This is latest update for the most revered text in the field of cell and molecular biology. I used this book as an undergraduate even though this was not the required text for the course. I still turn to it often as a graduate student. As someone who has read the book cover to cover I can vouch for its extensive coverage of the most important concepts and the abandance of information on the most frequntly encountered concepts. It is a must have for any serious student of cell, molecular and developmental biology. I recommend that you buy this book in addition to any required texts for your course. The book is so comprehensive that even topics that gained prominance in 2002 such as RNA interference are wonderfully presented. Even if you are new to this subject area this book if properly used can increase you understanding immensely of even the most difficult of concepts. You would never regret buying this.

I'm an undergraduate student in Biology and I was looking for the best book on the subject... after a hard selection of the best ones available, I came up with two great items: Lodish's Cell Molecular Biology and Alberts's Molecular Biology of the Cell.
When I spoke with my older colleagues in college and asked my Cell Biology teachers (they're both career researchers) for their opinion about what should I buy, I always received the same kind of answer: «Well, they're both great references, Lodish's is a very insightful text on the matter, as well as Alberts's. But you know... Alberts's is the real thing, the one to go for: It gives you the most wonderful and comprehensive view of the cellular world!»
So, I decided to buy Alberts's and indeed, it is a terrific book: accurate, up-to-date, really enjoyable to read (for those avid for scientific knowledge), the English is quite accessible, illustrations are excellent, a truly great achievement! From now on, this book will be my «bible»!

Molecular Biology of the Cell is one of the best surveys available on the status of current information about cellular biology. The authors skillfully accomplish the difficult task of combining detail with readability while conveying the excitement of this dynamic field. Clear, concise, and colorful illustrations assist in this task and the book is a fine collection of splendidly dramatic photos of "molecular biology of the cell" in action. They covered an enormous amount of material with a style that is simple enough for a college-level biology student to follow with enough detail and references to be of use to an experienced research scientist. Bravo for a job well-done!

Any author who tries to su up the life of Robert Johnson is going to have a hard time. The life of this man is a mystery beyond belief. The one thing that stands out is the music. I really feel that owning Johnson music is better than any book. Pick up the two CD set that has the booklet. Read that booklet and then put the CD's in and get ready for an experience this book can not give you. This book is good after you have done this. The music helps explain things a little more.

It's a long way from the Mississippi Delta to Australia but this screenplay allowed me to visualise and feel the passion and raw edge to the music and landscape of Robert Johnson. It seems a shame that no Director has been brave enough to attempt to put this tale onto film as it could surely be an outstanding work if properly attacked. The comprehensive attached notes provide the reader with an opportunity to fill in any gaps in their knowledge to the point where one can almost picture the juke joints with their duelling musicians. The brutality of life in this community was shocking to me and the early death of Robert Johnson now seems to be less of a tragedy and more of an inevitability.

I never read anything like this before--it was like watching an amazing movie in written form. This unique book is an undiscovered gem.

This huge first volume of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson tells the story of Johnson's life up to the time of his defeat in the Texas senatorial election of 1941.

I enjoyed the book very much, staying up late into the night to read more, yet having now finished it I thought that - somewhat perversely perhaps - the book's weaknesses as a biography were its strengths as a more general work of historical analysis.

Although the book is about Johnson, Caro doesn't restrain himself from letting his focus shift away from Johnson for long stretches: for example, the natural history and settlement of the Texas Hill Country are described in detail (fascinating to someone like me who knew next to nothing about these subjects); and the lives of other people who were important to Johnson are described in great detail (Sam Rayburn in particular).

I was happy to follow Caro down these roads, as he wrote so compellingly - for example, the descriptions of women's lives in the Hill Country should destroy a few rural myths. Other historians would have abbreviated or summarised such descriptions to the absolute minimum necessary to add to the reader's understanding of the context of the subject's life, whilst maintaining the overall focus on the subject himself. Indeed, at times, Caro loses sight of Johnson completely, and the book becomes more of a general history.

I felt that Caro made up his mind that Johnson was an utterly unscrupulous and amoral politician, totally devoted to the acquisition of power. The picture he paints of Johnson and of American democracy is unflattering - elections and politicians are there to be bought - money is everything. We're in a precursor stage to the "military-industrial complex". Even where Johnson did good, Caro's praise is brief (for example in his determination to force through the rural electrification program). I thought that there needed to be a better balance - surely there were issues other than money and gerrymandering that decided elections in the US? Or am I being naive?

Also, if Johnson the man was such a hated person, why did he evoke such loyalty? It seems too dismissive to explain this by stating that other people were furthering their own self-interest through Johnson.

I feel somewhat churlish at criticising a book I enjoyed so much, but I will read the next volume!

Five stars does not do this book justice. Robert Caro's Path to Power is one of the best books I have ever read. Combining soaring prose with meticulous research, Mr. Caro paints a vivid picture of Lyndon Johnson, his contemporaries, and the places they called home, from Blanco County in the Texas Hill Country to the Dodge Hotel in Washington D.C. LBJ's family is also discussed in great deal, particularly his father, Sam Johnson, a worthy politico in his own right. Throughout the book, we see the dual nature of LBJ, from his genuine concern for Mexican students in Cotulla to his double dealing in Congress. No details are spared in this wonderful biography. Read it, and pass it along to your friends.

This book, published in 1982, has already achieved a legendary status among history and political buffs. When it was released its' author, Robert Caro, won enormous acclaim for his unprecendented research and engrossing writing style - and plenty of criticism for his harsh and unsparing portrait of Lyndon Johnson. Caro literally spent years living and interviewing people in the arid Texas Hill Country where Johnson was born and raised, and in the process he acquired a level of knowledge about his topic that few other biographers even approach. Like William Manchester's "Last Lion" biographies of Winston Churchill, "The Path to Power" is far more than a simple biography of the young Lyndon Johnson's desperate desire to escape the grinding poverty of rural Texas in the 1930's and achieve power in Washington. Caro writes unforgettably of the Johnson family, the culture and history of the Texas Hill Country, the incredibly corrupt political system in Texas at the time, and of how Johnson both brilliantly and cynically manipulated that system for his own purposes. Caro's descriptions of the people in LBJ's life - from his mother to his wife Lady Bird to Sam Rayburn, the Speaker of the House and Johnson's mentor in national politics - are superb and detailed. However, Caro's unsparing portrait of LBJ as a power-obsessed liar and bully who would stop at nothing to succeed greatly offended many of LBJ's associates whom Caro had interviewed, as well as liberal historians who cherished Johnson's activism on Civil Rights and other liberal causes (and who conveniently wanted to forget Johnson's record in Vietnam and elsewhere). Many of Caro's sources have refused to be interviewed for his later books on Johnson, and historians such as Robert Dallek have written their own LBJ biographies in which they specifically single out and criticize Caro's view of Johnson. Yet far from disproving his arguments, the release of once-secret documents about Vietnam, as well as other biographies written over the last 20 years, have only confirmed many of Caro's assertions about Johnson. LBJ's bullying of even his closest aides, his vote-stealing in the 1948 Senate election, his illegal business schemes that allowed him to go from being literally "dirt poor" to a multimillionaire on a government worker's salary, his shameless brown-nosing of powerful politicians, even while he had love affairs with their wives and girlfriends - all of the allegations made by Caro in 1982 have since been confirmed elsewhere. The fact that Lyndon Johnson was a lousy human being shouldn't be blamed on Caro - he simply dug up the facts (much of which Johnson had tried to hide from the public, such as cutting out all the unflattering photos of himself in hundreds of his college's yearbooks)! Yet despite the shocking and disturbing revelations in this book, Caro does seem to have a sneaking admiration for Johnson's unceasing drive and energy - the LBJ who emerges in this book may be unappealing in many ways, yet he also manages to move his beloved Hill Country into the twentieth century with cheap electrical power, good roads and schools, and other modern conveniences which its' residents might never have gotten otherwise. If Caro's thesis is that even the most self-centered and crass politicians can still do some good, then in Lyndon Johnson he has found his perfect subject. And, it's worth noting that while Robert Dallek and others may have criticized Caro's "interpretation" of Lyndon Johnson, not one of his critics has dared to challenge Caro's research or findings. Indeed, many of his critics have shamelessly used Caro's findings to try and support their own agendas. However, given that it was Caro who actually did the interviews and legwork, and given his unprecendented familiarity with Johnson's life, background, and career, it's difficult not to believe that Caro has a much better view of the "real" LBJ than any of his critics. If you're looking for a book that has passages that will stick in your memory for years, and which gives a view of a great American politician's early life which puts all others to shame, then the "Path to Power" will not be a disappointment. Superb!

A gem of a book. It puts at the hands of lay people the wonders of molecular biology. The best way of spending $65 I can think of.

The text is a most refined product distilled by an all-star team of leading scientists. Oriented towards the lay person or the would be specialist, it is simple, unpretentious, sometimes even funny, but always powerfully explanatory. The diagrams are exceptionally clear (a must for explaining such complex subjects) and the photographs are astounding. Love for their subject and passion for teaching are present all along. And mysticism is always around the corner...

If you have ever wondered things like "What are exactly chromosomes?", "How do exactly enzymes work in the cell?", or "How the hell does all this machinery work at a purely chemical level ?" and you are not quite satisfied with popular science books, this one is for you. It will answer these questions and much, much more.

An enjoyable, deeply satisfying tour the force through the molecular level of all living organisms.

Don't miss it!

I have used Essential Cell Biology for my one semester introductory cell biology and found it to be superb!! It's perfect for a one semester undergraduate course, as well as a terrific overview for laymen with a strong interest in how and why cells work. For introductory cell biology courses, nothing on the market comes even close to this text. Like its larger predecessor, Molecular Biology of the Cell, the text is clearly written, informative, and downright interesting, a rare commodity in textbook writing. Once again, James Watson's superb writing style shows through in this book. The numerous illustrations are a superb complement to the text, explaining and reinforcing the concepts presented in the text. In addition to its use as a text for one semester courses, I would also recommend this to interested laypersons who have an interest in how cells work at the molecular level and are not satisfied with the few popular-level books on the topic. Here they will find a gold mine of insights into the marvels of cell structure and function, all of it clearly written and accessable to anyone with a good high school or mediocre college background in basic chemistry and biology. The only drawbacks of this book is the limited suggestions for further readings and the sparse information on the techniques used to study cells. Otherwise, it is a terrific, attractivly presented, superbly written and illustrated book. It is a real asset to all who have an interest in the cell, except for publishers of competing texts, who are likely to lose most of their markets to this excellent book.

I used this book as a studying supplement during the cell biology module of my first-year biology course. It explains key cell biology concepts clearly, thoroughly and concisely. The text is very well written and has wonderful photographs and diagrams throughout. Updated and recent biological and biomedical findings are used to further tie in the concepts of cell biology. Those that prefer a more detailed source of information should look to Molecular Biology of the Cell, but for beginners, Essential Cell Biology is an excellent place to start.

I happened to read this book while in elementary school decades ago, always remembered it, and finally got around to buying it and reading it again, it made that much impact on me. Johnson's story does get a bit slow at times, but it does tell one what kind of person became a fighter pilot and ace in WWII. Considering that they were really kids, it's impressive how technical and professional these pilots were, how they persevered even when it was boring, hopeless, or terrifying. The P47 itself fascinates me, and this book will tell one why. The later P51 is everyone's sweetheart, but the P47 (and a few others) did the dirty work and made it possible. Johnson's story when his plane got shot up beyond belief and he limped home is an incredible story about both P47's and Johnson. To me, this is a "must read" book by someone who was there, much like Adolf Galland's books. Future generations shouldn't forget any of this, but it's also good reading, fascinating stuff.

I take my hat off to Bob Johnson...he's had an incredible life and written an incredible book. I give it 4 stars instead of 5 stars because there are other slightly better books of the genre...most notably "Yeager" by Chuck Yeager.

Bob's book differs from Yeager with a slightly longer story of his childhood, an area I'm not particularly interested in, and doesn't contain Yeager's sound-breaking X1 chapters....ergo the 4 stars.

But this caveat aside, it's a great book. The descriptions of the WWII dogfights are even more elaborate and more enjoyable than in Yeager. And his description of the P-47 ThunderBolt is beyond compare.

This is a great book - terrifically written and carries the story very very well. I regret everytime I have had to put it down, even for a few moments. Any interest in flying, WWII, the BigBadUgly Thunderbolt, or first-person narratives - this is for you.

This is a gripping book. It deals with the feud between RFK and LBJ, and the influence that their animosity had on a wide range of domestic and political issues from the time of JFK's election to RFK's assasination. However, despite the extensive notes and detailed research, this is no dry-as-dust political science tome, but a nicely structured, well-paced tale, with plenty of juicy gossip and amusing anecdotes to enliven it. This book supplies a new and original dimension to the Kennedy myth, and I enjoyed it enormously. Definitely a "10"!

Shesol approaches the LBJ/RFK relationship as history - he doesn't carry any of the baggage that people, historians, voters would have if they lived during the 60's as participants. The Kennedys were the reason I became fascinated with politics and American history, but LBJ has always been the President (and Senator) I've most admired and studied. My personal library has some 35 volumes on LBJ. MUTUAL CONTEMPT shows that the relationship between LBJ/RFK was very complex and certainly played a significant role in events, policies and Democratic politics in the 60's and beyond. Shesol concludes that in many ways the two powerful leaders were similar at the core and both sides spent too much time on petty things and failed to completely unite for the national good. The what ifs will haunt us for many years to come. What if LBJ had not become bogged down in Vietnam, what if RFK gained the nomination in 1968 or waited until 1972? A great book can lead to great discussions. Only if we had solid leaders such as LBJ and RFK today!

Recent months have seen the publication of a spate of books regarding presidential politics in the turbulent decade that was the 1960s. Taking Charge, The Kennedy Tapes, Shadow Play, LBJ's War, Kennedy and Nixon, The Walls of Jericho, The Living and the Dead, Guns and Butter, Dereliction of Duty, The Other Missiles of October---all these books offered some insight into the thoughts, beliefs, actions and geopolitical decisions of the men (and they were all men) who ran our country during that difficult and often painful period. Many of them are well-researched, some are well-written, a few have become best-sellers, but all of them are missing a vital piece of the puzzle, a flaw which leaves each of them, for all af their research and erudition, strangely unsatisfying and incomplete. This magnificent new book supplies that vital missing piece and, in doing so, paradoxically renders each of the others both more valuable and at the same time obsolete.

Shesol's thesis, which he amply substantiates with tapes, documents and personal interviews, is that the feud between RFK and LBJ was pivotal not only in the later stages in their respective political careers, but also in a wide range of policy decisions taken by Johnson, as President, and Kennedy, as Attorney General and then as Senator from New York. He enlivens his book with commentary and anecdote from a variety of important figures of the time, inclding Arthur Schlesinger, who is also quoted approvingly on the dust jacket. This is both an important piece of historical research and a thoroghly enjoyable read.

This delightfully written, important, book is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand the Vietnam War, the Johnson Presidency, the catastrophic results of the Great Society which we are still living with today, or, indeed, the 1960s in general. It should certainly be read in preference to any of the other books mentioned above.

Needless to say, Boswell's LIFE OF JOHNSON is one of the preeminent works of biography and should be read by anyone interested in Johnson or the genre. It is a great book (also great is W. Jackson Bate's SAMUEL JOHNSON [1st published 1975]which is a MUST for anyone interested in Johnson). But although I love the Everyman's Library, I do not recommend this edition of Boswell. Unlike the usual quality of the Everyman's Library, its Boswell is rife with typographical errors (there's even missing text!). Though it's the only edition of Boswell I've read, I regret that a correct edition is not on my bookshelf. That being said, if this is the only affordable hardcover version you can find -- and you buy only hardcovers -- go ahead and purchase the Everyman's despite the numerous and distracting errors.

This book will redefine your concepts of biography, of philology and of intellect. However critically James Boswell is rated as a writer, the fact remains that his biography of Johnson remains the standard by which all others are judged, and by which they ultimately fall--flat on their condescending faces.

Who was Samuel Johnson? He was, in one sense, the first literary celebrity. His fabled dictionary of the English language was, a few years down the road, superceded and greatly improved upon by the dictionary written by Noah Webster. His tour of Scotland and the book that ensued from it hardly rank with the other literary giants of English. And his essays, indisputably brilliant, remain sadly that: forms of literature seldom read, and lacking the artistic force of the play, the novel, the poem.

What Boswell shows us about Johnson is that he was the sharpest conversationalist of his time in a society that cultivated the very finest of witty speakers. Living off the beneficence of friends, off a royally-provided pension, and leading what he readily acknowledged to be a life of idleness, Johnson was a sought-after personality invigorated by one of the brightest literary minds ever.

Boswell introduces the genius, his pathos, his melancholy, his piety, his warmth, and most of all his stinging wit. That he loved and respected Johnson, and sought to honor his memory, can only be doubted by an utter cynic or someone serving a lifetime of durance in academia.

"All intellectual improvement arises from leisure..." "You shall retain your superiority by my not knowing it." "Sir, they [Americans] are a parcel of convicts and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging." "He was dull in a new way, and that made people think him great." "...it is our duty to maintain the subordination of civilized society..." "It is wonderful, when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession." Boswell: "...you are an idle set of people." Johnson: "Sir, we are a city of philosophers." "We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards."

And best of all, and immortal to boot, is this: "No man but a blockhead writes, except for money."

Buy this book. Read it. It's humanity at its wittiest and most complex.

Boswell was not the obvious choice to write the best biography about Samuel Johnson, much less one of the greatest biographies in world literature. He had much less contact with Johnson than Mrs. Thrale, for many years a close friend of Johnson who spent much more time with him than did Boswell. In fact, Boswell spent perhaps 400 days with Johnson over a period of many years. He also was not Johnson's literary executor. Finally, Boswell was regarded by many of his day, and afterwards, as something of an 18th Century celebrity hound. He made a point of meeting every famous person he could (Voltaire, Rousseau), and went to great efforts to make himself famous. Nevertheless, in his Life of Johnson, Boswell succeeded in portraying Johnson and his circle so vividly that more than 200 years later they come across as real human beings. He did this by breaking the convention of concentrating only on the most favorable aspects of his subject's life, and instead describing Johnson's eccentricities of dress, behavior, etc. Moreover, Boswell did not neglect to include incidents that make himself appear ridiculous. The book is both extremely funny and moving. If you read this, you will want to immediatley get a copy of Boswell's book on the trip that Johnson and he took to the Hebrides.

All the reviews I've read of "Crossroad Blues" have been positive, and this one will be no different. Ace Atkins uses the death of enigmatic bluesman Robert Johnson's death as a starting point for "Crossroad Blues", a mystery starring Nick Travers (whose name, Atkins thoughtfully points out in a pre-novel note, means "dweller at a crossroads"), a former New Orleans Saint who is now a semi-drunk teacher and musician. When one of Travers' colleagues disappears while researching a set of nine mythical recordings possible laid down by Johnson, Travers tries to track him down, only to become embroiled in a search for the recordings and the answer to Johnson's untimely murder.

Here's the lowdown: Robert Johnson recorded only 29 songs in his life. While he lived, he cultivated rumors about himself that suggested he had earned his musical skill by trading guitars with the devil. He died in 1938 under mysterious circumstances (various rumors had it he was either stabbed or poisoned).

It's a credit to Atkins' skill as a storyteller that his fictional characters blend seamlessly into the blues mythology. His retelling of Johnson's life made me wish I had grown up black and impoverished in the 30's. The mystery was, if implausible, engaging and entertaining.

I'm a sucker for stories of this type - found manuscripts, new recordings of old musicians, old paintings found under repaintings - so the story kept me going. But the novel did not hit the high point I was expecting from previous raves. Instead of simply telling his story, Atkins at times tries too hard for literary strokes, producing these clunkers:

"Daniel Rose's dusty Oldsmobile was parked next to a mound of rich upchurned soil that resembled a spilled chocolate ice-cream scoop."

"Looked like Superman's badassed twin from the Bizarro Planet."

"Dawn broke over Jesse Garon's head like a spilled blue milkshake."

This book would have benefited from a few well-placed commas. Most of Travers' internal dialog is written in sentence fragments, a device I find tiresome. Most of the fragments would have fit neatly onto the preceding sentence, but Atkins' insistence on maintaining a "realistic" internal voice apparently prevents him from obeying the rules of grammar.

A few reviewers have mentioned the character Jesse Garon, the hitman who looks like a young Elvis ("The one from the postage stamp," says another character), as one of the more intriguing villains to come along in a while. Frankly, I thought Sarah Shankman wrote him better in "The King is Dead". Yep. That's right. Someone else wrote an Elvis-obsessed killer who may or may not be Elvis' lost twin brother Jesse Garon fully five years before this novel (in reality, Jesse died at birth).

Overall, this was a remarkable book, notable for its knowledge of the early greats and for the creation of a likeable anti-hero. I look forward to reading Ace Atkins' next Nick Travers book.

What would happen if there were nine unknown original recordings of Robert Johnson's work. Would there be intrique, murder, back-stabbing and plans by glitzy glossy labels to market this work. Well we know stuff would happen and probably some unsavory stuff to help someone make money. This is Ace Atkins' premise. His hero, Nick Travers follows the trail to the Delta to Greenwood where it all began or ended depending on your perspective.

Atkins includes all the elements of blues - the glitzy blues club, The Real Thang in Jojo's, Elvis, a Susan Tedeschi type in Virginia Dare who dares immerse herself in the Delta to develop the real blues feel. Travers' trips to the Delta region does have the blues feel, that kind of eerie, spooky Crossroads mood.

All in all a good fast read. It's not perfect. Mystery books aren't classic literature and blues ain't a Shakespeare sonnet. Both good blues and a good mystery should be accessible and entertaining. Crossroad Blues is.

One of the greatest mysteries in the music world is the life and death of Robert Johnson, whose twenty plus single recordings are a major influence of the blues as well rock and roll. How did Johnson learn to play so well? Did he he indeed go to the crossroads and sell his soul to the devil. Why, when he recorded his songs, did he sit facing the wall. Are there more recordings hidden some place? Why did he die? Was he murdered? If so who did it?

Into this real mystery Atkins spins a tale with his PI, musician, and Blues History professor, Nick Travers, searching for a lost collegue. Into the mix he brings intriguing charecters who are as real as the Mississippi Delta cotton fields. You can almost feel the mud squishing between your toes and heat rise of the fields.

Blended in is the legend of Johnson, and the missing recordings as well as his sudden death. Also you will see the shadow of David "Honeyboy" Edwards, a frequent traveling partner of Robert Johnson. In the real world "Honeyboy" is still alive and making music. Well in to his 80's his abilities on the guitar are still remarkable.

This is a well written first novel.

I admit, I didn't get it. I bought this book on the strong recommendation of a psychology major, who praised He, She & We (all three books by Johnson). Perhaps my lack of understanding of Jungian theory interfered with my ability to glean meaning from the text.

The book is a short, readable eighty pages, developed around the Greek myth of Eros and Psyche. In Johnson's explanation of how femininity evolves (including the man's feminine side, or anima), a person must go through certain rites of passage, in sequential order, to develop fully as a woman. Psyche must complete four tasks assigned by Aphrodite. Failure to complete any task before nightfall will result in death. The tasks include sorting a pile of many different seeds, collecting golden fleece from rams, filling a crystal goblet with water from the river Styx, and collecting a cask of beauty ointment from Persephone, goddess of the underworld. Johnson explains how each of these tasks represents an evolution in a woman's life (choosing one of the many seeds a man gives to a woman to begin the miracle of birth, gathering the fleece as acquisition of a bit of masculinity necessary to survive in the world, the single goblet of water from Styx as focusing on a single item at once from the vast choices in the universe). The text is rich with metaphor -- marriage as both death and resurrection for a woman, a beautiful oil-burning lamp as a woman's natural consciousness, etc. Interesting, but (at least for me) not particularly enlightening. Overall, I enjoyed the story, but I didn't come away with an enhanced understanding of female psychology.

I picked up this book because I wanted to know more about women. I've been fascinated by them, and irresistably, magnetically attracted to them all of my life. I wanted to understnad a little more about this powerful pull. Women are beautiful, mystical, and wonderfully different. There's that quality in a woman's voice that just doesn't exist in a man's that can make all of the world feel like it's suddenly become light as a feather. There's always been that bewitching paradox about the sexes. We're all human, but our perspectives are inherantly different.

In this slim but nourishing volume, Johnson lucidly examines the Greek myth of Psyche and Cupid. Using Jungian pysychology, he shows that the trials a girl must undertake to become a woman are no different today than they were in the ancient world. Johnson tells us why myth is so important to us as humans. It's one of the truest, clearest records of ourselves. When a myth is passed on from one generation of storytellers to another, it is refined and slowly given its truest shape. The parts that glow are given more emphasis and the parts that don't are left along the way.

As the author stresses, this book is not really about women, but rather about the 'feminine' that exists in both women and to a lesser degree men. In learning to understand the psychological imperatives of the female, not only will a man be more adept in his relationships with women, but he will also better understand his own complex nature.

This is a short, easy read (about 80 pages) of large-typed, generously-spaced, amply-margined words. Johnson's style is light and casual. Whilst not as in-depth as Marie-Louise Von Franz' treatments, for example, it is also much more approachable and less academically inclined. Still, it provides a concise forray into Jungian thought as related to færy tales and myth.

Whilst the readers of Von Franz might find it too light, I suggest it simply adds to the analytical repertoire. If you enjoy Clarissa Pinkola Estes' work relative to færy tales, you should also enjoy this, too.

The movie Jeramiah Johnson has always been one of my favorites. It turns out that the true account of the life of John Jonston (his real name), though no less fascinating, is not much like the movie at all. The movie portrays a lonley man haunted by relentless attacks from the Crow Indians. This is partly true, but if you have seen the movie and think you know a little of the history of the man, you will be amazed at how much you did not know after reading the book. This was a truly violent, ruthless man, living in a time and place where those traits were not uncommon.

The book reads quickly and gives you a sense of awe for the man, and the manner which he and his companions lived. Though the book is mainly based on documented accounts of those who knew Johnston, I sometimes found parts of it hard to believe. One example is simply the sheer number of Indians this man kills throughout the book. That alone is nearly beyond belief, and I wonder if some of the accounts may have been exaggerated. That aside, the book was very enjoyable. A true taste of the harshness of the place and the people of that time. You'll never look at a liver the same after reading this book!

Possibly the best fur era book I have read. John Johnson is what the free trapper really was. If you are ready to get away from the "fantasy land" of the historical novelist, and immerse yourself in what was, this book by Thorp will bring you there. Open the book, keep your powder dry and watch your topknot. If I don't see you at the grave on Sepulveda (Big Anton's name) then I'll see you on the trail.

I have read this book a number of times. Having grown up in Wyoming, I am familiar with much of the country and many of the people described in the book. Opening this book is like going home all over again. This is not an "historical novel" but a retelling of actual events that reads better than any fictional adventure story. The best part about the book is that it turns the giants of the American West into real people, with real foibles and follies. The mountain men weren't super heroes, but regular people living a hard and dangerous life. It's an excellent snapshot of the realities of frontier life, told by the people who lived there. Thank God Raymond Thorp interviewed these men before all knowledge of their lives passed into obscurity.