Charles Kuralt never really believed how good he was at his profession. That's hard to believe, but it's a sad truth and maybe at the heart of the man who traveled the country for over 30 years, chronicalling what he saw and felt in his "On the Road" series for CBS News.

By that time he graduated college, Kuralt had a work record that would be the envy of a college journalism graduate. As recounted in "Remembering Charles Kuralt," a collection of interviews and essays edited by Ralph Grizzle, the high school senior had worked for a radio station, helping to call the baseball games of the Charlotte Hornet. The summer he was 13, he had a once-a-week radio show. He had won an essay contest on democracy and delivered his speech in the House of Burgesses in Colonial Williamsburg.

Kuralt knew what he wanted to be a reporter early in his life, and he pursued it with a single-minded determination. But not only that, he did it on his work ethic and talent alone, and in a good-natured manner that came through in his television appearances. "I never heard Charles say anything unkind about anybody," jazz pianist and friend Loonis McGlohon said, "that's true, and in thinking about it, it's pretty unusual."

"Remembering Charles Kuralt" covers the whole of his life and career: his upbringing in eastern North Carolina, his growth as a writer and reporter, his career at CBSNews, and his life in retirement, his illness, decline and death. It's an affectionate look that reveals more about the man than Kuralt probably would have wanted.

This is a well-written, intimate portrait of Kuralt presented in a way which itself reminds the reader of Charles Kuralt's own journalistic style. A beautiful edition including original photographs and a variety of personal and professional perspectives. Recommended for any fan of Charles Kuralt or for the reader who wants to learn how and why this charismatic individual transformed the nature of American journalism.

Gen Simmons has written a good, but very superficial history of the Marine Corps. If you know nothing of the service's history, this provides a good overview. But if you are interested in anything but a generic overview, based solely on secondary sources, and lacking any critical analysis, than move on to something else.

BGen Simmons' excellent general history of the Marine Corps is just that a general history. I note with distain the comments from the Alexandria reader. Clearly they don't understand the book's purpose and intended audience. It tells the tale. It doesn't twist tails with analyis.

This is the 3rd edition of General Simmons' classic account of the United States Marine Corps. It is very readable and traces the complete history of the Corps. This edition brings his general history up-to-date and covers the Persian Gulf War and other recent conflicts. I highly recommended it.

A rather interesting book, "The D Case" contains the incomplete manuscript of Charles Dickens' "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" interleaved with Fruttero & Lucentini's fictionalized examination of what the solution to the unsolved mystery is. "Edwin Drood" was Dickens' last, and probably weakest novel. It just isn't a very interesting read. Read it alone, and you probably won't care what happened to Edwin Drood. What F & L do is cover all the various ideas scholars have had over 'whodunnit', by putting the arguments in the mouths of all the great fictional sleuths of the last 100 years+ working as a team. A much more interesting way to follow the discussion about the book than reading formal articles in Lit Journals. In the end, F & L's detectives present a new and interesting solution to the title crime, and in addition, reveal a new crime no one suspected, the murder of Dickens himself, along with the culprit! Sound farfetched? Try it, you'll like it.

The reason I don't give this 5 stars is the poor depiction of the fictional dectectives. With the exception of Hercule Poirot, none of them talk like they did in the orginal works they appeared in. Whether this is the fault of F & L, or the fault of the translator, I don't know. Regardless, it weakens the book.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood is a wonderful book. The last book of Charles Dickens' work. He wrote this book before he died but never ended it because he died before he did. This book is a very educational, and hard book to read, but it's really worth it. I strongly recommend you to read this.

A very detailed description of what happened that day. It's a strange story, but it fascinated me fro beginning to end.

When I first heard this tale I found it hard to belive. Without knowing the story, and the time when the hanging took place, it would be impossible to think that an elephant hanging could take place in the U.S., but it did.

Charles Price does an excellent job of telling this story using the very few deatils that exist regarding the hanging. By tracking down the last known living eye-witness Mr. Price was able to recreate the scene of the hanging in his book using first-person testimony. Through his research and interviews Mr. Price has successfully documented this strange moment of history thereby taking a piece of Southern folklore and creating a fact-based document before before all witnesses to the execution had passed away.

The book is illustrated with ink drawings in several places and the famous photo of elephant Mary hanging from the gallows is included as well.

In the middle of the fifties I found a pocket edition of 'Heavenly Discourse' in a bookshop in Stockholm, Sweden and found it fascinating and hilarious. I lost the book and the name of its author. No one of all the Internets Search engines were able to find this title. Amazing! Finally I found a copy of the first edition (1926) at the International Institute for Social History in Amsterdam. But this precious edition will not be lended. I think after more than 70 years a translation into Dutch would be worthwhile. Why not a new reprint of the 1st edition? = Jacques de Reus, Amstelveen. Netherlands

"Heavenly Discourse," by C. E. S. Wood, would rate six or seven stars. To my utter disbelief, it is out of print. The good news is that "Wood Works" includes four of these hysterically funny satires. They build slowly, like a Bob Newhart monologue, and this short excerpt does not do them justice:

"BILLY SUNDAY: Why, there is Herman Morgenstern. I sent him to hell. He kept a family beer garden on Fourth Avenue...

JESUS: I liked him. He was a gentle, charitable soul.

BILLY SUNDAY: But he kept a beer saloon.

JESUS: I lived with publicans and sinners.

BILLY SUNDAY: And there is Margaret Hartwell. She had an illegitimate child. She sold her body. She was a harlot. I sent her to hell. How did she get here?

JESUS: I liked her. The one with her is Mary Magdalen."

The bad news is that "Wood Works" is a comprehensive overview of Wood's oeuvre, and while a lot of it is nice to have if you're already a Wood ! fan, it does become clear why "Heavenly Discourse" is his best-known work.

The introduction and commentary give about the right amount of background on C. E. S. Wood.

It's a nice book. But I hope someone gets around to reprinting all of "Heavenly Discourse."

expecially for anyone in the East Tennessee area about the history of the area.

Mr. Price has a good writing style that makes this book a joy to read. It will keep you interested from cover to cover. The only drawback is that he mixes documented ghost cases with folk tales and old legends with no clear pattern. As one who enjoys documented stories of ghost sightings I found this aspect of this book a bit annoying. Still the book is great fun and if Mr. Price was willing to put a little more work into research he could be one of the great American writers of ghost stories.

An enjoyable read of about two dozen short stories of the supernatural. Many are folktales passed down from generation to generation of supposed true occurances, some with eyewitness accounts and historical data of southwest Virginia. My favorite was "A Very Sensitive Child."

In his introduction, the author attempts vainly to put Merrill in the same category as Morgan and other great financiers. The problem is that he was not a financier, just a guy riding the trend of retailing in the 1920s. But his gratitude for his own personal pension fund appreciating in the 1990s and attributing it to people like Merrill is extremely embarrassing. This suggests that the author is trying to ingratiate himself to Merrill's company. A little balatant. More to the point, Mr. Perkins did not seem to understand his topic very well. He constantly refers to the backroom at Merrill as "backstage." The backroom and its problems was a big topic on Wall St from the 1950s through the 70s although Perkins seems unaware of the whole problem and constantly refers to it as backstage. Did anyone ever research a topic so poorly? Whether Merrill deserves a full fledged biography still remains unclear after reading this amateurish attempt.

I learned a lot about Wall Street history from this book. The relatively overnight successes of technology driven Wall Streeters should not obscure the more remarkable achievements of Charlie Merrill. The author skillfully describes the times in which Merrill operated and gave me a balanced view of Merrill's strengths and weaknesses. The story moves swiftly along and I gained a real appreciation of the future Merrill saw, the opportunities he capitalized on, and those he inspired along the way.

Charles Merrill is an authentic American genius and today's capital markets bear his distinctive stamp in many ways, as Edwin J. Perkins' book proves in fascinating detail. While the book works as a business history and as a professional portrait, it is less successful as a biography because Perkins deliberately chose to focus on Merrill's professional life. By keeping Merrill's personal life very much in the background, Perkins declines to bring Merrill's personality to life. We learn about his career, but we do not seem to get to know the man himself. Happily, Merrill's achievements and business innovations are well worth examining. His commitment to service, integrity and the good of the common customer - even when that angered the elite customer - made him richer than most of the aristocrats who fought against him. We [...] recommend this worthy portrayal of a riveting role model to entrepreneurs, finance professionals and any business history buff.

I found this book extremely difficult to understand. In this book the Author uses victorian style english. Victorian English is very difficult to understand due to the verb usage.