If you didn't know otherwise going in, you'd probably think Rubinstein and Hersh had just written this book. Even though it's nearly 20 years old, this book has lessons and guidelines that still apply today. Sure our computers and programs are cheaper, more powerful, and more plentiful than they were when this book came out, but somehow those of us who make them still haven't picked up on the lessons this book has to offer.

A couple years back Alan Cooper very appropriately and effectively took those of us in the tech world to task with The Inmates are Running the Asylum. I recommend Cooper's book very highly, but it's clear that Rubinstein and Hersh had the subject nailed years ago and that we still don't get it. Pick this one up if you can.

Nice, consistent collection of horror short stories.

I very much enjoyed seeing this catalog. I only wish I had been in the country when the actual exhibit that took place in Connecticut. This book is small, but charming and the images showed a good overview of what had been just before the current massurrealist era that is now. Building upon the theme of mass-media & surrealism, Pop Surrealism showcased established artists works (in decent quality reproductions), and is a must for anyone's collection of contemporary art publications.

A fabulous English teacher could only produce fabulous works himself. The best and most influential instructor I've had in school also has the skills to teach other educators how to instill a terrific intellectual drive in their own junior high students.

I really enjoyed this book until I became sure who commited the crime. Unfortunately, this was half way through the book. I continued to read it, and continued to enjoy it until my prediction came true. How very disapointing. The dialog and the characters are very funny and engaging but the story that had promise, fissled. This book was an Edgar Award Winner which considering the forseeable ending, I found very surprising. I will definately read more books by Steven Womack and hope that the stories are as good as the rest of the book.

In DEAD FOLKS' BLUES, the protagonist is a newspaper reporter who is fired and becomes a private investigator. All fictional detectives have to have some type of other professional background, and this one for Harry James Denton seems to really work.

When an old-college fling comes to his office wanting him to get her doctor husband out of trouble, Denton is extatic to land his first case. Rachel pays him in advance, and he heads to her husband's hospital to do a little background checking. In the process, he is knock out while Conrad Fletcher is murdered. The story really takes off from there, as Harry soon finds out that there are a multitude of suspects. No matter where Harry turns, he runs into a dead end.

Steven Womack does an admirable job of mingling several different characters. They are all tied together quite nicely in a good, cohesive plot, chock full of witty dialogue and humorous situations.

DEAD FOLKS' BLUES is a fairly entertaining novel, and a good solid effort for the first novel in the series. Although the ending is somewhat predictable, there are enough twists and turns to keep the reader interested. This is pretty good thriller.

This was the first in the Harry James Denton series...and I devoured it in one afternoon. I had to have more! Went out and got as many of them as I could find...and read them all just as fast. Once I started reading, I couldn't put the books down. I was addicted...sigh.

What was cool is that I lived in Nashville at the time, and the setting was there. I learned more about the city through reading his books than I had in the entire time I'd been there.
What even made it better is that Harry lived pretty close to where I was living in real life! He even wrote about the very grocery store I went to every week...

The main character was endearing, yet rough-edged to say the least. I loved everything about the series. Do yourself a favor and pick this one up...I betcha get the next in the series, too...and the next, and the next.....

...and I wanted it to be good so badly! But, it just was not to be. This is a book about someone who did a lot of research and decided to publish every word of it, rather than just the pertinent information. It becomes irritating to continue to learn information about the subject, only to be told that it is all totally worthless. And, the end is anti-climactic. In the end, a diligent researcher accepts the word of a single source as fact. Doesn't seem like the same man. Perhaps he was just ready to retire. I suggest this would make a pretty good movie, but not a book.

This book held my attention as I read it practically cover to cover. It is very interesting, albeit annoying at times as the author goes in great detail about numerous leads, only to have them ruled out a few pages later. I can see why the author did that -- to show the exhaustive work done by CID and FBI investigators, and also to give the reader a small, small taste of the incredible frustration these investigators must have felt at the time. The problem with the book is that it is highly anti-climatic. The researcher, Jacobs, did not "give up" (as some have implied), he basically solved the mystery it's farthest moral extent. I do recommend reading this book, as it shall hold your attention through and through, but be prepared to be disappointed with the anti-climatic end.

I've been interested in the Richard Cox mystery since I was very little and read about it in LIFE magazine in 1950 and then a few years later in CORONET. From time to time over the years I would research the topic hoping for new information. I'd almost given up until I came across this book , containing lots of details never before disclosed. Unfortunately, as mentioned in some of the above reviews, the proposed "solution" at the end is thoroughly unconvincing.

Although Harry Turtledove is one of my more favorite authors and is capable of being truly spellbinding , this book was a real chore to finish. Rather than an Alternate History , one might better describe it as an Alternate Outcome--the American Revolution never occurred!

I didn't believe that this alternate outcome was at all possible given the conditions in 1775 America and the nature of the personalities involved ; the force of personality in Patrick Henry , Thomas Jefferson , and Tom Paine was entirely too strong for this outcome , wherin Americans would still be bowing and scraping before a King. For me to "buy into" an Alternate History or , in this case an alternate outcome , there must be a finite plausibility.

The mystery aspect of the theft of the painting known as "The Two Georges" is about all that kept me going in this book. Dr. Turtledove and Richard Dreyfuss did a fair job of portraying an alternate America , but the book WAS waaay too long! The pace of the action was tedious and verging on boring.

Not one of Turtledove's better efforts. Two stars is fair.

In my opinion books by Harry Turtledove (and even films by Richard Dreyfuss) can be a so-so affair. But I did like this book. The premise itself, that America could be happily part of the British Empire, without a revolution, is always an interesting one,especially considering how easily it might have been. It is also a brave book, especially in its attempt o debunk some "heroes" of modern America, especially JFK. And American life, especially the idea that blacks are far more equal, with Martin Luther King as the Governor, and many dominating the political classes, and the digs at gun control (with only 5/6 gun murders in what would be LA in one year). The Story line itself was good,a well realised crime thriller, with unexpected twists, and especially liked the detail of the story to, the careful descriptions of the food and travel conditions.

However I don't think this book is worth a fifth star, it reads very much like a film, also while the details of the book make it, they also let it down, because in places it drags, and the action moves far too slowly. The love story, does seem a bit false. Also some of leaps he makes, the use of airships, the pace of life and lack of technological advancement seems for the world he creates is a bit lacking, merely to show how different the world would be, rather than being a bit more realistic.

But as with all Harry Turtledove's book, it is the characters that make you ignore its faults and keep going through its prolems, and thi is no exception. The two leads are excellant and well fleshed out, and make you want to know what happens to them, also the bad guys in the story are not totally demonised, and in some places you can understand why they do the things they do.

This is a good book,and I would buy it, and my advice is: stick with, and don't be put off by its lack of pace.

The idea of the sun never setting on the British Empire is fascinating even to patriotic Americans and Dreyfuss and Turtledove have given us their view of the possible result. In an interesting mystery with a lot of twists and surprises, the authors give us an America where things are slower, crime is lower, and technology minimal. Though it paints a picture of a "kinder and gentler" America--short of the homegrown terrorism of the Sons of Liberty--much of what we still hold dear as Americans is demonstrated by Colonel Bushell and his aide Captain Stanley: An unfettered view of right and wrong, loyalty to what is demonstrated as a just system, and the desire to succeed against all odds. This is certainly an excellent book with lessons for the real United States in the closing years of the 20th century.

I don't doubt that Mr. Abanes has read the Harry Potter books, but I'm not sure that he did so other than to catalogue all mentions of occult within its pages--occult including several instances of folklore. In his research and documentation, he has misquoted Ms. Rowling and takes her to task for not qualifying which sort of magic she *does* believe in--yet when I used his bibliography to find the interviews he used, she did qualify her statement to declare that she believes in the magic of imagination, of good books, of friendship, etc. This is but one example of the misleading nature of Abanes' book.

Another involves his extensive research and explanation of the Hand of Glory, an artifact which appears very briefly in one scene in the Chamber of Secrets. Yet to believe Mr. Abanes, it is a pervasive and recurring evil in the books.

He further misses the point about the Divination classes in the book. Ms. Rowling is clearly spoofing divination and presents Sybil Trelawney as the fraud she truly is--for example, she cannot even recognize when her students, who are not taking the class seriously at all, invent answers to their assignments. The discounting of divination continues in the 5th book, which, naturally, Mr. Abanes was unable to read at the time his book was published.

I feel Mr. Abanes is quite unfair to Ms. Rowling on several counts, first and foremost being his taking her to task for the marketing efforts of others related to the Harry Potter movement. While the marketing of occult items to children is wrong, the offenders should be blamed, NOT Ms. Rowling. To blame her is to blame J.R.R. Tolkien for writing Lord of the Rings because people have sold tarot cards, oracles, rune sets, and other occultic items to cash in on it. Why, Lord of the Rings is inadvertently responsible for the Dungeons and Dragons that Mr. Abanes decries in his book. Shall we view Professor Tolkien's work as evil too?

On the whole, because of such blatant misunderstandings and misquotes designed to build up an argument against Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling, I cannot recommend this book to anyone who wants to read a fair analysis of Harry Potter.

Are you a Christian? Curious about whether the Harry Potter books are appropriate for your children? Then I warn you- don't read this biased, inaccurate book by Richard Abanes. If you have never read Rowling's books and only look to Harry Potter and the Bible for information about the series then you are doing yourself and your children a great injustice. Harry Potter and the Bible really reaches to find occultic evil in the series(by the way how does one become an occult expert?). It's secondary focus is the age old issue of right vs. wrong and how Harry and friends are rewarded by breaking rules and making trouble. I wonder if Abanes 1) Gets the point of the Harry Potter series, and 2) Remembers what it is like to be a kid.

If you are searching for answers about the Harry Potter series, then empower yourself, read Rowling's books and form your own conclusions. If you are still looking for supplemental literature, What's a Christian to do with Harry Potter? (a Focus on the Family product)is a better choice.

I was wondering if I should be letting my daughter read the Harry Potter books, so I picked this book up and thought it might help me make this decision. My daughter wanted to read this book when I finished it. Harry Potter and the Bible has so many books and web sites listed for the occult that it is a better book, than the Harry Potter books for someone wanting information on the occult. I won't let her read the Harry Potter and the Bible. I think I'll let her read the new 5th Harry Potter book that has come out.

Arthurian fiction in general is steeped with awful fiction, and short story collections are a mixed bag. Let me simply say that I was left unimpressed - and often disgusted - by the stories in here. There are some good ones, but they are few and far between. (Do not be led astray by the pretty cover art! It is pretty, but that's almost all it has going for it)

We start with an icky poem by Jane Yolen; then a groanworthy Mercedes Lackey story "The Cup and the Cauldron" -- it stars girls and yes, has more Christian-pagan stuff if you're as sick of that as I am; an incoherent Andre Norton story "That Which Overfloweth"; Marion Zimmer Bradley's equally groanworthy feminist-Goddess-server "Chalice of Tears." We hit something far better in Diana L. Paxson's "Feast of the Fisher King," which is both well-written and entertaining, as well as being in play format; also Brad Strickland's enjoyable elf-fantasy-Arthurian story "Gift of Gilthiliad."

Then it's back into "groan" territory with Ilona Ouspenskaya's gypsy tale "Curse of the Romany," where you wonder what-the-heck-does-this-have-to-do-with-it? James S. Dorr's "Dagda" is pretty; Gene Wolfe's odd "Sailor who Sailed After the Sun" is another where you wonder what the relevance is; Lee Hoffman's indifferently-written western-fantasy "Water" takes a long time to get to the point, as does Alan Dean Foster's "What You See..." and Richard Gilliam's "Storyville, Tennessee" and Jeremiah Phipps' "Hell-Bent for Leather" (are you seeing a pattern of irrelevance here?)

Lisa Lepovetsky pens another icky poem; Orson Scott Card's "Atlantis" stretches indefinitely; Dean Wesley Smith's "Invisible Bars" is pretty amusing; Janny Wurts bores and annoys with "That Way Lies Camelot"; Kristine Katherine Rusch's "Hitchhiking across an Ancient Sea" is a pale, pale short story; Lawrence Watt-Evans's story has a good idea, but is poorly written; Lionel Fenn's "The Awful Truth in Arthur's Barrow" is just plain bizarre, as is Brian M. Thompson's "Reunion." Margo Skinner redeems the poetry angle with "Quest Now"; Neil Gaiman's "Chivalry" is enchanting; Bruce D. Arthurs is weird again in "Falling to the Edge of the End of the World", same with Rick Wilber's "Greggie's Cup."

As you can see, this mixed bag tends toward the dull, irrelevant, pretentious and just poorly written. Half the stories seem to have the Grail thrown in (if it's there at all) just as an afterthought. Except for Margo Skinner's poem, the poetry all stinks; only a few of the stories retain the beauty and prose that one espects to see in an Arthurian story. When I buy a book classified as Arthurian fiction, I WANT Arthurian fiction; I do not want stories about pregnant gypsies, fantasy westerns, or genies.

There are much better collections out there, however bright the bright spots in this are. Read "The Doom of Camelot" and the upcoming "Legends of the Pendragon" if you want good Arthurian short stories.

The Gaiman story in this collection is brilliant. There are other bright spots as well, particularly the contributions from Diana Paxson and Alan Dean Foster. Good, fun stuff.

This short book (under 100 pages) tackles oneof the more enigmatic books in the New Testament. After a brief intro which outlines the chapter, the book is divided into 2 sections. The first covers key themes and images of Revelation in literature, from Alpha and Omega to Michael to Millenium. The 2nd part is the unabridged version of Revelation (from the New Jerusalem Bible).

While its not the last word on translations, "Revelation: The Apocalypse of St. John (The Classic Bible Series)" is a nie introduction to deeper understanding and also shows its influence on our culture.