This book amazes me everytime I read it. It follows a visit to the hometown of Evan Carlyle. Through narrative, flashbacks and memories, his life unfolds. Read it. It is the best book I have a ever read.

Alex Haley is rather unappreciated these days, as his reputation is unjustly tarnished by issues surrounding the veracity of "Roots." But this collection of his pioneering interviews for Playboy should leave no doubt that this was a fine journalist.

The interviews with individuals then prominent on the African-American scene -- Miles Davis, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Sammy Davis Jr., Jim Brown -- are very insightful. For anyone who happens to be a journalist, or aspires to be one, the book serves as a textbook of a kind. With Miles Davis and Brown -- the ultimate "hip" individuals -- Haley comes off as something of a square, but nonetheless asks questions that elicit thoughtful and candid responses.

His interview with Johnny Carson is another highlight. Carson, then in only his fifth season as host of "The Tonight Show," already appears, thanks to Haley's prodding, to be an embittered showbiz veteran, an intelligent man who fully realizes the relative unimportance of what he does for a living.

The conversation with neo-Nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell is a masterpiece. Without losing his own cool, Haley is able to allow Rockwell to expose himself as a complete buffoon, if a dangerous one.

Toward the end of the book, you'll find Haley's account of the pros and cons of being the author of "Roots." He doesn't ask for sympathy, but he is realistic about the experience.

I'm sorry to see that it's out of print, but if you have any interest in the U.S. during the 1960s, you should make the effort to find this book. You won't regret it.

This was one of my favorite books. I think though to enjoy it you kinda have to like the sport of swimming. If not the you may not enjoy it as much but it is still great!

`Alex in Winter' carries on from where `Alex' left off. Alex Archer has her place in the swimming team, aling with Maggie, but events still conspire (in the shape of Mr Upjohn and Maggie's mother) to stop her from swimming at the Olympics. She is also still struggling to come to terms with Andy's death, and maintain her family relationships. This is an excellent book, and like the rest of the series, is so realistic that it makes you want to cry in parts.

The book was excellent and very thought provoking for my 4 year old i would recommend it highly as a way to teach your child to be forgiving and understanding of others who are less fortunate

Colby College is an amazing school and this is an incredible book. No more needs to be said.

I have followed Alex la Guma's fiction and this is the best critical work I have read on the author. Others tend to be too simplistic -- simply biographical or they fall into essentialist terminology. I have read them but been disappointed by them because La Guma, a political writer, a member of the ANC and a writer whose work was banned under apartheid, deserved so much more detailed consideration. It isn't enough to tell us that he wrote against apartheid but how he did so so effectively. Yousaf has written a thorough and thoughtful book. Reading it helped me to look again at novels I know and see new things and read them through new ideas. The book also helped me to see that reading people like Frantz Fanon or Mikhail Bakhtin, critics I have found difficult, can actually help you to read novels in thought-provoking ways. The bibliography is really useful too. Yousaf uses the theorists, but to effect and never lets them get in the way of the novels themselves.

This is a great introduction to La Guma for new readers and for readers like myself, it augments what we already know and advances our thinking on a neglected South African writer.

I cannot understand why Heinemann who publish La Guma's fiction should have decided to price this book so high. From experience, I would say that it would work well for students of African Literature, especially South African Studies. But it would need to be in a cheaper format, like the fiction.

Thos book about Alex Rodreguez was very good for youngerchildren. It has cololrful pictures of Alex, and is nice as a paperback. If you are looking for a book about about a good guy for your son or daughter, than this book is perfect.

If I could have my wish and could become any artist that I wanted to be- I'd be Alex Toth.

It came as a shock to me awhile back to finally realise that so much of the work that I admired over the years was drawn or designed by the same creative genius (Space Angel, Clutch Cargo, Space Ghost, Johnny Quest, Super Friends, The Rook, etc.)

This is a truly remarkable book that actually gets inside the head of one of the all time great animators and illustrators. Not only do you get hard to find material from limited circulation publications (from Bravo for Adventure, to The Fox, to Zorro), but you also have a great deal of unpublished material from Toth's personal sketchbooks. Not only that, but the artist writes extensive commentary about just how he concieves both characters and plots. Further, he comments on the artists that most influenced his own work and development over the years.

The introduction is written by Milton Caniff (Terry and the Pirates & Steve Canyon.)

Prof Berman wrote a thesis in 1954 which explored a little known area of the history of American Pharmacy and Medicine: Plant remedies and Botanical medicinals in America from Colonial times on. In doing so he gave us a view of American Culture not previously expressed. The thesis was circulated and used by many in the field but never published as a book. In his later years Prof Berman with the happy help of the distinguished scholar Michael Flannery used this thesis as a basis for this wonderful book. It is learned, it is lucid, and it is engaging. Sadly, Prof Berman died right before the publication of this book,a book which is testimony to the continuing existence of real scholarship in America. This is not a "theory" book. It is solidly grounded in history and evidence. It is not light reading but even laymen (like myself) should read it to engage good history and good prose. Have you ever heard of the Thomsonians? Are you interested in how this "narrow field" speaks to or is influenced by Jeffersonians and Jacksonians? Are you in short interested in how seemingly small movements within a culture reflect that culture at large? Above all are you interested in the process of investigation which reveals and explainsthese connections? If so read this book. If you want to read trendy scholarship be my guest; but, if you want to read real scholarship--the kind of thing truly imaginative and thoughtful academics do then as I have said you could well profit from this wonderful book.