Agent Books

This book is comparable to the other drug information books published by lexi-comp, with similar limitations, but it also has a garnish with added pages devoted to psychiatric meds and notes on drug/disease interactions. It has a wealth of information like other lexi-comp books, but it doesn't have enough information on some important drugs, and some important drugs aren't even listed. I can't recall the drug right now that i looked for and couldn't find, but i was stunned when i couldn't find the simple information on a common drug that wasn't listed at all in this book. This drug was an older one, not one that was left out due to release of the drug after publication.

I am a senior psychiatry resident and have found the Drug Information Handbook for Psychiatry to be an excellent reference for not only psychotropic medicines, but medications in general. Each drug listing has detailed, comprehensive information, which guides the clinician to dosing strategies, side effects, and drug-drug interactions, and more. There is not a drug that I have needed to find information on that is not in this book. I was also surprised to see that it has over the counter drugs, including non-allopathic remedies which often are being used by my patients.

If you thought the first book was crazy, what with all the scary monsters, the destruction of Earth, and the death of the protagonist, you will be in for a shock with this volume. The action, somehow, ratches up a notch. The sci-fi elements stay light and breezey (Spaceships! Rocket Packs! Ray Guns!). There is a little bit more back story filled in. And, unexpectedly, the story takes an emotional turn which invests the reader into the characters themselves and not just the crazy, fun, sci-fi action.

Did I say "crazy" "sci-fi" enough times?

Written by Rick Remender; Illustrated by Jerome Opena. Fear Agent is like one of those old fashioned Space adventures like Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers, except for the fact that our hero, Heath Huston is a foul-mouthed, lecherous, alcoholic who kicks serious alien but. The book even has the look of those old 40's sci-fi pulps with its retro-looking rocket ships and laser guns.

Heath has had to travel back in time to stop the alien race of bubble-brained (literally!) robots known as the Tetaldians from destroying the Earth. He succeeds, but in doing so has upset the fabric of time. He's captured by the Keepers and charged with crimes against the known universe. Heath is belligerent as usual but goes absolutely nuts when he finds out that the Keepers intend to restore the Tetaldian Empire after Heath has worked so hard to destroy them. Heath is given a life sentence but soon after the Keepers have a mysterious change of heart and release him.

Heath now returns to find Earth again ravaged by the Tetaldians but this time finds allies in a group of surviving Fear Agents who have taken refuge on the Moon. Fear Agent is great stuff. Heath seems influenced by Bruce Willis' character from the Die Hard films. No matter how he is beat down he just won't give up. It's action from cover-to-cover but also filled with a good deal of often-bawdy humor. The cinematic visuals of Jerome Opena put a topper on what has been a great series so far. Good Sci-Fi stories are really lacking in comics today and Fear Agent is one of the best.

Reviewed by Tim Janson

"God's Secret Agents" is an interesting narrative covering Catholic priests in Elizabethan England. Alice Hogge draws an excellent portrait of a number of the leading Catholic figures in England during that period and provides a solid description of their lives, deaths and motivation. It's a complex story and to Hogge's credit she is able to provide a clear, if dry, narrative. Two caveats. Anyone looking for a rousing take on the Gunpowder Plot will have to look elsewhere. While the book provides a good background to the Fifth of November, the title is somewhat misleading. The other problem with the book is Hogge tries too hard to compare Catholics in England during the time of Elizabeth I and James I to Muslims in the West today especially with the specter of religiously motivated violence. It's tough to buy her line of thinking (Catholicism was more firmly established in England for centuries-see "The Stripping of the Altars" by Eamon Duffy-then Islam is in the modern West) and she tries too hard to make the comparison. Despite these problems, Hogge has provided a very clear and over all good if not especially gripping account of a complex and important subject.

Much written history is well documented, but dry reading indeed. Hogge's work is well researched, but flows as well as a historical novel, despite the fact that it is pure history. I picked up this book, intending only to browse through it (because of my interest in the Gunpowder Plot) but wound up reading the entire thing, because it is such a good read. Many historians know their material well, but that doesn't mean that they can write . . . . Hogge is not only an accomplished historian, she is an excellent writer as well. I learned a great deal about the religious divides of the period, as well as the fact that the Gunpowder Plot was not an isolated incident, but the outgrowth of more than 40 years of religious conflict in England. If you have any interest in Elizabethan/Jacobean history, this is a "must read."

This is a well written reference book, especially for those in nursing or the other health care professions. Good study guide for students as well.

This text is very useful in explaining pathophysiology of cardiac events, at a cellular level. There are overviews of acute and chronic heart failure, acute MI, and arrhythmias. The conditions are explained in depth and the text is easy to understand. These sections then address the drug therapies, interventions, and cellular activities that resolve the pathologies. It is very helpful to clinical practice and intervention.

Chris Kraus and Sylvere Lotringer have complied an interesting, diverse and brilliant array of writings from the
last 25 years. "To the Memory of an era (1974-2002)" is the
dedication of the book that covers every concevible idea about different views of the cutlure we happen to live in, construct and deconstruct. Hatred of Capitalism is stimulating, thought provoking and subversive in its multitude of ways artists; writers; thinkers; philsophers talk about their lives, bodies and thoughts.....This is a stimulating must read...

As an avid reader of numerous books published by Semiotext[e] I found this anthology to be an excellent sampling of essays and short-stories. There are a few pieces included which are pointless--some shortstories and interviews--but there are enough gems to make this book worthwhile.

The selling point for me was the two entries by Ulrike Meinhof (of the Baader-Meinhof Gang, RAF) entitled "Armed Anti-Imperialist Struggle". I've always been interested in the Red Army Faction (which, for some reason, other authors in this anthology call the "Red Army Fraction") so I was excited to read Meinhof's apologetics. Some of the Deleuze and Guattari entries were worth the purchase as well.

John was an icon of the industry and a very down to earth fellow. The book is an easy read with some real gems, but can be a little verbose at times.

As an insurance professional I am disappointed at the lack of insurance industry specific material available. Mr. Savage is right up there with Ben Feldman and Jack and Garry Kinder in the insurance industry. Mr. Savage encourages simplicity in his presentations rather than the complicated 45 min - one hour sessions as taught by most major insurance companies. I find his material a great read, full of insight and information. His other books, Savage on Selling and It's Getting Easier" are also highly recommended. I am still looking for a copy of "The Easy Sale" if anyone finds one less than $$$ for the paperback.

Thieves Jerry Lang and Gloria Pavlich are doing one last caper before retiring. They are to steal a five million dollar painting "Self Portrait" by Isaac Leviathan from a private collector; then they will give it to their fence Albanian expatriate Hanif "Mittens" Gallega who will sell it. They succeed in taking the painting, but when they get to their hotel, thugs greet them. In the melee that follows, Jerry shoots one of his assailants, but watches his beloved leading lady vanish. He later learns he killed a cop and is convicted of such.

In prison, Jerry escapes four assassination attempts. His last one has him sharing a hospital room with a corpse that he uses to escape his incarceration. He is coming for Hanif while remaining unaware someone has assigned Delta Force Domestic Major Cliff Hartung to insure he does not get close to one of his agency's "toys". At the Casbah, Jerry meets college student dancer Letitia Hudson, who gets caught in the middle of a local war.

This exhilarating crime caper is not for the cozy crowd as Jerry, feeling guilt for accepting one last job over Gloria's objection, proves quite efficient in dispatching enemies in a violent manner. The story line is fast-paced as Letitia becomes Jerry's new LEADING LADY and Hanif his crash dummy. Although how Hartung and his two deadly soldiers fit into the plot comes very late with quite a revelation, readers will appreciate Heywood Gould's wild Noir.

Harriet Klausner

So here comes Heywood Gould again with another exciting tale. Gould, author of "Fort Apache, The Bronx," "Boys From Brazil" and other novels and screenplays, now gives us a super-charged story full of bad guys, a lot badder guys (among them rogue Feds, Russian and Albanian mobsters and locally-grown mafiosi) and a not-that-bad bad guy you can come to love and root for. Jerry Lang, by name.

Lang, a thief practically from when he was a toddler, usually steals on demand. That is, he gets an assignment from a fence, mentor, whatever, to rip off a bit of property that someone else covets.
This time it's a valuable piece of art, and he and his "leading lady" - Gloria, a very lovely, erotic head-turner whose role is to distract any man who might get in Jerry's way - head off to work.

But things go wrong and Gloria vanishes and most certainly has ended up buried in the Bronx or some other godawful place and Jerry himself almost gets the final push to Hell but ends up in jail for a couple of years. (I'm really not giving much away: Gloria is disposed of in the first few pages.) From this point on Jerry lives with one major motivation.

Revenge.

Revenge drives the tale, and it's like watching a Nascar event. Fast, dangerous, sexy.

And this is a pretty sexy book. Chapter One introduces us to Jerry's leading lady with a warm, tender and glowing post-coital description of her body, her near-perfect bone structure and just how Jerry feels about her: He truly loves her. It's afternoon, with the theft of the artwork planned for that night, and they've made love mostly because if the caper turns bad he wants his last memories to be of Gloria's essence.

The dialogue is smart and droll; nothing flashy, but it will instantly hook you. Four pages in, just after Jerry and Gloria have made love, he explains the final details of their upcoming heist that he's been asked to pull off by a fence/scammer/rotter from whom he's long taken assignments. He discusses their place in the pecking order of who gets paid how much and why the top guy gets the most and why Jerry and Gloria, the "heavy lifters," get the least. "How do we go up to the next level?" Gloria asks. Jerry's wry response: "Get different parents."

A touch fatalistic, and yes, Jerry grew up in a rough and tumble crummy neighborhood, but he makes no excuses and no apologies. Jerry is not exactly a good guy but the guys he is up against are so much worse. Of course, the score goes south and the rest of this post-modern noir detective novel is a cat and mouse tale of revenge and counter-revenge peopled by some pretty interesting characters. Gould is able to make a character come alive with just a few words. For example, his description of a big, beefy bouncer: "He had three chins, only two of them shaved."


The cast of characters include a sly and crafty mafia boss surrounded by mostly loyal but dim goons and a coked-up lieutenant impatient to step up and depose the boss so he can sit at a table in an Italian restaurant with the other Dons in $4,000 silk suits. The scariest villain and Jerry's most formidable foe is the corrupt and mega nouveau-riche Russian oligarch who has the goods on some important American politicos and can therefore command and receive protection and favors from secret U.S. Army operatives working under the auspices of a shadow government agency.

But the story is really about the Leading Lady, beginning with Gloria and ending with her replacement, Letitia Hastings: actress/lap dancer/actress but, finally, Jerry's true Leading Lady. She's beautiful and smart and talented, but most important she steps up and prevails. It's a pretty dark novel - definitely noirish - illuminated by the faint glimmer of Letitia's moral center.

Murders, double-crosses and more, straight to an explosive and chilling ending.
[...]

The author is a great storyteller and provides an inordinate amount of details concerning the rougue CIA that is being tracked. It really is amazing how Mr. Maas was able to pull this all together in a great read like this.

Maas is a good story teller and he keeps your attention the whole while as he takes you from the beginnings of Wilson's thirst for money at age 8 to his acquisition of prime property in the Washington, D.C. area as a result of his secretive and illegal dealings with foreign powers. Though CIA senior officers were members along with him in phoney corporations he set up to conduct his "import-export" business), any official connection to the CIA while all this was going on isn't clear. Yet the prospect of any CIA connection to Wilson's shipments of thousands of pounds of C-4 (plastique) to Libya and Mohamar Kaddafi is, indeed, very troubling. As the author pointed out, when jets started falling out of the air (Lockerbie) and discos blowing up (Rome), you couldn't help but feel that if not for Wilson, many of these things might not ever have happened. It seems that whereever 20th century evil was to be found, the CIA was either right there, or not too far behind.

This doesn't give you any great insights into the inner workings of the world of spooks, but it is certainly an interesting read and does afford at times a look at how the Justice and State Departments work--or fail to work.

Alison Baverstock's latest is as practical and down-to-earth a guide to marketing books as you'll find anywhere. Unlike many so-called marketing "experts" she speaks from experience and has no truck with fancy-pants jargon and theory. This is just plain, simple, excellent advice from start to finish. If you're a published author you'll already know that you need to do everything you can to support your title. And if you're hoping to get published, then you would be wise to read this book and be prepared to give your little treasure every help.

There is also a very valuable chapter on self-publishing - when it's worth considering, how to go about it and above all how to avoid the pitfalls.

This book is aimed at helping authors with their book promotion.

Starting with the basics - What Is Marketing - the author guides you through the publishing maze.

You'll learn how to get noticed, what you can do as an author to promote your book, the steps you may take when you self-publish, getting publicity, speaking at author events, and a host of other book marketing and promotion tips.

Useful resources are also included to give you a good start.

This is a fascinating review of a very interesting life. The "greatest generation" didn't always lead to such incredible success, but in this case Rivkin took his GI money to law school, a one person practice and built it into a big law firm despite incredible odds, some real setbacks and a lot of determination. The inside story on the Agent Orange case was a real eye opener even for another lawyer but would be just as interesting (maybe even more so) for lay people. Highly recommend.

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I found Leonard Rivkin's book, "May It Please The Court!" to be very entertaining, interesting, and very easy to read. My trepidation of picking up and reading a book written by a lawyer were totally unfounded.

I expected to be bored by legal mumbo jumbo and boring statistics. It was quite a pleasant surprise to find the book reading more like a novel. My principle purpose was to read the chapters on Agent Orange. Mr.Rivkin's accounting of the "behind the scenes" activities and proceedings truly opened my eyes to many obscure, but highly pertinent details and facts. I have come away with a new attitude toward the subject.

My assessment of this book, and Mr. Rivkin's ability to shed light on Agent Orange where it has not been shown before, gets my "two thumbs up".

Capt Patrick McCrary