Kevin Anderson Books

Working at this book was sheer drudgery. I'm a quick reader, and I love true crime, so taking two weeks to plow through the first half of the book was most unusual. Most frustrating, too. Finally, I gave up, checked the back of the book for the verdict (normally verboten) and just threw it away. The author built an air castle on conjecture. "If", "maybe", "perhaps", "possibly", are the main words. There's hardly a sentence without one of these, and a notable scarcity of facts and evidence. It was a big waste of money and time, and I'm going to be pretty allergic to the name Carlton Smith from now on! (Too bad he shares a first name with another true crime author who's consistently good!) Yuk.

True crime is tough to write about, but filling page after page after page ... with complicated legal wranglings and accounting practices that no one but an accountant could understand or even care about takes this book from about 10 pages of interesting information about the lives of these people to however many it ended up being. Sorry, I ramble.

Do not waste your money on this one. Very poor research and slow moving. This si not the first time I have been disappointed with this author, but it will be the last time and of this I am sure. I think this book was probably written in about 2 days. This is one of the worst books I have read in along time. I can not understand how this Turkey ever got published. AWFUL!!!!!

I wouldn't give the book even one star, if there were a "no stars" category. Reading it is sheer drudgery. I'm a quick reader and very fond of true crime, so plowing through it for two weeks was quite unusual and quite unsatisfying. There are few facts - instead, lots of "if", "maybe", "perhaps", and "might" - the author has built an air castle on his own conjecture. Finally I just checked the back of the book for the verdict (normally verboten) and threw it away. What a total waste of money and time! I'm going to be allergic to the name Carlton Smith from now on. Too bad he shares the first name of a good true-crime writer!

This is an awful book, full of elliptical jargon that exemplifies the piteous state left wing theory has stumbled into. The basic problem seems to be the capture of Marxism by an exclusively university-based contingent of professional obscurantists and windbags. Since the demise of communist states marxism lost any semblance of a connection to lived experience and the lives and struggles of real people. It now resembles the species of 19th century German idealist philosophy that Lenin reviled. It is amusing to contemplate what Lenin would make of Badiou or the unbelievably opaque Zizek, and how he would review this mud-wallow of speculation without praxis, addressed to a vacuum. It seems designed to put its audience to sleep or drive them into the arms of Liberal Democratic theory. At least that body of work has some relation to reality and attempts to address itself to the real world. There is something to be said for Leninist labour camps for this pompous gaggle of academic wankers.

It is unfortunate that such an important political figure in the history of socialism as Lenin is so often outside the realm of academic discussion, and therefore the reasoning behind having a collection of academic writers discuss Lenin specifically is a good one. However, the result, "Lenin Reloaded: Towards a Politics of Truth" is astoundingly mediocre.

The great majority of the articles are incomprehensible pseudo-philosophical ramblings, either by professional dilettantes like Zizek, Jameson, and Balibar, or by people who do have something to say but are incapable of expressing themselves clearly, like Badiou and Callinicos. The greater part of this book is dedicated to essays musing on Lenin's relation to Lacan, the "Situation", "Leninist gestures", "the dialectic today", and so on and so forth. Even a normally engaging writer like Terry Eagleton comes off poorly when forced to write on such an infertile ground, although he at least has the advantage of being a skilled writer. It is unfortunate, but it is safe to say that almost all the articles in this collection can be skipped without any loss to the reader.

I say skipped, however, because there are a few contributions that at least redeem this book a little bit, although to strain the reader's patience they are all put at the back of the book (perhaps nobody can be enticed to actually read the likes of Zizek or Kouvelakis otherwise). Georges Labica has a strong and interesting piece comparing Lenin's view of imperialism to global capitalism today. Also of interest is a perhaps somewhat far-fetched, but nevertheless very original and intriguing view of Lenin as a socialist missionary by Lars Lih, who incidentally is also the only author in the collection to not express support for Lenin. This is best read in combination with the article by Alan Shandro on Lenin's idea of vanguard politics and its relation to hegemony in politics, an essay surprisingly free of Gramscian jargon. But the best contribution in the collection is probably by Domenico Losurdo, who uses Lenin to mount a very strong and rhetorically effective, almost Mike Davis-like, attack on liberalism's hypocrisy and pretense about democracy and 'human rights', both in the past and today. This article and that of Lih are certainly must reads. Borrow this book from a university library to read those, and so spare yourself the expense of money for a whole pile of nothing.

This is a far cry from KA's best work. The first two books in this series (Gamearth and Gameplay) are downright bad. The third shows definite improvement in his writing ability, but overall, the series probably isn't worth your time, unless you're a complete D&D addict.

I was dissapointed, but not due to the story line. I was expecting something else and got a short comic book version of a tale about an orc who comes to appreciate art.

I own GLORY LANE in paperback with this exact same cover. The central character's name is Seeth. Is this a web error or has the same cover art been used on two different books? It's great art; I really enjoyed finding the characters from the story. So why is it shown under this title?

The book is very misleading. On the outside it appears to have several pages of popups, but on opening the book, there are several illustrations, but only one popup scene of the entire cantina. The author should have given the reader several diffirent popup scenes.