MR

This is a charming personal take on what most people think of as a charmless subject ' fungi. The author teaches in a university botany department. These days it's clear that fungi are actually more closely related to animals than they are to plants, but they have always been thought of as a vampirish offshoot of the plant kingdom, so to botany departments they go.

This is not really a primer on fungal structure and function, but it does manage to quickly give us a feel for the basics. Fortunately, it is possible to get to the fungal forefront, as it were, relatively quickly. These are fairly simple creatures, as creatures go. (Of course, the simplest cell is complex beyond our most complicated machines.) They are more colonies (or rugged individuals) than multicellular beasts, and most of the action centers in figuring out how they reproduce, and the cocktail of chemicals they use to go where no fungus has gone before.

In this book the author talks about a range of topics, such as human and animal fungal pathogens, how the different kinds of fungi make a living, fungal 'sex', poisonous mushrooms, and so on. But he also profiles some of the more eccentric (and productive) researchers in the field. In the course of the book, in many ways, he profiles himself as well. Our author turns out to be a thoroughly engaging sort, humanistic and unpretentious. You'll like him, and learn something about mushrooms, molds, and mycologists.

Wow! I never thought I'd enjoy a book on fungi this much. Parts of it are not a particularly easy read, but the information it contains is mind blowing. Forget terrorists; if fungi and mold decided to take out the human race it would be no contest.

We tend not to think of fungi as being a very important part of our world. We might occasionally have mushrooms on pizza or steak, we might notice fungi growing on an old tree or on something that has been kept too long in the refrigerator, but that's about it. In fact fungi has a vast influence in our world, from breaking down fallen trees in the forest to making our bread and beer. Have you ever wondered how dandruff was formed? Guess what plays a major role.

The writer, who presents often bizarre information with wit and style, reminds us that one fungi, covering 2000 acres in Oregon, is thought to be the world's largest living organism. Even the more prosaic information comes to life in this book - I enjoyed his description of the speed a spore is catapulted from a gill.

Some of the most interesting sections are the mini-biographies of scientists who have researched fungi and added to our knowledge of them. There was Buller, for instance, a professor whose students called him 'Uncle Reggie', and Ingold who found a totally unknown kind of fungus in water. There are now over 300 species of Ingoldian fungi known and in fall you can find about 20,000 of them in every litre of brook water.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in the natural world. You'll need to expend a little effort reading the more scholarly parts of it, but you'll learn some amazing stuff about fungi, mold and the scientists who discovered them.

I myself enjoyed the book. The book makes for easy reading and it gives you a deeper look at Levi, but not too deep that it will start to bore a child. I believe it would be perfect for a student in the 4th grade because it ties into the Gold Rush era, which they are studying.

It was a fun, exciting short storybook. We laugh and talked about interesting parts of his life and what he went through to get here. We were studying immigration at the time of our reading. Very good book. I encourage you to read it!!

The recipes in this book were like a flashback in time to the days of TV dinners on TV tables in front of the TV set. But in a good way, and with real food instead of foil trays. Fun. I really enjoyed reading it!

This cookbook is different from any others that I've ever seen. The theme is the 50's, 60's and 70's, and the foods are ones that families would have eaten in front of the TV together. Many of the recipes are adaptations of foods that were found in the old-style TV dinners. Reading this cookbook really took me back in time!

WARNING: For the most part, these are not diet recipes!

This journal is lightweight and has both slim-ruled lined pages for writing and blank pages for drawing and doodling. Jotto's little characters wave and smile from the top margins of every page. The slightly goofy appearance of the little book helps to keep things light and fun, especially when journals can take themselves SO seriously with the advent of tomes in the making for every occasion, be it travel, gardening, being a woman, dreaming, loving cats, riding a harley? One caveat to this journal is its flimsiness compared to hardbound journals. The little stamp decal on the cover flaked off during its rigourous stay in my purse. Still, it can easily be glued back on. Also, pressing down the pages to write on them exposes the back spine, which is bound with a hardy vinyl-leathery material, but could lead to page loss if not carefully kept. This didn't keep me from buying another one to start once my current journal runs out. The Mr. Lunch Journal just has the lovliest weight in the hand and fits so easily into any bag.

The Mr. Lunch Highly Professional Address Book would make a wonderful gift for a child learning to write letters or anybody who likes offbeat, silly drawings. J. Otto Siebold's wonderful, lovable illustrations of Mr. Lunch and friends are on every page of the book and it even comes with a sheet of stickers. If you buy this address book, it'll make you smile every time you use it.

This book presents a rather objective view to a profoundly painful period in a service man's life. It is broad in scope. It covers a wide array of emotions. It starts as an adventure , hope barely alive.As it suffers through the senseless horror,death and pain of war and imprisonment it become gray and somber. The author wrote it over 50 years ago in an easy yet compelling style and tone. It is ejoyable and informative , an good addition to any library especially one dealing with WWII naval history in the Pacific Area.

An informative and educational work. The war can best be felt through the eyes of those who participated in it, from the time before the U.S. entered through the pre-pacific war days to Pearl Harbor and beyond. An interesting cast of characters on the ship (the pope) and in the POW camps. I was surprised at how badly the Dutch acted and, at times, how well the Japanese behaved. One of the best books I have read in a long time.

The importance of Jack Kirby to comics can never be overstated. The man redefined the medium's look and atmosphere. His high-energy renderings, amazing concepts, and "Kirby-tech" have influenced the style of comic artists for all time, whether they know it or not.

TwoMorrows Publishing releases issues of "The Jack Kirby Collector" on a somewhat regular basis. If you can stand the wait, you can eventually pick up the trade-bound format containing several issues. The trade edition is a bit smaller (dimension-wise), but it's also much easier to store and more of a bargain. With these trades, you get page after page of Kirby art, as well as articles, and interviews with those who either knew him or were influenced by him. The art isn't just pin-ups and portraits - it also includes reproductions of entire pages of comic art (some as pencil roughs), sketches, and unfinished projects for comics and animation. It can get a bit tedious at times, but there's always at least 2 interesting articles per issue. It's certainly a publication made more for the fan, but shouldn't everyone be a fan of ol' Jack? Even if you're not, I think this series does a great job of explaining to the casual reader just what made Kirby's art, vision, and storytelling so special.

Mr. Monster...what can I say? I somehow stumbled onto this book during an Amazon shopping binge and WOW-Fan-freakin-tastic. I had never heard of Mr. Monster or Michael T. Gilbert before and it made me a fan. Altough it's not a serious book, being a sort of respectful parody of old pulp horror books and superheroes. This volume re-prints the "lost" books and those found in old anthology volumes. It doesn't matter what order you get the 2 "Forbidden Knowledge" books in, but just for the record, Volume 0 (this book) is actually the second book, Volume 1 re-printing Mr. Monster #'s 1-5. But this volume is a great introduction to Mr. Monster and his world. And what great extra stuff. The author put in a TON of extra background info revealing things about this character, his work, and the comics industry in general. If you like pulp books and their concepts but think they can be a bit silly, Mr. Monster is for you. It doesn't take itself seriously and is genuinely funny. Plus the art is great, I couldn't even begin to mention the huge names that have worked with/on Mr. Monster in this volume. Great introduction to a very fun and funny character. Made me a HUGE fan.

I have been weight training on and off, for the last 12 years and have come across many books on the subject but this is one of my favourites. This book by Samir presents a good source of information and working-out routines on body-building for all; from the beginner to the advanced body-builder. I expecially like its simple layout and a good range of illustrated exercises.

This is one of the best books on weights training/ muscle building. Samir explains everything from muscle tissue, routines, diet to exercises. If followed the results can be truly rewarding. Five stars all the way. Its a pity that this book is not easily available in the book stores.

Robert A. Taft of Ohio was a bastion of the Republican Party. Son of President William Howard Taft and elected to the U.S. Senate in 1938, he was "Mr. Republican" in that venerable chamber for fifteen years till his untimely death in 1953. Widely respected as a legislative tactician, he developed a fiercely loyal public following. He was a major contender for the Republican nomination for the presidency of the United States in not one but four presidential campaigns: 1940, 1944, 1948, and 1952. In all four contests, however, he was ultimately passed over in favor of the likes of Wendell Willkie, John Bricker, Thomas Dewey, and Dwight Eisenhower. One would like to say that these successive defeats are merely disappointments in an otherwise brilliant career, but in fairness they do raise the question of whether Taft was "Mr. Electible Republican."

James T. Patterson approached the Taft family in 1968 and became the first biographer to receive full access to the late Senator's archives. This 1972 biography thus enjoys preeminence among the several works about the Ohio Senator. Patterson's intent was a readable biography; he admits in his preface that the sheer amount of documentation [1400 boxes] and the closeness in time to the subject's life [then less than twenty years] made a definitive treatment impossible. All the same, Patterson does not shy away from a treatment of Taft's character and motivations, his place in the American political spectrum, or the painful details of his various presidential campaigns.

The fact that no major treatment of Taft's life has appeared in the three decades since this work is an indicator of several things. First, Patterson did in fact achieve a reasonably thorough presentation of the Taft persona. And secondly, Taft's predictability and innate conservatism as portrayed by Patterson have led historians to suspect that there would be few surprises in those 1400 cartons. Patterson is kind to his subject and admires him to a point, but he is compelled to present him as essentially colorless, efficient, predictable, self-assured, opinionated, and inflexible. These are wonderful qualities for a tax lawyer or a Midwestern state legislator, and indeed Taft was both of these over his career. It is fair to say that as Taft's ambition grew, his personality became more of a liability. Patterson does not run from this hard truth.

Taft inherited much of his personal philosophy from his father, but the mentor who seems to have energized him toward public service was Herbert Hoover. Young Bob Taft served under Hoover during the latter's extraordinary tenure as emergency relief coordinator in Europe at the close of World War I. His tutelage under Hoover impressed Taft in several ways: he returned home convinced of the importance of American agriculture, the potency of effective business management, and the necessity of disengaging from European politics. He was thus a poster boy for Ohio political life, and Republican bosses such as Cincinnati's Rudolph Hynicka did not object to this suburban Brahmin making his way to Columbus and the state legislature. Ohio-already in the throes of depression in the 1920's--featured bitter political battles between big city and agricultural interests over matters of modernization, public relief, taxation and debt reduction. Taft survived not on charisma but on competence. He literally wore down opponents with floods of statistics until they cried uncle.

As a politician seeking higher office, Taft had few "laughers" along the way, particularly in his U.S. Senate campaigns. Only his 1950 election was won comfortably. Part of the difficulty was the deep electoral split between city and country in Ohio. Another problem was Franklin Roosevelt who, as Patterson observed, caused nearly all Republicans to run on a platform of "the TVA is a wonderful thing and we'll see that it never happens again." Taft himself was an energetic albeit wooden campaigner who, like Dewey, probably lost votes on the stump with an awkwardness that was more offensive than loveable. Patterson himself was mystified at the mediocrity of the men who managed Taft's campaigns. While Eisenhower enjoyed the counsels of Herbert Brownell and Sherman Adams, Taft entrusted campaign responsibility to political hacks with whom he felt comfortable. In the final analysis, Taft depended primarily upon his own judgment in the planning of election strategy, and as often as not he was wrong. Nor did he appear to learn much from successive primary failures.

As a U.S. Senator Taft established himself as the opposition leader against New Deal philosophy. While his Senate record is impressive-he was co-sponsor of the controversial Taft-Hartley labor legislation, for example-he never quite understood that the anti-Roosevelt vote, as passionate as it was, would not translate into enough party delegate strength to carry a nomination. His opposition within the party was pragmatic as much as doctrinal. Willkie, Dewey, and Eisenhower were nominated, in the final analysis, because they were more attractive candidates. For the consummate party loyalist Taft, this pragmatism was hard to swallow. He blamed East Coast Republicans [read Dewey], internationalists, and the newspapers for promulgating the idea that he was unelectable. The nomination of Eisenhower in particular enraged him and his followers, though even Patterson admits that Taft would probably have failed as a national candidate.

Patterson does not shortchange Taft's personal life, though even here one senses a bit of impoverishment. Taft was neither religious nor philanthropic. He was happily married to Martha Bowers until a stroke dramatically altered her personality, leaving her cantankerous and enfeebled. Interestingly, Taft invited the divorcee Darrah Wunder, a veteran party worker, into his home, ostensibly to care for his wife. Mrs. Wunder soon replaced Martha as Taft's only real political confidante and she created for him an oasis of comfort and support during his last crushing defeat at the 1952 Republican Presidential Convention. Always an isolationist at heart, Taft distrusted President Eisenhower's foreign policy as Senate Majority Leader. Perhaps mercifully, Taft's 1953 death to cancer saved him from eventual exile to the fringes of his beloved party.

Simply put, this is the best biography of an American political figure that I have ever read. The book focuses on the life and political career of Robert A Taft (1889-1953) of Ohio, one of the most powerful - and unluckiest - men ever to sit in the US Senate. In the late 1950's a Senate committee named Taft as one of the five greatest Senators in history. The son of a US President, Taft, like John F. Kennedy and George W. Bush, was the product of a great political family. In the 1920's Taft got married (to the daughter of a close friend of his father's), served in the Ohio state legislature, and appeared to have a great political future. But then the Great Depression struck, and Taft, a fiercely loyal Republican and a diehard pro-business conservative, fell on hard times. Patterson does a wonderful job of describing Taft's ultimate tragedy - that while America changed dramatically during the Depression (from conservative Republican to liberal Democrat, from belief in small government to belief in the welfare state) Taft refused to alter his pre-depression views, and thus was prevented from ever winning the Presidency. In 1938 Taft was elected to the US Senate, where he soon became the leader of the conservative wing of the Republican Party. He was re-elected in 1944 and 1950 and became one of the most respected, powerful, and controversial politicians in the nation. Franklin D. Roosevelt and many liberal Democrats AND liberal Republicans (especially New York Gov. Thomas E. Dewey, with whom Taft waged a bitter 12-year war for control of the GOP) despised and ridiculed him, yet many conservative Republicans and even some Democrats (including, privately, Harry S. Truman) came to respect and admire him for his political courage, high intelligence, and blunt honesty - even when it hurt him with the voters. In 1940 and 1948 Taft was a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination but lost to liberal Republicans from New York. In 1952 he made his last, strongest try for the Presidency, but narrowly lost to Dwight Eisenhower at a bitterly divided Republican convention. He died suddenly from cancer in 1953. Thanks to the skills of James Patterson, the reader is given an in-depth, well-rounded view of this forgotten political giant. The writing is both eloquent and detailed, and Patterson does not forget to include the human face behind an often cool and private man. Patterson is also admirably objective - he offers praise or criticism of Taft when he feels it is necessary, but he never allows his own views to get in the way of his story. Whether you're interested in high political drama that no novel can match, or simply looking at the human face behind a major politician who was often considered to be "cold" and "colorless" in his day, "Mr. Republican" is as good as it gets...this book should provide any reader with many days of reading pleasure.

As a child this was one of my favorite books. Later on, it became very important to me as a therapy aid for my speech therapy. The therapist also fell in love with the book and I offered her my copy. Now that I have a child of my own, the story is still as wonderful now as it was then!

My son loves this book. I pulled it out of some of my old books and read it to him for the first time when he was about 3. We had to read it every night for at least a week. At first I struggled with all the esses but now I can read it smoothly. It has such a happy ending and Mr. Shaw is such a determined man.

This is a truly moving and brilliant book about a man who discovers the creative impulse late in life. Unlike Naipaul's customery set of third-world characters, this one is an Englishman, which sets this book apart. We witness a novelist with great imaginative power, a first-rate talent.

Stone discovers he can create, with all its joys, its trials, and disappointments. He also finds love of a sort, which he struggles to pursue and maintain.

Warmly recommended.

Many of V.S.Naipaul's books are set in his native Trinidad, or other Caribbean islands, or locales such as Africa. This novel, however, is entirely set in England and all the characters are English. Richard Stone, a sixty-two year old bachelor is a librarian in a corporation who is approaching retirement. Unnerved at the prospect, he suddenly decides to marry. He also draws up a plan whereby his company can help its retired employees who are now pensioners, many living in penury. The plan, against all odds, becomes a success but Naipaul shows how victories can be bittersweet. A charming book, and a real treat to read even just for the style and the use of language.