Tired of cherry blossom and endless bowing?

Japan Behind the Lines is a real eye-opener on contemporary, post bubble economy Japan.

If you are looking for new perspectives add this to David Suzuki's The Japan We Never Knew and Robin Gerster's Legless in Ginza.

Entertaining, well written and very true to life.

This book falls shy of a couple stars for me for one reason:
Although the photographs are all very well done, clear,
and pletiful, they are all inside studio settings only.
Compared to outdoors settings and natural light, these pics
loose something crucial in the translation.
There are NO outdoor shots and, most importantly, NO PICTURES
OF NATIVE DANCING!! Can't believe it!! I can't
believe that a book of ceremonial dress woulb have no
pictures including dancing ceremonies, for the costumes truely come alive when in motion. Tsk-tsk for not even giving us even a few - such pictures are the main reason I bought the book. Two or three would have helped immensely. Otherwise, I agree with the other reviewers, who don't seem to mind the omission I mention.

The photos in this book are absolutely marvelous. If you are interested in making your own regalia, this will help you get ideas for the finer details. Most of the colorful "outfits" use contemporary as opposed to traditional materials, and with great ingenuity.

I believe that the photographers (a husband and wife team) had a terrific eye for what makes beautiful regalia. The photos are expert and visually enjoyable. Contrary to a previous reviewer, I think the plain backdrop works well. Yes, the book is limited in scope to static (non-dancing) poses, i.e. still portraits.

And nearly every photo is accompanied by an inspirational paragraph transcribed from the words of the Native American pictured. Good reading!

My only objection to this book is that since it was photographed at powwows in the northwestern U.S., it is mainly limited to representatives of tribes in that area. Otherwise, an excellent book!

I highly recommend this visually stunning book for anyone with any interest at all in Native American pow wow culture. The color photographic portraits are riveting and the commentary from the dancers themselves is compelling.

My first contact with "Red Hills and Cotton" was in 1973; I was 4 years old, and my mother had been given the book as a birthday present by my aunt. When I was old enough, I read the book for myself. Ben Robertson is buried in my hometown, and I recognized much of the geography of which he writes. I also recognize much of the human spirit about which he writes - the spirit of the Southern small farmer.

Although many of the circumstances of the South have changed since this writing (in the early 1940s), the nature of the people has not changed to a great extent. We may not work the fields each day, but our love of God, family, homeland, adventure, loyalty -- all these things remain close to our hearts and lives. Ben Robertson would still have reason to be proud. Would that he had lived longer and written more!

An English professor I had in college once berated me at a poker game for recommending this book. He had never heard of it. I gave him a copy. I can only imagine the sardonic moment in which he finally picked it up. He loved it. The book was given to me by a Capitol Hill policeman from North Carolina. This is the sort of book that will help Yankee's (like me)to understand the Old South; a truly liberal and enlightened view. This is one of those books, whose author was struck down early in life, that makes you wonder what might have come from his pen had he lived. These are memoirs, memoirs of the old folks that made up the backbone of the South after the Civil War up to the Great Depression, real, living people whom, thorough these pages, become a delight to get acquainted with.

My initial thoughts when I saw a VR related story made me cringe. All I could think of are all the Late Night B Movies that so make VR an unattractive subject.

I got the audio version from the library on the simple fact that Ben Bova is an established fiction author. Suprisingly I enjoyed this quit a bit. The audio version had me anticipating what would happen next more from the story than from the reading of the story.

If the reading was done a bit more like acting things out I probably would have gave this a five stars. At least they had some different sounding voices for some of the characters but the reader's ability to switch between character voices had some flaws.

This story based on VR technology really did get my thoughts going on the dangers of other pieces of technology. Interesting and entertaining story.

Although Bova tends toward the odd and strange ways of men dealing with children and society, DEATH DREAM is a great book. The only reason it does not deserve 5 stars is because the descriptive nature is not quite as good as it could be. I would reccommend this book to anyone interested in computers or VR.

The theme of manipulation through virtual reality is unsettling in that it is so possible, but the book is well done and interesting to read. One of Ben's best efforts.

I was expecting great things from my first Ben Bova novel, but I'm afraid the dialog is too corny for me! I'm used to reading Dan Simmons and Ian M. Banks, and I guess I was expecting a little more flair... the plot and ideas are good, but it just didn't cut the mustard for me as a novel. I just didn't find myself believing the characters were for real... as one reviewer put it - made-for-TV. On the plus side, there are quite a few tense moments that are well-crafted. But not enough to sustain the momentum for such a long book... in the end I didn't really care what happened to the characters. In summary: look elsewhere for deep characters and thought-provoking prose...

I recently read Ben Bova's Moonrise. This book was easily one of the best Sci-Fi books I have ever read. He had wonderful characterization and the plot kept you guessing. It had something for everyone. Some murder, some action, and some romance too. All-in-all it was a very good book and I would recommend it to anyone.

I have been reading Ben Bova's works since the early to mid eightys. I have seen Bova tackle many levels of science fiction from near possibility to distant future. Even some are a bit of a flight of fancy such as his Orion Saga. One element remains constant throughout all his books: they are all base on hard core science theory...theory that may soon be reality. Of all his books, I've noticed a re-occurance of a couple of themes that this particular book refines and improves upon. Foremost is Bova's love for writing about Moonbase. This place has been a centerpiece for many of his works. Secondly is the field of nanotech. The first series I remember him introducing this in was the Voyager series. This particular topic has recieved the most improvement out of them all. This book above all others adequately describes what is more than likely to be feasible applications of nanotech. Furthermore, this book also discusses the dangers the world faces should the ultra conservative Luddites gain control. In conlusion, this book deserves no less than 5 stars because Bova once again ties together elements of science and philosophy and wirtes them together in a believeable plot that works on many levels

I enjoyed Mars by ben Bova and was eager to read the sequel to learn the secrets that planet Mars has to offer humanity. I was disappointed to find that this book is merely a repeat of Mars with a different cast of characters.

Jamie Waterman, the geologist from the first mission to Mars, heads up the second team to see if Mars can be lucrative for business. As in the previous novel, Jamie has problems with male team members and hits the sack with a female team member. It seems tha Mr. Bova hit on a good thing and simply stuck with it.

The highlight of this book was discovering that the cliff dwellings that Jamie thought he saw in the first book were real. The decsriptions of the cliff dwellings were wonderful and make you imagine that there was life on Mars at one time in history. What a scary concept.

Part two in Bova's series about Jamie Waterman, the Navajo Geologist, and his exploits on Mars. In some ways this was better than the first as there was more of a sense of this being a complete novel as the ending here is much more satisfying. A lot of gimmicks take up a lot of time (such as the hunt for a possible saboteur) but overall it was a fun read. The charactors are more fleshed out and develop visibly over the course of the book and Bova makes an effort to make them less shallow, succeeding in several instances. The book almost has a soap-opera feel to it as most of the explorers have sex fairly frequently with several partners along the way. This is used predominately as a tension-creating device and it works well in the context of a small group of people far from home. Not a waste of your time but only read it if you enjoyed the first volume in the series.

Jamie Waterman gets a chance to go back to the planet that gave him fame & happiness. This time, however, there are forces at work that make this voyage dangerous from within as well as from outside. In this riveting sequel to "Mars", Ben Bova's smash hit, he again has written hard science fiction like no other, setting you right on the surface of the Red Planet. His characters are real people with whom you could easily work & explore. He makes getting to Mars like driving to the Painted Desert & stepping out of your car; I've been to the Painted Desert & Ben Bova makes me want to go to Mars. A great read! ..........

Ben Bova's novel 'Mars' is slow, a little too slow at times, but nevertheless is a fun journey to the red planet. The story deals with an international expedition to Mars whose primary mission is to search for signs of life. Along the way rivalries and romance spring up among the crew. While the science-fiction is hard and entertaining, the story more often delves into the realm of soap opera. Bova is an author that no doubt has done extensive research on the subject of space travel but this proves to be both a plus and a minus. Sometimes it feels as though he's forcing situations into the book to show off his research, more often than not to the detrement of the plot. Of course, the plot itself is rather thin. But I do have to say that Bova throws in more than a few twists and turns that will hold your interest and gives us a clever ending. If you're looking for something that's fairly easy to read and you enjoy B-movie characters, this one could be for you.

This novel was well researched and well written, but it was missing something. It was rather anti climactic and set itself up a little too well for a sequel. The characters are well developed and the story flows very smoothly. You could skip this one and you would not really miss that much.

When I picked up "Mars" I thought what I wanted was serious science fiction (aliens and all that) but now that I think about it those kinds of books would not truly satisfy me.

What was so interesting about "Mars" was the unexpected character development. I found myself annoyed with characters, proud of them and sometimes wanting to cry at how much they had grown during the expedition. Of course, the crying part may have something to do with the birth control I'm on but....

Anyway, if you are looking for superficial sci-fi you will not find it here. This book is about as accurate a depiction of what the first manned mission to Mars will be like as you can get in terms of the politics, the procedures and the different problems people at Mars as well as on Earth have to face. But do not fret! There is enough fiction in the book to make it an interesting read even for those die hard sci-fi fans.

Admittedly it took me 2 tries to get through this book. But it was worth it!

I did not make it beyond the first 60 pages, probably it gets better after that. For me, the book starts too slow, has too few and un-inspiring pictures and too few examples. I just wonder what the right audience for this book would be. I would rather recommend to start with "Instant Corba" and then select some real programmers guide.

I found this book an excellent introduction to CORBA, and always recommend it to technical developers wanting to learn about CORBA. It doesn't compare CORBA to rival technologies nor talk about what CORBA will be able to do sometime in the future. Furthermore, it does not contain any cartoons of aliens - a great relief to many of us!