I grimmaced at first when I saw the subject matter. This sort of internet urban myth plotline usually seems kind of pathetic, but Baer is a strong writer. At times the images and the language deserve the highest of praise, but overall the writing seems too calculated. I think he definitely is a writer to watch, and the last line was one of the more memorable in years, but as a book on its own I think the characters are a bit too involuntarily cartoonish for me to love this book. I think Baer might write an incredible book oneday, I hope he does, cuz he's a truly gifted writer, much more talented then basically every under-thirty or so writer out there except eugenides. So good luck baer, and to anyone who thought reservation road or any of those other discover books were good, you should be taken out back and shot. Baer deserves to win based on being the only "talent" of the bunch. Nonetheless, not a great book, but I have lots of hope for him in the future...

After reading all the emails circulating on the Internet about travellers getting their kidneys removed after consuming a spiked drink and falling into a stupor, I almost mistook this book to be a "real-life" account of one such incident.

I was hooked at the beginning. The style of the author was original and intriguing. It begged me to read more and find out what illicit intentions hung in the mind of Phineas Poe, the victim of a rare sort of theft. We are exposed to the horrors of a dark trade and the heinous minds of individuals who had strayed too far from the 'normal' life. Horror-fans, this is not what you think it to be.

Will's narrative style was like some sort of a drug that coaxed and intoxicated your mind as you passed your eyes over the first couple of chapters. I followed... but...

... I got confused along the way. The appearance of Isabel and Henry left me muddled as to what really was going on. I no longer knew who was the 'bad' guy and who was 'good'. Also, the story started to be a bit draggy. Images of a very worn and dirty man who had no idea what he was in didn't keep the storyline appealing anymore. The sex that occurred between the characters added no color nor meaning to the plot.

It would also have been easier if conversations were marked in quotation marks. It could be quite a chore figuring things out for the English-challenged crowd.

A slow-paced detective story, this would enthrall you at first, but leave you rather dissatisfied.

I happen to randomly pick this book up, and disover that it's remotely close to a screenplay I just optioned. Well, that happens...seems it won't be too long when a plethora of urban myth kidney hijacking tales will be cluttering the marketplace.

For a genre novel, I was surprised Baer's publsher (the intrepid Viking Penguin) let him get away without putting quatation marks around dialogue. I've had publishers place these marks there when it was never my intention, on the manuscript. "Oh, but the general genre reader will get confused..."

Seems some publishers feel the lack of quotes around dialogue is for esoteric literary authors only.

I was immediately sucked into this book. Scary stuff. Haunting images. I think from pages 100-150 it was all padding. "I need this novel to be 80,000 words or it won't sell!" I see Baer saying (as I have seen myself saying).

Baer couldn've cut a good 15-20,000 words off this book and streamlined it. I almost didn't finish it. Then I got hooked again.

The ending left me cold and empty...which is a good thing, for a book like this.

The memories of his dying wife, her suicide (or murder) struck a home chord.

I will definitely look for this guy's next book.

the book is nicely illustrated with color (and b/w) pictures.

Bad i found it unsatisfactory mainly because of its incompleteness.
Today armored vehicles they come in versions with A/A artillery,
SS/missiles and S/A missiles. You wont find any information
on these. I think the editor couls skip some old vehicles
in order to provide a full coverage of modern versions like
the finish automatic loading mortar, the russian Chrizantema,
the russian S-300 systems etc.

Not really a complete book, but of good quality.

This book is the best and most comprehensive millitary vehicle identification book I have ever read. I'm an M1A1 tank driver for the US army and I was impressed with the amount of information in this book. I actually used this book to point out flaws on our Vehicle ID test. Now that I have it, all my fellow tankers want a copy.

In the 90's I taught 4th and 5th grade in Baltimore, Maryland. I was so delighted with this textbook--with all of its stories and illustrations--that I just had to have it for teaching my own children.

It is a lot like a good literature book with "DK" style illustrations. My male students used to be mezmerized by the full-page, full-color diagram of a continental soldier---I confess I was too. That's not all though, the book is very easy to use-for student and teacher alike.

Far from being a dry,social studies text, this book has excellent photographs, illustrations, maps, diagrams, charts, time-lines, and primary-source literature.

This book teaches social studies the way that children prefer to learn it----visually!

Some of the language in War Music is exceptional--Her breasts so lovely that they envy one another-- And he quit being-- His soul crawled off his tongue and vanished into sunlight-- And from its silver, sea-dark wine had crossed your lips (such a nice turn on Homer's wine-dark sea)-- Dawn stepped bare-footed from her lover's bed (Homer's rosy-fingered Dawn has become rosy-toed).

However it must be said further that this work seemed exhausting and extremely difficult to follow, except in the broadest outlines. Who is doing what to whom, and when and with whom, were questions constantly in mind while reading. Obviously this work does not purport to be a translation of Homer in the usual sense, but it is indeed a powerful and arresting poem in its own right, an inspired and original adaptation, which is of course what Logue intends. The introduction of modern words and non-Homeric references (Bikini, Iwo Jima, Napoleon, binoculars, etc.) is bothersome not because they are there per se, but because they seem so unnecessary to the context and tone of the poem. The seem like jolting anachronisms. Other images and words found within the Homeric world would have done just as well. And where on earth does he get some of the proper names--Bombax, Famagusta, Opknocktophon, etc.? If these are intended to provide a background of humorously named lesser characters, as in Shakespeare, perhaps reading the classics leaves one unprepared for them in this context and precludes appreciating them as such.

Logue's insight into the major themes comes across well. We see the wrath of Achilles wreaking its consequences. We know that when Patroclus goes out to die, Achilles will follow him. And we see foreshadowed that when Hector falls at the hands of Achilles and the doom of Troy is sealed, so too is Achilles own fate assured. Through all these themes the immortals are weaving their way, full of apparent fallibilities and indecisivenness themselves, playing their favorites, and never hesitating to interfere in the affairs of men, in which they take a great interest.

Logue's inspired poem is good and perhaps will lead some to Homer himself, especially if this version is heard aloud (as the mention of the BBC suggests), where the power and rhythm of the language can be demonstrated and felt to its fullness.

This is a flat-out triumph. Logue fills his take on Homer with dazzling imagery and stunning word-music. The Iliad falls right into our laps because Logue has given it a mighty shove. Only Professor Fagles' recent translation of the poem betters it and that is because Dr. Fagles has actually rendered the WHOLE poem in crisp, biting English that for the first time actually walks Homer up to our faces. In Fagles we can smell the breath of the blind poet, Logue brings us to the sweaty armpits.

As a styling, however, "War Music" has no peer and if Dr. Fagles has a slight edge it is because he has, after all, wrestled with the Greek text and got us into Homer's world all the way. Logue brings into the world but chooses to give us a whirlwind tour while Fagles allows us to slum awhile.

Still as much as I adore Dr. Fagles now celebrated translation, I am haunted. Logue's great re-imagining has left me shaken. The worship scenes are boffo and the Pax chapter that ends this fine "War Music" contains some of the sharpest, most moving, most eloquent, most rugged, and most manly, epic English verse since Marlowe's majestic "Tamburlaine" made kings into footstools.

And finally, there is this: As a work of English poetry, leaving Homer on the rocks for just a moment, "War Music" stands as one of the great collections of modern verse in the 20th Century.

"War Music" turns staid old men like me into groupies.

Bravo!

Why must old works of literature sound like they're covered with dust? People rail against translations of the Bible, like the Message version, and translations of classics, like this book, as if they were desecrating our grandfathers. This is a re-vision of a work of genius that truly brings Homer into the modern age. As George Steiner says in Homer in English (which shows all the brilliance, as well as the boringness, of Homer translators of the past), this is one of the few translations of Homer that is a work of art in its own right. Get it!

I have always found it a bit distressing when non-scientists or reporters, write books on science. More often than not they have only a superficial understanding of the topic and tend to muddy the water not only to make it appear deep, but to obscure their lack of understanding or the lack of foundation for their claims. Despite the title, the authors have almost no understanding of Darwinism, and are amazingly misinformed as to the "sparks of life." If you cannot explain the origin of DNA, you cannot explain life on this planet, and the authors not only fail miserably in this regard, but are sadly misinformed about the very nature of DNA and RNA. This may come as a revalation to the authors, but cytosine is in fact one of the four bases of RNA! Another shock: RNA employs uracil rather than thymime! Another surprise: DNA is not unstable as the author's claim --thats an attribute of RNA! Another surprise: There is no evidence to support the author's claim that RNA appeared before DNA. RNA is produced by DNA -not the other way around! Another shock: RNA is not a catalyst and cannot manufacture itself or DNA. This is why viruses must invade the DNA of a host in order to reproduce --the viral genome generally consists of RNA. The book goes on and on like this, and is riddled with errors and falsehoods and what might charitably be called propaganda. Not only is this book chalk full of nonsense, but it borders on theology, with Darwin taking the place of the hand of God! However, just a believers often attribute every possible personality trait or personal bias to "god" the authors perform the most amazing mental gymnastics in order to make 19th Darwinism conform to 21st century science. Have the authors even read anything written by Darwin? I think not. What the authors have presented us with is theology and mythology masquerading as science, and in this regard, the book is really anti-science. Sparks of life? Sorry folks. There are no sparks here. This book is a dud.

This book starts out fine as to laying out the different scenarios for life's origins , but one has to read it cautiously because it is filled with the biases of the authors, occasionally lacking a balanced scientific perspective on the origins of life.

This is a good popular book on the current hypotheses of how the first complex molecules may have combined to form the fundamental structures of early replicating systems. After a good brief historical survey that shows some of the problems previous encountered, the authors examine a variety of possible scenarios as to how a "primordial" chemical soup could have given rise to more complex structures, metabolism, and genetic information containing molecules. The authors, both of whom are well known and respected known scientists have a writing style that is easy to read and the level of the material should be reasonably accessible to even high school level readers. A couple of minor errors that anyone could make on the first edition were corrected in the later editions.

_Yellow Fever, Black Goddess: The Coevolution of People and Plagues_ could have been a penetrating examination of the relationship between humanity and disease. Christopher Willis certainly had fertile ground to work, but the book ends up being a dull and pedantic trudge that fails to bring the best of the academic or the popular to the reader.

The text wanders through evolutionary biology and human history without any real sense of direction. The biographies and personal histories read like indifferent 'human interest' stories injected into an otherwise uninteresting science news broadcast.

While the subject of the book is fascinating, and there is some interesting information in the book, the book would greatly benefit from substantial editing, with emphasis on writing style.
The book suffers from a number of writing faults. If it's a book about "the coevolution of people and plagues" (its subtitle), why are the author's world travels constantly thrown at the reader? "One of my most searing memories is of being surrounded on a street in Hyderabad by a crowd of lepers.... I reached Vellore, a cheerful and relatively clean market town, after a hectic 120-kilometre bus ride from Madras...."
If the reader makes it past the travelogue, the reader will still have to get through the prose and commas. "Yet the AIDS virus, despite its fearsome aspects, has had just as much difficulty in spreading through the human population as syphilis or typhoid, and has had to make equally dramatic compromises in order to retain its ability to spread" is a typical sentence.
The subject would be much better served if the author could stay on topic and the book was presented as an adventure to be discovered and enjoyed instead of making each sentence (and the book itself) a puzzle to be penetrated.

Wills does not provide an exhaustive review of diseases, but selects illustrative examples. I find this preferable to a less in-depth discussion of a large number of diseases. His incorporation of personal experiences, and theoretical speculations on disease and diversity add breadth and depth to this book. I thought it was excellent.

First, it is a very good book that covers a lot of material that is of interest to evolutionists and eugenicists. That is, 95% of the material is not new but it is useful for those interested in the subject matter. So like many books in this genre it has two purposes: to establish Dr. Will's knowledge of the subject matter and make it appear to be objective and empirical, while at the same time promoting a political agenda that falls into the abyss of the utopian dream of universal egalitarianism. While he intermittently lashes out at nationalists and religious fanatics as if they have no right whatsoever for holding the views that they do, he then demands that all human races be forced to intermarry so that we are all mixed up genetically. He then claims that we will accelerate the evolutionary process, but he doesn't really explain to what purpose.

So the really fascinating reading of this book is the inherent contradictions, deceptions, and moral positioning Dr. Wills uses to try and advance what is in essence his own form or nationalism and religious fanaticism. That is the nation as one global nation under totalitarian control by the egalitarian elite, and the religious fanaticism of Marxism, universalism, socialism, or whatever name you attach to this neo-Marxist lot of academics.

Before I take apart this sophomoric proposal for universal brotherhood, let me lay out what the basic premise is: When subspecies (human races) that are genetically different begin to interbreed, the results are "profound" and "generally positive." Keep this simple message in mind as you read this review. But first let me point out at the beginning just a few reasons why it is nonsensical.

First, it is based on the premise that different races are in some real way genetically different, a premise that Wills repeatedly denies to be true throughout the book. For example, he claims that human races are now interbreeding and we are also [all] getting smarter. The fact is for example that if sub-Saharan Blacks with an average IQ of 70 were to interbreed with Ashkenazi Jews with an average IQ of 117, the offspring would in fact be somewhere between the two groups; somewhere around an average of IQ of 90! This IS "profound" but it is hardly "generally positive!" Those offspring are more likely to end up in jail or on welfare than the offspring of the pure Ashkenazi Jew. ...

As an evolutionary biologist working on insects, I had turned to this book to help fill in some gaps in my conceptualization of how evolution and selection may be affecting humans today. But while I don't think this book is poorly written or of no merit, I had a hard time getting much from it. In fact, I got more from the review of the anthropological research regarding fossil discoveries than from any of Will's attempts at synthesis.

For me, the biggest flaw of the book is a lack of a true vision of what "evolution" actually MEANS in this context. As obvious or as simple as it sounds, there is never much discussion of this fundamentally key issue. Instead, examples and speculation are given that the gene pool of Homo sapiens is changing, and allele frequencies of many genes are undoubtedly different than they were millenia ago. It takes a whole book to make this one point, yet from there, the only synthesis Will can make is that because allele frequencies are changing, therefore selection MUST be acting on them. Mostly speculative with little in the way of support, his treatment of an interesting topic just falls short. In other words, it's all bun and no burger. It may still be worth reading, as it is written very clearly and without the pitfalls of scientific jargon...making it a brief read. But I think you could do much better than to use this as your source for intellectual inquiry...I'm going to look around from something better.

Christopher Wills puts to rest a common belief that humans, having mastered their environment, have brought their own evolution to a standstill, now exempted from the pressures of natural selection. Humans, through their manipulation of the environment both deliberate and unintended, have actually increased the pace of evolution, both their own and that of other animals. Wills brings the professional knowledge of population genetics to this subject to write a popular science book which will challenge the reader far more than many other popular science books.

He fills the beginning of the book with many insightful examples which hold the attention and educate the reader. Where we encounter more familiar examples, Wills takes the subject several steps deeper in a way which will keep more veteran science readers interested in addition to illuminating Wills' thesis. For example, with the malaria/sickle cell anemia phenomenon, he goes on to show many other patterns of balanced polymorphism and also elaborates on the role that the appearance of human agriculture has played in causing this phenomenon in the first place. His example of the Tibetans evolutionary adaptation to their environment truly fascinated me.

In the next part, he presents a thorough evolutionary account of the emergence of humans from Australopithecus, including useful comparisons with our great ape relatives and some special focus on our recently extinct closest relative, Neandertal. Far more than just a summary of human evolution 101, this section of the book demands the most attention out of the reader. In addition to providing the outline for human evolution, Wills takes the opportunity to introduce the reader to many in depth concepts of population genetics which play crucially into his thesis. Don't feel frustrated if you find yourself needing to reread chapters in this section, where the first part may have breezed by for you. You will miss a lot of Wills' thesis if you drop out at this point. I found the graphics in this section crucial to helping me understand, and I only wish the author and/or publisher had provided more.

Finally the last part presents the final unfolding of Wills' thesis bringing careful attention to the ongoing evolution of human mental capacities, in addition to a keen focus on cultural factors at work. Wills introduces the idea of "culturgen," E.O. Wilson's less popular competing synonym of Richard Dawkins' "meme" in describing interplay between culture and biology. This choice of terms proves apt, however, in that Wills' evolutionary thesis proves far more complex than the conceptual elegance of Dawkins' selfish gene theory.

Wills concentrates far more on population genetics rather than the individual gene. His interest here lies in the unexpressed genetic potential of an individual, in addition to the extended phenotype of expressed genes. He focusses far more on the population, environmental, cultural, developmental and greater genetic contexts in which formerly hidden genetic potential becomes expressed. Instead of natural selection granting a biological reprieve for the human species, it has instead selected for genetic diversity, both hidden and expressed, and Wills explores the ramifications of this. Where Wills' evolutionary outlook lacks the conceptual elegance of selfish gene and selfish meme theory, he more than makes up for it in dealing more directly and realistically with the actual complexities of human evolutionary realities.

This book stands as one of the more challenging and rewarding popular science books to deal with human evolution.

The highlight of this book is the series of anecdotes about the creation of various high-profile Web sites and the people behind them. Unfortunately, they lacked the depth to prevent them from being mere soundbites - quite the tease.

Enjoyable at first, once the book turns to speculation about the future of the Internet and its role, it becomes apparent that this book was penned by an old-school journalist who at best lacks the experience with the technology necessary to write about it, and at worst could be labled a technophobe.

The end result is a simplistic overview of the Internet as it relates to the media. Written in 1997, the book quickly loses credibility with the section devoted to the Y2K bug which was summarized with a statement to the effect that, no matter what we do to try to avoid it, it would definitely cause massive problems for everyone in every imaginable way, and the flippant comment about the improbability of affordable cable Internet access being made available to the public any time in the near future.

Harper is better off sticking to concrete facts. It's when he starts making unfounded predictions that his credibility - and the book - go down the drain.

I do not need to say that Christopher Harper's And That's the Way It Will Be: News and Information in a Digital World is outdated; any book attempting to forecast internet capabilities in 1997 will inevitably be so by 2002. But I do need to say that this book represents an almost sickening trend in the very field it covers. Harper's hyper-journalistic style of "shorter is better" prose, analysis and famous anecdotes collapses under its fatuity, leaving the reader with the dissatisfaction of accounting for the book's missing substance and the time spent reading it.

That said, Harper does situate the current boom of internet news services within the larger journalistic profession and that entity's concerns for its continuing role in American society. He supplies charts that measure audience interests and recommends how the internet may be tapped to cater to those interests. Through biographies of Bill Gates, Elizabeth Osder and Richard Duncan, Harper suggests tactics for continuing journalistic excellence, including exploitation of internet media capabilities and the possibility for news stories unlimited by traditional print space. Most importantly, if judged by contemporary publications (little in this area, at least in book form, has been published since 1998) he raises the question of internet ethics in relation to the increasing battle between immediacy and accuracy of what's reported, a question not foreign to American news enterprises of the past century, and Harper unfortunately lacks an answer like so many other news writers reflecting on the state of their profession.

Harper is easy to read and offers a simple overview of the "genre" of news websites, and if you can get past the constant prophesies for the collapse of AOL, the annoyance at "herky, jerky" free streaming video clips, descriptions of rounds to the parties of now defunct "dot coms," and the impending apocalypse of Y2K, it is not wholly uninteresting. It is not wholly informative either.

Why would anyone want to listen to dark, dreary stories of the undead, Angels that drink blood, this book was very misrepresented in the title. "Deamon" fantasies is much more appropriate. I was looking forward to a spiritual uplifting, instead I threw all the tapes and box into the trash, right where it belongs.