Only half of this book contains anything about the TV show, the rest is about other projects the boys have done.

If you are more interested in behind-the-scenes and trivia then don't buy this book - there is hardly any. Most of the goodies section is about what happens in each episode, which any fan of the goodies knows anyway.

Disappointing.

the fabulous threesome get the encyclopedic treatment they deserve. This is a fascinating trivia book of everything pre post and during the Goodies phenomenon. I can't fault it. Has everything from Footlights tours of New Zealand to what each individual is doing today all in an A-Z format. Open it up on a different page each day and learn something new. Also includes in depth episode guide, which since the BBC won't show it is invaluable.

The back cover alone,should be the biggest tip off,to this gigantic rip-off! Mr.Ross is payed to write books about British television shows. Besides Python,he has written books on The Avengers,and The Saint. ( Heaven help their fans as well! ).He doesn't have to be a fan of the show,just a flunky who collects information. It's easy enough to get a Python endorsement as well,since a book about them,obviously generates intrest in their own projects.

One thing I wonder about is this: why do the authors of books about funny people,naturally assume they themselves are the comic event of the decade? ( Please,leave the comedy to the professionals.). Mr.Ross is no more a comedian,than Geoffrey Guiliano is a musician. Mr.Ross's overly long decriptions of every Python episode,are like being trapped in a pub with a drunken neo-Python fan,intent on retelling every joke to you until you laugh at it.

Frankly,if you wanted a run down of cast and crew for any Python film,you could run it down on the Internet Movie Data Base.( And more than likely see the information spelled correctly as well.).Obviously all Mr.Ross had to do,was pay someone to surf for the information,and copy it down for his book.

This book would benefit from being,simply,the facts. Most "encylopedias" tend to state facts,rather than personal opinions. As a Python fan,I frankly don't care if Mr.Ross laughs at the same jokes I do,or "gets" the social ramifications of certain subjects.We all laugh differently,and Python offers much to laugh about.

Instead of having every film,ruined by a full out synopsis that kills every joke,why not give just a general overview? Instead of merely listing the albums,why not list the variants? ( And yes,original Python vinyl came with extras!). Instead of going over every episode with a fine tooth comb,why not give just a season intro?

Mr.Ross wants too hard to be Kim Johnson,and fails.

This encyclopedia is filled with information not just on Monty Python, but on the individual members as well. What I mean is, not only do we read about things like "Life of Brian" and "The Meaning of Life," but we also hear about "Silverado" and "Splitting Heirs."

The book provides a chronology starting with John Cleese's birthday in 1939 to 1997. There is also a list of videos and books as well as addresses for the British and American fan clubs.

The focus for the entries is on the Monty Python cast. For instance, not a lot of information is given on the movie "Silverado," but there is quite a bit of information about John Cleese's role in the movie.

Unfortunately, there are not a lot of pictures in the book. Personally, I think that would be a grand addition to this work.

I would recommend this for diehard fans of Monty Python.

Alright, this has gone a little too far. Perhaps the reason why 3 Pythons have endorsed the book is because they *ACTUALLY LIKED IT*. Mr. Frankenstein, or whatever his name is who wrote that lousy review probably right above this one, has not a clue what humor is. Probably the best way to write about a topic is to know it firsthand, and the second best way is to be objective. To leave writing Python books to the Pythons themselves would probably leave us with a bunch of books to be reviewed badly by uninformed persons such as Mr. Frankenstein, or whatever his name is. I have read through the book and have found nothing but pure Python emerging from its pages, pure humor, comprehensive and complete, and pretty well written. To give it one star is a lousy show of action. The only people who would give the Monty Python Encyclopedia ONE LOUSY STAR would be people who don't appreciate British humor for what it's worth. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book, even though it's paperback and doesn't have many pictures. It's got everything else, what's wrong with it?

The textbook is difficult to understand and many of the answers in the back of the book are wrong. Also it addresses lots of good topics but mostle hard to understand.

I thought that it was easy to read, the examples weren't difficult to follow and the definitions and proofs were great! I used it many times as a reference for Abstract Algebra (that book was awful) and Intro to Real Analysis. Great buy and a keeper for all students of Mathematics! Also, there is a reference of mathematical symbols in case you should forget what something means.

I have never been a math wizard, but I really enjoyed this book, and have kept it around because it is so helpful.

I appreciate the organization of the book. If you want to study a chapter out of sequence, the opening page tells you which earlier chapters are necessary to understand the new one. The exercises in each section are progressive - you can understand the topic with the first few problems, and by the time you work through the section you will REALLY understand it.
I used the fourth edition, published in 2000, so perhaps there are some inaccuracies in the earlier edition. I found few examples of wrong answers.

It is quite obvious after reading this book that Mr. Ross is a genuine fan of "The lad himself" from not only the depth of research but also the personal take that he puts on the book in the last few segments. The ONE thing that kept me from giving this book a 5 star rating is that, although he mentions co-stars such as Jack Wright, Sue Upton, Louise English, and Henry McGee, he neglects to put pictures of them in the book with Benny. For fans of the show they know who these people are but not so the occasional viewer who might buy the book hoping to find out a bit more about Benny and his show. Despite this, it's a great book and well worth the money.

I'm really SURPRISED at my reaction to this book. I LOVE Benny Hill (I have some of his videos and watched his syndicated show for years). I am now a fulltime ventriloquist and read and collect books on comedians and comedy. I have re-read many of the comedy/comedian books in my collection. I could not WAIT until I got this book!

But I found this book incredibly tedious.

At first I thought it was due to the fact that I'm American and Americans haven't seen as much of Hill's work as his British audiences. But I've read bios of comedians that detail work they did that I never viewed and I loved those books. This is a book crammed with research, whether it's about his early years -- how his comedy style came together -- or his years as the King of British TV, then American syndicated TV...and his sad fall as a victim of the relentless armies of political correctness.

The book reads like a collection of detailed research notes and staid business articles. There seems to be little passion (and when there seems to be passion it's a weird dispassionate passion!) for the subject, unlike the GREAT books done by authors on Laurel & Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Chaplin, and most certainly, The Three Stooges. Those books make you want to go out and see more of their work, even if you don't like them. This book summarizes and informs -- and can bore a diehard fan.

It's so very sad because Hill was so incredibly funny. As an American I didn't like many of his verbal skits -- and certainly NOT his songs -- but his silent segments bordered on comedic genius a la Ernie Kovaks or (I know some will be furious at this) Chaplin.

This book is so clinical it took me a LONG TIME to finish it. I'm talking about MONTHS where I had to read other books to get back to and through it. Ross, who wrote a critically acclaimed book on Monty Python's Fying Circus, certainly did excellent research. There's a ton of info you can't get anywhere else -- inside information about each step of Hill's career and why he did what he did at pivotal times; who was in his corner, keeping him on t.v., and who didn't like him.

But I can only recommend this to die-hard Hill fans who want every single thing available on him -- NOT to anyone seeking a book that tells about Hill and communicates the joy and (until the end)uncensored craziness of his comedy. Today his comedy lives on in video tape, despite the enemies that ended his career and, some say, finally broke his heart.

This book is hard to follow. The maps are very poor and there is no sense of historical journey. It is very fact based and hard to follow.

Based on the title, I assumed that this book would be a relatively light overview of S. African history and would provide some commentary about how S. Africa had gotten to where it is today. My assumption was wrong, however, and I found it to be much more academic than I expected.

It seems to be the ambition of many historians to make their subject as dry and inaccessible as possible. I mean, why write a sentence like 'Then Bob rode his horse into the sunset' when you could write 'following, Robert employed his most favored mode of transport, equestrianism, to progress toward the sun, which was setting, as it had done ever since the Earth had formed from a rotating disk of hot dust, and was expected to do in the foreseeable future, every night."

Ross seems to struggle with the 'concise' aim of the book on a number of levels. First, as I've alluded to, he wastes a great deal of space with sentences like "He was succeeded by Balthazar Johannes Vorster, often, and surprisingly, anglicized to John, who was relatively junior in the cabinet and unforgiven by its elder members for his participation in the Ossewabrandwag, in the course of which he had spent some years in gaol during the war for nazi sympathies.' And, perhaps my favorite: 'Nevertheless, the cultures that have been developed are only local when, as is the case with certain of S. Africa's ethnicicities, they have been created in almost conscious rejection of values, which within the confines of S. Africa, are universal.' If you found those sentences clear and riveting, rush right out and buy this book.

Second, he seems bent on covering relatively minor occurrences with a single (run-on) sentence that has no real context and assumes that the reader has previous knowledge of the event. Combine that with the fact that there are no good maps to refer to and no glossary to consult when you forget the difference between an 'inboekelinge' and a 'dorp', and you have a book that seems almost intentionally obscure.

So why not one star? Ross's scholarship is undeniable, and he is as unbiased as can be reasonably expected.

The bottom line, though, is that I had to fight with this book to get anything out of it. The benefit of its conciseness was negated by my wandering mind and the fact that I had to re-read sentences constantly. Go with Leonard Thompson's 'History of South Africa' which, though twice the length, appears to have been written with the goal of actually informing and entertaining the reader.

This work by the well respected historian Robert Ross is primarily concerned with the economic, social, and political factors that influenced South African history. As the title suggests, it is a concise history and thus some topics receive less coverage than one might like. For example, the description of the Boer War takes place in a little over two pages. But the text is both coherent and highly informative, and strives to be as complete as possible given the limit on length presumably imposed by the people who publish Cambridge Concise Histories. The book begins with a physical description of the South African environment and then discusses the indigenous peoples and their societies previous to 1652, the point at which the Dutch established a base on the Cape, and where many histories begin. The next chapters are entitled Colonial Conquest, Unification, Consolidation, and Apartheid. Next follows a chapter that was of particular interest to me, The Costs of Apartheid, in which the author considers the political, social, and economic consequences of the imposition of apartheid. The book ends with the chapters Let Freedom Reign, and Epilogue: The Acid Rain of Freedom. My single complaint is that I would have found a few more maps helpful. But the careful reader will most likely find this to be an excellent book.

scymanski has an ok story here. price has a good one about the gorgon. that one was very enjoyable, and had some lovely details. otherwise, this was dreary read. so many of these stories were not only badly invented, but seemed so uninspired to. i almost felt sorry for the writers, for making so bad stories. i think this is chaosium's worst.

Synopsis from Amazon.co.uk -- This volume represents a major critique of the way Malthusian thinking has influenced capitalist development policy in the modern period, as well as in the past. It highlights the strategic role of Malthusian ideas in the defence of capitalist political economy when confronted by struggles for equality and human progress.

A big bore. Homogeneous selections. No Aboriginal stories of worth. Sameness of style, plot, location added to drudgery--and I really wanted to be entertained on the 15 hour flight. Few of the stories held my interest. Later I realized that the major problem is that the collection didn't really paint an accurate picture of these incredibly diverse, lively, creative,spontaneous, brave people and fierce, glorious habitats. Not at all the Best of Australia--my Aussie friends (well-read) had not heard of the majority of authors. Not worth the weight to carry home. I threw it out in the hotel.