Scott Thomas Books

A particular phrase used by the main character in this novel is "there are no victims." In this novel, there are no heros.

This novel is highly entertaining, fast-paced and in the end, a little sad. I will not spoil the ending by telling it but suffice to say, there are real good guys - or gals - in this story. In fact, the individuals whom society looks up to uphold the law have clay feet and even looser morals. If the reader has a low opinion of lawyers, they will come away with an even lower opinion. Upholding the law is a far away third consideration for being a lawyer. Money and winning - at the expense of lying, twisting words, and shading the truth - are the top two considerations.

The main thing I enjoy from Mr. Turow's writing is his ability to give different voices to his characters. None of them sound the same and each has a distinctive voice. I highly reccommend this novel.

I confess, I heard the audio book version. It was pretty interesting, and well read by Stacey Keach. But I think Mack should have given the money back, in the end. He said he'd be drinking heavily again, even with his millions of dollars. I can see why: his conscience would never be clean. Well, it's only fiction, right? Diximus.

In this plot the author identifies himself with Malloy, a timid copper turned attorney. While rowing through the pages you find yourself to be lost in a vast ocean with very little intrigue, while the author dabbles in extensive introspection. Every good plot needs a villain. Meet Pigeyes the notorious comrade from the past. When crossing the equator of this bestseller, I was still in the doldrums hoping for a storm but the story continued to splash along with more introspection. There are a few scenes strewn throughout for laughing out loud, for which I gratefully bestow an extra star. While my mind wandered and Malloy was having another drink, I was rowing on `til the end: "There are only victims." Yes, the ones who think that this book meets the burden of proof to justify its existence. Gerborg

Scott Turow is brilliant, which is why I can't understand shy he writes some drivel (like this book, for instance). The plot is so thin that the story could be told in 1/5th of the time. The book is simply chockfull of ambience - i.e. the "hero's" thoughts and meandering actions. By the time I got to the conclusion I just didn't care about the who-did-what. Unless you love endless digression, avoid this book.

For some reason, John Grisham continues to be the hugest name in the "legal thriller" business, when that honor ought to be firmly in the grasp of Scott Turow. His books have more "meat on the bone," dabble in moral ambiguity more instead of having such clearly delineated good guys / bad guys, and are written in a more literate style. Grisham's characters are sketched in quickly and seldom grow and change. He's like the lawyer's version of Michael Crichton, all plot and no heart.

By shear coincidence, this was really driven home to me when I first read THE PARTNER, by Grisham, which tells the story of a lawyer who steals a huge amount of money from his shady law partners and disappears with it. It's a fun STORY with many amusing touches, but never makes you truly care for the characters. I followed this read immediately with PLEADING GUILTY, which also dealt with some shady attorneys being ripped off big-time by one of their partners.

The main character is Mack Malloy, an ex-cop turned lawyer, who is grappling with raising on his own a VERY troubled teenage boy and is also a recovering alcoholic right on the edge of no longer recovering. He's a smart attorney but not a terribly productive one for his firm, and he's given the job of tracking down his fellow partner who is suspected of raiding a company settlement fund of millions and disappearing. Mack begins to investigate, and he peels of layer after layer of secrets and surprises...off his firm, off their #1 client, off the local police force and even from his friend, the disappeared lawyer.

Told in the first person, the character of Mack is flawed but totally engaging. And when I say "flawed," I don't mean a little. He's a hard guy to like, but his narrative style is so incisive and his sadness so profound, he gets our sympathy. He (meaning author Turow) is also a very astute observer of character and through his eyes, we get to know a lot of very interesting and varied people. This book really had me turning the pages.

My only gripe is the conclusion. The plot gets twisted enough that when Mack finally gets to "reveal all" it takes a good long time to set us straight on what has happened and why. Turow also assumes that we care more than we do about a couple of the more minor characters in the book, and this slows the ending down a bit too. By no means do these minor flaws make this a book not worth reading though...I was sorry to leave Mack behind.

Turow first came to real national attention with his stellar PRESUMED INNOCENT. But I've read several of his subsequent books, and they are all rock solid. Grisham is like a burger, fast and filling but not all that good for you. Turow, to me, is more like nice, slow steak dinner...satisfying and worth lingering over. Give him a try! ...

I love the backstage info and the reports about the personalities and interactions on the campaign staff. The Newsweek folks certainly saw a lot that was not reported at the time.

My biggest disappointment is that it did not live up to the billing in the title. The subtitle says "How BC04 won and what you can expect in the future." Well, whoever wrote the title forgot to tell the authors about the second half of that subtitle.

The only mention the future in the final chapter (a mere 12 pages) and even then it isn't really about Election 2008 (the title of the chapter), its more about how Bush and Kerry reacted after the election and how second term presidents generally screw up.

Is it slanted? Yes. As another reviewer (Marc Dalesandro 031505) said, they had good access to Kerry but Bush and Co. kept them at arms length. That same reviewer had some great examples of biased terms used in describing different people and events.

Besides his examples, the most obvious to me were in that same last chapter where, for example, in discussing what Bush _could_ do as a second term president the authors suggest he take on liberal answers to Social Security (raise retirement to 70 and raise taxes on "the rich").

Bottom line: good inside detail about some of the campaign machinations, liberal bias is there but not overwhelming, nonexistent information about what the future would be like.

Down the toilet. But don't worry. We got Howard Dean who ain't afraid to come to my state and others and help bring in real democracy to America rather than put up with Bush/Limbaughian rant of bringing fake democracy to Iraq while stealing elections here at home and doing everything they can to turn America into a corporate fascism.

I read this book in one night and found it to be very interesting. I did enjoy reading some of the behind the scenes stuff like John Kerry's tantrum in the back of the campaign limo when his personal assistant could not find his hair brush. However that had been in Newsweek before and as well as on Drudge's website. New inside information about the campaign is not really a quality aspect of this publication. Since I paid attention to the campaign this publication served more as a summary or a reminder of events.

Also Newsweek's publication seems to form a lot of bias opinions about why people voted the way they did, often citing minor campaign footnotes. There is virtually no information regarding the inner thoughts of the president, which I guess is not unusual considering lack of trust of the mainstream media and being a wartime president. The publication also brushes over important political divides and the importance of the war on terror.

If you are not deeply knowledgable of presidential campaigns this may be a good read for you. If you consider yourself more of an expert you might want to find a more complete or indepth account. The book is slightly liberal but overall fair. I think the authors made false claims about the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth however. I feel the main reason Kerry is a loser is not because President Bush is so great, but he does have a determination and discipline to admire...The big reason is he never connected with the voters. For all of Kerry's strengths he is really an out of touch insider liberal elitist.

Certainly the privileged access that Thomas and his team makes for an insightful account of the 2004 election, drawing back to the nomination process. Pity for Kerry's plight, a hint of disdain for Bush and his coterie, are peppered throughout the narrative. Throughout, a lot of very interesting inside information is revealed in the book as well. Ultimately, I walked away feeling that the election was more lost by Kerry than won by Bush. Kerry's situation is blamed on his indecisiveness, his lack of trust in his his team, his poor people management skills, and his wife's attitude. There is not as much of the inside-scoop on the BC04 side perhaps, from an emotional perspective, as Kerry. And while Howard Dean takes a beating by the authors, we learn very little about John Edwards, who may in fact be the nominee in 2008.
What was most disappointing is the fractured prose. There is nothing really holding the book together, except for the theme of the book itself. The structure is there but the information and opinions often feel disjointed. Events and reports are presented in chronological order, but there is no flow, and the authors tend to jump from one nugget to the next without any bridge. Once in a while, interesting sub-themes are left hanging and incomplete. Perhaps the publisher rushed the book to print or simply didn't recognize the value added of adding this important finishing touch. Other career reporters have assembled excellent books on presidental elections 2000, 1996, 1992 (see Roger Simon) and I feel that Thomas and his team could have done a lot better than just throwing together their reports and conclusions on E04.
In the end, I appreciated the book for its detail and information, but found it poorly pieced together, which detracted from my enjoying the experience as much as I would have liked.

Election 2004, works as a good primer to one of the most important presidential campaigns in US history. Yet Newsweek did a less than fair job in its reporting from both camps.

E-04 could have used a bit more editorial help as well as a bias check; it doesn't flow very well and overlooks important things, ignoring some downright. I do think that the criticisms directed against Kerry were slanted; I was so un-happy with Newsweek's coverage that I actually dropped my subscription. It is no coincidence either that most of the books recommended in this website along with this one are favorable to the right. To be fair, this book does report on Kerry's own unfavorable response to Newsweek' coverage; a gesture of intellectual honesty Thomas should be given credit for.

More would have been appreciated about Kerry's ill-conceived campaign and lack of message and Rove's focused, dirty and eventually successful, tricks. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth; an obvious re-visitation of veterans against McCain in 2000 don't get the right coverage. Neither does Kerry's refusal to go against Bush's personal attacks, and failure to address the plethora of Bush's mistakes in the last two months, which decidedly cost him the election. We get very little on these points from the book. In one of the mildly insightful moments, Thomas reports that the electorate had a hard-time distinguishing Kerry's position on the war from Bush's, and consequently voted for the more stable looking candidate. This I thought was a very accurate point.

As a pet peeve, I always bought the whole Kerry's "Come-Back Kid" attitude, I even heard some of his former opponents on the right praise him for it. This book debunks it, and informs us this was just a campaign myth his people were trying to promote, which looking back on, makes sense.

One of the conclusions in E-04 was that Kerry lost partly as a result of his comments on Mary Cheney on the third debate (this is suggested and not said outright). This is just not true; although Kerry's comment was un-called for and served no purpose (I winced when he said it), I don't think that so much of the electorate was so turned off by it that they ended up voting for Bush, who ran on an anti-gay marriage platform. How much sense does that make? This assessment shows a lack of touch with the real issues on the part of Newsweek. In the following weeks the Republican camp did a lot to discredit Kerry on this point, but it is not pointed out by E-04 that Alan Keyes, a conservative republican running for the senate seat against Obama in Illinois had called Mary Cheney a "selfish hedonist" and received nary a comment from the now -conveniently- outraged Cheneys. This should have been noted in the book. I don't need Newsweek to editorialize, but I do want perspective.

Then there's Ohio. Although I'm not one for conspiracy theories there was obvious foul play in the weeks preceding and on election day; from Secretary of State Blackwell's flip-flapping on voting regulations, to the Rove people calling people in strong democratic precincts by phone and advising them to vote at the wrong places, to the lack of a voting records paper trail. Yes, there are irregularities on every election, but when all the irregularities favor the same candidate, I get a bit skeptical. Alas, this subject seemed too controversial for Newsweek.

Newsweek's coverage fails for one of these counts; they were either so engrossed in the process of reporting that they overlooked what for them, and not the electorate, was obvious, or they got so close to the campaigns they were covering that their judgment was impaired. I felt I was better informed by other sources during the election.

Campaign 2004 is at best an ok primer and at worst, a slightly biased account in need of some editorial cohesion.

Sancton and Mac Leod did one hell of a job, considering the book was published but a few months after Diana and Dodi's deaths.

They investigate the conspiracy theories that were floating around then and give evidence to either support or discredit them but they allow enough space for you to be the judge of whether the theory is based in fact or fiction.

It was impossible for the book to have come to any kind of ending, conclusive or not, because at the time it was written, evidence was still being sorted out, arraignments were being made, and people were being interviewed. In short, everything was still a mess.

I highly recommend this book for its unbiased reporting and also for the minute by minute account of Diana and Dodi's last day alive.

I liked this book. Very interesting. I followed all the media news and just could not get enough to satisfy my curiosity until I read this book. I don't know why I have been so touched by her death? It is a mystery to me, also? I just liked her when she was alive and was shocked at hearing about her accident. I, too, ordered the tape of John Elton's song about her. I want to thank all the readers who gave their comments on this book, it helped me to buy this book.

Interesting facts about the papparazzi and the holiday leading up to the accident which killed Diana. The chapter reporting the engineer's finding is not only technical, but gives supporting proof of a collision with a Fiat prior to the deadly collision with the 13th pillar of the Alma Tunnel. This book gives a handful of theories to think about, but the only thing not convincing to me is the conspiracy theory that the Princess was going to wed Dodi. The ending is not conclusive.

This book contains many factual mistakes, but since it was written over 2 years ago, before many facts were uncovered by the French investigation, I am not really penalizing it much for that.

About half of the book consists of background information on Dodi and Diana. This part could have been much shorter. I don't need to know, nor do I care about, Dodi's favorite pets as a child.

The actual part related to the investigation was an evenhanded treatment of the facts as they were known in 1998. To the authors' credit, they investigate the most wild theories in a fair manner. When information was not known or available, they plainly state so. Unfortunately, they hint darkly a few times in the book that a source (which they can't name) tells them there is 'something big' not known about the case. This shot down the authors' credibility.

Although this is an interesting look at how French authorities conduct an investigation it is not conclusive.

What was Elvis' favorite soft drink? The name of his customized Convair jet? His last Top 10 single? And you thought you knew everything about The King! Think again. W. Kent Moore and David L. Scott has amassed some mighty tantalizing, teasing trivia that will leave you all shook up. The soft-cover gem is as much as sourcebook of all things Elvis as a thought-provoking volume that rocks and rolls. There are more than 1,000 brain teasers
--- including fill-in-the blanks, crossword puzzles, word scrambles, hidden word games and multiple-choice questions. There's even a sprinkling of black-and-white photos, including one of The King next to the used BMW he bought in 1958 for ... Give you the answer? Don't be cruel. Turn to page 44.

This quiz book was really informative, yet fun to do at the same time. It kept me very busy one long Sunday afternoon. For the really true Elvis-fan this book is a must-have!! I must admit that I didn't get all the answers at once, but kept coming back to fill in the blanks! The questions are asked in a variety of ways (e.g. crossword, blockword etc.) so that you never get bored or unduly frustrated! Each chapter deals with different aspects of Elvis' career; you are tested not only on your knowledge of his music, but also of his movies. So, if you're a true Elvis fan (like me!!!) you'll buy this book and keep it aside for that lazy Sunday afternoon! Oh, and don't forget to use a pencil ... just in case you make an error, then you won't spoil that precious Elvis quiz book!!!!

i should have read all the reviews not just the first one. i didnt like this book at all.

this book wasn't very good at all. it's like most of the stuff is for little kids. i just dont like doing search-a-words and haven't since about fourth grade. i thought it was weak.

The Ultimate Elvis Quiz Book is so creative, so unique, and so delightful! The authors have many different types of puzzles chock full of Elvis information. Other puzzles don't contain new information, but are just plan fun to answer, such as Letters to Elvis and Word Pictures. One quiz, If I Can Dream, speculates about what Elvis would be doing and recording now if he were still alive. There are even a couple of quizzes about other rock and pop stars who were Elvis' contemporaries. If you're a true Elvis fan, your book collection is not complete without The Ultimate Elvis Quiz Book! (This book is available from another publisher, but the Rutledge Hill book is clearly better because of the larger print and better quality paper.)

this is a very awesome book it has lots of pictures it also has poems, stories, names of all the people who died. etc..........

Not satisfied to let the images speak for themselves, noted anti-American Noam Chomsky includes an article blaming the U.S. for the 9/11 attacks.

I was enraged to see that such a sad individual would capitalize on an American tragedy, to further his anti-American political agenda.

Do not support the publisher of this book.

I cannot explain how angry I was to see Chomsky's article quietly inserted among these horrifying images. Its existence invalidates the entire book.

Profits from this book are donated to The Robin Hood Relief Fund. I had a hard time reading this book because it is so overwhelming.

This book has a list of names of people who perished in the tragedies from that day. There are man thoughts, words and poetry from victims, and witnesses. It also includes Survivor stories, pictures of loved ones....and much more.

Although we all know we will not need this book as a `remembrance'....perhaps it is meant to be more as a memorial, a tribute to those who have suffered....to Americans.
There are a lot of things I am feeling about this book, but I don't know how to say them so I will let it be.

After receiving a few mean-spirited e-mails about my review of this book, I feel I must clarify a few issues.

Again, I've gone through nearly 30 books about 9/11. After you get past the austere black cover, this paperback falls with a thud.

Simply put, this book tries too HARD to be profound. You see images you've seen before, such as the sequence of shots of one of the jets slamming into the south tower of the WTC. Nothing new.

Two things bug me: Layout and content.

In the layout, you get the feeling the editors are trying to SLEGEHAMMER the reader with the obvious. I hate this. For example, in some essays, certain words and phrases are laid out into single lines, as if they are poetry. Then there is the awful decision to use fonts of varying sizes to EMPHASIZE certain passages. This is a pretentious device that, I'm sorry, calls TOO MUCH ATTENTION to itself. It is completely unnecessary and smacks of a patronizing tone intended to magnify the depth and gravity of what occurred on 9/11. We all know about that dark day. We DON'T need it pushed into our faces under the umbrella of "literary art."

Meanwhile, about the Chomsky essay: It's short but it's awful. It's laid out, again, in a way that feels like "padding." His message reads like an "I told you so" lesson. Here's what he does: He points to America's "sins" of the past and then turns them around in a way that makes you want to believe that it's NOW THE UNITED STATES' TURN TO SUFFER. This is horrible. His opinions are the stuff of fiery pamphlets handed out on street corners. (BECAUSE WHO WOULD PAY FOR THIS?)

OK, what's good about this book? Well, some of the transcripts of phone calls and a handful essays from victims and witnesses are well done. Why? Because they ARE NOT pretentious. But when others try to be "inspirational," they end up stating the obvious. I can't help but feel most writers were given an outlet to "vent" their own emotions, which have more relevance to the writer than to the reader.

If you want more for less, pick up the December 2001 issue of American Heritage Magazine. There you get five-star opinions about 9/11 from individuals of world repute. It has a "permanence" this book lacks and it doesn't feel rushed together.

In sum, it's fine to read what people like Joan Rivers, Deepak Chopra, Richard Dreyfuss and others "feel" about 9/11. But is it worth PAYING for? You can't judge quality by "good intentions." This is a rush-to-market volume featuring opinions from most who have (or who will have) little if any impact on our lives. Why not opinions from Giuliani, Bush, Blair, Sharon and Arafat, even those recorded by the news media in the AFTERMATH of 9/11? Why not more views from individuals who can effect CHANGE? This book could have been GREAT.

Trust me, this is NOT the definitive book of "think pieces" about 9/11/01.

If you disagree, fine. It's your money. But my advice is to borrow before you buy. There are other books worth buying. This one isn't.

This book is not easy to find. I finally ordered it from Amazon.com and I was amazed by it. I read all the critiques to this book. I usually like or do not like a book. I love this book, it is very factual, accurate and explores the feeling of about 30 people that had somenting to say about 9-11. It does not matter to me who they are and what they do, what matters is that the essays touch on fears that I had and still have. I do not pretend this book to change the world but to give me feeling and images to hang on to. On each essay I can find someting I can relate to and this makes the book special, it makes it personal. Highly recommended.

This book is a perfect example of pop culture bubblegum pap. It deals with such topics as bubblegum cards and t-shirts but either doesn't mention or very, very superficially such things as: Paradise Lost, Dante's Inferno, the Hieararchy of Hell, The Catholic Church's View of, Demons, Demonology, and so on. This book is truly useless and a waste of time. I can understand if the book was written for 1-6 year olds, it might be entertaining and of some interest but for anyone with any intelligence and/or education it is just horribly bad. So, save yourself some time and money and avoid this purchase. Spend the money to buy anything but this book. Avoid at all costs, can produce mindnumbing stupidity in readers.

Well, it is just what it says, a nice center of information about hell, the number of qoutes are amazing, i cpuld be a little bit more detalied but its enough to start an investigation.

Though I found some of this product useful and I use it for the purposes that I need to use it for. the amount of movies, and modern stuff listed in it including cheesy b budget movies makes the book not always about hell and it inhabitants, and they didn't list things that the levels of hell and their descriptions which would have been nice. It is good for a reference library and might give you some cross stuff if you need to.

I first found this book on the shelves of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Bible study reference section. After using it and know that I would soon move very far away I purchased it for posterity. This has been a helpful purpose.
It is written at the popular level and is a very easy read. Whereas there are works which you can consult for in depth studies, there is a place for brief texts such as this one.
If you are interested in a complimation in the form of a dictionary of many different forms of media dealing with hell - this is the book you should buy.
The breadth of coverage can be illustrated using some of the names of articles. "Hell Mouth" "Clive Barker" "Dante" . The movies, art, TV, literature - what ever has hell in its eye, you may see it in this book. If nothing else it is a conversation starter.

I'm not sure what motivated the review that contends much is "missing" from this book or if that reviewer was somehow confused, but I wanted to set the record straight. There ARE in fact entries that cover Virgil, Baal, Beelzebub, etc. --- a simple glance at the index can help readers find these. But please do note this is NOT a book on "Demonology" (Amazon has many excellent options that do focus on this subject) but rather on the interpretations of HELL from various cultures, religions and eras. A special emphasis IS given to pop culture and media, since these topics are usually NOT covered by other works on the afterlife, which tend to concentrate mainly on religious and mythic beliefs. Overall, this work is intended as a "primer" for those interested in the diversions as well as intersections about various "infernal" concepts. In fact, this book has been used as source material for programs on The Learning Channel, In Search Of..., The History Channel, NPR and ABC World News among others. It's a great place to start to "learn, so you don't burn!"

This is the second book on Antipatterns I have read (Brown was also an author in another in the same "subject"). I think that the first one was much better (style, explanations, usefulness,etc.). This book does not add information if you compare with the first one.

AntiPatterns in Project Management contains easily read and digested templates on people, technology, and process management antipatterns. The examples are concise, yet they offer enough information that experienced programmers and project managers will cringe when they read the stories. The antipattern templates are easy to read and understand. And they provide a consistent framework for the discussion about exceptions, refactored solutions, typical causes, etc.

This book is dull compared to the first book in the series, "AntiPatterns: Refactoring Software, Architectures, and Projects in Crisis". The authors take a reactive instead of proactive approach to project management. Read the four page antipattern synopsis in appendix B. The rest of the book regurgitates these items in expanded form. The text concentrates on project management problems and offers little in the solutions section. The antipattern named "standards" was helpful, however the material was duplicated from James Moore's book "Software Engineering Standards: A User's Roadmap".

A very talented software engineer highly recommended this book to me as an engineering manager. I was intrigued to find that some of the Amazon.com reviews were sooooo negative. However, I bought the book anyway and found it to be quite useful.

The book uses the methodology of AntiPatterns, which is a hot topic in the software development community, to analyze problems with project management. This is simultaneously the book's strength and its weakness. Antipatterns are just one tool; one way of looking at the world; one way of analyzing a situation. Another useful addition to the toolkit is always welcome and the book clearly delivers one. On the other hand, if you are looking for the unified theory that will solve all project management problems, it doesn't deliver on that. (I am still looking for that book.)

One reason the book might receive mixed reviews is that it does have a tone of irreverence towards management. For example, in the Executive Summary, it says "The primary cause of software development failure is the lack of appropriate project management." While this may be true, some project managers may not enjoy reading about it. Similarly, the book has a tendency to identify the root cause of problems as "haste, ignorance or sloth", most likely on the part of management. This may be true, but perhaps not all that helpful or enjoyable to read.

Overall, I found the book to provide a valuable perspective on software project management. The book will not solve all of the world's project management problems but that's OK with me.
Read the book and use the principles wisely.

This is certainly an enlightening book, bringing up many points to consider. The writers are experienced, and though this results in an overly authoratative tone at times, their work is sound. The problem I have with the book is not actually the book itself. If a project manager can be so opened-minded as to step back and look at the problem with an accurate perspective, having a clear idea of all the facts of the case, they should be able to use this book to accurately diagnose and fix the problems they face. If they can't do that this book may be less useful.

On the other hand, reading this book adds perspective, which may be enough to help one step back from the situation and reevaluate.

In addition, since the authors reference their earlier works frequently, it might be best to read the other books first.

I bought one for my mother-in-law and one for my mom. This is going to be a wonderful memory book for my young sons. As I read through a completed journal, I learned so much about my MIL! What an amazing woman!

My mother is a very good writer and she loves to do it. This is the perfect way for her to record her stories that we heard when we were children, for her grandchildren. The text is wonderful, prompting thoughtful and interesting ideas to expound upon, with wonderful illustrations and quotations inserted. This will be a real treasure for her and for the receiving grandchild.

Nowhere in the description do they tell you this book is filled with Christianity. My family and I are not religious and I was dissapointed to find out from my mother (after sending it to her for mother's day) that this book has references to God or the Bible on every other page.

I have been writing in this book off and on for the last few years. My eldest granddaughter is turning 13 and I want her to have this now. This is not the usual family history story. It requires openness on the part of the grandmother as well as a LOT of thought into the answers to the questions. You are telling your own story to your grandchild - not just the funny stuff or the historical facts, but how you came to faith, what is important to you, mistakes you have made, good things you have done, times you asked another person for forgiveness, and so much more. It also includes great pages to include those funny times and times of joy. The thing I like best is that in this book, I have recorded forever how very much I love this child and she can open it and remember on good days and on bad ones. She is going into those teen-aged years with all of their angst and I am three states away. Perhaps on just one of those days that she feels that the world just doesn't make sense, she will open this book and remember that God has given me such a tremendous love for her and that will help. I watched my mother and father pour out love on my kids and I saw my children encouraged by that love (although when the boys were 15-16, I wasn't sure how lovable they were, but my folks continued pouring out that unconditional love and promised me that "this too shall pass:) and I cannot think of a more important heritage than faith, love, and laughter. Highest recommendation.

Nowhere in the description do they tell you this book is filled with Christianity. My family and I are not religious and I was dissapointed to find out from my mother (after sending it to her for mother's day) that this book has references to God or the Bible on every other page.

If the "amateurish" comment meant this was not solve-the-whodunit material, I agree -- it's good bedtime, or escapism, reading. I don't think it should be classified under either Mystery or Suspense.

However -- the historical basis combined with modern elements made for an interesting plot. Some good characterization and steady unfolding of the storyline kept my attention until the end, and of course,

"Life is too short to read a badly-written book." ~ T.M.

I have rarely read a more absurdly amateurish book. In the hands of, say, Nevada Barr, the same story would have leapt off the pages. However, we have a book chock full of the inexplicable and the unexplained, cliches, improbabilities, two-dimensional stereotypes, characters acting out of character, ... in fact, to be brief, thoroughly poor and unskilled authorship.

See story summary above.

I enjoyed this mystery thriller. The locations in Alaska and the flashbacks to NYC all helped to bring a little more substance to this story. The characters did come of as a little shallow in my opinion. I also think a little more history could have been wrapped in the story. As with any fiction novel, I rarely read the whole jacket summary, for it gives away far to much information and leaves few surprises. I get the protagonists name and read the first couple sentences and that's usually all.

Recommended.

Nick Scott is back for another round of her favorite airplane archeology (bet you didn't know such a thing existed!) in THE RETURN OF THE SPANISH LADY. Author Val Davis sets up a nicely suspenseful scenario, but the cover blurb gives away everything, so I never had a chance to figure things out with Nick. Don't read the cover blurb!!!

I might have rated the book higher, if the cover hadn't taken away all the suspense. The 1918 characters were well done, and I liked those parts best. And if you haven't read TRACK OF THE SCORPION, the first Nick Scott book, you should do so, as this is a very nicely written and unusual series.

I'll give this book the benefit of the doubt and rate it as 5 stars, as I have not read it. But the plot is interesting: a biopharmaceutical company launches an expedition to retrieve (in secrecy) the viral remnants of the 1918 influenza outbreak. The place: the frozen landscape of Alaska. The target: deceased gold miners from the period.

The plot was so enticing in fact that I used it myself in an earlier book. If you'd like to read a carefully researched, and much longer version of this story (at 662 pages) check out Ninth Day of Creation, ISBN 0967571294.

Most likely Davis just had the same idea as I did, though I seem to have got to print earlier. Personally, I think an outbreak similar to 1918 is just a matter of time, so the information contained in the "Spanish Lady" genome is valuable, and will remain so. I might also point out that between me beginning and finishing my book, the genome was in fact located at the Armed Forces Institute in the wax-preserved autopsy material of 1918 victims. The results of the genetic sequencing of this material should be completed within the decade...

Leonard Crane, author of Ninth Day of Creation

Is a nut who just keeps posting reviews of things promoting his strange paranoia about Israel and its right to do whatever it wants... read his reviews, they all have the same strange paranoia. So don't trust his review here.

I looked for a long time to find a decent world history; one that was neither 10,000 pages nor painfully dry. This is the best I found. It is a very readable book of reasonable length. The authors make good use of sidebars with thought-provoking bits of literature which are scattered throughout the overall history. They also make a good attempt at discussing underlying causes and patterns behind the historical events. I perfer that to a dry recounting of the facts, even if I may not always agree with them on the interpretation. It was surprisingly neutral on religious topics, given the origin of the book.

with so many tiny tidbits of interesting information stuck in here and there it was a learning experience just reading the special highlights throughout the book. There were useful lists of important dates and happenings throughout each chapter and even suggested websites relating to each chapter's material for further information. The way the book was written made for easy understanding of the material and better memory of what was read. Although the book follows a text book formula it was fun to read which is rare. A real find!