great guidebook. Describes in detail the good, the bad and the ugly of Nepal. The language section was extremely useful. A few hours spent learning some useful greetings and phrases will pay off tenfold upon arrival in Nepal. Being able to bargain or ask for directions in the native language is a lot of fun and much appreciated, especially since most travellers do not take the time to learn anything more than "Namaste."

This book has given me comfort and a wealth of information about what I would like to do and see in Nepal. Having a well planned trip in advance is smart and this book will probably tell you everything you need to know about anything, and more. Food, health issues, places to stay, sights, special points, etc. Definitely worth the investment.

I just returned from Nepal using this guide. The book was very well-written with lots of practical advice-- everything from how to book an airline to what kind of diahrrea you may have picked up. Very accurate information re. hotels, modes of transportation, etc. Useful vocabulary list.

If you're looking for an intriguing, informative, and overall enjoyable reference work on both noir fiction and film, look no further. The Big Book of Noir, co-edited by Lee Server and Ed Gorman, is chock full of terrific pieces on great directors and writers including Cornell Woolrich, A.I. Bezzerides (writer of the classics Kiss Me Deadly, On Dangerous Ground, and Thieves' Highway), Harry Whittington, Peter Rabe, Fritz Lang, Leigh Brackett, Gil Brewer, Mickey Spillane, and many more.

One of the best things about the book is that several of the above-mentioned pieces are actually interviews; Lang and Bezzerides fall into this category, as do Daniel Mainwaring (writer of Out of the Past), Abraham Polonsky (writer of Force of Evil), Peter Rabe, Charles Willeford, and Donald Westlake.

Several of the non-interview pieces are written by some of the best known writers in suspense fiction around including Stephen King (on Jim Thompson), William Nolan, Ed Gorman, Barry Malzberg, Bill Pronzini, and Max Allan Collins. Other pieces are firsthand accounts--by Leigh Brackett and Malvin Wald (writer of Naked City).

There's an interesting checklist of 100 favorite noir films (including a few by Jean-Pierre Melville, one of the all-time great French directors--a powerful inspiration for Tarantino), another checklist of 100 noir novels, and even a section on noir comics!

The Radio and TV section goes into Peter Gunn, of course, but also mentions the lesser-known (and by all accounts, far more interesting) Johnny Staccato which starred John Cassevetes who was infinitely edgier than Craig Stevens' Gunn character.

These guys have done their homework and more, and it definitely shows. It's a shame this book is out of print; it's terrific!

A wonderful collection featuring some of the world's best noir scholars and historians. There's a wealth of information between these covers, but the book is worth its weight in platinum for the magnificent, definative essay on Gil Brewer written by Bill Pronzini.

As the lowly web guy behind The Thrilling Detective Web Site, I'm always looking for good reference books, and this one's a keeper! It collects some of the very best articles, essays and critiques in one handy volume, covering everything from film and fiction to radio, television and comics. Passionate, diverse, opinionated, cranky, illuminating and enlightening, it's like a Greatest Hits of Noir Criticism.

You won't here these stories on Fox News or Salon. This book is a superb piece of cultural anthropology and an awesome read. Remember: Owsely, the Farm, the Haight & the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, CIA suicides and the Edgware Arsenal? You get all of the foregoing plus great investigative journalism and a contact high. Part one: the CIA & LSD (You won't hear these stories on Fox News) is worth the price alone. If you can't remember which American General demanded that the Congress flood the NY subway system with LSD gas, you can find the answer here.

Tim Leary, Billy Hitchcock, Milbrook, Alan Watts, pink owsley, The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, Clair Booth Luce! (It's all here.) A finely written work of contemporary history from the LSD user's point of view. If you have an interest in LSD or the CIA or the 60s there is no finer book to read. This book is not a comic book or "like far out, man," treatment of LSD. It combines meticulous investigative journalism and cultural anthropolgy submitted and is a awesome read.

And it's all true! If you were there go back and come inside where it's warm for a while. If you weren't there, it's gonna blow your mind.

Anybody remember Ronald Hadley Stark?

Whether you are an aging tripster, a Wall Street conservative, or a high school student, Acid Dreams will grab your interest from the first page. I found this book a very informative illumination of the 50s CIA research(scandalous and horrifying; this subject in itself could fill many books)the 1960s, and Hippie culture. Very well written, it never gets dry or boring. I couldn't put it down, and reccomend it to anyone looking for a fun, exciting, and enlightening read.

There is great imagination and whimsy in this sweet piece of magic. I love reading this to the various children in my family and they love it too!

There is something so magical about this book. Not only are the illustrations lovely but the story is perfectly rhythmic and imaginative. I would highly recommend it -- your child will not be disappointed!

The story is tough and gritty, the protagonist is molded on the typical tough guy but you soon learn he is completely unique. The writing style and story will keep you intrigued. It is a timeless story that takes place in Brooklyn and Manhattan, an intense love story playing out in the midst of Little Odessa. Original and smart.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Although it took me a short while to adapt to the author's style, the story and the characters held my attention throughout. It's a story of loyalty, ambition, love and betrayal, seen through the eyes of a young man trying to make his way through the New York City underworld. It's one of those books that you want to power through so you can see how things turn out, but at the same time, you don't want it to end. Pick it up - you won't be disappointed. I only hope Anthony Lee's subsequent efforts can live up to my now-heightened expectations.

A wonderful story and an excellent read. Mr. Martin has gained me as a fan for life! I am honored to be sharing shelf space with him.

This is a great story, that will carry you away back to a time when everything appears black and white. But in this book he shows you how grey life really is. His characters are involving and easy to get to know. It certainly is war and peace. But you won't put it down until the end.

I am currently living in Belgium and have gone through several guide books to help find the spots to visit. Many other books focus on hotels or restaurants, but the Rough Guide focuses on where to go and what to see when you get there. It has useful information on how to get there by car, train and even bike. I take this book with me on my travels around Belgium and am enjoying learning more about this wonderful country.

Having spent an academic year studying and travelling in Belgium, I went through a great many different guidebooks to enhance my Belgian experience. The guidebook experience was a mixed one - some multi-area guidebooks devoted but a few pages to Belgium (Rick Steves' France, Belgium, and Luxembourg - very spotty on the Belgian information), others were more focused on the culture and history of Belgium than the intricacies of getting to a specific place (the Insight Guide to Belgium).

So, having gone through the gamut of books on Belgium, I can wholeheartedly say that this is the best one out on the market at the current time. The coverage given to tourist sites and getting around this small-but-wonderful country is outstanding...it helped me find some great, off-the-beaten-track destinations that other guidebooks might pass over. The coverage given to Luxembourg within these pages is also very well-done (not to mention helpful) -- something sorely lacking in other guidebooks.

The Insight Guide to Belgium is also recommended, but more as a cultural and historical primer. For the practicalities of everyday Belgian life, this is the only book you'll need (and its physical size is great - the least cumbersome and yet most informative guide I've ever carried around on my travels). So...what are you waiting for? Go to Belgium and take this book with you!

This is a fascinating treatment in the thriller genre of a frighteningly credible possibility. The novel races along with no letup in tension. Apart from being good entertainment - it would make a great film introducing new twists to the action adventure film - the story shows an originality of thought and idea that make it more than a run of the mill thriller.The author shows imaginative flair coupled with an ability to draw the reader into the dilemmas that confront the characters. There are no easy solutions in this thriller.

A Great Read. The pages just flew by - a must for anybody looking for a book with an original theme, great characters and a very thought provoking topic.

This one caught me by surprise. It's not the stuffy this-is-all-the-bad-stuff-that-happened textbook I expected, but rather a fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable study of LSD and the CIA's role in the cultural and political maelstrom of the 1960s. Over the past thirty years, from Watergate to Zippergate, Americans have learned that their government is capable of some pretty amazing shenanigans. That helps what we read in this book seem more plausible. What Lee and Shlain document in Acid Dreams, with an impressive volume of research, is the CIA's enormous effort to develop mind-control methods. These included various psychedelic drugs--with LSD topping the list--hypnosis, and more. The potential uses of such control range from military to civilian--and to downright bizarre. For example, they discuss the unresolved question--in some minds--of whether Sirhan Sirhan was actually a CIA-created murdering automaton, a drug-and-hypnosis-induced killer, programmed to kill Robert Kennedy.

Some the things they reveal are far-fetched and may be impossible to ever prove one way or another, but there's plenty more that is incontrovertible. And everything in the book is interesting. Acid Dreams adds a fresh and wonderful perspective on this aspect of our recent history. A more recent book called "Hepcats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams," provides a complimentary education on this topic, covering a broader history of illegal drugs throughout America's past. Readers who enjoy Acid Dreams may want to follow up with this one.--Christopher Bonn Jonnes, author of Wake Up Dead.

This is surprisingly one of the best books I have read. The authors give a colorfully accurate account of the events that occured decades ago, all of which still echo into our current era. It covers the origin of LSD, as a drug the CIA funded research on for use as a tool for mind control applications using civilians and military personnel as test subjects. At the very outset, it was obvious that the CIA was well aware of the potential power of this substance in its ability to wreak havoc on the collective psyche, to shatter current assumptions and threaten cherished ego boundaries. Yet, eventually it became available to the masses who would come to extol it's use religiously and otherwise.....giving rise to the groundswell of counterculture in the 60's. This book, more than any other source I have encountered, explores the underlying causes of the demise of the cultural/political/self re-evolution of that time and gives us pause to reflect on the politics of consciousness - to see who really won The War Of The Mind. Proof again that truth is stranger than fiction. Be informed.........read this book.

This book is somewhat similar to _Storming Heaven_ by Jay Stevens in that it is an objective history of the psychedelic drug movement. However, the emphasis of this book is focused more on the dark side of these new drugs, and the diabolic experiments conducted by the U.S. government with mind-altering drugs. This discussion goes far beyond LSD, and extends to STP, Ditran, and the infamous BZ (AKA Jacob's Ladder), which the government used on soldiers to see if it might make them more effective fighters. Of course the results of the BZ experiments were disastrous; looking back on it would almost be funny if it weren't so darn tragic. Nonetheless, _Acid Dreams_ is a riveting and disturbing account of the CIA's misuse and misapplication of mind control drugs. The authors provide many amusing anecdotes regarding the CIA's activities, such as slipping acid in each other's morning coffee just to see how they react, and so on and so forth. Inevitably, some General or high-ranking official would have a bad trip, causing him to call for an end to such experiments. Overall, this book is an interesting and entertaining read, and I recommend it to fans of the genre.

Written with extraordinary eloquence, elgance and honesty, Lee Martin's powerful memoir "From Our House" deserves a national reading audience. Revealing the horrible and enduring hurt regularly dished out by his angry and bereft father, the author journeys where few have the courage to go: to the depths of the human heart turned against itself, to the terrain where lives twisted by loss and regret recoil against each other, to the crooks and crannies of our soul where we try to forgive, to start anew, despite all evidence against hope. Whatever words of praise I write cannot begin to measure the profound respect I have for Lee Martin. This slender, compelling work will be recognized, I have no doubt, as a masterpiece, and Mr. Martin will be recognized as a skilled and compassionategeographer of how families can enter the darker regions of abuse.

Three characters dominate the narrative, which follows the life of the author from childhood through the ultimately redemptive acts of both father and son. Lee Martin interweaves his story with that of his mother, Beulah, and his father, Roy. The most poignant character is that of the mother, a woman who married very late in life and appeared to accept an existence of diminished possibiliites. Beulah emerges as an amazingly strong woman, whose faith and quiet optimism never flags in the midst of a household of anger and violence. Lee Martin describes her as "a woman of duty and endurance, selfless and without need, at least none she was willing to place before the obligation she felt toward her family." Earlier in her life, she battled against her father's alcoholism; her adult life would witness her constant attempts to broken a sense of peace between her enraged husband and alienated and terrified son. The author is acutely aware of her emotional exhaustion and the gnawing toll an abusive home exacted on her physical and spiritual life. Ultimately, if anyone triumphs in this memoir, it is she. Her quiet optimism, faith in the future and belief in the power of forgiveness transcend the violence, anger and mistrust which were the hallmarks of their home.

If Beulah symbolizes faith and redemption, Roy represents blasted hopes and unfettered violence. The author's evocative description of how his father lost his hands in a farming accident foreshadows the rage and sense of impotence that will become life's companions to his father. Roy regularly whips his son, and for those of us who have felt the anger of a father as expressed through whippings, Lee's understated pain permeates this novel. Yet, Roy is presented as a whole being. Lee knows his father is a "sensualist," whose passions for life were stripped from him by the accident. We can see Roy's jaws kneading in anger; we feel his hooks clamp into us when he grabbed his son by the throat; we know how he can use powerful words to sublimate the frustrations boiling underneath.

Yet, the son, Lee Martin, must be the focus of this memoir. We see him as a little boy, yearning for the caress and embrace of his father. Instead, "although he never really maimed me, he often left red marks on my skin, marks that faded more quickly than the heartache that filled me on those occasions." Lee senses that his family was skewed and recognized that difference in the other dysfunctional families he encountered in his childhood. He grows up with a sense of shame, both of his family and of his own apparent evil, for mustn't he by defintion deserve the abuse his father so unsparingly gives him. His family's move away from his rural origins brings only temporary relief to his family; Lee is an outcast, an outsider -- both in his new environment and in his own family. By his adolescence, Lee dallies with delinquency, involving himself in theft and arson. His eventual embracing of his mother's religious convictions provides the lever by which he may offset his own sense of existential anguish and family displacement.

Not only does the author carry the narrative with conviction and purpose, Lee Martin is an amazing writer. Each page is exquisitely crafted. His description of his childhood farm/home is Whitmanesque. As you read this novel, you will constantly comment at how hard this author has worked for you. Redolent with pain and anguish, "From Our House" instructs us in the manner of living.

A must read! Lee Martin takes a deeply honest look into who is, where he has come from and how that will shape his identity. Never have I come away from a piece of literature and felt so moved. Martin's memoir has a sort of constant rhythm that propels you to take the journey with him into another time. He avoids with great dignity the "poor me" syndrome, and takes the time to reflect with honesty and integrity the struggles of life. While 1960s life on a farm in the midwest might seem a nostalgic and peaceful setting, Martin brings to life the kind of violence and true grit of living and emotion that takes place in this typically idealized setting. A pleasure to read in that you come away feeling that you've learned as much as about your own life as you have the author's.

Lee Martin's memoir "From Our House" is more than an unsettling portrayal of a unique American childhood or the clash of generational values that were the seeds of the Sixties. It aims beyond a painful depiction of how rebellion and cruelty, even betrayal, can be bound up and contained within the love of a family. In fact, at its most daring, it is a suggestion of the very nature of forgiveness: that even as an offense and heartbreak continues, the indictment is never made and final judgement, despite so much bitterness, never rendered. It suggests something about the human spirit very hard to believe and by the end of the book, impossible to deny.

Martin uses a strong grace to tell us of the accident that takes his father's hands on the farm. "I'm free to imagine that day anyway I'd like: a brilliant sun glinting off the picker, the dry leaves of the cornstalks scraping together in the wind; or perhaps it was overcast, the sky dark with the threat of rain, and perhaps the wind was cold on my father's face." It happens when Martin is a baby, this event that will shake his family so powerfully, releasing his father's terrible anger and shame, and his own struggle to understand, gain approval and finally forgive. Later in the book he imagines being present at the accident, older in this dream, and able to warn his father to turn off the tractor before manipulating the picker. He dreams of the power to prevent the accident that leaves the elder Martin with steel hooks to drive his car, hold a cup of coffee or touch his wife and son. Remarkably, at the conclusion, we're not sure Martin would want to change the past, or that we would have him do so.

"From Our House" hangs in the heart and mind's eye, this image of what we can be, drawn with the sharp lines of what we are. I read the book a second time because it is good news and true, true because it never cowers at our inhumanity.

Martin's father and he share a rare moment of understanding on the morning of his grandmother's funeral. Coaxing his reluctant boy into preparing for the morning, his father lays beside him on the bed. "Such a strange day," he says. "You'd hardly think it was meant for you." The same can be said of this book, a stunning and beautiful declaration of everything we are.