"McNally's study is thorough, balanced and professionally critical: a spendid addition to our accumulating knowledge of the Irish Catholic Church." E.R. Norman, Peterhouse, Cambridge University. The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 40, no. 1, pp. 185-86.

The eleven stories collected here range in setting from Chicago's south side to small towns in southern Illinois, but are all thematically linked in their exploration of confused and often angry lower-class white males. The stories are also generationally linked, in that their characters all appear to have come of age in the early to mid-'70s. Indeed, the three best stories are set in the '70s and follow the same junior high boys through a trio of episodes ("The Vomitorium,'' "Smoke'' and "The Grand Illusion''), which include a trunk full of stolen Tootsie Rolls, and the forming of an "air band", and a homosexual advance. These three stories share much of the humor and angst of Chris Furhman's excellent novel The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, and Tom Perrotta's collection Bad Haircut.

In "The New Year", "The Greatest Goddamn Thing" and "Torture", the narrators are teenage boys, whose primary role in each is as sidekick or witness to another person's pain. In the first story, a cuckolded and abandoned father takes an axe to a deer. In the second, a brother just out of jail leads him into an all night bar party complete with gun, fire, and sex. And in the third, a neighbor is stranded on his roof by an irate wife, and no one calls for help. In each case, there's a kind of sad desperation to it all. Desperation is also present in two stories ("The End of Romance" and "Roger's New Life") that follow a UPS driver with a flaccid marriage, two kids, and a shaky grip on sanity. These are the most distant of the collection, as the protagonist is clearly cracking up and it becomes harder and harder to identify with his tenuous grip on reality. A rather similar character is the focus of the longest story, "Limbs," sharing a troubled marriage, kid, and in this case, friends of dubious character.

Two Chicago-set stories stick out: "The Politics of Correctness" abandons the world of the unemployed and lower-class for the world of academia and a struggling young English professor who must contend with the drug dealer who menaces his home, and the uber-PC people in his department. One sense this is a very personal story from McNally, and while it's not bad, it's not particularly original or noteworthy either. My own favorite is "The First of Your Last Chances," which stands out if only because it has a happy ending. Both funny and tender, it's a welcome respite from the heaviness of the other ten stories. The collection as a whole reveals a great new talent, I'll look forward to his next work.

Eleven stories make up this solid collection, and three of them are related ("The Vomitorium," "Smoke," and "The Grand Illusion"), starring a kid in the eight grade named Hank and his sometimes goofy, always strange adventures with Ralph, his dangerous deliquent of a friend. All three are excellent, and they make a logical progression, offering nice closure at the end of the third story.

The remaining eight are a mixed bag. "The New Year" is fantastic, but "The End of Romance" is not. "The First of Your Last Chances" seemed a bit too crafty, but I ultimately loved the story, which features a hilarious S&M vignette and a real cute ending. "The Politics of Correctness" was a wonderful story all the way through, my favorite in the collection. "The Greatest Goddamn Thing" didn't do it for me -- it all seemed too forced, and I didn't buy the narrator's voice. "Roger's New Life" just never seemed to go anywhere (a detached 3rd person pov, reminiscent of Raymond Carver), while "Torture" was strong from start to finish, though I'm not sure if it's a story that has a real direction. And the last and the longest, "Limbs," is a winner.

I wouldn't consider any of these stories as bad -- they are all finely written, and McNally's got a very nice, easy style. Many of the stories were very funny and thoroughly enjoyable.

- SJW

I was a lucky person to have had John McNally as an instructor in college. He taught at my college for a short time and I still feel that college (which will remain anonymous) did not know what they lost when they lost this brilliant writer. He taught a creative writing class which was based fully on the power of the written word and how the simplest and most realistic language often tells the best story. McNally's own work completely upholds this belief. I unfortunately have lost touch with John, but when I found out via the web that he had published this collection of short stories, I knew I had to find it. I had him for one semester, yet I remember him better than any other teacher I have ever had.

As a fan of the writing of Richard Yates and Raymond Carver (who John introduced me to), I can tell you that he learned his craft from the writings of these masters. His characters are believable, the dialogue is simple but powerful and the settings are described in the most minimal detail, but yet you have a feel of exactly where you are and who these people are. McNally's characters exist through their dialogue and that is what makes his stories powerful.

I highly recommend this collection of stories. Some are disturbing, others are more lighthearted. However, the writing is tremendous and you get inside these characters almost immediately. The art of the written word is not lost. People like John McNally are keeping it alive.

This is not a map. I expected an actual map with points of History listed in the different geographical locations. Instead, this is a chart with the years and what happened. Granted, it is full of information, but with the "HistoMap" I actually expected a map. If you're looking for a map, keep looking. If you're looking for a chart, this is it.

This is an excellent graphical display of quite alot of information. However, the meaning of the the width is unclear, and it would be nice to have an indication of how the OVERALL width should change with time.

My father had this four foot long chart of world history and I remember how neat it was to see a graphic depiction of the ebb and flow of civilization. It was also great to quickly answer questions like, "Which came first, the pyramids at Giza or the Great Wall in China?"

So I was so excited to find an updated edition. Information has been added for the last fifty years - logarithmically so you get much more detail on recent events. I have mixed feelings about this as it distorts the overall "tides of history" sense and gives so much importance to recent events. "Election of Bill Clinton" on the same chart as "Tamerlane the Great" or "Charlemagne crowned Emperor"?

One other thought: the chart depicts civilization as "zero sum." For one civilization to gain space, another must lose. This is not my view of the expansion of human civilization. Nevertheless, no one should be without this handy chart.

A strange mix of authors, styles, length, sadness and humor, linked by the college campus as a common theme. Started out as a potential stream of interesting stories but dwindled quickly into an almost dry bed. Richard Russo does a nice job with a nun's story. Stephen King contributes a mundane terror tale. For instance, Hassler's "Publish and perish" is a much more rewarding work. David Lodge covers this terrain very well.

Nice try, but college life is better, funnier and more interesting than this, as has been shown hundreds of times before.

As a college student who has experienced the ups and downs of academia, the frustrations and pleasures of the university campus, the insipid, the arrogant, the brilliant, even the outlandish in everyday college life, this exquisite compilation served as a sort of mirror funhouse, one I won't mind getting stuck in again and again. These stories encompass the complexities of universities from very versatile angles, all filled with insight, finesse, and lots of fun, intelligent humor. A great read, should be required material for all those who have ever walked the halls of any educational institution under any guise.

I first heard about this book when it was chosen by the CHICAGO TRIBUNE as an EDITOR'S CHOICE book of the week. This anthology does an excellent job of capturing the variety of campus life. Russo gives a knock-out story about a nun who takes a creative writing class. Dan Chaon's story about fraternity life is both quirky and moving. Two hilarious entries: Gordon Weaver's "Q: Questing" about a guy dividing his time teaching part-time at four colleges and carrying on affairs with a woman at each campus; and Lucia Perillo's "The Wife of the Indian" from the point of view of a cynical but hilarious woman who's married to a guy who lied about his ethnicity to get a job but then leaves his wife behind when he takes off with a student. Ron Carlson's "Hartwell" is a melancholy, heartbreaker of a story. In addition to work by other well-known writers -- Thomas Beller, Marly Swick, Thisbe Nissen -- the editor has included great stories by newcomers, such as Amy Brown, Rebecca Lee, and Alex Shishin. If you like good literary stories, and if you've spent any time on a college campus, you're bound to enjoy this book. Or if you're a parent sending your child off to college, this would make a great gift.

The atlas is U. S. centric even though the title is 'world atlas'. The map of the U. S. takes up about 25 pages, while the map of Italy, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslovia (formerly) take up 2 pages. And the spelling is unbelievable. Many of the place names are rendered in the native language instead of English, at least I assume so. North and South Korea, about the size of Kansas is shown at about 1/2 the size of Kansas. One normally buys a world atlas to learn about the world, not the U. S. A disappointment.

The twentieth edition of Goode's atlas of the world continues to be a standard for U.S.-educational purposes. The reference maps themselves are not too accurate and detailed, but they provide a reasonably well-balanced coverage of the world, with handy larger-scale inset maps for the more populous regions of each continent. There is an elaborate thematic section on a variety of topics about the world, the continents, and the United States in particular. This is supplemented by a very good statistical section, and the 30,000 entry index gazetteer contains a pronunciation guide for each entry, which is unique for a world atlas. Non-US buyers probably have better alternatives, but for school purposes for North America, this is a very good choice. The publication of this twentieth (!) edition illustrates the endurability of this work since 1922.

When I took my first college-level geography class, my professor told the class that Goode's World Atlas is the best atlas on the market. Fifteen years and a couple of editions later, it's still the best atlas I've ever seen. The atlas includes a commendable section on map projections, many excellent thematic maps, easy-to-read regional (general) maps, tables of country and landform sizes, and a wonderful index. If you're looking for a road map, this atlas probably won't help. If you want to learn about the world, or teach school-aged children about the world they live in, then this is one of the top resources out there.

If these are the top short story authors in the United States and Canada, we are in bad shape. Most of these stories simply aren't very interesting--I found the characters to be generally unsympathetic losers, and very little actually happens in most of the stories.

One story, by Margaret Atwood, has some punch. Why don't you just lean against the shelf in the bookstore and read that one, then put the book back? You'll save some money that way, and you won't miss a thing.

Wow, what a great line up of writers. These are the best around. Some of the stories are really great - Russel Bank's story just knocked me out - and all are definitely worth checking out.

I thought this book was fantastic, well edited, and poignant. I highly recommend it.

If you have had experience with other relational databases. i.e. SQL Server, Sybase. You may be farmiliar with Unleashed books. This one is nothing like them. The enire books gives a general overview of Informix and 90% of the book covers the Informix-4GL There is little to no examples for SQL and was not worth the $40.00 I spent on it.

I'm primarily a developer, but I also do a little bit of DBA stuff. This book has lots of info for developers, and apparently lots for DBAs too -- it's the book our primary DBA recommended to me. If you need to know something about Informix, chances are it's explained in this book.

This book is a great resource. It's not one to read cover to cover, but rather one to turn to when you have a question. It's helped me at work in critical situations.

I bought this book looking for some stories about players, about the game of baseball, about the human side of it. I bought it for my son for his 11th birthday. I bought the wrong book. This book is NOT appropriate for anyone under 16, and not for many over 16. I'm sure many players use profanity, but almost every story had more than enough. One story led up to a player and his girl going through the trauma of a backroom abortion (where is the baseball in that?), another ended with the picture of a player sliding headfirst into home to be greeted by the batter, a malevolent teammate with a grudge who slugged his face with the bat. Looking for junk story writers trying to be cute or brutally realistic? Fine, this book is for you. Looking for good baseball stories? Look somewhere else.

This book is for fans of literary baseball short stories. If you like the work of Andre Dubus (whose story inspired the movie IN THE BEDROOM), Patricia Highsmith (who wrote the novel THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY), and David Carkeet (whose novel THE GREATEST SLUMP OF ALL TIME is often listed as one of the best contemporary baseball novels), then you'll love this book. Some of these stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories, and many have appeared in top literary magazines. Some stories are funny; some are dark. This is NOT a book of baseball anecdotes or sappy sentimentality or play-by-play accounts or simplistic moralizing. Like all great stories, the main subject (in this instance, baseball) is also a metaphor for some aspect of life, and, as anyone who's lived long enough should know, life is nothing if not ambiguous and complex. I highly recommend this anthology of funny, heartbreaking, ironic, scary, and intense stories in which baseball plays a significant role.