Charles Dudley Warner appears to have lived an enviable life. He was educated when most men did not have an opportunity to become educated. He was editor and publisher of the 'Hartford Courant' and lived in Hartford next door to Samuel Clements. Warner was not only a neighbor but a good friend of Mark Twain with whom he co-authored THE GILDED AGE, and with whom he seems to have shared a sense of humor. Warner's writing is insightful and funny, but not always politically correct according to 21st Century U.S. standards. Allen Gurganus introduces the book with an overly long essay.

In MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN Warner shares 19 weeks of life in his garden (one growing season). His garden is located in Hartford at the edge of a game preserve. During the course of the summer, President Grant is in Hartford and stops by for a visit. As the men sit in Warner's yard, Grant says he can hardly wait to retire to his own garden as he is fed up with politics. Warner has been fighting pusley in his garden and he and Grant discuss the advantage of inviting immigrants who eat pusley and would soon rid the country of both problems.

Warner has various encounters with: hunters tracking quail who stray from the game preserve, one of whom claims he is looking for a lost chicken; small boys who eat berries from his vines and gather nuts from his trees; birds who attack his pea pods, the neighbor's hens who range too freely until he is looking for one to fill a pot; and the owner of a cow pastured in his yard. In spite of drought, theft, and green worms, at the end of the summer Warner is able to put aside enough vegetables to feel he has accomplished something and then his wife Polly takes credit for the work.

Of interest to me is that more than 100 years after Warner published his book, U.S. gardeners can still complain about some of the same things Warner complained about--and more. Most gardeners know that the U.S. has been infested with a whole array of pests and diseases that were not around when Warner gardened. For example, three new plagues including the Varroa mite have attacked American honey bees since the 1980s. Partly these attacks are owing to the introduction of containerized shipments that cannot be inspected and may hold verboten materials (plants, animals, insects). Partly these problems are owing to flagrant violations by individuals who believe U.S. laws concerning the transport of "foreign" plants do not apply to them. Warner's worries about green worms in his celery, witch grass in his potato hills, and pulsey seem mild in comparison.

I was intrigued by the title and sold by the exerpt. Charles Dudley Warner is fun. But skip the opening 30 pages or so. It's not that the other gentlemen don't write well, but they're not exactly fun. Besides, I didn't buy it to read a discussion of his more boring, 'professional' work in all those pages numbered with tiny Roman numerals. So go directly to Warner's first essay (which is the exerpt) on page 11.

Nicely written and witty book about the pleasures of gardening and its relationship to other aspects of life.

This book was about the Aldens and Soo Lee playing on a soccer team. Like a usual Boxcar book, mysterious things start to happen. This was a pretty good book, but it could have had a better ending, that's why I only gave this chapter book 4 stars. By the way, this book has 116 pages, but it has fairly big print.

I read The Soccer Mystery. I thought this book was really great because I really like soccer and mysteries, and I've never read a book from The Box Car Children. I recommend that kids under 7th grade should read this book because this is a really great book! If you read this book you will probably enjoy it!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I truly admire Kurt Warner conviction to his Faith, his family and perseverance. Kurt seems like a down to earth guy who has a strong support system. Kurt was given an opportunity and he took full advantage of it. In truth, this book is about an Every Day Guy who makes it to the Big Time and hasn't forgotten who he really is. Nothing out of the ordinary here, very easy to read.

After reading this book, I truly do believe that all things are possible. Kurt Warner has a truly remarkable story to tell.

In All Things Possible, I knew the final outcome. Unless you live in a cave, eveyone knew that Kurt Warner had a super season, capped off with a Super Bowl victory, picking up the game's MVP award. However, this book did more than go behind the scenes of that incredible season. It introduced us to Kurt Warner, the person.

He has had one incredible life. In this book, he touches upon everything, from his personal life struggles to being cut by the Green Bay Packers and having to work at a supermarket. We also meet his family, including his wonderful wife, Brenda. His story is one of overcomming seemingly unbeatable odds. Warner was constantly having to battle serious problems that always seemed to be hurled at him at the most difficult times. He never gave up, and his faith in the higher power is one that should not be taken lightly.

In this book, Warner is incredibly candid and does not hold anything back. He is straightforward and always honest. He hides nothing, and that is what truly makes this book an inspirational and enjoyable read. The personal stories add feeling and sometimes humor to the wonderfully written account of him and his family.

All Things Possible has something for everybody, including a nice romance in the background. His marriage proposal still brings a smile to my face. Kurt Warner tells his interesting story in a straightforward, yet nicely detailed language that allows you to keep turning pages as fast as he racks up passing yards. This book is more than just another athlete's story. It serves as an inspiration to keep pursuing your dream, whatever that may be, by believing in yourself. Any, if not all, things are possible.

An easy and enjoyable read; not a Hemmingway or Vonnegut by any stretch but it certainly tells a compelling story. I told people to draft Kurt Warner for their fantasy teams when he became the starter for the Rams because I had seen him play (in person) for the Iowa Barnstormers and his accuracy was unreal. I already knew a lot of his background but the book really examines in detail the hardships Kurt faced and the perserverance and faith he possessed on this wild ride. Simply put, Kurt Warner's story is a story for the ages and possibly the greatest underdog sports story of all time. What he did in 1999 and early 2000 is almost incomprehensible but he did it, and the NFL will never be the same. Plus, he is a genuinely nice guy. Sometimes nice guys do finish first.

"Celluloid Soldiers: Warner Bros.' Campaign Against Nazism," by Michael E. Birdwell, New York: NYU Press, 2001. A book review by Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com.

Politicians pursuing the "family" vote regularly chime in like critic Michael Medved about the harmful effects of film on theatergoers, particularly the young. "'The Basketball Diaries' has led to an increase of heroin use in teenagers," says one. "'Pulp Fiction' shares the blame for the increase of gun use in junior high schools," asserts another. "James Bond encourages the drinking of martinis, shaken not stirred," insists a third.

Motion pictures influence our thinking. How could they not? We sit in a darkened space, focused on little other than our popcorn and the big screen, as heroes from Humphrey Bogart to Tom Cruise spin their tales across the celluloid. But to what extent do they influence the way we actually act? Pondering and debating that unresolved issue should give us something to talk about at cocktail parties for years to come. Do filmmakers actually WANT us to behave in a certain way? Probably: to the extent that they supply us with propaganda, or, what theater people call agitprop. One of the best examples of passionate partisanship involves the case of Harry Warner, one of the founders of the illustrious Warner Bros. studio, who, during the 1930's, was so incensed by Hitler's actions in Europe and so disgusted by the isolationist views of the American government and a majority of its people that he set out to influence everyone from F.D. Roosevelt to backwoods 'billies to see that the policies of the Third Reich endangered this country as well as the continent of Europe.

While the other major studios pandered to the German fascists by doing business with them throughout the thirties, Harry Warner exploited his celluloid soap-box for all its worth, backing up his lobbying efforts with at least four motion picture productions unique in their evocation of Germany's evil. The heroism of this lone ranger might not be remembered by today's world had Michael E. Birdwell not written "Celluloid Soldiers: Warner Bros.' Campaign Against Nazism."

Birdwell's prose makes the heart beat faster as we join the author in loathing groups that had their own axes to grind in the U.S. during from 1933 to 1945--organizations whose names may have changed but whose professional haters

even today spew their venom against immigrants, Jews, African-Americans and other minorities whom they consider at the very least not to be 100% American. Some of Birdwell's scholarly but passionate statements might be describing activities in the year 2001 rather than movements that should have died a lingering and painful death during the thirties. Birdwell states: "Many Americans knew that Jews played a prominent role in the film monopoly. [One] vicious handbill read, 'Boycott the Movies! Hollywood is the Sodom and Gomorrah!'" What's missing in today's more subtle broadsides against Hollywood is the mention of Jews as the target of abhorrence, but The Pacific Coast Anticommunist Federation of that time had no problem declaring "international Jewry controls vice--dope--gambling. Buy Gentile. Employ Gentile. Vote Gentile."

Birdwell discusses Harry Warner's attempts to counteract the malice by his productions of anti-fascist movies, the most

arresting being his analysis of the film "Sergeant York," starring Gary Cooper as the title hero of World War I--an uneducated Tennessee mountain person who killed more Germans than Vassily Vaitsev but who turned pacifist immediately following the war to end all wars. When Alvin C. York came to his senses in the late thirties, he stumped for intervention. As Warner saw the prospect for waking up the world community to the dangers of Nazism, he convinced a reluctant York to give his permission for a portrayal of his life. "Sergeant York," one of the most influential archetypes of agitprop cinema, emerged. President Roosevelt may have been more affected by the attack on Pearl Harbor than on this movie, but both Harry Warner and Alvin York deserve monuments for their work in splashing cold water on the faces of a largely indifferent America. In the same manner, Birdwell--and the NYU university press, must be commended for its short but thoroughly researched study about the impact of media writ small on politics and American thinking in general... film_critic@compuserve.com

I heard Michael Warner on local radio here in Boston and came to this website to read an excerpt from his book. His writing blew me away! Gay and Lesbian politics, much less Queer, hasn't had a really smart, innovative essayist in years. Warner points out the errors of what passes as common sense these days in the gay and lesbian movement, which has become increasingly stale and warped by phony Washington politics. He produces one original idea after another, and if they go over many people's heads, it's not for lack of good writing--his writing is conversational and clear--it's because people have stopped imagining progressive sexual politics. He turns sexual ethics, the marriage debate, the pornography debate, and HIV education on their heads and shakes them down to form brilliant insights. Not everything he says is practical, but that's the nature of vision--it ROCKS! I think this will still be taught in college 50 years from now--as a CLASSIC. It was well worth forking over sixteen dollars for, and I only hope he writes more.

This book speaks beyond academia without ever talking down to its audience, about things most of us still debate despite having fewer and fewer forums to do so -- about queer ethics, sex and intimacy, marriage rights, public sex. Though I already admired Warner's activist and intellectual work (and, full disclosure here, am an academic), I was moved by the passion and precision with which he argues. There's nothing "snipey," libertarian, or more-radical-than-thou about this book, other reviews notwithstanding; it's a book with a mind and a soul. Warner clearly respects the confusion many of us feel (especially the many who are outside of both academia and the "national" movements and who cannot find activist public spheres that make sense to them anymore), but will not let our confusion dissolve into easy acceptance of the "national" movement's sanctimonies about "our" lives. I imagine that some people will dismiss this book without reading it, as an argument for "radical promiscuity" coming from the privileged position of a white gay male academic. Please don't make that mistake. Warner quite rightly sees the marriage movement and the privatization of public space as the biggest threats to LGBTQ movements and everyday lives. But he also clearly cares about, and lushly imagines a future for, the most complicated forms of pleasure, belonging and caretaking that queer people have invented. Oddly enough -- I'd only say this on Amazon, and it's not what I think is crucial about the book -- it's a book I can imagine giving to my biological family members, not because it tells them I am normal after all, but because it actually might make my life intelligible to them. In the way it bridges a clarion call to activism and an intelligent dissection of the status quo, The Trouble with Normal does work that no trade book coming from the queer left has managed to do so far.

In this wonderful manifesto, Warner argues that the recent emphasis on marriage and normalcy within the gay and lesbian movement (or, as Harvard University Press typesetters put it at one point, "the hay and lesbian movement") undermines the hard-fought struggles and betrays the valuable lessons of an earlier generation of queer activism, and strips queerness of its central insights about human sexuality. This is not just a timely intervention within gay politics, however. It is also a smart analysis of the regulation and disposition of urban space, a sophisticated reflection on the meanings of privacy and publicity in our culture, a disturbingly persuasive indictment of the institution of civil marriage, and the most resonant non-fiction on the subject of sex I have read in a long time. Most of all, this is a deeply ethical book that will speak to a range of readers, whether or not they are "hay," or have any abiding interest in the politics of that identity.

I have been a fan of Mr Howard for nearly 12 years now, which in my opinion, makes me a bit of a connoisseur, and frankly this book was a bit of a disappointment. Undoubtedly the contributing writers are well-respected and immensely able but their writing lacked the Howardian flavour I have come to love. Ghor's sudden personality shifts are hard to follow and the various ideas in the story lack sufficient depth. This book is not the way Mr Howard would have written it. Nevertheless, this should be read because the original idea belonged to the great REH.

Ghor is a nice blend of Conan and the Cthulhu Mythos together. Abandoned as a child because of a deformity, Ghor is adopted by a pack of wolves. Raised by them, he adopts the ways of the wolf, yet when he meets up with humanity joins them. Constantly struggling with his wolf upbringing and his human surroundings, Ghor becomes a mighty war hero wherever he goes.

This is an excellent adventure book that takes a Conan like hero and plots him against all sorts of evil (and good), including some Cthulhu creations as well.

Originally Ghor was an unfinished story by Conan creator Robert Howard. Upon finding this unfinished story, a magazine decided to finish it. What they did was have a different chapter every month written by a different top fantasy writer. It made the reading interesting.

While most of the chapters were great. Some were excellent. Unfortunately there were a couple chapters that I just wanted to get through to reach the next writers' chapter. Overall a really good read.

I WAS VERY SUPRISED ABOUT HOW WELL THIS STORY CAME OFF. THE VARIUOS WRITERS DID AN EXCELLENT JOB IN WRITING AN EXCITING BOOK THAT FLOWED SMOOTHLY. IT DID NOT COME OFF AS A SERIES OF SHORT STORIES. THIS IS AN EXCELLENT BOOK FOR ROBERT E. HOWARD FANS, AND FANS OF FANTASY IN GENERAL.

Gregory Hines and Joel Gray present horrible readings of two of Poe's best poems. Gregory Hines sounds like a used car salesman when reading "Annabel Lee," and Joel Gray sounds like a spastic nut when reading "The Bells." Did they ever listen to themselves? Christopher Cazenove represents the best reader and the savior of this otherwise fiasco. Although he left out the last stanza, his reading of "Ulalume-A Ballad" is by far the best reading I've heard of this powerful poem. Michael York's reading of "The Raven" is ok, but he lacks correct interpretation with the "wispered word, 'Lenore?'" The only other reader to read this phrase like a question is Edward Blake. For some reason many of the poems have background music. Did the producers of this collection really think that these poems lacked something? Perhaps this collection going out of print was an act of mercy.

Like the first reviewer, I thought Gregory Hines absolutely ruined "Annabel Lee" for me, which is--or now, was--also one of MY favorite Poe poems. What's next, "Gregory Hines Tapdances 'A Cask of Amontillado'"? Stick to you day-job, Greg! Michael York and David Warner are much beter readers than Hines, though when York reads "I shrieked..." it hardly sounds like a shriek. Their readings are good, but not great. By far the two less-famous (to me, anyway) readers on the tape, Roger Rees and Christopher Cazenove, are giants compatred to the other three. Rees' reading of "The Conqueror Worm" alone is worth the price of this tape. Obviously Rees and Cazenove are experienced Shakespeare-trained actors who love--and know how to utilize to startling results--the English language. I would pay almost anything for a new version of this tape read by Rees and Cazenove alone, or possibly by them and other accomplished Shakepearean actors (Patrick Stewart? Ralph Fiennes? Simon Russell Beale?). It's just not enough, to effectively read aloud poems or prose written by a master, to be famous (Hines) or even British and famous (York and Warner); you have to be GOOD! Anyway, overall this tape's worth buying.

If "Annabel Lee" is your favorite Poe poem, be warned that it is read by Gregory Hines, and the AudioFile review is being generous when it says that his readings lack drama and force. Though it is one of my favorite poems, or, more precisely, because it is one of my favorite poems, I fast forward through it everytime I listen to the tape, lest his reading impare my ability to enjoy the poem in the future.

This is somewhat compensated for by Michael York's exellent rendering of "The Raven" and David Warner's various readings which wonderfully capture Poe's mood and spirit.

Overall, still worth the price. I don't regret having purchased it and I'm still enjoying it a month later. If only "Annabel Lee" had been assigned to Mr. York or Mr. Warner!

Good for research but not exactly coffee-table blurb.