If you have a serious interest in John Northrop's Flying Wings, this is absolutely the best book available on the subject. Authors did a wonderful job pulling together photos, including many in color. The color photo section also includes some B-2 pictures.

But more important, the written narrative is excellent. The book covers Northrop's earliest days in aircraft design, and deals with all of his flying wing and tailless aircraft designs, especially the N-1, N-9, B-35, & B-49 projects.

Worth the money if you're a flying wing fan!

Although I am a student of Poliical Extremism, I found this book very tedious. I have found many other books, scholarly and otherwise, much more interesting and worthwhile.

This fact filled tome will aggravate those with a fixed set of assumptions whether from the Left or the Right. The reason? They view themselves as exceptionally virtuous, morally superior, and they're convinced they are middle-of-the-road as to their beliefs. It doesn't take very long to see that this point of view leads to a distorted perception of reality i.e. if Dan Rather sees himself as middle of the road then moderate Libertarians would be far Right in the pantheon of his worldview. It's the same story with the abortion issue, particularly from the Right.

John George, a professor of Political Science and Sociology at Central Oklahoma University and Laird Wilcox, founder of the Wilcox Collection of Contemporary Political Movements, are the book's authors. Wilcox has the largest collection of extremist literature in America and it can be found at the University of Kansas, home of copious fields of wheat, endless horizons and a highly successful basketball program.

They cover every facet of extreme political movements including what radical groups exist, who joins up and why, what do they want to accomplish, how far are they willing to go to achieve those ends, and the degree of danger we face should they achieve their ends. They begin by summarizing pre-60's movements, then morph into the makeup of conspiracy theories and what motivates extremists. They thoroughly document and detail a listing of contemporary groups in addition to adding an in-depth appendix of fake quotes and fabricated documents.

If you've ever wondered how the far-Left in America could fawn at the feet of a butcher like Fidel Castro or lap up the distorted and inaccurate screeds of a false intellectual like Noam Chomsky then go no further, it's all here. I'll share with you some insights in the book.

For the alienated and "ideologically prone", identification with a power figure or someone held up as an intellectual guru can serve as a mechanism to free them from anxieties and doubt. A failed ideology such as Socialism can thus continue to embody all their fantasies, utopian ideals, and hopes for the future. This phenomenon is repeated over and over throughout history from the heaven-on-earth promises of Communism to the heaven-hereafter central to the teachings of radical Christianity as well as radical Islamicism.

The "true believer" tends to believe in theories with little or no evidence to support his conclusions or predictions. Eric Hoffer addresses this condition in his book by the same name. Put another way "true believers" tend to believe what they tend to believe, a form of "petito pricipii", where dogma is presented which assumes the truth of the premise. It assumes that the thesis speaks for itself.

After pounding home this theme with his followers the guru uses selected facts, working backwards from his addled assumptions, to support his flawed thesis. Rituals are often invoked to soothe the listener by incorporating what amounts to the elements commonly found in the practice of hypnosis.

There is much, much more and it's all worthwhile if you're a student of people and how they come to believe what they do. This is the best book of its kind I've read, and I wish to say thanks to the authors, "I needed that". It was getting just too difficult to understand my Libertarian-Socialist-Communist friends let alone my friends of strong religious conviction. And, these are my friends! they're not even trying to kill me! We're a lucky bunch here in the USA.

This book is an exposee of some of the groups judged "extreme" by the authors on the far left and far right. These include communists, socialists, black nationalists, militias, white supremacists, Jewish extremists, Klansmen of various sorts, NeoNazis, and various religious fundamentalists. Fortunately, the authors do not take the smug politically correct stance that is taken by many academics writing about this topic. We learn that indeed the communist parties (CPUSA, for example) were likely linked to the Soviet Union. We learn that the militias are largely not racist. And, we are told that the events of Waco and Ruby Ridge were indeed totalitarian power plays. A decent account of some conspiracy theories is given as well. Overall, this book provides a much more objective view of "extremism" than is usually given by the politically correct in academia.

I really liked Harrison's gloomy '70s novels, the Viriconium stuff as well as _The Committed Men_, and _The Centauri Device_. I'd all but lost track of him, though, except for a few short stories, before _Signs of Life_ was published.

It's a strange novel, ultimately quite affecting, though I admit I didn't quite "get" it all. The genre is rather odd: sort of an SF analog to Magical Realism: that is to say, SFnal things happen (or, rather, one SFnal thing), but the explanation might as well be a typical Magical Realist explanation for Fantastical events.

Anyway: the story is the first person narrative of one Mick "China" Jones, a middle-aged Englishman. It seems to be set in the early '90s. China is involved with a very unpleasant character named Choe Ashton: the two of them run a shady biological courier and toxic waste disposal business. China falls in love with Isobel Avens (a significant last name, that), a much younger woman. After some happy years together, her dreams of flight, as well as possibly her unhappiness with China's dealings with Choe, begin to drive her away, finally she leaves him for a doctor who does some advanced bioengineering (here is where the SF theme sneaks in). All comes to a believable and moving and depressing end.

A disturbing book about a woman who wants to become a bird and her amoral lover. Picked by Graham Evans as one of his favorite books of 1998. It's short enough to be read in 1 night if you have insomnia. If you didn't finish, you'll automatically have insomnia until you do. It was probably designed to be read in the bathroom, and that's where I'd leave it.

The book is very light on written information, but if it's pictures you're looking for, this is a good book.

For those interested, the book also discusses "cousins" of the flying wings, Northrop projects such as XP-79, XP-56, X-4, etc.