Breeders Books

I am a dog lover, I couldn't beleive the mistreatment of the animals and the love of these animals portrayed by this book/author. Very good read, reminds me of Jilly Cooper, I am an American and enjoy a good british read. Dont' pass this by.

Priceless to those of us who study pedigrees in depth. Invaluable to my breeding program.
With Chesapeakes being my breed of choice I was delighed to get this addition to add to my CBR titles which include fact as well as fiction.
Unfortunatly many of the pictures are very dark and hard to make out and the copies could have been better for all the information pages.

Shannon

This is quite a good book BUT as other Breed books it dwells mainly on the young dog. It would be an improvement if there was more on the adult Chow ie. Grooming, feeding, prefered weights etc.

John Cunningham has been invalided out of the army. He caught a tropical virus while serving in the Falklands War. With his pension, savings, and a partner, he is striving to make Three Oaks Kennels a going concern. He trains the dogs, his partner Isobel handles them at field trials, and Beth, John's significant other acts as both kennel maid and nursemaid to them both. In this novel, Beth's uncle, the famous artist, George Muir, is killed in an explosion and has left Beth a painting and his Labrador puppy, Jason. John and Beth travel north to collect both and visit with the widow, Aunt Hattie. John isn't satisfied that the explosion was an accident, and notifies the local police, but doesn't tell Beth or Hattie. Other family problems arise involving the inheritance and Muir's other paintings.

There is more than enough going on in this mystery to keep anyone happy. Family squabbles, murder, swindlers, and goodness knows what else. I was a little offended by the author referring to Beth as John's mistress, but other than that, I enjoyed the mystery thoroughly and hope to work my way through the whole series.

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.

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.

The *story* is very interesting, but the author repeatedly annoyed me. As others have said, if he had stuck to the story, the book would have been much, much shorter. There was some useful background information about nuclear history and research, but there was also absolutely useless information thrown in as well. [...].

The author was also rather condescending toward David (the boy), his parents, and virtually anyone else who knew him, it seemed. I felt bad for David in particular. The author clearly interviewed him and got to know him somewhat, then he took quotations and used them in ways that David didn't intend for them to sound. And the general tone toward David seemed rather uncharitable. I think he realized this and tried to remedy it a bit in the epilogue, but it doesn't undo the rest of the book. I think that a better author could have conveyed the obvious, that David needed better direction, without the condescending tone.

In the end, I'm definitely glad that I read the book, but I find the author distasteful. I would have preferred to have read the book from someone who left less of their own personality stamped on the story. I would definitely like to know what David is doing now. He should start a blog.