Having spent some time recently in Cambodia exploring the Angkor ruins, I looked forward to purchasing this new picture book by celebrated photographer Jon Ortner. I was not disappointed. The photographs literally come alive. The quality of the paper is extremely good; the colour reproduction and sharpness of the pictures are superb.

The author chose a broad selection of the ruins to be included in his coffee table size text. All the famous sites are included, as well as a number of the lesser known monuments. The essays written by experts in the field also added a lot of useful and interesting background information. Several maps also aid the reader in locating the ruins.

For those who have seen Angkor, this book is almost a must. I am certain the owner will refer to these awesome photographs time and time again to remind himself of the experience of viewing some of the most incredible architecture and art in the history of mankind.

Top quality photographs of one of the true wonders of the world in one of the few remaining truly exotic countries. The craftsmanship and presentation are top notch, but nothing short of making the trip in person is really satisfactory. Fortunately, the trip is relatively safe in these days when even domestic travel has its risks.

This is an extremely well written explanation of one of the latest and best management theories. One of the things I liked best about this book is the explanation of the major management trends of the past and how they brought business to the point it is today. Most management books simply tell one what to do, but this book tells the background of the problems we face, then goes on to explain very clearly how they can be solved.

Leading With Knowledge is a thought-provoking read!

Having been excited to learn more about one of the great novelty artists of our time, it's sad to have to report that this book is an expensive waste. Rather than a biographical look at Dickie Goodman, the author instead rambles on in a hard-to-follow, at times incomprehensible, stream of unconsciousness style. While I appreciate his need to vent, try to understand, and somehow deal with his dad's tragic death, it's not fair to make fans expecting a quality telling of Dickie Goodman's story to have to suffer through this. The book is more of a private diary or journal, intended to help the author, not the reader. Again, I don't diminish the author's pain or need to do this, but want to warn folks just what they're getting.

Dickie Goodman was a genuine pioneer. Decades before hip-hop and rap artists ever so much as thought about using the latest computer software to "sample" snippets of songs from other musicians, Goodman was making hit "break-in" records with nothing more than a razor blade and his imagination.

In 1956, he and his collaborator Bill Buchanan launched "The Flying Saucer," a groundbreaking, innovative single that incorporated many of the top tunes of the day and sold more than a million copies nationwide. It was a cultural phenomenon that jump-started Goodman's successful career, landed him in court (on copyright infringement charges), and eventually led to his ultimate legacy as the man who invented a totally new way of recording.

Over the course of the next 30 years, Goodman won every legal case filed against him, helped to popularize so-called "race" music for white audiences (by using the original versions of songs that black artists had done first), and produced a body of work that entertained an entire generation of Americans throughout the 1960s and 70s, and even into the 1980s. During this time, he drew on the talents of everyone from Los Lobos, Michael Jackson, and Whitesnake to Fats Domino, Olivia Newton-John, and Desmond Dekker & The Aces. In the process, he exposed listeners to every imaginable form of music, including the blues, country and western, disco, doo-wop, folk, heavy metal, jazz, reggae, and rock and roll.

In 1975, almost 20 years after "The Flying Saucer" was released, he topped the charts again with "Mr. Jaws," a send-up of the summer blockbuster film of that year. But he never got the recognition he deserved. Finally, with his glory days behind him, overlooked and unappreciated for his contributions to the recording industry, Dickie Goodman shot himself to death in 1989.

With such a background, it seems only natural that the Dickie Goodman story would make an interesting book, or even a movie. Unfortunately, that book has yet to be written. "The King of Novelty" by Dickie Goodman's son, Jon Goodman, is not really a biography in the conventional sense. It is instead a vanity publication that the author has cobbled together as a tribute to his father. That having been said, it still sometimes (almost by accident) achieves a sort of pained eloquence, even as it fails to flesh out the man at the center of the tale.

Perhaps the main problem is that Jon Goodman is not a professional writer, and it shows. "The King of Novelty" is badly organized and poorly edited. The text rambles on all over the place and there are numerous typographical errors throughout the manuscript. Even worse, the author has a habit of telling the reader more about himself than his subject. We learn a lot about Jon Goodman but much less about his dad and what made him tick. And Dickie Goodman--after all--should be the focus here.

Another flaw is the son's tendency to overstate his father's accomplishments and nurse grudges about the lack of credit Goodman Sr. receives even now. This is somewhat understandable but also unnecessary. Dickie Goodman was an authentic innovator who almost single-handedly created the "break-in" record and the sampling process. To claim that he also inspired the topical folk songwriters of the early 1960s, and influenced the civil rights movement, is going a bit far and undermines the author's credibility elsewhere in the book.

On the bright side, however, Jon Goodman deserves a great deal of praise for his honesty in talking about the darker parts of Dickie Goodman's life (the drugs and gambling and womanizing, for example). He does an excellent job of describing how these character faults affected his family, while still showing that his famous father had many good traits as well as bad ones. Some of the most effective writing in "The King of Novelty" actually comes in the sections where Jon Goodman talks candidly about seeing his dad as a whole person and not just in filial terms as a child. Although the space might have been better spent by providing details of how Dickie Goodman prevailed in his legal battles to "sample" other artists' works (or covering other aspects of his life), it is fascinating to see how the author's experiences and memories have affected his own outlook on things. His observations about how popular culture has changed during the 1990s (especially in the social roles that men and womyn play today) are right on target.

So there you have it. "The King of Novelty" falls short of the mark in many respects. It is certainly not the definitive Dickie Goodman biography, which remains to be written by a more impartial source. Nevertheless, as a period piece about the kind of radio that baby boomers grew up with, or as a study in modern musical history, it does demonstrate how much many current artists owe to a funny little guy named Dickie Goodman. Without him, bands like the Evolution Control Committee and stars such as Puff Daddy and Fatboy Slim would not be allowed to mix and sample in their hit songs today.

This book was so emotionally involving I couldn't stop reading it until It was done. So much more than the standard biography, The King of Novelty draws you in and holds you close like a dear friend. Not only is it a tell all story of the life and times of Dickie Goodman, an international icon of American creativity; but an accurate unveiling of the pop culture burden that our society places on the youth of today. While the book is properly described by leading musicologists as an essential part of the history of American music and comedy, it is also just as important to point out the obvious reason why the book is so revealing; the author, Jon Goodman transports the reader into a compelling account of the relationship between a son and his famous father.