Collins Books

Great photograghs with well written copy. This book makes me want to go to this museum and see first hand the items displayed. Highly recommend!!!

i'm an engineer- worked rocket motors, and various satellite programs. this book was recommended by associate after visiting the museum at Langley. The pics are super, with short descriptions, and moderate on the tech. It's an amazing pulse of this wild history, and mostly is from America's lineage. St. Louis, Mercury, Atlas, and up to current Shuttle. There's also the SST, and unique turn of the century early birds. A fine read to be shared with a youngster (my son 10, digs it), or for the history or engineering buff. amazon has it cheaper than at the museum.

THIS BOOK IS BETTER THAN ANY DESIGN BOOK I HAVE EVER READ THE PICTURES ARE AMAZING I JUST WISH THIS COMPANY WAS IN THE UK

This book is unlike anything else out there. It gives valuable insight for anyone interested in design, architecture, restaurant design or working in any of these industries, it's also great for anyone who is curious about great design and art or has heard about AvroKo. They have won numerous awards and being able to see their projects in-depth is a truly unique way to see how this top design firm works. The photos are amazing and beautifully shot and the design of the book itself is the best I've seen in any kind of art or design book like this. It also gave me a really great look at their design process and the outstanding projects they've designed. I've been to Public (which is one of the coolest restaurants in NYC) and this book makes me want to visit all the restaurants they've designed. I would highly recommend it as both a beautiful book to own and give as a gift.

I am not an avid poetry reader, especially when it comes to modern poetry, but I loved this book. The poems read like prose that has been distilled to it's purest essence. If you like the cover photo you will like the book. Although many of the poems deal with heartache and loss you feel the strength and deep roots that are there to support those emotions. Just like the tree in the photo that is making it's way through winter and is covered in snow. It is not a sad picture, it is beautiful and so is this book. Kelley stunned me with his elegance and bravery.

I am seldom invested in poetry books. I usually must imbibe poetry in small does, lest I lose interest. All in all, I prefer prose work. But Kelley's BETTER TO TRAVEL is one of the rare works that sidestepped that preference.

The title itself implies movement, flux, action from somewhere to somewhere. And BTT substantiates this implication consistently throughout. The back cover reveals the book's premise: a physical flight from a moribund relationship. But the destination is more vaguely identified: "sights unseen" (the title of the book's closing piece).

But the flight from heartache is also mental and spiritual, of course. And gradually the reader finds that the flight *from* heartache was not wholly accurate---for the heartache is a fellow passenger on the plane, a haunting mate on London streets, a taunting vision in troubled dreams. The narrator's European trip seems a half-real vacation with a ghost: a reluctant self-exile ("Consider me exiled, expatriate, excommunicated.") from the lost love that he cannot ungrasp.

Kelley is not specific about *who* this lost love is. The flashbacks and lucid imaginations emanate a more essential power and presence rather than a meaty person. The narrator focuses on both real and fantastic shared moments: "How quickly I am in that place that is nowhere at all". He has fled to a dreamscape, a healing purgatory. And he admits this, even to his former love: "Your presence more spectre than spatial."

The book also mentions timely world events and issues that serve as a chronological backdrop for the narrator's journey. By book's end he returns to America, but sees that he is still in a foreign land---for he must relearn language and behavior and even love.

The craft itself can be initially mistaken by folks tired of diary-type works as yet more typical "confessional" poetry. But by the first poem's conclusion, I was relieved and invested. For the rest of BTT I felt as if I was a second set of the narrator's eyes---and a second wounded heart.

Kelley's style is nimble, clever, and injects very notable lines without setting us up for them. They are felt like snowflakes suddenly dropped on noses.

Which brings me to an attempt to describe the book with a brief image that comes to my mind in its regard:

BETTER TO TRAVEL is a snowglobe, just shaken, containing a cozy house locked to the world and those lost outside and a winter-forlorned but beautiful tree. And between the tree and the locked, lighted house a lonely, outcast man is sprawled on his back in the snow, slowly and grievously making snow angels with his arms and legs. Each time the man sweeps his limbs he becomes a bit younger---and the pain that drove him outside breathes out into the snow, freeing him.

I'm not sure why that image arose from my reading Kelley's book, but it serves as a mood indicator: be prepared for both pain and pleasantry, warmth and cold, death and rebirth.

Perhaps the image was planted by a part in my favorite piece:

"Here is the snow I never
saw this season and the
great house I run towards.
If I go indoors does it mean
I cannot cope?"

There is some good stuff in here, but I think most of it looks pretty dated to me.
Your mileage/opinion may vary.

A great companion book to Carter's book on color in design. Lots of great ideas and I love the flip book layout which makes it easy to find what you are looking for.

I am a design teacher - and like to fill my presentations of real-life work that parallels my classes. Excellent source of scanning material, and gives you the exact colors.

Most of the Nate Heller books are good. This one is very good. I enjoy the characters and the ties to history. Basically, a Forrest Gump/Spencer type of read.

It was an excellent book. A little bit too much language. It got crazy on pg. 140 (read that page). It had a whole bunch of explosive sex. And a whole lot of bloodshed.

"The follow-up to his critically acclaimed novel, Consumed In Freedom's Flame, protagonist and factional Irishman, Aran Roe O'Neill returns in this historically accurate factional tale of Ireland's Civil War. The book opens with a military entourage carrying Irish rebel leader Michael Collins to a mysterious meeting aimed at putting an end to the savage conflict gripping the country. As a passenger in the car with Collins, O'Neill is caught in the midst of the ambush that would eventually leave his beloved leader - and perhaps even the hopes of a generation - dying on a country road. The novel then shifts back to the end of the Irish War of Independence as the British government awaits the arrival of an Irish delegation charged with attaining their country's sovereignty after hundreds of years of supplication. As [Eamon] de Valera jostles for an outcome that appears motivated by personal rather than stately reasons, Collins is reluctantly press-ganged into joining the Irish deputation. With the threat of total war imminent, the Irish delegation are forced to return to the country with a less than desirable treaty for those who sought a full 32-county republic, a position that the author pointedly claims: 'once a means to achieving a broad ends, had become a narrow end in itself.' With the factions split, the country becomes embroiled in a bitter, insidious conflict that turns comrade and households upon themselves. There are possibly those that would charge the author with being too far in the Collins camp, but with the dispassionate eye of history now finally beginning to fall on Ireland's most depressing dispute, it is hard to escape Liam's presentation of Ireland's most dominant political figure as an egotistical, arrogant man armed only with his own selfish, myopic vision. As one of Collin's inner circle, the newly married protagonist sees his own life unravel along with those around him as Liam's superbly researched book brings alive one of Ireland's darkest hours. Armed with murderous subplots, along with romance, heroism and betrayal galore, this is certainly one of the most dynamic and enjoyable retellings of the Irish Civil War that I have ever read." Reviewed by Joe Kavanagh, Irish Connections magazine, (New York, NY), Autumn, 2006

"Blood on the Shamrock" is the sequel to "Consumed in Freedom's Flame," Cathal Liam's historical novel about Ireland's Civil War in the 1920's. Fictional hero Aran Roe O'Neill continues in the struggle for Irish self-governance and independence. In this complex network of loyalties and treachery, he faces foes both from within and outside the ranks of Irish patriots. For those who may have missed the first novel, "Blood on the Shamrock" stands very nicely on its own as a great historical novel. It is greatly enhanced by an introductory list of cast of characters, in order of appearance by chapter, the prologue, which quotes the Declaration of Arbroath and the Proclamation of POBLACHT NA H EIREANN, and the glossary. Frequent quotations from poems and songs also help to place the novel's tone and action core. The reader will quickly become caught up in the life and cause of Aran, which is 'at one with the cause of Pearse, Connolly and Collins.' Twentieth century Irish political reality evolves through the pages, with many references to its cultural and historical heritage. "Blood on the Shamrock" is immediate and personal; it will serve to enlighten many readers about the latter days of the Irish Civil War. Ending in the 1960's, "Blood on the Shamrock" is a complete read in and of itself. But one wonders (and hopes!) if there will be another novel to the present day?

I found blood rules absolutely gripping. The description of events on the hijacked plane give you a fair idea, what it would be like to be one of the passangers on board

I found blood rules absolutely gripping. The description of events on the hijacked plane give you a fair idea, what it would be like to be one of the passangers on board

Anne Bradford's Crossword Solver's Dictionary would be my first choice, along with Chambers, to take on my desert island. It is a most dependable source of inspiration for the crossword solver.

For the past forty years Anne Bradford has been scrutinising every puzzle that she has encountered. She has broken down the clues into definitions and cryptic definitions and has carefully recorded and stored all the words, including those that indicate anagrams, reversals and puns. It is for this reason that this volume is so valuable in decoding the cryptic clue.

Even the most obscure word can be found under its every day definition. If you are searching your memory for a word meaning fidget, for example, just look it up and she gives you: fantad, fanteeg, fantigue, fantod, fike, fuss, fyke, jimjams, jittery, niggle, trifle, twaddle, twitch and uneasy. Word-length, crossing letters and subsidiary indications do the rest. If you are looking for a fish she gives you two pages of them!

I have found that this book makes solving the most difficult puzzle (including those of Ximenes and Azed) an easy task. It is undoubtedly the best of the solving aids available and I have no hesitation in recommending it to débutante solvers. The experts already have it on their bookshelves!

Anne Bradford has used her 40 years of crossword solving and setting to produce an essential aid for the crossword fan. She has examined every cryptic clue that she has tackled over these years and has compiled a dictionary that includes even the most obscure references. I find that this book can half my solving time and, when creating puzzles, it is a magnificent thesaurus. I can certainly say that this is the best crossword dictionary available.

Sammy Weiss has been set up for a fall, played for a sucker, stuffed in a frame, but for squalid, fat Sammy, who always takes the easy way, who seeks the fast buck and believes the brass ring is right around the corner, the con had the ring of truth. When a two bit gambler asked him to collect a $25,000 gambling debt from wealthy Jonathan Radford III for a thousand dollar fee, Sammy believed the job was legit, because he wanted to believe it. He got in a fight with Radford, fled and went to Dan Fortune, one-armed P.I. to alibi him, but Fortune knows trouble when he sees it and he turns Sammy away.

Later Fortune wonders about Sammy and asks around out of curiosity, then finds out Radford had been murdered and the cops think Sammy did it. Fortune doesn't like Sammy for the crime. He doesn't particularly like Sammy either, but right is right, so he embarks on a quest to prove Sammy's innocence.

Collins knows how to plot a mystery, knows how to paint characters good and bad, knows how to hook a reader. He's been doing it for a long time, doing it well and it's often bothered me that he isn't more well known. If, like me, you've been reading him over the years, then you've seen the tremendous influence fast-talking, wise-cracking Dan Fortune has had on Private Eyes that have come later. You see some of him in Kinsey Millhone, Tom Magnum, V.I. Warshawaki and scores of other wisecrackers and you'll be seeing him in a scores of P.I.s whose authors are still toddling around, who have yet to pick up a pen, touch a keyboard or finger a mouse. Collins has given mystery writers and readers so much over the years and if you haven't read him yet, then you've been missing one heck of a writer who's been writing damn fine books for quite a while now.

When I agreed to review a book written by Mr. Collins's wife Gayle, I didn't know he was married to her, as they write under different names. I did a Google search on her and found out who her husband was and was intrigued. Mr. Collins has long been a favorite of my husband's. Ken has been reading him since the '60s, never missing a book, losing a day when each one came out. I've read many of them myself, and now we're re-reading them. Murder is still murder and a good mystery is as good a read now as it ever was.

THE BRASS RAINBOW opens with fat and slovenly Sammy Weiss trying to buy an alibi from Dan Fortune, one-armed private eye with a C-note. Fortune can't be bought, Weiss leaves and later is accused of murder. Fortune doesn't believe he did it, but the cops do and are on his trail. Supposedly Weiss killed the scion of a wealthy family over a $25,000 gambling debt, but Fortune doesn't believe fat Sammy could have gotten himself into any game or games with that kind of stakes.

Mr. Collins gives us a vast and varied cast of characters to choose from as suspects and at times we're as confused as Fortune as he doggedly tries to clear Weiss. There's a gaggle of beautiful babes who flit in and out of the story to tempt Fortune and to lead him down a false trail or two. There's the beautiful gold digger who wants to marry into the wealthy family. There's the wealthy family who want to keep its secrets. There's a bad cop and a good cop. There's mobsters, good and bad. And there is Dan Fortune who has to sift through them all in the search for a killer in this five star book that is a fun read. You should track it down if you can, or maybe check your local library. You won't be sorry.

Reviewed by Vesta Irene

Ever hear a phrase or a word that you can't quite place or would love to know the derivation of? I stumbled across this book in the bookstore one day and had to have it. It sits next to my computer right beside Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. Just about any word or phrase is listed in alphabetical order. I've even spent an hour or two on a rainy afternoon thumbing through the pages til something catches my eye. Then while reading one entry, something else will come to mind and I go to that page. You could spend hours wandering through this book and not even realize how much time has gone by! Very educational in a Trivial Pursuit kind of way and great fun!

I picked this book up mainly because of John Ayto's name on the cover. I had been using his 'Dictionary of Word Origins' for some years, and had found it invaluable.

The book turned out to be rather different, but in a pleasant sort of way. Essentially, the book is compilation of interesting references and words that you come across when reading, or that you need when you are writing something. Most of the information is extremely interesting, though often you get knocked from one page to another because of cross-references. In the process, you end up finding something else, which may be even more interesting! For instance, there is an entry on nose tax, and another on a tax on beards. I also found out that the banyan tree is so named because Indian traders (baniyas) used to worship under a fig tree on the Iranian coast. And that the three Magi who visited Lord Jesus Christ in Jerusalem may have been linked to the Brahmins from India!

Sometimes you don't find what you are really looking for, which is quite frustrating, especially when you think of you may be missing out on. I do wish someone would bring out a bigger edition, may be in 12 volumes?

The book is fairly big, and organized like an encyclopedic dictionary. The paper is of good quality, and the binding is quite durable.

The book is not written by John Ayto - it is a very old book (1870). This seventeenth edition has been updated by Mr. Ayto. This means that he had a great deal to say in the picking and choosing of words.

An invaluable writing tool, and quite interesting on its own. Highly recommended for the curious.