This book provides a wonderful summary of African-American history--it's comprehensive and full of little known historical facts. I think this book provides a very good starting point for anyone that would like to learn more about African-American history. BUT, the grammar, syntax, use of cliches and lack of organization may prove distracting for many readers. I read this book after reading a book on how to improve my own writing and many of the "writing don'ts" in that book find a home in this book. HOWEVER, the information was worth the frustration.

I read this book for my African American history class, and I don't think I would have read it if it hadn't been for the class, but I really liked it! I learned a lot that I know I'll take with me for years to come. All the really big important African American leaders are represented here, and all of their portraits are exciting...

This is a good book to go along with all the policitcally correct studies of Mr. Franklin in our public schools. This is the more controversial side, the cantankerous side, the mischievous side of our great American patriot.

Mr. Franklin's writings on choosing a mistress are both funny and eye opening. His letter to those holding a scientific competition asking that they find a way to improve the smell of 'human wind' is absolutely hilarious. His perceptions on what happens when you try to please everyone are very insightful but seldom taught.

Mr. Franklin's article that tears down the actions of the free press of his day are also relevant today. He was a great believer in freedom of speach but a watch dog of press.

Although this book is short, it is worth the read. We should be teaching our children the entire Ben Franklin (as we should with all historical figures) not just the politically correct view that we now teach to them. Read this book, decide for yourself.

This is truly a fun little book. It's worth having on your shelf when friends come over and peruse your collection. Without fail they'll pull this one out thinking it's nothing but potty humor. Then they see WHO?!?! Ben Franklin?!?!!? WHAT?!?!?

This very small book is a collection of the satire of Ben Franklin. Those of you looking for a good book of fart jokes will be deeply disappointed. Those looking for a good laugh will not be. Those looking to learn more about Ben Franklin will learn a great deal.

A few must-reads are "Rules on Making Oneself Disagreeable" (though farting is not mentioned), "On choosing a Mistress" (again, no farting, but it's hilarious), and the best of all "A Letter to a Royal Academy" in which Franklin makes a suggestion to a group of scientists: throw away all your abstract theory and find a way to make farts smell nice. It is the most subtle and disparaging piece I've ever read, and it rides that line between "is he SERIOUS?!?" and "is this is a joke!??!"

There are actually historically important pieces in this book, believe it or not. Don't let the title throw you. "Rules by Which a Great Empire May Be Reduced" is cutting satire from right before the American revolution. It ran in papers of the time and made an impact. "The Speech of Miss Polly Baker," about a woman having children out of wedlock, was reported as fact throughout the colonies until Franklin admitted the joke.

And finally, for those looking for good fart humor, there's "The Dream" from which the book takes its title. Read and giggle 'till you cough.

Something the book does not mention is that many of these pieces were originally published anonymously, as was the custom in the 18th century. You would not have seen "'Fart Proudly' by Benjamin Franklin" in the press. Instead there would have been no name on the piece or a false one. Franklin assumed numerous false names throughout his life, as did most authors of the time. Writing was more about what was being written than who was writing it. This has changed drastically in the intervening centuries.

Hopefully this selection will whet your appetite for more Ben Franklin. He wrote an incredible amount, much of it is very funny as well as significant. He was no stodgy old professor, as this book more than proves. If you enjoy this collection, go out and get more, or read a biography. You'll find there's much more to Ben Franklin than you ever thought.

Fart Proudly is a collection of Ben Franklin's lesser known but most interesting writings. They cover a variety of subjects but all exhibit Franklin's questioning nature and many show a sense of humor I never guessed present in Ben. The book's title is derived from a letter he wrote to the scholars at the Royal Collages in England, whom he considered petty and constipated. Highly recommended.

"The House On The Point" is a modern rewrite of the classic Hardy Boys adventure, "The House On The Cliff".
Reading it brings to mind the old axiom: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
The original "The House On The Cliff" is one of the best of the Hardy Boys canon and can scarcely be improved on, yet the author tries - vainly.
For no reason at all, he changes the name of some of the major recurring characters in the series and has the Hardy Boys and their friends jive-talking in 40's slang.
The original outline for "The House On The Cliff" is available to any researcher at the NY Public Library. The author should have consulted that instead of attempting to "modernize" this classic story with his rather bizarre ideas.
Your best bet is to stick with the [original version of] "The House On The Cliff".

I have no idea what the author was trying to do here--other than jump on the HB nostalgia bandwagon that began rolling several decades ago when Leslie MacFarlaine wrote his fine book about being the ghostwriter for the HB series ("Ghost of the Hardy Boys"). But I could not get through the first ten pages of "House on the Point." Big deal. The Hardys get a little older. They now dig cars and hot music. Who cares. The original texts are what they are. Take 'em or leave 'em. They do NOT need to be improved, enlightened, brought "up to date" (their old-fashioned charm was what I liked most about them), deconstructed or corrected. Save your money and get one of the Applewood reissues of the original HB texts.

Hoff set out to rewrite a classic Hardy Boys tale (#2 in the series), fleshing out the plot and making the characters more real. He scaled down the plot of the original House on the Cliff to the bare bones and built up from there. He succeeded.

These are the Hardys as you've never seen them - real. These Hardys are not perfect (even Frank!). Joe jokes and teases more, Chet is known by the Bayport police as a prankster, Tony Prito has a NY accent and works in his father's produce business and Callie Shaw and Iola Morton actually help solve the case!

The biggest difference in this version of House on the Cliff is that the Hardys use step-by-step logic and 1940s methods to figure things out and solve problems along the way, just as their father would have taught them. When they dust for prints and pick locks, the reader is right there with them. No sleight of hand glossing over these things, the Hardys' methods are spelled out for the reader.

Callie & Iola are real girls. Iola makes Joe very nervous until she cries, thus making her human in his eyes. She's a smart-aleck. The boys talk over their plans with each other and the girls. The girls volunteer to talk to the house's owner under the guise of working on a project for school. While they're in the house, they figure out where the secret passageways are (because the windows aren't placed correctly inside the house), sketch various things (including a tire track that amazes Frank later in the story) and find an important clue that wasn't in the original book.

The story is infused with 1940s slang and music. The boys like cars and talk about them - Chet's coupe scrapes bottom going over the rutted roads, because he fixed it up as a low rider (lead sled) "to impress girls". Chet and Tony even talk about asking girls out on dates. The biggest change comes at the end of the book, but I won't ruin it for you. :-)

The book includes the re-written version of The House on the Cliff (renamed The House on the Point), an epilogue describing all the changes the author made to the original story, and an essay on the differences in American culture since 1947, the year in which the book was set.

Great attention to detail. Highly recommended!

I suppose this book could be a very basic first step for people that never, in their whole life, asked themselves about death and never even look outside the window to watch nature. It starts great with the statement that WE ALL ARE GOING TO DIE. But from there, is bla bla, with superficial examples that not support the cientific method she tried to use in the book to reach conclusions. She never explain how to reach and help a person that is in a terminal condition, or how to explain to him/her that death is unavoidable. In fact, I read the book in less than one day because I didn't want to return later to finish it. With so many good books outthere about death, this is one you should pass.

This book does NOT contain the typical advice on how to cope and what to do when a loved one dies, so it may not be for you if that's what you want. It is rather a spiritual approach to death that grew out of the author's relationship with a loved one who died prematurely. I found it a breath of fresh air because it turns upside down a lot of the traditional negative ways the Western world looks at death. The author says that if you are suffering too much, you probably have misconceptions about what death means. She came to new conclusions about death from personal experience and shares them in a very moving and generous way. Because of this, the book can perhaps help you cope in a much deeper and more satisfying way than the rest of the stuff you're likely to find out there.

As I journey throught the experience of watching my grandmother make her transition, Start the Conversation is helping me to think of death in a new way. The reminders that we are eternal and that by just being willing to show up for the experience we release our fears. The conversation is ultimately about my belief system, about me. The book gives one much food for thought.

"Ben Franklin of Old Philadelphia" was a very poorly written and boring book. I think this book was very boring because it was indescriptive and had very little action. This is a biography of Benjamin Franklin. I am not trying to imply that Benjamin Franklin lived a boring life. It is just that this book does not describe Benjamin Franklin's life very well. I highly recommend you DO NOT read this horrible book, and if you are one of those stubborn people who must read this very undetailed book anyway, I suggest that you read a couple pages, then skip ten times as many pages as you just read

If you've been playing Nintendo all night and watching TV all day, the pace of this book is going to seem slow in comparison. But for the serious young reader who wants to learn interesting historical facts, this is a terrific book by a terrific author in a terrific series.

The book is really a compilation of letters, memos and accounts of Benjamin Franklin - probably the greatest diplomat in U. S. history. The language and prose of the audio book is somewhat difficult to follow since it's authentic style is from the 1700's. Listening to the audio book version straight through seemed somewhat dry, but gave me a distinct respect for the amount of thought placed in each word Franklin used that showed his genuine compassion for others methodically thought out in advance. The work does in fact provide a valid, first-hand account of the events leading to the diplomacy of the Revolutionary War, but my one fascination came from the way Franklin became such a gifted diplomat. He dealt with refining his own character imperfections out of his habitual life by finding a personal "flaw" and intently focusing on the correction of that single flaw for one week; thereby infusing a new "good" habit in lieu of the previous one. He truly learned "How to Win Friends and Influence People" before Carnegie thought of it...That small morsel of what Franklin did (and how) is worth the price of the book to me - and if you get it, you'll understand too.

The book is really a compilation of letters, memos and accounts of Benjamin Franklin - probably the greatest diplomat in U. S. history. The language and prose of the audio book is somewhat difficult to follow since it's authentic style is from the 1700's. Listening to the audio book version straight through seemed somewhat dry, but gave me a distinct respect for the amount of thought placed in each word Franklin used that showed his genuine compassion for others methodically thought out in advance. The work does in fact provide a valid, first-hand account of the events leading to the diplomacy of the Revolutionary War, but my one fascination came from the way Franklin became such a gifted diplomat. He dealt with refining his own character imperfections out of his habitual life by finding a personal "flaw" and intently focusing on the correction of that single flaw for one week; thereby infusing a new "good" habit in lieu of the previous one. He truly learned "How to Win Friends and Influence People" before Carnegie thought of it...That small morsel of what Franklin did (and how) is worth the price of the book to me - and if you get it, you'll understand too.

Benjamin Franklin was a hard-working inventor, scientist,and improver of his society. The book was a very interesting and factual book. It included the history and life of Benjamin Franklin. The author has many good things in the biography like: subtitles, little stories, and informational parts in the book. A person that would like to read this book would be a history buff interested in the early times of America. This book was unique because the author did what was necessary and added more details. The author's intellectual style and methods were informative. I felt the author did a good job on the life and story of Benjamin Franklin. To find out more about his life his role in our country's past then read the book The Importance of Benjamin Franklin by Gail B. Stewart.

Benjamin Franklin is a hard-working inventor and interesting man of his time. The book was a very factual book. Including the history and life of Benjamin Franklin. The author has many good things in the book like: subtitles, and little stories and tid-bits of information about Ben Franklin and the time period. A history buff or a person interested in the founding of American. It is put in the author's opinion and time period of Ben Franklin. The author used good decribing words and very intelligent words write the book. I liked her style of writing and what she did with the biography. To find out more about a man our country's past then read this book. To see how Benjamin Franklin improved a way of living in his time and ours a how he viewed life than read The Importance of Benjamin Franklin by Gail B. Stewart.

I wasn't going to assign stars since I'm not qualified to judge the scholarship, but the system forces me to do so. Jennings claims to have examined previously ignored sources, and one must surely commend him for that. The book is generally impressive, but some of the cases where I can judge Jennings' reasoning make me wonder about his judgement in the cases where I have to take his word. My remarks are as a general reader with an interest in Franklin (I've read 3 biographies). The title is a little deceptive here. The book starts off as a biography of Franklin, and ends there, but the topic for most of the book changes to politics in Pennsylvania in the mid-1700s, and the focus is no longer particularly on Franklin, it could easily be said to focus as much on William Smith or Thomas Penn. I don't know what other people are expecting, but I don't think that Jennings has pulled any mask off of Franklin, revealing some previously unknown qualities. Two of the biographies I have read also affected to be iconographic, but neither of those surprised me either. Jennings certainly tries hard, and sometimes a little too hard. I agree with him completely that we should avoid mythologizing people and events, but I don't think this is a good way to go about reversing the trend. I am reminded of the advice to a new lawyer: if the law is with you, pound the law; if the facts are with you, pound the facts; if neither is with you, pound the table. He amply demonstrates that Franklin's Autobiography is selective and self-serving, but I don't think this is a new insight, and indeed is what one might expect of almost any autobiography, which is why I seldom read them. He is pounding the table in chapter 5, however, when he focuses special attention on a passage in the Autobiography where the Proprietary party offers to make it worth Franklin's while to stop opposing Penn. Franklin says that he replied that he fortunately didn't need their favors. Jennings calls this a near lie since Franklin had enjoyed their favors earlier. To prove this, he quotes Franklin's account in the Autobiography, some 60 pages earlier, of the honors that he had received. Since Franklin told his readers about these earlier honors, he isn't being deceptive and we are left with only a petty argument about word usage that isn't worth pursuing. Jennings also holds up a number of examples of what he apparently views as Franklin's bigotry, but he may find that many of his readers do not find Franklin as distasteful as he hopes, for many of these issues are with us today: how do we react to people who refuse to learn English or assimilate? Is it possible or desirable for us to affirm all of the varied and often contradictory views of our fellow citizens? Can we sharply disapprove of some aspect of another person's life and still work with them for shared social goals without being a hypocrite or seeming to approve of everything they do?

This book is interesting it has a lot of information and a lot of details thats why i give this book three stars

I'm still reading this book, the first one in this series that I've read. It seems to be accurate in its historical details, and the mystery itself is intriguing. But the incredibly annoying thing about it is the narrator's constant and continual references to past occurences in the series. I might have given it higher mark but for that.