5 comments about Without a Doubt.

1. I have read most of the books written about the O.J. Trial. All have been more about setting forth that particular author's personal/ or political agenda and not about true analysis.

   What I fail to find in any of these books is what role did the media play in turning a simple crime of passion into the racial mess that this trial came to symbolize?

   This story is simple. Man and woman have a very sick/tormented relationship, where many sick games are played. One day man loses his head and murders woman and the poor guy who comes to her rescue. Man goes to trial. Man goes to jail for a crime of passion. End of story.

   Instead the SCLM (So Called Liberal Media) as described in the Eric Alterman's book, "What Liberal Media," enters the picture driven by the almighty dollar and turns this simple crime into the trial of the century simply for the profit margin.

   We still trust the media to inform us and they failed miserably as they have done in every important story of our generation. There is no liberal media bias. It's all about the money and polarizing the country to fuel the tragic story of the Simpson case was more important to the Media than actually telling the real story.

   They forgot that Nicole and O.J. loved each other and created two very lovely kids together. Race had nothing to do witth it until the media focussed on it.

   Marcia Clark lost her case, because she drank the Kool Aid from the media and followed their narrative as opposed to trying the case for what it was a crime of passion.




2. It wouldn't have mattered who prosecuted this case. The jury were never going to convict OJ after the race card was played.
   
   Pretty good account of the trial, and an interesting insight into the author's ordeal in handling such a nightmarish case. She lays into Judge Ito & the cyncical tactics of Cochrane.
   
   You come away doubting that the jury system really delivers justice.



3. I read four books after the trial. I read the Schiller 1000 page saga, Outrage, the present book and a book on Johnny Cochrane. Each book was different and gives us different insights.
   
   I think it is clear to any reasonable and unbiased thinking person that O.J. did in fact kill Nicole and Ron and it is just as it is clear that Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK. Also it is clear from the other reviewers that Marcia Clark evokes a certain emotional response that colors their view of the book. If you still think O.J. is innocent then I think that is a personal problem or internal devil that you must deal with but it is not related to reality. As the title says "Without a Doubt" he was guilty.
   
   Johnny made buckets of money as a criminal attorney. Both he and Shapiro could make sums of money in hours that only the rest of us can dream about. Johnny drove a Rolls and Shapiro rubbed elbows with the LA movers and shakers.
   
   Marcia is more like the average citizen, working for the DA's office, probably driving a Chevrolet or Honda. She was a single divorced mother that commutes to work. After the trial she had decided enough was enough, and she wrote the book along with everyone else. And I say good for her! Make a buck or two! Its America.
   
   Now for the book. It is what you might expect. It is the story of her involvement with the trial. It presents some prior background on her life and earlier trials and then goes in detail through the O.J. saga and what it was like from her perspective. I think is a well written book and for the most part entertaining. "Outrage" is a bit more gripping and Schiller's "American Tragedy" longer and more comprehensive. But this book is what we would expect. It deals mainly with her role and it is a solid job. She was basically a civil servant and she was the front "man" facing a raft of America's most famous lawyers including the above mentioned plus F. Lee Bailey. Then to complicate things, the whole mess was presided over by the star blinded Judge Ito. Together they faced essentially 12 black female jurors who loved Johnny and O.J.
   
   Could she win? "Without a Doubt" she could not win, but it was nothing to do with her.
   
   Recommend. 4 stars.



4. Any reasonable person who listened to the evidence at the so-called "trial of the century" knows without out a doubt that O. J. Simpson killed his ex-wife Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman, the hapless waiter who was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Anyone who watched the announcement of the verdict and saw the shock and disbelief on O. J. Simpson's own face, as the not guilty verdict was read, would know that even the defendant knew he was guilty.
   
   The prosecution never had much of a chance, because the presiding judge, Lance Ito, was a bumbling idiot who could not control his courtroom and make sound evidentiary rulings. . Instead, Lance Ito allowed his courtroom to become a three-ring circus. As a career prosecutor, I was appalled at the time at what went on in that courtroom, and Lance Ito's courting of the media was reprehensible. It was also clear that he was awed by and enthralled with the celebrity of the defendant appearing before him. One need only look to the civil trial in the matter to see how an effective judge controlled his courtroom. There, Judge Hiroshi Fujisaki made sound rulings on evidentiary matters and remained in control of his courtroom at all times. Consequently, justice was obtained in the civil case.
   
   This tell all, no holds barred book is a well-written, engaging behind-the-scenes account of the "trial of the century". While Ms. Clark does include some personal information about herself, it is in the context of why she became a prosecutor and makes for a more fully fleshed account of how and why she may have acted as she did under the circumstances. She admits to some mistakes, and probably one of the biggest was having been lulled into a false sense of complacency about the competence of the criminalist assigned to the case, rather than going with her gut instinct to get whom she thought would be the best person for the job. Consequently, she was saddled with criminalist Dennis Fung, who for his incompetence in such a high profile case should have been summarily fired thereafter.
   
   As for the defense "Dream Team", having watched their antics on court TV during the course of the trial, it was clear that they were playing to the media for all it was worth, and the media was lapping it up. So much of what the defense did went beyond what was sanctioned by evidentiary rules and the rules of professional conduct that I was both amazed and appalled. That they got away with this kind of behavior was reprehensible. The only one able to call them on it, however, was Judge Lance Ito, and he failed to do so. The blame, therefore, for all the shenanigans that went on during the course of the trial lies squarely on Lance Ito's shoulders. He definitely gets the prize for one of the greatest failures in American jurisprudence.
   
   Still, one cannot forget prosecutor Chris Darden's ill-advised decision in proceeding to have O.J. try on the bloodied, weathered gloves found at the scene and at his home, rather than waiting for an exact duplicate pair to be delivered by the manufacturer. In light of the fact that the manufacturer had advised the prosecution that the original gloves would have shrunk as much as fifteen percent due to repeated exposure to dampness and extremes of heat and cold, it was downright stupid for Chris Darden to proceed to have the defendant try them on. While Ms. Clark had counseled Chris Darden not to proceed with this demonstration, but rather, to wait for the new duplicate pair, he did so anyway with disastrous results. As the lead prosecutor in the case, however, the fault for this debacle lies squarely with her on this issue, rather than Mr. Darden, because when you are the lead prosecutor, the buck stops with you. Ms. Clark need look no further than herself for this major faux pas and for the ensuing creation of Johnnie Cochran's famous, catchy sound bite, "If the glove doesn't fit, then you must acquit". Never mind that the new, duplicate glove fit O. J. to perfection!
   
   Notwithstanding the glove debacle, the forensic evidence against the defendant was overwhelming, despite the bungling of criminalist Dennis Fung. Unfortunately, the painstaking forensics case put together by the prosecution was lost under the smokescreen set off by the defense. The "Dream Team" played the race card to perfection to a sound bite crazed media that helped create a public frenzy, no doubt aided by the celebrity of the defendant. The defense team's cries of police mis-conduct and the Fuhrmanizing of the trial was a pulp journalist's dream come true. It was also a travesty of justice, as all the hoopla and media distortion masked what the trial was really about, the savage and wanton murders of two innocent human beings. Moreover, while much has been said about this being a crime of passion that the prosecution tried as dispassionately as possible, one must keep in mind that Judge Ito tied the prosecution's hands in large part, while giving the "Dream Team' an unprecedented free rein.
   
   This book will keep courtroom junkies enthralled with its war stories and sneak peak into the "trial of the century". Ms. Clark gives an excellent analysis of what went wrong, and while some of it may be a bit self-serving, she is right on the money for the most part. This is a riveting, page turning account, and she doesn't hold back any punches. Ms. Clark painstakingly goes through the evidence that was presented at the trial, as well as that evidence that Judge Ito, in his infinite wisdom, did not allow the prosecution to present. Anyone who reads this book will be outraged by the obvious miscarriage of justice, as it will be clear as a bell why O. J. Simpson is, without a doubt, guilty of the murders of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman.



5. Yeah, I am a white guy. And you can call me any names that you would like, but it is upon you to prove it. Marcia Clark has written a book and has laid herself open to all the negative attention and snide remarks that she endured during the case that IMHO was a gut wrenching travesty. Marica proves to me that she is a mighty fine lawyer, a great mother and even more important a real LADY that dealt with extremes with the utmost integrity and honesty. She should be held up as an American heroine for what she endured, doing battle daily for more than a year with the "Dream Team," and their race baiting and a judge that was oh so very weak. I can't remember ever reading a book that made me want to meet and honor such a very special person as I do Marcia Clark. The trial was all about race and nothing that the prosecution could do would change that. They are the heroes. But instead, they are held up to ridicule for what they did or did not do. Orenthal James Simpson is guilty of snuffing out two lives with vicious and bloody attacks and if you don't get that message from this book, you have a serious lack of comprehension or you just don't get it. It would be a great honor for me to be able to meet Ms. Clark, just to thank her for what she went through while trying to find some sort of justice while fighting all of the elements that she came across. Great book. I am proud to live in a nation that has people like Marcia Clark. being an attorney, mother or just a lovely person. Ms Clark. Good Job!!!!!!

1 comments about A Good Day To Die.

1. YOU WILL NOT WANT TO PUT THIS ONE DOWN! I FINISHED IT IN ONE DAY!

5 comments about The Evil 100.

1. There are many things wrong with this book as a list, and as a discussion of the problem of evil. But consider just one thing. This is a collection of malefactors that Islamic fanatics would approve of. Of course Osama Bin Laden makes number 8, and so do the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. But that's to be expected from Americans. But how could they not admire a book in which 46 of the world's most evil people come from the United States? When you add people from Britain, Australia and Canada you get a solid majority from the Anglo-American world. And so many of their crimes involve sexual perversity and anonymous murder, which clearly trumps religious bigotry and systematic injustice in the author's scale of evils. Basically this is a book that starts off with the most infamous tyrants (Hitler is number one), and after the first twenty and thirty places, goes on to discuss mass murderers and serial killers. The four Presidential assassins are included, and the book rounds out with the Marquis De Sade and virus writers. Aside from inadvertently giving aid to comfort to America's enemies by suggesting it has, if not a monopoly of evil, controlling interest in it, the book is superficial and unpleasant to read. The book combines a shallow moralism with a lurid interest in their subject's atrocities, a sort of pornography for Republicans. The moral questions are not really addressed. For a start many of the book's subjects are patently insane, even by the strict and pro-Prosecutor guidelines of Anglo-American law. Is it useful to describe as evil someone who does not have the capacity for moral choice, or which is constrained by severe psychological problems? Sure, says the author. It doesn't matter that Martin Bryant, the Tasmanian mass murderer had an IQ of 66 or that Caligula may have been suffering from schizophrenia or epilepsy.

   Reading the earlier entries one wondered how many of the charges against Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Ivan IV (the Terrible) or Vlad III (the Impaler, who makes the top 10) are actually true or are just propaganda. Good question, since Vlad III's status rests more on the idea that he was the inspiration for Dracula. The suspicion increases when the entry on Hussein starts by blaming him for the anthrax mailings in the fall of 2001, something which he clearly was not responsible for. The historical analysis is not very deep. Salvador Allende was not a Communist. There is no good reason for having Eichmann appear before Himmler, his superior, nor did he have to face 15 charges at Nuremberg. The book overstates the severity and intensity of the persecution of Christians as a result of Nero, while at the time ignoring his destruction of Jerusalem. Likewise Tojo's treatment of American POWs gets more condemnation than the way the treated the rest of Asia. Mussolini's worst acts, his African atrocities, get little space. And there is much that is missing. Neither Khomenei or the Shah appear; the African slave trade is completely ignored, and so is apartheid. Idi Amin Dada appears, but the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide are missed. The Belgian Rulers who may have caused the deaths of 15 million Congolese in their occupation of the country are forgotten. The whole bloody subjugation of the Western hemisphere goes unmentioned, so there is nothing on how Pizarro managed to destroy and enslave an entire civilization out of sheer greed. The Thirty Years War, the Crusades, the conquest of Ireland, the suppression of the Dutch Revolt are all ignored. If Stalin's and Mao's famines are to be condemned what about the Irish potato famine or the (several) Bengal famines? Mobuto, Suharto, D'Aubisson, Stroessener and the rulers of Guatemala get no mention. Nor, needless to say, do Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If Garfield's assasin deserves an entry, shouldn't Gandhi's? (Or for that matter the assassins of Indira or Rajiv Gandhi?) Charles Guiteau was just a disgruntled office seeker and Garfield a mediocre politician. The assassins of Gandhi, Luxembourg, Jaures, Rabin, King, Barthou, Bloch, Milk and Moscone were fascists or something close to it. And what about the judicial murder of Thomas More or Margaret Pole? McKinley's conquest of the Philippines involved many atrocities and the death of one in seven Filipinos. Shouldn't he rank higher than his killer?




2. So the assassin of Garfield warrants a place among the most evil human beings to walk this planet, but the murderer of Gandhi does not? To be fair I'm not sure either individual should be included in this terribly flawed book, but one was a rather insignificant politician, the other freed his nation from imperialist bondage. Then again, Gandhi wasn't an American so perhaps his death is less significant in the eyes of this particular author.
   
   Many of the choices of evil individuals the author makes in this book are arbitrary at best, and many individuals are included simply because of the lurid and sensasionalistic details of their crimes. For example, Ed Gein was clearly insane and should not be included with people who understood the implications of their crimes, yet choose to commit them anyways, yet he's included among the great "evils" of the world because of the... well... exotic nature of his crimes related to already dead women; while not intending to minimize his actual murders, he is known to have killed only one woman - perhaps three - hardly worthy of inclusion in a book of "pure evil." I'm still shocked that this author would seriously include the creators of computer viruses as being in the 100th most "evil" person(s) in history.
   
   In addition to sometimes very poor choices, the quality of the writing is very poor. (...) There are times he simply repeats the exact thing he wrote a paragraph or two before. (...) There are also times when one isn't sure who the author is refering to in a story. What "he" are you taliking about? The subject of the story? A victim?
   
   Far be it for me to tell potntial purchasers of this book how they should spend their money. Suffice it to say, though, that I received my copy as a gift, and I still think I spent too much on it.



3. After reading the first half-dozen entries and skimming the rest, the summaries are not as concise as they could be and some entries are questionable. The most obvious one:
   John Wilkes Booth makes the list of most evil (number 94), but Linconln should be there instead. Lincoln is primarily responsible for the deaths of 620,000 people because he could have simply allowed the Confederate states to have their independence. Instead, he launched a military invasion, allowed the demolition of cities which caused starvation and disease. He imprisoned thousands of people simply because they were sympathetic to the Confederacy, leaving them jailed indefinitely, without access to attorneys or a listing of charges against them. He shut down many newspapers and confisticated telegraph companies. He refused to meet with Confederate delegations during the war, which could have resulted in a compromise. The South was justified in seeking relief from the unfair tax burden and their decreasing representation in the senate and house. The constitution and other laws effectively permitted secession. Lincoln was not really anti-slavery and slavery was dying out throughout the Americas anyway (it ended in Brazil, in 1888).
   Also, referring to the Civil War battle of Antietam, 22,000 was not the number killed. It was the number of casualties (dead, wounded and missing).



4. 
   I can't figure out who this extremely weak book is aimed at. As a serious discussion of evil -- something I held out hope for until a couple of minutes after I cracked open the cover -- it is far too superficial and haphazard. A light and fun treatment of the subject? Um, doesn't writing something about evil preclude that tact?
   
   Instead, we're left with an an almost random list of people who, at the highest levels, are responsible for some truly atrocious events (Adolph Hitler is first; Ossama bin Laden eighth), then eroding into a list of rapists, assassins, and serial killers at the middle levels, before concluding with the world's most famous sexual fetishist (the Marquis De Sade) and a couple of computer virus writers. Almost half of the evildoers are from the U.S.; almost all are men.
   
   None of this is to belittle the horrible to nasty things these people did, though it could be argued that the format of this book does that. The whole concept is similar to learning about food by writing about the hundred most tasty meals ever prepared, or discussing parenting by ranking the hundred best-behaved children ever to be potty trained. It's absurd. Much more interesting would have been an investigation into what kind of psychology makes people evil, or of historical trends regarding the subject.
   
   But there are other problems:
   
   --How do you rank kinds of evil? The whole process requires some kind of formula based on how much persecution is worth how many murders, that the murder of anonymous masses is worth more or less than a high degree of sexual perversion, a lack of sanity, or a low IQ, and puts a ratio on how much property damage is worth a human life.
   
   --Also, how good is the history this information in based on? Comparing the well-documented evils of Nazi leaders with the myth of someone like Vlad The Impaler, the historical character that Count Dracula is based on who is ranked in the top ten and who may or may not have existed ... well, you see the point, which is made over and over again.
   
   --There are many factual errors. The number of dead listed for the battle of Antietam is actually the number of men killed, injured, or missing. Chilean dictator Salvador Allende was not a Communist. And no serious commentator has blamed Iraq's Sadam Hussein for the anthrax attacks in the U.S. in 2001. There are many more examples.
   
   --Then, as with any top 100 compilation, what about those left off the list? Africa and Latin America are woefully underrepresented. What about the perpetrators of apartheid in South Africa or of the African slave trade? Or Fransisco Pizarro, who destroyed the great Inca capital of Cusco and killed tens of thousands of natives so he could send their gold and silver home, to the smelters of Sevilla? What about Abamael Guzman, the founder of Latin Americas bloodiest rebel group, or Alfredo Stroessener, who ran Paraguay as a haven for ex-Nazis and who left his country a generation behind most of the rest of the continent?
   
   In the end, the book's limited value is as a collection of mini biographies of despicable characters aimed at the small niche of people interested in rubber necking at an almost random collection of people who left a negative mark on history. For anything beyond that, this book is not up to the task.



5. This book is not reliable for sources or anything else, for that matter. I have not read it, but I know. I was doing a Google Book search on Benito Mussolini and I came to the first page of this book, and it states Mussolini was born in 1893. This is incorrect. He was born in 1883. I don't know if this was just bad editing or horrible fact-checking on the author's part, but having seen this I cannot say I would trust any other parts of this publication.

4 comments about A Knight of Another Sort: Prohibition Days and Charlie Birger, Second Edition (Shawnee Classics).

1. If Paul Angle's BLOODY WILLIAMSON got your attention, you might consider DeNeal's portrait of Birger and his violent life as a natural companion piece. His exhaustive examination of the gangster's persona and the spectacle of his death is well-written and enjoyable. For those not so interested in the particulars of Birger's life, this study offers a solid snapshot of southern Illinois culture during the years just before the Depression. Ballowe's smart, albeit brief, introduction is also nicely done.



2. Growing up in southern Illinois, the stomping grounds of Charlie Birger, I always heard the stories of gangsters. For anyone who has lived in southern Illinois, it is hard to imagine gangsters, bootlegging, etc. going on in this rural part of the state. Being curious about what was fact and what was fiction regarding Birger, I found this book.

   It is a really good read, covering all aspects of Birger, as well as some background information on southern Illinois and the Prohibition period there. It is especially interesting to read about areas you know really well, and soak in the history that took place there. I would recommend this book to anyone from the southern Illinois area.




3. I purchased this book originally while doing family research in Southern Illinois. My family had for years heard stories of my grandfather and Charlie Birger. I wanted to see if any dates/events coincided and to my surprise and relief there were not very many. During the reading of the book, however, I found myself being drawn in and even beginning to become enchanted by Charlie Birger. Don't get me wrong - he was a very dangerous and troubled person - but the writing by Gary DeNeal really drew me in. The history lessons as well as the interesting look at the world of a small time (even though Birger thought he was big-time) gangster was quite interesting. One of the most interesting facets was his association with other local gangsters and the historical look at how East St. Louis, now suffering from urban decay, was once a thriving and beautiful city. This book was a lot of fun and Mr. DeNeal did his research quite well.



4. I picked up the original edition of this book years ago. It seemed then to be the definitive biography of Charlie Birger but Gary DeNeal has seen fit to update it and expand it with new info. This is one of the best gangster biographies I've ever seen and the rural background adds to the fascination. The Birger-Shelton gang war, complete with machine guns, armored trucks, and aerial bombing, equalled the violence and color of Capone's Chicago. A well-written and researched work that brings to life the Prohibition era.

No comments about Lucky Luciano: The Father of Organized Crime (Amazing Stories).

2 comments about Loyal Soldiers in the Cocaine Kingdom: Tales of Drugs, Mules, and Gunmen.

1. "Loyal Soldiers in the Cocaine Kingdom; Tales of Drugs, Mules, and Gunmen," by Alfredo Molano is a collection of seven self-portraits of bad decisions. The introduction and translation by James Graham is outstanding. Graham displays a towering knowledge of Colombia and successfully argues that Plan Colombia will never succeed. His logic is simple, "no military campaign will ever extinguish the narcotics trade, because it would first be necessary to eliminate the disenfranchised members of society, individual by individual."
   
   The testimonial literature in this short (158 page) book reports how Colombians want a better life and roll the dice on getting caught trafficking. Unfortunately, the author employs weak transitions which leads to a choppy read and much confusion. The first (the mule driver) and last (puppet) chapters are good. However, much of what is inbetween contains nuggets of interesting information but it is wrapped in a maze of confusing language. The back of the book informs us that Alfredo Molano is a highly regarded sociologist and journalist who (in his native Colombia) is compared to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. That may be true...but he will hardly be confused with the legendary Gabo by critical readers in this country.
   
   Bert Ruiz



2. In Loyal Soldiers in the Cocaine Kingdom: Tales of Drugs, Mules, and Gunmen, the exiled Colombian writer Alfredo Molano makes a similar point. Molano's book consists of a series of populist portraits of the little people in the cocaine business--people who for the most part have gambled and lost, the sort of folks whom, as he puts it, "our compatriots would be happy to bury so as not to cause embarrassment at embassy cocktail parties." (Molano interviewed many of his subjects in prison.) Most are motivated by a desperate desire to escape the poverty that afflicts the vast majority of ordinary Colombians. In each case, cocaine offers the prospect of financial relief--of freedom, really, to use a word that President Bush seems to be unable to complete a sentence without. A man Molano refers to as Scuzzball, the son of peasants from the southern state of Putumayo, leaves home at the age of 13 because, as he puts it, "there's no life where we were living and it was time to go looking for it." Endowed with natural intelligence, Scuzzball becomes an artist at cocaine extraction and sets himself up as a chemist, hiring out his knowledge so that his fellow peasants can coax a little more product out of their coca bushes. Eventually, however, Scuzzball's entrepreneurial instincts lead him into trafficking. He is betrayed, and by the time Molano meets Scuzzball, he is doing time in a Bolivian prison in Cochabamba. "In Colombia," Scuzzball ruefully tells Molano, "it's we nameless people who moved [into the cocaine trade] ... until those with nice last names started to ask us for help and little by little we gave it to them, and eventually we take them as partners in the business."
   
   The situation is much the same for the poor of Colombia's slums. "The Mule Driver," another Molano character, describes the gamble taken by the "mules" who transport cocaine on airlines. The mules wrap the cocaine in condoms and swallow them. "If the rubber tears, you'll live a few hours; if it doesn't break but the police seize you, you'll spend eight years of your life behind bars; if you carry it off, you've laid the first layer of bricks that goes towards building a wall between you and poverty."
   
   Molano doesn't romanticize this impulse, which is both corrupting and fraught with moral ambiguity. Colombia's legal products have never sold well enough either internally or in the United States to generate significant numbers of stable jobs. The few jobs that Colombia's globalized neoliberal economy has kicked up are low-wage and nonglamorous--offering little more than what Kirk refers to as "the cheap seat at the world's parade." By contrast, the cocaine business offers fabulous riches and far sexier possibilities--what Kirk describes as "integration through crime." Although for a person of few prospects it's a tempting line of work, it has obvious drawbacks. The Mule Driver, for example, starts as a poor liquor-store delivery boy infatuated with a rich girl--the daughter of the owner of a whorehouse. After he loses his job as the result of this infatuation, his brother tells him that the job was beneath his dignity anyway and advises him to get into cocaine. "Why should I have a 'job' that has me stooping to work at the beck and call of a boss," the Mule Driver argues to himself, "killing myself for a lousy salary that would never compensate me." Although he makes good money for a while, he ultimately gets betrayed by the girlfriend and winds up doing twenty-two years in a Madrid prison.

5 comments about Chinese Playground : A Memoir.

1. Yeah-- so forget about some of the editing problems-- this book is a must read! There are so many similarities between this and cultish groups. It doesn't matter if you're a poor kid in Chinatown or a rich kid in a brainwashing group-the lessons remain the same:One's inner voice--thinking for onesself and then of course--running away when you can --are universal stories. We have seen it in Nazi Germany, with Waco, in Chinatown and in Jonestown. KIDS of all ages should read this truly eye-opening account of how easy it is to get pulled in to an ideology that then kills its own....



2. this is a very well-written book for a non-fiction plot. It was recommended to me by a friend and I have to say the plot was not boring, the author was very descriptive in his writing. Don't miss out on this.



3. I was born in San Francisco. It isn't like that anymore as you can see, I didn't live in Chinatown but regularly go to my Grandma or grandpa after school in chinatown. I lived in Japantown til I was six years old. I moved to Oakland ever since.

   When I brought this book, I didn't know what to expect, but when I read about his life, I could really relate to his childhood. Not as extreme as his was, but I can really relate, and how I would turn out if I was still in San Francisco. Would probably be the same as him with those family issues like that. Can turn a kid to look at their enviroment for support. I too am Toishanese, does that mean most toishanese parents are stubborn and ignorant? I don't know.

   And the Enviroment in Oakland is no different. Kids want to be goo wak jais and hard ghetto punks.




4. I've seen this in Chinatown Toishan parents and the kinds of effects that their nastiness has on their kids and the conflicted confused ideas of Confucian obedience that prevent intelligent kids from healing as fast as they could especially when in other Chinese families, Confucianism does work and families are peaceful and happy or if the kids aren't targeted by their nasty parents, they grow up smug and snug and sly. I can't even imagine what it is like to grow up with such parenting in parts of Asia where Western psychobabble isn't pervasive and there are no clues at all for kids to suss out why their parents behave terribly.
   
   When the author was four years old, he required medical appointments once a month and his mother would not speak to him during this once a month escort but she would sigh throughout the bus ride and sometimes not sit next to him to indicate that he was an imposition. I've seen this happen. I've also seen parents threaten to leave toddlers and sometimes actually walk away from children and stay hidden watching their child's distress. It looks like the parents who do this imply to their kids that this can't be held against the parents since it not a regular occurence and will soon vanish in their infant memory. I know exactly what the author means (because I have seen it) when he writes that his mother was "unpredictable," intensified abuse when her child "cried harder," "perceived [her children] as her enemies ...[and] was a master at making [her children] feel repulsive." It's not a secret and he's not exaggerating or demonizing his parents. Other people see but why don't things change? I think that things don't change within a closed community and there has to be certain conditions in place with regard to subgroup's historical attitude towards entitlement, money, education and subgroup dogmatism for the problem to exist. This is not an entirely Chinese problem. It is at least specific subgroup's problem as far as I am aware. I know that irrational injust parenting had to have had something to do with later judgement. These parents are so socially insulated even within the larger Chinese hierarchy of provenance nevermind in American society that there's unlikely to be any occasion when someone holds a mirror up to them or lets them know just how they appear to others which means their kids are really isolated in processing the abuse. This is another good book for examples of narcissistic personality disorder both covert and overt. I don't respect more fortunate Chinese American kids who think Chinatown is glamorous and lap up all the exploitive media products while living an otherwise boring but at least safe existence in suburbia. This is another person's misfortune that is being used as entertainment. I guess this is a good book for those kids who have no sympathy only voyeuristic interest for Chinatown. I'm not sure that it would be effective for an at-risk child though.
   
   Born to Lose is a better book by the same author. It has greater depth. For some one with birth defects, he's a much better writer than many others I've read.



5. I just finished reading Bill Lee's book "Chinese Playground," it was a book that I could not put down. It is a must read. I found I had a lot in common with the author of the book, we both have had our own experiences in our lifetime, but it comes down to getting through the problems. It's a matter of SURVIVAL and learning something from our experiences. I admire the author for what he has been thru and what he has made of his life inspite of the obstacles.
   
   I would recommend that everyone read this book!

3 comments about The Luciano Story.

1. This book does provide the reader with a basic insight of Lucianos life.It has been well written but the facts seem to be a bit out of place.A few incidents seem to be exagerated by the author and the reader gets the feeling that its not a book but more like a story from the news paper. A good book for a reader who wants to have basic knowledge of Lucianos life but the book i would recommend for the true followers of Organized crime is the Luciano Testament.



2. This book does provide the reader with a basic insight of Lucianos life.It has been well written but the facts seem to be a bit out of place.A few incidents seem to be exagerated by the author and the reader gets the feeling that its not a book but more like a story from the news paper. A good book for a reader who wants to have basic knowledge of Lucianos life but the book i would recommend for the true followers of Organized crime is the Luciano Testament.



3. This book is a great introduction, but nothing more. The book has no continuous flow to it. It is not well written, but does contain some useful information into the power that Luciano held

5 comments about Death at Every Stop: The True Story of Alleged Gay Serial Killer Andrew Cunanan the Man Accused of Murdering Designer Versace (St. Martin's True Crime Library).

1. This guy ought to be sued by The Washington Post for his word-for-word article rip-offs. You'd think he spoke with Cunanan via some channeler of the dead by the way he gives the intimate details of Andy's thoughts and motives. But I must say, it's chock full of delerioiusly scandalous rumors regurgitated as fact, nearly all of them undocumented, unnamed sources -- "a close friend" and "a famous hollywood star." This book has been a great source of inspiration for my own web site about Andrew -- but honestly, I couldn't even finish the whole thing, because it drags on worse than the 21-word title.



2. The author has falsified a life for Andrew Cunanan--a life mostly unsubstantiated by any facts. The bombastic writing seems intended to shock--but is there anyone who's going to read this who is as shocked (and unknowledgeable) about gays as Wensley Clarkson? His ham-fistedness is amusing at times in its over-the-top, 1950s style moralism and it's pathetic efforts to shock. To wit, here's Clarkson on "San Francisco's gay population": "The city overflowed with nightlife in the early 1990s. But it was a labyrinthine in the extreme, with a very serious sadomasochistic community, a body piercing epidemic, and a lot more besides." Also, his assumption that Cunanan was HIV-positive has been proven false by the twice-leaked autopsy report. (The rumor was begun by an unscupulous San Diego AIDS counselor. Fie on him.)



3. This book was the only book on Cunanan for a time. It reads like a hurriedly put-together book to cash in on the Cunanan frenzy created after the murder of Gianni Versace. I wondered how the author was able to get into Cunanan's head during his killing spree, and this tended to fictionalize the book. A more in-depth book on the Cunanan case is needed in order for the reader to get a better understanding of it.



4. This books chronicled the life and crime spree by Andrew Cunanan 1997. Motives and triggers were investigated by interviews with family and friends to explore what may have drove this person to commit these truly sick crimes. Cunanan's life was further looked into, covering his above average intelligence, Constant chameleon-like appearance changes and desire for the "high life." He was a habitual liar who told many different people many different things. It is very likely that a major precipitating factor to this killing spree was that Cunanan thought he was HIV Positive. However, this is now disputed as false that he ever though he was hiv positive. Angered at his presumed fate he turned against the world and people. An autopsy on him after he took his own life revealed he was negative. One can read this book quickly.

   The author would describe what Cunanan would do, and what he would think, while he was all by himself. Does this author have ESP, or has he been channeling with Cunanan. Perhaps he hired a psychic. This is a book that had to be thrown out as quickly as possible after the media hype to cash in on it. So take if for what it is: synopses of a killing Spree that needed more depth.




5. All of the other reviews for this book really hammer it as the worst true crime book in the world. But if you do the research, many of the other reviewers do not have much credibility since they have only reviewed one book. While it has some flaws, I would suggest the book is not that bad.
   
   The account of Andrew Cunanan is concise. Even with a 260 page count, the chapters are short and have an average of three pages in between chapters. That being said, the facts are largely accurate. While the author does take some liberties, such suggesting Cunanan asked for a glass of water before shooting Lee Miglin, the fabrications are not sensational.
   
   Some of the things I really liked about the book were Clarkson's research into Cunanan's obsession with Tom Cruise. Additionally, Cunanan met Lisa Kudrow and may have targeted her for the future after her rebuffs. Before this publication, little has been documented about Cunanan meeting Gianni Versace over a year before killing him. Also, the author documents Cunanan's stormy childhood and carosel of relationships.
   
   Certainly the book is concise but serves as a good introduction to interested readers. In other words, I hope they will write better books about Cunanan than this, though "Death at Every Stop" is adequate.

1 comments about Tiger of the Wild Bunch: The Life and Death of Harvey "Kid Curry" Logan.

1. I have been waiting for this book for a number of years, and was so happy when it finally came out. The book is well-written and I think does a good job of telling the reader where and when things happened. The reader does have to understand that there are historical gaps that the researcher cannot fill in. For example, the real character of Logan is not very well explored. You can reconstruct the fact that he was not a very good man, and was someone you would do well to avoid. Also, the author says that the romance of the outlaw trail was what Logan wanted (as a younger man anyway) and that is why he did some of the things he did. Well, maybe. He did read a lot of dime novels when he was young. I do want to congratulate the author on pulling together a good, readable book on a difficult subject, and on being very fair about whether or not Logan was actually killed in 1904. I recommend this book to anyone that is at all interested in the subject of the waning days of the Old West outlaw era, and in one of the worst outlaws that ever rode the trail.