Miss You, Pat
Sharon Watts
S. Watts Illustration
44 Masters Place, Beacon, NY 12508
9781430327042 $19.95
Christina Francine Whitcher
Reviewer
Some events should never be forgotten. Some people should not be either. What love has a man? One that is selfless. He paves a path to excellence.
911 - Tape released August 16, 2006
"I'm on the 35th floor, okay, okay? Just relay to the command post we're trying to get up. There's numerous civilians at all stairwells, numerous burn injuries are coming down. I'm trying to send them down first. Apparently it's above the 75th floor. I don't know if they got there yet. Okay, Three Truck and we are still heading up. Okay? Thank you."
---Captain Patrick J. Brown
Captain Patrick Brown was a highly decorated firefighter. He was a Vietnam veteran, a yoga student, and his courage is legendary. Pat was a hero long before 911 occurred, but this day proved that. He had been one of eleven men from his squad of twenty-seven. They were last in the twin tower collapses. Pat died in the North tower. Watts' book is a tribute to this special human-being who reminds us that heroes in fact do exist today. They are real and fight the odds. Some hear our calls and then respond; give all they have - even at the cost of themselves.
The dictionary describes a hero as, "A man of distinguished courage or ability for his brave deeds." Such a man lived in New York City and died on September 11, 2002. His name was Captain J. Brown of the New York Fire Department.
The author of Miss You, Pat heard from so many people who were touched by Pat, that she began writing everything down and compiled all of it. Then, when she was the enormity of letters and pictures placed at Grand Central Station, she realized the size of the paths Pat crossed; Watts decided moments needed space in a book. People share their knowledge and use words like "remarkable," "modest," "strong," "empathetic," and "generous" to describe Pat in Watts' book. She also shares that she and Pat were once engaged to be married.
Pat not only went above and beyond the call of duty as a fire-fighter, he impacted people's lives in other ways too. For example, he volunteered giving time to teach blind people self-defense. Roxanne Bebee Blatz, Sensei at Seido Karate, had this to say, "Pat could be tough on the students. They loved him," however. "Too many people patronized them. He gave them encouragement and hope." Another example comes from Steve Baker. "Pat was my AA sponsor. He didn't judge me. He gave me strength." Still another example comes from a yoga instructor named Felise (Shivadasi) Berman. She reflects on Pat and what he did. "I never could have stood in your shoes. But when I move into a down-ward dog, a warrior, a crow, or a wheel, I think about you, Pat, wherever you are. Bye, Pat.
Pat has appeared on 60 Minutes, Dateline, in Yoga Journal, Time Magazine, NY Times, and on local NYC TV. A documentary has also been made about him called, Finding Paddy.
Many readers have never been to New York City. Some view the place as insensitive and filled with cold characters. Those whose lives Pat touched know this is not the case. Numerous citizens share their thoughts about Pat in Watt's book. Many show that not only good people live in New York City, but heroes do.
Firefighter, Mike Moran said this in Watt's book, "Paddy had pretty detailed instruction if he should ever die in a fire on what he wanted done. He had his place in Central Park picked out where he wanted his ashes spread." Since Pat's body could not be found, a tree was planted in his honor.
The books' layout includes multiple photographs of Pat, an author's note, Watt's journal entries, exerts from published work about Pat, and shared thoughts from people who knew Pat. There is also a note which says, "Proceeds of book sales will go to Bent On Learning, a not-for-profit program that brings yoga and meditation to NYC public schools and youth centers. For more information go to www.bentonlearning.org." The book is to be published on Pat's birthday, 11/9, and to be included among the archives at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center.
Just when we have begun to lose our faith in humankind, a larger than life hero steps up for the fight. Miss You, Pat is a haunting book that promises to restore your confidence; to have you thinking of Bonnie Tyler's song, I Need a Hero. Pat's nobility demonstrates the best of our humanity. In an era where we seek for ourselves, Pat distinguished himself by giving the greatest measure of love one can give. What love has a man? Sacrifice of himself for another. A highly recommended read.
Engleby
Sebastian Faulks
Doubleday
1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019
9780385524056, $24.95 www.doubleday.com
Dawn Papuga
Reviewer
"I decided not to be mad any more; I was never going back to a place like that again." Engleby, pg. 191
Audiences love underdogs and surprises. They also love the formulaic nature of entertainment. Readers, even if they've never encountered the term "archetype," recognize signature character types when they see them. Conventional literary signposts clue readers in on who to root for, who the good guys are, and who should be wearing the black hat. In Engleby, Sebastian Faulks turns conventional character development on its ear and, like Nabokov did with Humbert Humbert in Lolita, forces the audience to invest in a protagonist who is detestable, yet addictive.
By no means is Engleby merely a case study of a sociopath. Michael Engleby's very thought process is intellectually elitist, condescending, and uncomfortably devoid of recognizable emotion. On page 2, he gives readers cause to question his own understanding of the world's events. Because of the journal format of Engleby the protagonist is already set up as an unreliable narrator, but his intelligence and astuteness cause audiences to question the traditional literary device. Even still, through each analysis Engleby reveals regarding society and social practices in general, a clearer understanding of his anti-social mentality is gained. Engleby hovers on the fringe of social groups and is apt to point out that he likes "to be invisible." At one point he invites himself to the country with a group of students working on an independent film to be close to Jennifer Arkland, and while no one can remember who invited him to begin with, they're grateful for his cooking and drug supply. Other times he relives, in painful detail, the various abuses he sustains from countless others - both university dons and his fellow students at each of the schools he attends.
Though readers may sympathize with some of Engleby's experiences and insights, there are equally as many instances for the reader to turn on him. The sharp disconnect between his intellectual understanding of the world and social interaction, and the practice of those skills and application of that knowledge, is the single most unsettling aspect in his character. You don't like Engleby, but you want to understand him. You're compelled to understand him. Through the entire journal you wait for some inkling of genuine emotion, for some signal that he hasn't fully detached from society and reality, or that he is still, in some basic way, human. Faulks engineers this pseudo-diary in such a captivating way that the readers become co-conspirators with Engleby, and even to the very end, reserve a fraction of hope for the troubled young man.
Plenty of people have experiences or demonstrated the anti-social and intellectual superiority complexes that Engleby goes through, but not every one is Engleby. Not all intellectual elitists are certifiable. Not all highly intelligent people exist solely in the landscape of their own minds. Because Engleby had never experienced the guiding hand of a true teacher (he felt, and probably was, smarter than the "dons" at his various schools, including Cambridge). He stepped into the tiger pits of philosophy and sociology with no hand to help him back out into reality. His existential crisis is not merely a phase, but becomes a disease of the mind.
Engleby could be a treatise on the mind of a single mentally ill young man, but it shines a light on issues that are far more complicated. It's about the lack of perception of those around troubled individuals, and it can easily be a warning to society about the dangers of closing your eyes to bullying - specifically bullying based on a warped sense of tradition or "boys will be boys" attitudes. Most importantly, Engleby speaks to the dangers of knowledge and unguided intelligence, and the dangerous line in the sand between intelligence and insanity.
The last third of the book shifts perspective from the Engleby readers know, to a medicated, institutionalized Engleby who can identify his behavioral problems of the past and the crimes he committed, but still cannot feel appropriate emotional responses. The difference is that he wants to. While others may criticize this turn in the novel, it is absolutely necessary to complete the story. To leave the journal incomplete, or to shift to third person would render the tragedy in Engleby trite and meaningless. Without his shift from book knowledge to personal knowledge, his experiences and writings would be rendered pointless because even after he is given the tools to help himself, Engleby chooses to remain locked in the safety of his own mind where he can rearrange reality and history, and that itself is his tragedy.
Faulks departed from his comfortable writing styles with Engleby, and readers may or may not be appreciative of the sudden shift in gears. He moves from his comfort zone of historical fiction to a fiction riddled with history and both mental and social illness in such a way that reading the novel once would cheat readers out of the carefully woven clues and allusions Faulks works into his writing that are only able to be appreciated after the final revelations of the protagonist. Engleby may be a departure from Faulks' other writings, but it is a path well following him down.
No Second Chance
Harlan Coben
Dutton
c/o Penguin Group (USA) Inc
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
0525947299 $17.65
Doreen Luff
Reviewer
Rating: 4 Stars
Copyright by Doreen Luff for Curled Up With a Good Book, 2008
In "No Second Chance", Doctor Marc Seidman wakes up in the hospital that he works at with almost no recollection of what happened. He knew that he had been shot and he remembered what his last thought was. His daughter. His first thought was his daughter and how much he loved her. His daughter, Tara is six months old and a police detective tells him that she has been kidnapped and his wife is dead. Dr. Seidman is distraught with grief and in a state of shock. The shock becomes even greater when he finds out that he has been in the hospital for twelve days.
Twelve days his daughter has been missing. Twelve days his wife, Monica, has been dead and buried. The funeral was small and quiet. Her father had wanted it that way and could not wait for Marc to be released from the hospital. Her father, Edgar, was a very prominent man with lots of money. However, he was not a very nice man. We find out that he had "abused" his daughter. At the end of her life, she was seeing a psychiatrist for emotional problems. She thought that her husband did not love her anymore and might've been having an affair with his old girlfriend Rachel in college. She was right about one thing. Marc didn't really love his wife ever. He married her only because she was pregnant and he was trying to do the right thing. When she had the baby, he almost resented Tara for making him make the sacrifices that you must make as a parent. He even questioned himself about being a good husband and father. But, a baby was a baby and the more he got to know her and fell into their "routine", he came to love his daughter.
Marc, having recovered from his injuries, gets out of the hospital and goes to see Edgar. But first, he stops and sees his wife's grave. He makes a promise that he will find Tara. When he finally gets to the house, Edgar tells him that he has gotten a ransom demand from the kidnappers. No police, two million dollar payoff and then he gets his daughter back. The good doctor informs the police, who incidently suspects him as being the killer of his wife and mastermind behind the whole plot. The police go with him and as a result he gives up the money, and the chance at finding his daughter.
The kidnapper's tell him that there is no second chance. But, after eighteen months of wondering and waiting, they get another ransom demand. This time, like the last, the demand comes to Edgar. They give him a hair sample to convince them that the girl is still alive and waiting to come home. The police get involved with investigating him deeper as he finds his old lover, Rachel at the grocery store. It was an awkward moment, but he eventually enlists her help to recover his daughter. As the police then turn their attention to her, we find out that Rachel Mills is a retired FBI agent and has a mysterious past of her own.
I was truly expecting "No Second Chance" to be just as satisfying and heart wrenching as his book "Tell No One." I really cared about the characters in "Tell No One" and I wanted everything to turn out well. I still wanted everything to turn out well, but the characters in "No Second Chance" were just not that interesting and really, I didn't care about them. The characters felt very rushed. The characters could have been given more depth and sincerity. The main character's concern throughout the book over his daughter was not very believable. It seemed like Mr. Coben's main character was more interested in his ex-girlfriend Rachel, when he found her again, then in finding out what happened to his daughter. He and Rachel's relationship almost seemed to be the main story and finding Tara seemed to be pushed into the subplot. He also seemed to give up on his daughter too quickly. As he said "he and Rachel could just drive off in the other direction"; Essentially leave his daughter and the trouble that they were in far behind and start a whole new life together. Dr. Seidman did not seem to be a very strong character to be the main one.
The story builds up to a climatic conclusion which will satisfy his readers. The chase scenes and the mystery of who killed his wife, shot him, and took his daughter was very entertaining and keeps the reader questioning the character's motives. Also, the confrontations with the police are also very interesting and keeps readers at the edge of their seats.
Although not his best work, it was a very entertaining book, and fans of Mr. Coben will definitely appreciate this fast paced mystery.
An Illusion of Harmony: Science and Religion in Islam
Taner Edis
Prometheus Books
Amherst, NY
9781591024491 $28.00
Fred Reiss
Reviewer
Can an ancient religion anticipate the findings of modern science? Henry Morris, the intellectual father of Creation Science, thinks so. He found the Law of Conservation of Energy in Ecclesiastes 3:14, which says, "I know that all that God will do will last forever. Nothing can be added or taken from it." Of course, he fails to mention violations of the conservation laws when Joshua made the sun stand still (Joshua 10:12-13). In fact, to make the sun stand still implies that the sun is moving, and not the earth. Copernicus discredited the Geocentric Theory more than 400 years ago.
Judaism, in addition to the Bible, relies on its oral tradition, known as the Talmud. The Talmud (Tractate Shabbat) says that sun signs (the Zodiac) and planets have influence over our lives. Although astrology is still a popular concept, science discredited it long ago. The Talmud (Pirke Avot) also says of the Five Books of Moses, "Turn it; turn it, for everything is in it." Islam is no different than Judaism in this regard. The Quran is the infallible word of God - Allah. Any problems between the pronouncements of science and the Quran are due to one's inability to properly interpret the Quran; implying that all modern science is contained therein.
Taner Edis, author of An Illusion of Harmony is a physicist and Turkish Muslim who declares himself to be an Islamic disbeliever. From this perspective, he seamlessly blends the beliefs of fundamental and liberal Islam with the findings of modern science. According to Edis, Islamic countries are doomed to remain behind the Western world without a significant shift in Muslim thinking from simply borrowers of technology to solvers of important scientific problems. To accomplish this, he says, Muslim countries must create an Islam-believing core of pure research scientists.
The International Islamic University of Malaysia reported that all countries that comprise the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) have less that one scientist or one engineer per 100, compared to the world averages of four and fourteen per 100 in the most advanced countries. In August 2007, the OIC noted that over the previous ten years, twenty Arab countries contributed just half the number of scientific papers that Israel contributed alone. In fact, Israel produces more scientific papers per capita, 109 per 10,000, than any other nation.
Edis tells us that Islam represents itself as a religion that is open to new knowledge; including knowledge obtain through scientific research. In reality, he asserts, this is not the case. Muslims will accept technology that offers practical solutions to everyday problems, but not, for example, Darwinism and certain types of genetic research. They are generally suspicious of pure science because science does not need Allah to describe the world.
The period from the ninth to thirteenth centuries was Islam's Golden Age and compared to Europe, marked by superior learning and knowledge production. During this time, Muslims translated Greek works into Arabic; thereby preserving for the world the seminal work of Greek philosophers and gave the world the mathematics known as algebra, among other important scientific findings. Yet, it has been more than seven hundred years since Islam produced any significant scientific breakthrough.
Why is it that the scientific leadership of the Islamic world disintegrated and then fell so far behind the Western world? In Europe, science had little impact on religious beliefs until the Renaissance, when theology finally gave way to scholasticism. The reins of power in theocratic countries and countries with strong right-wing religious movements kept scientific investigations in check. The Catholic Church to this day still defends itself against its treatment of such thinkers as Giordano Bruno and Galileo. The fate of scientific thought is no different in the Muslim world. Today, all Islamic science must be linked to the Quran because secular governments never took hold for very long in Islamic countries.
The scientific conceptions of late-medieval Christians did not differ significantly from Jews or Muslims. They each believed that God revealed Himself to a chosen prophet and the universe operated as ordained by God/Allah. Jews lacked a theocratic government and simply rode the political waves and scientific thoughts on which the tides of history carried them. Christianity, unlike Islam, was forced to yield over time to secular authorities who disengaged themselves from the revealed word of God as they pursed glory, power, and wealth. So unlike Muslims, Christians were free to re-learn and assimilate ancient knowledge (that the Muslim world saved), as well as discover new knowledge that might not agree with church canon. Western science is secular.
According to Edis, Muslims began appreciating the military, administrative, economic, scientific, and technological advances of the Western world more than a hundred years ago. Nonetheless, science and rationalism lag in Islamic countries (or any country for that matter) with strong ecclesial leadership. There are both fundamentalist and liberal-thinking elements in all Islamic countries. Orthodox Muslims use the Quran to find science. They quote the Quran, for example, which says that "God creates you inside your mothers, in successive formations, in three darknesses" to prove that the Quran preceded our scientific understanding of embryonic development. However, these Muslim fundamentalists do not mention that Aristotle, preceding the Quran by more than a thousand years, describes these very stages in the development of a chick embryo. In contrast, Islamic liberals believe that science is a practical endeavor that must be accommodated by Islam, and not necessarily found in the Quran.
Edis explains that quantum mechanics, the physics and the atom and subatomic world in which probability replaces certainty, is the scientific hallmark of the twentieth century. Yet, instead of adapting Islam to a probabilistic world, Islamic science, which is supported by theocratic government funding, adheres to fringe and pseudoscientific interpretations of quantum mechanics, including parapsychology and UFOs, and links these beliefs to the Quran. Because of its counterintuitive nature, Islamic science accepts the mystical side of quantum physics and uses it to describe a spiritual universe. The same case can be made for its anti-Darwinism beliefs and the Islamizing of the social sciences, such as sociology and economics. Fundamentalists believe that their religion knows everything, and science does not. They believe that Creationism, Intelligent Design, and the Young Earth Theory have equal footing with the research of Charles Darwin, the Theory of Evolution, and genetics. Theocracies and pure scientific research are immiscible.
Edis is not the first Muslim to explore science and Islam. More than fifteen years ago, Pervez Hoodbhoy, a physics professor at Quaid-i-Azam University in Pakistan, studied the same interrelationship between Islam and science; arriving at the same conclusions. The strength of the West, according to Edis, is its diversity-in-thinking. He maintains that if the Muslim world, estimated to hold about a billion people, limits itself with a priori boundaries on scientific research imposed by radical interpretations of the Quran, then Muslims are doomed is to be a followers of the Western world and relegated to second-class citizenship, at best.
We already see the results of the hatred carried out by Islamic extremists and directed toward the "haves" of the world. Edis concludes that terrorist attacks against the West will continue until steps are taken by the international community to grow and support secular Islamic governments. But, just as important, if the countries of the West yield to the pressures of home-grown fundamentalism, then it is inevitable that scientific and social-scientific research, and all the progress that results from that research, will stop here as well.
Earrings of Ixtumea
Kim Baccellia
Virtual Tales
PO Box 822674, Vancouver, WA 98682
9780978215712 $12.95 www.virtualtales.com
Karen Anne Webb
Reviewer
14-year-old Lupe Hernandez hates everything about her life: she's dumpy and dark instead of frail and fair, her Latino upbringing makes her feel like a second-class citizen, and her crazy grandmother keeps telling her about the magical realm of Ixtumea as if it were reality instead of myth.
But her beliefs are put to the test when a pair of antique ruby earrings and a hunky Mezo-American warrior transport her to an Ixtumea that is all too real. Dream balances nightmare as Lupe makes a spiritual journey, comes face to face with living gods, and learns the truth about her parents, her own origins, and her destiny. Author Kim Baccellia uses Lupe's spiritual journey to frame some profound thoughts about our view of physical perfection (and how a Latina copes in a blonde world) and how traditional beliefs integrate with those of a faith like Catholicism. (When you're being threatened by Tezcatlipoca, do you pray to the Virgin of Guadalupe or to Ixchel?) Though herself a Mormon, Baccellia seems to have a good grasp of Latin Catholic sensibilities. In a genre market (fantasy) that is dominated by Celtic mythology and heroes drawn from a northern/western European aesthetic, a book featuring a young Latina heroine and a culture drawn from Native Central American and Hispanic influences is a welcome change.
Challenges that make the book less than it could be include content somewhat strong for its demographic and editing issues. Although the story is pegged as "young adult," it includes content (including drug use, vulgar language and profanities, and disturbing images including references to human sacrifice and gang rape) that would easily net it a strong PG-13 rating were it a movie rather than a book. And a very perfunctory editing job leaves the book with a plethora of consistency errors, some passages that take on the proportions of a grammatical nightmare, some gaping plot holes, and a lot of undeveloped potential.
That said, the basic story is a good one, and the book is a fun read for its imaginativeness, unique atmosphere, and spunky (non-blonde) heroine.
Ghost
Alan Lightman
Pantheon
9780375421693 $23.00
Kelli Christiansen
Reviewer
Alan Lightman is one of my favorite authors and he has never failed to impress me. I only wish he wrote his novels with more frequency. His latest novel, Ghost, is sensitive, inquisitive, provocative. Lightman's exploration of the metaphysical and the physical never ceases to draw me in, completely.
Ghost focuses on David, a not-quite-middle-aged man who finds his life at a standstill, perhaps even at a crossroads. Perhaps it is this situation which makes him susceptible, or even receptive, to the unusual. While resting in the slumber room of the funeral parlor where he works, David sees something - experiences something - he cannot explain, to himself or to others. When he does try to explain it, intense reactions are hurled at him from across the spectrum, unleashing unexpected emotions and actions from the people around him, as well as from himself.
Lightman is probably best known for his first novel, Einstein's Dreams, although his other novels are equally wonderful and wondrous. He also is the author of numerous nonfiction works, largely in the area of theoretical physics (he has served on the faculties of both MIT and Harvard). His background in science obviously informs his fiction, to a fabulous result. Lightman's exploration of the physical and the metaphysical, of time, of emotion is fascinating and reveals itself in the most unusual fiction without being overly scientific or creeping into the surreal.
This beautiful novel contains some rather odd coincidences to my own life, which made the story only more interesting. Strangely, Lightman manages to capture my feelings like few other authors (Duras being one of them). Ghost is, by far, one of the best novels I've read in ages.
New York in the Fifties
Dan Wakefield
Published jointly by PIF Press and Greenpoint Press
Greenpoint Press
PO Box 3203, Grand Central Terminal, New York, NY 10163
PIF Press
6115 NE 185th Street,Kenmore, WA 98028
0975976036 $20.00
Kristina Marie Darling
Reviewer
Dan Wakefield's New York in the Fifties, originally published by St. Martin's Griffin in 1992, has recently been reissued by PIF Press and Greenpoint Press, making a unique work of nonfiction available to new readers. Depicting the writers, journalists, social reformers, and musicians who lived in New York City during what most remember as an uneventful period in American artistic culture, Wakefield's book is a compelling recreation of a time and place that shaped the nation's intellectual tradition. Describing his own experience as an undergraduate at Columbia University alongside that of other literary luminaries who comprised the supposedly "Silent Generation," such as John Gregory Dunne, Joan Didion, Jack Kerouac, Mark Van Doren, and C. Wright Mills, Wakefield's book gracefully presents a range of voices while maintaining its own sense of stylistic unity throughout.
One of the most impressive aspects of Wakefield's memoir is the way the author's life experience becomes a window through which the reader observes larger trends in literary and cultural history. The end result being a narrative that is at once diverse and anchored in its protagonist's story, this trend in New York in the Fifties is exemplified by the descriptions of traveling to New York by train. For example, Dan Wakefield writes when describing the journey from his Indianapolis home to "the nation's greatest city":
The train stations of American's cities were not simply points of arrival and departure, loading docks for people and baggage, but awesome, vast cathedrals for the continent crossing railways that first connected us into one country…When I went away to college at Columbia, my mother and father saw me off at Union Station with hugs and tears and promises to write, as if I were a soldier going to the front. (20-21)
Using his experience at a starting point when depicting the sudden mobilization of Americans by railroads, Wakefield's description examines not only the societal impact of this transformation, but also portrays its having been romanticized in artistic culture on a national scale. His trip to college, then, becomes a manifestation of both technological changes and their representation in the arts, all of which are unified by the finely crafted and engaging narrative of Dan Wakefield's experience as a young traveler.
Similarly, an incisive commentary on literary fact and fiction pervades New York in the Fifties, addressing the supposedly uneventful nature of this key decade, the believed impact of the beat generation, and many other topics as readers follow Wakefield through first jobs and freelance assignments. This aspect of the book is particularly apparent in the discussions of Jack Kerouac's performance at the Vanguard, in which he writes:
Perhaps others felt as I did, that Kerouac was not only giving our generation a bad name ("beat"), but by his antics he was also - a worse crime - giving writers and writing in general a bad name, making them look like the foolish clowns that the worst of our parochial hometown critics took us to be. (176)
While narrating his experience seeing Kerouac perform, Wakefield suggests that, in their creating "the myth of a generation," beat writers not only overshadowed those who adhered to tradition, but presented a romanticized vision of literary life in which rebellion matters more than craft (203). Forthright and insightful throughout, this assessment of how writers and their writing are perceived in retrospect is woven throughout New York in the Fifties, the end result being a memoir that situates personal experience in a broader historical context, remaining engaging and enjoyable all the while.
New York in the Fifties is a dazzling, intelligent read. Five stars.
Eccentric Billionaire: John D. Mac Arthur-Empire Builder, Reluctant Philanthropist, Relentless Adversary
Nancy Kriplen
AMACOM, American Management Association
1601 Broadway, New York, NY 10019
978081440889 $24.00
Mark Nash
Reviewer
Nancy Kriplen's biography of John D. MacArthur is an insightful look at one of the last centuries wealthiest, but publicity-shy businessman. One that is remembered today for making large contributions to many philanthropic causes including National Public Television, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation underwrite many current programs featured on NPT. Kriplen shares his transformation of Marquette Life and Bankers Life and Casualty companies from small regionals into national players, and his development of Palm Beach Gardens in Florida. Just a few of his many investments that made him rich and maligned, from business practices that ran the gamut.
Chapter titles are: Ransoming the Baby, Breaking the Sod, Baby John, Life with Father, The Competitor, Every Little Breeze, Catherine T, Staying Afloat, The Mother Lode, Divorce... and Death, Hat Trick, Down Among the Sheltering Palms, Banyan Trees and Hibiscus Hedges, Hogs Get Slaughtered, The Colonnades, Founding a Foundation, Palm Beach Prometheus, Lost and Sometimes Found, Royal Summons, And with Dignity, and Genius. Additional features include acknowledgments, a prologue, location of collections cited, notes, selected bibliography and an index.
The author writes in an engaging, page-turning style, rather than what could have been a dry just-the-facts-please business portrayal. Ms. Kriplen shares his ups and downs, be it personal or business, warts and all. She also is well known for penning the successful biography of Dwight Davvis: The Man and the Cup.
This Is Cuba
Ben Corbett
Westview Press (Perseus Group)
Boulder, CO
9780813338262 $15.00
Max Carrillo
Reviewer
This is a great book. Not just a great Cuba book, or travel book...it's an excellent piece of writing with a objective, surefooted point of view that cuts through a controversial, incredibly complex subject with precision, heart, humor, and an unflinching sense of witness. One of the great things about it is illustrated by the fact that although the author is a fan of socialism and Castro, he frames one of the most devastating descriptions ever written of the bankruptcy of the economic, political, social, and philosophical situation in Cuba today. There might be those who take umbrage at what Corbett has done here, but no visitor to contemporary Cuba will fail to recognize the unvarnished validity of what he says or admire the lapidary, congenial way he says it.
Unlike many writers who pop into Cuba and pop out with the answer--not to mention the legions who make up their minds on sheer ideology--Corbett has visited the island many times over a period of years, and has considerable experience living there for long periods of time. He lived somewhat underground: in illegal circumstances, which brought him into easy contact with mass opinions not quickly offered to strangers. And he was lucky enough to have been there during several very revealing periods, including crackdowns and crises.
Corbett organizes his experiences into twenty-odd chapters in a way that seems effortless, but is actually an ingenious method of arranging the multi-leveled task of describing a society. Chapters discuss a day in school, black market, prostitution and hustling, the effects of "Buena Vista Social Club", the incessant marches, the crush for tourist dollars, diet, and the attempts to escape--either legally or otherwise. And each spins out into an embrace of the whole nutty economy and culture. The subtitle of the book, "An Outlaw Culture Survives" is extremely indicative: throughout it we see a constant struggle for survival in a system of parallel cultures that operate beneath the laws and oppression. And throughout we are appalled and impressed by the dogged ability of Cuban ingenuity to pull through, to rig things up, to balance necessity, law, doctrine, and black humor.
One phenomenon he describes is a good example of the multi-level impact of his calm observation: derrumbes. From time to time buildings in Havana just collapse--failure due to age, poverty and lack of safety codes. Sometimes people have enough warning to run outside, often several families die. And the neighbors cannibalize the collapsed houses to repair their own homes. The first reaction of a North American to the idea that urban buildings fall down and people are used to it is one of horror and disbelief. It goes against everything we think a city and society should stand for. Then we think about an economy in which some homes survive by using debris from those that collapse--not a bad analogy for the Cuban economy that has degenerated to a flea market selling off the last old stuff in the attic. Then maybe we start to admire the hunker down courage of people who live like that, who accept a system so different from the one their parents knew. And we marvel at the many who move to Havana from the country--even with possible penalties of jail and fines equal to five years pay for doing so--because the small towns and countryside offer much less opportunity for survival. The real genius and miracle of Cuba is in its people. By the way, approximately a quarter of Havana's buildings are officially unsafe, a moderate earthquake would probably topple 75% of them. It is illegal to photograph or report derrumbes.
Corbett (and his Cuban friends) have a fine eye for ironic contradiction and the bitter laughs it provides. Cubans love to camp on beaches but under the current regime are not allowed to--beaches are reserved for tourists with dollars. In the workers' paradise, labor unions are illegal. Castro proclaims socialism and trumpets against U.S. capitalism yet whores for American capital. Foreign companies pay well for construction and oil workers, but the government keeps the money and pays the workers the usual $7 a month stipend for their work--in a system supposedly built on rebelling against exploitation of labor. Prostitution, supposedly impossible under Marxist principles, is tolerated because it brings in foreign dollars. Those who are lucky enough to win the visa "lottery" and leave Cuba end up having everything they owned taken from them by their government--and have to pay for exit visas. It just goes on and on. For the reader--for Cubans it's been going on and on for fifty years.
Though basically a fan of Cuba, Castro, and leftism, Corbett doesn't flinch away from realities that most starry-eyed chroniclers gloss over or ignore: that Cuba is a fascist state. The government controls everything, including where you live, police are numerous and everywhere, a block-by-block citizen spy network reports everything that happens, goods are seized by the state on any pretext...and above all, the prime characteristic of slave states that makes their apologists uncomfortable--the people are not free to leave. What better definition of imprisonment, oppression or slavery could there be than that: you can't leave if you want to.
It's as much a tribute to Corbett as to the Cuban people that this exhibition of socioeconomic malpractice is basically upbeat. And that's the way Cuba is: you see all this atrocity going on around you, but you leave happy and singing the lyrics. The last chapter of "This Is Cuba" is the most quizical of all: what happens next? If Castro died tomorrow and Cuba burst out into the real world after a half-century of being kidnapped away from the world economy, what would happen? They have nothing to sell but the usual Third World inventory: their labor, soil products, beaches and willing women. They have nobody who has a clue how to market goods, run a factory, design competitively, distribute products, organize labor. On the other hand, they have become a country of survivors: tinkerers, corner-cutters, jury-riggers, co-operators. If they have a chance to avoid being Haiti, it will be because of Cuban resilience. Corbett ends his book like this:
"(the will to survive, to live, to endure, and even to resist)...are the ingredients of focused human determination. Today, Castro only stands in the way of the people. They are now prepared to define Cuba's destiny. And in this preparedness, perhaps Castro achieved the greatest victory of all." Whether that is a ringing cheer for Castroism or analogous to saying that men come out of penitentiaries better prepared to live on the street remains to be seen.
Slam
Nick Hornby
Penguin
375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014
9780399250484 $19.99
Mike Frechette
Reviewer
Time Travel Teaches in Hornby's Newest Novel
Two modern day adolescents, once young and innocent, must confront their parents with the news of an unplanned pregnancy that will change the course of their lives forever. Sounds like another Lifetime movie, right? It is actually the premise of Nick Hornby's newest novel Slam, about a fifteen-year-old boy who is forced into adulthood when he unintentionally impregnates his girlfriend. Most bookstores are shelving the novel under the "Young Adult" section, and Hornby himself has classified the book as such. However, any adult who likes Hornby also will like Slam, for it is not your typically sappy melodrama about teen pregnancy. What elevates it is not only Hornby's signature wit but also the aesthetic attention the protagonist devotes to how he constructs his narrative and tells us his tale.
Like all of Hornby's novels, Slam is set in his own specific corner of contemporary London. Sam Jones, our narrator and the product of a teenage pregnancy himself, relates this story from two years in the future, where he is eighteen and the drama of becoming a teenage father is past. When he begins the tale, though, he is fifteen, nearly sixteen, and notes that "things were ticking along quite nicely." As a fifteen-year-old, Sam's main concern was skating ("we never say skateboarding," as he tells us) and memorizing the text of Tony Hawk's book Hawk - Occupation: Skateboarder. Skating actually plays a fairly large role in the novel because Sam uses it as an extended metaphor in telling his story. As in skating, you can be coasting through life with ease when all of a sudden, you "[have] a bad slam," to use Sam's parlance. And when he meets Alicia, the beautiful daughter of one of his mother's colleagues, Sam is about to have a metaphorical "slam" of his own.
While the skating metaphor is clever, what really lends this seemingly hackneyed story some artistic originality is a fantastical feature that takes the reader by surprise - time travel. Several times during the book, Sam wakes up months in the future, forcing him to tell us his story out of conventional order and thereby making him conscious of his own narrative structure. Near the "end" of the novel, Sam says, "I'm telling you this as if it's a story, with a beginning, a middle and an end." What he knows by this point, though, is that "it's going to be the middle of the story for a long time." Throughout the novel, Sam is either trying to avoid the future or wishing he could skip to the end and sidestep the arduous middle. But the important lesson he eventually learns through time travel is that there are two futures: the real future and the one he gets "whizzed" to. The one he gets "whizzed" to shows him only the facts, whereas the real future is the one that he feels emotionally invested in since he has lived through all the moments leading up to that point. As he so matter-of-factly tells us, "Here's a funny thing. You go into the future, and afterwards you think, Well, I know about that now. But like I said before: if you don't know how something feels, then you don't know anything." Over the course of the novel, Sam realizes that you cannot stop time nor can you accelerate it in order to bypass life's uncomfortable and frightening middle; you must live through this middle because living through it gives a life feeling and meaning.
Though it is decidedly odd that Hornby uses time travel to drive home this major theme, it is also a stroke of genius. In a story where the basic plot is very predictable, Hornby keeps his adolescent reader engaged and entertained by introducing a fantastical element. Rather than wondering what will happen next, the reader remains focused on time travel, the feature of the story through which Hornby makes his main point manifest. Furthermore, as in all Hornby novels, the characters are lovable and funny - and most importantly, they learn, change, and grow, which is always satisfying to readers. Sam runs away at first, tries to shirk his new responsibility, and harbors incredibly selfish thoughts ("Do you mind if I go to college anyway?" he wants to ask Alicia). But over time, he slowly embraces his role as a father and learns to accept what his future holds.
Full Circle: A Memoir
Edith Kurzweil
Transaction Publishers
Rutgers University, 35 Berrue Circle, Piscataway, NJ 08854-8042
9781412806626 $34.95 www.transactionpub.com 1-888-999-6778
Phyllis Chesler, Reviewer
www.phyllis-chesler.com
Edith Kurzweil has lived many lives and prevailed against tremendous odds. As an Austrian Jew, she was not meant to live at all; as a first-generation immigrant in America, she wasn't expected to succeed; as a woman, who was also a 1950s-style wife and mother, she was not supposed to become a scholar in her own right. But Kurzweil refused to identify herself as a victim, choosing instead to view adversity as a useful challenge. She earned a Ph.D. in sociology, became a professor, and published a number of thoughtful books including The Freudians: A Comparative Perspective, The Age of Structuralism, and Nazi Laws and Jewish Lives: Letters from Vienna. She also married three times, the final time to William Phillips, the founder of Partisan Review. Kurzweil served as executive editor of this highly influential magazine from the late 1970s until its demise in 2003.
Thus she knew and worked with many of the leading intellectuals of her time: Saul Bellow, Ralph Ellison, Doris Lessing, Mary McCarthy, Susan Sontag, Norman Podhoretz, Cynthia Ozick, and many more. She was privy to the great disputes of the era, and her memoir Full Circle recounts them all, from battles about communism and fascism to splits over Zionism and the nature of American power - battles that, in different forms, continue to the present day.
Kurzweil's life, like a play, has had many distinct acts. Act One: "Ditta" Weisz is born in Vienna to wealthy Jewish parents. For 13 years, she enjoys a charmed and sheltered existence, which world events then shatter. Solely responsible for her younger brother, Hansl, she flees Austria to join her parents, who are already settled in America, and travels through at least 11 cities and villages in Austria, Germany, Belgium, France, Spain, and Portugal. Her flight is grueling and perilous: she dodges bombs, enemy soldiers, hostile civilians, and Catch-22-like diplomatic restrictions. Strangely, the idea of "being sold into slavery" (as opposed to being simply incinerated) terrifies her. At one point, Kurzweil rides in a boxcar together with other Jewish children. For eight days, they have little food, no light, no ventilation, no bathrooms - and no parents. She writes: "The younger children got sick first and some of them threw up; we had no toilet facilities and had to use the odd containers . . . since boxcars have no windows . . . the putrid smell of excrement mingled with that of perspiration and vomit. . . . By the fifth day our limbs were black and blue from the bumps we got when the train was careening."
These painful memories occupy only three paragraphs in the hellish travelogue. Still to come is a long period of hiding in the French countryside and long lines to navigate at the Spanish, Portuguese, and French consulates as Kurzweil desperately tries to get a visa. Aided by a kind stranger, she makes it to the S.S. Excalibur just as it pulls up anchor in Lisbon. Seeing two children approaching, the ship's crew halts and lets them aboard.
Act Two: Kurzweil's new life as a teenage immigrant in New York City begins. Her sadistic father and self-involved mother control and exploit her. Kurzweil the memoirist does not complain; she merely shows us how things were. Her writing is fresh, leavened with the endearing Americanisms that she acquired. She "moseys" along, wants the "low-down," relates best to people "on the ball." For those, like me, who remember the Manhattan of this era, her descriptions bring back a lost world: here is the dear departed automat, the Cafe de la Paix, the Eclair, and the Konditorei. Kurzweil dubs these last two "Vienna on the Hudson."
She encounters routine sexual harassment on the streets and on the job, of a type that these days we would regard as extreme. She describes the "leering once-overs" of foremen, the "foul language" of "sweaty men," and the harshness of the "demanding foreladies." Kurzweil works as a hat maker, jewelry painter, stock clerk, salesgirl, bookkeeper, and far underpaid diamond cutter. She works during all of her marriages, even while raising the children she had with two of her husbands.
Act Three: she prospers as a wife and young mother in a New York City suburb during the very decade in which Betty Friedan decided that isolated, educated housewives suffered from a "problem that had no name." "I don't recall my suburb as a Mecca of enlightenment nor as the nadir of Hell," Kurzweil writes. She eventually returns to Europe and lives there happily for some time - though she shares a sobering anecdote about visiting her childhood home in Vienna. The concierge of the building, guilt-ridden about the past, is afraid that she has come back to reclaim her apartment.
Act Four: Kurzweil documents an important period of intellectual history. She confirms that intellectuals can be as ruthless as corporate titans, capturing the raw ambition, ceaseless backbiting, intimate betrayals, and anti-Americanism that have characterized so many New York and Parisian thinkers. Kurzweil describes how the New Yorkers devoted themselves to "honing their mercurial minds at each other's expense." She relates priceless anecdotes and both first- and second-hand thumbnail sketches of a battalion of intellectual leading lights, including Michel Foucault, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Hannah Arendt, Diana Trilling, Czeslaw Milosz, Robert J. Lifton, and Noam Chomsky, among others. She is frank about the male domination, philandering, and polygamy prevalent in intellectual circles, and about the way in which otherwise capable female job applicants were mainly viewed in terms of their "sexual potential."
Full Circle has far too many rich anecdotes to recount, but one involving Chomsky is typical and illustrative. Kurzweil describes an enormous party that is "more like a political rally," at which Chomsky states that students should be encouraged to protest, "even to the point of laying down on a railway track while awaiting an oncoming train." When Kurzweil protests that a young Italian demonstrator has lost his life that way, Chomsky replies that the loss was acceptable - "if it had furthered the cause."
Kurzweil also reveals the rather shocking attempt to destroy Partisan Review by certain "solicitous friends" who envied its success and wished to "own" its gold-standard brand name, even though they disagreed with many of its principled stands. She describes how William Phillips found himself locked out of his own office at Rutgers University, his Partisan Review papers impounded. Boston University chancellor John Silber gave the magazine a safe harbor, but after Phillips died, Silber, in Cynthia Ozick's words, "executed" and "terminated" the magazine that Kurzweil had essentially run on her own during the years of Phillips's declining health.
Full Circle is an ode of sorts to Phillips and to the committed intellectual life that he led, and an acknowledgment of what one must juggle, sacrifice, brave, and endure to live the life of the mind. The intellectually dazzling Phillips lost many of his closest friends when he refused to glamorize tyrannies or wholeheartedly embrace the cultural uprisings of the 1960s, which included hatred of America and Israel.
Kurzweil shared his political bravery. Immediately after September 11, in the pages of Partisan Review, she wrote: "To others, like myself, who lived through some of the real horrors of World War II, the United States was perceived as a safe haven . . . the United States is not truly prepared to fight its enemies. Once again, we are divided around domestic priorities and must fight enemies both outside and within our borders. . . . We have tried to attain our ends while holding on to our liberal values. . . . We will have to decide at what point the rights of the individual must be subordinated to the public good, to the 'rights' of the country. When do we go after the Osama bin Ladens? And how do we conduct fair trials without being so overly 'fair' as to encourage or condone more such activities?" Kurzweil's perspective was prescient; her views today remain vigorous and vital.
Full circle: Vienna, 1940. As the train leaves, the 13-year-old Ditta is afraid to keep her maternal grandmother's gold chain: "We were forbidden to take any valuables... in the end, I panicked... as the train began to move I reached out of the window to return the coveted jewel." The real jewel is this book, and the memories and insights it contains.
Happy About Online Networking
Liz Ryan
HappyAbout.info
20660 Stevens Creek Blvd., Suite 210, Cupertino, CA 95014
1600050158 $19.95
Rocky Reichman
Reviewer
Networking is important to making contacts and building sustainable relationships. And not just in business. Online networking is important in people's social lives too. That's why Happy About Online Networking is such a great contribution to the current literature on business networking. Besides for the traditional customs, Ryan offers advice and new ways of looking at online networking. The author argues that the purpose of online networking is to build relationships, not just reach goals. It's a two way street: if you want someone to help you, then you have to help them too. Otherwise, forget about getting that job you wanted or gaining a new customer.
Diving deep into social networking sites like LinkedIn.com, one of the most popular sites for business networking, Ryan explores what makes these sites so useful. She explains their importance and how they can be used. And at the same time she knows when to place restrictions on her own advice. For example, she recommends prudence when sending out mass e-mailings or announcements. Only do so if something important has happened to you, she advises, such as getting a new job or signing a book contract.
The book is short, but has few weak points. Some parts--as much as whole paragraphs--seem redundant. And the word "rude" is used so often it leaves readers feeling insulted (no joke intended). The book's title can be misleading. It lacks specificity. "Happy About Business Online Networking" is less broad, and would be more likely to attract the book's target audience. The format, though unconventional, makes the book easy to read.
Happy About Online Networking is recommended for anyone who wants to find a job, get more customers or simply build relationships online. Its chapters are packed with advice on how to succeed when networking online for business purposes. Summaries at the end of each chapter conveniently provide a list of "Key Points Discussed." Ryan has written a short, easy to read guide for business networking online--a book that will continue to be useful as this activity becomes more and more important in our everyday lives.
The Jihad Next Door - The Lackawanna Six and Rough Justice in the Age of Terror
Dina Temple-Raston
PublicAffairs
c/o PerseusBooks Group
2300 Chestnut St., Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103
9781586484033 $26.00
Susan M. Andrus
Reviewer
The Danger of Innocence in America
Having grown up in suburb of Buffalo next door to Lackawanna and being an advocate for peace and justice, a book about the Lackawanna Six jumped off the shelf into my hands. And once I started reading, I couldn¹t put it down. Reading more like a good mystery than the well-researched investigative reporting that it reflected, this book kept me intrigued and reading well past my regular bedtime.
Dina Temple-Raston, National Public Radio¹s FBI correspondent and critically acclaimed, award-winning author of several books including Justice in the Grass, In Defense of Our America (with Anthony D. Romero) and A Death in Texas, gave this extraordinary accounting of the lives of six American Muslim twenty-somethings who never in their wildest dreams considered where a trip to Pakistan would lead them.
Temple-Raston created suspense as she sketched the characters, showing their immaturity, restlessness, and strong family ties to their Yemeni heritage. She moved the narrative along with short chapters, action, suspense, and intrigue. Her extensive investigations included traveling to Yemen, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Knowledge of FBI practices, as well as her ability to gain trust in order to extract information from the most reluctant witness, makes the reader feel like a welcome guest where formerly no one had ever visited.
Temple-Reston painted these alleged terrorists from the perspective of humanity and naivete. Their travels to Pakistan before 9/11/01 led them to a nightmare during the era after 9/11 when government policies and procedures defied logic and justice. Photos of the six, the neighborhood where they lived, and scenes from Yemen including boys studying at a madrasa added to the interest and authenticity of the book.
The New IQ
David Gruder, Ph.D.
Elite Books
PO Box 442, Fulton, CA 95439
9781604150131 $17.95
Dr. Tami Brady
Reviewer
Can we really have it all? Can we make a good living at a job that we love, spend quality time with our families, and make the world a better place, all while keeping our personal integrity? The New IQ says not only is it possible to have it all while keeping our integrity it states that integrity is actually the key to making it all happen.
At first, that statement might seem a little odd to a lot of people. After all, the majority of us try to follow the rules and show others that we are generally good people. Why then do bad things like illness, divorce, and being fired from a job happen?
The unfortunate truth is that most of us aren't very honest with ourselves. Without even realizing it, the majority of us spend our adult years stuck in the survival modes we learned as children. Even when it is clearly obvious that we won't receive the connection, validation, and protection that we so desire from our parents (or others that we've transferred these needs onto), we continue to try to redeem ourselves. The genuine parts of ourselves (including our true talents and gifts) simply get locked away with the hopes that no one will ever see (and judge) the real us.
Bethany's Bookshelf
Family Reading Night
Darcy J. Hutchins, Marsha D. Greenfeld, Joyce L. Epstein
Eye On Education
6 Depot Way West, Larchmont, NY 10538
9781596670631, $29.95 www.eyeoneducation.com 1-888-299-5350
One of the best ways to insure literate children is for parents to provide support and example through the institution of a regular weekly "Family Reading Night" where reading would be a shared activity engaged in by all family members. To assist concerned parents into creating and maintaining such a home-based program in behalf of their children (and appropriate to all ages and grade levels), Joyce L. Epstein (Founder and Director of the National Network of Partnership Schools -- NNPS -- at Johns Hopkins University) teamed up with former public school teachers and Senior program Facilitators at NNPS, Darcy J. Hutchins and Marsha D. Greenfeld to create "Family Read Night", an step-by-step instruction manual and guidelines for more than 30 activities, ideas for student performances and presentations, ideas for classroom and home connections, as well as invitations and evaluation forms. In addition to enhancing children's basic literacy skills, additional results will include building positive relationships among teachers, parents, and community partners, as well as the promotion of reading and writing outside of the classroom as children learn to value and enjoy the act of reading and the skill of writing. Thoroughly 'user friendly' in every respect, "Family Reading Night" is a valued and strongly recommended addition to school curriculum development materials.
Burying The Secret
Carol Rutter
Babbling Books
PO Box 4668, New York, NY 10163-4668
9780979860904, $14.95 www.buryingthesecret.com
A prolific writer of published articles, Carol Rutter provides the reader with an especially articulate, thoughtful and thought-provoking discussion of what she terms 'the law of attraction' as it relates to relationships and other universal laws and principles in "Burying The Secret: The Road To Ruin is Paved With Books About The Law of Attraction". Drawing upon more than three hundred books in the fields of mysticism, psychology, Eastern philosophy, and metaphysics, Carol as compiled and written a particularly 'reader friendly' and occasionally iconoclastic self-help manual based on key influences that impinge upon the development of the human soul. Among these fundamental influences are the learning of lessons, voluntary acts of redemption, sacrifice, and free will. A seminal work founded upon truly impressive research that spanned a decade, "Burying The Secret" is very highly recommended for non-specialist general readers with an interest in spirituality, self-improvement, and metaphysics.
Children of Divorce
William Bernet, M.D. & Don R. Ash, J.D., M.J.S.
Karen Pugliese
Krieger Publishing Company
PO Box 9542, Melbourne, FL 32902-9542
9781575242880, $31.50 www.krieger-publishing.com 1-800-724-0025
Now in an updated second edition, Children of Divorce: A Practical Guide for Parents, Therapists, Attorneys, and Judges is a no-nonsense, straightforward discussion of what truly constitute's a child's best interests. Written by child and adolescent psychiatrist William Bernet as well as lawyer Don R. Ash (who personally researched the effectiveness of parenting plans for children of divorce), Children of Divorce takes a practical, no-nonsense approach to common dilemmas, while remaining acutely aware that there is no absolute "one size fits all" rule for determining custody in every possible situation. Chapters discuss the harmful effects that fighting can have upon children - stressing that fighting in front of, through, or over the children is frequently the worst possible thing divorcing parents can do - common and uncommon parenting arrangements, the importance of balancing the needs of parents and children (especially when divorced parents divide up a child's schedule to serve their own needs, rather than the child's), the challenges that stepfamilies and blended families face, dealing with holidays, the role of grandparents, what to expect in divorce mediation versus divorce counseling (which are two emphatically different things), and much more. "Although it looks superficially like the child's therapist is the perfect person to testify in a custody dispute, he really is not a good choice. For one thing, the therapist is almost certainly biased in favor of the custodial parent, even though he may try very hard to be neutral... Furthermore, there are risks involved in testifying. For instance, the confidential nature of the therapy will almost certainly be violated if the therapist testifies." Written in plain terms accessible to parents as well as legal and counseling professionals, Children of Divorce cannot be recommended highly enough as an invaluable compilation of wisdom garnered through years of experience.
Raising a Superstar
Terri A. Khonsari
Advantage Media Group
PO Box 272, Charleston, SC 29402
9781599320465, $14.99 www.amazon.com 1-866-775-1696
Written by Iranian-born mother Terri Khonsari, who had to raise her daughter on her own away from her home nation, Raising a Superstar: Simple Strategies to Bring Out the Brilliance in Every Child is a reader-friendly guide written especially for parents, to help children reach their full potential. Defining a "superstar" as one who lives every area of life with passion and joy, Raising a Superstar stresses that good communication with one's child is the number one priority - the better to establish oneself as a positive role model, build confidence in one's children, why it's better to let children figure out their own homework rather than help them with it (though arranging a tutor for a field they are weak in is acceptable), guiding a child to look out and care for other people, and much more. Simple exercises with blank lines for the owner to write in round out this enthusiastic and encouraging parenting supplement.
Susan Bethany
Reviewer
Bob's Bookshelf
Kitchen Literacy
Ann Vileisis
Island Press
1718 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Suite 300, Washington, DC 20009-1148
9781597261449 $26.95 www.kitchenliteracy.org www.islandpress.org 1-800-828-1302
"Kitchen Literacy" by Ann Vileisis offers a sensory-rich journey through 200 years of making dinner. From 18th century gardens and historic cookbooks to calculated advertising campaigns and sleek supermarket aisles, Vileisis chronicles profound changes in how Americans have shopped, cooked, and thought about their food for five generations.
As you read this fascinating book, you'll realize that distance between farm and table has grown to the point where most foods travel 1,500 miles or more before they reach the consumer. As the supply chain has lengthened, so have the problems associated with the consumption of our food. Just as "industrial eating" has given rise to the organic movement and local farmers' markets, the problems still exist.
Focusing on what she believes readers will get from her book, Vileisis writes, "I think that readers will most enjoy the stories I tell about historic characters - people who had very different ways of thinking about foods than we do today…Ultimately, I hope that they (also) will gain a better understanding of the complex reasons why we've lost knowledge about where our foods come from."
Thinning the Herd: Tales of the Weirdly Departed
Cynthia Ceilan
Lyons Press
PO Box 480, Guilford, CT 06437
9781599212197 $14.95 www.LyonsPress.com
Admittedly "Thinning the Herd: Tales of the Weirdly Departed" is a bit on the macabre side. But, for just the right person, this irreverent collection of real-life anecdotes, facts, and observations regarding death will probably be a much appreciated and enjoyed. With chapter headings like "Oops!", "Death's Little Ironies", "It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time" and "Better Luck Next Time", it's apparent the author is trying to inject a little humor into what is not normally a fun topic.
On the book's first page this quote, attributed to Will Shriner, sets the tone for what is to follow: "I want to die in my sleep like my grandfather, not yelling and screaming like the passengers in his car." Before making a purchase, I'd suggest you thumb through this book, and then decide if this would be an appropriate gift. On the other hand, you might want to keep it for yourself.
Concorde
Frederic Beniada and Michel Fraile
Zenith Press
0760327033 $60.00 www.mbipublishing.com
Although it has been retired from service, the legendary Concorde can be seen in a few aeronautical museums sprinkled around the globe. For three decades the Concorde was the model of luxurious air travel. The supersonic passenger jet was considered the Rolls-Royce of the skies and priced accordingly.
In "Concorde" Frederic Beniada and Michel Fraile have created a comprehensive photographic look at this aviation icon. This large format volume features 150 unique and stunning photos of the Concorde in a horizontal format perfectly suited for full-page spreads. The ground and airborne images chronicle the majestic bird from its birth to retirement. In addition to the numerous exterior shots, there are spreads of everything from the cockpit and flight attendants to seats and the menu.
For three decades beginning in 1976, the Concorde was flown on transoceanic flights by both British Air and Air France. A decline in air travel, coupled with a tragic crash and rising maintenance costs, eventually grounded the 20 existing Concordes by the end of 2003. Although a bit pricey, this one-of-a-kind photographic history of the plane that flew at a cruising speed of 1,300 mph is worth the investment. For most of us, this is as close as we'll ever get to the Concorde unless we can visit one of the remaining museum specimens.
Classic American Airliners
Bill Yenne
Zenith Books
c/o MBI Publishing Company
Galtier Plaza, Suite 200, 380 Jackson Street, St. Paul, MN 55101-3885
0760319316 $24.94 www.mbipublishing.com 1-800-458-0454
Finally, for those airliner aficionados who yearn for the good old days when planes were smaller (and slower), airports were user friendly, and flying was a fun experience rather than a nasty ordeal, "Classic American Airliners" by Bill Yenne will revive fond memories. This history of the American airliner's embryonic years bridges the prop era that featured the DC-3 and Lockheed Constellation with the dawn of the early jetliners such as the DC-8, Boeing 7-7 and Convair 880.
A combination of modern and period photography transports the reader back to this heady period when commercial air travel was coming into its own and changing the way we all traveled.
Although it has been available for awhile, fortunately Zenith Press continues to offer this classic volume which provides an important overview of the period. No aviation library is complete without a copy of "Classic American Airliners" which is itself now a classic reference/history book.
Bob Walch
Reviewer
Buhle's Bookshelf
Early Greek Lawgivers
John David Lewis
International Publishers Marketing
22841 Quicksilver Drive, Dulles, VA 20166
9781853996979, $20.99 www.internationalpubmarket.com 1-800-758-3756
Written by John David Lewis (Visiting Scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center, Bowling Green State University) Early Greek Lawgivers is a scholarly study of the men who brought and administrated law in early Greek city states. The lawgiver's special status enabled him to resolve disputes without violence, and craft social norms of ethical conduct. From the unwritten laws of Lycurgus that created the foundations of the Spartan state, to the written laws of Solon in Athens, to Hippodamus on civic planning, Zaleucus on the divine source of laws, Philolaus on family laws and much more, Early Greek Lawgivers offers a fascinating glimpse into ideas and lives of notable figures in classical Greek history. Highly recommended especially for ancient Greek history shelves and college libraries.
A Cherokee Encyclopedia
Robert J. Conley
University of New Mexico Press
MSC04 2820, 1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001
9780826339515, $24.95 www.unmpress.com 1-800-249-7737
Written for readers of all backgrounds, A Cherokee Encyclopedia is a one-volume quick reference to the different groups of Cherokees within the United States and their history. Entries are listed in alphabetical order and include brief biographies of famous individuals in Cherokee history, different bands of Cherokee Indians in the past and present, Cherokee societies, and more, illustrated with occasional black-and-white photographs. From Keetoowah News, the official newspaper of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma, to modern "tradition bearer" of old songs, tales, Cherokee hymns, and flute melodies Tommy Wildcat, A Cherokee Encyclopedia is an up-to-date resource highly recommended for modern Native American reference shelves.
Source of Wisdom
Charles D. Wright, Frederick M. Biggs & Thomas N. Hall, editors
University of Toronto Press
10 St. Mary Street, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M4Y 2W8
9780802093677, $75.00 www.utppublishing.com 1-800-565-9523
Source of Wisdom: Old English and Early Medieval Latin Studies in Honour of Thomas D. Hill is an anthology of nineteen original essays in tribute to dedicated, prolific, and influential scholar of Old English literature Thomas D. Hill. Many of the writings connect with Hill's chosen research topics; individual essays include "The Fates of Men in Beowulf", "Alfred's Nero", "The Peterborough Chronicle and the Invention of 'Holding Court' in Twelfth-Century England", "The Revelations of Pseudo-Methodius and Scriptural Study at Salisbury in the Eleventh Century", and more. Extensively researched, written with a keen eye toward scholarly restraint, and featuring a fair amount of Old English and Latin excerpts in both the original and in modern English translation, Source of Wisdom is an erudite anthology and a welcome addition to literary studies shelves.
Pulitzer's Gold
Roy J. Harris Jr.
University of Missouri Press
2910 LeMone Boulevard, Columbia, MO 65201
9780826217684, $39.95 www.umsystem.edu/upress 1-800-828-1894
Former Wall Street Journal reporter Roy J. Harris Jr. presents Pulitzer's Gold: Behind the Prize for Public Service Journalism, an in-depth account of the ninety-year history of the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, especially the most exalted prize of the Joseph Pulitzer Gold Medal. From accountings of the distinguished journalistic coverage that exposed sexual predators among Catholic priests, to the New York Times' role in helping the community cope after the September 11th attacks, to the Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's uncovering of the Watergate scandal, to the Boston Post's revelation of swindling schemes hatched by Charles Ponzi and much more, Pulitzer's Gold takes the reader on a one-of-a-kind historical tour. A distinguished tribute to the journalists who labored to bring the truth to light and help make America better place to live, as well as a studious history of journalism's most prestigious award.
Willis M. Buhle
Reviewer
Burroughs' Bookshelf
The Sport Of Schutzhund
BJ Spanos & Peter Spanos
BJ Spanos Ink
367 Adams Road, Fayetteville, Georgia 30214
1884330096, $25.00 www.bjspanos.com
"The Sport Of Schutzhund" is a photographic album featuring 370 photographs contributed by 26 amateur and professional photographers from twelve states (and a few photos from Europe) showcasing the breed of canines called 'Schutzhund' as working dogs in the sport of Schutzhund -- including the training, competitions, the dogs at play and with their families, as well as individual dog portraits and puppies. These full-page, full-color images show the action, rewards, beauty and simple fun associated with training these intelligent canines for competition. Beautifully organized and presented, this singularly unique, 250-page, full-sized coffee table paperback is especially recommended to the attention of dog fanciers in general, and Schutzhund owners in particular.
Notes From The Other China
Troy Parfitt
Algora Publishing
222 Riverside Drive, 16th floor, New York, NY 10025-6809
9780875865829, $22.95 www.algora.com
Troy Parfitt is an English teacher and "Notes From The Other China: Adventures In Asia" is the story of this Canadian's professional and personal experiences over more than a decade in East Asia in general, and Taiwan (the 'Other China' in particular. The focus is not upon the politics, but upon the individuals Troy encountered, and the cultural context in which those personal and professional encounters took place. Troy combines memoir with travel commentary and cultural analysis with respect to the Koreans, Japanese, Pilipinos, Thais, Cambodians, Nepalese, and Vietnamese he has met, as well as the Taiwanese with whom he lived and worked. The first half of "Notes From The Other China" provides informed and informative insights into Korea's nationalism leading up to the 1997 Asian Economic Crisis, Japan's sex culture, Marcos legacy in the Philippines, Taiwan's type of democracy, and how traditional Chinese culture is in the process of modernizing. The second part of "Notes From The Other China" is a beautifully described travelogue as Troy journeyed from Hanoi to Saigon, from Vietnam to Nepal. Of special note is his commentary on what is regarded in Asia as the 'American War' in Vietnam. Also available in a hardcover edition (9780875865836, $34.95), "Notes From The Other China" is an especially recommended addition to personal, academic, and community library 20th Century Asian History & Culture reference collections and supplemental reading lists.
Roadside Wild Flowers of Christian County
Sue Robinson
Oak Tree Press
140 East Palmer Street, Taylorville, IL 62568
9781892343437, $20.00 www.oaktree.com
Roadside Wild Flowers of Christian County is a visually appealing field guide to sixty-four naturally occurring types of roadside flowers in Christian County, Illinois. Each flower has its growing season listed, along with its size, species name, and a few brief facts as well as the occasional legend about the species. "The story is told of a little yellow dragon who died when a fried egg (always death to dragons) became stuck in his throat and he was then transformed into the butter and eggs flower." What distinguishes Roadside Wild Flowers of Christian County are its absolutely beautiful illustrations, blending elements of realistic minimalism and artistry. As a result, Roadside Wild Flowers of Christian County is very highly recommended for anyone who enjoys artwork of flowers as well as for Christian hikers, drivers and visitors.
Vaast Bin
Michael Peters
Calamari Press
15 West 74th Street, Apt. #8-A, New York, NY 10023
9780979808005, $13.00 www.calamaripress.com
Vaast Bin N Ephemerisi is an original, free-verse poetry collection of multifaceted imagery ranging from lingering moments of impression to stream-of-consciousness, punctuated by the occasional abstract black-and-white illustration. The linguistic stops, starts, and original reinterpretations of individual words offer disjoint glimpses of hectic reality, much like life itself. "Vaast Bin - 1 } 181: the supplanter / } that I was in this power / coxcomber, in the opening of the forest / a movement - in the arcing beams of starheadlights / serrating the indices of black night / O'd sepal parting struumm'd in tuenns / in the dark milk of axionic piors / the shutter thrusts open / seeping into the eyes of the bin / beings, tongue-trilled- / with all instruments denoted".
John Burroughs
Reviewer
Carson's Bookshelf
They Flew Proud
Jane Gardner Birch
Privately Published
1113 Layfield Lane, Crownsville, MD 21032
9781933858258, $35.00 jane@theyflewproud.com
Winner of the National Aviation hall of Fame 2007 'Combs Gates' Award, "They Flew Proud" by Jane Gardner Birch is the story of the national Civilian Pilot Training Program that was a local course of study at Grove City College and the Grove City Airport, Pennsylvania from its pre-World War II founding, to the war years when the college contracted to teach Army Air Force Cadets their academic studies, and the airport provided fixed base operator and flight instructors support for cadets to embark on solo flights. More than 435.000 men and women were taught to fly under the CPTP. In Grove City, 486 students of the 8th Detachment received almost 5,000 hours of instructions before seeing service in the war before the CPTP was abruptly canceled by the government. "They Flew Proud" is also the story of how manager/instructor Gardner Birch refocused the airport to teach civilians to fly, creating five Solo Boards to record the 127 students and their solo dates between the summers of 1944 to 1948. Jane Gardner Birch includes interviews with a number of men and women who retell learning basic flying skills and their solo flights, sharing their memories of their instructors who prepared them to fly some 60 years ago and the strong bonds they experienced with their fellow students, the instructors, and others who shared their enthusiasm for flight. A unique bit of American aviation history, "They Flew Proud" is a very strongly recommended and much appreciated contribution to 20th Century Aviation history and a singular addition to any personal, academic, or community library Aviation Studies reference collection or supplemental reading list.
The Official NRA Guide To Firearms Assembly: Rifles And Shotguns
Joseph B. Roberts & Harris J. Andrews, editors
Stoeger Publishing
17603 Indian Head Highway, Suite 200, Accokeek, MD 20607-2501
9780883173343, $24.95 www.stoegerpublishing.com
Now in a newly revised and expanded addition, "The Official NRA Guide To Firearms Assembly: Rifles And Shotguns" examines the history and mechanical details of hundreds of historic and popular rifles and shotguns. Collaboratively compiled and deftly edited by firearm experts Joseph B. Roberts & Harris J. Andrews, "Joseph B. Roberts & Harris J. Andrews" features detailed instructions and accurate 'exploded-view' diagrams proving the precise information needed by the reader to successfully dismantle and then re-assemble their rifle or shotgun. The thoroughly 'user friendly', profusely illustrated, step-by-step instructions show precisely how the various parts of the firearm interact and will prove to be an invaluable instructional guide and reference for collectors, dealers, hunters, and shooting enthusiasts. Also very highly recommended from Stoeger Publishing is Joseph B. Roberts and Harris J. Andrews companion volume, "The Official NRA Firearms Assembly: Pistols And Revolvers" (9780883173350, $24.95).
The Hawai'i Beer Book
Cheryl Chee Tsutsumi
Watermark Publishing
1088 Bishop Street, Suite 310, Honolulu, HI 96813
9780979676925, $15.95 www.bookshawaii.net 1-866-2665
In "The Hawai'i Beer Book: Bars, Breweries & Beer Cuisine", award-winning journalist Cheryl Chee Tsutsumi provides interested readers with a succinct history of brewing in Hawaii, an informative explanation of home brewing, an illustrated tour of Hawaii's local craft breweries, listings and reviews of local bars and restaurants with a special focus on the beers they serve, suggestions for food-and-beer pairings, beer-related recipes, as well as fun beer trivia. From beer books, to breweriana clubs, to beer related podcasts, "The Hawai'i Beer Book" is a unique, confidently recommended, and thoroughly 'user friendly' compendium of practical and fun information that must be considered essential reading for any resident or visitor with an interest in what Hawaii has to offer for beer enthusiasts.
The Lighthouse Encyclopedia
Ray Jones
The Globe Pequot Press
PO Box 480, Guilford, CT 06437
9780762745784, $19.95 www.globepequot.com 1-800-243-0495
An impressively organized and presented 288-page compendium of information, "The Lighthouse Encyclopedia: The Definitive Reference" by lighthouse enthusiast and expert Ray Jones provides a wealth of information and trivia that will be especially appreciated by lighthouse fans and students of maritime history. Offering answers to hundreds of questions about lighthouses, their history, key people associated with them, lighthouse technology, lighthouse organizations, as well as specific lighthouses, "The Lighthouse Encyclopedia" truly lives up to its title. Enhanced with a literally hundreds of full-color photographs and archival images of lighthouses, sidebars addressing light house preservation, lighthouse collectibles, and tips for photographing lighthouses, "The Lighthouse Encyclopedia" is a superb contribution to the growing library of lighthouse literature and a core addition to any personal, academic, or community library reference collection on the subject.
Michael J. Carson
Reviewer
Cheri's Bookshelf
Never Look Back: Phantom Hollow Series Book Two
Kathy Herman
Multnomah Books a division of Random House
12265 Oracle Boulevard Suite 200 Colorado Springs, Colorado 80921
9781590529225 $12.99 www.mpbooks.com
Twenty-nine year old Ivy Griffith is starting over, just released from a six month stay in prison for keeping quiet about a murder in high school. Yes she could have chose community service instead of prison but knew she had to pay for the past. Totally clean from the drugs and all that was in her past she begins for the first time to raise her seven year old son Montana on her own. Having recommitted her life to Christ she still struggles with forgiving herself and it doesn't help that her brother Rusty won't forgive her, wanting nothing to do with her or Montana and doesn't want his daughters around him for fear he will "act out" something and hurt them. Ivy's parents have been very supportive and glad she's back even giving her a job at the camp they own and a cabin on the property. As Ivy settles into her new life there are new men as well. Luke Draper a vacationing CEO who everyone thinks would be perfect for her but she's drawn to Rue Kessler one of the two men that her father has hired from Brother's Keeper a service helping recovering addicts get a new start on life. Everyone opposes the relationship feeling two recovering addicts cannot be good and Rue seems to be the number one suspect in a rash of home break-ins and beatings in the area but Ivy enjoys spending time with him and he is so good with Montana except when Ivy learns Montana and Rue are keeping a secret from her and he starts acting funny towards her once he sees her ivy tattoo.
As for the break-ins, Rue doesn't have an alibi as he has been star watching alone on the nights of the break-ins so of course with his history it seems the sheriff's department is determined to pin the crimes on him. Luke is not even a suspect since his story of being a vacationing CEO checks out and the only other suspect is Huck Maxfield whom the sheriff's department keeps receiving anonymous phone calls to check out what's going on at old Gus Maxfield's place. But Huck's story seems to check out that he is Gus's grandson who has inherited the place. It seems the attacker is only going after the older senior citizens in the community, beating them up and stealing things of little value except to that senior citizen. The whole town is on edge and the sheriff's department is at a loss as to what is happening.
Author Kathy Herman has done it again in this exceptional book two of the Phantom Hollow series in telling this story of suspense and intrigue. Drawing the reader in from page one and making that reader believe they know the characters personally. A perfect read for high schoolers and adults alike. Also included is a discussion guide for book groups.
This reviewer just could not put it down just like the first book of the series "Ever Present Danger". And again Herman does an incredible job of teaching through the pages of God's unfailing love, amazing grace and how He always has a plan even when we ourselves don't have a clue and can't forgive our past. This novel will definitely stick with you long after you close the book. So by all means sit back and enjoy this spellbinding tale and be prepared for a totally unexpected amazing ending!
Splitting Harriet
Tamara Leigh
Multnomah Books a division of Random House
12265 Oracle Boulevard Suite 200 Colorado Springs, Colorado 80921
9781590529287 $12.99 www.mpbooks.com
Harriet Josephine Bisset - Harri tattooed rebel, the preacher's kid, the ultimate prodigal son come home again from the dark side past of cigarettes, sex and alcohol. But now is back at her old church - First Grace. Totally clean and forgiven by her church and God but cannot seem to forgive herself. Lives at the senior citizen mobile home park because it's safe. There is a new preacher at First Grace since her parents are on the mission field and Harri has been at odds with him since he took over fighting mainly for the rights of the seniors and demanding things stay status quo with no changes especially contemporary music! But changes must be made if First Grace is to survive. Harri is in charge of the Woman's ministry and works at the local cafe that she's working to buy soon. With all this you would think Harri was a senior citizen herself but she's only twenty-eight!! Than to top it off the new pastor brings in a consultant to move First Grace into the present and beyond. Enter gorgeous motorcycle riding, long haired, tattooed Maddox McCray everything Harri has tried to leave behind. She tries to resist for fear the old Harri will rise again but as everyone keeps reminding her including Maddox that she is forgiven and needs to live again but can she? Can the Jelly Bellys continue to help her keep control?
An awesome read for teens and adults alike, also included are discussion questions perfect for readers groups or Bible study groups as this novel is an a fantastic teaching tool.
This is author Tamara Leigh's third Christian novel wanting to write novels that were God honoring and that she has. This is chick-lit or God-lit at it's finest Leigh does an amazing job of allowing us into Harri's life and not just glimpses of her past but spells it out and shows us God's grace and His total forgiveness and shows us we can forgive ourselves and begin a new life. Reviewer's personal note from someone with a past like Harri's this has taught me how I must forgive myself too as I'm sure everyone has things in their past they struggle with as well and this book will help you let go and let God!
So grab a club sized container of Jelly Bellys and sit back and enjoy "Splitting Harriet" you won't regret it!
Cheri Clay
Reviewer
Daniel's Bookshelf
Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails: The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War
Tom Wheeler
Harper Collins Publishers
10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022
9780061129780 $24.95 www.harpercollins.com 1-800-242-7757
I always enjoy reading books about our past presidents to get a perspective on the accomplishments they made to succeed during their term or terms of office. I envisioned so many books about Abraham Lincoln have been written, that I believe it would take a lifetime to read all of them. I noticed this curious book about him from an author who discussed his tool to communicate with his generals while in the field.
Tom Wheeler is today's high-tech person having been the CEO of technology companies, and the National Cable Television Association and the Cellular Telecommunications and the Internet Association. He is the author of Take Command! Leadership Lessons from the Civil War.
Wheeler discusses how the telegraph enabled Abraham Lincoln to keep his generals from losing the war for the North. He uses his modern day knowledge to show how Lincoln micro-managed his generals. Lincoln's handwritten messages that were telegraphed brings this book to life. Lincoln was able to take advantage of a technology, and it helped develop his leadership by doing it. Lincoln was able to communicate the telegraph as a tool to project his leadership and authority. Wheeler explained it well about how General Ulysses Grant was able to improvise based on changing battlefield conditions. Wheeler said, "His decision to operate from the field would not have been possible, but for the army's central nervous system running over the telegraph wire."
The book covers war decisions and war news. It also was used to instruct and inspire his generals, commute executions and even stay in touch with his alcoholic wife. I agree that the book is an interesting account of Lincoln's dynamic role in the Civil War. Tom Wheeler has given the reader a fascinating history of how a great president used the telegraph to save the country from being split in two.
Blue and Gray Navies: The Civil War Afloat
Spencer C. Tucker
Naval Institute Press
291 Wood Road Annapolis, MD 21402-5034
9781591148821 $34.95
One of the topics in my major history interest concerning Civil War history, is the naval portion. There has not been as much exposure in the battles and campaigns on the seas and rivers. Spencer C. Tucker's earlier book A Short History of the Civil War at Sea gave an excellent short and concise view of the naval war. Readers who read this book got an understanding with this tight informative book, that would go from the river warfare to clashes of ironclads, from blockade runners to shipyards, from submarine and mine warfare to the shops. He continues relating about the guns, and the brave men on both sides of the war.
Tucker's next book uses recent scholarship, official records and memoirs of it's participants. The book is direct and agile in its language, and facts which contribute to make an interesting subject even more so. He looks at important roles played by Union and Confederate navies. In this book Tucker does a wider and more complete sweep of the naval Civil War period. He begins with an overview of the United States Navy history to 1861. Then he covers the two navies at the beginning of the war. He follows by examine senior leadership, officers, and personnel, organization, recruitment practices, training, facilities, and manufacturing practices. He discusses the acquisition of ships, with the design and construction of new types, He follows telling us about the armament, and how naval ordnance was developed. He doesn't skip a beat with some detail on both Northern and Southern naval strategies.
I found the book to contain good depth on most areas of the naval subject with a close look at Union blockading of Confederate Atlantic, and Gulf Coasts, river warfare in the Western Theater, Confederate blockade running, and commerce raiders on the high seas. Tucker looks at the Union's major campaigns against New Orleans, Charleston, Vicksburg, and on the Red River. His history narrative goes over the major battles and technological innovations and finally the significance of the Union blockade.
Tucker has written two excellent books on the naval aspects and his latest book completes a fine history coverage. One can appreciate a much better understanding of the events, that occurred near or on the water. This book will stand alone as the standard single-volume history of naval and joint operations during the Civil War.
Daniel Allen
Reviewer
Debra's Bookshelf
The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency
Alexander McCall Smith
Anchor
9781400034772 $12.95
The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, first published in 1998, is the first in Alexander McCall Smith's acclaimed Botswana series. Precious Ramotswe is the lady detective behind the book's title. She opened her agency with money inherited from her father, Obed Ramotswe. In this first installment we learn about Obed's life--he worked for years in South Africa's mines, saved his money, and later invested in cattle--and also about Mma Ramotswe's early history. ("Mma," pronounced "mah," is a term of respect that appears throughout the book.) She grew up in Mochudi, raised by her father and a cousin. Against her father's wishes she leapt into an unhappy marriage that left her alone and grieving her only child's death in infancy. It's an unhappy chapter in Mma Ramotswe's life, but it packs meat onto her character: she is not all homespun goodness, that is, but was capable in her youth of great folly, and what wisdom she has was hard won. The book offers an account of Mma Ramotswe's earliest cases, which she solves with legwork and good sense and the occasional help of her friends, in particular Mr. J.L.B. Maketoni, the proprietor of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. Mma Ramotswe is not the sort of detective one calls upon to solve grand crimes, but neither are all of her cases trivial. In addition to dealing with a client's wayward daughter, for example, and a doctor's worry about his colleague's competency, she is concerned throughout this book with the case of a missing eleven-year-old boy. The story of his disappearance and of her involvement in the case is woven throughout the book.
McCall Smith's series is not plot-driven. Mma Ramotswe's cases give the books their framework, but the focus is on Mma Ramotswe's character and on the country of Botswana itself: the setting of McCall Smith's books is at least as important to the stories as his protagonist. But although one doesn't think of the books primarily as mysteries, they are in fact good cozies, so the books can be enjoyed on that score as well.
If you haven't yet stumbled on McCall Smith's series, you have yet to experience the singular joy of slipping into Mma Ramotswe's world. There is something soothing about the experience, and I'm not sure how the author achieves this magic: the simplicity of his language, perhaps, or of his characters' ethos. At any rate, the books are a pleasure to be savored.
The Husband
Dean Koontz
Bantam
9780553589092 $7.99
Up until now I'd somehow missed Dean Koontz's career. He's written some fifty books, a number of them New York Times bestsellers. His first book was published in 1968, and he published his breakthrough novel Whispers in 1980. He's one of those writers whose names appear in larger type than the titles on their book covers. Reading Koontz's 2006 thriller The Husband, I can see why he's so successful. The book is lightning paced, with short, easily swallowed chapters and a heart- thumper of a plot. The premise: 27-year-old landscaper Mitchell Rafferty--married three years and still crazy in love with his wife-- gets a call on his cell phone in the middle of the day. Mitch's wife has been kidnapped. The psychopaths holding her tell Mitch he has to fork over two million dollars in sixty hours' time. They're deadly serious--a point they make abundantly clear within minutes of contacting him. At once Mitch's contented world is shattered. And we get to watch as he tries to figure out how to get his hands on the money and save his wife and evade the police and elude surveillance. And so on. It's a really good read. What I particularly like is that Koontz takes us through his protagonist's thought processes, so that we understand how a regular guy might respond to the insane situation into which he's been thrust. When Mitch needs to buy ammunition for a gun he's gotten his hands on, for example, he doesn't know how to ask for it at the counter of a gun shop without looking suspicious. We get to see how he decides what to do, sitting in the car outside the store. That Mitch has to fumble his way through things, thinking on the run, makes his response to the kidnapping more realistic.
The book is not without flaws. The author sometimes allows an almost mystical element to creep into the story, which isn't necessary:
"An important truth hid from him, hid not in shadows, hid not behind the boxed holidays, but hid from him in plain sight. He saw but was blind. He heard but was deaf.
"This extraordinary perception grew more intense, swelled until it became oppressive, until it had such a physical dimension that his lungs would not expand. Then it rapidly subsided, was gone."
There are a couple really bad sentences in the book. (One of them has the word "susurration" in it, so it may be an inside joke: Koontz is apparently known for using the word in most of his novels.) The ending is a little disappointing. And Koontz gives his protagonist an elaborate but implausible back story--his parents raised Mitchell and his siblings as if they were science experiments, subjecting them, for example, to extended periods of sensory deprivation and humiliation. The background serves to explain the characters and reactions of Mitchell and his brother Anson, who plays a large role in the story, but it's all a bit over the top and distracting and, again, unnecessary. Mitchell and Anson need not have endured so unusual a childhood to have ended up as they are.
The Husband is flawed, to be sure, and it's the sort of book that would get Harold Bloom tut tutting from on high. But it'll also remind you how fun it can be to get lost in a page-turner.
Whatever You Do, Don't Run
Peter Allison
The Lyons Press
c/o The Globe Pequot Press
246 Goose Lane, P.O. Box 480, Guilford, CT 06437
0762745657 $16.95
Beginning in the mid-1990s, Peter Allison worked as a safari guide, primarily in Botswana. In Whatever You Do, Don't Run, Allison tells stories about his life in the bush. There are animal stories aplenty--a herd of elephants clustering protectively around its calving matriarch, a giant Python intent on crushing the life out of the author, an infestation of mice so desperately hungry they took to chewing on bald men's heads. But guides have to deal with paying guests as well as wild animals, and Allison does not shy from criticizing the spoiled and stupid among his tour groups.
In the hands of a more witty writer (think J. Maarten Troost's The Sex Lives of Cannibals), the material at Allison's disposal might have resulted in an unputdownable read. Allison's book isn't, but his stories are cute and amusing, and the author himself is likable and agreeably self-deprecating. Most interestingly, Whatever You Do, Don't Run gives readers a glimpse of an unusual llfestyle that most of us will probably not have given much thought to before: what's it like, day-to-day, to lead tourists around herds of impala and crocodile-infested rivers? If the subject matter is of interest, or if you like to browse the lives of people with jobs far different from yours, Allison's book is worth a quick read.
Wish I Could Be There
Allen Shawn
Viking
0670038423 $24.95
Allen Shawn's book on phobias is often fascinating, sometimes hard going, and always written in laudably precise prose. Shawn's approach to the subject is two-fold. In several chapters he discusses the science of phobias. He writes, for example, about the various types of phobia, about the functioning of the brain, about how the brain responds to fear, about Darwin and Freud. Though a layman, Shawn has done a lot of research on the topic, and he is clearly a very smart guy. These chapters of the book were, for me, the boring bits, but I can easily imagine a more scientifically inclined reader enjoying them as much as the rest of the book.
Shawn also discusses the subject of phobias from a personal perspective. He is riddled with phobias himself--the fear of elevators and of tunnels, of closed spaces and open spaces and unfamiliar routes. Though he's managed to enjoy a successful career as a composer, his agoraphobia has significantly curtailed his activities. In exploring his life as a phobic, Shawn unpacks his childhood, subjecting his family's dynamics to dispassionate analysis. His was an unusual family.
Shawn's parents were themselves both neurotic. Many subjects were taboo in the home--the relationship of the meat on one's plate to its animal source, for example, his mother's mental health, human sexuality:
"Before I left for music camp at thirteen, my father told me that I might encounter an activity called masturbation while I was there, but he looked as if he might be about to commit suicide after our conversation."
Also unmentioned was the fact that Shawn's father (William Shawn, who was the editor of the New Yorker for 35 years) was living a double life, carrying on a long-term relationship with another woman, whose existence was known to his wife but not his children. That so many subjects were off-limits, and that a great secret was being kept by the parents, put an emotional strain on the family. Shawn was also scarred by his early separation from his twin sister, Mary, who was autistic (a modern diagnosis of her developmental problems) and was institutionalized at the age of eight. (Shawn's older brother is the actor Wallace Shawn.)
Shawn's discussion of his parent's neuroses and the impact they had on his family, so lucidly discussed, makes for riveting reading. Here, for example, is a description of how his mother's need to control events was sometimes manifested:
"She couldn't and didn't drive, and she shared my father's need to direct every turn a driver should make while taking her somewhere. On the occasions when we traveled as a family in a rented car with a driver, she held the map and dictated every move. A drive to Lincoln Center was planned almost like a military campaign. A taxi driver would be addressed with the utmost courtesy but in a manner appropriate for someone who didn't speak English, did not know the city well, and was hard of hearing. Neither of my parents would ever have dreamed of stating the destination at the outset of the drive. The exact route was doled out slowly, and the final destination always saved for last. 'Thank you. Now, we want to go down FIFTH AVENUE to the EIGHTY-FIFTH STREET TRANSVERSE...and then across to...COLUMBUS."
I should add that Shawn's account is utterly devoid of rancor: he is not out to blame his parents for his own problems. In exploring the roots of his phobias he is laying bare the strange environment in which they were nurtured, but his approach is analytical. He could almost be an anthropologist describing the habits of test subjects. The result is a very interesting read.
About Alice
Calvin Trillin
Random House
9781400066155 $14.95
Calvin Trillin's wife Alice died of cardiac arrest in 2001. During their 36-year marriage, Alice had served as Trillin's muse and first editor, and she often featured as a sort of character in his writing. (I confess I've only read one other book by Trillin, his 2001 novel Tepper Isn't Going Out). In About Alice, published in 2006, Trillin seems to be trying to define his wife's personality, to preserve a piece of it for the record, to explain why she inspired his devotion. It is not a maudlin account. He writes about Alice's attitudes toward parenting and money, for example, about the role she played in his writing, her charity work, her cancer scare in 1976. The book is a sort of extended love letter to Alice, to be sure, but a further point of the exercise is to be found on the book's dedication page. About Alice is dedicated not to her, but to the couple's grandchildren, who will never know her. The book is a nice gift to them, and to Alice. About Alice is brief--it only takes about an hour to read--and Trillin's prose goes down easy. The book should be of particular interest to readers familiar with Trillin's characterization of his wife in earlier books.
Debra Hamel
Reviewer
Gary's Bookshelf
A Testament in Purgatory
M. Kevin Durak & Scott D Muck
Publish America
Baltimore
9781424118953 $16.95 www.PublishAmerica.com
On the copyright page there was a statement. "At the specific preference of the author Publish America allowed this work to remain exactly as the author intended, verbatim, without editorial input." In all the years I've done reviews I have never seen a statement like that by any publisher. The authors should not be proud of that because this work needed a great deal of editing. From the beginning there is confusion because the first person narrative switches characters making it difficult to follow. It is further complicated by the name at the beginning of each chapter implying that is the person telling their story. The work had some moments where it was focused, but the end is very shallow. For me there were too many things detracting from the enjoyment of the novel. The authors had a good idea but it is very poorly handled. No major publisher would accept no revisions. My advice to the authors is have many people read their manuscript for criticism before they send it out to be published.
Firefighterette Gillette
Engineer Kathy Gillette
Foreword by Toronto Firefighter Graham Voss
Alacheri Publishing LLC
P O Box 26587, Indianapolis, Indiana 46226
www.alacheripublishing.com www.firefighterettegillette.com
9781603480222
Gillette breaks new ground in the realm of books about firefighters. She takes off the gloves and shows how hard it is for women to make it in a profession dominated by men. All she wanted was to be accepted in this occupation. Gillette reveals the attitudes of her fellow workers and shows that she deserves to be a part of the team. She is the female Dennis Smith.
Terrorist.com
Vic Sandel
Author House
1663 Liberty Drive Bloomington, Indiana 47403
9781414060804 $15.95 1 800-839-8640 www.authorhouse.com
Terrorists take over computers in the United States causing havoc on the roads, phones, and anything else that uses the machines. They also have kidnapped a computer genius's daughter. They say they will return her if they receive a certain amount of money. The money is to be dropped at sea at a certain geographical location. The package is dropped but a man out for a day of fishing picks up the bundle. A short time later federal agents storm his home thinking he is involved. He's not but he is the terrorist's worst threat because he is a retired covert military agent. The story is a fast paced tale that moves along briskly until its final explosive ending. This is a great first in a series.
Games End
Vic Sandel
Llumina Press
P.O. Box772246, Coral Springs, Fl 33077-2246
9781595268105 $14.95 www.llumina.com
Terrorists hit sports events all over the world. Greg Norman and his girlfriend, the main characters from "Terrorist.Com," are back in action searching for the perpetrators of the crimes they continue to see unfold. The author once again has written a story that is a fast paced thriller that races along to its final volatile end. Both of this author's books would make great movies.
Forecast
Jane Tara
Love Spell
200 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
9780505527448 $6.99 www.dorchesterpub.com
Drew Henderson, the weather guy at USBC TV station, has a problem. While covering a hurricane in Florida he is injured and laid up in the hospital. The station is faced with a problem as well. They have to have someone do the weather segment of the evening news. Rowie Shakespeare, a resident astrologer, is hired and the ratings go through the roof. When Drew gets out, he has a major dilemma: how can he get his job back? He also falls for the new weather lady. Jane Tara has written a novel that is fun and a delightful romance tale.
Blood Thirsty
Marshall Karp
MacAdam Cage Publishing
155 Samsome Street Suite 550, San Francisco, CA 94104
9781596922099 $26.00 www.macadamcage.com
This second Lomax & Biggs mystery is much better than the first one. Starting with the fact that it is shorter and faster paced. The author takes the reader behind the scenes of Hollywood while the detectives solve a grisly murder. The novel is a fun read that is a great crime novel.
Because She Can
Bridie Clark
Hachette Book Group USA
1271 Avenue of the Americas
New York NY 10020
9780446195232 $7.99 www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com www.bridieclark.com
Claire Truman has a great job with a publishing company, but she is offered a position with a much bigger house. She wants the new employment but has some doubts because of what she has heard about Vivian Grant, who would be her new boss. All of her friends tell her not to take it because of what they know about Vivian. But Claire feels it is a stepping-stone to much greater work. So she takes the position and finds out for herself that Vivian is a tyrant. Claire has no life for herself. Everywhere she turns there is Vivian. This is an entertaining tale that shows how bad a boss can be.
The Deadliest Strain
Jan Coffey
MIRA
World Wide Library
225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9
9780778324584 $6.99 www.Mirabooks.com
Once again this author delivers a rapid-fire tale of suspense that is torn from the headlines of news stories. There is germ warfare that is being placed all over the nation. The results are gruesome. The country has a short window of time to find out who the culprits are and destroy the weapon.
Nick & Slim the Legend of the Falcon Mine
Pamela Henn
White Wolf Studio
P. O. Box 490, Windermere, Fl 34786
9780446195232 $19.95 www.whitewolfstudio.com
Eleven-year-old Nick Stewart is having trouble at school. He is the new kid and other students are giving him a hard time. His dad is deep into his work and that adds to his problems. Nick is framed for stealing a museum artifact. His life couldn't be more screwed up. Somehow the stolen journal of Slim Marano who was hanged for a murder ends up in Nick's possession. Slim always said he did not commit the killing. Now his spirit comes to Nick and takes him back in time to help solve the case. This is a fun fantasy mystery, a YA tale that like, the Harry Potter novels, can be read and enjoyed by any age group.
Around the World on Two Wheels
Peter Zheutlin
Citadel Press
Kensington Publishing Corp
850 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10022
9780806528519 $22.95 1-800-221-2647 www.kensingtonbooks.com
Women have always been at the forefront of change. This is a remarkable story of a Jewish woman who in the year1894 decided to ride a bicycle around the world in a certain amount of time and transformed the world for women athletes. Annie Kopchovksky was the first female to get product endorsements for her event. For author Peter Zheutlin this is personal because this is the story of his great-grandaunt.
The writer brings to life the feel of the times and recreates her trip throughout the world and shows that women can do anything a man can do.
Gary Roen
Reviewer
Geoffrey's Bookshelf
The End Of The Affair
Graham Greene
Penguin Books
c/o Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
9780142437988, $14.00 www.penguin.com
"Emotionally Difficult To Read"
Drinking a glass of bile might be a more pleasant experience than reading Graham Green's THE END OF THE AFFAIR, but it wouldn't be as insightful. He's masterfully managed to make you feel as if your own heartstrings had snapped in a sordid love affair and you were hell bent on hurting someone. Thankfully, he's kept this emotionally difficult novel mercifully short.
First person narrator Maurice Bendrix spills the truth about his married lover, Sarah Miles, in perverse dribs and drabs because he wants you to hate her as much as he does until he sets the record straight. Although the twist ending seems at first contrived and manipulative, it is, in retrospect, perfectly within Bendrix's pitifully wounded character to make us feel as miserable as he does.
Right Ho, Jeeves
P.G. Wodehouse
Penguin Books
c/o Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
0140284095, $9.00 www.penguin.com
"Perfectly Plotted"
Any sentient person would describe P.G. Wodehouse's RIGHT HO, JEEVES as a perfectly plotted novel about, well, what? A muddleheaded aristocrat trying to back out of an accidental engagement? A socially inept newt fancier trying to work up the nerve to propose to the girl he loves? A blustering Aunt trying to bulldoze money out of her tightwad husband? Two stubborn blisters breaking their engagement because he doesn't believe she nearly got inhaled by a shark while aquaplaning in the south of France? A butler showing his disdain over an employer's dinner jacket?
In other words, it's a novel about... nothing, which sounds frivolous, doesn't it? Yet I dare you to put it down once you've started it. I dare you not to be delighted. I dare you not to marvel at Wodehouse's magnificent craftsmanship, and how he seamlessly weaves these half dozen plot lines into a most satisfying, last-page conclusion. And, finally, I dare you not to want to pick up another of his almost 100 novels or short story collections, with 14 of those involving Jeeves and Bertie Wooster written over a 51 year span.
Geoffrey Smagacz
Reviewer
Gloria's Bookshelf
Down Into Darkness
David Lawrence
Thomas Dunne Books
c/o St. Martin's Minotaur
175 Fifth Ave., NY, NY 10010
9780312347420 $24.95 646-307-5151, www.thomasdunnebooks.com
This is the fourth book by David Lawrence, all in the Stella Mooney series. Stella is a 33-year-old London detective sergeant, and a body found in the rough section known as Harefield Estate hits a little too close too home for her - this is where she spent her youth, an appalling neighborhood, known for its flagrant drug-dealing and prostitutes. Stella never knew her father, and hasn't seen her mother in ten years. In those early years, the author tells us, Stella spent her time "watching the weather, following the flight of birds and wishing she could do that, wishing she could find a thermal, like the city gulls, and tilt, sliding down the wind until she reached somewhere that was somewhere else. Stella keeping quiet, keeping to herself, reading her own school reports, because her mother never would, looking for a way out, taking charge of her own life."
As the book opens the naked body of a young woman, no more than 20 years old, is found hanging from a tree, the words "dirty girl" scrawled in marker across her back. When another body is found soon thereafter, a man whose neck has been nearly severed found tied to a bench near the river, the words "filthy coward" similarly written across his arms, it would appear that the police have a serial killer on their hands. But a connection between the victims is hard to discern: the girl was apparently a prostitute, the man a researcher for a prominent Member of Parliament. As to the motive for the killings, Stella finds herself thinking: "'Who are you to be judge and executioner?' She gave a little shudder and suddenly was filled with a just and intense loathing for this man, this lone vigilante, this angel of wrath, or whatever he considered himself to be." But even more than the police procedural aspect of the book, as good as it is, the pull of the writing lies in the characters, among them DI Mike Sorley, Stella's boss and her close friend; Stella's lover, John Delaney, former was correspondent but currently a features writer currently working on something called The Rich List; who misses the action, and, of course, Stella herself. Most of all the book is about "secret lives. Who could ever know everything about anyone?," as Delaney says.
The poetry evident in this author's writing evinces his background as a prize-winning English poet. The book is gripping, its characters well-drawn and though similarities may be found in the writing of Ian Rankin and TV's Prime Suspect, among others, they are nonetheless original creations. This is a haunting novel, and one I won't soon forget. Highly recommended.
Hell for the Holidays
Chris Grabenstein
Carroll & Graf
c/o Da Capo Press
11 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142
9780786720606 $27.95 617-252-5200, www.dacapo.com
Chris Grabenstein, the author of the wonderful John Ceepak/Jersey Shore mystery series, this time has brought back Chris Miller in a sequel to Slay Ride, which was published a little over a year ago. Chris is the African-American FBI agent from Jersey City whose daughter's life was endangered in the earlier book.
His daughter, now seven years old, is suffering from PTSD as the anniversary of that traumatic event nears. Chris' attention is diverted from those problems when the ten-year-old son of a neighbor, a Hispanic Customs Agent, is kidnapped on Halloween Night, and a few days later Chris is called to the scene of a kidnapping in another part of the country which appears to be a hate crime: the victims are gay, and Chris' special expertise is needed. But something much more sinister is brewing: domestic terrorists in the form of a White Supremacist hate group are planning an attack, to coincide with Thanksgiving Day, that most American of holidays. They are armed with sophisticated weapons, and overflowing with hatred.
Mr. Grabenstein has given his growing audience a taut, fast-moving thriller, packed with suspense and a wonderful hero [dubbed "Saint Chris" by his friends and neighbors] determined to stop the impending catastrophe. Filled with suspense and scarily real 'bad guys,' Hell for the Holidays is a great read, at holiday time or any other.
Third Strike
Philip R. Craig and Wm. G. Tapply
Scribner
c/o Simon & Schuster
1230 Sixth Ave., NY, NY 10020
9781416532569 $24.00 www.SimonandSchuster.com 800-223-2336
In this, the third entry in the Brady Coyne/J.W. Jackson adventures, after the earlier "First Light" and "Second Sight," Brady has been called to Martha's Vineyard, where J.W. presently makes his home. Larry Bucyck, a client who he hasn't heard from in years calls him when he fears his life is in danger, and implores Brady to help him. J.W.'s help is enlisted when the steamship strike on the island has idled the ferries which are virtually the only way to get to the island from what they term America [i.e., the mainland].
J.W. has his own problems: His wife, Zeolinda ["Zee"], has prevailed upon him to investigate the death of her friend's husband, who is believed to have died while trying to blow up the engine room of a boat, all part of the growing tensions arising from the strike. It soon appears that two men have died from seeing what they should not have seen, and being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It is not apparent at first in what manner these two threads will come together, but the reader knows it will happen at some point and in some way as the book progresses. The tale moves at a measured pace, unhurriedly, much as life itself does on a summer's day in Martha's Vineyard, I imagine, and with equal pleasure.
The authors alternate chapters with their respective protagonists moving the plot along, Mr. Craig's J.W. Jackson, the former Boston cop and Vietnam vet, happily married after ten years and with two young children. The steamship company has till now been the only viable lifeline between the Vineyard and America; now men are using their own boats, making two, three trips a day, ferrying eight cars at a time, and it was just such a boat that was destroyed in the attempted torching which resulted in the man's death. There are others who are making good money during the strike, ferrying people and cars and freight night and day, for whom the strike is a boon. Meanwhile Brady, who describes himself as a wills and estates lawyer from Boston and a trout fisherman, must find out who killed his former friend and client, who he describes as a "shy, private guy, living like Thoreau down there in the Menemsha woods. He said he just wants to be left alone," an innocent enough man who had managed to find a simple life on his own. Had indeed "carved out a little Walden for himself in a patch of woods on Martha's Vineyard, how he raised chickens and pigs…how he built stone sculptures that I guessed would stand there for eons, the Stonehenge of future generations…" The island at the moment is inundated with "pilgrims who came seeking the Promised Land, found it, and now can't leave because of the strike. The gods are Jesters." "The island cops were already stretched thin by the strike and by Larry Bucyck's murder, to say nothing of maintaining law and order among 100,000 August people who were rowdier than usual because they didn't like being trapped, even though they were trapped in Eden."
It would appear that the first man's death wasn't a suicide and that moreover there is a plot afoot with very sinister implications which Brady's client may have stumbled upon. These two authors, who were also great friends with a common love of the natural world, fishing and the Boston Red Sox, have put together a seamless, well-written and suspenseful book, with the personalities of their protagonists blending into a well-oiled machine that gets done that which it must, never losing sight of the women they love or their love for the beauty of their surroundings and their fishing. The writing is wonderful. Mr. Craig's J.W., at the end of a tense day, waiting for Mr. Tapply to return: "'I imagine Brady's fine,' I lied. I felt I was on the lip of the Void, ready to fall. We sat close together in the fading evening light and looked out over the gray waters of Nantucket Sound where the sailboats were easing toward harbor under the low dark sky. In spite of the sultry summer heat, the earth seemed without form, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. What had become of Brady?" And Mr. Tapply's Brady, confronting one of the 'bad guys: "Harry Doyle ignored me. He hunched his shoulder, squin
