The Crazy Old White Man from the Hood
Lee Gaylord
Publish America
P.O. Box 151,Frederick, MD 21705
www.publishamerica.com (301) 695-1707
ISBN: 1413724663, $19.95, 194 pp.
Bernadine Fawcett
Reviewer
Lee Gaylord, a man with a mission, dares "To Dream the Impossible Dream" to develop enough income from the sale of his book, "The Crazy Old White Man from the Hood" to create a center for drug and alcohol abuse. Just as Don Quixote was "scorned and covered with scars" Lee battles with his streetwise concepts "to reach the unreachable stars." Publishing an honest forthright subliminal flow in a personal journal - as is- without proofing is gutsy, but the author, Lee Gaylord, illustrates that he can take on his own and the world's flaws without hesitation. The reader experiences a skid row world which is raw, confused and violent. Lee believes himself to be a Black man in a white body. He is accepted as Black in a world foreign to the majority of us. His message to others is not just accept yourself, but be yourself and let your soul shine through.
If the impossible dream is to happen he will need professionals to exchange concepts with this down-under culture to find realistic preventions, causes, and cures. With much that is stacked against him, I hope he wins.
Sex Between The Beats: The Ultimate Guide To Sex Music
John Kale
Blush Books/A division of Blush Records
850 Warren Ave., Venice, California 90291
ISBN: 0976391201, $18.95, 233 pp.
Lynn Burton
Reviewer
Review first published online at blushrecords.com
Already familiar with some of the music from Blush Records, I was excited to get my hands on this book (it might also be the stickiest book I own) as well as the CD that accompanies it because I knew I'd be in for a fun ride. A fun ride is what I got! From the beginning to end, it delivers just what it promises. As a writer of erotica and lover of music, I could appreciate all that this book has to offer.
Author and DJ, John Kale takes us on a guided exploration of sex music and our own sensuality through extensive research and his personal experiences as a disc jockey. Focusing on selected music, along with using all of your five senses, you'll learn how to set the mood and gain the desired effects for any erotic encounter. The type of music we listen to has a very great effect on how we behave in certain situations. Music can gently turn our consciousness toward sensuality while attuning sensitive bodily systems to the stirrings of sexual energy as Kale explains in a sub-chapter titled The Sexual Power of Music.
"Sex Between The Beats" appeals to a wide audience of music lovers, musicians or anyone trying to find a new direction in their relationships. It's informative as well as arousing. Don't just read this book; absorb it, learn it and put it to use for your advantage. You and your partner will be glad you did. Take the time to do the short exercises that are presented. They work! The appendix also lists several different types of music selections and further reading.
Torn Sky: Project Jerusalem
Kathleen Keating
Fleur de Lis Media
PO Box 352, Ainsworth, NE 69210
888-292-9096
ISBN: 0970859805, $25.99, 488 pp.
Cary Stu
Reviewer
Having read Kathleen Keating's earlier works, it was with great anticipation that I opened my review copy for Torn Sky: Project Jerusalem. For once, this is a sequel that truly does not disappoint. From the opening pages to the breakneck finish, I could not tear myself away. Keating has accomplished what so many authors fail to achieve when it comes to writing a sequel. Readers tend to develop preconceived notions about their favorite characters, and they expect the story to unravel the way they want it to. Sequels invariably never live up to reader's expectations, but in this case, Torn Sky: Project Jerusalem not only stands on its own, it exceeds the first by weaving an even more complicated story.
The first book in this series leaves you wondering what will happen in a world that has just been nearly devastated, both physically and spiritually. In the first chapter of Torn Sky: Project Jerusalem, we experience this devastation and the hesitancy that accompanies the unknown. What will the world be like, what can people expect? Keating answers these questions gradually, allowing the reader to immerse themselves into the story.
One of my biggest questions after reading Torn Sky: Part One was "What comes next?" Although these books are works of fiction, Keating has an uncanny foresight into world events. Many of the seemingly improbable events that were mentioned in the first book have come to pass. If even a few of the events mentioned in Torn Sky: Project Jerusalem come to pass, I fear what the answer to my question will be. This thought stays in the back of your mind as you follow Keating's characters as they seek their own answer to this question.
In a story that deals with "end time" events, I have found that authors tend to get carried away with their villains and with their protagonists. You end up with a caricature of a villain, a typical "baddie," complete with an expertly twirled moustache. The "good" people are always too good, and leave the reader little to commiserate with. Keating does not fall into this trap, creating characters that despite their failings, their faults, and their personal tics, are always real. The main antagonist in the story, although he is a man of incredible power and is filled with evil intentions, never crosses the line into the unbelievable. We're given insight into his mind, into his plans and although they are sensational, we begin to understand his motives, and perhaps even see a little bit of ourselves in his actions, a disturbing thought.
Each character in this book has to deal not only with the world crumbling down around their ears, but their own lives as well. Reality has been twisted, terrorist attacks become a nearly daily occurrence as mercenaries seek to turn confusion to their own ends, and families fall apart. In the midst of these calamities, each character has to make their own decision on where they will turn, what they will become and how they will write their own stories.
Several surprise twists occur throughout the book, and I won't spoil them here. Suffice it to say that if you have any preconceived notions going into this book, prepare to have them shredded. As a suspense author, Keating is in the top-ten of all time when it comes to weaving a tale and springing surprises on the reader. Chances are, you'll be guessing just like I did, all the way until the end. This book, even despite its size, is a book to be read in one sitting. Each time I put it down, I found myself drawn back to see what was behind the next corner, and the next. I must confess it was a pleasant addiction, and I only hope that the next book in the series will be completed soon.
In a genre filled with lackluster authors, cheap story-lines and mass produced, for lack of a better word, crap, Keating stands like a beacon. This is how a suspense book should be written, and one that I hope will receive the attention it deserves.
Tales of Soldiers and Civilians
Ambrose Bierce
Kent State University Press
Kent State University, Kent, Ohio 44240
ISBN: 0873387899, $30.00, 184 pp.
Christopher Baldwin
Reviewer
This collection of stories is a rare forgotten gem of American literature. The same can be said of its author, a dark, cranky, brilliant cynic and iconoclast, mentor to the young H.L. Mencken and role model for Westbrook Pegler, two titans of twentieth century journalism. Unfortunately, Bierce's fiction has been unjustifiably neglected—perhaps because the short story as an art form is moribund in this postmodern age—and he is now remembered chiefly as a prolific newspaperman and author of some witty aphorisms. He was, also, however, a magnificent short story writer, a master of the genre and every inch the equal of such virtuosos as Stephen Crane, Bret Harte, and William Faulkner.
It is a curious and fascinating fact that a disproportionate number of American short story writers belong to what might be termed the toxic school of fiction. Included are contaminated geniuses like Edgar Allan Poe, a pedophile and drug addict; Nathaniel Hawthorne, a sex-obsessed Puritan; Mark Twain, a churl and a misanthrope; Jack London, a racist savage; and Ernest Hemingway, a literary necrophiliac. Ambrose Bierce, to be sure, is comfortably at home among this group, both for his tremendous talent and his morbid fascination with cruelty, suffering, and death.
Bierce is certainly a diseased writer. What other type of mind would devote years of effort to composing a bilious, gall-and-wormwood work like The Devil's Dictionary, droll and bitingly clever though it undoubtedly is? If the essence of humor lies in deconstructing current mores, then Bierce eclipses most humorists by debunking every convention known to Western man. The Dictionary is a volcanic eruption of burning ridicule.
Having fought bravely in the Civil War's western theater of operations—he saw action at the great battles of Shiloh, Missionary Ridge, and Atlanta—for the entire four years as an officer and cartographer with the 9th Indiana Infantry—the only writer of stature courageous enough to have done so—Bierce, who suffered a serious head wound in the war's final months, migrated to England in 1872 and wrote vitriolic articles, his wicked wit earning him the sobriquet Bitter Bierce. Returning home in 1876, he found his niche and went to work for William Randolph Hearst newspapers in California and became a columnist in the San Francisco Examiner.
Tales of Soldiers and Civilians presents Bierce at his very best: imaginative, dynamic, grim, sardonic, sadistic, and as a technical innovator. He was a born storyteller, and these riveting tales, including some memorable ghost stories, are concerned chiefly with how and why men die. Sometimes they die courageously, sometimes uselessly, sometimes just to prove a point; often they die horrifically, agonizingly. Bierce's theme is that although war is hell, men are still eager to fight because fighting satisfies a deep and powerful need. Bierce saw firsthand how human beings sacrificed and willingly laid down their lives for a transcendent cause, whether that cause was called The Union or Southern Independence or Emancipation. The tragedy of the war for him was that both sides were right. And both were wrong, albeit for different reasons.
The most well-known piece in this collection is "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." While masterful and ground-breaking in its use of the psychological-flashback, (Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" is modeled after it) the story is not the best; "Chickamauga" is. The scene of a fierce battle in northwest Georgia in which 35,000 men died, the battle is never once mentioned except as the title. The piece could easily have been called "Sharpsburg" or "Chancellorsville," "Spotsylvania" or "Fredericksburg." Bierce impressively depicts the destructiveness of the encounter, not with combat scenes, but solely by describing the aftermath. A six-year old boy, playing soldier and lost in the woods outside a farmhouse, happens upon a ghastly company of maimed men crawling weakly through the fog-shrouded forest. We are not told if they are Federal or Confederate, and it does not matter. With their flesh in tatters, their bloody, grotesque faces shot half away, they delight the child by reminding him of painted clowns he has seen in a circus. Pretending to be their general, he leaps upon their backs to ride them as horses and urges them forward with blows from his wooden sword. Eventually he comes across a smoking wreck of burnt buildings and is shocked to discover his own home. He spots a female form on the ground, his mother. The story concludes with a grisly flourish:
"Conspicuous in the light of the conflagration lay the dead body of a woman—the white face turned upward, the hands thrown out and clutched full of grass, the clothing deranged, the long dark hair in tangles and full of clotted blood. The greater part of the forehead was torn away, and from the jagged hole the brain protruded, overflowing the temple, a frothy mass of gray, crowned with clusters of crimson. The child moved his little hands, making wild, uncertain gestures. He uttered a series of inarticulate and indescribable cries—something between the chattering of an ape and the gobbling of a turkey—a startling, soulless, an unholy sound, the language of a devil. The child was a deaf mute."
Typically, it is not enough for Bierce that the boy should discover his ruined home and dead mother. Anxious to give the screw another turn, he describes her mutilation in lurid detail, forehead gone and frothy brain oozing out. And to pump up the pathos, Bierce turns the child into a defective, a device totally superfluous to the plot and necessary only if one finds pleasure in imperfection and misfortune.
In another potent story, "The Coup De Grace," the war's brutality is shown as being all the more reprehensible when it is unintentional. Behind the lines, wounded men are dying painfully and in droves because doctors are overwhelmed and medicines are in short supply. The title refers to mercy-killing, what Bierce labels "a rite of compassion." But even his compassion is tinged with cruelty. With exquisite irony he has a soldier shoot a wounded horse, yet when the soldier presses the revolver to the temple of his best friend who is writhing in agony with a gaping belly-wound, the hammer merely clicks; the cylinder is empty. The soldier has spent his last round on the horse. He manages finally to dispatch his friend, and in barbarous fashion—hacking him to death with a sword-thrust through the chest.
Another story, "Killed at Resaca," deals with a lieutenant who is thought by his comrades to excessively vaunt his courage by constantly exposing himself to enemy fire. After he is killed, the story's narrator finds a love letter indicating that the dead man may have been responsible for one hundred deaths due to his cowardice. Only then does it become apparent that the lieutenant was not swaggering but seeking expiation of guilt through a suicidal act. This is the kind of insight of which Bierce was capable. With his illustrations of man's desire for martial glory—beautifully symbolized by the six-year old boy—set beside the gruesome reality of the Civil War, he is revealed as a shrewd psychologist as well as an artist of the first rank.
In appraising Bierce, it is worth recalling the dictum of his contemporary, Henry James: we must not quibble with an author's choice of subject; what he makes of it is our only legitimate concern. What Bierce understandably made of the war and incorporated into all his work was the idea of humanity's wickedness and savagery. It is a true enough vision as far as it goes, but is only half the picture, because it never takes account of the opposite side of human nature. To put a Freudian slant on it, Bierce sees all Id and no Superego.
Despite his wizardry with words—his prose at times soars to poetical heights—Bierce still has limitations. He can depict friendship but not tenderness, loyalty but not devotion, sacrifice but not love, because he is incapable of any real warmth or affection. The impetus behind his work is a purely negative energy. Yet his jaundiced outlook is precisely what gives his writing its vitality and force.
We do not know the origin of Bierce's pessimism. Perhaps it was caused by the horrors of the war, or perhaps it was something innate that the war exacerbated. In any event, that morbid strain in his nature apparently found its logical conclusion in his end. Death came for him just as it did for the lieutenant in "Killed at Resaca"—by personal invitation. Here is what he wrote in his last letter in 1914, at age 71, from Mexico, where he had gone to find Pancho Villa and observe the Revolution:
"If you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags, please know that I think it is a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stairs. To be a Gringo in Mexico—ah, that is euthanasia!"
Bierce vanished south of the border and was never seen or heard from again. It was a perfect ending for him, exactly as he himself would have written it. Come to think of it, he did.
The Tender Bar: A Memoir
J. R. Moehringer
Hyperion
77 W 66th St, New York, NY 10023
ISBN: 1401300642, $23.95, 368 pp.
Coletta Ollerer
Reviewer
J R Moehringer's earliest memories have him living with his mother at his grandfather's crowded, messy and unkempt home in Manhasset, Long Island. He says, "Under that one sagging roof my mother and I lived with Grandpa, Grandma, my mother's two grown siblings -- Uncle Charlie and Aunt Ruth -- and Ruth's five daughters and one son. `Huddled masses yearning to breath rent-free,' Grandpa called us." (p15)
Ruth decides to take her brood to Arizona and later JR and his mother follow. Things do not go well for Ruth but her sister decides to stay when Ruth returns. A fatherless boy and his mother have a special bond but this boy's mother is smart enough to know that he needs male supervision and companionship so when the school year ends she sends him back to Manhasset for the summer and turns him over to the influence of his uncle, a single man with lots of friends who is also the head bartender at Manhasset's favorite pub, Publicans. His uncle begins to include JR in his activities with his friends and JR loves the company of these men, all characters, who take a liking to him. "Everything the men taught me that summer fell under the loose catchall of confidence. That was all. But that was enough. That, I later realized, was everything.." (p95) He is enthralled with the idea of a meeting place for men and is delighted when he is first admitted to Publicans. As he grows older the bar becomes his refuge from the storms of life and its denizens are his closest friends.
His mother reveals that grandpa wouldn't allow her to attend college and she very much regrets that and encourages JR to plan on completing his education. He dreams of attending university and getting a job, "if I lived frugally I might still be able to take care of my mother and send her to college . . ." (p123) He bravely applies to Yale and is amazed when he is accepted there but as he begins his first year he learns he is not prepared for the academic demands. During a discussion of Plato in a Philosophy class he observes a classmate "scribbling rejoinders to Socrates in the margins of his text." (167) He thinks, "In a million years I wouldn't disagree with Socrates, and if I did, I'd keep it to myself." (p167) Despite setbacks he graduates and begins his life in the workaday world..
This is a delightful memoir of the coming of age of a boy whose father was absent. He is so easy to like, full of insecurities but open and willing to work hard and learn. And he has a lot learn from the unusual people who inhabit his life: his selfish, unpleasant and cantankerous grandfather, loving but ineffectual grandmother. Aunt Ruth, so angry at the world and her life. Her children, his cousins, whom he adores and Uncle Charlie who is among his heroes. Most of all, his mother, whom he loves mightily. A fun read.
Sun Dog Days
Slim Randles
University of New Mexico Press
1601 Randolph Rd. SE Suite 200 S. Albuquerque, NM 87106
ISBN: 0826339425, $24.95, 189 pp.
Buck dreams he's riding a horse at full gallop over the range, as Slim Randles' novel, SUN DOG DAYS, opens. Once a cowboy, Buck now edits an outdoors magazine in Los Angeles. He's married to Jan, a woman with two children, and he's settled into his life, though he remembers his carefree cowboy youth with pleasure, especially when he's waking up.
But every morning, Buck shrugs off the vision and heads for the office, where he thinks he's happy. Then one day, things go haywire. A freelancer misses a deadline, and Buck must write the article originally assigned to that person, to fill a centerfold, though Buck knows little about the subject he needs to cover. Frustrated, he glares at his computer. If it weren't for Jan and the kids, he'd "take this job and shove it," he decides.
The phone rings. When he answers, his old cowboy partner, Smokey, invites him to go for a beer. It seems Smokey's in Los Angeles. Buck agrees, just to get out of the office and clear his head. However, twenty-four hours and many beers later, he finds himself tossed out of the house by Jan, and off with Smokey to illegally round up mustangs.
Combining present time with Buck's recollections of the old days with Smokey, Randles makes SUN DOG DAYS the story of Buck weathering a mid-life crisis. As Buck makes critical decisions about who he really wants to be, he learns much about making choices and accepting their consequences. SUN DOG DAYS' universal theme makes this short novel accessible to everybody, not just cowboys. In fact for the non-cowboy, SUN DOG DAYS tells the mid-life crisis story in a refreshing way. For cowboys or cowboy wannabes, it probably catches the spirit of why they want to be cowboys.
With warmth and humor, Slim Randles presents fleshed out and very human characters. His uses a writing style that is simple and direct, but never simplistic, painting a vivid picture of the range, and cowboys at work and play. Randles offers a good look at the psyches of these tough men. SUN DOG DAYS is both a fun and gently thought provoking read. It reminds us that we all must be who we are with no apologies, if we want to hope for any happiness in our lives.
Catch As Catch Can
Joseph Heller, author
Eds. Matthew J. Brucoli & Park Bucker
Simon & Schuster
New York
ISBN: 0743243749, $25.00, 333 pp.
Dan Schneider, Reviewer
www.Cosmoetica.com
If there's ever been a greater example of a single author milking a single bit of work more than Joseph Heller I don't want to read him. It's been years since I read his classic Catch-22 satire of the Army during World War Two - although I aim to read it again within the year- and it was a good book, to my best recollection. But, my word, give it a rest.
The whole of Catch As Catch Can: The Collected Stories And Other Writings is a virtual homage to Heller's most well-known book. Not even J.D. Salinger has sucked the life out of his The Catcher In The Rye like Heller has Catch-22. This book is divided into five parts- thirteen previously published stories, five previously unpublished stories, a play- Clevinger's Trial- based upon Catch-22, a four piece non-fiction section called On Catch-22, and a single Recollection called Coney Island: The Fun Is Over. The recollection has moments, the only worthwhile thing in the On Catch-22 section is Joseph Heller Talks About Catch-22, in which the process of bringing book to film screen is engaged, and the two fiction sections amply demonstrate Heller's limited range as a fictionist. It's almost as if his obsession with his one hit is because he knows this mostly banal and dull collection is the best of the rest of what he had to offer.
Of the tales, there are no real standouts, no stories that are unforgettable, and most read like third rate John O'Hara. They are also very dated, and at best they reach mere competence. A Man Named Flute, for example, is a simpleminded anti-marijuana story where a booky decides to confront his son's dealer. Look at the stiltedness of this scene. Even fifty to sixty years ago this confrontation with the drug dealer was laughably badly written- something out of a 1930s didactic anti-drug and socially aware film starring the Dead End Kids:
Murdock shook him away impatiently and walked back to the fourth table, his eyes fixed on the man but not noticing that Flute was as big as he himself was, with broad, level shoulders and thick forearms. Flute was bending over to make a shot when Murdock came up to him. Murdock tapped him sharply.
"I want to talk to you," he said.
Flute straightened up slowly and studied him with a careless interest, a slight, mocking smile coming to his strong face. "What about?"
"I'll tell you outside," Murdock said.
Flute thought about it a moment and then nodded. He put his cue down and followed Murdock out through the side door. Murdock walked until they were out of the light before he turned.
"You've been selling marijuana to my kid," he said.
Flute showed no emotion. "Who's your kid?" he said calmly. "I sell tea to a lot of people."
"That doesn't matter," Murdock said. "It takes a pretty low bastard to sell it to anyone."
"All right," Flute said. "Talk nice."
Four men came out of the darkness behind Flute, two on either side, and moved forward until they were around Murdock. As soon as Murdock saw them, he swung at Flute. Flute caught his wrist and held it, and before Murdock could move, he had his other arm, and in an instant Murdock was pinned back against the wall, unable to move. He kicked out viciously at the man's groin and struck his thigh. Then the leg moved and Murdock could no longer hit anything. The four men watched without moving. Flute held Murdock powerless with his arms and shoulder, making no attempt to hurt him. Murdock struggled feverishly to break free from the younger man, putting all his strength behind the effort. It was no use, and after a few minutes he sagged in helpless exhaustion. The anger went out of him, leaving him limp with defeat.
World Full Of Great Cities is a dull and too long look at what a couple might do to save their marriage. I Don't Love You Anymore follows a similarly negative track on modern marriage. Here's a typical Hellerian take on domesticity:
….She didn't answer him immediately; she didn't know what to say. It wasn't working out right. He had been home three days now and it was getting worse. The first day they had been uncomfortable, very cautious and considerate, feeling each other out as prize fighters do, not being themselves at all, and hoping to pick up the thread of happiness from where it had been dropped almost a year ago when he left. The second day should have been better, but it hadn't been. She was still considerate, too much so, and he found that something in the routine was getting on his nerves and making him bitter. And now they were quarreling; not yet, but he could see it coming because he was deliberately bringing it on. He was being cruel purposely, not really wanting to be, but nevertheless deriving some perverse pleasure in seeing her unhappy. He had been thinking about her for ten months, thinking about how nice it was going to be when he got back to her, and now he was back and it wasn't nice at all.
He fingered the Chinese puzzle in his hands unconsciously, two metal rings, and without being aware of it, he deliberately thwarted himself each time from separating them. He caressed them with his hands, enjoying their cold firmness as he waited for her to speak.
"Harry and Edith are coming over," she said finally.
"That's nice."
"Will you put some clothes on?"
"No."
"Why won't you?"
"I don't want to."
In To Laugh In The Morning WWII veteran Nathan Scholl returns from a heroin treatment program in Kentucky to Washington, D.C., where he drifts through his old haunts dejected and uncured. The story is dull, long, depressing, and larded with poor dialogue. The Day Bush Left, from the 1990s is a poor satire of the first George Bush's lack of ethics forcing him to resign the Presidency as a matter of principle and conscience. And on go the flimsy stories. About the only successful stories are Lot's Wife, a decidedly Hemingwayvian piece about the aftermath of a car accident, Castle Of Snow- a solid portrait of an aging man losing his sanity and inhibitions, and Girl From Greenwich which follows a young writer schmoozing his way through a classic mid-Twentieth Century Manhattan literary cocktail party, only to meet the woman of his dreams who turns out to be a pre-Madonna Material Girl. The Catch-22-related material is of very hit and miss quality. Love, Dad is the introduction to a Catch-22 character, Edward J. Nately III. We are told 'he was often lonely and nagged by vague, incipient longings. He contemplated his sophomore year at Harvard without enthusiasm, without joy. Fortunately, the War broke out in time to save him.' Of course, he ends up dead, with his dad's last letter returned to him, in typical Hellerian fashion.
The question I have is why such a piss-poor collection of B Side rot was ever released? Editors Matthew J. Bruccoli and Park Bucker state that the texts of the works in this book are unaltered because writers who have died cannot approve changes. I would submit that Heller probably knew the little literary quality these works had, so therefore never wanted to see them hit print, and would probably have been angered that four years after his death in 1999 this tripe was published. Fortunately, I paid under $5 for this new hardback version at Half Price Books. Don't you pay a dime, unless you are just so devoted to every little fart and idea Heller had about his most famous work. Give the man his due- Catch-22, the phrase and novel, will be around as long as military and bureaucratic stupidity is, but this collection should never have seen print, for its existence only reinforces that claim with dramatically depressing conviction. Lesson learned: let the dead rest, in their graves and on their laurels.
The Da Vinci Enigma Tarot
Caitlin Matthews
Simon & Schuster (Australia) Pty Ltd
Lower Ground Floor, 14-16 Suakin Street, PYMBLE NSW 2073
ISBN: 1859061826, $39.95 AU, 144 pp., 80 Cards
Rose Glavas, Reviewer
www.astrologyrealm.com
This fabulous set of cards and reference book comes in a well presented box set that would make a perfect gift for somebody. When opened, the cards and reference book are quite pretty (I hope this doesn't sound too mundane!). I noticed that there are 80 cards, 2 more than the traditional tarot deck. All of the illustrations are reproductions of the original Da Vinci works and are beautifully presented. On closer inspection all of the microcosm cards (except the court cards) have a keyword on it to facilitate imagery and connection to it, and exploration of the message being conveyed.
The macrocosm cards are, in most cases, given the same names as those of a standard Rider-Waite major arcana deck (although the illustrations are obviously different). The cards that differ are: II High Priestess – Enigma; VI Lovers – Twins; VII Chariot – Imagination; X Wheel of Fortune – Time; XI Justice – Experience; XII Hanged Man – Passover; XV Devil – Pain & Pleasure; XVI Tower – Deluge; XVII Star – Way-Shower; XVIII Moon – Conception; XIX Sun – Birth; XX Last Judgement – Renewal. I examined card '0 Fool' and found that the meaning corresponds to the standard Rider Waite '0 Fool'.
The two extra cards are 'Enigma Cards', one represents the 'Enigma Pattern', the other is 'The Enigma Card'. The Enigma Pattern reveals how the card-backs join together to form a complete pattern of repeating roundels and interlocking knotwork. Across the Enigma Pattern design are five repeating, many-sided geometric forms, which Leonardo designed. There is detailed explanation of the background and meaning of this in the reference book.
The second extra card, the Enigma Grid, shows the sequence of the full deck face up. This grid reveals the natural resting place for the cards if they were to come together as a complete deck. Although the two Enigma cards are not actually used in readings, they are referred to in the various unique spreads shown in the reference book… particularly the Destiny Spread. Through using these spreads you will learn how matching the card-backs together produces a series of random connections that transcend the Enigma Grid sequence, helping you find the unique signature of your soul's code.
The reference book is comprehensive and covers an introduction to the theory behind the cards, an introduction to Leonardo Da Vinci, explanation of how the cards work, and a chapter on both the macrocosm (major arcana) and microcosm (minor arcane) cards. There are also sample spreads and readings to experiment with. You will find a bibliography, further reading suggestions and acknowledgments at the back of the book as well.
Each macrocosm card is given a two page spread in exploration covering 'Dimmi' – Core question/meaning; 'Background' – exploration of the symbolism; 'Soul-Code' – expansion of meaning; 'Upright' – Focused meaning; 'Reversed' – reversed meaning; 'Disconnected'- used as part of the Enigma Pattern interpretation. The microcosm cards are explored under the same headings, but are given one page each.
In summary, this is an excellent card and book set that is much more complex than I thought it was on first impressions (in fact, I wasn't that impressed when I first opened the pack!). I would recommend it for the experienced card reader.
Ruthie Black
Peter Brown
B Literary Fiction B Paperback Original
ISBN: 1887641890, $14.50, 235 pp.
Philip Kurata
Reviewer
The novel, Ruthie Black, pulls the reader into the comic and pathetic struggle of a poor, conniving white woman to extricate herself and her son, Freddy, from Bible-thumping Acworth, Georgia. After learning of the death of her traveling salesman husband, Buddy, in a car accident, Ruthie sets about to find another man to assure her survival by parading about in the lobby of the local bank in Betty Grable-style shorts. While Ruthie fishes for a man, Freddy amuses himself by hanging on the teller?s ledge and playing in the sand of ashtrays before finding and pocketing an envelope full of money. Once outside the bank, Ruthie discovers and appropriates Freddy's newly found wealth and goes on a shopping spree that draws a visit from the sheriff. After extricating herself from that predicament, the mother-widow who grew up in an orphanage turns her feminine charm on a young Thunderbird-driving minister, Maddox, who is a rising star on the revivalist circuit. From there, author Peter Brown takes the reader to raucous revivals seen through the perceptive eyes of a ten-year-old who instinctively understands religious hypocrisy when he sees it. At the same time, Freddy continues to believe that his father Buddy will soon come home to him as his mother drags him through her world of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer cans, soda fountains at Rexall drug stores and a shrewd fortune teller who correctly predicted that there would be no husband for Ruthie. Ruthie's dream of leaving Acworth with Maddox crashes and burns when their shenanigans draw accusations of adultery from the pious locals and an elder presents Maddox with the choice between his revivalist career and Ruthie. Jilted, Ruthie returns to Acworth with Freddy in a Greyhound bus. The bus stops at the smoldering site of a road accident. Freddy climbs in the burned out wreckage of a Rambler, the kind of car that Buddy drove. When he returns to the bus and sit down beside Ruthie, Freddy tells her, "Call me Buddy." (page 235). Peter Brown's first novel, a winner of the O.Henry Festival prize, deserves high praise for its stunning portrayal of life in the small town South in the 1950s.
The Passion of Mary Magdalen
Elizabeth Cunningham
Monkfish Publishing Company
27 Lamoree Road, Rhinebeck, NY 12572
www.monkfishpublishing.com 845-876-4861
Consortium Book Sales & Distribution: 1-800-283-3572
ISBN: 0976684306, $29.95, 620 pp.
Leah Samul
Reviewer
A Sensual Mary Magdalen Tells Her Own Story
You thought people got angry about "The Da Vinci Code?" Just wait. Elizabeth Cunningham's new novel about Mary Magdalen will likely have many of the same folks hopping mad. "The Passion of Mary Magdalen" is the second volume in Cunnigham's Magdalen trilogy, though enjoyment of this middle book isn't contingent upon reading the first one, "Daughter of the Shining Isle."
In the first book, Cunningham introduces Magdalen as a Celt, born and raised on the magical isle of Tir na mBan. If thinking of Magdalen as Celtic strains credibility, remember, this is a novel: a work of fiction. Maeve Rhuad, Magdalen's Celtic name, eventually comes to study at the Druid College, where she meets and falls in love with Jesus. Both of them flee the college in peril of their lives after they are perceived as having tampered with the ancient mysteries of a Druid rite. They separate, and Maeve ends up sold as a slave in Rome.
This book begins with Maeve on her hands and knees at the slave auction. When the auctioneer nuzzles his nose in her hindquarters, the feisty Maeve farts in his face. This attracts the attention of another buyer, a whorehouse madam, who sees promise in Maeve's actions: "There are men in this town who will pay good money to be humiliated like that." (p. 7) Maeve goes to work in her owner's brothel, where her fellow whores nickname her Red because of her flaming tresses.
However, don't expect this turn of events to set her up as the breast-beating penitent of the gospel story, who comes to the savior guilt-ridden over her transgressions of the flesh. Though being a slave is abhorrent to her, Maeve doesn't see sexual activity as a sin. In fact, it is in the whorehouse that she begins to realize she could use the intensity of the sexual experience for healing, and become "a conduit of some wild force, the mediator of it, the priestess." (p.27) And it is here that she first begins to realize, somewhat to her chagrin, that she is being drawn to the Goddess Isis, who like the God of Jesus, seems to be everywhere.
The book is aptly titled, because passion can indicate excitement, but can also mean suffering, as in the passion of Christ. And Maeve encounters plenty of both, while never losing her determination to be reunited with her beloved Jesus. As the story moves forward, she is sold again, this time to Paulina Claudii, the cruel daughter of a high-born Roman.
Cunningham has done her historical homework. The book contains nuggets of information on the time period: the hierarchy of slaves in a household, the status of women when they are faced with divorce, Roman style, the concept of sacred prostitution, and the cult of Isis, who was originally an Egyptian Goddess but whose worship was popular in Rome among all classes, from the high born to the whores and slaves.
The call of this Goddess, along with Maeve's insistence on finding her beloved Jesus, comprise the book's two main threads. Eventually Maeve becomes a priestess of Isis, establishing in the village of Magdala a temple of sacred prostitutes that becomes a haven for all strangers who come by in need of healing. In an interesting twist on the gospel parable, one fateful night a Samaritan brings to the temple a battered and beaten stranger he's found on the road. At long last, Maeve holds her loved one in her arms.
As the story unfolds, it is very hard not to like Cunningham's engaging Maeve/Magdalen character, who always leads with her heart, even when it gets her into trouble. Though the author follows the conventional gospels, her inclusion of Maeve in the gospel stories is her own design. Written in the first person, by turns irreverent and poetic, the book pulses with an eros that is true to the original meaning of the word as "life force." The reader sees all sides of life: joy and sorrow, love and hate, the pettiness and the stupidity as well and the power and the glory, often related with a wicked sense of humor. The apostles are human, with their own weaknesses and difficulties. If the Christian writer Annie Lamott wrote a book on Mary Magdalen, it would probably be very much like Cunningham's Maeve.
In the end, this is a love story. An old seer had prophesied to Maeve that she and Jesus would be lovers, but not of each other; lovers of the world. And love is what comes across most strongly in this extremely enjoyable book. Just remember that the Magdalen/Maeve story as related here won't resemble the one you may have heard as a child. Rest assured this is not your mother's Mary Magdalen.
Let Today be a Holiday: 365 Ways to Co-create with God
Rose Rosetree
Women's Intuition Worldwide
116 Hillsdale Drive, Sterling VA 20164-1201
www.cocreatewithGod.com
ISBN: 0975253808, $18.95, 369 pp.
Linda Davis Kyle, Reviewer
www.writersfriend.com
If you are open-minded and you are seeking ways to enhance yourself physically and your enlightenment mentally and spiritually, then you will want to read Rose Rosetree's book, Let Today be a Holiday: 365 Ways to Co-create with God. In a modern, creative fashion, Rosetree presents 365 inspiring and motivating messages that you can read straight through in a few sittings to acquaint yourself with the goal of the book and her goal for you. You will want to mark your favourite passages, techniques, and exercises as you read so that you can return smoothly upon completion to put them to use. Or you can start an open adventure and just see where Rosetree leads you with her exuberant presentation of ideas and step-by-step practices that can improve your body, mind, and soul. You may choose to read in chronological order, one message at a time, on a daily calendar basis from the beginning and invite in all the joy you can from January through December; or you can begin with any month you wish and continue for 365 days and beyond using what you have learned. Or you may prefer to read randomly for inspiration and motivation. That can work, too. Because Let Today be a Holiday is a modern day workbook for a happier and more fulfilled life, you can put Rosetree's guidance to your very best use not only by reading but also by studying, assimilating, and practicing what she so generously shares. No matter how you read it, Rosetree's book, Let Today be a Holiday, is a must read for you, and it is a great gift book for your like-minded friends.
Like James Allen, 19th century Englishman, author of As a Man Thinketh, who says, "A man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must and will bring forth," Rosetree says, "Creativity isn't optional. You were born to create. If you don't make something good, you'll create anyway" (p. 8). Let Today be a Holiday offers not only inspiring words written in beautifully flowing prose and Rose Rosetree's original poetry to stimulate your positive thinking, but also it supplies a multitude of plans to put your goals into action for creating a better life and to bring forth good.
The Tent
Margaret Atwood
Bloomsbury
ISBN: 0747582254, A$29.95
Prolific, multi-skilled, and ever insightful author Margaret Atwood has justly earned her place as one of the most well known living authors. The demand for new material from her must be extraordinary. Her latest book, The Tent, seems to have been pulled together as a kind of between-novel filler from pieces she's published, interesting if slightly naive drawings, and a few unpublished reflections, poems, thoughts and occasionally, what appear to be sketchy beginnings. Reading these in their original context, for example, "Tree Baby," "But It Could Still," and "Something Has Happened," in New Beginnings or "Our Cat Enters Heaven" in Brick they are thought provoking and upbeat, fusing humor with pathos; dignity with blackness. However, united together in this little, but attractively presented book, and perhaps read in a single hit, the work comes across collectively as cranky, and rather negative reflections on the difficulties inherent in fame, and the pain of being a famous woman writer. In other words, there is a definite whining buzz to this work which makes the reader think less of their sometimes hysterically funny lightness, and more about the author's chip.
That's a shame, because I've very much enjoyed the work when I've come across it elsewhere, and it is possible to imagine these as lovely little gifts, given in a spirit of generosity to collections like New Beginnings where "Something Has Happened," "Tree Baby," and "But It Could Still," provide a unique take on the Indian Ocean Tsunami tragedy, looking through the eyes of a survivor and hoping/projecting a positive future; a beginning:
What new name will they give it, this child? The one who escaped from your nightmare and floated lightly to a tree, and who looks around itself now with a baby's ordinary amazement? Now time starts up once more…(150)
Read on its own in Harper's Magazine, the title piece "The Tent" is a richly detailed metaphor for the tenuousness of the writer's world. It has the terrifying feel of the apocalyptic distopia of Oryx and Crake, and although the reader is aware right from the start that this vast and unsettling wilderness is no more than an extended metaphor, so powerful is Atwood's writing that the reader is in the tent, shivering from cold, fearing the dogs and howlers, and writing through the burning paper, "because what else can you do? (146)" But then we are pulled up by its conjunction with "Time Folds," a very short reflection on the futility of life and the pain of death, or from "Nightingale," which proceeds it. "Nightingale" is one of the weaker pieces in the book, suffering from a surfeit of introspection and the unconstructed insular feel of someone's raw dream. Both "Time Folds" and "Nightingale" draw power from "The Tent," removing the illusion of camaraderie, and of being included in the world Atwood creates. Instead it becomes just another whine on the pain of the writer's life. It is another dream we don't quite understand. Or another beginning, in need of more depth for the piece to holds its own.
Other pieces, such as the previously unpublished "Three Novels I Won't be Writing Soon," are quite funny. From "Word Zero," "Spongedeath," to "Beetleplunge," the ever ready Amanda and Chris prepare for challenge from a number of unlikely sources. This was longer than many other of the pieces in this book, and I felt in some ways, tongue firmly rooted in cheek, that Atwood was actually enjoying herself, winking at the reader rather than whining at her, which made this a pleasurable interlude. Other tongue-in-cheek work like "Heritage House" or "Bring Back Mom: An Invocation," are also enjoyable, and fully crafted:
Come back, come back, oh Mom,
from craziness or death
or our own damaged memory –
appear as you were:
Queen of the waffle iron,
generous dispenser of toothpaste,
sorceress of Mercurochrome,
player of games of smoky bridge
at which you won second-prize dishtowels (109)
In some ways, this too could be read as allegory. The selfless mender of the "holes in the world" mom, hiding all the ugliness in her apron craft is not too different from the preyed upon writer, producing silky work from inside her ugly tent. That this old-fashioned pre-feminist "mom" should mirror the wise old Cassandra of "Voice" or "Bottle II," is an interesting twist which adds unifying depth to the book. It isn't just the writer's voice which is an "invisible vampire" sucking out the writer's blood. It is the reader, made to sit in the uncomfortable position of 'burden,' like the child author of "Bring Back Mom." We too want the writer to go back to being invisible. To submerge herself into craft and not let us know how painful it is. The knowledge is unsettling, which isn't necessarily a bad thing:
That was when you heard the voice. My voice, to be precise. It was a small sibilant voice, like the rustling of old corn husks in a breeze, or of dried leaves kept for eons in a cave. It was a hissing, like steam escaping fitfully from a fissure in damp mud. An underground sound, hinting of unknown pressures, of unknown powers. It was an enticing whisper. (38)
However, there are simply too many unfinished prose poems in this work for it to hold together. Pieces like "Faster," or "No More Photos," just don't have enough words to draw the reader in. They may be the beginning of something, or the end of something, but as they stand, there is really nothing to hold the reader's interest. Others, like the sharp parody "Chicken Little Goes Too Far," "Horatio's Version," or "King Log in Exile," are lighthearted and fun but read, again, in the context of this book, rather than on their own, as writing exercises. Write Hamlet from Horatio's point of view. Write a modern story from the point of view of a log in a pond. Make sure it ends with a sardonic note on our times: "New he is draining the pond. Soon it will be turned into desirable residential estates." (123)
This is an interesting collection, as much for the quality of Atwood's writing, which, in itself, never falters, as for what she tries to say. But it never reaches full fruition. It needs more synthesis, more culling, and more development so that the work comes together towards a unified purpose. On their own, the developed pieces are terrific, but the sketchy half written pieces take power away from the good ones. The sardonic anger towards the writing gift, towards the useless world as it stands, and above all, towards the bloodsucking and ungrateful reader also makes these pieces seem more unpleasant than they ought to feel. It's worth reading anyway, because there are plenty of gems, and the writing is tight and always informed thoroughly by history and thought. Just don't expect to feel good afterwards. Even when the pieces are meant to be funny and upbeat, there is an overriding whiney and irritated overtone that is hard to take.
To Mom, I love you because…
Tomoe Sasaki Farley
Red Rock Press
New York, NY
ISBN: 1933176016, $10.95, 64 pp.
Maryan Pelland, Reviewer
www.ontext.com
Having just become a grandmother, I am delighted by a teaspoonful the best medicine, called To Mom, I love you because… a first effort written and illustrated by Tomoe Sasaki Farley. If you love your mom, your wife, your grandmother, you'll get a kick out of this well put together book.
Farley, born, raised and educated in Japan, is now a New Yorker studying fashion and illustrating instructional guides. Her drawings are soft, simple, colorful and touched with whimsy – you'll chuckle over each of them. The simple, heartfelt text is completely appropriate. The author conveys deep thoughts and strong feelings with a very few well-chosen words. It's the kind of keepsake book that can speak to anyone on a personal level.
To Mom…has eye-appeal. The colors remind me of children's books and put me in the mood to remember why my mom was special, why my kids thought I was special, and why I hope my grandchildren will be completely in love with Grandma. One particular illustration depicts a very small child reaching way up to grasp a very large, but pink and soft looking hand. The child's face is amazingly expressive. Farley's illustration style reminds me a bit of the Margaret Wise Brown/Clement Hurd classic, Goodnight, Moon.
Little thoughts like "Your kisses made my bruises better" and "When the going gets tough, you're a match for it" attempt to put a fresh touch to a traditional message. If there's a reason to get critical, perhaps I should say Farley might have reached deeper for a few more unique or striking thoughts, but the book is all about images and those she does perfectly.
I think Farley's goal was to publish a tribute to her own mother while honoring all moms – she succeeded. The publisher, Red Rock Press, specializes in gift books, unusual titles, and books that appeal to the senses. As is their habit, they created a strong first impression, a must for a gift book. The cover is soft yellow with embossed title in a font of posies and an embossed mom almost overwhelmed by a bouquet of the same flowers. The paper quality enhances the simple italic text and makes the pictures pop. You can expect to see more illustrations from Farley, judging by the quality of this first project. Red Rock has a knack for choosing artists and writers who have something real to say.
The Last Sacrifice
Hank Hanegraaff & Sigmund Brouwer
Tyndale House Publishers
Wheaton, IL
www.tyndale.com
ISBN: 0842384413, $19.99, 395 pp.
Maurice A. Williams, Reviewer
http://www.lulu.com/maurice-williams
This second novel in the Last Disciple series opens with Vitas and John the Evangelist (the last disciple) onboard a ship hurriedly embarked on a voyage from Rome to Alexandria. So hurriedly did the captain set sail that he did not wait for a propitious time, did not make public homage to the gods, and left behind some paying passengers. Powerful men in Rome paid Captain Pavo much money and promised more if Vitas arrives safely. The superstitious crew panicked when they saw a storm brewing. They tied John to a cross and threw him overboard to appease the gods. Vitas jumped overboard and rescued John. This put Captain Pavo in a dilemma because he would lose his crew's respect if he did nothing. They would mutiny and kill him and Vitas. He didn't dare throw Vitas and John back overboard because he feared the powerful men who paid him to take Vitas safely to Alexandria.
Pavo convinced Vitas to accept ten lashes so Pavo's crew would think he is still master of his ship. The lashes were brutal. John tends Vitas wounds and prays over him. He and Vitas become friends. John begins to decipher the first portion of the coded message that was given to Vitas when he boarded the ship. There are still two more portions to the scroll.
Meanwhile, in Rome, Nero's henchmen, Helius and Tigellinus, find out that Vitas is on the ship headed for Alexandria. They hire men to capture Vitas as he leaves the ship. When the ship docked, Vitas gave John his cape to keep John warm. Because of the cape, the men mistook John for Vitas and put John on another ship that will soon sail back to Rome.
Prior to this, Helius also wanted to capture John, who has been writing coded warnings about Nero. He wanted John silenced before the superstitious Nero learns about the warnings and acts in an unpredictable way. Helius hired Vitas' brother Damian, a successful runaway slave hunter, to find John. Damian is successful but was tricked into capturing Russo who had arranged to have John kidnapped and sent to the same ship Vitas is on.
When the ship arrives in Alexandria, Damian is surprised to see brother, Vitas. They tell each other on what they know. Damian tells Vitas that Vitas' wife, Sophia, had been sentenced to death by opening her veins. Enraged, Vitas tells Damian what he knows about the coded message given to him and the second part given to John. He expects a third and final part from someone in Alexandria. He already knows that powerful men want him to depose Nero. Vitas also knows the name of the ship John is on. Vitas urges Damian to help him free John and then help him find the men who want him to depose Nero.
THE LAST SACRIFICE ends around the year A.D. 65. Nero is still alive, and The Temple is still standing. We know from history that Nero has only a few more years to live, and that Titus, one of the main historical characters in the preceding novel and a personal friend of the fictional Damian and Vitas, will lead a Roman army that destroys The Temple and most of Jerusalem. Therefore, we can expect more novels in this series.
The authors, Hank Hanegraaff and Sigmund Brouwer, have made a marvelous mix of fact and fiction in this adventuresome series. Since most of the background situation is historical, this novel will make you familiar with early Church history as you read it. The authors are also experts on Biblical interpretation. They hold a time-honored interpretation that Revelation was written before Titus destroyed The Temple. That's why Revelation does not discuss The fact that the Temple had been destroyed. Most of Revelation's predictions occurred during early Church history. Unlike some other commentators, Hanegraaff and Brouwer do not propose a future rapture, tribulation, and millennial kingdom, presuming that nineteen of the twenty-two chapters in Revelation describe events that have not yet happened. You will enjoy this novel and eagerly await the next one in the series.
The Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Nations
Miguel de Unamuno
Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691018200, $6.00
Dr. Pedro Blas Gonzalez
Reviewer
We can imagine Miguel de Unamuno (1864-936) sitting comfortably on a wing chair grimacing, puffing over some of the historical and often quite vacuous anthro/philosophical renditions of man. Amongst these, Unamuno points out Aristotle's notion of a featherless biped, Rousseau's man as social-contractor, the Manchester school's man as homo economicus, Linnaeus' now household homo sapiens, and some flagrantly comical entity described as the "vertical mammal."
Besides being egregiously positivistic in make up, none of these naive monikers leave an iota of possibility, of existential wiggle room for Unamuno's – man on the street corner – who the Basque thinker rightly addresses as a singular entity, one of flesh and bones. Thus, the author leers and scowls and scratches his head in discomfort.
On the opposite shore of this material rendition of man - nothing more than intimations of human beings from the
outside – Unamuno struggles to depict man as a concrete, proto-first man of flesh and blood. The latter signaling "you and I, that man yonder, all of us who walk firmly on the Earth" and who is the anti-thesis of the mere idea of man, what is essentially "a no-man."
Wavering between vitalism, that is, a free flowing feel for individual, differentiated life and the rationality necessary to express his vision, Unamuno's Tragic Sense of Life is a rare, glowing, blue-heat example of just what a genuine philosopher can come to resemble. If one takes the ancient Greek words philos-sophia seriously, as perhaps only a minority of philosophers historically have, only then can we relish the full splendor and radiance of Unamuno's thought.
The Tragic Sense of Life is a vitally incandescent and philosophically sonorous work. The thought of a seasoned thinker expressed in the vital manner of a gifted poet, Unamuno refuses to be pigeonholed – he is a simple man who embraces his fate. His thought always brims with a sincere appreciation for life that, well, as he puts it, the former cannot be qualified as anything less than tragic for those who feel their way through life, those who do not refuse to believe that life is often a maze that traps the best guided illusions. But tragic? Why tragic, some will ask? Why not absurd, irrational or even comic, as so many others have characterized life? A major difference, Unamuno tells us, has to do with the fact – this is not another theory in a century of make-work, industrial complex, professional theorists – that my life cannot be understood as an abstraction, but is instead always encountered as a concrete entity. Unamuno suggests that "thou shall not conceive life abstractly" should be sanctioned as the eleventh commandment.
But to shine brightly also has its price. Setting thought ablaze and thus apart from the tenuous, if superficial adhesive of the common herd, Unamuno frightens those who have made a social-political mockery of the vocation for reflective thought. Unamuno is not selective, picking and choosing timely theories, much as the matador chooses the appropriate moment to launch his courage at the spectacle-weary bull.
Instead, the writer of The Tragic Sense of Life encounters the fiercest, meanest, most myopic bull out in the open, always playing to the bull's strength and to his own detriment. The most difficult road is the one that leads to truth. How else would his baroque Spanish temperament have it? He is content with a view of life as a venerable, if also immediate and fleeting eternity. Contentment and not happiness is more like it, Unamuno suggests. While the former is indicative of a measured, settled joy that garnishes its vitality with the scent of the present, the latter only serves to fulfill the expectations of children while derailing and frustrating the desire of utopian malcontents.
But life, tragic? Unamuno makes the observation that life is indeed tragic for those who take their own pulse, while it will always remain comic to those who cannot help but to rationalize it. In a century dominated by pop psychology, virulent and often insidious sociology, positivism, determinism and a mania for quantification, what better science than that which makes an observation out of the observer – through the latter's free will. In a century of bright lights, of moral and spiritual dwarfism, of shameless isms that venerate the state, Unamuno's thought serves as a vital anti-thesis to bloated modernity, to the twentieth century.
No fiduciary approval or applause solicited, much less welcomed. Unamuno's thought is that of a solitary figure - in short – that of a thinker. Not a professional in the service of this or that "career," a free thinker par excellence, Unamuno is unapologetic in telling the hypocritical chattering class, the denizens of popular "causes" to put their house in order, that all charity – sincerely – always, by moral default, begins at home, and that, oh, reflection on immortality – our own – is our greatest concern.
What unprecedented sincerity. Perhaps we should also mention that archaic, now repudiated word, conscience. The kind of word that the world today cannot bear, instead opting for textbook prescriptions of its degenerate cousins "honesty" and "ethics."
The Tragic Sense of Life begins with an exploration of "the man of flesh and bones" and culminates by returning to the importance of the individual vis-à-vis the cosmos. In the beginning of this truly enlightening work, Unamuno points out that the history of philosophy is curiously devoid of philosophers, only philosophy and that "the inner biography of the philosophers, of the men who philosophized, is assigned a secondary place."
And yet, as a book on the immortality of the soul – individual identity, that is – this inner biography is precisely what is at stake given that "our philosophy, that is, our mode of understanding or not understanding the world and life, springs from our impulse toward life itself."
But how Unamuno goes about describing this "any man" of flesh and bones is what distinguishes this now classic text from others that deal with the same topic. The trajectory of the "I" that is the man of flesh and bones is followed from its original undifferentiated Being to its self-awareness as consciousness, as this comes to know itself as a continuous entity who possesses self-identity. If "I am I" and everything else is said to remain outside of me as objects, then how do I come to terms with the eventual dissolution of this newly found subjectivity?
Reflection on immortality is what Unamuno refers to as mundane philosophy. May we ask what other type there is? Unamuno's Quijotismo sees the Spanish philosopher doing battle with time, as he witnesses the frigidity and self-assurance of every tick of the clock.
Unamuno, a pessimist? No more so than Don Quijote who believes in eternal life. The man of flesh and bones must encounter the world with courage and a resignation of will that ironically enables the imagination to battle its own fate. But not fate, universal and abstract, as some specimen found in a textbook or laboratory. Man's origin, Unamuno explains, is not of this world, even though our material lives may be. These are his chosen tools to battle both life and time.
The Tragic Sense of Life is dealt a double assault by thought and feeling for those concerned with immortality. Those who ignore the former suffer a tragic death, while those who embrace it die a comic – ridiculous – death.
Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion
C.M. Mayo
Whereabouts Press
1111 8th Street, Suite D, Berkeley, CA 94710-1455
(510) 527-8280
ISBN: 1883513154, $14.95, 256 pp.
Jennifer Redmond
Reviewer
It is not mandatory that you read Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion on a train, or a subway, or on a trolley as I have over the past few days, but I highly recommend it. All anthologies are a bit like trains—their collection of cars, new and old, linked together and engineered by unseen hands, all heading the same way; in this case carrying us south to the border, and across, into the heart, or hearts of Mexico.
Edited by C.M. Mayo, Mexico (Wherabouts Press, 2006, $14.95) is the perfect size and shape to toss in a backpack, and most of the stories are short enough to enable one to dip into the book sporadically, sampling writing styles like a hummingbird sipping nectar.
Included are such well-known authors as Laura Esquivel and Carlos Fuentes, but readers will find many new voices here, too, many well-known in Mexico, some not, and some translated for the first time into English. Their nationalities also run the gamut; not all are Mexican, and of those who are, many do not live in their country of birth. All, however are contemporary writers—none of the pieces was written before 1986, and most are from the last twelve years.
Ms. Mayo has cleverly chosen tales that are as varied as the country's geographic regions; the book is a journey in itself, beginning at the border with the U.S. in dusty Tecate, Baja California, and continuing south and then east, finally coming to rest in the ancient jungles of Yucatán.
Readers will find some of the "classic" subjects found in much of Mexican writing—life and death, loyalty and betrayal, and of course, family. But many of these short trips take unexpected turns, unlikely detours, and find unusual endings, with both just and unjust rewards. Most important of all are the characters that inhabit these stories, guiding us through their hometowns and homelands, through past and present, and into their minds and hearts. Each of these narrators holds some part of the key—a secret that helps us to understand ourselves a little better—and taken together, these help us to decipher the many mysteries that are Mexico.
Soulcatcher
Charles Johnson
Harcourt, Inc.
ISBN: 0156011123, $12.00, 110 pp.
Shayla A. Hawkins
Reviewer
The slender brevity of Soulcatcher, a collection of twelve historical tales centered around slavery, belies both the genius of its author, National Book Award winner Charles Johnson, and the passion, wit, and pathos within its pages. As any discerning reader who's read his longer fiction can attest, Johnson is an extraordinarily skilled storyteller with such command of literary and poetic forms, he can, in ten pages, convey complex human behaviors and philosophies that most writers can barely express in one hundred. But Johnson's artistry outperforms even itself with these concise and resplendent stories.
As Johnson explains in the book's preface, each of the twelve stories in Soulcatcher is told using a different narrative device. From the third person limited perspective and fictitious diary entries, to mock newspaper articles and full authorial omniscience, Soulcatcher evokes, through the fictional accounts of both regular characters and historical luminaries like Frederick Douglass, Phillis Wheatley, and Martha Washington, the everyday struggles, contradictions and ingenuity that slavery produced in the United States during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Every story in Soulcatcher is a mini-masterpiece that adds more color and light to the understanding of the peculiar kaleidoscope that was American slavery. But my personal favorites are the heartbreaking yet ultimately inspiring "The Transmission," which filters the horrors of the Middle Passage through 15-year-old Malawi and tells how the history of his African tribe survives through him because of the lessons of his older brother, Oboto; "Soulcatcher," a tense and terrifying account of a runaway slave's fateful encounter with the ruthless slave catcher hell-bent on recapturing him; the O. Henry-esque "A Soldier for the Crown," which tells of the many changes slave Alexander Freeman makes to gain freedom and start a new life in Nova Scotia; "Poetry and Politics," a spirited dialogue between Phillis Wheatley, the first published black poet in the U.S. Colonies, and her mistress about the merit and legacy of Wheatley's writing; and "The Mayor's Tale," a funny (and deliciously wicked) account of the stunning, overnight reversal of fortune that happens to an unnamed Northeastern city and its mayor in 1851 when every black person in town flees to Canada to escape the repercussions of the newly amended Fugitive Slave Act.
Soulcatcher is the fictional counterpart of Africans in America: America's Journey through Slavery, which Charles Johnson co-authored and is itself the companion book to the same-named PBS series. For readers unfamiliar with Johnson's longer works that are much more philosophical and laden with Eastern mysticism, Soulcatcher is good preparation. And to those already acquainted with Johnson's dazzling fusion of grit, humor and spirit, Soulcatcher is a refreshing reprieve that doesn't compromise an inch of his supreme writing abilities. For any reader, Soulcatcher is a masterfully rendered compilation of stories about the many human faces and testaments to the most brutal, blasphemous, shameful and soul-shaping period in American history.
Short, sweet and to the point, Soulcatcher is a blazing example of proficient, engaging writing from a contemporary American author at the top of his game and is highly, HIGHLY recommended.
The Last Spymaster
St. Martin's Press
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
44 Fairway Drive, Newcastle, Ontario, Canada L1B 1B3
ISBN: 0312301596, $24.95 U.S./$34.95 Can., 464 pp.
Bonnie Toews, Reviewer
www.bonnietoews.com
RATING: Five Stars
Action-Packed Masterpiece of Intrigue
In THE LAST SPYMASTER, Gayle Lynds' riveting suspense embedded with literary finesse eclipses thriller stars John Le Carre and Robert Ludlum at the peak of their form. Unlike Le Carre's exhaustive angst and Ludlum's lengthy detours into topics or causes that fascinated him, Gayle's economy of language makes her political point without wasting a word while engaging the readers' eyes, ears, nose and heart.
Sprinkled throughout are awesome examples of: ALLITERATION—Dense forests flowed dark; as the dark night deepened toward dawn; footsteps echoing in the emptiness; SIMILES—She seemed to shrink, grow calcified, as hard as a tombstone; METAPHORS—Bolts of silver lightning speared the distant Alps; IMAGERY—She found a slot in which to wedge the Jag; sunlight filtered down in strawlike rays; and POETIC RHYTHMS—His family. But not his family. A charade, a farce, a travesty of the living and the dead. His eyes felt hollow. Such literary devices are what writing groups and English professors can use as models of powerful literature, but if readers miss them, it is because they are stitched in seamlessly.
THE LAST SPYMASTER is a classic because no one element or technique stands out over another—the sum of the parts makes it one great read and Gayle's best work. She gives us superb storytelling at supersonic speed and sets the bar, not only for her own future novels but also for every other author in the thriller genre. In character development, for instance, individual idiosyncrasies that distinguish her previous heroines in 'Masquerade' (Asperger's syndrome), 'Mesmerized' (cellular memory), 'Mosaic' (conversion disorder) and 'The Coil' (a peacenik aversion to violence) make way for broader scope. This time she tackles the universal flaws of globalization within today's political framework in her portrayal of power brokers—whether greedy or altruistic—competing in the war on terrorism.
Jay Tice, one of the legendary chiefs of the CIA in the Cold War, is actually a traitor. Convicted of selling secrets, he's languishing in the formidable Allenwood Federal Correctional Compled in Pennsylvania, when he suddenly disappears. His locked cell is empty. Current CIA Deputy Chief Lawrence Litchfield engages a top CIA hunter, Elaine Cunningham, to track him down. She's a woman with her own psychological baggage, but an artist in probing the psyches of her prey. As she zeroes in on Tice, she becomes his target, and discovers nothing is as it seems. Instead, she finds, in the clandestine world of black ops, there are illegal arms dealers, information traders and cloaked cover ups far more dangerous to the United States and the world than one man's treachery.
Using her characters' perspectives and personal agendas, Gayle masterminds a maze of crossover subplots and merges them on the final ramp of "the last spymaster's" odyssey. Also weaving through the maze is a classic love tale between Tice and his former concubine, Raina Manhardt. They are lovers sadly doomed yet deeply passionate without being sexually explicit. That's art. And in addition to compelling storytelling, the ultra 'smart' inventions and security technologies Gayle introduces make Orwell's vision of the future seem primitive.
Against such a backdrop of global conspiracy, I looked for cynicism or disillusionment seeping into her writing, because the more we learn the more we see how much our governments lie to us. Instead, with a keen journalist's nose for truth, she relentlessly sniffs out the corruptive realities existing inside the covert catacombs of international intelligence, while keeping her eye on the ultimate sacrifices and dedication of those who serve to protect us.
As Gayle explains in a Question and Answer dialogue with readers, "Holding on to one's ideals while working for a better world is the most difficult personal challenge. Those who succeed against such odds are the stuff of quiet legend, occasionally receiving secret honors and awards, and living out their days without telling tales . . . They pay high prices personally, and they deserve our respect."
THE LAST SPYMASTER chronicles such hope in a 'tour de force' that catapults Gayle Lynds to the top of the thriller genre. As a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Operatives, the Military Writers Society of America and co-founder/co-president of the International Thriller Writers, Inc., she can be proud of the brilliant work she has delivered to represent their high ideals of service.
Once a Thief
Suzann Ledbetter
Mira Books
225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada MB3 3K9
ISBN: 0778323005, $6.99, 393 pp.
Les Williams
Reviewer
Ramey Burke and her sister Portia Carruthers live in Plainview, Missouri. The sisters are the daughters of former Police Chief Bill Patterson. Nothing much happens to Ramey until one morning. There on her doorstep are three seventy plus year old visitors who happen to be family. The old codgers were her maternal uncles Ed and Archie and Aunt Melba Jane, also known as the Other Dillinger Gang. Ramey's geriatric relatives have just been released from prison after serving thirty four years. It seems the trio had taken a liking to relieving banks of their money.
The Burke household settles in to a routine. Ed and Archie busy themselves by doing much needed repairs while Melba Jane took over the cooking. A discovery one night changed everything. Returning from one of his nocturnal wonderings Ed discovers a body by the driveway. Ed fears he, his brother or Melba Jane will be accused of the dastardly deed because they are ex-cons. He drags the body out back, placing it underneath a brush pile. Ed is unaware he was observed from the house by his brother. While he returns through the front of the house, Archie goes out the back. Once again the corpse is moved. This time Archie puts the remains in a trench out back. As he re-enters the house and goes to their upstairs bedroom, Melba Jane exits the house. Now it is her turn to once again transport the body. She wraps the victim in an old rug and drags it to the curb for the garbage man to pick up. This final disposal brings to Ramey's door Detective Sergeant Mike Constantine.
Uncle Ed becomes the primary suspect because he was the first person seen dragging the corpse out back. Mike takes Ed in for questioning. Before the two leave for the station, Ramey calls her brother-in-law Preston Carruthers to represent Ed. He is not a trial lawyer but Ramey figures he's better than nothing. Sergeant Constantine learns little from the old man and soon releases him. Ed is not the only suspect. There is Don Blevins who wants to be more than a friend to Ramey but is rebuffed. Also Howard Chinn, the victim's stepson who stands to inherit from a life insurance policy. And of coarse there are the Other Dillinger Gang members. Through some good detective work, Constantine collars the killer and the motive behind the murder. Suzann Ledbetter delivers a light hearted mystery that just makes you want to curl up in your favorite easy chair to read the day and night away. She must have had a good time writing ONCE A THIEF because I enjoyed reading it as I chuckled my way through it.
Crazy Men Can Make You Do Crazy Things
Java Weathersby
Crazy Men Books
P.O. Box 84533, Baton Rouge, LA 70884
www.crazymenbook.com
ISBN: 1599713624, $10.99, 130 pp.
Carey Yazeed
Reviewer
What happens when naive meets psycho…major drama. Java Weathersby tackles some tough issues in her newly released book Crazy Men Can Make You Do Crazy Things. Based on a true story, Weathersbys' first adventure into the real world is not what she had hoped for. Impressionable, to say the least, Java a gusty freshmen suddenly finds herself caught up in the social world of campus life. Smitten by one smooth talking fraternity man, who is simply known as Omar, this college sweetheart is eager to please. Sensing that she is willing to do almost anything to keep him, Omar uses extreme measures to tests the limits of her love.
An emotional rollercoaster ride from the very beginning, Crazy Men Can Make You Do Crazy Things is a must read. Informative as well as entertaining, Weathersby does a nice job of engaging readers about the importance of loving ones self and the need for mutual respect in relationships. A fresh voice on the literary scene, Weathersbys' writing is simple, clean and easy to follow.
Java Weathersby is a native of New Orleans, Louisiana. She lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana where she works as an Occupational Therapist. She is married to Byron Weathersby and they have two children.
Ann's Bookshelf
The Big Oyster
Mark Kurlansky
Random House
ISBN: 0224078232, $35.00, 307 pp.
"Up until the nineteenth century the oyster was thought to be a simple primitive creature".
So begins one early chapter of this book by Mark Kurlansky. And, if you enjoy oysters as a culinary delicacy, you would do well to stop reading right there and skip to the next chapter, because what follows is a detailed description of a complex, sensitive creature which we keep alive so that, complete with "a working brain, a stomach, intestines, liver and a still beating heart", we can swallow it whole. And some of them can grow to a foot long, which, as William Makepeace Thackeray once complained was "like eating a baby".
In spite of all this, the shell middens left by our ancestors since the earliest times show that oysters have been an important part of the human diet for centuries. In fact, as Mark Kurlansky convincingly demonstrates, we can even trace the history of a city like New York by examining the parallel history of the oysters in the waters which surround it. Hence his subtitle for this book: New York in the World, A Molluscular History.
The Big Oyster tells you everything you ever wanted to know about oysters, and, in its litany of dates, weights, and farming techniques, rather more than is perhaps necessary or desirable. The focus of the book is obviously America, with occasional excursions into other lands, so I read with a constant question in my mind: "To what family does the oyster I have frequently enjoyed (but may no longer be able to stomach) belong?" i.e. the Sydney Rock Oyster. The answer is that it is unique to Australasia. This revelation came late in the book, by which time I had learned lots of fascinating facts, many of which I'm not sure I really wanted to know.
I learned, for example, that oysters are extraordinarily efficient sanitary workers, filtering out those deadly cholera and typhoid bacteria, as well as heavy metals, DDT etc, so well that they can be used to measure the pollution of our waterways. I learned that oysters are amazingly fecund. That in spite of the fact that both species look identical, they seem to know what to do and it takes only a few minutes for them to release enough sperm and eggs to produce billions of swimming larvae. I now know, too, that the pearl oyster is not really an oyster at all: just a rather unsavory cousin from another family.
So, The Big Oyster may put you off oysters, but if not there are plenty of recipes here, culled from the best ancient and modern cookbooks, for you to try out.
Also, by the end of the book you will be superbly informed about the original inhabitants of the New York area. They were people with names such as Jonathan Swift might have borrowed for Gulliver's Travels: the Lanape people, whose culture was rich and diverse, ate copious quantities of oysters, the shells of which still lie beneath Manhattan, Rockaway, Bayswater and many other city areas. They called the first Europeans to visit their shores the 'Salty People', welcomed them and traded with them, but did not understand their concept of land ownership and had no resistance to their diseases. Gradually relationships between the Lenape and the 'Salty People' soured. And eventually the protective wall that was built around New Amsterdam demonstrated the mistrust that came to exist between them.
In between telling us ALL about oysters, oyster collection and oyster cultivation, Mark Kurlansky outlines the growth of New York city and its markets, the growth of the oyster trade interstate and overseas, the effect of the American Revolution on New York and its oysters, and the seemingly never-ending popularity of oyster stalls, oyster barges, oyster cuisine and, for the poorest people, the availability of oysters as a cheap but not very nutritious food-source. Sadly, he charts, too, the growing effects on the oysters of overpopulation and industrialization, and the consequent pollution of the waterways in which they live.
So, in spite of the jokey chapter headings, the generous (overgenerous, even) larding of quotes at the head of each chapter, and the many curious and tempting recipes, the serious message of this book (as of Kerlansky's earlier book Cod) is depressing. The history of the oyster shows, quite clearly, how effectively we are destroying the natural world around us. So, what once seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of food is now an expensive delicacy and, unless we change our ways, the oyster will soon be off the menu for good. "If we had the ability to see deep into the water, it would have been different", Kurlansky suggests. Perhaps. But even the small changes we have made as we have become more environmentally conscious are not enough. Oysters are returning to New York waters and are making their own contribution to filtering out the pollutants, but, as one scientist notes "In our lifetime, there's no hope we could eat them, because the water contains heavy metals". It is the same sad story around the world.
The Stolen Child
Keith Donohue
Random House
ISBN: 0224076973, $32.95, 319 pp.
Every child acts strangely at times, and every parent wonders where that behaviour came from, where it was learned or whose genes might be responsible for it. "Must have been swapped at birth", we sometimes joke, disowning responsibility. But in more superstitious times we might not have been joking. Changelings, children stolen away by the faeries, trolls, green-men, wodwoes, hobgoblins, mischievous little people who are sometimes glimpsed and often placated by special greetings or by food left on the doorstep at night, all these are common in folk-lore. And in many places the belief in such things still lingers.
Keith Donohue draws on these stories and weaves an intriguing tale of two boys, both of whom have at one time in their lives been stolen from their families and a changeling left in their place. Now, in alternating chapters, they tell their strange stories and gradually their lives begin to touch.
For Henry Day, aged seven, the book begins with the end of his normal family life and the beginning of his existence as Aniday amongst the unaging, feral hobgoblins who haunt the local woods. He has much to learn.
Meanwhile, the new Henry Day who takes his place must transform himself from hobgoblin to human child and convince his new human family that he is their child. Much preparation has already taken place, but for him, too, this is a challenging learning experience.
The Stolen Child starts rather slowly, but as events bring Aniday and Henry Day closer to each other the tale becomes more interesting. Aniday forms a close relationship with Speck, a girl hobgoblin who helps him to understand the unwritten laws by which the hobgoblins live, the hierarchy through which they may someday return to the human world, and the careful and dangerous process by which this may be achieved. Aniday sees what happens when such an attempt fails and, in the process, comes into brief, forbidden contact with his human father.
The new Henry Day progresses through childhood, school, college and marriage, always with the knowledge that he was once (before he was stolen away and lived as a hobgoblin) someone else. Scraps of memory surface, and a precocious musical gift, which puzzles him and his family and sets him looking for his past. His search and his strange and obsessive behaviour have real parallels in our everyday world amongst people with Asperger syndrome. And, as he learns more about his first human identity and the shadowy figure of Aniday, the boy he replaced, begins to have real presence in his life a crisis threatens.
Keith Donohue's exploration of these two lives becomes more absorbing as suggestions of the real psychological dilemmas of a split personality surface, but these are never elaborated and the book never loses hold of the imaginative fantasy which lies at its heart. Donohue walks the thin line between the believable and the wholly fantastic with skill. And anyone who still harbours even the vaguest suspicion that there might be something unknown and dangerous out there in the darkness will probably enjoy this book.
Ann Skea, Reviewer
http://ann.skea.com
Bethany's Bookshelf
Drive Around Canadian Rockies
Donald L. Telfer & Helena Zukowski
Thomas Cook Publishing
PO Box 227, The Thomas Cook Business Park, 15-16 Coningsby Road, Peterbourough PE3 8SB, United Kingdom
1841575607 $24.95 www.amazon.com www.thomascookpublishing.com
Drive Around Canadian Rockies: Alverta And British Columbia by Donald L. Tefler and Helena Zukowski is an impressive collection of roadmaps and drivers guides to and through the scenic Canadian Rockies. Profusely illustrated, Drive Around Canadian Rockies provides travelers with a wealth of useful information on the top twenty-five tours, along with their routes and road signs; details of major destinations; clear maps; walking tours through towns and cities; sightseeing, activities; dining recommendations; accommodations; and ideas for personal explorations along a chosen route. Drive Around Canadian Rockies is very strongly recommended as the ultimate guide for a fun and glorious vacation while traveling through Canada's Rocky Mountain country.
Second Honeymoon
Joanna Trollope
Bloomsbury
175 - 5th Avenue, Suite 300, New York, NY 10010
1596910380 $23.95 www.bloomsburyusa.com
Second Honeymoon by Joanna Trollope is the tale of Edie Boyd whose youngest child, Ben, leaves home to create an empty atmosphere in what has become a terrifying emptiness Edie soon comes to feel all around her. Nonetheless Second Honeymoon emerges as the inherently engaging and occasionally inspiring story of one family's unconditional love, timeless closeness, and eternal forgiveness. A truly accomplished novelist, Joanna Trollope has written an original and a heartwarming story of parenthood with a realism and an ultimate optimism that will hold the reader's attention and satisfaction from beginning to end. Second Honeymoon is a welcome and recommended addition to community library fiction shelves.
Your Daily Life Is Your Temple
Anne Rowthorn
Seabury Books
445 Fifth Avenue, NY, NY 10016
1596270225 $16.00 seaburybooks.org
Your Daily Life Is Your Temple by Anne Rowthorn is a thoughtful and thought-provoking collection of insights into the grace of God and the necessity for acceptance of divinity through the entirety of our personal and professional lives. Offering readers an introduction to God's love, perspectives of living among others, and the collective contribution of each individual person to the community as a whole, Your Daily Life Is Your Temple covers a diversity of issues ranging from the everyday choices of children, friendships, money, politics, the arts, hospitality, and theology. Your Daily Life Is Your Temple is recommended reading offering an impressive compilation of wisdom for daily life.
Love, Love, Love, And Other Essays
Charles Taliaferro
Cowley Publications
4 Brattle Street, Suite 309, Cambridge, MA 02138
1561012424 $14.95 1-800-225-1534 www.cowley.org
Love, Love, Love, And Other Essays: Light Reflections On Love, Life, And Death by Charles Taliaferro (Department of Philosophy, St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota) consists of forty-three succinct essays focusing on the human heart in all of its absurdities, dilemmas and joys. Drawing from personal experience within the context of his own life and personal observations, Professor Taliaferro writes with a combination of wit and wisdom that engages, entertains, and occasionally inspires. Love, Love, Love, And Other Essays is the kind of reading that impresses itself upon the appreciative mind of the reader long after the essays are read and the book placed back upon the shelf.
Gotta Find Me An Angel
Brenda Brooks
Raincoast Books
9050 Shaughnessy Street, Vancouver, B. C., Canada V6P 6E5
1551927179 $29.95 www.raincoast.com
The debut novel of Brenda Brooks, Gotta Find Me An Angel is the imaginatively engaging story of a 30-something female film-projectionist whose haunting dreams of an old friend, having been dead for about twenty years, becomes reality as the young girl's ghost makes regular visits to her. With its distinctively vivid style of authorship, Gotta Find Me An Angel is also the compelling tale of an aspiring writer addicted to late night re-runs of "I, Claudius", his unconventional editor, as well as the intimate (albeit despondent) relationship of a young ghost and the story's narrator and heroine. Unique, intelligent, colorful, complex, memorable, and altogether enjoyable, Gotta Find Me An Angel is very strongly recommended reading that establishes Brenda Brooks (who has previously published two books of poetry, "Somebody Should Kiss You" and "Blue Light in the Dash") as a writer to take note of.
Searching For Mary Magdalene
Jane Lahr
Welcome Books
6th West 18th Street, NY, NY 10011
Maryann Palumbo Marketing Concepts, Inc. (publicity)
9201 Shore Road, Suite A508, Brooklyn, NY 11209
1932183892 $39.95 www.welcomebooks.com
A beautifully illustrated work of original scholarship, Searching For Mary Magdalene: A Journey Through Art And Literature by author and editor Jane Lahr is an in-depth and comprehensive detailing of the modern and historical history of the enigmatic Mary Magdalene as reflected through the literature and art of the last two millennia. Introducing readers to a collective survey study drawn from historical writers, philosophers, artists, and scholars, Searching For Mary Magdalene accessibly presents a concise and intricate descriptive analysis of Magdalene based upon the many known resources. Searching For Mary Magdalene is very highly recommended to non-specialist general readers with an interest in a life and history of Mary Magdalene.
The Couples Contract For A Lasting Relationship
Ed Sherman & Bruce Janke
Nolo Press
501 Mission Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95060
0944508588 $24.95 www.nolotech.com
Expertly co-authored by the attorneys Ed Sherman and Bruce Janke, The Couples Contract For A Lasting Relationship: For All Couples: Married, Getting Married, Unmarried is a complete and comprehensive guide for creating an everlasting bond between couples of every level. Enhanced with the inclusion of a CD-Rom, The Couples Contract For A Lasting Relationship presents a thorough and concise collection of advice and examples for securing important legal benefits through the mechanism of a written contract with respect to a loved one whether engaged, married, or simply living together. By tailoring a written agreement to a couple's particular financial relationships, and building successful problem solving skills with respect to general relationship issues (which may frequently be financial), The Couples Contract For A Lasting Relationship is very strongly recommended as a useful tool and guide to safeguarding the relationship. If you are planning to share your life with that special someone, then give The Couples Contract For A Lasting Relationship a very careful reading first. It could save you a great deal of regret and expense later.
Empowered by Empathy
Rose Rosetree
Women's Intuition Worldwide
116 Hillsdale Dr, Sterling, VA 20164
0975253816 $49.00 www.rose-rosetree.com
Rose Rosetree draws upon her many years of experience and expertise with empath empowerment in Empowered by Empathy: Twenty-Five Ways To Fly In Spirit an informative introduction to awakening personal empathy through the application of Rosetree's expert techniques and intuitive spiritual development. This six-disc CD audiobook edition of Empowered by Empathy has a total running time of 7 hours, 13 minutes and deftly carries the listener through easy, step-by-step techniques to taking hold of and control life; turning on the gifts for recognition of the true experience of "otherness"; turning off the gifts to block picking up the pains of others; and obtaining a practical understanding of empathy as a true and enduring blessing, regardless of how much suffering has resulted in having lived as an untrained, uncontrolled empath in the past. Empowered by Empathy is very strongly recommended, especially for those who were born with physical, intellectual, spiritual, emotional, or metaphysical empathy.
Fantastic Four Workouts
Christi Taylor
Bayview Entertainment
c/o 411 Video Information
PO Box 1223, Pebble Beach, CA 93953
DVD $19.99 www.taylordfitness.com
Fantastic Four Workouts is a four volume DVD series showcasing fitness guru Christi Taylor in an incredible collection of useful "follow along" exercise workouts specifically designed for men and women wanting to improve, maintain, and enhance their physical well-being. Characterized by an easy to follow visual format throughout the extensive collection of workout instructions, Fantastic Four Workouts offers the four innovative and thorough workouts, Still Jumpin (60 minutes), Still Steppin (60 minutes), Hi-Lo Heaven (90 minutes), and Step Heaven (90 minutes). Fun and effective, Fantastic Four Workouts is very highly recommended for its superb production values and complete coverage of Christi Taylor's exercise routines in a double-disk DVD compiling 300 minutes of enthusiastic, music accompanied, and creatively styled workouts -- complete with warm-ups, cool-downs, and bloopers!.
Get Ripped
Jari Love
Razor Digital Entertainment
12031 Ventura Boulevard, Suite 3, Studio City, CA 91604
1595522824 $14.95 www.razordigitalent.com
Get Ripped, featuring actress, model, singer, and personal trainer Jari Love, is the introduction to an effective and fun style of workouts specifically designed to burn off excess calories, carbs, and fat. Providing an easy-to-follow collection of simple but elegantly effective workout routines, Get Ripped showcases a three to four week program of "cutting edge" workout exercises for men and women resulting in maximum muscle definition, body fat loss, and cardiovascular productivity. Especially appropriate for beginners wanting to get into the best shape of their lives, Get Ripped is an effective, 55 minute DVD exercise program featuring a conversation with Cory Fagan about the underlying science and research behind why the "Ripped!" program works, along with several illustrative success stories. Also very highly recommended from Razor Digital Entertainment are the two other exercise DVDs; Tom Holland's Total Ab (159521887, $14.99, 29 minutes) and Tom Holland's Total Body (1595521860, $14.99, 68 minutes).
The Perfect Body: The Pilates Way
Lynne Robinson
Firefly Entertainment
c/o 411 Video Information
PO Box 1223, Pebble Beach, CA 93953
WD-1027 (DVD) $14.95 www.wellgousa.com
The Perfect Body: The Pilates Way with Lynne Robinson (Director of the Body Control Pilates Academy and the Body Control Pilates Association -- Europe's largest school for Pilates teachers with over 700 teaching members) is a 90 minute, full color, live action, informational exercise DVD guiding viewers through a series of Pilates exercises that includes such basics as alignment, breathing, centering (using the deep abdominal muscles), two balanced workouts, "The Series of Five" offering classical Pilates for beginners to advanced exercisers, and "The Relaxation Session" - a series of gentle movements designed to release tension from the body for a perfect conclusion to a physical workout. The Perfect Body: The Pilates Way offers an efficient and thorough workout plan for toning and shaping the body to its ideal condition and shape. The Perfect Body: The Pilates Way is very highly recommended for viewers searching for an easy-to-follow, all-inclusive, "follow along", fun and effective guide to a Pilates based workout routine.
Susan Bethany
Reviewer
Bob's Bookshelf
The Big Bamboo
Tim Dorsey
William Morrow
0060585625, $24.95, 336 pp.
Tim Dorsey sends his hilarious and loveable serial killer, Serge Storms, off on a madcap adventure to Hollywood and the movie Mecca may never recover from his visit. Upset because the entertainment industry has been ignoring his beloved home state, the Florida native wants to know what the deal is. Why aren't more films shot in the Sunshine State? Why are the movies that do feature the state so lousy?
When Serge lands in town all sorts of weird things start happening, including the kidnapping of a starlet. Never one to steer clear of a messy situation, Serge once again shows he's a master at turning a simple disaster into a total catastrophe. Only Tim Dorsey can whip up a literary recipe whose ingredients include the Yakuza, the Playboy Mansion, sundry sleazy Hollywood types, and a rousing conclusion on a Tinsel Town movie set. It's a heady concoction guaranteed to provide plenty of laughs (or guffaws).
Night of the Jaguar
Michael Gruber
William Morrow
0060577681, $24.95, 372 pp.
What do the violent deaths of some corrupt corporate executives have to do with a little girl's nightmares? Called out of retirement, Miami's expert criminal investigator Jimmy Paz has to figure out the connection between these seemingly unrelated events. If the ex-cop fails to find the link, the consequences will affect his own family in a way he never imagined. "Night of the Jaguar" completes the Paz trilogy. The first two novels have already received rave reviews and this concluding story may well be the best of the lot.
As the thriller opens, Jimmy is eight years into his retirement, cooking at his mother's Cuban restaurant and playing the role of devoted father and husband. A slew of bizarre ritualistic murders, though, coupled with troubling dreams that haunt both Paz and his seven year old daughter, force the former detective to accept the Miami Police Department's plea for help. As he launches the murder investigation, Paz finds himself heading down a path where his own murky past becomes an issue.
What he discovers is as unbelievable as it is frightening. Try as he might, Paz would like to discount his findings. But when he realizes his daughter's life is in jeopardy, the detective has to give credence to what he has uncovered no matter how bizarre the discovery is. The mysteries of the deep jungles of Colombia collide with the frenetic lifestyle of modern Miami in this unusual and provocative thriller. Like the novel's hardheaded protagonist, the reader will be shaken by this intriguing mixture of reality and the supernatural.
Prior Bad Acts
Tami Hoag
Bantam
0553801988, $26.00, 375 pp.
With 20 million copies of her books in print, Tami Hoag doesn't need an introduction to most suspense fans. Her gritty police procedural novels have been a fixture on various bestseller lists for years. In this latest thriller, Hoag's cop duo of Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska are given an assignment they'd rather pass on. After Judge Carey Moore is attacked, the Minneapolis detectives are called upon to solve the assault and also keep the judge safe.
After the mass murderer, whose case Judge Moore is trying in her courtroom, escapes from custody, the situation becomes a little more ticklish. But that isn't the half of it. When the judge is snatched right from under the noses of her protectors there is even more of a community uproar. With a killer on the loose plus a kidnapped judge, the public is up in arms and the police department is at the center of a media maelstrom.
Kovac and Liska will need not only all their professional expertise but also a little luck to sort out this mess. If they fail, the duo may end up being the fall guys and find their careers are all but over.
Secrets of the Bible
editors of Archaeology Magazine
Hatherleigh Press
1578262186, $15.95, 230 pp.
"Secrets of the Bible" brings together a group of articles that deal with the Holy Land and biblical history. This new and updated edition offers the latest information on the history of the world's most renowned book and some of the stunning breakthroughs in archaeological science that expand our understanding of the mysteries of Holy Scripture. Included in the 230 page paperback are new details about the ancient Philistines, the true story of Sodom and Gomorrah, new theories on the Star of Bethlehem, the heroic last stand at Masada and the secrets of Armageddon.
The featured essays examine and explore some of the conflicts and controversies that have surrounded the Bible for thousands of years. From a discussion of the secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls to the recent brouhaha over the authenticity of the James Ossuary and the Jehoash Inscription, the 29 experts who contributed material to the volume rely on some of the most recent fieldwork to substantiate their ideas. Sections devoted to "The Ancients: Their Kingdoms, Trade, and Politics", "Reading Between the Lines of the Bible", "The Rise of Christianity", and "The Holy Land Today" provide a wealth of material on a wide range of intriguing topics, including which Bethlehem (the one in Galilee or Judea) was Jesus' actual birthplace and an analysis of how Hollywood has presented the Holy Land will make it difficult for readers to set this book aside.
In the introduction Neil Asher Silberman explains that recent discoveries in the Lands of the Bible may not have provided answers to all of the Bible's mysteries. But, the historian from Berlin's Ename Center for Public Archaeology continues, this new information has "utterly transformed how we look at this ancient, sacred text." With special features such as a biblical timeline, in-depth insight into the latest research, stunning illustrations and color photos, "Secrets of the Bible" is a must read for experts and armchair archaeologists alike. Anyone interested in understanding the world of the Bible will also find this a fascinating read.
Bob Walch
Reviewer
Buhle's Bookshelf
Plenty Porter
Brandon Noonan
Amulet Books
115 West 18th Street, New York, NY 10011
0810959968 $16.95 www.abramsbooks.com
Plenty Porter by Brandon Noonan is a nicely scripted coming-of-age novel about the youngest daughter a poor sharecropping family from rural Illinois. Plenty is the youngest of eleven children and has trouble "fitting in", all of which is further complicated with her meeting a boy named Ed who is the son of a rich landowner. The two of them begin a relationship that has Penny discovering the true meaning of family and an intimacy she had never before experienced. Documenting Brandon Noonan as a skillfully original novelist, Plenty Porter is very highly recommended reading for those who appreciate the combination of deft authorship and timeless values.
The Hour Of Bad Decisions
Russell Wangersky
Coteau Books
2517 Victoria Avenue, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, S4P OT2
1550503375 $16.95 www.coteaubooks.com
The Hour Of Bad Decisions is a riveting collection of seventeen short stories by Russell Wangersky. A writer of considerable skill and originality, The Hour Of Bad Decisions beautifully crafted stories populated by memorable characters caught up in the imperfections of their problematic lives and in the process, captures the readers total attention from beginning to end. Documenting Russell Wangersky as a consummate storyteller of considerable talent, expertise, and originality, The Hour Of Bad Decisions is to be given high praise recommendation for personal reading lists and community library fiction collections..
Yocona Puff Adder
Gerald Inmon
Taylor House Publishing
1739 University Avenue, PMB 340, Oxfortd, MS 38655
0977486435 $27.95 1-662-234-4180 www.taylorhousepublishing.com
A kind of "coming of age" novel with distinctly autobiographical elements by Gerald Inmon, Yocona Puff Adder is the story of Scott and Charlie, two seven year old children growing up in the American south and leading horrific, heroic, disdainful, persistent, and thoroughly active lives. A professional forester and wildlife biologist, Yocona Puff Adder is Inmon's debut novel and tangible benefits from the inclusion of environmental detail. Indeed, each of the 52 chapters could successfully stand alone as brilliantly presented short stories as the boys meet fictionalized versions of a series of memorable characters ranging from civil rights activist James Meredith to Nobel Prize winning author William Faulkner. Introducing Gerald Inmon as a truly gifted regional writer, Yocona Puff Adder is entertaining, original, and articulate as he uses a fictional format to address issues of racism, war, and the environment.
The Pictograph Murders
P. G. Karamesines
Signature Books
564 West 400 North, Salt Lake City, UT 84116-3411
1560851821 $21.95 1-800-356-5687 www.signaturebooks.com
The Pictograph Murders by P. G. Karamesines is the story of Alex McKelvey and her desperate struggle to seek happiness by moving to the desert country of Utah with Kit, her Siberian husky. Swiftly carrying readers through a purely captivating tale of mystery and suspense that continues to hold the readers full and unabated attention from first page to last, The Pictograph Murders compels Alex through an investigation involving the archeological study of pots, witchcraft, and murder as the archaeological excavation site-owner disappears, and Alex's only lead is the site itself, and the mysterious arrival of a Coyote-figured stranger. A beautifully crafted mystery thriller, The Pictograph Murders is very highly recommended for mystery buffs as an enthralling tale of murder, archeology, myth, and an eccentric young woman who is determined to discover the truth.
Old Filth
Jane Gordam
Europa Editions
116 East 16th Street, New York, NY 10003
1933372133 $14.95 www.europaeditions.com
Jane Gordam's novel Old Filth is the remarkable tale of Sir Edward "Filth" Feathers and a wonderfully entertaining account of his life and times as a part of England's sometimes eccentric legal system. Deftly carrying readers through Filth's exploration of life from his struggles as a young Barrister to his ultimate retirement from a judgeship in the beautiful Dorset, Old Filth is very strongly recommended as a giftedly authored novel portraying of one man's life and times. Destined to be a minor classic of the literary arts, Old Filth continues to clearly establish why Jane Gordam is considered to be an award-winning author of note. Also highly recommended are her early works: "Black Faces, White Faces" (1975); "God on the Rocks" (1978)"The Pangs of Love and Other Stories (1983); "The Queen of the Tambourine" (1991); "Going into a Dark House" (1994), and "The Flight of the Maidens" (2000).
Song Of The Crow
Layne Maheu
Unbridled Books
2000 Wadsworth Boulevard, #195, Lakewood, CO 80214
1932961186 $23.95 1-888-732-3822 www.unbridledbooks.com
Layne Maheu's debut novel Song Of The Crow offers a unique depiction of the confluence of humanity and the metaphysical heavens as illustrated by the story of Noah and the Flood from the perspective of a crow. Song Of The Crow carries readers through an incredibly engaging and superbly crafted story of struggle, fear, free will, the inner workings of the human mind, and the obedience of an old gray haired man to the commandment of his God despite the ridicule and disbelief of his community. Maheu's writing style is lyrical and imaginative, a kind of extended story-telling meditation uniquely portrayed through the eyes of a bird viewing the pitiful struggle of the man to build his ship and save all life from being extinct because of the wrath of Yahweh. A welcome addition to any community library fiction collection, Song Of The Crow is especially recommended for all readers who enjoy stories inspired by scripture and brought to life with flair, style, and imagination.
Willis M. Buhle
Reviewer
Burroughs' Bookshelf
Americans And Climate Change
Daniel R. Abbasi
Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
c/o Yale University Press
PO Box 209040, New Haven, CT 06520-9040
097078824X $16.50 www.yale.edu
Expertly written by Daniel R. Abbasi (Director of the 2005 Yale F&ES Conference on Climate Change and Associate Dean at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and Director of the Environmental Attitudes and Behavior project at the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy), Americans And Climate Change: A Synthesis Of Insights And Recommendations From The 2005 Yale F And ES Conference On Climate Change is an informative academic study of the worldly issues of climate and environment change and the threats faced in the probability of variables involved and summarizes the results of a seminal conference on climate changes that will shape the foreseeable future of life on planet Earth. Opening an the results of an extended debate on the complex dimensions drawn from the collective research surrounding the discovery of the on-going potential for climate change, Americans And Climate Change evocatively presents a documented perspective and is very strongly recommended reading for governmental policy makers, environmental activists, academia, and anyone else concerned with the issues of global climate change.
Designing Residential Wilderness Programs For Adults
Michael Day & Ellen M. Petrick
Krieger Publishing Company
PO Box 9542, Melbourne, FL 32902
1575242613 $29.50 1-321-724-9542 www.krieger-publishing.com
Expertly co-authored by Michael Day (Associate Dean and Professor of Adult Education in the College of Education at the University of Wyoming) and Ellen M. Petrick (Educational Consultant and former Program Manager for Formal Education in Yellowstone National Park), Designing Residential Wilderness Programs For Adults is an impressively presented introductory guide and instructive reference to the physical and emotional difficulties, as well as the potential rewards, in adult residential and wilderness education. Expansively detailing the troubles faced with a return to schooling, Designing Residential Wilderness Programs For Adults guides readers through relevant issues, values, relationships, pursuits, as well as offering an practical suggestions for the successful design and experience oriented learning processes through various established residential programs. A conceptual and "user-friendly" guide to the education process of aging or older individuals in the midst of a diverse environment, Designing Residential Wilderness Programs For Adults is also available in a paperback edition (1575242826, $19.5) and very highly recommended as part of the Krieger Publishing Company's "Professional Practices" series.
British Travel Writers in China
Jeffrey N. Dupee
The Edwin Mellen Press
PO Box 450, Lewiston, NY 14092-0450
0773464972 $119.95 1-716-754-2788 www.edwinmellenpress.com
British Travel Writers in China: Writing Home to a British Public, 1890-1914 is a scholarly study of British travel writings in an era when Chinese territory was under British control. Chapters discussed the tone of such articles as many of them were penned to an imagined British readership; the cultural values that affected how the Chinese were seen through British travel writers' eyes; complaints about creature comforts denied while traveling through China, tales of danger, the thirst to explore and learn, and much more. British Travel Writers in China presents numerous excerpts from travel writings in support of its points, but the main focus is on the dissection and analysis of such writings; readers looking for the complete texts of actual writing must necessarily search elsewhere. An excellent and thoughtfully inclusive study of its kind.
Early Renaissance Invective and the Controversies of Antonia da Rho
David Rutherford
Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies
Arizona State University, PO Box 874402, Tempe, AZ 85287-4402
0866983457 $48.00 www.asu.edu/clas/acmrs
Early Renaissance Invective and the Controversies of Antonia da Rho presents an edited translation of two works by medieval scholar Antonio da Rho (1395-1447). The text is also offered in its original Latin for side-by-side comparison. Extensive notes and commentary, as well as line-by-line citations allow for ease of close scrutiny. The rhetoric manuscripts include "Philippic Against Antonio Panormita" and "The Apology of Antonio da Rho". The scathing attacks present in these classical manuscripts demonstrate that all-out verbal assault was as skillfully used centuries ago as it is today, if not more so! A finely presented addition to medieval literature and studies shelves.
Potency
Eugene Monick
Inner City Books
PO Box 1271 Station Q, Toronto, ON M4T 2P4
189457415X $18.00 www.innercitybooks.net
Ten years in the writing, Potency: Masculine Aggression as a Path to the Soul summarizes Dr. Eugene Monick, M.Div. Ph.D., an Episcopal priest wrestling with a profound social issue: how can men function smoothly in society, when their traditional patriarchal authority has eroded in a changing climate of more egalitarian values? Drawing heavily upon Jungian psychology to examine what makes the male mind, body, and sexual impulses tick, Potency explores at length the frustrations and challenges of being male in a former man's world, as well as viable alternatives to male-concentrated power as a way of life. Unabashed in its discussion of male sexuality hand in hand with male power, Potency reaches out to the spiritual as well as the physical aspects of maleness in its search for balance and paths to greater happiness for all human beings. Also highly recommended are the author's previous treatises, "Phallos" and "Castration and Male Rage".
QuickBooks Pro 2006
Karen Mitchell et al
Craftsman Books Company
6058 Corte del Cedro, PO Box 6500, Carlsbad, CA 92018
1572181702 $51.50 www.craftsman-book.com
Enhanced with an accompanying CD-ROM, the Contractor's Guide To QuickBooks Pro 2006 by the team of contractors, accountants, and QuickBooks Pro experts Karen Mitchell, Craig Savage, and Jim Erwin is an in-depth, "user-friendly" guide to coordinating and knowledgeably approaching using the software programming of QuickBooks Pro in building construction contract development. Introducing contractors to an exceptionally comprehensive understanding of the computer-based programming system, QuickBooks Pro 2006 guides readers through QuickBooks Pro 2006's national estimator, an easy-to-use program with over 100 pages of construction cost and estimating data for general contractors; the Job Cost Wizard which swiftly converts the National estimates into QuickBooks Pro estimates for ease in creation of invoices and track job costs; as well as a collection of blank construction forms for customization and use with customers and subcontractors. QuickBooks Pro 2006 is very strongly recommended for its concise and thorough coverage of the often difficult dealings of construction contract estimates and bids.
John Burroughs
Reviewer
Carson's Bookshelf
Myths And Legends Of The Second World War
James Hayward
Isis Publishing
c/o Ulverscroft Large Print (USA)
PO Box 1230, West Seneca, NY 14224-1230
0753156636 $32.50 1-800-955-9659 www.amazon.com
Myths And Legends Of The Second World War by James Hayward is an impressive collection of lore and lies, folk stories and propaganda generated misinformation drawn from every theatre of World War II. Debunking the misconceptions, myths, and misunderstandings arising from conflicts, Myths And Legends Of The Second World War addresses and corrects such "tall tale" stories as the "Foo Fighters" and UFOs, German Parachutists dressed as nuns, Hitler's escape to South America, German U-boat bases in Ireland, Herman Hess and the British Royals, a massacre that never took place, an invasion that never was, and other enduring myths. Offering a large print format for easy reading and enhanced with the inclusion of an extensive bibliography, Myths And Legends Of The Second World War is very highly recommended reading military buffs for its clarifications and explanations of World War II's most enduring but quite erroneous stories.
Future Hype
Bob Seidensticker
Berrett-Koehler Publishers
253 Montgomery Street, Suite 650, San Francisco, CA 94104
1576753700 $15.95 www.bkconnection.com
Future Hype: The Myths Of Technology Change by Bob Seidensticker (a 25 year veteran of the technology industry and holder of thirteen software patents) is an iconoclastic collection of "insider insights" debunking common misconceptions about the role, function, and progress of technology. Providing readers with wealth of useful data and often surprising information, Future Hype reveals nine technological myths including: the disproval of the rate change is not exponential; important new products do not arrive any faster then they ever have; the analytical perspective that the internet doesn't really change everything; and more interesting and documented observations. Future Hype is very strongly recommended reading for students of science and technology, popular culture and contemporary sociology, as well as non-specialist general readers interested in the impact of technology on their lives, their communities, and their future.
Playing President
Robert Scheer
Akashic Books
PO Box 1456, New York, NY 10009
1933354011 $14.95 www.truthdig.com
Playing President is an impressive collection of informative interviews by award-winning "Los Angeles Times" journalist Robert Sheer with the presidents Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and Bush Senior. Deftly compiled and analyzed to create a sound basis for understanding each of these former presidents in terms of their respective parts played in the national debates and issues of their respective administrations, Playing President offers readers a wealth of insights into their lives, minds, and decisions which had historically influenced and shaped the American political front during the course of the second half of the twentieth century. A core addition to academic library "Political Science" reference collections, Playing President is very strongly recommended for non-specialist general readers with an interest in the American presidency for its wide-range of informative and first hand accounts drawn from direct interviews with the men who occupied that august office.
European Universalism
Immanuel Wallerstein
The New Press
38 Greene Street, New York, NY 10013
1595580611 $14.95 thenewpress.com
European Universalism: The Rhetoric Power Of Immanual by Wallerstein (Senior Research Scholar at Yale, Director Emeritus of the Ferdand Braudel Center at Binghamton University, and researcher at the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme in Paris) is an impressive and complex study of European society, its political and cultural paradigms and western cultural ideals. European Universalism explores the developmental attributes of the United States as an imperial power in juxtaposition to the European philosophical notions of progress and domination. A work of impressive and original scholarship, European Universalism is to be given high praise for its conceptual documentation as a comparative, eurocentric, sociological study of European and American political, cultural, and social values.
Michael J. Carson
Reviewer
Cassandra's Bookshelf
Wild Girls Paris, Sappho & Art: The Lives & Loves of Natalie Barney & Romaine Brooks
Diana Souhami
St. Martin's Press
175 Fifth Avenue, NY, NY 10010
ISBN: 0312343248, $29.95
Drawing from letters, papers, and paintings, Diana Souhami "recreates the lives and loves of this pair of dazzling and wild women." No where in the publicity does it mention that in dealing with the lives and loves of these two rich American expatriates, and "grandly lesbian" women Souhami is going to put her own autobiographical interjects into the text. In hazarding such a writing experiment Souhami's unfortunate interpolations in italicized passages of lesbian encounters from her own life only serve as a distraction from the maximum clarity that she strives for in her book.
Wild Girls's cover is illustrated by the image of a corset being laced by a woman with manicured blood red nails making it appear as if the publishers needed something more provocative to catch the average reader's eye. Divided into thirty chapters, Wild Girls features twenty-five interjects. These interpolations attempt to sex up the book, unfortunately they only serves to dumb it down. Additionally, not everyone wants to open a book and read, "Liane de Pougy began each day with an enema." (7). Readers may admire Souhami for examining such delicate subjects as sexual orientation, abortion and social inequality in relation to the lives of Natalie Barney and Romaine Brooks, and the women of their circle but many can do without the author's concentration on basic bodily functions, glamor and wealth at the expense of much more interesting analysis and subject matter. Granted this is a personality driven book but the writer's tete-a-tetes with herself and dishing gossip about the "girls" results in an awkward book that fails to draw the line between critical thinking and chummy repartee. In the case of Wild Girls the crossover attempt simply does not work.
The first few chapters of this book focus on Barney who was celebrated for her "bon mots" but whose real achievement was her Friday salon. Natalie's salon served as an important and radical vehicle providing a context in which nobility, artists and thinkers exchanged ideas across barriers of class,
