I really had high hopes for this book. So little substantive is available on the career of Simon & Garfunkle. Unfortunately, this childish, fawning tome is almost a waste of time.

It's so hard to determine what the author had in mind. Certainly not the music of this duo. She spends more time on a plot synopsis of an Art Garfunkle movie than she does IN TOTAL on the creative process of the duo's groundbreaking albums. How they made their records, how the songs were created, life on the road - very little on their art is discussed. That seems not to be important to this amateur author.

Since she had such access to Garfunkle, that must be why the focus is on Artie-minutia (and then she should have called it that!). But if one wants insight into the actual career of this duo, to learn about their music, their muse and their legend...look elsewhere. Lord knows where that is...

There are too many factual errors and fan-mag platitudes here to make this an authoritative biography or analysis. Too bad, since the subjects are such interesting people with such interesting careers. Look elsewhere.

I'm a huge fan of S&G, and this book is very respectful and lots of fun to read. But . . . Kingston (the author) goes through every song on every album and explains what it's about--that uses up about 25 pages in the book. Us fans already know the songs, when she rehashes them it comes off as trite. Also, there are a good many typos and mistakes. She lists Madison Square Garden as being in Pennsylvania (it's in New York) and cites newspaper "The Detroit Times," a paper that went out of business in the 1950's I think. There's a missing word here and there. Also, she's English, and there one or two things she said in the book and I wasn't quite sure what she was talking about. Also, she rehashes interviews published in Rolling Stone and other magazines. Why not just give us the gist of the article. Instead, she gives us verbatim quotes. That uses up about another 25 pages.

It's a fast read, and a fun one, but the book isn't perfect. A good editor could have straightened this book out.

This is a two disc set; one for Greek authors, another for Latin. It contains selections from Homer, Sappho, Anacreon, Eurpides, Theocritus, Moschus, Bion, Anacreontea, Palatine Anthology, Lucretius, Catullus, Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid, Martial, Juvenal, and Petronius. This disc is NOT in Greek or Latin but in English, rendering quite useless to anyone wishing to use it to study the languages.

If you are a collector of obvious statements that then fail to connect proposed solutions to the stated problems, this book is for you. Perhaps if you are interested in learning how politicians can use large amounts of space to write very little, you may find "Making Government Work" insightful. Otherwise, this book fails.
The concept of the book is intriguing. Take the most recognizable names in American state and local government, from Rudy Guiliani to Jeb Bush, and ask each to analyze their experiences in privatization. What results is a series of glorified press releases. This book is neither an honest presentation on the debates over privatization, as only one side is presented, nor a useful discussion of privatization. Little meaningful insight is offered.
What emerges are grandiose declarations of the need for privatization and how great the privatization programs each implemented are operating. Very little data is presented. We are expected to take these public official at their words they are doing great jobs. Perhaps some of their programs have been successful. Yet the lack of honest evaluation makes their claims suspicious.
This book argues that privatization is needed to counter the recent large growth in state and local governments. Yet, instead of analyzing why this growth occurred, the book immediately concludes this growth is out of control and needs to be curbed. Perhaps some growth is excessive. A more proper analysis would observe a.) the Federal government's recent devolution has transferred more responsibilites from the Federal government to state and local government, something, incidentally, most state and local government officials heralded at the time and b.) government has become more proactive in recent years in providing public services, from increased police protection to improving education, something the pubilc heralded at the time. To ask for growth and then recoil in shock when we realize growth has occurred is contradictory. To assume all this growth has been wrong is incorrect, unless you have a liberatarian ideology. What would have been more useful would have been to examine this growth and try to determine which is proper and which is wasteful.
Many of the writers in this book state public managers should look at government as if it were a business. Yet, business managers need to think in terms of managerial objectives such as maximizing profit rather than providing quality public goods. If public managers operate with bottom line considerations, financial considerations can lead to employee layoffs, decreased employee morale, and reduced public services. The business-like objectives may be met, but the initial purposes of the public services may be defeated.
With early data on prizatizion conflicting, this book is noted as a good collection of what public executives approving of privatization think. Beyond that, though, this book has little more to offer.

In a nutshell this is a very expensive 11 page biography followd by almost 200 hundred pages of bibliography. The biography has nothing that is not well know to Simon's fans. The bibliography can be gotten for a lot less money with a good search engine. Even with a casual glance at the bibliography ommisions were apparent.

While the biography is short -- as are all the ones in Greenwood's series -- this is a good annotated guide to information on Paul Simon, with a focus on his work as a songwriter.

This wordy book on the 1992 Earth Summit was a reading requirement for a class I once took. Most people in the class did not finish it. Although the book presents several interesting ideas and important policy directives for global environmental problems, it loses the reader with overstated details. The ideas and goals presented look good on paper, but leave you scratching your head after reading them, asking yourself "how?" However, this is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of global environmental discussions and policy.

This book collects issues 7 - 10 and 4 of Todd McFarlane's short-lived Crow series. McFarlane bought the rights to the Crow, but the comic was cancelled after issue 10, because nobody really liked it. Jon J Muth does have a writing talent, unfortunately somebody made the mistake of trying to continue Eric Draven's story, rather than beginning anew.

If you decide to buy this book, do so only for the art, and not for the storyline. It's a shame, considering the vast talents McFarlane has at his disposal