The Hardy Boys are at it again! For those who aren't fans of the series, the Hardy Boys are Frank and Joe, 2 teenage detectives who have a sweet tooth for mystery and adventure. Their father is a famous American detective (Fenton Hardy), and the Hardy Boys help their father crack cases. By doing this, the Hardy Boys have also earned their share of the limelight.

Their best friend, Chet Morton, is a slightly chubby boy who has weird interests. Chet has many odd hobbies, and the Hardy Boys enjoy seeing all them when he is not tagging along with them through Bayport solving mysteries with them.

The book starts as Frank and Joe Hardy slam the brakes of their convertible to avoid slamming into an automobile that ran down the road into a ditch. After fixing the tire that flew off the car due to a bad repair job, the man, who happened to speak with a British accent, revealed himself to be John Mead, a rich man who lives in a mansion in Barmet Bay near Bayport.

However, as the Hardy Boys are leaving the crash site, Joe finds a key. It's no ordinary key either. It's an ornately designed, ancient key. But when they check up on John Mead's background with their dad's boss, chief of police in Bayport Chief Collig, they find that John Mead died 5 years ago with no heir to claim his mansion. Even stranger, his house has no visible locks; just ornately designed doors on all 4 of the mansions sides and they haven't been maintained for years.

Then, strange things start happening. The odd "y" symbol Frank and Joe noticed on John Mead's ring turns out to be the insigne for a gang of thieves that are infamous for electronics theft. A shifty locksmith named Mike Batton repaired the Hardy's door lock with no input from anyone including his new boss, Ben Whittaker. Mike is actually a thief that is making a bum rep for Ben Whittaker, an honest man. The fresh new kleptomaniac Mike stole from Ben's customers and they are suing Ben, and, if it keeps up, he'll be out of business.

Also, Chet bought a battered dory named The Bloodhound which sank on it's first use with a mysterious locked box inside. The box then is then lifted with the boat and stolen by the same mysterious man. Finally, a boy named Lenny Stryker is kidnapped with no clue except a message from him, "secret panel...". Oddly enough, these happenings are all connected by Lenny's last message.

This book ranks up as one of my favorites. It is a mix of action, adventure, and mystery suitable for all ages. However, kids from 9-14 will get an extra "Kick" from it. If you'd like one last clue to the mastermind here, he has an alias of Whitey Masco. I hope that if you read The Secret Panel, you'll love it as much as I did.

This reveiw concerns the original 1946 edition and the revised 1969 edition. A stranger nearly crashes into Frank and Joe's car due to poor repair work. He introduces himself as John Mead and later asks Frank and Joe to go to his house to turn off a light he left on; however, Frank and Joe learn that the man they talked to has been dead for five years and the doors of his mansion have no visible doorknobs or keyholes. Also, a woman seeks Mr. Hardy's help in locating her son, Lenny, who got mixed up with a group of criminals, was shot during a robbery and is now being hidden behind a secret panel. The original and revised editions are nearly identical. One of the few differences that I noticed was that, in the revised edition, John Mead drops his key and Joe finds it after Mead has left. This was an action packed mystery with many different angles that all tied together in the end (don't they always). Although, it didn't take much thought to figure out where Lenny was hidden, the book is well written and interesting. It may not be the best Hardy Boys book, but I'd be surprised if any Hardy Boys fan thought this one was bad.

A dazzling mystery full of excitment,and suspence. I thank my friend (Isaac Bease) who got me into the Hardy boys. Otherwise I wouldn't be writing this review right now. This is a realistic story which I call "a masterpiece!", "a real triumph!", " an action -packed thriller!",and "one great mystery full of fun!" If you don't like this book you got all wrong. The Hardy Boys are a great series of mystery books. Go! An have fun reading the most greatest series ever!

This book is a must-read. It is almost a whole different story from the blue cover edition. It uses 1930s words.

The whole thing in this mystery is just terrific! The plot was made and planed very well. Plus I admitt one part gave me a little bit of the chills, like the part when unexpectingly the ticking of the clock that made Frank and Joe still. I hope that you'll read this book in 30 minutes like I did.(if you can) Please beg your mom and dad to get this book for you.

In all of those mystery books I had read, The Hardy Boys is the only kind I really interesting in, and in those Hardy Boys books the one I really love is While The Clock Ticked because I had it...^wink wink^...! Beside, I am a fan of The Hardy Boys after I had read this book from a friend. ... And it worth it, it was really.
It was starting with a mysterious stranger apparently steals some of Mr. Hardy's papers from the Hardy home, suspicious events are occurring at the local Chinese laundry and one of Mr. Hardy's clients demands that his name be cleared of rumors that he is involved in smuggling Chinese immigrants. And there is going to be more action and interesting then what I just wrote. So I suggest you should check you this book. But the whole idea of the book is it focused heavily on the title that I liked and presented a fairly good mystery.
It is really good in the beginning, and terribly good at the end. All people like to read mystery books should check out this book but do not forget to check out all other Hardy Boys books, though. Because I know author Franklin W. Dixon did not write just one book but many of them. I heard others Hardy Boys from him are really good, too. And in a minute I am going to look for them online. So anyway, I recommend you should check them out and save them for your summer reading books. Enjoy reading them and have a fun summer student from Mrs. Lenhardt's class.

A book like this should be mandatory reading for everyone. Particularly people who represent other people's interests for a living, such as World Leaders, Presidents, Kings, etc., would find it absolutely useful; a kind of constant tool, a compass that keeps them on the right track once and again. This is a book that shows not only Franklin's wit and wisdom, but also his vulnerability, that wonderful human quality, thus making it enchanting and insightful. Buy this book, learn and practice these principles, and enjoy the new breath of fresh air you'll experience in your life.

I saw this book one day when I was browsing Franklin Covey planners in the mall. It had been awhile since I read something not business related so I thought I'd give this a shot. I'll be honest when I tell you I enjoy a good read but this book took me about one year to read from beginning to end. The first few chapters weren't too bad but then it got into a section about a debate between two philosophers on the definition of virtue and why one should practice a virtuous life. I've never read anything that mentally straining in my life (my degree is in Mechanical Engineering BTW). I enjoy the arts but that one section took me about a month before I could fully digest what the philosophers were saying in the span of less than 2 pages. This one section proved so enlightening that my head hurt for about 2 days after I had a chance to chew on the content. If you had any doubts that the founding forefathers of this great nation were anything but geniuses, this should dispell any and all myths. I must say that I even had to break out the dictionary for some of the diction used in this book in that it was definitely not your everyday conversational english. If you enjoy mental challenges of a higher level and your mastery of the English language is proficient enough to understand the fine nuances of sentence structure and double, sometimes triple meanings, I would recommend this book. If you're looking for something a little more entertaining and easier on the mind, then definitely look somewhere else. But I will admit, when I did finally complete this book one year later, I actually felt a major sense of accomplishment. I guess that makes me just a little more virtuous?

An inspiring book written by an amazing author. Ok, so he is my dad, but he didn't pay me to say any of this stuff:)

Well, personally I really enjoyed this book. I liked how it expressed you don't have to be the exact same as everyone else in this world. Even being a little different from someone else changes everything. In the beginning of the story. Franklin and his friend Bear, were eating their lunch and Bear's tooth fell out. Then Franklin says O NO! Bear you lost your tooth, and Bear said I know its normal for me. Then Franklin went home and found a small rock that looked like a tooth. He wrote a letter asking for something. Well it turns out in the morning there was another note saying, I am sorry but you're a turtle, and turtle's don't have teeth. So, when he went to have breakfast his parents gave him a present for being who he was and that he is growing up to be a nice young turtle.

Franklin doesn't understand why turtles don't have teeth. He thinks that is one way to know you are growing. Plus you get a present. He evens tries to give the tooth fairy a fake tooth. In the episode on tv they take Franklin for a checkup to show that he is growing. In the book, he gets a present.

This book is all about feeling grown up. When Franklin's friend Bear has a loose tooth he tells Franklin. Bear is excited because he wants the Tooth Fairy to leave him a present. Franklin feels sad because he doesn't have any teeth and he wants a present too. Franklin's parents tell him that turtles don't need any teeth. Franklin puts a pretend turtle tooth under his shell when he goes to sleep to fool the Tooth Fairy so she can bring him a present. But he gets a note saying "nice try Franklin". Franklin is sad but in the end he learns that growing up is more than just about losing teeth.

I think this book is very funny because it tells about growing up. I would give it to all my firnds and everybody in the world.

Amanda Rae Cunningham

Ebola-type fever gains a handhold in the City of Lights. The first victim is a rose-bearing admirer of Kit Franklyn, and the expert diagnostician is Andy Broussard. This is my first outing with the duo I have heard so much about. (...) Andy is a treat. He’s not a conventional hero—a mite too heavy, too old, and too curmudgeonly. He wins us with his strength, humor, and doggedness.

The true villain of the piece will chill. He is patient, resourceful and completely focused. The author does a wonderful job of describing near misses by the villain while the characters are blissfully unaware of their brushes with death. The gradual discovery of what is killing these victims raises the suspense level and contributes to fast page turning. The New Orleans descriptions are done with the eye of a native; no bland touristy snapshots intrude.

The autopsy scenes are quite intense (read before eating). The plot has some extraneous genealogy that I found tiresome. (...) However, it’s a good, fast, interesting read, and I look forward to reading more about Andy & Kit.

Kit Franklin receives an invitation to meet a mysterious admirer at Grandma O's Restaurant. She is curious because the unknown suitor has been sending roses to her for three straight days. When Kit arrives at the restaurant, she is greeted by a sixtyish stranger who speaks her name and then promptly collapses. The man later dies in a hospital of unknown causes. Then Kit disappears and the authorities suspect she is a kidnap victim. On one level this book is about greed and the harm caused by families trying too hard to bury secrets from the past. There are just enough strands to the story to make it interesting but not too confusing.

In this installment of the Kit Franklin/Andy Broussard Mystery Series, Andy's hash is in the deep-fat fryer and it's up to Kit to save him. The only problem is that Kit's been kidnaped.

Add to that the deepening mysteries surrounding Kit's origins, romance trouble and a deadly virus, and you get a rich mystery steeped in medical examiner lore and true human feelings.

I appreciate the author's no-nonsense writing style and his quirky, but not over-the-top, cast of characters. Of late, the New Orleans Mystery has become a cliche, riddled with parades, politics, French Quarter dining and Bourbon Street debauchery. Donaldson eschews the gimmicks and serves up sensible, well-written stories using New Orleans, a city he obviously loves, almost as a character. Donaldson's mysteries feel like real life (albeit a life I wouldn't want to live) and his characters feel like people who live there, instead of tourists.

Donaldson seems to have stopped writing the Broussard/Franklin mysteries (he's now writing medical thrillers as Don Donaldson) so you can be sad that it's all over or be thrilled that this is a series you can read, start to finish, without having to wait for some slow-poke writer to release the next installment. Give it a try...you'll like it.

I really think that the information in the book is some of the most helpful in this series so far. There is a great deal of information on herbs and oils, a nice section devoted to tarot, and lore is better than many in this series of books. Overall, these books are a distilled pagan text. In the end, I only recommend these books for pagan families looking for ideas for pagan children. Any serious student of the craft will not find much help here.

This book is a fully rounded examination of the midsummer festival with history and lore, pagan themes and spiritual inspiration. It contains traditional Wiccan and witchcraft rites, along with Saxon and Druidic celebrations for the festival. I know for a fact that the Wiccan rites are authentic and I have never seen them published before. [I do worry that it may be a case of casting pearls before swine in some instances.] Along with stuff for the more serious Wiccan, the ritual suggestions would help beginners and experienced covens alike. There is a wealth of herb craft here, since midsummer is the traditional time for gathering herbs, which again, may appeal to ex[pereinced and beginner alike. I can't recommend this book too highly- the strongest in the series so far.

Midsummer is one of the Pagan festivals which celebrates a positive seasonal change, and this title covers common midsummer seasonal rituals, from the Rite of the Oak King to Drawing Down the Dawn. Recipes for herbs used in ritual celebrations blend with ritual instructions in this excellent guide to creating a midsummer celebration.

In "Forged In War," Warren Kimball seeks to shed light on the relationship between Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill that was, well, forged in World War II. For those who are interested in what happens away from the battlefield, this book provides an intriguing behind-the-scenes look at cooperation between two Great Powers. After a brief discussion of the two major players and their characters, the book plunges into the meat of its subject, namely the political and military cooperation between America and Great Britain during and after the war. Essentially, the narrative is divided into three (somewhat overlapping) parts. The first segment covers the events leading up to the war and FDR's decision to enter it; the second, the struggles to defeat Germany and Japan; the third, the diplomatic maneuvering over postwar arrangements once the defeat of Germany had been assured. It's the third part that's most prominent, and also most interesting, as Kimball delves into a discussion of how the prosecution of the war effected, and was effected by, competing visions of the postwar world. The upheavals caused by wars tend to have a dramatic impact on the way the world looks after they're over, and "Forged In War" is a comprehensive examination of how Roosevelt and Churchill (and Stalin for that matter) attempted to exert their control over these upheavals. Although Kimball obviously has a certain level of admiration for Churchill and Roosevelt, he makes it clear that for both men practicality overrode principal; as Roosevelt said, he was not a Wilsonian idealist, and the same held true for Churchill. At the same time that the two Western leaders were finishing off Germany militarily, they were also positioning themselves to prevent Soviet domination of Europe at war's end. A central focus of the book is the massive series of formal and informal discussions that eventually culminated in the acceptance of Stalin's axiom: whoever liberated a conquered country got to impose on it their own political system. In this sense, probably the most impressive aspect of the book is the extent to which Kimball captures the intermingling of political and military considerations that can occur during wartime. Kimball has a straightforward and sometimes entertaining writing style that prevents his narrative from getting too bogged down in detail, so most should find reading this book pretty easy. For history buffs, "Forged In War" gets a high recommendation.

Forged in War is a well researched although often quirky history of Churchill and Roosevelt during World War II. As diplomatic history, this book is a good review of the key events during the war years, including the many conferences and meetings between Churchill, Roosevelt, and sometimes Stalin. Kimball reminds the reader that during the war Britain and the United States were allies with the Soviet Union. He correctly discourages the reader from using the Cold War as a prism for viewing the decisions of high strategy made during the war, while at the same time he reviews those key wartime decisions that were so important in shaping the postwar world.

Kimball uses various unnamed sources throughout his otherwise meticulously researched book. For example on page 10 at the end of a paragraph about how postwar leaders "exploited the Churchill legend" Kimball states: "Even one of those convicted in the Watergate affair during the Nixon years adopted as his public motto a Churchill admonition not to give way "in things great or small, large or petty." On the next page he refers to: "One student of international affairs, who by 1990 had become a regular contributor to the op-ed page of the New York Times . . . ." Such references to unnamed sources leaves the reader wondering why Kimball uses such sources at all, if he can't or won't name his source.

Kimball is a talented writer although he too often inserts comments that remind the reader when he is writing-in the 1990s-and by doing so he cheapens his narrative. One example is in reference to the Yalta Conference and its influence on postwar popular culture. "Fifty years after the Big Three met in the Crimea, a supermodel, appearing in a motion picture depicting her vacuous, if remunerative, occupation, specified the place of the conference in historical memory. Searching for a stark contrast between what she did and what was truly important, she quipped: 'I mean, the worst thing that can happen to me is I break a heel and fall down. This is not Yalta, right?'" (pp. 310-311) He then refers to this broken heel later in his text. The name of the supermodel is supplied in an endnote, however the reference is a strain on the narrative. Kimball would have done much better not to include such references at all, however they are laced throughout the book.

Despite such quirks in his narrative, Kimball still manages to deliver a good review of the leaders and their strategies for winning World War II. Churchill is depicted as loveable, immature, brilliant, drunk, determined, and loyal to his country and empire. Roosevelt is shown to be shrewd, duplicitous, patrician, informal, irreverent, and equally committed to his nation's interests. FDR constantly urges Churchill to abandon his colonies in favor of self-determination for those under British rule. Churchill is adamant in his desire to maintain the empire. Kimball completed a three-volume study titled Churchill and Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence. He draws heavily on this research and includes choice quotes from the correspondence between the two wartime leaders. Kimball looks far beyond the Churchill-Roosevelt correspondence however, and gives the reader a comprehensive summary of both the Churchill-Roosevelt relationship and their independent actions as they led the world to victory over the Nazis. The book focuses on the war in Europe with fewer references to the war in Asia. Stalin is also prominent in this narrative as befits the leader of the nation who took the brunt of what Hitler's armies had to offer.

Kimball reviews all of the summit meetings of the war from the Atlantic Conference through Yalta. Churchill met with Roosevelt eleven times, with Stalin twice, and all three met on two occasions. The travel logistics and risks were enormous in these meetings, especially for the handicapped Roosevelt. Churchill too was not a young and strong man. Included among Churchill's many serious health problems is the story of when he nearly died of pneumonia after the Tehran Conference.

Kimball argues against putting excessive blame to "losing eastern Europe" at Yalta, reminding the reader that most of the postwar agreements, including the fate of eastern Europe, were already agreed to prior to Yalta. Those agreements were made with the Soviet Union when they were a desperately needed ally in the fight against Hitler. Churchill was especially worried about Stalin negotiating a separate peace with Hitler.

Even with his quirky writing style, Kimball managed to write an excellent history of Churchill, Roosevelt, and their wartime leadership that led to the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany and set the foundation for the postwar world.

Warren Kimball once again, with an adeptness uncommon among documentary-based historical narratives, weaves his way through the complexities of the Roosevelt-Churchill wartime partnership. As suggested by the title, Kimball frames for the reader a political and personal relationship that, although rife with an undercurrent of conflict, ultimately is hammered into the finest weapon of war. A picture immerges of two leaders, who despite the immense internal political and external military pressures of the war, never lost their edge in dealing with one another, let alone their common foes. Many internal skirmishes over the conduct of war policy are revealed in the author's apt analysis of the documents. The correspondence reveals that the duo often disagreed quite intensly about the conduct of the war and the way to win the peace at war's end. The careful reader will appreciate the pains professor Kimball undertook to reveal the many shades of the relationsip. The two statesmen did not always see eye to eye and frequently utilized subtle, to not-so-subtle methods of deception in order to force the other's hand or coax the other slowly but surely to eventually concurr. However, a final balance in the narrative is achieved by a paralleling focus on Roosevelt's and Churchill's shared mutual objectives. In the end it was Roosevelt's and Churchill's compatible visions of future that transended their differences in style, personal judgement and even national self-interest.

Jacques Ninio, who has written on everything from molecular evolution to the debilitating prejudices of scientific research journals, begins his latest work with the sentence: "The illusion of always being right." Of course his book,; but because to be right, in French-avoir raison-means, idiomatically and literally, "to have reason," something gets lost, right from the start, in the translation. (The Science of Illusions, was translated from the 1998 French edition). What gets lost is the double entendre, in French tangled up, of being right as having reason.
Now this may be a small point, and it is, but it illustrates the enormity of Ninio's task, coming to grips with the endlessly fascinating and ever elusive world of illusions. Vladimir Nabokov in his lectures on literature says that the most intriguing things in art as in life always involve an element of deception. Einstein, in many well-known quotes, emphasizes the call of wonder, of the emotion of surprise as a motor promoting the curiosity necessary for the scientific enterprise. Long interested in geometrical deceptions, Ninio's emphasis is on optical illusions-and explanations of them, sometimes complementary, sometimes contradictory. Why does the moon sometimes look so large near the horizon? Believe it or not, thick academic books have been devoted to probing the mystery of this illusion alone-and here, offering more than one solution, suggests that the normal view in human evolution, horizontally across the horizon, is filled with visual referents for comparison, while the vertical view up into space is not. Seen (as it usually is not) against the little objects of the landscape, the distant moon is put into a foreign frame, and looks huge. Ninio explores similar visual tricks such as why isolated lines joined in crosses look shorter than their unattached cousins, why stairways look steeper from far away, and that 19th century parlor curiosity, why top hats look longer than they are wide?

Ninio's discussion is focused mostly on optical illusions, with brief excursions into the auditory and tactile realms and a brave if short chapter on stage magic in which he shares his experience of catching a magician on television by slowing down a videotape, and thus exposing the loading of a bird done by quickness. But the popular cliché that "the hand is quicker than the eye" is also (professional magicians know) a form of distraction on the plane of explanation: only a very small minority of tricks are accomplished by quickness, the vast majority being the result of the distraction which magicians call "misdirection." And there are other illusion-steeped topics Ninio doesn't discuss: linear time (which Einstein called a persistent illusion), evolutionary epistemology (e.g., might not the truth ultimately be inimical to survival?), death, consciousness, the metaphoricity of "literal" language (e.g., "concrete"), free will (is it real?), and so on. In Hindu mythology the world is a game, lila, veil, or maya, of phenomena.

Ninio's narrowness allows him to go into detail about specific common misperceptions of geometrical figures, natural and urban landscapes and so on. But what might have happened if the narrator was not so trustworthy but unreliable, as in a novel, or if Ninio had attacked as illusions the egos of his readers with the same scientific thoroughness and creativity he musters in his analyses of optical illusions? I confess to being somewhat disappointed that multiple (and not always exquisitely translated) interpretations are given of minor (and sometimes, at least for me, not even visible) optical illusions when other possible illusions, grander and more foundational, such as those explored by neurology, were not even discussed. In an email from Ninio he blames this on trouble that occurred in transferring the artwork during translation. (Robert Frost defined poetry as that which gets lost in translation!)

And yet this elucidates the nature of illusion itself. Perhaps we can get glimpses of the whole but the fact remains that each and all of us-even all of us together as a parallel processing technologically connected scientific society-is only a part of the system we observe. The well-known mysteries of quantum physics hinge in part at least upon the necessity of reintroducing the observer who, for convenience's sake, had long before been removed (at least theoretically) from the system. Newer illusions, such as the mistaken apprehension of purpose, design, or life in thermodynamic systems, can also be understood as the result of the hidden operation of what has been observationally excluded. (So, too, the Monty Hall Paradox, if you know it, can be understood as an illusion of misplaced probabilities due to not accounting for information provided by the moderator assumed to be "outside" the frame of operation.)

"The illusion of always having reason"-Ninio's opening fragment, interpreted literally if not figuratively, intimates our perfectly human inability to keep illusion caged to the stage of entertainment or science. If we do not have reason, we lose the very means to detect sensory illusions. The senses, if they do not always tell the truth, require thought-itself a kind of supersense-to make sense. For it is our reason, our ratiocination or rationality-neurologically identified with the more recently evolved prefrontal cortex-that is responsible for sorting out conflicting perceptual cues. There is one world but many perceptions of it, reflecting the manifold beings which inhabit it. And yet evolutionary expediency allows us, no forces us (unless we are mad or drugged) to conceive of this world as whole despite being formed from data fragments. For example, you only have eyes in front of our head yet your conception of the space around you is not marked by a huge gap corresponding to the back of your head. Incomplete beings, we are "Procrustean" in our perception: we cannot help but fill in the blanks. Such endemic Procrusteanism may be instinctive, as in much perception or, as with Ninio here, consciously scientific in its explication of how perception works.

I have to admit I got hung up looking at the many illustrations and trying out the visual illusions -- but the text deals with all kinds of illusions, many of which you have probably experienced yourself (the train next to you starts moving and you're convinced your own train is moving; crossing your fingers and feeling your nose which has suddenly turned into two; and many many more). The text gets as technical as you want, but the book is a lot of fun for the non-psychologist too!

Optical illusions are profound; they indicate that at the most basic level, seeing can lead to believing in things that are not true. Even more deeply and disturbingly, they show that we don't respond to or make judgements on an objective reality "out there," but only upon how our particular neurons process information. From France, _The Science of Illusions_ (Cornell University Press) by Jacques Ninio (translated by Franklin Philip) collects lots of visual illusions, describes auditory and tactile ones, and attempts to make sense of what it all means. There is not deep science in this book, and that is of necessity. You may remember the optical illusion of two parallel lines that are actually the same length, but because of something added to them, one looks definitely longer and one is definitely shorter. There are different reasons that have been proposed for this illusion, most of them complicated, some of them no longer tenable, several far-fetched but as yet unrefuted. It is probably better for us laymen to wonder at the puzzling pictures and let the neuroscientists sort out all the circuitry, and when they get it all down, they can get back to us.

Ninio has indeed covered many sorts of illusions, including magic, but also such things we now take for granted as movies. It used to be that people shown a movie of a train coming at them would scurry out of its way, but we have seen enough movies by now to know that illusion for what it is. Ninio has concentrated on visual illusions because, of course, they can best be shown in a book. But also, as he points out, visual input is supreme, trusted more than other senses. People shown a film of someone saying "ga-ga" while the soundtrack says "ba-ba" will wind up hearing a hybrid "da-da" with their eyes open and "ba-ba" with their eyes closed. Everyone has had the experience of sitting in the old-style movie theater with one speaker behind the screen, and finding that the sound seemed to come from the location on the screen of whatever person or thing was shown making it. A ventriloquist, of course, easily makes visual cues of origin overcome auditory ones. The optical illusions here represent some of the old classics, as well as new ones, because new ones are being invented all the time. One of them was so strong that I believed there was a misprint when an explanation claimed that two parallelograms were the same size, so that I had to measure them, and even after that, I had to copy the page and cut the parallelograms out and compare them that way; they still do not look nearly equal. Other illusions here present obvious but invisible white shapes, or scintillating black spots that are not there, or even circuits that seem to have matter flowing around and around their printed images. This book is a wonderful funhouse.

For some reason of all the pathetic cover arts drawn after The Secret Agent on Flight 101, this one does not bother me. The Monkey is bulleted in the dead center of the cover and captures the eye. The story was action packed and keeps the reader's interest. The brothers are hired by a local man to solve a case for them which takes them to Brazil where they encounter many adventures. Lots of action - but little suspense I found, coupled with a moderate amount of mystery. The book is worth reading but ranks among the set's inferiors. RATED C

Frank and Joe are hired by a wealthy businessman to find his missing adult son. A clue leads Frank and Joe to Brazil where their lives are threatened on numerous occasions by a gang determined to prevent the Hardys from finding the missing man. This is a very good book, it is filled with excitement, action and suspence from the first page to the last. I'd recommend this book to any fan of the series and am confident that no one would be disappointed with this book.

I think that this book was awesome. Really I read this book in two days because on the first day I read to chapter nine and a few days later, when I noticed that I was behind, I read from chapter nine to chapter twenty. That is how good of a book it is, I could barley put the book down. If you want mystery, intrigue, and international excitement, read "The Masked Monkey". The story is action packed and keeps the reader's interest. The theme of the book is to not get use to trusting people until you have learned a lot about them. I reccomand this book to, mostly boys, people who like excitement and mystery books; and to people of all ages. It is a great great great book!

This book was interesting though rather hard to read, sort of like a text book. Sometimes there were interesting stories about people, and then you didn't hear what happened to them in the end. I think you can learn about fugitive slaves easier from other books like I WAS BORN A SLAVE. Also, I liked THE JOURNAL OF LEROY JEREMIAH JONES, A FUGITIVE SLAVE and THE DIARY OF A SLAVE GIRL, RUBY JO.

Much research went into the writing of this book and the conclusions drawn from that research are interesting. I much enjoyed the book and can see where it would be a good source for further research into the subject. The authors were also kind enough to include a large section regarding their source material. However, I can't exactly say that the writing was of a style that would keep one awake for long periods of time. If you are looking for just entertainment value, look elsewhere.

Six score and 16 years after the end of the Civil War has not dimmed many of the controversies surrounding the events leading up to that epic struggle.

In "Runaway Slaves," John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger attempt to counter one of the more insidious images: that slaves working under the plantation system were generally happy, with instances of rebellion few and far between. By quoting from contemporary records -- everything from letters and diaries to newspapers, handbills and petitions to county courts and state legislatures -- Franklin and Schweninger want to show that slaves rebelled against their masters in a number of ways.

The scope of rebellion is breathtakingly wide, ranging from a sort of civil disobedience -- complaining, refusing to work, hiding from the overseers, destroying or stealing property, mistreating the animals, to the more serious offenses such as running away, formenting rebellion or murder. Any slaves was capable of running off, from known troublemakers to the most trusted house servants. Even hired slaves, those who had earned their master's trust and were allowed to accept work in the cities and generally left alone, would run away.

"Runaway Slaves" spends several hundred pages detailing the various forms of rebellion, and that is the book's greatest strength and weakness. The sheer volume and range of these acts makes it clear what the white overlords were up again, and explains some of the extreme methods used to keep the blacks down.

But the book also doesn't give an indication of the extent of black rebellion, and thus it offers a case no more convincing than whites to point out the few blacks who fought for the Confederacy. It would have been far more effective to look at a particular county over a year and examine what went on there during that time. By cross-referencing diaries, newspapers, memoirs and other accounts, it may be possible to discover just how deep resistance to whites ran.

But for those looking for details of who ran, why, and how they were captured and punished, "Runaway Slaves" offers a wealth of details and a few choice insights.