An epic poem so richly filled with wisdom, wordplay & laughs that a little of it is often enough. Dorn's characters - who are derived from both John Bunyan & Paul Bunyan - wander through a landscape that feels like a spaghetti western existing inside a Star Trek wormhole. All of the rituals of the Great American Desert are honored & performed in ways that surprise & delight. The cinematography is nonpareil. Does the Zlinger fall in love with Lil? Does he ride off into the Sunset of Happy Trails? Does Walter Brennan make a cameo appearance? Read on, fellow pilgrims, read on.

Bob Rixon

The late Ed Dorn wrote a masterpiece with "Gunslinger", an anti-epic poem that prefigures many post-modern gestures from its 60s era starting point. Funny, cartoonish, erudite to the extreme, it also locates a tuned lyricism in the Western vernaculars that Dorn uses: the metaphysical aspect of our legends, the sheer questing for answers as Euro-Americans come treading closer to a West coast that will stop them and force them to settle and create lives from dust and ingenuity, comes alive in way that never escapes the zaniness of Dorns' narrating inquiry into the nature of the search.

A masterpiece

Dorn has crafted a hysterical political allegory. Swift would've busted a gut at his work.

I'm taking one star off only because this novel wasn't really a page turner. It wasn't the kind of book you just have to finish in one sitting, the way I'd expect to with one of the shorter Danielle Steel novels such as this one. It was very easy to put down, and took me quite a bit of time to finish because the story was so predictable that you already knew what was going to happen and were not necessarily compelled to turn pages.

Nevertheless, what I did read, when I decided to pick it up, was somewhat poignant and tender in a very simple and childish way.

This novel would be good for teens as it deals with high schoolers who are in love and one teenager in particular, who gets herself into unfortunate circumstances, and then meets up with a sympathetic family that is going through it's own trauma. I can't really go further in describing the plot without giving away the whole story.

I think four stars is actually a bit generous. Still, the heartbreaking nature of the emotions the characters experience, even though Steel has a simplistic way of writing about them, provide enough warm and fuzzies which allow the reader to experience heartfelt emotion right along with the characters.

Think Nicholas Sparks "A Walk To Remember", even though in that novel, the teens experienced totally different issues. Steel's writing doesn't come close to the thought provoking and efficient nature of Sparks. But, the emotions and the fact that both novels deal with teens make both "A Walk..." and "The Gift" slightly similar.

This is the first Danielle Steel book I've read, but I simply loved it!! It's a great heart warming story. Although it leaves you wondering about the two main character's future, the book gives me hope... hope that there is a love two people can share, a true love that sees no judgment, just feeling... it gives me hope for the main characters... and it gives me hope that one day I'll just walk into some new place and who knows... lightning could strike... and my life will change for the better. Somewhat perdicable, although I would have preferred a different ending... some stories are wonderful to read even if you know how it unfolds. I hope there will be a sequel about Maribeth and Tommy... a made-for-tv-movie about this would be nice too.

The Gift by Danielle Steel is one of the best books that I have read so far. I am not an avid novel reader and I have to say that I am hard to impress. This book is about a happy couple with two lovable chidren, Tommy and their little precious daughter Annie. There is nothing else they could ask for in this world. On a Christmas Eve, a terrible thing happened, their youngest daughter Annie died of acute mengingitis. The whole family was devastated and the happy family was shattered into pieces. After months of sorrow, a girl named Maribeth came to their life. She had managed to bring back the happy smiles into their faces. It was her who gave them the most precious gift of all, a baby just like Annie that could bring back the joy and love they once had. The Gift will make you want to read until the end, non-stop. It is a love story, not just about teenagers falling in love, but also a story about a family bringing back love into their life. Danielle Steel makes me want to read some of her other novels hoping to get the same interest that I had with this novel. So if you are like me who hardly reads and wants to read something that will interest them and something they could relate to, this is the perfect book for you. I am absolutely giving this book a rate of perfect 10!!!!!

Buy and enjoy the whole thing (Ring of Bone) instead. Lew Welch may have been less certain about this and that, most of his life, than this selection or refinement suggests. When a writer disappears suddenly, the entire remaining mess is often interesting. Selections reveal much about their editors, of course.

I'm not sure how reviews about Lew Welch got attached to this record, but this is Ed Dorn's Selected Poems. I am very sorry to see that it's out of print because this excellent selection and Etruscan Book's High West Rendezvous together make up the best sampling of Dorn's work I've read outside of Gunslinger. (Read Gunslinger too.) I dream of the day a complete Poems appears, but until then the best of the best can be rounded up in this Selected and High West Rendezvous (for his later work). Both are recommended without reservation.

Lew Welch experimented with Life in These United States before choosing the Life of Poetry. Ring of Bone, collected and lightly/deftly edited and introduced by Donald Allen shortly after Lew's disappearance, reveals a man with more open eyes/ears and wider empathy than fellow (and dearly beloved) sons-of-witches who never wavered. Or never obviously wavered. Or never wavered all the way out of this world without a trace. The difference in tone and impact between this book and a later selection edited by Gary Snyder is profound. Amazon treats both as same for review purposes, but this is not so. Currently on back order, which is a bit frightening, since much of the less elegantly crafted or only semi-finalized writing included in this collection but absent from Selected Poems feels essential to me. Not just what Lew himself may have imagined, in the end, he should have written and released, but a wide smattering of what he did write, the bulk of the whole thing. In a clamshell.

This 160-page book provides coverage of the history and uniforms of each of Frederick's 13 Cuirassier, 12 Dragoon, and 10 Hussar regiments. Though the title states "1756-1763", this book, like its companion (The Infantry Regiments of Frederick the Great), covers the entire history of the units - in this case c. 1656-1807. Each regiment has two pages of history and organizational details, along with two color plates of its uniform and standard, makings it useful for all wargamers and armchair historians.

This book refers to telefaxes and manual pasteup. It may have been partially updated recently, but it is not terribly useful and certainly not worth the price. Buy the Graphics Art Guild Handbook instead.

The information in this book is very useful for starting a small advertising business. It offers information from setting up your agency to pricing each job. It's a small price to pay for the knowledge that I haved gained from this book.

When our company placed this order we could barely wait to receive the book. What a complete dissapointment! For the money I expected more than a flimsy, digest-size, 143 page book with 14 point type and the pages were only 1/4 to 1/2 worth of type. For example, one chapter titled "How Much Spec Work?" was only 9 sentences. Another chapter titles "Develop a Presentation Kit" didn't have any verbage on the topic, instead it simply showed 4 line-art images. Save your money! Who ever was responsible for putting a price tag based on the information/content given in this book should be ashamed of themselves!!