Anyone who knows Spain and bullfighting can only cringe (or hoot in derision) upon reading this ridiculous book. One has to wonder if Michener ever really visited this country. Among the many inaccuracies in the book, I'll list a few of the craziest: he has Spaniards spending pesos (the currency in Spain is pesetas), he has the locals referring to El Puerto de Santa Maria as "Santa Maria" (which no one does), and he has two bullfighters blaming a third for ruining their chances of getting carried out of the bullring in triumph (this simply never happens--each bullfighter is judged on his own merits). And the book is just badly written--somehow managing to be dull and melodrmatic at the same time. The "fiery gypsy" is an absurd stereotype, and all the characters are presented in the most wooden and amateurish manner. Only John Fulton's fine illustrations save the book from being a total loss (but Fulton--who was himself a matador--should have been ashamed of himself for being party to such a travesty).

I found that this book captured the beauty of Seville in all of it's grandeur. It described the love and passion of bullfighting and how it is reflected in the religous faith of it's most devout. The book accurately describes the love and devotion that the Spanish in Seville have for Our most Holy Mother. She is love and she is above all things. The book tells of how Our Lady peforms all kinds of miracles for those good and devout to her.

Hearing about the bull fights before visiting Spain I thought how cruel and terrible. My opinion was based on ideas I do not share and a culture I do not understand. In Madrid, I experienced a bullfight sitting next to a local. What I learned to appreciate that day. Now reading "Miracle", again my perspective has been changed. And isn't that what truly good reading does - changes our perspective? Michener teaches about the history and glory of the bullfight creating an understanding with the reader. While still not my choice of sport for the treatment of the animal, I better understand the bullfight. Thanks, Michener!

Field guides are great to have because they're small and their entire aim is to help you immediately identify a bird you see before you. Every birder should have at least one field guide, and maybe even several - some to keep in the car or by a window.

Being published by the National Audubon Society, you'd expect this field guide to be top-notch, one developed and tested by thousands of birders. Indeed, the photos are very nice, full color and in 'native habitat'. The descriptions are pretty complete - with size, key things to look for, song, hapitat. There's a little map showing range, and the range is also described as well.

The problem is with the layout. All of the pictures are at the front of the book - put into groups by bird type, three to a page. Often there's only one photo of a bird, even though they look different during different years of life or seasons. If you see something that seems it might be right, now you have to go flipping through many pages to track down the actual *information* on that bird. Does it even live where you're looking? Are there other similar birds it might be instead? What are those key features you're supposed to be watching for? By the time you figure any of this out, the bird is probably back in hiding.

It seems with their knowledge of birders and how birders operate, they'd have arranged this book in an easier-to-use fashion. While this is a nice book to have for its lovely pictures, it's not what I grab when I need to bring a field book with me on a trip.

I have used many of Audubon's Field Guides, and they are very helpful and usually organized and easy to understand. However, this one is extremely complex and confusing.

When I find an interesting bird, I would go grab my binoculars and field guide and look it up. I go to the correct catagory and frantically search for the bird. When I find it, it gives me a detailed color picture that helps identify the bird. However, if you want more information, it than refers you to a different page, hundreds of thin pages away. You than need to go and find the page, but by then, the bird is gone. When I do get to the page, it is filled with wonderful detailed information of appearance, voice, habitat, nesting, range, map of habitat, and a brief summary.

The book is nice, but I would recommend buying another one with more organization.

This National Audubon Society field guide to birds has lots and lots of nice, but small, photos of birds. That's nice. This guide also includes most of the birds of the region. Those are the plusses of this book. There are, however, a number of minuses that come along with this book.

First of all, no photograph-based field guide can show the important characteristics needed to identify most birds as clearly as a good illustration can. Next, the only info that accompanies each photograph is the common name of the bird, along with its gender, average size, and a reference to a page number to a section in the back of the book that provides all of the descriptive narrative information for each species. That info includes each bird's physical description, voice (call), habitat, nesting info, and geographic range (with a map by the info -- that's nice). The part that's frustrating for me is that I have to spend time flipping back and forth between the photo section at the front of the book and the info section at the back of the book in order to get the info I'm looking for! While I'm in the field birding, that's a hassle! I therefore much prefer the illustrated format that has pictures and descriptive info of the Peterson Guides to the Audubon guides.

Still, the Audubon guides are useful, though I use mine primarily as a secondary source, and it usually stays inside when I go out -- Peterson is my guide of choice.

I am, by the way, a novice birder myself, and find that the Peterson Guides help me to ID birds faster and with fewer errors than the Audubon guides do.

5 points for photos, but 3 points for ease of use, for 4 points overall.

Good luck,and happy spotting!

Alan Holyoak, Dept of Biology, Manchester College, IN

It has been some time since I read this book, and would like to read it again. If my memory serves me correctly, the book is about breeding and raising fighting bulls. The ranchers reputation if based on his success. I don't think I would cherish the job. Again, the fact that the bulls never see a human on foot until they meet in the ring I personally found very interesting.

It has been some time since I read this book. It was mostly about the raising of this special breed of bull, how they are selected and what they are exposed to. The ranches who raise them take great pride in their finished product. If my memory serves me correctly, I read the book after seeing the movie, The Sun Also Rises. If you like bullfighting and all aspects of it, you will like this book.

The book itself is very interesting. However, when you run the CD on a Windows 95 system, you receive the following error:

"The media resource is not open. Try using "mmopen" before this command."

Very dissapointing for a 4 year old who received the book as a birthday gift.

Tried to contact the company using the e-mail address provided, and it was bounced.

i had to read John Bull's other island and major barbara for a literature class. i really disliked both of them. major barbara included a preface all about poverty and how the jails should be emptied. (apparently, shaw was a socialist.) it was really pretentious and he just made me really mad. the plays themselves seemed really dry and dull. i don't think this is the fault of the class because i really liked other things we read. it just seemed like the characters were really one dimentional, the social message shaw was trying to get across was the real focus of the play. i resent that. i don't read plays to be (primarily) lectured to. they were pretty unentertaining, too.