1 comments about The Principal Upanishads: The Essential Philosophical Foundation of Hinduism (Sacred Wisdom).

1. After searching long and hard for a quality edition of the Upanishads, I found this little abridgement to be the best of its kind. The ten texts that make up this selection, are, as advertised, the most consequential for Hindu philosophy, and the hardcover volume itself is quite handsome, and comes complete with a ribbon bookmark. Highly recommended.

5 comments about To Sleep with the Angels: The Story of a Fire.

1. I love to read and I feel that this is one of the best books I have ever read. I am also a firefighter and decided to read this book because it had to do with a historic fire, little did I know that I would love this book for much more than historic and educational reasons. This book was very well written and showed all aspects of this event from the firefighters to the victims themselves. I would recomden this book to anyone who wants a good read, as well as to anyone who is interested in fire history.



2. This book was given to me to read when I took my first fire fighter class. My instructor loaned me her copy and I ended up buying my own copy. The tragic events detailed in this book led me into teaching fire prevention and making sure that a tragedy such as this never happens again.
   
   I have recommended this book to several people both in and outside of the fire service. Everyone that I know who have read it have been touched by this story. I have also given this book as a gift to several students taking their first steps into the fire service so that they never forget the impact a tragic fire can have.



3. This is one Chicago tragedy that resonates with me strongly. My former attorney, recently deceased, was a survivor of the deadly fire at Our Lady of Angels Catholic School.
   
   Despite our shared interest in history, he never spoke of the fire during the twenty years in which I knew him. Last year, I found a web site maintained by survivors of the fire and questioned him about the inclusion of his name and that of his sister on the list. His sole response was that the entries were correct. Both had attended school on December 1, 1958, the date of the fire. Our brief conversation proceeded no further. My friend was visibly uncomfortable and I did not make press him with additional inquiries.
   
   Having read this well written account of the fire and the arson investigation, I can understand why my friend preferred to change the subject. This book is compelling, but it is not for the faint of heart. The descriptions contained in "To Sleep With Angels" will haunt and disturb you. You may not be able to read the book without pausing to weep.
   I could not read the book in a single sitting.
   
   It is difficult to forget any of the tragic events described in "To Sleep With the Angels." In no particular order, the random images include a father, who rushed to the school with a ladder to rescue trapped children, watching his own son perish in a cloud of toxic smoke as the ladder was too short to reach a high window; a sick ten year old girl had a premonitory dream, but within a few hours the same child felt much better and asked her mother to let her attend school after recess; from an upper floor window, frightened children recognized an adult neighbor, the owner of the local candy store, and began shouting at the woman and begging her to help save them. The terrible list goes on and on as the authors relate the individual memories and recollections of many of the survivors, the families of the victims, the witnesses and the investigators.
   
   More than ninety persons perished that on that cold December afternoon. In addition to ninety-two students, three nuns were also killed in the burning building. A majority of the victims succumbed on account of smoke inhalation. In the aftermath of the fire, a national campaign was launched to improved fire safety at schools throughout the USA.
   
   Almost as painful as the fire itself was the ultimate fate of many of the survivors. Following the tragedy, many local residents began to move away from their formerly beloved parish. Some people would describe the exodus of the families from the blue collar West Side neighborhood as white flight, but others believed that it was simply too painful for many parents and children to continue living in close proximity to the school where their loved ones had died. They needed to find new surroundings in which to live rather than be reminded of the tragedy on a daily basis. There were far too many unanswerable questions: How many additional lives might have been saved if a set of doors had been closed? How many children would have been spared if the fire had occurred fifteen minutes later after the three o'clock dismissal bell? Why wasn't the fire alarm bell sounded at the school more quickly? Firefighters felt that they could have saved many more lives if they had been given the correct building address and had arrived on the scene four minutes sooner.
   
   No one was ever prosecuted for the crime of arson in connection with the suspicious fire. A juvenile offender set the fire, but he could not be tried under Illinois law since the crime occurred before his thirteenth birthday. This same minor was subsequently tried and convicted for a series of arsons committed in suburban Cicero, where his family moved after the fire at Our Lady of the Angels. The authors posit that church and civil authorities sought to shield the identity of the boy on account of his minority. This explanation is wholly credible.
   
   After my friend's funeral, his two sisters related that their brother regularly attended memorial masses held to honor those who died in the fire at Our Lady of the Angels. The elder sister, who had also attended the school on the day of the fire, exited the building safely. Her brother was also escaped without serious injury. Their father heard a radio broadcast concerning the fire while driving his car and he was permitted to enter the police cordon to look for his children. He was unaware that they had arrived home safely during the confusion. There was a great deal of crying when the children and parents were reunited at their home that afternoon. These personal stories are not repeated in the book.
   ************************************************************************
   In a bizarre and equally disturbing development, one of the authors of this book was convicted of arson after setting a fire to a storage building opposite St. Benedict's Catholic Church on the North side of Chicago in June of 2005. Thankfully, only property damage resulted from the fire. David Cowan was said to be despondent after losing his janitorial job. The defendant, who was also a former suburban firefighter, was sentenced to serve a three year prison term in December of that same year. He has been paroled. Ironically, he was also the author a book entitled, "Great Chicago Fires" and had reported on fires for various newspapers.



4. There are some hard parts to get through describing the fire, but you'll appreciate the Chicago history, the history around the event, what it did to the surrounding neighborhood and how it changed fire codes in the U.S. and likely the world. Your children are safer today because of what happened to these kids.
   
   The book also made me replace all of my smoke detectors!



5. This was a fascinating book. I bought it to read on a trip, because of the excellent ratings. We were stuck in a plane on a runway in Dallas for 6 hours. The wait seemed much shorter, because I was thoroughly involved in reading this book.
   
   I highly recommend it.

2 comments about Serial Killers and Sadistic Murderers - Up Close and Personal.

1. Levin's new book is a kind of summering his knowledge on serial killers for many years. The author explain the phenomena and its multiple faces to the academic reader as well as for the common readers as well
   This book is not of a theoretical but a descriptive of the many kinds and reasons of serial killers. The personal touch from Levin knowledge and acquaintanceship with so many cases of serial killers give the reader a global picture of the phenomena, and make the reader feel as he himself knew this killers.



2. After twenty-five years of probing serial murders, interviewing killers and their families, neighbors, and surviving victims, author Jack Levin has become an expert on the topic - and here translates his expertise to a series of lessons identifying the mind of these killers and how their murders occur. Any college-level collection strong in enforcement books will find this an invaluable tool to understanding the psychology and activities of these killers.

3 comments about Las Hijas de Juarez (Daughters of Juarez): Un auténtico relato de asesinatos en serie al sur de la frontera.

1. A lo largo de todo el libro, la autora trata muy bien la problematica de ciudad Juarez. Un libro muy interesante.



2. 
   Nunca me imaginé que esto estuviera sucediendo en Ciudad Juárez y que según muchos estadounidenses persiguen y discriminan a los mejicanos así mismo deben hacer para así poder dar con los criminales que estan causando tanto dolor a muchas familias



3. She's a bit repetative, uses the same two families as examples of what is going on in cuidad juarez (as seen in documentaries). She fails to keep me wanting to learn more about the topic.

4 comments about Wilderness of Mirrors: Intrigue, Deception, and the Secrets that Destroyed Two of the Cold War's Most Important Agents.

1. This is one of the anti-Angleton books. You you want to understand Angelton's approach to counter-intelligence, I would recommend Edward Jay Epstein's "Deception" instead.



2. This book, which relates the ongoing war between the CIA and the KGB, focuses on the activities of William K. Harvey, a gun-totin' ex-FBI agent (who does not seem to have entirely evolved in a social sense), and James Jesus Angleton, a Yale graduate who lived first in Italy and then in England, where he learned the fine arts of counter-espionage at the knees, as it were, of Kim Philby, and was in charge of counter-espionage at the CIA. The revelation that the latter was a KGB penetration agent in British Intelligence seems to have engendered extreme paranoia in the former, who was ever after on the lookout for moles in the Agency (and was even suspected by some of his colleagues of being one himself).
   
   The tales of covert operations range from the amusing (an agent loitering in a park to make a dead-letter drop being arrested as a potential child molester) to the appalling (the dastardly enticement of the Soviet defector Yuri Nosenko with promises of a salaried job and then keeping him in what was tantamount to a cage for 1277 days (292 of which were devoted to interrogation) [p, 171], all because of the dubious word of Anatoli Golitsin, a previous defector--living high off the hog at taxpayer expense--who warned that the next defector would be a KGB plant.). Angleton placed his faith unstintingly in Golitsin, whose wild scenarios had Averell Harriman, a former United States ambassador to the Soviet Union, cast as a KGB agent. It never seems to have occurred to Angleton that Golitsin may have been the KGB plant, intent on making mischief.
   
   The title, "Wilderness of Mirrors," was apparently coined by Angleton, who was a poet in his spare time. It refers to the labyrinthine world of espionage into which one is "lured deeper and deeper ... pursuing the traces of Soviet plots, both real and imagined, each step taking [one] farther into a bewildering world of intrigue ... [p. 10].
   
   The author notes the justification of the battle between the CIA and the KGB, but he also cites the absurdity of its reality. "The careers of Angleton and Harvey were mired in absurdities, not the least of which was that they habitually violated the democratic freedoms they were sworn to defend . . . Immersed in duplicity and insulated by secrecy, they developed survival mechanisms and behavior patterns that by any rational standard were bizarre. The forced inbreeding of secrecy spawned mutant deeds and thoughts. Loyalty demanded dishonesty, and duty was a thieves' game. The game attracted strange men and slowly twisted them until something snapped. There were no winners or losers in this game, only victims" [p. 226].



3. The term, "wilderness of mirrors," is still used today in counterintelligence circles to denote the feelings of paranoia that sometimes develop in the byzantine business of spyhunting, when one is no longer able to distinguish between what is real and what is illusion. When conjuring up images of this precise phenomenon, no name rings louder than that of James Jesus Angleton, who himself was enveloped and ultimately destroyed by his obsession with uncovering a "mole" within the CIA.
   
   Martin's brief account of the CIA's largely unsuccessful efforts to spy on the Soviet Union during the Cold War alternates between the stories of "Jim" Angleton and "Bill" Harvey, two CIA trailblazers who undoubtedly left their marks in their profession. What's unfortunate is that while they may have scored some early successes, they spent the latter parts of their careers in shambles, with both resigning under hostile circumstances. Especially in Angleton's case, it is tough to objectively determine whether he did more good than bad.
   
   For a more detailed account of the CI fiasco involving Angleton, Golitsin, and Nosenko, check out David Wise's "Molehunt."



4. Since its establishment in 1947, CIA has enjoyed some modest successes as an agent for regime change, but does not to appear to have been a very effective intelligence agency. Yet during the first 25 years of its existence under the freewheeling influence of the many WWII Office of Strategic Services (OSS) veterans who formed its original cadre, it certainly seems to have been an interesting place to work. Indeed its halls were apparently filled with interesting and colorful characters who may or may not have been very good intelligence officers, but who were never boring. This very good book provides the story of two such characters who were at the heart of the CIA counterintelligence program.
   
   James Jesus Angleton was clearly CIA material with his WWII OSS experience, Ivy League education, and international background. Yet he was also by all accounts one the strangest intelligence officers CIA ever recruited. An orchid growing intellectual, Angleton began his long involvement with counterintelligence with the OSS under the tutorship of Kim Philby, who even then was a Soviet mole. He appeared to thrive on the intellectual challenges presented by convoluted and complex work that was counterintelligence. From the first he applied himself to seeking out Soviet agents within CIA with the passion and zealotry of a Jesuit converting a heretic. In the end his efforts failed to find real evidence of Soviet penetration of CIA, but in the notorious `mole' search he initiated succeeded in virtually destroying its ability to run clandestine operations against the Soviets. Ironically for all his zeal, Angleton was unable to recognize that his mentor and friend Philby was a Soviet plant in heart of the delicate U.S. and UK intelligence relationship.
   
   William King Harvey was Angleton's complete opposite in every respect. He was a small town lawyer turned FBI agent who was sacked because his behavior came too close to breaking the number one rule of the FBI in the post war period, don't embarrasses Mr. Hoover. Somewhat like Angleton however, Harvey had developed a passion for counterintelligence work and when he was sacked was probably the FBI's leading expert in this arcane subject. The newly created CIA was struggling to create a counterintelligence program and was happy to take Harvey on board. He and Angleton quickly learned to loathe each other. The hard drinking, womanizing Harvey tended to shoot from the hip, while the aesthetic Angleton tended to move carefully and intellectually. Fortunately Harvey decided that he would like the rough and tumble of overseas work and got a plume assignment in the then divided city of Berlin where he was clearly at home. Prior to taking this assignment however, Harvey presented CIA with what in the end was an accurate argument that Philby was indeed a Soviet plant.
   
   In the end the careers of both men were destroyed by the very things that made them effective counterintelligence agents and the sea changes that shook CIA in the 1970's

1 comments about Postmortem: Establishing the Cause of Death.

1. Book arrived in very timely manner. Looks interesting and will add to my daughter's forensic library.

5 comments about Bitter Blood: A True Story of Southern Family Pride, Madness, and Multiple Murder (Onyx).

1. Twenty years late I find a copy of this at a yard sale this weekend. Murder, Mayhem and Mystery being my favorite genre, I found it irrisistible. All 573 pages. I sat down to read it right off and rushed home to keep reading between my regular Sunday obligations. This story is uncommonly horrifying, and for such an overwhelmingly complicated, convoluted story, it was exquisite in its detail; character development; and in the smooth flow of its unweildy, appalling, riveting, repulsive, terrifying, mysterious, chilling, absolutely gripping story. I coudn't put it down. Thank you, Jerry Bledsoe, for all the work it took to research all those details and then to write with the tons of skill and talent it took to suck me into it right in the beginning and not let me go. How did you do that? I was greatly rewarded when you kept going and kept going and kept going... wanting with all your bone marrow to do the right thing by this book and the people in it, no matter how many obstacles and family secrets and denial and skanky politics; and questionably inept or inadequately trained or poorly organized and led, the takedown finally was, you wouldn't let me go. And I grew to care about those people as much as you did, and so repelled by others, and I was at long last satisfied with where you took me, and lamented the end because I would have loved to keep on reading and learning more. EXCELLENT job. I'll be reading more of your books. This one will be a hard act to follow though! Thank you very much.



2. It is very well written and researched. I highly recommend this book. It's unbelieveable that this person was able to get away with the things he was doing for so long. How this mother could let something like this happen to her children is scary.



3. What happens when you take a narcissist, pampered and over indulged in a somewhat delusional well to do old southern family, and mix her with a psychopath from a more twisted and more delusional branch of the same family? Well it spelled disaster for the innocent people who ended up dead as a result of this volatile incestuous combination.
   
   This book was a long, but very interesting look into a horrific series of murders and those tasked with investigating them. I know when I finished this book, I was convinced that the ultimate fate of this pair seemed insufficient, and makes one hope for an eternal brand of justice. I was also amazed at how some families can delude themselves in regard to the true character of their members, and regardless of all evidence to the contrary can continue to make excuses for their evil acts.



4. This is about as engrossing a true crime book as one can get. Well researched and compellingly written, it tracks the story of three families whose lives intertwine only to culminate in boodshed. It is a story that will enthrall the reader, as well as tug at the reader's heartstrings, because of the tragic familial implications.
   
   At the heart of the horror that this book reveals is a beautiful southern belle, Susie Sharp Newsom Lynch, who together with her first cousin and lover, Fritz Klenner, the mentally unbalanced son of a prominent doctor, goes on to be involved in unspeakable acts. It is a riveting book that will keep the reader turning the pages and is one of the best books in the true crime genre.



5. I read this book 19 years ago and just finished it again after a family member mentioned their dentist was Tom Lynch.
   
   I met Tom and Suzie when he first came to Albuquerque and worked with the Gianni's (the mafia, according to the psychos). I recall she had a very hard, cold, dark stare. She gave me the creeps, I guess that's why I remember her.
   
   This book is a great read and the historic details help the reader understand each character and their motivations.

1 comments about The Human Factor: Inside the CIA's Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture.

1. This is the ultimate adventure story of a deep-cover spy, operating throughout the Middle East, Asia, and Europe, tracking weapons scientists and terrorists. It is full of dry humor, and never slows down. But the real purpose appears to be to draw the reader's attention to the weakness in American national security caused by poor or false human intelligence. By not pontificating, the book is exciting and gets its point across. It's a book about intelligence reform disguised as a spy story.
   
   Deep cover spy Ishmael recounts details about inept CIA training and torture courses, dodging co-workers trying to sabotage his work, falling prey to a dead-baby con scheme in Bombay, and the hilarious saga of his friend, the world's worst spy. I read an advance copy that should be the same as the final - and believe some of its revelations are explosive: the inability to place spies in foreign countries, the CIA's growth within the USA, disappearing money, work avoidance schemes, and great gaps in intelligence. A few paragraphs on the Plame incident are enlightening.
   
   The Twins, a pair of CIA professors, pop up to intrude upon intelligence operations; a hunt for CIA pornography users decimates deep-cover spies overseas. CIA employees hire their spouses as managers in a confusion of nepotism. And bloody Iraq, a place of such absurd violence that ordinary CIA risk aversion is temporarily on hold.
   
   The CIA's just a big couch potato, a failure at providing intelligence but an expert at feeding itself and growing ever larger. The consequences of this nonpartisan book could be far-reaching and CIA reform should be on the top of the Obama, (Hillary) or McCain agendas. CIA reform may well be the most important thing Americans can do as a nation to protect themselves. The author's decision to donate his book profits gives his case even greater strength.

5 comments about The Murder of Helen Jewett.

1. On one level, Professor Cohen's thorough investigation into one of 19th Century New York's most shocking murder cases doesn't tell us much that we don't already know: the society was sexist, accommodating toward the privileged, and hypocritical in its attitude toward sexual behavior (...and nothing has changed much since then). Whenever Ms. Cohen hammers these points home, and she does pretty often, the effect isn't very... well... effective. And the flow of the book suffers a little from this. Two other things hurt the story: one is the long, distracting section on the histories of the Weston and Jewett/Dorcas families in Maine; and the other is the constant need on Ms. Cohen's part to track the lineage of each and every participant in the case. But for the most part, Professor Cohen's telling of the event is engaging, chilling, and compelling. The participants are brought back to life in a way that most historical writers should envy. To me, the most rewarding part of the book was realizing how much the Jacksonian era in New York and America represented a turning point from the colonial to the modern era. This was the dawn of modern journalism and mass media--the pivotal point where newspaper publishers realized that the public wanted more than just shipping and business reports: where publishers realized there was a public at all. And the media circus--a national media circus--which surrounded this case was the first in a long line that goes on to this day. It was also the first time in western history when people no longer lived in the same place they worked, and when the entire apprenticeship culture was being replaced by the more indifferent employer/employee system. All these important factors do figure into the crime. But the most admirable aspect of the book, for me, was that while all this socio/political analysis went on (sometimes at the expense of the pacing) Ms. Cohen never leaves sight of the young girl at the center of it all. Jewett/Dorcas was by no means a pathetic babe-in-the-woods, and the author is very careful to avoid this perception. But Ms. Cohen makes clear that Jewett, like any crime victim, didn't deserve the end she met. And like any other human being, Jewett was worthy of justice.



2. This book is 409 pages. It should be at least 259 pages shorter.

   The author fills the pages with irrelevancies, speculation and thesis-like sociological postulations.

   This book is ostensibly about the murder of a prostitute in the 1830's and the trial of the man accused. Why then must we be subjected to several pages on the following topic: the family history of the man who hired Helen Jewitt to work as a servant before she moved to Portland then to Boston then to NYC? If that were not enough in the irrelevant department, we also got some information on this man's grandfather's competitor in the general store business nearly a century before the events in the book. These irrelevant facts added nothing to the book.

   Added to this frustration were page upon page of the auhor's speculation about events unknown and motives of people long gone. She gets more out of an undated letter than anyone I ever knew.

   Lastly, are the author's often redundant postulations and theorizing about the socialogy of the age. Some would have been helpful, but by the fourth or fifth time the same theory was repeated it was decidedly tiresome.

   It is a shame this book was not cut and cut again. The story is a good one and the points the author made were good. It was the presentation and the stretching as if she felt compelled to write 400 page book rather than a short concise one that ruined the experience. You could read the first chapter, then skip @150 pages to the account of the trial and hardly miss a beat.




3. On one level, Professor Cohen's thorough investigation into one of 19th Century New York's most shocking murder cases doesn't tell us much that we don't already know: the society was sexist, accommodating toward the privileged, and hypocritical in its attitude toward sexual behavior (...and nothing has changed much since then). Whenever Ms. Cohen hammers these points home, and she does pretty often, the effect isn't very... well... effective. And the flow of the book suffers a little from this. Two other things hurt the story: one is the long, distracting section on the histories of the Weston and Jewett/Dorcas families in Maine; and the other is the constant need on Ms. Cohen's part to track the lineage of each and every participant in the case. But for the most part, Professor Cohen's telling of the event is engaging, chilling, and compelling. The participants are brought back to life in a way that most historical writers should envy. To me, the most rewarding part of the book was realizing how much the Jacksonian era in New York and America represented a turning point from the colonial to the modern era. This was the dawn of modern journalism and mass media--the pivotal point where newspaper publishers realized that the public wanted more than just shipping and business reports: where publishers realized there was a public at all. And the media circus--a national media circus--which surrounded this case was the first in a long line that goes on to this day. It was also the first time in western history when people no longer lived in the same place they worked, and when the entire apprenticeship culture was being replaced by the more indifferent employer/employee system. All these important factors do figure into the crime. But the most admirable aspect of the book, for me, was that while all this socio/political analysis went on (sometimes at the expense of the pacing) Ms. Cohen never leaves sight of the young girl at the center of it all. Jewett/Dorcas was by no means a pathetic babe-in-the-woods, and the author is very careful to avoid this perception. But Ms. Cohen makes clear that Jewett, like any crime victim, didn't deserve the end she met. And like any other human being, Jewett was worthy of justice.



4. The Murder of Helen Jewett by Patricia Cline Cohen. was recommended by an academic friend as a true crime effort with historical weight. She couldn't have been more correct about the weight business. The story of the murder of a New York City prostitute in 1836 generally interested me.
   
   I spent hours with Cline's work and, at the outset, felt well rewarded for the time spent. If detail and context were enough to make a great book, this would qualify. Few books that I have read contain as much detail as carefully analyzed as this one. Much of it illustrates the business of newspapers directed at the common person during the 1830s, something that I have a passing interest in, but it was all too much. By the time I had reached Chapter 4 on "The New York Sex Trade," I knew the basic story and most of the key characters in some detail, and I knew Cline's approach would be to analyze, reanalyze and again reanalyze each aspect of the murder so thoroughly that I couldn't stay with the repetition. I skipped to the end, found out what happened with the likely murderer and moved on to another book.
   
   Personally, I'd have liked it more if she had found an editor determined to serve the reader. Close, research-based document analysis makes good academic work, but it loses a reader looking for the true-crime counterpart of P.D. James.



5. We shouldn't like murder mysteries, but we usually do.
   
   While there's a real tragedy going on -- someone killed, families in disarray, a killer on trial -- we hang on for the gory details.
   
   Folks were no different in New York City in 1836, which is the setting for the real life, true story of the murder of Helen Jewett, a lady of negotiable virtue, who plied her trade at an upscale brothel. It's the story of Jewett's life, and how she came to be who she was, and how she came to do what she did for a living.
   
   And about Richard Robinson, her accused killer, and how a mild-mannered store clerk from rural New England came to New York, and was arrested for Jewett's murder.
   
   And about the trial, and about the crowds there (mostly young -- the defendant was 18 -- clerks like the accused), and about how long the trial lasted, and about the speculation that the judge might have been bribed.
   
   But this is more than a murder mystery. Because the author tells us vivid details about life in New York City during that time, and how prostitutes lived in that era (I didn't know that prostitution was legal in New York at that time), and how young Americans grew up during that time, and what was expected of them as far as behavior and decorum.
   
   This is a scholarly book. It's labeled "history/women's studies," and I wouldn't take that away Patricia Cline Cohen, the historian who wrote the book. But if you just want a better-than-average read that will entertain you as well as teach you, you can do no better than this. I might even suggest -- since I'm writing this review on May 8 -- it wouldn't be a bad beach book. The cover and title are just trashy enough that the people on the next towel won't think you're a nerd on the beach. It'll have to be a secret between you and me and the author that while you're busy turning pages, you're also having your mind expanded.

5 comments about The Cyanide Canary.

1. I'm a long time Idaho resident and libertarian. I am pretty cynical about help from the Federal government, but...
   
   In Idaho, someone tried to get ahead by cutting corners in ways that impacted others. We have a perfect role for government to step in. This is a true tragedy. The story is almost over and then takes another twist that really had me sprinting to the end of the book.
   
   As I promote free markets, people always ask what will keep big business from destroying the world. This is a great story about the difficulties, and ultimate triumph of the government's effort to make one citizen accountable for his actions.



2. I bought this book for a friend for Christmas and found I had to go back and buy two more copies (one for myself and as another gift), because I started reading it before wrapping it and couldn't put it down. I won't call this tragic "story"--because the word story implies it is a work of fiction. However, the detailed endnotes based on sworn affidavit, deposition and trial testimony, as well as numerous citations to witness interviews show it is well researched recital of shockingly true facts. Written in the third person, it reads as easily as a fiction novel (including simplified medical, chemical and legal jargon), but it clearly is not. Given the monstrosity of the events, it is easy to understand how witnesses involved in the investigation and trial would easily remembered what they said and saw at the time the events occurred. This is a definite read for anyone interested in a well written and researched compelling story of finding justice in a small Idaho-company based town. The only people who might not want to read it now would be those who don't want to have their holiday preparations waylaid (because it will pull you into the story), or those who are still denying the facts of what happened.



3. We lived and worked in eastern Washington State during the mid-1990s for environmental companies and both had to take safety classes where they explained the dangers of confined space entries and the precautions you have to take for working in those environments, not to mention all the other regulatory and safety requirements needed for working with hazardous chemicals. We were lucky: we were educated, well-paid, working for environmental clean-up companies with lucrative government contracts where safety was good business practice.
   
   The circumstances detailed in The Cyanide Canary are 180 degrees different. Allen Elias, the owner of the Evergreen facility, was not engaged in environmental cleanup, but working on the cheap trying to develop a commercial means of reprocessing waste. His employees were high-school graduates desperate for a job, with no safety training or understanding of the requirements for confined space work, nor any clue, really, about the hazards of certain chemicals--things Elias did know. Which is why Elias was charged with criminal conduct after one of his workers was injured during a tank cleanout. The story of the accident, along with the resulting investigation, and trial, makes up this book, which reads like a long Law & Order episode, almost complete with the "Ka-Chung" sound at the end of each chapter. As such, it should appeal to L&O fans, or anyone with an interest in how environmental law is being developed.
   
   The weakest part of the book is the beginning chapter, where the authors attempt to portray the events of the accident in an almost novelistic method, including trying for some suspense about whether the victim, Scott Dominguez, would survive or not. After they get that out of the way (more than likely, a suggestion from some bone-headed editor who felt the beginning needed some punch or a grab for the reader), the book settles down into its portrayal of Hilldorfer's investigation, bolstered by all the interviews and transcripts that were eventually used to indict Elias and bring the case to trial. The truly riveting part of the book is not the opening, but the trial, the question of whether Elias will be found guilty, and whether or not he will attempt to flee justice.
   
   I enjoyed the book quite a bit, reading it in two sessions during a train ride to and from NYC. It's a revealing look into the legal world, and also an interesting case study between the kinds of murder cases usually seen on Law & Order and the "white collar" crime that usually does not end up in jail sentences for the convicted.



4. Picking up a well-written book always scares me. It means everything on my carefully planned TO-DO list (except job and kitties, of course) will get reprioritized. Oh well.
   
   I'm about halfway through a real page-turner of an exposé, `The Cyanide Canary,' by Joseph Hilldorfer and Robert Bugoni. This true account of an environmental waste cover-up brings to mind Jonathan Harr's "A Civil Action," with parallel themes of corruption and negligence. Here Hilldorfer is the primary EPA agent in charge of bringing hazardous materials transgressor Allan Elias to justice. Elias is described as an outrageously amoral con-artist whose in-your-face OSHA violations are breathtaking in their heedlessness. Working with larger chemical waste corporations such as Kerr-McGee, Elias' chicanery and unabashed stonewalling has allowed him in the past to slip through the net of the Environmental Protection Agency. Hilldorfer becomes personally vested in this case when he learns of the significant neurological damage sustained by one of the men Elias sent to clean out the `tank.'
   
   The `EPA' is generally regarded as a behemoth greatly to be feared, but the agency as depicted here has few enforcement `teeth' and even fewer agents with a desire to sink those teeth into violators. While the public believes that pursuing environmental lawbreakers on criminal or civil levels is second-nature to the EPA, that's not evident in the book so far. The author suspects the EPA is picking and choosing its battles involving criminal prosecution.
   
   `The Cyanide Canary' was inspired by that sine-qua-non of all good writing: passion and compassion. An issue is only as credible as how well it's expressed, and the articulation in this book is superb. Objectivity and balance --even understatement--pack a powerful punch with me. Writers Joseph Hilldorfer and Robert Dugoni manage to make their case dramatic and compelling through a wry Jack Webb `just-the-facts-ma'am' style that allows readers to easily tap into their own reserves of disgust and wonder, outrage and sympathy.
   
   Like the author in `A Civil Action,' Joseph Hilldorfer finds this investigation leeching into his personal life, his thoughts, his sleep.
   
   And so do I. I must find out how things end here. The cats are fed, but the bills, dishes and deadlines will wait. I can't resist the mesmerizing siren of a particular `canary' one minute more.
   
   Therese Hercher



5. I was quite impressed with the detailed account of the trial and the events leading up to it !!!!
   
   On the other hand I was sorely disappointed with the seeming total disregard for the workers safety !!!!
   
   It is fly-by-nite outfits like this that give the rest of the chemical industry a bad name.
   
   Many of us have spent our entire or large portion of our working life ensuring the workers safety !!!!
   
   Thanks for a great book and being a voice for the worker.