Ward Books

I am collecting shells for more than 11 years. At the beginning of this activety I found a lot difficulties in species identification, in determianation of their position in the molluscan systematics. The book of S.Peter Dance was the first guide I had obtained. This book introduced me to the world of "professional" shell-collecting. It showed me the way of collection arrangement, specimen cleaning and labling. I learned a lot of new data on ecology, geographic distribution and systematic of molluscs. Really, it is best book for beginner shell-collector I've ever seen and I greatly suggest it to all beginners and even advanced collectors. The wonderfull photoes of the book makes identification easy, the system of legends and signs (accepted in all other Eyewitness Handbooks) provides brief but very convinient information on geography, ecology, sizes and rarity of the species. Even now (having over 1.500 molluscs species and a lot of identificaton guieds) I oft! en look through this book and gain nesessary information. Unfortunatly, the book deal with marine molluscs only. I am shure, that the books of such quality on land and fresh-water molluscs would be greatly apreciated by collectors.

This has to be one of the most useful books I have bought. The photography is very clear. The colors are also good. Best of all I can see all of this without my bifocals.

However, I was a little annoyed at the scarcity of the other regions in the book,mostly because I was interested in finding out about the shells within the area in which I visit to go shelling. However, I thought it was a wonderful first-field-guide with excellent color pictures, specific descriptions, indication of common\uncommon, and the size of the shells.

I have been collecting shells for around 20 years and never bothered to get a book about them until now. My 4 year old daughter started collecting and I wanted to make sure I had all the answers to her questions about shells. This is definatly the book to have. She is facinated by the great pictures and the cut-aways of the shells. This is a must have for your shelf.

I liked this book because it takes place in the ocean and it's a cartoon. My favorite part is when the shark eats the teacher . It was fun to read. If you read this book you'll love it.

This story is about a shark named Sammy who was excited to go to the first day of school. When he gets excited he bites things. When he gets to school he has so much fun and learns not to bite his friends and teacher.

I read this book to students at the beginning of the school year for a number of years. Kids are inundated during the first few days of school with "do this"/"don't do that" new rules and procedures. They absolutely LOVED laughing at the frivolity of the rule "Don't eat the teacher"--at last, a rule they could probably abide by. Plus they were quite taken with the book's apparent bite out of the corner of the cover. Unfortunately they liked it enough that I've had 3 copies that somehow never quite got returned to the media center. I'm hunting for a new copy & now that it's not as easy to get, I might have to keep this one in my secret stash of "librarian" books--it's just too good a read aloud to keep losing.

Don't Eat the Teacher! By: Nick Ward

Sammy is an energetic little shark and he is ready to go to school! But when he gets too excited he tends to bite things (as all little sharks do). CRUNCH! First it was his breakfast table. He really didn't mean to nibble on his friends, and he REALLY didn't mean to ruin story time and painting... All day Sammy keeps eating things he doesn't quite intend to... can he get through the rest of the day without biting off more than he can chew?

Don't Eat the Teacher! is a fun way of remembering the first day of school. I think that kids of younger ages will love this book and be just as excited as our main character, Sammy. I would definitely recommend this book to any parent because it will probably change your children's attitude toward school. Instead of being afraid of school, they will be more confident.
I would give it five stars, because it had fantastic detail and excellent word choice. Nick Ward is a great illustrator; his pictures really make the ocean floor's characters come to life; this makes it enjoyable for any age!
You will not be disappointed as soon as you pick up this book.

By:Morgan

I found this book enjoyable and entertaining. The author is funny and witty while passing on advise for life and dating in todays world. I will be passing it on to my daughter and hope she will take her advise. This is a very worthwhile read.

This book is a super-easy read and is lots of fun to remind yourself of all the little things that mom tells you throughout life that actually "stick"! I'm sure Peggy's mom was surprised to know how much of her advice her daughter listened to and remembered into her adult life.
This is a very sweet book that will appeal to any woman, as a mother or as a daughter.
Highly recommended as a Mother's Day Gift or as a gift to a girlfriend for any occassion! ENJOY!

This book is beautifully written and offers timeless advice about how to live life. The way Peggy Ward, the author, writes is so warm, you feel as if you are sitting across from her in her home. I highly recommend this book to all people.

This book is a quick read filled with common sense advice. It is easy to identify with the author. By the end of the book, you feel like the author is a friend that you can call for advice! AWESOME BOOK! Highly recomended!

A little boy sees dragons everywhere he goes. We should be jealous that we can't see them too! I think this book is a very sly, very cute book. This is a great story and I highly recommend it!

This book is beautifully illustrated. I can't even begin to understand why it would be out of print. I ordered
a used copy, and was beyond happy with what I got. It's a cute story about a boy who starts to see dragons.
He begins to feed them, and brings them into his home, which later he finds out is the last thing you should ever
do. The little dragons make foot prints and brake things that the little boy has to take the blame for. He then
builds a mechanical dragon. He plans on flying the mechanical dragon in hopes of leading all the dragons to
a safe desert home. The story is written simple so that even young kids can enjoy it, and the beautiful artwork will captivate the older kids as well. The art alone puts the book in my top ten most beautifully illustrated books.

I have read literally hundreds of books to my son over the last three years and this is one of the very best. The art is beautiful and the text is very rich without being wordy. Don't miss this one.

I'm sure that the folks who hand out the Caldacott didn't see or read this book since it wasn't even a Caldacott Honor book for last year. As a former employee of a national book store chain who worked in the children's area, I've seen a lot of not so good picture books that get published anyway. I can say that this is one of the best picture books I've seen in a long time. Not only are the illustations done beautifully, but the story is well written. It is not so wordy that you don't want to read it at night and not too short that you have to have a back up book. This book should be a classic.

Very long read, but well worth it. de Lubac is a brilliant scholar, and he has a plethora of knowledge and piercing insights on those men on the cover of the book and their thinking. It is not so much a refutation of atheism as it is a refutation and critique of the ideas that some very prominent atheists held (Comte's positivism, etc). Believe it or not, I have actually never read a non-fiction book, but de Lubac has piqued my curiosity to consider reading The Brothers Karamazov because of his discussion of Dostoevsky as a prophet and precursor to Nietzsche. A very good read, and has made me want to read more de Lubac.

De Lubac's anlaysis of Feuerbach, Nietzsche, Comte and Marx illusrates that "where there is no God, there is no Man either" and that postitivism, marxism and variant philosophies, in seeking to model a new man, agressively independent of God, result in a nihilistic tyranny of man over man. Its De Lubac's sympathetic handling of these lunatic ideas and their exponents, Nietzsche,in particular (who de Lubac sees as haunted by Christ), which gives the book balance. If you wish to understand why we are living in an age where atheism has become more militant and aggressve, then De Lubac's book make you realise that what we are experiencing now is the culmination of many centuries of alienation of western thought from the Logos, who unites all things in himself. His treatment of Dostoevsky (a counterbalance to the other thinkers) is particularly illuminating.

This book is very well written as well as very well documented. Those who read this book should be somewhat read in the works of Kierkegaard, Marx, Comte, and most importantly Nietsche and Dostoyevsky.

This is the book that first got me interested in religion. It is an outstanding discussion of Comte, Marx & Nietzsche. After reading this, the reader may want to read Kung's Does God Exist? and Baum's Doctors of Modernity: Darwin, Marx & Freud.

This book was quite a surprise. While so many people focus on purely materialist causes for the rise of western culture, this collection of twentieth-century essays by Christopher Dawson emphasizes spiritual roots. These essays are well-written and if anything have become even more relevant with the passing of time. Though many people probably won't agree with all of his conclusions, it seems to me that a reading of Dawson's work is essential to understanding western culture.

This book was bought with little previous knowledge of Dawson, and only a general idea of the subjects he discusses; but having read this book, and also now his (shorter) more strictly historical work "The Making of Europe", I know it was exactly what I needed. In fact, I feel that divine Providence was at work in my encountering this book. Thanks to Dawson, my understanding of the meaning (rather than only the bare facts) of our era of civilisation in Western Europe has been deepened. I feel I have a better grasp of the overall shape of our history, where we've come from and (therefore) where we're going. Dawson, I feel, writes with a combination of profound wisdom and sharp analysis; he is excellent on both the broader picture (more important) and the historical/sociological details and nuances (also important). Dynamics of World History is therefore historiography of the highest order. But more than this, his writings have a kind of prophetic urgency, which even after sixty or seventy years still seems to retain its power. Some people, I think, have objected to this aspect of his work- the "voice in the desert", if you like- claiming it represents too narrow and dogmatic (too "Christian") a perspective in a pluralistic postmodern age. But I believe it is this that gives his writing its tremendous force and also bestows a remarkable unity of purpose on all his work, which covers a great variety of topics and subtopics. Dawson made no secret of his religious convictions- but just as he himself says of Toucqueville, "he succeeds not despite them, but because of them."

This book is awesome! Dawson was a professor of Roman Catholic Studies at Harvard University, but don't let that scare you away thinking it will be hard to read. It is written in language that us lay people can understand and relate to in a very deep and meaningful way. Dawson is Catholic and the book will give you an incredible historical perspective through Catholicism, however it really addresses all world religions and their role in human history and culture. Religion, Dawson believed, is the great creative force in any culture, and the loss of society's historic religion therefore portends a process of social dissolution. For this reason, Dawson concluded that Western society must find a way to revitalize its spiritual life if it is to avoid irreversible decay. Progress, the real religion of modernity, is insufficient to sustain cultural health. And an ahistorical, secularized (Americanized) Christianity is an oxymoron, a pseudo-religion only nominally related to the historic religion of the West. Dawson maintains that the hope of the present age lay in the reconciliation of the religious tradition of Christianity with the intellectual tradition of humanism and the new knowledge about man and nature provided by modern science. This book shows that though such a task may be difficult, it is not impossible. If you're an active, faith loving, curious, sacramental Catholic this book will bring you to a whole new level of knowledge about your religion. This is one of those, `changed my life', kind of books in the best kind of way.

While I was reading the Introduction and the first chapters I realised the depth and strenghness of Dawson's stream of thought.

His conclusions, in front of those of the widespread common thinking, are sharp and have a paradoxical revolutionary point of wiew dealing with Rationalism and Cartesianism, performing a genuism Catholic thinking that collects the best tradition of English Tractarians.

I very recommend the reading of "Dynamics" to those interested in understanding the chain of historic events leading to nowadays state of affairs.

I never fail to pick-up the book from my coffee table and find something I might has missed previously.

Imagine, there was something I overlooked.

DJR

Beautiful and compelling. A fascinating book, and one of the best of its kind ever made.

Just got to say that I live out in Gamba, Gabon as my family work for Shell Gabon and in all the time I have been there, I never imagined that beauty out there exists as deeply as portrayed in this book. You look at the beaches and you think wow but to then see it as detailed as it is in the Edge of Africa, it brings real light to your eyes. Get it.

I just put the book down and all I can say is "Wow". I am amazed at the spectacular photographs and vivid descriptions of the book. It made me feel like I was in Africa. The photographer depicts the various animal, plant, and geography so unique to the area, while the author describes the details and makes you feel like you are right there. This gives me a different perspective to other images and documentation I have seen regarding this region of Africa. Recommended!

I LOVE to bake pies, and this book is my pie-Bible! My family particularly raves over the cherry and apple pies I have made from this cookbook. I like to try different pie crust recipes from this book, besides all the different fillings. This is the ONE cookbook I turn to when I am going to bake a pie for company or a bake sale. Each recipe has been delicious.

There are sections devoted to fruit pies, cream pies, and savory pies. There are instructions on how to bake a no-fail pie crust. There are many full-color pictures of the completed pies, too. All in all, it's a treasure! Add this to your cookbook collection and you won't be disappointed.

This pie cookbook has techniques and recipes for everone from the beginning pie baker to the most experienced. The fruit pies cannot be beat, and the main dish pies are very good. Best of all is the section on crusts - different types, and how to produce a great-looking and great-tasting pie.

My copy of this book is over 20-years old. If there is ever a fire, I'm saving the Farm Journal pie cookbook.

I WOULD HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS BOOK. I PURCHASED MINE 25 YEARS AGO WHEN I WAS IN COLLEGE AND IT IS A WONDERFUL COOKBOOK. THE PIE CRUSTS RECEIPES ARE TRIED & TRUE. ONE CRUST, TWO CRUST, HEART HEALTHY, TARTS, TURNOVERS, PUFF PASTRY, AND MORE! THE DIRECTIONS ARE CLEAR AND CONSISE. THE BOOK IS WRITTEN IN A GREAT STYLE. A SHORT DESCRIPTION/HISTORY PRECEEDS EACH RECEIPE, ADDING INTEREST FOR THE BAKER. ALSO TIPS ARE GIVEN ON HOW TO MAKE YOUR PIES LOOK NICE-CRUST EDGINGS & SHINY TOPS. MANY RECEIPES, FRUIT, MAIN DISH, ETC. MY COPY IS FALLING APART & FLOUR DUST THE PAGES. A GREAT BOOK.

I recently received this book as a gift and to be honest I had never baked a pie before. I thought that I would never be able to master making my own pastry or even come close to baking a successful pie but this book has so many great recipes and instructional passages that it was a snap. Baking pies is now one of my favorite things to do. There is even a section of "savory main dish pies", that contains a number of quick and easy recipes for dinner-time. Great as a gift for yourself or someone else!

I spent most of the summer reading this wonderful book. I only read it on the weekends relaxing on my porch and was always anxious to reacquaint with the young man who would become FDR. It is a testament to this biography that after reading almost 800 pages I was sorry to see it end.

With all this praise one might think that I understood FDR. I finished this book no less able to draw a conclusion about the man who would lead our country through two of its greatest crisis. Question abound in my mind that probably can never be answered. The first and most difficult question is what was so special about this man that he could lead. As this book points out he was not a giant intellect,nor a hard worker or even a visionary. Somewhat like our current President he muddled through his youth. Most of what he accomplished was a result of his family name. The easy answer is that polio changed him. That is not satisfying when it is recognized he is nominated for Vice President before he got sick.

I remain uncertain and Mr. Ward does not really help in answering the unanswerable other than possibly in his prologue. From reading this book one might come to the conclusion that FDR did not really relate to anyone. He lived a distant life from his wife and children. Possibly it was only Lucy Mercer who reached him. He was dominated by his mother but even there he was independent. LOuis Howe and Missy Le Hand were totally devoted to him but it does not appear he spent much time with Missy when she become ill.

His battle with polio is beautifully told. I take away from that his ability to be optimistic and positive against all odds. He showed perserverance but only really when his ambition was involved. Yet even in this case he chose to spend his time in Warms Springs somewhat removed from the other visitors and did not spend time with him family.

As the above review shows, a First Class Temperment is a wonderful book because it presents the subject in tremendous detail. It does not draw conclusions. Mr. Ward introduces us to FDR in transition. We meet him and see him grow. We see what kind of president he will be. I admire FDR. I am not sure that I like him much. I know I loved the journey and thank Mr. Ward for setting it out for us.

I hope that Mr. Ward will read the review and maybe indicate what he thought of his subject. Maybe he will even write the next volume.

For me I will continue my education by rereading No Ordinary Times, Conrad Black's biography and Arthur Schlesinger"s 3 volume set. I doubt it will answer any of my questions but I look forward to the experience.

Geoffrey Ward thanks for the experience.

Ward's first 2 book's on FDR's life are a masterpiece. When will he finish this epic account?

Geoffrey Ward shares the ability of David McCullough, and that is to take a scholarly topic and write about it intelligently and coherently. He also makes the journey fun for the reader and he showcases this ability in this excellent book. FDR as a young man (pre polio) was a very different man from the President he was to become. Polio was the defining moment that both changed FDR and deepended his compassion and understanding for the downtrodden.

In this second volume of Ward's Roosevelt trilogy, he illuminates FDR's dominating mother and the problems she caused between Franklin and Eleanor. One almost cringes when the obtrusive Sarah Roosevelt plans her son's honeymoon, buys homes for him (with connecting doors for her to intrude upon)and basically usurps FDR's own decision-making processes.

Franklin Roosevelt was not a great man, or a particularly engrossing man when young. He achieved greatness only after tragedy befell him, but Ward sets the stage here for Roosevelt's later greatness. If you're interested in Roosevelt or the flighty, banal rich New York set of WWI and the Washington social scene, then this is your cup of tea. It is also a fine book.

Since I was about nine years old back in the 1960s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt has been my favorite U.S. president. My mother, who grew up poor in the Great Depression, is probably responsible for this. She bought me a kiddie biography about FDR which I devoured many times over. She also encouraged my interest in Eleanor Roosevelt, whose life I relived through another kiddie biography. My mother made sure during one summer vacation that our family visited Hyde Park. Time did not abate my fascination with the thirty-second president. As a young teen, I borrowed from our local library all the books about FDR that I could find. I wanted to know everything about his life, his political views, his achievements, and his impact on Americans, America and the world. One of the more poignant works I read in those days was Bernard Asbell's "When FDR Died," which told of the sweeping affect his death in April 1945 had on Americans. When I was in high school, my family visited Hyde Park again. This time, I was so moved that, after I got home, I wrote an account of an imaginary encounter with FDR's ghost.

Then I went to college, got married, and found employment, and my youthful obsession with FDR took a back seat to everyday concerns. But my dormant interest awoke recently when I felt compelled to watch the Biography channel's two-part special, "FDR: A Presidency Revealed," and then the HBO drama, "Warm Springs." I suddenly remembered that I had a book sitting on my shelf that I'd never seemed to have time to read, one I'd purchased some 15 years ago- Geoffrey C. Ward's "A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt," first published in 1989. The day after the "Warm Springs" drama I took the book down and read it during every spare moment, creating some spare moments that wouldn't have otherwise existed. Now that I'm done, I feel the need to share my thoughts about Ward's hefty tome.

I'm giving this book five stars, although it is not quite a perfect work. I'll start with the positives. First, it's extremely well-written, and generally reads like a novel. I love the literary prologue, "The End of Algonac," a flash-forward (rather than a flashback) in which a measure of FDR's fortitude dies in 1941 with his very elderly mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt, who had been the one constant in his life. The end of the last chapter, "It is Time," concludes brilliantly in 1928 with Sara excitedly climbing up the front steps of her son's brownstone in the wee hours of election night to tell him that, despite the discouraging early returns, he'd won the New York Governor's race after all.

Ward has done a superhuman job of sifting through the gargantuan archives at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, the collections of papers and oral histories housed at other institutions, the ridiculous number of biographies about all the Roosevelts that came before, and his records of interviews with numerous eyewitnesses to some aspect of the lives of FDR and Eleanor. I know from experience how hard it is to synthesize and express as a readable whole the varying and innumerable strands of factoids produced by voluminous research, and I stand in awe of Ward's accomplishment.

A chief result of this accomplishment is the opportunity afforded readers to learn about the less well-known part of FDR's life-his youth. One discovers in "A First-Class Temperament" the divergent personalities possessed by Franklin and Eleanor even as newlyweds in their early twenties. In 1905, Franklin was 23 and already larger-than-life, a tall, lanky man brimming with optimism but not introspective by nature, blessed with the chiseled good looks of a Greek or Roman bust, and bursting with a charming, self-confident, effusive personality. Eleanor was 21 then, and mostly the opposite of her new husband. Plain (but cruelly, and unfairly, labeled "ugly" by her dysfunctional family growing up), shy, deferential, pessimistic and exceedingly introspective by nature, and burdened by a self-esteem that had been stomped on by others, she typically gave herself wholly to Franklin's interests and preferences, as well as those of her new mother-in-law.

In a way, the real story of Ward's book is how Franklin and Eleanor slowly broke out of their early molds and refashioned themselves in a manner that would eventually make them the most formidable and effective husband-and-wife team ever to take up residence in the White House. Eleanor would later remark that Franklin strongly desired "broad human contact," something that had been missing from his privileged but sheltered upbringing. It seemed that he entered politics for this reason. Ward brings us to the starting point of Franklin's transformational journey when he was a naïvely brash, in-your-face, freshman New York State legislator. In first running for office, Franklin took steps toward satisfying his craving for "broad human contact" by energetically and enthusiastically courting the ordinary folk of Dutchess County, although it would later become clear that he didn't have a vision for how to serve them. Nearly 20 years later, by the end of the journey, at the time he was elected Governor of New York, he had become a more measured, thoughtful politician of remarkable oratorical gifts and a coveted elder statesman of the Democratic Party.

How did this transformation occur? Certainly, his experience during the Wilson Administration as Assistant Secretary of the Navy (which saw him embark on a constructive relationship with labor almost from the beginning) and his number two place on the doomed Democratic ticket with Presidential nominee James M. Cox in 1920 afforded him the knowledge and street smarts (many would say deviousness) that he would need to advance his name and master the ropes of government. But his horrific bout with polio in 1921 at age 39 was, as virtually all historians believe, the transformative event that took his people skills in a whole new direction. Desirous as a young man of emulating his distant cousin Teddy Roosevelt to the full, he eventually found his own political identity, divorced from Teddy's blustery American chauvinism.

Eleanor, on the other hand, went from a quintessential anti-feminist who initially opposed women's suffrage (and was shocked by Franklin's support of it) to someone who returned to her first love, social work, by World War One, and, battling her shyness and insecurity, struck out on her own during the 1920s as a political activist. Ward shows that her transformation was at least partly due to her discovery of Franklin's affair with her secretary, Lucy Mercer, which meant to her that she had to rely on herself rather than others for self-fulfillment. Franklin and Eleanor stayed together, but whatever romance had existed in their lives up to that time was replaced by a unique friendship.

A thrilling, and sometimes downright spooky, common thread in Ward's book is the foreshadowing of Franklin's future greatness-not through the use of literary artifice, but simply by Ward's relation of countless anecdotes that demonstrate the loyalty and awe FDR inspired in numerous people who encountered him or who signed on with him in one way or another. In fact, predictions of Franklin's greatness came from the diverse likes of Endicott Peabody, the headmaster of his prep school (Groton) and Louis Howe, the rumpled, gruff journalist who decided to devote his life and career to Franklin. Even Josephus Daniels, Franklin's beleaguered boss at the Navy Department, good-naturedly tolerated the younger man's behavior that often bordered on being, or actually was, insubordinate, treasuring Franklin like a dear son, and marveling at his classical attractiveness and charisma. It was as if Franklin, still boyish as a thirty-something Assistant Secretary of the Navy, were walking around with the Presidential Seal floating above his head.

But the best portion of the book is Ward's sensitive and dramatic recounting of FDR's contraction of polio and how hard he worked to overcome, or at least adapt to, the severe limitations posed by his useless legs. It is a gripping human interest story told with the knowing tone of an author who, as Ward reveals in the book's source notes, had had his own battle with polio.

"A First-Class Temperament" does have some faults, mainly in some of its analyses. Ward seems unsure whether Franklin's characteristically courteous treatment of all people, regardless of social class, religion or race, was innate or, as the author tends toward, simply a matter of a patrician upbringing that emphasized graciousness. Admittedly, one of the challenges faced by Ward, and all of FDR's other biographers, is the matter of divining Roosevelt's real feelings about things when he almost always kept his feelings under close counsel, even from friends and family. Nevertheless, a reasonable conclusion may be reached that Franklin's polite manner was so effortless and natural as to mean that, at some point, he had internalized the notion of respect for others rather than just exhibited this quality as a matter of habit.

The fact that, during the 1910s, Franklin sought the company of educated Jews, who were not his "social equals," not to mention, heaven forefend, also Jewish, was puzzling and disconcerting to his wife (whose pan-humanism hadn't yet manifested itself) and mother. Just as it is reasonable to conclude that FDR actually believed in respecting others, it is unduly cynical to question the sincerity of Franklin's friendship with Henry Morgenthau. Did it matter whether Franklin had established a profound bond with Morgenthau or was just friendly with his fellow Dutchess County resident? Either way, FDR's interest in Morgenthau's companionship was not necessarily any less genuine or significant than if Morgenthau had been a social equal. Indeed, as the 1920s wore on, and Franklin was spending increasing amounts of time at his home-away-from-home, Warm Springs, Georgia, in what would become a fruitless effort to revivify his legs by swimming in the purportedly magical waters of the town, he managed to ingratiate himself with the local, economically deprived populace. Ward highlights the remarks of one of Franklin's physiotherapists to suggest that Franklin's relationship with the people of Warm Springs and its environs was merely political courtship. Yet, as one area resident fondly put it decades later, Franklin could "talk to anybody about anything." More demonstrative of Franklin's feelings for regular people were the real help and encouragement he gave fellow polios who hoped, like he did, that the waters would restore their health and vitality.

In the chapter titled "The Limits of His Possibilities," Ward levels the unfounded charge that Franklin's business investments during the 1920s were of similar recklessness to the wild speculative activities of many other businessmen during that decade. The conclusion that, by virtue of these investments FDR's conduct was no better than that of the speculators who bore responsibility for the 1929 stock market crash is completely unsupported by the information that Ward provides. The business investments that Franklin made during that decade, "...everything from selling advertising space in taxicabs to harnessing the tidal power of Passamaquoddy Bay...," sound on their face no better or worse than any number of ventures that people in America embark on all the time and do not of themselves evidence the kind of blind opportunism that led to the Great Depression. If Ward had wanted to make a point about Franklin's investments, he should have tried to show how Franklin's "schemes" were qualitatively comparable to the schemes of the careless speculators of the era.

Franklin's intellect doesn't get an entirely favorable review, either, as if the author is surreptitiously captivated by the viewpoint of Roosevelt's misguided detractors that he was an intellectual lightweight. On the one hand, Ward relates the young man's articulateness, sharp wit, ability to dictate a series of flawless letters in rapid succession, and talent for quickly assimilating huge quantities of information and then using them, for example, to skillfully fend off tough questioning by a U.S. Senate panel during his time at the Navy Department. "A First-Class Temperament" also quotes extensively from correspondence Franklin wrote to members of his family and to his friends, which often reveal an impressive literary flair, such as this excerpt from a letter written while sailing to Europe during World War One:

...the good old Ocean is so absolutely normal-just as it has always been-sometimes tumbling about and throwing spray like this morning-sometimes gently lolling about with occasional points of light like tonight-but always something known-something like an old friend of moods and power....

Despite all this evidence of a good mind, the book's introduction has FDR, as the president-elect in 1932, paying a visit to the ancient, recently retired Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, after which Holmes remarked that his visitor had a "second-class intellect" but a "first-class temperament." The anecdote serves as the source of, and justification for, the book's title. However, the author points out that Franklin never opened the books he avidly collected. Ward thus intimates that Franklin didn't read books at all, even though it was possible that FDR merely didn't read the books (perhaps vintage volumes) that he sought to line the walls of his library. But if he didn't read anything of value, where did his demonstrable literary talent come from?

A lengthy footnote examines Franklin's youthful reputation for effeminacy among the testosterone-drenched Oyster Bay branch of the Roosevelt family (headed by Teddy) due to his gentility, slender rather than hulking body type, and stunning facial features. Understandably, this reputation was a source of frustration for Franklin, who aspired to be like Cousin Teddy, and avidly engaged in such "manly" activities as hunting and fishing. The author expands his discussion of Franklin's perceived feminine side- and, by doing so, teeters on the brink of sexism-when he again questions FDR's intellect in pointing to his apparent penchant for solving problems intuitively rather than through logic, which, according to the author, Roosevelt was unable to master. Ward fails to reconcile the inconsistency of a supposedly illogical nature with Franklin's ability to swiftly consume and cleverly use large quantities of information to his advantage in arduous U.S. Senate hearings.

Ward seems to want to depict Franklin as brave and resilient during his battle with polio, but dilutes this portrait in repeatedly reminding the reader of FDR's upbringing in which he was expected to be stoic and uncomplaining. The author points to the conduct of Franklin as a boy, emotionally steady as his tooth was accidentally knocked out and the underlying nerve exposed, and the calm demeanor of his mother, who, in her late sixties and touring a foreign country with some of her grandchildren, fell and injured her thigh but continued sightseeing. The reader must conclude that neither of these instances of stoicism can be considered a match for Franklin's tenacity in overcoming his polio-induced disability. Neither his mother nor Eleanor expected that he would or could continue with his political career once it was clear that Franklin's legs were paralyzed. That he toppled an apparently insurmountable obstacle no one could have predicted.

One may justifiably overlook the problems with Ward's discussions of certain aspects of Franklin's personality and conduct and readily acknowledge the prodigiousness of the writer's multi-layered, complex portrait of a man who to this day continues to inspire new biographies and in April was selected by Time magazine as the 20th century's second most important person (next to Albert Einstein). In the final analysis, "A First-Class Temperament" is the sort of book that fans of FDR or of American history will mull over and hungrily revisit long after first voraciously reading the book's 800-odd pages of facile writing.

Chicago freelance writer Emerson Ward is an engaging sleuth of the new order, an amateur sensitive enough to care about what happens to victims and tough enough to chase down bad guys. When a teenage girl goes missing and her father accuses Emerson at gunpoint of being involved, Emerson takes matters into his own hands. Despite his best efforts to find her, though, she turns up dead, the vistim of a hit-and-run. Determined to find some small measure of justice and suspecting the worst, this Quixotic hero gives up everything, adopts an alternate identity and follows a twisted and deadly trail from a violent anti-abortion protest to a convent full of secrets. Author Michael W. Sherer's series has been likened to John D. McDonald's "Travis McGee" books. Here his nicely attuned balance of action, both physical and cerebral, has never been better.

I'm not usually an mystery reader, but I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Not only was the story line compelling, but the subtext of the abortion debate was well-thought out and believable. Being a Chicagoan, I especially enjoyed the references to the city (very accurate, I might add). The language was descriptive without being overblown. It was definitely a book I wanted to stay up all night reading until I was finished. And I can't wait now for the next installment.

Reviewed by Regan Windsor for Reader Views (10/06)

A sign of a good mystery novel is one that keeps the reader guessing until the end. A brilliant author is able to successfully "go where no (wo)man dare go." Michael W. Sherer has managed to accomplish both in his novel "Death is No Bargain."

Emerson Ward, former stock broker, spends his days as a freelancer. For the most part he picks up freelance writing at a tolerable pace and spends the rest of his days in a relaxed and laid back pace having made enough as a stock broker to keep him comfortable between jobs. It's his other freelance work, however, that seems to keep him living close to the edge. By doing more favors for friends than actual jobs, Emerson has a knack for attracting himself to danger.

A year before Emerson had run into a disoriented young girl and brought her back to recoup and recover at his place before convincing her to find her way back home. Now her father has showed up on his doorstep ready to kill him for seducing and harboring his daughter who has once again run away. After escaping the near-death experience he finds himself unable to deny his help to the saner ex-wife. In the twists and turns of the ensuing events, Emerson soon finds himself dedicated to solving the mystery of her disappearance.

Michael W. Sherer tackles the complexities of pregnancy, abortions, adoptions, and shady connections to a Catholic convent. Although these events are at the forefront of the novel they are presented in a brilliantly uncontroversial way - simply as details for the reader to ponder and digest while diligently trying to determine "whodunit."

"Death is No Bargain" brings more to the reader than the thrill of a good mystery. It is brimming with controversial subject matter successful in transporting the reader to a higher level of intellectual stimulation. As the battles in Emerson's world ensue - so too do the battles within the reader.

About a year ago in Chicago, writer Emerson Ward saw the twenty-three years old waif look in trouble so he took her to his home and was nice to her while Ellen Forrester regained her equilibrium before she finally left after five days there. Now her father Larry arrives in a rage accusing Emerson of seducing his daughter and tries to kill him, but fails. Apparently Ellen has run away again.

A week later while Emerson and his girlfriend Nell ponder what to do about her pregnancy, Larry's former wife Audra Campbell asks him to find her missing daughter. Reluctantly he agrees because he feels a certain knight in shining armor mentality towards the lass. He starts at her private school, which leads to her friends and soon he learns she was pregnant but when he finds her she is dead. Emerson refuses to quit as he now needs to know who killed her.

This is an intriguing investigative tale as the hero is unable to stay on the sidelines following twisting clues where they take him to include violent encounters at abortion clinic and a strange weave involving the Catholic Church. The story line is action-packed beginning from the moment that an apparently very accurate shooter misses seven times (hitting Emerson's newly finished table, etc.) and never slows down as the sleuth follows a meandering trail that climaxes with a fabulous final spin. Fans will appreciate this solid murder mystery.

Harriet Klausner