Book reviews from Nick Howes...I read a lot although not fast enough to keep up with the stacks I have in my apartment.  My interests are far-ranging and in time I delve into many fields.  Hope you find my reviews of my latest helpful. 

SILVER SCREAM, David J. Schow, ed., 1988, Tor Books, 500 pp.

The common theme in this anthology is the movies. The settings range from Hollywood backlot to broken down movie theaters and drive-ins with plenty in between. Ranging from sweet to brutal, balanced between stories of the supernatural and of psychological horror, featuring works from Robert Bloch, Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell, Robert R. McCammon, F. Paul Wilson, and others, complete with an introduction by Texas Chainsaw Massacre director Tobe Hooper.

In Robert Bloch's much-reprinted "The Movie People," a Hollywood extra discovers a unique access to life after death in a sweet story that only the narrator finds unsettling while another tale focuses on a rural outdoor theater taken over by a bunch of slimy Christian theme park developers who discover it has a lethal soul of its own which they trigger. Then there's the movie serial hero Green Falcon, now an old man, maybe losing his grip as he chases a serial killer...who he might be unlucky enough to find. A dying killer secretly holes up in an old movie theater his soul becomes the deadly catalyst which acts out the emotions of countless past patrons.

These were anong my favorites stories. Many in this book are good, a couple I didn't get, a few I didn't care for. Par for the course in a collection. Certainly the theme is a natural for a true movie buff.

If you come across this book, it's worth a read-through. Not for kids, though. There are some sexual situations, but primarily, some of the stories get pretty strong with their imagery.

In "Danse Macabre," Stephen King wrote that everybody dies and horror stories focus often on the good death versus the bad death. The bad death falls into the "it could be worse" department. And some of these guys die bad. So be warned.

IRON EYES: MY LIFE AS A HOLLYWOOD INDIAN, Iron Eyes Cody, 1982, 290 pp hardcover, Random House

One of the more enjoyable Hollywood biographies I've read in many a day as told by Iron Eyes Cody. Cody is best known for the most famous public service announcement of all time in which, amid a littered landscape, the camera closes in to a lone Indian and a single tear trickling from his right eye.

The Oklahoma Cherokee appeared in numerous movies from the silent era up to his death. His favorite roles were in Stagecoach, Sitting Bull in which he played Crazy Horse, and A Man Called Horse in which he played a medicine man. Westerns began in the silent era. When sound came in, Westerns created recording problems and A-picture Westerns were abandoned. Instead, the low-budget Poverty Row studios rented some horses, threw together a script, went out to Juarez Rocks north of Los Angeles and filmed a movie to which they often added the sound later.

His early silent movie work included touring with a popular wild west show put together by a movie star. In later years, he also toured an act involving Hopi snake dance rituals with the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus.

In Hollywood, Cody was in charge of hiring Indian extras for the moviemakers in the early years, a job inherited from his dad. Unlike his father, he insisted on authenticity in customs and costuming, leading at one point to a confrontation with tyrannical C.B. DeMille.

Among the stories he tells in this book about the extras he hired was one from the late 1940's, involving a laborer he found on a WPA ditch-digging crew....former Olympian Jim Thorpe, stripped of his medals because of a short period when he played professional sports. Iron Eyes helped get the famed Indian athlete back in the limelight, sportswriters voted him athlete of the century, and moviemakers planning a movie biography snubbed him by denying any role in the process. While the movie was filmed (and tanked), Iron Eyes organized a traveling football team made up of Indians under Thorpe's leadership. The Indian athlete was back in his element, training, toughening, dropping weight, and mowing down football players, playing right up until laid low by cancer which Iron Eyes found he'd been battling for six years.

Cody was a close friend of John Wayne whose fans will find interesting new material about the Duke's career from the beginning. There's also plenty of information about another close friend, Gary Cooper, anecdotes about callous but ever-charming Errol Flynn (who ill-advisedly challenged Jim Thorpe to a fight in a bar then hired him), Roy Rogers (Cody was talked into featuring his band at the end of a Los Angeles radio show called he and his wife hosted "The Lone Indian"), William Randolph Hearst (Cody was a frequent guest at the Hearst castle), Ward Bond, John Ford, Howard Hughes, Paulette Goddard, and more.

Cody even spends some time on a couple people who often showed up at Gower Gulch, at the intersection of Sunset and Gower Street, the "cultural" center of the Poverty Row studios. Here producers, stuntmen, producers, cowboys looking for work as extras, the occasional name actor, salesmen, hustlers, and other characters hung out.

Among these characters Cody writes about were elderly Wyatt Earp whose most notable trait was his silence on his Tombstone experiences -- Cody says he tried to discuss it-- and Northfield Raid bank-robber Emmett Dalton ("We jus' wanted to git our names in the headlines. Like them James Brothers.") Both of them were used by the movies for their names.

Naturally, Cody throughout discusses his own life and career, starting when he was 13 when he was first hired for a silent Western being filmed on his father's ranch. From there he found his way to Hollywood where Westerns had a niche in the celluloid market.  Cody talks about his drinking and womanizing, and his less-than-smooth courtship of his wife, a leery archeologist named Birdie. There was his later WWII shipyard undercover work where he reported on sabotage and his later friendship with doomed Iwo Jima flag raiser Ira Hayes.

Cody's autobiography is long out-of-print but worth looking up. Check Amazon and Half.com. Also, investigate Inter Library Loan.  Anyone with a taste for stories about Golden Age Hollywood or the role of Native Americans on film will enjoy this book.

Cody also wrote at least one other book on Indian sign language (I know, I sold one through my used book business.)

Ranks of Bronze/David Drake (1986). Paperback.

An alien merchant empire acquires a legion of Roman soldiers, the best soldiers who ever lived, to fight its battles on low-technology worlds, as dictated by their civil leadership.  The Romans survived the historical massacre of Crassus in the eastern reaches of the Empire.

Gaius Vibulenas is a 17-year-old tribune who fights an unending series of battles for the alien masters. With Clodious Afer, his grizzled veteran noncommissioned officer, they prove themselves time and again, even as their numbers are slowly reduced, even with the incredible efforts of the alien technology that seems to resurrect the dead.

Eventually, they get some ideas about going home.

Drake uses Crassus' defeat in the eastern frontier in an ill-conceived battle as the source of his soldiers.  The richest man in Rome, Crassus defeated Spartacus and assumesd rule of Rome with Pompey and Ceasar.  In an effort to address his lack of military credentials, he undertook the expedition that led to his death and the destruction of a great Roman army.  It's from that battlefield that the legion is taken.

Given drugs to extend their lives, the Romans sleep between landfalls, when they are dispatched to do what they do best. 

Readers of combat SF will find this book quite exciting, certainly action-filled, although to be honest it turned out to be not entirely to my taste.  No slight to David Drake.  He has plenty of credits to indicate his skills at combat SF, including the classic Hammer's Slammers.  I did find the Roman history references interesting, which motivated me to get this book.  And the concept is quite appealing.

It's out of print, I'm sure.  Check Half.com or Amazon.

Deep Storm/Lincoln Child (2007), hardcover

Ernie, the Autobiography/Ernest Borgnine (2008), hardcover

GUST FRONT, John Ringo, 721pp in paperback, Baen Books  

The direct sequel to "A Hymn Before Battle," set in the present-day, involving a war against the Posleen, centaur-like aliens with crocodilian heads, crank and determined to annihilate humans and convert Earth into fiefdoms for their leaders.

After the first encounter with the Posleen on distant planets, humans are preparing to meet the Posleen when they land in their troopships which each carry thousands of armed alien soldiers.   Earth governments have been warned that an interstellar war is about to come to Earth and, except for some alien technology, none of which it seems can be produced anywhere near fast enough, human armies are on their own.  

This is the gust front, the violent, leading edge of an oncoming storm. 

These Posleen hope to sweep across the planet before the reinforcements can arrive and rob their leaders of their gains and glory.  

This story follows a number of threads including that of Captain Mike O'Neal, veteran of those alien wars and the commander of a small quick reaction force of soldiers in armored combat suits.  The other threads bring in other military forces which will bear the brunt of the initial assault until O'Neal gets to them. 

And even then, the combat suited soldiers may not be enough.   The threads come together at one of the landing sites near Washington DC as the Posleen advance through Virginia and into the nation's capitol for the final showdown at the Washington Monument. 

There are some limitations to make it work fictionally.  The military can get naval backup when near water, but there's no air support.  Posleen space-based weaponry is able to suppress that easily although they (conveniently but plausibly for the storyline) do not use it themselves.  

A well-considered, exciting story. There are further stories published and being developed in this ongoing series.

A Hymn Before Battle/John Ringo (2000) paperback.

Mysterious Island/Jules Verne (1874), paperback.

The Glorious Cause, Jeff Shaara, Ballantine Books, paperback. 680pp. 

In the second volume of his two-part story of the American Revolution, Jeff Shaara continues with his fictional reconstruction of the events that led to the independence of the United States amid war against the West's greatest empire.  He focuses on major characters in the conflict, from George Washington, the largely unheralded Nathaniel Greene, Benjamin Franklin, Dan Morgan, Nathan Hale, British General Lord Cornwallis and General Benedict Arnold. 

The story opens with Washington's disastrous confrontation with the British at Brooklyn and proceeds through the maneuvering back and forth across the Northeast with numerous losses, in a scenario that raises numerous comparisons with the Vietnam War.  There is the occasional victory at Trenton and Saratoga, the wintering-over at Valley Forge where American volunteers are turned into hardened soldiers, the British turn South where they expect greater grassroots support, only to meet horrendous defeat at the hands of Dan Morgan at Cowpens.  Finally, Cornwallis, operating for once with a free hand while his immediate superior is trapped in New York, and certain that he can divide the colonies in Virginia, instead finds himself mousetrapped at Yorktown.

As with its prequel, this is an involving story that illuminates the facts behind the War for Independence, while demonstrating the monumental obstacles faced by Washington, Greene, Franklin, and others which have been reduced to insigificance by our distance in history from these real people.  As a novel, the narrative is also, within the historical accuracy of its framework, able to knowledgably present and sometimes speculate on the motives, emotions, and actions of the principal characters. 

Fascinating story for anyone with the slightest interest in our origins as a country and as a people.  Like its predecessor, highly recommended.

Rise to Rebellion, Jeff Shaara, Ballantine Books, 548pp. paperback

This first volume of a two-part story of the American Revolution follows the pattern established by Shaara's father, who wrote Killer Angels about the Civil War battle of Gettysburg.  Shaara follows the stories of a number of major characters to create a novelized narrative of the period.  He adroitly shows how John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington. and others went from writers and lawyers and planters to become leaders of the revolutionary cause.  The British side is represented by General Thomas Gage.  

The story opens with the Boston Massacre and John Adams' defense of the soldiers involved and proceeds through Lexington and Concord where Minutemen confront British troops sent from Boston and snipers pick off the victorious redcoats as they return on the long, bloody road back to their barracks.  The story continues through the battle of Bunker Hill where the British suffer a tremendously costly military victory and leaves their forces beseiged by Washington's troops gathered in the hills around Boston.  The book continues up to the unprecedented Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia.

From this volume and it's sequel, you'll learn more than from reading a dozen books on the Revolutionary War...how it started, what motivated the patriots, how they fought, where they went, all invaluably presented so you can experience the flow as the conflict develops. 

Highly recommended.

The Lost and the Lurking/Manly Wade Wellman (1981) paperback

The President of the United States sends word to Silver John, asking the man with the silver-stringed guitar and a knowledge of dark Appalachian folklore to investigate the disturbance from the town of Wolver.  With no more information than that, John heads out.  You don't turn down a request from the president, even though it takes him away from his beloved Evadare.  In Wolver, he finds the disturbance quickly enough.  The hositlity from the locals drops when the mysterious Tiphaine invites him to her home.  The bewitchingly beautiful sorceress tries to recruit him, but Silver John amazes her by resisting her hypnotic attempt with a simple prayer and a strong will.  She is a threat, he knows, but he doesn't know what kind.  She has some hidden goal even though trapped inside Wolver with her followers by a former preacher who becomes John's ally.  There's another player too, a young, blonde runaway who may be helpful or may be a different kind of threat.   Through the first-person narrative of this humble mountain dweller, we peer with him into the mystery.  What is Tiphaine's goal and who are the foreigners who have been making contact with her?  And why does she want to recruit John?  Another fine novel from the John the Balladeer series by the late Manly Wade Wellman.  If you can find any of the six or so Silver John novels, you'll discover some entertaining reading.  As I indicated with a link in a previous review of one of Wellman's books, there is a Silver John book online you can read.

The Old Gods Waken, Manly Wade Wellman (1979) paperback.

Arguably Manly Wade Wellman's most popular creation is Silver John, the folksy, guitar-playing, Appalachian wanderer who encounters and battles the unusual and bizarre that frequently turn up in his path. 

John is a simple God-fearing man who likes to play his old folk songs for appreciative audiences, often singing for his supper, but not above working for it if need be.   His knowledge of the mountains includes a thorough understanding of their mysterious side.

In this novel, John confronts transplanted English brothers, Druids who wish to raise power that will fuse pre-Native American magic with their own Old World Druid worship of Baal.  With his new friend and ally, an Indian medicince man, John must pass seven deadly perils, among the vampire-like Raven Mockers of Cherokee legend, before reaching the druids awaiting atop Wolter Mountain.  All must be done before midnight and the  human sacrifice that will occur then unless prevented.  Even if the two can overcome all of those perils, how will they stop the Druids?

John relates his stories in first-person narrative with a mountain man's dialectical syntax.  The result believably conveys John's roots without having to resort to writing in dialect, a style I've often found irritating.

Wellman was an expert on mountain folklore and the Civil War who lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and like John, he liked to play his guitar and enjoy the occasional taste of blockade whiskey.  The Silver John stories were his best-known works, although he wrote in many fields and even worked on The Spirit comic book during World War Two.   Wellman died in 1986.  John made it to the screen in The Legend of Hillbilly John, a low-budget 1974 movie that used Wellman's character and  featured Susan Strasberg, Denver Pyle, and Harris Yulin.

Baen Books has made freely available online, "John the Balladeer", the original collection of Silver John stories, that have been published in edited and rewritten form as "Who Fears the Devil?" at http://www.library.beau.org/lib/ebooks/baen/03/John%20the%20Balladeer/index.htm

Up Till Now: The Autobiography by William Shatner, David Fisher, hardcover

Bloodline: A Repairman Jack Novel by F. Paul Wilson, paperback.

Lessons in Instant ESP by David St. Clair (1979)

Dead and the Dread Filled the Dunham House, Doris "Dusty" Smith (2005), trade softcover

The Dunam House episode, filmed for Discovery Channel's "A Haunting," was a milepost for Dusty Smith's Daytona Beach Paranormal Research Group.

This book is an account of what happened in the house occupied by the Dunam family, where a young girl talks to someone no one can see in her bedroom, where the father  finds himself increasingly able to discern figures walking through the house before him, where the mother struggles to hold her family together in the face of an unexplainable paranormal threat.  The landlord who previously lived in the house refuses to leave his car when he comes to collect the rent.

It is no surprise that the Dunams welcome the Research Group because they think they're going nuts.  But over five-months, the researchers are able to confirm the family's claims.  They hear footsteps, audio tapes pick up voices and noises that are not being produced by anything physical, and upside-down rainbow shapes are seen howering over the house which, Dusty discovers, Native American tradition labels as gateways to other dimensions.  Numerous examples of paranormal activity are logged.

There is no pat ending to the story.  They are not sent to their reward in the end by Zelda Rubernstein nor are they banished by Max von Sydow.  Attempts are made by the researchers, anxious to help the stressed family by banishing the spiritual presence, but in the end, even though they can't afford it, the Dunam family flees the house.  That step is taken after the videocamera discovery of what the family's infant daughter has been exposed to. 

But the case is fascinating reading, in the medieval sense of the word.  Smith's attention to the group's efforts to find a more mundane explanation, Dusty's discussion of procedure, the efforts to document, all provide a revealing picture of what goes into the task of ghost-hunting. 

Highly recommended.

Shadow Warrior (1989) Felix Rodriguez, John Weisman, paperback.

This is the autobiography of a Cuban exile who undertook a life-long battle against Castro forces.  Rodriguez's story leads up to the Iran-Contra scandal, the focus of the final chapters of this book.

More valuable to the modern reader is the Cuban expatriate insight on the Bay of Pigs in which Rodriguez participated, tthe Cuban Missile Crisis, and subsequent seaborne raids on Castroite Cuba.   The other compelling matter is Rodriguez's first-hand account of the capture of Che Guevara.

Rodriguez tells how Che Guevara expressed thanks to President Kennedy for the Bay of Pigs fisaco, which allowed Fidel to finally succeed in consolidating his power by arresting thousands of Cubans following the invasion and bury dissent. 

He later assisted in setting up the quick-reaction system in Bolivia that targeted Che's ill-conceived underground movement, eventually meeting with success, as with the system he set up while on the CIA payroll in Vietnam.  Rodriguez established another somewhat-similar system in Central America to flush and destroy guerrilas.

These chapters are definitely worth reading the book.  For those who are curious about what now seems ancient history, he discusses what brought him to write the book...the Iran-Contra deal that was a major black mark on the Reagan presidency. 

Perhaps inevitably, Rodriguez was drawn into Oliver North's activities in Central America.  Rodriguez plausibly describes how the Iran-Contra conspirators drew him into the scandal he interesting comments about Oliver North, and makes clear that he had no direct involvement in the Iran-Contra scheme at all.  Even Senator John Kerry cleared him at the end of the his hearings.   

Quick-reading book, has a photo insert including the only photo of Che taken of him following his capture and just before his execution by the Bolivian forces over Rodriguez's objections (the CIA wanted him alive for several obvious reasons).

THE WHEEL OF DARKNESS,  Douglas Preston, Lincoln Childs. Hardcover.

Monks at a Tibetan monastery so remote it has been overlooked by the Chinese ask visiting students, FBI trouble-shooter Aloysius Pendergast and his ward, Constance, to retrieve a stolen object.

They reluctantly explain that it is an object of ultimate evil, too dangerous to look at, not to be unveiled until the end time. Pendergast has to find an object they are unable to describe. They do know who took it: a recent refugee from a failed mountain-climbing expedition. Pendergast takes up the trail which puts Constance and him aboard an ocean liner making its maiden voyage across the Atlantic.

Pendergast is a terrific charcter, white-haired, aloof, independently wealthy, with qualities of insight reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes.  He's been prominently featured in a number of Preston and Childs novels, notably the Diogenes trilogy which pitted him against his evil brother and immediately preceded this latest book. The books, I might add, are related but are designed to stand-alone.

The ocean liner remains the setting for most of the story. The task is simple: identify the person in possession of the object and retrieve it. The possessor killed the original thief and now he is leaving bodies in his wake (literally and figuratively) on the ocean cruise.  The tension heightens as the short-handed crew tries to handle an emergency they are not equipped for and the 4,000 passengers become panicky.

Preston and Childs, who began their collaboration with the monster story Relic (filmed with Penelope Ann Miller and Tom Sizemore), have added another fine thriller to their collection. I have been a fan since Relic, in which a monster created by a gene-altering drug from South American jungles, is prowling a major New York museum.

Since that novel, the authors have written a series of thrillers that have flirted more subtly with ever-present supernatural elements. Actually, this latest entry has the strongest use of the supernatural they've had in awhile, although it still does not overwhelm the story (for those who prefer their thrillers straight-up).

This is quite a page-turner...I stayed up late to finish it. But then I always do with Preston and Childs' books.

ODD HOURS, Dean Koontz, hardcover.

 This book focuses primarily on Coughlin's sniper mission in Iraq.  As opposed to the civilian's view of combat, Shooter illuminates the Marine's ground-level experience from Al Kut to downtown Baghdad during Operation Iraqi Freedom.  Couglin deals briefly with his childhood, training, and gets straight to the topic that drew the reader to the book to begin with.  Expect a story that illuminates the value of a sniper in a battlefield situation and, as a bonus, Coughlin's own innovative approach to sniping of providing a mobile sniper team that covers advancing units from high perches atop buildings or platforms to destroy enemy leadership and deal with specific lethal threats, saving Marine lives and advancing the mission.    The reader who assumes this killer is a monster will also find valuable Coughlin's own explanation of his emotional response to what he does and how and why he does it.  Coughlin retired after Operation Iraqi Freedom, so the account stops after the major combat ends. 

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Alan Moore, Kevin O'Neill, 176pp, $14.99 list, $10.19 Amazon. (graphic novel)

The movie with Sean Connery did not do well at the box office although I liked it and break out my DVD to watch it every once in awhile.  I admit interest in how the storyline may have diverged from its source, the graphic novel by Moore and O'Neill.  I was especially interested in M's library with its artwork of fictional Victorian heroes who are apparently past members of the League, but only the cover of this graphic novel reflects that gimmick.  And that is typical of the whole transition from graphic novel to screen.  I do not claim this is a bad thing.  Never having been in a comic book store before, I visited one yesterday (and Pat was going into Michael's next door; my interest in craft supplies are more limited than hers).  $30 for Volumes I and II was a bit more than I would've liked to pay, but what the heck.  I wanted to read both the initial story that inspired the movie, as well as its sequel which centers around HG Wells War of the Worlds (how could I resist getting that volume as well?).  As I indicated, the film version of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen diverges significantly from the graphic novel.  Among the differences from the movie, Mina is not a vampire created by Dracula, Dorian Gray is not in the book, nor is surrogate son Tom Sawyer, and, similarly, many of the settings are not in the graphic novel, and of course the plot diverges almost from the beginning.  Really, it's only the League iteself that carries over from page to the film, not uncommon with Hollywood treatments.  The plot of the graphic novel actually pits the League against a sinister Asian with numerous obscure Victorian literary references throughout to entertain the well-read and, unlike the movie, primarily focuses the action in London.  I'll avoid providing more details for those who do decide to get the book.  As a bonus, there is a separate narrative story involving Burroughs' John Carter of Mars, Lovecraft's Randolph Carter whom we are told is John's grandson, and H.G. Wells' Time Traveler.  Overall, excellent art and story. 

Ghosthunting Illinois, John Kachuba, 256pp, $14.95 list, $11.95 Amazon.  (nonfiction)

 Kachuba tells about touring haunted sites in Illinois including at least one account I'd never come across before, the alleged haunting of the Pere Marqiette State Park lodge just north of the small rivertown of Grafton.  Kachuba told me he just happened to stumble across it when telling someone what he was doing in the area and was told, "you need to check out the lodge" or words to that effect.  This haunting involves several separate ghosts, apparently including one of a Union soldier who, according to the historical account, might've been a member of a small group of sentries stationed in that area along the Mississippi River.  He also talks about hauntings at places like the Mineral Springs Hotel in Alton...my old backyard...Abraham Lincoln's tomb in Springfield, Oprah's Harpo Studios in Chicago, among many others.  There are photos of the sites as illustration.  Kachuba seems to focus, at least partly, on the story of his visit to the site, generally with nothing new to reveal as a result.  To be honest, having read a number of these kind of books including Troy Taylor's excellent books, I found this entertaining but lightweight.  The Ohio writer, however, has met with success with his previous Ghosthunting Ohio and has another coming up, Ghosthunter.

The Ruins, Scott Smith, 528pp. $7.99. (horror)

The cover blurb from Stephen King calls it the best horror novel of the new century.  It's a monster story, of a kind, which I generally prefer.  I'm reluctant to spoil your reading with too many details so let's see if I can finesse this.

The setting is important, a vegetation-covered earthen mound in the Yucatan jungle.  Archaeologists working on the mound and in the pit atop the mound are missing when a handful of students arrive to fetch the brother of one of their number.  The brother is missing too.  The tents and other items are there, but not the people. 

The students find themselves prevented from leaving.  Why precisely they are being kept trapped there are unclear, but they are.  As a reader, I think I see the reason, but the students don't.

Slowly, they begin to realize the immensity of the threat they face.  As their realization grows, so does the capabilities of the threat and so does their horror.

I know this doesn't help much, but there's a shaggy dog element to it...I can't give too many details about what they face without undermining your enjoyment if you want to read it.

A big book but fast reading.  Pretty unpleasant at times.  My own judgment:  An interesting read but not ultimately to my taste.

Basis of a movie of the same name.

Next, Michael Crichton (fiction)

The 5th Witch, Graham Masterton (horror)

The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations.  Brian Fagan.  2009. 282pp, index, bibliography.

Author Brian Fagan makes a strong case for the fact that the Medieval Warming Period (about 800-1300 AD), that preceded the Little Ice Age (1300-1850), may have had a positive influence on Europe, but that was far from worldwide.

Keeping in mind that only daily average of a couple degrees up or down the scale are involved.

The Medieval Warming Period encouraged population growth in Europe, success in agriculture, the building of grand cathedrals, all in a time that was still very difficult, but on the average better than before.  As Fagan notes, people of that time still knew of days when there was no food.

Overcrowding in Scandinavia where farmland was at a premium and oldest sons inherited, drove Viking raiders and settlers to Iceland, then Greenland and the Americas.   Across the world in the South Seas, Polynesians spread out throughout Oceana.

But while Europe and Pacifica benefitted from comparatively improved conditions, civilizations elsewhere in the world came under stress during that same time period from decades-long droughts caused by shifting air and ocean currents.  The Anasazi fell in the American Southwest, the Mayan Empire collapsed, the Mongol incursion into Europe from Asia faltered, established civilizations in South America, Southeast Asia, China, India, and Africa declined and never recovered.  Even the Mississippian culture centered on the Cahokia Mounds site in Southern Illinois not far from where I live went into decline for reasons that remain unclear, though drought is a possibility.

Fagan draws from data on ancient climates,  subject to constant improvement.  From ice borings to tree rings to satellite observation, the data helps him create a continent-by-continent breakdown of the period of the Great Warming, which preceded the Little Ice Age.

The only flaw I can see, and I'm not overly qualified to point out flaws, is in Fagan's use of the infamous Hockey Stick graph.  The graph shows a consistent average temperature, notwithstanding the Little Ice Age, until it reaches the 20th century when it soars.  The Hockey Stick graph was a controversial factor in Al Gore's man-caused global warmining movie.  But others have noted elsewhere that no matter what data you plug into the model you wind up with the same flawed prediction.

Looked at overall, this book definitely makes the reader understand that the Medieval Warming Period was not by any means benign to everyone as you may have once thought.

Benjamin Franklin Takes the Case, Robert Lee Hall.  227pp.  (mystery)

This is an outstanding "celebrity-sleuth" mystery set in London during the years Benjamin Franklin was in residence, as agent for the colony of Philadelphia against the heirs of William Penn, seeking to get them to end the exemption of their extensive holdings from taxes needed to support the colony.  The legendary master of lightning and electricity, Franklin becomes involved in the death of an old friend, a printer who has called on him for help.  When the printer winds up dead, Franklin takes into his home a servant boy who was working for the printer.  Thus he saves the boy from the printer's surviving family, as rotten a bunch of people as you could hope for.  Franklin procedes to hunt for the murderer, and it takes him not only to the printer's family members, but also to the doors of a variety of Londoners of all stations as he pieces together the reasons for the deed.  This book gives a good feel for mid-18th Century London and for the language of the period.  Franklin himself is a fascinating individual in fact and, in Hall's hands, as a fictional character as well.  Hall produced at least two sequels featuring Franklin.  Excellent, quick read. 

Issued in 1988, look for it at friends of the library book sales and online at Amazon and similar used book sources. 

It's Not Easy Bein' Me, Rodney Dangerfield, 288pp, $13.95 list, $11.16 Amazon. (nonfction)

This quick-reading autobiography was written the year comedian Rodney Dangerfield died at age 82. Dangerfield's early life was pretty bad...no money, a cold and selfish mother who never showed any warmth for the child, an absent father...he skates through those chapters pretty fast. I wouldn't want to dwell either. Then he begins talking about his career as a comedian.

"My wife can't cook at all. I got the only dog that begs for Alka-Seltzer."

He talks about how he developed his Everyman persona, the guy people can identify with who has everything bad happen to him. "It's not easy being me" became "I don't get no respect." Both catchphrases worked well for him.

He spent years on the road, left the business for several years to sell aluminum siding, but returned to comedy at age 35 and confounded everyone by having his career take off, propelled by his being discovered by television talk show hosts. To stay near home and raise his kids, he opened a New York restaurant, Dangerfield's, and it thrived.

"I tell you, I can't take it no more. My dog found out we look alike. He killed himself."

Rodney throws out an assortment of anecdotes about his various movies. There was the memorable role for Sam Kinnison he wrote into one of his more successful movies, Back to School. In the same movie, there's a scene in Dean Martin's office when Rodney puts his foot up on the chair and the Dean (Ned Beatty) says "Mr Mellon..." and Rodney reacts, shifting his foot to the desk. Both actors were in character as ad libbed the scene, actually the result of Rodney trying to ease the pain from gout in his leg. It stayed in the movie.

Rodney's wife was a Mormon and thoughts on that inspired My Five Wives, one of his last movies, a comedy with John Byner and Andrew Dice Clay about a guy who marries into a Mormon sect.

Caddyshack led to Rodney being invited to golf tournaments all over the country which he turned down...he didn't golf.

Rodney also talks about his experiences, his friends, and the comedians he helped on the way up like Jim Carrey who did the book's foreword, Roseanne Barr, who did the afterword, Sam Kinnison, and others.

He writes of his best friend, Joe Ancis, whom he describes as the funniest guy he knew, although Joe had no interest in performing or performers. Asked what the weather was like outside, Joe said he didn't know. When urged to go out on the terrace and find out, he replied "No, they'll expect speeches." Another time, the bank teller cashing his check asks how she knows he's really Joe Ancis. He responds reasonably enough, "How do I know you're really Next Window Please?"

"When I was a kid I worked tough places -- places like Fonzo's Knuckle Room, Aldo's, formerly Vito's, formerly Nunzio's. That was a tough one, Nunzio's. I sat down to eat. On the menu, they had broken leg of lamb."

Rodney Dangerfield writes honestly, describing a bleak childhood, unapologetic about his drug use, talking about the long slow grind to success in middle age, and in his final chapters about his illnesses, all while sprinkling jokes throughout so you don't forget who he is. That's not likely.

Odd Hours, Dean R. Koontz, 368pp, $27 list, $17.82 Amazon. (fiction)

Haunted Daytona Beach, Doris "Dusty" Smith, 128pp, $19.99 list, $15.99 Amazon (nonfiction)

Lucifer's Hammer, David Niven, Jerry Pournelle, 640pp, $7.99 (fiction)

First published in 1977, Lucifer's Hammer offers a terrific story built around a comet that strikes the earth. The nucleus of the Hamner-Brown Comet breaks up as the ice binding the rocky material together melts off in its pass near the sun. When the massive shrapnel that remains hits the Earth, it triggers all the stored-up sesimic stress around the world, the Pacific ring erupts with volcanic action, dams collapse and flood cities and country, Soviet Russia and Red China exchange missiles, thousand-foot tsunamis from ocean strikes sweep across coastal areas and destroy the major cities of the world, and millions are killed. In fact, very few areas in the United States remain intact, except for a rural section of California where US Senator Arthur Clay Jellison has a ranch that becomes a safe haven.

The major characters include Harvey Randall, the television documentary reporter whose career disappears along with wife and home when the comet hits; Timothy Hamner, the amateur astonomer who witnesses what follows his finding of the comet bearing his name; Harry Newcombe, who doesn't abandon his mail route, even with the end of the world; Dr. Dan Forrester of the Jet Propulsion Lab, who arrives late on the scene to become Jellison's Merlin; General John Baker who witnesses the comet strike from space and brings his partner and two Soviet cosmonauts back to Jellison's ranch, just in time for war; and the Reverend Henry Armitage, who leads a crusade by a homicidal mob of cannibals to whom he offers absolution as long as they help him rid the world of the remnants of civilization and bring on the end times. The one image that stuck with me from when I first read the book a few decades ago is of a young surfer who finds himself riding a thousand-foot wave across downtown Los Angeles as other surfers drop off beside him, leaving him alone, aching from fatigue thinking that he might make it when he slams into a building taller then the wave.

This is an outstanding story, a well-executed novel aimed at a mainstream readership with multiple storylines, and an eloquent appeal for a space program that will ensure the survival of the human race, come what may.