history

I am not much of a reader of books. This is one that I could not put down though. The stories will put you right in the drivers seat with these brave men and women. You will be crashing through 15 to 20 foot breaking surf right along with them. Those of you who have been to a small boat unit, will smile and say "I have been there, done that". For those of you who may never have new that small boat stations do exist. This book will give you a new apprieciation for what these young men and women do at a small boat station. Risking their lives everyday to help others. I know because I live it everyday, and would give it up for nothing! Thanks again Dennis. Chris Sparkman, Surfman United States Coast Guard.

While this slender volume contains many exciting adventures that make great reading, the most fascinating aspect of this important book is the author's unflinching critisizm of the Coast Guard officer corps and the indifference (if not outright hostily) they often effect toward the small boat stations of thier own service.

Dr. Noble gives an account of a Coast Guard officer referring to small boat station personnel as "Neanderthals". I don't doubt it at all. Having done time in the "black shoe" Coast Guard on cutters, I was a first hand witness to what Dr. Noble mentions: the CG officer corps places so much emphasis on the seagoing Guard they forget and ignore the small boat stations.

I hope this book will serve as a wake-up call for those at HQ. I'm certain it will "frost" a lot of behinds. But its high time they smell the coffee and make necessary changes before the CG has it alter its nickname from "Lifesavers" to "Life-losers."

Every member of Congress and the Senate should read this book to get a full understanding of the imortance of Coast Guard small boat stations and why they can no longer continue to remain undermanned, underfunded, and overworked.

This book offered a rare and informative insight into the world of US Coast Guard lifeboat stations and the sailors that man them. It gave great first hand insights into the day to day operations of a lifeboat station and a very informative history of the stations from the early days of the lifesaving service to the modern lifeboat station. A great read and a must for anyone in or wanting to be in the US Coast Guard!!!!!!

"Pride Rock On Broadway" is a beautifully illustrated, written and deeply felt struggle to bring a major theatrical project to successful life.

The author takes the reader on a journey that the audience rarely get to see adding to our overall appreciation of the mega-hit stage show.
From initial concepts to finished production.
Her production team echoe these sentiments offering a fascinating trip into their world. The tears, the laughter, the joy, the frustrations its all here in words and pictures.
This is how books about musicals should be written.
It is exciting, stimulating, imaginative and a must have for all theatre fans.
Grand in design and grand in its writing this is a must have for anyone who loves and cares for the theatre.

Disney know how meets Broadway theatre and the results (apart from a smash hit musical) come to life in this book.
For those of us who do and for those of us who dream of putting on stage musicals you will find this insipiring journey enough to jump start you into motion.

"The Lion King : Pride Rock on Broadway" was really fun looking at.It had wonderful photos from the show and told how the show came together from conception to production design.It showed you costume designs, the actors in full costume, the sets, how they did the phenominal special effects, and much more!It's cool, and one of my favorite theater books!

"How could the book be better than the show?!" You may ask yourself. Well, although this is a phenomenal show, the book is not simply a collection of pictures for the show but a totally round experience throwing light on every angle possible of the creation of the show, *aside* from displaying pictures from every scene in the show.

For theater people, this book is completely engrossing. If you are a set designer, you can see how the set developed through the original ideas years before production to the final set onstage, with concpet drawings, explanations, models and of course final production photographs. If you are a lighting designer you can find explanations about the lighting, and a partial technical diagram of the lights above the stage that only a lighting designer would understand (it is partial because the full diagram is so extensive that it could never fit onto a page in the book. I preffered having a detailed partial diagram to pore over rather than a full one where you couldn't read anything.) If you are a director, you have pages upon pages of Julie Taymor expaining the source of her ideas, dilemas she had, disagreements she had with the producers and a great section about the tech rehearsals with a list of major problems the team encountered and their solutions (like "The actress palying Sarabi is scared of heights and she has to walk up Pride Rock at the beginning of the show. It is 20 feet high, it turns, rises from the stage and has no railing. Solution: she will get over it". Most problems required more creative solutions.)

If you are not a theater person, you will still appreciate this book simply for how beautiful it is. It is filled with endless amounts of pictures from the show and rehearsals, workshops and scene/costume/puppet shops.

So even though there is nothing that compares to seeing a really good show like this one, the book in this case offeres an amazing and interesting experience.

This calendar is a lovely work of art in and of itself. Each month features medieval and renaissance works of art about or by women. Paintings and illuminations are the main works featured. Interspersed throughout the pages are even more details of works, closeups you wouldn't normally see in art books or coffee table books. This fact and the short write-ups are why I purchase this calendar every year that I can get it (it sells out quickly). This is one calendar you'll probably want to save even after the days and months have passed.

As a great lover of medieval art this calendar is just beautiful. Every month a new work of art to gaze at. Highly recommended.

I have collected this calendar for many years and suddenly in 2003, it was no where to be found. Where O where is it ? What happened to the creators of the calendar ? This superb series has been eagerly awaited year after year by lovers of art and its dramatic design and medieval theme adorn any wall as a piece of art. Old issues sit beside my Belgian tapesties and French/Italian furniture. Calendar raised to the level of art... there is nothing like it!

If nothing else, you just have to admire Dietrich Bonhoeffer for the stand he made for the truth. Whether or not you agree with his role in the murder plot of Hitler, you have to salute the German theologian for his honesty in this book, which is comprised of letters sent mainly to Eberhard Bethge and his parents. An appendix includes letters that he penned to his fiance Maria. If you want to read this book for pure theology sake, then I would probably turn to The Cost of Discipleship first (which, he mentions in one letter, he wrote partly out a false hope to acquire faith by trying to live a holy life, a very honest admission). But if you want to better understand the man and what he was truly made of in the time of his last two years of life, then this book is very insightful. I don't think anyone can do better to get into the head of this great theologian than to read Letters and Papers From Prison.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison show the reader the thoughts of a man who wrote with immense insight under circumstances fraught with the deepest despair. Prior to the war, Bonhoeffer had established himself as a visionary, if somewhat moderate, young Christian theologian. His imprisonment by the Nazis in the wake of the failure of the conspiracy to assasinate Hitler gave rise to this series of letters, ranging from the trivial to the most profound, reflecting the thoughts and ideas of a man whose ideas continued to evolve, even as hope dwindled. It is tempting to see Bonhoeffer as a sort of modern Christian saint "set-piece" of a man, or a Spielberg movie waiting to be made. Such an interpretation of the man would trivialize the flesh and blood reality of his life, as these letters demonstrate. Collections of letters typically suffer from one of two defects--either they are inanely trivial and gossippy, or they spend far too much time on being "literary" for posterity, and not enough time giving real insight into the writer. Bonhoeffer's letters avoid both of these traps. Although the letters collection is not overly burdened by the confessional, letters to his parents and fiance help us understand in very human terms the horror of imprisonment by the Nazis, notwithstanding their careful phrasing to avoid the censor's pen. The letters do contain some of the intentionally "literary"--Bonhoeffer writes poetry which is reasonably spare and connective and sometimes writes for the hypothetical future reader. But the real tour de force is Bonhoeffer's analysis of the evolution of his theological thought in light of the changes wrought by modernity and made apparent to him through his experiences. In several reasonably succinct but incredibly sweeping letters, he outlines a new vision of Christianity, a form of post-Christian Christianity if you will, which has generated a half century of debate and provided inspiration to Christian and non-Christian alike. In this age in which "liberal" religion has been sadly equated by some with "flaccid" religion, we see through these letters a deeply disciplined thinker outlining the way for Christianity to remain relevant in a world all too ready to try to "outgrow" the faith. Although his thinking is complex, and in some instances he assumes a base of knowledge of late 19th C and early 20th C. Christian theology the 21st C. casual reader may not have, the letters are quite accessible and profoundly human. This is not a man building a neat construct out of his dissertation. This is a condemned man hinting at the blueprint for the transformation of a faith. Although it is tempting to suggest that this is a "Christian masterpiece" of 20th C. faith, the suggestion is a disservice. This is a masterpiece of literature which transcends genre or faith. In the interminable list of intellectual heroes of the 20th C., we rarely see Pastor Bonhoeffer among the honorees. But this book is a powerful argument that this man, who saw the need for religious people to use religion less as a crutch and more as a transformation, should be included prominently in our intellectual heroes list.

An excellent selfportrait of Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran minister, while in a nazi German prison during the war.
It reveals the immense power of the spirit that helps us go through the most cruel experiences life can have awaiting for us. My first book by Bonhoeffer and I am glad I started with this one. What a great man!

If you are looking for a book that tries to analyze Patsy Cline from a woman's perspective, read Margaret Jones' biography. If you want dirt and hack writing, read Ellis Nassour. But if you want to know Patsy Cline, read this book. Patsy wrote it herself with a guiding hand from Mike and Cindy. Patsy tells us in her own words what kind of a woman she is and she shares her dreams and disappointments in a way no other writer can touch.

Mike and Cindy let Patsy tell the story, intruding long enough to clarify a point or identify an obscure reference.

Thank you Mike and Cindy for sharing the personal letters of Patsy Cline with all of us. What better way to get to know someone, then to peek into their letters written to someone very special. Not only are the words that she writes very intimate and from the heart, but the paper they are witten on and the way they are written(phrasing and penmanship) give you insight into Patsy's feelings and personality. Since reading this great book, I have become an REAL Patsy Cline fan.

When I first heard that this book was being published, I awaited patiently but eagerly. My patience was rewarded with a truly sensational personal account of the real Patsy Cline. The letters tell of an ordinary woman and an aspiring young country singer with the hopes and dreams of making it in the country music field and the closeness and personal relationship that occurred between Patsy and Treva Miller Steinbicker. The photos included depict a beautiful, vibrant young woman. Mike Freeman and Cindy Hazen has made it possible for me, in Patsy's own words, to have an up close and personal feel of the young woman with the tremendously powerful voice that I have admired for so long. This book is a definite must read for anyone who has and always will love Patsy Cline. Thanks Mike and Cindy, for a gift that will grace my library.

An excellent book and well put together. You will find amazing photographs of all the characters in the cast...and then some. One of the most interesting photos, in this book, is one of an ariel view of the Mayberry Town near Culver City, California. An actual town within a town.

I have read other books and also found them interesting with regard to the Andy Griffith show, but it was great to see all the pictures and read the personal comments of the stars and the people behind the scenes.

I believe that anyone , like myself, who really loved the show will enjoy this a great deal. Well done. This was one of my all time favorites shows and this book shows a lot of the people who made it such a great series.

Since publication of my "Andy Griffith Show Scrapbook" in 1993 I have regrettably been away from the world of Mayberry working on many other books in the ensuing years. However, Jim Clark and Ken Beck's "Mayberry Memories" made me recall just why this show is the epitome of classic American comedy. It is superb in every respect, and filled with dozens of rare photos that will impress even the most hard-core Griffith collector. Clark and Beck are uniquely suited for this project, having spent so many years documenting the Griffith show phenomenon through other books, fan clubs, and events. They've outdone themselves with this definitive tribute to one of the truly great shows. There's only one word for it...."Big!" (Or as Mr. Fife would say, "Aw, big ain't the word for it....it's REALLY big!")

I purchased this book for my father - a long time fan of TAGS. He really loved it and said that he learned many interesting facts about the show and the cast. It was wonderful being able to purchase the perfect gift for him!

As one who has collected and read scores of books on Custer and the Little Bighorn, I must say that this book is the most concise, even-handed, and readible account of this most controversial period in American history. The author makes the many facets and personalities of the events of the summers of 1876-1877 come alive with his colorful writing and honest evaluation. This book is the perfect starter for anyone who is either casually interested in the story or is a useful summary for those veterans who have been fascinated with the Little Bighorn and Custer for some time. Also the sidebars used throughout the text help to make the persons, places, and things of the campaign stand out in their historical context. I heartilly recommend this book and am very happy that it is now out in paperback for an even greater audience. If you want to know the story of the Sioux War of 1876 and 1877, begin here!

Wayne Sarf has researched all the master historians in the past and present to provide a fascinating well written history and objective book on the LBH and Sioux Campaign. The book tells the complete history of the campaign from its inception to its finale, Custer's and the Sioux's as a free people. Sarf quotes both the participants concerning their actions in the campaign as well as perspectives of major historians. He also offers his own views based on the historical record and logic. An important example is his evidence and commentary concerning General Terry's June 26th rendezvouz which is pure fiction and self serving. As Sarf well proves, Custer acted judiciously and appropriately based on the information, circumstances and the expectations provided to him in synch with all the military commanders . Unfortunately for him, the circumstances changed once he was committed to the attack. Wonderful perspectives including side bars on the military participants, weapons and Native Americans. Also includes a readers guide for additional reading including critiques and some cheeky comments.

Here's where to start if you want to read just one book on the Summer Campaign of 1876 against the "off-reservation" plains indians. This paperback from 2000 is a reprint, with a few minor corrections of misprints, of the 1993 hardback edition. The only actual new text is the "preface to the revised edition," dated May 1999.

Sarf's approach is even-handed, and he has a real eye for telling details and for vivid quotes from participants and eyewitnesses. Boxes set apart from the main text give needed detail and background, particularly on individuals participating. A great deal of exotic color is provided by the various indians who rode with both sides in the conflict. For example, riding with General Crooke were The Other Magpie, a beautiful female warrior, and Finds Them And Kills Them, a transvestite who dressed and lived as a woman except during battles! You don't encounter soldiers of that calibre in most military histories!

The Summer Campaign of 1876 is distinguished by the almost staggering military incompetence displayed by the U.S. Army leaders. Apart from Custer, who generally seemed to know what he was up to, and the canny Nelson Miles, virtually every commander in the field seemed to be clueless, cowardly, vacillating, and in a couple of cases (Gibbon comes to mind at once) apparently paralyzed by mental illness.

Well-written and extremely readable. If you have ever wondered how Custer really got into that very bad fix, this is the best place to start your quest for understanding, and Sarf also offers a good annotated list for further reading.

I've been a fan of Troy Paiva's night photography for years. It's ethereal, it's mysterious, it's almost supernatural. The Abandoned Roadside West is his recurrent theme: ghost towns, derelict drive-ins and motels, airplane graveyards, and other places in our own country that we would never otherwise see, or even guess at their existence.

How does he do it? He works at it. Over the years he developed his own system of long-exposure night photography that uses strategically placed colored strobes to light the most unusual and out-of-the-way locales imaginable, which he researches and tracks down during week-long expeditions through the forgotten desert highways of the West in his trusty Subaru SUV.

Paiva, a former toy designer, is like no one else. He possesses a sardonic view of the world and a maniacal sense of humor. His esthetic is informed by kitsch, camp, television, toys, modern architecture, the pop culture of the fifties and sixties, and his extensive formal training in design and technology. How this mixture of traits and influences yields such hauntingly beautiful images is a mystery you will want to check out.

Troy Paiva has been photographing abandoned buildings for over ten years. But unlike David Plowden, who favors the industrial rust-belt buildings under overcast skies, Paiva centers on the small, roadside buildings of Southern California, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico; the mom-and-pop grocery stores, gas stations, and drive-in theaters that have been left in the desert to decay a slow, dry death. Although this book is interesting to anyone who's a fan of either Route 66 memorabilia or the history of roadside America, the most stunning aspect of this book is that all of the photographs were taken at night, usually under a full moon with the aid of well-placed color strobes. And while a Hollywood production company would flood these buildings with enough light to make it look like daytime, Troy Paiva selectively adds just enough colored light to draw the buildings out of the darkness and render some sense of mystery to the scenes.

I'd highly recommend this book to anyone who's interested in abandonded buildings, roadside America and night photography.

After years of admiring Troy Paiva's photography on his website, I was thrilled to find that a collection of his unique images is finally available in print. For those unfamiliar with Paiva's work, he takes color pictures of long-abandoned buildings and machines at night, under moonlight, and provides additional illumination with splashes of brightly colored flash. If that sounds gaudy or just plain odd, it probably is. And although I'm normally a fan of subdued colors and black-and-white photography, Troy Paiva's work has always captivated me. A lot of photographers take pictures of decay. And taken under sunlight by any other photographer, that's what these images would look like. But decay is only part of the story. Troy Paiva had a stroke of genius when he determined that darkness and garish color would turn his images of junk into vital accounts of American technologies and ideas whose life cycle has been spent. His lighting techniques make the structures seem haunted. Not by ghosts, but by cultures long departed. Ugly things are made eerily riveting, if not actually beautiful.

"Lost America" contains five sections: "Where the Lanes Are Wide" (photographs of abandoned Miracle Mile towns), "Drive In, Drive Out" (you guessed it, drive-in movie theaters), "The Last Resort" (The Salton Sea), and "Salvage" (machines with one foot in the grave). Troy Paiva introduces each section with an excellent essay detailing the history of the subject and its demise. The essays are fluid and informative. Mr. Paiva turns out to be one of those photographers who writes the text for his photographs better than anyone else could. There are about 90 5"x7 1/2" color photographs in this book, all with explanatory captions, and some smaller black-and-white photographs as well. I have really enjoyed looking at these images over and over again. My only misgiving about the book is that I wish it were hardcover and perhaps a little larger. Nevertheless, no fan or practitioner of photography should be without Troy Paiva's haunting historic images. Aficionados of 20th Century popular culture may also find "Lost America" valuable for its graphic representation of how cultures and their icons came and then passed into oblivion. Highly recommended.

When I first saw this book I was fascinated, but I held off till it came out in paperback. Mapping Mars is a very different book than Hartmann's Traveler's Guide. Morton is concerned with helping us understand the process we have gone through in the understanding of the face of Mars. As such, he interviewed many key players in the space-age study of Mars and paints his portrait of Mars through their work.

Mapping Mars is concerned more with the "big picture" of Mars than the Traveler's Guide. As such its illustrations are more concerned with showing the evolution of our maps and our mental images of Mars. Part of that "big picture" is our cultural view of Mars through our science fiction, art and exploration plans. He spends quite a bit of time on these topics - but does not sacrifice the science content.

The book reads like a series of personal vignettes of the people involved in the illumination of Mars - people like Hartmann, Michael Carr, Michael Malin and Bob Zubrin.

Mapping Mars reads well and draws the reader into the personal and scientific journey of understanding Mars.

Highly recommended.

Mapping Mars: Science, Imagination, and the Birth of a World written by Oliver Morton is a wonderfully fascinating story about the fourth planet in our solar system... Mars.

For the better part of the book the author informs the reader on the geology of Mars along with history of mapping the surface of Mars early on with telescopes... and then later on the Mars explorer robotics that landed a few years ago.

The author's writing style is easy going and very informative. You can read the book with ease... quite frankly once you start you'll find it hard to put down, with the intellectual history and the engaging writing style you'll quickly be engrossed in the book.

Mars is cratered much like our Moon and has a most beguiling landscape. There are picture in the book that gives the reader a good sense of what the author is taking about when it comes to the geology of Mars. Only after our spacecraft reached its orbit could we see Mars for what it is, a planet with a surface area as great as that of the Earth's continents, all of it as measurable, as real as the stones in the pavement outside your door.

This book is about how ideas from our full and complex planet are projected onto the rocks of that simpler, empty one. The ideas discussed are mostly scientific, because it is the scientists who have thought hardest and best about the realities of Mars. It is the the scientists who have fathomed the ages of its rocks, measured its resemblance to the Earth, searched for its missing waters, and always wondered about the life it might be home to.

Engagingly fascinating are the two words that rightfully describe this book, enjoyable without technobable.

I highly recommend Oliver Morton's Mapping Mars. Not only does it frame the debate about the likelihood of life on Mars, but also does a great job of explaning our changing understanding of the planet.

It also conveys a sense of Mars as a real place, and discusses how the meaning of Mars changes depending on our sense of whether or not we think there is life there.

Finally, it asks a crucial question: what do we mean by "nature" and how tied up is that notion with "life"?

And it has cool pictures.

The book contains edited and slightly commented oral arguments for a number of cases brought before the Supreme Court of the United States since Earl Warren ordered that oral arguments be recorded. Few know that it is possible to attend oral arguments at the court (highly recommended if you ever visit Washington D.C.), and even fewer know the recordings exist. This is a set of six tapes with edited and commented (by Peter Irons) cases, together with a book which transcribes the tapes and includes highlights of the opinions in the case. There is also a brief introduction to the Court in the first tape.

The cases touch on a number of issues, ranging from the highly controversial (Roe v. Wade and abortion rights, Edwards v. Aguillard and teaching of creationism in school, Johnson v. Texas and flag burning) to issues which perhaps aren't so controversial anymore (such as the 'one person, one vote' rule). They are, nonetheless, very interesting to listen to.

I have very few regrets about the book, but they should perhaps be mentioned. First, there is no doubt that there is a somewhat liberal slant to the presentation and comments by Peter Irons in the tapes; I don't find it too problematical since they tend to agree with my own feelings on the subject, but others may find it annoying. Second, I cannot but be somewhat disappointed that these are ->edited<- and not the full arguments. I realize one hour or more per case may be prohibitive and it is perhaps better to have more cases and edited highlights of the arguments, but I would have loved to have access to the full argument nonetheless. At least in some cases, the impression given is certainly not that of the whole argument (in Edwards v. Aguillard, one gets the feeling that the attorney for Aguillard did pretty well, but one need only read Stephen J. Gould's account of the arguments to know that Justice Scalia trounced him and it was only through the intervention of the amicus curiae brief by the Nobel Laureates that the eventual decision was reached). And thirdly, it is very disappointing that the companion book has only highlights of the opinions in the case. The full opinion (together with full dissents and concurrences) would have been a very welcome addition to the set.

Despite these problems (which are the reason I give it a 4 star rating rather than a 5; I wish we had a 4.5 rating), this is a highly recommended set. This is a great and facinating look at the Court and at oral arguments therein, and it is highly recommended. Even if you are only interested in three or four of the cases or issues, you will find it a very worthwhile investment.

I am not a U.S. Supreme Court enthusiast, but in light of the Courts activity in the 2000 presidential election case (George W. Bush vs. Al Gore), I searched out books on the U.S. Supreme Court and found "May It Please the Court" to be a fascinating read. It sheds light on the ebb and flow of the U.S. Supreme Court's rulings and reasonings over the past 30 years.

Recently millions of Americans were privileged to hear live the two presidential election cases that the U.S. Supreme Court took and vicariously we all had a "fascinating you-are-there experience." In "May It Please the Court" editors Peter Irons and Stephanie Guitton spent scores of hours at the National Archives in Washington retrieving and editing twenty-three cases and once again give average Americans the opportunity to experience, in proxy, each court case.

In 1955 the U.S. Supreme Court began tape recording all cases from which twenty-three ground-breaking cases were selected by Peter Irons and Stephanie Guitton. These are segmented into five sections: "Secure the Blessings of Liberty," "Congress Shall Make No Law," "In All Criminal Prosecutions," The Equal Protection of the Law" and "A Right of Personal Privacy." Each section has an informative foreword by the Editors.

Skilled advocates on both sides, as in the two presidential election cases, argue each landmark case forcefully, and most often, as in the recent presidential election cases, the Court's opinions have sparked controversy. Our Constitution invested great powers in government officials and these powers are only kept in check by the Bill of Rights. And these Rights only have meaning if government officials can be forced to obey them. Only the courts have the ultimate power of enforcement and thus the Supreme Court of the United States of America has the ultimate power. This excellent book helps all Americans to understand how this Court balances the legitimate powers of government officials and the rights of the people. Highly Recommended.

Peter Irons has consistently written books that describe with amazing clarity and insight the inner workings of the American judicial system. "May It Please the Court" is brilliant in large part because of a very simple, straight forward idea: ensure publicity for Supreme Court hearings that should have been quite public from the outset. Those who accuse Irons of partisanship have missed the mark: it is the contents of the very Supreme Court hearings he describes which provoke thought and evoke political response - not Irons' commentary. I look forward to the next work by Peter Irons, and can only hope he sees fit to comment on the Supreme Court's various controversial rulings since the turn of the century. His thoughtful consideration would be helpful to lawyers and non-lawyers alike.