His Lordship's Mistress is a typical short regency of about 200 pages. Some authors can manage to cram quite detailed plots and characters into this short format, but not in this case. This is a very shallow novel. Jessica Andover, who is 20, is left financially in a bad way when her step father dies. She has Winchcombe, a property, plus the care of two younger half-brothers. Her character comprises of the usual cliches of young, beautiful and fearless. She sells of her tenant farms (I found that a bit hard to swallow, no responsible gentleman farmer at the time would have done such a thing, also she is underage and yet her guardian, a kindly neighbour lets her do as she pleases.) In addition, she mortgages what is left of the estate to the kindly neighbour. This is so she can have the money to breed horses. So of course we know see her openly dressed in breeches in front of her conservative neighbours training horses (very historically unlikely). Her kindly neighbour dies, and a villain who wants to marry her inherits. He threatens to foreclose on the mortgage if she won't marry him. But don't worry, Jessica is fearless, she knows exactly what to do to save her property and herself. She will go to London and find a rich protector and be a mistress. Luckily, she has a beautiful Shakespearean speaking voice, thanks to her governess's training. So of she goes to London, gets a moneylender to lend her money by mortgaging her property (um, thought it was already mortgaged...) walks into the best theatre in town and of course instantly gets hired on the spot as a leading actress and yes, she instantly becomes the reigning toast of London. She becomes a rich lord's mistress and you can guess the rest. No problems for Jessica ever.

This book, although informational, is largely biased by the writers. In my opinion it is too flowery to be presented as a reference source.

First of all, this book was not written by Joan Darby; the authors wished to remain anonymous and used the pseudonyms "Darby & Joan". The book title refers to the entity known as "Stephen" who purports to be the spirit of a soldier who fell in battle in WWI. This "Stephen" explains the meaning and purpose of life; unfortunately nothing he says can be verified. Like all other "revelations", you are forced to have faith in the source.

How irritating. Not only did this not cover the specific, "powerful" ideas I was hoping for, but the "report" is only 16 pages long. The last 4 pages are the titles and order form for the company's umpteen other reports that I can also get. Each report covers one idea. So if I bought another three or four ideas that might be helpful, I'd end up spending [$$$]. I could have purchased an ENTIRE book for a fraction of that price!

I have recently become a dedicated Joan Hess fan. However, I have been reading her books out of order. Yesterday I started "Roll Over and Play Dead" ready for another light, funny story. Unfortunately, I got a speech from a soapbox. On page 28 one of the "good 'guys'" states: "The National Institute of Health gives away over three and a half billion dollars of your tax dollars so researchers can cut animals up, cripple them, blind them, burn them, infect them with diseases, and in general torture them. Over seventy million animals die this way every year so that someone can determine that you really shouldn't drink paint solvent or put it in your eyes."

WHOA! Where to begin? In the context of this story the reader is led to believe that the majority of these poor animals are pets - cats and dogs. NOT!!! Yes, I have been involved in animal research. I, like the vast majority of whole animal researchers, use rats. Never have I caused a rat undue pain (they are anesthetized by legal and moral code). Never have I pounded nails in a skull or any of the atrocities put forth in this book. In fact, I have never even heard of such a thing occuring in a lab. On the other hand, I HAVE heard of such things in pets homes from a vet tech student of mine. Such horrible cruelties are much more commonly afflicted upon animals by their "loving" owners.

I stuck with this book through the end even after countless assults on scientists and the necessity of medical research. I have never worked with dogs but I still take offense at the insults steeped high in the course of the story.

I respect the views of animal rights groups. However I fully agree with a poster hanging in the lab where I worked. It shows a group of protesters and the caption reads "Because of animal research, they have 20.9 more years to protest." The next time you pop an antibiotic to cure your bronchitis, or a pill to lower your blood pressure thank a scientist and a group of rats.

This book is detailed and i recommend this book to the people who loves reading. I read this book 1 and a half years ago, but I liked it a little.

Misrepresentation of learning theories contrary to the authors' biases make this book useful to readers who already know better. I received it as a gift but wouldn't buy it for myself. This book does little to round out a library in psychology, educational psychology or developmental psychology.

Disappointing in that there needs to be more written about this early WWII history but this book falls considerably short. The reader should be aware that the book is nothing more than a compendium of diaries of various british participants of this amazing retreat and rescue operation. As such the stories (diaries)are not always well written. The book lacks dialogue and smooth flow like a historical novel and becomes tedious in the reading. I resorting to skipping pages in the back of the book.

Joan Landes' "Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution" consists of several essays loosely united by the theme of women and their place in the "public sphere" of activity during the late 18th century-- and specifically during the French Revolution. This is an important and exciting topic-- and it's one that has not yet been researched to exhaustion.

Sadly, Landes' book is flawed in several ways. Some of these flaws are forgiveable, but a few are fatal. One of the most obvious faults of this book has to do with one of its central concept-- the idea of the "public sphere". Landes specifically states that she is using this term as the philospher Habermas used it in his famous "Public Transformations of the Public Sphere". However, that is not what she does. Habermas's conception of the public sphere is that the idea of the "public" emerged as a term for referring to the collective sets of feelings arising from private individuals engaged in private activities-- and *NOT* as something that exists in opposition to private interests and activities (which is how Landes uses it). Now, the truth be told-- I don't think it's really a *problem* that Landes uses a different model of the public sphere than Habermas... after all, there's no reason to say that Habermas definition of it is any better than hers. However, the fact of the matter is that Landes claims she really IS using Habermas' model of the public sphere. In other words, it's not that she prefers another model-- it's that she misunderstands the model she's trying to use!

While this fact does not necessarily invalidate the whole book, it is, nontheless, a bit troubling. One would think that a scholarly writer should have a good understanding of the theoretical models she is herself using.... and one might start become skeptical of more specific things that writer has to say as a result. In the case of Landes, such skepticism would be well-placed, for there are many more serious, specific problems with this book. I'll not go into them all here, but I'll only cite the most damning, namely that it one of the essays, Landes analyzes two contemporary movies that are set in Revolutionary France-- and she does so in order to bolster her general claims about how politics and gender operated in Revolutionary France. Yes, that's right-- she uses two 20th century movies as if they were primary sources for writing the history of the 18th century. And no, there's no recognition on her part that she's doing anything unusual-- or any attempt to say she's actually writing about the way we today represent the 18th century. She really is trying to use these contemporary films as historical sources, as if they were actual 18th century documents. What's next, using "Braveheart" as a historical source for information on medieval Scotland? That's a kind of error that not even the most amateurish of historians should commit!

When alls said and done, the many flaws of this book outweight its merits. Although Landes does have a few insightful things to say about women, the public sphere, and the French revolution, the fact of the matter is that her claims are undermined by her methodological sloppiness. She doesn't fully understand the theoretical models she is using, and she doesn't even seem to know what constitutes a legitimate source of historical information on the eighteenth century and what does not. Still, this book has its merits-- especially as a model to be given to history students as to what *NOT* to do when writing a book.

Since you can't award any book title a no star rating I have to make note of it in this review. This book of all things considered is one of the worst pieces of pesuasive writing I've ever seen. It's boring, annoying, repetative, and screams of amateurism.

There are no redeeming qualities to this book. It is composed entirely of outdated information, half-truths, crippled logic, out-of-context quotations, pithy phrases, nitpicking, and every bad technique of argumentation known to man.

You want the REAL truth about D&D? Updated information which debunks this entire book? Check out the sites....

If you dig Chick tracts (and who doesn't?), you're sure to get a kick out of The Truth about Dungeons and Dragons. It's pretty much the same mixture of highly dubious assertions, logical fallacies, Bible quotes, and spotty documentation that we've all come to know and love in Cap'n Jack's little masterpieces. The lack of an amusing narrative to go along with the story means that it is marginally less entertaining than a trip to chick.com, but it's all good.

Look at Chapter 9, "A "Deadly" Game" (oh, so it's not *really* deadly?), for instance. This consists of a shortish list of murders and whatnot allegedly caused by D&D (notice how that's apparently the only RPG that exists in this world--you'd think these people would be much more concerned by the likes of Call of Cthulhu). An impressive litany of mentally unbalanced people for sure, even the rigid cause/effect thesis isn't exactly convincing--untl you realize that only about half of these instances are footnoted. Eh? Joan, babe, if you're going to make stuff up, it's a very bad idea to include ANY footnotes--it just accentuates the fabrications. Or, I don't know; maybe it is on the level, and the woman's just a very sloppy writer.

"Two soldiers, dressed in ninja martial arts outfits slit the throat throats of an elderly couple while stealing their jewelry during a break-in. A D&D martial arts book was found on the dashboard of the truck used by the soldiers."

...then again, maybe not. Believe me, Ms. Robie--if D&D sourcebooks really taught you mad ninja skillz, they'd all be instant bestsellers.

And then there's my personal favorite. Chapter Eleven, "What's Wrong with Dungeons & Dragons?" features a highly alarming list of bad things caused by D&D; eg, voodoo, murder, rape, homosexuality, sex perversion (whatever that may entail) cannibalism, insanity, and, of course Jungian psychology (I am SO not making this up). Prefacing this list, Ms. Robie tells us: "Dungeons and Dragons is not a game. Instead, some believe it to be a teaching [sic] the following:" Right. "Some believe." That's brilliant, that is. Does Ms. Robie supplement her income by writing mircle weight-loss ads, I wonder?

I have to be honest, though: even though this book is in many ways quite humorous, it's also sort of depressing. Bald-faced, willful ignorance isn't pretty, even if has no meaningful bearing on anyone else's life. Ms. Robie and others of her ilk, it seems to me, was born a thousand years too late. If you're going to buy this book, fergawd's sake get it preowned. There's no sense encouraging the woman.

IF anyone is unconvinced of this book's TRUTHfulness, then they worship the devil, not god.

This book is a brave attempt at denouncing the influence dragons have achieved on our noble leaders through their mind-controlling spells, spells, by the way, described in minutiae in the rulebooks, and what scares me the most is that most phases in the book are longer than this one.

A classic. I hope they update it for third edition.