Poorly written, half-baked "book" clearly published for the wrong reasons
922519
The only redeeming quality about this "book" is that I liked learning everything that the writer has to say about the history of Superman. But that's where my appreciation ends. The main issue is that this book is very poorly written. Virtually every page is littered with grammatical, spelling, and syntactical errors, many of which are errors we learn not to make in third-grade English class. It speaks very poorly of the author's intelligence (did he really not think to have an editor go through his manuscript before having it published?) and, even more importantly, of his intentions with this book.

In fact, it's hard to even call this a book because it really just seems like a few poorly-written blog posts were copied and pasted them into a single Word document, and then literally sent straight to publication. Clearly, the author has insufficient knowledge of the English language -- and, thus, shouldn't be writing books anyway -- or he did hardly any proofing or editing done on the book, either of which is egregious as people have to actually pay money for the privilege of this affront. To clarify, I've read many books in which there are a couple stray spelling or punctuation errors that somehow slipped by and made it to print, but this was unforgivable. At a certain point I got so frustrated that I couldn't even continue reading anymore.

Another problem I had was that there's just not enough content here to even warrant a book. If you buy the physical copy, you'll notice that font is humorously large and there's a ton of space in-between the lines. As soon as you look at a page, it's obvious that the huge font size and gaping spaces between the lines were to artificially add length without actually having to write additional content. Not only is this lazy, but it's indicative of someone publishing a book for the wrong reasons. And even with this artificial inflation, the physical book only contains 150 pages. Unfortunately, this gives the impression that the author cared very little about what they were putting in the book and was more interested in the prestige he hoped to achieve by having a book published. 'Behind the Cape' really should not be a book. If anything, it would be better-suited as an essay in a larger book that explored the background of several comics characters. Instead, we got a half-baked, rushed book that is truly an insult to readers and to the publication industry overall.

Until this book, I really had nothing against Rob or Comics Explained. In fact, I subscribe to Comics Explained on YouTube and have watched a number of Rob's videos, but this book has really angered and disappointed me. If I could give a zero-stars rating, I would. At just a single star, I will say that there's the occasional nugget of legitimate insight provided here, but all the insight contained herein could've and should've been conveyed in a fraction of the pages. And really, "insight" is being generous as there's really no information provided here that anyone with the time and energy wouldn't find with a few Google searches.

As a writer, I hope to be published one day, but I also want to earn that privilege with hard work and by honing and developing my writing abilities. This book was not earned or warranted and it's deeply upsetting to me that Rob would expect readers to waste their time and money on something that he clearly did not take seriously.
1940670
This seems to be a self published book--thus no editing or fact checking seems to have been done.

I bought the book having only looked at the chapter list.  I should have clicked the "surprise me" link to in order to get a picture of what an actual page of the book looks like.  The book's contents are what appears to be a couple of sets of someone's lecture notes.  Maybe two or three weeks worth.  All equations in the book are written by hand.

Let me repeat.  All equations in the book are written by hand.  LaTeX editors are free, and there really is no excuse for such a shoddy presentation of material.  That the equations in the book are all handwritten is of major significance in the following regard.  Had the equations been typeset properly, the book would have been much, much shorter in length, which would hint at the significant lack of content.  There is very little text in the book, the vast majority of it is in large, handwritten equations.  This is an unfortunate dilution of the material.

The entire amount of material in this book wouldn't even fill a fourth of a chapter of Griffiths, or even an eigth of a chapter of Sakurai.  If you don't know those names as references to books on quantum mechanics, then this book will be way beyond your comprehension.

The book has no references.

This review is longer than the book's "chapter" on QED.
2205156
This is, by far, the WORST publication on bread baking I have ever come across.  I have an EXTENSVE library of bread baking titles consisting of hundreds of books that span the last 2 centuries and beyond, and this is the least informative. most overpriced piece of JUNK I have seen yet.  It's almost comical to read, and if it would've been free (this publication isn't worth the cost of the paper it's printed on), it would have been funny.  Unfortunately, however, the thing costs almost $9!!

It should be mentioned that this barely qualifies as a book, and is more reminiscent of a brochure or pamphlet. Its 69 pages are fraught with errors, poorly formatted and even more poorly researched, written and edited (I've seen high school research papers that are formatted better and more cohesive).  I honestly believe that this was done as a joke, as anyone who was writing about this in a serious fashion would have been ashamed to release such a monstrosity.

This "brochure" is an insult to anyone who has ever baked bread and to those trying to learn how to bake, and is particularly insulting  to all of those people who have spent time and dedicated their lives to baking bread and/or writing proper books on the subject (of which there are many).  There are dozens of excellent publications on bread baking, and plenty of titles that are in this same price range (or even less expensive).

***This book is actually counter-productive to novice bakers and should be avoided by beginning bakers. It's better to simply take your chances (or look up formulas on the internet and the myriad home baking websites and forums dedicated to the craft).***

Ironically enough, it was published by "Speedy Publishing LLC".  Clearly it was written, edited and published in a single afternoon.

What would justify such harsh criticism? Let me outline just a few of my complaints.
  The table of contents has chapters 1 - 9 titled: "Chapter 1 - Enter Chapter 1 Title".  Chapters 7, 8 and 9 say "Error! Bookmark Not
  Defined" after the "Enter Chapter Title" phrase.
  In the chapter on bakeware, he writes the following sentence (with the exact punctuation, as follows):
  "Depending on what your are baking, is what you will want to use."
  There is a section titled "How to Slice Homemade Bread." One of the "suggestions" is:
  "If this is your first time, you may want to invest in a bread cutting guide. Check out different ones to see which one would
  work for you."
  The header on each page that has the name of the publication on it has "Break Making Mastery" instead of "Bread Making
  Mastery".  That's a mistake that's carried through the entire book - not just on one page, but EVERY PAGE.
  The author writes that "The quality of your bread will improve if you use yeast that has improvers instead of plain yeast."  Not only
  is this wrong, but there isn't any follow up - that's all he says.
  The About the Author section states that Robert Walker is "a great chef" and "one of the country's leading authorities in baking
  bread."  It continues to say that "He has great recipes on main dishes but he is towards the great beauty of baking breads. He
  used their family's recipes of homemade breads as starter then eventually adding some tweaks on it to make it more
  acceptable to ever changing demand of the society."
  All of the recipes have serving size listed as either "1" or "20" and have a preparation time of ":0:00" (both colons are in the actual
  text at the header of the formula).
  Barm is constantly referred to as "barn"

These are but a few of the dozens upon dozens of mistakes in this publication.  The publisher and author should be embarrassed and ashamed for releasing such garbage and trying to sell it. This is truly the worst publication I have ever come across on any topic, and it should be avoided by everyone.
692931
This book is misrepresented by its title and cover art. Harry himself gets a mention once in a blue moon, and not even that in the first half. We learn nothing new about him (we ALL already knew he lost his mother too young). The book is badly written even at the level of the romance novel genre. It is primarily the author's need to gossip about petty personal politics when the job itself of being a "Royal" is about the PRusing one's position or fame to bring attention and resources to important social issues. Something Diana did extremely well. This author is still beating a dead woman who is not here to defend herself, and who did far more to improve the reputation of so-called "Royalty" than anyone prior. Definitely NOT RECOMMENDED for anyone other than the British class of people who either live in castles or buy those grocery store tabloids with headlines that scream unconfirmed personal details about famous people's lives but nearly always get it wrong. The author does a disservice to the young man the book claims to be about, and while she probably believes she is serving the monarchy, Junor puts them in a bad light too because this is the kind of hack job that looks hired and probably was. What I learned: it confirmed the "Royals" are spoiled and England is stupid about them and that I wasted my time and money buying the book. Grand Central Publishing should be ashamed of itself for publishing this author.
996490
A friend recommended this book to me, and knowing nothing of this author, I took her recommendation and purchased the book. I am torn about whether or not I regret that purchase. Would I recommend the book to a friend? No. Here's why. Had the book been free, I may be less harsh in my criticisms, but with money in the game, I will review it as such. The author acknowledges in the post credits that he knows the book isn't going to be a classic, and I agree. It reminds me of a made for TV drama. It is not an intellectual piece as I had hoped, but the author did have knowledge of the physical area the story took place in. Having lived in the area, I reminisced about the traffic, construction and cities mentioned. Unfortunately, there were multiple spelling errors, maybe a dozen, that made me cringe. I would have hoped the author's daughter (his editor) would have caught these blatant errors. He even misspelled a main character's name in a chapter title. The story, being about a scientific experiment gone wrong, had very little science in it at all. It was more like a cheap detective novel. I granted him the excessive use of 'be' verbs due to either the author trying to create a certain vibe or because he thought his readers wouldn't notice. I noticed. Aside from the lack of depth, the spelling errors, and simple use of the English language, I had one more problem. The author failed to realize that he gave away his age by the inappropriate use of labels. At one point, the author is talking about a teenage boy who delivers a note to a reporter. He is quick to label him "the black boy." My grandmother makes similar remarks without realizing she is racist. One time when I mentioned it to her, she exclaimed, "I'm not racist, just this morning I hugged a black lady." I think both the author and my grandmother don't realize how they label people. I am sure the author would argue that he had to establish the boy was related to the girl who gave birth to the black baby, he just didn't do much to build a character description beyond his skin color. Ironically, the baby had a caucasian father, and would have had a mixed ethnic heritage. Despite that detail, the baby was simply referred to as "the black baby." Another indicator of the author's age.
I did finish the story, hoping the ending would be worth the time. The author had the opportunity to really delve into the box he had opened in relation to the scientific and ethical questions the story raised, but he did not, or at best, did so in a strictly superficial way. The book did not leave me to ponder questions raised. It simply left me. By tomorrow, I doubt I will even remember the names of the characters. The author got his money, but he did not get a repeat customer.
199049
I am astounded that Vince Flynn would let this book be published. There are countless errors in the book, and it appears that it was not proofed one bit. Random, totally unrelated paragraphs appear in the middle of a sub-plot, the character names are mixed-up in several places, on and on. As an example in one place (paraphrasing) "Hurley throws his head back in a laugh in the bar"...Hmmm...in the plot that is underway in this section of the book, Hurley is in fact in a prison cell! "Lewis" is this correct character in this example, but sadly, this isn't the only error.  Very, very poorly edited...

I am simply dumbfounded at the poor quality of this book...amazing.
3971405
The publishing quality of this book is egregious!  I'm shocked that this is on Amazon Prime. It should be removed. First of all, there are no page divisions for new chapters. Instead, new chapters appear in subheadings, which are sometimes not even separated from the previous paragraphs (see picture below). Even more unacceptable is the fact that chapter titles are incorrect! The first chapter should be titled "The Prison Door," but in this print, the title reads "The Scarlet Letter." There are also no paragraph indentations, making it difficult to read (seems like publishers were scrimping on paper). Paper quality is poor and print looks as if I printed the book myself from a word a doc. I want a refund!!
1442083
I cannot overstate how unhappy I am with this book.

First, it was a nasty surprise to receive an amateurish, self-published, print-on-demand book when I thought I was paying for a real book from a real publisher.  I do sometimes order vanity press (self-published by the author) books, but it's nearly always the case that authors self-publish only after being rejected by all potential "real" publishers, so the quality level of self-published books is typically awful.  I expect at least a warning.  No wonder the price is so expensive for only 100 pages!

I love LOTR and enjoy learning which sources Tolkien drew his ideas from.  Tolkien did unambiguously get a few ideas from Islamic tradition, like the "tree of the sun" and the "tree of the moon" in the Silmarillion (borrowed from Alexander romances).  Tolkien also famously translated a version of 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,' a 14th century story which does seem to have been intentionally built using some symbolism from alchemy, so when I saw this title listed, I thought perhaps Tolkien had really borrowed that symbolic model from 'Green Knight' and used it in LOTR, and this book would explain how, where, and why and provide support for each claim.

Although inaccurately titled 'Alchemy in Middle Earth,' this book is really focused mostly on Islam and the Qur'an.

Presumably in common with all readers of this book, my most important question is: "Is the author claiming that (1) Tolkien based LOTR *primarily* on Islamic symbols, (2) *partially* on Islamic symbols, or (3) is the author claiming only that there are similarities (perhaps coincidental) between Islam and LOTR?  The subtitle "The Significance of J.R.R. Tolkien's LOTR," strongly implies that the author believes that LOTR is based *primarily* on Islam, and this book can prove it.  To my great surprise and disappointment, author Mahoud Shelton never gives the reader a straight answer!  Instead, he constantly *implies* that LOTR was intentionally meant by Tolkien to be primarily about Islam, but this idea is always couched in slippery "weasel words."

For instance, here is the sentence from the introduction which the author seems to regard as his thesis:  "For indeed LOTR is an essentially 'alchemical' work, with it's imagery of fire and metallurgy, and more importantly, 'transmutation' from one state to another."  Is the author claiming that LOTR is *based* on alchemy, or has *coincidental similarities* to alchemy?  In real life the latter seems true, but Shelton makes constant slippery implications that the former is true.  Does Shelton imagine that every story with any kind of change ('transmutation') in it is really about alchemy?  Doesn't that include every story ever told?

Shelton very occasionally brushes up against genuine Tolkien influences, like Solomon and other Old Testament characters, but even on well-trod ground, he is wrong more often than not.  For instance, Shelton suggests that "Middle Earth" is Tolkien's translation of an Arabic word, when even casual Tolkien scholars know "Middle Earth" is simply the English for "Midgard," the Old Germanic name for the realms of men.

This book might be more accurately titled: 'Let's pretend LOTR is about Islam; a long list of vague, coincidental similarities between LOTR and Islam, which are misrepresented as significant.'  Shelton seems sincere in his intentions, but unfortunately this book is almost completely misinformation and should be avoided.
4596627
Dont judge this book by its cover; the title may be intriguing, the graphics enticing, but be warned  there is nothing inside other than incoherent, inconsistent, inconclusive, unfocused, uninformative, ill-researched, and poorly written waffle. Although the book is on a subject as timely and pressing as water security, its telling that the authors could not find a commercial publisher. Its THAT bad. Im giving it one star because I cannot give it negative four. The only reason you should read this book is if you're an undergraduate student with self-confidence issues who wants to feel better about their own essays by seeing something even worse in print.

This book is a chaotic laundry list of every single issue tenuously connected to water, from cholera outbreaks to terrorists targeting dams to nations fighting water wars to the water-energy nexus to bushfires started by arsonists (WTF?!!!!!). That may, at a stretch, be fine for an introductory textbook  but a textbook would surely be a comprehensive survey of existing literature. Maybe Ive spent too much time in academia, but I cannot comprehend how a book on water conflicts can fail to mention the work of Aaron T. Wolf, or how a book on security does not reference Barry Buzan et al., or how a book on environmental threats can completely ignore Thomas Homer-Dixon. The authors claim to have a background in intelligence analysis yet have not gathered the most basic, well-established, open source information on any of their many topics. Indeed, they prefer quoting each other when they are not referencing blogs and newspaper articles with alarmist headlines. AND theres no bibliography, endnotes, or even recommended readings list.

Then theres the editing. Or rather, lack thereof. The writing style meanders between dense, jargon-filled but meaningless pseudo-analysis to emotive, scandal-mongering quasi-fiction illustrating the existential threats we are all apparently facing. Also, who decided that publishing a 450 page book in bold Arial font 12, single spaced, with narrow margins was a good idea? I appreciate that self-publishers generally do not possess professional layout skills, but seriously guys, even Microsoft Word has some perfectly acceptable template styles that, for example, distinguish between headings, sub-headings and body text.

Anyway. You get the idea.

If you're interested in a general introduction to the myriad of water-related issues and crises facing the world, try Fred Pearces well-researched and very accessible When the Rivers Run Dry.

If you're a student wanting a textbook style overview of literature and concepts relating to water conflicts, try Dinar et al Bridges over Water: Understanding Transboundary Water Conflict, Negotiation And Cooperation

If you're in water governance or policy, try Islam and Susskinds Water Diplomacy: A Negotiated Approach to Managing Complex Water Networks

If you want to know what real intelligence analysts think about imminent water security threats, dig up any of the freely available US intelligence community worldwide threat assessments for the past few years.

If you fear water wars then read Brahma Chellaneys Water, Peace and War: Confronting the Global Water Crisis
2481985
I reviewed this on Amazon years ago, but for some reason the review has vanished. Trust me, this is not a good book. It was published by a "vanity" publisher, where the writer either pays to have it published, or has it published on "spec". Dates and events are mixed up, such as the narrator's father mysteriously coming back to life after dying in World War I("Ach, but Papa you're TODT!"). Originally the author hung his OWN reviews up on this turkey about how "thrilling" and "authentic" it was. It's basically sophomoric. It's better to read "War Of The Rats", or recently published non-fiction than waste time on this.
Yet another thing that rankles on this piece of scheiss: read "What the Author Has To Say". That's almost as bogus and self-serving as the review he was allowed to post of this piece of dreck(until he was reported to Amazon)
1423719
As a health enthusiast, I was extremely disappointed in this book.  This book is nothing but long-winded, uneducated fluff. I suffered through the entire thing, trying to find one scrap of useful information about places to exercise or dining tips, but not a single insight or suggestion was offered that was not either common sense or something readily available on the Disney World website.

Much of the information is inaccurate, even though the book claims to have been updated this year.  The book is painful to read, as the author is obviously opinionated about the "right way" to exercise and eat and has no tolerance for people who don't share his specific choices and are therefore "unhealthy and undisciplined." To further insult the reader, the lack of editing is amazing -I have never seen a published book that was so sloppy.

Do not purchase this book.  This was a complete waste of money and I feel swindled at spending money on such trash.
4740085
Another book that is not worth the paper it is printed on.
3644219
I bought this by accident (stupid one-click!) and read it just because I paid for it.  Now I resent the wasted money AND the wasted time!  This "book" is little more than a short essay.  Apparently the author didn't ask any friends to read it before self publishing.  Aside from the obnoxious and inconsistent use of the present tense, the paper is full of typos and grammatical errors.  Wiki has a more interesting, well-written, and comprehensive bio of Travers available for free.  Support self published authors by helping them to refine their craft, not by encouraging sloppy work.
191369
I don't normally criticize, especially as the author clearly went far in some places to actually contact some of the event creators, but holy crap the errors. How a published book gets all the way through editing, especially in what appears to be a second edition, with so many typos, grammatical and spelling errors I have no idea. I haven't even finished the book and were I an English teacher I'd give a C- just on the errors alone. Then there's the factual errors such as incorrect, sometimes internally inconsistent house locations and names of characters. Then there's glaring omissions of major parts of certain years. Some parts Wikipedia has more information on. I knew in advance I would likely already know 99% of what the book could possibly tell me, but I purchased it for one promise: It claimed to give walkthroughs of every house and scarezine in HHN history. I already know, from memory, the names and locations of every house, but in many cases do not have a clear understanding of the details inside many earlier houses. What did I get? "This house had a room with a vampire doing a thing." Paraphrasing of course, but that's about the level of detail it gave for many of the houses. I'm tempted to take a red pen and edit this sucker myself and send it back to the author, or at least the editor, who was apparently asleep, if he bothered to read the book at all.
4653649
Virtually every page in this book contains a glaring error: a misused statistic, an inappropriate inference, an incorrectly cited study or a warped view of history.  The errors are so egregious that Alexander loses all credibility resulting in the reader constantly asking themselves "Is what she's written true or not?"  This problem makes the book a frustrating endeavor and it is compounded where Ms. Alexander is a heralded academic so you would assume she knows better than to make a series of untenable conclusions.  Radley Balko's Rise of the Warrior Cop is a much better book, one that I read immediately after The New Jim Crow, because it covers the same territory but its author is not plagued by credibility issues.  In fact, I decided to read Balko's book because I wanted to learn about the subject and I could not trust Alexander as an author.  If you are interested in this subject matter, do not read TNJC, it is self-serving and fictional which is sad because the subject matter is something touches on issues that are deeply important to Americans.
4541916
I ordered this book as a gift for my father, who can't seem to say no to any jury summons!  However, one look at the cover told me I'd made a mistake.  Sloppily put together and poorly illustrated, it appears to have  been typed at home, then published at Kinko's.  Ms. Dix, please consult an  editor next time, and use the spellcheck!  Prejudice is not a verb!  You  cannot BE "prejudice," unless you are actually claiming to be  prejudice personified.  While there are a few genuinely funny lines, these  were outnumbered 50 to 1 by trite, outdated "humor".  Repeated  references to the O.J. trial might have worked a few years ago, but this  book was published in 1999!  The only positive thing I have to say is that  I am now truly inspired to pursue my own career in writing!
626297
This book may have been great had it been written by a different writer.  Instead, it is bogged down with spelling and gramatical errors (I'm not perfect but I'm not published, either), several fragmented sentences and a style that doesn't flow.  Inaccuracies and inconsistencies plague the book.  At one point, the author is describing a trench system and claims it is five feet deep.  Two sentences later, he claims that it was waist high.  No man alive has a pair of legs that are five feet tall.  In another instance, he describes the soldiers driving a gator vehicle loaded down with several boxes of MREs and in the next paragraph he talks about how the soldiers were out of food.  He confuses his timeline at least once.  Writing about events in 2001, he talks of Captain Nelson thinking back 15 years to his commissioning.  No SF captain would be allowed to command a team if he wasn't able to make major in 15 years.  It is obvious that in 2009 when giving his interview, CPT Nelson was likely then a 15 year veteran.

Wild claims also pulse through the book.  He credits a Command Chief Warrant Officer which is not an Army rank.  At one point the soldiers haven't slept for 10 days, apparantly, though they had yet to enter the combat zone.  I doubt anyone can go that long without some sleep.  He also claims that the Afghan general was riding into battle while talking to US congressmen, Pakistani and Russin politicians and news reporters on a satellite phone.  This almost led me to throwing the book across the room.  The book further is bogged down by unnecessary details.  50 pages of the 345 that make up the heart of the story are dedicated to a relatively eventless helicopter flight inserting the soldiers into the combat zone.  Also, throughout the book, the author continually brings up John Walker Lindh and tells his story.  John Walker Lindh is not significant in anyway to the work of the soldiers or the retaking of Afghanistan.  He just happened to be captured in the end.  What becomes evident is that it is the author's thinly vieled attempt to assert that John Walker Lindh has been wrongly cast as a traitor and that he never tried to kill Americans.  That is fine if the author believes that, but it doesn't belong in this book.  Had Lindh actually played a role in the story, then it would have made sense.

Reading this book, it seemed to me that the Horse Soldiers didn't win anything.  Asside from a few isolated incidents, all the fighting was done by Afghans with Americans directing air strikes.  This appears to be the truth, so claiming that the Americans rode to victory is misleading.  Besides, victory has yet to be claimed in the war anyway.  Staton further seems to have made the same mistake that Robert Traber made in assessing the Cuban revolution.  Robert Traber became so invested in the fight that he proclaimed that insurgencies, once started, can never be defeated and found convenient ways to claim that all victories in history for the counterinsurgent weren't actually victories of counterinsurgeny.  Here, Staton seems to beleive that Special Forces is the only way to win wars in the future.

The story does have good points.  There is much to be learned about how the war unfolded and what the SF soldiers did.  The fighting scenes are gripping.  But, the other parts really detract.  When speaking about CPT Nelson's first airstrike, Stanton states to the effect, "It suddenly occured to him that only a few weeks ago he'd been in the Wendy's line waiting for his order."  That has nothing to do with the story.  I think Stanton should have streamlined his story to the 150 pages of good material he had rather than drag it on to reach a certain page number.

Overall, I do recommend reading the book for lessons learned but if you are a veteran, some of this will read like a bad war movie.