Richard Ford Books

The cover on this book is beautiful and that is why I bought it. It certainly should increase sales. Most of the articles are, obviously, by people who grew up in Mississippi although the editors have stretched this point a bit to include some well known names and a diversity of backgrounds. Many of those included no longer live in the state, and what they have to say about growing up in Mississippi leaves much to be desired. And yes, I did grow up in Mississippi and no longer live in the state (which I regret) and I wasn't asked for MY story, but that is beside the point. It would have been nice to include more people who actually are now real Mississippians.

I purchased this book as reference for the current year. Poor choice. It does not have the changes for the last two years integrated into the text. If I was teaching a tax class I would use this book as my text. It is very complete and the exercises have very real world situations.

Ever wonder what simple changes add for hp? The specific impact runner length has on tq & hp? Like to see dyno tests while only changing to the various size TB or MAF? If so, this is the book. I was referred to this book and came away feeling I learned a lot. It does away with many of the myths. Has also become a great reference tool when considering certain changes.

p.s. After reading the book I doubt the author is trying to decieve the reader with the claim of 2000 dyno runs. I'll bet it was the real number of pulls it took to gather the data. I'm sure it involved multiple pulls per setup, per test not just one.

While I think this book has some good information, I think anyone who regularly reads Muscle Mustang and Fast Fords will have read most of this already. It states there are 2000 dyno runs, I counted, and came up with around 180. While this is a lot, most of this was already in MM & FF magazine. They didn't even test a vortech/paxton centrifugal supercharger on a stock engine. They did this test for a Kenne Bell, but it would be a great comparison to test the KB against a centrifugal supercharger. Overall, I am dissapointed, I think most of this is regurgitated material.

While I think this book has some good information, I think anyone who regularly reads Muscle Mustang and Fast Fords will have read most of this already. It states there are 2000 dyno runs, I counted, and came up with around 180. While this is a lot, most of this was already in MM & FF magazine. They didn't even test a vortech/paxton centrifugal supercharger on a stock engine. They did this test for a Kenne Bell, but it would be a great comparison to test the KB against a centrifugal supercharger. Overall, I am dissapointed, I think most of this is regurgitated material.

I am a Mustang enthusiast who was sorely disappointed with this book. While this book provides dyno evidence for most enthusiasts¡¯ anecdotal knowledge, it misses important tests of the standard equipment and combinations that most gear heads want to know about.

For instance, in the section which compares cams on a typical street/strip 5.0 setup w/ extrude honed Dart Iron heads, ported Cobra intake, and long tube headers, the dyno results purport to compare 8 different cams. However, in reality, the cams tested were only from three different companies: Ford Motorsport, Lunati and Crane. Additionally, the cams were not really selected for optimal use with that particular combination. A more valid test would have compared similar cam grinds among 8 different companies.

The intake section has similar shortcomings as well. The dyno results of many tests that most reasonably knowledgeable mustangers don't really care for are reported in great detail. Many comparisons are made between OEM and slightly modified OEM components vs. FRPP/SVO components. There is absolutely no comparison among the different aftermarket intake manufacturers represented here. Although there are comparisons of ported vs. unported cobra/GT40 style intakes and extrude hones OEM intakes reported here, this information is only useful to the novice who is looking to get his/her feet wet.

The supercharger and exhaust modification sections are better, but lack key dyno comparisons as well. I give credit to Richard Holdener for compiling such a comprehensive array of cheap and/or free modifications for the novice to try, but most enthusiasts would have tried these modifications already. The layout of the book is very easy to read, well organized and very well written. But, in my estimation, it is a book most suited for the novice seeking optimization of stock or SVO/FRPP components. This book is not for the gear head that knows which combo they want to run, but is seeking hard evidence from the dyno to make a particular component or brand choice.

Peace

This book was a joy to read - and to begin the journey of Frank Bascombe as Ford travels through his life here and in the other two Frank Bascombe novels I will read next. Ford is an extraordinary author, because as he tell of the lives of his characters, he's also telling our own in a way that makes us understand ourselves better. Who can't use more of that?

This book sucks. It's an overgrown weedpatch of gratuitous description. Ford has a formidable talent for using a lot of words to say little. I would have liked, at least, to learn a little bit about the world of sportswriting, and even in that I was disappointed.

My wife and I agree... this book, how can we say it... has great and continuous vaccuum. We purchased it to take with us and read on a 16 hour flight to Australia. It was my turn first. To say the least, I'm certainly glad our pilot was not also reading it. Pointless, self indulgent, and boring. I made it 60 pages before I went back for a second read of the Airline's flight magazine. It is extremely rare that I don't finish a book, but in this case I can't imagine anything more torturous.

My wife took it as more of a challenge. A challenge to make it through the book... and that she did... reading it because "Surely, it must get better". It apparently never did. She WAS going to read Independence Day... not anymore.

What exactly *do* you do to get a Pulitzer anyway. He couldn't possibly have upgraded his style that much could he??

Never has a book involving cocaine smuggling, at least three murders, and Mexican prisons been so boring or unsatisfying. I've read Ford's Frank Bascombe novels and the difference in the writing and subject matter (to use the old cliche) is night and day while there's no difference at all in the lack of passion in the characters, specifically Harry Quinn, the protagonist.

Harry doesn't care if he gets Sonny out, he only cares about getting himself and his wife Rae out of Mexico alive, which may or may not happen, we never even really find that out. Rae doesn't even care about getting her brother out, so both her and Harry are making a half-hearted attempt. This is great, complex stuff, but from a reading standpoint it comes off as cold and clinical, to the point where I never cared if Harry or Rae lived or died. Heck, if one of them died, maybe the other would have had to experience some emotion then.

I'm not saying I want a lot of melodrama, but I do want to feel SOMETHING. I hate putting down a book with a weary sigh and saying, "Yeah, so?" It means the author failed to deliver the goods, although in this case maybe Ford got what he was after, because I felt as cold and detached from everything as Harry.

In terms of the writing, this is nowhere near the caliber of "The Sportswriter" or "Independence Day". The sentences are choppy and filled with a lot of amateurish telling instead of showing and useless adverbs. The characters are all so bland and detached that I never care about them. The action is handled so poorly that in big moments, like the gunfight at the end, I didn't know what was happening. The dialogue was stiff and unbelievable. And of course the plot really never went anywhere. Based on all this, there's simply nothing for me to recommend with this book.

Do yourself a favor, if you want a book with drugs and action, then there are probably plenty of others more exciting. Or if you want decent literary fiction that's a better example of Ford's writing, check out his Bascombe novels. Those might not make you feel much at the end either, but they are written better. Good luck to you if you still try this book, you'll need it.

Mr. Ford has an excellent prose style and as I began reading the book, I thought it was going to be excellent. The author seems unable to continue with anything interesting and the novel runs out of gas by the half way point. The characters are apathetic regarding their lives and their world and make the reader feel the same. In the end, I no longer cared about the characters (even loathed some of them) and I was happy when I reached the end.

Richard Ford is an incredible writer. His works dig deep into the character's psyche. Ford usually finds his characters in the midst of a down cycle in their lives and explores their personal experience as they deal with life's trauma.

Not the usual novel nonsense where everything ends happily ever after, but a real life portrayal as an individual encounters the nitty gritty essentials of life and confronts the tough choices offered.

Ford is among the best American writers alive today and I think that this is his best book.

My assumption is that the only people who would be interested in this collection are people who already have a fairly substantive knowledge of the Watergate episode. Having said that, there is really nothing new or overly interesting in this collection. This item is 156 photocopied pages that contain a dozen or so bad document reproductions. The rest is a cursory history and description of the ensuing events. One point that should be made is that the pages are in a 3-ring binder and are completely out of order. Oh yeah, the pages aren't numbered either, so putting them in order took some time. My advice would be to read about Watergate on the internet if you don't know anything about it. If you do know the basics of the story, you won't learn anything new with this item.

By the way, these 156 pages are also included in 21st Century Complete Guide to the Nixon Presidential Archives: President Richard M. Nixon, Nixon Administration, Watergate, Impeachment and Resignation, ... Presidential Library Material (CD-ROM), which is over 10,000 pages on CD and it sells for less than this primitive offering.

When I saw the publisher's comment "Before the curtain rises ...careful attention to planning, budgeting and scheduling must be overseen" I thought I had found a book that would help me in my task of setting up a budget and developing a stratigic or at least a single project plan for a new theater company. Wrong. While there are useful forms for scheduling certain tasks as well as some accounting forms, neither the Index or the Table of Contents mention planning or budgeting. This book seems to assume that planning and budgeting have already taken place. For this reason, I was rather disappointed in the content and felt misled by the publisher's comment.

Having said the above, however, I do believe the forms are well put together and will save the weeks of work it would take to design them, and even more time lost if they were not available. This book is really about day-to-day operations and not about the broader tasks of management. I believe if the book had been titled "Theater Office Forms and Guidelines" or "The Administration of Theater Operations", I would still have purchased it and would not have been disappointed in the content.