Eagle Reviews

This book is one of Wilbur Smith's early books and it shows.
After reading his books set in ancient Egypt, I bought this thinking it would be a good read. He spent too much time on the relationships and too little time on the meat of the story which should have been the search for the elusive diamonds. I was able to finish it but was very disappointed particularly with the ending. It was as if he ran out of steam or got into a hurry. The ending in the book just left you wishing that he would have given you a little more to tie up the loose ends. Not a bad book but, not a great one either.

i have read all of Wilbur's books and found that one learns a lot about Africa (with a few exceptions). you learn african history, economics, social problems, environmental problems, natural history, etc. in this one, you learn about the diamond industry and the history of the Namibian diamond coasts, while Wilbur weaves it into his "unputdownable" story. kind of like the Master of the Game with substance. for an even better look at Namibian history, try the Burning Shore.

This book is one of Smith's early books - originally published in the mid-70's, I think, and anyone who's read a lot of Wilbur Smith (like me) will be able to tell. It's shorter, and he's definitely refined his writing style since then. However, his talent for plot twists, engaging characters and sucking you right into the story is still there - I loved this book! It is well worth it for anyone who likes a rip-roaring adventure!

Porter's agenda to clear Jim Sweeney's name and to cast more doubt over Ernie Cobb's name is disgraceful. Sweeney fixed games. Period. He admitted to that by accepting a plea bargain from his "buddy" Ed McDonald. Cobb, who would have been a very good NBA player was acquited of all charges, yet Porter wants you to believe that Cobb was guilty. This book insults any true Basketball fan's knowledge of the game. Kuhn wasn't good enough to dictate outcome, Cobb was acquited of all charges, leaving Sweeney the Point Guard as the obvious link on the court. I'm surprised Porter's never been sued for this inaccurate hatchet job.

I read David Porter's fascinating and well researched account of the real and perceived point shaving of Boston College's basketball team in a single sitting. In addition to his sensitive approach to each player's family history, psychology, and financial stresses, Porter presents the dynamic among the Mob, law enforcement and the players with nuance and professional objectivity.
A great read for all - serious sports enthusiasts to grandma on a Sunday afternoon.

Tremendous read -- the characters come alive, the full range of personal fallibility: gullible to greedy, stoic to berserk. An amazing examination of the verious motivations of human behavior, and the way character is tested by pressure, by competition, by fear and by the temptation of money. Involvement of celebrity gangsters lends both intrigue and absurdity,as the stakes were simultaneously huge for the players but penny-ante for the kingpins.... Great book to read. You will watch March Madness with new eyes.

Recommended to basketball, crime, and suspense fans.

Hermann, one of the more nazi of the nazis in Luftwaffe, was a controversial character, and decided to write this book to make the truth clear. But he writes in a heavy language, that makes the reading unpleasant and totally boring. Anyway, as a major figure in Luftwaffe, he deserves credit for the book.

Hajo Herrmann is perhaps not as well known as some of the great fighter aces of World War II on the German side , but his book provides a close-up first hand view of some of the more interesting aspects of that conflict. The "style" in which the story is told is hampered by the fact that we are reading a translation , and the "style" thus becomes the responsibility of the translator rather than the author. German is not an easy language to translate into a readable and literary form. Oberst(colonel) Herrmann embarked on a rather remarkable post-war career as a highly regarded lawyer in Germany, so I doubt his use of language and writing ability sould be questioned.

Herrmann , very early in his career , was close to many of the major figures in the Luftwaffe : Hermann Goering , in particular. In the first chapter of the book , Herrmann describes how Goering personally encouraged him to join the new infant service as an officer cadet.

The career of the author is virtually a roadmap of Germany's early triumphs. One of the most interesting(to me) tales involves his bombing of the harbor of Athens in a Ju-88 and the sinking of a munitions ship in an explosion of "near nuclear proportion". Also interesting were the descriptions of the battles against the PQ convoys to Murmansk over the Barents Sea.

But it was as the originator of the "Wilde Sau", or wild boar nightfighting tactic that brought Herrmann both fame and earned him the animosity of many other highly regarded officers of the Luftwaffe.

I consider the book one of the best of the first person narrations of the former enemy camp. The author comes through the "style" problem as a real man of honor , and I would recommend this work highly to any serious student of military history.

This book is now published by "Airlife Publishing Ltd. London" 270 pages ISBN 1 85310 161 3. Benno Herrmann

This book is bad. After reading well-developed stories about the ancient world written by Bernard Cornwell, Pressfield, Paxson, Whyte, it is impossible to accept this forced story. After reading the first two chapters I threw this book down disgusted by the shallow characters, weak plot, and awkward prose. If you want a copy of this book you can have mine that I left at the Sheraton in Denver, plugging up the toilet.

Honestly, I really tried to enjoy Scarrow's books, as I read all the works of historical fiction that's out there. But the Eagle series is just so utterly boring, an insult to the reader's intelligence. There is absolutely no historical detail at all. The characters are straight from Asterix the Gaul. I'm ahead of the reviews, because I've read the third book -not because I enjoy it, I reveiw historical fiction for a book store- and it's just as bland. It's a travesty to read the reviews Scarrow gets, when there is so much more better works out there. Attractive cover art is an enormous facter in book marketing. This whole series is a skeleton surrounded by an Armani suit.

I'm amazed by the range in reviews on Scarrow's books, from the fawning praise to those who seem to loathe it. The latter are typified by doug bail. Short, inaccurate (the historical details are there all right - Scarrow knows his stuff)and incomprehensible (how could such gritty page turners ever be considered dull?) If doug bail truly reviews books I hope he runs his material through a grammar and spell checker before daring to submit them...
Anyway, the second book is even better than the first in the series. Macro and Cato and the rest of the Roman army are clawing their way up country towards the enemy capital. Aside from the brave and savage enemy they have to worry about a secret organisation plotting to overthrow the emperor, the dastardly Vitellius ( a truly evil and therefore likeable villain), and a native assassin out to kill Claudius. The battle-scenes are excellent and take the reader right to the heart of a very bloody business. The characters are well rounded and very likeable. This is achieved largely through first rate dialogue that sounds just about right (though you do have to get used to a certain amount of soldierly profanity). Scene-setting is superb and you get the sense of a real cinematic imagination behind the writing. I'd be surprised if this wasn't made into a film or TV series soon. It's a great series to follow, and I cheated a bit by buying the third from amazon.co.uk. That book, WHEN THE EAGLE HUNTS, is better still and my only worry is that Scarrow might not be able to keep the standard (no pun intended) up over a long series. We shall see. Until then, enjoy these books for what they are; page-turning actioners that also happen to be extremely well-written.
Oh, and it's about as far from Asterix as you can get. That's probably why the book is way over doug's head.

I have always been a fan of the intellectual debates in the New York Review of Books letters to the editor pages. This book consists of two articles by Crews and the subsequent debates surrounding them. I would have liked to see better defenses of Freud, but none of the eminent defenders of psychoanalysis is able to mount a serious challenge to Crews's devastating attacks.

This devastating book has two parts: (1) The Unknown Freud, where the reader gets a picture of Freud as a dictator, a megalomaniac and egotripper. A pope who alone knew the truth and who founded a secret commission to protect his 'church' against the heathen. He was a bad psychoanalyst (e.g. the Wolf Man case) and a venal man (e.g. the catastrophic Horace Fink case, where he tried to get his own hands on some money of the heiress).
I agree with the author that psychoanalysis is a pseudoscience - statements cannot be tested and the research results cannot be verified uniformly. Although it is not totally without meaning (Karl Popper), it is not a science.
(2) the revenge of the repressed
A frontal attack on the caste of the psychoanalysts, depicted as 'religious zealots, self-help evangelists, sociopolitical ideologues, and outright charlatans who trade in the ever seductive currency of guilt and blame, while keeping the doctor's fees mounting.'
The author is particularly severe with their latest 'school' : the 'recovered memory movement', based on the rape of children by their parents (really!). This lead to false accusations and condemnations of innocent people. No wonder the author predicts an accelerating collapse of psychoanalysis as a respected institution.
A much needed and courageous book to halt a profession riding at full speed on a misty highway. And a much needed angle on Freud as a person, written in a style to slaughter the not so innocent father of psychoanalysis.
After reading this book, I agree with Peter Madawar, who called doctrinaire psychoanalytic theory "the most stupendous intellectual confidence trick of the twentieth century".

Frederick Crews really knows how to tap that deep reservoir of hostility found in modern Freudian psychoanalysts. In 1993 and 1994 FC wrote two essays in the New York Review of Books debunking Freud in the first, and tearing to shreds the recovered memory movement in the second.

These two essays and the letters in response to them have been put into the book The Memory Wars. As someone trained in experimental psychology you can guess my own personal bias in this matter. Crews discusses Freud's botched cases; his frequent vacillation in theory formation; some of his sillier theories; and his serious interjection of personal bias into the formation of his beliefs. The main problem with the whole Freudian system is the total lack of scientific evidence supporting it. Freudian psychoanalysis is founded on anecdote and supported by anecdotes. To be fair, much current non-Freudian therapy is also based on anecdote. Indignant Freud followers write back, and their letters are indeed interesting (and often pompous).

The second half of the book takes on the recovered memory movement. It would be great to poke fun at this movement if it weren't for the fact that it has caused so much damage to all parties involved. Symptoms checklists are published with the statement if you suffer from these symptoms you may be a victim of sexual abuse. Read the list and you will find that the majority of Americans will find that they have been abused. It's all a patient seduction game with the intent to make big money. Hospitals have even set up units to treat such patients (Having worked in the psychiatric hospital industry I am well aware of the "product lines" that such facilities set up in order to fill beds). Crews does an excellent job of dissecting the memory movement, and once again we get to read the indignant responses.

Those who believe that psychological therapy should be based on sound scientific evidence will love this book. Those who have accepted Freudianism with a religious like faith will, of course, hate it. To me this whole subject is analogous to the evolution vs. creationist debate. It's science versus pseudoscience.

I enjoyed this overall but have some quibbles.

Firstly, though the author appends a bibliography, I find her portrayal of pre-Roman Celtic cultures less than believable. They're *interesting* people, as she portrays them, but nothing that I, as a non-expert, have read about these cultures' actual religion, social structure, or archeology matches what Scott has devised. We don't know much about early Celtic religion, but Scott's book doesn't even take into account what we do know; here are the Iceni apparently without Epona (though Scott spells them 'Eceni' for some reason). She seems to have based her Celts on Native Americans to some extent (dreams of totem animals, for example), and I'm not sure there's historical justification for that. I was confused by the portrayal of Boudica as fighting beside Caractacus against an initial Roman invasion (the work on Boudica I have previously seen has her first encountering Romans in her own homeland), and I found the gender equality in the society unbelievable. I could accept spiritual and perhaps political power in women's hands, but I can't believe that women warriors would be common in a culture that fights primarily hand to hand.

However, I was able to look past these issues and think of the book as semi-fantasy, and on that level I enjoyed it. The plot is dramatic, perhaps a bit over-long, but with plenty of action and lots of pain for the characters. The latter are reasonably appealing, with the troubled Ban a standout. I was disappointed with the rapid demise of Amminios, who was shaping up to be an intelligent and interesting antagonist. But the dark ending makes up for a lot. I will be reading the sequel.

There is no reason not to like this fantasy-like lore of an early English warrior queen. The idea is fantastic. The problems are:
-Manda Scott goes on forever. Philip Pullman can give you a terse sentence describing a place, and you'll know what he means and the way it makes the characters feel in the way you can get the sense a place by glancing around. Manda Scott is not so blessed. She uses language naturally well - everything is well-written - but it's OVERwritten. (P.S. I confess that I never finished it.)

-Breaca's character is nothing special and you are stuck with her for 500+ pages. Caradoc is not remarkable either.

-This is not Ms. Scott's fault, but many people have studied this era so little that this book is confusing.

-The whole book is so dark and mysterious, it reminds be of the Lord of the Rings DVDs--cryptic, poorly-lit and overlong.

But I still give 3 stars for hard work, a good idea, and nice writing.

Amanda Scott's sweeping novel takes place in Tribal Britain in the 1st century A.D. She builds a believable story from the fragments of recorded Roman history that describe the pre-Roman Iron Age. Modern archaeology provides scraps for her imaginative fiction. Boudica lived, but her story is a rich fabrication that makes one yearn for more in subsequent books.

Young Breaca nic Graine witnesses her mother's murder by a renegade Coritani warrior. The girl grabs her father's boar spear and kills the intruder, earning her first red kill-feather, the mark of an Eceni warrior. Breaca dreams, however, of holding the title of Dreamer, a coveted tribal position. A Dreamer possesses the gift of witnessing future events and interpreting visions of life and death. Dreamers are accompanied and protected by Warriors.

Additional major players in Scott's drama are Ban, Breaca's half-brother; Caradoc, third son of Cunobelin, the Sun-Hound; Corvus, a shipwrecked soldier of Rome; and Airmid, Breaca's Eceni Dreamer and friend. Throughout the tale, Ban's life and aspirations are second only to Breaca's. Ban, at eight years, experiences his first dream and is the potential greatest Dreamer of the Eceni. His path leads to distant lands, first as slave and then as Roman citizen, with his eventual return to Eceni territory.

Breaca accepts her place as Warrior and heir apparent to succeed her mother as tribal leader. She lives a bittersweet existence, forsaking womanly love for the training and ritual behavior befitting a warrior princess. DREAMING THE EAGLE is a story of peaceful agrarian peoples who defend their homes when provoked by aggression.

Love and dependence upon animals is a featured keynote of the novel. Hounds are hunters, companions and needed warriors when tribes are attacked. Horses are used for war as well. Ban devotes himself to the care of an angry multicolored mare he called the Crow. She performs for him when his life is at risk, killing those who attack with the thrust of her mighty hooves.

The author takes license with history in her telling of the Roman invasion of Britain by the legions of Caligula. He is shown to be licentious, evil, crafty, self-serving and vain. From other historians, we can agree with Scott's assessments of Caligula. He, among other self-serving men, is the hated enemy.

Scott catalogues her story with lists of names, their pronunciations, tribal groups and their locations, maps of probable tribal lands and Roman invasion routes. Her descriptions of battles, their outcomes, personal struggles and resolutions are developed with poetic beauty. DREAMING THE EAGLE is an exciting story chronicled by a masterful storyteller. If Iron Age existence was an iota of the reality Scott pictures, we can identify with and cheer for her people.

--- Reviewed by Judy Gigstad

Since we are against drugging our child and/or telling him he's got any kind of "defect," I would have liked to have known this was a pretty major part of the story so we could have avoided this rather thin book. The ending, where the child says he will use his "eagle eyes" to get help was awfully brief and, frankly, seemed like an after-thought.

I can't believe the hardcover edition is out of print! This is one of the best books I've read to help the self-esteem of children with Add or LD or any other kind of learning problem.
It doesn't dumb down the criteria. It shows the child being the hero of the story using some of his natural abilities. It also shows some of the techniques he develops for learning. It is a wonderful story for any child with or without a disability.

Beautiful illustrations! The nature theme engaged my son's conscious mind while the healing message sank into his subconscious. He won't go to bed now without his "Eagle Eyes."

In "The Choir," Trollope focuses on a village that has to deal with change. The cathedral choir, that was established in the 1500s, is threatened by lack of money and, perhaps, by the sense that the choir may not be all that relevant anymore in a changing society. The people in the village respond in very different ways to the situation, all the while preoccupied with their own personal dramas. The idea of the relevance of traditional values is very interesting. But at the same time, it takes away at times from the close observation and character development that usually makes Trollope's novels so much fun to read. There is so much going on in this novel, and there are so many major characters, that it's hard to feel connected to any of them. To me, Trollope is much better when she narrows her scope to a smaller group of people, as she did for example in "The Men and the Girls." "The Choir" is just as well-written as anything else Trollope has done, but she doesn't allow the characters room to develop, and the effect of that is that they all stay flat. If she had halved the number of significant characters, this book would have been much better.

the novel, which deals with church politics and life in a small community. I agree that the number of characters reduces the depth in which each is presented, but this is a technique deliberately chosen, as with Dickens, when socio-ecclesiastical-political matters are at the forefront. 'The Choir' is a well-written novel, an enjoyable read, with more serious concerns which never bog it down in authorial pontification.

As a devotee of Joanna Trollope, I had always avoided this one book, due to the dreary book notes that invariably describe it as some row or other about a boys' school choir. I simply could not imagine such a topic holding my interest for more than five seconds, Trollope or not.

But it did.

Far from being the dismal plot described above, it turns out to be probably one of Joanna Trollope's very best, both in the writing and the plotting. Yes, it does take place in a boys' school, which is closely affiliated with the town's cathedral. The main characters are all quite Britishly normal, thank you, and not a bit precious. On the contrary. We have a runaway wife who always returns, a bored-stiff housewife (mother of a choir boy) who begins a torrid affair, four utterly horrid teenaged and twenty-ish offspring of the cathedral's long-suffering dean, and much, much more.

When a group of disaffected socialist (seriously) townspeople decides that the choir is antiquated and must go, that the headmaster's house must be sold out from him and his family and made into a town social hall, and that the catherdral, the deanery, and everything in between is a haven for the rich, the close-knit and relatively peaceful community is torn apart. Trollope's skill, as always, is in somehow effortlessly drawing us into the real feelings and anguish of very ordinary people who become less ordinary as they face the crises of their lives. In that, she is like her ancestor, the great English novelist of the 19th century, Anthony Trollope. Unlike any other of Joanna Trollope's books, this one most closely reminds this reviewer of the senior novelist's brilliant works.

As always, the end is not a happily ever after, but, as the British say, a "sorting out" of feelings, personalities, and lives. Some come out the better--others collapse.

"The Choir" is simply a wonderfully written work of art, and I am glad to have read it, and doubly glad to be able to recommend it to any reader who loves a finely drawn novel.

I was very disapointed with this book...the story line was fragmented and the style of writing, crude and amateurish. Even though the reader was warned in advance that it was told in McNiece's own words, complete with misspellings and grammatical errors, it was still read like a 6th grade essay. Too much time was spent on McNiece's near brushes with military authority, his indifference to the military structure, and his various antics (i.e. stealing a train). I'm sure he made a meaningful contribution to history but much of that impact was lost on his cavorting and highjinks. Having read Band of Brothers and the strict code of military discipline handed down by Col Robert Sink you would have to wonder how accurate McNiece's recollections were???

This is one of the worst books I've read in years. The reader is left with little doubt that the stories of the protagonist have been embellished with each telling, and the amount of ego on display is simply staggering. The writing is amateurish at best, and inexplicably switches between first and third person at whim. There apparently was no editing whatsoever.

This is an excellent historical account, as verified through veterans and archived information. This is a real-life story, told as it was without any need to embellish or distort what happened.

I am pleased to see an actual historical narrative presented, rather than the Hollywood version. Highly recommended for any WWII 101st enthusiast.