always. Doris Kearns does a find job exploring the psyche of this most complex, conflicted man. She had a unique opportunity, spending unlimited time with LBJ at his ranch after he had retired from public life. She is in fact his very personal
biographer, this being a task he didn't want to do himself.
There is great reliance on his dreams & the interpertation of what they mean. The answers are simple & so pat that it is doubtful they were dreams at all but merely a vehicle for LBJ to explain his actions .
To her credit Ms. Kearns does not dwell on Vietnam. Important to be sure but this was a whole life biography & she did cover the war adequately.
Cultivation of mentors was a method used by LBJ throughout his life to better himself & led to his sucesses. However, by the time he became vice president he was own his own, isolated for maybe the first time in his life.
Like presidents before him & since LBJ labored in the shadow of FDR. Few presidents, Jefferson & T. Roosevelt excepted, have attained greatness without winning a major war. This sad fact was apparent to LBJ even as we got caught in the quagmire of Vietnam with no honorable way out. Vietnam is how LBJ will be defined in the future.[...]

This book is in an easy to read format. It has activities for the reader to do, so that he/she will gain a better knowledge of Microsoft Office 2000. Some parts of the book were difficult to understand, but overall it is a well written book.

I had a great interest in reading this book purely for information on latex allergy. The book in several chapters dealt with the science of the subject well and explained it so I could understand. Hwever, I did not think that it read well. It is laced with exclamation points and alarmist wording. The case studies enclosed were helpful to put a face on the science and understand his message.

An allergy to latex kills. While the book is somewhat dated (1997), it accurately predicted precisely what would happen if this issue was not addressed. The issue was, indeed, ignored. I am highly allergic to latex, which pervades both the medical and consumer world. I have spent too much time educating physicians, nurses, and hospitals educating them on latex and its dangers. I am tired of having to do so. I must as my life depends upon it. I've decided to give a copy to my internist and my allergist. It turns out, I have been allergic to latex as early as 1983, but wasn't diagnosed until 1997. While it may seem alarmist, the cause requires it. Another problem is that it omits important information for patient populations. This may well be the result from the five years since its publication. Nonethless, it is an excellent resource to supplement research from publications in medical journals. If you are unfamiliar with medical terms, keep a medical dictionary (Tabor's or Dorland's) on hand.

I've always wondered why people would bother to spend considerable amounts of time and energy researching, interviewing, compiling facts and writing biographies of people they obviously intensely dislike. Marion Meade's disdain for Woody Allen is almost palpable on every page of this book. Basically, she presents Allen as a contemptible, meanspirited, self-absorbed, self-loathing misanthrope capable of teutonic cruelty and with nary a redeeming quality. So the question is: why bother? Sure, her subject is full of flaws (big surprise) and probably won't be publishing a guide to successful relationships anytime soon, but he does deserve better than this. That said, this book isn't your usual Kitty Kelley trash. It is meticulously researched and gracefully written, at times insightful and illuminating and extensively annotated. The author has done her homework and written this book with considerable effort and care. However, I couldn't get over the fact that she seems to more or less hate Woody Allen, even while describing the factors in his childhood and background that might have led to the behavior she condemns. This is, however, the best of all the Woody Allen biographies (the others were poorly researched or simply sycophantic), and worth reading, if one reads with an open mind.

Meade's book will never be mistaken for a work of great biography. The book is fascinating nevertheless. Particularly for all the gossipy stuff. We are spared the whining of Mia's own book, and the get rich quick trash of the maid who wrote a book about the one of '90s greatest scandals. I'm an enormous Allen fan and have seen each and everyone of his movies--Meade doesn't pretend to be a movie critic, but spins some interesting tales. I admit I enjoyed the gossip. It is actually pretty well balanced--there is no defending Woody's actions of course. But Mia has long since been martyred and Meade tells us just what a kook Mia is. While completely unauthorized, it is still accurate. Eric Lax's bio, with Woody's blessing, is the better of the two most famous one (including this) and has been reissued. They are fun to read as companion pieces however. I have not yet read John Baxter's recent bio, perhaps in the near future--so I cannot compare. If you love Woody's art, stick to the critical pieces by the academics (Reconstructing Woody, and countless ones from university presses). If you want gossip and some insight, start here. A fun read to learn more about own of our greatest artists--warts and all.

With 'The Unruly Life of Woody Allen', Marion Meade has written a delightful, gossipy life story of the irreplacable New York artist. Anyone who has seen his work knows the basic gist of the story: raised in Flatbush during the '40s, a dropout of NYU film school, a self-made auteur by his late 20s. A filmmaker whose work manages to nostalgize, lampoon, and transcend the New York Jewish intellectual scene.

Who is the man behind all this? Marion Meade supplies a lot of details about his life without ever really getting to the heart of the man. I can't fault her for that, since I'm not sure any writer could understand someone at once so sentimental and mean spirited, so artistic and tired, so trailblazing and so old fashioned. Why do we need to? His films speak for himself, and his life speaks for itself. We don't need to like or understand the man to be entertained by his movies.

This book is a gossipy, guilty pleasure. It will hold the interest of anyone curious about what the Woodman eats for breakfast, which co-stars are still his friends, what a declining audience has done to his career. The Mia Farrow fiasco is covered in some detail -- probably a little too much time in spent on the custody trial and subsequent legal problems with his film production company. The book covers no new ground but does provide a lot of new details. I enjoyed it and would recommend it to fans.

This is not a review of the content of the book, rather I'd like to comment on the publishing quality. This book is an "instabook", which I assume to mean that it is printed after it is ordered. There doesn't seem to be any mention of this on the book description page on Amazon. The results of this "instabook" printing are as follows: low quality paper cover and pages; sloppy cut on the exposed edges of the book; numerous typos - averaging 1 per 1.5 pages; misalignment of paragraphs sometimes cutting words in half. All this would be acceptable if the intent of this book and others like it was to deliver classic books at a very affordable price. But! for [the price] it is a complete RIPOFF!

At the heart of the book are the six (or two, depending on how you count) stories about Prince Florizel ... these stories if any capture something of what "The Arabian Nights" would have been if it had been written in the nineteenth century. The central character is an impossibly noble and high-minded Prince Florizel, who the author appears to believe in with the utmost seriousness - at least until the very end. They tend to begin with a mystery so intriguing that it doesn't even matter if the solution is less brilliant than we would have thought. "Ruritanian romance" is the best description. Ruritania itself is not so Ruritanian as this.

The non-Florizel stories are none of them favourites of mine - which is merely to say that I don't rank them up there with, say, "The Bottle Imp". All of Stevenson's short fiction is worth reading.

World of Chemistry is a good introduction for those who've never taken a chemistry class before. It goes into great detail on how to successfully do everything there is in chemistry: identify compounds, determine atomic mass, and atomic weight, etc. It should be noted, however, that the last few chapteris in the book, starting with Chapter 12 are very confusing and hard to understand. At this point, you'd probably be better off listening to the teacher's lectures, or searching for another similar book. Beyond this point (Chapter 12), the book is worthless. If you want to buy this book, I suggest that you buy it used, or wait for it to go on sale.

I am a big fan of wood burning stoves. Admittedly, I've never actually owned one or even used one, but from what I've seen on television and in the movies, I think they are fabulous. However, even though I never actually read this book, I cannot recommend it. Books are for [non-winners].

If you are THINKING about a wood stove, and wondering if it is an environmentally correct decision, if there are any real benefits to it, and have a bucket full of money available to you, this is the book to help make your decision. If you are a life long environmentalist who believes in getting off the grid but have a limited income and want practical advice about chosing a stove, used or economical, and installing it in your home, don't bother. I found this book useless.

This book has a wealth of information for anyone who is truly interested in wood heating.

A truly dreadful book which trots out the most dismal clichés about art in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It has nothing new to say.

The book does exactly what it is supposed to do--present focused and simplified theoretical discussions of major issues in modernism. People whose reading already includes advanced art historical theory might be disappointed, but they shouldn't be reading on this level anyway. A good intro survey text.