High Noon

Book Description

Police Lieutenant Phoebe MacNamara found her calling at an early age when an unstable man broke into her family's home, trapping and terrorizing them for hours. Now she's Savannah's top hostage negotiator, defusing powderkeg situations with a talent for knowing when to give in-and when to jump in and take action. It's satisfying work-and sometimes those skills come in handy at home dealing with her agoraphobic mother, still traumatized by the break-in after all these years, and her precocious seven-year-old, Carly.

It's exactly that heady combination of steely courage and sensitivity that first attracts Duncan Swift to Phoebe. After observing her coax one of his employees down from a roof ledge, he is committed to keeping this intriguing, take-charge woman in his life. She's used to working solo, but Phoebe's discovering that no amount of negotiation can keep Duncan at arm's length.

And when she's grabbed by a man who throws a hood over her head and brutally assaults her-in her own precinct house-Phoebe can't help but be deeply shaken. Then threatening messages show up on her doorstep, and she's not just alarmed but frustrated. How do you go face-to-face with an opponent who refuses to look you in the eye?

Now, with Duncan backing her up every step of the way, she must establish contact with the faceless tormentor who is determined to make her a hostage to fear . . . before she becomes the final showdown.

Customer Reviews:

One of Her Best!.......2007-10-01

Nora Roberts is one of my favorite authors. I often wonder how she sleeps at night what with all the stories that must be running rampant thoughout her head and "High Noon" is one of her best. For those of you who avidly follow Ms. Roberts, you will enjoy this book. For those of you who do not follow her, this is a good novel with which to begin your Nora Roberts Journey.

A little disappointing.......2007-09-26

While "High Noon" has a an engaging plot line I found the characters rather superficial for a Nora Robert's novel. I usually enjoy her fully developed characters. These are not her usual deep personalities. If you are a fan of her JD Robb series than this will disappoint you since much more of the book is on relationships than on the investigation or hostage negotiation, as the case would be. Other reviewers have compared the main characters to Eve and Roarke but I see very few similarities. Very different personalities. I was also disappointed that none of the dialogue was written in the southern dialect. While the story takes place in the South there was not even a y'all in the conversations. Makes if very difficult to get a feel for the environment of the story. So while it is a good plot I would definately wait to buy it in paper.

Eve Dallas steps back in time.......2007-09-26

Nora Roberts or J.D. Robb? This was a tougher book for me to enjoy than Nora Roberts last few novels. The main character was so out of place with the other characters until I realized it was because she was really speaking with the voice of Eve Dallas, from Ms. Roberts futuristic series of books. Lieutenant MacNamara had the same clipped speech patterns and prickly personality of Eve Dallas. Same type of horrific childhood memories. Rich, capable boyfriend. The extreme violence is also a hall mark of the J.D.Robb series. Also, not once did she come across as a life long resident of Savannah. This book, despite it's length did not have full enough or original main characters to keep me interested.

Nora Does It Again!.......2007-09-24

I think I've finally figured out why Nora Roberts' writing appeals so much to me. She writes with "soul." I love her stories that feature close family ties - and most of them do. Either close family members or close friends. Nora knows exactly how to weave the family bond in a way that makes the reader feel as if they know the family, personally.

And High Noon is an example in point. Police Lieutenant Phoebe MacNamara is the cog of her family wheel. She's the glue that holds the family together. Her mother, Essie, her daughter, Carly, the family friend, Ava, who lives with them, and even her brother, Carter, depend on Phoebe to be "the strong one."

But sometimes Phoebe needs to lean on someone. Duncan Swift is just that person, but will Phoebe allow herself to lean on anyone except herself?

This story has it all. Romance, suspense, intrigue, family dysfunction...

Very good.

Fantastic. Kept me reading Page after Page.......2007-09-21

Nora Roberts rarely disappoints me with her wonderful stories. Maybe it's because the plots of her books are very engaging. I have been and continue to be a big fan of NR and in my opinion High Noon is one of her best books. Nora applies just enough to put you in the moment and I loved the characters Duncan and Phoebe. I couldn't help but root for them. High Noon had many twists to it, especially the ending which I won't ruin for you. There was one point in the book that made me cry while I was reading it, but then I am a softy. I just thought it was a wonderful book to read.

Speaking of rooting, check out the terrific Women's Fiction novel Gathering of Cans by Robert L. Saunders and you'll find yourself rooting for Zoie Baker. In this story Zoie is the heroine and a dreamer that feels right down to her bone that she can build a swimming pool by gathering aluminum cans along the country roads. In this stunning, and warm story each unique can, i.e, Nehi, Mountain Dew, etc takes the reader on a trip into the fascinating life of Zoie. I almost cried when I finished the last page. Don't miss this one! Enjoy.

High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them

Average customer rating:

Creative and refreshing approach
What has our world come to?
Straight-Forward, Understandable, URGENT, "Strong Buy"
Great intro to 20 global issues

High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them
Jean-Francois Rischard , and J. F. Rischard
Manufacturer: Basic Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0465070108
Release Date: 2003-05-27

Book Description

The most impressive idea to emerge from the recent World Economic Summit in Davos, Switzerland: a new approach to identifying and managing the world's twenty most pressing problems.

In this age of instant communication and biotechnology, on this ever-smaller planet, what kinds of problems have we created for ourselves? How do we tackle them in a world where the accustomed methods used by nation-states may be reaching their natural limits? In High Noon, J. F. Rischard challenges us to take a new approach to the twenty most important and urgent global problems of the twenty-first century. Rischard finds their common thread: we don't have an effective way of dealing with the problems that our increasingly crowded, interconnected world creates. Our difficulties belong to the future, but our means of solving them belong to the past.

Rischard proposes new vehicles for global problem-solving that are startling and persuasive. With its clear-eyed urgency and refreshing specificity, High Noon is an agenda-setting book that everyone who cares about the future must read.

Customer Reviews:

Creative and refreshing approach.......2006-03-27

This book is a very solid, creative and refreshing proposal for new ways to look at Global problems. He modestly proposes real solutions and processes. These ideas seem equally applicable at the regional and local level where institutional change can be slow but problems need a response without years of debates and institutional resistance.

What has our world come to?.......2006-03-10

This book shows, proves and explains 20 of the major problems our world is faced with, which will become fatal/too serious after twenty years. Rischard has divided the book into three sections: the reasons, the problems, and the solutions. He gives examples of what we could do or what needs to be done, and why this is importants/what would come from it if we do not act. It is not a book for people who dont care at all, but is a good read for those who have enough motivation to help. Worth the money, although its not about the money, but the meaning is important: it's not just 'a good read'.

Straight-Forward, Understandable, URGENT, "Strong Buy".......2003-08-30

Having read perhaps 20 of the best books on global issues and environmental sustainability, water scarcity, ocean problems, etc, over the past few years (most reviewed here on Amazon) I was prepared for a superficial summary, political posturing, and unrealistic claims. Not this book--this book is one of the finest, most intelligent, most easily understood programs for action I have ever seen. The book as a whole, and the 20 problem statements specifically, are concise, illustrated, and sensible.

The author breaks the 20 issues into 3 groups. Group one (sharing our planet) includes global warming; biodiversity and ecosystem losses, fisheries depletion, deforestation, water deficits, and maritime safety and pollution. Group two (sharing our humanity) includes massive step-up in the fight against poverty, peacekeeping-conflict prevention-combatting terrorism, education for all, global infectuous diseases, digital divide, and natural disaster prevention and mitigation. Group three (sharing our rule book) includes reinventing taxation for the 21st century, biotechnology rules, global financial architecture, illegal drugs, trade-investment-competition rules, intellectual property rights, e-commerce rules, and international labor and migration rules.

The author's core concept for dealing with these complex issues intelligently, while recognizing that "world government" is not an option, lies with his appreciation of the Internet and how global issues networks could be created that would be a vertical complement to the existing horizontal elements of each national government.

The footnotes and index are professional, but vastly more important, the author's vision is combined with practicality. This is a "doable-do" and this book is therefore my number one reading recommendation for any citizen buying just one book of the 360+ that I have recommended within Amazon. Superb.

Great intro to 20 global issues.......2003-07-31

J.F. Rischard does a fabulous job of compiling his knowledge into a great introduction of twenty global issues that the world is currently facing. As the subtitle indicates, these issues are steadily becoming problems that we, as a global community, must reckon with. Rischard says that they must be solved in the coming twenty years.

Most of the twenty problems are not surprises, but some are. The author spends time mentioning that his list is not all-inclusive, and that certainly other issues could have been added (or taken off). But his list is all-encompassing and includes the following classifications and then the actual problems:

Sharing our planet: Issues involving the global commons
1. Global warming
2. Biodiversity and ecosystem losses
3. Fisheries depletion
4. Deforestation
5. Water deficits
6. Maritime safety and pollution

Sharing our humanity: Issues requiring a global commitment
7. Massive step-up in the fight against poverty
8. Peacekeeping, conflict prevention, combating terrorism
9. Education for all
10. Global infectious diseases
11. Digital Divide
12. Natural disaster prevention and mitigation

Sharing our rulebook: Issues needing a global regulatory approach
13. Reinventing taxation for the 21st century
14. Biotechnology rules
15. Global financial architecture
16. Illegal drugs
17. Trade, investment, and competition rules
18. Intellectual property rights
19. E-commerce rules
20. International labor and migration rules

Yes, this list is QUITE long and extensive! But Rischard does a wonderful job of giving a brief (3-5 pages) introduction on each issue. If you are looking for a more in depth study of these issues, then you should look elsewhere. But note that the footnotes are great places to look for sources on these issues!

In the end, the purpose of the book is to present a brief summary of these problems, then propose a method for world leaders to use in solving the issues. The author's method is a good one, and he does a nice job explaining it simple terms with "pretty" pictures, charts, and graphs. My only complaint is that -- although the method is somewhat sound -- the book left me wondering what I could do (an average American citizen) to help solve these problems. I would have liked a chapter on what types of careers -- or even small daily tasks -- can be pursued to help fight these issues on a grander scale.

Book Description

In this age of instant communication and biotechnology, and on this ever-smaller planet, what kinds of problems have we created for ourselves? And, once we identify these problems, how do we tackle them in a world where the accustomed nation-state methods may be reaching their natural limits?

In High Noon, J.F. Rischard challenges us to solve the problems of the twenty-first century with a new approach to global problem-solving. Defining and then offering a brief overview of the twenty most important and urgent global problems, Rischard finds that they all have two things in common: They're getting worse, not better, and the standard strategies for dealing with them, such as international treaties and on-and-off gatherings of governments, are woefully inadequate to the task. The real problem, in other words, is that in our increasingly crowded, fast-moving, interconnected world, we don't have an effective way of addressing the problems that such a world creates. Our difficulties belong to the present and the future, but our means of solving them belong to the past.

Rischard proposes new vehicles for global problem-solving that would be acknowledged by governments but that would function as extra-governmental bodies devoted to particular problems. Their powers would not be legal but normative: They would produce globally recognized standards and would then monitor and single out the nations and organizations that were not cooperating.

No previous book has presented such a unified appraisal of this century's global problems or offered such a consistent and well-defined approach to solving them. With its clear-eyed urgency and refreshing specificity, High Noon is an agenda-setting book that everyone who cares about the future must read.

Customer Reviews:

Practical Bottom Line on Saving Planet--Do It or Lose It.......2003-05-30

The author breaks the 20 issues into 3 groups. Group one (sharing our planet)includes global warming; biodiversity and ecosystem losses, fisheries depletion, deforestation, water deficits, and maritime safety and pollution. Group two (sharing our humanity) includes massive step-up in the fight against poverty, peacekeeping-conflict prevention-combatting terrorism, education for all, global infectuous diseases, digital divide, and natural disaster prevention and mitigation. Group three (sharing our rule book) includes reinventing taxation for the 21st century, biotechnology rules, global financial architecture, illegal drugs, trade-investment-competition rules, intellectual property rights, e-commerce rules, and international labor and migration rules.

Highly Recommended for Those Interested in the Future.......2002-07-17

I attended a lecture the author gave summarizing his book. If you're interested in globalization, the environment, or any other global problems, I highly recommend reading this book. It was deliberately limited in length, so it is a really quick read... about 5 pages for each of 20 problems and an additional 100 pages or so presenting the general problems and his proposed solution.

Important and Accessible.......2002-07-03

Amazon's observation is interesting - "No previous book has presented such a unified appraisal of this century's global problems or offered such a consistent and well-defined approach to solving them." If that is so, this book is important. Rischard's issues are not and do not pretend to be all inclusive, but they are self-evidently urgent and of global import. The book also left me thinking that Rischard's tentative solution framework may relate to other issues... High Noon deserves the attention of all well meaning and globally minded people.

High Noon in the Cold War: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Cuban Missile Crisis

Average customer rating:

This book is very well done.
very informative
Highly recommended!
SHOULD BE READ BY ALL PEOPLE WHO ASSUME THEY KNOW IT ALL -

High Noon in the Cold War: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Cuban Missile Crisis
Max Frankel
Manufacturer: Presidio Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0345465059
Release Date: 2004-09-28

Book Description

One of the giants of American journalism now re-creates an unforgettable time–in which the whole world feared extinction. High Noon in the Cold War captures the Cuban Missile Crisis in a new light, from inside the hearts and minds of the famous men who provoked and, in the nick of time, resolved the confrontation.

Using his personal memories of covering the conflict, and gathering evidence from recent records and new scholarship and testimony, Max Frankel corrects widely held misconceptions about the game of “nuclear chicken” played by John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev in October 1962, when Soviet missiles were secretly planted in Cuba and aimed at the United States.

High Noon in the Cold War portrays an embattled young American presidentnot jaunty and callow as widely believed, but increasingly calm and statesmanlikeand a Russian ruler who was not only a “wily old peasant” but an insecure belligerent desperate to achieve credibility. Here, too, are forgotten heroes like John McCone, the conservative Republican CIA head whose intuition made him a crucial figure in White House debates.

In detailing the disastrous miscalculations of the two superpowers (the U.S. thought the Soviets would never deploy missiles to Cuba; the Soviets thought the U.S. would have to acquiesce) and how Kennedy and Khrushchev beat back hotheads in their own councils, this fascinating book re-creates the whole story of the scariest encounter of the Cold War, as told by a master reporter.

Download Description

One of the giants of American journalism now re-creates an unforgettable time—in which the whole world feared extinction. High Noon in the Cold War captures the Cuban Missile Crisis in a new light, from inside the hearts and minds of the famous men who provoked and, in the nick of time, resolved the confrontation.

Using his personal memories of covering the conflict, and gathering evidence from recent records and new scholarship and testimony, Max Frankel corrects widely held misconceptions about the game of “nuclear chicken” played by John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev in October 1962, when Soviet missiles were secretly planted in Cuba and aimed at the United States.

High Noon in the Cold War portrays an embattled young American presidentnot jaunty and callow as widely believed, but increasingly calm and statesmanlike and a Russian ruler who was not only a “wily old peasant” but an insecure belligerent desperate to achieve credibility. Here, too, are forgotten heroes like John McCone, the conservative Republican CIA head whose intuition made him a crucial figure in White House debates.

In detailing the disastrous miscalculations of the two superpowers (the U.S. thought the Soviets would never deploy missiles to Cuba; the Soviets thought the U.S. would have to acquiesce) and how Kennedy and Khrushchev beat back hotheads in their own councils, this fascinating book re-creates the whole story of the scariest encounter of the Cold War, as told by a master reporter.

Customer Reviews:

This book is very well done........2007-03-12

I really enjoyed this book. It is an easy read and the author has done a great job in his research. I thought the perspective he presented about what it was about the 2 leaders personally that allowed this situation to occur was very interesting. I also enjoyed the lack of bias. The situation was presented as neutral as possible I believe.

very informative.......2006-02-23

This book is very informative on the Cuban Missile Crisis. The author gives great prespective on the mindsets of the leaders of both Soviet Russia and America. I recommend this book.

Highly recommended!.......2005-12-21

Most Americans know the Hollywood mythology of the Cuban missile crisis. Our collective assessment of the significance of this national security crisis, the participants and the process, has been largely shaped by emotion, fantasy and politics. Max Frankel in his remarkable new book, High Noon in the Cold War, has changed all that.

Frankel shares the real story of this critical series of events like an old friend sitting with us in front of a flickering fire on a crisp fall evening. Gracefully he enlightens and fascinates with well-crafted portraits of John F. Kennedy, his close advisors, those in the periphery at the Pentagon and in the Congress, and their counterparts in Moscow and Havana. High Noon presents the story without the bluster and self-confidence of history written by the winners, and instead allows us into the hearts and minds of the key decision-makers and their world that autumn of 1962.

John F. Kennedy, privately pain-wracked and publicly politically assaulted for his youth and a lack of seriousness in 1962, played this game of global chess, in part by doing what one might believe any president would do. He consulted with a variety of advisors, trusted and some less trusted, and he attempted to more deeply understand what Khrushchev's first surprising call of "Check!" required of America. Frankel does a wonderful job of putting the reader inside the pressure cooker of the Executive Committee as well as insightfully portraying the extensive series of possible moves weighed minute by minute by John Kennedy himself.

The deliberation and debate in both Washington and Moscow, after false starts and misunderstood and mixed messages resulted in the American declaration of a Cuban blockade-lite, described as a quarantine, implemented with a sensitivity that seemed at times an affront to Navy tradition. The eventual resolution surprisingly satisfied America, satisfied the Soviets, and only Fidel Castro felt betrayed at the immediate outcome. The Soviet nuclear-capable SS-4 Medium Range Ballistic Missiles were removed from Cuba, as were the Soviet strategic IL-28 bombers. Khrushchev allowed Castro to retain the defensive antiaircraft batteries provided he not use them against American U-2 high altitude surveillance planes, left a 3,000 man Soviet combat brigade on the island, and Castro was promised that he would never have to pay for any future Soviet defensive weaponry. In return, Khrushchev received a direct and very public pledge that the United States would never invade Cuba, and a secret pledge that the United Stated would dismantle the obsolete but symbolic Jupiter medium range ballistic missile from Turkey within five months time. Later in 1962, Castro accepted $53 million in American medical supplies and baby food in return for his release of 1,113 survivors of the Bay of Pigs invasion. Frankel portrays the facts of the resolution of the Cuban Missile crisis cogently, but it is in his exploration of the dramatic and frenetic internal debate over the meaning of the signals on both sides, and even the logistics of information flow, that make the book difficult to put down.

The Kennedy administration had secretly recorded many meetings, including those of the ExCom, and the revealed data now available sheds new light on the events as they occurred. Frankel is a reporter, a former executive editor of the New York Times, and won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting of President Nixon's 1972 visit to China. As he writes about the events and decisions that precipitated and then resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis over forty years after the fact, with newly available information, and some fifteen years after the end of the Cold War, Frankel can be both brutally and breathtakingly honest.

Some might say that the most brutal as well as breathtaking conclusion drawn by Max Frankel is that Khrushchev and Kennedy never came as near the point of no return, a nuclear Armageddon over the Soviet missiles in Cuban as has been oft declared and glorified with a kind of delicious horror in America and around the world. Instead, the story is more about the way both national leaders were plagued with over-aggressive and at times illogical advisors, and internally confronted by an array of opportunistic political critics. The truth is revealed in the ways both leaders personally intended to act, and did act, to avoid escalation - even as events indeed escalated, and misunderstandings appeared to mushroom like the fearful images that colored the entire affair. This correction to the historical record is welcome indeed. Yet, this is not the sole accomplishment of High Noon. Our understanding of key important players and events is not only enhanced by Frankel's attention and perspicacity, but readers gain a whole new perspective on the crisis and its resolution. Just as certain "paradigm blindness" afflicted key members of the national security bureaucracy in the United States, and the Soviet Union, and Havana for that matter, historians and other observers have also been afflicted with a kind of paradigm blindness. We have seen Kennedy and Khrushchev as responding to a purely military threat and weighing fair options posed by advisors who were only serving their President. Yet, Frankel exposes two men who were attempting to resolve not only the facts of the threat, but the paradigm flaws driving their own advisors. Khrushchev, the "wily old peasant" and Kennedy the wunderkind occupying a fresh new White House faced down fear as they faced down their own animated and noisy advisors, and their internal critics.

We have long been aware of the impact and perspectives on the crisis of men like Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and the crusty Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon. Frankel reveals the real depth of animosity for the White House during this high-pressure predicament. Likewise, the perspectives of senior Communist Party leadership of Nikita Khrushchev's wild ideas are richly illustrated. What comes through most clearly is that in different ways, the inexperienced and urbane Kennedy and unsophisticated political survivor Khrushchev both overcame the animal reactivity stoked by much of their staff. While the world waited in fear and helplessness, this unlikely pair of leaders learned a great deal about each other, and themselves, in October 1962. In response to what both sides later recognized as alarmingly dangerous communications pitfalls, Kennedy and Khrushchev implemented a hotline teletype connection between Washington and Moscow in 1963, with an eye to avoiding the nuclear brink. High noon had come and gone without a shootout, and we would not pass this way again.

A review of High Noon in the Cold War would not be complete without a mention of the outstanding work Frankel does in portraying one lesser known hero on the American side. CIA Director John McCone, a traditional conservative brought over into the Kennedy Administration for political reasons after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, is a man that modern political observers often seek in Washington today and do not find. McCone is distinguished in modern studies of CIA history as the only Director of Central Intelligence who gave primacy to accurate intelligence estimating, instead of to either covert action or managerial aspects of the CIA. An outsider to the intelligence community, in the months leading up to the Cuban Missile crisis McCone took issue with his own CIA's assessment that the Soviet Union was preparing for nothing much in Cuba, despite of the deployment of a ring of SAM anti-aircraft batteries being installed in August 1962. McCone instead advised Kennedy that this activity logically related to something else either planned or ongoing that warranted immediate and serious American attention. The world, and certainly the mythology of a new Camelot in America, would have placed the white-haired 60-year-old Republican in the Kennedy administration as the odd man out - and he was. But his dead on reasoning and independent streak (later seen in his resignation from the Johnson administration in 1965 because of Johnson's disregard for the bleak CIA assessment of the possibility of U.S. success in Vietnam in favor of more rosy Pentagon assessments) were a precious balm to a President who needed reason instead of reactionaries.

While John F. Kennedy may also fit the bill, McCone brings to mind the characteristic contributions of a group of Americans most recently illuminated by former Navy Secretary James Webb in his new book Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America (Broadway, 2004). The intrinsic stubbornness and fierce individualism of McCone was a key factor in the resolution of the Cuban Missile crisis, and that Kennedy gave credence to McCone's advice over the majority opinion attests to his own qualities of Scots-Irish independence in the face of overwhelming pressure.

While the Cuban Missile crisis holds a unique position in American history, Frankel's fresh visitation of the men and the process of October 1962 is also of critical importance today. High Noon provides not only a wise enhancement of our national memory but a prudent guide for the present. John F. Kennedy listened to the heated and often confused chatter and outdated paradigms of his national security team, and then sought time alone or with key advisors, away from the microphones, to assess the reasonability of the recommendations - as well as the soundness and logic inherent in the information that came to him under the guise of national intelligence. When determining his course of action, a course that could have led to all-out war and the death of thousands of servicemen and civilians here and in the Soviet Union, Kennedy contacted each of the living former American Presidents for advice and comment. His pre-decision conversation with Dwight D. Eisenhower is particularly poignant and simultaneously amusing. Furthermore, while he informed a group of twenty key congressional leaders after his decision to respond to the Soviet missile deployment with a Cuban quarantine had been made, they were pleased to have been informed if not consulted about a decision that was still very much unknown to the American public or the rest of the world.

Almost a full generation after the end of the Cold War, America finds itself engaged in multiple overseas military deployments, wars of liberation, and wars against terrorism. While nuclear annihilation seems far from imminent, warnings of the danger of weapons of mass destruction used against innocent civilians in America and elsewhere flow consistently from Washington and from other monitors of global security. Congressmen and women, politics-watchers around the country and living ex-Presidents can only imagine the role of deliberation and ascendance of reason over bureaucratic or political agendas that Max Frankel so elegantly and engagingly portrays in High Noon in the Cold War.

Posted on Tuesday, October 12, 2004
Karen Kwiatkowski, (...)

SHOULD BE READ BY ALL PEOPLE WHO ASSUME THEY KNOW IT ALL -.......2004-12-29

NO MATTER HOW YOU LOOK AT IT, THIS IS AN EXCELLENT BOOK.
IT'S TAKES A SUBJECT, THE FACTS ABOUT WHICH HAVE BEEN BEATEN TO DEATH IN ALL MEDIA FORMS, AND FOR ONCE, ALLOWS YOU TO COME AWAY WITH A CLEAR, FACTUAL, THOROUGH, UNCOMPLICATED, UNBIASED UNDERSTANDING OF EXACTLY WHAT TOOK PLACE. IT'S LIKE CUTTING THROUGH BUTTER WITH A HOT KNIFE. IF THIS SUBJECT INTERESTS YOU, IT'S A MUST READ.

High Noon for Natural Gas: The New Energy Crisis

Average customer rating:

Hey if you hate progress, go live in a van by the river, and eat government cheese.
High noon for Natural Gas
Great analysis of gas supply and demand, but unrealistic solution
Contradictory and factually incorrect
The Only Book on This Topic as of Today, So I Believe

High Noon for Natural Gas: The New Energy Crisis
Julian Darley
Manufacturer: Chelsea Green
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1931498539

Book Description

Blackouts, rising gas prices, changes to the Clean Air Act, proposals to open wilderness and protected offshore areas to gas drilling, and increasing dependence on natural gas for electricity generation. What do all these developments have in common, and why should we care?
In this timely expose, author Julian Darley takes a hard-hitting look at natural gas as an energy source that rapidly went from nuisance to crutch. Darley outlines the implications of our increased dependence on this energy source and why it has the potential to cause serious environmental, political, and economic consequences. In High Noon for Natural Gas readers can expect to find a critical analysis of government policy on energy, as well as a meticulously researched warning about our next potentially catastrophic energy crisis.
Did you know that:

Natural Gas (NG) is the second most important energy source after oil;

In the U.S. alone, NG is used to supply 20% of all electricity and 60% of all home heating;

NG is absolutely critical to the manufacture of agricultural fertilizers;

In the U.S. the NG supply is at critically low levels, and early in 2003 we came within days of blackouts and heating shutdowns;

Matt Simmons, the world's foremost private energy banker, is now warning that economic growth in the U.S. is under threat due to the looming NG crisis?

Customer Reviews:

Hey if you hate progress, go live in a van by the river, and eat government cheese........2006-09-25

The information value of this book is limited by the authors anti Western, anti US stance of practically EVERYTHING that has occured since the beginning of time. His whinning is tedious, and really gets in the way of any information thats there. I hope a better book comes out but I will never read another one by him again.

High noon for Natural Gas.......2006-08-25

Nice easy reading for non-technical readers who do not insist on verification of facts. Many interesting details, but few data. I have not found any errors or serious omissions, but its somewhat gossippy style is disappointing. The book is not a professional analysis of a diminishing supply or a predicted supply crisis. As is expressed in its title, the book tries to shock and entertain its reader, but it fails to inform.

Great analysis of gas supply and demand, but unrealistic solution.......2006-04-28

I recommend this book to anyone interested in peak oil and gas. I've read many books on "peak oil", but this is the first one I've seen about "peak natural gas." It is very informative, understandable, well written, and well researched with copious endnotes. One of this book's strengths is that it takes a global perspective on gas supply. Although Darley's warnings are directed primarily to the United States and Canada, he goes into global supply and demand, country by country and region by region, in a way that few other books do.

If any Republicans who still like Bush read this book, they may be turned off by Darley's politics. Some Bush loyalists might even call Darley anti-American for being strongly critical of the Bush regime, its foreign policies, and its energy policy. But to right-wingers who say, "America, love it or leave it," remember, this author is not American, he's British! Bush is not his president, so he has no obligation to support Bush, his policies, or the policies of other American administrations. I think this is an advantage, because it gives Darley the independence to speak freely about America from an outsider's perspective, the way the world sees us, as few Americans are able to do.

My main criticism of this book concerns its suggested solutions to the problem of peak oil and gas. I once criticized a peak oil book by a different author for putting too much emphasis on coal and nuclear power as the solution, ignoring solar and wind, but this book goes too far in the opposite direction! Darley simply writes off coal as too dirty to use and nuclear as too dangerous to use, devoting only about a page to each one. Renewable energy and conservation will be very helpful, true, but Darley is dreaming if he believes that when America is freezing in the dark with no oil or gas, we're going to leave all our coal in the ground, not burn it, just because it's dirty! That is unrealistic. I'm an environmentalist, but face it, there's no way we will abandon both nuclear power and coal. The only way we will avoid burning more coal is to use nuclear power, and the only way we will avoid using more nuclear power is to burn coal. This book is definitely worth reading, at least so you will know what the future holds for Americans, Canadians, and the rest of the world.

Contradictory and factually incorrect.......2006-03-07

I don't normally write these kind of reviews, but I felt it necessary to do so here, to counteract a book that I see not just as misleading, but as dangerous. Julian Darley has tried, in this book, to link a purported imminent decline in global natural gas production to the better-publicised issue of peak oil. Unfortunately the book has several fundamental weaknesses.

Firstly, he fails to present any really convincing evidence for the shortage of gas. He points out the stagnation in North American gas production, and generalises this to the whole world, using one small graph of annual discoveries from Laherrere (it's noticeable that all these peak oil theorists endlessly cross-reference each other's work but don't quote that of researchers with other views). He suggests that global gas production is going to begin declining in 1 or 2 decades, while even his graph seems to show that production could grow for at least 30-40 years, and other writers see scope for increases in global gas production out to 2070.

Secondly, the whole thesis of the book is contradictory. We are running out of gas, he suggests. Then he suggests we shouldn't even use the gas we have due to the need to reduce energy use to protect the environment. If we really do have to decrease energy use now, then surely the amount of gas we have left doesn't matter. It seems to me that he's just using the argument of peak gas to argue against big investments in a natural gas economy, which would further postpone his vision of a low energy world. The great danger of this is that he may put people off using natural gas, in which case they may well continue to rely on much more environmentally damaging fuels such as coal and oil.

Thirdly, the book contains numerous errors of fact which undermine his arguments. For example: he states that energy is required to keep the Earth revolving (literally) - what is this energy? Solar, geothermal...? So if the Earth somehow 'runs out' of energy, will it stop spinning...? His simplistic explanation of the drivers for growth in the economy conflicts with any standard economic theory. He attacks capitalism for its record on the environment, but condescendingly mentions that 'Communism was not any better' - I think it would be only fair to say that Communism has been far, far worse for the environment than capitalism - Chernobyl, for instance. Or visit a Soviet-era oil field versus a Western one. He suggests that the main gas suppliers to the US are anti-American (pandering to popular paranoia) - the main current and future gas suppliers being countries such as Canada, Trinidad and Tobago, Norway, Australia, Qatar, Russia, Nigeria - these countries have their problems, and sometimes disagreements with the US, but I hardly think any of them could be described as anti-American. Darley stresses how important natural gas is to make fertiliser, but in mature economies, this represents only 2-3% of gas use, and in any case, substitute feedstocks are available. He says that we are exceeding the energy budget we get from the sun, but the inflow of solar energy is more than 1000 times human use of energy in all forms. I could quote more errors, but I hope the point is clear: would you support a plan to reduce the human population by some 80%, based on the opinion of someone with such a shaky understanding of science, geopolitics and economics?

Fourthly, he is solidly against increase in efficiency and technological solutions because he believes they just allow more economic growth and environmental degradation. Yet the switch from coal to oil and now to gas has dramatically improved air quality in Western cities (compare the 'pea-soupers' of 1950s London with the situation today; or look at the big amelioration in pollution in Delhi with the recent adoption of CNG (compressed natural gas) vehicles). Considerable further reductions in environmental impact are possible, for instance carbon dioxide sequestration (which Darley does not mention at all), which would tackle the very real issue of global warming. He misses the fact that, since 1970, American energy use per capita has been almost flat due to efficiency prompted by energy price increases. He quotes the 'Limits to Growth' report approvingly, without acknowledging that this report turned out to be fundamentally flawed because (a) it believed that energy use would not decrease in response to rising prices and (b) that further investment and technology would not discover new resources or substitutes for the apparently depleting supplies of oil, copper, tin, etc. It seems a counsel of despair, and very odd to say the least, coming from an environmentalist (as I also classify myself, by the way) to dismiss the very great gains in efficiency that are easily achievable even with today's technology. Again, the risk is that he will dissuade people from investing in technological advances that could really help the environment.

Finally, the whole argument of the book suggests that it is too risky to depend on natural gas and we should therefore dramatically reduce population (from 6 billion to 1 billion) and energy use (and by implication, material well-being). I would ask: what is more risky - to depend on LNG (liquified natural gas) imports into the US, a proven technology that has powered the economy of Japan for over 30 years with no serious incidents, or drastically to re-engineer the whole of global society? Is he suggesting that the average North American or European reduce their energy use to that of the average African? This seems almost inconceivable - Darley himself would certainly not be able to run his website with so little energy, certainly if he confines himself to today's technology. If Western energy use remains somewhere above Darley's supposed sustainable level, then is it right to expect the average African not to increase their energy use beyond the current, low levels?

The Only Book on This Topic as of Today, So I Believe.......2005-12-21

The "Natural Gas" crisis is the "sleeper" energy crisis of our time; while all the focus has been on oil, the price of natural gas has gone up five-fold (versus two or three fold for oil).

Mr. Darley's book (published in 2004) is written from an "environmental" perspective more than an "economic" perspective, which may be offputting to some. However, his tecnhical research is thorough and his insights appear to be "right on" as far as events have unfolded over the past year. His main contention is that natural gas production in North America has probably peaked and is headed down, and that the alternative -- importing liquified natural gas (LNG) -- is probably not realistic or even a good idea, given the costs, difficulties in siting LNG facilities, and the long term depletion of hydrocarbon fuels in general.

Instead of reading another "oil" book, I'd recommend this one on natural gas, until some other newer book comes out to knock this one back in the queue.

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Not Free SF Reader
Life is too short for bad books.
Vurtual feathers
Vurt is it?
A wad of neural bubblegum; tough to swallow

Vurt
Jeff Noon
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Griffin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0312141440

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If you like challenging science fiction, then Jeff Noon is the author for you. Vurt, winner of the 1994 Arthur C. Clarke award, is a cyberpunk novel with a difference, a rollicking, dark, yet humorous examination of a future in which the boundaries between reality and virtual reality are as tenuous as the brush of a feather.

But no review can do Noon's writing justice: it's a phantasmagoric combination of the more imaginative science fiction masters, such as Phillip K. Dick, genres such as cyberpunk and pulp fiction, and drug culture.

If this tickles your fancy, you should definitely consider the sequel to Vurt, Pollen, or Noon's lighter and more accessible Automated Alice, a modern recasting of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.

Book Description

Vurt is a feather--a drug, a dimension, a dream state, a virtual reality. It comes in many colors: legal Blues for lullaby dreams. Blacks, filled with tenderness and pain, just beyond the law. Pink Pornovurts, doorways to bliss. Silver feathers for techies who know how to remix colors and open new dimensions. And Yellows--the feathers from which there is no escape. The beautiful young Desdemona is trapped in Curious Yellow, the ultimate Metavurt, a feather few have ever seen and fewer still have dared ingest. Her brother Scribble will risk everything to rescue his beloved sister. Helped by his gang, the Stash Riders, hindered by shadowcops, robos, rock and roll dogmen, and his own dread, Scribble searches along the edges of civilization for a feather that, if it exists at all, must be bought with the one thing no sane person would willingly give.

Customer Reviews:

Not Free SF Reader.......2007-09-25

Vurt is just not very good. When you look at what William Gibson, Pat Cadigan, Walter Jon Williams and others have done with this sort of thing, or even going back further, this is very disappointing.

Alternate reality via drugs and all is perhaps missing the point at little, at this point. Plenty of other cyberpunk tales to read before you need to waste your time with this one.

Life is too short for bad books........2007-08-17

If you really love bad sci fi, you might be able to get through this. It is definitely not as rewarding as Gibson or Stephenson. So why bother? Well, if you're fifteen and this kind of book is what you love to read, maybe. The rest of us should just put it down and move on.

Vurtual feathers.......2007-08-12

Vurt is an odd beast. I found it hard to start with, but soon the world had sucked me in. In futuristic Manchester those looking for hallucinogenic experiences suck on feathers to enter virtual worlds, Vurts. Stash Riders, a bunch of miscellaneous losers, hunt for interesting feathers and try to find Desdemona, who got stuck in a bad Vurt.

Noon has cooked up a futuristic and surrealistic world. The language is colourful and takes some getting used to. The world isn't explained thoroughly; some readers will certainly find Vurt too strange a feather to swallow. However, if you can accept that the world doesn't always make sense, the story moves on with a good pace and the plot is interesting.

Vurt isn't the easiest and most accessible book, but it's worth the effort. If you like it, there's more: Noon has written several books set in the same vurtual world.

Vurt is it?.......2007-07-21

The book jacket for Jeff Noon's Vurt is full of hyperboles.

Vurt is sui generis in form but filled with the shadows of classics--from the Orpheus and Faust myths to A Clockwork Orange and Blade Runner. With relentless pacing, exuberant originality, and prodigious wit, Jeff Noon has created a language, a world, and a love story destined to take its place among the classics.

I beg to differ.

What is (the) Vurt? Nobody knows. And one of the problems with Vurt is that Noon never bothers to explain what the Vurt is. The closest to an explanation that I found is that the Vurt is collective dreaming, some sort of disembodied virtual-reality consciousness that can be accessed by stroking a feather in one's mouth. Different colored feathers give access to different parts of the Vurt. The most powerful color is yellow; while a user can jerk out of most Vurts, yellow feathers open the door to Vurts that you can't escape, unless you survive. Desdemona, the sister of Vurt protagonist Scribble, took one such yellow feather. And now Scribble is trying to get her back.

The Vurt is a fascinating idea. Too bad Noon didn't feel the need to explain it more fully--or, indeed, at all. Instead, the Vurt ends up being a vague nothing in the plot, an area where no rules apply and therefore very little of excitement can actually happen.

But that shouldn't be fatal to the book: after all, plenty of science fiction novels introduce bizarre ideas with very little explanation. (Cf. Michael Marshall Smith.) Sadly, Noon lacks the werewithal to pull off his audacious creation with panache. Throughout Vurt, he attempts to maintain a writing style that oozes hip and cool; the only problem is that he's trying too hard, and it shows. The resulting jerky sentences and fast-spun slang sound forced and, ultimately, annoying; rather than jazz, it's the voice of a bad rapper trying to fit in with the gang. Even worse, the plot of Vurt is as limp and dull as the language. Scribble scatters thither and yon in search of his sister, hooking up with various characters whose lives hardly matter to the reader, only to succeed (or fail?) in his quest in a bizarre conclusion that saps whatever life was left of the novel in the last few pages.

Vurt is only partially redeemed by the fact that Noon does have quite an imagination, and his ideas, taken by themselves, are interesting. Too bad you have to sit through the rest of the book to capture all of the noteworthy nuggets from his mind.

A wad of neural bubblegum; tough to swallow.......2007-06-12

Take away the superficial stylistic jazziness and this is a very conventional story about a guy on a hazardous journey to bring his lover back from Virtual Hell. You know, like Orpheus. Here, though, Noon sets the archetypal drama in a world where drugs come in the form of feathers that open onto a kaleidoscopic variety of different realities...

Well, this whole feather-drug connection is just one of the many largely unnecessary complications Noon employs to make an old story seem fresh and original. At best, *Vurt* can be seen as William S. Burroughs for pre-teens. Maybe I would have found something like *Vurt* profound when I was twelve. But it's hard for me to believe that even a relatively sophisticated adult reader would get much out of this novel but a few hours of mindless entertainment. Cardboard characters, emotional clichés, a plotline driven largely by coincidence, chance, and the seemingly arbitrary switch of allegiances wherever convenient, *Vurt* has a lot in common with your basic Hollywood sci-fi thriller--a sequence of action scenes and `surprise' twists that come at you so rapidly you don't have time to realize that none of it really adds up. Except that in a novel you *do* have the time--and in *Vurt* the plot is laid down like a guy running away from a fire.

A great deal of this novel simply reads like a confused mess through which Noon affected an escape wherever necessary by making the language and plot even more messy and confusing. It's the sort of novel where whenever the author runs himself into an impasse he simply has the main character jump to a different drug/feather induced `reality' or reveal a character's `secret' identity or change of allegiance. Problem solved, right? Not really. You have to be extremely deft to play as fast and loose with story the way Noon is trying to do in *Vurt,* you have to really have something to say, and *Vurt* is filled with nothing more than pseudo profundities.

There are a few well-done passages here and there, some isolated images that momentarily arrest one's attention, and even times when you think there's going to be something to *Vurt,* after all--but, for me, this was a largely empty and disappointing read, very much over-hyped and over-rated, and pretty well forgettable, just like yesterday's bubblegum. Not total dreck, but only one star away from it.

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Not up to what you would expect from a Leonard classic
Showdown with the Wildman

City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit
Elmore Leonard
Manufacturer: HarperTorch
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 006008958X

Book Description

Clement Mansell knows how easy it is to get away with murder. The seriously crazed killer is already back on the Detroit streets -- thanks to some nifty courtroom moves by his crafty looker of a lawyer -- and he's feeling invincible enough to execute a crooked Motown judge on a whim. Homicide Detective Raymond Cruz thinks the "Oklahoma Wildman" crossed the line long before this latest outrage, and he's determined to see that the hayseed psycho does not slip through the legal system's loopholes a second time. But that means a good cop is going to have to play somewhat fast and loose with the rules -- in order to maneuver Mansell into a wild Midwest showdown that he won't be walking away from.

Customer Reviews:

Not up to what you would expect from a Leonard classic.......2006-09-17

This is one of those Elmore Leonard books that you just wont find in a bookstore. City Primeval has the characters you expect from a Leonard book, it has the banter, it has the tounge in cheek humor, and it has the plot that Leonard used to such a degree of sucess later on. But in the end, this book just does not meld together in the way that Leonard later perfected. The characters, the bad guys are just a little too stupid and evil here. The whole story relies so heavily upon them, that it falls apart due to Leonards not having yet found his magic that pops up in later books like Get Shorty.

This book was written almost three decades ago and is dated. I think that this might have been released right before Leonard went on a tear and churned out a good ten classics that are not only hillarious, but influenced a generation of writers like Carl Hiasson and Kinky Friedman. Leonard started out writing westerns and crime novels mostly set in Detroit where this book is set. Later he moved all of the action to Florida, and these are where the best of his works are set.

The book starts out with Clement Mansell, a ruthless punk, gunning down a judge every one hates and a young whore the judge was out with. From here it becomes a conflict between Mansell and a hard nosed cop Detective Raymond Cruz.

This book isn't all bad, and is worth reading if you have read most of Leonards more recent work and are wanting to take on everything the author has written. But I would suggest that you not start with this book. Try Get Shorty, or one of his from around 1990-95, and I would say that you will be much happier.

Showdown with the Wildman.......1998-07-16

Clement Mansell is a killer without a conscious, and the guts to match. Is he going to blink? And if he does, the question is who's going to make him do it? Raymond Cruz, the cop who is nearly as crazy as he is? Carolyn Wilder, his attorney who is as hard as nails? or some one else? Each page is more intense than the one before.

Cut Down to Size at High Noon: A Math Adventure

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Perfect for scale factor lessons!

Cut Down to Size at High Noon: A Math Adventure
Scott Sundby
Manufacturer: Charlesbridge Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1570911681

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Perfect for scale factor lessons!.......2005-10-17

This book works great for my 7th and 8th grade classes. The kids love the story and it was the perfect first time for them to practice scale factor.

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Belabors the Obvious, Misses the Elephant in the Room!

High Noon in the Automotive Industry
Helmut Becker
Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Time for a Model Change: Re-engineering the Global Automotive Industry

ASIN: 3540258698

Book Description

The automotive markets of the industrialized world are saturated. There is no longer any growth for the "growth-minded" automotive industry. This situation is not fundamentally changed by countries like China, India, and Eastern Europe, their markets are too small and develop their own automotive production. As a consequence, automotive industry sees a cutthroat competition, leading to an explosion of new models and rebates. This book offers an impressive analysis and gives a sound forecast for the global automotive industry in the next ten years. Expecially, the book offers a thorough analysis of the 11 big automotive companies in the world and their outlook for the future. It answers important questions: Who will survive, who will drop out? What will be the consequences for suppliers? Which regions will loose, which will win? Don't miss this breath-taking insight into the struggle for survival of the automotive companies!

Customer Reviews:

Belabors the Obvious, Misses the Elephant in the Room!.......2006-07-23

Becker begins by telling us that auto manufacturing is in an overcapacity situation worldwide, creating pressure on suppliers, overhead costs, productivity, wages, and an incentive to build volume through filling niches. He then goes on to compare quality, productivity, and costs by major manufacturer. Guess what, Japanese firms (especially Toyota) come out best. Innovation is also important, and again, Japanese firms (especially Toyota) lead. (Becker fails to note that the three are closely related, per the innovations of the Toyota production system.)

The "really bad news" is that Becker gives almost no attention to Korea and China - the latter being the proverbial elephant in the room because of its much lower costs and ability to quickly learn and move up the technology chain.

Save your money and time - study the Toyota Production System instead.

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High Noon (BFI Film Classics)
Philip Drummond
Manufacturer: British Film Institute
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0851704948

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A small western town, sometime in the late 19th century. Will Kane, an aging sheriff about to retire, hears that a dangerous outlaw whom he put away is now on parole. The outlaw is heading for the town, accompanied by his henchmen and looking for revenge. One by one, Kane's supporters, friends, and sweetheart abandon him, leaving him to stand alone, waiting for the showdown at high noon.

This is the stuff western myths--and great films--are made of. In his book, Phillip Drummond tells you everything you always wanted to know about High Noon (1952), one of the finest westerns ever made. You'll read background information on the movie's producer, director, and writers. You'll learn about the popularity and persona of star Gary Cooper. You'll meet Grace Kelly, an ingenue making her film debut. You'll encounter "The Tin Star," the short story upon which the film was based, and discover the differences between that tale and the film. You'll also hear about the subplot initially intended to accompany the story of Will Kane, which was cut from the final product. You'll ponder the ethics and morality of High Noon, "and their intersection with the social world of citizens of law and order--themes which ... draw the film out of the fifties and project a longer and more complex vision of the cultural and ideological role of popular cinema." --Raphael Shargel

Book Description

Made in 1951, High Noon rapidly became one of the most celebrated and controversial Hollywood dramas of the postwar period. A grave, taut western about community and violence, High Noon collected a clutch of Oscars, helped to re-establish the dwindling fortunes of its star, Gary Cooper, and confirmed the stature of director Fred Zinnemann and producer Stanley Kramer. The film was also a flashpoint for the conflict between the U.S. film industry and McCarthyite anti-Communist: writer and associate producer Carl Foreman was hounded off the production and blacklisted.
Phillip Drummond offers a detailed account of High Noon's troubled production and its early public reception, along with career summaries of the key participants. He analyzes the dramatic organization of the film with close reference to the original short story and Carl Foreman's script, and concludes with an invaluable overview of the long history of critical debates, focusing on questions of social identity and gender.The result is a fresh, nuanced reading of a major classic.

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