Stanley Books

The most comprehensive, most honest and factual account of Jinnah's life and times. The multi-faceted personality of this brilliant lawyer and politician has been graphically captured. The tribulations and 'lows' Jinnah had to suffer throughout his life were a true eye opener for me. It's difficult to find these real-life, 3D accounts of Jinnah's life as most of the material out there has passed through official Pakistan government sources which ensure a pristine, monolithic view of Jinnah. Ironically, it's Jinnah's perseverence in the face of hopelessness and failure which ultimately make him larger than life, rather than his never-failed, Superman image in Pakistan which belittles his true struggle. Hats off to Stanley Wolpert.

Stanley Wolpert's work is the most authentic and comprehensive biography of Jinnah, a man who thru his sheer determination, almost single handedly changed the map of the world and created the largest ( at that time) muslim nation in the world. Stanley Wolpert has written other biographies too ( Jawaherlal Nehru, Zulfie Bhutto )but this is his best work. There are other books on Jinnah but none as comprehensive as this one.
Of particular interest is the rare glimpse of the personal life of this most private person, especially his marriage to the vivacious "flower of Bombay" Ruttie which ended, sadly, in a divorce and her tragic death on her 29th birthday.

I have really studied this book over the past 6 months and I believe that anyone who purchases it will find the information great for identification and for general knowledge. This book also has had me branch out into different areas of bottle openers and into Corkscrews ! , Great Job to the Authors, John Stanley and Donald Bull.

As I collect bottle openers in general, this book was an exciting way to find out what the openers I had were worth,and to see what other varieties of my openers there is available, it is very well set out and has clear and all coloured pictures, I would have liked to see more on cast iron bottle openers, but that is just me I suppose.

A 'Critical Edition' of this kind provides layers of interpretative richness to add and enhance those the reader makes on their own. Camus said of Kafka that he demands to be read and reread, that in short the essence cannot be given in a single reading or interpretation but that the text is an invitation to open and endless reinterpretation. This characteristic it might be said belongs to all great art both through the generations, and in the heart and mind of the individual at various stages of their lives.
Kafka however with his ambiguous indefinite narratives which at once seem so abstract and so realistic- which tend always toward parable and symbol seems especially suited for the rereading.
The great stories of Kafka, " The Metamorphosis" " The Judgment"
"To a Penal Colony" "The Hunger Artist" "The Country Doctor" all seem to take us on a trip to a place we vaguely fear going to and which we come to understand as not where we want to be yet where we almost preternaturally had to get to.
The depth of this the irony of it holds us in thrall with its terrible beauty.

This is a terrific collection of Kafka's stories followed by fine critical essays on a number of them. One caveat: Contrary to the implication in the previous reviewer's comments, this edition does NOT contain the famous long story "Metamorphosis." Had there been a "Search Inside!" option, we would have known that Norton did not "select" this great work to be among the "selected stories."

Sgt. Sellers has a bone to pick with Donald Lam even before the case begins. It seems an armored car robbery netted a robber $100,000, but Sellers only recovered $50,000 of it. The crook claims Sellers took the rest of it. His clues led him to a woman who had the address of Cool and Lam in her purse. Donald had never heard of her before, and tells Sellers that - but while in conference the woman in question shows up.

Meeting her in secret, he learns she wants him to track down $60,000 she claims her ex-boy-friend was going to settle with her on. It's a case Donald doesn't like, but agrees to take.

Donald finds $50,000 without much trouble, and even figures out a way to ship it back to his office without detection, but then finds himself in the middle of a murder case - and worse still, the $50,000 disappeared somewhere along the way. It takes all of his skill to figure out the clues while still being detained by the police - and held under "protective custody" in a hotel room.

Kept Women Can't Quit, by A A Fair (Erle Stanley Gardner)

The 'Foreword' is dedicated to Preston G. Smith, Warden at the Federal Correctional Institution at Terminal Island California, and has some advice and wisdom on rehabilitating convicts. Gardner says a vindictive punishment is bad because it doesn't rehabilitate prison inmates and leads them to continue the mental attitude that put them in jail. Warden Preston G. Smith tried to provide the fundamentals, vocational and academic training, counseling, etc. Has anything changed over the last fifty years?

The opening chapter tells of a stealth theft from an armored car that was only discovered when the money went missing after the driver and guard stopped for coffee and doughnuts. The "Cool & Lam" agency gets a visit from Detective Sergeant Sellers because their name and number was found on a piece of paper in a suspect's possession - the alleged girlfriend of a criminal found with half the loot. The police think this money was ordered by a big bookmaker. This girlfriend, Hazel Downer, visits Donald Lam to find her missing husband, and the money she inherited. Coincidentally, this money matches the amount missing in the robbery! [Note how the author builds a complicated case while lightly touching on various human errors.] Chapter 2 gives a quick introduction to the public relations racket and its use in merchandising. Donald Lam follows the clues he discovers. A duplicate trunk is shipped to San Francisco, and Lam follows. Lam meets Hazel and goes for a ride. Their meeting is interrupted by Sergeant Sellers. How will Donald Lam get out of this mess?

Gardner used this pen-name to provide another outlet for his creative talents. This story demonstrates Gardner's skill as a writer of detective stories. Using a continuing series about a fictional person creates a brand and a market for this type of novel. Examples are A. Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Ian Fleming, Patricia Cornwell, and others.

Anderson's style is so impressionistic that you would have to know the basic facts of King's life and career to get much out of it. That being said, this book is not another hagiography of King as a non-threatening figure whose message was that we should all be polite to each other.

Anderson's King gets angry, gets hungry, gets horny, has periods of crippling despair; in other words, he was a human being. But he also stubbornly held onto what he felt was right, often in the face of powerful opposition. And make no mistake about it: charlatans and dolts like Bush II may invoke his name now, but Anderson makes clear that when he was alive, not everyone was standing around applauding.

The King we see here is almost as polarizing a figure as, well, Jesus. After reading it, I understand anew why M.L. King was a great, if not a perfect, man.

The starkness of Ho Che Andersen's artwork is fitting in that it serves to heighten the mythological feel of King's life, which contrasts with the intimate portrait we get of the man and his daily struggles. The mixture of photography montage, black and white sketch work and the occassional, startling splash of color is mezmerizing.

I don't know enough to comment on the historical accuracy of Andersen's work; the first volume of King was released in 1993 and it took the author a decade more to finish. This is a labor of love foremost, and the author's passion manages to leap off the page at you. That Andersen has avoided the pettiness of humanizing King is no small miracle - the biography genre routinely suffers from trivializing those it portrays in an effort to make them seem more familiar.

My only complaint is the paraphrasing of much of King's "mountaintop speech" given the night before his death in Memphis. The speech is too long to be included in its entirety, but having listened to the audio clips of that speech too many times to recall I found Andersen's version lacking. I suppose this is only to be expected, but nonetheless I would have loved to have seen a few more pages devoted to what I consider a rhetorical masterpiece, and easily one of the greatest speeches ever given in America. If you've never heard it before, do your best to download it or otherwise listen to King at the height of his power; it is a speech much informed by the gift of sight and of prescience, and is all the more moving and remarkable for the last stanzas.

If you are as fascinated with Martin Luther King as I am, I cannot recommend this work enough. Go out and buy it, and marvel, and remember one of the most pivotal figures of the twentieth century whose message should be heeded no matter the era.

As someone who has been in the travel marketing business for almost 20 years, I found Plog's book contained information which confirmed my past marketing strategy and presented some new and very revealing concepts as well. This is a "Must-Have, Must-Read" book for all travel marketing professionals. I give it my highest recommendations!

As a travel professional with more than 30 years experience of tourism marketing I have never read a better book on destination marketing. Plog uses his more than 40 years of knowledge by mixing telling case studies with marketing theory. Some of the basic principles should be well known to practitioners, particularly the product life cycle of a destination but it is Stanley's use of real world examples which brings the book to life. And to my fellow directors of tourism, just read page 150 and you will immediately understand how knowledgeable Stan is.

After having owned a Lexington for 30 years and not being able to restore the car until I found the lexington history book. The research and dedication that the author Richard Stanley has put into the book is highly commended. For this I am forever grateful.

I thought this book was very well researched and accurate. I learned some things I had never heard before about the car and also the Ansted family of which I am a member, being E.W. Ansted's Great Great Grandson. Having been born in Connersville,Indiana in 1937 it also gave me a feeling of what things were like in the early 1900's.

I thought this book was great.
David really tells it like it is.
I am glad that David got his life back on track and became a christian. this is a very interesting book if you are an Elvis fan or not. a good one!

At the age of sixteen, David Stanley found himself at the top of the world, traveling from city to city as a personal aide to hos stepbrother Elvis Presley. Touring with the king of rock 'n' roll, Dave lived life in the fast lane - a way of living mosst people only dream about. On August 16th, 1977, tragedy struck when Dave found the king of rock 'n' roll lying facedown on his bathroom floor, dead at age forty-two. Life With Elvis tells Dave Stanley's compelling story about growing up with Elvis, the dangers and disillusionment of life in the fast lane, and how he discovered true meaning in life through faith in God. -- from book's dustjacket.

This is such a beautifully written little volume, so sensitive, insightful,and inspirational. Ms. Braham's choice of language to describe these poets and their poetry is exquisite! I would highly recommend it to any who enjoy a terrific read!

When I finished this lovely little book I sat there under my reading light for several minutes filled with the that rare satisfaction that some pieces of art lend you. These four poets are among my favorites but I learned so much about them in so little space and their poems came alive to me in an extraordinary way. I went back to my dusty shelves and resurrected them. The book rides on the shoulders of the poet who wrote it for she provides the quiet, direct intimacy that binds you to all of them. She does for each of them something that no award, and they all have many, could ever do and that is she brings them into your hearts. Moser's art adds additional beauty to it. Buy it, give it to people you care deeply about. Share with them the light.

I bought this book when I started attending the opera regularly. Composers are listed chronologically with a brief summary of their place in history and their works, followed by summaries of their best known operas, including musical notation excerpts from the most famous arias. Of 58 operas I've attended, only 6 were not in the book. It has also become the place I record "when and where I saw what."

Another great source book is THE CHRONICLE OF OPERA by Michael Raeburn, 1998. Enriched with many pictures, it chronicles performances beginning in 1589, with historical references and composers biographies.

Reference books are easy to review. They are either good and useful or worthless. We are in the first category here. The authors chose a by author system to review the main operas, for each of which a good synopsis is given. One could rise an eyebrow at some inclusions or gasp at some omissions. But Opera has its fads and fashions and the choices of the authors reflect certainly the ideas of opera in 1964 when the first edition came out. One would have liked a little bit more of musical notes but that would have perhaps scared away the neophyte. As it is, the book is an excellent introductory book, and always a convenient reference for the more knowledgeable opera fanatic. A must have book, even if you already own other opera books.