I am happy I spent the money on the How to Do Your Own Divorce. It is easy to read and gives examples of all the forms you may need to use and how to fill them out. The laws regarding divorce in California are made easy to understand. Also, if there is a law you don't understand or have a question about something you can call the divorce help line for $10.00 a call and $3.50 per minute (kind of steep and I hope I don't have to use this). Once you get the book you will need to download the latest forms. If you want a cd you will have to spend another $5.00 to have it sent to you. Also, if you have a messy divorce you will need to buy a second book to get those questions answered. After looking through the book I've decided I don't have the time to do my own divorce and am going to retain a paralegal to file papers for me. In the back of the book there is a list of paralegal located throughout California. The positive is that what I have learned from this book will make my own divorce a lot easier.

I found this book to be very helpful. Don't get me wrong, California doesn't make getting a divorce easy and there will be a ton of paperwork, but this book makes it possible to get through it yourself. In particular I found the included CD to be extrodinarily useful. The process involves filling out several dozen forms. The included software automatically fills out the route form information for you and is much/much faster than typing them by hand.

Krull had great potential, but it lacked star power and was therefore cut down to the bare minimum production values.

This novelization tells it like it was supposed to be. Better than the movie.

This is one on Foster's best writings. It inthralled me and kept me going with an adventure that didn't slow down. There is also some moral themes. They are in the background and don't scream out at you, leaving you to fully enjoy the story. This book is well worth reading and better than the movie.

I confess to a weakness for biographies of U. S. senators. I seldom see one I don't want to read, and when I saw this one I knew I would have to read it. Smith actually had an amazing career (elected to the House of Representatives in 1940 and to the Senate in 1948, reelected in 1954, 1960, 1966, and defeated for reelection in 1972) and this unpretentious book, solidly but not exhaustively researched, recounts it well. It is quite laudatory, but will be critical when it is clear criticism is warranted. Mrs. Smith was not a great brain but she was a great working politician, ably assisted by her AA.

This was a fabulous biography of Margaret Chase Smith. Sherman does a great job of relating her themes to the narrative. Connections are emphasized regarding major points. This book is very readable as well as informative.

My 7th grade English teacher, Mrs. Mayo, used to read a chapter of this book to our class at the end of each day. While the details of the story may be fuzzy now, I remember how much we all looked forward to hearing the next installment.

THe way everything is descripted in this book, the details and actions that take place in the forest, EVERYTHING, even at the end, THIS IS JUST ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS I'VE EVER READ IN MY LIFE. It deserves a movie!!!

The author manages to make his various topics (glaciers and their effects on our world here in Ohio, development of flora and fauna of the region through history, etc.)very accessible to the lay person. He has a sense of humour about nature and a beautifully descriptive eye.

Sherman's excellent book was recommended to me by a colleague while I was preparing to teach a college course in bioregional biographies, and it is clearly the best I've seen. His rendering of geological, botanical, and biological information is both lucid and lyrical, and--unlike David Raines Wallace, whose Klamath Knot is also a wonderful model of this sort of writing--Sherman needs no incidental narrative device to hold the layers of deep history together. Mr. Sherman is a gifted writer and naturalist, and A Place on the Glacial Till is clearly a classic of natural history writing.

Normally when people see a book this size, they think to themselves, "Wow what a great paperweight" but that shouldn't be the case here. Dan Simmons continues to prove that horror fiction is just as much his plaything as science fiction, crafting a big, ambitious novel that succeeds in just about every aspect. It's scary, it's intimidating, it's complex, it's funny, it's full of characters that you're going to either or love but will be unable to ignore. Simmons takes the basic concept of vampires and goes in a slightly different direction here, instead of the typical bloodsucking stuff, here we've got psychic vampires who can infilrate the mind and do many unpleasant things. For the most part the vampires are utterly amoral, using and abusing people with no other impulse other than instant gratification. Until some people try to get revenge. Here we've got Saul, a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust who makes it a near obsession to find the monster that invaded his mind in a concentration camp during World War II. Or Natalie, who is motivated by a tragedy touches her personal life by way of vampires who see people as only pawns in a game. And then there's Sheriff Rob Gentry, trying to solve a mystery involving a bunch of dead people who apparently went crazy for no apparent reason, murders that seem to be part of a subtle, but disturbing pattern. These are the building blocks that make up the foundation of the rest of the epic . . . needless to say there are more than enough other characters, and subplots and surprises and intrigue and even horror to keep the reader occupied for many an hour. To even add to the excitement, a bunch of sections are told from the point of view of one of the vampires and her utterly amoral useage of the people she encounters all the while justifying it with no problem for her own twisted pleasure has to be one of the most horrific aspects to the book, the gap between the reality she perceives and the reality that exists is frightening indeed. Not that the book is perfect, it probably is a little too long, if you read it in small chunks you're okay but Simmons is very meticulous in his detail, something long time readers are probably used to. Some things aren't really explained either, one of the vampires is apparently ridiculously more powerful than the others but no one ever says why (but I guess that's horror for you, plus no one really gets the time sit down and discuss it), the concept of "Feeding" he never really goes into even though everyone talks about it, but those are minor complaints indeed. Where it's supposed to work it does, the action is thrilling, the emotional payoffs are staggering, the truimphs are earned even as the defeats will keep you on the edge of the chair. If you've got anything more than a passing interest in Dan Simmons or horror, you owe it to yourself to set a week aside and devour this book. You'll be glad you did.

I am truly stunned by an earlier reviewer calling Carrion Comfort "very, very boring," and stating that he "couldn't care less if all the characters died..."

Carrion Comfort is very probably my favorite book. Simmons does an amzaing job of putting you inside the various characters' heads. As my brother put it after finishing the book, "All of the other books I read now -- the characters seem so flat." Simmons provides the 1st person disjointedness of a character undergoing a mental breakdown, the fear and loathing a concentration camp survivor has towards his SS nemesis, and the horror and disbelief "normal" people have towards the atrocities and seemingly supernatural phenomina around them with equal deftness.

And beyond the intriguing characters themselves, Simmons produces that "Maybe this IS possible..." sort of feeling by weaving factual and fictional history together within the framework of the story. JFK, WWII, Ayatollah Khomeni, John Lennon -- scores of the biggest news stories that involve death or murder are fair game to be included in Simmons' story line. And they all fit.

The book describes a chess match, both literal and figurative, between people and powers, both supernatural and politcal. It has twists and turns like the best mystery novels, and shear horror with the best of the macabre. It is no wonder that Simmons won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Horror Novel with Carrion Comfort.

You don't see a lot of "epic horror" books. Epic sci-fi, epic historical fiction, epic fantasy, yes. But epic horror is a rare beast. Simmons produces a wonderfully horrific novel on an epic scale in _Carrion Comfort_ and I heartily recommend this book to horror fans or to fans of Simmons' sci-fi and recent suspense books.

The novel spans more than 100 years and moves effortlessly from first to third person, present to past, and is told by multiple narrators. Usually, this technique fails to hold my attention, either because all of the characters sounds the same, or because one or more the characters have nothing to say. Not so here. Simmons imbues each narrative with vitality and purpose...the overall effect is that you reading multiple short stories that are linked by a common ending and sometimes feature the same characters.

The story itself is a horror take on the concept of how absolute power corrupts absolutely. There is just enough of the supernatural element to give the book that creepy feel but not so much that one thinks "this couldn't possibly happen." Buy this book, sit back in your favorite reading place, and enjoy.

I was inspired to read The Man in the Iron Mask after seeing the movie (the one with DiCaprio). I hadn't realized that the Musketeers were part of the story and was very intrigued. Which plot lines were in the original and which were developed by Hollywood? Wow! Was I in for a surprise! The movie and the book tell different stories, but both are excellent, entertaining, and thought-provoking.

I appreciate books/series which show how the characters have aged and developed. Dumas does this with the musketeer series. D'Artagnan is no longer the wide-eyed "Gee, what could happen to me next?" hero of The Three Musketeers. He has to deal with questions of loyalty vs. friendship, support for the king vs. honor vs. love of his friends. There are still adventures and swordfights, but also more character conflicts. There is no simple nasty villain for the "good guys" to fight.

When I first read The Man in the Iron Mask (the movie tie-in edition), I was confused about who many of the characters were. The beginning didn't make much sense since it came in part-way through the story. The first line of the first chapter in particular confused me since it referred to events which I as the reader knew nothing about. The book makes a lot more sense when read as part of the whole series (The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Louise de la Valliere, The Man in the Iron Mask).

I STRONGLY suggest reading the Oxford World Classics edition, which starts with earlier chapters than other published versions and includes scenes that make the story more understandable: Athos confronts the King, Aramis reveals himself as a Jesuit and scopes out the Bastille, D'Artagnan confronts the King... These are some of the best scenes in the book, and it is a shame that other publishers don't include them.

Alexandre Dumas is my favorite story teller. He pieces together a story better than any other writer I have ever read and he makes tales of swashbuckling men and fair maidens completely engaging even two hundred years after that lifestyle died out. He writes romantic novels, where all the characters embody both virtue and vice and are people you wish you knew. I have not seen The Man in the Iron Mask movie, but from what I hear the book and movie are not very similar. The book, however, is an incredible creation, you will learn a lot about the history of the French monarchy, you will fall in love with the characters, and you will want to go out and read the rest of Dumas's books. I can not say enough how much I liked this book.

This book only marginally resembles the recent movie. The last of The D'Artagnan Romances, a series of six romances spanning forty years and written by Alexandre Dumas in the mid-1800s, The Man in the Iron Mask presents Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and D'Artagnan aligned against each other politically, but always joined together in spirit and friendship. The series vividly recreates the courts of Louis XIII and Louis XIV, as seen from the perspective of the four Musketeers. The intrigue and adventures of these four men carries the reader into their lives, loves, and tragedies. In The Man in the Iron Mask, Philippe's struggle with his identity and his attempt to rule France serves only as a backdrop to the complex relations of the characters. Dumas' flamboyant writing style enhances the intricate splendor he describes. A master wordsmith, Dumas was extremely successful in France during his life. The Man in the Iron Mask and the other D'Artagnan Romances are based on the Memoirs of Monsieur D'Artagnan, written by Courtils de Sandras. Dumas' other great success was The Count of Monte Cristo. ...The D'Artagnan Romances are: The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Ten Years Later, Louise de la Valliere, and The Man in the Iron Mask.

I finished "Indian Killer" last night. I read various reviews of this book while I was reading it. I have to disagree with reviewers who claim all the white people portrayed in Alexie's book are stereotypes. I didn't find the white people to act and react any more stereotypically than the Indian characters. I felt that Alexie did an excellent job of laying out the attitudes and prejudices of both "sides" of the coin, Indian and white. Everyone makes assumptions about everyone else based on incomplete information, pride, or ignorance. It's a human thing, not an Indian thing or white thing, and Alexie weaves it into the very fabric of this mystery story. This book was grittier than I expected, based on reading previous works by this author. Alexie's scripting of John Smith's descent into unchecked schziophrenia was painfully accurate and left me reeling. Seattle's madness fluttering around Smith over the series of "Indian Killer" murders, despite the violence and pain and number of people involved, did not seem as important as one man's agony. And I'm left wondering who--or what--the killer really was. The mystical components dropped into the mix added the perfect grace note to the book. Not a happy read, but a fast and engaging one, and a fine effort by a fine writer.

This is a beautiful and frightening book. I read it on the advice of a friend who knew that I had some Indian ancestors. In recommending the book, the friend asked me, "Were you taken?" He said "Indian Killer" would make me angry, and it did, but not in the ways I expected, and frankly, partly at Sherman Alexie.
His poetic voice and uncompromising, zero-sum philosophy -- Assimilate or die -- are its best points, and feel absolutely true. As a newspaper reporter, I used all the time to cover stories about adopted-out Indian kids who ran away from their white parents. I'd fight to get some context into the story, then pray that the kid finally made it to whatever he considered home.
John Smith is not the killer -- he can only feel pain, not inflict it -- and in this realization at last, we're given to think, becomes the "true Indian" he has always wanted to be.
The book is best when it's in John's head, especially his fantasies of his birth mother, his "real" life denied him on the reservation. Alexie mocks the idealism of John's fantasies, but shows great compassion for his need. It's wonderful, assured writing. The worst is the misogyny. Women are betrayers, like Dawn, the Crow who has the gall to bob her hair. Their sexuality is frightening. Marie, the activist, has wonderful anger, but it becomes subordinate to her work, necessary to the plot, as the Sandwich Lady. Finally, Alexie's best woman swallows her rage to hand out food.
I liked how characters speculate on "the real killer," rather than confront their own race pain and rage -- sort of like O.J. on the golf course. There is wonderful, if a bit talky, satire on literature and media: You don't mind a few punches to the ditzy white kid who goes backpacking with $300 in cash and a Jim Harrison novel.
(Hint on 'the real killer' -- The owl taboo is Navajo -- the tribe Alexie says tribeless Indians tell other Indians they are -- as is the knife. And what faith manifests itself in human sacrifice?)
The middle of the book, the police-procedural part, sags. The language flattens and his protagonists -- Marie, brutalized Reggie and especially John -- cede the stage to plot points and lesser characters. I started wondering about John. If his mental illness is congenital, as some think schizophrenia is, doesn't it undercut Alexie's premise? Alexie says John hears voices, but what do they say? John goes to psychiatrists: what do they tell him? Why , for God's sake, doesn't he ever get angry at his adoptive parents?
Sadly, in real life, men with John's extremity of fear all too often don't attack men. They attack women. Finally, what does Alexie's philosophy say about America's millions of (genuinely, not like the fools Mather or Wilson) biracial, triracial people? Or those adopted-out kids who are so lost? Is there any hope?

Sherman Alexie delivers again, coming through this time with a brilliant look at prejudice, hatred, fear, community and lack of community. Although the Amazon.com blurb and the reviews of others on this list seem to suggest the killer's identity, don't believe it. The killer is carefully constructed so that the reader has no clue as to the killer's gender, age, tribal affiliation -- in fact, the killer could just as well be white, since scalping was a practice that originated with European traders, rather than with Native tribes. Alexie blurs the killer's identity on purpose -- perhaps to reveal our own prejudices. If you believe only Indians can scalp, then you will believe the killer is an Indian. If you believe all races are capable of equal savagery against each other, then the killer could be anyone. Read this book and test your own prejudices -- racial, sexual, and sociological prejudices. You may surprised to find out something about yourself as well as about Alexie's gift with words. My review may make INDIAN KILLER sound like a social or political manifesto, but more than anything else, the novel is a vibrantly written murder mystery, a real, honest-to-God page-turner. You won't be able to put it down

This picks up some characters from Alexie's earlier works: Thomas Builds-the-Fire and Victor Joseph. They were the main characters in Alexie's movie "Smoke Signals" were also in his collection of stories "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven." Now, they are the lead singer and guitar player in a would-be Indian rock and roll band. The story itself is fairly straightforward, but it is woven through with elements of mysticism, magic, and deals with the devil. I keep wondering how Alexie will translate this to the screen. Following simply the story line, there is plenty to show: humor, hope, despair, addiction, love, hate, racism, and of course the commercial music world. But then there are the characters and incidents which push the story into the "wooo-wooo" world. How did Victor suddenly gain the ability to play the guitar? Who is Big Mom and where does she get her powers? There are also a great many dream sequences, which I found getting old after a while. Alexie has written a number of poems/songs supposedly created by Thomas, and there is of course also the challenge of providing the music for the soundtrack. It will be interesting to see what makes it to the screen.Alexie's skill as a poet is evident all through this book, as is his wit.

Alexie's book about Coyote Springs all Indian band is contemporary and he does not lose any of the flavor of being "Indian" with his storytelling (so much like Thomas'). The humor, sadness, love, fame, groupies, experiences he depicts in this tale of the band members and Robert Johnson and how their lives become intertwined with the Spokane Indian Reservation is a masterpiece! I can't wait for the film and to find out who will play the characters! Keep writing, Sherman, because you have been making people like me laugh, cry and continue to be connected with other Indian people who have grown up on reservations to leave for a "better life" in the urban cities (S.F. Bay Area) but who always return "home" (Wind River Reservation, Wyoming).

The blues, unlike any other music I've ever heard, has the astonishing ability to yank your heart out of your chest while making you laugh at the same time. In his first full-length novel, Alexie brings that same quality to his story about five Indians and a rock and roll dream.

It's been said that there are two stories in the world: one, someone sets out on a journey, and two, a stranger knocks on the door. In "Reservation Blues", a stranger arrives on the Spokane Indian Reservation at the end of a long journey. The stranger turns out to be the legendary bluesman Robert Johnson, who made a scant 29 recordings before dying of poison in 1938. In the novel, it turns out that Johnson faked his death in an attempt to escape the "Gentleman", an enigmatic figure that anyone familiar with the Robert Johnson mythos will recognize.

Johnson leaves his guitar in the back of storyteller Thomas Builds-the-Fire's van, which sends the plot rolling through themes of identity, alienation, tragedy and redemption. All of this, with a liberal sprinkling of the deft comic twist that is a hallmark of Alexie's style, and of the blues itself.

Being a musician, or any kind of artist, requires sacrifice--whether it's not getting enough sleep because you have to get up for your day job no matter how late you played the night before, or making a choice that results in losing something you care deeply about for the sake of your art. "Reservation Blues" shows how well Alexie understands this, and how even failure can be turned into success.

I first heard of this book in a review journal put out by a science fiction/fantasy bookstore, but Alexie integrates the fantastic elements of his story far more deftly than most writers of fantastic fiction can manage. Although the construction of the story is non-linear, Alexie never loses track of the threads of the tale, and the result is a great read that I've enjoyed over and over again.

This book, written in 1999, is a must read for anyone wanting to evaluate America's chances in the current conflict.

Soul of Battle is about a special intersection of ideology and warfare. Hanson proposes that democratic "armies of a season", led by philosopher-generals, in pursuit of a just cause, can be phenomenally devastating beyond what any material measures would predict, when taken on an anabasis (march upcountry) into the heart of an oppressive, militaristic society.

To illustrate this thesis, Hanson captivatingly narrates the details of the marches and men lead by three generals: Epaminondas, William Sherman, and George Patton. The first lead the yeomen of Thebes to crush the supposedly unstoppable Spartans in their homeland. The second lead his famous-and often misunderstood-"March to the Sea" that eviscerated the Confederacy and ended their will to fight. The third, despite constant interference from above, lead the brand-new Third Army in a mad dash into the heart of Nazi Europe. All three were vilified by members of their own side, worshipped by the men they commanded, and unexpectedly victorious over and devastating to the slave-owning regimes they went up against.

The first thing that grabs me, reading this book, is how compelling Hanson's narratives are. Some of the minutiae he examines would, in the hands of another author, make for somewhat dry reading. Hanson, though, has the refined gift of not only loving his subject matter to death, but also of being able to convey that love to a fairly broad audience.

Hanson is a professor of Greek at California State University in Fresno, as well as a frequent contributor of opinion articles to outlets like National Review. However, he is also a fifth generation farmer and a great believer in the "yeoman-citizen" who puts down his work to go and fight evil for a season, much as his father did in World War Two. This perspective comes out strongly in his sympathies for the Theban hoplites, the midwestern soldiers of Sherman's Army of the West, and the unassuming Americans of Patton's Third Army.

The book is enjoyable, but is Hanson's thesis true? It's certainly compelling as he argues it. Much of what he says flies in the face of the accepted wisdom regarding why soldiers fight. Citing letters and diaries of soldiers, though, he does show that ideology and idealism were significant motivating factors for these people-these folks fought to do more than merely "protect their buddies". He also takes on the accepted wisdom regarding the generals that have partially overshadowed Sherman and Patton (Grant and Eisenhower, respectively). Comparing Sherman to Grant (who were friends), he notes that Grant's efforts were focused on the "terrible arithmetic" of grinding down the lives of the Army of N. Virginia, while Sherman fought a largely battle-free campaign to destroy the Confederacy's will to fight. Eisenhower was a logistical genius and part of the new breed of "corporate generals", a mastermind of management and organization; Patton, on the other hand, was the general who saw that the conservative approach directed by Eisenhower was unnecessarily long and-while "safer" from the strategic perspective-ultimately far more costly to the individual lives, not only of allied soldiers, but also to enemy soldiers and civilians held in helotage or worse.

Let me back up a moment. Before opening this book, I would always have characterized myself as a fan of Alexander the Great, Robert E. Lee, and Douglas McArthur. Sherman has never interested me, Patton always bored me, and of Epaminondas I knew nothing. Hanson has fully converted me in all regards, now.

This is a good book, but there are many good books. It makes it onto my Warblogger's Bookshelf because it is also of real relevance to today's conflict. The most disturbing aspect of this book is the trend over history that the three generals exhibit: as command and control has become more all-encompassing and farther reaching, as armies have continued to reward good "peacetime generals" and politicians have gained greater influence over the day-to-day decisions of the military, the potential effectiveness of these rare and critical philosopher-generals has steadily decreased over time. The kind of person you want leading your democratic army when confronting real evil is generally someone that will be rejected by polite society; they are at their best when they may act on their own. Had Bush and Powell, the first time around, not halted Schwarzkopf's Iraqi anabasis before it was completed, we would be looking at a very different Middle East, right now. At the same time, as Hanson himself has said in many places, a democratic society's auditing of the military that serves it is an important foundation of the free society we enjoy and defend.

Hanson's thesis is multipart and, in the end, complex; sometimes it feels like he is trying to cover too much at one go, dashing about to keep all of his plates spinning. This is a small criticism, though, as he does manage to pull it all off in what amounts to a wonderfully written book filled with compelling stories, all supporting an important statement on the nature of war.

Well-written narrative and interesting thesis about three three "maverick" warriors who broke the constituent molds of their time: the Greek general Epaminondas and the American generals William Sherman and George Patton. Unfortuneately, the author often does sound like a bleeding heart liberal, especially when he talks about "the inherent evils" of Spartan, Confederate Southern, and Nazi German cultures and contrasts them with our heroes' societies. He does make some sound points about the character of democratic warriors, however (i.e., they prefer rapid attack and quick resolution). So aside from the sometimes tiresome liberal brow-beating, this work was awesome as it clearly compares and contrasts leadership styles. If you appreciate Patton, for example, or don't completely understand his place in history, this book will fully contextualize him and you may even walk away, as I have, in holding Generals Bradley and Eisenhower in almost total contempt. This book is a great leadership guide and is a must read for all soldiers in the U.S. military.

This book is one that belongs on any armchair military historian's shelf. It makes a persuasive argument in favor of the sueriority of militias organized from democratic societies.

Hanson argues that the moral power of the three armies led by Epaminondas, a Theban, Sherman, a Union general in the American Civil War, and Patton, commanding the 3rd Army in Europe in WWII, was decisive in their ability to vanquish three slave states - Sparta, the Confederacy, and Nazi Germany. The democratic militias were ideological warriors fighting for a cause.

One of the particularly interesting features of Hanson's analysis was the fact that the democratic militias were able to demobilize so quickly. Their generals were not leading armies of conquest with imperial designs.

One problem with the book is that the sources Hanson used were narrow. The works cited are small in number.

The book is well written in a prose that is easy to read. It does suffer from a couple of glaring mistakes that should have been caught by an editor. But overall it is a very engaging book.