I remember having these Fairy Tales read to me at bedtime when I was little. I bought the same book to read to my son. The stories are bit anachronistic and may not meet modern standards of being politically correct, but we love them anyway.

This is a very adventurous book. It shows how little kids can prove themselves responsible. It shows how young children, know ho to act in scary situations. Some people have to learn that young children can be trusted, but they should be able to prove themsleves first. Sometimes young kids just want to grow up, so they wanbt to explore and learn how to do things for themselves.

I like the character Henry in this book. When Henry and his dog sent out on a journey to explore the mountians, they do not know what to expect. They have a good time exploring and take extra precautions. They meet some friendly and unfriendly characters, yet they know how to handle the situations. Henry takes controll of the bad situation and turns it into a learning experience. This book teaches a lot about how to act when on a journey. It also shows how kids get regconized for the good deeds they do.

This is the first fully-documented account of the ritual commonly called the Black Mass ever to be published. Subtitled 'A Criminological Study' and written by a man who authored numerous forensic textbooks and police manuals in his time, THE SATANIC MASS stands to this day as a basic source of reliable data for students of the occult, sociology and psychology. The source materials that Rhodes uses lend astonishing credibility to his analysis of the subject. Many of the books he sites, such as J. de la Bodin's 'Demonomanie des Sorciers', date from the 16th century and are all but impossible to find now. The English translation of much of this source material is worth the price of the book. A favorite of mine, I recommend THE SATANIC MASS without reservation.

Don Taylor, the author of Marley and Me, is one of the most influential managers in the history of the music industry. Living in Jamaica in his youth, he learned his street smarts by hustling in the villages around his home. Spontaneously, he started working for the entertainment industry, helping musicians get around Jamaica and getting them whatever they pleased. Word got around that Taylor was a good manager and sooner than later, Marley and Taylor started working together, booking shows all around Jamaica while developing a strong fan base. Eventually, Bob's music was being heard all around the world, partly due to Taylor's work in and out of the United States. As things started to slow down for Bob near the end of his career, Don and Bob began to part their seperate ways on bitter paths. Bob's death to cancer ultimatly ended their relationship, yet before he died, Taylor tried to clear things up with Bob, but it was too late. Bob had passed away.
I throughly enjoyed this book. Having a view point of Bob Marley's life through the eyes of someone very close was an interesting way to understand the man and his music. This book was the best Bob Marley biography I have ever read. It clarified every aspect of his life and opened up many new doors that had been closed due to other sources that failed to offer as much information as this book had done. If your looking for a great book to unvail the life of Bob Marley, go to your local library and pick this book up.

The life of one man that accomplishes what most people dream of. Most people dream of living a life where oil does not drive our lifestyles. Marley is shown as a person where material values are absent, while preaching a method that love and peace prosper over greed and selfishness.

I think that anyone who has any interest in Bob Marley or Jamaica will really enjoy this book. I thought that it gave a lot of detail about Bob's life and also a lot about Jamaican culture. There were several references to the Rastafarian religion and how Bob practiced it. It is hard to say how much of the stuff that Don Taylor talked about was really true but it did seem believable. The style of writing he used was basically a journal of different events that took place in his and Bob's life. I did not realize before I read this book that Bob was actually a fairly smart businessman and tried to watch his money as carefully as he could. There were times where he could not protect his money from being taken away, like when Rita Marley would sign his name and make large withdraws there was nothing that he could do because it could not be proven. Bob Marley became popular right in the time when Jamaica was in one of its worst times. He was forced to make a choice between two different political groups, the wealthy and the poor. He never really did make a decision though he continued to remain close to people in both groups. This made me think about hard it must have been for Bob to grow up in the areas with lots of violence and poverty. Once he did become popular he did not leave his old friends behind. Overall I thought that this was a great book and I would encourage anyone interested in Bob Marley to read this and learn more about his life.

I first read "The Flying Change" about five years ago and enjoyed it. Then I went back to school and got my master's in literature and reread Taylor's book and all my old enthusiasm was gone. This was not Pulitzer material. On the other hand, given the abominable state of today's poetry, maybe it was. I've given this book a "3" only because there were a few rhymed pieces in it, which were marginally better than the others, although the subject matter is universally banal throughout.

I loved every single one of the poems in this remarkable collection; it's no surprise why Henry Taylor won the Pulitzer. One reviewer made the comment that Taylor's work isn't Pulitzer material because it doesn't rhyme or something . . . That's truly misguided. Most of the poets who try to rhyme in this day and age really [bad at it] at it. I mean, that's putting it mildly. If you are a poet, or want to be a poet, my advice is: whatever you do, don't rhyme! Taylor is a great poet, and it's too bad he isn't discussed more.

This book reveals that poetry can be both accessible and compeling. Taylor combines a conversational style with traditional poetic forms to create a contemporary style that is a true descendent of the work of Robert Frost and E.A. Robinson. Be sure and read "Landscape with Tractor", "Taking to the Woods", & "At the Swings." I highly recommend this book. And, if you haven't read poetry in years and have found the thought of it daunting, try this book as a great reintroduction, or introduction for that matter, to what poetry can offer.

I have read Taylor's Understanding Fiction a biblical seven times and it has left me as barren as the wife of Jobe. It would be charitable to the poems in this book to have them be forgotten within the context of American poetry than have them fester forever as the modest best a minor American poet could muster. --MH

Taylor's collection of poems belongs on the shelf alongside other fine collections of poems entitled Understanding Fiction.

(Chorus: True dat)

To say that this book has brightened my life would be only a minor understatement. Understanding Fiction is a quiet collection of poems that encourages the idea of the sanctity of life and the wonder therein. The wisdom and economy found in -NIGHT SEARCH FOR LOST DOG- cannot leave a reader unaware of his own humanity, mostly for the good. -FREETHROW- and -FOR WILLIAM STAFFORD- bring me to removed loved ones, no matter how distant they may be. Henry Taylor has my gratitude. This is a book that needs to be shared; I share it. The volume is returned to me, everytime, with a gift, small or large, marking the significance of shared exposure to truth. Read this poetry. It be good for you.

I'm glad somebody found this to be a quick read. I found it to be hard going with a lot of " maybe -this -happened" in the text, which the author acknowledges. It seemed to jump from one year to another and back to the first year and if you were not familiar with the characters became very confusing. Parts of it were interesting, mostly the last 50 pages. The pictures were nicely done. There was a small error in the Family Tree at the beginning. Eleanor of Aquitaine did not die the same year as Richard the Lionheart.

I am an academically trained and practicing medieval historian who has written some "serious" stuff on medieval queens, and I was enchanted with this author's approach. It isn't a traditional biography -- it isn't supposed to be...it's part travel journal, part memoir, part tribute to the marginalized women of th European past; part talented amateur engagement with the middle ages.
The author's attempts to engage with and appreciate Constance of Sicily are wonderfully narrated, and I think very effective over all. I am giving a copy to each of my female grad students to read over spring break.

It's a daunting task to attempt to write a biography of someone when few primary sources exist. Constance, the last child of the Norman King Roger II of Sicily was an intriguing woman whose personal story teased, eluded and captivated author Mary Taylor Simeti for years, as she states in the pages of this biography-cum-travelogue-cum-personal memoir, but with whom she felt a strange kinship. Both were strangers in a strange land---Constance in her 10-year exile from her Sicilian homeland when she married Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI---Simeti when she married a Sicilian, settled there, and raised her children far from America. Simeti happily found a home in Sicily (and this is her 4th book dealing with Sicilian subjects); Constance finally returned, in triumph, to the land of her forebears, having borne a child along the way (a first child, at the age of forty!), the infant who would become Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor and Sicilian King. Simeti flatly states that she did not know if she had enough material to write a biography. She then takes the daring chance of fleshing out her thin material by musing about a fictitious (though likely) Arab nursemaid, a possible (though unlikely) relationship with a German courtier, and a close friendship (most plausible) with an Italian abbess, and sets out to reconstruct Constance's final trip home to Palermo, using logic, old documents, and intuition, to guess the actual route of the journey south. Simeti takes the further leap of relating to Constance as a woman and mother whose hopes, fears, and ambitions for her child were not so different from those of any other mother, despite the yawning chasm of centuries and cultures. Not a traditional biography, or history, by any means, and some points are surely controversial, but this is a compelling narrative that makes this little-known queen come alive as a personage in her own right. Simeti freely admits that although she was a history major, she is not an historian, but she shows great powers of empathy with Constance. Moreover, living in Sicily for 40 years has made her quite knowledgeable about and sensitive to the people, the land, and its ancient history. (I wish only that Simeti had taken more time in her journey to visit more sites and take more photographs!) The story of the Norman conquest of Sicily, when the House of Hauteville wrested control of this rich kingdom from Arab control, and what happened when Teutons from the North stepped in two centuries later at the death of Constance's young nephew, William II, after the throne was claimed by an illegitimate grandson of Roger II, isn't well-known, but it is highly dramatic, replete with colorful characters, intrigues, and adventure. I look forward to more explorations of Sicilian history from this talented writer, someone who loves what she does and has the ability to make otherwise dusty history come alive for her readers. A final note---Simeti talks about her own life and experiences in this unusual book but never in a jarring manner---which makes one wonder at the disturbing ad hominem remarks addressed to the author in the previous reviews---rather, the contemporary travelogue-cum-memoir has its own charm and nicely brackets the trip and experiences of Queen Constance, who becomes ever more human to us as she makes her crucial life's passage from the cold, monochromatic German castle of Trifels to the warmth and beauty of the colorful Mediterranean island her heart never really left. And there is never any question of where Simeti's heart is.

These stroies are worth reading,but the translations in this book are fairly bland. In fact, the translation for Ajax is pretty bad. I don't think I've ever seen the word twinkie used in a Greek trajedy before. I would recomend picking up other versions of these plays.

The role of values in public policy is certainly a topic worthy of discussion. Unfortunately, this book does not do a fine job of discussing the matter. It presents the typical think tank view of the world - rigidly ideological defenses of policy backed by a boatload of numbers. Values don't work well when forced into the defense of a viewpoint, and work even less when they are being quantified. The ideas of many of the writers, such as James Q. Wilson's notion of an underclass mentality, had been discredited even before they appeared in this work. For a serious discussion of the role of values in public policy, read a book by Rev. Jim Wallis or a like-minded soul, not by a bunch of think-tank technocrats.