Beck Books

This book was disappointing. It did answer my basic questions about Lindh's childhood years, adolescence, and joining with Islamic extremists. The link between Lindh's political leanings and his alleged repressed homosexuality is intriguing. But do the authors have to repeat things over and over? The writing is amateurish. And what's the deal with Chapter 7, with the authors' diatribe against homosexuality and the American Psychological Association? This is certainly not a scholarly book, and is even questionable for an audience of laymen.

It raised questions about his parents. Why didn't they draw the lines? If I would be a Mom, I'd never let my Teenage- kid study in another Country but USA, especially not without a Highschool-
diploma. And is he now gay or not? If he would be, why did he write an E- Mail to his Mom about Family-life in Yemen and that he wants to build a house there and get married ( FOXNEWS ).And why did he write to his Parents "... I'm in safe hands now. "? (around Dec., after his capture)I hoped this book would answer questions about this case, instead it raised even more.

The thesis is that John Walker Lindh became a jihadist is because he was a self-hating homosexual. Astonishing. The Taliban didn't recruit a lot of gays, that I know of. The author also says that 50% of RC Clergy are gay and that the Middle Ages burned witches because gays hate women. It says some equally ridiculous things about Jews, Christians, Muslims-- and the whole thing is a rant and worthless to someone
looking to understand the extremist mind. I have found what I was looking for in Eric Hoffer's 60's manifesto, The True Believer. This book is truly awful. I often sell used books to Powell's in Portland, but this book I intend to toss in the trash.

The connection between religious fanatacism, repressed homosexuality, and self-hatred has a long an ugly history, and the authors make their case. But do they have to do it over and over and over and over again? Jeez! they clumsily revisit every point ad nauseum. On top of it all, their facts are a disaster. For example, they give historical background on Boy Taliban's hometown in Marin County, and state that its old Spanish Mission San Rafael was founded in 1681 (it was founded in 1817), and that those same missionaries enjoyed burning the Indians alive. I have studied California history my whole life, and have never, ever, ever, ever, read that, ever (Oh, do I repeat myself? That's a tic I developed after reading this book). As for clumsy, after giving useless detail about Marin County, they state that Boy Taliban liked playing with plastic Jedi warrior("Star Wars") figurines, yet failed to mention George Lucas and company are based in Marin County as well. So what was the point of local color when you forget the obvious? Later on, they talk about Islam's jehadi (jihad) warriors, and completely missed the opportunity for delicious irony...

I'd be embarrassed to have my name on the cover of this book (and I'm NOT talking about Lindh!) Beyond even the topic of this book, I have several major issues. First of all, I cannot believe that Jess and Beck even have the gall to call themselves writers. They should go back to 1st grade and start again. This book was a joke, the most poorly written thing I've ever read in my life. Ever heard of an editor? Because I found more typos on the first page than I could count. Ever heard of writing clearly and concisely to get your point across without repeating yourself over and over? How about actual sentences, rather than endless fragments? Maybe you should find some concrete facts before accusing Lindh of unfounded allegations (i.e. his homosexuality, etc.) To potential readers: regardless of your own opinions of Lindh, DON'T BUY THIS BOOK! It insults your own intelligence. I returned mine!

I purchased a number of books to get me updated on the latest Lightwave. I guess if I could I would give this one a star and a half, not 1 star, but I really found it to be lacking in a number of ways. The tutorials are clear in some areas, but gloss over other areas. The writing isn't really very good either in that it doesn't explain things in an order which is typical (and better) in other books. I was very disappointed with this book to sum it up. I found a number of others to be much better, especially Ablan's. Thumbs down.

This is an excellent book, and very applicable to version 7.5 as well. It consists of many small tutorials and has some excellent solutions to complex problems. The only complaint I can find with this book, and the only thing keeping it from 5 stars, is that the book gets you going on creating an effect, then kind of trails off with some suggestions for improving the effect.

Some of the effect ideas in this book are well worth the price of the book. Mr. Beck's burning paper effect is awesome, and the time to work thru the tutorial and create the effect is very minimal (5-10 minutes). I've worked several of the tutorials in this book and found myself saying "Wow!" quite a few times.

I am a newbie to Lightwave and 3D and I had hoped for this book to ease my transition into this interesting subject. Rather, it caused me grief. There were so many errors that I have to read over and over in order to grasp the faintest idea of what the author seemed to imply. An Advance user may not find the book useful since much of the stuff are geared towards beginners but the number of errors and inconsistencies makes the book a pain for a any beginner. Patrik may know the in and out of Lightwave 3D, but from this book, he failed to get that across. My advice to Patrick - next time you write a book, please spend more time going over it and save unsuspecting victims like me from wasting time and money. As a matter of fact, I'll give the book away for free to the first person who contacts me. This book should never have been sold in the first place.

NewTek's LightWave is one of the most powerful, multi-platform 3D applications available today. In The LightWave 6.5/7.0 Project Handbook computer animation expert Patrik Beck presents a comprehensive survey of the features and functionality that make LightWave a tool of choice for special effects professionals in the film and television industry. Offering a wealth of in-depth tutorials, the reader is provided with information on all aspects of LightWave including the creation of text and logos, using cameras and lights, modeling, texturing, surfacing, animation, and much, much more. The individual chapters are self-contained making it an ideal instructional for the novice and a continuingly useful reference text for even the more experienced LightWave user. The highly recommended text is accompanied by a CD-ROM which includes a limited-use Demo of NewTek's LightWave 7.0 for Windows, OS9, and OSX; support files and worked-through examples from the tutorials in the book; as well as sample animations and pictures.

So you've purchased Lightwave and are confronted with an endless array of tabs and menus. You have some idea as to what HyperVoxels are, (or maybe not), but certainly don't know how to activate or create them, or know how to assign bones, model simple items and assign surfaces to them, or use lighting to create various effects. If you are looking for a good place to start, I personally found this collection of short projects to be a great way to begin to understand some of the many things that you can do with Lightwave; providing a great launching point to start experimenting from, now having a primary understanding as to how to "get around" in the program. Those with previous experience in Lightwave specifically or other advanced 3D applications in general may not benefit from this book, but I sure did. I spent a fair amount of money for this program and it has been useless to me - until now.
While it doesn't cover any one aspect of Lightwave completely, it does introduce a new user like myself to a wide range of key features of the program. The tutorials are step by step, and once you have finished a lesson you begin to immediately have ideas as to how you can apply them. Reading this book has given me the general understanding I was wanting in order to proceed with more in-depth books such as Lightwave Applied and Inside Lightwave. While some reviewers have accused this book of glossing over some of the details, I have found that the introduction to a wide range of topics and tutorials worth the trade off in detail in any one area. Plus, it was fun.
Oh yeah... and don't buy Modeling in Lightwave by Shamms Mortier; it's the worst computer book ever conceived.

Reading what others have written about the book, here and elsewhere, I wonder if we read the same book.

I found the author very sympathetic to her subject, if sometimes blown away by the situations she was describing.

She is very careful to include every side of a question.

I,like Ms. Beck, find Opal a fascinating subject. I enjoy her (Opal's) writing. There is definitely something there.

This does not prevent me from being able to separate hard evidence from wishful thinking and subjective opinion.

Opal disciples write off the book and I think it is because they do not find what they want in it.

There have been outrageous misrepresentations, such as one assertion that Beck implied Opal was a "harlot." She did no such thing.

She wrote somewhat clinically about Opal's mental problems. This struck me as a possibly overdone objectivity. It would be impossible to read Opal's story and not be deeply touched by her difficulties. Beck is frank about the patronizing attitude of the Boston Brahmins. She does NOT claim that Opal hoarded paper and crayon in advance of perptrating a hoax; rather, she points out thay owners of actual fragments of the manuscript have refused to have them analyzed, saying in the clinch that "it didn't really matter."

No one doubts that Opal's long institutionalization was a horror, or that the experimental treatments of the day were barbaric.

She makes it quite clear that opal's claims to French royalty are a complete delusion. There can be no reasonable doubt of this. Yet people want to believe it, because Opal herself believed it, yet these same people acknowledge her insanity.

Over time, myth and legend have a way of overtaking hard facts, and this seems to be happening here. Most people interested in the story at all are already true believers.

The triumph of magical thinking still doesn'tmake it so.

End of rant.

Ms. Beck is putting a microscope on a person that needs to be seen from one step back. You missed her essence. Rather than cast a critical gaze on Opal's writing skills, when it was written, when it was not, or if it indeed happened, Opal's story still stands, regardless of how it was created. I have read anything in print or on websites about her. Ms. Opal is truly magical and very meaningful to those of us who cherish her, regardless of how Ms. Beck formulates her "case".

First let me say that while I reside in Oregon, I do not consider myself an "Opalite". I have read most of the books on her and find this woman, along with others with various personality disorders, very fascinating.

In the first half of the book, I thought Ms. Beck was overly critical of her subject, always trying to disprove Opal's stories. As I read further, I discovered that Ms. Beck really did her homework, and manages to bring strong evidence against most of Opal's outlandish claims.

For me, this doesn't take away from the strong appeal of her diary. I personally don't care what age Opal was when she wrote it, I find it magical and captivating just the same.

I think that Opal truly believed the stories she told, it was just a part of her mental illness. I don't believe that she deliberately tried to con anybody.

I would recommend this book, as it's nice to see an author hunting down the truth. I love Benjamin Hoff's book as well, but sometimes it's nice to get the "real" picture, and not just the "rose colored glasses" version.

Okay, first off I want to say: I'm not an Opalite. I've read her works and enjoy them, but the sort of new-agey and sentimental community centered around her work is not my kind of thing.

Now, having said that, I'll add I'm completely fascinated by Opal Whiteley. Until I balanced my opinions of her on local folklore, neigh-sayers who pride themselves on having the real dope on things but have few hard facts, and Benjamin Hoff's biography/memoir/reprinting of her work. So I was, naturally, intrigued by Katherine Beck's book when I saw it on the shelf.

Reading it, I was struck by how she often seems so antithetical towards Opal. Which forced me to confront my own biases: I wanted to believe in her. But I got over that and kept reading. The book does contain interesting facts about Opal that aren't available in other texts.

There are a couple of issues I have with the writer's style, she doesn't site her sources very well and yet sometimes it reads like a newspaper article. It gets old, it all seems dispassionate.

This leads to my main beef: WHY? Why'd Beck write this? Why should I read it. She's not crazy about Opal, but she's not really trying to cut her down too much. She never shows much sympathy for her mental condition or belief in her story, yet also she never really goes after Opal. There's no real point in discrediting Opal she's been discredited plenty. At no point does Beck ever tip her hand by telling you what to think. Which is good but she also doesn't give you much in the way of what she thinks, which I'd have kind of liked to hear about.

So here's what I came away with as an assessment of her view: "Opal kind of had it hard, she was a little crazy but was also a fraud and a self-promoter, but you wouldn't have needed my book to figure it out. That is all thank you."

I'm also a bit curious as to what the publisher wanted with the book for example: Imagine a book about George Washington that states: "After exhaustive research it turns out the general consensous is pretty much true. You could have just stuck with what you learned in school and not dropped 10 bucks on my book." That's not a book a publisher would want. Or me as a reader. Whether or not you believe her story, I feel kind it's kind of irrelevant. (I would like to note that I found evidence at UO more compelling that the book was at least in part really from when she says it was, than any evidence Beck presents against it.) But the myth is fascinating, and that's why we read about her. Not giving anything but some new facts and few vaguely antithetical lines about Opal... not really worth my money.

In short if you don't like Opal Whiteley, what would you get from reading a very detailed book about her life that would get you around to about where you started? If you like her why read a book that doesn't have any sympathy for her and doesn't really challenge your views directly? It's just kind of an apathetic book, about a passionate person.

Why Beck? Why?

As a person who deeply loved the book I read 25 years ago (Opal's childhood diaries), I was entranced with all the info in Beck's book, & impressed with her research.

But I have to say that the sloppiness of Beck's writing made me somewhat question the thoroughness of her research. What truly angered me, though, was that "Viking Press", associated with "Penguin Books", allowed a hardback book go to press with so many grammatical & syntactical errors! I often choose one book over another based on the reputation of the publisher, and until now, "Penguin Books" has represented for me the highest standard of quality.

If you're wondering if I'm exaggerating the extent of the writing errors, I'll give you an example. But I have to tell you that this is just one dozens (I wasn't obsessed to the point of counting them) in the book. What is amazing about this sentence is that it occurs ON THE LAST PAGE OF THE BOOK, one of the first places where you'd think that the copy-readers would focus their attention! "Her greatest success may have been her work with children, many of whom who genuine learned a love of nature from her." And no, the mistakes aren't mine. It's verbatim from the book that my sister spent $24.95 for my Christmas present.

I read this book a while back, and although another reviewer calls it garbage, it's because he thought our intel agencies could do no wrong. Now, in hindsight, we know better. We see the chapter detailing the omissions by our intelligence agencies was Totally Correct. These authors were the First to reveal these truths, and this shows they are top notch investigators. They knew what the NY Times and Wash Post only published months and months later. Hopefully, their upcoming book, America Betrayed, will be even more prescient and revealing

This is a sad yet scary book, and probably the only book on the market that tells a true and coherent story as to the events leading up to and the events of September 11. Although the reviewer below might be surprised, not just the twin towers but the Pentagon was struck by a jet and it did cause extensive damage and it did open up a huge crater in the walls. This is a great book. It really tells it like it is. I could only find one error. The authors say that over 6,000 were killed. It is true that this was the estimate for several months after 9/11, but now they are claiming only 3000 were killed. Will we ever know for sure? Other than that, this was a great book. The authors even wrote about the so called "20th hijacker" and identified him months before the mass media even became aware of his existence. This is a great book that tells a sad but true story.

The newspapers, the TV stations, and the Bush administration want us to believe that the U.S, was attacked because the terrorists "hate our freedom." That's nonsense. This book explains what the media and the government don't want you to know. The sickos who attacked us did so because of our racist policies that harm Arabs while promoting Israeli aggression and the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands. Because this book dares to tell the truth, you can bet a lot of people are not going to like it--especially the Israeli lobby. But don't get me wrong--this is an emotionally wrenching book, and it attempts to present an unbiased account of what happened and why; though certainly it is also very pro-America with a very patriotic, tearful ending. Read this book and your eyes will be opened.

More drivel condensed in one book you would be hard pressed to find -- that is, unless you read any of the other trash rushed out by this one-man publishing outfit. Note: "University Press" has absolutely nothing to do with the highly reputable University of California Press.

Reader beware! The editors website - Brain-Mind.com - is so full of bizarre material, I don't know how anyone can take any of their books seriously. This book is chock full full of factual errors, for example: on page 194 it says that the Boeing 757 that crashed into the Pentagon plowed a crater 100 feet wide into the ground. Photos of the crash site reveal no such crater. There are many more errors much too numerous to list here. This book is being sold in many supermarkets in the tabloid section and should be regarded as tabloid reading material!

Those readers wishing to find out the truth about what actually happened on September 11th. should avoid this book and look elsewhere to more credible sources of information.

This is a great quick read that covers a lot of detail and history in a humorous and easy way. It's a good beginning point to learn the complex history of Eastern Europe.

Aside from the pro-Socialist slant already mentioned by several reviewers, it is a book riddled with factual errors (the Letts and Moldavians are Slavs? Tito was a Serb? Why does the map outline of 1795 Partitioned Poland-Lithuania only show half of the country?) and fails in its basic premise of providing an outline of Eastern European history. Regardless of one's politics, their approach is ahistorical, with odd strings of facts displayed without context or explanation, rather like a book of trivia. Other books from this "...for Beginners" series have been far better organized and done a much better job of explaining their subject than this book does. Its half-baked organization, poorly-disguised ideological partisanship and quite stark plethora of factual innaccuracies and errors is all better understood when one looks at the bibliography: a book on flags, a U.S. government collection of global statistics and a couple other similar "references" that would get a standard high school research paper returned for lack of effort. These guys obviously didn't do much research.

It's sad because this field desperately needs a good introductory guide for laymen, but this book isn't it. This is a case where something is not better than nothing.

OK, I know this isn't the most in-depth and accurate book on Eastern Europe (nobody claimed it was textbook level), but it is a good overview for someone who is interested in the basics. I was given a copy due to my job (all I can say is I work for the government), and I found many interesting tidbits in it that I didn't know. I have traveled and lived throughout the region, and wish I had found this book years ago as it would be helpful for those not familiar with its history. And please don't criticize any events or issues that may have been left out, all written history has its shortcomings and inaccuracies! Overall, this book does a grand job and showing how Eastern Europe got to its present state!

As with nearly all the books in the "for beginners" series, anyone who knows anything about the topic will find the book not only incomplete (to be expected), but hopelessly skewed in a left-wing direction. Communism is never completely revealed as the horribly crushing, oppressive system it was. Although there is little mention of the millions who died under Stalin's rule, there is a page on the positive side (!) of Stalinism. There is no differentiation between the democratic West and the communist East with both being accused of simply wanting to divide up Europe. Most citizens of Poland, for example, would find such a perspective appalling. World War II merits around a page with no mention of the Holocaust or the extermination of European Jewry. Indeed, Jews rate one mention in passing in the whole book. This fits in with the bias of the series. In other books, Jews are usually mentioned negatively (with the notable exception of anti-Israel Noam Chomsky) and the hate for Zionism is so overdone that it moves into anti-Semitic with even widely recognized moderate figures (e.g. Chaim Weizmann) attacked as extreme.

While the book was helpful in learning basic geography of eastern Europe and had many humorous comments, I had a hard time getting past the blatant sympathy for communism. The section on the Soviet Union, for example, described the "widespread discontent" brought about by Stalin's collectivization of agriculture. A cartoon showed a sad farmer wearing a barrel with little straps. There was no mention of the tens of millions who died as a result of the intentional destruction of their seed grain, nor any mention of the purges or slave labor camps. The authors implied that while communism was "unpopular", capitalism produces "unemployment, homelessness and destitution".

America was described as an empire exactly analagous to the Soviet Union and it's puppet states.

The authors did concede that Joe Stalin had corrupted the idealistic dream of Marx and Lenin.

I don't understand this book at all. The auther is really nice and stuff, but she doens't help me have multiple organs. I only have one. I don't know why I bought this book. Musicians like me need better books than this to help them learn about the organ. I'm not sure why she wrote this. I hope she doesn't write any more books.

No, I haven't read the book. But I have read the reviews on this page. And I want to suggest that the reader from Richmond Virginia has a very helpful review. On the other hand, the reader from Watertown Massachusetts seems to have completely missed the point of the book. He/she seems to think the book is about organs, and wants to somehow obtain extra organs. Perhaps the reader needs a kidney or liver transplant -- I'm not sure. But one thing is certain: You won't find much information about obtaining organs in this book. (I know this because I read the title of the book! -- apparently this reader did not!) For this reason, I urge you to disregard this reader's review!

After careful practice and careful study...I've found this book extremely useful. Anyone, man, woman, boy, girl, should read this to spice up and heat up even the dullest sex life!

Unfortunately I am rather disappointed with Beck's book. Her "secrets" seem rather elementary and vague. The actual "how-to" doesn't even start until page 152 and even then the only non-obvious piece of advice is to practice holding your pee! This book should be entitled "How to have sex from a woman with a huge ego." While I think that some of her tecniques may prove to be useful and her ideas for a romantic evening are nice, the title of the book is simply an eye catcher and a gimic. The reader is forced to live vicariously through the author's sex life while taking quizzes that can also be found in Seventeen magazine. On a positive note, this book did get me thinking about how to be more romantic and intense, but I didn't expect reading a zillion pages on how to masturbate and how to get over fears of telling your partner to slow down or speed up. I say keep your $5.99 and put it towards something more useful...like condoms!

I bought this item and i have to say that it is pretty good. It does change your voice but not too much. Yet it works good enough. It was great using it for playing pranks on my friends.

My daughter and I had a wonderful time putting this together and it is still firmly together after months. She loves to make all kinds of sounds with big smiles on her face when she talks into the voice changer. She thinks it's really funny to have her voice turned into something so different and surprising us. It's a fun toy. I would have given this five stars if the sound is a bit more clear.

I only gave it two stars because my son kind of had fun helping me "put it together." I use "put it together" loosely because the pieces wouldn't actually fit together. I had to use masking tape to hold the top and bottom portions together and had to keep retaping the wires so that they would stay twisted. The battery and wires would not fit in the body - no matter the configuration. After we finally had it all taped shut, it just made a bunch of roaring noises and nobody couldn understand what he was saying. All of the settings sound the same. It is a complete waste of money. The book is informational, but not worth the effort. Look for something else - I wish I had.

The concept is great, you work with your child (or he can do it on his own) to put this voice changer together with a few simple, informative steps. The main problem is the closure mechanism doesn't stay closed, which renders the product useless. Who can use an electronic device if it won't stay contained? Also, the instructions suggest putting the wires together with scotch tape. I learned when I was 5 that scotch tape wasn't good at holding much together, especially metal. Pull out your electrical tape (no room for wire connectors) and save yourself the hassle. And when you're done taping the wires together, and can manage to STUFF everything inside the case, go ahead and wrap the tape around the casing, too, because if you don't, you'll be looking at those parts all over again.

This is, without question, THE WORST book for the 3rd year OB/Gyn clerkship available. In carrying the book on the ward for only one day, I found no useful information on: preecclampsia, proteinuria, premauture rupture of membranes and only limited info on a host of other topics. The omissions are unbelievable and the book is useless. I regret having bought it.

Excellent and exhaustive notes on Obs&Gyn. Good for USMLE preparation. I feel that it is a bit too much of explanations. Model question are comparable to that of USMLE. In short, go for this book, if you have time!

This was the only book i used for ob gyn for usmle step 2 review.I think it is sufficient to read this book alone,as the questions in obsgyn were not so tough.

Long book, informative but of low yeild, would be better of with the BRS O&G. Some Gyn topics are really bad and make no sense. Some are good.

High class bio of the Most Blueswailins, immaculately designed with dozens of rare photos (though precious little of the LITTLE GAMES era band). Author Alan Clayson makes it clear his book is a stylized, highly-personal take on the band, so it came as no surprise the pages were filled with empurpled hipster prose. Yet Clayson succeeds in eliciting trenchant quotes (both archival and new) from each member of the group, and captures the band's seat-of-the-pants creativity with eloquence and humor. On the downside, Clayson can't maintain a narrative and wastes too much ink on irrelevent details about other artists---especially aesthetic peewees like Dave Dee Dozy Beaky Mick and Tich and the Downliners Sect, both of whom make the Seeds look like the Beatles. There are also a number of factual errors (though only a pedant would care that Keith Relf didn't write "Shapes In My Mind") and a puny chronology almost entirely cribbed from Greg Russo's superior (though more workmanlike) ULTIMATE RAVE UP. The biggest problem with the book is Clayson's unwillingess to allow the band's story to unfold on its own. Virtually every paragraph is crammed to the gills with snoozy hyperbole that says more about the writer's fascination with his prose than it does about the subject. Nevetheless, it's a worthy pick up for fans of the Yardbirds, who have waited eons for the kind of journalistic respect accorded to the Who, Cream, Beatles, Stones and their other rivals. Where before we had to trawl through [the webites] to hunt down a battered copy of John Platt's 1983 book and pay [good money], now we have two quality reads---and despite his pretentions, Clayson's love for the band that gave us "For Your Love" and "Shapes of Things" shines through brightly. I can't knock him for that.

Conveyed new information, so was worth the read for an avid fan, but it dragged on and on.

I didn't really learn anything new about the Yardbirds after reading this. Considering they were one of the most exciting and important bands in rock history, I would have expected more 'meat'. I felt Alan Clayson's writing style got in the way at times, distracting somewhat. However, the photos are really outstanding, particularly the cover shot showing them at Studio 51 in London (I think). What a classic moment frozen in time. Glad I read it. Any Yardbird book is better than no Yardbird book, however, there are better ones.

With great anticipation I ordered Mr. Clayson's book, however having finished it last evening I would have to say that I am somewhat disappointed.

There is certainly no lack of research or knowledge on Mr. Clayson's part, but perhaps it was his style of prose that put me off. He writes not necessarily in a high-minded manner, but perhaps it is English dry-wit which makes it hard for an American to slog through; in many cases I could almost picture Mr. Clayson and another UK resident nodding and winking at each other across the bar. Annette Carson's JEFF BECK: CRAZY FINGERS was written in a much easier-to-digest style.

The Yardbirds were known, at least in my youth here in the USA, as a band much better seen in person than to hear on record. Mr. Clayson certainly explains to the reader why that is so. The description of life on the road, for The Yardbirds, should be enough to put off any youngster with delusions of trying the same; that is, if he could get through to that point in the book.

Being somewhat of a "gearhead," I missed discussion of the bands' equipment or more technical side. The photographs printed in this book are quite wonderful though, and to a degree appeased my appetite; Chris Dreja certainly went through some guitars! It is just a pity that things such as this were not spoken of in the text.

I can see where this book would appeal much more to the English market than the American, given the discussion of musical groups never heard of here, and in that way the work is much like Mo Foster's 17 WATTS, where one must sort through that tedium.

All in all, not a bad book, but not an easy read. That said, the overleaf shows that Mr. Clayson has published many works on music of the era, so he certainly has the authority of his research behind him. THE YARDBIRDS and his other work are surely the "go-to" source for any trivia you may wish to ferret out.

Lonely planet Sweden is not a bad introduction to Sweden, but it is not as reader friendly as it could have been, and it is a little short on content. However, I cannot recommend "The Rough Guide to Sweden" in its place, due to some grave omissions and incorrect and highly subjective information in this book.

There are some minor errors in Lonely Planet Sweden that irritated me. For example, the word "älg" is translated as "Elk" through out the book (dozens of places). This is wrong, "älg" is "Moose" not "Elk". Sweden has moose but no elk (Kanada hjort). Another example is that the river "boat race" in Uppsala on the Walpurgis festival is actually a "float race", real boats are not used. Instead anything home made that floats, including Styrofoam skis, large airbags, and decorated floats are used. It is more of a comic arts and craft event rather than a "boat race".

However, what annoyed me the most was that out of the books 313 pages only 36 pages were devoted to the Northern part of Sweden called "Norrland". This part is 2/3 of Sweden and has probably the most interesting attractions in all of Sweden. That includes wild life (thousands of Brown Bear, 300,000 Moose, reindeer, wolf packs, Lynx, etc.), the famous Ice Hotel (hotel made entirely of Ice), nature, mountains, moose hunting trips, fishing, ski slopes, national parks, Sámi culture, and much more. Central Europeans flock to Norrland to see these things that does not exist in other parts of Europe. This is described very briefly, if at all, in this book. However, the Ice Hotel lobby is depicted on the front cover, which is a consolation.

I am from Norrland, so I may be biased too, but I still think that mentioning nothing about many of the popular tourist attractions in Norrland, while mentioning almost every Pizza joint in the country is imbalanced.

Lonely Planet always does a solid job and this is no different, but having also bought the Rough Guides Sweden guidebook, I would have to strongly recommend the later: ISBN: 1843536854.

Lonely Planet looses in the amount of content (380 pages vs. 500+ in roughly the same size/weight as Rough Guides). The layout is less reader friendly and harder to search through. But in the end what really matters is that on every city Rough Guides has more information, better details and better maps. Plus Rough Guides was for 2006 published more recently and had presumably more update to date information. There is nothing wrong with this version of Lonely Planet, but given that's is the same price why not get the Rough Guides.

If you are going to Sweden I would also point out Rick Steve's Scandinavia book if only for the highlights on the extremely reasonably priced cruise between Stockholm and Helsinki. It's an excellent way to spend 2 nights!

The 2006 (3rd) edition of "Lonely Planet Sweden" has a decent amount of information about Sweden, enough to permit planning for travel to that beautiful country. Sweden, with its viking roots, its briefly imperial past, and its very modern present, boasts a fantastic geographic diversity of farms, lakes, mountains, and islands spread along the Baltic Sea all the way to the Arctic Circle

The format of the guide includes maps, diagrams, some photographs, and summaries of the attractions in each major region of Sweden. The coverage includes the entire country, although the southern portion, especially Stockholm, takes the majority of the content. This guide may be of most use to those looking for a quick survey on Sweden coupled with opinions on what may or may not be worth seeing. Those interested in more detail, or in forming their own opinions, will find plenty of other guides to meet those needs.