This is a long book, the product of a lengthy period of research, which was needed to unravel the extensive coverup of the story of Richard Case Nagell, who worked for both US and Soviet intelligence. In the process of being a double agent in the early 1960s, Nagell learned that Oswald was involved in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy, which he was unable to prevent. One of Hoover's greatest failures was not paying more attention to Nagell. Nagell's letter to the Warren Commission regarding his knowledge of Oswald was basically ignored, and it was thus left to Dick Russell to undertake the investigation that Hoover's FBI should have done. Fortunately for the reader, Russell's investigation was far superior to any that the FBI would have been able to do. The result is the best book ever written on the JFK assassination. The nature of the conspiracy and some of the players are clearly delineated in this book. Anyone interested in knowing the outlines of the conspiracy to kill JFK must read this book. This isn't just a book that adds a few interesting pieces to the puzzle--this book puts the puzzle together like no other source, in or out of government, has been able to do. This is the only JFK assassination book ever written that is an absolute must for the serious (or casual) reader on this subject.

If you are an assassination or conspiracy researcher, this should be your most 'dog-eared' referance material. Mr. Russel approaches all the angles here, in an un-biased collection of facts. semi-facts and outright myths surrounding the JFK incident. While there is much insight to the Richard Case Nagle scenario, Russel provides much material that is scattered about the research communtiy in several different sources, and presents them in an easy to lactae manner. Even if your not a ressearcher, it is a good read.

My four yr. old was entranced by this book. It's very different from the books we usually read. It didn't have the bright colors that most young kid's books usually have, yet, he was attracted to the disctinct art work.
This book spotlights the triumph of faith, the faith that two of the characters in the story maintain, to finally reach the stars. Great Book!

This book is entrancing! The illustrations are gorgoeus. A gentle blend of fantasy and reality. Anyone's imagination is sure to be captured- young or old! We will be using it for a children's book club discussion of the month.

John Rush gives us a present day triumph of faith. The book is masterfully written in a personal down to earth style. The author takes you from the California gold country, to the most remote location on earth to a little island in vanuatu which is home to an an amazing tribe of people. He tells the true story of a young man's struggle to come to grips with the reality of God, and the blessings that come from obedience to God.

Mr. Rush presents us with a thrilling account of faith and a journey to an isolated island. The book is a masterpiece, detailing an early life as an atheist to a switch to a missionary to the islands around Vanuatu. Everything from being made a temporary pastor to avoiding drive-by shootings. This book proves that God is active in the world today, and deeply cares for those unreached people in the world. A true-life account of a missionary, and a wonderful example of God's work in our world.

The author of the previous review and I must have read a different book....I dont know where he got the 'ancient brain' idea. But, he is right that this is a wonderful book.

I am sure genetics has advanced much since this book was written but I doubt that it's theories have been proven wrong. It is a well written, easy to read explaination of the molecular similarities between man, chimp and ape. And, using the molecular information, the authors propose an evolutionary tree that, to me, rings true.

Read this book.

This book is a classic. Try to locate one if you are interested in the brain.

The puzzle of the title is this: DNA studies show we share 95% of our genome with chimps. How can such a slight difference in our respective genetic blueprints account for such a huge difference in skull and brain anatomy?

This book proposes an explanation which, right or wrong, is just a splendid idea, a kind of intellectual marvel. The idea is that the brain is an ancient structure. It fully evolved over a period of many, many millions of years. This whole long evolutionary period is remote from us. It came and went a long, long time ago. In this scheme, the brain might, for example, have evolved within the head of an increasingly quick witted, deeply thoughtful, man-sized reptile. A big green one, let's say.

In subsequent evolution the structure of the big brain was lost. It went silent, unexpressed. But it rode the genome down through the eons until suddenly, just 2 million years ago, it was re-expressed in apes. Ourselves. A biochemical accident. Today, chimps still carry the silent code for a big brain, just as they (and we) carry the silent code for many ancient structures like gills and flippers. Chimps don't express DNA encoding the big brain, but we do.

If the hypothesis of an ancient big brain is accepted, a lot other problems suddenly solve themselves. The sudden, seemingly overnight appearance of the human brain, 2 million years ago, allows almost no time for such an elaborate structure to evolve. The answer: it didn't evolve 2 million years ago. It evolved long before, over a suitably long period of time, and simply re-appeared in man. Popped up fully realized.

A current book, The Prehistory of the Mind, by Steven Mithen, an archaeologist, emphasizes a fascinating observation. Although the big brain appeared 2 million years ago, mankind did nothing particularly intelligent or impressive until 1.9 million years later, that is, just 100,000 years ago. Man was a toolmaker, yes, but he kept making the same oafish, primitive tool, a stone axe, consisting of a rock tied to a stick, for nineteen hundred thousand years.

Finally, just 100K years ago, human beings suddenly got smart -he or more probably she -- finally found the boot disk.

Everything, the whole explosion of human progress, has happened since that day. An explanation of the long night of the human brain, per Gribbin's Monkey Puzzle, would be genetic drift. Lack of maintenance. An ancient brain would have come down us in very poor operating condition. DNA encoding for any feature that is unused over time will lose fidelity like a fading photograph. So it took 1.9 million years to get the biochemistry of the brain to start working right once again. Finally, 100,000 years ago, it happened to kick in. And the rest is history. Find this wonderful book.

This is the best-looking coffee table book on Sinatra, with most of the first half based on an excellent essay by John Lahr. For a thorough look at the music, you want Will Friedwald's book, but this one is a classic photo tour of Sinatra's career from Hoboken to the world. I could spend a 1000 words on the pictures, but you can travel back to the 1950s with this one. The large format photos bring home the personality of the subjects, who include Nat Cole, Ava Gardner, Dean Martin, Count Basie and other music icons of the last century. Very enjoyable evening read, also.

Of the plethora of books on Frank Sinatra that have been fighting for space on the shelves since his death, this is the best.

A wonderful essay by John Lahr chronicles his life, from the tough streets of Hoboken to a room in Beverly Hills shortly before his 80th birthday. A now well chronicled life, but captured by Mr Lahr in all its complexity and contradiction.

At the heart of this life was his great gift - singing. At the very end, in the Beverly Hills room, surrounded by Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan (what were they doing there?) Steve Lawrence and others, he insisted on singing the solo. It was his right then, as it had been his right throughout his life. And he was undeniable.

A beautifully designed and produced book, it is adorned with a perfect selection of photographs to complement the essay. Look at the faces on page 102, completely transfixed by "The Voice" and see what James Agee called "an erotic dream".

A must have for Sinatra fans, and anyone fascinated by popular culture.

This book was compiled at the dawn of the Promise Keepers movement. Therefore it's well known "Seven Promises" are still tweleve promises, having not yet coalesced into it's present form. Each chapter comprises one of the twelve promises, and is subdivided into three to seven small articles by writers such as Bill McCartney, Wellington Boone, Charles Stanley, and Jerry Jenkins to name just a few. The promises cover all aspects of a Christian man's life as deemed important by the Promise Keepers. They include your relationships with your wife, children, God, church, brothers in Christ, neighbors, and world to again name just a few. The format of short articles, some only one page, allows for easy reading as part of a morning devotional time. Even though the book is approching it's tenth anniversary, its teachings and the advice offered within are still very applicable to the man seeking Christlike character.

chapter 1 what are promises/ /chapter 2 the promises you make to God/ /chapter 3 the promises you make to yourself/ /chapter 4 the promises you make to your wife/ /chapter 5 the promises you make to your family/ /chapter 6 the promises you make to your parents/ /chapter 7 the promided you make to your friends/ /chapter 8 the promises you make to worship and fellowship/ /chapter 9 the promises you make to your work/ /chapter 10 the promises you make to your neighbors and community/ /chapter 11 the promises you make to those in need/ /chapter 12 the promises you make to the future/chapter 13 practicing learned hopefulness

Brunner was known to be a very workman-like author, producing many works that were quite readable but not particularly special. But in the mid-sixties he seemed to mature and produced a whole series of excellent to great novels, from Stand on Zanzibar to The Jagged Orbit. This work is part of that period of excellence.

If telepathy is a rare but very real talent, just how does society as a whole make productive use of it? One obvious use is to find out exactly what is wrong with people who are mentally ill, to become the ultimate psychiatrist, and if the talent extends to 'projection' of thoughts onto another brain, to effect corrective changes in the ill mind. With acceptance of this talent, the definition of 'ill' could possibly be extended to those who are violent, the trouble-makers of society. Coupled with a far more effective UN than exists today, telepaths could be used to help defuse the attitudes and situations that lead to revolutions and wars. This is the background against which Brunner tells a tale of a child of just such an aborted revolution, a child born with physical deformities, an uncaring mother and a dead father. Gerald Howson grows up without hope, the object of ridicule, trapped in a cycle of minimal dead-end jobs that are limited by his deformities.

But in his early twenties, he suddenly finds that he is one of the fabled telepaths, and a very powerful one. His first real use of the talent is to draw a deaf and dumb girl into a detailed fantasy, made more than real by his talent, a fantasy neither would really wish to wake from. Forcibly dragged out of this fantasy by other telepaths who have tracked down his radiated power, he is taken to the UN center for training and rehabilitation. But Gerald is far from a whole man at this point, and the story of his growth and maturation forms the balance of the work.

The characterization of Gerald is excellent, a man we can see change and empathize with. Many of the secondary characters are just as sharply delineated, and the interplay between them and the envisioned world society so dominated by the actions of the UN peace-keeping forces forms a convincing picture of what could be. Issues of privacy, individuality, self-responsibility, and the proper use of power form the thematic backbone, highlighted against some vivid scenes of internal mental worlds that demonstrate just how alluring living inside such a fantasy can be.

Portions of this book are somewhat dated, from the use of typewriters to a stated method of trying to combine music and visual form, which has been long superceded by modern computer integration of the two. But these technological items are almost irrelevant to the thrust of the story, of just what it is that man does beyond surviving to give him that inner feeling of correctness and satisfaction with doing something that is worth doing.

Incomprehensibly out of print, this book was nominated for the 1965 Hugo Award, and to my mind is better than the book that won that year, Fritz Leiber's The Wanderer.

--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)

The main character is remarkably even spirited even though he was born into abject poverty with severe physical handicaps - including a twisted, ugly, stunted body. His one gift is a remarkable psychic mental gift - the ability to project and read thoughts from great distances. When he is finally discovered, captured and brought to the institute where his talents can be developed, he becomes one of the most gifted "psychics" in the world. He never even attempts to use his power selfishly. A very uplifting story with numerous philosophical themes or "sub-issues" of universal importance which are woven, unobtrusively, throughout this rather short novel. I wish the author had done a "series" on the life of the main character!

7 Best Things ought to be a number 1 best seller! I thought I knew a few things about relationships, but until reading this book I was in emotional kindergarten. By the time I completed reading just half of 7 Best Things, my relationship quotient increased about 20 times.

After trying and trying and trying for years to deal with difficult issues in my marriage, nothing seemed to work. I was spinning my wheels. I read this book and, voila, I have confidence that this relationship will be positively resolved. Next time I'm invited to a wedding, 7 Best Things will be one of the gifts I buy. Wish I'd read it many years ago! It has given me the tools I need for my relationship. Other books haven't helped at all. My eyes have been opened. I now know what I didn't know before about having a fulfilling, adult relationship! Thank you, Linda and John Friel!!!!!

He's an ad guy. He puts in late hours coming up with witty headlines. He works with the some of the smartest people in New York - and the dumbest. It's a demanding job that takes more then it gives back...even if it means taking away your entire life!

Most people in advertising run into the same road block as this main character (Is this work really important? And if so...Why?) Our hero in this book illustrate a common cynicism that makes you think, laugh and cry. Although the mood is dark, the ideas brought forth in this novel are very enlightening.

On the surface this book is about the perils of working in advertising. But deep down this book is about the perils of working in ANY job that demands you put more in your professional life then you do in your personal job. Although profoundly funny, this book is a reminder of what's really important in life.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a job to quit.

I'm currently reading An American Romance and will go from here to find anything else John Casey has ever read or touched. The book talks about the relationship between Anya & Mac and follows the flow of their lives with a generous intensity that it opens up horizons of emotion that are left out of most contemporary characters.

That said, it takes a while to fall in to. It's written with such attention and depth that I got lost a bit in the first few pages until I shifted into a kind of reading that isn't usually demanded by modern novels. There's so much interior detail here that I had to shift into Henry James mode, and having done that, I love this book. The characters are so well drawn, so rigorously plumbed, so wide, that they give me hope in a thousand unexplainable ways. For the world, for writing in general, for humanity, even. The way this relationship is described is so non judgemental and so intelligent that the novel reads as an implicit contradiction to the title, which implies a simple romance. The love here is brutal and open but above all invented, exploratory, and engaged- the extent to which the characters and the narrator avoid the obvious is almost heroic; in that way that heroism is usually mixed with a little numb stupidity.

I haven't read Spartina, and it took me a while to get into this one, but if you liked The Half Life of Happiness you will like this one. It seems like an earlier novel to me in many ways; the voice is more rangy and less structured and the ambitions, in a strange way, are more unchecked. The Anya character reads as a younger Joss in Half Life of Happiness, so if Joss irritated you in that book (she's not easy to tolerate from a moralistic point of view) she will drive you crazy here- but if you're reading for morals or adventure Casey's not the right person for you anyways. I am stunned that this book is out of print. It's great. It's totally intimidating and redemptive and inspiring and you should read it.