I just couldn’t finish Demon Angel. I gave up just before I would have hit the 50% mark. It’s part of my attempt to find something in the romance genre that I like. The truth is that Demon Angel is better than a couple of the other attempts, but just barely. It met my first basic criteria in that the female lead is not Too Stupid To Live. She’s actually kick ass, and likes to subvert the wishes of her master Lucifer (she’s a demon). In the part I read, there’s one conversation between two women, and it’s about a murder investigation rather than a man, so I can check off the Bechdel test. Good so far…

Lilith is a half-human demon. Hugh is a half-human angel (or guardian). Lilith is actually the proximate cause for Hugh becoming a guardian. This all occurs in the 1200s (I.I.R.C.). A demon’s job is to tempt a human to sin, so that if the human dies he/she will go to hell and become part of Lucifer’s army. Demon’s do not kill humans, and they must respect human will. Their job is to entrap. Then for the next 600 years Lilith and Hugh meet up periodically on opposite sides, though they do not really fight. Eventually Hugh kills Lilith, violating his guardian code and causing his Fall to being human again. But Lilith isn’t really dead, and they meet up again with her still being demon, but now Hugh is human.

It’s all very convoluted, and it takes a long time to develop. There’s all sorts of side things going on in the war. Lucifer has another rival fallen angel called Belial. And there’s vampires and nosferatu, who are enemies of both good and evil. What’s hard to follow and boring is all the backstory involved on all the sides and all their motivations, which aren’t usually clear anyway. It takes forever! We’re only just starting to get to the real story around page 200.

And really, could they just get on with the sexing? The romance is all Breathy Whisperings in Hugh’s ear from Lilith. He wants it. She wants it. But they don’t do it. There’s only so much teasing a guy can take before he just walks away. It’s one thing to have the romance develop slowly. But here the romance is pretty far along around page 3 or 4. They just don’t consummate.

First D.N.F. of the year. Was feeling hopeful I’d finish the year without one. Alas. And I feel bad because some of the other romance I’ve tried was worse, but I just don’t have the patience any more.

Title: Demon Angel
Author: Meljean Brook
Cover creator: Franco Accornero (illustrator) / Lesley Worrell (designer)
Series: The Guardian Series; 1
Imprint / publisher: Berkley Sensation / Penguin
Format: Mass market paperback
Length: 412 p. (194 read)
Publication date: Jan 2007
ISBN-13: 978-0-425-21347-6

Enough! I give up! 8+ hours into this audiobook I’ve finally decided I can’t take any more! Awful awful dreck!

Premise: Abraham had a local boy transcribe his thoughts on God into clay tablets before he left the land of Ur for Canaan and founded the Jewish religion. Nazis find some of the tablets during World War II and keep their find secret. Sixty years later, one of them decides his legacy should be that his good daughter and her Iraqi husband should be the discoverers of the Bible of clay. They begin an archeological dig for the rest of the tablets. A do-gooder priest, four revenge-minded Jews, jilted ex-partners, disbelieving archeologists, and the U.S. government hell bent on invading Iraq complicate matters.

So far, I really can’t find anything right about this. I knew it would be bad fairly quickly in, but I soldiered on for the train wreck value. I suspected it would be so bad it would be hilarious. But really, it’s so bad it’s tedious.

What’s wrong. The characters are all one dimensional. Not even two dimensional. They all have on track minds. They are also really repetitive. The writing sucks. Perhaps it was the translation, but I doubt it. I lost count of the number of times the author ended a scene with and then the group discussed the details long into the night. So the details of the plotting are held off-screen, but she does treat the reader to excruciating level of what food and wine they partake. In particular, I got tired of how many times the character of Mercedes exclaimed her impatience with the pace of exacting her revenge. Got it! Shut it!

I also want to call out the reader. They got the wrong reader for this. She has a thick southern European accent, which I suppose is supposed to make the book sound exotic. But in reality, her reading sucks. Pauses in the middle of sentences, no pauses at the end. Little differentiation in tone or inflection for each character, and the author’s dialogue requires much skill when reading that aloud to follow along.

Not to mention that the plot is full of serious holes as well as contrived occasions. A Jewish archeologist discovers the first couple of tablets. Then a cable from Berlin comes in announcing the beginning of the war. Immediately the two Aryan archeologists shoot the Jewish ones, never bothering to find out where the tablets came from. However, later this racist has no problem living among Arabs or having them marry his granddaughter. The book opens with his granddaughter, though an accomplished archeologist supposedly but still an unknown, attempting to convince other archeologists to fund an expedition. Never mind that she has only blurry photographs, no paper, no analysis, and pretty much nothing at all. But of course, it’s the stuck in the mud archeological community that is wrong for dismissing her. Ugh.

Don’t read this. Dan Brown is better.

Other blogged reviews:

• Bookgasm
• Julie Chan’s Blog
• Bibliophilia
• Lowly’s Book Blog

Title: The Bible of Clay
Author: Julia Navarro
Translator: Andrew Hurley
Cover creator: Shoreh Aghdashloo
Imprint / publisher: Books on Tape
Format: Audiobook
Length: 20 h. 18 m.
Publication date: 2008
ISBN-13: 978-1-41594697-8
Subject: Archaeologists — Fiction
LC classification: PQ6664.A8932 B5313 2008

What a truly awful book! Awful enough that I gave up at page 97, at the end of part 3 (though there was no part 1). Don’t read this book.

The premise in the part I read is standard science fiction. Science group searches the skies for signs of extra-terrestrial life, and they find it. Later, an expedition travels to Wolf 359 to investigate the radio signals and finds primitive humans on one of the four planets. Humans who obviously do not possess the level of civilization necessary to build or maintain a high powered radio transmitter. They don’t even have fire.

Why is this book bad? Let me tell you.

In part two (remember, there isn’t a part one), the head scientist apparently is the only person in the group who knows how to interpret the data, and he decides to give it to the military. His logic is that a stellar race between all the militaries of the world will subject the inhabitants of Wolf 359 to much more danger than subjecting them to the depredations of just the U.S. military. As if there wasn’t such a thing as public opinion. Also, the text is dreary. Endless talk of punch cards and JCL and printouts of numbers that have to be looked over by humans. Page after page of straight numbers. Meanwhile head scientist courts a subordinate whose job it is to verify his data. As in asks her out all the time, insisting on things being informal after hours and that no one will question it because he’s the boss. And then turns around and admonishes her when she doesn’t use the Doctor honorific back in the office because it’s too informal there. And then he tells her he’s verified the work and she doesn’t need to. And has her lock up the office as if she’s security staff.

As revealed in part three, this is all part of his shocking plan to get the discovery of intelligent life out there around the U.S. military. He’s annoying his subordinate so but also giving her the opportunity in locking up to copy all the data and distribute it despite the military’s request to keep it secret. Sure it’ll ruin his reputation for everyone to know he was ready to keep it secret, but that’s a burden he’ll bear.

Even though the logic fail is epic, I’ll spell it all out anyway. Rather than sneak the information out himself, being a hero in the scientific community for both the discovery and bucking the military when he has exclusive control of the information, he enacts a subtle plan to trick a subordinate into ruining his own reputation to accomplish the same end. Not to mention ruining his chances of getting with the woman who seems amenable to his extremely lame courting.

Then we get to part three. Through careful psychological profiling, six crew members for the trip to Wolf 359 are chosen. By 2022 of course, computers can do everything, so the people are supposedly superfluous. However, they carefully pick six people. The biggest question the choosers have is whether to gender balance the crew, which they decide isn’t necessary, going with four men and two women. Cause they are all professionals and will have no problem leaving two men out of pairing off if it comes down to that, though they will all be too busy to have time to pair off.

Logically speaking, mostly okay up to that point. Then we discover who they’ve picked. A Doogie Howser doctor prodigy who’s graduated medical school but has never examined a single patient. A veteran commander who was one of two survivors of a dust storm on Mars but where the person he saved won’t talk to him again because of the unspeakable things he did to her while saving her. A marine without command experience for security. Another young prodigy as an anthropologist. And two others I’ve already forgotten.

As soon as they wake up from cold sleep or whatever Effinger called it (I can’t be bothered to re-read to figure it out), they all have nothing to do. In fact, the commander woke the rest of them up because he was bored and wanted company. The computers do everything supposedly, though the astrogator seems to have to determine if they made it to the right star. And never mind that the previous logic was that they would have so much stuff to do that pairing off really wouldn’t have a chance to happen.

Okay, skip ahead to the landing. Shortly thereafter they run into a naked human who stumbles in to their camp. A primitive camp. He stumbles in because the commander can’t be bothered to stay awake during his whole watch. Some commander. Some excellent selections. Insert sarcasm emoticon here. Now the naked primitive human is there, and the first thing the group does is tie him up so they can sleep the rest of the night.

Supposedly later in the book the commander guy decides to become a god to the primitives, and the book is a look at the dangers of being a god. Or something. If Effinger wrote that with the same level of skill that he wrote the beginning, then I can’t see how it would be worthwhile.

Title: Those Gentle Voices: A Promethean Romance of the Spaceways
Author: George Alec Effinger
Cover creator: Lou Feck
Series: God I sure hope not
Imprint / publisher: Warner
Format: Mass market paperback
Length: 190 p. (I stopped at 97)
Publication date: January 1979 (originally March 1976)
ISBN-10: 0-446-940178

It’s nearing the end of the year, which traditionally is the time in which I abandon books that I’ve long been loathe to forsake. If you can call two years running a tradition. Which I can, because it’s my web site!

I’ve long been a fan of China Miéville. I was bummed a few years ago when word of his entry in The Thackery T. Lambshead Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases spread around the then thriving Runagate Rampant Yahoo Group (a fan group for Miéville). It was being put out by small publisher and I wouldn’t have the opportunity to buy it. I can’t remember the publisher, but Amazon says the original publisher was Tor, which is hardly small. So my memory is probably suspect.

But while working for the giant chain store last year, one of these babies came across my receiving table. A paperback reprint! I quickly bought the copy for myself. Fortuitous, as the person in charge of fiction at the time saw it and thought she should buy the copy as well. I should have let her have it.

I can’t say this is bad. But it’s not my kind of humor. What it is is a compendium of invented diseases by the leading lights, the up and coming and some of the already established, of the speculative fiction world. For example, Empathetic Fallacy Syndrome, where the sufferer takes on characteristics of the people around him. Or Bone Leprosy. In regular leprosy necrotic flesh falls from a person’s bones. In Bone Leprosy, necrotic bones fall from the flesh, leaving a spineless person.

It seems to me this book is for the well-read Nigel Crane’s of the world. There’s probably a ton of references to literature and other items that I’m just not getting. The ones I do get, just seem to be too obscure to be too funny to me. A blurb on the back of the book says it plays delicious postmodernist games that are sure to delight the discerning (and slightly warped) reader. I am not discerning. And anything characterized as postmodernist (an oxymoron in my world) ain’t gonna get over with me.

Nevertheless, one entry I found highly amusing, which is why I decided I would keep attempting to read more of the book. Perhaps if one was good more would be. After 100 pages, admittedly read one entry every few weeks while sitting on the pot, I’m throwing in the towel. If there is something else I find amusing in here, I’m not going to slog through the rest.

The one good entry? Rachel Pollack’s Delusions of Universal Grandeur. Sufferers’ symptoms include the severe delusional belief that the universe is ever more gigantic and typically is accompanied by the belief that the universe is vastly old. But I imagine that if I proposed this as a funny disease to my friends, they’d think I was being obscure much as I think the rest of this book is just too obscure.

Title: The Thackery T. Lambshead Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases
Editors: Jeff VanderMeer, Mark Roberts
Cover creator: John Coultheart
Imprint / publisher: Bantam / Random House
Format: Paperback
Length: 298 p. (gave up at 100)
Publication date: July 2005 (originally 2003)
ISBN-10: 0-553-38339-6
Subject: Medicine — Humor
Subject: Diseases — Humor
LC classification: PN6231.M4 T45 2005

Lord save me from self-published books!

This is the second on my reading list from the Feminist SF Top 10 Obscure Speculative Fiction Books. However, in this case, this is one book that should probably stay obscure. Ulises Silva, the author, repeatedly asked his friends/readers to vote up his book. It’s the only generous explanation I have for it winning top spot.

The book has a lot of promise. The premise is that certain people are born with the ability to change reality by writing about it. These Scribes can pen a story, and the story comes true. The other piece of the puzzle is that a shadowy organization consisting of Editors and Researchers exists to check the Scribes and make sure their power doesn’t go to their heads. That’s the set-up. Our plot concerns someone systematically killing Scribes. The Editor organization sends in their best, Io, to figure out who and rid the world of the menace.

One Scribe has really gotten out of control, sending a message to the entire world predicting the apocalypse in one week’s time.

Or I assume that one Scribe has done this. I quit reading before finding out.

Why? The execution of the good idea annoyed me.

The writing is overly florid for one.

Io startled and immediately made up her mind to ignore the call. But her cell phone, nestled in its slot on her center console, continued to blare out. Loudly. Her cabin seemed to amplify its electronic shriek beyond her closed windows, echoing it as a schizophrenic, disharmonic chorus.

Also, the author tends to write in a peculiar passive voice (not technically passive, but might as well be). People don’t do things. They find their legs carrying them places. Hot casings spit themelves out rather than Io emptied the gun into the object of her wrath.

The characters are all over the top clichés with no subtlety to their actions whatsoever. Io lashes out at everything, usually murdering someone in the process. She’s the quintessential angry 16 year old, except she’s not supposed to be 16. Yuniko… pauses… between… every.. phrase she… utters. She’s afraid… to talk… to… anyone. All of Io’s colleagues hate her because she supposedly thinks she’s worthy to judge others. I’d hate her just because she’s a bitch. Their reasons don’t make sense given they do exactly what she does. Not one of the characters made me want to care what happened to them. X-Pac heat.

So in the part I read before giving up, we learn nothing. A couple of things happen with the message about the end of the world. But nothing happens to move the story along.

And as soon as that message gets out, pretty much everyone immediately turns into a bad parody of Lord of the Flies. The world ends in a week, so everyone feels the need to murder their neighbors and set fire to the airport. This is me rolling my eyes.

Thing is, despite the many problems with the book, it could be something with a good editor and a large re-write. Add a little nuance to the characters. Cut the floridness from an 11 to a 10. Move up some of the storyline into the first 100 pages. Do that and this would be a decent book. But in this form it’s unreadable, and I stopped at page 93.

Edit: Read Ulises Silva’s reaction to this review.

Title: Solstice
Author: Ulises Silva
Cover creator: Nicholas DeWolf (artist) / Leda DeWolf (designer)
Imprint / publisher: Tragical Mirth Publishing
Format: Paperback
Length: 342 p. (I stopped at 93)
Publication date: 2007
ISBN-13: 978-0-9794513-0-0

I received this book in the mail a couple of months ago. No return address, no note, no promo letter. While I do put up my address so that publishers and authors can send A.R.C.s or other promo material, I kind of expected stuff to come like it did when I worked at the book store. There was always a for your consideration letter included that hyped the book in more detail than the normal cover blurbs. A quick glance told me it wouldn’t be too schlocky though, so I’m gonna read it.

The book would probably qualify as Mundane-SF, as the subject concerns a near future Earth where for some reason the lifespan of women has increased but men are only living the same amount of time they do now. Or something like that. Resulting in a world where women run everything, since they have the experience and the old girls network to outdo pretty much any man. Relationships are also increasingly rare, since most women don’t want to watch the men they marry die.

Here are some bullet point thoughts written as I read through the book:

• Early on, the writing relies a lot on exposition and the omniscient narrator describing the participants’ thoughts. I don’t know if it’s that in particular, but it feels kind of clunky in the first couple dozen pages.
• All the characters are referred to by first name. My memory does much better with last names. I’m already confusing who some of these people are! Probably not the fault of the author though.
• I wonder if Boultbee has spent any time in corporate America. The descriptions of corporate relationships here matches better with my experience than some other books, but it still seems to fall under some stereotypes that I just never found to be true when I worked as middle management. For instance, there’s a scene where Ryan Peters gets to wait several hours in the lobby for his scheduled interview with the C.E.O. of the company. I’ve seen this scene written before (not that I can recall where), as a test (as it is here) and also as a way to show the V.I.P.’s callous disregard of underlings. I was made to wait once for an interview for several hours. It was actually a sign of a disorganized C.E.O. more than anything else. I wouldn’t stand for it anymore. Anyone worth hiring will just walk out. The whole corporate culture described here feels just a bit off. Though I must again iterate, nowhere near as wrong as some books I’ve read.
• I’m confused. The C.E.O. Olivia treats Ryan as the son of a former lover. Ryan acts like that. But his thoughts are as if he is Olivia’s former lover. The blurb on the back cover says he’s one of the few men who live as long as women. So is he hiding that fact? Is he he posing as his own son? But if he is, wouldn’t Olivia recognize him not just as the son, but as the real Ryan? Specially considering that she notes he was the love of her life. It was years ago in the storyline. So I’m not sure what’s the case here. Reading on…
• Ahhh okay! He is hiding his age by posing as his own son. Though he reminisces about his handlers who also know his real age. Two questions come to mind. Why is he making a secret of his age? And who are his handlers that are sponsoring this?
• For a supposedly liberated female world, Olivia the C.E.O. seems remarkedly prone to male charms. Her whole career is supposedly based on her trying to forget Ryan and throwing herself into her work. And now he’s back (secretly) and she just can’t resist heading to his house to give him corporate news personally, or inviting him to her special restaurant where she goes to escape, or surprise meeting him at the airport on his return from a trip to help him unwind.
• So now we know his handlers have him set up for some industrial espionage at Delphi. Forty years of effort for this. Not sure exactly why or what though. Was Ryan’s age predating his recruitment, or did the handlers give him the extra age? If they did, why do they need for him to steal something related to it from Delphi? They already know how to extend a male’s life. These little bits of foreshadowing just leave me confused, rather than anticipating.
• Senior V.P. of something or the other Nicole knows Ryan and Olivia’s history. Does that mean she is one of Ryan’s handlers? Again, the bit of foreshadowing is confusing me rather than drawing me in. Making a decision right here, this will not be one of the books I stick out to the end no matter what. The 100 page rule applies. If my opinion isn’t on the positive side at that point, I am putting it down.
• Are these people in sixth grade or are they senior executives in a bio-pharmaceutical company? This is the equivalent of Johnny telling Susie that he thinks Robbie likes her. If there’s a Tolo (Sadie Hawkins for you east coasters) dance involved I am going to drop this book before page 100. I’m on page 70 something and it’s not looking good…
• Okay, now we know what the deal is for Ryan, 85 pages in. Delphi holds the secret to male longevity. For some reason, only men who already have the alteration can see it, which is why Ryan is recruited. Why Delphi has this secret is not revealed yet of course. Why the C.E.O doesn’t know about it isn’t revealed either. If she did know, she would immediately suspect Ryan of being his father. Pretty certain I won’t last beyond page 100, because this is just stupid. Good idea, poor execution.

Yep, definitely giving up on this. As I wrote in that last note, this is just poor execution. Everyone acts like they are in sixth grade with regard to the relationships, not like they are 80 years old. Plus, Boultbee can’t decide if he wants this to be a techno-sci-fi thriller or a cheesy romance. The two are not mixing well in this case.

If you want to buy/read this book despite my shredding review, head over to Lulu.com to buy it. It appears to be the only place still selling it. The publisher, Shadow Rose Publishing, let its web site go defunct two months ago. The site for the imprint Shadowmere Publishing is still active, though it lacks any information normally associated with an imprint, like its back list. I’m betting it will disappear when the domain name expires.

Title: The gender divide
Author: David Boultbee
Cover artist: Melanie Fuller
Imprint / publisher: Shadowmere Publishing / Shadow Rose Publishing
Format: Paperback
Length: 222 p. (I got to 99)
Publication date: July 2007
ISBN-13: 978-1-8907-8512-3

Astute visitors will have noticed that I’ve had Ben Bernanke’s Essays on the Great Depression on my Now Reading list for over two months. I’ve been slowly working my way through this book, but with the new year fast approaching I think it’s time I gave up. This one not so much because the material isn’t interesting, but because I am not up to the material.

I picked up the book last year, before he was even appointed to be chairman of the Federal Reserve. Some economics writer listed the tome in a bibliography of a their own book. I can’t remember who specifically. I suspect it was N. Gregory Mankiw but I could be totally wrong and I don’t have that book handy to check.

This is not to say that I haven’t gotten anything from the book. I have. But this is not what I was expecting. I thought the book would be more essay-like. Instad, it is reprints of some of Bernanke’s academic papers. Very very heavy with graphs and tables and equations and jargon that is well beyond me.

The big thing I did get out of this is the correction of some misimpressions I had. I’d always thought that the Great Depression affected the United States primarily. Incorrect. The economic phenomenon occurred worldwide. I also thought that the public works projects initiated by Franklin Roosevelt hadn’t done much, but that our entry into World War II boosted us out of the economic slowdown. But according to Bernanke, the primary cause of the Depression was adherence to the gold standard by the U.S. and western European governments along with some poor policies by United States central bankers. As countries dropped off the gold standard between 1931 and 1936, they began recovering from the Depression. In other words, the key determinant of recovery was not World War II, but instead abandonment of the gold standard.

Title: Essays on the great depression
Author: Ben S. Bernanke
Imprint / publisher: Princeton University Press
Format: Paperback
Length: 310 p. (includes index)
Publication date: 2004
ISBN-10: 0-691-11820-5
ISBN-13: 978-0-691-11820-8
Subject: Depressions — 1929 — United States
Subject: Depressions — 1929
LC classification: HB3717 1929 .B365 2000

This is a pretty short review, because I invoked the Nancy Pearl rule: if you aren’t enjoying the book 50 pages in, put it down and read something else. I actually read to page 142 before I decided to put this book down last night. It was just too much of a chore to read, though it has some promise.

The story: humans have colonized a few other planets. One planet found rotates around it’s axis so slowly that day and night last hundreds of years. The meridian between the day side and the night side only moves a few miles every turn around the sun. Two alien races (the only alien races found in the galaxy so far) evolved there. The night side demons controlled the day side aliens. Our protagonist is Simon Mayaram who works for the consul’s office. He came to the planet because he was interested in the demons. But by the time he got there (it takes dozens of years to travel from planet to planet) the demons had been obliterated (mostly) by the human colonists working with the day-siders. The day-siders use surgery and drugs to become as nearly human as possible. Only some of them are now agitating to overthrow the human rulers. A group of such terrorists attack during a party and take Simon and one of the day-siders hostage after killing everyone else.

A lot of the book is told through the perceptions of the aliens. Along with a strange human back-story/history that’s told piecemeal, I found it very hard to get into and understand what was going on and who the players all were. In addition, their motivations and shifting alliances got confusing. I put the book down last night when I realized I just didn’t care about any of the characters and that hindered my caring about the story.

Rather than being a bad or poorly written book, I get the distinct impression that this one is more an issue of it just not appealing to me.

Title: Celestis
Author: Paul Park
Imprint / publisher: Tor
Format: Hardcover
Length: 287 p.
Publication date: June 1995
ISBN-10: 0-312-85899-X
Subject: Space colonies — Fiction
LC classification: PS3566.A6745 C6 1995

I had only a vague idea of what metaphysics was prior to reading this book. Had I known, I probably wouldn’t have snagged this book from whatever pile of used books it came from. But really, I should have had a clue. Wikipedia notes that metaphysics is the study of what transcends physics. Duh. Strike one on me. To tell the truth, such questions as Does the world exist outside the mind? don’t really interest me. I tend generally toward a view of philosophy as espoused by the pragmatists.

Nevertheless, I don’t think I would have gained much of an understanding of Jacques Maritain’s view of Thomist metaphysics from reading the book. His writing is convoluted. The sentence diagrams for a typical passage would look like the worst spaghetti code I ever wrote. He uses terms and Latin phrases that no one outside of a philosophy major would ever bother to learn.

My general feeling is: don’t bother with this. Luckily, I doubt anyone reading this ever will.

Title: A preface to metaphysics: seven lectures on being
Author: Jacques Maritain
Imprint / publisher: Mentor Omega / New American Library
Format: Mass market paperback
Length: 142 p.
Publication date: 1962
Subject: Ontology
LC classification: BD312 .M32 1945

This will be a pretty short review since I didn’t finish the book. However, it’s not really negative. It’s just that I thought the book would be something other than what it is. I was expecting an inside look or journalism expose of the production of bullshit. How and why do the powers that be create and manipulate us. Rather, it’s more of a series of essays on various forms of bullshit, with various statistics thrown in. However, it’s written from an outsider leftist former activist’s viewpoint, making it more of a polemic than a documentary. After reading No Logo, I just am not in the mood for another polemic of this sort. So I’ve put the book down, and it’s going on the pile of stuff to give away.

Title: Your call is important to us: the truth about bullshit
Author: Laura Penny
Imprint / publisher: Three Rivers Press / Crown / Random House
Format: Paperback
Publication date: 2006
Length: 256 p.
ISBN-10: 1-4000-8104-1
ISBN-13: 978-1-4000-8104-2
Subject: Progaganda
Subject: Public relations
Subject: Advertising
Subject: Deception
Subject: Manipulative behavior
LC classification: HM1231.P46 2005