Street

The time is 1940-41 and the focus of this engaging and engrossing yarn is Nestor Burma, captured and interned by the Germans -- along with most of the rest of the French army -- following the blitzkrieg and the government's capitulation. Before the war, Burma ran the Fiat Lux detective agency in Paris and his investigative skills are needed again in finding the origin and identity of an amnesiac fellow prisoner -- and also the killer of an old friend and associate murdered before his eyes at a railway station. The cast of characters includes journalists, cops, lawyers, and crooks -- both big-time and two-bit. The German occupation is always in the background but it's not really part of the story. Rather, this is a classic "noir" murder mystery, complete with a wrap-up scene where everyone involved comes together to hear the detective explain the clues and identify the murderer. This is a sort of minimalist approach to the graphic novel form: Straight story-telling in black-and-white, each bit in its own rectangular frame, emphasis on the words rather than artsy effects. And it's an excellent piece of work.

this masterpiece of european comics, based on the leo malet detective novel, is impeccably drawn by Jacques Tardi and beautifully translated by Jean-March and Randy Lofficier. For mature readers due to a few questionable panels of nudity and contextual violence, it takes the reader into the heart of WWII occupied France with style, tension and detail. A not-to-be-missed graphic novel mystery.
--from ibooks, the publisher

Over the past few years, I have read several "cop books;" some good, and some not so good. I have been a cop now for almost three years, and I can honestly say that "Blue Truth" is the best book I have read regarding law enforcement...period. McDonald truly captures the emotions, fears, and predjudice that every cop, whether conservative or liberal, faces each day. Being a cop is not an easy job sometimes, and McDonald captures this wonderfully. Thankyou, McDonald.

i a ttended the broward police academy class 190 and cherokee was my report writting instructor and he was one hell of an instructor. he had told the class about his life on the beat and the things that he had been through during his carrer. well i purcased the book and read it and after that i have the upmost respect for mr. mcdonald. he opened my eyes to alot of things that could and can go wrong with your family life and the stress of the job pertaining to lawenforcement.

The boy who cried wolf is about a boy who cries wolf when a wolfs not there, and everyone comes to help but they find no wolf. They worned him that next time they wont come if he is lying but he didnt care. the next time no one came. this book teacheds children no t to joke about serious things. This book is for children from age 2 to 5.

A lesson in telling the truth will be learned from this book. A young boy watching sheep for a living has a wicked idea to play a joke on the village people. He thought it was so funny the first time, he decided to do it again. It was funny to him, but not to the village people. The third time backfires big time. Ylu will see why no one believes a liar . . . even when he tells the truth. Moral lesson. Told in rebus.

Take power back from executives, admonishes this shareholder advocate. Should be a great read for investors who want to be active without trading all the time.

Most investment books are written for speculators. They focus on a strategy for picking stocks though market timing, technical analysis, finding value stocks that are under priced, or growth stocks with good prospects. The problem is that over time, none of these methodologies achieve returns superior to the market average. As more and more investors realize this, they have chosen to invest in index funds. Yet, the more we do so, the less efficient our markets become since capital is no longer allocated to companies that produce the greatest wealth for each dollar invested.

Jacobs identifies our most common fallacy; treating stocks like commodities. Each share of stock represents ownership and a vote in what is to be done with corporate assets. Index investors spread their stock holdings so thinly, they minimize any influence they can have on each company. Break the Wall Street Rule is about how to be an effective owner, how to focus your attention on factors over which you can have some control, rather than the market. It is the first book written specifically for intelligent individual investors. (for more, see http://www.corpgov.net/abreviews1.html#Jacobs)

One way or another this book will piss off everyone.

"Burning Books on Fenwick Street", the sophomore novel from Lee Dravis, is timely. As we surrender of our liberties in the war against terrorism, Mr. Dravis borrows from the ideals expressed in that bible of the far-right, "The Turner Diaries", and examines an America where our civil rights have been stripped, and the 10 Commandments outweigh the Bill of Rights.

Convincing in its premise, "Burning Books on Fenwick Street" postulates an America where the white supremecists rule, forbidden books are burned, and diversity has been thrown on the ash heap of history. Obviously influenced by George Orwell (and James Thurber), the novel attempts to tackle our contemporary issues of racism, nationalism and the separation of church and state. Almost always, the author is dead on target, and the reader looks at the world around him and shudders that Dravis may be right in his predictions.

The writng is clean and crisp, a reminder of the style displayed in his first book, "Key Monster". "Burning Books on Fenwick Street", however, is a departure from the expected for this writer of comic mysteries. It makes one wonder, and look forward to, what might be next from Mr. Dravis.

Although I'm not in the intended age group for this book I read it anyway after hearing that Sandra Dutton is an alumni of my same high school, and to see again the milieu I grew up in, having lived elsewhere since 1984.

I wasn't disappointed. "Capp Street Carnival" is an authentic, straightforward story with a good message that kids and adults should all enjoy. Sandra Dutton includes everyday details of a family with Appalachian roots, but the details are neither trivial nor trite, but authentically human, as all these details serve to reveal and develop the characters in the story.

One footnote: Mary Mae's parents reminded me in a way of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet in "Pride and Prejudice" (Jane Austin). Not to say that it's a retelling of the same story. But "Capp Street Carnival" could perhaps be a very distant (American) cousin.

One wonders whether the author has more Mary Mae stories in store for her readers. I hope so.

Sandra Dutton's wonderful story of eleven-year-old Mary Mae Krebs had me chuckling from page to page to see how her heroine's good-natured meddling in the love life of the family boarder, Annabelle, would turn out. Mary Mae's mother thinks Leroy, an assistant manager of the Rise'n Shine poultry company is a promising catch for Annabelle. But precocious Mary Mae can spot a phony in a heartbeat. When she finds out that Annabelle is engaged to the "wrong" man, Mary Mae makes it her mission to convince Annabelle to marry for love, not prestige. This guitar-toting schoolgirl never misses an opportunity to speak up or write a song about her keen observations of life -- especially adult peculiarities. "Tell you the truth," Mary Mae says, "I don't know why grownups can't handle more than one event in a week. You just go to one, then you just go to the other." It is this matter-of-fact reasoning that creates some splendid dialogue between Mary Mae, her friends at school and the adults in her world. My favorite comments in the book take place in Mary Mae's uncensored head as narrator of the story. Dutton is a gifted visual writer. Her sensory language and attention to detail are noteworthy. In describing Leroy, Mary Mae says,"So here he was at 7:20, all duded up in a brown suit, collar so tight his neck looked like crescent rolls." Dutton has crafted the story in Appalachian dialect. This is what makes the story so magical and believable. I grew up in Cincinnati and majored in English at Ohio University, located in the foothills of Appalachia. The book's language is authentic because I also taught students who used the same vernacular. Dutton is accurate in her descriptions of the Cincinnati area -- right down to the four-way chili! This book would be a great addition to any school or public library. It is the perfect book to read aloud to a group of children because of Dutton's rhythmic writing and the fun antics of Mary Mae. Although it is considered a children's story -- adults just might have the last laugh.

It's sad that great children's books go out of print of so often.

This one is about a grandfather's tall tales. He joshed his granddaughter Julie about Hershel the famous astronomer, who discovered the moon is a matzah ball. And Bessie, who used her exceedingly long braids as jumping rope.

And Moishe, the goat from his village in Russia, who pulled his wagon all the way to America--9,092 miles, singing a certain famous song all the way.

But grandpa's best tale was about his real trip on packed steamer to America, and meeting Julie's grandmother Rose.

Of course, he couldn't keep himself from embellishing the story for long, and soon wove in nonsense about a castle on Hester Street, so tall that pigeons couldn't fly to the roof and had to be carried by ladder. And since he was a button peddler, he told Julie of buttons made from diamonds and gold, buttons big as saucers, and buttons used as sleds.

Our copy was a hand-me-down from family, and since there is little chance of finding another, there is no chance we'll ever part with it. Alyssa A. Lappen

A grandfather tells his grandaughter tall tales about each stage in his immigration to the U.S. and his early life in New York. Then the grandmother deflates each tale and explains how things really were back then. I find this two-step process to be a clever way to teach children about the experience which their grandparents went through, first hooking them with a silly story, and then hitting them with the facts. The book is especially useful for reading aloud to children whose grandparents can no longer tell the story themselves, or for inspiring children to ask their grandparents about their experience. This is a rather matter-of-fact review, so I should add that my children and I find this book funny and endearing, and have read it together many times.

If you buy this book you're certainly looking for such books - so the pure mass of photographs of children may not make you as uncomfortable as me in the first moment. It is a kind of document of a time, when children could play safely on streets, bath naked on a rivers bank, roam through streets as if they were a continuation of there flats. I don't know if Mr. Ovenden have had more and other things photographed, *this* is a rest of what was the result of his strolls through London in his youth, and so, while you can clearly see that he have had an artist's eye so early, it is also sometimes the limitation of the camera, what makes the picture perfect (while technical imperfect). Take this book if you wish to know something about this time (end fithies/early sixties) and how children have lived, no other book I know has this very special focus (and is obtainable).

This book is a beautiful collection of older black-and-white photos of children. Most of the photos were created on the streets and they show us how life looked like some 50 years ago, especially for children. Graham Ovenden made these photographs as a teenager and that shows that even back than he had a talent for making art. I am very blessed to own this beautiful collection and I would recommend this book to anyone interested in historic photography and in the subject of children in the photography which makes this book even more kind, unique and beautiful. And for the end, thank you Graham for creating something so pretty that will last forever!

This book is the follow up to Evanick's book, Catch of the Day. It's just as good, of not better than the first book. After reading this one, you won't be able to wait for her next book to hit the shelves.
The characters were believable and very likeable. I found myself really rooting for Sydney. Richard is such a louse!
I read this book during the summer, but I'll be pulling it out again to curl up wtih on a cold winter night!

I had so much fun reading this book. All the characters are so endearing (except Richard.) Evanick writes with a simple, honest wit that I found so refreshing, I kept laughting out loud! I am a sucker for a great romance with a happy ending, this book surprised me with more than one. I didn't realize this is the second book she has written with some of the same characters, I am on my way to buy "Catch of the Day"!

Bob Thall has been making marvelous photographic books from marvelous big-camera photographs for more than a decade. He's also been systematically investigating the city of Chicago as a test case for the 21st century city. PERFECT CITY began by looking at the creative destruction of an architecturally significant and economically vibrant American urban downtown; THE NEW AMERICAN VILLAGE then looked at the new "urbanism" of what Joel Garreau has called the Edge Cities that have sprung up along the interstates and tollroads at a safe distance from the old metropolis. Now with CITY SPACES, he's tackling the newest phenomenon of American urbanism: the nostalgic return of downtowns as places to work, live, and be entertained. It's Thall's quirky intelligence at work that a collection of photographs of alleys could become a book about the resurgence of the old city, but that's what he shows us-- the way the city's encrustations of history, its graffiti, old signs, strange corners, odd spaces, and once-vibrant functional loading docks have become objects of nostalgic reverie, and Thall offers to be our guide in this visual treasure-hunt. This is a photographer of decidedly modernist sentiments. The play of subtle light on worn brick, the way mirror glass recedes deceptively into a non-existent, yet absurdly convincing surreal skyscape, the delight you feel as things line up into sensuous arrays when you stand precisely THERE and tilt your head like THIS and bend your knees oh-so-slightly: these are the matters of this book. Such visual sleight-of-sight requires superb printing to work in a book; luckily the Icelandic printers have labored with Nordic determination and the results are astonishing: blacks as smooth as velvet but still retaining a sense of detailed dark space; silvery sheens to steel, walls that crumble as you look at them.

I met Bob in the spring of 1986 when I took his Architectural Photography course at Columbia College Chicago. It would be wrong to define Bob as an Architectural Photographer. He goes beyond the definition. The only thing "architectural" in his work are the buildings themselves. This guy is a documentarist and a good one! I thank him for the hard time he gave me when I took his course because he wanted us to do more than "just" taking pictures of buildings. It is quite difficult as you can imagine! The subject matter isn't flexible ...I guess I sometimes achieved that. An image such as "Near North Side neighborhood, Chicago, 1973" on page 2 isn't an architectural image. It is a document and a good one. I know for a fact that Bob spent many days studying the Art Sinsabaugh collection at the print study room of the Art Institute of Chicago. He actually took us there once. At the same time I sense some sadness and also shyness in these images. But they are beautiful and I can respond to them. Bob is a sensitive man and his course was more like a seminar where he opened himself to us as an image-maker and thinker.

There are a number of images in this book, which would make the day of a gestalt analyst: plates 13, 22, 31 (gorgeous isn't it?), 68, 69, and 70. The strange thing about these images is that images of alleys presuppose that there is more to them than what we are shown - "What is beyond that?". After all an alley is only the side, or back, of a building or of two or three buildings. Plates 18, 21, 24, 28, 34, 36, 48, 51, 52, 54, 65 have tremendous tension in them. I mean to say that the tension is created by the subject matter itself, and by the composition used. It is somehow difficult to close them. They go on and on. Great photography!

For those of us who think in terms of photographic images in the "great American tradition" of the view camera, this book is a breadth of fresh air. In his other books Bob achieves the greatness of an Ansel Adams when he produces images of urban landscapes. In this book he teases you! Thanks for the books and the 1986 course! I continue on learning a great deal from you and I sincerely hope that your current students do to!