Related Subjects: Author Index Reviews Page 1 2 3
Book reviews for "Cox,_Richard" sorted by average review score:

My Father's Gun: One Family, Three Badges, One Hundred Years in the Nypd
Published in Paperback by Plume (2000)
Author: Brian McDonald
Amazon base price: $11.20
List price: $14.00 (that's 20% off!)
Used price: $0.86
Collectible price: $14.85
Buy one from zShops for: $3.95
Average review score:

100 years in the NYPD
Anyone who ever wondered what it was like to be a cop in New York City should read this book. The author is steeped in police tradition -- his grandfather, father and brother all wore the badge. The book is particularly interesting because of the view it provides of life in New York over the past 100 years.

Brian McDonald's grandfather, son of Irish immigrants, joined the New York City police department in 1893. He was there during the height of Tammany Hall. He walked a beat as a patrolman and then rose quickly to seargent. He and his descendants each enjoyed the life of a copy and suffered because of bureaucracy, favoritism and the changing nature of the city.

In a way the story of these 3 generations is an excuse to tell the story of the NYC police department and the city it served. Though not a disciplined or complete history, this book quite effectively creates an anecdotal portrait that gives the reader a peek into a time and place not generally accessible.

If you like NYPD Blue mixed w/ history, you'll love it!
Usually I stick to novels written by Tom Clancy or Stephen Hunter. However, after hearing Mr. McDonald on G. Gordon Liddy's radio program, I decided to order this book. IT WAS A WONDERFUL DECISION!!!! My Father's Gun gave a detailed look at NYC in the late 1800's - 1900's w/ cultural influences and societal evolution that basically has defined how we are today. Perhaps most of all, I see that the "good old days" weren't so "good" and that today things aren't as screwed up as people would have you think. I'm only 33 & without this book, I probably would never have learned about early NYC and America at the turn-of-the-century. This book details fascinating police stories and drama too; however, I feel that it's a gem in that it serves as a true historical documentation of the immigration movement of Irish, Jews, Germans, etc into NYC. You'll learn about the origins of the true cases upon which Hollywood productions such as Kojak, Serpico, and the Valachi Papers were based. It's an unromantic look at life in the big city, but it's a polished diamond of a book. God bless the author's family members who proudly wore the NYPD blue & for the guts they showed in protecting my grandparents who emigrated over from Poland and Russia at the turn of the century.

Outstanding
Brian McDonald has given us a picture of 3 generations of a police family.He gives accounts from a number of war stories both humoruous and tragic. He seems to have the ability to touch a number of emotions in this book. "My Father's Gun" goes beyond cop stories to interpersonal family dynamics. Brian clearly shows us how being a cop effects the entire family. It was a great read , I couldn't put it down. I am looking forward to another book by Brian McDonald.


Four Pillars of Constitutionalism: The Organic Laws of the United States
Published in Paperback by Prometheus Books (1998)
Author: Richard Howard Cox
Amazon base price: $18.00
Used price: $5.70
Collectible price: $10.59
Buy one from zShops for: $6.49
Average review score:

Good Collection, But Unimpressive Presentation
In my opinion, this book is just a collection of the four documents that have or do define the pillars that support the foundation of America. The author tries to convey his goal in interpreting these four documents but he does a poor job at making the goal clear. The consequence is that the reader is left to ponder exactly what points are being made throughout. And in the end, the conclusion is effectively meaningless since there was no possibility for the reader to achieve a focus on the gist of what Cox intended. I would not recommend this book unless all you want are these four founding documents under one cover.

An Authentic and Vital Intorduction to Organic Law
The book consists of two parts: Mr. Cox's long introduction, and the texts of four historical documents. The intorduction is not neutral; Mr. Cox attempts to form an argument for modern use of these texts as important legal documents, not merely rhetoric or politics. One may or may not agree with Mr. Cox's propositions, but the fact that he attempts a meaningful study and arguments with these old texts should be applauded. Reading the actual texts contained here may not be exciting per se, but for those interested in law or philosophy, this book is highly valuable. This book provides authentic copies of important historical documents, and presents them in a way which makes them vital and important to modern times.

An Excellent Review
If the other reviewers are having trouble determining the value of the "Four Pillars" or perhaps Dr. Cox's thesis in general, perhaps they would have received more value out of spending a semester or two in Dr. Cox's classes on "Politics and Rhetoric" and "American Political Thought" while he taught at the University of Buffalo. In those courses he used the excellent book "The Constitution of 1787" to demonstrate the importance of the four most important documents in American political and social life. I found this book to be cogent and a refresher course from my years as a political science student at the University of Buffalo.


Medicine's Deadly Dust: A Surgeon's Wake-Up Call to Society
Published in Hardcover by Vandamere Pr (1997)
Authors: Richard F. Edlich, Julia A. Woods, and Mary Jude Cox
Amazon base price: $24.95
Used price: $4.24
Collectible price: $19.99
Average review score:

Some good science but didn't read well
I had a great interest in reading this book purely for information on latex allergy. The book in several chapters dealt with the science of the subject well and explained it so I could understand. Hwever, I did not think that it read well. It is laced with exclamation points and alarmist wording. The case studies enclosed were helpful to put a face on the science and understand his message.

What MDs Don't Know
An allergy to latex kills. While the book is somewhat dated (1997), it accurately predicted precisely what would happen if this issue was not addressed. The issue was, indeed, ignored. I am highly allergic to latex, which pervades both the medical and consumer world. I have spent too much time educating physicians, nurses, and hospitals educating them on latex and its dangers. I am tired of having to do so. I must as my life depends upon it. I've decided to give a copy to my internist and my allergist. It turns out, I have been allergic to latex as early as 1983, but wasn't diagnosed until 1997. While it may seem alarmist, the cause requires it. Another problem is that it omits important information for patient populations. This may well be the result from the five years since its publication. Nonethless, it is an excellent resource to supplement research from publications in medical journals. If you are unfamiliar with medical terms, keep a medical dictionary (Tabor's or Dorland's) on hand.


Child of My Heart
Published in Hardcover by Farrar Straus & Giroux (12 December, 2002)
Author: Alice McDermott
Amazon base price: $16.10
List price: $23.00 (that's 30% off!)
Used price: $4.49
Collectible price: $9.00
Buy one from zShops for: $6.70
Average review score:

impossible to believe
This book was completely spoiled for me by the relationship between Theresa and the painter. I kept re-reading sections, trying to figure out what would attract any 15-year-old girl to a 70-year-old lecherous drunk, but nothing in McDermott's writing seemed to explain it. It actually turned my stomach and I almost didn't finish the book, but I had to find out what happened to Daisy and the Moran kids.
The prose in this book is really first rate, and I enjoyed the rest of the book, but I'm still trying to figure out the painter-thing. I picked this book up at the library because I had read Charming Billy and really enjoyed it, but this one makes me not want to read anymore of Alice McDermott.

A lovely book about a young girl's coming of age
Young Theresa is the middle class Irish and strikingly beautiful babysitter to the rich and famous of Long Island's East End. She spends her fifteenth summer caring for "four dogs, three cats, the Moran kids, Daisy, my eight-year-old- cousin, and Flora, the toddler child of a local artist." Theresa still lives in the world of children, weaving stories about lollipop trees and bedazzled shoes and spending her days at the beach. However, by the end of the summer, as illness, death and betrayal have obliquely asserted themselves, Theresa has become an adult. It is from this vantage of loss that our older narrator tells the dense story of one June to August.

In one sense, little heartbreak happens. Early on, Theresa discovers the ominous bruises on her young cousin Daisy but decides not to search out their meaning. The neglected neighbor children, the Morans, crash through the summer but without great catastrophe. Even the privileged toddler, Flora, who has been essentially abandoned by her cosmopolitan mother, is still at an age where she can be easily pacified with a bottle of red juice. Tragedy and adulthood itself are postponed to the unwritten pages of life after the story's summer. However, in between, McDermott's lapidary prose hovers the inexorableness of Daisy's cancer death, of the Morans frustrated alcoholic future and of the lost and lonely adult Flora inevitably will become.

"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day." Theresa quotes from her school's production of Macbeth throughout the novel and it is this ineluctable progression of time that forms the book's core sad note. For the narrator, an older Theresa looking back, childhood represents the finest point of life. It is a time of unlikely hopes, a time before the distasteful ambition, disappointed love and parental death of adulthood.

Alice McDermott's skill and restraint make CHILD OF MY HEART an anxious, lovely book, rather than the mawkish or sentimental one its story would have produced under the care of a less exquisite, sincere and deliberate writer. Many readers will find the craft itself, rather than the characters or the images, to be the most memorable quality of this book. One reads with the rare confidence that no scene has been carelessly included, that no sentence is meaninglessly clever. Each paragraph further compels the reader towards McDermott's elaborate argument and desired impact.

--- Reviewed by Rivka Galchen

Inspired, Beautiful Prose;Some Reservations...
You can read this book in one concentrated sitting, and the book feels like an inspired burst of breath. There are many passages of writing that are superb - some of the best sentence-writing McDermott has ever done... and that's saying something. Mcdermott's forte has always been rendering the specificities of life with a sober, but poetic slant. There is nothing really intriguing about the events themselves in McDermott's novels, but filtered through McDermott's eyes, everything becomes somehow meaningful... even sacrosanct.

This book can be called a bildungsroman, but unlike most rite-of-passage books which tend to take a sweeping view of a person's life, this novel takes a slice from a girl's life (a single summer, a few weeks) and examines how such a short moment transformed everything in the world for her.

The story is simplicity itself. Theresa is a fifteen year-old, a precocious babysitter, who looks after her young cousin, Daisy. On the surface level, not much goes on in the novel. There are adults who make up the moral landscape of the novel, and it's a tribute to McDermott's strength as a writer that much of this moral landscape is filled in through the absence of these adult characters... this vacuity that exists in the novel makes this suburban world of Theresa seem very lonely.

The climax of the novel (which I won't give away) is quite foreseeable, but this doesn't distract us from being engaged. The ending is as natural and inevitable as life itself, and although unspoken, it is quite clear that Theresa will never be the girl of fifteen again hence.

As I've mentioned, some of the writing is magnificent. The last fifty pages of the book achieve a kind of incandescence; I got one of those rare buzzes you only get from a special kind of writing. The prose alone can transport you. But at the same time, some nagging aspects of the novel got in the way of the story. It is clear that Theresa is fond of Daisy, but their relationship seemed too cloying at times. Undoubtedly, this is realistic; children can be attached to someone unequivocally. But it became repetitive... the constant 'poor daisy's' uttered, noxzema cream slathered on feet...

This is a coming-of-age tale as only McDermott can write it. Most of the denouement of the novel, Theresa's coming to terms with life and its gravity, the passing of youth, becomes apparent through unspoken terms. Sure, this book doesn't quite fully plumb the depths of the characters as her excellent novels from the past. Nevertheless, McDermott's insight is enlightening, and the book contains some of her most effortlessly passionate writing to date.


Oblivion: The Mystery of West Point Cadet Richard Cox
Published in Paperback by Brasseys, Inc. (01 December, 1999)
Author: Harry J. Maihafer
Amazon base price: $16.95
Used price: $3.89
Collectible price: $3.12
Buy one from zShops for: $8.16
Average review score:

Good story, bad book
...and I wanted it to be good so badly! But, it just was not to be. This is a book about someone who did a lot of research and decided to publish every word of it, rather than just the pertinent information. It becomes irritating to continue to learn information about the subject, only to be told that it is all totally worthless. And, the end is anti-climactic. In the end, a diligent researcher accepts the word of a single source as fact. Doesn't seem like the same man. Perhaps he was just ready to retire. I suggest this would make a pretty good movie, but not a book.

Good story, bad ending
This book held my attention as I read it practically cover to cover. It is very interesting, albeit annoying at times as the author goes in great detail about numerous leads, only to have them ruled out a few pages later. I can see why the author did that -- to show the exhaustive work done by CID and FBI investigators, and also to give the reader a small, small taste of the incredible frustration these investigators must have felt at the time. The problem with the book is that it is highly anti-climatic. The researcher, Jacobs, did not "give up" (as some have implied), he basically solved the mystery it's farthest moral extent. I do recommend reading this book, as it shall hold your attention through and through, but be prepared to be disappointed with the anti-climatic end.

Fascinating story marred by unconvincing "conclusion."
I've been interested in the Richard Cox mystery since I was very little and read about it in LIFE magazine in 1950 and then a few years later in CORONET. From time to time over the years I would research the topic hoping for new information. I'd almost given up until I came across this book , containing lots of details never before disclosed. Unfortunately, as mentioned in some of the above reviews, the proposed "solution" at the end is thoroughly unconvincing.


Model Behavior
Published in Audio Cassette by Dove Books Audio (1998)
Authors: Jay McInerney and Richard Cox
Amazon base price: $17.50
List price: $25.00 (that's 30% off!)
Used price: $4.38
Buy one from zShops for: $4.39
Average review score:

Worst Book Ever
Never before have I read such a petty, superficial book. There is nothing redeeming in it. It blew me away that a man who wrote Bright Lights, Big City (a fantastic book) could come up with something like this. It's embarrassing.

"Bright Lights" for the nineties
As it's been stated before, Jay McInerney's "Model Behavior" is basically his own "Bright Lights, Big City" updated for the late nineties. The stories are similar -- a young professional in the New York City publishing business is unable to cope with the absence of his estranged model girlfriend. Fortunately, the story was good enough the first time around so that an updated version is still enjoyable. McInerney has a great ear for dialogue (and doesn't feel compelled to drop names as much as his best-known contemporary, Bret Easton Ellis), and Connor McKnight, the lead character in the story, has a hilarious, world-weary personality. As a magazine writer, Connor has interviewed countless celebrities, and his frustration of shallow movie stars and supermodels had me laughing out loud. The subplot involving Connor's e-mail stalker, however, gave the book a creepy realism. There are plenty of interesting characters to keep this story entertaining, and even though it is a story we've all read before, it's fairly short (less than 200 pages). Recommended for McInerney fans. A lack of originality keeps it from getting four stars.

short stories are better than novella
If you like the style of McInerney, then I wouldn't discourage anyone from buying the paperback or a used version of this book. I would just skip the title and read the short stories. Some of them are up there with Carver!
-Borden Burns


Singer's Manual of French and German Diction
Published in Paperback by Wadsworth Publishing (01 July, 1995)
Authors: Richard G. Cox and Richard D. Cox
Amazon base price: $19.95
Used price: $9.25
Buy one from zShops for: $18.95
Average review score:
No reviews found.

3-D Star Maps: A View of the Universe in Three Dimensions/27 3-D Maps and 2 Set of 3-D Glasses
Published in Hardcover by HarperCollins (1989)
Authors: Richard Monkhouse and John Cox
Amazon base price: $15.95
Used price: $2.70
Collectible price: $8.47
Average review score:
No reviews found.

Aahperd Research Consortium Symposium Papers, 1980. Ed by Richard H. Cox. Papers from 2 Symposia Held During the National Convention in Detroit (95P)
Published in Paperback by Amer Alliance for Health Physical (1981)
Amazon base price: $3.75
Average review score:
No reviews found.

An Agent of Influence
Published in Hardcover by Vintage/Ebury (A Division of Random House Group) (16 May, 1988)
Author: Richard Cox
Amazon base price: $
Collectible price: $13.75
Average review score:
No reviews found.

Related Subjects: Author Index Reviews Page 1 2 3

Reviews are from readers at Amazon.com. To add a review, follow the Amazon buy link above.