5 comments about The Alibi.

1. A one night stand is definitely out of character for upstanding and straight-laced county solicitor Hammond Cross. He is on the fast track to be the next District Attorney in Charleston. But one hot and sultry night at a carnival, he hooks up with a beautiful stranger. Imagine his surprise when Lute Pettijohn, the notorious corrupt tycoon he is investigating is found murdered, and the chief suspect is the woman he just spent his most passionate night with.
   
   To provide Alex Ladd with an alibi would be career suicide. And staying away from Alex is unthinkable. Hammond also has to contend with his conniving colleague Steffi Mundell, who also has dreams of the DA position; police detective Rory Smilow, with whom he has a checkered past; and his overbearing father, who also has a reason to want Lute dead.
   
   Brown is at the top of her game - tossing out tons of red herrings, giving the reader plenty of potential suspects and great secondary characters like Lute's widow Davee. You will convince yourself of who the real culprit is, only to turn the page and get a huge surprise.



2. I just bought this paperback at a local Kroger store. I didn't even realize that it has been in publication since 1999. I was hooked from the beginning.. and didn't want to stop reading it. I kept thinking.. "OK, I will read to the end of this chapter and then put it down". WRONG.. the author teases you to the next one. I was reluctant to set it aside to do those necessary household things or even sleep. What a movie this could be. I'm already casting it in my mind.



3. I find her mystery/romance novels to be too wordy, as in drags on til the last 100 pgs, and by then you're mostly bored with the whole damn plot. Except for this book...
   
   Although, THE ALIBI was 560+ pgs long, I found that I was caught up with the story from page one. Truly loved the sweet love-at-first sight theme btw the H/H, and this coming from someoen who loves romance books. The mystery was well paced, it never seemed to get too stale or boring and ending was supring, like a good mystery book should be. I would've given this book FIVE stars if Ms Brown added a bit more about what happens to the H/H afterwards. After the murderer was caught did they, H/H, get married, have kids, what happened to Hammonds career, romance btw Davvy and he ex, etc, alot seemed to be left unsaid, ... guess I just didnt want it to end there, hehe. I would recommend this book to any fans of romance OR mystery novels. This is a keeper, well done, Ms Brown, bravo!



4. Hammond Cross is a sexy Assistant DA in Charleston, SC. He is in a very prominent spot, and expected to take over the top office soon. Hammond has had this planned as everything else in his orderly life. One reckless night, he meets Alex Ladd, and his life is changed forever. After an unforgettable night together, she disappears. When Hammond gets back to his normal life, he is distraught to find out Alex is suspected of murdering a local prominent businessman. If he provides Alex an alibi, that would be career suicide, so he sets out to find out who the real murderer is.
   
   This was a disappointing story. I had trouble buying the love at first sight forgoing all else between Hammond and Alex. The chemistry wasn't there, and the pairing just didn't work, so that made the rest of the story hard to accept. The buildup was lacking, as if a lot of the important steps took place behind the scene. The big reveal at the end was also a let down because there wasn't one.



5. "The Alibi" by Sandra Brown, © 1999
   
   I was surprised by this book. It was the sort of story that made me want to throw it down and never pick it up again, but I was drawn in and could not stop reading; then came the ending: another surprise. You see, I realize that I am reading fiction and knowing that writers have only to exercise their imagination to make something happen, I tired of reading that these people were just diddling about with the truth and their careers. I realized that in real life, these things happen and do not happen, but for me, I wanted a story to deal with chivalry, and adventure, and courage; all these people were doing is moping along, waiting for someone else to make things right or wrong. It drove me to distraction. I put the book down at least a dozen times, knowing I would pick it up again, but to disgusted to continue reading for the moment.
   Hammond Cross is a truly good guy trying to do his best. I liked him well enough, but he was so ambitious it did not seem right. He did not act ambitious in a lot of ways, so his career ambitions was out of sync with the rest of him. He may have been acting like others around him: father, co-workers, boss, etc.
   Mr. Cross falls in love after a one night stand, head over heels, can not breathe around her, can not wait to hold her again in love. Then all heck breaks loose with the murder. As the story goes on, you start to follow three different paths to the end and you just hope it all turns out well. This is where I got bothered. It is written with a love interest, so maybe it is a romance. But they are looking for a killer, so it is a mystery. But they are dancing around the truth, so maybe it is an adventure. And you just want it to end or hurry up to the end so you can rest easy that people did the right thing, etc, etc. In the end, I could not put it down.

1 comments about Sneakers.

1. Not unlike a synopsis of the many recent books on the subject, Sneakers, by Neal Heard, takes some of the best elements from its contemporaries and creates a true accessable place to start in the study sneaker culture. It's visually excellent and a must for the sneaker collector or casual "kicks" fan.

5 comments about Hitler's Scientists: Science, War, and the Devil's Pact.

1. This is the history of German science and how it was perverted by Nazi ideology. It begins with a review of what made Germany a leader is science in the 19th and early 20th century. It then discusses how it was used and perverted to support the Nazi agenda.
   
   The subject of German science is an immense one, and this book only scratches the surface. The early history of German science focuses on WWI, particularly with regards to poison gas and Fritz Haber. Thus, early on, it raises the question of what moral obligation, if any, a scientist has towards the use of his science. The answer appears to be that most scientists were more than willing to follow the dictates of their government, with little thought to the overall morality of what they were doing. As Werner von Braun put it after the war, he did not care if he worked for Uncle Sam or Uncle Joe (Stalin), so long as he was a rich uncle. This moral ambivalence is a main theme of the story and led, among other things, to many doctors disregarding their oath to save lives, but instead to end them in the name of racial purity. It discusses how Nazi science contributed to the Holocaust and to the deaths of slave labores working to build the German synthetic gas and rocket plants.
   
   The book covers the dismissal of German Jewish scientists and which of their colleagues protested and which took this as the easy road to advancement. The book discusses "Jewish Physics" and how this view of modern physics retarded the development of a German atomic bomb. (Much of the later portion of the book deals with the German bomb project and whether or not Werner Heisenberg actively worked to prevent its development.) Hitler's view of science is also discussed and shows how this retarded not only the development of a German bomb, but also (unfortunately only temporarily) the development of jet planes and rockets.
   
   This is an interesting book that raises many troubling questions.



2. The subhead of John Cornwell's "Hitler's Scientists" sets up the pointer to the wrong path he intends to take: a devil's pact implies that German scientists, like Germans generally, had to compromise their feelings in order to exist or to work in the Hitler regime.
   
   Early in the book, Cornwell writes, "Fellow travelers did more damage than out and out Nazis, since they failed to challenge the conscience of the uncertain and the fence sitters." That assumes a point that needs proving, that there were a lot of fence sitters.
   
   That there were some is certain. That they were other than outliers is doubtful. Some Germans fled the regime, but few of these were "Aryans." Lise Meitner wrote, after it was over, that she should have left in 1933. More sensitive than most, she finally developed doubts by 1938. There is little evidence here (or anywhere else) that German scientists, any more than Germans generally, objected to Hitlerism.
   
   In "Hitler's Pope," Cornwell judiciously sifted the competing motives and influences on Cardinal Pacelli (Pope Pius XII by 1938), and rendered a harsh verdict on him. Cornwell does not hold Germans to such strict scrutiny.
   
   Not that he absolves them. But it is not clear what line was crossed when, say, a doctor took the opportunity the regime offered to conduct hideous experiments on Jews that had not already been crossed by the whole nation on Kristallnacht -- if not very much earlier. It is not logical to say, as Cornwell implicitly does, that scientists, because they could do more damage, had a greater responsibility.
   
   Nor does Cornwell really try to untangle the independent threads of nationalism and Hitlerism/Christianity/anti-Semitism. This does come up, especially in the case of Werner Heisenberg.
   
   Heisenberg gets most attention because, as Germany's leading atomic theorist, he could, in principle, have given Hitler an A-bomb. In practice, he couldn't have. Heisenberg was an example -- there were many, many of them even Jews -- who rated loyalty to their German nation so high that they were ready to overlook many things. (Among the ironies, but never alluded to by Cornwell, was that when it came to "giving" A-bombs to hideous totalitarians, the Nazi fellow-traveler Heisenberg failed to do so, while the American Rosenbergs -- Jews, this is where the irony arises -- did not.)
   
   There are ironies enough even if Cornwell missed that one. He starts with Fritz Haber, of Jewish heritage, who made science work for the Kaiser. For symmetry's sake, Cornwell might have gone back a little further and cast his net wider to ask, for example, whether a Hiram Maxim (inventor of a machine gun) was any different. (He was. Unlike Haber, he sold his scientific killing technology to all comers.)
   
   Anyway, in his narrative of events, Cornwell, perhaps inevitably, gives an unbalanced picture by selecting out the fence sitters, never more than a tiny minority. The narrative benefits from revelations dating from as late as the `90s and suffers from being too brief and, in some areas, Cornwell's ignorance. His discussion of German naval technology is laughable.
   
   (There are many, many careless but minor errors. Field Marshal von Rundstet's first name was Gerd, not Karl, for example.)
   
   One difficulty is that Cornwell's topic is too big. Even though the tome is fat, much is skimmed over too lightly. He writes, "Nazi science . . . was by no means unique in practicing experiments on human subjects . . . The importance is where the lines are drawn."
   
   True. One place they could be considered to have been drawn was that the experiments were celebrated by Naziism, usually not so in other countries. German callousness does seem qualitatively different.
   In any event, Cornwell's history is not so bad as to be worthless. It should have been better. To the extent that it is good, it really does not advance the summary provided by William Shirer long ago in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich." On the other hand, it does provide a general introduction in modern dress to this important subject.
   
   The last section of the book, "Science from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism," would better have been left out. Whatever your views about patenting genes, that moral dilemma isn't in the same league with German scientific dilemmas (to the extent that Germans even thought of them as dilemmas) in the 1933-45 era.



3. I read this book, here in Brazil.I'm a brazilian and I like to read books.
   The subject of this book is the science in Germany, during Hitler's govern, between 1933 and 1945.
   The main lesson from this book is the fact that scientists are such as the govern, society and times around them.
   Famous american scientists such as Thomas Edison, Wright Brothers, Alexander Graham Bell,etc. were eugenicist, while they were alive.At the peak of eugenics times in USA(until 1933-1939), only a handfull of scientists(mainly catholic scientists) were against eugenics.Today is "fashion" to be an ecologist.Eugenics today is ecology.
   The Wright Brothers were bigoted eugenicists(and also bigoted racists), but they were just following the press(NYT, etc.), protestant and jewish clergy, doctors,etc. from their times.
   The scientists living in nazi Germany weren't crooks,They were simple a face of german society.Scientists are also human beings.They need a salary and they need to be suchs as their times and places.



4. Anyone interested in science and the turbulent times since the turn of the century will appreciate the material in this book. Personal and science views, also covers post WW2 years. Recommended!



5. This is a thoughtful examination of how scientists on both sides struggled with the ethical issues presented by the development of weapons of mass destruction. Most of the focus is on the appalling ethical lapses of many German scientists (especially regarding treatment of jewish scientists and toleration of slave labor), but is not smug in examining the similar issues faced by Allied scientists. In the end, the ethical question for Allied scientists was a bit easier given that all weapons efforts were ethically justified by their fear that Hitler would successfully mobilize science to develop the miracle weapons that would win his cause.
   
   The interesting theme that Cornwell struggles with is the myth that the totalitarian Nazi system was more efficient and effective in mobilizing and applying societal resources than were the Western democracies. Cornwell convincingly argues that the West's free flow of information, absence of fear, and lack of vicious turf battles were far more conducive to fostering the scientific method. But he does not do a good job of confronting the effect of the obnoxious security measures imposed by General Groves and others in inhibiting the progress of the Manhattan Project.
   
   The most interesting chapter in the history of Nazi science is their development of the atomic bomb. It appears that the Nazi scientists did not believe the project was feasible. And given the enormous amount of societal resources necessary to engineer the bomb, the Nazis probably never had a chance. But Heisenberg's efforts were so slipshod as to prompt a controversy as to whether he was intentionally sabotaging the effort. Cornwell persuasively argues that Heisenberg was hardly a hero.
   
   This is an interesting and worthwhile book.

1 comments about Unauthorized Guide to Fire-king Glasswares.

1. I am quite disappointed with this book. If I have read it in a book store (instead of mail order) I would not have bought it. It is bacially a book with only pictures and the prices. It does not even include the price of those that are not pictured. The pictures are not great either, some ivory pieces look like they are green!! The listing is not complete and in my own opinion, any one who goes to an auction site can gather enough pictures and a more complete price list of all the Fire King items than this book. There are only 2-3 pages that have words/writting by the author. I didnot gain any new knowledge by reading this book at all. A waste of money. The one by Gene Florence is much better.

5 comments about It's a Wonderful Christmas: The Best of the Holidays 1940-1965.

1. This book was an incredible walk down Memory Lane! I couldn't put it down. For all those reminiscing and hungry for "how it used to be" I highly recommend this book!



2. This book brings back memories of Christmas past. It is informative and entertaining. I gave this as a gift to four different people and got a copy for myself.



3. This is a great book!! The stories are a wonderful collection for anyone who was a child OR adult during this time frame. If not read it anyway, it's very enjoyable to read. I took this book on a flight to Denver and had many people as me where I got it.



4. I bought this book last year and again this year sat down to enjoy the wonderful photos. It brought back wonderful memories of a time before consumer advocacy when we used lead and fiber glass all over our homes, and especially during the holidays when we pulled out the painted ornaments (and ashtrays and candy dishes and ceramic figurines of Santa and the Baby Jesus) and angel hair for the tree. I can still feel the itching as I write this :-)
   
   I highly recommend this book for anyone who remembers Christmas anywhere between 1940 and 1965. It brought back some lovely memories (aside from the itching).



5. I bought this book for my mom (81 years old), and it brought back amazing memories for her from her teenage years through the first 20 years of her marriage. The package of ornaments shown on page 11 is the identical one my parents had bought (which we still have - most of them, anyway!). She (and I) enjoyed it so much, I also got copies for my aunt and a family friend of the same age as my mom. They both loved the book, and talked of all the memories it brought back for them, as well. It's a fun book that wil bring back memories for anyone who lived through those years.

No comments about The Official Blackbook Price Guide to U.S. Postage Stamps 2005, 27th Edition (Official Blackbook Price Guide to United States Postage Stamps).

3 comments about Very Rare Glassware of the Depression Years: Identification and Values (Fifth Series).

1. Excellent and informative detail. I strongly suggest adding this book to your library.



2. It is not likely you will ever encounter any of the glass shown in this book but the book is worth buying anyway for anyone who enjoys collecting depression glass. The photos in this book will have you drooling for hours. And who knows? You might actually find one of these beauties one day and buy it because you remember seeing it in the book and knowing that the $50 asking price was well worth it since Gene says its worth $2000!



3. I was not expecting this book to be what it is and still am surprised.It is a collection of photos with some details about the author's and other's private collections of rare collectibles(vases,bowls,lamps,etc).All are beautiful photographs and amazing peices!A totally wonderful book for anyone who loves collectible glass!!!

2 comments about 2006 Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue, Vol. 2: Countries C-F (Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue Vol 2 Countries C-F).

1. This was purchased for a senior who was re opening his collection. He found it exciting and informative as he reviewed his collection.



2. This catalogue has become the World standrad for stamp prices.

1 comments about Maxfield Parrish Identification and Price Guide (Maxfield Parrish: Identification & Price Guide) (Maxfield Parrish: Identification & Price Guide).

1. Incredibly useful. I believe Flacks has written the most accurate and convenient pricing guide available for Maxfield Parrish collectors and anyone else who wants to figure out what a Parrish item is worth. If you're looking for a great coffee table book, I suggest Alma Gilbert's The Masterworks. -- James Halperin, sf novelist (The Truth Machine & The First Immortal) and Parrish collector.

5 comments about Fitonics for Life.

1. This book really reached me. It got me to change the way I think about dieting and exercise. Speaking of exercise it has a great routine. Both my wife and I do it every morning. I lost 15 pounds the first month with the exercise and the diet.



2. I lost 30 pounds in three months by doing the simple exercise program and following the suggestions in this book. I'm ready to wear a bikini again!



3. I bought this book for the "diet", but it's a BIBLE. I learned how to exercise in 12 minutes. I learned the most powerful meditation technique I've ever down and I learned health information that no doctor has ever told me about.

   I lost 65 pounds with the diet and the delicious recipes. I recommend this book to anyone who wants a healthy lifestyle not just a diet.




4. I started doing the bodytonics natural movements and I've already lost 3inches from my waist! These are so easy to do.



5. This book is an updated version of FIT FOR LIFE and the updates are important ones. What I got most is the authors pointing out a popular myth that we need to eat less food because our culture is overweight, when the truth is that we ARE eating less, but not eating enough greens and fruits. Understanding the shift in emphasis is a key point. There are also reviews and reminders about white sugar and some important basics that our culture is still not clear on. While some of the feedback may still consider this approach a little rigid, I find that it is already toned down some. I would recommend cutting out flour products fairly thoroughly and dairy as thoroughly as one can too. But the body needs to some adaption time so starting with this book is good. I give it four stars because it is a repackaging of information that is already out there. It is not a ground breaking book but a very good book written by some good summarizers and presenters.