I guess I'm the type person referenced in the one guy's review where he stated that those people who are looking for a Point A to Point Z type of biography will be disappointed with the book "Doo-Dah : Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture." Since a Point A to Point Z biography of Stephen Foster was/is exactly what I sought, I've found reading this particular book (in which music plays the lead role and Foster is sadly oftentimes little more than a secondary player) an endurance contest! Don't get me wrong: it's a well written book; just not what I was hoping for.

If you haven't read Doo Dah, buy it today!!!! Doo Dah was the best book that I have ever read in my entire life. Unfortunately, the book is not as good as the writer is handsome, and if it was it would be on the best seller list, and I know because he is my uncle. So, show your support of American culture and buy this stupendous biography, by the Master writer, the all time best, the one and only Ken Emerson.

This is another boonie dog book review from Wolfie and Kansas. Ken Emerson's book "Doo-dah! Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture" is well-written and informative. This is a "life and times" book, rather than a narrowly focused biography. However, the times of Stephen Foster, and the social and cultural history which Emerson discusses, are, like Foster's music, generally more interesting than the sometimes racist and alcoholic Foster himself.

Our one complaint about "Doo-dah!" is the short shrift Mr. Emerson gives to one of Stephen Foster's biggest hits in 1857, a song entitled "Old Dog Tray". We would have like to have learned more about this song. Foster's minstrel songs were performed by white men in blackface. Was "Old Dog Tray" performed by humans in dogface?

What a book..."The Book of life." Why it's a modern cartoon book of paleontology. Though its wonderful life-like illustrations and tree-of-life charts are delivered as scientific facts, they are simply graphic theories that illustrators doll up into hypothetical reality. If you like science and fiction, here is a book for you. The realistic pictures belie the text, which says: "We do not even know how to conceptualize, much less to draw the worldview that would place Homo sapiens into proper relationship with the history of life."

Its authors caveat is that "science can only operate as a work in progress without perfect knowledge, and we much therefore leave a great deal out from ignorance --- especially in a historical field like paleontology, where we must work with the strictly limited evidence of a very imperfect fossil record." It's that fossil record, that the book presumes is accurate in its layer-by-layer record through time, that requires scrutiny. The oldest fossils are found in the bottom layers and the youngest in the top layers of rock, but little or no evidence is presented to provide skeptical readers information they can decipher for themselves as to the accuracy of fossil dating by rock layers. Are we to believe, without exception, that the fossil record is progressive from bottom to top? What about fossilized trees that protrude through millions of years of time? They are conveniently omitted. Michael Benton of England's Bristol University, one of the book's contributors, says "All the periods in the geological time scale receive their names in recognition of obvious changes in the fossil record." Yet, to the contrary, Benton adds, "the history of Earth's crust has been far too violent to preserve much more than a random sample."

Its general editor, Stephen Jay Gould, is magnanimous in his promotion of a single theory of man's origins, from monkeys he and most other fossil hunters say.

There may be missing pieces to the paleontological puzzle, but the bone diggers cliam they have finally filled in the evolutional blanks and can conclusively attest to the idea that life evolved from simpler single-celled organisms into modern man. The book's most ardent opponents are taken head on by Gould: "The lack of fossil intermediates had often been cited by creationists as a supposedly prime example for their contention that intermediate forms not only haven't been found in the fossil record but can even be conceived." But Gould holds a trump card. He says: "a lovely series of intermediary steps have now been found in rocks.... in Pakistan. This elegant series, giving lie to the creationist claims, includes the almost perfectly intermediate Ambulocetus (literally, the walking whale), a form with substantial rear legs to complement the front legs already known from many fossil whales, and clearly well adapted both for swimming and for adequate, if limited, movement on land." Oddly, the book never shows a drawing of Ambulocetus, but does have an illustration of a skeleton of a 400-million year old fish with a small underside fin bone the authors claim "must have evolved" into legs in four-legged animals. Man's imagination is not found wanting here. Out of millions of fossils collected and stored in museums, is Ambulocetus the main piece of evidence for evolutionary theory?

Richard Benton says that Charles Darwin had hoped the fossil record would eventually confirm his theory of evolution, but "this has not happened," says Benton. Darwin hoped newly-discovered fossils would connect the dots into a clear evolutionary pattern. The book attempts to do that with its fictional drawings of apes evolving into pre-humans (hominids) and then modern man. Yet the book is not without contradictions. It says: "It remains uncertain whether chimpanzees are more closely related to modern humans or to the gorilla."

The horse is shown as evolving from a small, four-toed to a large one-toed animal over millions of years. There are different varieties of horses, yet there is no evidence that a horse ever evolved from another lower form of animal, nor that horses evolved into any other form of animal.

Another evolutionary puzzle that goes unexplained in the book is the pollination of flowers. How did bees and flowers arrive simultaneously in nature? What directed the appearance of one separate kingdom of life (insects) with that of another?

The book describes 6 1/2-foot millipedes and dragonflies with the wing span of a seagull, but gives no explanation for them. Life was unusual in the past and not all forms fit evolutionary patterns. Consider the popular supposition that life evolved from the sea onto land. That would make more advanced forms of intelligence land bearing. But the aquatic dolphins defy that model, since they are among the smartest mammals.

The book maintains an "out of Africa" scenario for the geographical origins of man, but recent fossil finds in Australia challenge that theory and even the book's authors admit that "a single new skull in an unexpected time or place could still rewrite the primate story." Consider Java man (Homo erectus), once considered the "missing link" and dated at 1.8 million years old. Modern dating methods now estimate Java man to be no more than 50,000 years of age, a fact that was omitted from this text.

Creativity, invention and language are brought out as unique human characteristics. Yet the true uniqueness of man is not emphasized. Humans biologically stand apart from animals in so many ways. Humans can be tickled whereas animals cannot. Humans shed emotional tears, animals do not. The book does not dare venture beyond structure and function, beyond cells and DNA, to ask the question posed by philosophers --- does man have a soul? The Bible speaks of a soul 533 times, this "book of life," not once.

Gould's temple is science. He calls the scientific method "that infallible guide to empirical truth." Science works by elimination. It can only work from experiment to experiment, eliminating what is not true. It can say what is probable, it can never say what is true. Gould appears to begrudge the shackles of science by stepping outside its boundaries in overstating what it can accomplish. Whereas creationists await the day they will stand in judgment before God, for the evolutionists Gould says "Someday, perhaps, we shall me our ancestors face to face." Imagine, standing there looking at a man-like monkey skeleton.

One cannot fault the flaws in this book. After all, it was written by highly evolved apes.

You would have expected more time and detail to the ermergence of the nervous system and the Cambrian Explosion. A more up-to-date section on human evolution (no mention of Ardipithecus Ramidus) but on the whole the book is a good synthesis of the state of the knowledge in this field.

This singular book gives a very nice popular overview of the state-of-the-art in paleontology, chronologically covering everything from the Archean to the evolution of man. It is a beautifully illustrated and well-written book, although the text is perhaps sometimes a bit too technical and dense for the paleontological novice.
And please don't buy some creationists' claims that this is science fiction. The contents of this book is based on material from thousands of scientific articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals such as "Nature" and "Science", representing the fruits of the hard labour of paleontologists from all over the world. And the fossil record, even if it is convincing in itself, is far from the only support for evolution. Independent evidence for evolution can also be found in biogeography, development, molecular analyses (gene DNA, junk DNA, mtDNA etc), anatomical analyses, and even field observations of new species evolving. This large amount of evidence is why evolution is considered an established and undisputable fact. Of course, if one rather than facts wants comic book fantasies such as humans coexisting with dinosaurs and evil scientists conspiring to hide the truth, then one should look for creationist books instead. Or comic books.

I thought I might be bias to give this book a good review because I enjoy Stephen Collins as an actor but I must give it a good review based on the story itself. This was truly a fast paced, sexy, suspensful read that kept me turning the pages. The character of Joe McBride is realistic and flawed but not an idiot which makes his actions in the story plausible. A recommended read.

Stephen Collins' new novel "Double Exposure" is a superbly written page turner. With perfect aim Collins goes straight to the heart of the varied characters he introduces throughout the story. The emotional core lies in Joe McBride, a rather seasoned TV critic and his relationships with everyone from past and present lovers to his co-workers, to his mother and then some. With eroticism and suspense, Collins excels with his carefully crafted details. The writer also maintains a firm grasp of the characters psyches, many of whom intersect in an intriguing and often nail biting manner.

It isn't only the suspense that keeps the reader captivated, but Collins' display of the lurking and complex psychology of the characters. What sets "Double Exposure" apart from other suspense novels and what makes it most memorable is Collins' understanding of people and the underlying traits of human nature that many of us all too often deny. Stephen Collins offers us a mirror of the mind---a reflection that is not something we expect. All in all, there is an eager vitality in Collins' writing which makes for a thoroughly satisfying read.

Stephen Collins' new novel Double Exposure is a sexy page turner. Joe McBride,the TV critic, seems to lose control of his life as events derail his plans. He gets so caught up in his obsession with his enigmatic neighbor, Amy Goode, that he seemingly loses all reason. The story becomes almost unbearably poignant when his daughter is kidnapped. And,just when you think the story is over, it's not. What it lacks in character development is made up in plot complexity. A definite fun read for the beach this summer.

This book contains 13 articles written by different scholars on various topics related to the resurrection. A few of the articles also include brief responses from other scholars. This book doesn't seem to flow as well as other books I've read with a similar format involving various authors. The articles I enjoyed the most were those by Stephen Davis, William Alston, Richard Swinburne, William Lane Craig, and Alan Padgett.

Although some may consider it highly speculative, Stephen Davis' topic was very interesting. Its basic thesis was as follows: If we assume that Jesus really was raised from the dead and appeared to other people, then what kind of "seeing" was involved by those to whom Jesus appeared? Craig's article was a strong critique of John Dominic Crossan's reconstruction of the events surrounding Jesus' death and (non) burial. Padgett wrote about the need for religious historians to recognize the impossibility of "scientifically proving" the resurrection, and the necessary component of faith for any belief in it.

While this book contains much helpful material, I felt it lacked cohesiveness. After finishing one article, the next one might be on an entirely unrelated topic. If you can get past this shortcoming, you will find something of value. If I had the option, I'd give this book 3.5 stars.

THE RESURRECTION brings together a group of scholars who portray the theological underpinnings of the Resurrection of Jesus. In addition, the various contributors establish that the three uncontested facts surrounding the Resurrection controversy (the empty tomb, the post-mortem appearances of Jesus, and the inexplicable origin of the Christian faith) favor the Resurrection hypothesis over and above modern-day liberal pedantics about unsupported presuppositions precluding miracles. The serious student of the Resurrection (if one already possesses a working knowledge of the Resurrection debate) will find this fascinating work an important element in attacking contemporary criticism of history's most fantastic truth: Jesus is risen.

With this rendition of The King James Old Testament, Stephanie Beacham lends dramatic vocal talent and passion to the most ancient words of God. Certainly worthwhile, and again, beautifully done!

"When you keep the hours that I do, you often find yourself in other people's stories."

-Sonja Blue

With the exception of "Knifepoint," which takes place before she was "born," and "Cold Turkey," which provides telling insight into her "otherness," the words above perfectly capture the tenor of the remaining stories in this collection, which feature Nancy Collins' vampiric vampire killer, Sonja Blue, as a cynical, world weary adventurer, who, when she's not hunting her own kind, is cleaning up her little corner of the world, a la Clint Eastwood's "Man with No Name." In "Tender Tigers," she rescues a child from her abusive stepmother, an ogre; In "Vampire King of the Goth Chicks," she gives a vampire wannabe his comeuppance; "Variations on a Theme" finds her in James O'Barr's "Crow" universe; "Some Velvet Morning" features her in her "angel of vengeance" mode, hunting down one of the oldest of her kind; finally, in "The Nonesuch Horror," she teams up with the werewolf sheriff of a remote western town to rid the hamlet of an unwelcome visitor.

Always the pro, Collins makes each of these pieces work, milking her themes and situations for all they're worth. Doing so, she delivers a handful of solid entertainments that should inspire longstanding fans to revisit her worthy Sonja Blue novels, and those new to her work to sample them for the first time.

A collection of essays by scholars of Apocalypticism. Good cites, interesting reading. Would have given it 5 stars, but the book contains no index, which would have been very useful to me.

This book is simply dreadful. The premise is so implausable as to be laughable. Engineered Nazi zombie with steel teeth and claws gets loose after being preserved in a u-boat for fifty years, to terrorize the coast. An author not named Benchley would not be able to get this published. Apart from some well written passages about the water, marine life and coastal towns, the book is bad. I mean, it is really bad. The title is deceptive (white shark being the code name for the Nazi Zombie) and the main charactors are so wooden as to be painful. One has to respect Benchley as the master of his genre, but he would have been better off having typed this one to re-read it and toss it in the garbage. He didn't, and there it is. Please do not read this book. Please do not buy this book.

I picked up a copy of this book as soon as it hit the shelves. I tore into it ravenously (being a Benchley fan from "Jaws" days), and found myself shaking my head at the unbelievable expectations the author wanted me to believe as the story-line unfolds. To me the whole book read like a great white shark meets a storm trooping Edward Scissorhands or, maybe, Freddie Kruegger.

First of all, the author appears to be reaching deep for any kind of sympathy or group you can hope to pull into a story -- Nazis and those who hate them, reporters and those who hate them, even sharks. Sharks are, by the way, only peripheral characters in this book, maligned and mauled by the main creature/character.

OK, I usually don't tell too much about what's in a book, but I want to save many of you who haven't read this book already. A deranged Nazi scientist develops an amphibious biological based on a human form (an ultimate amphibious warrior) that has metal teeth and claws, a ravenous appetite, and nasty disposition to match.

No one in the book knows what to make of the remains they find scattered along the beach and, later, on shore. Only at the end of a predictable series of events do the "good guys" finally figure out what's up and put and end to the situation.

I worked my way through the book in good order, mostly because I was on vacation at the time and had little else at hand to read. The book is a quick and, compared to JAWS, a shallow read.

I wish I could recommend this book, but I cannot in good conscience do that. I can't imagine who in the world I would feel good recommending it to. It's too bad that not everything out there is a 5-star item.

I gave it a couple of stars primarily because I enjoy stories with a marne setting.

I hope these comments are helpful to you.

Alan Holyoak

WHITE SHARK is perhaps one the best written dead ends in history. Although packed with ideas, some adventure, and many, many ten mile wide close calls, by the end of the book you are literally left wondering what is it you just read. Its pacing and narrative are written like the tides breaking on the shore... it rolls in, it drags out, repeat until end of novel. Every so often the waves bring up something that sparkles, but it never truly shines through. The creature here is a crackjack idea (although a lift from the film SHOCK WAVES), but Benchley spends little or no time with it. And the major players in the book are made from the thickest carboard there is - they hold no surprises, and are so routine that Benchley never breaks a sweat when writing them, because we already know them and know what will happen to them. The hero and herione will get together at the end (they do), the sidekick will pull through (he does), the son will find his first love (he does, a deaf girl with telepathic powers which Benchley mentions once, and then drops, almost like she was going to play a larger part in the story, but Benchley found it too time consuming to continue with), and the monster will die (it does, pretty quickly and easily). Not his best work. For fans, it's worth the read. For those just picking up Benchley, start and stop with JAWS.

It is difficult for me not to be gung-ho when it comes to Ancient Rome and when a new book is published concerning one of my favorite subjects - the Roman military - my mouth starts to water. However about fifty pages into "Caesar's Legion" my mouth began to dry up.

Mr. Dando-Collins has spent thirty years researching Rome's legions and this book is primarily focused on Caesar's favorite, the 10th. One can't imagine how difficult such an undertaking must be. While ancient sources abound regarding the leading personalities of the day trying to divine the day-to-day activities of a particular military unit must have proven about as tedious as winter encampment for the legionnaires themselves. The author explains some of his research, combing through enlistment & re-enlistment records and such but a lot of guesswork was necessary in order to put a little flesh on all the dusty old bones and this guesswork is glaringly apparent.

The pages abound with phrases like, "Caesar probably behaved..." or "Probably said..." and the "Legion was probably..." at such and such a place at such and such a time. I found all the supposition very distracting.

Histories of the men serving in the legion, their personal stories, are completely absent out of necessity of course because we just don't know anything abut them except in broad general terms, what they ate, how far they marched and what battles they were in, "probably."

Instead of giving us an alleged historical account the author would have better served the reader with a work of "historical fiction"- an approach that would provide a little entertainment value. After all it is not as though the current work is going to be used as source material by any historians in any significant way.

A far better read that covers the same ground with the exception of the 10th's activities after Caesar's assination, is the recent biography, "Caesar" by Christian Meier.

Firstly I must make an admission that I am no expect on this area of history. However I do appreciate a good historical account and that is what you will find with Dando-Collins book on the Roman 10th Legion. I have always enjoyed history books covering this period of time and I was prompted to buy this book after reading Major Clunn's excellent book 'In Quest of the Lost Legions', which I would highly recommend to anyone interested in Roman history.

In Stephen Dando-Collins book 'Caesar's Legion' the reader is offered a rarely seen look at the battles and campaigns of Rome's Legions during the time of Julius Caesar. The centerpiece of the book is the 10th Legion, raised by Julius Caesar and used by him throughout as his elite shock-troops. Not only does the book provide you with an interesting and detailed insight into the 10th Legion but also the author provides you with a detailed narrative of the battles and campaigns fought by Roman Legions throughout the known world.

We read about the officers and men of the 10th Legion including its recruitment, training, makeup and organization along with detailed descriptions of their fighting. The book details all the known campaigns and battles, from the English Isles, Gaul and Italy to the Middle East. The story covers the campaigns against rebelling tribesman in Gaul and Germany to the many set piece battles against other Roman Legions during the Civil War. The narrative continues with the life of the 10th Legion after the death of its founder, Julius Caesar. We follow the Legionaries to the Jewish fortress of Masada and read about the campaign against the Jewish Zealots with its grim ending.

The book is easy to read with a smooth and descriptive narrative. The story is well researched and has a number of maps to assist the reader in following the campaigns of the 10th Legion. No illustrations are provided which is a slight disappointment but more than made up for with the rich narrative. This is a great story and I am sure that anyone who enjoys good historical accounts with love this story of "Caesar's Legion".

"Caesar's Legion" is partly a unit history of the famous 10th Legion, and partly the story of Rome's military adventures from the Gallic Wars through the fall of Masada. The book seems to be very carefully researched and it is certainly well written--Dando-Collins is fascinated by his subject, and his enthusiasm shows.

The Tenth Legion was, for most of its history, an elite and honored unit. Like America's 82d and 101st airborne divisions, the Tenth enjoyed a world-wide reputation for skill in battle. Dando-Collins explains how the Tenth earned its stripes, from recruitment and training to victory as the legion that usually occupied the position of honor on Caesar's right flank. As he does so, he tells the story of the centurions and other soldiers in the legion--how they were recruited, how long their terms of enlistment could be expected to last, when they would be promoted (if they lived) and how they could expect to spend their retirement.

Dando-Collins also points out some things that are probably old hat to students of Roman military history, but are very interesting to someone who is new to the subject. He explains, for example, that Roman javelins were designed so that they would bend upon striking an enemy shield (or an enemy), thus preventing the weapon from being re-used against the attacking legion. He also describes the remarkable training, discipline and mobility of a legion--on campaign, a unit like the Tenth might disassemble its fortified camp, march a great distance, assemble another camp to precise military specifications, and then repeat the process day after day until the enemy was run to ground.

In battle, a Roman legion would fight in a tight, disciplined infantry formation and engage enemy units first with javelins, then with Spanish swords in what must have resembled a rugby scrum from hell. A well-trained legion like the Tenth won far more often than it lost--the Romans understood that a soldier should sweat in peace so that he didn't have to bleed in war.

The story of the Tenth is told in the context of the times. Dando-Collins follows the Legion as it helps Caesar pacify Gaul, crosses the Rubicon and fights a civil war, endures the assassinations of Pompey and Caesar, casts its lot with Antony at Actium, and finally captures the Zealot fortress at Masada. The Romans, it seems, were very skilled and very ruthless, and the Tenth Legion (for better or worse) represented the pinnacle of their military art.

For seventeen dollars I would have expected a lot more then a glorified version of the little Windows book that comes with a new computer. It's not a bad little book,just not worth the money in my opinion. The book is a mix of very very basic windows concepts explained at a higher user level. For example, page 67 tells us what the Address bar in Windows explorer is for. Now any user who cannot figure out what an address bar is for will not understand an explaination worded like this, "Show the name of the resourcethat is selected in the All Folders pane. Enter a path name or resource name to jump quickly to that disk, folder or resource." If you do not have enough PC knowledge to know what an Address bar is for,then you will have no idea what a "Resource" is or a "Path name". Neither of which are listed in the index, and there is no glossary. As computer teacher looking for a text book for a Windows 98 Basics class, I will not be using this one. Sorry Steve, you missed the mark.

Since I have this book and have used it frequently, recommended it to others and been very happy with the way it shows absolutely everything in pictures, I was surprised at Mr. Ianetto's negative review and I wanted to add my comments to be fair. Out of curiosity, I went to find Mr. Ianetto's problem with page 67 and saw that he pulled out a short caption next to a figure and then criticized it for not being a full explanation of something. But the caption occurs right below another paragraph that does use the term he refers to. I do agree that using "path name" without defining it wasn't helpful, but that was an usual instance. Mr. Ianetto looked hard for something to criticize because the rest of the book is very clear, especially for someone like me, who's just getting started with computers and doesn't have any background knowledge to rely on. I was also surprised that the previous reviewer took what seemed to me to be a nasty swipe at the author at the end of his review. That didn't help at all and made me suspect that the reviewer was maybe reveling in his own sophistication and maybe also relishing writing a negative review.