Morgan Books

My Name's Friday is an enjoyable romp through the world of Jack Webb. From his days portraying hardboiled radio detectives Pat Novak and Johnny Madero to Hollywood Success, Failure, and a big comeback, Friday takes us through the highlights and lowlights of Webb's life.

Michael J. Hayde comes to the book with a great deal of respect for Webb and his work, which is an essential element in a work such as this. Hayde's work first and foremost is a Webb fan book. He gives a synopsis of each of Webb's movies and then provides a critique of them. While appreciating Webb's contributions, Hayde spares no criticism of the late 1950s Dragnet episodes, Pete Kelly's Blues, and other less than successful Webb projects. While I don't agree with all of Hayde's criticism (I loved the "Night School" episode and he didn't), his criticisms are reasoned and measured rather than spiteful. Whatever criticism Hayde has for Webb is mild compared to the well-deserved critique he slams down on the 1987 Dragnet movie with Dan Akroyd.

If there was one criticism I'd had of Hayde's book, it was where he went from TV fan to armchair psychologist, buying Webb's statements that he didn't miss having a father around as a youth. I actually after reading the book and of Webb's difficulty letting himself act believably on screen particularly in romantic scenes, as well as history of broken marriages might not have been influenced by never having a father around. Kind of off-topic from the subject of the book, I know. However, if one is going to engage in psychology, it shouldn't be done haphazardly.

Still, the book is incredible fun as a fan resource and provides a rare glimpse at a radio and TV genius that's been typecast as a stiff clown. Read it to recapture a vital part of America's television history.

This is an excellent book. While not a true biography, it does take a look into Webb's personal life because Webb was such a workaholic that it had an effect on all that he did and who he was.

Unless you're an old time radio fan like me, you may not know that Webb started early and young. He had many outstanding shows before Dragnet and even Dragnet started in 1949 on radio. For a while, it was on both radio and television at the same time.

Webb was in many ways a brilliant man. Yet he had many failures --- both in his business life and certainly in his four marriages.

To say he was an interesting man may be an overstatement. But his body of work is so extensive, that one has to be impressed.

I started to become interested in Webb when looking for metaphors for my own writing. I didn't want to use stuff that everyone knew. And I kept hearing them on his old radio shows --- especially the ones written by the incredible Richard Breen.

I liked Webb's delivery and unemotional approach to acting. In most people, that would be considered bad acting. But somehow with Webb it was something special.

This book makes Webb and his entire career, his stock of actors and his many incarnations come to life. While his life was short, he accomplished so much.

Dragnet started on radio in 1949 and still today, in 2007, I know of no one who doesn't know what it means to hear, dum - de-dum -dum. And few people do not know of Dragnet and at least seen it on television. To me, that's amazing.

This book dwelt mostly with Webb's body of work and not his personal life or his personality. It does deal with it to some extent. But if you're interested mostly in that area of Webb's life, you might prefer another book.

The book has an excellent and exhaustive appendix that included a list, along with dates and other valuable information on each show on both radio and television. The appendix also includes other valuable informations. Well worth saving.

For Dragnet fans and Webb fans or those who are interested in radio and/or television history, this is a must-read. Oh, it has lots of great photos too.

Highly recommended.

I found this book to be an OK read. The only problem I had was that toward the end the tone of the writing shifted as the author sought to be a Jack Webb apologist. There are excuses made for the way the Dragnet of the 60s portrayed drug users, and there's almost an indignant tone taken over Dragnet spoofs such as the Dan Ackroyd film and even Nick at Nite promos!

The reason the Dragnet of the 60s became such a ripe ground for spoofing (besides the rapid fire patter) was indeed the portrayal of drug users. The series basically equated marijuana use with LSD and heroin, which is a laughable premise. The author's defense of the "Blue Boy" episode was particularly humorous. I remember seeing one of the participants of the drug party in that show actually physically trying to climb the walls. Talk about heavy-handed and unintentionally funny!

That said, I still found the book worthwhile reading, I'm a fan of Dragnet, both for Jack Webb's innovative style of shooting and the campy humor. It was interesting discovering things about Webb's radio show and some of his films that I had not previously known. I was easily able to overcome any minor annoyances with the tone shifting at the end.

I bought this book expecting fluff based on the reviews. I am a big fan of Dragnet the radio show but did not think the book would cover much of it in depth. I was wrong. Although it spends more time discussing the television series and movies, I was happy with the information on the radio show.

This book details the Dragnet radio show, both Dragnet television shows, and Mark VII movies. It does this through the central person in all of these productions, Jack Webb. However, the reader also learns about the regulars on the shows, and we get to know a bit about them as well.

"My Name's Friday" does not claim to be a biography on Webb and if that is what you are looking for, this is the wrong book for you. If you are looking for a bio of Jack Webb, there are many other books that you would probably enjoy more. However, If you are interested in the multiple incarnations of Dragnet and Pete Kelly's Blues, this is the book for you.

In addition to the main text, the appendixes include titles and brief descriptions of each Dragnet radio and television show in addition to police terms used in the shows and movies.

This is a must if you are collecting the radio shows, original TV series, or the '67-'70 version. A lot of the 50's series is on DVD, but they are scattered on all sorts of compilations. This book helps keep track of what you've got. I particularly enjoyed hearing from the extras that Webb used religiously.

But beyond Dragnet, there's a lot of interesting stuff here, how Webb was a jazz nut, including his foray into recording with his spoken-word "You're My Girl" album.

I think it's very interesting how he worked with ex-wife and her husband on Emergency! Many paramedics credit Emergency! with inspiring them to join this service. He obviously loved police and emergency services and his hometown. It makes you wonder, if Webb had lived, what his creative reaction to say the LA riots and the OJ trial would have been.

This is among my favorite computer science books. I read the first edition straight through from cover to cover, even though I had some prior knowledge of the subject. I have since purchased the second edition, which exceeds the high standards set by the first edition. Scott's book would have made the programming languages course I took as an undergraduate much more enlightening, had it existed at the time.

As a software engineer, I tend to be picky about my books, but this one is very in depth and a good read. You will learn a lot about different programming languages, and why certain languages are better than others for solving different types of prroblems.

Over the years the Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools (2nd Edition) (also knwon as the dragon book) has become the de facto standard for introducing compilers and related topics at universities. This is very unfortunate because "Programming Language Pragmatics" is in a completely different league and should be the one used instead. It gives the student (or the self taught) a complete and through overview of parsing, grammar, automata theory and other key language constructs. What really differentiates this book from others (and most notably the (in)famous "Dragon Book") is that it does so in a easy to understand manner and with lots of well written examples.

Many people find compiler and language theory to be dark magic, and it would be wrong not to acknowledge that these subjects are considerably harder than say creating a web page in PHP or writing a small Java/C# program. But much of the confusion also stems from the long history of porly written books which all have lacked explaining key areas or assumed that the readers just know some obscure CS topics beforehand. This book does not travel down that road, it is well written, contains both simple and advanced examples and is simply a delightful read.

Overall, "Programming Language Pragmatics" (PLP) is a very good book. According to the Preface:

"It aims, quite simply, to be the most comprehensive and accurate languages text available, in a style that is engaging and accessible to the typical undergraduate....

At its core, PLP is a book about how programming languages work. Rather than enumerate the details of many different languages, it focuses on concepts that underlie all the languages the student is likely to encounter, illustrating those concepts with a variety of concrete examples, and exploring the tradeoffs that explain why different languages were designed in different ways."

I'm not knowledgeable enough to pass judgment on "the most comprehensive and accurate" part. But, I'm pretty happy about the book meeting the rest of those goals. I read through the book on my own and have only a few significant gripes:

- Chapters 2 (Programming Language Syntax) and 4 (Semantic Analysis) are tough to get through. They're basically trying to teach enough about Alphabets, Languages, Regular Expressions, Context-Free Grammars, Finite Automata and Push-Down Automata for the reader to understand what the rest of the book is based on. I've read Cohen's Introduction to Computer Theory, which is dedicated solely to this material and I still had some trouble. With an instructor in a class to walk through the things, it should be doable. But, for a person reading the book on his own, ugh.

- All of Section III: Alternative Programming Models, seems to depart from the format of the rest of the book (as noted in the Preface) where the author talks about the concepts and then how the different languages implement them. Instead, he focuses on the languages themselves and almost seems to be trying to cram a primer into his text. Since the section seems to be a special case, it wouldn't be so bad except that the languages covered are a bit out of the mainstream and so that degree of depth gets pretty unreadable at times. Again, with a professor around, things would be better.

- At a more pedagogical level, the author has a tendency to merely explain what his example Figures are doing in general terms. The problem is that a lot of the code/pseudocode involves fairly advanced structures in several languages (many of which most people won't have run across). It would have made things a lot easier if he had walked his way through each of those Figures line-by-line and explained what each line did. Once again, this wouldn't be that much of a problem in a normal teaching environment since a professor could do it.

Other than those three things, this is a very good and readable book. I rate it at four stars out of five.

Every good programmer should know more than one programming language, that much is almost a consensus. But more than that, every programmer should educate himself about programming languages in general, what they mean and how they work. It's important to know at least the major programming paradigms, because they form the "mental model" of computation that is available to a programmer in a language from that paradigm.

And then it's always illustrative to know about the differences in many common languages, to see where different decisions have been made and what are the consequences. To know that certain legacy languages (e.g. C, Fortran) have features that were not designed because they were the "best" option (for some definition of best), but because the design was constrained by what technology was currently available.

This knowledge is not only required of compiler writers. It should be required of every good programmer. Compiler writers, of course, must know this, and probably in more detail. But Scott's book is a good resource about programming languages, in a level of detail that I believe adequate for all programmers.

There are two main kinds of books on programming languages: they are "survey" and "implementation".

Survey books show how things work in a lot of languages, comparing them along the way. Often the comparison gets down to small details that can affect the meaning, or semantics, of similar programs written in these languages. These books contain one individual chapter for every major topic, and inside such a chapter all languages are compared in relation to the topic. For example, one such chapter covers "subroutines" and then compare a host of different languages on how they implement subroutines.

Implementation books are different: they show how to implement many language features, usually by presenting code for interpreters and compilers. The reader doesn't learn that Ada permits nested subroutines, but instead how nested subroutines really work and how to implement them in a language, for example. A very good book of this kind is "Essentials of Programming Languages" by Friedman, Wand & Haynes.

I normally prefer the implementation books. I'm not really interested if Standard Pascal permits functions to be passed as parameters or not; if I do need to write a Standard Pascal compiler I'll look for a reference manual. I much prefer to know how to implement functions as parameters, and be done with it. Comparing minutiae about extant programming languages can sometimes be very enlightening, and sometimes be mostly dull.

Scott's book, however, really shines because it mixes feature descriptions and implementation details in the presentation. It does the usual routine of comparing a lot of different languages, most of the time the more popular ones like C++ and Java, but it then shows how the implementations differ because of differences in features. The book strikes a good balance between "language design" and "implementation" approaches, although it is clearly slanted towards design, and so more of a traditional "survey" book.

It wins over other survey books by including implementation information about almost every topic, and by the clear writing and style. Also, most survey books concentrate on mainstream imperative languages (nowadays C++, Java, C#) and leave other paradigms to chapters at the end. Scott's book is a bit better in this respect: the presentation often includes Common Lisp, Scheme and Standard ML in the comparisons. There are separate chapters about functional and logic programming too, but considerations about functional programming are spread in the whole book. This is important because paradigms change, and a good programmer must be able to adapt.

It's a good reference for language implementors and good education for most programmers. I look forward to the next editions.

Penny Sansevieri is an expert marketer, I have watched her over the years and based on her success, I bought her book and it didn't disappoint. When you read this book make sure you have a notebook and pen handy, you will want to take notes as you go along. The best books are written by people who have "been there, done that" and Penny certainly has.

Penny's books is terrific given that it not only lays out the info one needs to understand how the Net can affect book promotion but that it also outlines a comprehensive strategy to utilize the Net's power. This approach is invaluable for helping us "old world" authors move into the brave but unfamiliar new environment of Internet book promotion opportunities.

If you are interested in promoting on line...there are some great tools and ideas explained in this book. Definitely recommend it.

My agent recommended this book to me. I'm finding the information contained inside to be very useful and I'm anxious to see it work for me!

This is a concise, information-packed guide through the maze of the on-line world as it relates to book promotion. I found the author's ideas and tips extremely helpful and current. Recommended for any new author!

We recieved a copy of this book as a present when our baby was born. Honestly, the art is not my thing at all. Its that weird collage style. So, if it was up to me, I would give this book 3 stars but my daughter absolutely loves it. She's 8 months old and always gets so excited when we read it that its on heavy rotation. I like how it teaches about animal sounds but with a fun rythem. Eventualy, you just don't notice the art that much. In the end, I am forced to give it 5 stars.

This book has very simple text, but my 16 mo old twins love the rhythm. They both dance around as I read it aloud and have me read it over and over again. Like other reviewers, my son laughs and dances over to look at the picture when we get to the "Bee Buzz Honey" page. We used to get this book from the library but decided we needed a copy in our personal home library.

Cow Moo Me contains images of animals paired with text using a rhyming pattern to display the name of each animal and the sound the animal makes. For example, an image of a bumblebee flying around flowers is paired with the text, "bee buzz honey, bee buzz zoom, bee buzz busy, bee buzz bloom." This book would be appropriate for infants ages newborn to 24 months. The rhythmic patterns, bright colors, and familiar animals make this book ideal for this age group. In addition, the rounded edges are very appropriate for young infants who like to explore books themselves. I would recommend using this book in the library as part of a lapsit. The artwork is made of bright, colorful collages. The images are cute and silly, fitting well with the simple text.

My 2 year old LOVES this book. He can practically recite it back to me! He laughes when we get to the Bee Buzz Honey part! Although most of the reviews are for babies much younger, my son continues to enjoy this book, in fact, even more now!

My daughter is 7 months old and for the last month this book has been among her favorite playthings. She laughs and waves her arms when I read it to her and her eyes light up just looking at the pictures. I turn the page to "Bee Buzz Honey" and her eyes find the bee and she smiles. Not great literature, no. But a book a baby could love.

We purchased this book with a gift certificate from our wedding and have loved it ever since! Included are recipes for the crust, the sauce, and many different types of pizza (white sauce, red sauce, chicken, veggie, etc.) I am not an advanced pizza dough tosser so creating restaurant style crust is more difficult than I thought it would be. This book is such a great buy that we purchased it as a wedding gift for someone else.

Very good layout and pictures of final product. The book doesn't have thin paper pages like the others, but rather thick semi-gloss paper that you can easily wipe off if you spill something on it.

The item was delivered in a timely manner. It was purchased as a gift, therefore I am unable to give a review on the book itself.

This book is fabulous! A must have for anybody who loves to eat and cook pizza! The recipes are easy to follow and the pictures make your mouth water. There are many unique pizza's that look fun to try as well as your basic pizza. The dough recipes are exceptional.

This cookbook is made well. It has thick pages and colorful pictures. The recipes all look delicious and have ingredients that are readily available at the market.

This book is an interesting, enjoyable, quick read. If you believe MLM is a ripoff then that will be confirmed but true believers will disagree and brand the author a "loser". I commend the author for being brave enough to hang out his dirty laundry in public but wish he had been more forthcoming with details. The effect of MLM on personal relationships is huge and these were not touched on sufficiently.

I stupidly was involved with Equinox for a few short months back in the spring of 1994, I'm embarassed to admit. A good friend of mine had gotten me into the company (he had already been involved for a few months himself at that point). I can't remember how much money I put up but I believe it was about $2,500. Anyhow, I never really made any money. I did sell some products. But my friend very quickly got a bad feeling about Bill Gouldd & dropped out (plus, it was causing problems at home & his wife was almost ready to leave him over it). I stuck around for a few months & then realized it wasn't for me.
I have only read the first 3 chapters of this book but it is an excellent read & reminds of some of the "atmosphere" of a typical Equinox office. I was located in the New Haven, CT office. I remember one of the top guys there was a young guy named Dave Campo. I wonder what ever happened to him. I now wonder if he ever made any money with the company himself. And another guy named Mario. They seemed like nice guys, who believed 100% in Equinox. Maybe they were just good liars...? I don't know. I'd like to believe that they WERE good guys who just got caught up in this "scheme" like everyone else. Hopefully they didn't lose their shirts. I remember a few other names as well, Beta, Katie, Mike...
Anyhow, I do believe the products were of good quality but it seems like the products were almost an afterthought to these people. It was all about bringing in more & more people. I would always wonder, "if I'm just bringing in more people & then they bring in more people, who is actually SELLING PRODUCTS??" Nobody ever seemed to be doing any selling.
The last thing I have read about Bill Gouldd is that he had some new seminar company. But that was back in 2003. I wonder what he is up to these days. And how much money he has left. I seriously doubt he can be doing as well as he was in the mid-90s. I still don't know what to think of that guy. Was he a good guy who let money corrupt him? Or was he a bad guy all along? All I know is he should be in jail for all the people whose lives he ruined. Whether intentionally or not. His company's principles were built on quicksand.
Anyone who was ever involved with Equinox or any of these other pyramid schemes, should read this book. And stay away from companies like these. If it's too good to be true....

In the early 90s my former wife got hooked into the NSA MLM program in Baltimore. She chased her dreams of fortune at the clip of $4,000/month for desk rental, phone rental, seminar training for herself and paying for others to attend as she tried to con them into her new world. At one point the first office had to be closed, and several senior reps opened a new office. The idiots asked me to sign the lease contract, as none of them had the money or good credit to do so. I refused, and was immediately branded an enemy. The NSA product line was soon after moved to Equinox, and the heat for new recruits was turned up.

After that who I met Bill Gouldd once in a Building Blocks seminar my former wife forced me to go to (yes, I also paid $300 to go, plus she paid again). What a smooth operator, spawned from the loins of Satan himself. I saw right through the hype. But my wife saw glamor and riches.

After that came the Journey seminars for herself and others she tried to recruit. $2,500 a crack, and she paid for these folks in the hope they would buy into her dream. I finally called American Express to advise I was no longer going to pay for her card use. It was her account, they refused to close it. I never paid another dime for her account. I hid every dime I had left after she burned through over $80,000!

I remember she did not want to pass on shipping charges or sales tax. She absorbed it, as though magically losing money was going to help her break a profit. I was all about getting new suckers in her downline, the hell with good business sense.

So much of what this book says is so true, the cult mentality was so pervasive, and the attempt to alienate new recruits from other Neg Heads permeated everything. After the former wife burned through over $200,000 (most of it conned from my own parents behind my back), and wound up all but bankrupt (my CA home was in my name, and I had my own credit and money - now I am independently wealthy due to hard work in the computer software business), she decided I was to blame (more Gouldd cult influence) and filed for divorce. Good fu@^ing riddance. She was later impregnated by some Peruvian guy who bolted out of the USA upon hearing of the pregnancy. Poetic justice. The last I heard she could not afford to pay for repairs for her BMW, left it for the repair shop to sell to cover the bill, and wound up in a rusted out Taurus from her parents.

Drawing and Quartering of Bill Gouldd would not be enough to mete out justice. Bravo for the author to have come out so clean in the end. I do not blame Bill Gouldd, or anyone else, for my rather nasty turn in life. His influence merely brought a basic fault in the ex-wife to a very costly head. I survived financially, and kept my own pride intact, but so many others were deep into a downward spiral even in the earliest days of my seeing all this going on. All in denial, the next big deal was just around the corner, just had to get to some more $eminars... Meantime get a fancy car before going totally broke, "If you can't make it, fake it." Gawd, the memories...

A cautionary tale of greed gone oh so wrong, Spellbound made me thankful that my experiences with direct marketing have all been with a company that actually wants its sales force to make money. For those of us who believe in capitalism and have done direct sales with a well-run and fair company (Mary Kay Cosmetics), this book comes as a sad surprise.
What particularly left me with respect for the author is that Styler makes no victim of himself, instead admitting his own culpability in everything that occurred; and makes no hero of himself for helping to bring down a selfish and dangerous man who gave direct marketing a bad name.
Spellbound is a readable book. The tone is confessional but without maudlin sentimentality. Pick it up when you have plenty of time to read; you won't want to put it down.

This books took a tremendous amount of courage. First to walk away
from a lot of money because Styler discovered unethical practices,
then to stand up against a $200 million dollar company and later shut
them down with his testimony...that takes character. When you read
the story, what is really surprising and interesting is how honest
Styler is. He does not make himself out to be a victim. He owns his
faults and learns from them. It is a fascinating read.

Loved it. Quick, fun read. Interesting story. The two main characters are great. The secondary characters play meaningful roles and are well-developed. I have nothing negative to say about the series.

I bought Dark Protector (Paladins of Darkness, Book 1) on a lark. I was looking for something with a slightly different premise from the usual vampire/time travel/wolf/ghost paranormals that have seemed to flood the market. Dark Protector held something new; Warriors that returned from the dead to fight again and again but always with the knowledge that eventually, they would become the thing they fought against. Dark Protector was a very good read and though the author's writing was very rough in places, the premise and the character development gave me the desire to give her a chance and read the second, Dark Defender.

Dark Defender (Paladins of Darkness, Book 2) was as good as the first, the writing had improved, the character development in new characters was done well and the original characters stayed true to form. I thought I might have found a winner in Ms. Morgan.

In Darkness Reborn (Paladins of Darkness, Book 3) has verified my trust in her abilities. Her original characters carry through this story well, staying true to themselves and unflinching in their personalities. So many times, first characters tend to become wishy-washy as the series progresses. Not so with Ms. Morgan. In this story, Barak, who we met in the first book, has been well fleshed out and is a rich personality but is his own man and not a carbon copy of any other that she's written. Her heroine, Lacey Sebastian, is humanly flawed which is a delight in the face of so many perfect heroines these days. The story was very well done, easy to become engrossed in and even Barak, as an Other, was easy to relate to as far as the many problems he faces not only trying to fit into the human world, but to keep true to the honor he holds above all else.

If I have any complaints at all about Ms. Morgan, it is that she seems to latch on to an 'favorite phrase' and uses it too often, in this case "she stepped into his arms" or some such subtle variation. Other than that, it has been a joy to watch her growth as an author while I read a well thought out and consistent new series.

My only question now, can she maintain the standard she has set with the first three in her newest which will be released late November, Redeemed in Darkness (Paladins of Darkness, Book 4). I certainly hope so! It's already on my pre-order list.

I really liked book one in the series. Book two was average and number three was just silly. I can tell how much I enjoy a book by how fast I read it. If I lay the book down repeatedly then I know my interest is lost. It took me a month to read this. While I was interested in Barak's story, there wasn't much of one. To much of Lacey's brother and Lacey herself was annoying. I did not find her character believable at all. She barely spoke to Barak before their first sexual encounter. No chemistry there. Oh well, I gave it a try.

I fell in love with Barak the first time I read about him. This book just confirmed my feelings. The warriors are all strong as well as their women. I felt Baraks and Laceys pain at not being able to come forward because he was from a different world as well as their undeniable love for each other.

I blew through the first two books in this series and waited anxiously for this one. I was really curious to see how the author would handle Barak as a hero. We met him in Dark Protector when he saved Dr. Laurel Young's life. He's one of the Others, the Paladin's sworn enemy. I had no idea what to expect and - wow, this book was great. No one does the tortured hero like Alexis Morgan.

In the beginning of the book, Barak is alone in every sense of the word - he's a man between worlds. Then he's paired with Lacey, who has no reason to like or trust him. Her brother has dedicated his life to fighting the Others and now she finds herself attracted to the very man she's supposed to despise. But he's not like she expected. He's loyal, determined and intriguing. Both of them are torn. Barak has a secret that, if revealed, could cost more lives.

This book surprised me, made me smile in places and kept me reading way too late into the night.

I am a member of the Detroit Historical Society and other historical organizations and have read many history books. "Alive on the Andrea Doria" is not only an interesting factual presentation of the events of this historic sea collision, but also a well written and riveting drama describing the human emotions and reactions of passengers, crew, rescuers, the anxious families and friends of passengers and crew, news media, and others involved in this tragedy. It is also the author's fascinating personal story of a young girl pulling up roots in Italy, leaving her town, friends, and school behind to come to America, where all was new and different: family, language, food, school, etc. This book is highly recommended for all.

What a wonderful book (and story). I read it straight through and couldn't put it down. The author, Pierette Domenica Simpson, did a marvelous job especially in recanting so many details (sights, sounds, smells) - and I know how hard that is because an author has it all in their mind and memory but putting in the "reader's" mind, well, that's a different story. As a retired Navy pilot and haven't spent most of my life at sea (and in the air) I really enjoyed reading Chapter 10 and Part II in general for it was extremely detailed and complete about the circumstances surrounding the collision. Moreover, as a story teller, Part I was terrific and moving as well. I was especially enamored with the author's experience as an Italian-American and how we share the stories of our families and their courage in coming to a new land to live the American dream. I write of this as well in my latest book, My Father's Compass: Leadership Lessons of an Immigrant Son, found here on [...].
Again, wonderful story with a happy ending and a must read! Perry Martini, My Father's Compass.

Alive on the Andrea Doria! is a wonderful book. Ms. Simpson, an Andrea Doria survivor, is the new Walter Lord of maritime history. She skillfully uses a wide variety of survivor recollections to retell the story of the sinking of the Andrea Doria, Italy's premier luxury liner in the 1950s, after its collision with the smaller Stockholm. These stories are about a very diverse group of people, both a variety of native Italians settling in the USA and a group of Northern-European-Americans of a variety of backgrounds. Ms. Simpson very frankly and touchingly also shares her own story and developmental history, including the circumstances that led to her and to her maternal grandparents' immigration to the USA on the Doria's final voyage. The second portion of her book details a variety of scientific evidence that explains the sinking of the Andrea Doria from a technical point of view. She provides a strong rehabilitation of the Doria's Captain Calamai, much vilified at the time of the collision, and details frankly the realities of anti-Italian and anti-Italian-American stereotyping that influenced public perceptions of the Andrea Doria disaster.

The book has many strengths. Ms. Simpson includes a great variety of survivor stories, and allows her fellow survivors to tell of their lives in great detail (frankly exceeding the masterful Walter Lord's compelling but very abbreviated depictions of Titanic survivors and victims in A Night to Remember.) She makes an effort to make the technical descriptions of the disaster understandable, she readily acknowledges the influence of her own experience and her own biases on her final text, and she wisely does not translate every word of Italian she presents--this both makes the last moments of the Doria feel more as they actually happened, and is a pleasant challenge for those of us who love the Italian language but are rusty in using same and have to work to self-translate various phrases. Moreover, Ms. Simpson also does a very good job of portraying the symptoms of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) suffered by a number of the survivors (at a time when we didn't yet have a formal diagnosis for that syndrome), and the books includes a number of excellent, evocative photographs. Most importantly, Alive on the Andrea Doria! is a validating remembrance, of the lives lost, the lives saved, the experience of Italian-American immigrants, and the tremendous heroism of those involved. Ms. Simpson, with whom I've had the pleasure of corresponding by email, stresses that this was the greatest sea rescue in history, and makes clear that just because the Doria disaster did not claim the massive number of lives that did the Titanic, the Lusitania, and the Empress of Ireland tragedies, the loss of the Andrea Doria is still a real and moving drama that should be studied and commemorated. Brava, signora, e mille grazie!

I knew little about the Andrea Doria until I read this book. Pierete Simpson has brought the Andrea Doria back to life with her book. This book was compelling and I truly enjoyed all the individual stories. The amount of research that went into this book is astounding. This book is a testament to human triumph and spirit. I highly recommend it for everyone.

Ms. Simpson was a survivor of the Stockholm - Andrea Doria collision. In this incredible documentary of that ill-fated trip she does what has not been done before. Alive on the Andrea Doria not only tells passenger and crew stories but also has explanations from nautical experts explaining how and why the collision took place.

Pierette Domenica Simpson was a child on July, 25 1956 traveling with her Grandparents to America where she was going to live with her mother and stepfather. Then her life and many others became perilously endangered when the Stockholm hit the Andrea Doria, the pride of the Italian fleet.

Ms. Simpson does an awesome job of telling the story of this catastrophic event. She tells the story through the eyes of many of the passengers that were aboard - their dreams - their hopes - where they came from - where they were going - their terror - where they are today.

Ever since that tragic night Ms. Simpson had wanted to find out why the collision occurred. She didn't accept the overall belief that it was the Italian, Captain Calamai's fault. It was important to be able to put this to rest and have closure. She sought out the help of nautical experts to recreate the collision paths using documented transcripts of the Bridge crew from both ships and today's technology. In this way they discovered that the assumed guilt of the Italian crew was misplaced.

Alive on the Andrea Doria is a spellbinding tale of the "Greatest Sea Rescue in History." Ms. Simpson did a wonderful job. Rather than making this a run-of the-mill dry documentary, it is a deep-felt account of a tragedy that should not have happened.

Richard Bondurant arranged a great trip to Moorea and Tahaa for my wife and I for our 10 year anniversary. This spectacular book is a great memory of our trip to Tahiti, and does an outstanding job of detailing all the exotic recipes that we jotted down on bar cocktail napkins while sipping fabulous drinks and sitting in the sun. I need to stock up on a few obscure ingredients before I can make all these wonderful drinks, but while it's snowing here for the winter, it's nice to just sit back, look at the amazing photos, read some of the trivia about Tahiti, and dream of going back someday soon. Thanks again Richard, for another great time!

The format of the book is very well done. Makes you want to go to Tahiti.

Wow! What a great book! We received it as a gift, which was perfect since my husband and I spent our honeymoon in Tahiti. Several things make this book great. First, the information about Tahiti is factual and entertaining to read. Second, the photos are amazing. Third, not only are the drinks easy to make, they are awesome! Kudos to Richard Bondurant.

Not only does this book have a wealth of information on a destination we long to travel to, but it offers a wide variety of fun and DELICIOUS drinks.
We love to entertain and it has been great having 'Cocktails in Tahiti' out at our parties...quite a conversation piece! Everyone loves the stunning photos of Tahiti, the scrumptious drinks, and the intriguing facts of the islands. Thank you!

Always looking for new and exciting cocktails to try, I purchased this book. Each page became more interesting, not only for the drinks presented but for the knowledge that Mr. Bondurant shares about Tahiti, it's culture, local accomodations, etc.

The photos are exceptional and each drink I have mixed has been better than the last. I have bought several as gifts for coworkers and friends. You won't be disappointed!

This book was purchased for a college research project and it was just perfect. It talks of Kandinsky's color theory and how music and color co-exist. The seller was professional and I got the book when it was promised. I would order from this seller again...definately!

Wassilly Kadinsky was a 20th century painter and his CONCERNING THE SPIRITUAL IN ART provides a blend of philosophical, spiritual and artistic reflection as it examines the premises and presence of spirituality in art. This new edition is a recommended pick not just for art students of modernism, but for readers of spiritual works: it includes letters between Kadinsky and Sadler, unpublished prose poems, and a fine attention to artistic reflection and analysis.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

I enjoyed reading the book. At times it was over my head,but still it was worth the effort!!!!

Kandinsky throws his ideas out in a slightly esoteric manner. It make take a few rereads to really grasp the quality of discourse he presents. But, in the end, his commentary shines brightly through his comparisons of music to painting. The spiritual triangle is comparable to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. It is important to remember that Kandinsky is not using the term "spiritual" in a religious sense.
This book is a very good read for anyone feeling slumped in their art making. And for anyone who wants to expose themselves to ways of thinking about art. By the third time I had read the material I had underlined and highlighted almost every line and filled all the margins with notes. The book is fantastic. It is especially good when paired with Hans Hofmann's essay "In Search for the Real." Although the ideas in the two books do not parallel. In fact the lines aren't even on the same page. Kandinksky's critiques of other familiar artists are very interesting too. Names like picasso and Cezanne pop up quite a bit.
I'll stop rambling now. Read the book, it is very good.

Kandinsky had risen to positions of influence in other disciplines (political science/economics and law) before directing his considerable intellect to painting. His insights extended into the historic 'meta' trends of the arts and sciences, including the physical sciences, and had his interests been directed more to the history and philosophy of science instead of the history and philosophy of art, he might have written Kuhn's observations regarding paradigm change a half century before Kuhn did: "Here and there are people with eyes which can see, minds which can correlate. They say to themselves: 'If the science of the day before yesterday is rejected by the people of yesterday, and that of yesterday by us of today, is it not possible that what we call science now will be rejected by the men of tomorrow?' And the bravest of them answer, 'It is possible.'"

Instead, Kandinsky extended the frontiers of painting and authored philosophic writings on the future of art that are among the most important of such works. M.T.H. Sadler, who translated this work into English, was a friend of Kandinsky's and was among his early admirers. The notes he has written in the front of the book (Translator's Introduction) are therefore more helpful than could be the opinions of many other critics, including myself:

"Anyone who has studied Gauguin will be aware of the intense spiritual value of his work. The man is a preacher and a psychologist, universal by his very unorthodoxy, fundamental because he goes deeper than civilization. In his disciples this great element is wanting.

"Kandinsky has supplied the need. He is not only on the track of an art more purely spiritual than was conceived even by Gauguin, but he has achieved the final abandonment of all representative intention. In this way he combines in himself the spiritual and technical tendencies of one great branch of Post-Impressionism.

"The question most generally asked about Kandinsky's art is: 'What is he trying to do?' It is to be hoped that this book will do something towards answering the question. But it will not do everything. This--partly because it is impossible to put into words the whole of Kandinsky's ideal, partly because in his anxiety to state his case, to court criticism, the author has been tempted to formulate more than is wise. His analysis of colours and their effects on the spectator is not the real basis of his art, because, if it were, one could, with the help of a scientific manual, describe one's emotions before his pictures with perfect accuracy. And this is impossible.

"Kandinsky is painting music. That is to say, he has broken down the barrier between music and painting, and has isolated the pure emotion which, for want of a better name, we call the artistic emotion. Anyone who has listened to good music with any enjoyment will admit to an unmistakable but quite indefinable thrill. He will not be able, with sincerity, to say that such a passage gave him such visual impressions, or such a harmony roused in him such emotions. The effect of music is too subtle for words. And the same with this painting of Kandinsky's. Speaking for myself, to stand in front of some of his drawings or pictures gives a keener and more spiritual pleasure than any other kind of painting. But I could not express in the least what gives the pleasure. Presumably the lines and colours have the same effect as harmony and rhythm in music have on the truly musical. That psychology comes in no one can deny."

Some aspects of Kandinsky's color theory are dubious, at best they cannot be universalized, and Kandinsky sees this. But other of his ideas and arguments are widely accepted among artists, even as being self-evident. Stating that "there is no 'must' in art, because art is free," that is, free to address external representations OR "the inner need," to merely chase after material 'objects' OR to wrestle with the mysteriously spiritual, to somehow meld the two visions OR to stay purely to exploration of the spiritual high ground, Kandinsky absolutely rejects the materialistic expectation of an art "explanation" that has been articulated by EO Wilson in his unfortunate daydream 'Consilience' (Wilson knows ants better than he knows humans, and is given to understanding humans to be essentially ant equivalents).

Anyone interested in art history, painting of the past century, or the relationships/correlations/divergences of the various arts (visual, musical, literary), as well as anyone interested in the meaning and purpose of art, or in the philosophy of aesthetics, should read this important book, perhaps more than once.