This book is a "must have" for any fan of literature, science fiction, or just plain good story telling!

"The Time Machine" is the opening story in this book and starts the reader moving through the world of H.G. Wells. He will entice you with stories that pique the imagination, that range from the ancient past into the far future.

Over sixty short stories adorn this classic work, including:

The Empire of the Ants - killer ants from South America?

The Land Ironclad - land ships with guns can change trench warfare? (written in December 1903)

The Door In The Wall - a man recounts his boyhood memories of a door leading to a magical garden...

The Tempatation of Harringay - an artist is tempted by the devil himself

The Country of the Blind - is the one eyed man King in the land of the blind?

The Flowering of a Strange Orchid - Vampire flowers?

The New Accelerator - a man creates a mixture that allows him to move at ten times normal speed (concept adapted for a "Wild Wild West" episode)

Get the book, you won't be sorry.

(review based on hardback edition)

The generation that passed between the death of Victoria and the accession of her son, Edward VII, in 1901 and the death of Edward's son, George V, in 1936 was one of great change not only in the British monarchy but in the state of monarchy throughout Europe. Edward's personal power was subject to the close limitations of the unwritten English constitution, but his cosmopolitan personality and astute knowledge of international affairs gave him great informal authority, especially since the emperors of Germany and Russia were his close relations. George, though likeable, shared neither his father's eminence abroad nor his extroverted style, and was much more subordinate to his ministers - and during the early part of his reign, as a result of the Great War, the empires of Germany, Russia, and Austria ceased to exist. The author of this well-researched study, who has written a number of other books and articles on modern European royalty, follows the complex interconnections among the royal houses of Europe during this period, pointing out just how much diplomacy depended before the War on personal relationships between monarchs, and also just how little such things came to matter during the subsequent Age of Dictators. He includes a great many photographs and illustrations, many of which are new to me, as well as a (necessary) genealogical chart and table of accession dates.

Here is a true and engaging story that goes to the heart of a
bloody feud unresolved since 1947. "Cursed is the Peacemaker" is
the go-to book for the historical drama of what it took to
negotiate that brief shining moment when there was-- as close as
it gets-- to a cease-fire between Israelis vs. Palestinians and
others in the Arab world.

Author John Boykin (a former editor at Stanford Magazine)
recounts the gripping story through the eyes and viewpoint of
Philip Habib, Reagan's Special Envoy charged with the enormous
task of staunching the bloodshed and destruction in Beirut in
1982...in 1947 and left with an unfulfilled United Nations mandate that
was to have been, like Israel, the provision for their homeland,
some Palestinians relocated to West Beirut where Palestinian
leaders carried on the battle against Israel, which retaliated.
In June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon and laid siege to Beirut to
destroy the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) once and
for all. The PLO is the umbrella of organizations that leads the
Palestinian diaspora.

President Reagan gave Habib, the Brooklyn-born son of Lebanese
immigrants, the task of talking to the warring sides and
persuading them to make some changes. Everything from vitally
important matters down to the price of Israeli pickles was thrown
on the table and it was up to Habib to sort it out. He convinced
the Israelis to stop shooting long enough for thousands of
Palestinian guerrillas to sail from the Mediterranean port city
under the watchful eyes of a multi-national force of 800 U.S.
Marines, 900 French and 500 Italian soldiers. This was no easy
feat. Habib persuaded the Palestinians to leave their families
behind in the West Beirut refugee areas of Sabra and Shatila with
their safety guaranteed by the multi-national force and the word
of Ariel Sharon.

This very readable story explains how imperfectly Habib
accomplished his task and yet how Habib's work stands as the
blueprint for the diplomacy that a person of iron will and
stature will need if ever there is to be a negotiated end to
this war that rips at the heartland of Christian, Jewish and
Muslim civilizations.

Boykin recounts the history in an engaging way and he's careful
not to assert his own opinions. The viewpoints he presses are
those that he documents were those of Habib, the talented, hard-
working, often gruff U.S. negotiator.

The book's completeness is a tribute to Boykin's persistence in
using, among other resources, the Freedom Of Information Act,

archives at Georgetown University's Foreign Affairs Oral History
Program, and extensive interviews with Habib's peers, his bosses
and underlings to piece together this important story about a
critical juncture in the life of an historical figure who
steadfastly refused to talk to reporters during negotiations.

Boykin provides the listening post for readers to "overhear" the
blunt conversations between Habib and the Marine Colonel James
Mead whom Habib came to rely upon to keep warring parties apart.
But Mead was no patsy. While he came to grudgingly respect Habib,
he was protective of those in his command. Boykin lays out the
negotiating positions of the various sides, noting that the
intransigence, the absolutist positions by Israel and Syria were
non starters.

Boykin conducted interviews with dozens of well-known diplomatic
players who knew Habib well-- everyone from Nobel Laureate Oscar
Sanchez Arias to Henry Kissinger (who knew Habib from his days
negotiating an end to the U.S. war in Viet Nam).

It can safely be said that there can be no peace in the Middle
East until there is a measure of justice for the massacre at
Sabra and Shatila, refugee camps that resemble acres of the
crowded tenement buildings that dot working class areas of New
York City. In these camps, Christian Phalangists went door to
door wantonly murdering more than 800 Palestinians while Israeli
soldiers stood guard seeing to it that no Palestinian could
escape. Details of what led to the massacre, for which even the
Israelis hold Ariel Sharon culpable, are of historical
importance.

Boykin describes what went on behind the scenes just before the
massacre of Palestinians on September 16-18, 1982. It was the
tragedy Habib had labored all summer to prevent and in the end,
he didn't, in part because Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger
withdrew the Marines who were charged with keeping the warring
parties apart. When the Marines left, the French and Italians
also left Beirut. That their families would be protected was the
key to persuading the Palestinians to lay down their guns and
leave Beirut. That Ariel Sharon broke his word and allowed his
soldiers to stand guard while mass murder was committed can not
be glossed over, especially since two decades later, Sharon
became Israel's elected leader.

This story is a microcosm for what has gone wrong in the Middle
East. If peace is to come to the region, this story may contain
kernels of the reconstructed blueprint for what, along with iron will, is needed to find a peaceful solution.

Wild Cards 7, written by George R. R. Martin and John J. Miller is one of the best Wild Cards books so far. Eventhough I don't generally like the mosaic novels, this is a prime example on how it should be done.

It's possible that it is so succesful because there are only two writers, which clearly helps the pace. And ofcourse, the fact that half the book is written by my favorite writer George R. R. Martin, speaks for itself.

Dead Man's Hand is a 'parallel novel' to Wild Cards VI: Ace in the Hole. It follows a plotline that was mentioned in WC6, but not exploared - Chrysalis's murder, and the attempts by Martin's Jay 'Popinjay' Acroyd and Miller's 'Yeoman' Brennan to find the killer.

Popinjay, previously meerely a secondary character, proves to be a classic Martin hero - witty, clever and seemingly superficial, there is more to him than meets the eye, although that is only revealed slowly. I must admit I was disappointed that we won't see the Turtle in this story, but Jay was a suitable compensation.

Yeoman was a different story. Although I have allways liked him, his new love affair with Jennifer 'Wraith' Maloy, is not only unlikely but uninteresting, unlike his past relation with Chrysalis. Now Brennan is little but your average action hero running aroung beating people up and delivering one liners.

As a mystery, the novel works rather well. Certainly the identity of the killer is unexpected. On the other hand, the authors don't quite let you feel this is a Mystery novel - you're too focused on the action/thrilelr plots resolving the story of T-Malice, the master that enslaved so many Wild Cards characters, and the Shadow Fist gang - who try to benefit from Chrysalis's murder.

One of the things I liked best about this novel was the focus on jokers. Although the heros are an ace and a nat, there are more Jokers active in this Wild Cards novel than in any other, many of them showing strength and courage. The Wild Cards series tends to focus on Aces, but I personnaly like the Jokers at least as much, and quite possibly more. The dark side of the Virus, so to speak, can be more fascinating than the more obvious Superhero stuff.

Overall Dead Man's Hand is a thrilling ride, filled with action, advanture, cool ideas, and an extremely powerful climax, in which there is a confrontation between several major characters. The confrontation at the end is one of the Wild Cards' strongest moments, and this novel certainly holds up there with DOWN AND DIRTY, as the best of the Wild Cards so far.

This book suggests that all business activity must be to delight a customer. Profit is the reeward for doing a good job. not the objective. The book has a number of worksheet that I completed and it really helped me do a better job at serving the customer. I wasn't just excited to serve the customer I had tools to make it happen.

I have read this book and it is awsome! It was very informative and helped me with raising my young axolotl. I found a lot of things that can harm axolotls, some things that I have been puting in the tank. So if you want your axolotl to live long than you should buy this book.(My axolotl is going on his 7th year!)

Having taught B&F in my early 17th cent. drama class, I can recommend Wit without Money and, to some extent, The Wild-Goose Chase. I would not bother with Wife for a Month, one of the weakest and poorly written of their collaborations. Nevertheless, this is a handy book.

In The Eclectic Odyssey Of Atlee B. Ayres, Architect, Robert Coote (professor emeritus of architecture at the University of Texas, Austin) informatively surveys thirty years of the architectural career of Atlee Ayres, focusing on Ayres' residential architecture in the San Antonio suburbs of Monte Vista, Olmos Park, and Terrell-Hills. It is in these architectural designs that Ayres' eclecticism is most apparent. Coote studies twenty-five of Ayres' houses in detail including their plans, spaces, exteriors, materials, and structure. Additionally, Coote describes Ayres' architectural education, travels, and career highlights. Highly recommended for professional and academic architectural reference collections, The Eclectic Odyssey Of Atlee B. Ayres, Architect is a superbly presented treatise on the work and career of a most remarkable American architect.

The book reviews the evolution of English pistols between the English Civil War (1642-49) and the late 1930s, thus covering the birth, flowering and death of specifically English inventiveness in this field. The author constantly sets technical development in social context, filling the book as much with good tales, as with spanning-keys, scears and springs. US and UK readers alike will enjoy the revolver-controversy of the 1850s between the American Colt and the English Adams. Sadly, this mature and definitive book was written by a still young man who was, soon afterwards, killed by a sniper while serving as an officer in World War II. The companion book 'English Guns and Rifles' is equally good.

A lot of existentialistic analysis goes along with these intriguing pieces of work, grandly exposing the underbelly ;) of proper society. The chapter on Nietzsche explains his views on Dionysis and Apollo and how we are torn between the carnal and culture...forget any "Nietzsche for Idiots" tyoe books, and read this one!!