For the last in the series (sadly so -- and published the year i was born, by a coincidence), Ransome has given us a somewhat different book.

As with "We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea" and unlike most of the rest, virtually all of the action in this book involves real-world situations and problem-solving rather than the often-imaginary (though no-less-fun) adventures that the other books recount.

The plot turns at least partly on the contrast and conflict between the methods used by older-style "naturalists" -- Audobon often shot the birds he painted -- represented by the bird expert on the yacht "Pterodactyl", whose reaction to hearing of a very rare nesting is to find it, take the eggs, shoot the birds and stuff them as a display in a museumand those of the newer generation, represented by Dick Callum (in his strongest, most assertive appearance in the series).

Dick is of the opinion that simple but clear photographs will do Just Fine to document this amazing sighting.

And so begins an adventure that will have three separate problems to solve -- keeping the Egg Collector from finding the birds, getting the photos and -- most importantly -- not running afoul of the local Laird on whose land all of this is going on.

All of the Swallows, Amazons and D's -- and Captain Flint, a full participant for once, rather than just a prop/supporting character -- are here, and all are in full character -- when someone sees Dick fleeing the Egg Collector's yacht after he realises what sort of "naturalist" the man is, they remark "If it were Roger, I'd think he'd said something cheeky," to which Roger replies "Dick would never think of anything in time..."

If it had to be the last, this is a pretty good book for the position.

Read it; read them all. Even adults can enjoy these books.

i wish life were like this now, its a neverending adventure for the swallows amazons and ds i must say, however, that the best books in this series are (its a draw) We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea and Peter Duck (sorry ds) this book is still extraordinarily well written and adventureous

Another wonderful story of the Swallows, Amazons and Ds. This time they are far out in the Scottish Highlands and, unusually, it is the mild-mannered Dick, rather than the fiery Nancy who is calling the shots. Rather than ape the myriad reviews that give you a banal synopsis of the plot, I will simply say that this, like all the other books in the series, is a jewel that you and your children will want to gaze upon again and again.

I am a student at Florida State University, My major is Management Information Systems. This book covers many approaches to solving business problems. This book is easy to read and understand. It gives many real world examples and solutions using MS Excel.

He usado el libro en cursos de maestria en administracion. Mis estudiantes lo recomiendan por ser muy didactico, sin sacrificar profundidad en la presentacion de los temas.

This goes great with the hardcover textbook. It is full of problems and solutions to practice with.

I read a positive review of this book in a business column in my local paper and ordered it. I enjoyed reading the book and especially like the metaphor the author used. Who doesn't know about King Arthur and the Round Table? And what a great metaphor to use in relaying the concept of good communication in the business world. There are good tips throughout the book on how to bring your company together and how to make it work. I recommend this book and Good to Great for every manager or director.

It's difficult to find a management book that is as well-written as this one. An intriguing read about collaboration and how to use collaboration effectively. Great for nonprofit orgs and corporations. If you need to know how to get a project done with the help of other people, read this book.

David Perkins is brilliant. This book is collaboration for smarties. It aims high and delivers the Holy Grail for real seekers. Wise, clever and rich in truths, it is a new theory based upon lots of research and practice. I found it very helpful and stimulating - a treasure trove of insights, principles and things you can do to create better conversations and help teams & organizations act more intelligently. Perkins lays out an elegant set of principles on the practice of intelligent action and how the most intelligent solutions emerge from people in constructive dialogue together. He shows what makes for progressive and regressive action. He hits a home run by illustrating how both people smarts and process smarts are essential for success.If you are a leader, coach, consultant or educator and really want to find new ideas on how to build a collaborative culture, buy this book, read it carefully and you will find the Holy Grail! It's a real gem!

This was my first John McPhee book, selected because of its subject matter (I'm an ex-serious tennis player). John McPhee was recommended to me as a writer/essayist who can take any subject and write about it intelligently and interestingly. After finishing this book, I would agree with that characterization, but clarify that the subject in this particular book is not professional tennis or even the game of tennis but rather two people and how they have managed their lives. That they play tennis is the point around which the book comes together, but it is not the point on which the book stands. If you're looking for insight into the game of junior/professional tennis, try David Foster Wallace's great essay about Michael Joyce in _A Supposedly Fun Thing..._. If you're looking for insight into two particularly interesting people--Arthur Ashe is one of them, but his compatriot and opponent, whose name, of course, I have forgotten, is worth equal time--in a particularly interesting time period and situation, check this book out.

Ostensibly this book is about a tennis match, Arthur Ashe versus Clark Graebner in the 1968 US Open Semifinals. The match was historic in itself:

"It has been thirteen years since an American won the men's-singles final at Forest Hills, and this match will determine whether Ashe or Graebner is to have a chance to be the first American since Tony Trabert to win it all. Ashe and Graebner are still amateurs, and it was imagined that in this tournament, playing against professionals, they wouldn't have much of a chance. But they are here, close to the finish, playing each other. For Graebner to look across a net and see Ashe--and the reverse--is not in itself unusual. They were both born in 1943, they have known each other since they were thirteen, and they have played tournaments and exhibitions and have practiced together in so many countries and seasons that details blur."

But McPhee is actually after bigger game than this one match. He also provides insightful portraits of the two very different contestants. Ashe, the only championship level Black tennis player of his time, is single, liberal, mercurial, a finesse player and a risk taker. Graebner is married with kids, conservative, religious, a power player and risk averse. McPhee demonstrates how their personalities influence, indeed shape, their play and how their lifelong rivalry lifts their games to higher levels when they play one another, ultimately lifting Ashe's game towards perfection by the end of this contest.

Ashe would go on to win the tournament, becoming the only amateur to win it in the Open era and together Ashe and Graebner lead the US to it's first Davis Cup in years. After that though, while Ashe went on to a respectable career, Graebner slipped into obscurity. But in this book, McPhee has preserved a moment in time when the two were evenly matched on the court, despite being polar opposites off of the court and in charting the lives that brought them to that moment, he provides a penetrating glance at two fascinating men.

This is a real pinnacle in Sports writing.

GRADE: A

To say John McPhee has written the best tennis book ever is to say too little. This is far more than a tennis book and, if you're looking for instruction, far less. The platform, if you'll excuse the tennis pun, is a U.S. Open final between Clark Graebner and Arthur Ashe, but it is a study of two men and what brought them to this point, athletically but especially sociologically. The reflective Southerner forced to be a pioneer because he is black. The more rigid son of the Midwest and privilege, with greater power and less versatility. The vagaries that make them human: Graebner, the more up-tight, gambling with a prepared point successfully at a crucial spot in the match. And at the end, there is Ashe, triumphantly whistling a winner off his suspect backhand to close out the match. You want to cheer. And you understand more about people than when you opened the book.

First-time novelist David Pirie deserves kudos for doing
something a little different along the lines of a Sherlock
Holmes pastiche. His characters are Dr. Bell and Conan Doyle
themselves. On the other hand, he runs off the rails pretty
early on, with a perfervid yet elliptical style that is more
along the lines of Anna Katherine Green than Dr. Watson, and
with (oh, no, not again!) standard pastiche plot B.

There is no chemistry (or even friendship) between Dr. Bell and
Dr. Conan Doyle, and their cases--- "real life" incidents that
are close parallels to Holmes-Watson adventures such as
"The Speckled Band" and "The Solitary Cyclist"--- tend to
be more annoying or unsatisfying than interesting.

The usual problem with standard pastiche plot B is that the
behavior of a central character is necessarily totally
inconsistent with his actual aims--- here the problem is
magnified, since there are at least three and maybe four
characters whose behavior throughout the "adventure" makes no
sense whatsoever in terms of their eventually-revealed
motivations.

Conan Doyle's overheated style continually sets the reader up
for "a revelation more terrifying than mere mortal flesh can
endure," and then follows up with, more often than not,
no payoff at all, or a payoff that amounts to an empty
pay envelope. At the end of the very episodic "novel," Dr.
Conan Doyle hints that in the next adventure, we'll encounter
Jack the Ripper (whom CD and Bell have seemingly matched wits
with years before during Watson's medical school days).
It's a promising setup, but we've been burned so often in
the present book, I wonder if it is worth checking out the next
in line.

Everyone who loves a good Sherlock Holmes mystery MUST read this book! This is the difinative fictional book on the Master's creator.

This is a terrific read - fast paced and complex. I read it in a single sitting, then leafed back through. It's a "keeper" that won't get cycled through the used book store - it'll be read again and again, especially as Pirie promises more in the series. The next in the series will be released in the U.K. in Oct. 2002, and I await it with pleasant anticipation.

Islas's poetic story is about the Angel family, originally from Mexico, and now living in America near the border. Weaving back and forth across time and weaving the various threads of family members together, it gives a stunning portrait of its various individuals and the whole family stuck on the boundary of heritage, of class, of race, of religion. There's Miguel Chico who's avoiding his sexuality as he struggles to balance his Mexican identity with his American education. His father Miguel Grande loves his wife and his mistress equally, and when he's forced to choose, he finds he cannot. And Miguel Grande's brother Felix who is unable to escape his passions for young men, which brings his life to a violent end. And throughout it all, there's the women in the Angel family who are steady, patient, and at the heart of the family. It's a beautiful, poetic series of snapshots that flows with the reader like the water the desert lacks.

Arturo Islas's ten-year search for a publisher for this novel reveals the sad tragedy of commercialism and racism in the literary world. White editors told him that his book was not 'authentic' enough: where were the gangs, the poverty, the struggle of barrio life? Islas, an authentic Mexican-American, stood firm for a decade until The Rain God was at last published, to the great joy of all its readers. In just over 200 pages, it chronicles three generations of a family living in a border town in Texas, and probes at the borders and divisions in all of our lives: parents vs. children, modern vs. traditional, gay vs. straight, human vs. supernatural, and body vs. soul. Surprisingly, all of this is done with great subtlety and flow; you must be an active reader to pick up on Islas's themes. It is the type of book you can reread half a dozen times (as I have) and see something new each time. It is profound, haunting, and filled with music. The Rain God is the greatest American novel since The Great Gatsby.

If there is anyone, regardless of background that wants to comprehend Hisapnic culture, this story is the best source. It gives a good description of the beauty and confusion of the Hispanic culture and gives an insight of the unique culture and an affirmation that all Hispanic cultures are indeed unique. Also, the beauty of the "desert" is at last, given its true and deserved respect.

I found this book very well-written and full of information about the history of marriage, sexual ethics, and morals. Bertrand, in his usual style, examines the social problems of his time and why they exist. This book was written in 1929, but is still logical and modern in thinking. Bertrand wittily and cynically speaks out against the restrictive dogmas of sex and love: ?It would seem that it is only with the introduction of the patriarchal system that men came to desire virginity in their brides. Where the matrilineal system exists young women sow their wild oats as freely as young men, but this could not be tolerated when it became of great importance to persuade women that all intercourse outside of marriage is wicked.? I strongly recommend this book for anyone doing a research paper on love, marriage, or sexual ethics. If you?re looking for something to make you think, it?s also a great book. I give it four out of five stars.

At first blush it looked like Russell wrote this book after having an extra-marital affair!

Just like an explicit answer to the problem of free will, any prescription on sexual ethics run the risk of being very wrong - it's perhaps one of the greatest ironies with homosapiens that while they themselves will not always avoid adultry, they will never tolerate it in case of their partner.

But even then the proposition that infidelity in marriages, since it cant be elliminated, should be tolerated is not a feasible solution not only from purely moral view point but also when human character is viewed in the light of evolutionary biology - men will not tolerate it because they will end up investing in others' offspring, and women because they will loose social and material resources to raise theirs.

Our capacity to form moral judgement (as on pre- , post-marital sex) developed much later than when we developed the strategies for reproductive success. It remains this constant struggle between our morality and our nature that will continue to trouble all those who concern themselves to give, or have, an explicit answer.

Perhaps the answer is in that immortal line of Forester (_African Queen_): "Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we were put on this earth to rise above."

That aside, despite being written eighty years ago it's still a good book especially for readers from oriental part of this world where one can't discuss sexual ethics without being termed immoral.

Read it if you have not read on this topic. (...)

It's hard not to cheer when you realize Russell wrote so forward-thinking a piece in the late '20s. Its ideas are still being debated today, especially in light of the recent trend toward opting out of conventional, legally bound marriages in Western countries. As a married man myself, I found Russell's condemnation of conventional sexual morality quite convincing. He doesn't advocate immature hedonism, nor does he pardon all infidelity. He actually favors marriage when children are involved. He simply rocks the foundation of marriage on Christian asceticism ('fornication is sin') and the need for certain paternity. He gives an anthropological & historical perspective on the issue that is broader than anything you're likely to hear in current debates.

My only complaint with this otherwise provocative & well-reasoned work is that some of his commentary borders on anti-Catholic. I'm not Catholic myself, but I couldn't help but wonder whether some of his persistent jabs at the Church weren't motivated by a prejudice common at that time. That isn't to say he doesn't critique Protestant morality as well, but he seems to take inordinate glee in poking the Vatican.

This was my first Kay Arthur book. I am comparing it to the impact Philip Yancey's and Max Lucado's books had on me. I even listened 2-3 times through to make sure I wasn't missing something. I gained no deeper perspective of covenant with God, nor was I able to glean anything from the tapes to make 'practical application' in my life. Most disturbing was her reference to Jesus Christ going to hell after the crucifixion. This is just not true. Christ did not 'descend to Hell' to pay any 'debt' we owed. It was all finished on the cross, thusly He proclaimed, "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!". Also, the gospel of John records Jesus as saying, "It is finished". I cannot recommend this book.

Words fail me. I think this is one of the most important books we can read to begin understanding this staggering love God has for his children. Many fears are laid to rest and peace takes it place. Covenant is so huge and so wonderful and so comforting.

I have ordered five of these books for family and friends and will be ordering five more. Over time, I hope to give a copy to as many people as I can. This book will be a blessing for anyone who reads it.

Kay Arthur takes on the overwhelming task of explaining the meaning of the Covenant relationship believers have with God. She details the scripture surrounding this topic. It is a life changing concept that the Almighty God would desire even enter into this type of relatiohsip with us. It is a masterful book that deserves more than one reading.

The first major biography of Charles Arthur "Pretty Boy" Floyd is a sweeping "life and times" effort, a well-researched opus that concentrates as much on early 1900's-Depression era America as on a straight biography of Floyd. It's too bad because Floyd himself deserved a more detailed treatment, as well as a more objective one. Much of the information on Floyd came from family and friends and, while this is interesting and informative, one gets the distinct impression that Wallis got too close to his subject, blinded perhaps by the folkloric image of Floyd as a Southwestern Depression Robin Hood. This is somewhat understandable. Floyd was falsely accused in his own day of many atrocious crimes, such as the "Young brothers' massacre," but the fact remains that he was a ruthless killer as well as a bank robber and that a preponderance of evidence exists suggesting Floyd's guilt in the Kansas City Union Station massacre. Wallis ignores this evidence, accessible in thousands of pages of FBI files he claims to have read, and instead builds straws for Floyd's innocence in this crime. Such as relying on the testimony of "Blackie" Audett, a minor bank burglar of the period and notorious liar, who claimed to have witnessed the massacre but whose story is shot full of holes. Audett was in prison at the time of the shooting and one of the men he named as an "actual" killer had been murdered over two years earlier. This doesn't stop Wallis in his determination to vindicate his Robin Hood idol. In all, it's a nice professional work--a thick book with some nice photos, a bibliography and an index. It could have been much better, as evidenced by the more recent The Life and Death of Pretty Boy Floyd by Jeffery King.

This is without question the best biography I have come across in many years. I strongly suggest anyone who has even an inkling of interest in modern American history make it a point to get this book and read it. They will not be disapponited.

I became interested in "Pretty Boy Floyd" when I found out his mother was distantly related to my family and I was researching my family. He was raised 25 miles from where I live until his family moved to Oklahoma. There was mention of the town in the book and some of the mischief he got in to. The house they lived in still stands. I was able to use some of the information from the book to go in my family tree. The book was very well written and seemed to be accurate in the account given of his life. I felt like I had known him from the reading of this book and feel he was unjustly killed at the end. His mother was treated unfairly about the way the funeral took care of his body. The pictures in the book of his family in the younger days were very good pictures. I didn't especially care for the ones at the funeral home where he was more or less put on display. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys the history and hardships that occurred during the early part of the century.I am sure I will read this book again. It was hard to put down when I read it the first time.

In the story of Puss In Boots, a miller dies and leaves one of his sons nothing but the cat. This cat turns out to be quite clever and earns the favor of the King for his master. The cat also obtains land and a castle for his master and gives him the title of the Marquis of Carabas. The King becomes so impressed by the Marquis that he offers his daughter's hand in marriage, and the simple miller's son becomes a prince. The use of clever illustration makes this book an effective piece of folk lore. "Narrative Expectations: The Folklore Connection" discusses the basic pattern of a folktale. The article states that every folktale begins with the main character of the story being no different from or more special than any other character. Then, out of nowhere, the character is boosted into a "supernatural world" and all of a sudden he is moved up to higher society and viewed as a hero (67). This resembles the plot pattern of Puss In Boots, with the Marquis being the average character who becomes a hero. This jump to a higher level of society out of luck is strangely enough realistic in the twenty-first century. With things like inheritance, lotteries, and the stock market, a person of today could easily go from the poor miller's son to a "prince." However, this is not a common occurrence. The article also states that folklore "functions in part as an informal system for learning the daily logic and worldview of the people around us (71)." The author chooses not to use human characters to represent Master Slyboots and the rich ogre. He could have done this easily with illustration by making Master Slyboots a servant boy and the ogre a Marquis. Instead, he uses an informal style, placing animal characters in the book. This represents a higher level: Using animals in contrast to humans in order to show the differences in people as a whole.

This new translation of the "fairy" story first presented by Charles Perrault (1628-1703) in his Tales of Mother Goose in 1697 was illustrated by Fred Marcellino and translated by Malcolm Arthur. It was a 1991 Caldecott Honor book (that is, a runner-up to the Medal winner) for best illustrations in a book for children. The youngest son of a recently deceased miller receives a cat as his inheritance. He feels that he will soon die of starvation (after he has eaten the cat) since he has no other possessions. But, the cat convinces him to get him boots. The cat proceeds to find a fortune and a position for his young master.

I regularly visit school classrooms and read aloud to children from Kindergarten through eighth grade. Finding books that appeal to more than one grade level is a challenge.

I have found that the pictures in this version of 'Puss' appeal immensely to kindergartners through third graders. (Fourth and Fifth grade children also like it, but are often embarassed to say so in a classroom setting!). Children who often have a hard time sitting still for a story have sat transfixed as I read this book, holding the pictures in front of them all the time and giving them lots of opportunities to check out the wonderful use of light and color. The illustrator uses a lot of wonderful yellow that is very appealing to young children and seems to draw them into the book. I love reading this book out loud both to see children's reaction and also because I love the detail and color in the pictures.

Reading this book aloud has also sparked some beautiful art work from young children.