An excellent collection with great writing. Edgy, evocative, atomshpereic with fully developed character studies that are made even more fascinating by the fact that these are real people and events. The crime reporters explore the conjunction of everyday life and the many faces of pathology. Could not stop reading; can't wait for the next edition.

Although I'm a fan of true crime, most of the genre doesn't meet my standards. Too often I find that it focuses on the criminal and the macabre, gruesome, or sensational aspect of whatever story is being told and appeals to a certain prurience which I find distasteful. Often, the victims are forgotten or neglected in favor of the criminal, whose story may be more interesting or titillating. This remarkable collection, however, includes only well-told stories from respectable publications. Most of the 17 stories are riveting and will linger with you long after you've finished the book. These are true human interest stories which never ignore the real tragedies involved. Kudos to the editors for managing to find such quality stories. I can't wait for the next edition!

This book is a wonderful read!! It contains 17 articles written in the past year by excellent journalists from various magazines such as: GQ, SPIN, THE NEW YORKER, ATLANTIC MONTHLY, ESQUIRE, VANITY FAIR and more. The variety makes it nice because you get to read different styles of writing by different authors on different subjects. The subjects too are a variety in range: "The Cheerleaders" focuses on a town in New York hit by tragedy after tragedy; "A Prayer For Tina Marie" is a wonderful article about a woman who murdered her two kids in an unthinkable way (much worse than Andrea Yates); "Flesh and Blood" is about the murder-for-hire by pro football player Rae Carruth... AND MUCH MORE!! With such quality of writing, you don't want to miss this book. I am really hoping that more of these will be published!!

One of the things I do when I looking for ideas for new paintings is to look through this book. I also go for walks, take photographs and go to museums and galleries but when those options are unavailable or inconvenient books like the "Best Of" series are a great help.

This book contains works in more than just 'pure watercolor'. Many of the most beautiful works are mixed media. The common denominator being that an aqueous media has to be the dominant element in the painting. Thus there are works in gouache, acrylic, pen and ink with watercolor, gold leaf, watercolor pencils, water-soluable pastels...basically anything that can be used with water. An added extra is that many of the paintings list what surface was used. Books like these are always a great pleasure and inspiration to look through.

This showcase book is packed with spectacular watercolor art with a wide variety of subject and style, including people, nature, still-life and abstract. It is delight to leaf through and a great source of inspiration.

Some of my favorite pieces include a beautiful lily pond landscape by David Lee and a portrait of a woman by Paul McCormack. I also liked two different collage style pieces fish and fishing poles by Patricia Scott and another with shells, birds and writing by Judy Hoiness. I enjoyed a colorful abstract by Margaret Manter and a still life of melons by Sue Archer.

Caption information includes artist, title, size, paper used and sometimes medium notes. Artist addresses and a brief note about the judges are included in the back. This book makes a great gift for the watercolor artist or enthusiast.

Both the Best of Watercolor and the Best of Watercolor 2 are filled with a wonderful assortment of beautiful work by current, award-winning watercolorists. The techniques and subject matter are varied, and give the reader a terrific selection of truly fine work.

There is not much I can say about this book. The book speaks far better for itself than ever I could hope to. I congratulate the author. I had read lectures on Systems Analysis and Design to Graduate Students (not on informatics)and my reference book was this one. Obviously, authors applied their past experience to present a complex task in a very amenous and readable way. Of course, I will use it again in my next courses. Some years ago, I used several times in my courses, with good results, the book "Systems Analysis and Design. Best Practices" by the same authors.

Happy Valley is a book that you won't want to put down as it takes you through the many adventures of the colorful colonialists who came to Kenya. Its strength is that it is a riveting work that captures the main events of an incredible story. Its main weakness is that it sometimes lacks depth, but it remains a great introduction to a most fascinating subject.

This slim volume ..... The book covers several episodes in the colonial history of Kenya. It's not suitable for research historians, but it will entertain you on a flight or on the beach. Some of the anecdotes will make you laugh till you cry.

This is not a review. It's the only way I can find on your site to ask a question. I just ordered Happy Valley by Micholas Best. It's out of print and I ordered a used one. However, I only want a hard back copy. Please let me know if that is possible. There was no way to indicate I only wanted a hard back edition.

Thank you, William B. MacIver

My boyfriend and I bought this book in the British Museum bookstore so we could keep the monarchs straight. For that purpose it is perfect. Each page is about the size of two credit cards, and each monarch gets two pages each- one page for a picture of him/her, and one page for a biography. The brevity of the biography obviously leads to inaccuracies in the interest of cramming it all into a single tiny page. In other words, I don't recommend using it to study for a history test, but if you want to put it in your backpack as you are touring London so you can say "Oookay, now Henry the VI was a [crummy] and weak king" as you stand over his tomb in St. George at Windsor and "Henry VII killed Richard the III, that bad guy from Shakespeare" as you stand next to Henry's tomb in Westminster Abby, it is absolutely perfect for that purpose. However, if you want a more thorough review (and loads of pictures, but less backpack friendly) of each monarch, I very much recommend Antonio Fraser's "The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England."

My only complaint about this book is that it tells a complete falsehood of the blessed Anglican Martyr Charles Stuart. To put this in a nutshell, Queen Victoria had a grudge against several of her predecessors (including Charles the martyr.) During her reign she fabricated the tale that Charles was a self server. On the other hand she tried to make the monstrously evil Cromwell into a champion of constitution and democracy. (Don't take my word for it. Read Winston Churchill's "History of the English Speaking People" 1955). Otherwise, this book is EXCELLENT. It offers a brief listing of the different houses. It also offers a beautiful photograph of each monarch. For the most part, it offers a brief but accurate passage on each of the monarchs. One thing Best does very well is that he goes beyond common and inaccurate opinions of some famous monarchs (including Henry VIII) and gives a scholarly opinion of their contributions to England.

If you want a coffee table book, this is not for you. Though tiny in size, this book is packed with valuable information. The illustrations, which cover all 43 of the rulers, are beautiful. The biographies are short and sweet, providing a basic background on each monarch. Also included are some humorous and shocking facts! I bought this for a friend and was pleasantly surprised at how much I liked it myself. It's a great value.

This is a compendium of various stories run in the Science Times section of the NY Times newspaper from 1992 through 1997, addressing various issues related to genetics -- understanding how the human genome is being sequenced, cloning, ageing and gradual understanding of the process of cancer.

The features are written for an educated, but non-expert audience, with half a dozen diagrams to complement the content. My favorite article was on the research done on Caenorhabditis elegans, a small (1 mm long) soil nematode found in temperate regions. Although C.elegans has no economic impact on humans, its importance, which the article explains, is both in the primitiveness of the organism and the commonality it has with many human biological functions. The book explains this fascinating stuff very well to the layman.

As the editor notes, genetics is still in its "gestational stage," and the book is obviously limited in its snapshot into research. Indeed, only a few years later the first pass of sequencing the human genome was completed earlier than planned.

Two minor complaints about the book are the similarity in some of the stories and the lack of pointers to additional resources...

Nicholas Best, Shame on you! I liked the book, except... You did not have the full names (middle names) of the presidents! Now thats weird. VaVoom SoKKo

I bought this book in hopes of learning information about the presidents other than the simple things. It basically is full of greatly detailed pictures, but only has a small paragraph on each president. It's very small to beat that (the book itself). So, If you are looking to find trivia this book is not the right choice. Otherwise, if you want a brief summary of each president, this book is good.

In this book, each president had two pages- 1 with their picture...the other with thier information. The pictures were really great, but the information was brief in content. If you're looking to learn something, this book would not help very much. Most of the text contained is already known by most people. It may be suitable for ten year olds, but for adults, it wouldn't be as interesting because all it contains is pictures and a short paragraph. Although, It would be a great book for kids, it just doesn't go good with "history buffs."