A highly amusing look at California from the vantage point of a Scottish visitor: the criminally underfunded public institutions, the money-grubby dot com crowd, the veracity-challenged used car dealers, all against a backdrop of perfect sunshine.

It's the kind of book you have to renew after three weeks at the library---to go through again....Funny in kind of a non-neurotic, non Spaulding Gray style....If you've ever lived in California, it adds to the fun. This book was just a pleasure to read, to get myself out of myself...Informative about the used car buz....funny, realistic and enjoyable.....

I was here again, buying a copy of the book, looking at the reviews, agreeing with this one, and discovered it was mine.....
Oh Scooty!!!!

Castles of Britain and Ireland by Plantagenet Somerset Fry is the most important and most used book in my library. Not only is it a great read front to back but is invaluable as a reference when reading any history book about Britain and Ireland. It covers every aspect of Castles; The History, the people, the construction, the defenses, and even the art of attacking a castle, including seige engines. When I travel to Britain this book will be in my backpack.

A very good book, Castles of Britain and Ireland: The Ultimate Reference Book contains exelent quality photographs, and contains information of almost every known castle on Britain and Ireland. It talks about their evolution through the years and about the people involved on their construction. I greatly recommend it to anyone interested on knowing more about british castles, its information is very clear and easy to understand. If you are a castle fan, this is a must-have book.

In her writing,Stella Tillyard manages to span the difficult gap that separates fiction from non-fiction. Her style is lyrical - almost like a historical fiction - but without the emotive judgement. I find that it makes her books highly evocative and very easy reading.

However that should not lead people to think she has a flare for dubious tabloid presentation. She is quite ruthless in ensuring that her facts are correct, and in 'Citizen Lord' she has stripped away many of the romantic layers that have concealed the true story of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. These were myths that had been spread by Lord Edward's family following his death, and have coloured his story since. The stripping away of these layers makes this book no less interesting, indeed the true story still very much romantic and tragic.

A younger son of the first Duke of Leinster and his wife Emily, a daughter of the Duke of Richmond, Lord Edward was born into privelege and influence. Tillyard traces his gradual move from this life, to one of revolutionary in Ireland of 1798 without descending into either pathos or into judgement.

I was first introduced to Tillyard's writing with her first book, 'Aristocrats' which is also available at Amazon. I would recommend this book as also worth reading, and gives marvellous background to 'Citizen Lord' - it is about his mother, Lady Emily Lennox, and her three sisters.

I think Tillyard is a "Must Read!"

You'll have to look elsewhere for a full picture of the catastrophic Irish rebellion of 1798, but Ms, Tillyard paints a lovely picture of its most romantic leader. I first heard of Lord Edward as a teenager, dipping into Yeats and reading Lord Edward's name linked to Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet..."that wild delirium of the brave...". I have read numerous accounts of '98 since, but found little about Lord Edward in them, save for the melodrama of his arrest and death-an extra-judicial murder, if ever there was one.

So I am grateful for Ms. Tillyard's rendering of the man himself. She gives ample proof of the sweetness of his character, showing how his inborn beauty was nurtured and how it blossomed under the doting care of his formidable and unconventional mother. Their tenderness for each other lights what otherwise is a stark and tragic story. More significantly it gives the lie to the masculinist theory that maternal love weakens and "feminizes" male children. True, young Lord Edward had a "strong male role model"-his tutor, who was also his mother's adulterous lover!-but every step of Mr. Ogilvie's tutelege was directed by the attentive and indulgent Duchess of Leinster. The letters between Lord Edward and the Duchess make lovely reading for any mother concerned with the making of boys into men.

Of course, Ms. Tillyard includes the apparently obligatory expressions of horror about "political violence" a phrase used only in reference to Lord Edward's revolutionary enterprise, not to the ongoing repression and dispossession of the native Irish. Taken against the whole of the book, however, this is only a minor stupidity, one so ubiquitous in books about Ireland published since 1969 that Republican readers can pass over it without undue offense.

The main thing is that Lord Edward Fitzgerald lives on these pages as a beloved and loving human being, worthy of all the praise heaped upon him over the centuries. How often does a shining name in history still shine under close inspection?

Anna Bradley

Bliss designed a great variety of styles, all attractive and all, sadly, only in children's sizing (many would make truly lovely adult sweaters). Difficulty level is not high -- some are fairly simple to make and the others are well worth the effort. Some are rugged sweaters, others decorative. Sweaters for boys and girls, too. The photography is nice and instructions are clear. Really a fabulous book.

My husband and I started knitting while expecting our first child. Ms. Bliss' books contain photos of beautiful sweaters, caps and dresses which are very inspiring. The most classically fashionable that I've ever seen, and surprisingly not impossible to make. We also own her "Kids Country Knits" which is great. My husband's first ever knitting project was a large stuffed sheep, and his second a beautiful sailor collar style sweater with a family of ducks knitted into the design. Both turned out great!!! These patterns are in the "Kids Country Knits". I made a cute hat and sweater set from the "Classic Knits for Kids". I recommend her books as the instructions are understandable, versatile and the small child sizes take a short time to make.

This is a fine wicked knowledgeable book, and entirely readable, especially the beginning, which can be read aloud straight through without losing you your audience.

I first met =A Colder Eye= when I was one of the editors of a literary criticism reference series. We were proceeding alphabetically, which meant that when we hit "O" we got half the Irish writers in one go, also alphabetic near neighbors like Mary Lavin. I found =A Colder Eye= on the shelf at Columbia University's main library, and went flipping through its index to see whether it had substantial sections on the authors I was researching. What I found was that all its index listings for authors had epithets attached: "O'Casey, Sean," it said, "ventriloquist."

"?", I thought, and checked another.

"O'Nolan, Brian," it said, "logician."

"Right," said I, and put the book on my small and extremely selective "books to be checked out" stack. As I knew only too well after reading several small mountain ranges of literary criticism and rejecting most of it, a critic who can joke about his subject, and get it right, is to be cherished. Hugh Kenner knows his stuff.

(It's one of the two great funny indices in English literature, the other being of course the index to =The Spotted Owl=; but leave that for another day.)

You would be well rewarded for buying =A Colder Eye= in hardcover if you did nothing more than read the part about the charming unreliability of Irish recollections; and allow me to say that the ghost of Brian O'Nolan should be both ashamed and proud of himself for perpetrating the interview with James Joyce Senior.

There's nothing else so good on its subject as this book. Enough. Go buy it now.

(And if you like it? Hunt up a copy of Walter Bryan's (that is, Walt Willis's) =The Improbable Irish=. If you like both, you may need to acquaint yourself with the works of Brian O'Nolan. But start with Hugh Kenner.)

A deliciously funny and engaging look at the personalities and history behind Irish literature in a tumultuous time. The care and humor with which Kenner treats the subject of Yeats is just beautiful. Several times I laughed out loud while reading it on public mass transit, much to the dismay and confusion of my fellow riders, but I just couldn't help it. I can hardly wait to read Kenner's other works (and I wish I'd discovered him a long time ago).

As an avid enthusiast of Irish Traditional Music, I regard this volume as a stunning achievement. I was enthralled by the amount of carefully researched material as well as the balanced presentation. The care and devotion to this momentous task was evident on every page. Nowhere in the literature of Irish Music is there a comparison. This volume stands alone as the pinnacle of standards and will remain so for a long long time.

This is the work that those of us who have been studying Irish traitional culture have been waiting for years for. As far as I know, there has never been a work like this published. This is an amazing encyclopedia of articles that are very thorough and are written by people with impressive professional expertise. If you've ever come across a term or topic in Irish music or dance that you wished for more information about, this is the place to find it. The extensive appendix is a very valuable collection of sources from every facet of the genre. This reference work is essential for any serious student of Irish culture. It is well worth the price.

This ex-pat Jewish Brit loved this book! Not only did it make me nostalgic for home, but it told me things I never knew! This is a concise but complete guide indeed. I fully intend to take it with me on my next trip back to England.

I am planning a trip to London and the surrounding countryside and I stumbled across this guidebook. Because I am Jewish, I was interested in learning more about the culture and history of British Jewish places while I traveled. This book is packed with facts that are presented in a very entertaining way. The author talks about places regular guidebooks miss, and she makes you aware of the great contributions Jews have made to England. The book is well laid out and very easy to use. I can't wait to use it for walking tours when I am abroad!

This is a book that reads more like poetry than a novel. It's rich and sensual imagery allows the reader to become a participant observer of the events that are not always readily understood. Once you just allow yourself to become a part of the scenery, and to let the images wash over you, then you begin to be rewarded. This book brought tears of many emotions for me. It is filled with real, honest people, living real, honest lives, and like life it is both humorous and depressing, joyful and oppressed, desperate and free.

The characters in each of the stories in this book are so real that sometimes it is frightening, but in the very best way. I was completely engrossed (shocked, touched, amazed) by each tale. I discovered Jenny's writing after taking a Creative Writing course under her tutelage at a university in upstate New York. On the last day of class she let us read "Touched." I read it the first time, and thought it was good. I read it again a few months later, understood it much better and thought it was great. I then proceeded to read the rest of the stories and was completely amazed. (I think if I had read these stories *before* I took the class, I would have been too intimidated to let her see my own writing.) This is a terrific group of stories, and I wish I could read some more of her writing.

I discovered this book in a store in Boston. I thought I knew a good deal about contemporary Irish poetry. However this book took me by surprise. It is outstanding. I had not come across this poet before. What a pleasure his work gave me. This is an original, I have no doubt.There is a dark imagination at work here which I don't think I have seen in modern Irish poetry. I will be ordering all of John Hughes's work . Highly recommended.

One of the few books of poetry to have made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. This book has poems which use language in an evocative and mysterious way. A challenging book in terms of the intellect and imagination at work within its covers. Highly recommended.

It has photographs, maps, etc. on at least every other page. It covers nearly all of the major archeological findings up to the end of the B.C. years. Written in a easily readable style by a person who cares more about the quality of the concrete evidence than making surmises or speculations from it. I would have liked more associations made with what's been found in Britain and the Continent, but it's still a five-star overview.

This book, by the archaeologist who excavated Newgrange, is an excellent resource for anyone interested in European prehistory. Though subtitled "An Introduction to Irish Prehistory," the book does not shy away from indepth scientific and archaeological evidence, either supporting or refuting conventional theories; thus, the book would be better classified as intermediate to advanced. One would be hard pressed to find a better resource of Irish prehistory.