I have never understood multicast prior to reading this book. Yeah, the concept of it is easy but when it came to knowing how it worked and knowing the difference between Sparse and Dense mode, etc, I was lost. Well, after reading this book I can now answer those questions and many more. This book has open my eyes and inspired me to want to learn more about it. It is so easy to follow and understand and all topics are well covered and explained. It's a keeper.

-Mario

The authors writing style is very detailed and thorough. This has all relevant information to get somebody started in the world of multicast. After finishing this book you can jump straight into the rfcs/drafts and be able to read them like a childrens book. I love the fact that they omit talking in depth about DVMRP/CBT/MOSPF, since those protocols serve no relevance in todays modern networks. It is a much more coherent read then "Developing IP Multicast Networks" by Beau Williamson. The authors begin by giving you an overview of multicast technology, including IGMP, PIM-SM, MSDP, and how they work together to create the state required to deliver multicast traffic from a source to reciever. They then go more detailed into each protocol to give you a more detailed understanding about the protocols behavior. This is what "Developing IP Multicast Networks" shouldve done to make it a better multicast book. I also like the packet decodes at the end, turns the book into a great reference. Definite 5 stars.

Note: If you are a network admin thinking about deploying IP multicast, PLEASE, buy this book and pay close attention to the SSM service model as described by the book. After reading the book you should have the knowledge to deploy and troubleshoot SSM. The next-gen 'killer-apps' all depend on pervasive multicast throughout the internet. Do your part.

-andrew

The first half is multicast theory and descriptions of how the protocols work and is vendor agnostic. The authors pull no punches when it comes to how it actually works in the real world, which I like.

Next is a section on how to configure the protocols on a Juniper Networks router. It's followed by a similar section on how to configure a Cisco router. The two chapters show how to configure similar features on the vendors' equipment. There is no performance testing nor discussion about capabilities of specific revisions of code, which I also like. Any attempt to do that would make the book quickly become outdated. I believe these types of issues are best discovered in a lab, not in a book.

All of this is followed by a detailed service provider implementation case study. I liked this part the best. It includes configuration for both vendors' routers.

Finally, there are some good detailed appendices.

Certainly you can pick up some good information in the configuration examples that may be useful outside of multicasting. On the other hand, the book itself is entirely focused on multicast traffic and protocols. I read it for fun which should give you an idea of how interesting I am to talk with at parties.

Hope that helps. I highly recommend it!

A modern replacement of Libby Hyman's classic series, but, even so, is now beoming out of date because of the rapid advances in molecular biology. Dr. Barnes is deceased and I understand that Dr. Ruppert has no plans to update the book, a horrendous undertaking. Nevertheless, I know of no substitute for this fine text. Readers should also refer to Margulis & Schwartz "Five Kingdoms".

Ruppert and Barnes' text, now in its 6th edition sets the standard for invertebrate zoology texts. The authors provide adequate depth for undergraduate courses in invertebrate zoology, and good fodder for graduate students starting in the discipline as well.

There are outstanding collections of line drawings in the text -- a method of illustration I prefer to photographs for most instructional purposes.

There is good coverage of invertebrate animal groups, but, since it's published in 1994, there are a few places where the book is becoming dated. There is, for example, no information about the Cycliophora, the latest invertebrate phyla to be proposed.

I hope that there will continue to be new editions of this text produced. I cut my teeth on the 3rd edition, and other editions have figured prominently as I have worked through my graduate and professional careers.

Top-notch material. If you are considering which text to select for an invertebrate zoology course, I urge you to give this book a look.

This book covers all the major taxa of invertebrate fauna and is surprisingly comprehensive for such a diverse topic.

This is an extremely important book that should be read by every American. Unfortnately, the American people have been subjected to disinformation and lies concerning the American relationship with Israel for over 50 years. The result has been thousands of Americans killed and more in the future. People like Irwin Graulich and Daniel Pipes should not be listened to on this subject because their loyalty lies outside this country. They would censor what you are allowed to read and burn all books or articles that say anything at all critical of the US Government's blind support of Israel. Educate yourself AMERICA and tell your elected officials to put America first and not be subservient to the political pressure of AIPAC and the religious right which have their own agenda, which does not coincide with the national interests of America.

This book is a searing, well documented indictment of the relationship between Israel and the U.S. The author doesn’t pull any punches. He says, “Israel is not our ally,” and then he proves it over and over again in his hard hitting 284 page expose’. Every aspect of the relationship, viewed within a broad conspiracy context, is revealed. Abboud’s open windows into areas usually closed to public view, where the interest of our Republic is continuously put at risk for the sake of Israel. The “Invisible Enemy,” Zionist Israel, is invisible no more, thanks to the hard work of Edward Abboud. All Americans who love their country, owe this intrepid author a debt of gratitude for writing this book.

Edward Aboud forces us to confront our own invisible enemies of cowardice and apathy when it comes to Mid-East politics. The stranglehold which the Zionist lobbies have on the media and Congress must be analysed if the US is once again to be perceived as an honest broker.

Mr. Aboud has provided us with an excellent, thought-provoking read. Highly recommended.

First time novelist? Unbelieveable for Morris' writing is that of a well disciplined, seasoned writer! The story of Jo Shelby Ferguson catches you and moves you along the search of his family roots. The reader moves with the main character feeling his frustration, his pain, his daring, his adventure, his every move imtimately. The author must have done his homework, especially with the authenticity of the adventure on the river barge and life in the Mexican prison. The skillful and creative use of language, the vivid descriptive scenarios linger long in the reader's memory. Woven through the tale are the moral lessons of determination above all odds, and commitment to the ultimate goal. The story opened a chapter of southern history unfamiliar to me of Yankee birth! For the superior writing and the historical perspective, I am a grateful reader. When is the next novel to appear?

This book brings the character of Jo Shelby Ferguson to life--right from the beginning of the first page. Morris has serious talent and lets it show. He takes Jo Shelby on a believable journey in search of his roots and creates an unforgettable journey from the Mississippi delta to Mexico. It's the (seemingly)true story of a man with an unquechable thirst to find out who he really is, and Ferguson is willing to do anything to accomplish it. Joe Morris' writing is up there with the best of the literary geniuses of the 20th century--F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, and Zora Nealle Hurston, though it is a little faster paced than Faulkner. He (Morris) is sure to come out with other and greater works. He must!

I found "Land My Fathers Died" to offer what many books of today do not. The novel treats readers to a wonderfully intriguing story told with grace and poetic deftness in describing a man's courageous, searching spirit. The descriptions of Mexico's vastness, ts colorful cities and its rapidly changing vistas of montains, deserts and plains are beautifully done and gives the mind many vivid pictures to recall. And one will well-remember the story's people who are given depth and "realnness." I felt the novel really moved along smoothly, with no slow stretches. Morris well shows what he can do with words and plot. I very much look forward to seeing his next work.

Lots of histories cover the major events of WWII, but what I liked was the way the author covered small details--little "slices of life" aboard a fighting ship.

It's difficult for readers today, accustomed to the security we enjoy, to appreciate the anxiety that sailors faced. What to us seems like an inevitable victory against Japan was not such a sure thing to the men being shot at, and for that reason alone this book is worth reading.

Way back in 4th grade I got a little book on the Battle of Midway (I think it was Ira Peck's) in a book distribution at school because the book I really wanted about making paper airplanes was already taken. I enjoyed that book immensely and began to turn the capacity for detail that most kids my age spend on dinosaurs or baseball towards the Pacific war. This book, though, which I scrounged at a used book store when I was a high schooler, introduced me to the human side of WWII. The people in the book were just plain old folks in a little ship in the middle of a big war. This book turned me into a historian, instead of just a reader of history books, because it introduced me to the concept that all history is biography. People make things happen, they don't happen on their own. You can read what happened, or you can look into why the people did what they did. This book doesn't give too much insight into the grand schemes of the Pacific War; the title says it all. It was, however, the catalyst that matured my interest in history. It is also a very fine read in its own right!

World War II was my parent's generation's war, and I am consistently drawn to stories of the sacrifices made by them. This is an excellent bit of history, told in a artfull but straightforward way. I highly recommend it.

This is one of the best biographies ever written. A wonderful piece about an interesting man.

Take a fascinating subject-- Edward Bennett Williams. Add a highly-skilled author with remarkably deep interviewing and archival research skills-- Evan Thomas. Put in a lot of hard work. And presto-- you have Thomas' "The Man To See," one of the most thorough biographies ever written (I have read many hundreds).

Edward Bennett Williams was one of the most dynamic men of the 20th Century-- a great figure of destiny whose life would have seemed emptier had not Evan Thomas been his biographer. EBW was a self-made man in the days where one could still achieve that accolade. He was no spoiled yuppie of family money. Bright, hard-working, forward-thinking, compassionate and disciplined-- and a wonderful rogue!-- this was Edward Bennett Williams. Warts and all, Evan Thomas presents the larger-than-life lawyer who pioneered criminal law practice in postwar America, bringing the constitution into the 20th Century. He sought power for the purpose of doing good, after doing well. Thomas interviewed practically every living person with whom EBW had a conversation or situation.

I am re-reading "The Man to See" for the fourth time in ten years. It remains fresh and fun. What a brilliant book!

This is one of the best biographies I have ever read. It is a great story about a great man. I read a lot of biographies and I can tell when the author is fauning over his subject - just read some of Robert Slater's books on Jack Welch. Thomas book did none of that. Thomas made you feel that he was giving an accurate and true account of Williams life. Of couse Thomas was helped by selecting a subject that was larger than life, a one of a kind person both in legal talent and raw personality. This book is right up there with "Vince", Michael O'Brien's biography of Vince Lombardi. Interestingly, Lomardi and Williams were very much alike - both very religious yet profane, and above the rest of their competitors in their chosen fields. They were also both like to drink, were emotional and quick to say exactly what they thought or felt about something. I recommend this book to anyone who likes to read biographies about great men.

By the time most of us baby boomers were old enough to watch more substantive television fare than Felix the Cat, Edward R. Murrow was an aging icon without portfolio. He did not have the regular exposure of a Douglas Edwards, Chet Huntley, or David Brinkley. He would on occasion do spectacular work-as elementary school students we would discuss his "Harvest of Shame" documentary on the sufferings of migrant farm workers. But it was from our parents and older relatives that we inherited something of a sense of his importance in an earlier time, in the same fashion that they might speak of a Bob Taft or an Adlai Stevenson.

What we could not know in 1959, what biographer A.M. Sperber makes abundantly clear, is that we were watching the shell of a driven man who had exhausted his incredible stores of emotional energy to international cooperation, then to radio coverage of the horrors of World War II, and on to shape the formation of the CBS new department during the explosion of the television era and the age of McCarthy. Sperber traces the rise and decline of this charismatic, almost manic, entrepreneur from the most unlikely of origins, that of a lumberjack named Egbert who quickly realized the liabilities of his given name in the male work camps of Washington State.

Egbert, now Edward, chopped wood only long enough to scratch and claw his way into Washington State College. A student with fingers in many campus pies, he joined an organization called the International Institute of Education in 1931. The IIE in the early 1930's was a form of college student exchange program, one of its sponsors being the not-quite-ready-for-prime-time Columbia Broadcast System. When Murrow spoke at a West Coast gathering of IIE representatives, he earned himself election to the national office of the IIE in New York, a paid position there, and free air time on CBS radio. Murrow produced Sunday afternoon radio lectures and round table discussions, demonstrating a flair for attracting international speakers. As Murrow learned more about the plight of Jews in Germany from reporter [and later close friend] William Shirer, he used the machinery of the IIE in the United States to rescue as many Jewish intellectuals as possible and place them in American colleges. It was a tactic not universally appreciated, nor would his close cooperation with the Russians be forgotten by J. Edgar Hoover.

By the beginning of the Battle of Britain, Murrow was assigned full time by CBS to provide radio coverage of Hitler's assaults and to coordinate the company's European reporting network. It is impossible to capsulize here the horrors of those eighteen months for Murrow and for England generally, when every night brought a terror at least as awful as the World Trade Center bombing. Murrow created a network of European radio correspondents-many of whom would become household names in their own rights. He overcame industry biases against putting reporters on the air and using taped reports from the fields. But most of all, he revolutionized the very style of radio news into "factual storytelling" by his nightly accounts of German bombings that by happenstance occurred during the East Coast's prime time 7 P.M. radio news hour. Later, as the theater of war shifted east, Murrow was among the first western reporters to see first hand an operating extermination camp. He could not bring himself to talk about it over the air for several days.

Murrow returned to CBS in New York a conquering hero of sorts, the network's hottest property. Sperber does a good job in explaining why the postwar Murrow-CBS marriage was a stormy one. For one thing, the war years had reshaped Murrow into a cross between an Old Testament prophet and a posttraumatic stress sufferer. He would never be quite at home in an industry moving toward television, increased advertising dependence, and escapism. Secondly, Murrow was too much the prophet to claim objectivity. He would never be confused with, say, Bob Trout. Long before Woodward and Bernstein, Murrow crafted the art of investigative reporting for a presumably concerned nation, particularly through the medium of his weekly "See It Now" series, a rough and tumble forerunner of "60 Minutes." His most controversial television piece, his hour-long exposure of Joe McCarthy, was out and out editorializing, albeit accurate. In Murrow's mind, he was serving the common good. Others were not so sure. Thirdly, Murrow himself had a past that made him a potential network liability. When he produced his "Harvest of Shame" documentary, for example, hardly a paean for capitalism, those with long memories would recall his enthusiastic embrace of Russian intellectuals in the late 1930's with the IIE.

The great irony in the breakup of Murrow and CBS is that the deciding infidelity may possibly have been unintentional. In 1960, with quiz show scandals threatening the credibility of the television industry, CBS President Frank Stanton announced a policy to eliminate the appearance of deceit in any of his network's programming, not just quiz shows. When pressed as to the extent of this policy, the network cited other programming, including rather surprisingly Murrow's own "Person to Person" prime time home visits to celebrities. In one reading of this event, Stanton may have simply been protesting the pre-scripting of interview questions and the staged walk-through of the homes. Or, there may have been a subtler message. A young Harry Reasoner inquired of Murrow on air, in so many words, "why are you, the Jeremiah of the industry, wasting precious prime time with the innocuous drivel of fighters and starlets?"

Unlike Reasoner and Howard K. Smith, who felt no compunction about switching networks, Murrow lived and died CBS. Illness and ultimately death interrupted his stint as window dressing for the Kennedy administration in 1965. Perhaps his prodigious cigarette smoking had finally claimed him. More likely, it was the pressure of living so many lives in one frail human shell.

Few figures stand so prominantly in 20th century folklore than does Edward R. Murrow, who spoke with such force and gravity over the radio and televison airwaves as did his colleague Walter Lippmann in the medium of print. His is a singular and absorbing story, cutting such a swath through the annals of the last century's history as to guarantee himself a place in the patheon of journalistic greats. That said, this is a wonderful biography of a man so uniquely gifted as to stand alone as an icon. This is indeed a work of prodigious scope and historical proportions, one covering the rise of this man in the streets and towers of London during the dark days of the war in Europe, who with his colleague William Shirer (later author of the best selling book, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich"), pioneered the use of trans-Atlantic radio broadcasts as a method of communicating real-time coverage of current events. In so doing, he brought home the poignant message of how close the war was drawing to Americans. In this sense, then, his biography closely parallels the historical epoch of both war-time and post-war America.

He was the virtual prototype of the international newsman, urbane, well-spoken, and yet brutally honest and beyond reproach. He conveyed a sense of integrity that became a model for eeryone who followed, from the early days of colleagues like Eric Sevareid, Harry Reasoner, David Brinkley, and Walter Cronkite to the well-polished and quite cosmopolitan Peter Jennings. He beacame a power unto himself, gaining unrivaled credibility and relevance with the American people, with a somewhat dour and hyper-serious demeanor, almost a paradoy of himself as he related the latest in the world news. This work concentrates on his incredible gifts as well as on his initial work during the second world war exposing the truth and horrors underlying fascism. In the process, he gained widespread credibility not only for himself, but also for the so-called fourth estate and privilege for journalists at large. later he founded a team incorporating the best of the wartime correspondents , including Willaim Shirer, Charles Collingwood, Howard K. Smith, as well as many others.

Yet after the war he received both greater fame as well as a kind of denouement, in the sense that in order to rise and maintain his poosition at the top of the new world of television-based journalism, he had to deal with moral cretins and the contamination of corporate money politics. Eventually this led to a break between Murrow and CBS, although in the process he forged bonds with such new notables as Fred Friendly that led to the famous series "See It Now". Even in the midst of all this very public history, Murrow was at the same time a very private, shy, and melancholy man, who was given a very rich personal life he managed to keep far from the foibles of the cameras. This work by Ms. Sperber is a seminal work, one that takes a loving and fascinating look at a complex, memeorable, and highly moral man who managed to make his way through the temptations of the 20th century while keeping his dignity and integrity along his rather remarkable way. Enjoy!

Modern pop history is in part a rewriting, and obscuring, of what really happened in midcentury America. Thus television programming recognized as garbage when it was aired is celebrated today in museums (for example, the Smithsonian saw fit to commemorate the Dukes of Hazzard.)

Thus the rather innocuous commentator Walter Cronkite is the grand old man, whereas Sperber's Murrow is known only to journalism wonks.

The shallowness of the broadcast, electronic media, which prized immediacy (the now) from its inception, is hard on any sort of historical accuracy in commemorating Murrow. Had Murrow lived at the time of Thomas Carlyle or Walter Bagehot he would have been, I think, more kindly treated: for the medium of the book is friendlier to the very idea of preservation of the memory of the author. The whole material point of broadcast, and the Internet, is extraction of content from modern denizens of grub Street, who dare not think of themselves as authors, let alone bourgeois subjects with social power over and above that of the corporation.

Murrow, with a certain naivety, thought to use radio and then TV to communicate a level of complexity to the ordinary man only seen in books. But even his allies saw that the medium is the message (not necessarily a benign fact, nor one to be celebrated, as McLuhan himself spelled out in The Mechanical Bride.)

Reading a book imparts a certain depth and respect for complexity in the reader. Half-listening to a lunatic like Sen "Tail Gunner Joe" McCarthy while doing the dishes is apt to impart oversimplified half truths, a fact which McCarthy was low enough to use. While first-order McCarthyism in the form of naive anti-Communism is on the wane, second-order McCarthyism, where signifiers such as "economic growth" and the fear of job loss replace the red Menace and are used by the cynical in precisely the same way McCarthy used "communists in the State department that lost China."

Murrow's respect for complexity and willingness to try to communicate complex truths to the audience ultimately, as Sperber relates, had him gently retired from CBS and into directorship of the US Information Agency under Kennedy.

This book is an excellent read. It points up the fact that in many ways, the 1960s and 1970s were an infantile reaction to mere complexity and nuance. In this reaction, the popular mind was subtly persuaded to think of commentators, who did not pander to the worst in us, as stuffed shirts who "think they know more than the common lot." Thus even Cronkite was more acceptable because he hewed more closely to the policy that jelled under Murrow and that is described by Sperber, a policy in which departure from a vague centrist position was "opinion and not fact", but "facts" could include quite a lot of opinion...as long as it followed a centrist party line.

For example, as LA commentator Mike Davis points out in Ecology of Fear, wild fires are news only if they threaten upscale houses. This is now "fact": fires in ... SROs in downtown LA are no longer news, but fires near big ranches (probably referred to by their Yupped out owner with Yup irony as "mah spread") are news leaders. For the same reason that underpaid smoke jumpers die protecting "mah spread" (on the public dime, I might add), a fire in Malibu, or in Jackson Hole, is a "fact": a fire in LA or even Idaho Falls is a nonfact, and it shows "bias" and "opinion" to foreground this interpretive bias.

No opinion wants in logic to be an opinion. An ordinary man, expressing the "opinion" that the Chicago Cubs will take the pennant this year, is not shooting off opinions for theire own sake. Instead, our boy wants his "opinion" to become solid fact in the future.

Likewise, when Ed Murrow gave his famous anti-McCarthy broadcast, he was not, in good conscience, stating mere personal opinions for there own sake. His opinions wanted to be mere facts about Tail Gunner Joe, and Murrow's managers would have done well to state more clearly, not that the broadcaster not state "personal opinions", but instead that the broadcaster either state the opinions of the owners of the station, or else zip up, and restrict himself to such facts (such as the words coming off the wire service copy) that everyone, except the clinically insane, agrees to be facts.

Falsity and intellectual dishonesty is a toxic byproduct of media with longterm effects, and it can be stated fairly that Murrow may have been able to stop smoking if he had been able to come to a more honest contract with his employers. Instead, Paley and Stanton (despite the better angels of their nature) used the guy. During the 1940s and on radio, Ed Murrow's left-liberal views were simply less hazardous and more popular with viewers than they became in the 1950s, and Murrow was eased out as his entire perspective, and on-air persona, became less intelligible to a more suburban, less unionized viewership.

Of course, Paley and Stanton could not have done otherwise, and Frank Stanton much later (in a brouhaha over a late 1960s program) proved he had integrity. Perhaps the broadcast journalist should be an independent contractor who buys time from the airwaves under some sort of deal and says whatever he wants to say, making the listeners the ultimate arbiter of whether the guy is worth listening-to. But the problem with this pure market model is of course the bearer of bad news and the odd Cassandra who is confused with the content of the bad news, and whose value to society (in warning society of the ways in which it is in trouble) cannot be reflected in a market model at all. Nobody goes to the fair to buy a Nasty Story, or a detailed list of his own defects of character. The Catholic did not pay the priest to hear his confession.

No society can tolerate, under a pure market model, a Savonarola or Murrow at his most extreme, and legal professor Cass Sunstein (cf. Republic.COM) shows, gently, how a pure market model leads to "cascades" of opinions, where Internet users have gorged themselves sick on falsity (such as the centrality of the Second Amendment, or the wickedness of Clinton), and, bulimically, spread their fantasies. This of course is where government by the people, for the people and of the people comes into play, including a Constitutional role for the super-ego (aka "the Nanny State.")

In an era of pandering to malformed ids and egos that find their ego satisfaction in pure transfer of negative emotions to the Other, this is of course a non-starter, but this merely shows how far we've declined (from Ed Murrow to hate radio.)

My personal theology is considerably more liberal than Dr. Brown's. Nevertheless, I think that he does a good job of explaining what many Christians believe about the divinity of Jesus and why. I also believe that his scholarship is thourough and honest, albeit not always impartial. But then again, I doubt that anyone's scholarship is totally impartial.

i guess this will be just another five star review for father brown! raymond brown (now deceased) was a catholic priest and a moderately critical new testament theologian PAR EXCELLENCE. this, like his other works, is well-reasoned, thorough, and essentially impartial. probably the best overall introduction to Christology (which one might define as the study of not only of Jesus, but of His relationship to His surroundings). father brown concentrates on subjects such as Jesus' preception of Himself and His purpose, the probable reaction of His comtemporaries to His teachings, and the overall picture we get from the gospels. this is tremendous scholarship distilled into a brief readable capsule! you will respect this work whether you are fundamentalist or pagan!

I am currently using this book while enrolled in a course in Cristology in graduate school. I have found it to be very helpful and fact filled. The author is very staitforward and does not stray from the subject matter.

Even while Ed Wood was scraping to get together the resources necessary to make his infamous films (and earning an underserved reputation as the worst director of all time), he was also making side money by writing literally hundreds of pulp and "adult" novels. Killer in Drag, considered to be his signature novel, was written when Wood was on the verge of sinking into his final alcoholic decline. It deals with Wood's favorite theme -- a strong, heterosexual man who enjoys dressing up as a woman. In this case, Glen is also Glenda. Hoping to raise the money for a sex change operation, Glen works as a contract killer for "the syndicate." However, in one of the less convuluted plot twists of the book, Glen is then unjustly accused of the one murder he didn't commit. Glen is forced to go on the run. Ending up in a backwater town, Glen also ends up purchasing a used carnival and finding himself the prey of two corrupt cops. Even as Glen struggles to keep Glenda from taking over his own personality, he finds time to pursue a romance with an understanding prostitute and to bond with an alcoholic drag queen. This is the type of plot that only Ed Wood could come up with and if you're a fan of the man's films, you'll find a lot to enjoy in this book. Is the book trash? You bet. Is it even a good book? Um...no, not really. But it is a lot of fun for Wood devotees who, by this point, should know what to expect.

It should also be pointed out that this book proves that, even if he wasn't talented, Ed Wood still doesn't deserve to be known as the worst director or writer ever to work in Hollywood. While the dialouge in this book (and his films) is often flat and full of terrible jokes, is it really any worse than that to be found in Titanic or Star Wars: Episode 1 or the collected works of Bret Easton Ellis? What comes through, most sadly, in this book is a sense of overwhelming sincerity. No matter how ludicrous the plot, its obvious that Wood is attempting to tell a touching story that, underneath the pulp stylings, contains a plea for tolerance for men (like Wood himself) who enjoyed wearing women's clothing. There's a niave quality to the book's attempt to be hard-bioled pulp that is almost child-like and, in a way, almost endearing. And, unlike several other writers, Wood actually does manage to pull off one compelling chapter in which the drag queen Shrilee opens up to Glen about his tragic past and the persecution he's suffered as a result of his preference. Its a short chapter but well written and for a few pages, Wood is obviously writing from his soul. No, it doesn't mean that Wood was actually a brilliant talent waiting to be discovered. But it does show that Wood did possess an actual sensitivity and compassion for his subjects -- no matter how ludicrous a plot he may have constructed to showcase that sensitivity. It also shows that Wood, no matter how untalented a dreamer he may have been, deserves more than to be simply laughed off as "the worst writer/director of all time."

The most amazing thing about "Killer in Drag" is that it plays out more-or-less exactly like one of EDW2's movies. The action moves from point-to-point without logic or consistency, and when it all ends rather abruptly, you're not sure what, if anything, you've just witnessed. He probably could've made big bucks turning out Hollywood blockbusters in the '90s.

Glenda is an assassin for "The Syndicate". The Syndicate is apparently an equal-opportunity employer, with a quota for exactly one transvestite (TV) assassin, as she is later stalked by her (much inferior) replacement.

Anyway, Glenda's trying to get out of The Syndicate (which no one ever does, of course) by--get this--having a sex-change operation. In other words, Glen, whose specialty is portraying a woman very convincingly, is going to hide from his criminal employers by actually becoming a woman.

In a shocking and completely unexplained twist, Glen is spared from the homosexual prostituting he needs to get the money for the sex change by murder of his would-be patron. So he goes on the lam, stopping every few miles to change clothes.

He finally decides to hide from the law by--yes, you guessed it--buying a carnival. (If you actually did guess that, you may have a lucrative career in writing ahead of you.)

In other words, this book is chock full of the surreal antics and idiomatic use of language that marks EDW2's film work. It probably didn't take much longer to write than it does to read and at this point '65, he was well on his way to alcohol-induced dementia. (I would guess the bulk of the book is descriptions about people drinking, mixing drinks, wanting a drink, etc.) The tell-tale sign is in the delirious description of his alter ego "Shirlee", described unpleasantly as an ugly old drunken TV.

"Shirlee" only adds a certain poignancy to the whole proceedings, with its raw energy and its echos and shadows of talent. The author went off the rails somewhere in life, and there's a real tragedy in not having him around to reflect on it all. Of course, that's long spilt milk, and it must be admitted that the man left an enduring legacy.

A must-read for Ed Wood afficianados.

Fairies and dragons and witches and gnomes aren't real, but they bore the phlegm out of me. High-heeled, cross-dressing hit men aren't real either, but they fascinate me, especially when delivered with the earnestness and raw sensibilities of an over-indulgent Ed Wood Jr.


This book has it all. Murder, mayhem, and endless wardrobe minutiae. More intelligible than its sequel, Death of a Transvestite, Killer in Drag puts the P back into pulp. And puts it back into pumps, too.

Others reviewd this legendary book already. But I have a point to tell: Mimesis not as content but as form. Mimesis, the title of the book comes from latin word, reflection. Traditionary, mimesis is used to analyse the content of text. You can see that kind of approach in Arnold Hauser's 4 volumes of 'The Social History of Art' or Lukacs's aesthetic theory. But that kind of approach mainly inspired by Marxism went out of mode. Alternative approach is the one of Adorno's 'sociology of art'. Adorno's analysis of music is distinct. He insisted that we could detect the totality of society not in content but in the form of text. He himself is the composer and pupil of Schonberg. So he advocated Modernism in this light. At first glance, Modernism could not match to Marxism. But persausively, Adorno showed the opposite case. You can see that kind of approach in the textof Frederic Jameson's 'Marxism and Form'.
Auerbach's approach should be captured in this line. He analysed various Western literary text in the light of form and the social structuer of that time. His point is that we could detect the social structure of that time or totality, in the term of Marxist tradition, not only in content but also in form, or in Auerbach's term, style.

Beginning with episodes in Homer and the Bible, this amazing study concludes by analyzing passages in Woolf and Proust. To echo Rene Wellek's assessment: it is a book of such scope and depth....it combines so many methods so skillfully, it raises so many questions of theory, history and criticism, it displays so much erudition, insight and wisdom.... I returned to this book after being out of graduate school for twenty years (where it was already out of fashion in most English departments but read with care by all students of Comparative literature), and it is so much better this time around. The essay on Fortuna continues to resonate with timely warnings, and what I once admired about "Odysseus' Scar" is even more luminous after my recent rereading of the book.

In the 30 odd years since I read this book it has never been far from my thoughts. It has changed my understanding of how people think and how they look at their world. I cannot do true justice its impact.

We are apt to think that people are the same wherever and whenever they lived. This is probably a legacy of our democratic, universalistic heritage. It is also what gets us in trouble when we get involved abroad in changing other nations and their societies. Auerbach shows us that humankind is not and has not been alike in its thoughts, aspirations and character but has distinctly changed and varied over time and place.

By closely reading, analyzing and comparing texts of different periods through time, the author demonstrates how the structure of language interacts with the structure of thought, how the way one writes delimits ones vision. This is a more radical thought than its converse that the way we think affects how we write. To Auerbach, an early medieval religious writer, because of the way that Late Latin worked, could not think the way a classical author could. This seems intuitively wrong to a person who has knowledge of one language, but if you have ever tried to translate anything beyond the simplest sentence, you can appreciate what Auerbach means. This is one of those books that stay with you for a lifetime.