Hoffman Books

This is a great book. It gives great insight,into the lives of the old York barbell crew and Bob Hoffman.It also goes into the lives of many of the old Weightlifters such as John Davis,the first African-American,Olympic Champion,and at one time the worlds strongest man! You will also see that Bob Hoffman,was not the best cat in the world to go drinking with! Liked to fight! It does tell of the workings of the champs of old and would be of value to anyone interested in the world of pre-steroid,and post-steroid weightlifting.

the book has everything you would want to know about hoffman and other famous bodybuilders, strongmen but the way the book was written too much information, was not entertaining.

The bottom line is t hat Bobby Hoffman did all this for his own good and it is really irrelevent as what the iron game was back in the 40's was nothing compared to what the sport is today. What Hoffman had control of with a little carnival act, a subculture that was widely ridiculed by the general public and still would be if the sport where left in the hands of Hoffman and the AAU.

I grew up in a household in which I was not welcome. Two individuals made my life bearable: Mickey Mantle and Bob Hoffman! From the late fifties through the late sixties I was a welterweight lifter out of Oakland, California. I enjoyed a small measure of success. I can recall being at the newsstand each month on the appropriate day to search the racks for the latest Strength and Health. I would read those magazines from cover to cover, every word, and would do so several times before the next issue was released. And throughout those years I certainly bought more than my share of York equipment.
Someone once said something to the effect that if you have an idol look a little closer and you will see that you are selling yourself short. The author, Mr. Fair, looks a little closer, but not unfairly, in my opinion. Growing up with Strength and Health I was not aware of many of Mr. Hoffman's shortcomings. And now that I know them, nothing has changed. For Hoffman is still number one in my book. In my view the character flaws only serve to humanize him. Something wrong with that? How many of you who've submitted critical reviews regarding Hoffman have lived steller lives? How many of you have built sucessful businesses from the ground up? And most importantly, How many of you have MADE A DIFFERENCE in the lives of so many? The silence is deafening. Regarding the book, I find it well written. Also of great interest to me are the photos of the luminaries of that era. I am thankful that this book was written, and I am pleased to have read it. Mr. Fair, how about bios on some of the high profile people of the "weight game", Grimek, Reeves, etc?

Whether you agree or disagree with the "tone" taken towards Bob Hoffman in this book - whether he was a devil or a saint (though the truth is, no doubt, somewhere in between) - you'll have to agree that a lot of time, work and research went into writing this book. Dr. Fair interviewed a lot of history's most prominent figures in the Iron Game in compiling the material here.

Everyone with personal experience will have their own opinion of Bob Hoffman as a man. I don't really think that's the point here. The point is that Fair did a monumental task in putting this book together. There's a lot of interesting and little-known history contained it. I don't think anyone interested in the history of the Iron Game should be without it.

Too many retirement books offer advice that is not practical for me. Usually I am pleased to find ONE idea that I can act on in these financial advice books. Hoffman's book provided over 11 ideas that make sense at my age and financial circumstances. The practical advice is based on real life examples collected from a wholesome variety of folks. The 54 stories provide a window on the lives of regular people eager to maintain a sense of control over their financial lives - without the "get rich" quick flavor of many financial books.

Maybe Hoffman can go on and help her readers address our concerns re handling the health care services we will need in our future.

This book tells you what you can actually DO about catching up for retirement without overloading the reader with numbers and complex theories based on somebody else's speculation about the long-term health of the economy. It's both readable and motivational, and there are lots of useful leads to help you get free, unbiased information on everything from how Social Security works, to how to find an old bank account or pension you forgot about.

The Retirement Catch-Up Guide: 54 Real-Life Lessons To Boost Your Future Resources Now! by journalist and financial expert Ellen Hoffman is a solid anthology of anecdotes, strategies, and useful advice for planning for one's retirement no matter how late in the game one is getting a good start at putting a little extra away. From learning good saving skills to making the most of a home equity to downsizing extravagant expenses in one's daily life, The Retirement Catch-Up Guide is a superbly presented resource for financial retirement planning and highly recommended for anyone contemplating retirement -- especially in this day and age with an uncertain future for the American government's Social Security program!

The Retirement Catch-Up Guide offers fifty-four lessons drawn from real-life experiences and conditions to boost the development of future financial resources for retirement. Especially appropriate for those who are coming late to planning for the retirement, Ellen Hoffman offers an invaluable, practical, and workable compendium of sound advice on all aspects and every stage of financial planning for retirement. Beginning with a thorough examination of all retirement resources, she then covers making a plan, readjusting the plan (including such happenstances as delaying retirement, starting a new career or business, etc.); downsizing present lifestyles to increase savings; making the most of home equity; learning to be a successful saver and investor; and monitoring retirement resources. The Retirement Catch-Up Guide is very highly recommended, "user friendly", comprehensive, reliable, and invaluable reading for anyone wanting a financial secure and adequate standard-of-living retirement.

With retirement just 11 years off I thought I would start reading up on the subject. Hey, you can't know too much. So I've been perusing Amazon for promising titles. When I got to this one it looked like I had found a book with answers. Yikes, was I mistaken.

This is a waste of time for anyone who has any kind of life. It's just a tired old retelling of information that you can get free from the Social Security department and Medicare. The rest of what you might need to know about retirement planning is far better explained in other, more general personal finance books or by seeing a financial planner.

I enjoyed this book a lot. It gives an insight into the relationships among gang members. I continue to love Alice Hoffman's use of imagery, plot and character deveopment. I'm continuing to read my way through the remainder of her titles.

THis is the first of her books that i read and i haven't read any other yet but i liked this book. it told the real story of gangs and stuff. i wouldn't expect this author to know much about this topic but she did a really fine job. i give it two thumbs up.

This was a semi-good book. It just seemed the main character in was a little obsessed and aggravating. She was so klingy and annoying and it annoyed me slightly to see such a pathetic girl such as herself. But all in all the story and the plot were ok.

I still prefer Foxfire, by Joyce Carol Oates, a much better book dealing with girl gangs. However, Alice Hoffman didn't do a bad job portraying why some girls gravitate towards gangs. The sense of belonging and importance that they obtained when they officially became The Property was something that they probably had not experienced ever before. The nameless protagonist, who is also the narrator, is a very mature 17 year old who is simply looking to connect with someone. The object of her affection is McKay, the leader of the gang. McKay is the epitome of the bad boy, and we all know how attractive a bad boy can be to a teenager. McKay is mysterious, powerful, and a junkie. Sure, this book contains some graphic violence, drugs, sex, the works. This is what the novel is about. Don't expect to find a fairy tale, please!

The silver lining in this novel is that the protagonist eventually comes of age. The process is very painful, but I loved the hopeful ending.

This book is in my honest opinion much better than Here on Earth.

The only books I've read by Alice Hoffman are 'Property Of' and 'Practical Magic'. I hope they never make a movie of 'Property Of', thereby ruining it. Potential Readers: Try and ignore the naysayers. Why pick apart things you don't like when all the things put together make the novel what Ms. Hoffman intended it to be? True, heroin and gangs suck in real life. Just because you might never have wanted to belong so badly doesn't make the book a bad one. I still have my original copy from 78? 79? and it's coming apart. I'm buying another copy because I want to pass this one on...This is a great book. Dark, yes, depressing at times, yes. But very realistic to falling in love with a guy who doesn't know what love is.

I'm also a big Alice Hoffman fan & was looking forward to reading this particularly as my daughter is currently carrying my second granddaughter- I was even looking forward to recommending it to her but after slogging my way thru this depressing mess I pitched it into the "book trade bag" for the 2nd hand shop and warned her against it.No expectant mom should read this!
Lila goes insane & no one manages to notice or get her help. Rae finally finds her own strength and then we are left with the impression that she gives it up again "just like that" when the "man" comes back into her life--- while she's in labor after he has deserted and robbed her in the first few weeks of the pregnancy!
I never found any reason to sympathize w. these women except for the appalling treatment of Lila during her delivery and the incredible stupidity of barely-more-than-a-child- Raes' obsession w. a completely selfish, boorish & abusive male. Why Hoffman didn't add beatings into Raes' portion of the tale seems like oversight on her part because Rae is definitely a victim of abuse!
Lila is herself abusive to her sweet loving husband but we're given the excuse of growing incipient insanity for her part. Altho' Hoffman doesn't call it insanity but aims to invite the image of mystical conjuring ("thoughts are things")BWAH!
I actually found this novel to be insulting to the intelligence. I was utterly repulsed by Lilas' selfishness and self absorbed cruelty (even with mental illness as an "excuse" given toward the end).
I felt a bit more sympthetic toward Rae because she was at least able to care about a stray dog and was young enough to have the excuse of inexperience. But ALL motherhood in this tale was portrayed with horrors! Then at the end when it seemed we might have some semblence of rational relationship or at least the blossoming of genuine Motherhood and new life we are left hanging and (in my case) completely disgusted with Rae going back to her abuser--feeling sorry for HIM like all abused women tend to do between the beating times--getting in Jessups truck just like she did when beginning her lonesome sad saga. The ending was truly a disappointing attempt at a cliff-hanger-- I wish all the characters would just jump off that cliff.
Disappointing ending/ depressing read-- had to start another book right away to get the taste of this one out of my mind.
Hoffman IS a good writer & I usually enjoy her greatly-- but her writing couldn't overcome this STORY. Sheesh!

Alice Hoffman writes so beautifully, even of tragedy and deep sadness, exposing raw emotions and mystical feelings of her characters. I have very mixed feelings about this book - on one hand, the author's amazing talent makes a strong impression. This was a story of loneliness and I'm left with a rather empty sense of wondering what happened after I read the final page, as the story seemed to end rather abruptly without neatly tying up many loose ends. Every book I read these days seems to be about dysfunctional families and abusive/controlling men....I think I need to find more upbeat and hopeful reading material.

This is the fourth of Alice Hoffman's books that I have read in recent months, and I found Fortune's Daughter to be a beautifully written portrayal of two women coping with longing, loss, and letting go. Unlike many novels where romances drive the plotline, in Fortune's Daughter, the central relationships are between mothers and daughters -- real mothers, both through birth and adoption, and surrogates chosen by lonely young women in need of support. Hoffman's judicious use of magical realism heightens the emotions and vividly expresses the inner life of her characters. Highly recommended.

Fortunes Daughter is about Rae, a young, unmarried girl who is awaiting the birth of her child and Lila, a fortune-teller with no interest in the future who lost her child when she was a young, unmarried girl.

Rae and Lilas lives, fates and futures intertwine as each tries to make peace with the past and become a better person for the future.

Not knowing the what the book was really about, Lilas fortune telling, visions, nightmares, spirituality stuff was different then what I would normally read. I didn't like how Lila was so emotionally torchered all her life and never fully found peace.

Without spoiling the storyline, I can say that as an Adoptive Mom I REALLY didn't like how one element of the book was treated. At all.

All in all, it was an OKAY read. I read it in a weekend and like all of Hoffmans other books, she pulls you in with her ability to turn everyday events into enchanting words.

When I first started reading the book I did not know what to expect but I felt the book got worse as I read more and more. I found the book to be quite depressing none the less. The story is about a young woman named Rae and a fortune teller name Lila. Rae had run away from home and an early age with her boyfriend Jessup. When Rae tells Jessup that she is pregnant he decides that he is not ready to be a father and leaves his pregnant girlfriend so he can pursue his job in the movies. Lila the other character is a tea leaf fortune teller who had a rough time growing up. She became pregnant at an early age by her boyfriend who like Jessup left her. She did not tell her parents she was pregnant until her mother found out when Lila's water broke. Lila's parents would not even take her to the hospital because they were too ashamed of her and called Lila's cousin who was a nurse to help with the pregnancy. Lila's parents made Lila give up the baby for adoption and after that Lila fell in to depression. Lila is sent to her aunts to live with and meets her future husband Richard. These two women cross paths and build a relationship. Rae reminded Lila of how she was at that age, young, unmarried, and pregnant. Rae becomes depressed and ends up hurting her marriage because she is in search of her lost child. She hallucinates that she sees her daughter and so she has somewhat of an invisible daughter she believes is there. The end left me kind of disappointed because I wanted to know more of what would happen to these two women. I think Alice Hoffman writes in great detail and has a nice descriptive artistic flow to her writing. I still honestly found the book to be depressing because of Rae's dysfunctional relationship with Jessup and then Lila's depressive attitude. Details of Lila's labor I found were quite graphic and painful for me as the reader. Even her depressing incident of slitting her wrists was very disturbing. I would not recommend this book unless someone really is interested in disturbing and depressing stories or into fortune telling then you may enjoy it.

I really enjoyed this book by a former professor of mine at Michigan State University. I am not a seasoned book reviewer, but I have read a number of mysteries lately after a long stint with non-fiction, and this was a fun read. Nick is a character who isn't a super tough guy, who doesn't take himself too seriously, who doesn't burn through cliches of boot knives and emergency spare pistols taped to the underside of his car. He is a real person with real worries like tenure, his new office-mate, his relationship with his partner, and so on. There were some really funny moments surrounding the constant bickering of the two Edith Wharton factions, and I thought the author had about 5 really good ending possibilities, all of which would have made sense. Having taken two semesters from the author I can see his real-world sense of humor standing out in the book. A great read with some fun characters.

Edith who? I enjoyed this book as much as the first Nick Hoffman mystery, LET'S GET CRIMINAL. Nick and Stefan are flushed out more as characters, Nick's sarcastic wit is honed, and the overall effect is to make for a totally fun mystery. Mr. Raphael pens a story full of intriuge, "what if's", and "ut-oh's" that will delight any mystery reader. The fact that he takes broadsides at other contemporary writers is also amusing. And as for the mystery's "solution"...well, suffice it to say that Mr. Raphael does Agatha Christy proud.

Naturally I expected it was a mystery with murders in the title, but reading it felt like I'd stumbled into a literary novel about writer's Angst. One writer was so obnoxiously obsessed with jealousy and envy that I immediately rooted for her to be perpetrator or victim. A bit over 1/3 of the way into the book, there was a murder and the story evolved into a proper mystery with the appearance of a traditional character, a likeable cop, Lt. Valley, and later, Angie, a criminal justice student who helped with the detecting. Nick's pardner, Stefan, is the practical down-to-earth one. The relationship reminded me of Hall's Stanley Hastings and his wife, Alice. Alice brings Stanley down to earth from time to time, too. Thankfully, there are no details of the men's intimate relations which is as it should be. The largest number of consumers of mysteries are mature women (like me) and the majority of them abhor sex scenes, be they hetero or homo. The book's ending was a very satisfactory wrap-up.
As to Wharton, she serves as catalyst for the gathering, but we are not bombarded with biographical data. If you want more, read a biography, and if you come to southern New England, visit The Mount, Edith's beautiful home in Lenox, MA.

This is most definitely the worst mystery novel I have ever read. The characters are not two-dimentional--but one-dimentional. You will not care about anyone. There is also too much padding of incidental material, and enough red herrings to stock a Shanghai fish market. Though the lead character is supposedly gay, there is only a token gay content. He might as well be a Buddist missionary. The hero and his lover share only a Jewish ceremonial meal, all other forms of intimacy in their relationship seems to have vanished. We read mystery novels to get pleasure in discovering who dunnit before the detectives. It is impossilbe to do this when essential information is not revealed to the reader until after the culprit is caught. I feel I have wasted my time here. With an eternity of reading ahead of you, the time would still be too short to bother with this one. Read Wharton's Ethan Frome instead.

"The Edith Wharton Murders" has it all---good writing, a bright and charming amateur sleuth, and a fresh and ironic take on those well-worn groves of academe. Wait---before you groan and mutter something about "another campus mystery with cutesy cartoon characters as faculty members," give this one a try. You''ll find plenty of highly UNstereotyped profs---you probably had classes with some of them, maybe even Nick Hoffman himself. New t-shirt motto: I LUV LEV!

Most people taking a course like this use Rudin and this is a reasonable supplement but there is a good bit of errata that should be downloaded from the author's site. Pugh's "Real Mathematical Analysis" is an alternative.

Unfortunately this book is used at many good schools, but it should not be! Given that there are many excellent texts it is hard to understand why this book is chosen so often. The author is very brief with his proofs as though the reader is reviewing the material and not learning it for the first time. On the other hand, he explains some simple topics excessively when it's not at all necessary. I think the reason for the style of this book is that Marsden is really an applied mathematican. I would not use this book for self-study, unless I had to. There are also many errors in the book. It is possible to make use of the book by supplementing it with other books (almost any book on analysis would do!). In short, Marsden does a beautiful job of turning analysis into an ugly subject! Be warned!!

This was my favorite book as an undergraduate student and I've taught from it as a professor. It is an excellent geometric approach to analysis. It can even help students who have difficulty with epsilon delta proofs understand the geometric intuition behind them. The construction of the real line at the beginning is daunting for students who aren't clear about set theory and sequences already but a few supplementary materials can help the students out there (see my webpage notes on real analysis for example). The proofs are hidden which makes it a challenge for students to try prove everything themsleves before peeking at them, but they are available. Just remember to tell your students where they are!

As a student I loved the book because it allowed me to learn everything on the metric space level while allowing students who prefer to stay in Euclidean space to do that. Now I am a metric geometer.

I am using this book to teach myself analysis. Because my mathematical background is limited, I cannot assess what the book is missing, or whether alternative methods of presentation would be more insightful. But in terms of clarity and comprehensibility, the book does very well. The authors write very carefully and are not cryptic; the proofs and examples are well-presented, and I rarely feel lost. The book is rigorous but not, let's say, snobbish. I am learning a lot from it.

Many other reviewers have panned this book. The overall sentiment seems to be that the book is too difficult to follow. Perhaps for them. And, granted, perhaps this is so for many readers. But some students, who are probably majoring in maths or physics and who might be amongst the top in their classes, are likely to appreciate the book.

It is a rigorous explanation of classical analysis. Frankly, for someone who will not major in maths, you are unlikely to need this level of rigour in your understanding and usage of the maths. Even theoretical physicists. But you can regard it as a good part of your maths education. If you have learnt introductory calculus at the level of Apostol or Spivak's books, then that level of rigour is continued here.

The proofs can be quite difficult to follow. It is for good reason that Marsden segregates these into the ends of the chapters. The fact that these proofs are difficult is perhaps misread by some reviewers as a flaw in Marsden's writing. Wrong. Some proofs are inherently difficult, and need a detailed and careful presentation. The Heine-Borel Theorem, for example.

Which is why I find puzzling claims by some reviewers of many errors in the text. Are they referring to simple typos? Or errors in the logic? If the latter, maybe they should cite specific cases. I went through an earlier edition, as a student, and studied carefully most of the proofs. Beyond some typos, I never found any logic errors.

Adina Hoffman and her husband, Peter Cole, engage in provocateur activity and utilize racist imagery in their confrontation with a local yeshiva. Their concern? The trimming of a tree. This was a sad disappointment to me, as when I began reading this book, I was impressed with its humanistic glimpses into the varied people she lives among. I certainly applaud any efforts to understand different points of view, including Arab viewpoints. Might things be improved if Israeli Jews took an interest in feeling the plight of the Arab world? In learning Arabic? Sounded great so far.

But this impression of open-mindedness quickly evaporated in her offensive usage of anti-semitic imagery to describe an orthodox Jewish grounds keeper, despite her warm parallel portraiture of an Arab gardener. The Orthodox Jew trimmed a tree - which deserved an onslaught. Yet, one other tree in her neighborhood was trimmed and another chopped down - why did she take forceful action against the orthodox Jews, and not the other two tree trimming episodes? They single out the yeshiva as the one institution that apparently has no place in the varied neighborhood in which they reside. There was no reason that Peter Cole had to speak harshly to the orthodox groundskeeper, who was clearly an unwell individual whom the yeshiva was helping out. Hoffman does not merely observe and record this antagonistic episode - she provokes it. She does not seek real contact or ponder the point of view of the yeshiva members. After claiming to promote an understanding of different viewpoints, this is unfortunate indeed. Coexistance includes all peoples, and excludes the use of racist language or interpersonal provocation.

The yeshiva became a dumping ground for strangely misplaced outrage that could better serve real injustices, like terror. A neighbor's wife was carjacked and murdered, yet Ms Hoffman expresses no objection to terror. She does object to efforts at its prevention.

Following a European holocaust and expulsions of ancient Jewish communities from Arab lands, the state of Israel has indeed offered incentives for Jews to settle in Israel. Ms Hoffman calls this racist. But if she is so concerned about racism, why does she not recognize the Eurpean and Arab antisemitism that led to the above? Why does she fan its flames in the yeshiva confrontation? She describes herself as an "interloper" when entering East Jerusalem. Here, she buys into what should be recognized as Arab racism. That Arab culture claims geographical areas to be purely Arab is clearly racist.

When recording landscapes and when actually talking to and listening to people, Ms Hoffman's work is engaging, though more stream of consciousness than factual. But when she does NOT take the effort to get to know people, stereotype quickly fills the void, both in her contact with the Arab and orthodox Jewish population.

Ms Hoffman appears to be in the service of a revisionist intellectual machine that props up Arab claims while minimizing Jewish claims - and Jewish suffering - both historical and current. Her biases aside, one begins to understand that Adina Hoffman's views are low on research and involve much personal projection. It is politicized poetry, not research. It is projection, not communication.

It's great writing, it uses many wonderful words and sentences. Although after about the 13th (to be exact) page, it seems to become unimportant. She is talking about how her purse got stolen, and then she recieved it back, with everything but the money. Not only this so early in the book, but she tells who she thought did it, and who she thought returned it, and how she still isn't sure to this day...blah blah blah

I just found this really annoying. Sorry Adina..

I read a review of Ms. Hoffman's book in Passionfruit, a travel magazine and that's why I bought it. At first I thought it was slow going, but hang in there, readers. Adina Hoffman is lapidary in style, and there are many gems in this tour of one neighborhood in Jerusalem. Understated, introverted but poetic, as others have said. Very much worth buying.

Ms. Hoffman is admittedly an eloquent writer, eager to show us the virtues of being above a "tribal" identity in contemplating the varied people that she lives among. But being more open minded than your group identity does not mean degrading the group from which you hail and seeing no wrong in anyone else. It means applying humanistic standards to all people equally, wherein there is no place for prejudiced language against any group, including yours.

But that is not what this author did. Overweight Arab men in Jordan are warmly referred to as round-bellied but an overweight orthodox Jew is contemptuously dubbed potbelly. She shows defferent respect for Arab/Muslim codes of modesty on a visit to Jordan but shows contempt for orthodox Jewish ones (which are actually more lenient than Muslim codes). And although she ponders the problems and feelings of Palestinian refugees from the war of 1948 (without doing much research), she has no room to consider the effect of the forced displacement of Jewish communities from Arab lands in the 1940's and 1950's that may play a part in some of her neighbors' difficult lives, one of whom committed suicide. She portrays an unattractive local Arab gardener warmly, but she refers to an unattractive orthodox Jewish caretaker as an "ape" and as "monkeyish". Here the author plays the chic, leftist-Israeli game - toying with antisemitic imagery in order to denigrate orthodox Jews. A game both dangerous and reprehensibly unethical.

She ponders the condescension of hiring an Arab gardener, Ahmed, to do menial chores, never asking him how he feels about it. But when she sees an orthodox Jew performing menial gardening chores for a yeshiva, what a flip flop. She degrades a local yeshiva for (presumably) housing former prisoners and giving odd jobs to a local "misken" or pitiable person. There are indeed Israeli yeshivos, or places of higher Jewish learning, that have in-prison and post prison rehabilitation programs. This positive contribution to Israeli society has been recognized by the Israeli government in its "father of prisoners" awards bestowed on various yeshivas. As usual, she gives no proofs of her assumptions, but if this yeshiva indeed serves former prisoners, or other young men who have problems and probably do not therefore have winning personalities, what is wrong with that? Why does she treat the yeshiva with such contempt for what has been recognized as a positive and largely successful act of charity? Oh she doesn't like their front yard either, though she was part of some neighborhood gardening rennovations, how about including the yeshiva in that? Because for her to consider the charitable acts the the yeshiva is doing right before her eyes, or to approach them as equal neighbors, would challenge her us versus them mentality. Then who would she have to safely dump the reservoirs of political and social frustrations that she admits to upon?

Neither can Ms. Hoffman bring herself to criticize the Arab world, which she keeps at a safe distance, and thus open to her poetic projections. She goes to Jordan to interact with an Arab family, in and out in a brief afternoon, but how about getting to know the East Jerusalem population? Oh she longs to, and goes about it by looking up land registries with few skittish interactions with East Jerusalem Arabs. Her claims of the awkwardness of it all don't ring true, she is confident when it suits her, she can provoke confontational episodes when she wants.. Perhaps her hesitation is because the minute she gets too close to seeing faults within the Arab world that she doesn't want to see, she backs off fast. For example, When an Arab journalist charmingly tells her how sorry he was that no, he could not speak to her since she is an Israeli Jew and Arafat had banned contact between Arab journalists and Israeli Jews, she doesn't flinch. Why didn't the author evince any personal objection to Arafat's tyrannical blocking of freedom of speech? But, here we go again with her boiling over on safe ground - dumping on the orthodox Jews: she assumes (again, not having spoken with them) that the orthodox Jews who are gathering books from a collection left on the street have no intention of reading them. How horrid that THEY lack literary freedom.

She gets upset about the trimming of a local tree (by an orthodox Jew), but glosses over the terrorist murder of a neighbor's wife (but that was done by an Arab).

Considering that Ms. Hoffman is quite able to be critical when it suits her, friendly when it suits her, why all this bias? Fear, perhaps. Because to really come to grips with the serious faults that lie within the Arab world and that threaten us world wide would be too overwhelming, too much to handle, too much of a pholosophical shift. Stay (philosophically) safe: get mad at the Jews, gloss over the Arabs.

Unlike her fellow Jerusalemite, David Horovitz, Hoffman knows how to poetically render the city of lights. She is a fine craftswoman, might well have been or become a fine poet.

. . .or at least that is what I am told. This probably is a more fun book after you already know these characters from previous adventures. That said, it was wildly funny and silly, although a poor mystery. I do plan on reading more of the books, so obvioulsy the silliness was more of a blessing than a grating characteristic. I liked this more for style than content.

I always finish Kinky's books feeling confused and a bit violated, but I have no idea why. The books are so entertaining although there is not much story - just a mix of insane people (who you just can't tell if they like each other or hate each other), and their often unfortunate lives.

Blast from the Past does give you some insight into the Kinkster's life and you learn things like how he came to live in his fourth floor apartment on Vandam Street, how he left country music to be a P.I., and how he came to know many of his cohorts such as Rambam, Ratso, Chinga and McGovern.

This book, along with other Kinkster books is just plain bizarre and silly!

You get the sense that Kinky needed a change of pace with Blast from the Past, as if even he realized that his previous few novels were almost becoming caricatures of themselves. So he wrote a "prequel", going back in time to the early 1970's in order to bring together the Village Irregulars for the first time, and to detail his beginnings in the private detective world.

As usual, Steve Rambam is all business, Ratso is his typical wisecracking cheapskate self, and McGovern drifts in and out of the plot as a hard-drinking, loud Irishman with little to do. The action begins on Ratso's couch with Kinky in the arms of "Judy", although it is not specified whether we are dealing with Uptown Judy or Downtown Judy from Elvis, Jesus and Coca Cola fame. Abbie Hoffman a.k.a. Barry Freed drifts into the picture, and the mystery of the novel involves someone who is apparently trying to kill either Hoffman, Kinky or Judy. A parallel plot line, which Kinky suspects may be related to the first, involves the appearance of a man Judy believes to be her deceased Vietnam veteran husband.

As in all Friedman books, the plot is just there as an amusing excuse to throw the various characers together for some good-natured fun. It probably has more substance to it than Spanking Watson, (at least we weren't treated to two dozen conversations with a mute cat), but overall I agreed with some of the other reviewers who thought this effort was a little empty. The characers don't get along, so there is little sense of camaraderie, and you get tired of reading about Kinky's agressive appetite for "Peruvian marching powder". I thought the funniest scene was one in which Kinky, getting ready for a date with Judy, unknowingly brushes his "moss" with a toilet brush at McGovern's apartment. I give it 3 stars, an interesting diversion but instantly forgettable.

After reading this novel I immendiately went back to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail. Much better novels. The plot is thin and after awhile I could not wait to but this book down. I would recommend everyone pass on this one.

I had lost some faith in Kinky Friedman's tales of the Village Irregulars and the "mysteries" that they take on. Most folks noticed that the series was starting to get long on drawl and short on substance about the time the gang was searching for Ratso's mother...however, Friedman had a flash of brilliance when he started pulling out new scenarios for his alter ego.

First was Kinky going back home to Texas to fight the bad buys on the stomping grounds of his youth instead of the mean streets of New York. Then we had an entry featuring Willie Nelson as one of the main characters (Roadkill is still the best of the series, too). Now, in Blast From The Past, Kinky's back on Vandam Street...circa 1979. That's right, a blow to the head sends the Kinkstah's memory banks through the years to his first amateur detective work ever. And, to make things even loonier, counter-culture hero (and real life Friedman pal from back in the day) Abbie Hoffman is the center of much of the action.

For those of you who've never read a Kinky Friedman book this is not a good place to start. By this point in the series it's understood that the reader "gets" Kinky's world and the characters in it. If you're not familiar with the skidmark-covered couch over at Ratso's place or the unusual greeting that they get every time they enter Big Wong's restaurant...well, go back a few books and catch up first. Many of the recurring points of interest in the series have their origins explained in this volume as well, but you have to know what the big deal is about.

The jump back in time also sends the meter of un-PC behavior skyrocketing. The Kinkster is eyebrows-deep in the 'ole Peruvian Marching Powder and has just discovered Jameson's whiskey. It's a high old time (and it opens with Kinky in bed with a strange girl). It's grand fun and proof that there's still plenty of new ground to explore in the series. Or at least plenty of off-color jokes, humorous antecdotes, sex, drugs, and a teensy bit of crime-solving. My faith in this Texas Jewboy is as strong as ever.

"Hunting Warbirds" paints the picture of a world few of us have traveled. I'm not talking about the deserted, frozen shores of Greenland, but the inner sanctum of the realm of warbird salvage. Living here are wealthy collectors, skilled restorers and daring pilots, each with a unique perspective and inner driving force. It's a small world that those of who attend airshows and read "Air Classics" don't often get to see in detail. Hoffman walked in their ranks and absorbed enough of their passion to coherently relate it. He lived though the same privations and fed off the same energy that keeps those die-hard warbird salvors working 18 hours a day, seven days a week at a remote recovery site. For me, it was a rare view of a world I will never be privileged to experience. Some reviewers have criticized Hoffman for technical errors. I suppose they are valid critiques, but I really think they miss the point. The book is more about the people than the planes. Though you certainly can't separate the planes from the warbird fanatics, Hoffman gives us a sense of what makes those guys tick. I for one enjoyed the hell out of it. Given the look we get, only the most techno-pedantic could fail to forgive the author for a few errors. That said, I hold back one star because so much more could have been included. Instead of a wall mural, we got a small canvas. After ingesting "Hunting Warbirds" I hunger for more.

I think this book was terriffic. Of course there are going to be some mistakes in the technical areas of the planes...the author never claimes to be an expert of every part of every plane that is covered...get over it. The book lets everyone have a small taste of a hobby (or addiction) that isn't available to eveyr person. I'd love to own a ME109, but can't. I like to read about the salvage and saving of these wonderful machines, and I think this book does a marvelous job of doing that. If you are reading to get a 110% account of airplane facts, buy a manual. If you want a story of a dying part of American history and culture, read this book.

I thought this a great book. It seems that a new generation of writers that often publish in the outdoors magazines like Backpacker or Outside are discovering the WW II eccentrics who are well known to us, their sons and nephews, as being the aviators and mechanics of the past who won the air war over Japan and Germany. As a helicopter pilot in the Vietnam War, these men were our former mentors and role models. We went where we were sent and didn't question the duty or the reality of it all. Later, after finishing my tour in the Army, I flew the bush in Alaska, and this book reminded me of my early days on the North Slope, flying a Bell Jet Ranger with a seismic crew in the Colville River Delta. I was the furthest west chopper pilot during those spring months of 1969, and about the third youngest Army pilot to arrive on this edge of the Arctic Ocean. We flew around Prudhoe Bay and astonished many of the old bush pilots with our know-how and amount of flight time at such a young age. The B-29 story made me reminisce about those months up there, when anything could happen and did. Lot of fun and a lot of misery! Somehow, one has to go through these extremes in a swashbuckling manner to relate to these early aviation stories before GPS and much safe devices came about today. Good reading and a great young writer is Carl Hoffman.

Piston-engined aircraft of WWII are among the most fascinating and important artifacts of the 20th century, part of some of the most intriguing history of war and humanity that affected millions directly and indirectly. It is not surprising that they evoke passion and obsession.
This book attempts to describe the passion and obsession, but its disjointed, episodic and disintegrated form works against it and the technical errors are annoying. Reviewer Collins (see his review) correctly identifies the core problem: the author does not seem to have considered his audience(s). If he's writing for knowledgeable aviation enthusiasts, his lack of depth, poor research and many errors are a turnoff. If he's writing for non-flyers, he doesn't provide enough background information on the many wonderful flight museums and collectors around the world to frame the subject adequately (his superficiality about, say, Kermit Weeks, is a huge disappointment, as just one glaring example). If he's writing for readers who enjoy literature, his lack of polish is a disappointment--much of the book reads like a first draft. It seems that Hoffman's approach to flying is skewed to the gee-whiz and away from the magnificent, mysterious realities of aviation.
Offering credentials like AIR & SPACE and SMITHSONIAN doesn't induce confidence in the reader. Both these publications often use materials from staff or stringers that are deeply disappointing and too often read like the work of somewhat talented amateurs, matched by editorial positions that seem to be issued--without justification--ex cathedra. If Hoffman had written for AVIATION WEEK or FLIGHT JOURNAL one could be sure of its quality.
If some genuinely competent pilot-writer could approach this subject--someone like, say, Walter Boyne or Richard Bach--it would result in an important historical document with breadth, depth and authenticity. Such a work is urgently needed. Sadly, HUNTING WARBIRDSA is not that book.

My immediate enthusiasm for this story waned pretty quickly, under the influence of Hoffman's many errors of fact, so disappointing from one with his aviation credentials. Such obvious and simple errors, which should have yielded to even the most superficial research (You're standing there in front of the engine�Just count the cylinders, fer Chrissakes!), cast a nagging doubt over everything else he has to say. And why the hokey cloak-&-dagger act concerning the obsessive collector "somewhere in the midwest"? The Walter A. Soplata Collection in Newbury, Ohio was written up in Jon Allen's "Aviation and Space Museums of America",
and has been known among warbird buffs throughout the world for more than a quarter-century!

Used this book as an undergraduate... hated it... I kept using a little thin old edition of "Complex Variables and Applications" by Churchhill to actually teach math using english.... Ironically the instructor who was teaching out of his notes followed churchhills presentation closer then this text.

The treatment of this subject in this text is just so horrid for a FIRST LOOK AT COMPLEX THEORY. No elegance to it what so ever...

I used an earlier edition of this text as an instructor 20 years ago. The students in my class at the time were equally divided among the fields of mathematics, physics, and engineering. The book proved to be quite useful for all of them. Marsden skillfully strikes a balance between the needs of math majors preparing for graduate study and the needs of physics and engineering students seeking applications of complex analysis.

The book is clearly written and well-organized, with plenty of examples and exercises. My only significant criticism of the first edition was the author's tendency to label many examples of contour integration as theorems. Technically, there is nothing wrong this, but I found that some of my students tended to memorize the statements of these "theorems" rather than focus on the methods of integration discussed (for example, "Pac-Man" integrals with branch cuts along rays other than the positive real axis). Nonetheless, this is a fine text that has--not surprisingly--continued to be widely used for over two decades.

The book reveals complex analysis as a very elegant and lovely branch of mathematics. The level of rigour is not that of Marsden's other book, Elementary Classical Analysis. Instead, Basic Complex Analysis can be usefully read by non-maths majors, especially those in physics and engineering.

Key ideas are well covered. Starting with the Laurant series, which generalises the Taylor series. Then, from this, the idea of contour integration is examined. Giving rise to the Residue Theorem and the winding number. All because the only term that does not integrate to 0 is 1/z, which gives the complex log and its imaginary argument is the only thing left. So simple and powerful. Amazing that an essentially arbitrarily intricate contour integral can be given by the residues at the enclosed poles! Yet the text's derivation should get straightforward to follow for most readers.

If you are going onto advanced physics, like quantum electrodynamics, then this theorem is used extensively.

The book also covers important subsequent ideas. Especially conformal mapping and the Schwartz-Christoffel transformation. The treatment of conformal mapping, though, is only a hint of the richness of analysis available here.

The numerous problems are also good for the student to tackle.

When I first started with this book, I was not a fan. However, the book grew on me over time. Marsden and Hoffman do a very good job of blending both theoretical and computational aspects of complex analysis. They do a very good job of motivating and explaining the proofs, and they do not leave out any details (this is both good and bad - it can distracting, but as long as you pay attention, you will never get lost). The illustrations in the text are for the most part illuminating and useful, and the worked examples at the end of each section are not bad as well.

I did have a few minor problems, though. While many of the exercises are good, some of them seemed rather trivial. The chapter on conformal mapping could use some work. The binding on mine started to come apart by the end of the semester, although that may have been my fault.

This is the second book that I have read beside the Vector Calculus by Marsden and Hoffman. This book rushes you through with an introductory chapter and go right into the heart of complex analysis. The author assumes you to have a great professors that can explain things in detail when you can't quite understand what is written in the text. Unfortunately I did not have a great instructor.

The examples of the book are quite simple, compare to some end of section problems.

Overall this book has no surprises as it is quite dry, got bored from reading it. If it was not a required text book for a 3rd year complex analysis course, i wouldn't recommend it to anyone. There are many other books out there that are better written.