I'm glad I have this book to refer to. No matter where we consider traveling, I have this handy book to know what's "out" there for us.

I bought this book back in 2001 for a trip to New York. Not knowing anything about "the city", I needed some help. Along with this one, I purchased a few other guides focusing on gay oriented places in the U.S. and New York, but this one was far better. With it's insightful mini reviews of places shown in the guide, I got ALOT from this book. From places to stay, to places to see, it'll give you a great base to start with when trying to find nightlife, or otherwise, in ANY new city. I'm taking it back with me again to New York and to Seattle this time. But, be weary, as with any guide, places change, and what you read might not be as bad as it says it is, or it could be worse! Thanks for reading.

Just looking over my hometowns review I found them correct in substance but wrong in form. Cleveland has a neighborhood called "WEST PARK" that the book names WEST EDGE>. While not devastating to the overall value of the text it would leave a visitor here asking for a place that residents wouldn't recognize. I'm not sure if the other cities reviewed suffer from similar mistakes. Going to Orlando 8/24 and San Francisco 9/3 so I'll note any discrepancies.

This is overall a very good and comprehensive history of the past 50 years in F1. In a year-by-year fashion the reader is able to follow how the world's fastest sport has evolved. A fascinating read in general and a must for every true F1 fan. Every decade is covered by a different expert guest writer, all of them great past and current champions of the sport, and this adds personal color, but also bias. David Coulthard of the McLaren-Mercedes Team covers the 90ies and of course gives his very personal perspective on the most recent seasons. The downside of the guest-writer format is a general loss in homogeneity that can't be avoided with this system. While the pictures are carefully selected and in part very stunning and excellent, some true gems of the past are sorely missed. It is very, very clear that this is a british book, and some of the other great European and South American drivers are not covered in as much depth.

This is one of the few books in the book store which tells you how it all started back in 1950. You can find a lot of rare F1 photographs (B/W and Colour) from 1950 to 1999 in this book. For each year's championship, there is about 1 to 2 pages of text depicting the highlights of that year. All in all, I found this a very good book. Whether you are a F1 fan or not, you will enjoy reading it.

Unfortunately, I also bought "Autocourse : 50 Years of World Championship Grand Prix Motor Racing" by Alan Henry and I gave that book 5+ stars. In most parts, these two books are on par but on subjective preferences, I found the photographs in Alan's book more attractive and give more depth into F1. If you are a serious F1 fan and your buget allows, get both books. If you have to pick just one due to whatever reason, I'll recommend Alan Henry's over Bruce Jones'. Sorry Bruce!!

Comprehensive but not exhaustive review of the 1st 50 years of the sport.

Loads of fabulous photos I never saw before. The 60's are especially well covered. Very good year by year synopses, plus insightful re-caps of the decades written by such greats as John Surtees.

I cannot put this book down!

Shakespeare's play, "Othello" is usually recognized as one of his "great" tragedy's (with Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth). It certainly has a quite exciting plot and great poetry. If you have not yet had an oportunity to read this great work, I recomend it strongly. It is still an intelligent treatment of race, family and civic duty, and sex. It also has one of the most interesting bad guys around - Iago.

I read it in the Arden edition, edited by Honigmann. Honigmann argues that Othello has a strong claim at being Shakespeare's greatest tragedy and makes a strong case for the work. He has a good introduction that gives a quite balanced and clear overview on many topics regarding this play, from the "double" time method Shakespeare uses, overviews of the various characters, as well as a the stage history. Amazingly, he can be remarkably balanced, even when he is talking about his own views. While he is a decent writer, Shakespeare is better... In the text itself, he gives quite ample footnotes to help explain the language, why he picked particular readings, as well as where themes came from...

Like all scholarly Shakespeare editions, the notes are in danger of overloading the text. This reader, however, recognizes the distance between myself and Shakespeare and so I find it comforting to be able to look at the notes when I have questions. At times his "longer notes" were awkward, but there is no easy way to handle this amount of material.

Othello relects the true meaning of a tragedy both in its content and its structure.Tragedy is 'a story of exceptional calamity produced by human actions, leading to the death of a man in high estate.'The downfall of Othello is caused by his own actions, rather than by his character, or rather the two work in unison to create the stage for his downfall.
This is what captured my attention when I read this play.It is very profound to realize the fact that Shakespeare uses Iago to set this stage on which Othello is a mere player.
I love the character of Iago. His total confidence, the superiority that he feels when psychoanalysing human nature, his rational thinking and intellectualism sways the reader to think: 'Wow, this is a compelling and sophisticated man we're dealing with here!'
However, my admiration of Iago does not in anyway undermine my love of Othello. His poetic and calm demeanor makes the reader feel the pity and terror for him when he falls from grace (catharsis). Yet, we are made to understand that the reason why he is made to appear a gullible and ignorant fool to some readers is that he does not have any knowledge of a delicate, domesticated life. Venetian women were foreign to him. This tragic flaw in Othello added to the circumstances used by Iago to destroy him.
The meaning, and hence the tragedy of the play is conveyed through the use of Shakespeare's language, style, literary devices and imagery. Without these dramatic effects, readers would never be able to enjoy the play as much, although the dialogue is at times difficult to decipher.
I thoroughly enjoyed Othello and it is my hope that more people find it enticing as I have. I would be delighted to contribute more of my reviews to that effect.

As a play, "Othello" encompasses many things but more than anything else it is a study of pure evil. Although Othello is an accomplished professional soldier and a hero of sorts, he is also a minority and an outcast in many ways. As a Black man and a Moor (which means he's a Moslem), Othello has at least two qualities, which make him stand out in the Elizabethan world. He is also married to a Caucasian woman named Desdemona, which creates an undercurrent of hostility as evidenced by the derogatory remark "the ram hath topped the ewe".

Othello's problems begin when he promotes one of his soldiers, Michael Cassio as his lieutenant. This arouses the jealousy and hatred of one of his other soldiers, Iago who hatches a plot to destroy Othello and Michael Cassio. When Cassio injures an opponent in a fight he is rebuked, punished, and subsequently ignored by Othello who must discipline him and teach him a lesson. Iago convinces Desdemona to intervene on Cassio's behalf and then begins to convince Othello that Desdemona is in love with Cassio.

This is actually one of the most difficult Shakespeare plays to watch because the audience sees the plot begin to unfold and is tormented by Othello's gradual decent into Iago's trap. As with other Shakespeare plays, the critical components of this one are revealed by language. When Othello is eventually convinced of Cassio's treachery, he condemns him and promotes Iago in his place. When Othello tells Iago that he has made him his lieutenant, Iago responds with the chilling line, "I am thine forever". To Othello this is a simple affirmation of loyalty, but to the audience, this phrase contains a double meaning. With these words, Iago indicates that the promotion does not provide him with sufficient satisfaction and that he will continue to torment and destroy Othello. It is his murderous intentions, not his loyal service that will be with Othello forever.

Iago's promotion provides him with closer proximity to Othello and provides him with more of his victim's trust. From here Iago is easily able to persuade Othello of Desdemona's purported infidelity. Soon Othello begins to confront Desdemona who naturally protests her innocence. In another revealing statement, Othello demands that Desdemona give him "the ocular proof". Like Iago's earlier statement, this one contains a double meaning that is not apparent to the recipient but that is very clear to the audience who understands the true origin of Othello's jealousy. Othello's jealousy is an invisible enemy and it is also based on events that never took place. How can Desdemona give Othello visual evidence of her innocence if her guilt is predicated on accusations that have no true shape or form? She can't. Othello is asking Desdemona to do the impossible, which means that her subsequent murder is only a matter of course.

I know that to a lot of young people this play must seem dreadfully boring and meaningless. One thing you can keep in mind is that the audience in Shakespeare's time did not have the benefit of cool things such as movies, and videos. The downside of this is that Shakespeare's plays are not visually stimulating to an audience accustomed to today's entertainment media. But the upside is that since Shakespeare had to tell a complex story with simple tools, he relied heavily on an imaginative use of language and symbols. Think of what it meant to an all White audience in a very prejudiced time to have a Black man at the center of a play. That character really stood out-almost like an island. He was vulnerable and exposed to attitudes that he could not perceive directly but which he must have sensed in some way.

Shakespeare set this play in two locations, Italy and Cypress. To an Elizabethan audience, Italy represented an exotic place that was the crossroads of many different civilizations. It was the one place where a Black man could conceivably hold a position of authority. Remember that Othello is a mercenary leader. He doesn't command a standing army and doesn't belong to any country. He is referred to as "the Moor" which means he could be from any part of the Arab world from Southern Spain to Indonesia. He has no institutional or national identity but is almost referred to as a phenomenon. (For all the criticism he has received in this department, Shakespeare was extrordinarlily attuned to racism and in this sense he was well ahead of his time.) Othello's subsequent commission as the Military Governor of Cypress dispatches him to an even more remote and isolated location. The man who stands out like an island is sent to an island. His exposure and vulnerability are doubled just as a jealous and murderous psychopath decides to destroy him.

Iago is probably the only one of Shakespeare's villains who is evil in a clinical sense rather than a human one. In Kind Lear, Edmund the bastard hatches a murderous plot out of jealousy that is similar to Iago's. But unlike Iago, he expresses remorse and attempts some form of restitution at the end of the play. In the Histories, characters like Richard III behave in a murderous fashion, but within the extreme, political environment in which they operate, we can understand their motives even if we don't agree with them. Iago, however, is a different animal. His motives are understandable up to the point in which he destroys Michael Cassio but then they spin off into an inexplicable orbit of their own. Some have suggested that Iago is sexually attracted to Othello, which (if its true) adds another meaning to the phrase "I am thine forever". But even if we buy the argument that Iago is a murderous homosexual, this still doesn't explain why he must destroy Othello. Oscar Wilde once wrote very beautifully of the destructive impact a person can willfully or unwittingly have on a lover ("for each man kills the things he loves") but this is not born out in the play. Instead, Shakespeare introduces us to a new literary character-a person motivated by inexplicable evil that is an entity in itself. One of the great ironies of this play is that Othello is a character of tragically visible proportions while Iago is one with lethally invisible ones.

"Here's to fall, winter, and spring, . Here's to friends that I met this year and the friend that I lost. Here's to finding love. It's been a crazy year, it's been a fun year, it's been a sad year, but...it's one year I will never forget. Here's to my Sophomore Year!" - Staush

As Staush always proposed a toast, I propose a toast to the author of this book, for he wrote a book which describes the ups and downs of life, in which everybody and anybody can relate to. This book was a true page turner, in which I felt I knew the characters, anticipating the events to occur. A truly great read!

While I reserve five stars for literary masterpieces, I put this novel as close as possible. The story is told in third person narrative and puts the main character, Staush in an uncomfortable situation right off the bat. The story moves along seamlessly and creates a fun relationship with the main love interest. Their relationship is one filled with flirtations and unwritten desires. Conflict is created by inproprieties with an English Literature Professor described impressively. I enjoyed their interaction and kept rushing ahead to scenes involving the three. Without giving too much away, the description of the main character's roomate and his demise is outstanding and vivid. Overall a superb story told with thorough descriptions that brought the campus setting to life. I found myself eager each night to find out what would happen next. A pleasure to read.

It's the same book as Stick Making, a Complete Course-- except in compact format! So don't make the mistake I did and order both books. ...

Other than that, it's a great little book. So if you don't have the other one, by all means order it; you won't be disappointed!

Based on the authors' "Stick Making: A Complete Course." Andrew Jones and Clive George, devote the first chapter of this book going over finding, cutting, seasoning sticks, what types of wood is used, as well as the tools used. They go through everything not only in text but they provide pictures as well.

After the introduction the authors jump you straight into the techniques used in strengthening your sticks to be used in building your projects. The projects outlined range from thumbsticks, walking sticks, wooden crooks, market sticks and much more.

This book shows you how to make specialty head for your canes as well. Providing detailed instruction on a dog's, duck's or a pheasant's head. They

My favorite aspects of this book are the authors' use of providing a lot of diagrams and pictures to help spotlight the amount of detail they write. Also, each project has detailed descriptions of what material is needed and how to shape everything from the wood for the shaft to using bones and horns for the handle. There's no more guesswork on what tool is used to make or do what!

This book is very thought out and it is geared toward the more experienced woodworker. I enjoyed this book and look forward trying my hand at building one. Over all I recommend the purchase of this book.

This is one of the few good book you can find, you can't find one like that easily. It is the best thing you can get that tells you all what you need to know on that topic, if you want a good book, buy this one.

Not quite a page turner, but factually correct throughout. Now I've finished reading it, I'm using it to prop up that wobbly filing cabinet in the corner.

In Yellow Music, Andrew Jones blends post-colonial discourse with theory drawn from culture studies and other fields to tackle the complex subject of the rise of modern Chinese popular music. In the process, he lands a well-placed jab in the jaw of the dinosaur known as area studies. Jones makes an ambitious effort to historicize his study of modern Chinese music through a detailed account of its rise as an industry within a global context of technological and cultural change. His analysis of major figures in the modern Chinese musical world makes a substantial contribution to a neglected field of cultural enterprise in the study of modern China, while his focus on the music industry and musical culture of Shanghai, including records, cinema, cabarets, revues, and popular magazines and journals, sheds additional light to the growing field of Shanghai cultural history.
Jones places the history of modern Chinese music within the frameworks of global capitalism, Euro-American colonialism, and the American "culture industry" that came to influence so many different parts of the world during the twentieth century. Even so, Yellow Music reminds us that China's own film industry, beginning with the first cinematic exhibition in a Shanghai teahouse in 1896, kept pace with Hollywood and eventually began to exert a significant ideological power of its own upon the Chinese movie-going and record-playing public, especially during the 1930s when the ideologies of nationalism became imbricated in the film music and content of Shanghai's leftist film studios. The advent of songwriter Nie Er--whose film song "March of the Volunteers" eventually became China's national anthem under the P.R.C.--on the Chinese stage and screen thus marks an important turning point in the history of modern China.
Jones is at his best when describing the careers of musicians Li Jinhui and Nie Er, both of whom worked in Shanghai's burgeoning musical scene during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Li Jinhui established a blend of Chinese folk and Western jazz music to create the sounds of modern Chinese pop. He commercialized his music through song-and-dance troupes, one of which included his daughter Li Minghui. Although his efforts to nationalize his music through the use of Mandarin was a valid contribution to the project of modern Chinese nationalism, the contents of his music and dance programs were deemed prurient or "yellow" by both conservative and leftist Chinese nationalists.
Nie Er began his career as a songwriter working under Li Jinhui. Following the attack by Japan on the Zhabei district of Shanghai in 1932, and in the context of heightened Chinese nationalism that followed Japanese aggression during the 1930s, Nie Er turned away from the "yellow" music of sinified jazz and began writing "revolutionary" music for leftist films. His efforts to infuse a sense of heroic Chinese nationalism into his music through strident marches and patriotic lyrics earned him fame among leftists and communists. Today, a statue of Nie Er in a small park on the corner of Fuxing and Huaihai Roads attests to his status as a revolutionary hero in the communist pantheon.
That Nie Er's "March of the Volunteers" became the anthem of a totalitarian regime is an irony that is apparently lost on Jones, as are the hegemonic tendencies of Han Chinese nationalists, who even during the height of European colonialist endeavors were bent on disciplining, subjugating, and suppressing other ethnicities within the Chinese geopolitical sphere, not to mention their own people. Jones's attempt to explain the fascist tendencies of Chiang Kai-shek and his Blue Shirts as naïve strikes one as unnecessarily apologetic. Nor does Jones fully explore the implications of the imposition of a national language via music and film on the ethnic and regional identities of hundreds of millions of people in China who did not speak Mandarin as their native tongue.
One is also skeptical at times about the quality of the research that went into this slim volume. For instance, Jones begins his study with an anecdote about the African American jazz musician Buck Clayton, who traveled to Shanghai in the 1930s to play in the city's nightclubs. Jones uses anecdotes drawn from Clayton's autobiography to illustrate "truths" about the complex racial hierarchy that characterized the polyglot city of Shanghai. The story of Clayton's dismissal from the Canidrome Ballroom, told briefly from the point of view of Clayton himself, is actually far more complicated than Jones makes it out to be. In fact, it was not Caucasian American managers and Marines who engineered his dismissal, but rather the club's Chinese managers, who themselves were under the influence of the notorious mob boss Du Yuesheng. The man who attacked Clayton was not a Marine but rather an American mobster named Jack Riley who was probably paid by the Chinese management to start the fight. The real objective was to fire the band for causing a disturbance, since the band had become too expensive to maintain and since there was no other way to legally sever their contract. This is just one of many topics in the book whose nuances could have been explored more fully.
For a study of an academic topic as serious and complex as the rise of modern Chinese music, Jones's book is refreshingly short. Moreover, despite numerous references to cultural and critical theory and the liberal peppering of his text with theoretical jargon, the book remains highly readable, engaging, and stimulating throughout. For these reasons, Yellow Music may serve well as an addition to any college course on modern China, colonialism, music history, or globalization.

Paris Minton is an unlikely protagonist for a mystery novel. An African American man, approaching middle age, he runs a used bookstore in a 1950s LA ghetto. He doesn't make much money from his business, but that's not why he has the shop. He just wants the chance to read his books and be left alone. That dream ends the day a beautiful woman named Elana Love walks in the door. "Fearless Jones" features an improbable hero, perhaps, but a classic setup for a hardboiled story.

The comparisons to Mosley's brilliant Easy Rawlins series are natural and deserved. Both are set in similar times and deal with similar themes. The character of Paris Minton, though, adds a new dimension to the story. A thoughtful, literate man, he's not very handy with his fists, awkward with guns, and a patsy for a gorgeous woman. Most hard-boiled characters are just that: hard. Paris, though, is far softer than most, and more interesting for it.

"Fearless Jones" once again demonstrates that Walter Mosley is one of the finest writers working today. His sharp eye for race relations, human nature, and the changing face of America would be excellent contributions to any novel. When added to a solid, engrossing mystery, they take his work to a higher level that few can match. Mosley is a treasure who should be read by all.

This was great. Mosley introduces readers to two new characters, Paris Minton and Fearless Jones. Paris is a bookworm. He states that he fell in love with books when he was told by a white libraian that he could never read any of the books in a local library. Fearless is a war vet, who is sweet, compassionate and as you would guess,he is fearless of death.
By the time you reach page 5, all hell has broken erupted. Elana Love walks into Paris' bookstore and she brings plenty of trouble. She is looking for a church congregation that suddenly disappears in the night because the alleged Rev. has a bond that is worth a lot of money. As a result, Paris is beat up and his store is burned down. He turns to his long time friend, Fearless, for help after bailing him out of jail. As the two travel the streets of L.A. to find Elana, they meet Fanny and her husband, Sol. Fanny is funny, brave and caring. Then there is Leory, The Rev., and many others who will make you laugh out loud. Paris turns out to be a great detective as he tries to unfold the mysteries that Elana has set in motion. If you love Easy Rawlings and Mouse then you will definately love these new characters. Like all of Mosley stories, it was a page turner with many twist and turns. You will not want to put it down. Peace and Blessings!

Rather than reprising his popular central character, Easy Rawlins, deft wordsmith Walter Mosley introduces an equally intriguing hero - Fearless Jones. Again, Mosley shines at depicting black characters struggling to survive in an inhospitable white world.

When Paris Minton's book shop door opens and gorgeous Elan Love walks in, so does trouble. Paris is a laid back black man content to run his store in the Watts area of 1950s LA. He's ill prepared to deal with all the woes that beset him such as being used for gun shot practice, being robbed, and seeing his business go up in flames.

There's little choice for Paris except to send an SOS to his war veteran buddy, Fearless Jones - a man who more than lives up to his sobriquet. The pair embark on a surprise riddled chase fraught with excitement and danger.

TV and film actor Peter Francis James gives tension filled voice to this riveting thriller.

I used the previous eddition of the LP guide while on an extended (5-month) trip in Brazil and halfway through the trip I gave it away because it was just cluttering up my backpack. It only covered the biggest cities, and even then, I thought Andrew Draffen to some very snobbish opinions about many places (Santos being one of them). One of the most interesting "off-the-beaten path" travels I made (w/out Lonely Planet) was from Lencois Maranhenses (Barreirinhas) overland to Tutoia, and then by boat past the Ilha do Caju to Piaui, and then to Camocim and on to Jericoacoara. Had I trusted the LP guide, this region of the coast would have remained a mystery. I eventually bought a copy of Guia 4 Rodas Brazil guide in Portuguese because the maps were amazingly accurate, and it had hotel and dining options for even the most obscure towns. I also visited Parintins (an island-city in the Amazon) in June for the largest Bumba-meu-boi festival in the world, and LP doesn't even mention the place! There are some newer, better books on the market that appear better... when travelling in Brazil trust the locals and avoid Lonely Planet!

As always, Lonely Planet provides thorough advice on the country, on do's and dont's. Don't go to Brazil without it ! This guide is particularly admirable for covering such a vast territory in a single book, and for offering, on top of usual information for visitors, a great deal of historical, social and political data which is interesting and easy-to-read for anyone. Indeed, at university I remember some people studied Latin American politics just by reading the politics section at the beginning of these LP guides.

I just spent one month in the Rio area and Sao Paulo with my wife. We took both the Insight Guide to Brazil and Rio, and this book. I never used the Insight Guide books, they were awful. They only had pretty pictures.

On the other hand, the Lonely Planet book ruled! The book gives detailed info on how to do things everywhere in Rio, and even has great sections on the pequena cidades in the interior. For example, we went to Teresopolis (north of rio) and the info on Teresopolis was very helpful.

I would especially recommend going hang-gliding or para-gliding on Sao Conrado in Rio. The Lonely Planet guide explains how to do it. I did it, and it was better than any dream I've ever had, though terrifying at takeoff!

The insight on places to eat, and places to stay, is the MOST helpful. If you're very wealthy, you don't care--you'll just stay at one of the best places and eat at the two or three most famous places. But if you're constrained by a budget, this book clearly indicates how to maximize your dollar.

If you're going to Brazil for an adventure, and not just to sit on Copacabana and go to the Sugerloaf, this book is a must.