5 comments about Kill the Shogun: A Samurai Mystery (Samurai Mysteries).

1. Dale Furutani gives us an excellent ending to his ronin Kaze mystery trilogy with "Shogun". Japanese history buffs like myself should agree he depicts the early Edo era wonderfully, with great use of imagery, believeable characters, and even some historical figures. His fine woven mystery will have you hanging on edge, his sense of humor will have you chuckling constantly, and his usage of some Japanese words (with its English equivelent following!) will please Japan fans.

   I highly recommend you buy this book if you can; if not, borrow it from your library (I had to). If you love Japanese history/myseries, this is an excellent book to read. I also suggest you read "Death At The Crossroads" and "Jade Palace Vendetta" first, but this book can stand by itself.




2. It's an alrite book, although, sometimes i get confuse with what's going on. It's a pretty good buy, so u should buy it if you want.



3. It's an alrite book....nothing really special. It's an okay buy if u want to buy it...



4. ...Matsuyama Kaze ("Pine Mountain Wind") is a ronin (masterless samurai) on the run. He is being hunted by a boyhood enemy, the ambitious and ruthless Lord Okubo, who wants Kaze's head, literally, for besting him in a wooden sword match that severely injured one of Okubo's legs. Adding insult to that crippling injury, Kaze was awarded the top prize by Lord Tokugawa Ieyasu himself. This event took place years before the historic battle of Skigahara in 1600 which led to the forces of Tokugawa defeating those loyal to the late Lord Hideyoshi. Japan was finally united under the rule of Tokugawa. Kaze's Lord was on the wrong side in the battle and, true to the Warrior's Code (bushido), chose to die in battle rather than be captured and lose his honor. Kaze was ordered by his master to guard the Lord's Lady and young daughter, so he was not present at the battle. This caused him much anguish, as his home is destroyed and his wife and children die because of Kaze's loyalty to his Lord and Lady. Much is told about honor, duty, and loyalty by the author, so I'll not go into that here. Suffice it to say, Kaze rescues the dying Lady from her captors and promises to search for his mistress's daughter no matter how long it takes. It takes several years and three novels.

   The search begins in the first book DEATH AT THE CROSSROADS and continues through JADE PALACE VENDETTA and KILL THE SHOGUN. I found the trilogy entertaining and informative. As the author said, the reader will recognize similarities in each book to the films of Akira Kurosawa. There is humor to be found in these books, also, so don't fear they will be weighty, historical tracts. They're supposed to be light and fun. The best part is that they also inform. I learned much about medieval Japan that I didn't know...




5. I liked this one even better than Jade Palace Vendetta and Death at the Crossroads. It can stand alone, but there's several little elements that would make more sense or be more enjoyable if the books were read in order. This book has a relatively lighter tone, and there was more humor than in the other books. The history is of course very interesting. Tokugawa Ieyasu shows up in this book along with five daimyo, so power politics result, which is very entertaining to people who like power politics. Furutani has a very nice descriptive style and whenever he explains elements of ancient Japanese culture, he manages to keep it interesting and maintains the flow of the novel. Also, this book has more and better developed characters. There's more parts that aren't from Matsuyama's point of view, which might help. I was slightly disappointed because Okubo (the enemy) was absent for basically 3/4 of the book, but he did have some backstory, which was slightly funny and also a great insight into his character :D. Overall, it was a must read.

5 comments about J F K: A Conspiracy of Silence (Signet).

1. I loved this book! It was only after I had completed it that I found that there were questions concerning Dr. Crenshaw's integrity and account of the assasination. Even if some of what he writes is exaggeration, this just can't be complete fabrication and still makes me think in terms of conspiracy. Regardless, this book, if nothing else, gives a new view of the assasination and is worth reading. Entertaining!



2. Dr. Charles A. Crenshaw worked to save President JFK, and later Lee H. Oswald, at Parkland Hospital. He
   had firsthand personal experience with the crime; he saw that JFK was struck twice from the front: once in the neck, and once in the right side of the head. President LBJ called him to ask for a "deathbed confession" from Oswald. Dr. Crenshaw and the other personnel in the emergency room were ordered not to speak about the events, citing the standard medical confidentiality.

   Charles A. Crenshaw was a surgeon for over thirty years. He watched thousands of trauma victims enter the emergency room. Trauma is the greatest killer of America's youth, and can affect anyone regardless of age, race, sex, occupation, or status. It also has psychological after effects on survivors.

   When Oliver Stone's "JFK" was filmed in Dallas the doctors were again warned to keep quiet. The hundreds of similar gunshot cases seen by Dr. Crenshaw since 1963 have confirmed his conclusions on JFK's wounds. He finally decided to write his story in November 1990 when his career was over and he no longer feared the "men in suits". Dr. Crenshaw saw photos of JFK's Bethesda autopsy - it showed a different wound to the back of the head, one that would support a theory of a lone gunman firing from the back. The front of JFK's neck showed a larger and jagged opening than was seen in Dallas (p.111). According to reports, JFK's body was wrapped in a white cloth and placed in a bronze casket in Dallas. At Bethesda the body was in a zippered body bag in a gray casket. This book was written to present his witness to the events.

   There is one thing that I remember from that time. Right after the assassination the first newspaper reports said JFK was shot from the front. J. Edgar Hoover then said that JFK was shot while the limousine was heading towards the School Book Depository Building. When photos were printed to show that didn't happen, this story was changed. To learn more about this, read "Act of Treason" by Mark North.

   Could the "alterations" in the wounds between Dallas and Bethesda be explained by use of a "body double"?




3. This book is absolute pulp fiction trash. Charles Crenshaw is trying to "cash in" on the Kennedy assassination by writing a book about his recollections at Parkland Hospital on the day Kennedy was shot. Crenshaw makes it sound like he was a major player in the trauma room where Kennedy was treated for his gunshot wounds, yet, the other doctors, including the doctor in charge of the case, cannot recall if Crenshaw was even in the room! Clearly, Crenshaw is writing this book for the money, and not to blow the lid off the assassination. It is a pathetic attempt to make money off a dead man.
   
   Crenshaw brings up conspiracy issues of which he knows little or nothing. He writes about the possibility that Oswald was picked up by Jack Ruby at the Texas Schoolbook Depository after teh shooting occurred! This "truth" of Crenshaw's is based on the unreliable account of a Dallas policeman who later suffered a mental breakdown and killed himself. How utterly ridiculous, yet, this is the kind of innuendo, lies, and half-truths that Crenshaw spins to make his book intriguing to the reader to sell more copies. Crenshaw is a Kennedy assassination fraud and his fellow doctors at Parkland have said as much about him in other publications.
   
   This book does nothing to advance research on the Kennedy assassination. To the uninformed reader, it sends one down a path of conspiracy that is not provable nor feasible. I'd give this book a negative star rating if I could. Avoid it all all costs unless you want to read it for pure fiction, for that is what it is.
   
   Jim "Konedog" Koenig, Kennedy Assassination Buff



4. Few actual eyewitnesses to the JFK assassination and cover-up have provided us with an inside look into the happenings of that November 22, 1963. Dr. Crenshaw finally does so. His book is simply written, void of complicated medical terms and clearly illustrates the fact that the information provided by the government and certain investigative agencies was untrue. A small book, easy to read and although there is no real "smoking gun" here, the information provided grants credence to the conclusion millions of U.S. citizens have arrived at: President John F. Kennedy's assassinated was a high-level conspiracy and cover-up.



5. Chuck Crenshaw was a friend of mine at Parkland Hospital. We both were there at the time of the assassination. We were both residents in general surgery. He was in the trauma room with Kennedy. My only criticism with his book is in his exaggeration of his role. The facts he related were identical to those of all the other physicians who were in attendance. They were all friends of mine and I knew them well. I heard what each of them had to say moments after the ordeal. They all saw the same wounds which were described by Dr. Crenshaw. The things seen at Parkland and reported by all these doctors are clear evidence of a conspiracy. Who and why are issues not addressed. Those would require another book and a huge paradigm shift in thinking on the part of most Americans. Another good book is "Best Evidence." It is more thorough.

1 comments about Evil Empire: The Irish Mob and the Assassination of Journalist Veronica Guerin.

1. I was very pleases with the service and the quality of the book would do business again with them.

2 comments about California Justice: Shootouts, Lynching and Assassinations in the Golden State.

1. "I'm goin' to cut down my old lady, you know I caught her messin' 'round with another man."
   
   California Justice. Yeah, it's a little screwy. Here Mr. Kulczyk gives us over 30 vignettes of what's passed for justice in the Golden State: lynching galore, Bugsy Siegel riddled with bullets in a Hollywood mansion, the saga of Sirhan Sirhan (the assassin so nice they named him twice), and Dan White's infamous Twinkie defense (look out, though, because the Twinkie defense is not mentioned by that name). California Justice is fine reading whether you're on the toilet or in your living room.
   
   Disclaimer: O. J. "Class-Act-All-the-Way" Simpson does not show up here, nor does "Hey Joe' by Jimi Hendrix.



2. California Justice is an well researched and eminently readable compendium of some of the most interesting cases of crime and punishment (often by mobs) in California from the 19th to the 21st century. Included are the more famous examples of Sirhan Sirhan killing Robert F. Kennedy, the mob rubbing out fellow gangster Bugsy Siegel, and the assassination of San Francisco's Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk by Dan White; but also more obscure though equally fascinating stories of the Golden Dragon Massacre, the (not so) Brite Brothers, and the last lynching in California in 1947.
   
   The author does a great job of bringing these true sagas to life by adding just the right amount of detail and by keeping the stories moving along at a brisk pace. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in history, offbeat characters, or crime.

No comments about The Sweetest Dream: Love, Lies, & Assassination.

No comments about COUNTDOWN TO VALKYRIE: THE JULY PLOT TO ASSASSINATE HITLER.

3 comments about The Yankee and Cowboy War: Conspiracies from Dallas to Watergate.

1. How did our CIA really come about and what was the true role of Hitler's top spymaster? Was Watergate really an "accident"? What role did James McCord really play?
   What did Jack Ruby tell the Warren Commissioners about a "whole new form of government" that would take over if he was not taken to Washington with them and be able to reveal his personal knowledge about the assassination of JFK?

   Remembers E. Howard Hunt's wife Dorothy and the highly suspicious plane crash in which she died, while in the process of paying Nixon hush money to the Watergatgate burglers???

   Oglesby's brilliant work answers these and many more questions.

   This very rare and magnificent read is long overdue for a republication, so that the many conspiracies of the 60's are better comprehended.

   I cannot recommend this work highly enough.

   Attorney Dawn Meredith,
   Austin, Tx.




2. I concur with Ms. Meredith- Oglesby's analysis is cohesive, and the information contained herein is unavailable anywhere else.



3. This is the first of several high-level political analyses motivated by a need to better understand the politics that led to both the JFK assassination and the Nixon Watergate Affair. It deploys as the primary theoretical model, C. Wright Mills "Theory of the Power Elite" and the framework in Carroll Quigleys book "Tragedy and Hope."
   
   With these tools, Carl Oglesby posits an interesting thesis: that JFKs assassination, instead of being a random act by a lone nut was in fact a carefully planned and professional executed ongoing coup d' etat a la Americaine, a not so silent coup by the same forces responsible for the murders of JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm X and possibly the demise and eventual destruction of the billionaire Howard Hughes.
   
   What all of these events had in common was that they were links in a chain designed to replace one set of power elite (members of the old moneyed "peace promoting" Eastern Yankee Establishment) with another (the Nuevo Riche and newly arrived, "progress through war" Western Cowboys). Thus it is argued here that the events connecting Dallas, Memphis, Watergate and the demise of the Hughes empire, are but threads in a common fabric, growing and evolving directly out of the systematic corruption of American politics and out of contemporary political realities.
   
   Altogether it is thus a seductive and believable theory that says as much about American political realities as it does about the events of Dallas, LA, Memphis and NY themselves. What Oglesby tries to do, and succeeds at it brilliantly, is expose the almost organic level of corruption in the structure of the political process that led to the events in Dallas and Watergate. When the connections linking these two are examined in detail, and are traced backwards in time to their origins, they extend not just back to CIA dirty tricks to get rid of Castro, or to the Cuban rum and gun-running days of Batista, or for that matter, even to the unholy and corrupt pre-war alliance forged by FDR between Meyer Lanksys wing of the mob and the USG, but they go all the way back to the competing North-South power factions emerging in the aftermath of the Civil War.
   
   Left unchecked, except by the tug of war being waged in the under currents of the competing interests of the power elite, this corruption eventually led to the ceding of power to what we have come to recognize as the "Secret National Security State." It is precisely this melding of corruption and the built in power of the national security state that General Eisenhower had warns us about in his farewell address. And in both the JFK assassination and the Watergate Affair. it seems (at least to Oglesby) that those events were a simple case of "the buzzards coming home to roost:" In short, the machinations of competing factions within the Secret National Security State eventually took on a life of their own.
   
   Of all the books on the JFK assassination one is likely to read, this is one of the few that gets directly at the heart of the matter. And even though it deals confidently and adequately with the facts surrounding both the JFK assassination and the Watergate Affair, which are important in and of themselves, it is not just about the discrete facts of those events, but about what it means for the republic when two of our elected Presidents are brought down by clandestine and hidden powers that undermine and substitute a Secret National Security State for our democracy.
   
   The book seeks to answer the question: How could these things have happened in a self-respecting democracy? What does it means when "We the People" can go on pretending that even though two coup d' etats occurred before our very eyes, that life goes on behind our collective denial as if nothing has really happened? Ultimately, these questions are more important than who and how JFK was killed.
   
   Anyone who doubts that answering these two questions is Oglesby ultimate aim should read first the epilogue, Chapter 9, entitled "Who Killed Kennedy?" then go back and read the rest of the book. Chapter 9 is an essay so chilling it will make any self-respecting democrat, republican or independents hair stand on its head. It is the single most chilling chapter of any book on American democracy one is ever likely to read.
   
   What Oglesby tells us in this brilliantly written epilogue is that when a President bleeds, whether through assassination or by being hounded out of office, it is our solemn duty to clean up the blood. We have a choice in this unpleasant task: We can exercise the default option and sleep in the blood as we have done for the last forty five years, pretending that sleeping in blood is the new reality. Or to use John Deans metaphor in the advice he gave to President Nixon, we can pretend that the cancer on the Presidency has not finally metastasized and now has infected us all. Or we can chose the toughest option of all, which is to pro-actively defend the republic and its future against the bureaucratized criminally corrupt cabals that felled two Presidents and appears to be using its unchecked power under the secrecy of the National Security State to completely replace our democratic form of government. In either case, by what we do or dont do, we have made a choice about what kind of democracy we are willing to settle for. If we choose not to fight, as we apparently have done, then the war of competing corrupt and powerful elites going on above our heads will continue unchecked.
   
   In this book, Oglesby just wants us to be clear about what it is we have done when we capitulate: We have effectively forfeited our right to a democracy and all the values, ideals and traditions that go along with it. Arguably, todays political existence in the U.S. is a whole new form of quietly hidden tyranny run by the Secret National Security State as the proxy for two competing vampire power elites.
   
   The overarching point of this book is to tell us that there is no free lunch even in a democracy. As in any other political system, in a democracy too the choice is between terror and tyranny, between Democracy and Fascism. These two poles of political existence cannot be finessed through laziness, exhaustion, or choosing to live in denial. Like all other political systems, democracy also exists on that tenuous sliver of ground that lies between these two poles; there are no angles left to be played. Those who somehow believe that benign tyranny "by their own favorite corrupt power elite" is the answer to terror, have failed to notice Oglesbys crowning point about the JFK assassination: that terror and tyranny are but opposite sides of the same corrupt coin: that tyranny is terror, just by another name, and by other more elaborate means.
   
   That this fact is true could not be made clearer in todays post-911, post-JFK, RFK, MLK and Malcolm X assassination era. In the current heightened internal security frenzy, it is easy enough to see that the American internal security landscape has finally being transformed in plain sight, into a proto-Fascist nation overrun by rent-a-cops, hired security guards and undercover agents of all descriptions, gated communities, metal detectors, mercenary armies, informants, spies, counterspies and intelligence stringers, NARCs and DEA agents, FBI, CIA, Secret service and IRS agents, helicopter surveillance, bill collection agencies, and bounty hunters, just to name a few.
   
   And this is being done at the same time that our leaders take us to war without asking our consent and without good reason. It is now the USA, not the Communists nations, that is throwing suspected terrorists in jail and torturing them without the benefits of even the minimum of legal protections. It is our own home-grown democracy, not Russia or South Africa that now leads the world in prisoners with 2.3 million of our own citizens locked behind bars. And all of this is taking place after two Presidential elections have been decided under a cloud thought to be normal only in a Banana Republic.
   
   Under such dramatic circumstances it is no longer just an academic exercise to ask the question Oglesby poses in this book: Where does our democracy now lie along that spectrum between tyranny and terror? Between Fascism and democracy? Nor is it mere hyperbole that John Dean, one of the surviving principals in the Watergate Affair, is at this very moment furiously writing books warning us all over again that the cancer he spoke to President Nixon about has finally metastasized and spread throughout the American body politic. If no one has noticed but Carl Oglesby, those who assassinated Kennedy and ran Nixon out of office with the Watergate caper, are now in charge of the Secret National Security State.
   
   What Oglesby proposes in this analysis is that it is the Yankee-Cowboy War that has finally lulled us to sleep. We have been socialized into hiding behind our favorite power elite team jerseys, outsourcing our hard won freedoms and power by proxy to those Yankees and Cowboys, who, at the same time they stand-in for us, also rape us in the name of their own private economic self-interests. We have been socialized into handing over our loyalty to those who have proven that they no longer have the interests of this nation at heart, those with no demonstrable values above their own ability to seek power and their ability to accumulate wealth. To them, this Yankee-Cowboy War may be a game with a winning strategy. However, for us, the true heirs and the true sovereigns of American democracy, trickle-down Socialism, or trickledown Cowboy Entrepreneurism (which in the end are pretty much the same thing) is a losing proposition whether our proxy is a Cowboy or a Yankee, whether our political party is democrat or republican, and whether our team jersey is red or blue.
   
   JFK, Nixon, MLK, RFK, and Malcolm were all brought down by those who somehow have used their corrupt power to bore their way into the walls and crevices of our blindly and insanely partisan democracy, establishing in its place a Secret National Security State, an entity that grows without bounds like a cancer and one that is ever inching the nation closer toward Fascist tyranny. And like the political imbeciles they each take us to be, We the People have allowed them to ride into town on their red and blue Trojan horses to steal away our power, our freedom and our peace of mind under the guise of political partisanism, and keeping us safe from terror and tyranny.
   
   This is an important book not just because it builds up, brick-by-brick, a coherent frame of reference for situating the events that unfolded into the JFK assassination and the Watergate caper, but also because it forces the reader to think and to ask the hard questions laying at the subtext of the JFK assassination: What does it say about us as a nation if a President can be murdered in broad daylight, and the murder covered-up for half a century, and the nation goes on pretending that it was all the result of a lone nut?
   
   When a President bleeds, who will clean up the blood?
   Five stars.

No comments about The Lincoln Assassination: The Evidence.

5 comments about Deadly Secrets: The Cia-Mafia War Against Castro and the Assassination of J.F.K..

1. Really interesting stuff here. Digs deep behind the scenes of the whole affair & leaves one wondering what really happened. Very detailed & well-researched.



2. Although the original message was the CIA-Mafia complicity in President Kennedy's death, there is a more important message for 2005. Namely, Bush, far from being against terrorism, loves terrorists if they're anti-Castro Cubans. Our current president's father is the real villain, but our current Bush has done nothing to put the Miami Mafia terrorists in their place and bring them to justice. (...)



3. In addition to what was written above, I'd like to add that this book would almost be funny if it weren't so depressing. When I say funny I mean this only for those who might find James Ellroy or Chandler's bleak wit funny. A bitter sarcasm tinges the language that fleshes out this strange corner of WW3. Unlike many history/expose books, Deadly Secrets is written with attitude, with a sharp perspective that is illuminating (Hinckle and Turner have clearly spent some time with many of the players).
   
   The oblique cold warriors (mafia, arms dealers, mercenaries, displaced patriots, displaced murderers, gamblers, right wingnuts, oil barons, cia officers, bad bankers,international corporations, drug traffickers and all those other types of people we don't like to think of as soldiers on the front lines of the cold war) aren't so oblique after reading this...Its a wonder we won the cold war because with friends like these who needs Soviets. Your taxpayer dollars have gone to interesting 'causes,' (schemes) and its not hard to imagine that these secret wars are no different today.
   
   If you are interested in the Cold War and how it bleeds into to "War on Terror" you should check this out. Also helpful for those interested in the continuity of the careers of those who pass through, in, and around 'Dallas,' Watergate, and the Iran/Contra affair.
   
   If you're hungry for more afterwards, other authors to look for are Jonathan Kwitny, Peter Dale Scott, Jonathan Marshall,Alan Block, Pete Brewton, whose bibliographies give up a bunch of great sources.



4. While this book doesn't identify the actual shooters in the assassination of John Kennedy,it offers up an immense volume of information about the C.I.A.-mafia partnership regarding assassination attempts directed at Fidel Castro.
   
   The planning,execution,and failure of the Bay of Pigs operation are detailed.
   
   The book really focuses on the C.I.A.'s activities and participants,especially in the Caribbean. Air America and the Corsican mafia are also discussed. Various agency business connections and financial ties are detailed.
   
   You will read about characters such as Robert Maheu,Howard Hughes,E.Howard Hunt,Mitchell WerBell III,Frank Sturgis,"Maurice Bishop", and a myriad of other interesting people that were in some instances heavily involved in the intelligence community. In addition to that aspect, the authors investigate the mafia activities in Cuba and Haiti and how they particpated in projects with the Agency, sometimes without Kennedys knowing about it.
   
   The authors documented this book well.
   On the subject of the JFK assassination,this is one of the better books available. The details in the book make it an even better book on the subject of secret wars and how participants re-surfaced in the Watergate scandal and even later in politics.



5. Authors Warren Hinckle and William Turner are "in the know". Learn what they know and you will be a wiser person. In "Deadly Secrets", these thorough investigators reach out to the American people in an attempt to educate them about how the American government really works. They did a superb job, from detailing George H.W. Bush's involvement in the JFK assassinaiton, Iran-Contra, and CIA drug smuggling to Nixon's hiring of the same CIA thugs for his personal and sinister use. Who would have known? This is a great chronicle of the events leading up to and surrounding all these secret events. The most interesting part is the chapter on Bush. I did not realize he had so many connections to the murder of a president. But now, writing in the year 2008, it looks like such pathological killing runs in the family. America is lost forever.

2 comments about Addy Studies Freedom (American Girls Short Stories).

1. This is a short story in the American Girls Short Stories series about Addy Walker, a ten-year-old African-American girl living in the America of 1865. After the joy of celebrating the end of the Civil War, Addy's world is thrown into confusion when she receives the news the President Abraham Lincoln was shot. All her hopes for a better future seem gone. However, just when things look their darkest, Addy finds reason to hope.

   The final chapter is a historical look at Lincoln's death and its aftermath, and then a nice quiz on Mr. Lincoln. (My eleven-year-old daughter got 8 out of 8!) Once again, Connie Porter has produced a great Addy book, one that shows what life was really like, and teaches a lesson. We highly recommend this book!




2. History, a great story and an authentic historical craft! Not only that, but just the right size for girl-sized hands. A+++++++ Cannot be beat!