error Books

Rarely has a mystery grabbed me so completely from the first few paragraphs. I was so excited to discover this series about Regina Cutter, a newly divorced forty-something mom of two who tries to use her psychic ability to help the Boston Metropolitan Police.

However, the story quickly degenerated from that early high. My complaints, in no particular order:
-The title has absolutely nothing to do with the book. Hate that.
-Too many coincidences -- the plot was wrapped up a bit too neatly with all the strange occurrences tying together.
-At the same time, a lot of loose ends were left... what about Doc? What did he want to do with Regina?
-Random quoting of Bible verses and Dante's Inferno that were distracting and laughable, rather than adding to the story.
-Stark's deus ex machina appearances to save Regina just in the nick of time
-What's this with the psychic who is basically useless? She never seems to pick up anything worth mentioning, yet so much is made of her psychic ability.

What a disappointment. Tishy is a great writer and surely could have fixed many of the issues that made this book so lame. I may try another Regina Cutter mystery in the future, but only if I get a psychic message to do so.

Robert Frost's poem "Fire and Ice" aptly describes Regina Cutter's psychic feelings when she consults on a case for the Boston police. A thirteen year old case is brought to Reggie's attention, and she feels compelled to see if the man imprisoned for murder is actually guilty. Whenever she's close to the murder site, and also to the site of a fire, Reggie's feels fire in her thumb and body. When she uses her ability to check out a "haunted" house, she feels cold and sees snow. Despite her status as divorcee living and working alone, she pushes herself into places she doesn't belong and bothers people with clout. Now You See Her is a fascinating look behind Boston society life with a great new character.

I enjoyed the main character and her psychic ability. However, the book's pace was a little slow for me. A little too much of her going to talk to someone and chit-chatting about irrelevant stuff and then finding one tiny piece of information. It was as if all you had to do was read the last page of every chapter. But it was well-written.

It's always fun to discover a new series and this one's clearly on my watch list!
Engaging characters, plot that's not too obvious, and a strong sense of place.

Another psychic mystery - Reggie Cutter is starting her life over in the Boston house that she inherited from her aunt - another psychic. Reggie is new to her abilities - but she still tries to assist police detective Frank Devaney the way her aunt had before she died. Reggie gets strange vibes in areas where there was a fire and murder 13 years ago - but she doesn't understand her skills well enough to apply them to the clues she's getting. I wasn't able to finish this story - I didn't enjoy the way the author wove the story together and many of the actions Reggie took were extremely unrealistic. This just wasn't a story for me, but I hope that others enjoy it.

"Brilliant" claims Minette Waters on the fly leaf (?!) Well she also said "Deja Dead" by Kath Reichs was "Unputdownable" so I guess we should all have learned to take her recommendations with a pinch of salt by now!

"Laughable" might be more appropriate. Except that this book is so bad it is not funny. An implausable plot that turns only on the poor choices of cardboard characters. The daily dirge of dreary Rachel et al is described in minute detail and to no advantage that I can see - beyond padding a threadbare plot.

"Preposterous" if we are expected to believe, for example, that the once beautiful but now aged beyond her years and socially inadequate Rachel transforms overnight into a femme fatal capable of seducing a muscular, young stud. The book lost me right there and then.

"Forgetable". Eager To Please? Oh, please!

This story takes place in Dublin where Rachel Beckett has just been released after twelve years in prison for the murder of her husband. Although innocent,she was framed by her brother-in-law and lover, Daniel Beckett,who actually killed him. Upon her release she has become a timid,frightened woman.Her anger and sadness have increased due to the estrangement of her only daughter,Amy. There are several subplots in the book, one involving her probation officer,Andrew Bowen,and his wife Claire.When her dearest prison friend,Judith Hill,is found brutally murdered,Jack Donnelly heads the investigation and another subplot develops. Jack was also the investigative officer in the murder of Rachel's husband. The story moves rapidly forward with everything coming together. Rachel's revenge upon Daniel Beckett is masterful,involving much complicated planning on her part. You will greatly admire her for her accomplishment. "Revenge is sweet",and she succeeded wonderfully in giving Daniel his just deserves.The characters were,for most part,one dimensional,but it did not detract from the story. This is a well written book with a surprising climax guaranteed to satisfy you.

"Eagar to Please" was my first book by Julie Parson. While I was not entirely disappointed, I would probably not look into any of her other novels. Rachel Beckett has been falsely imprisoned for the murder of her husband. She was sentenced to life, but after twelve years, she is released on a strict probation. She is not even permitted to see her daughter. After years of prison, Rachel has learned a thing or two about committing real crimes and she is determined to seek revenge on her husband's real murderer.

I found the basic plot of "Eager to Please" okay. It was fast paced, with a couple of good characters, including the main character of Rachel. However, it was slow to start, with what I felt was far too much background information. Another complaint I have is there seem to be several stories mixed in. I found that the more I read, the more confused I became. And the main plot had no real twists. Overall, I would say it is a basic mystery of sorts, and there are a great many authors out there who can do so much better. Skip this one.

I loved MARY, MARY, Julie Parsons's first novel, so much that I read it twice. Her second book, THE COURTSHIP GIFT, was a letdown. And EAGER TO PLEASE is a disappointment on almost every level -- except that of writing style, which is excellent. This book takes forever to get started; for more than 100 pages virtually no forward movement takes place. Instead, the reader is served the same backstory in several different forms, and forced to watch as Rachel, the central character, moves with little purpose through her first days after release from prison. Rachel, convicted of a murder she didn't commit, is sympathetic at first, but once she sets her revenge plot in motion -- and makes use of innocent children and their innocent mother in the process -- she becomes repugnant. Her brother-in-law Daniel, the object of her vengeful scheming, rarely does anything that makes sense. I was constantly asking, "Why on earth is the man doing that?" and was never provided with answers. And Rachel's revenge is based on such a threadbare, B-movie concept that I was disappointed by the writer's lack of imagination. MARY, MARY is also a story of revenge, but written with much more imagination and flare. Julie Parsons writes beautifully, but this is probably the last of her books I will bother to read.

Rachel Beckett has served 12 years of a life sentence for the murder of her husband. She did not commit the murder, and has been meticulously planning her revenge for these twelve miserable years when she finally receives a conditional parole.

Everything about this tale is very Irish, including the judicial system. American readers will be surprised to find Rachel was convicted by a "majority" vote of the jury, 10-2. Rachel was totally convinced she would be acquitted and made no mental preparations for a prison sentence. Her descent into the life of a penitentiary is harrowing. It was so profoundly shocking to her, I could not see her living a month. We gradually realize Rachel has an inner toughness and determination that permits her to make use of her time in prison. We know she has a well-formulated "plan," but we don't know what it is.

As Rachel's character unfolds, our admiration and apprehension increase in equal measure. We revise our picture of Rachel as a downtrodden drudge to something like Medea or La Belle Dame Sans Merci. Yet we have pity for her when she tries to re-establish a bond with her highly troubled daughter. All of the personalities are carefully drawn in depth. Not one is a stereotype, and each has a compelling part to play.

I thoroughly enjoyed this tightly plotted psychological thriller and look forward to future books by Julia Parsons.

This novel starts off and concludes with a bang (each of a different sort). FBI agent Breed Grayhawk meets a woman in a bar one night and engages in what he believes is a fantastic one-night stand. Oh were it so. In exchange for the sex, she extracts a promise from him, but doesn't tell him what it is. She is a convicted murderer of her parents, sentenced to Juvie until 21, and she has been spending the past year since her discharge attempting to find the real murderer and clear her name.

The woman is on the lam, having failed to attend her first meeting with her parole officer. She assumes a new identity and has "disappeared." Breed can't get her out of his mind, and has no way of contacting her. When finally meeting with her, she tells him her story and seeks his help. Thus begins a race against time, especially when she is accused of being a terrorist and chased by the FBI.

There are various subplots and personalities which complicate the basic story, all smooth and well-done. And, like Texas, larger than life. Filled with a serial murderer, suspense and hot romance, the novel progresses rapidly to its finale. Recommended.

I was pleased to take a chance on an author I had not listeded to before.
With my failing vision at such a young age it is always a a great find to add another author to the mystery/ thrillers I enjoy. Hope you will too.

This book has 2 concurring romances, it joins Grace (merle ray) and breed grayhawk through a series of unfortunate events. also it starts to explain kate grayhawk's and jack mckinley's marriage to different people and family life. The ending was unexpected it; shocked me and left me calling all my local bookstores to see if there's been any dates or names for the next book

I love Joan Johnston's writing. The "Bitter Creek" books are among my favorites. I am going to have a hard time waiting for the next one. I want to know what happens with "Kate."

I expected a lot better from this author. The book was good but if you did not read her last book, you would have been lost on who the characters were.

Her story was good and left you a cliffhanger, but I thought that her special spark was missing.

I would recommend you wait for the paperback, as the hard cover price even with a discount is a bit steep,

I am a big fan of "weird" news stories and have read several books in this genre. "What Were They Thinking" is by far my favorite of the bunch. Perhaps it isn't 100% factually accurate (few books are), but neither is it a piece of fluff.

I bought the book because I wanted some good laughs. "What Were They Thinking" definitely delivered!

The book is well-organized into various topics: Politics & Government, Science & Medicine, Sports, Transportation, Crimes, etc. Although I was familiar with some of the material, much of it was new to me. I especially enjoyed stories like that of Plennie Wingo, who decided to walk around the world backwards. After wearing out 13 pairs of shoes, he arrived home to find his girlfriend had left him.

From obscure tidbits of history to modern-day mistakes, this collection encompasses the best and worst of human foibles. Highly recommended!

Seemed like an interesting enough book when I bought it, but a good many of the "factual" anecdotes have proven to be already-debunked urban legends, so it's difficult to take any of it seriously. Take with a large grain of salt.

This was a fun, light-hearted book that was easy to read in pieces...as my schedule allowed. It's not a serious or hearty read, so considering what it was meant to be, it hit the mark!

It's summed up on the back of the jacket: "... a compendium of history's most ... fool notions, useless products ..." Substitute "publishing's" for "history's", and there you have it. All of which begs the [next] question -- what was *I* thinking when idiotic enough to purchase this piece of slack-jawed trash?

Bruce Felton's "What Were They Thinking?" is a breezy examination of Strange laws, bizarre beliefs, and downright crazy ideas throughout history. There's not a lot of detail in any one description of a bad idea, and I agree with another reviewer that some context may have shed a different light on certain ideas that are presented as off-the-wall, but I feel Felton's effort, on balance, is worthwhile. This book is intended strictly as light reading, and it fits that bill quite nicely. A typical story is that of a fellow who proposed blowing up the moon, so that the Earth's tilt would change, resulting in constant springlike weather worldwide. I'm not sure which aspect of the story is more astounding - that someone would come up with this idea, or that others would take him seriously enough to present detailed arguments as to why his idea wasn't such a good one. "What Were They Thinking" is full of amusing antecdotes, and is great for some lighthearted reading.

The book was well written and easy to read. Excellent maps accompany the chapters allowing the reader to follow the action. The book focuses on the Civil War's Eastern Theater in 1862-63. The author believes that the Eastern Theater was critical to the South and allowed the only opportunity for Victory. The author compares the war fighting styles of Robert E. Lee and Thomas Jackson. His thesis was that Lee's attacking style used up the manpower resources of the South. If the South had followed Jackson's way of war, it would have invaded the northeast, threatening northern cities, used maneuver to dislodge Union Forces, forcing them to attack the Southern Army in a favorable defensive position. Union forces would be broken by losses suffered in attacking a strong defensive position and then shattered by counterattacks. With the North beaten on Northern soil, the North would sue for peace, granting southern independence. (Maybe)
The author does some choosing of facts to paint the picture he wants to show. He believes the landed aristocracy of the South was wedded to an aristocratic view of war and established commanders were not replaced by more qualified subordinates of a lower class. True enough, Davis appointed friends for his old military days and did not replace them when they proved inadequate. The author believes that Stonewall Jackson was the best Southern Commander and probably could have won the war by carrying the campaign to the North and pursuing a policy of destruction against the Northern People similar to Sherman's March to the Sea in 1864. Jackson shared this thoughts with no one so the author needs to construct his strategy from collected comments. The author gives credit to Sherman for his campaign of maneuver in the Atlanta campaign and afterwards, but cannot figure out when Sherman decided to pursue this strategy. See Sherman's Mississippi Campaign He does not credit Grant as the Union general who first saw that his forces could live off the southern countryside early in the Vicksburg campaigns and determined to use this strategy.
I enjoyed the book. The South probably wouldn't have won the war pursuing a strategy of strategic raids but it certainly would have been a different war. How well would Jackson have fared if he lived and had to face better and better Union generals. Lincoln lost most of his aversion to removing generals who failed him by 1863 and favored those who fought and won. I would recommend this book to those who are interested in how the Confederacy could have won the Civil War

Bevin Alexander's new book, HOW THE SOUTH COULD HAVE WON THE CIVIL WAR, is an analysis of the errors and missed opportunities that led to Union victory. There were plenty of mistakes in the Civil War on both sides, as you might expect from a war in which the majority of the generals were appointed for political reasons. The entire catalogue of the early history of the Army of the Potomac is chock-full of serious and costly errors that led, time and again, to battlefield disaster. But Alexander's focus is on the Confederate mistakes --- how Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson erred, and how those missteps cost the South its independence.

Alexander makes the distinction between strategic and tactical mistakes, and how the shortcomings of Southern strategy led to the tactical errors. Faced with a Union strategy that turned out to be very effective --- cutting off Southern supply lines while trying to capture Richmond and evict the Confederate government --- the Confederacy had limited strategic options. Davis's initial strategy (much derided by Alexander) was to try to protect all Southern territory from invasion and play on the defensive. Lee's strategy was to try to destroy the Army of the Potomac with relentless head-on assaults, taking advantage of his men's fighting spirit and drive.

But there was a third option, advocated by Jackson and supported by Alexander. Jackson's plan was to invade the Northern heartland, evading the main body of the Union army, and strike against the fat civilian targets of Baltimore, New York and Philadelphia. Jackson reasoned that attacking the North's cities and industrial base would cause Abraham Lincoln to sue for peace --- all the more so if the South was able to isolate Lincoln in Washington by cutting off the rail lines that supplied the city. (This is exactly the strategy, as Alexander points out, that William Sherman used in capturing Atlanta and Savannah, and thereby bringing the war home to the Southern heartland.)

Alexander takes pains to describe the tactical consequences of these strategic errors. For example, the author analyzes the impact of Jackson's hugely effective campaign in the Shenandoah Valley, not only in terms of his tactical genius, but in how his campaign kept Union forces out of the hands of General McClellan when he was driving up the Peninsula towards Richmond. Alexander argues that if Jackson had been given free rein to threaten Washington, he would have caused Lincoln to order McClellan back to the defense of the capital, thereby ending the Peninsular Campaign and giving the Confederacy the initiative. However, Lee instead ordered Jackson back to aid in the defense of Richmond, targeting McClellan's army instead of the potentially richer prize of the Union capital.

Alexander's talent as a historian is lifting the "fog of war" and explaining the tactical issues of the Civil War in a way that is comprehensible for the armchair general and the military amateur alike. However, as his focus is limited to only certain battles and engagements, the reader may feel that he gives some topics short shrift --- Shiloh, for example, rates only a paragraph, and General Grant not much more than that. Furthermore, it is at least debatable as to whether or not all the mistakes that Alexander identifies were avoidable. The author asserts that a Southern invasion of Maryland, following up on the disaster of First Bull Run, could have brought the war to a quick end. While such a strike was at least technically feasible, it is not at all clear if the still-raw Southern troops could have pulled off such a thing, especially given the quality of Southern generalship at that point in time.

Nevertheless, HOW THE SOUTH COULD HAVE WON THE CIVIL WAR is a formidable piece of scholarship, showing a mastery of small-scale tactical details and an eye for the missed opportunities that led to Confederate defeat.

--- Reviewed by Curtis Edmonds, who writes the "Northbound" blog at http://www.txreviews.com/blog.

In about 1978 I began reading seriously about the Civil War. The library in St Paul MN had a vast literature on the subject, including numbered/signed 1st editions and obscure local works. The MN Historical Society had a lot of material including letters home from the front. I have gamed the ACW many many times, tactically at the battle-scale and strategically the war as a whole. At Ft Snelling I was inducted into the 1st MINN Vols, a re-enactment group, although as a non-uniformed member. On the wall of my gaming room hang framed reproductions of the paintings of the seven Minnesota regiments found in the capitol building and governor's office.

In all my studies I have found exactly one large unit that surrendered -- Pemberton at Vicksburg. This occurred after a campaign lasting about a year. I mention this because Mr Alexander has units surrendering left and right, had the Confederacy only done the right thing. Page 28 -- 1st Manassas -- "...a brisk move with only a few troops up to Centerville would have...forced them to surrender." Page 41 -- Stonewall Jackson -- "Jackson's aim...was to...force the opposing army against some terrain feature such as a mountain or river, where it would be compelled to surrender." Page 79 -- Seven Days -- "Lee felt he had a good chance of defeating McClellan and forcing his army to retreat in panic or surrender." Page 81 -- Seven Days -- "If this had been done, McClellan would have been forced to surrender his entire army."

We're only in 1862 and AoP has already surrendered three or four times! This sounds good if you know little or nothing of the war.

Alexander's thesis is a good one. He advocates Fuller's indirect approach. That is, make war not on the enemy's main force but on its ability to supply itself and against the state of mind of the High Command. This was Jackson's method. He criticizes Lee on this point, as have others. "The enemy is there and I intend to attack him there." That is Lee in a nutshell, alright. (No one else could have maintained the ANV in the field as long as he did, so you have to say Lee was a positive overall.) Yet, note Hood's references to the "Lee-Jackson School" in his memoirs, "Advance and Retreat." Hood sought to apply in the western theater the lessons he absorbed while serving under Lee in the east, and we know the result. There was nothing indirect in his methods.

The idea of assuming the tactical defensive in a civil war battle, is a good one. Longstreet had it and applied it whenever he could. It was not Jackson's alone. Yet it was never enough to win the war.

To find out if the south could have won the war, play SPI's "War Between the States." This vast game uses weekly turns and offers the players the complete range of options. Combat is attritional, but that is unimportant if your idea is to test the indirect approach which of course seeks to avoid combat. You will find there was no way for the south to win. Large-scale maneuvers against the enemy's sensitive rear areas are mostly impossible because of the supply problem, and small-scale maneuvers are easily dealt with. The last time I played it, I tried out the specific idea of preventing the capture of New Orleans and maintaining control of the river and Gulf coast ports. I couldn't do it.

So my beef with the book is that is assumes so much! We have to remember, this is the 19th century. Applying 20th-century methods, learned the hard way and shown to be effective, is not possible with 19th-century armies. Mechanization was answer to the problem of mobility. We have to wait for the IC-engine before we can break out in deep penetrations into the enemy's rear and attack them where they aren't. ("Hit 'em where they ain't." Wee Willie Keeler)

Nonetheless I enjoyed Alexander's narrative. It was a good summary of the eastern theater. It was always true that the north could lose the war in the east but could only win it in the west, so concentrating on the east was a good idea for the author.

On the frontispiece are photos of Lee, Jackson and Davis. Davis makes only a few short appearances in the book. For my money, Davis is the one man most responsible for the defeat of the south. Alexander ought to write a book about Davis' screwups. It would be a big seller!

Alexander, Bevin. How the South Could Have Won the Civil War: The Fatal Errors That Led to Confederate Defeat. New York: Crown Publishers, 2007.

This books supposed subject in contained in its title, but it does not really achieve that. The subtitles is slightly more accurate. It is 337-pages including notes, bibliography and index with eighteen maps and very readable type.

The introduction is entitled "No Victory is Inevitable" which is true but analysis of why and how victory could have shifted to the historically defeated is a difficult task. Such analysis moves into the realm of counterfactual (or alternate) history, a field more usually the playground of fiction writers rather than historians.

In Chapter 2 "A New Kind of War" (p 33-43) Alexander lays out the three strategies that the Confederates had to choose from:

* Passive defense, championed by President Jefferson Davis and, as such, the de facto strategy of the CSA.

* Engaging and destroying the enemy, championed by Robert E. Lee and later pursued by him.

* Invasion of the North to destroy its ability to make war, by destroying economic and transportation assets, according to Alexander, this was the strategy that `Stonewall' Jackson wanted to see followed by the CSA.

Alexander believes that the war against the infrastructure of the North would have been a winning strategy. By Jackson was not able to find support for such a course of action, nor does it seem that he tried very hard to do so, and it did not happen. There Alexander leaves the matter, Jackson was right and if the Confederates had just listened they could have won. No discussion is made of how the Confederacy could have effectively pursued this.

Would cavalry raiders, such as Nathan Bedford Forrest commanded, have been sufficient? Or would it have required the actual Confederate armies to have pushed into the North, laying waste to all around them. Could J.E.B. Stuart's cavalry done it alone? Perhaps partisan rangers, such as John Singleton Mosby commanded, could have been employed to assist in these tasks. None of these questions are properly addressed nor is any likely Union response. How would the Federal army have deal with such raids? Would Lincoln's government have fallen? Would the depredations light the fires of resolve and revenge among the people of the Northern states? None of this is even considered by Alexander, he just agrees with a single letter of Jackson's, the only place he seem to have presented these views, and moves on.

The rest of the book is looking at the battles of the army of Northern Virginia. Alexander is a strong supporter of `Stonewall' Jackson and his strategic and tactical insights, especially his ability to act on the strategic offensive and the tactical defensive using the weapons of the era to their best advantage. The rundowns of battles are familiar with occasional comments on how they could have gone better for the Confederacy if different actions had been taken but nothing new or even very interesting here.

The book neglects the western theater of operations, relegating it to another loss for the Confederacy. Alexander fully overlooks the potential of Shiloh to have been a turning point in the war, in the Western theater at the very least, and is content to criticize the incompetence and overly defensive mind set of the western Confederate commanders. Alexander recognized that the defense had primary on the battlefields of the Civil War and deals harshly with those commanders, on both sides, that threw their man away on fruitless frontal assaults. However, he complains about General Joe Johnson trying to force Sherman to attack him behind field fortifications (p. 252-3) which ultimately came to naught as Sherman flanked him repeatedly but at least Johnson was not throwing his men away.

Alexander uses Sherman's success in his March to the Sea as proof that Jackson strategy of attacking the North economically would have caused its collapse. While there are similarities in strategic design, by the time Sherman moves through Georgia, the South was hollowed out by four years of war and blockade. However the North never suffered the same level of hardship and, one suspects, would have been more resilient to such damages and more able to resist such attacks into its heartland.

While an interesting read, the writing is solid if unexceptional, this book adds little new to the debate on the American Civil War.

This is a quite good operational and grand tactical history of the Eastern Theatre of the American Civil War from 1st Bull Run to Gettysburg, complete with a plethora of very useful maps, told from viewpoint of the Confederate high command.

For the author, Jackson is a transcendent military genius, Lee is myopic at best, and Davis becomes pretty quickly becomes immaterial. Ordinary soldiers enter the narrative mainly as numbers engaged, and casualties.

The author posits that the Army of Northern Virginia could have wandered around eastern Pennsylvania for months in the summer living off the land. On the other hand, he suggests that any Union army would have surrendered almost immediately if cut off from supply. Similarly, he suggests the Union itself would have surrendered upon the capture or cutting off of either Washington, Baltimore, or Philadelphia. The possiblilty that any of these events would have merely riled up the Union against an invader is not even mentioned, much less discussed.

So, while I found the book an enjoyable read, I also find it possible to doubt many of the author's opinions and spectulative theses. For me, these things balance out to a four star rating.

It is an intricate book for those readers who love Psychology and want to discover more. The content is difficult to comprehend because Freud used a terminology that is easy to grasp by psychologists/psychiatrists. You will need another source (dictionary, person in the domain of Psych)to help you understand what he is talking about. However,I loved "The Psychopathology of Everyday Life" and I recommend to all to buy it. As I mentioned, it is an intricate book!!

This is a fantastic, captivating book. The theories and ideas outlined in "Psychopathology of Everyday Life" are logical and seem more applicable, plausible, and realistic (i.e. more easily seen in everyday life) than some of Freud's other theories. Highly recommended for anyone interested in psychology, character, human behavior, or Freud's work. Covers a lot about human memory. A very good resource to have.

Freud presents examples and case studies of why we forget, make verbal slips. Explanation of negative assocaiations which result in suibconscious 'forgetting' is explained. This book is written in laymen terms. Parts of the discussions are sometimes tedious and I lost interest at times.

The huge amount of evidence and research over the past 50 years is enough to convince even Freud's most loyal votaries that his "science" amounted to little more than--wish fulfillment!

But--so what? Does anyone read Freud for science anymore? I hope not. But does that make him not worth reading? Of course not!

The Freudian system of the unconscious was used by scored of brilliant artists in the 20th century. Want to understand Faulkner? Anderson? Larsen? Dali? Picasso? Anyone? If so, then you must read two books by Mr Freud: this one and The Interpretation of Dreams (only James Strachey's translation!).

Are they good science? No one believe that anymore. But do they serve as excellent and useful metaphors for better understanding art? Yes. And I'm not even saying that art is independent of scientific truth, so that it wouldn't matter anyway (or anything like that). All I'm saying is that you cannot fully understand the literature coming out of America's best writers without reading some Freud. You could then use Freud's nonsense to call the art nonsense, or you could marvel at the meaning inhered in the metaphor as used by the author. The situation and philosophical background would of course determine the matter.

Anyhow, you can't go wrong with this one here. It's a quick read; it's full of great stories; it's full of wonderful nonsense; and it's so, so very useful for literature without being offensive. All the infantile sexuality stuff--that came later. This book is easily Freud's most innocent.

Bad science. Bad philosophy. Bad theology. Useful artistic metaphor. Necessary material. Great reading!

(Only read the Alan Tyson translation as edited by James Strachey.)

The republication of this authorized English edition which appeared in 1914 will enable libraries to replace aging volumes with a fresh, affordable paperwork. This remains one of Freud's most widely recognized titles, blending anecdotal accounts with his personal experience and psychological insights. His first-person, chatty tone makes it easy for the lay reader to understand his concepts of underlying psychological influences.

Growing up in the north and spending a number of childhood summers in Marion, I am satisfied that Skip's story is pretty accurate. Some of the blanks he necessarily had to fill in. My beef is that the time line in the book veers all over the place and it's often hard to follow the players and the events. It could have been organized much better. Also, there are times when Skip's passion leads him to minute details that don't add to the telling of the story. In my opinion, a top notch editor could have made this a best seller.

I don't doubt that Skip brought some troubles on himself and he acknowledges that he would do things differently a second time around. But, Skip gets the important stuff right. How much more can we ask of ourselves? Well worth reading.

Skip Roth's book tells it like it really is. Outsiders are not welcome and it is obvious why. If Sam is the neighborhood pedophile but also everyone's cousin of course the town folks want to hide this. Nobody wants their dirty laundry aired to the world. Roth's courage at not being bullied by these poeple and fighting the injustice of a kangaroo court should be applauded. A great book, raw, gritty and right to the point.

Insightful about prison life. A little self-serving and exaggerated. The author says he's never so much as had a ticket before and later he reminds us he has been in gunfights before.
He's very upset he went to prison,but I doubt all the conspiracies took place as he relates them. The judge shows the prosecutor some leg? You can't even see what a judge is wearing below the chest level in the courtroom he is describing.

Chainsaw's Justice is the story of the author, Allen "Skip" Roth (aka Chainsaw) and a nightmare that plagued and terrorized his family. The author and his family were living out their dreams living in rural North Carolina. Roth readied himself to earn his living as an artist who created sculptures from wood.

At first, the family's neighbours seemed friendly and welcoming to the outsiders. Then something changed. A neighbour by the name of Sam Williams started to pay extra attention to Roth's young son Michael. Something seemed amiss about the relationship and Roth feared that the boy was being sexually abused by Williams. However, not only did the local law enforcement ignore Roth's pleas to look into the matter, Roth's family suddenly became the target of harassment and violence at the hands of Williams and his friends. Unfortunately, such situations would continue long after an incident that would leave Williams dead and Roth in jail charged with second degree murder.

Chainsaw's Justice leaves the reader wondering what he or she would have done in Roth's situation. This book also leaves the reader with a feeling of shock and concern over the incredible greed and incompetence that corrupts our justice system. Though these messages are powerful, there is an even more compelling message in this book: one of love, tolerance, and a willingness to try to make the most of life no matter what the situation.

When I read this book it reminded me of my own experience with 'smaller town' personalities. Originally from a big city, I have lived in other small towns, due to being sent for long term jobs. It does show that none of us are safe from injustices if you do not know the 'right people' or play their game. Another thing I loved was the way the icons are placed in the book. You can go to their website and see more information of either pictures or a small clip of a show. Great job! Thanks for showing that we are not alone.

I agree with the previous commentator---I could not put the book down. Tolle et lege.

This book is well worth the read. In view of the fact that it was written prior to the breaking of the current scandal, it seems almost prophetic at times. When the author gives his scathing critique of celebacy, however, he assumed that the indescretions of the clergy involved adult men and women. Even Kaiser could not imagine the depth of horrific betrayal of trust in the abuse of children that so many clergy would be capable of.

This book is a "must read" for anyone seriously interested in reform in the Roman Catholic Church. It so speaks of its systemic abuse and misuse of power.

One more reason for RCs to get out of our pews and take back the church.

From The
History of Vatican II by James Hitchcock:

Time magazine, which was a much more influential journal then, than it is now, was represented at the Council by a reporter whose name was Robert Blair Kaiser. He had been at one time a Jesuit. He was not a priest but he had been a Jesuit, had studied for the priesthood, and was therefore somebody who knew something. He wasn't an ignorant man who had to learn it all from scratch; he was fairly sophisticated in religious matters. But Robert Blair Kaiser's reporting was very much along the same lines as that of Xavier Rynne, the good-guy liberals versus the bad-guy conservatives. Every day there was a shootout at the O.K. Corral over some issue or other. Fortunately most of the time the good-guy liberals managed to disarm the bad-guy conservatives. They shot the guns out of their hands. But unfortunately the bad-guy conservatives kept getting more guns, and so there would be another shootout maybe a week or two later.

As it turned out in some of the autobiographical things which he later wrote, Kaiser had a very clear agenda from the very beginning. One major part of that agenda was birth control. He had been poking around in that area and making contact with certain theologians who were privately or secretly supportive of birth control before the Council. He had made contact with certain influential Belgian and Dutch theologians. When he went to the Council he understood that there was a liberal agenda, the modernist agenda as we've called it, and he was going to use his magazine, Time magazine, to push it. And he did so, and very effectively. Unfortunately the average American Catholic, and this includes most priests and most nuns, learned what the Council was all about more from Time magazine and The New Yorker than from any other source.

There is a massive failure of education here on the part of the Church. One would assume that given an event like the Council that the hierarchy would have put into gear a massive educational project. They would have been lining up books, they would have been training teachers, they would have been announcing schools, workshops in every parish, whatever. And they would have insured the fact that what was presented to people as the authentic teaching of the Council really was the authentic teaching of the Council. To an amazing degree this task was neglected. There was, in fact, as far as I can see, practically no systematic effort to educate Catholics as to the meaning of the Council. They were left to discern its meaning in just about any way they could. And if they were reading the New Yorker they got it from Xavier Rynne, and if they were reading Time magazine they got it from Robert Blair Kaiser. Some variation on the views of those two men appeared in most of the secular press. So not only did there persist a good deal of confusion as to what the Council was all about, but there was even a completely skewed, even false notion of what it was all about. Victories that could not be won on the floor of the Council itself, victories that could not be ratified in the Conciliar decrees, were won after the Council in terms of what people thought the Council said as opposed to what it actually said. The obligation of obedience was used over and over again to get reluctant people to go along with the Council's changes, until such time as obedience had outlasted its usefulness and then the shift was to independence and freedom.

Svengali, Rasputin, Martin. If what Mr. Kaiser says in this book is true, then it's too bad that Malachi (why does Kaiser spell it Malachy?) Martin died before INTERPOL, and whatever other law enforcement agencies should be interested, got to him.

I'm not Catholic and I don't think the story in Mr. Kaiser's book is Vatican II at all. The story is about a master con-man and even a cult master of international proportions.

Malachi Martin is connected so much like a spider to so many people and "things" that someone ought to do a really IN DEPTH rundown on the man. I live in a little, out-of-the-way midwestern state, I'm not Catholic, and even I know of people connected in a bizarre, almost cult-like way to Martin and perhaps a mysterious, grissly, unsolved murder or two.

I don't think that Martin was incapable of it, assuming that what Mr. Kaiser says in this book is indeed "a true story."

I just finished reading Clerical Error after making copious notes throughout.

As a sedevacantist his book validates my position held by a growing group that the vatican ii council has produced untold damage to the faith of millions of souls.

By recounting the idealogy of many liberals to attempt to change the unchanging doctrines of God's Church Kaiser has unwittingly pointed out that fruits of vatican ii and the new religion (novus ordo) has decimated the true faith throughout the world and brought the full impact of satan and his minions upon the soul of the Church.

I also bought the book to validate some other sources concerning Malachy Martin. I admit being duped into buying Martin books especially during my novus ordo days as a "conservative". Now I will be trashing or burning any books that I still have of his.

Martin, if he did not repent before his death, will be burning in Hell along with the last 3 antipopes and another Martin (Martin Luther).

This book should bring to those Catholics of good faith still trapped in the novus ordo religion that the purpose of vatican ii was to CHANGE Jesus' teaching as well as impose a new religion.

The Fruits of vatican ii are evident: widespread apostasy, priests shortages, homosexuals in the seminaries. The devil couldn't be more proud of his handiwork.

There are two websites I would recommend to give a better understanding of the new religion and its antipopes:

http://www.novusordowatch.org/archive.htm
http://www.mostholyfamilymonastery.com/

This book is a very poor piece of literature. A lot of the facts that the author says are false are true, and the author is wrong saying that they are false. There are many inaccuracies. Some of these are very much proven facts that the author claims are wrong. I believe it just the author giving his opinion on the things from what he believes to be true. Some of them on the other hand are false.

the best book i ever read. it is wonderfly done

Some interesting twists and some corrections on what we mostly assumed to be true: This book is not intended for a serious debunking of popular myth. It is an enjoyable browse or a very fast read and could spark some arguments and debates.

My favorite on is the constantly perpetuated misinformation on the amount of iron in spinach. Sorry, Popeye!

I don't think this is a book of facts somebody screwed up. A lot of the facts are just common beliefs which, taken completely literally, aren't correct, which shouldn't be a big surprise. (Like, "doughnuts do not have holes.") Much of it is filled with interesting facts. But I was still disappointed, since a lot of the facts I knew already, and the author doesn't provide a lot of information about each fact. Still, it's a fun book, although irritating at times.. I was hoping for something with a little more weight.

This book proves the adage that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Many allegedly "screwed-up facts" are simply cute, too-clever-by half twists that the author has cooked up on familiar subjects, and many of these twists are just as screwed up as the facts that the author is allegedly debunking. For example, on page 2, the book asserts that "there are only forty-six states in the United States. Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Massachusetts are commonwealths." Well, okay, those four states do call themselves commonwealths, but doing so obviously does not deprive them of statehood. (A "commonwealth" was simply a term popular in the eighteenth century, particularly around the time of American independence, for describing a political community whose form of government was based on the consent of the governed.) The book contains dozens, if not hundreds, of instances of equally threadbare research and thinking. The author offers no credentials, other than thanking a list of "Mensans" in his acknowledgments; and the book nowhere contains any citation, documentation, or other authority for its "facts," other than a barely page-long introduction in which the author writes that he relied on "encyclopedias, standard references, and specialists." The book's "facts" may supply fodder for some meagerly amusing cocktail-party conversation, but just don't start that conversation in a contentious crowd, because nobody will take your argument seriously if this book is all that is backing you up.

my jop is survayor in arraba munacibality ,so ineed this book to read only ,and i know about international low . please help me . thanks

my jop is survayor in arraba munacibality ,so ineed this book to read only ,and i know about international low . please help me . thanks

Starts off with some basic principles before going in to more developed mathematical and stochastic models and even includes topics include in the use of constraint equations and blunder detection. Explanations are supported by clear & practical problems. Excellent book for surveyors and photogrammetrist.

It covers the title subjects very well, and also covers related topics (such as blunder detection in horizontal networks) very well.

This is an excellent and relevant book. It is well structured, and the examples are very much practice oriented. However, when I tried to install the included software under Windows 98 and Windows 2000 Prof I failed. Only under Windows 95 it runs!
Did I something wrong or it is just like that!
I would appreciate any helpful comment!