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American Science Fiction and the Cold War
The American Landscape
Encyclopedia of African History
Sociological Worlds: Comparative and Historical Readings on Society
The United States and the European Union: The Political Economy of a Relationship
Religion in Archaic and Republican Rome and Italy: Evidence and Experience
The Crusades (Essential Histories S.)
The Crimean War (Essential Histories S.)
The American Civil War: The War in the East 1861-May 1863 (Essential Histories S.)
Atlantic Air War: Sub Hunters Vs. U-boats
Douglas A-2 Invader
Air Commando Fighters of World War II
Hell in the Heavens: Ill-fated 8th Air Force Bomb Group Missions
Racing Bearcats and Corsairs (RaceplaneTech S.)
Boeing C-17 Globemaster III: Volume 30 (Warbird Tech)
Grumman A-6 Intruder (Warbird Tech S.)
XB-70 Valkyrie (Warbird Tech S.)
Illumininated Celtic Book of Days
Long May She Wave: A Graphic History of the American Flag
The Politics of Frenchness in Colonial Algeria, 1930-1954 (Rochester Studies in African History & the Diaspora)
Animals in Human Histories: The Mirror of Nature and Culture (Studies in Comparative History)
Conversion in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Seeing and Believing (Studies in Comparative History)
The Power of African Cultures
Writing Ghana, Imagining Africa: Nation and African Modernity
Venereal Disease and the Poor in London Hospitals, 1550-1800: The Foul Wards (Rochester Studies in Medical History)

Cold Wars (Star Trek New Frontier: Gateways, Book 6)

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Not His Best Effort
Not the Greatest... Not the Worst
Best of Gateway Series
Great Trek story
Read it. Just read it.

Cold Wars (Star Trek New Frontier: Gateways, Book 6)
Peter David
Manufacturer: Pocket
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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Gateways #7: What Lay Beyond (Star Trek)
No Man's Land (Star Trek Voyager: Gateways, Book 5)
Doors into Chaos (Star Trek The Next Generation: Gateways, Book 3)
Demons of Air and Darkness (Star Trek Deep Space Nine: Gateways, Book 4)
Being Human (Star Trek New Frontier, No 12)

ASIN: 0671042424

Book Description

A century ago, the imperial Thallonians separated two feuding alien races, depositing each of them on a new world safely distant from that of their ancestral enemies. Now, however, the Gateways have made it possible for the long dormant blood feud to begin anew. Captain Mackenzie Calhoun of the U.S.S. Excalibur and his partner, Captain Elizabeth Shelby of the U.S.S. Trident, find themselves fighting a losing battle to keep the horrific violence from escalating, even as they gradually realize the catastrophic danger posed by the Gateways themselves!

Download Description

Missing for two hundred millennia, the legendary Iconians have returned, bringing with them the secret of interdimensional teleportation across vast interstellar distances. Awakened once more, their ancient Gateways are rewriting the map of the galaxy, and nowhere more than in the New Frontier®.... A century ago, the imperial Thallonians separated two feuding alien races, depositing each of them on a new world safely distant from that of their ancestral enemies. Now, however, the Gateways have made it possible for the long dormant blood feud to begin anew. Captain Mackenzie Calhoun of the U.S.S. Excalibur and his partner, Captain Elizabeth Shelby of the U.S.S. Trident, find themselves fighting a losing battle to keep the horrific violence from escalating, even as they gradually realize the catastrophic danger posed by the Gateways themselves!

Customer Reviews:

Not His Best Effort.......2007-05-28

I generally enjoy all of the Peter David's Star Trek books I have read, but this one was very boring to me. The story was not that interesting. Usually I cannot put his books down, but this one was almost tough to finish.

Not the Greatest... Not the Worst.......2004-06-22

I must admit this was my first foray into Peter David's New Frontier, and while Peter David seems a great writer, I'm not a fan.

The story here was good and riveting as well the character development for M'Ress especially was great. As for the Gateways series I recommend TNG's book instead of this one, as this one doesn't have much to do with the real problem. The only relation to the Gateways problem in fact, is the fact that it is a gateway that has restarted a war between two races. This book simply serves as a "Hey, here's another reason gateways are bad."

My major issue with NF is that I don't like the fact that Calhoun and crew are "silly" and very much NOT what you have come to expect of a Starfleet crew and captain. Shelby is about the only believable recurring character here. Calhoun is not professional and boldly goes against what the Federation is and the admirals know it. The fact that he is still a captain after all of his shenanigans is a miracle. I think the New Frontier series was created simply to have the Star Trek name on it. Peter David is a good enough writer that he could have written his sci-fi books with out Star Trek and they'd have been better.

Best of Gateway Series.......2002-06-09

This was the best of the 5 I've read. Like many New Frontier books, this one ends in a cliffhanger, but the story just prior to that point has a conclusion that you can feel is complete in itself.
Peter David is probably the most consistently entertaining ST author, but this was a challenge for him. I think dealing with two New Frontier crews is difficult. He pulls it off, but not as much fun, in my opinion, as some of the earlier New Frontier books. The two separate Captain--First Officer relationships just don't have the flame of Calhoun and Shelby. And Shelby isn't her same old self either. That can be good, as the future will tell, but so far I was slightly disappointed in that aspect.
Still, the book by David is the best I've seen of the Gateway series.

Great Trek story.......2002-01-13

Like many reviewers have mentioned here before it is a story of two races that hate each other and were separated long ago by the Thallonians. They sent them to two different worlds with no spaceflight technology. Since this is a Gateway series you know they get their hands on it and attack each other. The Excaliber and Trident commanded by Calhouhn and Shelby are sent to solve the Gateway problem and the war between these races.
The story is very typical New Frontier style with interesting twists and attitude. I did noticed the NF gang is mellowing and growing up more except for the engineering crew with that Fetus joke. Thatcould have been cut down a little. Overall I thought the story was great and to me the best of the series tied with the TNG story. The series started so-so, dropped to pretty bad in the 2nd but from that point on was good to excellent.

Read it. Just read it........2001-12-18

I'm gonna need another bang in the eye for dismissing Peter David's New Frontier world before I read this book. Admittedly, there are holes because I didn't read a few NF installments, but those holes didn't diminish my understanding or enjoyment of this book. A few details missed? Yeah. But in the Big Picture, I was still able to put it all together. The holes just make me want to go back and read the NF books I missed, so how could that be a bad thing?

In this, novel, Peter expertly guides his "irreverently-professional" bunch through a rousing adventure involving both ancient technology and ancient enemies.

Take two vicious enemies and put them on separate planets to keep them away from one another. Introduce technology (those dratted gateways) that enables them to get to each other in the blink of an eye and boom Big Trouble in Thallonian space.

Enter Mac Calhoun on the *Excalibur* and his wife, Elizabeth Shelby, on the *Trident,* charged by Starfleet with keeping the peace.

What follows is "peacekeeping" quite unlike what you might expect from, say, Jean-Luc Picard. Take, for example, this excerpt, written here to give you an idea of the reigning attitude throughout:

"Calhoun was standing in the open area within the desk, and Si Cwan was next to him. The Counselars had made it clear that they would not convene nor speak with him at all unless he stayed in the 'Place of Address,' which was where he was standing at that moment. Calhoun did not particularly want to be in the Place of Address. Just then, he'd have far preferred to be in the Place of Beating the Crap out of the Counselars, had such a location actually existed."

I ask you, can you beat this?

While this novel stands alone just fine, it *ends* with a gateway cliffhanger, same as all the rest of them do, to be taken up in the final novel in this series, "What Lay Beyond."

But for real? Read this puppy. And read all the other Gateway novels while you're at it.

Cold War Fantasies: Film, Fiction, and Foreign Policy

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a retrospective tinged with nostalgia

Cold War Fantasies: Film, Fiction, and Foreign Policy
Ronnie D. Lipschutz
Manufacturer: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Culture of the Cold War (The American Moment)

ASIN: 0742510522

Book Description

As memories of the Cold War recede, it becomes more and more difficult to remember what it was about and why it evoked such feelings of intensity and fatalism. Fortunately, we have a gold mine of movies and novels to help us recall why an entire generatio

Customer Reviews:

a retrospective tinged with nostalgia.......2006-06-28

Lipschutz reminds us in this 40 year retrospective of what the Cold War was like, to Americans who went through it. But, and perhaps more to the point, he writes for Americans and others too young to grown to adulthood under it. It is sobering that it is now already 17 years since 1989, when the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact crumbled.

As the fears and passions have started to fade, the book reminds us why those existed to begin with. Through an extensive survey of contemporaneous films and fiction, he recasts the glory years in an afterglow of nostalgia. Though were those years really so cool? It's easy to laugh at some of the movies and books, but the peril was real, as made clear by a sober reading.

Monsters, Mushroom Clouds, and the Cold War: American Science Fiction and the Roots of Postmodernism, 1946-1964 (Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy)

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Monsters, Mushroom Clouds, and the Cold War: American Science Fiction and the Roots of Postmodernism, 1946-1964 (Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy)
M. Keith Booker
Manufacturer: Greenwood Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0313318735

Book Description

The 1950s are widely regarded as the golden age of American science fiction. This book surveys a wide range of major science fiction novels and films from the long 1950s--the period from 1946 to 1964--when the tensions of the Cold War were at their peak. The American science fiction novels and films of this period clearly reflect Cold War anxieties and tensions through their focus on such themes as alien invasion and nuclear holocaust. In this sense, they resemble the observations of social and cultural critics during the same period. Meanwhile, American science fiction of the long 1950s also engages its historical and political contexts through an interrogation of phenomena, such as alienation and routinization, that can be seen as consequences of the development of American capitalism during this period. This economic trend is part of the rise of the global phenomenon that Marxist theorists have called "late capitalism." Thus, American science fiction during this period reflects the rise of late capitalism and participates in the beginnings of postmodernism, described by Frederic Jameson as the "cultural logic of late capitalism."

American Science Fiction and the Cold War: Literature and Film

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Trendy Academic Garbage

American Science Fiction and the Cold War: Literature and Film
David Seed
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1579581951

Book Description

American Science Fiction--in both literature and film--has played a key role in the portrayal of the fears inherent in the Cold War. The end of this era heralds the need for a reassessment of the literary output of the forty-year period since 1945. Working through a series of key texts, American Science Fiction and the Cold War investigates the political inflections put on American narratives in the post-war decades by Cold War cultural circumstances. Nuclear holocaust, Russian invasion, and the perceived rise of totalitarianism in American society are key elements in the author's exploration of science fiction narratives that include Fahrenheit 451, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Dr. Strangelove.

Customer Reviews:

Trendy Academic Garbage.......2001-09-09

This book is destined to remain in the obscurity of a special collections back catalog in feminist gender studies of a small liberal arts college on the east coast. "Most science fiction critics are intellectual dorks" to quote Stephen King, which describes Seed succinctly. And John Clute as well.

Average customer rating:

Frustrating
More truth than fiction
Good but flawed tale
Catapulted to the forefront of World War III predictions
A Convinving Look Into The Future

Cold Allies
Patricia Anthony
Manufacturer: Harcourt
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Brother Termite

ASIN: 0151185034

Book Description

A science fiction tale, combining humor, horror, high-tech tanks and artillery, and enigmatic visitors who read the darkest longings of the human mind.

Customer Reviews:

Frustrating.......2007-03-24

Well, afte reading "God's Fires" and saying in my review that I probably wouldn't be reading her other books... I went ahead and ordered them all anyway. That first book I read was just too good to ignore the rest of the work by this author, even though the ending frustrated me.

The first I finished was "Cold Allies" and it is a fantastic book. The storyline kept me turning the pages until I finished it in one sitting and the ending... though not quite as frustrating as "God's Fires" still left me unsatisfied.

It seems that Ms Anthony just can't come up with an ending that makes sense, that brings closure to her stories of Human and Alien intercourse. (Not the sexual kind.) The humans in the story had closure in some sense with everything except the aliens, just like in "God's Fires" and just like "The Happy Policeman" which I also just finished reading.

This is so frustrating because this lady can really hold your attention. Her writing is clear and, in places, poetic. I just wish she could close a science fiction book properly.

Oh well. I still have "Brother Termite", "Conscience of the Beagle" and "Eating Memories" to read. Let's see how it goes.

More truth than fiction.......2006-05-07

This author is definitely basing this more on truth than fiction. Writing it as fiction allows one to not have to defend what is.

Good but flawed tale.......2004-07-20

If you are looking for a story about strange happenings on the battlefied and a critique on war and our culture, this is a good place to start. If you want cogent military drama, probable future projections or realistic politics, then walk on by. It's the future and (naturally) the world is in ruins by man's wicked ways. The Arabs have invaded Europe because - as one officer put it, "They are hungry." Yeah, right. Not to conquer the infidel or force Islam but for a nice plate of pasta.

Let's get the bad parts out of the way. Weaponary is dated - apparently in the future missles and airplanes are banned. All actions seems to be on the ground. The invasion of Eastern Europe is susiciously similar to the earlier invasion by the Turks under Saladin. A virtual fighting machine is introduced but it is vague, more description than real. Secondly, politics are wacko - Libyans, Moroccans, Egyptians and Algerians who have been bickering for centuries suddenly unite. And while Europe will probably be Muslim within a century it will be due to the loss of will, not an invasion.

Good parts: The ephemeral nature of the aliens, the "Virtual" world in which the captured humans lived, the way the personal problems were introduced, the ending.

Catapulted to the forefront of World War III predictions.......2001-11-12

For a long time, Tom Clancy's "Red Storm Rising" was considered by and large to be the best mass-market speculative fiction about World War III. Then in 1994, Eric Harry wrote his magnificent "Arc Light," which I went on CNN.com to call the best Cold War novel ever, about accidental war between the U. S. and Russia. What these two authors had in common, though, was not necessarily Russo-phobia. Rather, they were limited to envisioning World War III between the U. S. and another nuclear power capable of destroying the world.

It did not occur to them that the U. S. and Europe might fight World War III against a bunch of little countries united by religion, language, and simple, implacable revulsion towards the modern world. It occured instead to Patricia Anthony. And to think that when I first read this book (before the first paperback edition had been printed), I telephoned Ms. Anthony to chide her for making U. S. tanks too easy to kill in her book.

Even if the factor unifying the Arabs in her book is food insecurity (as a result of global warming making their already arid homelands more or less uninhabitable), she did come up with what wound up being the most accurate prediction of World War III. And by saying that, of course, I do stick my neck out a ways. All right, I admit that AS OF THIS WRITING, we aren't fighting all the Arab countries. The key words in that statement are capitalized.

And I also admit that aliens may never have visited here, or even if they have, may think our predicament so hopeless or our problem-solving abilities so pathetic that they would consider us not worth the effort of saving. Having the good ol' world restored by Mr. Blue for the price of two permanently abducted service members is just a bit intellectually dishonest, and the scene where SACEUR is taken in by a human "psychic" is ludicrous. For her part, Anthony attempts to restore the Victorian consensus that God (wearing the guise of a mysterious alien probe/organism) is clearly interested in human progress. Her thinking about how technology would transform war, however, is visionary even if not capable of being fully realized in a scant eight years. Never fear - the war will last longer than that, though perhaps not quite long enough for everybody's croplands to dry up on their own.

A Convinving Look Into The Future.......2001-10-11

What I like most about Anthony's futuristic (ie. take place at some time in the future) novels is how natural they play. Cold Allies, Cradle Of Splendour and Conscience of the Beagle have a view of the future that is very convincing and this makes the backdrop of each of the stories more interesting and palatable. This in contrast to say.... Dan Simmon's Hyperion where people owned houses that had each room in a different galaxy all joined together by some cosmic work hole. Yeah... interesting.... but the operative word in SF would be Fiction.

In Cold Allies, climatic change has lead to North Africa and the Middle East to completely dry up and all the Islamic countries have banded together and invaded Europe so as to avoid starving to death. The United States is a willing if slightly ineffecvtive ally to the Europeans, having had its economy and population devastated by the same climatic changes which have also put much of the USA under water.

The story revolves around the involvement (or lack of) in this war of a mysterious alien presence. The presence manifests itself as a blue globe and it invariably shows up at the sites of major battles in the European theatre.

The blue globe seems to have a strange attraction to a remotely controlled battle robot (think Mech-Warrior) whose satellite connected controller is so psychically connected to the robot that his persona appears to be felt by the globe through the inanimate workings of the machine.

The story line is part future history, part war drama and part alien mystery. The future history is interesting, the war drama is compelling with rich, complex characters, and the alien mystery is ultimately, well.... mysterious. Chris Carter, producer of the XFiles once said that what made episodes of that show frightening was that they never showed too much detail of the "monster". It was always shrouded in darkness. Anthony treats her aliens in a similar way, never anthropomorphizing them. This is achieved perfectly in her book God's Fires and it possibly a little overdone in Cold Allies, but I enjoyed it a lot none the less.

Unequivocal Americanism: Right-Wing Novels in the Cold War Era

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Unequivocal Americanism: Right-Wing Novels in the Cold War Era
MacEl D. Ezell
Manufacturer: Scarecrow Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0810810336

M. Keith Booker. Monsters, Mushroom Clouds, and the Cold War: American Science Fiction and the Roots of Postmodernism, 1946-1964.(Book Review): An article from: Utopian Studies

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M. Keith Booker. Monsters, Mushroom Clouds, and the Cold War: American Science Fiction and the Roots of Postmodernism, 1946-1964.(Book Review): An article from: Utopian Studies
Richard D. Erlich
Manufacturer: Society for Utopian Studies
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Utopian Studies, published by Society for Utopian Studies on March 22, 2003. The length of the article is 1541 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: M. Keith Booker. Monsters, Mushroom Clouds, and the Cold War: American Science Fiction and the Roots of Postmodernism, 1946-1964.(Book Review)
Author: Richard D. Erlich
Publication: Utopian Studies (Refereed)
Date: March 22, 2003
Publisher: Society for Utopian Studies
Volume: 14 Issue: 2 Page: 143(3)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

American Science Fiction and the Cold War: Literature and Film.(Review) (book review): An article from: Utopian Studies

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American Science Fiction and the Cold War: Literature and Film.(Review) (book review): An article from: Utopian Studies
Peter Ruppert
Manufacturer: Society for Utopian Studies
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Utopian Studies, published by Society for Utopian Studies on January 1, 2001. The length of the article is 1008 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: American Science Fiction and the Cold War: Literature and Film.(Review) (book review)
Author: Peter Ruppert
Publication: Utopian Studies (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 2001
Publisher: Society for Utopian Studies
Volume: 12 Issue: 1 Page: 258

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

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Monsters, Mushroom Clouds, and the Cold War : American Science Fiction and the Roots of Postmodernism, 1946-1964 (Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy)
M. Keith Booker
Manufacturer: Greenwood Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OTUMJ6

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