"Clash of the Titans," by entertaining writer Richard Hack is a very impressive read. A lot of reasearch went into the creation of this 'Must Read' 544 page book. Hack gives the reader a look inside the media world of business as well a look inside the personal and professional lives of Ted Turner and Keith Rupert Murdoch. Risk taking, careful planning, and gutsy determination is what it takes to become like these two media moguls...men of position, power, and fame. So now that you know how to do it get out there and go conquer the world! I plan to, smile...

Mr. Maheu shares his amazing life story with the world. He does a wonderful job describing the likes of Howard Hughes and his dark past.

If you're looking for a good biography on Howard R Hughes, look no further, because this is the one you'll want. Richard Hack writes in an open and laid-back manner making it all easy to enjoy and absorb. The subject manner certainly makes for entertaining reading itself. This most noted of eccentrics will captivate you as well as disgust you. Hack takes you inside the Hughes empire and paints a very good picture of the how and why of his world. If not for Hughes inheritance from his father-owner of the Hughes Tool Co-you most likely will never have heard of Howard Hughes. Basically Howard himself had no business acumen. His life does read somewhat like a fairy tale in that most of the things he wished for he got. From movie starlets to hotels and casinos. Money can truly buy most things. Unfortunately he wasn't psychologically stable for the last half of his life and this caused him and those around him much misery. Form whatever opinion you like about Hughes, but after reading this biography, the opinion you form will be a strong one. It was a well-written biography that lagged just a little on the editing.

Highly recommended.

....I settled on this book because I thought it would be account of Howard Hughes's weird and wanton ways, like several of the other books on this very original American have been.
Much to my amazement, I discovered that this book, which the publisher has unembarrassingly labeled "the definitive biography of America's First Billionaire," was not exaggerating. The story that unfolds here is a real pageturner...one of a life that hit upon politics, Hollywood, aviation, science, and parental neglect of the most extreme variety. What makes this book work as well as it does is the ability of the writer, Richard Hack (of whom I know nothing but intend to read more), has built the plot as if writing a novel. His words are lush with emotion and frustration, as the reader is brought along as an innocent observer of an incredible life story. It took a special talent to make material that has been attempted to be told elsewhere new and exciting. "Hughes" is both well researched and beautifully written. I cannot recommend it highly enough to men, women and teenagers.

There has been a lot of writing about Howard Hughes. A lot of it was based on incomplete or just flat out false information, going back even to when he was living with the Clifford Irving hoax. If we are to believe the author of this book had access to thousands of never before available documents, and he's telling what he found factually, this would be the definitive Hughes biography to date. That he makes it a fat, juicy biography makes it great reading.

So I would nominate George Clooney to take this role to the big screen. There are remarkable similarities in their looks, and the public would just eat up this tale. Here we have a man who was lucky enough to inherit a big fortune early in life. But he didn't just sit on his money. He re-invested a lot of it into other industries, such as movies and airplanes. His resources greatly advanced the art of aviation in it's time, and his movie marketing greatly enhanced Jane Russell's breasts in their time. He was a hands-on, get involved manager who flew test planes himself, setting many speed records.

This dashing lifestyle also made him the darling of Hollywood. His string of glamorous conquests was a who's who of movie actresses, from budding starlets to major icons. He literally had the world in his hand for awhile.

Alas, something happens to people when they gain so much power that there are very few people or institutions that can tell them "No". We've seen this in the last 100 years with characters such as Hitler, J. Edgar Hoover, Elvis, and Michael Jackson. They get a few successes, and think they are infallable. This leads to bad decisions in life that either deteriorate them, or leave a mess for those that surround them. They also withdraw, always mentally, sometimes physically, from the world around them, as if they were surrounding the wagons to protect them from that world.

This also happened to Howard Hughes. We see early signs of where he's going when he was merely a ruthless young business man. The first thing he did upon inheriting part of a company was to immediately buy out all the other inheritors to give him total control. Holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas mean nothing to him, and he calls upon his associates to work on these days to get more done. Marriage had it's uses, but none of them ever involved love.

So we get to see one side, which is this dashing young millionaire who becomes America's first billionaire. We see him as he lands at crowded airports after setting yet another air speed record. We see him with every hot babe on the silver screen, and a lot more hoping to get there. America even liked him thumbing his nose at the government when he felt they were digging into his private life too much. This would all have to be portrayed.

But we would need a director like Martin Scorsese to turn this into a "Raging Bull" type of hell. Yes, he had the women, but the feedback from them seemed to indicate a very selfish lover who often couldn't produce where it counts. Yes, he directed several films, but was such a control freak that the products went way over budget. And the volumes of instructions he wrote to his staff on how to guard against germs, real or imaginary, show a very disturbed mind.

And the movie would have to show how this increasingly lonely man deteriorated in his last ten-fifteen years of life. While it is true, as suspected, that his paid caretakers took advantage of his situation, and in fact sped up his demise, it is also surprising how much of his faculties remained in his later years. While he was well on his way to looking like the Walking Death he eventually became, he still had the ability to conduct a two-hour press conference to convince the world that the Irving biography was a hoax.

But the ultimate ending would have to show that all the money in the world cannot buy happiness. For the last several years of his life, he was surrounded only by people who were paid to be there. His hair, beard, and nails grew to extreme lengths. While obsessed with germs, he ended up living in putrid squallor, with jars of his own wastes stored everywhere. His body was stoked up with enough drugs to kill an average person, and he even had the remnants of five broken needs inside his arms.

This could be Oscar time for both Clooney and Scorsese if Hollywood lets them do it right.

This book made me feel like a fly on the wall in the Jackson household. The author does a great job of revealing Jermaine's dysfunctionality. Yet she still did so without bashing him, keeping in mind he is the father of her children. A must read for Jackson curiosity-seekers. The book is a bit one-sided. The author freely discusses Jermaine's infidelity, but fails to go into detail about her adulterous relationship with him during his union with Hazel Gordy-Jackson.

I've been an admirer of the Jacksons for many years, and it's so sad to hear of the layers of dysfunction that exist in this family. At the very least, this book talks about the other Jacksons besides Michael, which is a refreshing change. It is also the story of a woman who discovers that even celebrities are not immune from problems, and that fame and fortune are no substitutes for a healthy home life. What is WRONG with these folks? According to the author, it seems that Marlon and Tito are the only ones among the 'other' Jacksons who have made a life for themselves apart from sponging off of Michael and Janet (thank God Marlon and his wife Carol are still together; the smartest thing they did was to leave the whole dysfunctional bunch to themselves at Hayvenhurst!).
I have seen Jermaine Jackson on Feed the Children Informercials, defending his famous brother in interviews, and heard of his supposed conversion to Islam. I sincerely hope that by now he has dealt with his issues of abuse and womanizing, and that he is paying child support for the two sons he had with the author. I would love to see Margaret Maldonado write a revised version of this book, with updates as to whether or not things have improved between her sons and their father, as well as how she has rebuilt her own life.

This is a wonderful story on how Margret tells the tails of her ''memories of madness'' while being married to Jermaine Jackson and her experiences while living in the Jackson Family home in Encino California. For people who are or have always wanted to know what it would be like to live in the Jackson family home or who have always wanted to know what the Jacksons are like,this book is a must read for you. I am 13 years old and was still intrested in it. So if it can please me. I am absolutly,positivly sure that you will like it too.

This book describe ancient warfare very well. WIth an Intersting plot and well developed characters I give ths book a 4. I give it a 4 because in the middle there is a gapse of action. Other than this the book was great.

Classical Hack Ancient Warfare 600 B.C. to 600 A.D. is a 38 page interpretive study of classical warfare that has unique style and a handsome presentation. Unlike most books that examines ancient warfare through the manipulation of miniatures, this book captures the flavor of classical warfare like no other such study. For those not familiar with ancient warfare and historical gaming they will find this work a doorway to making history, no matter how ancient, interesting and fun. Maybe all that D & D stuff we did as kids did have some merit. Taking myth and legends of our culture and making them fun as a game. Well Classical Hack does exactly the same thing for ancient history.

Here's why I think this book is worth owning. It has a neat color picture of Alexander the Great on the cover-done by Peter Connolly now of A & E fame (you can find him on Amazon too). Hey the picture itself is worth $24.00 U.S., just to frame and hang. For miniature collectors of ancient figures or gamers the price of this book is less than it would cost you to buy a bag of figures! What good are miniatures if you do not know the proper way to use them.

Each of the 38 pages has diagrams and art work from the last century with all manner of ancient warriors. These are cleverly used to explain how the book is used as a set of rules. Rules for playing miniature war games.

Not being familiar with a lot of other such rule books (except HG. Wells Little Wars and Young's Charge, D & D, and the slow moving if not boring tournament stuff from England) I think this is an exceptional book. Not for its size but for its interesting approach and general content. Obviously the authors have spent a lot of dry research time. That's a plus for the reader. It saves the reader (especially this reader) endless hours of their own research on a usually uninteresting subject. I suppose that if you were a die hard ancient wargame buff it would inspire you to do more.

Other things about it include a well organized table of contents and what I especially like a fine working index! Not sure I have seen much of this in similar rule books.

The book follows a pattern that is clear and gets relatively to the point. I do not like to read a lot of long winded narrative explaining how to do something. First off the book tells you everything you need to have to start gaming. Then it explains how to build the armies you will require in order to entertain yourself via the thoroughly modern manipulation of military miniatures of the ancient period.

Each section follows the game outline as you go. You easily learn all that manipulation stuff. It is not in the King's English. It is written in plain old American. Common yes. Inspiring perhaps. Clear? Yes it is.

Attempting to see if the ideas for the basic manipulation of miniatures actually worked as explained, to my surprise it did work. I did cheat a little. I used pieces of paper cut to recommended unit sizes instead of actually painting up all the miniatures. I am sure we did some things wrong but we were pretty sure we got things right. Well we knew we were having a lot of fun doing it.

This book can be a source of great interaction with others too. The more we played the more we got into the period stuff on our own. In a way the book became a tool. I used all that boring basic statics stuff I studied in high school and later college. It took a bit of time to figure out that a matrix is not just a movie thing. It can also be a chart with numbers used in a very fast play game system. We were confident enough after 5 or more games (using the book) to stick just with the end page which has a quick reference sheet. Friends that have started joining the games we put on were doing fine by turn 2 or 3 without any previous experience.

When purchasing the book I looked long and hard at the back cover. It lists all the things the book does. I did laugh a little. Sure enough after getting the book it does indeed do the things it says it does and in record time. Perhaps you can tell a lot about a book by its cover after all.

Mr. Hack has written an extended TV Guide article and published it under the guise of a 250-page book. While "Madness In the Morning" does offer interesting anecdotes along the way, it fails to address obvious questions: what differentiates morning news from other forms of delivery and how has the profile of the morning news viewer changed and impacted the formats of these programs. If this book were a morning show, you would tune out and go back to bed.

Surprise! The men and women who inform and dazzle us each weekday morning are no better than we. Hack's gossipy account reveals the flaws in the glitz and glamour of the TV morning news biz, inviting us to watch network executives decide that America needs a chimp as well as an idiosyncratic host; to follow that early-era Today host Dave Garroway's slow decline into a "quagmire of mental confusion and emotional vulnerability"; to cringe as Bryant Gumbel asserts his massive ego and skewers the efforts of his co-hosts and staff,including the harmless Willard Scott; and to check out the self-indulgent antics of David Hartman, the seemingly genial Good Morning America host. As NBC was the boldest of the three original TV networks in developing morning programming, Hack gives its history the most scrutiny, while he portrays CBS as the perennial laggard, making one wonder why the network ever threw Captain Kangaroo off the air. Best of all, this book, which has a tone greasy enough to keep the pages turning but not so malicious as to induce guilt, portrays men and women like Barbara Walters, Kevin Newman, Joan Lunden and Katie Couric, who sacrifice their private lives to usher in the start of the day, and the network executives who sit in a veritable pressure-cooker backstage trying to get them-or someone waiting in the wings-to keep the act going for just one morning more.

Robert Maheu gives a one-sided view of his reign under Howard Hughes downplaying his "sins" in my opinion and never really coming to grips with his abuse of power and lack of character. I suspect that what he did reveal is mostly because he was caught with his pants down. Nevertheless, I still found it interesting in helping to piece together the Howard Hughes enigma. I learned much more from reading "Citizen Hughes".

I was just looking around for something intersting, something just to read. Then one day my mother came in with this book that they had given to her, I saw the cover and thought this wasn't my kinda book, after leaving it on top of my t.v for a few weeks I decided to see what it was about, I picked it up and started reading, soon I couldn't put it down. This book is the kind of book that puts you in the front seat and makes you realize how much it can hurt to loose someone you deeply love. It kinda makes you wonder how bad that feeling is, and not wanting to but having to let go, of falling in love so deeply but just knowing that it just can't be, and that it has to not be. It's just a book you can read to pass the time, and to learn form someone else's point of view. If you like these kind of stories, this one is one to read.

I just finished reading my copy of St. James' book a few hours ago and in all honesty I'm not completely sure how to feel. The writing of Jana St. James is actually very good; descriptive with lots of detail, and the emotions that she and Waller feel are written so clearly/elonquently that we can feel what they felt as if we were there with them or it was one of us in this situation. But, like the other reviewers, I too am confused as to why she would bring all this out in the open twentysomething years later when the affair is so long over. Why would she do that when he's moved on with his wife Georgia, and he and Georgia are obviously happy, knowing that the publication of this novel could do damage to their relationship? It's almost as if St. James wants to stir up trouble. If she really felt the need to write about this time in her life to get it out of her system, she should have written this book exactly as she has done-except write it as a novel, with ficticious names/characters. However the writing is good, as I said before, and she writes about the emotions well, making her story all too believable. Three stars is about the fairest review I can give this book.

I read the book in one sitting, I could not tear myself away. I felt like I was there, I could feal all the love and emotions. Memories of Madison County is at the top of my favorite list, I haven't read a book this good in along time. Thank You