Dr. cooper throughly explains how your body (mainly the heart and lungs) works. The book is about his studies on aerobic exercises and how it affects the body. He talks alot about his subjects and thier conditions and how aerobics helped rid themselves of thier problems. I would say to anyone who is serious about thier health, to buy this book. It's for those who are obese, those with heart and lung conditions and even those who have problems sleeping. This book is basically for anyone and everyone. Buy this book and it may help you live longer and healthier.

..Dr. Kenneth Cooper has provided us with the most complete fitness program available anywhere today -- simple guidelines that have been proven over years. Anyone who wants to be fit and well needs this program. As a physical education teacher and a world class athlete I have used Cooper's formulas for fitness excellence for over 35 years.. Don't be confused, Dr. Cooper will lead you and your family to total health in the years ahead.

This book has wonderful suggestions for achieving balance in all aspects of one's life, as the title says--"exercise, diet, emotional balance".

I found the exercise programs to be particularly useful--he gives explicit guidelines for achieving cardiovascular health, and does not minimize the importance of balancing one's workouts. Whether you're just beginning to exercise or have been exercising for years, you will undoubtedly find useful information in this book.

Let me qualify something. I have a two year old. This book is not good for a two year old. Pictures: Poorly done, with some artistic watercolors that are really to dark. Not a bright happy and pleasing in the illustration department. The pictures are really elementary in skill level. Story: This book is really just a huge social message about the loss of habitat for certain animals. I dont think that little kids really can conceptialize this let alone care. The message also offers no solution to the problem. Leaves you hanging at the end as you wonder if you missed something. Text: Not a rhyming book. Actually, just did not have good flow. I hate to be the odd man out here, but for MY purposes - not a book that I would recommend you buy.

My almost 2 year old son got this book for X-mas.We have been reading it everyday since. He loves it! After reading this book 3 or 4 times he says sleepy now when it is time to go to bed.
I like it because it seems to get the message across that night is for sleeping. Plus it has beautiful illustrations and the text isn't completely assanine. After writing this I am going to buy some more of this authors books. Too bad she doesn't have one about going to the potty :)

I purchased this book for my daughter when she was two. She is now almost three, and this is still one of our favorite bedtime books. My daughter enjoys (and relates to) the little boy's not wanting to go to bed, and the stalling that is involved. My daughter gets a kick out of the vrrooming car sound. We love to explore every detail together on each page of the charming illustrations. My daughter loves to point out how sleepy everyone gets as the story moves along, making her sleepy too. I especially love the part of the mother and the ending!

Cooper's style comes though again in this delightful narrative. His stories are true...and truly spoken in a plain yet poetic voice. As I read about Henry I was touched by this story of the life of a beloved pet--a story which in turn easily tells the story as well of a reflective young boy who grows up alongside his dog, and who must come to terms with changes in his life and his dog's life. The watercolor illustrations reflect the peaceful, rural environment in gorgeous color, and these illustrations themselves inhabit a peaceful setting--it's a beautifully designed book.

Cooper isn't afraid to tell a sad story here--and the story wouldn't be sad if he hadn't first given us a something vivid and real and joyful to care about: a boy and his dog. True companionship runs through this book. The writing's spare but the feeling isn't. And the pictures are beautiful. A good gift for anyone who likes dogs or is thinking of getting a pet for their child.

For anyone who has shared a bond with a pet, "Henry" is for you. It brought back memories of all the creatures I grew up with. I thought the illustrations were wonderful. Once again, Cooper has brought tears to my eyes and a smile to my face.

Few novelists pursue their chosen themes with such morbid enthusiasm as Dennis Cooper. For more than a decade his quintet of novels - Closer, Frisk, Try, Guide and now Period - have obsessed over sex, child pornography, drugs and dismemberment. Undeterred even by death threats, Cooper has played out his violent fantasies in these novels with a disturbing purity of vision. His new novel Period marks, as its title suggests, the end of the cycle. He's claimed that it's both a 'disappearing act' and a 'suicide note.' Considering the spectral and sparse quality of the book both comments seem particularly appropriate.

The quintet began back in 1989 with Closer. Yet it was Cooper's 1991 novel Frisk that really stirred controversy, deliberately blurring the line between fantasy and reality and securing its author a place at the cutting edge of contemporary American literature. Period draws out the same themes and concerns as the preceding novels, charting the bored angst of gay West Coast adolescents and their middle-aged paramours as they drift into experiments with drugs, Satanism, sex and ultimately murder. Like grim parodies of Enlightenment anatomists, Cooper's protagonists believe that dismembering the bodies of their lovers will reveal the truth of existence, bringing them closer to an absent God and saving them from the demystified consumer culture that surrounds them.

What has always been so impressive about Cooper's work is his dedication to narrative forms that replicate the violent content of the books. His prose has sought to cut into the flat surface of the conventional pornographic or horror text through the use of flashbacks, narratives-within-narratives, and stream of consciousness techniques. In Period this relationship between form and content reaches its peak, creating a fragmented and confusing novel that refuses easy definition. It's certainly the sparsest of Cooper's books, a skeleton thin, episodic narrative that's like the decomposed body of one of the story's victims. Indeed, the novel is so cut up that the reader has no choice but to follow the advice of the epigraph and 'keep watch over absent meaning'. Shifting between different characters' viewpoints, radio phone-ins, Internet chat rooms and diaries Cooper creates a disturbing hall of mirrors through which we're left to wander without a guide. Although Period's obliqueness is slightly dissatisfying it appears ultimately inevitable, for what else but a self-reflexive 'period' could end this set of books?

Period confirms Cooper's growing reputation as the most exciting and transgressive of contemporary American novelists. However, as last year's publication of Cooper's journalism and essays - in the collection All Ears - has demonstrated, his work has much more scope than this obsessively brilliant cycle of novels. He's currently working on a book based upon the recent spate of American High School shootings and has also expressed a desire to experiment with a novel of physical comedy (he cites the films of Jacques Tatti, Jerry Lewis and Jackie Chan as a potential source of inspiration). Whatever path he may choose his next offering will be awaited eagerly on both sides of the Atlantic.

'Period' by Dennis Cooper is at times horrifying, heartbreaking, or just confusing. Horrifying becauses of it's violent implications and stronghold to truth. Heartbreaking because of the overwhelming feeling of desire and missed chances. His dialogue and syntax keep reading interesting, if not hard to comprehend. He jumps around a lot, but that just adds to the whole darkness of the book. Without having read the other novels in this "cycle" , it takes awhile to figure out what's going on. 'Period' is a book that the reader will either read cover to cover three times, or set on fire after reading the first few paragraphs.

"Period" is likely to anger many Cooper fans due to its spare qualities in narrative, character, form. Cooper has always written about desire, particularly it's darkest manifestations and results. Cooper's books are short, extreme, and demand that they roll around the subconscious of the reader. "Period" is no different, but here everything Cooper has worked toward in the 4 previous novels in this cycle is reported flatly, obscurely, and sometimes causes great aggravation in the reader.

However, interviews with Cooper have revealed that "George Miles" was a real person who left deep emotional marks in Cooper. His mutilation in "Closer," the first in the cycle, seems like an attempt to exorcise the author's feeling for his object of obsession. George's absence (or mere mention) in the next 3 books makes it seem like the author was successful. Those 3 books ("Frisk," "Try," "Guide)all deal in some way with the attempt to vanquish desire. Exploration of the extremes in human thought and behavior distance the obsession over something the author, who is always a character in some fashion in the cycle, cannot have.

Interviews say that Cooper found that the real George Miles committed suicide, years after their relationship. "Period" takes that as a cue to move everything toward death - desire, the author himself, any characters that happen to appear in the midst. This book mirrors Cooper's others, but leaves us in the end only with ourselves and interpretations. The book has a formal structure where the prose is allowed to mirror itself foremost, the other books in the cycle secondly, and ourselves - probably most disturbingly.

Under all the sex, gore, minimalism, and luridness of Cooper's novels is a profound meditation on who we are, what relationships mean, how expression cannot contain reality, and the various meanings of love.

This is strong stuff. "Period" is not the place to start for a novice. But it's one hell of a book-long poem about desire, and therefore a fitting end to the five book cycle. What Cooper does next is already an intriguing subject. He might just be the last American writer with any guts. A master; a masterwork.

Buyer beware! Nothing on the cover reveals that this is born-again Christian propaganda,the hero an Indiana Jones who stops to pray. The bad guy actually IS an anti-god and not just a human with a sheet. I was shocked when my daughter brought it home. It is a very creepy book.

It's Frank Peretti's brilliant novel writing skills...condensed! It's a super-cool family of archeologists--minus a mother--who investigate phenomena in the spirit of Indiana Jones, only with a Christian perspective.

The Coopers are on a nice, run-of-the-mill, routine dig in Israel, when they uncover a huge pit. Then one of their crew falls - or is pulled - down, and never seen again. After being captured by the creepy Yahrrim, the local tribesmen who live in fear of their god, meeting their prophetess, Marah, and encountering a rough and mysterious desert rogue they are finally forced to enter. . .The Tombs of Anak.

Riddles, action, suspense, and coolness are loaded to the gills in this book, just great for young people who want to read some cool stuff without the junk and gore of Illinois Jones, or whatever. And yes, there is Christian material in these books, as another reviewer so angrily stated. Refreshing if you ask me.

Parental warnings: Lots of creepy stuff in this book...the Yahrrim are scary - when we first meet them, they're in the middle of an underground ritual - and lots of other scary things happen in the book. I read them when I was younger, and I thought they were cool. And I never needed the Arkansas Jones movies!

The Tombs of Anak is a very creepy book. It's full of excitement and although it is Peretti's children's series it is a very entertaining book for the older reader as well. I would recommend this book to anyone over thirteen. I'd say it's too frightening for anyone younger than that.

When writing for television and film some people may think that all you have to do is come up with an idea and write the screenplay. The reality is that there is a lot more to it according to Dona Cooper, the author of the best-selling book, Writing Screenplays for Television and Film. The major theme that she continuously uses throughout the book is the two-dimensional roller coaster theme. The roller coaster analogy is to help "capture the sense of thrust, power, build, and intensity that a good story experience must have." This book targets readers who are more advanced and are ready to market their screenplays as soon as everything is together versus a beginning writer who wants to learn the basic steps of writing a screenplay. The majority of this book is written with strong structure. She develops key concepts and backs the structure of the different types of roller coasters that can be incorporated in many story elements. She writes with the idea of not telling the reader first you need to do this step, instead she lets the reader explore the different possible directions they can take. Her advice allows the reader to develop their own way of writing and their own sequence of writing. Beginning writers may want to gear away from this book. For the more advanced writers this would be a great book to purchase.

You should definitely own a copy of this book. While it is not aimed at total beginners, intermediate and advanced writers will find it invaluable.

If only every book was as well written as this one.... This book is one of the best books on screenwriting I've ever read for one simple reason: Clarity. The material in this book is presented in a wonderful "reader friendly" streamlined structure. Full of useful information yet straight and to the point. A great read for the beginning screenwriter.

I read this book about 27 years ago as a young lad after seeing him perform the Welcome to my Nightmare tour. Have been looking for it recently but understand it is out of print. It spoke of his hard drinking days, and I'd like to have another look. Come on Alice cooper fan club maybe we can get it re-published.

Bob Greene's open-eyed account of the excesses of life as a temporary member of the Alice Cooper road show in 1973-74. Not only do we see the stresses taking their toll on a band just passing their peak, but we also get a fairly nostalgic look at Nixon-era America. Not as much a "Fan" book as it is a nice study of the commercialism and marketing techniques that used to stir teen appeal and parental angst.

Want the ins/outs of the touring as a rock superstar? Look no farther!

Billion Dollar Babies has it all!

The private jet, throngs of willing groupies, money, recording studios, limos, egos out of control, envy, etc. The reader get a feel of it all thanks to a great job by the author.

The problem is the book is out of print!

However, if you ever find it in a second-hand book store be sure to pick it up.

I'm a big fan of bubblegum music (it's not often someone will openly admit that), and I thought this book was going to be interesting. It was, to an extent. All of my favorite bands were listed (1910 Fruitgum Company, Ohio Express, and my personal faves, The Monkees), and a lot of the cartoon rock bands were talked about, too (mostly from Hanna-Barbera Studios, such as The Impossibles, Josie and the Pussycats, and the Banana Splits, just to name a few). Another one of the book's best moments was the "100 Greatest Moments of Bubblegum" list in the beginning (or something like that)

However, there were some drawbacks to this book. When they were talking about the producers and record labels, the essays got kind of long, and sort of boring. I got bored with this section very quickly. Another downside to the book was when the authors were talking about the Backstreet Boys, 'NSync, Britney Spears and the like (which in my opinion are NOT bubblegum) and then comparing them to The Monkees (which is totally bogus, becuase the Monkees DID play their own music after the first 2 albums, and 'NSync and the rest have yet to actually pick up a guitar, but I digress).

Other than the drawbacks listed, I think you'll get a bang out of this book. It's the perfect thing for those who grew up with the Partridge Family and the Monkees, or those of you who are new fans, and want to know more about the subject of bubblegum music.

This was a rarity in non-fiction for me: I couldn't put it down! So many of the essays were so wonderful, I just had to keep reading to see how strong the next one was. There are a few that I can tell were included more for completeness than quality compared to some, but overall this book is highly educational and entertaining at the same time. Worth it for anyone with an interest in pop culture. Also would make a good gift for that too-snobby-for-the-room culture vulture in your life that needs to be reminded that even The Ramones got into kitsch.

The naked truth, indeed!

Editors Kim Cooper and David Smay have outdone themselves in producing the definitive work on the wildly popular yet strangely esoteric world of bubblegum rock, compiling dozens of essays written by some of the finest scribes of the underground press.

Case in point: "Looking for the Beagles" by Steve Mandich, the author of the fantastically comprehensive biography "Evel Incarnate: The Life and Legend of Evel Knievel." Here Mandich sheds a similarly swell light on the all-but forgotten rockin' doggie duo the Beagles, who starred in their own short-lived late-'60s Saturday-morning cartoon series and released one gleeful pop album.

Other contributors include the comic world's Peter Bagge ("Hate") with a hilariously enthusiastic overview of his young daughter's contemporary bubblegum CDs, Jake Austen ("Roctober") deconstructs KISS, and, in the interest of fairness, Dennis Eichhorn ("Real Stuff") bursts the bubble with "I Hate Bubblegum!"

Buy for its long-lasting flavor.

Splat!

Maybe Michael Bruce should have hired a ghost writer. But don't hold it against him. Until a better writer happens along, this will probably have to be the definitive account of Alice Cooper's early life - as in, when the name indicated a band first and foremost, even if the lead singer decided to adopt the name as his own stage name, too - if only because it comes from the man who was probably the real most valuable player in the band. Though they began as a gang of rabble-and-rollers who also had a sense of the absurd which veered between the surreal and the downright insane (you have to hear their very first album, the Frank Zappa-produced "Pretties For You," to understand), it didn't take long before Alice Cooper began shaping into a slashing band with hooks to burn - the maturity which began on their second album ("Easy Action") and all but exploded on their third ("Love It To Death") may have been a rather watered-down and cartooned-up version of the Stooges' genuine teenage-wasteland angst, but there was no escaping the quick grip of songs like "Eighteen," "Under My Wheels," "Be My Lover," "Caught In A Dream," "School's Out," "You Drive Me Nervous," "Dead Babies," "Gutter Cat Vs. The Jets," "No More Mr. Nice Guy," and "Billion Dollar Baby." And it was predominantly Michael Bruce - who was actually the better of the band's two guitarists, though fellow guitarist Glen Buxton usually earned the raves for the spiky lead guitar work even when he didn't play it (which, beginning with the impossibly best-selling "Billion Dollar Babies," was damn near all the time; the stories abounded about the band using unseen guitarists to cover for Buxton while Bruce actually switched between lead and rhythm guitar onstage) - who provided the hooks and the overall balanced structure that made the songs workable even without the stage act whose shock value, in hindsight, wore off into self-parody rather quickly.

It probably should have surprised no one that the overworked Alice Cooper fivesome delivered something less than their front line with 1974's "Muscle of Love," but what happened next proves somewhat tawdry - announcing a temporary hiatus for the band, on the pretext of regrouping and refreshing, Cooper the singer cut a well-received solo album ("Welcome To My Nightmare") with most of the band he swiped from Lou Reed (the famed "Rock and Roll Animal" group, spearhead by twin guitar slingers Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner)...and then some solo concerts with a few new variations on his old stage tricks...then another solo album...a few hit singles (especially 1977's surprisingly masterful and haunting ballad, "You And Me")...another couple of solo albums, including a live album at least a third of which was stuff from the old band. Meanwhile, the old band twisted in the wind and figured out the hard way that Alice Cooper the singer had no intention of ever reuniting Alice Cooper the band. (Almost a year and a half later, while Cooper was riding his slowly swelling solo success, the band gave interviews in which they assured one and all that yes, they were only on temporary vacation and they were just waiting for Alice to pass the word it was time to rock again.)

The band was fool enough to try it on their own for awhile (minus Buxton, apparently), changing the name to Billion Dollar Babies, and cutting an album which had plenty missing beginning with the foolishness of their new name. From there, they drifted apart to various ventures none of which came even close to their old glory, and practically the whole world forgot Alice Cooper began as a band name.

As all but the musical director of that band, Bruce has all the reason in the world to be bitter over their shabby treatment. He may not be David Niven as a show business memoirist, but given his limitations as a prose writer he's telling a story fans of the 1970s (remember: Alice Cooper the band was the hottest act in American show business from 1971-73) and of Alice Cooper will want to know, and if you get past his stylistic flaws as a writer you'll be surprised at how well he keeps the bitterness down to a dull roar and still has a stubborn pride in what he did accomplish.

This is an excellent book by Michael Bruce (Alice Cooper Band Original Guitarists) and Billy James (Ant Bee) which follows the Bands History from Arizona to Los Angeles To Michigan to Superstardom. It is well written and tells the story in an engaging way with much humor and candor. This is a MUST HAVE for any Alice Cooper fan and really any Rock Fan.

A great book that goes right to the heart of The Alice cooper band. I only wish that it was longer. Good content indeed!
Lovely photos and info throughout! If you are a fan of the early AC, READ THIS BOOK! It is essential!

Dennis Cooper is a writer who is creating his own niche in literature. He is eloquent while being brutal, comprehendable while writing about insanity, tender while describing the most perilous of situations, and a master at living inside the heads of troubled youths. MY LOOSE THREAD is more like an epic poem in dialogue than it is a novel. There is story here - grand Guignol story - but the madness of the narrative comes solely through the voices of the participants in this far from normal setting. And like an epic poem, this story begs to be read in one sitting. The dialogue is intense but the depth of meaning behind even short phrases requires deep concentration on the part of the reader.

Some people may be put off by the style or the subject of this book - Cooper climbs inside the psyches of young gay boys and tries to sort out the confusion and challenges of the real versus the fantasy. But get past whatever might disturb you about the story and you will be witness to a major talent. It will be invigorating to read a long novel by this gifted writer.

One thing you can say about Dennis Cooper's writing is he intends to shock and alarm us with his subject matter, and he certainly is successful in that respect. You might even call it "high risk literature". He is a born writer who writes with short, tight, tense sentences that keeps the reader glued to the story from the beginning to the end. You can feel the emotions and feelings of each of his characters. That's why I have read all of his novels. The subject matter may not be appealing but Cooper is a daring, literary master with words. Cooper's writing has often been compared to another literary artist, William Burroughs.

Cooper's latest novel is about a high school student named Larry who is offered $500, by an older student, to kill a fellow student at his school and retrieve the guy's notebook. It seems like a easy enough task for Larry to do, but many unexpected complications arise. After the student is killed, Larry decides to read the notebook out of curiosity. What it reveals is totally unexpected and shocking for Larry. Larry's life is changed from this point on in the story. Larry at the same time, is also wrestling with his own sexuality and a sexual relationship with his younger brother. These young characters seem to be in a permanent state of emotional upheaval. There seems to be so much violence, stress and sexual abuse in their lives. Everyday is a matter of life and death for these kids. This story is not one that will uplift your spirits, and it's not for the easily shocked.

Shocking? Yes. Sexually tense and violent? Yes. It almost seems like a "teenage hell". As I said, "The subject matter may not be appealing but Cooper is a daring, literary master with words. Be prepared!!!! Cooper's done it again. Recommended.

Joe Hanssen

This is the first Dennis Cooper novel I've read so I cannot compare it to what he has written before. But I think it's the most honest and emotionally intense fiction I've ever read. I've read it four times and it made cry every time. It makes me feel speechless. It's brilliant.