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Book reviews for "Seal" sorted by average review score:

Eagle Strike (Seals Eagle Force)
Published in Mass Market Paperback by Avon (07 September, 1999)
Author: Orr Kelly
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Expedition of the SEALS
As I first picked up this book, I was expecting an exciting story about a Navy SEAL expedition and that is exactly what I got. Orr Kelly takes military action to a new level in Seals Eagle Force. If even mildly interested in the operations of the Navy SEALs, you must read this book. The plot is great and the only thing that takes away from the book is remembering all of the names of the characters and a number of misspelled words.

Right on target!
Even though it is in the same genre as Keith Douglas'-'Seal Team'series it comes at it from a slightly different angle. And like a .50 cal sniper round it for sure hits the mark! The storyline, characters, and action all come together in a well written,fast paced book that is fun to read and hard to put down! I have read the previous book and look forward to the next one! This guy knows his stuff! I highly recommend this book!

Eagle Force Soars
Orr Kelly does a wonderful job with this book. It is definitely a page turner and no dull moments. If you like novels about the Seals you will love this one! Well worth the read.


Ice Cradle: A Portrait of the Baby Harp Seal
Published in Hardcover by Takarajima Books (1995)
Author: Rei Ohara
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The most adorable critters on earth?
The pictures in this book are utterly wonderful. If you like cute and cuddly, this one's for you. Harp Seal pups are, I think, one of nature's wonders (how could anyone club one over the head?) The book is great and is almost wholly a picture book. If there had been more text, it would have rated 5 stars. Totally scrumptious

Stunning photos that leave me breathless and serene...
What can really be said about a book that makes me happy when I am sad? Ice Cradle is one of those rare books that contains within its pages some of the most beautiful sights imaginable. Even if one doesn't have a particular liking for harp seals, I think the book is still appealing. There's just something so spectacular about the innocent and pure beauty of the baby harp seal. This book features 63 pages worth of stunning baby harp seal photos. There is very minimal text among the photographs, but a few pages at the back of the book are dedicated to a short but satisfying introduction to the life and times of baby harp seals. I continuously turn to this book when I am feeling down. There is something so comforting about sweet harp seals smiling back at you. If you enjoy photography, if you like animals, if you want something beautiful and comforting to look at, obtain a copy of this book. It's worth every penny and more.

Best pictures you'll find
If you love harp seals, you'll love every page of this book. Not a lot of text, but it's full of great pictures.


Operation: Artful Dodger (Seals-Top Secret , No 1)
Published in Mass Market Paperback by Avon (1998)
Authors: James Watson and Mark Roberts
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Strong and very believable....
This book was very exciting and influential about the lives of SEALS in the Vietnam war. i would recommend to anyone.

Amazing story about SEAL's in Nam!
Your in the jungle...... charlie is all around you, what do you do? Blow the c**p out of them, thats what. If enjoy special forces novels this is the book for you!

Great depiction of the actions of the frogmen!!!!!
This book really does justice to the SEALs who risked their lives in the jungles of Vietnam. The use of a hydrogen bomb in the story really pulls the reader in and the book never gets boring. I just can't wait 'till the next one comes out.


Seal Team Seven: Specter
Published in Paperback by Berkley Pub Group (1995)
Author: Keith Castellain Douglass
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Not as exciting as the first book, still worth reading
Opening scene is great, remainder is less
exciting. There isn't as much technical
detail as in Direct Action.
Still a great book in an excellent series!

I enjoyed this book in the series the most.
The scene in the book where the SEALs do a HAHO parachute jump in the middle of the night over Lake Ohrid was so well written, I thought I was there! Characters are realistic and action is non-stop. Would love to see this story hit the big screen! Keith, you've done it again! Best SEAL Series out there. For a hoo-yah good time, you'll find it hard putting this one down.

Good, but. . .
Specter did not have the pace of the first book, although it is still excellent. I enjoyed the first scene of the book, in Bosnia. But, the rescue at the castle was too much of shoot out for me. This is still better than anything out there.


The Sign and the Seal
Published in Paperback by Doubleday (1993)
Author: Graham Hancock
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Well researched, but some conclusions are debatable
I was highly impressed with Graham Hancock's committment to completing his quest and telling his story. He did so at the cost of his family, which is regretable. I much appriciate his sacrifice for all of us. It is obvious that he put a great deal of time, research and effort into his work. We now have a more clearer story of the "FOUND" Ark of the Covenant of God; "found" because I do believe it is in Ethiopia.

However, I do disagree with a few of Graham's conclusions, specifically with regard to Moses as only being a master magician, educated by the Egyptians, and Jesus as not being the Divine Son of God. I have many ideas and comments on the subject, but with just 1,000 words allowed, I must be brief.

I also wish to contact Graham, to share some of my insights, but I do not have a way of establishing communications with him. I have numerous questions, such as: 1) Has Graham actually read the Book of Enoch; 2) Has he done research on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (for they have a lot of templar type traditions-- and a definite connection with Freemasonry); 3) Has he actually attempted to contact the modern Templars and the Vatican for direct questioning, particularly concerning the true motivation for the Knight's quest for the Ark, and concerning the contact of Pope Clement V with the Ethiopian delegation, just one year prior to the persecution of the Templars; and 4) is Graham himself a Templar?

I am a Christian and have full faith that the scriptures are accurate. I also do not believe that it is inconsistant that a just and loving God would slay the wicked, for disobeying him-- especially on such sacred and important matters as the establishment of God's Law and Gospel to His Children, on earth, through his vessel-- the Ark. It is not unjust for the righteous to slay the wicked. Therefore, I do not classify God as being a psychopathic murderer as Graham had suggested.

An easy-to-follow journey for the reader
This book was the first of Graham Hancock's I ever read. Although the size was, at first, daunting, I quickly was drawn into the book as it contextualizes the history surrounding the Ark of the Covenant to explain where others quests may have gone awry. Hancock enables the reader to retrace the possible/probable trail the Ark may have taken and explains each twist and turn with basic logic. I was able to read it in 3 days and retained enough to retell the tale during 3 a.m. guard duty shifts to my fellow freezing comrades, making the time pass quickly and opening up more lively conversation than you usually find guarding an empty perimeter in the snow. I loaned it to a professor and have yet to get it back. Of course, now my brother has a copy. A great book.

Good reading or research information
If you are interested in the mystique of the lost Egyptian wisdom, the Ark, Atlantis, mysteries of the Bible, the Knights Templar,or just plain enjoy reading a good book, this one is a must! I believe that Graham Hancock has found the true resting place for the Ark of the Covenant.


Mark Bunting's Virtual Power: Using Your PC to Realize the Life of Your Dreams
Published in Hardcover by Simon & Schuster (1997)
Authors: Mark Bunting and Mark Seal
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A nice tale of success, little useful information
The riches to rags to riches success story is quite interesting and sometimes even inspirational. The book is very easy to read. However, for an entrepreneur looking for practical tips or information it is quite useless. This is a good book to read for general inspiration and to lift the spirit only. Seek guidance elsewhere.

Refreshing book...Tony Robbinesque
Good knowledge, enthusiam, and some hype. All and all a good pump for getting online and getting PC literate.

Inspirational
This book is extremely inspirational. Mark Bunting gave up a 100,ooo dollar job to reach his quest, as he called it. He realized yopu have to try no matter what and the risk paid off. He was a multi-millionare really soon. This book shows how he started with no knowledge and worked up, also explaining that you can do. A must have for sny aspiring entreptuears or money-seekers


The Navy SEAL Physical Fitness Guide
Published in Paperback by Hatherleigh Pr (2002)
Authors: Patricia Deuster and Patricia A. Deuster
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Very Good Overview
First off this book is not a "how to" manual with carefully laid out programs. It does have some suggestions on how to build up running distance but don't expect much more. What you can look forward to is a great basic reference for exercises and related inuries and their treatment. Very basic. If you read it carefully you'll find valuable information and it will point you in the right direction in terms of specialized training (basics of plyometrics, weight training, importance of stretching etc), but you'll need to get some other books on these subjects to fill in the gaps. This is not something for a complete beginner.

If you are new to working out consider Stew Smiths'Maximum Fitness or The Complete Guide to Navy SEAL Fitness, you will not be disappointed, both excellent books. From beginner to advanced you can't go wrong, you will have to adapt the plans in the books to your own level though. In response to those who may say the workouts are too difficult or take too much time; what did you expect from guys who operate at the level of elite athletes and are paid to keep themselves in top condition? Like I said, adapt to your own level and strive to improve!

Actually I bought The Navy Seal Workout by Mark DeLisle way before I ever came across these other books and consider it OK but not great. It's a thin book padded with pictures but DeLisles' pyramiding scheme for chin ups is excellent and it has good upper body workout plans but no lower body(leg)workouts.

After working out for many years I considered myself in good shape in terms of strength and endurance, these books proved how wrong I was.

The textbook required for training trainers.
Using Stew Smith's excellent examples in his Navy SEAL Fitness Guide (ISBN 1578260981) as illustrative examples, this book will assist new instructors in teaching comprehensive, total body fitness performance.

While it doesn't serve as a traditional textbook with 500+ pages and an extensive bibliographic stew, it does have uniquely qualified and credentialed authors contributing key chapters throughout, making this a terrific reference guide and course builder for any new instructor or instructor looking for new direction.

I have two criticisms, minor and not enough to reduce the star ratings.

One, there should be at least two more pages of material in the estimation of VO2(max) for trainees. What is written can be figured out, but it can be re-written for clarity, and given two more pages, it can be broken down a little more to see the numbers transform.

Two, the typesetting is terrific for handouts, but the layout breaks across page boundaries in weird places. This is, after all, printed matter bound for publication and distribution to the public as a book. It should be laid out like a training manual with better formatting and page breaks, and given a keyword index at the back of the book.

In all, this is a very helpful guide for PE instructors of all kinds. While its basis is primarily for training SEAL teams, there is wide appeal to any athlete looking for a disciplined, scientific approach to realizing one's full potential.

Intro to exercise physiology + Customization tool
This book provides a practical, user-friendly introduction to exercise physiology. The author provides tables and formulas to help the reader calculate how much, how far, and how often to work out. Also included are basic exercise physiology principles to help readers understand the how and the why.

There's a lot of useful general information, though the book also contains specialized stuff not relevant to civilians (like training for extreme combat conditions, or how to customize training for different mission profiles.)

If this had been my first and only SEAL fitness book, I would've been disappointed and bored. But after watching SEAL fitness videos, reading the other books, and trying the PT exercises, merely doing was no longer enough and I wanted to understand more.

In particular, I wanted to go beyond the standard "beginning - intermediate - advanced" classifications. I wanted to find out how to really customize the exercise routines for my own needs. I also wanted to discover how to set personalized goals. Deuster's book provides the answers and the quantitative tools to boot. Combine this book with Deuster's other book on nutrution, and you have a complete customization tool.

My only gripe -- Deuster's suggested PT routines seem too tame. In the interest of preventing injuries, she builds in so much stretching that the exercise tempo gets slowed way down. Other than that, I found this a very useful book.


The People of the Sea: A Journey in Search of the Seal Legend
Published in Paperback by Academy Chicago Pub (1981)
Author: D. Thomson
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An Unsuccessful Quest?
I have to say that I was disappointed with this book. It seems less about the legends about the selkie folk and more about what the author thinks he might feel about such legends---it feels removed, remote, uncommitted. If he was really on search for the truth behind the stories, he didn't seem to be searching very hard, and he didn't seem to share his results particularly successfully, and I never really felt touched by any sense of Celtic other-worldliness---and that's what I was hoping for and waiting for. The introduction by Seamus Heaney was, alas, the best part of the book...

selchies forever
I was fifteen when I first read this book, in 1967. I had never heard any of the Selchie legends, and I was completely enchanted by them, and by Thomson's writing. He doesn't just retell these tales; he finds those people who still tell them, and lets them speak for themselves. We hear about how they lived then, and how they live now, showing how beautiful some of the old ways were, and how sad their loss is. I have re-read it many times since and, as I get older, I find more in it that speaks to me. It should be impossible to feel nostalgia for something you have never experienced, but Thomson has managed to fill me with that emotion. I'm thrilled that it is back in print again (my copy is worn thin!) and that the celebrated poet Seamus Heaney has written the new foreword.

A wonderful glimpse into a different world
This is one of the most marvelous (in all senses of the word) reading experiences I've had in a long time. Thomson's book was originally published in the 1950's, but had fallen out of print and was resurrected through the efforts of Seamus Heaney, a friend of the author's who also provides a very helpful introduction. As a child, Thomson became fascinated by legends of seals who transform themselves into human beings (or vice versa), and in pursuit of this interest he traveled into remote areas of Scotland and Ireland where these legends were still part of the living folk tradition. But in the 1940's the tradition was dying out: the educational system pressured children to speak English rather than Gaelic, and listening to the radio had superseded traditional entertainments such as storytelling. Thomson's chapters depict a way of life that was already disappearing; he conveys not only the stories themselves but the entire "flavor" of the storytelling -- the people who tell them, the phraseology they use, their audiences, and the smoky cottages and fishy seaside shacks where the stories are told. His summary of the seal legends is fascinating, but the greatest pleasure of the book, for me, was its evocation of the world in which the legends arose. I can't recommend this book highly enough. (Suggested listening to accompany the final chapter: "The Song of the Seals" from Matt Molloy's album "Shadows on Stone.")


Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics Code (Studies in Popular Culture Series)
Published in Paperback by Univ Pr of Mississippi (Trd) (1998)
Author: Amy Kiste Nyberg
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Narrowly Focused, Nice Addition to Comic Book Studies
In Seal of Approval (The History of the Comics Code), Amy Kiste Nyberg takes the reader through a narrowly focused but essential part of the history of comic books and, therefore, part of the greater history of popular culture in general. Much of the basic story will be familiar from other histories of comic books but this author provides new insights into the foundation for the movement to censor comic books as well as providing a run down of the evolution of the comics code after the mid-fifites Senate hearings, an evolution very rarely discussed. The author also makes valuable use of sources little used by other authors such as the minutes of the Comics Magazine Association of America. All in all, a nice piece of research and a valuable contribution to the history of pop culture.

a bright study of a dark subject
This is one brilliant book. She has taken a subject of much heated debate and passion among collectors and boiled it down to it's essence. I don't agree with everything she claims but it is thought-provoking nonetheless. If you collect comics and you want to gain a deeper understanding of how our hobby has been shpaed then buy this book.

The Comics Code in the context of Popular American Culture
This insightful and well-researched work carefully places the Comices Code Authority with in the context of American culture. Rather than taking the traditional view, that the code came a a result of the repressive attitudes of the 1950s and was the downfall of the industry, Amy Kiste Nyborg convincingly shows the Code to be a pioneering effort in industry self-regulation in response to public pressure -- a logical forerunner of motion picture ratings, recoard warning labels, TV advisories, and the V-chip. Parental and community outcry against commic books in the 1940s and 1950s virtually mirrors the "protect our kids from the Internet" efforts of 1998. The unexamined role of economic factors such as industry distribution patterns on the Code is examined here for the first time. The Comics code is shown to have made fundamental changes in how the comics industry has operated over time, and in SEAL OF APPROVAL, Amy Kiste Nyborg demonstrates that it is still very relevant today.


Water Is Never Cold: The Origins of the U.S. Navy's Combat Demolition Units, UDTs, and Seals
Published in Paperback by Brasseys, Inc. (15 October, 2001)
Author: James Douglas O'Dell
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It's All Here
The Navy SEALS are among the most heroic of all the brave men throughout military history. If you have an interest in where they came from, this is where you want to be. O'Dell has clearly done his homework. His depth of research is impressive, in both archival material and in interviews. O'Dell brings passion and intensity to his writing. It's all here. Enjoy.

Where did they come from?
The Navy SEALS are among the most heroic of all brave men throughout military history. If you have an interest in where they came from, this is where you want to be. O'Dell has clearly done his homework. His depth of research is impressive, in both archival material and in interviews. O'Dell brings passion and intensity to his writing. It's all here. Enjoy.

Men among Men
I had the honor of knowing one of the men in the book. I grew up with his sons and he treated me like I was one of his own. He never spoke of his service. He never watched a war movie when it came on the television; he either changed the channel or shut the set off. He was a quiet man.

These were real men. The description of the training and missions is full of detail that brings the story to life. It helped me understand some things about a man who I spent a lot of time around. It explained some of the stories my Dad told me about when they both worked in a logging camp in Oregon.

The stories of the men in this book will make you appreciate the freedom you have today and the sacrifices they made over 50 years ago. They risked a lot for us and we owe it to them to learn about their sacrifice.


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