Kotzwinkle's "Midnight Examiner" is a funny book. At times, uproariously funny, gut-bustin' funny. Roll-around-the-floor funny. But ultimately - that's all it is.

The plot: The staff of a low-brow publications house, among whose many titles is "The Midnight Examiner," bands together to save a porn star from a mafia boss, who she mistakenly shot in the knee. Slapstick action ensues as the rescuers, doped up on voodoo medicines, storm the mafia stronghold with a boomerang, fishing pole, derringer, blowgun, and Swiss Army knife.

The characters: A motley collection of has-beens, never-weres, and eccentrics. Each character comprises a unique set of quirky habits and mannerisms. There's the narrator, a polyester-clad schlep. There's the publisher, who is obsessed with blowguns. There's the new guy, fastidiously dressed, concerned only for his cats, and wickedly good with a fishing pole. There's the resident graphic artist, who has an epileptic/schizophrenic condition and draws big Aztec-like women on living room walls. And the mafia boss, who's driving anxiety is that his taste in interior decoration is low-class. In fact, there's a cornucopia of characters, a snowstorm of maladies, all amusing.

So what's wrong with funny? Nothing, of course. However, the best humor is something more than funny. It's a device used to reveal something deeper at stake by hiding it, by covering it up with laughter, and it's that ironic juxtaposition that strikes deep. The best example I can think of is Salinger - the sarcasm, the swearing, the ridiculous image of a child in a hunting cap wandering around New York City. All of it hiding the grief for a lost brother.

But...back to Kotzwinkle. Funny and entertaining, yes. Moving? Teaching something new? A great book? No, no, and no.

I actually made it all the way to page 18 before bursting out laughing. This may be the most hilarious book I have ever read and, at the same time, it has exciting action, mystery and intrigue, romance, magic, and cows in dresses. When this ragtag bunch of tabloid writers decides to challenge a local Mob boss to save their favorite porn star, they call on all their varied resources. Blow guns, fishing poles, boomerangs, an Egyptian cabbie, voo doo spells and potions, and an impeccable sense of haute fashion all play key roles in Kotzwinkle's demented game plan. If you like to laugh, you are going to love this book. But, alas, there is a downside. Kotzwinkle has apparently chosen to move on to other venues and characters, thus you will feel a great sense of loss at the end of the book as you part company with this wonderful group of friends. I think that all Kotzwinkle fans should join forces and demand a sequel that brings the tabloid gang back together again for more exciting and hilarious adventures.

This is a delightfull funny novel. Howard Halliday is the jaded editor a small line of dubious low-brow publications, ranging from softcore-porn to religion, most notably the tabloid "Midnight Examiner" which is notorious for sensational headlines like "UFO FOUND IN GIRL'S UTERUS". The setting and characters of Halliday's small media empire are plenty colorfull and amusing enough, but when they cross paths with the sinister machinations of a crime boss, the genius of author Kotzwinkle kicks into overdrive.

This is a delightfull read. I think it could make a marvelous movie.

-- DCM "Froggy"

William Roughead's accounts of great crimes from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Scotland and England are about the most delicious mind candy I can think of; I opened this new edition from NYRB and almost couldn't put it down. While his vocabulary and style at times go a bit overboard in terms of their purpleness, he still presents very readable and exciting accounts of some incredible crimes which still haunt the popular imagination today (such as his account of the West Port murders of Burke and Hare, the body snatchers).

Re-issuing Roughead's work is really a feather in NYRB's cap, and yet I can't help wishing they had taken more pains with this edition. (Because of this, I felt I could not really offer it the five stars it otherwise would've deserved.) The introduction by Luc Sante is interesting, but not without errors: he notes that all of the crimes excepting those of Burke and Hare "are discoveries [on the part of Roughead]"; yet Roughead himself admits that Deacon Brodie's case has been dramatized many times, and inspired Stevenson's "Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." Madeleine Smith's trial inspired a film, "Madeleine," directed by David Lean in the 1950s. Similarly, no editor seems to have taken the time to annotate some of Roughead's more bizarre (or anachronistic, or peculiarly Scottish) terms: "douce" is used repeatedly for "sweet", and "lands" (apparently a term for the highrise towers in Edinburgh) recurs often too, yet there's nary a word of explanation. This lack of editorial interference is not welcome, especially since Roughead often refers repeatedly to other writings of his which his original audience would have recognized but which remain obscure to a contemporary reader.

Still, this book is a real treasure--and, as with all NYRB books, it comes on beautiful paper and with a gorgeous cover.

Simply put, William Roughead was and is the greatest true crime writer of them all. Combining unusually supple storytelling talents with an inimitable, pawky sense of humor, he remains the best prose stylist chronicling human depravity since, well, the compilers of the King James Bible. A Scot by birth, Roughead became a Writer to the Signet at the turn of the last century, a privileged position which allowed him to attend and write up the great murder trials of his day and his favorites from Great Britain's colorfully criminous past. Almost all of his works are shamefully out of print but are well worth searching out in used book stores: both his own popular accounts and his contributions to the more formally edited "Notable British Trials" series. Henry James was one of his many besotted fans, and even the briefest sample of his work makes it obvious why true crime buffs consider him the Master. "Classic Crimes" (which includes chapters on Deacon Brodie, Burke and Hare, Madeleine Smith, Dr. Pritchard and other irresistible villains) is the best collection of his work, and I would be remiss if I did not own that my introduction to his peerless work came via Toni Morrison, who confessed her own idolatrous admiration in the New York Times Book Review some two decades ago. If you like Roughead, you'll never be able to get enough. As Luc Sante writers in his perceptive introduction to this latest reprint, Roughead repeatedly creates narratives which contain "in full that collision of placid, well-furnished pedantry with savage howling atavism" that was the keynote of his fascination with evil--and Roughead did believe in evil--people. More of his genius is avalable on display in "Twelve Scots Trials," available from Amazon. co.uk. As Roughead so eloquently put it: "Murder has a magic of its own, its peculair alchemy. Touched by that crimson wand, things base and sordid, things ugly and of ill report, are transformed into matters wondrous, weird and tragical. Dull streets become fraught with mystery, commonplace dwellings assume sinister aspects, everyone concerned, howsoever plain and ordinary, is invested with a new value and importance as the red light fall upon each."

Simply put, William Roughead was and is the greatest true crime writer of them all. Combining a supple prose style with an inimitable, pawky sense of humor, he remains the best prose stylist chronicling human depravity since, well, the authors of the King James Bible. A Scot by birth, Roughead became a Writer to the Signet, a privileged position which allowed him to attend and write up the great murder trials of his era (1870-1952). His works are shamefully out of print and are well worth searching out in used book stores: both his commercial collections and his contributions to the "Notable British Trials" series. Henry James was one of his many devoted fans and even the briefest sample of his prose makes it obvious why true-crime buffs consider him the master. "Classic Crimes"(which includes chapters on Deacon Brodie, Burke and Hare, Madeleine Smith, Dr. Pritchard, William Palmer, etc.) is the best collection of his work in print and I would be remiss if I did not mention that I owe my introduction to this peerless writer to Toni Morrison, who confessed her own idolatrous admiration in a New York Times Book Review piece more than 20 years ago. If you like his stuff you'll never be able to get enough of it. (Also worth securing are the works of Roughead's friend, the American Edmund Pearson, whose "Studies in Murder" was reprinted last last by the Ohio State University Press.) As Roughead so eloquently put it: "Murder has a magic of its own, its peculiar alchemy. Touched by that crimson wand, things base and sordid, things ugly and of ill report, are transformed into matters wondrous, weird and tragical. Dull streets become fraught with mystery, commonplace dwellings assume sinister aspects, everyone concerned, howsoever plain and ordinary, is invested with a new value and importance as the red light falls upon each."

William Burroughs Jnr. was born to the predicament that all those in the wake of a formidable family history are. That is, one in which one must, to forge one's own identity, risk especially large strides to step from long familial shadows. Burroughs Jnr.'s ancestors cast not only long shadows, but contorted ones too. His great grandfather founded the Burroughs Adding Machine Company, the double-edged sword of inheritance then laid at the feet of subsequent generations; at age four his father, iconic hophead and avant-garde litterateur William S. Burroughs, accidentally shot his mother in the head during a drunken presentation of William Tell. (She died. Burroughs Snr. was charged with criminal imprudence and subsequently decamped for South America and Tangiers, the latter being where he wrote NAKED LUNCH, a love-it-or-hate-it binge of surreal imagery that has since assumed mythic proportion in counterculture lore.) By age eighteen he was under the care of his paternal grandparents in West Palm Beach, Florida - and injecting methamphetamine daily. It is here that we rendezvous with the narrative of SPEED.

Superficially the book recounts the 1966 trip to New York made by Burroughs Jnr. and his needle buddy, Chad ("His whole attitude was full of fear and I could see that right off, and I always respect scared people who know what they're up against.") Chad comes off as one or two shy of the full compliment ("We turned a corner and he kept on going straight and didn't answer when I called to him.") though as a sidekick I think he would have been without peer. Appropriately he provides the book's comic highlight, a bout of grand paranoia during which he makes the protestation familiar to anyone acquainted with that state of being: "Every direction I started to go, he'd say, 'Oh, no! You're not getting me to go THAT way!'"

Accompanied only by their wits and an accommodating moral code ("I never rob anyone unless they die or go to jail which leaves me plenty of room, after all. I remember one time I boosted a guy that was only in a coma, and when he came to, the atmosphere was pretty strained for a while.") they accept hospitality where they can, occasionally with squares ("They wondered in stage whispers what was on my mind. I said, 'Carnivorous albino badgers, the size of a boxcar,' and they shut up.") but mostly with fellow chemical crusaders, amiable folk who wished the trivial and mundane would let them be so that they could get down to the real business of transcending reality ("I got on the phone to another session across town and tried to get them to come over. But they were all in the midst of God and didn't feel like driving.")

Considering what must have been a fairly skewed appreciation of reality, his sensibilities nevertheless appear attuned to some degree. At a gas station he lingers to savour the phonetics of "Gargoyle Arctic Oil", and later falls to the spell of a prodigal jazz musician ("But one morning I woke up just as it was getting possible to see and he was talking through his horn real quiet and conversational, and I think I never heard a more healing sound. I wish I knew his name so you could watch out for him."). Still, he's not above it all so much as to be immune from a spot of arbitrary rumination ("I sat still for a long time thinking about cathedrals.") or the inevitable rush of hyper-self-awareness ("'On the way over, I got to thinking about my ape man heritage for some unknown reason and I felt pretty hairy by the time we arrived.")

Substance abuse and the law being mostly antagonistic fields of interest, it's not long before the fuzz show up ("I was standing there on the curb dreaming revolution when a cop came over and said to break it up, fella. There was only one of me, but I broke it up anyway and went down the street in a well-rounded way.") Inevitably Burroughs Jnr. is soon in the wrong apartment at the wrong time. A stint or two at the county hotel follow. Against the narrative of the street these passages betray a mind grateful for respite and reflection ("Up and down the tier, the Puerto Ricans were banging out Latin rhythms on bedposts and bars and singing popular love songs...I felt sleep catching up to me as Gestalt shifted and spaces between the bars floated free...It was complex now, maybe thirty captives in separate cells listened hard and patterned together as my cellmate's tears and prayers fell unconsciously into time. Every bit of light went out, shapes ran melting through the dark as the rhythm slowed and stopped, and the last I heard was the click of the hack's heels as he passed on the catwalk and the kid finished, 'forgive me...'")

Mainlining a drug that narcoleptics use to stay awake doesn't bode well for the pursuit of slumber, and soon enough Burroughs Jnr. decides that for the sake of health, sanity, etc., a return to Florida is in order. At book's end, standing out front of the grandparent's house, he signs off in typically humble fashion ("Then I took a deep breath, smelling the jasmine, and I went inside.")

The prose is breezy, uncomplicated, a loose freeform arrangement that occupies the space a foot or two off the ground. Commas are applied sparingly, the effect being a pitter-patter rhythm that never slows for heavy discourse or pedantic application of fact. There's no danger of cutting yourself on any severe literary edgings here.

Highly recommended, but as the reader is often asked to meet the author half way, as it were, I'd hesitate to push this title upon anyone but those on amiable terms with the subject matter (though a passing interest may suffice).

William Burroughs Jnr. died in 1981, aged 35, of acute gastrointestinal hemorrhage associated with micronodular cirrhosis.

****stars

READ THIS FOR YER OWN GOOD...

_Speed_ was William S. Burrough's Jr.'s (not to be confused with his father, the "real" WSB) first novel. It's hard not to compare it to _The Basketball Diaries_ on the basis of some trivial and obvious similarities (_Speed_ is about the author's adolescent experiences as a methedrine addict in NYC) but he's going somewhere very different from where Carroll was going. His vision is colder and more distant than Carroll's, less sentimental. Yes, it IS possible to be less sentimental than Jim Carroll. WSB doesn't (didn't, i should say) write at all like his father; his prose is clean and spare, his characters are human, etc. Forget WSB sr. and Jim Carroll; WSB Jr. was enough of a writer to be considered on his own merits, which are significant. A very worthwhile book, as is its sucessor, _Kentucky Ham_. A third novel, _Pakriti Junction_, apparently was too fragmentary to print at the time of the author's death.

I remember his running for New York City Major. I read this book in college. He know he was not going to be elected. But Buckley put The Conservative Party on the map in that campaign. And in 1968 his brother, James Buckly, was elected to the office of US Senator from New York State-- on the conservative party line. James Buckley was a very significant Senator.

When it became clear that Lindsay would be the nominee of both the Republican and Liberal Parties,
and furthermore, thanks to incumbent Robert Wagner's scandal ridden term, that Lindsay would likely
win, Buckley began to write pieces asserting that it was important that someone who actually
represented Republican views enter the race, simply to guarantee that there would be an honest debate
on the issues. When leaders of the recently formed Conservative Party approached Buckley and asked
him to take on the race, he agreed, on the understanding that he would not campaign full time and
would continue to fulfill his obligations to the several jobs he held. He made his reasons for running
clear in his announcement speech:

The two-party system presupposes an adversary relationship between the two parties. That there is
no such relationship in New York Mr. Lindsay makes especially clear when he proposes as running
mates members of the Liberal and Democratic Parties. Mr. Lindsay's Republican Party is a sort of
personal accessory, unbound to the national party's candidates, unconcerned with the views of the
Republican leadership in Congress, indifferent to the historic role of the Republican Party as
standing in opposition to those trends of our time that are championed by the collectivist elements
of the Democratic Party. Mr. Lindsay, described by The New York Times as being "as liberal as a
man can be," qualifies for the support of the Liberal Party and the Republican Party only if one
supposes that there are no substantial differences between the Republican Party and the Liberal
Party. That there should be is my contention.

It was clearly understood by all concerned that he would basically play the role of a gadfly in the
race. Indeed, any doubts that he reckoned how little chance he had of being elected were cleared up at
his first press conference, when to the consternation of staff and Party officials he gave the following
answers to questions:

Q: Do you think you have any chance of winning?

WFB: No

Q: How many votes do you expect to get, conservatively speaking?

WFB: Conservatively speaking, one.

In the campaign that followed, Buckley, freed from the restraints that bind a politician who thinks he
may win, proceeded to run one of the most ideological, honest and entertaining campaigns that anyone
had ever seen. He quickly became a media phenomenon, although they were almost uniformly hostile
to him and his views, they loved covering him. And when the cities newspapers went on strike the
race came to center around television and Buckley was able to totally outclass his opponents, Lindsay
and Abe Beam.

Besides his natural facility with the fairly new medium, Buckley's political platform turned out to be
more popular than anyone expected. Indeed, his proposals were twenty or thirty years ahead of their
time, including Education reform, Welfare reform, beefed up law enforcement, tax cuts, balanced
budgets, an end to school bussing, abolition of rent control, and so on. as a result, when the first polls
came out, not only was Beame beating Lindsay, Buckley was polling over 20% and doing particularly
well with Blue Collar Democrats. Suddenly everyone, including he, had to take his candidacy
seriously.

From that point on Lindsay and Beame and their cohorts trotted out all the trusty anti-conservative
canards--tarring him as a racist, an anti-Semite, anti-Protestant and, somehow, even an anti-Catholic.
Buckley ended up spending so much time defending himself that he lost the momentum he had gained
by being a purveyor of brash new ideas. He acknowledges that his political inexperience was a major
handicap as he allowed himself to drift off message and into a defensive posture.

When the votes were finally counted, Lindsay won, but with just 45%, Beame tallied 41% and
Buckley polled an impressive 13%. In the process, he had carved up Lindsay to the point where no
one seriously considered him to have a future in Republican politics and indeed Lindsay eventually left
the party for his natural home with the Democrats. But more importantly, Buckley demonstrated that
there was a significant segment of the democratic Party that was just waiting to be wooed by a
conservative Republican message. These folks--largely middle or working class, White, ethnic and
Catholic--would later form the backbone of Nixon's "Silent Majority" and would come to be called
Reagan Democrats, but it was the 1965 New York mayoral race that really showed that conservatism
had an inherent appeal to this population. For this, as for so much else, the Republican Party is
indebted to William F. Buckley.

This book, his account of these events, is one of the funniest political stories ever written. He looks
back not in anger but in bewilderment at the neophyte mistakes he made, at the shoddy media coverage
he received, at the character assassination he was subjected to and at the entire chaotic process of
running for office, especially in New York City. It's a real shame that the book is out of print (though
easy to find used, see the link above); it is almost frightening how much of the story remains topical
and pertinent today. In particular, and somewhat ironically, I couldn't help thinking how badly the
Democratic Party today needs someone like Bill Buckley--someone with wit, grace, style, and actual
core convictions who will remind them that they are supposed to represent something more than
conservatism with an Oprahesque tone. As Buckley said in his announcement, the American system
presupposes two adversary parties. Men like Goldwater and Buckley made sure that the republican
Party offered "a choice, not an echo"; where is the Democrat who will do the same for his party, who
will undertake a similarly quixotic quest, though it prove his own unmaking? We're waiting.

GRADE: A+

This true story is written from a somewhat sardonic viewpoint, given the fact that its author, conservative journalist William F. Buckley, had no intention of winning, or even actively campaigning in, the race he had entered. The year of this tale is 1965, with the election in November. However, the real story begins in the 1933 New York City Mayoral election.

Republicans in New York had been dormant ever since Al Smith's glory days of the 1920's, and they were unsure of how to operate. In 1933, however, the party's nominee won a commanding victory in the general election, definitely something curious for a city where, amongst registered voters, Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly 3-to-1. Buckley explains that a certain political faction backed the 1933 GOP nominee, Fiorello LaGuardia, and these were not your usual Republicans. Rather, a centrist coalition of good-government seekers (or "goo-goos") choose to stand by LaGuardia rather than his Democratic opponent, a top lieutenant of the notorious incumbent Jimmy Walker.

After Walker's resignation in 1932, the normally victorious Democratic Party had a tarnished image and a corrupt machine, and subsequently the GOP was almost guaranteed the Mayor's Office if it choose the right man. By the end of LaGuardia's reign, the Democrats were ready to take over once more. Thus, Buckley asserts, the only way for the Republican Party to win a city-wide office in the Big Apple was by nominating a non-traditional Republican at a time when the Democratic Party was under intense scrutiny.

Such was the case again in 1965, when this story takes place. Mayor Robert Wagner had chosen not to run for re-election, and voters were extremely flabbergasted at the ethical shortcomings of his tenure at City Hall. Thus, voters were carefully watching the Democratic Primary to see if the victor was a crony of Wagner or a political independent.

Republicans had already nominated U.S. Representative John V. Lindsay as their mayoral candidate, much to the chagrin of conservative Republicans. In1964, Lindsay publicly denounced Republican Presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, a staunch conservative. Additionally, he had accumulated the notorious distinction of being the most liberal Republican, voting with President Lyndon Johnson's position over 80% of the time. Thus, he was seen as a Republican in name only by conservatives, but he was perfectly suited for the Mayoral "nomination" of the goo-goo crowd.

Subsequently, many prominent Democrats supported Lindsay. Though a few die-hards waited for the Democratic Primary, it was clear that a bipartisan coalition of left-of-center politicians had practically elected Lindsay long before the election. Furthermore, the New York State Liberal Party gave Lindsay its nomination, and this was the culmination of conservative unrest and disdain towards Republican politics in New York.

In 1962, Kieran O'Doherty and Dan Mahoney, two young lawyers disgusted with Governor Nelson Rockefeller's nominal Republicanism, founded the New York State Conservative Party in order to elect conservatives to the many local, state, and national offices that were of concern. By fall of 1964, they had no formal Conservative candidate for Mayor, and so begins this story.

William F. Buckley, Jr. was editor of National Review, an accomplished writer, a weekly columnist, and a staunch conservative when he decided to run for mayor. He was concerned that the Republican party was swinging away from its classic platform, and therefore decided to run for Mayor to carry the Conservative backing and its ideological accruements.

So in April of 1965 he began his campaign, with his brother and future Senator James Buckley serving as campaign manager and confidant Neal Freeman acting as press secretary. Buckley immediately deemed that it was impossible to win the November 1965 election, and so he decided against having many rallies or appearances. Thus, his campaign was half Quixotic, half symbolic.

After his declaration, the press was indifferent, but many associated his candidacy with the far right wing John Birch Society. The growing sentiment in the New York circles was that Buckley was a rightist henchman trying to kill the "moderate" influence that Gov. Rockefeller, Rep. Lindsay, and Senator Jacob Javits (R-NY) had on the party. Of course, Buckley pointed out, his goal was not to destroy moderation but to make sure that the left wing of the GOP did not destroy the party.

The Democrats nominated Comptroller Abraham Beame for Mayor, and many were disappointed. Beame was part of the Wagner regime, and his two "running mates," the candidates for Comptroller and City Council President were Wagner associates. Though Beame stressed his independence, the opinion polls indicated that Lindsay was still running ahead.

Immediately, the campaign turned nastily racial. Buckley, a Catholic, made an off-hand remark about Lindsay's Protestantism, and wildfire began. Beame, a Jewish man, tried to take the high ground, but his numbers did not change. From this point, it was clear that Buckley's vote would make the difference in the campaign.

Since Buckley hurt Lindsay more than Beame, he received a worse assault from the pro-Lindsay camp. He was derided as racist, elite, anti-progress, anti-Protestant, anti-Semitic, etc. Beame finally assailed Buckley, but it seemed that his campaign was not improving. It was, however, apparent to both Beame and Lindsay that the more they criticized Buckley the more votes would be returned to their campaigns.

Beame, a moderate-liberal with a low-key personality and generally boring speeches, had an ineffective campaign from the start. On the other hand, though he was oratorically mundane, John Lindsay had a Kennedyesque charm that led many journalists to speculation on his Presidential aspirations. Buckley was perhaps the most interesting of the three, because he was unfettered in rhetoric because he had no intention of winning. He had colorful speeches and fresh ideas, but the press treated him as if he was Adolf Hitler.

Eventually, the assault on Buckley, his campaign workers, and his speeches diminished his support. On Election Day, Lindsay won the race with 45.3% of the vote. Beame came in behind with only 41.3%. William F. Buckley ended up with 13.4% of the vote, which was significantly lower than projected.

Though it seems as though Lindsay's victory was Buckley's loss of purpose, it must be noted that Buckley's candidacy did more to help the fledgling Conservative Party. The total percent of votes cast for the Conservative ticket, 13.4%, was much higher than the 11.1% cast for Lindsay as a Liberal. Thus, for the first time, the three-year-old Conservative Party outpolled the older Liberal Party in a major election.

This was a great book, because it was written from a dynamic first-person point of view. Buckley more than adequately gave the reader background on New York Mayoral politics, and he then went on to analyze the events leading up to the 1965 race. He described the three candidates, including himself, very much in detail and he never lost sight of his subject matter. Additionally, in the end of the story he compiled many excerpts from various news articles pertaining to his campaign, giving the reader an impartial collection that shows one the hostility most reporters showed towards Buckley's candidacy.

This book was written not for the mere entertainment value that such a firsthand account of politics espouses, but for the cause of conservatism. Buckly is trying to show us that the Republican Party is still not the vehicle for true conservativity, and that third parties can literally grow overnight. His point may be that conservatives ought to form a viable third party. Hopefully, though, the Republican Party will not be detained from pure conservatism for much longer.

Fascinating, though too long. I recommend starting with Taylor's _Liberty Men and Great Proprietors_, which seems to have been less of a "labor of love."

The tale of James Fenimore Cooper's father on the New York frontier in the 1790s is an Horatio Alger story run amuck. Born to a poor Quaker farm family, William Cooper learned the craft of making and repairing wheels before reinventing himself as a land speculator, founder of Cooperstown, judge, congressman, patrician farmer and Federalist party powerhouse.

Alan Taylor's WILLIAM COOPER'S TOWN: POWER AND PERSUASION ON THE FRONTIER OF THE EARLY AMERICAN REPUBLIC is an outstanding biography of an archetypical American character, an extraordinary social history of life and politics on the late eighteenth-century frontier and a brilliant exercise in literary analysis.

This is a wonderful read. Taylor's lively prose, compelling narrative and original, fresh story sustained my interest from cover to cover. I never would have imagined such a dull title could cover such a marvelous book. WILLIAM COOPER'S TOWN certainly deserves the Pulitzer Prize it was awarded.

Taylor not only describes William Cooper's rise from rags to riches and even more meteoric fall but analyzes Cooper's political odyssey in America's frontier democratic workshop.

"As an ambitious man of great wealth but flawed gentility, Cooper became caught up in the great contest of postrevolutionary politics: whether power should belong to traditional gentlemen who styled themselves 'Fathers of the People' or to cruder democrats who acted out the new role of 'Friends of the People.'"

Taylor argues "Cooper faced a fundamental decision as he ventured into New York's contentious politics. Would he affiliate with the governor and the revolutionary politics of democratic assertion? Or would he endorse the traditional elitism championed by...Hamilton." "Brawny, ill educated, blunt spoken, and newly enriched," writes Taylor, "Cooper had more in common with George Clinton than with his aristocratic rivals." "For a rough-hewn, new man like Cooper, the democratic politics practiced by Clinton certainly offered an easier path to power. Yet, like Hamilton, Cooper wanted to escape his origins by winning acceptance into the genteel social circles where Clinton was anathema." Taylor concludes "Cooper's origins pulled him in one political direction, his longing in another."

James Fenimore Cooper's third novel, THE PIONEERS, is an ambivalent, fictionalized examination of his father's failure to measure up to the genteel stardards William Cooper set for himself and that his son James internalized. The father's longing became the son's demand.

Taylor analyzes the father-son relationship, strained by Williams decline before ever fully measuring up to the stardards he had set, and the son's fictionalized account of this relationship.

James Fenimore Cooper spent most of his adult life seeking the "natural aristocrat" his father wanted to be and compensating for his father's shortcomings. It is ironic that the person James Fenimore Cooper found to be the embodiment of the "natural aristocrat" his father had longed to be and that he had created in THE CRATER and his most famous character, Natty Bumppo, was the quintessential "Friend of the People"--Andrew Jackson.

I enjoyed this book immensely and give it my strongest recommendation!

This is the story of William Cooper, the founder of Cooperstown, New York, and of how his son, James Fenimore Cooper, used his father's life and experiences in his novels. Described in this way, this sounds like a narrow book, of interest mainly to specialists. But anyone interested in early America should read this book: it reveals truths not only about these two men but about the whole period. One of the key themes of the book is that the Revolution, which in a sense made William Cooper by pushing aside the old aristocracy of New York, also unmade him by creating an anti-aristocratic politics that ousted him and other Federalists in 1800. A fascinating minor detail: the city fathers, in their effort to maintain a proper tone in Cooperstown in the early 1800s, outlawed stick ball, the precursor of baseball.

Although this was a good book in itself, it covered too much of the French and Indian War to just have a title of Fort William Henry and the "Massacre". The book was interesting up to the point of the siege and massacre then it became very vague. It lacked details to the point of disappointment. It did not say what specific Indian tribes did most of the massacre, nor did it have a thorough account of actually what was happening! It told about some injured being killed in the fort , then it jumped to militia killed on the road to Ft Edward, then to the English officers dining with the French officers and chasing away Indians from their personal effects. In addition the author downplayed the massacre! Every time the word was used it was in quotation marks,making it seem the massacre was overplayed. But if 10 people are massacred instead of 200 does that make a difference? The book did inform the reader about the Canadien slave trade which was going on between them and some tribes, which other books clearly never bring up. Many English suffered because of it. It also made it clear that because of the French's terms at Ft. William Henry, many Indians then refused to help the French in the future. Sealing their fate in the French and Indian War.

The title of this perceptive book tells the gist of Professor Steele's investigation into the seige and subsequent murder or kidnapping of prisoners after the British garrison surrendered to Montcalm in 1757. In essence, the English prisoners were betrayed by the French by letting their Indian allies seek scalps, prisoners and plunder after being given parole to march to a British force on the Hudson. On a larger scale, the French betrayed the Indians by not allowing them to take what Indians assumed were rightfully theirs as a part of 18th century warfare: prisoners to replace tribal members killed in combat, plunder of European materials, and scalps. Steele asserts that the losses suffered by the British garrison were smaller than previously claimed (including a number of men who were forced to travel home with Indians from the Great Lakes)and that the incident was not the bloodbath of popular legend. The men taken to the Lakes kept turning up for years afterward. Many of the scalps taken were from the corpses in the fort's cemetery-the Indians who took these scalps therefore brought smallpox back home with them and might have inadvertently destroyed whole tribes. Steele tries to count the men killed during the "massacre" and I think he is successful in his enumeration. He does not overlook the wounded who were murdered in their beds, the man boiled and eaten by his captors, and the soldiers knocked out of line and killed because they resisted being plundered. I agree that Montcalm was not complicit in directing the massacre, but set up the conditions that caused it to happen.

The Massacre lives on in popular imagination, but so does the Boston Massacre, certainly one of the most non-massacres in American history.

On a personal note, my 7th generation great-grandfather Bernardus Bratt commanded the New York troops at Fort William Henry in the summer of 1756 and came out as a company commander in Sir William Johnson's regiment after the 1757 massacre.

Well-written and well-documented modern accounts of the French and Indian War are few and far between. Steele's book should remain the final word for some time to come.

Steele presents the reader with a masterful treatment of the events surrounding the "massacre" so familiar to viewers of the latest cinematic incarnation of Cooper's "The Last of the Mohicans." As a teacher, I can tell you it's a bit of a surprise for students to find out that Colonel Munro survived Magua's knife. Steele puts the events in historical and cultural context. A fine piece of work, one which should be of interest to a broader audience than the book will probably get.

His personal and professional lives are all but dead, leaving New York Globe reporter Billy Burke very depressed. However, suddenly things look much brighter when Billy finds a story that, if handled correctly, could provide him with a Pulitzer. A hospital refused to provide life saving open-heart surgery to an impoverished child because the mother has no means (either out of pocket or insurance) to pay the cost.

Billy begins to investigate and soon realizes that hospital administrators are protecting their butts by altering or destroying records. However, his superiors at the Globe want Billy to hang somebody because someone needs to take the public hit as the malevolent person refusing proper health care to a poor child. Billy remains the consummate professional, not concerned with a prize, but with an honest story that will help the victim. Still, the clock is ticking on the life of a little boy and the pressure mounting on Billy to find a public goat.

CITYSIDE is a fabulous look at the journalist profession to hit a home run at every bat since the Watergate exposure. The story line is entertaining and intriguing as readers hope the lad gets his needed operation. However, William Heffernam falters a bit by painting Billy and his seemingly horde of women as totally perfect beings. The so-called villains are portrayed in a more even manner as hospital administrators struggle between costs and proper health care. Mr. Heffernam provides readers with a deep, well-written thriller.

Harriet Klausner

I have read and enjoyed all of William Heffernan's previous books, thus looked forward eagerly to the release of Cityside. I was not disappointed. Obviously writing from the experience base of his past career as a journalist, Cityside is a passionate expose of the period in big-city journalism when newspapers changed their emphasis (as we say in Australia) from playing the ball to playing the man. The triumph of the novel is that he treats his subject with humour and intelligence, rather than descending into cliche. When I finished the last page, I thought to myself that it was the best book I had read in many years.

William Kotzwinkle, despite his frequent turns converting blockbuster movies like ET: the Extraterrestrial into novels, is one of the more consistently interesting fantasy writers around. In The Game of Thirty, he tries his hand at a hard-boiled private eye novel and proves quite capable.

Jimmy McShane is a former military cop turned NY City private detective. When he is hired to look into the mysterious death of an antiquities dealer, he finds himself getting drawn into a murderous match of wits with the killer, based on the ancient Egyptian Pharaohs' Game of Thirty.

Mixing traditional elements of noir fiction--first person narrative, wisecracking dialogue, and urban locale--with nearly Victorian elements, reminiscent of a Sherlock Holmes or Fu Manchu tale--cobra venom, egyptology and the like--and throwing in a New Age heroine as Jimmy's sidekick, Kotzwinkle produces a neat little thriller that manages to be both modern and nostalgic and seems like it would be perfect for the big screen.

GRADE: B

The Game of Thirty is a little bit above average when it comes to stories in the mystery-esque genera. The plot is interesting, and although it revolves around a typical "hard guy" main character and "kooky, yet bright" dilettante female companion, the story does not come across as being too cliche. For me the best part about the book was the Egyptian atmosphere, which is centered on a board game - the Game of Thirty. Although at times this game is used to envoke far too much foreshadowing, on the whole it helps the story progress. An antiquities theme runs througout the book, but many other sub plots are developed (generally well), that allow the reader to peak into other walks of life. The worst part of the book is the ending. Readers can guess the ending about 1/2 way through, and the conclusion is completely unrealistic. Still the Game of Thirty is a good read.

The Game of thirty was a ming boggling and fascinating book. It seemed to lead you into a new dream and keep you there. This book deals with tough issues, deeper than you can imagine, and handles them straightforward, in a New Yorker approach. I definetlty reccomend this book to anyone. It is an intriguing tale that sweeps you off your feet.

We read this book in our classroom and really enjoyed it. Some of our comments are: I liked how Tucker found his name from the sweet shop; Because they are cute; Like how Tucker goes crazy over food and its funny; Finally how a cat and mouse our friends; If you like adventurous books it is fun; Liked Sid Rat and Charlie; How the three rats have a Boston accent in Time Sq NYC; How they are scared of the rats big eyes; Funny; Dramtic

My daughter's girl friend gave her "A Cricket in Times Square," a wonderful adventure of Chester Cricket and his New York City-savvy friends Harry Cat and Tucker Mouse. Once reading that adventure, we had to read all the others in the series, starting with how the cat and mouse met and became great buddies.

In this, the prequel to "Cricket in Times Square", we meet the very young Tucker Mouse and Harry Cat. Well, actually Harry KITTEN in this case. When our story opens, Tucker is wandering the streets of New York, lost, hungry, tired and even NAMELESS! Determined to make something of himself, he struts off down the street searching our first his own name and then his fame and fortune. A sweet shop gives him his name, and a young kitten, equally lost and alone, gives him friendship. Thus is born the friendship that many of us know and love from "Cricket" and Mr. Selden's other books. Together the pair set off to find a place to live. This proves to be a bigger, more complicated task than one might originally think!! The Empire State Building calls to them--why not live in one of the biggest buildings in the whole city? However, when they manage to finally find themselves in the basement where there are little or no people, the find themselves in a vast, cavernous tunnel of white tiles. LOST!! But, by keeping their wits about them, they manage to get back out on to the street. The old piers seem like a good place to live until our heroes are nearly crushed by falling debris from the crumbling buildings. An upscale park is quite beautiful and peaceful, but too ritzy and, well, DULL for our young companions. Deciding that this is still not the place for them, they set off again, this time toward Times Square. There, they finally find the home in the drainpipe readers know and love so well... There's just one problem though, and that's the local gang of rats with thick, New York accents who want to steal all of Tucker's life savings!! "Cricket in Times Square" is still an extremely popular book, though many of the other works by Mr. S. that feature the same characters are much lesser known. Not as many fans of "Cricket" go on to read "Tucker's Countryside" or "Harry Cat's Pet Puppy." I myself have read "The Cricket in Times Square" multiple times, but stumbles across this book, "Tucker Mouse and Harry Cat" rather by accident! I'm very glad I did, though!! Though the writing is a bit weaker than I expected--the story is certainly not as long as the other's in this series, nor are the events or characters fleshed out as much--it's still a very good book and worth reading. I think Mr. Selden intended this book to be for younger audiences than those who normally read "Cricket", for the story is easier to read with less detail. The pen & ink illustrations by Mr. Williams are as familiar and comfortable as those in the other books; I'm especially fond of the picture of Harry and Tucker clinging together in terror at being lost in the corridors of the Empire State Building! Weak or not, younger audience or not, this book is definitely worth reading, and will add so much to the beloved adventures of two beloved characters. Highly recommended!!

I would probably have given this book 5 stars if the Belle Harbor section (where I grew up in the 60's and 70's) had been better represented, but still, it was great to see the neighborhood I left as a teenager in 1976!

For those that live --or lived-- there, especially if you spent any amount of time in Far Rock, you must get this book.

To the authors: issue a revised edition with a more emphasis on everything West of Beach 116th Street... and I'll go 5 and a half stars in my next review!

Simply the only printed information available about the Rockaways of yesterday. It seems that everyone has roots in this once grand seaside community and this book gives you hundred of old postcard views of the towns along the beach. There's not much left there from the old days and even fewer people left in the NYC slum who know how to read or right. So we'll bet that most of the sales of this book will be outside of Rockaway. But if you're heart's at the seashore, then Vincent and William's book should be in your library...

EKG, (escaped to Long Beach, NY)

Old Rockaway, New York in Early Photographs, exceeded my expectations! I thought it would provide a photographic history of perhaps the 1930's and 1940's. I was pleasantly surprised to find nineteenth century photographs of the peninsula in its true heyday. Having lived in Arverne during the 1960's and 70's, I was amazed to see that the rich and famous visited this area very similar to the way the rich and famous today visit the Hamptons on the east end of Long Island. As you view the postcards from this early era, you can actually see the unspoiled landscape of sand dunes and bay marshes that no longer exist. And the magnificent hotels and homes that graced this once popular resort prove to me that the City of New York truly mis-managed the development since the 1930's.