I ran across this book at the library looking for substantive books on chickens--the cute cover caught my eye. This is a very entertaining and enjoyable read!

I'd recommend this book as one you'll finish quickly, share with a friend or two, and want to read again yourself one day.

This extremely short book really qualifies as more essay than "book," and as much as I enjoyed it, I wondered who would shell out hard-earned cash for its slim contents.

Then I found myself handing it around to people as I would share a cartoon or funny email. "Zip through it over lunch," I said, "Take it instead of a magazine while you're waiting for your oil change or dentist appointment."

And so I learned what this book is best for: for a few bucks, you can pass a smile around to your friends. The eye-catching cover is hard for anyone to resist, and the illustrations are great. If you know someone who's been adopted by a stray animal, this is perfect for them. But if not, pass it on anyway. It's a light, funny read that will make anyone smile.

In Grime's hands this unusual bird manages a truly universal appeal. I loved the pleasure it seemed to take in sneaking up behind a skittish cat and sending the cat vertically airborne with a sudden cackle. Then there's the pet store employee who tries to explain that they don't carry chicken feed, because a chicken is not a "particular animal." Grimes has an eye and ear for gem moments like these.

This is an absolutely adorable story about a man who comes to know and love a chicken who suddenly appeared in his backyard. I first read the authors article about the enigmatic and willful chicken in the New York Times and I actually saved that article because I enjoyed it so thoroughly. My Fine Feathered Friend is just as charming as that article was and better since the author is able to elaborate more on the chicken's fantastic personality and the personalities of the numerous cats that interact with the tenacious bird. The author really knows how to describe animals and the cats encounters with the chicken are truly vivid and terribly amusing. You will not forget this chicken. Its personality lingers long after the final page. The book is a joy and I highly recommend it. Thank you, Mr. Grimes, for sharing such a delightful story!

This is an extraordinary book. It is written by an author with a first class mind and genuine curiosity about his subject. Whilst one may not agree with all of it, the writing is a delight and he does not shirk dealing with controversial issues such as the influence of homosexuality on the stage and the corrupt financial practices in relation to theatre tickets, etc. Even though it was written for the 1967-1968 season, it still resonates and viewed in retrospect, it provides crucial evidence relative to the aetiology of the culture wars.

William Goldman's groundbreaking book The Season is all it's cracked up to be and more. Though a number of the people he deals with are no longer with us, many of the shows have been forgotten, and the ticket prices are quite a bit higher, it's astonishing how much the Broadway of the late 1960s resembles the Broadway of today. The same problems, the same headaches, the same disappointments, and the same triumphs are all still a part of the Great White Way. No Broadway enthusiast should be without this book; The Season is a stunning history--and current events--lesson on Broadway theatre.

Having lived in New York for so long it's scary how accurate "The Season" is, although written over 30 years ago.

Broadway has become a tourist trap with very little to offer serious theatergoers anymore except spectacle shows.

Each chapter in this book shows how Broadway was crippled with each passing season...and it makes sense that this is what it's come to.

But the book is very funny (especially the chapter on critics where he launches an all-out assault on then-New York Times reporter Clive Barnes) and explains everything you'll ever need to know about how plays and musicals are put together.

Oh, yes: there's plenty of dirt, gossip, anecdotes and name-dropping...Neil Simon, Carl Reiner, Tennessee Williams, David Merrick and NBC Reporter Edwin Newman drop in for cameos.

As someone from a a profession where problem solving is a core ability, I was amazed from chapter to chapter how the members of the Garbage Project went about their endeavors to successful results. They truly show how something so ubiquitous(garbage) can contain so much information about our lives and our behaviors.

The men and women involved in this research project open the bag on the realities of this human behavior to shed light on how we act as consumers and as members of society in general. Our political tendencies are also exposed in investigating how groups endeavor to address the issue of solid waste disposal, often to unbelievable results, totally contrary to the desired end goal.

I wholeheartedly agree with some other reviewers in that this should be required reading for anyone interested in environmental issues, from the simplest aluminum can collector to the most active environmentalists.

This is billed as an archaeology book, but I would call it more accurately an environmental/psycological/science read, never very technical, often entertaining and always eye-opening.

Rubbish should be required reading for anybody who things he/she cares about environmentalal issues. Until reading the book, I would have never guessed all the facts--yes, hard, cold facts--documented in its pages. Garbage disposal is the ultimate out-of-sight-out-of-mind issue in our hurried consumer culture. So much of our opinions on garbage comes from an uninformed media (i.e. the ridiculously high estimates of landfill space taken up by disposal diapers). People act, lobby and debate based on knowledge that, as the book shows, is usually false.

As wasteful as we are, the authors present interesting comparisons of American families and Mexican families. The results will surprise you, to say the least. Also well presented are rational comments on the always present issue of recycling.

In all, this is a fascinating book. Like all great book of this nature, it is scientific but an easy read. Highly recommended!

This is a remarkable book. Using a scientific approach to rubbish, a team of archaeologists from the University of Arizona dive into the layers of what we throw away and reveal more about us then we can even begin imagine.

Every page unfolds an interesting tidbit of trivia, an astouding insight into those things that divide human beings socioeconomically, and those quirky little things we do, quite often un- or sub-consciously.

Who would have imagined rubbish could be so interesting and, oddly enough, so wonderful? You'll never be able to look at your trash, or your neighbor's, the same way again.

From 1941-71 Classics Illustrated comics introduced millions to abridged, comics-style version of literary masterpieces. Classics Illustrated tells of the birth of this popular medium, founded by Russian Jewish immigrant Kanter whose operations saw both the heyday and decline of the golden age of comics. The focuses on artists' creations is particularly involving.

The thing I appreciate most about this book is the soberness (with no lapses into pretentiousness or portentousness) the author brings to his subject. A survey of Classics Illustrated, to be sure, could have very easily elicited yet another visually engaging pretty-picture book saddled with a stridently jokey, throwaway text --ala Chronicle Books. We can be thankful that the tone here is intelligent, the level of detail scholarly, and very few, if any, stones are left unturned. The author has done all his homework, giving all known writers, editors, artists of the series coverage commensurate with their contribution.

This is a thoughtful, caring volume that is so much more than a tribute to a long-gone comic series, although it could be read as that too. One can't help but feel this is a primer on the way more books about popular culture really ought to be written.

About every five or ten years, when the nay sayers are about to bury Classics Illustrated again, they bloom from the earth like the Phoenix rising from the flames. And now, Willian B. Jones Jr has taken the baton for this decade, for this century, and brought new and exiciting joy to the legion of Classics Illustrated collectors. How much more new information is there to be found on the wonderful illustrated stories that Al Kanter first brought to us in Octover of 1941? The answer is that we will never know but we keep on finding more and more. We can speculate about Red Majic, Action Play Books, Red Projectors, Tatoos, Classics Boxes, Pen and Pencil sets and many other yet to be explored items of the Classics Illustreated lore. But here, Bill Jones has filled in a tremendous gap for all of the ages to enjoy. What a tremendous effort! What an overwhelmingly comprehensive peeling away of the darkness to open the lives and tribulations of anyone who ever picked up a pen, pencil or brush to bring us Classics Illustrated. As the acknowledged Father of Classics Illustrated collecting it brings unbrided joy to my heart to read and reread the wonderful stories that Bill weaves on every page about the men and women behind the comics we came to love as Classics Illustrated. His effort is now in a second printing and deserves many, many more. My Classics Illustrated collectors friends are buying this book whenever they can. It is a joyful six hour read to be then put aside and opened randomly again and again with refreshing illumination with every new opening. Buy this now! You will not see the likes of this ever again. Raymond S. True, Classic Comics Library

A neglected classic by a writer who some consider equal to Ralph Ellison in importance. One fascinating aspect is its fictionalized treatment of some of the century's famous black literary figures. It's a portrait of the post-WWII-through-mid-sixties period as seen through the eyes of a black writer as he establishes a career as a novelist, journalist, and Presidential speechwriter in New York, Paris, Washington, D.C., and Lagos, Nigeria. The main character, Max Reddick, is shaped by anger, at the crux of which is indignation at the hypocrisy and hostility that black people and writers faced during this period. It's a historical novel which provides some insight into the social and political ferment of the sixties, and has an Afrocentric perspective that's somewhat reminiscent of Walter Mosley's work. It includes an intruiging fictionalized version of a mythic encounter between Richard Wright and James Baldwin ("Marion Dawes") in a Paris café, and according to James Sallis's biography of Chester Himes, it describes the essence of Wright's expatriate experience and his relationship with Himes. Ishmael Reed has said that the cartoonist Ollie Harrington is depicted, and although I didn't recognize him, Malcolm X is unmistakable and I suspect that "Time" Curry is modelled after jazz drummer Kenny Clarke, who was living in Paris at the time. According to the author's biography of Richard Pryor, Motown explored the possibility of buying the film rights to the novel as a vehicle for its star, Marvin Gaye, until the idea was abandoned in favor of Lady Sings the Blues.

The story begins near the end as Max, who's dying of cancer, sits at an outdoor café in Amsterdam where he's come to investigate the mystery of the death of his friend, Harry Ames, "the father of black writers," a few days earlier in Paris. What he eventually discovers is mind-blowing.

Throughout the novel, Max opines on a multitude of subjects like: Marxism, African independence and African attitudes towards Americans, sexuality and interracial relationships (he works past some of his homophobia too), the different styles of reporters from 5 major NYC newspapers, the theory of the rich president and other political theories, the "lie" of Christmas ("the rich man's chance to dissipate the image of Scrooge"), American cars (with their "long, buttock-smooth lines"), existentialism, and Alban Berg's atonal opera, "Wozzeck" (whose climax, a child's scream, punctuates Max's argument with his woman). Max interprets bebop's message as, "we can not be contained," and modern jazz becomes the avatar of his literary aesthetic: "He wanted to do with the novel what Charlie Parker was doing to music -- tearing it up and remaking it; basing it on nasty, nasty blues and overlaying it with the deep overriding tragedy not of Dostoevsky, but an American who knew of consequences to come: Herman Melville, a super Confidence Man, a Benito Cereno saddened beyond death."

and this is a great book...read this and you will see why the black man feels the way he does; why interracial relationships remain the enigma that no one wants to unravel and the the battles that black people fight in general...also read " one for new york," by williams

One of the greatest novels of its time or anytime. It brought me to tears, jeers, and fears.

If you are a fan of photography, this book is definately for you. NEW YORK NOIR is chock full of amazing photographs that were the staple of the "New York Daily News." In this book, you get to see some of the poignant images that help define the term noir, and its connection to the silver screen industry, not to mention its effects on tabloid journalism. Many of these same black and white photogrpahs were often used as references to assist in making modern day motion pictures, helping to give a look into the past. From the days of "Three-Gun" Turner to the electrocution of Ruth Snyder, this book captures New York's horrid crime life in a candid, in-your-face style. There is nothing but unhidden truth in each and every photograph. NEW YORK NOIR is a well designed book loaded with powerful images and somewhat detailed descriptions. It is fascinating, riveting, and gives you a decent look at the roots of photojournalism. You can't help but be intrigued by the gritty, graphic photos that once graced the pages of a daily newspaper. It is one amazingly good book.

This is one powerful and well designed book. I picked it up at a show of the original photographs which I had read about in the New York Times. I was awestruck by the power of the images but even more so by the window it opens into life in New York City during the time they were taken. This book provides real insight into the force of photographs in the media and the their importance in the rise of the American tabloid industry.

What a cool book. It's sometimes disturbing to see some of these images of crime as beautiful, but they are beautiful, there's no escaping it. I picked it up because I like the whole genre of noir, but this book makes it very clear where Hollywood got all its ideas. Both essays are very good and informative, but what really marks this as a special book to me are the gorgeous photos and riveting stories of the people on both sides of crime in the city of the century, NYC.

I grew up in Hollis, Queens during the '50s & and '60s and thought that I saw a lot of changes in the neighborhood. But this book is a real eye-opener showing how the area changed from farmlands in the 19th century (including developer's ads) to a fully built up residential community by the 1940's. The book is a must read for anyone who has lived in Queens

For this former resident (Corona and Laurelton), Old Queens presented an engrossing, illuminating, and refreshing visual window on the area of New York that has received too little historical attention. Arranged by community, the book provides concise, individual historical narratives to go with a set of photographs of people and places and old maps that can only be called amazing. Indeed, the treasures of this book, for my taste, are the many photos from the era before the construction of the subway lines that transformed rural Queens into megalopolis. Many of the area photos (structures from the 1939 World's Fair, for example) will no doubt be familiar to many. What surprises, however, are photos such as the two page spread of an untamed, deserted pre-World's Fair Flushing Meadow, a lush meadow creased by the winding Flushing River, itself crossed by the vanished Strong's Causeway that carried Corona Avenue traffic across the soggy marsh to Lawrence Street in Flushing. Equally compelling are photos of the muddy looking thoroughly rural roads of Queens Boulevard and Merrick Road (in Springfield) from the early 20th century complete with isolated farm buildings. Perhaps the most symbolic photo, however, is the panoramic photo showing a spanking new IRT Flushing Line elevated tracks slanting across a nearly-vacant 1915 Sunnyside landscape that looks more like Ohio than New York City. This book helps the reader see Queens as it existed before the housing explosion. It also makes one wonder what might have been. In effect, Old Queens shows what was lost to all-too-rapid, unplanned suburbanization left entirely in the greedy hands of the marketplace. Lack of urban planning and nonexistent historic preservation is the unspoken theme that resonates often in this book. Who wouldn't want to live in one of those handsome, tree-shaded, Victorian homes on the shady, Lefferts Boulevard in Richmond Hill, Jamaica, or Elmhurst? The question is academic, since none of these homes survived the Queens building boom of the early 20th century. Suppose Robert Moses had actually carried through plans to turn the Corona Dump/Flushing Meadow into an honest-to-goodness park with kinds of recreational facilities he lavished on his Long Island state parks? Suppose the city fathers (and local politicians) had taken a more custodial role and protected Jamaica Bay and it surrounding marshlands from pollution for descendants of the gentlemen angler shown pulling his crabpot out of a quiet channel in Meadowmere? While this reader would have liked to view a few photos from vanished communities, such as Ramblersville (Ozone Park), Black Stump (Fresh Meadows), or White Pot (Forest Hills), he believes that Seyfried and Asadorian have assembled a fascinating book that appears destined for the coffee table hall of fame, that is, if rabid readers don't tear it to shreds, first.

Queens usually takes third place to Manhattan and Brooklyn on NYC bookshelfs but this terrific photo collection will go a long way to remedy that. There's an enlightening introduction about the borough and wonderful photos/captions for 27 neighborhoods. My personal favorite is on pp.122-123, a jaw-dropping 1906 view of the strange junction of Jamaica Ave., Myrtle Ave. and Lefferts Blvd. in Richmond Hill. Today, this unique street pattern remains but, alas, the Triangle Hotel, later the Triangle Hofbrau, where the likes of Babe Ruth and Mae West imbibed, recently closed down. I've shown this book to a couple of former Queens people and they were amazed. Don't miss it if you're from Queens or have even a passing interest in urban history. Hopefully, the publisher is correcting a page-order problem in the beginning of the edition I purchased at a museum last summer, but don't let that hold you back. This is a real gem.

This is the funniest book that I have ever read. Horse Badorites is a character who cannot finish any of his beginings. He will be walking down the street and he will say something that he needs to do then he will say, "But first, man, I must..." This book is so good because the author never seems to say or hint that the herb smoking, worthless object buying, racsist behavior is in any way a bad lifestyle, just an interesting one. If you liked this book, try The Bear Went Over the Mountain, by the same author. A must read.

More remarkable than the spaced out world William Kotzwinkle has created inside Horse Bedorties' head, is the effect this world has on its readers. Eveyone I talk to who has read this book has givin it away at least once. Most peopole numerous times. I personally have bought and passed on well over ten coppies. It is like a joint that is just too good to keep to yourself, it mussed be passed to anyone that is willing to take a puff. Legal pot with no munchies. How perfect, Man.

I first read this book when I was about nine or ten. My mom and older sisters had already dog-eared our copy and finally saw fit to pass it down to me. I read it, laughed uproarously, and wasn't aware of 90% of the culture, drug, or sexual references in the book. I still found it funny enough to read repeatedly throughout middle adn high school, and throughout college and graduate. Of course, as I got older, I understood more and more and found The Fan Man to be as sad as it was funny.

Horse Badorties is a loser who knows he's a loser and this makes his life that much more poignant, hilarious, and pathetic. He's on the fast track going nowhere and intends to enjoy every moment of it. He's the burnout hippie who hasn't escaped his languishing identity; he's capable of great things, but never follows through. He's a skilled musician, a magnetic group leader, and a charismatic con artist, yet never takes himself seriously enough to achieve the bliss he's looking for -- until he gives up his main ambition to watch the sunset over the Hudson River.

Like the sunset, his contentment is also short lived and leads inevitably to his perpetual dark dissatisfaction with everything he does (with the exception of his girl's choir). Yet I still find myself laughing at him and with him. Every time I read this book.

The endnotes would lead you to believe this is just another popular pirate saga but it is actually much more. Ritchie actually tells a tale more concerned with the political, social, and economic realities of 17th century England than piracy and wayward ambition. His presentation is easily read, very well documented, and a bit shocking in its revelations of political corruption and backstabbing. Ritchie clearly possesses an impressive working knowledge of the source material available in the British Museum and the Colonial Office of which any scholar would be jealous. It is unfortunate that material is lacking to permit a better examination of Kidd's character and motivations and Dr Ritchie is often left to delve into the hazardous realm of speculation and supposition in this regard. Overall, however, he deftly uses Captain Kidd as a blank canvas while the overlaying picture he paints of merry olde England is what really makes the book worthwhile. PS-The more you read the better it gets.

This book makes you hostage from start to finish Was the captain out on the seas in quest for something other than treasure You Decide Great read

It is ironic that Captain Kidd is one of the most famous pirates of all time considering that he was probably one of the worst and most unlucky pirate of them all. This book chronicles the adventures of those most "notorious of pirates" and gives an excellent account of the times that came to be known as the Golden Age of Piracy from about 1695-1730. Here are found names like Edward Teach, or Blackbeard as he is better known, Bartholomew Roberts, Edward England, and their ilk. Armed with tales of hidden treasure and cold steel cutlasses, Robert Ritchie weaves a wonderful tale of the time of the pirates as they plundered shipping and coastal towns from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean in search of excitement and riches. The book focuses on the exploits of William Kidd, a man hired as a pirate hunter in a time when crime on the high seas was taking its toll on an emerging global commerce. Kidd is a poor pirate hunter, but when his crew evetually threatens to mutiny, he is forced to turn to piracy himself. We see Kidd slowly spiral into oblivion as his crew and his life are pulled into the blackest depths of self-destruction. Kidd is finally captured by treachery and put on trial as a scapegoat for the financial ruin and embarrassment he has caused his secret aristocratic backers; made the victim of a conspiracy gone awry. This is a great book on a fascinating subject that has too often been shrouded in myth.

When the body of Sara Eisinger, travel agent is found, it is just another homicide for Detective Lieutenant Dan Malone and his detectives. Then a few of her possessions are checked and things don't add up. A key that gives access to an exclusive sex club. Two phone numbers that are unlisted CIA. Definitely not your typical travel agent.

These cause Malone and his team to become embroiled in a mystery involving the NYPD, CIA and Mossad. His bosses try to stop the investigation from proceeding but it's already too late and the action carries on until the inevitable violent conclusion in Brooklyn.

Overall this book is a good read. As the author is a retired Detective Lieutenant of the NYPD, you can't help wonder how much of Dan Malone is based around William J. Caunitz. As would be expected, the routine police work is detailed and is interspersed well with some of the action sequences.

This is the authors first book, which is maybe why everything is oriented around the main character, whom just happens to be something that the author once was. Not that this is a negative point, the story line works well and although the main story-line itself is not too plausible, IMO, the way that it is constructed has given the book a feeling of authenticity that someone without the authors background would maybe not have been able to do.

David Lucas (davidlu@sco.com).

The drab, dangerous and often funny details of police work give One Police Plaza a hard-boiled realism. Caunitz shows how government hacks, Mafiosi, reporters, spies and even New York's Catholic Diocese are linked to the cops and each other by a system of favors Malone's manipulation of his superiors and his relentless dedication give this novel the page-turning pull we expect from a good thriller. Its special strength is its carefully exacting depiction of what the working life of a big city police department really is like. With the same bold clarity that served him as a New York City police detective, first-novelist Caunitz delivers a powerful tale of murder and espionage. . . Caunitz expertly depicts the stark reality of the police officer's life and work, and his hard-edged prose drives the story to a stunning conclusion.

Strong character development, plausible plot, realistic dialogue with a splash of sexuality. Opening pages can be a bit disturbing; not for the faint of heart. Well worth reading; a good book to read when you don't sleep alone. And hope no one you care about ends up in the scenes he describes!