While in the town of Morwenstow, author Jeremy Seal noticed the cracked figurehead of the Scottish ship Caledonia, which sunk off the English coast in 1842. Interested in learning more about the ill-fated vessel, Mr. Seal searched public records dating back to 1842, customs paperwork and local edifices like the church. Mr. Seal concludes that the townsfolk led by Parson Hawker caused wreck in order to salvage the cargo.

When Mr. Seal examines the past through his mesmerizing theory, readers receive an enthralling historical speculative work. However, when Mr. Seal provides insight into how he conducts research and the steps he took to draw his conclusion, the book loses momentum. Though overall quite interesting, TREACHERY AT SHARPNOSE POINT could have been morbidly great with more insight into the 1842 Morwenstow Caledonia link and less Seal.

Harriet Klausner

Good book, you should definantly get this if you are considering becoming a UDT SEAL.

The Europa Militaria "US Navy SEALs in color photographs" is exactly what is claims to be... it is a wonderful full color record of modern Navy Special Warfare. While the text is very limited, the detail and quality of the close-up images speaks volumes. Of particular interest is the amount of space dedicated to gear and weaponry... military modeling buffs and miniature collectors will find it quite useful (at least I do).

Like many of the titles in this series, it is well worth adding to any collection on military uniforms.

This is the kind of book that stays with you long after you read it. I'd recommend it for any teen or adult with an interest in reading about adventures most of us will never experience. A very heart-warming story!

I have loved all the books in the SEAL Team Seven series. However, the later you get in the series, the more preposterous the storylines get. I was OK with a female going on the mission, but the hypnosis thing was ridiculous. Douglass should spend more time developing his stories before churning out new ones. It is still an enjoyable read, but a little over the edge.

As has been typical with most action/adventure series novels, the stories are action packed and well thought of, but the editors lack a keen eye for spelling and grammatical errors. This book is no different. I've learned to overlook errors and go with the story. Deathrace sets Seal Team Seven in Iran to take out a nuclear facility and its few nuclear bombs. One problem, none of the team knows how to dismantle a nuke. Enter, Kat Garnet, top physicist and triathlon champion, oh, and a female.

A female in the SEALs? President's orders. Well, Kat gets a two week crash course on how to be a SEAL, shooting the weapons, swimming several miles, running long distances with 40 pounds of gear on your self. Well, she actually does well, and at times better than the men! Will she do well when real combat takes place?

The first 200 pages deal with her getting trained, while a couple of SEALs help a CIA agent find the Nuclear Facility in Iran. The last 100 pages, have the team infiltrating the Nuke Plant, doing their job and trying to get out of Iran before capture. They have 40 miles to go to make it to the coast, and plenty of angry Iranians in between them and their freedom.

this is the first book that i have read out of this series and i enjoyed it all. His descriptions of what is going on are so good that you can hear the exposions. I found in reading this book that i could not put it down that i wanted to know what happened next. I recomened this book to anyone who likes a good action adventure story.

The problem with thrillers these days is that so many are dreadfully formulaic. Superman type hero, crazy assassin killer, throw in some geo-politics and international locales, and you have your modern thriller. A few authors today know how to buck this conventional trend, and Vince Flynn used to be one of them. Term Limits, his first novel, was an extremely exciting and unique book with a really engaging storyline. His next couple of efforts were also top notch, as they introduced the character of CIA operative Mitch Rapp, who brought along quite the colorful assortment of enemies. The publishers were pushing Flynn as a Daniel Silva type superstar, and I waited with much anticipation for the further adventures of Mr. Rapp.

All for naught.

Instead of another intriguing addition to the saga of Rapp, Executive Power is a barely readable bore of a book. With this tome, we find Mitch Rapp as a horribly conventional type of CIA officer. Fresh off his daring exploits in Iraq, Rapp is a now a nationally recognized celebrity. Even worse than that, Rapp has gotten married, a plot point that annoys the reader to no end. Agent Rapp, or "Ironman", was a great character because of his loner personality and his deadly ferocity. Now we find him cooking pasta for his returning wife. Of course, Flynn finds some exciting things for his domesticated hit man to do, but it is just not the same.

Well, I thought, maybe the storyline can carry the new characterization of Rapp. Failure again. Two story arcs struggle throughout the 377-page work, searching for some kind of synchronization and sophistication, but they never even get close. The minor arch deals with fighting terrorists in the Philippines, a story which never even peaked any excitement from this eager reader. It seems like Flynn got bored with that tale, and moved on to one concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The villain in this one is the mysterious Palestinian terrorist known as David (ironic, huh?). David has some kind of amazing plan that he only hints at at first, and by the time it is revealed in all its illogical glory, the reader barely cares anymore. Never mind the fact that the story and the plan make little sense, it is just lackluster writing anyway.

This book has a lot of problems. The first is that Middle Eastern thrillers these days have to rise above a certain threshold of believability these days, and Executive Power fails to even approach it. Even an amateur student of current events should recognize the flaws in a lot of the plot "twists". The characters are a very tedious bunch, with Rapp's new wife leading the pack of wearisome cutouts. She is the hip network reporter who will not stand for her husband's lies and wants the scoop on everything he does. How original. The President's chief of staff is a conniving operative who will sell out her country in order to protect her career. Come on Vince, now you are just copying yourself. We have the mysterious assassin/terrorist, and his drunken billionaire Saudi sponsor. Little insight into the motives or background of any of these characters is given, and the reader could care less how they end up. The dialogue throughout the story is uninspired at best, cringe worthy at worst. Mr. and Mrs. Rapp deliver some of the most ludicrous pillow talk I have ever heard.

The book has a few attributes. Try as he might, Flynn just cannot seem to make Rapp boring. Nothing like a deadly CIA assassin with a 9mm Beretta pistol to get a thriller aficionados blood pumping. The actions and exploits of the Navy SEAL team are also fairly stimulating. However, the reader just gets the constant feeling that Flynn is just going through some motions, trying to make his characters and the dreadful world they inhabit matter in our eyes. It is a shame, because Mr. Flynn seems to be, from his other novels, a promising young author. Hopefully he can recover in his next book, after Rapp gets a divorce, of course.

Executive Power begins with the main character, Mitch Rapp, responding to a hostage crisis in the Phillipines that is eerily similar to the one that occurred late last year. After reading through a 100 or so pages, one would assume that the rest of the novel would follow this plot. But, that is not the case.
After the hostage crisis is concluded, halfway through the novel, the book abruptly changes gears. It now is dealing with a terrorist killing assorted famous people to bring about a peace in Palestine.
While the book is a quick read, and hard to put down, it suffers from a terrible plot. Actually, Executive Power is essentially two stories, the hostage crisis and the Palestinian terrorism lumped together to form a novel. There is no clear connection between these plots either. Executive Power also has a depressingly bad ending, almost all loose ends are not wrapped up, and it is also confusing. Executive Power succeeds as a thriller/suspense book but fails miserably as a novel. Definitely not one of Vince Flynn's best, look to The Third Option and Term Limits instead.

As always, a great stand-alone story. However, if you're familiar with all of the Mitch Rapp stories and characters, you'll enjoy it even more. So happy to see Scott Coleman back, he's one of my favorites. I was hoping Donatella would make an appearance...maybe next time.
Wow, this story moves quickly so hang on. You are everywhere. I appreciate Mr. Flynn's 'history in a capsule' so you become familiar with his situations, i.e. the U.S. and Phillipines relations as well as the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. This is not a 5 star book compared to his others, but still a very good political thriller. I'm already looking forward to the next installment!

If you're a SEALs or Special Forces fanatic like me you'll read this no matter what any review says just because you're so desperate to clue into these guys' stories. I've read just about every personal account I can get my hand on and eventually found my way to this one. It's really not very good if you're interested in Vietnam action. One whole section is devoted to stories about skydiving. One chapter is an interview with Rudy Boesch's wife about her experience skydiving? Still want to read? Because there is so little battle stories I found the chapters on SDV operation the most interesting. All in all a very mediocre book. Read this one if you're really as desperate as I am for every word you can find about these guys.

This book consists almost exclusively of interviews, printed verbatim, with former (and a few still active) Navy SEALS. As such it is quite different from almost all other books with a similar subject matter.

The interviewed SEALS come across as fairly average guys except that they liked adventure, didn't require a secure home life and were willing to take risks. The degree to which these SEALS displayed being rather average surprised me. In particular I had assumed that members of elite military forces would be fairly intelligent, but the impression I got from reading these interviews was that high intelligence was definitely not a requirement.

In a way the honesty displayed by this book is refreshing. The SEALS aren't made to look like supermen or even heroes. They were men who had elected to do a particular job, received training for that job and then went out and did it. Often they were successful, but often things went wrong, sometimes with fatal results.

One third of the book covers the Vietnam War during which the SEALS were involved in a lot of real combat. But the Vietnam War has two problems relative to a modern book about the SEALS: it happened 30 years ago and the USA lost that war.

The last half of the book covers developments and experiences since the Vietnam War. This includes up-to-date information about the newest diving and parachuting and water-borne landing techniques, all of which I found quite interesting. But this part of the book includes no real combat experiences except for a few pages about Grenada (including a disastrous mission where four SEALS died parachuting from a plane that was flying too low) and the Gulf War (a 4-page story about a group of four SEALS who saw the Iraqi army advancing on them and wisely retreated without firing a shot).

In conclusion, if you're looking for a book about how utterly fantastic the Navy SEALS are then you should steer clear of this one. If you're curious as to what kind of men enjoy jumping out of airplanes at 37000 feet and getting their eyeballs frozen, and prefer honest accounts that include disastrous missions where men died and objectives were not met, then this is a good source.

Having read quite a few books on the SEALs, I liked this oral history of the US Navy SEAL action in Vietnam. It is hard to go wrong when you just let the subject tell their story and put those words on paper. The stories are colorful as well as insightful to the riverine operations the SEALs took part in throught the Vietnam war. Not only are stories told, but a look at weapons, uniforms and other areas of the operations are looked at as well. I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in the SEALs.

Well, I thought this book was a good read, and a good account of Chalkers career. I'll have to say the book was less detailed and obviously doesn't have the unique view of things that Marcinko did, but that doesn't lessen Chalkers' accomplishments. It was really cool to get another perspective on formation of Seal Team 6 and Red Cell, and also to compare accounts of Urgent Fury between One Perfect Op and Inside Delta Force.
As far as Inside Delta Force, the books do give the impression that ST6 was built more from the ground up and operating in a more balls to the wall manner than Delta Force, of course that doesn't change the fact that both units are the best in the world at what they do, and it goes without saying that there's alot that the books don't mention about the units' operations.

This is an excellent book, the story of an incredible carreer told with intelligence, humility and humor. If you have read the story in Richard Marchinko's excellent Red Cell et al., this book provides a fascinating opportunit to hear the same stories from another perspective. In the same spirit as Marchinko's books, "One Perfect Op" is not a boastful shoot 'em up, rather thoughtful reflections showing that even motivated highly-traned SEALs can have doubts, fears and bad luck, but that teamwork and training really work. It is heartening to know that there have been and hopefully will continue to be people of Command Master Chief Stalker's quality defending our nation.

An excellent book, not in any way a boastful shoot-em up, rather a thoughtful and balanced look at a life in the SEAL Teams along the lines of Richard Marcinko's non-fiction books. It is particularly interesting to see the same events through the eyes of Mr. Chalker in contrast to those of Mr. Marcinko. The importance of perserverance and teamwork to success comes through along with the quality of the training these men receive. A valuable contribution.

In this book, Daughter of the Sea, the book was not interesting at all, and I would give it no stars if the computer would have went that low. It's pretty much about a woman named Janice, and her husband, Munroe, that find a baby and keep it as thier own and hope that no one finds out about it.They live on a ship that they also make thier living off of fishing and selling the fish they catch. This book is very fictional, since there is no way you could find a living baby on the shore, and expect to keep it. And there is no way to make a good living selling fish. This book was not one of my favorites. Taking into consideration I don't have any favorites, and I don't care for a subject about people living on a ship and keeping a baby. There is no way this book should have gotton a overall rating of four stars, but the no stars has my vote.

This book is abit wierd, and confusing to me. It's definitly not the best book you would want to pick for Lit Circles (people in elementary school knows what it is, *it's like a project*) This is how the story goes: It all started when there was this terrible storm hitting Hamna Voe, the island where it took place, Munroe Jaffery is still out in the sea trying to fish. He notices that the storm was coming and try to get back to the land, but when he finds out he couldn't, he got drifted into the selkie rocks. There he found a baby, just right under the water, he brought it home to his worried wife, Jannet, and made it their own baby and saying it to everyone that she's their's. They named her Gioga, that was the present name of the Sea Princess who saved a man's life. Eilean a.k.a the crab woman, knew that the baby wasn't theirs and told them that "they'll" come back for her. Jannet didn't believe her at first but she got creeped out by it. Years later, a man called Hill Marliner came and said that he was there to collect his child back, Jannet refused, Hill Marliner gave a month's supply of fish to Munroe (as Hill is the lord of the sea, he controls everything in there) who didn't know it was a reward. Jannet didn't give the baby to the strange man, so he left and came back years later. Jannet didn't tell Munroe about this. Hill Marliner cam back, this time he gave them a purse full of gold coins, Jannet still refused. But during these moments, Gioga became close to Eilean who told her tales of the sea. Jannet got worried, so she sent Gioga away to her cousin's house, which was in a valley where you can't hear or even see the sea. And everyday Gioga became to want the sea more and more. Later on the island, Hill Marliner came back again for the third and final time, this time he got shot and killed by Jannet, who was blinded by her love for the child that she became confused and killed a man. The seals wanted revenge, so they destroyed everything on the beach that the men owned and went away. The sea became rough, but they all knew the only way to get it to calm and get their main source of food back was to get Gioga here on the island again. So a boat with Munroe and Harris(Gioga's friend), led by Eilean to get Gioga back, than the three waves came: Wave of tears, Wave of milk and Wave of Blood, and Harris did what he was told, to his the Wave of blood with the harpoon straight in the heart of the wave. With that done, it was a sacrifice, Eilean was gone... dead... They rescued Gioga and went back to the island, there, Harris did what Eilean told him to do and showed Gioga her seal skin. Later, Gioga cried 7 tears into the sea for all the 7 horrible things that had been done. In the end, she slipped into her seal skin and went into the sea.

A great fable based upon many of the Selkie legends from different lands. A childless couple raise as their own a baby girl the husband found one night floating in the sea during a storm. Munroe suspects right away that this child is one of the Selkies (seal-people) but keeps the secret from his wife Jannet. But when a mysterious stranger returns years later asking for the return of his child, the desperate woman tries to hide the child - and brings upon her village the anger of the sea and the seal people. Finally their daughter must chose for herself whether to return to the sea, or stay with the people she has grown to love as her parents. A great addition to lovers of tales of the Selkie.

I am no expert on Ibne Al-Arabi, but it seems to me that he did adopt a good portion of Shii teachings without mentioning them. It takes a little research for one to know that the notion of "walaya" is a distinctly shia notion. I don't wish to accuse Ibne Al-Arabi of intellectual dishonesty, I think he just didn't know much about Shiism. I find Corbin's assessment of Ibne Al-Arabi's theosophy as being essentially a Shii philosophy much more reasonable. One can refer to couple of his books such as " history of Islamic philosophy" and "temple and contemplation" to get a better picture. It is this affinity and parallelism between Sufis and Shia sect that has made the great Sunni scholars to be very suspicious of Suffism. I think sufis wanted to get the best of the both world. On one hand they wanted to be part of the larger Islamic community which was and is a Sunni community, and at the same time they wanted to incorporate some of the mystical shii teaching into their faith without the troubles that came with the word "Shiism". Unfortunately this forced them, at times, knowingly or unknowingly, into a situation of hypocrisy. It is not acceptable to adopt other people's ideas and take them as one's own. I wouldn't like it if some one did it to me, and in fact the practice of taking other people's ideas and making it your own is so repulsive that there are "laws" nowadays to prevent it from happening, and those who practice such a thing are usually dishonored in their intellectual professional communities.

As a Palestinian historian, I have failed to see of what use Sufism has been for the middle east. Sufism has made little or no difference on a social and political level and has never played a major, positive role. Indeed one can the say the same about Islam itself. Islam never achieved the promise of the ideal society of "dar' Salaam", or the society of Peace and prosperity and has been a complete failure in this regard. The so called Islamic civilization has been no better, if not worse, than any other worldly civilization. The so called peace was never achieved not even among the companion of Mohammad himself. Shortly after his death, or indeed during his last few days, the conflict over political power started and killings and wars began to take many lives. This social and political "mess" that was left behind and continues to this date in Moslem countries, are no doubt the result of Mohammad's own mismanagement and his naive approach to his community and complicated social, political and cultural issues. The statement attributed to him as saying " after me cling to Quran and my tradition and you will not go astray" is an indication of how simple minded his approach was. This formula did not even work for his own companion immediately after his death. The famous Sufi, Ibne' Arabi is another example of how naive this formula is. Ibne' Arabi is known by many Moslem Scholars as the greatest Saint and known as the greatest enemy by just as many other Moslem scholars. Those who defend him as a great saint, use Quran and Hadith of Mohammad to prove their point. In the much the same way, those who consider him the ultimate evil in Islam, also use Quran and tradition to make their point. Well, so much for relying on QUran and tradition as a source of guidance. Islam, like any other religion, has brought more confusion, hate and killing than guidance, and peace. There is no need for us to dwell on philosophy and speculation on Islam's failure, we have 1400 years of track record and historical data behind us for anyone who is brave enough to want to face "Truth"

I likt this book a lot. Unlike the book alone with the alone by Corbin, this is a book that is honest and accurate. I recommend Chodkeiwicz book on Ibne-'Arabi to anyone but do not recommend books written by Corbin which is misleading and full of Shii propagenda. I made a mistake of buying his book"history of islamic philosphy" where he makes very clear his biase about Shiism, according to that book every significant thinker in Islam were either a Shii' or from Iran, this an example of what I call Scholars for hire. But for every Scholars like Corbin God raises another one like Chodkiewics to guide people to the truth.