.. this book is for you.

This book is not only informative but its presentation is a delight. John Coburn has a deft artistic hand in his wonderful ink sketches. The book gives "insider" information about these hotels; such as how the rooms are decorated, services near the hotels, prices and a little history. I wish Allen Sperry would collaborate with John Coburn again and do the same type book for many popular cities around the world. London would be my next choice! This is a clear winner.

As a father tells his daughter a bedtime story, his lyrical words lead her on a whimsical journey "sailing away to the end of day, down the long winding river that goes to the sea." The illustrations, charming in their child-like simplicity yet rich with detail, are washed with white, giving them a dreamlike quality. Soothing, gentle, hypnotic--a lovely bedtime book!

A great book for kids who are afraid of the dark. In The Night Thief, Ms. Allen shows us the importance of nighttime and every kid I know who has read the book loves Nedra. The illustrations are very nice and keep with the "dark" theme.

Very good book. I like how it has scriptural references so I can go back and read it in the scriptures as well. The pictures are really cool too. It is sure to be a Christmas favorite in my family!

In this gripping adventure, the dark elves finally delve beyond the depths of their own dark realms of the Underdark, and break through into the lush jungles of the Hollow World! What follows is a grim tale of flashing blades, poison and sunlight... the PCs (levels 7-9) must journey through thousands of miles of lost wilderness, in search of the feathered serpents - the only race ancient enough that their elders might know how to stop the menace! A great adventure for any Underdark campaign.

No-Hitters: The 225 Games, 1893-1999 discusses each no-hitter baseball game, including a brief profile and career record of each pitcher. Each game is recapped, with details on what happened to that batter. A box score for each game is also featured, as is a photo of almost every no-hit pitcher. No-Hitters is enhanced for the baseball enthusiast with appendices that list no-hitters in which more than one pitcher participated; complete game no-hitters of less than nine innings; and no-hitters pitched before 1893 (when the mound was only 50 feet from home plate). An informative foreword by Jim Bunning (who pitched two no-hitters and one of the only eleven perfect games in baseball history) is a true informational treasure for the baseball fan. No-Hitters is a highly recommended addition to personal, school, sports bar, and community library baseball reference book collections.

Hopefully Amazon will have fixed this charming novel's classification by the time you are reading this, but just in case, this is not a horror story, or even a suspense story, or a mystery. It is, however, a marvelous tale of growing up gothic in Cleveland.

Tom, the narrator tells the story of his experiences as he approaches his thirtieth year. He is a goth by choice, but he is also the owner of a publishing company and a loyal son and friend. By no means is he stereotypical, nor are his compatriots, all of whom share his own search for identify.

The largest part of the story is about his loss of one relationship and the redefinition of several others. It isn't the best of times for Tom, but in reflection, perhaps it is. As he faced crises and worked through his feelings I was charmed and heartened by his willingness to lean into to things and hold onto the good parts. In the end we find that Tom has maintained his identity even as he has flexed and changed. It is an unexpectedly positive novel for one about goths; not that it doesn't have its share of grim stuff.

The writing is absolutely crystalline. This is Crowley's first novel, but I honestly hope he goes on to write more. The characters, as crazy as some are, all ring true and I was quickly absorbed into the story. Considering I was expecting a horror story (it does use the work vampire in the blurb) I am surprised how much I enjoyed the book.

If you are interested in an interesting and moving story of a lifestyle that is really the modern version of the beats, read this book. If you enjoy a straightforward, coming of age / love story, but this book. If you like to occasionally end a book smiling, read ... You know.

I just heard this book's author on the radio, and was so impressed by him. He's a Harvard professor who got interested in the story of Matthew Henson, a black man who explored the Arctic and discovered the North Pole along with Robert Peary. The professor, Dr. Counter, has gone to the Arctic several times now, and has befriended the sons and grandsons of both Henson and Peary. Before Dr. Counter, nobody in the US even knew that these explorers had fathered children up there. And Dr. Counter has done a lot to get Henson recognition here in the States, where institutionalized racism has minimized his role in history.

After a long delay, the latest volume in the Hershenson-Allen behemoth series of movie poster books, "Not Nominated," is finally here.

This latest enterprise, in my mind, can truly be called, without apologies, a "reference" volume, possessing qualities consistent with what I associate to be the purest definition of what this word is supposed to mean.

The critical aspects are these: Beyond printing each "year" on the vertical edges of each page, this volume isn't all about images. It lists Oscar winners. It lists every film that was nominated for Best Picture. It illustrates, in wonderful color, posters of films that in most cases, were ROBBED of a Best Picture nomination. But the editors keep going. They list "honorable mentions," a concession that the panelists on its selection committee (for which I was honored to be a member), did not always agree with the choices that ended up in your book.

I'm conceited when it comes to Oscar. I'm a professional writer who happens to be an amateur film historian, who, in 1972, was a winner in the San Diego Union-Tribune's Academy Award history contest, having studied this subject obsessively, watching every Oscar telecast since 1962. So it's obvious why I would disagree with my fellow panelists on a number of selections, and in such cases, why it was a lousy feeling to see some of my choices "overruled" and put into the "Honorable Mention" category, or worse, not even listed at all. Yet the selection process was completely fair.

Some choices were obvious and expected, e.g., "Singin' in the Rain," "The Third Man," "The General," "Queen Christina," "City Lights," "Pinocchio," "North by Northwest," "Rear Window," "Some Like it Hot," "Breakfast at Tiffany's," "A Hard Day's Night" and "2001."

But some choices were baffling. How can anyone, for example, leave off films like "The Seven Year Itch (1955)," "Duck Soup (1933)," "National Velvet (1944)," "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945)," "Black Narcissus (1947)," "Key Largo (1948)," "The Miracle Worker (1962)," "Two for the Road (1967)," "A Man and A Woman (1966)," "Glory (1989)," "The Commitments (1992)," "Fearless (1993)," "Dead Man Walking (1995)" or "Three Kings (1999)?"

And some selections, forgive me, were overrated. What's a film like "Dracula" doing in there? "Frankenstein," yes, but has anyone tried to sit through "Dracula" in its original, un-musically scored version without unintentionally laughing? A film that stands the test of time does so without falling back on the post of the technical limitations of any era. Is the monetary value of the film's poster and/or its standing as an iconic title greater than the merits of good old-fashioned story telling? Dracula is a classic, but a Best Picture nominee it wasn't, nor should it have been, any more than "Blazing Saddles," despite my tremendous affection for the latter.

What about "Journey to the Center of the Earth" over "Pillow Talk?" "How to Murder Your Wife" over "The Flight of the Phoenix" or even "Cat Ballou?" "A Funny Thing Happened to the Way to the Forum" over Billy Wilder's "The Fortune Cookie?" Perhaps the worst was seeing the ponderous "Far From the Madding Crowd" selected over Stanley Donen's underrated "Two for the Road" and "The Day of the Jackal" knocking off Bogdanovich's enchanting, "Paper Moon." And the panelists who, in apparently sufficient numbers, were responsible for putting garbage like "Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls" even on the "Honorable Mention" list deserve 50 lashes with an well-oiled, leather whip.

Debating cinema as art (as opposed to posters) makes for great fun, and this is why this book is worth buying and talking about. But I was most happy with four selections in particular that were associated with the agonizing process the editors' chose to make this book historically credible.

The first was Ernst Lubitsch's "The Shop Around the Corner (1940)," that wall-to-wall Margaret Sullavan-James Stewart howler that still holds up as being done one of the greatest romantic comedy films from Hollywood's Golden Age. The second was "Say Anything (1989)," writer Cameron Crowe's first directorial effort. The third was Terence Malick's haunting "Days of Heaven (1978)." But the fourth, the one that brought the most joy, was the panel's selection of David Lean's wonderful 1945-46 collaboration with Noel Coward, "Brief Encounter (1946)." I can only count on one hand the number of people I know out here on the West Coast who have seen this near perfect 86-minute film. Yes, I disagreed with some of the choices, but this particular selection confirmed that the editors did their homework in their efforts to create a credible cross section of non-Hollywood industry historians to join their "jury." I applaud them for selecting this movie despite the higher profile titles released the same year, such as "Gilda," which even though was among my selections, I was only mildly disappointed to see "missing the cut." The latter is high grade "B" material compared to "Brief Encounter."

Moreover, I applaud the editors for assembling one of the finest pictorial books ever published about Oscar history, featuring posters associated with films that were shamefully overlooked by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Admittedly, not all of the posters feature great art, but the point is to document history. I hope there will be a second volume featuring the films that at least made "honorable mention." For this first volume (which no one in publishing history has ever done in terms of subject matter), panelists were limited to listing just five "losing" films each year. But we know that some years it was feast or famine in terms of quality.

Combining great images with great history, if Hershenson and Allen continue to keep the quality as great as this, they'll be publishing forever, and not just to the narrow band of hard core movie poster collectors who DON'T make up the greater body of book buyers in America.

I have read all the Mackie books and this one is by far one of the more important. He rambles a little about the Canadian woods, polotics, etc., but worth reading every bit of what this master has to say. Detailed instructions and excellent diagraming make this and all the other Mackie books a must in any woodspersons library. If you want difinitive information on how to build with logs, whether you are a do-it-yourselfer or a pro, this is the book.