I liked the book Kazaam it made me think of what I would do if I had a genie of my own. It was also very neat how almost all of the book took place at a club called the music box. If I had a genie I would have wished for something better than a master CD of his dads concert. I would have wished for a lot of money or a really nice house. I liked how the book was written. The author put alot of action into the story and it was never boring. I also dont like books that are very long. This book was about the right length for me to read. I have read other books by this author and I like how he writes. One other thing that I liked about this book was that it had a famous athlete in it. Shaquille O'neal has the main role of Kazaam the genie. I think that this is a good book for anyone to read. I really liked this book and I think that you will too but you have to read it first.

This book gives information on British calvery and artilllery units from about 1740 to 1790. It deals with troops in the seven years war, India, American revolotion, and Jacobite rebelions. The pictures and illustrations are good. The info is good and accurate. One problem is the writing is very dry. I've read many Osprey books but this is the dullest. I also wish the author had given information on Loyalists units in America.

In his first full-length book, Paul R. Hyams, one of the preeminent medieval historians of England, traces the origins of common law from its Latitudinarian beginnings to the Syballine reform movement. Using as his starting point the incrementalist paradigm first espoused by M.M. Postan and Shirley Williams, Mr. Hyams has drawn deeply on primary sources--assizes records, mortmain circulars, and court chamber decrees--to support his thesis that the common law was introduced to England by the Saxon invaders of the twelfth century. He sheds new light on the recently discovered and controversial Uptechurch manuscript, which purports to show that Edward I, and not Athelstan, was the first English monarch to move against the prerogatives of the clergy. In crisply written English, Mr. Hyams boldly takes issue with the Marxist interpretation of English common law, as argued by Rodney Hilton, and conclusively demolishes Bruce Macfarlane's hypothesis that the common law has its origins in the Druid priesthood. This is a splendid contribution to English medieval and legal history and deserves to rank with the classics of English historiography.

There isn't much new in this book.

An interesting biography of Lafayette, the young French nobleman who served with Washington during the American Revolution and then went back to France to help usher in the French Revolution. A long life spent extolling the virtues of liberty, Lafayette is portrayed in the book as a generous man who seeked fame only. When presented with a chance to actually take action and change the course of history, he would retreat and allow others to make the decisive actions of the time.

The author is not particularly kind to the Lafayette and does not hestiate to point out his flaws. However, the writing is well done. The only major problem I have with the book regards referring to many major historical characters without giving us some background before they are introduced. For example, many of the leaders of the French Revolution are referred to without any explanation of their politics. The author assumed a fairly wide understanding of the various personalities. I would have preferred a little more exposition.

In A Landscape of Events, consisting of 13 essays written between 1984 and 1996, French thinker Paul Virilio examines the effects of modern technology on our societies and psyches. The exercise is frequently both enlightening and bleak. Consider, for instance, this passage: "...in giving more depth to the present 'instant,' these new electromagnetic technologies will ruin us and literally kill us; television's so-called real instant only ever being that of the sudden disappearance of our immediate consciousness." Among the effects of these "new electromagnetic technologies" - essentially our digital "communication" tools - on humans, Virilio sees the atomization of cities, of communities of all sorts, with each person diverted into his or her own consumer-entertainment-lifestyle dreamworld. Here Heraclitus is kind enough to step onto Virilio's stage and elucidate matters with this remark: "The world is one and common to those who are awake, but everybody who is asleep turns away to his own."

On the debit side, Virilio's nimble prose style can often be too fast for its own good, with quick jumps à la Baudrillard that sometimes seem to leave thought behind. And when it comes to politics Virilio exhibits an unconcern bordering on naivete - looking, for instance, at impacts of the Gulf War and never venturing any thoughts about the curious situation in which a single country, the United States, arrogates to itself the right to decide for the world who will be bombed and who will be spared, who will live and who will die.

First of all, I just gotta say "Don't you love those Czechs?" I mean what other country would have a poet/playwrite/activist/ex-con president? Sorta makes me want to emigrate. Anyway, Havel's volume of letters to his wife, Olga, from prison in the late seventies is quietly revealing. I am used to his electric political comentaries and dark absurdist theater and this hollow correspondence came as a shock. Perhaps, most of all it was the shallow loveless relationship between he and Olga that surprised me. In my mind Havel is a passionate larger-than-life figure. I wanted, and expected, to discover a living and organic relationship in these pages and was utterly disapointed in that respect. What we see, and aparantly what they have (had? I dunno) is very dry, businesslike, and unmoving. I wonder if expending so much energy in the public and artistic sphere leaves little or nothing for private relationships. Perhaps that's what's going on, perhaps it is more complex or subtle. Whatever the reasons, the book was interesting as well as dissapointing in that it revealed a totally new and unexpected side of Havel. This book humanized him. As well as the troubled, or maybe just bizarre marraige, I got to hear him struggle with his daily frustrations and desires-food, health, writing, keeping himself educated and interested in life. There IS a good bit of of political writing in the letters, (it's pretty obvious that most of them were not just for Olga)including some detailed descriptions of the resistance movement, that are really as fine as any of his other writings. I could put it down to the dustjacket, but the whole had to me this sad tan feeling; heavy, still-like empty dusty rooms at that time of day where the light is all saturated. Well written and translated, all in all an interesting read.

This is a helpful and honest reference book for anyone wishing to move to Traverse City, MI. It helped me and now I'm moving there! Only fault I found was that some of the phone numbers given had changed. But this is common to reference materials of this nature. I enjoyed the history information given in the book.

That you will be completely charmed by Elliot Paul's recollections of his boyhood is a matter beyond speculation. The turn-of-the-century scenes are not only dear to his heart but clear to his mind -- albeit sometimes suspiciously so. But who will quarrel with so elegant a storyteller as Mr. Paul? Out of the sows ear of common occurrence he makes a silken purse to hold the coins of our enchantment. Rare is the reader who will not delight in these fortified memories.

Those who recall LAST TIME I SAW PARIS know that Elliot Paul is incapable of being banal or tiresome. Thus there is nothing of the diary-like march of events in this record of his early years in the Boston suburb where he was born. Instead you will find a series of neatly dovetailed stories, anecdotes. character sketches, comedies, tragedies and singularly embellished observations all set out for your allurement like gems in a jewelers window.

Some of Mr. Paul's tales of the people who lived out their lives in Linden will make you laugh, some may even tempt a tear. There are a few -- such as the story of Alice Townsend, the schoolteacher who found that her name had been written in the snow with a stylus of strange origin -- that may inspire the merest suggestion of a blush.

LINDEN ON THE SAUGUS BRANCH, a volume complete in itself, is another segment in what will ultimately be Elliot Paul's life story: ITEMS ON THE GRAND ACCOUNT. Both THE LAST TIME I SAW PARIS and THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A SPANISH TOWN are other books in this group.

This workbook is a softcover slim volume of approximatley 60 pages. It really must be used in conjunction with the book "Listening Hearts" in order to get the most out of certain exercises. There are some interesting hands on projects for meditation enhancement that can be done alone or with a group and the supplies listed are easily found in a craft or toy store. I think that this book, when used with the other books in the Listening Hearts series, would be helpful to those leading religious getaways or anyone wanting to focus on inner reflection through words of God.