It's the long, hot summer of 1968. For ten-year-old Kathleen Slaven and her pals, the school holidays beckon. Into their run-down village in the west of Scotland arrives Tony, a real American kid, like the ones from the movies, ready to lead them into all kinds of adventure: gaining sweet revenge on their sadistic teacher Miss Grant on a trip to Ayr, discovering the unsettling secrets of 'Shaggy Island', and coming up with ways to outwit the people who screw up their lives - like the local parish priest Father Flynn. But the world they live in is a precarious one. And while they escape by playing at TV heroes and film stars, their mothers grow old before their time on broken promises, and fathers make a living in the coal mines or 'digging ditches, in the pissing rain', often boozing or gambling the wages away while their families go hungry. In an impoverished community, suffering and violence are never far from home. And even the optimism and escapism of their years cannot protect the children from the tragedies of life.

It's the long, hot summer of 1968. For ten-year-old Kathleen Slaven and her pals, the school holidays beckon. Into their run-down village in the west of Scotland arrives Tony, a real American kid, like the ones from the movies, ready to lead them into all kinds of adventure: gaining sweet revenge on their sadistic teacher Miss Grant on a trip to Ayr, discovering the unsettling secrets of 'Shaggy Island', and coming up with ways to outwit the people who screw up their lives - like the local parish priest Father Flynn. But the world they live in is a precarious one. And while they escape by playing at TV heroes and film stars, their mothers grow old before their time on broken promises, and fathers make a living in the coal mines or 'digging ditches, in the pissing rain', often boozing or gambling the wages away while their families go hungry. In an impoverished community, suffering and violence are never far from home. And even the optimism and escapism of their years cannot protect the children from the tragedies of life.

In this commentary on chapter one, "Why I am So Wise," of Nietzsche's Ecce Homo, the author dispels the long-standing impression that Ecce Homo is an irrational book in which the madness that claimed Nietzsche only months after he began writing it had already begun its work. Ecce Homo, it is alleged, is not egotistical, or narcissistic, or megalomaniacal. It is not a work of madness. In his linear exposition of this first chapter, the author presents Nietzsche's revelation of the tragic fact that his very aliveness was in a state of being overwhelmed, consumed, by powerful unconscious emotion, the condition he called decadence. Nietzsche's madness may have caused him to lose perspective on the meaning of having dwelt in "a world of exalted and delicate things," as he writes of himself in Ecce, but the original experience of elevation that comes of an abundance of life, of a surplus of life, certainly was not pathological.

Colorado has some great ghost stories, and this book contains spirits, spooks, and sprites that are a colorful lot of characters. MaryJoy Martin brings them vividly into focus as she describes the San Juans marvelous mix of cultures, from ancient Puebolans, migratory gold seekers to the hungry immigrants straight off the boat. Woof and warp, these tales weave a unique tapestry that matches the mystery and majesty of the mountains. The majority of the tales originated before the 1920s, most going back to the gold rush days and earlier.

The story of the tempestuous romance between Rhett Butler and Scarlet O'Hara is set amid the drama of the Civil War.