For Evan Thomas to remind readers that John Paul Jones was his own worst enemy, that his vanity, ego and ambition rivaled those of the preening Alexander Hamilton is unnecessary and an understatement. John Paul Jones was, as much as the knowledge pained him, a glory hound. He was also one of the bravest, most skilled and dashing officers in the services of the United States during the Revolutionary War, and Thomas brings the cantankerous, manic-depressive little bulldog to vivid life for today's historians, history buffs and armchair adventurers. The highest highs and lowest lows of Jones's life toss, exalt, thrill, and lurch the reader like an unpredictable sea, and what a wonderful voyage it is!

John Paul Jones is the latest "self-made man" to appear in a biography, following on the heels of Willard Sterne Randall's cumbersome yet well-rendered "Alexander Hamilton: A Life." From humble roots, the son of a Scottish gardener, Jones was determined to rise from under the oppression of the European class system. He gazed out across the magnificent gardens created by his father and saw the ocean, with its seemingly endless horizon -and that is how Jones decided to live the rest of his life: He would expand, grow himself and mold his image anew, as wide as the sea, as broad as the sky.

As much taken with sail and sea as they took him, John Paul Jones was a natural, a gifted sailor who always tried to improve himself, whether his nautical skills, or by reading books to absorb philosophy and seeking the company of men from whom he knew he could learn. Unfortunately, Jones was never able to subdue his passions sufficiently, not sufficiently enough for any self-reflection to temper his sensitivities and thin skin, nor for him to ever cultivate the necessary strengths to achieve his highest ambition: Appointment to the rank of Admiral in the United States Navy. He would have to travel to Russia near the end of his life and enter the service of Catherine the Great to achieve that rank, but as fundamentally flawed and blameful as Jones was, he was not a rank human being. He was steadfast, loyal to his adopted country, America, and never gave in to the easy profit of privateering or ever turned his back on the Stars and Stripes.

He was as big-hearted and melodramatic as he was tragic and romantic, a sometimes womanizer who barely had a head for wine and never drank hard liquor. Like Thomas Jefferson, Jones was a paragon of paradox and yet always was, in the best sense, an American patriot.

It's painful to look on, page after page, reading about Jones's exploits and ideas, tactics and tales, only to see him constantly self-destruct, eventually alienating every single person around him. Nonetheless, Jones knew how to fight in an age where most men achieved rank through connections and lineage, and even though he didn't always win, he won enough: Jones was a tonic for fledgling America, and any other person or power savvy enough to employ his courage.

Sadly, Jones was far from the best judge of character, and often found himself in an impossibly frustrating, nightmarish circumstance because of his own inability to discern veneer from character, though Jones seems to have had plenty of character, and yet constantly coveted superficial laurels of those less worthy. But no matter how badly he may have comported himself, and in spite of how myopic most of his handlers were, blinded to Jones's full potential, "Little Jones" was indeed a mouse that roared.

Whether Jones ever knew it during his life, he certainly reflected the rigid principles of honor to which he held himself and others, and Evan Thomas has written a flowing, absorbing book about John Paul Jones, a man who cherished freedom above all else, and helped bring it to so many others.

This is a good year for navalists and those who study war, combat and leadership.

We have this book which can only be described as a masterpiece worthy of a Pulitzer, and we have Joel Hayward's new highly original book (FOR GOD AND GLORY) on Admiral Nelson, the British naval hero, which is worthy of whatever prizes Britain offers.

Both books present very real, highly eccentric and slightly - dare I say it - weird fighting sailors. But both books, although different in approach to their subjects, make the same point: that Horatio Nelson and John Paul Jones were able to rise above the constraints of their eras and distinguish themselves as true heroes precisely because they were so psychologically unusual.

Evan Thomas's book on John Paul Jones is so sumptuous that your mouth will water as you read the first pages. You'll be hungry - ravenous - to bite into the meat of the book. And you won't be disappointed when you do. This book is so good you'll lie awake thinking about the events of two centuries ago.

I have no reason to say this because I am not an American (and no reason to laud the celebrated new Nelson book by Hayward; I am not a Brit). I am Russian. But I know good research and brilliant writing when I see it. And here I certainly do.

This is a magnificent effort.

This is a good year for navalists and those who study war, combat and leadership.
We have this book which can only be described as a masterpiece worthy of a Pulitzer, and we have Joel Hayward's new highly original book (FOR GOD AND GLORY) on Admiral Nelson, the British naval hero, which is worthy of whatever prizes Britain offers.
Both books present very real, highly eccentric and slightly - dare I say it - weird fighting sailors. But both books, although different in approach to their subjects, make the same point: that Horatio Nelson and John Paul Jones were able to rise above the constraints of their eras and distinguish themselves as true heroes precisely because they were so psychologically unusual.
Evan Thomas's book on John Paul Jones is so sumptuous that your mouth will water as you read the first pages. You'll be hungry - ravenous - to bite into the meat of the book. And you won't be disappointed when you do. This book is so good you'll lie awake thinking about the events of two centuries ago.
I have no reason to say this because I am not an American (and no reason to laud the celebrated new Nelson book by Hayward; I am not a Brit). I am Russian. But I know good research and brilliant writing when I see it. And here I certainly do.
This is a magnificent effort.

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.

It does not content any original chants, prayers, divination, and powerful names like we use here in the Philippines...We have been in the actual practice of the Craft since tha Spanish colonization....

If you are looking for a "how to" book on spellwork, this book will disappoint. However, if you are interested in purusing another chapter in the unfolding history of "old school Wicca", you might find something of interest.

Evan Jones gives a good account of what he and his fellow coveners did under the direction of Robert Cochrane in the 1960's. The book is geared for group work and maintains the male/female, hierarchical system of Gardnerian Wicca.

Personally, I prefer Valiente's books on modern Craft history; but this text does possess some merit if one is looking to expand their knowledge on how a coven can be run.

Lots of garbage masquerades as "traditional" witchcraft. Much of the quality material can be traced back to Gardnerian roots. This book is a rare gem--a reliable and modern source for non-Gardnerian British Craft material. Doreen Valiente, an important figure in Wicca, wrote with Evan Jones about the practice of the Craft after Robert Cochrane's style.

While this book does not hold many "spell recipes" or "ritual scripts," it provides enough information to "produce" rituals in this style & to organize a coven. This begs the question, however, of whether or not the Craft may be handed down through books or not.

The Goddess knows Her own, and to Herself She will call them. Within these pages lie material that may be of great use to those so called. Five stars for laying out a tradition rarely written about and making it available to those called to "tradition," but not to the "Gardnerian" way of doing things.

The second edition of this outstanding guidebook has been produced by people who were rightly content in general terms with the style and content of the first. Twelve pages of colour photographs have been added - calculated more to increase sales than to be of use to the traveller on the road.

Of the three sections, Part One, The Basics and Part Three, Contexts, are little changed. Between them, Part Two, The Guide, at 1005 pages is 76 pages longer. Regions which get an increase of twenty per cent or more are Dongbei, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hong Kong and Macau.

A few new routes have been added, including the roads from Chengdu to Shaanxi and from Mangshi south-east along the Burma border. The book notes the opening of western Sichuan and north-western Yunnan, but unfortunately and oddly provides little information about these important regions. In fact there is very little mention of a vast tract stretching generally south from the Xining-Lhasa road, through Qinghai, the Tibetan "Autonomous" Region and western Sichuan to north-western Yunnan.

Although that region warrants much more attention, it is inevitable that there will be some substantial regions that do receive little or no attention. All of north-eastern Sichuan/Chongqing, for example, is a blank. Perhaps it deserves to be; but a traveller is unlikely to find out unless he ventures there and explores for himself. This raises another unfortunate omission - any comprehensive account of which parts of China are still closed to foreign visitors without special permits. That matter is of little importance to travellers wishing to visit the "sights" listed in this guidebook, because few of those "sights" are in closed areas. That is, I expect, why the whole matter of what is closed amounts almost to a non-issue for the popular guidebooks. But it is certainly of importance to the traveller who, having reached this or that province with the help of a guidebook, wishes to go off to see what is in one of the blank areas. Comprehensive lists of what is closed are available, but hard to get, and available nowhere that I know of in English. Such a list, or better still a map of China showing the counties which are closed would be invaluable. That is exactly the kind of information that a guidebook of this kind should provide.

The great majority of the changes in this edition are in the detail - admission prices, opening hours, accommodation addresses and prices. Whether the new information is accurate will have to wait for on-the-road testing. But the very large number of detailed changes suggests that the revision has been thorough.

There is, of course, the usual and almost inevitable smattering of errors - Dehong described as an "Autonomous Region" (it is an autonomous prefecture) at page 810, Hubei abutting Sichuan (p503: it used to, but not since Chongqing was excised from Sichuan province in about 1997), the map on p773 showing part of Guanxi as incorporated in Guizhou province, Anhui not named on the map at p470, Macau omitted from the table of contents. An important error is the map on p898, showing the "Desert Highway" across the Taklamakan as joining the southern highway at Khotan, more than three hundred kilometres west of the actual junction, which is east of Minfeng (Niya).

I would have liked to see more attention to the regional maps rather than the twelve pages of pictures. The maps are, on the whole for their given scope, reasonably well done, fitting in well with the text. Their scale bars are sometimes awry, and maps of adjoining regions are sometimes incompatible - most notably the map of the north-west, which does not fit with the other maps at any scale.

So now I come to another special plea. Planning a trip through several regions calls for an overall map. In times gone by, fold-out or loose sheet maps were sometimes provided with guidebooks. Perhaps the practice was abandoned on the grounds of cost; it was not abandoned for lack of usefulness. Of course separate maps are available, but they are much less useful than a map would be if specially prepared for a particular guidebook - less useful because they include so many places not mentioned in the book, omit some that are, and in China may even use different names. After wrestling with adjustments to scales different from those indicated by scale bars I produced a single map of China from the regional maps in the new Rough Guide, and a most useful map it is for use in conjunction with the book.

When next I travel to China, the new edition of the Rough Guide will be the one I shall take, supplemented where needed and possible by information from other sources. ()

I traveled extensively throughout China in 1998, and I found the roughguide a much more practical book for getting around. The charts inside the guide allow you to find the information quickly, whereas the other popular guide forces you to flip through pages with apparent random entires of Chinese Characters, which can be frustrating and stressful when you climb into a chinese taxi in the middle of the road, and you need to show the driver where you want to go. Although lonely planet seems to have more detailed information, the well organized layout of the Roughguide makes it ten times more desireable when your actually on the road. I'm looking forward to the new edition, as I left my roughguide in China with a friend who only had a lonely planet!

The book describes in detail almost everything one needs to know about going to China. From reccomending large 5 star hotels to Yurts in out of the way villages, the Rough Guide helps you get there the way you want to get there. The guide is so detailed that it even reccomended a small village in the middle of Inner Mongolia called Zhaohe. I went there and found it to be what the guide promised...out of the way and no tourists. Invaluable information such as this makes traveling in an already crowded China more rewarding and interesting.

Ugh. Where do I start? Where should I start. How can I possibly stop?

While there are some good aspects to the new system, the horrendous and horrible features far outnumber them.

First off, the game is a matematical and book-keeping nightmare. The gamemaster will rapidly lose control of any game while he/she sits back and computes difficulties, defenses and damages for the heroes and npcs. The system is overly complex (though not the worst I've ever seen, mind).

For example, when you take damage, for every 3 red stones of damage you take, you take 1 health. Why not just multiply health by 3 and take damage directly off of that? That way you don't have to do multiplication AND subtraction. I'd make a House Rule if I were running the game. IF I were running the game.

As another example, a hero or villains defense changes every turn. This might be fine, albeit annoying, for players, but the gamemaster who's running the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants is going to to slit his wrist trying to keep up with all the healths. And that's assuming he or she has the space behind the GM screen to properly track all of said evil mutants.

Time is ambiguously measured in vague panels and pages (conceptually clever, technically atrocious.) Simply put, a character can do as many things in a panel as a comic book artist can draw in one. Huh? I get the gist, but this is a game for crying out loud. We need some structure.

I do like the method of experience awards and advancement, conceptually; but again, technically it's weak. Experience is awarded toward different powers or skills, which are called "lines". In other words, you have to use a power before you can advance in it. Not a new concept, but one that's completely foreign in a lot of currently published games.

But this system also falls down. An example in the book clearly states that if you gain a line of experience that claims you performed "underwater close combat", then in the future when you are underwater fighting and the GM tries to impose a penalty for your actions, you can point to your experience and say you don't have to take the penalty because you've been underwater fighting before? Come again?

The book, on the surface, seems laid out rather nicely. But upon closer inspection it's hard to find things. I couldn't find a clear cut section on combat. The sample heroes were introduced to me before I could even understand what their stats meant. The powers that I read were incomplete and confusing. (For instance, the Phasing power didn't mention anything about what would happen if you unphased into a solid object, but the example under the power description clearly stated that Kitty Pryde would be in for a world of hurt if she did so. Okay then!)

I could go on. But these are just my initial findings and the ones that come to mind immediately. The developers have attempted to create a free-form, game that captures the spirit of a comic book and puts the players in control of their heroes abilities and successes. But look, if you want that AND you want a system that's easy to learn, go buy the previous version of Marvel; the one from Wizards of the Coast. ... But if you like doing math, flipping through pages, and creating lots and lots of sheets of paper to keep track of who has what defense during what panel on a page, then you can also find this hardbound [book, too].

Don't say I didn't warn you.

...

I have been playing RPG's for about 5 years now, and have played everything from Dungeons and Dragons to D20 Modern...and this really doesn't make much sense. The rules, while short and sweet; are really complex about something with energy and stones and white and reds stones. I am still going to be playing it but it is not as good as D&D or other games...plus, I kind of isn't fair to be playing a ... SUPERHERO in an RPG (its like playing a God in Dungeons and Dragons!) Over all it is worth it for the money, but unless you just want an RPG to {mess} around with then this is your game.

This game is excellent! It really captures the true essence of Marvel Comics. If you want to play a game that simulates what a comic book is all about, then buy this game! I know that it might seem weird without the dice and all, but it really is more fun. Unlike other games where you have to role dice to see if you can complete an action, this game gives you a set amount of points, called "stones", and basically lets you decide what to do, and whether or not you accomplish the feat. Again, if you are a fan of comics or RPGs, or if you just want a change of pace from the norm, buy this game today.

If you are looking for an honest, intelligent account of the Three Strikes law, its origins, and its impacts, this is NOT the book to read.

The murder of Kimber Reynolds was a tragic, sad, horrendous event, and my heart goes out to Mike Reynolds. I can see how he would want to start a crusade to prevent such a tragedy from occurring again.

I am a policy analyst who has done a great deal of reearch on Three Strikes. There are various potential benefits of the Three Strikes law, but the impacts on the budget and the corrections system will probably be vast. These costs and effects are never discussed in this book. The details of the law are glossed over.

The book is a pathetic attempt to turn a sad story into heavy-handed propaganda for a controversial law and its proponents. It's like an overly long campaign leaflet, launching harsh attacks on the law's opponents and making the law's proponents out to be heroes.

Easily one of the worst books I have ever read. If there were any way to give it less than one star, I certainly would.

This book is an embarrassment. Badly written, badly conceived. A sad, incomplete, and partial account of the tragic slippage from personal grief to the collective tragedy of a policy that does nothing but aggravate the problem it is supposed to solve. Relies on emotion, not on argument. Pitiful.

Until Mike became motivated by the loss of his daughter, California's prisons were a short stopover for violent criminals on their way to their next victim. Poor grammar aside, the book vividly portrays California's legislature being run by an immensely strong liberal cadre of men dedicated not to the public who elected them but to a political philosphy out of step with common sense and the one man who ran the assembly at that time, Willy Brown.

Not only was Kimber sensely sacrificed but also Polly Klaas. Polly was kidnapped from her home during a pajama party then raped and killed by a repeat felon just out of prison. This took place just as the initiative was being circulated for signatures. The event so moved the hearts and souls of the citizens of California that the politicians resisting the prison reform effort either got out of the way or joined the ranks of those supporting it.

The Three Strikes law has accomplished what it set out to do: Take dangerous repeat offenders off the street! Not only is crime down over 46% here in the state (2000 stats) but not one single prison has been built. In fact, prison population is down.

The only senseless thing is why did so many have to suffer and die and why did it take so long to bring about this common sense reform?

New Yorkers take note!

The meteoric rise of Chris Evans has mainly been chronicled in tabloid reports of excess, erratic behaviour and the nastiest temper in show business. Is Freak or Unique, the title itself suggesting an analysis of character, anything diferent, would it show a different side to Evans? Sadly it has not, the author himself a tabloid journalist, has interviewed a biased selection of characters from Evans' life and attempted to fool the reader into thinking he'd interviewed more worthy names by piecing together old interviews. With very little revolutionary material, Freak or Unique fails to achieve an in depth analysis of Chris Evans.