Yadda yadda. Another schmuck who employs misleading "logic" that fools the inattentive. He also presents flat misinformation, generalizing and characterizing swaths of people, scholars, archaeologists, etc., about whom he knows nothing. I could tear this fool apart with one-fourth of my mouth. He also commits the most fatal of gaffes: the possibility that X is untrue does not equate to the FACT that X is untrue.

Move along.

Motivated to read this by yet another Pilgrims-and-Indians television movie, I was truly pleasantly surprised. This book presents a very solid survey of life among the New England tribes before the coming of the white man. The writer certainly has an astonishing command of his subject, knowing not only the native names of, seemingly, every rock, tree, and shrub in New England, but also precisely what tribal villages were located precisely where, and even in what modern villages one might find the descendants of this tribal subgroup or moiety (there's a nice word for your anthropology homework!). The information is presented largely in a comic book style, fictionalizing typical episodes throughout the life cycle of two New England natives of either sex. We gain fascinating insights into the uttermost detail of crafts, games, amusements, customs, hunting, farming, etc. Frankly, the spelling and the grammar gave me quite a fright: Eaton, it seems, doesn't even always know the difference between "it's" and "its"--as for its influence on me, it's disturbing, frankly. But never mind the bathwater: let's focus on the baby. This was informative, fascinating, and a pretty easy read.

I think people sometimes pen a glorious review because they feel pressured--like the high-school teachers who feel obligated to give Joe Schmuckface a "100," despite his half-assed performance, because, well, he's Joe Schmuckface. THIS BOOK WAS VERY DISAPPOINTING. The font was so small it was practically useless. If you want to explain advanced, complex material, use a font that makes the job pleasant, and provide enough pages that you don't cram sixteen oodles' worth of crap into something the size of the period at the end of this sentence. While the BIOLOGY COLORING BOOK (in this very same series) was a delight, THIS one is a definite tosser. Shred it and use it to stuff your pet bed.

I disagree with the folks who sing the praises of this product. It has a cheap feel from the get-go. My aging Maltese is getting strange vis-a-vis his sleep habits, moving from this room to that room and back: thus, I thought I might like this next to my bed as an alternative to his "box" (= kennel without door, equipped with overstuffed, handmade "mattress"). I extracted him from his box and plunked him into this, and he was immediately miffed. It was borderline small for him--even though he only weighs 13 pounds--and the "stuffing" was so thin that his copious, thirteen-pound weight compressed the padding down to the point where his old, arthritic bones lay directly on the no-longer-so-wonderfully-padded carpeting. This device was IN NO WAY impressive, and I have a dog's vote on that. TWO TAILS DOWN!!

This is a simply outstanding collection of fairy and folk tales from all over the world. Bear in mind that the characteristic violence has been bowdlerized for younger audiences. The 110 stories hail from Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and the Neolithic traditions of Africa and North America. Plentiful, highly stylized illustrations by such prominent Victorian artists as H. J. Ford grace the text of this handsome, leather-bound volume. The chrestomathy is culled from Lang's set of twelve color-coded "Fairy Books" from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, so you'll find trivial entries known to every four-year-old (e.g., The Three Bears, the Three Little Pigs) plus a wide selection of entirely unusual, albeit hauntingly familiar in motifs, entries from such "off the beaten track" locales as Romania, Afghanistan,Thailand, Portugal, and Lapland. Altogether, this is a most impressive volume and an outstanding value at scarcely twenty bucks!

I figured I would avoid wasting time and jump straight into the technical "heart" of the book. The author claims there's hard-core science in this, no? Fine, let's look at his "science" and attempt to vet it.

There is zero valid science in this book, and little more than zero valid history. We learn that "life consists of cells" (funny: I thought living ORGANISMS consist of cells) and that "proteins combine with food" to accomplish this or that. "Doctor" Begich has no understanding of biology, biochemistry, or physiology.

The good "doctor" presently turns his attention to electrical engineering. He first offers the poorest definition of "frequency modulation" I've ever seen, demonstrating a gross misunderstanding of the concept. (Clearly, the mathematics is way over his head.) He then confuses "carrier waves" with "pilot waves" while freewheelingly confounding both of those with other misapplied terms. He next credits every pseud's favorite hero-du-jour, Nikola Tesla, with having discovered modulation. That's fascinating, since the earliest researcher in radio was Heinrich Hertz.

Presently, we're talking about resonance. Again, it's crystal-clear that the good doctor is unable to define the term, let alone understand its implications. We are presently exposed to "filters" and "tuners," although both terms are woefully misapplied and the "explanations" that avail of them exhibit little, if any, internal cohesion.

That was more than enough for me. This clown dares to "expose to the world" the biologic dangers of some electromagnetics experiment or other when he, with crystalline clarity, possesses zero understanding of either biology or electromagnetics. He does know a handful of terms, and he clearly has watched enough "Transformers" cartoons and "Star Trek: Voyager" episodes to mischmasch nifty-sounding terms into nearly convincing sentences. But that's as far as it goes, and that's way too far for my liking, actually.

What an absolute disgrace for a putative adult.

This is a fun book that is chock-full of informative facts. I already knew my fair share about the vikings, and this really helped round them out as real people with real problems. (Well, it's pretty obvious that living a thousand years ago constituted "real problems.")

I was astonished that the book cost only $11. Even with Amazon's generous discounts, I asked myself, how can that be? Well, here's why it be: the book is cheaply produced in a small, non-glamorous format on cheap paper. I was really looking forward (perhaps foolishly, given the $11 price tag) to a glorious oversized volume with nice pictures on glossy paper. I instead received an undersized volume with nice pictures on potato peels. O.K., I do exaggerate slightly.

But the book was still lots of fun. And here's another thing for you to learn: never begin a paragraph with "but."

I have quite my share of books on Biblical scholarship and various aspects of Judaica. I do not own a bound set of Talmud, chiefly because I don't speak ten words of Aramaic ("Eli, eli, lama sabachthanai!" is about the best I can do--oh, wait, I remember: "Mene, mene, tekel, up'harsin"). I read Abraham Cohen on the Talmud, and his approach was, well, rather dry and scholarly.

Parry peppers his book with anecdotes and, courtesy of its fine-grained structure, lets you drill down on whatever you like or, in fact, skip whatever doesn't interest you. The anecdotes are fun, and it's fascinating to learn of the peculiar logical thrust and parry (pun intended) involved in "pilpul."

HOWEVER, this book is an absolute editorial nightmare. On EVERY page, I find a grammatical error, a case of faulty parallelism, a missing word (typically something like "or" or "been"), or a sentence fragment. This is, quite honestly, INEXCUSABLE in this day and age. What: was Dr. Parry trying to save a few zuzim by skipping the editing phase?

So, I recommend the book for those who don't know Talmud and would like to dip their toes into its broad, deep ocean and soak in some of the flavor, but, if you enjoy proper English and are yourself a competent writer, you are GUARANTEED frequently to cringe.

Zuker has done a workmanlike job of cobbling together a number of anecdotes from survivors of the Holocaust, which observant Jews term the Churban (literally, 'holocaust' or 'massacre', more at 'genocide') or the Shoah (literally, 'disaster'). The stories relate--typically, in not a whole lot of detail--the grueling experiences of Eastern European communities, largely Hasidic communities, as they struggled in vain against the superior firepower of their German oppressors. Their efforts are typically--indeed, just about always--doomed to failure, but their courage in the face of overwhelming odds is most admirable and is a glowing testimony to the strength of the human spirit.

HOWEVER, a much wider, more detailed, and presumably more representative collection of tales is to be found in Yaffa Eliach's "Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust," which, as I recall, I bought at least thirty years ago. The same cast of characters is to be found, typically 'shtetl' communities in Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine, and their titanic rabbis--who are at once teacher, mentor, philosopher, and daddy--emerge in all their splendor. But reading Eliach's tome gives a sense of continuity that is lacking in Zuker's work. One sees, essentially, nearly the entire modern history of such-and-such community expressed through the actions of their grandfather, father, and son rabbis, or some such.

I am not recomending against Zuker's book: no, not at all. But I honestly think there's so much more value, color, richness, spiritual depth, and--frankly--spellbinding storytelling in Yaffa Eliach's "Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust." also available from Amazon.com.

I'll be the odd man out here and contribute a realistic, panning review rather than the "de rigueur" accolade that reflects more upon the contributors' past reputations than upon their current contributions.

I will begin by saying I own quite the collection of Jewish literature, ranging from midrash and medieval legends through the Hasidic works of Buber and that ilk; through extensive folktale collections edited by the likes of Patai, Schwartz, and Noy; through the Neo-Romantic and modernist works of such as Singer, Aleichem, and Malamud; to the latest in Jewish fabulist fiction. In short, I know whereof I speak, and then some.

I was beyond excited to receive this fresh chrestomathy, and my mouth watered when I surveyed the ranks of writers. Imagine my disappointment to find that the typical contribution was a three-quarter-page "story" attended by several pages' worth of "suggestions for family discussion," an oversized photo of the author surrounded by generous white space, and then yet more white space to ensure that every story began on the next recto, never on a verso. Were this book packaged honestly and faithfully, the collection wouldn't span more than fifty pages.

Sorry, dear readers, but I must sternly caution you to save your money and avoid this star-studded (at least, per Amazon's reviewers) collection like the plague.