I would recommend this book to children of young ages. It teaches the very basics on hamster care but does not go into depth about these things like I was hoping . : / If you have a child between the ages of 6 or 7 to 10 this would be a GREAT book for them to understand how to groom ,when to feed, what to feed,and how to set up there cages . : )

Commander Miller lays out in considerable detail his experiences as the skipper of the Navy's Bombing Squadron 109. This unit flew in the central Pacific area in WWII in aircraft normally thought of as an Air Force aircraft: The B-24 Liberator known in Navy parlance as the PB4Y-1. In single and 2-plane formations, the wideranging bombers of VB-109 carried the war to Japanese island bases like Truk, attacking by surprise and getting results far out of proportion to the size of their forces. While written before the War ended in 1945, Miller's personal account gives first-hand information on VB-109's tactics, operations and losses. A noteworthy addition to Naval Aviation historiography and one that focuses on a little known aspect of the air war in the Pacific.

I have not read the latest version of the book; however, I read the original authored by Miller. I found the recorded examples used to illustrate the ideas in the book especially useful. The original book contained a list of twenty-five basic compositions which illustrated the ideas.

This book is a great guide to parakeets, for kids who are about 9 to 12. Every thing you need to know on these interesting pets is simplified, and organized into neat paragraphs and sentances. It is just wonderful information, and would be a wise perchase for your child.

Looking at the bibliography, one might think that Ian Hugh Maclean Miller's book on Toronto's reaction to the first world war was an impressive piece of research. Originally a successful doctoral dissertation, one finds no fewer than eight archives, 95 personal files and 12 pages of secondary sources. These sources supposedly prove Miller's point that Torontonians were willingly, enthusiastically, indeed unanimously supportive of, not just the war, but the most aggressive and forceful measures to win the war, and moreover did so with full knowledge of its cruelties and many sacrifices. And indeed, there is no doubt that Torontonians supported the war, at one point providing one in five recruits at a time when they were less than one in fifteen of the Canadian population.

In fact, this is a shockingly mediocre work. A look at the endnotes reveals a heavy reliance on Toronto's five daily papers, all of which supported the war. In chapter three 54 of the 88 notes depend SOLELY on these papers. In Chapter four it is 36 out of 51; in chapter five 37 out of 62, and in chapter six 56 out of 72. Much of the book consists of endless accounts of funerals, rallies, calls for recruiting, war campaigns as reported in the press. Class, gender, religion, are only mentioned to reinforce that everyone supported the war. Politics never appears until the conscription issue arises in l916. Moreover, Miller indulges in several sleights of hand. Because no Laurier anti-conscription candidate ran in four ridings, Miller assumes that everyone in that riding supported conscription, an obviously fallacious assumption. At one point (158) he states that 92.6 of Torontonians supported conscriptionist candidates, at another (196) he states that more than 90% supported the smaller subset of Unionist canditates. (In fact it was more like 70%). Often Toronto is personified, so that it is the "majority" of Torontonians who oppose Woodrow Wilson's peace offers, or the "majority" who support breaking up anti-war meetings, when all we hear are the presses and the police chiefs.

In order to show that Torontonians were fully aware of the costs of war he notes that there were articles that occasionally printed grim details. But as any student of wartime propaganda will tell you, the same newspapers also showed fatuous optimism, cheap moralism, rancid chauvinism, insipid sentimentality, atrocity propaganda and outright lies. It would be difficult to take out the facts from the slosh, and most readers weren't I.F. Stone. And in fact Miller provides no systematic analysis of the media coverage. There is no discussion of censorship, no discussion of propaganda, only the most cursory discussion of the biases of the papers, and nothing about their owners' ideologies or political agendas. Moralism, chauvnism, sentimentality--apparently they don't exist in Miller's account.

In fact, Miller's shallowness is rather amazing. Jeffrey Verhey has shown that, contary to myth, Germans did not rush off enthusiastically to war in 1914. Similar studies have been made of Russia and France. Scholars of the Blitz, a much more just and much more heroic war, are not as endlessly upbeat as Miller. It does not occur to Miller that Toronto's apparent unanimity needs some sort of explanation. But then perhaps it did occur to him, and he omitted it so it would not complicate his uplifting tale. There is no mention of the fact that recruitment was highest from those born in Britain. There is no mention of the fact that Toronto was known as "Little Belfast," not because of any reference to Irish wit and charm, but because of an atmosphere of smug rancid chauvinism. (The Orange Order is only mentioned once, in passing). There is no discussion of its political culture (many ridings were Tory even after the Depression), and no real discussion of what imperialism and monarchism meant. So if Torontonians were fighting for their country, what country was that? And where did Catholics and Francophones exist in that country? (There are only passing mentions of anti-French demagougery in 1917.)

Canadians are often critical of American conservatism, but only in Canada do military historians feel that it is their duty to be propagandists for the army. Miller, according to the flyleaf, is a policy officer at the Department of Defense and this book does look like is was written by a bureaucrat. "Sacrifice is no longer equated with the giving of oneself for a nobler, higher purpose." he writes sententiously. Dead wrong, but then many sane people would not consider Ypres and Somme a nobler, higher purpose. I suspect that the attempt to encourage national pride is one reason for this perspective. It cannot succeed. Only 57% of Canadians voted for the Union government in 1917, and the number who supported it would have been even lower had it not been for electoral skullduggery. The Canadian army in 1917 and 1942 was not a national institution. And even in the Second World War, we have to wonder about an anti-fascism whose heroes are George VI and Pius XII. Had Britian decided to stay out in September 1939, Canada would not have dreamed of entering the war. So it says much that Neville Chamberlain was the conscience of our country. But then a power of facing unpleasant facts has never been very much honored in Canada's army, or its historians.

Our Glory & Our Grief: Torontonians And The Great War by Ian Hugh Maclean Miller (a Department of National Defense police officer) is an impressive, scholarly, yet highly accessible account of the impact World War I had on the people of Toronto, Canada and the Torontonian soldiers who fought and died for patriotism and to change the tide of history. From discussing why citizens of Toronto chose to support the war effort, in spite of its terrible burden, to the far-reaching repercussions of the war that reverberate in Canada today, Our Glory & Our Grief is an engrossing, informed and informative account, meticulously researched and a welcome, recommended addition to Canadian History supplemental reading lists and academic reference collections.

Unfortunatly, I was really anticipating some clever mind tricks. The kind that really makes you think..."Wow!!!" As it turns out, many of these illusions are tricks that I remember encountering when I was in grade school. For example, staring at a black silouhette for several seconds burns a "ghosted" image in your eyes. So if you then stare at a white wall directly after, you'll see the same image. Tricks such as that were great when I was younger. And, true, it was nice to see these forgotten illusions resurface. I suppose I was just looking for something a little more novel. Some of the other illusions include finding hidden pictures within a picture. Or an image that becomes another image when flipped upside down (see the cover). All of these were fun...but at the most I gave each "gag" only 15-30 seconds of my time. There was one redemptive illusion that merited this set a rating of 3 stars - the ones that require holding an image up to light. That was very entertaining!!!

I bought this for a friend of mine for his birthday and couldn't help but thumb through it myself before wrapping it. Found it full price at a Shambhala bookstore in Chicago and felt it was worth the price. It's a bargain here. Lots of clever word play in the booklet- a number of palindromes that I'd never heard before. Great illusions and clever postcards. Some brilliant effects are achieved through light and playing with human perception. Each piece could stand alone as a piece of art, and there are a lot of pieces in this little box.

While it is not "technically" a book, I recommend it strongly as a gift for that friend that reads and thinks a lot but you don't know what book to pick for him or her. It's relatively obscure right now, and makes a truly unique gift. Don't buy it for yourself, but be sure to check it out before you wrap it. Remember to wash your hands first.

The book should be put in print if only because it effectively undermines Hefner's carefully cultivated image as a suave and debonair sophisticate, showing him to be an arrested adolescent and a rube. What do you call a man who for years and years would sleep until four in the afternoon and live on speed and cola? Is it a sign of a sophistication to hire best chefs of Europe just to make fried chicken and ham sandwiches? Miller's book is chock full of these kind of details about Hefner's life and together the paint a picture not of an urban Ladies' Man but of an eccentric, childish, and pathetic hermit. I wish that Mr. Miller had focused more on the moral damage Hefner and his Empire have inflicted upon this nation. He does show how the Playboy Philosophy has devastated the lives of individual women, and tells in great detail how the Bunny Lifestyle is really quite the opposite of its publicised image; far from liberating and joyful, it is enslaving and grimly exploitative. The Bunnies are made to live in quarters just a little more comfortable than the barracks at boot camp while their bosses live in plush and guady opulence. But Mr. Miller never explores the impact of the Playboy lifestyle on the culture at large, but it is unfair to ask that a piece of factual journalism engage in culture criticism. Russel Miller punctures another Playboy myth, that the Playboy Empire is an Empire of Wealth. It isn't. Actually, Playboy Inc. is very sick financially, and this because of Hefner's breathtaking financial irresponsibility. As Russel Miller details, Hefner would rather spend his money on a staff to edit out the commercials from the tapes of his favorite sitcoms than to make sound business investments. The costs of his lavish parties that are thrown for the most frivolous reasons are constant and dangerous drains on the company's coffers and actually threaten the solvency of Playboy Inc., but Hefner seems to be a man quite willing to fiddle (or play video games) while his Rome burns down. To be sure, Miller's book came out sixteen years ago just as Playboy was entering the cable tv business, but the financial irresponsibility that plagued Playboy back then plagues it still today. Hefner still spends small fortunes on ephemeral decadence while his stock drops like a stone. Miller's book is not a comedy, drama, or adventure. It is merely a work of competent and sober journalism, and that is exactly what is needed to puncture the evil glamour of Playboy to reveal the utterly pathetic banality underneath.