This is not only the story of Catherine, it's also about her daughter Marguerite, the Queen of Navarre, and Catherine's rival, Diane de Poiters, who was her husband's (Henry II) mistress. You can imagine what a tale unfolds here!

The story of these three and the times in which they lived is one of those truly amusing side trips the scholar can take while pursuing a path of historical and/or literary interest.

The book is illustrated with photographs of paintings and drawings and is written in an entertaining style that brings people, events and locations to life in the imagination. The research is thorough as well. Whether or not you have a particular interest in Italian or French history, you'll find this an entertaining and informative read. Don't miss it if you can help it.

Before reading this book, I knew very little about Catherine de Medici and how her reputation as an evil queen came about. Author Strage does an excellent job of explaining young Catherine's life and how she came to be Queen of France. For the first twenty years of her marriage, she lived under the shadow of her husband's mistress Diane de Poitiers and again the author does an excellent job of explaining this strange relationship. After ten years of marriage, Catherine finally begins to bear children and these children will become the key players in the latter half of her life. Three sons will succeed their father as kings while one daughter will marry Henri of Navarre and eventually he will succeed to the kingdom of France. However, the religious wars of the period (between Protestants and Catholics) must first be fought. Catherine has a major part to play in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre and this infamous act will color all the rest of her life as perceived by future historians.

The books is very well written and especially accessible. You do not need to know a lot about the time period to understand all the characters and their motivation. I would recommend this book as good for someone just beginning to review this time in history.

This is the kind of biography that's a joy to read, and I'llhappily read anything Strage has written. He writes with humor andinsight, painting a vivid picture of the people and the times. He knows how to keep things moving along. He includes the fascinating details that illuminate the time (what herbs were used to treat an illness, or exactly how that prisoner was tortured), yet doesn't get bogged down in needless explanation. You don't have to be an expert in 16th century France to enjoy this book.

As a long-time reader of Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams, I absolutely loved this story. Cantiger is the typical bumbling fool who I can only describe as a medieval-type Arthur Dent...striving to be in his element and only making a fool of himself. There are a lot of side-scenes sprinkled in that really brought guffaws, like the giant bull or "Aurochs" that is described by a noble knight as "A burger with an attitude." There's even an assortment of absurd historical footnotes, much like you would find in the "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" series.

I must caution readers, however, that the heavy use of the British dialect in sections of this book may cause you to lose your place in the plot sometimes. Several times while I was reading I did not quite understand some concepts they were talking about (although after going over it again or reading further, I managed to get the idea). But don't let that deter you from the enjoyable absurdities this book offers. Nowhere in any other book would you ever find a flatulence-propelled cow!

Well worth reading! It took me a few days to really get into this book, but once I did, I loved it. Some parts caused me to laugh so hard that strangers sitting near me were giving me funny looks, which is high on my list of criteria for good books. In some ways it reminded me of Terry Pratchett's early work, so I can't wait to see what Mark F. Parker is writing in ten years.

This book is so good and funny!Perfect for Harry Potter Fans!!

When I first began reading this collection, I thought McLaughlin's writing was an acquired taste. But the further I got into his world, the more I understood and appreciated the in jokes and his use of the campy conventions of the movie genres he satirizes. Although these movies don't exist, they could, and probably not in too different a form from the way he writes them. Mutated animal-like forms play a role in many of the stories, and an apocalyptic ending is usually in order. I had to wonder constantly where I was in relation to McLaughlin's universe. Although his stories strike me as being somewhat context-free and lack a certain continuity, these qualities enhance the reader's feeling of disengagement with the "real" world, which might very well be requisite for entering his dark (although oddly humerous) landscapes.

This collection is a must for people who like good writing that has the ability to both inspire whimsy and chill the blood. Mark McLaughlin is aptly named--Mc LAUGH lin. But don't become to comfortable, because the moment you start laughing, you are somehow awakened to the joke, and it ain't always so funny.

I love this book, and kudos to Fairwood Press for publishing it. Writers like Mr. McLaughlin and publishers like Fairwood are the reason literature continues to live in a world of big books and corporate mergers.

Hazzah! I await McLaughlin's next triumph!

In this latest work from Mark McLaughlin, the author takes the seemingly disparate elements of humor, horror, and the surreal and whips up a delightful literary mince-pie just in time for the holidays. Recommended for the humor readers that don't care for the horrific and the horror fans that don't normally opt for the humorous; in short, there's flavours here for one and all! McLaughlin's deft blending of such disparate ingredients shows why many have referred to him as "the Graham Kerr of the Macabre".

JWD at RMU

The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn "Critique"

Huckleberry Finn introduces himself as someone who appeared in an earlier book reminding us of what happened towards the end of that story. Though he won't mention it until later in the story, when his irresponsible father has left him by his self. Huck has been living with Ms. Douglas a widow, a kind woman who wants to teach him all the things his father has neglected, the things all normal kids would usually learn.

He tells us about Miss Watson, the widow's sister, who is strict on teaching Huck good manners and religion, and about Tom Sawyer and his stories, a boy like Huck looks up to because of his wide reading and imagination ability. He is also friendly with Jim, the black slave. Huck's father returns and takes him away from the widow. A pig has murdered when his father begins beating him, Huck runs away and makes it look as though Huck. He hides out on a nearby island, intending to take off after his neighbors stop searching for his assumed dead body.

Jim the black slave of Miss. Watson is also hiding on the island, since he has run away from Miss Watson, who was about to sell him and separate him from his wife and his deaf little girl. They decide to escape together, and when they find a large raft, their journey on the Mississippi River begins. After a couple of adventures on the Mississippi River, a steamboat hits their raft, and Huck and Jim are separated. Huck goes ashore and finds himself at the home of the Grangerfords, which allow him to come and live with them. At first Huck admires these people for what he thinks is their class and good taste. But when he learns about the deaths caused by a feud with another family, he becomes disgusted with the Grangerfords. By this time Jim had time to repair the raft, and Huck rejoins him. Two men who are escaping the law and who claim to be a duke and the son of the king of France soon join them. Huck knows they are actually small-time crooks, but he pretends to believe their stories.

After watching these frauds bilk people of their money in two towns, Huck is forced to help them try to swindle an inheritance out of three young girls who were recently orphaned. He goes along at first because he doesn't want them to turn Jim in, but eventually he decides that the thieves have gone too far. He invents a complicated plan to escape and to have them arrested. The plan almost works, but at the last minute the two crooks show up and continue to travel with Huck and Jim. When all their moneymaking schemes begin to fail, they sell Jim to a farmer in one of the towns they're visiting. Huck learns about this and decides to free Jim. The farmer turns out to be Tom Sawyer's uncle, and through a misunderstanding he and his wife think Huck is Tom. When Tom himself arrives, Huck brings him up to date on what's happening. Tom pretends to be his own brother Sid, and the two boys set about to rescue Jim.

The true to his imaginative style, Tom devises a plan that is more complicated than it has to be. Eventually they actually pull it off and reach the raft without being caught. Tom, however, has been shot in the leg, and Jim refuses to leave until the wound has been looked at. The result is that Jim is recaptured and Tom and Huck have to explain what they have done. Tom, it turns out, knew all along that Miss Watson had set Jim free in her will, so everyone can now return home together. Huck, however, thinks he's had enough of civilization, and hints that he might take off for the Indian Territory instead of going back to his home.

I found this book an excellent choice of words to describe Mark Twaine's Huck Finn

I thought that this was an exciting book, and I would recommend it to anyone who likes adventure. Southern dialect is used throughout the entire novel, and it was difficult to understand at first, but once I had read a little ways into it, the language added tremendous reality to the story. This book is about a young boy who runs away from his dad, the town drunk, and is later joined by a slave, Jim, who is running aways at an attempt for freedom. It questions a lot of the values that Americans had when it was written (before the Civil War), and it's message is timeless. It was an awesome book, and you should definitely check it out!

I would recommend this book to 15 year olds and up or if you have a good vocabulary. This is a spectacular book. This book kept me in suspense almost the whole book. This book teaches you about slavery. They have a lot of people that think African-Americans should be slaves. It is an adventurous book that takes you along the Mississippi & The Ohio River before the civil war. I liked the book, because most the time when I start a book I get bored with it then I don't finish it. I really recommend that teachers have this book for there students and parents have there children read this book, I hope people wont ever be prejudice.

Even though the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan is often viewed as their Vietnam, there are suprisingly few books on the subject. The books that do exist often derive from the experiences of a particular journalist or soldier. While such books are extremely valuable, they do not provide an overall treatment of the war and its relevance to the wider world.

Mark Galeotti provides a more historical and wider view of the war. He discusses the Soviet Union's involvement in the war and its effects on that country. He particularly addresses the argument that the war in Afghanistan was central to the fall of the Soviet Union. In pursuing this argument, a detailed and compelling analysis of the effects of the war upon the Soviet Union is provided.

The major problem with the book is that at times it feels spotty. Galeotti sometimes exhaustively focuses on issues that are tangential to his argument, such as the role of Afghan veterans in Soviet/Russian society, while providing only adequate amounts of detail on the actual war in Afghanistan. The overall history of military operations is covered very briefly. In particular, analysis of military effectiveness focuses almost entirely on tactics and does not attempt a detailed appraisal of flaws/strengths in Soviet strategy.

Nevertheless, this is a very strong book and certainly vital reading for understanding the importance of the Soviet war in Afghanistan.

I picked this up because I'm interested in the war(s) in Afghanistan, but to be honest I thought it might be a little dated because it was published in 1995. Boy, was I wrong! There are a few details which have emerged since in later books (especially by Les Grau), but this is an amazing overview not just of the war but of the effects this had back in Russia, from the problems the vets faced to how it changed the High Command. And it's written very clearly, even with humor. Highly recommended!

There have been many books about the history of maps, but few have addressed one of the types of maps that we consult most regularly: the weather map. Monmonier, a professor of geography at Syracuse University and author of several previous books, endeavors to remedy this deficiency and does so admirably.

He goes back to the earliest days of investigating the weather, before telephone or telegraph when any weather map had to be put together days or more after the fact. But it gets done, even so, and when higher-speed communications are available, people are ready.

He goes on to cover developments both technological and social: the advent of radar as a weather detection tool as well as the now-routine weather satellite views, but also how the weather is covered in the news, including the development of the newspaper weather map from the dull black-and-white diagrams that were once routine to the multicolored glory of USA Today's weather map.

There's weather on television, too, and he spends time talking about both The Weather Channel's coverage with their many maps on a chroma-key background and how local stations cover the weather using the latest in technology, from doppler radar to the fancy, fly-through 3-D graphics that many of them seem to use these days.

My personal preference would have been to learn more about the earliest days of the weather maps and how they were developed and less about the development of the glitzy modern weather reporting, but perhaps that is just me, and, considering the ubiquity of the latter, I can't fault its inclusion.

Overall, it's a well-written, good read, and highly recommended for the weather fanatics among us (and I must include myself!).

This book uses weather maps as a central motif. It discusses issues of meteorology (although it is not really a primer on meteorology, as suggested by the Scientific American review), cartography, graphic design, and mass media. It is lightly written but well documented and intelligently illustrated. It is a great read for those who enjoy science books.

Brimming with information, statistics, and assessments of "America's Drugs of Choice," this book presents an overview of alcohol and tobacco use in a highly accessible and easy to read format, without sacrificing quality of content. Like other books in the Information Plus series,its reference materials also give readers a source and direction to access further information. "Must" reading for general information, or research.

This book is an excellent resource tool regarding "legal drugs" that people regularly abuse. This book explores the addictions people have to alcohol and tobacco and does a thorough, in depth study of how these substances not only impact negatively on individual health, but on society as well. I would highly recommend this book to anyone.

First off, I am a huge fan of Mark Eitzel and AMC, so that's not an issue. I was excited to read this book because I was a late convert to the music and was looking forward to catching up on the story I'd missed behind the band I dug. Body's culling together of reviews and interviews is admirable, and the depth of factual research in general is impressive. Die-hard AMC/Eitzel fans aren't going to be able NOT to appreciate the concentration of information here.

My reservations about the book deal with the telling of the story; I really don't think there's much surprising or new in here. Body insists that--and quotes others' insisting that--Eitzel is "one of the greatest living songwriters," but he doesn't really try to test the whys and hows of this claim beyond uttering the normal platitudes about touching deep common emotional chords. But every review of every AMC/Eitzel album has already told us that.

Slightly more off-putting was...how shall I call it?...a disturbing textual relationship between Body's work and some of his source material. I'll cite one example. As Body describes Eitzel's recorded solo show in 1991 (that ended up as "Songs of Love Live"), "People called out for requests contantly, mouthed the words to songs, and generally revelled in what felt like a semi-religious event; part stand-up comedy, part theatre, part concert and part revivalist meeting" (103). Compare Andrew Smith's review of the concert, reprinted in the CD's liner notes: "Tonight, the atmosphere in the Borderline was like a cross between a revivalist gospel service, an intimate jazz club and a pantomime. People called for songs, mouthed the words, even commented on them between numbers..." What's going on here? I understand that re-creating concerts one might not have attended could be a difficult proposition, but a little more gracious disclosure as to the origin of the description might be warranted in this case. I'm almost afraid to look at the other reviews that might have been consulted in the writing of the book.

If you want the history of AMC, you'll get it. The sound bites from Eitzel alone are practically worth the price of the book. I was just a little disappointed, after finishing "Wish the World Away," that a book about an artist so unafraid of picking at his own wounds seemed to pull up short of considering some of the harder questions in a fresh way.

Mark Eitzel is an exceptionally talented songwriter and performer, not to mention a complex, intriguing human being who, as this book shows, has occasionally been his own worst enemy. Sean Body's excellent biography of Eitzel and American Music Club gives insight into a wonderful band who were critically lauded and publicly ignored, and a music industry that simply didn't seem to know what to do with them. Despite the absence of a happy ending, this remains a curiously uplifting story, told with grace by an author who clearly understands and respects his subject matter. Highly recommended.

For the uninitiated, American Music Club, and its frontman Mark Eitzel gathered a cult status throughout the '80s and into the '90s when they split. Happily, Eitzel is still creating music of unnatural beauty. This is a great book for the Eitzel/AMC buff, or for those at the beginning of a wonderful musical journey. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

This novel adapts The X-Files pilot episode. Dana Scully has been assigned to the X-Files with the main aim to debunk them, but is quickly drawn into Fox Mulder's world of conspiracy and alien abductions. They're investigating a town where kids from the class of '89 are all being found dead with 2 identical scars on their bodies. As the book is only an adaptation from the series is doesn't really shed much light on the characters - it's pretty much what you see in the episode on tv is what you'll find here. Still it is good if you dont have access to the show for reminiscent purposes only.

When F.B.I. agent Dana Scully is first meets Angent Fox Mulder she is confounded."..like putting together 2 pieces in a puzzle that don't fit.." He is deffinatly the ruddest man that she has ever met! Together they investigate the strange disippearance of one high school class. Each victim has strange red welts on thier lower back. Agent Mulder thinks that the kids have been abducted by aliens, but his skeptical, brand new partner thinks that this is some kind of sick prank. Until, that is, she gets some red welts of her own......!

Still my favourite Xifiles book, #1 is full of excitment! Was it a human corpse that Scully dug up? Why are all the people who died in the graduating class of 1989? What are the two red dots on there backs? Was Mulder right, did time really lose three hours? What's the metal thing placed in the class of '89 students' teeth? All these questions, and more are hard too figure out when students in the graduating class of '89 are dieing. A little too hard...