this book was exciting and interseting...it lost my attention at some points...going on and on on little things....overall this is a great book...:-)

When I borrowed this book from a friend's younger sister, I thought it would be an easy read to take my mind off things before I did my homework. Well, I read it.. and then I read it again. While the plot could be a little contrived at times, the characters were vivid and real, and the relationships between them left me wishing for a sequel. I bought the book for myself, and it has a permanent place on my bookshelf for those rainy lonely days when I need some cheering up.

This book is set in post-apocalyptic times, after a Nuclear Holocaust called the Flash. It is about six children who are living on a paddle wheel steam boat. To make a living, they play Rock-and-Roll from before the Flash and carry mail. Absolutely No Passengers! The kids rescue a man out of the river who is being pursued by a band of men who think he has something they want. This book may sound to you like the classic "Kids on their own", adventure story, but, it's not. Even though the plot becomes a bit unrealistic at times, it is still enjoyable. The characters come alive, and not only are they believable, sometimes you can even identify with them. It is as if you're on the boat yourself. Also, you're being told the story in the first-person by one of the kids. I enjoyed his descriptions and his thoughts. I highly recommend this book, and if you read it, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. By the way, I've read about four (Sherlock Holmes, Watership Down, The Goats and this.) really great books in my time, and I consider this to be one of them. Yours, Dogspaw

I was excited when I first saw this book advertised. Anyone who has studied the Roosevelts knows the fundamental emotional foundation this island provided the family. However, when I began to read the book, I quickly became disgruntled. There was little to no new information, insight or perspective offered. The author seems to mainly cover the same formulaic roads covered before-- early marriage, polio, governor, president, & Eleanor on her own. The only difference was this books focuses on those same paths through the lens of Campobello. The problem, besides offering little new, is this lens is restrictive, rather than encompassing. If you're looking for an introduction to the Roosevelts, this may be a good selection. However, if you have studied this couple with any kind of attention, nothing profound or enlightning is likely to be found here.

This is a well-researched and well-written glimpse of one of the most famous and influential couples of the 20th Century. It reads extremely well while casting new light on two already-much studied lives but from an entirely new perspective. Jonas Klein proposes that FDR and Eleanor were in some measure defined by the Campobello experience and makes a credible case for it.

Before picking up Beloved Island I had just finished reading one more of Stephen AmbroseÕ books on World War II and, quite frankly, had tired a little of the rhythm and predictability in his technique of stringing together many individual Òoral historiesÓ to create a coherent whole. He does it very well, of course, but Jonas Klein does it better. Working mostly from snapshot detail in correspondence, I presume, Klein succeeds in portraying the larger portraits of personality, emotion, relationships, and other intangibles that make figures from history what they really are.

Though not quite a Òone sittingÓ experience, this little book leads us gently to further thought and deeper understanding about Franklin and Eleanor. ItÕs a good book.

Beloved Island: Franklin & Eleanor And The Legacy Of Campobello examines how the Roosevelt summer home on New Brunswick's Campobello Island (a remote Canadian location) had a significant physical and emotional influence on their lives and the events of their day. While acknowledging the Roosevelt's' traditions and background, Jonas Klein presents a fresh perspective on their public trials and triumphs as well as their personal frustrations and private disappointments as showcased by their Campobello residency. It was at Campobello that Franklin was stricken with polio, that Eleanor found peace and refuge from a demanding and unsympathetic world, and that their personal and political relationship as formed in a manner that would serve them both to the end of their lives. Exceptionally well researched, well-written, insightful, informative, and totally engaging biography.

A married couple asks Frank and Joe for help with a mysterious, black-winged ghost that has been seen flying outside their home and the eerie voice of a dead slave trader. Also, they help their father track down thieves targetting high-tech companies. For fans of the series who don't like when the Hardys travel everywhere to solve the mystery; this book takes place solely in Bayport. Many of the characters from the lower volumes appear in this book, Mr. & Mrs. Hardy, Aunt Gertrude, Chet, Biff, Tony, Phil, Sam Radley, Jack Wayne, Callie and Iola, and they play more prominent roles, too, instead of being mentioned once and thats it, like in many of the higher volumes. The plot is interesting and while the action in the first half of the book is a little light, the second half makes up for that.

There's never been a REAL ghost in a Hardy Boys book before this. Could this one be real?

There's been ghosts in Hardy Boys books before this. So far they've all been fake ghosts. So I doubt that it changes now...

The point of Franklin Roosevelt's brilliant fireside chats and other seminal speeches was that the listener could hear his voice and experience his charisma. This is impossible with this book which is merely lifeless words on the printed page. Of course some of FDR's speeches make interesting reading, but the entire thrust of his message is lost without the resonant voice and the indefinable "something" he brought to the microphone.

Just yesterday I was listening on CD to FDR's incomparable Pearl Harbor speech from December 8, 1941. Even though this was long before I was born, I always get goosebumps listening to his intonations, the cheering from the Representatives and Senators and the feeling that you are actually witnessing history. There is none of this in this book, where reading speeches is a paltry substitute (at best) for listening to FDR, who was perhaps the most effective Presidential orator of the 20th century. Those who extol Reagan as an effective and charismatic communicator need to listen to Roosevelt.

My advice is to buy a CD with the collected speeches of FDR and ignore this book. The idea is good but the premise flawed. You need to hear Roosevelt's voice, not merely read his words.

First - I hate political books that make it seem that you have to have an MBA to read it. But this book is intelligent, a reference guide, and a great book to which you will read great works of speeches. FDR, is a great idealist and essentially a great man. This is a great book, in which to read his thoughts.

The Essential Franklin Delano Roosevelt is by far the most comprehensive collection of that President's major works. Each and every piece presented in this book is historically relevant. Formatted in chronological order, Hunt takes his reader on a journey from Roosevelt's First Gubernatorial Inaugural Address to remarks Roosevelt gave to congress on the Yalta Conference days before his death. The Essential FDR is the perfect book for anyone from a Roosevelt scholar or research-paper-writing high school student. Almost 350 pages of anything quotable by one of history's greatest men. As an aside, John Gabriel Hunt's introduction is also quite informative and gives great background information. If you want FDR, you want this book!

Frank, Joe and Chet fly off to the California desertland to search for a man who disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Did he leave by his own choice or was he kidnapped? Also, Mr. Hardy investigates a group of criminals who are counterfeiting government checks. I thought that this book had a very good plot, it was fairly well-written, the events moved along quite well and there was quite a bit of interaction between the Hardys and the criminals during the course of the book. However, I found that the book could have used a bit more action and that, while I did enjoy the book, it never completely grabbed my interest to the point where I didn't want to put it down. I would recommend reading this book, but while most fans would probably like it, few probably would say that they absolutely loved it.

This mystery takes the brothers west into the desert in search of the missing Willard Grafton. This volume has remained one of my favorite higher volumes. The brothers have a great amount of interaction with the criminals, especially Caeser and Ringer. I especially liked the middle of the book when they are lost in the desert and hop aboard first an old antique motorized car of sorts and a freight car after that. This book flows along effortlessly while keeping the reader interested with very little suspense. RATED B+

This book takes you on another adventure of Frank and Joe Hardy,sons of the famous Fenton Hardy.Ill tell you I was at the edge of my seat while reading it!

This book deals with an aspect of junior high that everyone experiences: bullying. We can all think back to our grade school days and remember that one person who, for one reason or another, was picked on and could do no right in the eyes of the other class members. In this book, the main character, Ludwig von Beethoven Carter (poor guy), is that guy from grade school who was a normal, accepted kid who got good grades. However, he becomes the guy in the class who is picked on when his mother becomes the star of a silly, educational science show for kids. In order to regain his popularity, Wiggy Carter keeps trying to change his image in order to be accepted by the "cool," trouble-making kids.

While one looks at the title and cover of the book, he thinks that this is going to be a book written just for the amusment of the young reader. However, I was happily surprised to see that this book deals with a lot of peer pressure issues and social issues that junior high students struggle with every day. I highly recommend it to help put things in perspective for students. They have to go through "drama" in the classroom every day and this book can really help them to look at the "queen bee" as well as the "nerd" in a new light.

Nerd No More

Wiggle V. Cater is a regular kid that is smart and nice. He is like every kid in the sixth grade. A problem comes when his mom becomes the host of Jump Into Science. But a real problem occurs when the other kids lead him to trouble.
I liked this book because, it was funny. The main character was wiggle V. Carter who is sort of a nerd. He is a nice kid who just wants to fit in. This book was easy to read and understand. The book was used with simple words. That is why I liked this book.

It is a great book about a boy who is a pure nerd! It is also how he copes with it!

This book is set after Frank and Joe's father is killed when the Hardy's are working together to uncover a poaching/smuggling ring. In this book they are trying to find their father's killers, and have found out that they relize that there may be more to his death than meets the eye. It is suspenseful, and also a little too excieting at some points. You shouldn't read this book before you read the first book in the trilogy, called Endangered Species. Also, you shouldn't read this book until you know that you can get your hands on the third book in the trilogy, which is called Operation Phoenix.

Out of all the Operation Phoenix trilogy, this is probably the best book. I would recommend it to any Hardy Boy fan - Derrick Williams 15 (8/3/98)

No Mercy is the middle book of the 'Ring of Fire' triology - and what a triology it is! I had almost given up on the Hardy's after a string of very dissapointing books when these three books hit me....great reading. should definitely be on the reading list of any Hardy Fan....but only after 'Endangerd Species' and BEFORE 'the Phoenix Equation'(the other books in the triology)!!

The Secrets of Inchon is a remarkable war story complete with suspense, hair-raising escapes, death, education about the Korean culture and some romance mixed in. Navy Lieutenant Eugene Clark tells the story very capably.

Combat is treated as a necessary evil and he is not afraid to say he was scared during his many incursions into hostile territory. The Korean people working with him are patriotic and hard working. They understand the chances they are taking, but know that their entire country is in the balance as they assist the Americans in their preparations for the imminent Inchon landing.

I echo the editorial review that lamented the absence of maps. While I am not a big fan of map reading during most books, the number of islands and their proximity are key elements of the story and the book suffers from the lack of a single usable map.

The most striking feature of this story is the fact that Lieutenant Clark locked it away in a safe deposit box and never revealed its existence. In other words, it wasn't written for self-aggrandizement or enrichment, but out of a desire to tell the story.

I recommend this book to fans of military history and espionage.

This is a gripping adventure story. Lieutenant Clark was the man responsible for checking, updating, and correcting information on tidal channels, mudflats, seawalls, beaches, and defenses during the two weeks prior to the Inchon landings of Sept. 15, 1950. He landed, with two key Korean aides, on the island of Yonghung-do - just 12 miles from the city of Inchon. His team took the isle, organized its 1,000 inhabitants, and maintained control of his looking post during the last days before the invasion which broke the back of the North Korean supply line. From the base camp Clark conducted repeated clandestine probes of enemy defenses (frequently dressed only in mud!). There is enough action and exploits here to satisfy any reader! Paradoxically, this book's biggest problem is not Lieutenant Clark's fascinating narrative. It is the inadequate way this book was put together. Most bothersome are the curiously inadequate maps! It only has two: one of the entire Korean peninsula, and another of the islands and channels around Inchon. The first is unnecessary; the second is simply infuriating. Of the many islands shown on the second map, only four are identified by name. This is unconscionable since careful reading of the text allowed me to identify several others: Sin-Do, Sinbul-Do, Chongna-Do, Yui-Do, and Sammok-Do. (I carefully penned the names of each of these onto map next to each island for my own future reference!). I was also forced to create my own detail maps of the islands of Palmi-Do (the lighthouse island), and of Yonghung-Do (the base island) from Lieutenant Clark's narrative! The book features eight pages of glossy photos in the center (15 photos) only some of which bear directly on Clark's narrative itself - too bad the money used on these was not spent on adequate maps! (An index would have been very appreciated, too.) Despite all these annoying flaws, I would still buy this book - simply to read Clark's captivating and extremely well written story. Those who have slogged around in small boats, contending with tides, sandbars, mudflats, shell banks, shifting channels, and so on will especially relate to the challenges facing those Koreans who lived in these waters and who assisted the American 'spy!' Those who have served in the U.S. military (both naval and ground) will appreciate the knowledge and capabilities of this man, who seems a prototype for Navy Seals or for Green Berets of later generations. Sadly, many who could learn from this man will never read a book like this, thinking he lived "too long ago" for anyone now to learn from. Not so! "The Secrets of Inchon" is worth every moment spent reading it!

This is a great story. Most of it takes place in the few weeks preceding the U.N. landing of troops at Inchon in September, 1950, only a few months after the Korean war started. The author, Gene Clark, was supposed to send as much information as possible to Tokyo prior to the landing date. Fortunately, he was highly aware of many aspects of such operations from his previous service in the American invasion of Okinawa in 1945. In 1948, he served as an interpreter at Japanese war crimes trials on Guam, and his account of his weeks in Korea is filled with information about how well ideas were translated from one language into another. A short paragraph in which he quotes himself is capable of showing how quickly his mind operates on many levels in the midst of complex situations, thusly:

"Can't we get some clothes for these men, Kim? And get that doctor to take care of those splinters right away," I directed. Min's back and arms were a bloody mess. We couldn't afford to have this man hospitalized. (p. 150).

That's from a page in the middle of the book, where the 15 pictures are located. Back in 1950, Gene Clark was not transmitting pictures in his reports to Tokyo. His radio communications were quite limited, and a lot of the spying took place after dark. Even the picture of his ten men on the island about eleven miles from Inchon, showing Clark with his shoulder holster and Youn standing "with the pistol in his belt," doesn't use the nicknames which were constantly used in the story "in case they were captured by the Communists." (p. 18). Clark had a knack for picking names for his top buddies that could be confused for major Asian figures: Yong Chi Ho and Kim Nam Sun. My confusion about which Kim was part of this story was greatest on page 129, after a digression about "a certain doom for more than a hundred of the innocent peaceful inhabitants of Taemuui-do, sacrificed on the blood-drenched altar of Communism to the ambitions of the traitorous and false Korean prophet, Kim Il Sung, the Soviets' puppet president of North Korea," as related to Clark by Kim after his interrogation of the mother of Political Officer Yeh of the North Korean People's Republic. Yeh had been assigned to impose order and collect rice for the Red High Command on an island a mere five miles from where Clark was able to observe things like, "Down the beach, a sampan was shuttling back and forth between beach and junk, landing the people from Taemuui-do." (p. 128). Yeh's father had been a close friend of Kim Il Sung and had been captured and later executed by the South Korean counterintelligence organization for which Kim Nam Sung had previously worked, "But Syngman Rhee had fired him for failing to predict the North Korean invasion." (p. 24). The attempt to capture Yeh to extract whatever information he might have about Red High Command intentions on the defense of Inchon is barely plausible, but it was an exciting episode.

General of the Army Douglas MacArthur is mentioned a number of times in this book. There is no index, so this will not be an easy source to use for those who are looking for details about how well General MacArthur did in 1950, but a picture of how pleased he was, sitting on the bridge of the USS Mount McKinley on September 15, and walking ashore on September 17, are great evidence of this operation's success. The Epilogue, written by another after this manuscript was revealed by Clark's surviving family members in 2000, gives Clark the credit for flashing "earthshaking news to headquarters in Tokyo" (p. 324) from islands in the mouth of the Yalu River at the end of October, 1950. A million Chinese troops, with human wave tactics that are easy to imagine, after the number of casualties that begin to mount up in the actions reported in this book, changed the situation enough to confine the UN army mainly to South Korea. In noting the medals won by Gene Clark, the Navy Cross which he received for an action behind enemy lines in early 1951, escorting Brigadier General Crawford Sams, a doctor, to determine if Chinese troops were dying of bubonic plague, which might have required "the daunting task of vaccinating their entire army against the plague," (p. 325) seems most modern.

Published in 1953 - This was one of the first books painted by Ruddi Nappi. The Hardys live at Woodston College and try to help their friend solve the mystery of The Yellow Feather thought to be a dangerous character stalking their friend. William Dougherty the author of this book wrote only two HB books. The Secret of Wildcat Swamp and this one. Upon learning that fact I realized why this book was as good as it was. A pitty that Dougherty did not write more than he did. Many parallels can be seen between the two. I think of the Chapter in Wildcat Swamp "Three Odd Letters" when it is discovered that Wildcatters were buried in the swamp and not Wildcat. In Yellow Feather we learn minor was mistaken for miner - which leads to the conclusion that the Yellow Feather was not a young man - but a mine in Canada. We are kept in suspense throughout the book as to the identity of The Yellow Feather and as to the true intentions of Kurt the Headmaster at the College. Hardy Boys books were never "scary". But the scene around page 110 where Joe is walking alone outside a cabin back in the woods when he hears a rustling in the trees makes my spine tingle every time I read it. Only scene I can think of that has that Stephen King element about it. Very well written. Overall this was one really fantastic book, a brilliant detailed cover art drawn by Nappi. After this volume the series declined. RATED A-

This review concerns the original 1953 edition as well as the revised 1971 edition, which is a shortened version of the original. Greg Woodson, the grandson of the recently deceased owner of Woodson Academy, Mr. Hardy's old school, asks Frank and Joe to locate his grandfather's missing will which would prove that Greg is the rightful heir to the academy. However, a crook, who uses a yellow feather as his symbol is trying to stop them. Frank and Joe must find out who or what the Yellow Feather really is. This mystery reminded me of a Nancy Drew mystery, although, for those that aren't a fan of that series, don't let that discourage you from reading this book because it was actually rather good, despite having only one criminal. The book was well written and had a fair bit of action. I think most Hardy Boys fans would enjoy this one.

Frank and Joe are at it again. This is a well-written book that keeps you (or your kids) occupied. (Which is always good!) Definitely add this one to your Hardy Boys collection.

Frank, Joe and Chet head to Los Angeles to track down a ring of car thieves and to find a rare, valuable coin stolen from Chet's cousin, Vern. I would rate the book average to good; although, it proved to be much better than I had thought it would be.

The Hardys track down a missing coin in this book. It's a great book for kids, it's action-packed and has a neat coin in it.

This is an educational, action packed book. I recommend it to any fan of the Hardy Boys series.