Camp Foxtrot is great! Personally, I think Jason is the best character. He is funny, smart, and has an iguana named Quincy. Everyone should have a copy of this book. It is one of the best books I have ever read (my other favorites are "Foxtrot" books too). One more thing, the characters are Paige, Jason, Roger, Andy, Quincy, Marcus, and Peter. Hope you like this book.

Camp Foxtrot will keep you laughing from "Skeeter falls" to Eleen and Phoebe's many gags at Lake Bohrmore Science Camp.A must read.

Though most comics today use the same joke over and over, which wasnt a very good joke in the first place, FoxTrot strays away from the heard. With witty jokes and great story lines, this is probably the best comic strip running today. And, unlike many strips, it has emotion in the characters which adds another dimension to it.

This book just adds to the collection of great books for a great comic strip.

Highly Recommended.

The long-rumored book by the rather legendary authority on Indian blankets is finally a reality and the result is one of the great surprises of my reading life.I was expecting superb photos of spectacular blankets.I was expecting the hard data collectors love - label information and the like.These things the author serves up in spectacular helpings and blows the previous books on the subject completely out of the water.
What I was NOT expecting was masterful storytelling and towering wit. A relatively dry subject in ordinary hands becomes a riveting and often hilarious joyride here.Friedman's take on the antiques business and wickedly clever asides are worthy of Dave Barry on DB's very best day.Moreover, his grasp of history is sure and thought-provoking.It isn't necessary to be a blanket collector to love this book.It's the author you'll come to love and he will make you love and understand these beautiful blankets.THIS is the book I'll be buying for friends this year!!

A quick read of the reviews for this book reveal a Barry Friedman cult is already in full bloom. Tally yet another convert in me. I am delighted this singular volume found a home at the very prestigious Bulfinch Press. Bulfinch is the exclusive home of Ansel Adams and boasts multiple titles by the likes of Herb Ritts, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Robert Mappelthorpe. What's a collector/dealer of commercially manufactured Indian blankets doing in exalted company like this? Bulfinch decided he belongs and indeed he does. Friedman's artistry is in his words. He has an absolute mastery of his subject and a sense of humor that is quirky and completely audacious. One senses he KNOWS text like his is never found in books like this and somehow induced an editor to became a co-conspirator. A magnificently illustrated collecting book written with spirit and wit is just not done and certainly not by the likes of a high-toned publishing house like Bulfinch Press. Until now, that is. This is more than a book - it's a gorgeous act of rebellion!

I have never read a "coffee table book" cover to cover until I found Chasing Rainbows by Barry Friedman. This delightful, informative book pulls you in from the very beginning with humor and knowledge that prevents you from putting it down. I read it cover to cover in one sitting, an afternoon of sheer pleasure and factual understanding of the history and beauty of American Indian trade and camp blankets. I highly recommend this book for the pure joy of reading and understanding the history of a little known subject.

this book was soooo good and it was really cool the way lurlene wrapped together some of the stories that left unfinished endings. this was a wonderful way to end the one last wish series! it was so touching the way katie stuck by josh when he was hurt. it ended really well, but in a way I didn't expect it to! if you've read the other books in one last wish, this is a must read.

This is a great book. I thought it was totally cool how Lurlene entertwined characters from other books at the Jenny House camp. It was interesting to read about how other plots to different One Last Wish novels wrapped up. Dawn Rochelle (from Six Months to Live and the other three books about her) would have been a cool character to add to the mix. I always wondered if Lurlene would write another book about her. As usual, someone dies in this book (I won't tell who), and Josh gets in a riding accident. Will he survive? What will happen to his relationship with Katie? A great read for a hot summer day.

I absolutely loved this story, I could read it over and over again (and I have too). This was one of the best books yet and a perfect addition to the OLW series. Even if you haven't read all of them yet they are explained in the first chapters (I skipped that because I am an avid McDaniel fan and knew about them) I thought the chapel building was touching and the ending was the bomb. Katie and Josh are my favorite couple of any of the books (other than Ethan and Leah) and they belong together forever, keep up the good work Ms. McDaniel! And please come visit the Southern states on your tour...I've got a stack of books waiting to be signed...

Though Gordon Korman's books are geared toward young readers, his words hold meaning for everyone. My fifth grade teacher read us "I Want to go Home!" and I fell in love with it and purchased it for myself as a child. I still have the book, battered and torn, however I can honestly say I've probably read it over 20 times, even in adulthood! It's funny, witty, and really brings you back to the days when kids were just kids. This is especially memorable for those who ever went to summer camp themselves.

I first picked up "I want to go home!" when I was around 10. I loved it the first time just as I've loved it all the other 29 odd times I've read it. I wish I could say I was exaggerating but I'm not. Once I even picked up the book again and read it twice in the same afternoon! Rudy Miller is someone who could never really exist. Like Melanie Wilkes in Gone With the Wind. The power that these characters generate is so strong that you get to like them a lot. Or you wish they actually existed. The story of 'I want to go home' is about a boy who's good at everything without trying. In his inscription Gordon Korman says "There's fun, and then there's fun. This is dedicated to those who know the difference." The fun of the chase, the game. Rudy has to find trouble to make things fun because everything else comes so easily to him. The situations that he creates are what seperate this book from any other comic childrens book ever written. I don't care if you're 100 or 15, like myself, if you like humour you'll like this book!

I first came across this book in the 6th grade, when my teacher read it to our class.. It kept our attention, it moved along swiftly and was the funniest book ever. I remembered it years later and when i had the chance to come across it in used book stores I bought it, to this day (I'm almost 27 right now!) I still find it one of the best books i've ever gotten to read. I just finished reading it again for the zillionth time and i don't mind admitting i loved it even more. I realize people think it's silly for an adult to read such a book but i have to tell you that the story of Rudy Miller and Mike Webster (and who could forget Harold Greene?) at camp tickles my funny bone even now.

If you get the chance, don't let this one pass you by.

I highly recommend the book "Boot Camp for Your Brain: A No-Nonsense Guide to the SAT I." With the help of this book, my child raised her SAT I scores by a total of 300 points. Her final combined SAT I scores put her in a much better position for applying to her first choice in colleges.

Buy this book! It is a comprehensive study guide that is right on the mark for what you need to know. The results my daughter achieved after studying this book and following its excellent advice were astounding. She increased her combined score 290 points, achieving an 800 in Math and a 790 in Verbal. Ms. Manning's book provides a winning strategy for taking the Sat I. I rated it a 5.

This book is a MUST for all students taking the SAT. My son improved his score by almost 200 points after reading this book and taking the sample tests. He now has the opportunity to apply to many more colleges of his choice. I would highly recommend parents buy this book for their high school student. It could dramatically make a difference in your child's life.

This book is not a novel. It is an unusually constructed history in three volumes, written by a word-class writer. It is a heavy read. In this volume, Solzhenitsyn describes arrests, interrogations, tortures, trials, prisons, and methods of transporatation from the prisons to the labour camps. He gives a brief history of the genesis of Gulag, its principles and its expansion, in the chapter "A Brief History of Our Sewage Disposal System." Solzhenitysn marshalls an impressive range of facts and first hand anecdotes in addition to his own experiences, usually relating them in a straightforward manner, sometimes with bitter, vicious sarcasm, sometimes with passionate anger. The book is an astounding achievement, especially when one considers that he wrote it in sections, hiding each as it was completed; he was never able to refer back to what he had previously written, yet I noticed no repetitions. The book is an astounding achievement, immensely powerful, but very depressing, sometimes heart-breaking. Nonetheless, anyone who wishes to be well-informed in general, or about history in particular, must read it.

Gulag provided for me a powerful and shocking history lesson I had never been taught in high school or college. So much has been taught on Hitler, but barely anything of substance on Soviet Communism. After reading this book, you'll understand the reasons for the so-called paranoia of McCarthyism. Ronald Reagan had it right when he called the Soviet Union an "evil empire." I found this book so compelling, though heart wrenching, that I went on to read "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" as well as a recent biography on Solzhenitsyn by D. M. Thomas called "Alexander Solzhenitsyn: A Century in His Life." I have come to the conclusion that nobody but a man like Solzhenitsyn could ever have written Gulag.

This is probably as significant a book as has been published in the 20th century. Not because it changed the course of history or influenced a huge number of people. It did neither of these things. The history it deals with was already long passed and its size and severity kept it from being read by a mass audience. Still, it is significant because it tells a story that otherwise could not have been told. The full extent of what happened during the half century of Soviet rule to millions of Soviet citizens is the focus of this book and Solzhenitsyn's narrative, often numbing in the regularity of repeated cycles of arrests, 'trials', and imprisonment, seems to be his effort at repaying those who perished - at insuring that they are remembered and that those who subjected them to lives of torture are remembered for what they did.

Solzhenitsyn is a true hero of the 20th century. A military officer of the Soviet Union during WWII, he was imprisoned for writing a letter that included a joke about Stalin. During his time in prison he met numerous others who had been in different camps - different places and different types - and started piecing together in his mind the full scale of the vast Gulag enterprise which eventually consumed more of his contrymen than the total count of those of all countries who died in WWII. That the size and scope of this mass internment was kept virtually a secret to most of the world (and to most Russians)for so long is only part of the horror to which Solzhenitzyn is responding.

From his first book, A Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovitch, a small volumn about a single day in the life of a typical Gulag prisoner - smuggled out of Russia and published in the West - he has devoted his life to various tellings of his country's recent history. Most of it to do with the Gulag. This isn't pleasant stuff. It isn't tight fiction like Darkness At Noon. This is the real stuff with no prettifying. He feels that someone had to tell the truth. We owe it to him to listen.

Dr. Miklos Nyiszli has written an important book: not only for the unique first-hand account of a "privileged" inmate in Auschwitz but also for the questions that it raises about Man and humanity.

As a German-trained pathologist Dr. Nyiszli became pathologist under Mengele, performing both antemortem and postmortem examinations of Mengele's experiments. In so doing he lived relatively well: had sufficient food, clothing, and equipment. The question here is this: can we damn a man for taking advantage of an opportunity for better survival through the aid of the captors? Certainly one is quick to condemn the Jewish Kapos that assisted in the management of the other prisoners.

Some have said that Nyiszli aided in the experiments, yet he only performed the post-experiment examinations. Is he then as guilty as Mengele?

This is not an easy book to read: the content is disturbing and the implications of it are hard to grasp. It provides a unique insight into the operation of Auschwitz that is rarely written about in first-hand accounts: the Sonderkommando were regularly gassed, Mengele disappeared.

As a memoire this is excellent. I would like more cross-references to documented events to substantiate the claims. It is not that I disbelieve him, but adding such documentation would improve the historical usefulness.

Aushwitz - A Doctor's Eyewitness Account is not for the faint of heart. It is the memoirs of a doctor / prisoner of the infamous Nazi 'Death Camp'. I have personally read (at the time I write this) about a dozen memoirs on the Holocaust. Dr. Nyiszli's experiences cannot even be imagined. I am truly at a loss for words to articulate the feeling in my heart left by this accounting of evil. Under the direct supervision of the infamous 'Doctor' Mengele, Nyiszli performs, without question, some of the most horrific and scientifically useless 'experiments' on human beings. Truly, who among us could ever imagine trying to survive in a Death Camp such as Aushwitz? And yet the disturbing point over all in Nyiszli's book, is the fact that he VOLUNTEERED his services ! I will not judge anyone personally, however, was this author truly a victim or a conspirator with a 'better them than me' attitude? If you have the intellect and stomach for descriptions of horror, then I do acknowledge the importance of this 'Self-Damming' memoir, since it does offer a rare glimpse into the levels of mindset that was the sinister and the sadistic butchers that were the Nazi's...and their conspirators. Perhaps it is a confession of a repentant mind tortured with his actions of the past.

I have always had an interest in the Holocaust, but until I read this book some fourteen years ago, it had always remained at a distance.

A reputable colleague at work handed me a copy of this book and said 'this is worth a read'.

Having begun, I could not put the book down. The book gripped me from start to finish. The story is horrific but, nevertheless, it is a story that we all owe it to ourselves to be familiar with.

The story and the author's experiences were so profound and penetrating that I have spent the last fourteen years studying and reading as much about the Holocaust as I can.

I have visited the Concentration Camps at Treblinka, Majdanek, Auschwitz, Birkenau and Plaszov, together with other areas in Poland directly connected with the Jewish Holocaust. I have seen the buildings full of human hair from the Jewish victims, the gas chambers, crematoria and the other hideous instruments of mass murder referred to in this book.

The book by Dr. Miklos Nyiszli will not take you long to finish. The voices of the victims referred to have long since disappeared. Many people today are not even aware of the Holocaust and others deny it's very existence.

Books like these, written by people who were actually there, are essential if our this and forthcoming generations are to be made aware of "man's inhumanity to man" and to prevent such a horror from occurring again.

Gita Sereny's "Into the Darkness" is based on a series of interviews with former Treblinka extermination camp commander Franz Stangl, his family and associates. It reports, beyond reproach, on the machinery of extermination, justification, and cover up of the Holocaust.

The book seek to answer the question how an ordinary citizen like Franz Stangl can raise to the complicity in unimaginable horror and still live with himself for many years after that. Mrs. Sereny shows how deeply ingrained the moral fiber of being is in the soul after all, how important is it in order to live in peace with oneself, and how difficult is the struggle of repression, justification and denial is for one guilty. How cunning evil is in diffusing its scope beyond recognition of individual responsibility; and how at the end in the darkest recesses of his soul the guilty knows and finally has courage to say the truth. How adapt the human soul is in building barriers, masks and ritual to hide the ugliness and suffering.

Without taking sides, in cool and non-judgmental journalistic style, narrative is a masterpiece of it genre. Difficult book to read no doubt, because the magnitude of horror is not masked by petty emotion. This book does not offer any answers, any solution, it just sadly reports on what went on.

I read this book after devouring Gitta Sereny's wonderful biography on Nazi Armaments Minister, Albert Speer. This offering is superior to anything else on the Holocaust, bar none. Sereny spent many hours interviewing the Commandant of Treblinka, Franz Stangl. He reveals in dispassionate tones the horrors of this death camp: the subterfuge to confuse those arriving to the camp, the fake train station, the beautiful gardens... it's almost surreal to read this man's words. More disquieting is that Stangl appears to be rather normal, though obviously a psychopath since the concept of guilt is alien to him. He loved his wife, was a devoted father and was an attractive personality, yet he was involved in monstrous crimes.

Sereny also interviews Jews who survived Treblinka by working in the "clothes factory," and she also interviews some of the S.S. guards who presided over this horrific complex. But the heart and soul of the book is Stangl, whom she interviewed while he was in a German prison in 1972. When she asked him, "When you saw children about to be gassed, did you think of your own children?" Stangl vacantly looked away and said mutely, "I don't know."

This book should be required reading for those who deny the Holocaust or seek to make excuses for Nazi genocide. Sereny is a masterful writer and every word of this book is gripping. This is not a product to skim haphazardly, it's as engrossing as anything ever written about genocide in the 20th century. I can't recommend this book highly enough.

Often, the most frightening--and courageous--action we can take is to confront the truth about ourselves. Through Franz Stangl, commandant of the Nazis' Treblinka death camp, author Gitta Sereny reveals how the choices we make in our lives inevitably, and sometimes mercilessly, change us. And she shows us that the only way we can be at peace is to accept responsibility for them.

Sereny's is no mere biography of Stangl; instead, his life becomes the point of departure for a complex look at Nazi Germany, ordinary Germans (and Austrians, like Stangl), the workings of Treblinka, the escape and pursuit of Stangl after the war's end, and the Catholic Church's complicity in aiding Nazi war criminals. On this last subject, readers will especially appreciate Sereny's thoughtful and scholarly approach, as well as her persuasive conclusions regarding Pope Pius XII's curiously ambivalent behavior at the peak of the death camps' operations. Compare Sereny's analysis with the recent Vatican apology (of sorts), and judge for yourself which is the more credible account.

Throughout the book, Sereny manages to keep the focus on individuals and still retain the vast scope necessary to treat the Holocaust as a historical event. Stangl himself is presented as an ordinary man who made his Faustian pact and tried, like so many former prisoners of the camps, to move on and repress his feelings without processing them. His interviews with Sereny were ultimately as cathartic as they were therapeutic, and he died soon after their last meeting.

The impression we are left with at the end of "Into That Darkness" is one of tragedy as well as horror, for unlike a Goebbels or a Himmler or an Eichmann, Stangl could have been one of us. Sereny makes no apologies for Stangl; quite the contrary. But that's what makes this particular truth so hard to face.

Rena's Promise is the beautifully told story of two remarkable young women in their early twenties who endure and survive nearly three and one half years as prisoners of the Nazis in Auschwitz and Ravensbruck. The love that Rena has for her younger sister, Danka, sustains her and helps her to endure the atrocities and indignities forced upon them on a daily basis by the Nazis.

During the time they are prisoners, Rena never once forgets the promise to her mother to take care of her younger sister. There are numerous times when Rena unhesitatingly gives up her daily crust of bread in exchange for medicine or a much needed salve for Danka. And at times when Rena is able to "organize" an extra tidbit of food such as a tiny piece of potato peeling, she meticulously divides it and without exception shares it with her beloved sister.

Although Rena is the stronger of the two sisters, Danka's strength emerges during the death march when Rena becomes so weak she cannot stand and walk

Rena's Promise is the beautifully told story of two remarkable young women in their early twenties who endure and survive nearly three and one half years as prisoners of the Nazis in Auschwitz and Ravensbruck. The love that Rena has for her younger sister, Danka, sustains her and helps her to endure the atrocities and indignities forced upon them on a daily basis by the Nazis. During the time they are prisoners, Rena never once forgets the promise to her mother to take care of her younger sister. There are numerous times when Rena unhesitatingly gives up her daily crust of bread in exchange for medicine or a much needed salve for Danka. And at times when Rena is able to "organize" an extra tidbit of food such as a tiny piece of potato peeling, she meticulously divides it and without exception shares it with her beloved sister. Although Rena is the stronger of the two sisters, Danka's strength emerges during the death march when Rena becomes so weak she cannot stand and walk without assistance. Danka refuses to leave her and with the help of a friend, they support Rena until she regains sufficient strength to walk. In the mist of thousands of starving prisoners when a crust of bread could mean the difference of life or death, Rena retained both dignity and honesty. She was once chosen unanimously by more than a hundred women prisoners with whom she worked to divide ten Red Cross packages of food that miraculously made their way into Rena's block. Numerous footnotes are provided by Rena's freelance co-author which helps the reader to place the events of Rena's story into the sequential order of previously documented facts of the Holocaust. Rena's Promise is a testimony of how the love for her sister gave her the will to go on and how something so simple as the offering by a Nazi of a rag to clean her beaten and bloody face was viewed as a great act compassion.

By: Joe E. White

Rena's Promise is the beautifully told story of two remarkable young women in their early twenties who endure and survive nearly three and one half years as prisoners of the Nazis in Auschwitz and Ravensbruck. The love that Rena has for her younger sister, Danka, sustains her and helps her to endure the atrocities and indignities forced upon them on a daily basis by the Nazis.

During the time they are prisoners, Rena never once forgets the promise to her mother to take care of her younger sister. There are numerous times when Rena unhesitatingly gives up her daily crust of bread in exchange for medicine or a much needed salve for Danka. And at times when Rena is able to "organize" an extra tidbit of food such as a tiny piece of potato peeling, she meticulously divides it and without exception shares it with her beloved sister.

Although Rena is the stronger of the two sisters, Danka's strength emerges during the death march.

The Sunflower tells the story of a dying Nazi soldier who seeks out Simon Wiesenthal for forgiveness for his crimes against the Jews so he can die in peace. The story is based on fact from Wiesenthals life. Many famous people wrote essays, which are printed in the back of the book, arguing wether to forgive him or not. But the true value of the book lies in the question what you would do if you were in the same situation.

This is some powerful material. Wiesenthal presents the story of a Nazi begging for forgiveness on his deathbed. Should he as a Jew grant this forgiveness? He deals with all the emotional and spiritual ambivalence he feels over this situation. What would you do? is the ultimate question he asks. Don't read this late at night if you want to get some sleep. I found myself tormented by the issue of forgiveness after reading this tale. I can not answer what I would do because I have never been in any situation as horrible as that. But this is a book that should be read by would be philosophers and moralizers as it features Wiesenthal's heart rending tale and follows it with essays by numerous writers of diverse religious and cultural backgrounds. They all must wrestle with this issue. This is a book that should be required reading in universities if not high schools. It might actually provoke students to think. And surely that would be a good thing.

Simon Wiesenthal authored a first rate book, one that should be read by everyone the world over, for it deals with problems that all societies struggle with in trying to achieve peace: forgiveness, justice, and grace. To what extent are we enabled to offer forgiveness on behalf of another, especially when the crimes committed are of almost unspeakable atrocity? Wiesenthal's story is gripping, moving, and haunting, a true encounter that provokes repeated pondering and contemplation. I don't have the 1997 revised version of the book containing the responses of 46 people in a symposium discussion, but I can say that in the original 32 responses, I read very few that contained a cogency and depth equal to that of Wiesenthal's story. While a handful were good, most were evasive. I therefore found the second half of the book to be a disappointment. THE SUNFLOWER, though, is worth getting just to read Wiesenthal's treatment, which is first rate. Philip Yancey also offers some thoughtful comments in a chapter from his book of essays entitled I WAS JUST WONDERING (beginning on page 70 under the title "A Haunting Deathbed Confession".)