Although at times it sounds like a masters-level thesis, Denton's A Southern Star for Maryland is a decent overview of how Maryland reacted to Secession Fever and how the state was compelled to stay in the Union. Denton provides some interesting numbers and analysis to support his thesis that Marylanders were inclined to join the Confederacy, detailing the general pro-Southern nature of the state. He also does a good job of detailing the quick and effective (and often legally questionable) movement by federal officials and Union volunteers to squash pro-secession sentiments in the state.

I've just finished reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and checked out this book because of some frustrating questions I had with Sir Gawain. This book is truly excellent! Instead of focusing on one person's views on the text, and instead of presenting a dry "This is what happens here" type of critical study, this book really feels alive. There are 14 (15, if you count the introduction) different essays and viewpoints on Sir Gawain, and they are all written by people who are passionate about their subject. There are studies in ancient history, morals of the time, ancient poetry style and the characters of those in the story. I was really able to appreciate the poem twice as much after reading this enlightening book. I would give it a five, but there is one drawback to the book. I think that in a few instances too much is assumed of the reader, we are expected to know more about early English literature than is normal. This was frustrating at times, but the benefits far out weigh this drawback. If you love English literature, or are simply curious about the many sides of Sir Gawain..., then try to get a copy of this book! It is extremely rewarding.

We can all benifit from Ms. Blackstone's extensive research in Virtual Strangers. She gives detailed information on how to set up e-mail accounts to protect privacy and dignity on the internet and offers great advice on how to avoid potential embarassment to the computer user. Ms. Blackstone's use of humor is sharp and sometimes subtle, but always tasteful and helps drive the point home. The actual conversations recorded in the book will sometimes be lengthy for the experienced user, but the novice will find them most enjoyable and useful. Virtual Strangers is a must for the novice and informative to the experienced web surfer.

I was looking for a detailed map in the form of a book, with a complete street index. This book has maps on the fold-out covers, a scant 28 pages of text-only sightseeing guidebook material, and a street index. It's more guide than map.

Check out "The Paris Mapguide" by Middleditch for the best maps I've found. Get the Michelin Green Guide for Paris if you want guidebook material (where to stay, what to see) with detailed area maps. For France, look at Michelin or Lonely Planet guides.

Bon Voyage!

Lets Go Map Guides are very good. They are concise, lightweight, and an easy size to store in a coat pocket. You will probably need an additional more detailed map though. But their maps are useful and the Metro Map (subway system) is indispensable. The recommendations on places to stay or restaurants is hit or miss. I would use some other guide book for that.

As soon as I got this book, I took out the inner pages, and just used the cover. The Metro and city maps printed on it proved indispensible. The plastic coated cover made it last through jacket pockets, jean pockets and rush hour Metro human sardines. You *need* a good portable map, and I found this one to be the one for me!

I really enjoyed this book until I became sure who commited the crime. Unfortunately, this was half way through the book. I continued to read it, and continued to enjoy it until my prediction came true. How very disapointing. The dialog and the characters are very funny and engaging but the story that had promise, fissled. This book was an Edgar Award Winner which considering the forseeable ending, I found very surprising. I will definately read more books by Steven Womack and hope that the stories are as good as the rest of the book.

In DEAD FOLKS' BLUES, the protagonist is a newspaper reporter who is fired and becomes a private investigator. All fictional detectives have to have some type of other professional background, and this one for Harry James Denton seems to really work.

When an old-college fling comes to his office wanting him to get her doctor husband out of trouble, Denton is extatic to land his first case. Rachel pays him in advance, and he heads to her husband's hospital to do a little background checking. In the process, he is knock out while Conrad Fletcher is murdered. The story really takes off from there, as Harry soon finds out that there are a multitude of suspects. No matter where Harry turns, he runs into a dead end.

Steven Womack does an admirable job of mingling several different characters. They are all tied together quite nicely in a good, cohesive plot, chock full of witty dialogue and humorous situations.

DEAD FOLKS' BLUES is a fairly entertaining novel, and a good solid effort for the first novel in the series. Although the ending is somewhat predictable, there are enough twists and turns to keep the reader interested. This is pretty good thriller.

This was the first in the Harry James Denton series...and I devoured it in one afternoon. I had to have more! Went out and got as many of them as I could find...and read them all just as fast. Once I started reading, I couldn't put the books down. I was addicted...sigh.

What was cool is that I lived in Nashville at the time, and the setting was there. I learned more about the city through reading his books than I had in the entire time I'd been there.
What even made it better is that Harry lived pretty close to where I was living in real life! He even wrote about the very grocery store I went to every week...

The main character was endearing, yet rough-edged to say the least. I loved everything about the series. Do yourself a favor and pick this one up...I betcha get the next in the series, too...and the next, and the next.....

I just could not get into this novel. It seemed to me to be very shallow and did not delve into the characters beyond a physical context. The main character remained below a murky surface as I found myself waiting for his true nature to emerge. It washowever an easy read and perhaps a nice piece to read if you want something simple and unengaging.

I quite enjoyed this little book. I have only just made the Denton Welch discovery and am very happy I did. This book details the misadventures of an obviously gay teen on holiday with his father and brothers. Fine prose and keen insights are the author's gifts. Autobiographical in nature, this novella never negelects to entertain or amuse. Welch's was an original voice and one well worth listening to.

This book is an account of a walking tour of England by a young man. Mostly, it's full of wry and critical descriptions of the people he encounters. There are odd aunts, strange villagers, haunting fellow hostel guests. Welch himself was a visual artist by training. He was a promising, public school educated young man when he had a crippling bicycle accident. His writing consistently describes athletic situations: swimming, skiing, bicycling. Because he wrote so little, though, I'm not certain how important this was to him. As I read, I felt I was in the company of Paul Theroux. Then I'd feel it was Graham Greene or DH Lawrence. He's such a craftsman of the written word. His skills equal those of the other writers I'm mentioning here. However, it's a shame to compare him to these writers. He simply didn't leave enough writing behind him. Welch feels very accessible. Though his writing has become obscure to us, there is no feeling that he is writing in an obscure way. You have an oppurtunity to be the first one on your block to get to know Welch. The fun part is that nobody has to know just how easy Welch is to read.

This remains, without question, one of the most excellent and insightful assessments of race in America. Whether you are a US citizen or an international visitor to the US this book is fundmental to understanding the hidden dimensions of ongoing racial division. Read it and pass it on in the hope that people will recognise the irrefutable evidence of racial segregation offered by Massey and Denton.

This is the most important book explaining the causes of African-American disadvantage in the U.S. today. Packed with data and argumentation, it documents the devastating impact of residential segregation on African-American socioeconomic prospects. One of the best features of the book is the way it subsumes other prominant explanations of African-American disadvantage--for example, William J. Wilson's spatial-mismatch hypothesis, and "culture of poverty"/"black cultural pathology" theories--within its theoretical framework.

I, too, read this for an ethnicity class. I found it to be very informative and repeatedly found that I was saying to myself "Wow, I never noticed that, that's right!" Granted, it's fairly academic writing but I don't think it's written beyond the level of an average reader. If you're interested in the topic it raises some ideas that aren't talked about in a lot of places.

It's an odd book, not at all what i expected. I only finished it the 3rd time i tried, after putting it to the bottom of the TBR pile as a waste of reading time. The reason i bought it was that recommendations had it being an important contribution to the Creation-Evolution-Design debate, being an account of purposefulness in the universe encoded in the very physical and biological laws of natural science. The first part, on physical constants(or constraints) and how little they can vary and still have a human being friendly universe, was tedious and boring. The reason i found it so was my expectations clashed with the books reality, i thought it was polemical, fast moving, directed at enemies near and far, in general combative. It's not, it is working through the details, especially the first half. So the reason i finished it is not the same reason as i bought it.

Secondly, it is a misused, misconstrued, misread book in the CEd debate. It is a testimony to the strength of the young earth creationists and their desire to completely polarize the conversation that this book is recommended as ID or even worse as creationist. Simply NOT TRUE, the author is a non-darwinian materialist evolutionist with several pages in the preface directed at this confusion. It is almost like the YEC believe the enemy of my enemies is my friend. Just like they jumped at punctuated evolution as a 'proof' of their thinking, they are jumping at this book.

This out of the way, what is the book about?
The first part, roughly half the book, is an extended, detailed account of physical things and how important their exact characteristics are to the presence of life on earth. This is really introduction to the second half, which are the particular characteristics of biological life are generative of the forms of life we see around us. Essentially the book is an argument against S.J.Gould's statement that if you replayed the video tape of life on earth it would be substantially different than it is because the driving forces are undirectional particularly the spontaneity of mutation.
To this argument the 12th chapter, "the tree of life" is, imho, the key point of the book. It is certainly possible to read it by itself and i would recommend this to anyone, the central themes of the chapter are not dependent upon the earlier material. The following chapters are the details of some pieces of the puzzle started in chapter 12, fleshed out, made into sections in their own right.

So i've reduced a 400+ page book to a careful reading of one chapter. So what is the point of "the tree of life"?

Taking the very old image of the tree of life, setting next to it the modern genetic idea of the investigation of DNA sequence space through time via evolution by creatures existing in morphological or phenotypic space. It is his idea that evolution 'fills', 'investigates', or 'explores' the tree of life in a directed, purposeful way. The chapter is a speculative look at the potential forces that could constraint, prune, force into channels this evolutionary force to literally build a tree where the main branches, the truck, maybe even the twigs, certainly the general form was implicit before hand in those laws and constraints. This looks very much like the Neoplatonic idea of forms updated to the world of PCR and Human Genomic Project.

It's speculative, often i wrote-argument from ignorance*- in the margin, as if he believed 'A' rather than 'B' because there was no 'C' on the horizon, and 'A' looked better than 'B'. The only example i really appreciated was the idea that Australia with it's extraordinary marsupial convergence towards placential animals elsewhere in the world, shows that Gould's tape has run a second time in the history of this world and produced much the same creatures, at least morphologically.

It's an interesting book, i would, if i could do the time over again, read chapter 12 to the end, then just skim the 1st half skipping the mass of uninteresting detail. It IS an important contribution to the CED debate but i am afraid from what i see written about it that people are not really reading it before they recommend it. One problem is that it will be attacked from both major sides in the debate. From the naturalistic darwinian evolutionists because not-teleology not-designed is a crucial element of their high level metaphysics and from the creationist side who can not conceive of a design without a designer or purpose without consciousness. The second problem is that it is not polemical, not convincing because it is so speculative and daring, more a putting out of new ideas to see how they fly then a fully mature consistent position.

*actually argument from personal incredulity....

It is a tragic demonstration of what Cremo, in "Forbidden Archeology," politely calls the "knowledge filter" of science, that evolutionists can take the time to read the 428 pages of this book and completely miss the whole point. To claim that Denton has been "converted" to evolutionism is either a serious misreading or deliberate misrepresentation. Perhaps the following, from the conclusion of "Nature's Destiny," will suffice to demonstrate:

"All the evidence available in the biological sciences supports the core proposition of traditional natural theology--that the cosmos is a specially designed whole with life and mankind as its fundamental goal and purpose, a whole in which all facets of reality, from the size of galaxies to the thermal capacity of water, have their meaning and explanation in this central fact."(p. 389)

Can Denton's stance be any more clearer than this? Perhaps. He does say that "to get from a single cell to Homo Sapiens has taken about 4 billion years". Likewise, he seems to assume that evolution is responsible for the diversity and complexity of life, albeit directed by information built into the first cell, by whom or what he does not say. However, he offers little to support the notion that the origin of this first cell (and its wondrous DNA) was "in some way programmed into the laws of nature ... it has to be admitted that at present, despite an enormous effort, we still have no idea how this occurred ..."

He goes on to mention the various theories currently offered, unfortunately with a less critical eye than he should. Even the poor example of snowflakes as a highly ordered state analogous to the molecules of life is thrown a bone. This seems strange in light of the still unanswered challenges presented in his previous book, but it is an example of why evolutionism has survived-- the compartmentalization of science, whereby each scientist, assuming evolution to be proven outside his own! field of expertise, discards or explains away his own contradictory findings (the "knowledge filter" again). We will have to be content with such excellent volumes on the subject as "Forbidden Archeology","The Origin of Species Revisited", and Lubenow's "Bones of Contention". However, this does not detract from the main thrust: the overwhelming evidence of design, inexplicable by "natural" evolution.

Another flaw is his requiring that "evidence for believing that the world is prefabricated to the end of life" must somehow contradict his own notion of "special creation." Even supposing this were true, he errs in forgetting that the creation of the first cell (to use his evolutionary view) or DNA, or indeed the left-handedness of life's proteins, are in themselves worthy of being considered supernatural acts, in that they do not naturally follow from the (strangely fortituous) laws of nature in the same way as the origin of the heavier elements. He neglects to address the still unresolved (and fatal) problems regarding the early atmosphere, crucial to the origins question. In distancing himself from his perception of "creationism," he exhibits similar forgetfulness when he claims that his argument is consistent with naturalistic science--"that the cosmos ... can be comprehended ultimately in its entirety by human reason." But surely he does not mean to include abiogenesis and the fitness of the universe for life. Instead, one gets the impression that he is trying to be charitable to his fundamentalist Darwinian colleagues.

What Denton does do well is take us on a marvelous tour of how finely-tuned the universe is to allow us to exist. He does this in far greater detail than most other books of this kind. He covers such "coincidences" as the many fortituous (and anomolous) properties of water, independent yet working together to support life; the fine-tuning of physical constants; suspicious d! ovetailing of nuclear resonances; the fitness of carbon and other elements for life; the complexity and inexplicability of DNA and proteins; etc. However, details even creationists take for granted are scrutinized, leaving us with a sense of awe (or gnashing of teeth): the fitness of the visual spectrum for vision; the design of the hand; our body dimensions bipedal gait, allowing us to use fire and develop technology; capacity for language; and so on. In doing so he shows us that the "chance" so casually spoken of in evolutionism quickly diminishes to zero upon open-minded examination of our cosmos; and that, indeed, we were meant to discover this fact.

This compilation of smoking guns makes for an always fascinating, always interesting read, bound to raise much ire in evolutionistic circles. Perhaps a better title would have been "Denton's Dangerous Idea." Apologies to many sci-fi writers should be forthcoming, as he demonstrates that many concepts of otherworldly life can be entertained only in our naivete.

It is a tragic demonstration of what Cremo, in "Forbidden Archeology," politely calls the "knowledge filter" of science, that evolutionists can take the time to read the 428 pages of this book and completely miss the whole point. To claim that Denton has been "converted" to evolutionism is either a serious misreading or deliberate misrepresentation. Perhaps the following, from the conclusion of "Nature's Destiny," will suffice to demonstrate:

"All the evidence available in the biological sciences supports the core proposition of traditional natural theology--that the cosmos is a specially designed whole with life and mankind as its fundamental goal and purpose, a whole in which all facets of reality, from the size of galaxies to the thermal capacity of water, have their meaning and explanation in this central fact."(p. 389)

Can Denton's stance be any more clearer than this? Perhaps. He does say that "to get from a single cell to Homo Sapiens has taken about 4 billion years". Likewise, he seems to assume that evolution is responsible for the diversity and complexity of life, albeit directed by information built into the first cell, by whom or what he does not say. However, he offers little to support the notion that the origin of this first cell (and its wondrous DNA) was "in some way programmed into the laws of nature ... it has to be admitted that at present, despite an enormous effort, we still have no idea how this occurred ..."

He goes on to mention the various theories currently offered, unfortunately with a less critical eye than he should. Even the poor example of snowflakes as a highly ordered state analogous to the molecules of life is thrown a bone. This seems strange in light of the still unanswered challenges presented in his previous book, but it is an example of why evolutionism has survived-- the compartmentalization of science, whereby each scientist, assuming evolution to be proven outside his own field of expertise, discards or explains away his own contradictory findings (the "knowledge filter" again). We will have to be content with such excellent volumes on the subject as "Forbidden Archeology","The Origin of Species Revisited", and Lubenow's "Bones of Contention". However, this does not detract from the main thrust: the overwhelming evidence of design, inexplicable by "natural" evolution.

Another flaw is his requiring that "evidence for believing that the world is prefabricated to the end of life" must somehow contradict his own notion of "special creation." Even supposing this were true, he errs in forgetting that the creation of the first cell (to use his evolutionary view) or DNA, or indeed the left-handedness of life's proteins, are in themselves worthy of being considered supernatural acts, in that they do not naturally follow from the (strangely fortituous) laws of nature in the same way as the origin of the heavier elements. He neglects to address the still unresolved (and fatal) problems regarding the early atmosphere, crucial to the origins question. In distancing himself from his perception of "creationism," he exhibits similar forgetfulness when he claims that his argument is consistent with naturalistic science--"that the cosmos ... can be comprehended ultimately in its entirety by human reason." But surely he does not mean to include abiogenesis and the fitness of the universe for life. Instead, one gets the impression that he is trying to be charitable to his fundamentalist Darwinian colleagues.

What Denton does do well is take us on a marvelous tour of how finely-tuned the universe is to allow us to exist. He does this in far greater detail than most other books of this kind. He covers such "coincidences" as the many fortituous (and anomolous) properties of water, independent yet working together to support life; the fine-tuning of physical constants; suspicious dovetailing of nuclear resonances; the fitness of carbon and other elements for life; the complexity and inexplicability of DNA and proteins; etc. As we read about the ingenuity employed at the molecular level for the sending of nerve signals, manipulation of electrons, conveyance of oxygen, and so on, and the many such contrivances that are essential for life, we are struck by the overwhelming, mind-boggling complexity of it all, and the sneaking suspicion that much is taken on faith in evolutionistic circles. And we see immediately that it cannot be an informed faith based on any scientific evidence, but rather a wishful, forced belief that such nanomachines could have arisen by chance. By the time we have recovered from our revelations about water and carbon, how wonderfully fit they are for our existence, by the time we are finished reading about proteins and the cell, it seems an impossibility that life, being so complex as it is, could have arisen at all, even if it were created by some supernatural being; for this being would have to be possessed of an intellect that beggars our minds. We are used to thinking of cells as simple blobs of protoplasmic jelly, as did Darwin; not so. Now we can understand wny the intricate requirements of life are usually glossed over in popularized treatments on evolution: either the knowledge was not available then, or the inclusion of it would have made evolution impossible, even ridiculous, to defend.

However, details even creationists take for granted are scrutinized, leaving us with a sense of awe (or gnashing of teeth): the fitness of the visual spectrum for vision; the design of the hand; our body dimensions and bipedal gait, allowing us to use fire and thus develop technology; our capacity for language; and so on. In doing so he shows us that the "chance" so casually spoken of in evolutionism quickly diminishes to absurdity upon open-minded examination of our cosmos; and that, indeed, we were meant to discover this fact.

This compilation of smoking guns makes for an always fascinating, always interesting read, bound to raise much ire in evolutionistic circles. Perhaps a better title would have been "Denton's Dangerous Idea." Apologies to many sci-fi writers should be forthcoming, as he demonstrates that many concepts of otherworldly life can be entertained only in our naivete.

Denton's book is a first-rate critique of contemporary versions of Darwinism and is filled with original and compelling arguments. The usual suspects have, naturally, attacked the book with the usual generic accusations, but don't be mislead: "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis" is not a defense of "Scientific Creationism" and definitely does not go wrong in easy and obvious ways. It is a penetrating account of features of the natural world that mutation and natural selection are simply inadequate to explain. From biochemistry to the fossil record, Denton systematically demolishes the "fact" of evolution as a sufficient explanation for the world as it is. Denton doesn't deny that evolution occurs; he is, for example, sanguine about the "horse series." He claims, however, that evolution, taken as mutation and natural selection, is no more than a partial answer. His his explication and analysis of the avian respiratory system is as convincing as anything in Mike Behe's book. Some have tried to explain away problems in evolution as owing to the paucity of human imagination, but Denton doesn't merely ask, "How could this have evolved?" e.g., the feather, avian respiration, etc. He argues positively that certain features cannot have evolved, that intermediate forms are not just difficult to imagine, they are impossible. There are those who judge books critical of evolution without actually reading them, evidently considering that to be needless toil. They "know" that evolution is true and explains everything, and therefore "know" that all critics have bad motives and worse education. Those who find that they need actually to read a book in order to fairly judge it will find Denton reasonable, extremely well-informed, clear, readable and thought-provoking. I highly recommend "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis."

It's amazing to me that Denton's book written 15 years ago (1985)has been largely ignored. It is the best book I have ever read in criticism of The Theory of Evolution; and it does it from a purely scientific basis. Denton a Molecular Biologist removes all of the supports (if there ever were any) from Darwin's theory of macro-evolution (continuity of life). Denton blasts all of the previous arguments made by the pro-evolutionists showing that there is essentially no support of macro-evolution in the fossil record. He also, clearly demonstrates that there is no support coming from his specialty molecular biology. In the end the only sound explanation he can make is that life is profoundly discontinous. Denton makes another point that is particularly interesting, he demonstrates that it is the anti-evolutionists (not to be confused with creationists) that have always utilized a scientific approach to their argument while the evolutionists have been guilty of at best pseudo-science. This book is worth reading for anyone who wants to approach the subject matter objectively and scientifically.

Perhaps no other scientist has been bold enough to admit to the many problems with the biological theory of evolution of life. Most nature programs we see on television portray evolution to be as factual as a round earth or the law of gravity. But is it? In this highly informed and well-documented book, Dr. Denton reveals from primary source material what most in the scientific community do not seem to want the general public to know about this theory:'...His [Darwin's] general theory, that all life on earth had originated and evolved by a gradual successive accumulation of fortuitous mutations, is still, as it was in Darwin's time, a highly speculative hypothesis entirely without direct factual support and very far from the self-evident axiom some of its more aggressive advocates would have us believe.' (p.77). If this is so, then perhaps the scientific community has much explaining to do in light of this and other books by fellow EVOLUTIONISTS.

Ad hominem attacks and ad hoc rescues from those who ignore or distort the facts, or who choose not to see them, will not make them go away. The facts are real, and to glibly call these findings "creationist garbage" is to show great ignorance and bias at its worst. At least this evolutionist is being honest with the facts....the others want to continue living in a fantasy world where their perfect little anti-God theory lives and enjoys no flaws or imperfections. A nice fantasy land, but not much else, especially not unbiased, objective, pure science. This book is a must read for anyone who wants to see an EVOLUTIONIST honestly reveal the weaknesses of a theory that is literally collapsing under weight of its own irrationality.

The title of this review says it all. I was expecting some hip, exciting work from NY's young up-and-comers, and I'm sad to say I've read/heard/seen better from unpublished playwrights in other parts of the country. Disappointing.

I have purchased and read all 4 volumes in this remarkable series edited by Martin Denton, chief reviewer at the New York Theatre Experience, and I highly recommend any or all. If fact, my reasons for recommending are the same for each: First, the collections are brilliant snapshots of what's new in the downtown NYC theatre scene. Second, each script is fresh and amazing on its own. Third, the diversity of styles and textures is remarkable for any play anthology. Fourth, where else can you get this many modern plays for such a price! And none of them can be found elsewhere. I have been an actor and director for 30 years and believe me, whether you are an actor, director, playwright, producer or patron, you will do yourself a favor by purchasing as many of these volumes as you can (and look for future year's editions).