Archer Books

Culture and Agency is a very useful book to understand social change. The Author provides several analitical tools to examine the relation between systems of beliefs and values and the stuctural opportunities individuals have to support or contest them. In doing so, she opens new ways to think sociological problems like the change in the role of woman in society, or the reinterpretations of culture proposed by new social movements, in spite of the fact that the book maintains itself in a theoretical level, without adressing substantive issues. I am a Ph.D. student, and the book was extremely helpful to iluminate my object of research, the women's movement.

Let me start by saying that I have owned the full 12-volume set for about a year and use it quite frequently as a resource. To be fair, I have yet to use this particular volume. However, as there seem to be no competent reviews on the set as a whole, I did want to add my impressions of this terrific resource.

I can say that I'm very satisfied with my purchase of the 12 volumes in this set. Every portion has been quite helpful, and this is an amazingly simple and inexpensive way to assemble a good library of commentaries on the entire Bible. Obviously the commentaries are not as thorough as one may find in other series, such as the excellent (although not yet quite complete) "New International Commentary on the New Testament" or a similar series. However, for most Christians who teach or lead small groups in their churches, this set can serve as a great resource to get started with, and one that can easily be supplimented with specific volumes that treat a book of the Bible in greater depth as those books are needed. Additionally, this resource can be more useful than a larger volume in situations where one is interested in looking at a few chapters of scripture at a time, or where one just needs to understand what a verse or two might mean. Thanks to the very clear and practical verse by verse organization, it's a terrific tool to do just that.

Also, I will add that (at the time of this writing) it should be possible to buy the entire set for around $150 or less, so I would suggest shopping a bit if you plan to purchase all 12 volumes.

Strongly recommended.

At the start of "Dark Angel" we are introduced to Tom Sedley who is 17 years old in 1948. At the end of the book Tom Sedley is 72. During these 55 years of Tom's life there is one overriding factor on his mind: an uncertainty as to who killed his younger sister back in 1948.

"Dark Angel" is basically a murder mystery or whodunnit. But it is a murder mystery that spans 55 years and is recounted in terms of the impact it has on Tom Sedley and a few other people that were close to the crime when it was committed.

Approximately half of the story takes place in 1950 while Tom and his (former) best friend Marcus are serving in the British Army in Korea during the start of the Korean War. In this section of the book we are told a lot about the Korean War (sometimes called "The Forgotten War") and the inhumanity of war in general. Tom and Marcus are no longer best friends, and Tom is troubled by doubts that Marcus may be the person who killed his sister.

The remaining half of the story takes place in 1982. Tom's mother has died and during his emptying of the childhood house Tom finds a secret diary that belonged to his sister. Once again there are indications that Marcus may have been the killer. At the same time another childhood friend gets involved, and a very unexpected person arrives in England and gets in touch with Marcus (and Tom). But once again there is no clear resolution, and we are still unsure of who killed Tom's sister so many years ago.

At the end of the book there is an epilogue that takes place in 2004. Tom Sedley is 72, and is still haunted by the events that took place 55 years ago. Will there finally be a resolution to this mystery that has traumatized him so much?

I liked "Dark Angel" a lot because of the interesting story and the interesting people who are involved. None of the main characters are average; they are all special in one way or another. Many of these people have secret motives and all of them are affected in various ways by the murder in 1948. This makes the story very gripping - we want to learn what will happen to Tom and the others, and, like Tom, we want to learn the truth about what happened to his sister.

Incidentally, this book is quite unlike the other books that Geoffrey Archer has written. This is a murder mystery, not a military action thriller like Mr. Archer's previous books, despite part of the story taking place on the battlefield of the Korean War, and despite the 1982 events having some connections to the Falklands War.

Highly recommended if you like murder mysteries told in terms of the long-term effects the murder has on the people involved, and if you like being teased about who the murderer was until the very last page.

Rennie Petersen

David Zeisberger was a Moravian missionary who immagrated to England's North American colonies in 1740 and became one of the first white men to live among the Indian tribes of the Old Northwest. He spent many years living among the Delaware in western Pennsylvania and Ohio, founding the famous "Praying Indian" towns at Salem, Shoenbrun, and Gnadenhutten in the years just before the American Revolution. Zeisberger worked tirelessly to convert the Indians to Christianity for many years on the frontier when it was a hostile and dangerous wilderness. This book is translated from Zeisberger notes made while living among the Delaware in the period 1780-81. They describe in great and accurate detail the lifestyle and culture of the Indians. It details all aspects of religion, hunting, social structure, foods, medicine, clothing, etc. of the Delaware and the eastern woodland tribes in general. It also gives an overview of the flora and fauna of the Ohio Country in the years prior to white settlement. "History of the Northern American Indians" is a valuable piece of 18th century literature and should be read by any student of frontier or Indian history.

A killingly funny and delightful little book. Martin Archer, the author (Former King of Norway and World Champion Flower Arranger) has done nothing less than invent a totally original and new style of humor for our day. A terrific laugh-out-loud gift for that person who has everything!

Very well written. Starts a little slow with much preliminary
but fascinating information about the international politics
leading up to the war. After that starts a day by day account of the war and most major battles. I especially liked the many
behind the scenes personal interviews with pilots, Iraqi officers, tank commanders, etc. about their experiences,
Many " stories never told" . It was riveting. Very well researched, unbiased & hard to put down.

I always wondered what happened during winter - how does so much spring forth in springtime when its so quiet over the winter. This book gives us a terrific foundation for understanding all that. There are chapters on trees and what's going on inside them, "winter weeds," insects and how they overwinter in their different forms, and mammals and what they're doing to survive. Its just so absolutely amazing. There are activities throughout the book as well so it doesn't need to be just a nice winter read but a nice chance to get outside and explore too!

There is no such thing as a bad Ross MacDonald novel, but while this is good, it isn't typical of his best work. MacDonald's Lew Archer novels are correctly judged to be the great successor works to the great stories and novels of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Together the three writers constitute the Great Triumvirate of the American hardboiled school. While MacDonald doesn't write prose quite as brilliant or memorable as his two predecessors, he created characters of greater depth and complexity. He also wrote a larger quantity of great novels than either Hammett or Chandler.

Despite all this, THE DROWNING POOL does not stand out very far from what Hammett and Chandler had achieved and it did not really put on display MacDonald's later innovations. If there is a theme running through MacDonald's best books like THE CHILL or THE INSTANT ENEMY or THE MOVING TARGET is it this: "The sins of the fathers will be visited unto the second and third generations." In almost all of his mature novels Lew Archer starts off investigating some incident in the present that ends up having roots 20 or 30 or 40 years earlier. His novels always puts me in mind of Yeats's "Leda and the Swan," where the rape of Leda by Zeus in the form of a swan inevitably leads to the tragedy of the Trojan war: "A shudder in the loins engenders there/The broken wall, the burning roof and tower/And Agamemnon dead." There is an intricate causality in the Archer novels. Things happen not because of anything happening right here and now, but in almost foreordained fashion because of actions in a previous generation. THE DROWNING POOL has a smidgen of this, but not much. The causality developed here is the later view of causality in embryonic form.

The amazing thing is that even though this is not quite as breathtaking as later MacDonald novels, it is still absolutely first rate. Ironically, this is one of his best-known novels, even if it isn't one of his very best. The reason is easy to identify: it was made into a movie starring Paul Newman. In fact, though MacDonald is clearly one of the Big Three hardboiled writers, unlike Hammett and Chandler -- both of whose novels have been turned into several great films -- MacDonald's books simply do not lend themselves to conversion to movies. Paul Newman did play Lew Archer as Harper in two movies, but they were not of the same quality as the best films based on Hammett and Chandler books. HARPER was a film version of THE MOVING TARGET, so both the title and the main character underwent a name change. Unbelievably, MacDonald's best book -- and one of the two or three greatest hardboiled novels ever written -- THE CHILL has never been made into a movie. The film that is closest to the world of Lew Archer has no connection to any novel by MacDonald, Roman Polanski's CHINATOWN, which is much closer to MacDonald in spirit than to either Hammett or Chandler.

Still, this is must read MacDonald. His books would get better, but that isn't to say that this isn't a good, even a great, novel.

The book teaches you how to transform your pain into power and how to turn your misery into minstry.

The best book I have read on leadership

I enjoy reading thrillers, and my tastes tend towards military/action thrillers, techno-thrillers and international thrillers. At the moment Geoffrey Archer is my favorite author, and of the four Geoffrey Archer books I've read so far I consider "Eagle Trap" to be the best, and worth five stars. (I gave four stars to "Skydancer", "Shadow Hunter" and "Java Spider".)

There are two common problems that plague thrillers.

The first common problem is that in an attempt to make the story very exciting the author crafts a plot that is not believable. Things happen that are too unlikely, or people act in unrealistic ways, or there is a complicated sequence of many interdependent events that is too improbable when considered as a whole. Another possible cause of lack of believability is that the author talks about technological gadgets that he/she didn't really understand and makes mistakes that I, having some knowledge of technology, can see through.

The other common problem that plagues thrillers is poor characterization of the people in the story. The heroes are very brave and tough and the bad guys are extremely nasty and heartless, and they just don't come across as real people. They are two-dimensional clichés, nothing more.

"Eagle Trap" fortunately avoids both of these common problems. The story is very exciting and scary, and yet believable. And the characters are also believable and act like real people, especially the "good guys".

The story takes place in the early 1990's at the time of the breakdown of the Soviet Union. Two nuclear warheads being moved from Armenia to Russia are stolen and end up in the hands of an Arab gang leader in Lebanon. This Arab gang leader has a burning desire to revenge the death of his brother by inflicting a terrible blow on the British. Specifically, he intends to detonate a nuclear warhead next to the HMS Eagle, the British aircraft carrier that was involved in the bombing attack that killed his brother.

Geoffrey Archer's background as a journalist can be seen in his realistic (I assume) descriptions of various conflict areas around the Mediterranean. The hostilities between Russia, Armenia, Iraq, Turkey, the Kurds, Lebanon and Libya all play a certain role. Even the hostilities between Spain and Britain over Gibraltar come into play in the book, increasing the overall excitement.

Adding to the realism and excitement of the story is the fact that the hero, Capt. Peter Brodrick of the British Marines, is very human. He makes mistakes, misses observing things, is often very frightened, and lets his emotions get away with him occasionally. His girlfriend is also refreshingly appealing, with a disarming sense of humor and a simple-minded tenacity when the going gets tough.

There are many military action sequences for fans of this kind of material. Naval aviation operations on both the HMS Eagle and on the American aircraft carrier The USS Carl Jackson are described in detail. Operations by the British Marines on land and at sea also play a part in the story as does a Russian submarine that plays havoc with the plans of the British and the Americans.

On top of everything else there are even several surprising twists in the plot, and times when the best laid plans simply fall apart, just like in real life. There is a slow but sure increase in the suspense as we move towards the surprising climax.

To repeat what I said at the start of this review, "Eagle Trap" is the best of the four Geoffrey Archer books that I've read so far. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of his books.

Rennie Petersen