After speaking to some that were very familiar with the case and knew a lot about the paranormal in general, I'm questioning the book further.

As far as the whole Danny's Bed incident goes, it did take place and it had happened long before the Cobb family purchased the bed. The questionable material comes from the aftermath -- the portal that was supposedly opened up in their hallway, inviting friendly ghosts from all over the world into their home, from little knowns looking for a child that's burried under their house to one of Savannah's more famous haunts, Little Gracie.

His other book, as well as the supplement at the end of this one, is actually more worth reading as they're made up of short tales of what others in Savannah have told him about the ghostly happenings at their home and work. Anybody that knows Savannah will know that this is merely just a daily routine for many of the residents, so there's little to question about most of those short tales.

This book is an unsuccessful hybrid of social history and an "on-the-road" travelogue. Ellis uncovers no previously undiscovered traces of the effect of Sherman's journey in the New South and after a while it appears he loses sight of his goal. This book has one saving grace: Ellis's natural story-telling ability which captures the spirits of the people he encounters. However, this bright spot isn't enough to compensate for Ellis's failure to achieve his original objective; it just turns this into a passable diary of someone's hike.

This is a personal story, not meant to simply tell the history of the places and people he finds along the way. Their histories are interwoven with his own, their presents forming a framework for Ellis' coming to terms with the possibility of losing the woman he loves because of the journey, and with the death of his father. It adds to what he knows about himself and who he is, a Southerner with ties to the War Between the States, and part Cherokee with ties to a past unrelated in many ways to that war.

This is an interesting view of history and how it affects people's lives, even generations later. At times, Ellis becomes too bogged down in his own problems and we wonder if he misses telling about other things we might have found interesting. But all in all, this is a book for Southerners who know and understand their ties to the South, or who are still trying to find those ties and weave them back into their lives.

Readers who like this book might also want to read other of Ellis' journeys. Also "Womenfolks: Growing up Down South" by Shirley Abbott might be interest. They might also like to read an account of Sherman's march to the sea, such as those included in the nuemrous Sherman biographies, or sets of histories of the war, including the Time Life Civil War volume "Sherman's March."

Author Toni Cade Bambara was living in Atlanta at the time of the murders, and after several children's bodies were found but officials seemed unconcerned, she began keeping a journal. She filled twelve notebooks, which she spent more than a decade revising into a historical novel. By the time she died in 1995, she had drafted an imposing manuscript, animated by her vexed fascination with America's latest racial Catch-22: that blacks who suspect authorities of prejudice are paranoid, or themselves prejudiced, because our society is now color-blind.

Bambara isn't a one-sided social critic. "Those Bones Are Not My Child" blames black communities for their quietism after the Civil Rights movement: "The ballot secured, reps in office, … folks had laid down their weapons in the public square and sauntered off to read the papers." In Bambara's view all Americans today are chasing the good life instead of social justice. Still, in Atlanta between 1979 and 1981, hundreds of black citizens became activists like Bambara's protagonist, Zala. Weary from the difficulties of raising Sonny in a world dangerous to black males, and now traumatized by his disappearance, Zala is feisty, too. She and her husband join STOP, a group of parents trying to energize a lukewarm, lagging investigation into the killings.

Readers are plunged into the daily round of a community in crisis whose situation is ignored, misunderstood, or exploited by powers-that-be. STOP urges civic leaders to declare a public emergency - something is menacing Atlanta's children, even if it's not an organized vendetta against black youth. But the official view is that systematic or racist violence can't happen in "the city too busy to hate." Stories about serial killings would be bad PR for an Atlanta ambitious to be a world-class location for corporations, conventions, even a future Olympics. Zala finds it infuriating that the minimal publicity given the case treats the parents as primary suspects. Worse, when evidence clears the parents, officials speculate that the children were narcotics runners murdered by ghetto druglords, or runaways from family poverty and neglect who met with fatal accidents.

Bambara shows that when citizens can't trust authorities to be diligent or impartial, rumors multiply. Someone in the black community hears that whites are kidnapping their boys to use in porn films and snuff flicks, but that all evidence implicating whites is being suppressed. Others say that an official deliberately lost a recording of a Klansman's boasts about participating in the murders. Still others insist that the 1980 explosion in a black daycare center that killed four children must be from KKK dynamite, not a flaw in the building's ancient boiler. The arrest of a black man looks like a predictable gambit in a white cover-up, especially because now newspapers jump to give the case daily front-page prominence at last.

Small wonder that Atlanta's black community comes to view the trial of the accused man, Wayne Williams, as a white frame-up. Williams is charged with two killings and convicted on the basis of circumstantial evidence, mainly fibers found on the bodies of victims. According to the grapevine, Caucasian hairs were also found but prosecutors ignored that detail, and they apply the fiber evidence to the other murders only because they want all the cases closed even if a killer is still at large. In sum, Bambara's novel shows us what it's like to live hours, days, and years in the midst of beleaguered fear, mistrust, and indignation.

So it's an important story for all Americans, although the book is overlong - the anguish of parents as they seek their missing children, build theories, and witness official inaction is a slender plot on which to hang 600+ pages. Had Bambara lived longer, she might have cut the manuscript. She does try to heighten drama by elaborating sensory detail and starting chapters like short stories whose temporarily withheld explanations might tantalize a reader, but these strategies often prove distracting. Still, the first half of the book compels attention, and domestic scenes with the Spencer family are deft and moving throughout the narrative. The final two chapters become gripping as the mystery of Sonny's disappearance is solved.

In any case, we choose a historical novel for more than just its novelistic technique, and we can't choose a different novel on the subject - there are no others. I'm grateful that Bambara wrote the manuscript before she died and that Nobel-winning novelist Toni Morrison shepherded it through posthumous publication.

The series is interesting, but I believe fatally flawed. First, it assumes that the Domination could build advanced war machinery without the rest of the world catching on. The Domination develops armored cars and exports them to the American Confederacy in the 1860s, performs air strikes on Turkey during WW1 and goes after the Nazis with tanks that could probably hold their own against modern day M1 tanks. Despite the excellent results (for the Domination), the rest of the world never catches on and uses this war technology! Another problem is that it assumes Great Britain would permit a slave society within its empire in the early 1800s. The early Domination is a British Colony with slaves at a time when slavery was abolished in the Empire and the British were shutting down the slave business with force of arms.

If you can get past these big problems, it isnt a bad read however.

"Gripping" is an overused word in reviews, but it is an uncannily perfect word to describe this entire series, set in an alternate-history where the Loyalists established a colony in south Africa after losing the American Revolution.

"Marching Through Georgia", the first in the series, takes place in the early 1940's. The Draka have dominated and enslaved all of Africa, the Middle East, and much of Asia. They have lain in wait as the Nazis exhausted themselves conquering Europe and battling Russia. Now, the Domination of the Draka is poised to take advantage of the situation and extend its iron grip yet again.

The Draka -- men and women both -- are trained from birth to be outstanding fighters, both individually and collectively. They are also trained how to be slaveholders, how to most effectively tame, train, and use human beings, as some people tame, train, and use horses. Draka are dedicated to the survival of the State, and believe that "if you desire the ends, then you desire the means".

Unfortunately for everybody else, the only way the Draka will feel secure is to put the rest of the world "under the yoke".

Stirling could easily have written the Draka as stereotyped evil villians -- powerful and nasty and easy to hate. But the author did something far more impressive ... he(?) made them human. There is much to hate about the Draka and their society, but there is also much to admire. Better yet, Stirling helps you understand *why* the Draka are who they are -- and why their slaves are who *they* are. As "inhuman" as some of their actions are, it is clear the the Draka are, indeed, all too human. *This* is Stirling's accomplishment, this is what makes this series so impressive.

(The other books in the series are "Under the Yoke", "Stone Dogs", and "Drakkon".)

Most Barbie books have hundreds or even thousands of color photos but the quality isn't exactly award-winning. Photos are often badly lit, too small, or even grainy. So it was with great joy that I opened this book and saw large full page stunning color photographs of vintage dolls.

Unfortunately my joy was quickly dampened as I noticed that somebody forgot to hire a stylist for the dolls. The photos are so magnified and clear that it's impossible to ignore the flaking face paint, the messy hair, and the stained clothing. "The BEST of Barbie" ??? Not by a long shot!

I am thankful this book was a Christmas gift and I did not shell out money myself for it. It is SO disappointing to see crystal clear photographs of vintage dolls in a Barbie book only to have those photos ruined by dolls in crummy condition. Apparently all the dolls pictured in the book were culled from one collection. I'd hate to see the dolls that didn't make the cut!

I am not a doll snob (I buy dolls from the Goodwill and fix them up myself) but if a book calls itself "The BEST of Barbie" then I expect to see mint dolls in crisp clean outfits.

He comes closer to catharsis in his sequel "I Hate Georgia Tech!", as he must see more than a glimmer of himself amongst the nerds.

It is not a 'diet' cookery-book, but rather simply a healthy one. As the author states: '[n]o-one ever sticks to diets, because the often take away the pleasure of flavour...[These recipes are] "happy medium" food...it is not gravely fattening because it avoids things like cream and butter. What I will not do is eat food that does not taste good'. The book does provide a listing of the amount of calories, protein, fat, carbohydrates, cholesterol and sodium along with each recipe for those who are concerned with these things.

A sampling of dishes includes: Stuffed Bell Peppers (Spain), Sautéed Steak in Red Wine & Shallot Sauce (France), Fiery Farfalle (Italy), Tandoori Chicken Salad (India), Vegetarian Chili (India), Bali Baked Fish (Asia), Wild Mushroom Couscous (Morocco), Poached Pears with Raspberry Sauce (dessert), as well as numerous other exotic delights.

Another lovely addition to the book are the short passages at the beginning of each section and interspersed throughout in which the author recalls her time living in Spain, Italy, India, &c. The one leading the section on French dishes begins: "Each of us has a charmed part of our lives we remember with nostalgia as a carefree and idealistic time. For me it is when I was in Paris that cold winter of my first year as a model...." and concludes, "There were all sorts of discoveries, small and large, that I made on a weekly basis. Soon I began to know my way around Paris and my way around modelling as well. I can hear Tom Waits in the background and the sound of [my friend] chopping the onions as I slam the door on another day's round of casting".

*****

A non-culinary exotic delight of EASY EXOTIC is the inclusion of a number of photographs (though, alas! too few to my mind) of the author herself--the breathtaking model/actress Padma Lakshmi--cooking and shopping in outdoor markets.

Notably, Miss Lakshmi is also the current girlfriend of the Booker-Award-winning author Salman Rushdie, and is, in fact, transparently the model for one of the character in his latest novel, FURY. This character, Neela Mahendra, is described in FURY as "the most beautiful Indian woman--the most beautiful _woman_--he had ever seen. Compared to the intoxicating effect of her presence, the bottle of Dos Equis in his left hand was wholly alcohol free. Other women in the world were just under six feet tall, with waist-length black hair, he supposed; and no doubt such smoky eyes were also to be found elsewhere, as also other lips as richly cushioned, other necks as slender, other legs as interminably long. On other women, too, there might be breasts like these. So what?....Staring into the sidereal unreality of her beauty, which wheeled in the room like a galaxy on fire, he was thinking that if he had been able to wish his ideal woman into being, if he'd had a magic lamp to rub, this would have been what he'd have wished for". This poetic description may almost do her justice.

My one complaint about EASY EXOTIC (other than wishing for more photos) is that someone [the publishers?] seems to have felt compelled to have the scar on Padma Lakshmi's right arm airbrushed-out. I find this unfortunately, for, as Rushdie says of Neela Mahendra in FURY (who has a scar to match Padma's): "down the upper part of the woman's right arm there was an eight-inch-long herringbone-pattern scar....[that] made her more beautiful, that perfected her beauty by adding an essential imperfection. By showing that she could be injured, that such astonishing loveliness could be broken in an instant, the cicatrice only emphasised what was there, and made one cherish it....all the more".

All in all, an excellent book of delicious recipes which are not too fattening or difficult to make, complemented by photographs of the astonishingly beautiful author; made all the more interesting for the fact that Padma Lakshmi provided the inspiration for a main protagonist in a novel by Salman Rushdie, arguably the world's greatest living novelist. However, the recipes alone in EASY EXOTIC are well worth the price of the book.