A well written Commentary by Davids; but lacks depth. After reading Davids, the serious reader will need to turn to other works on James, like Moo's Letter of James (Pillar) or Adamson's The Epistle of James (NICNT), to get a fuller meaning of the text.

This book, about the early adventures of Worf (Now commander Worf at DS9) Was okay. It was firstly too short, and it was slightly boring. However the characters are well written, especially the characters of Worf, Soleta and Kebron. Also, the illustrations inside that book are very good. On the whole this book was not that good, And only trek fans, who want to know a bit more about Worf should read it.

I find it interesting that the glowing reviews on the back cover of the book are all in reference to the "Simple Etiquette in Arabia" portion (37 pages), and not to the language component (69 pages). Indeed, a traveler who relies on the stylized Roman script to facilitate reasonable pronunciation will be taking a chance.

As an experiment, I enlisted the help of three colleagues to read the Arabic as presented in this book (with native Arabic speakers in the room). One produced fairly good pronunciation, the second was recognizable, and the third gave up because he was incomprehensible.

The book is attractive, pleasantly thin, and enjoyable to look at. And the "etiquette" section is good. But to be truly valuable as a language tool, it should come with recorded material. If you plan to use it, try to find an Arabic speaker to help you with pronunciation -- before you try it on the street.

I'm a huge James Patterson fan but lately he has been really dissapointing me. The last two or three entries in the Alex Cross series are far inferior to his early novels such as Jack & Jill or Along Came a Spider. But, really, The Beach House is about as weak a book as Patterson could write. It's got a decent little setup and some potential for good characters, but about halfway through the book gets so contrived and farfetched, it gets to be a task just to get through the book. It's like Patterson just wrote until he reached a point where he needed a "shocking twist" and then one was randomly thrown in without any real rhyme or reason. A couple of them I'd love to go into detail about because they make virtually no sense at all except for the fact that they were needed to move the plot along, but I'll keep quiet for those of you who'll read the book. It's a quick read like most Patterson books, but you're gonna be dissapointed if you're expecting a lot from this book. If the poor character development and unrealistic plot don't do you in, the poor excuse for an ending will. Wait until this one hits the markdown table before you check it out.

In his latest book James Patterson teams up with Peter de Jonge to produce a swiftly paced and unforgettable novel.

We are brought into the playground of the rich and famous and amongst them the Neubauers; Barry and Campion. The Neubauers are renowned for their great flashy and expensive parties, which are thrown as often as possible during the year and this is where the young Peter Mullen has found a niche for himself as a valet; parking the visitors cars.

It then is with some surprise when his lawyer brother Jack arrives at the Hamptons to pay a visit to his favourite brother, that he is told by the authorities that Peter Mullen has recently committed suicide by drowning.

Jack is flabbergasted for his brother was a lover of life and they were extremely close.

Jack sees fit to start an investigation along with other family members living there. As the investigation starts stumbling blocks are put in the way making it oh so very obvious to Jack that there ais a cover-up going on, and he is being blocked from the truth of the matter. Obviously this spurs him on even more and by this time even the rich and famous have become part of facade influencing the less wealthy and the "never hads". Black mail, kidnapping, murder are all coming into play as Jack tries to fight against the privileged and powerful.
An excellent summer read, with a startling ending.

This is the second best book I've read this year, second only to "Conquest of Paradise: an end-times nano-thriller", a book very similar to "Beach House" in its level of suspense. This is one of Patterson's best. I simply couldn't put it down. The level of suspense keeps you hanging onto each page from chapter to chapter. Intrigue lurks around every corner. Mystery, love, tragedy, deceit, mayhem and suspense drip from every page. You simply won't want to quit reading this one, and I guarantee you won't get bored. An excellent book!

While I am willing to admit that some forgetfulness, slips of speech, and other actions have unconscious motives, (ex. I actually misplaced this book, apparently so I wouldn't have to read it), I don't see how all such acts can be classified as neurotic efforts at repression. Is Freud saying that a fully conscious person would never make a mistake?

Freud shatters all scientific crediblity by admitting near the end of the book that, of couse, we can't recognize or assertain the meaining behind every dream, mistake, or superstition, (like psychoanalysis). Freud writes,

"To substantiate the general validity of the theory, it is enough if one can penetrate only a certain distance into the hidden associations." pg. 161

This is kind of like substantiating the theory of relativity by saying it's enough to know that two plus two equals four.

Freud was an egotistical person, who spewed venom towards critics, and apostates to his theory, (look at what he has to say about Adler in a letter to Jung). Much of that ego plays forth here, when he speaks of psychoanalysis as a proven fact, rather than something to be seriously questioned and studied.

My misplacing of this book was less an unconscious act than a conscious one, I really found the reading dry at times and some of the examples pulled out of thin air, (if you keep free associating long enough, you can make anything in the universe connect to anything else, don't believe me? Play the Kevin Bacon game.)

I eventually did find my lost copy, and it was in the last place I would look for it....my reading table.

Once upon a time I read Freud seriously, in search of some understanding of human behavior. Now I only dip into a few of his books periodically because his thought process is so fascinating. His book The Psychopathology of Everyday Life is more interesting and accessable than many of his writings, though his style does not make for an easy read. It is in this book that Freud takes up the issue of all the little things that go wrong which we have tended to think of as accidents and mistakes. To Freud, most, if not all incidents of things forgotten, lost, dropped etc are examples of hidden dynamics of the psyche playing out in the real world. His arguments can be very strained and he extrapolates very broadly from a few anecdotes and case histories. This isn't scientific thought, but it is very interesting nonetheless. If you took him at face value, you would have to conclude that we all need an analyst - which is exactly what he thought.

This book may be read as a necessary sequel to Freud's major opus The Interpretation of Dreams, cause the object of the two are the same, that is, to demonstrate trough a lot of very detailed personal and third person's examples, how the unconscious work, or even better, how it betrays itself trough its concealed (condensed and displaced) actions shown in our parapraxis of everyday. Parapraxis is a term which could be translated into faulty acts, which are, for instance, "slips of the tongue", "slips of the pen", misreadings, mislayings of objects, undeliberate forgetness of sentences, names and places, etc ...
The book is written in a very casual style and one is again admired how could such a genius as Freud convey his ideas in such an easy style.
Why no 4 stars? Because I think this book is not so fascinating as The Interpretation of Dreams, an opus which deserves 5 stars.

Definitely the least good of Patterson's crime novels (originally titled Black Market). This one doesn't take you deep enough into the characters personalities so you really don't care what they achieve or if they get killed while reading. It does have the usual short chapter Patterson style which does make getting through it easier. It is an effort to finish though and a lot of the information in dated now both the Russian and terrorist New York react to it stuff. Unless you're a huge Patterson fan give this one a miss. If you've just heard Patterson is the greatest crime writer there is and you wish to sample his work you're right, but try his others books first. For a substantial number of novels series try the Alex Cross ones they're brilliant. If it's only a short series you want then the women's murder club may be for you with the novels 1st to Die and 2nd Chance. All Patterson books can be read alone but once you've read one you'll want to read all the rest so you're better to start off with the initial novels in the series otherwise it spoils it a bit for the previous rest of the series. The Midnight Club is an excellent stand alone novel as well.

I'm a huge fan of James Patterson, in fact I can consume one of his books in a weekend -- they keep me that entertained. But I had problems with this book.

The plot, the story itself, is great -- clever as per usual to our Mr. Patterson -- but there were several glaring errors in the book. See if you can spot them:

* Grammatical problems where inanimate objects are personified.

* Plot problems (and this is my chief complaint):

~* The main character is running into Bed-Sty at the end of the book to capture the Green Band leader. The building is in flames, and there are two men on the roof arguing when he shows up. The main character knows the Green Band guy is there, but he doesn't know, at least according to how the story is written, who the second man is. The reader knows who the second man is, because it's written in the previous chapter, but the protagonist does not. However, when the protagonist gets to the roof, he suddenly knows who both men are -- both bad guys he's been after (and the second is supposed to be this great unknown -- no one has ever seen his face sort of deal). Is the protagonist suddenly clairvoyant?

~* Second: The protagonist, in this same scene, is badly beaten up -- he mentions that something's seriously wrong with his body, he can feel it deteriorating, his skull is cracking, etc ... -- and the next thing you know this issue is dropped and he's driving back home to his family to flee with them. Miracle healing?

~* Third: Before the rooftop scene, he goes down in a helicopter crash (upside down no less!), and walks away alive from it -- what next? Will he walk on water? I think to make this scene more credible, there needed to be more details, rather than action to more action.

A book is supposed to be a luxurious distraction -- don't rush to the end to finish it Mr. Patterson, take your time.

There are other plot problems, as well -- generally towards the end of the book -- perhaps Mr. Patterson should reconsider who's editing his books to catch these gaffs, because it detracts from the enjoyment of the story.

However, if you can ignore these problematic plot issues, then the book is, yet again, another Patterson goodie.

If you haven't read any Patterson, and you are considering buying one of his books, try one of his earlier publications with Detective Alex Delaware -- all of those are great reads, it's a shame he let this character drop.

This was a great read of "classic" James Patterson. Originally released as "Black Market", Patterson's main character Arch Carroll might be eerilly reminiscient of the later Alex Cross, but if you ignore that than the book gets a whole lot easier to get through. The dating on the book is evident throughout. Not only in the ages of the characters, but the dates and pop culture references. Star Wars enthusiasts will guffaw at the line about "Revenge of the Jedi", which was the original title of Episode Six. A great book with enough of Patterson's patented twists and turns near the end to keep you turning those pages.

I've read a bit more than half of this book, and I can already say that it is probably the most RACIST book I've ever read. While trying not to make race a big issue in this novel(I think that's what Lehrer was trying to do by having a diverse debate panel), the author made the fact that Barbara Manning(African-American) and Henry Rodriguez(Hispanic) were minorities THE central issue inadvertently. Every time these two characters are mentioned in the novel, their ethnicity is brought up. Even worse, the character of Henry is a stereotype of Mexican people. On page 111, it is mentioned that Henry's favorite food is a bean burrito. Nearly every time Henry makes a statement in the novel, he uses the word "Ole`". I'm still waiting for him to break out and start refering to people as "Essay"(which, I'm sure is coming up) I think that the only thing Lehrer knows about Hispanic people is what he learned by listening to Cheech from Cheech and Chong! I'm not even going to start on the fact that every Republican in the novel is portrayed as a Neo-Nazi-type of supervillan. This is a book with weak characters that use poor dialogue.

"The Last Debate" is a page turner, an easy, quick read, good for the beach or a night of insomnia. Even though much of it was predictable, I was tantalized enough at each stage to continue on. That said, however, the plot is hardly realistic. Any decent journalist (and the hero Howley was characterized as such) or news organization possessing the "explosive" goods on one of the candidates, would check it out carefully unlike the four debate panalists. Furthermore, it is hard to believe that a candidate who behaved as the Republican candidate did could get as far as he did without at least one or two of his accusers (and there were many!) not going public much earlier on, i.e., during the primaries. Look what happened to Clinton in 1992 -- not to mention 1998. The "minority" journalists are one dimensional and stereotypical. Still, given the weaknesses in the plot, it was an interesting read, and I'm trying one more Lehrer fiction piece to see if he does any better.

Days before the election, the moderator of the presidential debate (Lehrer has of course moderated many presidential debates) is given some secret, damning info on one of the candidates (the right-wing Republican who all the press realize is a truly evil man who will ruin the country) and has to decide whether to step over the journalistic line and use this info in a way that will damage the candidate in the eyes of the voters and so change American history.

It's an interesting moral question but because it is set up so weakly, a lot of the impact is lost. The candidate's character is somewhat like Pat Buchanan, but the situation is more like that of when Ross Perot first came on the scene, and he seemed such a wonderful guy, until we all found out about the steel-tip-booted way he ran his businesses, and how badly he took criticism, and saw the guy he chose for V.P. Everybody said, "Whoa! and I was going to vote for this guy?!"

In "The Last Debate," though, the American public still doesn't know about the man's real character 8 days before the election. It just seems awfully unlikely that nothing would have come to light before that time. And even then, why couldn't the journalists bypass the moral issue by just giving the damning info directly to the press to report it as news? Lehrer does kind of explain these things, in a way, later on, but these kinds of doubts gave the premise a tinge of unreality which weakened its impact for me.

You have to read this book, also, with the assumption that Lehrer is being very loose and imaginative here, probably aspiring to something a la Jonathan Swift, because the characters do express themselves in very simple, repetitive, often stereotypical ways, and say a lot of things out loud that you would never expect such people to say. But he might have done that to simplify things, and of course, ambitious people are, sometimes, extremely simple and childish, underneath it all.

And you can't really call all the characters superficial. The Democratic candidate is kind of a dummy, but he's not really a nice guy, as we see in how he treats his campaign manager. (Is Lehrer telling us they're all like that?) And I thought the contrast between the narrator (a young journalist) and the "hero" moderator (from the old school) was very interesting. And also the contrast between the somewhat opportunistic narrator and the deeply moral and patriotic private investigator.

(Lehrer also leaves open the interesting question of whether the American public is better off with the dumb Democrat rather than the crazy Republican.)

Lehrer writes with a sort of Southern lilt which is kind of nice, but then, he has everyone - the narrator of the story and most of the characters - talk that way off and on, which is a bad idea if you're trying to keep characters separate. For instance, the narrator and several characters frequently do what I give an example of above in my title: use 4 nouns or adjectives in a row. There's no point building up verisimilitude by using all sorts of place and brand names, but then making this sort of sloppy error.

Still, the book is interesting if you watch the Newshour and want to read about the Washington scene. The pacing is nicely done, and Lehrer is an honest and good man, so you do trust what he says about his world.

An aside: I couldn't help remembering Stephen King's "The Dead Zone," which also involves an evil politician and a hero who knows the truth about him. That book had a great solution to the problem, a little more physical, of course. A major flaw with King, in my opinion, is that he's lived up there among the pinecones, watching TV and reading paperbacks too long, and a lot of his plots nowadays are too far from reality, even for his genre. And I thought, wow, wouldn't it be great if Lehrer and King teamed up for a novel or two?! Or is that a little TOO Swiftian to hope for?

It has been about 3 years since I wrote the first review for this book on Amazon.com. In that time there have been some new, and I feel better publications about R. M. Schindler

The most comprehensive Text is Judith Sheine's book (entitled R. M. Schindler) published by Phaidon. Please see my review for more details. Sheine is also the editor and narrator for two CD-ROMs produced by Planet Architecture. These are both excellent sources. Lastly is the lavishly photographed catalog for the Schindler Exhibit entitled The architecture of R. M. Schindler by Elizabeth A.T. Smith. This has good essays and photos although I feel is better as supplementry text to Sheine's new book

I am an avid fan of this master architect/builder and I am pleased to see that Shindler is finally getting the attention he deserves. There is an abundance of material about Schindler now available to the public. Whereas, just ten years ago only a few books were available about Schindler (Gebhard and McCoy). This is a large format book with lavish color photos. Early books on Schindler, such as those by Gebhard, McCoy, and Sarnitz were small in format and contained equally small black and white images.

This book is divided into two parts: Essay and Selected Works. The essay, by noted California Author/Historian James Steele assumes that the reader has some familiarity with Schindler and the Wagnerschul. The author skips over biographical data on the architect, such as birth, upbringing, family life etc. and instead presents the reader with a concise, competent essay on Schidler's place in Early Twentieth Century architecture. The essay shows how Schindler was influenced by his mentors and peers such as Loos, Wright, Nuetra, and Irving Gill. It also touches on Schindler's rejection from Johnson and Hitchcock's International Style exhibit.

The second part of the book - selected works - presents the reader with thirty-two of the architect's built works in a chronological order. The selected projects include twenty-five houses, six apartment buildings/complexes and a Baptist church. Each work contains a brief description. About half the projects contain color photos. These appear to be recent photos and include many interior shots. Some projects, such as the Kings Road House and the Wolfe Residence contain reproduced color drawings (plans, sections, elevations) There are also a few renderings, color and b/w. Other projects are, disappointedly, not given proper attention. The Lovell Beach House, considered by many to be Schindler's masterpiece does not have the plans and section that are so essential to the understanding of this seminal structure. One project, The Grokowski Residence, contains only one, small black and white photo - not sufficient to give an adequate description.

The book also contains a map of L.A. with the architect's projects pin-pointed and a brief biography at the end. There is no bibliography that could point the serious scholar to additional sources, nor does the book contain any of Schindler's writings.

THE BOTTOM LINE This book contains nice color photos - some apparently previously unpublished, some good graphic resources. It is not a deep book, however it can be a nice compliment to previously published work on this master architect/builder.

In these days of real terrorism, we need real books not rehashed grad school junk. Put this down and go for current journals. PL or PU?

There are only a few books that the scholar of "third world" nuclear doctrine will find helpful. This is one of the few. The chapter on Iraq's chemical arsenal, in partuclar, is very informative. This is not a history or even a strategic study of the dangers of proliferation. It is an attempt to understand how military doctrine integrates weapons of mass destruction in different institutional and political contexts. This edited volume is far from perfect, but it is the best broad survey of this particular subject.

This book is written in an academic style and format. Despite the exciting cover, it is *not* light reading, nor is it written for a popular audience.

Basically, each chapter is written by a different expert in the field. There's a chapter on terrorism, a chapter on the India-Pakistan nuclear dilemma, and so on.

I found this book to be fascinating because of the wealth of facts contained inside.

Is this book a page-turning thriller? Heck no! But is it full of useful research material and expert analyses seldom found elsewhere? You betcha.

Instead of one big novel involving characters from all six current Star Trek book series, this is a collection of six short stories, each one picking up from the cliffhanger ending of each of the Gateways novels from the individual series (if that makes sense). While this sounded like a cynical marketing ploy, I had hoped that the six stories would build on each other to present some sort of unified whole, bringing the whole adventure to one grand conclusion. How wrong I was!

The Star Trek (original series), Challenger, and Voyager stories could--and probably should--have easily been included as concluding chapters in their respective books. Each one is nothing more than an epilogue to the main story. The Deep Space Nine and New Frontier stories present somewhat separate adventures, but that doesn't make them much better. In both, characters get transported to significant locations (an important historical moment for Colonel Kira, a mythical afterlife for Calhoun and Shelby) where nothing of any real consequence seems to happen. Of course, since both series present ongoing adventures, it's possible that these tales plant seeds for upcoming stories. Even if that were the case, it doesn't make these stories any less inconsequential or any more satisfying.

The Next Generation tale, longer than the other five, does, indeed, wrap up the Gateways story. But, like the other five, there's no real reason (besides financial) that this story couldn't have been included at the end of Doors Into Chaos.

Because four of the stories are completely dependent upon what came before, there is a complete lack of tension or suspense. All the big events happened in the parent novels, and all the authors have left to do in What Lay Beyond is tie up the loose ends (even when there aren't really any loose ends that need tying up). Any opportunites for suspense that could have been sustained through the other two stories are completely ignored by their authors. Frustratingly, those two authors, Peter David and Keith RA DeCandidio, have done particularly good Star Trek work in the past, which makes their lackluster contributions here even more disappointing.

So, if you followed the Gateways saga so far and need to see what happens next, I recommend waiting for the paperback. Nothing of enough consequence happens to make this an immediate must-read.

The series Book 1-6 was promising, if annoying for having a cliffhanger ending that forced you to buy the next book, or specificially the Book 7 which contains all the endings.

Well after being built-up by books 1-6, wondering if the inconsistencies between those books would be tied together in ST Gateways Book 7, wondering if Book 7 "the grand conclusion of what lay beyond" would put forth a good explanation for the Iconian mystery, tie all the loose ends together and provide good conclusions for the cliffhanger endings of books 1-6...............it was most most most disappointing to see that this was not the case.

Book 7 creates more inconsistencies and the endings are [bad]. Oh some of the endings were ok, but the final ending...for the TNG book in the series...which was SUPPOSED to tie everything together, totally messed it up and failed, completely failed to deliver! I mean...first in books 1-6 they established that once activated a gateway cannot be destroyed no matter what they threw at it because it will simply absorb the energy. THEN in Book 7...suddenly Gateways CAN be destroyed by explosive force...no explanation given!!! Just a lazy author who didn't even read the previous book he wrote and ignored all stuff he established in the previous book! Once again, this is a MAJOR LETDOWN!

I'm not too fond of the Trek editors' current penchant for crossovers, but so far, they've managed to keep things from getting too irritating. This book ends the six stories started in the previous volumes of the series, but doesn't connect them; each adventure is a separate novella.
All of the stories were interesting enough to keep my attention, but the Kirk story dragged on for a while, and provided absolutely no backstory beyond the jacket type. Since this story opens the volume, it may cause readers who didn't pick up all the previous books (like myself; I only bought the TNG and New Frontier volumes) to turn away.
The other stories lacked both these faults, so the enjoyment you take from them is pretty much proportionate to your preference for each series. I knew nothing about Voyager, DS9, or Challenger but the basic concepts, but since each story followed only the captain (or Kira, in the DS9 case), it worked out. In fact, the Challenger story was interesting enough to convince me to pick up the original volume. A warning: the Voyager story involves a somewhat gratuitous cameo from a famous guest star, and the ending is irritating, as we watch Janeway say goodbye to every friggin' ship in the caravan. And, of course, there's the unconvincing explanation to why they didn't use the gateways to get home.
I worship Peter David as a god, so I'll leave the New Frontier review to someone less biased.
The TNG story comes last, and serves as an ending. I won't give away any details, but suffice it to say we do get a definite resolution to the crisis, as well as an explanation to just where the Iconians went, along with a really neat Picard story. One problem: there is a painful TMI moment between Troi and Riker in the last chapter; thankfully, it's brief.
I gave the book 4 stars because all the stories but one were above average, and Burgoyne's one-liner justified the hardback price (you'll now it when you see it).