"Shelby Tucker's Among Insurgents: Walking Through Burma is the account of an American adventurer who entered Burma illegally from China, was captured by Communist guerrillas, passed on to Kachin freedom-fighters and was eventually arrested by the Indian Army. A hugely informative book of near-lunatic courage."

"For near-lunatic courage and a unique mine of information, [this book] by Shelby Tucker might belong to another century. At the age of 53, Tucker, a maverick American lawyer, decided to cross North Burma, entering illegally from China and departing illegally into India. He was captured by Burmese Communist guerrillas, passed on to Christian Kachin rebels (with whom he was soon consorting), was arrested by the Indian army, and six months later emerged to write this astonishing book: a surreal mixture of "Boy's Own" derring-do and expert knowledge of an almost unknown region."

--Colin Thubron, for The Sunday Telegraph (UK), in "Books of the Year" Column

"I cannot recommend Among Insurgents highly enough. Shelby Tucker describes a quite extraordinary trek across the genuinely remote and dangerous mountainous north of Burma. His account gets to grips with an immensely complicated political scenario and is written in the classic manner. I was reminded quite often of Fitzroy MacLean and Peter Fleming." --Justin Wintle "To one familiar with the dangers inherent in such an enterprise, the story almost defies belief. A 53-year-old American teams up with a 22-year-old Swede, whom he has met on a train and known for less than an hour, with the aim of trekking across one of the most inaccessible and least explored areas on earth, in a country which, everyone recognizes, is ruled by a military autocracy and which has been engaged in a vicious civil war for nearly half a century." --Stephen Morse

"I read it in growing amazement. What a journey and what a lot of research since! Very impressive." --Robin Hanbury-Tenison

"I think [Shelby Tucker] may have written a classic of modern travel writing." --John McEnery

"Among Insurgents is a vastly impressive piece of work and life. Shelby Tucker may be a mad man, but he certainly writes wonderfully." --Peter Wolf

"I read it at one sitting, with my wife providing earthly sustenance at intervals, and thoroughly enjoyed the adventure. The vitality and freshness of the enterprise shone throughout." --Robert Pelletreau

"Those of us who would never go on such an adventure (and that's most of us!) can have something stirred within us, feel a little freer, more willing to take risks, after reading this book." --Fred Fenton

The story revolves around four characters: Sara Goldfarb, a desperately lonely widow who wants nothing more than to be on a television quiz show, her junkie son Harry, his girlfriend Marion, and his best friend Tyrone C. Love.

As Harry and his friends come up with a plan to become powerful heroin dealers, Sara, the most innocent and loveable pathetic character ever, becomes addicted to diet pills, the only way she can see to loose weight so she can fit in her red dress for the television.

Each character slowly begins to descend into the hell of addiction, and as they do the reader is subject to the most brutal passages of drug abuse and false hope found in literature.

If you're one who responds to emotions in a book or a movie, read this book. It will not be forgotten.

But with a Selby novel, you know that things will not work out the way you think. What happens is a set of events whereby with each downfall we wonder how the character got there but know that the reasons are imperceptible from the last event.

On a downward spiral, this book shows human determination in the extreme. Each person, with only one thing in mind, do anything to sustain the dream, deceiving each other and themselves.

I almost wanted to cry after reading this book, coupled with the fact that I have read most of Selby's books, I feel as if I have read the best set of books ever written about human nature, and I am hollow in the knowledge that I will not find anything quite the same

Like other reviewers, I especially liked the inclusion of Foote's fiction though more was read into it than probably should have. However, I think Chapman does a good job in bringing the hidden and private Foote to us. With all his foibles, Shelby Foote is destined to be remembered for generations.

If you're a fan of history then you need to read Shelby Foote: A Writer's Life.

Foote deserves a 21 gun salute.

This book is an excerpt from the history focusing on the Gettysburg campaign. As perhaps the most dramatic episode of our national four year drama (and tragedy), this breakout survives its separation from the whole very well.

Foote traces the reasons Davis allowed Lee to march north and the ensuing battle thoroughly. Although not given the breadth of Coddington's description in his classic "Gettysburg: A Study in Command," Foote does his job extremely well over 290 (small sized) pages. This is a factual yet at the same time romantic telling of the great battle of American history.

In Chekhov's stories, marriage is hardly a bed of roses, usually resulting in discontentment, depression, and adultery; nowhere is this more perfectly executed than in "The Lady with the Dog," which ends with the two transgressors not contrite over their sins, but resolving to carry on their affair in the face of uncertainty. In "The Party," a young married couple's disharmony culminates in a tragedy that underscores their need to love each other. Chekhov's characters tend to marry for the wrong reasons, like societal pressure, false hopes of marital bliss ("The Helpmate," "Betrothed"), and convenience and mutual benefit ("Anna on the Neck"). His characters usually are people who mean well but do the wrong things: In "At a Country House," a cultural elitist has a habit of scaring off the very men he wants his daughters to marry.

Chekhov also touches on themes of pure, often unrequited, love. "The Beauties" is a plaintive tale of infatuation, of a boy's enthralling first discovery of intangible feminine beauty. His lonely characters, such as in "The Schoolmistress," "A Doctor's Visit," and "The Darling," are often prisoners of their own inhibitions, obsessions, and self-obligations.

Other topics are covered, often exhibiting a world-weary cynicism. In the amusing fable "The Shoemaker and the Devil," the protagonist's conclusion is not the cliched lesson to be thankful for the few things he has in life, but rather that there is nothing in life worth selling his soul to the devil for. "Rothschild's Fiddle" is like a Marc Chagall painting set to prose, portraying the futility and bitterness of life offset by the beauty of art, while "Whitebrow" is a fuzzy parable. Chekhov also displays a talent for drawing comical characters, such as the talkative blowhard in "The Petchenyeg" and the prudish protagonist of "The Man in a Case." A mark of Chekhov's style is that these people often are oblivious to their own idiosyncrasies, a touch that injects as much comedy as tragedy into the stories.

These stories might leave one with the impression that Chekhov was pessimistic about love and marriage, and even life, but in my opinion they emphasize a fundamental truism about fiction -- much as in comedy, where failure is funnier than success, even though "good" love is what makes the world go around, "bad" love is more interesting to write about.

Chekhov is a master, but I almost wish he'd never existed. His prose is so deceptively simple that it will make everyone reading him, be they caterers, kids, or Senate whips, think "I can do that!" Needless to say, they can't.

This doesn't mean anyone will ever stop trying. Chekhov fans the flames of megalomania in what Sartre called the "Sunday writer", dilettantes like Mathieu in The Age of Reason. Almost every short story written now is in either the style of Raymond Carver or Chekhov, and Carver was just the first to graft Chekhov's style onto American subjects. What is that style? It's not as instantly recognizable as Kafka's or Joyce's -- two terminal figures who can't be imitated -- but if you want an example of it, grab any New Yorker that might be lying around the house and flip to the short story. Got one? Okay, now notice how it doesn't end with a swordfight or an orgy. Instead, it will most likely hinge on a simple misunderstanding, such as a man making an offhand comment that causes his wife to lose all respect for him, or else some kind of sudden revelation; like an interior monologue where, after seeing two schoolgirls share a bologna sandwich, a professional woman realizes her entire life is corrupt and shallow. Shocks of recognition, mundane realism, and a muted climax ( this last is especially crucial; the professional woman above wouldn't throw off her worldly chattels and move to India, but would simply go back to her office, maybe even with a little excitement to get to work on a new ad campaign ) -- these are the hallmarks of Chekhovian writing.

The bad news is that we can look forward to an eternity of these pale imitations. Because the times are always changing, Chekhov's journalistic style -- remember he started out as a newspaperman -- ALWAYS APPLIES. It's a nightmare. But that's no reason to keep you, as it kept me for so long, from the original. All of Chekhov's best stories are here, or in the other two volumes of the Modern Library series ( where the nitpicker below can find the other stories whose absence he laments, except "Gusev," which is in this one. )

I've been on a spiritual quest for many years, reading everything I could find on the various spiritual traditions and incorporating bits of wisdom from each into my life philosophy. This straightforward, charming book brings much of that knowledge together in such a way as to make it immediately relevant to the daily journey of life.

In my experience, many people on a spiritual path may be enriched by what they learn, but a bit lost as to how exactly to apply those lessons on a day-to-day basis to find some sense of peace within a culture of chaos. This book-with its six simple steps-provides a concrete method for combining the teachings of many spiritual beliefs into a practice that brings positive and lasting change in the way we live our lives.

As a professional editor of publications in the psychological realm, I review a great many books that attempt to help us find happiness. I am deeply impressed with this one ... and fascinated with the positive effect it's had on a diverse group of people, from skeptics to spiritual veterans.

As Silverstein explains in the foreword (done here, as throughout the book, in his own handwriting), he has thought and thought about children and as he wasn't blessed with children of his own, he has come up with this "primer" for all children. The book opens with a wee poem:

O child learn your ABZ's
And memorize them well
And you shall learn to talk and think
And read and write and spel.

That ought to give you an idea of what's to come. Silverstein meticulously addresses every letter in the alphabet, descending further and further as he does into a swirling pit of black humor. He starts off, of course, with "A," writing with great jollity about how many green apples he thinks the reader can eat (everything is addressed directly TO the reader, as though the reader is a child, making the text all the more seductive). "E" is a hoot:

E is for egg.
See the egg.
The egg is full of slimey goosey white stuff and icky yellow stuff.
Do you like to eat eggs?
E is also for Ernie.
Ernie is the genie who lives in the ceiling.
Ernie loves eggs.
Take a nice fresh egg and throw it as high as you can and yell "Catch, Ernie! Catch the egg!"
And Ernie will reach down and catch the egg.

Silverstein's humor is subversive, to say the least. One page has a coupon, which Silverstein accompanies with the following text:

Kids! Clip out this certificate and bring it to your friendly neighborhood grocer and he will give you, absolutely free . . . A REAL LIVE PONY!

I have seen adults absolutely dissolve off their chairs with helpless laughter on reading "Uncle Shelby's ABZ." It wickedly plays off every insecurity and worry and doomed hope that any child secretly entertains, and it does so with a ruthlessness that's mighty to behold. This is highly, highly, HIGHLY recommended for any adult.

The book is written in the style of Shel's other children's books (A Light in the Attic, etc.) with the exception that this book is intended for older children/teens and adults. Unlike typical "A is for Apple" alphabet books, Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book is a vehicle for twisted humor along the lines of B is for Baby, Mommy loves the Baby more than she loves you. (Not a direct quote, but something like that.)

The entire book is hilarious and one you'll want to read over and over again.