Inspirational, funny, moving. A time machine to a place called the 60's. This will open eyes and minds, give new awareness. Not for the shallow or ignorant.

After seeing 'Steal this movie', I had no choice but to learn more about this incredibly crazy man. This book is amazing...it made me laugh out loud, think, ponder the idea of getting out there and causing a ruckus in the name of freedom. His writing flows...like old friends reminicing about their life changing experiences. What an insane, beautiful man. I can only hope that there will be more like him to come...our country needs a good jousting in the ribs!

This Review refers to the paperback edition of Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You, by Norman Solomon, and Reese Erlich and as introduced by Howard Zinn with an afterward by Sean Penn.

Target Iraq is a book of many aspects, covering varying topics relating to the recent Iraqi war from a pre-war perspective. The introductory chapters focus largely on the media and self-censorship, providing the reader with insight into how the larger media organizations conduct their operations. The book then goes on to describe the opinions of the Iraqi people, with both examples from public and private sources. After which it moves into the US propaganda campaigns and examples of why the majority of it is untrue, in the authors' opinions. Detailed in the later chapters is the use and visible consequences of depleted uranium, along with the UN resolution issues, and effects of the economic sanctions. Concluding the book is a chapter concerning US manipulation and discrediting of various aspects of the UN, followed by the motives for war. Also contained in the book is an introduction by Howard Zinn, afterward by Sean Penn, article by Seth Ackerman, Bush speech with analysis, and Resolution 1441 with analysis.

This book contains a nearly extreme bias at points; however, it does probe both sides of some aspects. It does manage to provide a decent overview of Iraqi public opinion, and properly warns that the opinions may change once the displacement of power takes place. There are also informative summaries concerning depleted uranium and the illegal no-fly zones.

The two authors, Solomon and Erlich, switch each chapter, giving the reader an interesting mixture of viewpoints. Solomon is the stronger literary presence throughout the book, yet is also quite lacking in his ability to back up his rather strong claims with proper evidence. The result is a shell of sorts, leaving the reader skeptical if they do not already have a proper background in the area. Erlich, on the other hand, wanders and is weaker in his content but stronger in his presentation of possible sources to collaborate his statements. Yet, Erlich has an intriguing literary form that allows the reader to come to his/her own conclusions. However, neither provides any form of a bibliography, forcing the unfamiliar reader through hours of research to verify their statements. There are also typographical errors in the appendices.

The private interview with the Iraqi civilian family is an invaluable insight into the opinions and thoughts of the Iraqi people. However, the literary styles and lack of sources subtracts heavily from the book. Overall, the book would have been a great and inspiring work, even after the war, had it been the recipient of proper source work and effort. Perhaps the authors could release an updated version with a proper list of sources.

This book brings up a few points that are not publicized in the main-stream media in regards to the situation in Iraq. It could be beneficial for those who don't read alternative press, and would like to familiarize themselves with a non-corporate media view. However, if you are looking for an in-depth analysis of the situation in Iraq, you might be disappointed in the book.

Personally, I thought that the chapter on self-censorship in the media was the most thought provoking.

What the authors have done is great. Solomon and Erlich actually paid attention to exactly how the US government and the news media talked the American public into accepting the 2003 war against Iraq. This book brings terrible truths into focus: the deceptive media practices from President Bush on down, and the inaccurate "information" provided by lots of supposedly fine American journalists, conservatives and liberals alike.

You have to wonder, reading this book, just how the situation got so bad that the reporters don't even seem embarrassed about repeating false statements endlessly! The misleading character of the media coverage about this war is brought home to the reader by Solomon and Erlich. Plus, there's a very moving introduction by the historian Howard Zinn. And Sean Penn in the afterword tells why he became so concerned about the war that was impending and now is history.

This is the kind of multi-layered book you can read easily and thoughtfully. And you can give it to people who might disagree with you and learn a whole lot from reading "Target Iraq." This book provides plenty of facts but it doesn't just pile them on; it puts them in an analytical context that demolishes the claims of the Bush Administration and its apologists.

All but the title story in this volume were published in 1989 as Kiss in the Hotel Joseph Conrad. If you missed these stories the first time, try them now. They are not dated as Howard Norman's storytelling is timeless or even 'out of time' as the characters exist almost in their own dimension of time. Norman's characters are always so finely drawn. Although they lead quiet and even bizarre lives, Howard Norman's prose is so quietly hypnotic that you cannot fail to be drawn into their world, into their time.

This book contains a few short stories about the mischief that Coyote always seems to get into. They held the attention of my five-year-old. We found the last story - Coyote and the Grass People to be particularly amusing, but not for those who don't appreciate a little bathroom humor. The book has a few pictures in black and white. The narrative reads as if the author is really speaking the story the reader.

This book is a bilingual edition (Old French, English) containing approximately 40 Old French fables and their English translations. The originals and the translations are in verse and appear on facing pages so that the scholar who knows Old French can compare the two. Shapiro's translations are quite good. He manages to preserve the rhyming pattern of the originals, without significantly altering the content or resorting to awkward syntax. Also of note here is an outstanding 45 page introduction by Howard Needler, who discusses the history and cultural import of fables as a genre and performs a quick close reading. of each fable in this edition. There are also some nice medievalesque woodcut illustrations. When all's said and done, this is a well-done book-- but, don't think that this is going to be a good gift for a child. While this isn't exactly a scholarly tome, it's a bit denser than your typical rendition of Aesop... and probably isn't going to be too interesting to kids. I highly recommend this for those interested in poetry, and especially medieval poetry, though.

One of the better Stooge books that I have read. Full of great photos and tidbits.

Howard Norman's The Museum Guard tells the relationship between DeFoe, a young museum guard in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Imogen, keeper of the Jewish cemetery who first becomes enraptured by and then literally becomes Jewess on a Street in Amsterdam, the subject of a painting on exhibit. As with Norman's earlier The Bird Artist, this is very much a novel of place and character. Particular to this novel, however, is its setting in history - 1938, a time of Nazi fanaticism and anti-Semitism. It is this context which makes Imogen's "madness" particularly horrifying, because in "becoming" the Jewess in the painting she travels to Amsterdam when Nazi overrun appeared imminent. Norman manages to write a novel that is both shocking and humorous, wise and witty. His use of language, also, is a marvel.

After finishing this wonderful novel, I felt like I had "discovered" a new author. Actually, Howard Norman has been writing since the early 1980s and published his first novel, The Northern Lights, in the late 80s. I was drawn to this book by its title (I work in a museum) but fell in love with it for its quirky characters. It seems that Norman's characters are often forged by tragedy. The parents of DeFoe, the young museum guard, were killed in a Zeppelin accident when he was a boy. He develops a close relationship with his often-drunk uncle Edward, but even closer ones with many of the women that pass through Edward's life, including Imogen, the caretaker of a Jewish cemetary, whom DeFoe and Edward both pursue, though in radically different ways. Be warned, there may be a moment in this novel when you will detest all three of these characters; but forge ahead, because at least two of them will redeem themselves. Don't think of this as just another novel with "quirky" characters. They certainly are quirky, but in ways that make them real rather than caricatures. I was left feeling somewhat troubled about Imogen and the reasons for her crisis, which drives the latter part of the book, and the determination of the people around her to sacrifice everything for her, but that is only a minor complaint. Above all, this is a coming of age story, mainly for DeFoe, who is a product of arrested development due to his parents' untimely deaths, but also for Edward, Imogen, and even--you will see--for the world.

One of the disarming things about this somewhat old-fashioned, charming novel is the gradual realization that most of the tight-knit group of characters have taken up permanent residence in hotels (the main character DeFoe Russet, his cantankerous uncle, his uncle's various paramours, and the artist Heijman); if they do not live in hotels, they tend public buildings such as the museum of the title or the Jewish cemetery of which DeFoe's long-term lover is caretaker. There is nevertheless a feeling that these settings are incidental to the central character's quest, much like the hotel in Ishiguru's mammoth and brilliant The Unconsoled. As a result, Norman avoids the obvious pitfalls of writing about paintings and artists in too much depth at the expense of characterization and story. Even more surprising is that the ostensible focus of the whole story, a modern Dutch painting, Jewess on a Street in Amsterdam, and a series of paintings by the same artist, never becomes hackneyed. Norman prefers to play safe and concerns himself with one character's obsession, a la Vertigo, with the subject of the above-mentioned painting which comes to a museum in the port city of Halifax, Canada, in 1938 and deals with the effects it has on the DeFoe, the narrator. There is no danger of his being too academic ('I am not a thinker here, only a describer', he says at one point). This reviewer would have preferred more detail about the painter, his painting and the tradition of Dutch art the work relates to. But you get plenty of that kind of thing in John Banville, who has already championed this novel. There is, however, one tantalizing idea and opportunity passed up in the layout of the book. In the Picador edition the various chapter titles are literally framed in borders of differing ratios. It would have been an excellent idea to have had these frames actually relate to the paintings mentioned in the text, but they don't, as far as I can see, and they are not consistent. The same can be said of the annoying front cover illustration where we see the heroine Imogen looking at the Jewess in the museum, but the painting she is looking at is totally contradicted by the few descriptions of this painting we get in the text. These are small caveats, because what Norman delivers first and foremost is a riveting story about passions which are constantly deferred from one object or person to another. DeFoe is in love with Imogen, who is obsessed with taking on the identity of a figure in a painting which she rightly assumes is the deceased wife of the artist. DeFoe's uncle, a womaniser and seeming rogue, is more passionate about the roving political commentator Ovid Lamartine, who he gives up his life trying to save, than in his mistresses, one of whom is Imogen. The curator of the museum, in love with Miss Delbo, the museum guide, risks his life and probably his reputation chaperoning Imogen to Amsterdam when the Nazis are on the doorstep of the city.
Norman's style is straightforward, almost conversational, with moments of light relief that play on occasional oddnesses in the two central characters' perceptions of things. One moment to savour is DeFoe's slightly manic hatred of one particular painting in the permanent collection, Sunday Flower Market by Peter Lely. 'After five minutes or so of looking at Sunday Flower Market', DeFoe explains, 'my opinion was: Get me out of here', and he goes on to give a longish description of the picture which features a menacing dwarf with a knife about to slit open the stomach of a goat. 'That dwarf really got to me', he adds for good measure. DeFoe's uncle provides moments of quirky humour too, at one point arguing in front of a tour party with Miss Delbo that the bread held by the Jewess is stale. On another occasion, DeFoe reports, his 'uncle was sitting on the corner chair. When he saw me, he produced a dunce cap he had fashioned from [a] newspaper. He fitted it over his head. It was too small. He pinched his mouth into a pout, then slapped his own wrist. My uncle could make me laugh'. Imogen displays this quirkiness when in a discussion initiated by their discovery that Miss Delbo and Edgar Connaught, the museum curator, are lovers. To DeFoe's '"They only have the briefest conversations in the museum. A few sentences at most"', Imogen replies baldly, '"'See you tonight at seven' is one sentence, DeFoe"'.
In an interesting symmetry at the end everyone is replaced or replaces someone else. DeFoe steals the painting for Imogen (strongly echoing Banville's The Book of Evidence) and ends up in another public institution - prison - for a short time, while Imogen succeeds temporarily at least in replacing Heijman's wife as his new model (incidentally driving the artist mad in the process). Heijman in turn redoes a series of paintings of his first wife, which the curator takes back to Canada. The museum curator himself is temporarily replaced while he is away, and DeFoe's job goes to the brother of a policeman he initially approached after an incident where he suspected his uncle of stealing The Jewess. We cannot be sure what happens to Imogen in the end, but there is a good chance that she is tending a cemetery in Amsterdam or even in Germany, whereas DeFoe is back at the hotel.

"The Bird Artist" is a dark yet charming tale set in turn of the century Newfoundland. Howard Norman desearved "National Book Review Finalist" recognition for this well-crafted tale. The protagonist, Fabian Vas, is a bird artist and furthermore a murderer. I've ruined nothing--for the heart of the novel lays not in murder nor bird art but rather how a lonely stretch of land can push characters in most disarming ways. Howard's novel is strangely reminiscent of the better known, Newfoundland-set novel "The Shipping News". I liked it more and found it to be if not as humorous, more touching. The plot is wonderfully coilded; there are plenty of subtle twists and suprises..

Howard Norman writes what I think of as anti-mysteries. It is his trademark to announce the "crime' that forms the basis for his story right up front. So, Norman's novels tend to start with confession and work their way toward explanation (as opposed to a standard mystery, which moves toward a solution.). In The Museum Guard the crime is theft; in his newest, The Haunting of L., it is adultery, then murder. This book begins thusly:

My name is Fabian Vas. I live in Witless Bay, Newfoundland. You would not have heard of me. Obscurity is not necessarily failure, though; I am a bird artist, and have more or less made a living at it. Yet I murdered the lighthouse keeper, Botho August, and that is an equal part of how I think of myself.
This novel is characterized by a dry humor, unlikely but truly engaging characters, and the skill with which Norman fixes them in their community and landscape.

As he recounts the story to the reader, Fabian, despite knowing where he is headed, even what he will see when he arrives, remains at the mercy of the stubborn swells of memories that preoccupy him along the way. And that, it seems, is the great mystery at the heart of Norman's anti-mysteries. Not what will or did happen, but what role the narrator actually played in everything and why it all seems to have so little to do with him. Norman's befuddled narrator/protagonists, with their confessional introductions, imply that everything they are describing is, in fact, being made sense of in the retelling, that the reader, therefore, is witnessing their very synthesis into a story.

Although critics have celebrated The Bird Artist as a tale of "redemption by art," the novel seems skeptical about the idea. For one thing, meaningful redemption requires guilt, and Fabian feels none (nor is the reader shown any reason that he should, a fact that may bother some).

There is a big difference, though, between reckoning and redemption. Fabian's "redemption" for Botho's murder is the fantastical mural of Witless Bay he is paid to paint near the end of the novel, above the pulpit of the church. The offer, from Reverend Sillet, is tendered with a mix of prurience and sanctimonious sadism-he throws in extra money for a depiction of the murder. Indeed, Fabian's show of contrition seems to be mostly for Sillet's benefit, and Margaret rightly mocks his shameless decision to paint himself into the mural, facedown in the mud in the place of Botho. But if the mural does not offer redemption, it does offer something like revelation. For the first time in the novel, Fabian steps back from the enveloping current of events, fixes them in relationships, and imposes his own organizing vision on them. What Fabian's art does offer are these moments of clarity, the knowledge that, in the end, Botho's murder is simply "an equal part of how I think of myself."

For, in the end, it seems to me it is not so much redemption Fabian seeks, but understanding. Which is a scenario much more true to the realities of everyday life than is the struggle for redemption in my view.
A complex, challenging and rewarding read.

The events depicted in Howard Norman's novel THE BIRD ARTIST are cemented by his finely-honed style into their time and place -- and at the same time they are as universal as they could be. It's one of those stories that could have easily been written as a mystery -- if the murderer had not confessed to the crime in the first paragraph.

Fabian Vas is a bird artist -- a talent that would seem to have been born in him. He lives in Witless Bay, Newfoundland, born just at the end of the 19th century. The village is not a wealthy one, and the people are simple and straightforward -- but not stupid. Several of them, in fact, I would classify as being inordinately wise -- their comments about the events that transpire, as well as about life in general reveal this about them. There is a lot of gentle humor to be found here, as well as suspense -- for, even knowing the perpetrator and the victim, it's entertaining to see how things play out.

Although Fabian reveals the fact that he has murdered a man at the outset of the book, the author's storytelling skills would not allow my interest to fade. Looking back to the time before the murder, and chronicling the events that followed it, Norman weaves a rich tapestry of these characters lives for the reader -- in the hands of a sensitive director, this would make a memorable film.

I picked up THE NORTHERN LIGHTS after having read Norman's superb second novel, THE BIRD ARTIST, and was disappointed. Although reviews were strong for this book, and I believe it was a National Book Award finalist, it felt like an apprentice effort to me. The characters and situations were strange--as they often were in THE BIRD ARTIST--but not nearly as compelling. The plot was loose and slippery, and didn't cohere by the end of the novel. It felt like Norman was trying too hard to be obscure and poetic. This is a mediocre first novel, but does hint at the wonderful things to come. Now go read THE BIRD ARTIST.

This is a fantanstic book. Norman tells a story very well; his clean beautiful writing style evokes the northern remote wilderness settlements vividly. In this setting, two young boys become great friends, and their relationship grows as they do. This book reminded me of A Separate Peace, with a Canadian edge and tone. It compelled me to read The Bird Artist -- also terrific.

I picked up this novel in part to see if Norman's wonderfully written novel The Museum Guard was a fluke. I can say emphatically that it was not. The Northern Lights is Norman's first novel, but his prose reads like a veteran writer's. Rich with the details, personal habits, quirks, and eccentricities that make up real people, Lights is basically a coming of age story set in 1950s and 1960s northern Canada. As with The Museum Guard, Norman's characters are driven by strange tragedy. In The Museum Guard, the main character's parents are killed in a Zeppelin accident; in the Northern Lights, Noah's best friend Pelly is killed when his unicycle breaks through the ice. This sets in motion a series of events that forces Noah to adjust to the loss of his friend, and come to grips with his wandering father and lonely mother, who is obsessed with the story of Noah's ark to the point of illness. Unlike with the animals on the ark, Norman shows us that sometimes people have no companion, and must survive alone, even when surrounded by people who love them. The Cree Indians are richly drawn, and provide a touchstone--a remembrance of Pelly--when Noah moves to Toronto and befriends a family of Cree. Told in shifting chronology, the story draws the reader back and forth from action to reaction to an ending that will leave you ready for another Norman novel.

Nice photos, but how much faith can you put into the text when simple errors stick out like sore thumbs

For instance:

Man Called X: Ken Thurston did not have a girlfriend and had nothing to do with the Cafe Tamborine (that was an entirely different program.)

Jack Moyles did NOT replace Frank Sinatra as Rocky Fortune. That series ended when Sinatra left it. Moyles DID star in Rocky Jordan, an entirely different show.

It is little things like this and make the book suspect for me. How many more errors are in this book? What can one take as fact and not with a grain of salt?

Excellent concept, faulty execution. I would not buy this book again and am considering returning my copy for credit. I do not consider this book to be a valuable reference item. Casual reading yes...reference work...no

This book, The Encyclopedia of American Radio, is an excellent, comprehensive compilation of facts and photos relating to radio shows and personalities of the past that were part of Radio's Golden Age...the thirties, forties and fifties. It is a very fond look back at those days when we all gathered around the family radio and listened to such great shows as The Lone Ranger, The Shadow, The Lux Radio Theater, Jack Benny, et al. The amount of information given in this book is vast and the Appendices, which lists hundreds of dramatic anthology shows and personalities not given separate entries in the book, is extensive. An amazing achievememnt and it is Fun to read and not dull, which is more than I can say for other less well written Radio Encyclopedias that have been published in the last few years. Congratulations, Mr. Lackmann, for a job well done.

Ron Lackmann's Encyclopedia of American Radio is a wonderfuul and useful book about Old Time Radio. It is the only book I have found on the subject that gives both show descriptions and biographies of many major radio personalities. I have found other books that are filled with far many more errors than are found in this book, and yet those books seem to get favorable reviews from certain somewhat bitter people. I have been told that authors writing for vanity publishers often write favorable reviews for their own books on similar sujects and nasty picky criticisms of other people's books on similar subjects in order to undermine work done by others. How awful. I found the illustrations in Lackmann's Radio Encyclopedia especially nostalgic and very provocative of a time gone by. I understand the bvook won the POpular Culture award as Best Reference book for 1997...which was well deserved. The extensive APPendices is also most impressive.