reading in ints from binary files

[Bill]

Quick Newb question:

How do I read in integers from binary files?  readlines() reads returns the
data in as a string.  I can manipulate the string to get the desired result.
However, is there an easier way of doing this?  I currently do something
like:

f=open('file', 'rb')
s = f.readline()
l = list(s[0:-1])
l.reverse()
a = array.array('h', ''.join(l))

There's gotta be an easier way.

Thanks in advance,
Bill