Saturn Books

Comprehensive and inclusive of almost anything you could think of. Takes a bit to get through because of all the big words and long sentences, but very absorbing. My understanding of this subject has grown immensely.

This book is an easy read for the beginner astrologer, which is my level of prior knowledge. It is clear to understand, with lots of examples.

From a psychological standpoint, it really can clear some strange things up for you, especially if you've got a million aspects to Saturn like I do. Totally clear, AND most importantly, she doesn't forcast the doom and gloom other idiot astrologers proclaim when talking about Saturn. Truth is, freedom isn't free, and if you've set yourself up to get it in this life, Saturn is your best friend. Yay!!!!! Liz Greene!!!!!!

...it's certainly a classic in psychological astrology that teach people to respect the laws of Saturn.

This book has some serious weeknesses:
1. The author seems to be confused about the nature of Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and thus she keeps on mislabeling the energies of these planets. She keeps on pointing out how misunderstood these planets are, and I think that notion applies to her first and foremost.
2. The book attempts to assimilate the occult perspective on outer planets, as it has been done by Alice Bailey, and the author seems to have bought wholesale into the Bailey's theories instead of developing her own understanding based on her own experience. Granted, that is hard to do with Saturn because of lengthy time-span involved into such a study, but the book would be a lot better had she done so. Unfortunately now it has a ton of hints and poetic allusions to the occult nature of Saturn and its myth, but severely lacks solid psychological perspective. A good book on Saturn, considering the natural Saturn-Moon opposition, would be an in-depth study of emotion and it's affect on how we function and build our lives. The author touches on it, but superficially. She talks about the pain of Saturn, but never explains why it is painful. She also talks about the rewards of Saturn, but doesn't give clues on how to turn Saturn into being rewarding. Where does it stop being painful and becomes rewarding? As a result, you find a lot of correlations to your life in this book, but absolutely no info on how to transform it. Thus Saturn will remain for you after reading this book what he has always been --"The Devil" and "The Great Malefic", something that will come and hit you on the head during the transit.
3. The writing style is nausating with "pie in the sky" metaphore. Saturn would appreciate a little more matter-of-factness and insight.

I thought the book was very informative and an easy read. It helps put things into perspective when your life feels out of control and is making no sense to you at the time..lol

I'd never heard of the "Saturn Return" before a friend gave me a copy of the author's other book, Fate of Your Date. A coupla months ago I'd just gotten out of a very, very bad relationship (thank god) and she wanted to lighten my load with a fun little guide to dating. But then I read up on the authors other projects on their website (Ivillage show, Elle magazine, etc.) and joined their Myspace page. Little did I know that I'd found the answer to all my suffering and angst over the past year. I turned 29 in October, and I'm right in the heart of my Saturn Return. Thank god for the Saturn Sisters and this empowering, life-affirming book. It explains why turning thirty isn't the end of the world, shows exactly how your birthday reveals your current experiences, and basically maps out your karma. It's totally all about knowing you're going thruogh the Saturn Return before you actually do. I have gotten the book for all my friends between 28 and 31, and everyone is relieved to know that they're not going crazy, they're just going through their Saturn Return.

Very interesting, could explain a lot of things. Coincidence? I'm not quite sure but it's worth reading if you're into astrology. It did get boring before you get to read about your sign placement in Saturn but the sign description was interesting and in my case right on. Got boring after that and was hard to keep my attention. Still worth a look if you're around the age of 30, looking for some possible explanations for the difficult times you may be encountering, and if you're at least intrigued by astrology.

This book changed my life! I can't believe the amount of insight the Saturn Return phenomenon can shed on this time in my life. I was blown away. Very funny and well-written. I am recommending this to all of my friends. I just dont understand why Amazon doesn't stock more of these books. My friend told me that they have to keep re-ordering so we have to wait?
Please order more of these so people can get this vital info asap!

This book came to me at the perfect time, like a gift from the gods. My life was breaking apart and I couldn't figure out why everything seemed to be happening at the same time. A friend told me that I was in my Saturn Return, and I had no idea what she was talking about. But I googled it and found this book (and the author's website) and the chapter that pertains to me is DEAD ON. They talk about different issues that come up for women about to turn thirty, with respect to their date of birth. I never thought that this stuff was valid before. But it was really uncanny how exactly what they wrote was happening to me. (And how these have been life-long issues for me.) Also, the writing is really down to earth and it's full of really useful information. The reviwer "Satire" is way off. It's not syrupy at all. It's funny, actually, and chatty, like an Oprah show. I haven't read a lot of astrology books, but this is by far the best one I've ever read.

This is an invaluable guide to the development of the Saturn rockets which lays out not only the history of the development but delves into technical matters and looks at the entities involved in its building. It is well researched and thorough but it is not exciting, even for somebody like me who pines for the past glories of the manned space program.
It would make a great reference but is not casual reading.

You have to WANT the information.

A great book, with lots of detail. It is amazing that the
von Braun/Nasa team got all that to work, as well as they did.
An amazing read. Some much testing was required, because the
computers of the time could not support the simulations.
Now, with our much faster and better computers, we can'tbuild a Saturn-V

This book is the most complete history of the Saturn launch vehicle family available. Author Roger Bilstein wrote this as an official history for NASA in the late 1970s, and it was originally published in 1980. This edition is paperbound and is published by the University Press of Florida. I was tempted to give the book five stars, but ultimately two things lowered it to four. First, the illustrations are quite poor. All are black and white and most are public domain images that are of low quality. Many are taken from much larger sources and compressed so that the legends and details are virtually or completely impossible to discern. There are many better illustrations available, and there is no reason that a modern reprint of this book should have such inferior illustrations, especially when such complex (and difficult to visualize) machinery is being discussed. The second and more minor reason for the loss of a star is due to the extremely annoying use of metric units (newtons, etc.) throughout the book, which was a misdirected Carter administration whim in vogue when this was written. The problem is not with the units themselves, but rather that all the original units the program worked with were English, and after conversion the numbers are extremely cumbersome to digest and work with: as an example I opened the text randomly to page 119 (which deals with F-1 thrust chamber and furnace brazing,) and found this example, which is typical, but not the worst: "the F-1 was designed to burn its propellants at approximately 79000 newtons per square centimeter (1150 pounds per square inch) at the injector face...." Given that virtually all other sources (and all original sources) cite English units, this is a needless complication that should have been revised.

Having noted the negatives, this book has a lot of positives: it has extremely detailed history on all the Saturn program iterations, including the often neglected Saturn 1 and 1B models. It also discusses proposed but unflown Saturn derivatives, and of course the mighty Saturn V. The book presents a background on previous programs and key personnel and developmental and design choices and rationale; the discussion of the pros and cons of cryogenic propellants in various applications is especially well written. Following this the different models of Saturn vehicle are detailed to include all stages, engines, systems, and Instrument Units (which were fairly similar throughout the program.)

There is enormous effort expended to detail the histories of the various stages and the individual histories of the individual rocket engines built. Several missions are examined in great detail, most notably AS-506, which was, of course, Apollo 11. After the discussion of the technical details of the Saturns, Bilstein presents an excellent examination of the logistics of Apollo and the management techniques used to oversee the design, construction, checkout, and launch of the vehicles. The book concludes with a treasure trove of appendices full of technical and other data, which serious space historians will find of enormous assistance.

This is overall a great book, and I recommend it highly to anyone serious about space history. It is not casual reading for most people, but is extremely well detailed, and were it not for the illustration issues (and metric units, to a lesser extent) this book would easily have been awarded five stars.

I'm an apollo nut and very much into the technical details of the program. This book is a good overview of the Saturn project and an excellent place to start if you are just beginning your adventure into history.
However I found the book to be lacking in detail when it comes to specific technological problems and how they were solved. One has to go to the more detailed sources (NASA press kits, 1st-person accounts, etc.) for the good stuff.
The book is written in dry, documentary fashion. It is factual (a NASA publication) but not an entertaining read.
Again, an excellent source for facts, figures and an complete overview of the massive project that is Saturn.

THE tech history of the Saturn launch vehicle in all of its forms. Bilstein has written the authoritative book on the Saturn program: its design, construction, testing and final use. For anyone interested in the launch vehicles for all of the Apollo missions, this is the book to read. Despite its daunting technological scope, the book reads well and provides a sound narrative underpining to the development of the Saturn system.

Kyle Baker, Why I Hate Saturn (Vertigo, 1990)

Kyle Baker is one of the granddaddies of the American graphic novel movement; one only has to look back at Why I Hate Saturn, published eighteen years ago, to see that. Now that the graphic novel has become a much more accepted medium, it's time for us all to go back and check out Baker's work and see that literature-quality graphic novels have been there for us all along; we just didn't realize it.

The story: neurotic New York hipster's life is taken over when her crazy sister, who believes herself to be from Saturn, moves in claiming someone is attempting to kill her. Things get weird when neurotic New York hipster realizes that, perhaps, the "someone trying to kill her" bit is not all in the sister's head.

It can get a little on the talky side now and again, but that doesn't affect the story's pace, which is frenetic in a sort of lazy way, and Baker's characters are exquisitely rendered from a psychological perspective; seemingly shallow, but there's a lot there to explore. It helps, of course, that the book is laugh-out-loud funny more often than one might expect. This one's a keeper. ****

A fun read. The main character (who is the least self-aware of the bunch) is set as the observer which makes for a style of story telling that feels very chaotic and random but yet really works well. The artwork is great.....very frenetic but also very playful.

This book has characters that are fun to read and an appealingly madcap plot. Those are the good things, and they're quite good.

It also has problems, though. The dialogue tries to be snappy and witty. Sometimes it succeeds, but more often it only half-succeeds, like a moderately funny joke someone tells you at a party, the kind where you go, "Ha, ha," and smile. The sort of joke that's not funny enough for a real laugh, but not so bad that you feel justified in shaming the teller with stony silence. So yeah, that's kind of how a lot of this book is.

The biggest problem, though, is that this isn't really a comic (or graphic novel) in the sense I usually use the term. Except for a few chapter title pages and one sort of diagram thing, all it is is pictures with CAPTIONS under them. The text of the captions is either dialogue or the internal monologue of the protagonist. There isn't any integration between the text and the images; they are always separated by the neat little borders around the drawings.

In theory, this is an interesting twist on the typical word-bubbles-etc. comic format, but in practice it doesn't work here. Probably the biggest flaw is that most of the pictures are just pictures of people's heads as they're talking to each other. Sure, the facial expressions are sort of interesting, but for the most part I found myself just reading the text. I sometimes had to force myself to stop and look at the pictures, and, although they're well-drawn, they don't really add anything most of the time.

Still, this isn't a bad book. I think I might have liked it a good bit more if it were just presented as a traditional novella or short story --- just text, no pictures. The art is competent but repetitive and basically superfluous.

There's lot of amusing insights into relationships here, combined with visuals by a very gifted artist.

Unfortunately, the relationships ring hollow to me -- I just don't believe in Anne, Ricky, and what's-her-name as real people. They seem designed mainly for humour.

The early part of the book is non-stop talking heads with little or no plot or action. The early chapters could be interchanged without much problem. The visuals liven up the succession of heads, but I found the artwork a little too lively; with shots from every angle, and expressions jumping from joy to angst in rapid succession.

The latter half of the book livens up with Anne's trip to LA and San Francisco. There was some action, and events that I could believe in.

The road-trip elements at the end of the book might suggest "Thelma and Louise", but I believe this book was first published before the movie (?).

This is really lots of fun, a book you'll wanna talk about with your friends. From the physical perspective, it's a very nice comic book, one of the coolest ones published by Vertigo in the 90s. Kyle Baker is responsible for both the argument and the drawings, which are specially expressive. The text that supports it all is absolutelly solid - catchy, funny, as intelligent as all good humour manifestations should be. The characters' somehow orthodox view on the modern society, the groupies' tendencies, interpersonal relashionships (love, sex, friendship, family) is f*** surreal, yet very centered and amazingly logical, and the whole development of the story leads to unexpected, delightful happenings which aren't as important as the dialogues in the middle of it all. It's hard to begin it and not to finish it in one take. Try it and you'll love Saturn.

I read this collection because I had heard the author was a modern day Erma Bombeck, who I absolutely love. I don't see it. Yes, there were a few funny parts, but nothing as good as anything Bombeck ever wrote. This book may appeal to someone who is married with kids, which I am not.

Being a 40-something parent and homeowner, I can relate to everything this author has to say! Funny, witty and sharp. Makes a great gift. She is a hip baby-boomer Ermma Bomback. Read it and laugh!

This book was so funny!! I couldn't stop laughing. You really feel a part of the family because you can relate to at least one thing but most likely many more!! It is set up in a great format and is very readable for all. I am going to recommend it to anyone I come across!!!!

Baker is definitely on the front lines of parenting. Her stories ring true and had me laughing in recognition!! I'd recommend this book to anyone.

JoAnn Baker really makes me laugh. Her humor is sharp, quirky, keenly observant, and occasionally downright twisted.

I can't wait for her next book!

A very good book. Easy to read, informative and explains Saturn's effects on one's life with positive and fluent detail. I would recommend it strongly for everyone who is interested in the archetypal or astrological effects on one's life.

Erin Sullivan is one of modern astrology's best. I recommend this book for readers with intermediate to advanced knowledge in astrology.

A must for the astrologer's library.

I usually don't write reviews, but I really likes this book. I've read it twice now and the information contained in "Saturn in Transit" explained so much of what I have experienced, mostly in 7 year cycles (when Saturn adversly affected a 4 planet stellium I have). I've studied astrology off and on for a few years and knew there had to be a reason for the drastic changes, but until I read this book, I didn't connect what or how to deal with it..So now I am prepared for 2006! LOL. The book shed light not only on my craziness, but on the actions and feelings of lots of my friends too!

Every so often one comes across a quality astrological book that really stands out from the crowd and stands the test of repeated reading over time. "Saturn in Transit" is one such book. I have continued to read and re-read this over the last few years. In the best possible sense, it is a Saturnian treatment of the transits of Saturn. There is also a great deal of other high quality non-Saturn astrology here.

In addition to her obvious extensive experience as a practising astrologer, Erin Sullivan draws extensively on depth psychology and classical mythology to portray Saturn's developmental influence on our lives. The fourth section of the book, "The Personal Heroic Journey" stands out for me. Here the journey of Saturn around the birth chart is illuminated profoundly and accessibly. Sullivan begins the cycle at the midheaven and tenth house stage, "The Call To Adventure" as she terms it, in contrast to the more conventional viewpoint that places the ascendant and first house at the beginning of the cycle. From there on she comments on Saturn's movement round the chart and the various inner and outer lessons it has to teach us.

Countless practical examples are referred to throughout, with two contrasting case histories at the end showing how different but essentially similar each individual's "heroic quest for meaning" can be. As befits a book on Saturn it does all get a bit heavy going at times but is well worth the effort!

In Saturn In Transit: Boundaries Of Mind, Body And Soul, Erin Sullivan draws upon astrology, mythology, and psychology to reveal Saturn's useful and developmental influence in our daily lives as a source of divine discontent. During its transit around the zodiac, Saturn assists the modern hero and heroine by destroying the old and outmoded within, and throwing us periodically into chaos, thereby invariably generating creative transformations of purpose in our lives. Saturn In Transit is an impressive and highly recommended addition to personal astrological reference collections and metaphysical studies reading lists.

This therapeutic myth on the Greatness of Saturn by Robert Svoboda presents the ancient, Vedic, Puranic and Tantric knowledge in a modern language appealing to all people in the world. Dr. Svoboda has done an excellent job in presenting the materials, appealing to those who know, or not know Sanskrit.

Dr. Svoboda has communicated his deep and profound understanding of Jyotir and Aurvedic knowledge. It is a fortune that I came across this book through Sri Prasannan Herke, the astrologer in the Amma (Mata Amritanandamayi Devi) Ashram. I am thankful to him for pointing to this book. Amma's infinite Grace and Blessings have made this all possible.

May Lord Saturn shower Sri Svoboda with His Grace and Blessings for making this book available to all. May Lord Saturn shower His Grace and Blessings to all you readers of the book by ending the difficulties in your lives.

I've studied Western astrology for over 30 years. I would always have a feeling of fear around the planet Saturn, whether in a natal chart or transit. I learned about this book in the Book Reviews of The Mountain Astrologer magazine, a publication I find a necessity of life! When I bought the book, I was going through some major life challenges. This book taught me that I needed an attitude adjustment when it came to Saturn. Due to this book, I did not give up on myself during those challenges. Two years later, I find that things I used to dread I now welcome into my life because they've helped me grow spiritually. Saturn has taught me, through the mythology in this book, how to RESPECT boundaries and limits. More importantly, it has helped ME set boundaries (around myself) for others to respect.

This is a book you must read if you are an astrologist. This is about great wisdom of the ages which we can apply in our lives today! Blessings...

Om Amrtesvaryai Namah! A masterful retelling of the "Sani Mahatmyam" with a wonderful personal touch as in all his writings.This book very expertly shows the effects of the planets on one's everyday life, and offers an object lesson in why we must pursue spirituality as if our lives depended on it. (Cause they do!!!!)A wonderful way of showing that Saturn's job is not so much just to give us all a hard time, but rather to help us turn inward to the real help we might find from the Divine within.i loved every page, and many of them were wet with tears. All i can say is Thankyou Robert Svoboda, and when may we expect the next delicious morsel from you? Om Namah Sivaya! visvanathan

I really don't understand what this is supposed to be about. I certainly didn't get anything meaningful out of it. The points made about the various grahas are very basic themes familiar to anyone who knows something about jyotish. The Saturn story is an elaboration of the trials and tribulations of sade sati, but I didn't really get anything out of it. I would like to be able to understand this more deeply; maybe I just missed the point.

I found this book while on a business trip to Bangalore and was inexplicably motivated to buy it, even though I had never heard of Dr Svoboda before. Perhaps I was fated to buy this book -- as one who has had a significant influence of LORD SATURN on his life.

I found the book to be one that gives a lot of information on not only LORD SATURN but also the various other "grahas", their influences (beneficial and malignant), and an outline/summary of the methods of propitiating them. And, of course, it has a wealth of information on LORD SATURN. Dr Svoboda has done a lot of study to write this book and his "Bhakti Bhav" (loosely meaning "Devotional Attitude") comes through very well in the book.

Thanks to Dr Svoboda for enabling me to access this ancient wisdom culled from various old, rare texts of Hinduism in various languages.

And most of all, thanks to LORD SATURN for motivating me to pick up and read this book, thereby enabling even me (of admittedly insufficient knowledge)to understand His powers.

...sharing what she knows. Sara Gran does us all the huge favor of neither overreaching for a grand universal plot nor underestimating the validity of what she clearly knows from her own experience and imagination. She's unapologetic as a young woman from the big city writing about growing up, about family, about change and adaptation and cycles-- and breaking those cycles. Her narrator is brave, independent to a fault, and refreshingly aware of the limitations of her own knowledge and experience.
This is a really solid first novel and does not have that awful cutesy show-offy self-consciously "quirky" quality that books about cool young women too often do. Gran is a much more level-headed writer than that. I'm looking forward to her future work.

Sara Gran's Saturn's Return to New York is a witty and clever novel, a light, yet still somehow substantial read of a young woman in New York, turning twenty nine, trying to figure out various aspects of her life. There are a lot of books out there like that, I know, but this one distinguishes itself from the pack. Sara Gran is a fine writer and her novel holds together very well. Mary, the protagonist is a likeable heroine dealing with real issues--such as her slightly troubled relationship with her mother, and her mother's failing health. It is this relationship that is the focus of the novel and not the whole boyfriend thing that dominates so many other young single woman novels. The novel is witty and well told. Everything, plot, character, dialogue, is natural and unforced. I really enjoyed this one.

I loved this novel! I "gobbled it up" in a day, thoroughly engrossed in Mary's life. The humor is subtle, the intense emotions ring true, and it's an easy and satisfying read. I enjoyed spending time with this contempoary heroine who's honest, realistic, a bit of a smartass, and quite likeable!

This was a good book on dealing with your parents getting older and dependent and the inevitability of care taking, to some extent. It chronicled the subject's feelings very well in dealing with these issues. Not as good as I expected, but still a good book and worth reading, especially if you are experiencing or have experienced this subject.

This is a smarter book than I had anticipated. The heroine is smarter, her friends are smarter, even her put-downs are smarter. It is also a love story, of a daughter for her mother. An appreciation of the influence parents and background had for her. And how she has adapted them into her life. It's a shame that this book may be swept under the rug and ignored in favor of other books that receive more publicity. A real sleeper.

This is an entertaining enough book to keep in the bathroom, but it's written in a cutesy style that I found off-putting. (I expected and wanted it to be witty, but the authors frequently settled for jokiness.)

Some of the facts are wrong -- for example, they perpetuate the myth that Jayne Mansfield was decapitated in the car wreck that killed her. She wasn't. In other places, there's just not enough information. They mention China's "Festival of the Hungry Dead," but instead of explaining what it is we get two paragraphs on how China's communist regime prevented the celebration of religious holidays. Snooze.

This book is cute, but for a more entertaining and in-depth exploration of death, check out Paradox Press's "The Big Book of Death" ...

This book was very interesting and keeps you wanting to read more. It's very well put together and I enjoyed it throughly. I look forward to more book by the authors.

I could not put this book down! Went through it in one sitting and I go back to it and read it again and again. When I'm not reading it, friends and family are always borrowing it. Full of facts and funnies.

Do you have any thoughts on how you will leave this Earth? After reading this book, you will most certainly question the thought. You will read and re-read chapters with such curiosity. Examples of freak accidents, gruesome serial slayings, Mother Nature, plagues and epidemics, poltergiest, genocide, and Spontaneous Human Combustion just name a few of the documented stories covered. This light-hearted book is full of death stories, ancient traditions, and phenomina. If nothing else, you'll be wondering how you will go. As it is, all life does come to an end. Oh yeah - interested in learning what happens to a body within the first few weeks of death? Check it out!

The Big Sleep is the kind of weird, funny, fascinating book that keeps you saying, "Just one more page." Some of those chapters really knocked me out . . . like "Death Styles of the Rich and Famous" or "Hell No, We Won't Go". It's far from some morose book on the realities of death. I loved the quotes, the jokes, and those incredible factoids. Hey, who knew that Balanchine died from a form of Mad Cow disease or that the Marquis de Sade died in an insane asylum. Crazy stuff.

I read this book when it first was released and after reading Michael's other books, this one was a little slow.

This is my favorite novel by Michael McCollum. It doesn't have the following of his Antares or Life Probe series but it has a kind of well crafted elegance that sets it apart and I think above the rest.

Earth has been abandoned, rising solar radiation sterilizes our home world. Humanity has retreated to floating cities in the atmosphere of Saturn (plus some small colonies on the more mineable moons)

Human nature being what it is, intereige and conflict abound.
Our Hero, an interesting mixture of Han Solo and perhaps Sir Francis Drake, is drawn into a plot to bring all the independent cloud cities under one government ("to prevent war" quoteth the villain).

The author serves up a full helping of mystery and suspense, along with plenty of action. Charactor development is particularly strong in this novel and the inevitable romance is well handled.

I find the political overtones in this novel interesting. The idea of a single super government to "end all war" has a Wilsonian ring that students of history will recognize and it resinates stongly with our current international situation.

This novel should appeal to a wider audience then even the usual Sci Fi croud. The future tech is well crafted but stays in the background and doesn't intrude on the story.

So if you like adventure, in exotic settings, mixed with action, mystery and romance, this is one that you shouldn't miss.

I picked this book up (literally) off an airline seat during a flight across the country...and began to read it as I had finished the novel (forgotten now) that I had brought with me. This book, however, I have not forgotten and has peaked my long-lost interest in science fiction again. Very well written with technically exciting details of 'future world' possiblities.

This story envelopes the reader from start to finish. Since Mr. McCollum is himself an engineer, he has a good idea about the theories that he has based this story on. That is just the beginning. This novel is fantastic!

Humanity living in cities that float in the skies of Saturn, and a battle is taking place.

I hope Mr McCollum becomes wealthy writing books like these: they are fun and easy to read, and also (speaking as a physics trained guy) they are generally scientifically accurate. Most sci fi books these days make ridiculous mistakes with basic physical laws. Please write more books!