The book made of Guthrie's song translates to written form suitable for very young children. It is mildly entertaining as a book, and the artwork, while flat and lopsided, is bearable. However, the accompanying CD is shamefully bad. I recommend skipping the book and buying one of Guthrie's CD's for children. The songs are much better when Guthrie sings them and accompanies himself. The music on this CD is as flat as the artwork in the book--no more banjo, please! On top of that, the mediocre musicians are accompanied by the Half Tone-Deaf Children's Chorus. The fourth track on the CD is a long, inane "discussion" between the book's artist and some children who are much too young and suggestible to have anything interesting (or even cute) to say. I recommend not wasting time on this package at all. If you do buy it, keep the book and turn the CD into a frisbee.

...I...prefer Woody's music performed by Woody himself, but I can attest that my children would rather listen to the band that perform on the CD that comes with this book. We have a decent collection of children's music and the one CD that leads the lists of requests is this one. Perhaps (and hopefully) when they grow older they will prefer the authentic Woody, but at this young age, this version is much more pleasing to their ears.

And the book's simple and happy message is a wonderful way to introduce your young children to Woody Guthrie and his vision of love and compassion for all.

My little boy and girl (ages 2 and 4) cannot type yet, but I speak for them when I give this book and CD the full 5 stars.

Howdi Do is the narrative of the Woodie Guthrie song of the same title and it works as well in book form as in song. The text is cheerful and silly and complimented by the colorful illustrations of Vladimir Radunsky. Kids will love the simple rhymes of the verse and the silly words of the chorus. With the bonus CD of the song included inside the front cover, the whole family will be singing this folk song in no time. Read together, sing together and enjoy!

If you enjoy reading the pervert writings of godless mercenaries who killed many millions of russians, you will like this book. In it you will see how to lie, pay and demoralize the bottom of society in order to achieve great murder and destruction rates. Both of these satanic maids (lenin and trotsky) had one goal - to destroy the nation that tolerated them. Not Russians themselves, they borrowed the pervert anti-capitalist marxism that FAILED to destroy the west.
Unfortunately they had more backers, more money and more luck in Russia. Make no mistake, if you fall into this hateful trap you will be used for the destruction of your own society. The powers of darkness are alive and well today. Be on the alert and may God blees you!

For the workers and farmers of Russia, winning political power in 1917 was a formidable enough job in itself. However, defending the new revolution quickly became a much more Herculean task.

From 1917-21, the new Soviet Republic battled imperialist invasion and counterrevolutionary forces in a civil war. The Kronstadt rebellion flared when it seemed the civil war was at a pause and the political and fighting capacities of the countries working people was near exhaustion.

There were many other rebellions during the period, but Kronstadt posed more serious implications for the existence of working class leadership heading the Soviet government.

Opponents of the October revolution saw Kronstadt as the closest point to Europe and a defenceless Petrograd. A central demand of the nearly 15,000 rebels was, "Soviets without Bolsheviks" which was a weak kneed way of calling for the overthrow of the workers and farmers government.

The book covers the speeches and writings of Bolshevik leaders Lenin and Trotsky exposing the dangers involved and what was behind the motivations of the Kronstadt rebels and it's leaders. In later years, Trotsky takes on critics who label aspects of the Bolsheviks suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion as the beginning of Stalinism.

When over three hundred delegates to the Russian communist party congress volunteer to throw themselves - in the biting cold of the Russian winter -into the middle of a military battle you are not sure you are going to win and do just that. Then you know the mutineers at Kronstadt were up against a force much wider and deeper than the Bolsheviks.

This book of speeches and articles on the Kronstadt rebellion by Trotsky exposes the reality of this revolt, often used to discredit the October Revolution. Trotsky writes as the defender of the real revolution, against the real Kronstadt. The real Kronstadt of the revolt had lost many of the fighters who had led the revolution who had left to fight in the civil war on Land and sea. The real Kronstadt had tried to take advantage of their position as military to demand privileged conditions in a country where civil war and imperialist blockade had produced mass starvation. These are the speeches Trotsky used to summon the real revolution, include many of the real 1917 fighters of Kronstadt, to crush this counter revolutionary revolt.

As a previous reviewer noted, thes is very much a business text book focusing on the cruise industry, probably aimed at people working in (or preparing for working in) travel agencies. There is some interesting general information in the early chapters, but then gets dry quickly.

This book provides a facinating behind the scenes look at the cruise industry, from the ship to the home office to the travel agent. I was expecially surprised on how broad based it was, although Carnival (Bob Dickinson is president of that company) does play a prominent role. For example, a section on advertising features old Carnival ads. However, the book does include quotes from presidents of all major cruise lines, and the book freely uses examples from other major cruise lines. That said, it is a great book if you want a behind the scenes look at the industry, or work in the travel industry.

I have to admit I was a bit concerned about an "impartial" book about the cruise industry written by the president of the world's largest participant. I was dead wrong. Bob Dickinson and Andy Vladimir have written a no-holds-barred, painfully honest account of the state of today's cruise industry. They don't mince words when it comes to the actual decline of cruisers! They finish up with a case study of an ideal cruise only agency that makes sense.

I read this book for a class to get an understanding of Lenin's influence on the Russian Revolution. This book is very detailed and not for someone who doesn't understand what the Bolsheviks were rebelling against. Little background is given on the Tsar's reign and the problems associated with autocratic rule. The story is never presented from the Tsar's side. What the reader does receive is a detailed account of Lenin's private and political life. Lenin was full of contradictions and paradoxes that were reflected in Communism. It was almost as though his influence was so powerful that the political culture reflected his egnimatic personality. In addition to being a fine intellectual biography of the man, Ulam's text details all the political movements that competed with Lenin in addition to highlighting the beginnings of the Stalin era.

Ulam writes well and is interesting to read. As a lay reader I found all the details sometimes overwhelming, and I had to do additional research to understand the issues that the Bolsheviks were responding to. As a non-scholar, I found this book readable and memorable.

Anyone interested in a good biography of Lenin written from a non-Communist slant should pick this up. Its amazing that this book, written in the '60s, required no revisions upon being re-published in 1998.

This book is a critical look at the life and career of V.I. Lenin. It is not entirely one-sided, however, and the author generally does a good job of putting events in their proper perspective. Those considering buying the more well-known Lenin biography written by Dimitri Volkogonov would do well to read this instead. It is far superior in every respect.

Out of print? Out of print??? I assume that Vintage are waiting for the movie tie-in edition, or something. It's in print in my country, anyway, under its proper title "The Luzhin Defence".

This is, as Brian Boyd says in his excellent Nabokov biography, its author's first masterpiece. I am an execrable chess player, but I know just about enough about the game (and am obsessive enough about various other things) to find its shambling, mumbling hero one of my favourite characters in the Nabokov oeuvre. I've always liked Nabokov's less clubbable heroes - although I recognise that "The Gift" is a greater novel, I can get a bit tired of Fyodor's limitless resourcefulness and poise. (I got impatient with "Ada" for much the same reason.) The unsocial and inarticulate Luzhin is more my kind of character. Surely John Turturro was born to play this character, even if the movie isn't that great.

John Updike, in his afterword, gets a bit sniffy about the meticulous patterning of the book, but I think he fails to appreciate the scope and grip of Luzhin's insanity. This is one of the saddest books Nabokov ever wrote, but also one of the most openly compassionate. Later on, there were more intricate and more skilful games being played with our need to (dodgy word coming) "empathise" with a central character, but "The Luzhin Defence" is still the first book Nabokov wrote that has the mark of the master.

This is Nabakov's third novel, a moving and bleak picture of a self-obsessed man who decides to obsess on anything but himself. It is wonderfully written, beautiful, an obvious indication of just how marvelous a prose stylist Vladimir was, but I sometimes found myself wondering if I really cared. Of course, I find chess to be terribly dull (perhaps my own lack of ability at the game having something to do with this), but that didn't stop me from admiring the compelling structure of the narrative--the world reduced to a chess board and the people taking on the individual characteristics (including the methods of movement) of the various pieces.

I'm sticking with Nabakov, continuing on, hoping that he was more than just a nifty stylist and eventually blossomed into that rarist treat: A stylish author who understands how to tell an engaging story.

This is an inspirational and often moving biography of one of the great mathematicians of our century. Hadamard was not only a brilliant mathematician, but a stimulating mentor, a man of wide-ranging knowledge, insatiable curiosity, humility, and most of all, great humanity. When Japan invaded Manchuria, he proposed that the League of Nations send peace-keeping forces there, only to face ridicule from the French press. Hadamard, more than most of us, deeply felt the tragic wastefulness of war. He lost two beloved sons in World War I. Of his son, Etienne, he once said: "what I did in mathematics is nothing compared to what he could do if he were alive today." (Half of the brilliant graduates of the Ecole Normale were killed in that war). I finished this book with feelings of gratitude and regret--gratitude to Hadamard for sharing his remarkable gifts with such generosity, and deep regret that "fate" was so grievously unfair to him.

This is an inspirational and often moving biography of one of the great mathematicians of our century. Hadamard was not only a brilliant mathematician, but a stimulating mentor, a man of wide-ranging knowledge, insatiable curiosity, humility, and most of all, great humanity. When Japan invaded Manchuria, he proposed that the League of Nations send peacekeeping forces there, only to face ridicule from the French press. Hadamard, more than most of us, deeply felt the tragic wastefulness of war. He lost two beloved sons in World War I. Of his son Etienne, he once said: "what I did in mathematics is nothing compared with what he could do if he were alive today."(As the book points out, half the brilliant graduates of the Ecole Normale were killed in that war). I finished this book with feelings of gratitude and regret--gratitude to Hadamard for sharing his remarkable gifts with such generosity, and deep regret that "fate" was so grievously unfair to him.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky tells a chilling tale of life in Russia. The book begins with his painful and anti-social childhood. Vladimir overcame his past and began his carreer in politics. The book discusses this three-time presidential candidate's plans for the Post-Soviet nation of Russia. There is only one drawback to this book: it seems as though something was lost in translation. Th sentences are somewhat choppy and the vocabulary is poorly chosen.

I find this book to be the most enlightening books of the twentieth century. I give it the ravest reviews. Long live Slavic people!!!

"OKB SUKHOI" is the first comprehensive volume on one of the most famous soviet design bureau. A large part of what was known was based on intelligence database released during the cold war; this work is the first definitive insight of this team: many details are revealed by gathering informations and photographs published in original russian papers; some snapshots are from personal collections of engineers actually involved in bureau development and testing work. In fact many of them are rare examples and they include prototypes and research vehicles, previously unpublished in the west.

The text is accurate and a detailed description of design features, structures and systems is covered by having access to soviet engineering data. In this regard is important to remark that the metric system is a standard russian practice; if the reader is looking for a precise figure in tabular data, she/he must take into account the significant digits while computing own conversions to british system.

Even if its style is different from the western standard in aviation pubblication, this is a much needed book, really helpful to get a clear picture of the hystory of this famous bureau; above all it is a fine tribute of its leader, one of the most gifted genius in soviet aviation industry.

Interesting book but not as throrough as Gordon & Gunston one on MiGs aircraft, especialy when it comes to detailling TOW, fuel load, Sfc and evolution history on the recent types (i.e. MiG-29 versus Su-27 family). Nevetheless a reference book that should be on everyone interested in aviation bookshelf. But who will come up with an update on the Su-24/32/35/37 family ?

The author of "The Queue" has become recently one of the most popular writers in Russia. "The Queue" is an instance of Sorokin's early writings and is free of his later excessive exploitation of sex/drug/alcohol abuse scenes. This as well might be due to the difficulty of including one when the action in the book is constantly taking place in or around a crowded public area.

The text is better described not as a novel but as a prose poem of the size which is exaggerated far beyond the bounds of decency. The first few pages might be of certain interest to a professional in Slavic languages. The translator certainly deserves a high praise at least for his patience in reading all of the two hundred pages of dialogs between tens of unnamed heroes of the book. In my opinion, Venedikt Erofeev's "Moscow-Petushki" is a more curious, humorous and literary valuable item of this genre and time.

If you're wondering how people lived and survived in the Soviet Union, or if you just want to read a book full of innovations (in terms of style) and bitter humor, this book is for you. I read it in both in Russian and in English and either way, it's great! The whole book is in form of dialogue, which makes it easy to read and to follow (sometimes).

It includes a sex scene... only dialog, no descriptions, one of the most powerful scenes i've read. Your mind has to produce images while your eyes see phrases, of cource, it's the same with the rest of the book.

Sorokin's style in The Queue is much milder than what he has now, less postmodernism, more realism, but the format is simply outstanding.

I recommend this book to all beginning writers and people who enjoy a nice well-written book once in a while.

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Excellent descriptions and partition. Good idea are the individual lists of instruments showing the main artists of these instruments and the style of music they play.

An improvement would be to show all artists which appear on each CD.

I am eagerly waiting for the third edition.