This book picks up where "Planetfall" left off, with main character Homer B. Hunter commandeering the ship inhabited by his faithful robot companion Oliver, tough but pretty warrior Reina, gorgeous Lieutenant Coryban, and the inept and argumentative Ensign Blather. I must say right off that this book cannot really be understood very well without first reading "Planetfall." Other than that, however...this book is just as hilariously ridiculous as its predecessor. Homer B. Hunter leaves the others and crashes his ship on the very mysterious and very advanced civilized planet of Aurelia, where he teams up with a head-shrunken rock star Spaceside, the ancient but heroic Agent Double-Oh-Pi (in the book it uses all numeric characters!) and the agent's beautiful, initially naked daughter Yangtze. Battling a mysterious phenomena in the universe known only as "The Farce," Homer must use all his wits to locate the spirit of his other once-dead-but-no-less-faithful robot Floyd. The written gags are as ridiculous as those in the first book, such as the cybernetic sexual member replaced on Homer after he is injured in an explosion, the alternate egos of the goddess Marie (one who rides the soul of Yangtze and another who chews gum and tries to look cool), and Oliver's annoying habit of taking all of Homer's sarcasm seriously. This book reads quickly and I highly recommend it. I only give it 4 stars instead of five because:

1) In some places, particularly the last chapters, the author gets so lengthy with event description that I found myself skimming just to see where the next character action occurred.

2) The story would be hard to understand without having read "Planetfall" first, and

3)The next sequel promised at the end of the book, supposedly called "Futurefall", was never written. Therefore, you are left permanently hanging after you finish this book...although thankfully the "hanging" is the start of a new story with the same characters, rather than cutting you off in the middle of the old story.

If you want to know about everything about the beginning of America, this is definitely the book for you! Great for school American history classes.

This well-known story is presented with stunning illustrations and easy to manage chapters. The vocabulary is accessible to younger readers, and the characters are clearly delineated. It is the type of book that can be read in parts without losing the focus of the main story. It is certainly one of the best presentations of the Arthur stories.

While traveling in India and Nepal I spent an extended time in researching the folklore around Gesar Ling through interviews with his direct descendents and his reincarnation (Namkha Rinpoche) in Kathmandu. Alexandra David-Neel's book "The Super Human Life of Gesar of Ling" proved to be extremely valuable, and fairly accurate with respect to the information I gathered.

Despite David-Neel's association with Madame Bolovsky's "Theosophical Society" this book still retains a great deal of credibility. The introduction details an encounter she had with an emissary of Gesar Ling which seems to be derived directly from his reputation as the regional protector deity of the Dege region of Tibet.

Her easy writing style makes this book accessible to the academic and the casual reader. I enthusiastically recommend this book to anyone interested in the more obscure writings on Tibet.

This book is not only a book of changing times in our last century, but how lives affected and were effected by these times. The story begins in the coal towns of Pennsylvania and follows the lives and families of the people as they deal with a world progressing and morals regressing. A great read and the ending will make you cry!

I AM INTERESTED THE BOOKS

The first time I ever heard of Anne Montgomery, it was in the context of her jumping into, I think it was the Connecticut river, and beating on a nuclear submarine with a household hammer. I thought "Woah, what's that all about?." Eventually, I got to meet her. She was about seventy-five, weighed maybe 100lbs, five feet tall, dresed in a pink hooded sweatshirt and terrycloth sneakers, and just as sweet as you could imagine. That's sort of the jist of this whole book right there: things are not what they seem. Swords Into Ploughshares is a history of the Ploughshares movement- a nationwide faith-based affiliation of anti-nuclear and military industrial complex activists committed to non-violent direct action. Whew, that's a mouthful. What that means, very basically and slightly melodramatically explained by me is: a group of people that holds hands and prays together before sneaking into weapons facilities and disarming B-52's with cordless drills and such. Skillfully integrating elements of political analysis and theology the book left me with some inkling at its end of what was totally inconceivable to me at its beginning; namely, why this sweet little old lady would jump into an ice cold river and pound on a NUCLEAR SUBMARINE with a hand tool. (Other than the fact that she's insane of course, and I've talked to her, and she's not; a fact that makes the whole thing a bit harder to stomach, because if she's not crazy, and all the other people in the book aren't crazy, then there's some incredible motivation, passion, and dedication here that I have to deal with. Somehow. Cool. Yikes.)

This story has in it the original Y2K bug! Not technically a bug, but a genetically altered form of lepidoptera, which produces larval forms with a voracious appetite for tobacco in the field! The industry is wiped out, in this book, in spite of the wickedness of those in charge, and we have a tobacco-free world in the year 2000. It was a great fantasy, while it lasted!

With the plethora of weight-loss books available, all hawking their individual programs and special approaches, it's nice to see some real balance and sense in this important aspect of health. Dr. Ulene bases his program on three basic principles that are easy to follow. Guided by these, one month will bring the overweight individual to a new awareness of eating habits and ways to change these and maintain them. This paperback is a bit scant on detail, leaving much to the motivated reader, but it provides enough to get the overweight person started on a healthy approach to living the rest of his/her life without excess pounds, without living a monastic life or complicated food combining or macrobiotic regimens. Worth the read and easy to take!

This was an amazingly good book. I had to read it for a college anthropology course. At first I was hesitant but once I began to read it, I found it to be very interesting. It is written like a novel, which I find to be a rather unique approach. I find most Anthropology and History boring because they are written in like a textbook sort of style. They are a bunch of facts written in an uninteresting way. That is the total opposite of this book. I would definately recommend it to anyone.