Eric Roberts Books

This is the sixth and final installment of Lustbader's saga of Nick Linnear. On the plus side it does clear up all the loose ends that were left hanging in the previous five volumes. However the main problem is the final battle scene. After five books, each over 500 pages long, the final battle between Nick and his ultimate antagonist only last a page and a half! I felt that Lustbader was working his way up to a real no holds barred fight but just sort of sizzled in the end. An overall great series and overall a good ending if you discount the brevity of the final fight.

Eric's a bit like Kevin Kline's Fish Called Wanda, "Don't call me stupid" character. He's desperate to impress us by showing he's read some Nietzsche, and can spell both his and Goethe's names (probably better than I can), but someone needs to remind him that the central message of Buddhism is not `every man for himself'. He does, for example, just get deconstruction wrong, and tries to portray a nun as a seriously devout believer who has no concept of an afterlife. He tries to give his standard action novel (with formula use of seedy sexual background, plus some eastern mysticism thrown in) the pretence of profundity: difficult when, poor soul, he can't actually conceive of anything more impressive than having a lot of money and being able to punch out, spiritually or physically, any comers. Think of Simon the sorcerer trying to buy a slice of the Holy Spirit. Even his `enlightened' characters are as driven by materialism as the bad guys, they just aren't (quite) so arbitrarily bloodthirsty. Oh, and they do stupid things, despite purported intelligence.
 
If, however, you can ignore the deep contradictions, just enjoy the vibe of the trash spirituality/philosophy and take the ride of standard thriller characters and violence, sure, Lustbader will take you along.

Absolutely one of the WORST Books I've ever had the displeasure of reading. Kept plugging away at it in hopes that something would change.... ANYTHING!!! What A Crock...... A little Sci-Fi never hurt anyone, a little supernatural can be tolerated but this thing is a mass of Kung Fu, ESP, and Ghostbusters all wrapped up in one....

This is one of the best books I've ever read

Outstanding. Lustbader excels himslef with this, the sixth of the Nicholas Linnear novels. I have followed his work since the release of "The Ninja" and haven't been able to put his books down.

Second Skin takes Nicholas on a journey which will almost see him lose his entire corporate empire, to almost losing his re-found childhood love, to discovering the other secrets within him as a result of him being Tanjian. In typical Lustbader fashion, the story switches from the past to the present providing the necessary historical content that brings him to the point in his life that we read about as we progress through the book.

The great thing about Second Skin also is that it fills in many of the gaps that were left in "Kaisho" and "The Floating City"

If you enjoyed those two, you will be embraced by Second Skin.

My most sincere congratulations to Mr Lustbader on magnificent book. I have alreasy read it 3 times. I only hope and pray there is a seventh Linnear novel.

I should of read the other reviews before buying this book. There is nothing in it. Big text, lots of space and a few interesting stories, but no real useful information. I'm returning the book and getting my money back. Wharton should be ashamed to lend their good name to such a shallow book.

If you're impressed with platitudes, by all means read this book. It's amazing how obvious some of the recommendations are. "Target profitable customers, and avoid unprofitable ones." "Form a consistent corporate strategy, and stick to it -- until, of course, the time comes to abandon it, and then abandon it." Wow. Deep stuff.

If the authors had spent more time explaining how to know when to change strategies, rather than focusing on hindsight, this book could have been powerful. It's a shame, really. Singh and Clemons have published much deeper research in strategy and MIS journals. Knowledge@Wharton is free to subscribe to, and quite interesting, but there's no need to pay for two-year-old stuff.

This book was extremely weak, basically, it just lacked substance. The author's wrote in extremely high level business/technologies terms that yield almost zero insight.

I definitely don't recommend this book unless you are looking for a VERY fluffy high level overview of how technology can transform an organization.

This is one of the best book on information-based strategies. Book does an excellent job in brining new and old economy together.

This book was originally issued in 1995; the second edition slightly updated in 1997. In 1995 the "Internet" was not easily available. The purpose of the book was to make available, in one place, the wealth of freeware and shareware functions then available for Access. Many were necessary to correct omissions in Access versions of the time, and those routines can still be used and modified now in current versions. For every program included, the author is clearly identified, with mail address, telephone and/or email contact information, and all consented to be published in this book/CD. Most programs and source code in this book/CD do still work with Access 2000.

I was terribly disappointed with this, and consider it a complete and total waste of time and money. It is ostensibly comprised of freeware and shareware Access utilities, demos, and samples collected from the Internet, BBs, online services, etc. Unfortunately, however, no effort was made to note which work for Access 1, which for Access 2, which for Access 95, which for Access 97, etc. So you have to unzip and invoke each one to learn that most are for Access 1 or 2 and won't even work with later versions.

It would seem like a much better idea to instead try the free trial memberships at AOL, Compuserve, etc, and download the freeware and shareware utilities from their extensive Access libraries (where you can easily see which are for Access 1 and which for Access 97), do the same at web sites and online services, etc. In the end, you'll have the latest and most bug free versions, and will save a lot of time and money.

I gave this one star because that was the lowest rating available. I really think it deserves a minus, though. It wouldn't have been all that difficult for the authors to have at least noted the date on which each version was released, or, preferably, the latest version of Access it was known to work with.

This book was different style than I was used to see, it is mostly based on sections of the body rather than body systems. I guess each style has its own benefits but in this one I missed systems view. You can't see circulation, endocrine, lymph drain.
Case studies were instructive, picture quality is not that great

The text is straigtforward and readable. However, it is not thorough in treating all areas, and there are some inaccuracies. Clinical applications and case studies are helpful.

Mind-sets have histories, and the history of genocidal mentality includes struggles with the 20th century emergence of aviation technology, atomic weaponry, and the bomb. From the American side, that history can be traced in relation to attitudes and policies of the presidential administrations from the time of WWII to the present. The rhetoric and language of nuclear weapons and the men who use them include harshness and bitterness.

Carol Cohn has pointed out the prominence of male sexual imagery in that rhetoric. The stress on "hardness" parallels Nazi practice but has its own additional dimensions. It can include strategists' pride in "hanging tough" in the threatening situations, making "tough decisions" which may entail great human risk. But there is also the idea of the "hardened target," "hard data," and a parallel contempt for "soft data." It can be a mixture of the sexual, technical, and obscurantist, as in "optimizing penetration dynamics." The bomb was named "Little Boy." That imagery reached a kind of apotheosis in William Lawrence's equation of the explosion of a hydrogen bom with "the first cry of a newborn world." While this imagery can reflect male appropriateion of the female birth function, its fundamental significance may well lie in the nuclearistic impulse to associate the bomb with a crative capacity and general revitalization.

"You can get so good at manipulating words that it almsot feels like the whole thing is under control." She wrote, "the longer I stayed, the more conversations I participated in, the less frightened I was of nuclear war." Adopting that language, she found herself increasingly unable to express the humane concersn she originally brought with her. Typical woman in a man's world. "The better I got at engaging in this discourse, the more impossible it became for me to express my own ide3as, my own values." Men are good are dominating most women in all phases of life by using the sexual approach.

We have mentioned the relationship between brutalization and numbing, and the silent brutalization that can be associated with weapons of high technology. Men are good at using the brutalizing tongue-lashing even now. Concerning the atomic trauma, Edward R. Murrow spoke these words: "Seldom if ever has a war ended leaving the victors with such a sense of uncertainty and fear, with such a realization that the future is obsure and that survival is not assured." How true he was. With the weather threats all over the world today, no one is safe.

Concerning the early fear of the power of the first bomb, Ernest Rutherford wrote, "Some fool in a laboratory might blow up the universe unawares." That could have happened right here in Oak Ridge, just a few miles down the road from by hometown; if it had happened in Los Alamos, it would not have been such a great disaster. But to bring that Manhattan Project to a populated area as Knoxville put all of our lives in great harm and danger.

A book containing multiple different titles, as a sampler. Again these are somewhat problematic. Excellent if you are a library, for example, as people can check them out and look into things they might like, but as a consumer or collector, do you want something like this? Often the answer is no. The content in this is not bad. Most things by Kirkman are worth reading, for example.

I've reviewed each of the volumes in the 7 Deadly Sins series separately. But it's worth saying here that the series is uneven. Readers without lots of free time, then, might want to read selectively.

The very best of the series is Robert Thurman's Anger, which examines anger from western philosophical and theological traditions, but also provides a masterful discussion of it from a Buddhist perspective. Francine Prose's Gluttony, which raises questions about our contemporary obsessions with gorging ourselves on the one hand but looking svelte and sexy on the other, and Simon Blackburn's Lust, which tries to rehabilitate sexual desire from overly-prudish and overly-puerile travesties, are also quite good. Each of them is heartily recommended.

Running a close second in quality to these volumes is Joseph Epstein's witty and insightful volume on Envy, which he describes as the most hidden--and thus insidious--of the 7 deadlies. Also heartily recommended.

But there are three volumes in the series which are genuine stinkers. The very worst of the lot is Wendy Wasserstein's Sloth. Wasserstein approaches the topic by writing a faux guide to laziness. Her jabs at our hectic, needlessly busy lives is well-taken. But there's no substance whatsoever to the book, probably because she bizarrely equates sloth (which has traditionally been seen as despair) with laziness.

Less bad but still falling short are Phyllis Tickle's Greed, which seems more of a preliminary sketch--a preface, as it were--to a discussion of greed than the discussion itself, and Michael Eric Dyson's Pride, which the author takes as an occasion to focus on his special interest in the politics of identity. Wasserstein's volume isn't worth picking up. Tickle's and Dyson's are worth reading if one doesn't expect too much.

Francis Bacon famously wrote that some books are to be tasted and others swallowed, but only a few chewed and digested. Nibble on Tickle and Dyson and swallow Epstein, but definitely ruminate on Thurman, Prose, and Blackburn. And Wasserstein? Banish her book from your table.

I almost hesitate to critique this book for the author seems to be a sincere individual pursuing a subject which has long intriqued him. Unfortunately he has not done enough research to adequately cover his subject. Harry Jone's book " The Minutemen " ( Titled: A Private Army in it's slightly extended paperback version ) remains the deffinitive in depth study of the Minutemen. More seems left out of the story then could have been included. It was written as a garduate paper and I suppose in that case it was fine enough - but as a history of the subject it is disapointingly sparse. So many major facets of the story are left unchronicled and ignored. It is not a book I could objectively recomend to anyone seeking knowledge of the subject Though it is even handed and not written as a broadside aginst DePugh or his organization it fails to deliever much in the way of a history.

BOOK WAS GOOD , BUT I WAS NOT USE TO SEEING BOURNE GET BEAT UP THROUGHOUT THE BOOK . LOST TOO MANY BATTLES . LUDLUM WOULD BE SAD TO SEE IT..

On its own, the Bourne Legacy is a good "thriller" book. Lots of action and page turning - likely 4 stars in this regard. However, when compared to the three previous books in the series (written by Ludlum), this book does not do the series justice (2 stars). My main problem was with the characters - the Bourne characters were either killed off, not in the book (or very limited - i.e. Marie) or hollowed out (lacked depth). The Bourne character lacked the cunningness of both the previous books and the movie series. Time after time in this book Bourne makes stupid mistakes and is either saved by another character or by chance/luck. Part of the awe of Bourne in the previous books was his ability to be on top of situations (mentally) at all times - to be a step ahead.

Other issues with the book (perhaps a little nit-picky) - most mentioned already: cliches (I was laughing reading the dialogue at the beginning of the book when Bourne saves an Asian student from two black "thugs" - the "thug" talk was comical); the in-depth detail of certain places or people (regarding the terrorists mostly) that added no value to the book, especially when compared to the lack of depth of the main characters; Marie completely being written out of the book, except for a couple pages to wrap things up (whereas Marie is central to the Bourne character in the previous books), to name a few.

Overall, a worthy thriller but a limited continuation of a great series.

Another great Bourne book form Ludlum. Haven't yet finished but I can hardley put it down to write this review. A real page turner, though a real disapointment that Conklin and the Doc have been killed off.

Having read all the Bourne episodes, I truly believe that Eric Van Lustbader was the best choice to continue the saga begun by the great man (Robert Ludlum) himself.
The links were to earlier stories were great.
I'm now into the next edition - the Bourne Betrayal - by the same author.
I can only it is as good.

**some very minor spoilers**

I love The first two Bourne books, they're among my all time favorites and I've probably read the Bourne Identity 8 times, own all the movies, which I've seen multiple times, etc... I just love the premise and the character, so I really looked forward to settling down with Legacy.

Lustbader is not Ludlum, clearly. And clearly he doesn't have a good handle on the character Bourne/Webb.

The Bourne Legacy is so poorly written that I couldn't even finish it, actually I skim read to the end. I was on a long (very long) boring plane trip with nothing else to do and by the time Bourne decided he was an ace fighter pilot I gave up. I'd already slogged through the ultra ridiculous Mission Impossible-like face and identity switching and I couldn't take any more. It was so bad, I left a *hardback* on the plane. I didn't want anything to do with the story. Nothing. I've never felt that way EVER about a book. I can always find some redeeming quality but found none. I instead watched a silly Drew Barrymore/Hugh Grant movie Music and Lyrics and for all its cloying, boring plot it was better than Legacy.

I DO NOT recommend this book. If you have to read it, get it from the library or borrow it from a friend. I cannot believe the editors allowed this to be published.

I love the "Borurne" stories - of course the originals are the best, and Ludlum is the "Master of Bourne" - while I appreciate another writer trying to tackle the Bourne saga, he should have stayed clear of the James Bond movie "Never say Never Again", I realize it was only one plot twist, but it was a complete and total rip-off. I must confess, I have not read other Van Lustbader books, and can only hope they are more original, or at the very least, if he wants to "sample" other writers, he at least mixes it up a bit as not to show a complete lack of originality. That being said, again, I appreciate anyone who writes for a living, and know it can not be an easy task coming up with completly original material - I know that I could not do it, but when I pay for the product I can not produce myself, I except a little more effort for my coin. Peace Out!

I can't wait to seen if there will be another sequel! I enjoyed this book VERY much1

I know we're talking about fiction, but this is comic book stuff. I finally stopped reading when the main terrorist character "became" Bourne's good friend Martin Lindross, fooling Bourne and everyone else whi knows Lindross into believing it was really him. Please. Until then I was able to keep going, hoping that the many logical inconsistencies and improbabilities would subside into a good solid story. I have rarely stopped reading a book only a quarter of the way into it, but this book is rare in its awfulness. I'm as willing to suspend disbelief as the next guy, but don't insult the readers' intelligence. Can I have my money back?

It's definitely not in the style of Ludlum. It's difficult to read a book where the author/s have not bothered doing some basic research. Anyone with even a modicum of science in their background will cringe when things like successful "eyeball transplants" take place in an underground lair... or a "small stainless steel square" triggers a detonation many miles away. Sure, new contacts could give you a somewhat matching eye colors but won't people notice the sudden "lazy eye" you've developed? (uh....the transplant recipient won't be able to see out of it either). I could go on and on with this book. Maybe I get too hung up on accuracies - but it's one thing that made the Tom Clancy's novels immensely popular, (Ludlum was also somewhat careful) Hire someone to do a little research.
Also, get rid of some of the vulgar slang, take out the unnecessary sex scene, and you might have a decent read.

I was ready to stop reading after a few chapters but did not on the hope that it would recover. Aside from a brief improvement about 2/3 of the way through, it was never of quality. It was one of the worst paperbacks I have read in many years. I suspect that Ludlum would turn over in his grave if he saw his name on this.