This delightful book of at least three hundred photos of advertising characters shows the public face of commercial America. Companies realised that a three-dimensional figure built brand awareness. Look through the photos and you have to admit they do look cute and so very collectable too.

This book is the author's second attempt at the same subject, he wrote an earlier book called 'Advertising Character Collectibles', more or less the same items in each book but the earlier copy had perhaps a bit more historical detail about the companies. I prefer 'What a Character', the photography and design are so much better and I think these count for a lot in a strongly visual book.

Both books have a photo of the character I would love to have, the Kraft Cameraman from Kraft Television Theatre. Yours for fifty cents and the end flap from a Velveeta carton in 1954, yours now for at least $100 without the end flap!

I ran across this book in a offbeat-stuff boutique and couldn't put it down. An amazingly comprehensive view of all kinds of advertising characters over a century. This can't help bring back childhood memories, whether you're 20 or 85. And the writing is quite interesting as well. This one quickly made my gift list for some hard-to-choose person's birthday or christmas.

I love this book and love giving it as a gift as well. The thick colored photographs glorify these quirky, spooky, adorable, impish, goofy figures. This is not just another boomer collector on my kitchy 50's coffee table book. Oh no! The writing is musical, provocative and sociologically insightful. I'll never look at an advertising character again in the same way. Chronicle does tasteful stuff but this book with it's tribe of characters is a yummier feast for those who long for magic from our breakfast cereal and motor oil and in moments once spent between the twilight zone and Mr. Clean . Bye bye kittie!

Winning Mindshare is a must read for all associated with Customer Relationship Management (CRM). It's a short 60 page read that provides the missing link to an industry struggling for an identity. The point of CRM is not technology, on which many books are focused.

Winning Mindshare focuses the reader on the customer and engaging them in real dialogue. Marketing is no longer about getting attention with sizzle. It is now about establishing meaningful dialogue with your cutomers. How is that done? If customers are not thinking of how your company can service them your marketing has failed. This book is the real "how to" on making people think your ideas are theirs. As we all know, if we think it is our own idea we are determined to see it through.

Winning Mindshare goes right to the very core of effective marketing and sales in the new economy.

It does an excellent job explaining key aspects of human psychology and the diminishing returns of traditional communications. It exacts primary challenges facing corporate sales forces and the necessity for one to one marketing.

The fact that the Authors could successfully address the subject matter in 61 pages illustrates the comprehensive grasp they have of it.

I would strongly recommend this book for (1) marketing executives that, through all the hype, are still searching for more effective customer relationships, (2) any sales professional that wants to achieve sustainable high-performance and (3) players, like me, along the communications supply chain that need to strengthen their ROI.

CRM'S goal is to build better relationships, and relationships are built on better communication. Effective communication is not just about sending a message; the other side must receive it and be engaged by it. This is the supreme challenge of CRM.

Engaging the audience to want to participate in the relationship-building process is what this book tackles head on in a clear concise highly organized fashion.

This book is only 61 pages in length and is a tribute to the authors' intelligence and consideration for those of us who heretofore have read much drivel on CRM. Books that ramble on and on.

Not so this publication!

This one is clear, concise, hard-hitting and highly insightful.

In my opinion, this is a must-read for anyone involved in CRM (marketing or otherwise). This book represents a significant step in understanding how to make CRM work effectively.

Congratulations to authors John and William Todor for chiseling this one out for us.

Robert T. Stacey - President The Association for the Advancement of Relationship Marketing [...]

If your children or grandchildren have ever asked, "What did you do in the war?" then point them to this book.

Bill McGee, a prolific author and veteran of naval service in the South Pacific, has written a book that will do any "Amphibian" proud. He has managed by dint of exceptional research and extensive interviews to perfectly blend the historical development of naval amphibious forces with humorous anecdotal references. You will find yourself chuckling and nodding in the affirmative as you recall your own moments of terror, mind-numbing boredom and outrageous pranks.

McGee tells his story by following the formations of the Flotilla 5 LCTs, LSTs and LCIs from the formation of their crews in the states through their training--or lack thereof--crossing the Pacific, and their arrival and operations in the Solomon Islands group. It is a compelling story of "green" crews, "green" officers, "green" dragons and "green" camouflage.

Throughout this book, you will find yourself saying, "Yup, that was us." Read this book and I will guarantee that you will have a renewed respect for the guy you see in the mirror every morning.

William McGee's The Amphibians Are Coming! is a deeply engaging biographical history of World War II ship-to-shore landing craft and their crews. A brief history of amphibious warfare from the American Revolution to the 1942 Gudalcanal and North African campaigns is provided. Specifically designed and built to speed assault troops ashore under enemy fire, these landing crafts were used extensively in both the European and Pacific theaters. The Amphibians Are Coming! also profiles the famed "Green Dragons", the high-speed destroyer transports that filled a pressing Marine Corps need for ship-to-shore delivery prior to the availability of the new and more effective landing craft. Here is also the story of the "Earlybird" Flotilla Five LCTs, LSTs, and LCIs and their crews. McGree ranges from landing craft design and construction to amphibious training and flotilla formations, then concludes with the on-the-job warfare training in the southern Solomons. The Amphibians Are Coming! is a welcome and informative addition to personal, academic, and community library World War II history and reference collections.

I am a former Russian journalist and a documentary filmmaker who has also worked at NASA in the US.

"The Anatomy of Russian Defense Conversion" touches on many more subjects then just Russian Defense Industry. This is a very thorough, informative and important work that analyses the history of US and Russian Defense Industries, weapons exports and conversion, and possibilities of transformation from a militarized to a civilian economy in the new millenium.

The book also reflects on the current state of defense industries in the US and Russia, and "brain drain", or loss of intellectual capital in Russia and other countries after the Cold War.

I found reflections in Arkady Yarovsky's chapter "From the Culture of War to the Culture of Peace" very contemporary, especially in the light of recent events in the Middle East:

"Our time is unfortunately still characterized as "the culture of war." The culture of war is evident first and foremost in the hostilities between people and states, between nations and faiths, and in the inability to solve conflicts by peaceful means... Humanity has made it into the third millenium because the lust for power has been restrained by fear of nuclear war, but this restraint is not to be counted on permanently... The danger hidden in the separateness of people of different countries, unfortunately, remains a legacy for the next century... If humanity renounces the legacy of the culture of war, it can start down the road of cooperation, peaceful creation, and enlightenment. This is the only road leading to the culture of peace."

One can imagine that I, as a small child living in San Antonio, Texas, next to three Air Force bases and an Army base, living through the Cuban missile crisis, thought about the threat of the Russian military. I also met my parents' wonderful emigre' friends, and to this day have had warm relations with Russian people.

This book tells of the enormous cost to the Russian people of building and maintaining their war industry for so many years, a militarized economy where people got second best. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, defense industry just about shut down, but civilian industry has not grown great enough to support the population. There are horrendous unemployment, and terrible health and social problems. There is some danger that the path of least resistance for Russia, if we neglect the situation, could be to re-start weapons production, for export at first.

In my opinion, the United States also, to a lesser degree, has neglected the manufacture of quality consumer goods, importing them instead, and has let its physical economy deteriorate, despite much activity in the financial sector. We, too, have been insufficiently careful of the environment. This book provides some idea of what these trends could lead to, if carried to extremes.

Perhaps the involvement of United States companies in Russia, could lead to more of a recognition here, of the importance of the physical economy. Hopefully, both countries could also work to put industry on a healthy environmental footing as well.

There is awareness of the problem of Russian defense conversion, at high levels of our government. I hope this book helps educate people and sustain that interest.

This book conveys the words of a young Union soldier who was captured and taken to the Southern prison they called Andersonville. This detailed account taken from the diary of Charles Hopkins tells a story of survival and horror. It makes you imagine trying to survive in a disease riddened prison with barely any food or fresh water. Read this book because it will be one you will never forget

This first person account provides a wealth of insight into the day-to-day rituals of "life" in one of the most forbidding Civil War prison camps. Throughout his trials, however, Charles Hopkins never loses his faith in humanity and even manages to endure with a sense of humor. His uplifting story bears testimony to the strength of the human spirit under fire. Hopkins' style of writing is descriptive and conversational, and works well with the enlightening information and photos supplied by editors Mr. Styple and Mr. Fitzpatrick. I highly recommend this book to all who are interested in the Civil War and in becoming acquainted with one of its many unsung heroes.

A long history/memoir by Morton, who rose to command of Forrest's artillery after the death of (my relative, perhaps) Captain Freeman. Morton was only 18 when he joined up in '62 and spent seven months of the war in Northern prisons, of which he gives some description.

Forrest wasn't happy to accept this "tallow-faced boy" at first, but Morton slowly won him over and participated in all of his campaigns.

We get a lot of observations as to Forrest's character -- including that, according to Morton, he believed one attacker superior to two defenders (this is alarming) and that he was "at times the most insubordinate of men" (13). (Greatest general of all time, eh? I can't quite feature that.)

We learn as well about the activities of Forrest's troops, and I found it interesting to observe how often his men charged entrenched opponents (cf. Morton's description of the Battle of Dover, p. 76; etc.). I would be interested to know what Forrest's casualty rates were, as compared to other cavalry commanders and as measured against what he achieved.

The death (possibly a murder) of Captain Freeman, Forrest's deadly brawl with Lieutenant Gould, Chickamauga and Brice's Crossroads all are covered, among other events. Though Morton quotes letters between Forrest and the Federal commander Washburn regarding the treatment of prisoners of war, there is little discussion of Fort Pillow and it is implied, as far as I can tell, that Morton and his artillery weren't there--which seems hard to believe, but that's what the text seems to suggest.

A detailed account, a vital source for the activities and personality of Forrest. Limited personal narrative, with Morton tending to refer to himself in the third person, but quite vivid nonetheless. For anyone wanting to understand the war in the West this would be indispensable.

This book reflects Forrest's will to win the battles, and the fights he put up in the process. He will ALWAYS be known as the GREATEST general any war has ever seen.

A marvel in comparison to the many contemporary metaphysics books that are still so influenced by modernism, positivism and postmodernism. The book covers all issues dealt with by positivist books, but also traditional metaphysical trancendentals (truth, goodness, beauty), linking them to the ultimate Being. The author is not afraid of political correctness, arguing that metaphsics is a scientific discipline, and apologetically interacts with many recent philosophical developments, showing their inadequacy. The book is thick, exhaustive and with a good academic level. The author seems to be influenced by Gilson.

Fr. Sweeney was surprised when I referred to his book as a "metaphysicial primer". I meant it as a compliment. This is a lively yet scholarly introduction to metaphysics. It is equally valuable to advanced students and career academics.

George S. Schuyler was one of the premier black journalists of his, or any other, day. Between his own acerbic style and being published in The American Mercury, he was referred to as the Black Mencken. In addition, he wrote one great satirical novel, Black No More, and a fair amount of pulp fiction. Two of those pulp titles, The Black Internationale : Story of Black Genius Against the World and the sequel, Black Empire : An Imaginative Story of a Great New Civilization in Modern Africa, are reproduced here in one volume. Written under the pseudonym, Samuel I . Brooks, for a black weekly newspaper, The Pittsburgh Courier, these sixty two serial installments in an ongoing adventure story originally appeared between 1936 and 1938.

Reminiscent of Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu, Schuyler tells the story of Carl Slater, writer for the Harlem Blade, who accidentally witnesses the murder of a white woman. The black assailant forces Slater into a waiting car at gunpoint, whereupon he is drugged. When he wakens, the murderer reveals himself to be Dr. Henry Belsidus, leader of the Black Internationale, an elite organization of black professionals whom the Doctor plans to lead in his mission to liberate Africa and restore blacks to their rightful position of dominance on the world stage. He explains that the woman had been one of his agents and her murder was punishment for failure. It turns out that Slater was on a list of blacks whom Belsidus planned to eventually recruit to his cause, and now circumstances force him to choose between joining up or being killed. He joins.

Dr. Belsidus is clearly maniacal, but he is also possessed of a compelling vision :

My son, all great schemes appear mad in the beginning. Christians, Communists, Fascists and Nazis were at first called scary. Success made them sane. With brains, courage and wealth even the most fantastic scheme can become a reality. I have dedicated my life, Slater, to destroying white world supremacy. My ideal and objective is very frankly to cast down Caucasians and elevate the colored people in their places. I plan to do this by every means within my power. I intend to stop at nothing, Slater, whether right or wrong. Right is success. Wrong is failure. I will not fail because I am ruthless. Those who fail are them men who get sentimental, who weaken, who balk at a little bloodshed. Such vermin deserve to fail. Every great movement the world has ever seen has collapsed because it grew weak. I shall never become weak, nor shall I ever tolerate weakness around me. Weakness means failure, Slater, and I do not intend to fail.

In the ensuing chapters he realizes this vision, along the way utilizing such visionary technological wizardry as solar power, hydroponics and death rays, and such social measures as as his own new religion, the Church of Love. Carl Slater witnesses it all and--at the behest of Schuyler's editors and readers--falls in love with Patricia Givens, the beautiful aviatrix who commands the Black Internationale's Air Force. The serial ends with Belsidus and his followers triumphant and white Europe expelled from Africa.

Stylistically this is pretty standard fare, following the over-the-top, melodramatic, cliff-hanging, conventions of the pulp fiction formula. It's well written and exciting, though overwrought. What really makes it interesting though is it's politics. Schuyler, particularly late in life, was a conservative. He moved farther Right as he became more vehemently anti-Communist and finished his career writing for publications put out by the John Birch Society (see hyperlinked Essays below). Part of this evolution entailed becoming generally hostile to the Civil Rights movement and to African Nationalism, but apparently in the 1930's he was himself a Pan-Africanist, especially concerned with the fate of Ethiopia after the Italians invaded and with liberating Liberia. There's a tendency to dismiss black conservatives as somehow self-loathing, as if conservative values are necessarily at odds with the advancement of the black race. And you can see something of a dichotomy in Schuyler's writings if you take for instance one of his comments on Marcus Garvey, of whom he was generally skeptical :

Marcus Garvey has a vision. He sees plainly that everywhere in the Western and Eastern hemispheres the Negro, regardless of his religion or nationality, is being crushed under the heel of white imperialism and exploitation. Rapidly the population of the world is being aligned in two rival camps: white and black. The whites have arms, power, organization, wealth; the blacks have only their intelligence and their potential power. If they are to be saved, they must be organized so they can present united opposition to those who seek to continue their enslavement. (George S. Schuyler, writing in the Interstate Tattler, August 23, 1929)

and compare it to what he had to say about the success of Black Empire :

I have been greatly amused by the public enthusiasm for 'The Black Internationale,' which is hokum and hack work of the purest vein. I deliberately set out to crowd as much race chauvinism and sheer improbability into it as my fertile imagination could conjure. The result vindicates my low opinion of the human race. (George S. Schuyler, from a Letter to P.L. Prattis, April 4, 1937)

Taken at face value, he seems to be criticizing his black readership for enjoying stories based on the vision he had extolled in Garvey.

But perhaps this conflict is more easily reconciled than critics would have us believe. Throughout his career, Schuyler seems to have been entirely consistent in his hostility towards those who sought to speak for blacks. It is this general stance which explains his opposition to Garvey, Communists, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and so on. In Black Empire, he presents Belsidus as quite a monster, willing to use mass murder and near genocide to achieve his ends. It's easy to read the story as reflecting both his most treasured dream--the triumph of blacks over racial oppression--and his inherent pessimism about the leaders and means that would be required to achieve that goal.

At any rate, the story is great fun and Schuyler's personal conflicts only serve to add a few layers of tension. The reader is often unsure whether he's writing with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek or whether he's allowing characters to speak his own forbidden thoughts. That you can read it on various levels merely adds to the enjoyment. There's also a terrific Afterword by Robert A. Hill and R. Kent Rasmussen, from which I gleaned much of the information in this review. Altogether, it's a marvelous book and the Northeastern Library of Black Literature is to be applauded for restoring it to print. Schuyler's reputation among academics and intellectuals declined in direct proportion to his increasing conservatism, but his is a unique and valuable voice, deserving of revival.

GRADE : A-

This is an incredibly interesting (to say the least) story ofthe rise of a Black dictator who takes over Africa (and the Blackdiaspora). Sort of "The Turner Diaries" meets "TheSpook Who Sat By The Door." It is noteworthy that Schuyler (asthe notes in the introduction indicate) did not intend for this workto be taken seriously. But many did, and I'm sure that many modernAfrocentric readers would also.

In contemporary society, people increasingly rely on governmentto provide many goods and services. Those who champion governmentallocation of resources fail to consider both the effectiveness of government allocation and the moral questions involved. In the last century, resistance to government intervention, from paper money to economics regulation, was far more pervasive and effective than it is today. Indeed, today's Americans only have a faint understanding of the Constitution and its envisioned restraints on government activity. The Constitution and its philosophical underpinning are rarely taught and understood by most Americans. That is a remarkable change from the time of our nation's founding when a large percentage of Americans were conversant with the ideas of Locke, Cato, Paine and the Federalist Papers.

The Declaration of Independence, one of America's most important political documents, contains statements that are today greeted with hostility, or at best, viewed as extremist. The motif of America's inauguration has become too radical to discuss without extreme qualification, and those who want to use it to assail the present political process are labeled 'radicals.' Of course, the liberty-loving American founders also carried this sobriquet. Another characteristic of the modern age is that Americans have become carelessly oblivious to the historical struggle for the vast liberties they enjoy but the preservation of which they now seem to disregard.

Dr. Cobin's book is part of the growing literature of case studies legal-philosophical treatises that provide economic analyses of public policy. While many other studies about regulation have been produced, Dr. Cobin has provided a major contribution to local regulatory issues. Building regulation and the modern system of private property rights are areas which are taken for granted by most people. However, this book reveals that there are more than trivial policy defects in our system of private property rights. Dr. Cobin has established that there is a real need to re-examine how private property rights are regulated. In the same way that public choice theory has exploded the notion of altruistic bureaucrats and politicians, who serve the interest of the public to the disregard their private interests, Dr. Cobin's book unmasks local building regulations whose ostensible purposes are to serve the public interest.

The results of Dr. Cobin's work lead us into a new dimension of public policy deliberation, i.e., whether government regulations produce more or less safety than that provided through the market 'regulation.' If government regulations reduce the safety and quality of goods or services, then it is in the public interest to revise or eliminate such regulation. Dr. Cobin has also done a commendable job of demonstrating that market provision can produce efficient and effective regulation, even for informational services that are assumed to be public goods. After demonstrating the failings of government regulation and provision of information about quality, Dr. Cobin shows us that markets can do in building and safety regulations what it has done the rare coin and gemstone industries.

Dr. Cobin's work goes even further. In addition to suggesting an adequate policy alternative for a failing system of building regulation, he also resurrects an alternate legal philosophy of real property. This system, known as 'allodialism,' is not a novel concept but has deep roots in Western civilization. However, it has been obfuscated over the years in favor of feudalism. It may surprise many readers that the American system of real property, not to mention the rest of the world's is essentially feudalistic. This fact should be repugnant in America where the Founding Fathers sought to abrogate all fetters of tyranny and oppression. An allodial real property system would make private property rights absolute and not subject to any form of coercive taxation or regulation. Subsequently, allodialism would serve to secure rights to property as guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence.

Hopefully, this study will provide the impetus for scholarship, in both case studies of local regulation and renewed discussion and analysis of allodial property rights. Not only can this book be added to the annals of regulatory studies which support market over government provision, but its philosophical basis can be used in basic disciplines, including law, economics, philosophy, political science and history. Dr. Cobin has made an important contribution to an important public policy area in a novel and frequently overlooked way.

This book provides evidence that the state has failed to provide building safety regulation in the public interest. Useful market alternatives are suggested to replace government regulation. A must read for anyone studying urban regulation or interested in policy applications from free market economics.

In his third work of fiction, Williams returns to the colorfully seedy neighborhood and characters of Butetown in Cardiff, as seen previously in his collection Five Pubs, Two Bars, and a Nightclub, for a crime novel that draws heavily upon the themes of his first novel, Faithless. That story featured Jeff, former punk saxaphonist who is drifting along trying to figure out what to make of his life in the wake of punk. Here, we have Mazz, guitarist for hire and former leader of a Welsh one-hit-wonder ska band from 1981, the Wurriyas. It's now 1999, and Mazz is making his way back to Cardiff for his bandmate Charlie's funeral, where he will encounter everyone from the "good old days" (including a number of characters who appear in Five Pubs, Two Bars, and a Nightclub).

Was Charlie's death an accidental cocaine overdose, or is there something more to it? And what about the mysterious disappearance of Emyr, formerly the Wurriyas' skinhead drummer, and now a brooding alt-rock god? Mazz ends up getting involved in both questions, but only in a meandering way, because what he's really wondering is how his life has gotten so off track, and what-if any-changes he can make. Mazz's struggle with the past is inexorably tied to that of Tyra, his former bandmate, girlfriend, and Charlie's daughter. Williams propels their story with flashbacks to the early '80s showing the formation of the band, their rise and fall, and the relationships between them all. Initially it's a little hard to feel too much sympathy for hard-drinking Mazz, who seems to be able to pull any woman he wants, but as the novel progresses, it becomes sad how these are the only things he can try and fill his emptiness in. What he really wants, he's not made for, and perhaps saddest of all, he knows it.

This is a great book, mixing crime, pulp, tragedy, grim humor, surfing, ska, urban renewal, nostalgia, and desperation. All the characters pop from the page, especially vivid are lesbian singer turned pimp Bobby, and laid-back former footballer turned surfer bum Colonel. Contrary to at least one review, there is very little slang in the book, and it's quite easy to understand from the context. A brilliant look at non-tourist Cardiff. in addition to his his two books mentioned above, also check out Williams' non-fiction tour of American crime writing, Into the Badlands.

This book stands up well alone but if you have ever been to Cardiff or Wales or have some Welsh relative then this book is for you. Like the best selling Cardiff East by Peter Gill and Ash on a Young Man's Sleeve by Dannie Abse, the story is all there but with the added reality of being writen in and around a real sometimes obscure place just adds to the majesty of the work. It is argued that the Welsh founded America and in particular pennsylvania and set the foundations for what is now the greatest nation in the world. It is tantilizing and intriging to go back and see where it all began. Buy this and enjoy, I did!