

Some examples don't work on Windows 2000, but that's something I can understand since I guess most of the techniques shown on this book were developed before the Win2k release. Anyway, as the author states on the preface, this book is not intended for beginners or people who need to be guided on baby steps, but for programmers with some intermediate VB skills at least. This book is all about COM programming, so if you nothing about COM, this book may still be useful (there's a decent COM introduction on chapter 2), but I'd suggest you to play with COM first.

All in all, this is a "cover to cover" interesting book and that kind of book we should keep nearby for reference. Shell programming is a brave new world for VB programmers. I think there are lots of subjects which could be explored on a volume II.

Great job Mr. Hamilton.

I've never written an Amazon review before, but I felt a real obligation to trash this book. It is riddled with bad grammar and syntax -- I mean several errors on every page. I don't have it in front of me and can't remember the names, but a typical case would be "Me and Grace had a fight," instead of "Grace and I had a fight." Since the book is narrated by the protagonist, these errors are not only in direct quotes but also in the main text.

In short, the book is written the way many kids talk. This is a perfectly legitimate technique for adult books, and can certainly add to the feeling of authenticity, although the hundreds of books I loved and devoured as a child did not suffer for being grammatically correct. But it is very confusing to a child who is trying to learn proper English in school, and it undermines the efforts of teachers. When children read such usage in a book, what are they supposed to think? What habbits will they learn? And how can a teacher correct the child's own usage when the child can point to a book and say "They do it like that here"?

I was dismayed to discover that this book is part of a series by a popular author, and I couldn't believe it when I saw that the publisher is Scholastic! Perhaps this means that an official decision has been made to abandon traditional rules of English usage in favor of those of the playground. But if so, I wasn't notified, and my career effectiveness would nosedive if I followed suit. So would most people's.

Barbara Park and Scholastic are doing a tremendous disservice to children by habituating them at an early age, in print, to usage that can only hurt them both in school and later in life. These books, and others like them, should be blacklisted by teachers, schools and liblaries. Censorship on the basis of content is a tricky subject, but bad grammar in children's books can only hurt their very vulnerable readers.

This is a great book to read with your favorite children. There are many lessons to be learned here about behavior, feelings, emotions, fears, and about getting what you ask for, but not REALLY wanting it. Discussing these stories with your children can help them understand how to cope with life's circumstances. We discuss Junie's poor grammar and the behavior of the children in the stories. It helps the children in our family better understand social skills and discipline. It also encourages them to share their experiences with their family members who may need to know about them. Adults in our family up to the age of 90 laugh at Junie's adventures and delight in the humorous twists to the stories. The children relate to Junie's problems and learn from her experiences.

Written from the very believable point of view of a precocious little girl, this story was at least as enjoyable a read for me as it was for my daughters! If you have a kid, know a kid, ever been a kid, or even ever SEEN a kid, check this (as well as the rest of the Junie B Jones series) out. She's the Eloise of the 21st century.

After a recent trip to my family's cabin in Cardiff Spur, I caught the history bug. Back in the dusty shelves I found a old book about the ghost towns of Idaho. A small book, probably out of publication by now, that had details about North Central Idaho that the schools don't teach - the drama. When I decided to make the trek back to the cabin, I decided I would be better informed of the area and what it offered in the way of hiking and historical sites. In that manner, I came across "Snowbound."
Ladd Hamilton did a wonderful job of recreating an incident that has been told in many different versions. I knew the fate of George Colegate before I started reading the book, but the rich detail helped make the story vivid and more human.
It was a bit slow paced at times, and the heartbreaking part is that no one will ever know exactly what happened to George Colegate. Regardless, an awesome history of the area surrounding the Lolo Trail for those who are interested.

I just finished this book (February 2003) and I must say that it was a very riveting book. Since I have been to some of the places that are spoken of in this book and am a resident of the Lewiston,ID and Clarkston,WA valley, it was all the more fascinating.
The positives of this book are too many to list, but let me begin by saying that it gives a vivid picture of the beauty but also the brutality of nature. The Bitterroot mountains, the Lochsa River, etc. are described so well, you feel like you're there. The Carlin hunting party that ventured into these parts in October of 1893 did not expect such harsh conditions - it was an unusually snowy and wet Fall. Very few people in the world have faced the hardships they faced, and their heart-wrenching decision to leave a sick man behind can only be understood by those who appreciate the harsh conditions they were in, both in terms of weather, but also in terms of their own physical and mental weakness at the time.
Ladd Hamilton does a good job at remaining objective on his assessment of their decision. But I, for one, do not fault them for it. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one. Far from being an act of inhumanity, as one reviewer calls it, I see in the Carlin party an example of real courage and ingenuity. They did not arrive at their decision in a flippant manner - they really struggled with it, and they chose to act on logic, rather than on sentiment. What a breath of fresh air that is in our feelings-oriented society!!
One member of the party, Keeley (who was hired by Carlin to aid them in their exit), ends up twisting the story against his comrades - but this was clearly because of his greed and his bitterness for not having received more $$$ for his services.
Read it for yourself, and enjoy!

.
This is a "True Crime." In 1893, two spoiled rich boy-men and a brother-in-law - all from New York, and 2 local men (a guide and a cook) went off into the Bitterroot Mountains for a hunting foray. Not all came out. The Great White Hunters were exposed to be neither Great nor much good as hunters. The aftermath of their foibles and folly is an interesting juxtaposition of Eastern American v. Western, and the idle idyll rich v. working folk of the time.

The hunting "expedition" and its wending out of the wilderness are slow going. Unfortunately for the reader, so also is author Ladd Hamilton's pacing and writing style. In the beginning, I had to create a chart of the participants - then, reading further, they each become more easily identifyable.

Two portions in the book are among the most sad and gruesome testimentaries of man's inhumanity to man and animal of any this reader has ever read - I will not spoil it for you by revealing further. And speaking of spoilage, one is cautioned to employ "Owen's Rule" and not look at the included photos before reading - as they disclose those who came out alive.