Sterling Reviews

As the newlyweds travel together yet keep their distance, an attraction springs up between them. Michael will do anything to keep his now beloved Ellen safe even if it includes giving her up at the end of the journey. Ellen loves her spouse too, but she worries how he will react when he learns she is not quite the prim and proper lady he thinks she is.

A HUSBAND BY LAW is a charming western romance that stars two exciting lead characters who will gain reader attention by the heat they generate with just a stare. The story line is fun and the background and secondary characters such as Colonel Peabody and Kate add value to a strong plot. The latest "seduction" tale stands tall along side its fabulous predecessors as enjoyable historical romances.

Harriet Klausner

Subsequent editions have moved to line drawings of the pattern handles, and do not include the photographs. There are better guides to be had.

Ms. Hagan's "Sterling Flatware", revised second edition is a must have book for any silver pattern matcher or anyone seriously interested in American sterling silver flatware. This book contains several hundred more patterns than the "Jewelers Keystone" pattern matching book and is a vast improvement over the Authers's First edition.

There are some disadvantages. The first is that after minor use, the pages will fall out. This can be remedied by puting the pages into plastic sleaves and than into a 3 ring binder. The second disadvantage is that line drawings are used instead of photographs. This often makes it a little more difficult to identify a pattern.

Still this has to be the book of choice for myself and other professionals in this field.... Marc Cutcher / Solomon Enterprises, Inc.

The "Price Guide" is totally useless! Examples: "Dinner Forks $45-110" "Teaspoons $30-85" "Macaroni Servers $295-1250"

All pieces are priced and listed just this way. Listing such a dollar range with no patterns or manufacturers mentioned, makes the price guide of no value.

This book follows this general pattern or template of trying to describe the Latter-day Saint theology in terms of philosophy. Granted, I am glad that someone is trying to make sense of such a complex and texturous religion. But in describing or explaining the religion in these philosophical terms, he distorts the message. Frankly, the Church of Jesus Christ possesses a uniqueness that defies any categorization. It is a pure quiddity!

Examples:

MIRACLES: "From the perspective of God there are no miracles." (p. 2). The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ (LDS scripture) makes a large point about there being miracles (Moroni 10:24-26), and Elder McConkie, one of the Twelve Apostles, wrote, "In the ultimate sense, all that God does is a miracle."

PELAGIUS: "Indeed . . . Mormonism is essentially Pelagian in its theology." (p.82) I have read every published discourse of Joseph Smith, was born in the covenant, raised an active member, served a mission, and graduated from BYU, and it wasn't until my last semester of college, in an elective class that I heard of Pelagius. I have never heard any of the current Authorities of the Church use the word "Pelagius." I had to explain the word to my brother! So everyone in the Church is missing the essence?

FILTERED PROPHET: Another mistake, and this is a common one among many people, is that McMurrin is not using Joseph Smith, but Joseph Smith filtered through B. H. Roberts. In his discussion of "Intelligences" on page 108, he alludes to Joseph Smith, but the text he quotes is Robert's text. Several leaders, such a Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce R. McConkie have understood Joseph Smith's ideas differently, but McMurrin does not acknowledge that.

I appreciate the endeavor, but in using "traditional philosophical terminology," such as the platonic "being and becoming" (p. 11-13), he assumes that Joseph Smith's ideas would fit into Platonic assumptions. If the piece won't fit into the puzzle, reshape it. Then it is no longer the same piece. That is the hazard of trying to "translate" or "transpose" the theology into educraticeese, the message is garbled, and ultimately betrayed.

The initial idea of European civilization being severely damaged by World War I, while an isolationist North and South America growing to the height of civilization and peace was a brilliant one. The idea of someone from the Americas entering the unknown European realm is a fascinating plot idea. Unfortunately, the book was just not long enough to really develop the story.

Even if World War I had gone as badly as the story indicates, I do not believe that European civilization would have been so totally obliterated that no trace of it would remain. There should have been ruins, at least. It seems more as likely that some sort of Medieval-type society would have resulted, especially since that is so much a part of the history of that part of the world.

Further, when the Roman Empire fell, some learning was preserve in monastaries. It seems to me that something similar would have occurred if World War I had destroyed European civilization. I kept expecting the main characters to come across something of this nature, but they never did.

Third, I find it unlikely that the animals that Burroughs describes as thriving in England would be able to do so, unless the entire climate of the planet had changed, and there is no indication in the novel that this has occurred. Lions and elephants may be able to live in zoos but if turned loose with a few British winters (from what I've read of the British climate), they would certainly not become more populous than humans.

Finally, I felt that the end of the story was rushed. With the material that he had, Burroughs could have stretched this story out to a multi-hundred page novel. As it is, the edition that I read was under 100 pgs.

In all, Burroughs started with a great idea, but it just needed a lot of work.

The story is ERB's standard fare. However, like many of his books from this period, there are a few themes to the story that are of interest above and beyond the light adventure story. The elements foremost in this novel are the destructive nature of war and racism. There is also a certain amount of naivete from the period and the relative newness of the United States as a world power.

Most of Burrough's books are good reading for pre-teen to early adolescent, and nostalgic adults; this one is no exception.
P-)

Beset by sabotage, Turck is cast adrift east of 30d in a motor launch. With a small crew he explores first Great Britian, finding a wilderness complete with lions, tigers and wild animals (ex-zoo residents, often as not). The humans have reverted to spear carrying hunter groups. The motorboat then travels to Europe, which is also a wasteland where nature has reclaimed all of "civilization". A great war - which the Pan-American nations of Turck's origin avoided - had devestated human life in Europe.

In Europe, Turck is captured by soldiers from a black empire from Abysinia who are bringing civilization back to Europe. As well as slavery. He is finally set free by yet a seperate invasion of Chinese troops, who being enlightened free the slaves and reunite Turck with his homeland.

As mentioned, this is typical Burroughs "sceience fiction". Turck encounters a "savage" queen in Great Britian who then almost by chance is encountered again in Europe where they profess their love and hence marriage looms - the same plot seen in many others of his books. He is betrayed by a dastardly villian or two. The technology has "dated" stamped all over it ("submersible flying cruiser"?). He has more than one Tarzan-like encounter in the wilds.

At the same time, it lacks much of the movie-stock plots; the hero's gun doesn't jam and in fact when he encounters lions he shoots quiet a few, only to be driven off by their sheer numbers. (If you've read stories of starved packs of man-eaters terrorizing villages, the idea of hungry prides of lions doing so isn't so far fetched.) His main character sometimes wanders off in introverted sidelights on various subjects but eventually comes back online.

Overall, a good Burroughs read. If you like old-timey adventure fantasy with a bit of man-woman attraction added and exploring lost lands of great forrests, this is a good book to try.

In a near future world, DisLex is a monstrous corporation holding all lines of communication and controlling most of the amusements and public utilities in a semi-automated society which expects many channels of often mindless entertainment and disdains outward ugliness. At the head of this corporation is Harmon Jacques, a Dorian-Gray-type madman secretly infected with the incurable HMV, the so-called "freak" virus, and sexually and emotionally obsessed with a beautiful Latino woman Julie Curtez who works for him. Harmon has her under secret 24-hour surveilance, watches her every move, her nudity, her quiet moments, her innocence, her pain, and has accumulated years worth of tapes that constitute a record of her life and loves -- tapes that in their sum total can recreate a virtual person, an imago.

But Julie is not Harmon's only obsession. There are other imagos, virtual people -- growing more real and complex with each passing moment -- populating PerfectTown, a virtual construct in the brain of a supercomputer at the heart of DisLex. One of these is the imago persona of Richard Nixon, an amazing character who is at the heart of the book, for Richard is Harmon's idol, dream, teacher, psychological "parent," and eventually conscience.

The plot is deceptive -- on the surface, an engrossing hi-tech thriller, concerning an expose of Harmon Jacques and the horrifying DisLex corporation, and the liberation of the freaks who are the result of the Human Mutational Virus, and who are also Harmon's pet obsession, since deep inside he is one of them. The real plot happens in the minds of the humans, the freaks, and the imagos, for lines of difference, of prejudice, of the real and unreal, become blurred, and underneath it all, the human greatest strength is that of empathic love.

Oscar Wilde's theme of external beauty covering a soul's ugliness and vice versa, runs throughout the novel, and indeed it comes down to another of Wilde's lines: "Yet each man kills the thing he loves," because some of the choices that the characters are faced with are the destruction of that what is dark in one's own soul, personal sacrifice and the notion of doing the right thing.

The imago Richard Nixon is a fascinating study in "what if" -- an alternate meta-history, a man given a second chance to do the right thing with a great yet different power once again at his disposal. Political nuances and real historical detail are at play with an imaginary world of possibilities, and Amy Sterling Casil shows her ever-increasing mastery as a writer of the human psyche at integrating and extrapolating from our own reality into a meta-reality. IMAGO becomes a projection of wishful thinking, a correction of history's faults, and at the same time a gentle admission that "you cannot change the world that is, you have to let it be."

And yet, change is inevitable, we are shown, because the freaks themselves, the mutants that figure prominently in the novel, the beings that Harmon strives to destroy in his pain and self-hatred, serve to remind us that ultimately we are all only human, and we are all caught up in the great world around us, whether it is imaginary construct PerfectTown or the imaginary construct that lies within our own dreams.

IMAGO is truly a feast for thought.

In this reworking of the theme of a commoner filling in for the missing ruler of the country, we have Barney Custer of Beatrice, Kansas taking the place of the 'Mad' King of Lutha. While far from original, Burrough's use of action and adventure make this an enjoyable tale. If Anthony Hope hadn't written what is essentially the same story 20 years earlier, it would be even better.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this book is that another of Burrough's novels; The Eternal Lover (aka The Eternal Savage) takes place between parts 1 and 2 of this novel and deals with events that occur to Barney's sister.

American, Barney Custer, travelling in Europe visits, Lutha, the homeland of his mother, located near the border of Austria and Serbia. He is instantly caught up in the politics of the two factions within the nation. For those that have not read Prisoner of Zenda, the premise is that the main character bears an almost twin-like resemblance to the nation's king who is being menaced by a rival to the throne, the resulting confusion between the two men and love for the king's betrothed provide the meat of the story plot.

The original Prisoner of Zenda is by far the better adult read, as it incorporates more twists and deeper character development. However, for early teens, or just a fun read without the moral agonizing, this is the better choice. P-)

I sold this book at an internet auction and I was glad to get rid of it for postage. Do not buy.

Book covers all the basics, why structured cable, properties of Cat5 and fiber, connectors, OSI model, cross-connects, installation techniques, certification, etc.

Only criticism I have is that it was published in 1996 and that a new edition would be nice, especially after the Cat6 standards are finalized.

Best thing I can say is that after borrowing a friend's copy for about 6 months, I decided to take the plunge and buy my own.