Bartholomew Books

it's okay except too much boring stuff that will really bothered me. it almost put me to sleep no other book i've ever read could be full of boreness

To those Australians who grew up in the last 40 years, and who had the masochistic prediliction to stay up late and watch Santamaria's weekly spot on telly, his memoir will ring with familiar cadences. An eloquent and utterly self-serving tome, which omits at least as much as it describes.

He walks the reader through his long life in the Australian political and social scene. The linchpin of which was his pivotal role in the founding of the Democratic Labor Party. He and other key figures were alarmed by what they saw at the leftward drift of Labor, and reacted by splitting off a crucial fraction of its supporters. No where in this account is a suggestion that he and his cohorts overreacted by tirelessly flogging the canard about Reds under the bed before every state and federal election.

Whereas the US had its McCarthyist era, which was thankfully shortlived, the Australian experience was weirdly different. Santamaria played the role of the intellectual powerhouse behind the DLP and the National Civic Council. The latter was such a grand name, and it soon became associated with conservative Catholics. While many other Australians were never quite sure exactly what the NCC did, apart from apparently underwriting Santamaria's weekly diatribe. Santamaria and the NCC went on and on for decades; putting the Everready bunny to shame.

To an American reader, much of the book will seem strangely opaque. You basically had to have lived in Australia during the 1950s-80s and hang out in certain political circles, to fully "appreciate" the book. With time, passions have cooled. But the smug and yet bewailing tone of the book can still infuriate some, especially in the ALP.

Yes, in some ways, Santamaria's book is a record of his accomplishments. He locked the ALP out of Canberra for decades. With the tacit encouragement of the Liberals, who could not believe their luck, in getting him and the DLP to do the dirty work of red baiting.

But the later part of the text also exhibits a continual complaining about the moral decay of Australian society. Above all, the tolerance of abortion. But don't forget about women in the workforce, or sex education or homosexuals. He never got over the 60s and the changing social attitudes it engendered. Again and again in the book he railed against the secular drift of society. Correctly, he guessed that this would severely marginalise organised religion, and above all, his beloved Catholic Church. (You might notice that sections of the book sound like some of Pope Benedict's recent speeches.)

Those who detested Santamaria when he was alive can at least derive some minimal satisfaction from how his influence decayed. He was reduced to his weekly whining on TV, utterly ignored by broader society. If what happened to Senator McCarthy in the US was the analog of the death penalty, then Santamaria's fate in this book was life imprisonment. Where his once great and feared influence just rotted away.

Catholics might want to know that this book has the "imprimatur," but not the "nihil obstat." The nihil obstat and imprimatur were notations included in the front matter of Catholic religious works. The "imprimatur" (simply this one Latin word, meaning literally, "let it be printed") ought to mean, to judge from the Latin, merely that the Church does not oppose publication. The "nihil obstat" (simply these two Latin words, meaning literally, "nothing stands in the way") would say that the book is free of doctrinal error. One might suppose that that the nihil obstat would precede the imprimatur, but perhaps these two judgments are independent anyway. These Latin notations are not seen much any more. Books published in English under Church auspices these days included, instead, a notation in English that the book was published "with ecclesiatical approval."

Unfortunately, this book muddies the water of Catholic belief. A simple reading of it would see no distinction between confirmed Marian apparitions, worthy of belief, on one hand and on the other hand, for example, natural, explainable defects in photographs taken by the author. One photograph, in particular, clearly resulted from the camera's shutter's being open for longer than the flash. It is not "a profile of seven dove-like figures in flight," which is the sort of statement that prompts derision and, as I say, muddies the water. For interspersed amid the book's nonsense are, in this same book, genuine miracles and sound faith.

I do respect the author's beliefs, but he seems to have gone overboard, abandoning his critical faculties. At least, he would need to present more information about certain allegedly supernatural phenomena, such as the three people appearing in two photographs of a scene where, according to his recollection, there were no people. He does not say enough to convince this reader that he did not make a mistake in that recollection or perhaps in remembering when exactly, on what day, the photos were taken. Even if the photographs were miraculous, why should we understand the three people as representing the Trinity, as he does? This question of mine is not to say anything about the doctrine of Trinity, but only about the author's interperetation of a supposed miracle. Caveat lector (let the reader beware).

The book opens with the detective, McGarr, being let into the murder house. A woman talks him through the house, chatting constantly without any interrogation. Arriving at the corpse, they stand about talking for another 10 pages about the dead man and her theory that he was stealing priceless books from the library where he worked. Although the author tells us the corpse is swollen and putrifying, our characters must have nerves and noses of steel. Later on, McGarr and his crew watch blue videos starring the late corpse. The chatty lady watches with them. (Is this typical of how Irish police operate? Hey - let's watch dirty movies with a witness!) This brings us up to about page 80. No other non-police character has appeared. Hmmm - wonder whodunnit? Well, if the novel doesn't succeed as a mystery or a police procedural, maybe it's full of Irish character and atmosphere. Oops - the author forgot to include them too! Most of the characters speak the way Americans expect the Irish to speak - they really aren't allowed to be human, just pleasant caricatures. The whole novel seems a lazy effort.

Strikingly different in tone from all the other Peter McGarr mysteries, this novel may have been a Gill experiment in the blackest of black humor. It's a curiosity in the McGarr series, a wicked piece of work with some truly disgusting scenes, perhaps an attempt to mock the pseudo-realism of other mysteries and/or film, or, more likely, an attempt to imitate the dark satire of Jonathan Swift, whose work is featured throughout this novel about the murder of a man who regarded himself as the Dean's reincarnation.

In the opening scene McGarr arrives at the estate of B.H.P. Herrick, the keeper of Marsh's Library of antique manuscripts in Dublin, finding find him nude and six days dead. With a sort of ghoulish glee, Gill describes the macabre scene in minute detail, omitting none of the putrescent details. Herrick was in the midst of a Frollick, "inspired by Swift," a lurid carnal escapade in which Herrick quoted lines from Swift and which he videotaped, unwittingly recording his own agonizing death from poison.

I concede that the book is clever, in that it incorporates some serious literary criticism about Swift's work, some of it obscure, in addition to discussions of Gulliver, the Brobdingnagians, the Yahoos, and the Houyhnhnms, and it does illustrate how the main character surrounded himself with the modern incarnations of these Swiftian creatures. However, Gill's additional remarks about "excremental verse" and the Freudians, along with additional scenes of degradation, keep this grim and grisly little novel firmly mired in depths most readers do not expect of this series and will not want to explore. 1 star for subject matter, 2 stars for cleverness. Mary Whipple

Please go back to school and learn to read.
This book is writen so that the most basic and reasonably uneducated human beings can understand it as well.
I am flabergasted by your patetic comment and review.
Where did you go to school..??

In the bush.?

I obtained the book from a Co-worker who attended a seminar by the Lecturer, who is also apparently the writer.
The book is supposed to be a workbook.
It is extremely difficult to read and very fragmented.
The methods set out in the book on the checklist are also very difficult to follow.
I do not recommend it as a workbook neither as a guide for Corporate Fraud management.
I recomend Corporate Fraud by John D. O'Gara,Fraud by Paul Waldman,How to Become a Professional Con Artist
by Dennis M. Marlock,
[...]

This book is either written to teach fraud or how to avoid being caught.
Never has anyone opened the playing field so wide for the would be blue collar criminals as Henderson.
His "Red Flags" are so clearly illustrated that any would be con will find this the best workbook ever writen.
[...]

The fraud 'red flags' are terribly outdated. The detail is vague and shocking. Henderson has failed in nailing occupational fraud . This work has given me no help apart from hours of wasted reading trying to find any assistance. I could clearly see why it took him three and a half years to complete.
He must have read hundreds of papers and case studies to compile this. [...]The case studies are related to contemporary cases and can be found all over the net. In my view the book contains NONE of the most important information I have been able to find on the subject ever. Perhaps he should revert to what he knows best..."Counting Beans"

I bought this map prior to traveling to Australia for a driving trip. The scale is too large to use for a road trip. There are better in the "Loney Planet" series.

Still on a quest to find good books for my newly bereaved children, I stumbled upon this 1990 well-meaning treastise that unfortunately feels like it's been written by a committee, with way too many topics trying to cover every possible death-related question from "What is it like to die" to "How can you prepare yourself to die" and everything in between including euthanasia, organ donation and the (alleged) Five Stages of Grief. Some of it is almost inadvertantly funny: "Some people live wonderful short lives while others live long, miserable lives." Yikes, what category does a 12-year guess she's in? Aside from its way-too-broad contents, there's the off-putting moral purpose of the book as described at the end: "Learning what you can about death might motivate you to live a happier, more productive life." Well, maybe. Or at least be more selective in my reading.

Didn't make a lick of sense, for the most part. If I was the author, I'd be anonymous, too.

Someone gave me this book and another from the series (Mealtime). While I applaud the concept of books that teach children about appropriate behavior, I have a very low opinion of these books and can not recommend them.
The writing is very uninspiring. "I do not want to get my clothes wet. I take my clothes off. I want to get my body clean." Maybe this type of language could be good for early readers but the version I have is a board book (for babies!) and I choose not to talk to my baby like she's an idiot with a rudimentary IQ.
The illustrations are also uninspired. They are neither colorful, nor interesting, nor beautiful. They look like a terrible textbook from the 80s.
Overall, these books are so boring that I have no interest in reading them. My daughter (now 1 yr old) is clearly unimpressed. She never selects them for me to read to her (as she does with other books) and she never sits and turns through the pages.
There must be other books out there that teach meaningful life lessons but come packaged in an artistic and clever book.
Sorry to be so negative but in my opinion, these books are boring and lame.