I read this book about 7 years ago. The reason I am thinking of it now is that I am reading Gillian Bradshaw's THE WRONG REFLECTION and I would be willing to bet that she drew upon this book for a part of the plot of hers. And I'm glad to see it! I remember THE DONORS as being a novel unlike any I have ever read with outrageously surprising action from page to page. It was a literal page-turner with events that were so alarming, I found myself flipping back and forth to be sure I had read it correctly!! (And happily so!)

I don't remember the names of the characters, but the action centers around a man who has been kidnapped and put through plastic surgery, reconstructive dental work,a series of broken bones, and other ordeals in order to make him look like an evil dictator. All this is done so that the death of that dictator can be staged, and the protagonists dead body put in the dictator's place. In that way,no one will look for the dictator! Everyone will believe he is dead!

As it turns out, the evil, nefarious organization that does this sort of thing does it all the time. Average people are always being "disappeared" because of their resemblance to someone famous who wishes to go into hiding!

Again, IF this is the book I'm thinking of, I truly enjoyed it, and am glad to see the concept behind it drawn upon again (IF that is the case!!) I'll have to spend 72 cents and find out if this is the one I'm thinking of!

A good reference guide for a group of birds that many people only know from one or two species (e.g., the belted kingfisher, the laughing kookaburra). As with nearly all field guides, the text is fairly dry and confined primarilly to descriptions of the various species, their habits, et al. Still, for those who enjoy a celebration of the diversity in nature, this book is a treat. The plates are of good quality (and occasionally surprising--apparently there are several species of kingfisher in which the female is somewhat more brightly colored than the male) and show all of the living species, as well as many of the major subspecies. Great for the armchair bird-watcher.

Anyone who is interested or is currently teaching social studies should consider purchasing these books. These books are composed of numerous short stories (3-6 pages) in which a story is presented followed by an ethical or moral dilemma. Students reading the text are encouraged to discuss their reactions as a class, resulting in constructive debates; a skill that our students need to learn!

(And I'm not just saying this b/c Dr. Harris is one of my professors at the University of Michigan. I really think these are great books!!)

You'd be shocked to see how stupid people can be. This book was really funny. I read every story and they were all great. This book is kind of like a combo of "COPS" and "America's Funniest Home Videos" (but on paper, not tv). These stories aren't just in the U.S.A. but all around the world (as the title implies). Just to give you a sample of a funny one... this one guy broke into a display case at a shoe store and he only stole right shoes, no left at all. Duh. If you enjoy comedy this is the book for you. -_-

While thinking of how many stars to give this book, I decided on five. So I went back and finished the rest of the book and then came back, giving this book only four stars.

"Red Dragon" is the first book I have read by Thomas Harris. I am normally a very big Stephen King fan, but I found this book quite enjoyable nonetheless. However, like I have seen in so many books before, this had the chance of being an amazing novel, but was spoiled by a disappointing ending.

To begin, I would like to say that I do not enjoy Thomas Harris' style of writing when he uses choppy sentences and switches between the first and third person narrative. However, I soon got over that. It did not take away from the book.

Plot: 9/10--I found Francis Dolarhyde to be an extremely strange and frightening character, yet we could relate to his story. You could sense the tension between the characters as they tried to hunt him down.

Action: 8/10--This book is more of a crime drama. It is filled with more "Law and Order"-like searching than action and violence.

Characters: 9/10--Dolarhyde was extremely well-done, but Will Graham was not developed enough. He seemed like a jerk at some points despite his attempts to stop "The Dragon".

Overall: 8.5/10--This book should be at least a 9.5, but the ending was not enjoyable for me. It was an oustanding book, yes, and I will continue to read work by this author, but it seemed rushed and unoriginal. I think Mr. Harris could have come up with a better way (WARNING: SPOILER--DO NOT READ ON IF YOU WANT TO BE IN SURPRISE!) for "The Dragon" to die. It was like most horror movies today, and non suspenseful like the rest of the book. Not only did Dolarhyde suddenly lose his strength and cunning brilliance, he was killed too easily.

"Red Dragon", in conclusion, is a great piece of fiction that I cannot say enough about, but beware, the ending may be slightly disappointing to some.

Before the movie release of Hannibal I decided to go ahead and read all the Lecter novels before the release. Lecter just appears in this novel and does not star. This is one of the finest books I've ever read. Thomas Harris gives you an absolute thrill ride.

In this novel, retired FBI agent Will Graham comes out of retirement to work on a case involving a killer that kills whole families including their pets. The novel opens up with Graham at his home in Marathon Key, Florida with special agent Jack Crawford. From their the investigation starts. The killer is being dubbed the "Tooth Fairy," a name given due to the bite marks left on his victims.

Meanwhile the killer calls itself "The Red Dragon," after a pcture that the killer is obsessed over. "The Red Dragon" writes to Hannibal Lecter Ph.D, and says what an idol Lecter is to him and just makes staement about Lecter's brilliance etc., etc. I won't give away any more information regarding the plot. This is a novel that takes you to the corners of the FBI and through a killer's mind. Written by one of the greatest writers ever known, Red Dragon is a novel not to be missed. I reccomend this novel to fan of a fabulous book but not to a person that cannot deal with gore and violence. Once again, READ THIS BOOK!

HAPPY READING!

Harris first rocketed up the bestseller lists with his excellent terrorism thriller Black Sunday. His antihero Hannibal the Cannibal exploded into the public consciousness after Jonathan Demme's excellent movie version of Silence of the Lambs (1991) came out, with Anthony Hopkins brilliant creepy performance as Lecter. And, of course, fans and Hollywood have had an anxious 11 year wait for Harris to finally publish a sequel. But many people may not realize that Hannibal Lecter first appeared, albeit in a cameo role, in the novel Red Dragon and in Michael Mann's capable movie version, Manhunter (1986). If you've missed this book, I urge you to try it; in many ways it is Harris's best work.

FBI Special Will Graham has retired to Sugar Loaf Key, FL with his new wife Molly and her son Willie. Retired because of his nearly fatal encounter with a linoleum knife wielding Hannibal Lecter, whose capture he was responsible for, and because of the emotional troubles that have accompanied his ability to develop an almost extrasensory empathy for such killers, such that he has trouble purging their feelings from his own psyche. His peaceful idyll is disrupted when his old boss, Jack Crawford, shows up and asks for his help in catching The Tooth Fairy, a serial killer who is notorious for the tooth marks he leaves and for dicing his victims with shards of broken mirrors. Reluctantly agreeing to join the chase, Graham decides, in order to recapture the mindset that has made him so eerily effective in prior cases, to visit Hannibal Lecter in the Chesapeake State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. There the administrator, Dr. Frederick Chilton, shares an anecdote about Hannibal that demonstrates just how horrible he is:

"On the afternoon of July 8, 1976, Dr. Lecter complained of chest pain. His restraints were removed in the examining room to make it easier to give him an electrocardiogram. One of his attendants left the room to smoke, and the other turned away for a second. The nurse was very quick and strong. She managed to save one of her eyes."

"You may find this curious." He took a strip of EKG tape from a drawer and unrolled it on his desk. He traced the spiky line with his forefinger. "Here, he's resting on the examining table. Pulse seventy-two. Here, he grabs the nurse's head and pulls her down to him. Here, he is subdued by the attendant. He didn't resist, by the way, though the attendant dislocated his shoulder. Do you notice the strange thing? His pulse never got over eighty-five. Even when he tore out her tongue.

I don't think we're any closer to understanding him than the day he came in.''

After tabloid reporter Freddie Lowndes splashes this visit all over the pages of The Tattler, the killer too contacts Lecter who urges him to attack Graham. Thus begins a suspenseful, violent minuet as Graham develops increasing insight into the killer's methodology and psychoses, the killer plans his next kill (he's on a Lunar schedule) and Hannibal pulls strings from the dark background. Harris provides fascinating detail on police procedure, he writes savvily about how the FBI uses the media and the inventiveness of the crimes he dreams up is genuinely disturbing. But the most interesting part of the story is the delicate mental balance that Graham has to maintain in order to think like the killers but still remain sane. And as Graham penetrates further into the killer's mind, Harris reveals more and more background about the Tooth Fairy, Francis Dolarhyde, who it turns out was a horribly misshapen baby, abandoned by his mother and raised by a demented grandmother, early on manifesting the now classic signs of the serial murder--torturing animals and the like. This background and Will Graham's troubles dealing with the thought patterns he shares with Dolarhyde raise questions about what separates us from such men and whether there's a formula for creating such evil beings. Is it really simply a matter of psychosexual abuse of young boys and, presto chango, you've created a serial killer?

In addition to this kind of portrayal of the psychotic as victim, our effort to deal with these creatures has resulted in a sizable batch of thrillers where the serial killer is portrayed as a nearly superhuman genius. This flows from the same impulse that makes folks so willing to believe that assassinations are conspiracies. It is extremely hard, as a society, to face the fact that nondescript shlubs like David Berkowitz and Lee Harvey Oswald and Richard Speck and James Earl Ray are really capable of causing so much social disruption. Their crimes are so monumental that we want the killers to be equal in stature to the crimes. The sad truth of the matter is that these monsters are, in fact, generally hapless losers. They are not Lecterlike geniuses.

That said, Hannibal is still one of the great fictional creations of recent times, our age's version of Dracula or Frankenstein, and Harris's imaginative story makes for a great, albeit unsettling, read with more food for thought than most novels of the type.

GRADE: A

'Enigma' is a story of intrigue that takes place at Bletchley Park during the Second World War. There are two main storylines: cracking the enigma code before a shipping convoy is destroyed, and discovering the motives and intentions of the mysterious Claire Romilly.

Both these storylines revolve around the main character, Tom Jericho, a cryptanalyst working on breaking the german naval enigma code.

'Enigma' starts off very slowly, and after 90 pages, I was about to put the book down and move on. However, Harris really starts getting to the heart of the action about this time, and the book really takes off. Perhaps he could have condensed the first 90 pages and made this book five stars, but taken as a whole 'Enigma' is quite entertaining.

If you enjoy books about wartime codebreaking, you will definitely want to read this book. If you read and enjoy 'Enigma', you should check out Neal Stephenson's 'Cryptonomicon.'

Some years ago I read a spy novel where the main characters needed to escape from Nazi Germany with some info on the bad guys they'd stolen. It was very entertaining, but for me kind of silly because I'd just read a book on the British codebreakers, and I knew the information had gotten to the Allies by much more mundane means. Robert Harris turns all of this on it's head and even makes it suspenseful. Enigma is the story, in novel form, of the British codebreaking effort that won WW2, to a large extent anyway, for the Western Allies. Interwoven into the plot is a hunt for a German spy among the codebreakers, and while that story is interesting (and the solution and motive bring out another story less often told) the main focus is a novel version of David Kahn's Seizing the Enigma, with all the suspense of the codebreakers grappling with the Kriegsmarine's codes as the convoys approach the U-boats... It's a very good book.

This book is a must read for anyone who likes smart, savvy adventure mysteries.

The main character is Tom Jericho, a mathematician and cryptoanalysist who works in a government building in Britain, trying to crack the Nazi Enigma code known as Shark. Tom and his team manage to crack Shark a month ago, but the Nazis have set up a new version that makes Shark, which already has several million ways of encoding, just 26 times harder. Jericho is overworked and tired, and distraught over his girlfriend, Claire, dumping him, but he is sent back to help the team crack the new code. The Nazi U Boats are planning an attack in 4 days, and the code is virtually impossible to crack in that amount of time. To make things worse, Jericho finds that Claire is missing under very strange circumstances. Jericho must deal with the constant memories of Claire, and team up with Hester, Claire's roomate, and his many co-workers to solve the mystery of the Shark.

The book is very intelligently written. Harris knows exactly what he is talking about, from historical facts to every little detail of the Enigma machines and codes. He delivers these facts to you in an engaging style that keeps you riveted. This book is NEVER boring. Even the long passages about the codes and mathematics are so interesting the pages just fly by. I'm a person who detests math with all my heart, but this book manages to capture my interest and hold it.

I'm amazed at how the characters are portrayed. They're all superbly characterized, even the very minor ones, each with their own unique speaking style and actions and motives. The characters are so realistic that you're able to see all them and REMEMBER all twenty or so main characters as if you've known them all before.

The pacing of the book is fast, but manages to deliver romance and deep thinking without dragging the book down. The superb, complex plot, the characters, and the intriguing details make you want to go back and read it again.

Note: you'll probably need a dictionary or at least some knowledge of WW2 to fully understand all the terms and references in this book.

One thing is for certain, you'll put down Enigma enlightened to a lot more about WW2, in addition to having read a great book.

Finally, a complete, comphrensive FIELD guide to the birds of India! Gone are the days of hauling 2 or 3 hardcover bird books to the subcontinent just to be able to identify relatively common species. The drawings in this book are excellent, the descriptions very detailed, and the range maps very helpful. My two criticisms are that birders familiar with the common names in Salim Ali's "The Book of Indian Birds" will be confused with the revised nomenclature in this guide (based on the Inskipp's Indian Checklist); some changes are relatively minor, while others are so dramatically different (and frankly puzzling) that cross-referencing is a chore. The second involves the seperation of many of the range maps from the plates and descriptions, sometimes by many pages. This was due to the large number of species featured on some plates- there just wasn't enough room for the maps also. A better strategy might have been to put them all in the back of the book. But the benefits of this book far outweigh the shortcomings- my next trip to India promises to be more rewarding and productive bird-wise (as well as easier on my back)due to this excellent and overdue field guide.

The title is promising and the concept is good for some laughs as we struggle to comprehend the mind of the not-so-crafty criminal. However, the same story with different variations repeated 100 times is about 84 times too many. Probably younger kids will have the unique attention span to find all of these funny but juveniles and older will find reading the whole book a bore. The writing style is also QUITE elementary. However, if you just want to veg out and not use any brain matter, this is perfect uninvolved reading for a lazy afternoon with Cheez-its (not necessarily a brand recommendation) and T.V.

This is a group of stories that was put together by officers from around the country sharing some of the more bizarre experiences they have encountered in their careers. This is not about glorifying criminal behavior, it is just meant to highlight human nature at its lowest point when common sense is totally missing.

It is fair to say that common sense is not something a criminal should have by definition, but this book proves that any semblance of judgment is often missing. There are several hundred examples, some of which are a riot to read, and many that seemed forced. Some of the tales seem familiar from other stories I have read centering on The Darwin Awards.

To give you an idea of these geniuses here are a couple of examples. One person serving a 90-day sentence attempted to escape on day 89, the result an additional 18 months added to his time. A man suspected of stealing from vending machines paid his $400 bail, all in quarters. And one stunt was not even a criminal at the outset. A woman decided to alter her lottery ticket so she would win $20. The rub was that if she had left the ticket alone she not only would have avoided jail, but her original numbers had already won her $5,000!

The Police have extremely tough jobs, its nice to know that they do get an occasional laugh from their jobs.

Any reader who says these tales are exaggerated or just war stories, obviously has never worked as a police officer.

There are a lot of dumb crooks out there, so many and so dumb that officers can't always feel proud of their easy arrests. What's amazing is that some of these dummies have survived in this world as long as they have.

While you will laugh out loud at the stories in this book, know that there are thousands of other dumb acts by criminals that could have been included and thousands more that have occurred since this book was written.

And while you laugh, keep the sobering thought in mind that many of these dumb crooks are dangerous.

It is a nice book but my only complaint is that the birds in it are limited. It did not have indigo buntings and rose breasted grosbeaks, etc.
Also, some of the descriptions do not seem accurate, eg differences between a yellow fronted canary and a yellow eye canary are not highlighted, and the female distinguishing markings are also not covered. The description on the song is also not accurate. I was disappointed with the book because I expected a lot more for the price I paid.

Overall, a good reference to the finches and sparrows of the world. However, those interested chiefly in the sparrows of the New World are advised to look elsewhere, as only the sparrows of the Old World genuses Passer, etc. are included in this work. I repeat: THERE ARE NO NEW WORLD SPARROWS (or towhees, buntings, juncos, etc.) IN THIS BOOK.

Also, I am not sure that all of the munias and mannikins of the genus Lonchura are included, as this book lists only 34, while another book specifically on that subject claims 41. Taxonomic hair-splitting or an omission by the authors of this book?

The Galapagos finches are omitted as well.

Buyer beware.

I am a breeder and distributor of different finches and this book has been the best resource I have been able to find. The picture plates are finely detailed including many sub-species of each type of finch. It even covers some finches that are too rare to be covered in any other book. There is detailed information on each species including, but not limited to, regional location (including migration and breeding maps), identification, differences between sub-species, availability, habitat requirements, food eaten, and scientific and local names. I really want someone to make a book as well done covering Weavers, Whydas, and Buntings. If you are looking to identify species and sub-species of finches then this is probably the only book you will need--period.

I think the premise of this book is interesting - reflecting who you are by the tastes you prefer....the psychology of personality, the power of smell in memory and in attraction. The chapter titles enticed me (but it all seems to be advertising, with no depth) -- the writing and the information imparted in this book is no deeper than a magazine article. The book is probably worth paging through for fifteen minutes...you will catch all the information you need -- and will ever get from it -- that way.

This book is really about the world of smell first, taste second - and the findings, meanings, ramifications, and just plain weird and thrilling things neurologists, psychiatrists, educators, and all sorts of additional folks have learned in the past several decades about olfactory stimuli.

Dr. Alan Hirsch is a neurologist and a psychiatrist, and has published a study entitled "Effects of Garlic Bread and Family Interactions." He has my vote. The results of that study, and a series of other, equally engaging ones (on migraines and fragrance, firefighters' loss of smell, nostalgia, the effects of "malodors" and more) are included in the wonderful appendix of this very entertaining book.

Considering the wealth of understanding and information that Hirsch has at his disposal, this book is a bit "lite, " and the chapter on meat is quite general. But the narrative seems to be grounded in Hirsh's research, and in his especially playful and hopeful sense of human possibility.

In addition, Hirsch mentions some strange and interesting things: for example, research into humans and smell has shown that certain floral smells are stimulating, ever so slightly anxiety-provoking, and therefore promote learning in test subjects. (Your third grade teacher who "smelled good" may actually have enhanced your ability to learn - by wearing perfume.) Male chefs - for a variety of reasons - have senses of smell that are often less acute than the diners in the restaurant. In order to make foods "taste like themselves," artificial flavoring often does the trick better than natural flavorings. Men and women have very different noses. (Men, think twice about taking a female date to a barbecue.) If someone "smells right," it's a very, very good thing - for a developing relationship. Likewise, the "wrong" smell jinxes things - utterly. However, men are turned off by many fewer smells than are women.

Much of research has been done by Hirsch. The index is a bit scanty, but on the other hand I have no idea how he managed in this book to describe me to a T based on my preferences in food and odors. I pestered family and friends and they, too, were impressed with his on-target analysis of their psyches and behaviors - based on food and odor preferences.

This book is a lot of fun.

What Flavor Is Your Personality?: Discover Who Your Are By Looking At What You Eat is an informative examination of the research accomplished by the "Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation" that is an entertaining as it is instructive. As the foundation's Neurological Director, Dr. Alan Hirsch examines how our olfactory system works and how people with like personalities share preferences for various foods and scents. Numerous quizzes and surveys enable the reader to determine his or her true personality -- and that of friends, families and colleagues. What Flavor Is Your Personality? is a unique, insightful, original, and enthusiastically recommended addition to any personal or professoinal self-improvement, or self-discovery, or self-help reading list and reference collection.