Amelia Edwards' The Phantom Coach (1-899562-82-6) is edited by Richard Dalby and gathers her best Victorian-era ghost stories under one cover. This satisfying collection proves the ghost story can have many themes and settings and still prove refreshingly different from tale to tale. This is the first to gather all her supernatural works under one cover.

Rarely do you find a book that is EXACTLY what you're looking for and EXACTLY what it claims to be. This is a superb book for intermediate Russian students who want to focus their study on Politics and International Relations. I treasure this book.

This novel is one of the greatest explorations of moral relativism that I have ever run into. Although the novel looks at life, love, family, and Mafia loyalty in comparison to each other, the issues of relative duty are just as significant for each of us. The plot is wonderfully designed to create unexpected tensions that make moral issues compelling and interesting to even the most casual listener or reader.

The story opens at the wedding of a Mafia don's granddaughter. One of the don's lieutenants, Charley Partanna is instantly smitten with a beautiful woman who appears unexpectedly at the wedding. She quickly disappears, and he tries to find her. His search leads him to California from New York. He finds that she is married, but separated. He falls deeply in love with her. Imagine his chagrin when he dispatches a crook who has stolen from his crime family . . . and the crook turns out to be the woman's estranged husband. What's worse, hundreds of thousands of dollars are still missing. Fortunately, it's insured. But that's not the point. You cannot let people steal from a crime family. What should Charley do now?

What obligation does Charley owe to the don? What does he owe to the don's family, the Prizzis? What does he owe to someone he loves? What does he owe to his own father (who also works for the Prizzis)? What does he owe to himself and his own sense of self respect?

The story is even more complicated by the overhanging debt of honor that the Prizzis owe to Charley. Earlier, another granddaughter had run off to live with another man while engaged to Charley. As a result, she is cut off from the family. She cannot be reconciled with her family until Charley finally marries. That will release that debt of honor.

Charley Partanna is a Don Quixote-like figure who is very concerned with what honor requires. Although the rest of the characters of often speak as though they do too, they really focus on what's best for their wealth and survival. But Charley overlays the concept of honor on them, despite the evidence to the contrary. This makes him a very appealing character for someone who is a remorseless contract killer, enforcer, kidnapper, and general on-call criminal. Perhaps Mr. Condon's message is that we can all aspire to the Heavens, no matter how debased our lives and sins are.

The realities of honor in these situations come down to sovereign power more than to any real codes of honor, in the sense that chivalry was a code of honor. The "deal" keeps changing, and Charley finds himself one minute on the same side as another person and then opposing that person in the next minute due to a ploy by someone else or changed circumstances.

The conclusion will strike you as unexpected in the extreme unless you think carefully about the title. The denouement is a neat resolution of the escalating conflicts brought on by the complication of Charley's falling in love with a woman whose interests are not the same as those of the Prizzis.

After you finish enjoying the story, I suggest that you think about what you own code of ethics would tell you to do if you had these sorts of conflicts in your life. Hopefully, such conflicts in loyalties will never occur. But such advance thinking can probably help you avoid misplacing your trust and support, should you run into these conflicts.

May you always seek out the honorable solution!

Although over 15 years old, this book is the best, most comprehensive treatment of available data (which has grown some) and theories (which have grown but not multiplied) on land vertebrate extinctions of the last 100,000 years. If you are a mammoth/sabertooth extinction hound, this book will feed you better than any other. It does require some specialized knowledge in a few chapters, but the gist is accessible for the educated layperson. It's worth hunting for or buying used.

A more recent offering still in print (though briefer) is "Extinctions in Near Time," Ross MacPhee, ed.

I appreciate the candor in labeling two of the major sections, entitled 'the theoretical marketplace: geologic-climactic models' and 'the theoretical marketplace: cultural models' which encompass variations on each of the two main theories for the extinction.

In addition to theories, the book describes the various mammals as well as their pattern of disappearance region by region worldwide. At 867 pages, it will keep you going for a while, but it's worth every page.

There is only one chapter on birds, only passing references to a tortise, lizard, or fish, and nothing on plants. I would love to find similar treatments for changes in characteristic flora for the same time period.

i have yet to read this book.send me some edited part

You can derive pleasure and profit from other books on Richard Strauss, notably Michael Kennedy's (my review of Kennedy's latest Strauss tome is already on Amazon.com) and Norman Del Mar's; but nobody can claim to know Strauss the human being who has not read Kurt Wilhelm's magisterial account. Wilhelm brings the day-to-day behaviour of Strauss and his family to life, in a way that no previous biographer -- however diligent -- has managed to do. You finish this production feeling as if you have met the man. Wilhelm appears to have been given the run of Strauss-related archives at Garmisch, Bavaria, which earlier chroniclers either couldn't or simply didn't use. Old enough to have corresponded with Strauss in person, Wilhelm (who spent part of the Nazi period in jail) is neither oppressively autobiographical nor mindlessly sycophantic: just quizzical, fair-minded, and courageous in his judgements. I don't imagine Strauss himself would have wanted any other sort of tribute.

I highly recommend this book to all readers who love poetry. Ted Burke, Paul Dresman, and the other cast of poets included in this book share a talent for writing and yet maintain individual and unique voices.

The concepts in this book are "real-world" and easily applied. It is a superb book that is much more than a book on just selling. If you are in sales, you need to know these elements for success.

SHOW ME HOW TO FIND PAUL BUNYON STORY WHERE HE COME FROM AND WHERE DO HE LIVED

After reading the first chapter, I was taken in by the sophistication of this work. It is very deep, and the reader should choose a quiet place with pencil and paper in hand.

One of the most important goals of this work is to establish that modern philosophers (e.g., poststructuralists) did not mean that Ethics are relative - thus values education is not dead yet.

PJO