What can I say? This is simply the greatest. If you collect role playing games, you absolutely have to have a copy of this book. The only question I have is -- when can we look for a sequel??? Mr. Schick, take pity on us and give us an update, please!

I began role-playing in the late seventies, when all of the earliest role-playing games were still available for sale. Reading "Heroic Worlds" is like returning to those early days, both in its comprehensive listing of every role-playing game release available up through 1990, and in its evocation of the state of the art of role-playing games in its early days. This book is bound to be a classic for a number of reasons: one, it's the only place that will serve the collector hoping to buy every single supplement for their favorite game; two, it's the best history available on the subject, even today; and three, it will serve the game designers of the future, in seeing what has already been done, and what still remains to be done. It's a wonderful read, as well. Now all we need is a second edition, that updates the subject to the present day!

What can I say? When you see a work like this on a hobby you're passionate about, you pick it up, and hope it's good. Schick delivers the goods here, but I would have liked to have seen more commentary from more people. Hopefully, like the other reviewer here, there will be a sequel for the past 9 years, there having been a real boom in certain games (White wolf, Deadlands, etc....)

The term "Vikings" brings to minds an image of mystery and war. And when an author sets out on a voyage tracing the Viking routes, nothing could be better to "Vikingophiles". I was eagerly looking forward to reading this book.

Having read this book I must admit that I find Theroux's and Dalrymple's travelogues easier to read. For one, living in a tropical country and not having set foot on the cold northern countries, I found the book very difficult to read because it introduced too many unfamiliar terms to me. Only a picture dictionary could have helped me :-) Perhaps the author could have attached some photographs of the cold and lonely places to give us an idea of what it's like. Another drawback of the book is that the author has tried to be too funny and it sounds a bit artificial. Or perhaps I am more used to Theroux's humour :-)

I would still rate this as a great book and worth adding to your library of travelogues. Mr. Millman, you should now travel to Finland, Siberia, northern Japan(Hokkaido) and northern Russia and write another book on those cold places. That will be a good sequel.

It is appropriate that Paul Theroux, that globetrotting curmudgeon who gave us THE OLD PATAGONIAN EXPRESS and so many other great travel books, should write the introduction for this edition of Millman's LAST PLACES. Millman takes Theroux's world-weariness to higher latitudes -- from Norway across to the Shetlands and Faroes, from there to Iceland and Greenland, and ending up in Labrador.

But like Theroux, Millman is wonderfully entertaining. See him witness a Faroese "grindadráp," or mass slaughter of a whole pod of whales, by throngs of gleeful Faroese bearing hooks and knives. See him wake up naked and hung over in a drainage ditch after a night of carousing in Reykjavik. And, most funny of all, see him fend off love-starved Inuit maidens in Nuuk who crave his bod and are not too dainty about their seduction technique.

Millman is a bit of a loner, and yet his book sparkles most when he is interacting with the locals. Because this happens hardly at all in the Shetlands, this is the weakest part of his book. LAST PLACES picks up steam as he visits an isolated lighthouse keeper in the West Fjords of Iceland whose library extends to 16,000 volumes. His encounters with Inuits in Greenland are priceless. And the episodes in Labrador show us a land of isolated cranks and eccentrics attempting to protect their way of life from do-gooder government relocation projects.

When the thermometer rises, pick up this book to cool you off. It makes for great summer reading. And it is excellent preparation for my upcoming trip to Iceland. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

A truly wonderful book about traveling in the North from Norway to Newfoundland. Millmand sets out to trace the Viking Route across the North Atlantic and along the way comes up with tales magical and gritty at the same time. My favorite is his meeting with the lighthouse keeper who lives with his library of 16,000 books. Millman has the ability to be open to every experience, take it all in, meet all kinds of human beings and make it come alive in words. This one goes on my short shelf to be read over again. A great book for travelers dreaming of a northern journey and for armchair travelers alike.

I guess you could say I am a celebraholic, meaning I read everything I can about my fave celebs. I thought I had read everything until Private Dreams of Public People. So intense... this beautiful coffee-table book reveals the private, sleep dreams of the most amazing celebrities including Michael Douglas and Sophia Loren. From writers to supermodels, from musicians to senators, this book is awesome. The dream interpretations are bite sized but extremely well written, breezy but to the point. I never realized how clever we are when we dream. The photographs are beautifully done. There are even some celebs photographed in their bedrooms. Diane Von Furstenberg appears to be naked under Porthault sheets! There is a wonderful photo of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' bedroom when she was first lady. In historic context, her dream was amazingly prophetic!I try to read one dream every night but I warn you, it is hard to put down once you start. ---a reviewer from downtown Manhattan

This is a gorgeous book! The photos are beautiful and artistic. The dreams are maps into the mind. And the analyses are insightful and interesting. This is a book you can have on your coffee table or your nightstand. It's like everything you always wanted to know about your favorite stars but they wanted to keep private. They're sharing such interesting secrets about themselves. The main one is, we're all the same when we're under the sheets -- dreaming, that is. It's just that when we wake up, they're famous and we're not.

Guests that sit in my livingroom repeatedly pick up Private Dreams of Public People, and once opened, cannot put the book down. An absolute page turner, there is always just one more celebrity's dream that you want to read. Thoroughly engrossing in a gossipy, voyeuristic way, Lawrence's interpretations are gloriously intuitive, and revealing...they squeeze the person out of the celebrity. A wonderful addition---reading this book helps us understand our own dreams.

The psychiatry 2002, is an excellent quick review of psych. In the clinics it will give you easy to read summaries of all topics in psych and treatments. An ideal book for any med student or resident.

Great reference for the psych clerkship. Written by same 3 authors at UCI who write the psycho-pharmacology book for CCS.

A good light handbook for quick reference on the run. Point-form and well laid out. Ideal for helping with differential diagnosis. I like the practicality & succintness of the information in it, as I can go to bigger texts if I want details. Bonus is that, if you own the handbook, you can download free a PC version, as well as a Palm, or EPOC (Psion Revo/Mako) versions. Mine is on a Revo and goes around with me when I'm on call.

My gay reading group (some Jewish, some not) read this collection of stories and essays about being gay and Jewish. What we generally liked best was the range of voices and approaches to the issue--some stories focused more on sex but others more on emotion/psychology. The favorites of our group were the pieces by David May and Daniel Jaffe (our own Boston writer--hurrah!). David May conveyed a real tenderness in his portrayal of an SM relationship. How amazing to see that two men who use pain and violence as part of their lovemaking would be most turned on by the use of Yiddish, by words. The power of words. Jaffe's piece (an essay)about an adolescent religious Jewish boy ashamed of his gay feelings is so honest. The essay makes the point that sometimes we don't want to be who we are because the conflict is so great. Both these pieces left some of our group's readers in tears. Our only complaint was that some of the other pieces were not as well-written as they could have been. Schimel's introduction is fairly weak and cutesie.

ForeWord Magazine Review: "The writers in Kosher Meat lay bare their souls to reveal their innermost thoughts, desires, passions, and anxieties about both sex and Jewish identity." Schimel has put together a collection of ten essays and short stories that are diverse in nature, yet unified to the theme of the work.

Contributors range from award winning poet Michael Lassell to author and '70s gay porn star Rick Sanford. Schimel is a full-time author and anthologist who has published more than forty books. In 1998 his anthology PoMoSexuals: Challenging Assumptions About Gender and Sexuality won a Lambda Literary Award. He is also a contributor to this particular anthology with his short story "The Minyan," which describes Simon's thoughts and reactions to participating in his first sex party with a group of men from his congregation. Simon finds himself glad to become part of something bigger than himself: "A Minyan of desire, men who no longer needed to congregate in clandestine secret to worship, but who could love and pray without shame."

Lassell's story, "My People," compares and contrasts losses suffered due to the Holocaust and AIDS. Michael and David meet for the first time and end up sharing their thoughts and experiences while touring the Holocaust Museum.

Through their interaction they discover the need to live and love in the present. "Mein Yidishe Tate," by David May, also explores the connection between two people, but with more of an erotic tone. In his story two lovers discover their secret language of desire--Yiddish. In "The Good Son," Brian Stein relays what it is like to be in a "mixed" relationship. Patrick meets Noah's family for the first time when returning home for his father's funeral.

At times the impact of the writing contained in Kosher Meat can be lost on the non-Jewish reader, but fortunately there is a glossary of terminology contained at the back of the book.

Shimel has proven himself to be a talented editor by bringing experiences to the gay ewish reader who may be feeling lost with the lack of representation in literature, as well as providing insight for the non-gay and non-Jewish reader into the lives of their lovers, friends, and family. Historically, gay men have focussed on the larger picture connected with the struggle for recognition and acceptance. Kosher Meat is an opportunity to learn some of the individual differences that make this community distinctive.

Copyright © 2000 ForeWord Magazine. All Rights Reserved.

Lambda Book Report, September 2000: "Eclectic diversity of story themes and styles is a difficult row for an editor to hoe; however Schimel manages to pull these stories together, grouping them so that the differences aren't as obvious as the sameness."

I'm in the Boston reading group referred to by another reviewer. Although I agree for the most part with his comments, I disagree about Schimel's introduction. I found it highly appropriate and suitable to the book. And let's not forget to give credit where credit is due--as editor, he's the one who found all these wonderful stories and essays!

A deeply moving misadventure. In getting lost, these three men discovered the soul of Labrador as well as the true meaning of friendship and survival. This book is a classic.

I have read this book several times, and would recomend it to anyone that enjoys an adventure story. I enjoy it even more than most as Leonidas Hubbard was my grandfathers first cousin.This book has been almost required reading in our family,(Hubbard).I hope the publisher will reprint it as we have many family members looking for a copy of the book.

I have read a lot of teen adventure books. I recently read this one while I was on a rugged boys canoe camp trip. We went on a 7 week trip with 12 men to labrador. I purchased this book because it was nonfiction and it was saying how these 3 brave, adventurous men took a trip similar to the area i'll be going to. It talked about how mothernature just (threre's really no word for it but...)Destroys these people and they fight back with courage and hope in succeeding this raw adventure. The three in progress of there adventure take care of eachother and keep eachother alive nad in this doing they become better than great friends almost brothers. I really don't want to ruin the book for you, but i suggest so strongly that you get a copy of this book, and oh yea the beginning of the book really is boring because it tells you of how they got to labrador in 1902 (they didn't have cars).

"Out on the Cutting Edge" follows the two best novels in the Matthew Scudder series, "8 Million Ways to Die" and "When the Sacred Ginmill Closes." It is also the first novel in which Scudder conducts a case (in this instance two cases) while not in an alcoholic stupor. We catch up with Scudder a few years after he joined AA. He has a sponser and has managed to recover control of his life. His day to day existence, meanwhile, hasn't changed much. He still lives in a residential hotel and still conducts cases off the books as "favors" for friends.

The two cases are interesting. One is for pay; a family wants to know the whereabouts of their missing daughter. One is personal; an AA companion apparently commits suicide just before he is ready to confess his sins to Scudder. Both take Scuder in some unlikely directions and the payoff is typically messy. Meanwhile, author Lawrence Block introduces one his most interesting side characters to the series, the Irish gangster Mickey Ballou. Overall, this is a solid Scudder novel that is not quite on par with the best of the series. But any Scudder novel makes for excellent reading.

Once again Lawrence Block has managed to blow me away with another fantastic Matt Scudder book. This one is about a guy who is looking for his daughter, who went off to New York to try and find fame. He hires Scudder to find his missing daughter, but the only problem is, there arent many leads. He searches and goes through all the motions and has stumbling blocks in his way, but manages to get around them. I wont tell you the rest, because I dont want to ruin the book for you, but I will just say this. THE ENDING WILL SHOCK YOU!!!!!

Matt Scudder is dealing with the day-in, day-out struggle to stay sober in the Big Apple. He has a case he doesn't have much hope of solving and he's got an AA acquaintance who wants Matt to sponsor him. Eddie Dunphy is a small-time crook, sober for a little over half a year. He has something he really wants to tell Matt, but before he gets a chance, he's found dead in his apartment--an apparent suicide.

It's an open and shut case, but Matt is obsessed with finding out whether or not Eddie died sober. Dead is dead, but if he stayed sober he won the war. Of course, he finds out Eddie was murdered and he also gets a lead on his original case just when he was ready to give up on it.

This book introduces a recurring character in the series: Mickey Ballou, known as the Butcher Boy. Mickey has a reputation. Folks believe he killed a man and carried the guy's head around in a bowling bag for a week, showing it off so people would know not to cross him.

The characters all grow and change over the course of the book. This is a terrific novel and a nice addition to the Scudder series.

The Oz Factors is a pretty good book. The author did a good job for not being well educated. He uses The Wizard of Oz story as a springboard for explaining his philosophy on everything. I think that anyone would enjoy the book. It may make a few people on the extremes (i.e. hard core liberal and conservative people)nervous.

"The Oz Factors" pulls back the curtain of misinformation and deceit carefully concealing the vested interests of the "great and powerful" of western civilization. What you have been taught about western history, science, archaeology and spirituality have been twisted, distorted and concealed from view to serve the self-serving lies and fears of wizards and witches.
Learn how to think for yourself. You don't have to be the victim of the "oz factors" any longer. Read this book.

You probably think it's a good thing to question assumptions. Well if a book helps to to discover assumptions that you forgot you were assuming, you might call that a revelation. I for one enjoy a good revelation. This book is full of them, and wasn't that the real story of the Wizard of OZ? I knew there was something about that movie.....

I think Scott Ryan's review covered the core of Kellemen's arguments, and I don't have that much to add (although I do think Kellemen does gloss over some difficult issues--e.g. would a reasonable God want to give us every concievable scrap of information about how to live, a detailed code that nevertheless allows for some interpretation, a less detailed code, or just the reason we were born with?). One weakness I saw that Ryan didn't: a very weak understanding of Christianity (and I say this as someone who is pretty ignorant on the subject myself). Kellemen notices numerous inconsistencies in the New Testament, and resolves to ask some Christians to explain them away. So far, so good. But he asks Catholics to explain those inconsistencies, and the Catholics are only too happy to agree with him that yes, the New Testament as written is wrong on some details. What's wrong with this? What's wrong is that if you want a defense of Biblical inerrancy, you don't ask Catholics (any more than you would ask Reform Jews to defend the proposition that the Torah is literally the word of God). Instead, you ask the Christians who really do believe that the New Testament is inerrant: fundamentalists and Baptists (the Christian equivalent of Orthodox Jews, in the sense that they take the Biblical text more seriously than other Christians). If Kellemen had gotten such people to agree that, yes, the New Testament is wrong on a few points, I would have been more impressed.

This is the best book on the subject that I have ever read. However, here are two additional proofs the author neglected to mention.

1) Although the author convincingly proves that the Torah could not have been written sometime later in history (the Missing Hero argument), he does not do a good job proving that Moses did not write it or transmit it. However, this is implausible because the Torah states about a half dozen places such statements as "You approached and stood at the foot of the mountain. The mountain was burning with a fire reaching the heart of heaven, with darkness, cloud, and mist. Then God spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sounds of words, but saw no image, there was only a voice. And he said to you his covenant that he commanded you to do" (Deuteronomy 4:11-13).

Note the constant use of the word "you". Had Moses made up the events, written them down, and distributed them to the people, upon reading it they would have said to him something to the effect of: "These events that you are describing never occurred! You are a fraud!" And they would have proceeded to burn the Torah. Moreover, they would have never related the event to their children as diligently as they have, since millions of parents could not be expected to collectively lie to their children about an event they had supposedly witnessed (there is no precedent of such a thing ever happening).

2) One proof against other religions, such as Christianity and Islam that the author neglects, is that they, unlike Judaism, acknowledge that one of their adherents can cease to be a member of their religion and to become a member of another religion by converting to it. Presumably if they believe this to be the case then it follows that in their conception G-d acknowledges this to be the case as well, since the beliefs of religions embody God's beliefs. Otherwise G-d has failed in ensuring that his faith has been disseminated accurately. An unlikely scenario.

However, if there is only one correct religion then all other religions are false, and therefore not acknowledged by God as religions at all. If this is so, how could God or his adherents acknowledge conversion to a religion that does not exist in their framework? God might be able to acknowledge that someone has stopped practicing God's religion or even that he has left the religion to practice no religion at all. But to convert to a nonexistent religion is impossible. Furthermore, considering that God is kind and good, would he allow one of his adherents to leave to practice a religion that God himself knows to be false? In Judaism, however, once someone is born a Jew he is never acknowledged to be "not Jewish" no matter how many religions he converts to.

I find this book to be well-written,the arguments are clear and logical;both the arguments and the evidence presented compelling one to consider the question of Torah's Divine origin seriously.This book is excellent for someone who is open to honestly consider this question.

Marty Appel bring us a signficant book about 19th century baseball, of which not enough is written. This book is also one of 27 that The Easton Press has chosen in its deluxe library of the 27 top baseball books. This books belongs. Many of baseball's present day problems can be traced back to the late 1880's when both players and owners rangled over such concerns as high salaries and the reserve clause. This is also the story of Cap Anson of the Chicago White Stockings getting fed up and ridding himself of the alcohol abusers on the team, Kelly included. Consumption of alcohol by ballplayers was considered to be a sign of manliness (how sad) and many of the players of this time died young and poor. We don't have many books available on 19th century baseball worth your time, but Slide, Kelly, Slide and a few others such as Where They Ain't (Willie Keeler and the Baltimore Orioles) and A Clever Base-Ballist (John Montgomery Ward), are exceptions. Appel's book will not disappoint you.

See a review in www.Sportsbookfile.com, Issue

Winner of the 1996 Casey Award, from Spitball Literary Magazine, as the best baseball book of the year.