Bambi Books

This book is simply amazing in providing what many books on the subject do not and cannot, because most writers do not have the depth and breadth of personal knowledge required. Bambi Vincent & Bob Arno have done an extraordinary amount of research, covering many countries over many years. The wealth of details gives the reader what are possibly the best weapons against the many cons covered in this extensive advisory - education and awareness.

I needed something to help me really understand what I might be up against, and Bambi Vincent and Bob Arno's work has it in spades. The book is well written, well documented (including photos of crimes in progress), entertaining, and above all, educational. The amount of background work they have done to prepare this book is remarkable; the research is all-original, leather-on-pavement, with a very ballsy personal commitment. It was done not for a few months like most well-researched books, but over decades.

This book covers details of many varieties of con that are only hinted at in other work on this subject, evidently because the authors have spent many years researching, walking, talking to con men and their victims, and living on the road while looking for cons to record - in print, on film and in videos. It is possibly the definitive work on this type of crime, although I would be hard put to say precisely what that covers. There are many categories involved and the word 'con' is about as good as I can do to describe them. Preparing me to meet them effectively, mostly through awareness and continuous vigilance, is the job the authors have taken upon themselves. After reading this book, I think I am as ready as I can be.

Perhaps if I spent years learning and practicing the techniques myself, as Bob Arno has done for his work as an entertainer, I could do better. But getting this much information into an easy-reading book is by itself a major accomplishment, and Bambi Vincent deserves great credit as the primary author. Very strongly recommended for anyone who travels, whether it's to a foreign country or the other side of their own city.

I will make one suggestion. I would like to see this couple develop and market punitive pocket/purse devices for travelers. Perhaps a wallet that when opened sprays a permanent dye, or potent, disgusting, long-lasting odor spray. Perhaps leather that contains deadly tetrodotoxin, poison arrow frog poison, or at a minimum a pocket mousetrap (possibly with an upgrade to amputate an uninvited fingertip, with further option to deposit infective bacteria)--something cruel to ruin the thieves' holiday much as they ruin those of their victims. Sort of a miniature Charles-Bronson-in-a-Pocket.

Six stars out of five.

After reading some brief articles online, I was wondering how a whole book could be made out of the subject without getting really dry. This book managed that. Lots of ideas (to watch out for!) and very interesting reading. I'll definitely be more prepared and already used some ideas on my recent four trips.

Each chapter of this book, standing alone, would be worth the price of the book. The photographs, alone, would be worth the price of the book. Where else could you find so many photographs of pickpockets and street scam artists in action?

Do not let the word "Travel" in the title fool you. This is a must-read for anyone who goes out in crowds, even in their own home town. Pickpockets work at sporting events, concerts, shopping centers or anywhere they can blend in anonymously with the crowd. Help put pickpockets, hotel thieves and street scam artists out of business. Buy this book.

As an RPCV who has lived for 2 years in a third world country, I thought I'd seen it all until I read this book. The information the authors share can make any American's vacation abroad safer and more interesting.
The last chapter on IDENTITY THEFT (it's not money you should worry about losing--it's your credit cards!) alone is worth the price of this book. Identity theft is growing at an alarming rate in America. Even if you never plan to travel abroad, we all need this information to protect ourselves at home.
Carolyn Proctor

Most of the time, especially when traveling, paranoia is good!

I have traveled extensively internationally for the last 15 years and consider myself travel savvy. Recently, in Peru, I have been robbed of my passport, camera, credit card and ultimately, my peace of mind. This robbery happened in broad daylight, 100 yards from a policeman (in Peru the police are known for their collaboration with criminals and their corruption). If I would have read "Travel Advisory" before this trip, I am sure I would have been more vigilant, yes, more paranoid. Thus, I would have correctly thought, in a paranoid way: I am "fresh meat" among unseen predators.

Bob and Bambi masterfully lay out the world of professional cons, rip-off artists, and the pejorative and prolific street thief. In incident after incident they show the mind of you, the unsuspecting victim and more importantly, the mind of the thief. Read "Travel Advisory" and you will soon understand the techniques of thieves, their M.O. and why you, looking like a tourist, acting like a tourist, are like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming Peterbuilt.

Bob and Bambi tell you plainly, the criminals are out there in force, they are professional, very savvy and the police are at best inconsequential. After 9/11 the focus of the police has clearly changed. Very, very low on the police "to do" list is catching a purse-snatcher. Caveat: You are the only defense that you have.

Though the book is very good, it could be helpfully improved. There are no statistics. There are no lists, maps or charts that delineate the most dangerous tourist destinations. There is no appendix to help you with additional reading and/or web resources. There is no critical critique of 3rd world police (corruption, collaboration, complacency). Sadly, there is no mention of the punishment given to those thieves that Bob and Bambi tells us were apprehended. After being robbed, I want the satisfaction of hearing jail doors slamming.

There is not a traveler who could glean some beneficial tips from reading "Travel Advisory!"
It does us all well, prior to every trip, to remember the words of Stephen Still's song "For What It's Worth" (Buffalo Springfield 1966) "Paranoia Strikes deep, into your life it will creep. It starts when you're always afraid, you step out of line the [thief] man comes and takes you away." "Travel Advisory" excels at making you look over your shoulder, more than once. Read it. Strongly recommended. 4.5 stars.

A fast, funny read! I recommend it strongly

This is by far the funniest book I have read. The childhood memories that Linda Sunshine brings up makes me laugh, think of my best friends, and remember how hard it was to grow up, and how easy and carefree it seems now. I read this book all the time...over and over and over.

This book should have been a guide for women who grew up in the seventies.

Linda Sunshine brings out the loser, worrier, pre-pubescent, pretencious git in all of us in a trulely loveable character who among other things was in love with Prince Charles, had a friend with a Mary Tyler Moore identity crisis, sent her father broke, and married solely to get her mother off her back.

The character exerts the self-confidence of a lavishly-adorned princess, with the naivety of a sweepstake ticket-buyer who expects to win.

The Memoirs of Bambi Goldbloom is a hilarious look at growing up a Jewish girl in New Jersey in the seventies - and from an Catholic growing up in Australia at the same time, it is a refreshing, and sometimes embarrassingly-familiar coming of age novel. A bloody good read!

The life Bambi ends up with is certainly a surprise.

Bambi and Her Pink Gun...I mean the title alone insists that you pick it up and check it out. Do it and you are in for one of the most inventive Manga titles in quite some time. Bambi is...well a hot, punk, pink-haired, killing machine with a pink gun. Bambi has kidnapped a small boy with orders to deliver him to the mysterious "Old Men". Who they are and why they want the boy are not revealed, not yet anyway. But someone else wants the boy back. The word goes out to professional hitmen and two-bit slime balls all over the country...they are to kill Bambi and bring back the boy unharmed to collect a 500,000 Yen reward. Pretty soon every pro and amateur hitman is on Bambi's trail looking to take her out as she encounters Yakuza hoods, skull masked assassins, a deranged serial killer teacher, and gunslingers in cowboy outfits...all looking to send Bambi six feet under.

The mysterious man who wants the boy returned is a slavering, fat-Elvis looking pop-star called the Gabba King who needs the boy to maintain his vitality and he will stop at nothing to get him back. What transpires is a non-stop ride that seems in part inspired by films such as "Kill Bill" and "Natural Born Killers" as Bambi severs heads, blows out brains, and stomps butt in one of the most violent books you've ever read. But while it is violent, it's Tarrantino-esque, over-the-top violence that will make you laugh. Who is Bambi? How did she become such a skilled killer? We will have to keep reading to find out.

Bambi is a health food nut who's not above slamming someone over the head who tries to serve her junk food and mess up her pristine body or who dares to smoke in her presence. She also happens to loves a kids TV show about a talking bear named "Pei" and don't get in her way when she's watching it...or else!!! Meanwhile the boy who she names Pampi,does nothing but eat junk food, never speaking and constantly annoying Bambi with his disgusting habits. Atsushi Kaneko has created and uproariously aggressive and hilarious story. His art is not traditional Manga style as it is less `cartoony' than most types of Manga and complements the story quite well. Great Fun!

Reviewed by Tim Janson

If you like girls with large eyes in pastel colors or cute animals, you'll hate "Bambi." If you like/understand Japanese social criticism, you'll love it. "Bambi and her Pink Gun" is not a nice story - pink-haired punk Bambi has to get this kidnapped idiot child to the Old Men while avoiding bounty hunters who want the 500,000,000 yen reward on her head and while simultaneously offing an amazing collection of genuinely evil folk. I've read commentators who say that "Bambi" is like a Tarantino film for sheer violence and is mindless - but not so. A lot lurks below the surface of "Bambi." --- The story is set in a Japan that has almost totally been destroyed culturally by transnationalist American uglification. Air polluting factories, gas guzzling cars, nearly toxic junk food, a villainous rock star built like an aged and perverted Elvis, hideous signs in English - traditional Japan is gone. The driver's seat isn't even on the right anymore - instead, cars and roads have become Americanized. The kindly elementary school teacher is a serial killer by night. Into this depressing mess comes Bambi - pure and serene, and a killer, though perhaps "assassin" is a better word. --- She manages to slaughter off an impressive array of gangsters, perverts, and thugs, all of whom are out to kill her for the 500,000,000 Yen reward. One warty-faced yakuza gangster has an ashtray with an almost naked girl inside, so you can grind out your cigarette on her body if your perversions run to such things; Bambi kills him by managing to get some assassins in an RV to run into a steel stanchion holding a giant Americanized grinning child, which gets knocked over and bashes the yakuza's brains and warts into mush. She mows down a diner full of thugs emoting happily over a televised boxing match where the loser is visibly having his head beaten into bloody pulp. She and the kid - whom she names "Pampi" - watch a televised kiddie show that stars an overstuffed teddy bear who eats hallucinogenic mushrooms. At least the bear is minimally cute - he's all that remains of Japanese kawaii art. The rest has been swamped by globalization run amok. --- As the story proceeds, "Bambi" mobilizes the reader's hatred against the enemies Bambi slaughters off. One can claim, as one commentator did, that it's all mindless, but it isn't: "Bambi and her Pink Gun" is fury directed at the dehumanizing uglies that globalization has brought to Japan. If "Bambi" were an American comic, its political and social premises would be blindingly obvious, but, because it's Japanese, it can be harder to see the criticisms Atsushi Kaneko levels against modern Japan and, by extension, against all soul-destroying modernization, particularly that associated with a corrupt and decadent America. In the last episode of Volume 1, an old woman guns down a man using a heavy automatic rifle. Then she gives Bambi a new gun plus ammunition and tells Bambi to find her own pathway. --- Don't buy "Bambi" if you want cute girls and baby deer and adorable little animals. But if you want a sense of the targets of social criticism in Japan, indeed, in the world, then "Bambi and her Pink Gun" is superb. Take that, McTokyo.

Bambi Haggins traces how black comedy has evolved from performances for "the folks" to an integral part of the American experience. Her exhaustive research shows how pioneers Dick Gregory, Bill Cosby, Flip Wilson and Richard Pryor set the stage for later breakouts by Chris Rock and Eddie Murphy; Dave Chappelle gets his own, fascinating chapter. She also discusses the difficult issues of race and gender, plotting a trajectory from Moms Mabley to Whoopi Goldberg. A reader of any race will come away with a new understanding of comedy in "post-soul America."

Before the modern Civil Rights era, black comedians primarily performed for black audiences, and white comedians performed for whites. But over the last 45 years - the "Post-Soul" era -black comedians have moved into the mainstream culture, and this book explores this integration process by examining the comic televisual and cinematic personae of Dick Gregory, Bill Cosby, Flip Wilson, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Whoopi Goldberg and Dave Chappelle. The chapter on Goldberg, which explores her persona through the lens of gender and crossover, also touches briefly upon the careers of Moms Mabley, Pearl Bailey and Wanda Sykes.

Black comedians are in an untenable position. Unlike white performers, who can play a buffoon without fear of being criticized for perpetuating minstrelsy, black performers "represent" so every joke, every career choice, even personal relationships are scrutinized by both supporters and detractors and usually found wanting: too black or not black enough, Keepin' It Real or not. As Chris Rock stated in a New York Times interview, "... journalists start analyzing it and talking to me like I'm Kwesi Mfume. I don't need that gig. All I care about is being funny."

And a problem arises when attempting to mainstream material developed for black audiences, material which is often self deprecating and which, when removed from the privacy and security of the black enclave and put on display for the entertainment of whites, can be received and enjoyed in a racist way, or criticized as "airing dirty laundry." When discussing why he terminated his show, Dave Chappelle's summed up to Oprah as discomfort over "the white guy laughing" a little too loudly at, rather than with, humorous aspects of black culture.

Such struggles are at the heart of this study; in fact, the author says the question which inspired it arose at the late show of "Dave Chappelle's Block Party" when she contemplated some frat boys in the audience and wondered " I know what I'm laughing at, but what are you laughing at?"

As the author states, "Comedy is a powerful discoursive tool" and this study provides many thought provoking insights and raises even more questions. The book is written primarily for academics, and lay readers might find the jargon challenging at times but I still recommend it to them. It prompted me to make several trips to the video store in order to view some unfamiliar material but more importantly, to view some familiar material again in a new light. Recommended for anyone interested in media, African American or American Studies.

I have always been intimidated by the language, numbers, and ins-and-outs of investing and retirement planning. The literature I have read in the past was always too technical and assumed I knew things I didn't. Well, for me, Retire Rich... could have been titled: Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Successfully Planning for Retirement But Were Afraid to Ask. This book provided me with in-depth, intelligent information that I have wanted and needed to help me make plans for my future in a very clear, non-threatening, easy-to-read style. I have gained so much knowledge and confidence from it! I plan to give copies of this book to my 30/40/50Something friends and family! Many thanks and cheers to the authors of this timely and informative book!

My husband shared "Retire Rich" with me. Even though he has been in the financail services business for 20 years, I have to admit I never really understood all the concepts necessary to feel comfortable with what we have been able to save. "Retire Rich" led me through the maze of complex financial terms/concepts and explained them in words and examples that I quickly grasped. I found myself saying "I never knew that" or "I see" scores of times as I read through the book. I especially liked the style in which the book is written, it doesn't talk down or up to me. In a nutshell, "Retire Rich" answers questions that every spouse asks.

Without a doubt one of the finest film books that I have ever come upon! BAMBI: The Story And The Film by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas is a treat to both eye and the mind. Using sketches, drawings and paintings created during the course of the film's making, along with insightful text by two of Bambi's artists, this book is a work of art in its own right. This book, along with the latest BAMBI DVD, would provide anyone interested with an appreciation of this film unlike any college course could. If you love this film like I do, you will throughly enjoy this now out-of-print book. HIGHEST RATING!

Not as HOT as The Illusion of Life, but a MUST-HAVE anyway, this book gives a thorough insight into the making of one of the greatest animated feature films ever, by the animators of Bambi and Thumper...

I want to know if this is the book being told by Bambi. I had a book like this, loaned it out and did not get it back so am searching for it. Thanks. E-mail: JoyceJames26@yahoo.com

I was very young the first time i read this book. I got out of it about the same thing Disney later captured in its movie. But there is so much more to Salten's book than that.

I have read _Bambi_ many times, at many ages in my life. The older i get, the more there is to this beautiful, multi-faceted allegory of life, love, loss, and wisdom. Whatever Your age, i promise You will love this story.

Bambi is...well a hot, pink-haired, killing machine with a pink gun. Bambi has kidnapped a small boy with orders to deliver him to the mysterious "Old Men". Who they are and why they want the boy are not revealed, not yet anyway. But someone else wants the boy back. The Word goes out to professional hitmen and two-bit slime balls all over the country...they are to kill Bambi and bring back the boy unharmed to collect a 500,000 Yen reward. Pretty soon every pro and amateur hitman is on Bambi's trail looking to take her out as she encounters Yakuza hoods, skull masked assassins, a deranged serial killer teacher, and gunslingers in cowboy outfits...all looking to send Bambi six feet under. At the end of the first volume, Bambi faced off against a gun shop full of Cowboy killers and while she killed most of them, some managed to get away with the boy, "Pampi" in tow.

The killers are all a part of the Bloody Gang Mama, whose leader is the wretched, mean, peg-legged Mama herself. It doesn't take long for Bambi to track the gang down as she's determined to tear down the entire town to get Pampi back leading to a no-holds, battle to the death with Mama. I'm sure you can guess who wins. Later, a group of 18 wheeler trucker assassins use their rigs to box Bambi's little car in, trapping her in her toughest situation yet. The Gabba King is not giving up on his goal to get Pampi back, however, as he sends an undead, behemoth masked wrestler named "Platinum Mask" out to kill Bambi next.

Assushi Kaneko's Bambi and her Pink Gun continues its wild thrill ride of raw brutality as our heroine continues to wrack up an impressive body count of would be assassins. The battle with the truckers is particularly exciting as Kaneko uses a minimum amount of dialog and instead relies on his art to tell the story in cinematic fashion. Highly recommended!

Reviewed by Tim Janson

The Bambi Book is the story of the day Bambi meets Thumper. Thumper leads Bambi around the woods and introduces him to his friends, Owl, Skunk, etc. This is a great story for little ones because it's full of the detailed, wonderful pictures of Bambi and his friends; it's told in short sentences for short attention spans; and best of all, there's no depressing struggle for survival or mother-killing. This version of Bambi is actually written for children.