By the time most of us baby boomers were old enough to watch more substantive television fare than Felix the Cat, Edward R. Murrow was an aging icon without portfolio. He did not have the regular exposure of a Douglas Edwards, Chet Huntley, or David Brinkley. He would on occasion do spectacular work-as elementary school students we would discuss his "Harvest of Shame" documentary on the sufferings of migrant farm workers. But it was from our parents and older relatives that we inherited something of a sense of his importance in an earlier time, in the same fashion that they might speak of a Bob Taft or an Adlai Stevenson.

What we could not know in 1959, what biographer A.M. Sperber makes abundantly clear, is that we were watching the shell of a driven man who had exhausted his incredible stores of emotional energy to international cooperation, then to radio coverage of the horrors of World War II, and on to shape the formation of the CBS new department during the explosion of the television era and the age of McCarthy. Sperber traces the rise and decline of this charismatic, almost manic, entrepreneur from the most unlikely of origins, that of a lumberjack named Egbert who quickly realized the liabilities of his given name in the male work camps of Washington State.

Egbert, now Edward, chopped wood only long enough to scratch and claw his way into Washington State College. A student with fingers in many campus pies, he joined an organization called the International Institute of Education in 1931. The IIE in the early 1930's was a form of college student exchange program, one of its sponsors being the not-quite-ready-for-prime-time Columbia Broadcast System. When Murrow spoke at a West Coast gathering of IIE representatives, he earned himself election to the national office of the IIE in New York, a paid position there, and free air time on CBS radio. Murrow produced Sunday afternoon radio lectures and round table discussions, demonstrating a flair for attracting international speakers. As Murrow learned more about the plight of Jews in Germany from reporter [and later close friend] William Shirer, he used the machinery of the IIE in the United States to rescue as many Jewish intellectuals as possible and place them in American colleges. It was a tactic not universally appreciated, nor would his close cooperation with the Russians be forgotten by J. Edgar Hoover.

By the beginning of the Battle of Britain, Murrow was assigned full time by CBS to provide radio coverage of Hitler's assaults and to coordinate the company's European reporting network. It is impossible to capsulize here the horrors of those eighteen months for Murrow and for England generally, when every night brought a terror at least as awful as the World Trade Center bombing. Murrow created a network of European radio correspondents-many of whom would become household names in their own rights. He overcame industry biases against putting reporters on the air and using taped reports from the fields. But most of all, he revolutionized the very style of radio news into "factual storytelling" by his nightly accounts of German bombings that by happenstance occurred during the East Coast's prime time 7 P.M. radio news hour. Later, as the theater of war shifted east, Murrow was among the first western reporters to see first hand an operating extermination camp. He could not bring himself to talk about it over the air for several days.

Murrow returned to CBS in New York a conquering hero of sorts, the network's hottest property. Sperber does a good job in explaining why the postwar Murrow-CBS marriage was a stormy one. For one thing, the war years had reshaped Murrow into a cross between an Old Testament prophet and a posttraumatic stress sufferer. He would never be quite at home in an industry moving toward television, increased advertising dependence, and escapism. Secondly, Murrow was too much the prophet to claim objectivity. He would never be confused with, say, Bob Trout. Long before Woodward and Bernstein, Murrow crafted the art of investigative reporting for a presumably concerned nation, particularly through the medium of his weekly "See It Now" series, a rough and tumble forerunner of "60 Minutes." His most controversial television piece, his hour-long exposure of Joe McCarthy, was out and out editorializing, albeit accurate. In Murrow's mind, he was serving the common good. Others were not so sure. Thirdly, Murrow himself had a past that made him a potential network liability. When he produced his "Harvest of Shame" documentary, for example, hardly a paean for capitalism, those with long memories would recall his enthusiastic embrace of Russian intellectuals in the late 1930's with the IIE.

The great irony in the breakup of Murrow and CBS is that the deciding infidelity may possibly have been unintentional. In 1960, with quiz show scandals threatening the credibility of the television industry, CBS President Frank Stanton announced a policy to eliminate the appearance of deceit in any of his network's programming, not just quiz shows. When pressed as to the extent of this policy, the network cited other programming, including rather surprisingly Murrow's own "Person to Person" prime time home visits to celebrities. In one reading of this event, Stanton may have simply been protesting the pre-scripting of interview questions and the staged walk-through of the homes. Or, there may have been a subtler message. A young Harry Reasoner inquired of Murrow on air, in so many words, "why are you, the Jeremiah of the industry, wasting precious prime time with the innocuous drivel of fighters and starlets?"

Unlike Reasoner and Howard K. Smith, who felt no compunction about switching networks, Murrow lived and died CBS. Illness and ultimately death interrupted his stint as window dressing for the Kennedy administration in 1965. Perhaps his prodigious cigarette smoking had finally claimed him. More likely, it was the pressure of living so many lives in one frail human shell.

Few figures stand so prominantly in 20th century folklore than does Edward R. Murrow, who spoke with such force and gravity over the radio and televison airwaves as did his colleague Walter Lippmann in the medium of print. His is a singular and absorbing story, cutting such a swath through the annals of the last century's history as to guarantee himself a place in the patheon of journalistic greats. That said, this is a wonderful biography of a man so uniquely gifted as to stand alone as an icon. This is indeed a work of prodigious scope and historical proportions, one covering the rise of this man in the streets and towers of London during the dark days of the war in Europe, who with his colleague William Shirer (later author of the best selling book, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich"), pioneered the use of trans-Atlantic radio broadcasts as a method of communicating real-time coverage of current events. In so doing, he brought home the poignant message of how close the war was drawing to Americans. In this sense, then, his biography closely parallels the historical epoch of both war-time and post-war America.

He was the virtual prototype of the international newsman, urbane, well-spoken, and yet brutally honest and beyond reproach. He conveyed a sense of integrity that became a model for eeryone who followed, from the early days of colleagues like Eric Sevareid, Harry Reasoner, David Brinkley, and Walter Cronkite to the well-polished and quite cosmopolitan Peter Jennings. He beacame a power unto himself, gaining unrivaled credibility and relevance with the American people, with a somewhat dour and hyper-serious demeanor, almost a paradoy of himself as he related the latest in the world news. This work concentrates on his incredible gifts as well as on his initial work during the second world war exposing the truth and horrors underlying fascism. In the process, he gained widespread credibility not only for himself, but also for the so-called fourth estate and privilege for journalists at large. later he founded a team incorporating the best of the wartime correspondents , including Willaim Shirer, Charles Collingwood, Howard K. Smith, as well as many others.

Yet after the war he received both greater fame as well as a kind of denouement, in the sense that in order to rise and maintain his poosition at the top of the new world of television-based journalism, he had to deal with moral cretins and the contamination of corporate money politics. Eventually this led to a break between Murrow and CBS, although in the process he forged bonds with such new notables as Fred Friendly that led to the famous series "See It Now". Even in the midst of all this very public history, Murrow was at the same time a very private, shy, and melancholy man, who was given a very rich personal life he managed to keep far from the foibles of the cameras. This work by Ms. Sperber is a seminal work, one that takes a loving and fascinating look at a complex, memeorable, and highly moral man who managed to make his way through the temptations of the 20th century while keeping his dignity and integrity along his rather remarkable way. Enjoy!

Modern pop history is in part a rewriting, and obscuring, of what really happened in midcentury America. Thus television programming recognized as garbage when it was aired is celebrated today in museums (for example, the Smithsonian saw fit to commemorate the Dukes of Hazzard.)

Thus the rather innocuous commentator Walter Cronkite is the grand old man, whereas Sperber's Murrow is known only to journalism wonks.

The shallowness of the broadcast, electronic media, which prized immediacy (the now) from its inception, is hard on any sort of historical accuracy in commemorating Murrow. Had Murrow lived at the time of Thomas Carlyle or Walter Bagehot he would have been, I think, more kindly treated: for the medium of the book is friendlier to the very idea of preservation of the memory of the author. The whole material point of broadcast, and the Internet, is extraction of content from modern denizens of grub Street, who dare not think of themselves as authors, let alone bourgeois subjects with social power over and above that of the corporation.

Murrow, with a certain naivety, thought to use radio and then TV to communicate a level of complexity to the ordinary man only seen in books. But even his allies saw that the medium is the message (not necessarily a benign fact, nor one to be celebrated, as McLuhan himself spelled out in The Mechanical Bride.)

Reading a book imparts a certain depth and respect for complexity in the reader. Half-listening to a lunatic like Sen "Tail Gunner Joe" McCarthy while doing the dishes is apt to impart oversimplified half truths, a fact which McCarthy was low enough to use. While first-order McCarthyism in the form of naive anti-Communism is on the wane, second-order McCarthyism, where signifiers such as "economic growth" and the fear of job loss replace the red Menace and are used by the cynical in precisely the same way McCarthy used "communists in the State department that lost China."

Murrow's respect for complexity and willingness to try to communicate complex truths to the audience ultimately, as Sperber relates, had him gently retired from CBS and into directorship of the US Information Agency under Kennedy.

This book is an excellent read. It points up the fact that in many ways, the 1960s and 1970s were an infantile reaction to mere complexity and nuance. In this reaction, the popular mind was subtly persuaded to think of commentators, who did not pander to the worst in us, as stuffed shirts who "think they know more than the common lot." Thus even Cronkite was more acceptable because he hewed more closely to the policy that jelled under Murrow and that is described by Sperber, a policy in which departure from a vague centrist position was "opinion and not fact", but "facts" could include quite a lot of opinion...as long as it followed a centrist party line.

For example, as LA commentator Mike Davis points out in Ecology of Fear, wild fires are news only if they threaten upscale houses. This is now "fact": fires in ... SROs in downtown LA are no longer news, but fires near big ranches (probably referred to by their Yupped out owner with Yup irony as "mah spread") are news leaders. For the same reason that underpaid smoke jumpers die protecting "mah spread" (on the public dime, I might add), a fire in Malibu, or in Jackson Hole, is a "fact": a fire in LA or even Idaho Falls is a nonfact, and it shows "bias" and "opinion" to foreground this interpretive bias.

No opinion wants in logic to be an opinion. An ordinary man, expressing the "opinion" that the Chicago Cubs will take the pennant this year, is not shooting off opinions for theire own sake. Instead, our boy wants his "opinion" to become solid fact in the future.

Likewise, when Ed Murrow gave his famous anti-McCarthy broadcast, he was not, in good conscience, stating mere personal opinions for there own sake. His opinions wanted to be mere facts about Tail Gunner Joe, and Murrow's managers would have done well to state more clearly, not that the broadcaster not state "personal opinions", but instead that the broadcaster either state the opinions of the owners of the station, or else zip up, and restrict himself to such facts (such as the words coming off the wire service copy) that everyone, except the clinically insane, agrees to be facts.

Falsity and intellectual dishonesty is a toxic byproduct of media with longterm effects, and it can be stated fairly that Murrow may have been able to stop smoking if he had been able to come to a more honest contract with his employers. Instead, Paley and Stanton (despite the better angels of their nature) used the guy. During the 1940s and on radio, Ed Murrow's left-liberal views were simply less hazardous and more popular with viewers than they became in the 1950s, and Murrow was eased out as his entire perspective, and on-air persona, became less intelligible to a more suburban, less unionized viewership.

Of course, Paley and Stanton could not have done otherwise, and Frank Stanton much later (in a brouhaha over a late 1960s program) proved he had integrity. Perhaps the broadcast journalist should be an independent contractor who buys time from the airwaves under some sort of deal and says whatever he wants to say, making the listeners the ultimate arbiter of whether the guy is worth listening-to. But the problem with this pure market model is of course the bearer of bad news and the odd Cassandra who is confused with the content of the bad news, and whose value to society (in warning society of the ways in which it is in trouble) cannot be reflected in a market model at all. Nobody goes to the fair to buy a Nasty Story, or a detailed list of his own defects of character. The Catholic did not pay the priest to hear his confession.

No society can tolerate, under a pure market model, a Savonarola or Murrow at his most extreme, and legal professor Cass Sunstein (cf. Republic.COM) shows, gently, how a pure market model leads to "cascades" of opinions, where Internet users have gorged themselves sick on falsity (such as the centrality of the Second Amendment, or the wickedness of Clinton), and, bulimically, spread their fantasies. This of course is where government by the people, for the people and of the people comes into play, including a Constitutional role for the super-ego (aka "the Nanny State.")

In an era of pandering to malformed ids and egos that find their ego satisfaction in pure transfer of negative emotions to the Other, this is of course a non-starter, but this merely shows how far we've declined (from Ed Murrow to hate radio.)

This is not Ginzburgs only book on Shamanism. He also covers the subject in his book "Ecstasies". Nonetheless, this is a superb book. In it, he deals with a group of men in northern Italy who believed that their souls left their bodies while they slept to do battle with malignant forces. However, he does not view this as either a hard-line skeptic or a muddle headed New Ager. He approaches it as a historian and treats it no different from any other subject, thus creating an unbiased account of what happened. And what he constucts is an account of shamanism and witch trials in a northern Italian village. This is a fascinating account, and certainly well worth the read. If you appreciate this book, then I strongly recommend you check out "Ecstasies", his other book on European Shamanism and the witch-hunts.

Witchcraft was the belief that there were people, principally women, who met at night in deserted spots to worship the Devil. There is no evidence that this ever happened, except perhaps in the 20th century, after women were misled by the books of Margaret Murray.

Ginzburg's subject is a group of men who dreamed that at night they would go to fight witches so that there would be a good harvest.

Highly recommended.

This book is goddamn outstanding! You really see the simple power and depth behind these poor Northern Italian farmers who believed their souls left their bodies in ecstasy to fly through the night to do battle with life-destroying witches on their own grounds! At the very height and heat of Christendom, their beats an ancient, pagan heart. All who wish to know this hidden history, I definitely recommend this!

I am scheduled for a Permanent Colostomy in less than one week. Even though I had searched the Internet for helpful information, this book has been a tremendous source of help. It has greatly reduced my apprehension.

The authors are to be commended on they way that they have presented this information. It answers ALL of the questions that I had and more. I highly recommend this book.

This excellent book (half the royalties are donated to the United Ostomy Association) is written by a colostomate and an ET nurse and is characterized by numerous first person experiences and insights. Covering numerous topics from the typical descriptions of, different ostomies and surgeries to traveling with an ostomy, considering work situations, remaining active with exercise, children with ostomies, sex and emotional adjustments, etc., this book is written with a good sense of humor and a very down-to-earth attitude. Filled with lots of good resources, Mullen and McGinn do a great job explaining the role of the ET nurse and the role of the Ostomy Association in education of the ostomate and the public at large. A fabulous book and a must for the reference shelf.

This book is one of the few available specifically for people with ostomies. This book guides you from the ostomy surgery to dealing with social situations. I don't have an ostomy, but it gives useful advice and assurance, particularly in helping people know what to expect before and after an ostomy.

The standard edition of this work in the US, and a lively one. Jean-Anthelme de Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826) is known for this book and for pithy maxims like "Adam and Eve sold themselves for an apple. What would they have done for a truffled fowl?" (That of course in the days when the truffles that most people heard of were real ones, not chocolate candies that look like them; and also when the real ones were much more plentiful and less expensive.) Memorable are the wonderful anecdotes of the kindly old priest and his "austere" meatless menu ("The Curé's Omelet," with "theoretical notes" afterwards) and of Brillat's scheme at a country inn to enhance a humble dish. This wide-ranging book established its author as an original and knowledgeable voice in French food writing, to be compared with Carême and Grimod de la Reynière.

Brillat-Savarin, among other roles, was the basis of Marcell Rouff's _The Passionate Epicure,_ a fictional book gently combining food and sex (naturally, as a friend of mine remarked, since it's French), which was widely read in English when the translation appeared in 1962. Marcella Hazan and (I believe) Julia Child cited it in their cookbooks. In his preface to the 1962 Rouff, Lawrence Durrell (himself a fashionable author at that time) explained that many in the Brillat-Savarin family "died at the dinner table, fork in hand" and that Brillat's sister Pierrette, two months before her hundredth birthday, spoke at table what are to food fanatics easily the most famous last words ever: "Vite! Apportez-moi le dessert -- je sens que je vais passer!"

Fisher's translation and notes are a lively part of this edition of Brillat-Savarin (happily reprinted recently). Some booksellers offer newer editions by different English translators; I don't know why. This semi-scholarly translation and editing, executed in France during the post-war period described in her autobiographical _Two Towns in Provence,_ was the work that established Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher among US gastronomic writers. Her later status as Official Food Celebrity encouraged journalists to cite her automatically (whether they had read her work or not), but at least this time, publicity and merit coincide.

Physiology Of Taste is an unabridged photomechnical reproduction of a classic 1925 edition and should be on the shelves of any serious and dedicated gourmet cook. Physiology Of Taste provides a timeless discussion of French food and cooking written in 1825 by a master at both culinary insight and writing. Whimsical reflection mixes with serious food insights in a most satisfying manner.

I noticed that the exact same 2 reviews are listed for both MFK Fisher's translation and the Penguin Classics edition. Let me say that I own both, and MFK Fisher's is by FAR the better one. It expresses Savarin's personality so well in English. Even though I am not a fan of her writing in general she is a first-rate translator of French! She captures the humor and poetry and makes it much more the book so many have read and loved. I've tried but I just don't enjoy the colder, more academic Penguin version. I am grateful to MFK Fisher for bringing this document to new life.

This book teaches the Basics of Swahili grammer and gives a person tons of words and phrases. One could learn some basic Swahili phrases from this and even think in Swahili numbers, but besides that, it is mostly a tourist manual, and unless you plan on being in rural East Africa, and are very polite, do you need to really know tourist Swahili if a large majority of the people will already have the ability to understand you in English?

Very good! I am fully confident that it will help me wonderfully when I go to Kenya this summer. I will be buying more of Lonely Planet's Phrasebooks when I go on missions trips to different countries in the future.

There just aren't that many swahili dictionaries or phrasebooks out there, and this one turns out to be useful too. Its small size makes it easy to take everywhere and the sections give travelers a good feel for the language without being too overwhelmed by swahili's many noun classes. I would recommend it more as a reference than as a stand-alone teaching tool, but the english-swahili, swahili-english dictonary is comprehensive and useful for travelers with all degrees of Kiswahili fluency. My copy has turned somewhat brown from all the dust, but the book has held up well. I would hate to be stuck in East Africa without it.

If you are an Anne Rice fan this is a must have. Originally signed and numbered up to 850 as well as released on a small scale to comic book retailers. this is also now available for the first time in 11 years on a Book On Tape. This is a short story about a vampire (of course) who dwells in the home of the remaining Rampling family. Mystery and intrigue lead the young Ms. Julie Rampling to this man of darkness who is afraid his home will be torn down. It's a nice tale of Romance and old fashioned Anne Rice. Very rare and a true collector's item who has to read everything by this author.

Loved the book. Glad I found it for less then the price here. 131. used when new it was 6.95???
Do yourself a favor if you are seeking this very hard to find peice by Ms. Rice don't spend so much for it here. It is true it is in limited print and also that it is hard to find, yet I had no trouble purchasing it through another book store, well known and online. I paid Retail price for the book or 6.95
The book fantastic, the price here outragous!

Rice never fails to entice me into buying her books no matter what my financial situation!! I am somewhat biased when singing her praises, she and I are born on the same day, though me a decade or two younger!! I am a collector of her works, she's a true artiste, she takes me to another planet and I love that from an author.

Guiltied by 12 Galaxies! of a Rocketronic Society!

Others who have posted reviews of this book are certainly correct in their assessment -- it's engaging, harrowing, enlightening, etc. HOWEVER, nobody has addressed the actual CAUSE of Schreber's insanity which, of course, is key to the reading of his memoir. The patient in most cases, and certainly in this case, is unable to tell us matter-of-factly what is troubling him. Instead, he tells us of his dreams or his imaginings, or his horrible delusions. It is then the psychiatrist who untangles the web. I can't recommend highly enough, as a companion to Schreber's memoir, the book "Soul Murder: Persecution in the Family," written by the psychiatrist Morton Schatzman. The book is now out of print, but can still be found used. Instead of describing the book,I'll quote from the jacket flap: "Daniel Paul Schreber (1842-1911), an eminent German judge, went mad at the age of 42, recovered, and eight and a half years later, went mad again. It is uncertain if he was ever fully sane, in the ordinary social sense, again. His father, Daniel Gottlieb Moritz Schreber (1808-1861), who supervised his son's upbringing, was a leading German physician and pedagogue, whose studies and writings on child rearing techniques strongly influenced his practices during his life and long after his death. The father thought his age to be morally "soft" and "decayed" owing mainly to laxity in educating and disciplining children at home and school. He proposed to "battle" the "weakness" of his era with an elaborate system aimed at making children obedient and subject to adults. He expected that following his precepts would lead to a better society and "race." The father applied these same basic principals in raising his own children, including Daniel Paul and another son, Daniel Gustav, the elder, who also went mad and committed suicide in his thirties. Psychiatrists consider the case of the former, Daniel Paul, as the classic model of paranoia and schizophrenia, but even Freud and Bleuler (in their analyses of the son's illness) failed to link the strange experiences of Daniel Paul, for which he was thought mad, to his father's totalitarian child-rearing practices. In "Soul Murder," Morton Schatzman does just that -- connects the father's methods with the elements of the son's experience, and vice versa. This is done through a detailed analysis and comparison of Daniel Paul's "Memoirs of My Nervous Illness," a diary written during his second, long confinement, with his father's published and widely read writings on child rearing. The result is a startling and profoundly disturbing study of the nature and origin of mental illness -- a book that calls into question the value of classical models for defining mental illness and suggests the directions that the search for new models might take. As such, the author's findings touch on many domains: education, psychiatry, religion, sociology, politics -- the micro-politics of child-rearing and family life and their relation to the macro-politics of larger human groups." For me, this book shed a great light on "Memoirs of My Nervous Illness." In reading the other reviews, I get the sense that some people have concluded that Daniel (the son) "simply went mad," or "something went wrong," when the truth is that his father was a border-line personality and one sadistic man who inflicted his own brand of insanity on his children. If only we had something to document the father's childhood . . .

Shortly after the death of Daniel Paul Schreber, Sigmund Freud used his (Schreber's) memoirs as the basis for a fantasy of his own. Everyday readers are lucky that Schreber wrote down so much of what he saw, heard and felt during his many years in German mental asylums, for his own observations are far more artistic and harrowing than anything Freud ever wrote.

In this book, Schreber takes us into his world--the world of the genuine schizophrenic. He writes of the "little men" who come to invade his body and of the stars from which they came.

That these "little men" choose to invade Schreber's body in more ways than one only makes his story all the more harrowing. At night, he tells us, they would drip down onto his head by the thousands, although he warned them against approaching him.

Schreber's story is not the only thing that is disquieting about this book. His style of writing is, too. It is made up of the ravings of a madman, yet it contains a fluidity and lucidity that rival that of any "logical" person. It only takes a few pages before we become enmeshed in the strange smells, tastes, insights and visions he describes so vividly.

Much of this book is hallucinatory; for example, Schreber writes of how the sun follows him as he moves around the room, depending on the direction of his movements. And, although we know the sun was not following Schreber, his explanation makes sense, in an eerie sort of way.

What Schreber has really done is to capture the sheer poetry of insanity and madness in such a way that we, as his readers, feel ourselves being swept along with him into his world of fantasy. It is a world without anchors, a world where the human soul is simply left to drift and survive as best it can. Eventually, one begins to wonder if madness is contagious. Perhaps it is. The son of physician, Moritz Schreber, Schreber came from a family of "madmen," to a greater or lesser degree.

Memoirs of My Nervous Illness has definitely made Schreber one of the most well-known and quoted patients in the history of psychiatry...and with good reason. He had a mind that never let him live in peace and he chronicles its intensity perfectly. He also describes the fascinating point and counterpoint of his "inner dialogues," an internal voice that chattered constantly, forcing Schreber to construct elaborate schemes to either explain it or escape it. He tries suicide and when that fails, he attempts to turn himself into a diaphanous, floating woman.

Although no one is sure what madness really is, it is clear that for Schreber it was something he described as "compulsive thinking." This poor man's control center had simply lost control. The final vision we have of Schreber in this book is harrowing in its intensity and in its angst. Pacing, with the very sun paling before his gaze, this brilliant madman walked up and down his cell, talking to anyone who would listen.

This is a harrowing, but fascinating book and is definitely not for the faint of heart. Schreber describes man's inner life in as much detail as a Hamlet or a Ulysses. The most terrifying part is that in Schreber, we see a little of both ourselves and everyone we know.

I found this book to be really good, but I would've liked it a little longer haha! HerInteractive has been coming out wth Nancy Drew games for the computer & the reason I wanted this book was because I have the game. The game was fun but there were differences between both. If it were exactly the same , then the game would be easy! Well i have to say I really liked it & in parts they really throw you off-track on who did it in the end!

Nancy goes with her friends,Bess and George,and her house keeper Hannah to help renovate an old Victorian mansion waiting to become a bed and breakfast in Los Angeles, California.Nancy goes not suspecting to embark upon such a whirlwind of a case with someone,or something, behind accidents in the mansion that cannot be explained.If Nancy doesn't solve this mystery, who knows how dangerous the next act may be.The only way to find out, is to buy this book and find out for yourself.I give this one two thumbs way,way up for the suspense that keeps you asking for more.

This was a great book the clues are fun to pick up along the way and there are many suspectes, EVERYONE!! but I think you should read the book!! It was great.

This is the perfect companion to the first Cross-Training book. It's for the riders who want to better and further their dressage training. It picks up where the first book left off, and like book 1, it is clear, innovative, explanative and illustrates the basic principles of more advanced dressage. It leaves the reader/rider with a better understanding of riding mechanics and harmony with the horse. It gets a little bit more in depth and into more advanced, challenging dressage excercises. Suited for any horse and rider in any sport, which makes it so different than any other dressage book out there. A great buy.

Both of Jane's cross training books are a great resource for trainers, riders, and instructors because of their content and their readability. The photos are numerous and first rate. They illustrate commonly made mistakes as well as the ideal and are well captioned. The text provides readers with easy to follow instructions on how to correct common mistakes, how to introduce new movements, and how to improve our horses overall. You can enjoy the book reading it from start to finish or just selecting sections that deal with a particular point of interest to you.

i am a life-long rider in hunt seat, jumpers, and dressage, and i found this book to be well-written, straightforward, and illustrated with great photographs of horses and riders, showing both correct and incorrect movements and aids. anyone who wants a more disciplined, athletic, and well-balanced horse, as well as an improved attitude towards his or her riding, should read this book. it doesn't matter what your riding discipline is--dressage, hunt seat, or even western, trail, or endurance. the techniques that jane sets forth in her books will help every rider be more in tune with his or her mount, be more in control of the tremendous physical power of the horse, and therefore end up with a performance, whether in the show ring, or on the trail, that is a joy to ride.