I read this book in a week and the second volume in one day! This series really brought home to me what war means and how people react to it. If you didn't live through this time, you can get an idea of what people were thinking. It was hard for me to understand that people had such closed minds, but by reading this book it made me realize how far we have come. I love this series and can hardly wait for numbers 4 and 5!

Dean Hughes' "Children of The Promise, Vol. I" is an amazing story. It catches the reader's attention from the first page. The characters each have their own way of getting into the reader's imagination. From their reactions to the fast approaching World War, to the broken hearts and struggles of keeping a family together - this books takes the reader through a typical Mormon family's life. It tells of the characters endless struggle to find themsleves, as well as keeping their family together. With the outbreak of Wrold War II, the family must try to keep their beliefs as part of their everyday life, and turn to the Lord to guide them. I loved every minute, for it created questions and answers that apply to my life. It brings out the person inside of you that you really want to be by applying your own life to the story. A great way to find yourself, and a great story that I highly recommend it to those in want of a love, family and real life story.

Once I finished the Work and the Glory series, I was anxious to find some more LDS literature, and I always loved World War II stories, so I figured I'd give it a try. Well, once I got started I read the first 3 books in the space of one month! I'm now so involved in the plot of these stories and with these characters, I could swear I was one of them! Reading about the Bataan death march gave me goosebumps, I had heard little of this ghastly march, but these horrific stories really make me grateful for all that I have, I really wonder weather I could have lived through such horrors and I now greatly respect those that did. One thing that improved the book even more was the touches of romance Dean Hughes threw into the plot, I found myself in a hurry to get to another section about Bobbi and her struggles with her fiance and pofessor, this plot kept me all wound up, there was not a moment to lose interest, if one character was not in an exciting situation, you could be sure the others were! I really recommend this book, the only thing that may make you sorry for reading it is you will be amazed how time passes by so quickly as you read, and how much of the day you seem to miss, but don't worry, it definitely is worth giving up a few hours of the day!

I have many books on fly tying. If I was to choose one book on the subject of trout flies and tying them it is this one. Great commentary, great pictures and a sensible methodology for choosing the right pattern all help Trout Flies to be the only trout fly reference I need in my collection. Thank you David Hughes and Stackpole books.

Extremely well done book. The explanations and pictures of the sample flies are the best I've seen to date. Mr. Hughes selections are extremely good choices for western trout waters. I can't put it down and look forward to tying selected flies from the book all winter.

This book is a must on any serious fly tyers desk. The color photos and detailed pictures captures the essence of learning to tye fly's. The patterns and techniques are very refreshing and give good in-site on details and basics. If any one asked me why buy this book it would take more than a thousand words to describe. If you want to learn good techniques, de-mystify some troubles you encounter in everyday tying, learn about the patterns and see how they are tied, then this book is for you. I think this is Dave Hughes best work ever.

The author, Micheal Hughes, does an admirable job weaving a tale of triumph over fear and self doubt in a setting where young men are restrained in a system of endless rules and oppression by their charges. Underlying the main character's passage from boy to man is a story of a corporate good deed gone haywire. Hughes does a fine job of intertwining the two into a light and funny story about life at Hershey Home for Boys. Anyone who has unwrapped the foil from a Hershey's Kiss will enjoy unwrapping the wit and humor in this book. I highly recommend it to young and old alike. It will inspire the young and cause those of an older age to reflect on their own passages into adulthood. The author has done a fine job on this, his first novel. I will look forward to his future works.

I'm an avid reader and thoroughly enjoyed reading cocoa beans. It chronicles Dave Purenut's senior year of high school at an all boys school in a small, but well known town in PA. It's a coming of age book filled with humor,tenderness and even some tears. I'd recommend it for readers of all ages!

Mike Hughes has written a great story for anyone who enjoys fiction. While reading Cocoa Beans I found myself making comparisons to another great story about a young man's coming of age in The Catcher in the Rye. J.D. Salinger gave us Holden Caulfield in 1951 and Michael J. Hughes gave us Dave Purenut in the year 2000. Thanks to both of them. I won't summarize the story here but will tell you that while I was reading the book late into the night, I found myself laughing out loud at situations the main character Dave, a.k.a. Crazy, got himself into. My spouse didn't enjoy my outbursts, but I'm encouraging her to give Cocoa Beans a read and am sure she will have the last laugh. I also did not want the book to end. The author tells this story using what I think are a great combination of qualities in a work of fiction -- a great sense of humor, given to some genuinely unique and interesting characters, and uses his good storytelling ability. Mike Hughes may be a new author, but all great authors start somewhere. Try Cocoa Beans. I enjoyed it tremendously and think you will too.

I first came across Sylvia Plath in an anthology of modern poetry. Her poems "Daddy" and "Lady Lazarus" blew me away. The former may well be, in my opinion, the best poem ever written by a woman, and one of the five best written by anyone in the last two centuries. Buying this book, I expected more of the same. Unfortunately, I found most of her early work to be dissapointingly typical. The reason Plath is so controversial is that her greatness is linked inextricably to her darkness. Before the latter manifested during her divorce and subsequent depression, there just wasn't that much to her. In other words, much of her early poetry is that of a reasonably intelligent woman- entertaining, even a little intriguing, but lacking the fury of "Lady Lazarus", the darkness of "A Birthday Present", or the fatalistic beauty of "Ariel". And while there are some glimmers of the genius that is to come (The Colossus, I Am Vertical), they aren't many. My advice to any prospective reader is to save some time and money and pick up her collection "Ariel", which contains 90% of her essential work.

This book is the most complete collection of Sylvia Plath's poetry assembled in one volume. It is for this reason that it belongs almost as required reading, not just in American english programs, but in secondary schools everywhere. It's value lies in it's progression of a female poet and her journey towards finding her true voice. We see the early poems, methodically and skillfully written, shedding style after style of obvious influences through excercises of observation and perserverance. Through these verses, she explores and develops an intricate mythology; by the end, however, she has not lost us in her private world of symbolism and imagery, but enthralls us, heartbreakingly, through the mastery of her words. These last poems, that made up her final manuscript, are undisputedly some of the most moving and beautifully executed compositions of this past century. It is a wonderful book, one that forever changes the way the reader interprets art and the world around him that inspires it.

Gosh, I love Sylvia Plath's prose and poetry. I could read and reread some of her poems again and again. This is a great collection of her poems. I keep this book loose on my bookshelf when I feel like getting shivers up my spine before I go to sleep. There are some poems that I can just read and reread over and over again that make me feel... oh, mysterious, anxious, happy, perplexed... and Sylvia Plath is one of the poets who has written multiple poems that give me those feelings. Most people who like poetry are familiar with Mirror or Daddy, but there are other poems that people don't know about. I loved the sonnet "To Time" and the poem "Mystic." It is interesting to read her poems knowing what she was going through... reading the poems that coincide with certain events in her life, like her marriage to Ted Hughes, and poems that she wrote about her attempted suicides. I suggest this collection to anyone who is interested in this woman... and I also recommend that you read The Bell Jar as you read her poems, or maybe a few of her journal entries. Sylvia Plath is one of those poets that writes about herself, and knowing background on her life is crucial in understanding these poems. Well, you can decide for yourself.

"Life doesn't just happen to us. There is one spectacular moment when it happens for us. It happens to change us somehow, to pick us up just when we're heading in the wrong direction..." And therein lies the magic of THE LAST SLOW DANCE by Mary Gauden Hughes. This talented author captures that searing magical moment on which all of one's destiny hinges, drawing it into every moment of the novel in a lovely musical harmony.

When Mary Livingston enters Michael's life, everything changes. His house becomes a home, his girls happily sharing their days at the supper table. Mary claims she's only passing through, a writer gathering stories, searching for that one special story to tell.

As Mary loves writing, so does Michael McCain loves his music, dreaming of breaking into the big time. When he at last reaches his dream, as successful star Abby Rhodes invites him along to open her shows, Michael must reevaluate his life, his priorities, and his dreams.

THE LAST SLOW DANCE flows with a poetic grace, the language's lyricism mesmerizing the reader. THE LAST SLOW DANCE moves like a great river with hidden currents of meaning below the reflective surface. If you enjoyed James Waller's BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY, you'll love THE LAST SLOW DANCE with its positive ending and inspirational message. Very highly recommended.

I read this book in one sitting! What an excellent, uplifting story of life and love. This author's writing style is beautiful and easy - it flows so well - you just can't put it down. If you liked The Bridges of Madison County, you will also love The Last Slow Dance. I look forward to more books by Mary Gauden Hughes.

In this novella the author offers an intimate and close-up portrait of a musician with genuine dreams and a desire to find meaning in his life. As Michael McCain struggles with problems associated with divorce and parenting, he is trying to build a career that will not only enable him to make a living but will also jive with his artistic spark--not an easy task in the often rancorous music industry.

Enter Mary. In a style reminiscent of writing by Nicholas Sparks and Richard Paul Evans, the author's lyrical handling of this simple character's impact on the world sets everything in balance for Michael. With Mary as his center, the truly important things become clear. At the same time, she brings an unexpected twist into his life which creates a heart-thumping race Michael must win in order to keep from losing her forever.

What I want to see next is the movie version of this book . . . and more stories like this one from an author who is destined, most certainly, to create them.

reading these book are alittle like eating peanuts, once you start you cant stop. this is what the war was like for every family in america during ww2.this is about your family or your next door neighbor or the family down the block. a time when you were proud to be an american. this would be a great series to give a teen, to help them learn what we were fighting for. family,home and freedom.my only problem with it was dean hughes writes to slow. i cant wait for volumn 5.

The Childern of the Promise Series is the bomb espicially the 3rd Vol. I love the way he writes as if he is the character himself. He writes what that character is thinking and how they feel. Once you start reading you get so caught up with the characters that you can't put down the book.For example I read each book in a day it was so good and I don't like reading. Once you your finished with the book(s) you feel like you know those characters personally, and you just want to know what's going to happen. After I was done with the second book, that night I almost prayed for Wally but then I relized it was fiction. These books also made me reliaze how difficult it was to live in that era. Hughes also does a woderful job with researching about every thing he writes. For example I gave a speach about D-Day and I used Alexes experince when he jumped out of the airplane. My reading teacher thought I had interviewed a WWII vet about that. So go out and buy the book now it will be money well spent. I'm reading it again a second time to my grandma and I'm not bored with it.

I don't usually (in fact I can't ever recall doing it) give a 5-star review..but these books by Dean Hughes are amazing. They paint the picture of an LDS family caught up in WWII.

The reader follows one son in a Japanese labor camp, another as a top-notch paratrooper..a daughter serving as a nurse in Hawaii...and more. As a younger person, I learned a lot about this particular time period. I love historical fiction..it really gives the reader a taste of a different era.

The book may not have the spirituality of Gerald Lund's saga, but it's much more well-written. Hughes avoids all of the Lund-isms. His characters don't have group hugs whenever they get together. They don't grin sheepishly..or any of a dozen other phrases. Well worth reading.

This book is not only beautifully written and perfect for all ages, "The Princess and the Goblin" is also morally strong and uplifting. Children of either sex will be interested in it, with a loving and beautiful grandmother, a strong and intelligent young girl, and a young boy who is intent on protecting his loved ones and uncovering the evil goblin plot. I have read this countless times, and each time I discover something new. The sequel, "The Princess and Curdie," is also worth reading. I love this book!

So you love C.S. Lewis' Narnia Chronicles? There people who don't are few and far between. One of the biggest influences on C.S. Lewis was this man, George MacDonald (1824-1905). It was MacDonald's talent for telling fairy stories that inspired Lewis in writing his own. Like Lewis, MacDonald has a remarkable ability to tell a delightful and enchanting story for children, layered with strong Christian themes and imagery by means of allegory and symbols. 'The Princess and the Goblin' is one of his most beloved works for children, and an excellent introduction to his style and success.

'The Princess and the Goblin' features a heroine ' a princess called Irene ' and a hero ' a simple miner's son called Curdie. While working overtime in the mines to earn money to buy his mother a red petty-coat, Curdie chances upon the goblins who live in the mountain, and discovers that they are hatching an evil plot against the king and his palace. Meanwhile the princess makes a discovery of her own ' high in the castle she finds a wonderful old lady who is her great-great-grandmother. The problem is, nobody else knows of her grandmother, and nobody believes her. But the princess does believe, and it is by her faith in her grandmother and the magic thread that she receives from her, that she is able to rescue Curdie. Together they rescue the entire palace from disaster at the hands of the goblins.

In telling the story, MacDonald has an enchanting conversational style, wonderfully suitable for reading aloud to enraptured children ' an ability perfecting in telling stories to his own eleven children. But 'The Princess and the Goblin' is more than just a story. Before pursuing a literary career, MacDonald was a Congregationalist minister, and so integrates important underlying Christian themes. Believing in the great-great-grandmother despite the fact that many cannot see her, is a symbol of believing in God. MacDonald uses this to show how the Christian faith involves believing without seeing, and that not everyone has to 'see' something for it to be true. The grandmother's lamp and magic thread are the guides on which the princess must depend, much like the Word which is a lamp on our path. It may sound tacky, but it works.

Children are not likely to grasp the deeper underlying themes that MacDonald is working with. Nonetheless the story has a clear message for children. The clear conflict between the royal powers of light against the goblin powers of darkness is unmistakable. Moreover, the princess is presented as a model of virtue, and MacDonald frequently asserts the importance of moral virtues such as always telling the truth, keeping your word, and admitting your faults ' moral virtues that are equally important for princes and princesses of God's kingdom. Courage, honesty, grace, dignity and beauty are timeless ideals for children of all times to strive for. If you love Narnia, you're sure to like this one, and you'll find yourself quickly grabbing the sequel, 'The Princess and Curdie.' 'The Princess and the Goblin' was one of J.R.R. Tolkien's childhood favorites, highly regarded by C.S. Lewis, described by W.H. Auden as 'the only English children's book in the same class as the Alice books', and generally considered as a classic example of nineteenth century children's literary fairy tales. So if you haven't yet read this book, it's about time you did. With admirers such as Tolkien, Lewis and Auden, if you become a MacDonald's admirer you'll find yourself in good company!

I cant believe I haven't read this untill now, its such a great book! A princess lives in a castle all her life, never knowing of the great dangers that go on in the mountain. One day(being about 7 years old) she finds a stairway in her house that she has never seen and it leads her to her great, great grandmother. After she meets her grandmother she is shown the dangers of the goblins and meets a boy named Curdie who mines in the mountain with his father. Throughout the book Curdie and the princess have many encounters with the goblins. This is a great book I highly recommend it for readers of all ages.

The Waste Land, published in 1922 and considered one of the major works associated with modernism. This poem deals despairingly with the state of post-World War I society, which Eliot saw as sterile and decadent. Numerous references to religious imagery, mythology and literature of the past are used ironically to point out the comparative emptiness of Eliot's time.

The Waste Land is sometimes considered to be the greatest poem of the twentieth century. This collection from Dover (at an amazing price) includes this and several other of Eliot's poems. The Waste Land, however, is considered to be his masterpiece, his 'epic,' in a sense. In fact, it is interesting to compare Eliot's bleak vision of a land of waste to other, earlier epics.

The poem is in some sense a warning, in another sense a cry of despair. The image of the wasted land, of the spiritually degenerate human race, is depressing, yet the poem ends with a glimmer (albeit faint) of hope--salvation is possible, however unlikely. I am no expert on this poem, and like most people understand only fragments of it, but what I have gained from the poem I have found to be very enlightening, and very stirring.

Eliot draws many references from the old legend of the Fisher-King, and an idea of what this legend is about (in all its many forms) is useful in interpreting the poem. This is undoubtedly one of the classics in both English literature and modernist writings, and very worthwhile for anyone who is willing to take the time to study it.

T.S. Eliot wrote "The Waste Land" against the backdrop of a world gone mad-- searching for reason inside chaos, and striving to build an ark of words by which future generations could learn what had gone before, T.S. Eliot explores that greatest of human melancholy-- disillusionment. This is a difficult poem, but one well-worth exploring to its fullest. The inherent rhythms of Eliot's speech, the delightful, though sometimes obscure, allusions, and intricate word-craft, create an atmosphere of civilization on the edge-- in danger of forgetting its past, and therefore repeating it. In the end, only the poet is left, to admonish the world to peace, to preserve the ruins of the old life, and to ensure that future generations benefit from the disillusions of the past.

"Prufrock" is perhaps the best "mid-life crisis" poem ever written. In witty, though self-deprecating and often downright bitter, tones, Eliot goes on a madcap but infinitely somber romp through the human mind. This is a poem of contradictions, of repression, of human fear, and human self-defeat. Technically, "Prufrock" is brilliant, with a varied and intricate style suited to the themes of madness, love, and self-doubt.

Buy this. You won't regret it. If you're an Eliot fan, you probably have it anyway. If you're not, you will be when you put it down.

The book delivered exactly what it was supposed to. The equipment described were mostly from the second movie, which was expected since the colonial marines only made an appearance in that one. I was expecting a few more vehicles and weapons that were not shown in the movie. The arsenal of the marines appeared to be very limited. Whatever the case, this is a good book for fans of the movies and sci-fi fans who like big weapons. The section on the aliens themselves was kind of brief, being mostly accounts from Ripley.

this book provides a great deal of information on the Colonial Marines from "Aliens". all of you potential Aliens video game modders out there must get this book. it has served as an excellent reference book for all my "Aliens versus Predator" modifications. with several illustrations, it also provides the artist with valuable "Aliens" info. even the curious Sci-Fi geek will find this book thoroughly interesting.

This book is based off of the premise of a technical manual writen as a MArine PR piece. The book is full of psuedo scientific explanations for everything that we saw in the first and second movies, from the dropship design to the actual biology of the aliens themselves. It's all complemented very well by ample pictures and quotes from "actual" colonial marines. It's addicting, I find that i pick it up every now and again and re-read it, some of the "quotes" are very funny. Even if you are only a casual fan of the series, pick it up, it's sure to get you addicted.

This is a wonderfully funny, interesting book. All the neat droids covered in this book are cool. I'm surprised only 5 other people left reviews for this book. The only downside is that the illustrations are absolutely DEVOID of color besides white. Now you may be criticizing me, mumbling under your breath "Oh go crawl back in the sand box," but it IS true that the mere prescence of color can make something marginally interesting massively interesting. The Star Wars: Visual Dictionary and Incredible Cross-Sections series are popular for that very reason, although the Essentials series has tons more information in sheer volume. The black-and-white illustrations were well-done, but mucho DRAB. The original concept art was cool, but the schematics and silhouette models are positively goofy-looking. Still, they get the job done of making it apparent how the droids are supposed to be designed.

I love this book because it shows you the size of the droids and stuff like that.

This book is a must-have for any Star Wars fan, and explains 100 of the coolest droids. One bad part is, it has no terminology section, like the Weapons and Tech Guide had, for those people who dont know what a Photoreceptor, Vocabulator, or Servomotor is.