The cavalier attitude of a fellow submariner to promulgate such information flies in the very face of what the Silent Service has always been.

It seems to me that Reed is riding on the backs of individuals like Walker and Sontag. Perhaps thinking that since they have already divulged some secrets, He would be free to do so. I think he was wrong to write this book and I believe that while some or all of the information may have been publically obtained, perhaps some aspects of it had not yet been put together in the big picture in the intelligence world. Have on-going operations been compromised? I have no way of knowing that, but the possibility exists and for that reason alone, this book should not have been written.

The best parts where those describing the land - Montana, Seattle, Alaska. The book was good enough to get me through a flight to D.C. and back, but to compare this writer to Wallace Stegner causes me to wince.

steve

Three people, three intense relationships, three rivers. "Mountain Time" is the confluence: The very real familial clash between Lyle and Mitch echoes the clash between the historic and contemporary West, where exploitation has always been at odds with environmental anxiety.

"Mountain Time" will not dissuade those who rank Doig among the best living American writers, and one might even begin making comparisons to some of the best *dead* ones, too. Faulkner comes most readily to mind: The Snopeses of Yoknapatawpha County are no more troubled and no more human than the McCaskills of the Two Medicine country in Montana. Two great rivers in different landscapes.

The broad noses, wooly hair (plate 31 b), and the full lips of the Olmec Negroid stone heads speak volumes about who was depicted in these artifacts. A simple process of elimination rules out any assumption that these heads are anything but depictions of Black Africans. For many, Dr. Sertima's theories are seen as a threat to mainstream history and anthropology. In time, many of the 18th and 19th century racist assumptions that persist to this day regarding Black Africans and their descendants will be relegated to the junk heap of history as scientific methodologies improve. --Kenneth B. Hollman

The broad noses, wooly hair (plate 31 b), and the full lips of the Olmec Negroid stone heads speak volumes about who was depicted in these artifacts. A simple process of elimination rules out any assumption that these heads are anything but depictions of Black Africans. For many, Dr. Sertima's theories are seen as a threat to mainstream history and anthropology. In time, many of the 18th and 19th century racist assumptions that persist to this day regarding Black Africans and their descendants will be relegated to the junk heap of history as scientific methodologies improve...

On the plus side, Mr. Doig certainly knows his subjects well. He develops interesting characters and relationships and weaves it all into a complex novel.

I was left feeling like I'd been teased with the mystery which turned out to be little more than a footnote. Also, I'd have to say I didn't find the author's style all that easy.

On whole, though, the book was worthwhile and I'll try another of his works.

I appreciated the sense of place and time that was so well evoked. I admired the characters, thier complexities, and the overlapping and differences among their personalities. But I missed the warmth and the sense of the moment that I got from English Creek and Dancing at the Rascal Fair.

I found many of the phrases, allusions, and figures of speech to be quite unnatural and unrealistic. I found myself doubting that anyone would talk that way. While the words chosen were interesting and evocative they didn't flow and contribute to my connection with the story and characters. In fact, I often found the manner of speech to be quite distracting.

The dam was huge in life and in the story. I found that I could not easily follow some of the details about the design and construction but I also found that understanding the specifics was not necessary. What seemed to me to be important was the understanding that the dam was perhaps the major character in the novel with a life of it's own that grew in complexity as the structure itself built layer by layer. Much as the lives of the human characters interwove, unraveled, and were repaired.

All members of the family Duff are unique, as are their relationships. All are enjoyable with only the Scottish Uncle seeming a little too polished; his dialogue a little too precise. But that's a quibble because overall, Doig does very well with his characters. Throw in the dam as another major character and Montana itself, and you have a book worth your time; a great tableau of the 1930s Depression in America.

And if you know what the cover of the first Life Magazine looks like, you know Fort Peck. Doig weaves many real events into his fiction including a visit by FDR, a major dam mishap, and a visit from a Life photographer.

The book also suffers from overly clever and elliptical story-telling, weaving together two distinct plots (which are confusingly both told in the first person, by very similar narrators), without clear indications of when it switches from one to the other. Nadas also adopts a faulkneresque non-linear narrative style, jumping around in time, which further confuses the issue. A few more concessions to readability would have benefitted the book enormously, in my opinion.

A last comment is that the book's central, climactic events hinge around the Hungarian revolution in 1950, but it assumes the reader already knows all the events of that period. If you don't know the timeline of events and the internal politics of Hungary during this turmoil, you would do well to brush up on it before reading Nadas's work.