Although of course I had heard of Bloody Sunday, I did not understand exactly what happened, I was too young at the time.

This book contains some very touching accounts of those who were there and relatives of those who died. An excellent collection of photographs present a very sombering account.

I would definitely recommend this to anyone interested in the subject.

This slim volume allows readers to understand the events and context of the Dutch possession, settlement and colonisation of Mauritius. It is clear, simply written and perceptive. It contains many new, previously unpublished facts about the colonisation, including the records of living dodos decades after they were thought to already to be extinct. A good read. Essential reading for anyone with more than a passing interest in the first century of Mauritius' history.

Debate of the existance of God, the purpose of life, science, philosophy and mysticism are all covered in this testament to athiest ideals. Comparable to to book 'Critiques of God'. Very controversial, post modern ideas are presented without, in my opinion, proper investigation. However, you wouldn't read this book to enhance your thinking, or to find backup for the God/Science debate. More of a 'think about life' book.

...Which pave the road to mediocrity, a writer's hell. Though it isn't terrible, "Democracy" is little more than a could-have-been in all respects. It has interesting ideas and competent writing, so the potential was there. The problem, as is so often the case, is in the novel's execution.

The idea that power corrupts is an old one, and it is obviously the main point of Henry Adams' novel. His intention seems to be to portray the lengths to which those in power will go to acquire more power, and how the lust for power is certain to deaden one's sense of morality. Unfortunately, Adams would have done better to write an essay on the subject rather than attempt to weave it into a fictional novel, for the author waxes too moralistic on his theme, rather than stepping back and allowing the characters to make his point for him. This does more harm than simply annoying the reader with value judgments; the story itself becomes so transparent and predictable, that it seems a mere vehicle for what soon becomes a tiresome refrain.

Perhaps this is why the characters are so lamentably flat. The descriptions Adams writes for each character seem to foreshadow complexity and development, but this soon is proven to be a false impression. Interesting as the characters might have been from their descriptions, when push comes to shove and the story continues, they remain utterly devoid of personality. Ironically, the main characters, Madeleine and Ratcliffe, are probably the most thinly developed of the entire bunch; the supporting cast is slightly more interesting, but not by much.

Another annoyance is the implausible thinking and actions of so many of the characters; for Madeleine to contemplate marrying Ratcliffe for her sister's sake is simply ridiculous. The fact that she considers her life at an end at age thirty is equally implausible, as is Sybil's attitude of careless youth at age twenty-five: in the nineteenth century, any woman of that age who was yet unmarried would have been considered an old maid, yet that is never even hinted at.

Perhaps the worst of it all was the pacing: this 300+ page book could have EASILY been half its size. It drags along without character development and without even any plot development. Worse yet, the book is centered entirely around politics, yet Adams seems hazy as to the details of those politics. Perhaps Madeleine learned a lot about American politics from her stay in Washington, but very little of this is shared with the reader. As such, the book does not even have an interesting setting to recommend itself.

In the end, it is obvious what Adams was trying to say, but by making Madeleine so careless with regard to Ratcliffe, the author fails utterly. With no temptation, there can be no sacrifice. It is unclear why the reader is expected to admire Madeleine, yet this expectation is clear enough.

To sum up...for a book about government corruption, look elsewhere. There must be something out there better than this. Anything.

"Democracy" is what "Primary Colors" would have been if the latter had been well-written. Like Joe Klein, Adams published his book anonymously and skewered a number of contemporary politicians (including President Rutherford B. Hayes). But Adams goes two steps further: his novel is a scathing commentary more on the American political system in general than on one administration in particular, and his characters are iconic and recognizable in any era.

In "Democracy," the nation's capital "swarms with simple-minded exhibitions of human nature; men and women curiously out of place, whom it would be cruel to ridicule and ridiculous to weep over." But Adams is not hesitant about being cruel in his portrayal of Washington's residents, and he saves his weeping for the true victims in his novel: the American people. The typical American senator combines "the utmost pragmatical self-assurance and overbearing temper with the narrowest education and meanest personal experience that ever existed in any considerable government." (Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose!)

The story concerns Madeleine Lee, an intelligent and well-meaning (if somewhat naive) New York widow, who, bored with her cosmopolitan lifestyle, travels to Washington to learn what makes the nation tick. She and her sister are quickly surrounded by a diverse group of politicians, lobbyists, and foreign diplomats, and she finds herself courted by Silas Ratcliffe, a senator with presidential aspirations whose talent "consisted in the skill with which he evaded questions of principle." During one heated (and humorous) argument about George Washington's merits, Ratcliffe sums up his view of politics: "If virtue won't answer our purpose, then we must use vice, or our opponents will put us out of office."

Adams's prose is almost Jamesian in its measured pacing (and this may simply bore some readers); the initial chapters are unhurried as he weaves the web of the plot and sketches his all-too-believable characters. Along the way he tosses barbed zingers at every target. The climactic passages are among the most comically riveting, emotionally intense, and morally satisfying finales I've read in a satire: as you might expect, nobody gets exactly what they want, but everyone gets what they deserve.

To act with entire honesty and self-respect, one should always live in a pure atmosphere, and the atmosphere of politics is impure. -Senator Silas Ratcliffe, Democracy

In his own lifetime, Henry Adams was famous first for being the grandson of John Quincy Adams, thus the great grandson of John Adams; second for his epic History of the United States During the Jefferson and Madison Administrations. It was only upon his death, in 1918, that his third person autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams, was published and that his publisher revealed that Adams had written the previously anonymous novel Democracy. It is The Education which has sustained his reputation, having been named the number one book on the Modern Library list of the Top 100 Nonfiction Books of the 20th Century, but Democracy is still considered one of the better novels of American politics, though surprisingly it is currently out of print.

The novel is both a fairly typical 19th Century comedy of manners--with the widow Madeleine Lee decamping from New York to Washington DC, where she instantly becomes one of the Capital's most desirable catches--and a more serious meditation on the nature and pursuit of power in the American democracy. The widow Lee is specifically interested in Washington because it is the seat of power :

...she was bent upon getting to the heart of the great American mystery of democracy and government.

. . .

What she wished to see, she thought, was the clash of interests, the interests of forty millions of people and a whole continent, centering at Washington; guided, restrained, controlled, or unrestrained and uncontrollable, by men of ordinary mould; the tremendous forces of government, and the machinery of society at work. What she wanted was POWER.

Mrs. Lee's most likely pursuer is Senator Silas Ratcliffe of Illinois, widely considered a likely future President : he sees her as a perfect First Lady and she sees him as her path to power. Through an elaborate courtship ritual and several set piece scenes (in the Senate, at the White House, at Mount Vernon, at Arlington Cemetery and at a dress ball) Adams puts his characters through their paces and affords the reader an intimate look at the rather tawdry political milieu of the 1870's. The theme that runs throughout the story is that access to power comes only through compromising one's principles, but Adams is sufficiently ambivalent about the point that we're uncertain whether he's more contemptuous of those who make the necessary deals or those who, by staying "pure," sacrifice the opportunity to influence affairs of state. Suffice it to say that the novel ends with Mrs. Lee, assumed by most critics to represent Adams himself, fleeing to Egypt, telling her sister : "Democracy has shaken my nerves to pieces."

Like his presidential forebears, Henry Adams had a realistic and therefore jaundiced view of politics, even as practiced in a democracy. The Adams's did not subscribe to the starry eyed idealism of the Jeffersonians. But they were all drawn to politics, even realizing that it was a moral quagmire. This is the fundamental dilemma of the conservative democrat, we recognize that we have to govern ourselves because we know we can't trust unelected rulers, but we also understand that our elected representatives are unlikely to be any more honest than the tyrants we threw out. This attitude is famously captured in Winston Churchill's (alleged) aphorism : "Democracy: the worst of all possible systems, but there is no other which would be better." And the unfortunate corollary is that unless relatively honorable men like the Adamses and the Churchills pursue careers in politics, the field will be left to the real scoundrels. Henry Adams doesn't offer any solutions to the dilemma, but he offers an amusing take on it.

GRADE : B

People seem to have mixed opinions about the character "Random", Arthur and Trillian's (biological) daughter. Her presence in the story constitutes more of a Statement than a character as such, I think. She is Douglas Adams' way of saying "hey, we all feel lost, alone, helpless, overwhelmed, uncertain where we belong, etc etc etc" Even so, she probably could have been a little more fleshed out...

The "Guide Mark 2" is really pretty creepy. It makes you think about some of the big questions, unsurprisingly, if you have read any of Douglas Adams' other stuff... Also, although the plot just goes hogwild for 95% of the book, it really does all pull together at the end. The book is relatively self-contained, compared to some of the others in the series. In general this book is less wacky, and generally a bit darker, than the other books in the "trilogy". Reading this is a little like going to "The Cable Guy", when you are expecting a usual Jim Carey movie. It does make you laugh, but also makes you think, and not always in very comforting ways.

This fifth and final installment in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker's Trilogy is simply amazing. While it seems that a lot of people weren't satisfied with it, I am quite the exception. The tone of the humor in this book (as with SLATFATF) is much darker than the earlier books, but that's just fine by me. I prefer a little darkness.

While this book returns somewhat more to the zaniness of the first three books (at least in comparison to the fourth book), it is not entirely wacky. It seems that this book is, in many ways, quite "fannish," there to please fans of the series with cheap thrills and tips of the hat (one example would be the return of the Vogons, which I don't exactly think anybody was clammoring for). However, in the midst of all this, Adams tells a wonderfully adventurous story that ties together in an ending that will leave you stunned and breathless (I'll try not to spoil it, but it's reminiscent of something that happenned in the first book, HG2G).

The worst part of the book is that Fenchurch just disappears... literally! And we never see Arthur deal with it! Still, Adams provides us with yet another wonderful character to help reveal the human side of Arthur....

I think it is a wonderful, if unexpected and somewhat unnecessary, end to the series. Trillian returns (although thankfully Zaphod doesn't), but Marvin is depressingly absent. Oh and remember Agrajag, from LTUAE? Well, there's a wonderful tie to that whole thing that you just can't miss. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, go read LTUAE and then read this and laugh along with me. Read it. You'll be blown away.

People who read the book "Mostly Harmless" with a focus on the events of the book will probably end up disappointed. Adams continues his shift toward writing character centered novels (as begun in "So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish", and continued in the Dirk Gently novels).

The story focuses on three characters: Arthur Dent, the perenially confused Briton; Ford Prefect, the manic Betelgeusian; and Tricia McMillan, a BBC television reporter who, had she decided not to go back to get her purse when she met "Phil" at a party, would have become Trillian.

Adams presents Dent as a wonderfully tragic picture, and mirrors the beginning of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" quite well. Dent is presented as a lost soul, desperately in search of a home and a place to belong. Of course, when he actually finds a place where he belongs and becomes comfortable, outside events tear his world apart. This is a theme that was present in three of the four previous HHGTTG books, but the presentation is probably the best in "Mostly Harmless" (and particularly intriguing is that Arthur's world is torn asunder by a person searching for the exact same thing as Arthur had: a place to belong).

The story of Tricia McMillan offers an interesting counterpoint to Arthur's troubles. Although she is a successful television personality, she is obsessed with the consequences of one of her past choices. Unlike Arthur, who is preoccupied with the process of finding a place to belong, Tricia is preoccupied with thoughts of what might have been.

Unlike his previous books, Adams allows the tragedy to come to a fitting end. The tone is certainly darker than the previous HHGTTG books, and the humor is perhaps less prevalent. Even so, it is a fitting end to a fine series.

Besides the lack of fact-checking mentioned above, I was bothered by the lack of basic writing skills Webb displays. The occasional misplaced apostrophe I can ignore, but this book is rife with mistakes, the most annoying of them being the author's habit of using incomplete sentences.

However, if you're not bothered by that sort of thing, this book is a quick and interesting (if not particularly accurate) read.

Adam Webb has done a good thing by bringing attention to Dennis Wilson's wonderful music. But this book needed some decent editing and fact checking in a big way. Webb continually makes mistakes that even the novice Beach Boy fan would catch. For example by stating that Dennis was not at the "Surfin" sessions. It is well documented that Dennis was there, his voice is obviously on the recording, and he sang a lead line on the B-side "Luau". Webb also states that Dennis sang lead on "Catch A Wave". No. That was Mike Love. Webb states that Brian's song "Lay Down Burden" was on his BW solo LP when in fact it was on his "Imagination" LP. These kind of annoying errors are rampant in this book. It takes away from the believability and enjoyment factor in my opinion.

I think this book rates really well alongside Jon Stebbin's book on Dennis from last year. There is some overlap, but Webb concentrates more on the music and deflating some myths surrounding the Beach Boys most underrated member. Most people know about Dennis for his rock n roll lifestyle and association with Charles Manson, but few know that he also created an awesome body of music.

Maybe it's a little one-sided but there are some cool interviews with key collaborators and Webb writes strongly with a genuine passion for Dennis Wilson's work. If you're intruiged by what you read here I strongly recommend that you search high and low for a copy of "Pacific Ocean Blue".

My 13 year old son used this book to prepare for the COOP exam. The plus side to this book is it has "diagnostic" tests so you can quickly identify strengths and weaknesses and then zero in on the chapters needed to improve your grade. There is a ton of practice questions and hundreds of mini exams on each subject covered on the test. The book also includes 2 full practice COOP as well as 2 full practice HSPT exams. The book however, is ruined by very poor explanations on exam answers and no explanation at all on practice answers. The worst part is the answer key on many of the tests appear on the very same page as the last few quesions, so in other words, it's nearly impossible to take the tests (especially the diagnostics) without seeing the answers. Finally, the book contains at least 10 errors that I found and there might be more that I didn't realize. I would expect better from a name like Barron's. Great idea, poorly developed book :(

This book helped me prepare for the Coop And HSPT. This book explains step by step how to find anwsers to the problems. I really do reccomend this book!

Mr. X is about a dysfunctional family whose members have various supernatural powers and how one member figuratively and literally comes to terms with various aspects of himself.......This 1999 release by Peter Straub is touted as a tribute to H.P. Lovecraft. It is also stamped with the all powerful marketing quote from Stephen King: "Ghastly, hide your eyes horror". Oh, it's ghastly alright. Ghastly dull. Plot twists abound in Mr. X which ultimately twists the reader out of caring about anything in the book. Whilst there is some promise in the beginning, Mr. X eventually wanders off into a very disappointing sequence of clichés that the Straubster doesn't even bother to revitalize. The ending was weak, rambling for too long, hoping to deliver a final twist that had already packed up and left town. If you're determined to pick up this piece of wood, be prepared to wade through page after page of uninspiring plot and characters. It is difficult to understand how it recieved a Bram Stoker award, just as it is difficult to understand how Straub continues to get published. Oh, yeah, Mr. X does have value - it's a great cure for insomina.

"Mr. X" is typical Straub, at times frustrating, at other times amazing. His style is decidedly not readily accessible at times, but he does possess a superior command of the English languague (which doesn't always make for quick reading....)

Ned Dunstan is a likeable enough sort, and his adventures in the search for "the truth" are convoluted but interesting. The book takes wild twists and turns, he inherits large sums of money, his mother dies, he hooks up with various women. But the biggest question of the book is, what of his double, Robert?

Working in a bit of Lovecraft fare is a cool technique also. This book really cooks in the first half, especially Dunstan's college experience, completely surreal and bizarre.

"Mr. X" is not an easy read by any means, but is ultimately worth it.

The Peter Straub acid test - you'll either love it, or hate it.

Ned Dunstan comes from a very peculiar family. Some of them see things that haven't yet happened. Others can teleport. Or, apparently, be in more than one place at a time. Their offspring are - well, sometimes not quite right. Occasionally they have to be buried out in the Back Forty. Ned has been haunted by an "Other" since his childhood, some shadowy figure who seeks him and those around him out to do grievous harm. And he seems to have a twin, who his mother never told him about...or does he?

Along with Ghost Story, this is Straub's best-written and most carefully plotted book. Also like Ghost Story, it requires tremendous patience to read. Straub writes like a Chinese puzzle box, and in highly convoluted form, presenting bits and pieces of his story in altered time frames and from different perspectives. His plot is half Poe's "William Wilson," half Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror." It is more sci-fi or fantasy than true horror, and in fact the award it won was the World Fantasy Award, which is most appropriate. It's tricky and clever, but really satisfies in the end if you simply pay attention.

Won't be everyone's cup of tea, but this description should help you decide whether or not it will be yours.

The amount of typographical errors is truly astounding for a book that has passed through 9 editions. The answer keys have so many errors that the book is of dubious merit. If the student realizes the answer the book gives is wrong then hopefully s/he has the means to find the right answer. Otherwise, the student is just left insecure, frustrated, or mislead. Upon what survey do they make their claim that this is such a popular book???

The editors really, really need to proof read their text better - it is literally embarrassing. The current level is not competent enough to be deemed professionally done.

If this book is representative, would I trust them for further books like SAT Preparation? They must do better than this to be competitive.

I bought it because it was the best bestseller among its kind.
It has a lot of typos. The book is not well organized.

This book has lots of illustrations taken from old music catalogs and limited text. Most of the text that is there is quoted from other sources. Information on about 10 companies only and skips some of the largest including Conn, Buescher, York, and Boosey and nothing on some of the smaller old brands like Lehnert. The valuations given are for specific instruments, and the guidelines for generalized pricing are next to useless, with statements such as: "Valuing antique brass instruments is like shooting at a moving target in the dark." All in all some limited information about a number of companies, and many interesting old illustrations of historic instruments, but not of much use in determining value of instruments other than the specific ones in the book.