I read this book in one sitting, and was completely intrigued by the world of rowing which I knew nothing about before. These guys are insane, training hard with no big bucks down the line, and Brad Lewis had to not only fight against pain but against the "old-boy" silver jockstrap preppy rowing establishment, which stood in his way. Well, the good news is that he went for his dream, and realized it. The dude copped the gold!! The book is gripping, the prose is clean, the emotions very honest, and there is no drippy sentiment to muddle the read. What I don't understand is why the squeeky little pre-pubescent tumblers get all the headlines, when these giant brutes of rowers compete in a sport which is ancient -- from Polynesia to the galley slaves, these crew guys are throwbacks. This is fascinating stuff. I'm glad I stumbled on this book and I recommend it to anyone interested in America or American sports. Ultimately it is ! ! about one man's assault on the limits, personal, political and mental. Check this book out.

Brad Lewis' "Assault on Lake Casitas" is bar none the finest book ever written, not just on the sport of rowing, but on the unflaging pursuit of excellence. A powerfully gripping read from cover to cover, Lewis's description of the training, trials, heats and finals of his 1984 olympic campaign captures the essence of competitive rowing. Like many of the other reviewers, I too read Lewis' heart stopping description of his Grand Final race before races-no other book captures with such power the emotions which crew illicits. A triumph of determination and perseverence, Lewis' story is a great, great read.

An impossible dream. This book takes you inside the head of someone determined to win an Olympic rowing gold medal. In spite of every hurdle thrown at him, Brad Lewis forces his way to the finish line. He leaves nothing on the table in his relentless and unique approach to reaching rowing perfection. The odds against Brad even making the team are incredible, let alone winning a medal. This book is for anyone wondering what it really means to "go for it!"

I have had this book for over 10 years and use it for everything. It is my absoulte favorite cookbook. I refer to it quite often and all of recipes that I have tried work wonderfully! I recently tried the pineapple tarragon chicken (I baked it in the oven instead of grilling it) and now family and friends can't get enough. This is just one one many great recipes. If you don't have it, get it! It's the best.

I am extremely selective of any cookbook. This book has a wonderful variety of recipes and ALL are very quick and easy, which is great for us busy parents who believe in a well-rounded, balanced and wholesome meal. That's hard to do these days AND in this economy. I'm not a "chef" by any means but try to put out very "taste-bud" pleasing meals. This cookbook allows great meals on a budget w/little prep/cooking time or mess. You will love the extra bonus info that comes with the book. Detailed explanations of "how to's"; shop for vegis, identify forms of fish, barbecue or grill, cut up and bone chicken, etc. Also, cooking tips (very helpful:),and such a variety of recipes in each catagory of food. **Great taste w/clear & easy instructions**

I bought this book over eight years ago and still pull it out whenever we have dinner guests in our calendar. The full color pictures are inspirational even if you don't follow the recipe to the letter.

The preparation and cook times are very accurate -- great for when you have guests arriving for dinner at a certain time and the directions are easy enough to follow for when my 15 year old wants to try her hand at dinner.

This book is not just for dinners either! There are great dessert and sandwich recipes as well. All recipes contain quite a bit of butter (it IS a Land o'Lakes cookbook) so they are not for those cooking light, but are very tasty.

The skillet pizza is the only recipe I have not liked so far. My favorite recipes are the deep dish apple pie and chicken Kiev.

A fascinating true story of how A 3 1/2 year old child was brutally abused and ultimatly murdered by his adopted mother, Lois Jurgens. You Will learn how her husband, family and friends were very aware of the abuse and did absolutly nothing to help this poor child. You will also read how the justice system and adoption agency failed to save Dennis. And the painful events for the natural mother, Jerry Sherwood and her family to get justice for her dead son. Very well written book that goes into the background of Lois and Harold Jurgens and how this evil women was able to adopt a total of 6 children (all which ran away and was removed from her home due to abuse). The book also gives a compelling account of the trial and finally the conviction of murder for Lois Jurgens, who almost for 22 years got away with it.

As a parent myself, I will never forget what happened to little Dennis Jurgens.

Karen, OHIO

I have lived in White Bear all of my life. My parents grew up there. We all attended classes in the "new" high school that is talked about. My aunt was in that school's first graduating class in 1965. I say this because, horrifying as the Dennis Jurgens case may be, it is not hard to see how it happened. Even today, it is a small community where most everybody knows everybody else. My family often attended holidays at the Zerwas home, and even today they find it hard to speak ill of Lois. This book does a wonderful job of telling what so many people have been trying to keep quiet for so many years. This is a story that needs to be told in order to make sure that it never happens to another child. Siegel does an excellent job of projecting the difficulty of following up a 20 year old crime that nobody would admit was committed. This is a powerful story that will make you look at child abuse in a whole new way.

A stellar performance on the part of Barry Siegel and Peter Borland. The detail, history, and character development are exquisitely attended and because of that the writer's talent has created a smooth and clear and compelling flow of the story, when it could have been quite muddled. I am a voracious reader and prefer nonfiction to fiction. This is one of the best. Thanks, Mr. Siegel. More. More. Do it again!

I first read this book in 1972, the original 1947 edition. It is one of the few permanent items in my library. I read it again at least once a year. I have even tried some of the projects John describes including the radio set made out of bits laying around the cabin. If you want a relaxing and enjoyable read about life in the woods, get this!

Every true outdoors man and woman needs to read two books. One is Leopold's A Sand County Alamanac, the other is Cache Lake Country. If you've hunted, fished, and trekked the northwoods as much as I have, and love its brooding, dark beauty, this book will capture the sensations of the taiga. It is almost painful to read it if you find yourself trapped in someone else's idea of the good life, when what you really want to do is chuck it all for a cabin in the boreal forest.

I first read this book when I was 12 years old, I am now 46. I could not put it down and can not. I made my first knike sheath, first snow shoes, and my first moc;s (which remain my favorite type of moc's) from sketches from this book, as well as many of the other projects and they all lived up to expectations of a young teenager to present. You feel like you are there with the three men of the story. It is is one of the few books that I reread every couple of years. Worth every penney and then some.

Title:Little Town at the Crossroads Author:Maria D. Wilkes Little Town at the Crossroads is a great book for grades 3-6. I recommend this book because I enjoyed and I couldn't put it down. Children and adults alike will love this book.

During the first book, Caroline was portrayed as a little girl who tried desperately to help her mother all that she could after the death of her father. Now, Caroline's gained a little vibrance, as she still tries to help Mother, but also wants to have fine and pretty dresses, instead of the hand-me-downs from older sister Martha. I love this book through-and-through, and I'm sure that you will too!

This book is very good. You can really get interasted. Caroline Quiner, the main character in this book, along with her two older brothers, Joseph and Henry, her older sister, Martha, her younger sister, Eliza, her younger brother, Thomas, and her mother, Charlotte, have a lot of great times in this book. Caroline and her family open a Christmas trunk from grandma and grandpa Tucker sent from Boston. (They are mother's parents.) They also get ready for their neighbor Ms. Stodderd's maple frolic. This book is excellent!

I finished reading this about two days ago. My first single sitting read! I had the TV on in the background and after a while just shut it off. Thinking that there is no way I could find anything on television better than what I was reading!

This book just kept pounding in the excitement. I was seriously dazed from the intensity and the emotion that seemed to never let up. Evan Fuller is one tough SOB...

At many times my heart raced with anticipation wondering what was going to happen next. I hate to admit I'm not an avid reader however, I read this book in two days. I loved it! I can hardly wait for the author's next book to come out. Parson's Lake is definitly movie material...

This book grabs you on the first page and keeps the tension building with every turn of the page. Good versus evil against a well-drawn, peaceful New England landscape. The hero and heroine are likable and you'll want to read more about them to see how their lives turn out (a sequel please!). Easy to visualize, would make a good movie. A winner!

Soon after moving to the Northwest I read The Lusty Life of Loon Lake Lloyd. The stories are rich and provided great insight into the culture and history of Oregon and the region. I knew many ole' timers just like 'Lloyd' back in Colorado. Individualistic, hard-nosed and harder working, honest (perhaps too honest), self-reliant; sage men, full of the kind of wisdom that you can't get necessarily from a book. The art renderings and the stories are authentic, unique, and well worth the read.
Michael Thessen
Eugene, Oregon

I'm sure you get many letters and compliments on your book, but my husband has never commented on a book as much as he has after reading yours. He thoroughly enjoyed the copy loaned to him by his cousin, and I thought a copy of his own would be a nice Christmas present! I'm so glad that you wrote this book about your very interesting and adventurous life. So many stories are forgotten or lost to us, your book helps to preserve these tales for future generations to enjoy.

The Lusty Life of Loon Lake Lloyd is the funniest, down to earth book I have ever read! His vivid descriptions mentally place you in each funny situation.

Back in the prehistoric days of the 1970's, I found this small book in my school library. Despite it's small size, it became, and has always been a bible of life in the northwoods. No politics, no social agenda, just a detailed blueprint of the pleasures and perils of living far from the city. The book covers the basics of shelter and winter warmth. It instructs the reader in a variety of skills ( from keeping oatmeal warm until breakfast, to making snowshoes to get along in mid-winter). All in all, I recall it as the first docu-drama that I ever had the pleasure to read. Though it can be labeled as non fiction (of the instructive kind), it has the ability to build endles dreams of pioneer life in the mind of most any reader.

I reviewed this book several years ago, and after accidently stumbling upon my review, the same images, smells, and excitement still come to mind. I just purchased an old copy at many times the original price, and I can't wait to read it again after more than thirty years. It still amazes me to thnk that a simple diary of life in a bygone distant frontier could elicit such a Technicolor panorama in the mind of the reader. Everyone should read this book. It's good for the soul.

Don't we all wish we knew someone like J.J. Rowlands. What a life! He should have been a father; what a wealth of information he might have imparted... ...and what delivery! Couldn't put it down. Thank goodness he left us his book.

What always gets me with Wells is the forcefulness of his imagination -- his ability to construct powerful, symbolically resonant setpieces based upon the scientific ideas of his time. In the final pages of "The Time Machine" he gave us one of the great apocalyptic visions in all of literature. In "The First Men in the Moon," he gives us a magnificently alien setting, full of bizarre moments -- jumping about the lunar surface in 1/6 G; the Giddy Bridge and the Fight in the Cave of the Moon-Butchers; the bizarre lunar ecology, in which all the plants die every night and are reborn each dawn.

Scientifically, much of this stuff doesn't hold up after a hundred years. And the device he comes up with to get his characters to the moon -- Cavorite -- is without basis, an arbitrary magical tool not unlike the time machine. Even when Wells' science is iffy, though, he presents it in such a clear, convincing fashion that you are only too glad to suspend disbelief while the story unfolds.

In the Selenites we have a metaphor for a different type of society -- rigidly hierarchical, with the needs of the individual sublimated to the whole. The metaphor obviously comes from social insects; though it became a sci-fi cliche, it was still fresh circa 1901. In the remarkable last section of the book (Cavor's communications from the moon), Wells describes the Selenite society with delightful attention to detail. He ends with a haunting, unforgettable image, and probably the best closing sentence of any sci-fi novel.

Although it is not as famous as some of his earlier science fiction books (or "scientific romances", as they were then called), and is not an absolute classic like those books are, The First Men In The Moon is nevertheless a delightful and important satrical SF novel. Also, its importance in the development of modern science fiction cannot be overestimated. Although numerous books before had dealt with a story set on another world (let us here, for the sake of convenience, refer to the Moon as a "world"), Wells's book is the first to make it convincingly real. Although, one hundred years on, much of the novel's science is dated and Well's Moon is far different from how we now know it to be, nevertheless, Wells here created a world out of his own imagination, and describes it with such a convincing level of detail that one actually feels like they are there. And the science, indeed, was, in fact, quite up-to-date for the turn of the century. The structure and format of the novel also was highly influential: one will see immediately upon reading it just how much modern science fiction owes to this novel, and to Wells (and yet, Wells himself borrowed prodigiously from previous books on the subject.) The book was originally supposed to end at Part I: Part II was added later by Wells after the book was already in the process of serialization. I think that the addition of Part II is what makes the book good instead of great. If it had ended as it originally would, it would still be a good book - a rousing adventure, an interesting yarn - but it would not be great. The second part makes the book a full-on satire - something that the earlier portion had merely hinted at. It sharply and bitingly satarizes manking and his many follies, particularly war. This addition of satire and borderline philosophy makes the novel a truly great one. I read an essay on this book that said it differs from Wells's earlier SF novels because it is not grim. I beg to differ. The ending, to me, seems quite grim, indeed. Although it does not involve the imminent extinction of man himself as earlier works did, it is nonetheless quite pessimistic and grim. The addition of the second part of the novel and the ending also pave the way for Wells's later works - ... This is a true science fiction classic that deserves to be more highly-regarded than it is.

Cavor, a genius, invents a material that allows him to build a Gravity-Defying Sphere. Soon he and a young, and very greedy, businessman use it to go to the moon. They find not only life, but the Selenites, a culture who can change their shape to fit their jobs. In other words, form is designed for the function of their class or in this case their caste. Over them rules the Grand Lunar, a being whose large brain gives him awesome power and foresight beyond even the businessman who tells us the story. Both characters show their human merits and their very human flaws. Not science fiction as much as a book on society.

This 3rd exciting novel takes you back into the adventurous life of Ben Gannon and his girlfriend Sass as they embark on yet another action-filled adventure. John McKinna's series is always a delightful read with stories filled with action and adventure but also filled with delightful and colorful characters of both good and bad persuasions. Ben is drawn to his lost friend by a vision and the man's wife to save him from an island prison that is not only underwater but - you guessed it - surrounded by man-eating sharks! With a badass sidekick named Naji and a throw-away stoner named Head, they fly away into high adventure and a rescue that was very fun and exciting to read. This writer is never boring to read and is just getting better and better as he goes along. The whole story was well executed in terms of great range of characters and storyplot. This is a must read for all. So strap on your underwater gear and dive in!

As an enthusiastic sport diver, I love coming across good adventure fiction with a diving theme. Compared to crime or legal thrillers, for example, there isn't that much out there. Cussler you can more or less forget about: what he writes doesn't have much to do with real diving. His novels are more like literary versions of James Bond's more ludicrous adventures (Moonraker, etc.). Author McKinna, on the other hand, was a real working oilfield diver, and his experience shows in his writing. The Ben Gannon Trilogy (Shark Lake, Tiger Reef, Crash Dive) is hands-down the best diving fiction in recent memory . . . and possibly ever written. The reason is that in addition to his practical diving knowlege, McKinna is a writer of genuine skill. His characters are sympathetic and interesting, his storytelling is adept and keeps you involved. The diving parts are of course excellent, but so are the character interactions. This is just great relaxing reading for anyone interested in things-underwater. I'm writing this review under the most recent novel, Shark Lake, but my recommendation extends to all the Ben Gannon novels by John McKinna. Just excellent stuff.

Excellent book. This is the third Ben Gannon book I've tried and it continues the high standard of entertainment established by the first two. Diving and mercenary action in a Rwanda-like African country with two opposing tribes trying to cut each other to pieces. Diver Ben Gannon is out to save an old friend imprisoned by a diabolical South African mercenary--a classic McKinna bad guy--and has to swim at night through a shark-infested inland lake to do it. Heartstopping inwater and onland action to go with the crazy characters and plot twists. Humorous sometimes too. Excellent adventure fiction which should be made into a movie any day now.