This book is phenomenal! First, the thing weighs more than a solid lead plate and is made of the finest paper with the best color reproductions I’ve ever seen outside of an expensive art book, so it is well worth the money in just the quality alone. But turn in to the oversized pages and you will find the densest, most detailed information on these four “black” planes you will find anywhere. I have many books on the SR-71 and a few on the F-117, but these contain far more information than any other titles I own, plus way more incredible photos. There are more pictures on the B-2 than I’ve seen in all other books combined! “Blueprint”-style illustrations show full layouts of planes, and wing/squadron information and color patches are also displayed.

There are so many small details covered it isn’t even funny. This book is simply mind-blowing from cover to cover for the airplane enthusiast. I expect to be reading this over and over for years to come.

I bought this book on a 6th grade field trip to the Museum of Science and Industry, after gawking at their giant model train layout, and thinking I needed to do more with the oval of HO-gauge track I had packed away in a closet. Weiss does a great job of starting with the basics of trains and expanding the standard toy setup into a real layout, with scratch-built buildings and scenery on a big piece of plywood foundation. It goes over the pros and cons of each piece of expansion, eventually building an interesting (if congested) fictional town. Aside from the building, there’s also some brief instruction on how to run your railroad, for example how trains have to move from point A to B, dropping off cars and picking up freight for fictional industries.

One of the best things about this book is that it’s aimed at the kid, and not the adult hobbyist who has the cash to go buy premade and computerized everything for a huge layout. It talks about making trees, mountains, bridges, and houses from things you might find around the house or in the garage. It’s very motivational with no frustration and many ideas for young minds. Another great aspect of the book is the impressive photography, also by the author.

This book isn’t for the serious hobbyist by any means. Many instructions for buildings are wildly out of scale, and the demo layout features highly unrealistic tight curves and a somewhat laughable trolley line of flex-track. But it’s not about ultra photo realistic results; this book is about having fun with trains and not spending a ton of money. I have many fond memories of this book, and I’m guessing I’m not the only one. Thank you, Mr. Weiss, for a great little book that’s a time machine straight back to 20 years ago when I was gluing down green sawdust and hacking cardboard boxes into my own grand central station. Great stuff.

I remember Surge coming out in maybe 1998 or so, but to a limited number of markets, like maybe a dozen or two places in the US. Seattle was one of the places, so I tried it, and LOVED it. It’s marketed against Mountain Dew for the most part, but it’s much more carbonated, and more of a lime green color, rather than a yellow-orange. In some markets, Coke bottles Mello-Yellow to compete with Mountain Dew, and it’s a close clone, but Surge was different than both of them. To me, it tasted like that old Hi-C Ecto-cooler drink, but carbonated and with caffeine.

I moved from Seattle in 1999, and when I got to New York, Surge was nowhere to be found (despite the fact that it was regularly advertised on Coke’s giant jumbotron sign on the north side of Times Square.) I searched everywhere, and once or twice, I found the stuff way out on Long Island or upstate. I also saw it in 2000 in Las Vegas. But then it quickly vanished, and I was SOL. It was gone forever.

Lo and behold, Coke came out with Vault in 2005/6 and it’s now available everywhere, and it’s a worthy clone of the old Surge, but in new wrappings and with more annoying ads on TV. So go try it while you can, because I’m guessing it will also vanish for no reason someday.

Everyone remembers HST’s weird and gonzo stuff, but truth is, he started as a solid writer and journalist, and wrote a hell of a lot of letters to friends. In these letters, you start to see how Thompson’s literary career began, and how he struggled to keep alive on pittance-salary jobs while he consumed books and honed his craft. This is great stuff because whenever I crack it open to a random page and start reading, it inspires me to keep going with my own writing.

It’s an interesting film, but it’s a bit sloppy. It doesn’t touch all the bases, it doesn’t do all the research, and it doesn’t hit hard to get the most out of the people he did manage to bring in for interviews. It is good at digging up old footage, especially the video B/W stuff of Buk driving around East Hollywood to do his laundry in 1976 in his old Volks with a smashed in windshield, courtesy of crazy girlfriend Linda King. But there was just something missing for me. He just barely skimmed. It was a movie version of any of the many Bukowski biography books that have been published recently, that only tell part of the story. Seriously, you’d do much better reading the Howard Sounes biography. The only explanation, other than the director being relatively new to Bukowski, was that he closely worked with his widow to get started on everything, which meant he only had the “official” view on everything. Oh well. It’s entertaining, but it’s a rent-not-buy for me. (Well, pretty much everything is now, though.)

I liked the idea of the band getting back to their metal roots and doing a really musically straightforward album, but following the story of their last big concept album. But when I listened… I dunno. The production sounds really off. And there are some riffs that are spot-on awesome, but other parts that sound really stupid. I think this demonstrates that the writing of Chris DeGarmo was an important part of the band’s early success, and the production of Peter Collins was the other part. With both missing, this doesn’t have much repeat playability for me. I feel like a dick saying that, because I’ve been a fan of the band since Rage for Order, but I’ve heard demos recorded in peoples’ houses that sound better than this.

Reading FFS reminded me of when I read Henry Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn way back when, except instead of moving from New York to Paris, the protagonist wanders between New York, the deep south of Louisiana, and a fictional midwestern state. It wanders from woman to occupation to rental apartment with no purpose, other than to capture the feeling that many of us did the same thing with no purpose. In that, it’s perfect in its detail and ability to nail exactly what it felt like to be in this slightly punk, slightly modernist life. It was a great read and I look forward to seeing more from Lasner.

The only problem with this book is putting it down! I enjoy reading military history written by the people who saw it firsthand, and this book is an excellent example of a group of men who put together their stories and published them using a print-on-demand publisher, enabling them to preserve this history that may have gone otherwise forgotten amid the big publishing houses that are only focused on the big-name stories and opinions.

The FAC pilots flew a tough mission, trying to find SAM missiles and other targets and them mark them so the fighters with the big bombs could come in and take care of business. Sounds easy, but it isn’t when you’re in a slightly out-of-date plane with everyone and their brother shooting at you. These pilots would come in low, “jink” around to avoid ground fire (and often they didn’t!), and mark the targets with a smoke rocket.

The Misty pilots used the F-100 2-seater jets, which were faster than older attempts with the O-1 birddog (basically a Cessna prop plane) and there were many close calls, bail-outs, captures, and some losses, but these guys kept at it until they could see a totally camoflauged ammo dump in their sleep.

This huge volume covers personal stories from many pilots, with Shepperd collecting the information and writing his own tales. It tells of the persecerence of these brave men, how they missed their loved ones back home, how they joked around on their time off, and how they did their job at 110%. I know this was all before my time (my dad actually worked on the older O-1 planes when he was in Vietnam) but I am amazed at the stories of what happened and that any of these guys made it back. This is an excellent book and well worth the time it takes to read all of the information, especially since you can’t put it down once you start!

I enjoyed this book, mostly because I could picture David’s euphoric work on such an idealistic and crazy goal. I think most of us had some obsession in high school, be it souping up an old car or thinking we’d make it to the NFL by playing high school football. In David Hahn’s case, this was a fixation on chemistry, which led to his atomic research. I felt sorry for him that he didn’t have someone to sit him down early on and give him some structure and goals, aside from trying to solve the world energy problems in his basement. But the book’s very compelling in showing how David tried to get his lab started, and it makes you turn the pages to find out what he did next.

I didn’t notice any great anti-nuclear slant in the book, other than telling the obvious truth about some of the failures in creating breeder reactors. I also don’t see why so many people have complained about an anti-Scouting bent; I didn’t see much of a focus there other than showing that David did participate and eventually become an Eagle Scout. My only complaint was that the book went by fast, and was slightly anticlimactic at the end. I almost wanted to see David get a PhD from MIT and invend cold fusion, but unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

Overall, a very quirky little story, and I’m glad I checked out the book.

I read a lot of travel books, and I’ve always wanted to write one, but couldn’t get National Geographic to foot the bill for a giant safari or photo expedition through Southeast Asia or whatever else. But I do a little travel, and most of the time, I’ll write down a report of what happens, so I don’t have to repeat the same email fifty times when I send out the photos to my friends.

I go to Las Vegas a lot. I don’t gamble much, but I like the city because it’s a place of excesses and also the kind of place where the average working Joe can visit without a lot of money and enjoy that excess. So after a half-dozen of these trip reports showed up on my hard drive, along with hundreds of digital photos, I decided to wrap them all together, write some new essays and articles, and make this book.

I’m no Hunter S. Thompson, but I do love the doctor’s work, and tried to weave together a lot of the practical travel stuff with a deeper look at the underbelly of the city, plus my own mental state, in a way that would hopefully be interesting to you even if you don’t like Las Vegas. You don’t need to be a huge poker fan or a frequent visitor to enjoy the stories and pictures here. But if you have sampled the insanity in your own travels to the desert city, that’s good too.

Anyway, I hope you check out the book and enjoy what I’ve put together. Thanks!