Television Books

This book is a fascinating, engaging read. It feels more like a great story than a history book, but is a really interesting insight into the beginnings of WSM, the early history of radio, country music, the Opry, the start of many a famous name in broadcasting, and Nashville itself. Thoroughly enjoyable, I would recommend this to every reader I know.

Havighurst has compiled a tremendous amount of information on this subject into a story which comes to life. I can't imagine any one writing a more definitive work on WSM and that era. He has succeeded, for this reader, into making WSM a living, breathing character unto itself within this story. I'm not even a huge country music fan but no matter, Havighurst's storytelling style and obvious passion for telling this story won me over early on. Once I picked it up I couldn't put it down. He made me feel as if I was right there in the early days of radio, watching and listening as all the early pioneers of the industry shaped the airwaves. Great read for anyone interested in how radio began and evolved and it's impact on not only country music but the world as well.

I believe Air Castle of the South is an important book, in that it goes far beyond the history of a musical genre. It sheds light on the mindset of those who first dabbled in a revolutionary new medium. The innocence, curiosity, and zeal of some of radio's brilliantly naive pioneers is painstakingly recorded, as is their evolution from enthusiastic hobbyists to full time broadcasters. But this accessible read is not just a nostalgic indulgence. It's full of insights for the era-changing times we are in now, where the Internet is opening new doors of opportunity for those willing to rethink the why, the what, and the how. As a performing artist who came up through the ranks playing on country music radio shows, including the Opry, Air Castle rekindled my affection for the charm and simplicity of those shows. As someone who grew up listening to a transistor radio in bed late at night with an earphone, it renewed my love of the medium of sound; where the absence of force-fed visual images allows one's imagination to create them in the theater of the mind. Thank you, Craig Havighurst, for this invaluable work. It is clearly a labor of love.

Just finished Craig Havighurst's magnificent history of WSM. It's a read that you hate to see come to an end.

What a GREAT station WSM was in its golden age which extended into the TV era while other stations of its size threw in the towel and got rid of its live musicians and the stuff that made bigtime radio great.

The book comes to a sad ending--the rash sacking of TNN and Opryland--and I kinda felt like I was finishing the final pages of "Gone With the Wind."

Anybody with an interest in Bluegrass, Country, Nashville, big time radio, the Ryman and/or the roots of country music and broadcasting has to read this book.

Fun food and a magnificent forward with some of the best spiritual advice I've ever read. Way to go Ann!

My mom put this book in my Christmas stocking a few years ago because I was a big fan of the Brady Bunch, and I love to cook. Let me tell you now that this is an excellent cookbook! If you hate stylized cookbooks tall on glossy, artsy photos of the food, but short on content, then this book is for you. Sure, there are some pictures and stories about the show, and some cutesy recipe names like "Marcia, Marcia, Marc0ia Muffins", but this stuff is kept to a minimum (and if you are a fan of the show, this stuff brings back some fun memories.).
The real substance of this cookbook comes from the recipes! This is a great book for the serious home cook who prepares lots of meals for hungry family members who like good food. The recipes range from simple homestyle classics to more sophisticated cuisine and lighter fare. It covers everything from breakfast to dessert, even beverages. It is PACKED with recipes, and everything I have made out of the book has been top quality. It is obvious that this book was put together by a serious cook and that it is not just a vehicle to sell books based on the BB gimmick.
You need not be a fan of the show to love this book. It is one of my most used cookbooks, and I have dozens of them.

There's some great recipies, but there's also some really odd ones. I mailed some double trouble chip cookies to a really good friend of mine. That was 4 years ago and he still remembers them and says they were his favorite. I love the recipies for tortillas and boiling water.

I got this as a gift some years ago. I normally don't go for celebrity/themed cookbooks because usually they're only a pedestrian collection of random recipes, plus a bunch of stock photos and a hastily written foreword.

But no! Like everything else Brady Bunch, this book was made with love! It's packed full of unique (i.e. "you read it here first" type of stuff) trivia, anecdotes, and quotes... plus some cute little trivia quizzes and photos.

Oh, and the recipes. As a cookbook, completely aside from all the Brady Bunch content - it's excellent! Some of these recipes have become my staples, and when I'm looking for something new, I've taken to looking here first (move over, Joy Of Cooking!).

Did the Bradys eat this way every day? No wonder they were always so cheerful!

This book is not only a staple item for an avid Brady Bunch collector, but it is a must have for the active cook as well. This book is filled with Alice's favorite dishes to satisfy even the greatest appetite!

This would be a great way to start a unit for upper elementary kids on media and truth in journalism. It's a visual delight, and has lots of details to spark further inquiry. While most kids today think they are pretty media-wise, can they indeed tell the difference between "entertainment" and "infotainment?" A fun visually engaging introduction to the "War of the Worlds" broadcast, might provoke some interesting conversations in the classroom.

Aliens Are Coming is about a false radio broadcst about aliens.This book illustrates how a little prank could affect so many people. I thought this book was great and you should too.

One of the most famous - or infamous - hoaxes in American history, an event that terrified hundreds of thousands and sent normal people into panic-driven frenzies, may not be the first thing you'd think of when you consider writing a picture book for young readers, but thank goodness Meghan McCarthy had a vision for this book that presents this very significant snippet of Americana in a way that not only won't scare the bejeezus out of your little alien hunter, it will entertain them with great, kid-friendly art, and educate them with photos of the period and some really well-researched historical information in the back pages that will make this one a staple in American classrooms. A must for anyone studying the time period.

Picture book non-fiction. A hard format to write in, or the hardest format to write in? Every year countless libraries get inundated with the same old same old. Your bee books. Your dinosaur books. Your fifteen different biographies of Teddy Roosevelt. So you can imagine my surprise when I picked up a book that looked... different. You don't expect something called, "Aliens Are Coming" to be factual. You especially don't expect it to tell the truth when you flip through the pages and see large multi-tentacle-laden outer space beasties terrorizing the natural landscape. But then, it helps to know your history. Seeing the 1938 radio broadcast of "War of the Worlds" for what it truly was (perfect picture book fare), McCarthy gives us, thrills, chills, and some wonderful little factoids in the back of what I might well call my favorite non-fiction picture book of 2006.

It's the 1930s! Good old 1930s. Open the book and here's a cheery announcer telling kids that back in the thirties the primary source of entertainment and information was the radio. It then explains that some people "were easily fooled by a radio play that sounded like an actual news bulletin". Turn the page, and everything is black and white. We're looking at a typical American street scene. "It was October, 30, 1938, the day before Halloween". We next see a nice black and white scene of a family gathered in their living room. The noise coming out of the radio forms into colorful dancing sequences. Suddenly an announcer comes on and starts talking about a flaming meteorite that has fallen in New Jersey. As the listeners grow worried, the scene shifts to a field where a group of people stand around as a flying saucer slowly begins to open up. It's aliens! And they've come to conquer us all! They ransack the farmlands. They invade the cities. They land all over the country. "Was this the end of the world?" Certainly a lot of people listening thought so. The pictures are back to black and white and we're seeing clogged highways and jammed phone lines, and police investigating perfectly calm fields in the country. It wasn't the end of the world. It was Orson Welles and his troupe of actors at the Mercury Theatre performing a realistic version of "War of the Worlds". Interesting factual information rounds off the book with the true story and fun info about subsequent readings of the story (with similar results).

Part of the fun of this book is that there is no indication that any of this story might not be entirely on the up and up until you reach its end. Then it finishes a bit abruptly. Still, imagine introducing this book to a room full of second graders. You tell them in all seriousness (preferably around Halloween time) that this book is a true story. True true true. Then you fill their little heads with a wacked-out tale of alien invasion and widespread panic. The fact that they've been duped only makes them (like those poor 1938 American citizens) only more intrigued and want to read the book again and again later. The pictures make it ideal read-aloud material, to say nothing of the haunting scenes, colorful during the broadcast and bleak in real life. Though McCarthy works with a misleadingly simple palette, her pictures have a great deal of depth, tone, and character to them.

Actually, author/illustrator Meghan McCarthy has always struck me as being underrated. She first came to my attention when she wrote, "The Adventures of Patty and the Big Red Bus". Like a cohesive Lauren Child, McCarthy is particularly good at her atmospheric round-eyed cartoonish illustrations. She seems at her best when she's writing non-fiction too. Her factual information bringing up the book's rear is just amazing. All in all, this is one of the most amusing and wonderful titles to grace libraries and bookstores this or any year. A great idea for a book and superb follow-through. Amusing to its core.

This engaging and readable account of modern GLBT/queer history argues that gays and lesbians have become increasingly visible in the past thirty years. Whereas it was once scandalous for GLBT people to meet publicly, many 'mainstream' institutions such as Disney sponsor gay days, if nothing else to demonstrate their own 'inclusivity' and gain money from this community.

Because coming out is such a common event today, myself and other generation xers (regardless of our own sexuality) may inadvertently dismiss the revolutionary impact these declarations of self had for the generations of Americans who were conditioned to believe that GLBT and 'well adjusted' were essentially contradictions in terms.

Gays and lesbians were not the lonely mysterious stranger but friends, neighbors, and coworkers. Any depression which these individuals experienced because of sexuality was the result of society intoning negative self-esteem messages rather than the 'natural' state of being.

Walters's book is also important because she traces how a rise in GLBT visibility (although not the same as equality) has prompted a backlash. The right wing vociferously campaigns against gay rights in today's environment because the greater cultural visibility has effectively undone their own world. Whatever they actually think of GLBT rights, now having to acknowledge that GLBT people exist is a very uncomfortable development.

Prior to Stonewall, these people and their predecessors were effectively enabled to pretend that GLBT people actually did not exist because the prevailing cultural norms had prevented GLBT visibility.

This book primarily deals with the cultural aspects of GLBT rights, but it is still an important and essential read. Both scholars and/or community activists will want to understand how cultural visibility is not the same as political equality but is necessary for facilitating the progress.

Author Suzanna Danuta Walters chronciles the history of gay visibility in America excellently in this book! Looking at it from a variety of perspectives: Cinema, Television, Advertising (Marketing)and her own personal accounts of being a lesbian parent. While the debate rages on over assimilation, equal rights and the unigueness of gay culture, I feel that the author has done an excellent job bringing to light valid arguements while chronciling the history of how far we have come as a culture and how much furhter we have to go. It never ends and we are fooling arourselves to think that it does.
It sometime shocks and angers me how the gay community refuses to support such good work as this. Ignorance in anytything is not bliss!

Anyone interested in any type of gay studies should read this book. The author puts together tons of research into a rich and well developed text.

This is one of the most thorough and thought-provoking books I have ever read. I couldn't put it down and have in fact read it more than once. It offers a current and readable analysis of the contradiction between gay visibility in America and the growing trend of such Anti-gay initiatives as the Defense of Marriage Act. It was very enjoyable to read and very insightful.

"All the Rage" presents a readable and engaging overview of
gay and lesbian cultural visibility in recent years, with
emphasis on the growing representation in television. The
book takes a middle-of-the-road view that cultural visibility,
while good, does not necessarily imply progress in achieving
political rights (and, in fact, growing cultural visibility
for gays and lesbians has coincided with increasing efforts
to impede progress toward gay rights). The book offers a
number of insights through detailed treatments of particular
TV shows, advertisements, etc., with loving attention. I
thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, and I learned a lot on
the ride.

an informative and entertaining look at gay and lesbian images on radio and television through the decades. the author makes a number of interesting and relevant points in a non-judgmental yet authoritative style. should be on all public and university library shelves.

Witty, insightful, daring, complete, and as non-dry as you can get, this book goes where none have gone before, not only regaling us an authoritative on-screen compendium of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered images, but the "stories behind the stores" - lesbians invading NBC studios, gay activists interrupting Walter Cronkite on the air, from the tortured, pitiful images of the early "exposes" of "the gay lifestyle" to full, responsible news coverage of activism. Neatly divided into small chapters, it weaves the tale of the first whispers of the "love that dare not speak its name" through to the out and loud shouting of "Ellen" and "Will & Grace" (and the format, for better or for worse, makes for great bathroom reading). An absolute must-have for every queer library and TV fan.

Author Steven Capsuto chronicles the history (1930-2000) of gay and lesbian characters on Network TV and in doing so mirrors the history and struggles of the gay community to be shown as real, full human beings. Even as a reader familar with much of the material mentioned here I even discovered new things that I didn't know. While heterosexual television character continue to romp all over the screen in wanton abandon, even the smallest, simpliest signs of affection between two characters of the same sex is treated with scorn. Has the gay community actually progressed? Given the choices of lonely Will on "Will & Grace," the constant in your face gay sex on "Queer as Folk" and the little screen time of the now lesbian romance and soon child for Dr. Weaver on "E.R." I'm not sure. Media (especially televison) and gay and lesbian studies scholars should take note, there is such a wealth of a history and knowledge here that it can't be ignored. A rich, acurate and very well written text.

The first striking thing about this book is the amazing amount of research that would have been necessary to have written it. Just how does a person master this much material, run down particular episodes of "Medical Center" from the early 1970s or "Hill Street Blues" from the 1980s, and dozens of more obscure programs? I don't know, but Steven Capsuto has managed to do it.

The result is a singularly fascinating book, and a worthy companion to Vito Russo's The Celluloid Closet. And since television plays a more important role than movies in shaping public perceptions of gay people (and in helping young gay people to understand their places in the world), Capsuto's project is arguably even more important.

For gay readers over 40, this book is likely to produce some strong nostalgic feelings. Reading the author's accounts of such significant broadcasts as "That Certain Summer" (with Hal Holbrooke and Martin Sheen) or "A Question of Love" (with Gena Rowlands and Jane Alexander), one can't help but reflect on memories of a former self and how the world was then.

For younger readers, this book will fill an important gap in their cultural knowledge--what happened many years before Ellen and Will & Grace, "lesbian chic" and heightened gay visibility. It also tells the story of lesbian and gay media activism, of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and its forerunners. And Capsuto covers television and radio depictions of bisexual and transgendered people in his thorough account.

Perhaps most important, the book also helps to illuminate a continuing flaw in television depictions of gay life: for all the progress of the past decade, there continues to exist a kind of unwritten Hays Code that bars most expressions of affection or sexual desire between persons of the same sex from American network television.

Will & Grace continues to depict what may be the only attractive, witty, smart and successful gay man in Manhattan who has no sex life. In its own way, this show is as deficient today as was "The Andy Griffith Show" in depicting (during the height of the civil rights movement) the only town in North Carolina with no black people.

Television provides a crucial window through which we see our lives and our society. Capsuto's book helps us to remember how skewed that vision has often been, and to realize the important changes that are still needed. This is an important work of cultural and social history.

I first read this book a couple of years ago and thought it was very clever. Though the author sometimes sacrifices compelling language to reach a rhyme, the overall story is a rich, satirical tale for adults about how TV is used to lull a group of dissatisfied slaves back into complacency, presented in the guise of a children's book. I bought a copy recently to read to my junior high media literacy class in honor of "Turn Off Your TV Week" and a lot of it flew right over their heads. I think the rhyming helps to cloud the real issues being presented so I would recommend this title only for a high-school-and-older audience. Also, this book, unedited, is not suitable for read-alouds as it is deceptively long (and one can only listen to rhyming couplets for so long).

A classic! Fable for today's kids. My boys got the message, and my husband and I both loved it! Our current family favorite.

This is a fun book. The graphics are really engaging, and the writing has a really incisive glance at consumerism and how TV and media control every aspect of our lives. It's a nice follow up to Snark, Inc. and in many ways it's a stronger book.

Turn off the TV and check it out!

This is a very clever follow up to Snark, Inc. I read a review somewhere stating the book puts more twists into fewer pages, and I agree with that. I liked Snark but this book is more of an interesting critique of its enemy (if you will) as it has a stronger narrative. I think the best underlying theme of the book is that the "protaganosts" are treated as a faceless collective - which is exactly what people become as media consumers. There's a great illustration to convey this when the Snox Boxes are delivered to slaves, and they're all in the background with no discernable faces. Definitely worth picking up if you have your doubts about the true intentions of mega-media corporations. Control, control, control!

This is one of the most thoroughly researched film biographies I have ever seen. This book relates the life story of Tom Mix, the silent movie star who dominated Hollywood in its early years. Jensen has provided extensive documentation of all the information contained in this work, including material from original sources stored in the back rooms of libraries and museums. Due to the research and reliance on original documents (personal letters, court records, etc.), there is a considerable amount of material contained in this book that has never been published before now. This book is a true tribute to Tom Mix, and will serve as the definitive biography of his life and career for many years to come.

One of the better books on Tom Mix.I really enjoyed this one,it
tells the Mix story warts & all.Apart from spelling errors & some incorrect facts Mix fans will go for this one.A good proof
reader would have helped!!!
John,"B" Western fan.

"The Amazing Tom Mix" reads like a novel but it's a biography, which to me made it all the more enjoyable. I only knew a little about Tom Mix but my parents remembered him, so I read it and then gave it to them to read. All of us agreed that the book was fascinating. There is so much detail in the book, but you don't get bogged down in it. It's just a great book.

I loved this book and agree with these two reviews that were on the back cover:

"Here is Tom Mix as he really was ... captivating ... enchanting ... a splendid book."
- Richard S. Wheeler, five-time Spur Award winning author of "Trouble In Tombstone."

"...the most complete biography of Mix's life of trials, tribulations and victories."
- John Duncklee, author of "Bull By The Tale."

Max Whitman is a moderately successful actor in present-day New York City. Cast member on a soap opera, he seems to have acquired a stalker who dresses exactly like his TV character. One day, the stalker is found dead in the middle of the street. Indications are that he was dropped from a great height.

In preparation for a big audition, Max agrees to spend some time in a sensory deprivation tank. His soul is taken to a place of tall buildings made of energy and hears voices talk to him like he is someone named Lord Redmark. Max also meets neon colored snakes in glass tubes, and harpies who look human, except for their wings of blue-black vinyl and mini-TV cameras for eyes. A door seems to have been opened between "here" and "there." Max starts talking like Lord Redmark, and, more than once, he is attacked, in midtown Manhattan, by these vinyl-winged harpies.

Quantum theory speculates about each physical body having an interrelated body made solely of subatomic particles, a "soul." Such bodiless beings do exist on their own, and they are called plasmagnomes. They are divided into two factions, one of which is ready to declare war on mankind. Man's computers, cell phones and other electromagnetic generators are causing real problems in the plasma world. Antoinette, a friend of Max's, does human-looking metal sculptures. More than once, he sees what looks like her sculptures coming to life. Max is taken deep beneath the streets of Manhattan, where he meets people who have turned into various beings. Their true, plasmagnome self has been awakened; Antoinette becomes one of them. To put it simply, reality is being turned upside down and pulled inside out.

John Shirley seems to make a habit of exploring parts of the human psyche that few other writers even wish to visit. In a way, this book is vintage John Shirley; very weird and very, very good.

I LOVED this book. The imagery and the mysticism fit together in such a beautiful dissonance, I couldn't put it down. John Shirley is an expert wordsmith. The way he described the sculptures, I felt like I could close my eyes, reach out and touch it in my mind's eye.

There were a few places where it moved a little slowly, but hey, what book doesn't have it's more plodding passages? I have to give this book 5 stars.

John Shirley constructs a concealed world, existing side-by-side with the world visible to the normal human eye. We all know that a similar world must exist within the sub microscopic, quantum realm of which we are all composed. Shirley populates his concealed world with creatures who feed off the souls of mankind. Environmentally, these creatures are vulnerable to the electromagnetic emanations man uses in his radios, cell phones, TVs and radar. Their message to mankind is `clean up your environmental act.'

Max, the main character, begins as a soap opera star whose ennui drives him to quit his TV role playing. He accepts the larger task of unraveling the role concealed within his being. The Angel with TV Eyes changes Max's perspective of his dream like visions describing a concealed world. At an earlier date Lord Greymark had been dissolved into pure information and implanted in the womb of Max's mother. Max's pursuit of a larger than life role triggers his revelation as Lord Greymark, a 12 foot entity concealed within the jaded actor's soul. Lord Greymark possesses great power that he uses to extinguish the fires of Thanatos, a character representing death and vowing destruction of all that is good in man.

Just as the pictures on a TV are converted from unseen waves, the vision of the Angel with TV Eyes flows via holowaves from within the quantum realm. This posits a reality which few can either detect or receive on their vision screen. By personalizing a character with TV eyes John Shirley creates an entity directed from within this hidden reality. A story that begins with a cast of bud-like human characters soon blossoms into a bouquet of revealed Spirits constructed of plastic, metal and electronic switches. As the evolution of man is expressed through DNA, so the Spirits evolve by means of vibratory packets-a non genetic form of evolutionary record keeping. Thus the author posits another method the unseen Spirits are using to throw the evolutionary dice. What the Spirits seek is the same as what man seeks-companionship.

Admittedly this might sound like straining an old blurb cliché, but John Shirley's latest novel really IS a tour de force on the darker side of literature (dark but not without humor). It's one of those rare books so crammed with astonishing images, bizarre scenes and brilliantly written passages (some of them just begging to be read out loud) that it leaves you breathless and absolutely satisfied. On a stylistic level the author has combined the neo-baroque images of his earlier works with the condensed, razor-sharp language of his more recent fiction. Shirley always writes on the edge of reality but with such a controlled and experienced voice that he can make the most weirdest things seem natural and plausible. His menagerie of oddities is described as vivid as if the author has personally met the hybrids of ancient mythology and industrial materials which populate his novel: the vinyl harpies, Thanatos, the angel with television eyes and all the others. And if you think that the Weaver from China Miéville's "Perdido Street Station" was a strange fellow, wait until you meet Vega, the discoball guy who overdoses on e-guitar chords.
"...And the Angel with Television Eyes" has an unbelievably fast-paced plot, some cool narrative gimmicks (just look at the chapter titles) and also profits from its author's insider knowledge of the media business. Definitely some hell of a ride.

If you have ever wanted to play a trivia game using your knowledge of anime, here's your chance. The questions cover a wide variety of subjects, and they are grouped into categories. This makes it easy for you to use the book. And there is snappy banter included with the answers! Most of the comments are quite funny, and some had me rolling on the floor gasping for breath. I can't wait til the next volume comes out!

Japanese animated movies, called "anime", have received wide popular attention with the American movie-going public, and have long had an enthusiastic following among film buffs and students of Japanese popular culture. In the Anime Trivia Quizbook, Ryan Omega offers more than 400 questions that range from the very easy to the very difficult. Fortunately, he also provides the answers. The Q & A covers all the major anima genres, from giant robots and space aliens to silent samurai and "fan service" girls. From Ah My Goddess to Zetsuai and all the anime epics in between, Anime Trivia Quizbook is enhanced with sidebars, cells, and more! This is a "must" for all dedicated anime fans everywhere!

For those of us who like details, this book certainly questioned most of them. A very humorous book with comments for even the wrong answers, and a great guide for whether or not you are just starting anime or have become very obsessed with it. A variety of topics include romance, math, sci-fi, merchandise, etc. I can't get enough of this book! It contains all the current anime and puts your brain to work, but if you don't feel like doing that, the answers are easily accessible. A well-worth buy.

I was going to take this book to a party with my friends, but I missed the party because I was laughing so hard reading it! I was skeptical at first of the subtitle, "From Easy To Otaku Obscure," I thought, "Pshaw, what Sailormoon and Dragonball Z trivia probably." But no! It was a pleasant surprise to find references to lesser-known anime series' such as the Legend of Basara and Weiss Kruez, two of my personal favorites. I loved the Games section, Japanese anime-style RPG and fighting games are highly underappreciated in Western literature about contemporary Japan. When I met the author at a local bookstore, we had fantastic discussions about everything from the cultural and social implications in Final Fantasy to male and female sexuality in anime. It's refreshing to meet another anime otaku who has the brainpower left to discuss things intelligently. Everyone, including the smallest Pokemon fan to the otaku who's been watching anime since Astro Boy, should buy this book!

Very entertaining! It was a great surprise to find this gem from an unknown author. The characters are very real and engaged my interest. I laughed, cried and was captivated by the wonderful story. It caught my attention and held me right through to the last word. It was difficult putting the book down since the novel is written with each chapter leaving you wanting more. I would very much like to find more work by this author but haven't been able to find anything else. Highly recommended! Thank you.

Acting: Art of the Monologue by Frank Catalano.

If you are an aspiring actor you must read this book and you will go back to it a thousand times. Frank has a unique, ralaxed way of teaching and writing. After you read his book I'm sure you will wish you could attend his classes. I said an aspiring actor because I am one, but I really mean anyone can and will learn a great deal from this book. Don't wait. You will be many steps closer to succes with the use of this great book.

I have read many monologue compilations, but this one is excellent! The material is relevant and very good. I also loved the characters. Plus all of the pieces can be done together as a single work. Very cool book. I'd give it an A+ for originality.

This little book raises many uncomfortable questions about what we like to think of as the differences between good and evil, between "us" and "them," and between the (as the title suggests) justified and unjustified use of rational violence. If this book doesn't get students talking, I don't know what will. Carlson never flinches from harsh images and refuses to hide behind words or creeds. Instead, he lays out for us, in clear, accessible, and sometimes heartbreaking prose, the very questions that lurk in the darkest corners of our world.