If you are newbie, you should buy it. But dont expect a definitive guide.

WIllson's book provides a very good coverage of the ongoing declination of the relationship between the Monarch and Parliament. He completely stays within the bounds of Parliament in his writing and provides a well written source on the topic.

I've been a big fan of David Morrell since First Blood which I originally read in the summer before ninth grade way back in the early 70s. Morrell ALWAYS tells an interesting well-written story. Long Lost is one of his best.

Brad Denning's brother was kidnapped and never found when he was nine. Suddenly, after 25 years, his brother shows up... but is it his brother?

When Brad is nearly killed and his wife and son kidnapped by the man claiming to be his brother he turns to the authorities to help. After a year with no leads, it appears all is lost. Then Brad decides to go looking...

This one rates a solid "A."

I've read every book David Morrell has written and Long Lost is his best in years. The last few books he's written have been good books, but the heroes are almost superhuman. Yes, Morrell did create Rambo, but David Morrell's Rambo was a real, flawed person, not the perfect hero Stallone turned him into. With 'Long Lost' Morrell returns to the kind of human story he told in 'First Blood'. It's a fairly simple story of a boy, Petey Denning, who disappears when he is nine years old, devastating his parents and older brother. Years later his parents are dead and his brother Brad is married and successful. Petey returns to Brad's life and kidnaps his family. The story takes off from there as Brad chases his family across the country trying to save them from his brother. The characters are very real, and the situations all make sense.
Although, the way Brad tracks his brother is a little hard to believe. The ending rings very true to life. It's not exactly a happy ending. This book is one incredible book!

Most of you remember telling a pesky sibling or younger friend, "Get lost. Go away. Leave me alone." You didn't really mean it, of course. You just wanted some time with your buddies without your bothersome little brother getting in the way. You didn't think about "what if?"

What if? What if you told your little brother to get lost...and he did--for twenty-five years? Brad Dennings is now a successful architect with a beautiful wife and adoring young son. A quarter century earlier, his nine year-old brother Petey disappears. At a baseball game thirteen year-old Brad gets tired of his little brother following him around and tells him to go home. Petey never makes it home. He's apparently been kidnapped--his bike and baseball glove found abandoned just blocks from home.

Brad carries the guilt of his brother's kidnapping with him into his adult life, but buries it deep inside, where it lies dormant as he becomes a happy successful business owner, husband and father. One unexpected day,the persuasive words of a stranger bring Petey back into Brad's life. His feelings of guilt also return, so Brad shoves away his lingering doubts about this hardened, disheveled man who claims to be his "long lost" brother. His suspicions are validated when Petey disappears once again--this time taking Brad's wife and son with him. Now Brad must literally step into his brother's shoes to find his stolen family--before it's too late.

David Morrell is truly a master novelist. His ability to balance rich descriptions of characters and scenery with heart-pounding action makes you feel as if you are perched on the edge of a sheer cliff, feeling the adrenaline burn through your veins as you desperately try to keep from falling.

The first "Bill" book was good. Not great, but decent, funny and satirically sharp. The rest of the series is barely-mitigated garbage. By this point, he's clearly not even writing the stuff at all, as one "co-author" after another takes over. Sadly, it's difficult to see how it would be any better if he had. Harrison can write great, lively, funny, inventive sci-fi: the early "Rat" books, "Deathworld". "Deathworld" works so well because he wrote three short books, one short story and then stopped (or converted its protagonist into the Rat, one could argue). But the Rat books decay into a muddle when it becomes clear that Harrison just thrives on the stock elements of the stories; the capers, gadgets and booze. Continuity and development can go hang. Who cares if English was the native language of Jim diGriz's homeworld in some books but has to learn it in others? Who cares that the man who has dealt with money in every form from coin to electronic transfer can suddenly be confused by a wallet and its contents? Stick with the ride and it'll all work out OK. The Rat character and the main ingredients are good enough. After a while, though, the contempt that Harrison exudes for his audience starts to get wearing. If Harrison doesn't care enough to keep consistent about basic details of his major character's history, why should we care about him at all?

But with "Bill", we reach this point after Book 1. The character is not as accessible, his lot in life not as enjoyable to read about, the reversals he suffers tiresome. Add in some often appallingly bad attempts at genre parody (the Cyberpunk and Orson Scott Card efforts in one of this series, in particular, were cringe-makingly horrible) and it's no surprise that in every used SF bookstore I've seen, a chunk of the Harry Harrison shelfspace is taken by barely-touched copies of "Bill the Galactic Hero And Something Or Other" by Harry Harrison And Some Guy. I've read them all once and will never touch any of them again. Harrison clearly doesn't care about Bill, and nor do I.

Harry Harrison has an ingenius talent when it comes to creating fundamentally likeable,amusing characters and scenarios.Similar to sleeeepery jeeeeem digriz(anti-hero of the stainless steel rat series)Bill is stuck in the TROOPERS and all his adventures revolve around trying to get out and back to his sepia-toned robomule.The final adventure is more topical than previous novels but is firmly rooted in the soil of mirth with running gags,polevaulting gags and gags on rocket powered rollerblades(both left footed,chuckle chuckle chuckle)ah bejesus,this was my 'bath book' for ages,like a fine wine in nearly no way at all except its funnier.buy this for a much needed laugh at the military mind.

Harris and Harrison have taken their Galactic Hero into the middle of a war for control of vital neutron mines. This book takes Bill back to satiric vision created by Harrison in the original book, Bill the Galatic Hero. Funny, occasionally moving, with an undercurrent of contemporary commentary on the nature of war--and people who like their jokes well-aged.

Apparently, this book was written to cater to those interested in hallucinogenic fungi. I initially bought this book in the hopes that it would teach me how to set up a cultivation operation focused primarily on edible, gourmet mushrooms. What I got instead was a poorly organized book rife with errors. The text has almost nothing to say about growing edible mushrooms. Rather, it is basically little more than a souped-up underground manual for the cultivation of hallucinogenic or so-called 'magic' mushrooms.

To demonstrate how erroneous this book is, the author begins the book by saying that fungi are plants! As any good student of biology knows, fungi lack chlorophyll, thus can not be considered plants, and occupy their own, separate kingdom. These and other gross errors throughout the text make it unfit as a starting point for those interested in mushroom cultivation.

The book is poorly organized, and places way too much emphasis on the psilocybe mushrooms, with passing reference to the cultivation of Pleurotus (oyster) mushrooms. In addition to some gratuitous color photos of a variety of Psilocybe mushrooms, and a few poorly placed black and white photos, this unremarkable book comes without an index, references, or supplementary materials. Furthermore, for the money you spend, you will not get much more than eighty six pages devoted to terse methods for locating, identifying, and cultivating the Psilocybe mushrooms (and this even is at a very low level).

The title of this book should actually be: 'Growing Hallucinogenic Mushrooms'. For those interested in Psilocybe mushrooms, this book may serve as an adequate reference. For individuals interested in the edible and gourmet mushrooms, a good starting point is Paul Stamets' utilitarian book 'The Mushroom Cultivator' and his comprehensive, though sometimes off-beat 'Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms'.

Growing Wild Mushrooms is a good book for a biggining Mycologist. It runs through the basic procedures from making an agar medium to harvesting. But what makes this book worth a four star rating is it's wonderful color photos. It's one thing to read text, but quite another to to see clear illustrations. I would recocgmend this book to any aspiring Mycologist

This is a great book, and at no. 137,000 this Bob Harris' book on Mushrooms seems all set to pass the other Bob Harris' book on Chomskian analysis of how dumb all those journalists are, excepting of course Mssrs. Cohen and Solomon.

David presents this book as a "reckoning" for those of us who lived through the years of the Viet Nam war. That is, a sort of emotional catharsis. In some ways, it worked for me. In some ways, not. Perhaps it is good for those of us who lived through the fear. And for those of us who are left scared by the experience of those years. But the message will be lost on those who thought, and still think, that the war was a good idea. For me it brought back the full impact of the total distrust in government that the era made a permanent part of my psyche. But did I need that? I'm not sure. David's book did not change my head... But for younger readers (folks under 30) who did not live their early-adult years in the fear of being forced to kill or be killed. And for the still remaining supporters of the war, the book is highly recommended. David has done a good job of telling the story of what the war did to us. Not just as individuals, but to the country, and its poitics. Not to mention what it did to S.E. Asia. Reading "Our War" didn't help me, as a person. I _was_ pissed, and I'm _still_ pissed at what our government did to me and my generation; and hope to remain that way. So, I guess David's book failed in its attempt at "reckoning." We've already had our noses rubbed in that war. But the book works on other levels. And the results of the war echo though today's branches of government. Worth a read. --del

The "Vietnam Syndrome" is not buried forever, contrary to former President Bush's pronouncement after the Persian Gulf War. My heart goes out to the "loserama" reviewer of this book. Victory? For whom? The Vietnamese we were supposedly helping? No one ever wins a war. The only way to avoid condemning "millions to death, imprisonment and misery" in the future is to face ourselves. It is the American Dream that causes our wars. We have gotten the government we deserve; one that protects our vulgarly excessive way of life with brute force and cruelty. And most of us like things that way. We veterans are both victims of the empire and recipients of its ill-gotten bounty. We have to lead the reckoning.

Twenty-five years after it ended and the Vietnam War still brings-up intense feelings from people who lived through that period. Harris stood up for his beliefs and he paid the price for not going along with the government line. I had the opportunity to meet him shortly after he was released from prison and found him to be sincere and steadfast in his support for non-violent resistance to an unnecessary war. I thought that Harris did an excellent job of explaining the moral underpinnings of the anti-war movement and how his stand against the war evolved. This is required reading for anyone seeking clarity about those times, whether they fought in Vietnam or protested at home, or weren't even born yet. Anyone who still blames the anti-war movement for the outcome of the Vietnam War needs to read the Pentagon Papers and the numerous books detailing the prolonging of the war for political purposes by LBJ, Nixon, Kissinger and McNamara. A lot of people died because the United States government was unwilling to admit mistakes had been made and we should never have been over there in the first place. I had friends who went to Nam and never returned. I knew others who volunteered, survived their tour of duty and came back convinced of the injustice of the war. And I had friends who stood up, refused to serve and went to prison. All of us who survived would benefit from reading Harris' thoughtful accounting of those dreadful times.

I know several of the characters in Harris' book, and he has invented a lot of their colorful talk and dress. In just one example Raymond Takiff ("Roy" in the index!) was from West Philadelphia, Overbrook Park, just south of the Main Line, not South Philadelphia. Harris makes Takiff, a Villanova graduate and former history teacher who considered himself an intellectual, sound like a cheap South Philly hoodlum. Takiff was a snappy dresser, in the South Florida style (Silk, please, not Rayon!), and the scene with the shorts and brogans was a grotesque invention. Harris also misspells Takiff's daughter's name! Most details on the other lawyers involved are also highly imaginary. As an indication of the sloppy job Harris did, he misses some colorful items, too, such as Takiff maneuvering the judge in the trial of the 91 year old woman accused of cocaine possession into helping the defendant out of the witness stand!
No wonder a number of the characters in this book are not named, or personal background and color is missing. Since Ray Takiff is dead he couldn't defend himself but I'd guess that some legal threats were involved with many of those in this book, and the publishers took the names and/or details out when they were unable to verify all the "facts".
The large percentage of mistakes on items I have personal knowledge of are a likely indication that the error level in this book is pretty high. Not a trustworthy source of information.

this book would be better sub-titled "The True Story of an Unusual Indictment of a Foreign Ruler," considering it only devotes a handful of pages to the actual "manhunt" for Noriega. that being said, Harris tells a great story of the weird saga of Manuel Noriega, the cheap thug who was the de facto ruler of Panama for awhile.
Harris goes on in great detail about how the U.S. built its unprecedented case against Noriega by interviewing some of the key players in the indictment.
however, although Harris makes numerous allusions to the reluctance of several powerful agencies to endorse the case against Noriega (chiefly, the CIA and DEA), he never goes into much detail about Noriega's connection to these agencies or what role Noriega played in the Iran-Contra scandal, which i feel are probably the real stories here. i dont fault Harris for not having those answers, considering the sensitive nature of the questions, but this book begs the answers nonetheless.
i was also disappointed that Harris negelected to write at all about Noriega's trial, considering the exhaustive research he did into the indictment, but perhaps the trial is addressed in someone else's book.
despite its shortcoming, this is a very well researched book, and definitely worth the time if youre interested in U.S. policy toward drugs and/or Latin America.

In 1989 the United States sent American troops to arrest General Manuel Antonio Noreiga, Panama's highest military officer. Trying a foreign leader for events that took place in his own country as violations of U. S. law was previously unheard of in American history. Stopping the Medellin Cartel was a major step in slowing down the influx of illegal Cocaine and other drugs. Harris unravels the complicated story with wit and verve, very colorful language, marvelous humor, and a sense of excitement. Harris makes the FBI, DEA and CIA agents appear to be involved in a bumbling, amusing, tragedy. Oliver North was engaged in clandestine arms dealing and nobody seemed to know what anybody else was doing. Here is a true crime story on a grand scale with betrayal, murder, arms dealing and drug smuggling that reads like good fiction. Here are the explanations of the Reagan administration's dealings with the Sandinistas and Contras; names that were always in the news in association with cover-ups and destroyed evidence by government agencies, though the public didn't really know what was going on. Harris has done a superior job of investigative reporting to create an impressive chronicle of the events leading up to the invasion of Panama and the arrest of Manuel Antonio Noreiga. He made history come alive and really gave me a much better understanding of the events that were in the news for so long, and the role and fate of each of the historical players in this drama of our time.

Other than the little mention of Colter in the Lewis and Clark Expedition journals, there is no verifiable material for this biography. His life is a mystery and remains so, inspite of considerable effort by Burton Harris. If you are interested in the life of J Colter, sorry, its just not known and this book is a waste of time.

Yellowstone...Colter's Hell...geysers...Indians.... I found this book a total pleasure to read. Couldn't put it down! Although it is true that Colter's life was somewhat obscure by a lack of more historical documentation, Harris does an exemplary piece of work with what there is to work with. Citing such references as William Clark, Thomas James, Brackenridge, Bradbury and others, Harris does make a justifiable attempt to back up his story. Required reading for those into this time period of the early American West when mountain men roamed the wide open spaces, high mountain valleys and peaks. It must have been a tough, but very rewarding way of life...if you survived the perils and hardships of that day.

very drawn out and boring. does get interesting at times

It should have been soo much more. Running in the same gamet as Alston Chase's "In a Dark Wood" David Harris goes into some of the same territory. The 'good' lumber company taken over by Wall Street and turned into the mirror of its former self, this book is at it most fascinating describing the moves between PALCO and Charles Hurwitz. The arrival of a hurrican alows him to suceed in his takeover but the company is taken over by the resultant costs both to its people and the enviroment. The final point is well taken.....if you lumber in oblivion there can be no winners. Only with sustained yield can the enviroment, employees and shareholders come out ahead. The only winnter with Palco was Charles Hurwitz.