5 Stars!!!

BlEsSeD bE!!!

In this novel, Alice and Patrick are getting married, Pamela is pregnant, and Elizabeth is buying a car. Not to mention Karen shoplifting and Jill burying her grandmother! What? Well, it's all part of the Critical Choices unit in Alice's 8th grade class: everyone receives a hypothetical situation and solves it.

This book was filled with humor, especially when Alice and her friends try to solve their situations! Teenages can really relate to this book. :) Be sure to read all of the other "Alice" books!

You're going to ask yourself right up the front: Do I need to have another book like this? Star Wars Incredible Cross-Sections basically gives detailed information about vehicles and spacecraft in the galaxy far, far away. But don't The Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels, A Guide to the Star Wars Universe, The Star Wars Encyclopedia, a Starlog blueprint magazine or two, and assorted editions of West End Games RPG sourcebooks all do that in one form or another?

Oh, yes. But not like this.

X-RAY VISION The review copy I received revealed truly "incredible," intricate drawings like in no other Star Wars book to date. Illustrators Jennsen and Chasemore (who do this type of work for jet aircraft, military vehicles and other real world machinary) put more detail into these drawings than a scanner can adequately show you.

What they've done is rip away parts of the exterior and interior of various vehicles and spacecraft to show you, from a 3/4 view, the hallways, hangers, machinary and other inner systems and components both familiar and newly-created. For example, you'll get to see the hallway from the Millennium Falcon cockpit lead to the interior where Chewbacca threatened arm-rippage and Ben patiently opened a new world for farmboy Luke Skywalker - and you can see those characters in position!

Author David West Reynolds (who also wrote Star Wars: The Visual Dictionary) has obviously spent long hours researching his topic. In these drawings, you'll find the hallway on the Tantive IV where Vader choked Captain Antilles, as well as the passageway where Princess Leia sent Artoo Detoo on his mission to find Obi-Wan Kenobi. You'll also discover an exquisite gatefold unlocking the interior mysteries of the first Death Star - including hanger bays and tractor beam stations.

From the systems of Boba Fett's Slave I to the workings and troop/storage capacity of the Imperial's All Terrain Transports, this book gives the Star Wars fan a true visual feel of how these machines would be put together.

It's almost a shame that so many of the other books I mentioned previously have already been released - many fans may feel put off buying a book of a topic that seems more than adequately covered previously. But if they don't, they'll be missing a real treat.

ECHO STATION Grade: A

I have read The Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels, but I found the information contradictory to previously published material, and a bit amateurish. Incredible Cross Sections does such a well-thought-out job, and is worded so well, that you almost forget these things don't exist! The gate-fold spread of the Death Star is absolutely incredible! The detail is also carefully executed, right down to the gold-foil insulation on the air ducts in the Millennium Falcon. Everything a Star Wars Technophile could want is in this book. I highly recommend buying the companion book as well: The Star Wars Visual Dictionary.

All I can say is, More! I would love to see another edition of this book containing some of the other vehicles.

Highly Recommended!

I knew nothing about yoga before I started, so I intentionally chose this book for it's defined program and limited set of poses, as opposed to others that have a smorgasbord of poses that I could dabble in. As other reviewers have pointed out, some of the poses are not easy, and there are many that I still probably only get 25% right because I don't have the strength and flexibility, but the honest effort I make is paying off.

I found myself getting more and more out of shape because nagging injuries stopped me every time I tried to start an exercise program. My formerly active lifestyle was slowing way down, and I just felt bad -- and felt bad about myself as a result. Bikram's yoga has turned that around in 2 short months. I've lost some weight, gained a tremendous amount of flexibility, added muscle tone, and feel a lot better about my long term health outlook.

I do the full program (it takes me about an hour and 15 minutes) at least 4 times a week, usually 5 or 6. I'll probably take a class with an instructor eventually.

Is Bikram's yoga the best way? I don't know. But it's working for me.

~Joan Mazza, author of DREAM BACK YOUR LIFE and DREAMING YOUR REAL SELF

A great thing about the photographs is that he uses a variety of ages and body types so that no one is excluded. Thin, fat, young and old are all there. And I was delighted with Bikram's sense of humor--he's a great showman! He's not afraid to be silly and by doing so he takes some of the sanctimoniousness out of yoga.

The answer is YES, in that Reynolds is taking a somewhat different
approach to the subject. Chaikin's book is relatively long and
detailed, but has no illustrations and is fairly nontechnical.
Reynolds' book is substantially shorter, heavily illustrated, and has
a much more technical bent.

All three of these virtues make Reynold's book probably a better bet
for the casual reader, someone who is interested in the Moon flights
but would be perfectly happy with a tidy summing up, focusing in
reasonable detail on the flights themselves but giving a fairly brief
discussion of the background.

Even the more serious reader will find the book's layout and
illustrations outstanding. It's crammed full of pretty pictures and
paintings, ranging from the Chesley Bonestell artwork of the
1950s Colliers / Disney "space program" to fine NASA photography of
the Moon missions. Serious readers may also find the technical
"sidebars" on items such as the "Moon buggy" and unfulfilled advanced
Apollo missions to have some very interesting information in them.

Those who would want to understand the broader scope of the Apollo
program, including its political background, would probably prefer
Chaikin's A MAN ON THE MOON. Reynolds' tends to ignore the politics
behind the Moon program, which in itself could be regarded as a
rational decision to focus on some things and ignore others.

Unfortunately, to get to the most negative comments I can make about
Reynolds' book, the author occasionally does get on a soapbox, doing a
little flag-waving and sometimes playing "eager young space cadet".
A bit of patriotism is fine, of course, but in a few places I felt
as though I was reading the text with someone playing STARS & STRIPES
FOREVER on a kazoo in the background. As far as being a space
cadet goes ... well, yes, I admire the astronauts and believe that
Werner von Braun was a remarkable man in many ways, but the astronauts
were not Boy Scouts, and much more to the point, von Braun was noted
for his arrogance as well as brilliance, and he'd got his hands dirty
working for the Nazis in a way that would never quite come clean.

The soapbox exercises are infrequent and can be ignored. This is
fortunate, because APOLLO: THE EPIC JOURNEY TO THE MOON is otherwise
a creditable piece of work. I give it four stars and not five to
emphasize that not everyone might want to buy this book. Serious
students of the space program might want something more substantial.
However, I think almost anybody would like to page through such a
pretty book, and casual readers should find it both interesting and
informative. I think adolescents would be particularly taken with it.

I did find one small bug in the book: a picture that is supposed to
be of the launch of the first Earth satellite, Sputnik I, is actually
of a Soviet manned space launch, a Vostok or some later capsule.
This is not a killer bug by any means, just listing it as a minor
correction.

Reynolds writes about the first of three "sci-fi" segments of ABC-TV's Disneyland that aired on March 9, 1955: "Man In Space explained the challenges that would face humans traveling into space and detailed von Braun's concepts for a reusable space shuttle, dramatizing one of its missions and ending with a spectacular night landing...It was watched by an audience of 100 million. [It] was so popular and so provocative...that President Eisenhower [till then, a doubting Thomas] called Disney to order a copy for review by his staff and the Pentagon. It felt to many like a new age was just around the corner."
Man And The Moon, which was televised the following year, was "a preview of what would become the real Apollo 8...portrayed realistically with actors and included a mysterious sighting of unexplained lights on the surface of the Moon, strangely prefiguring events that would occur during the Apollo missions."

At 36, Dr. Reynolds, who has published scholarly articles on archaeology and ancient exploration, also authored the New York Times #1 bestseller Star Wars: Episode 1, The Visual Dictionary, among other books. However, he is truly at the top of his space game here. This is fascinating stuff, and Reynolds writes in a clear, concise, and entertaining style that makes even technophobes like yours truly easily comprehend one of the most spectacular - and complex -- scientific and historical achievements of the last century.

With a "you are there" Foreword by Apollo 7's Mission Commander Wally Schirra, and the cooperation of NASA and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, the reader can be assured of the accuracy of the detailed facts and figures Reynolds presents.

Richly illustrated with some rare and never-before-seen photos, it also includes many new rocket cutaways, and custom-keyed maps and panoramas that put you more lucidly in the lunar landscape.

Photographed for the first time is the famous memo to LBJ in which JFK asks, "Do we have a chance of beating the Soviets by putting a laboratory in space, or by a trip around the moon, or by a rocket to land on the moon, or by a rocket to go to the moon and back with a man?"

(Amusing to think that nowadays, American multimillionaires like 60-year-old money manager Dennis Tito and 23-year-old Lance Bass of the boy band N'Sync so casually shell out [$]million apiece to the Russians for the privilege of becoming Soyuz cosmonauts.)

However, this merely scratches the surface of the moon, for Reynolds pilots us to an ethereal kind of Tomorrowland in his Jules Vernesque conclusion: "We will one day surpass the achievement of Apollo. In reaching beyond it, we will at last fulfill its promise, a promise that lies waiting today, waiting for anyone to look up at the glow of the night sky, a promise recorded in the footprints on the Moon."

It is the profoundly inspiring Afterword by Gene Cernan, Mission Commander of Apollo 17, which brilliantly encapsulates Reynolds' comprehensive tome.

"One cannot behold all the lands and seas of the Earth in a single glance and remain unchanged by the experience," says Cernan. "Returning to Earth from the Moon poses the challenge of finding a perspective within yourself that can encompass what has happened to you, that can accommodate the matters of ordinary life as well as the memory of having looked into the endlessness of space and time from another world. I once stood upon the dust of the Moon and looked up, struggling to comprehend the enormity of the message that we found in Apollo. All that is here. In this book..."

No way, no how, could I have said it better.

It shares many features with the great comedies - the notion of the forest as a magic or transformative space away from tyrannical society ('A Midsummer night's dream'); the theme of unrequited love and gender switching from 'Twelfth night'; the exiled Duke and his playful daughter from 'The Tempest'. But these comparisons only point to 'AYLI''s comparative failure (as a reading experience anyway) - it lacks the magical sense of play of the first; the yearning melancholy of the second; or the elegiac complexity of the third.

It starts off brilliantly with a first act dominated by tyrants: an heir who neglects his younger brother, and a Duke who resents the popularity of his exiled brother's daughter (Rosalind). there is an eccentric wrestling sequence in which a callow youth (Orlando) overthrows a giant. Then the good characters are exiled to Arden searching for relatives and loved ones.

Theoretically, this should be good fun, and you can see why post-modernist critics enjoy it, with its courtiers arriving to civilise the forest in the language of contemporary explorers, and the gender fluidity and role-play; but, in truth, plot is minimal, with tiresomely pedantic 'wit' to the fore, especially when the melancholy scholar-courtier Jacques and Fool Touchstone are around, with the latter's travesties of classical learning presumably hilarious if you're an expert on Theocritus and the like.

As an English pastoral, 'AYLI' doesn't approach Sidney's 'Arcadia' - maybe it soars on stage. (Latham's Arden edition is as frustrating as ever, with scholarly cavilling creating a stumbling read, and an introduction which characteristically neuters everything that makes Shakespeare so exciting and challenging)

Ah, sweet Rosalind. In her are encapsulated so many ideas about the nature of woman. She is first pictured in a rather faux-Petrarchan manner. This quickly fades as an intelligent woman comes to the fore. While the intelligence remains, she is also torn by the savage winds of romantic love. Rosalind, in all her complexity and self-contradiction, is a truly modern female character.

Most of the women in Shakespeare's tragedies and historical plays are either window dressing (as in Julius Caesar) or woefully one-sided (Ophelia, Lady Macbeth). This is not the case with Rosalind. Rather than being marginalized, she is the focus of a good chunk of the play. Instead of being static and [standard], she is a complex evolving character.

When Rosalind first appears, she outwardly looks much like any other lady of the court. She is a stunning beauty. She is much praised for her virtue. Both of these elements factor in the Duke's decision to banish or [do away with] her.

Rosalind falls in love immediately upon seeing Orlando. In this way she at first seems to back up a typically courtly idea of "love at first sight." Also, she initially seems quite unattainable to Orlando. These are echoes of Petrarchan notions that proclaim love to be a painful thing. This dynamic is stood on its head following her banishment.

Rosalind begins to question the certainty of Orlando's affection. She criticizes his doggerel when she finds it nailed to a tree. Rather than wilting like some medieval flower, she puts into effect a plan. She seeks to test the validity of her pretty-boy's love. In the guise of a boy herself, she questions the deceived Orlando about his love.

Yet Rosalind is not always so assured. Her steadfastness is not cut and dried. Composed in his presence, Rosalind melts the second Orlando goes away. She starts spouting romantic drivel worthy of Judith Krantz. Even her best friend Celia seems to tire of her love talk. This hesitating, yet consuming passion is thrown into stark relief with her crystal clear dealings with the unwanted advances of the shepherdess Phebe.

Rosalind contradicts herself in taking the side of Silvius in his pursuit of Phebe. She seeks to help Silvius win the love of Phebe because of his endearing constancy. Yet the whole reason she tests Orlando is the supposed inconstancy of men's affections.

This idea of Male inconstancy has made its way down to the present day. Men are seen, in many circles, as basically incapable of fidelity. Though a contradiction to her treatment of Silvius' cause, Rosalind's knowing subscription to pessimistic views on the constancy of a man's love places her on the same playing field as many modern women.

Rosalind takes charge of her own fate. Until and even during Shakespeare's own time women largely were at the mercy of the men around them. This is satirized in Rosalind's assuming the appearance of a man. Yet she had taken charge of her life even before taking on the dress and likeness of a man. She gives her token to Orlando. She decides to go to the Forest. She makes the choice of appearing like a man to ensure her safety and the safety of Celia.

Rosalind finally finds balance and happiness when she comes to love not as a test or game, but as an equal partnership. Shakespeare is clearly critiquing the contemporary notions of love in his day. His play also condemns society's underestimation and marginalization of women. However, the Bard's main point is more profound.

As You Like It makes it clear that the world is never picture perfect, even when there are fairy-tale endings. Men and women both fail. Love is the most important thing. With love all things are possible.