Douglas Books

Has Heart Disease Been Cured? is a breakthrough work by journalist Douglas Mulhall and a biological engineer Katja Hansen. The two collaborators have tirelessly labored to present their findings that the root cause of heart disease and "hardening of the arteries" may not be excess fat, but rather a microbiological infection that can be treated and cured without the necessity of surgical intervention. Convincingly researched for the medical community and accessibly written for the non-specialist general reader, Has Heart Disease Been Cured? is a sharply profiled and highly necessary wake-up call advocating a re-evaluation of contemporary medical practices concerning this deadly and wide-spread cardiac condition.

ALL OVER AGE 35 MUST READ THIS BOOK NOW! Mulhall & Hansen have done a great job explaining difficult medical concepts and describing the paradigm-shifting disruptive medical research, nanobiotech and prescription discoveries by the startup Nanobac Pharmaceuticals. The three discoverers: Mezo, Kajander & Ciftcioglu are a lively and interesting mix! This could very well be the most important medical news in 100 years....big pharma is probably watching VERY closely! BUY THIS BOOK and READ IT TWICE to be sure you didn't miss anything.

The need for the subject is enormous. We get so contributed by the book. We believe in respecting the human as a whole entity. The body reflects so much of our being that we need to understand and assess the meaning of the book. Let hope that an updated book will come soon. The conecction of mind and body reflects what is going on with the sociaty body and we need it very very much. Thank you.

When I first heard about this book from a friend, I thought that it was most likely 'Junk Science'. I was very happy to find that it is truly a valuable book. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is facing a serious illness. I think it is important to note that this book is not an alternative medicine philosophy book. I prefer to base my scientific beliefs on objective evidence

OK, I admit I haven't read this book yet, but I just ordered it after reading (and thoroughly enjoying) "the Salad Days", Volume One of Fairbanks' auto-biography. But I just had to say something about the nonsense in the "Library Journal" review above. When a reviewer uses terms like "his (Fairbanks') fulsome accounts of time spent with the rich and occasionally famous" to describe this book, it seems obvious that the reviewer has a big problem with his subject, a problem such as hating either Hollywood, actors, the rich, the famous, or all of them! Look up fulsome, and you'll know what I mean. And that a Library Journal reviewer (presumably living in his comfy bookish little world) has the temerity to criticise Fairbanks (who joined the military 6 months before the USA even entered the war, and who had been actively encouraging the Americans to support the British) by saying "Fairbanks is shot at a few times, and once the man standing next to him is killed, but for the most part he serves in staff jobs" as if those events in themselves would not be life changing for most of us, just beggars belief. A very marginal review, to say the least.

From what I now know of Fairbanks from several sources, it is apparent that he was a very gifted and special man, who lived an amazing and very worthwhile life. I am looking forward to receiving this book very much.

Entertainers have for many years portrayed individuals of historical significance. In " A Hell of a War" Mr. Fairbanks relates his activities during World War II as a naval officer. The book became more interesting when he became involved with Lord Mountbatten's Combined Operations Command raids. With remarkable sublty Mr. Fairbanks relates his participation in the development of a U.S. Navy unit named the Beach Jumpers. Based in Little Creek, VA. this unit came latter to be known as the SEALS. A fact that has been verified by former SEALS, and is not common knowledge outside of that organization.

"Being able to show people in simple, real moments of their lives was one of Henri's greatest talents", p 18

The young reader will learn about Henri's being born into a rich family, his having broken both of his legs in his early teenage years resulting in his small stature, and his years in Paris painting the life with which he came in contact.

Toulouse-Lautrec's painting of lively scenes of the theaters, dance halls and circuses makes this a perfect choice for young children. His Moulin Rouge advertisement prints are easy to read, uncluttered and therefore grab the young reader's attention. The young are frequently in motion. As a result they will appreciate Toulouse-Lautrec's ability to capture a scene in mid motion. The young reader will be drawn in by Henri's choice of brilliant colors and will have fun finding Henri in some of his paintings.

Henri's portrait of van Gogh is breathtaking. He van Gogh'd van Gogh. He does honor to the painter by mimicking van Gogh's style.

Venezia's illustrations are humorous. His narrative is delightfully entertaining. His approach brings the artist within reach of the young. His illustration of the Parisian friends that Henri may have introduced to his parent's is jokingly exaggerated.

The size of the book is perfect for smaller hands. It enables the young to have art within their grasp. Venezia gives the locations of the paintings and as result if the child lives near one of the museums or will be near one on vacation, she/he would be able to see the original.

This is the 18th in Venezia's "Getting to know the World's Greatest Artist" series. He also has similar series on composers. Venezia's back cover illustrations tie back to the subject. "Greatly influenced by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Mike also tries to capture the private moments ...".

The price of the book is well worth paying. The book contains the following: Toulouse-Lautrec's Paintings (13) and Prints (4), Photos of Toulouse-Lautrec - 2, Venezia's Illustrations - 6, Others' paintings/prints - 3.

The strongest point of this book is the quality of its color plates--which of course makes or breaks an art book. Fortunately, the prints in this book are very rich and most images are full page. The accompanying text is also very thorough, informative, and interesting. My only complaint is that this book doesn't present much of the posters for which Toulouse-Lautrec is perhaps most famous; however, it does cover much of his other work. In that sense, I got to learn a lot about the body of this artist's work outside of the usual cliche of Toulouse-Lautrec. I would recommend this book for any art library.

Anybody at all interested in California history should own this book. It consists of 544 double-columned pages of historical information, arranged by county, and includes information on everything from historical ranches to famous trails to old Mexican land grants. The listings are truly all-encompassing. There is also an exhaustive index that includes just about every proper noun mentioned in the text and a bibliography that is as thorough as any on the state. The book is also well illustrated with many photographs. An extremely valuable and useful reference book on the historical places of California.

A great resource for the researcher of early California, the Gold Rush, geography and history of each county. Richly detailed and illustrated accounts of the people and places which make California unique. The authors provide details of history which make the lives of the early settlers understandable and interesting.

Engaging students in the classroom and helping them draw connections between their own lives and what they are learning are two of the biggest challenges for any teacher, novice or otherwise. This is often doubly true in a history classroom.

History in the Present Tense is an incredible resource for any Social Studies Teacher. It offers a range of lessons that help students draw connections between history and the present, are focused on student inquiry, and encourage students to count on each as resources. The lessons encourage students to become active participants in the classroom, not just passive absorbers of information.

This book is easy to use and the activities can be adapted to almost any age level.

In "History in the Present Tense," Doug Selwyn and Jan Maher - both accomplished writers and educators - have produced a completely accessible, practical, insightful and FUN book about how to engage students in making, recording and analyzing history.

Their original lessons emphasize multiple perspectives and authentic tasks, and challenge young people to think critically about real world issues.
Thoughtful questions, suggested resources and sample handouts are included. The lessons have been field tested by teachers (like me), enabling readers to gain from the experiences and modifications of teachers in a variety of settings.

As a middle school history teacher, I was most impressed by the authors' ability to incorporate what it means to think and work like a historian: the role of lenses in viewing events, the importance of corroborating evidence, the privileging of some accounts over others, and the roles of the media and textbooks in influencing our interpretations of events.

This book is a "must-have" for novice and experienced teachers who seek to learn and teach history in hands-on, relevant and stimulating ways... from investigative reporting to policy making to documentary production.

Anyone who likes Hitch Hickers should have these.

These started the series, they came before the books. The recordings are great, done in stereo. Unlike my old cassettes from a SF convention eons ago, which seemed to be recorded off the radio, and weren't very good quality.

6 CD's with the original radio show, 2 CD's with background information on the show, including interviews with Adams. The interviews make clear why the stories aren't all the same (radio vs book vs ...), Adams was in a fearful rush to make deadlines.

Douglas Adams was brilliant.

I came into the Hitchhiker world fairly late in the game, having read the books only shortly before Douglas died. Still, though they'd been written twenty years ago, they remained fresh and original, opening my eyes to a style of writing I'd never seen before. Since then, Douglas Adams has been a major obsession of mine. In addition to his Dirk Gently books, Last Chance to See, and the posthumous Salmon of Doubt, I've overjoyed at the DVD release of the Hitchhiker TV series and the long-delayed film version. But, sadly, I never got to hear the original radio series. At least until I finally bought an import of this CD set through Amazon Marketplace. In addition to both seasons of the radio series, this set also includes a documentary and Douglas Adams interview.

Truth be told, both the film and television versions - though they still contain Douglas's brilliant writing - suffer from a number of shortcomings, falling well short of the novel versions. Happily, the radio series works wonderfully.

It also makes me appreciate the fact that Douglas kept no version of Hitchhiker strictly faithful to any other version, making each unique in its own way. Great as bits like the babel fish and the search for the question to the ultimate answer of life, the universe, and everything are, I've seen/heard/read them a lot in repeated readings/viewings of the other versions. So, it's very refreshing, now, to hear the radio series go off into different directions than later versions. The second series, in particular, contains episodes that bear almost no resemblance to anything whatsoever contained in the novels, effectively reminding me of just why his writing appealed so much to me all those years ago.

If you're a Hitchhiker fan, you owe it to yourself to listen to the radio series. If you're not a Hitchhiker fan, but wondering if maybe you could be one, I would suggest starting with the books, if only on the basis that the CD set price tag is a bit high for a simple introduction. If, like me, you find that Douglas Adams's brand of insightful satire and absurd humor speaks to you, then, yeah, you'll want to hear this.

Finally, the HHGG radio series is complete. This story needs THIS cast and THIS medium to truly come to life (the movie can't hold a candle to this production). The ending is more upbeat than the book, but is just the kind of finale the show needs after 30 years in the making.

This is the superb final BBC radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, this one adapting Douglas Adams' final book Mostly Harmless. It features the same creators and cast from the recent Tertiary and Quandary Phases (which means that most of the original cast from the 1978 to 1980 radio shows appear.)

While the book itself was a major disappointment, the radio adaption manages to be funny, interesting, thought-provoking and very satisfying. The writers have focused the story, created new scenes, included characters which Adams had apparently forgotten about over the course of the "trilogy," brilliantly converted the novel's rambling prose into dialogue and guide entries, stayed true to Adams' original intentions while simultaneously improving them considerably, and have created a new epilogue for the story which takes us beyond what Adams ever wrote and ties up the entire saga in a way so clever and sweet as to make a grown man cry. Such a brilliant adaption stands in stark contrast with the abysmal, dumbed-down script which was used for the recent film. THIS is the way to adapt a Hitchhiker's book.

Since the book concerns a parallel Earth and features two versions of the character Trillian (each from a different continuity in improbability,) it's of particular fan interest that the two Trillians are played by Susan Sheridan, the original radio actress, and Sandra Dickinson, who created the role for BBC television. As in the Tertiary Phase, Douglas Adams himself appears as Agrajag. I won't spoil the surprise of who else shows up.

As with all the previous radio entries, it's odd, brilliant, confusing and dense enough to warrant an immediate second listening, and has enough depth to offer new discoveries several listenings later. I couldn't be happier with how it all came out. Which leads me to wonder...

Why does this have to be the last one? If the producers don't wish to invent their own H2G2 episodes, I hope they turn their attentions to Dirk Gently, Douglas Adams' other comedic book series. A creative unit as successful as this shouldn't stop now.

Well, that about wraps it up for...
Arthur Dent
Ford Prefect and
Trillian
...not to mention the galaxy of other characters who have appeared - even if only for a line or two - on the BBC radio series that has built a global and intensely loyal following for the past 28 years.
"There's nothing penultimate about this one: this - ladies and gentlemen - is the proverbial it."

Finally, there is closure. A conclusion that this listener has longed for ever since the original THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY invaded my awareness in 1981.

And what a conclusion! At the risk of spoiling it for other Hitchhiker wannabe's, BBC4 and Dirk Maggs have managed to remain faithful to Douglas Adams' final installment to the inaccurately numbered trilogy of books, spawned from the original radio series and then respawning into new radio shows. Go to their web for some priceless photos and other cool stuff: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/newseries.shtml

And yet, there's more. The book was as dark as the space encompassing the outer eastern rim of the galaxy, and closed on a note that I'd swear was written by Marvin, the paranoid android. A series that the Beeb billed as "light entertainment" can't leave its audience that depressed and morose, now can it?

As I listened to the last episode of the fifth series, I awaited the darkness of the book's conclusion. When I read the book, MOSTLY HARMLESS, on which this radio series was based, I wondered if Adams was so annoyed with the insatiable appetite of readers and listeners that he decided to dispense with his much beloved characters once and for all. Was this the final disposition of the everyman hero, Arthur Dent, his hedonistic traveling companion and Guide field researcher Ford Prefect, and the only other survivor of the Earth's demolition, Trillian? As I wondered and listened, I achingly mourned Adams' passing. I'll miss forever his command of the English language - weaving similes and other literary devices into a tapesty that delights the listener/reader as much on the 10th or even 100th time as much as it does on the first. Sure, those words would will last for a long, long time. But there would be nothing new from that well that watered and nourished so many of us over the years.

On a somewhat related tangent, I responded to a query on the IMDB web page for Farhenheit 451 as to what book you would memorize for posterity's sake if that book/movie's scenario came true. No question: the original HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY or any of its sequels.

Back to this CD collection: The producer, director, script-writers, performers and other talented members of the ensemble succeed admirably in this final reunion, ushering radio story-telling well into the 21st Century. Sure, the voices had aged. Some had passed and are dearly missed: Peter Jones as the Book and Richard Vernon as the definitive Slartybartfast. But to hear the final reunion was absolutely golden.

Years ago, when I began my career as a road warrior, I used to tune into CBS Radio's nighttime mystery series on a 50,000 Watt AM radio station. (Hey, this was pre-CDs, way pre- XM or Sirius). There's something about driving down a rural two-lane road in the dark that made those tales that much more spine-tingley.

In like manner, listening to any of the CDs of the BBC Radio4's productions of Adams' work makes the miles fly by so much more easily. Books on tape/CD pale in comparison, in much the same way that a black hole is outshone by a supernova or even a red giant. The sound effects and incidental music add such a rich and complex dimension to the story-telling that is so sadly lacking with all the audio books on the market these days. OK, Ok, the flatulence noice is a bit puerile, but it works so well in the scene.

Douglas Adams is a true artiste whose talents will be appreciated for years to come.

So long... and thanks!

The books are wonderful, but if you think that the books are gonig to be like any other version of The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, you are dead wrong. If you read the introduction to the books you know that each version is meant to be different than the others. That is the beauty of Douglas Adams work. They are all unique but all worth you time.

Okay, for those of you who haven't read the book yet but did watch the movie you guys missed out on a lot the movie didn't include all the scenes that I personally though was very well.
Now that that's out of the way. Douglas Adams in his one of his possibly best know books really out did himself. In this adventure a boring simpleton named Arthur Dent living on the planet we call earth has befriended a guy named Ford Perfect, who is not as he claimed from earth but from a planet called Betelgeuse. Where he was sent from to do research for "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe" (it's a book where it has everything and anything that you could possibly need to know about the universe). Ford tells Arthur that he isn't from around here. He isn't from Earth. In telling Arthur this he also tells him that the earth is about to end.
And since they have gotten to be really close friends he takes Arthur with him when he hitches a ride with the Vogan ships (these are what the aliens are called that destroyed our planet earth). Vogan's in particular don't like hitchhikers very much. So they kick them off the ship, shortly after they get on. And by pure chance they get picked up. And the story goes from there.
Now that I've told you how the book starts I'll leave it up to you to read the rest of the book. And if you read this book, then watch the movie. You'll see that the movie is hardly based on this incredible book .

On par with Mark Z's other books, particularly Juno. A very, very important addition to any WWII history collection, especially since this subject is overlooked in so many ways. Very refreshing.

It is well known that the invasion at Omaha beach was the worst. What isn't nearly as well known or perhaps appreciated is that the Canadians going ashore at Juno suffered almost as high a percentage of casualties as did the Americans at Omaha (relatively speaking Sword, Gold, and Utah) were pretty mild. Further, the Canadians even reached their assigned targets for D-day in some places (the only ones to do so). The story of the Canadians landing at Juno is told in Mr. Zuehlke's 'Juno Beach' (still available).

'Holding Juno' picks up at midnight, the morning of June 7th where the Germans are massing for an attack to throw the invaders back into the sea, and the Canadians are fighting to work further inland and to consolidate the invasion beaches (at midnight there was still a gap between Juno and Sword).

This book ends on June 12. By then neither the Canadians or any of the other divisions that assaulted the beaches on June 6th were capable of more than holding actions. But by then 326,547 men had landed and the battle to hold the beaches was done.

This book is an important contribution to the story of D-Day.