Author Robert Creamer has created one of the finest George Herman "Babe" Ruth biographies. This book incorporates a plurality of fascinatingly engrossing details about the baseball career and non-baseball activities of Babe Ruth.
This portrait describes Babe evolving from his tumultuous life in Baltimore as the delinquent son of a saloonkeeper into whom many people consider as the greatest baseball hitter and baseball player of all time.
Robert Creamer gives the reader an exceptionally in-depth description of Babe Ruth's life activities, attitudes and habits before the beginning of his major league baseball career. Creamer even mentions a few facts about Babe's minor league baseball playing roommate Rodger Pippen who roomed with Ruth during their 1914 International League season. Although not germane to the Babe's career I do wish that Creamer had given a very brief history about Rodger Pippen's history and his later-to-be significance to Baltimore. Pippen's International League statistics for that 1914 season were omitted. After Pippen's baseball career he later became a notable sports editor for the "Baltimore News-Post". Rodger Pippen was the primary individual who convinced Baltimore to create Memorial Stadium n the early 1950's. It is also believed that he may have been the first individual to create the phrase "Believe-It-Or-Not!". Rodger Pippen was a longtime friend of my great-grandfather Boston Fear's family. When Babe Ruth was dying from cancer he decided to make one last trip back to Baltimore to visit Rodger Pippen, other friends and family.
Robert Creamer presents many detailed facets about Babe Ruth's baseball career with the Boston Red Sox, the New York Yankees and the Boston Braves. It would have been a bit more of an improvement if Creamer had explored the Babe's epic making record breaking 1927 sixty home run season in more exquisitely minute detail. The biography could also have given the reader a more behind-the-scenes explanation of the silent and talking movies the Babe played in. Also, Babe Ruth's life after his major league baseball career ( the retirement years ) and his off-season exhibition baseball performances could have gone into more depth. Perhaps some day a Ruthian baseball scholar will write a book comprising these oft-overlooked topics.
Robert Creamer's book splendidly evokes an appreciation of how highly important Babe Ruth was to revolutionizing and popularizing baseball. This biography is most definitely one of the "must-read" books about Babe Ruth. Every baseball lover should possess a copy of this book on their home bookshelf.
Babe Ruth may very well be the most famous American athlete of all time. No less an authority as baseball hall-of-famer Ted Williams called Babe Ruth "the greatest baseball hitter and baseball player of all time" and that "Babe Ruth was Bunyanesque ( like the mythological folk tale Paul Bunyan ) bigger than life".
For a small state in geographical square mile area Maryland certainly has produced an unusual statistically high proportion of Baseball Hall of Fame players ( e.g. Babe Ruth, Jimmy Foxx, John Franklin "Home Run" Baker, Judy Johnson, Robert Moses "Lefty" Grove, Al Kaline ) or potential-to-be Baseball Hall of Fame inductees ( e.g. Cal Ripken, Jr., Harold Baines, Bill "Swish" Nicholson ). However our state is very proud to state that we produced "The Sultan of Swat" , "The Bambino", "The Maharajah of Maul", etc. who is otherwise known as George Herman "Babe" Ruth! Even some of Babe Ruth's descendants today live around the Baltimore, Hagerstown and Salisbury cities of Maryland.

Of the 200+ baseball books I've read, "Babe: The Legend Comes to Life" is my favorite. Creamer wrote the book while some of the old-timers were still alive, and this makes his story come to life. If you want to learn about Babe Ruth, this is the definitive book to read.

The book captures not only the facts of the Babe's life, but his spirit and feel as well. You almost believe you were back in the times of his life, with the state of mind of the fans, the ballplayers, etc. The Babe remains bigger than life today, and you can only imagine how big he was then. Creamer takes you beneath the surface and gets you into the real life and times of Babe Ruth, the greatest player ever. You will find how despite his shortcomings, Babe Ruth was a real, warm and genuine individual, with an absolute soft spot for children. Five stars, hands down!

This is what I thought of the book. I thought it was a good book, it was interesting to read. Basically, the book was about Malcolm's plans and his murder. He went to jail when he was young then became a Muslim. He eventually broke away from the Muslims and started his own movement. The police didn't like Malcolm or his organization of Negroes. He thought blacks and whites should be seperated. Unlike Martin Luther King, he believed in the violent approach. He was killed in a ballroom. The author wants to know the reason the police didn't look further into the investigation. That's what the book is written about.

This book combines on the spot reporting of the murder of Malcolm X that exposes the flaws in the NYPD's claims about the murder with a look back at the murder taken after COINTELPRO, the FBI's campaign against the civil rights, antiwar, and other progressive movements which included following and disrupting the life of Malcolm X. This is combined with political defense of Malcolm's ideas and his course of struggle in the time after he broke with the Muslims. For those who think the NYPD and the FBI are heroes, and who think that the US government should not be feared in regard to protecting the civil liberties of people in struggle, this is the book to read!

"Carnival of Saints" is a delightful novel of a comedy troupe traveling through 16th century Italy, and becoming entagled in the Machiavellian politics of the time. Herman creates interesting and believable characters that interact with historical figures of the time. At times it reads like a tv sitcom, so I took away one star, but this was generally an enjoyable novel.

Carnival of Saints is a story set in Renassance Italy in the year 1502. This story tracks the people in the band of Wayward Saints, a group of ragtag misfits drawn in for various reasons. Now, on to the review. This book is amazing, and I'm very upset to see that it's out of print. It has the most priceless moments... the humor is rolling on the ground-breaking your ribs type stuff. Hilarious. There are some sexual suggestions, but nothing too bad. This book is wonderful, and definatly worth getting.

Herman Melville's style of detailed descriptions certainly comes though in this slim 210-page volume written in 1846. He describes life aboard ship, the geography of the island and the technical aspects of making clothing, tattooing and preparing food as well as many native ritual customs. This is all seen through the eyes of his lead character, Tom, called Tommo by the natives. The book put me right there with him, when, exhausted and starved, he and Toby, the other seaman he jumped ship with, find their way into the world of the Typees. The two sailors are treated well, but are kept virtual prisoners and there is apprehension throughout about the Typees' cannibal tendencies. In spite of that, there is also joy as Tommo views the simple and carefree life of the people he considers savages and contrasts it to life in the so-called "civilized world".

The Typees seem perennially happy and content. They spend a lot of time amusing themselves as food is plentiful and there is not much work to do. Their lives are idealized so much that I found myself raising a quizzical eyebrow at times. But the story was so good and so well written that I didn't let it get in my way of enjoying the book, which must have been received with similar delight when it was published as it not only painted a picture of a better world, it appealed to everyone's sense of adventure.

I loved the book, especially the social commentary. I found myself reading it quickly and at odd times during to day just to see what would happen on the next page. It sure was a good story and seems as fresh and meaningful today it when was published more than a century and a half ago.

Herman Melville's "Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life" tells the story of a white sailor who lives for a time among the Typees, a native people of a Pacific island. According to a "Note on the Text" in the Penguin Classics edition, this book first appeared in 1846 in no less than four different editions.

"Typee" is a marvelous story of cross-cultural contact. It is also a fascinating glimpse at a pre-industrial culture; Tom (known as "Tommo" to the Typees) describes in detail the food, dress, tattooing, physiology, musical instruments, architecture, warfare, religious practices, and social customs of the Typees. The book is full of vividly portrayed characters: the gentle beauty Fayaway, the "eccentric old warrior" Marheyo, the talkative "serving-man" Kory-Kory, and more.

Melville's prose style in "Typee" is irresistible: the writing is fresh, lively, and richly descriptive. There is a satirical thrust to much of the book. And there is a lot of humor; at many points I literally laughed out loud. Such scenes as the description of a wild pig's frustrated efforts to break open a coconut really showcase Melville's comic flair.

A major theme of "Typee" is that of the "noble savage" (Melville actually uses the term). The narrator often wonders whether Typee life is in some ways better than Western life, and is quite critical of the work of Christian missionaries among Pacific Island peoples. The book is richly ironic, as Melville's narrator reflects on the problematic nature of cross-cultural observation: "I saw everything, but could comprehend nothing" (from Chapter 24).

"Typee" is more than just a colorful travelogue or a philosophical reflection; it is also a genuinely exciting and suspenseful adventure story. Melville's story of a visitor to a strange alien world curiously anticipates a major theme of 20th century science fiction; thus a novel like Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Left Hand of Darkness" would make a fascinating companion text. Also recommended as a companion text: "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass," another 19th century American classic which casts a critical light on Eurocentric Christianity.

In Chapter 17 of this book, the narrator conveys his feelings about the differences between Western civilization and other cultures: "The term 'savage' is, I conceive, often misapplied, and indeed when I consider the vices, cruelties, and enormities of every kind that spring up in the tainted atmosphere of a feverish civilization, I am inclined to think that so far as the relative wickedness of the parties is concerned, four or five Marquesan islanders sent to the United States as missionaries might be quite as useful as an equal number of Americans dispatched to the islands in a similar capacity." This portrayal of primitive cultures as being more civilized than Western society is part of a long tradition, beginning at least with Montaigne's essay "Of Cannibals." This and other similar statements by Melville in this work caused quite a tempest in Europe and the United States, but one which was a gentle breeze, compared to the current storm raging in academia regarding the origins and validity of the terms "civilized" and "primitive."

I am myself interested in the statement above for another reason. Some fifty years ago, a small group of inhabitants of the Marquesas Islands, in which this book is set, came across this romance. They had long before adopted Western ways, but these individuals decided to use Melville's work as a means to recreate the pastoral moment which the author had captured in this book. Such an effort was as feasible as would be an attempt to recreate the America portrayed in Norman Rockwell's paintings, but these islanders were convinced of the necessity and possibility of this act, and they reconstructed, with admirable accuracy, a past that had never existed. They gave up their new houses, their churches, their Western foods, for a lifestyle closer to that portrayed in this work, a large part of which consists of quasi-anthropological description of rituals, feasts, customs and dress. Naming children after characters in the book became common, though only in those regions in which the Melvilles, as they were called, were predominant, just as there are still a few adults named Rainbow and Sunflower in the U.S., a legacy of the hippie movement. And in keeping with the full spirit of Melville's portrait of the Marquesans, and inspired by the passage I cited above, several families did indeed move to the United States in order to proselytize their lifestyle to the Westerners whose ways these Marquesans had rejected.

It is well known that their efforts failed, for the most part, both here and in their home country, but it was a happy accident that my interest in Melville led me to meet Fayaway, one of the descendants of that tribe of emigrants to the United States, and that she and I would soon after wed. As a result, I have become indoctrinated into the remnants of this culture; without either of us being true adherents to the religion, we observe its customs, much as agnostics celebrate Christmas. Our favorite part of the entire set of customs is to replay the Ritual of the Canoe from Chapter 18, as gently erotic now as when it was written, first in Hobomok Lake in Phoenicia, New York, and more recently in Malibu Lake, California. The puritanical fussbudgets in both neighborhoods were appropriately scandalized.

As a result of my marriage to the living incarnation of the female protagonist of the romance, I am well familiar with this work, and must say that it is more nearly perfect, in its own way, than is Melville's masterpiece _Moby Dick_. It embodies many of the same themes as that larger work, and reveals, because of its imperfections, a deep glimpse into the author's mind and his longing for that tropical paradise where he sought Arcadia and found a nymph fit to his fancy. Rarely have adolescent male fantasies been given such a beautifully complex form, and if, as many have noted, the anthropological tangents detract from the narrative, it is helpful to recall that Melville was attempting create a fiction that looked like an authentic travel narrative, and that in any case those tangents can become of themselves interesting diversions, and commentary on the greater narrative. They even inspired a small group of South Pacific Islanders to fly from their homes and settle in the wilderness of the United States, in an effort to save us from our wicked ways.

I liked the book, There's An Owl In The Shower, because it is funny and shows it's expression. Children and adults of all ages would enjoy it. It is about a boy and his family, and an owl. Borden, a character in the book, hates spotted owls because they "stole" his dad's job. When Borden finds a spooted owls that has no stots yet he takes it home to take care of it. When you read the book you'll find out what happens to the boy, his family, and the owl. You'll enjoy the book if you enjoy nature.

I think There's an owl in the shower was a good book because I really like owls. The book is about a boy that hates owls because his dad lost his job because of them. So he goes out to kill them but instead ends up saving one. his dad says he's going to kill the owl but gets to attached to it. Thus begans vthe stor of Bardy the owl.

This book is about a boy, his father, and a spotted owl. The boy, Borden, hates spotted owls. They made his dad lose a job at a logging company. But one day, he finds a lost, hungry little owlet, and, thinking it's a barred owl, takes him home and gets him healthy again. It isn't until the owl gets totally hooked on them that they find out what kind of owl he is. Can Borden pick up enough courage to tell his dad that the barred owl he has learned to love is really a spotted owl, the kind he hates? If you want to learn more about owls in a fun story, read this book, "There's an Owl in the Shower." I tell you, you're gonna love it!

I really enjoyed this book. As a baseball fan (and a NYY fan), I had to read about Ruth. A great person from some aspects, this book took a look at the Babe from every point of view. It showed Ruth from his private and public life, his love life to his Saturday night (to Sunday morning)life. This was a very good book.

This is the story of Herman and George Brown and the engineering and construction firm, Brown & Root, they founded. From humble origins in Central Texas building roads with a team of mules to much larger projects such as damns, military installations, ship building, offshore platforms and industrial plants. The book is not about the history of Brown and Root, but rather focuses on the lives of both brothers and their political and philanthropic activities. The book shows the relationship between the brothers and an up and coming Congressman from Texas in the 1930's, Lyndon Johnson. The book chronciles the parallel rise of both the Brown brothers' company and Lyndon Johnson in the national and international scene. The book shows the Brown brothers as movers and shakers in Houston politics and how they helped shape the growing city in the 1940's and 50's. A good book for anyone interested in construction as well as the history and poltics of Texas.

I enjoy George Herman's style and humor. The characters are all so real and witty. The use of Di Vinci as a crime solver is a brilliant idea. A lot of historical mystery novels feature sleuths whose talents are limited to being at the right place at the right time in ways that are predictable and contrived, but Di Vinci actually uses his well documented gifts for mathematics and science in a manner similiar to those of modern crime scene investigators. This is exactly the type of historic mystery that I love to read!

I do not mean to offend anyone, but Moby Dick is a disappointment. Having read several reviews on the text, I believed it was one of the greatest of American Literary works. When I began, the tale proved to be accepatable and I found its insights profound indeed. However, the story quickly became tedious and boring (it seemed that Melville could not come up with any new material, so expanded on the mental processes of Ishmael). I wondered how readers could rate a story which had little (if any) plot and moved extremely slowly, as a great novel. True, literature is seldom interesting, and authors like Dickens and George Eliot are hardly better than Melville, but nevertheless, I believe that a literary text should at least be able to engage the reader and make him/her interested enough in it to finish it, so that the message can be fully comprehended. I did not finish Moby Dick and perhaps never will. I do not recommend it to readers. However, to give Melville credit, Moby Dick is an accurate portrayl of the American spirit in that context and thus, in that sense, does hold that mirror up to nature, as literature often does.

I first read Moby Dick; or The Whale over thirty years ago and I didn't understand it. I thought I was reading a sea adventure, like Westward Ho! or Poe's Arthur Gordon Pym. In fact, it did start out like an adventure story but after twenty chapters or so, things began to get strange. I knew I was in deep water. It was rough, it seemed disjointed, there were lengthy passages that seemed like interruptions to the story, the language was odd and difficult, and often it was just downright bizarre. I plodded through it, some of it I liked, but I believe I was glad when it ended. I knew I was missing something and I understood that it was in me! It wasn't the book; it was manifestly a great book, but I hadn't the knowledge of literature or experience to understand it.

I read it again a few years later. I don't remember what I thought of it. The third time I read it, it was hilarious; parts of it made me laugh out loud! I was amazed at all the puns Melville used, and the crazy characters, and quirky dialog. The fourth or fifth reading, it was finally that adventure story I wanted in the first place. I've read Moby Dick more times than I've counted, more often than any other book. At some point I began to get the symbolism. Somewhere along the line I could see the structure. It's been funny, awesome, exciting, weird, religious, overwhelming and inspiring. It's made my hair stand on end...

Now, when I get near the end I slow down. I go back and reread the chapters about killing the whale, and cutting him up, and boiling him down. Or about the right whale's head versus the sperm whale's. I want to get to The Chase but I want to put it off. I draw Queequeg with his tattoos in the oval of a dollar bill. I take a flask with Starbuck and a Decanter with Flask. Listen to The Symphony and smell The Try-Works. Stubb's Supper on The Cabin Table is a noble dish, but what is a Gam? Heads or Tails, it's a Leg and Arm. I get my Bible and read about Rachel and Jonah. Ahab would Delight in that; he's a wonderful old man. For a Doubloon he'd play King Lear! What if Shakespeare wrote The Tragedy of The Whale? Would Fedallah blind Ishmael with a harpoon, or would The Pequod weave flowers in The Virgin's hair?

Now I know. To say you understand Moby Dick is a lie. It is not a plain thing, but one of the knottiest of all. No one understands it. The best you can hope to do is come to terms with it. Grapple with it. Read it and read it and study the literature around it. Melville didn't understand it. He set out to write another didactic adventure/travelogue with some satire thrown in. He needed another success like Typee or Omoo. He needed some money. He wrote for five or six months and had it nearly finished. And then things began to get strange. A fire deep inside fret his mind like some cosmic boil and came to a head bursting words on the page like splashes of burning metal. He worked with the point of red-hot harpoon and spent a year forging his curious adventure into a bloody ride to hell and back. "...what in the world is equal to it?"

Moby Dick is a masterpiece of literature, the great American novel. Nothing else Melville wrote is even in the water with it, but Steinbeck can't touch it, and no giant's shoulders would let Faulkner wade near it. Melville, The pale Usher, warned the timid: "...don't you read it, ...it is by no means the sort of book for you. ...It is... of the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships' cables and hausers. A Polar wind blows through it, & birds of prey hover over it. Warn all gentle fastidious people from so much as peeping into the book..." But I say if you've never read it, read it now. If you've read it before, read it again. Think Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Goethe, and The Bible. If you understand it, think again.

It's always dangerous to label a book as a "masterpiece": that word seems to scare away most readers and distances everyone from the substance of the book itself. Still, I'm going to say that this is the Greatest American Novel because I really think that it is--after having read it myself.

Honestly, Moby Dick IS long and looping, shooting off in random digressions as Ishmael waxes philosophical or explains a whale's anatomy or gives the ingredients for Nantucket clam chowder--and that's exactly what I love about it. This is not a neat novel: Melville refused to conform to anyone else's conventions. There is so much in Moby Dick that you can enjoy it on so many completely different levels: you can read it as a Biblical-Shakespearean-level epic tragedy, as a canonical part of 19th Century philosophy, as a gothic whaling adventure story, or almost anything else. Look at all the lowbrow humor. And I'm sorry, but Ishmael is simply one of the most likable and engaging narrators of all time.

A lot of academics love Moby Dick because academics tend to have good taste in literature. But the book itself takes you about as far from academia as any book written--as Ishmael himself says, "A whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard." Take that advice and forget what others say about it, and just experience Moby Dick for yourself.

I originally bought this book hoping to learn more about the so-called "poison widows." What I got was a book that devotes more than two thirds of its pages to the trial. There is alot of extra info about the lawyers in this case that I really didn't think helped the flow of this book.
The author only briefly delves into what life was like back in the early part of the century. There is even briefer mention about the women's lives. You are told in passing that some of the men beat their wives, for instance.
The main portion of the book, the trial, isn't told very well either. I understand that there were alot of women that went to trial, but most of them get a few pages. Two of the trial lawyers get more coverage than most of these women.
Overall, more of a general synopsis of what happened than anything with real depth.

Really interesting story. Good colorful, funny characters. I learned a lot about life in the Italian community of Philadelphia in the 1930's. I especially enjoyed the funny "voodoo" that the killers practiced and victims believed in. Very entertaining. I can't believe they got away with so many murders before they were caught. A good "gang that couldn't shoot straight" type tale. And it's all true!