Richard Books

This story made me cry more than any other. Flanagan breaks many "rules" of creating writing, which is to his credit. He tells a story without a plot. The characters were not attracting. He gives away the ending. But, he uses a delivery method of fantasy to tell a truth of the human condition. Brilliant! This is a book about loss, injustice, and suffering, with smatterings of love and tenderness. Beautiful. A most powerful scene takes place in a bar where Flanagan captures the heart and soul of what makes music so dramatic and driving for both musician and listener. This is not a happy book, just great literature. I read this after reading his "The Unknown Terroist," another good one with the same themes.

perhaps i found this book enjoyable because i have been a river guide and also because i enjoy magical realism. the sense of time and space throughout this book captures not only a family history but the essence of a river itself, and being caught up in it. as i began reading, i found myself hating the main character for his apathy towards his own life. i resented that i would have to wait until the end of the book for him to finally end his miserable existence and drown. but then as i read on i wasn't so sure what i wanted for the main character. a very satisfying read.

Richard Flanagan has an almost unexcelled capacity to weave historical threads into his fiction. In line with many writers of the Australian scene, he deftly conveys his awareness of the Aborigine condition in this story. Despite his name, Aljaz Cosini, born far away in Trieste, yet manages to return to his ancestral homeland. Ancestral roots bear little, if any, sway on our monotheistic world. In other cultures, however, forebears are the foundation for existence, a tradition widespread and of extended duration. Flanagan's awareness of that cultural milieu is forcefully portrayed in this story of a man's final living moments.

Flanagan's method is subtle. We mourn for the drowning guide as the story opens. His fate is clearly inescapable. Strangely, he condemns neither his situation nor the river that is taking his life. The attitude is far from fatalism, however. His circumstance is opening a new realm of Aljaz' awareness. As he confronts the inevitable, Aljaz comes to perceive his ancestral roots. Visions arrive of events he could not have witnessed, yet bear no skein of fabrication nor the supernatural either in Aljaz' mind or in Flanagan's depiction of them. There are no deities or spirits here. Aljaz resents that at first - "visions ought be given you by divine beings, not ... marsupials and their mates". Yet these visions are events from the reality his ancestors experienced. They are also of those real people - his father, grandmother, and most importantly, his former girl friend and the child they lost. Flanagan accepts the Aborigine view of children - love them intently, but if they are lost, long-term grief is too debilitating a luxury. The white world didn't understand this view when they first encountered it, and it remains enigmatic even now. Aljaz meets death calmly after a tormented life, but it's not release from suffering he gains, but a fuller understanding of who he really is. He is joining with a lost heritage.

Describing Flanagan's style as "powerful" is frail praise. "Formidable" might be something of a start. This is not a book to rush through, or if done, one to turn back to again. Flanagan wants to confront you with the realities of history and become aware of the long-term effects of lack of cultural awareness. These aren't lessons acquired at one sitting. He knows there are deeply set roots underlying behaviour and this book is attempt to reveal some of these to us. He has accomplished this effort with vivid imagery and exemplary characterisation. We must applaud his effort with enthusiasm. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Aljaz Cosini, a Tasmanian river guide, is trapped under water, his body wedged between rocks in the Franklin River, into which he has dived in an effort to save a reckless rafter. "I have entered the realm of the fabulous, of hallucinations, for there is no way anybody stuck drowning could experience such things," he thinks, as many generations of his family history pass through his mind. As this remarkable narrative unfolds, it alternates between Aljaz's dying, first person memories of his family's past and his objective, third person observations about life in contemporary Tasmania. Through Aljaz's memories, the reader learns the sad history of the island, a former penal colony for the most hardened criminals, the site of total genocide for the aboriginal natives, a remote colony with little hope and no tolerance for differences. A bright boy, Aljaz himself has intentionally failed everything in school, because "by failing, Aljaz begins to fit in with people...there is a camaraderie amongst the ranks of the fallen....They expect to be failed, to be unemployed, to be pushed around, to know only despair."

This is a story of abject hopelessness, the misery of Aljaz's family continuing through the four or five generations we meet during Aljaz's final moments and culminating in Aljaz's own predicament. The author does not even hold out the hope that Aljaz himself will be rescued, choosing to confirm the death in the book's title, before the reader even opens the book. What unites the generations (and keeps the reader going) is the clear and abiding respect for nature we see throughout the book--for the power of the river, for the unique animals of the island, for the stories and myths of the old people--and the belief that there is a unity of man and nature. And Aljaz experiences the ultimate unity with nature in his death in the river, as he becomes one with the sea eagle who "carries the spirits of the ancestors."

The characters one meets in this book are memorable, as they survive the best way they can. The tales of nature and the mystical moments that Aljaz experiences are vivid and uplifting, a fitting contrast to the reality of life. The action on the river is realistic and exciting, and there is a thematic unity which connects the generations of the past with the action in the present. It may be self-defeating, however, to create a novel in which the reader is asked to become personally involved with a main character whose death is foretold from the outset. Though that confirms and reinforces the point the author is making about the hopelessness of Aljaz's life, it certainly makes this novel a depressing ride for the reader. Mary Whipple

I was interested to read this first novel by Richard Flanagan after reading his acclaimed novel "The Sound of One Hand Clapping". In going back to this earlier work I wanted to see if he was pursuing similar themes and if the writing was as compelling. It was. Here again was a master storyteller at work who refuses to release the reader until the last page has been read and the reader held in the grip of an idea that the broken in spirit will be redeemed.

This story of a man drowning beneath a waterfall provides the canvas to explore the emotional history of his family and by extension the emotional history of his island state, Tasmania.

Don't be to eager to dismiss this book as superficial, for females only or aimed at the fashion/ art set. It is a well researched and knowledge packed directory into the ploitics and social history of fashion and beauty, throughout the entire 20th century.
It would be of immense value to students of 20th century history, women's studies as well as an invaluable and pictorial journey for children exploring the recent past.
The layout is well structured and the photography, art and fashion plates are breath taking.
Even if just a coffee table book, it's far more engaging than the average trendy photo album.

This book covers the changing styles and images from the 1890s thru the 1990s. Each section covers the life & times, faces in vogue, film and media, fashion, hair and hats, cosmetics, body shape and underwear, and work and play for a particular decade. Filled with interesting facts and tons of photographs, this makes the perfect addition to the library of anyone interested in fashion, cosmetics, or history! Fun and unique!

A nice collection of fact & photos on the beauty industry. Contains information on styles of each period--including the impact of film! I thought the 1920's invention of "twist-up" lipstick & the use by flappers was a hoot! Pick this book up & grab another as a gift!

Decades of Beauty is both an excellent pictoral as well as literary history of beauty through the decades. Great pictures that have not been often seen showcase the fashion fads of each era along with the fashion icons who are responsible for that decade's fashion hype. I loved that this book also gave equal space to the history of cosmetic beauty through the years. Its fascinating to see what type of makeup each generation "had to have" along with the "hippest" hairstyles of the day. The contents are easy to read and allows one to pick and choose a decade of interest without having to read the book start to finish. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is a cosmetic junkie, fashion obsessed, or just a history buff. This would also make an excellent gift for those in the beauty industry. Enjoy!

I purchased this book a year ago and read it from cover to cover the day it arrived. But I find myself picking it up and flipping through it every now and again. I love the fact that the authors wound in all kinds of fascinating pop culture trivia along with fashion history. I learned all kinds of amazing things -- like the fact that Elizabeth Arden brought out a velvet gas mask during World War II and that someone actually saw fit to bring a bra to market that could be inflated by blowing into a straw. This book is very fun reading indeed. It's also a gorgeous coffee table book. Highly recommended.

This is the only guide you will ever need to understanding how to put a business plan together and in so doing you gain invaluable lessons on what makes business tick, from a master. I have used this book in an earlier edition, as a blueprint to attract finance for 3 ventures so I can vouch for its easy style and elegant solutions. Highly recommended whether you're starting, running or turning around a business. If you are in business you need to read this book from cover to cover and you don't need to be Einstein to understand it.

An excellent book that takes you through start to finish on the operating principles of a business and the reasons behind each process. This provides a good framework for you to fashion what is appropriate for your business given the circumstances you are in at this point in time. The book is logically laid out, explained in simple language and very easy to apply in a practical business environment. This is the best book I have read on establishing a business plan that can either be highly operational, tactical or strategic in nature or have these elements combined in a manner that meets your current needs.

I think this is an excellent and practical introduction to writing business plan.

Peter

I find this book way superior to many other books on the subject. At the same time, it approaches business plans with small boxed anecdotes and an easy-going attitude (alla "...for dummies" but a far better level). Also differences between British and U.S. accounting terms are explained, giving the book a touch of international reach. At all times you have the feeling of being in company with a very talented and experienced author.

Written for serious professionals, and assumes a modicum of intelligence, out of all the books claiming to assist in designing a business plan, this is the only one that actually comes close to anything serious. Have a look at the sample pages to see what I mean.

Without customers, a business is doomed to failure. "Delivering and Measuring Customer Service" is a complete and comprehensive guide for business owners who want to deliver these valuable people the best service possible. Looking at the evolution of customer service through recent history, "Delivering and Measuring Customer Service" discusses such matters as getting accurate feedback on how one's business is doing, and how best to use that feedback effectively, along with many more general tips. A guide that every business owner should consider required reading, "Delivering and Measuring Customer Service" is highly recommended for community library business collections.

I loved this book. Typically I'm pretty critical of business books, but this kept me engaged with great humor, logic, and insight. In my opinion this is a no-brainer buy for any business with customer service or support teams.

Finally a book that is engaging, helpful and insightful on customer service. This book takes away the mystery and simplifies the process in an understandable way while providing a good dose of humor to instill the message. Every business leader should have this book on their desk.

Anyone who is interested in understanding the role of gathering and using guest feedback needs to read this book. There is no other book that so clearly outlines the need for customer service and the actual methods and measurments on how to get it, and then how to improve your operation based on the feedback.

Businesses often focus their efforts on getting customers. The mantra of the day is sell, sell, sell.

Mr. Hanks' book is a valuable reminder that while selling gets the ball rolling, it is customer service that keeps the customers coming back for more. That is the bloodline of most successful enterprises.

I especially enjoyed the lesson taught on the importance of measuring the actual customer experience versus the less-reliable and less-effective techniques of internal auditing and mystery shopping. Rather than guessing what the customer experiences, why not just ask the customer directly?

I would highly recommend this book to any professional who has to keep customers satisfied for a living and wants to find new and better ways of doing so.

"The Dictionary of Concise Writing" is a thorough examination of how to write tight, well-crafted prose. The book begins with a section on "Perfectibility of Words" which defines wordiness and provides various examples of the different types. The following section is "The Imperfectability of People" which discusses the prevalence and acceptance of wordiness in society.

The extensive dictionary actually begins on page 49. Each listed phrase or word combination is followed by suggested substitutions, an example using the "wordy" phrase, and the same example using the correct substitution. If you are wondering if your writing could be more concise or looking for a suggestion for a phrase that just doesn't feel right, or just want to learn better writing skills then this is the book for you. It is the largest and most useful compendium of excessively wordy phrases and practical, workable substitutions that I have had the pleasure of using. A highly recommended purchase for anyone doing any serious writing.

Robert Hartwell Fiscke has produced two powerful, literary weapons to guard against the growing trend of misspellings, tautologies and clichés as well as hackneyed metaphors, inane expressions and bloated or weak writing: The Dimwit's Dictionary: 5000 Overused Words and Phrases and Alternatives to Them (reviewed elsewhere) and The Dictionary of Concise Writing: 10,000 Alternatives to Wordy Phrases.

The key to good writing, according to Fiske who is also the author and publisher of The Vocabula Review (an online journal about the English language), is concise and precise writing ~ and that's just what he offers with these two excellent reference books.

Like Fiske's other guide, The Dictionary of Concise Writing can be used as a reference when needed or read cover to cover. In fact, reading it like a regular book is a good way to grasp the rudiments of good writing.

It comprises two parts: The first offers a wide range of advice on clear and concise writing, including practical suggestions for trimming the fat from sentences and adding more muscle to your work.

The second part is the dictionary, which presents several thousand common, verbose phrases and offers fresh, concise alternatives and real-world examples of useage.

A point made in the foreword by Dr Richard Lederer sums up the objective of the book: "Cutting the fat is probably the quickest and surest way to improve [your writing]."

The author expands on that point in the first chapter:

"Poor grammar, sloppy syntax, abused words, misspelled words and other infelicities of style impede communication and advance only misunderstanding. But there is another, perhaps less well-known, obstacle to effective communication: too many words.

"We often believe that many words are better than few. Perhaps we imagine that the more we say, the more we know or the more others will think we know, or that the more obscure our writing is, the more profound our thoughts are. Seldom, of course, is this so. Wordiness is arguably the biggest obstacle to clear writing and speaking."

As Fiske says, our language has become bloated with phrases such as 'at this juncture' or worse, 'at this moment in the history of my life' which simply translates as 'now'.

The Dictionary of Concise Writing is a must for any writer - amateur or pro - and anyone else wanting to communicate more effectively. But don't just buy it, keep it handy on your desk. If you're like me ~ you'll be reaching for it sooner than you think.

-- Michael Meanwell, author of the critically-acclaimed 'The Enterprising Writer' and 'Writers on Writing'. For more book reviews and prescriptive articles for writers, visit www.enterprisingwriter.com

"...he could hear a sound like rushing steam inside his skull. It was the rush of madness, the incorrigible madness of this place...they had attacked and reduced him to a grisly, spastic, convulsive length of live meat burning in the throes of neurons gone amuck and hauled his shriveled caracus off to some madhouse called the Rubber Room." Quick! Tap the subconscious recesses of your computer-like brain and identify the author. If you pulled up Tom Wolfe, A Man In Full, page 368, you are correct. ##### Just goes to show, I guess, that wordy prose in the hands of a famous writer is still acceptable. (Little wonder that Wolfe writes 700-page books.) Suffice it to say, such over-the-top wordiness submitted to a publisher by an unpublished writer would probably be tossed in the waste basket, quickly, or consigned back to the slush pile. ##### Essentialism venerates humility as its highest virtue. Consequently, when in doubt, it is probably best to adapt the James M. Cain breakout writing fashion dating way back to the 1930s with his The Postman Always Rings Tiwice, Double Indemnity, and Mildred Pierce. Brevity. Simplicity. Faithfully follow Commandment V of the Plot Development Ten Commandments: Thou Shalt Not Hyperbolize. ##### In this regard, The Dictionary of Concise Writing is a precious gem. It is a volume which should be on every book shelf, conveniently accessable as a constant reference by every writer.

This is an excellent book, and other comments here are more profound than my own thoughts, so I'll just say that I use this (and it's somewhat companion, The Dimwit's Dictionary) with regularity. Whenever I've written something that I think may be verbose, I hastily consult this to see if I've erred. It's truly an indispensable tool.

In "The Dictionary of Concise Writing", Robert Hartwell Fiske battles the veritable plague of excessive wordiness that threatens to make muddled mush of the English language. Well, maybe that's hyperbole. And maybe it's too wordy. In any case, in this book's first two chapters, "The Perfectibility of Words" and "The Imperfectibility of People", Fiske explains how, and hypothesizes as to why, we cloud our speech and writing with so many unnecessary words. The first chapter gives common examples of objectionably wordy sentences organized by part of speech and type of phrase. The second chapter discusses wordiness in business, legalese, journalese, academicspeak and its repercussions. Those chapters are followed by "The Dictionary of Concise Writing", whose 357 pages constitute the bulk of this book. The Dictionary lists common wordy phrases, alphabetically, and suggests more concise alternatives for each one. Every wordy phrase is illustrated with an example sentence and an improved version, in which the phrase has been replaced by something better. Fiske isn't claiming that these wordy phrases should never be used -although I gather that he might say that of some, but that we should express these ideas succinctly whenever it will do the job. Truthfully, writers probably don't notice when they use too many words, so we may not think to look for an alternative in this book. I find "The Dictionary of Concise Writing" most valuable as a reminder. Fiske's examples stick with me and make me more conscious of wordiness while I'm writing, especially of common redundant and overwrought phrases. There is a short interview with the author at the end of the book. Robert Hartwell Fiske is the editor of The Vocabula Review (www.vocabula.com), where you will find further interesting opinions and observations on the English language.

A good transliterated dictionary of most of the words you'll ever use.

It's a shame that the Arabic-English part was never completed!! I love this dictionary, it has almost everything it. I actually went through most of it with a Syrian friend, and he agreed that everything in there appears as it is spoken in Syria today. It lacks slang terms, but then again one can learn the slang of Syrian Arabic by visiting Syria, and it's a great country to visit, very beautiful!

This is a very good dictionary for the Syrian dialect. It includes broken plurals and it uses most of the words in sentences. Some might complain that it is not written in the Arabic script, but I thought the notation chosen was helpful for pronounciation. One downside is that it is not totally comprehensive, but it contained almost all of the words I wanted to look up.

This book is superb. Its biggest plus is that it uses thousands of real-life examples of sentences in Syrian Arabic and demonstrate how words are used. It is designed to be a guide to speaking Arabic on a conversational level, and is replete with colloqualisms, figures of speech, and idioms. It is well worth the money.

I refer to this book once in a while.Its really neat that I can just think of a word, look it up and voila!....there it is in perfect syrian colloquial arabic.The entries also have example sentences to give you an idea of the context and grammatical syntax with which this word is used.I have noticed however that some very common arabic expressions/words that I hear spoken by Syrians and Lebanese are not included as synonyms for the meanings.Im not sure if this is because this book was compiled in the 1960s and the colloquial slang could be slightly different now in 2005....this sort of thing is very rare, though.I wonder how on earth they compiled such a detailed exhaustive list.This is a lifetime keepsake, if you are as crazy about learning levantine arabic as I am!

"Dinner Music" was the first diet book that ever worked for me. It's creative approach to learning how to eat well was inspiring and energizing. I thank Dr. Donze for the wonders his book has done for me!

Poetic in its tone and imagery, Dr. Donze's book reads like a wholesome delicious feast - each new chapter unfolding a new course and building new understanding. This is clearly not your ordinary diet book. I gulped the book in one sitting, but would return to savor it in buts and pieces again and again.

The ten books I would take with me to a desert island? Sorry CAT IN THE HAT, you've been dumped for DINNER MUSIC. Super advice packed in a great read...

DINNER MUSIC is clearly THE book for the new millenium!

I have been pulled so much in every direction by diet books in the past that I feel like three-day old taffy but after reading "Dinner Music" I now know what a food plan for life truly is. Blast you, Dr. Donze, for waiting so long to write it!

My mother got this book for my daughter. She loves it. She dances with the music and is learning to sing along with it even though it doesn't have the lyircs on the cds. She loves to carry around the cd player and switch out the cds. Another wonderful thing about this is she leaves my cds alone now. She would rather play with hers. I would recommend this to anyone with a child.

I gave this to my Grandson for his 2nd Birthday. He loved the stories and the music player. It is just the right size for his little hands. His favorite song is "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". He figured out how to play it over and over again.

My friend gave my son (then 18 m.o.) this storybook October 2006. My son became quite attached to it. Then in Jan 2007 my 7 m.o. nephew came to visit from overseas, he was very drawn to the the music which has a calming effect on him. So I let my nephew take it home. Several months later, my son saw other kids with the music player and started to miss the one I gave away. Back to present, I ordered one last month Apr 2008. The night the parcel arrived, my son has a ear to ear grin all night and insisted he need to take the music player to bed.

My husband picked this out for our daughter for Christmas. She is 2 1/2 and loves it. The songs are classics and she sings the words as the music plays. She thinks she is so grown up because she can operate the CD player herself. The illustrations are large and beautiful. I will be buying her another player for Easter.

This storybook and "CD" player are very cool. My 2-year-old spends a lot of time looking at the pictures and pushing the buttons to make the music play. Even the older kids enjoy turning it on and changing the CDs. The songs are fun.

There are books that make you think, and there are books that make you feel. Disturbing the Peace is both. It is the story of a man and his descent into insanity. But it is so much more than that. It is the story of ourselves, told quite plainly, and in such a way that, as a reader, it's very easy to slip in and out of the minds of all the characters, because they are us.

Disturbing the Peace made me think, feel, and believe that I was not simply watching this story unfold as it was told to me, but rather, I was a part of the story as it unfolded around me.

The brilliance of Yates is not in the writing. Rather, it's in the non-writing, that is, what he doesn't put on the page. And opening this book - and any of his books - you are invited to join in and watch or partake as the world crumbles.

Why the genius of Yates has never caught on, we'll never know. Perhaps people were afraid to peer into the stories and see such bold and disturbing representations of themselves and their lives.

Highly Recommended.

Five Stars.

is it a painfully telling portrait of american domesticity gone awry. it is a book you read from begining to end with as few breaks as possible.

This is the story of John C. Wilder and his descent into insanity. Wilder is a highly strung hard drinking affluent salesman, a husband and father. He tries to hide his low self-esteem which stems from a mild dyslexia and being somewhat short in stature. He seeks to fill the void in his life through drinking and women.

At one point, all of Wilder's ambitions seem within his grasp. He falls in love with a woman who encourages him to pursue his dream of producing films, and it seems he has a real talent for it. However, the seeds of insanity are sown within him. Time after time, he reaches out for help, to his family, to psychiatry, to AA, looking for understanding and support, but every reed breaks at his grasp. It is a disturbing novel. We are left doubting if anything could have averted his fate.

Yates always gets everything right. The dialogue, speech cadences, observations, structure: his writing is a beautiful thing to observe. He is never simplistic. Yates has a reputation for being a devasting chronicler of American suburbia. He is that, but in this novel he shows that he can deliniate urban angst and despair as well.

This novel, by one of my favorite late 20th century writers, is a compellingly realistic story of the downward spiral of an alcoholic. It's power comes from the exacting insights into the mundane existence of the characters trying to survive and thrive in modern society; along a view into the mind of a man making a step-by-step descent into a private hell. As Yates draws you into Wilder's mind, you find yourself,like the main character, unable to see the bottom, until you have made the slow descent into insanity.

I found the book incredibly insightful, with accurate representations of the madness of addiction. The book never descends to the level of moralizing or sermonizing, and that makes it all the more powerful. Yates creates an empathy between reader and character, and that makes the outcome all the more gripping.

Some have said this is Yates' weakest work, and I suppose it might be, but I think credit has to be given to Yates for even managing to pull this off. This is a tough story to write, a man's journey from sanity to insanity. Yates stays in his usual third person narration all the way, even when the main character goes completely nuts, so his delusions become our delusions.

It's not a pleasant experience by any stretch of the imagination - we see get a no-holds-barred view into Bellevue and the complete breakdown of the protagonist. There isn't a likeable character in the entire novel, which isn't that different from Yates' other works, but the problem here is that it's very tough to have any sympathy for the main character, John Wilder. In Yates' more successful books, no matter how nasty the characters, we can't help but to feel for their faults. Not so here.

Disturbing the Peace may not have the amazing pace of The Easter Parade or the driving power of Revolutionary Road, but it's still a pretty good read. It's a tough book to find nowadays, so if you can get your hands on it, pick it up.

I quit reading. Books these days are either vulgar or trite. I met Richard and enjoyed a discusson with him about Lewis and Clark; I had to get the book. I hated Undaunted Courage; what a joke of a 'historical fiction' book. GAG. I was understandably hesitant to read Eclipse. But with the first page, I loved it. I did not want to put it down. I almost missed my own booksigning because I did not want to quit reading it. His research is outstanding. His interpretation is fantastically executed. FINALLY a modern writer who can WRITE. In less than a month, I now own 7 Richard S. Wheeler books.

This novel written in first person from both Lewis's and Clark's viewpoint peered deeply into the Captains' souls in the years following the Expedition until Lewis's death. Clark prospered; Lewis stepped onto a slope more deadly than any he faced on the trail.

The author's case is convincing. But it is heartbreaking. It pulls back some of the mystery surrounding Lewis's untimely death, revealing unspeakable and, for Lewis, intolerable tragedy.

I can't say I enjoyed this book, but I could not put it down.

In 1997 a Seattle epidemiologist, Reimert Thorolf Ravenholt, M.D., did a little forensic diagnosis by looking at the Lewis & Clark journals. He concluded that Lewis was dying of advanced syphillis (complicated by malaria) when he was killed by two bullets, probably shooting himself simultaneously with his set of two pistols. I'm not qualified to pass judgment on medical matters.

Neither is Wheeler, but he takes the challenge of "what if" this theory were true, a challenge side-stepped by Ambrose, who likes his heroes stainless. The book Wheeler creates is two parallel and episodic monologues, one inside Clark's head and one inside Lewis' mind, so that we see each with the other's eyes. It's immediately clear that the two men are not alike in voice, experience, position or temperament, but that they are linked by friendship and shared adventure. They have been deeply marked and changed by the long trail to the Pacific. Clark's salient issue is what to do about York, his slave and childhood playmate, who was an equal throughout the journey, but must now return to being owned. Not easy for either man.

After the expedition both Lewis and Clark were expected to take hold of the seething and often disease-ridden Louisiana purchase and wring profit out of it while they were still celebrities. Clark had a hard time, in spite of his sturdy diligence. But Lewis went steadily downhill, making enemies, blundering -- not getting the vital journals edited and out to the public despite everyone's demands, including President Jefferson's. No one knew how to help him. He was angry and secretive.

Wheeler gives us the terrible details of a descent into hell that no one could stop, all begun in one moment of unguarded relaxation at the very moment the Shoshone supplied the horses that made the success of the expedition possible. Other men of the expedition also suffered contagion and some of them died earlier than Lewis, so he knew what to expect. They were starved, exhausted, battered and stressed, which made them especially vulnerable. In spite of access to a reliable physician, Lewis tried self-doctoring with alcohol and drugs which, on top of malaria and the brutal heavy-metal drugs of the time, assured his destruction.

This book is transparently written -- one does not stop and think, "Oh what a fine phrase!" The scenes unfold grimly and inevitably until, at the end, one thinks, "That's about how it must have been." And personally, I think Lewis comes through as a mortal hero, a man who fought death with honor, a tragic figure who paid a terrible price for his president and his country.

The historical accuracy of ECLIPSE is a credit to the author's careful research. He ties together the known events in the life of these well-known American heroes, using his extensive knowledge of the nineteenth century. Fiction it is, but it is also very true to the known facts. The book "reads well", never boring, never dull. ECLIPSE is a fine addition to the many books about Lewis and Clark, especially as we celebrate the 200th year of their expedition to the Pacific and back.

Eclipse - A Novel of Lewis and Clark, by Richard S. Wheeler, is a book I could not put down until I finished it. Wheeler turns the aftermath of Louis and Clark's historic trek into a gripping novel with vividly portrayed characters and an engaging plot. The title characters are far more than just historically significant. They also have flaws, rivals, financial difficulties, diseases, and other problems resulting in large part from their heroic deeds. I highly recommend this book to all readers.