If you're a thinking baseball fan you need to read this book. It covers every player you've heard of, and most of those you haven't. After reading this book, your next step is to go to their website ... on a daily basis for more of their top notch writing and analysis.

Their team articles are insightful, witty, biting and entertaining. I find myself grabbing one of my three copies from my shelf and enjoying them, even if I pick the one that's three years old. How many other baseball annuals can you say that about?

Thanks guys...keep up the good work.

Baseball Prospectus opens up a new world for the uninitiated and continues to inform those of us who've studied the game. Just put it on your springtime shopping list each year, kind of like grass seed.

After years of withdrawal symptoms from missing my annual dose of Bill James, I have at last found a substitute. These guys are not always on the nose -- their obsession with positions is a bit limiting to my mind, for one thing -- but they're right a helluva lot more often than they're wrong, and they've already proven themselves prophetic in many instances (for example, the White Sox's migrating back to the middle of the pack and the Mets' collapse). Plus, they're good writers -- not only are their analyses far more cogent than most sportswriters (admittedly, not a difficult task, since most sportswriters, not to mention analysts, can't tell their rear ends from their elbows), but those analyses are great fun to read for aesthetic reasons.

Anybody who really cares about the game will love this book.

This book is truely original, and I do not think that there will be another like it. Arthur and Stella Crandall are two dogs that live a very simple life. One thing that is very familiar about their life is that every morning while Arthur is making breakfast, he burns the toast. One day, a magic fly flies in and promises to grant Arthur three wishes in turn that Arthur does not [swat] him. Arthur, not believing the fly, makes wishes that come into his head, and he doesn't really think about them. The wishes end up coming true, and you will never believe what happens to Arthur and Stella unless you read the book. My favorite character was Stella. I would recommend this imaginative story to anyone.

Arthur and Stella Crandall are two dogs who have a quiet, happy life. "Almost perfect, but not quite." Two things keep their lives from being completely perfect: one is that Arthur continually burns the toast in the morning and two are the 5 mean alligators that hang about on the street corner and continually taunt him and Stella on their morning walk.

Well, life goes on as usual (the sun rises, the toast burns, and all is well) until one day a fly buzzes through the window. Arthur raises his flyswatter to smack the thing when the fly cries out "Wait!" Turns out, the fly is a magic fly and in return for Arthur not swatting him, the fly will grant three wishes. "'Oh come on,' says Arthur, 'that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard." At the fly's insistence, Arthur comes up with three ridiculous wishes: a new toaster, for the crocodiles to turn into squirrels and for him and his wife to be magically transported to a beautiful island where the natives sing and dance all day long.

Arthur, of course, doesn't believe any of this until some time later when he comes into the kitchen to find a squirrel running about and his toaster missing. What's more odd are the five new, shiny toasters sitting on the street corner where the crocs used to be. How odd!! However, that's nothing compared to what happens when he and Stella wake up on a lush, tropical island with the odd natives offering them fresh fruit from a silver platter!! Good grief, his wishes DID come true!!

Mr. Egan has written and illustrated a very amusing tale for story savvy children. Arthur's sarcastic comments to the "magic fly" will delight children who have grown up with (and possibly grown tired of) the old spare-me-and-I'll-grant-you-three-wishes fables. The pictures are big, bold and beautiful, drawing the reader right into the story (a note tacked to the fridge with a magnet reads "bones, milk"). Turning the page and finding Arthur and Stella on a tropical island while still in their bed adds the perfect, hilarious and surreal touch to this wonderful story. Highly recommended!!

Now I love burnt toast & its smell brings back all sorts of memories! Tim Egan has created a funny & telling little story of a couple of dogs in their happy &, well, almost dull lives. The only fly in the ointment is the gang of crocodiles who jeer & taunt them as they take their stroll around their neighborhood.

With delightful pictures & a tongue-in-cheek humor, Tim Egan, once again, gives us a charming, instructional parable on the old saying: be careful what you wish for!....END

I still do not have the faintest idea as to why Disney could possibly make this book into a children's movie. First of all, I would rate the unabridged book itself "PG-13"...but anyway. This book, more popularly known as "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame" (even though the plot circles around the Cathedral, not Quasimodo) is like a twisted "Romeo and Juliet" story sans star-crossed lovers. The real protagonist (in my opinion) is Esmarelda, the sixteen year old gypsy dancer. She falls passionatly in love with the chauvanistic stuff-shirt Captain Pheobus whotakes advatage of her love while meanwhile courting a young, rich noblewoman. Meanwhile, both Quasimodo the deaf bell-ringer and Claude Frollo the fanatical archdeacon fall madly in love with Esmerelda. So naturally things get quite chaotic when the gypsy is sentanced to death for "murdering" the captain. The action so is spectacular, especially the siege of Notre Dame, that I almost forgot I was reading it, not actually standing in Place de la Greve watching it all happen. Hopefully I don't give too much away when I say yes, there is a heck of a lot of dying going on throughout the book. This book, unfortunately, does have its long, slow, boring parts too...such as the beginning--just get through it and you'll be alright. And unless you are an ardent scholar of mideival architecture or French history, go ahead and skip the chapters titled "Notre-Dame" and "A birds eye view of Paris". P.S: my favorite part...Esmarelda's "marriage" to Pierre Gringiore, and also Gringiore's unhealthy obsession with the gypsy's goat

I still do not have the faintest idea as to why Disney could possibly make this book into a children's movie. First of all, I would rate the unabridged book itself "PG-13"...but anyway. This book, more popularly known as "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame" (even though the plot circles around the Cathedral, not Quasimodo) is like a twisted "Romeo and Juliet" story sans star-crossed lovers. The real protagonist (in my opinion) is Esmarelda, the sixteen year old gypsy dancer. She falls passionatly in love with the chauvanistic stuff-shirt Captain Pheobus whotakes advatage of her love while meanwhile courting a young, rich noblewoman. Meanwhile, both Quasimodo the deaf bell-ringer and Claude Frollo the fanatical archdeacon fall madly in love with Esmerelda. So naturally things get quite chaotic when the gypsy is sentanced to death for "murdering" the captain. The action so is spectacular, especially the siege of Notre Dame, that I almost forgot I was reading it, not actually standing in Place de la Greve watching it all happen. Hopefully I don't give too much away when I say yes, there is a heck of a lot of dying going on throughout the book. This book, unfortunately, does have its long, slow, boring parts too...such as the beginning--just get through it and you'll be alright. And unless you are an ardent scholar of mideival architecture or French history, go ahead and skip the chapters titled "Notre-Dame" and "A birds eye view of Paris". P.S: my favorite part...Esmarelda's "marriage" to Pierre Gringiore, and also Gringiore's unhealthy obsession with the gypsy's goat :-)

The novel which is so poorly mistranslated as "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame" is one which sadly few people have read. Disney has done this novel a great injustice. Hugo paints an elaborate and incredible picture of 15th-century Paris. The main character is not Quasimodo, the infamous hunchback, but rather the cathedral of Notre Dame itself. It is a complex and powerful character who shifts dramatically depending on who percieves it. Hugo is a brilliant writer; each image is beautiful, each line a poem. The book is four hundred pages of pure poetry. I highly recommend this novel for anyone who appreciates good literature.

I ordered this thinking that the book would contain more photographs like the one on the cover, strong, sensual images of young men/boys making the transition from childhood to adulthood, and all that that entails. There were some great images in the book, the 15 yo matador and his family, the boy standing naked beside his fully clothed brother.... but there was a lot of wasted potential as well. As mentioned in other reviews, the photos of Indian boys towards the latter third of the book are somewhat out of place, but so is the final set of pictures (even though there are of a German teenager) that come from another of McBride's books.

All in all, this book was something of a disappointment...

This is an interesting if slightly perplexing collection of photographs. I guess that the authors aim to present images of young boys making the difficult transition to young adulthood has been shown, but with a non-cohesive sense of place. The presentation of young Indian boys towards the centre of the book comes in sharp contarts to the images of West German boys elsewhere. Indeed, I felt they were out of place and opportunistically placed. Almost as if the author suddenly found this odd set of pictures he'd taken years ago and thought "I could use some of those here".

The collection ranges from candid photgraphs to rigidly posed studies, some of the latter being amongst the most haunting I've ever seen. There truly can be beauty in the peri-pubescent and adolescent male. I know some people have claimed that this book has been produced to satisfy that strange group of people who call themselves "boy-lovers", and it may indeed appeal to such people. However, lovers of the male form more generally can gain from viewing this collection, and trying to understand the context in which the photographs were taken. ....

I bought this book when I was looking for some puberty material for my 12 year old son. I thought at first that it was a bit too pornographic for a pre-teen to see,but the reality is,this book is just perfect. My son and I looked inside the book together and it was a lot easier for me answering any question about his body when you have pictures of other boys his age who are the same stage,or soon to be stage. It was really a fine ice braker and I'm sure any father with a soon to be teen age boy would agree. Mothers too can take advantage of the book as well..

I highly recommend this book to anyone.....

Military memoirs are kind of a tricky category. The authors usually aren't professional writers, but that's often a bonus rather a drawback. Donald Engen's book is perhaps somewhat of an exception to this rule.

"Wings and Warriors" is well worth reading, but it required a bit of grit to make it through to the end. Engen has a remarkable career as a naval aviator and test pilot, and goes on to become a Captain in the "black shoe" Navy. But his account often threatens to bog down in a welter of detail. Engen includes a lot of facts about a lot of different aircraft, and salutes a great many of his comrades and commanders, but the momentum of the narrative tends to suffer as a result.

I found myself wishing the book had an appendix with a field guide to all the aircraft Engen describes. As Engen notes, there were many different types of jets produced in the early days, and he seems to have flown most of them. But it's hard to keep them straight, especially because Engen refers to them mostly by their original Navy designations, which are somewhat obscure today. (Engen gripes about the Pentagon-imposed "uniform" aircraft designations which eliminated the Navy system in the early 1960s.)

Despite some excess baggage, "Wings and Warriors" has enough great stories along the way to make the trip worthwhile. As a test pilot, Engen relates why it isn't necessarily a good idea to turn off your jet's engine at high altitude just to see what happens. (Hint: the engine also keeps the cabin pressurized.)

Test pilot Engen also flies a series of attempts to set the altitude record. He manages to best the Soviet mark, although not by a wide enough margin to make the record books. But he does a really nice job of relating the experience, and it's pretty clear there's no major disappointment involved.

There are many other gems here as well. Mrs. Engen devises an unusual method to remind her flyboy hubby that he drove off with *both* sets of car keys that morning. The Engens move so frequently that one move is cancelled halfway to make way for the *next* move. Given command of an ammunition ship, black-shoed Captain Engen reveals himself as a world-class scrounger. It's not hard to understand why a crew would be intensely loyal to a skipper like that.

I did find one minor factual error: during his carrier qualification, Engen refers to Point Oboe as the "large mausoleum" on the shores of Lake Michigan. The "mausoleum" is in fact the Bahai House of Worship in Wilmette, Illinois, not far from the former NAS Glenview. But Engen was there for all of one day over fifty years ago, so I suppose we'll give him a "fair pass" on that one.

After the Navy, Engen went on to become the FAA adminstrator and the curator of the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum. As this memoir makes clear, Engen is unusually well-qualified for both jobs.

This Naval Aviator's personal memoir is also an excellent history of Naval Aviation from the battle of the Phillipine Sea to Viet Nam. It was almost voyeuristic - peering not only into the exciting and sometimes mundane activities of his flying career, but also seeing how he and his family adapted to the nomadic life of a career Naval Officer. It was particularly enlightening to read the story behind how some of the great innovations in Naval Aviation came to pass from the author's perspective. His very survival to achieve all that he accomplished in his life alone is a miracle. While some might criticize the inclusion of the names of almost aviator or commander with which he served as detracting from the narrative, for me that was personally satifying as I too served in Naval Aviation and recognized some of those individuals. All in all an enjoyable memoir of a great and not particularly well known American hero.

On the personal level, very satisfying read. I served in one of the author's commands (CAG 11), but before he took over. It was particularly enlightening to read the story behind how some of the great innovations in Naval Aviation came to pass and the human cost. On the down side, the narrative included almost every aviator and commander with whom the author served, which while great for the ego did not help the narrative. All in all an enjoyable memoir of one of our nation's great unsung heroes.

Yes, I am all for social and political reform in America. And yes, Americans don't know anything about the environmental situation at the moment, but Wendell Berry could tell this to me in half the words.

Cover to cover this book encompasses twenty-one powerful essays spanning as many years, from "The Unsettling of America" (1977) to "The Whole Horse" (1999). It is basically the backdoor into the house of Berry's thought, the best way to familiarize oneself with his writings without buying all his books. In fact, to date, it is the only such compilation currently available.

For me personally, reading Berry is a kind of sacrament taken with the utmost reverence and joy. Like the bark of an ancient redwood tree, the essays are imbued with scent and deep, earthly texture. This language serves the underlying themes well -- themes of love, work, earth and health. Indeed, many of the essays set out explicitly to reestablish the hidden connections between body and soul, individual and community; the former necessarily connected with the land that created and sustains us. Like hymns to one's sense of place, one reads Berry and is transported back home.

"I came to see myself growing out of the earth like the other animals and plants. I saw my body and my daily motions as brief coherences and articulations of the energy of place, which would fall back into it like leaves in the autumn."

Full of common sense, prophetic visions, poetic beauty and cogent analyses of America's cultural crises, these essays will retain their relevance and charm for generations if not millennia to come. At present, I can think of no single author better suited to guide us through these troubled times. Humble, illuminating, honest and profound -- this is one thinker not to be overlooked by anyone concerned with our fate as species and the fate of the planet as a whole. Definitely one of the most important, soul-satisfying books I have ever read.

Before reading this book, I was told that the author had this work of fiction set in his childhood home - 6 miles from where I live. I immediately wanted to read it for that reason. And the book really brought back memories of my life on a tobacco farm. But the most pleasant surprise was the story - a "who done it" from a young boy's perspective. It was a fascinating read and the ending was not predictable. I loved it - a wonderful mystery!

This novel offers a wonderful journey back into the old southern farm life. The twisted plot adds action and suspense to a great detailed memory. Dragons Die At Dawn reads fast and well. I would recommend the book to any southerner who longs to get a glimpse of their past, or anyone else who would like to be enlightened on rural tobacco farm life, while being entertained along the way!

I will soon be traveling to England and plan to trek around the country for a week on as little money as possible. I know that Lonely Planet produces the best kind of guides for this type of traveler - that is, a cheapskate drifter like me. I'm certainly happy I picked this guide up and I'm mostly confident in the data it provides. There's a treasure trove of information on how to travel cheap, especially in terms of bus and train transport between the major cities, plus inexpensive lodging - including hostels and even YMCA's and campgrounds. The problem with this guide is a general "cooler-than-thou" attitude toward tourist areas, with a real snobbish outlook on some popular attractions. An example is the Madame Tussaud organization, as their various museums are described as boring at least twice in the book (I've been to England before and I strongly disagree). Also watch out for the general "tacky" or "dull" label for many towns that cater to tourists, which makes you wonder about Lonely Planet's motivation for including them in the guide at all. In most cities, the restaurant and club recommendations do not seem like a representative sample, but just a quick list of locations that the LP team found cool enough to visit in a short amount of time. A lingering production problem is the quality of the maps, which are mostly dim in the black-and-white format and hard to read. But despite the occasionally condescending attitude, Lonely Planet succeeds in providing a very informative guide for the penny-pinching traveler.

England must be a difficult destination for Lonely Planet to keep writing new and fresh as it sucessfuly has this last decade. England however, is not a country generaly regarded highly by main stream travelers. Yes there are some kicking cities and night life and ofcourse there is always London, hoever England is not a cheep country to visit by anymeans and it takes a lot of effort and time to thoroughly enjoy the rewards of England. For this reason the lonely planet on England is comproable to the other guides on the market. The coverage is more extensive then the Britain guide, and the London section is nearly as useful to the Lonely planet city guide. I would recommend however the Britain guide to the typical back packer, or Antipodeans comming over for a while to work, you never know when you might go to Scotland or Wales. This is however a good guide for the mid range traveler who wants to stick to the Dales and lowlands. The coverage of cities, accomadation and getting there and away sections are adequate to excelent. The authors do miss coverage that I would expect in a comprehensive guide. Many northern cities are missing as with many cotswold villages and Cornish destinations. The set up however is still better then the other guides on the market and is much more user friendly. Four Stars.

This was a rather interesting book about a pair of sisters (Gillian and Amanda Davenpot) who were raised rather isolated from society and even each other by strict Puritan parents. Because of a smallpox epidemic in London and fear that the girls would be corrupted by the army in Yorkshire, the two Davenport sisters are given a short reprieve from their cloistered life. They are sent to distant relatives, Sir John and Lady Harrington. It happens to be Christmastime and though Jilly and Amanda's parents don't celebrate it, they do not realize the Harrington's do! Lady Harrington welcomes the sisters with open arms, giving them a holiday full of liveliness and spirit! She assists in making them fashionable by updating their dull clothes and buys them new gowns! Of course during this holiday in the country, there are plenty of young people and love is in the air.

This book contains a great deal of conversation much like Barbara Cartland's style of writing. You had to read closely to understand the story fully. I disliked that the sisters were raised with such cruelty and felt they "forgave" their parents much too quickly in the end, but I guess those times were different and parents used drastic, corporal punishments to control their children.

I loved the explanation of Regency Christmas rituals and celebrations many of which survive until today. Some of these celebrations were mentioned in other novels but I never understood fully before. If you read a lot of Regency novels, this is a great way to learn all about the traditions. This is a quick reading novel with just enough tension to make it interesting. Marion Chesney books are often full of surprises and she styles each book differently.

I read this book many years ago and I still came on Amazon[.com] to look for it because I loved it so much! The synopsis actually doesn't do it justice. The Davenport sisters, by a little luck, are spendign Christmas with their matchmaking aunt. The girls are the daughters of Puritans who never really have big, fancy Christamses, so everything that there aunt does, who firmly belives in big fancy Christmases, is so knew to them. Its a lot of fun because of that, Chesney conveys this feeling of being a little kid again and being so amazed at Christmas. Plus the heroes are incredubly dashing, of course each girl gets her own. Gillian, the main chracter, is one of those fun, spirited heroines you like but shes awkward around men. The end of the book is really interesting and all in all I loved it, which isnt much of a surprise cuz I love anything Marion Chesney does! :)

Subtitled "Four Hundred Years of Excess, Horror, Evil, and Ruin," this book is not what one should buy for your weird teen goth nephew who wears a nose ring, black fingernail polish, listens to Marilyn Manson, and hangs out at the food court at the mall.

Davenport-Hines' book is strictly a historic work, tracing gothicism from the middle ages to today. While most of the book is interesting, the field is so big that the author can only bring surface examples to light without probing them too deeply. He has a section on the music of the Cure, and the literature of Poppy Z. Brite, but chose not, or just could not, interview either one of them.

The author's biggest mistake is the amount of pages spent on gothic architecture. The first half of the book is full of castle names, earls and dukes, and is of little interest to those who want to read about the gothic lifestyle.

The author does deconstruct the literature of Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne rather well, in addition to a myriad of British authors whose names I am not familiar with, but might be interested in now. His coverage of gothic art is average. The book includes photographs of many pieces of art, but the author must resign himself to describing pieces he could not include in the pictures, leading to reader frustration.

I do slightly recommend this book, but do not be fooled by its dark cover. This covers four hundred years of gothic HISTORY, not four hundred years of your nephew hanging out at the mall and listening to Marilyn Manson (who is not covered here).

The book was great until it started getting to the last part of the 20th century. There he forgot a lot of current gothic works in the areas of comic books and film. I think Tim Burton was only mentioned ONCE in the whole book for his work on the first Batman movie. He should have further explored Tim Burton's work on Batman, as well as talked about Batman Returns, Edward Scissorhands, The Crow, etc. He also could have explored horror films with dark themes like Rosemary's Baby. And he forgot to talk about Batman comics, Sandman, and maybe even Spawn.

Looking at some of the other reviews, which pretty much trash this book, I have to say that it really isn't all that bad. This is actually a pretty good introductory-level overview of an important and interesting genre (although Davenport-Hines emphasizes that gothic is more of a worldview than simply a genre). Speaking for myself, I didn't know much about gothic before picking this book up. I was familiar with the "gothic classics" (Radcliffe, Monk Lewis, Poe, Le Fanu, etc.) but didn't have much understanding of the real significance of the gothic mode, which Davenport Hines does an admirable job of explaining in this work. Honestly, I found this book fascinating, especially the discussions of painting (Goya) and the connections between the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the Marquis de Sade, and the first gothic novelists. I finished reading the whole thing in two days. Davenport-Hines really gets your attention and holds it. He writes well, and the narrative (patterned according to the "history" or chronological development of gothic) flows nicely. Having said that, let me make a few negative points. Davenport-Hines' selection of texts seems pretty standard until he gets to the latter half of the twentieth century, and it's there that he seems to be hawking his personal favorites: namely, some novelist I never heard of ("Poppy Z-Brite") and the Cure. Here's where the author dates himself; he gives himself away as a child of the 80s, one of those sullen mall-rats who wore the thrift-store trenchcoats, had big hair and worshipped Robert Smith. Okay, I can accept the Cure and the other Euro-art bands (Joy Division, Bauhas) as representing gothic in late 20th century. But if you're going to talk about gothic in popular music, how could you forget to at least mention heavy metal bands like Black Sabbath, who predate the Euro-stuff by a decade? All the gothic themes are there in lyrics, cover art, and performer appearance. But these relatively minor oversights are forgivable. This is book is certainly worth reading, and if you're even the least bit interested in the literature, art, films, and music of terror, you should get the paperback edition (cheaper). It's intelligently written, hip to what's going on in academia, but also geared toward the layperson who wants a good starting point for further exploration.