When the Star Wars Radio Drama made its debut in 1981, on the NPR network, it was an instant success. Saga creator George Lucas sold the rights of the story to his alma mater for a dollar After that, a highly creative team took on the task of adapting the very visual film, for the radio medium. The end result is an enjoyable and very worthwhile, experience that makes the film come alive all over again, despite the lack of any of the film's landmark visuals

Using sound effects, the original score by composer John Williams, and with 2 key actors reprising their roles from the film, the radio drama boasts lavish production values. This is not some cheesy adaptation that they slapped together, quickly and put the name Star Wars on it, hoping for the best. Author Brian Daley's radioplay expands on the film verison by including additional "scenes" and backstory. Directed by John Madden (Shakespeare In Love), the radio drama has a top notch cast. Mark Hamill and Anthony Daniels add some additional class by recreating their film roles as Luke Skywalker and C-3PO respectively. Brock Peters as Darth Vader, makes the part his own, while Ann Sachs gives Leia the right amount of spunk. Perry King, as smuggler Han Solo, may not be Harrison Ford, but he could be Solo, and that's what counts. Bernard Beherns as Ben Kenobi and the late great character actor, Keane Curtis, as Grand Moff Tarkin, round out the main cast, with style. While I was listening to this, I got the impression that, even though it must have been a lot of work to put this production together, it seems like everyone had a good time too. Sure some of it may sound a bit off at times, because most of us know the film so well. But one must remember that no one working on the project set out to just copy the film. The Star Wars Radio Drama captures the sprit of its of source material perfectlly...and that's all it needs to do.

I highly recommend this presenation. The Star Wars Radio Drama on CD contains all 13 episodes as originally presented, spread over 7 discs, with a running time of about six and a half hours. The Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi radio drama adaptations are also available as well.

All the sound effects and music added much as well as having two members of the original cast from the movies(Mark Hamil and Anthony Daniels)was wonderful!! Anne Sachs was brillient as Leia and Perry King was magnifesent as Solo although getting used to King's voice instead of Ford's was a bit difficult.I enjoyed getting more background on Luke and Leia. Brian Daily wrote a wonderful script!! All in all this series should be re-brodcast.

At first, the idea seems bizarre, even ridiculous. Star Wars, a movie best known for its vistas of alien worlds and epic battles, as a 13 part radio drama? No way would it work, right?

Well, unless you have the cold heart of a Sith, Star Wars did indeed translate well from the silver screen to radio, thank you very much. Yes, Star Wars' visual effects are a big part of the magic of the saga, but the heart and soul of George Lucas' galaxy far, far away are the characters and the storyline. And while the movie is satisfying on its own, the radio dramatization written by the late Brian Daley takes us beyond the movie....beyond the screenplay...and even beyond the novelization.

By expanding the movie's story beyond its two hour running time, the Radio Drama allows us to catch glimpses of Luke Skywalker's life BEFORE the movie. It tells us how Princess Leia acquired the Death Star plans....and what, exactly, happened to her during her interrogation aboard the Empire's battle station...(it is an interesting scene, but not for the squeamish, by the way). In short, by expanding the story to nearly seven hours, characters we loved on screen acquire depth only equaled by novelizations.

The Radio Drama makes extensive use of material written (and in some cases filmed) for A New Hope's silver screen version but cut for editorial or technical reasons. Also, Ben Burtt's sound effects, John Williams' score, and the acting of Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) and Anthony Daniels (See Threepio) give the whole project its "true" Star Wars cachet.

Inspiration for Student Leaders is a concise, intelligent read, ideal for both students and professional staff who work with student leaders. Stories, poems, quick quotes and other works combine to make this publication live up to its goal of inspiring student leaders. Student Activities professional should give this book to incoming student leaders to help them broaden their perspectives on leadership. Established student leaders whose energy may be waning, can draw encouragement from the passages written by other students. This book should be on the resource shelf in every Student Union in America.

This book is phenomenal! A collection of stories, poems, quotes, and real experiences for student leaders. The book has many applications to leadership studies and personal motivation and inspiration.

As one of the co-authors, I'm extremely proud of the finished product. In addition to getting a great resourse for your library, every purchase of this book gives a $1 donation to the National Association for Campus Activities (NACA) Educational Foundation - NACA provides scholarships for college students across the US.

This is simply the best book anywhere for campus leaders.

I admit that I'm one of the co-authors. But keep this in mind-- as editor of Student Leader magazine, I don't lend my name and reputation to just any project.

I was, and am, proud to be associated with this uplifting and inpsiriational book. It's written similiar in style to the Chicken Soup series, including lots of heartwarming stories written by campus leaders themselves nationwide.

This book is perfect for leadership retreats, workshops, and seminars. It would be the perfect addition to any leadership classes as well.

If you're the parent, friend, or relative of a student government leader, resident assistant, Greek leader, or other campus leader, this book would be the perfect easy gift!

This is a great book to help all of us to analyze ourselves better , to be able to understand our un-real ILLUSIONS and our distorted view o f others, these stories are sometimes difficult to grasp , but as soon as you think and understand them and apply them ; then your life will begin to change or be modified, remember always to have a FLEXIBLE mind and to be very sincere with yourself when you read the books o f this excellent , honest, sincere and great Psychologist A. de Mello ,his books are also publised in Spanish.Thanks to the publishers: ING. EMILIO CRISTANCHO GUEVARA; e-mail: edfasa@hotmail.com

This book is a must read for all the people who are devouring books by Deepak Chopra and others. Without preaching, this and other books from Anthony De Mello teach the simplicity of life.De Mello has compiled some very good stories. Other books to read are: The prayer of the Frog (Part I and II).

Unlike the man standing by the river selling water, I was a purchaser. When my "guru" gave me this book to read, I devoured it and the Truth became clear. But it was only a part of the Truth. Through the years since then, I have read many many spiritually oriented books and find that the short stories in this one use few words to say a lot. Start at the beginning as de Mello advises when reading it for the first time for one story lays the foundation for the rest. Later you will skip around when you need a bit of calming reality in this hectic world.

Despite the criticisms levelled at Trollope for his "authorial intrusions" (see Henry James for example) this novel is always a pleasure to read. The characters take precedence over the plot, as in any Trollopian fiction and this is what makes a novel like BARCHESTER more palatable to the modern reader, as compared to any of Dickens's. Some readers may find the ecclesiastical terms confusing at first but with a little help (see the Penguin introduction for example), all becomes clear. What is important, however, is the interaction between the all-too-human characters and in this novel there are plenty of situations to keep you, the reader, amused.

Do yourself a favour and take a trip back into Nineteenth century where technology is just a blink in everyone's eye. What you will discover, however, is that human beings have not really changed, just the conventions have.

I rushed home every day after work to read a little more of this Trollope comedy. The book starts out with the death of a bishop during a change in political power. The new bishop is a puppet to his wife Mrs. Proudie and her protégé Mr. Slope. Along the way we meet outrageous clergymen, a seductive invalid from Italy, and a whole host of delightfully ridiculous characters. Trollope has designed most of these characters to be "over the top". I kept wondering what a film version starring the Monty Python characters would look like. He wrote an equivalent of a soap opera, only it doesn't take place at the "hospital", it takes place with the bishops. Some of the characters you love, some of the characters you hate, and then there are those you love to hate. Trollope speaks to the reader throughout the novel using the mimetic voice, so we feel like we are at a cocktail party and these 19th century characters are our friends (or at least the people we're avoiding at the party!). The themes and characters are timeless. The book deals with power, especially power struggles between the sexes. We encounter greed, love, desperation, seductive sirens, and generosity. Like many books of this time period however, the modern reader has to give it a chance. No one is murdered on the first page, and it takes quite a few chapters for the action to pick up. But pick up it does by page 70, and accelerates into a raucously funny novel from there. Although I didn't read the Warden, I didn't feel lost and I'm curious to read the rest of this series after finishing this book. Enjoy!

This is the second of the six Barsetshire novels, and the first great novel in that series. THE WARDEN, while pleasant, primarily serves as a prequel to this novel. To be honest, if Trollope had not gone on to write BARCHESTER TOWERS, there would not be any real reason to read THE WARDEN. But because it introduces us to characters and situations that are crucial to BARCHESTER TOWERS, one really ought to have read THE WARDEN before reading this novel.

Trollope presents a dilemma for most readers. On the one hand, he wrote an enormous number of very good novels. On the other hand, he wrote no masterpieces. None of Trollope's books can stand comparison with the best work of Jane Austen, Flaubert, Dickens, George Eliot, Tolstoy, or Dostoevsky. On the other hand, none of those writers wrote anywhere near as many excellent as Trollope did. He may not have been a very great writer, but he was a very good one, and perhaps the most prolific good novelist who ever lived. Conservatively assessing his output, Trollope wrote at least 20 good novels. Trollope may not have been a genius, but he did possess a genius for consistency.

So, what to read? Trollope's wrote two very good series, two other novels that could be considered minor classics, and several other first rate novels. I recommend to friends that they try the Barsetshire novels, and then, if they find themselves hooked, to go on to read the Political series of novels (sometimes called the Palliser novels, which I feel uncomfortable with, since it exaggerates the role of that family in most of the novels). The two "minor classics" are THE WAY WE LIVE NOW and HE KNEW HE WAS RIGHT. The former is a marvelous portrait of Victorian social life, and the latter is perhaps the finest study of human jealousy since Shakespeare's OTHELLO. BARSETSHIRE TOWERS is, therefore, coupled with THE WARDEN, a magnificent place, and perhaps the best place to enter Trollope's world.

There are many, many reasons to read Trollope. He probably is the great spokesperson for the Victorian Mind. Like most Victorians, he is a bit parochial, with no interest in Europe, and very little interest in the rest of the world. Despite THE AMERICAN SENATOR, he has few American's or colonials in his novels, and close to no foreigners of any type. He is politically liberal in a conservative way, and is focussed almost exclusively on the upper middle class and gentry. He writes a good deal about young men and women needing and hoping to marry, but with a far more complex approach than we find in Jane Austen. His characters are often compelling, with very human problems, subject to morally complex situations that we would not find unfamiliar. Trollope is especially good with female characters, and in his sympathy for and liking of very independent, strong females he is somewhat an exception of the Victorian stereotype.

Anyone wanting to read Trollope, and I heartily believe that anyone who loves Dickens, Austen, Eliot, Hardy, and Thackery will want to, could find no better place to start than with reading the first two books in the Barsetshire Chronicles, beginning first with the rather short THE WARDEN and then progressing to this very, very fun and enjoyable novel.

Many of us have made a small effort at trying to help the homeless. Many of us have made a small effort at being educated about the homeless: how many there are, reasons for them being homeless, etc. Very few of us, if any, have taken the time to actually get to know a homeless person. Laurie Anthony did just that and then shared it with the rest of us. "Have a Great One" is a compassionate, insightful look into the life and times of one homeless man. Homelessness is at best, a complicated issue. This book brings to light both our frustrations, as a society or as individuals, in dealing with the homeless and the frustrations of the homeless themselves. It is a very compelling and enlightening read.

I was hooked after I read the first few pages! A true story, that reads like a mystery! Laurie Anthony has captured the reality of homelessness through her experience with a homeless man. She tells his story (and hers) in such a honest, soul-searching way that I also examined my own beliefs and misconceptions about the homeless. In addition, the research she sites about homelessness, poverty, mental illness, shelters, welfare, and unemployment was informative and helpful. This book can be read as a memoir, a self-help book, or an introductory text to the problem of homelessness.

Laurie Anthony does care and does become involved with the homeless problem. I loved this book because it shows how an ordinary person can make a difference. So often people say, "I'm not going there!" They are not getting involved - they are staying in their own safe world. But Anthony takes a risk and does get involved. If only we all would light just one little candle as Laurie Anthony has done, the world would be a better place. This book is an inspiration to all!

I have to hand one thing to Piers Anthony: He managed to take a single plot element, the disappearance of Good Magician Humphrey, and make it last for five novels, barely advancing the search for the Good Magician in each book.

After her brother Dolph looked for the Good Magician Humphrey in the previous book and came back with two fiancees, Princess Ivy decides its her turn to go look for the Answer-providing Magician. After stealing back a magical mirror from a magical Com-Pewter, she invokes the Heaven Cent and ....

Enter Grey Murphy, stage left. Residing in magicless Mundania, he has managed to obtain a computer program that procures girlfriends for him. And its latest procurement? No prize if you guess Ivy. Following the by-now standard Xanth formula, they undertake a journey (back to Xanth) and fall in love along the way.

But it's a good journey. Piers Anthony made two very, very good decisions with this novel. First, he abandoned the juvenile tone that infested earlier and later entries in the Xanth series. Second, after umpty-ump Xanth novels made tangle trees, ladies-slipper bushes, and other magical marvels seem mundane, Anthony chose to approach much of novel through an outsider -- Grey Murphy.

Even as he confronts wonder after wonder, Grey Murphy refuses to believe in magic. A sailing mountain? Special effects. Invisible giant spouting a river of blood? Food coloring. A half-human, half-equine centaur? A robot. A hate spring? Ordinary water, backed by a strong superstition that it will make people hate each other.

Despite his disbelief in magic, Grey Murphy is nonetheless the typical Anthony protagonist, with a code of ethics that uniformly matches every other protagonist we've seen out there. Not that I mind ethical characters, mind you; it just gets tiresome when, after a dozen books, all the good guys display identical codes of ethics. Kind of ruins diversity of characters.

The plot continues, with Grey having to meet a certain challenge to successfully assert a claim to Ivy's hand in marriage, journey all over Mount Parnassus, and overcome a rather nasty oath that's been forced on him ... but things might just turn out well for this happy couple, right? Right??

If you would like to inflict the remainder of this series on yourself, this book is a very good jumping-on point. Grey Murphy's unfamiliarity with the land of magic makes him a good proxy for an unfamiliar reader, but the book's other flaws (uniform characters, linear plotting) keep it from a perfect rating.

Like any of Piers Anthony's Xanth books, this book is wonderful. If you haven't read a Xanth book before then you should start. This book was about Princess Ivy on a Quest. Her quest was to find the Good Magician Humfrey. She ends up in Mundania and meets Grey, an ordinary guy who needs her. He takes her back home and along the way they become engaged. Ivy's parents, the king and queen of Xanth, don't want their daughter to marry someone without a magic talent. This lends them to go off looking for a magic talent for Grey. There are so many scenes that are hilarious, like the scene where Grey and Ivy are captured by the goblins and they have to do some brave yet funny things(funny to me anyway). The twists in this story are great! (I think that the reading level of this book is around 5th or 6th grade level-I'm not good at judging this kind of thing) This is a great book and I think that anybody could read this book and love it!

The novel, Man From Mundania, by Piers Anthony is a great novel that follows the journey of a magical princess named Ivy and a ordinary man named Grey. The story takes place in Xanth, a land full of magic, where Ivy is searching for the missing Good Magician (Humphrey). The Magician Humphrey is a powerful man who's magical talent is to know the answer to any question and without his knowledge Xanth is going into chaos. Ivy's quest takes her to the dull land known as Mundania where she is joined by a man called Grey. Together, the couple resume the quest and uncover an evil machine's plot to take over Xanth. If they're to stop this they will need some serious help.

Concise coverage of critical topics make for an efficient read. No wading through introductory material--the book gets to the point quickly. Awesome CD with great tools (that work). Good for anybody's library.

I got this book before I started taking the MCSE tests. It really helped me out on the networking and NT workstation/server tests. I've worked with NT for awhile and I found that the book covers most of the things you need to know as long as you also take some practice tests from microsoft. I'm glad I got it when I did!

I don't usually take the time to come back and comment on a book unless it's very bad. In this case the book is way better than I've come to expect from most NT books. There were so many extra topics in the book that I don't think I've seen elsewhere. Important registry setting are listed and explained but not ALL of them (with no explaination) just what is important. I liked the IP Management section and DNS overview. The capacity planning section that somebody else here mentioned was excellent and the tuning and troubleshooting chapter had a great section on problem resolution. It covers a very wide range of topics relating to NT and networking and does it very well.

-Tom

Black and white was never so gray, and gray was never so vibrant as it streams across the pages of David Anthony Durham's new historical novel, "Walk Through Darkness."

While contemporary activists seek slave reparations, Durham explores the complexities of slavery from a modern black man's perspective. It's not a rant, but a contemplative journey in which good is always tainted, bad is never pure, and black and white blend to gray.

The desperate condition of African-Americans before and after the Civil War is Durham recurring theme.

In "Gabriel's Story," the protagonist is a 15-year-old African-American boy in the empty middle of the continent after the Civil War, caught between youth and manhood, naiveté and wisdom, family and flight. It was a classical bildungsroman - a novel about the moral and psychological growth of the main character -- told in masterful prose reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy.

In "Walk Through Darkness," Durham retraces his literary steps in a different landscape and a different time: That troubled slice of America between Virginia and Pennsylvania where slavery and abolition collided in the anxious twilight before the Civil War.

William's story also traces through complex historic and cultural issues. If you were expecting Durham, by virtue of being an African-American, to oversimplify an issue that split America down the middle, you've been reading too many racial polemics. We glimpse extraordinarily humane slave owners, mercenary blacks who gleefully profit from trapping runaways, and a wide array of men and women who are unexpectedly - and refreshingly - conflicted about human bondage.

As he did with his first book, Gabriel's Story, Durham has provided readers with a book that works on many levels. First of all it's a hell of a story. This is an exciting adventure, an intelligent page-turner. Interesting, well-drawn characters, who, like people in "real life," can act in unpredicted ways. These characters rank with those created by Charles Frazier in "Cold Mountain."
If you've ever grappled with imagining the lives of slaves in 19th century America, their struggles and the response of whites to them, reading "Walk Through Darkness" will help.
The story concerns a slave, William, escaping a cruel master and his search for his pregnant lover. Durham intersperses this tale with relentless pursuit of the protaganist by a tracker.
While spinning this fascinating yarn, Durham offers a hard look at a time and place not so distant and the attitudes that pervaded American life.
This is Durham's second book, following the fantastic "Gabriel's Story". He is two for two, having hit both out of the ballpark.

Walk Through Darkness is a powerful tale of the trials and tribulations of slavery in early American history and how the forces of love, truth and redemption can at times work to right the wrongs of that hateful period.

In his novel, David Anthony Durham tells a story of William, a fugitive slave, who places his life in danger to find his pregnant wife and deliver her to freedom. With little knowledge of his surroundings and only occasional help from random strangers, William travels from down South to Philadelphia. During his travels, William encounters many hardships, which force him to grow into a stronger man. First, he is tricked, then captured, by a group of slave traders and prepared for sale. Forced to endure the cramped quarters and debasing actions of his captors, he begins to lose hope of his goal, only to be freed through a violent uprising, which results in the death of his captors. On the run again, William reaches Baltimore and stows away upon a trading ship, only to be found and once again returned to shackles. It is here, while befriended by the ship's Captain, that William begins to learn the larger lessons of life. With one more chance to reach his goal, he is given the opportunity to escape, and through a stroke of luck, finally ends up in Philadelphia. Hungry, tired and lost, William succumbs to yellow fever and would have died had it not been for the help of a stranger. This Samaritan only asks that he understand her altruistic ways and her desire to help him become a free man. Fully recovered, he discovers his wife's whereabouts and makes plans to rescue her from her surroundings.

Throughout William's journey, we follow a parallel story of a Scottish tracker, Andrew Morrison, who is hired to find, capture, and bring William back to his master in one piece. While his motives are unclear at first, it becomes obvious that Morrison's past history within America has created a man who is at odds with his identity and is wrestling with his quest for redemption. With his trusted hound at his side, Morrison eventually ends up in Philadelphia to find and capture the fugitive slave.

The book ends with a suspenseful account of the various forces that are working for and against William in his quest for freedom. With violence an everyday possibility, many lives are ruined because of their participation in helping an innocent person seek his dream. However, even with powerful currents working against him, William ends up on his way to freedom through the help of many of those who were opposed to the evil of slavery that flowed through American veins.

Walking Through Darkness is a heavy read that yields an enormous amount of satisfaction. It is clear that David Anthony Durham has become a literary force to reckon with and is among the new cadre of African American writers like Paul Beatty, Guy Johnson, and Colson Whitehead, who have brought new stories into the mainstream literary world, without sacrificing their integrity. Once again, Durham has used his deft literary brush to create a tale complete with vivid pictures of life and death during this most turbulent time in American history.

Hume is rightfully an important philosopher. Philosophy had been mainly a metaphysical/rationalistic field until Hume (in addition to Locke and Berkeley) came along. His basic philosophy is this: induction is the only principle by which we can have knowledge, but induction is fundamentally flawed. Thus, there is no belief of which we can be totally certain of. Hume even questions whether we can be as sure as Descartes was when he asserted "Cogito Ergo Sum". To Hume, one could consistently maintain that the "self" was just a bunch of thoughts in succession. Hume believed that there were no strict identities in nature, but only resemblences which the mind tends to treat as identities. He also treated ideas as imperfect images of our experiences.

The problem I have with Hume is on resemblence and his treatment of ideas. I agree with him that there are resemblences in nature which humans tend to treat as the same--but then what is this resemblence based on? The nominalists have to account for why resemblence is there in the first place. Perceived identity must have its basis in reality somehow. And his treatment of ideas is just plain wrong--our ideas are not just images, although they can include images.

I obviously can't give a complete criticism of Hume's philosophy in a review, so if anyone wants to discuss this with me just email me. But I definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in philosophy--any complete philosophical theory must challenge or incorporate Hume if it is to succeed.

This is a good edition of the first but fundamental book published by Hume in 3 volumes (1 and 2 in 1739; 3 in 1740) dedicated to the methodical study of knowledge, passions and moral, through experience and practical observation. It is with Hume that empiricism (following Locke and Berkeley) reaches its complete expression as a "modern" classical system, against previous dogmatic visions of philosophy. According to Kant, Hume awoke him from the dogmatic dream......
With Hume, english illustration comes to a definitive expression. Through his opus, empiricism is systematized and acquires a new dimension that expands its influence on all fields of philosophy. Previous conceptions about the theory of knowledge, ethics, politics, esthetics, and the philosophy of religion, all are transformed or renovated by Hume. In spite of his critics, Hume's system dwelled with different topics of modern interest: positivism, psychology, nominalism, critical skepticism, determinism, agnosticism, moral philosophy, political economy, etc.
No serious philosopher after Hume, has been able to avoid a careful look at his system. So if you are a student or scholar of the subject matter, I highly recommend this edition of Hume's seminal work.

This is a superb edition of one of the basic works in Western philosophy. Designed to be used by both casual and serious students of philosophy, this edition contains the text of Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (EHU) and a series of other sections that provide background and further directions for studying Hume. Included are an excellent precis of the EHU, a first rate annotated bibliography concerning works by and about Hume, considerable background material on Hume, and excellent notes to the text of the EHU.

The EHU is a concise and charmingly written presentation of Hume's views of the nature and particularly the limitations of human knowledge. The EHU presents Humes basic concepts of human thought, human pattern recognition, and then proceeds to Hume's revolutionary analysis of the problem of induction. Hume exposes our limitations in establishing certain cause and effect relations. Hume's analysis of this problem and its corollaries leads to ultimate skepticism about our ability to know the external world with certainty and undermines much of the basis for religion. Hume presents his ideas in an attractive style that owes much to famous 18th century essayists like Addison.

A fundamental work and very readable work.

Clarence Earl Gideon would have been less than an historical footnote had he not written to the U.S. Supreme Court asking for, in essence, a "get out of jail free" card. Gideon, who would be a career criminal by contemporary definitions, was in a Florida jail for breaking and entering with intent to commit a misdemeanor. In his letter to the nation's highest court, Gideon wrote in pencil that his constitutional rights were violated when he was denied the right to have an attorney at his trial. In the end, the Supreme Court agreed with Gideon and reversed a prior decision to hold that people in Gideon's position (but not all accused persons) are entitled to the assistance of a lawyer and to have the state pay for one if necessary.

"Gideon's Trumpet" tells the story of one man's improbable battle and the Court's ultimate decision in his favor. Author Anthony Lewis has done a remarkable job of putting a human face (several, actually) on one of the landmark cases in criminal procedure and in making the story accessible to any adult regardless of a lack of formal legal training. In "Gideon's Trumpet," Lewis presents all of the characters as humans, not simply as people whose names later stand for legal rules (a la Miranda). "Gideon's Trumpet" also represents a ray of hope for those who think the legal system is solely the prerogative of the wealthy and politically connected, for here is the story of a virtual nobody who without the help of an attorney undertook a monumental process. In fact, "Gideon's Trumpet" might be a bit too optimistic. Written in 1964, the book could not have foreseen the subsequent studies that have shown that *Gideon v. Wainright* (the name of the case) has not substantially altered conviction rates. Still, the book tells a remarkable story quite well. Perhaps the highest praise is that this true story reads as a novel.

As Lewis documents the events surrounding the case of Gideon v. Wainwright, perhaps the most important case of the Warren Court era, he provides us with an easy-to-read yet insightful look at the workings of the Supreme Court and the interaction, and sometimes tension, between the federal and state courts. Lewis also provides a thoughtful commentary on the legitimacy of rules that issue from the courts as opposed to those that issue from our legislatures and in doing so, he provides his reader with a perspective of the Court's role in our democracy. This book made everything I learned in law school all the more clear. It is a wonderful explanation of American criminal and constitutional law for those who have legal training and for those who do not. Both readers will find Gideon's Trumpet accessible but also intellectually challenging.

Gideon's Trumpet is an eloquent and informative look at a very important story in the history of the United States legal system. Not only will it teach you about the evolution of the right to counsel from the case of Gideon v. Wainwright, but it teaches you much about the practices, intricacies and eccentricities of the Supreme Court and its members. This book should be considered essential and required reading for all law students. I loved it and learned much from it.