For a book called "Full of Life," this work is surprisingly flat and boring. Not much happens in the life of John Fante. He drinks a lot, writes a little, drinks some more, abuses his wife, drinks even more, and saves just enough time to drown a sack of kittens in the kitchen sink while his children cry horrified. That's it for the drama, though. There isn't much life here, just a sad example of a generation of gruff and abusive alcoholic men slowly fading into memory. "Life" in these terms seems defined by random violent outbursts, failure and the bottle. Even Cooper's prose, fashioned to echo his idol, falls flat on the page with sentences like, "He was full of piss and vinegar." This isn't a biography as much as a eulogy to a time and a man better left forgotten. Fante's literary achievements were limited in his lifetime at best, perhaps in no small part due to his heavy alcoholism. There is nothing new or interesting here, not even a great work of art to point to and wonder. Cooper looks behind the curtain of Fante's existence, finding that whatever wizard we had imagined there had long ago crumbled to dust. There is no life here, full or otherwise...

Overall, a good first biography of John Fante. Fante's extensive screenwriting efforts are documented in detail here, and there are interesting insights into the writing of Ask the Dust. I found some portions a bit dry, like the delving at length into Fante's family tree at the beginning. Likewise, the fifty pages of scholarly Notes at the end are tedious reading and seem superfluous. Invaluable are facts surrounding incidents such as Fante's car accident later in life (Stephen Cooper hinting that perhaps it was an attempt at autocide), and Fante's purchase of a revolver (the biographer suggesting that Fante may have been planning to kill himself). Inexcusable, however, are omissions like the failure to note the recent writing achievements of Fante's son, Dan, whose books are big business in Europe. Dan may have his father's gift of braggadocio, and the curse of ten times the old man's bitterness, but the oversight (?) is bizarre in the context of such an obviously well-researched bio. The few glossed-over gaps in Full of Life are almost to be expected since John Fante's own letters and fictions were so frequently full of fabrication themselves.

Cooper is an elegant writer in his own right. He brings new light to Fante's life and work. After reading his stimulating biography, any readers unfamiliar with Fante will immediately be drawn to his novels and readers already familiar with Fante will get the urge to re-read and re-think an author who, with the help of Cooper, will eventually find his way into the classroom.

by attempting to be everything to everyone, this book missed the mark. although useful in a few cases, the illustrations were mostly black and white, and the author list too long to provide good specifics. since most collectors choose to focus on a handful of writers this book may not suffice for them. As a general book, i think the cooper and pike book - collectors guide to detective fiction - is far superior.

Have only looked at the pictures. They are beautiful and inspirational.

Cooper's tome tackles an important issue !!!
-- is there a god? -- is god merely absent or has s/he
'died' in some way? -- how are we to make life meaningful?

but Cooper lets his theater-training creep out in one unforgettable chapter, during which the naive reader is drawn into a tangential web of inferences inspired by dramaturgical zealotry. The dude -- Dr. Cooper of East Stroudsburg (PA) University -- tests the patience of his readers with an almost merciless string of references to plays by Eugene O'Neill, Arthur Miller, even Sophocles. and all the while, as you might've guessed, Ole Doc Cooper stridently rails against the Death of God theologians of the sixties! doesn't he even give 'em a chance? Nope. Guilty until proven innocent, for those poor scholars-of-the-abyss.
If you're a-searchin' for an unbiased examination of the ideas surrounding THE last interesting movement in modern theology -- that of 'Christian Atheism' -- then you're in for a boatload of disppointment if you decide to purchase and then read Doc Cooper's terrible tome.

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.

Of the three books that have been published about "The Fugitive" television series (my favorite of all time), this one I would rate as the most flawed. "The Fugitive Recaptured" by Ed Robertson and "The Official Fan's Guide to The Fugitive" by Mel Proctor are both much better.

Cooper's book is largely a series of summaries of each of the 120 episodes in the four-year series. The problem is that careless factual errors pop up again and again. And I am basing this on checking the summaries of only the 60-odd episodes (just slightly over half the total) that I'm familiar with. Who knows about the others!

For example in Episode 27, "Never Stop Running," the author doesn't even get the name right for the character played by Claude Akins. He said it was Jim, when in fact it was Ralph. In Episode 63, "Crack in a Crystal Ball," in which a wife of a phony clairvoyant drives Kimble to a certain destination, Cooper says, "She leads him (Kimble) to believe that she is in trouble and asks him for help....They arrive at the agreed-upon location, but Mrs. Mitchell tips off Kimble and he escapes before the police arrive." Wrong. She drove Kimble because she said she had a lead on the whereabouts of the one-armed man. SHE was the one doing the helping (or so she claimed). She also did not tip him off. She just dropped Kimble off and drove away. He learned about the trap from a friend on the phone.

Sometimes the errors are small, but they still count as errors. In Episode 25, "Taps for a Dead War," the book says, "The police arrive. Joe and Millie hide Kimble in the house." I just saw that episode recently on video. In fact, he hides behind a tree outside.

Perhaps the most egregious example of an inaccurate summary is Episode No. 53, "The Survivors," (one of my favorites) in which Kimble secretly visits his financially troubled in-laws. The book first says Kimble wanted to help them find "a savings passbook, part of his wife's effects." In fact, what he was looking for was any information recorded on paper about a forgotten bank account. Eventually they find some hand-written notes inside a regular book. Cooper also says that Kimble's father in law "believes him innocent." Actually the father in law is uncertain.When asked about his opinion on Kimble's guilt, he says, "I don't know." Also Cooper says that at the end of the story "Mrs. Waverly (is) now thinking that perhaps Kimble is not guilty of murdering her daughter after all." There is no hint of this in the story. The ONLY reason Mrs. Waverly helped Kimble was because she was trying to heal her damaged relationship with her daughter.

Another example: in Episode 14, "The Girl From Little Egypt," a story that starts with a woman hitting Kimble with her car, the book says, "When he awakes, Ruth sneaks him out of the hospital." Not true. They left openly together.

I think John Cooper should do a second version of this book with the various errors corrected.

I'm sorry but i read this book and found it UNBAREABLE. Although it showed good char. dfevelopment it lacked in plot and action. These men were suposed to be in a war and I got the fealing that they were still in the U.S. talking about doing things. For a book about a war it was pathetic but for a boot about frienddships it was ok