I teach at a medical school and have found this text to be excellent for both our medical students and residents. Up-to-date and a quick and easy read. Great charts/algorithms.

A very practical review, packed with numerous charts and tables. Up-to-date. The most straightforward guide to psychopharmacology.

Mr. Preston's "Leave a Good-Looking Corpse" is spellbinding. It grabs you starting with page one all the way to the last page. Not a dull moment. An excellent read. Keep them coming Mr. Preston! FYI - this novel was loaned to me by a friend and fan of Mr. Preston's, Ray Shinmachi. It is wonderful to share a good read with someone else to increase our knowledge of newer writers and gifted story tellers. I am pleased to be a new fan of the T. R. McDonald mystery series and am looking forward to future publications of Mr. Preston's writings of mystery and intrigue.

I found the book very addictive. Once I started I didn't put it down until I finished. The details of various scenes were engaging to the point that I felt like I was right there as the action or story unfolded. I felt that the development of the various characters described real-world people that I may have personally encountered and therefore was able to relate and bond with the characters and situation drawing me into the book all the more. I am looking forward to the release of Mr. Preston's next book.

This is a humorous, clever tale of a well known western folk hero and a virtually unknown bumbling western nobody. The book engrosses you from the beginning and keeps you guessing until the very end. Don't let the length discourage you. This is a great read!

This is the second in the book seris and is well worth the time it will take to read this. It has acton and adventure and there is even a joke in it about Bill Clinto

"All Possible Worlds" is an excellent source for the history of geography. The authors cover geography as done by the ancient Greeks, Phoenicians, Muslims, Chinese, Medieval scholars. Portuguese, and all the explorers during the Age of Exploration. They excellent cover how hard it was to discard the wrong ideas of the Greeks. After discussing Humboldt, they then go into the development of geography from 1850 to the present day, which to them was originally in the 1970's, although it has been updated up to 1993. in each of the major countries on the Earth.

A definite book for any true geographer to have.

This is the funniest western I've ever read! My favorite along with Lonesome Dove. I love his country sayings. I laughed out loud and was sorry that the book ended. Didn't know this book existed until I stumbled onto it in a library. A Lewis book is like a John Wayne movie, based on history, spurred with suspense and spiced with humor. The perfect formula for any book. I'd love to have the Lomax set! Why are they out of print???

Kavanaugh puts words to emotions that we have all experienced and in the process I learned about him and about myself. It is well worth waiting for your special order to arrive. You'll want to keep it forever. In one week my copy is already dog-eared and I have passed many poems on to dear friends who have thanked me over and over.

If of your slender store you are bereft/ And have but two loaves of bread left/ Sell one! And with the dole/ Buy LAUGHING DOWN LONELY CANYONS to feed your soul!/ (I've forgotten what ancient poet I stole this from-- but "LDLC" IS soul-food!)

James Kavanaugh is able to express so many of my own thoughts and feelings. I feel a soul connection with him. He is definitely my favorite poet. I am on my third copy of this book, I wear them out.

People said of the first A-tests toward the close of the second world war that the "nuclear genie" had been let out of its bottle, words proved prophetic as in coming years the world raced toward nuclear armageddon. Yet today the nuclear genie is largely bottled thanks to the end of the Cold War, only to be supplanted by the wilder and unfortunately more accessible "poor man's" weapons of biowarfare.

Richard Preston, the author of the book that introduced western society at large to the threat of Ebola (The Hot Zone), presents a tale many times more chilling than his previous work as he delves into the threat lurking ostensibly in only two locations on earth: smallpox.

Preston's nonfiction reads better than many novels, and the reader will be hard-pressed to put down this page turner. The content will frighten all but fools--particularly the descriptions as to the ease of militarizing the world's greatest scourge into a vaccine resistant pandora's box demon. Though most of the tale is set between the anthrax attacks of 2001 and the present, he explores the days of the Eradication to describe the methodology (and set up its limitations) that rid the world of smallpox and to describe in chilling detail the effects of the disease.

If you thought Ebola was scary, smallpox will send you to cower in the corner as Preston details the ease of spread of the disease, where every infected person likely infects at least ten others--at times simply by being in the same building. Unlike the anthrax scare where only those exposed to the letters became ill, a smallpox attack could kill millions in mere weeks--and to believe that only the US and Russia maintain smallpox stores under strict security is a hope utterly dashed by Preston's account when he describes such recent finds as an amputated arm of a smallpox victim preserved in a dark University storeroom, or the forgotten personal stores of retired researchers at labs around the country--not to mention the bankrupt (financially and morally) Russian weapons program that to this day continues weapons work with smallpox.

His description of the ease of making vaccine-resistant smallpox reinforces the belief that we must work with the demon in the freezer to develop treatments and newer vaccines--the one in use today is the same as was used over 200 years ago. Read this book--just not alone at night; the smallpox demon makes Ebola look like a child's stuffed animal in comparison.

You Won't sleep until this book is done, and maybe not then! Another True and chilling book by Preston! Never mind Ebola, the hemorrhagic disease that was the main subject of Preston's 1994 #1 bestseller, The Hot Zone. What we really should be worrying about, explains Preston in this terrifying, cautionary new title, is smallpox, or variola. ...and today the variola virus only exists officially in two storage depots.. one in Russia, and the other at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta (in the freezer of the title).

To believe that variola is not held elsewhere, however, is nonsense, Says Preston, who delves into the probability that several nations, including Iraq, Iran, Russia and maybe Al-Qaeda, have recently worked, or are currently working, with genetically altered smallpox as a biological weapon!

Preston shows why even "normal" smallpox could (and would) sweep the globe in a matter of weeks killing millions, perhaps hundreds of millions! No one on the planet today has an immunity to this disease.

A chilling account of what countries have what Bio-weapons, and what happens if they use them. The research is excellent and accurate. Preston takes you through the recent Anthrax attacks, why they were "different" and what happens if a terrorist unleashes an easily genetically modified Smallpox weapon.

Richard Preston's first work of non-fiction, "The Hot Zone" was a gruesome look at emerging viruses in general, and the Ebola virus in particular. However, no matter how grotesque it got, the reader could detach themselves from the book because Ebola is basically unheard of in the developed world, and isn't particularly effective at spreading (it kills its victims to quickly). His latest, "The Demon in the Freezer" is another story altogether.

In it, he discusses the appalling specter of smallpox in general, and weaponized smallpox in particular. By using the anthrax attacks of 2001 as a jumping off point, he delves into a fascinating exploration of a disease that most people consider eradicated. Unfortunately, Preston reveals that this is far from the case. While it is true that smallpox hasn't occurred naturally in 25 years, it is accepted (if not altogether proven) that the Russians have significant stockpiles of particularly virulent smallpox. Moreover, it seems probable that some of this material has found its way into the hands of other actors (Iran, Iraq, North Korea). Finally, give the abundance of smallpox samples available just three decades ago, it seems likely that parallel programs could have been pursued in any number of countries.

In clear (if you've studied any biology at all, you should be fine with the terms in this book, and there is a glossary), vibrant language, Preston explores the personalities and institutions involved in trying to understand what smallpox today would mean. With a significant portion of the population having never been vaccinated, and the efficacy of 30-year-old vaccinations in serious doubt, it is a certainty that the release of even "natural" smallpox would be an absolutely devastating event. But what is even scarier is the possibility for engineered viruses that could burn through a fresh round of vaccinations and that would be almost impossible to counter.

As compelling as the subject matter is, and as breathless as Preston's writing is, it bears mentioning that he does an excellent job of staying above the scientific debate. His narrative is nothing if not evenhanded, and he goes to great lengths to report varying points of view in an engaging, but dispassionate tone. The closest he comes to editorializing is when he takes a jab (that is to my mind well deserved) at the Clinton administration for handling the Russians with kid gloves when the U.S. knew for a fact, from a variety of sources that, they had huge stockpiles of smallpox. The end result of this rather typical bungling was the loss of security, the loss of accountability, and the loss of awareness as to the material's locale.

In light of the Bush Administration's recent decision to begin immunizing health care workers, and to begin stockpiling enough vaccine for every American, this book takes on a whole new importance. Anyone who doesn't understand the decision, or what the consequences of bio-warfare are, would do well the read this book. Moreover, anyone who doubts the grave threat to all mankind posed by smallpox will find this book a disturbing eye-opener. It is eminently readable and is loaded with fascinating, downright terrifying, information.

The writing is very smooth but the writer spent too much time to paint the veiled several key characters with very very long paragraphs, sometimes a whole page only got about 1-1/10 long paragraphs which were usually very tiresome to focus and read. The prose style writing may be very good but also kills the pace to an almost dragging, snailingly crawled monologue styled narration, just like the late man who rode a bus and look outside the window, the smoky glass made everything distant and vague and made the scenary going back and disappeared. A mystery should not be written like a some kind memorial stuff lingering in yesterday. Like a chess game, both players got to meet the time limits, reading a novel or mystery is the same thing, you just can't have too much time wasted in blabbing and making the reader waiting too long and too much

Girard has an ability I usually don't find in this genre, to give detail of settings and people to make you feel you are there along side them. Rather than the typical supreficial, get to the story nature of mysteries, it goes several levels deeper. The people become very real and you care about them as much as you care about whodunnit. The people are not some stereotype. The weaving of contrasts and similarities between the three main characters puts us on a level with them, we've all been there in some way. What starts out as bleak lives, mistakes are made, hope is lost, leaves the reader feeling there is a future. I can't wait for his new novel to come out.

"The Late Man" is an elegiac, beautifully written novel whose story happens to fit the constraints of genre. But to say that it is not strictly speaking a "genre novel" is meant as praise; this is a beautiful book that sneaks up on you and lingers with you long after you have turned the last page. I recommend this book to all "genre" lovers- be they crime novels, detective novels, or murder mysteries- who want a little more weight, a little more feeling with their entertainments. "The Late Man" makes me hope that this was not a one shot from Mister Girard; that many more novels of this caliber will issue forth from him.

The first part of this book was mildly interesting for the anecdotes relating to Preston Sturges' fascinating early life & career(s). But as it proceeeds through his Hollywood period & beyond it gets thinner & vaguer. When it ended, I wasn't even sure what happened to Mr. Sturges, he just seemed to disappear & the book just stopped. Or was my edition missing a chapter?

An outstanding biography. Though concise, this is much better written than longer biographies of Preston Sturges. Curtis provides all the essentials, and does so in a well-structured and well-written style. Takes less time to read than the bios by Spoto and Jacobs, but the reader comes away with a much more vivid portrait of Sturges.

This is a very good book for gay/lesbian people who want to see some positive messages on the subject of religion, which is definitely needed. With all the hatred that masquerades as "God's word" when it comes to homosexuality (even though Jesus himself *never* mentions sexuality or gender identity *at all*, it's about time people started putting loving book which shows gay/lesbian people they don't have to abandon religion. My only complaint is that the authors don't ever mention or include bisexual or transgendered people at all. They just quickly say something to the effect of "we'd like to, but that's beyond the scope of our book." I'd say someone should write another book addressing this, since bi and trans people get the same harassment from so-called "religious" people, but except for that, this is a very good book. I'd recommend it to any gay/lesbian people I know who don't want to give up on religion, since it shows you *can* be gay *and* a Christian.

The subtitle of Alexander and Preston's book is "Claiming God's Grace for Lesbians and Gays." Nevertheless, this is not a book for homosexuals. This is a book that raises important theological and liturgical questions for all of God's people. Reduced to their simplest forms the question are: "DOES the Church tell the truth about those who are different?" and if not, "CAN the Church tell the truth about those who are different?"

Cutting through the psycho-babble and well-intentioned but destructive, liberal, social thinking, Alexander and Preston quickly get to the heart of the matter: (1) some denominations baptize infants and young children, boldly declaring that what matters is not our decision for Jesus, but his decision for us; (2) a growing body of scientific evidence argues for a significant genetic component to homosexuality, but (3) despite the commitment that denominations make in infant baptisms and a growing body of scientific evidence for sexual predispositions, most congregations effectively excommunicate homosexuals. The point is simple: every time the Church chases away an homosexual, we sin.

In the face of our religious hypocracy and failure to keep the promises of infant baptism, Alexander and Preston calmly remind us, "We Were Baptized, Too." This thought-provoking argument demands to be read and discussed within the "straight" Church. Can we tell the truth about those who share our faith, but whose ways of loving are different from our own?