One day I had to go to the library to get a book from my 7th grade reading list and I saw this huge book of comics and I just had to take it out. I read it probably 100 times .It became my favorite book.My favorite comics were Popeye, Gasoline Alley, The Smythes,and Krazy Kat. I love this book and you will to. So my advice to you is if you love comics you will love this book!

I've always been a huge comic strip fan going back to the days when my dad was the press foreman and he let me (as a little kid) watch the "Sunday Funnies" get printed. Awesome! Fast forward to my high school years. I was bored and killing study hall time in the library when I stumbled upon this book.

The book is broken down by period going back to the first comic strips and working their way up to the early 70's. There's some text where the authors write to explain the different styles or comment on various strips but the real gem here are all of the comic strip samples in this book. Some strips (like Mickey Mouse) get many pages as they tell a whole story. Others don't get but a single sample strip, especially strips after the 1950's.

I love this book and will break it out from time-to-time just to read all of the classic strips like "Yellow Kid", "Buster Brown", "Katzenjammer Kids", "Mutt and Jeff", "Little Nemo in Slumberland", "Thimble Theater", "Mickey Mouse", "Krazy Kat", and many, many more.

It's a shame this book hasn't been re-published with new sections to include modern classics but oh well. If you can find it, it's well worth having!

Growing up in the 60s & 70s, I wasn't much enamored of comic strips appearing in the newspaper with a scant few exceptions. Newspaper comics were awfully stale if not comatose at the time; they smell even worse now. In light of this reality, thank God I found this book 20 years ago. To me, this mammoth oversized anthology of color and b/w strips (mostly vintage 1895-1950) was and is an education, a revelation and a door to a separate reality. Who knew that such fully realized, utterly compelling and unique works of art were once commonplace features in our daily and Sunday newspapers? Compiler Bill Blackbeard provides minimal but insightful commentary, which only underscores his good taste as the majority of SMITHSONIAN is devoted to the actual comics themselves. Wherever possible, he provides continuities of strips to give the reader not only a fuller flavor of the individual storylines and the era they appeared in, but each strip's particular dynamic with its audience. What's also impressive is the sheer number of titles sampled. Among the weightier excerpts are Popeye, Moon Mullins, Wash Tubbs/Capt. Easy, Barney Google, Polly and her Pals, Krazy Kat...but many of the lightly-skimmed properties are just as good. Set aside their enormous entertainment value and what you may find most impressive is how starkly individual each strip creator is; what ends up on the page is the sum total of one man's creative & emotional being, distorted through a prism of fantasy or slapstick or melodrama. Your net gain as reader: 336 pages of the kind of joyous, crazy, all-elbows-and-graceful-despite-it art that can only emerge from forms that the Arbiters of Taste don't take very seriously. Splendid as this book is the first time 'round, it continues to enrich you, always revealing more with every subsequent re-reading. Out of print for a while but readily available through the online auction services; I also hear it's being reissued soon. By the way, the other mandatory strip anthologies are the 'sequel' to this one (COMIC STRIP CENTURY), an important predecessor (Robinson's THE COMICS) and the entire run of Rick Marschall's NEMO magazine; happily, there is next to no duplication of strips reprinted between all of them (apparently the archivist's code of honor). If this book floors you like it did me, seek them out and flabbergast further.

Each time I think it's time I settled for something less than fulfilling in life I sit down and read through this book. It calms my soul. It realigns my senses to what it is I'm truly seeking in life and in a partner. I have given this as a wedding gift to those who I think have the mind and soul for such small wisdom as this. I would recommend this book to anyone who seeks to be complete before entering into a relationship or who seeks understanding of why their past relationship failed. It has helped me to keep clarity of mind.

This book was a wonderful gift from a friend. I used to beat my self up when I couldn't follow the advice of the many self help books I have. The Couple's Tao Te Ching really changed the way I looked at my behavior because it didn't tell me how to behave. I memorized this passage because it has been helping me through this global, troubled time: "The world will never know love, respect, kindness and tolerance until you experience them in the safety of your love. When you do, it will." It means a lot to me. It's more than just about a relationship with another person. It makes a lot of things clear.

I have a library full of books on relationships and improving communication. Those books (like Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, etc.), tend to be read quickly with their advice being filtered through my brain for ideas to tweak our relationship. This book is refreshingly different. If you want to involve your brain by thinking about the deep meaning of the words, you can... or you can just hear the words and feel them nurturing your heart and spirit. Each page offers beautifully written verses to provide quick inspiration or a thought to meditate on for as long as you like. This books is a great addition to any library and makes a wonderful gift for any couple.

Citizen Washington is not your typical historical novel. While it is held together by a single voice, it is broken up into many short perspectives that lend the story of George Washington a varied examination. At first I found this inconvenient, but once I got to know the people speaking, I welcomed them again and again as they returned to add their view of an event. The story is told without sentimentality or heroics. In fact, the battles fought (or retreated from) are described very simply and directly. It's been a long time since I studied American history, so it was refeshing to read how the Revolution was fought and won from a "novel" point of view. Citizen Washington is definitely worth a read. I found the Federalist vs. Republican debate especially helful, told, as it is, from characters near the debate.

This is an excellent historical novel about George Washington. The novel presents Washington through the eyes of many of the people who knew him, including his wife and his slaves as well as the other great men of the day. It is a good approach for describing a very complex man with many sides.

The book focuses primarily on Washington's life up until the time he became President. The book does cover his entire life, but his years as President are skimpy by comparison to the rest of his life. The author's interest is more on who Washington was as a man than on his public accomplishments. Focusing on his formative years provides more insight into his character.

Nevertheless, the novel demonstrates the truly great accomplishments Washington made to American history. Without Washington, we would not have won the Revolutionary War: he provided the military strategy, the determination, and the leadership needed to win. Without Washington, we would not have become a country: he provided the leadership the 13 colonies needed to come together as a union. Without Washington, we would not have become a democracy: he resisted efforts to anoint him king, and he voluntarily relinquished power--first as commanding general who won the War of Independence, and later as the nation's first President.

Washington was an admirable person, and deserves the adulation the nation gave him then and since. But of course he had his flaws, and Citizen Washington conveys them, particularly via the characters in the novel who did not idolize him. Such was Washington's force of personality, though, that even his detractors were in awe of him.

This novel is particularly valuable as an adjunct to a nonfiction account of Washington's life, the best of which is James Thomas Flexner's Washington: The Indispensable Man.

This novel was one of the most informative books I have ever read. Not only did we get a run-down on the usual suspects of the era, Jefferson, Adams, and Washington, but the insight gained on the characters which history misses sometimes, like Alexander Hamilton, Henry Knox and Martha Washington made the book very hard to put down. The way Martin intermingles fictional and non-fictional characters is a work of genius. This novel is a fast-paced, fast-reading tale which NEVER bogs the reader down with an endless string of statistics and facts. The story is always the most important part of the book, and Martin hit a home run spinning this tale. I would recommend this novel, obviously to any Martin fans, but also to anyone who has wondered what historical fiction is like. I can not wait for his next novel!!!!

I'm new to the details of the King assassination, and though I lived through that period the details, as I recall, were never made clear unlike the previous JFK murder. It was pretty clear, however, that the killing was a coordinated effort by shadowy background forces, and not even the government pressed its usual lone assassin case very hard. The result was a lot of loose ends awaiting real investigation. This is Pepper's second book on the topic. I wish I had read the first one before picking up this one, because An Act of State does not serve well as an introduction. Instead of summarizing the official story and introducing the principals, the opening chapters plunge us into subsequent developments, which for newcomers like myself risks confusion from the outset. Moreover the work as a whole is neither well organized nor cogently edited creating additional obstacles for the uninitiated. Nonetheless, there are so many fascinating factual aspects brought to light by Pepper, that the book stands as a must read for those interested in America's hidden history. So for those with a skimpy background such as myself, either prep with a better intoduction or be prepared to sort through as best you can. The results speak volumes.

This is the account of King lawyer William Pepper's pursuit of the facts in the King assassination, and his denouement of the evidence, centering on the successful civil suit of Lloyd Jowers, a local resident with a business across the street from the motel murder site and with a connection to the murder, which led to the unravelling. The credentials of the ringleaders and perpetrates are very impressive indeed and include J. Edgar ('the' J. Edgar),the CIA, FBI, Memphis Police Department and assorted sordid Mob hoodlums. That's quite a team. But then the motive appears to have centered on the decision by Martin Luther King to bring the focus of his movement on poverty and the Vietnam War. It ook the jury one hour to decide that:
1. Yes--Lloyd Jowers participated in a conspiracy to do harm to Martin Luther King
2. Yes--Others including governmental agencies were parties to this conspiracy as alleged by the defendant.
This should have been headline news, but the story never survived, and it wasn't news to me until I stumbled on the book in the library, and I read a lot of books.
I hope you find out too.

An Act Of State--The Execution Of Martin Luther King--is a chilling indictment of the deadly madness that was rampant through American Society in the 1960s. The book systematically overturns the Government's ... case against James Earl Ray as Martin Luther King's assassin. Instead, it paints a series of powerful vignettes that appear to implicate various agencies of the Federal Government, elements of of the Memphis Police Department, other of the City's Municipal units, and pieces of the Carlos Marcello Mob in New Orleans, in planning and covering up Dr. King's tragic murder. This crime robbed the nation of its greatest leader for social justice in the twentieth century--a loss we as a nation may never recoup. Dr. Pepper relentlessly assembles a body of evidence: circumstantial, eye witness, and admissible hearsay that would prove his case beyond a reasonable doubt before an impartial court of public opinion. And perhaps this is the most haunting aspect of the tragic murder of an American icon:How free are we as a people and a culture when the truth cannot be told? How free are we when evidence and news is managed and withheld? How far our separation from the Body Of Laws we celebrate in our flag, anthems, hymns, and pledges?Dare I whisper: far. Bob Lupo, author, A Buffalo's Revenge, and Extremities-4.

After 30 years in parish ministry, I wish I could have read this book slowly each year. I would have been more relaxed and focused. Martin takes the best from Eastern (Taoist) thought and puts it into a Christian framework. It's soothing. It's therapeutic. Especially for Type 'A' pastors like myself. We need these grace-filled thoughts to reflect on. My only caveat is a theological one. A few of Martin's reflections seem to blunt the edge of prophetic ministry--the concern for justice and equality in the world. It's that "everything is already perfect" Eastern notion. I realize the paradox involved in accepting "what is" in order to change or be changed. I wonder what Amos or Jeremiah would think about "everything is already perfect." That being said, I recommend this little volume for its peace-evoking words. I have used it in daily prayer to help me "let go." These words on page 24 keep ringing in my ears: "If you want to be a wise and true minister of the Word, work a modest number of hours each week, then go home." Amen.

I have used this book for personal as well as community meditation ever since its first publication by CTS several years ago. As many others, I sincerely wish it were required reading in seminary and by corporate-type lay leadership who want a pastor to be a CEO rather than a pastor. I must disagree with the reviewer who faulted the book (modestly) for its lack of stress on the prophetic aspects of ministry. After all, wasn't Thomas Merton a contemplative who had a great deal to write concerning the prophetic issues of peace and justice, let alone racism? This book has been formative in enabling my continuation in ministry.

This simple book has been an important tool in helping me recover a sense of peace and serenity in parish ministry. The challenges and struggles of ministry are intense. The answer for me has been found in returning to a place of quiet, listening, and trust. The Art of Pastoring is a MUST READ for anyone in full-time parish work.

Perhaps, considering a 2003 survey published in the Journal of Sex Research that concluded "heterosexuals dislike bisexuals more than gays, lesbians and most religous or enthnic groups," and that women tended to feel negative towards bisexual or gay men and women alike while men were more prone to rate bixsexual or gay men lower than they would bisexual or lesbian women. The earlier "Dual Attraction ..." coincidentally hints of similar findings, but goes significantly further than the more recent survey. Most notably, a distinction is made between the bisexual and gay male although both seem mostly to be lumped together in social and research terms. Maybe because of that, any serious study of bisexuality in particular is sparse. The bisexual male, then, is somewhat "invisible," accounting for the fact that most clinicial and social discussion and advocacy come from the bisexual female. And, consistent with the more recent study, the Indiana University sociologists behind "Dual Attraction ..." also come up with a reason that the bisexual male is apparently regarded beneath the gay male and lesbian and bisexual woman. The bisexual man, unlike the gay male, so the theory goes, is self-focused, preoccupied with sex and so sexually experienced with both genders that he feels superior to all, even the straight man. Add to that the apparent belief that bisexual men gave AIDS to the straight community, and the bisexual's social position plummets. Of course, the conclusions in "Dual Attraction ..." are pre-suppositioned on the hotly disputed Masters and Johnson opinion years earlier that sexual orientation is a choice rather than a biological pre-determinant. Even discarding that idea, however, "Dual Attraction ..." still comes out as something of a pioneering effort in acknowledging the existence and explaining the dynamics behind bisexuality. Perhaps no other published work has gone so far as this research. But is it relevant? Quite possibly, considering various surveys put between 25 percent and 75 percent the number of men in America having sex with other men.

This is, without a doubt, the BEST work I've ever seen on bisexuality. Kudos to Weinberg, Williams, and Pryor. Finally ... someone who understands.

This is, without a doubt, the BEST work I've ever seen on bisexuality. Kudos to Weinberg, Williams, and Pryor. Finally ... someone who understands.

A book you can still dream on.

This was written and rewritten when Victorian erudition was in the making. Some authors in the long series of its well parsed institutional writing would still like to see it continuing in THAT well established tradition.

Alas, the times have changed. Recent anatomy texts are dwarfs not even climbing on the shoulders of the likes of Gray, Braus and Testut. Those authors professed ideals of "seeing through the skin structures", "synmorphy" and "mentally reconstructing the living". Today we do all this with machines...

I stopped reading the huge text linearly at the complicated review of angiogenesis, but still browse dedicated chapters for standard, if somewhat elaborate descriptions. Comprehensive knowledge parsing seems to have lived a fruitful life and then exit the scene to enrich scientific obituaries. But if Gibbon were still an example of style, the fifth star would be added when that clarity, in my view mandatory for monuments, will be eventually reached.

This book is absolutely amazing. It was the required reference text for a gross anatomy class I took in graduate school and it made studying so easy! I used to go through and take notes out of it in order to have a solid base of what I should see when I would dissect. This book also described a lot of the abnormalities and variations that we would regularly see in the human body. A MUST HAVE FOR ANYONE WHO WILL BE STUDYING ANATOMY!!!!!!

This book is truly a masterpiece. The writing and layout is good. Descriptions and illustrations are clear and well done. I am not a medical professional and yet I find this book fascinating in its breadth and scope. To better comprehend some of the anatomical structures I first read relevant portions of this book and then go to Netter's Atlas Of Human Anatomy. One point of caution though - get the 38th British Edition. This is by far superior to the American Edition which costs half as much. The extra money spent will be well worth it. After all there is a lifetime of adventure embedded in this volume.

The Brazilian Sound is good as far as it goes - a who's who list and discography of 20th century Brazilian music. Although, the book has the feel of a junior college textbook, it's written in plain language. It would be a relatively easy read if it were not that a parenthetical list of Brazilian names breaks up every third or fourth paragraph. There are some very informative passages - notably the chapter on Bossa Nova and the "Escolas de Samba" section of Chapter 2. At their best, the authors provide clear and comphrensive explanations of the geneology and sociological context of the music.

Unfortunately, unless a person is willing to spend countless shopping hours and a couple of thousand dollars building up collection of Brazilian records, he or she will gain almost no insight from this book into what the music feels like. The authors describe individual works and artists in only vague terms - terms often identical to those previously used to describe others. They beat the term "syncopation" into irrelevance - it's clear only that all Brazilian music is syncopated. The authors habitually refer to folk music genres and song forms ala "Composer X's work is all based on the Y song form..." But they provide no practical examples or definitions of those genres or forms.

The authors stridently dumb-down their text, accepting as axiom that one has to "hear it to believe it" and that it is meaningless to describe Brazilian music in technical terms. They generally refrain from even using common musical terms - bar, measure, pulse, key, etc. - to give the reader a clearer understanding of Brazilian rhythmic and harmonic structures. They use few effective musical comparisons or verbal metaphors. It is understandably difficult to describe music in writing. But it is possible. Judicious use of metaphor, comparisions, and technical descriptions would have greatly fleshed out what in the end comes off as a skeletal text.

This 1998 edition serves as the update to the first, apparently published in 1990 or 1991. However, the amendments appear to have been quite minor - embodied by an isolated paragraph here and there, and four meager pages in the final "More Brazilian Sounds" chapter. It's as if nothing has really happened in the evolution of Brazilian music since 1990 - an impression that must be wrong.

The Brazilian Sound catalogs decent research, but is neither good writing nor effective music history.

The best book ever written about Brazilian music in English, "The Brazilian Sound" is a beautifully written, in-depth guide to samba, bossa and other Brazilian genres. Many of the reviews below are on the mark, but BGB from WA seems not to have read the book (or to have read a different book!). The 1998 edition substantially upgrades the original 1991 version. There is much added in terms of early history, capoeira, racial issues, choro, and the blocos and afoxes in Bahia. There is more on important artists from the 1990s, like Marisa Monte, Daniela Mercury, Carlinhos Brown, Chico Cesar, Chico Science and Karnak, though these additions are in various chapters, not just the final one ("More Brazilian Sounds"). One needs to have actually read the book to know that, of course...The music is nicely described, in both musical and cultural terms. One gets a strong sense of how it sounds, and a clear understanding of its rhythmic, harmonic and melodic ingredients. Some of the writing is rather encyclopedic, dispensing a rather staggering amount of information, while many sections vividly convey a sense of the music. I often felt I was at a bossa nova club in '59, at an escola de samba rehearsal, watching one of the 1960s song festivals, or attending a forro party. "The Brazilian Life" brings to life both the current and past greats of Brazilian music. As a result, I added quite a few CDs to my collection, especially of artists like Milton Nascimento, Pixinguinha, Jobim and Marisa Monte. I can't recommend this book highly enough.

You could fill a book with all the information I _don't_ know about Brazilian music... In fact, these guys already have! Concise, conversational, informative and very well laid out, this is an exceptionally readable book. Chapters on samba, bossa nova, tropicalia, forro and jazz include focused biographical sketches of dozens of key artists, as well as succinct historical information about the progress of Brazilian music from its European and African folk roots into its bewildering and often beautiful modern offshoots. The book's focus is nonpartisan: although there is plenty of room for aesthetic criticism within the various styles, the authors generally hold their preferences and dislikes to themselves. They do, however, give readers a good sense of which recordings might be best to check out -- an invaluable service considering how little of Brazil's vast musical output makes it to the United States. Highly recommended! Certainly the best English-language guide to Brazilian pop that you will find in print (online is a different matter), this is great for casual listeners and hardcore fans alike.

Who doesn't love a great mystery? I know that I do. The reason I love this book is that it is suspenseful and gripping. I was immediately drawn into the plot and the details that the author describes in the book. Not only is it a great mystery but it provides Roman history for its reader as well. It gives us a look into the Roman citizen and his life.

If a writer wants to introduce a new series in the somewhat crowded field of Roman mysteries, he'd better have a unique twist. Albert Bell has done that. Instead of fictional sleuths, he uses historical characters, Pliny the Younger and the historian Tacitus, in the first of what promises to be a fine series. Bell combines historical knowledge, witty writing, and a plot with just enough complications and suspects to lead to a thoroughly satisfying conclusion. Pliny and Tacitus have to find out who murdered a man travelling with them while also protecting a beautiful young slave girl who may be the killer's next victim. I can't wait for the next one!

The field of mysteries set in ancient Rome is a bit crowded, with Davis, Saylor, and Roberts, but this new entry deserves to take its place at the head of the line. It features an historical character, Pliny the Younger, with his friend the historian Tacitus playing the Dr. Watson role. While traveling back to Rome in a caravan in 83 AD, they stop overnight in Smyrna. The next morning they discover that a member of the caravan has been brutally murdered. Suspects abound: a gambler who was in debt to the victim, a group of women who may be involved in occult practices, an abused slave, and several others. With no Roman magistrates on the scene, Pliny takes charge of the investigation. He soon realizes that the case is more complicated than at first appears. He must find the killer because he himself may have been the intended victim. First rate!

I am not a Linguist, but this book helped me to appreciate all of the differing theories and various fields within what is known as linguistics. If you are seeking a book that is simple to read, yet very comprehensive, I recommend this volume. If you enjoy languages, speech development, regional dialects, language acquisition, theory of language, language trends, and more - this book is for you.

Major disciplines coverd include: phonetics, morphology, syntax, and semantics. Also included in this new addition are new chapters on second language acquisition and psycholinguistics.

One of the best features of this text is how well it is laid out. It is a pleasure to peruse and even study because of it's logical and user friendly format.

If you love anything about language- whether knowing it's origins, or what part of the mouth is used to create certain sounds, or how language changes over time and for what reasons, or a host of other curiosities, you will certainly enjoy the wealth of information within Contemporary Linguistics!

"Contemporary Linguistics" (CL) is a wonderfully clear and accessible introduction to the field of linguistics. The authors begin by introducing the methodological assumptions that underlie present day Chomskyan linguistics and then reserve a chapter each for almost all major research directions within linguistics.

One thing in particular that I liked about the format of CL was the treatment of more advanced material (marked "Advanced") in each chapter. The "Advanced" sections augment the material in the rest of the chapter and are placed in logical sequence with the rest of the material instead of appearing in an appendix at the end of the chapter. For example, a section marked "advanced" on X' (read X-bar) Theory appears fairly early in the syntax chapter. Having some knowledge of X' Theory allows the reader to proceed to examine the rest of the material with the knowledge that there exists an intermediate level of structure between lexical categories (N, V, ...) and phrasal categories (NP, VP, ...).

Most chapters in CL are pretty well written and technical tools to treat linguistic phenomena are almost always introduced at the correct juncture. However, CL does not treat Innateness properly (why Innateness and arguments for and against Innateness), and has a weak chapter on semantics. The reader would do well to augment the material in CL by reading Pinker's "The Language Instinct" or Jackendoff's "Patterns in the Mind" for a non-technical introduction to some ideas in linguistics, as well as sections of De Swart's "Intro to Natural Language Semantics" to get an idea of how semantics is done. If the reader is interested in looking at language from a cognitive science perspective, she would also do well to read most of Gleitman et al's "An Invitation to Cognitive Science: Language".

All in all, CL provides a relatively painless initiation into linguistics and I highly recommend it.

Speaking as a newcomer to the subject, I found this book to be an excellent intro. Very useful.