MR

This was a great book for the Mr.T fanatic like myself, I liked it because it allowed me to establish a grester knowedge of one of my life time heros. The book was very descriptive and interesting, however I found it was somewhat one sided and lacked some of the backgroud I was eager to discover.

I found this book compelling and insightful. It is loaded with more than just the facts. It includes a very basic analysis from an historians perspective on the people and events, both big and small, which shaped the end of the war and the post-war world. President Truman was keenly aware of the many influences on such monumental events as the Potsdam Conference, the diplomacy required to confront the problems of a devastated Europe, the competing views among his cabinet members, the French priority for dominating Indochina, and the multi-faceted dilemma posed by new discoveries in atomic power. Moskin is able to deftly capture the complexities of so many intersecting landmarks of history and tell the story in a way that brings the reader along through the uncertainties of the end of WWII.

Mr. Twigg's Mistake is by Robert Lawson, the author of the Newbery award winning Rabbit Hill. This is a fantastic story, about a little boy in Connecticut who finds a tiny baby mole and feeds it from a box of breakfast cereal. This virtually non-nutritious cereal, hyped by its manufacturers in a most obnoxious manner, is described by Lawson in a way that will make even a jaded 21st Century consumer smile. Unbeknownst to everyone, the box of cereal fed to the mole is filled with pure Vitamin X. The Vitamin X should have been distributed in thousands of cereal boxes, but due to the mistake of Mr. Twigg, an employee at the cereal company, it all ends up in our hero's box.

What happens to the little mole as he eats the cereal, day after day, is the heart of this delightful story. The artwork is as funny as this preposterous story. You'll enjoy it (although watch out for some of the dated nonsense that sometimes lurks when the black maid, Pearlacy, is present).

I believe this book is out of print, but if you can find it, it's a great tall tale to read with your kids!

John Dos Passos wrote this history of World War One in 1962, and much of it appeals to my nostalgia for the great ideas that were expected to make the world safe for democracy in that century. Dos Passos is sensitive to the progressive issues which were supposed to make politics meaningful to ordinary participants in the process, but the end of the book runs into prohibition, the moralistic attempt to legislate the end of all evils, which produced an economy of booming illegality and immorality on a scale that this book does not attempt to encompass. Wilson's great wish, when the Treaty of Versailles was placed before the Senate, was, as Wilson put it, "The united power of free nations must put a stop to aggression and the world must be given peace . . . It has come about by no plan of our conceiving but by the hand of God who has led us into this way." (p. 483). This is at the beginning of Chapter 24, which is called "The Supremest Tragedy."

President Wilson, somewhere in this book, is asking the people who are talking to him for a continuation of his ideal: please find an American president who can think of the entire world to come after him. He did not mean that American corporations need to acquire the right to see the whole world as booty in their quest for profits. Personal details on how Wilson actually perceived the world include the Wilsons preparing for "the final longdrawn ceremonies of a dinner at the Elysee Palace:" (p. 482):

(When the invitation came from Poincare Wilson flew off the handle. He vowed he would not sit down at table with the swine. It was as if all the resentment of the frustrations suffered in Paris were focussed into hatred of the stubby little President of the French Republic. It was all House and Henry White could do to convince him that not to accept the invitation would cause an international incident. Perhaps Mrs. Wilson had already clinched the matter by getting a special dress for the occasion designed for her by Worth.) (p. 482).

One of the major characters in this book is Teddy Roosevelt, who became President in September 1901 after President William McKinley was shot in Buffalo, in the Temple of Music of the Pan-American Exposition. The assassin declared that he had been inspired by "Emma Goldman who was inciting working people in Chicago to bring about the triumph of right and justice through anarchy. . . . The Chicago police arrested Emma Goldman but the judge turned her loose for lack of evidence. Editorials demanded the deportation of foreign anarchists." (p. 4). This book keeps bringing in T.R. as representative of the politics of these times until he was "too weak to talk." (p. 432). "By Christmas T.R. was thought sufficiently recovered to go home. Two weeks later he died, without a murmur, in his sleep in his own bed at Sagamore Hill." (p. 433). There was a Congressional election campaign shortly before the armistice is 1918. Late in July T.R.'s youngest son, Quentin, "had been shot down fighting a formation of German planes. At first he was listed as missing. Then the Germans reported his death and burial with full honors behind their lines near Cambrai." (p. 432). T.R. made a campaign appearance "in Carnegie Hall, flashing his eyeglasses and clacking his teeth and waving his arms with his legendary zest" (p. 432):

On October 26, before a packed and cheering audience, he hauled the President over the coals for his call for a Democratic Congress. He denounced the arrogance of Wilson's conduct of the war. With his customary combination of wild inflammatory statements and commonsense reasoning he tore the Fourteen points to pieces, crying out that they were shams and would not bring the peace with justice the American people wanted. (T.R. hadn't been able to get Wilson's war away from him: maybe he could carry off the peace.) (p. 432).
Photograph number 25 from 1916 shows a campaign truck with a sign on the front that says:

VOTE FOR WILSON
PEACE WITH HONOR
PROSPERITY
PREPAREDNESS

On the side: WHO KEEPS US OUT OF WAR?

The captions on the photos are brief, as skimpy as subtitles in a silent movie. By 1916, "on the western front the British had lost half a million men and the French nearer two million, with the gain of only an occasional thousand yards of shellpocked mud on the Flanders front." (p. 156). Wilson's Secretary of War, Lindley Garrison, and Assistant Secretary Breckenridge resigned because they favored universal military service while Wilson still thought "that the Administration could not move faster towards military preparation than the people moved." (p. 160). Eight soldiers and eight civilians were killed in Columbus, New Mexico by several hundred men led by Villa on March 9, which was about the size of any problem an American Secretary of War ought to be able to handle, and "Wilson picked a man after his own heart. Newton D. Baker was a progressive reformer and a Wilson man from long before Baltimore. He was reputed to be an ardent pacifist." (p. 161).

There are some exciting descriptions of the war in France and the confusing situation in Russia at that time. Details like "The growth of war exports, without compensating imports, tended to fill the railroad yards in the east with empty freightcars waiting for a westerly load. On top of that the prolonged cold spell froze up locomotives, trapped barges on rivers and canals and increased the nationwide demand for coal and petroleum products." (p. 297). People couldn't use the internet to plan their trips, back then.

Mr. Wonderful (Loveswept, No 548)
by Linda Jenkins

Sam- He was the Perfect Combination of Cowboy and Cool...He was furious when Trina Bartok showed up at his Ozarks resort, convinced the gorgeous brunette was just the latest candidate in his father's endless matchmaking, but it took Sam Wonder only moments to decide that he had to persuade her to stay! Trina felt the sensual curretn crackle between them, sensed the power in this breathtakingly masculine man- and yielded her heart.

Hot Midnights and Tangled Sheets

With wicked satisfaction Sam teased and tantalized his city girl, claiming her with wanton kisses that burned hotter than the dultry southern nights. As much as she wanted to share Sam's dreams , Tina had to make him see that she had promises to keep before she could be his alone. Letting her go nearly drove him wild, but once he'd earned her trust, would she see that their happiness was worth fighting for?

The story of Mr. Mike Yee and his job as an auto mechanic is interesting, but it could use more pictures. I'd recommend it to children in the transition period learning to read.

This isn't a Maud Silver novel, although it's set in the same universe - their common characters are in the realm of spy vs. spy (Colonel Garratt and his merry men) rather than ordinary crime. _Mr. Zero_ was first published in 1938, just after that long gap in the Silver series between _Grey Mask_ (1928, an unsatisfactory effort) and the 2nd Silver novel (1937). By this time, Wentworth's command of her craft had reached the standard that held through the rest of her life.

When they were at school together, Gay Hardwicke was always the one tapped to pull her cousin Sylvia out of a jam, and now that Sylvia is married to Sir Francis Colesborough, things haven't changed; Sylvia's sister Marcia still passes the buck to Gay, although Sylvia hasn't even written to Gay since her marriage, let alone offered any payback. However, Sylvia has never had brains (when she plays cards, the question isn't whether she lost, but how much) or character (she frankly married Sir Francis for his money, although she herself wouldn't put it so brutally), so nobody expects more of her than a pretty face and a pleasant manner.

This time it's serious; Sylvia lost 500 pounds at cards after her husband asked her to quit gambling, and she had neither the ability to pay nor the nerve to confess and ask him for help. Worse, she very, very stupidly answered an anonymous phone call, then stole some state papers in exchange for 200 pounds, to put it baldly. Now the mysterious Mr. Zero is coming back for more. (Sylvia is a double-dyed idiot, but a believable character; she's driven by a horror of returning to the genteel poverty in which she grew up.)

Gay, working on what to do without giving Sylvia away, tries to wangle hypothetical advice out of her escort, Algy Somers - and when one of *his* papers goes missing, he remembers being asked about blackmail. Joining forces, they begin attempting to peel back Mr. Zero's camouflage, but their efforts backfire spectacularly when a dead body turns up with Algy as a prime suspect. As with the theft, only Algy seems to have had an opportunity; my congratulations if you work out what happened.

Writing with the advantage of post-war perspective, Jenkins gives an insightful account of the battles surrounding the Parliament Act and the move towards the supremacy of the House of Commons. The work has aged well over the decades, with Jenkin's analysis as fresh as when he wrote it. Indeed, a mid-20th century perspective, particular from one of Jenkin's intellectual stature, is helpful - far enough from the events themselves to be impartial, without being caught up in the latest changes and machinations with regard to the upper house.

Jenkins sets out the stragies and motivations of the different sides clearly, and in as impartial a manner as can be expected (given that a modern perspective is highly unlikely to sympathise with those peers seeking to preserve the status quo). There is little "demonising" of the conservative factions, and the book is an informed and intelligent insight into a critical turning point for the British constitution.

My daughter, now known around town as "Mr. Frumble," absolutely adores this book! She reads it all of the time, while eating, on the potty, in bed and watching TV. In fact, I'm am purchasing ANOTHER one of these books because our copy was purchased second hand at a thrift shop and the pages are tearing apart due to excessive reading.

I really hate this book, but only because I'm am SO TIRED of reading it! It IS really long and can take 20 minutes to read...but of course, each minute is totally worth it! From an educational standpoint, though...the book is just FULL of pictures to look at, and it's pages are thick and large, perfect for my three year old's fingers. She loves to tell me about what Mr. Frumble is doing in each picture, and she adores Mr. Frumble's pickle car.

I remember Richard Scary books from my childhood days, and I have to say, I think my daughter will be remembering them as well. I am very happy with this book and would recommend this book and this author to anyone who asks.

This charming English tale follows the follies of Mr. Magnolia who "has only one boot." Cartoon style, water-colored line drawings explore the various rhyming friends of this quirky musician. My two year old daugter chimes in with delight as we encounter sisters who play the flute, a frog and a newt, a dinosaur...what a brute. While this book seems like nothing to a parent, children request to hear it over and over again. It's an instant favorite and a non-overpowering introduction to ryhmes.