Wunderlich got bad press for the ideas he promulgates in this book, even before it was published. His basic idea is that the so-called Minoan palaces were actually mausoleums, not dissimilar to saying that, like the Egyptians, Etruscans, and other ancient peoples, the Minoans put a great emphasis on the afterlife and their after death dwellings, and didn't leave behind well-preserved homes and the like.

Wunderlich attributes the destruction of the palaces to graverobbing, and notes that at Knossos the bathtub-shaped sarcophagi were identified by Evans et al as bathtubs. Wunderlich sees the entire Knossos complex for what it apparently was -- a place for the embalming and storage of the dead nobility. That the internal architecture of some Etruscan tombs is identical with Minoan tombs which were made by a culture supposedly long gone nearly a thousand years earlier is pointed out by Wunderlich. He is however mystified by the similarity.

In 1978 Barry Fell published translations of Etruscan, showing that it belonged to the Anatolian group of languages, including Minoan which is expressed in Linear A. Likewise, he noted the elements of the much later Petrachian sonnet in a surviving pre-Roman Etruscan inscription.

Although Immanuel Velikovsky must have been unaware of these two developments, the elimination of the phony "dark age" of Greece in his reconstruction of history is consistent with and supported by both. It's interesting that in "Ramses II and His Time" (p 90, ISBN 1568490240) Velikovsky suggested that the "Hittite" library preserved an extensive library of Etruscan, since the misdating of the archive will have prevented such an identification.

"Removing the historical scene to where it belongs, namely, to the seventh and sixth centuries before the present era, we wonder which of these languages is Chaldean, which Phrygian, which Lydian, which Median, which perchance Etruscan, spoken by a people who came to Italy from Asia Minor... 'Hittite' was the language most commonly used during the Empire period. Modern scholarship found that Lydian 'seems to be Hittite' -- the Lydian and the 'Hittite' kingdoms were contemporary, and used the same language. Hurrian... is but a mistaken name for Carian."

Other books of interest: Barry Fell's "America BC", "Saga America", and "Bronze Age America", and the Epigraphic Society Occasional Publications (vols 1 - 23). Also see my ListMania lists.

This is something of keynote work in traditional Seneca stories. The author -- Arthur C. Parker -- was a Seneca author from New York State who became a well-known ehtnologist, and contributed a great deal based on his first-hand perspective of his own People. (He was the nephew of Ely S. Parker, Seneca Sachem and Union Aide to Ulysses S Grant). The language, indicative of scholarship of the time, can be somewhat stiff and formalized, but the Stories and their relevance are critically important.

This book really helped me when I was doing a report in 5th grde on the pioneer trails. It can help you too. It was extrodinary

The best book I ever rea

Put simply, Professor Fine knows what he's talking about. Written at a level which is understandable to the lay reader with a minimum of scientific background, but with attention to detail that excludes any trite simplification, the Shaky Game details Einstein's work on and objections to the quantum theory as it was hammered together (mostly by the likes of Heisenberg et al in Copenhagen) during the 1920s.

Many misconceptions exist: such that Einstein was simply too old (in his 40s) at the time that these brilliant new thinkers (in their late 20s and 30s) were bringing together QM. Never mind that Einstein actually laid the groundwork for the theory in the 1910s and earlier, as well as working well into his golden years, Fine presents many other objections, mostly from Einstein's unpublished correspondance with other notable figures of the day.

Fine also presents his and several other alternate interpretations designed to circumvent the various snags that QM invariably encounters, all with some degree of success. All in all, its a good read, and solid physics too, which is an important and all too often forgotten aspect of physics philosophy.

For the student of Sherlock Holmes this book offers much. It is a complete guide to the people, towns, streets, estates, railway stations, objects -- in fact everthing in the 56 stories and 4 novels making up the work of Sherlock Holmes!

Everything from "Abbas Parva" (a Berkshire village from The Veiled Lodger) to "Zoo" is covered.

If you are a fan of Holmes or even a fan of classic newspaper comic strips, this book is for you. I received from a playwright who is mentioned in the book and I ended up becoming a collector of vintage comic strips! It seems that the author reprinted a number of vintage works like Krazy Kat.

Sherlock Holmes has been done and redone in print, on the stage, on screen, and on the radio. The first Holmes pastiche was done by William Gillette as a stage play around the turn of the century. Orson Welles redid Gillette's play on his Mercury Theater. Edith Meiser dramatized almost every one of Doyle's original Sherlock Holmes stories (and a few hundred Holmes stories of her own invention) for American radio, and a few of them survive to this day. Meiser could never bring herself to dramatize "The Final Problem." The classic radio Holmes, against which all other radio Holmes must be measured, is the Green/Boucher series of pastiches starring Nigel Bruce and Basil Rathbone. Radio drama died in America during the late '50's and early '60's, but it is still a staple of British radio over the BBC. Holmes has had a long and varied career on BBC radio, being done and redone with various actors.

The present series of stories represents one of the two latest Holmes attempts on BBC. The other is the Bert Coules series starring Clive Merrison and Michael Williams. Coules' series reprises the entire corpus of Doyle's work (most of which is available from Amazon.com), including "The Final Problem." "Sherlock Holmes: Radio Mysteries" consists of pastiches. The present work suffers in comparison with Coules'dramatizations, but compares very favorably with all other surviving radio renditions of Holmes. It has just the right Victorian flavor, and the stories are just as good as the Green/Boucher stories. Holmes-a-holics will have to add this work to their collection.

After Coules finished the original Doyle stories, he dramatized a few pastiches himself under the title "The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," and they are very good. They are not available in America, but can be ordered from Amazon.co.uk.

This is actually a highly readable, somewhat academic (re)discovery of gender script-building in the Doyle stories. It systematically tours the Canon & does not reduce (as almost every other book on the topic does) to fandom fallout. Anyone challenged by the originals & depressed by pastiche will be rewarded.

The references & bibliography are valuable. Baden-Powell is the departure point--which was promising enough to get me to buy the book itself. Either a lot of people are thinking about this stuff, or almost no one is; but the author makes a case, out of both his own thoughts & the writings of others, which makes it seem like a lively & inspiring debate has formed.

Sixty Glorious Years is the follow up on the author's book Fifty Glorious Years. Lots of great photos and stories about the world's best aircraft, and the first REAL airliner. A Glorious buy, but if you bought the last book, there's no need to buy this one. However, if you own NEITHER - this is the book to buy. A must for every Total Aviation Person's library.