In February of 2001, it was announced that Battlestar Galactica would be revived as a new TV series. I'm willing to bet within a month this re-issue of the first two Galactica novels was planned as an attempt by Glen Larson, faded TV producer, to cash in on his old series. He didn't write them, but there's his name, first on the cover, ahead of the man who actually wrote them, Robert Thurston. The books are entertaining and explore the Saga of a Star World and Gun on Ice Planet Zero episodes in more depth. Ironically, the Galactica revival that was probably supposed to coincide with the release of this book, is long dead. Fox TV, which was supposed to air the new series, bailed out in November, 2001, when Bryan Singer abandoned the project in favor of X Men 2. Sequels are safer.

This is the companion to the TV episode that starred Jayne Seymour as Serina. It is more in-depth than the episode. they are now in the process of bringing the show back. Sadly it isn't the show I grew up on. However this book is a worthy collectors piece for anyone who loves Battlestar galactica. I highly recommend it.

memory lane time, gents...with a fabulous frazetta cover painting

This book was an interesting read. They do show a wide variety of techniques that are used for the stage...but they only give you a small taste of the process...The vacuum forming section is good. Read this book to get an overview of some ideas... but know that most of the technology shown is past its prime. I know stagework is seen at a distance... but you will not be impressed with the craftsmanship of the projects. Heads up on some safety issues...they skip right over that. Oh my.

I purchased this book as a sculptor....and thought it might be too focused on theatrical uses. I was pleasantly surprised to find that not only did it apply to the art sculptor but that it was more descriptive than any sculpture books on the same processes. The photos and directions are very clear and informative. The author gives a list of sources for ordering materials and supplies( though there are now many more sources available since this was published).

What do you want to know about molding and casting? It is probably in this book. How to work with Plaster, how to work with urethanes and resins. All about mold making, all about casting materials. From the simplest to the most complex. The book even explains how to do vacuum molding. I've just begun to do molding and casting and so far everything I've needed to know came right out of this book. And it is a lot of fun, too.

I am currently teaching a series on "Lesser-Known Women of the Bible." I find Professor Thurston's book to be based on sound research and thoughtful reflection. Of particular help was the section on the cultural and religious background, which focusses on the place of women in N.T. culture. I would suggest this book for study for both women and men who wish to explore what the Bible REALLY says about women.

This book is an excellent, thoroughly-researched, very interesting commentary on women in the New Testament. It provides both context and balance in discussing passages, analyzing the societies (Jewish, Roman, Early Christian and Hellenic) when the various epistles and Gospels were authored. Ms. Thurston discusses what is both said and unsaid, and provides more accurate translations of some of the more controversial or unclear language (i.e. diakonos). Of particular interest for those seeking further study is the bibliography included at the end of every chapter. An important and inspiring book.

I just had my first child, and going through my first pregnancy, I bought every book about pregnancy that was out there. Dr. Thurston is my OB-GYN, which is how I found out about this book. It is BY FAR the book that I referred to the most. It was very comforting to be able to look up information that is supported by medical fact, as opposed to the author's opinion. It is easy to find whatever topic you may be concerned about, and this book covers just about everything! Dr. Thurston addresses the questions with humor, making it a fun read. I highly recommend this book to all pregnant women! And I'm giving it as gifts to all of my pregnant friends.

This book will answer most any question you can possibly ask about your pregnancy. You know- the one that you either meant to ask the doctor at your last visit or felt it might not be important enough to ask. The book is informative and erudite, yet, is written in lay language that is easy to understand. It is tastefully comical in discussing many of the more sensitive and taboo topics and its approach is suggestive rather than preachy. The organization of the book around a list of questions that each seemed to gain in relevancy at different stages of our pregancy, allowed us to read in fragments without feeling guilty for "skipping around." We highly recommend this book for the first time parent(s).

I purchased the What to Expect book with my first pregnancy and had to stop reading it due to its doom and gloom attitude (Don't eat that one candy bar or your child will be nutritionally doomed!). During my second pregnancy, Dr. Thurston's book was in my OB's office when I went for my first visit and I found it to be not only informational but pretty straight shooting with the facts. This book is packed with loads of information on a variety of subjects and talks about them with rational, straight forward language. Pregnancy can be a scary thing, but I think it's important to have a factual resource that tells it like it is without scaring you half to death.

Clarke makes it clear that he does not like California. He doesn't see why anyone would like California. He goes into great detail critcizing California and the people in California. The problem is, he NEVER suggests anything better; he never presents anything about anywhere that he *does* like. This makes for dreary, and at times infuriating, reading.

Then again, I'm from California.

....could so sharp-eyed an author collect such a crazy quilt of legends, stories, hard data, speculation, and eccentric responses to the oft-denied relationship between the San Andreas Fault he paces from north to south and the folks who live atop it. He has a reporter's knack for getting at the subtext of whatever details catch his attention--and the subtext is often deeply poignant, coming as it does from the shadow side of a given community.

My one complaint is that the book spends too much time northward. One reads 3/4 of it and gets no farther south than Hollister. I hope future editions will include more about Southern California. Highly recommended.

The author takes a trip down the San Andreas fault from the North Coast to the Salton Sea, and talks about the communities (villages, San Francisco, Palm Springs) along the way. These California towns are facing the same problems with developers wanting to make a quick buck and local governments desparate for tax money to build prisons. The author's geology is lacking, but his sense of the people he's met makes up for it.

Lots of Thurston, Mike Watt & Lee Renaldo, some David Yow, only one entry from Courtney and none from Stephen Malkmus, so the title is a little misleading. If you're a Beck fan, you'll love his entries. They're the best of the bunch. He describes the world as he sees it in Beck-style free-form, without bashing his fellow performers. Thurston's entries are almost entirely in strangely self-righteous defense of Kathleen Hanna and an incident in which he was not even involved, which is a waste. The last I heard, Kathleen is more than capable of speaking for herself so his defense of her/bashing of Courtney is unnecessary. I expected and would have preferred more insight into the Lollapalooza performing experience.

Here is a low priced little book with lots of journal entries from Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo, quite a few from Beck and a couple others (but the others don't contribute too much). It is a very interesting inside look at one of the most vividly remembered tours in independent rock history. A lineup featuring the likes of these many performers will probably never cross the U.S. again in my lifetime. The Kathleen Hanna incident doesn't actually dominate Thurston's entries, but takes up a large chunk of his journals. Beck's entries are great. David Yow doesn't say too much... One overriding theme is how big of a jerk Courtney Love really is. There are plenty of little interesting stories relayed along the way. Don't miss out you Sonic Youth and Beck fans! And for all those who still remember being at one of these shows, it might be interesting to hear what was going on behind the scenes.

In 1995, the Lollapalooza maelstron plundered thru the cities & towns of America, a [diamond] sea of noise & beats changing lives & generally having fun. That's what I'm lead to believe anyway. Thurston is more or less the star here as he was in 1991: the Year Punk Broke, & there's some other cool & crazy kids there too. He writes in his typically amusing & insightful style about the Mexican food, the backstage parking that's reserved strictly for Hole & how Kim has to pretend to be Courtney so SY's car can get in, & how Bek was outraged by this, the Kathleen vs Courtney thing, the crowds disappearing when SY are last on the bill, etc. Lee Ranaldo also writes from the sonic perspective, of course in his more contemplative style usually except when he gets pissed off he shows it. Well, to be honest, I've read these things as they were intended, as computer things so I didn't get everything, I'd very much like to hear what the great Beck had to say about it as well. Yeah the show goes on eevry year but that was the one that mattered. Very interesting reading that you can go back to many times for enlightenment/amusement.

A facinating memoir of Mao's personal physician- Dr. Li Zhisui. I just finished reading this book for the second time and liked it even more than I did the first time.

This is a truly amazing story of power, corruption and how intrigues, infighting and byzantine court politics affected the lives of hundreds of millions of people during the 'Great Leap Forward' and 'The Cultural Revolution'.

Anyone interested in understanding how one man gained so much influence and power and held such sway with his cult of personality should read this fine book. It was particularly tragic to read how the Chinese people became the pawns in Mao's personal political struggles. Scarier yet is how his wife, Jiang Qing (a obviously neurotic and paranoid woman), would gain so much power for herself.

This is a must read for any student of twentieth century politics or modern Chinese history.

This is a fascinating book. For anyone who wants to understand "modern" China, I recommend two books: this one, and Hungry Ghosts by Jasper Becker. The two combined provide many insights into both traditional Chinese culture (Mao acted as a tradtional emporer) and the operations of the Chinese Communist Party today. Becker's book describes the worst famine in the history of mankind and how it was brought on by Mao's brilliance as a politician, his hunger for power and control, and his incomprehension of science and economics. Another book sometimes recommended as being a more "balanced" account of the Great Leap Forward is Calamity and Reform in China by Dali Yang. Yang's book is well documented and worth reading, but it is much less interesting than Becker's book and doesn't give as much explanation of why things happened. The "balance" (between those for and against mass starvation?) comes from his claim that the Great Leap experience was instrumental in China's later reforms, after Mao was out of the way. The idea is that at least something good came out of the experience. It's not surprising that the dismal economic performance of communes and collectivization in 1959-61 played a major role in the later decision to abandon communes and collectivization. But did the Chinese Communist Party really need to see 30 million unnatural deaths in just a few years in order to figure out, 20 years later, that they should go back to the methods they used in the early 1950s? Becker points out that China was copying methods that had already led to massive famine and food shortages in the Soviet Union, and that many Chinese Communists had studied and worked in the Soviet Union since that famine and must surely have heard something about it. Yang is right that the beginning of the reform process in China wasn't entirely due to the brilliant and original ideas of Deng Xiaoping, and it wasn't simply a backlash from the Cultural Revolution (Becker and Li make it clear that the Cultural Revolution was mainly a result of Mao's drive to stay in power after the catastrophe of the Great Leap Forward). Throughout his time in power, Mao forced disastrous and illogical farming methods onto Chinese peasants. Once he and his cronies were finally out of the way, the farmers sensibly went back to their earlier methods, and Deng was smart enough to realize that he couldn't and shouldn't stop them. The mistakes of the "Great Leap Forward" weren't necessary or useful, as readers of Yang's book sometimes imply. All that was necessary was for Mao (and the CCP) to stop holding China back. The reasons why Mao didn't let the "reforms" begin while he was in power become much clearer after reading Li's inside account of Mao.

I have to hand it to Li Zhisui: I never would have guessed that a book with the heft of a small automobile and a subject as thoroughly despicable as Mao Zedong would be a page-turner, but I was wrong. I decided to read The Private Life of Chairman Mao on the strength of a review I read in the New York Times, combined with a desire to quell my ignorance of Chinese history. These things did not keep me riveted, however; Li Zhisui's detailed yet highly disciplined account of his experiences with Mao Zedong and the political intrigue in Maoist China made it difficult to put this book down. Not only was Mao an opportunist masquerading as an ideologue, but he was also a disgusting human being in every possible way. I was sickened to learn that an entire country was held captive by the whims of a man who was completely obsessed with his own power--and who had the worst personal hygiene of anyone on the planet! And I was fascinated to discover that the Chinese people did not despise Mao for it; rather, they revered him as something akin to a god. Indeed, Mao's ability to keep his countrymen enthralled in life--and to continue to keep them enthralled in death--says more about who he was than do his atrocities or his aversion to cleanliness: First and foremost, Mao Zedong was a master politician. And Li Zhisui is nothing if not a master storyteller. In The Private Life of Chairman Mao, he presents a sane perspective of a truly insane time

This is Verne's classic story of the trip of Phileas Fogg (who is obsessed with time), Passeportout, Aouda, and Detective Fix around the world on a wager. The book is filled with beautiful time and space imagery throughout (I would bet that one could write an entire thesis on all the time and space references in the novel). Thirty-three years after its publication, the world first learns of the space/time continuum (although I'm certain Verne was not anticipating Einstein). Fogg bets his fellow club members that he can circumnavigate the globe in a mere eighty days. He leaves immediately with his valet Passeportout and is pursued by Detective Fix, who thinks he is a bank robber. Through many adventures, including the rescue of Aouda from immolation, they all return to London. Interestingly, a few years later, after a number of improvements had been made in railways and roads, a U.S. journalist named Nellie Bly (the pseudonym of Elizabeth Cochrane) decided to attempt to break Fogg's "record." Leaving New York on November 14, 1889, she was able to circumnavigate the globe in 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes, and 14 seconds. But, she didn't rescue a Hindu princess! It should be noted, however, that one has to be very careful concerning the translations of this novel. There are some terrible ones being sold. Perhaps that's the reason for the few poor comments by earlier reviewers. There is an excellent translation by William Butcher that appeared in 1995.

Before there was any kind of high-speed travel an English gentleman named Phileas Fogg betted 20,000 pounds that he can travel around the world in 80 or less days. He starts his journey in London. On his way he meets a beautiful Indian Princess. Fogg also gets mistaken for a criminal. During his whole journey he has a detective following him trying to arrest him when the warrant arrives. In the book you follow Fogg's adventures through four continents when he is racing against time. The book is fast-paced, action-packed adventure with both romance and danger.

The characters in the story were introduced very well, especially Phileas Fogg. In the beginning of the book you get to know that Fogg is a very private gentleman. He never goes to any social places except the Reform Club. A remarkable thing about Fogg is that his life is centered around the clock. He is very precise and always on time. Every day he follows the exact same schedule. Phileas Fogg does not have a wife or any kids.

The setting of the book was very jumpy. Since Fogg travels through many continents and countries the setting changes all the time. You still feel you know a little bit about every place that he comes to, even if he only stays there for a couple of hours.

When I started reading the book I thought it would be a really good book and it really did meet my standards. I would recommend it to any one who likes adventure and action. Since it is written in so many different versions a person almost any age can read it.

I think this book is a superior book because it is full of action. This book is about a man named Mr. Phileas Fogg, and his faithful servant, Passepartout, that wager a bet that They can travel the whole world in eighty days stopping at Suez via Mont Cenis and Brindisi, then to Bombay, then Calcutta, Hong Kong, Japan (Yokohama), San Francisco, New York, back to London, all within eighty days, and by steamboats, and trains. However, a nosy detective, Detective Fix, tracks them down, and tries to arrest Mr. Fogg because he believes that Fogg stole fifty-five thousand pounds. As one may guess, this greatly detains Mr. Fogg, and it seems like he may not make the trip around the world after all. However, the Fix never seems to catch up with Fogg, and Fogg triumphs over most of the obstacles that come his way, like missing boats, missing trains, missing people, and Fogg even meets and rescues a beautiful Indian Princess called Aouda. However, Fix finally catches up to the detective, and everything seems lost for Fogg until Fix discovers that Fogg was not the robber, and Fogg is released. Even so, Fogg is one day late, and in doing so, misses the train that would have taken him to London precisely to win the bet. He ordered a special train, but even in doing so, still misses the bet...or so he thinks. The ending of the book is a very unexpected one. Read this book and find out!