Most of my several thousand volume library consists of serious books, works of literature, literary criticism, philosophy, history, theology, political science, and so on. But I also have a shelf or two devoted to "fun" books, books that I pick up and just lose myself in having fun. This is one of my favorite fun books. Not a masterpiece. Probably won't be in print twenty years from now. But the photographs are spectacular! And in just under 300 pages, almost every major city and structure of Europe has been photographed from the air. It is not merely the famous sights and buildings that makes this such a fun book, but some striking photographs of relatively unknown features. For instance, one of the most stunning photographs for me is what would appear to be a gigantic green field in Denmark that has been punctuated by a series of large housing circles, each cut off from one another, and each surrounded by the same green field.

The text has been provided by noted travel writer Jan Morris. The book is largely structured by starting with Italy and proceeding clockwise through the entire European continent, ending with Greece, Romania, and Turkey.

I really can whole heartedly recommend this book to anyone except those who don't like to look at anything. But if you have any interest in the world, in traveling, in Europe, in history, in photography, or in just having fun looking at awesome photos, this book will prove to be an utter delight.

I stumbled upon this title in a competitor's bookstore and was astonished that I hadn't read a review anywhere. With a 1998 imprint and Jan Morris as the author of the text, it doesn't seem like it should be an obscure tome, yet even here on Amazon.com, only one other person has reviewed it!

The photos are designed to provoke a sense of wonder and awe in the reader/viewer, and they succeed aesthetically, emotionally, and psychologically. From the rock of Gilbralter to a dense set of "potato row" houses in Copenhagen; from snowfields near the Arctic circle to Turkey--it's all here, images snapped from blimps, airplanes, helicopters, almost any method by which one might be "over" Europe.

One will not be able to glimpse most of these sites from comparable vantage points on a typical trek across the continent unless one plans to do so in a biplane. The images here are unusual in their breadth and majesty. ... The text is literate and fun. Buy it and marvel.

If you regard this book as just another coffee table book you aren't even half right. This is one of the best photo books I have ever seen. The pictures are outstanding. Nearly every photo takes you to the alter of the church, the edge of the cliff, or the gate to the castle. Not only is it a photo book, but a great travel book. These aren't just descriptions of what to see, but beautiful pictures showing you what you will want to see when you get there. You won't even need to take a camera or change for postcards-- the best pictures are right here. Get this book before you plan your vacation to Europe.

Many of those who have disliked Conquest appear to have concluded that because characters from the Young Jedi Knight and Junior Jedi Knight series are in it, this book, too, must be for "young readers." Not so! Keyes has presented us with an epic tale of a young hero who must confront his own inner demons as well as monstrous foes in a quest to redeem himself. Conquest is, as another reviewer has observed, a classic "hero quest," and as such is a welcome return to the mythological underpinning of the entire Star Wars saga.

Keyes' style is both fluid and engrossing. The characters imported from Junior Jedi Knights are fully fleshed out and much more enjoyable than in their original venue. We are caught up in Anakin Solo's adventure, truly experiencing what he experiences and caring deeply about those things that matter to him. The story has its twists and turns, always leaving us on the edge of the seat. Even the Yuuzhan Vong are made interesting, as we see sides to their culture only hinted at in other works; we are finally given, as Anakin himself observes, Yuuzhan Vong who are not *enemies* but *people.* Keyes brings a new perspective to the New Jedi Order series, a much welcome one.

What prevents Conquest from receiving a five star rating is that its ending is too pat. Anakin's friend Tahiri undergoes an experience that cries out for an in-depth treatment (an experience that Jack Chalker's characters inevitably go through), but the potential is not followed up on. I cannot say more without completely spoiling the end, unfortunately.

Fans of adventure stories, as well as fans of Star Wars, should enjoy this one, even those who have not been following along with the rest of the series.

I have been reading the New Jedi Order books with trepidation. Every time I read one I find I am so drawn into the books that I feel the same horror as the characters as they see the destruction the Yuuzhan Vong evoke as they take over the Star Wars Galaxy. This book was no exception. I bought it when it first came out and couldn't bring myself to read it until recently. I kept looking at the book and saying "I can't read that - I don't want to know what happens next..." It was very hard to approach this book since I had read the Jr. Jedi Knights series and remembered the characters Tahiri, Tionne and others. Needless to say, this was the first book that gave me hope as well as more insight into the Yuuzhan Vong and the characters of Anakin Solo and Tahiri. If you are looking for the "tried and true" characters, Luke, Mara Jade, Han and Leia - this is not the place to find them. It's a new galaxy ...

Conquest is an excellent addition to the New Jedi Order series. Just when it seemed that the books were going to get predictable, Keyes takes the story in a different direction. This story is not as dark as some of the books in this series, most notably Star by Star which is very dark. Keyes captured the well-known characters perfectly. Although I was unfamiliar with many of the younger characters in this book, Keyes does an excellent job introducing them and integrating them into the older, more mature Star Wars books. Some people have complained about the length of the story, while it is shorter than some Star Wars books, but that doesn't detract from the excellent story at all. Some books just keep going, taking forever to get to the point. Conquest does not do this. As for the story focussing more on Anakin, it was really his turn. The first 3 NJO books focused on the Jedi as a whole, while the second 2 focussed on Han Solo. The book directly before conquest focussed on the twins more, so it was really Anakin's time. The casting of the Vong as different castes and in a more sympathetic light was a stroke of genius. The only reason this book has 4 stars instead of 5 is because as good as it is, Rebirth is better.

Occasionally throughout the years I've enjoyed reading a good Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine mystery-thriller. Not so this time. I had to force myself to finish the last 120-plus pages. Whatever mild interest Rendell aroused at the beginning of the book evaporated when the story's lynchpin Jeff (Jock) was removed. After it became apparent to the reader how the characters and their lives intersected, the story line became a rather tasteless pudding indeed. The characters were truly one dimensional cardboard cutouts defined soley by their emotional and psychological aberrations. Minty, an OCD paranoid schizophrenic aroused not a ounce of sympathy. I found the parts about Michelle, the emotionally vulerable easily wounded binge eater and her equally off-putting saccharine, anorexic husband hard to take, even in small doses. Jeff(Jock) the womanizing sociopath at least ignited a small bit of fire before he burned out fairly early on. Creating the stereotype narcissistic gay MP was beneath the talent of Rendell. As were all the uncharming, off-putting characters in this inadequate "mystery". Psychological thriller? Not by any stretch of Rendell's imagination... or yours.

Ruth Rendell has always tackled madness with remarkable skill, and in Adam and Eve and Pinch Me she brings us in close to Minty, a young woman suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder and being pushed closer and closer to the edge by voices in her head and hallucinations which at times appear as real to her as the people around her.

Minty is not the only character in this book. There is also Jock, or Jeff, or Jerry Leach, depending on whom you ask, a rather charming young man who befriends women, only to disappear with their money. He has befriended Minty, only to desert her by pretending to get himself killed in a train wreck. Before that, he has befriended, and in one case married, a whole string of other women, several of whom find their way into this book, along with their own sets of problems. But the story belongs to Minty. It begins and ends with her, and with the horrible but inevitable acts she commits while battling her hallucinations. She knows Jeff is dead, but his ghost won't leave her alone and she's desperate. She knows she must get rid of him ... and she does.

Adam and Eve and Pinch Me did not blow me away. In fact, there were times when it did not seem like Rendell's writing. Many of her characters came across more like caricatures than real people, especially Matthew and his wife. I did not find myself growing especially attached to any of the bizarre parade marching through these pages. I did, however, read the book all the way through, something that doesn't happen so much now that I've gotten more fussy, and, even if I did find disbelief hard to suspend at times, I was never bored. Rendell is certainly a master at her craft, and while Adam and Eve and Pinch Me is not her best work, it is still an excellent read.

"Adam and Eve and Pinch Me" is another tour de force by the magnificent Ruth Rendell. It is the story of three very different women who have one thing in common. A handsome and charming rogue named Jeff Leach romances them and subsequently abandons them with no explanation. As his last name implies, Jeff is very much a leech. He takes advantage of women by living off them financially until he decides to move on to his next conquest.

In this novel, Rendell creates some extremely dysfunctional characters. Yet, no matter how strange or unlikable the characters are at first glance, the author manages to make the reader both understand and sympathize with them. Most dysfunctional of all is Minty Knox, a pathetic and lonely young woman who has a horrible case of obsessive-compulsive disorder. She is compelled by her illness to wash herself, her clothing and her home many times daily; her fear of dirt is pathological. Worse yet, Minty eventually starts to hallucinate, seeing and hearing ghosts of people whom she has known in the past. There is also a strange couple, Michelle and Matthew Jarvey, who suffer from extreme eating disorders and an ambitious Member of Parliament named Jims Melcombe-Smith, whose is willing to go to desperate lengths to keep his homosexuality a secret.

The lives of these people and others intersect when two bizarre murders are committed in London in close succession. The police cannot decide who had the means or the motive to commit these strange crimes, but the reader is in on the secret all along. Therefore, "Adam and Eve" is not so much a whodunit as it is an intricate, suspenseful and fascinating psychological study of the different ways that people behave under extreme duress. It would be fair to state that Rendell's view of human nature is generally a negative one, since she so often depicts selfish, petty and disturbed people in her novels. However, Rendell tempers her pessimism with delicious humor and deep compassion. Occasionally, as in the case of Michelle and Matthew Jarvey, Rendell creates characters who treat one other with genuine consideration and devotion. The whole spectrum of human nature is on display in Rendell's novels.

I highly recommend "Adam and Eve and Pinch Me." It is a wonderful book that will mesmerize, horrify and entertain you all at once.

Some say that we who live in the United States are much too self-absorbed and pay little attention to people and events outside our boarders. After reading "The Global Emergence of Gay and Lesbian Politics," edited by Barry D. Adam, Jan Willem Duyvendak, and André Krouwel, I believe that such criticism may well be warranted. For both serious and arm-chair students of politics, ethics, culture, anthropology, religion, sociology, or modern history (as well as for garden variety social activists, particularly of pink & lavender stripes), this book is an excellent introduction to the worldwide gay and lesbian equal rights movement. These three editors (themselves writing from both Canada and Holland) have fashioned for us a very informative book from thirteen international contributors. This work seeks to not only give us historical background on national gay movements in selected countries, but also, in very scholarly fashion, applies current social theory to these various movements hoping to: (1) see if any generalizations can be made about how gay movements can or cannot develop in a given place, and (2) appraise the accuracy of the theories themselves (i.e. do these academic theories accurately reflect political, "real-world" reality).

Adam et al. pieced together contributors' reports from Canada, the United States, Brazil, Argentina, Britain, Holland, France, Spain, Romania, Hungary, the Czech Republic, South Africa (including brief, troubling dispatches regarding anti-gay elements in Zimbabwe and Namibia), Japan, and Australia. In some of these countries, national movements have met with incredible success to the point that gay and lesbian people are practically main-streamed into their dominant cultures. In others, however, it is quite a different story. Some fledgling movements are just now struggling to find their gay political and cultural identity. If this were not enough of a problem, it is compounded by what for them is the new problem of capitalist economics versus the need for gay and lesbian Community building. In yet other parts of the world, due to ancient cultural customs regarding public discourse, the entire notion of individual "gay identity" as being separate and apart from heterosexual identity is in question (much less any kind of collective gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender political aggressiveness).

Clearly linked to the development (or arrest) of all national movements is the connection with national/global economics. For a movement to be successful in gaining legal equality (always the first order of battle), it appears that a gay-friendly space or Community must also be built. It is a two-fold task and some places have, for a variety of reasons, enjoyed greater success than others. "Global Gay and Lesbian Politics" is a window into specifically what those "variety of reasons" are. This book is well worth the read.

The few criticisms that it must sustain however, are that at several points (particularly in the Introduction) it needlessly encumbers itself with thick academic rhetoric instead of just making its point. Further, if greater international communication is a valued movement goal, the book limits its usefulness by not including any kind of contact information for various groups in these countries (with the most glaring omission being that of the International Lesbian and Gay Alliance in San Francisco). However, these faults are relatively minor in comparison with the fact that the editors and most contributors fail to sufficiently connect the global reach of anti-gay, American-based Christian evangelical/ fundamentalism. Specifically, I refer to televangelists and fundamentalist missionaries with their influence in and upon foreign, right-wing regimes. (Being written from a socio-political viewpoint, such errors are common when analysts fail to make use of available inter-disciplinary research.)

And finally, the scope of the study omits any analysis (or substantive mention) of conditions in Russia, China, India, or any Islamic nations. Granted, there may well be no "movements" as yet organized in these countries; however, it would have been satisfying to have at least a general chapter on what is going on in the rest of the world besides the nations studied. But perhaps the editors will include such a chapter in a much needed and hopefully forthcoming second volume. The Community owes this book's editors, contributors and publisher, Temple University Press, a debt of thanks. As for potential readers, particularly myopic, self-absorbed, concerned, courage-filled, caring, committed American gay,lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, this book is a "must read."

The positives:
This book covers pretty much all of the important, basic neuropsychology issues for the main neurological disorders.
It has well thought out tables of pertinent information and good, clear diagrams.
It is written in an easy to read, relatively jargon-free way and thus is available to neuropsychology-interested people at all levels.
This book contains illustrative case examples, which really help to clarify some of the complexities of neuropsychology.

There is, however, a huge drawback for anyone wanting to use this book as anything other than a basic introduction to neuropsychology, and that is the age of the book.

I bought this book misreading "third printing December 2000" as "revised December 2000". This was silly of me and was entirely my mistake. However, the fact remains that now, in April 2003, some of the information given is out of date, with the majority the research and papers cited in the book being from the late 80s and early 90s. It does not take into account any (and there has been a great deal) of the relevant neuropsychology literature published in the last 8 years.

I probably would not have bought this book if I had realised how old it was, given the number of other, more recent neuropsychology texts available.

However, if the editors brought out a revised and updated edition I would gladly pay double, or more, for it.