This book is a masterpiece of modern legal history, effectively covering the fall of classicism and the rise and decline of progressivism in legal thought. This second in his series on the American Law is much less controversial than the first, and lends much to the in-depth scrutiny of the individuals behind progressivism in the period surrounding World Wars I and II. This is a must read for any law student with an interest in the foundations of what they learn every day.

There is a small, independent bookshop in New York dedicated to the Art of Travel. It is there that I've spent many happy hours looking through new and used books and maps- some treasures and some highly disposable.

One of the favorite places I've ever visited is Rome, Italy. And this book by H. V. Morton which is shamefully out of print, is positively the finest I've read on this forever changing, "eternal" city.

I'd never heard of Morton, but soon learned that in 1957, when this volume was published, he was "the most widely read living travel author." And now, according to research I've done online, every single one of his books is out of print. And he wrote quite a few: "A Stranger In Spain," "In Search Of London," "In The Steps Of St. Paul," et. al. Morton's method is simple and works perfectly: first a short history of Rome, then a diary-like collection of his thoughts and impressions. There are also several, wonderful photographs including a charming, color one of The Vatican's Swiss Guard---one man "at attention;" the other looking as if he had better things to do. Everything in the book is well-researched and very interestingly written, yet his description of the politics and history of The Vatican is especially fascinating, as is his description of Julius Caesar's final days. But the book is not all history. Not at all. We also read about the author's trip to an open market, Hadrian's Villa, and I particularly liked the passage about Rome in the rain, since when I was there, it rained every single day for twenty days. This is a book of fact that reads like a fine novel.

It is an absolute crime that Morton's books cannot be more easily purchased both for travellers and for people whose hobby is reading about travel. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Dr. Louis Morton's THE FALL OF THE PHILIPPINES is the backbone of all books books written about the 1st Philippine Campaign of the Second World War. Well researched and documented, Morton was able to blend historical, personal, political and official military records in creating his work. No wonder it is the official US military history about the defeat and surrender on one of the largest US Army command in the Pacific. Morton's book also gives a lot of emphasis on Military Operations in the Philippines. Among them are the North Luzon Force, The South Luzon Force, WPO III, the Withdrawal to Bataan and Corregidor, the Surrender, the operations of the Visayas and Mindanao Forces and the 14th Japanese Imperial Army. The books contains a lot of maps, diagrams, table of organizations and photographs. A must have for those readers or researchers who would like to seek knowledge and answers about one of the greatest defeat American Arms has ever suffered.

This book has a very cute storyline that appeals to my toddler and is a great way to learn some words for food and eating. The illustrations are beautiful and the hardcover is great quality. I highly recommend this book as well as the others in this series.

Mort Marcus, one of America's hidden literary treasures, has become a superb master of the prose poem. One of this author's attractive qualities is that, unlike many poets, Marcus doesn't seem to be out to show off, or prove anything. The pure joy of re-inventing the world, inside and out, through language and imagination, seems alchemy enough.

A seasoned writer who clearly respects readers, so much so that he stays out of the way, Marcus invites us to co-compose with him. By opening my heart, my many minds, my memories to these magnetic pages, I quickly learned that my own enthrallment would power the journey. It was those very faculties that enabled me to richly co-create with the author all of the unimaginably tantalizing, mini-stories, thumbnail histories, legends, pictures, myths, sketches, murals, and musicals crammed into this new volume, which is as lovingly conceived as the book itself (from the legendary Hanging Loose press) is designed.

Often -- as in "My Father's Hobby," in which we meet a reflective man who collects actual specimens of sneezes on microscopic slides -- it's the situation, the little storyline, that captivates. Marcus knows how to make believable his every premise before he nudges his spellbound collaborators to let us know it's OK to spin out or float off into unexpected directions or realms. Try "The Girl Who Became My Grandmother," "The Man Who Kicked the Universe in the Ass," "How I Came to Own the World," or the darkly yet delightfully Slavic selection called "The Mussorgsky Question."

At other times, it is language, the physically affecting beauty of it, that sends a shiver up the spine. Such delectably sayable prose poems as "Kisses," "Explanations of Night," "The Oceans," or "The Big Broadcast,"("What is immortal in us is not moral but those feelers of light merging with the next object we touch, those antennae surrounding us like radiant body hairs that sipped from something else that sipped from us whatever, at that instant, we were."). Or take "The Swallow," or the riveting title piece, "When People Could Fly."

Readers weary of the regulation whiney, ho-hum, stand-up confessional poem, which has overwhelmed American poetry for far too long, will smile and nod and shake their heads as they sample and chomp down into these stunning prose poems.

Don't be surprised if you wake up in the middle of the night and find those vestigial wings sprouting back out. I couldn't get enough of this delectable stuff, and there is nothing else like it anywhere

Wrestling to Rasslin' provides a straightforward analysis of American Professional Wrestling. Written by two college professors (and rasslin' fans), the book does an outstanding analysis of the psychology behind the success of the sport

The story of a relatively small but deadly firefight brings to light USA's failed foreign policy regarding Africa's Somalia. Bowden's powerful description of the battle in Mogadishu over one 24 hour period is as captivating a story as I have read in years. Bowden tells his battle story from the viewpoints of its participants from the general down to the private. America's modernized military might was tested and it won, or did it.

I applaud Bowden's efforts, his book is excellently researched and heart rendering. He captured both the people and the events so vividly that when you read this story you can visualize the fire-fights, the wounded, and the horror. The fateful decisions made by the General Garrison will be assessed later by historians but Bowden leaves the success of the mission up to us to decide.

Since the book is labeled Military History I would like to point out that it is not strictly a text-book history. Bowden's work breathes life into his soldiers. This is no dry history, you hear the soldiers speak and behave as men (or as boys, as the case may be) during the attack. This is probably one of the best facets of his book, it reads like a novel.

This battle will be analyzed by historians 25 - 50 years from now and they can apply the true historical impact of this attack. Bowden makes no claim to be a historian and even shies away from assessing blame (which historians usually have no problem doing). Bowden's perspective is that of a journalist, a viewer of events and he makes no historical analysis but recounts the activities before, during and after October 3rd, 1993. He offers us an impartial view of this battle and for this he should be congratulated. Faced with the number of dead and wounded USA soldiers I think it must have been tough to stand on the sidelines.

This is excellent book.

This is an excellent piece of modern American history. Black Hawk Down is also a wake up call to any policy makers who have taken the Gulf War as proof positive that Military intervention will always work in the new century.

Mark Bowden manages to give the reader a good impression of the overall situation in Somalia in addition to the electrifying events of that ill fated mission in October. This is a very good aspect of the book, because it is here that the general reader and future policy maker will gain the most insight. Technological superiority does not insure an easy military success. Gunships and night vision goggles do not equal victory.

As the battle rages through the streets of Somalia, you will find yourself having to take some time off, in order to catch your breath. Bowden's writing is as telling as Spielburg's directing in Saving Private Ryan. Not only is there an honest and smooth account of combat, but the humor that manifests itself in these terrible situations is also brought out with ease.

I did find myself fliping to the index when a name came back that I recognized but could not remember exactly- that is one of the few shortfalls Bowden's tale posesses: an amazing quantity of characters. They are hard to keep track of. I needed to remind myself that I was reading history, and not an adventure novel. It shamed me to think that I could read like that, but you might find yourself falling into the same trap that Bowden's prose led me. All in all, I am glad that Bowden has give us the story the way he has, with as few as possible ommitted details and in a way that is so easy to access.

Bowden's account of the October 1993 Battle of Mogadishu in which eighteen American soldiers were slain is a gripping blow-by-blow account of this horrific fifteen-hour battle. He has interviewed dozens of Army Rangers, Delta force operators, pilots, and Somalis, combed through the archives and pieced together the battle in a running minute-by-minute chronology that puts the reader in harm's way. This is a tough book to put down. The soldiers are put into context, their lives, their training, their camaraderie, but are yanked out of any political picture. They are soldiers, doing their jobs and trying to stay alive and complete a mission. Aside from a brief epilogue, "Black Hawk Down" does not seek to characterize the broader mission in Somalia from start to finish nor frame the reason for these troops' presence in Mogadishu, nor engage in any real post-mortem. This is the story of a brief and now nearly-forgotten battle. It is gory and heart-wrenching and full of chaos and noise. It is a powerful book. Not a political analysis but a true story of war.

Before I read the book, I saw the Spike Lee film. The film was good, the book was great...blowing the film away!! Sadly, "Spikeroo" missed a lot of the raw power and message of the book in the crossover. As I read the book, I constantly thought of the line from the film, "...I decided to dedicate my life to telling the truth to the white man's face." The book tells the truth about everyone and everything they're involved in...white, black, class, money, culture, consumer debt...everything! Many think of Malcolm X as a stubborn militant, but nothing is further from the truth. His life is an epic, and many times painful, journey of body, mind and soul across the vast US social landscape of the 1930's to the 1960's. Alex Hailey penned the book in such a warm and technically inviting way that the reader feels like they're sitting with Malcolm over a cup of coffee, engulfed by this one man's life. Every person of any race who calls themself an American needs to read this book at least once...by any means necessary!

I read this book years ago & sill reread captions of it from time to time. When I first started, it was difficult to put down, I couldn't wait to hear what happened next! The absolute best book & autobiography I've ever read in my life!!! An enlightening look into the life of the most brilliant, progressive, strong, influential & misunderstood leader the world has ever seen! Did more for the human rights revolution than any other African-American in history! A must read for all cultures, should be mandatory reading in schools. Paints vividly the hopelessness, despair & pain of poverty & living in the ghetto as an African-American in the wealthiest nation on earth & how one can remake themselves just by 1 idea, thought or decision! Also, reveals a glimmer of truth about Elijah Muhammad & his motives. (there are other sources that go into more detail specifically concerning that)Portrays how 1 man's tireless & selfless efforts to liberate & educate a nation & then have some of the very people he's helping abandon, betray & ultimately kill him. Put this true story of the evolution of a revolutonary and the american dream on your To DO list & get it now!

Biographies are fascinating works of literature. A good biography is a window into someone's life, as well as what they stood for and who they represented. Malcolm X's Autobiography is no exception. Flawlessly rendered by Alex Haley, it documents the truly amazing life of one of Black America's foremost freedom fighters.

Malcolm's intelligence and convictions are apparent through the whole book, from his retrospective look at his childhood years to the present. What is most fascinating about his life are the changes he went through. He started out at the bottom of society, the starving son of a rape-child and a preacher murdered by whites. He went through a brief period at a reform school, then moved to Boston and fell in love with city life. He lived a life of crime in the Harlem streets until he was caught one day, and thrown into prison. There, he studied like a college student and was converted to Islam by his family. He became the Nation of Islam's most devoted speaker, truly believing that the white race was devilish by nature. It was not until after his pilgrimage to Mecca that he realized the possibility of all races living together without conflict.

Malcolm X's brutal honesty, talent, and intelligence were complimented by his complete devotion to his cause and his religion. Malcolm was not afraid to reveal the disturbing truths about the hypocritical white "puppeteers" who control many black people, from the educated to those living in the ghetto. His humility and his true hope for American society remains powerful: "I know that societies often have killed the people who have helped to change those societies. And if I can die having brought any light, having exposed any meaningful truth that will help to destroy the racist cancer that is malignant in the body of America-then, all of the credit is due to Allah. Only the mistakes have been mine." He has not died in vain. This book is an essential perspective into the Afro-American struggle for true liberty and justice, which continues through today.

Everything that you've read so far will eventually fill a deeper meaning!

It was assigned by my English Teacher who seemed to tell us each day what was coming next. At times, it was the most discouraging thing that he could have done, yet in the beginning, it kept the class interested. I sat up many nights reading the book, chapter after chapter.

The novel connects people. As a white Montana girl from the heart of the Rockies, I don't have the culture of Harlem around me. I recommend this literary work of art to any teacher wanting to educate their students. Ellison's book gives insight on the difficulties and betrayal life can hand you. His title adds to the personal side of it. As an Invisible Man the reader never learns the main characters name, simply because it isn't important. A name would not add to the significance of the novel, but the invisibility does. By not having a specific label, the author pulls you into the story line, as if you were the Invisible Man.

Ellison has also incorporated marvelous imagery and breath-taking facts that make this novel a classic. Facts that are told in such a manner that our children will be reading this masterpiece, growing and learning as humans. "As long as there is humanity there will be novel's like this."

"Answer them with yeses." -Grandfather The Invisible Man lives with a haunting rememberance of his Grandfather, and his answer to the indifferences placed on the superiority of the races. Our main character fights with this throughout his life, stuggling to become a man of his own though and disposition. This novel takes you on that journey, revealling one man's ups and downs that eventually leads him into his invisibility.

This is one of those books I was assigned in English class that I didn't want to read. How wrong I was--this makes my short list of the greatest stories ever written. Ellison creates a vivid and shocking picture of America and society's subversion of individual identity in search of something larger. He said soon after the book was published that "Invisible Man" was not just about the black experience in America, it was an account of every person's "invisibility" in a world that tells us how to think of each other. The African-American protagonist is merely a vehicle for Ellison's much broader social commentary. Complex, heart-wrenching, deeply moving and of course beautifully written, this book is a must-read for anyone who thinks they have a grip on the American experience.

"Stephen's task, like ours, was not in creating the uncreated aspects of his race, but of discovering the undiscovered features of his face. Our task is in making ourselves individuals. The conscience of a race is the conscience of its individuals who see, evaluate, record... we create the race by creating ourselves, and to our astonishment we would have created something far more important: we would have created a culture. Why waste time creating a conscience for something that does not exist? For you see, blood and skin do not think!"

Ralph Ellison, INVISIBLE MAN

This book is a treasure. This book is filled with all the elements of masterful storytelling, mythic-level subtext and spellbinding events, psychological depth, multi-dimensional characters and characterizations... it will be patently impossible for you to put it down once you have picked it up. I somehow found a way to avoid this book in high school and college- partly, I'm sure, because it became so fashionable to have a timely opinion on its social relevance that it made not having read it seem subhuman, while simultaneously making the act of reading it seem like an inhumanly boring chore. Thank God the spirit of excellence and truth kept calling me to this book. This one book does for the human soul what the authors of most of the last ten plus years of self-help books, sociological tomes, racial dialogues and popular novels COMBINED have both endeavored to do and practically proclaim could not actually be done in print. I came away from this book feeling rejuvenated, stunned, inspired, engaged, taught, challenged, exhilarated, simultaneously filled with both hope and despair- and never at any time did I stop feeling entertained. I not only felt what the character went through, but the sick side of humanity and how it fought the good in every human being he came across, in an insane, insane world that renders human beings, "invisible".

Ralph Ellison was from the school of writers who endeavored not just to write good, timely books but epic myth/epistles of the human condition wrapped up in the pains, sicknesses and triumphs of the present day experience. He didn't try to write a Black book; he tried to write a human book, about the spirit IN a Black man. He did it. He achieved it. He wrote THE book with this, and made our world that much better.

You will enjoy this book immensely.

I will confess that I'm not wild about Melissa Etheridge's music just because I hear a lot of her songs way too many times on the radio to a point of ad nauseum however in the past year things changed like my attitude towards her. After reading a sample of her biography in an issue of Rolling Stone and seeing a few tv interviews, I immediately became curious and picked up the book.

It is amazing how a person perceives a particular celebrity because of his or her public persona and then have that perception change after reading and/or hearing about the sordid details of his or her past. Melissa Etheridge is one of those celebrities you would think you got pegged but then after reading her book and seeing her on tv a few times in brutally honest tv interviews, there was information about her that I had no idea about. VH1's episode of "Behind the Music" on Melissa didn't even scratch the surface of her past like "The Truth is...My Life in Love and Music".

I thoroughly enjoyed the book on every level. Sure the book tends to come off as something that Andrew Morton would write but at least the information was coming from the horse's mouth, figuratively speaking of course. I was quite surprised to find out information regarding her older sister sexually molesting Melissa but maybe even more surprised to find out what sort of family environment she lived in where emotions weren't really expressed. I was also surprised to read the sordid details regarding Melissa's relationship with Julie Cypher. I never realized how troubled it was because of the public appearances I saw but keep in mind that Melissa is only human. No one is perfect.

"The Truth is...My Life in Love and Music" was compelling. I found myself listening to Melissa's new album "Skin" a few times while reading her book which just fit together nicely. The music and the book are perfect accompaniments. After finishing Melissa's book, I could envision what sort of hell she went through while listening to her album.

Excellent read, highly recommended -- Bought a few more copies and they made excellent presents for the holidays. I couldn't put it down myself and finished the book in a day.
A very down to earth, well-written interesting view of Melissa's life which I will, no doubt, read a few more times.

I think what I enjoyed the most was looking at the handwritten copies of lyrics she wrote when she was a teenager. And the way each chapter was named after a particular song -- Really a lot of insight to be found reading between the lines as well. Getting a glimpse of what Melissa was feeling/thinking at the time she wrote a certain song was simply facinating to me.

Julie really made a mistake, it sounds. ;)

Whether you started out a fan of Melissa's or not, you will be after you read this book. I liked the song "Come to my Window" - that song, and the publicized relationship Melissa had with Julie Cypher were about all I knew of the singer before I heard that she had written a book. Thinking it would be entertaining, I bought it. Entertaining was an understatement. This book is helping me to change my life, or remember it, I should say. In "The Truth is..." Melissa reminds us how important it is to stand in your own truth, to be an active part of your own present and future and to make peace with your past.

This well written, thought provoking book not only makes you feel like you know Melissa better, but like you know yourself better. Like looking into a mirror, "The Truth is..." reminds you that each one of use share the same demons in our past, insecurities in our present, and concerns about our future. This book will help to remind you to look at the truth in your own life, to be who you are. For me, this book has helped me to remember my future.... to remember all of the dreams that I had for myself in love and life, and that, if I believe in me and live for me, I can arrive at the future that I have longed for. Read the book, and let Melissa's truth remind you to embrace your own.