John Winston Books

The modern Cavendish family was founded by the redoubtable Bess of Hardwick who married into wealth not once but four times and built an empire. By her second husband, Sir William Cavendish, she had five children, including William (who was created earl of Cavendish), Charles (whose son was created duke of Newcastle), Elizabeth (mother, by Charles Stuart, of Arabella Stuart, claimant to the throne who died in the Tower), and Mary (whose husband, a Talbot, inherited the earldom of Shrewsbury from Bess's fourth husband). This book follows the story of the younger William's descendants and Pearson does a good job of getting behind the state portraits and stately homes (including Chatsworth in Derbyshire) to the almost excessively human member of the family. The earls and dukes of Devonshire tended to marry well, including links to the Russells, Howards, Spencers, Butlers, Cecils, Fitzmaurices, Greys, and even the sister of President John F. Kennedy. The family also produced Charles Cavendish, a leading mathematician and close friend of Descartes, and, a century and a half later, Henry Cavendish, discoverer of hydrogen. Pearson does a very creditable job of recounting the history of a fascinating family.

This is a collection of short stories. My school uses it as a general handout for a short story elective. Selections include: The Red Dress, By The Waters of Babylon, The Birds, and The Most Dangerous Game. Good Reading.

_Son of the Stars_ (1952) by Raymond F. Jones was one of 36 juveniles published by Winston in the 1950s. It was common practice for Winston to have their authors write factual forewards or afterwards to their novels. Presumably the notion was that these would help to make them "respectable" to parents and librarians, though I suspect that most librarians didn't need that kind of trickery.

Richard Marsten's _Danger: Dinosaurs!_ (1953) had an essay on an imaginary time-slip and history. Chad Oliver's _Mists of Dawn_ (1952) had a detailed introduction to anthropology. Lester del Rey, in _Marooned on Mars_ (1952), discussed the history of the "Martian canals" in astronomy and speculated about the possibility of life on Mars. Jack Vance's _Vandals of the Void_ (1953) predicted that we would enter a future age of piracy. Philip Latham explained how he used some out-of-date astronomy as a basis for creating fictional life in _Missing Men of Saturn_ (1953).

Raymond F. Jones's essay was a tribute to the "back-yard scientists of America" (v):

A ten-year-old boy in Texas begins the search by producing rotten-egg gas with his Christmas chemistry set. At sixteen, he has a well-equipped basement laboratory. A girl in Oregon is astonished at the wonder of her first glimpse through a microscope in junior high. When she enters college, she takes her laboratory with her-- a box containing her own microscope and a few hundred slides. (v)

This topic is one that seems to run through much of Jones's writing. Like Hal Clement, Jones likes to write about scientists-- both professional and amateur-- who engage in the great game of experimentation and observation. At one point, the alien boy Clonar (who knows how to build a transmitter that can communicate over light-years) touches the hero's short-wave radio and says, "It must be-- fun, anyway" (52). Clonar is being polite, but he is also telling the truth. Science _is_ fun. It's not so much the level of technology that your culture may have that counts. It's how well you play the game. Ultimately, it is decided that Earth must learn to make her own way-- both scientifically and morally.

Why morally? Because Clonar is an alien who crash lands on Earth. He is dependent upon the kindness of strangers. He gets it from some people-- the backyard inventer hero, his girlfriend, a crusty country doctor, and an intelligent collie. But often, he does not. The hero's mother is frightened of him. He is arrested by the military. Some of the military (like Colonel Middleton) are unimaginative and paranoid. Others (like General Gillispie) are more intelligent but overly ambitious. The hero's father is tolerant of Clonar, but he has a tendency to believe what those in authority tell him is the truth. Earth people have potential and basic goodness, but they still have a long way to go.

If it is at all possible, get the first edition with the original cover by Alex Schomberg. It depicts a fleet of flying saucers gracefully sailing from a planet with a reddish sandy desert and a blue ocean toward Earth hanging prominently in the sky. But I have sometimes wondered... What is the planet in the foreground? Not the Moon. Not with an ocean. But a planet such as Venus or Mars wouldn't show the Earth as prominently in the sky. Mars wouldn't be likely to have an ocean. Given the scientific knowledge of the day, Venus might have an ocean. But it would also have been cloud-shrouded, hiding any view of outer space. Clonar's world is in another galaxy. So what is the world in the forground? Well, never mind. It's still a spectacular cover.

If you want to know about everything about the beginning of America, this is definitely the book for you! Great for school American history classes.

I read the book, "A Seperate Peace", by John Knowles and it was pretty good. It involves two main boys going through high school during World War II. One of the boys,Phineas, is superior at everything involving sports. The other main character is Gene Forrester. He is great at school but not in sports. These boys are roomed together in their prepatory school named Devon and are best friends. Gene starts thinking that Phineas, a.k.a Finny, is trying to hold back him from doing so great at school so he can be the best at everything. So Gene starts hating Finny and ends up creating a horrible accident that ruins Finny's life forever. It shows that there is always some darkness in the back of Gene's mind but never once was there in Finny's. Gene goes to tell Phineas that he created the accident but Finny doesn't belive him. So Gene drops it and hopes Finny won't try to remember what actually happened that one day and remember the truth. Another character in the book is a boy named Leper Lelliper who is always looking to find the best things in life he can look at slowly and not rush anything. He decides to go look at and take pictures of a beaver dam then go and work on the railroads to help the WWII fighters get through the town. But in his childish life he becomes to be the first person in his and Gene's and Finny's class to enlist in the army. After doing this everybody's life takes a turn. Brinker Hadley, the class president, drops out of all extra curricular activites and becomes lazy. Gene starts working at sports and pitys Finny every chance he can. Phineas starts trying to get his life back in order and trys to do all the things he did before the accident. But then one day Gene recieves a letter from Leper asking for help. The army has done something to Leper and tooken something away from him he can never get back. Gene goes to visit him but can't take it and goes back to Devon, never speaking of what happened. Then one night Brinker Hadley and a bunch of other boys awaken Finny and Gene to take them to a trail. A trial that would change Finny's life and Gene's life forever. The whole story is told by Gene Forrester in a flashback fifteen years ago. The story shows great symbolism with tree. And always has great themes, such as:private war versus public war, Gene's view of life vs. Finny's view of life, and a life of conformity vs. a life of freedom.

The Piedmont Triad is a region of North Carolina that encompasses Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Highpoint, Burlington, and a number of smaller towns. Best known for its tobacco and furniture, the area often gets ignored by tourists. However, as this guide illustrates beautifully, the Triad is brimming with fantastic trails and hiking areas.

The book details information on numerous outdoor areas in the Triad. The book claims to include 140 trails, but this total clearly encompasses multiple trails in each area. For example, the Densons Creek Nature Trail map shows a "long loop" and a "short loop." Nevertheless, this guide is the most complete of its type available.

Each hiking area is illustrated in maps featuring the various trails, with numerous pictures throughout the book. De Hart has written brief descriptions of each area, including information regarding the length and difficulty of the hike. The book also contains an Appendix with useful contacts, such as local biking clubs.

This guide will obviously appeal greatly to hikers in the Triad. I purchased this book when I moved to the Triad, and I've used it quite often to find new places to walk and hike. The guide could also be useful for people visiting the area and wanting information. Highly recommended.

Winston Churchill: Soldier, Statesman, Artist, is an outstanding, and easy to read book for young adults. It is very detailed and not hard to follow along. It basically describes the entire life of Winston Churchill starting even before he was born. It is an amazing book, yet does get dry at points.

Book was shipped on time and came in great condition. Had no problems. Great experience

This was a good book to learn chem from for a high school chem class OR use as a supplement to one's high school AP chemistry class. Good clear explanations. In re one of the previous reviewers comments, I do agree that some answers were wrong. The problems given in the book were of average difficulty, perfect for an average chem student.

Overall, I didn't especially like this book. I used it in high school AP chemistry for an entire year.

First of all, the hardcover edition is very heavy and generally cumbersome to use, and i'd definately recommend buying the paperback edition. The book attempts to cover a huge amount of material, which is overwhelming, and it is too much to cover in the course of one academic year.

The content of this book was of average quality, but at times confusing. Many of the explanations provided seem to require a background in chemistry--not a good thing if this is the first chem course you have ever taken. But if you've studied chmistry previously, this book should be fine, provided that you understand how to do basic calculations using conversion factors and mole ratios.

I was sometimes confused by the more complicated topics. In some cases, the explanations of the topics were fine, but the examples problems went above and beyond the basics, which was confusing. Other times, the explanations were unclear but the examples were fine. Generally, I was able to understand the concept in the end, but at times it was frustrating.

The thing that bothered me the most about this book was that some of the most basic formulas were not explicitly stated. The book would show you how to derive the formulas and do a number of complicated calculations, but the formulas themselves are not always right there, in bold print. I'd be sitting there trying to do my homework, and i'd have to go searching back through the text to find the formulas, which was annoying. I'd recommend writing the formulas out seperatly, of using one of those quick-study guide things that fits into a 3-ring binder.

Also, beware, some of the answers in the back of the book are incorrect and/or don't match what's in the solutions manual.

To tell you frankly I am very poor in Chemistry. This book has been a great help in understanding facts. The book is wonderfully illustrated with examples and sample problems. This is a better or easier reading book than say Brady Senese (which is also a very good book btw)

I had the fabulous experience of using this book at the college of where one of the professors used to teach so it was shoved down my throat how great this book is for two semesters. I have to say it's not too bad halfway through, it uses plenty of interesting diagrams to simplify the material or even add more information that couldn't be put in the text, it has interesting everyday examples of how the concepts fit in, or even easy experiments. One could reasonably get through the first half of the book (up to Chapter 9) without the CD and have a basic understanding of chemistry. The rest of the book goes straight downhill with explanations however. It tends to skip over details. You also need an EXTENSIVE mathematical background to understand even any remote concept past chapter 9, and in the examples showing how to do many of the formulas, steps are skipped leaving you to wonder what is going on. The diagrams get much more involved with way too much detail, or lacking explanation of the detail. The CD is really where the entire package fails though, as the questions for the chapters often do not relate at all, are set up to trick the student because the tiniest detail will be so complex, and when you do get a question wrong, it does not really help you to understand where to look for help or how to fix the problem you made. Most of the problems you're likely to make on the questions are extremely complex mathematical errors. Basically you have to make sure you have a masters in mathematics to even understand some of the examples in the CD, and there's no way to get through it without the help of an actual human being. The book seriously needs a much better editor, there's no need to skip over so many details on a subject that is often very difficult to so many students, especially those lacking a strong math background which is not always required for entry level chemistry.

Although the intent of this undertaking was most commendable, and with all due respect to Father Bannon, the writing style is disconnected, complex and difficult to follow. Quite understandable when one attempts to cover three and a half centuries of conquest and subjugation into two hundred thirty odd pages. The overabundance of names, events, places and dates generates much confusion.
Nevertheless, I did glean some unknown particulars on the Spanish Borderlands which I previously did not know before.
Five stars for a great bibliography and one star for coherence.

As one of the volumes in the Holt, Rinehart and Winston "Histories of the American Frontier" series, this work provides an extensive look at Spanish expansion and activities in what was called by Herbert Eugene Bolton, The Spanish Borderlands, from the 1513 landing of Juan Ponce de León in Florida, to Mexican Independence in 1821. Utilizing an extensive array of primary and secondary source materials, he traces the history of Spanish northward movement out of Aztec Mexico in three separate pronged movements in time-one up the West coast of Mexico; the second up through what is now New Mexico and the last into Texas. He essentially points out a difference between Anglo-American approaches and the Spanish, seeing the areas of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California which are presented as basically defensive enclaves, especially after the late 18th century. Importantly, those that moved north into what later became part of the United States did not enjoy the overall freedom that their counterparts further north later enjoyed. A basic thesis is that Spain did not allow the "rugged individualism" so notably applicable to the Anglo-Americans. Initially motivated by avarice, the Conquistador's explored great portions of areas now incorporated into the United States. Nonetheless, after 1543, the Spanish were driven more by a genuine religious concern for Amerindians, influenced greatly by the Franciscan and Dominicans, and somewhat the Jesuits. Hence, using the mission church to convert and pacify Indians, the presidio became a support to an essentially religious motive with a civil end-for which they were quite successful until they met the nomadic Indians from the Plains. Bannon's narrative, at times, seems overburdened with details and names, but this is the nature of historical writing. Overall, this book will be more appreciated by those already possessing a good knowledge of American history; in the end, Bannon effectively carried on the work of his mentor, Bolton, providing a more complete look at a part of history that has been essentially overlooked

Bannon writes haphazardly and with no structure whatsoever, all he seems to be concerned with is filling the pages of his borderland history with insignificant missionary characters who play little part in the development of the Spanish frontier. The book is boring and very disjointed and difficult to read.

Originally published by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston in 1970, I first read Father Bannon's history of "The Spanish Borderlands Frontier" while in graduate school in 1980. I recently reread it to see if it still offered a useful overview of the subject. It does, despite the publication of David J. Weber's excellent "The Spanish Frontier in North America" (Yale University Press, 1992), which covers the same period and location and should be read in conjunction with Bannon's work. The Spanish borderlands was first denoted by Herbert Eugene Bolton, the great early twentieth century historian of the Spanish experience in North America, as the region originally settled by Spain but later incorporated into the United States. Bannon was one of his last students and the inheritor of his scholarly mantle.

"The Spanish Borderlands Frontier" presents a balanced and thorough history of Spanish exploration and settlement from Ponce de Leon's landing in 1513 to the end of Spain's North American empire in 1821. It is a magisterial textbook that presents an authoritative account of the Spanish colonial period in North America. It focuses largely on the political, economic, and religious activities of the borderlands, and always explores the relationship of the European conquerors to the Native American population. It takes a largely geographical approach, moving from region to region analyzing the development of the borderlands over time.

Father Bannon's work is still quite excellent and I applaud the University of New Mexico Press's decision to keep it in print more than thirty years after its original publication. Highly recommended!

The 'Introduction' says Europeans wondered how the American press was forced into supporting the Warren Report (p.x). Two-thirds of Americans did not believe the Warren Report (p.xi). The reason is the facts belied the lone-gunman theory. Mark Lane (and others) were in the first wave that attacked the Warren Report. In 1975 George O'Toole published "The Assassination Tapes" that provided objective evidence for Oswald's innocence. This led to the House Select Committee that re-opened the investigation; this was followed by a new wave of books. The media's trumpeting of the lone-gunman theory does show their relationship to the Government (p.xii). Both are mostly owned by the corporate ruling class. [Americans learned about government lying in May 1960.]

This is a very readable and detailed book even if it has few photographs. It is a history of Lane's efforts at that time. When the lone-gunman theory was rejected in Europe the public was told Europeans are conspiracy-minded (p.12). When Americans rejected this theory the corporate media claimed Americans are conspiracy-minded! [The Federal government originated in the Philadelphia conspiracy of 1787 when dozens of men plotted to overturn the existing government.] The then unavailable evidence was consistent with innocence while the available statements were consistent with guilt (p.13). Censorship continued (pp.14-16). Marguerite Oswald asked Mark Lane to represent her deceased son before the Warren Commission; this was refused (p.18). The experience at JFK airport sounds like a comedy if it wasn't so serious (p.22). Was Mark Lane banned from the broadcast media (p.25)? Lane tells of other suppressions of his story by the corporate media.

This book is too detailed to mention the many chapters. The appendices reproduce the actual letters with their markings. Part One summarizes Lane's experiences after the assassination and his publishing of "A Rush to Judgment". In Part Two Lane discusses the defenders of the Warren Report and their many mistakes. Part Three discusses the testimony about the Grassy Knoll and the New Evidence about the wounds. The entrance and exit wounds could have only come from the front (neck to below shoulder, Appendix X). Why are these public documents restricted to the public (p.232, 235)?

Around 1976-77 Congress re-opened an investigation into the assassination. More evidence was now available as it was no longer censored. Many more books were published, few defended the Warren Report. One book on the JFK assassination, "The Zapruder Film" by Professor David Wrone, explained that figure in the doorway of that picture was Oswald; two movies taken from across the street showed nobody at that 6th floor window. Oswald in the doorway refutes the Warren Report and proves JFK was killed by a conspiracy that has not been exposed. One book that provided an explanation was "Act of Treason" by Mark North, a law professor at the University of Texas in Austin Texas. These later books had more facts and the experience gained from the early critics of the Warren Report.

While it seems obvious that the main reason this book was written was because Mark had a runaway, suprise best-seller with his first book and his publisher wanted a follow-up, this IS a decent volume. There is some intersting info. on Secret Service agent Abraham Bolden, as well.
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