While I suppose the story is good, the book is written at a seventh grade reading level. Maybe this is okay if English is not your first language (or if you happen to be 13 years old). Should make for a good movie.

A lot like a textbook, but if you don't know much about Thailand, this sure would entertain you quite well. The simple language might get in the way a little bit. Then again, being written in a second language for an audience who are not familiar with Thai culture, you've got to give the man a break.

The movie is being made. And now CBS's Survivor is going to this island as their next destination. :)

I was just returing from my second month long trip in Thailand when i picked this book up at Bankok International.
What a great read, I couldn't put it down. The historical facts souronding and leading up to all the events are unbelievable.
Maybe it's my own personal biaists that make this book so likeable, a love for the Thai culture and a historic respect for pirates throughout the ages. I haven't stop thinking about these characters and events since I read this story months ago. In fact, i'm so bummed that I hadn't read this book before I went to Thailand. I would have gone to the Island of Tarutao (now a national park) for a historical visit. I quess the best thing about this book is that it is based on real life events, so much stuff they don't teach you in American High Schools. Neat to hear the flip side of events and stories. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.
(I hope this will be a great movie. (It should be if Hollyhype producers don't get a hold of it and change everything) In fact I would love to be in this movie as a extra if there is a way???
Any reason to go back to the land of Buddahs is a great reason.

Here a good scholar has really flipped. Certainly the exaggerated views of German Lutherans about Paul of Tarsus need revision. What views of German Lutherans do NOT need revision? But if Paul, as claimed by Prof. Gager, did not think that Jesus came for anyone but the Gentiles, what on earth did Paul think that James of Jerusalem and Simon Peter were up to? It is sad to see historical revisionism and benevolent ecumenism degenerate into near madness.

Gager's text, "Reinventing Paul" is perhaps mislabeled, as he does less re-inventing than "recovering." With the sort of exasperation characteristic of E.P. Sanders' in "Paul and Palestinian Judaism" Gager dismantles, by way of a thorough review of recent Pauline scholarship, the age-old distortions of Paul and first century Judaism that have plagued Christianity from the outset.

His dismay is easily understood as he makes plain the way that Paul, the "Apostle to the Gentiles" was forced into the role of "Paul, critic of all that is Jewish." (my phrase) Indeed, the only regret that I had as I read his book was that he seemed unaware of the groundbreaking work of Mark Nanos' "The Mystery of Romans." Nanos' work would only have bolstered Gager's conclusions, but from a Jewish perspective.

It is no longer excusable for Christian students of the New Testament to set Paul up as an opponent of the "straw man" of Pharisaic Judaism created in the late 19th century and utterly discredited by Sanders, George Foote Moore, and Charlotte Klein. In concise form, Gager has catalogued the breaches in the dam of tradition that will, one hopes, lead to its imminent collapse. The hope, however, falters briefly when one reads critiques of Gager's book that seek to cite brief passages from Romans or Galatians once again as support for Paul's rejection of the meaningfulness of Torah for Jews of his day. Still the misrepresentations of the Judaism of that day raise their misshapen heads to perpetuate the abuses of the past.

His analysis of Romans and Galatians, while hardly exhaustive, give us an exciting taste of the benefits of real rhetorical analysis of Paul's letters, without weighing the reader down with excessive jargon. Perhaps the most wonderful bits of the whole book are the footnotes, which lead the reader from his tight digest to a variety of authors whose works explore the questions in much greater detail.

One hopes that Gager's text will become a staple in the teaching establishments of the Church. It would be a shame if any student graduated from a seminary in the next ten years without having read it.

John Gager's book "Reinventing Paul" is a long overdue summation of the latest insights into Paul's beliefs and his mission to the Gentiles. Gager and the others are helping to clear away 2,000 years of Christian perversion of Paul's thinking and activity. Here Gager shows that Paul was very much a Jew and remained anchored within the Jewish tradition. He did not repudiate the law of Moses, he did not argue that God had rejected Israel, his enemies were not Jews outside his movement, but opponents within, and he did not expect Jews to abandon the Law and find salvation through Jesus the Christ.

Gager goes to great lengths to show that the debate over circumcision, or whether Gentiles needed to "become" Jewish and themselves followers of the Law, was at the center of the great controversy. Ultimately, of course, Paul said, "No." Paul believed that a spiritual Christ had arrived and could be experienced through faith as the End Time was near. This has happened as a result of God's promise to Abraham that the Gentiles will also be saved. Faith in Christ is the Gentile's way to salvation, while the Jews retain their Law and covenant with God. Paul's doctrine, in other words, is one of inclusion, not exclusion.

Gager does a solid job of proving his points and his reinventing of Paul is long overdue, but the author leaves a few loose ends. He does not go into Paul's vision of the Son and what implications this has for Christianity. If Paul held that the saving experience is "faith" in God's righteousness and justice as manifest through a spiritual Christ, and that Jews can be saved even without the belief in Christ, what does this say of the Christian belief that a living Jesus walked the earth and performed a redemptive act to save mankind? Paul obviously never believed in it! Yet, Gager is silent on these issues. A sound book, in other words, as far as it goes, but it answers only half the questions concerning Paul and his vision. But, this is an important book that needs to be read.

If the person from Boulder Co. is such a wonderful editor, he or she, would have found out that LIGHT HOUSE PRESS is NOT a vanity publisher. And friend, I happen to like commas, they let people like yourself, write a review that sells thousands of my novels. It makes the much researched novel better reading.
Thank you for your review and have Happy New Year.

I can surely tell that Mr. Reader in Boulder has not traveled in southern New Mexico. As most of the characters I have met on my many adventures in this area of the country, they speak slowly, adding many pauses while telling their amazing stories. Mr. Thompson has caputured their ways of expressing themselves. I felt myself sitting by a campfire listening to seasoned ranchers tell of their lives. I could acutally see the landscape unfold in front of me as I went for the ride. I enjoyed this book and look forward to the next.

As one whose family came to the Southwest in 1811, I have had the benefit of listening to hundreds of stories told by our oldtimers. I recognize Paul Thompson's talent for writing books as tales are told by those oldtimers. Anyone who wants an authentic flavor of the the Southwest's tough and self-reliant rural culture will enjoy his books hugely.

BTW, reader in Boulder, you made several erroneous uses of commas in your review.

About the errors subject, I can point two right now: he says that Van Halen's first album was produced by Gene SImmons from Kiss!!! It was not! It was produced by Donn Landee!! Simmons only helped the band a little bit in their beginning! He also says that Ozzy began his solo career in 1978. In 1978, Black Sabbath (with Ozzy)was recording and releasing NEVER SAY DIE. Ozzy started his solo careeer in 1980.

As for the book itself, it has some good points, but in general is boring and boring and boring...

Fridlander tried to do too much with few available space. The result was more like a dictionary of "who is who" in the world of "rock", comitting the same errors of other writers: Dylan is God, metal is a sub-genre, (altough he reckons his importance), there is an endless stream of names and artists. He tried to divide rock into separate frames of times like doo-woop, Motown, folk, etc, when that's no true. Rock mas always made of intersections.

After all, trying to analyse music is a waste of time.

There is no shortage of books purporting to give historical accounts of American rock and roll music. From trade paperbacks to more scholarly treatments (like Steve Waksman's "Instruments of Desire") these texts vary widely in scope and quality. Paul Friedlander's "Rock and Roll: A Social History" is one of the better treatments of this music, although it suffers from some difficulties. Published on Westview Press, the book is written by a musician turned academic historian, and is targeted towards an intelligent readership, although not necessarily towards the strict academician.

The book exhibits a number of strong points, including an opening essay providing a hermeneutics of rock and roll, focusing on open-ended readings of both music and lyrics, while acknowledging the biases and cultural positioning of the critic. Friedlander avoids exclusivist and reductionistic modes of analysis, instead arguing for pluralistic elements of both "escape" and "enlightenment" in popular music. This allows him to maintain a critical distance, but avoids a simplistic overgeneralization of the subject matter, as seen in both left-wing music critics like Theodore Adorno and right-wing critics like Orrin Hatch.

The bulk of Friedlander's book, however, focuses on tracing a narrative of influences from artist to genre and back again. While useful, this reveals a limitation on Friedlander's part, a subterranean impulse to regard the history of music as a history of artists. While the fetishizing of the "artist" is nothing new (dating at least from the publication of "Sentimental Education" by French realist Gustav Flaubert) it deserves to be interrogated and examined, especially in a text claiming to be a "social history."

Friedlander's narrative progresses from a largely white middle class phenomenon in the early fifties, to an infiltration of urban R +B into the musical sensibilities of white teens. Friedlander is careful to analyze the appeal of early artists in terms of race and sexually rebellious theme, as in the case of Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis as compared to Elvis Presley. Friedlander devotes complete chapters to supergroups, and artists, like The Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan, while chronicling the interplay of Soul and Motown music with issues race. Later chapters are devoted to themes of "decades" (70's, 80's) while punctuating these chapters with genre examinations, such as Punk Rock and Folk Rock. The attention given to race as a guiding issue in rock and roll music is admirable, even if some of the particular conclusions are debatable-here Friedlander shows himself superior to many other treatments of the subject, which often ignore Soul, Motown or post-50's R+B altogether.

Another strength of the book is an extensive discography of the artists covered (and skipped too) in the book. Again here Friedlander rises above others in his careful treatment and guidance to the reader regarding label reissues, as well as refusing to fetishize the "original album" as the proper unit of record collecting (a fairly recent and annoying trend). At the same time, Friedlander's endnotes are frustrating, leaving very few openings to track down interpretations and influences in his own writings.

In the final analysis, "Rock and Roll : A Social History," is a valuable but insufficient introduction, especially with regard to social issues other than race. An excellent place continue reading is Steve Waksman's "Instruments of Desire," an excellent cultural history of the electric guitar.

-Christopher W. Chase, PhD Fellow, Michigan St. Univ.

This book contains very valuable information about brewing better beer, whether at home or in a small brewery. The opinions of the brewers are justified in logical terms and make a lot of sense. The recipes are a different matter. In looking at a recipe for Americal Red Ale, my calculations showed that the beer would be two to three times more bitter than the most bitter beers available. I believe that it would be undrinkable. Please, if you buy this book, do the calculations before blindly following the recipes.

As a professional brewer I found this book interesting in that I was able to view thoughts on the subject by other professional brewers that I did not personally know. I frequently contact others in my area of the country and share thoughts and knowledge.

The recipes seem to be good examples of the styles they mean to emulate. You must remember beers can be very different from region to region, (but sweet stout should fall into certain guidelines) and vary brewer to brewer. That's what makes brewing and tasting beer so great.

I can appreciate the effort put forth by these authors, I also enjoyed thier first book. If a brewer felt missreresented in the book, well, I can't speak for the authors or that brewer, but in my mind the book was done well and is just what it claims to be.

The appproach to the recipes is relaxed and that is wonderfull. It will call for and ounce of Chinook hops, and not call for alpha acid or IBU's. While this is important to exactly replicate a beer time after time, I find the spirit of brewing is more closly followed by the more relaxed approach.

Anyway, good book.

This is a great book to progress to after you've read a couple of the starter homebrewing books. It's eye opening to hear the methods and techniques of the actual microbrewers. Their collection of recipes is the best I've seen in one book. The most important thing that I learned in this book is the importance of uncontaminated yeast strains. This one factor alone convinced me to use only liquid strains and therefore lesson the possibility of souring. My beers have been exceptional ever since reading this book.

The reviewer below is utterly right-- this book is a waste of everybody's time. What he fails to note is that Runyon's "thesis" is itself unacceptable. Who could buy for one second the idea of Carver "arranging" his stories? Anybody who's done the research understands that Carver's stories were arranged FOR him. Runyon's premise-- and book overall-- is preposterous. The "correspondences" he finds are belabored, contrived, unsubstantiated and unsubstantiatable, outrageous, insane.

The introductory essay by Dobyns is delightful but the rest of the book is truly bad. The author has a thesis -- that Carvers' stories are interconnected and purposefully arranged in the books -- and that's all he deals with. Once you accept the thesis, what else is there to say? Not much, but the author spins his wheels trying. The book is a waste of money and will add nothing to your understanding or appreciation of Carver.

Author Runyon provides an insightful interpretation of Raymond Carver's short stories collection from the books, "Will You Please be Quiet, Please", "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love", "Cathedral" and "The Last Seven Stories". He labels this insight "intratextuality", where the strategic placement and sequence of text makes a connection to other stories. As he says, "- and this is the thesis of my book -to the interstices between the stories as well."

If you are new to Raymond Carver's stories and poems, you may overlook this as you become ensconced into what has become known as Carver Country. Ruyon astutely explains these connections. An example: In the story "Intimacy", the last line, the narrator sees the need to pick up the leaves strewn, while the beginning of the next story, "Menudo", the narrator is unable to put up with the accumulation of leaves.

In Carver's story "Collectors", narrator Slater, waiting for the mailman, would "look through the curtain" while the next "What Do in San Francisco?", the narrator becomes the mailman who tells that the resident, Marston, would be "looking out at me through the curtain".

This is, indeed, an excellent book that not only gives us this insight, but it has interpretation of the stories we, as readers, may or may not agree with. There isn't a need to search for these connections, but the noted premise doesn't hurt. Excellent reference material. ....MzRizz.

Although Maddog's book is good for the beginner who wishes to install Linux and at least get X running, it's not something that an experienced computer user would want to read.

The writer often gets side tracked on to other subjects when discussing certain aspects of the O.S. In his attempt at humor, he often falls short with unlaughable examples of how bad the rest of the PC industry is.

There are many points in the book where Jon writes, "This is beyond the scope of this book," whenever he gets onto something that is good. Also, it seems to me that "Red Hat Linux For Dummies" is nothing more than a shameless plug at other For Dummies books. I noted well over twenty references to other IDG prints.

This is an excellent book. I just completed a Linux Administrator course and use this book as a supplement. The CD-Rom is the same as what the instructor had for the course. It would have gotten 5 stars, but it lacks some administrative commands and KDE workstation is not referenced.

Coming from a Windows Administration background, I found this book the be very helpful as a Linux newbie. I found the networking part to be oversimplified though. For home use, this IS the book I'd reccomend.

I was disappointed in this book. The plot was so vague and slow-moving I wondered if the author was making it up as he went along. For a murder investigation, there is little investigating going on, maybe because the British author didn't know (or didn't research) U.S. procedure. There is way too much stumbling around in the snow and fog contemplating life and death and sexual fantasies that don't get anywhere. A major problem is the author cannot seem to get American dialogue right. He makes it difficult for both himself and the reader by writing in the third person and constantly switching the point of view between English, American and Native American/Indian characters. The result is people living on the reservation sometimes sound like they're in a London drawing room, sometimes like a bad cowboy movie. The omniscient point of view is particularly confusing because of the language difference. Do you use British English for the thoughts of an American character? It becomes very distracting. The sex seems to have been put in just to have a few sex scenes; it is neither necessary nor relevant. There is practically no action, and none of the characters come across as convincing. The ending seems like an afterthought. I expected much more. This author was compared to Stephen King, but Stephen King lives and works in Maine and knows what he's talking about. Write about what you know, or know about what you write!

An odd book that presents an interesting idea which the author tries to develop without success. Most of the book is spent exploring the characters' personal lives but without in any way relating them to the plot or subject matter of the book, so that we're left feeling that the author just let his mind wander. Unfortunately, the characters are flat and uninteresting, so their prolonged contemplations of their sexual and family problems, which have no bearing whatsoever on the subject or plot of the book, leave the reader bored and baffled. The mystery with which we're initially presented, involving Native American beliefs, the desecration of sacred sites, etc., is interesting and engaging but soon lost amid these meanderings and comes to seem a mere aside. The denoument of this mystery has no relation to anything that preceeds it and leaves the reader even more deflated. This book needed a sharp-witted editor to lead the author back to his subject matter. Disappointing.

It was fairly interesting, and I liked it despite its portrayal of Maine (the state closest to here) being deep in the dark woods, buffeted by the harsh sea; Maine is actually fairly civilized, but you wouldn't know that if this book was your only window into the state. A lot of authors have oddly romanticized views of life in northern New England, so I guess if you have to forgive one, you have to forgive them all.

What's harder to overlook was the strange reference to one of the protagonists and a friend - both Maine natives- cooking grits over an open flame. Since it was presented in a matter of fact, people there do it every day, tone it makes me wonder if the London born author learned about the US from watching westerns.

Anyway, the story is about a murdered woman, her sister and daughter, and the state cop investigating it. It's also about bears, the Souriquois, and settlers who have been dead for 300 years. It didn't have as much to do with the supernatural as the book jacket would have you believe, but it was a solid story that integrates the varying themes quite well.

This book works as a travelogue; as a police/detective thriller novel it is poor. Readers are asked to believe that detective hero Devlin would accompany his paramour to Cuba, placing her, his friend, and himself in mortal danger - in order to seek out the dismembered corpse of his lover's aunt and give the body a "proper burial." Poor character definition, poor plot, and a lot of mumbo-jumbo history of Cuban voodoo. Writers get a tax exemption for travel, which is why we see a lot of novels set in foreign locales. Most of them work as tax exemptions and most of them don't as novels. This is a prime example.

New York City cop Paul Devlin takes his instincts on a vacation to Cuba in search for the truth about his girlfriend's missing aunt, the so-called Red Angel and hero of Castro's epic revolution. Physician Adrianna Mendez helped Castro into power decades ago, and has since dedicated her life to the welfare and health of the needy and underprivileged. Now she is said to be dead, with her body stolen and missing.

In a land of religious voodoo and secret police, Devlin's detective skills are foreign for a country that seems to be in a mercurial state of chaos and poverty. He's not sure whether the local cops are good guys or bad guys. And he needs a score card to figure out what the nine different law enforcement agencies have jurisdiction over. In a state of utter confusion, he enlists his in-your-face partner and sidekick, Ollie Pitts, to come to the red nation to help make sense out of this and the evolving and bizarre clues surrounding the missing aunt and Cuban hero. New York's finest soon learn that witch craft and human sacrifice are a religious way of life for many in Cuba.

Devlin is use to the standard fare of chasing the bad guys around in the Big Apple. But it seems the opposite is happening in Cuba while he, tough-guy Pitts and the local police hunt for the missing Red Angel. But why are the Americans themselves being hunted on the island? The quid quo pro chase makes for a constant nerve-racking suspense. And with religion and other belief systems in constant play, it seems that anything is possible. All the possibilities surrounding the missing Red Angel are sorted out with a clever, intriguing and satisfying close to this continuing Paul Devlin mystery series novel.

New York Police Detective Paul Devlin is back and in the midst of a Mafia showdown when he shifts gears and heads to Cuba with his girlfriend, Adrianna, after she learns that her aunt is dead and her body is missing. When they arrive in Cuba they are met by an overly attentive policeman named Martinez. He proceeds to tell them that Adrianna's (Devlin's girlfriend) aunt was a healer, staunch Castro ally and revolutionary war heroine that the Cuban people worshipped and nicknamed the "Red Angel". He also believes that her body may have been stolen by a mysterious religious sect known as the Abakua to use as part of their voodoo rituals.

When the threesome set out to find the Red Angel's body, they confront the sinister head of the Cuban secret police, Colonel Cabrera, who says he wants to help, but is actually in cohoots with the Mafia henchmen that Devlin has been dealing with in New York.

So much for the beginning...the plot only thickens from this point on. There are so many twists, turns, political innuendos, and black magic to absorb in this book that you're guaranteed to lose some sleep, if not from the action, then certainly from trying to keep up with who's who and what's what.

Overall this was a very entertaining read. Although it does get bogged down with details in several spots, I made it to the end quite satisfied.

I would rate this 3 and 1/2 stars. The characters lack some depth, the explanations were a bit too long in spots, but Heffernan is a very smart writer who handles a ton of information and a very eager audience quite deftly.

I give this book two stars instead of one only because I'm assuming there is a significant amount of fact--dry fact. If this book is to be used as a reference for research it would best be utilized in combination with other books dealing with the same subject. It shouldn't be relied upon by itself.

In addition to the Jew-bashing noted by another reviewer, I found the book to be boring. Although I purchased it over a year ago, I have been uninspired to complete more than half the book. I suppose I'll get around to it at some point, but I'm in no hurry.

When you're holding a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. Jeffrey Melnick has a theory -- actually more a gripe -- and, by God, any piece of evidence, no matter how flimsy, no matter how anecdotal, is going to prove his theory.

"A Right to Sing the Blues" might have been far more compelling or provocative if it had been a magazine article, or a piece for the New York Review of Books. It really doesn't stand up as a scholarly monograph -- the "research" consists largely of fairly wide reading in secondary sources, coupled with a number of anecdotes that get repeated and repeated and repeated until you get the feeling that what you're reading is not a "book" at all, but rather discarded paragraphs from Melnick's dissertation.

This is probably the kind of trendy, jargon-filled claptrap that gets tenure at less-than-front-rank colleges; but, as scholarship it degenerates into a kind of poorly expressed ideological horse-beating for the easily impressed. No one, for example, not even George Gershwin has a "career" -- everyone has a "project." You get the idea.

Melnick does not seem to understand, or care very much about, the art forms or the artists he's writing about, but he's damn-sure going to indict every Jew in show business who ever dared to write a pop song or appear onstage. I thought we were over Jewish self-loathing. Well, maybe most Jews are, but Jeffrey Melnick defintely ain't one of them.

I was prepared to like this book; and I have to say there are moments of genuine insight. However, you have to slog through more than 200 pages of vacuous "argument" to find them. Not a very good deal.

As a psychologist I have been studying the tension between the African American and Jewish community for a number of years. Jeffry Melnick's book clearly adds significantly new perspectives and much interesting information to the field. His work expanded my understanding of the historical issues, particularly with regard to the development of Jazz in America. A major addition to the literature on "Black/Jewish relations."