The first of a riveting triology, Frank & Joe land up in Africa with plenty of animal protection and poacher catching to do - sounds mundane? Absolutely not..there's a twist and a surprise everywhere...not to mention some tender moments between Frank and an Elephant!! Loved the entire triology. Buy it!!

A missing US customs official and a large smuggling operation takes the Hardys to Africa on an undercover mission. It may sound like just an average Hardy Boys mystery, but before it's over something truly shocking happens. I highly recommend this book for all Hardy Boys fans.

A well documented history of today's Black family. Read this book to understand how our family structure has manage to weaken over the last 150 years. This book left me with the understanding that our individaul accomplishments consisting of corporate promotions, new home purchases, and higher incomes don't mean much when our family structure continues to weaken our community towards non-existence.

I don't know Donna Franklin and don't have anything to gain through my comments. This book is one of the best I've read in a LONG time in analyzing the reasons for some of the changes in the black family and suggesting a number of very lucid, rational, and intelligent recommendations. Absolutely terrific, terrific book! Very scholarly, well-researched, and thoughtful but written in non-jargon and extremely accessible to the average reader. Should be required reading in most college courses as well as for our politicians.

As one of Andrea's former students, I've had to read this book and use it extensively. Not only did it get me through her class, but every class I had after that (and I've had a large number of English and History classes). If you're looking for a book to help you with MLA style, Professor Lunsford covers everything you can possibly hope to draw info from, including lectures, interviews, and even MUDs online.

The Everyday Writer is a wonderful asset to any college English student. It contains all the essentials for writing term papers. I suggest that everyone who needs help in English should pick up this book.

Frank and Joe tamgle with the Network again as they travel to France. The see the Gray Man in Manhattan and decide on their own to work on the case. Dressing up as punks(with weird hair dyes and clothes)the Hardys' hope to pass as gun dealers. On their mission they meet Denise, a teenage girl working with the enemy! Trying to escape from the French Police, the Hardys' follow the clues to find the real mastermind! A must read book!

This book mainly shows how Joe takes revenge of the death his of girl friend Iola Morton. Going undercover they find that not only they but even the french police is after the same people.

This book contains an introduction to the subject of working with animal powers and the various types of relationship one can have with spirit animals- familiars, totems, fetches, nugual and tonal animals for example. It shows how to build a relationship with animal powers, how to gain a familiar or totem, how to create a power song and so on. there are then full descriptions of the lore and lessons of fifty animals and birds, togther with personal experiences of people, plus pathworkings and meditations on the animals. As with all of Anna's books this is a full and exhaustive coverage of the subject, well researched and cohesively written. I was able to gain contact with my own elusive familiar, as well as certain healing animal spirits that help me in my shamanic work.

A fascinating dip into the shamanic world of the witch's familiar - wild and domestic animals with which adepts can link consciousness. It includes real life testimony from people undergoing shamanic experiences [some of them quite scary, others - unexpected].

Frank and Joe's friend Davis Johns is one of the hottest high school basketball prospects in the state, and two colleges are going all-out to sign him. But the competition between the two programs gets downright ugly. And now the game has taken an even more sinister turn: The head coach at Bayport U has suddenly dropped dead!
The Hardys are convinced that the death came as a result of foul play, and they're determined to slam-dunk the case. But the killer is running to show, he's still got a few shots left, and he's aiming them right at Frank and Joe. The boys know that the clock is ticking and that losing this game could be murder!
Read this book and find out what happens next!

Frank and Joe have launched themselves into a big pickle, helping their star basketballer friend, Davis, choose a college. 2 particular colleges will do anything to recruit Davis, even murder! All is not as it seems and Frank and Joe are faced with a most difficult case. Great for basketball fans, detective fans and everyone who ever liked a Hardy Boy's book.

Professional historians might slight Jim Bishop's work -- "The Day Christ Died;" "The Day Lincoln Was Shot" -- as "popularizations." So they are. Not much new in either of these: just good writing and empathy. There is a role for these qualities, one would think, even in the footnoted world of the professional.

"FDR's Last Year" lacks footnotes too. Its biblography is barely up to undergraduate term paper standards. It is, without doubt, beautifully written. So far, so good. But, it is more than just a facile rehash of research done by others. It is a moving account of a great human and historical tragedy -- the physical and mental deterioration of the god-like FDR at what should have been his moment of historic triumph.

By the spring of '44, when the book opens, President Roosevelt was already on borrowed time. There was a world of difference between the buoyant and vigorous champion of 1933 (or, even, 1943) and the increasingly depressed, distracted, and enervated Chief Executive of the late war years. Bishop does not dance around any of this -- but he does not succomb, either, to the harsher portraiture that has been drawn of a senile and naive FDR about to be taken to the cleaners by the Russians.

Some of what the tired president did during his waning months defies rational analysis. What was the purpose of his quixotic meetings with three middle eastern kings on his way back from Yalta? What made him think they would be interested in his hare-brained schemes to "make the desert bloom?" Was his meglomania simply in control here?

Yet, Bishop keeps his focus on the main event: FDR's self-destroying mission to create a postwar world that would not self-destruct into war as had the post-Versailles world. For this, his inspiration was his own political mentor -- Woodrow Wilson. While Churchill and Stalin reveled in their own species of cynicism, the tired and dispirited FDR, well-aware he was dying, held to a vision of a world organization that might offer humanity something better than realpolitik.

Roosevelt sacrificed himself to this vision. Burned himself out in pursuit of it. Churchill was interested only in British imperialism and FDR saw him for what he was -- a hopeless reactionary brought to power by a temporary crisis. Stalin was -- well, Stalin was the one man who had as much blood on his hands as Hitler. Of the "Big Three," only FDR tried to rise above chauvinism toward a broader, more humane future.

This broad view of humanity is exemplified by FDR's contempt for imperialism and his determination not to allow the French back into Indo-China. It is a sobering thought that had he been spared, the Viet Nam War need never have been fought.

Bishop gives a compassionate account of FDR's covert romance with Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd. The dying man, and the aging widow, found inestimable comfort in one another's company. It was too late in the day for both of them. The time for happiness was past. But, they clung to one another as the darkness closed about them.

This is a story about a dying god. A self-immolation in pursuit of an ideal. The impossibly handsome and charming FDR, the most politcally astute chief executive in our history, fading away into nascent senility and physical decreptitude. One is reminded of the last scene of "All Quiet In the Western Front," where the soon-to-die soldier played by Lew Ayres reaches out for a beautiful butterfly in No Man's Land in a last attempt to seize beauty out of death.

This is a marvelous book. Parts of it, such as the embalming of FDR's body, are almost too painful to read. Bishop brings an empathy, pathos, and compassion to his subject that is altogether absent from nearly all "professional" works of history. It is a moving and deeply illuminating work.

As a former educator and one who has worked for the State Department in our nation's capitol, I found FDR'S LAST YEAR not only to be enjoyable reading but one of the most profoundly written books of history I have ever come across. It was so detailed and I saw FDR for the first time to be thoroughly human.The fact that I discovered this book to be out of print, surprised and disappointed me, to say the least.

After I finished, I felt that I had not only lived in the White House that last year, but worked closley with the former President. Love him or hate him, FDR'S LAST YEAR is a must read for all those interested in the history and politics of this country.

This book was awarded a well-deserved Parkman for the quality of its scholarship. This is the best book on the early years of FDR. It follows his childhood and explores the relationships with the key people in his life: the formidable Sara Delano Roosevelt, his marriage to Eleanor, and his political education from Louis Howe.

This book also has a great deal to say about polio and how FDR and each of these people responded. This is not "Sunrise at Campabello, although it is clear that polio did make Roosevelt into the person who was able to become the greatest president of the 20th century.

I can't wait to read the other books in this serial biography. Davis rarely overtells or undertells details of FDR's early years. The book moves quickly, and leaves an insatiable desire to read the next installation - if you can find it.

Some people claim that Arthur Schlesinger wrote the definative history of the New Deal and FDR back in the 1950s. These same people probably are unfamiliar with this wonderful book by Kenneth Davis.

This is not just a history of the period of 1933-37, but an extended mediatation on how we are a nation are going to respond to the changes brought about by industrialization.

Do not be put off by this last statement because Davis is an excellent writer, historian and philosopher. The best part of this book deals with how social security came to be shaped in the form that it finally was. How all manner of elements came together for the legislation to be written. It is just remarkable.

Davis is evenhanded in this book and in the series as a whole. He identifies FDR's triumphs but at the same time is willing to be critical when he feels the actions warrent it.

Davis and his series have been recognized repeatedly although I believe that they probably were not given the praise that this series deserved. They are simply the best thing to be written on FDR by a historian.

I bought this book on a flyer in 1987, read it once and put it on the shelf. During a televised Clinton address from the Oval Office, I noticed on the credenza behind him "FDR: The New Deal Years" in its distinctive silver and red jacket. Well, if its good enough for the White House...so I read it again, and now understand why it stood on the President's desk. It's an outstanding work of narrative history. Volume one was awarded the Francis Parkman Prize, but this is clearly the next best in Davis's monumental five volumes on FDR and his times. It is a lively depiction of the New Deal and its famous characters, including Louis Howe, Harry Hopkins, the Brain Trust, Eleanor and Sara Delano all orbiting around the Sun King FDR. It is also an excellent analysis of how outright revolution was avoided and our capitalist system preserved in the darkest hours. But most of all it is an enjoyably facinating portrait of the man who everyone wanted to be near but almost no one, not even Eleanor, really knew.

First, I must say that this is a great book, but that I think Vanessa was wrong. She said that Joe was being the jerk, when she was being the jerk. She never even asked Joe to dance with her and she was showing feelings for Billy Barta, whom I think is ugly. She must have danced about ten songs with Billy while Joe only danced for an hour. She was the jerk, sorry Vanessa. You should have apologized, not Joe. Joe has been brought up on murder charges too many times, like this one when they thought he killed Billy Barta. I think Billy deserved it, whoever did it to him. It is full of suspense and action. A must read!

Frame-Up is one of the more original Hardy Boys books I've read. Very interesting plot twists and lots of action. Great!