Westerns Books

I used this textbook for one of my graduate level finance classes, and I just loved the book! It's very well-written, and covers all the basic premises of finance (PV, FV, etc), and then goes on to more advanced stuff (Equity and Fixed Income Valuation, etc). The textbook requires some knowledge of accounting for more advanced topics. Overall, I found the book easy-to-read and easy-to-follow. I found the book useful for the CFA Level I exam preparation, as it gives in-breadth explanation of major concepts.

It explains everything clearly. I have another finance book with the same type of content but this one is definitely easier to understand. Recommend it.

Amazon shipped me a $30 book in place of this textbook. Nice trick, I hope I don't have problem receiving a refund. I needed this textbook for class, now I have to shop somewhere else. Great job Amazon, count me as a former customer.

This text is written for an audience with a solid grasp of economic theory and finance. The chapters build on the vocabulary of the one preceeding it but also assumes the reader is fluent in the terminology and it's use. While answers are supplied to self test problems how to arrive at those answers is not provided. The test bank exams require absolute grasp of all variations of the problems and multiple choice answers includ likely results wich are wrong, so selecting between the correct answer and other answers which would result from common error such as a mis-set financial calculator, are provided.

For those who are interested in getting knowledge in finance, this is an excellent source. Besides a friendly theory explanation, all chapters bring a list of exercises to set the most important points covered in each one. I do recommend it.

A "black" western as one can say of somber thrillers. The joyful passion by Louis L'Amour is like a little bereaved in this beautiful fierce story.

This is one of the shorter Louis L'Amours. It is only a 126 pages. But in these few pages there is a lot of action. There are around a dozen fights, guns fights and fist fights.

This a fairly typical Louis L'Amour. The hero, Rock, is stronger, faster, and smarter than the bad guys. He is a good man.

The basic plot is the villian tricks some settlers into being foot soldiers for a war to try and take a valley from the man who settled the valley. Rock figured out the plan, but most of the settlers won't listen to Rock. He isn't a smooth talker, like the villian.

This is a fun book.

Not one of L'amours best books, but still good

This book was first released in 1957, while Louis L'Amour, though a selling author, was yet somewhat a writer in training. It is interesting to read some of these earlier works, they help to not only see his later growth in writing, but to get a glimpse of the younger writer working out those things important to him. Some of which would continue as content in his later writings.

This particular western has as its main subject the Oregon Trail, and it is peopled with the types of men and women heading west to build or rebuild their lives. The action centers in the western U.S. circa 1860, midtime or late in the western exodus. Bishop's valley, the main area of their settling, is found close to the Teton range in western Wyoming. Much of this area was then part of the Nebraska Territory. The Oregon Trail left Council Bluffs, Iowa, running parallel to the North Platte River, through this Nebraska Territory crossing the Green River branching off to eventually reach Oregon.

Along the way through treachery, Indian attack, fist fights, and gunfights, new lives will be built, while others will be broken.

All in all, this is an enjoyable read. While very smooth in most places, some ragged parts do exist. Remember, Louis is still putting his skills in order. One item I noticed, was at the ending, one of the main characters, Hardy Bishop has been seriously wounded, yet, unless I missed it, no final report is ever given as to his condition. We must therefore assume he fully recovered.

But for the few hours it takes to read this western, readers will be rewarded with enjoyment. Early L'Amour, still good reading.

Semper Fi.

Volume four is a selection of non-western short stories that will keep you glued to the pages. What a wonderful book!

Arrived in good shape and to me way ahead of when I expected it.

I bought this to take on vacation, although it is rather heavey to carry through airports. I have only read the first few stories, however they are filled with drama and intrigue that take you to strange lands. So far they are filled with adventure and I look forward to spending more time with these stories. I would guess that Louis L'Amour westerns would be equally exciting.

not as good as the vol 1 thru 3
like western short stories better than seamen stories

The stories are all page turners. i read the book in one sitting. the stories are .... Death Westbound * Old Doc Yak * It's Your Move * And Proudly Die * Survival * Show Me The Way To Go Home * Thicker Than Blood * The Admiral * Shanghai, Not Without Gestures * The Man Who Stole Shakespeare * The Dancing Kate * Off the Mangrove Coast * Glorious Glorious! * By The Ruins of El Walarieh * Where There's Fighting * The Cross and the Candle * A Friend of the General * Author's Tea * East of Gorontalo * On the Road to Amurang * From Here to Banggai * The House of Qasavara * Well of the Unholy Light * West from Singapore * South of Suez * Voyage to Toblai * Wings Over Brazil * Pirates of the Sky * Flight to the North * Coast Patrol * Wings Over Khabarovsk * Flight to Enbetu * Mission to Siberut * Down Paagumene Way * The Goose Flies South * Tailwind to Tibet * Pirates With Wings * Night Over the Solomons * Where There's Fighting * Beyond the Great Snow Mountains * May There Be A Road * By the Waters of San Tadeo * Meeting at Falmouth * Crash Landing * With These Hands * The Diamond of Jeru *

The Lojong teachings are translated here by an English speaker with great feeling for nuance.
Her explanations are pithy and insightful.
I'm copying them onto pages of my datebook so I have them to reference.

Small book of 59 Lojong "mind training" slogans from Chekawa Yeshe Dorje's "The Root Text of the 7 Points of Training the Mind" (#21 is the title) + "Opening the Heart" CD on Tonglen. Left hand pages are aphorisms; right-hand are Pema's pithy commentary ~Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living (Shambhala Classics). 42:57 CD w/4 tracks: Intro=0:23, Tonglen Purpose/Practice=16:09, 3 stages=9:50, guided meditation=16:35; recorded during 11/99 Berkeley CA retreat ~Tonglen, the Path of Transformation. p. vii: "The primary focus of my personal practice & teaching," randomly focuses on one/day; p. viii: "The basic notion of lojong is that we make friends with what we reject, what we see as `bad' in ourselves & in other people" [~Jungian shadow integration] & p. xi: the slogans always introduce me to a bigger perspective...to transform all circumstances into the path of enlightenment"=practical application ~The Compassion Box: Book, CD, and Card Deck.

Causes of Suffering: p. 25: "Your own self-righteousness causes you to get all worked up and to suffer; p. 35: Ego-clinging causes you to suffer; pp. 112-3: self pity...increases your suffering (and that of others)."

Transformation of Poison into Elixir [lemons to lemonade]: p. 29: Shunyata or "complete openness"
p. 39: The entire Buddhist teachings (dharmas) are about lessening one's self absorption, one's ego-clinging. This is what brings happiness to you & all beings.
p. 45: [train so emotions] perk you up & your awareness increases.
p. 89: Recognize your neurosis as neurosis...not to do the habitual thing, but to do something different to interrupt the neurotic habit...a way of life. [dealing with complexes]
p. 110: #55=liberate yourself by examining & analyzing. [discriminating knowledge/wisdom]

Avoiding Transforming Elixir into Poison: pp. 58-9: #29=Abandon poisonous food. You can use these slogans to build up your ego & p. 72: #36=Don't act with a twist." [sneaky, underhanded, or manipulative]

Tonglen Practice: p. 14: #7; p. 81: #40; pp. 98-9: #49="Always meditate on whatever provokes resentment. Do tonglen practice whenever you feel resentment;" & the entire CD--Track 2: Tonglen="exchanging yourself for others to get in touch with our pain; dissolving barriers between self & others; developing empathy--stretching ourselves [like Olympic training], overcoming resistance to pain, & opening the heart." [reminds me of Frank Herbert's Dune series "Bene Besserit Litany Against Fear"]

Some are even quite Dzogchen-like a la Longchenpa Buddha Mind: An Anthology of Longchen Rabjam's Writings on Dzogpa Chenpo, The Precious Treasury of Pith Instructions, & Old Man Basking in the Sun; Longchenpa's Treasury of Natural Perfection: p. 4: #2=Regard all dharmas as dreams; p. 6: #3=Examine the nature of unborn awareness; p. 8: #4=Self-liberate even the antidote; p. 10: #5=Rest in the nature of alaya, the essence; & p. 12: #6=In post-meditation, be a child of illusion.

And one p. 68: #34="Don't' transfer the ox's load to the cow" reminds me of my Management Science training where it's called putting your monkey on someone else's back!

I did not find this book very helpful or interesting. If have not read Pema Chodron's other works then I would start with some of her classics (like "When Things Fall Apart" or Dont Bite The Hook, etc.).

Pema Chodron's book is 119 pages. Most have one sentence on the left page and a short paragraph on the right side. This is the first book I have read by this author. I believe that she has more to say than what was presented in this short book. Because many of the sentences and explanations though short were profound, I rate this book as good and look forward to reading her book, The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving-Kindness.

I read all of the sayings in this book and listened to the C.D. a few times. This is really good if your interested in helping others and making the world a better place.

This book was pretext for Karl MARX idea of communism. Rousseau blamed inequality among people due to ownership of property.

I find Rousseau especially creative in the way he describes how inequality progressed from the time the first humans made contact. He makes a good case for the solitary life. I think Rousseau believes it is destructive whenever humans come together in groups. Governments were formed to protect the weaker from the stronger or as Rousseau thinks to actually protect the rich from the poor. This is an outstanding book. It will haunt you.

This is a wonderful example of the 18th century enlightenment. In this work, Rousseau states that inequalities of rank, wealth, and power are the inevitable result of the civilizing process, something most of us have found to be very true if unfair. This new translation also includes all of Rousseau's own notes.

I enjoyed this tremendously, and am always amazed that the thought pattern and process is oneof the few things that hasn't changed over the centuries.

Excellent discourse. This book discusses some of the rudiments of the history of inequality and how its self supporting and ever existing in human nature. I recommend this book for those readers who either want to increase their knowledge on Jean-Jacques Rousseau or historical development of inequality

(...)

This essay was Rousseaus's submission to the Academy of Dijon contest, entitled, "Has the progress of the arts and sciences contributed more to the corruption or purification of morals?".

This text is his story about Nature, and Society, and the scandal that happens when people come together, build, divide, dance, sing, and compare themselves with one another. In many ways, it is his answer to the problem of evil.

Natural man is, in many ways, good, because his needs are immediately felt and immediately fulfilled. Social man begins to compete, to hoard, and to use cunning to enslave his fellows, to gain their esteem, take their property, and sometimes their lives.

His picture of the natural man is half what we think of an "animal" and half the "human" that we recognize in ourselves. He shifts his description as the flow of arguement dictates. The habitual provocateur, Rousseau - watch him!

In a way, he is rewriting the Christian "Creation Myth". In his version, evil does not originate at that moment when man eats the fruit of the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" --to "be like God"; it happens when Adam wants a better apple than Eve's got for herself. Before society develops as we know it, Adam would have been fine with just a pear.

This title is an eminently readable social history of the potato's influence in Western Europe and the United States. It's full of fascinating facts, e.g. innante prejudice about food sources that came out of the ground delaying acceptance of the potato in Europe.

The book's greatest strength is the lengthy and sympathetic description of the Irish Great Famine of the 1840's. I am somewhat familiar with the secondary historical literature of the period and can confidently say that Zuckerman has thorough grounding in the sources and has fairly presented them.

There are some problems: the book could have been better organized, it skips too lightly over the origin of the potato in South America and although it cites sources, a more traditional footnoting style would have been helpful.

Mr.Zuckerman, I am now your fan and look forward to reading your next book.

With a lively literary style, journalist Larry Zuckerman explains the history and importance of the lowly tuber, from its thirteen-thousand-year origin on the high Andean plateaus to its sixteenth-century discovery by Spaniards down to the beginning of World War I. Zuckerman chronicles just four countries in his treatise about the spud, but these countries: France, England, Ireland, and the United States are, he says, representative of the Western world.

Despite the potato's vital nutrients, it soon became known as the food of the poor and remained out of favor among the gentry. Even the peasants did not appreciate the strange plant that formed odd tubers which sprouted, which they declared to be of the Devil. But by the end of the seventeenth century, the potato as a staple food for Ireland's poor had become widely known. At the same time in England, the potato had yet to become a table food. Farmers fed them to their livestock. Within a hundred years, the potato had "nosed its way into English life." In France, where the fear of nightshades was even greater than in England, the potato caught on because the wet summers did not affect this hardy plant as they did grain.

Zuckerman traces the tuber's history from its beginnings through the horrific Potato Famine of Ireland to farm staple in a post-Civil War U.S. The potato represented a food whose ease of preparation lightened the burden for the average American farm wife. In chapters titled Potatoes and Population, A Passion for Thrift, Women's Work, The Good Companions, and Good Breeding (showing the evolution of the tuber from exotic and fearsome to low class, to beneath notice), Zuckerman educates and entertains, and at the same time shows us that having read the history of the lowly spud, we can never regard it in the same way. Perhaps the humble potato did rescue the Western world.

Don't let the corny (ouch!) title put you off: this is a serious look at the historical place of the potato in England, Ireland, France and the United States. And if you are concerned that 271 pages on the "humble spud" might put you into a stupor, you might breathe easier when you know that Mr. Zuckerman uses the potato as a starting point to examine lots of other stuff: class distinctions; agricultural landlords and tenant farmers; urbanization; women and domestic drudgery; the role of bread (ouch again!) vs. the role of the potato, etc. Mr. Zuckerman even finds the time, near the end of the book, to incorporate some philosophical musings on the positive and negative aspects of "fast-food" and its relationship to our "hurry-up society." To me, one of the best things about the book was the multi-cultural approach: it was interesting to see how much more quickly the potato caught-on in the United States than it did in France, England and Ireland (where the centuries-old custom of strict reliance on bread had to be overcome). Another interesting thing to read about was the amazement of foreign visitors concerning the variety of the American diet. We tend to forget that in Europe, in the period this book primarily deals with (1700-1900), the average person lived on bread, porridge, and soup. (One of the many interesting facts presented in this book is that up until almost 1900 most French peasants had a morning bowl of soup rather than a cup of coffee.) You were indeed fortunate if you had meat, milk, butter, eggs, coffee, etc. Even if a peasant farmer owned a cow, pig, or chicken, quite often the food products the animals supplied had to be sold, to provide some much-needed cash. The book provides a very nice combination of scholarly data(economic and sociological information) and anecdotal material. To be honest, the book was a "heavier" read than I anticipated, but the interesting "factoids" helped to lighten and liven things up. Some examples: soup was so prevalent in 19th century France that in one district it is documented that some people had wooden tables with rounded depressions carved into them. As Mr. Zuckerman writes, this "removed the need for plates and [also] any doubt about the menu."; soup was also used as a "bread-softener." Due to poor quality grain and inefficient ovens, the crust of bread was often as hard as a rock. Some people couldn't cut the bread with a knife- they had to use a saw; finally, in 19th century London a common sight was the "baked 'tato man," who sold his product from a cart on the sidewalk- similar to today's hot dog, pretzel, and chestnut vendors. But the interesting thing about the "baked 'tato man" was that, in the cold weather, he would suggest to the gentleman-half of a passing couple that he buy a baked potato to keep his sweetheart warm. The author writes, "This advice was often taken, and the potato placed inside her muff." Food for warmth, and this fine book provides much food for thought, as well.

Riding on the wave of single-ingredient books, this one is a poorly edited but mildly interesting book, mostly about Irish peasantry and how the potato was viewed by its various classes, a subject that the author is so fascinated by that he repeats himself more than once. And other than that, the choice of what to write about and what to just ignore seems to have been made in the most idiosyncratic manner. The history of the potato won't be found, nor its geographical spread and importance in various places around even the western world. As for the Andes, where's that? It must be in the east. As for the premise in the title, it's just a title with nothing to show for it in the book. I wouldn't criticise the author on readability, though. The book is quite readable, just not something to be read otherwise than casually (if you're into reading about Ireland), with the knowledge that the author has points of view that he's pushing. This can't be plain-potato reading. Since the author holds strong views which he pushes here, one needs to read sprinkling the facts and choice of sources with a touch of salt.

If, like me, you mostly read at night in bed, don't choose this book. No-one should go to sleep in an irritable mood, having painfully re-read pages to ascertain what the author is trying to say, disentangling the contorted lines of thought and timelines. Although crammed with information, much of it seems contrived, anecdotal and you have to expend too much energy digging deep to get to the core of the history of the spud. When you do, it is indeed interesting. But don't labour over this book - read COD instead for easy-read insight into how single food sources make and break entire populations.

I think this was a very good book and should not be compared to the movies. It is hard to write a new book on this subject since the two movies came out about them. It was an entertaining book and worth the money.

Parker misses big time. He has ripped off the Costner film version of the Earp saga. The only character I felt he fleshed out more firmly was Morgan Earp.

What's up with the lousy ending..... take a pass on this one unless you are a Parker completist

Positives: short chapters, quick read, and, for what it's worth, more historically accurate than Hollywood.

Negatives: the characters are paper thin, the only way you can tell them apart is by their names, there is no suspense, no humor, the title that tells us nothing about the story is a clue to stay away from this.

I don't know of a good Earp novel, but if you want a good Earp story, check out John Ford's My Darling Clementine.

In this story, the creator of the tough private detective Spenser and his sidekick Hawk develops a tale of the old west that is an example of historical fiction. Parker uses the backdrop of Tombstone, Arizona involving the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday and the members of the Clanton gang. This is an example of historical fiction at its' finest, the people and events are largely true; the fictional aspects are their conversations and expressed motivations.
Wyatt Earp is the primary character in this tale and Parker has him display many of the characteristics of Hawk in the Spenser series. His dialog is short and to the point, there is never a word wasted. The relationships between the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday and Bat Masterson is similar to that between Spenser and Hawk, they will fight to the death for their friends. Even the relationships between Wyatt Earp and the men he will soon face in a gunfight have many of the aspects of the relationships between the Parker characters. When Wyatt Earp is speaking to Curly Bill, they both know that someday they will battle with guns, yet they are still civil to each other and express regret that it could not be different.
I consider this to be one of the best novels Parker has ever written, the accurate historical references kept me enthralled throughout the book.

I am not surprised to find 123 of this book available used, the lowest price $0.01. The mode of those available sell at this price, but one is new for a couple of bucks and one is on sale for $17 +.

This is the most laughable Earp book I have ever attempted to read, filled with historical inaccuracies and ridiculous assumptions. Somewhat as though a commedian decided to write I CLAUDIUS without thoroughly researching his subject for a decade or so.

I am qualified to make this evaluation. Look up my Earp work on Amazon. It was made possible since I was an intimate of Wyatt Earp's immediate family for almost half a century. I found the memoirs of both Wyatt and his widow, and got them published, having to rewrite hers to make them publishable as I MARRIED WYATT EARP (1976), and privately published Wyatt's memoir (commonly called the Flood Ms.) in a leather-bound and linen-cased limited edition of 99 for $300.00 a copy (in 1981) and have written a creative nonfiction book titled: WYATT EARP'S TOMBSTONE VENDETTA (1994). Also a few articles, perhaps 36 on this subject which appeared in scholarly journals and National magazines.

My conclusion is that paying one cent for this book and then having to pay postage, is a questionable bargain if you expect a reasonable parallel to history in a historical novel. As the late premier historian Shelby Foote wrote, in sustance, of Larry McMurtry's ANYTHING FOR BILLY, if you are writing of a known person named Henry McCarty your picture should at least roughly parallel history. (McMurtry didn't, which was why Foote was commenting.) Parker's doesn't which is why I am writing this. I do like his writing style and can understand why he is a great success as a writer.

Read some other books in the Earp, Holliday and Tombstone field first, if you want this one as a curiousity, so you will realize what a farcical affair it is. A reasonable summation of all the well-known Earp source material can be found in Casey Tefertiller's WYATT EARP: THE LIFE BEHIND THE LEGEND.