This book showed each side to any conspiracy that could have been involved in the Lincoln assassination. I became confused after reading a chapter and then all of that historian thinking was rejected by some other guy. If you are into that kinda thing, sure go ahead and read the book, but I just got confused. I can't determine what really happened and what was people's thoughts.

Since the day Lincoln was assassinated, many theories have emerged about who was the mastermind behind the plot. Among the accused have been members of the Confederate government, including Jefferson Davis, the Catholic Church and members of Lincoln's own Cabinet.

Hanchett examines these conspiracy theories and the people who put forward the theories in an attempt to find out if a higher authority, civil or religious, ordered John Wilkes Booth and his co-conspirators to kill Lincoln and members of his Cabinet. By examining each theory individually as well as the motives behind those who suggested the theories, Hanchett does an excellent job of refuting some of the more unlikely theories.

Rabbi Heschel may have been a great man, active in the civil rights movement and other just causes. His skill as a young writer and biographer seems lacking in this book though. Very drab and dry, it seems to bounce around way too often. One does not get a good feel for Maimonides and only a limited glance at the era in which he lived. I found little in this book that would encourage me to recommend it to others.

Abraham Joshua Heschel has written a great biography of Maimonides which, although it may not be to everyone's taste, is still very satisfying and rewarding This is obviously not a book for the masses and it certainly would help to know a little bit about Maimonides before picking up this book. A superb book. Highly recommended

After missing the first collection of essays on this brilliant recluse published soon after his death, I picked up the present version as soon as I was able. It did not disappoint.

The book is a collection of four lectures given in the subject's honor in 1995 on the tenth anniversary of his death. The final lecture and the latter part of the third are highly mathematical and technical and clearly intended for a professional audience.

But for me, the first lecture by Abraham Pais is worth the purchase price alone. Pais was not only a contemporary physicist, but also a close friend and as close to a confidant as was possible with such a reticent man.

Through Pais' eyes, we see a mathematician turned physicist who was very different from the man to whom Dirac is most frequently compared, Albert Einstein. Einstein was a physicist first, mathematician second. Dirac was exactly the opposite. Einstein became a social and political critic, Dirac never strayed far from his study. The two were similar in that both viewed mathematical beauty as primary and both hated the modern remake of quantum mechanics (after the initial theory) for very similar reasons. This last point was interesting as Dirac was the first one to combine all his contemporaries' work on this improved quantum physics into a formal mathematical structure. His resulting equation, called naturally the Dirac equation, is classic Dirac, short and sweet. It combined Einsteinian relativity with the new quantum theory and Dirac considered the result to govern most of physics and all of chemistry. Stephen Hawking, the renowned theoretical physicist, says in his introductory memorial address to the book, "If Dirac had patented the equation ... he would have become one of the richest men in the world. Every television set or computer would have paid him royalties." For this work, Dirac shared the 1933 Nobel Prize with German physicist Erwin Schroedinger. One unexpected consequence of this work was a mathematical conclusion that defined a "negative energy" matter (aka antimatter) solution. Simply put, he had discovered a universe noone had imagined. To this day, we see the effects of this discovery from medical necessities (PET scan imaging-Positron Emission Tomography) to science fiction (Star Trek).

The quotations and anecdotes Pais chooses are well placed and often very funny. They are also supported by the images of Dirac portrayed in the sketch on the cover and in the few photographs scattered through the first two lectures. They reveal his character well. He saw mathematical and physical realities so clearly that he simply could not understand why others did not see them as well. The photo of him "listening" to future Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman in Maurice Jacob's section is one of the most amusing of the collection.

In the second lecture, Jacob shows the path of discovery and effect on latter day experimental physics of antimatter. He goes too long in spots but is generally fine.

We were ourselves participating in the inauguration of the Paul Dirac memorial in Westminster Abbey. Especially the speeches of Stephan Hawking and Abraham Pais were very touching as they did not only touch Dirac's work but also his personality and life. He was a very complex person and a great physicist. This book reflects that more than others about him.

As an avid reader of the "Best of JIR" books for many years, I didn't find this volume nearly as roll-on-the-floor funny as previous volumes. However, there are some real gems in here.

This book is largely a collection of silly experiments--likethe testing of bricks for infectious diseases, or the reactions ofcats to photographs of men with various styles of beards--written up in the style of a scientific research paper, complete with footnotes. Most of the material is written in a very dry, technical style, which is exactly what makes it so funny--_if_ you're a scientist, or if you've at least been exposed to scientific journals in the past. If you do not fall into this category, you'll be left wondering what could possibly be the least bit funny about this nonsense; so if you're buying this as a gift, choose your recipient very carefully.

If you're interested in this book, you should also have a good look at The Best of Annals of Irreproducible Research; it's a collection of the same sort of material, and I found it to be a bit funnier than this collection. Both are very worthwhile to the right audience.

This book feels like it was written for no other reason then to cash in of Left Behind's popularity. The writing is unfocused and hard to follow and the author certainly doesn't use his book to explore Christianity in any kind of depth or bring any insights into the faith. It's a waste of time from any angle you look at it. Try We All Fall Down or the Christ Clone Trilogy instead if you're looking for thoughtful books that explore the topic with insight and intelligent writing.

By in large an EXCELLENT, EXCELLENT novel!! Although there are some similarities with the Left Behind series, this book is without a doubt much more superior in its characterization and writing style. From the beginning you're immediately pulled into the lives of each of the characters and you can't help but sense that the time they live in is all too real. In addditon, although this novel is about the end-times, its delves much deeper than that. It touches on the struggles of coming to true faith in God and the reality of what it means to be born-again. It doesn't use a lot of ambiguous terminology like "finding Jesus" or "getting save" but it focuses on describing the real experience of encountering the living God through Christ. I have no doubt that this series will not only change a lot people ideas about the last days but about what it really means to be a Chrisitian.

I have read all of the poor reviews and can't help but wonder who is writing them. Didn't they read this book? I couldn't put it down. I carried it everywhere with me. I read the entire Left Behind series and became bored toward the end because I felt that the story line began to drag and the writing and character development was poor. Not so with this book.

In order to understand the importance of this topic and storyline, extensive and needed character development has been achieved throughout the first half of the book. I was truly disturbed by what I read and the evil doings in the book. I was able to feel and visualize the evilness not just read about it. The scenes of war and devastation left me breathless.

I look forward to reading the entire series and recommend it to anyone who has enjoyed the Left Behind or Christ Clone series and anyone else who may need enlightening.

Told from the perspective of John Surratt, perhaps, after Booth himself, the least understood of the Lincoln assassination conspirators, Robertson's John Suratt is very much a fictional Surratt, as are all the historical figures presented in the book. While interesting in its depiction of Civil War Washington, ultimately, the book is a disappointment in that the characterizations are flat and stereotypical as Mr. Robertson dispenses with historical truth in search of a good yarn. The Lincoln assassination and its participants can provide enough grist for an enjoyable and plausible historical novel (as Mr. Robertson describes his work) with only marginal manipulation of history; thus the wholesale manipulation of history results in a work that is, at the end, an unconvincing and uncomfortable perversion of the historical fiction genre.

Most (though clearly not all, judging from previous comments here) Civil War and Lincoln buffs will applaud David Robertson's debut novel, which rescues a friend of John Wilkes Booth from obscurity and places him at center stage. Robertson brings to life John H. Surratt, tried as a co-conspirator and acquitted -- two years after his mother was convicted on the same charge and became the first woman to be hanged by the U.S. government. But "Booth" is a book for even readers with no special interest in the Civil War. It opens a fascinating window onto those turbulent times and offers insights -- though, granted, fictional ones -- into a story whose ending everyone already knows.

The novel opens with Surratt's 1916 New York Times obituary and then shows us diary entries he had written a few days before. In his initial entry, Surratt reveals that he has been plucked from shipping-clerk obscurity by none other than D.W. Griffith, who wants to put the reminiscences of the long-forgotten historical figure on film for an epilogue to his new movie, "The Birth of a Nation." He considers Griffith's proposal: "Perhaps," he writes, "it was time to tell the full truth about the Lincoln assassination." And with that, the septuagenarian opens up his diaries from the fateful months of 1864-65, offering up the observations and narrations of his younger self.

At 21, already a failed playwright, Surratt has just landed a job as a photographer's assistant that both affords him gainful employment and helps him avoid the draft. It was a strong recommendation by his friend Booth (one of the country's most popular actors) that got him the position, and, as he finds out, the favor comes with strings attached. According to Robertson's somewhat defensive five-page essay on his sources, Surratt wasn't actually a photographer, but the author's invention is welcome -- it enlivens both the novel and Surratt's character and allows for some remarkable bits about the Civil War photographer's art: the metal rack that painfully hol! ds subjects' heads and bodies still; the delicate glass-and-chemical work to produce photographic plates; and "the bane of the photographers' art" -- the light-absorbing fabric called bombazine. Surratt's boss complains that "with the fashion in ladies' dress, a pretty maiden of twenty who comes to my studio in her best bombazine outfit becomes . . . a fleshy blob of a face swimming in an inky darkness."

The truly fascinating element of the novel, though, is the relationship between Booth and Surratt, who is torn between obligation and independence, struggling for control over "Booth's presence in my life." Robertson's Surratt is a reluctant cipher, a humorless man searching for a cause; it's all too easy to fall under Booth's sway. He's aware of this influence, disturbed by it, fights it. He frets about his place in Booth's shadow even as his friend worries that "he is not the great man onstage" that his father, Junius Booth, was. At times Surratt reflects upon "how lucky I was to be able to call a man like John Wilkes Booth my friend." But he's fully aware that Booth is a "subtle manipulator and egotist"; even as he marvels at his friend's generosity, "I couldn't help wondering what Booth wanted."

It turns out that what Booth wants is help with a wild scheme: He intends to kidnap President Lincoln as a prisoner of war, to stop all the killing; his primary concern is that the Union army is bent on humiliating the South. His safety compromised, Surratt turns against his friend: "Booth has reduced my life to comical farce, and a low bumbling comedy. . . . I fear he is a loose cannon, and sure to get me killed -- and over something about which I am utterly disagreed with him on. Why did I ever think Booth was my friend? How can I now disassociate myself from him?" He tries to disentangle himself, deciding that "with the return of peace I will back away from Booth, and turn once again to my own hopes, my own future." But, of course, eventually it's too late, and Booth commits "the one act that would write! my name forever in the history books, and, I prayed, make the South whole again."

This last bit is from Booth's diary, written during his flight after Lincoln's murder. Booth's entries are by turns contemplative and thrilling -- and, considering the harried circumstances of their writing, a little too glossy to seem genuine. Indeed, both diaries read more like meticulously edited historical fiction than contemporary journals. They're far too nuanced and accomplished, laced with italicized flashback phrases and artful foreshadowing. The entries conclude with teasing cliffhangers. There are no missteps, no unsurety, no spontaneity. They don't *sound* right. Surratt's recollection of even throwaway dialogue is too pitch-perfect to be real, as when Booth tells a colleague: "Lewis, there is also a sideboard at the bar with pickled eggs, oysters, and beefsteaks for sandwiches. . . . You must get yourself something to eat. It's all right." Not even Truman Capote would have remembered these lines! Many readers have trouble when an author gives us an unreliable narrator, but sometimes a narrator can be *too* reliable.

The upside to the writing's shininess is that "Booth" is very smooth reading -- though I can't resist pointing out a rare stumble, when Surratt describes his dread: "I felt a cold shiver in my bowels, as if the shadow of death had sent a chill wind through them." Somehow I doubt Robertson was aiming to instill an image of wind in Surratt's bowels. But this type of lapse is unusual. "Booth" is a gripping, enlightening read that's well worth the time of even those who don't often pick up historical fiction. And for Civil War aficionados: Don't miss this one.

An enjoyable book to read, and one that is hard to put down. Robertson admittedly takes some liberties but sticks pretty much to the main facts. Telling the tale through diary accounts, we see the relationship between John Wilkes Booth and the POV character, John Surratt, develop much like that of Steerforth's and David Copperfield's in the Dickens novel. Robertson interestingly enough has the aged Surratt meet with film maker D.W.Griffith and uses this to begin the novel, to great effect. An interesting tale with historical tidbits thrown in, and some insight into early American photography techniques as well. I hope to read many more novels by David Robertson in the future.

It isn't a bad book, and I've to agreed that you do not need any prior database concepts to learn it....however I think some prior programming concepts might be of help...This book was used as the textbook of a database design course at the University of Illinois at Chicago(UIC). The students that took the courses has a business background, not a technical one; but because of that, most of them had trouble understanding the book and end up focusing more on the professor's notes. However, I do believe it is a good book for those who wants to go into details about databases.

I had this book for an intro to databases classe, and I have to agree that the material presented within is challenging; however, that doesn't mean that the book is bad - working with databases (outside of small academic projects) is very challenging. Most of the database developers that I work with have a BS or MS in CS as well as about 10 -15 years experience.

When I began working with Oracle in an employment situation with a complex schema - my appreciation for this book and the theories presented within grew enormously. If nothing else, you'll at least be able to speak intelligently about database related issues with your future (or current) co-workers.

Too many database books ignore the semantics, research and design that go into databases. This book covers everything from the basics to the complex. You will learn the different design methdologies behind databases as well as the history and research that has gone into this field. You will also learn how to design and debug database systems. The book is excellently laid out and assumes no prior database knowledge. It doesn't discuss specific database systems, but it does cover the different styles and query languages you will come across (QBE, SQL, etc.) This book allows you to come away with the knowledge and expertise necessary for database applications. I highly recommend this book if you are interested in any way with databases. No matter what your interest, you will not come away empty handed.

This book is...an insult to the intelligence of all those former slaves who were wise enough to judge Lincoln by the actual results he brougth rather than measuring him against some perfect set of ideals that had no relation to political reality.

True, Frederick Douglas has his doubts about Lincoln right up until the end. But in the end he appreciated the role Lincoln had played as an emancipator and judged his efforts to be "sublime".

Lincon's gift lay in his capacity to grow. In the final analysis he achieved greatness whatever the flaws he may have started with. Douglass recognized this and Lincoln in turn cane to recognize the greatness of Douglas and of all the former slaves who stood and contributed to the creation of a more just society.

Lincoln and the slaves overcame their limitations together. They each worked in their own ways to achieve a more just society. It is a shame the author of this work refused to recognize this obvious truth.

Unbelievable! Bennett is rehashing and keeping alive his hardly new views from the early 70s when he first wrote on this topic for EBONY magazine! Scholars have overwhelmed his points for 30 years with their demonstrations of Lincoln's personal growth and political evolution; his personal reflections on God's favor of emancipation, his relationships with Elizabeth Keckly, Sojourner Truth (as well as Frederick Douglas, who was invited in by Lincoln as the first black man to be received at an inauguration), his dropping the colonization idea in 1862, his endorsement of educated black suffrage in 1864, the approved Freedmen's Bureau in 1865 (the first Federal support agency). True, some scholars (Stephen Oates comes to mind) have taken Lincoln's growth to too great an extreme, but he was even farther from Bennett's portrait. In truth, almost no one in the 1860s could pass Bennett's requirements for purity from racism and Douglas's qualified praise of Lincoln noted by Bennett was to keep the newly freed slaves from overeacting in their idolization. (PS, I wanted to give this 0 stars.)

did this guy vote for mcclellan? the book is nothing but axe grinding. ok, lincoln wasn't perfect. but if he had lost the election to either douglas or mcclellan things would have been a lot worse. the man was trying to save a country from being torn apart at the seams. the author cites a wide range of "historical evidence". he forgets that when you quote sources its usually smart to leave them in context. i may be no scholar on the president, but i have read a lot about him. lincoln was a man of his times, as we are men of our times. a lot of revisionist historians employ the tactic of deleting this fact. the book is nothing but copperhead propoganda in an election year. far superior works are out there. the author will make friends among the liberal "culture police" that have been on patrol for the last eight years. for a better book on the sixteenth president read mr. oates work "with malice towards none." it is far more balanced and correctly researched.

Here we have 3 smart kids (nat, izzie & grace), The twins, Izzie and Grace are stratospherically wealthy. Nat is poor. When Nat's mother loses her job ending Nat's collage edu., the twins come up with a plan to pull a kidnapping on themselves? Yeah right, I don't think so. Given the two wealthy girls prior generous and forward behavior with money and people they would have just gone and paid Nat's (and his mothers!) bills whether he/she liked it or not. So for me the story ended on page 221 with this way-out of character kidnapping scheme.

I did read the rest regardless tho because I sometimes like the way Mr. Abrahams weaves his stories and characters.

But right away comes another glaring out of characterization. Nat, who has fallen in love with Izzie and can tell her apart from her twin sister -easily- suddenly fails in recognizing Grace when the girls switch places at the last minute (Izzie becoming the kidnapped instead of Grace).

I think Mr. Abrahams would of done this story a favor if he'd of toned down Freedy (the bad guy) with his Andro/speed/bodybuilding obsession and gone into and expanded on the Freedy and Professor Uzig connection. Professor Uzig being Freedy's "Father: Unknown".

Also, why would Nat be prosecuted for attempted extortion? The kidnapping wasn't his idea! He came down against it but the twins had acted before he saw them again. Why didn't Izzie come to his defense?

All 'n all this reads like an unfinished draft. I don't see how something like this could of made it past anyone! especially anyone in the business. Too many discrepancies. Too many
avenues left unexplored.

Body>This book is a victim of the author's previous works. Once you've read other offerings, you come to expect dynamic chacterization, a rock-'em-sock-'em pace along with a surprises thrown in. Crying Wolf doesn't quite cut it in all areas. The characterization is there. First we meet Freedy, a swimming pool cleaner who just doesn't get it, an Abrahams' trademark. Freedy thinks he's smarter than he is; he thinks he's sexier than he is and in demand, and he doesn't understanding what the woman's (whose pool he's cleaning) problem is when he tries to have sex with her. On the other end of the spectum is Nat, the mid-west son of a single parent, basketball playing high school kid whose intelligence and essay wins him enough money to go to Inverness. While Freedy momentarily fades from the picture, Nat goes off to college. Because he can't afford to go home for Christmas, he must spend holiday on campus--until he meets the twins, Grace and Izzy. The twins, who are filthy rich, introduce Nat to a seductive new world he could not even begin to imagine. They take a jaunt to the Carribeans on the twins' family jet where Nat meets Leo Uzig, a philosophy professor at Inverness. From there, the plot thickens and the pace, which has faltered up to this point, picks up consideraly. Under the guidance of the professor, the twins and Nat become involved in a "harmless" plot that turns deadly very quickly.

I'd purchased "Crying Wolf" for a friend at work. Because he was out of the office and I'd run out of books, I borrowed this from his stack. I actually went to work half an hour early the day after I started reading it, so that I could finish the book before he came in to claim his prize.

I was looking for the suspense since, on the cover, Stephen King is quoted as having said that Peter Abrahams is his "favorite American suspense novelist." I really didn't find suspense. However, I found a good plot with likeable characters. While this book takes place in college - a boarding school, if you will - I kept thinking that Inverness was NOT Hogwarts...

Nat is a young man who wins a scholarship that takes him from his working-class town to Inverness College. Freedy is a young bodybuilder thug. Their paths parallel but never quite meet until...

Nat happens upon Grace and Izzie, very rich twin sisters who attend Inverness (and very different from Patti, his hometown sweetheart). The three students hatch a kidnapping scheme to try to obtain some much-needed money from the girls' father. However, as we learned as children, if you Cry Wolf often enough, when a crisis emerges no one will believe you.

While seldom actually "suspenseful," "Crying Wolf" was nonetheless a good book and a good purchase. I do recommend it; and I will be looking for more books by Peter Abrahams

Pearl Abraham's second book, Giving Up America, illustrates the gradual tears in moral fiber that people of every background may experience when an important relationship is tested. While Pearl Abraham's book deals with the testing of the marriage of a young Hasidic wife and her Orthodox Jewish husband by his attraction to a Southern beauty, it illuminates as well the testing of other relationships.

Deena and Daniel do not enjoy the support of an involved family. Each belongs to a separate community of work friends who owe their allegiance to the individual instead of the couple. The "foreign" natures of the couple and the Southern beauty they befriend do not threaten the marriage; but the lack of family, societal and cultural support helps to make it vulnerable.

As is the case for many melting pot marriages, the marriage of Deena and Daniel is tested at its very foundation. Abraham inspects every crack, every weakness, every short cut taken, every neglected aspect of maintenance in the marriage. Giving Up America made me wonder whether a couple who attend to their relationship with the same devout attention lavished on their home might have a better chance no matter how different the persons' background.

In The Romance Reader, Abraham's protagonist breaks with tradition when tradition collides with her dreams. In Giving Up America, the bonds of tradition wear away long before daily friction begins to whittle away at the protagonist's dreams. Readers don't need to be Jewish to identify with the characters. They need only be willing to observe the often infinitesimal crumbling that undermines marriage and faith so painfully.

I found the book very interesting because the writer makes us clear what happens in the minds of both persons. She lets us know the differences in their characters. The most interesting for me was that in every chapter you could feel the distance between them growing. There was already a difference between them, but meeting people from the world outside their Jewish community made the developments going faster. If you read the book you feel that it's inevitable that they will split at the end. You feel that there could not be another way.
The writer lets us live the whole story together with the main characters and that is why I liked the book. So....Go buy or rent the book!!!!

I just read Giving Up America and experienced it as a real page-turner. It's quite different from The Romance Reader, Pearl Abraham's first book, and interestingly so. It's a more difficult book somehow. The themes aren't obvious and the writing more subtle, which probably means that lay readers won't take to it. Oh well. My advice to the writer of the above criticism: It might be wise to learn to spell before passing judgement on a true and gifted writer. I highly recommend Giving Up America to all those who like reading books that make them think.