Browning Books

This book is not really about Peter Hurkos. It is about Peter Hurkos, the psychic. If one measures this book by whether or not Peter Hurkos is revealed as a charlatan or a true psychic, then it succeeds admirably, as it leaves little doubt that Peter Hurkos was an individual with a highly unusual gift. If you measure the book by whether or not you get to know Peter Hurkos, the person, then it has not succeeded, because the reader comes away with very little feeling as to who Peter Hurkos was. The book, while interesting, suffers from being somewhat one dimensional. Notwithstanding this limitation, it is still a thought provoking read.

Peter Hurkos is the famous Dutch psychic who enthralled the world during the nineteen fifties and sixties with his psychic gifts. Uncannily clairvoyant, he was not always so. Born in Holland to a working class Dutch family of simple means, his youth was relatively uneventful. Interestingly enough, however, he was born with the caul which is often taken to mean by those who are superstitious that the individual may have been born with the gift of telepathy or clairvoyance.

Though his youth was relatively uneventful, this changed in 1941 when he fell off a ladder and fell four stories, landing on his head. He miraculously survived, but as his friends and family put it, the old Peter had died, and a new one seemed to have taken his place: one who could foretell the future, as well as describe past events, with uncanny accuracy. In the nineteen fifties, he left Holland and came to the United States, where he prospered as a well known psychic.

Peter used his gifts commercially, for which he received much criticism. He also became known as a psychic detective for helping the police solve numerous cases. Some of the cases in which he assisted were high profile cases, such as that of the Boston Strangler. For many years, Peter Hurkos astonished the world with his psychic gifts. He performed best through the process of psychometry, the divination of information by touching an object belonging to the subject of the reading.

I have to admit that some of the documented stories are truly amazing. So amazing that the author, an investigative reporter with a reputation for exposing frauds, became a believer. I do not doubt that the reader will likewise succumb and join the legions of those who believe that Peter Hurkos was, indeed, psychic.

First published in paperback in 1982 as Silhouette Romance #142.

Description from the book back cover:

He doesn't play by the rules - but she can't live without him. Wilhelmina Silverthorne is determined to live life her way. She wants to leave her past - the close call of a broken engagement - behind her. She craves freedom, excitement, fast cars and glamorous entertainment. She is beautiful, young, and independent. Then she meets the fascinating Kiel Faulkner, a renegade, a loner, a man without loyalties. She wants him more than she has ever wanted anything. She knows that if he senses her weakness he'll leave her flat. But when he kisses her and murmurs, "I know how to handle you, Willy Silverthorne," she wonders if she is strong enough to meet the challenge ...

In some ways this is an unusual Wolfe novel, although it hardly smashes any conventions. I did hope it might be a particularly dramatic episode with the early revelation of Wolfe's Moriarty, Zeck, but a titanic encounter remains a tease. That being said, it's nice that Stout has given this new dimension to the normally self-assured Wolfe, having him acknowledge fearing an opponent and - unlike your average super-sleuth - deliberately avoiding closing with a smart criminal.

The other potential departure from the usual `light-boiled' crime is the political sub-plot. This reminded me that Wolfe was a popular author, so I suppose Communists in a 1949 story is no more surprising than terrorists turning up in something published in the early 21st century.

Otherwise Archie sticks to character, flirting with heiresses and cracking wise with police officers. I can't say I was really engaged with solving the mystery - despite gradual revelations along the way Stout tends to leave Wolfe with some information up his sleeve for his final revelations that the reader couldn't know. I suspect a generation later Stout would have been ideal as a TV writer, turning out able weekly shows that never intended to soar but gave the pleasure of familiar characters and situations.

This book was interesting enough, but NOT what I expected after reading a review in the NY Times. There is lots of "British humor" that I just did not get. I almost put it down mid-way, but did manage to finish. Maybe if you are Brtitish you'll love it?

After using many other SLS book and cassettes I had high hopes for this course. I have used the german, dutch, russian, finnish, hungarian, serbian, greek and albanian versions of spoken language courses and they were extremely useful. There are always useful dialogues all of which contain extremely practical everyday vocabulary. Unfortunately, the grammar explanations let this one down. Throughout the book only two genders are mentioned masculine and feminine, the romanian language actually uses a third gender, the neuter, which means a good grammar text (or native like i used) is an absolute must. Using this book will leave the learner confused when reading other materials which refer to a neuter gender. Also, this book uses the old spelling rules so I would suggest getting a modern dictionary as a supplement.

i was a big fan of the House and Garden magazine so i was disappointed by this book. More inspirational shots, ie. flowers, people, etc... than actual homes. the book is lovely but thought it would be more of a shelter book than "artsy" type format.

I read as much of this trash as I could before throwing it out and barfing. I wish I could give this thing a negative rating!

It is terrible writing. Heinlein wrote better stuff on his worst day. As best as I can tell the real Heinlein had nothing to do with this travesty and this is a total rip-off of Heinlein's reputation.

"Jubal Harshaw" is one of Heinlein's characters and should be under copywrite. If the author using this pseudonym isn't already paying the Heinlein trust a bunch of money, I hope he/she has to pay much, much, more money in the near future for harm to Heinlein's legacy.

Do not buy this book. Do not read this book. Grump at Amazon for carrying such trash.

Clever idea and good stories, even nicely Heinlein-like. But attention to detail in story-line (something Heinlein himself seldom missed a trick on) is lacking. And proof-reading by author, editor, or anyone at all would have improved the end-product enormously. Was Harshaw in a hell of a hurry on this? By the way, for "future reference," Jubal Harshaw (in "Stranger in a Strange Land") has a middle initial: "E."

The author is defninitely pushing it using Heinleins name on the title, but, when it comes down to it, he's done him justice. Both stories were non stop action and laughs. I highly recommend this novel and if you want a good, quick laugh read "How Aeneas Browning Got Rich" first. It's priceless. Enjoy.

Just another lamer hijacking the Old Man's name so this poorly copy-edited, badly-written excuse for a book will come up in RAH's search results.

Don't waste your time; this book is a waste of time. Seriously. The author isn't Robert Heinlein. He isn't even fit to take out the Old Man's trash, although RAH would be unlikely to be so impolite as to say so.

Attempting to grab one's fifteen minutes of fame on the back of RAH's Grand Mastery, simply strikes me as rude. Rude and lame.

Don't buy this book please. Not only does it genuinely suck. It's written by a lamer, attempting to use the Old Man's reputation to get search results from people whom aren't paying close attention. And if there's one thing Robert Anson Heinlein wanted you to do besides think for yourself, it is to pay attention.

One Star -- and that's being generous. Jubal Harshaw would have set Michael loose on him. *smiles sweetly*

The "yarn" itself is not a bad one. The story has a semi-fantastic, but reasonably plausibly "spun" premise out of modern-day science fact themes. Clearly "Mr. Harshaw" is also trying to set it in his own future history. He even captures some of the ludicrously sublime wording that one could find in some of Heinlein's juveniles--the line that's sticking out for me in this vein was something like: "Then Mom nuked another city."

The problem, as other reviews have aptly noted, was that this author made a mistake that Heinlein never did. He [or she] failed to retain a competent editor--or if there was an editor, they were poorly heeded.

There's "sheer" instead of "shear," an early warning of what's to come. I stopped short for precious seconds at a capital letter used mid-sentence. The offending character followed a lower-cased, period-delimited abbreviation, "d.n.a." [sic] This flaw made it obvious that the author was drafting in Microsoft Word. A word to the wise: "Auto-Correct" may be automatic, but it's not automatically correct.

Throughout the text there were parenthetical comments {or sometimes curly-brace comments [sometimes brackets were. The fact that these constructs contained anything from run-on sentences to nonsensical fragments only added to their distracting power.

If you like a decent yarn, and can get past all the painful syntax and outright errors, then do give this a try. I'd spend my valuable time with some of the well-crafted works of other SF authors that will give you great stories, without all of the amateurish defects.

I'm not sure what happened to Frank Browning. His first book, The Culture of Desire, was interesting and provocative. It got me thinking and it was, above all, generous. It was inclusive and it was respectful of so many kinds of gay people. This book is the complete opposite. Browning comes off like a closed-minded old man--and I don't mean that in an ageist way. A young person could sound like an old fool, so it's not about age. It's about style and openess and thinking. It's about personal attacks and ugliness. And it's about sticking to a post-structuralist, Foucauldian agenda, even when it doesn't intrique or make sense. I read both Michaelangelo Signorielli's book Life Outside and Gabriel Rotello's book Sexual Ecology. Rotello I found to be a bit dull and unwilling to entertain the thoughts of those who might disagree, though I still found him enlightening and interesting, and I thought the book was major piece of scientific work. Signorile I found to be thoughtful overall, far from dull, and quite perceptive. The book was also well-written. But all that Browning has to say about these two is that they're "policing" desire. He has nothing good to say about them and their work, and seems instead to be hellbent on attacking them. It so much deviates from his usual thoughtful style, and it's a real embarrassment. I can only imagine that he's jealous of them for taking the spotlight while he's been nowhere to be found. He reduces and simplifies their work in ways that I think is dishonest, as I cannot believe he actually thinks these things to be true. Furthermore, his use of postmodern theory is just hackneyed and pitiful. In his first book it was an interesting aside, something we should consider. In this book, it has become the religion by which he judges everything. He's turned me off. I think this book is a total mess--and boring.

Best thing I've yet read on why so many of us younger, er, gays, are feeling increasingly "post-gay."

Unfortunately, this book will probably sell only half as well as Browning's blockbuster "The Culture of Desire." That's because it's twice as good. "Queer Geography" is a sexy read, but it's also very smart, which may make it a challenge to readers unwilling or unable to look beyond 1970's ideas of what it means to be gay. But it should be required reading for anybody who's ever felt that maybe, just maybe, there's a life outside of dumbed-down gay magazines.

Same-sex desire can cohere into many different identities -- we've known that since Foucault. Same-sex behavior often does not cohere into an identity at all -- we've known that at least since "Tea Room Trade." So why does Browning present it as a remarkable revelation that he has just now thought of, and that will come to the reader as a shocking revelation? This is a well written book, but interesting accounts of pansexual Arcadias are unfortunately interspliced with annoyingly self-absorbed tales of his tricks -- Browning believes that he is hot enough to attract every guy in the world, straight, gay, or whatever, and that the reader is desperately interested in hearing the details. I can buy better porn elsewhere -- but my problem with this book is not that there are many ways to express same-sex desire, not that there is gay life beyond the Castro Street clones with gym memberships and charge accounts at Ikea -- who'd want a world where everybody is the same? But Browning continuously states that those clones have no right to exist, that they are inauthentic, self-absorbed, sex-obsessed closet bisexuals. Gay life should should not ever include muscles, circuit parties, and political activism. In fact, there should be no gay people, anywhere, ever, just promiscuous pansexuals going with the flow. In a less enlightened age, we would call such rantings homophobic.

This book should insult any gay man who considers himself to be an intellectual. Full of faulty logic, purple prose, gross generalizations, and accounts of Browning's crusing experiences, the textoffers a disturbing, degrading picture of homosexuality. Despite a section on the works of Michel Foucault, the text demonstrates no knowledge of political ontology; also, the text avoids mentioning the works of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and David Halperin, but it posits Camille Paglia as an intellectual diety--look out! The correlation between coming out and becoming "born again" just doesn't work: the former is an outward, social/public event, and the latter is an inward, spiritual one. Nonetheless, the cover of the book reproduces a beautifu, homoeroticl print by Paul Cadmus.

I've been in the gun building and repair business, part-time, for 35 years. I bought this book recently because it was always referred to in all my studies in the "Trade" as a "Must Have" in the Professional Gunmaker's reference library and because I needed several rust-type bluing formulas. It has all the information one could ever need, and reportedly the formulas work with excellent results. But, I never got to try any. When I attempted to purchase some of the basic chemicals (mostly acids) from regional chemical suppliers (there are NO small local suppliers left anywhere, thank you EPA and Liability Lawyers), and I found all the basic chemicals had either been taken off the market because of EPA "fiddling", were hideously expensive to ship ($1000+ base shipping, all by truck) or were only available in 200+ gallon minimum orders (no pick up, even if you were willing and had a truck, transport must be via EPA and DOT licensed Hazardous materials transporter - also $$$$$$$+++++) Yes, this book is a storehouse of information, but it needs a SERIOUS revision for modern times and conditions. It's a good relic of better days gone by, but I can't use it in today's gunsmithing metal finishing applications. It's in the collector's corner in my library, not in the shop. A shame.

I bought this book expecting to set up a homemade gun bluing operation in my home and was disappointed.

The chemical formulari were archaic and unusable (most of the chemical names used went out of vogue 50-60 years ago).

The book does not include plans to build bluing tanks of drying rooms; book only offers a brief description.

It left me, "the advanced do it yourselfer" lacking and I do not undertand why so many people rave about this book.

I do not think it should have been reprinted.

It did not help me at all

Good information on many recipes for do it yourself blueing and browning that is hard to find.

The print is very small for older eyes and the book was written many years ago. The blueing and browning techniques of today are far easier and simpler to use.
I would not recomend this book for reblueing modern firearms.

Very good info but very technical. This is more of a cookbook then a novel. It does explain everything including measurments and chemical names but is very dry reading. Please keep in mind that this title is 90 years old and the style reflects it. The fact that it is still around after so many years tells all you really need to know in regard to it's value as a reference.

The author of this book was completely hoodwinked by Hurkos and accepted his self-serving fictions as accurate accounts of his cases. In fact, his record was one of continuous failure. In at least three major cases (the Jackson Family murders, the Boston Strangler murders and the Michigan Coed murders) he falsely implicated innocent parties. In the Jackson family murders he caused an innocent man to be incarcerated in a hospital for the criminally insane. The man was only released after the FBI caught the real murderer -- without any help from Hurkos. Hurkos's involvement in the Michigan Coed murderers was even more tragic. When Hurkos went to Michigan to investigate the murders the murderer committed yet another as a challenge to the great psychic sleuth. I am currently working on an article about the Jackson family murders and have found that most of Browning's statements about the case are contradicted by contemporary news articles in major newspapers.

This book is not really about Peter Hurkos. It is about Peter Hurkos, the psychic. If one measures this book by whether or not Peter Hurkos is revealed as a charlatan or a true psychic, then it succeeds admirably, as it leaves little doubt that Peter Hurkos was an individual with a highly unusual gift. If you measure the book by whether or not you get to know Peter Hurkos, the person, then it has not succeeded, because the reader comes away with very little feeling as to who Peter Hurkos was. The book, while interesting, suffers from being somewhat one dimensional. Notwithstanding this limitation, it is still a thought provoking read.

Peter Hurkos is the famous Dutch psychic who enthralled the world during the nineteen fifties and sixties with his psychic gifts. Uncannily clairvoyant, he was not always so. Born in Holland to a working class Dutch family of simple means, his youth was relatively uneventful. Interestingly enough, however, he was born with the caul which is often taken to mean by those who are superstitious that the individual may have been born with the gift of telepathy or clairvoyance.

Though his youth was relatively uneventful, this changed in 1941 when he fell off a ladder and fell four stories, landing on his head. He miraculously survived, but as his friends and family put it, the old Peter had died, and a new one seemed to have taken his place: one who could foretell the future, as well as describe past events, with uncanny accuracy. In the nineteen fifties, he left Holland and came to the United States, where he prospered as a well known psychic.

Peter used his gifts commercially, for which he received much criticism. He also became known as a psychic detective for helping the police solve numerous cases. Some of the cases in which he assisted were high profile cases, such as that of the Boston Strangler. For many years, Peter Hurkos astonished the world with his psychic gifts. He performed best through the process of psychometry, the divination of information by touching an object belonging to the subject of the reading.

I have to admit that some of the documented stories are truly amazing. So amazing that the author, an investigative reporter with a reputation for exposing frauds, became a believer. I do not doubt that the reader will likewise succumb and join the legions of those who believe that Peter Hurkos was, indeed, psychic.