I love this book. Although it is rated for ages 9-12, I am a graduate of an Ivy League school and I find that it quickly refreshes as well as adds to my (already good) knowledge of world history.

Its point of view is commendable: the author writes as if he were an extra-terrestrial just visiting Planet Earth, thus can write about all peoples--American, Europeans, Hispanics, Polynesians, Africans, Japanese, Chinese, Asian Tigers--in a neutral but interested and caring way, for his people out there in the stars to read.

He touts the amazing achievements of several peoples but also pokes fun at their faults and confusions in a breezy but not overblown style. He tells us of nationalism and the rise and fall of individual empires and nations including their feats, truths and dreams as well as their lies, illusions, and exaggerations. Even Science is shown as a rising God that blesses us with favors but also punishes us with headaches.

The book is illustrated in full color, comic-book style, and peppered with delightful stories in virtually every page. It is a good first book or refresher for anyone wishing to start, or again get going at, delving deeper into world history, from the Big Bang several billion years ago to the present. The readers ends up both appreciative and skeptical of humanity, in short with the truth.

I noticed a couple of typos at the end of the book, but they are minor blemishes in a truly excellent book of about 120 pages.

The cover on my edition of "Appleby's Other Story (1974)" is adorned with a badger dressed in a diamond choker, and a plastic peacock. A peacock, badgers, and diamonds are indeed featured in this British manor house mystery, along with Sir John Appleby, now retired from his high position at New Scotland Yard.

As this elegant story begins, an antediluvian Chief Constable, Colonel Pride (late of His British Majesty's Indian Army) is driving Sir John over to meet his neighbors at Elvedon Court. Sir John was New Scotland Yard's acknowledged authority on art-robberies, and the manor's owner has suffered a recent theft:

"'Grove nods at grove' -- Sir John Appleby quoted -- 'each alley has a brother--'

"What's that, my dear fellow?" Colonel Pride, who had drawn up his car on the Palladian bridge for a preliminary view of Elvedon Court, glanced at his companion with every appearance of perplexity.

"'And half the platform just reflects the other.'

"Ah, a bit of poetry." Pride nodded. He was seemingly gratified at having got, as he would have expressed it, right on the ball. "And I see what the chap means. All a bit formal, I agree. What another of those long-haired characters calls fearful symmetry."

The layout of Elvedon Court plays an important role in the ensuing mystery, so it behooves you to pay attention when the author is discussing its architecture.

No sooner do Colonel Pride and Sir John pull up next to the stately flight of steps leading to the manor's entrance, than they spot a police van.

Someone has murdered their host, Maurice Tytherton.

Almost everyone at Elvedon Court is a suspect, including a shifty butler and his wife, a known art thief, the late owner's mistress and her husband, a sniveling nephew with financial problems, and a prying guest who may remind you of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. Sir John insinuates himself amongst the guests and relatives of the deceased and has a splendid time smashing alibis and detecting motives. There are lots of red herrings to chase after--for instance a vicar who lurks about the distinguished grounds with a pair of binoculars--but when Sir John finally rounds up all of the suspects into the deceased's study for the grand denouement, you may be sure he will finger the actual murderer. After all, "Appleby's Other Story" is from the Golden Age of British Mystery--the genre's Age of Enlightenment, as practiced by authors such as Dorothy Sayers, Edmund Crispin, Margaret Allingham, and of course, J.I.M. Stewart a.k.a Michael Innes.

Incidentally, this book's title is a horrible bit of word-play on the solution of the mystery. I stumbled across its true meaning (shame on you, Professor Stewart!) while writing this review.

Covers basics for young players - spiced with advanced concepts you wouldn't find even in a book written at the College coach level. Brilliant.

This book is unbelievable. It give stats from every single baseball player in 1997. Whenever your bored and need something to read, just sit down and read a few biographies, Itll increase your baseball knowledge, and most of them are very interesting.

Sir John Appleby and his wife, Lady Judith accept an invitation to a house-party at Charne, the country estate of the Martineaus. Their friend, Grace Martineau is dying of cancer and she wants her friends about her one last time.

This particular Appleby is mostly dialogue. Almost all of the action (several deaths, drug dealing, statutory rape) takes place off stage. Innes paints very believable psychological portraits of his protagonists, a talent that may have been strengthened by the year he spent in Vienna, studying Freudian psychology. The characters' interactions tend to be both erudite and revealing, as in this mystery's opening scene when the guests have gathered in the loggia at dusk to hear a nightingale sing:

"'O Nightingale, that on yon bloomy Spray/ Warbl'st at eve, and when all the woods are still.'

"This was Bobby again, and it ought to have been harmless and agreeable. But it wasn't, Appleby thought--or not quite. Grace Martineau could be sensed as stiffening in displeasure as if she felt Bobby--her husband's nephew--to be guying this new poem, and so guying the bird. And it was quite possible--one suddenly perceived--that Grace didn't much like Bobby, anyway.

"And Diana Page, too, seemed not pleased, for she launched another attack on the young man.

"'Fancy spouting poetry about the nightingale,' she said, 'when one can sit still and listen to it!"

The deaths don't take place until the latter half of the mystery. Meanwhile the reader becomes well-acquainted with Grace Martineau and her machinations to have her husband remarry after she has died. Her guests, already on edge because they know this is the last time they will see their hostess, are shocked by her insistence that her husband should wed another after her passing. They are even more shocked when they learn Grace's choice of bride.

"The Bloody Wood" is a somber Appleby, almost more tragedy than mystery. Nevertheless it is a good mystery, where the reader is challenged to discover a killer, after the author has furnished revealing psychological portraits of the murder suspects.

by Thomas A. Cameron Director, Clan Cameron Online clancam1@aol.com

Published by the Clan Cameron Association, this 344 page "masterpiece," by John Stewart of Ardvorlich, is dedicated "To all of the name of Cameron wherever they may dwell."

The history of Clan Cameron follows along side the history of the Camerons of Lochiel, the hereditary Chiefs of Clan Cameron. For this reason among others, this work details the Chiefs and their family from the fifteenth century through the present day. In addition, Stewart focuses on the many "tribes" and "septs" of the Camerons, those who either adopted the surname of Cameron or who followed the various Lochiels throughout the years. Coat of arms, tartans, poetry, music, Cameron "place names," and a listing of historically "famous" Camerons are also included, with twenty-five photographic plates of historical relevance.

Within the pages of this work, which is endorsed by both Colonel Sir Donald Hamish Cameron of Lochiel

Stewart's study of the spiritual and theological writings of St John Cassian attempts to provide for students and monastics alike a framework for appreciating Cassian's significance -- and it succeeds brilliantly in doing so. Stewart's presentation is noteworthy, inter alia, for his revision of traditional categories too often (mis)applied to Cassian's theology. Thus, his consideration of the "Semi-Pelagian" Conference XIII takes up the dissatisfaction expressed by R A Markus in his End of Ancient Christianity, who called for a reading of Cassian's theology of grace in situ, rather than through the prism of Prosper's hardline Augustinian critique. Stewart does so with the great clarity and succinctness characteristic of the work as a whole. His style is highly approachable, even fluid, and his notes (which run to a length roughly equal to that of the text itself) are remarkably thorough. This study will be highly valued by scholars and enthusiasts alike.

This story of fairy tales from the celts is very good. It has wonderful illistrtions and owinspiring storys. Anyone who is interastined in fairy tales and the celts is going to love this story. Please read this you will love it!

This book contains lots of detailed illustrated guidelines on riding in traffic. Also maintaince etc. Every aspic of riding on road is covered in detail. Very well done.

A very strange and silly book that yet succeeds in being entertaining, despite (or because of?) that very quality. The plot is as exotic and as lush as the setting: Appleby and a small group of Commonwealthers are shipwrecked on a Pacific island inhabited by sinister archaeologists, German spies and transvestites. Although there are the usual Innesian linguistic blocks (e.g., at one point the heroine is described as "being as yet unaware of being obscurely conscious of offence"), the book is remarkably well-written, even if steeped overmuch in Freud.

(I save 10's for Dostoyevsky.)

Michael Innes in his usual perfection! Like any of his books, this one will delight you between dinner and bedtime. Skip that blind date and take out Michael Innes instead. He's the hippest, coolest Oxford don on the crime scene.

This one features George, my favorite aristocratic dog, as well as a young debonair Appleby in the pre-Judith days. The story starts out as a Robinson Crusoe shipwreck adventure (featuring a proper English spinster who goes native), turns into an offbeat drawing room comedy (with an entire cast of eccentric characters including the wonderful George), and ends up a World War II action-suspense thriller (with full sensurround fire and explosions)! Really, it does!

Along the way Innes' dry, hilarious prose drops little precious gems of insight and percipience. If you read Innes with your dictionary handy, you are guaranteed several arcane and ultra-cool additions to your vocabulary in every book. He's a sort of cross between Henry Fielding and Douglas Adams... kooky and hip and very, very well educated. If he is still alive, he is over eighty... and if I met him I would just swoon!