The Opera Journeys Mini Guide Series is just wonderful; it's like a "Cliff Note" of the opera, and extremely informative and educational. I particularly like the size; these guides are not cumbersome and fit right into my shirt pocket. The ladies will find sufficient room in their pocketbooks.

The story narrative with the music examples is excellent. I prefer it to a libretto; indeed, it's a much easier way to follow the essence of the story. The essay is magnificent; very well written, not pedantic, and extremely insightful and comprehensible. I congratulate Burton Fisher for a job very well done and Amazon for making these handy, information-laden booklets available. The Opera Journeys Mini Guide Series is a wonderful contribution to opera education and opera appreciation.

My tip: acquire the entire collection because you will be in easy reach of superbly presented opera guides consisting of story analysis, principal characters in the opera, story narrative with music highlights, background, analysis, and commentary.

Heinz Dinter, Ph.D.

The Opera Journeys Mini Guide Series is just wonderful; it's like a "Cliff Note" of the opera, and extremely informative and educational. I particularly like the size; these guides are not cumbersome and fit right into my shirt pocket. The ladies will find sufficient room in their pocketbooks.

The story narrative with the music examples is excellent. I prefer it to a libretto; indeed, it's a much easier way to follow the essence of the story. The essay is magnificent; very well written, not pedantic, and extremely insightful and comprehensible. I congratulate Burton Fisher for a job very well done and Amazon for making these handy, information-laden booklets available. The Opera Journeys Mini Guide Series is a wonderful contribution to opera education and opera appreciation.

My tip: acquire the entire collection because you will be in easy reach of superbly presented opera guides consisting of story analysis, principal characters in the opera, story narrative with music highlights, background, analysis, and commentary.

Heinz Dinter, Ph.D.

This amusing book is full of anecdotes, laughs, and short devotions for teachers. Patricia Ann Fischer helps dedicated educators to look at the lighter side of the teaching profession, while inspiring them with appropriate prayers and scripture. She portrays children and situations that every teacher, but especially "frontier teachers," will recognize and relate to, such as rainy days and required staff meetings. It can refresh even the most discouraged teachers and encourage them to keep on when the going gets tough. You're sure to laugh and cry your way through this oustanding book!

Lone Pine books are probably the most pleasing nature guides I've seen. They aren't as lean and functional as some of the great bird ID guides, they're... pleasing, like a really engaging encyclopedia. Their layout, their spare but well-written texts, their thoughtfully done range maps, their size and weight, their durable feeling, and just the overall tone of these books all feel right, just right.

As a publisher, Lone Pine seems to be aiming for spots that aren't saturated with competitors. They're also taking a regional approach. So, we get a "Plants of the Rocky Mountains" title from Lone Pine, with trees and perennials and annuals and so on, rather than an "Eastern Wildflowers" or something like that.

This Mammals book is more of a browsing sort of guide, a reference you skim through or go to check when you've see something, rather than an identification helper you'd use with binoculars. I'm sure it'd be fine as an actual ID guide too, but the idea here isn't to get a bunch of comparable deer species onto the same page to let you compare, it's to provide enough space for each species to really come into its own. (There is a little paragraph for each animal explaining what you could mistake for it, but that's not quite the same. And anyway, how many types of bear are there in the Rockies?) I've also seen a Squirrels guide from them that seemed to follow much the same style.

The format's beautiful, easy to use and very consistent. Each species includes at least one illustration and one photo, along with four pages of loving description. There are nice little callouts with explanatory text about behavior and so on. It's all extremely easy on the eye.

Once you've used one of this company's books, you'll probably want to set a shelf aside at your cabin.

Lilith Jones' beautiful, warm drawings are realistic and fine accompaniments to this simple story of various baby animals who don't resemble their parents. Animal mothers and babies are profiled in You Don't Look Like Your Mother, a very fine survey of differences.

A good overview of the basics of golf, with age appropriate pictures, narrative, etc. I must admit, however, that the title is a little deceiving - the book has nothing to do with Tiger Woods!

What A great way to help my kids kids understand the great game of golf.To my pleasant suprise the book has everything young and old need to know. I highly recommend all beginners take advantage of this easy reading,fun for all book!!!

This book has really helped in my writing skills. It encourages great handwriting and also encourages reading skills for a young growing mind.

Gary Fisher was a graduate student, fledgling writer, and Black gay man living in the Bay Area before his death in the mid-1990s. This book consists of two parts: a sample of short stories and poems and an autobiographical sketch based upon his diaries.

I don't know whether to thank the author, editor, and publishing company for challenging me and most other readers or to throw this book into an incinerator. One reviewer in the gay press called this writing "outre" and I wholeheartedly agree. I am thoroughly surprised that this book is available at non-pornographic outlets. Rafael Campo, Don Belton, and Eve Sedgwick all have raved about Fisher or helped this book come into fruition. I admire all three of those writers and enjoy their work, so I have no idea what they were thinking here. E. Lynn Harris' fans would roll over and die if they read this book! It's one thing for art to push the envelope, but an actual Black gay man made all the poor and crazy choices that Gary Fisher made. I had to work hard to keep my eyes in their sockets trying to get through this book.

While the fiction and poetry demonstrate the potential Fisher had, they are worthless. Things don't really get started until the autobiographical portion begins. This book invokes every "disrespectable" aspect of some gay people's lives; the Far Right could have a field day with this text. The shock value and goriness is very reminiscent of David Wojnarowicz's "Postcards from America" and Eve Sedgwick, the editor, basically admits as much in her conclusion. Adding racial matters into the mix only intensifies the uncomfort I felt. Issues such as dangerously unsafe sex practices, size-queeniness, Uncle Tom-ism, coprofilia, anonymous and public sex all come up and readers will be thoroughly shocked at how. The action in this book comes out of nowhere. Fisher never clearly states when he started to identify as gay, when he decided to practice masochism, when he tested positive for HIV, or when he met Eve Sedgwick. They all kinda just happen. Furthermore, he is a closeted gay and a black self-loather. He never once challenges homophobia or racism.

Eve Sedgwick praises Fisher's feelings on race as "complicated." Ha! Fisher makes very clear that he hated being black. Throughout his life he hardly associates with other blacks. He lets white gay men do all kinds of degrading things to him. While he listens to black music, you hardly hear anything about black literature, heroes, or friends. He does have sex with some black men, but he places white men on a pedestal and even enjoys when he is called racist epithets. Not only will straight Black readers be appalled, but gay Blacks will be both appalled and embarrassed. If bell hooks hated "Paris Is Burning," you can just imagine how she and others would trash this book. He is very race-conscious, but this guy didn't have an ounce of Black pride. Additionally, Fisher thinks in strictly black-white terms though he moved to California, a state with many Latinos and Asians. Sedgwick makes clear that Fisher wanted the book's title, but it nevertheless underlines all the ugly issues that his life brings up.

Possibly due to Sedgwick's editing and institutional connections, this book has the format, height, and font of many gay studies texts from Duke University Press. This is odd to see in a non-academic book. Some of the autobiographical part is ramblings of his fiction. I understand that characters sometimes speak to writers when they are creating art, but this made the book even more confusing, capricious, and repetitive. Fisher asks many rhetorical questions that need question marks, yet Sedgwick fails to edit them in. Fisher obviously read much yet music seems to have moved his life far more than literature did.

I do love the fact that Fisher was attracted to heavy guys. There is a lot of prejudice against fat men in the gay community and this one aspect of Fisher was a breath of fresh air. At a time when many coming-out stories are being produced by gay men, few are done by gay Blacks and SM-practitioners. Also, Fisher is an "Army brat" and not enough has been written about their lives. This book adds to the collection of AIDS writings which is formidable. The reader does get to observe how AIDS has robbed us of someone who had talent. And it is provocative in a way.

STILL, LET ME WARN ALL READERS THAT THEY BETTER HAVE A STRONG STOMACH, NO POLITICALLY CORRECT LEANINGS, AND AN INCREDIBLY THICK SKIN IF THEY ARE GOING TO READ THIS BOOK. YOU HAVE BEEN ADVISED!