At first W. Chambers claimed that Alger Hiss and others were secret Communists whose purpose was to influence policy (from 1939 to November 1948). After being sued for slander Chambers produced 69 documents to support his claim of spying. Chambers earlier stated he was a Communist until "1935", or "early 1937", or "the end of 1937", or "the spring of 1937". The documents were dated between January 5 and April 1 of 1938. Chambers then changed his story to leaving on April 15, 1938. You can judge his veracity by this. Note his memory of wallpaper patterns!

The original State Department files were rated "classified" to "secret". Most consisted of trade agreements, which were of commercial, not political, importance. When Chambers learned that Alger Hiss could not type, he then claimed Priscilla did it! (Did writer and translator Chambers ASSUME that other men had this skill?) The most telling fact about these documents is that most had never been routed through sections where either Alger or Donald Hiss had worked! This discrepancy has never been explained. When the contents of the three rolls of microfilm were released in 1975, they were found to be Navy Dept instructions on how to use life rafts, fire extinguishers, and chest parachutes. Where did they come from?

The biggest lie of all is Chamber's claim that the stored documents were a "life preserver". Because they had no value without his testimony to corroborate them! He should have seen a lawyer, made a notarized statement, and left immortal testimony. But then it couldn't be changed to explain new facts.

The book had lots of nice pictures in it and the front cover attracts you to the book.The facts were exciting because they told me lots of things I didn't know about wood.

Maybe that was a little too harsh. But I started using this book with my son a couple of weeks ago. I am always looking for good devotional books, and when I saw this had some good reviews and had enough material for a year, I decided to give it a try.

It is short all right -- maybe three or four sentences on each page. And my son always wants to know the story about the picture. But there is no story about the picture, because what is on the page doesn't relate.

When finding devotional material, I want something that will hold my son's interest while teaching him Biblical concepts. Because there is no story, it doesn't really hold his interest, and the content is so simplified that it is basically meaningless. After reading it, I often don't see anything we could possibly discuss!

If you want to have an empty ritual every day that you call "devotions," this may be a great book for you and your child to use. But if you want something that will both interest and teach your child, I would recommend looking elsewhere.

My mom purchased this book for my little sister who is now six. They read the daily entry together. My mom had a lot of good things to say about the book so I looked at it (I am 18). It is a wonderful little book! All of the entries are really convicting and pertaining to your daily struggles in life. Because it is written for kids it is also easier to understand right away as well as faster to read on a busy day. I bought a copy for my friend when she graduated and hope I get one when I graduate too! A really good book for even adults and teens.

I wasn't going to write a review but I couldn't help notice someone gave it a really bad review stating that it had to many pictures and pages. Well it's a DAILY DEVOTIONAL BIBLE just as it says on the cover. Its wonderful for those parents who want to start leading their children to GOD as soon as possible, a little bit each day. It has easy to understand text, short like my son's attention span too. This way he gets the story before he wonders off to his toy cars. Plus it has plenty of pictures which appeal to small children who learn by seeing![...]

very inventive. very original. and ha sure knows how to keep the reader from knowing what's going on. but he is too anarchicc in style, suddenly taking a long path AWAY from the horror. for example, he suddenly creates a love story in the middle of building a horror story with great promise. he can make a story become an unclear blur. he doesn't obey any rules, and it does not suit the stories.

Editor S.T. Joshi warns all the readers that Chambers can reach sometimes the nadir of literature and that he tried to not include the worst thing in this collection.
Nevertheless the disappointment is high as soon as you end the book and realize that only the first 88 pages are worth reading (that is the King in Yellow)on a total of 643.
In the remaining 555 pages ideas are scarce, character are monodimensional and there's a disturbing sense of racism.
I'll advise Cthulhu and Weird tales fan to get a book with only the Repairman of Reputation (which is indeed a marvelous story) unless they are truly collectors.

I eagerly bought this book based on the King in Yellow tales by Chambers I had read years before. Yipes! Chambers wrote a ton of really dreadful stuff--silly, immature nonsense. Despite editor Joshi's disclaimers in the introduction that Chambers wasted a lot of his talent pandering to popularity, I don't think his comments adequately criticized the awfulness of much of this massive volume. Chambers undoubtedly could create real chills, but how the author of the King in Yellow short stories could descend into such pap is beyond me--what a disappointment and what a bore. Unless one is a total fanatic and has to have everything Chambers wrote that has a "fantastic" element, save your money and buy a small volume about the Yellow King. The only thing "fantastic" about most of these stories is how fantastically dreadful they are.

I place "The Golden Gate" and "A Suitable Boy" amongst my ten favourite novels but I was disappointed by "An Equal Music". Seth has over-reached himself. Being a music-lover (even such a passionate one as Seth) does not overcome the essential problem of conveying the effect of music in words. The reader simply becomes tired of all this gushing. Then there's the setting - Michael is supposed to be English but his London is a foreigner's London (he hangs around Hyde Park and Oxford Street) and he never uses even the most basic Londoner's slang. These aren't meant as factual quibbles: in a book which attempts to be realistic (as opposed to Rushdie's magic realism, for example) these things weaken an already boring character and fail to spark the reader's interest in him. NOW, a factual quibble: how the heck does a struggling musician pay the annual service charges of a portered flat (with lift) in Bayswater?

Although it took until page 27 to lock into this story, once I did, I couldn't put it down. Seth is so eloquent and sensitive to love, life and music, and such a versatile writer!

The protagonist, Michael, is a violinist that fled from an intensely critical music master in Vienna, where he was studying. In so doing, he fled from Julia, a music student of the same teacher and the love of his life. On reuniting in London years later, they find their love alive, but, alas, Julia is married with a child. At the same time, the musical drama persists, with detailed descriptions of compositions and situations amongst his colleagues, the Maggiore Quartet.

What Michael comes to know, as they carry on an affair, is that Julia, a concert pianist, is going deaf, but includes her in one of the quartet's performances. In spite it's success, this is the beginning of the end of the quartet as we know it. Michael's decision to leave the quartet was also induced by a number of panic attacks and the fact that he crumbles under the strain of an illicit affair, and the knowledge that Julia won't leave her husband. All this, plus the fact that his cherished violin, on loan from his childhood music teacher and too expensive for him to ever buy for himself, is to be bequeathed to a relative instead of to him. This makes for suspense, as the two things he loves with great passion, Julia and his violin, are threatening to leave him. Does he get the woman of his dreams? Does he keep the violin? I don't want to spoil the ending, so read it for yourself.

My only criticism is that Julia is too perfect. I'm not sure I'd take a liking to her if she were real, while Michael with all his weaknesses, is still a sympathetic likeable character. Also, I'm not sure that Seth doesn't over do his descriptive literature, especially when he and Julia are in Venice. There's a fine line between great prose and burdening the reader with too much description not always relevant to the story. I would say Seth comes close to that line, but doesn't quite cross over it, though my mind wandered and I had to reread some paragraphs of descriptive prose. On the whole, I loved this story, as I did a "Suitable Boy" and am inspired to read everything he will ever write!

Unlike most of the other reviewers of this book, I love Bach, Haydn, Schubert, Mozart, Beethoven, etc., and have loved them for many years. So I have no patience with those who talk about the main character, Michael Holmes, as a whiner or as immature. Of course he is these things. So what? The fact is, Vikram Seth has given us very plausible characters who act with passion, who are driven by the need to find the exquisite, and who are changed forever by their encounters with this passion. And who among us haven't acted dumbly when we think we are in love and that love goes bad and our lives go bad with it? I know I have. I know I've been selfish, dumb, self-pitying. But these days it's a sin to give in to emotions. One must behave like a "healthy" person, move on, take Prozac, and just get over it. I wonder if all artists, musicians, and novelists were always "rational" and just "got over" things, would great and meaningful art ever be able to be created through such a "rational" mind? In any case, this novel is a great entertainment, beautifully composed and easy to read. I think its ending is just fine. I admit there were parts that could have been better edited, redundancies that made me impatient with Michael and Julia, but these were minor flaws in a fine novel that accomplishes a whole lot. I was very happy to meet all its characters and live among them for a while. I even went off to my local music store and got the Haydn string quartet that Michael loved so much. I highly recommend this novel to anyone, but especially to those who love Bach and chamber music.

This book provides overwhelming evidence of how unelected, Leftists Supreme Court law clerks abuse their positions to make public policy. The author clerked for the late Justice Harry Blackmun who tried his best to incorporate Leftist values into the Constitution against the will of the vast majority of the American people. Lucky for us, Justices Scalia and Thimas have neutralized this vast left wing conspiracy. Like Carville, the author holds most Americans, including those reading this review, in utter contempt.

Lazarus, who clerked for Justice Blackmun during the 1988-89 term, has written a behind-the-scenes look at the court and its decisions during that term. He focuses on abortion and capital punishment cases; somewhat surprisingly, he doesn't discuss the growth of "federalism." His overall thesis is that the overpoliticization of the Supreme Court nomination process, as exemplified by Bork's rejection, has resulted in a deep split between liberals and conservatives on the court, with the outcome in the control of Justices O'Connor and Kennedy, both of whom are too much subject to the influence of their clerks, especially a well-organized, highly partisan group of conservative clerks.

The book combines the clerk-driven content of "The Brethren" with documentary evidence from the Thurgood Marshall papers and a more sophisticated analysis of the legal issues. It provides a more complete view of Chief Justice Rehnquist's work style and why he has been so much more effective than Chief Justice Burger at effectuating the conservative legal agenda. It shows how the troubling developments of that period, such as the cert pool, have grown into monsters. It looks briefly at the newest justices (Thomas, Ginsberg, Breyer) and accurately characterizes Ginsberg so as to explain her frequent alliance with Rehnquist.

The book, despite its publicity, tells no tales out of school. It is much less chatty than "The Brethren." Its tone follows Justice Blackmun into sentimentality. With news reports missing or giving less space to the ideological battles occasionally revealed by the court's decisions, lay followers of the court should make a point of reading this book.

I agree with most of what the other reveiwers have written about this book. It is a very well-written and accessible account of the Supreme Court and its development in recent times. As another reviewer mentioned, Mr. Lazarus is honest about his liberal views and biases, and he is quite clear about which of his observations are accurate historical accounts and which are colored by his poilitical view. I found the book to be enjoyable and informative, and to contain some good basic explanations of how the Supreme Court works.

Grisham's best books are the thrilling fights against powerful enemies not yet fully known; this theme makes The Firm, The Pelican Brief and The Client such exciting stories.

That his first book (A Time to Kill) did not sell at fist didn't suprise because it just goes on and on in this flimsy tale of legal chitchat of a starting lawyer defending a black man's murder of the rapist of his daughter.

The Chamber gave me the same feeling. It feels like a poor attempt to write a literary, philosophical and ethical thriller - presenting the death penalty as an issue (but not really discussing it) and missing the chances of real suspense in the story.

I gave it two stars because of the description of the last hours of Adam and his grandfather, which I found really moving.

But they didn't make me forget that I had thought I bought a thriller.

John Grisham produces another great book here. It starts out with a bombing gone awry. One man meant to only bomb a building, but instead kills two innocent children and destroys another life. Thirty years later, one of the bombers in sitting on death row, a former Klan activist, waiting to die when his unknown grandson appears as a lawyer in hopes to rescue him.

Grisham does another excellent job describing a story, with great mastery and fluidity, of one man's last ditch effort to save his grandfather from death. Even though his emphasis on law is profound, he delves into deeper issues such as family, the question of the death penalty, and other emotional issues that one does see in other Grisham novels (with the exception of A Painted House).

What's really fascinating is that nothing in this book is not black and white. For each issue he brings up, there are good and bad points - each issue is a gray area. He describes the horrors of death row, but then juxtaposes it with the deaths of the two youngsters. Instead of making the main character purely good or evil, he mixes it a bit. Sometimes you wish the inmate would fry, sometimes you feel he's innocent.

Another good point about the book is that it's not a farfetched story, like the Street Lawyer or the Firm, it's a book that could be confused with a documentary. He doesn't revolve action or plot twists, but instead relies on the psychological aspects of all sides of a death sentence.

The only bad point, of which Grisham tends to do a lot, is he is repetitive. Many, many parts were repeated over and over again. This 700-page book could have been reduced to 500-page book without any loss of detail. Pages 200 to 400 just dragged on and on and on. The last 150 pages, though nothing exciting happens, is really intense and emotional, and is what makes this book.

I highly recommend this book to anyone. It's a slight departure for Grisham, as he delves into more psychological elements, but it works well.

At first glance, one might assume that this book's title refers to a judge's chamber and that this will be another one of Grisham's thrill-a-minute page turners like his other books. This well-researched, movingly-detailed story is difficult to put down, but not for the same reason as his other novels. Instead, it closely resembles the author's first book,"A Time to Kill", an intense courtroom novel examining the politics of Mississippi justice.

The chamber in the title is the death chamber, where Sam Cayhall, a nine-year resident of death row, is slated to be killed with cyanide gas in a few weeks. Cayhall, a frail and elderly man, was a Ku Klux Klan bomber convicted in 1981 of bombing the office of a Jewish civil-rights lawyer in Mississippi in 1967. This explosion killed the lawyer's two young sons and badly maimed their father. Cayhall was freed after mistrials in 1967 and 1968; for the next 12 years, Sam led a normal life until an aggressive new district attorney reopened the case.

The novel's main action begins a month before Cayhall's scheduled execution. Adam Hall, a first-year lawyer in a large, prestigious Chicago firm which formerly represented Cayhall on a pro-bono basis, asks to represent Sam in an effort to get a stay of execution. Adam's secret weapon in the effort to have Sam agree to his representation is that he is Cayhall's long-lost grandson. Although Adam wants to help his grandfather, he must deal with his guilt for wanting to help someone whose beliefs he detests.

When Sam agrees to Adam's representation, a race against the clock begins. Grisham presents a picture of the controlled but frantic coordination necessary during the appeals process. It is literally a legal juggling act requiring split-second timing.

This book reads like non-fiction, with details about how the gas chamber actually works and what happens when it doesn't work perfectly. While it was not Grisham's intent to have "The Chamber" alter anyone's opinion of the death penalty, it will certainly cause many readers to re-examine their position.

The subject matter of this novel creeped me out, yet I found myself picking it up again and again just to finish and find out what happened. The question "Is language innate or learned?" is an interesting one, but the main character - whose name you discover in the final pages of the novel - is so inhuman, so cold and unemotional, that as a reader you lose sight of your interest in that question. I suppose I knew throughout the novel that there would be no consequences for narrator's bizarre behavior, but I kept reading just to see if there would be. While this book greatly disturbed me, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend it, I have to say I am not going to forget it any time soon - which perhaps was the author's objective.

I picked this book up on a whim while at our library to study for my stats final. I alternated studying stats and reading this very, very odd book about an eccentric (or completely mad?) man who's obsessed with understanding the purpose and source of language in our society and civilization. Really interesting ideas in a rather disturbing novel

The novel relates a highly elaborate experiment carried out by an insane genius: whether language is innately acquired, or whether it is a product of environment and conditioning. The protagonist (who is unnamed) proceeds to murder a vagrant girl he shelters, preparatory to kidnapping her two children (of whom he, incidentally, is the father) and imprisoning them for years in a secure chamber. Throughout this period, he attends them while totally mute, administering food to them and preventing them from coming into any contact with the outside world in his bid to discover the origin of human communication. However, his experiment takes a turn for the worse, as the two children manage to surprisingly turn the tables on their deranged father, ending with grisly results. This is an unforgettable and deeply fascinating crime thriller.

well, chambers stories have a LOT of potential. he has quite an imagination. very original guy. and very different. he could have been truly weird. but he doesn't know when to stop. he can suddenly stretch the story too far in one direction, amazingly enogh: away from the horror. also he likes to include romance even when it doesn't fit. he has an anarchic style that destroys the stories.

Most of the other reviews here rightly criticize
the syrupy romance of Chambers and the thin
character development in this book. They also
entirely miss the point. This book was published
in 1895, and between Poe and Ambrose Bierce the
literature of fantasy and the macabre had not
developed greatly. This book should simply be
enjoyed for what it is -- a flawed book with
some rather sinister and chilling stories.

A better purchase would be "The King In Yellow And
Other Stories," which collect this and other works.

The King In Yellow is not what I expected; the horror more subtle, the portraits of old Paris more sensitive, and neither set of stories particularly worn for their age.

It is clear to see the connection between the first and the contributions of Lovecraft and King, but I wonder particularly about the inspiration behind one of the latter, "The Prophets' Paradise", and who may have picked up _that_ thread of literature in the intervening years.

I resisted picking up a copy of Mage Revised even though I believe the Mage system is the best one in the World of Darkness. Mage 2nd Edition was so complete and well written that I didn't feel there was a need to get another main source book. What could White Wolf possibly do to improve on a book that was already so perfect? In an effort to keep up to date with the game I ordered a copy of Mage Revised and sat down with it.

Let's start off with some good things I found in the book. Much like Vampire Revised, the book was well written and a lot of the systems have been cleaned up. The Traditions each got a few more pages worth of descriptions, which was great. Each one had numerous subdivisions and they were discussed briefly, but concisely. There were a few changes in each Tradition but overall they remained the same. The magic systems were reworked extensively. The description of the spheres was detailed and easy to follow, for the most part. Most of the spheres remained the same with minor changes here and there. A lot of the more devastating effects have been toned down. Magical effects can be fine tuned by the mage by dividing successes on duration and effect intensities. Finally, the Technocratic Union was not painted as the antagonist. I felt this was a good move since it is really up to the storyteller and players to decide whom the antagonists are. Yes they can still be used as the monolithic [enemy] but the gray areas of good and bad have grown to encompass them.

Despite the many positive points used primarily to balance out Mages with the other denizens of the World of Darkness, there were also many problems with the book. One of the largest flaws was the lack of treatment of the Technocracy. The Technocracy had won the Ascension War but we got only two pages about it. Players and Storytellers will have to acquire the Guide to the Technocracy to flesh out this major faction of PC-compatible mages. Another large omission was information on the Umbra, Paradox Spirits, and Umbrood in general. This lack of information makes the Spirit sphere and possibly the Dreamspeakers somewhat PC-unfriendly. The metaplot had taken a front seat of the game. There was some dimensional storm that made piercing the Gauntlet dangerous and difficult, another blow to the Spirit Sphere. Most of the archmagi have been killed when the dimensional storm hit, which left most of the younger mages on Earth to fend for themselves with little experienced training. Doissetep and Concordia have been destroyed, but there was no information on exactly how these powerful strongholds went under. There was also the mention of some weird red star in the Umbra. I noticed this was mentioned in the Guide to the Technocracy, as well but there was little elaboration. Talismans and Devices were mentioned in the book but there was no information on how to make them.

Almost all of the omissions I mentioned above were discussed in depth in Mage 2nd Edition. Though the discussions were brief, they provided enough information for you to make up the rest of the information as you see fit. There was also less of a reliance on the metaplot, thus encouraging storytellers to weave any type of story they deemed appropriate. Though you can still do that, the metaplot has influenced many aspects of the game.

So is this book worthy of purchase? The answer is maybe. If you have Mage 2nd Edition, you probably don't need this book to run a good game. You can find a lot of the Revised systems in other core source books. If you are new to Mage than I strongly suggest you don't get this book unless you plan to purchase Guide to the Technocracy and the Book of the Worlds or the Infinite Tapestry. Get Mage 2nd Edition instead. So who should really consider getting this book? I would say people who want to keep up to date with the game and those who already have Mage 2nd Edition. Though a lot of the information was not new, I saw it more as an update to the existing system rather than a full replacement for 2nd Edition. It serves as an additional reference to the rules, which should clear up the sections that were unclear in 2nd Edition. Mage Revised wasn't a bad purchase for me because I had all of the supplements that adequately filled in all of the omitted information. But new storytellers should be aware that games that are run with only Mage Revised will be mostly limited to street-level survival games.

I have been playing Mage for 5 years now, and have quite the collection of the books. When I heard that Phil Brucato was leaving the line, I was dismayed, for he has brought such a wonderful vision of what the world was like in the setting. It was with great trepidation that I purchased this new edition of Mage. I was hoping for something akin the the Revised Edition of Vampire (which is outstanding). I was disappointed, but relieved at the same time. I gave it four stars, only because technically it is quite well. It clears up some rules, revises the game rules to use the Revised Combat section, and cleans up a few minor problems that the other edition had. But as for an enjoyable read, this book fall flat. It is missing a great story ideas of the previous editions. It makes the game more selfish, and more depressing, rather than something with a glimmer of hope. The game takes away the world spanning information, and instead makes everything more or less self-centered. Something that goes against the basic feeling of the game in general. If you are looking to get into Mage, this isn't a bad way to start, but really try to find earlier material, because it is what the game is really about, and just use the cleaned up rules. If you are an experienced mage player or storyteller, than you can skip over most of it, although the Revised rules are nice, and makes things a bit better.

I run a a Mage LARP, not a tabletop. However, I have still found this book to be a valuable resource.

Where the Laws of Ascension books skim over details, this book fills in the gaps. I have no experience with the previous incarnations of this game, but I like the direction this game is going in.

This game focuses on the small changes that characters can make to make bigger changes for the world. It gives storytellers more room to take the game in the direction they want it to go in.