The author skillfully uses the biography of a San Francisco gold rush pioneer to illuminate the broader history of America's westward movement. Through the prism of one man's experience, a reader comes to understand the impulses and circumstances that constitutes one of America's single-most important developments--the setteling of America's west. Fans of "common-man" history will especially like following the tracings of an average man and family, who, by pluck, industry, and perseverance managed to create for himself and his heirs an authentic, Horatio Alger rags-to-riches success story.

This is a riveting account of one man's journey to the promised lands of California. This is a must read for California history buffs. It is the most impressive and well researched book I have read in a long time!!!

I assign this book in all of my courses. It is a concise and precise tool for improving student writing. The book is divided into sections for Grammar (G.O), Punctuation (P.0) and Spelling (S.0). The subheadings for each section are intuitive rather than technical. If you are having trouble deciding whether to use the word "fewer" or the word "less," you go to the section titled "Fewer vs. Less." When grading student papers I can simply refer to the sections of the book rather than having to write the full grammatical explanation for every error. For example, the "its vs it's" confusion is solved with a reference to section S.21, "except/accept" S.19. Students have found the book helpful and user friendly. The explanations are clear and succint.

The culturgrams are a great reference for teachers, students, travelers, and researchers for quick information on history, geography, cultural, and other important information for each country listed. The information is accurate and as up-to-date as possible.

This was the first book I read for my Communication Engineering course and this subject became one of my strengths after I read it. The style of writing is conversational and not overly technical.The arrangement of the topics is again just like a beginner needs for it to be.The language is lucid .The matter covers not only the technical details but also the practical difficulties.The author has taken pains to make things simple except in places like receivers where its impossible. In my opinion it is the best place you can learn your basic radio and modulation thoery and also stuff about receivers and radio wave propagation from.Be sure to read about tuned amplifiers,oscillators and push-pull amplifiers...you wouldnt understand most of the book if you dont know these elementary concepts.

There were very few things that I didnt find in this book...one was the procedure for determination of AM modulation index by the use of a Oscilloscope,but i dont think i can recall anything else which was missing.

If you are serious about understanding the JFK assassination then you need to get all ten volumes of Bruce Adamson's works on the Dallas assassination. The deep and wide research in Mr. Adamson's volumes allows one to see the inportant people surrounding the mysterious Lee Harvey Oswald. You can learn about someone by knowing a persons friends . These volumes contain valuable info on George DeMohrenschildt== self proclaimed == best friend of Lee Harvey Oswald. Knowing who DeMohrenschildt was helps to understand the important question --Who was Lee Harvey Oswald ? Words to the wise ....get these volumes !

This book is excellent if you understand the basics of 3D Studio Max, but cannot get to grips with the more advanced feature set of the animation tools. It covers alot of different types of animation from animating various animals, and humanoid characters to explosions and animating the environment.

It also has insider knowledge on using various techniques used in other types of work. (e.g. in forensic animation etc..) It may not explain every detail on how to perform various tasks so it is important that you have basic understanding of the MAX interface, but it is certainly a great reference on animation, and the animation industry. It even has tools for showcasing your work and producing a demo reel.

Included are several tutorials and a CD full of example files, avi's and demo versions of some of the leading plugins.

I haven't seen Volume 1 and 2 yet...

Oswald's Closest Friend: The George De Mohrenschildt Story

In the last couple of years under the JFK Assassination Records Review Board Act our government has spent millions of dollars into the research of the assassination of our 35th President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. As a former Federal employee, on several occasions I have offered all of my research under the Whistleblowing Act to the Clinton administration without receiving replies. President Clinton's former Chief of Staff, Leon Panetta, in the past (1992), had supported this author's research as a former Congressman for the County of Santa Cruz. This author believes that it was certainly unethical and boardering upon fraud when President George Bush signed into law The JFK Assassination Records Review Board Act and did not disclose that he knew George de Mohrenschildt since 1942. In order to understand the conflict of interest George Bush played in the JFK assassination investigation in 1963 and in 1976, one needs to look at his entire career with the CIA and Zapata Oil industry.

TRACKING THE JFK ASSASSINATION

Santa Monica College Corsair - November 17,1997, by Donna Lynn

As the 34th anniversary of John Fitzgerald Kennedy's assassination approaches, Bruce Campbell Adamson, a self-taught genealogist, historian, author and Santa Monica College graduate says that he is close to solving "the crime of the century." When his father died in 1980, Adamson applied for a job at the Santa Monica Post Office. He says he "wanted to work outdoors" because it seemed to be a "healthy" job with few problems. "It took me five years to get hired," he says "And I retired in five years." Adamson ended up filing a federal lawsuit against the Post Office in a worker's compensation claim. He was the case in 1991 and has used the money to research the JFK assassination. "I started researching it (JFK) because I was tired of the subject, said Adamson. When I began my research Oliver Stone's movie, JFK, had just been released and I was sick and tired of all of the theories generated by the tabloid news agencies." This motivated him to write and publish The JFK Assassination Timeline Chart, and eight volumes (now ten) of Oswald's Closest Friend; The George de Mohrenschildt Story. Each bit of information led to another, and Adamson soon discovered that some of his own family members were coincidentally associated with persons connected to George de Mohrenschildt in one way or another. In the past 14 years, Adamson's research has taken him through the government and the Central Intelligence Agency...In a trail that leads from oil fields to Wall Street to the sales of helicopters used in the Vietnam War, Adamson claims that he exposes evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone. Everything that we are today exists today because of the past, he said "If historians don't get the story right, then our lives today are based upon lies." He also link's "alleged lone assassin" Oswald to de Mohrenschildt, an aristocrat who had ties to the rich and famous. Adamson asserts that these elites may have benefited financially from JFK's death. The wealthy "were also retaliating for their political as well as other motives," said Adamson. "Wealthy individuals having prior knowledge of the plans to kill JFK could sell short on the New York Stock Exchange and buy their company back for half the price after the assassination," Adamson aid. On the day of the assassination, the stock market lost 11 billion in paper." Adamson's main theory focuses on a U.S. oil depletion allowance, which grants oilmen a 27.5 percent tax break when reinvesting in their other corporation. Adamson says that Texas oilmen plotted the assassination of JFK to gain more power, and that the Warren Commission found Oswald guilty without a fair trial. He places de Mohrenschildt with a group of friends -- one of whose grandfather's chartered the oil depletion allowance in the 1920s."... De Mohrenschildt died on March 29, 1977, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Adamson, however, says de Mohrenschildt could have been murdered, since the CIA was on his back about his knowledge of the assassination. Adamson asserts that de Mohrenschildt, prior to his death, told a close friend that a number of oilmen, FBI and CIA agents were behind the JFK assassination. "De Mohrenschildt had complained to his friend, CIA Director George Bush in September of 1976 about being harassed," Adamson wrote. "Shortly thereafter, Bush contacted the FBI Director and it was not long after that de Mohrenschildt would find himself in Parkland Hospital receiving nine shock treatments." Were the shock treatments CIA-sponsored, Adamson asks? While Bush was CIA Director, more than 200 Top Secret documents came up missing, including the letters between de Mohrenschildt and Bush, says Adamson. Like Oswald, de Mohrenschildt went to his grave insisting that Oswald was "just a patsy," and that Oswald was not the assassin, according to Adamson. "That's a dying declaration," Adamson insists. "When someone makes a statement on their deathbed, they're likely telling the truth." Is finding the truth about JFK's murder Bruce Campbell Adamson's destiny? Is Adamson possessed by the genetics of his own distinguished American heritage, driving him to correct an error made in history? Is he driven by Hustler magazine's bounty of $1 million to whoever determines the murderer? "Circumstantial evidence does not lie," says Adamson. "And people should not be afraid to focus and speak of these associations in our society, which allows free speech, nor should they fear retaliation for alienating the rich and famous." "Adamson's fascinating bloodline hasn't gone to his head. He maintains that he's just "a simple guy. I'm nothing special," he says, but "here I am trying to solve the 'crime of the century,'" for which "there is no statute of limitations on murder."

...

Sometimes the events in one's life seem to go beyond our plans and expectations and exceed beyond the best fiction of anyone's imagination. So it is with "My Blue Heaven" as the life and times of one lonely soul confronts reality in his pilgrim's journey to never stop learning.
It's a book that reads quickly and one that is difficult to put down once you start to read it. All the events progress rapidly as history is being made in parallel.

Frightful is the third book of the series My Side of the Mountain. In the begining Sams sister Alice frees Frightful from mean people. She is lost trying to find Sam Gribly. She is hunting for food when all a sudden a male falcon shows off by swooping upside down and touching her talons. She mates with him{Chup} who had a mate because three nestlings are in the nest. Lady,Duchess and Drum. Two males and one female. Then they grow up and try to hunt by themselves by practicing on Frightful and Chup. They can not handle them practicing on them so they both sleep in two different places. Later on in the story it is migrating season so all the birds went southward to a warmer place so they could survive with food. Frightful did not migreate because she had stayed with Sam the whole year round in the same places. She has no food so she goes to find her hunting pal who is a dog named Mole. She gets to the house but no dog no owner. She flies to a house she sees and lands nearby and sees Mole coming towards the steps bleeding and limping. She sees food he usualy shared but he snarled at her. Frightful saw Duchess by the house. Two men who probably caught Duchess came outside with a net they captured birds showed them to people and hurt the bids after. The net was to capture, and they were going to capture Frightful. They captured Frightful and went in the house Frightful wiggle until she was free at last. She saw a nearby telephone wire and landed on it to purch she got shocked and burned. She fell all the way down to the grouned. An nice man came by saw Frightful and picked her up. Her feathers were burnt on the edges and she was shocked. The man held her. Frightful was dead. This is not the end so the peolple who read this you will need to read the rest of Frightful's Mountain

I liked this book a lot. In order to like it you have got to read My Side of the Mountain and then On the Far Side of the Mountain. The book starts with Sam Gribley releasing his falcon because he figured out that it is illegal to harbor falcons. This book is about how Sam's falcon, Frightful learns to survive in the wild and this book also has background on falcons. A must for nature lovers.

The third book in Jean Craighead Georges series begining with MY SIDE OF THE MOUNTIAN, followed by ON THE FAR SIDE OF THE MOUNTIAN, is just as encapturing as her other books.

Sam Gribly is a boy who grows up living off the land, and Frightul is his trained peregrine falcon who will always stay close to his heart. Sam learns that it is illegal to harbor an endangered bird of prey, and Frightful is taken by two men posing as state game wardens. However, they are really bird kidmappers. Fortunately Alice, Sam's sister, soons finds and frees Fightful. But Frightful isn't prepared to be a wild bird. She has never had to feed herself, does not know how to mate, brood chicks, or migrate in the winter. Can she survive the many dangers that await her in the wild, esspecially power lines? Will she ever be reunited with Sam? If this sounds interesting to you, then read all about her exciting adventures and find out what happens in the end!

A quick perusal of "Ignatius Rising" reveals why it has taken so long to produce a even the thinnest of biographies on the man behind "Confederacy of Dunces." With the exception of the story behind how the novel got published (which only occupies the book's last pages), there's nothing at all remarkable about Mr. Toole's sad, mundane life. The authors try valiantly to dig up research and credible eye witnesses to shed some light on the mysterious Mr. Toole, but they are not entirely successfully. How else can you explain why we are forced to read--in their entirety--so many of Mr. Toole's redundant letters home from the Army?

The correspondence between Gottlieb and Toole, however, is worth the price of the book, and that's why I recommend it to friends. Mr. Gottlieb has the distinction of being the only person in publishing who was in a position to evaluate Mr. Toole's manuscript based on its merits. His sensitive yet honest appraisal of the book is, in my humble opinion, right on. "Dunces," in its published form, is a funny but highly flawed novel, certainly not worthy of the lavish praise and prizes that were bestowed upon it by those intrigued by the book's tragic circumstances.

I trust that even if other readers don't agree with Mr. Gottlieb, they'll at least see him in the light of truth rather than as the cariacture created by Mr. Toole's demented mother.

The authors are to be congratulated for doing their best with very little material. I finished the book with a better understanding New Orleans society. Alas, I wish I also had a better understanding of Mr. Toole.

I finished Ignatius Rising very quickly, maybe because of my great interest in the book A Confederacy of Dunces. There is certainly a wealth of information here for the Dunces fan. I must say right off that Gottlieb ,the N Y editor, seemed to want the book to be perfect or maybe was just making excuses because something in the book offended him. I didn't feel he was really trying to help Toole, more like just stringing him along. The authors here play down that Gottlieb might have been offended with something in the book and therefore didn't give it it's due consideration. I still don't buy that, after all Gottlieb read the m.s. so he must have realized that Dunces was a masterpiece. I think editors having so much power over an artist's work can be a little intoxicating and blinding, at least this may have prooved true for the editor in question here. I don't really know of course and there are still unanswered questions in this regard upon completing this informative work. There are facts here I never knew, like there being an earlier version of Dunces with Ignatius being called something else. Towards the end of the book the tragic visitation of Toole's depression makes for tough reading. The authors deserve a lot of credit for digging out this much info on Dunces and Toole. I just can't say after reading this tragic story that I walk away from this book with an all together good feeling.

I still remember the first time I read "Confederacy of Dunces" lying on the bed in my college dorm room, kicking my feet laughing. I have returned to it many times and still consider it the funniest book ever.

So when I saw the biography of J.K. Toole, the author and suicide, in my local bookstore I had to buy it. I did not anticipate, though, being so swept up. The authors do an outstanding job compiling the minute details of Toole's too-short life, which could not have been easy since he was unknown and until well after his death. I was surprised how interested I could be in his grade school years-- although that is in large part owed to my fascination with Toole going in.

The key mystery to me has always been about Toole's relationship with Robert Gottlieb. For an unpublished novelist (indeed he had barely published anything) to gain the attention of perhaps the leading book editor of his genration is incredible. What happened? Why was it not published?

It's hard to fault Gottlieb. His letters-- reproduced over his own initial objoections-- show his committment to the book. On the other hand, his objections to the book-- that it lacked "meaning"-- were, however sincere, maddeningly unhelpful and unspecific, as he admitted.

Thelma Toole is presented as a domineering, overbearing, grandiose nutcase. But her successful effort to finally have the book published shows a great strength. It's actually inspiring.

Toole eventually killed himself after despainring of the book ever being published. This "failure" hardly explains his act-- how many failed authors go on with their lives or write a second book that is published? Suggestions are made about his homosexulaty (closeted) and his finances (bad since he had to support his parents). Neither is enough. But the events leading to the tragedy, the descent into madness, are touchingly detailed.

One mystery remains. Nevils and Hardy, also first time authors, show that Toole was an excellent student, though hardly a world-beater when he ventured beyond New Orleans. They reproduce many of his letters. While the letters are fine, there is not a single inkling of either the prose style, the imagination, or the comedy that is on every page of Toole's novel. Though we are told constantly how funny Toole was in real life, we never see it. Where did the genius in the book spring from, and why was it not eviedent in any of his other work?

A chilling thought occurred to me towards the end of the book. The authors reproduce a letter from Thelma Toole to her lawyer. Shen concludes a trademark harangue: "My nervous system is drained by this harrwoing legal matter." That's Ignatius all over.

Is it possible that Thelma had a hand in the book or was-- even weirder-- it's ghostwriter? It's a bizzare notion and I have not one shred of evidence to back it up. But throughout the biography, Thelma is portrayed as not of the sensibility to even appreciate the book or its humor. Yet she is the one person-- including J.K. Toole-- who had the strength and faith to see the project through.

In the end, I recommend "Ignatius Rising" to anyone who read "Confederacy" and loved it. As to those who read it and did not love it, they lack all sense of taste or decency. As to those who never read the novel, read it first, then read the biography of the tragic author who (probably) created it.