Charles Dickinson is a wonderful writer who should have a much larger readership than he seems to. He employs his clear and winning prose to describe the lives of ordinary people living their daily lives, but there's always an interesting little kink in those lives. In "The Widows' Adventures," two elderly sisters leave their suburban Illinois homes for a trip to Los Angeles. One of the sisters is blind. She's the one who's driving. The sensitive protagonist of "Waltz in Marathon" is a loan shark. The artist hero of "A Shortcut in Time" lives in the town he was born and raised in, yet on a familiar neighborhood path he meets people slipping back and forth in time. For a man with many regrets, there is the temptation to try to tweek the past. Unfortunately, he is not the only person with this compulsion.

I recommend this novel highly, and I envy anyone picking up a Charles Dickinson book for the first time. A banquet awaits you.

Though the premise - time travel - is a sci-fi staple, Dickinson's latest ("Rumor Has It," "The Widows' Adventures") is more psychological than speculative. What speculation there is revolves around the role of fate in our lives and how small actions can have unforeseen consequences. But mostly this is the story of a man's mid-life self-assessment, the role grief and guilt have played in his life, and the man he might have been.

Shakily married to Flo, his childhood sweetheart and now a hard-working pediatrician, Josh Winkler is an unsuccessful artist beginning to face up to his mediocrity - by avoiding work as much as possible. It's a summer of storms in Euclid, Illinois, the only place either has ever lived, and their teenage daughter is making her first real break for independence. The marital tension, fueled by Josh's growing unreliability, goes back to the roots of their relationship - an "accident" that left Flo's brother dead and Josh's permanently brain damaged.

Then one day, running the path behind his house in a storm, Josh slips 15 minutes into the past. Which prepares him to believe and help the desperate young girl who claims to be from 1908 and whose plight becomes more desperate with every moment she's gone. As the town - and Josh's marriage - roils with believers and non-believers, Dickinson explores how a jolt out of the accustomed tracks of life can change a person in unanticipated ways.

Dickinson's complex characters reveal themselves in sometimes surprising, but reasonable ways. Examining the paradoxes of time travel and the inevitable consequent ripples, Dickinson also speculates on how circumstances may be shaped by chance, but the essential tenor of a life depends more on the nature of the person. A well-written, thoughtful, understated novel which should add to Dickinson's readership.

There are no new time travel plots -- I think that's pretty much been proven. And in fact, the time travel & causality portion of the plot here are a bit like the movie Back to the Future as it might have been written by Charles DeLint. And yet Dickinson has arranged familiar elements in a completely new fashion. I've never read anything like it (including DeLint). A Shortcut in Time is the strangest and most interesting novel I've read in a long time, and probably the strangest and most original time travel book ever written, and has a most unexpected ending. The book is filled with genuine characters and genuine emotion. It's weird, and I loved it.

I admit that this is the first (OK, maybe the second) children's book that I bought more for myself than for Max.

The feisty wombat who sometimes likes to curl up in a ball is a quite active and wild little fellow. It is having fun with its friends running, jumping and screaming. The effect on Max is not exactly that of a "sweet-spirited bedtime story to ease young ones to sleep."

The highlight of the book is without any doubt the page where the wombat shows how to make funny faces. Hilarious! In fact, I had considered taking the book to the office for therapeutic purposes.

In sum: A fun read with beautiful illustrations. Unfortunately it is not a board book. It is bound to suffer from a three-year-old's enthusiasm.

I am currently studying to become an early childhood teacher, i purchased this book to use with my 3-5's.
I initially purchased it because i LOVED IT! The pictures captured my heart, and the words are large print,easy to read and great content, my 3-5's adore it as much as i do, and it will be a book i'll be keeping for my own chn!
HIGHLY reccomend, you wont regret it!

Wonderfully detailed artwork, a sweet main character, and a tone that warms the heart.

My 2-year-old son and I just love this book. Its message is that it's fun to play games and run and be silly. And the last page, where the baby wombat is curled up at the end of the day with mommy (or daddy) is one of my son's favorite.

You are sure to love it.

I've read several book by Ernie Gann and being a pilot I was in awe of Mr. Gann's story telling ability in "Fate is the Hunter" and thought this is surely the best autobiography ever written. Now having read "Song of Sirens" I have to re-evaluate this opinion. It makes you want to run out and buy a boat!

Ernest K. Gann is, quite simply, a great writer. In Song of the Sirens he writes about his adventures aboard the many ships he has owned. His writing skill takes the reader, even a landlubber like me, along with him to experience what it is like to ride out a storm 50 miles off the coast of Oregon in a fishing trawler or to sail across the Atlantic Ocean with an old, rusty, leaky training boat with a suspect engine. The book is slanted more for the boating afficionado. While he does explain some of the technical terms, a lot of them are obviously for someone who knows sailboats. There are no pictures, either. Pictures of the ships (not boats because, as he explains in the book, a boat is carried by a ship)would have been helpful. All in all, though, this book will greatly appeal to Ernest K. Gann fans, those who enjoy adventure stories, and those who enjoy sailing stories.

When Ernest K. Gann wasn't flying or writing, he was sailing. This is a beautifully put together set of vignettes of the various boats and ships he loved and his voyages on them.

There's been a lot written about the civil rights movement but the Temple Bombing is a real stand-out from the pack. Greene writes a compelling narrative, using the bombing of an Atlanta synagogue in 1958 as a touchstone for an in-depth social history. There's a good overview of Jewish life in the American south, the history of extremist groups in mid-20th century America, and how the bombing of "The Temple" effected so many people in so many ways. Couple that with a lively cast of characters that Greene brings to life through vivid prose and great personal sketches. Well worth reading and passing on to others.

I picked this book up in a Boston bookstore a few years ago while attending a National Abortion Federation meeting. The title attracted me, as I was attending my first national abortion rights organization conference of abortion providers and was astounded by the level of fear and anxiety that I sensed among my compatriots. It has been said that the true test of courage is not in doing what needs to be done without fear, but is in continuing to do so even in the face of great fear. If this is in deed true, my colleagues in the National Abortion Federation must be among the most courageous people in the world. Many of those whom I met there had endured years of threat and ostracism, of attacks both verbal and physical, and most knew clinic workers and abortion providers who had been maimed or murdered or whose facilities had been bombed and burned. And they continued their work even in the face of continuing threats to themselves, their families and their coworkers. So Greene's book title was a magnet for me, pulling me in although I had never heard of Ms Greene or the Reform Temple bombing. (I was in the Navy, serving in the Pacific when this incident occured and must never have seen any news reference to it. I was perhaps much more attuned to the events in Arkansas in the 50's, and never had heard of it until I read Ms. Greene's account.) The Temple Bombing is a masterwork by a master story teller, and although the ending is somewhat unsatisfactory in that the perpetrators were never caught and punished for their part in this heinous terrorist act - some of whom probably went on to other deeds even more evil like the the bombing of the Church in Birmingham which killed the four little girls - this is the way history played out in the South. Much as many of us would like to change it. Ms Greene has written a fine book with a truly heroic protagonist sympathetically and sensitively portrayed, and has given us a vision of an Atlanta and a time which long ago ceased to exist. For movie buffs, the temple bombed was that depicted in the wonderful movie, Driving Miss Daisy.

I purchased this informative history after my Temple in Gary Indiana had received a second bomb threat in as many years and the most recent being on Easter Sunday 1997 when an anonymous caller warned the caretaker of the detonation time.

The Temple hadn't been involved in any significant political movements for quite some time; the civil rights struggles had mostly depleted the community of the majority of its white residents and those who had remained in the neighborhood were as liberal as was our congregational membership. In the past those members who had been the most outspoken for integration of the public beaches and of the schools and for free polio vaccinations and bettering the conditions for prisoners were either hounded by the House Un-American Activities Committee or had since then been honorably distinguished by Gary's Hall of Fame committee. What threats if any the Temple had received in the distant past, when our intellectual rabbis had struggled for timely social improvements, were long forgotten to the deceased or perhaps had been filed to memories of denial? This most recent threat coming on Easter was a time old anti-Semitic standard, and yet a very real and dangerous relic of the pre-enlightenment era when non-thinking and superstitious peasants were easily rallied into violent action and a pre Vatican II legacy which just won't go away.

I read Greene's tome about the Civil Rights activist rabbi Rothschild in Atlanta and in conjunction with Louis Rosen's 1998 publication 'The South Side: The racial transformation of an American neighborhood' and about a Chicago Jewry which made a striking comparative between the general civil standards reserved for American blacks between the South and North respectively, neither of which were honorable. The Pill Hill neighborhood Rosen portrayed was one I knew intimately and I remember the trouble, the nervous conversations following the riots and the passive yet panic driven moves to the suburbs. In the Miller Beach section of nearby Gary, Indiana, rabbi Carl Miller at the same time had led the call for civil rights unlike the departing rabbi in Rosen's Illinois story and yet a flood of moving trucks nevertheless crowded the beach community streets with too many families fleeing under the premise that the public schools had deteriorated. However, the Indiana rabbi had made an impact because many families did remain and enough to sustain the Temple but ironically not a single member has even today a child enrolled in the Gary public schools.

Having read both tomes, I discovered Greene's book on the shelf of a friend's Mother's home when visiting them in the American Southwest and then learned that Greene had portrayed my friend's maternal Grandmother. A discussion pursued, my friend challenging his Southern belle Mother on her passivity with regards to the poor standards reserved for blacks in the South of her youth, and yet while we knew she, a merchant, had at one time pushed the social norms for a Valentines exhibit of women's lingerie in their storefront windows, that had caused a sad public out crying over what would be as innocuous as a 'Victoria's Secret' display today. As my friend hounded his Mother for answers, I could only think of those members back home in Indiana, in the more tolerant North, and in the 'City of the Century' whose prosperity had been stalled because of the FBI's allegations of communist activities and whose patriotism had been challenged because they had outspokenly called for social justice or their having been blacklisted by the Medical community when they had lobbied for free polio vaccinations! I also thought of my own Mother's childhood friend whose father the Chicago police had murdered in the infamous Republic Steel Strike of 1938 and who is one of the dead men for who Meyer Levin dedicated his novel "Citizens.' My friend's Mother had not been a political nor spiritual leader, amongst those professions that should have advocated social change, but for as many years as I have known her, a merchant who had pushed as much as she could in her own field, she has not only stood by but had been supporting their community's most liberal rabbi whose sermons demand more changes in our own times for prison reforms and other unpopular causes. Both reads of 'The Temple Bombing' and the 'South Side' reminded me of my favorite James Madison quote: "Measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and over-bearing majority." And of my GGG Grandfather's epitaph "Freedom, Justice and Liberty, Do right and Trust in the Lord." Which in itself explains perhaps in my favorite UJA slogan an adaptation of an Disraeli quote from Alroy (1833): Great civilizations rise and fall but we few, we Jews we do survive! How lucky we are to have had a Rabbi Rothschild in Atlanta, and for a Melissa Faye Greene to tell us the story of this American patriot who spoke out for unpopular but just causes! Make this tome next year's Pesach gift, a chapter of our American Patriotism!

Alexander approaches baseball history as a historian; not a mere storyteller. This book reflects that approach. Alexander reports the feats and faults of Cobb, but doesn't try to pass judgement. Cobb's career speaks for itself (men are still chasing some of his records). However, in our age of political correctness Cobb's misbehavior speaks louder.

Alexander details a complete Cobb. For all his faults Cobb was mannered and gracious in public (most of the time), a perfect host (if he liked you) and a generous philanthropist. This is the side most other Cobb bio's whitewash.

This book proves useful as a resource about Cobb. It details the facts about his life season by season. The only way to improve the book would be to add more detail and color to some of Cobb's exploits-- but then the book would have to be about 500 pages.

I consider this to be the primere biography of Ty Cobb. However, those looking mostly for anidotes, stories and that harsh personality brought to life might want to check out Al Stumps' "Cobb". I suggest reading both to develop the full image of the Greatest innovator baseball has ever seen.

Ty cobb was the most ideal hitter in baseball before "the Babe" opened its new era.

The author described well enough for me to understand 1900-1910's players, ballparks, other circumstances around baseball.

I sincerely recommend this book to all the baseball fans.

Perfect companion to Al Stump's bio of Cobb. Alexander is more factual; Stump gives the reader a more thorough understanding of Cobb and his peculiarly ferocious personality. (The Alexander and Stump biographies portray a man who is one part Bedford Forest, one part Patton, one part Perot and one part Michael Jordan). For instance, Alexander devotes little more than one paragraph to Cobb's nervous breakdown in August, 1906. On the other hand, Stump details the inhumane hazing Cobb received from his yankee teammates in 1906 due to southern upbringing which led to Cobb's breakdown and fed his massive paranoia. Stump does a much better job on detailing Cobb's rivalry with Babe Ruth. Alexander briefly mentions the rivalry; Stump details the intense hatred Cobb felt for Ruth. For example, as player-manager of the Tigers, Cobb would often scream at the thick-lipped Ruth from the dugout, "You Nigga', Nigga' etc., etc.." However, where Stump takes many of Cobb's stories and yarns at face value, Alexander sifts through the clouds and tells the reader what is definitely true and leaves out what might be lies. Ty Cobb is the most interesting baseball player of all time though not the most important (Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth, Roberto Clemente and, because of his role in free agency, Catfish Hunter were more important than Cobb). To get a real good feel of Ty Cobb, you need to read two books. Mr. Alexander's book is one of the two.

I've read most of the other "space" books and this one is the best by far. Most of these books are written from the astronaut's point of view, and while this is an exciting and interesting view point, it's pretty clear that there are thousands of people working behind the scenes for each astronaut out doing his job (his - this is Apollo - all of them were men).

After reading "Apollo" I have a new understanding for the amount of effort and love that went into the creation of the Apollo program. The men and women who helped put a man on the moon are every bit the heroes as the 12 who stood on the surface (as well as the seven, the nine, etc.).

If you really want to understand how America put a man on the moon, this is the book to read. After you finish, go back and watch Tom Hanks' "From the Earth to the Moon."

This book is the true "diamond-in-the-rough". With so many re-issues of material from the manned space program and specifically Apollo, it's hard to imagine that this book isn't re-issued again and again! This book (along with Andrew Chaiken's Man on the Moon and Jim Lovell's Lost Moon) is by far the definitive account of the Apollo program. Not just a re-gurgitation of the Apollo history, this story is told from a Flight Controller/Engineering perspective and gives a truer picture of what the early and subsequent days of the program were like. Here, Apollo Program Manager Joe Shea comes alive and is portrayed as an heroic/brilliant manager, not the villian of the Apollo 1 fire as in other accounts. You're down in the "trench" in Mission Control for not only the Apollo 11 Moon landing, but also for the lesser known Apollo 6, the ill-fated second un-manned launch of the Saturn V. It may be hard to find this book, but the effort is well worth it...one of the top 5 books that I've ever read.

Murray and Cox wrote by far the single best book on Apollo. It covers the political decisions, the engineering, the people, and the history. The engineering is explained in a clear and non-condescending way that non-technical people can understand, and yet it's thorough enough to interest scientists and engineers as well. The detailed descriptions of the various technical and political debates, as well as the struggles between divisions of NASA and various contractors are well documented with many different sources consulted.

With the current resurgence of interest in Apollo and the reissue of a number of lesser books, it's a great pity this book has not been reissued.

If you want to learn to hit the right way, this might be the best investment you will ever make. Like another reviewer wrote, though, you must be willing to do the work to learn the lessons the book teaches. Also, if you just want to be a home run hitter, this book is not for you; a home run is only a pleasant mistake in the Charlie Lau/George Brett school, which teaches solid line-drive hitting. After studying this book, I became a Top 10 hitter in a highly-competitive Texas league. The Art of Hitting .300 is a baseball treasure.

I recommend this book for anyone wants to learn (or teach) advanced hitting techniques. Pictures and descriptions clearly explain common hitting problems and show correct swing mechanics. My 15-year old struggled through his first slump before we applied Lau's hitting fundamentals. He added fifty points to his batting average over the next month and hit 0.638 in a national tournament. I believe this book had a lot to do with his improvement.

I was a scrawny little kid to whom baseball was everything. To my parent's dismay, I judged myself by how I played baseball. But I was scared of the baseball and lost as to how to go about hitting it. My coaches gave me harmful, misguided instructions like, "make sure it's a stike, then swing at it" and "snap those wrists". I was a wreck. Then one winter my Dad (like me, a George Brett/Wade Boggs fan) bought me this book. My Dad had never been able to hit either, but he and I dissected it over the course of a summer.

It was a lot of work, more work than any 12-year-old could could have undertaken without the guidance of an equally determined adult. But my Dad and I realized that hitting was a process, a method that could be learned. Lau taught that everything I had been told -with horrible results- was in fact wrong. You don't judge whether a pitch is a strike and then swing; you start your swing and let your reflexes hold you back. You don't swing hard with your arms; you swing easy and get your power from your whole body.

All spring we worked on it, practicing in the garage, spending literally hundreds of dollars at batting cages working on mechanics. That very next season, I was hitting the ball better, and I only improved from there. By the end of that season, I was a certified leadoff terror. My team won its league title thanks to a game-winning single by yours truly. I even hit a few home runs (by not trying to, as Lau teaches). I was deliriously happy.

Even since then I've been a good hitter. Not a power hitter (I'm much too small), but a solid doubles guy with surprising pop. What I learned from this book kept me in organized baseball through Babe Ruth and high school (simultaneously), college, and semi-professional leagues. I am a hideously slow runner who soon after puberty had to give up dreams of playing professionally, but to this day I can step in front of a pitcher or pitching machine -cold- and drive the ball. This book taught me how. If you really want to hit a baseball, buy it, read it, internalize it, and put your faith in it. It will serve you well.

Some of the poems have a Zen like quality, the beauty, the simplicity of the line are extraordinary. Bukowski got better as he aged, there is no doubt. The great humanity of some of his writings are unmatched.

This is my second favorite volume of Bukowski. I know this because it has the second greatest number of pages dog-eared over so I can find them again.
Why do I like it? OK, it is because when I read most modern stuff, or watch modern films for that matter, I wonder what planet they are living on. It is seldom anything I recognise. When I read Bukowski, either the poems or the short stories or the novels, I recognise the real world. It is just so damn refreshing to see that there is someone being published that is not totally disconnected with reality- at least working class reality.
Will you like this book? Well, skip to page 282 and read "the masses." If you don't like it, then you ain't going to like the rest....
There is another reason that I like this book. It emphacises that the old horseplayer beat the odds and actually made it into his seventies. He "Buk'd" some steep odds there....

In the previous review I was telling that this book was published in spanish but ONLY the stories, not the poems. I can't understand why the guys at Anagrama did this. I cant understand why none of Bukowski poetry books are published in spanish either. And I say that this book is good, not Buk best, but good. (you'll wonder why 5 stars then? Because the good books deserve 10 or more stars)

Kaia Svien is a powerful storyteller, taking us on an unforgettable adventure in her new book, TO FOLLOW THE MOON. The strength and courage demonstrated by Basuba, Marion and Fiona travelling to the New World, along with their sacred connection to the Earth, will remain with me for a long time. I look forward to reading this book with my daughter. Thank you Kaia!

Finding a tale that is realistic to the past and to the issues that faced young women and pagan peoples was once impossible to do. However, in this book these topics are expressed in a way that is relative to life today and holds true to what life was like in past European culture.

This book tells of the coming of age of Marion a young girl whose Aunt Basuba is a healer and part of the community of Willow People. Marion, who is very spiritual and devoted to the ways of her Aunt, begins to notice the massive changes due to the increasing accusations of some narrow-minded Christians towards herself and the Willow People. She also sees the sparks of change due to the discovery of the New World and the desire some people have to conquer its "savage" people. She teams up with Fiona, an older teen who is fighting to save forests from being timbered. They have an exciting and dangerous trip across the Atlantic.

To Follow the Moon is a wonderful mixture of feelings all depicting the journey of these three Willow Women out of persecution and into understanding who they truly are. I strongly recommend this book to readers looking for a historic view of women. I also encourage girls to read this book as a guide to the similarities to life in the past and how to incorporate them into them into your life now.

TO FOLLOW THE MOON was a voyage of discovery for me. As it ends with the three protagonists safely arrived in Boston, anno 1641, so I arrived with a new understanding of the Old Ways--the spirituality which we Christians refer to as "pagan." Along with young Marion, I am introduced to a world respectful of and attentive to the ever-changing, yet ever-constant flow of Nature. To follow that flow, symbolized by the phases of the Moon, humanizes us, re-connects us with the humus out of which we grow and in which we must retain deep, strong roots in order to keep growing. Kaia Svien's book helped me to understand how dangerous I and my fellow Christians can be if we cut ourselves off from any other children of Nature and allow ourselves to sit in judgment over them because of ideas we harbor. I heartily recommend TO FOLLOW THE MOON to readers of all ages. It is a wonderful read which broadens as it entertains. Further, I encourage Kaia Svien to work on a sequel, since I want to know what happens to my new friends--Marion, Fiona, Basuba plus of course the faithful Matthew--now that they are in America.

Those of you who know Robert Taylor's art work will know what to expect from this book. Those of you don't, then you will be treated to some superb sketches and paintings which mainly focus on World War 2 aviation scences. Taylor has an excellent eye for detail and realism and researchs his subject(s) to ensure that his paintings are more than just realistic, they are factual. In this book he talks about how some of his paintings were done, along with comments from some of his subjects such as Adolf Galland, Townsend, Johnnie Johnson etc. The book includes 24 of his paintings, including some of my favourites "Dambusters","JG-52", "Victory over Dunkirk" all of which are on good quality paper. This is a quality book which displays the master's work and the master at work and highly recommended, although some may find the price a little prohibitive.

If you don't have the money to buy an original painting of Robert Taylor, but you want to see his works, this book is absolutly fantastic.
You can look to the prints for hours, using your fantasy how it was/is to be a combat pilot.
But, do not not expect it to be a book with a lot of prints.
This is just a selection of one of the most beautiful prints.
This is really a book you can look in from time to time and turn yourself into another fasinating world.

This is to clarify the actual status of Taylor's Vol. 1-4 volumes of terrific aviation art.

All volumes are still available through several aviation art dealers. ( NW Aviation Art/Leisure Galleries) I do not know why Amazon lists many of these as out of print. They are NOT!

The new Volume 4 is out as of Sept. 2000.

Wish Amazon stocked them all.