Breeders Books

Lefko is a Toronto based sports journalist, who has assembled agreat history of the breeders cup, both in terms of how it came aboutand the first ten runnings. Great pictures, and insight into many of the sports stars both equine and human. A must have for any horseracing enthusiast. END

Hank Wiescamp ultimately breed some of the greatest horses from four registeries - Quarter, Appalossa, Palomino, and Paint. "The Hank Wiescamp Story" allows the reader to understand how and why Hank made many breeding decisions to create the great "Wiescamp horse". After this book, you too will appreciate what Hank Wiescamp has done to create many of the modern breeds.

Hats off to Hank...... Highly recommend this book for all. Pictures, pedigrees and stories. However, 207 pages could not begin to touch the surface of the 70 years it took to create the "Wiescamp horse".

"This ingenious attempt to explain the mysteries of Chinese politics to Western readers has two unusal features...a kaleidoscope of photographic images for which [the author's] lucid text serves as a kind of continuous caption. ...It provides as vivid a sense of the complexities of Maoist China as any book yet published. ...should help to clarify the traditinal image of China in the American mind, an image that has often swung capriciously from sentimental enthusiasm to angry disappointment and back again" Richard Bernstein; TIME Magazine, September 6, 1976

This book was very through in explaining the breed. It was eazy to understand and follow. Would recommend this book to people thinking of breeding or showing. It was very informative.

Betty Whelen was one of the first Americans to breed and show shelties, and she was continued to be a force in the breed up until her death last year. A wonderful book for anyone whose life has been changed by dogs.

Fantastic true story. "The Radioactive Boy Scout", brings back memories of my days when I built and shot a rocket off in my bed room, set the bed on fire. Obtained a neon sign transformer and built a Tesla Coil, scaring the neighbor lady next door to death. She had a heart attack. How in Boy Scouts, three of us ditches a Saturday project of delivering political fliers. We through them in a vacant field, and took off for better things to do. We here in Michigan do it all!
Yes this book is a must on everybody's shelf.

I found this book to be an enjoyable quick read. The science was well explained for those who don't know about nuclear physics and chemistry. There was a good progression of the story with interruptions that you wanted to read to get the background science information on what exactly David was doing. I think everyone should read this book to get a realistic view of how people can have an influence on one life. I will digress a great deal if I start to point out the many life lessons packed into this book so I'll just leave with a recommendation. Read not to get a balanced viewpoint for we all have our slants; read to get another viewpoint and figure out what you are going to do with that new perspective.

This is an excellent non-fiction quick read at just under 200 pages. It is a true story about a teenager, David Hahn, who ventured to build a nuclear breeder reactor with little protection from radioactivity. He used a potting shed as a laboratory and a few old college textbooks from his dad for knowledge on radioactive materials. David became increasingly secluded at school as he continued to experiment with dangerous chemistry. His grades dropped, and no one believed he could do anything to raise eyebrows. He ignored laws and cautions, obtaining many radioactive materials like beryllium, radium, polonium (210!), and americium to recreate the Curie couple's feats. He succeeded in creating a nuclear reactor but could not stop the increasing radioactivity, resulting in catastrophe. Finally, the federal government had to dismantle his reactor, as it was a great danger to people who lived near David.

I think this book is a worthy read. It is a fascinating story with great description. The author, Ken Silverstein, was very good at highlighting facts and things that happened in David's life that were related to his inspiration of building a nuclear reactor. However, I think Silverstein put a little too much history of atomic energy into the book. He is also slightly biased against nuclear power.

Overall, I think this book could have been written better, but still deserves a thumb up.

I was David's scoutmaster when he was preparing for his Eagle Scout Board of Review. I was to contact five registered adult Scout leaders, who would comprise the Board. One prospective adult told me he could not sit on the Board, because "something happened".

I learned that David and some friends were stopped by the cavaliering Clinton Township (Michigan) Police, who were randomly stopping teens and searching their cars for stolen tires.

David was not allowed to keep his experiments in his stepmother's home, so he kept everything in his car trunk. The cops found no tires, but saw his stuff and overreacted.

Days later, David's father phoned and said that David would no longer pursue the Eagle Scout rank.

A month or so later, a man claiming to be a reporter phoned my home, wanting to do a telephone interview about David. After a few moments, I refused. There was something negative about the line of questioning.

As a Scout, David was always clean-cut, polite, and well-liked by the other boys. My take is that David had the scientific curiosity of a Tesla or Edison; not of an evil prankster.

David's father, like so many divorced and re-married men, walked a tightrope between caring for his son and appeasing a new bride.

As for Mr. Silverstein, he should keep his story factual, and keep his opinions about Scouting to the editorial pages.

There's something not quite serious about The Radioactive Boy Scout. The book jacket has a cartoonish design and each page has a little atomic symbol by the page number. It's a small book, almost like a children's reader. It seemed to me as if it would be a quick, fun read.
Well, it was quick, all right. Author Ken Silverstein originally wrote this as an article for Harper's Magazine, according to the blurb. The article has been padded with several chapters on nuclear power, chemistry, and the history of the Boy Scouts. But The Radioactive Boy Scout is hardly a cartoon or a fun little story.

Although this is a story about how one teenager nearly built a nuclear reactor in his back yard, Silverstein wants us to know it is more than that. He emphasizes how David Hahn, the teenager, was neglected by his parents and not taken seriously by his teachers. If only someone had taken the time to take this boy under his wing, perhaps a near-disaster could have been averted. Certainly the fact that there was no disaster takes the edge off the story, but we already know what can happen when teenagers don't get the attention they need.

I enjoyed the main story as well as the chapters on science and the Boy Scouts. Silverstein describes how radium-based products were sold in the early 20th century as tonics, lotions, and even suppositories, to improve one's health. He recalls filmstrips (remember?) and pamphlets that cheerfully told us to "duck and cover" in the event of a nuclear explosion. He uses a hilarious passage from P.G. Wodehouse to illustrate a common view of the Boy Scouts in their early days.

Although I share most of Silverstein's opinions on federal government, the nuclear power industry, the Boy Scouts, and inattentive parents, I think the story would have been more effective if he had left his editorial comments out. Describing David's father as "pathologically oblivious" is unnecessary. True, but unnecessary.

New to this author and will not open another of her books. If one can't stand the protagonist,one can't enjoy the story, dog lover or not. Jo Beth is a nightmare of ego and self-righteousness, and her mental meanderings are dimwitted and sour. Too bad, as I had great hopes for the series.

I have read all of Ms Lanier's books regarding bloodhounds. They are so entertaining and gives me an idea of what the world of raising bloodhounds is. I am anxiously awaiting another book from her and would like to know when she has a new one out. Reading is so relaxing for me. And I like books that have a little mystery involved.

There seemed to be entirely too much going on in this story, to the point that I lost track of several subplots. Maybe this book showed the heroine in a worse light than most, but I didn't find her charmingly feisty, I found her extremely irritating. Maybe I am simply tired of Southern characters who brag about Southern manners and then are pig-rude to everyone they meet. I am willing to believe that she is more interesting than this book shows her, but I will probably never know. I am fascinated by bloodhounds and I *still* couldn't enjoy this book, so I do not plan to investigate the rest of the series.

If nothing else, any novel that would have a major character's murder trial occupy about two chapters squeezed into the end has got more problems than I care to think about. The fact that, under the circumstances described, the major character would probably never have been charged in real life only made that part more bewildering.

I plan to read a "How To" book about bloodhound training to cleanse my palate, and then never go near another book in this series ever again.

I have enjoyed the books in this series, but this is my least favorite by far. I found too many parts to be unbelievable; the protagonist was constantly alienating her friends and putting herself in extreme danger (more than usual....?). There were also a few side stories that were never really fleshed out or wrapped up, which was disappointing. And too much happened in the last chapter...cheap literary device used to tidy everything up. So, read it if you're reading the series, but skip it otherwise

I liked this book at least as much as the earlier ones in the Bloodhound series. Virginia Lanier provides a realistic tour of the nearly mystical abilities of the bloodhound and keeps the characters busy at the same time. JoBeth is balancing ten bloodhound pups, ten murder suspects, the nasty Bubba and her business all at one time. No wonder she's short-tempered. The astonishing information on the scent machine is true--I've seen it in action. She weaves the facts and the fictional characters together in an exciting story that has humidity and 'gators crawling out of the book's covers. A great read!

Michael McGarrity is a retired policeman, like his alter ego, Kevin Kerney. You get the idea that the character is closely based on the writer, right down to the double initials in their names (M.M. and K.K.). Kerney has graduated in the series to the point that he's the police chief of Santa Fe, New Mexico, but since there are so few murders there, for this to be a murder mystery, McGarrity has to have Kerney go to California, shopping for horses, and stumble on a dead body.

The victim turns out to be a wealthy socialite, and at first the local authorities suspect Kerney of being involved, and investigate him. Once that dries up, the investigation turns towards the guys wife, an attractive younger woman who has a wandering eye. As the book moves slowly along, the killer becomes apparent rather early and easily.

There's a second plot in the later part of the book, involving Kerney's wife (an Army officer) and her investigation of alleged cover-ups involving Army personnel involved in sexual assault cases, some including actual rapes. This plot thread doesn't finish at the end of the book, leaving us to wonder if he's going to continue it in the next entry in the series.

I enjoyed this book, but only to a certain extent. This is by far the slowest of the Kevin Kerney novels, with virtually no suspense and no real mystery. The author has a good command of characters and dialog, and some of the interchanges between Kerney and the other characters were fun, but the plot is very slow and predictable. I definitely think that you'd be better off starting this series out with one of his other books.

I discovered McGarrity a few weeks ago and have been reading his Kevin Kerney (is there another series?) books as I find them, and out of chronological order.

I like McGarrity's books because:
1) They are easy to read. His books flow naturally and are easy to understand.
2) I like his descriptions of NM, which until now I thought of as a desert and cultureless state.
3) His characters are easy to like and well described.

The cons:
1) I guess I've been reading too many thrillers, or it's just that his books are not in the thriller category. I'm not sure if this is really a strike against his books.
2) This book, like another Kevin Kerney one, seems to end very abruptly without ending. I keep thinking how the author was going to wrap it up in 2 more pages, and he didn't.

Spoiler here:

First, just like the other KK book, he sidetracks into Sara's case, however we're left hanging there and I don't know if Sara's case is going to continue in the next book in the series.
Second, McGarrity never explains the deal with the son and how the scheme worked. It's like he just wrote the required number of pages and stopped there. A very abrupt ending.

Bottom line: A very nice, but not overly thrilling book, full of your favorite characters, but with a very abrupt ending. I guess I should try to read his books in chronological order to see if it makes better sense.
But I will continue to read the rest of the series.

McGarrity has disappointed the reader in his last two books, this one especially. The plot and storylines have not been up to par with his previous books, which I enjoyed immensely. His ending in Slow Kill does not wrap up the loose ends and appears hurried. His ending in his last book also seemed "hurried".

I have read McGarrity's other Kevin Kerney mysteries, so I was looking forward to this one. The book has McGarrity's easy-going style that brings in a lot of the New Mexico atmosphere. That style was the strongest thing about the book. The plot (you can get summaries of the plot in other reviews) is convoluted. That is not necessarily a bad thing in a mystery novel. But it is a horrendous thing in a novel that seemed to be operating under limited space requirements, as if the author were under pressure to keep the book under 280 pages (it's 278 pages in hardback). The ending was rushed. Not all of the loose ends got tied up, at least not to the satisfaction of this reader. Perhaps McGarrity will revisit some of these plot elements in a later work. But the result was a book not up to the level of the rest of the series.

In the ninth novel in the Kevin Kerney series, Michael McGarrity stretches his writing ability along with the patience and stamina of his protagonist. Kevin Kerney, one of America's favorite cops, is a suspect in a homicide and the investigator who has Kerney in her sights is not one to let go easily. But is it even a homicide? There are no marks on the body, no obvious signs of a struggle, but the deceased didn't just die all by himself, did he? Then, there is that younger wife to consider. Could she and Kerney have conspired to kill the aging husband for his money and his land? Would Kerney's wife be happy about the whole thing? And what is all this about a secondary mystery that goes all the way back to the Vietnam War? McGarrity weaves a dense and devious plot, but the path of discovery is well worth the time it takes.

Wow! There are 45 horses who are personal friends of mine, and after reading this book, I feel that I know them so much better now! I had already figured out many of their quirks and cute personality traits, and now I have a whole new insight. For example, now I understand that the reason Image is "attitudinal" is because his mama was lead mare when he was born, and he's not about to let anyone forget it. And Casanova is the "class clown" who, if he likes you, will entertain you for hours with his (sometimes annoying) antics like knocking the hat off my head, over and over again -- and if he doesn't like you, don't turn your back on him, or he'll nip you in the butt (but never hard), and by the time you turn around, he's looking the other way, as if to say, "Who did that? Not me!" There are stories in the book to match and top any I have to tell, including a senior horse who liked to play jokes on cows. It's a terrific read and very educational as well. If you are looking to buy a horse, there are tips for selecting one. And for those who enjoy horse racing, there are tips for betting on horses, based on observing their behavior before the race. There's something for everyone in this book.

I personally felt that this book is an awesome introduction to horses and their behavior. No, it does not go into great detail of body language, and it is not for the experienced horseman (I only bought this book because it was required for a class), BUT the book is worth your time. I think that this book offered an excellent perspective on undertanding the horse and why they do what they do. For example, just because the horse isn't doing what you want, doesn't necessarily mean that it's being a "bad" horse- there is an incredible array of things that could be the 'problem'; even though as I said this book will offer no new insights to experienced horsemen and women, it can be a very good reminder of why our horses do what they do. All in all, if you are a beginner to the horse world, pick this book up, and take a few hours to read it, it'll be worth the time and money.

This is an excellent resource for a person who hasn't had much exposure to horses or has trouble interpreting the meaning of equine body language and sounds. Although, it was well written, and made some excellent points, it seemed quite basic and I didn't come to any new revalations about horses that would help or change my relationships with them.

I'm a young horse lover and I spend much more time reading and studying horses in books, magazines, and other sources of trustworthy media than I do actually experiencing these beautiful animals up close. Nor am I lucky enough to be able to regularly work with them. I recently received "The Body Language of Horses" and I have blazed through this small book and found that it is very informative, observant, and suitable towards an aspiring horsewoman or horseman. It gives out clear, though thick, digestible pieces of horse psychology and body language offering ways to understand and `connect' with the equine. I give it a rating of four stars out of five because there is further searching in different books about horse language I have yet to discover and the horses themselves.
Thanks!
Sarah

I was rather disappointed with this book for several reasons. First and foremost, the bulk of the book does not, as the title would have us believe, focus on the body language of horses. A couple of chapters devote themselves to brief descriptions of horse behavior under different circumstances (when happy, angry, frightened, bored, tired, hot, cold, hungry, thirsty, etc.), but the largest sections of the book concern curing problem horses and training foals. At the end there is a chapter on observing the body language of racehorses in order to pick winners, and two appendices on how to buy a horse.

Not only does the book stray from it's purported topic, but the information that IS given about equine body language is so basic and obvious that any true horseperson would already know it, and any aspiring horseperson could learn it all in a matter of a few weeks spent around the creatures. Of course a nervous horse will work up a sweat, a bored horse will get mouthy, and a horse that is irritated by a fly will swish its tail and twitch its skin. There are really only two forseeable uses, in my mind, for this book. The first is as a reference for those who know next to nothing about horses and wish to learn. The second, a slightly different version of the first, is as a guide to non-equestrian racegoers in order to pick winning horses on which to place their bets (and this is not surefire or guaranteed in any way, since pre-race behavior is only one of many factors that determines the outcome of a race).

The book is also considerably old, and a bit dated. It was written and first published in 1980, more than two decades ago. While the basic behavior of horses hasn't changed in that time, much else in the horse world has, including attitudes toward the care and training of horses. There are now many more effecting training methods than those presented here, and one passage in the book even alarmed me. Though they pronounce it a "dubious last resort," the authors nevertheless included the following method for "[teaching] manners to a resistant horse":

". . . dramatic effects are obtained by striking the animal over the poll bone with a fragile wine bottle filled with a slush of sand and warm water. When the bottle breaks and the warm, moist substance dribbles down its head, the savage horse becomes a trembling wreck. A gestured threat to repeat the treatment is usually enough to terminate subsequent misbehavior" (pg. 49).

While this is the only place in the book where the authors propose such blatantly inappropriate methods, I nevertheless cannot give a vote of confidence to anyone that would condone striking an animal with a wine bottle to elicit compliance. In addition, the authors make a great many generalizations about equine behavior and do not allow much leeway for differences in personality. As any person who spends much time around horses knows, one can be vastly different from the next. I said earlier that this book had two conceivable uses, but even for those I would not recommend purchasing this book. There are other books out there on the behavior and training of horses that are more current, more accurate, and more effective.

Never received the book. No emails and notice, no nothing!
Very Disappointed.

Moe covers most of the parts of setting up a first-time marine aquarium with aplomb and humor (his troubleshooting section includes "water pooling around tank" and "cookie floating in tank"). The only drawbacks to this book are a lack of illustrations and there is no real species profile to speak of. Since many, if not most, people start with an idea of what kind of fish they want to keep and work (backwards?) from there, a section would be helpful. But the information in the book will complement a species-focused book quite nicely.

This book helped me setup my first marine aquarium. The advice on setup, run up and maintenance is well written and interjected with great wit every once in a while. It is packed with very useful information. The book is very close to a perfect marine starter manual. It's only flaws lack of some graphics (such as the disease section) and in organization. That is the only reason I did not give the book a five star rating. These minor flaws are easily overlooked and overshadowed by the wealth of the book. If you are a first time marine aquarianist (as am I) this is a well-written, excellent book to start with. If you have been in the hobby for a while, it is an excellent reference.

This is an excellent book to use as background and reference for marine aquarium keeping. There are other books that cover species identification, and I would not buy this book for that purpose. You need this book to understand the principles of filtration systems, recognition and treatment of disease and all of the underlying knowledge that will allow you to be successful in maintaining a marine aquarium. It is in need of revision to cover more recent advances in reefkeeping, though.

I referred to Moe's book to confirm that my fish had Black Ich (my first experience with a fish disease). The book stated clearly the proper treatment,and I even carried the book into the fish store to confirm what needed to be done. I'm happy to say, fish are now Ichless. This is the kind of book you would want to have nearby, so diagnosis and treatment can happen quickly.