This scattershot novel has some of the elements of the traditional "rite of passage" novel, in which a young man makes the troubled transition to adulthood, but lacks the narrative cohesion of such novels to fully merit the title. Set in the city of York, circa 1980, the story is told by Billy "the Kid" Glover, a feckless youth knocking about with equally feckless friends, lamely avoiding the necessity of figuring out what to do with his life. Kid Glover tells, with "Yorkshire Ripper" paranoia and the rise of New Wave as a haphazard background, how he came to be sort of friends with the inexplicably charismatic Ziggy Hero, a David Bowie impersonator par excellance. There are a bunch of supporting characters who drift in and out, with story always verging on, but never quite leading anywhere interesting. Other than a vaguely interesting fictional sense of York, the only thing one takes away from the book is that to be different in Yorkshire in the early '80s was to court regular beatings. There are a few funny moments here and there, nothing to make you laugh out loud though. Finally the whole proceedings are drawn to a grating conclusion with an inexplicable 13-page epilogue that I defy anyone to explain to me. Altogether, a disappointment.

Professor Boner-field's book like uh . . . sucks. He talks about some case called, "WEINER," and stuff about the uh . . . PENETRATING HARD look review and the logical outGROWTH test? . . . huh huh . . . growth . . . huh huh huh huh . . . .boy-oy-oy-oy-oy-oying!!!!

In first chapter Arthur Chandler states that, due to Shepard's desire for no biographical books to be written until thirty years after his death, he simply offers "a look through the Shepard Archive". He then procedes to write an autobiography padded out with illustrations. Maybe I am missing a trick or perhaps Chandler has found a few:

Firstly I can only deduce that "through the Shepard Archive" is an encrypted citation of a special infringement authorization policy granted by the Archive, as I find little evidence of close examination of the Archive works and rather a lot of biography.

Secondly he entitles the book "The Story of E H shepard: The Man who Drew Pooh". He later explains rather condescendingly in Chapter two that,in actual fact, Shepard was not just the man who drew Pooh, and that the book will therefore steer away from this aspect of his work. Perhaps there will be a few disapointed buyers out there, considering the misleading title. Maybe the book should be titled "The E H Shepard Story: The man who Drew Pooh, but this is Not what this Book is About".

Thirdly (and this is the unforgivable one) it is a very poorly written book. Crucial facts which should have been brought to light early on seem to pop up out of the blue later on, reminding one of a badly told joke. And what is wrong with a good old fashioned paragraph with a general point? A lot of facts are simply laid down in isolated sentences in the style of some sort of mystic. To be fair, this aspect of the writing is in keeping with the 'pseudo-art-history' style of the book which seeks to place Shepard and his works in a preserving vacume - away from history, and the history of art, and supposedly away from biography.

I read this book in an afternoon and was pleased that its over-simplistic style allowed me to wade - or should I say paddle?- through its 174 pages. In more ways than one Chandler has his cake and eats it, and a very bland cake it is too.

Opens in a viewable size only in Internet Explorer (not Netscape). Each page is a jpeg, so no searching capability exists. Jpegs are not even level. Must have been processed on a 24 inch monitor, because no page is completely viewable on my 17 inch monitor even when set at 1024 x 768. Completely unviewable in Netscape. Jpegs are smaller than a postage stamp. Each time I try some command to use the "document", the gaudy company logo ROTATES! There is no way any human should be expected to read a book in this format. The CD case broke the first time I opened it. This is one of the worst products I have ever purchased. I gave it one star only because I didn't have the option of giving it zero. In summary, I was not pleased.

It amazed me, as a casual student of American History, to find so many factual errors in this short children's book dealing with the US Supreme Court. It refers to Justices Wendell and Blackmun as Chief Justices of the Supreme Court when in fact they were Associate Justices. Although the book was published in 2000, it says that the Constitution has had only had 26 amendments, even though the 27th amendment was ratified in 1992.

What's more, the book tells you very little about the actual workings of the court. It deals broadly with the court's historical importance which I personally found misleading since the title is "Your Government: How it Works: The US Supreme Court".

Arthur M. Schlesinger's name is shown on the cover as "Consulting Editor". My best guess is that any consulting Mr. Schlesinger did on this one was strictly from a distance.

The price is prohibitive; it must be a textbook. Perhaps this extensive subject can be broken down for general readership into five or six categories under two main ones: 1) victims of violence: murder, assault, rape; and 2) victims of non-violence: prostitution, drug use, burglary. Or whatever. And divvied up into three or four separate books. I would be interested in reading about particular types of crime victims such as those that have affected me, but I certainly am not willing to spend that much money on a book three quarters of which would not interest me in the least unless I were a victims' rights advocate.

Peter Arthurs was a proverbial hanger-on to the point he must be considered an ungrateful parasite. The book is a libel against
Brendan Behan who was the source of many funds for this unemployed and uneducated merchant seaman. Behan, no doubt, had his problems but Arthurs capitalized on them.Without Behan, there
would be no author Peter Arthurs.