All the sound effects and music added much as well as having two members of the original cast from the movies(Mark Hamil and Anthony Daniels)was wonderful!! Anne Sachs was brillient as Leia and Perry King was magnifesent as Solo although getting used to King's voice instead of Ford's was a bit difficult.I enjoyed getting more background on Luke and Leia. Brian Daily wrote a wonderful script!! All in all this series should be re-brodcast.

When the Star Wars Radio Drama made its debut in 1981, on the NPR network, it was an instant success. Saga creator George Lucas sold the rights of the story to his alma mater for a dollar After that, a highly creative team took on the task of adapting the very visual film, for the radio medium. The end result is an enjoyable and very worthwhile, experience that makes the film come alive all over again, despite the lack of any of the film's landmark visuals

Using sound effects, the original score by composer John Williams, and with 2 key actors reprising their roles from the film, the radio drama boasts lavish production values. This is not some cheesy adaptation that they slapped together, quickly and put the name Star Wars on it, hoping for the best. Author Brian Daley's radioplay expands on the film verison by including additional "scenes" and backstory. Directed by John Madden (Shakespeare In Love), the radio drama has a top notch cast. Mark Hamill and Anthony Daniels add some additional class by recreating their film roles as Luke Skywalker and C-3PO respectively. Brock Peters as Darth Vader, makes the part his own, while Ann Sachs gives Leia the right amount of spunk. Perry King, as smuggler Han Solo, may not be Harrison Ford, but he could be Solo, and that's what counts. Bernard Beherns as Ben Kenobi and the late great character actor, Keane Curtis, as Grand Moff Tarkin, round out the main cast, with style. While I was listening to this, I got the impression that, even though it must have been a lot of work to put this production together, it seems like everyone had a good time too. Sure some of it may sound a bit off at times, because most of us know the film so well. But one must remember that no one working on the project set out to just copy the film. The Star Wars Radio Drama captures the sprit of its of source material perfectlly...and that's all it needs to do.

I highly recommend this presenation. The Star Wars Radio Drama on CD contains all 13 episodes as originally presented, spread over 7 discs, with a running time of about six and a half hours. The Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi radio drama adaptations are also available as well.

At first, the idea seems bizarre, even ridiculous. Star Wars, a movie best known for its vistas of alien worlds and epic battles, as a 13 part radio drama? No way would it work, right?

Well, unless you have the cold heart of a Sith, Star Wars did indeed translate well from the silver screen to radio, thank you very much. Yes, Star Wars' visual effects are a big part of the magic of the saga, but the heart and soul of George Lucas' galaxy far, far away are the characters and the storyline. And while the movie is satisfying on its own, the radio dramatization written by the late Brian Daley takes us beyond the movie....beyond the screenplay...and even beyond the novelization.

By expanding the movie's story beyond its two hour running time, the Radio Drama allows us to catch glimpses of Luke Skywalker's life BEFORE the movie. It tells us how Princess Leia acquired the Death Star plans....and what, exactly, happened to her during her interrogation aboard the Empire's battle station...(it is an interesting scene, but not for the squeamish, by the way). In short, by expanding the story to nearly seven hours, characters we loved on screen acquire depth only equaled by novelizations.

The Radio Drama makes extensive use of material written (and in some cases filmed) for A New Hope's silver screen version but cut for editorial or technical reasons. Also, Ben Burtt's sound effects, John Williams' score, and the acting of Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) and Anthony Daniels (See Threepio) give the whole project its "true" Star Wars cachet.

Ram Dass leads you on your meditation path, as he simplifies the method for you. Interjecting quotes from poems, scriptures, and wise zen sayings, Ram Dass pulls from wisdom and faith to help you along your journey. An especially helpful chapter on learning mantras, and the value in repeating mantras

All the reviews here are right on target. This book states some HUGE truths in a very simple, elegant manner. The talk about the ego and the mind chatter echos A Course in Miracles, Hiduism, and probably many other spiritual paths. His understanding of the human mind in general and meditation in particular drips from the page. I especially like that he doesn't "sell" one particular style of meditation but gives a fair introduction to all. Many roads, same destination. A must read for both the interested and the experienced.

I read this book as a form of meditation. The pace, the language, even the mandalas and other drawings can be used as tools to launch onesself into the deeper life. Best read or listened to during the morning commute to set a good tone for the rest of a hectic day.

This book tells a simple story about a boy who makes a hard decision that is both kind and generous. This story was read to a staff of adults at our annual Christmas party and all of us sat enrapt and charmed as we listened and watched each page turn. The pictures are beautiful and the story is something that all ages will enjoy. A delightful find and one that I will give as a gift each year.

As Christmas books come and go with each passing season, few have caught my attention as "The Light of Christmas" has. It encompasses the main idea of Christmas, which is that by reaching out to those in need, one learns the true message of why we celebrate the "Light" of Christmastime. Mr. Evans does a fantastic job by including such things as the "Light" and Santa Claus or rather Father Christmas, without pounding in too hard the message of Christ only. He does a very commendable job at combining the two, which I think would be a hard task for any author, especially with a children's book. On top of it all, the illustrations are absolutely beautiful, and are timeless in nature, so this book will be enjoyed for people of all ages and for many generations. This book is a must for every home!

If you only read one Christmas book this season, make it "The Light of Christmas" by Richard Paul Evans. This is a beautiful, well told story for children of all ages. "The Light of Christmas" pulled at my heart strings and brought tears to my eyes. This is a gift that I will share with my family and friends for Christmas. Thank you, Richard Paul Evans, for helping bring the meaning of Christmas back into my life.

This is a "can't put it down" biographical story about a Catholic priest known as Father Vincent Robert Capodanno who served in the Viet Nam War. From a war that many would like to forget emerges an identifyable hero and quite probably a great saint. Fr. Daniel Mode does an excellent job in researching the life and career of this courageous officer who was described by one of the grunts who knew Capodanno as "a man who had the courage of a lion and the faith of a martyr." He died serving the "grunts" on the battlefield, minstering to them at the hour of their death. It is a well-documented account of Capodanno's childhood, manhood and priesthood and a tribute to the men who served with him. A great book for everyone, a missing piece of history that finally has come to light. Enjoy!

The spiritually inspirational story of Father Vincent R. Capodanno has deeply touched myself, my family and my friends. Both of my parents served in the Navy during the Vietnam Era; my mother as a nurse and my father as an aviator. I passed the book on to them and it brought tears to my mother's eyes each time she picked it up. The autor, Fr. Daniel Mode simply portays a vivid picture of Father Capodanno's childhood, minissonary work, and especially his deep understanding of the spiritual and physical needs of his fellow "grunts". The troops leaned on him so that they could go forward in the daily struggles of war. It was obvious that Fr. Mode had a deep connection with his subject. The countless personal interviews with the men who served with Fr. Capodanno as a missionary and later as a chaplin, as well as the troops who were in country with him bring the book to life. It was obvious how the title of Father Mode's book came to be. He writes of Father Capodanno's committment to God through his selfless sacrafice in ministering to the people he encountered in his missionary work and in Vietnam. Thank you Father Mode for writing this beautiful story!

This is an interesting story which has been well researched by the author. We need more true stories of everyday people who have done great things to find their way in to the many media outlets that are over-enamored with the personal lives of actors, professional athletes, and pop singers.

Thanks to Fr. Mode, I and others have learned about this Priest who served his God and his country well in the ugly war that was Vietnam.

I enjoyed HOL more than I thought possible. The system is relatively easy to use (it is a little bumpy for my taste), but the entertainment value of the book alone is completely worth it. The companion, "Buttery Wholesomeness" is equally as quirky, and definately adds what is lacking to HOL. Character creation is such fun that my cohorts and I made several, just for giggles. Fun to play, a riot to read, if you are a gamer, I recommend this for a light-hearted spin on the atypical RPG.

Hol is one of the most interesting RPGs I've ever played. Let me give you an example. In my first game of Hol, at one point, we were stuck in a 10 by 10 stone room. We had no way to get out. Or so we thought. My friend summoned about 200 children, which he ordered to repeatedly run into the wall. AND IT WORKED! After playing in games where characters could grow extra limbs, make their voice sound more important than the voice of God, use sarcasm to make a meteor grow a face and cry, eat an obscenely large, unedible object, engage a huge evil enemy in a game of childish insults, buy Tito Puente at your local Caldor, or roll dice to die, it's hard to go back to Mage and Werewolf. Good job, Black Dog/White Wolf!

With all of the complex, rules heavy games on the market, it was a pure joy to be able to teach my two kids, ages 9 and 11, to play HoL! The rules are insanely simple, make for fast, exciting play, and allow you to totally immerse yourself in playing. I recommend this game for any parent wishing to teach their kids to roleplay, and as an educational tool as well! No better fun to be found anywhere! Both books are fantastic, with great writing.. you will be laughing for hours!
HoL, so good the entire family can play!

Dave Lowry writes with a clarity that is accessible and moving. In Autumn Lightning, Lowry explores his early interest in the arts of the bugeisha (samurai-in-training). He trains with the ken/katana, and learns much about the world of Japanese Martial Arts.

But this is not simply a martial arts book. What makes it so unique is its easy realationship with the reader. It is like having a discussion with an old friend, and hearing all the wonderful stories that friend has to tell. Lowry expands on his experiences with his neighbor/sensei and relates them both to his life and, by proxy, the life of the reader.

This is a book I loved from cover to cover not just because it bridges certain cultural constraints (which it does with wit and candor), but also because it is a delightful story. Hearing the stories about the author, his sensei, and even his sensei's wife, are inspiring and thoroughly entertaining. If you have any interest in the martial arts, Japanese culture, or just open thinking in general, this book is most certainly going to excite your literary pallete.

Many books about the martial arts are dry and boring. Lowry, through his own life story and the fictionalized history of his style, makes this a book not to be missed! If you are a martial artist, you will find parallels and lessons. If you are interested in the martial arts, you will find this both a good read and an excellent introduction to the practice and history of martial arts. This is on my "must read" list!

Ostensibly the autobiography of an American bugeisha (practitioner of Japanese martial arts, in this case kenjutsu, "sword techniques"), this book is much more as it delves into an easily-read discussion of different bugei (Japanese martial arts), zanshin (the state of "continual mind"), special skills and hidden methods, the precursors of jujutsu, warrior monks, Zen Buddhism, seppuku and much more. Even if you do not practice a martial art, you are likely to find this a fascinating read, and if you do practice a martial art, this book will inspire you no matter what your own art is (I practice eskrima, which has no relation whatsoever to kenjutsu and yet I found many principles in this which I can apply to eskrima).

This book was SUCH a fun read! Dan Price's book on keeping a journal is quirky, inspiring, humorous, delightful, and educational! If you haven't kept a journal before, you will really want to start after reading this book! Actually, I doubt that you could read through the whole thing without beginning.

I've been journaling pretty steadily for the past 4-5 years or so. One thing I've really wanted to include is more doodling and (attempts at) drawing. I consider myself artistically-challenged, and this book really has encouraged me to give drawing in my journals a try.

Some other reviewers have stated that they've read this book in one sitting. I daresay that's POSSIBLE, but I wouldn't WANT to read it in one sitting. It's just so packed with stuff and so good that I wanted to savor it!

Scrapbookers would also benefit from reading this book!

Take a look at Amazon's great "Look inside" feature to look at this book, then order one for yourself and several for gifts - you won't be sorry!

perfect for any fan of the moonlight chronicles. most people who would have have read this book will be familiar to the moonlight chronicles and will already know how awe inspiring Dan's work is. For those first time readers, the moonlight chronicles are the amazing small zine format journal by Dan Price. Dan is the Jack Kerouac of drawing and free thought. he's a wandering vagabond, who travels and draws in search for simplicity and truth, if you can find them check them out. in the meantime this book shows us how to make a journal for ourselves unlike the monotonous bedside diaries that most keep....and he does so with ease and originallity. if you can find the moonlight chronicles check them out until then go get a coffee and relax with this great book.

I loved all of Dan Price's Moonlight Chronicles over the years. I am so happy that his works have been published for the masses to see. This particular book is fantastic at getting the creative juices flowing. This book gives you plenty of ideas and makes it easy to start your own journal. I hope that Dan some day compiles all the Moonlight Chronicle series into one huge volume. I would deinitely buy it!

George Eliot's final novel is both riveting and problematic. Many critics have called it "two books in one" -- some have even said that the two strands of the book should have been *separated*. One plotline follows Gwendolen Harleth, a spoiled and beautiful girl fallen on hard financial times, and what happens when she marries a soulless aristocrat...the other plotline concerns the title character, Daniel, who is drawn into the revelation of his true Jewish ancestry. George Eliot is a Novelist of the Mind...she dissects the motivations and psyches of her characters, setting them against the society they inhabit and examining interaction both with that society and with the other people it encompasses. This is a stirring novel, with sharply-etched characterizations : not a melodrama or a potboiler, yet still with the drive of a thriller.

While Middlemarch is a thoroughly Victorian novel, Daniel Deronda looks forward to the modern period in its focus on the individual. The text primarily focuses on two individuals--Daniel Deronda and Gwendolyn Harleth. Their lives are entertwined from the first chapter in which Daniel observes, with a certain amount of disdain, a serpentine Gwendolyn gambling. By the end of the text, both characters have been transformed from the characters you meet at the beginning through self-discovery. Daniel discovers the secret of his birth while Gwendolyn is tragically disillusioned by her unfortunate marriage. The novel foreshadows the modern period's treatment of the individual searching for his identity and his place in an intolerant society.

This novel, originally published in 1876, was Eliot's last. It has remained controversial ever since, and some critics delete it from her first-rank work. It is an ideological novel, and its plot is forced at times (too many coincidences, for one thing). The central character appears to be Gwendolen Harleth at the start (note the echo of her last name with "harlot"), who pawns a necklace at a gaming table only to have it returned by a disapproving observer--the eponymous Deronda. While offended, Gwendolen is also fascinated by Daniel and finally takes him on as her conscience as the novel continues, at great length, weaving a multitude of characters and issues into a fabric with an echo-chamber effect (in the sense that various elements of the book echo each other in odd and unpredictable ways throughout the novel, such as the continuing ways that people gamble with their own fates and the lives of others). This is a novel of sensibility, a link between Austen's method and Woolf's. But it is also a romantic treatment of Zionism (well before it was a popular issue, especially in Victorian England), with all the Jewish leads ennobled and idealized. In this sense it reads differently than MIDDLEMARCH, which was strictly realistic except at the very end. It's closer to SILAS MARNER, a morality tale with symbolic characters. Gwendolen is one of the saddest and most beautiful figures in any novel. She wants so deeply to be the center of attention, and finally can't even be the title character of the novel she's in. There are so many marvellous moments in this book, it repays the time it takes to read it many times over. I do not think Eliot arrived at a satisfying structure for the book, though; her need to promote Zionism prevented it. The Oxford paperback edition is the one I read, and I can recommend it highly -- its notes are superb. But the print is very small, so if that bothers you use another edition.

This is a wonderfully funny, interesting book. All the neat droids covered in this book are cool. I'm surprised only 5 other people left reviews for this book. The only downside is that the illustrations are absolutely DEVOID of color besides white. Now you may be criticizing me, mumbling under your breath "Oh go crawl back in the sand box," but it IS true that the mere prescence of color can make something marginally interesting massively interesting. The Star Wars: Visual Dictionary and Incredible Cross-Sections series are popular for that very reason, although the Essentials series has tons more information in sheer volume. The black-and-white illustrations were well-done, but mucho DRAB. The original concept art was cool, but the schematics and silhouette models are positively goofy-looking. Still, they get the job done of making it apparent how the droids are supposed to be designed.

This book takes all the other information about droids, which has been scattered throughout hundreds of books and puts it in one. The Essential Guide series has been very successful but the last on on planetss disappointed me. It had bad drawings and little information. But this book has brought me back to the series. With great specs, awesome stories, and cool drawings, this book is a must have for all star wars lovers.

This was a great book. I was amazed at all the droids throughout the Star Wars universe. The book was nicley illustrated had great schematics and the text was very discriptive. It also gave a discription of different manufacturers of the droids. However this book was not as good as the planets and moons or guide to characters it still gets a 5 in my book. The droids book completes my set in this collection. I would like to say thanx to Daniel Wallace, Bill Hughes, and Troy Vigil, I hope you will continue to create other Star Wars books in the near future.

I am not an historian, but have read many of the books that used the "Draper papers" as their primary source material, and marvelled at breadth of our knowledge of Boone, his time, and his frontier contemporaries. Anyone who has studied this chapter in American history has probably marvelled at the exhaustive trove of material left by Lyman Draper. Now, with TFB's superb editing, non-professional students of history have access to the source material. This is a "must have" for any student of the "Old Northwest" and its memorable characters. No work of fiction could possibly be this absorbing. And, as a valuable historical footnote, Ted Franklin Belue concisely introduces us to Lyman Draper, to help us put the "Life of Daniel Boone" in its proper context.

When he died in 1891, historian Draper left unfinished this massive biography of legendary Kentucky frontier hero Daniel Boone (1734-1820). Now Belue, who teaches history at Murray State University in Kentucky, has transcribed and annotated Draper's rambling manuscript, whose florid, hagiographic prose should not deter readers from some real merits. First, Draper, an indefatigable researcher, drew upon thousands of documents as well as interviews with white, Native American and black frontier dwellers to re-create Boone's colorful exploits, including his blazing of a trail through the Cumberland Gap; his construction of Boonesborough, the first permanent settlement in the "Far West"; and his dramatic rescue of his daughter Jemima and two other girls from Indians. Second, Draper's tome is a treasure trove of early Americana, covering Indian-Anglo wars and relations, the fur trade, the British presence and trans-Appalachian life, flora, and fauna. Third, the 76 period drawings, engravings, photographs and maps offer revealing glimpses of both whites and Native Americans. And finally, Belue's entertaining and informative chapter notes diligently correct Draper's romanticization, offering instead a lifelong wanderer from home and family, a failed land speculator, an adventurer who watched his son tortured to death by Cherokees but who still sought accomodation with the Indians. Regrettably, Draper's text breaks off in 1778, but a chronology, epilogue, and appendix sketch Boone's later exploits.--Publishers Weekly, September 14, 1998

In 1856, the eminent historian, Lyman C. Draper, temporarily laid aside the 800 handwritten page biography of Daniel Boone that he had just recently completed. So far, Draper had documented the famous American frontiersman's life only through the year, 1778, and he fully intended to renew the project one day to cover the forty-two additional years of Boone's life. But that day never came, Draper went to his grave in 1891, and his unfinished manuscript was filed away and largely forgotten in the collections of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. One day in 1990, Ted Franklin Belue, a history professor at Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky, was studying Draper's manuscript on microfilm. Here, according to Belue's own words, was a national treasure, "known only to a few, filled with tales of Boone, frontier lore, Long Hunters, Indians, wild exploits, hunters' skills, genealogical data, descriptions of native flora and fauna, miscellaneous Americana, trans-Appalachian history, and much more." It took Belue eight years to transcribe, edit, and annotate the monumental manuscript. The result is an equally monumental book. More than 600 fact-filled pages tell the story of Boone from his birth in Pennsylvania in 1734 to his residence forty-four years later in Kentucky. Draper's original biography is much enhanced by Belue's interesting preface, his own extensive notes which shed a great deal of additional information on Boone in light of modern-day research, a chronology of Boone's life, a fine selection of period illustrations and maps, and an index. The Life of Daniel Boone is a book that anyone interested in America's "first West" will read with relish and appreciation. It is a testimonial to a man whose name-even today, nearly two hundred years after his death-is one of the country's most recognizable. But, beyond its tribute to Boone, the volume presents a gold mine of information about everyday life on the trans-Appalachian frontier, the mores and lifestyles of the region's first Anglo settlers, and a number of mini-biographical sketches about some of the key players of the times. --James A. Crutchfield