This rating that I have givein has nothing to do with the artist. But the rating to which I thought the cards represented. I was hoping for cards for my son to paint as it was listed with COLORING Books, which should be colored. So I was a little let down at what I had recieved. My son has allways for some reson beyound us has had a very STRONG fasenation with the Titanic. It was just last week that we found out that he was BORN on the day they first found the ship. So this is why I was hoping for more. He has this special thing about the boat.And he Loves to draw. This might seem stupid I know.But he loves anything to do with the Titanic. The cards were beautiful but he has them already that he got for Christmas. He's young at heart but so deep at times.

I bought this book 5 years ago and I still look at the cards with respect. Paintings are really good and you can use them in personal projects. For example I'm going to a wood painting course and I used one of the paintings in decoupage. You will not be disappointed when you buy this book.

This is an excellent book to give to anyone weather it be any artwork lover or a child just getting started in their learning and appreciation for the great arts and the Titanic. Whatever the occasion this is a nice small way just to say...I care.

A thoroughly enjoyable history of the greatest revolutionary party in the history of the Republic. Very readable. However, I was irked by several factual errors, which, in my opinion, are inexcusable in a history book. (For example, former GOP Minority Whip Bob Michel was from Illinois, not Indiana. Richard Nixon died in 1994, not 1993. There are several others that struck me while reading but that I cannot recall now.) One my consider such factual mistakes as "no big deal." However, I cannot help wondering what other errors there are that I am just not aware of.

If you're either a Republican or a political junkie, you'll enjoy John Calvin Batchelor's "Ain't You Glad You Joined the Republicans?" While it doesn't dig deep into the personalities and issues that have defined the GOP, it provides a wonderful study of the party and its robust history. After finishing the book, you'll have not only a greater understanding of the Republican Party, but perhaps a greater appreciation as well.

It's also well-worth the time for the use of political cartoons from throughout the years. Batchelor uses these wonderful treasures effectively, providing not only appropriate art but a study of the art of political cartooning and how it has changed over the past 150 years.

Aint You Glad You Joined The Republicans, is the finest book I have read about our GOP. It is engaging and does a good job telling the history of our party. It is insightful and even handed in it's treatment of the GOP's storied past, from Lincoln to Bush, it is an enjoyable read!

I use this book for teaching Sunday School. I'm planning on giving a copy to everyone that teaches Bible Stories to our kids at church because it edits the stories and gives a paraphrase that is accurate to the text.

This bible is an excellent tool for reading the bible daily with your children. It is well written with excellent illustrations. Each story is short enough to read just before turning out the lights.

Our family (we have 8 children) has read a number of Bible story books. This one stands out to us as THE BEST. It is clearly written so that even the younger ones can follow well. Also, it is written in an interesting manner that the children always want more. A sign of a real winner! With the stories being so short there is always time to read at least one.

Batchelor's major work of Cold War fiction floored me the first few times through. His gift to tear into the other side of the U.S/S.U. rivalry, showing both the very worst of Soviet repression and the kind of searing love-of-life felt by characters once they escape the watchful Soviet eye, is possessed by very few. Never feeling like a Soviet apologist or a "Raa raa, horray for our side" jingoistic US enthusiast, Batchelors work touches on Orwell's but never feels simply derivitive or hollow. He is a challenging, intense and unique writer and anyone who falls at the feet of Tom Robbins or loves the work of Don Delillo would do good to tackle Batchelor's writing, both this novel and the very wonderful, "Birth of the People's Republic of Antartica." Enjoy.

This is the central question explored by Conrad in Lord Jim. Jim is ultimately a character who inspires our sympathy due to his inability to find reconcilliation for his one tragic moment of weakness. In him we find a person of tremendous potential that remains unrealized as the tragic circumstances of his abandoning his post aboard the Patna continually haunt him and the associated guilt drives him to isolation.
Conrad successfully explores the concepts of bravery, cowardice,guilt and the alternative destinies that an individual may be driven to by these qualities.
The narrative can be a bit confusing at times as Marlowe relates the tale by recalling his encounters with Jim. The book reminded very much of Somerset Maugham's THE RAZOR"S EDGE" in style. However I believe that Maugham did a much better job of incorporating the narrator into the flow of the story. Overall LORD JIM is a wonderful classic novel that I highly recommend.

This is the fifth book I have read by Conrad, and through these readings I have come to deeply appreciate his literary power and the perfection of his stories. Conrad has the skill to border about several similar subjects, without repeating himself. "Lord Jim" is truly a Shakespearean tragedy, mainly because of the Shakespearean nature of the main character. Jim is a young naval officer with high hopes of heroism and moral superiority, but when he faces his first test of courage, he miserably fails. While 800 Muslim pilgrims are asleep aboard the ship "Patna", Jim discovers that the boat is about to sink. There are not sufficient lifeboats for everybody. Should he wake them up or not? He gets paralyzed with fear and then sudenly jumps into a boat being set up by the rest of the officers. He is taken to trial and disposessed of his working licence.

Ashamed and humiliated, Jim dedicates the rest of his life to two things: escape the memory of that fateful night, and redeem himself. This agonizing quest to recover his dignity in front of his own eyes leads him to hide in a very remote point in the Malayan peninsula, where he will become the hero, the strong man, the wise protector of underdeveloped, humble and ignorant people. Jim finds not only the love of his people, but also the love of a woman who admires him and fears the day when he might leave for good. The narrator, Captain Marlow (the same of "Heart of Darkness") talks to Jim for the last time in his remote refuge, and then Jim tells him that he has redeemed himself by becoming the people's protector. Oh, but these things are never easy and Jim will face again the specter of failure.

Conrad has achieved a great thing by transforming the "novel of adventures" into the setting for profound and interesting reflections on the moral stature of Man, on courage, guilt, responsibility, and redemption.

Just as in "Heart of Darkness" the question is what kinds of beings we are stripped of cultural, moral and religious conventions; just as in "Nostromo" the trustworthiness of a supposedly honest man is tested by temptation, in "Lord Jim" the central subject is dignity and redemption after failure.

A great book by one of the best writers.

After reading this book (along with several other of Conrad's books) I am under the impression that Joseph Conrad may very well be my favorite author. Here is another masterpiece, a deeply incisive study of character of the motivation and the ultimate failure of all high-minded ideals. Granted my own personal world view falls directly in line with this realization and therefore prejudices me towards anything the man might write, but, when considering such a lofty title as 'favorite author' one must regard other aspects of the novelist's creation. As with the others, Conrad wins by the power of his stories.

Lord Jim is my least favorite of the the four books I have read by Conrad. The story is rather scattered: a righteous young man does something wrong that he holds himself far too accountable for and the public shame the action brought him exaggerates the reality of his failure and makes him believe the rumors swirling around about his so-called cowardice. He spends the remainder of his life trying to reclaim his self-regard, mostly exaggerating his own importance in matters he hardly understands. His goal is to liberate the primitive people of the jungle paradise he inadvertantly finds himself in (due to an effort to escape every particle of the world he once inhabited) and his once high-minded ideals and regard for himself lead him to allow those people to consider him almost a God.

Jim likes being a God and considers himself a just and fair one. He treats everyone equally and gives to his people the knowledge of modern science and medicine as well as the everyday archetecture and understanding of trade that those primitive folks would otherwise be years from comprehending.

Of course everything ends in failure and misery and of course Jim's restored name will be returned to its demonic status, but the whole point of the novel seems to me that one can not escape their past. Jim, for all his courage in the line of fire has tried to avoid all memory of the once shameful act of his former life and by doing so becomes destined to repeat his mistakes.

Lord Jim is far more expansive than the story it sets out to tell, ultimately giving a warning on the nature of history and general humanity that only a writer of Conrad's statue could hope to help us understand.

If there is a flaw it is not one to be taken literally. Conrad was a master of structural experimentation and with Lord Jim he starts with a standard third person narrative to relate the background and personalities of his characters and then somehow merges this into a second person narrative of a man, years from the events he is relating, telling of the legend of Jim. It is a brilliant innovation that starts off a little awkward and might lead to confusion in spots as the story verges into its most important parts under the uncertain guidence of a narrator who, for all his insight into others, seems unwilling to relate his personal relevence to the story he is relating.

Nevertheless (with a heartfelt refrain), one of the best books I have ever read.

This is well written, but I can not recommend it. I should say that there are many parts that have the flashes of brilliance, and other sections that remain confusing and contradictory. Perhaps some might say this is because it is all told in the first person, the ravings of a mad man. Perhaps it is that I simply don't want to read the ravings of a mad man.

The title belies the text. The People's Republic of Antarctica itself is no more than a footnote- it more is the story of the life of Grim Fiddle, taking place mostly on the Atlantic Ocean in various places. I enjoyed the descriptions of life on the waves, for I enjoy the waters of the deep. But I picked up the text hoping to hear about a Republic in Antarctica, as there is so little future history or imaginations that continent. Instead we follow Grim as he lives in Norse legend from his birth in Scandinavia as an American-Swede, down the length of the Atlantic Ocean to the Falklands and other islands of the South. Throughout there is portent of greatness about Grim, and one expects much to come out of it. One ends up with dissapointment.

This tale is dark, and one keeps hoping for some Joy, some recompense, but the desire are stifled. Yes, it goes in places you would not expect, and I commend Batchelor for his work and effort in that regard, and in others. But the lines between what one expects and what one ultimately receives are not clearly drawn. It may well be the revelation of the mind of a mass-murderer- but if so, we the readers come to identify and relate to a Grim, in his first thirty years, and he suddenly becomes an evil man and destroyer of peoples. Yes, there are some glimmers of this earlier on, but there truly is no transition to this change- you are suddenly presented with the new Grim, and the only explanation is a confused interlude tale told in epic Nordic style.

But I speak too harshly of this book. For Batchelor truly opens up the mind of the man, Grim. You move with him and the events that occurred. And it is a harsh tale, but realistic, of the depths of depravity of man. There is much to be said on the question of what *will* we do with all the refugees, the huddled masses on our teeming shores, that increase year after year in this new century.

I hold this against the story: it is told as confessional, but without real remorse. Better yet, there is remorse, but not real anguish, nor the repentence that can be seen in renewed Hope. It is depression, and I declare that depression is not Reality- Hope is present, and is powerful. The author would fashion in one's mind a falsehood that rings of Truth.

If this review was at all confusing, it was told in the same style as the book.

Writing from the point of view in the early 80's and fresh from the chaos of the 70's oil crisis Batchelor naturally used this experience to build his world which in SF terms would be classified as a "near future" narrative.

More accurately his book is that rare animal in the XX century a political fiction talking about the issues of freedom and personal responsibility in the face of antiutopian fictions like 1984 or The Brave New World and actual political utopian projects like the Soviet Union or Third Reich.

It is easily recognizable that Batchelor is writing from a Libertarian perspective and that would allow me to label the book as a 'Libertarian fable' however this book is much more.

Taking Sweden in the early 70's as the location of his books beginning the writer appropriates the heritage of Norse mythology and epic poems for his flawed hero and this imagery stays with the reader throughout the book in tone, names and a whole chapter that takes place during a 'berserk' war fury during which the Hero Skallagrim Strider commits many crimes.

However Batchelor posits his crimes against the political crimes of those who convicted not just the hero but millions to a fate worse than his. The metaphor of the 'road to hell is paved with good intentions' is aptly used here.

In the end the Hero is given a sort of a political redemption by becoming a "Republic of one" incarnating the libertarian ideal of personal responsibility and freedom in the wastes of Antarctic islands.

Fascinating read that will stay with you, slightly dated due to the basic premise of a breakdown in world social order by Oil crisis, racism and religious fervour. Otherwise, to the point, asking the most fundamental questions about the political animal-Man.

I'd like to second an earlier reviewer about the book being stuck in his psyche- I read it about 7-8 years ago (not as long ago as him :>) and it keeps reappearing in my mind. It's well-written, although at times it can get a bit heavy-going. It's an adventure story, an introduction to Jeremy Bentham's Utilitarianism, a peek at what could happen in the future ( reminded me of Piers Anthony's Orion Rising- another fascinating read, though not as dense as TBOTPROA)and more. I picked it up in the days when I was big science fiction fan, and I'm happy to say that I mistook it for a standarrd sci-fi novel, when it's much, much more than that.

I sense the author is just pushing his own view on buddhism (or... existentialism) through this book: this is not a study of the crossroads between buddhism and existentialism, but the author's own view on buddhism expressed in the terms of existential thinking.
St. Batchelor in this book holds a view about buddhism very much close to that of contemporary Vietnamese zen buddhism. They see the world as manyfold manifestations all sprung from one unique universal 'tank' ('alaya vijnana'); consequently they hold the view that all things and beings in this universe are linked together in complete solidarity. This is one view: but this is not really essential either to buddhism or to existentialism. It also seems to me somewhat oversimplified as a moral and as a cosmic hypothesis. Personal responsability and gratuitous compassion are closer to ancient, theravada buddhism.
Anyway, I much preferred--and would recommend--the same author's "Buddhism without belief" as a contemporary, 'modernist' approach to the ageless and visionary wisdom of buddhism!

If you are familiar with existentialism and buddhism, and you would like to read about their relationship, this book is great. But I would not recommend one to read this book for an introduction to either Buddhism or existentialism. For an introduction to Buddhism, I recommend Bachelor's other book, "Buddhism Without Beliefs: A Contempory Guide to Awakening". To learn more about existentialism, I would recommend reading the philosophy of Albert Camus.

Although I found this book very enjoyable, in the end it is little more than a collection of Cold War short stories, well observed but ultimately less than satisfying. The follow up novel, Walking The Cat, featuring a lot of the same characters is far more enjoyable. This book is worth reading as an introduction to that one. As regards the unavailability of this novel. I bought a brand new copy off the shelf in City Lights in San Francisco last summer after several failures in trying to get this and other Clavin Batchelor novels via the net. They had a full stock of all his works available.Maybe the old ways are still the best.

Gordon Liddy is My Muse reads like a rant turned novel by Dennis Miller. Constructed of a series of vignettes involving various aspects of cold war Americana, John Calvin Batchelor voices an opinion on anything that springs to mind, culminating in one of the most pointless yet intriguing questions of the century: Who was Deep Throat? (Not the porn star, her namesake the political luminary.)

The patriotism is apparent, yet lacks any jingoistic narcissism, as our hero "Tip" wanders first through the Soviet Union, where he shows the change from totalitarian state to frontier justice. This is a precursor of the author's later novel Peter Nevsky and the True Story of the Russian Moon Landing (1993). Having gotten the obligatory Us vs. Them out of the way, Tip moves on to Us vs. Us in the good old Us of A., except for a foray into Germany, where its Us vs. Them vs. Us, and we continue to look for Nazis. For the rest of the novel, Tip maintains a domestic traveler with visits to Houston, Ohio, Miami, Maine, Arizona, and where the cold war will play while the ticket sales last, Hollywood. Through it all, Tip maintains his cynical isolation with the ever ready sarcastic quip and side glances at the camera, while providing commentary on what he perceives as the great cold war game; "sci-fi/spy" stuff.

Using an extensive array of references, literary, historical, and political, the author manages to create a satire which still shows affection for the very things he mocks. Up until the final title section of the book, the light handed humor of our hero remains constant. It is then that Mr. Batchelor becomes somewhat preachy - providing an acceptably plausible explanation of who exposed the details of Watergate, while both building up and tearing down the character of the second most victimized participant - G. Gordon Liddy. Lest we forget, the primary victim remains Richard Nixon, the scapegoat of our age and principal martyr of our cultural disillusion. The double entendres and previous wit seemingly vanish while the author presents his explanation of the crime and its results. However, the book remains close to the target as an entertaining exploration of current social history.

Ultimately the book is well worth reading, as are any of the author's works. Mr. Batchelor is a widely underrated author who has written novels in a multitude of styles, and always with integrity. Having read all of his novels but the sequel to this novel Walking the Cat (1991), and the political thriller Father's Day (1994), they are next on my list.

"Father's Day" starts with a good premise: the tension between an elected President who has voluntarily taken a leave of absence under the disability clause of the twenty-fifth amendment, and the Vice President who has been acting as President during the disability. Two years after winning a landslide, but with his "approval rating . . . plunged to a post-Cold War low" and his marriage disintegrating, President Theodore G. Jay "collapsed with a disability diagnosed as a major depressive episode." For five months, Vice President T.E. Garland acts as President while Jay recuperates. Then Jay decides that he is rested and ready for resuming his office. But Garland, enjoying the office and its power, is reluctant about handing them back. And Garland has been accumulating quite a few friends while he has been running the country.

That premise would have made for a good, fast-paced, tense political drama. But author John Calvin Batchelor takes it too far: instead of weaving a plausible story out of politics and psychology, he opts for cheap but implausible thrills. The denouement is unsubtly foreshadowed in the first three pages, so I am giving nothing away by telling you that the first chapter opens with an unquestioningly obedient military rehearsing for an assault upon Air Force One, ending in an assassination. To Batchelor's credit, he gets the law right, and his application of the twenty-fifth amendment's provisions for a political contest between a disabled President and a Vice President acting as President is unimpeachable (no pun intended). But once the story steps outside politics and into action-adventure, reality bites the dust, and the story takes a turn so far-fetched that it ruins what may otherwise have been a good book.

No doubt about it, Batchelor did a solid job making his characters into flesh and blood people, bringing to the surface all their strengths and weaknesses. You wanted to root on one of the big heroes, Maine Governor and Presidential hopeful Jack Longfellow, but there was a taint on him due to his affair with another woman. I also liked Joint Chiefs Chairman General Sensenbrenner. He's a guy still not afraid to walk where regular foot soldiers go and has a soft spot for those in poverty, especially children. He comes off as such a stand-up guy you forget he's trying to help Vice President Shy Garland overthrow President Teddy Jay. Speaking of the Veep, I don't think he really came off as the power-hungry nut he was. One really interesting aspect of the story was the fact that while Garland is power hungry, President Jay is still battling depression and sounds like a total wet noodle throughout the book. You start to wonder who is the better guy to have in the White House. The ending, however, did leave me scratching my head in certain places.

While the premise of the book my seem unbelieveable, the very fact that the 25th Amendment makes this scenario possible makes this book very chilling. I found it to be very entertaining and very hard to put down. I highly recommend it for an political junkies looking to get lost in something other than the current events in Washington!

Amazon.com located my copy for me, so don't give up hope of obtaining one. Don't let the word "Illustration" in the title scare you off if you are an aspiring artist with an interest in these topics. Ted Wilbur's introduction is encouraging and insightful. Good coverage of most all of the basics. It goes into a lot of detail on drawing and painting aircraft, ships and vehicles. Good treatment of initially drafting the machines. Given the age of the book (1986), it remains a useful primer to the subject.

I hope this title is reprinted. Cam Martin