"Old Devil Wind" will get very young children in the mood for Halloween night by telling them what happened "One dark and stormy night" when a Ghost began to wail. One by one other things in the house, from the stool and the broom to the door and the floor, as well as the owl and the witch outside, begin to add their own spooky sounds to the dark and stormy night. You can think of this story by Bill Martin, Jr. (author of "Brown, Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" and "Happy Hippopotami") as sort of a creepy Halloween version of "Old MacDonald." Barry Root ("Pumpkins") provides the suitably eerie illustrations chronicling the growling cacophony of eerie sounds that builds to the arrival of the Old Devil Wind at the climax. "Old Devil Wind" should work well for youngsters who can still count the number of times they have gone trick or treated on the fingers of one hand (without using the thumb).

Wonderful book for story time. Easy to involve children in the excitement of the book. Lots of opportunities to involve sounds while reading at a Halloween party.

The book followed the show pretty well all in all. It made for a good afternoon's reading. I will enjoy reading it again. Anyone who enjoyes the television show will like this book.

When an elephant runs loose from a zoo Mulder and Scully are called to the case. This case is just surprise after surprise after surprise! After someone is ripped open by a tiger, it leads them to a gorilla who is trying to tell them something. But what? Can a form of extra-terrestrial life be involved?

If you think this is an above average novelization,the fact that "Jack Martin" is actually horror writer Dennis Etchison has a lot to do with it. Etchison even adds a few scenes either never in the film or that were cut out. Great movie,great book!

I read this book in about a week. It only has 228 pages. I ended up liking it. It is slightly better than the movie, but it missing some good action scenes. It goes into more details about each character. examples: Dan Challis' depressing life, and Ellie's childhood. The gory scenes are described up to the fullest. Jack Martin, the author, also wrote Halloween II. His work is similar in this one. As I said before, this book is a little better than the movie, but it missing some exciting action scenes from the movie. Other than that, it is a good read.

Dennis Etchison, once again writing under the pseudonym of "Jack Martin", does a fine job novelizing the illogical but fun, Michael Myerless Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Unlike his more pedestrian work on the Halloween II novelization, Etchison, as he did with The Fog, expands upon the narrative, digs deeper in the main character's personal problems (his drinking and failed marriage) and attempts to fix some of the film's countless story problems (i.e. with time zones, conspiracy etc). He piles on the creepy, shadow drenched atmosphere as well. The novelization also contains a few in-joke references to The Fog as well as the unrelated Halloween films. Carpenter and Etchison fans will find plenty to like in this overlooked oddity. Recommended.

I just got back from two weeks in the Netherlands on my own, one week of which I spent in Amsterdam. I carried this book with me as I went and consulted it a lot. It helped me decide which coffeeshops to visit, pointing me away from high-neon blaring tourist traps to fun little places like Rusland and the Grey Area. It helped me find restaurants. I liked the neighborhood-by-neighborhood maps. And I loved the glossary of Dutch food terms! The history of Amsterdam in this book felt vibrant and alive, unlike the bowdlerized version given in the Lonely Planet guide. (Compare the descriptions of the Lieverdje and the Provos to see what the LP guide leaves out.) Good guidebook. Thumbs up!

If you are looking for a book that will tell you everything you ever needed to know about Amsterdam...look no farther. I have been to Amsterdam three times before, but I never knew there was so much to see, or the history about the places there. This book combines everything. It has great maps, good directions, and colorful historical information. No one would be lost or at a loss of things to do with this book. A must for any traveler going to Amsterdam.

Easily the best travel guide to Amsterdam and one of the best travel guides I've used. Rough Guides always pack a lot of information and this edition is no different. From how to use the trams to an informative historical backround section, this guide can not be beat.

When did you last have a very strong feeling of the present moment, and a simultaneous, visceral understanding of how that moment fits into the context of life? Writing or reading Haiku poetry has a way of stimulating that feeling. The form is so condensed that it can feel sharp and sudden, like the sound of a balloon popping. This little book is a wonderful introduction to Haiku and also inspires the reader to experience the powerful effect of creating Haiku; after all, the folks who wrote the Haiku's collected here are ordinary Joe's like you or me who all decided to just start writing one Haiku each day.

The Haiku Year is much more than a delightful collection of interesting poems. It's also a very interesting window into the lives of seven friends. It's a bit like seven personal photo albums all mixed together, which gives it an enticing, voyeuristic feel for the reader. It's also a bit like a puzzle; did the person who wrote the Haiku about the cold pain of an ending relationship also write the one about the exhiliration of new love found?

I highly recommend this book as a gift to yourself. Do you know someone who would be very surprised to receive from you a fresh, red rose? Give them this book instead (or along with).

One of the hardest things to do - as a writer - is to keep things succinct. It is so amazing that the group of writers who had 'a haiku year' all manage to beautifully express moments of their lives in a few lines.

Though the poems vary in perspective and subject, they convey equally strong emotions. This book is enough to make you want to gather your own circle. And it's small size makes it easy to bring with you wherever you may travel - whenever you are in need of 18 words of affirmation, frustration or love. It's one of the few books I make sure is near my desk at all times.

sometimes i think of my father as an aging hippie- a rusty van plastered with bumper stickers, a very liberal viewpoint, and long hair.

the haiku year doesn't conform to haiku norms, but it isn't about aging hippies. it's a simple approach to the lives they lead.

i have much respect for my dad, and this book is everything about him and and his friends that i love.

This past summer I had the opportunity to visit the amazon rainforest and scoured the net and bookstores for literature about amazonian insects. I found this selection @ amazon.com and eagerly anticipated its arrival. The book is small and nicely writen. I appreciated the bilanguality of it, and found a nice sampling of insects within. Unfortunitly, as a serious entomologist, I found the book little more than entertaining. With the sheer diversity of life in that region, I'm not sure if several volumes worth of pictures and data could justify. Though a nice conversation piece, this book is not for the serious traveler or professional interested in a realistic sampling of insect life from the amazon region.

A pocket-sized gem that makes a great companion for the Amazon traveller or armchair enthusiast alike, opening up a world of breathtaking - if Lilliputian - diversity. No, it's not a dry scientific compendium, but the author says as much at the start of the book. It's an easily accessible intro: perfect for the vast majority of travellers to the region. The color photos are superb, and make for easy identification of this selection of the region's most fascinating and emblematic insects. Check out the mimicry of these little marvels -- you may find yourself being drawn into their little world with more passion than you'd ever have expected!

The book was informative however the foward by Spike Lee was out of place. It breaks my heart that so many people profit from the life and death of Malcolm X other than his family. Although this is a good book do your self and Malcolm justice by getting this book from your public library!

Carson is a well-known Black scholar whose most important work has been organizing and opublishing from the Martin Luther King Papers. This book was an effort on his part to expose how the FBI followed Malcolm X from the time he wrote to a radical youth group for information, long before Malcolm X joined the Muslims until his death, a death Malcolm more and more expected would come from the FBI/CIA. Along the way the FBI has preserved speeches and letters and views of Malcolm as they evolved throughout his life. Anyone who treats Malcolm X as some sort of prefabricated god, and not a man whose views developed over time, over experience, and particularly after his exposure to the struggles of the civil rights movement, and the anti-imperialist struggles ongoing in Cuba, Africa, and Vietnam at the time, is in for a rude shock as this book shows how his ideas changed and grew.
I recommend Pathfinder Press's series of books by Malcolm X. Malcolm selected Pathfinder to publish his speeches before he died. The first book Malcolm X speaks was selected while Malcolm was living, though published after he was murdered. Every book has been published in cooperation and with royalties to Malcolm's family. Pathfinder has gone as far as the jungles of Guyana to find every speech or interview available with Malcolm particularly in the last years of his life.

The tremendous appeal of the Deb Ralston series owes much to the fact that Ralston isn't an angst-ridden tough cookie with commitment issues- although I quite like tough cookies, it's possible to overdose on them, so Ralston makes a nice contrast. This is not to say that the novel is sentimental or its heroine weak - it's a decent police-procedural with well-realised characters and a nice line in ironic asides. If you ever read a detective novel with a female investigator and thought "Yeah, try doing that with a couple of kids, a dog and six loads of laundry ," you might appreciate the Deb Ralston series, of which this is an excellent example.

I spent two weeks in Israel recently and brought along Fodor's and Let's Go travel books. I found Let's Go far better than Fodors because it had intricate details on the hotel properties, prices, border crossings into Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, etc., and tourist sites. Fodors did have more information on the history, politics, conflicts, art, and religion, but for a quick reference book to carry in a backpack, my vote goes to Let's Go.

Martin Lee describes, in "The Beast Reawakens," the post-WWII survival of Nazism and fascism and explores some of its consequences. At the war's end, major figures in the Nazi government were either executed at Nuremberg (e.g. Ribbentrop and Kaltenbrunner) or received prison sentences (e.g. Speer and Dönitz). Some lesser Nazis, particularly those associated with concentration camp atrocities, like Hoess, commandant of Auschwitz, or Sievers of the Ahnenerbe, were also punished. Many others either escaped to safe havens, were released after minimal detention, or were actively recruited by U.S. intelligence on the theory that their knowledge of the Soviet Union and their contacts behind the Iron Curtain would be valuable in the cold war. This recruitment was predicated upon the assumption that Nazism was a right-wing movement and that unregenerate Nazis would automatically be fervent anti-Communists. As events proved, this was not always a sound assumption, for many old Nazis played an independent game, and the Soviets were also active in recruiting such people.

One of the most interesting chapters in this book is Chapter 4, "The Swastika and the Crescent," revealing the safe haven given by several Arab countries to old Nazis, whom they employed either as anti-Israeli propagandists or as military or police advisors and trainers. Islam has had a long history of hostile relations with Judaism, but these new alliances injected additional venom into the already tense situation prevailing after the creation of the state of Israel. Fervent ideologues like Johannes (alias "Omar Amin") von Leers disseminated virulent anti-Jewish propaganda to a new audience in the Arabic-speaking world - somewhat an irony, since Arabs, like Jews, are Semites, and were equally considered racial inferiors under the Third Reich. This hateful pot-stirring was backed by Arab governments and remains, to this day, a significant influence on opinion in the Islamic world.

Less successful than Lee's account of Nazi influence in the Middle East is his attempt to tie Nazi/fascist extremism to American conservative politicians like Patrick Buchanan or Pat Robertson. America's two-party, winner-take-all system inevitably assures that many people on the political extremes will throw their support to a candidate in one of the two major parties, whether or not he wants or solicits it. That should not be taken as a sign of influence. If the tiny neo-fascist contingent in the American body politic should support a conservative politician, that should not give his opponents any more license to tar him with the brush of Nazism than the support of communists and socialists for a liberal candidate should give that candidate's opponents the right to call him a Bolshevik. It is ironic that for all the whining of the left about McCarthyism and guilt by association, leftist partisans like Martin Lee show little compunction about engaging in essentially similar tactics.

"The Beast Reawakens" is marred by a rigidly ideological outlook in which Nazism and fascism are identified as right-wing phenomena. Lee quotes with approval a definition stating that "to be right-wing means to support the state in its capacity as an enforcer of order and to oppose the state as distributor of wealth and power more equitably in society." No pretense of objectivity here! What, after all, is "more equitable" about the distribution of wealth and power favored by socialists? And where, in this definition, is there a place for the viewpoint of, say, Jefferson or Madison, in which liberty is assured by the strict limitation of governmental power - so that even if the democratic will of the majority is to oppress the minority, it is prevented from so doing by constitutional restraints?

In fact, Nazism - Nationalsozialismus - and fascism are kissing cousins to Bolshevism - "international socialism." Lee, by failing to recognize this, makes the same mistake that U.S. intelligence agencies did in relying on the questionable loyalties of ex-Nazis to the anti-communist cause during the cold war. Prior to U.S. entrance into WWII, the Nazis made common cause with Stalin through the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, after which much of the American left - that part under communist domination - fell shamefully silent about Hitler, resuming active anti-Nazism only after the pact was broken. The same willingness of neo-Nazis to collaborate with communists surfaced after the war in various "Red-Brown" collaborations. Stripped of the peculiar anti-Semitism of its German manifestation, fascism has much more in common with communism - authoritarian political and social control, economic dirigisme, and imperial ambition - than it does not. The guillotine of the Jacobins was the philosophical antecedent both of the gas chambers of the Nazis and the gulag of the Soviets.

Lee's doctrinaire leftism leads him into contorted interpretations on this point, and also, I suspect, into selective reportage on other topics. For example, the white supremacist/neo-Nazi element in this country is a minuscule collection of losers, crackpots, and cranks, yet receives many pages of coverage. Louis Farrakhan, perhaps the most influential anti-Semite in the United States, is mentioned on only two pages of this 525-page book, and only in passing. The substantial Muslim community in the United States, made up mostly of African-Americans and of Middle Eastern immigrants, is given little notice as a source of anti-Semitic and fascist sentiment. No doubt to acknowledge such points would upset Lee's ideological preconceptions.

Editorial sloppiness is also evident in places. For example, Frederick the Great, king of Prussia and elector of Brandenburg, is twice identified as "Emperor" when in fact the Hohenzollern claim to that title dates only from 1871, long after Frederick's death. Error on such an elementary point of history, in an historical work, calls into question the reliability of Lee's claims about other more recondite historical points.

Nonetheless, there is much fascinating material in this book, and when its ideological bias is discounted there is much in it that can be read with interest and benefit.

Mr. Lee's book is well written, and a fascinating read. The topic is one of great interest, and is timely in our "Post Cold War World". I was fascinated to read of the various activities of post war German exiles, and even more fascinated by the goings-on of the various current post Cold War varieties of fascism and its offshoots. Ultimately though the book is fundamentally flawed. A reader would be forgiven if they came away with no other impression than Mr. Lee despises all things German, including the Germans, and assigns to them responsibility for many of the afflictions of the post World War era.Its a hypothesis that may be a comfort to certain people, but reason and inquiry are unable to sustain. Mr. Lee's anti-German views are ultimately of little consequence to anyone but himself, except to the extent they detract and degrade from what I take to be the serious message of his book, namely the need to be on guard against a resurgence of the terrible effects of fascism. In this respect he has hindered this effort.

This book is a "wake up" call for those who don't believe that "it can happen here".

While the likelihood is remote, and while Mr. Lee correctly characterizes those involved with these "Neo-Nazi" movements as uncredible wackos for the most part, unfortunately these creatures do have a habit of breeding in the most unlikely places.

Fact: Despite Hitler's slaughter of Homosexuals, including his little buddy Ernst Roehm, many of those in today's German "Neo-Nazi" movements are Gay.

Fact: Lee shows how despite Adolf's virulent hatred of Soviet Communism, American Nazis such as Francis Yockey, H. Keith Thompson, and James Madole eagerly sought ideological alliances with the Soviet Union against their own country!*

Fact: Yasser Arafat had a cordial ideological relationship with Otto Remer, the betrayer of the brave Anti-Nazi Germans of the July 20, 1944 plot to kill Adolf.

Lee exposes the machinations of the bizarre Francis Yockey, a Fascist ideologue who once worked for US prosecutors trying Nazi criminals but was fired when he was exposed, and later committed suicide in mysterious circumstances in a San Francisco jail. He also exposes the shadowy H. Keith Thompson, who by his own bouyant admission worked for German Intelligence during World War II, and admitted to acts of sabotage against the U.S. Yet this wealthy native-born traitor, who openly admits to hating the country of his birth, was NEVER arrested by the FBI - not once, despite a lifelong career of sucking to hate groups.
This is one major unanswered question given the recent and not-so-recent failures of the FBI. Who was protecting this scumbag who applauded the deaths of Americans who fought Hitlerism???

Lee never addresses the reasons why Keith Thompson was never arrested and prosecuted by our authorities, whereas the sicko Yockey was. This is one major flaw in this book.

His tantalizing glimpses sometimes lack the detail needed for a work of this calibre. As a Republican, I also find fault with his readiness to accuse the GOP of cuddlying up to the wackos despite the Democratic Party's habit of welcoming with open arms former, unrepentent Communists and "Liberation" movement supporters. Thus the 4 stars instead of the five that it deserves.

A scary, necessary book for all Americans who hate extremism of all kinds. One gets the feeling that guys like Thompson, Kuhnen in Germany, Zhirinovsky in Russia and others would have no qualms about making deals with Osama Bin Laden.