John Winston Books

Between the early 1950s and the early 1960s, Winston published a line of 36 handsomely packaged juvenile science fiction books. If they were not usually as good as the better juveniles of Robert A. Heinlein or Andre Norton, the level of writing was generally quite good. The Winstons are something of collector's items today. I remember saving up my allowance and work money as a boy until I had enough to buy a Winston-- the princely sum of $3.95. It is not uncommon for a Winston in mint condition to sell for twenty or thirty dollars today.

Lester del Rey wrote more of the Winston novels than any other single writer, sometimes under his own name and sometimes under a variety of pseudonyms. As you might expect, his performance was uneven. He would sometimes turn out an excellent book, sometimes a mediocre one. _The Mysterious Planet_ (1953) was an early Winston published under the pseudonym of Kenneth Wright. It has since been reprinted in paperback using the del Rey byline. Not to keep you in suspense, the novel is an average performance for del Rey-- neither his best nor his worst.

The action centers around a mysterious Planet X which has moved inside the orbit of Pluto. There are hints that there might be life on the planet-- hostile life. The Space Patrol is sent to investigate, and the hero is lucky enough to be included on the crew. But complications crop up. They include a spoiled, immature, irritating, yet somehow amiable reject from the Academy, a young survivor in a derelict, a black spaceship with weapons that seem to be invincible, and an unusual alien trap.

It's basically good fun. But the ending, in which men of peace and good will save the day with a series of grand gestures, strikes me as preposterous. It may be appealing to many youngsters. But I still say that it's preposterous. There are a number of small details that are now out of date. Pluto is considered a planet, not part of the Oort Cloud. At one point a character types a report on a typewriter. Del Rey can hardly be faulted for having these details in his novel in 1953. But modern readers today can't help but notice them.

If you can, get the original hardback with the spectacular orange Alex Schomburg cover. But if you can't, don't pass over the Del Rey paperback.

I purchased this for my niece who really liked the Disney movie. This book is a bit different than the Disney film, does not contain many pictures, and was not really appropriate for her, age 2. It's a nice story but given the large amount of text this is better for older readers.

Alternatively, there is a Small One book based on the Disney film that is more for the younger set.

sincerely,
R.C.

I am a great student at college who loves school and I had to take a mandatory history class. I'm not good at history and do not like it but since I wanted a good grade in the class I had to read this book. This book was confusing to me and was not in a logical order. It kept jumping around from topic to topic in the first part of the book. It was too wordy and did not get to the important facts.

I have been using this text in my American history survey's at a major university for about the last four years. I chose it in the first place because, unlike most of the other texts I have received for consideration, its focus is more upon information than interpretation. Moreover, it avoids the kind of pc bs one finds so pervasive in academia today i.e. it does its best to be objective, does not begin with the premise that the United States is an evil empire, and does not enter into the fantasy that anyone other than a a bunch of dead white guys were primarily responsbile for the creation of this country, its evolution, and its institution. This is the ideal text for someone who wants to text history as an account of the past; it is a poor textbook for someone who wishes to teach history as a vehicle of their far left agenda.

I teach an accelerated college prep US History class in a high school. Our department selected this book before I arrived at the school in what I've gathered was a flurry of political correctness hysteria to "The American Pageant's" emphasis on white men. Even if Murrin's book makes an effort to be more PC (sometimes to a fault) it makes the much bigger mistake of assuming that readers already have a fairly sophisticated background in American History. I think it's interesting reading, but then again, I have a degree in history, so trying to learn how the concept of 18th century mercantilism is connected to the 19th century concept of progress all on the same page isn't really a major feat of mental gymnastics. Most teachers in my department don't even use the book because it's too confusing for the kids. If I could have my way, we'd just sell them all and buy something that's (gulp) a little simpler.

To its credit, the book has a nice website with lots of maps and images and resources - but in my memory as a high school student (which was during the age of the internet), a clear, concise textbook was a foundation of learning and more important than a nice website. This textbook is no learning tool.

$95 for a paperback book is highway roberry.

Have been pricing out college textbooks on Ebay, Amazon, and the college bookstore. It's a bloody medieval guild these publishers have going here and professors who insist on the latest editions of texts are aiding and abetting the rip-off.

This is monopolisitic practice if I've ever seen it. If the industry doesn't rachet down this greed-fest, someone else will - and as far as I'm concerned, it can't happen too quickly. Shame on you all.

In reference to the other reviewers, the complaints here don't seem to address the actual content of the book - $95 is expensive for a paperback, but that's why the same book can be found for $20 under Used&New.

ANYWAY, I'm a high school student who ordered this for use in my AP United States History course this fall. The book is clearly laid out, the prose is engaging, and the parts that I have read so far are comparable to(and in some instances this one surpasses) Alan Brinkley's "American History: A Survey", which is ranked far better. I'll probably drop another review next year after the AP exam, but it seems to be clear and concise, and the resources on the CD-rom are invaluable.

I have finished a 314 level class at OSU for my Spanish minor using this book and I hated it all the time. I am Latino and live in Centro America for many years. This book over generalized many too many things and romanticized many others. It sacrificed too many details and it kept on saying Hispanic too many times. This book is from a point of view from an outsider who does not seem to understand the rich and divorce Latino culture.

I do not recommend this book for anyone to read if they hope to learn something.

The dilivery time was great however, I didnt recall the specifics of the book stating that there was tons of writing in the book, to the point of not being able to read certain sections.

This book has various mathematical errors in some of the key equations. Even the equation for the basic CPC is wrong.

Yet, in the first book, by Welford and Winston, the key equations are all correct. [Welford was a meticulous proof reader.]

This latest edition is a badly flawed book because of poor (if any) proof reading.

Get the 1st edition if you can (1978 version), to get the correct basic math, then use this edition for a reasonable review of more recent stuff.

Anyone contemplating buying the online-edition of this book should be forwarned: All the appendices, which constitute 77 pages of important reference material, have been left out of this edition. You can see what you're missing in the table of contents, but that's all you'll get to see. The physical book is 491 pages long, while the online-edition gives you only 414 pages.

When I attempted to bring this to the attention of the Amazon customer support staff, I was informed that my message informing them of this technical error was itself lost due to another technical error.

If I cannot have a refund, at least I can save my fellow customers from a frustrating experience.

As I am a longtime admirer of Winston Churchill -- whose face and name is prominently featured on the dust jacket cover -- I eagerly looked forward to receiving this book. However, after reading through several chapters and numerous passages I ended up tossing the book into a pile that will eventually be given away as charity to the local library.

Notably, the title of this book, "The Fringes of Power", is an apt description for this work; and that title should be taken at face value. This book is very much about the people who worked at the fringes of power; not those who truly wielded it. To paraphrase a famous American television hamburger commercial: "Where's the beef?" Colville gives us a "fluffy bun", but precious little beef.

First of all, this diary is not written by Churchill, but by someone who worked with Churchill. We are promised "the incredible inside story of Winston Churchill", yet we get the John Colville story instead. Indeed, we are reading Colville's diary; not Churchill's. These are Colville's thoughts, his impressions, and most notably, the minutiae of his daily life -- where he ate dinner, with whom, and even what the weather was like on a given day. In some passages, this reads more like introspective poetry rather than solid insights into Churchill the man.

Secondly, there are a great many names of people and players who are identified in this diary, some of them quite obscure. But unless you are a Churchill historian, they will likely mean little to the average reader. Indeed, there are esoteric qualities about Colville's writing which seem impenetrable unless you are British, and a scholar of British politics during the run up to and during the World War II era.

Moreover, Colville's recollections of his life as a soldier add little but distraction. His recollections of his work for Neville Chamberlain is of doubtful utility, unless of course Neville Chamberlain is someone you wish to study. On that point, count me out. So, buyer beware: this is not truly a book about Churchill as the dust jacket cover suggests.

Finally, this book did little to satisfy my curiousity about Churchill. Were this Churchill's diary, I would be thrilled. But alas, it was written by a man who was acquainted with and for a time worked with Churchill. But there are many others who worked for and with Churchill who offer much better insights to the man.

As mentioned earlier, if you are a serious historian, intimately familiar with the entire cast of characters in the British political scene during Churchill's tenure in parliament and as Prime Minister, you may find this book interesting and enlightening. But if you are like many of us who want to know Churchill and care little about fringe minutiae, I would respectfully submit that there are much better offerings, including of course, the fine work of Martin Gilbert, Churchill's official biographer.

I go to Bishop Dunne Catholic High School in Dallas, Texas. We never use this book. It is basically the appendix of a Literature book. It tells you all the rules for this and that and stuff that I never need. (Anyway we have a grammar book that tells us all those things) If you need something for English reference for things like abbreviations and grammar rules I reccomend you buy it. If not don't bother.

Boy, how I used to enjoy some of the juveniles of Lee Correy and Milton Lesser when I was a kid! And they do have some virtues that may still appeal to young readers-- the gee-whiz scientific enthusiasm of Correy and the slam-bang action of Lesser. Some of the values that these authors champion-- individualism, courage, honesty, and sportsmanship-- are appropriate for youngsters even today.

But Correy and Lesser were writers whose novels had thin plots, cardboard characters, and a rough style of writing. And when the authors chose to do so, they had their characters sing "songs" that were some of the worst science fiction poems ever committed to paper. There is one such song in _Stadium Beyond the Stars_ (1960):

"_Oh, Sirius is far away, far away, far away!
We've journeyed to the Milky Way, Milky Way, Milky Way..._"

The basic idea behind _Stadium Beyond the Stars_ is actually a good one. What would happen if you held some Intergalactic Olympic Games on a planet near the center of the galaxy? And what would happen if some athletic ships made first contact with a nonhuman life form on the way to those games? Lesser has developed one futuristic sport in detail-- spacesuit racing. But all other sports mentioned are old ones such as swimming, wrestling, or the shot put. What other futuristic sports might there be? Space polo? Four-D chess? Free-fall soccer? What would an Olympic stadium of the future be like? How would conditions on other worlds such as different gravity or atmosphere have to be dealt with? What sort of rules and regulations must athletes of the future follow? We are never told. I wish that Lesser had fleshed out his background a bit more.

If you can, I recommend that you get the Winston hardback edition with the original, spectacular cover by Mel Hunter.

_Addendum_: Since writing the above review, I stumbled across a similar novel, A.M. Lightner's _The Space Olympics_ (1967). It is also a juvenile, with a similar plot in which the hero eventually uses his athletic skills to save the lives of others. Like Lesser's novel, the athletic events are essentially the same as those of today. A more imaginative treatment of future athletics may be found in Piers Anthony's Appretice Adept series of novels.

In "These Men Shall Never Die," Lowell Thomas, noted radio personality of the day, has written a collection of stories about the heroes of WWII's first years.
Thomas has a knack for the sensational and many of the stories have factual errors, the consequence of many wartime publications. This book was written in 1943 and reflects a wartime propagandist view of warfare and is not one of Thomas's best works.
As a scholarly reference, this book points out unwittingly the disparity between awards for senior officers and lower officers, noncommissioned officers and enlisted.
It is a shame that commanders and other military authorities maintained throughout history a reluctance to award top medals to the men who certainly faced the most danger (unless the President, Congress or the public intervened). This reveals the unfortunate class or caste distinctions that in one form or another still exist in today`s military.
Perhaps the most notable viewpoint I took from this book is that officers, particularly those above field grade, should not be eligible for the Medal of Honor as was originally intended.
Shame on those within the military hierarchy who refused to award men medals they certainly deserved for fear of having their egos or service surpassed or overshadowed.
Thomas makes no such commentary, but I feel remiss if I don't acknowledge now what scholars and readers of the past seem to have overlooked.
REVIEW EVERY BOOK YOU READ, DEMAND BETTER LITERATURE THROUGH YOUR OPINIONS!

This textbook does such a horrible job of explaining parts of speech, correct usage and creative writing, it should be banned from every classroom. It is as dull and confusing as any textbook in history. It's interesting that the textbooks used 30 years ago for English classes were much more well-written and clear than this. You want students to learn to use the English language correctly? Bring back the old tried-but-true methods.