One should mention the fact that this Dover edition is a reprint of the Macmillan edition of 1937. Chemistry has much evolved since then.

I find this a very interesting book for those who have any interest in the history of Chemistry. The same author also have a serie of books about the same subject- named The History of Chemistry - but this is to big and to extensive for one that just whants to learn something about the history of chemistry. This is a smalest and simplest book to the ones that are now starting to study the history of chemistry. The book covers the history of chemistry since the early chemistry and alchemy and allows you to learn lots of interesting things about the begginings of chemistry.

No, this is not a book about architects unless you consider, as I do, people of accomplishment as builders. This is a story book, fiction based on fact, of Maine people, most well-known, but some not so well-known whose stories grace these pages and come to life under the pen of a gifted writer. Not a book to be read at a couple of sittings, but to pick up and enjoy, one chapter at a time.

Mellow introduces the reader to a person and a period of time that makes the book a vacation from our modern world.He introduces us to personalities of the nineteenth and early twentieth century who remain names to most of us. How delightful to attend the parties, hear the gossip, and take part in pre-World War I Paris, with this astonishing woman and her friends whose literature and paintings are recognized the world over.

I think a good ghost story is very hard to write. M.R. James makes it look easy. There are others that lay claim to the title of the Father of ghost stories, J. Sheridan LeFanu and L.P. Hartley to name but two. It is James, however, that will forever hold that title.

His are generally stories that evoke life in the 20 years either side of 1900 romantically. They tend to be stories around Cathedrals or in Scholars houses or in and around Schools where the schoolboy is sometimes included.

The reason why these stories are so good is that James judges and recreates exactly the correct amount of romance in each story that parallels the romantic notion of the ghost in every person's mind.

If I had a complaint, it would be that M.R. James' obvious intelligence (He was a professor at Cambridge University for many years) is a little too much for some. It could just be that the language of the times are different and today some words are no longer in everyday use or the style of speech has changed.

These are very minor concerns, however. The upshot is that M.R. James is and always will be the Master and this complete collection of his works is the perfect collection of ghost stories, never to be improved upon.

Mr.Gill's exploration into reincarnation brings the reader to a
new mental awarness of possibilities. The riveting court trial keeps you on edge through the twists and turns of the engrossing plot. I would recommend this book to all my friends.

I subscribed to the Merlyn's Pen magazine all through middle school and then my subscription just disappeared. I was so glad to see it again (in book form) on Amazon.com. I am now graduating from college, but I still enjoyed the youthful writing. It helped me remember why I began writting in the first place. I highly reccomend this for any high school writers!!

I bought this reprint because of the James Montgomery Flagg illustrations, but I enjoyed the story a great deal. Emma is a "drummer" in her mid-30s, an agent to retail stores throughout the Midwest of the T. A. Buck Featherloom Petticoat Company. She's a woman in what was, before the Great War, decidedly a man's world, but she beats most of them at it all hollow. She's claimed to be the first businesswoman in American literature and she serves as a mouthpiece for Ferber's feminist politics and her Progressive attitude toward the commercial world. This was the first of three collections (all made up of stories serialized in magazines) and they were immensely popular in their day -- especially with women, though Theodore Roosevelt was a fan. too. In fact, Emma was Ferber's first real hit and paved the way for her prolific later career. The style, of course, tends somewhat to effusive overwriting, but you get the same in almost any popular literature written at the turn of the century. Good stuff!

It does a reading and writing instructor some good to come across a volume like this! The stories contained in Something like a Hero offer the young adult reader models of excellent writing that is within their reach. The classic writing assignment, What makes a Hero? is given new life. Young (and old) readers are given the opportunity to peek behind the screen of composition and can uncover for themselves what constitutes "good writing." The text contains themes for reader's of all types: love and war, alienation, fitting in, peer pressure, as well as discovering one's true self. If everyone does indeed have a story to tell, this volume is a boon for writing and reading instructors everywhere. The dialog is crisp and believable; the settings authentic; and the action and storytelling are truly admirable. Something like a Hero is inspirational for young readers and writers alike.

This is a wildly uneven anthology of stories about WWII. The best of the stories are Stephen Coonts'"Sea Witch" and James Cobb's "Eyes of the Cat" oddly, both are about PBY planes, a definitely unique topic. Both deliver excitement and unpredictability and a unique perspective. Stories by Barrett Tillman and Harold Coyle are standard, well told combat tales. Stories by Harold Robbins and David Hagberg belong in a different espionage anthology and there is a truly boring and glaringly out of place story by Dean Ing, who is a much better writer than this. Ralph Peters does well with his tale of a German soldier's problems returning home.
Not up to the caliber of Combat, the earlier modern war anthology, this still offers enough diversion for those interested in WWII fiction if you're willing to accept the uneven nature of the stories.

This book is in the same classification as the Combat book.In
this book you have ten authors write stories about World War II.
Stephen Coonts writes about a Catalina flying boatwho are doing battle with the Japanese in the Pacific.Harold Coyle does a story about the battle on Guadalcanal with the Japanese that earned this area the name of Bloody Ridge.Jim Defelice tells about an American pilot who parachutes into Germany to gather
intelligence and gets decieved.Harold Robbins tells a story about someone whi is sent to kill Hitler.Dean Ing tells a story about an effort to build an interceptor to stop a Nazi super weapon.Barrett Tillman tells of the role of a flamethrower operator in a battle at Tawara against the Japanese.James Cobb
tells of a Catalina searching for Japanese radar in the Pacific.
David Hagberg tells of allied agents trying to stop a Nazi superweapon that can cause havoc in the United States.R.J. Pineiro tells of an American pilot who trains Russian pilots in new Aircobras.Ralph Peters tells of a German soldier going home on foot after the war has ended.All in all this was an interesting book.It ranked as an equal to Combat.

They really aren't around anymore, but from the 1930s through the 1970s, there was a proliferation of what became known in the trade as "adventure" magazines. These ranged in quality from the semi-respectable (Argosy) to the not so respectable (a veritable slew of titles, such as Stag and the right-out front For Men Only). They featured stories of spies, derring do and jungle intrigue, but they primarily contained war stories. Lots and lots of war stories. The covers often told the tale regarding the type of quality you could expect within; this was particularly true of Stag, which featured damsels who were either in distress (especially with respect to the state of their undergarments) or inflicting distress upon U.S. soldiers who were tied to chairs and doing their best to appear panic-stricken. All of these magazines, alas, are long gone, or at least don't seem to have the circulation they used to. I was reminded of them, however, by the publication of a mammoth volume of war fiction titled VICTORY.

VICTORY is a companion volume to COMBAT, both of which are edited by intrigue-meister Stephen Coonts. VICTORY is a doorstop of a volume, weighing in at well over 700 pages and consisting of ten previously unpublished pieces by masters of the war story. The stories in VICTORY range in length from fifty to over one hundred pages; if they had appeared in any of the adventure magazines, they would have been serialized. Most of the stories in VICTORY would or could have found a home in Argosy, though one --- "Blood Bond" by Harold Robbins --- is definitely Stag material. More on that in a minute.

The stories in VICTORY do not glorify war. Far from it. All of the stories are set during World War II, with the exception of "Honor" by Ralph Peters, set immediately thereafter. It is difficult to pick an immediate favorite; the average reader may have several, for different reasons. Coonts's own "The Sea Witch," which opens VICTORY, begins as a fairly predictable tale with an unpredictable ending and that utilizes an unexpected technique to catch the reader flatfooted.

"Blood Bond" is typical Robbins. It is a spy story, dealing with a plot to kill Hitler, and stands apart from the other tales due to its unrelenting scatological narrative. Robbins writes the way James Bond really thinks. Though Robbins, gone for several years now, had his share of detractors, he never inflicted boredom on his audience, and this previously unpublished work continues his streak, even in his absence.

David Hagberg's "V5" concerns the German rocket that could have turned the tide of World War II and the Allied military and espionage components that feverishly work together, though at some distance, to ensure that the project never makes it off the ground.

Peters's "Honor" deals not with Americans in the war but with a German officer in the war's aftermath, trudging through the nightmarish ruin that is postwar Germany as he tries to return home to his wife. The conclusion of "Honor" is predictable, almost from the first paragraph; it is the journey, not the close-to-foregone destination, that is important here.

The biggest surprise in VICTORY may be "The Eagle and the Cross" by R.J. Pineiro, a tale of an American pilot who is sent to the Eastern front to train Russian aviators during the final months of the Battle of Stalingrad. The bittersweet ending is perhaps the most haunting of any tale in the book.

With VICTORY Coonts again demonstrates that his talent as a writer is matched by his editorial abilities. While this volume is aimed at a more narrowly defined audience, the quality of the stories involved should, for the most part, satisfy the more discerning reader of any genre. Recommended.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

As one of the authors included in this book I would have to say that this is a decent collection of stories by young authors. Looking back on my own story, written 6 years ago, I am pleased to see that it still stands up. There is a great variety of style and subject matter and I think readers will be surprised by the level of sophistication some of these pieces have.