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Jim Loy's Book Reviews

Book review by Abraham Lincoln: "People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like."

Milissa Bank's praise for David Rokoff's Fraud: "What he said."

These pages are now associated with Amazon.com, an online book store with over 1.1 million titles. Many of these books ship within 24 hours. Most are 20% off the cover price (often 30% off on hardcover books). Make sure the book you order is the edition that you want; some may have come out in paperback since I wrote the review.

I also recommend www.commonreader.com. See my review of their catalog: A Common Reader.

Also see AAABookSearch (Book Search and Price Comparison).

I highly recommend the following books (click on a title, to see my review). *****=best book ever written:

Nonfiction:

• Science:
  • The Best of Annals of Improbable Research (AIR) - edited by Marc Abrahams
  • Biology Books by Stephen Jay Gould
  • Dead Men Do Tell Tales - by William R. Maples, Ph.D. and Michael Browning
  • Digging Dinosaurs and Dinosaur Lives - by John R. Horner
  • The Double Helix - by James D. Watson
  • Dragonfly - by Bryan Burrough
  • False Prophets - by Alexander Kohn
  • The Handicap Principle - by Amotz and Avishag Zahavi
  • Horizon - The Pleasure of Finding Things Out - with Richard Feynman (a video tape)
  • The Hot Zone - by Richard Preston
  • King Solomon's Ring - by Konrad Z. Lorenz
  • The Malaria Capers - by Robert S. Desowitz
  • The Neptune File - by Tom Standage
  • New Guinea Tapeworms and Jewish Grandmothers - by Robert S. Desowitz
  • Newton's Clock - by Ivars Peterson
  • ***** Origin of Species - by Charles Darwin
  • The Pinball Effect - by James Burke
  • Plague - by Charles T. Gregg
  • Rocket and Space Corporation Energia - edited by Robert Godwin
  • Science Fair Projects - various books
  • Science: Good, Bad, and Bogus - by Martin Gardner and Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science - by Martin Gardner
  • Snow Crystals - by W. A. Bentley and W. J. Humphreys
  • T. rex and the Crater of Doom - by Walter Alvarez
  • Tuva or Bust! - by Ralph Leighton
  • Understanding Physics - by Isaac Asimov
  • The Voyage of the Beagle - by Charles Darwin
  • What If the Moon Didn't Exist? - by Neil F. Comins
  • Yes, We Have No Neutrons - by A. K. Dewdney
• Mathematics:
  • 200% of Nothing - by A. K. Dewdney
  • aha! Insight by Martin Gardner and aha! Gotcha - by Martin Gardner
  • Chaos - by James Gleick
  • Disappearing Cryptography - by Peter Wayner
  • The Fourth Dimension - by Rudy Rucker
  • ***** Gödel, Escher, Bach - by Douglas R. Hofstadter and Forever Undecided - by Raymond Smullyan
  • ***** How to Lie With Statistics - by Darrell Huff
  • In Code - by Sarah Flannery
  • Innumeracy - by John Allen Paulos
  • Logic Puzzle Books by Raymond Smullyan
  • The Man Who Knew Infinity - by Robert Kanigel
  • Make Your Own Working Paper Clock - by James Smith Rudolph
  • My Brain Is Open - by Bruce Schechter and The Man Who Loved Only Numbers - by Paul Hoffman
  • Prisoner's Dilemma - by William Poundstone
  • Prof. E. McSquared's Calculus Primer - by Howard Swann and John Johnson
• History:
  • U. S. history:
    • An Alien Place - by Carol Van Valkenburg
    • Born to Fly - by Shane Osborn
    • Fireboat - by Maira Kalman (a children's book about Sep. 11, 2001)
    • Fire on the Mountain - by John N. Maclean
    • Hanging the Sheriff - by R.E.Mather and F.E.Boswell
    • Isaac's Storm - by Erik Larson
    • Night of the Grizzlies - by Jack Olsen
    • Scandalmonger - by William Safire (historical fiction, also listed below)
    • Senseless Secrets - by Lt. Col. (Ret.) Michael Lee Lanning
    • The Sting Man - by Robert W. Greene
    • The Terrible Hours - by Peter Maas
    • Vigilante Victims - by R.E.Mather and F.E.Boswell and Montana's Righteous Hangmen - by Lew L. Callaway
    • Women Who Charmed the West - by Anne Seagraves [various entertainers]
    • The Wreck of the Whaleship Essex - by Owen Chase
    • Young Men and Fire - by Norman Maclean
  • World history:
    • Alive - by Piers Paul Read
    • Between Silk and Cyanide - by Leo Marks
    • Codes and Ciphers - various histories
    • The Codex Nuttall, the Codex Borgia, and The Sad Night (with graphics, takes a while to load)
    • The Commissar Vanishes - by David King
    • ***** The Egyptian Book of the Dead - by Raymond Faulkner (with graphics, takes a while to load)
    • Endurance (Shackleton's Incredible Voyage) - by Alfred Landsing
    • Farthest North - by Clive Holland
    • ***** Fatal Storm- by Rob Mundle (The best book ever written?)
    • Great Exploration Hoaxes- by David Roberts
    • Into Thin Air - by Jon Krakauer
    • K2: The 1939 Tragedy - by Andrew Kauffman and William Putnam
    • Life in Ancient Egypt - some books
    • Longitude - by Dava Sobel
    • The Lost Tomb - by Kent R. Weeks
    • The Murder of Napoleon - by Ben Weider and David Hapgood
    • The Murder of Tutankhamen - by Bob Brier
    • Navajo Weapon - by S. McClain
    • Our Votes, Our Guns - by Martin Meredith
    • Phantom Islands of the Atlantic- by Donald S. Johnson
    • The Prince- by Nicolo Machiavelli
    • The Rape of Nanking - by Iris Chang
    • Until Death Do Us Part - by Ingrid Betancourt
    • Who Wrote Shakespeare? - by John Michell
    • The Wreck of the Medusa - by Alexander McKee
• Humor (also see humor in fiction):
  • 101 Unuseless Japanese Inventions and 99 More Unuseless Japanese Inventions - by Kenji Kawakami NEW
  • The Darwin Awards, Volumes I, II, and II - by Wendy Northcutt NEW
  • Depth Takes a Holiday - by Sandra Tsing Loh
  • How to Cheat at Chess - by William Hartston
  • I Hated, Hated, HATED This Movie - by Roger Ebert
  • Palindromes - various collections
  • Rube Goldberg Inventions
  • Six Drown Saving Chicken - by Reuters
  • There's a Hair In My Dirt - by Gary Larson
  • Totally Useless Office Skills - by Rick Davis
• Biography [who they are about] (also see the above topics for more biography):
  • Banvard's Folly - by Paul Collins [several]
  • Between Silk and Cyanide - by Leo Marks [Leo Marks]
  • Bobby Fischer Goes to War - by David Edmonds, and John Eidinow [Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky]
  • Born to Fly - by Shane Osborn [Shane Osborn]
  • The Bridge Bum - by Alan Sontag [Alan Sontag]
  • Catch Me If You Can - by Frank W. Abagnale Jr. [Frank W. Abagnale]
  • Counting Coup - by Larry Coulton [Sharon LaForge]
  • The Cuckoo's Egg - by Clifford Stoll [Clifford Stoll]
  • Endurance (Shackleton's Incredible Voyage) - by Alfred Landsing [Ernest Shackleton]
  • Ex-Prodigy - by Norbert Wiener and Genius in Residence by Audrey Grost [Norbert Wiener and Michael Grost]
  • Finders Keepers - by Mark Bowden [Joey Coyle]
  • The Fugitive Game - by Jonathan Littman [Kevin Mitnick]
  • Hanging The Sheriff - by R.E.Mather and F.E.Boswell [Henry Plummer]
  • In Code - by Sarah Flannery [Sarah Flannery]
  • The Island of Lost Maps - by Miles Harvey [Gilbert Bland]
  • Jackson Pollock - by Mike Venezia and Jackson Pollock - by Ellen G. Laudau [Jackson Pollock]
  • The Keys of Egypt - by Leslie and Roy Adkins [Jean-Francios Champollion]
  • Killing Pablo - by Mark Bowden [Pablo Escobar]
  • A Leg to Stand On - by Oliver Sacks [Oliver Sacks]
  • Life in Prison - by Stanley "Tookie" Williams [Stanley Williams]
  • The Lighthouse Stevensons - by Bella Bathurst [several Stevensons]
  • Longitude - by Dava Sobel [John Harrison]
  • Losing My Mind - by Thomas DeBaggio [Thomas DeBaggio]
  • Lucky Man - by Michael J. Fox [Michael J. Fox]
  • Man-Eaters of Kumaon - by Jim Corbett [Jim Corbett]
  • The Man Who Knew Infinity - by Robert Kanigel [Srinivasa Ramanujan]
  • The Mask of Nostradamus - by James Randi [Nostradamus]
  • Maus and Maus II - by Art Spiegelman [Vladek Spiegelman]
  • McGoorty (a Billiard Hustler's Life) - by Dan McGoorty and Robert Byrne [Danny McGoorty]
  • The Mind of a Mnemonist - by A. R. Luria [S]
  • The Murder of Napoleon - by Ben Weider and David Hapgood [Napoleon Bonaparte]
  • The Murder of Tutankhamen - by Bob Brier [Tutankhamen]
  • My Brain Is Open - by Bruce Schechter and The Man Who Loved Only Numbers - by Paul Hoffman [Paul Erdos]
  • No Picnic on Mount Kenya - by Felice Benuzzi [Felice Benuzzi]
  • Pictures, a Park, and a Pulitzer - by Tom Lawrence [Mel Ruder]
  • Playing Off the Rail - by David McCumber [Tony Annigoni]
  • Portrait of a Killer - by Patricia Cornwell [Jack the Ripper (Walter Sickert)]
  • Prisoner's Dilemma - by William Poundstone [John von Neumann]
  • Rube Goldberg Inventions [Rube Goldberg]
  • Ryan White: My Own Story - by Ryan White and Ann Marie Cunningham [Ryan White]
  • The Sting Man - by Robert W. Greene [Melvin Weinberg]
  • The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst - by Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall [Donald Crowhurst]
  • The Terrible Hours - by Peter Maas [Swede Momsen]
  • The Truth About Uri Geller - by James Randi [Uri Geller]
  • Tuva or Bust! - by Ralph Leighton [Richard Feynman]
  • Unabomber - by Chris Waits and Dave Shors [Ted Kaczynski]
  • Until Death Do Us Part - by Ingrid Betancourt [Ingrid Betancourt]
  • The Voyage of the Beagle - by Charles Darwin [Charles Darwin]
  • The Watchman - by Jonathan Littman [Kevin Poulsen]
  • The White Death - by McKay Jenkins [five young mountain climbers]
  • Women Who Charmed the West - by Anne Seagraves [various entertainers]
  • Word Freak - by Stefan Fatsis [Stefan Fatsis]
• Current events:
  • Dangerous Waters - by John S. Burnett
  • The Essential 55 - by Ron Clark (become a successful student) NEW
  • False Impressions - by Thomas Hoving
  • Hate Is My Neighbor - by Tom Alibrandi and Bill Wassmuth
  • Ishmael - by Daniel Quinn NEW
  • The Language Police - by Diane Ravitch NEW
  • Little Girls in Pretty Boxes - by Joan Ryan
  • The Mask of Nostradamus - by James Randi
  • The New Killing Fields - edited by Nicolaus Mills and Kira Brunner
  • No Crueler Tyrannies - by Dorothy Rabinowitz NEW
  • No Mercy and Public Enemies- by John Walsh
  • Nose to Nose - by Barry J. Schieber NEW
  • The Radioactive Boy Scout - by Ken Silverstein NEW
  • Scams from the Great Beyond - by Peter Huston
  • Them - by Jon Ronson
  • The Truth About Uri Geller - by James Randi
  • Various Books about Lies by the Media
  • Who Says Elephants Can't Dance - by Louis V. Gerstner NEW
  • The Wildlife Detectives - by Donna M. Jackson (a children's book)
• Fraud:
  • The Art of Deception - by Kevin D. Mitnick
  • *****The Art of the Steal - by Frank W. Abagnale
  • The Eudaemonic Pie - by Thomas A. Bass
  • ***** Scam School and Easy Money - by Charles R. Whitlock
• Games and sports:
  • Beat the Clock Mazes
  • Bringing Down the House - by Ben Mezrich (blackjack) NEW
  • How to Cheat at Chess - by William Hartston (humor)
  • The Inner Game of Tennis - by W. Timothy Gallwey (good for any sport)
  • *****Stacking the Deck - by Bryan Berg and Thomas O'Donnell
  • The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge - from ACBL
  • The Unbelievable Bubble Book - by John Cassidy with David Stein
• Others:
  • Blank Slate - by Stephen Pinker NEW
  • Blue and Yellow Don't Make Green - by Michael Wilcox
  • A Book of Artrageous Projects - by Klutz, inc. (mostly for children?) NEW
  • Buck Up, Suck Up . . . and Come Back When You Foul Up - by James Carville and Paul Begala
  • A Common Reader
  • Death in the Long Grass - by Peter Capstick
  • Dumbth - by Steve Allen
  • The Imponderables Series - by David Feldman
  • Letters to Jenny - by Piers Anthony
  • Tidbits, Vol. 1 - by J. Spencer
  • Various Collections of Urban Legends
  • Why Buildings Fall Down - by Matthys Levy and Mario Salvadori
  • Win or Lose By How You Choose! - by Judge Judy Sheindlin (a children's book)
  • The World Almanac
  • The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook and The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Travel - by Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht

Fiction:

• Science Fiction/Fantasy:
  • The Ambivalent Magician - by Simon Hawke
  • The Chronicles of Narnia - by C. S. Lewis
  • The Curse of Chalion - by Lois McMaster Bujold
  • The Dinotopia Series - by James Gurney and others
  • The Discworld Series - by Terry Pratchett
  • ***** Dune - by Frank Herbert (The best book ever written?)
  • The Ender Series - by Orson Scott Card
  • Eragon - by Christopher Paolini NEW
  • Expecting Someone Taller - by Tom Holt
  • The Foundation Trilogies
  • The Harry Potter Series - by J. K. Rowling
  • The Hero and the Crown - by Robin McKinley
  • His Dark Materials Series - by Philip Pullman NEW
  • The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - by Douglas Adams
  • The Hugo Award Winners NEW
  • The Merovingen Nights Series - by C. J. Cherryh and others
  • The Miles Vorkosigan Series - by Lois McMaster Bujold
  • Murder in Cormyr - by Chet Williamson
  • The Myst Series - by Rand Miller
  • Piers Anthony vs. Editors
  • The Red/Green/Blue Mars Series - by Kim Stanley Robinson
  • Starship Titanic - by Terry Jones
  • The Wheel of Time Series - by Robert Jordan NEW
  • The Wiz Zumwalt Series - by Rick Cook
  • The Xanth Series - by Piers Anthony
• Mystery/Crime/Thriller:
  • The Agatha Christie/Charles Osborne Collaboration
  • The Amelia Peabody Series - by Elizabeth Peters
  • Big Trouble - by Dave Barry
  • Bimbos of the Death Sun - by Sharyn McCrumb
  • ***** The Charlie Chan Series - by Earl Derr Biggers
  • The Childhood of Sherlock Holmes - by Mona Morstein
  • The Da Vinci Code - by Dan Brown NEW
  • The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes - by John Dickson Carr and Adrian Conan Doyle
  • The Hound of the Baskervilles - by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
  • Jennifer Government - by Max Barry NEW
  • Lieutenant Bak Series - by Lauren Haney
  • The Little Friend - by Donna Tartt
  • The Lord Meren Series - by Lynda S. Robinson
  • The Maltese Falcon - by Dashiell Hammett
  • The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - by Agatha Christie
  • The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency - by Alexander McCall Smith NEW
  • The Solar Pons Series - by August Derleth
  • A Study in Terror - by Ellery Queen
  • The Tory Travers/David Alvarez Series - by Aileen Schumacher
• Humor (also listed in other categories above):
  • America's Most Wanted Short Stories - by Mike and Veronica Krath and A Brief History of the Midland Bridge - by Mike Krath
  • Big Trouble - by Dave Barry
  • The Definitive Biography of P. D. Q. Bach, by Prof. Peter Schickele
  • The Discworld Series - by Terry Pratchett
  • Expecting Someone Taller - by Tom Holt
  • Starship Titanic - by Terry Jones
  • The Wiz Zumwalt Series - by Rick Cook
  • The Xanth Series - by Piers Anthony
• Others:
  • The Castle - by Franz Kafka
  • the curious incident of the dog in the night-time - by Mark Haddon NEW
  • Master of Go - by Yasunari Kawabata
  • One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - by Alexander Solzhenitzyn
  • Open Me... I'm a Dog! - by Art Spiegelman (A children's book)
  • Pale Fire - by Vladimir Nabokov
  • The Pleasure of My Company - by Steve Martin NEW
  • The Ramses Series - by Christian Jacq
  • Scandalmonger - by William Safire
  • Stories from Shakespeare - by Marchette Chute
  • The Thief Lord - by Cornelia Funke
  • Wit (W;t)- by Margaret Edson (a play)

***** Above, I say (with some seriousness) that each of these books is the best book ever written:

• The Art of the Steal - by Frank W. Abagnale
• The Charlie Chan Series - by Earl Derr Biggers
• Dune - by Frank Herbert
• The Egyptian Book of the Dead - by Raymond Faulkner
• Fatal Storm - by Rob Mundle
• Gödel, Escher, Bach - by Douglas R. Hofstadter
• How to Lie With Statistics- by Darrell Huff
• Origin of Species- by Charles Darwin
• Scam School - by Charles R. Whitlock
• Stacking the Deck - by Bryan Berg and Thomas O'Donnell

It is hard for me to decide which is better. They are vastly different books. Of course the Bible must also be mentioned as perhaps even better.

Children's books:

I used to think that there were no good children's books back when I was a child. The only good ones that I remember were books on science. I recently read three of the Nancy Drew mysteries, and I am not very impressed. Well, I am slowly discovering that I was wrong. I recently read Charlotte's Web, very good (I will review it soon). And there were Winnie the Pooh, and Tolkien. And I am sure that there were more. Here are some new ones and some old ones, and they are all good:

• The Anti-Coloring Book . . . by Susan Striker
• Beat the Clock Mazes
• A Book of Artrageous Projects - by Klutz, inc.
• Brundibar - by Tony Kushner and Maurice Sendak NEW
• The Chronicles of Narnia - by C. S. Lewis
• Click, Clack, Moo and Giggle, Giggle, Quack - by Doreen Cronin
• Dear Mrs. LaRue: Letters from Obedience School - by Mark Teague
• The Dinotopia Series - by James Gurney and others
• The Dog Who Rescues Cats - by Philip Gonzales and Leonore Fleischer
• The Essential 55 - by Ron Clark (become a successful student) NEW
• Fireboat - by Maira Kalman
• The Hank Zipzer Series - by Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver NEW
• Harold and the Purple Crayon - by Crocket Johnson
• Katie's Favorites, Some Children's Books
• The Magic Door Series - by Dean Morrisey and Stephen Krensky
• Micawber - by John Lithgow
• Mrs. Biddlebox - by Linda Smith
• Olivia and Olivia Saves the Circus - by Ian Falconer
• Open Me... I'm a Dog! - by Art Spiegelman
• Palindromes - various collections
• Penguin Post - by Debi Gliori
• The Polar Express and other books by Chris Van Allsburg
• Sector 7 - by David Wiesner
• Snow Crystals - by W. A. Bentley and W. J. Humphreys
• The Tale of Despereaux - by Kate Dicamillo NEW
• There's a Hair In My Dirt - by Gary Larson
• The Unbelievable Bubble Book - by John Cassidy with David Stein
• The Wildlife Detectives - by Donna M. Jackson
• Winnie the Pooh - by A. A. Milne
• Win or Lose By How You Choose! - by Judge Judy Sheindlin

Books for young adults:

These books are for teenage and older. Nearly all of the books that I list at the top of this page, both fiction and nonfiction, should be considered in this category, as well. In particular, science fiction and fantasy should appeal to many teenagers.

• The Anti-Coloring Book . . . by Susan Striker
• Beat the Clock Mazes
• A Book of Artrageous Projects - by Klutz, inc.
• The Chronicles of Narnia - by C. S. Lewis
• The Dinotopia Series - by James Gurney and others
• The Harry Potter Series - by J. K. Rowling
• The Hero and the Crown - by Robin McKinley
• Inkheart - by Cornelia Funke NEW
• Life in Prison - by Stanley "Tookie" Williams
• Multiple Choice - by Janet Tashjian NEW
• Palindromes - various collections
• Snow Crystals - by W. A. Bentley and W. J. Humphreys
• The Thief Lord - by Cornelia Funke

I added a link to Amazon.com. And then, in order to test the link, I visited Amazon.com. There I learned about being an associate. It seemed like a win/win/win (I win, you win, Amazon.com wins) situation. I was already linked to them. If I became an associate, not only would I get paid when someone linked from my pages directly to Amazon.com, but visitors who were interested in books that I review would not have to go search on their own, and maybe get lost. Earlier, one person who visited my pages reported that a book was out of print, and was mistaken, it was still in print. This could have been avoided, if I were linked to Amazon.com.

My reviews point mostly to the paperback edition of most of these books. There may be hardback or audio editions (or large print editions) at Amazon.com, as well. Some of these books are out of print (or out of stock). You can order them anyway, and Amazon.com will try to find a copy for you. Some of my links have not been updated for years, so if there is a cheaper paperback version available, then I would like to hear about it: Please send me email (see address below).

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