This book was my husband's favorite book in the 60s when he was in elementary school. Now we read it to our children, along with many other Bill Peet books. We love the illustrations, plots and rhymes in Bill Peet's books. Buford is a sweet and innocent mountain goat dealing with a handicapping condition (oversized curling horns) that threatens his safety. Then when he's cornered he discovers a way to use his horns not only to escape the hunters, but to ski. And everyone at the ski resort loves him and makes him welcome. If you like this one, try Eli, Cowardly Clyde, and The Wump World.

These are my absolute favorite pictures from Bill Peet. Buford has trouble with his tribe due to being smaller than the other bighorns, but manages to find a way to be proud in spite of the opinions of others.

I remeber my dad reading these stories to me. They are all great! i recommend them for your kids. I enjoy them so much I ma buying them for myself, grown ups like them too! Sweet entertaining stories, great writing, great pictures. an A+

This is one of the finest issues of Granta ever. It affected me profoundly when I read it while traveling ten years ago. It contains a long except from Bill Bryson's "Lost Continent" (unabridged and thus far superior to the book version), an inspiring memoir of the 1930's by Martha Gellhorn, testimonials on the deteriorating Middle Eastern situation, and so much more. Reading it brings you to life in an amazing new way, and puts you in touch with a huge world you may have been oblivious of.

I beg that the publisher re-issue this monumental document, so that others' eyes may be opened as magically as were mine.

What a great literary read! Granta is good no matter the topic. But Granta's take on the family is superb. Varying degrees of family dysfunction are presented from different perspectives and by different authors. Well worth the read, particularly if you are in the throes of determining your own family patterns. This is definitely a departure from mainstream self-help books.

This edition of Granta focusing on 'Crime' takes a unique approach, incorporating contemporary examples of short "crime fiction" with two real-life accounts of murders committed in Glasgow, as told by the murderers themselves. It seems this structure encourages reflexion on our personal reactions to the nature of crime and the extent to which our perception of what is real and what is fiction will color our tolerance of graphic descriptions. While we see violence depicted in film and in fiction constantly, to an extent that many of us feel largely desensitized to its "shock" effects, it is interesting to read these real-life autobiographical accounts embedded in the series of "crime fiction" pieces. Personally, I found myself shocked and horrified as I listened to the real-life murderers tell their all too graphic stories, while I breezed through the less threatening fictional descriptions of similar events. I think the experience which comes by reading these two types of stories, juxtaposed, is what makes GRANTA 46: CRIME worthwhile.

I bought this back issue expecting a bit more Graham Greene content than I found. The remainder of the volume was a bit less coherent than the first Granta that I read. I especially enjoyed the pieces by Alice Munro and Marianne Wiggins. The "name" pieces were uniformly weak.

Even old issues of Granta are on the edge of what's hot and new!

This issue deals with death, both future and past. The series of short stories by some of the most hot authors around, all seem to flow easily from one story to the next.

Includes Jeremy Harking, John Gregory Dunne, Eugene Richards, Edmund White, Teresa Pamies, Mary McCarthy, Adam Mars-Jones, Roger GTarfitt, Michael Ignatieff, John Treherne, William Cooper, Rudolf Schafer, Christopher Petit, and oddly enough Louise Erdrich.

The photographs are all very moving and fit right in with the shorts. If you have ever sat still and wondered about your future fate, or reflected upon what comes at the end, this is a book worth reading -- if only for the reflections that it might cause you.

Granta is a quarterly British magazine that offers the best of new British writing, as well as reportage and photographs. Each edition is dedicated to a particular theme, in this case, Africa. Almost all Granta's are good but some are better than others and this one is particularly successful. It includes a shocking account of the civil war in Liberia entitled "The last days of Dr Doe", as well as a story of an African filmmaker in Hollywood, a lovely inspirational piece by Nelson Mandela and a brilliant excerpt from Paul Theroux's My Secret History about the lepers of Moyo.

I, like Mr. Buford, lived as a priveleged American in London during the heydey of bootboys and hooligans in the early and mid 70's. I was a teenager and a wannabe-hooligan, too young (early teens) to be a real hooligan. I travelled extensively on the "football specials" to away games, among them a 1973 FA Cup semifinal at Hillsborough (scene of the 1996 disaster that ended standing on the terraces forever), and the danger of violence was expected and palpable. I recall a lovely spring day in Southampton where hooligans in motorcycle helmets roamed the streets smashing milk bottles on heads in a completely random fashion. Unlike some readers, I found his descriptions dead-on accurate. The discussion of crowd theory and when things change right before they "go off" was fascinating, as well as absolutely true. The part of the book I found odd was the change of opinion from wanting to study his topic to throwing up his hands and deciding there was nothing to study. What's the conclusion, or are there none? I am happy to report that those days are, for the most part, over. Having recently returned from England, the ticket pricing, and all-seater stadiums, have eliminated the hooligan mobs at football matches. the reason the hooligans rampage in continental Europe is because that's all that is left (there are still terraces in much of Europe). Domestically, many of the football venues described by Mr. Buford have been torn down or rebuilt as all-seater stadia.

Bill Buford uses two different ways to tell the tale of the English football supporter. Buford's first method, used in the beginning and end parts of the book, provide a view from the inside as the author documents his the part of his life spent, for lack of an original phrase, "among the thugs," specifically with supporters of Manchester United, one of the top teams in England's Premier League. Buford paints a harrowing picture as he describes people who are basically degenerates. Much like people used to fight in support of their country (does anyone really do that anymore?), the supporters use violence, much of it simply appaling, as their vehicle for team support.

Buford's second technique, employed in the middle section, uses a more scholarly approach as the author relates the supporters' behavior to the tenets of modern sociology, especially those that deal with the dynamics of the group or the crowd.

Although possessing a thoroughly interesting subject, especially for Americans whose sports are comparitively homoginized in the face of such thuggery, Buford's somewhat schitzophrenic approach takes away from the novel as a whole. When Buford immerses himself in the thug life, the reader immerses himself, too, thus providing for entertaining and slightly voyeuristic literature. Buford's sociology lesson is boring and repetitive, however, and the incompatible narrative methods keep the book from attaining its full depth.

In all, Buford presents an flawed yet interesting tale about a subject to which few Americans can relate.

It was Bill Shankly, ex Liverpool manager, who said "Football is'nt a matter of life and death, it's more important than that". This book goes someway to capture the passion and importance of Football in English culture, and the extreme lengths that some so called supporters go to feel that they belong. As a true English Football supporter, I felt somewhat annoyed that readers of the book from other countries would feel that all English Football supporters behave in this manner, this is NOT true. But this book does accurately portray the minority who caused and still cause the atrocities described. The book works on two levels, to shock with horrific stories of brutal violence, and at a much deeper level to explain crowd behaviour and how this can be manipulated. Overall this is a valiant attempt by an American to explain English Football violence, which to my suprise was successfull.

The title of Gazza Agonistes pretends to a pitch of literary ambition that the text itself does nothing at all to bring into fulfilment. There is nothing special about the writing here - not even judged as journalism, much less as what I hoped (especially from an established poet) might be an attempt at contemporary mythopoeia. Having said that, it is very readable. I just got the wrong idea about it from the title. I only read it because of the title. Not that I regret reading it, now that I have read it.

The title piece, "Gazza Agonistes" is 112 page mini-biography of English soccer superstar Paul Gascoigne. What makes it more than an expanded sports or style section profile is the author. Ian Hamilton is a well-known biographer, poet, and essayist, and reading someone of his caliber write about soccer as a fan is always a nice departure from the norm. Gascoigne's story--the sort of rise and stumble of a mercurial and talented boy--ends a little abruptly as he was still in the prime of his career at the time of the writing, even so, it's worth reading.

The rest of the issue includes some arresting photo portraits of WWI veterans, 30+ pages devoted to the consequences of the end of the Soviet empire, a long piece by Jonathan Rabin about the Mississippi flooding which didn't look that interesting, a 40 page short story by Ethan Canin that I also skipped, and more intriguingly, an 18 page story by Nick Hornby called "Fourteen and After." This story is basically an early draft of the earliest parts of "High Fidelity", in some areas word for word. Neat.

The only reason I got this issue of the magazine was because of the interview with General Alfredo Stroessner. Which was well done. But the magazine GRANTA over all is a terrible, biased and it is so far left it would make Castro blush.

If you are looking for factual articles with little slant then you have come to the wrong place. If you want lots of "Long live the proletariat..hail Marx!" type of stuff..then you will want to fill in an subscription post haste.

But, my reason for getting this issue was the Stroessner interview, and it was the only thing of real value IMHO..

To whom it may concern,

I am writing to you, and I am looking for help, I am currently doing a story about Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama, I know there is a book named The Search For The Panchen Lama, the author is Isbel Hilton, is there anyone who can help me to get the email address and the contact with her? I heard that she is travelling in India, one of my colleague is going to travel in India, so, if some one can provide me the contact with her, I would appreciate it. Thanks.

Charles