This book is an easy-reading guide covering all states. Don't leave home without this one! Lots of history of the parks. My only disappointment was the small number of photographs.

This book is just awesome...it reviews over 350 theme parks, amusement parks, and waterparks all over the U.S. and Canada, providing everything you'd want to know about every park...the great roller coasters and other thrill rides, costs, operation schedule, directions, special tips, insider facts and trivia, historical milestones, etc. Also gives phone numbers and website addresses for each park. The author is a life-long park expert and senior editor of a major park industry publication...he really seems to know his stuff, and he injects some fun and personality into the book. It's a great guide to use to plan your park trips and to carry with you for quick reference. It's also fun to to sit down and read through it because it gives so much interesting trivia on the parks. Just a fantastic, authoratative, fun, easy-to-use resource on parks.

This is a great book!! It is well worth your money. If you are planning a vaction, then buy this book. It has theme parks from Disney to Universal Orlando, to Cedar Point, all of the Paramount Parks and many, many more!! The ultimate guide to rollercoasters is this book!!

Great new book on amusement parks of PA. This book show the interest in amusement parks and rides that has been growing ever since the 90's. There is a nice balance between the history of the parks and current conditions. In one book the reader learns a wealth of material about past and now defunct parks (where is the mention of the park that used to be in Mt. Gretna - carousel and all??) as well as information on parks that are up and running. Good summary of each park as well as current information on admission, directions, etc. I was disappointed that there was little emphasis on memorabilia or good trivia. The old photos/postcards really help. That would really help this work out. What about all those great tokens. Even Leap the Dips put our a coaster token to push the coaster. The book is a good read and recommended for the enthusiast.

As most roller coaster enthusiasts know, there are very few books that go beyond pretty full-color photographs and into the history of a particular park. It is even more difficult to find information on parks not owned by major corporations (e.g. Disney, Paramount, Vivendi Universal).

Futrell's book captures the unique history of 13 different amusement parks in Pennsylvania. You are given a rare glimpse into these parks that date back to the origins of the American amusement park industry. Having recently visited Kennywood and Idlewild for the first time, I have realized how much of the charm and atmosphere has faded from the latest generation of parks.

Buy this book before the print run ends! You won't regret it.

This book rocks. There was more information than I could possibly imagine. The author is obviously impassioned by his subject--this had to have been a labor of love. And what better muse than the romantic coasters of Pennsylvania.

This is without a doubt, the funniest, most clever and, ironically, on target business book I have ever read. Boy howdy! It's got everything: parodies, satire, spoofs, and monkeys with sticks. I laughed til I ... ummm, nevermind.

Let me start by noting that this book is not something I would have picked up just browsing at the bookstore. There're lots of satires out there about the business world that just rely on the same old cliches about the silliness of economists and the business world. But I heard the authors on a radio show, and they were really funny, so I figured it was worth a look. When I did so, frankly, I laughed so hard right there in the store that I figured I better go ahead and get a copy. I am sure that their jabs will offend someone, but for the rest of us, it's hilarious.

I am, in general, not overly fond of business parodies (remeber that lame 'cut the cheese' one?) but then I heard the authors on a radio interview in Fresno and they cracked me up. Enough to go buy the book.

And the book is even better. These two cover virtually every genre of business book written. Their history section is worth the price; Hayak as a poet, Lenin complaining about the revolution, these guys are GREAT!

I found the prose well written, the industry examples almost made me, dare I say this?, wet my pants.

I can whole heartedly recommend this book, you'll cry laughing.

This novel takes a look at how you would live your life if you were always cognizant of, and worried by, the threat of extinction in a nuclear war. O'Brien treats this subject very seriously, but the book is written in a comic style.

_The Nuclear Age_ recounts one person's search for safety and sanity in a world that is anything but safe and sane. To develop this theme, Tim O'Brien uses William Cowling, the narrator of this book , as his instrument. The novel opens in 1995 with William, debatably insane, digging a huge hole in his backyard for use as a shelter (or is it meant to be a grave?) for his wife, daughter, and himself against an impending nuclear war.

Growing up in the 1950's I recall being extremely fearful of a nuclear war with the then-Soviet Union. I remember gazing in terror at a photograph on the cover of the New York Daily News of a huge mushroom cloud, with the newpaper reporting the Soviet Union testing a 100 megaton hydrogen bomb that was capable of destroying civilization 1000 times over. Like William, I would occasionally lay awake in bed wondering if the next day would be my last and also, like William, being afraid to share my fears of doomsday with my parents.

A child, naturally vulnerable and unfamiliar with the world around him needs to know that he is loved and protected from danger by his parents. When he is constantly bombarded by the media with the imminence of death from nuclear annihilation, even his parents are rendered totally impotent by that possibility. Building a shelter from a ping pong table with a roof lined with "lead pencils" may seem like the only answer to this child.

Years later William, who is a pacifist by nature, chooses to dodge the draft during the madness and carnage that was the Vietnam War. Even then he cannot escape death: all those who are closest to him, including his parents, all die. Even Sarah, his college cheerleader queen, turned anti-war revolutionary, is completely baffled by her imminent demise. Maybe if William had really chose to love her she could could have been protected. In the present, William's shadowy, former flight attendant wife, can only make fun of his fears by pinning puzzling, inscrutable poems that she composed to his clothing.

I agree with those who say that the best parts of this book are those dealing with William's childhood experiences, which includes his relationship with his parents. The sessions with his equally troubled therapist, Charles Adamson, who identifies and verbally empathizes with William's problems, are just priceless. I also liked the variation in the author's writing style, from a standard narrative during William's childhood to the near post-modern, sometimes stream of consciousness style of 1995. I did feel, however, that the 1995 parts concerning William's digging of the nuclear shelter a bit over the top. Also, I do not think that even someone like William, who grew up with the fear of nuclear war and who, though suffering great loss all around him would carry his fears of nuclear war with him into the present day. Nuclear terrorism and massive contamination from nuclear power plant material meltdowns seem more believable fears.

In _The Nuclear Age_ Tim O'Brien explores coming of age in America during the Vietnam War. He poses the question, "What would it be like to stay in the states, and protest?" Tim O'Brien had to make this difficult decision himself. The main character, William Cowling, decides to skip the war, and protest. This book shows the American public what can happen when you disagree with the American government. The book is well written, although, I have a problem with the means by which William gets his money. William Cowling is so oppsed to the war and what not. But yet he makes millions of dollars by selling a mountain containing uranium to Texaco. Other than that minor flaw, the book is an excellent look into the anti-war movement

I really don't want to short-change this novel. It is definitely a true-to-life, highly-charged account of what it was like to be a part of the lunacy that was Vietnam. I like the way that it starts out in the real world and descends into the undergrowth of the subconscious, similarly to Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" and Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket." The allusions to The Naked and the Dead and to Catch 22 are also on-the-mark. An even more contemporaneous comparison would be to "Saving Private Ryan," obviously, though the motives of the reconaissance teams would not be comparable, morally speaking.

What prevents the five star award is that I've read another Vietnam War book that is so far superior to this account, that I can't in good conscience award them equal status. Meditations in Green, by Stephen Wright is so superior in terms of scope and artistry that I have to reserve my full endorsement for that novel. O'Brien is a highly competent author. On the other hand, Wright just might make it to the highest rungs of the literary ladder, breathing the same air as Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway as far as American mountaineers are concerned. O'Brien may have to be content with breathing the slightly thinner oxygen of Mailer and James Jones. Which might not be so bad, since most of us mere mortals are down here taking in corbon monoxide.

"For just as happines is more than the absence of sadness, so is peace infinitely more than the absence of war." This quote from Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato represents the basic theme of the book. O'Brien uses a strange man named Paul Berlin to illustrate the realities and illusions of the Vietnam war. Through Berlin's imaginative trek to Paris he presents views for and against the war. Although the characters and plot are not real, the book leaves a disturbingly realistic impression of war. The book flows like a person's thoughts, through imagination and real events to bring a complete picture of the psychological effects of Vietnam. At times this gets confusing but overall the effect is new and different. And most of all O'Brien shows that although Berlin leaves the war, it is not absent from his life because he has not yet found peace.

This is a different kind of war story, one that women can read without being grossed out by all the guy stuff. O'Brien's writing elevates the telling of Vietnam war events to poetry and art, even in the face of bodies blown to bits by land mined. For instance, at one point he goes on for, oh, maybe 10+ pages commenting on the silence, the lack of anything scary happening, the quiet jungle, the unseen and unfelt enemy. And it began to bug them all, making them edgy and crazy and nervous. And still, page after page, he only talks about the fact that nothing happened.
Then, the last sentence of the chapter: When Pederson stepped on the land mine and blew to bits, it was something of a relief.
For my money, that kind of telling of war stories can't be topped.
Read it; you won't regret it. And read The Things They Carried, too.

A fascinating look at the complex relationship between two brothers, one of whom fought in Vietnam, Northern Lights also examines other issues. I enjoyed this book a lot, but O'Brien's other works are better. After all, this *was* his first published novel. In fact, O'Brien himself has said that he wishes he should have made intense revisions to this book. Regardless, read Northern Lights only after you have read O'Brien's other books. I am a true O'Brien fan who has read ALL of his books, and I DID enjoy this book. But save it for after you have learned to appreciate O'Brien and his literary style.

Excellent debut novel, but Tim O'Brien only got better. All of his tension and emotion in present in this novel, but he still had yet to develope his style and language that has made him, in my opinion, one of America's best writers today.

It's a story about privacy. Private lives at home and secret romances of sorts and the return of a Vietnam vet who has a constant reminder of his time In Country, but he never tells the secret of how he received the injury to his ear.

It's an excellent debut novel, but don't be discouraged if this is the first Tim O'Brien novel you read, he only get's better. I give it my highest recommendation.

It's adventurous and tense when the brothers are lost in the woods. O'Brien paints an impressive picture of the Minnesota woods when these brothers travel at the feet of these enormous snow covered trees in awe and reverence of nature.

O'Brien presents the tension between brothers in layers beginning with the vitnam war. As the story unfolds, O'Brien challenges the reader to think about their pasts and pending futures. The book kept me thinking long after I put it down. Even as I write this reveiw, I am considering new implications to their realtionship. Nothern Lights is a very thoughtful and enjoyable read.

The back cover of this paperback has a line that says 'A stunning collection of more than 100 nude album covers' If only that were true, well the 100 bit is true! Most of them are low budget stock shots bought by small record labels for their LP covers. Mainstream record companies were too conservative to use such blatant selling techniques. None of the covers are of any photographic or design interest (and most of the music on these LPs was produced by session musicians and is of no particular interest either).

The hundred plus covers are presented one to a page with some copy on the adjacent page, this is rather overgenerous for the text because there is really nothing to say about the covers so the author's repeat bits of the clichéd copy from the back covers. I think the (mildly) most interesting covers are the ones produced for the American bachelor market during the fifties and sixties, these are now so ancient and of such awfulness that they take on a curiosity of their own.

I think it is only worth getting this book if you are interested in a very sub-genre of commercial art or maybe you'll want to own the only book that will ever be published about the subject. Worth checking out though is 'Vixens of Vinyl' by Benjamin Darling, a nicely produced little book (six by six inches) of LP covers that feature females but not nudes. These covers are from major labels so at least you'll see some decent photography and design.

Face it...in the 50s & 60s, record covers sold most LPs, NOT the music. The cooler the cover, the better chance you had of selling a schlock recording. Sexy models were always in vogue, yet NUDE models were usually reserved for third party labels, bargain basement recordings and risque comedy LPs. There are a BUNCH of covers reproduced here, most of them were limited released and single pressings. This is true manna for the record collector and a great conversation piece for the average reader. Not much text but tons of full color covers featuring REAL (not enhanced or anorectic) models. Lots of topless nudity, so you may want to keep this one on the top shelf.

An ALA Notable Book: I disagree completely!

"I don't want to go!" Screams William.
William's whole family died in the Civil War and he is now
being shipped off by his friend, Doc Martin to his Uncle Jed
and Aunt Ella's in Piedmont, Virginia. Some sympathy at first
but then William reveals his ungrateful self. The sympathy
wears off.
William is ashamed that his Uncle Jed didn't fight for
the Confederates in the War. As the book lingers on, William starts to loosen up to his gracious relatives' hospitality. He becomes friendly with his cousin, Meg, who our author neglected for the first three chapters. He fished for Bluegills by the lighthouse with her. He also read Charles Dickens to Beth and Eleanor, who suddenly appear towards the end.
Then William gets a letter from his friend, Doc Martin, asking him if he wanted to come back home, the next three to five chapters are dedicated to William trying to decide where to go, when just a few pages back, he was furious about coming to see his Uncle and Aunt in the first place! Confusing.
In conclusion, the idea for the story was all right, but
Reeder didn't present it well. This history topic isn't something most children would be interested in.

6th Grade Student from OHES

Death, sickness, anger, and war are really causing Will Page to go mad in Shades of Gray by Carolyn Reeder. The story revolves around Will Page taking place in Shenandoah Valley in the 1800's. Will is being ached by the death of his family during the Confederate War. Will has now moved to his Uncle Jed and Aunt Ella's house along with his cousin Meg. Will has now found out that his Uncle Jed did not serve in the war along with his father which is really bothering Will. Will William Page be able to get along with his new family and Uncle Jed?
My opinion is Shades of Gray is a good book because of the information the author gives to the reader and its enough to explain to the reader what's going on in the book. The author shows letters, a lot of dialogue and also when the characters say things to themselves which the author makes descriptive thoughts by the characters. You should get this book because it's a book with morale to it. The author shows the main goal for the character which is the character is trying get over the fact that his family died and he's struggling and trying to get use to a new family and a new lease on life. I recommend this book a great book to read and enjoy.

Shades of Gray by Carolyn Reeder is fiction.Nevertheless, it shows the untold hardship that war can inflict on innocent people. The civil war between the Yankees and the Confederates has ended. But it has created a vacuum in the life of Will Page, a 12-year-old boy. He has lost his entire family in the war. his father and brother have been killed by the Yankees, his two sisters have died of typhoid, and his mother of heartbreak and grief. A sad picture indeed!!Without any hope of support, Will finds himself in a state of quandary. His animosity is directed not only to the Yankees but also to his uncle Jed for refusing to fight in the war. He has lost the very thing he adored most in life- his family. In accordance with his mother's death wish, he is to be sent to Uncle Jed, a man he despises for his 'cowardly' action to join the Confiderates. However, he has no choice. The battle for survival transcends certain boundaries and contingencies. Therefore, he condescends to live with Uncle Jed and his family, always struggling to adjust from the urban civilization he's lived with to his uncle's rural way of life.Acceptance of the generosity of his new family has its own toll on Will. He must learn the skills of rural life to eke out a living and justify the board of hospitality offered by this lovely but poor family. He learns really fast and bears himself upright. With time the civil war becomes 'ancient history' to Will. His attitude to Uncle Jed changes gradually; he is right for not fighting in the war. His family has suffered for staying out of the war as much as Will's family for fighting. Although the book is fiction, the message is quite vivid. People should fight for what they believe and not be led by the nose.Will's decision to live a rural, rather than an urban life later on, demonstrates his acceptance of this truth. He's been exposed to the stark realities of life. Uncle Jed is not the coward or traitor he once thought him to be.He rather admires Jed for his wisdom, courage, and conviction. The conflicts of this book are really challenging.Every young person who reads it has a lot to learn about the ups and downs of life. This text refers to the paperback edition of this title.

I've heard a lot of great things about Tim O'Brien and read his stories in "The New Yorker," so I was pleased when my book club chose this novel. I have to try another of his books, however, because this can't be a good example of O'Brien's work. I found the premise of this book unrealistic and boring. A group of very different personalities is brought together at a 30th college reunion. They seem interested only in drinking a truly extraordinary amout of alcohol, ... putting long lost romances to bed (literally and figuratively!)and commiserating about their horrible lives. No one seems to have a spouse or kids they care about, fulfilling careers, or any interests whatsoever other than what happened 30 years before. I kept getting the characters confused, no doubt because I found it hard to care about any of them.

O'Brien is no doubt a fine writer--I read the chapter "Nogales" in the New Yorker several years ago and remember it vividly to this day. Same for "Too Skinny", the story of an obese man who sheds his weight and finds he can't live with the new person he has become. These chapters stand alone as riveting portraits of people whose lives have gone terribly wrong. But the "reunion" as a device to pull it together is forced, and the weight of so many messed up people in one place at one time is hard to take.

An apt W.B. Yeats couplet introduces Tim O'Brien's new novel: "We had fed the heart on fantasies, The heart's grown brutal from the fare."

When he issued his best work, In the Lake of the Woods (1994) O'Brien gave assurances that he had got the Vietnam War out of his system.

On the strength of July, July (a) that is not quite true and (b) it doesn't matter all that much. The author is cruel, serious and funny; in great form here. This is only his second novel in eight years, a point in favour of writers holding their fire until they have more to say.

It is a stiflingly hot Minnesota weekend in 2000. A college group stages a delayed 30-year reunion, recalling the vicious years when even "the most ordinary human snapshots would be fixed in memory by the acidic wash of war".

A corny premise, you might think. Do we really need one more American book or film reuniting the golden children of the '60s carved up by drugs, phoney idealism and the Vietnam War?

But the cast of characters that flows off the pen is outstanding. A bruised, brittle group of flower-power veterans maintains a deeply human and alarmingly persistent thirst for love and vengeance.

David, the war amputee, hears voices so nagging and accurate that ultimately they can only be his own. The beauty of the class, another one troubled by dead people whispering in her ear, manages two husbands concurrently, until her "unblemished sovereignty" over men is brought undone by a third affair.

Two other women have had too little sex for years, but surprisingly different romantic fates befall them. The Governor of Minnesota, mysteriously unnamed, parades his trophy fiancee. The years have levelled "the bumpy playing field" between the aspiring male scientist and the fading female librarian.

Meanwhile, Marv, the rich mop-factory man, muses over his short-lived episode of thinness and sexual desirability. When his delectable girlfriend finds out that he is not a famous writer after all, Marv retorts nonchalantly, "No, but I'm skinny."

David was meant to marry Marla, and unfortunately did. Dorothy never married Billy, who is still paying out on her for not following him to Canada when he fled the draft.

"It's such a Karen sort of thing, getting killed like that," frowns ferocious Amy on the first page, damning a perennially awkward classmate murdered the year before the reunion - the same Amy who continually reminds her old friend Jan that she is still a frump, and cheerfully advises a young fellow to "go kill himself" when he objects to her old-fashioned jukebox choices.

Notable qualities of writing that lifted In the Lake of the Woods do the same for July, July.

It is almost obligatory for the American literary novel to flash forwards and backwards throughout. O'Brien's nice variation is that longer narratives of the past alternate with rapid fire segments from the present, as the diminishing celebration party lurches from reunion dance to buffet breakfast to memorial service to banquet dinner.

If the '60s have been a blitzkrieg for the group, the new millennium is still a battle. Subtly, O'Brien stages the reunion proceedings almost as a form of guerrilla warfare, streaked with sudden firefights and dangerously shifting alliances. The past dominates, new wounds are sustained in the skirmishes, but a bleak promise is also sustained.

The author retains a keen sense of what to close off and what to leave open in his fiction. The novel concludes with a hint of fresh tragedy. Defying the chequered history of her generation, Jan is left to take the last word. "We're golden," she brightly tells Amy.

This reads less as cynicism on O'Brien's part, more as an admission that only the gravest ironies will keep us sane in the face of the harshness to which Yeats alludes.

(From the Canberra Times, 9 November 1992)

Tim O'Brien has done it again! In July, July, O'Brien creates a beautiful range of voices and lives, trapped by their own passions, hopes and the delusions of a generation, whose youth has run itself, nearly, out of gas. At a high school reunion, we see O'Brien's characters dance under cardboard stars in an awkward celebration of times past. The reunion of old friends serves as a catalyst for reliving the year of their college graduation: 1969. The narrative fluxes between present time stories and the tales of old hopes, dreams, loves and lives of these ripened graduates. In the novel, O'Brien's characters (some of whom, like Spoke Spenelli, remain as sassy and sexy as ever, while others find themselves victims of divorce, broken hearts, or a lost leg to the Vietnam War) are as real as each of us, as they explore who they were and who they have become. In July, July the reader finds herself out on their dance floor, amongst the crowd, dancing along with nostalgia. By brilliantly weaving the experiences of these characters lives, O'Brien creates a chorus for a generation who drowned themselves in the sea of cul-de-sacs, housing developments, golf courses and other landmarks of suburban culture. There is no book that better exemplifies the dreams of a generation, so proud and young and hopeful, who lost its innocence to a time of war. This book has moments of pure hilarity and heart wrenching sadness. It is a reflection of another "coming of age," middle age, that leaves the reader walking away with her own reflections on who she is and who she thought she would become. O'Brien is masterful in his prose. In July, July the cast of characters develop a plotline that wraps each of their lives around your very own. An amazing feat. My highest recommendation.

Although I readily devoured O'Brien's previous novels, Tomcat in Love merely tarnishes his once-spotless reputation as a brilliant writer. This utterly worthless novel is but a poor carbon-copy of O'Brien's previous work whose main themes have already been explored countless times. While the exheedingly annoying main character (Chippering) completely lacked redeeming qualities, this by itself could have been excusable and perhaps intriguing. However, Chippering additionally lacks true depth and experiences zero pyschological growth over the story's course, making it readily apparent that he is merely a repitious, poorly-drawn parody of the neurotic Vietnam vet O'Brein continually characterizes and apparantly cannot escape from. For true O'Brien fans, this book may provide minimal pleasure, but will most likely be ultimately disheartening. For those unfamilar with his work, skip this shoddy book and instead read his true masterpieces.

Some readers may have a hard time getting into this book just because O'Brien has been so identified as THE guy when it comes to combat, Vietnam, their effects on society and ordinary men, etc. But there's a score of writers stuck on war-themed novels, and what always elevated O'Brien was that he is such a stronger and more imaginative writer than any of them. And that hasn't changed just because the genre of this novel has. It's highly entertaining, if not as socially poignant as his previous works, and expertly written. Had I read the premise of the story and it was by your average top-selling author of this genre, I wouldn't have given it a second chance. But it's O'Brien, and he would be hard-pressed to create a bad novel. The characters are memorable and almost Vonnegut-like in many of their odd traits and quirks. A good lawn-chair read over a slow weekend that will entertain you without the weight of his usual works.

I heard Tim O'Brien talking about this book in an interview on NPR months ago and was intrigued, having read The Things They Carried in awe. Now that I've read it, I'd have to say this was one of the most satisfying books I've come across in awhile! Thomas Chippering is a hoot--a delusional, Don- Juan-in-his-own-mind who does some despicable things...but the first-person narrative makes it hard to out & out hate him. He always has _some_ crazy, slanted justification. I think half the fun of the novel was figuring out what was real and what was in Tomcat's head, and where the truth really lay. The ending...I loved. I'd wanted Lorna Sue to get her comeuppance almost as much as I'd wanted Tomcat to get his. But O'Brien doesn't let Chippering get away with instant, unbelievable reform, either. I liked the vivid prose, the importance of the language. And the interspersion of the Fiji/redhead/ex-husband bits was interesting; I thought the final paragraph was beautiful. I was counting the pages that Tim O'Brien could go without delving into the Vietnam War. He made it to, I believe, 56. *g* A wonderful, if not "great" book.