Edgar Rice started a brilliant series with energy, but in this fourth installment, he fails to capture the full mystery and awe presented in his first three installments of the Pellucidar Series. By "Tarzan at the Earth's Core", you can tell the Pellucidar Series is starting to lose steam.

An Urgent message from Pellucidar, that world of primitive men and primeval jungles that lies inside the crust of the Earth, called on Tarzan of the Apes for assistance. Tarzan, used to the dangers of darkest Africa, heeded the call to Pellucidar, where all his skill in the jungle, all his talents with beasts and primitive men, would but to the extreme test.

Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote a number of series. Some series consisted of as few as two or three novellas. The Tarzan series stretched to 24 volumes. Almost all of the series were interrelated in some way or another. Clark A. Brady maps out the complex interrelationships in Appendix C to his "Burroughs Cyclopaedia" (available from Amazon.com). "Tarzan at the Earth's Core" makes the clearest connection between two Burroughs series. It is the 13th Tarzan novel and the 4th Pellucidar novel.

The Tarzan stories represent some of Burroughs' best work. The Pellucidar stories do not. Burroughs stretches credulity in all his stories, but he takes it to the limit in the Pellucidar stories. In the Pellucidar seriest Burroughs employs a preposterous concept (a hollow Earth with an inner world where time stands still) and adds insult to injury with highly improbable plot twists. This makes the quality of "Tarzan at the Earth's Core" all the more surprising. It stands as the absolute best Pellucidar story and one of the best Tarzan stories. Ironically it stands near the middle of both series.

David Innes, the hero of the Pellucidar stories, is in trouble. Jason Gridley, inventor of the Gridley Wave, hears the radio distress signal from the center of the Earth, and organizes a rescue party. Many stalwart adventurers, including Tarzan of the Apes, enlist in the expedition. Where Innes got to the Earth's core in a mechanical mole, Gridley's party travels there in an airship. Read the book to find out how they fly an airship to the center of the Earth and confront the many perils of the savage world they find.

Was kind of boring and didn't hold my interest and the titles are not all that original have seen them all before!

Unfortunately, it's the lead story that I couldn't even finish. Patricia Oliver is capable of a better effort. The next three stories (Carla Kelly, Edith Layton, & Patricia Rice) were amusing regency stories with the usual impediments to romance: relatives and misunderstandings. The fifth story, by Anne Barbour, was interesting, but I felt that I had read some of the scenes before. In fact, in one scene the dialogue came straight from Georgette Heyer's "Cotillion".

Overall, enjoyable stories for fans of regency romance.

I had to write a review because I disagree with the previous reviewer. The two stories she chose to belittle are my two favorites in the anthology. I can't imagine why she had any trouble reading "Something Old" by Patricia Oliver. Sure, most of us have read many stories in which the heroine is a young girl who has a painful experience at at ton gathering. But this time the girl has the extreme bad luck to fall in love at first sight with a cad who doesn't even notice! Ten years later they meet again. Is this a second chance at love? "And a Six Pence for Her Shoe" by Anne Barbour is a wonderful love story. The heroine waits for her fiance to return from war. She quarreled with him just before he left. Will he give her a chance to prove her love is true? The other stories were fine, but I found them less memorable. Read this anthology and see if you don't agree!

This is one of the most interesting and unusual of Burroughs' stories. Written shortly after World War I, "Beyond Thirty" follows the assumption that the war in Europe ultimately results in the destruction of European civilization and the complete isolation of the American continents for nearly two hundred years following. Everything between 172 degrees and 30 degrees West longitude is American territory; everything outside these lines is no-man's land. The story begins when an aerial patrol boat is sabotaged and its captain forces a landing near the forbidden 30th longitude line and takes the survivors across into Europe and no-man's land. On the whole, "Beyond Thirty" is a very good adventure story, but could have greatly benefitted from more thorough treatment of its subject. The first few chapters are marvelously detailed in their description of the post-war history, and the adventures toward the middle of the story are typically Burroughsian, with beautiful heroines, strong heroes and low villains. Unfortunately, the latter third seems rushed and most of the plot resolutions appear contrived as a result. "Beyond Thirty" is a good read, and can be rather amusing to the modern reader.

First published in 1915, the motivations for this story are obvious. The nations of the western hemisphere have taken an extreme isolationist stance in the early years of World War I, to the point that 200 years later they do not even know whether anything or anyone has survived the massive armed conflagration that began in the early 20th century. The hero inadvertently gets stranded in Europe and makes all of the startling discoveries of the outcome of the conflict and ensuing 200 years.

The story is ERB's standard fare. However, like many of his books from this period, there are a few themes to the story that are of interest above and beyond the light adventure story. The elements foremost in this novel are the destructive nature of war and racism. There is also a certain amount of naivete from the period and the relative newness of the United States as a world power.

Most of Burrough's books are good reading for pre-teen to early adolescent, and nostalgic adults; this one is no exception.
P-)

I went through this book in 15 min. I was expecting more actual pictures from the ruins of Pompeii, but most were drawings. It's definetly for children, but I don't think they'd be that interested in the book. The book talks about Pompeii before the volcano and after. I wouldn't recommend it to someone who is looking for real detail of Pompeii, stick with histoy books.

Of course it's meant for children! (see previous review) To review this as one would an adult text makes little sense. My 71/2 year old and her friends of comparble age love it. It's informative, well written and illustrated, and a good introduction to the subject for its intended audience of 9-12 year olds.

Pro: Good survey of ancient warfare from Ancient Egypt and Sumeria through the Roman Empire. Physical quality is excellent. The authors are knowledgeable and competent. Extensive use of drawings, maps and art work is useful and effective.
Con: Nothing really new here - much of the excellent art work is borrowed from older works. The authors cover the topics well but do not offer more insight into ancient warfare then previously offerred by earlier out-of-print works by authors such as John Wharry, Sir John Hackett, and Peter Connolly.
Bottom Line: If you need just one general purpose book on the subject, this does the job well. If you need more than a survey of ancient warfare, take a pass on this book and go after the works listed in the bibliography.

This is a very good book for a military historian to have. I liked the illustrations and tactical maps of significant battles. This book covers warfare in the classical world. The authors discuss the rise of various techniques, equipment and the sundry. For whatever reason, the Romans did not seem to develop anything new. They copied the old and improved on it.

This book is a disappointment to any Ann Rice fan who expects the same thrills and suspense that was lived while reading "The Vampire Chronicles". Although the novel is based on a fascinating and intriguing history of the times of the ancient Egyptian civilization, and a lot of research has gone into portraying an accurate account of early 20th century Egypt, (ask me I am Egyptian) I still feel that the plot was not up to Ann Rice standards and was extremely predictable to the reader. My disatisfaction in the book reached a climax in the very end where I had expected Ann Rice to make one of her famous twists to give the reader some sort of fulfillment even if it was towards the end, unfortunately it never came. However, I still am a big fan of Ann Rice and continued reading lots of her other titles.

I honestly thought that this book was wonderful. I like Ann Rice and have loved all of her books, except Lasher, which i just couldn't get through. This book goes through a lot of trouble to present accurate descriptions on Egypt, both ancient and early twentieth century. The plot was great, I really loved this book.

This is a reasonable compilation from an early Corsair variant. The drawings are of good quality and scale modelers will benefit from the detailed cockpit sketches, complete with item labels.

This Manual is a great for any F4-U Corsair junkie, it is complete with detailed sketches, as well as the procedures on flight, taxing, takeoff.It also has other Corsair procedures Excellent.

At first glance it seems to be somewhat daunting choosing which game to select for a given occasion. However, this book has proved to be an invaluable resource in creating hours of fun, laughter and overcoming those quiet moments in which a group is still in the "getting to know" stages. I would recommned it to teachers, youth pastors or anyone who deals with large groups of people with whom rapport is crucial.

As an activity director for a camping and cottage resort, I found this book to feature one crowd pleaser after another. Not only are the activities enticing, the format (activities grouped for large and small groups as well as indoor and outdoor play) is particuarly user-friendly. A great buy and a great sequel to Play It!

This is a great book. Of course, you'd have to have an interest in the time and the place, the 1st half of the 19th Century and the coast of Georgia. Emminently readable, with good expositions of the various agricultural practices of the time. Well done.

As a Georgia 'native' and historian with a deep interest in the field, I found this to be a fascinating text. But I would certainly agree that you have to have an interest in the topic--in which case it is well worth buying and reading.

Tarzan orders Arab slave traders to leave his jungle and follows them to make sure they obey. They all end up in the lost Valley of the Sepulcher, where there is a community of Knights Templar who have been isolated for over seven centuries. The slavers want to loot the place, the Knights want to resume their Holy Crusade to free Jerusalem, and Tarzan wants to rescue the lost James Blake. Despite the title, this 11th Tarzan novel spends more time in the Lost Valley than it does in the Jungle, which is its major problem. Having success with the fabled Lost City of Opar and its beautiful high priestess La, Edgar Rice Burroughs did several Tarzan novels where the Lord of the Jungle discovers other lost cities. This time around it is Crusaders, in two more novels it is Romans, so on and so forth. When Tarzan starts jousting with knights, you know that this is a below average novel in the series.

I first encountered this book via a very loose adaptation as an episode of the Saturday morning cartoon _Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle_, namely, "Tarzan and the Knights of Nimmr", which took the idea of a lost civilization founded by Crusaders, then oversimplified it while coupling it with a different plot (that is, changing the specific characters involved and the manner in which an outsider discovers the lost valley).

Burroughs often played with the idea of civilizations in which two cities, locked into patterns of eternal warfare, remained cut off from the rest of the world, but they're all different. The two cities occupying the isolated African valley where this story takes place were settled centuries ago by a few shiploads of lost crusaders, who had picked up some women on their travels, soldiers being soldiers even on crusade. The Crusaders split into rival factions when they discovered the valley, one faction (insisting that they had achieved the Holy Grail and thus the Crusade) founding the City of the Sepulcher, the other (denying it) founding the city of Nimmr, guarding the valley's only exit and preventing the rival faction from going home.

While officially the issues haven't changed, in fact the two cities continue to fight because that's what they've always done. (That seems realistic enough, considering Ireland, the Middle East...) The valley is the only home they've ever known, and if either ever really 'won' the war, they know that proceeding to either the Holy Land or to England would be fraught with problems. They've made accommodations with each other for survival, some of which are very far-sighted. For example, periodically a truce is declared and a great tournament held between the two cities, in which the grand prize provided by the losing city to the winner includes 5 highborn maidens. The winning city's ruler arranges honourable marriages for them - thus ensuring that the valley's population doesn't become dangerously inbred.

The specific details of how an outsider stumbles across the lost valley are somewhat less happily handled, although once he's in, the story smoothes out. James Blake is an American explorer with a bad guy for a partner, and their 'native' support team is handled in a stereotypical manner - although the bad guy is the racist, so one might be able to cut Burroughs some slack for the sake of the Nimmr/City of the Sepulcher bulk of the story. (On the plus side, the local villagers are nobody's fools.) Tarzan becomes aware of the party passing through his territory, and when Blake is separated from his crew, Tarzan takes a hand. Tarzan's really a supporting character for most of the story - Blake is the protagonist.