One of the high points in Doctor Who's broadcast history came about in 1977. This serial was quickly adapted into this novel.

The TARDIS materialises in Victorian London, with the Doctor decides to show Leela how her ancestors lived. Instead, they get caught up in a Fu Manchu-like story filled with a Tong, a mysterious murderer, trips through the sewers, normal animals grown to unusual sizes, and enough revcognisable elements recast in surprising ways.

The story is aided and abetted by wonderful supporting characters, not the least being theatre-owner henry Gordon Jago and police pathologist Professor Litefoot. There are also literary references to Sherlock Holmes, Oscar Wilde, and so on.

The story is wonderful, and this book, while it could be better, is still more than acceptable.

Robert Holmes wrote scripts for all of the Doctor on the television series and each and everyone of them is a classic. In this story, Holmes personal favorite, the Doctor and Leela travel to Victorian England. Before long they are involved in a mysterious string of murders and disappearances. Is the culprit Jack the Ripper? A Chinese god? Or a villian from Earth's future? This book also has the two best and most memorable characters Holmes introduced into the series. Professor Litefoot and Henry Gordon Jago.

This book is very cool. Four feet long, unwrap layer by layer and find information each time. You can even hang up the mummy! I love it and so does my lil bro!

I've had this book since i was given it by my parents when i was 7, and even though it has an age title of 6-8 i still enjoy it and i'm now 14! But the whole book is cleverly written for children to understand so they learn while having fun. I would personally recommend this book to anyone who is hesitant to purchase it, for their children or even for themselves.

Sophie's Snail, one of several "Sophie" books by Dick King-Smith of Babe fame is back in print after an American hiatus. Sophie, a non-traditional British girl wants to grow up to be a lady farmer. The rough and tumble Sophie who's hair looks like "went through a hedgerow backwards" is a girl who knows her own mind. Sophie's antics are wholesome and humorous. She loves mud, jeans, farm animals and following closely in her older brothers' footsteps. She abhors pretense, dolls and personal hygeine. The presence of a kindred spirited elderly aunt gives the limited series a delightful continuing story line filled with British wit and ultimately a poignant sense of growing up. I also found the series to be a great early chapter book series for the reader that has gone beyond picture books and likes the satisfaction of reading a well read shorter chapter book.

This was a very charming book about a young girl who aspires to be a farmer. She keeps herds of insects as practice and is saving to buy a cow named blossom, two hens named April and May, a pony named Shorty and a pig named Measels. I think that this was a wonderful book about a determined child with a large imagination, and you should buy it for the determined child with a large imagination in your life.

An excellent book for a younger but talented reader. My 6 year old daughter loves the "Sophie books". She is an advanced reader and it is good to find a book of the right level that also has subject material of interest to her. Fun for adults to read at bedtime too.

I saw the movie before reading the book. I generally agreed with movie critics that it was overdone and terribly acted. But I was fascinated by the central concept of "The Postman." So I decided to read the book. Whereas, the End Times fiction series "Left Behind" depicts the horrors of extremely centralized government, a one-world order, "The Postman" embraces the opposite concept, extremely DE-centralized government. In this story whose chronological setting is the year 2013, the United States has collapsed and a form of government known as feudalism has taken its place, a form of government that existed in Western Europe and Japan several centuries ago. There are numerous self-governing units which have little to no communication with each other. People bound themselves to the land of local dictators in exchange for protection. In the absence of any central government there was no military or police to protect people and their freedoms. These feudal lords were oftenin turn be pledged to even more powerful landowners who might be under feudal lords themselves and so on. But Gordon Krantz, in an effort to keep warm, stumbles upon something terrifying to these lunatic general-dictators. A postal service to bind people of a large republic with communication. Gordon tells several villages about a Restored United States of America and that he is a postman for that new republic. There is no Restored United States of America but that is not the point. People start believing in the possibility of a better future for the first time in a long time. And even if they did not believe the story new ideas had been introduced to them. The Holnists, followers of a long dead Nathan Holn, are committed to the idea that the strong who dominate the weak, otherwise they have been brainwashed by these weaker people. This is a hatable philosophy and serves as the story's main villian. My main complaint is that the book is not quite that engaging. It was not something I was unable to put down. There are several differences between the book and the movie in plot, and characters. But both seem to be in the exact same setting. I think the nuclear war theme is a little overdone and I would like to see how the author could have made the United States collapse in another way. Would he have chosen an extremely bad economy? a series of natural disaster? A book about the events leading to the scenario which "The Postman" describes would be even more fascinating.

There just aren't enough epic novels of post-apocalyptic survival. I have enjoyed every one that I've read, and I keep trying to find more to read and enjoy. Now, that is not to say that all of them were good. Many of them were completely ridiculous and repellant. David Brin's "The Postman," however, manages to be not only enjoyable, but also good.

On his way across the fractured, war-wracked Northwest, world-weary Gordon is shot at, robbed, and generally kicked around. That's the nature of life in post-WWIII Oregon. As the story begins, Gordon has been working as an itinerant entertainer, reciting Shakespear for a bowl of soup and a place to sleep. When he stumbles across an old US Postal Serviceman's uniform, though, he decides to try a new scam. The idea of the United States' continued existence, however, is something of a free radical, inspiring anger and defiance against local warlords. Gordon becomes an important, if unwilling, figurehead in the locals' struggle for autonomy and a return to real civilized life.

Brin's book is a good read. The story's characters are few, but generally interesting and believable. Several of his sub-plots are iffy, especially his third act treatment of male-female relations. The book was written in the 80's, and his prediction of world events in the 1990s is also so wrong as to detract somewhat from the story (at least in my reading.) Still, it's satisfying, overall, and has both a sense of humor and a moral, not to mention laser satellites and artificial intelligences. For sci-fi fans, this is a fine choice.

Before SF novelist David Brin became known as one of the "Killer Bs" of 80s and 90s SF, he penned a serial novel called "The Postman," a post-apocalyptic romp through the Williamette Valley in Oregon. Set in an area dominated by militias, survivalists, and the kinds of folks who like to blame Jewish people and blacks for America's troubles, Brin lampooned the typical, gutsy, survival-of-the-fittest attitude in post-apocalyptic (PA) fiction, creating a unique blend of adventure story and important moral lesson. In an interview, Brin said that most PA fiction revels in the downfall of civilization, creating a kind of macho paradise which would be great if you were a gun-toting conservative white male. For everyone else, it would be hell, and that is exactly what "The Postman" tackles.

Fifteen years after the Doomwar, a combination nuclear, biological, and chemical exchange between the US and an unknown enemy, Gordon roams the landscape looking for a cause to follow. The largest organization in this atmosphere are a loosely-organized militia-army, who follow the teachings of the deceased Nathan Holn, a racist whose beliefs about life and freedom were a mix of Ayn Rand, David Duke, and a badly warped Charles Darwin. Gordon, a college-educated thinking man, wants nothing to do with the militias, but is inadvertantly forced into acting when bandits steal his clothes and he is forced to dress as a postman and invent a story about the Restored United States to get some food.

On his way, Gordon meets towns wallowing in drugs and violence, paranoid people so scared by oppression they trust no one, and an organization seemingly controlled by a computer artificial intelligence. When the militias begin attacking the Williamette Valley in far greater fervor, Gordon begins to organize the resistance, aided in part by George Powhatan, an organizer who has begun to rebuild civilization in his own way.

"The Postman" makes clear that the downfall of civilization would not be a good thing, especially if you happened to be a woman, or black, or anything else not conforming to the WASP-militia stereotypes. Aside from a good adventure story, Brin's book bucks convention and treads new groud, providing an obvious stepping stone for later SF novels in the genre like "The New Madrid Run" and "The Rift." The prose can be rocky, but given "Postman" was published serially (and wasn't necessarily aspiring to high literature), this can be overlooked for the far more positive points of its content.

Final Grade: B-

At times absorbing, at times uneven. Nearly always well researched and smacking of authenticity.

This novel has a lot of ground to cover. The author divides time, nearly evenly, between private lives, diplomacy, and combat for all the key players of the war. He also divides the time evenly between conflicts in the North and in the South. Nevin treads between history documentary and steamy mini-series innuendo and nearly pulls it off entirely. These two areas are difficult to bring together. Alternately, I would long to return to the combat theater while the author waxes on the domestic trials of Rachael Donnelson Jackson, or wish to read more about Sally McQuirks early femminist character while the author was steeped in documenting Jackson's sweep of the south. Oh well.

None the less the novel was engrossing and a pleasure. Its biggest downfall was that the Treaty of Ghent was completely ignored! There was quite a group of personalities involved in that roe. They would would have fit in well with Nevin's saga. Perhaps his next historical novel can examine the picadillios that occurred in that lowlands city.

This book took you inside the minds and the hearts of the major players in the war of 1812. I am an avid historical fiction reader, but this was the one war i didn't know much about. After reading this book i becasue inthralled in the war, and the amzing people involved. The most captivating side of this book, was home the author integrated love and war and everything inbetween. This book kept me flipping pages from start to finish, andi recomend it to history lovers and those who are just looking for a good book.

I was hesitant to buy a book that employed the description 'historical novel', feeling it would likely alter the real history of the period in order to achieve readability. In fact, the author has a splendid awareness of the history and of the times, and has obviously read and researched each character so extensively that they truly 'come alive' by virtue of the technique. While no one recorded the private conversations of James and Dolly Madison (et al), I felt the text was probably an excellent approximation of what their dialogue must have been. Many other characters of the period come alive and interact, and the entire feeling is one of great delight in having 'been there' to hear them speak. The period itself is nicely covered as well. This is a great lesiurely read and would be a wonderful way to read history for those who hate the textbook approach.

Halberstam, as ever, writes so well...I am jealous. However, I couldn't help but be a little disappointed in this book. While it serves as a good overview of Clinton's foreign policy, it skimps on the first Bush Administration

First, the Persian Gulf War barely gets 20 pages, and it is almost all seen through the lens of the Air Force Colonel (John Warden) who planned the innovative air campaign. This is not really new or scandalous - Gordon and Traynor covered this in "The General's War" and you can find it in other sources. The only other mention you get is how tired Bush was from the Gulf War, and how it prevented him from tackling the Bosnia problem. Overall, Considering the subtitle is "Bush, Clinton and the Generals" Bush gets shorted.

Second, while the portraits of the personalities are vivid, there just isn't anything really new or insightful here. Indeed, there were many vignettes where I felt like I had read this somewhere before. Bob Woodward's "The Commanders" is still the definitive Gulf War decision-making work, Elizabeth Drew's "On the Edge" covers Clinton's decision making shortcomings, Ivo Daalder's "Getting to Dayton" covers Bosnia u1p to 1995; Daalder and O'Hanlon's "Winning Ugly" has everything about Kosovo.

As a student of international relations, my standards are a little higher. This book is useful to the extent it consolidates a lot of existing work, but it falls just a little short of being really deep or groundbreaking. Not even close to "Best and the Brightest."

I became a fan of David Halberstam's through his sportswriting, but since I have a longstanding interest in history and current events, I decided to check out some of his political writing as well. Having read this book, I'm glad I did. In "War In a Time of Peace" Halberstam attempts to summarize and analyze the key components of American foreign policy from 1989 to 2001 in a (relatively) brief and user-friendly five hundred pages. And it's a rousing success. Halberstam obviously has a profound understanding of the vast array of forces that shape modern-day politics, and he has an engaging writing style that keeps things moving right along.

The main thrust of the book is an examination of the effect the end of the Cold War had on U.S. foreign policy. Much of Halberstam's discussion focuses on two related themes: first, the decline in importance of foreign policy in American politics following the removal of the Communist threat; and second, the loss of clear-cut foreign-policy philosophies and objectives without the Soviets as an enemy. Halberstam proves his first thesis quickly enough with this fact: the first President Bush, despite his successes in the Cold War and the Gulf War, couldn't get himself reelected in 1992 in the face of the Clinton campaign's "It's the economy, stupid" logic because the American public didn't care as much about foreign affairs as it had even five years ago. The second theme of the book, regarding the ambiguity that accompanied foreign policy in the nineties, is reflected in the debates over just how and how much the U.S. should get involved in battles in faraway places like Somalia and (especially) the former Yugoslavia. Central to these debates was a fundamental question: should America, with its overwhelming military might, use its military as a police force in areas in which it lacked a vital national interest? In the wake of Vietnam, this was not an easy question to answer, and it loomed large over many of the Clinton administration's important foreign-policy decisions. Halberstam goes to great lengths to discuss the complex mix of factors that influenced these decisions in the Clinton years: American electoral politics, international politics, the internal machinations of the military, American public opinion, changes in journalistic practices, advances in military technology, Bill Clinton's personal problems, the legacy of Vietnam, and much more. Halberstam also gives the reader biographical sketches of many of the major American political and military players, as if to try to explain the impact their own experiences had on their views. He's sympathetic to these people, but at the same time Halberstam has a keen understanding of their weaknesses and how they worked against them.

I'm not really what you'd call a foreign politics or current events aficionado, but I think that may be why I found this book such a good read. It has enough detail to provide a comprehensive overview of American foreign policy in the post-Cold War period, without getting too bogged down in minutiae. At the same time, Halberstam demonstrates a remarkable perceptiveness in tracing the links between events and personalities that shaped America's actions. Highly recommended.

An essential overview of US foreign policy in the 1990s. Halberstam has crafted a well written, well researched account of the international policies and conflicts that shaped the 90s. He also deconstructs many of the major players -- Tony Lake, Dick Holbrooke, Colin Powell, Madeline Albright, Sandy Berger -- in great detail, exploring their particular leanings and, most importantly, the events that shaped their individual policies. For this group, shadows of the Cold War and of Vietnam are never far from the surface of their foreign policy.

I agree with reviewers who thought that the author has a liberal bias -- Halberstam tends to view the Clinton administration and the Democratic liberals as kinder, gentler, "aw-shucks" foreign policy doves, i.e. the kind of people who just "happen" to get caught up in nasty little international conflicts. Meanwhile, Republicans are portrayed as significantly more trouble-friendly and hawkish, to use a much-bandied-about phrase. Still, despite Halberstam's leanings, he does not hide the Clinton administration's obvious failings in the foreign policy arena. He is quite brutal at times in his descriptions of Clinton as a petulant man-child who doesn't like to be wrong and, more importantly, doesn't like anyone else to be right either.

The one flaw with this book, if it is a flaw, is simply that it was written before September 11. As such, it has a dated quality to it, like when you read about WWII or Vietnam. The world dynamic was significantly altered by 9/11 and it will be interesting to see if Halberstam picks up where he left off and writes the post-9/11 chapters of this book.

Overall, though, a must read.

If you have any interest in learning more about what all the hubbub is about concerning the events that took place in Waco, Texas in 1993 (and you should) then this book is a good place to start. Of the books I have read concerning the Waco tragedy this one is one of the easiest to read and follow.

Now, if you are pro-ATF/FBI then you will not like this book. The author does have a decidedly pro-Davidian bias to his writing so it is not an evenhanded version of the story but it stops short of being an ultra-right wing diatribe. It is what I believe to be basically the truth concerning the matter and that is that despite the technicalities of the alleged wrongdoing of the Davidians the government grossly overstepped its authority and trampled the Constitution that they are sworn to uphold in order to get their way.

The real issues here are not whether the Davidians broke some relatively minor firearms law or even whether they committed suicide by setting the fire that killed them or whether the government set the fire accidentally or deliberately. It is about a government that has a warped sense of what's right and basically makes war on its own citizens in order to prove that it is in control. It is about the frightening trend of our government to think of themselves as our rulers and above the law that they are sworn to uphold and it is certainly a chilling realization of that old saying about absolute power corrupting absolutely.

The bottom line for me is that the ATF planned this raid as an attack from the get go to make itself look good for their upcoming budget review and chose a fringe religious group to exploit because they thought that they would be good fodder for them from a political perspective. Then when their home invasion tactics blew up in their face they and the FBI basically systematically assassinated those people because they had the temerity to stand up to the federal government's thuggery. In the end they tried to cover up their wrongdoing and punish the survivors for embarrassing them. Even if you believe that David Koresh and his people were a bunch of kooks it shouldn't matter: what the government did to those people is just wrong.

If you have any interest in hearing the non-government version of what went on during this business then give this book a try, but read other versions too. I also recommend "No More Wacos: What's Wrong with Federal Law Enforcement and How to Fix it".

Law enforcement should not be about using tanks to smash down walls to force people to submit; those are war tactics that have no place in how a government treats the citizens of a free society.

Dick Reavis has done what no other journalist has dared. He has written a thoughtful, fair, and detailed account of the events that took place in Waco. Mr. Reavis researched the Davidian movement and in the process revealed the fact that these people were not "nuts" but very religious people, who read and studied the bible. Mr. Reavis did not make excuses for David Koresh's behavior, but rather explained the rationale motivating the Davidian Leader. Mr. Reavis did not make excuses for the BATF, the FBI, or Janet Reno either. "Funding" was revealed as the original culprit leading to the fiasco. The government bungling that followed and helped lead to the final tragedy was laid out with precision. Anyone interested in the subject of Waco, needs to read this book. I heard once that the closer you get to "good guys" and "bad guys," the further you get from the truth. Mr. Reavis steers clear of the good-guy, bad-guy syndrome, therefore bringing truth and light to a subject the national media continues to ignore

This book covers the events that led to the Waco disaster as well as the disaster itself. It starts with the Millarites and proceeds all the way up through the raid, the siege and the trial of the surviving Davidians. It also covers the life of David Koresh from his birth to his death, and provides some interesting information about the lives of some of the other Davidians, and a very brief summary of the religious views of the community. Its description of events is both very readable and clear.

Perhaps the aspect of this book that I like the most is its even handedness. Many people seem to have a sense that a useful lie is often better than an inconvenient truth. To them making your case is what's important, and getting at the facts is secondary. Dick Reavis clearly rejects this and believes in bringing forth the truth, even when it does not support his own sympathies. I find this very refreshing. He covers both the seamy side of David Koresh, and the evidence of both illegal and immoral activity on the part of the Davidians and of law enforcement officials. Where evidence is inconclusive or conflicts with other evidence he lets us know what evidence there is, and lets us decide.

Perhaps more importantly than the catalog of events this book also gives us a look at the Davidians as people. It tries to tell us who these people were. We are presented information about life in Mt. Carmel, how they lived and how they viewed the world. This is at least as interesting as the presentation of the facts.

I do have some criticisms of this book. For one this book does have a tendency to waste its already too few pages on what amounts to side issues that seem to me irrelevant to an understanding of what happened at Waco. Examples of these include arguments about the constitutionality of gun control, and a digression on other apocalyptic groups with rather tenuous relationships with the events at Waco. Also, I would have liked to see more of the negotiation tapes. Apparently Dick Reavis had access to all of them, but in his book we get only brief glimpses at what was going on in the negotiations.

In all these complaints should be seen as very minor. This is an excellent book and a great summary of the events at Waco, from an author who deserves our thanks for sticking with the story for long enough to get at the facts, and for presenting them to us so clearly and objectively.

The Perl Utilities Guide, and Programming with Perl Modules books are very good. However, the reference to the modules is simply the perldoc pages neatly bound. The software is very good, and ActiveState continues to support it, so it was a good investment.

I have bought many books from Amazon, but I have never come back to write a review. I found this purchase to be my best resource, yet. Lots of perl resources in one location and a terrific debugger too. The debugger has an interface that is similar to Visual C++ Developer. If you don't want to spend all your time looking up information on intermediate to advance perl subjects, get this resource kit. The books alone will save you a lot of time.

This is an excellent resource once you reach intermediate status. The PRK covers subjects that no other book does, such as, using PerlScript in ASP. Other areas covered: Perl and COM, writing extensions for Perl, module reference for win32 Perl, and programming Perl modules. The free debugger alone is worth the cost of the package.

Now that I am finished with this novel and have moved on to my next read, I am having a hard time remembering much about David Lindsey's "An Absence of Light". Being a big fan of concise writing styles, such as Michael Crichton and Greg Iles, I found Lindsey's overly descriptive style distracting, particularly since the prose was often irrelevant to the action. If you are a fan of very wordy authors, I would direct you to someone like a Pat Conroy (of Prince of Tides fame), who despite being extremely descriptive and downright wordy, does it extremely well.

I wouldn't describe it as a bad book or a horrible read, just an extremely ambivalent one.

I enbjoyed this book and felt it stimulating! I was very moved by the authors work! It rates up there as agood one....almost as good as "Going Too Far", by that great up and coming author Steven Gardner

Reading this book reminds me of my childhood dreams in Ireland.

Crais does it again. The only reason I give this four and not five stars is I have come to expect so much of Crais that I have set his books for extremely high standards. Elvis Cole has developed the more tender side as his love life grows, but this doesn't take away from the intriguing mystery and the characters themselves. If anything I think these developments make Elvis become more realistic and add to the story. If you have read the previous books don't be worried that this will skip a beat.

For any concerned Spenser fans, I'll say that I was a fan of Crais before I picked up a Spenser novel, and I have to admit I was initially blown away by the thought that Elvis Cole and Joe Pike were a reenactment of Spenser and Hawk. After reading this book though I think that while Crais may have been inspired by Spenser's stories, that his books do not fall into the category of imitations. They definitely stand on their own. In other words if you love Spenser then you'll love these books too, for the characters and stories and you will be begging for the next one to come along.

I can only guess that this book is not published due to some issue between Crais and the publisher of this book and Indigo Slam. I found my copy at a used book store. It's definitely worth the search. No matter how you find it, pick it up and bring it home.

You're not into this Elvis Cole case too long before you realize that Crais is using the OJ Simpson case as a model. And if you haven't read any of Crais' Elvis Cole novels, you'll also realize before too long that Elvis and his partner Joe Pike are similar in tone to Robert Parker's Spenser and Hawk. But Robert Crais has the ability to take these similarities and craft them into a series and a detective novel with it's very own flavor. Cole is hired to check out a detective who may have planted evidence. His findings aren't consistent with what the defense team wants and Elvis is forced to switch teams and work with Joe Pike to clear up a mess he helped create. Elvis' romantic tangle with a lawyer from Louisiana is brought into play and takes up a little too much page time, but the the climatic 3rd of the book is as satisfying a set of confrontations as anyything in the Spenser series. Not all of the bad guys get their just desserts and Elvis vows at the end to hound those who get away, which would make a nice story for a future case. A great PI novel especially for those who distrust lawyers and the media, which is just about everybody but lawyers and members of the media.

Robert Crais has done a wonderful job of writing in the Elvis Cole mystery series. The wisecracking private investigator is back for the sixth novel in his series.

Cole is hired by the leading attorney for a multi-millionaire arrested for the murder of his wife. Cole is hot on the tail of the Los Angeles Police Department in suspecting that they have planted evidence in this murder case. As Cole and his "hired muscle" partner, Joe Pike, investigate further, the evidence starts to turn on the defense team. Things heat up with everyone wanting a piece of the self proclaimed "World's Greatest Detective." Throw in a surprise visit from Lucy, Cole's love interest, and you have an intense thriller.

What always makes Crais' novels so great is his well-developed, interestingly complex characters. He weaves an amazingly intricate storyline around these characters with well-described settings, making for a complete book.

This is another solid effort by Crais, and an excellent novel that is a pleasure to read. Enjoy the ride.