Editorial Review

To many, Emperor Hirohito of Japan is remembered as a helpless figurehead during Japan's wars with China and the U.S. According to the received wisdom, he knew nothing of the plan to bomb Pearl Harbor and had no power to stop atrocities like the Rape of Nanking. The emperor was the mild-mannered little man who traipsed with Mickey Mouse in Disneyland and who brought peace through surrender, certainly not "one of the most disingenuous persons ever to occupy the modern throne." Herbert Bix's charged political biography, however, argues that such accepted beliefs are myths and misrepresentations spun by both Japanese and Americans to protect the emperor from indictment. Since Hirohito's death in 1989, hundreds of documents, diaries, and scholarly studies have been published (and subsequently ignored) in Japan. Historian Bix used these sources to develop this shocking and nuanced portrait of a man far more shrewd, activist, and energetic than previously thought. Caught up in the fever of territorial expansion, Hirohito was the force that animated the war system, who, acting fully as a military leader and head of state, encouraged the belligerency of his people and pursued the war to its disastrous conclusion. To the very end, Hirohito refused to acknowledge any responsibility for his role in the death of millions as well as the brutalities inflicted by his forces in China, Korea, and the Philippines. In fact, he worked with none other than General MacArthur to select his fall guys and fix testimony at the Tokyo War Crimes Trials--the emperor trying to protect the throne at all cost, the U.S. acting to ensure control of the Japanese population and the military by retaining Hirohito as a figurehead.

Reviews (9)

A pleasure to read and excellent introduction to algebra
Kenn Amdahl has succeeded in making algebra look like a game and maybe he is right.
I recommend this book to anybody who has the slightest interest in the subject. It reads almost like listening to your mathematically inclined buddy exchanging a few words on mathematics over a beer; that's what I felt, two buddies getting together and just shooting breeze over mathematics.
It certainly made me conscious of paying more attention to VOCABULARY and CONCEPTS and less on manipulation.
You won't regret the time you spent on this book nor the money!

FANTASTIC BOOK ON ALGEBRA!!!!!!
THIS HAS GOT TO BE ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS ON ALGEBRA CONCEPTS THAT THERE IS ON THE MARKET. I AM OVER 60 YRS. OLD AND WANTED TO STUDY ALGEBRA. I ONLY WISH THERE EXISTED MATH TEACHERS WITH THE ABILITY TO COMMUNICATE CONCEPTS AS CAN THESE GENTELMEN. WOULD GIVE 10 STARS IF POSSIBLE!!!!!!!!!!

Reviews (2)

Fine Compilation
I think Gertrude Stein is a supreme literary artist of the 20th century, and this anthology offers a wide range of her work, which ranges from poetry to essays. Her writing is difficult to penetrate, but in her case, and I rarely say this about abstruse writing, it enhances the effect. It's as if underneath words lies the human being itself, in all its feeling and rhythms, and language is a mere shadow of this self. Her words are like paths crisscrossing around the being, so that the reader can eventually see the whole. Magnificant artist. She also was apparently a good person, having befriended Hemingway, James, Picasso and others. A+.

Reviews (61)

For Those Who Can't Get Enough of Nugent
Since only Nugent fans will ever read this trash they will lap it up with the anxiety of Nugent himself, gun in hand, tracking defenseless animals. Every nuance of reality is stood on end in this delusional manifesto of individual inaccountability to society. The media is seen as the monster it is but is warped into a fantasyland tyrant controlled by "liberals," which, as a term encompasses a pluralism in society that in politics turns into an embracing of the ideas of a culture as a whole with the end result that nothing but conservative measures can be a political outcome. This outragageous trash talking hatred done at a distance is targeted at the vast majority of society which Ted dismisses as "idiots.".

Gonzo was a term coined by Hunter S. Thompson to describe fictionalized accounts of real events, and Ted's appropriation of the term is ironic. A Vietnam draft dodger cum chickenhawk, and a statutory rapist who became a guardian of the girl with whom he carried on an incestuous affair are not things to sell to the public as a compassionate socially responsible citizen. So what we have with this book is the evolution of a great entertainer, a tremendous actor who is able to create a larger than life mystique and continues to be able to sell himself to a stronghold of adoring fans.

It's Ted, need one say more!
If this book doesn't give you a case of "Buck Fever", I don't know what will!!!!If you approach the book as a metaphor spoken by the Nuge, it makes it all the more interesting.I think Ted brings into the book some very real truths about guns and weapons.Things like "You'll never see a gang banger with a Hunter's Safety Permit in their back pocket".Also on gun handling he brings in very real personal experiences the rules of gun handling and storage which many of us have grown up with from day one that aren't taught in "Liberal Education".He also includes heartwarming stories about people like Fred Bear (also THE BEST hunting song ever written)..This book is not one for the timid or someone expecting a textbook, it hits reality with common sense backed up with factual information that you won't hear in the media.

One minus five = negative four!
Ted, Ted, Ted, where did you go wrong? Do you think
that you are Rush Limbaugh, or some other right-wing
loudmouth? One would think so from reading this book.
Now back in the late sixties, Ted used to be the
best guitarist in Detroit. He could make that Byrdland
sing! His control of feedback was superb! He could have
become a great, but something went wrong along the way.
Perhaps a clue lies in the writings of his book. It
seems that he never questions himself -- like other

Reviews (17)

free your mind
I'm going to be honest: I was afraid to read this book.I don't assimilate disturbing imagery well and I was afraid certain details of the book might become forever lodged in my mind, haunting and confusing me.That's exactly what happened.


In support of the author I finally decided to just jump into the book, come what may.Two days after the book arrived (and after two days of placing the gruesome cover face down on my desk) I picked it up and started to read.Forty-eight hours later I feel sympathy for a man whom many might say deserved none, and that, I believe, is due to what was the loyally enmeshed and yet cautiously objective presence of author, roadie, documentarian, and honorary Murder Junkie Evan Cohen.


I read this book in three separate sittings and found myself rearranging my schedule to make time for the last thirty unread pages.No stranger to the road myself, I delighted in the memories evoked by the details of the band's tour: hard travel, long hours behind the wheel, bad food, cheap motels.Any similarity to my experiences ends abruptly there, as GG and the Murder Junkies are subjected to the equally unpredictable nature of their fans, sleazy booking agents, and horrific opening bands.They are steeped in drink, illness, women, exhaustion, country music, adrenaline, liberty, and madness.Cohen's attention to detail gives a specific, genuine, and purposeful life to all of these elements, as well as to GG himself.This book is alive, undated, a testimonial to the purity (or impurity) of the moment.


Like most anyone who saw GG Allin perform, I felt curiosity and apprehension about approaching the subject, even in book form.Now that I have read it, I see that I needn't have worried.Cohen graciously affords the reader the option of standing near the back in the safe zones, but he also expands those zones to bring you face-to-face (as he literally was) with the incomprehensible and abstract violence, the sociopathic perversion, the thrill of rage - all the intensity available via the terrified, yet unflinching, mind's eye of the author.


Evan Cohen was chosen to be one of only four other people on this fragile satellite to mark that last slash on the wall with GG Allin.In his time as a Murder Junkie he saw and experienced things most human beings never will, perhaps even shouldn't.Why it was deemed that he be the one sober witness to such undreamt-of chaos must still plague him.I submit that the answer lies within the covers of this compelling memoir.

- Katarina Parker

Woody Allen on G.G. Allin!
Sure, we all know G.G. Allin was one of a kind, but so is the author of this book, Evan Cohen.

Evan, with humor much like a cross between Woody Allen and Don Rickles, delivers a truely fun book that does what it sets out to do.Tell the story of the last days of a punk rock icon.

Evan, through his self-deprication, and, well, just being Evan, makes this one of my favorite books, ever.

Buy it.You won't regret it.And ignore those who "don't get it".If G.G. picked Evan to be his roadie - then G.G. "got it".Which he certainly did.

Get this book NOW before it goes up to $200 dollars again!

George Tabb
Spring, 2004

Reviews (39)

Entertaining but I am not yet convinced of its greatness.
Beautiful Losers is impressive as a work of free association, of stark poetic imagery, of isolation and even, at moments, filth and loathing. Cohen deftly navigates the sublime as both beautiful, delicate and vauntedly tragic and as self-indulgent, filthy, desperate, despondent and ill. I admire his work for this reason, he seems able to strip his descriptions of any political or even polemical quality. And, in spite of this apparent "honesty," I never get the sense the world has lost its beauty or wonder in his eyes. It is disinterest, I suppose, that makes him delve so deeply into his subject. And what isn't his subject?

Catherine Tekawitha is a saint, an Iroquois who forsook her faith and became a Catholic. Her healing powers and capacity for suffering are well within the purview of the Catholic metaphysic. She is a mysterious creature not of the stone chapels and cloistered gradens of Europe but of the North American wilderness, a wilderness surrounding Montreal, city of the protagonist's birth and the place he calls home. This wilderness, both real and perceived, never ceases to suffuse the intellect and libido of the narrator. He chooses St. Kateri as his life's work, discoursing (in French and English) on her history and the many reasons she is both a saint and a legend. Her transcendent power is a source of desire for this young man who has married an Iroquois woman himself and appears to try and make St. Kateri a presence in his own conjugal bed.

But his wife dies. Commits suicide. She was long suffering, misunderstood and even neglected by her lover. Our protagonist remembers her in all of her potency before she took her own life. Is she his wife? Is she the reincarnation of Catherine? Who is she? And what does he want from her? From anyone? He lives in his cloistered apartment that, after his wife's suicide, becomes filled with filth. He seldom removes himself from this degradation and only a male friend/lover can bring him, moment to moment, out of himself.

He is searching for a teacher, longing for someone to show him how to forget himself. It is this search that makes you wonder whether all of this suffering and loss and wastefulness is self-imposed. The narrator is enraptured by St. Kateri's pain threshold, her self-abnegation, the way her scarred body heals itself upon her death. The mysteries of her flesh are many and this apparent detachment of body and spirit (is it detachment really? Cohen makes you wonder) leads her to sainthood, to communion. Does the narrator want the same? He lives in a world where his flesh is not entirely his ally. He has trouble admitting to himself he is bisexual and has a steady liason with his male friend from childhood. This distress, confusion and internal conflict appears to lead him toward this great suffering woman.

But is this a great work? I am not yet convinced. Like Joyce and Miller, Cohen has no trouble bringing forward a variety of stunning images. But is this style over substance? In Joyce I can grasp his intentions and am more easily led toward the development of his aesthetic. Here, I am more resistant. Is there a great story being told within these pages? The jury is still out on this question for me.However, maybe you will decide for yourself? I certainly believe this is worth your effort.

Four stars.

A Rare Experience to Open Your Mind
The best way I can describe finishing this story is that you come away feeling you've experienced something and are changed because of it. The story is intense and wild in its extremes, amazingly crude and deeply emotional. It's easy to hate and tricky to love, and has doubtlessly scared away 2/3 of its readers. It's fabulously fantastic at times, and so incredibly mundane and confusing in others... It reads like life.

Don't trust anyone else's opinion; you need to read the story and experience it in your own way, because it's not possible for two people to have the same understanding of it.

Reviews (4)

Even If You Have All His Albums...
There is the beautiful book cover in purple, there are the lyrics printed in verse format...but mostly , there are the scrawling, handwritten notations of a [pick your adjective]

madman/poet/devout/philosopher/philanderer.

And the drawings Nick Cave makes...oh my, he seems to be at war with himself and that is Really interesting.You will enjoy seeing different lyric versions, and his writing in progress as things get crossed out and then re-written.This book is definitely a must have for the Nick Cave devotee.

Essential Cave, shows his growth
A big improvement over his first King Ink collection, this book shows just how far Nick Cave has come as a songwriter. Collecting his lyrics from his masterpiece Tender Prey all the way through his masterpiece The Boatman's Call, this shows Cave tackling broader subjects with an ever-more-eloquent pen, but staying "chained to the same bowl of vomit" as he puts it, returning again and again to the recurring themes of love, loss, God, and death. He delves deep into these themes in all their revertebrations. This book also includes lyrics to songs that have thus far remained unpublished, or were written for other artists, as well as a short "movie treatment." Also included is a manuscript of his essay "The Flesh Made Word", long adorned by Cave afficiandos, which probably makes it worth the price of the book alone for them, just being able to have a printed copy of this masterful essay. Reading this - you can also hear him dictate it on his CD, "The Secret Life of The Love Song/The Flesh Made Word: Two Essays By Nick Cave" - you can see why he was chosen to write the forward for a version of The Gospel According To Mark. Cave is a true talent, and this proves it. Essential for all admirers.

Brilliantly Twisted
Nick Cave has developed much since the publishing of King Ink volume I. A clearer style is developing, much different from the frenetic ravings in the previous book, a style more inspired by the recurring themes of lossand redemption. Some of Cave's beautifully crafted melancholy poems aresimply perfect down to the last detail, though his fiery passionate bitsare equally brilliant.