I bought this book in 1964 at a book van that stopped at my high school. Paid $.40 for the paperback. I have recently re-read it and it still fascinates. I believe Mannix used to write for the pulp magazines of the time, "Argosy", "True", etc. and his style shows it. (My dad had another excellent book by Mannix, "Those About to Die," which was a history of gladiatorial combat. I also recommend it.) "The History of Torture" is not a scholarly work and has no pretentions to being one. It is a solid, interesting history of man's inhumanity to man and one I highly recommend.

This book has it all---murder, cruelty, history, execution, murder, boiling oil, cruelty, and lots of enigmatically depraved sentences. Mannix is the MAN!nix. The guy can write---he puts these sentences down that are novels in themselves. I've read most of his books, but none of them touches this one for haiku-like brilliance of his prose. He can roll of a description of the most depraved acts known to man with a terseness befitting a VCR manual. Ace stuff.

Particularly heart warming is the story of the Russian princess way back when who was having an affair, and was punished by being frozen into a fortress made of solid ice with her lover and a gaggle of midgets and mentally-less-than-thou types, who forced them to make whoopee on the ice bed.

But that's just one example, and there are literally thousands in this book. The depth of the research is just staggering.

It all reminds me of the time I was laid off by Bob Egan. I mean, it wasn't like I was tortured or anything---he felt bad about it, so did I. But the thing was that Bob could lay out sentences like nobody's business. I remember when the company announced that there were going to be layoffs, and they packed nearly 100 people into a conference room that was designed to hold 30, then connected with the Chicago office via the high tech phone system, and announced that the company was going to "go through some changes". It was Bob's job there to soften the blow---I think he was the "COO", whatever that means---but stay realistic about it all. So he stepped up to the plate after the CEO (Chief Executive Officer, I'm told), and made this really funny but bang-on comment about the state of the company. I can't remember what that comment was, though, since they'd closed the door to the conference room, and there was absolutely no oxygen left in the room. So that was kind of like torture, and Bob was kind of like Mannix.

Anyway, they used to have to clear rats out of the dungeons because they would eat the fingers and toes off of people locked in the stocks, and then they'd bleed to death, leaving the public with no murder to watch, which was bad. Bob laid me off 8 months ago and I'm still unemployed---which is fine, since it's given me a lot of time to catch up on rereading this book. The only thing that would've made the book better would be a guest appearance by Nixon.

The book is well writen and non-biased. The author presents the material in a way that is non-judgemental considering the behaviour of the people he writes about.

When I hear discussions of capital/corporal punishment, I like to read excerpts from the book to gain perspective. The book begins with the torture and execution of an entire Jewish family because of their refusal to eat pork. He goes on to describe the games, the inquisition, and the fanatics who were in control throughout history.

It's not an easy book to read. I had to put it down several times because it was so graphic. However, it's not gratuitous violence. It was compelling enough to pick back up again.

The book questions the effectiveness of punishment. The final pages are the arguments from both sides, those who are proponants and opponants of capitol or corporal punishment. I thought he did a good job of presenting the different arguments.

At last a Bible where you can get a clear idea of how traditional but not fantical Baptist think. The bible is well laid out with outlines and vital information on each book and the footnoting is excellent with a rich variety of comments from some of the better thinkers of the Baptist way.

For a Baptist the book is a plus for a non-baptist it is educational tool in comparative christian thought and theology.

This study Bible is one of the best versions out there. It is very easy to follow and understand. It has outlines and footnotes that allow you to apply each verse to everyday life.

I am a Seminary student and have gone through many study bibles. However, this work by W.A. Criswell is by far the best in the business.

The i-Mode Developer's Guide shows you how the most popular and profitable wireless technology on the planet works, the business model, and is rich with examples. This is useful for anyone serious about making a wireless Internet business. It is not simply about Japan which is perhaps 2 years ahead of us in cellular market maturity. It is also a way to reach the new AT&T m-life market. Developers find how to tweak simple HTML to do i-mode. This is a base every wireless content developer MUST master. The book goes on then to explain and give examples of i-appli Java, and details of the emoji icons if they want to get tricky.
I absolutely love the attention to the excellent service examples and their technical explanations - consider i-area, the very smart location-based service in Japan. Developers are show the key emulators, how to develop ringtones, animations. It also puts SMS and WAP into perspective comparing service structures and microbilling differences.
This book is thoughtful and an incredible research report from the future in a difficult to access part of the world for most US and European developers who want to prepare for the future.

Users of the I-Mode Developer's Guide by Paul Wallace will be able to quickly, as well as, efficiently build I-Mode pages using their most familiar text editor. Following examples and instructions based on Wallace's successful experience, developers will create or convert images from other platforms, create animations and sound files, and develop dynamic database driven I-Mode applications and Web sites using common scripting languages such as Perl, PHP, and Java. Readers will also understand the relationship between I-Mode and other wireless technologies, and it's unique business model. An overview of several of the "killer applications" that have fueled I-Mode's success will further prepare the reader to create applications that take full advantage of the options of small screen devices. An exceptionally strong reference for Intermediate to Advanced level users.

Excellent overview of both the business and technology aspects of global wireless applications and services. Covers more than simply i-mode, and is simply THE most complete wireless/mobile Internet book I've read.

WAP is not coming back from the dead, so the future is HTML-based mobile applications. This book gave me both a foundation for HTML and XHTML wireless programming, as well as a the technical understading of handsets, location based services, and generating revenue. I wish all tech books were so comprehensive!

In Canada, we hear of Polar Bears invading the towns close to the North Pole. As global warming becomes more of a reality each year, the Polar Bears actually have to be escorted out of Churchill, (Alberta?) so that small children or pets aren't attacked. Back to the book -- this is a sweet look at emotions that children can relate to, when this polar bear finds himself in unfamiliar territory, trying to survive.

Children love the silly paradox of a polar bear at the beach, and I love reading the book to them!

I am a kindergarten teacher, and while my students enjoy this book, I don't think they like it more than I do. I read this book to my husband and teen-aged sons, and have read it for my own pleasure many times. I think this book could be well used in a high school English class when discussing tone or comic timing. I only wish that the Larry books would come out in paperback so that more people could enjoy them, and that another old Pinkwater favorite, Roger's Umbrella,were still in print.

Ice Cream Larry is one of a series of books about Larry, a polar bear, who lives at a hotel and works as a lifeguard at the hotel pool. Larry has never eaten a human being, but he is always hungry, and in this book he eats 250 pounds of ice cream and wants more. His greed leads him to fame as the spokesbear of the Iceberg Ice Cream company and a new product is named after him. The Larry Bar comes in many flavors including blueberry and codfish. The Larry books are hilarious, and the illustrations colorful and engaging. I have read this book many, many times to my 3-year old, who never gets tired of Larry's antics with his brother Roy and his friends at the hotel, the Frobishers... The phrase "And I don't feel sick!" has become one of our standard jokes when we eat ice cream (or anything else we like a lot!)

The quote on the cover - which I've used as the title of my review - sets expectations far beyond what is delivered. Kharms does an excellent job of depicting the absurdities of Communist USSR in his era ... the waiting in queques, the fear engendered by a simple knock on the door, the prevalence of bribery etc. Some of his observations - very short observations of ordinary life - are interesting perspectives similar to "reality TV". But too many seem to be journal notes of ideas not yet formulated: "On one occasion a man went off to work and on the way he met another man who, having bought a loaf of Polish bread, was wending his way home. / And that's just about all there is to it."

The absurdity of the pieces is often inventive, clever, etc. ... but I found the emphasis on violent or ill-manner behavior wearing as the absurdity became to predictable.

For contemporary short fiction absurdity read Barry Yourgrau. If you're interested in absurdity in Russian literature, this book is an essential piece of literary history.

The bulk of the fiction of Daniil Kharms was destined for his desk drawer. Though his work for children was widely published in the Soviet Union, his other efforts were unprintable, thanks to Stalin's iron rule. These tales have now been collected in "Incidences," an admirable work, edited and cleanly translated by Neil Cornwell, that highlights Kharms's eerie obsessions: a fear of old women and children, a love of falling bodies and a sensual pleasure in the scents and sounds of daily life. With remarkable precision and fluid language, the stories capture everyday tension in a land where an innocent knock on the door might mean entrapment in a bureaucratic maze or even death at the hands of the military. By yoking official policy with personal ire, Kharms reveals how deeply his contemporaries absorbed and understood their domination. And by casting his tales within the realm of the absurd he lifts anxiety into art. The pity is that his life was as brief as his stories: he was only in his late 30's when he died in 1942, probably in a Leningrad prison...

humor teaches like nothing else. or so it seems. mr. cornwell's translation of these "incidences" transformed this collection into a classic in the english language. if you believe this might be possible. please don't lump this in with other "absurdist" works. mr. kharms stands high above mr. beckett or mr. ionesco. or so i would have it. good day.

Cooks' Illustrated, surely, is many things to many people. I like to think of them as cooking for the hard-core geeks; they slice and dice recipes as well as vegetables, and work the kinks out of them to make what is at least their idea of the best possible version of a meal. To the geek chef, their books are the technical flip side of the theoretical work of Alton Brown, Shirley Corriher, and Harold McGee.

Don't pick this book up thinking that you're going to get someone's Italian nonna's sunday gravy recipe; that's what the Sopranos Family Cookbook is for. This is very technical stuff that involves stripping the great recipes down to their bare essentials and rebuilding them from the ground up. Sacred cows of Italian cuisine, as in everything else they do, are scrutinized very carefully, and slaughtered as often as not. Only the most basic definition of the dish is taken for granted. The end result is sometimes minimalist; the Baked Ziti recipe, for example, has no ricotta in it and is almost vegetarian. The end result is a dizzying book that should be on the shelf of anyone who likes to cook Italian. Finally, the frequent sidebars on cooking equipment, a Cooks Illustrated staple, offer deep background on the techniques in the recipes.

Now with raves like that, why only 4 stars, you might be asking? Well, it's not perfect. The Best Recipe series presents itself as a bible of cooking, and it's not; glaring omissions in this book include meat lasagna (though the big bragging point on the dust jacket is the vegetable lasagna recipe) and cannoli. There is also a tendency to repeat articles from earlier books, an understandable but occasionally annoying situation that tends to leave the reader feeling as though the magazine people are trying to cut corners. And the appeal of this book isn't universal; the Cooks Illustrated style is, as I said, very technical, and a bit chatty at times. If you just want the recipes and don't care about the particulars, this book will bore you. Me, I like cookbooks I can read, so this isn't a problem.

So, in conclusion, I say this: if you like chomping data as much as you like chomping food, this book will rock your world. If not, the recipes are still pretty good.

The Best Recipe series have outdone themselves. This is the best one yet.(I am partial to cooking american-italian food at home). This illustrates great recipes that are tasty and user friendly. I especially love the risotto cakes. This book goes beyound recipes and teaches one about techniques and what to do or not to do. THIS IS A GREAT LAST MINUTE GIFT FOR THE NOVICE CHEF TO THE AVID COOK FOR THE HOLIDAYS OR ANY OCCASION. Definately a keeper if you like italian cooking.

Italian Classics is easy to understand and has great tips on everything from balsamic vinegar to meatballs. It makes cooking simple and fun. The recipes also include tricks the pros use as well as home style cooking techniques. It is a great addition to any food lovers library.

I liked the book. It was very factual and helped a great deal with research. It contains many accounts of the Plague.

Well, it's not really clear that Defoe used actual accounts, though he did draw on much discussion about the Great Plague. He was, after all, only five or six years old when it occured. But the narrative is utterly absorbing. Written by one of the greatest novelists of all time (he was Joyce's favorite English novelist), the narrative is vivid, moving, and sometimes hilarious. It is also remarkably contemporary. You meet quacks and prophets disturbingly similar to the no-nothings who dominate our own time. The descriptions of behavior, disease, fear, and denial are as fresh today, and as relevant, as they were when Defoe wrote the Journal. Don't miss it!

What makes Dafoes account of the plague so compelling is the fact that the story is based on real accounts. He, Mr Dafoe, has accomplished the task of bringing a distant event that could be easily overlooked and created a yearning to know anout the conditions of London and the people whom resided there during the toll of the plague.

Having some experience in the movie industry (bit actor/producer)I was pleasantly surprised by how close this came to some of my own experiences. I must admit I laughed out loud at various times as I read the book. It is about a couple of investment bankers sent to Hollywood by their firm to see what happened to some money they raised for a studio. The adventures and kooks these guys meet are hilarious, and it isn't too hard to figure out who is being parodied. This book was seemingly written from a political perspective totally at odds with Hollywood, and it is quite refreshing. I found it funny, although a little too short.

With a title and cover like this one, who could resist? "Hollywood! Must Be Destroyed" is an nice book, aptly describing events into the strange place we call "Hollywood."

Put simply, it's about a young investment banker from Newww Yawk who comes to a Hollywood studio, and ends up winding his way through the bizarre ways of the people who work there.

The prose is a bit sparse, but is littered throughout with lines like "Enough of me talking about me, why don't you talk about me for a while?" In different settings it might be groanworthy, but in these circumstances it works pretty well. The cover looks a bit grainy, but has the pleasant view of Hollywood letters underscored by "must be" and then a fiery "DESTROYED," as well as a rather stiff-looking guy in a suit, and a babe in a rather tight, small dress.

A nice book if you're in the mood for light and kinda lampoony.

THIS IS A STORY THAT NEEDED TO BE TOLD AND DANIEL WADE SCHRODER
TOLD IT PERFECTLY. YOU CAN TELL THAT HE DID MUCH RESEARCH ON THIS BOOK. YOU FIND YOURSELF CLAPPING FOR THE HERO'S AND BOOING THE "BAD GUYS". IT HAS SOME OF THE FUNNIEST DIALOGUE I HAVE EVER READ AND SOME OF THE MOST SERIOUS. KIDDO'S TO MR. SCHRODER AND AM LOOKING FORWARD TO YOUR NEXT BOOK.

If I were to pick one short (127 page) book for the person who knows how the pieces move and wants to know, "what do I do next?" this would be it. Three principles to guide opening play, four for the middlegame, and three for the endgame. The author provides plenty of exercises for practice. Someone looking for a meatier text would be advised to take a look at "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Chess," by Patrick Wolff, but King covers the essentials quite well for those who just want to play a reasonable looking game, or get some ideas for teaching a child.

I would recommend this book to chess beginners.Daniel King has done a good job for writing a beginner's book.It will teach ten of the most important things to do in chess,opening with a center pawn,castling quick,looking for captures,knowing basic checkmates,and so on.Good for chess amateurs.

Novices will benefit most from this simple introductory text that clearly explains basic winning principles. This is the sort of stuff you'll need to know before you can look back on this with knowing contempt.

Batter stats included in this book are games played, at bats, runs scored, hits, doubles, triples, homeruns, rbi, stolen bases and batting average. Does not include strikeouts, walks or positions played. Pitching stats include games, wins, losses, winning percentage, saves, innings pitched, hits, strikeouts, walks and ERA. The entire roster of players on each team is not included, only the players who qualified for the batting or pitching championship (usually 4-7 per team). Season-by-season stats including team and individual player stats. Also includes the leaders in 18 categories (including the top five in batting average, home runs, rbis, era, wins and strikeouts), MVPs, Sawamura Award winners, All-Star game results and Japan Series results (as well as series award-winners). Also includes career record holders, but does not contain comprehensive career player stats. Given the dearth of Japanese baseball statistical books written in english, this book is very informative and interesting and the best I have seen to date. I would like to see a "Neft and Cohen" type book in the future.

Like Connie Mack's Philadelphia A's, Dan Johnson's book is a genuine "white elephant." His English-language statistical survey of Japanese baseball is as rare as it is exhaustive. JAPANESE BASEBALL: A STATISTICAL HANDBOOK is a valuable resource -- and an ideal acquisition for those interested in the INTERNATIONAL pastime.

Dan Johnson has spent a great deal of time collecting data in English on Japanese Baseball. This book is a must for anyone interested in the history of Japanese baseball. No other book like it written in English.