Mr. Speaker: The Biography Of Tom Murphy is the story of the man who was Speaker of the House longer than anyone in Georgia's political history. Murphy was powerful, controversial, enigmatic, effective, influential, and a consummate politician complete with a front-page image and political bravado. Georgia Journalist Richard Hyatt has applied all of his investigative and research skills to provide the reader with an engaging, informative, and insightful portrait of a legislator who was intimately involved in the political affairs of his state for decades. Mr. Speaker is highly recommended reading for students of political science and Georgia history.

Where do we end the story of the Civil War? With the assassination of Abraham Lincoln? The surrender of the last Confederate troops? The Grand Review of the Union armies at Washington, D.C.? Because the Time-Life series on the Civil War was able to devote over two-dozen volumes to the subject, "The Nation Reunited: War's Aftermath" is able to end with the death of the last Confederate soldier in 1959. This has a certain resonance for me, because I live in the city where the last Union soldier died in 1956 and often see his statue down in Canal Park.

Richard W. Murphy divides the Civil War's aftermath into five chapters after a prologue of "An Unforgettable Last Hurrah," when President Andrews Johnson ordered the Union armies to stage a grand review on May 23-24, 1865. "The North Divided" deals with the political turmoil over how the rebellious Southern states should be dealt with now that the war was over. In addition to covering the efforts of the Radical Republicans and those who wanted to follow Lincoln's example, the chapter has sidebars on the fate of Jefferson Davis, the trial of the commandant of Andersonville Prison Captain Henry Wirz, and how the former slaves were "Free--but Far from Equal." "The Radicals Ascendant" deals with the impeachment trial of President Johnson with a sidebar on the final years of Robert E. Lee. "A Wild Rush for Riches" covers the great migration that followed the Civil War as the West opened up, looking at what "Soldering on the Frontier" meant for the veterans from both sides who continued to fight.

"A Presidency Scarred by Scandal" looks at the troubles of the two administration of President Grant, with over a dozen wonderful Thomas Nast cartoons. "Retreat from Reconstruction" concludes the tale with President Hayes keeping to his promise to remove all troops from the South and how the dead and living veterans of the war came to be honored no matter which side they fought upon during the Civil War. The epilogue to "The Nation Reunited" is a pictorial on the "Twilight for the Blue of Gray," which covers the thousands of monuments honoring wartime deeds of valor, the formalization of Memorial Day in 1868 to honor those who fell in battle, the Soldier's Homes built to take care of elderly and infirmed veterans, and the reunions held at old battlefield, including the 7th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1938. The book's final photograph are survivors of the Philadelphia Brigade and Pickett's division shaking hands across teh stone wall on Cemetery Ridge. Certainly there could have been no more poignant or fitting final image for this epic series of volumes on the great American tragedy of the Civil War.

If you want a behind the scenes look at Remo and Chiun, the training, Folcroft, and Mac (and a little Smith), this is the book. Really explains a LOT about Remo and his transformation, that was not bad - for a hamburger eating white man. Much better than the movie it ties in to.

Dr. Judith White is back with her genetic formula and is putting it into bottled water. She also has some designs on Remo and in the process of reaching him she infects Mark Howard with her genetic formula, turning him nto one of her animal/people. The only thing wrong with this book is it is Jim Mullaney's last for Gold Eagle. He leaves on a high note though and leaves me wanting more great adventures from him. His writing really brings back memories of the early stories by Sapir and Murphy. You can even read more about them in a re-issue of The Assassin's Handbook that you can also order from Amazon or through Warren Murphy's own web page.

Solid entry into the Destroyer series. A serious entry with a mysterious and credible threat. This novel also should be classified under the mythology arc (adding and ending something to the overall story of the Destroyer series). Good read.

Reference for reference, By Eminent Domain had probably the most since #100. My favorite, non-spoiler scene was Remo trying to rattle the new assistant director by mentioning in the detail the exotic deaths of the other two CURE directors who replaced Smith.

And I also continue to believe that Mark Howard is a satire/parody of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan. Both are/were CIA analysts whose job is to predict things out of meaningless information. In their capacities in the CIA, they both came to know the President. And, oh yeah, their last names are commonly used as first names.

Anna is still here in book two of this "Rusted Curtain" mini-series. It looks like she may be responsible for this mess, at lease unknowingly. Remo is actually one-upping Chiun on the Sinanju histories. The twosome from Sinanju finally meet Smith's new assistant. All Remo wants to do is kill him. Chiun simply calls him a prince (after all, He's Emperor Smith's #2).

There's some more Sinanju history, another prophecy, Remo battling an internal crisis. Many hints about the future of the series, Chiun, Remo and Smith. Looks like big changes are on the way!

It was a REALLY good read. Great plot, lots of name dropping, set-ups, and foundation laying for the series next books.

As a continuation of the Rusted Curtain Saga, we are once again pitting Remo and Chuin against the Russians. We have a mad general with a terrible weapon at his disposal. A secret weapon forged in blood from a fishing village in Korea...

Another excellent installment in the adventures Remo and Chuin. Well written and leaving fans of the series hungry for more info.

For fans of the series, this seems to be a transitional book. By that I mean new ghost author Jim Mullaney is trying to advance the storyline by putting events into motion that will likely change the series. If you are not a fan of the series, go out and try it. The mixture of topical events and humor along with the action, has something for nearly everyone. Longtime fans will be somewhat surprised to see Remo's boss Smith begrudgingly accept an assistant. This is just one plotline that will change the series eventually.

The Positives: The author has either been a longtime fan himself,or has done his homework well. He brings up plot points that occurred many years,and many books ago. His attention to these details is very satisfying. The Negatives: just 2-The over-usage of pun-filled names runs thin. Remo seems to much more talkative than ever before,but the verbiage seems a bit contrived and over-used. Remo seemed to have far more dialogue than Chiun in this one.

Overall,though a must read for anyone with an interest in this series,both past and present.

Satellites are being destroyed in their orbits, Huitzilopochtli worshippers in Barkley, CA. are trying to declare independence, Russian agents are working inside our borders. Do all these things tie together? Will Remo fine the common thread and stop it all before the world is destroyed? Sure he will, but it's still fun to find out how.

Great story that really sets up what should be an even better finish in the next book. All the thread that Mr. Mullaney is dangling out there are sure getting my interest peaked.

Disloyal opposition is a fast-paced,unbelievably funny addition to the destroyer series. The political humor is second to NONE,and presents a delightful alternative to the liberal, politically correct sarcasm found in most popular fiction. The introduction of a heir/assistant for "Emperor Smith" is a interesting development that should serve to enrich future tales by providing a secondary plot. The dialogue from both Remo & Chiun is just hilarious. I can't wait to get the next book in this mini-series! Run,do not walk to get this one!

Unlike the other reviews, I found this instalment to be a total waste of time. If you are new to the series its great for a initial lesson. However for those of us who have been following the series since the begining, its a rehash of old material with some filler. Lets get back to current times and current problems.

Don't be fooled into thinking this is just a retelling of past events in the Destroyer series. This book goes way beyond anything done in the first Remo adventure. It does retell how Remo became the Destroyer but this is less than 5% of the book. The rest is a great look at events that were happening around Remo during his indoctrination. The book also answers a lot of questions about things that are happening to Remo in the present day by showing how these events started way back in 1960s.

This was a great story and is tied tightly to the current storyline. It's a shame Jim is leaving the series, he's done a terrific job in most of his books.

As Jim says in the intro, this book is not following the source material 100%. I think he greatly improved the storyline from the first book (Created, the Destroyer) - I even liked Remo in this version of the series beginning.

This is the handbook to have for writing ASP applications. The first six chapters cover everything you need to write basic applications that dynamically generate web pages. The following chapters cover specific areas such as database access, site personalization, optimizations, and interacting with other applications. If you want to build web-enabled distributed applications on a Microsoft NT platform, you will need more than this book, but this book is essential. From a technical standpoint, I would give the book 5 stars. However, apparantly WROX forgot to edit it. It is certainly understandable that authors selected for their technical knowledge may require a little help in grammar, syntax, sentence structure, and writing style. It is unfortunate that WROX chooses not to provide this help, but rather to ship the books as soon as they are complete. WROX has an outstanding group of authors who cover every essential NT technology as well as many cross-platform technologies. I hope that WROX will take a closer look at the quality of the final product.

Want to learn to build your own amazon.com? It's in this book. You'll have to be proficient with ansi-SQL and/or ADO 2.0 in order to really take advantage of the information presented here. But overall it's a well presented book on ASP. If you plan to buy this and want to build true interactive sites with full database integration, pick up ADO 2.0 Programmer's Reference and Instant SQL Programming also from WROX Press, then you'll have a strong book base to build powerful web sites such as amazon.com. The only drawback is its concentration on VBScript rather than ECMAscript (aka JavaScript). Try and stay away from the VBScript presented in this book and use ECMAScript for the examples instead. The reason is because Microsoft and Netscape are finally agreeing on ECMAScript standards that will be much easier to translate into Client-side Cross-browser code if you use it for Server-side code now. As ECMAscript matures it will present a much more flexible environment to work in than VBScript will (much the same way that C compared to Visual Basic does now). I don't have a book recommendation for ECMAscript, I haven't found a good reference yet, the info on the web has been my resource. But if you're desparate for a reference, WROX Press also has a handbook called Instant JavaScript that isn't too bad, but has lots of room more improvement. Happy Building! Ciao -C

If you have read the first edition of this book, this second edition may look familiar. However, the book has more pages - about 1000 (edition 1 had about 600). There are several additions, especially topics on MTS and Message Queue, which are very good in themselves. "A case study in compatibility" is excellent guide for all, to develop for a varied set of browsers. A whole chapter is dedicated to transactions, a prelude to the chapters on E-Commerce case study and MTS.

The best part is an extended reference at the end of the book, and this time JScript is also covered.

I have a few comments about this book
1. The book should have been thinner, with some chapters on CD-ROM
2. You must be at intermediate level to use this book, else you could get lost easily. Beginners, don't yet touch this unless you know VBScript

In short, without a doubt, the best book ever written on ASP.

Contrary to the others who have given a review, I found myself pretty disappointed by this edition. Where was Chiun??? He certainly wasn't the guy who used the word "maudlin" and spoke in such even tones. He certainly wasn't the man who passed up so many opportunities to bust Remo's chops when given so many invitations to do so. One of my favorite aspects of The Destroyer is the relationship between Remo and Chiun and I just didn't feel it in this one. I liked the idea of Remo trying to take on the role of the thinker. What a rich environment to poke relentless fun at Remo, but it never materialized. Better luck next time.

This was a very welcome return to form for the Destroyer after some lacklustre times and the thing that pleased me most was the fact that Remo was facing somebody as superhuman as him. Although the recent Nazi stories were taking Remo and Chiun back to how we like them (bickering and smartmouthing each other) the villains were hardly much of a challenge so there was a bit of a "ho hum" flavour to them. This story was great though in that we had somebody who could damage Remo which gave some much needed tension to the story and which led to a great showdown. A really entertaining read.

At present this is one of the best Destroyer books lately and the last few have been pretty good. I enjoyed the flashback into the past books, it was tied in nicely with this story. Over the years it's gotten so Remo can't be touched or hurt by anyone so it was refreshing to see a little bit of a reality check given to Remo, I won't say anymore. The book was definately fun and enjoyable to read if you're into the Destroyer don't miss this one.

Having enjoyed this series when I was much younger but not having read the last 40 or so installments, I was eager to reacquaint myself with the world of Sinanju. I was both pleased and disappointed. I was pleased to find Remo and Chiun bantering as always amid self-absorbed parodies of national political and cultural figures, but I was disappointed that the satire was not fresher and more pointed. I think the author needs to take a more sophisticated approach to the core material, understanding that the audience over the last 15 years has been exposed to modern-day events that are often more absurd than the best Destroyer parodies.

Finally, Chiun and Remo are back in form. Good characters, baddies you can really hate, and good action. No more super-spy Remo. Gone is the doddering, useless Chiun. Remo anc Chiun are their old selves, and all is good with Sinanju.

After slogging through the last three so-called "Destroyer" novels I was delighted to find our magnificent heroes back in true form. The reader who said Remo and Smith weren't themselves is OUT OF HIS MIND! The characters are great again, the parody is subtle (the Ross Perot parody is gleefully nasty) and the villains are evil incarnate. I only wished for a more extended battle scene at the end of the book. Clearly the author(s?) knows his Remo mythology. I have read these books for almost three decades and found no differenece between this book and the greatest Destroyers of days gone by. Long live Sinanju!