This book fills in some background about the movie that might have been cut from the final version. Enjoyable sidelight about the Pinkertons, and also, you understand why the horses were so upset at the start of the movie.

I agree wholeheartedly about the annoyance of "Cindy Crawford hair". Where in the heck did that come from. It took me a while to get back in the mood after that ridiculous anachronism.

After Reading this book, and listening to the Movie, I think that he needs to do A little more movie watching.

I bought this book for my daughter because she really liked the movie and wanted to read the story. It reads very concisely yet has enough meat on its bones to make it interesting. It also contains eight pages of color photographs from the film. Very good!

This was a very interesting book about a very interesting man. Interesting is about the nicest thing I can think to say about Billy Martin. Although his exploits have been legendary, the stuff in this book takes it too a new level. According to the author, Pete Golenbock, Martin has several women going in different cities at the same time. He was supporting an underage girl and her family on the West Coast and engaged on the East Coast. His life, as portrayed in this book, was more out of control than you suspected. Golenbeck caters to our interest in these areas and with life on the field, in the club house and in the owners office. You have to catch your breath periodically when reading about the life of Billy Martin.

On the negative side, the book turns into a defense of the person traveling with Martin the day of his fatal accident. You'll recall that Christmas Day story that told how his friend from Detroit was behind the wheel when it happened. You may recall later on (after consulting with his lawyer, no doubt) the driver suddenly became the passenger. Strangely, the lone eyewitness decided he was actually sitting elswhere in the vehicle after he had time to think about it. Along comes Golenbock to the rescue with photos, medical reports and diagrams showing how Billy was actually the driver. Sorry, I'm not that interested. Let the courts decide that one. The book should have been shorter than it was. I came away with the idea that intimate information was shared with the author in return for his public defense of Martin's passenger/chaffeur. It was a disjointed way to end the otherwise interesting book. But then, Martin's death was a disjointed way to end an otherwise interesting life.

Compard to David Faulkner's bio on Martin, this one by Golenbock has more insider details about Martin's life that make it the more interesting read. What does it in, unfortunately is Golenbock's peculiar analysis. Like so many people who like to ultimately elevate Billy the man higher than he deserves, more time is spent blaming George Steinbrenner for all of Billy's problems off the field. And it soon gets to the point where Golenbock actually performs what was once the impossible and makes you think he's too harsh on Steinbrenner. The bottom line is that Billy Martin, unlike his friend Mickey Mantle, never came to terms with what drinking and carousing could do to his life and for that, he had only himself to blame for not checking into the Betty Ford Clinic like Mantle did. Billy kept drinking not because of George Steinbrenner, but because of who he was, and that was a person with no morals whatsoever.

Without generating undeserved sympathy for the man, this book documents the sad life of Billy Martin, the extent to which his troubles were self-inflicted, and his tortured relationship with George Steinbrenner. The insecurities of both of these men feed on each other's, with each convinced that the other is out to upstage and destroy him, and each ultimately proving the other right, time after time. The years have provided an interesting postscript, however. Just as Martin's early death seemed almost inevitable because of his inability to confront and defeat his demons, author Golenbock ends the book with a forecast of inevitable doom for Steinbrenner, predicting with certainty that his many shortcomings will stop the Yankees from ever again achieving respectability. Golenbock was wrong, of course. Steinbrenner's late 90s Yankees are among baseball's all-time great teams, guided by a superb manager with no apparent interference from above. Perhaps Steinbrenner did in fact learn something from Martin's sad demise.

This is a book full of pictures of elephants, NOT a Peter S. Beagle book. He wrote a few paragraphs of an introduction, nothing else. In terms of the rest of the book, it is bland and hypocritical; the authors bemoan the fact of captive elephants, while keeping captive elephants. The pictures are poor quality as well.

In defense of this book, I am compelled to support the spirit of its purpose. Yes it is published by people with captive elephants, but the elephants in this book are now as free as they can be, at the home of PAWS, (Performing Animal Welfare Society) where "abandoned or abused performing animals and victims of the exotic animal trade can live in peace and contentment." They may be visited in person at their Galt, California sanctuary. Kudos to an organization that does not glorify the human entertainment of training wild animals to perform unnatural acts.

This is a sweet little book with wonderful photos of these elephants "71" and Mara growing up and finding contentment at PAWS in galt CA. The photos are so touching. It's more of a picture book...a documentary told in beautiful black and white photos...I loved it! the photos alone are worth the price!

Gill's novels are always fun because they revolve around aspects of Irish life not usually incorporated into mystery stories--eel-fishing, secret Catholic societies, literary history, and in this case, the serious business of salmon-fishing and fly-tying. Well drawn, repeating characters, lyrical descriptions of Ireland's rural charms, pitch-perfect vernacular and syntax, big dollops of humor, and a graceful incorporation of the mythology and history which infuses Irish culture intrigue the reader on levels other than plot.

This novel reflects all of these characteristics to some degree, but the mystery at the heart of this novel is thinner and less complex than in some of Gill's other novels. Focusing on the death of famed salmon-fisherman Nellie Millar in Donegal's Owenea River, Gill employs a limited cast of characters, each of whom has a reason to resent and or even kill Nellie, who is a former lover of Supt. Peter McGarr of the Garda Siochana. McGarr (now suspended) and his wife Noreen, along with acting Supt. Hugh Ward and his former lover, Det. Ruthie Bresnahan, find themselves helping unofficially in the investigation of Nellie's death and lending moral support to Nellie's bereft father.

The usually intense and idiosyncratic behavior of McGarr and his staff, which so often animates Gill's novels and keeps the reader involved and intrigued, is absent here. The wild nights and fights, the circumventions of the law to achieve a greater good, and the threats to the safety of McGarr, his staff, and their families, which usually keep the reader on edge, are missing. Though written in beautiful prose, this plot is more formulaic--and the characters' more predictable--than is customary for Gill. It's fun to read, but not Gill's best.

Why does it seem that the horse story get's twisted into the youth of this country. This is More Propaganda to save the wild horses. I am tired of this agenda being fed to my children

Don't listen to the guy who gave this book only one star. The research carried out by the author is accurate and correct. Columbus did in fact re-introduce the horse (inadvertently)to North America. If you're really that curious about it all then read 'The Nature of Horses'. I forget the name of the author but it is a first-class scientific account of the evolution of the horse and its escape from extinction by domestication (yes it's true, if we didn't enjoy giddy-upping so much on the backs of horses or getting them to pull stuff there would be no more of the majestic creatures around!). What the previous reviewer mistook as propaganda is actually the product of sound archaeology and zoology. There you have it, straight from the horses...

Despite there being a plethora of books on the National Parks of the US, there are very few books available which focus on Canada. This book has a good editorial review, so I was very much looking forward to receiving it. However, I was quite disappointed when I received it. Although it is advertised as having "breath-taking" photographs, most of the photos are rather poor. The larger ones are mostly out of focus and look like they've been taken on a cheap compact camera (this may be due to poor printing and not poor photography). In this age of great photographic and printing technology, I can't understand why such poor quality photos are still published. The text is informative and well written, but rather brief. The park-maps are too small and devoid of any detail: they basically only show the location, the rough shape of the boundary, the roads, and sometimes a couple of lakes. After reading this book, I still feel that I do not have a real idea about what most of the National Parks of Canada are like.

Unable, or unwilling, to secure the cooperation of Adams' estate, the publishers of this book have used images from the US national archive.

These substandard images have been reproduced hair, dust and all! It's an insult to a man who spent his life teaching and promoting quality photography.

This book was done without the authorization of the Ansel Adams Photographic Trust, as was duly noted in the book.

The volume reproduces Ansel Adams' images in a way that badly distorts his style. Most of the images are so dark and over inked that all you can see are the outlines. Adams' work was all about light and using details to show connections among objects. The only benefit you will get from seeing these images is to realize why Adams insisted on such tight control over his work. You will also come to more fully appreciate his comments about how his "reality" depended on what happened with the print, not with the negative.

Miraculously, a few images were reproduced in wonderful fashion. But you have to look long and hard to find them. Don't bother. I suggest you stick with the authorized versions of his work instead, which are all published by Little Brown. The main flaws of those volumes is that Little Brown designed the books in many cases to make the images too small.

Why, then, did I assign this book two stars rather than one? Well, I rather liked the essay by Eric Peter Nash about Adams. Nash provides a good balance between writing a short biography of Adams as a person, his development as a photographer through using new techniques, and Adams' reflections on his contemporaries. The essay is much longer than in other books about Ansel Adams and added usefully to my knowledge about his photographic techniques.

My advice is to read the essay and consider it in the context of images in other books. I would suggest you avoid buying this book.

After you have finished reading the essay, I suggest you consider how your purposes might not be followed as you wish when you are no longer alive. For example, do you have any possessions that you would like to have given to a certain person or handled in a certain way? Do you have a will that provides for those events to take place? Do you have an executor of the will who understands your purposes and is likely to outlive you?

Pass on your insights with care!

I have never seen such a shoddy bunch of sentences put together in my life. I counted nearly SEVENTEEN fragments in this book along with several akward sentences that leave the author's meaning unclear. The ideas set forth in this work about managing wild animals could have helped to change the way we interact with our game reserves. I say "could" because I'm sure anyone who reads this work will be too distracted (as I was) by the dearth of commas to think about the deep issues being considered. And don't even get me started on the over-usage of colons that borders on the obscene. Yet another good idea destroyed because an author decided not to Major in English.