I've read a bit more than half of this book, and I can already say that it is probably the most RACIST book I've ever read. While trying not to make race a big issue in this novel(I think that's what Lehrer was trying to do by having a diverse debate panel), the author made the fact that Barbara Manning(African-American) and Henry Rodriguez(Hispanic) were minorities THE central issue inadvertently. Every time these two characters are mentioned in the novel, their ethnicity is brought up. Even worse, the character of Henry is a stereotype of Mexican people. On page 111, it is mentioned that Henry's favorite food is a bean burrito. Nearly every time Henry makes a statement in the novel, he uses the word "Ole`". I'm still waiting for him to break out and start refering to people as "Essay"(which, I'm sure is coming up) I think that the only thing Lehrer knows about Hispanic people is what he learned by listening to Cheech from Cheech and Chong! I'm not even going to start on the fact that every Republican in the novel is portrayed as a Neo-Nazi-type of supervillan. This is a book with weak characters that use poor dialogue.

"The Last Debate" is a page turner, an easy, quick read, good for the beach or a night of insomnia. Even though much of it was predictable, I was tantalized enough at each stage to continue on. That said, however, the plot is hardly realistic. Any decent journalist (and the hero Howley was characterized as such) or news organization possessing the "explosive" goods on one of the candidates, would check it out carefully unlike the four debate panalists. Furthermore, it is hard to believe that a candidate who behaved as the Republican candidate did could get as far as he did without at least one or two of his accusers (and there were many!) not going public much earlier on, i.e., during the primaries. Look what happened to Clinton in 1992 -- not to mention 1998. The "minority" journalists are one dimensional and stereotypical. Still, given the weaknesses in the plot, it was an interesting read, and I'm trying one more Lehrer fiction piece to see if he does any better.

Days before the election, the moderator of the presidential debate (Lehrer has of course moderated many presidential debates) is given some secret, damning info on one of the candidates (the right-wing Republican who all the press realize is a truly evil man who will ruin the country) and has to decide whether to step over the journalistic line and use this info in a way that will damage the candidate in the eyes of the voters and so change American history.

It's an interesting moral question but because it is set up so weakly, a lot of the impact is lost. The candidate's character is somewhat like Pat Buchanan, but the situation is more like that of when Ross Perot first came on the scene, and he seemed such a wonderful guy, until we all found out about the steel-tip-booted way he ran his businesses, and how badly he took criticism, and saw the guy he chose for V.P. Everybody said, "Whoa! and I was going to vote for this guy?!"

In "The Last Debate," though, the American public still doesn't know about the man's real character 8 days before the election. It just seems awfully unlikely that nothing would have come to light before that time. And even then, why couldn't the journalists bypass the moral issue by just giving the damning info directly to the press to report it as news? Lehrer does kind of explain these things, in a way, later on, but these kinds of doubts gave the premise a tinge of unreality which weakened its impact for me.

You have to read this book, also, with the assumption that Lehrer is being very loose and imaginative here, probably aspiring to something a la Jonathan Swift, because the characters do express themselves in very simple, repetitive, often stereotypical ways, and say a lot of things out loud that you would never expect such people to say. But he might have done that to simplify things, and of course, ambitious people are, sometimes, extremely simple and childish, underneath it all.

And you can't really call all the characters superficial. The Democratic candidate is kind of a dummy, but he's not really a nice guy, as we see in how he treats his campaign manager. (Is Lehrer telling us they're all like that?) And I thought the contrast between the narrator (a young journalist) and the "hero" moderator (from the old school) was very interesting. And also the contrast between the somewhat opportunistic narrator and the deeply moral and patriotic private investigator.

(Lehrer also leaves open the interesting question of whether the American public is better off with the dumb Democrat rather than the crazy Republican.)

Lehrer writes with a sort of Southern lilt which is kind of nice, but then, he has everyone - the narrator of the story and most of the characters - talk that way off and on, which is a bad idea if you're trying to keep characters separate. For instance, the narrator and several characters frequently do what I give an example of above in my title: use 4 nouns or adjectives in a row. There's no point building up verisimilitude by using all sorts of place and brand names, but then making this sort of sloppy error.

Still, the book is interesting if you watch the Newshour and want to read about the Washington scene. The pacing is nicely done, and Lehrer is an honest and good man, so you do trust what he says about his world.

An aside: I couldn't help remembering Stephen King's "The Dead Zone," which also involves an evil politician and a hero who knows the truth about him. That book had a great solution to the problem, a little more physical, of course. A major flaw with King, in my opinion, is that he's lived up there among the pinecones, watching TV and reading paperbacks too long, and a lot of his plots nowadays are too far from reality, even for his genre. And I thought, wow, wouldn't it be great if Lehrer and King teamed up for a novel or two?! Or is that a little TOO Swiftian to hope for?

Chuck Dixon is the busiest writer in comics, but his comics scripts lack depth and charecterization. It's a good book in so far as artwork goes, but ulitmately the Catwoman vs the Feds story is something which is played out when Selina Kyle (Catwoman's real name) must outsmart the Dark Knight, and not always succeeding. But either way this book is not much on story.

This book reads like the writer was watching THE PRISONER (Patrick McGoohan) while writing as the influence is overwhelming with even the coffee joke being repeated (file says No. 6 drinks his coffee black, so he puts several cubes of sugar in his cup).

Julia Strain was the model for this. Gosh, she would make a great Catwoman.

Missing is Batman.

Just to clarify, I'm a regular reader of Catwoman's monthly title, and have nearly all of them. As such, I see this story in a different context than many, which I'll explain here to the uninitiated.

Chuck Dixon, this story's writer, was the book's second regular writer, and not my favorite one, personally. He never seemed to think very highly of her, and nearly all his stories revolved around Catwoman's being captured, unable to make ends meet, or bungling major robberies. This, alas, is more of the same, being about Selina being caught and ensleved by the US government.

Having said that, though, it's the best work Dixon did for the book. The story is actually well-done, a competent re-work of the "La Femme Nikita" concept into a Catwoman story. In and of itself, it's a good, solid Cat-Tale, but she's had even better, in her time. She has been stronger, smarter, and more competent in other stories.

CATFILE is a respectable read, but be advised that better stories are out there to be found.

I was expecting a memory jogger, but this was a fast paced marathon! Instead of being a few, quick, easy to read points, the pocket guide read more like a book. The formating was difficult to follow and the font was difficult to see.

We were trying to replace the heater core, the instructions were foggy to say the least. Further repairs or maintenance just as foggy, its a good book if you have a lot of experience with repairing the vehicle and don't need a how to. Amazingly the "Ford Tempo Mercury Topaz 1984-94" book by Mark Christman, which is by the same company, was a lot better for repairs and maintenance. But neither book helped with replacing the heater core, we eventually used other resources for more ideas on how to actually get to the heater core to get it out.

I've used this book for nearly three years now, and keep wondering why I go back to it. (Actually, it's because it's the only Tempo/Topaz book I own.) I have found several major errors in the illustrations, usually due to showing a 2.0 engine setup as a 2.3 or vice versa. Some instructions, like how to change a water pump, are just plain wrong. Electrical schematics, particularly of the instrument cluster are sketchy to the point of being useless when troubleshooting anything other than a hard failure. I suspect that much of the text in this book was a quickie cut-and-paste job of info that pertained to these same components as installed in other Ford products. It really doesn't do justice to the model-specific problems of navigating the limited space of the engine compartment or tracing an intermittent electrical circuit. Proofreading was spotty at best. It's better than doing a repair job blind, but not by much.

Chilton's Ford Tempo and Mercury Topaz Repair Manual 1984-94 is not for the average car owner. It is probably not even for the average mechanic. It is written in difficult language and at times seems to display unnecessarily complicated methods of performing simple tasks. From beginning to index it offers low quality information and instruction. There are too many diagrams and not enough photos. The photos available are poor. Overall this book was not very useful to me. I have used the Haynes manual for the same car and found it much more useful.

I don't use Notes, just Approach... All I learned from this book is how to Click a button to show a Message Box. The author thinks he is very clever because he replaced the usual "Hello World" by "Goodbye Cruel World". If that is all you need Lotusscript for, then buy this book!

Unfortunately, I could not find any other book on the subject here... If someone knows one, please email me...

OK so maybe the cover did say LotusScript, but if you are a Notes Developer, FORGET THIS BOOK! The book has absolutly nothing that deals with Notes/Domino at all. Maybe if there are people out there that want to learn LotusScript for other products besides Notes, this MIGHT be ok. There is little more to say for Notes consultants besides look elsewhere!

I thought this book was good in teaching the basics of Lotus Script, as well as the basic concepts of any language. However, if you want to script in Lotus Notes, then forget about it. Not knowing ANYTHING about LotusScript, I got a good foundation of how to do things and what things are, but as far as using the editor, how to add your own subs and functions, etc., it was no help as Lotus Notes is different than WordPro! This did not help you to differentiate between Notes Classes at all, although it did teach you about classes in general. Bottom line: good for a basic background, but won't get you very far with Lotus Notes.