Buildings have been torn down. Streets have been re-routed. Shops have closed, opened then closed again. The cynicism of the Thatcher years has faded. In essence, that magical period that Manchester experienced in the 80's will never be forgotten and cannot be replicated.

Gattenby is thorough in his approach to writing. He covers the essential sites, (i.e. Salford Lads Club, Strangeways Prison & the Cemetery Gates) as well as the more obscure places, (i.e. Anacoats, the Holy Name Church & Crazy Face.)

What's good:
Handy pocket size. Easy to handle. Small enough to fit in your back pocket. Light weight enough to carry with you and not feel bogged down. (Try doing that with the Lonely Planet Europe guide)

Thoroughly researched and clearly written. After having reading it I feel that I've had a fantastic new education on The Smiths.

The book is a complete guide to Manchester as well as the Smiths. The guide is fortified with extensive, bus, train and hotel information. It also provides specific walking directions and includes a fold out map.

The not-so-good
A topographical index would have been a great time-saving method of quickly finding specific places.

I do think it's important to include a historical basis for the city but I was a bit disappointed that the actual "tour" of Manchester doesn't start until the middle of the book. I was eager to jump into the tour from page one.

The Verdict:
I highly recommend this book. If you are visiting the UK (especially Manchester) this book is essential! Don't bother getting on the plane without it..

Even if you don't plan to visit the UK the book is still a great read and I guarantee you'll learn a lot about the Smiths in the process.

Drawing upon a number of basic principles within Physics, such as heat transfer, the fundamental properties of matter, radiation physics, thermonuclear reactions, and nucleosynthesis, the author applies them to explain the birth, evolution and death of stars.

What I like about this book is that the emphasis is on the basic physical principles, bringing them together by means of well explained and simple theoretical models, and then applying them to the high energy systems of stellar structure. The Maths is kept to the necessary minimum, and several "rough" calculations are given to show the relevance of the models to observation.

The problems at the end of the chapters together with hints help to underpin the physical concepts covered. There is at the end of the book also a useful bibliography of other relevant reading.

This book is a lovely introduction to tea, its production and consumption, and its place in custom and everyday life, in China, Japan, India, and Sri Lanka. It is not quite the "handbook" that the publisher claims, however; the author has aimed at a representative, rather than a comprehensive anthology of tea lore and information. For example, she has not described the Japanese tea ceremony in any detailed way. The lists of teas said to be produced in each country are summaries, rather than exhaustive catalogues. The color photographs are most attractive, and the few recipes seem inviting. "Tea in the East" offers a taste of the exotic, and will succeed in tempting many readers to further explorations.

The author has brought together representative documents and provides incisive commentary.

Manchester states that he's no expert on the period, and neither am I, but even I could see the glaring and seemingly endless number of factual errors throughout the book, not to mention the myths (such as that of "la belle Ferroniere" and Francis I) he presents as fact. The book isn't really even about the Middle Ages, aside from twenty or so pages Manchester devotes to outlining that thousand years of European history. The majority of the book is dedicated to Renaissance and post-Renaissance Europe, and a sizable chunk of that is solely concerned with the career of Magellan.

This would be acceptable, of course, if Manchester's "history" wasn't just a rehash of 19th (!) century clichés and stereotypes about the Middle Ages: that is, a Europe composed wholly of mud, blood, sex, torture and ridiculous superstition, utterly worthless and depraved. And although I'm certainly not a fan of the Catholic Church, Manchester's endless cavalcade of largely unsubstantiated potshots at that institution is particularly annoying. If this book was someone's sole source of information on the time period, they'd be excused for thinking that Europe from the fall of Rome to the rediscovery of Classical culture in the Renaissance was pretty much composed of people expiring from sexually transmitted diseases... when they weren't poisoning popes and burning witches, that is.

So, why two stars and not one? A World Lit Only by Fire may be tabloid history, but it could be considered a guilty pleasure if you keep in mind that it's utter nonsense. The portion of the book dedicated to Magellan is also a cut above the rest. Given that the majority of readers will probably be utterly ignorant about this time period, though, it's pretty irresponsible of Manchester to present a bunch of unrelated half-truths and myths as history. He says in his Author's Note--along with various other veiled apologies--that he didn't plan out the writing of this book in advance and it certainly shows.

If you want to read about the time period covered in this book without sacrificing facts for readability (or vice versa), try A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman, the appropriate volumes of The Story of Civilization by Will Durant (The Age of Faith, The Renaissance, and The Reformation) or The Civilization of the Middle Ages by Norman Cantor. They show that reading about this period can be both entertaining and informative, even if there isn't a bloodthirsty, syphilitic twelve year-old bishop on every page.

The book is a basic composite of the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, and as my teacher points out - one of the only books to do so. The format of the book is not good though. It is split into 3 sections, the first being an intro to the transition the people went though, the 2nd focusing on the Church, and the 3rd (the strangest) is a complete biography of Magellan. The first two sections discuss the importance of the Church and the influence of Martin Luther, while the third almost has no relation to the first two sections. The third section tells all about Magellan and his accomplishments, such as circumnavigating the world (he didn't actually circumnavigate the world, he died in the South Pacific) and bringing Catholicism to Fiji.

I found the Magellan section to be very, very entertaining. The problem with the book itself is that it does not flow well; it is almost as though Manchester chose to write about the Renaissance, then at the end tack on his personal narrative of the greatness of Magellan.

If you have to read this book for an AP European History class, which I think is the standard for incoming students, then I would buy this book and really just focus on Magellan, because that is the one thing that will hold your attention. Although unrelated, the Magellan section provides a great look at one of the most important explorers ever.