Here is a book that I have been looking for for some time, a book that incorporates the magnificent artwork of the Napoleonic period along with a detailed profile of Napoleon. The result is magic and a pure delight to the eye. Proctor Jones has done a splendid job at merging the two memoirs of Menval (Napoleon's secretary) and Constant (Napoleon's valet) to provide a detailed and intimate account account of Napoleon. This is not a book that details Napoleon's battles or strategic genius but is a book that provides a wonderful insight into his character and personality instead. What comes across is that Napoleon was indeed human with many strengths and weaknesses and is not the ogre or monster as often portrayed by British propaganda. One can see the the unboundless energy, emotion, magnetism and even quirky habits of the man as seen through Menval and Constant. The artwork is plentiful and compliments the events as described in the narrative. This is a superb book, printed on high quality paper and an essential addition to any buff of the Napoleonic period. You will not be disappointed, only delighted.

I will begin this review by saying that I knew Proctor Jones and liked him very much. I had the privlege to travel with him and visit many of his friends while I was living and working France. He was a wonderful man and an enjoyable companion and I will fondly cherish my memories of him.

Even today his memory is still strong for those of us who knew him and his name is a talisman which opens doors which otherwise would be sealed.

Many people claim to have access to special or unknown collections. Proctor was the real deal.

This book was a labor of love for Proctor. He set out to publish pictures that had not been seen in other books...he spent an unbelievable amount of money, time and effort tracking down unpublished art and securing the right to publish it in this book.

He then published this book himself because no publisher would print it at the level of quality he wanted. He was particular about the paper, the binding and the detail of the reproductions...

Proctor then was able to get Jean Tulard to do the preface...virtually impossible for an American author...and even launched the French version of the book at a reception at Malmaison (I was there).

Proctor never intended to make money on the book...It was his intention to bring these works to an audience who would otherwise find them inaccessable. I know for a fact that at the print run he authorized he lost tens of thousands of dollars just on the royalties and fees he paid for the permission to reproduce these paintings.

This book is in a limited print run in English and in French and when they are gone they will be gone. Just like Proctor.

Proctor I will miss you and I thank you for producing this book.

This is a fantastic book as it includes within its cover a feast of great Napoleonic paintings and memorabilia which is worth the price alone. The text is finely edited by Proctor-Jones, comprising of an interwoven thread based on two memoirs of two men who were closely linked to Napoleon. One was his secretary, C Meneval and the other is his personal valet W Constant.
Every dedicated Napoleonophile should own a copy.

This book has been a godsend to me in trying to teach compassion and anti-cruelty to my junior high students. Research shows that many serious criminals began their practices with abuse towards animals. This book is a stepping stone to the basics about the respect animals deserve. I highly recommend this book to teachers and parents who are tired of the violence.

is this a classic text that will be of particular intrest to scholars of the history of utopian socialism and feminism and political thought in general? probably. is charles fourier one of the most complex, mind boggling, idiosyncratic thinkers and writers of all time? i think so. what is particularly intresting to me about this book though? here it is: the idea that civilization is an abomination responsible for the decrepit state of our planet and that fourier had single handedly discovered the process by which we will be able to bring the universe into harmony through a social revolution that will align the planets and turn the ocean into a tastey beverage and will create an aurora that will attach itself to the north pole that will raise the temperature of the northern lattitudes enough to make them comfortable to humans and also that any animals that dont help humans will be replaced by anti versions of these animals such as the anti-shark that will catch fish for us and anti-hippopotomi that will pull our boats around for us and anti-lions (sevral times larger than normal lions) that will be capable of carrying several passangers at a time to where ever they want to go at increadibly high speeds. all this was conceived in the late 1700's. truly amazing. the stuff about his social structure ideas is very interesting too whether you are interested in social theory or not.

Senates is one of the best books that I have ever read about upper chambers around the world. As I am myself employed by the Senate of Canada, I feel that the book truly reflects not only the history and workings of that particular chamber but also of the other bicameralist systems in the countries which the book examines. The issue of Senate reform is a touchy issue, particularly in Canada, but the author of the section on the Canadian Senate offers viable and excellent options for potential models of Senate reform and his theories certainly deserve further investigation- not only by Senators and their colleagues but by the electorate of Canada as well. Any one who is interested in international politics should definitely add this book to their library and I give it five stars.

This is a wonderful book. I have read it through at least three times, each was an exciting journey. One of the very best works to be presented about a tattered, crimson stained, page of history...the Vietnam War. It is filled with every facet of emotion. It is a book that I will keep on my shelf and revisit often...Excellent work Charles.

John E. Delezen,Author of.... "Eye of the Tiger"

Five Stars isn't enough to express the powerful impact of this book. Charles Patterson has performed a tremendous service to all, particularly to all of America; war veterans in general, Vietnam Veterans in particular, the friends we lost, our families, and those who vilified us. In baring his heart and soul as he has, Mr. Patterson has managed to convey the breadth and depth of emotions--and lack thereof--that a warrior faces. I served two tours in Vietnam, during The Gulf War, in Haiti and again during Bosnia. I'm constantly asked why I continued to volunteer to go to war after being wounded in 1968 during my first tour in Vietnam. I could never adequately explain it. In the future, when asked I'll just hand over a copy of "The Petrified Heart: The Vietnam War Poetry of Charles E. Patterson." Someone has FINALLY told the world what Vietnam was really like for those of us who fought it. Thank you Mr. Paterson.

I felt like I had stumbled upon a pirate's chest of fine jewels and priceless treasures when I read THE PETRIFIED HEART. Each word, phrase and passage is delicate, beautiful, powerful and crafted into strings of enchanting art. I was both mystified and in awe of Patterson's command and use of the English language. Mark my word, this work will endure as fine literature, long after we are all gone.

Ernest Spencer author: WELCOME TO VIETNAM MACHO MAN, editor: The Khe Sanh Veterans Magazine, RED CLAY

Robert Cohen writes, "One year ago I read an author's manuscript. Today, that book is in print, and you should
add this one to your summer reading list: ETERNAL TREBLINKA by Charles Patterson. I have just been informed by Mr. Patterson that his Eternal Treblinka has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. After reading Eternal Treblinka, I wrote this:

The flight from Newark, New Jersey, to Portland Oregon lasted six hours. On the plane, I read the rough draft version of "Eternal Treblinka," an extraordinary book written by Charles Patterson that equates the real life and death experiences of ten billion farm animals raised each year for human consumption to the same Nazi atrocities suffered by six million Jews who became Hitler's "Final Solution."

This is one of the best written, best researched animal rights books that I've ever had the pleasure to preview. Fresh from the memory of having read about Jews stuffed into cattle cars as they were being transported to the slaughterhouses of Aushwitz and Dachau, I myself became witness to the twenty-first century's foremost example of man's inhumanity to other living creatures. Our tortured kin. The animal holocaust.

Last Thursday morning, I drove from Portland to Mount St. Helens in Washington State. I had been attending the Raw Foods Festival in Portland, and found a few hours in between my talks to visit the scene of America's greatest natural volcanic disaster. On this hot summer day, I drove across a bridge spanning the cascading Columbia River, separating Portland from Vancouver. There next to my car was a 40-foot long silver van with holes large enough to see through.

Inside of the truck were dairy cows. They were packed tightly together-with no room to lie down. The cows had served man's purpose. Each individual lived her short lifetime of stress, first birthing a child who would be immediately taken from
her, then injected with hormones that would painfully stretch her udder, depleting calcium from her own bones so that she would generate enough milk to fill 100 half-pint containers for school children to drink each day. Her ancestors naturally produced enough milk to have filled just four of those same containers.

The cow whose eyes I look into for just one moment would be made to suffer through hours or days of driving hundreds or thousands of miles to what was to become a dairyman's final solution.

Yesterday she died a violent death shared by 10,000 of her sisters.

Today she will share that same fate with 10,000 other Guernsey and Holstein cows on Route 80 or Route 66 or I-95, in Kansas, New Jersey, or Florida, on highways and neighborhoods where your children and mine sleep comfortably unaware of the predestined doom for living beings who have done nothing to merit such treatment.

Tomorrow the same, and the day after that. Eternal death. Eternal slaughter. Eternal Treblinka.

A holocaust occurs while meat eaters turn the other way, denying that such horrors could possibly exist. Were the German and Polish people who knew the fate of those trucked to Buchenwald and Treblinka any less moral or guilty than those who comprehend the truth about what really happens to farm animals?

I followed the truck for a bit until it veered off to the left, and I continued my drive in another direction. I took the high road, and she took the low road, and her look will forever haunt me. Her body will produce 2,000 quarter-pounders for one of many fast food franchises.

Her anus and cheeks, arms and legs, back and udder will be served so that others can have it their way. Today's slaughter will feed 20,000,000 people, and the year's tally of Elsie and her sisters will add up to seven billion kids meals served.

I feel the slaughterhouse. I hear the screams and know their fear. I smell the sweat and blood and suffer their pain. I internalize the agony and distress of transported animals. I envision the once green fields in which these animals grazed and the cold metallic ramp and smell of warm sticky blood that flows on the slaughterhouse floor and stains the psyche of us all.

I imagine the stun gun bolt to the head. The upside-down hoisting and the sliced neck artery. The animal who chokes on her blood, and the man who slices off her legs as she kicks in fear from the ensuing pain of butchery. The last fifteen seconds of a death that no creature deserves. The arrogance of a man who eats the flesh and dares not consider the origin of each bite.

Nobel Prize-winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer once wrote about a man's love for his departed pet mouse:

"What do they know-all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world - about such as you? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka."

I ceased eating meat four years ago. I now look at my pet dog, whom my daughters rescued from a shelter one day before she was due to be injected with man's final solution. I have come to love her.

Her name is Tykee, the goddess of fortune. Is she unlike the baby lamb or calf who is separated from her mother and shipped to the exterminator? I reflect on the Amazon parrot who recognizes me and sings "hello" when I visit my parents. Does the bird with green feathers differ significantly from the chicken with white plumage?

Do they not feel pain and deserve the right to live? I cannot eat them. I can no longer be then cause for their pain, although I once was a part of their genocide. I once denied responsibility for the acts of terror that occurred outside of my vision...outside of my consciousness. Their bodies were cut into smaller pieces and were broiled, baked, and fried.

Oh, that same crime of arrogance to which I now plead guilty! My penitence? Community service. I explain the act to meat eaters, and some turn their backs on me. Close their eyes. Shut their
ears. Who wishes to deal with the truth and reality of death?

Arriving at Mount St. Helens, I carefully read one plaque after another, taking note of performances both heroic and ironic. I consider the day that once silenced the birds and boiled to death fish in the streams. A blink in the eye of geological
time that stripped the landscape of the color green, divested pine trees of their needles and scattered whole trees like matchsticks across barren mountain tops.

I examined the original seismographs and warnings from hundreds of scientists to the residents to evacuate their homes and come to terms with an absolute truth. I became dumfounded by the arrogance of one man, Harry R. Truman, who lived alone in a cabin aside the lake below a mountain that would soon explode with the magnitude and power equivalent to 27,000
Hiroshima-type blasts.

A man who declined to leave that mountain. A man who denied a truth shared by others. An arrogant man who looked death in the face and refused to respect man's destiny. I try to imagine his final moment of sensibility. At the same time, in my own mind's eye I call upon the face of a cow in a truck on a bridge."

Eternal Treblinka is a book to be loved by those who believe pursuit of the truth is the way to the most valuable things in life. It naturally will be deplored by those who wish to maintain blind faith in social fictions to the effect that all is well as long as external enemies can be smited and the markets kept operating.
After defeating the Nazi Holocaust, our society expanded its own. Its holocaust against animals, nourished by 10,000 years of animal domestication, fed on the technological opportunities for managing and slaughtering animals that the Nazi Holocaust had used for managing and slaughtering human beings. The breeding for preferred traits, the exploitation and killing of "life unworthy of life," the killing in a depersonalized fashion as a matter of daily business with machinery designed for the purpose, the talk of "humane killing"--these are defining features of both holocausts. Eternal Treblinka argues that the long-ago enslavement of nonhuman animals informed the Nazi Holocaust. One of the key technological developments along the way was the animal dis-assembly line -- the slaughterhouse -- admired and imitated for manufacture by Henry Ford, who had a relationship with Hitler based on mutual admiration, Ford's antisemitism holding special appeal for his German penpal.
For some, reading Eternal Treblinka will pose problems because it reveals evil running through countless human lives that we are encouraged to consider good. For others, it will raise the difficulty that ignorance of its contents will be a sign of extreme naivete. We are each a part of the solution or the problem with regard to the animal holocaust, depending on what we choose to know and to do. Eternal Treblinka helps show us how to choose for the better.

ETERNAL TREBLINKA; OUR TREATMENT OF ANIMALS AND THE HOLOCAUST
By Charles Patterson

The title Eternal Treblinka refers to the ongoing holocaust of animals. The blindfold covering your eyes will drop while reading each chapter. Even vegans who advocate for a cruelty free lifestyle will find their eyes opening wide to the assembly line atrocities that are inflicted daily upon animals. This book is for each person who says, "Don't tell me. I don't want to know." The time to know is now. The time to act is now. The time to become the voice of the innocent and vulnerable is now.

The first five chapters of Eternal Treblinka give a historical background of humans and their treatment of animals. Humans have displayed a propensity to mistreat and degrade both animals and themselves. Usually the first step in vilifying another group or sub-group within the human species is to attribute animal-like qualities to them. This precedes the domination, enslavement, and slaughter of that group.

Stewart David, who is profiled in chapter six, states, "If the public is allowed to remain detached from the suffering of the factory farms, animal laboratories, fur farms, steel-jaw leg hold traps, rodeos, circuses, and other atrocities, these atrocities will continue. We must make them feel the pain of the creatures whose screams are hidden behind the locked doors, out of sight, out of mind. Their language may not be understandable to others, but we know what they are saying."

In one chapter Mr. Patterson discusses a worker who explains that on pig farms sows are forced to live on concrete and develop such painful conditions that they can't walk. "On the farm where I work", she states, "they drag the live ones who can't stand up anymore out of the crate. They put a metal snare around her ear or foot and drag her the full length of the building. These animals are just screaming in pain. They're dragging them across the concrete, it's ripping their skin, the metal snares are tearing up their ears." Mr. Patterson goes on to explain how worn-out sows are dumped on a pile, where they stay for up to two weeks until the cull truck picks them up and takes them to renderers who grind them up to make them into something profitable.

The mistreatment of people and the mistreatment of animals are connected.
The last three chapters parallel the treatment of animals and the holocaust. The slaughterhouse appears to hold the very same atrocities as the Nazi death camps. Eternal Treblinka forces the reader to face the horror of present day factory farming; it also awakens a soul to the plight of the voiceless.

While the screams of these creatures are kept comfortably hidden behind locked doors, they cannot be comfortably hidden from our collective consciousness.

Review by Patricia Rodriguez

This book flies. I had just read a couple of books that I thought were pretty lame and needed something fast and exciting. A woman I work with recommended James Patterson to me. I did a little research and found that this book is the first in a series for fictional detective Alex Cross. (I hate to read a series out of order, even if the stories are independent and don't continue from book to book.) Along Came A Spider is a perfect "fun" read. It moves at a very rapid pace. (The chapters are usually just a few pages.) It has pretty well developed characters considering its quick pace and more plot twists than you'll ever anticipate. Just when the romance element in the book started to bore me Patterson turns it on its ear. Another thing that makes this book so good is that despite the surprising plot twists everything is fairly believable within the context of the story. I read a lot of mystery/suspense and one of my biggest complaints is that I'll get really into a book and the climax will be totally ridiculous. You know, the killer will turn out to be the sister of the girl that was accidentally drown in the rich family's pool the night of the prom thirty-five years before but nobody recognizes her because she's a master of disguise or whatever! Along Came A Spider has none of that. It's consistent, quick and exciting! Read it!

At first, watching the brutality and tragery happened in NY, and reading the crimes in this book, I wish those should disapper.

1. Which is first, chicken or egg?
The part descibing on possibility of multiple character in Gary Murphy/Sonjei, reminded me of the movie, Primal fear in which Edward Norton deceived Richard Gear so amazingly. So many books recenly are published aiming for Hollywood movie, or many mystery novels and movies look like relatives. Where is the creativity? Among books and movies, I just found only 'Sixth sense' to prove the author's creativty.

2. The detailed and long desciption on the romance made me lost in following the kidnapping case. I think this targeted for the reversal in relationship, but which is a little boring.

Although, I gave this book 4 stars.
Because the character of Alex Cross, which is now confused with that of Morgan Freeman (He's too COOL though old), is so realistic and appealing to attract and deserve many people's affection. And one more, I cannot put aside the book and read the last 20-30 pages holding breath.

James Patterson is one of the best mystery novelists in US.

Of all the James Patterson novels, this one is definitely at the top of the list. In this and subsequent novels, kidnapper, Gary Soneji is to Alex Cross as Hannibal is to FBI Agent Clarice Starling.

Without going into the specifics of the book, all of which have been provided for you in the editorial reviews, this book is one of my all time favourites of James Patterson. It is packed with suspense, drama, a super A-1 plot and great characters. Be prepared for a long night ahead because it is a book you will not want to put down from start to finish. Also, at the top of the list is "Kiss the Girls" and "Cat and Mouse."

If you have read Patterson's later novels,"When the Wind Blows" and "Cradle and All," and are disappointed with what you have read, do not be discouraged. This book has all the punch and power of a real super thriller! You will not want to miss this book or the movie of the same name.

The Cliffs notes for the Bible is hardly an attempt to "condense the entire 39 books of the Old Testament into a little yellow book." I would not be so condesending, it does a very good job at condensing many scholars' perspectives on who's writing is included in it and the times the texts were written during; even touching on *some* pop Bible stories and the "great questions" they analyze. It introduces Bible newbies (and some oldies) to the notion the Bible wasn't written like a movie, by a few people in the span of a few months or even years; the Old Testament includes work by many people over the span of hundreds of years. Such a long time, that original documents wore out or decayed, thus needed to be copied down to a new hard copy...he briefly mentions instances of editorial modifications, he does not discuss language conversions however. I believe an overview of a very complicated piece of literature is great, before or after sitting down to read it in vast quantities. He does a good job at staying in an objective tone, not rambling on to preaching tangents. Again, this is not an attempt to condense the OT, but provide insight into who the current studied folks consider the authors and when the manuscripts were brought together.

Until someone comes out with Debby Does the Old Testament, this is perhaps the easiest way of passing any test on the most boring book ever written. And until society stops forcing unwilling, open-minded youth to read such cockadoodledoo-doo, Cliff's OT will remain the smart student's companion to the bible. Thanks to Cliff, students can look smart in class and still have time to read good books on the side - an important benefit for real scholars. Weighing in at nearly 100 pages, my only complaint is that these notes are bit too long. Subsequent editions should shoot for thirty or less pages. For me personally, trudging through ten pages of the bible is boring enough.

Wow, I really have to say--this is one Cliffs Notes that I can appreciate. It actually has a purpose. This is the perfect book for those of us who are forced by parents and sunday school teachers to read the Bible on penalty of everlasting suffering and torment. I wish this was available when I was growing up...it is the perfect tool to decieve those that would try to force us to read the incomphrensible gibberish that is the Bible. And frankly rounding out at just under 100 pages, I can say that this is about as much of the Bible that I can bear. Easy to read and understand and without the mind-altering, brainwashing side affects. A+, highly recommended!!!

Good account of holocaust experience without being too graphic for younger readers. We used this in an eighth grade classroom for a language arts project. The kids were a little bogged down in the section after Marian emigrates to the U.S. They could better relate to the account of his experiences as a youth. A solid account for adults, as well.

This is a well-written book, the main interest of which lies in its unemotional and almost off-handed anecdotal details. While the author, naturally, focuses on the events of his and his family's life, a succession of incredible details leave an invaluable impression of life in pre-war Warsaw, in death camps, post-war Germany, and 1950s America. The subject, Marian Filar, is a classical concert pianist and I found especially moving his description of devotedly studying under the great German pianist Walter Gieseking in the American Zone of Germany immediately after the World War Two. Anyone interested in a straight-forward, unself-conscious memoir of displacement will appreciate this book.

Not all of the little yellow books with the black stripes deal with literature in the fictional sense, as Charles H. Patterson's Cliffs Notes for Plato's "Euthyphro," "Apology," "Crito" and "Phaedo." "Euthyphro" concerns the meaning of piety, the "Apology" consists of Socrates' speeches in the trial that condemned him to death, "Crito" takes place in prison as Socrates explains why he refused to escape and save his life, and "Phaedo" relates the last hours of Socrates. The introduction covers the lives of both Socrates and Plato, in an effort to help teachers/readers understand the difference between the two. Then each of the four dialogues are covered in turn in the traditional Summary/Commentary manner, although each half is presented as a whole. Of course the dialogues do not have distinct sections, apartment from the "Apology," which consists of three speeches by Socrates before the court. This means that both the summaries and commentaries are large sections that consequently fail to give a sense of structure to the dialogues. This makes them somewhat imposing, although decidedly less so that the actual dialogues. However, the analysis does take into account the argumentative particulars of each dialogue so that readers get a clear sense of how Socrates/Plato advances his case in each one.