Now, if Stan Lynde would just collect and publish the rest of the Rick O'Shay archive, those of us nostalgic for the town of Conniption and its residents could complete our collections. Meanwhile, this will have to do. It's a collection of 10 complete stories from the daily comic strip (1959-1977) plus an autobiography of Stan Lynde and an introduction by Charlton Heston.

The stories center around the anachronistic town of Conniption, located somewhere in the Old West. Conniption seems, like Brigadoon, to be adrift in time -- often interacting with the modern world to humorous effect, while retaining its basic rural western character. Its residents are a quirky lot who change and grow over time as Lynde's skills as artist and story teller mature over the years.

If you're old enough to remember the strip in your daily paper, this compilation is the closest you can come to getting it back. If you're a fan of the Old West, or even just like "Tumbleweeds," but haven't yet encountered Stan Lynde's work, you're in for a treat.

Clearly a labor of love, POAR is jam packed with interesting interviews and interesting tidbits about the production of the first classic film and the well made sequels. This fine book corrects a lot of "myths" about the films (such as the fact that screenwriter Michael Wilson came up with the "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" scene and the fact that Rod Serling's original screenplay was a mess)and reminds us how groundbreaking this first science fiction film series was.

Although memories occasinally differ as to who did what (most notably about the twist ending of the first film. There has been some debate as to who came up with it although it clearly has Serling's fingerprints all over it),the authors have put together a terrific volume that works both as film history and puts the films in their historical perspective. Sure they're all entertaining (some to a lesser degree than others) but the first film (and to a lesser extent the sequels)works both as allegory and social satire in the tradition of Swift's Gulliver's Travels.

The book is stocked with rare photos (including a series of stunning photos from Lydia Heston's private collection)and great interviews. If you're an Apes fan this terrific book is a perfect companion to the DVD re-release of the films (and the making of documentary that aired on cable a couple of years ago). My only complaint is I would have liked to see a bit more of the Apes memorabilia reproduced perhaps even in a separate section.

What's surprising is the impact these films have had over the past 30 years. Although some of the participants would go on to bigger things (director Schaffner's classic Patton and Serling's stint as creator/host/writer on the uneven Night Gallery series), none of their efforts has had the impact of this fine series of films. Although it's taken over 15 years to for this fine book to finally see the light of day it was well worth the wait!

Planet of the Apes revisited is a must for all fans of the classic film series. From the Introduction by Charleton Heston, right through to the final chapter on Tim Burton's "re-Imagining", the Authors manage to answer every question you could possibly have about the Ape Movies, TV series, and Cartoon series. This book was over 15 years in the making, so the Authors were able to interview just about everyone associated with the films, from the Stars to the Crew. Kim Hunter & the late Roddy McDowell provide great anecdotes, and the struggle of the late Arthur P. Jacobs (Producer of the original Series of Films) to get a Studio to MAKE the Movies is exhaustively documented.

Two small problems: 1)- Many of the pictures in the book aren't captioned, so you aren't sure who or what you're looking at; and 2)- The Authors briefly mention the Ape Comic Books, by Marvel and Malibu. I would have liked to see a chapter covering these books, as well as a chapter (or Two...), about other Ape ancillary products.

Ape fans will love this book, and when you're done reading it, you'll watch the Movies with a new appreciation.

This is one of those books you can open at any page and start reading and find something interesting about the Ape Saga that you didn't know before. The writer gives tons of background info on each movie, the TV series, and the cartoon series, and there are lots of great photos.

We just reviewed this book for our church library this evening, we found it to be an elegant and accessible summary of popular Bible stories. The illustrations and photos are wonderful. The addition of historic and other contextual information in sidebars appealed to this well-educated group of church women. We felt that the book would be a good starting place for someone new to the Bible. The stories were told in a manner appropriate for reading aloud (Heston's intent) with older children.

WOW! That about describes this masterpiece. Mr.Heston offers such insight into The Bible, which has not been equalled even by theologians. I was moved, amazed, and brought to tears at times by the beautiful, thought provoking prose. I came away with a greater desire to serve our Holy Father. If these thoughts and insights were truly conceived by Mr.Heston, he is as erudite and inspirational as any of the great people in our world's history. His essays are gripping and his commentary is helpful and at times he achieves brilliance. This book has touched my heart and soul and filled them with a new love for Christianity and a greater respect for the already highly esteemed Mr.Heston. Get it today!

Being a big fan of Mr. Heston as an actor; this book in question, was a natural choice, i.e., In the Arena : An Autobiography by Charlton Heston. Mr. Heston here describes his life as an actor, father, husband and "celebrity". The stories concerning his discussions with Olivier and De Mille are very interesting. His seems throughly enthralled with the litterature of Shakespeare and has because of this played in the plays numerous times.

Here's a life worth learning about! Heston (along with Lancaster and Douglas) were probably the most successful actors of the most fertile period for films, the late 40s - mid 60s. Heston's secret: unbelievably hard work. The man was constantly developing roles and productions. Reading "In the Arena", you find yourself asking Chuck to slow down so you can catch up. Although the elites, now preoccupied with Chuck's political incorrectness, downplay Heston's importance in American film and stage, "In the Arena" will remind you of Heston's tremendous accomplishments.

Some of the material of the book is based on his journal entries from 1956-1976, "The Actor's Life", but with the perspective of an additional twenty years.

Celebs lives are shoved in our faces as "important", mostly as marketing gimmicks by the infotainment industry. Charlton Heston's work and human decency are a monument to a great era in American film and stage.

Heston has given us some of the greatest movies ever made. Who can deny he is among the greatest actors ever produced in America? His book is an interesting Bio and gives the reader a lot of insight into the Golden era of film making. Imagine yourself behind the scenes on the set of Ten Commandants, Ben Hur, 55 Days at Peking, El Cid. Heston takes you there in his own formable style and wit. You will enjoy the story as you have taken pleasure in his movie career. Unfortunately left leaning Hollywood has ostracized him in later years for his stand on liberty, but always a man of great principle, Chuck has stuck to his beliefs and continues to influence millions of young Americans with the truth. We can all be thankful for an actor of his caliber and character.

Yuk. So full of himself and his "goodness" that I couldn't even finish it. Don't waste your time.

Charlton Heston is a real man.
He stood up to the forces attempting to take away
Americans' rights to protect themselves.

Charlton Heston is my favorite actor of all time and this book, i.e., To Be a Man : Letters to My Grandson by Charlton Heston, is definetely an inspirational source regarding topics such as morality, ethics and religion. Mr. Heston is one better versed and read actors and when he uses quotes it feels as if knows the intricate meaning of these quotes rather then just putting them in for show. His letters to his grand-son Jack are very heartfelt, genuine and he seems to really care about the mind, spirit and intellect of his offspring.

The way I look at these tapes as the best way of reading philosophy while you are driving. Please keep your eyes on the road while you are driving. These series are great. I believe they are not intended to be comprehensive and they could not be in two hours but they give you %60 biography %40 philosophy. Some of them even have accent as they though they were immigrants from original contries to US, Kant speakes with German/English accent. It is fun, entertaining, illuminating. Much better than talk shows. Please this is not a substitute for a real book so judge accordingly.

This brief introduction to Hume is exceptional. I went from this tape to Hume's "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding" and "An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals". I don't think it would have been such an easy transition without learning how Hume fits into Western philosophical history and what problems concerned him. It startled me to discover that Hume's major point is that inductive thinking (thinking about "matters of fact" ) is irrational: forming general laws about the world has its basis in custom and experience and not by the sort of reasoning used in math and logic ("relations of ideas" in Hume's lexicon).

Hume's political, historical, and ethical ideas are also interesting and I was surprised to learn how much Hume's ideas on the separation of powers in government had influenced James Madison.

Charlton Heston does it again.Another project that I have absolutely fallen in love with.He sounds so smart and sexy,just like those philosophers were,therefore an appropriate choice to narrate.I wonder,if they were alive today,what would these philosophers have to say about guns?Ah,no matter,they'd all agree with me that Mr.Heston did an excellent job on what i'm sure will be a quintessential work on the subject.

I enjoy the two tape set very much. Often times, listening to spoken words has a different effect than reading them. I wake up to Nietzsche's reflections in the morning, by using these tapes in my clock/radio tape player.

I enjoy the two tape set very much. Often time, listening to spoken words has a different effect than reading them. I wake up to Nietzsche's reflections in the morning, by using these tapes in my clock/radio tape player.

The only problem with this audio set is the length. Unless there are some mysterious expanded sets floating around, the one I have consists of 2, 30min cassettes. Oh the agony! However, the 1 hour of total time is worth the set, simply because of Heston's voice. I mean come on, MOSES, reading the BIBLE. It just makes sense. Heston brings his trademark over-emoting to the King James Bible and his crackling voice just seems the perfect fit to the 400 year old language. If you enjoy the Bible and want to listen to some favorite stories and psalms injected with a new sense of majestic power, look no further. If you can't get enough of Heston rambling on and on about damn dirty apes and his people having to go, then grab this too because its in a very similar vein. I'll say it again, MOSES & THE BIBLE, it just makes sense.

I first read Moby Dick; or The Whale over thirty years ago and I didn't understand it. I thought I was reading a sea adventure, like Westward Ho! or Poe's Arthur Gordon Pym. In fact, it did start out like an adventure story but after twenty chapters or so, things began to get strange. I knew I was in deep water. It was rough, it seemed disjointed, there were lengthy passages that seemed like interruptions to the story, the language was odd and difficult, and often it was just downright bizarre. I plodded through it, some of it I liked, but I believe I was glad when it ended. I knew I was missing something and I understood that it was in me! It wasn't the book; it was manifestly a great book, but I hadn't the knowledge of literature or experience to understand it.

I read it again a few years later. I don't remember what I thought of it. The third time I read it, it was hilarious; parts of it made me laugh out loud! I was amazed at all the puns Melville used, and the crazy characters, and quirky dialog. The fourth or fifth reading, it was finally that adventure story I wanted in the first place. I've read Moby Dick more times than I've counted, more often than any other book. At some point I began to get the symbolism. Somewhere along the line I could see the structure. It's been funny, awesome, exciting, weird, religious, overwhelming and inspiring. It's made my hair stand on end...

Now, when I get near the end I slow down. I go back and reread the chapters about killing the whale, and cutting him up, and boiling him down. Or about the right whale's head versus the sperm whale's. I want to get to The Chase but I want to put it off. I draw Queequeg with his tattoos in the oval of a dollar bill. I take a flask with Starbuck and a Decanter with Flask. Listen to The Symphony and smell The Try-Works. Stubb's Supper on The Cabin Table is a noble dish, but what is a Gam? Heads or Tails, it's a Leg and Arm. I get my Bible and read about Rachel and Jonah. Ahab would Delight in that; he's a wonderful old man. For a Doubloon he'd play King Lear! What if Shakespeare wrote The Tragedy of The Whale? Would Fedallah blind Ishmael with a harpoon, or would The Pequod weave flowers in The Virgin's hair?

Now I know. To say you understand Moby Dick is a lie. It is not a plain thing, but one of the knottiest of all. No one understands it. The best you can hope to do is come to terms with it. Grapple with it. Read it and read it and study the literature around it. Melville didn't understand it. He set out to write another didactic adventure/travelogue with some satire thrown in. He needed another success like Typee or Omoo. He needed some money. He wrote for five or six months and had it nearly finished. And then things began to get strange. A fire deep inside fret his mind like some cosmic boil and came to a head bursting words on the page like splashes of burning metal. He worked with the point of red-hot harpoon and spent a year forging his curious adventure into a bloody ride to hell and back. "...what in the world is equal to it?"

Moby Dick is a masterpiece of literature, the great American novel. Nothing else Melville wrote is even in the water with it, but Steinbeck can't touch it, and no giant's shoulders would let Faulkner wade near it. Melville, The pale Usher, warned the timid: "...don't you read it, ...it is by no means the sort of book for you. ...It is... of the horrible texture of a fabric that should be woven of ships' cables and hausers. A Polar wind blows through it, & birds of prey hover over it. Warn all gentle fastidious people from so much as peeping into the book..." But I say if you've never read it, read it now. If you've read it before, read it again. Think Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Goethe, and The Bible. If you understand it, think again.

It's always dangerous to label a book as a "masterpiece": that word seems to scare away most readers and distances everyone from the substance of the book itself. Still, I'm going to say that this is the Greatest American Novel because I really think that it is--after having read it myself.

Honestly, Moby Dick IS long and looping, shooting off in random digressions as Ishmael waxes philosophical or explains a whale's anatomy or gives the ingredients for Nantucket clam chowder--and that's exactly what I love about it. This is not a neat novel: Melville refused to conform to anyone else's conventions. There is so much in Moby Dick that you can enjoy it on so many completely different levels: you can read it as a Biblical-Shakespearean-level epic tragedy, as a canonical part of 19th Century philosophy, as a gothic whaling adventure story, or almost anything else. Look at all the lowbrow humor. And I'm sorry, but Ishmael is simply one of the most likable and engaging narrators of all time.

A lot of academics love Moby Dick because academics tend to have good taste in literature. But the book itself takes you about as far from academia as any book written--as Ishmael himself says, "A whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard." Take that advice and forget what others say about it, and just experience Moby Dick for yourself.

Finishing "Moby Dick" goes up there with my greatest (and few) academic achievements. It was a gruelling read, but---in the end---completely worthwhile.

I've been reading it for 6 months. I started over the summer, during an abroad program in Oxford, and I remember sitting outside reading when one of the professors came over, saw what I was reading, and said: "It's a very strange book, isn't it?"

Looking back, that might be the best way to describe it. The blurb from D.H. Lawrence on the back cover agrees: Moby Dick "commands a stillness in the soul, an awe...[it is] one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world."

Now there are those who will say that the book's middle is unbearable---with its maddeningly detailed accounts of whaling. Part of me agrees. That was the hardest to get through. But, still, even the most dull subject offers Melville an opportunity to show off his writing chops. He's a fantastic writer---his text most resembles that of Shakespeare.

And, like one Shakespeare's characters, Melville sees all the world as a stage. Consider this beautiful passage from the first chapter:

"Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down for magnifient parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces--though I cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment."

The end of "Moby Dick" informs the rest of the book, and in doing so makes rereading it inevitable. It is telling that Moby Dick doesn't appear until page 494. It is telling, because, the majority of the book is spent in anticipation---in fact, the whole book is anticipation. It's not unlike sex, actually---delaying gratification to a point of almost sublime anguish. What comes at the book's end, then, is mental, physical, and spiritual release (as well as fufillment).

The book leaves you with questions both large and small. I was actually most troubled with this question---What happened to Ishmael? No, we learn his fate at the book's end, but where was he throughout it? We all know how it starts---"Call me Ishmael"---and the book's first few chapters show him interacting with Queequeg and an innkeeper. But then we lose him onboard the Pequod---we never see him interact with anyone. No one ever addresses him. He seems to witness extremely private events---conferences in the Captain's quarters, conversations aboard multiple boats, and--what can only be his conjecture--the other characters' internal dialogue. Is he a phantom? What is he that he isn't? Somehow I think this question masks a much larger and more important one.

Try "Moby Dick." Actually, don't try it---read it. Work at it. Like lifting weights a bit heavier than you're used to, "Moby Dick" will strengthen your brain muscle. Don't believe those who hate it, they didn't read it. They didn't work at it. Be like Ishmael, who says: "I try all things; I achieve what I can." Or, more daringly, be like Ahab, whose ambition is his curse, but whose curse propels and writes the book itself.

Reagan and Bush told no lies? Keep dreaming

Methinks the self-proclaimed pillar of virtue named Bennett doth protest too much. He does casuistic cartwheels and Puritan pirouettes in order to project continuing Republican shame over Watergate onto the Clintons: a stomped-to-death tactic that does not, has not, and shall not yield another bitter grape, let alone the wine of salvation. Bennett's collage of Utopian morality, tired, glittering denials of human nature, and one self-replicating argumentum ad hominem after another speaks volumes about the hypocrisy, cynicism, and self-serving affronts to critical reason that will come to be seen as the true Reagan legacy. But why expect more of a failed "Drug Czar", who never quite succeeded in recovering from his addiction to tobacco? That anyone could take Bennett's death-knell of statesmanship and partisan harmony seriously suggests that outrage indeed is dead: The title says it all, if not quite as its author intended.

What more can be said about Bennett's book than the reactions to it from those on the left. Bennett knows how to frustrate those who defend the likes of Clinton: employ logic and analytic philosophy against them. Wonderful book by a man who lives the virtues.