I have just spent an enchanted couple of hours visiting 'America's Vanishing Landscapes'. Wayne Williams has produced a visual feast and testament to the beauty of Nature. This book contains so many beautiful images, I felt compelled to write and reccomend it to you.
I am lucky enough to live by one of nature's rain forests in the West Indies. Everyday I am filled with awe and wonder by my surroundings. This book makes me feel the same way. What also impressed me too, was his mastery of the craft and it reminded me of Ansel Adams work. They have combined technological mastery of the photographic techniquies available to them; and have produced a vision that not only speaks to the senses, but also to the heart. This is a rare combination and achievement.

What would it feel like to be able to go back a couple of hundred years and experience in real life the magnificent vistas of the American west as they were then? Amazingly enough, this book of contemporary photography will magically let you feel that and then bowl you over with its message. It is simply the most moving collection of landscape images I have ever seen. The stunning beauty of these photographs of some of the American West's most spectacular vistas and the inspiration and purpose reflected in the artist's heartfelt interpretations of each image weave together a haunting sense of loss and, at the same time, a deep understanding of what we have done and must now do. It will be a long time before you make room on your coffee table for another book (probably about as long as it takes Mr. Williams to publish the next volume in the project). It will not take long, however, for you to make room in your life for its purpose. Thank you, Wayne Williams, for helping us see again with this important and beautiful work.

It's impossible to capture the grandeur and magnitude of beauty of nature in a photo but Williams comes as close as you can get in this amazing book. The greatest and worst terrorism is the terrorism against the environment. It dwarfs all the other forms. This book may give people the vision that is an antidote.

The Complete Communicator is simply the best, most complete communications book it has been my pleasure to read. Simple, direct, concise and compelling in its stories . . . this book embodies its own messages in wonderfully effective ways.

Poor communications is the problem that holds humanity back from making progress more than any other. Think of it as being like a stalled engine that would otherwise pull your car forward at whatever rapid pace you like. Overcome that stall, and progress will be yours.

Because of the importance of improving communications, I have made it a point to read every book about communications that I can find. Most of these books provide an in-depth look at one aspect of communications, while ignoring all of the others. Many times, communications books are not as simple and direct as they could be. Other times, they lack compelling stories.

I can think of few elements of effective communications that are not covered by Dr. Lampton's superb book, with Neuro-Linguistic Programming being the main exception. As a result, a person can read and employ the lessons of The Complete Communicator and have the benefits of reading many dozens of other books. For that reason, I think The Complete Communicator is the best communications book I have read.

Here are the subjects covered:

Person to Person (including self-talk, making connections, getting information, finding prospects for a business, and deepening relationships)

Nonverbal Communication (gestures, appearances, symbolism, and credibility)

Writing (the writing process, things to emphasize and avoid, getting published and improving your writing)

Letter Writing (following up on meetings, complaints, answering complaints, and avoiding errors)

Giving Speeches (the right mental attitude, preparation, expressing yourself naturally, touching the audience and making the right impression)

Listening (what those who are speaking would like you to do, questions to ask, appropriate responses, and ways to improve)

Telephone (good habits, etiquette, succeeding through voice mail, and keeping notes on messages)

Computers (e-mail, Web sites, and Internet connections)

Media (keep it simple and effective, getting booked on broadcasts, handling crises, and letters to the editor)

Many people who try to write such an overview book fail to either properly credit their sources, don't have enough examples or make the book too long. Dr. Lampton avoids all of those snares.

To me, the best writers tell stories that grab me emotionally. Dr. Lampton did that very well with stories from his own experiences. I especially liked one about a telephone message that he read from his Ph.D. advisor.

What more can I say to convince you to read this book? Please, contact me by e-mail with any questions. Click on my name at the beginning of this review to find my e-mail address.

Excellent! Some of the best work I've seen on communication skills. This book belongs in everyone's personal and professional library.

An outstanding communicator, speaker, and writer, Bill Lampton's clear, concise "how to" tips can make all the difference between getting the "sale," improving interpersonal relationships, and moving up the career ladder.

The Complete Communicator covers the basics...and much more...of various communication topics in a straightforward, down-to-earth way. As an author, speaker and coach, I particularly enjoyed Bill's chapters on writing, giving speeches, and listening. I felt as if Bill was carrying on a conversation directly with me in his delivery. He backs up his message with powerful quotes, great stories, and personal examples that were easy to relate to.

Chock-full of information and practical advice, you don't want to miss out on this gold mine. Both novices and professionals alike will benefit from the gems that you'll find in "The Complete Communicator." I highly recommend it to all.

The Complete Communicator-Change Your Communication-Change Your Life is an excellent resource for executives, managers, supervisors, team leaders, and business owners who want to improve their ability to make the "connection" with employees, vendors, customers, clients and even the media.

Dr. Lampton is a superb writer, speaker and communicator. I know of no one who is more qualified to write this book. I've found it invaluable - the kind of book that every manager should have as their on-the-shelf consultant. Thank you Dr. Lampton for sharing your insight in this wonderful book!

I used this book in an elementary classroom. When the children came in each morning, they would look at the board to get the day's riddle. They had fun and I got a couple of minutes of peace in the mornings. They felt SO SMART when they solved each one. They even started to make up their own riddles to put on the board and got such a kick out of letting their classmates in on the answers.

I used this book when teaching a high-school level English class in France. I wrote the "sentences" on the board and had the first person from each team run to the board to write out the sentence completely. It was fantastique! They loved it. I'm sure it could be put to good use in an American classroom too. Great fun!

A gift at 16, I laughed at every page... at 42, I am ordering 4 copies...a difficult book to review as you really have to see it to believe it. So order one up, and one for a friend. Enjoy, laugh and learn to C D B.

I remember back in 1984 I had just moved into a new place when I found a copy of Quartzsite Trip on the kitchen counter. Wound up spending the next 14 hours reading the book and never got anything unpacked. Well, 15 years later I found a copy at a book sale and it captitvated me all over again. Captures the angst and fear of the Senior year. The scenes of sexual frustration and experimentation perfectly remind me of What It Was Like. Almost every character in there reminds me of someone in my high school (class of 1979!)....even PJ reminds me of my eccentric English teacher who was this Bohemian middle aged poet that smoked a lot of pot (but was the only one ever that inspired me to read!) The final scenes are almost a perfect ending. Wonderful!

Funniest book I've ever read! Have sent at least 10 copies to friends. Wish it was still in print. Story about 36 high school seniors in 1962, who spend their annual Easter vacation together in the desert with their English teacher. Those who were in high school in the late 50s-early 60s, will be able to easily relate to this hilarious story, which covers such things as clothes, fads, boys, zits, slang, teenage worries, trials and tribulations of the times, cliques, socializing, being laughed at, dating, sex, bad breath, etc. This is by far the funniest book I've ever read; sorry the author hasn't written more books; his style is funny, crisp, fast-moving and entertaining. A thought-provoking, fun read, with poignant messages for all who are lucky enough to discover this book!

Following is the review I wrote over two years ago, and, as a voracious reader, I still say this is the funniest book I've ever read in my whole life, and I'm now 59. I first read this book when it came out 20 years ago and have found no other book, as yet, that equals it in terms of being funny and entertaining, and so true to life! I think all we "Quartzsite Trip" fans ought to write to the publisher (AVON Books, Division of Hearst Corp., 959 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10019) and beg and plead with them to reissue this very enjoyable read so not only can we purchase additional copies to share with friends and family, but so that other baby boomers, gen-xers, and dot.comers can have the enjoyment of reading it, too. I now have only one copy left, but am always on the lookout for extra copies whenever I visit a bookstore. When I write to the publisher, I'll also ask if the author, William Hogan, is still alive. Did he also write "The Mongoose?" If so, was "The Mongoose" as funny as "The Quartzsite Trip?" Here's what I said about "The Quartzsite Trip" over two years ago, and it still stands: "Funniest book I've ever read! Have sent at least 10 copies to friends. Wish it was still in print. Story about 36 high school seniors in 1962, who spend their annual Easter vacation together in the desert with their English teacher. Those who were in high school in the late 50s-early 60s, will be able to easily relate to this hilarious story, which covers such things as clothes, fads, boys, zits, slang, teenage worries, trials and tribulations of the times, cliques, socializing, being laughed at, dating, sex, bad breath, etc. This is by far the funniest book I've ever read; sorry the author hasn't written more books; his style is funny, crisp, fast-moving and entertaining. A thought-provoking, fun read, with poignant messages for all who are lucky enough to discover this book!" Laurel Tremaine, SF Bay Area, California. Email: minutiamaven@earthlink.net

The Complete Works of Shakespeare edited by David Bevington

Bevington's edition of Shakespeare's plays is a popular choice, and not without good reason. But that doesn't make an ideal choice. The introduction to this one volume edition is ample with chapters on life in Shakespeare's England, the drama before Shakespeare, Shakespeare's life and work. These are good, but they tend to rely on older scholarship and they may not be current. For example Bevington repeats Hinman's claim that there were 1200 copies of the 1623 Folio printed. However later scholars think the number was quite a bit lower, around 750. It should be said that we don't know for sure how many copies of the 1623 folio were printed and either number could be correct.

Bevington's edition prints the plays by genre. We get a section of Comedies, Histories, Tragedies, Romances and the Poems. He puts "Troilus and Cressida" with the comedies, though we know the play was slated to appear with the tragedies in the 1623 folio. The play was never meant to appear with the comedies, and all the surviving Folios that have the play have it at the beginning of the tragedies.

Let's get down to brass tacks. You are not going to buy an edition of Shakespeare's works because of good introduction. You're going to buy one because the quality of the editing of the plays. Is it reliable? Is it accurate? For the most part this edition is reliable and accurate, but that does not mean it is accurate and reliable in every instance.

Modernized editions of Shakespeare's plays and poems are norm. Since the 18th century (and even before) editors of Shakespeare have modernized and regularized Shakespeare's plays and poems. There are good reasons for this modernization. There is the reader's ease of use and the correcting misprints and mislination. I have no problem with this regularization of spelling or punctuation. But when an editor goes beyond normalizing and modernizing--when an editor interferes with the text then I have a problem.

Let me give two examples of the editorial interference that I am writing about:

King Lear 2-1-14 (p. 1184)
Bevington has:
Edmund
The Duke be here tonight? The better! Best!
This weaves itself perforce into my business.

The Folio has:
Bast. The Duke be here to night? The better best,
This weaues it selfe perforce into my businesse,

Even allowences made for modernization of punctuation and grammar would not account for Bevington's "The better! Best." Bevington glosses this to mean "so much the better; in fact the best that could happen." Nice try, but "The better best" of the folio is a double comparative, (which is a regular feature of Early Modern English) and not two separate adjectival phrases. Interestingly, the Quarto printing of Lear prints this scene in prose, and there is no punctuation between "better" and "best" in that version either.

A few lines down Lear 2-1-19 Edmund continues
Bevington has:
Brother, a word. Descend. Brother, I say!
Enter Edgar

But Bevington has reversed the order. The Folio has:
Enter Edgar.
Brother, a word, discend; Brother I say,

Bevington does not say why he changed the order, though to be fair other modern editors have done the same thing.

These two changes just a few lines apart go beyond regularization or modernization. They interfere with the text as presented in the 1623 Folio. And Bevington does not explain the changes. So next time you pick up this or any other modernized edition you should ask yourself "am I really sure what I'm reading is what Shakespeare wrote?"

THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SHAKESPEARE. Updated Fourth Edition. Edited by David Bevington. 2000 pp. New York : Longman, 1997. ISBN 0-321-01254-2 (hbk.)

As complete Shakespeares go, the Bevington would seem have everything. Its book-length Introduction covers Life in Shakespeare's England; The Drama Before Shakespeare; London Theaters and Dramatic Companies; Shakespeare's Life and Work; Shakespeare's Language : His Development as Poet and Dramatist; Edition and Editors of Shakespeare; Shakespeare Criticism.

The texts follow in groups : Comedies; Histories; Tragedies; Romances (including 'The Two Noble Kinsmen'); Poems. Each play is given a separate Introduction adequate to the needs of a beginner, and the excellent and helpful brief notes at the bottom of each page, besides explaining individual words and lines, provide stage directions to help readers visualize the plays.

One extremely useful feature of the layout is that instead of being given the usual style of line numbering - 10, 20, 30, etc. - numbers occur _only_ at the end of lines which have been given footnotes - e.g., 9, 12, 16, 18, 32. Why no-one seems to have thought of doing this before I don't know, but it's a wonderful innovation that does away entirely with the tedious and time-wasting hassle of line counting, and the equally time-wasting frustration of searching through footnotes only to find that no note exists. If the line has a note you will know at once, and the notes are easy for the eye to locate as the keywords preceeding notes are in bold type.

The book - which is rounded out with three Appendices, a Royal Genealogy of England, Maps, Bibliography, Suggestions for Reading and Research, Textual Notes, Glossary of common words, and Index - also includes a 16-page section of striking color photographs.

The book is excellently printed in a semi-bold font that is exceptionally sharp, clear, and easy to read despite the show-through of its thin paper. It is a large heavy volume of full quarto size, stitched so that it opens flat, and bound, not with cloth, but with a soft decorative paper which wears out quickly at the edges and corners.

If it had been printed on a slightly better paper and bound in cloth, the Bevington would have been perfect. As it is, it's a fine piece of book-making nevertheless, and has been edited in such a way as to make the reading of Shakespeare as hassle-free and enjoyable an experience as possible. Strongly recommended for students and the general reader.

Last year for Christmas I asked my parents for some William Shakespeare's plays.Boy was I suprised!Not only does it have all of the plays,but also his Sonats,poems,and illistrations.Despite the fact that it's a large valuem and will need quite a bit off book space from you're self.You wont regret getting it.You will never need to get another book on William Shakespeare's plays and everything else ever again.It also has a list of dictonary for understanding the words better.

This book gave me "chicken skin". Now I know why the call to Hawaii is the call to the soul. Everyone who has the inkling there is something more to life than the insanity and the eight to five should read this book!

I just bought the book "Secrets & Mysteries of Hawaii" and have read it through once already. (Of course I'm going to read it again). I related to everything that the author said in this book -- I was 'initiated' on the Big Island 6 years ago (during the solar eclipse). I visited several spots of the Island, and got a respectful salutation from Madame Pele. I never got to encounter a kahuna while on the Island, but I had a mystical experience there

At a time when all souls on the planet are awakening, this very special book invites your soul to sing and explore the secrets and mysteries of the universal force of power and energy that exists not only in Hawaii but deep within yourself as well. Withe Pila the "seer" as your expert guide, you will be taken on a journey of adventure and discovery. You will become a "kahuna" student of the secrets, and you will learn that the body of the Hawaiian islands can be thought of as a symbolic body of all levels of mind, body and spirit. To know Hawaii is to know yourself and the answer to the yearning of your soul. There is no greater spokesperson on the spirit of Hawaii than this man "Pila" Chiles. He is the Gatekeeper of the soul of Hawaii. Dr. P. Sunray, author/Director, Sunray Healing Haven & National Interfaith Seminary

Gitanjali is a sweet collection of poems and songs from Nobel Prize winning poet Rabindranath Tagore. These are songs that touch on love, faith, truth, life in general. Tagore has written from the heart. The wisdom contained in these works is startling. This is Eastern poetry that is a wonder to behold. Tagore embraces the personal as well as the universal. He encourages his people to transcend. I refer to this book variably over the years. Its alluring beauty has not faded in any way.

The word and the deed were never far from each other in Tagore's life and not surprisingly he advocated the Universal Man. He was a polymath: a poet, fiction writer, dramatist, painter, educator, political thinker, philosopher of science. He was also a genius in music, choreography, architecture, social service and statesmanship. Over six decades Tagore gave the world some 2,500 songs, more than 2,000 paintings and drawings, 28 volumes of poetry, drama, opera, short stories, novels, essays and diaries and a vast number of letters.

I would enthusiatically recommend this book by my favorite author. Like the Psalms of David, Gitanjali is a soothing balm to the spirit. I read this entire book in less than two hours and has been my long-trip travel companion ever since. The introduction to the book by W. B. Yeats is magical and all the poems in this book transcend your imagination. The variety and quality of the poems are unbelievable!

"Gitanjali" is a collection of prose poems by Indian author Rabindranath Tagore. The Dover Thrift Edition contains an introductory note on the life of Tagore, who lived from 1861 to 1941. According to this note, Tagore, who wrote poetry in Bengali, translated "Gitanjali" himself into English. The Dover edition also contains a 1912 introduction by William Butler Yeats.

This English version of "Gitanjali" is a series of prose poems that reflect on the interrelationships among the poet/speaker, the deity, and the world. Although Tagore had a Hindu background, the spirituality of this book is generally expressed in universal terms; I could imagine a Christian, a Buddhist, a Muslim, or an adherent of another tradition finding much in this book that would resonate with him or her.

The language in this book is often very beautiful. The imagery includes flowers, bird songs, clouds, the sun, etc.; one line about "the riotous excess of the grass" reminded me of Walt Whitman. Tagore's language is sensuous and sometimes embraces paradox. Like Whitman and Emily Dickinson, he sometimes seems to be resisting traditional religion and prophetically looking towards a new spirituality.

A sample of Tagore's style: "I surely know the hundred petals of a lotus will not remain closed for ever and the secret recess of its honey will be bared" (from section #98). As companion texts for this mystical volume I would recommend Jack Kerouac's "The Scripture of the Golden Eternity" and Juan Mascaro's translation of the Dhammapada.

Elric is probably the best, and best known, of all of Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion characters (though Jerry Cornelius must be a close second), and I almost rushed through the previous four volumes in the series in an effort to get to this book. And while those books were excellent examples of Moorcock's writing, this blows them all out of the water, showing fantasy unlike anything else. Here are some thoughts on the individual stories:

Elric of Melnibone: Great introduction and brilliant way to kick off the volume. Everything about Elric is explained here.

The Fortress of the Pearl: It's interesting to note that even though this one wasn't published until nearly the nineties, it fits seamlessly into the rest of the books, and of course the device of making him forget explains why the events here aren't referred to in later novels. This one is good, still.

Sailor on the Seas of Fate: Easily the best story in here, period. You know its good when three other Eternal Champions show up (Erekose, Hawkmoon, and Corum), and they only stay through the first part, and the rest of the book just gets better!

The Dreaming City: Elric takes out his home city. I thought this was just a short story until I read the end and saw the rather major upheval Moorcock threw in at the end. Quite the tragic tale.

While the Gods Laugh: Another quickie tale, also tragic. Elric appears to be wrestling with many demons (in his mind, at least). Someone get this guy a shrink.

The Singing Citadel: Last short story of the collection and probably the best, it shows Elric finally getting at least partially over the events of The Dreaming City, for a little while. And hey, any volume with the Duke of Hell in it can't be all bad.

My only quibble is that the entire six book series wasn't reprinted here in its entireity (only the first two were). Hopefully that will be rectified when the eleventh book in the series: Elric: Stealer of Souls, is published. I'll be waiting

What to say, what to say... the Elric saga is one of the most excellent fantasy series ever written. This is the first part, composed of the first three books, excluding Fortress of the Pearl, which was written after the six-book saga was completed. Nevertheless, it fits smoothly.

Elric of Melnibone - The flawless beginning of the saga. Elric of Melnibone introduces its namesake, his best friend Dyvim Tvar, his lover Cymoril, and his competent cousin Yyrkoon. This is, obviously, the first true advancement into the story; but as I mentioned before, it is flawless.

The Fortress of the Pearl - A sidestory, taking place between Elric of Melnibone and the Sailor on the Seas of Fate. Not as good as the other installments in the series, but a gem nonetheless.

The Sailor on the Seas of Fate - Split into three seperate, overall unrelated stories. Of course, all three fit into the current storyline, but each can be considered a seperate adventure. The first introduces Hawkmoon, Erekose, and Corum, three of the other incarnations of the Eternal Champion. The next two tell of Elric's adventures with Smiorgan and Duke Avan.

The Dreaming City - The conclusion to the plot that was set up through the entire first book (Elric of Melnibone). To say any more would spoil and excellent plot twist. Also, to mention, this is the first part of Weird of the White Wolf, the third book in the Elric Saga.

While the Gods Laugh - The second part of Weird. Here Elric meets Shaarilla, the wingless woman of Myrrh. Also, in this story, Elric meets Moonglum, his most faithful companion, and the one who stayed with the albino warrior the longest. An excellent story, simply put.

The Singing Citadel - Elric's first meeting with his long-lasting enemy (from this point on), the sorcerer and servant to Chaos, Theleb K'aarna. Here Elric also meets Yishana, who appears once more in the future Elric stories. The third installment in Weird.

My final word: Read it, read it, read it!

Being my first adventure with Elric, an incarnation of the Eternal Champion, I was quite perplexed by Moorcocks approach to dark fantasy.

This book, Song of the Black Sword, contains three full length original Elric novels with the addition of three short stories that would most definetly become a burden to collect. Just having so much out of print or hard to find literature in one novel is well worth the price alone.

The most interesting aspect of these books for myself was not the massive genocide Elric commits with Stormbringer or the bizarre adventures he physically and metaphysically sets foot on , but the strong development of Elric himself.
He has changed the way that I view fantasy with such a dark hero.

This is a brilliantly written book which tells a good story, but in a way that demonstrates the technical excellence of the writer.

The tale of the Heroine, Hope Clearwater, is told retrospectively by herself. Boyd cleverly puts himself into the first person so that he is believable as Hope herself. Then he has Hope speak of herself in first and third person, which creates an interesting effect. On the one hand you are viewing a narrative account of her story, but then you easily slip into her mind and listen to her thoughts. This makes the story very personal, and brings you close to Hope's character in an empathic way.

The story moves from College in England, to research in the downs of Southern England, before it leaps to Africa where things really hot up. Relationships move from civilised distraction to out and out bloodletting.

Boyd weaves in themes familiar from Jane Goodall and Diane Fossey's primate studies. He makes mathematics and research into interesting subjects, and is guaranteed to have you reaching for the dictionary to understand some of the obscure terminology of medieval english architecture. Over all of this he lays a central african civil war, academic cloak and dagger politics and some complex human and chimp relations.

Two love affairs that seem doomed, sexual politics in the bush and a shifting and uncertain movement of grant aid and civil war add to the complexity. A rebel army formed from a volleyball team, an egyptian cosmonaut, a half built hotel and the smallest model aircraft in the world inject the sense of ridiculous that is part of Africa.

A highly intelligent and enjoyable read.

Hope Clearwater sits on Brazzaville Beach, contemplates her past, and narrates the events of this novel. One strain of the story concerns her failed marriage to a mathematician whose unquenched thirst for revolutionary discoveries and their attendant fame drove him to madness. The second strain concerns the animal research that Hope had fled to Africa to participate in. Grosso Arvore Research Center is run by the renowned chimpanzee expert Eugene Mallabar, who was just putting the finishing touches on his master work, describing the peaceful ways of our close animal relatives, when Hope's own observations seemed to indicate that all was not quite as idyllic as had previously been supposed among these primates. But the evidence of aggression that she finds between two competing colonies of chimps threatens the carefully constructed image that Mallabar has built up over the years, and, most importantly, threatens to make the animals less attractive to charitable organizations which fund the project. Meanwhile, thrumming in the background is a guerilla war which threatens to swamp this African nation at any moment.

William Boyd takes these various threads and weaves them together, along with a variety of brief comments on scientific and mathematical ideas and issues, into an exciting and intellectually compelling novel. With its Edenic setting and themes of Man's search for knowledge--and the madness the search can bring--the book taps into our primordial myths and some of the core questions of our existence. If it sometimes seems to be almost too consciously striving to be a serious novel of ideas, that ambition is justified, if not always realized, and the philosophical failures are more than offset by the good old-fashioned African adventure story that unfolds simultaneously.

The shelves fairly groan beneath the weight of books warning that when a little of the veneer of civilization gets stripped away in the jungle, Man must face the fact that he has a dark heart. And there are elements of that here, particularly in the way that Mallabar treats Hope and her discovery, but Boyd has much more to say besides just this. Perhaps the most exciting message of the book lies in the contrarian stance it takes to the modern age's tendency to romanticize Nature. It is always well to recall Thomas Hobbes's famous description of Nature as "red in tooth and claw." The reader of this book will not soon forget it.

GRADE : A

Upon seeing all the excellent reviews on amazon.com I decided to give William Boyd and his 'Brazzaville Beach' a try. I'd like to thank all these reviewers for informing me about such a wonderful book. Why isn't 'Brazzaville Beach' better known?

'Brazzaville Beach' is a story about a young British woman studying primate behaviour in Africa. William Boyd deftly weaves the story by including flashbacks of her life before Africa (and her failed marriage in England), and by describing the present state of the war-torn African country where she resides. When the primates (chimps) she studies start behaving unusually her life, and those of her fellow researchers, turns upside-down, and she starts questioning the behavior of herself and mankind in general.

In addition to being a mature, absorbing story, 'Brazzaville Beach' is written with intelligence. The characterizations are well-drawn without be overly elaborate. The story is thought-provoking without being too preachy. I should think secondary schools and universities should include 'Brazzaville Beach' in their curricula as part of a social sciences program. It is *that* good.

Bottom line: simply terrific. Don't hesitate from putting it on your 'must read' list.

This book is, quite simply, a fabulous trilogy of novels. It deals, of course, with the two-year voyage of HMS Bounty from England to Tahiti, the captaincy of Captain William Bligh, the mutiny against him, and the aftermath. This is an unforgettable story, beautifully told, well-written, and fast-paced.

I have read reviews here and there that claim this book is written at a "young adult" level. Not so. This is a complex story that only seems to be easily told because the author has mastered the ability to write with utter clarity, and without sacrificing style. As one who reads all day for a living (attorney) I have learned to appreciate authors who can write well. Nordhoff does this--the reader never loses the storyline because it is well told. The novels proceed with the precision of a laser beam but with a poetic, wistful, thoughtful tone that is a delight to read. This book has class.

The story of the trip to Tahiti and the mutiny which takes place early on the return voyage are wonderfully told. The ONLY possible criticism is that this story is not terribly true to the facts of the actual mutiny. The protagonist, Roger Byam, is an imaginary person. By the way, this novel is the source for the first of the Mutiny on the Bounty movies starring Charles Laughton.

The other two novels in the trilogy deal with the voyage by Captain Bligh and those of the crew who remained loyal to him, and the aftermath of the mutiny when the mutineers settle on Pitcairn Island. Both stories are first-rate.

Persons interested in a somewhat more accurate depiction of what happened on the Bounty voyage, as well as a ripping good movie, will want to see "The Bounty" starring Mel Gibson (Fletcher Christian) and Anthony Hopkins (Captain Bligh).

The Bounty Trilogy is a book anyone who enjoys adventure will want to read and own.

I read these stories while at sea on a British research vessel. If you've ever been to sea, or have ever wanted to, you'll probably enjoy reading this trilogy. Nordhoff and Hall write in plain, unelaborate English, so the phrasing never gets in the way, and you can concentrate on all the colorful characters and incredible events. The first two (and half of the third) books are written in first person, putting you right into the action and events, making you think about what you would do in the situations as they arise.

This trilogy has it all: adventure, drama, comedy, history, life at sea, love and loss. It's hard to believe this all really happened. I've given this book to two of my friends already, and they both liked it. You'll probably like it, too.

I give my highest praise to these books. They are far better than current "adventure" stories because of the struggles they had to endure. I found all three books in the trilogy to be excellent (Mutiny on the Bounty, Men Against the Sea, and Pitcairns Island). My favorite one was Pitcairns Island. In all the books I have ever read, this is the first book that ever actually sent a chill up my spine. I won't give the story away, but you will not believe what happens in that book. It's absolutely thrilling and fascinating!