Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
"Clean, Green & Lean" is a great book to motivate you to do an inner and outer makeover, a "Spring clean" for your body and your environment. It is very informative about the toxins in our food and the many products we buy, from make-up to wall-to-wall carpeting. Dr. Crinnion gives us a 30 day program to slowly eliminate the things that are causing allergic reactions, and help prevent everything from simple fatigue to cancer from our lives. Since it's done slowly (even taking 12 months over the process is OK) it's not a "here today, gone tomorrow" approach that many would find too drastic to implement.

Though I'm not going to follow "Clean, Green & Lean" 100%, it has given me a major impetus towards more natural choices when buying food (spend the extra money on organic...it's most likely worth it, and cheaper in the long run compared to doctor's bills) and beauty products. Homeowners will find a lot of information on building materials too, and families with young children should learn a lot. There are some sobering statistics on the rise of cancer, diabetes, and obesity among our kids, and the connection to the chemicals that they eat and live with.

Dr. Crinnion has a lot of specifics on diet, what certain foods can do for us, and there is a chapter with some delicious recipes, and another with a 14-Day Menu Plan. Again, there is nothing drastic, and there are plenty of selections for meat eaters. Dr. Crinnion promotes the drinking of green tea in many chapters; he says "It may be the single most potent health food available." For those who don't like the taste, shop around and try different flavors and types (my personal favorite is the Japanese brown rice green tea...a fabulous aroma and taste!). All in all, "Clean, Green & Lean" is an excellent book to spur you on towards a life with better health and more energy.

See all customer reviews... ]]> March 5, 2010-00-00T00:00:00+09:00 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1596985674/areviews0c-20/ref=nosim/ ()


   1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
 So clear and fact filled that it will sweep away phony myths of the War March 5, 2010
By Craig Matteson
#75 REVIEWER

I came to admire Phillip Jennings when I reviewed his "Nam-a-Rama" Nam-A-Rama and, later, his "Good-bye Mexico" Goodbye Mexico. We even exchanged a few emails. I found him to be as you would expect from his books. He is brilliant, funny, deeply in love with American, but doesn't have time or the inclination to take guff from anyone. I am not saying I know the author, but just that my email exchanges confirm what I suspected from the books. Since I knew he was a true veteran of the Vietnam War and a very talented writer, I was hoping someday we would get his take on the War. So, I was extremely delighted when I saw his name on this book. As I read it, I found that Jennings had surpassed my hopes. I had a friend who was with SOG in the 60s and everything he told me about his work there (and there was much he could not tell) absolutely agrees with this book.

What is so politically incorrect about this book? Jennings demonstrates that America had won the war by 1973 and the only reason the South had to suffer defeat in 1975 was the liberals (mostly Democrats) in the U.S. Congress that cut off funding to support the South. They could do this because the sympathetic press was spinning the war as a defeat and unwinnable since the Tet Offensive in 1968, which was, by the way, a huge loss for the North.

He also shows how America SUPPORTED the war. We have seen this phenomenon again and again, when decades after the fact everyone knows as fact something that was utterly untrue at the time. Jennings points out another interesting distortion of history. Many more people claim to be veterans of the Vietnam War than were ever there. This is also true of the VVAW that did the "Winter Soldier" investigation that John Kerry was involved with and made many false accusations against our soldiers. However, these lies and calumnies are still quoted as fact in far too many places. Jennings lays the problems with Cambodia, Laos, and other places at the feet of the North. Their aggression and violation of those nations' sovereignty led to the expansion of the War beyond Vietnam's boundaries.

By reading this book you will learn why we were in Vietnam anyway, what JFK did there, how LBJ expanded it and what is limited war strategy cost us (and what it did not accomplish). Jennings also explains how we won the war and why it is still talked about as a loss in our society. He devotes a whole chapter the anti-War movement and corrects so many myths surrounding it. I can honestly and truthfully say that while I did not serve in Vietnam or in the military I was never part of the anti-War movement and would have gone had I been called to do so. In fact, I had a plan laid out my number did come up in the lottery. The final chapter deals with the myths surrounding the Vietnam Veterans and their reentering society.

If you have read any of these guides before you will know that they also have lots of other cool things. Side boxes listing books to read that overthrow the popular distortions of the subject. There are others with great quotes, anecdotes and helpful facts you can use when discussing the War with your friends imprisoned in a conventional mindset. You will also get some clarity about the reality behind the reputations of people like Westmoreland, Colby, Abrams, McNamara, and others.

Jennings also provides you with reading lists for the best books on the war (among the 300 or so in his library and he has read during his own study), the best movies on the War and mini-reviews of them, and a proper explanation of the Pentagon Papers. He exposes people like Peter Arnett and their phony reporting of the War, and he provides a really neat insight into the growth of the Vietnamese as immigrants within America. They number around 1.5 million, which, Jennings points out, makes them the 4th largest minority group in America.

I hope everyone reads this book. Yet, I am sure that many will attack it without taking the time to read it. They clutch to the lefty agenda about the War and will not tolerate any facts disturbing their delusions. But you don't have to be one of them.

Terrific and highly recommended.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI


See all customer reviews... ]]> March 5, 2010-00-00T00:00:00+09:00 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/157174617X/areviews0c-20/ref=nosim/ ()


   1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Wonderful book!! March 4, 2010
By MotherLodeBeth
#236 REVIEWER

Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Have owned a lot of books on Buddhism, because I wanted to educate myself because our son is Buddhist albeit very secular. And this is the book that clicked with me.

It was on page 143 where the author writes 'Now Buddhism is austere, but not like some other ascetic traditions (like Jainism). The Buddha recommended the Middle Way because real happiness comes with comparatively low-level prosperity and comfort. Like Epicurus in the West, the Buddha claimed that it is better to train oneself to enjoy simple foods rather that fine gourmet meals, because economic political, and even weather changes could suddenly rob us of our exotic spices and delicacies. If we had allowed ourselves to become attached to such connoisseur pleasures, then we will suffer in ways that could have been avoided. We are advised to focus on more stable and reliable sources of happiness: simple fare, friendships, family, and intellectual cultivation. There is nothing inherently wrong with certain foods, pleasures and even wealth itself. There are only problems of attachment. So, lets be clear, Buddhism does not want you to be poor. Remember that after his big-pimpin' days in the lap of luxury, Gautama tried and rejected poverty as a life strategy. Moderation is the successful path.'

Now I mention this part of the book, because I have had a tug of war with my Buddhist views, since I believed for a long time that self denial in ALL areas of ones life was a must. But then I would see celebrities and other well known people who have nice homes, new cars, nice clothes etc and were so opposite of someone like the Dalai Lama, that I would end up with a head ache. But this book has really helped clarify things for me.

See all customer reviews... ]]> March 4, 2010-00-00T00:00:00+09:00 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000XVTYYY/areviews0c-20/ref=nosim/ ()


   1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 How are you fixed for blades? March 4, 2010
By bernie
#641 REVIEWER

I guess you can call me a stick in the mud. However since I started using these blades I have no incentive to change. So far, I found the three-blade system the optimal. To blades work but they feel cheap. More than three blades feel like I am just overdoing it. I actually use the advanced indicator-lubricating strip to indicate when it is time to change blades because I really cannot tell. If it was not for the indicator strip, I probably use the same blade for a year. The package is a convenient size to ensure that you will not run out blades every time you turn around.

I use bar soap as my lubricant however; I do not really need one so it is more of a placeholder. One quick rinse and everything is clean and ready to start over with the next day.

The Razor's Edge by Somerset Maugham

See all customer reviews... ]]> March 4, 2010-00-00T00:00:00+09:00 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1591843138/areviews0c-20/ref=nosim/ Denial: Why Business Leaders Fail to Look Facts in the Face---and What to Do About It(Books)

Richard S. Tedlow, Release date:2010/03/04
   5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
 The "unconscious calculus" of "protective stupidity" March 4, 2010
By Robert Morris
#23 REVIEWER


By now, Richard Tedlow has gained and fully deserves his reputation for writing books and articles that are of the very highest quality. In Giants of Enterprise, he examines the lives and careers of seven entrepreneurial CEOs: U.S. Steel's Andrew Carnegie, Kodak's George Eastman, Ford Motor Company's Henry Ford, IBM's Thomas Watson Sr., Revlon's Charles Revson, Intel's Robert Noyce, and Walmart's Sam Walton. Then he wrote The Watson Dynasty in which he explains the causes and effects of what he characterizes as "the fiery reign and troubled legacy of IBM's founding father and son." More recently, he wrote Andy Grove: The Life and Times of an American. In my opinion, it one of the two most important business biographies published in recent years, with the other being T.J. Stiles's The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt.

Denial is his latest book and, in my opinion, his most important and most valuable...thus far. As he explains in the Introduction, "Denial is the unconscious calculus that if an unpleasant reality were true, it would be too terrible, so therefore it cannot be true. It is what Sigmund Freud described as a combination of `knowing with not knowing.' It is, in George Orwell's blunt formulation, `protective stupidity.'" Tedlow acknowledges that there are several short-term benefits of denial (e.g. it is soothing, convenient, allows us to live in a world we have created and thus control..."while it lasts") and that is why it is so seductive. "Denial sometimes actually works," as with entrepreneurs who refuse to be discouraged despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of new businesses fail. Also, "the inevitability of catastrophe does not mean that we personally will suffer the consequences." In most circumstances, denial does work in the short-term.

What we have in this extraordinarily informative as well as eloquent book is a comprehensive explanation of what the subtitle correctly indicates: "why business leaders fail to look facts in the face - and what to do about it." Tedlow carefully organizes his material within two Parts. In the first, he examines those who "got it wrong" (i.e. refused to face realities). They include Henry Ford and his denial of what consumers wanted, five major tire manufacturers (i.e. Goodyear, Firestone, Uniroyal, BFGoodrich, and GenCorp) who denied the significance of the "radial revolution" initiated in Europe, and A&P's denial of emerging demographics and consumer preferences. In Part II, Tedlow shifts his attention to several examples of those business leaders who "got it right" at DuPont, Intel, and Johnson & Johnson.

Here are a few brief excerpts from Part I:

Whereas Alfred P. Sloan at General Motors realized that the desires and expectations of consumers were changing in the 1920s and they wanted more and better choices, Henry Ford observed that "any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants as long as its black...He needed people to buy black cars because the only finish available was a black enamel that could be quickly baked on."

In the 1970s and 1980s, the five major tire manufacturers' denial of this new technology took place in two distinct phases. At first, they refused to believe that radial tires would succeed in the American market the way they had in Europe. Second, after it became clear that radials would indeed make it in America, the tire manufacturers denied that their world would change forever. Denial, however, does nit change reality. It simply makes reality tougher to deal with."

"What the A&P executives denied is that there are, in Disraeli's famous phrase, `lies, damn lies, and statistics.' A&P executives celebrated the statistics they liked. They ignored the statistics they did not like...Sales were growing, but at less than half the industry average. . But the lion's share of the increases were taking place by opening new stores...What was denied in this instance is that a policy that had worked well in one context [i.e. signing only short-term leases for inner-city locations] might not work well in another [i.e. suburban markets with rapidly increasing populations where developers required long-term leases]." A&P's "slow collapse" at a "grinding steady pace" was the inevitable result of relentless denial.

In Part II, Tedlow shifts his attention to business leaders who "got it right." For example, those at DuPont who recognized that the company "had suddenly and unexpectedly become far more difficult to manage." They completed an immensely difficult process of restructuring the entire company but only when it was "on the brink of disaster, in the midst of a crisis produced by one of the worst years in its history." Only then "was it able to reconcile itself to the fact that yesterday's structure was acting as a barrier against rather than an avenue toward tomorrow's strategy." And Tedlow then makes an especially key point: "Most remarkable is the absence of denial, the omnipresence of an engineering quest for facts, and the willingness to look those facts in the face even when they weren't pleasant." He then examines leaders at Intel (i.e. Gordon Moore and Andrew Grove) and Johnson & Johnson (James Burke) who also refused to "push aside hard truths in favor of more palatable or convenient" options and made decisions that required courage as well as candor.

Tedlow devotes the final chapter to providing what he characterizes as a "new point of view," one that is guided and informed by eight "lessons" to be learned, from those business leaders who, in ways and to an extent best revealed in context, overcame the "unconscious calculus" of "protective stupidity." Throughout his lively narrative, Tedlow's focus is on helping his reader understand to (a) what denial is, (b) why it is so "seductive," and (c) how to resist its appeal. The eight lessons discussed in the final chapter help to achieve that worthy objective and should be reviewed from time to time. Why? Because denial is not an all-or-nothing proposition. "It is a continuum. Individuals and organizations have the power to determine where on that continuum they fall...human brings and companies are capable of positioning themselves further toward the `facing facts' end of the spectrum than the `denial' end." Resisting denial requires a continuous "battle" that must be fought every day on many fronts.

Thanks to Richard Tedlow, those who read this book will be well-armed.

See all 1 customer reviews... ]]> March 4, 2010-00-00T00:00:00+09:00 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/030771456X/areviews0c-20/ref=nosim/ To tell us of the momentous events that changed not only his life but that of his country, Ireland, Ben McCarthy remembers. Now an older man he looks back to the winter of 1932, a time of turmoil in his home and throughout the land. He lived with his father and mother, Harry and Louise, on a small farm. Harry is stolid, hard working, a family man. Ben sometimes worries that his parents work too hard, and "dug for gold on the farm so he could buy his parents gifts." Quite obviously he is a good youth, one who only wants to do what is right. Theirs is a quiet life with entertainment sometimes being a traveling circus.

(Harry goes to Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show starring Venetia, a young, beautiful woman who we are told "... sprang from the womb and waved to the crowd. Then she smiled and took a bow. " It's a shock when always reliable Harry falls passionately, head-over-heels, crazy in love with Venetia and decides to follow the circus. Louise is distraught and sends Ben off with directions to "Find him and bring him back."

)

">
Thus begins Ben's odyssey, a journey studded with intrigue, larceny, murder and other heinous acts. In addition to unforgettable characters Delaney peoples his story with real people (Yeats) and, yes, a ventriloquist's dummy, Blarney, whose utterances are less than comedic. Woven throughout are references to myth. An ever astonishing author Delaney is difficult to capture - he's inventive, surprising, witty, erudite. But, why try to capture him? Simply listen and enjoy.

Release date:- Gail Cooke
   2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
 A REMARKABLE READING BY THE AUTHOR - AUDIOBOOK REVIEW March 4, 2010
By Gail Cooke
#139 REVIEWER




See all http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/x-site/icons/no-img-sm._V47056216_.gif customer reviews... ]]> March 4, 2010-00-00T00:00:00+09:00 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1427208883/areviews0c-20/ref=nosim/ In this, Stabenow's 17th novel to bring us PI Kate Shugak, the characters who cross her path (in addition to the love of her life Trooper Jim Chopin and her beloved Mutt who is half wolf half husky) are all affected by the Suulutaq Mine and the recently discovered large deposits of gold. The economic impact of this find is a bit more than Kate can relate to but finding a pickup with a suicide note in it but no driver is definitely up her alley. The sudden appearance of the supposed recently deceased complicates matters a bit, but leave it to Kate.

(Along the way environmental questions re the gold mine are raised, and we are treated to sharp portraits of that sometimes incomprehensible state Alaska. Stabenow and her series just get better and better with time - would that all of us would age as well.

)

" alt="In this, Stabenow's 17th novel to bring us PI Kate Shugak, the characters who cross her path (in addition to the love of her life Trooper Jim Chopin and her beloved Mutt who is half wolf half husky) are all affected by the Suulutaq Mine and the recently discovered large deposits of gold. The economic impact of this find is a bit more than Kate can relate to but finding a pickup with a suicide note in it but no driver is definitely up her alley. The sudden appearance of the supposed recently deceased complicates matters a bit, but leave it to Kate.

">
Enjoy!

Release date:- Gail Cooke
   1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 A NEW CHALLENGE FOR KATE AND ALASKA! AUDIO REVIEW March 4, 2010
By Gail Cooke
#139 REVIEWER





See all http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/x-site/icons/no-img-sm._V47056216_.gif customer reviews... ]]> March 4, 2010-00-00T00:00:00+09:00 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0740785176/areviews0c-20/ref=nosim/ That's just a sample of what's in store for your young ones in this inventive, merry encouragement to eat healthy and bring the family together to make mealtimes fun.

(In addition, there's a different challenge in every chapter of BEAN APPETIT. For every challenge completed a youngster cuts out the square provided on page 193 and attaches it to his/her diploma. The diploma can be downloaded at www.beansproutscafe.com.

)

" alt="That's just a sample of what's in store for your young ones in this inventive, merry encouragement to eat healthy and bring the family together to make mealtimes fun.

">
This is one cookbook that won't just sit on a shelf but be enjoyed over and over again by all. (A favorite of ours is Mama Mato with spaghetti hair!)

Release date:- Gail Cooke
   1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 FUN AND HAPPY EATING FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY March 4, 2010
By Gail Cooke
#139 REVIEWER


Basing their collection on favorites from Bean Sprouts, the acclaimed café and cooking school for kids, these authors have filled 192 pages with irresistible, healthy yet fun recipes plus food-themed games, crafts, and activities. So, Moms and Dads invite the small ones into the kitchen and have a ball!



See all http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/x-site/icons/no-img-sm._V47056216_.gif customer reviews... ]]> March 4, 2010-00-00T00:00:00+09:00 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1426925638/areviews0c-20/ref=nosim/ ()


   1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 A good first novel in the footsteps of Hiaasen and Dorsey... March 4, 2010
By Thomas Duff
#43 REVIEWER

As I get further behind in my reading, I find myself saying "no" to more book offers than I used to. It takes a bit more to break through my "I'd like to, but..." now. But I'm a sucker for a good Florida crime genre novel, especially if it has a touch of Dorsey or Hiaasen in it. When Chip Giles mentioned those two names in his email to offer me The Conch Killers, I had to relent and say yes to a copy. And it was worth the read... Tad Hunter and Ramon Garcia are two humorous additions to the wacky characters that make up the Florida literary landscape, and Giles could turn out to be a writer that I enjoy reading on a regular basis.

In Conch Killers, Hunter and Garcia are two ex-military drifters who live for sailing. They've gotten out of "the life", which means they are no longer doing jobs for shadowy characters that skirt the boundaries of the law. But they are drawn back when they are offered a large payout for a "simple" job... deliver a package in exchange for a kidnap victim, and bring the victim back to her family. But of course, nothing is simple in the Florida Keys, and the job turns into a full-fledged mission with terrorists, guns, and dead bodies. Along the way, there are luxury sailboats, obnoxious owners, people who aren't who they seem to be, and enough craziness to keep everyone confused and amused...

Giles has done a good job for a first novel. Hunter and Garcia are a good character mix, with Hunter playing the semi-rational partner to Garcia's off-the-wall (and sometimes deadly) antics. Given the type of characters they are, the dialog works well. It's not how you'd talk or carry on every day yourself, but it fits the personalities. The only major knock I have on the book is a situation that many self-published authors fall into... the lack of a solid editor to clean up the book. It wasn't so much the story that needed help as the grammar and word usage. I expect most books to have an incorrect word or two, such as their vs. there or bear vs. bare. But The Conch Killers has far too many. When I encountered the first one, I just let it go. The second one about ten pages later gave me pause. But when it got to be one every five pages or so, it really started to bug me. Most of these could have been caught with a single reading by a relatively careful reader. It's too bad, as it otherwise mars what would be a really good first novel.

Giles is in the process of writing his next novel, and I would look forward to reading it. The Conch Killers was a nice diversion to the Florida Keys, and I hope Giles continues to flesh out Hunter and Garcia, and add to their list of adventures.

Disclosure:
Obtained From: Author
Payment: Free

See all customer reviews... ]]> March 4, 2010-00-00T00:00:00+09:00 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0312573723/areviews0c-20/ref=nosim/ ()


   2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
 amusing crime caper March 4, 2010
By Harriet Klausner
#706 REVIEWER

In Pittsburgh, Roxy Abruzzo tries to keep her Bada Bling Architectural Salvage business clean although her Uncle Carmine the Mafia boss tries sending her work. Roxy feels strongly about staying legal in spite of Uncle Carmine's efforts because she feels she must set an example for her sixteen year old daughter Sage; who is the result of a teen fling she had with Chef Patrick Flynn, just back from a Middle East deployment and wanting to deploy a second time with his former high school girlfriend.

However, Roxy is unable to resist stealing an ancient Greek statue that belongs to wealthy womanizing Julius Hyde. Her assistant "Nooch" Santonucci does whatever she wants and easily hoists the garden statue. Soon after her heist someone murders Jules and burns down the estate of his nonagenarian mom, who is more fretful that her prized possession, an ancient Greek statue is missing, rather than her son's death or the arson.


With the Blackbird Sisters taking a breather, Nancy Martin introduces her fans to a steel tough single mom trying not to join the family business though thievery runs in her DNA. Roxy holds the story line together especially after she purloins the statue. Filled with dark humor, Ms. Martin's fans will enjoy the Stealer escapades of a woman who straddles the line between a touch of piracy and a role model citizen as one tiny caper proves to the heroine that crime doesn't pay (sometimes).

Harriet Klausner



See all customer reviews... ]]> March 4, 2010-00-00T00:00:00+09:00 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1595551697/areviews0c-20/ref=nosim/ ()


   1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 A sound history from Bush 41 through the election of Obama March 4, 2010
By Craig Matteson
#75 REVIEWER

The teaching of American History is worse than neglected in our schools and even our universities. Students are convinced that history is boring and even irrelevant to their lives and schools pretend to accommodate this need for relevancy by providing misleading pabulum and calling it history. It would be sad if it weren't so damaging to our nation and its people. The truth is that each of us needs a strong grounding in the history of our nation, its major events, important documents, and founding culture. Obviously, someone with a political agenda that wanted to overthrow that founding and replace it with a new, say, progressive culture would be better off if our schools taught our founding as unimportant, our Constitution as out of date, and taught a collectivist culture as superior to the ideas of individual liberty and responsibility that built this great country. You see the noxious fruit of this approach to history education everywhere in our schools for the past many decades.

Bill Bennett is working hard to reinvigorate the teaching of a sound, fair, but positive history of America. He wants people to feel full of hope and optimism about the great promise America has been and remains for the world. The beacon of Liberty can still shine bright if our citizens rekindle their desire for it.

This is the third volume of Bennett's history of America. You can get the first two either individually or in a two volume set that covers America from the Age of Discovery through the Reagan Administration. America: The Last Best Hope Volumes I & II Box Set I recommend this history highly. There are also other patriotic histories that do a very good job. The American Patriot's Almanac: Daily Readings on America Just stay away from the cynical approaches that see America as the source of all evil, pain, and misery in the world. Not only are those kinds of books lies, they are depressing to read, and will affect you, your students, and your family very negatively. After reading Bennett's books you will know why millions risked everything to come here, how America became the greatest nation on Earth, and why we must hold tightly to our founding culture and our Constitution.

This volume covers the election of George H.W. Bush, the two Clinton administrations, and the two George W. Bush administrations, and ends with the election of Barack Obama. Bennett is even handed in all he discusses, but not in the sense that he tries to have it both ways. He has a point of view, but is unwilling to be partisan. He is clear that Bush 41 broke his promises on taxes (even if he is a bit negligent in explaining that Congress turned on Bush and did not use the new tax revenues to bring the budget in balance. Instead, they spend something like $1.80 for every $1.00 in new tax revenues). Bennett is clear about Clinton's talents and promise, but also about how his personal foibles damaged his Presidency and the country. He is clear where he thinks our leaders (of all sides) made mistakes, where their thinking was wrong, and when they pandered for their own gain or agenda over their duty to America.

While Bennett is terrific in covering the political history and provides terrific insights from his personal knowledge and conversations with key players, he is also superior on bringing issues with the popular culture into focus and how they both reflect and influence our political culture. Of course, nothing is more important in this book that the War on Terror and especially 9/11. Here, the book is passionate and recounts the events so clearly, but not pathetically, that all the pain from that period is evoked again and I was strongly moved by how Bennett told the horrors of those days. The book has two sections of terrific color pictures that help us remember or see the images of the events covered in this book.

As I think about educating young people, I would probably want them to start with this book in the trilogy and then work backwards. Why? Because a teenager would see the events of his or her life covered in this book including the decade previous to their being born. For them, this book is the history of America and their life. Once they have that context clear in their minds, they can reach back to the lives of their parents and grandparents in the previous volume. Then, with that in mind, they can reach into the origins of our nation, its colonization, the Revolution, the Founding, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Westward Expansion, and World War I.

This is a terrific book and I think everyone should read it, use it to teach their children, and give it as a gift to anyone who could use an optimistic grounding in America.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI


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   2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
 A Fantastical, Revisionist Look Back at World War II, Tarantino Style March 3, 2010
By Ed Uyeshima
#131 REVIEWER

Polarizing filmmaker Quentin Tarantino's unadulterated love of cinema is really the most pervasive factor in his fantastical 2009 World War II adventure. Running an epic-length 153 minutes, it may appear on the surface like The Longest Day, but the director/writer takes inspiration from Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly), Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen, Hollywood wartime propaganda B-movies, and his own adrenaline-infused and blackly comic films (Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill) to tell an audacious "what-if...?" story about a group of guerrilla U.S. soldiers in Nazi-occupied France. The tightly wound plot revolves around three key figures: Colonel Hans Landa, an elegant, seemingly bloodless Nazi officer known as "The Jew Hunter"; Lt. Aldo Raine, a Tennessee-born resistance fighter who has organized a special squad of Jewish-American soldiers whose goal is scalping and killing Nazis; and Emmanuelle Mimieux (née Shosanna Dreyfus), a pensive young Jewish woman who runs a movie theater in Paris.

As presented by Tarantino over the course of five discrete chapters, the three disparate figures converge upon Mimieux's theater for the premiere of a Nazi propaganda film called "A Nation's Pride". There in attendance is to be not only Third Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels but also the Fuehrer himself. Needless to say, the filmmaker has carefully set up all his chess pieces for a flamboyant finale that represents a manifestation of some kind of crude moral justice that revisionist history allows only grand storytellers like Tarantino. Riddled with quirky incongruities, some of which border a bit too closely to self-parody, his signature style is evident through a series of set pieces, most heavy on insinuating dialogue, that suddenly explode like the tavern mêlée in La Louisiane.

In a turnabout from his Oscar-baiting performance last year as the passive Benjamin Button, Brad Pitt brings cocksure arrogance to Raine in an enjoyably hammy turn. Mélanie Laurent perfectly captures Shosanna's simmering resentment until her cathartic release during the explosive conclusion, while Diane Kruger cuts a somewhat more predictable figure as a Dietrich-like femme fatale actress in cahoots with Raine's battalion. Tarantino fills smaller roles with oddball choices like Mike Myers as a pip-pip British general, Rod Taylor (The Birds) as Churchill, and Hostel director Eli Roth as a baseball bat-wielding Nazi killer. Regardless, the best work comes from Christoph Waltz's nuanced turn as the sadistic Landa. It's a masterfully subtle performance amid a movie that is anything but subtle.

Waltz's best scene comes right at the beginning with his unbearably tense conversation with a stoic French farmer suspected of hiding a family of Jews. There is also glorious camerawork from veteran cinematographer Robert Richardson (JFK). The extras seem a bit too stretched out for the 2009 two-disc set, especially with no Tarantino commentary being offered in this package. Instead, on the first disc, we get two extended scenes and one alternate, the movie-within-the-movie "A Nation's Pride", and a few trailers. The second disc offers a half-hour round table discussion among Tarantino, Pitt, and film critic Elvis Mitchell; a faux-making-of featurette for "A Nation's Pride"; a discussion of the original Italian movie, Inglorious Bastards (upon which this movie bears little similarity); and a few other more obscure extras. Love it or hate it, the film reflects the filmmaker's uniquely audacious style in his most serious effort to date.

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