John Wayne Books

John Coston has written a rapid-paced true crime thriller about Wayne Nance who killed mostly women and girls for 12 years.
The actual number of victims is not known.

His childhood was a disturbing one with Nance frequently getting into trouble and in one instance showing a cruel streak directed at some kittens. He also had an acute interest in the occult and sacrificed animals. Nance was definitely a loosely-wrapped head case when he started murdering as a teenager. What made him so dangerous was his ability to earn peoples' trust and come across as almost normal while hiding the fact that he was "a mercurial,seething psycho".

Like a lot of serial killers you read about, Wayne Nance made mistakes and kept a few trophies. He avoided detection in small part by the tunnel vision of the sheriff in one of the cases. What's frustrating about the case was the fact that one of the investigators early on suspected him but couldn't get enough evidence. Things were a lot harder before DNA became a tool for law enforcement and Nance was very lucky.

He was also an anomaly among serial killers, prowling a very small area and avoiding detection for more than a decade.

"To Kill and Kill Again" is a riveting true crime book. Among the best at telling the story not only of the killer and his victims,but also the heroic survivor who ended the killing spree.

I lived in Missoula MT at the time this guy was on his murder spree. My sister went to school with him. I was in school at the time and not even aware of any of this going on. This book is very interesting and certainly would make any reader sharpen their radar for wierdos. Keep your head on a swival and maintain awareness. I could not put the book down, it is very good and very creepy.

When I was 5 years old in Missoula, Wayne Nance murdered my best friend. I will never, even all these years later, shake what he did - this book helped me come to grips with a small part of what happened as I was too young then to understand. I'm glad for that, but on the other hand, I'm torn. The victims of his horrific crimes deserve far more attention than he got in the end. My friend deserved better. *ALL* his victims deserved better.

Definitly a book for adults only, this is the tale of a furniture delivery man named John Wayne Nance who is confirmed as having killed four and possibly eight people in a twelve year period up until his death in 1986. He attacked a couple in their home who fought back and killed him. My heart went out to the victims and their families, in particular three orphaned children. John Nance must have been SICK to do the revolting crimes he did and to hell he can go!! The book is a moving account of what happened and also very graphic. Two of the victims remain unidentified to this day. May those who died rest in peace.

I worked at Conlins in 1982-83, and became good friends with Sheila Claxton and Wayne Nance. She was another sales person and Wayne was one of the delivery guys. We spent many hours at work and after together as friends. He was very mysterious to say the least. When he did weird things we just agreed it was just Wayne. After he tried to kill our friends and Manager of the Conlins Store, we knew he had done it and all the other killings, but it was not until I finished the book that it became real to me... and I was truly afraid....

I had moved to Missoula just as the Ministers wife was killed, and then the children found along the highway, later women, and former clients dying under mysterious circumstances. Then having it all placed in front of you and finding out it is a friend who has done it was almost too much to believe.

This was a wonderful, suspence filled, truthful book and I thank him for telling the story. Our lives will never be the same. I am sure you will share it with others after you have read it.

I'm a pre-service teacher and have been looking for books to guide me as I go through my teacher training. I found this book based on a quote by Schlatter I discovered on the internet. I was a little disappointed. While the stories are inspiring, I had hoped that they would be more teacher-oriented. In fact, they're not. Most of the stories are of day-to-day life. If you are looking for a "chicken soup"-like book, get this one. If you want information on what it's like to be a teacher, buy something else.

one of my step-childrens' favorite memories occurred when we lost electrical power during a winter storm (nature's reminder of who's in charge!); by candlelight, i read to them the john wayne schlatter stories from "chicken soup of the soul". fortunately, now we have a collection of john wayne schlatter stories in "i am a teacher". so powerful and magnificent, i bought many copies in order to leave them in hotels where we have stayed. it is my sincere wish that someone else along the way will be as deeply touched as we have been with his life's work. thank you, mr. schlatter, and GLY.

An inspirational book perfect for new teachers just beginning their teaching career to teachers who have years of experience. It is an ideal gift for anyone in your life you want to say 'thank you' to, or just let them know how special they are to you. Highly recommended.

What David Copperfield does with illusion, Schlatter has done with this collection of stories. True Magic! I started reading this book and didn't set it down until I'd finished the whole thing. What a delightful and heart warming book of stories and essays. It is like Chicken Soup for not just the Soul, but also the Heart, Mind, Body and Spirit. Whether it was the tributes like I AM A TEACHER, the motivating stories like THE FINEST STEEL GETS SENT THROUGH THE HOTTEST FURNACE, the common sense thinking of DECLARATION OF RIGHTS FOR TEENAGERS, the clever insites of CHILDREN, ADULTS, & MONOPOLY or the humor of HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY MAKE YOURSELF MISERABLE, I was captivated throughout.

Fans of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series already know John Wayne Schlatter for his many, soothing and heart-opening stories, the most famous of which was, I Am A Teacher. Do a Google search on "John Wayne Schlatter", and you will get over 250 hits about the many stories he has contributed to the series. Well, now you get 188 pages of the same wit, truth, soul-searching and revelations about the valued profession of teaching, and its importance to the future of us all.
Needless to say, I believe the author skillfully proved his point to me, the reader, by using strengths, battles and victories of his family to testify to the baseline, or foundation, and truth of the theme of his book. He then takes his needle and thread, and quilts his professional experiences, and literary/poetic reactions to those experiences, into the many, varied fabrics of former students, mentors and friends, to once again, give the reader reason to believe that what he is writing about is true. He gently, but firmly, as if a doctor delivering a baby, opens the reader's heart to the fact that, "I too am a teacher! I may not be in the profession of teaching, but by God, I am a teacher!" This is a must read. You will want to read it in one sitting if you are able, because you will find yourself on a train headed to the truth, and stopping may cause you to lose momentum. The book will also make an excellent gift for your children's teachers, your teachers, even your former teachers. Anyone who has made a difference in your life would be gratified by a gift of I Am A Teacher. Enjoy!

It is really a good book in protein NMR.
and give out a complete set of the basic of NMR principle
Some tiny mistakes, can be a handbook for protein structure analysis.

I have been reading this book for a while and decided to buy it. I am satisfied with the vendor, it arrived in good condition and fairly on time.

This is the new standard for Protein NMR spectroscopists (the old one being Ernst). Everyone I've met who uses NMR in biology has nothing but praise for this book. It's not a perfect book and has some weakness, especially in the modelling portions. The math derivations are clear but the authors do not connect back to the physical phenomenon. I would recommend keeping a QM book nearby as a reference. However, this book is well written overall and very complete. Highly recommended!

The book is very complete, covers most of the field in protein NMR studies. The book is well organised, with plenty of figures to facilitate easy understanding of the subject. Overall, I find it is very helpful for anyone who will be interested in protein NMR research. I have actually seen quite a number of copies in a few NMR laboratories and I would recommand this book to all those who are looking for an complete introductory book in NMR and protein study.

Damien Bona's `Starring John Wayne as Genghis Khan!' (which seems to be the same book as the alternatively titled `Starring Demi Moore As Hester Prynne') is a disposable celebration of the notorious - and some not-so-notorious - instances of miscasting. Like other `best of,' `worst of,' and `100 biggest' listings `Starring John Wayne...' is highly personal and idiosyncratic. Even though Bona says in his introduction "(t)o be miscast, an actor has to have spent the bulk of his or her career well cast - he can't really be wrong for a role until he has established a personality strong enough to mark him as ill suited for it," these type of books are never complete or immune from charges of omission. That's part of their charm, in fact.

The book is divided into seven sections. Each section contains a number of short essays, 5000 words or so, on the offending star and movie. The first section is entitled "Waxworks: The most unconvincing portrayals of historical figures ever captured on film" and begins with an essay on William Bendix in `The Babe Ruth Story.' Bendix "plays the character as a wide-eyed dope," Bona observes, which is hard to argue with. Bendix may have been miscast, but Bona is silent about John Goodman's portrayal of The Babe in the movie of the same name. `The Babe' was released in 1992, four years before `Starring John Wayne...' was published, and is every inch a classically miscast movie as the Bendix movie. This isn't to say Bona is wrong or even inaccurate, but books of this type are never the last word on a subject. Bona has some selections that I disagree with. He doesn't like Jack Lemmon in `Cowboy' ("Not an actor who fits comfortably into a period film, Lemmon isn't very convincing at any of this.") and I think Lemmon was very effective as a hotel clerk, a greenhorn, who wants to go on a cattle drive. Perhaps the most astonishing instance of miscasting, in Bona's view, is Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise in `Rain Man.' Age differences and physical dissimilarities are the culprits. "Look at their body frames, " Bona writes, "their sizes, their eyes. No way did they have the same parents. And although each boasts a prominent nose, they are differently shaped - Hoffman's wide and long, Cruise's more classically Roman." Er... okay. Perhaps, but I'd rather have seen mentioned Laurence Olivier as Gen. Douglas MacArthur in `Inchon', an uncomfortable looking Clint Eastwood as a singing cowboy in `Paint Your Wagon,' or Kevin Costner as a decidedly un-British Robin Hood. Or Donald O'Connor as Buster Keaton, or James Cagney as Lon Chaney. None of these guys are in the book, although any of them belong there.

Still, `Starring John Wayne...' contains interesting tidbits about each miscast movie and star. I was delighted to see that Gregory Peck, along with Frank Sinatra and Tony Curtis, made it into the three-man Miscasting Hall of Fame. Although I'm a fan of some of Peck's movies, I think Bona gets it just right when he notes, after a nod to some of Peck's greater movies, that "(w)hen his material is not... strong, ..., or when he's trying to play someone whose sense of moral rectitude is less than impeccable, Peck's disinclination to sound like anyone other than Gregory Peck is jarring." As these things go `Starring John Wayne...' is a good book and a fun read, particularly suited for those who are fans of older movies.

An almost exhaustive guide to those truly bad-casting decisions that are so bad, they're good. Many a film noir has been reduced to slapstick because of the decision by the casting agent.

A cynical and hilarious look at actors and actresses who were miscast. Lucille Ball, Donna Reed, Marlon Brando, Richard Gere, Demi Moore--a real variety of performers who for various reasons ended up in roles that were all wrong for them! This book also includes the story-behind-the-story, as in, *why* John Wayne ended up playing Genghis Khan. An interesting and enjoyable book!

What makes a good movie "good" or a great movie "great"?

The answer, of course, is, "many things." You have to have a good story, a well-written script (ideally with memorable lines and lots of linear logic!), a director with a fine eye for detail and organizational skills that rival Ike's before D-Day, a well-trained crew, a well-versed composer, a top-notch special-effects team, and a visionary producer with a dream in his mind and a deep pocket to match (but at the same time have better fiscal discipline than some Presidents).

Have I forgotten anything? Oh, yeah. And you gotta have a good cast.

Let's face it. Until the late 1960s, we did not go to see the latest Michael Curtiz or Victor Fleming picture like we go watch the new one from Spielberg or, God forbid, the latest Michael Bay offering. No, we (or our parents and grandparents) went to see the new Gable and Lombard flick at the Bijou or Rialto. If you went to a John Wayne picture -- as millions of Americans did from 1939 until 1976 -- you knew he'd be either a stalwart cowboy or Marine sergeant or even a colonel in the 82nd Airborne. And, by gum, you believed him in those roles, even when he seemed (as he does in The Longest Day) a bit too old for the role.

So, casting is important, and many great movies are great because the casting decisions were inspired and sound.

Yet, as Damien Bona illustrates in "Starring John Wayne as Genghis Khan: Hollywood's All-Time Casting Blunders," sometimes inspiration took a left turn at Sunset Boulevard and ended up in the pool with Joe Gillis' corpse. Whoever thought up the idea of casting the Duke as Temujin, the Mongol warlord better known as Genghis Khan (or Susan Hayward as a Tartar woman named Bortai) in 1956's The Conqueror must have been smoking something other than tobacco cigarettes. The sight and sound of John Wayne dressed up in Mongol warrior garb and spouting lines originally intended for Marlon Brando make one shudder. Suffice it to say that this picture was not a big hit.

Bona aims his acidly-witty verbal darts at such casting blunders as:

Marlon Brando as an Okinawan in Teahouse of the August Moon

June Allyson as a sapphic murderer in They Only Kill Their Masters

Tony Bennett in The Oscar

Robert Redford as a British aristocrat who, in real life, was also bald in Out of Africa

Michael Keaton as Batman

My personal favorite chapter is devoted to Gregory Peck, who was extremely talented but was also miscast in quite a few movies, including Moby Dick and The Boys from Brazil. Boma points out that most of Peck's miscasts did not come from his acting but from his voice and persona. In Days of Glory, a 1944 movie about Russian partisans fighting off German invaders, he speaks in a distinctly American accent. The one time where he does use a heavy German accent is in The Boys from Brazil, a 1978 flick about Josef Mengele and his plot to create some 90 or so clones of Adolf Hitler to create a Fourth Reich. Not only is the makeup overly done, Bona says, but Peck overacts, much to the detriment of the film.

Bona's style is both informative -- I had never even heard of Tony Bennett acting in a movie --- and irreverent. His chapters are brief (averaging at no more than four pages) and have clever tag lines (the one for John Wayne's The Conqueror is "Mongol Cowboy") that sum up the miscasting's overall effect. Biting yet never overly mean, Boma makes the reader laugh out loud while at the same time wondering what some of those casting directors were indeed, thinking...or smoking.

Alex Diaz-Granados

what better way to follow up Professional Cooking. Easy reading, easy modification, great food. And what could be better than great food?

This book is great and would get 5 Stars if it cost less. It is almost the same as The Chef's Art also by Wayne Gisslen. The differences are APC has 2 chapters on how to maintain food safty,... I have checked CA(my edition) and the index is EXACT except for the 2 chapters. If you need food handling and safty information it is a good investment, but I have all the info in other books, and think it is better to save the money.

The title of this important cookbook is most unfortunate. You might think that this book is only for seasoned, experienced professionals only. This is absolutely not the case. It is really just a continuation of Gisslen Professional Cooking 6th Edition w/CD-ROM + Professional Cooking 6th Edition Study Guide - SET>. If you have some cooking skill, then you will benefit from this book. I am very impressed with this cookbook and recommend it highly.

The recipes in this volume are closer to the retail recipes that you are likely to prepare either professionally or at home. In fact, each recipe has 2 different yields: 4 servings for home and 16 servings for restaurant service. The copyright is 1992 and some recipes are past tense e.g. flavored fresh pasta. But how about: soft-shell crab, flavored beurre blanc, foie gras, and fresh sausages? In fact, the selection of recipes reads very much like a current, best-selling cookbook.

If you are like me, you have any number of classic, French, haute cuisine cookbooks: Escoffier, and others. Even experienced professionals will often despair at the rather vague procedures for ballontines, galantines, wild poultry and game (duck, quail, squab?), and forcemeat stuffed fish. This volume will give complete, correct, professionally proven recipes for all these classic dishes. Never made pate en croute or a terrine before? Ever had to butcher an entire beef tenderloin or carve a saddle of lamb? What about kidney, sweetbreads, tripe, or brain? Confused by books that will throw around words like simmer, poele, braise, en cocotte, saute, pan fry, poach, and pot roast without explaining the difference? This book will explain all. Note that many of these recipes are long and involved (not really difficult, just time consuming requiring patience). Many need 2 or 3 pages of recipe steps, which are often casually tossed off in a couple of terse sentences in various, older Haute Cuisine cookbooks.

Theme and Method

This reviewer found Meeks perspective on the varieties of Biblical interpretation that might lead to knowledge of Christ refreshing and his arguments convincing. His central theme in editing this series of lectures into book form is best encapsulated on p. 129:

The peculiarities of the different traditions are not mere concealing husks that must be stripped from the truth that is the same for all. Reality is not something out there apart from the knowing.

He amplifies this non-Platonic perspective by emphasizing the need to "resist the imperialism of the single vision" (p. 126) when it comes to knowing Christ. For those who stand in the tradition of literal interpretation, Meeks' perspective is illuminating. On p. 3 the subheading "The Many Faces of Jesus" stand out when contrasted to works familiar to this reviewer such as the Christological study entitled "That One Face." For Meeks, knowing Christ is an ongoing enterprise that must move beyond the search for any `historical' Jesus. As he states on pp. 20 & 21:

...I suggest that a major reason why scientific history's search for the real Jesus failed was that we were all working with an inadequate model of human selfhood. I argue that we may get further by adopting a model of the self that is even more modern: a model of personal identity as a social and transactional process. It is a model developed by psychologists and others from the observation that each of us comes to know "who I am," not just by sitting and thinking about myself, but, beginning in earliest childhood, by responding to other persons who respond to me. ...Using that model will not get us to the real Jesus either, but it may help us to escape from the subjective idealism and romanticism that have warped all our recent images of him.

Meeks' Christology is one that moves beyond the historic creeds of the Church that are often considered a forced public response to heresy rather than an occasion for worship. He prefers a more poetic approach to understanding Christ such as what he considers the early hymn of Philippians 2: 6 - 11. Meeks' rejects the type of romanticism that produced such `non-canonical' hymns as "In the Garden" with the following conclusion (p.38):

...all these are signs of modern romantic religion, the kind of Christianity that insists that the only question that counts is, "Do you take Jesus as your personal savior?"

To put Meeks in the camp of modern, proselytizing Evangelicalism would thus be a mistake. In closing, Meeks sums up his overall perspective on the Bible:

It is not a rule book. It is not a set of doctrines. It is above all not a ransom note. It is a love letter.

While many may argue with this view, the purpose of Meeks dialogue with the reader is to refine and clarify the multitude of interpretations that have created the spectrum of beliefs concerning the identity of Jesus.

Observations

Concerning the nature of faith, Meeks believes that "We have been seduced by a long history of theological debates to think that beliefs and doctrine define faith - both for believers and for anti-believers" (p.35). This reviewer considers this a helpful perspective in the climate of post-Modern relativity where the opinion of the individual reigns supreme and leads to a rejection of a community-based and nurtured faith. Meeks continues by arguing, "Theology is the grammar of the faithful life, in one hopeful formulation, but language is more than grammar, and life more than both" (p. 36).

On the doctrine of claritas scripturae, Meeks confronts the literalist with the finding that the plain meaning of the scripture "was a bit tricky and depended a lot on who was doing the looking" (p.105). He goes on to say on p. 114:

The plain sense as it once existed, the common sense found in the text by authoritative tradition, has vanished, and in its place is a chaotic puzzle to be decoded at the whim of whatever interpreter you may trust.

This `decoding', in the opinion of this reviewer, can lead to viewing the scripture as the data from which theology is constructed rather than the testimony of believers who worked out their salvation with `fear and trembling' (Phil 2:12).

Recommendation

For the reader worn weary by the putative certainty of many works that present what one ought to believe, Christ is the Question makes the asking as important as the finding in any search for spiritual clarity. The title of this work is almost a curative in and of itself and the narrative flow leads the reader through a delightful retelling of the interpretations about Christ that make Christian history such an interesting story.

Perception changes whenever you change position. Likewise, perception changes as time passes. These are basic ideas to which none would disagree. In this book, Meeks shows us that the way we perceive Christ has gone through the changes also.

Most of the chapters of the book were lectures given at Emory University. As such, the language of the text has an academic quality that is not always easy flowing for the lay reader. It requires a bit more focus to follow what the author is saying. Further, students of literature, history, and theology will follow more easily as they have probably heard of the scholars mentioned and will be familiar with the work.

However, the gist of the book is not to "muddy" the proverbial waters in understanding Christ. By illustrating the change in academic perception, Meeks is showing us that Jesus is not intended to be taken for granted. We should always continue to study and discuss Jesus and what he means to us.

I would recommend the book.

This book is short, a quick read, and enjoyable. This is a critical history (high-level, not detailed) of research philosophy and modern motives and expectations. Meeks presents interesting critical points about history of the efforts and motives of trying to get to the historical Jesus via modern historical research. Meeks calls for bracketing-off the historical Jesus as one about whom nothing can be known except "that" he existed.

Meeks uncritically retains the assumption, taken for granted, that a single historical Jesus existed, even while denouncing the attempts and claims that scientific historical method enables us to know anything about him.

He mentions Paul's "the night when Jesus was betrayed" as an example of how Paul alludes to the life biography of the historical Jesus. But Doherty's book Jesus Puzzle indexes and discusses this passage, 1 Cor 11:23, showing that it's no such thing as a historical biographical recounting.

I'm certainly not reading such books because I'm trying to decide whether Jesus existed -- we're now a generation past such an investigation; future research is needed within the no-historical-Jesus framework, which Meeks refrains from mentioning. He words it so well and yet frustratingly retains the assumption that Jesus existed: he asserts that the question is, how was the image of Jesus formulated, what was the history of forming the image of Jesus -- not what were the historical biographical details of Jesus' life. (Or how were the images of Jesus formulated, in the plural.)

Meeks brackets-off the historical Jesus (alas while retaining such a confusing assumption) and calls for research into history of the formation of the image or images of Jesus Christ. However, I object that any attempt to bracket-off the historical Jesus from research of the history-of-formation of the Christian figure of Jesus will fail to really bracket him off; as long as you retain the uncritical assumption that Jesus existed and was the causal origin of Christianity, you're bound to be confused while attempting to reconstruct Christian origins.

Meeks doesn't go far enough -- not that I demand at this early stage that he go all the way to a definite rejection of Jesus' historicity. To be self-consistent, Meeks ought to agnostically bracket-off the assumption that Jesus existed, not only bracket-off our knowledge of the historical Jesus. Instead of saying that Jesus certainly existed but we can't know anything about Jesus' actual life historically (only "that" he existed), Meeks ought to say that we can't know whether Jesus existed, while saying (as he does) that we ought to study the history of formation of the image or figure of Jesus.

That specific agnosticism would make Meeks self-consistent. He thinks he's capable of bracketing-off the quest for the historical Jesus from the history-of-formation of the image and figure of Jesus, but actually, as long as Meeks retains the uncritical, unexamined assumption that Jesus existed, confusion is already bound to distort Meeks' effort to reconstruct the history-of-formation of the image and figure of Jesus.

This is not to suggest that I approve of agnosticism about whether Jesus existed. Reading any ten no-Jesus books is more than sufficient to settle the case; we have reasonable and ample proof and evidence that Jesus didn't exist -- though the assertion "Jesus didn't exist" is unclear and has to be unpacked and defined, such as the words 'Jesus' and 'existed'. The position Meeks' book advocates is the most inconsistent and unsatisfying of all; if you make good on Meeks' call for a change of direction, the result calls Meeks' framework into question. His blend of being half-critical and half-uncritical is a frustrating oil-and-water mixture, like Doherty's mixing-together of the lack of critical questioning of Paul's historicity with a highly critical questioning of Jesus' historicity.

You might get the idea that John Wayne only made black and white films when you first open and flip through this book, but perhaps I don't understand the bottom line of publshing color shots. With memories of The Searchers and The Horse Soldiers in vivid, almost other-worldly celluloid chromatics, it takes some getting used to. The rare and fascinating exploitation memorabilia included unfortunately suffers through this medium - tiny details are too fine and grainy to appreciate. Perhaps less entries and concentration on readability of larger reproductions might have worked.
But let's get into a "labor of love" from a fan, Mr. Lee Pfeiffer. (Color publications came later for this fine arbitor of Duke Chronicles). By the way, Lee's intro. to the "Turkeys" is hilarious.
Focusing in here on, if you will, the "best" and "worst" of Wayne, I would have preferred if Lee had listed the flicks in order of quality (or lack of), rather than their chronological place. ("Donovan's Reef" was a "turkey"? I added some extra stuffing and applied that good commercial gravy and enjoyed it).
It's tough to call a Patriotic film a loser but Pfeiffer's commentary on "The Green Berets" is perfect, as far as I'm concerned. Wayne's sincerity is never in doubt, but his history and analysis was. David Janssen's over-acted scene in which he lays out an exhibit of Russian and Chinese weapons in front of a skeptical reporter, begs for any High School kid, who can't find Indochina on the map, to say, okay, but at what point did they intervene? After we escalated?
Another political film fiasco, in my book, is "The Sea Chase" - an interesting idea, that World War II German nationals rebelled against the Third Reich by giving the appearance of complying, thus providing actual assistance to the fabricated enemy of the "master race", goes down due to some bad miscasting, and interminably downbeat direction, which make the viewer reach for that letter-boxed edition of "The Searchers", just waiting for a 19th home screening.
This is a true Scrapbook, so don't look for any voluminous *lists* of films/tv appearances, etc. (Woulda been nice, though). This is a personal reflection on perhaps the most appreciated and unappreciated film icon.
(Where's "The Fighting Kentuckian" with Duke and Babe, in the text?).
Recommended.

This book was just outstanding. I think any John Wayne fan who likes to read or learn anything, about The Duke will enjoy and value this book.

This book has been in print consistently since the 1980's and has been a treasure-trove of information about the Duke and his films. It not only tells the behind the scenes stories of Wayne's best films, but doesn't avoid a fun-filled look at his "turkeys" as well, even if you don't agree with the author on every title. (I can't help liking "Hellfighters" no matter what the author says!) Each film is broken down in it's own separate section and there are hundreds of rare photos. The recently released edition finally updates a lot of outdated information. For example, there is a very in-depth look at the making of Wayne's "The Alamo"... this section brings up to date the fact that much of the missing footage has been found and restored. Best of all, the new edition has tons of glossy color photos featuring dozens of rare Wayne international movie posters from over the decades. There are also sections relating to Wayne collectibles, record albums and a funny section that shows "bloopers" in Wayne movie posters and ads. (To promote the movie "Cahill: U.S Marshall", Warner Brothers used a well-known photo from "Chisum" in their ads). All in all, even you have the previous version, this one is worth picking up for all the new material.

This an awsome collection snippets from the life & times in the Black Hills aroung the 1870's. Written is a way that you feel like you are reading the author's diary. Deadwood was a great HBO series and this book really fills in the blanks. It is a suprise how much pain the early pioneers endured heading west (and how the American Indians were take advantage of!).

This man gives a real account of the real Deadwood and the events of the gold rush. Nothing is made up nor did he embelish. How refreshing. While reading it in the Black Hills, I am in awe of some of the places he describes. Though the topography has changed a bit, its fun to go see where the events happened. Some happy, some sad. Stories about the Sioux and Lakota Indians adds interest.

I would highly recommend this book for true facts of Wild Bill, Calamity Jane and Deadwood gold rush days

After seeing the HBO special about Deadwood I was interested in getting some factual data. This book provided insight and drama to a part of history above and beyond what a HBO special could provide. The historical accounts of people, places and gold give the reader something to chew on while contemplating what it would be like in the American past. SASS members would love the book also.

Sometimes it's fun reading a book that involves a group of essays from a variety of writers, and this work (dedicated to the Passantinos) was a delight to read. For those who enjoy apologetics works, there might not be a whole lot new here, but getting different perspectives on some key issues is always good. A few of the articles were dry, but overall, I'd have to give this book a top rating--definitely worth the time.

"Reaons for Faith" is informative, thought-provoking, and relevant. What impresses me most about the book is how Geisler and Meister (editors) have succeeded in striking the difficult balance between scholarship and accessibility. There's plenty of meat to chew on for the non-specialist yet relatively informed apologist. On the other hand, the novice will find introductory chapters exlaining what apologetics is and why it's important.

The Christian who's been timid about engaging difficult questions and intellecutal obstacles will find encouragment and instruction in this book, while the open-minded seeker will find peruasive arguments for the existence of God, objective, aboslute truth, and a reponse to the problem of evil and suffering. I found the chapters critiquing many of today's major religious movements in light of Christian teaching extremely informative.

Bottom line? For all those interested in giving a defense for the hope that is them, this is a must-have handbook!

Reasons for faith contains a lot of background information about apologetics--a nice 400 pages in a text that feels good to handle. This work includes a thoughtful background for the reason for apologetics, about 60 pages. I like the essays on historical theology and literature's role in apologetics--more needs to be done on this topic. I was pleased that the Editor Norman Geisler offered a good chapter on the essentials of the faith. This was well written and a missing piece in many apologetics works. I found the science articles technical yet a simple sample of the standard design arguments covered in many other texts. If you want a book that goes beyond easy answers and into essays on a wide variety of topics than read this book. I'd recommend this for the seasoned apologist and maybe not for the novice.

I was there. The stories are all true, Sunnie was exactly that: "sunnie", always a smile and ever dapper, he was the consumate host. The Mark Twain Hotel was a great place to meet the most famous jazz musicians in informal settings while they lounged or rehearsed. As a young, white broadcast engineer traveling with a national jazz radio program, I must say the Hotel was more like a home away from home than a Hotel. I stayed in room 38. Good times. Great book.

Sunnie Wilson was like the John Dancy's and the Francis Kornegay's of the Detroit Urban League: High-yellow blacks who loathed the dark-complexioned blacks. If you don't believe me, read E. Franklin Frazier's Black bourgeois, or Victoria Wolcott's Remaking Respectability.
It was not my intention to linger on the issues regarding Wilson's conspicuous story, rather than to make the point that Wilson belonged to a particular elite social circle that was set apart from the common black folk of/in Black Bottom and Paradise Valley. Albeit not stated in my theses, it is my belief that one of the reasons that Black Bottom fell was because black elites abandoned the community in time of real need. Instead of coming together to forge a political strategy to battle Mayor Jeffries infamous Detroit Plan, Black elites (with the aid of a 1946 Supreme Court ruling) fled to the suburbs, and Idlewild.
Wilson's story is an important source in Black Bottom historiography because he forces us to rethink the hiring practices of Detroit Urban League, where Forrester B. Washington, and other black community leaders, believed that light-skinned women seeking employment - as opposed to the those of darker skin tone - were more attractive because they "were as a rule girls who have had better opportunities than the pure blacks who were mostly southern girls from the rural districts." This reductionist viewpoint allowed leaders like John Dancy to place light-skinned women employees in coveted positions in effort to improve the image of African American female workers in Detroit. In other words, the Detroit Urban League - composed mostly of color-conscious, "high-yellow" blacks - funded by wealthy whites, allowed themselves to become the filtering station for the white establishment to scrutinize and choose the type and kind of blacks they would allow to enter their workforce. And who would be better suited for such a job other than the black bourgeois, whose main goal and objective was to be loved and accepted by white folks. Now, one could argue that the Detroit Urban League had simply played the cards they were dealt (as Richard Thomas might would argue), or one could argue that the Detroit Urban League could have done more to challenge the racist, paternalistic, and patriarchal actions of the white establishment, and pushed for a more humanistic approach to solving the problems of employment affronted the black southern migrant - both dark and light-complected.
Wilson's book forces us to look at these problematic issues that would, in my opinion, ultimately cause the fall of a great and unprecedented example of perhaps the most impressive black community the world would ever know. Wilson was part of an elite circle of (high-yellow) black folk that fleeced the black community in the same way that Jews had historical done. And when Black Bottom and Paradise Valley began to see hard times, rather than bond together their resources, influence, political power and wealth, the rich and elite black folk (including Wilson) packed their bags and fled the scene. Wilson would like to make us believe that it was black crime ("Soon I made up my mind that I could no longer do business in a section full of dope peddlers and petty criminals") that pushed him away from his responsibilities toward the black community revitalization movement, but it was probably the opportunity to retain his elite ties and lifestyle that ole Sunnie - a high-yellow elitist - saw the benefit in heading up north to forge together a community of "well-to-do black cottage owners and vacationers." Wilson reveled in the joy and prestige of rubbing elbows with the black rich and famous, who would become regular attendants of Idlewild: Dr. W. E. B. Dubois, Madame C. J. Walker, Charles Waddell Chestnutt, and Dr. Daniel Hale Williams who originally owned the island from 1915 to 1916 before giving it to his sister, Virgil (whom Wilson, consistently obsessed with color, describes as "a very light-compected woman..."). As I read Wilson's story, I became somewhat convinced that part of the reason that Black Bottom and Paradise Valley "became a victim of `slum clearance,' or what became known as urban renewal," was because the black community's most vital resources -black wealthy elites - abandoned it. Rather than see the benefit of fighting to restore, rebuild, and revitalize the fledgling black economy (fledgling since the riots) the black economic power-base (the Barthwells', the Gordys', The Roxboroughs' , the Wilsons' ) closed ranks and hit the dirt running. And the "big-money interests like Mr. Webster and the J. L. Hudson family bought up parcels of land," while, "to make way for the I-75 freeway, the city decimated Black Bottom and Paradise Valley."
Today, a comfortably retired Wilson unapologetically recants his act of treason: "I thought the takeover was wrong, but sometimes you can't fight `progress,' especially when you are poor and your adversary is armed with the power of millions of dollars." But Wilson, like his friends and associates, were wealthy, or at least, collectively wealthy, which meant power. Rather than fight, they ran to the suburbs and Idlewild, while the less affluent blacks in Black Bottom watched their lives crumbled beneath the mammoth city-owned bulldozers.

and Sunnie Wilson lived up to that motto by giving back generously to the black community. His motto might also have been "a bed and good meal for every musician" because he owned and operated the Mark Twain Hotel expressly for that purpose. BB King, Dizzy Gillespie,Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and many more stayed there. Sunnie also ran several show bars in Detroit's "northern" Paradise Valley. The book contains hundreds of stories having to do with musicians whose names are very common today. He was also very influencial in the political climate of the 1930 and 1940s in Detroit, and provides much insite into those times. Some of his greatest successes occured in the rich entertainment district that centered around John R, where today the Detroit Medical Center sits. To understand the history, you have to read the book, almost nothing remains of what was sometimes called the "near eastside ghetto".

A great read. It reads like a novel, but leaves you with hard facts that easily pop up in conversation, and give perspective into the future.