When I sat down with "The Beast", I was not planning to read the entire book in a single sitting. Terry Adams did a superb job at putting the reader into the lives of the real life characters. Book very well researched. Its a must for those who prefer "fact" rather than "fiction". Very well done with particularly good detailing of events.

This is a well written book that I believe does a good job of exploring the life of James Woods. I recommend this as a good read for any true crime buff who is interested in serial murders.

The Eye Of The Beast was the most awesome book I have ever read! I read it straight through in one day because I could not put it down. As soon as I picked the book up, I was instantly hooked. I guarantee you will love this book!

I was having an online conversation with a friend some time ago, and he recommended Stuart Woods as an author to read. I started with Dirt, then Choke, then continued reading, but I have been most pleasantly surprised by this book. The main characters are all very well written. The novel was also more espionage oriented, which Wood's masterfully wrote, with only a few minor mistakes that one (like myself) who has studied something of Russian history, would find fault with. The novel was so well written though, none of those come to mind at this moment. Then again, the novel was puplished in 86, and I didn't start my serious Russian studies until after the fall of the wall. Many thanks to Mr. Woods for an excellent novel.

This is one of, maybe the first of, Wood's books with Will Lee and Kate Rule as the main characters. This one leans more on Rule, her role in the CIA to uncover a Russian plot, and the attempts by Company agents to prevent her discovery from coming to light. I didn't know this one existed and was glad to add it to my Stuart shelf. A good read.

This book was my first exposure to Stuart Woods. I read it when it first came out in paperback in the late 80's. Since then I have read all of Woods' books and have without fail enjoyed all of them. In recent years his books seem more cranked out based on the quality of the writing, but I really can't complain since I still can't put 'em down once I start reading.

Dr. Wood and his colleagues have been publishing these same arguements regarding their reservations about the Rorschach Test for several years. Despite scholars' efforts to explain the authors' misunderstandings and misrepresentations of the instrument, its current use, and the research regarding the Rorschach's psychometric properties, these authors persist in repeating inaccuracies regarding its scientific properties.

This book is an embarressment to scientific experts who actually understand the research that these authors present with such misunderstanding.

- STRONGLY recommended to all observers of how science impacts culture; certainly required reading for all interested in how psychology influences society.
- "Rorschach test" has entered the language as an idiom for an ambiguous stimulus that prompts responses showing more about those who respond than about the stimulus itself. This book tells the fascinating story of how a parler game took on this role in popular culture and is worth reading for this reason alone. But the book tells a more profoundly important story.
- Readers are likely to come away with a sober view of how psychologists' clients and patients and those caught in the legal system, including innocent children pulled between divorcing parents, are at the mercy of those who evaluate them. The importance of controversy about the Rorschach then becomes clear.
- In an evenhanded, open minded, careful, interesting manner Wood and colleagues give a simple, but non-condescending overview of the science involved in controversies about the Rorschach -- and there is definitely real science to be considered. One need not come to a technical understanding to appreciate the practical importance of the scientific controversies associated with the Rorschach.
- Rank "What's Wrong With the Rorschach" with Stephen J. Gould's classic book, "The Mismeasure of Man," in showing how we can injure ourselves and others by failing to heed scientific evidence that disconfirms our biases.
- I have been using the Rorschach in my professional practice for about 25 years. I was trained by Rorschach experts. I've been teaching psychologists in training to use the Rorschach for the past 15 years. For much of that time I have been a cautious defender of the inkblot test. Paraphrasing an old joke, I believed there was a pony buried in all the Rorschach's accreted manure. My doubts grew as students working under my supervision were unable to confirm Rorschach claims. This book shows that others shared my doubts: Most who have tried to test the Rorschach, including many true believers, have come away frustrated. But "Rorschachers" seem unable to see the problems and consumers have not had a fair chance to judge for themselves.
- Wood and colleagues have tilted the balance for me. I will no longer be using the Rorschach in psychological evaluations. Their book is now required reading for my students.

It is amazing tha the Rorschach is used at all these days by folk that call themselves "scientists". This book is a clear indictment of how psychology is not a science because it holds onto beliefs such as the Rorschach as a valid and reliable measure of personality. A must read for lawyers who wish to challenge junk science in the courtroom!

This is more of a slow, slice-of-life historical fiction type story with great character development than an exciting, gripping drama. Initially, my reaction was that it had a lack of can't-put-it-down, compelling drama, and so I put it down! Then months later, I decided to pick it up again and was surprised at how well I remembered the characters. I picked it up & put it down several times, but in the end I feel like I'll remember these characters for a long time, & feel like I have a real sense of what it was like to live in that time.

The story is mostly in Albany (NY) and New York City, around the turn of the (20th) century, with 2 trips to England, too. It centers around one family, whose patriarch built their house and a thriving construction/carpentry business, as well as a reputation for an upstanding, devout member of his church. His oldest daughter sings in the choir & dotes on him, but eventually ends up in NYC, married to a doctor. His oldest son becomes a doctor & finds Albany too quiet & goes off to NYC to set up his new practice, where he ultimately finds a wife, and yet seems unsatisfied & often drinks to excess. His younger daughter turns out to have an even better voice than her older sister & goes off to NYC also, where she gets & gives vocal lessons & has a long-term relationship with a married man. His younger son is giving him trouble, so he takes him out of school & puts him to work as a carpenter's apprentice, which work he turns out to have a real talent for, & ultimately, he, too goes to NYC to work on building bigger buildings. With so much of her family there, the mother of this family starts spending more & more time in NYC & less & less with her husband, leaving him feeling neglected.

It was fascinating to try to imagine what NYC was like at that time, with the horse-drawn carriages & trolleys going down the street, & the commotion caused by the doctor-son getting one of those new-fangled horseless carriages. If what you like about historical fiction is putting yourself into that time & imagining what it was like to live in that time & place, then I think you will enjoy this novel.

They don't make 'em like this anymore. There'll be people who don't dig this kind of thing, but for anyone who likes Camus or Mann, or even George Eliot, this novel really delivers. It's funny, and genuinely intellectually stimulating. It helps to be interested in religious matters, but it's not essential. I picked it up for no better reason than the cover appealed, and I read the first chapter in the bookstore. I recommend it to all you crazies and subversives out there who THINK.

Chase Scene is a "so-so" book. It has a little bit of action in it which makes it better. For example I love the part when Hugh and Tap find out that Abner (the guy they met when they were camping) is a criminal. I'm not going to tell what happens after this because I want people to read this book. It isn't the best book I've read, but it is a cool book. James Wood use a informal and funny way to write the dialogues...

I use this book as a text in a university course. It gives a broad-brush approach to introducing the field of transportation and the various modes (planes, trains, trucks, boats). It looks at the field from both a user's and a provider's perspective and has great "real-world" examples and problems. It needs a little updating, especially regarding the regulatory environment which has changed significantly since this edition was published. I chose this book over 3 or 4 others because it is very readable and not too technical. A good introductory text.

"The Golovlyov Family" by Shchedrin is an excellent book. I've read both American and English literature, but this is a whole new literature form that seems to have the best of both worlds; it has the vivid descriptions of English literature, yet the simplicity of American works, that is, there's no nonesense dialog of meaninglessness that's often found in English novels. My first thought at reading the book was how could a translation be SO good, and how good would the Russian version be?

There is much emotion in the book, and the feelings permeate or pulse out of the book, absorbing and drawing in the reader like a good book should. Although set in the 1800's at the time the first Russian revolution ( I'm by no means a historian by the way), the book is not heavily focused on politics as works of Orwell are. The political affairs are a very distant and small prop on this rich stage of a book.

When reading the book, however, I strongly recommend the note taking of names, because some characters are referred to by more than one name. It's not hard to follow if you jot a few reminders down when introduced to each character, this will save much confusion later.

On a final note, if you're reading this book, read it purely for it's own sake. This isn't an adventure book with a climax and an unbelievable series of events at the end, so if that's what you're expecting, you'll regret reading the book. However, if you're after some brilliantly rich literature, with excellent characters, settings, and unfoldings of events, then this is a book I highly recommend. It truly is a masterpiece.

As far as I could tell the only other book that competes with this book is "World Woods in Color". I had the chance to compare the two side by side and here is my take:

The two books are very similar in many ways. They both include about the same number of woods (around 280) and they both have roughly the same sort of information about the woods. Of course 280 is a tiny number compared to the number of woods in the world, but as far as I can tell these books seem to be about the best there is in print on the subject, and these books do probably cover most the woods one can get on the retail market here in the US.

In any case, the small distinctions I noticed between theset two books were:

"Useful Woods" is organized by scientific name, which means that for most of us to find a particular wood we have to start at the index. "World Woods" is alphabetical by common name, which is easier unless you know the wood by a name other than what the authors considered to be the most common name.

"Useful Woods" is published by the International Wood Collectors Society and this orientation is apparent in the text. There is information such as the origins of the scientific names, and the sources for small samples, which most woodworkers are not likely to care much about, although it is interesting on occasion to read this information.

The color pictures of the woods in "World Woods" are larger but the pictures in "Useful Woods" are plenty large enough for me (2" x 3"). "Useful Woods" includes black and white end-grain pictures, which are useful for identification of an unknown sample. Single pictures are always hard when one is trying to capture something as variable as wood and so it's not surprising that some pictures are better than others. For example, the pictures of Lacewood in both books completely fail to capture the amazing grain of that wood, however, I thought that most of the pictures where pretty good in both books overall.

On average "World Woods" probably includes just a little bit more information on the working qualities of most woods but both books are somewhat thin in this area, at least from a woodworker's perspective.

"Useful Woods" was written in the US where "World Woods" was written in England. This shows in a number of areas, the most important of which are the woods included and the availability information about the woods. This was the final deciding point for me. I figured that everything else being about equal, which I judged it to be, it made more sense for me to get a book that focused on the woods I can get here in the US and that gives me availability information that is focused on the US Market.

So, I went ahead and bought "A Guide to Useful Woods of the World" and so far I'm happy with my choice.

Every once in a while you read a book that absolutly floors you. Mystery, the second book in Peter Straub's Blue Rose trilogy, does just that. It starts out with an excellent opening, a near death experience to the book's main charechter Tom Passomre, and takes off. Tom comes out of this experience with a strange fascination for death and murder and is confronted by an old man named Lamont who shares his obsession. Together they begin to investigat two murders, one past and one present. What follows is an excellent tale of suspense, deceit, and of course murder.

What makes this novel work so well is how intimatlly Straub understands his charechters. He's not satisfied to leave this excellent story with card board cut out charechters. Instead he breathes life into it and before long they are no longer just people on a page. Instead they are old friends who you come to know very intimatley. For me the main thing that makes charechters work in a novel is dialougue and Straub has no problem with this. He makes every word and emotion believable. He engulfs you into these people's lives and you genuinlly care about everything that happens to them.

I don't dare to give away the end but let me say it will certainly come as a shock to even the most experienced readers of mystery novels. With this book Straub has catapulted himself to the top of my list of favorite author. Here's hoping for many more years of excellent writing just like this from one of today's best but least known authors.

The "hook" with Peter Straub's novel was that a popular horror author has written a book titled "mystery". Had the author changed genres? This was what I wondered in High School when I first picked up the book. I had read Ghost Story (excellent) by Mr. Straub and was intrigued that he would write a book titled "mystery" with no apparent supernatural creatrues or doings found in the pages. But what authors like Peter Straub remind us of is that horror and fear and dread are all psychological in essence and that you can be scared and affected by a book that has no ghosts or no monsters. "Mystery" stands as a perfect novel in my eyes. While Ghost Story may be Straub's best "horror" novel, and one of the best ever I might add, this novel achieves greatness amongst ANY class of fiction. The characters are wonderful. Straub not only makes you love them, namely Tom Pasmore the antagonist and his mentor Lamont Von Heilitz, but he makes you be there WITH them. You long to learn the mysteries of the past. You long to learn the ways of a sleuth. I was right alongside Tom Pasmore in this story. I felt for him, I grieved with him, and I detected with him. Simple as that. The plot sounds simple but is so much more complex. Tom Pasmore, a young boy who is nearly killed in the beginning of the novel, takes up the art of mystery solving. He is fueled by a wonderful, reclusive neighbor who was once a "detective" himself. Tom then applies his knowledge to try and find a killer in the present and ultimately in the past. Mystery is about a young man's journey into adulthood and the hard truths about life. It is about realizing that secrets and untold truths swirl around us every day and that sometimes finding them out can be satisfying and other times dreadful. I left this story with a sadness in my heart. I simply didn;t want to leave the story. Mystery has suspense. Mystery has heartache. Mystery has, of course, a mystery. But what Mystery has most of is heart. It is simply one of the richest and most haunting stories you will ever read. One final note in case you didn't know. Mystery is the middle book of a trilogy that beings with Koko and ends with The Throat. You don't have to read Koko to read Mystery, and vice versa. But you DO have to read them both before reading The Throat. One more thing... The Throat is almost as good as Mystery. Almost.

Let me prefrace this by saying this happens to be my favorite book of all time. That having been said; Peter Staub, like Stephen King, is no Dickens here people. I will not try to compare him to Dickens. What Straubs writes are great characters and even better plot twist. "Mystery," his best work, is about Tom Pasmore a boy who view of the world is changed forever by a near death experience. With a new respect for his life and a fascination with death, Tom Pasmore begins a journey into his small town's past (as well as his own), to solve two murders; one commited in the present and one commited 3 decades ago. It is an amzing story of a boy growing up, finding himself. This is a taught thrilling adventure that I am SURE will become one of your favorite novels.

It's fast fun read that you will not regret.