I watch the History Channel too but somehow missed this. Working for an airline I do not have alot of time to spend on novels etc. But this is right up my gangway. Neat stuff to tuck away in my brain for a rainy day or maybe a gameshow! Glad I saw it here.

Rachlin has compiled an amazing amount of information on a wide range of subjects into this collection. It is a great book for anyone who enjoys history, whether as a hobby or a scholarly pursuit. He keeps the entries short and concise and still manages to provide a thorough explanation on the artifacts. The book is also convienient in its structure, in that you can read a chapter, put it down and leave for months, and then come back and read about another historical treasure.

This is a good book for Triva buffs and History buffs that discribes where all sorts of interesting items have gone and where they are now. This is a book that will make a great one time read and referance book. It is also big and looks good on a book shelf!

The reading age for this book on the description page has been put in the range 9-12 years.Actually,6-9 would be a more apt range.While it is true that this book would be thoroughly enjoyed by children in that age group (to which the excellent illustration would have a lot of contribution),and also that it might be a book good for bedtime reading by parents to children ---it is certainly not meant for an adult audience.I decided to buy it for a non-Indian friend interested in Indian mythology.It certainly proved to be a big disappointment.For serious first-time adult readers of Indian mythology & legends, I would suggest the following : 'Ka:Stories of the Minds & Gods of India' by Roberto Calasso & Tim Parks, and 'Folktales of India :A Selection of Oral Tales from 22 Languages' by A.K.Ramanujan.When one reads translations of any mythology meant for an adult audience (Greek mythology,for example) what marks a good translation from the bad is whether the language has a cadence particular to the rendition of mythology,whichever part of the world it might be from.Also, a book of Indian legends read by adults should not be as supercondensed as this one, as to lose all sense of detail. So if you are looking for an adult perspective on Indian mythology or legends,please don't try this book--you will be getting a very trivialised picture of Indian mythology.Indian culture would suffer by comparision if you took this book to be the yardstick for its narration. However,it should be kept in mind that this book is indeed a good buy for children in the age group 6-9, & the site actually does a good job of officially recommending it for a readership almost similar to that.

I read this book over and over as a child. The stories always stayed with me, but the book is long gone. One day, while browsing through cookbooks, I found one by Madhur Jaffrey and couldn't remember why her name sounded so familiar. So I got onto Amazon and realized that she was the author of this fantastic book.
I highly recommend it. The stories, while simplified greatly for the young audience, give the reader a magical entry into Indian myth. The illustrations are beautiful as well.

Many years later, this book is still a point of reference for me. Give it to your children, friends, and family.

I admit it, I didn't read this book to a child...it was for me. The stories are enchanting, well-written and beautifully illustrated. Hindu mythology is very complex, but in this book the stories are clearly told. I especially liked the "personal touch" where the author has sprinkled in her own experiences and what the stories mean to her. The joint family system she grew up in was nostalgic for me (I also grew up in such a family) and would help explain this lifestyle to those unfamiliar with it. To sum up: a fascinating collection of stories and the pictures are pure eye-candy. I highly recommend this book.

A couple years ago, I found this book in a box of other used books each selling for a couple quarters and decided I'd buy it for my mother's birthday. I guess I secretly wanted to read it myself, but it was lost in the shuffle of things before either of us was given the chance to read it. Recently, I went to New Hampshire, and found it in my family's cabin. If you're someone who, like me, does in fact judge a book by it's cover, you would have been drawn to this book immediately. The 1969 edition that I have (I guess my mother didn't want it after all) has a painting on the cover of a girl standing on a cliff over the waves smashing into the rocks below. This scene was what persuaded me into reading the first page.

What a mystery. A widow works incognito as a piano teacher to solve the mystery of her sister's disappearance. The title may give it away, but throughout the book, the reader is given many chances to figure out who, how, and why before it is actually revealed. There is an eerie "haunted" mansion, lots of shocking secrets, desire, and many disturbing encounters. This was a perfect introduction to Victoria Holt. Read it, you'll like it.

Victoria Holt does it again in yet another spectcular Gothic romance, full of suspense and chilling atmosphere. A very good read for those cozy nights by the fire...

Victoria Holt in this book had really made me shivered. when I started reading the book I could not stop she has this way of attracting the reader to keep reading till the end, there are some parts of the book that really made my hair stood up especially when Caroline was sinking in the shivering sands, she made me really feel it. I liked her style very much and am looking to read more of her books. Read this book and you will ask for more, I am sure!

It seems to me that the authors' objective here was to cram in the 1001 examples in as few pages as possible. Yes, it is all there, but for me there are way too few examples and not nearly enough explanation.

I have found that the books that provide little quizzes where I get to apply what I just learned, then find the correct answers in the book, help me to learn much faster, much easier, and in a much more enjoyable way.

Perhaps if you are a teacher and already know 80% of these pitfalls, you will appreciate having all this information, neatly organized for a quick review. But if you are a student like me, you will probably find this pretty boring and very, very difficult to remember.

I would recommend to you "The Ultimate Spanish Review and Practice" by Gordon and Stillman or "Advanced Spanish Grammar" by Prado if you want comprehensive workbooks on grammar pitfalls. Both are loaded with examples and exercises you can do.

If you want to improve your Spanish and don't need one book that covers it all, I'd highly recommend both workbooks by Dorothy Richmond, "Spanish Verb Tenses" and "Spanish Pronouns and Prepositions." These both are interesting, fun, and presented with so many examples and practice exercises that you can really learn the material and REMEMBER it! I can't begin to say enough good things about these two workbooks.

I have a zillion Spanish language books. This was the one that filled in all the gaps in my Spanish language education. I highly recommend it!

This book is extremely helpful, because it points out the right and wrong way to do things and gives you many rules to follow.

Kimberly Holt and Sharon Creech both write of strong young female protagonists living in rural settings with eccentric and endearing family members. Following Zach Beaver and Walk 2 Moons, when I compare Holt's LA Sky and Cadillac with Creech's Ruby Holler and Chasing Redbird, Holt wins--hands down. She simply has a better mastery of this genre.

Cadillac is just a delightful story; chock full of eccentric characters and humor in a quaint, rural setting in the year that Neil Armstrong walked the moon. Time after time, Jaynell, the protagonist, makes you smile and chuckle with her one line "zingers" that speak her opinions on everything from "white trash" to her coquetish sister, Racine. The humor is perfect for the primary audience of children as well as adults.

The best zinger of all occurs in the second paragraph of page 137. Jaynell's parents have just returned from a getaway weekend of reconciliation and romance at the lakeside trailer of Uncle Floyd. Jaynell tells the reader, "Mama seemed different...even Daddy seemed to have a lift in his walk...Uncle Floyd had been right...there was nothing catching a fine bass wouldn't cure." Children will laugh but adults will find the word play in the last line and howl!

There is much for children to experience and learn in this story. Don't miss sharing it with your students.

Dancing In The Cadillac Lights was a very well written book. I like the way that Kimberly Willis Holt describes her characters. For example, she gives a very good description of Jaynell. She tells that Jaynell is a tom boy and she is "not a girlish girl." The story is about a family that lives in a small town, Antler, Texas, and everybody in the town always hears everybody's business. Everybody in this family of four are the same, except for there is one oddball and that is Jaynell. One day Jaynell's grandpap becomes sick and has to move in with Jaynell and her family, and over the time that grandpap has to stay with that family, grandpap and Jaynell get a better bond that takes them closer together. So overall Dancing In Cadillac Lights was a good, even though it was short, but you could read it anytime.

I can turn my head to the right as we pass a little grey shack on the new blacktop road and see a big green Cadillac sitting in the dirt driveway. Wonder how those folk can afford that, I might wonder as we whiz by. Kimberly Holt has the answers in her book "Dancing in Cadillac Light". The story, read in one sitting, swept me along because I know these people or maybe their "kin". Growing up in small town Louisiana and living in East Texas, I know first hand that Mrs. Holt has nailed this time and place down perfectly. That's what I like so much about all her books. They are about real places, and especially real people.

In "Banned" Alice Walker continues to do for her readers what she has done throughout her writing career: challenges us. She challenges our ideas, our perceptions, and our life choices. This is a large part of why her writing is such wonderful literature and excellent teaching material.

To Walker's credit, much of this book is devoted to the ideas of those who oppose the inclusion of her works in state-wide CLAS tests. She could have easily written the book with only opinions in support of her own. However, were she to do that then she would be as guilty as those who oppose her without ever having read her stories in their entirety.

It is unfair to take any piece of art or literature (including the Bible, of which this is often done) and judge its value solely on specific quotes taken out of context. Neither Walker's nor any other artist's brilliance is given justice when this happens.

Reading is usually a solitary experience -- the reader engaged with the writer's words. That relationship can be enlarged with reading groups and in English classrooms. Banned further expands the relationship between reader and writer. What happens when what we read, or what teachers assign students to read, is challenged as inappropriate? The book's focus is the controversial decision by the California State Board of Education to remove two of Alice Walker's stories, "Roselily" and "Am I Blue?" from the 1994 California Learning Assessment System (CLAS) test. The book includes both stories, as well as an excerpt from The Color Purple, and nearly forty pages of letters to the editor and transcripts of the public hearing held by the California State Board of Education in response to the decision to remove the stories from the CLAS test

"Roselily," a short story of an African-American single mother marrying a Muslim man, and "Am I Blue?" a reflective essay about a woman's musings of her place in the world and the relationships with others in that world, are worthwhile reading in themselves. I found them both to be provocative pieces for different reasons. As a high school English teacher, I would use -- and have used -- both in my classes. Of course, the pieces have characteristics I want my students to learn and possess: voice, passion, writing with a purpose in both fiction and non-fiction forms. They are, indeed, controversial; but shouldn't writing provoke us to not just think about our world, but perhaps, to re-think our place in the world around us?

Banned's focus, however, is not the literary power of Alice Walker, but the power of her ideas. In the nearly forty pages of materials that either support or criticize the Board's decision to pull the pieces from the CLAS test, we witness the heart of the argument between censorship and free speech. "Roselily" was attacked as being "anti-religious" while "Am I Blue?" was challenged as being "anti-meat eating." Good argument has both emotion and logic in it; the editorials and the hearing transcripts reveal both the emotion and the logic in the censorship argument. Some of the arguments on both sides are heavily laden with emotion that distort the issue; others use emotional appeals very effectively to help prove their point. Some arguments attack the Board's decision as politically correct and motivated by the wrong reasons. Others reveal that there are clear thinking people on both sides of the issue, people who make a logical defense of their own positions whether in supportive or critical of the California State Board of Education's decision. As one who leans toward the side of free speech and is very cautious about pulling materials from library shelves or from a class reading list, I was impressed with several of the arguments supportive of the Board.

Alice Walker's stories cause us to examine how we live our lives, cause us to question our beliefs, cause us to wonder about our relationships in our world. Similarly, Banned makes us think about what we read, and what we ask our students and our children to read. If you're a teacher, this small book will cause you to think about the readings that we give our students. As a parent, hopefully, you will ask your children what they are reading and what discussions they are having in their classes. As members of a democratic society, we will all ask what we should do with ideas that that may conflict with our own ideas. This book, a book of dialogue, really, about the issue of censorship, should become a focal point for further dialogue.

This book is a must read for any serious Walker fan.It tells you a lot about the war behind the scenes to get books like The Color Purple removed from schools and libraries."Banned" is an important companion piece to Walker's books.The book brought up some issues I'd never thought of when I was reading the books.

I loved this book. Tom Holt is a wordsmith, a genuine magician. This is British humor at it's best. It's odd that British television and movie comedy is mind-numbingly stupid (excepting Fawlty Towers and some of Monty Python of course), but that the very best humorous writing comes from the U.K.

Tom Holt tackles the 'Flying Dutchman' myth, that an old Dutch seaman is cursed to sail the seas forever. Holt tells us how Wagner got it a tad wrong. In actuality the seaman drank an immortality elixir. Hilarious stuff. I love reading about Sebastian, the seaman who keeps jumping from the crow's nest to kill himself.

This ranks among the best books I've ever read, up there with Douglas Adams, Stephen Donaldson, & Tolkien. I recommend this for everyone.

I found this to be one of Holt's better novels. He doesn't give in to the temptation to be totally flippant, as he sometimes does in his later novels; out of the three published in the U.S., I think this is definitely the best. You still might want to look into importing some of his other books (he's really quite prolific).

Although I subsequently read and was a bit disappointed by Tom Holt's other books, Flying Dutch was one of the best books I have ever read. "Hitchhiker" fans will find the same absurdities, wild use of language, cynicism, and underlying frustration with the universe that Adams conveys. I have been looking for it for awhile & am sorry to find it's not readily available

I just could not get into this book, and as this is not the first V. Holt book I've read, I think I will just not like her writing style.

It was just that I could not feel what the character was feeling. The story is told from the first person point of view, and instead of that making her emotions more vivid to the reader, the narrator seemed to take a detacted voice to everything. I did not feel her hatred for the "Demon Doctor," though "Anna" said she hated him, there was never any real sense that it was true. When she fell for him I didn't feel the passion. I couldn't even feel her passion for nursing. I know they were all there, but just because she said they were, and her actions vaguely reinforced it. There was never any real action in the story either. There was never a confrontation or a real climax.

The story wasn't written badly, and the idea of the story was good too. There just wasn't that something extra in the story to make it great.

All in all, the story didn't make me cry, laugh, angry, passionate, or even content. I was just indifferent to the characters, and I would frankly prefer to hate a book or its chacaters, then at least I know it touched me somehow.

This was the first Holt book I have ever read. This was such a good book that after I read it I was on the lookout for more. Her boks are a wonderful combo of the great writing elements: suspense, history, romance and adventure. Her books make you feel like you are there. It's unreal.

if you've never read a victoria holt book than this one you would love it is the 12th victoria holt book i read

How difficult is it to attempt something very imposing at later years? Holt writes of this experience of taking up the cello at fifty and his resultant joys and journey.

A lifelong student, Holt is his own person. Learning from himself and his world, and everything in them that will help him achieve. He makes good points about fear and disappointment building barriers to improvement. The battle between competing voices of critique and edification, of between differing interests, e.g. Holt's musician vs. writer.

All this is comforting and inspiring for the adult learner in each of us. Attempting to pick up the oboe in my fifties, having abandoned it at 14, understand much of what Holt communicates so well. However, his issues of tuning and fret memory are replaced for the double reedist by the ever trying reed dilemma.

I did not profit from the lengthy recall of his music past.

This touching and useful sharing of music growth will stimulate and inspire aspiring musicians of all levels. Learning to be a learner is a wonderful thematic gift of this work.

John Caldwell Holt, like Ivan Illych, was a long-time rebel educator who felt that the general public education system could sometimes do more harm than good when it comes to instilling in children a life-long love for learning. But in this particular book, Holt is sending a message to those in their golden years who think they've passed the prime of learning. Taking up the cello at an advanced age, then putting it down due to work and travel pressures, then taking it up again into his 50s and beyond, Holt wants to show by example that getting older doesn't mean you can't pursue your dreams.

Like Wayne Booth's book on the love of amateur cello playing, Holt's book shows how the pursuit of amateur cello playing is available to almost anyone with the drive to put in the requisite practice hours and gather with likeminded people to practice their craft.

If you put down your childhood instrument decades ago, or never picked one up in the first place, Holt can inspire you through his example to consider taking it up.

If you've regret giving up violin lessons back in sixth grade, think "if only I had stuck with it" when you hear Yo Yo Ma play, and you think fondly of the neglected instrument collecting dust in the attic, this book may be for you, providing a jump start to get you back into music. Holt is passionate about his cello, about music, about improving. He inspires courage -- the courage to start something new and work through the frustrations of being a older beginner (whose skills are surpassed by a Suzuki-trained child, no doubt). Holt dives in to his instrument with a seriousness and commitment that I doubt most adult learners would have (hours of practice, playing in community orchestras) -- but it's an inspiring read, nonetheless.

Victoria Holt really knows how to spin a yarn, and I've really enjoyed her other books. This one clips along and has some interesting plots turns, but you never really respect the main character, Cordelia, because of her attraction to a man who doesn't exhibit a great deal of solid character, and in fact in one scene attempts to rape her. At the end of the book I felt like her life would go downhill from there. Also, I guessed the keys to the mystery very early in the book.

I do not own the book but I have read it and it is terrific for someone who loves a good mystery, anticipation for romance, and enjoys the history of the 18th century. This is an old-fashioned romantic novel and is the best. I have read most of her novels and she always writes in 1st person which makes you feel like you are the character that she is writing about and that you are apart of this mystery and romance.

With the mystery part of it, she keeps it suspenseful enough to carry it throughout the novel and has some interesting twists to the key behind the mystery.

The romantic part of it is not so graphically detailed. The main character ends up finding romance but it's exciting and the thrill behind it is that the character keeps her guard up trying to resist this man's charms. There is the thrill behind the man that's peristently pursuing her for romantic reasons and the possibility for love. The author always makes the male character a man that might have quite an exciting past but he always manages to respect the main character that he is pursuing.

She has been my favorite writer since my mother made a recommendation on this. You can imagine how some books may be dry and not capture your interest. I can read this book many times more!

I loved this book so much, I re-read it as soon as I finished.