I have to disagree with the reviewer who thought this book wasn't well-written. The author does a great job, to my mind: the book is well-paced, the character sketches excellent, and all my questions regarding technical as well as psychological issues answered. Of course, different people like different styles of writing.

Another, even more amazing true-story book by Alexander McKee is "Ice Crash."

PeeWee Herman, a weird 12 year old is devoted to his bike. "What's the significance? I DON'T KNOW!!!"
His life is perfect. That is, until his bike gets stolen!!! Get ready for fun and adventure for the whole family as PeeWee causes loads of laughs, either in the Alamo or in Hollywood.

Days before the election, the moderator of the presidential debate (Lehrer has of course moderated many presidential debates) is given some secret, damning info on one of the candidates (the right-wing Republican who all the press realize is a truly evil man who will ruin the country) and has to decide whether to step over the journalistic line and use this info in a way that will damage the candidate in the eyes of the voters and so change American history.

It's an interesting moral question but because it is set up so weakly, a lot of the impact is lost. The candidate's character is somewhat like Pat Buchanan, but the situation is more like that of when Ross Perot first came on the scene, and he seemed such a wonderful guy, until we all found out about the steel-tip-booted way he ran his businesses, and how badly he took criticism, and saw the guy he chose for V.P. Everybody said, "Whoa! and I was going to vote for this guy?!"

In "The Last Debate," though, the American public still doesn't know about the man's real character 8 days before the election. It just seems awfully unlikely that nothing would have come to light before that time. And even then, why couldn't the journalists bypass the moral issue by just giving the damning info directly to the press to report it as news? Lehrer does kind of explain these things, in a way, later on, but these kinds of doubts gave the premise a tinge of unreality which weakened its impact for me.

You have to read this book, also, with the assumption that Lehrer is being very loose and imaginative here, probably aspiring to something a la Jonathan Swift, because the characters do express themselves in very simple, repetitive, often stereotypical ways, and say a lot of things out loud that you would never expect such people to say. But he might have done that to simplify things, and of course, ambitious people are, sometimes, extremely simple and childish, underneath it all.

And you can't really call all the characters superficial. The Democratic candidate is kind of a dummy, but he's not really a nice guy, as we see in how he treats his campaign manager. (Is Lehrer telling us they're all like that?) And I thought the contrast between the narrator (a young journalist) and the "hero" moderator (from the old school) was very interesting. And also the contrast between the somewhat opportunistic narrator and the deeply moral and patriotic private investigator.

(Lehrer also leaves open the interesting question of whether the American public is better off with the dumb Democrat rather than the crazy Republican.)

Lehrer writes with a sort of Southern lilt which is kind of nice, but then, he has everyone - the narrator of the story and most of the characters - talk that way off and on, which is a bad idea if you're trying to keep characters separate. For instance, the narrator and several characters frequently do what I give an example of above in my title: use 4 nouns or adjectives in a row. There's no point building up verisimilitude by using all sorts of place and brand names, but then making this sort of sloppy error.

Still, the book is interesting if you watch the Newshour and want to read about the Washington scene. The pacing is nicely done, and Lehrer is an honest and good man, so you do trust what he says about his world.

An aside: I couldn't help remembering Stephen King's "The Dead Zone," which also involves an evil politician and a hero who knows the truth about him. That book had a great solution to the problem, a little more physical, of course. A major flaw with King, in my opinion, is that he's lived up there among the pinecones, watching TV and reading paperbacks too long, and a lot of his plots nowadays are too far from reality, even for his genre. And I thought, wow, wouldn't it be great if Lehrer and King teamed up for a novel or two?! Or is that a little TOO Swiftian to hope for?

There are really 3 autobiographical works that Agatha Christie wrote: there's this one, of course, which, if I remember right, covers her childhood and the early years of her first marriage, including how she began writing. Then there's "Come, Tell Me How You Live," about the 2nd part of her life, during her marriage to the archeologist Max Mallowan.

Then there's the novel (written under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott), "Unfinished Portrait." Although many things in "Unfinished Portrait" were clearly changed around for the sake of the story and don't pertain to her life at all, it is very frank emotionally about what was probably the hardest time of her life -- her divorce from her 2nd husband. It also tells a little more about her writing, since the heroine of the story is also a writer.

All 3 of the books are good reading.

One of my sons had a lot of trouble with beginning reading. How laboriously we taught him his letters, then sounds, then short words! But then we found the Myth Men series. He read these books over and over -- and they have some big words! It's a comic book format, so he could pick up cues from the pictures. This series (and Archie comics, actually) got him over the reading hump, he moved on to text without pictures, and last year he won an award for most books read at his school!

My middle son was about seven and having a lot of trouble learning how to read when we bought one of the books in this series at a book fair. The words aren't easy, but, since it's a comic book format, he could understand what was going on without knowing all the vocabulary. I tell you, he read the first one over and over, till he must have known it by heart.

We had always read to him, and he liked other books (Dr. Seuss, etc.), but we had to force him to read them on his own. This series he loved enough to really break through and develop that curl-up-somewhere-quiet-and-read habit, and since then we've just watched his smoke.

The illustrations are very vivid and realistic, and the stories taken very seriously (unlike the silly Disney-type versions), which children appreciate more. I would recommend this book for kids up to even 11 or 12.

Like they say, every child can be a reader if you just find the subject that he's interested in. For my son, this -- and, I have to admit, Archie comics -- did the trick.

Normally, I like reviews that give a short outline of the plot of a book or movie, because without that, you don't know whether you'd like to spend the time. However, unless you're really wavering, I would strongly advise that you to read the book before looking at the reviews below -- Ira Levin is THE MASTER of suspense -- like Stephen King says, his plots work like intricate timepieces -- and for maximum enjoyment you should know as little as possible about the book before you start.

Odds are, however, that you already know it's about cloning and Nazis, so I'll go ahead and say this: I put off reading the book for years because I wasn't interested in either of those subjects. But "The Boys" is not what you'd expect at all, and superlatives can't describe Levin's skill. "Couldn't put it down" doesn't touch it.

Plus, any gore or references to sex and violence are only what is necessary for the sake of the plot, which is important as far as I'm concerned.

And, just like with his other books, this is more than just a roller coaster ride that you walk off of and forget. There's satisfying poetic justice, interesting moral contrast, and important ethical questions raised -- not just the usual pronouncements about weren't-the-Nazis-terrible or isn't-cloning-awfully-dangerous, either. It's one of those books you love to discuss with a friend.

I'd give the original (judiciously edited) version 5 stars, this one four. The uncut version drags -- a few times I found myself wanting to give up on the rest of the book. I don't remember feeling that way at all when I read the edited version, about 15 years ago. King spends way too much, for instance, on Franny's inner thoughts and on the old Granny's character development. It's not thoughtful writing, either -- you feel like King's just on autopilot in these parts.

This novel is really several intertwined stories of about 6 upper-class girls who graduate from an ivy league school in the 30's, but the decisions they must make and problems they have to deal with are still very comparable to our day.

These girls are the creme of society but, of course, they have their misconceptions and make their mistakes just like we ordinary folk do. Kay marries a man who she thinks is a genius, but who's also conceited and selfish; another (whose name I can't remember) marries an up-and-coming obstetrical specialist who forces her (with the best intentions) to have their baby his way.

Libby is determined to become a great writer, but, unfortunately, all her verve, self-confidence, and connections can't make up for the fact that she has no talent. Polly's family lost all their money in the Depression and, when her lavish-spending father comes to live with her, she's forced to sell her blood to pay his debts. Lakey, really the most sophisticated and intelligent, and the leader of the group, is nonetheless a very unhappy misfit, for reasons we find out later on, in the very satisfying ending.

Although there is a good deal made about the upper-class setting - how these girls are aware of themselves as being leaders of their generation and role models - nonetheless the author (who must herself have been part of this milieu) is aware that, in a sense, this is ludicrous, and that the girls are in some ways, despite the best of educations, limited by their lack of perspective. There is also a strong moral underpinning to the story - the author is not a cynical person, she believes in true love, happiness, etc., and knows what goes around comes around. This allows you to sympathize with and root for the girls.

If you like women's novels (Jane Austen, et al.), I think you'll like this one.

I have both this book and Kabat-Zinn's other, "Wherever You Go, There You Are." That one is more of a general intro to mindfulness (i.e, concentrating on your breathing as a way to clear your mind and reach a deeper level) meditation. It's written in a more aphoristic style: short and sweet, lots of quotes from Thoreau and various gurus, "try this" exercises at the end of each short chapter. A book you mull over, read in bits, inbetween the recommended practice.

This one is more wordy, a description of what goes on at the Massachusetts General Hospital Pain Reduction Clinic, where Kabat-Zinn uses a combination of (physical) yoga, mindfulness meditation, and something called the "full body scan" (lying down and concentrating on different parts of the body at a time) to help people with serious, stress-related illnesses such as heart disease, back pain, migraines and cancer.

There are instructions on how to do the above; statistical information on how well this program works; descriptions of the types of illnesses they deal with; lots of case studies of typical patients; and some general conclusions that the very insightful Kabat-Zinn has drawn from his work. I hate pop psychology but that's not what's delivered here - these are very real insights, not facile at all, on the damaging stresses of modern life and concrete advice on how to cope with them in such a way as to not get sick.

He says, for instance, that "your pain is not you" - that you can and should separate yourself from the pain, and from the negative feedback voice ("I'm never going to get better," for example) that makes things worse.

They do recommend (as I do, and as I see another reviewer does) that you buy the tapes listed in the back of the book to help you with your program. But you can use the book without them: it just takes more willpower and concentration.

As far as personal testimony is concerned, I haven't had to use this program to help me cope with any serious illnesses, thank goodness. But (like most women in their post-childbearing years) I do have a lot of miscellaneous aches and pains which I do deal with much better using the techniques in this book. I have not yet had time to make the recommended commitment for optimal results (45 minutes per day, 6 days a week) - I just use the techniques (which include, for instance, imagining that you are breathing in and out of the painful part of your body - it's hard to describe, but it works!) when I feel headachy or in pain, and medicine either doesn't help or isn't possible to take because of stomach upset.

What I'm saying is, this book is valuable even if you don't have a serious, chronic illness.

Besides, it really is preferable to use these techniques BEFORE you get sick, rather than after.

And they do give the advantages of regular meditation, too: a sense of deeper understanding of yourself, a sense of wonder, etc. (so hard to describe without sounding silly).