Jim Krusoe sits on the weathered edge of reality to describe the view from both sides beautifully. His writing is sharp, original and entertaining. He captured a jaded reader's belief in the surreal tales layed out here, and left me wanting more. Fantastic.

These stories are so different. The author succeeds at making the reader believe entire imaginary worlds. A very interesting, different, read.

Jim Krusoe's Blood Lake and Other Stories is the wittiest collection of tales I've ever read, and more. For on top of and above the wit is a style and voice, and occasional whopping metaphor, that make for dizzying satire. Krusoe's fictional worlds compare to those of Kafka, Donald Barthelme, and Raymond Roussel, his reviewers observe. Some of his characters resemble the posturing, fraudulent whackos found in Woody Allen. Then there's the morphine addict pharmacist who buys at zoo auction a female gorilla that becomes his lover; and the unlucky night nurse who confesses, "I like hospitals and I like the sick, and of all the times that I can be with them, my favorite is the night shift, those hours from eleven to seven, when everyone's asleep." "Another Life" is a story whose narrator, an elderly bear, resides at the National Institute of animal Narrative, where he was "... trained by well-meaning scientists to operate a typewriter." In these tales there is thundering satire that smacks of the saturation bombing carried out over 200 years ago by Swift, yet has been terribly silent since. Simultaneously erudite, sobering, and farcical, Blood Lake and Other Stories will make you laugh, cringe, and cry, as Krusoe the writer does so many things so maddenlingy well.

An excellent review of early American History. I'm looking forward to the second part. Mr. Wall has a way of catching the essence of events without overburdening them with detail. His sense of humor lightens the subject matter while at the same time keeping it in context. His sidebars are a welcome innovation. I think this book would be of interest to older readers (as I am) interested in a refresher course as well as to those grappling with the basics of this fascinating subject.

This easy-to-read book is the history I should have learned in school years ago but did not. Highly recommended. Author has humor and tidbits that make the reading speed by.

James Wall's The Boundless Frontier: American From Christopher Columbus To Abraham Lincoln is a superb historical survey of key events in early American history. After an informative introduction, Wall dedicates individual chapter so the American Indians; exploration and discovery; the English interest in America; the Virginia Colony 1607-1699; the New England Colonies 1620-1691; the Middle Colonies 1664-1702; the Southern Colonies 1632-1734; religion in colonial America; patterns of settlement in North America; the colonial wars 1689-1763; British-American estrangement 1763-1775; the American Revolution 1775-1783; the Confederation Government 1781-1789; the Federal Constitution; the federalist Era 1789-1801; the Jeffersonian Era 1801-1815; the "Era of Good Feelings" 1815-1825; the Jacksonian Era 1825-1841; the era of "Manifest Destiny" 1841-1850; the era of popular sovereignty 1850-1860; the era of the Civil War 1861-1865; and a postscript "An Essay For Students" with commentary on books as history, periodization, dates and places. The Boundless Frontier is an impressive work of meticulous scholarship and a highly recommended, single volume survey of early American political history and development from colonial times through the end of the Civil War.

A short and perfect connection between spirituality and everyday life. Perfect for people who need help finding a spiritual side and can't stand to take leaps of faith. If this book was widely read, we would live in a better world.

My uncle had given me a copy last Christmas. We discussed the book, and its impact upon our lives, fairly often. When he was hospitalized late this year with what turned out to be fatal colon cancer, he insisted upon having his copy with him in the hospital. When you read Breakfast at the Victory, you'll understand why. Its one of those once-in-a-decade books that affect you for the rest of your life.

You know the old parlour game, "If you could take only one X with you to a desert island, what would it be?" Well, if I could have only one book for the rest of my life, _Breakfast at the Victory_ would be the one. I gave copies to everyone I care about.

I found the worksheets alone in this book worth the price. When you follow the step-by-step instructions, the worksheets cull out only the data you need. With all the extraneous data out of the way, it's easy to pinpoint critical problems that you might miss otherwise. And it makes developing key indicators and reports easier as well. I think any CEO who wants to keep the company's accounting and human resource managers on top of things at all times should give them this book tomorrow...if not sooner.

This book is packed with practical information and worksheets so you really get your money's worth. All points are illustrated with actual company stories and real-world experiences. The format makes it particularly easy to read and use.

I recommend this book to my coaching clients because it gives them a real system to develop strategy and then measure performance. Everyone wants a simple way to stay on track with their goals, and this book offers organizational planning advice, suggestions on how to effectively communicate the plan with employees, and then reports to make sure there is accountability for results.

By Honor Betray'd is the third novel written in the original Mageworlds trilogy. At this time, however, it is the sixth of the series in internal chronological sequence, following Starpilot's Grave. In the previous book, the Magelords have taken Galcen, the marines have joined Jos Metada, Commodore Jervas Gil has pulled together the Mageworlds fleet at Ophel, Ari Rosselin-Metada has fled Admiral Vallant to Gyffer, Llannat Hyfid has brought her motley crew and the deathwing Night's-Beautiful-Daughter to Gyffer, and Beka Rosselin-Metada has declared herself as the new Domina of Lost Entibor and the focal point of the resistance. Moreover, Owen Rosselin-Metada has found Errec Ransome imprisoned by the Mages, has proven his mastery, and has to been told to retrieve his staff and claim the Guild Mastership.

In this novel, Grand Admiral Theio syn-Ricte sus-Airaalin tries to break Errec's defenses, but fails. At Gyffer, Ari and Llannat join with local defense forces against Admiral Vallant and the Mages. Within Infabede sector, Jos captures warships from Vallant and decides to attack Galcen. At Suivi Point, Beka incorporates the local RSF squadron into the resistance fleet, Tarveet of Pleyver takes out a treason contract against her, and Ignaceu LeSoit breaks several regulations, and the docks, getting Warhammer away from Contract Security. On Nammerin, Owen and his apprentice, Klea Santreny, take ship to Pleyver to fight Mages. At Waycross on Innish-Kyl, Commodore Gil negotiates with former privateers to form a fleet around his three capital ships.

The Grand Admiral knows that he has a little cleaning up to do, but believes that the war is almost won. However, the resistance is gathering. All these forces, Republic and Mage, are converging on Gyffer. Should be a slam-bang fight.

This concluding volume of the original trilogy certainly brought everything to a boil, but the final plot twist is a humdinger. Recommended for Mageworlds fans and anyone who enjoys stories of interstellar war and intrigue.

The grand finale; still more surprising twists, and I love the ending (which I won't spoil for you, but trust me, it'll make you go, "I saw that coming," and "Wha??" at the same time;) Also, you get to see a more vulnerable side to Owen for a change, which makes him seem more human, more understandable. In the end, I couldn't help but love most of the characters, including the villains!

Love the people and the action. Want more of the same.

When the hustle and bustle of living in Silicon Valley becomes overwhelming, I reach for this book. Fr. Schmitmeyer's essays give me a feeling of peace and tranquiliity. His skillful writing style grabs and holds my imagination. I never tire of his sensitive descriptions of life in North Star and Osgood. This historic region of our country is his ancestral homeland and he gives enormous insight into the lives of its wise and spirited people. This book is a tribute to them and to the rare sense of community they have created. A Calendar of Care gives me a vivid image of what life is now like in these two neighboring towns. This is one priest who is not afraid to get his hands dirty. He works alongside his human and animal flock, literally. He isn't afraid to speak out and teach others about unjust agricultural practices. His essay, "Harvest Prophets", is pure genius. It digs straight to the core of the current trend towards rural nostalgia and offers a unique perspective on it. Fr. Schmitmeyer writes, "...abandoned homesteads make me ask disturbing questions, such as 'who lived here?' and 'why did they leave?' " He educated me about the dismal outlook for the future of family farming in the United States. He made me aware of how all of us are affected by how our food is produced. He writes, "The biblical wisdom that says that the way we treat the land determines how we treat one another, is again proving itself true in our culture of ultra-efficiency and social decline." Profound observations abound in this book. Fr. Schmitmeyer has the uncanny ability to even confront mortal violence head-on. He gives a powerful account of the worst form of man's inhumaity to man and yet in spite of the madness, he gently provided a sense of stabilty and resolve for this reader. His description of current unjust agricultural trends prompted me to write to my elected officials and to newspapers to voice my concern about this moral issue that affects all of us. (The problem is "concentration," where too few businesses control the market, and it is also the reason gasoline prices in California are the highest in the country.) In this sense, Fr. Schmitmeyer's care is far-reaching. A Calendar of Care transcends a reader's religious denomination and geographic location. I highly recommend this book for everyone. It's a must read!.

In 1988 Fr. James Schmitmeyer, an American priest in the archdiocese of Cincinnati, Ohio, left a faculty position at a graduate school of theology to take on the responsibilities of two rural parishes and a small farm. A Calendar of Care is an affecting collection of stories that attempt to "capture the grace" he has experienced in this new work. He clearly loves the communities of North Star and Osgood with a love only a man who has spent considerable time in academia can have. "Instead of attending symposiums on globalism, I now go square dancing at weddings, get sunburned in the fields and bless rosaries and animals and seeds." For Fr. Schmitmeyer, Christianity is about real things. It is about the incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection. It is also about parades, processions, grandmothers in shawls, old barns, oddly shaped trees, carpentry, sheep and square dances. For him, it seems, there is little division between his faith and his daily life and his work. In everyday and ordinary things he notices glimmers of the sacred and holy. And while there is this joy and peace there is also sadness in these tales. "There was a time when people in towns like mine were secure and prosperous." In America (and even more so in England) farm and family based communities are endangered by economic forces that militate against the small scale. "The Goliaths of agribusiness and food production industries would make even the stones in David's hands glisten with sweat." His own parishioners have sometimes had to make difficult choices in the face of threatening competition. Some have followed current trends by expanding their farming operations. Others have been forced to seek demanding work in the neighboring cities. There are also painful stories of the deaths of loved ones and the prayerful and compassionate response made by parishioners. For Fr. Schmitmeyer, the choice to become a country pastor was not a paranoid flight from modernity or a romantic hearkening back to bygone days. Rather, it was a choice to put himself in a setting in which life takes on more healthy and also more demanding aspects. It was really (it seems to this scribbler halfway across the world) a choice for greater service and self-giving. Cynicism and selfishness got you down? Put on a cowboy hat and pick up A Calendar of Care.

This poetic and vividly written book is a gift to all people of faith. For those who are involved in ministering to rural people, you can find a connection in Father Schmitmeyer's experiences. For those rural people, it can give you a sense of how important you are in today's world, and for those who aren't directly involved with rural life, this book will give you an understanding of what life is like out there. This book was exactly what I needed. In it I found a connection I have been searching for, namely: another heart concerned for the people and places which surround it. I am a seminarian studying for the Diocese of La Crosse, WI and I am a farmer at heart like Father Schmitmeyer. In my recent studies of rural life, I have been getting disheartened. Reading this book re-enkindled the passion I have for the family farm and sustainable agriculture. I had the opportunity to meet Fr. Schmitmeyer at the recent National Catholic Rural Life Conference Annual Meeting in Des Moines, Iowa, where he was a keynote speaker. I was able to get to know Father Schmitmeyer there, but in this book I was able to understand why he is a priest in rural Ohio.

I simply could not put this book down. Much more than an entertaining portrait of early 20th century life in some remote places, this is a highly informative social and political history and a compelling reflection on nationalism, patriotism and the fears, violence and intrigues which sometimes accompany them. Mr. O'Neill obviously has talents for both research and scene-painting, and his writing is both literate and engaging. After 340 pages, I was sorry to put the book away. But I feel wiser now that I have made the journey with Mr. O'Neill.

"Blood Dark Track" provides a fascinating background into the history of both Ireland and Turkey during the first half of the Twentieth Century. These two very disparate regions actually have more in common than we would initially suppose: neutrality during WWII, an antipathy to British Imperialism, persecution of religious minorities, and layers upon layers of history underlying bloody Twentieth Century history.

These areas also combine in the persona of the author, Joseph O'Neill, who has provided an intriguing personal narrative of his own family. His father's side, Catholic, poor, and Republican from Cork; his mother's, Catholic, bourgeois, and apolitical from Mersin (a coastal city near Syria). Their meeting is as fortuitous as it was unlikely.

The author deftly melds the pieces into a coherent whole, despite geographic, cultural, and temporal distances. Because of the personal connection of the author to events, people, and places, it reads more like a novel than a history.

Informing the story is the author's discovery of his grandfathers, both as family and as characters in two distinct, though subtly parallel, historical contexts. I was surprised to find the story so gripping that I finished it in three days.

This is a brilliant book. The author searches for the reasons why his two grandfathers - one Irish, one Turkish - both ended up in prison during the Second World War. His Turkish grandfather, Joseph Dakad, was interned by the British in Palestine on suspicion of spying for the Germans. His Irish grandfather, Jim O'Neill, was interned by his own government in the Curragh as a member of the IRA. By subtly intercutting the two stories, the book looks at nationalism in two very different contexts - the polyglot, post-Ottoman culture of Turkey in the years between the two world wars, and the hidden story of the IRA between De Valera coming to power and the resumption of The Troubles in 1969. In searching for the reasons why these two very different men were interned, O'Neill illuminates unspoken ideas of nationalism and individuality that permeate (like DNA) the two sides of his family. While he sifts through British intelligence reports on "undesirable" activity in Jerusalem, and discovers who really murdered Admiral Somerville in West Cork in 1936, O'Neill's book is shot through with contemporary echoes of his grandfathers' ordeals. As the author watches Bernadettes Sands reject the Good Friday Agreement in the name of Ireland's republican martyrs, and interrogates former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir about the morality of political assassination and the lessons the Zionist underground (the Lechi also known as the Stern Gang) learnt from the IRA, we realise that the ghosts of these men still haunt today's headlines, and our ancestors can exercise the power of an unconscious force over our political reflexes.

Great book! This book, Blues for Bird, is worth all the other biographies of Charlie Parker combined. A concise and direct evocation of the jazzman's life, it tells the tragic story of his rise and fall, and the tragic decline of his later years--it censors nothing, it tells the story better than a more detailed biographical volume, And does it with a poet's ear and eye! Alright! Be-bop!

Somebody ought to make a bunch of CDs, with an actor reading these highly accessible poems against a backdrop of Charlie Parker's music. They'd be a wow!

How can you write an epic today when the world is no longer 'story-shaped'? You can go back and translate 'Beowulf', as Seamus Heaney has done, or you can be like Martin Gray and write an epic life in quantum bursts of three-stress energy.

This is a great idea book- or lovely gift for a gardening friend. The illustrations are lovely. There are gardens from various climates, formal and informal- If you buy it for a gift, you may not want to give it up.

This book is a wonderful addition to any Landscape Architects shelf, the photographs emphasize the technique used by these two talented designers, and the pictorial key to their frequently used plant material acts as a springboard for your own interpretation on these very modern, yet naturalistic designs.

I am absolutely positive that you cannot go wrong with this book, or any other by these two incredible designers. With an emphasis on ornamental grasses and very "naturalistic" design styles that are beautiful year round, you'll have a hard time putting this one down. Photographs are absolutely beautiful!! You will definitely not be dissapointed!!!

Tired of all those solemn "memoirs" and "remembrances" that are on the library shelves? Well, this one will knock your socks off!
If Boswell were alive today and using videotape instead of a quill pen, the talk shows would have him as their constant guest.

I'm not sure if I'd want to have known him, but this lecher, alcoholic, and moocher had a keen eye for London high- and low-life that will keep you hanging on every page.

To anyone who, like myself, has found a real and deep enjoyment in reading the Life of Johnson, I can only recommend Boswell's own diaries. The first volume - his 'London Journal' starting in the year he met Johnson - is pure delight. Boswell always saw himself as a character acting in the drama of life, and he could be almost excruciatingly honest and objective about himself. His voluminous diaries record all the trivia, triumphs, and despairs of his own life, day by day and year by year.

My own opinion is that Boswell is a far better diarist than Pepys, though not nearly as well known in this respect. There is a fascination about seeing his whole life recorded from youth to shortly before his death, with all the same force and liveliness that went into his Life of Johnson. His inner life is at least as entertaining as his outer life. He seems totally determined to write about himself as he wrote about Johnson - warts and all.

It's this courage and honesty about himself that makes us respect Boswell even when he is at his most foolish or debauched. The diaries make it extremely clear that he was no idiot, and that the Life of Johnson was no fortuitous masterpiece. From his diaries he comes across as a deeply sensitive, romantic, self-conscious man. Charming, likeable, and often playing the clown to his acquaintances; but often filled with self-doubt, frustration, insecurity, and a deep depression that he concealed from all except his closest friends.

We see Boswell puffed up with vanity at some silly social success, and the same Boswell quietly devoting large amounts of time and money that he could ill spare to helping people in trouble. We see Boswell in love again and again with totally unsuitable women, and eventually marrying the cousin who had always been a good, close friend rather than an object of wild romance. We see Boswell in his vibrant youth, and his tragic final years, as an alcoholic filled with bitter shame and despair, yet unable to reform.

His diaries are certainly one of the great undiscovered treasures of literature. They deserve to be a lot better known than they are.

It has been quite awhile since I have read this book but and can remember few details. What sticks in the mind is the complete humanity displayed by its author. Frankly, Boswell is unlikable and hardly to be admired but his passion and candidness make this book very readable today. Not many tomes from this era can make this claim. It is a must read for both those interested in Johnson and those students of the human condition.