Book Description
China's great classic novel Outlaws of the Marsh, written in the fourteenth century, is a fictional account of twelfth-century events during the Song Dynasty. One by one, over a hundred men and women are forced by the harsh feudal officialdom to take to the hills. They band together and defeat every attempt of the government troops to crush them. Within this framework we find intrigue, adventure, murder, warfare, romance ... in a connected series of fascinating individual tales, told in the suspenseful manner of the traditional storyteller.
Customer Reviews:
compelling story but poor translation.......2007-09-27
I'm only in the middle of the second book (out of 4), so take my review with that in mind.
The biggest problem I have is that the English translaction is extremely poor. It is not the content I'm complaining about, but the writing. It is so lousy that it will take away from your enjoyment of the story.
The story is compelling but there is a few things that bothered me about it:
1) whenever the main character (of the moment) gets in big trouble, his predicament is always bailed out by some incredible coincidence that his assailant (or antagonist at the moment) is actually a friend or knows a friend of his. It is ALWAYS like that, throughout the book.
2) the characters in the book, whether they are righteous or unrighteous, always get lauded as heroes. You can have a despicable character and yet he is respected among his peers...why? Maybe it is a cultural phenomena that I am not aware of.
anyways, I'm going to finish the entire series and see what happens.
Entertaining but not as good as Three Kingdoms.......2007-08-23
This book was a lot of fun to read. Having also read Three Kingdoms I have to say I enjoyed that book more but this one was still great. It's full of adventure and colorful characters. Sometimes the events building up to a new dramatic event are too drawn out but for the most part this book has hard to put down.
Full of adventure, will keep you reading!.......2006-10-26
I couldn't believe this story was written in the 13th century! The structure read like a modern novel. You won't be disappointed with the adventures that these characters get into. It is also a nice insight into ancient Chinese thought about political legitimacy and virtue. While very gory at times, this book really shows you how the ancient chinese thought. The morals are also applicable to today.
Awesome!.......2006-03-09
I loved this book, it is fast, exciting and truly engaging! Even though it is a loooOOooong story, and the story grows to epic proportions in a not-too-organized fashion very quickly; it deserves five stars simply for its character and plot development, and how it carries over one hundred main characters without losing any story! This is for the unabridged & unexpurgated four volume set translated by Sidney Shapiro and issued by the Foreign Language Press.
Riveting epic about the 108 heroes of the Suikoden!.......2006-03-09
Outlaws of the Marsh is an absolutely engaging action-adventure experience! The characterizations are detailed and personal, and one never gets bored of their exploits. The translation (Sidney Shapiro) of this four volume, 2200 page novel is also very good, in some places it is downright hysterical! Never mind the spelling errors and such, the characters and the story more than make up for it.
Even today we can see this great Chinese Classic novel's influence on the next generation - as the Playstation video game console has put out about five role playing games based on this novel alone (the "Suikoden" video games). Yes, I would indeed say that Outlaws of the Marsh has withstood the test of time in its 700 years of existence.
Average customer rating:
- Fascinating Insight to a Time not so long ago.
- walked the walk/ just didn't talk
- A Criminal's-Eye-View of Old New York
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A Pickpocket's Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York
Timothy J. Gilfoyle
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
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Mid-Atlantic | State & Local | United States | Americas | History | Subjects | Books
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Social History | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books
True Crime | True Accounts | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0393061906 |
Book Description
Meet George Appo, pickpocket, con man, mayor of underworld New York in the late nineteenth century.
In George Appo's world, child pickpockets swarmed the crowded streets, addicts drifted in furtive opium dens, and expert swindlers worked the lucrative green-goods game. On a good night Appo made as much as a skilled laborer made in a year. Bad nights left him with more than a dozen scars and over a decade in prisons from the Tombs and Sing Sing to the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where he reunited with another inmate, his father. The child of Irish and Chinese immigrants, Appo grew up in the notorious Five Points and Chinatown neighborhoods. He rose as an exemplar of the "good fellow," a criminal who relied on wile, who followed a code of loyalty even in his world of deception. Here is the underworld of the New York that gave us Edith Wharton, Boss Tweed, Central Park, and the Brooklyn Bridge. 60 illustrations.
Customer Reviews:
Fascinating Insight to a Time not so long ago........2007-08-22
George Appo's own previously unpublished biography is interwoven into Gilfoyle's outstanding book and tells readers first hand what life was like in the "new" Sing Sing prison, the infamous Tombs - NYC's massive city jail, and of course the newly created institutions for the criminally insane in the late 1800's.
Appo survived on the streets like thousands of boys from Five Points and eventually learned to read and write in prison - fortunately for today's readers. George's gentle nature and philisophical view of his life and his situation is very apparent in his writing, but contradicts the sum of his experiences as a prolific pickpocket and con man.
The combination of the author's well researched presentation along with Appo's humble first hand account of his life is fascinating. A special opportunity for a glimpse into a wild and exciting era not really that long ago.
You will enjoy this book.
walked the walk/ just didn't talk.......2006-11-08
I first saw this book featured in the book section of THE WEEK magazine. So I picked it up to know more about the scams of the day and the criminal underworld protocals as well. But my ulterior motive was to examine how the coming gilded age of corporate power was reflected in the underground economy and how justice and prisons were being affected. It is a window of the past that looks into todays corporate influence in our current systems, and how they are being corrupted. It is worth the price of the book to find that the times and modus operandi have really not changed. The power that moneyed interest bring to bear on public institutions is an ever evolving process that needs to be checked by the people, NOT by the market!
Still it is George Appo who comes onto the stage at a time when organized crime was getting its engine in gear and revving up for the roaring twenties. A culture personified by Appo. The others made the money, and Appo did the time. Appo took the rap, but never ratted out. He carried the culture up to a man of honor. One of the few who walked the walk/ and didn't talk.
A Criminal's-Eye-View of Old New York.......2006-10-28
You probably never heard of George Appo, although he wrote an autobiography. He was a reformed and washed-out criminal by the time he told his story in the early twentieth century, and although he got through 99 typewritten pages, it must have been tough for him. He had never gone to school, and his limited reading and writing skills were whatever he could pick up from fellow convicts in prison. When Timothy J. Gilfoyle, a historian at Loyola University in Chicago, found the unpublished memoir in the archives of the Society for the Prevention of Crime in New York, he must have realized that Appo's story had lain unpublished because there wasn't much of a market for its mass of run-on sentences (it only has thirteen paragraphs) and spans of inarticulateness. Still, it was in some ways an epic story of eventual success in life, but it was far to dark to be the sort that Horatio Alger might have penned. Appo had been a child criminal, a prisoner in some famous nineteenth century jails, a pickpocket and confidence man, an opium addict, a celebrity, and a quietly reformed charity case and employee of the Society for the Prevention of Crime. Gilfoyle has taken Appo's narrative, quoting from it extensively, and expanded upon its many facets to produce _A Pickpocket's Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York_ (Norton), a detailed history of Appo, the social and geographical locales in which he worked, and of the many famous, infamous, and unknown people he brushed up against.
Appo grew up on the streets, selling papers and learning to pick pockets. New York in the nineteenth century was just the place for a pickpocket to make a living. There were plenty of crowds, and people crowded into streetcars where jostling was taken for granted. Appo was tough, but his toughness extended to his being able to take punishment from other criminals or from legal authorities, not in physically harming his victims. He worked in the realm of crooks who thought themselves "good fellows": they worked carefully, with dexterity and guile rather than muscle; they spent lavishly on themselves and their cronies, and they never squealed, even when wronged. There was truly some honor among these thieves. Appo generally made a good living, but with thousands of pickpocketing attempts, he was going to be caught some of the time. Much of Gilfoyle's history tells about his many and varied incarcerations, within the reform school ship _Mercury_, the Egyptian-style Tombs prison in New York City, and Sing Sing, the prototype for making industrial laborers of convicts, who suffered from filthy conditions, overcrowding, and torture from stupid and untrained guards. Appo rightly charged that it drove prisoners to insanity, death, and suicide. He graduated from pickpocketing to bunco schemes, but eventually testified to a government committee not against his fellow "bunco steerers", but about the schemes in general and especially the complicity of the police that allowed it to continue unhindered.
His testimony before the committee was his turn to go straight. Appo also had served as an opium den guide to Dr. Henry Kane who did the first medical investigation of the effects of opium addiction. In 1895 he went on the stage, playing himself in the melodrama _In the Tenderloin_, a play that portrayed criminals as something more complicated than simple bad guys. By the time of his release from his last imprisonment, his "underworld universe no longer existed". Those who had organized on a national scale the green-goods game had all been rounded up, and the customary support from venal policemen was giving way to the first of the police reform movements. Appo underwent a religious conversion (though one has to wonder whether this was merely the only career move he could make as an older criminal whose world had moved on without him), but evangelical reformers gave him only half-hearted support, and seemed to believe that he like all criminals was beyond real reform. For a while he worked at $6 a month as an undercover agent for the Society for the Prevention of Crime. He died of old age in 1930, at age 71, not a hero, not an urban Jesse James, "neither a latter-day Robin Hood nor a Jack the Ripper", just an ordinary guy compelled to specific crimes because of specific social conditions. It's a great life story, and Gilfoyle has used his skills as a historian and storyteller upon its episodes to give fascinating histories and essays about penal institutions, social philosophy, and criminal styles of the time.
Amazon.com
Not everyone who graduates from Ivy League schools immediately enters high-paying and prestigious careers. Peter Alson, Harvard graduate and nephew of Norman Mailer, writes in an "almost-tough-guy" style of his life as a bookie in Brooklyn, from the highs of making some big commissions to the lows of spending time in a feces-encrusted and overcrowded cell. A cross between Jim Carroll's The Basketball Diaries and Damon Runyon's tales of down-and-out or lowlife New Yorkers.
Book Description
Juxtaposing the thuggish worlds of bookies and privileged ivy leaguers, this hilarious study of unfettered machismo takes a perceptive look into a young, donw-on-his-luck Harvard graducate who joins a bookmaking operations while he tries to pull his life together.
Customer Reviews:
Even odds on whether it's worth it........2000-02-16
Despite the subtitle ("A True Tale of Love and the Vig") I was plagued throughout my reading of this semi-confession of a former Ivy-leaguer's plummet into the world of bookmaking by a certain dubiousness. Alson's story is written in a kind of flippantly open manner that undermines the believability of his insider's story. Don't get me wrong, it's very entertaining and all, but his coyness about just how "connected" the small-time operation he was a part of was came across as rather disingenuous to me. While his confusion and despair about figuring out what he should be doing with his overeducated self hit the right notes, the subplot of the long distance sort of relationship was often more annoying than interesting. Still, not a bad little peek into bookmaking.
What a brave and compelling tale!.......1998-01-16
I felt like I was growing up with Peter as he faced the consequences of his decisions. Looking forward to his next one.
A Sure Bet!.......1997-10-26
I really liked this book! I thought it was a refreshing and entertaining look at how are lives don't always end up as we had planned. There are some unresolved issues, but perhaps that makes the book all the more realistic. A movie version of this book would do very well.
Very entertaining misadventure.......1997-04-22
This book was a great but limited look inside a small-time illegal sports book. Alson's story is very funny, compelling, and informative but suffers from his distracting whining about a long-distance girlfriend and the unresolved mystery of whether his operation was part of a bigger syndicate. His frustrated accounts of big-time editors wanting his services as a bookie instead of a writer are a gem
Covers the spread.......1997-01-30
Very much enjoyed this real life book and look forward to the next one from Alson
Customer Reviews:
Sister Frevisse on the road........2003-08-11
In this book we find Sister Frevisse on the road with another nun from St. Frideswide. They are waylaid in their travels by a cousin of Sister Frevisse. This cousin is one she hasn't seen for some time because he's been an outlaw . He has stopped his cousin to enlist her aid in getting him a pardon so that he can resume a normal life. While Sister Frevisse is waiting for an answer about this pardon she is lodging at the home of one her cousin's business partners and a murder is commmitted. Sister Frevisse is forced to jeopardise everything she holds dear to solve the crime. She enters a world of lies and deceit in order to protect some and expose others. Ms. Frazer does a good job of setting her stories in the period and the plot moves along in a way that is very compatable with this period.
A solid addition to the Frevisse series.......1999-05-26
While _The Outlaw's Tale_ is not quite as stellar as some of the series' other books, it's a well-told and often puzzling mystery story nonetheless. Its story is complex, and builds with a lesiurely pace that fits both its period and its primary setting: a well-off household in late medieval England. Though taken outside of the priory for the first (though not last) time in the series, Dame Frevisse is still her usual self: deeply compassionate beneath her acrid wit, and driven by a mixture of deep piety, rock-solid common sense, and restless curiosity. Hers is one of the few believable portraits of a nun in historical fiction, simply because she enjoys the contemplative life; she is also one of the most likable detectives in the mystery genre because of her compassion. Whereas most detectives sleuth to solve puzzles, Frevisse does so to help people and heal relationships. The book's final plot twist is, characteristically for the series, both unexpected and rather sad, yet satisfying as well. Its roguish outlaws'adoption of late medieval Robin Hood personae is both apt and humorously done, and its mix of characters is vibrant. Overall, this is a book worth reading in a series worth reading.
Customer Reviews:
Funny as all getout!.......2007-08-26
Beautifully illustrated and wonderfully written, just full of charm. Very inventive and sure to please. A wonderful way to entertain your child and introduce them to the Yiddish venacular...hilarious and heartwarming all at once!
No luck, except for readers.......2007-04-30
Here's a delightful story, based on a true event, of the theft of a wagon load of Passover wine from a little Jewish grocer in Cincinatti in 1919.
In case you didn't know, a shelmiel is a luckless and inept fool, lacking enough sense even to change himself (however slightly) for the better. But the reader of this book will have a lot of luck, even if the chief culprits have none.
Besides from offering a great story, this beautifully illustrated picture book is a good reminder of the historical presence of Jewish Americans throughout the U.S., in many capacities.
It's been a while since I bought any new picture books, but if I were still buying them, this one would definitely be on my list.
Wonderful!.......2006-05-11
A delightful book in every way. Lyrically written and lavishly illustrated, Shlemiel Crooks weaves together the Passover story, old St. Louis and gentle humor to produce a "read it again" story.
Average customer rating:
- Oswald's War Against All
- Probing the mind of Oswald
- This book is a piece of defecation.
- The second of the one-two punch from 1993-1994
- Oswald's "long and determined dream of high destiny."
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Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery
Norman Mailer
Manufacturer: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Kennedy, John F. | ( K ) | People, A-Z | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
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Mailer, Norman | ( M ) | Authors, A-Z | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0345404378
Release Date: 2007-01-23 |
Book Description
"MARVELOUS . . . BREATHTAKING."
--The New York Times Book Review
"MAILER SHINES . . . Explaining Kennedy's assassination through the flaws in Oswald's character has been attempted before, notably by Gerald Posner in Case Closed and Don Delillo in Libra. But neither handled Oswald with the kind of dexterity and literary imagination that Mailer here supplies in great force. . . . Oswald's Tale weaves a story not only about Oswald or Kennedy's death but about the culture surrounding the assassination, one that remains replete with miscomprehensions, unraveled threads and lack of resolution: All of which makes Oswald's Tale more true-to-life than any fact-driven treatise could hope to be. . . . Vintage Mailer."
--The Philadelphia Inquirer
"FASCINATING . . . A MASTER STORYTELLER . . . Mailer gives us our clearest, deepest view of Oswald yet. . . . Inside three pages you are utterly absorbed."
--Detroit Free Press
"MAILER AT HIS BEST . . . LIVELY AND CONVINCING . . . EXTREMELY
LUCID . . . Mailer is fierce, courageous, and reckless and nearly everything he writes has sections of headlong brilliance. . . . [He] has found a way to make the dry bones of KGB tapes and his own interviews stand up and perform. . . . From the American master conjurer of dark and swirling purpose, a moving reflection."
--Robert Stone
The New York Review of Books
"THIS IS A NARRATIVE OF TREMENDOUS ENERGY AND PANACHE; THE AUTHOR AT THE TOP OF HIS FORM."
--Christopher Hitchens
Financial Times
"Mailer has written some pretty crazy books in his time, but this isn't one of them. Like its predecessor, Harlot's Ghost, it is the performance of an author relishing the force and reach of his own acuity."
--Martin Amis
The London Sunday Times
Customer Reviews:
Oswald's War Against All.......2007-05-22
Long as it was I regretted reaching the end of this book. Oswald's Tale purports to be a work of fiction. In fact, it impossible not to appreciate the wealth of research and analysis that informs the pages of this dense text. It becomes increasingly clear that Oswald very likely acted alone. Indeed, this is only a question because of the tributaries of zealots that seemed to work on the fringes of formal organizations, including the FBI and the MAFIA and so on. Yet, Oswald very likely acted independently; it would have been practically impossible for any one organization to control him. The novel Libra had it very nearly correct with its assessment that, had Oswald be chosen, it would very likely have been because he could have been depended upon to miss his target, or otherwise bungle the job. No one but Oswald propeled himself onto to the stage of Cold War history. In Oswald's world, his sense of destiny was confirmed by the chance occurrence of being employed in the Texas Book Depository in Dallas, stationed along the very route that President Kennedy's motorcade took that day in November. In addition to the quality of the writing and analysis, the book is to be commended for focusing so intently on Oswald's marriage to Marina, and the relationship he had with his mother, Margueritte. Like so many tragedies, one is all too easily reminded of Shakespeare's Richard, "my kingdom for a horse." Had Cuba provided Oswad a visa enabling him, ultimately to return to the Soviet Union he had already abandoned, history might well have taken a different course. Instead, Oswald's dyslexia, his sense of greatness, his determination and his lack of abilities in so many areas coupled with his gifts in others: all conspired, with chance playing its part, to place Oswald in the book depository from which he assasinated President Kennedy and subsequently murdered Dallas PD Officer Tippit.
Probing the mind of Oswald.......2006-02-05
Norman Mailer's book does not resolve the question of the existence of a conspiracy in JFK's assassination (for that see The Man Who Knew Too Much by Dick Russell), but it does provide critical pieces of information about Oswald's psyche that help us assess the liklihood that Oswald was involved in the assassination. For that reason I highly recommend this book.
Mailer provides interesting and frequently relevant detail about Oswald's life with Marina in Russia and their lives back in the US after they moved from Russia. The portrait that emerges of Oswald is one that is crucial to understanding what happened to JFK. Mailer provides convincing evidence that Oswald's activities were largely, if not completely, based on his own agenda and psychological makeup. It is highly unlikely that he was anyone's agent while living in Russia.
Most important is the information about Oswald's desire to live in Cuba after his return to the US from Russia--this was his personal agenda in mid-1963. Mailer takes us that far. Dick Russell's The Man Who Knew Too Much fills in the missing pieces. Russell's book shows that this agenda of Oswald made him vulnerable to a ploy to enlist him in the conspiracy.
Mailer's book on the psychological makeup of Oswald combined with Russell's book on how that makeup was manipulated solves the case.
This book is a piece of defecation........2006-01-24
This book is a piece of defecation.
It is difficult to believe this long piece of bad luck came from the same mind that brought us "The Executioner's Song". Clearly those with a vested interest in hiding the truth have bought off Mailer, and he has been entrusted with the mission of creating an exhausting work of fiction.
After drudging my way through this unfortunate slime I have lost all respect for Norman Mailer, and will never read another word he has written. The only thing that would be longer than this utterly pointless rant is the enormous mountain of known facts he must ignore to come to these delusional conclusions.
Out of a possible 5 stars, this book owes the scale 3. Wretched.
The second of the one-two punch from 1993-1994.......2006-01-15
The first was Posner's awful "Case Closed", while this was the second; the ole one-two punch from the media and publishing world to try to close---kill---the JFK assassination case. Thank God for the ARRB, COPA, Probe, even (gulp) Lancer, as well as the hundreds---thousands---of researchers and authors who battled to keep the case alive and not to rot on the vine like Mailer and Posner would have prefered.
Mailer, a legend once upon a time (and now one in his mind), does an inferior cut-and-paste scrapbook of a volume here. I saw so many "50% off" stickers on this book when it first came out, it reminded me of that 1987 book on Reagan that bombed! Avoid.
Vince (not to be confused with Bugliosi) Palamara ;-)
Oswald's "long and determined dream of high destiny.".......2006-01-15
Mailer's "non-fiction novel" of Lee Harvey Oswald is stunning, not just for the new information he has uncovered about Oswald's life in Russia between 1959 and 1961, but because Mailer has ordered this information to provide true insight into Oswald's psyche. At nineteen and just out of the Marines when he flew to Moscow, Oswald intended to apply for Soviet citizenship, believing that Marxism was "purer" than capitalism. Remaining in the USSR for two and a half years, he married Marina and fathered a child before becoming disillusioned with his poverty and deciding to return to the US.
In the USSR, Oswald was under constant KGB surveillance, and Mailer's first-ever access to the KGB files and his effective use of them give the reader a sense of who Oswald was between the ages of twenty and twenty-two. All the everyday aspects of his life, his constant fights with Marina (and his eventual physical abuse of her), his belief that he is meant for "high destiny," and his inability to find success and purpose in his Russian life, despite his high ideals, show a young man frustrated in every aspect of life.
Using files from the KGB, Warren Commission, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and books written about Oswald by Gerald Posner, Priscilla McMillan, Jim Marr, and Carl Oglesby, Mailer presents an astounding amount of historical data. Keeping his prose style journalistic and factual, Mailer uses his talents as a Hollywood script-writer to create dramatic dialogues appropriate to the facts, bringing events to life and making this long novel move quickly. Making frequent use of flashbacks, he fills in background detail, recreating Oswald's life as a young boy in New York--his truancy, his assignment to a youth center (where he was picked on), his relationship with his overbearing mother, and his constant loneliness.
When Oswald returns to Dallas in 1963 with his wife and daughter, he still has dreams, still sees himself as "an instrument of history," and is still frustrated and unhappy. His claim of responsibility for the April, 1963, assassination attempt on Gen. Edwin Walker, a John Birch Society supporter, whether or not it is true, shows him acting out his belief that he is an instrument of history in the months leading up to Nov. 22, 1963. Six months after the assassination attempt on Walker, Oswald takes advantage of the accident of history that has brought the JFK motorcade past the window of the Depository where he works, and he acts out his self-declared destiny.
Presenting all the information available to him, Mailer maintains a balanced point of view. Though he mentions contacts Oswald made with the FBI, his attempt to go to Cuba, Mafia attempts to kill Castro, and Oswald's strange connection with Baron George De Mohrenschildt, a Russian emigre with some CIA ties, he draws no conclusions due to lack of evidence, leaving those to the reader. This fine novel organizes mountains of raw material, some of it new, to provide glimpses of who Oswald was and what may have motivated him. n Mary Whipple
Book Description
In 1988 a troubled young man and his flamboyant mother were arrested for murdering a wealthy widow in her New York City mansion. Suddenly, America was transfixed by a pair of real–life film noir characters. The media couldn't get enough of the twisted relationship between Sante Kimes and her twenty–three–year–old son Kenny.
But the most chilling story of all was never told 埵ntil now. Kent Walker, Sante's elder son, reveals how he survived forty years of "the Dragon Lady's" very special brand of motherly love and still managed to get away.
As a child Kent watched his mother destroy his hardworking father, Ed Walker, and then 執ith Kent's painful collusion 埳nare what Sante called "my millionaire." When she married seemingly respectable real–estate developer Ken Kimes, it was a match made in hell.
For the next two decades Kent's mother and stepfather indulged in a globetrotting orgy of criminal behaviour.
Kent, their would–be recruit, was privy to the family business : torching houses, defrauding friends, crashing White When Kent's half–brother, Kenny was born, Kent was twelve years old , old enough to know that he was his younger sibling's only protector. Kent tried desperately to save Kenny from his mother's sinister bidding. His failure haunts him to this day.
Customer Reviews:
Must have been difficult to be honest!!.......2007-02-25
Great book for an autobiography. Well-written and quite a story. The only reason I gave it 4 and not 5 stars is that Ann Rule would have done better. But this is definiely still worth the read. I could not put it down. Other reviewers claim that greed overtook the author's sense in the book. That is true, but he ADMITS it. And it must have been difficult for the author to tell the world that.
AWESOME.......2007-01-10
What a life she lived. what a life she put her family threw.
you can't miss this one.
who's grifting who? .......2006-11-20
kent Walker didnt actually commit the crimes, and God knows he has suffered enough with the incredible dysfunction he grew up with, but his book becomes repetitive, almost impossible to believe when time after time he goes back , not just alone but taking his wife and children over and over to live with Sante and Ken and Kenny. He admits to consistantly being swayed by money and the lifestyle and its only at the very end, when sante has been caught tried and found guilty that he really cuts off contact for good.
There were times in the book it became laughable for me, the constant nonsensical lies and hysteria that he bought into again and again and made his living by being fronted with ken and Santes money. I also found his analysis of Kenny being ruined NOT by Sante but by Ken ( his father) very odd. Kent Walker has almost as little introspection and genuine understanding of himself and his life as His mother does.
Its constant scheme after scheme after scheme with names you no longer even register anymore throughout the book that fill up nearly 400 pages.
id have been more interested in someone like Ann Rule writing it. I have no idea why Kent wrote this book. And thats something an author needs to get across, if nothing else.
Like Mother, Like Son.......2006-10-31
I wasn't familiar with the murderous mother and son duo, Sante and Kenny Kimes, both convicted in California for the second of what is believed to be four homicides, until a friend sent me Son of a Grifter, written by Sante's oldest son, Kent Walker. From the unique perspective of one who lived with a veritable cornucopia of abuse - from terror and dodging bullets to blackmail and arson - Kent Walker narrates the outrageous saga of his degenerate, sociopathic mother, her loves, sons and victims, and her ultimate descent into madness.
In retrospect, Kent whitewashes his mother's pathology by blaming it on genetics, convinced she is the descendant of a long line of personality disordered, anti-social crazies. However, regarding his brother Kenny's fate, he is less charitable and condemns nurture rather than nature, indicting both his overindulgent, weak, alcoholic stepfather and his overprotective, paranoid mother whose greed knew no bounds.
For pure gall and tenacity, Sante Kimes has no peer. If she had been hardwired for productive and benevolent purposes, she could have been a notable force for good in the universe. Instead, essentially her entire purpose for existence was to accumulate wealth. Even when she eventually married a millionaire, who was almost her equal in corruption, nothing was ever enough. She burnt down beautiful homes for the insurance, stole furs and cut out the labels for fencing, wrote bad checks to car dealerships for tens of thousands of dollars without blinking an eye, and, worst of all, raised her youngest son to kill for profit.
Kent Walker avoids any psychoanalysis of his mother, preferring to limit his story to the events and consequences of being a member of the Kimes clan, but it is inarguable that Sante was a textbook sociopath: void of conscience, completely self-serving, compulsively driven by excess, reckless disregard for the rights of others, and absolutely no acceptance of blame.
For example, Sante and Ken drove to Mexico, with their boys in the backseat, and picked up young women to smuggle back in the trunk over the border to work as maids in their house. Except they weren't really maids, they were slaves. They received no pay, they were beaten and abused, and when they ran away they were simply replaced with new ones. Even after Sante Kimes served three years in a federal penitentiary for this offence, she continued to pick up homeless people and vagrants and keep them as unpaid servants. Needless to say, she wasn't much of a candidate for rehabilitation.
For those of us who are parents, you will come away from this book feeling like a combination Dr. Spock, Miss Barbara and Mother Teresa. If you think your children grew up in less than ideal circumstances, or their childhood was deprived in some way by your economic circumstances or limited expertise, I assure you it was Paradise compared to the Kimes household. Kenny Kimes was shamelessly spoiled, taught no limits, attended expensive schools, drove sports cars, wore designer suits, and was denied nothing by his wealthy father and grateful mother, who considered him the golden goose because his existence ensured her a piece of the Kimes inheritance. That overindulgence served to turn Kenny into a cold-blooded murderer who will spend the rest of his natural life in prison.
In retrospect, Kent Walker sugar coats much of his childhood, insisting that the crazy episodes comprised only a small fraction of the bigger scene, but this merely proves he has no sense of boundaries or reasonable perspective on what the reader will regard as a nightmare of dysfunction. Son of a Grifter is a long, bizarre story that I don't necessarily recommend to anyone unless they are looking to feel better about their parenting style, or are interested in the Kimes story, as it is probably the most compelling and factually correct presentation. For an overview of the murder trials, see Court TV's Crime Library.
Riveting .......2006-08-06
Sante Kimes was written up by many as some type of mastermind of crime, some evil genius. That wasn't really the case at all. What she was was unbelieveably ballsy, insanely narcissistic and self-centered, financially hugely neurotic and desperate and greedy, and of course very quick on her feet. Her crimes are simply too many to list - the book is positively stuffed with fraud, theft, arson, slavery, violence, swindling, in constant repition, and not excluding several murders - and coming from an eyewitness to literally decades of malfeasance they make for a fascinating roller coaster ride. It is a wonder the author didn't turn out every bit as warped as his half-brother. He did not escape unharmed.
None of the characters comes off well. Of course Sandy "Sante" Kimes is a true original, and the focus of the book. But Ken Kimes, her second husband and targetted millionaire, is not some simple dupe or victim; he aided and abetted Sante for decades, allowing his integrity (what little he may have had when he met Sante), his business, his health, and previous family relationships, and finally his wealth all to go into freefall as his 'wife' systematically plundered, wasted or misappropriated whatever she wanted. During the time of her first imprisonment for slavery, when he had a clear chance to make a break and save what was left, he declined to do so, and instead embarked on a multi-year drunk and slid into degenerate gambling to kill time until her release. When Ken finally dies, the author speculates on whether even this was entirely natural, and it seems the dying Ken had a lot on his mind just before checking out. In any event, Ken's death and Sante's subsequent desperate search for what was left of his cash (precious little) pushed her completely over the edge into much nastier criminal territory than she had previously occupied.
The son Kenny probably had a chance at a life but the adventurous high life offered by Sante seemed more fun. He had neither the charm or much of the luck of his mother.
The character of the police in the various cities should also be mentioned. It is simply shocking how lazy, stupid, and disinterested the various officers, who could have busted Sante et al dozens and dozens of times, were. Time and again either the victims or even the son Kent himself give the local cops absolutely everything they need to know, but they just couldn't give a crap. Had they made even the slightest effort to enforce or uphold the law, the Kimes' crime spree would have ended decades sooner, and some people might still be alive. It is their failure, and not Sante's evil genius, which is in part responsibile for both the sheer number of her crimes, and the related and contributing factor of her perceived invulnerability. Some of them should be charged as accessories for the crimes they thereby allowed to happen.
This was a great book. It fascinated throughout.
Amazon.com
Your company is not a machine. It may make machines, or it may service them, but it is not, in itself, a machine. It's a living entity in an unpredictable world. This makes it nearly impossible to run a business organization effectively with a hierarchical, top-down management style. And yet, posits Chris Turner in All Hat and No Cattle, that's the way most companies try to do it. They may give lip service to other management styles, to open chains of communication and all that, but in reality these managers are "all hat and no cattle": they talk a good game, but in the end don't really have anything to back it up.
Turner is a veteran of Xerox. She was there when its corporate name was synonymous with photocopying, and when it had huge markets to itself, and she was still there when the Japanese turned the copying world upside down by being able to sell machines for less money than it took Xerox to manufacture them. So she's seen how a corporation's assumption about how the world works can get turned on its ear, and she thinks the lessons she learned at Xerox are applicable to any large company that's set in its ways. For example, she notes that very few people actually learn how to do anything by reading the instructions--only about 15 percent, according to a study she cites. Far more--61 percent--learn by trial and error, or through social interaction, or a combination of those two methods. And yet, most managers try to teach people to do things by showing them the instructions. "I wondered who learns from PowerPoint slide presentations," she writes. "The answer is nobody!" This is a book that nearly anyone who trains, teaches, or manages a staff can learn from. Some managers reading this book will see themselves reproduced in unflattering shades of black and white, but, hey, sometimes you have to look at yourself as others see you, unpleasant as that may be. --Lou Schuler
Book Description
An irreverent and inspirational guide to overcoming corporate complacency, injecting spirit and energy, and creating real change and personal fulfillment in organizations of all shapes and sizes.
Are "knowledge-work," "empowerment strategies," and "continuous improvement" making your head spin? Have you heard "let's get everybody on the same page" just one time too many? Was the latest management training just another dose of warmed-over dogma? Then it's time to start kicking up some dust and making a difference. In All Hat and No Cattle, maverick consultant and writer, Chris Turner, serves as our guide, and with a healthy dose of Texas humor and the wisdom gained from experience on the front lines, she exposes much of what passes for management wisdom as baloney and offers alternative ways of thinking about organizations and the people who bring them to life. Not your father's management textbook, All Hat and No Cattle shows how real growth, vitality, and change result when all of us take responsibility for doing things in new ways-ways that create the future now. All Hat and No Cattle is chock full of ideas guaranteed to help frazzled folks shake up the workplace.
Customer Reviews:
Old Hat and Great Title.......2001-01-16
There is an old syllogism of organizations. 1. We must do something. 2. This is something. 3. We must do this.
Many a budding institutional innovator, frustrated by the hidebound habits of her colleagues, has nonetheless stifled her creativity for fear of losing influence, job, or respect. Then there are those like Chris Turner, who resolutely turn their horse's head and take the road less traveled. In Turner's case, that means donning the proud mantle of change agent, leading corporate learning programs at Xerox Business Services. Since leaving XBS, Turner has turned consultant and speaker, using her irreverence, Texan argot, and impatience with untested convention to inspire revolution.
Turner wants change, and she wants it now. She wants to replace institutional fear with "love-based systems." She believes in "disturbing the system," doing something - anything - differently to provoke a reaction. Most of all she castigates "all hat and no cattle," a Lone Star State expression for all style and no substance. Pay for performance, obsessions with measurement, corporate welfare, bad PowerPoint slides: "all hat and no cattle," declares Turner, and she delights in taking the high and mighty down a notch or three.
Irreverence can be entertaining, even when it fulminates on a soapbox. But like another successful Texan who partied throughout college, Turner tends to assume that the people in charge are self-interested, greedy mediocrities who can't be trusted. Appealing though they may be, generalizations cut both ways: we mustn't assume that all managers are automatically right, but nor should we assume that they're automatically wrong. Turner is mad as hell and not going to take it any more: fair enough, but by condemning any activity that perpetuates the status quo, she often veers from passion to petulance. It's imprudent for a sans-culotte to show frustration at not being queen.
If you're a stymied OD professional, you may be inflamed by this call for revolution. You'll certainly welcome Chapter 6, in which Turner offers specific, detailed suggestions for revamping organizational meetings. And you can always add to your storehouse of quotations, as Turner strews aphorisms across her pages with Barlettian generosity - Emerson, Wilde, Einstein, Didley, all are grist to her mill. But in the end All Hat and No Cattle suffers from the same syndrome it so gleefully diagnoses: too much prate, not enough practice. Change agent, heal thyself.
Insightful and Provocative.......2001-01-05
After reading this book, I recommended it to several friends, who in turn told several friends, and so on. This is a powerful and insightful glimpse by a trained observer, into organizational dynamics. I've used Turner's stories and exercises, always with profound results. Her focus on the human aspect of the organization is critical for those wishing to bring change to the vapid, smokey halls of corporate America. "When the student is ready, the Master will come". Turner is Masterful.
A real disappointment.......2000-11-09
The book began as an interesting concept, but quickly I realized that the author was never at a job long enough to see any results. She never was in a position of importance in any of the companies, so I don't really know where she gets the idea that these programs will actually work. She has views about almost every company and suggestions, but so far I've not been able to find anything that would lead me to believe that what she says had any validity. Save your money and buy another book.
Blowhard's Blather.......2000-07-27
"All Hat and No Cattle" purports to be an insider's account of, amongst other things, the lessons learned from being part of a bloated bureaucracy run amok. The title comes from the Texas term for "all talk without any substance." Indeed the foreword by Alan Webber extols the virtues of the author's genuine honesty. He even says that she "writes with a Texas twang!"
Trouble is, if that's the only real thing here, it's not enough to make up for the sloppy thinking and other defects that make this book such a waste of money. (Wish I could get a refund on grounds that the book had nothing of any value to say!)
My ex-husband and I both attended the Xerox Business Services (XBS) "Camp Lur-ning" organized by the author a number of years ago. She contends that the positive effects to the company are still felt to this day. Oh yeah? If true, why'd she bail like so many of us did? Tom Peters obviously failed to consider this when he cited Chris Turner as an example of passion and caring transforming large organizations into creative enterprises.
The book really has only about enough substance for a small pamphlet but embellishes to the point that the final pages degenerate into an incoherent diatribe, nah--it's just mush--of how all the ills of society are the result of white males running the show. Readers are encouraged to do everything from writing their elected officials to voting for Ralph Nader!
Not realizing that she had nothing much to say in the first place, the author tells readers that this is a story without end so she gives, in the book's final pages, a URL where readers are told not to be strangers (the contraction "Y'hear?" seemed missin' y'all!). Even here, most of what is posted reflects the ignorance keeping the author from assessing reality in a way that would have let her draw conclusions that made sense or, even better, would have been of some use.
The problem with Xerox in general, and XBS in particular, is the drag on operations by the bloated levels of bosses. Coupled with the incompetence of the over paid executives and it's no wonder the stock has tanked!
The biggest falsehood Chris Turner spreads is the myth that XBS was the only financial money maker within the corporation. Any XBS "profits" over the years were at the expense of the rest of the enterprise, mostly getting credit for the profitable part of the sale of equipment "bought" from manufacturing (at cost) along with the "services" (mostly slave labor) provided for running the same equipment. The dime-a-dozen vice presidents belched forth by XBS then actually believe their own propaganda--that they know what they're doing--and executives in the rest of the company follow their flawed example!
Chris Turner's a nice person but her book is no better than the phonies she used to work for. Too bad! Don't waste your time or money on this terrible, incoherently rambling, shoddily thrown together, replete with misprints, work which, with even a little bit of thought, could have risen to the level of fluff or, perhaps even, all hat and no cattle?
The single star given was generous. (Star of Texas?)
send for the posse.......2000-03-12
Chris Turner is a maverick turned loose onto Big Business, in this case Xerox. She questioned and made changes to the top-down autocratic management approach in order to stimulate interest and growth in Xerox. All Hat and No Cattle is a phrase she uses to describe managers who have no idea of what is really going on in their department/company. She inspired people to stir things up and try new ideas and concepts to get people/employees fired up setting up "camps" where people met/networked in a free-spirit open method. Once they understood what was the goal, which was growth and saving money, they were off and running on their own. She introduced new ways of doing things to stimulate them and it worked. They became very enthusiastic and zealous in their endeavors to make this work. Many managers use key words such as "empowerment, innovation and learning" without anything to back it up, no substance. All meetings are the same with power-point slide presentations and the same topics rehashed and never resolved. No one learns from these types of meetings she determined. She states that we "resist idiocies that will disappear shortly to be replaced by the latest flavor of the month. People resist inane organizational programs because people are smart." Chris Turner uses humor to describe corporate complacency and has you acknowledging you've experienced managers/leaders that she describes. As a nurse manager myself, she has us understand that with true employee involvement and giving them appropriate tools to work with they can surprise you with their adaptability, innovation and enthusiasm. Out of this involvement change can come, change for the better- bottom line cost savings, increased profit and increased employee morale. All of this really shakes up the bosses, who feel threatened by this increased employee involvement.
Customer Reviews:
Beyond Disney's Robin Hood.......2006-03-22
Before my professor pointed it out I hadn't really given much thought to where my knowledge of, and love for, the Robin Hood tales came from. Once I began to give it some thought, I realized it wasn't from books at all, it was from the Errol Flinn and Disney movies (such poor literary sources!). We all seem to know one or two Robin Hood tales, but Robin Hood is a much more complex character than those few tales would show.
I was also suprised to learn that no Robin Hood tales are included in the major anthology of English literature (Norton's), which seems odd to me, since the tales are classic English literature.
This collection of Robin Hood material is comprehensive, many stories I had never heard are here, and if you are looking to really learn about the literary sources for Robin Hood this is great (that is the publisher's purpose). This is not a children's storybook however. Much of the language is in the older forms of English, and even as an adult I sometimes wrestled with the language to understand it.
All that to say, that as a Robin Hood fan, I am thrilled with this book.
Welcome to Sherwood! (and Barnsdale).......2000-05-10
Do you know need a reason to buy this book? I can give you an excellent one -- it's called the Table of Contents. It lists 700 pages worth of Robin Hood ballads, plays and more. It has the earliest ballads and plays where Robin is merely a yeoman, the first play that casts him as the Earl of Huntington, and later ballads that give the "origins" of Little John, Maid Marian and Will Scarlet. Also, there's an introductory article on the history of the legend and complete introductions and notes to all the ballads and plays. The notes and introductions are by Stephen Knight and Thomas Ohlgren, two top Robin Hood scholars. If you want to read the original tales of the outlaw, or if you are teach a course in Robin Hood, this book is an excellent buy. Just treat it with care. I notice my cover is fraying somewhat.
Book Description
The lawless days Old West lasted only a short time, but the stories of its outlaws and the havoc they wreaked are legendary. Tough Towns reveals the small American towns that fought back when criminal gangs
invaded their quiet streets, making heroes of ordinary citizens and local lawmen who wouldn’t be pushed
around by armed hoodlums.
Customer Reviews:
Old West this isn't.......2007-01-26
Well written and fun, the book is a collection of chapters dealing with bad guys and good guys. However, a large portion of the book is not the Old West. Several of the shootout stories are in the 1930s, with cars, gangsters, and machine guns. That's not the Old West to me. The majority of the stories are from Oklahoma, so I think I would have had higher regard for the book if it were retitled "Gritty Semi-Modern Tales from the Streets of Oklahoma--" in which case I wouldn't have bought it. But the fact is I was interested in "Old West" material, and I feel somewhat disappointed. Even so, I'll put it on my bookshelf and may look at it again someday ....
True history of the old west.......2007-01-10
Reviewed by William E. Cooper for Reader Views (1/07)
I am both a student of history and a retired Chief of Police. I've spent considerable time reading about the Old West, particularly in the latter 19th and early 20th centuries. My interest has been about the courage of the men and women who built this country, who sustained themselves in truly difficult times. I also have an interest in how law enforcement worked. I used part of that history in one of the chapters of my own book, "Leading Beyond Tradition." I read Mr. Smith's book with equal interest. He presents an historic overview of some of the more infamous folks who lived during those times - factual information. It is fascinating.
Mr. Smith puts the reader with the involved people as if you were right there when the events actually happened. The crimes described and the actions/reactions of regular people are well worth your time to read. This was part of America during that time - these are lessons of value for good people to read, how courage can and does prevail. I recommend "Tough Towns" be part of your library.
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