This is a beautiful book of lovely photographs and tempting recipies. Great for summer parties & cook outs. Mango and guava are my favorites & there are wonderful recipies for these in the book. Could also be used as a "Coffee Table" Book because of the attractive photography.

Van Aken is lauded by the likes of Emeril Lagasse as being a true pioneer in a new cuisine which fuses American-Caribbean-Pacific Rim foods into exciting new taste combos.

Significant in this cuisine is the use of tropical fruit, so Van Aken has been experimenting. Here we garner the fruits of his research on fruits, with this guide. He also prepared the colorful posters which one can obtain, deatialing the two categories of tropical and sub-tropical varieties.

This is from a series of such works put out by Ten-Speed Press, one of my personal favorite cookbook pubs. They do Trotters, et al. This is another of their fine "The Great ... series," also I enjoy their one on pears and am awaiting the one on mangoes. They go through all the types and then provide recipes, here on drinks and salsas, and desserts, etc.

Fine reference work for those of us who like to find exotic, different components to cook with. This and his wonderful cookbook "New World Cuisine" will get a workout at my kitchen.

Acquiring required skills and tools to effectively manage or mitigate crises is essential to the success of modern organizations. 'Harvard Business Review on Crisis Management' is a collection eight essays presenting new ideas and concepts on how to manage, mitigate crises and other related key issues in a rapidly changing business environment.

Some of the essays in this collection are written by leading management consultants and CEOs. Topics covered include; 'strategic approaches to product recalls', 'leadership', 'what happens when an executive defects' and how companies can develop better media policies and plans as part of crisis management and preparedness.

My favorite is Norman R Augustine's essay titled 'Managing the Crisis You Tried to Prevent'. In this well researched essay, Augustine describes six stages of a crisis drawing lessons from several well-known crises. The important issue emerging is that "almost every crisis contains within itself' the seeds of failures as well as the "roots of failure." Drawing quotations from Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde, the author provides very useful insights into understanding, managing and preventing a crisis.

This book is a useful tool for executives and managers who need to upgrade their knowledge or gain access to leading experts on topics related to crisis management.

Great book. Good case studies. Solid crisis management examples

Ashby et al have made a timely and very useful contribution to the literature of metal foams. The book will provide an essential resource to designers, developers and researchers in this exciting emerging field. The coverage is very thorough with material on manufacturing methods, design, economics and current applications. The section on web resources is very topical.

I have been using this book for my research for the past year. Over all the this design guide by Ashby is excellent. It is well written for those who do not have any background in design using metal and polymer foams. The chapters are short and concise. If, after reading this book, you want to dig deeper in the world of foam, then read Cellular Solids by Lorna Gibson.

Perhaps John Norman needed to warm up after his 14-year hiatus from the world of Gor, because the first 400 pages of Witness are nearly interminably dull. Whether the talk of the "natural domination" of men over women thrills or offends you, 400 pages of it is certain to bore you to tears.

However, once you hit that 400 page mark, the book becomes classic Gorean adventure, with all of the skill, daring, courage, and honor Gor fans have come to love. The slave girl Janice, from whose point of view the book is written, is caught up in intrigues in the prison pits of Treve. There, she is given the task of administering to a mysterious prisoner, Marlenus of Ar, who is suffering from amnesia and believes himself to be only a peasant. A Cosian team of assassins is sent to find and murder him, and the adventure begins when Janice's master, the deformed pit master, finds the assassins' task to be less than honorable.

ok, I admit it-I have all the books, I've read all the books. Yes, they should probably come with warning lables: 'caution, known to brainwash', but, I couldn't put it down. Yes, John does tend to repeat himself, but (again) the story has it all: mystery, intrigue, honor, love, hate, sex. It's told from a woman's point of view, like several others in the series. I miss Tarl, I'm not sure who 'prisoner #41' is..but then it's been a long time since I read the rest of the series, maybe it is Marlenus....I really thought it was Tarl/Bosk of Port Kar. (ouch, showing ignorance here...huh)(hence anonymous-sorry). Read some of the other books reviews, you'll get a good idea of the controversy and the emotions attached to the books and yes, they do change, they evolve, maybe he does go 'too gorean', you have to make that call for yourself... But, again, Hello! this is sci-fi, maybe he did start out with an idea from ERB...maybe it was a joke...but you don't get 26 (27-'Prize...' is in the works now) books printed without the demand, interest, passion to possess, now do you. John has an eye for detail and an ability to express emotion, the peoples of Gor are varied, vastly different, but also familiar, the creatures complex and strong. I wish we lived as one with our world as they do...wish there were not the lies we live with everyday.

The last of 25 books in the "Gor" series, "Magicians of Gor", by John Norman was published in 1988. I have waited 14 years to read the 26th book in the series, "Witness of Gor", which was recently published in book form this August. It is difficult to describe the feeling of pleasure and anticipation when I finally held this new book in my hands.

The book is told from the point of view of Janice, an earth girl who has been kidnapped and brought to Gor. She has been enslaved and trained to the collar. She is then sold to the City of Treve, which is secretly located in the Voltai mountains. Terrence of Treve assigns her to duties in the sub-terranean prison pits deep beneath the city. There she befriends the Lady Constanzia who is being held for ransom. Janice has been bought for special duties. She is to look after a mysterious prisoner who is chained alone in one of the deepest and most isolated cells in the pits. The prisoner is Marlenus, Ubar of Ar, the largest city on Gor. He has lost his memory and believes himself to be one of the caste of peasants. Every day he asks the pit master, a deformed ugly monster of a man with honor and kindness in his heart, if is it time for planting. On Gor the harvest can mean life or death for peasants. Every day the pit master says "No".

One day 200 warriors arrive from Ar in a surprise tarn attack to try to free Marlenus. All are killed in the attempt. The Ubar of Cos the enemy of Ar decides not to risk further attempts to free Marlenus. He pays a team of assassins to come to Treve and execute Marlenus. They have permission from the rulers of Treve for this but Terrence and the pit master do not think that being murdered while chained in an underground cell is an honorable way for any man to die. When the assassins enter the cell, Marlenus once more asks the pit master if it is time for planting. This time the answer is "Yes". A primeval urge is awaked in Marlenus and he must do whatever is necessary to escape.
I cannot tell you what happens next without spoiling the book for you. If you are a John Norman fan, this book is for you. It is over 700 pages long and some would argue that it should have been shorter. After a 14-year wait, I was glad for every page.

In "Young Men and Fire" Norman MacLean offers a tragic, yet thoughtful, recreation of the 1949 Mann Gulch fire that left nearly an entire crew of U.S. Forest Service "Smokejumpers" dead. Over the course of the latter years of his life, Mann -- a former Forest Service firefighter himself -- unraveled the mystery of the greatest disaster in the history of the Smokejumpers, while at the same time weaving a tale of innocence lost as touching as any you'll read.

Looking a little deeper into the MacLean's brilliant prose, you will find a pervasive analysis of the decisions made by the firefighters on that fateful day. More so than any other aspect of the book, I found this element to be the most valuable. Every critical decision is broken down and examined, providing the reader with a deep understanding of just how difficult decision making can be when lives are at stake. Bound to be a modern classic!

I originally read this during the summer of 2001, as assigned reading for a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Teachers' Institute on the American West, and was so captivated that I poured through it in about thirty-six hours. I reread it within a few months, and now have included it as required reading in a high school course I teach, The American West.

What can I say? This book works on so many levels. Ostensibly, it's a book about the tragic Mann Gulch Fire, and the smokejumpers and ranger who perished in that blow-up. However, it functions on much deeper levels. In the broadest view, it's an exploration of identity: identities of Mann Gulch's tragic heroes, identity of young people, and certainly Maclean's identities. However, there's so much more. It works as narrative prose. It's also a technical book on how wildland fire "works." Finally, it's a tragedy in the classical sense: heroes who have everything going for them give in to hubris, leading to their ultimate demise. Admittedly, the narrative occasionally is a bit redundant, and during my third reading I found myself re-evaluating some of the stylistic choices Maclean (or his editors) made--some of it seemed a little trite. However, those observations only came across after the second or third reading.

I love this book. More importantly--and surprisingly--to me, the six high school boys in my American West class this semester already love it! And everyone to whom I've given this book as a gift in the past twelve months has really enjoyed it. This is a complex and deep work that touches on a variety of levels and I highly recommend it.

I've read a number of reviews that talk about how repetitive and disorganized this book is, but I really didn't find this to be a problem.

To me, the book read almost as though the story being told was not merely the story of the smokejumpers at Mann Gulch, but of the uncovering of the story of that tragedy. I almost imagined the story of the fire as the main character of the book and I was getting to know a little more about this character as the book carried on. It's hard to describe, but I thought it was an interesting angle to take. Perhaps it reads that way because the author wasn't finished when he died, but that didn't make a difference to me.

As pure literature, I might not find it so engaging -- the writing is beautiful, but if you are only interested in the events of the fire, this book takes the long way 'round. Taken as both a historical narrative and something of a literary exploration (the whole "story of the uncovering of a story" thing), however, I think it's fantastic. Maclean's writing is just breathtakingly beautiful, and I speak glowingly of this book to all my friends.

Assassin of Gor, the third Gor book that I have read, is clearly inferior to the first two. The storytelling skills so evident in Priest-Kings of Gor and Nomads of Gor are as strongly displayed as ever but it suffers from flaws not present in the other two. Firstly, John Norman has become self-indulgent. He goes into far too much detail on the training and discipline of slaves. To some extent this is necessitated by the plot, a large portion of which takes place in the House of Cernus, the largest slave trader in the city of Ar (think ancient Rome). Nevertheless, it's more detail than I care to read. The counter-argument is that the detail adds to verisimilitude but if you choose this justification, then how do you account for the book's other major flaw: scenes that are so absurdly over-the-top as to be (unintentionally) laughable. Specifically, the slave auction in Chapter 19, the arena battle in Chapter 21, and the tarn race in Chapter 22 defy credulity. Also, the humor which contributed so much to Nomads is missing, but this is a minor quibble. One other point of note: this is the first story to show one of the Others, who were just hinted at in Nomads and become so prominent later in the series from what I have read on this website. The Other is kept offstage for most of the book but is seen briefly and at a distance near the end. On the whole I have to say that this was a fun read but it's not as good as Priest-Kings or Nomads.

Clearly "Nomads of Gor" is the most popular of the Gor novels by John Norman, but I would still argue that "Assassin of Gor" is far and away the most ambitious in the series. For that reason, I consider it the best of the Chronicles of Counter-Earth series. Certainly Norman never tried anything of this scope, either in terms of the size or the complexity of the novel, and there is a sense in which this is the last Gor book in which Tarl Cabot is more an Earthman on Gor than a true Gorean. "Assassin of Gor" begins with the title character, Kuurus, being hired to avenge the assassination of Tarl Cabot, a warrior of Ko-ro-ba. The trail leads to Glorious Ar where he finds political intrigue in the House of Cernus, agents of the Priest-Kings, spaceships arriving from Earth with new female captives, a dramatic auction of pleasure slaves, a thrilling tarn race, a climatic battle of gladiators, and a couple of intriguing games of Kaissa (the Gorean version of chess).

As with the best of Norman's books, "Assassin of Gor" is full of vivid characters. Elizabeth Caldwell is back as Cabot's chief ally in finding out why the House of Cernus wants him dead and how they are involved in the endeavors of the Others, the galactic foes of the Priest-Kings. There is also the return of a major character from earlier in the series and a brief flashback involving the fate of the last egg of the Priest-Kings. However, the depth of the book comes out in terms of the new characters, including Mip the Tarn Keeper, Sura the house slave, the new slave girls Phyllis and Virginia, the young warriors Relius and Ho-Sarl, Scormus the young Kaissa champion and Qualius the blind player, and Hup the Fool (my favorite). We also meet a major supporting character for future Gor novels, Samos the slaver of Port Kar.

The emphasis is still on the action and adventure in "Assassin of Gor" more than the Gorean philosophy that would come to dominate the later volumes in the series. Even by this fifth book in the series the principle that only by totally submitting to a master could a woman find true freedom, pleasure, etc., was pretty clear. I never really wanted a woman chained to my sleeping furs, so I tended to ignore those elements, especially as they became a repetitious mantra. For me the best Gor books were those that took the tradition of the Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars books with John Carter and upped the ante on the action. That is why "Assassin of Gor" is the best of the lot and why Norman never really tried to do anything this monumental ever again. In fact, the rest of the series would always suffer in my mind because of how far short the remaining volumes fell of the plateau of "Nomads" and "Assassin."

I know that "Nomads of Gor" is probably the most popular of the Gor novels by John Norman, but I think it is equally clear that "Assassin of Gor" is far and away the most ambitious in the series. For that reason, I consider it the best of the Chronicles of Counter-Earth series. Certainly Norman never tried anything of this scope, either in terms of the size or the complexity of the novel, and there is a sense in which this is the last Gor book in which Tarl Cabot is more an Earthman on Gor than a true Gorean. "Assassin of Gor" begins with the title character, Kuurus, being hired to avenge the assassination of Tarl Cabot, a warrior of Ko-ro-ba. The trail leads to Glorious Ar where he finds political intrigue in the House of Cernus, agents of the Priest-Kings, spaceships arriving from Earth with new female captives, a dramatic auction of pleasure slaves, a thrilling tarn race, a climatic battle of gladiators, and a couple of intriguing games of Kaissa (the Gorean version of chess).

As with the best of Norman's books, "Assassin of Gor" is full of vivid characters. Elizabeth Caldwell is back as Cabot's chief ally in finding out why the House of Cernus wants him dead and how they are involved in the endeavors of the Others, the galactic foes of the Priest-Kings. There is also the return of a major character from earlier in the series and a brief flashback involving the fate of the last egg of the Priest-Kings. However, the depth of the book comes out in terms of the new characters, including Mip the Tarn Keeper, Sura the house slave, the new slave girls Phyllis and Virginia, the young warriors Relius and Ho-Sarl, Scormus the young Kaissa champion and Qualius the blind player, and Hup the Fool (my favorite). We also meet a major supporting character for future Gor novels, Samos the slaver of Port Kar.

The emphasis is still on the action and adventure in "Assassin of Gor" more than the Gorean philosophy that would come to dominate the later volumes in the series. Even by this fifth book in the series the principle that only by totally submitting to a master could a woman find true freedom, pleasure, etc., was pretty clear. I never really wanted a woman chained to my sleeping furs, so I tended to ignore those elements, especially as they became a repetitious mantra. For me the best Gor books were those that took the tradition of the Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars books with John Carter and upped the ante on the action. That is why "Assassin of Gor" is the best of the lot and why Norman never really tried to do anything this monumental ever again. In fact, the rest of the series would always suffer in my mind because of how far short the remaining volumes fell of the plateau of "Nomads" and "Assassin."

While you can certainly finish the book in 30 days, you'll most likely forget the vocabularies in at least half of the chapters by the time you are done. The quiz in each chapter is useful. The diagnostic test at the beginning of the book can crush your self-esteem - which is to be redeemed after reading the book. "30 days" in the title is misleading, because readers probably need to go through the chapters again and again to make sure they truly remember the words. So make it "45-50 days to a more powerful vocabulary"!

Furthermore, believe it or not: it is not a bad cram book if you have less than 3 months to study for SAT or GRE! I find vocabulary builders (such as this title) much better study tools for SAT or GRE than conventional exam preparation guides like Princeton Review or Barron's - at least for the verbal section.

While this book is very helpful in building a more powerful vocabulary, a more appropriate title would be "45 days to a more powerful vocabulary in just 60 minutes a day!" Some lessons must be repeated if you want to really know some of the words. There are no really ground breaking vocabulary memorization techniques in this book either. However, it does a great job of organizing certain vocabulary terms. If you can spare an hour a day for 45 days, this books can be a great help!

This book is excellent. I worked through this book in less than 30 days, because I found it difficult to stop after just one exercise. I improved my SAT verbal by 90 points thanks to this book, and it began in me a love of words that continues siepaternally. This is the best vocabulary builder I have come across.

I've tried a number of different language course in a number of different languages over the years, but this is far and away the best. It's an immersion course, which means the videos and the audio-tapes are completely in French. It helps at the start if you've done a little French before, but even if you haven't, the extra effort in the early sections pays off handsomely. The videos are an essential part of the whole package, though they seem to be fairly widely available on public TV. (Here in Australia, ABC TV shows them nationwide, continuously, as part of the Open Learning programme). I strongly recommend buying them if you can, otherwise you are going to have to tape all 52 programmes off-air - you need to watch them over and over for maximum benefit. Each episode consists of 10 minutes of the story (a charming and quirky American boy meets French girl in Paris soap opera)and twenty minutes of explanation by Professor Capretz, an equally charming and quirky instructor. The whole is interlaced with hundreds of brief extracts from French film and TV. You watch the video several times, then work through the audio tapes to improve your own speaking, pronunciation and comprehension, read the text, then do the exercises. It might sound repetitive (all language learning is), but the story does hold your interest right to the end. I did it as a two year course with Open Learning in Australia, through the University of New England, and was sorry when it ended. This is a good way to do it, but it will work fine for a self-learning course. It's fairly costly, with textbook, workbooks, study guide and audiotapes, not to mention the videos, but you won't find a better course for learning to speak French or understand it from radio, film or TV. The reading side has been strengthened in the second edition, but to get to be a fluent reader you will need extra reading outside the course.

One of my teachers ( a French national) criticised the course for cultural bias (a little upperclass and American) and he has a point, but for a rapid and enjoyable path to fluency, this course can't be beaten.

I have tried several self teaching french course books, audio tapes, etc. None of them comes close to French in Action. My french language skills have jumped several levels after I started studying this course. After having finished about half of this course, I was able to get by quite well in French during a recent trip to France. This course teaches you French and France, its culture and its people like no other.

Although all the video tapes, audio tapes, workbooks seems like a very expensive deal, there are ways to do this cheaply. The video section is broadcast year round on PBS stations, (local as well as sattelite on PBS-U). You can tape them. They are also available in community college libraries. I skipped the audio tapes since most of the excercises in the workbooks can be done without audio tapes and furthermore if you watch each video several times you have already understood the conversation. Then all that is needed is the textbook and the two workbooks. It can take a long time to complete the 52 lessons, but language learning is a long process. French in Action does make it very enjoyable.

I don't think this is a beginner level course, though. Its probably useful to do some other basic course for a couple of months before starting on this one.

This along with the video cassettes are an absolutely invaluable resource for anyone serious about learning French. It is total immersion without having to go to France, and crafted in a way that is not intimidating. It is a very endearing little story about two attractive young people in Paris, and is capable of enthralling even the beginner into the story in such a way that One cannot take this course without wanting to go through it all the way to the very end (Its actually sad when it ends) not becuase of a tragedy but because of the bonding with the characters that is established throughout their fun-filled odyssey through Paris. The result, an absolutely revolutionary concept of learning the language that has not been matched since its inception!

I abandoned the Gor series when it got to the high teens, mainly because Tarl Cabot was being replaced more and more often as the main character in the novels, although I was never a fan of the Gorean philosophy regarding sex, which is essentially that women can only enjoy true sexual freedom by totally submitting to the strong will of a male master. John Norman's series has certainly achieved much notoriety because of this philosophy and I have had a few encounters with true believers on the internet who try to live out the Gorean lifestyle as much as possible. However, I came to the series as a fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs' novels about John Carter of Mars, and cleary "A Princess of Mars" is the template for "Tarnsman of Gor." Both novels tell of someone who is transported to a more primitive planet where fights are resolved with swords and our hero falls for a beautiful woman whose station rises high above his own. Yet Norman's novel clearly creates its own world, which is what attracted it to me in the first place.

Gor is also known as Counter-Earth because it is on the far side of the sun always blocked from view. Gor is slightly smaller than Earth, which works in Tarl Cabot's favor when he accedes to a cryptic message from the father he has not seen for decades and enters a space ship in the woods of New England, bringing with him a handful of earth. After all, Cabot is a college professor (like John Lange, the professor of philosophy who wrote these novels under the John Norman name), and has not been living the life of a warrior. But on Gor he is trained to be a Tarnsman, a rider of the great war birds. His mission is to capture the Home Stone of Ar, the great city-state that is the "Rome" of the Gorean world. The effort is an attempt to end the power of Marlenus, who had been given the power of "Ubar" (essentially the war chief) to handle an emergency, but who refused to give up power afterwards and is building an empire.

This 1966 novel is relative short, a little over 200 pages long, but it becomes an important prologue to the rest of the series. In the first half of the book the reader, like Tarl Cabot, is introduced to many key concepts that are developed in the future novels, from the practice of slavery and the joys of paga to caste-bound Gorean society and the technological restrictions imposed on the people of Gor by the mysterious Priest-Kings. When you go back and reread "Tarnsman of Gor," after you have gotten deeper into the series (i.e., "Slave Girl of Gor"), you will recognize the embryonic form of the Gorean philosophy as well: the concept of honor, the independence of men, the respect for the environment, the dangers of technology, and the great "truth" of female slavery." However, at first glance, the sword and sorcery elements are what hook the reader into this opening novel. The parallels between Marlenus of Ar and Julius Caesar of Rome are obvious, but Gor is a much more barbaric world than that of the Roman Empire and one of the fun aspects of reading these books is recognizing the bits and pieces of different warrior cultures Norman has brought to his creation.

"Tarnsman of Gor" ends in the same manner as "A Princess of Mars," which means the series effectively offers a second beginning in the next novel, "Outlaw of Gor," which is the first novel in what I think of as the Priest-Kings trilogy. I think that the fifth novel, "Assassins of Gor," is the high point of the series, after which it starts transforming itself into something significantly different. But those first five novels are certainly worth reading for those who like the Burroughs school of grand adventure and Norman improves greatly as a writer, creating memorable supporting characters and unique actions scenes.

The Gor series is renown and extremely popular as an alternate dominance/submissive fantasy landscape. As someone who has read the entire (25 book) series I would like to warn newcomers to the world of Gor that the first novel in the series, Tarnsman, sets a strange and contrary tone to the rest of the series. Norman doesn't really hit his stride until the fifth book in the series (Assasin of Gor). That would be a good starting place to begin the series (you'll have to find it used, though, and Gor goes fast in used bookstores). Or an even better place to begin would be with Slave Girl of Gor, Dancer of Gor or Kajira of Gor-- these books get at the essence of Norman's Gorean sexuality and are separate from the Tarl Cabot saga that provides the meat for the rest of the series. These books are self contained stories about three earth women who come to Gor, and you won't get bogged down with Gorean politics. There is also a three part series in the middle of the series (Fighting Slave of Gor starts the three-parter, I believe) about an Earth man named Jason who is brought to Gor by slavers and is assimilated much faster into the culture than Tarl Cabot is in Tarnsman. Norman is just beginning to get his ideas in focus in Tarnsman and the book is startlingly out of place when viewed with its companion novels. Plainly put, it is bad. So don't read Tarnsman and think "I've done Gor and it wasn't much." Read the later books. The ones I have pointed out all serve as better points of entry into a series that has as much to offer in the way of intricate and interesting world-building as it has in the way of cheap thrills

I have enjoyed fantastic novels and fantastic series for decades. Yes the LotRings is one of the best well written series ever. No argue with that. However fantasy novels got dull for the past two decades. The same {stuff}thrust to the readers again and again. Like I was drowning in bad writing and bad world systems and bad characters.

Not with John Norman. He is one of the best, seriously, writers to ever throw out a fantasy novel. He has strong characters that have meaning behind them (male or female), realistic antiPolitically Correctness in the world, and intriguing situations and action and adventures.

John Norman is magnificent. He deserves so much credit for creating a fantasy world...fP>Now to the book itself, the book is wonderful. It has action and adventure, it has romance and mystery. Tarl Cabot is summoned by his father (who was and is of Gor) and the mysterious Priest Kings to come and become a Tarnsman of Gor. A tarn is a gigantic bird that looks like an eagle. Spreading its wings wide, a sharp, dangerous, but if bound to a rider who deserves respect...it is fiercely loyal. The hub of the story for the most part is Tarl seeing and viewing this world, this counter-urth, for the first time. He looks at a strong male society, which is the best form of society, from an Earthman's view. Soon he, however, starts on to become one of the best Gorean men. He then is thrust into the problems between the city of Koroba and Ar. Wonderful writing style, wonderful literary mind...

Mailer is a skilled writer and thanks to him being allowed access to thousands of KGB surveillance files compiled on Lee Oswald he is able to paint an almost human picture of Oswald's time in Russia and one almost forgets the crime he is accused of commiting.

I do believe though that the charting of Oswald's life when he returns to the USA is perhaps tainted by the opinions of people who did not have any respect for him prior to his infamousy and this may be why the book cannot be wholly trusted as a truthful study.

Furthermore, he relies too heavily on the work of Pricilla Johnson, the biographer who had met Oswald in Moscow and became a so-called confidante to Marina Oswald after the assasination, a friendship she exploited to write a best selling story of Marina's time with Oswald.

Clearly, Marina does not know what she believes as over the years her account of life with Oswald has changed as often of as the weather.

Mailer himself does try to keep away from the controversy surrounding Oswald's possible guilt and gives little away as to what his own opinion is in this matter.

For this reason he does redeem the book coming across as a genuine story teller in this regard.

In Mailer's own words the subject remains as great a mystery as it was all those years ago.

Worth buying to read about Oswald's time in Russia.

Mailer is always entertaining -- no matter whether you agree or disagree with him.

Oswald's Tale presents a new take on Lee Harvey Oswald. Here is the approach: What if Lee Harvey Oswald was not some incomprehensible (no-talent) societal outcast, but rather, a somewhat talented loser who had great skill in jerking around bureaucratic systems? As evidence of this thesis -- LHO was able to defect to the USSR and then get back to the U.S. Not really an easy task.

Could such a man successfully kill a president and NOT be part of a larger conspiracy? Perhaps...

And what about those conspiracy theories? Mailer gives a few plausible insights into why some the of the evidence of conspiracy may be happenstance and wishful thinking.

It is completely unfulfiling and base to think that our president was killed by some dispossessed nobody. From this springs our need to find a dark conspiracy. Perhaps LHO was of large enough stature (be it negative) to be considered man enough to have done it alone. Perhaps...

Entertaining and worth reading. Mailer does not answer the questions, he just asks them. And quite well.

The profile of Marina Oswald is to die for. You read about her and wonder what it would be like to actually be the world's most notorious bystander.

We have to give old Mailer credit for changing his mind about JFK conspiracies as he learned more about Lee Oswald through Russian documents and acquaintances. It is clear that Mailer began this book thinking that Oswald was not a lone assassin. In fact, one could swear that others helped Mailer write this because of the obvious change in styles and conclusions. But after all his unfolding of Oswald's history, he came to the conclusion that Oswald did it, in a similar mood as when he tried to assassinate General Walker six months early. Only Mailer could help the public recognize how sexual and career frustration and jealousy of the President accounted for his murder. This review is submitted by a psychologist who helped assess General Edwin Walker in Dallas some months before the assassination.