This book reviews the lives of three long-neglected cowboy stars - Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, and Audie Murphy. Specifically, it follows the western films of these three actors. The book presented a good deal of information on the films and it is too bad most don't seem to be available on dvd as I would like to see the films that I have not seen. There were great descriptions of the plot and making of the films which was well done because it was evident that the author had viewed most of the available films. However, what bothered me was the inaccuracy of the very first line of the book that indicated Scott was born in Orange, North Carolina when all references I have seen indicate it was Orange County, Virginia. When I see something I know to be inconsistent with many other sources, I begin to wonder if anything in the book is accurate as to the biographical data on the stars. However, I would still recommend this book to anyone interested in these films or the stars.

Entertaining and well-written book about the 3 movie-cowboys: Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea and Audie Murphy. Book tells not so much about their private lives and relations - but focuses on all the westerns they made since 1946. The writer tells detailed about each film and gives his personal opinion. DonÂ't think that he considers all of them to be masterpieces - far from that! So, if these actors were some of your movie heroes from the 50Â's and 60Â's, the book is recommendable and easy read (even for a foreigner).

Apart from John Wayne, there were only three cowboy stars who hung on in the late 50s and early 60s, before spaghetti westerns briefly revived the genre, and created a new cowboy hero, Clint Eastwood. These were Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea and Audie Murphy. The films made by Scott between 1956 and 1960, directed by Budd Boetticher and written by Burt Kennedy, are among the best westerns ever put to film. What Nott has done here is to briefly survey the careers of all three performers before the late 50s, then give a detailed look at their final films. His research is excellent (I only found one error, the often repeated nonsense that Billy the Kid was born in New York City or Brooklyn) and his writing style is coherent and clear. Although Nott clearly loves these performers and these films, this is not a gushing fan publication... a comment that cannot be made for much of the output of this particular publisher. Recommended.

Sorry, but I have to disagree with the reviews so far. I my opinion this is the worst book from QUE-Books I have ever read (most of the QUE-books are really good). The author never explains the essential details about HTML, he always strays into simple, unneccessary details or into complicated, unneccessary details, but never gets to the point what is really useful. And if there's the rare occasion something is really explained, it will be repeated at least five times... I don't want to say the author doesn't know what he is writting about, he simply just don't know how to write...

I just have to say this is the greatest book ever written. Why? Because it's MY web site that is featured in Chapter 3, Fig 3.12! It's under the heading of "The Wrong Stuff: What Not to Put on the Web"

I never got any royalty money out of the deal either, whats up with that? Can I sue for defamation of web site? Hmmm... probably not, but since it's the first site I ever made back when I was a freshman in Highschool, and now it's immortalized in print - I forgive him.

Greatest book ever written!

This book was great

Awful commie propaganda. Slanderous portraits of Liberals and of the Whites in the civil war. Wafer-thin characters all around, from decadent blood-sucking nobles to gooey warm camaraderie amongst their "class enemies." Read Tolstoy instead. Life is too short.

Certainly a masterpiece, spellbinding for 1300 pp., I happened on this amazing book as a remainder at The Strand in New York. Difficulty keeping the generals apart and whose side they were on, but a captivating story that has led me to learn to read and write Russian with hopes of living there/studying there. I had been a fan of Russian poetry for a while, esp Ahkmatova, but this is really simply an unbelievable story. Would be interested in reading more about World War I and this part of the world. Read The Guns of August and now need to read the equivalent for this area. Your suggestions are encouraged.

This is the second time I've read this thousand over page tome and it's truly magnificent. The greatest Russian/Soviet novel this century. Sholokhov is in the ranks of Tolstoy, Turgenev and Dostoevsky. An intensely beautiful, powerful and action filled tale of heroes in a land changed forever by war and revolution.

Largely regarded as the founder of Cultural Ecology, Julian Steward's theory strived to bridge the gap between human cultural adaptations and the physical environment. His "Essays on Social Transformation" are an essential addition to any social science library, and an intellectual touchstone for those interested in human adaptation. The editor, himself a student of Steward's, provides an insightful introduction to both Steward's life and ethnographic research, while allowing the greater corpus of the text to "speak for itself." The compilation of these essays was also aided by Steward's wife, in mindful appreciation of his work.

This book was written by a panel of scholars who cumulate PhDs in physics, philosophy and theology, and are more of the "liberal" trend (either evolutionists, Neotheist, Postmodern...). The different essays present a variety of views, but are highly speculative. I do not want to question the value of these scholars, I just think that they have to speculate so much because we know so little about Chaos theory or Quantum Mechanics.
The book is anyway a worthy attempt, given that unclear fields such as Chaos Theory or Quantum Mech. belong as much to physics as to Theology or to Philosophy. All interpretations seem possible.

An important study for our entrance into an age unfettered by a religious system repressing scientific progress, moving toward the merging of science and new religious study.

This book deals with Quantum cosmology, time (most contributors think that god is not eternal), the laws of nature, the problem of mind (they have a reductionist and evolutionary view) and the anthropic principle. The overall view of the book is neotheist. The authors are scientist or theologians.
It is incredible that there is no contribution and no consideration of the many works of the philosopher William Craig, who is the authority in the matter. Many of his articles can be found at leaderu.com, and his book is more serious than this one (the debate with Smith: "Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology"). Concerning the mind, Moreland's "Immortality" or Swinburne's "The Evolution of the Soul" are better works.

Finding intersections between religion and science is tricky business, given that they haven't been on serious speaking terms for a couple of hundred years. I thought this book, in the area of cosmology, did an excellent job of making connections between quantum cosmology and orthodox christianity. While it does not propose pat answers, and refuses to sign up to anyone's dogma, it offers some fascinating ideas. Who would have thought, for example, that the no-boundaries condition that Hawking proposed for his explanation of the early universe, far from denying the existence of God (as Hawking and Sagan say) actually provide an interesting model for the operation of the timeless Trinity in a temporal world? The religion here is perfectly orthodox, though it does not kowtow to fundamentalism, and is perhaps a little too reverent to process theology ideas. There are some excellent and (as far as I can tell) accurate summaries of some very tough and interesting scientific ideas. Excellent reading if your mind isn't already made up on science/religion issues. And if you are willing to work at it some.

This is the traditional anthropology book written during the women's lib movement. Certainly, women's issues are important to understanding a culture, but they are not the only part of the culture that one should focus on.

First, as mentioned earlier, they seem to only focus on the women's lives of the community. They may mention men here and there, but only in relevance to women. Are men unimportant without women? Do they not have a separate life? Perhaps if the men's lives had been discussed even a bit, I would have learned something about their culture.

Secondly, Yolanda seems to be the main author of this book. Her husband has done all of his publishing from their excursion, so he seems to have little influence over the content. Perhaps he should because then the reader might get a fuller picture of their lives.

Finally, they focus on the traditional and boring aspects of female lives. Perhaps that is great for a thesis, but not for the average reader. The details given are less interesting than a cold, gray day in London.

Perhaps this book was a great introduction into how not to write a book for anthropology, but it certainly would not be of any use for other purposes.

I found this book to be a rather insiteful and refreshing look at a culture from a woman's standpoint. Another reviewer of this book complained that the details of the women's daily life was dull and that the lack of the man's viewpoint left little to learn of the culture. I completely disagree. Traditionally, anthropology focuses on the lives of men when studying any culture leaving women to automatically seem umimportant and mundane. In studying the Mundurucu, the Murphey's realized that the women of the village were the real backbone. Yes, men provided the most coveted village luxury of meat, but little else. The women provided the staple of village nutrition, almost singlehandedly raised children, and furthermore, the Murphey's detected that the women of the village understood the importance of their role while allowing the men to believe themsevles in control. This idea gives the reader a much deeper understanding of the culture rather than just from the point of view of the male sex. The above mentioned reviewer also complained that Yolanda Murphey seems to have written the majority of the book: while this opinion cannot be proved of disproved here, I would refer this reviwer to the section of the book where the Murphey's discuss the overall advantage any female anthropologist has in the field. They found that Yolanda was readily accepted by the women of the village simply because she wasn't a man, furthermore, Yolanda was more accepted by the men in the village than her husband because she was seen as an outsider rather than as a woman whereas her husband was a man to them who did not have the hunting skills needed to be accepted by them. No wonder then, that Yolanda would be able to provide a more insightful outlook on the Mundurucu cluture! Overall, the book was anything but mundane and gave a refreshing view of anthropolocigal research. The tactic of viewing the culture from a woman's point of view gave a new meaning to the ideas that fuel the culture.

"In the morning we sat behind our house drinking coffee and watching the mists rising from the hillside in thin tendrils that were said by the Indians (who knew that it was really mist) to be the campfire of a mythical inambu bird. And the evenings often closed in brilliant, iridescent sunsets, kaleidoscopes of shifting colors. It was an enchanted land existing in a distant place and peopled by descendants of a remote age. To enter it was to step through the looking glass."

What would it be like to be a woman living in the Brazilian Amazon Basin? What if you lived in the moment, survival being a daily challenge? How would you set up your life so you had the support you needed when a man walked out of your life leaving you to care for his children? The women in the Amazon have it all figured out. In the first four pages you see the exotic beauty and undeniable reality of life.

The authors were a newly married couple when they first walked into a Mundurucu village in 1952. This book was written in the 70s and explains life from the perspective of a female anthropologist. Yolanda spent time with the women who accepted her as a friend and sister. Robert spent time with the men and learned about the ways they felt towards the women and how seriously they took their religious beliefs. This book really does include both sides, but has a definite focus on women.

This is a fascinating study of how the Mundurucu women humor the "mythically dominant" males, how they care for their men and how they survive when their marriages don't work out. It is a story about how women have found a way to survive by bonding with other women and sticking together through life.

When you read this book you realize how universal women really are. They all seem to basically want the same thing. You have to laugh when you read how the women encourage their husbands to work harder so they can buy new clothes and are even quite willing to do the work themselves. In fact, from this book, it does appear both sexes are working rather hard all day long just to survive. Afternoon naps are however a necessity because of the heat.

This story is also a beautiful look at survival. Of how men and women depend on one another to meet their basic needs. In the Mundurucu society, women and men took on various roles and responsibilities although the women tended to do most of the menial tasks and raised the children. Sound familiar? Well life is changing all over the world and by the end of this book, you can see how the Mundurucu Indians have already adapted to change.

Contents:

Woman's Day
The Land and the People
Munmdurucu Culture
Women in Myth and Symbol
The Woman's World
Women and Married Life
Women and Social Change
Women and Men

The work of Yolanda and Robert Murphy encourages an understanding of women's lives in the non-Western world. It focuses on gender relations and the social roles women play in the Amazon forest. Yolanda explains how the women rear their children, take care of their husbands, form groups to complete tasks and keep control of their lives even in difficult situations. There are descriptions of bathing in rivers, preparing foods, gardening, feasts, childcare, rubber collection and all sorts of interesting facts about the lives of the Mundurucu people.

While I thought this book would be only focusing on the women, the second chapter surprised me with information about the land and there are a few maps. There is also plenty of information about the men and what they desire, miss about the older cultures and how they even laugh and say that the homes really do belong to the women and in some areas the men live in a "men's house." There is information about hunting trips and the crafts the men work on in their spare time.

The processing of the manioc plant will interest anyone who has ever cooked tapioca. The myths are entertaining and it was interesting to read their version of the Adam and Eve story.

A widely read and beautifully written classic study of Brazil's Mundurucu Indians.

This book was interesting, but still left a lot of questions open in my mine. I especially enjoyed the chapters from the theological perspectives, but did not learn much new on the neuroscience research. I liked all the different perspectives that the book had to offer. It is definately technical reading!

This book is a short 100 page plus account of the actions of a unit of the 505th RCT of the 82nd Airborne Division. It takes place from 6-9 June after the drop in the vicinity of St. Mere Eglise. Sgt. Robert Murphy's unit had the task of taking the bridge at la Fiere, just west of St. Mere Eglise and on the Merderet River. I commend Sgt. Murphy for putting his combat experiences in print, as any personal account of this kind is a contribution to WWII history. However, I found the book confusing and lost interest in the account early on. It does not have the griping interest of the personal combat accounts of Burghett, Ganter, Neil, Blunt, or McKenzie (On Time, On Target). Much of the problem stems from lack of sketch maps detailing where the action Murphy is describing is taking place (this is a criticism I have in general with military histories). The bridge (the author points out that some authors have not been able to distinguish "bridge" from "bridgehead") and causeway are captured and the descriptions are at times exciting, but figuring out how the accounts tie into the ultimate victory is practically impossible. The book does contain a few military maps in the appendix but the scale is too large to relate the geography to Murphy's account. I was disappointed in this book and found it far too anecdotal to be of use to the average reader.

I found this book at work a few years ago, and I eventually set about reading it at my various sittings on the throne. It is the only Nero Wolfe book I've read. I remembered William Conrad playing the role in the early 80's. It was a most entertaining series. Unfortunately this book was a travesty. Don't waste your time with this.

A playboy is murdered after committing a heinous act. If an innocent man hadn't confessed there would be no reason to solve the case. This is the most flawed of the Goldsborough Wolfe series I have read. Archie approaches a situation with no real plan and becomes a temporary red herring. Along with murder, which is the usual fare in these mysteries, another crime which sets the chain of events in motion seems out of place in a Wolfe mystery. Finally there is a murderer whose motive better fits a cop show on television. This book just does not match up well to the Nero Wolfe legacy and it really stands out as something that only gets published because Nero Wolfe is on the cover.

An average mystery featuring a beloved character (and Nero Wolfe as well). Certainly, on its own, this book would not stand the test of time, but as part of the overall series it is fine. It falls in the bottom third of the canon... but it is certainly much better than no book and better than the average mystery.. even if not up to the standards of Rex Stout.