What do you get when you put together more than a dozenWarhols, a serenity of gods, and a child who receives, casually, theworld's greatest secret from her alien bride on her way to underspace?

Heaven.

No. Really. Heaven. And it's scary. And the tension keeps building because this sort of thing just doesn't happen, can't happen, something has to go wrong. Even if god just gave you a anti-gravity button - even if by his grace you can fly. Something has to go wrong...

Right?

I have done this too much lately. I must really stop recommending things to people but I just can't help it! Okay, then, Miracleman. Where do I begin? It's... erm. Its... Okay. Imagine Superman. Only he can do ANYTHING. And imagine him making the world an infinitly better place. Only it's his vision of a better place. And this man turned into god has strange ideas. But beneficial ideas. And yet imagine this brave new world to be actually quite unnerving. Set in the 1980's Miracleman throws into the mix: The worldwide mourning of a London destroyed and a population dismembered by a super villain. The birth of a new race of people, with incredible powers and all deciding to hover around the age of six for a long time. A man's affair with a goddess. A long trek up a modern day tower of babel to ask a god for a miracle. A dozen Warholls going into mass production of t-shirts, only supervised by a god. In a giant pyramid. On top of part of the ruins of London.

As the other reviewer said, the tension is unbearable.

Miracleman is set almost entirely in modern day England and it is this that makes the book so frightening. Things are good, yes, but almosy mind bogglingly awesome. Miracles and normal people trying to live normal lives in a world no one understands anymore. Character is the focus of this book, not action, and the characters are so real that...

Oh! Just buy it!

P.S: Amazon! Get this back in print! Now!

Coming after Alan Moore's run on Miracleman, how could anything coming after hope to live up? Well, the sad answer is that it doesn't. In comparison to the three preceding volumes it comes as a bit of an anti-climax. That having been said, I must acknowledge that The Golden Age should still be read by any Miracleman fan. There are a few things that you should know about before getting into it. First, the Big Blue Banana himself appears in the book hardly at all. Having created Uptopia on Earth, there is little for him to do now except rule over it. Occasionally pilgrims make the four-day climb up Olympus to "pray" - i.e., beg Miracleman for a favor. That's all we really see of him. The rest of the book is taken up with what life would be like in the new Miracleman universe. Of course, we also get to see what "life" is like for the reincarnated souls in Olympus - especially all those Andy Wharhols.

While published in tandem with Gaiman's award-winning Sandman series, his run on Miracleman was truly something special. It's also ridiculously difficult to find at this point, due to legal snafus. Nevertheless, it'll be worth the hassle.

Why? Consider this: what do you do when Alan Moore has pretty much wrecked the world as we know it? Make up a new one. And fortunately, as we've also seen in bestsellers like Neverwhere and Stardust, this is one thing Gaiman can do. From people admiring drug-users because they represent the last known frontier, to the permanence of death, and even the inevitability of evil, Gaiman hits on mythical concepts in a thoroughly plausible and enjoyable way.

How would superheroes REALLY affect our world? Read this volume and see. I guarantee you won't see any of it coming.

Miracleman Book Four : The Golden Age is a collection of several stand alone stories from the Eclipse comic Miracleman. After Miracleman solved most of the world's problems at the end of book three, one would think that there would be little left in this series. Fortunately Neil Gaiman is more than up to the task of continuing the story from where legendary comic author Alan Moore left off. Gaiman explores the strange landscape of the Utopia Miracleman has created in stories about the basic human condition in a fantastic science fiction future. This is a superb collection complemented by Mark Buckingham's phenominal artwork. Highly Recommended!

This book, considered one of the classics of American Literature, tells the story of Thomas Sawyer, a mischievous boy who gets in many troubles and adventures together with his friends Huckleberry Finn, Joe Harper, and his beloved girlfriend from school, Becky Thatcher.

Tom lives with his aunt Polly, his sister Mary and his well-behaved younger brother Sid, who always sneaks on him. He is a very playful and imaginative kid, whose games of pirate and Indian sometimes go far beyond the limits of imagination and take a much more real stance.

Mark Twain explores Tom's mind as a child, exposing its dreams and weaknesses, taking the reader back to his childhood memories and making this book a must-read classic for all ages.

127 years after its initial publication, Mark Twain's The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer (1876) remains the definitive account of American boyhood. Bright, sassy, dauntless, charming, and shrewd, Tom embodies the archetype of every healthy, mischievous, and extroverted American boy.

The book's plot, probably better known to most readers today via cinematic versions of the story, is uncomplicated. Tom tricks and antagonizes his beloved, easily outraged Aunt Polly, develops a frustrating crush on young schoolmate Becky Thatcher, tricks his pals into doing his chores, reinvents himself as a pirate on the Mississippi, and, with Huckleberry Finn, runs afoul of Injun Joe when they unexpectedly witness a murder in a graveyard at midnight. Like every good story with a traditional structure, the narrative offers a series of contrasts, here between the comfortable, familiar, sunlit world of St. Petersburg and the events that occur when curious Tom strips back daylight's veil and peers into the community's secret life.

Interestingly, with The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer, the clever Twain was writing about present day (1880s) America, but simultaneously already portraying that era in nostalgic, sentimental terms. Thus, today's readers may find in a double nostalgia in the novel: the first, their own, focused on a longing for America's mythological "simpler times," and the second a reflection of the homey, intimate, bumpkin - , eccentric - , and "character" - ridden American small town that Twain provided for the readers of his own era. By writing so powerfully about boyhood, Twain offers readers of all eras yet another powerful provocation towards nostalgia: that for one's own lost childhood, youthful initiations, and passages from innocence into adulthood.

The novel contains seductive, lulling passages of great poetic beauty, such as the following: "He entered a dense wood, picked his pathless way to the centre of it, and sat down on a mossy spot under a spreading oak. There was not even a zephyr stirring; the dead noonday heat had even stilled the songs of the birds; nature lay in a trance that was broken by no sound but the occasional far - off hammering of a woodpecker, and this seemed to render the pervading silence and sense of loneliness the more profound. The boy's soul was steeped in melancholy; his feelings were in happy accord with his surroundings. He sat long with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, meditating. It seemed to him that life was but a trouble at best, and he more than half envied Jimmy Hodges, so lately released. It must be peaceful, he thought, to lie and slumber and dream for ever and ever, with the wind whispering through the trees and caressing the grass and the flowers of the grave, and nothing to bother and grieve about, ever any more."

However, most of the book is written in a tone of buoyant theatrical artificiality: in episode after episode, Twain carefully sets his audience up for the punch lines to follow, and does so in a fashion that unabashedly reveals his own calculation as well as his intention that the reader be able to predict exactly what is to come. Even the narrative's tragedy - leaning moments are eventually punctured by corny, charming, tongue - in - cheek humor which seems to suggest that life, when well balanced, is primarily a pleasant affair of straw hats, freckled skin, rolled - up dungarees, molasses candy, indolent summer days, fishing tackle, white picket fences, and lovely chintz wallpaper.

A defining moment in American literature, the Adventures Of Tom Sawyer is an evocative, light, and fanciful book littered with shrewd social commentary and fragments of wisdom and insight composed by an American master at the height of his powers.

One of the Best Written books I've read. I can see how The Adventures of Tom Sawyer By Mark Twain is considered an American classic. Although not for adult readers I highly recomemd it to kids from 10 to 13 years old. Altogether this is a great book and if you havn't read it yet read it now.
The story of a rambunctous and mischievious young boy. It is interesting to read about Tom's many adventures with Injun Joe, the villian, Huck Finn, the son of the town drunkard, Becky Thatcher, Tom's grade school sweetheart, and Tom's best friend Joe Harper. These adventures include running away from home, getting lost in a cave, watching a man get stabbed to death and an innocent man get blamed for it. You can be a part of these adventures and many more if you choose to go on the journey throgh the book of Tom Sawyer.
You learn many things from this book. You learn a little about what life was like in the 1830's. Another mesage this book gives is that we should let kids be kids. These are just a few things you learn from the book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

The book is nicely written and is informative. It starts with a brief history of Sikhs, the long drawn roots of the movement, how it turned into terrorism, to the army operation and its aftermath. As pointed out in the book political leadership of the time was more to blame - Government did "too much too late". Too much because they acted too late which closed all the moderate options. Too late because a movement of small issues was allowed to grow into terrorism. The struggle for power and its wrath, once again, is well established. The dastardly act of few in power after the assassination of Mrs. Gandhi is brought out without wavering. And how the government machinery stood observer to inhuman killing of innocent people. The book carefully brings out controversial accounts, but not consistently. The book fails to paint the right picture of extent of terrorism - loots, killing of individuals, sects and groups, and attacks on government machinery with bombs and arms supplied from outside the country. Things can be argued one way or the other about the army operation. Everything is fair in love and war! The fact remains that army operation was inevitable and the Congress party, SGPC and Akali Dal were all equally responsible. While the first one created the problem, the other two supported and all the three used the propagators apart from the outside worlds, which helped in kind and cash both.

I will have to say that it is not a complete account of the movement. It fails to account for all the forces that supported the movement, financial, political and moral. Origin of Sikhs is not mentioned at all.

My students have enjoyed this book over the years as an optional book in ancient history courses; it is the starting place for anyone interested in childhood or education in the period.

This book is a pleasure to read, because it not only contains beautiful full-page, color calendar-quality photos of Goldens, but also gives the history of the breed as it became differentiated from other retriever breeds. The author has carefully documented the early geneology of the breed, and describes the scientific rationale for the program of inbreeding, line-breeding and outcrossing which established the breed characteristics. It was a real treat to find such depth of explanation presented so clearly. Experienced breeders as well as newcomers to the fancy will enjoy and learn from this book.

I would actually give this book 4.5 stars if I had the choice, but not 5. The poems are very different and original. All of them had a certain specialness, a deepness, if you will, that made them worth-while to read. My personal favorites are "I once saw a man pursuing the horizon", "A postcard from the volcano", and "Observation Car".

This is a Great book which Provides in debt strategies for, Probably one of the best golf games ever, It includes instructions and tips for all the courses, and a few secrets, Do you think you can conquer the best golf courses on the planet by yourself. YES ! Good for you. NO ! Don't let that get you down, Buy this guide, And maybe then you can pass the golden bear challenge

A typical Golden Guide pocket book. This book is a fact-filled reference work on the solar system. It should be in any astronomer's library. Full color and full of pictures it covers all the planets, the sun, moon, and a general guide to the night sky.

I usually LOVE Frommer's books. Their book on Costa Rica is outstanding and so is their Europe on $50 a day. However, I was a little disappointed with this one. My husband and I are about to travel to the Greek Islands and we wanted to at least see a one page per island description -- even if the description just says "uninhibited, don't travel here.' This one only goes through the main islands. I'm sure it's still a good guide but we wanted to see at least a listing of all the islands. It does give good tips and stuff and I'm sure we'll find them all helpful.

I went traveling in Greece 2 years ago and found other travel books to lack info on the Greek Islands and had to struggle my way through the islands. As I am planning to return this summer, I have found this book to be a good reference to prepare, and one that I will bring with me. When most of us think of Greece, the Greek Isles are the place most of us invision. This book gave me a good reference as to where to go, where to stay and what there was to do. I would reccommend this book to others.