I grew up in New York City, but have lived for the past 10 years on seven acres in a semi-rural part of New Hampshire. I am also in the process of building a barn (next to the house the we actually live in). So when I saw this book, I had to buy it.

However, within a few chapters I was starting to have some concerns that Monninger was missing the point, and the more I read the more it was confirmed. What he has written is a New Yorker's view of life in New Hampshire. When I got to the point in the book where he describes how he used to live on Central Park West, I understood my concerns, but also really lost touch with the book.

He describes expansive fields with levels of gardens and myriad flora and fauna. In my mind's eye I was picturing a real expansive New Hampshire farm, but then I was drawn back to the fact that he is talking about three acres, abutting on the town school. Three acres is a lot of land in Manhattan, but if you live in New England for a while you will understand that it is just a back yard. Monninger catalogs every plant and every bird he finds, with the child-like glee of someone who has never seen nature before, but he is so lost in the details that he can't get beyond that fact that he is writing a New Yorker's view of New Hampshire for other New Yorkers.

I also found it annoying that he does not describe the impact of having on job on his ambitious renovation project. It would be great if I could have the amount of free time that he seems to have, both to spend with family and work around the house. It comes off as an idealized view of life, and does not describe the realities of what he has undertaken. He also makes a few attempts to add local color and local history, and I feel the book would have been better if he had had more of that.

From a literary standpoint, he really does overdo the metaphors and descriptions, but I can imagine how difficult it must be to accurately convey the feeling of spring in New England, or the size of a large structure. He would do better though with more description and less attempted poetry.

I can see how this book might be an interesting read for someone in a large city imagining life in the country, but it is not really an accurate or well written portrayal, and it left me, now a committed New Hampshirite, frustrated.

I just completed the relishing of Joseph Moninger's , A Barn. Agreeing with anothers veiwpoint of too much flowering descriptions I ignored a few choice lines and skipped to new paragraphs; yet with respect I know I would never have enjoyed the parts I did read if they had not been described with such love and experience. I am one of those "wanna be barn owners"; ever since I was eight years old and watched the people two streets over gut, renew and live in this massive building with huge windows and sturdy walls. I fell in love. Amongst all the eloquence this book offers; it is the underlying theme; the reason I did not read it, that leaves me speechless and in awe. It is in the storyline that Monninger weaves the secondary and yet primal thread of family and the fact, as he states, that he realized that he and Wendy were creating thier son's past. What a beautiful, thought provoking, loving and spiritually filled knowing. As they were focused on integrity during the ever present process of renewing this structure; they also were creating sustanance, substance and stablitiy for Pie. My son is twenty-three and if I ever get another opportunity to go around with him again; I pray that I rememeber that once we become parents; however that is gifted to us; that in our present we are creating our childs past.

If you read this, Joseph Monninger, Wendy and Pie; thank you.

This is a great book that offers to show us a different way of life than most of us live. Having grown up in the suburbs of California, the oldest house I lived in was 30 years old. I never had to worry about heating, or beams falling apart things that are very real concers to Joe and his family.
In addition to the general information about "barn" living, we see what it is like to integrate three lives into one new one. The stories of the deepening relationship between Joe and Pie are heartwarming and touching, as are the moments of closeness between Joe and Wendy.
Mr. Monninger gives us a wonderful insight to barns, New England, and creating a new life with people that you love.

I like reading anything about the Adirondack region and even went to Newcomb this week to take a look at the place the author speaks of. However, the book seems to be more of the author's autobiography than stories about "the last real people." This is fine, but the title is misleading. While there are characters the author speaks about, they are more likened to "accounts" of these people rather than a more in-depth vision of who these people are. I would tend to say this is more of a kind of journal of the author's experiences in Newcomb than about the Last Real People of the Adirondacks. A book more suited for such a title might be the books by Helen Escha Tyler or a book called Growing Up Strong or My Grandpa's Woods. We get to meet some last of the real Adirondackers in those tales and stories. Still and all, this book is a good and pleasant read for any Adirondack lover.

As a native of the Adirondacks who spends his summer fun time in the Long Lake area which is the setting of the book, I looked forward to reading Lapointe's effort. However, I find that his effort was lacking. What we have here are 44 short vingnettes about what could be very interesting characters. And there lies the problem: Short. We only get bits and pieces on each subject, not enough to make us really care to any great extent. I do believe the subject matter is here for a truly great novel of Americana which would tie all these Adirondackers together through their love of survivinging in this harsh land. Instead, what we have are stories you might hear in any bar, donut shop, or back stoop. Interesting, maybe, but just the tip of the mountain.

Read this book. Joe Lapointe presents an enjoyable, easy reading and down to earth style of writing that makes you feel like your involved. I look forward to going along with " Joe " in his next book.

Very nice displays of guns and accoutrements, but the text suffers. Accounts are often presented in isolation, and the book seems to only follow a loose chronological order. Probably worth the photos, but the book is far from resembling any kind of scholarly undertaking.

It is true that should you buy this book, you will be referring to it again and again for its wonderful pictures of 19th century American firearms which it presents in beautiful plates. All the pictures come from the Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum in Los Angeles (for Colt firearms) or the Cody Firearms Museum in Wyoming (for all others).

You will not be referring to its text by Joseph Rosa, the author most famous for his biography of Wild Bill Hickok. His writing style is surprisingly and infuriatingly cumbersome. He is difficult to read, and he seems incapable of consistently putting together sentences that flow. I found myself saying over and over, "this would have been a lot clearer if he had put a comma here, or taken this one out, or broken this long sentence into two, or re-phrased this differently." One has to re-read his paragraphs two or three times very often to follow his narrative. His Hickok biography has the same problem.

One additional problem is that this is really two separate books. One is Rosa's narrative, and the other is the firearms pictures. The index deals with the narrative only. The excellent firearms pictures are not indexed, a handicap when one uses this book as a reference.

Although there may be minor flubs in the narrative this is still a great book. For firearms afficionados or Cowboy Shooters like myself the really stocked displays of firearms photos are a great way to study the evolution of 19th century firearms as well as see the wide variations as well as pieces owned by notably figures. The text is a nice introduction to the era of the gunfighter. It's a book that you'll pick up over and over to look at and enjoy.

The Joshua series was suggested to me by a friend, so I bought the book. Joshua and the City is the only one I've read thus far and I must admit that I don't know if I'm willing to read any more. The premis of the book is fantastic...Christ on Earth...it could make a great story...however, the writing is terrible. The way these inner city kids talk is not very convincing, they talk with more proper English than I do...and I've found several editing mistakes throughout the book. Great story...very poor writing and editing.

I fully enjoyed the movie Joshua which led me to buy this book on tape. I am glad I have it. It only cost me a few bucks; but now, these were my disappointments: I thought the movie Joshua had a too propagandic ending and thought that it should have been cut. The book was far worse, and actually on occasion out right interrupted the story line to tell the reader what was right and what was wrong about religion and life in a sermon style. Okay so that was my first big disappointment. Second was: this spun a whole fairy tale world around Joshua that was so outrages I couldn't even believe it for a fairy tale. But I still did and still do enjoy the book just be ware of some propaganda.

This is also a great and well orth reading book in the Joshua series. This and the original are my favorites in the series. I very highly recommend it.

This book is as good as a popular science book can be, and explains in easy terms some of the most important concepts in neuroscience. For this it should be widely read. However, Ledoux wants to explain the self, and not only to write a popular book on cognitive neuroscience. Now, given that it is very difficult not to accept that the self at some level is nothing but synapses, Ledoux does seem to base the self on neurobiological mechanisms. But this is no more enlightening than sayying that vision, attention, language, or even qualia are nothing but synapses, claims that at some level must also be correct. So one would expect the bulk of the book to develop principles that tie or at least correlate the self with brain mechanisms. Do we get this in Synaptic Self? well, yes and no.

Ledoux concentrates on memory, having in his last book focused on emotion. He explains memory systems from molecules to circuits, with the classical and most recent findings, including some from his own lab. He also gives a quick overview of the emotional systems of the brain, the working memory complex of the prefrontal cortex, and motivational systems of neuromodulator and brainstem and thalamocortical systems. He calls that the mental trilogy, namely cognition, emotion and motivation. Ledoux also wrote a nice chapter on some brain diseases that seem to alter these functions selectively. And thats it. Ledoux has explained the self. Or has he? Well, memory, emotion, cognition and motivation surely contribute to the making of the self, especially memory. How much of a self is left in a retrograde and anterograde severe amnesic? But this is not saying that putting them together is all the self is about. Its like saying vision, attention and waking are what consicousness is. Vision provides content, attention access, and waking a necesary condition for consicousness, but together they are not the phenomenon in question. I bring out consicousness because Ledoux says the really hard and important question in neuroscience is the self, and not consciousness. To me it seems almost silly to try to understand the former without the latter.

Ledoux then forgets about the feeling of the self itself, the possible bases of it on body schemas and body signals, the primacy of movement. He does touch on volition and free will, and is as naturalistic about these issues as one can be, which I think is a good thing. The final chapter presents 7 principles he can extract from his discussions, and meybe here we can find his theory of the self. Unfortunately, he seems just to add another thing, binding, to the picture. So binding, convergence zones, emotion and motivation, memory, placticity, hebbbian mechanisms of memory, together are the self. Again, I would say they are an important part of the self, but not the self itself. I may be wrong or maybe dogmatic about what would count as an explanation for the self. Maybe there is nothing more to the self than those mechanisms Ledoux lists. But work in theorethical neuroscience like by Damasio, or Patricia Churchland and philosophers like Bermudez show that the self is more complex than Ledoux seems to think.

At the end this book is of value, and I never said it did not make progress on the problem of the neurobiology of the self. However, it does not by any means solve it. It presents a nice theory of the integration of cognitive and affective mechanisms, and manages to cover a great deal of issues in simple terms, and that is always an achievement.

Took a college course entitled survey of physiology of psychology last fall. The textbook we used was physiology of behavior by Neil R. Carlson. A few weeks into the class I purchased synaptic self and began reading it. Stopped reading after about half way through because I lacked the necessary mental framework to understand the gist. After finishing the physiology course I picked up synaptic self and started over from page one.

From my point of view the average person with no prior knowledge of brain physiology would be in need of some sort of primer before attempting this book. There are 11 chapters. Chapters 1-10 read like a college textbook in order to set up the author's final conclusion in chapter 11. The last chapter is my only complaint about the book, because I thought his main point wasn't elaborated enough.

LeDoux starts his first chapter with a quote from Bart Simpson: "Dad, what is the mind? Is it just a system of impulses or something tangible?" My kind of humor.

LeDoux's Synaptic Self is a wonderful book loaded with clear understandable explanations and insights (his wife, a "fantastic writer," assisted) on how the brain works based on the most current neuroscience (e.g., how neurons/synapses/neurotransmitters/neuro modulators work/don't work, implicit/explicit learning/memory mechanism explanations, nature/nurture considerations, the "mental trilogy" of cognition/emotion/motivation, and much more). The book's bottom-line, he writes, is "you are your synapses." With this book, "know thyself," and even fix thyself, seem more attainable. It's a book I'll reread/study for a while.

The following are quotes from the last chapter:

Life requires many brain functions, functions require systems, and systems are made of synaptically connected neurons. We all have the same brain systems, and the number of neurons in each brain system is more or less the same in each of us as well. However, the particular way those neurons are connected is distinct, and that uniqueness, in short, is what makes us who we are.

What is remarkable is that synapses in all of these systems are capable of being modified by experience... Emotion systems [as an example]... are programmed by evolution to respond to some stimuli, so-called innate or unconditioned stimuli, like predators or pain. However, many of the things that elicit emotions in us or motivate us to act in certain ways are not preprogrammed into our brains as part of our species heritage but have to be learned by each of us. Emotion systems learn by association - when an emotionally arousing stimulus is present, other stimuli that are also present acquire emotion-arousing qualities (classical conditioning), and actions that bring you in contact with emotionally desirable stimuli or protect you from harmful or unpleasant ones are learned (instrumental conditioning.) As in all other types of learning, emotional associations are formed by synaptic changes in the brain system involved in processing the stimuli. Some of the brain's plastic emotional processors include systems involved in detecting and responding to danger, finding and consuming food, identifying potential mates and having sex.

Because synaptic plasticity occurs in most if not all brain systems, one might be tempted to conclude that the majority of brain systems are memory systems. But [as LeDoux argues in chapter 5], a better way of thinking about this is that the ability to be modified by experience is a characteristic of many brain systems, regardless of their specific function. Brain systems, in other words, were for the most part not designed as storage devices - plasticity is not their main job assignment. They were instead designed to perform particular tasks like processing sounds or sights, detecting food or danger or mates, controlling actions, and so on. Plasticity is simply a feature that helps them do their job better.

Functions depend on connections: break the connections and you lose the functions...

From LeDoux's Synaptic Self

Bat 6 is told from the point of view of two softball teams from two neighboring towns that play a championship game every year. In 1949 each team had a new player. Aki, who just returned from the internment camps, joined one team, and Shazam, whose father was killed at Pearl Harbor, joined the other. Shazam blamed Aki for killing her father because she was Japanese. At the championship softball game, the hatred came out and a horrific event happened. This book is a very creative story that I liked very much but the pace was a little too slow for my taste. The author also skipped around too much as she went from one girl's view to another's. I would recommend this book to children of ages 10-13 because of the language and the complex story.

Bat 6, by Virginia Euwer Wolf, is a fun but heart-breaking tale of life a few years after WWII from children's perspectives. Bat 6 is a softball game played by the 6th grade girls of two neighboring small-town American elementary schools, Barlow Road Grade School and Bear Creek Ridge Grade School. There is a new girl on each team, Shazam on the Barlow Road team, and Aki on the Bear Creek Ridge team. Both have been greatly affected by the war. Sadly, the scars of the war will not heal so easily when the girls meet for the first time at Bat 6. It is going to be one great game!
To read this book is to have a look into what life was like after WWII, which is an interesting time period for a child today. In these two towns, being rich is owning a refrigerator. Now it is owning an estate, or a huge business. Life was very different back then. Something surprising to me was the amount of rights women had back then. That was more than 60 years ago, but the women did have many rights. The women in the book were on the town council, actively participated in church activities and the whole Bat 6 game was a bunch of girls playing softball. That is one similarity to daily life back then. They also had hate crimes. The hate crimes in this time period were committed against Japanese-Americans, because of the war between the USA and Japan. The Japanese were put into camps for their safety against hate crimes. One of the main characters, Aki, is Japanese-American and had been put into a camp. Another reason to read this book is to see the world through the eyes of little girls. One goes on a journey with them while each individual girl puts the pieces together about the war. The girls may be small, but they have a huge concept to comprehend. The two new girls, Aki and Shazam, have the most to learn. Sadly Shazam's father had been killed at Pearl Harbor and she holds it against the Japanese, in other words, she holds it against Aki. The girls each tell the many tales of 6th grade from their own perspective. It is a good way to see different points of view. This book provides a whole new look into the world.
One less appealing aspect of the book is its format. There are entries from each girl and when deep into the book, the switch between entrees is not very noticeable. It is confusing when two different points of view are read, and one thinks they are from the same person, but they are not. Another confusing aspect of the format is that the chapters switch from the girls on one team to the girls on the other team. Despite the format flaw, the plot is inspiring and Bat 6 is well written. It is highly recommended!

Bat 6 is an annual softball game played by two teams from small towns in Oregon. The Bat 6 game has been going on since 1899, and all of the girls are determined to win this year's Bat 6 game. The two teams names are Barlow Creek and Bear Creek Ridge. Bear Creek Ridge has won more games than Barlow, and that makes the girls on Barlow even more determined to win this year.
The author chose a very complex way of writing this book. In some parts of the book, you can barely understand what she is trying to say. The narrator changes a lot and that's what makes it even more confusing. I like what she chose to do because you get to hear thoughts from different characters about what is going on in the book. Various characters help tell this amazing, complex story. This book gives a lot of detail and makes you think a lot. It is good for kids eight and older because it might be hard for little children to understand, but I would definitely recommend reading this book.
All the girls on each team are different, just like me and you. There is one girl in particular. This girl's name is Shazam. Her father was killed in World War Two, during the Pearl Harbor attack. She hates all Japanese people now. She thinks all of them are evil and they are out to get her. Shazam joins the Barlow team and definitely stands out from the other players.
Bear Creek Ridge gets a new player too. Her name is Aki and she's Japanese. She can throw left and right and can hit very well. She becomes one of the best players on the team, but the other girls don't mind. They are all kind to one another and they are open to all people.
The Bat 6 game comes so soon. This is the day all of the girls have been waiting for all of their lives. The game is going well; the teams are both doing very well. Everyone is nervous. Towards the end of the game, something happens that will change the girls' lives forever and will go down in Bat 6 history. Something that no one is expecting. A terrible event, maybe the worst the girls had ever seen, something that damaged a person for a long time, maybe even for life.

The book is excellent. A hardcover is a must for the second edition. It's truly a good "meal" for the hungry ChiLel/Zhineng practitioners.

So many new things I discovered in the book made me doubt the authenticity of the so called "ChiLel" teaching in North America. Is it really an offset of Zhineng Qigong?

We'd better explore it by ourselves.

I can't imagine a better book on this subject. If you want to learn about this form of healing "from the horse's mouth," this is the book that will provide everything you want to know, and more. Highly recommended.

I bought 9 Qigong books, this is the best. Grandmaster Ming Pang's insights are profund and breathtaking. The details of the forms were so beautifully described which helped me a lot. I attended many workshops, none provided this extention and depths.

I look forward to a hardcopy of this book.

Dr. Mercola gives his readers worthwhile health explanations and advice but his diet plan is too restrictive and time-consuming to easily follow. Instead, I recommend Going Against the Grain: How Reducing and Avoiding Grains Can Revitalize Your Health by Melissa Diane Smith. It is easier to understand and its diets and recipes are simple, tasty and a breeze to follow. I'm an avid reader of health books and both of these books cover important information for health maintenance. But Ms. Smith's book, Going Against the Grain, deals with a much broader range of health problems associated with grains and is the book I believe people would prefer.

As a regular visitor to Dr. Mercola's website for some time, I eagerly awaited the arrival of his book. While Dr. Mercola's big-picture objective -- weaning the average American off of poisonous food, poisoning medical doctors, and a poisoned environment -- is noble, his small-picture book renders an easy, common-sense diet too complex to follow.

In Mercola's defense, neither the writer, Levy, nor Dutton editors did much to clarify and communicate his vision. The writing is stilted and humorless, the organization an afterthought. Readers will balk at the confusion between Phases and Food Plans. Inconsistencies abound: Foods allowed on one page are nowhere to be found on another. For example, oranges are allowed on the 8-meal Booster Start-up plan on page 68; yet, inexplicably, the same list (lots of duplication in this book) eliminates oranges on page 106. Without explanation, the plan itself is reduced to six meals on page 136.

With better editing and organization, and fewer contradictory menus, the entire tome could have been reduced to half its size, with twice the clarity. It's a prime example of how too much information -- right down to how to cut one's bacon! -- can spoil a vital health education.

If you can find a way to get past the book's choking design flaws, please do: The good doctor's prescription for real health is both impassioned and well-documented, eclipsing all other "diets" out there, past or present.

In "No grain Diet" Dr. Mercola provides a three-step program for losing weight and keeping it off. His experience is based upon research and his work as an Osteopathic physician. He's also the Director of the Optimal Wellness Center in the Chicago area. In other words, he's got the resumé.

Dr. Mercola is one of a growing number of physicians that conclude that the current USDA nutritional food pyramid is not conducive to our bodies' needs nor optimal health. In fact, it's flat-out not healthy. To Mercola, significant or excessive amount of carbohydrates are the major causes of weight gain, a number of diseases, illnesses, and disorders. However, this is not an exclusively anti-carbo diet or regimen, but simply a reduction. And, for the good, this is not an absolute no-grain diet. After some time on this program people can introduce grains back into their diet. What's new here is that Dr. Mercola is also not a proponent of the high protein diet programs that have become so prevalent in recent years.

There are three phases of this eating and living method. Three-day, fifty-day, and the long-term maintenance plan. Achieving the optimal weight and being healthy is the goal of this diet program.

You can learn a lot about foods and what they do to us. This seems to be more balanced and healthy than a lot of other programs out there today.

What a piece of sentimental slop this book is.Looking for flaws is like looking for hay in a haystack. The setting is a rural paradise, a sort of Wordsworthian Eden in contrast with the cruel, wicked city. Oddly enough, despite being set in the historic and beautiful Hudson valley, there is no real sense of place. The river is "beautiful", but no mention of local custom,history, or social climate. Its citizens are idealized native angels who welcome strangers and become trusting lifelong friends after five minutes. The earth-mother sweetheart's daughter is a precocious and sweetly cute Margaret O'Brien clone. The biggest weakness of the book, however, is the main character, a sensitive, self-absorbed man of feeling who spouts cliches and moral platitudes in sentimental plentitude. His first person dialog never allows him to become real or believable. The plot is predictable from the first chapter. Yes, there's plenty of sentimental hay in Joseph Pittman's haystack.

Sloppy sentimentality is the essence of this badly written first novel. The protagonist is a bundle of self-conscious sensitivity, a man of shallow sentiments and saccarine emotions. It's no wonder his sweetheart choses to sleep with another man. Janey is a modern day Margaret O'Brien, all sweetness and light. The aw shucks residents of Linden Corners seem to be taken from some bucolic utopia as seen in bad TV. The dialog is unbelievably wooden, frought with cliched adolescent phrases and cutesy nicknames. Surprisingly, since the novel is set in the historic and beautiful Hudson Valley, there is no sense of place, no individuality of scene except for an out-of-place windmill; Linden Corners is indistinguishable from Green Acres. The plot is predictable, padded with redundant sentimental events, leading to the enevitable, and welcomed, tragic conclusion. Read this novel at your peril.

I didn't want this book to end - although I had to see how it would. I wanted Linden Corners to be real, I wanted the Windmill to be real, and I wanted the directions to vacation there. Living in the Hudson Valley region, I thought Mr. Pittman captured the true essence of the region, and although the characters of the book were fictional, I felt they were very real and believable.

This book was very enjoyable, real and totally involving. A quick summer book which was a nice change from typical formula books. It had enough twists that I didn't predict the ending. I look forward to Joseph Pittmans second book.

It is a well known fact for those that know me that I am a tireless devotee of William F. Buckley. That's why it has come as a total shock to most that I am of a mixed opinion about THE REDHUNTER: A NOVEL BASED ON THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SENATOR JOE MCCARTHY. Buckley, it seems, has fallen into the same sort of traps that those who have attempted to write "real political fiction" have fallen into before him. The difficulty is, naturally, how does one write an exciting narrative and remain true to the historical fact? Too often Buckley seems to forget that he's writing a novel and proceeds to regail the poor reader with awfully constructed dialogue and atmosphere that attempts to give the story rather than tell the story (if you catch my meaning). Readers of the book will find themselves frequently saying, "nobody talks like this!" or "nobody thinks like that!" simply because Buckley has attempted to fit as much information about the late senator as is possible while neglecting to compensate with adequate character realism. There are however, many redeeming qualities that should be noted. First, just as Buckley promised during his interview with Charlie Rose on PBS, there is much in here that has been previously unreported about McCarthy. Supporters and detractors will find ample heretofor unknown tales. Second, is Buckley's uncanny attention to historical detail. And third, is the moving and sometimes shocking way Buckley writes about McCarthy the man and those around him (for those interested in the life of the late Roy Cohn this book is a must read). Do I recommend it? Insofar as I recommend Buckley in general, though with some caution. For those looking for a history about McCarthy I prefer Buckley's excellent MCCARTHY AND HIS ENEMIES (which he wrote with L. Brent Bozell) and for those looking for an example of Buckley's usually fine fiction I recommend any of his Blackford Oakes novels (of which SAVING THE QUEEN is probably the best). Happy reading!

The novelist can sometimes unfold truth before a reader's eyes in ways that a historian cannot. This is well known: Dickens' "Bleak House" was perhaps as much a critique of classical economics (a la Mill) as a novel, for example. Buckley's latest work is in that tradition. Rehabilitating Senator Joe McCarthy is a long-overdue labor. This novel painted a compelling picture of a three-dimensional hero, warts included, who lived a quintessinal American success story, until his fall. There is no doubt in my mind that certain elements in our society will view with disfavor a novel that seeks to humanize one of the all-time bogeymen of the Left. The objective reader will have to give careful thought to the thesis of this book, however. That thesis is that there was organized Communist penetration of our government, that their intentions were treasonous, and that McCarthy did right and good in exposing them. He went to excess, but his sins pale next to those of the Establishment types who ignored the threat, and who probably viewed it with sympathy. (Class haterd seeps from many of the characters in the book, both historical and fictional, for the upstart chicken farmer from Wisconsin who shook up their little world.) Political considerations aside, I read it in one day, staying up until the wee hours to finish it. This is a classic yarn, and a compelling page-turner. -Lloyd A. Conway

Fiction can sometimes be more revealing than a bare recital of fact. (One need only think of Dickens' novels and how he described 19th century England to see how this can be so.) Buckley's book accomplishes this with his portrait of Senator Joe McCarthy. The novel's subplot, involving the fictional Harry Boncteau (sp?), is compelling, and is woven nicely into the overall story. The McCarthy Buckley describes is ambitious, blind to some aspects of human nature, and prone to excess, but basically good, and, as we now know, right in his basic thesis: Communists had systematically penetrated American institutions, with subvursive intent. Art imitates life in Buckley's portrayal of the seething class hatred for McCarthy on the part of the Left/Establishment. It was/is part and parcel of their animus toward anyone who dared to expose the truth: Nixon, Chambers, and sepecially McCarthy. This novel, which I read in one sitting, finishing in the wee hours, is both compelling literature and thought-provoking in terms of it's ideas. Hopefully, with Soviet archives open and their records validating much of what he said, this book will become the basis for a reexamination of a controversial American life. -Lloyd A. Conway