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As a mom of a 24 and an 8 year old (I know . . . big surprise) I am firmly of the opinion that Dr. Seuss is the greatest American philosopher! In this book he urges us to try things that we may be afraid of or even repelled by. Many folks think this book applies only to food but I think he is urging us to be more brave in all avenues of life. We need to listen to those around us urging us expand our horizons. I believe that if we go for it and 'take a bite of the egg and ham' then we too will say "Thank you, thank you Sam-I-am."

I forgot how much I loved this book until I began reading it for my 3-year-old. She loves it, and I love reading it to her (unlike the ELMO books which our daughter loves and I dread). You really can't go wrong with Dr. Seuss. The illustrations are imaginative and the writing is really a work of genius in children's literature. I can't recommend this highly enough.

Being the cruel and heartless person that I am, it was been years since I have bothered to so much think about this book. But, it being the week of the celebration of Dr. Seuss I have been reading various Suessian books to them. I forgot what a fun tongue-twister of a tale this was! My kids were able to repeat entire sections of the book with me and the illustrations are entirely animated without moving. Awesome book.

This is such a fun book. Who doesn't love Dr. Suess's Green Eggs and Ham? Great rhmes, a lot of sight words and a lesson about trying things before you decide how you feel about them.

This work, I find, is most easily read as a very simple allegory; Sam-I-Am is, of course, René Descartes (his name is a clever clue to this fact; a clear reference to Descartes' famous "I think, therefore I am" statement, which we can extend upon this reading to "I think, therefore I am Sam!"), while the unnamed character represents the millions of unnamed target readers of Descartes' "Discourse on the Method". The first rule of Cartesian method--that we cannot accept anything as true that we do not know for certain--is the work's primary focus; the unnamed character accepts his dislike for green eggs and ham as truth, despite the fact that he does not know this for certain. In accordance with Descartes' first rule, Sam-I-Am knows the unnamed character must try green eggs and ham before he can take such assumptions as truth. However, the book also explores Descartes' provisional axioms on customs and culture: that we must maintain custom in our public lives while we are searching for truth. This is illustrated by Sam-I-Am's willingness to illuminate the truth on a plane, on a train, in a box, with a fox, and in various other states that may exemplify Seussian culture. The pictures and incessant rhyming sometimes distract from the true focus of the work, but I still find it an invaluable resource in Cartesian studies.

Knowing only that "Robert Penn Warren" was a famous author of some kind, I blindly plucked this book from the shelf of a local library. As I read - - which was sometimes feverish, and sometimes with some amount of irritation - - I did not pursue any reviews or advance information regarding the plot, the characters, or the author's language. That said, I formed my opinion based entirely on my own feelings, as a person living in the 21st century who is exposed to today's barrage of media, television, literature, and current events.

For me, the story of Willie Stark is quite secondary to that of Jack Burden. In ways, I barely noticed the "political" aspects to it, or even the supposed evolution of Willie Stark from a man of ideals to a dirty political operative (he was probably the very same person from start to finish). Jack, the storyteller, is a man in his mid-thirties who is generally disillusioned with the world. On rare occasion, he is excited and happy about something, but he - - as the primary character of the book - - is mostly sour, sarcastic, and patronizing. I was never sure whether to wish the best for him. I really wanted to feel positively about someone, and he was the obvious pick, but ultimately I decided that he could fall down an elevator shaft and make a life in the basement of the building, and I would be alright with the direction.

Over the course of a month, I picked up the book and put it down several times. If I were taken with the story, of course I would have cleared my calendar and given it the attention I felt it required - - which I share only to suggest that I do get carried away by novels. But this book just wasn't that book at all. Along with this, as I put down and picked up the book, I did encounter a special danger: I would have to retrace my steps a bit to remember where I was if I left it just two days ago, requiring that I thumb backwards 15 pages and re-read. A modern-day novel would let you do this more easily because they tend to thread events, character dialogue, and internal musings together more succinctly and coherently. In 10 pages, the modern-day novel might give the main character four minor challenges and connect that character multiple times in exchanges to other characters, while this 1946 novel in 10 pages will have only shared the musings of the main character about some unanticipated, and sometimes very uninteresting, thoughts about how a barn sticks up out of the mist, and how cows in the field see cars blazing down a highway.

Criticism aside, what this book does give a person today is an outlook of the world through the mind of someone (the author) who lived a thoughtful life over 50 years ago. And even the wordiness - - though dizzying, tiring, and frustrating at times - - is a refreshing change for the reader who mostly reads novels written in the past several years, ones that focus less on description and more on keeping a frenetic pace and sequence of activity. I still maintain that in no way is this the "the best book," or even comes close to such a categorization, but Warren's All The King's Men is an interesting read from the standpoint of its own acclaim, history, and position in the literary world. I guess it's what you'd call a "classic." If you have a goal of reading a classic novel, and can afford the time to read well over 600 pages (and sometimes reread some of those pages), All The King's Men is a respectable choice.

To be honest, I originally had a tough time getting into this book. The first 100 pages were a bit confusing because I couldn't tell where the story was headed. However, I kept on reading and I'm glad I did. By the time I neared the end, I had to stay up until 2am to finish the book. The many subplots throughout the story unfolded in such a subtle way that I didn't realize until later that they were all building up to a beautiful, interwoven, complex, story of how people and the passage of time come together to create history and all of its truthful glory. This book is worth the read.

Emerson said of Plato's Republic, it is more than a book it is a world. This is also true of Penn Warren's classic political novel. But the political story of the rise and fall of the demagouge Willie Stark is just a veneer for the real story. The real story is the struggle of Jack Burden, the cynical and emotionally reclusive narrator, to understand himself and his role in the chaotic world that surrounds him. This book is a probing reflection into the soul on par with Miller's "Death of a Salesman." The movie starring Jude Law and Sean Penn did not do it any kind of justice. A must read.

This is an enjoyably turgid potboiler with large pretensions. The narrator's prose mixes tough-guy cynicism with over-the-top poeticizing. The author's literary ability is always in the foreground. Several stories, each entertainingly pulpy, are interwoven, except a historical romance that remains unrelated to the main plot. While basically chronological, the organization often makes better thematic than narrative sense. The weakness of the book is that almost all of it comes off as artifice and contrivance. Only Willie Stark and Jack Burden intermittently ring true. The other characters, especially the women, are props stuffed with clichés. The plots churn with coincidences and melodramatic events. And some passages are close to camp in their laughably extravagant rhetoric.

I put off reading this novel for almost twenty years from when it was first recommended to me for the simple reason that I dismissed as a "political" novel and, ergo, not of the first water. - How wrong can a prospective reader be?!? - To begin, this is not a "political" novel, per se, and the character of Willie Stark, as compared with the odyssey of Jack Burden, not very gripping. As another reviewer has mentioned, it is only political in the way that Oedipus Rex is political. What All The King's Men is, then, is a beautiful, hauntingly poetic, dark reflection on man's state in the world. It is an authentic American, modernist tragedy. And, like all great works of literature, it resonates in one's mind and heart long after the last page is read and the covers closed.

The other reviewers have covered the plots and subplots, so that there doesn't seem much to add save, that, for me, the most engrossing sections were Jack's accounts of his two journeys into the past, one to find "truth", the other to find "the facts" and his deeply poetic rendering of the development of his adolescent love for Anne Stanton, which comes as close to Proustian as anything else in literature.

I suppose I would go on to add a caveat here too. As I say, despite the book's somewhat pacific ending, the work is a tragedy, with the accompanying dark Weltanschauung inherent in an authentic tragedy. There are so many passages I could quote to exemplify this perspective to let the reader know what s/he is getting into here, but the best comes at the end of the fourth chapter, after Jack's first dive into the past:

"Cass Mastern lived for a few years and in that time learned that the world is all of one piece. He learned that the world is like an enormous spider web and if you touch it, however lightly, at any point, the vibration ripples to the remotest perimeter and the drowsy spider feels the tingle and is drowsy no more but springs out to fling the gossamer coils about you who have touched the web and then inject the black, numbing poison under your hide. It does not matter whether or not you meant to brush the web of things. Your happy foot or your gay wing may have brushed it ever so lightly, but what happens always happens and there is the spider, bearded black and with his great faceted eyes glittering like mirrors in the sun, or like God's eye, and the fangs dripping."

In other words, beware of trying to trip the light fantastic through this powerful novel.

My 3 1/2 year old loved this book. I read it to him one time and he memorized every word and recited it to his classmates and teachers at preschool the next day. We read it every night for the first week he had it.

I absolutely love this book. Its a great way to laugh your bad days away. I love reading it to my children and they thoroughly enjoy it.

I remember this book from when I was a kid. Now I read it to my daughter every night and she just absolutely loves it! I would reccommend this book to ALL families, even those without kids!

This book is excellent for children and adults as well. We all have bad days and this book will lighten your spirits.

This book is about a littly boy named Alexander who knew it was going to be a terrible day when he woke up with gum in this hair. And then his day got worse and work.

Parents will find this book is really helpful if you need a book to read to a discouraged child. It shows them that there will be both bad and good days in life.

This is an incredible book. Mr. Clancy has managed to weave an extremely complex story of drugs, betrayal, murder, honor and ultimately justice. Woven throughout this book's pages are many great moral values, creating a truly positive reading experience.
QUICK NOTE
This book has high levels of violence (hey it's a military novel) and not a little swearing. (Comprable every two hours of reading to a rated R war film.

Drug spy morals.


Jack Ryan is promoted, and not pleased to find out about very dodgy drug operations being run in Colombia.

He and a military officer work together when revenge is taken on the CIA for interfering in the drug business to try and salvage a dangerous situation.

A pretty standard Clancy book.

Being someone that is not really into reading books, this book totally took me away. I really felt like I was living the fight with the story. Great book, highly recomend it.

This is the best Clancy book I've read. It doesnt have much of Jack ryan but it does have a bit more about the military than some of his other books. It also has Mr. Clark in some action in the end.

In my teenager years, I loved reading Tom Clancy's novel. `Red Storm Rising', `The Hunt for Red October', `The Cardinal of the Kremlin' are stories engraved in my adolescent mind. Spies, technology, drama, heroic actions, people being proud of serving their country--not something I could learn from my upbringing in Spain. Later on, when I needed a break in college, I used to keep reading Tom Clancy: `Executive Orders', `The Bear and the Dragon'. I just loved it.
So I thought that reading an old novel starred by one of my heroes, Jack Ryan, would be an excellent company for my week vacation in South Carolina. And it was. But I realized that, this time, I didn't enjoy it that much. Maybe it was the low value ascribed to human life, maybe it was the parallelism I could draw with the present situation in the US and my current distaste with the old adagio `the end justifies the means', maybe I am tired from war, violence and terrorism from everyday news.
Anyway, if your conscience is so hardened that you don't care about this anymore, go for it. You'll have fun.
By the way, South Carolina was great: friendly people, warm and sunny weather, tasty food, nice beaches, and lots of history.

Lee is a lonely little boy dealing with his parents' divorce. He begins a correspondence with his favorite author, Mr. Henshaw. This letter writing helps Lee understand himself better.

I read this to my classes every year when we are learning about letter writing. It is a powerful novel that kids can relate to.

The beginning made me wonder so I wanted to read on.
The middle answered all my questions.
The ending was sad and happy at the same time.
This is why I liked Dear Mr.Henshaw!!!!!

I just finished reading a book called "Dear Mr.Henshaw". I think that it's just a waist of time writing letters. Some characters in the story are Leigh Botss, Mr.henshaw and Biscuit the dog. I think it's really interesting book. I liked the book because it's easy to read the book. It is no that complicated to read I also loved it because. It's too funny sad, and boring at times. I also thought that I would hate the book. But, once I opened and read it, I loved it so much. I also loved it because my friend recommended this book to me. I think the book is interesting to read.

I strongly disliked this book. this probably was one of the worst books I have ever read. The reason I somewhat enjoyed this book was making fun of it in class with my friend. I thought it was stupid and was boring. Don't read this Dear Mr. Henshaw, unless you like to mock of books.

The book I am reviewing is written by Beverly Cleary. It is a great book named Dear Mr. Henshaw. It is a book about a boy named Leigh Botts, he writes letters to his favorite author Mr.Henshaw. He writes about many of his problems such as his parents' divorce and trouble at school. I think this book deserves four stars because I like reading about realistic problems and people. I recommend this book to people who like realistic fiction in grades 3-5. Beverly Cleary also writes many stories like Ramona the Pest and Mouse and the motorcycle.

This is one of the best books I have ever read, and cried at the end.

My daughter had to read A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck for her 8th grade English class. We both read the book and both enjoyed it. We loved the characters, especially the grandmother. This is a wonderful book for young readers!

I read this aloud to my students each year and they LOVE it. Not only does it lead to discussions of the Great Depression and new vocabulary, it allows my students to see that a character, like Grandma Dowdel, is seldom one dimensional and can surprise the reader with her deep affection as well as her steely determination. Thank you, Mr. Peck, for this wonderful book and A Long Way from Chicago.

I just read the book A Year Down Yonder, by Richard Peck. The book is about 15 year old Chicago girl, Mary Alice, living in the Roosevelt recession. Mary has to move in with her outspoken, trigger-happy, grandmother because her parents can't afford to rent a big enough home.

Mary's first impression of her grandmother is much like everyone else's. She thinks she is quite odd. But once she gets to know her she finds out her grandmother is really a strong, brave, secure, caring, woman.

Mary and her grandmother have many adventures. They do everything from trapping foxes to baking pies. This sequel to the Newbery Honor-winning book A Long Way From Chicago is very well written and I enjoyed reading it very much.

By Val Charter (age 11)

This sequel to Peck's _A Long Way from Chicago_ focuses on a year spent "in the sticks" by Mary Alice Dowdel, grandchild of Mrs. Dowdel- the most intimidating woman in town. This book is by turns funny and heart-warming. This unabridged spoken word title is a great title for families to share.

this is one of Clancy's better novels, it has a little of everything, Military, intel gathering in the field, counter-espionage, and CIA operations. It isnt a big Clark book but it is still good.

The Cardinal of the Kremlin features a situation that could only been constructed by Clancy. The cold war is at its peak, and tensions are running high with both countries independently developing there own space laser systems. The Americans are doing fairly well and are advancing rapidly seeing as they know what it is that they are doing, but the Soviets are working with the best that they have and have already accidentally managed to create a working laser. CIA witnesses the laser blast and asks there inside man in the Soviet government CARDINAL to relay the info. It is now reveled that the CIA's inside man in the Kremlin is Colonel Filitov, the three-time hero of the Soviet Union and disgruntled patriot. But because CARDINALs courier is burned, they must retrieve their info some other way. The need Mary-Pat Foley to be a direct pick up with CARDINAL. The KGB catches them, but because Foley has diplomatic immunity she is deported but Filitov isn't so lucky. He is arrested. CIA knows what the Soviets do with spies so now they have to decide what to do about Filitov. Do they leave him to die or do they show loyalty to the agent that that loyalty provided information for over thirty years? The Cardinal of the Kremlin is a great book that is more Spy craft and ethics than action and gadgets.

I had read this book previously, but wanted to read it again. Clancey's books are just too good to read only once.

This book really makes me sad that the Cold War is over and the Soviet-American struggle and intrigue is a thing of the past.

CIA operatives struggle to get a Russian spy for America out of the Soviet Union before he is executed. Sounds simple but it's not and it takes great effort on the part of all involved. The husband-wife CIA team are great at what they do and make exceptional characters that you really want to cheer for like it's a football game or something. I like the way Mary Pat portrays herself as a bimbo but is secretly the brains of the operation.

God, I miss the Cold War...

I do not like Tom Clancy. I despise his totalitarian amoral politics and I canNOT stand him slapping his readers with them in his latest oversized and underwritten duds.

However, Tom Clancy was once an EXCELLENT technothriller writer. He might not have invented the genre, yet he launched it into the stratosphere.

This is HIS BEST BOOK and it is actually very good.
The mid-80's Cold-War atmosphere, the paranoia, the double-agents, the clandestine methods and the hardware are all expertly presented.
Now, him being, well...Clancy there still are stereotypes and bigoted characters galore. Deciding to overcome this however, the reader can actually enjoy this one.

Do not judge CARDINAL OF THE KREMLIN based on his deteriorated career.

Great Book!!!!
As a parent that reads ALOT to her two kids, I need books that will entertain me as well as them- and this is one of those books! The story is funny and the illustrations are wonderful!

This book is an excellent addition to any child's library. The board book edition holds up better to little ones who still chew on their books.

This book makes me chuckle when I'm reading it to my daughter. She's not sure why I think the illustration on the sand castle page with "she got pretty good" is so hilarious--- but it'll slay you if you're a grown-up. These books are really really witty. you hear this a lot- but they're great for kids AND grown-ups!

Visually playful, with arresting illustration and some fun page layout. Olivia's a spirited character for toddler girls--inquisitive, physical, testing limits. But after a few weeks of heavy rotation in our home months ago, we haven't returned to it much. One reason why: the only drama it has is family drama, not larger social drama. It doesn't give much of a picture of how the mysterious wider world works. No other characters have weight besides Olivia. Not enough story in the book to make it a must-have, even for NYC kids like mine.

I had seen this book in bookstores but didn't know how absolutely terrific it was until my daughter received it for Christmas this year. The first time I sat with her and read the book, my daughter really connected with the character of Olivia, who, like her, sings loudly, dreams of dancing, refuses to take naps, and conducts a bedtime story bidding war nightly.

My daughter loves all types of kids' stories, from fairy tales to more modern fare, but something in Ian Falconer's book really resonated with her to the point where she actually asks to read the story again and again in the same sitting (and not just as a ruse to forestall nap time or bedtime either). When I tire out after the fifth or so reading, she will flip through the pages and giggle -- I predict that this will be the first book she memorizes from cover to cover. I have never seen her so captivated by a book.

My wife and I love the book, too. It is a book which captures the essence of precocious girlhood to the point where we, like many other parents, are convinced that Olivia could very well have been based on our own little girl.

This Book is A must for All Students and Graduates in The Medical Field.
This will be a reference you can continue to use your entire career.

This medical school quality atlas of anatomy is as clear as possible for
such a complex subject. Good for medical professional or anyone who is interested. Artwork is the best.

I am taking anatomy online for nursing school, and this book definitely helps out with the quizzes for identifying parts. There is no explaining text, just pictures with labels, but it is so intricate, beautiful, and incredibly useful to any health student.

Clear pictures, clear labels, just about everything you would want to know is in this book. Or so Ive found. Only downside is no test to explain certain things.

This book is amazing. I've only been through some of the sections, but the pictures are so detailed that it takes time to observe each one in its entirety. My boyfriend and I are both pre-med and at first I thought I would buy a book for our entertainment only, but after I read many reviews of med students saying they used this book, I realized how important it would be to get this sooner rather than wait. Even if you are only interested in anatomy, this book has over 500 detailed, labeled pictures. Netter was a medical and artistic genius who meticulously drew and labeled each picture fully. This is a must have for those thinking about med school.

In writing 2010, Arthur C Clarke had to decide if he was going to sequel his book or the masterpiece that was the movie. He chose the movie and does indicate this before starting the story. The difference here is that 2001 the novel had the stargate on the Saturnian moon, Iapetus. Instead he writes as if the first novel followed the movie completely with the stargate orbiting Jupiter.

The book 2010 is very similar to the movie except for another ship from China landing on Europa and discovering life there just before the "Leonov" russian ship arrives in orbit. The "Tsien" the chinese ship discovers a creature from the ocean on Europa. It's too bad the movie did not include this as i think it would have made great cinema. There are some other chapters on Dave Bowman coming back to earth, visiting an old girlfriend and his mom in a nursing home. I really enjoyed the book as Athur C Clarke is so good at helping us understand the real science behind the story. For this alone i would recommend the book.

Post Discovery mission.


Several years after Bowman and company's original mission failure a new expedition is undertaken - this time to Jupiter, not to Saturn as in the previous novel, so following on from the film plot instead. It is a joint country mission as it is the Russians that have developed more advanced travel technology, the Chinese too it is discovered.

What follows is more of Bowman and the aliens and what they are trying to achieve.

Just an ok book, really.

2001 was a fantastic book, no doubt about it. 2010 was an even more fantastic book, no bones about it either. What's the connection between the two, besides the the obvious?

After reading 2010, 2001 reads more like a prequel than it does a stand alone one-off novel about the monoliths. The plot is just awe-inspiring becasue of the trip around the Jovian moons, their landscape and even the life on the moons. Reading the details given of Jupiter with its gas-cloud atmosphere, always reminds me of reading my favorite book - The Algebrasist by Iain M. Banks. The descriptions are atmospheric, dreamy and surreal. It's a wonderful journey to the Jovian system... and there's a good story behind it! The middle and end of 2010 are much more readable and sensible than the ending of 2001, which was silly to read.

After reading the mesmerizing 2001: A Space Odyssey, I was hooked. Odyssey Two is a daring and albeit interesting sequel; however, I was somewhat disappointed with the plot.

Nine years has come and gone since David Bowman was last heard of. Since then, an American-Russian expedition has been established to find out what happened and to recover the most coveted information in history. Along with Heywood Floyd, the team frets about the Chinese team, who covertly launched days before to steal the information. However, when Tsien, the Chinese ship, descends upon Europa for more fuel, they are destroyed by a mysterious plant-like lifeform. As the American-Russian team advances unobstructed toward Discovery, David Bowman has his sights back on earth. Now, only in the form of pure energy that can penetrate any system, biological or otherwise, Bowman is 'sent' by Monoliths to 'learn', to discover what is needed in order to continue the grand 'space experiment' began so long ago and initiated by the discovery of the Monoliths in 2001. As one odyssey continues in space, another is re-experiencing the mystery and bonds of humanity.

Clarke leads off and ends very well: it's exciting, mysterious, creepy, an all around great read; but the middle of the book was not only phlegmatic, but tedious and at times dull. It didn't really make sense other than an attempt to characterize the humanity of David Bowman, to make us feel like we know him or relate to him. It's a somewhat weak filler and doesn't as much to the story as it could have.

Then again, Clarke has never been that dynamic in terms of fleshing out his characters, which come off mechanical and wooden, one dimensional but not necessarily unimaginative, just impersonal and uncomfortable. But because Clarke's vision of the future is so FANTASTIC and SPINE-TINGLING, at times prophetic, it can play second fiddle and still be a remarkable story.

It is his ideas, his language, the style, the science, that is so magnetic, which is wonderfully rendered in this book. The short chapters keeps the suspense going and moves the action fast. There were parts that made me think that Clarke somehow has some eerie and creepy Nostradamian insight into the future, considering he wrote this sequel so long ago. But even with his skill and enviable talent, Odyssey Two could have been much better.

In every way, this book is worthy to succeed the masterwork 2001: A Space Odyssey. That is quite a rare thing, considering the hype and standard that its predecessor set.

Like the predecessor, this book is prophetic. In 1980's, only had the single-shot Apollo-Soyuz mission to build on. Now joint Russo-American spaceflight are standard operating procedures. But that is the job of science fiction--to blaze the trail.

I was surprised how well this book read. Either Clarke's style has improved immensely since penning or he is free to tell his own tale without the obsessive-compulsive perfectionist Stanly Kubrick constantly nit-picking, as described in The Lost Worlds of 2001. Maybe it is a little of both. Either way, this book was a breeze to read. Really, this book wanted to be read.

There are several discontinuities, however, that let me down. Not just the flip-flop of Saturn to Jupiter. Nor Clarke tweaking the story to bring it scientifically up-to-date--in fact, I appreciate him doing this.

The greatest strength of the "2001" books is that they take current science and take it a few steps into the future. So unquestionably you are getting science fiction, but it is realistic enough that you feel that NASA could announce any one of these programs in the next few months. As the blurbs on the flyleaf of the original run of 2001 said, , "You are commander of the USS Discovery . . ." It felt exactly like that!

The plot was squishy at times, and if Clake had done one or two more reivison, I imagine he would have gotten closer to the film version 2010: The Year We Make Contact, which had the better plot and plot twists.

But what bothered me are the changes that are really retroactive continuity changes. For example, Bowman is no longer the godling Starchild, but something less. The analogy of "pet dog" and an ever-present "leash" (Ch. 38) are a far cry from benevolent Clindar of the early drafts found in "The Lost Worlds of 2001." Remember that Bowman is a mirror character to Moon-Watcher. After getting the brain boost from the Monolith, each says the same thing "he was mater of the world, but he was not quite sure what to do next. But he would think of something." Now Bowman is a lapdog.

Also, Clarke paints himself into a logical corner. If Dave Bowman is "beyond love and hate, desire and fear"(Ch. 36)--the things that make us quintessentially human--, and if the Firstborn are in danger of evolving into "the stupefying boredom of absolute omniscience" (Ch. 52), they why bother with cultivating intelligence? The point of the monoliths is--admittedly in an indirect way--to stupefy intelligent species? Why bother to climb the top of the evolutionary ladder, if there is nothing at the top?

And then there is the assumption that omniscience is stupefying. Why does Clarke believe this? Where is his hard data?

I mention these three caveats solely because they are the cracks in the franchise's foundation. 2001: A Space Odyssey is euphoric, 2010: Odyssey Two is idealistic, 2061: Odyssey Three is optimistic, but 3001 The Final Odyssey ends up sarcastic. This book marks the beginning of the under-the-breath dread that rapidly crescendos into a scream. I would like to look the other way in this subtle matter, but I cannot. I respect the stores to well not to say something.