Book Description
One rainy day in Brooklyn, Jennings Michael Burch's mother, too sick to care for him, left him at an orphanage, saying only, "I'll be right back." She never returned. Shuttled through a series of bleak foster homes and institutions, he never remained in any of them long enough to make a friend. Instead, Jennings clung to a tattered stuffed animal, his sole source of warmth in a frightening world. This is the poignant story of his lost childhood. But it is also the triumphant tale of a little boy who finally gained the courage to reach out for love-and found it waiting for him.
Book Description
" The Night Club Era should rate as a Broadway Koran. Other books on the subject are unnecessary if they agree with it, wrong if they differ from it, and in either case should be burned." -- Alva Johnston, from the Introduction
Written in the aftermath of Prohibition, Stanley Walker's The Night Club Era is a lively and idiosyncratic account of the people and places that defined New York's night life during the era of "the great American madness." Here we meet murderers and millionaires, gangsters, bartenders, celebrities of the stage, screen, and society, and a host of other colorful characters who populated the city's diverse night clubs, from El Fey to the Cotton Club. Walker relives the "night of incredulous sadness" on which the Volstead Act went into effect, visits a classic speakeasy, discussing the owner's delicate arrangements with policemen, prohibition agents, and bootleggers, and details the frequently brutal swindles practiced in the city's numerous clip joints and the tactics of the era's crime organizations, explaining precisely what happens when one is "taken for a ride." Among the larger-than-life night club habitués Walker sketches are Owney Madden, the elder statesman of the city's rackets; Walter Winchell, America's most influential columnist and the "brash historian of our life and times"; Mayor James J. Walker, who typified the gaudiness, smartness, and insouciance of the city he ran, yet was never too refined to shoot dice on hotel room floors; and Texas Guinan, the beloved entertainer, hostess, and entrepreneur who greeted customers with her trademark phrase "Hello, sucker!" Vividly told, The Night Club Era offers a singular, serious -- though never sober -- history of New York City during Prohibition.
Book Description
With unprecedented access, Tom Shales and James Miller, with authorization from Lorne Michaels, have interviewed the stars, writers, crews, and guests who have made Saturday Night Live the greatest long-running comedy of all time. Out of these backstage stories they have woven an oral history that will be the definitive account of the shows 25-year history. The story is bursting with creative frenzies, clashing egos, actors who went on to mega stardom in film and those who disappeared; the origins of famous routines, censorship battles, and humour so toxic it never got on the air; the love affairs, feudsall the unique insanity involved in producing the show that changed North America forever. Includes great backstage stories from Bill Murray decking Chevy Chase to Norm MacDonalds campaign to infuriate NBC brass. Everyone from Cameron Diaz to Ralph Nader to Robert Downey Jr. to George Bush has appeared on the show, and they all share their fondest, wildest memories with us. Tom Shales is the Pulitzer Prize-winning TV critic of The Washington Post, and a movie reviewer for NPRs Morning Edition. His books include On the Air and Legends, and he has written for many major magazines.
Customer Reviews:
Awesome.......2007-07-09
I loved the book. Living in the mid west, you're not privy to rumors and stories in the local paper about SNL. I loved reading inside stories and such. The only bad thing I could say was that the book should have put some thumbnail pictures up of those quoted. It was hard with the lesser known cast members that were quoted, and trying to remember who they were.
Decent overview in a sea of SNL tributes, choppy reading, excellent bathroom book, nice gift for the fan........2007-07-07
Purchased as a gift for my SNL-loving spouse, it's a great bathroom book, because of the short excerpt format. If you are looking for a flowing chronology of the history of Saturday Night, it might be hard to stick with it. It's very broken up, the voices change with every page or two, making it feel disjointed. Because our memories and someone else's memory of the same event aren't always the same, you get amusing perspectives from different egomaniacs claiming to have the same great ideas. Nice background of behind-the-scenes as promised, lots of dirt on the sex and drugs, as expected. Not something I would have purchased for myself, even though I'm a fan, but compared to the other offerings out there, this one really is the most authoritative, closest to the source, and most accurate.
Where to buy this cheap.......2007-01-26
I have only read part of this book so far (and loved it), but the reason I am writing this, is to let people know that it is $2.99 at The Christmas Tree Store. I bought 4, so if my family is reading this, you'll have a good idea of what you are getting next year.
This is a great book!.......2006-08-30
Dear Everyone.
I did not order this book from Amazon. I bought it at my local "Dollar Tree" store for just one dollar. If you are interested in owning this book, stop by your local "Dollar Tree", or similar dollar store, and check to see if it might be there before shelling out the big money.
Pretty good review huh?
The book looks back at the early days of SNL, the drugs, the sex, the rock and roll. You probably won't learn anything from this book you didn't already know, if you are an SNL buff.
It is a good book to have in your bathroom, in my weird opinion.
Love,
Joel
Blows the lid off the mystique of SNL..........2006-08-25
This books shows very well that SNL was not the mystical, magical place it was purported to be. I've only really liked the original cast, and the mid 1980's cast with Murphy, Piscopo, Guest, Short, etc., etc.. In this book, you really get the feel of SNL, and how really difficult a place it was/is. No one romanticises the experience, and most people seem to have a only a few good memories and a lot of bad ones. The show is not necessarily a spring board to greater success. Only a handful of people from SNL have gone on to the big time. Most of them vanish into obscurity (Jan Hooks, Kevin Nealon, Tim Meadows), or end up doing horrible work (Rob Schneider and David Spade, anyone). Chevy Chase comes across the worst here. By all accounts, he's a real piece of garbage. Janeane Garofalo, surprisingly, gets raked over the coals here. She was only on the show for 6 months, so you would think she wouldn't have made much of an impression. But she managed to alienate nearly everyone on the show during her brief tenure, including calling members of the press and complaining to them on the record about the show, which is not the brightest thing in the world to do. Personally, I've never found her funny in a comic/comedian type of way. I think she has a lot more depth than most people give her credit for, but no one at SNL thought that, and she comes across as extremely insecure. Not to mention Ms. Garofalo shares a little too much information with the authors. I could have easily done without hearing about Janeane's bouts with irritable bowel syndrome during her time with the show. The thought of Janeane having the runs is not particulary attractive. Anyway, after reading this book, you realise it's a miracle that SNL comes up with a show at all, considering all the backstabbing, back biting, tension, stress, drugs, etc., etc. that permeates the scene. If you're a really big fan, you may not want to read this book, because it's not all roses and peaches here. The show is almost unwatchable these days, which is a shame, considering how well it started. Kind of sad...
Book Description
For an extraordinary handful of years around the turn of the millennium, the Yankees were baseball's unstoppable force. With four World Series championships in five seasons and a deep bench of legends and comers -- Clemens, Rivera, Williams, Soriano, Jeter, O'Neill -- they dominated the major leagues.
For the members of the team, though, baseball Yankees-style was a pressure cooker of anxiety, expectation, and infighting. As the spending and emotion spiraled, careers were made and broken, friendships began and ended, and a sports dynasty rose and fell.
In
The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty, Buster Olney tracks the Yankees through these tumultuous seasons and into the scandals and disappointments of 2004, providing insightful portraits of the stars, the foot soldiers, the coaches, the manager, and the Boss himself. With unparalleled knowledge of the game and an insider's familiarity with the team, Olney also advances a compelling argument that the philosophy that made the Yankees great was inherently unsustainable, ultimately harmful to the sport, and led inevitably to that warm autumn night in Arizona -- the last night of the Yankee dynasty.
Download Description
"
For an extraordinary handful of years around the turn of the millennium, the Yankees were baseball's unstoppable force. With four World Series championships in five seasons and a deep bench of legends and comers -- Clemens, Rivera, Williams, Soriano, Jeter, O'Neill -- they dominated the major leagues, earning the love of their hometown fans and the grudging admiration of players and spectators everywhere.
For the members of the team, though, baseball Yankees-style was an almost unbearable pressure cooker of anxiety, expectation, and infighting. With owner George Steinbrenner at the wheel, the Yankees money machine spun out of control, and as the team's revenues skyrocketed, salaries were inflated unimaginably -- and smaller teams found themselves priced out of competition. True devotees of the game suffered, and so did Steinbrenner's employees. Emboldened by New York's unforgiving fans, Steinbrenner let the Yankees know loud and clear that their fat paychecks carried an equally exaggerated mandate: win now, and win all the time -- any season that doesn't end in a World Series victory is an unforgivable failure. As the spending and emotion spiraled, careers were made and broken, friendships began and ended, and a sports dynasty rose and fell.
In
The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty, Buster Olney tracks the Yankees through these exciting and tumultuous seasons, providing insightful portraits of the stars, the foot soldiers, the coaches, the manager, and the Boss himself. With profound knowledge of the game and an insider's familiarity with the team, Olney also advances a compelling argument that the philosophy that made the Yankees great was inherently unsustainable, ultimately harmful to the sport, and led inevitably to that warm autumn night in Arizona -- the last night of the Yankee dynasty.
"
Customer Reviews:
Pinpoint Control.......2007-10-01
A recent personal project required that I read a half dozen books on baseball over the course of about as many weeks. Buster Olney's cool, lapidary prose made a nice sorbet with which to chase down the overweening lyricism of one of the game's Grand Old Men of American Lettahs, and the pomposity of a second. (I resist, with difficulty, the temptation to name names.)
The first thing to do is to set aside that contentious title. Olney, who covered the Yankees for four seasons for the New York Times, is a nonpartisan, or does a fine impression of one. His book is neither the inflammatory crowing of a Yankee hater nor the pessimistic keening of a demoralized loyalist. He uses the seventh game of the 2001 Yankees/Diamondbacks World Series as the springboard for a close analysis of the franchise's history in the years approaching and following the turn of the 21st century, and the treatment is both dispassionate and compassionate. The book's structure has a cinematic quality, with players taking their turns in focused, background-providing flashbacks generated by the inning-by-inning action on the field. Olney's narrative is not an innovation, but with his scrutiny of the decisions (good and bad) that led up to this game, and his attention to the personalities involved, he achieves something rare and tricky. He reminds us that every big game, like every snowflake, is distinct from all others, and suggests that the outcome of Game Seven was foreordained by the confluence of circumstances and people (both on the field and at the executive level) representing the clubs on this night. Put another way, a big game is never one big story; it's a significant point within dozens of smaller stories -- the stories of the uniformed people you see on the field, businesspeople you may recognize in the boxes and clubhouses, and others whose names you might never have heard. If anyone were removed from the tapestry, the whole would be altered. All the obvious slides get their time under the microscope -- Roger Clemens, Mariano Rivera, Derek Jeter, Joe Torre, George Steinbrenner, et al -- but the author also finds space, in a crisp 355 pages, for pertinent and illuminating studies of relative peripherals: the intellectually brilliant but fatally detached former Red Sox GM Dan Duquette; the obsessive-compulsive 1994-95 Yankee manager Buck Showalter; the gifted, infuriatingly undisciplined former Yankee pitcher David Wells, whose "bloated body camouflaged exceptional athleticism," in Olney's words.
The book, as suggested above, casts a wide net, but every one of its portraits has the subtlety and finish of a fine aquarelle. Indeed, some of Olney's most eloquent passages are those devoted to men who were not on the field for the game in question, but who played important parts in seasons leading up to it. I think here particularly of the section on the gracious and articulate yet driven David Cone, a Yankee starting pitcher nearing the end of a distinguished career and attempting (sometimes successfully, other times not) to do with guile and sheer force of will what he could no longer do with velocity and power. And the chapter on substance-abusing Darryl Strawberry's many second chances, and many subsequent relapses, makes something poignant out of material grown hackneyed in both news and fiction. "[T]hrough addictions, incarcerations, and hearings, he had never lost the beautiful buggy-whip swing he'd had when the Mets picked him first in the 1980 draft," writes Olney, and that unshowy yet felicitous phrase (especially that splendid description of the swing) finds just the right note with which to begin a chapter on a man of prodigious natural gifts and abysmal judgment, a package made up of the extraordinary and the dismayingly, even tragically ordinary.
I have taken pains not to reveal my own allegiances, because they are not really at issue here. Whether one roots for or against the Yankees, this is an engrossing and educational book, a potent blend of anecdote and psychology from the perspective of an astute insider. Go along with the author or not on his central point that the seventh-game loss to the Diamondbacks in 2001 was, by itself, of epochal character; but he compellingly makes his case that this franchise, historically restless and overachieving from the top down, was in some way due for sobering disappointment, retrenchment and reevaluation. Though occasioned by a bruising postseason loss, this taking of stock need not have been an entirely bad thing. For baseball franchises, as in life in general, survival is renewal.
Likely to become a classic within its field.
Heavy Weighs The Mantle..........2006-05-22
Buster Olney, a former beat writer for the New York Times, looks at the New York Yankees' run of baseball success from 1996 to 2000 from the vantage point of the night it all came to an end, Game 7 of the 2001 World Series against the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Published in 2004, the book's title seems overwrought. The Yankees haven't won a World Series in the last five seasons, but they have that in common with a lot of other good teams, and the Bombers remain impressive, winning the American League East every season since 1998, and well over .500 in 2006 as of this writing.
But something was lost in 2001, a spirit that departed along with Scott Brosius, Paul O'Neill, and Tino Martinez. One of the remaining Yankees, Derek Jeter, is quoted bemoaning at the end: "It's not the same team." Olney makes a convincing case for that non-quantifiable game element known as team chemistry, both its presence from 1996-2001 and its absence thereafter.
Olney seems to model his book, consciously or not, on the classic Dan Okrent book "Nine Innings," which focused on a single regular-season game in 1982, using each half-inning as an excuse to digress on different elements on the game and its players. The great thing about "Nine Innings," or one of them, was the fact the game wasn't that important, it was just another mid-season game and presented Okrent for a backdrop as he divided his focus between the two small-market clubs playing that day. Here, the game is the last one of the 2001 World Series, and all the focus is on the Yankees.
One weakness is instead of leading each chapter with the game, and then pulling the reader into the backstory, Olney starts with the story he wants to tell, whether it's about pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre fighting cancer or pitcher David Cone's ability to spin the media spotlight to the team's benefit, then throws in a half-inning's worth of business in the last few paragraphs, sometimes connecting it to the rest of the chapter, sometimes not.
While not a solidly constructed book, "Last Night" abounds with a lot of good behind-the-scenes copy, like Mariano Rivera's fatalistic locker-room speech before Game 7 and how George Steinbrenner's tirades caused his general manager, Brian Cashman, to think about wearing a mouthguard to bed, to keep him from grinding his teeth in his sleep.
There's also some funny dish on players ("It was taken as fact in baseball circles that Albert Belle was nuts") and nice insights on how they play the game (Cone's many different release points compensate for underwhelming stuff, Jeter's unorthodox playing style is re-examined by a former teammate who was critical but now thinks Jeter is right). If Olney comes across a little too kind to the Yankees' most vicious player, Roger Clemens, he is repaid by Clemens with some good quotes and worthwhile insights.
Overall, Olney is a sympathetic if not uncritical observer, and those expecting to read "The Bronx Zoo" may be disappointed. I'm not a Yankee fan, and I enjoyed it; I can only imagine how interesting it will be for those who bleed pinstripes and think five years without winning the World Series makes for some kind of drought.
Makes an eloquent case that the Yankees are done........2006-05-01
I admired Olney's attention to detail, the way he explains the game, and how he gives an in-depth account of every key figure for the Yankees during their latest dynasty run.
I especially like the way he writes about Mariano Rivera, the centerpiece of the dynasty. He comes off as a very decent man, as well as very humble, considering how good he is.
I do not like to nitpick, but Olney did use a fair amount of cuss words, which I do not like. Even when he was quoting players who were using such language, he could have used indirect discourse.
Nonetheless, an excellent account of the team by a man with a great baseball mind, as well as one who came to know the Yankee team of 1996-2001, its glorious run, and the internicine feuds that often divided members of that unforgettably dominant team.
Feel the Pain.......2006-04-07
For Yankees fans, this book makes you re-live the pain of the final inning of Game 7 of the 2001 World Series. Why would you want to do a thing like that? It also happens to be a good read on how the Yankees teams of 1996-2001 were built, perhaps providing an excellent roadmap for how the current Yankees can get back on the path to postseason glory. Here's a hint: While adding expensive, Hall of Fame bound free agents every winter may create the appearance of guaranteeing World Series rings, the results show the exact opposite effect. Where have you gone Gene Michael, our (Yankees) nation turned it's lonely eyes to you...
A review from a Non-Yankee / Sox fan..........2006-02-23
I presonally am a San Fransisco Giants fan so I have neither great hatred or great love for the Yankees. The only reason that I bought this book is because I recently drove cross country so I needed something to fill the time when I wasn't driving, and I also really enjoy Buster Onley's writing. That being said I thought this book was phenominally informative and unlike some of the other reviewers I really enjoyed Olney using game 7 as the driving force behind this book. It really sheds light on why the Yankees were able to win 3 consecutive championships and how that team was able to essentially save itself from Steinbrenner during the '90s. The epilouge was also outstanding as the book was able to describe some of the differences between the current Yankees and the Championship Yankees.
Average customer rating:
- Waiting Impatiently for the Next Book
- Getting better all the time
- One of my "Year's Best"
- I loved THE NIGHT MEN!
- Wow!
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The Night Men: A Jason Keltner Mystery (Jason Keltner Mysteries)
Keith Snyder
Manufacturer: Walker & Company
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0802733700 |
Book Description
The situation has to be desperate to cause a California guy to ride his bike across the Brooklyn bridge at midnight, in a snowstorm. But that's exactly what Jason Keltner was doing because of the phone call he'd received, as chilling as the wind he was riding into, as frightening as memories that haunted as nightmares.
Jason's friend Zeb, a fellow musician, had opened a music store in Brooklyn and someone had trashed it. The reasons were unclear, but one possibility came to mind: gay bashing. Jason knew the taste of violent prejudice too intimately to do anything but come out to help, to stay up nights as a watchman. It was something he'd done before; it was what brought him together with Robert and then Martin as high school students in California...and what brought Robert to Brooklyn now to help Jason now--without question, without limits, but with a bitter taste that would never go away.
Weaving past and present, The Night Men traces the evolution of a friendship forged in fear and investigates crime born of the same kind of blind hatred that had stalked three boys years earlier. The lessons they'd learned then hadn't been forgotten. The only difference was that now they knew what they were doing.
Customer Reviews:
Waiting Impatiently for the Next Book.......2002-09-25
This is not a conventional mystery novel. Keith Synder is not a conventional man. As a composer, he adds a dimension rarely found and, as a wise-[crack], he adds a dimension happily found. It is pure craftsmanship. It is, also, the fourth book in a series featuring Jason Keltner, but it stands tall and strong on it's own.
Page one and we find Jason peddling his bike madly across the Brooklyn Bridge. What is a California boy doing in Brooklyn? When it's really, really cold? He is there to help when a gay friend's grand opening of a music store is baptized by an act of vandalism. At night, he stands watch amidst the shattered glass and broken instruments, snooping by day. To aid him in his quest are Roberto and Martin. Oddly, you will be introduced to them for the first time whether you've read another book in the series or not. Excerpts from The Night Men, the PI book that cemented their childhood friendship, make up the third story arc that interweaves this exceptional book.
Totally original, amazingly funny with characters that make this a must read, re-read, and make others read, book.
Getting better all the time.......2001-12-29
To the point, I enjoyed the book. very much. As an avid mystery reader, it's easy to see the craft here; especially, Snyder's creation of of place, development of characters,and realistic, crips dialogue are all superbly-crafted, well-measured, and well-written. And that makes for a happy audience, and the pages turn... Bravo to Keith Snyder and his publisher.
One of my "Year's Best".......2001-12-24
Reviews are a strange business. In the end, of course, it's just an opinion of a singular individual, but it's funny how a book or music--or anything, for that matter--can inspire such wildly divergent opinions.
For example, the negative review posted below is a substantially different one from my own, as I thought THE NIGHT MEN was one of the best books I've read this year. For one thing, it takes chances. Combining three different story arcs--that of Jason's vigilant nightwatch over Zeb's shop after it's been vandalized, when Jason and his closest friends Robert and Martin meet as teenagers and forge their friendship in the midst of a similar situation (but with different results), and excerpts from a PI novel that was an inspiration for the trio in their teen years and from then on--is no easy task, and most writers don't even come close to succeeding. However, I never had a problem discerning between the arcs, and the transitions were very smooth and easy to follow.
Second, the characters have grown from previous books and grow throughout. The Jason, Robert, and Martin you may have met in SHOW CONTROL (or more likely in the later books) are older, more thoughtful, and less likely to fall back on the flippancy that often characterizes their conversations. It's still there, and I'm glad for it, but not to the same degree. This mirrors the progression of Snyder's own writing style--it has far more substance and honesty in THE NIGHT MEN than it ever did before.
Which ties into my third point, which is that this book doesn't patronize talk down to the reader, but instead assumes that he or she can handle reasonably intelligent ideas and thought. And it's probably the only book with a subplot about a stolen theremin, and I just thought that was cool.
Admittedly, THE NIGHT MEN is not an easy book to categorize; it's drenched in the conventions of the crime novel and owes much to it, but I wouldn't call the book a crime novel. It doesn't have Big Best Seller (TM) written all over it (though I really wish it did) because it doesn't fit so neatly into the little boxes occupied by whoever's on the fiction list these days. But that shouldn't stop you from getting it, reading it, buying it for your friends, getting them to read it, etc. Because if you're looking for something that actually makes you think about a great many things, like what makes a friendship and the emotional benefits and costs, and why familial bonds are often less strong than they potentially should be, THE NIGHT MEN's the book to pick up.
I loved THE NIGHT MEN!.......2001-12-23
In The Night Men, we follow Jason Keltner to New York City, where he ends up watching his friend's music store at night, after it's vandalized and trashed in a possible hate crime. Jason, having done something similar in high school, stays up nights to protect the place. He also does some snooping around to see if he can find the culprits and solve an enigma relating to the name of the store.
The book switches back and forth between the high school Jason and the adult Jason. We learn how he met Robert and Martin, and why they're such close friends. And we admire both Jasons' missions--watching out for friends. Despite the serious nature of the plot, Jason, Robert, and Martin are funny and quick with the offbeat comments. There's also interesting sub-plots about a recording studio, some rare instruments, and Jason's girlfriend.
This book is well-written: it's humorous and serious in all the right places. These guys are intelligent and well-read, and they make smart jokes, references, and comments instead of little-boy fart jokes.
I have loved all of Keith Snyder's books, and The Night Men is no exception. It's funny, smart, eccentric, and extremely entertaining.
Wow!.......2001-12-22
"Suddenly, thoroughly sick of learning things, Jason snapped. "Look-!"
Keith Snyder goes deeper and farther with Jason Keltner and his friends than he's gone before (And neither he nor Jason would be guilty of committing a cliche like that.)
Comng of age is another cliche and The NIght Men is not "just" a coming of age story. A friend's music store is trashed in the night--amybe a hate crime--and Jason rides his bike over the Brooklyn Bridge in winter. Not a good idea for anyone, especially a California boy. Something more than macho pride or even friendship impels him.
The past is never really past, of course, it bleeds into the present. When Jason and Robert and Martin were in high school, they met because life sometimes throws people together and fighting in a very nonTV-ish unsimplistic way against a hate crime/defending Robert's house binds them together.
The Night Men--a crime novel that Robert and Jason read togethe--binds the story together. Carter is the hero, one of those lone men who down those dark streets go, the knight errent who tried to save--who tries to save who and what he can. When he can.
Jason offers to guard the music store at night. robert flies out to be with him. The past is present. The boy stands guard with the man.
And Jason learns, even though, as he says, he is tired of learning lessons. He learns about friendship and love and what a man does to be honorable even when he wonders if he's only making a fool of himself, swinging at shadows.
This is a brilliant, wonderful, funny, heartbreaking, heartmeaking book. Buy it. Read it. Love it. (I did. I do.)
Book Description
Tom traces his alcoholism back to his British boyhood at Eton College, Englands oldest and most exclusive boarding school, where the boys had to wear tail suits to class and there was a school pub. He delves into his aristocratic familys well-documented fondness for the bottle and covers his own drinking apprenticeship as a trainee journalist on Londons famously alcohol-sodden newspapers. Whether he is getting arrested for drunk driving at the age of 15, climbing naked into his friends and colleagues beds, or simply trying to file an emergency front-page update while reeling from a cocktail of Ecstacy and magic mushrooms, Tom takes the reader on an addictive journey into the insanity of intoxicationall too often followed by a mossy tongue, a dull headache, and one burning question: What the hell did I do last night?
Customer Reviews:
Light-weight Drunkard's Tale.......2007-06-17
I guess that the book was entertaining enough, but woefully absent of any real dramatic tragedy that would surround the life of a hardcore alcoholic. He never woke up in jail or beaten bloody in England or New York. No horror nor any particular insight into the disease of alcoholism or drug addiction. Plenty of Alcoholism light. It gets much much uglier.
"Fear and Loathing" in London and New York.......2007-01-13
Tis is a brilliant book full of hair raising tales and high jinx. Incredibly funny. The author was an alcoholic who managed to wangle a job as the chief night life writer and bar reviewer at the Evening Standard and then the New York Post with disastrous (but hilarious) results.
Highly recommended. Not for the squeamish!
bloody fun and scurrilous.......2006-10-21
Tom Sykes writes without being sentimental or judgmental. This guy is now sober but he used to drink like a fish and race around New York and London misbehaving. His is a cautionary tale, but he writes it with panache and a light touch. Buy this book now and you'll read it in one sitting. Cleverer than Toby Young or Candace Bushnell, most astute than Milan Kundera, as straightforward as Bill Bryson, and as disreputable as Jay McInernery or Brett Easton Ellis. This is a sure-fire hit.
Outrageous !.......2006-10-13
I picked this up and started reading it, and it is a pretty funny autobiographical work on a British guy who really, really liked to party and drink. At one point, he makes the point that if you don't really know what a blackout is, you are not a true alcoholic (that definition is no doubt not the one the medical community in the U.S. gives, but it also is probably pretty accurate). He explains it as like having your "memory chip" for the past (x) hours totally erased. So, he often wakes up on a couch somewhere (Britain and then New York when he moves there), not knowing where he was last night. Hence, the title of the book. I think this book is actually pretty outrageous, in the good and bad sense of that term. I found it very, very honest and compelling. I don't think we need really to go into all the "you shouldn't do what he did" stuff. I think that will be clear to people who read the book. The book is actually very funny, and very outrageous.
Book Description
In Sleepless Nights a woman looks back on her life—the parade of people, the shifting background of place—and assembles a scrapbook of memories, reflections, portraits, letters, wishes, and dreams. An inspired fusion of fact and invention, this beautifully realized, hard-bitten, lyrical book is not only Elizabeth Hardwick's finest fiction but one of the outstanding contributions to American literature of the last fifty years.
Customer Reviews:
Amazingly written, but too loose and thin to be a masterpiece.......2006-10-10
In this "novel," Hardwick writes a series of highly autobiographical vignettes tied together by... well nothing except her voice. The prose is, for the most part, excellent and this is a great book to pick up and read for a few pages to get your creative side working.
However, reading all these mostly unrelated fragements together gets reptitive and leaves you wanting something a little more coherent. If its going to be this loose and thin, why not just make it a series of prose poems instead of a novel?
Still, well worth the read.
Hardwick, a master of craft and content.......2005-11-06
Heads up, all of you with M.F.A.s and those aspiring to write narrative non-fiction and autobiography. Elizabeth Hardwick's Sleepless Nights is a masterpiece of the genre avant la lettre. Through an effective use of sentence fragments, notes and letters sent and received, and sketches of people she has known intimately, Hardwick gives the reader a solid picture of New York City in the 1940s and after. But what Hardwick teaches us is that if writing can be taught, it must first be lived. Underneath Hardwick's combination of intimate conversational style and terse analysis of a lost era, one feels the author is a person of stable character, one who is a fully-conscious human being. Stylistically, Hardwick's method of composition is a pastiche of styles, a Post-modern hybrid, grounded in the fierce Modernist belief that every human being is essential to life.
Hardwick conveys human individuality through the technique of synaesthesia, a breathless juxtaposition of noun and adjective; for example, a young man was "a living, sturdy weed of gossip and laughter, of racing confessions about nights of fun and errors, of cooking recipes with unexpected olives, of fish sprinkled with chocolate..." Hardwick excites our desire to know the people she has known. I am a better human being for having read this book.
Evocative, beautiful, thin.......2002-01-21
This small novella from NYRB is a much-lauded work by Elizabeth Hardwick from the mid-Seventies; essentially plotless, it's a work of memory (both Proust and Tenessee Williams seem to haunt these pages... as does, oddly, Djuna Barnes) that encompasses autobiographical material from Hardwick's life growing up in Lexington, Kentucky, at Columbia as a graduate student in NYC, and in Boston as the partner of Robert Lowell (though he is never named in the narrative). The prose is often gorgeous (although there are times when it does get a bit NEW YORKER-precious in its sensory observations); the narrative passes much like a very vivid dream or a hallucination, so that though there is little to follow it will stay with you for months afterwards. This new NYRB edition comes with a spectacularly beautiful cover that suggests the hyperreal quality of the narrative, and a vacuous preface that tells you almost nothing about the book .
Simply incredible..........2000-10-31
I can really only reiterate what the last reviewer stated. This is one of the three or four books I pull off the bookshelf constantly to reread. Hardwick is a remarkable stylist and can evoke in a few pages (if not lines!) what it would take other writers whole novels to achieve. The section on Billie Holliday is one of the most beautiful things I've ever read. This is the book that made me want to write.
A gorgeously austere book about memory and loss.......2000-10-18
Part fiction, part autobiography, part a collection of lovely pensees on literature and life, this exquisite short novel moves fluidly between the narrator's Kentucky past and her New York present, with stops along the way in Europe, Maine, Boston, and elswhere. Employing a spare, pared-down prose of great beauty and oringinality, Hardwick approaches her subject--memory and the transformations we work upon it, and it upon us--with great restraint, bringing the novel's people and places vividly to life with an odd, knotty phrase or unexpected choice of word. Rather than focus with gushing self-indulgence on her own experience in the manner of contemporary tell-all memoirs, the author is more often probing the lives of the ignored and downtrodden she has known--cleaning ladies and laborers, small-town prostitutes and impoverished radicals, failed writers and homeless piano teachers. Hardwick broods over these small, burdened, often overlooked lives with a wry, unsentimental tenderness and a gentle pessimism. I can't tell you how often I've picked up this book since I first read it just to savor a paragraph or two or its gorgeously austere prose.
Book Description
Many of North America’s most beloved regions are artfully celebrated in these boardbooks designed to soothe children before bedtime while instilling an early appreciation for the continent’s natural and cultural wonders. Each book stars a multicultural group of people visiting the featured area’s attractions—such as the Rocky Mountains in Denver, the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, Lake Ontario in Toronto, and volcanoes in Hawaii. Rhythmic language guides children through the passage of both a single day and the four seasons while saluting the iconic aspects of each place.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent for Kids.......2007-05-21
The Good Night... series are good books for young kids to read or to have read to them. It includes basic words and gets the kids interested in different travel locations.
Amazon.com
Marc Parent worked for four years as a caseworker for Emergency Children's Services in New York, acting as the final protector of children from abusive parents, as "the one on the front line--the last hope for a kid in trouble." His job was to make house calls and decide if a child needed to be removed at once. He has selected eight cases illustrating the extreme pressures of the work and indicating why it is that the system so often fails in its mission. He recounts unsparingly how three years into his job he made a fatal mistake, failing to recognize the plight of a little boy who later died of starvation. This compelling account is an important documenting of the weaknesses of the child support system.
Book Description
Why does an infant die of malnutrition? Why does an eight-year-old hold a knife to his brother's throat? Or a mother push her cherished daughter twenty-three floors to her death? Marc Parent, a city caseworker, searched the streets--and his heart--for the answers, and shares them in this powerful, vivid, beautifully written book.
WITH A NEW AFTERWORD BY THE AUTHOR
Customer Reviews:
wild stories, soberly told.......2007-06-21
When a book has 'children at risk' in the subtitle, you might expect some bloviating op-ed column in book form rife with numerous stats and a preening sense of self-importance in its outrage ("I'm a prophet. Hear me roar!").
But this author primarily tells stories, cases he dealt with as a NYC Emergency Child Services caseworker. By virtue of the sweat and tears of his experience, the author is able to relay wild heartbreaking stories without getting mired in a sentimental or sensational mood.
"...how quickly, with a simple twist of the dial, the deepest calm can turn to chaos--how stealthy the chaos is and what a convincing costume of serenity it wears..." The author shows how the rationale behind seemingly horrific acts can follow some kind of logic underneath. A boy considers killing his baby brother, but not because the boy is demon possessed. Two caseworkers remove a child who is kicking and screaming in front of disgusted onlookers, but are really following the protocols of their job as best as they can under the circumstances.
This book is a real eye opener into some dark corners where children have lived. Still, the author rounds out the book with some sobering, yet heartening things to say. "Where despair and abuse spread back across generations, there are no such things as knockout punches." "The only way to lose this fight is to stop fighting."
Author RETURNABLE GIRL.......2006-12-02
As social workers we need to always advocate for chilldren at risk, unfortunately there are some fundamental flaws to the "system" which makes even our most caring workers burn out too fast. A real, gripping, honest portrayal raises this book high above the rest. For a fictional account, readers might want to check out RETURNABLE GIRL, about a teen in foster care who must choose between the woman who wants to adopt her and the mother who abandoned her.
This is a book that sticks with you.......2006-11-26
Fresh out of college, Parent left rural Wisconsin for New York City and applied for a job at Emergency Child Services, which covered critical abuse and neglect cases during nights and weekends. He shares with us some of his most dramatic and intense cases, as well as his personal reflections. During his fourth year on the job, he makes a poor judgment call that has tragic consequences. In his ensuing depression, he remembers a story he heard in junior high about some old nuns turning stones in the desert...and comes to an energizing insight. I would highly recommend this book, particularly for anyone who works in human services and feels burn-out creeping in. If you cannot read the whole book, at least read the last chapter.
A beautiful, yet emotionally challenging read..........2005-11-09
I read this book very, very quickly. That's the only way to read it, to avoid breaking down and sobbing throughout every chapter. And there are some doozies in here.
Remember the story of the woman who threw two of her five children out the window of her tenement (something like five floors up) in New York City? Marc worked the aftermath of that case. The woman had never been investigated before, hadn't even been diagnosed with mental illness, nothing. She kept down a job, the kids saw their father (who wasn't married to the mother) every weekend, they were well-fed and well taken care of. She just snapped, just like that.
He told of an eight-year old girl diagnosed with gonorrhea. Pitbulls attacking caseworkers. Women so afraid of hexes they wouldn't let their children eat the food, for fear of glass in the food killing them. Homes so infested and horrible that the caseworkers were scared to enter. An eight year old boy, mentally ill and neglected by his druggie mother, left home alone and terrified that he would kill his brother. Marc talked him down from plunging the knife, which the boy held at his two year old brother's throat, and killing his brother. Another scary story was about a nine year old boy who basically just snapped and beat one of his cousins to death.
A good read. Read it fast, and then turn some stones of your own.
beautifully written.......2005-05-11
turning stones is a wonderful book.its a collection of true events and stories of children at risk , all beautifully written and lovingly compiled by the author , marc parent ,who was himself a case worker in children's welfare services[new york] for 4 years.this book narrates many stories of various children who are abused in some way or the other.also, this book gives us an insight into a case workers life and the dilemnas he faces while attending to children in need.every chapter has a new story to tell and the readers will find it very compelling not to put the book down.a wonderful book for anyone interested in children or human interest stories.
Book Description
One keen, clear night, a polar bear cub wakes inside her warm den. Something in the moonlit stillness quietly beckons. What is it?The little cub sets out for the snow and sky and sea and ice, and the moon follows.So begins a magical journey through a starlit world filled with love and wonder. Soothing words and luminous pictures make this nighttime tale as comforting as a goodnight kiss.
Customer Reviews:
Lovely book.......2006-03-13
I read this book to my two youngest girls, 2 & 4, and they loved it. As I was reading it I wasn't sure how much of it they were really understanding, but when we got to the last page, they both let out a delightful sigh and looked up at me with a smile. It is a sweet touching story.
An Okay Book.......2006-02-22
The illustrations are pretty neat, but the story is just okay. I love polar bears, so I thought this would be a neat book for my 2 1/2 year old son, but he really isn't interested in it at all. One of our least favorite books.
A Captivating Bedtime Book.......2005-12-30
While many children's bedtime books are trite and redundant, every now and then you find one that's unique. "Polar Bear Night" is one of those books, and it immediately became a favorite of both kids and adults in our house.
It has a sparse visual style that's also very interesting - much more like retro graphic design than typical children's illustration. Still, the animal characters are each very cute and our son loves each of them.
The story is simple yet full of wonder - perfect for calming kids down before bed while also opening up their imaginations as well.
I see that Amazon is bundling this book with "Kitten's First Full Moon" and they are both great books with comparable storylines. However, it didn't take long for this book to overtake "Kitten" as our favorite each night. Enjoy!
Feel the night fever, night fever..........2005-07-26
Mmmf. Linocuts. Ask me to expound on the subject of watercolors and I'll do so for years on end. Request my opinion on woodcuts or pen and ink drawings and I'll talk your ear firmly off. Plead with me to offer a discourse on the wonders of collage and you'll be pleading just as heartily an hour later when I refuse to stop. But show me a book done entirely in linocuts and you already know my response. Mmmf. Linocuts.
This is hardly fair though. Certainly linocuts, while not the most eye-poppingly fabulous illustration technique known to man, have their own particular charm. "Polar Bear Night" proves as much. Created through the collaboration of author Lauren Thompson (best known, until now, for bringing "Little Quack" books into the world) and artist Stephen Savage, the book tempers its potentially treacly-sweet message with some cute-but-not-overly-saccharine illustrations. The result works. I'll tell you right here and now that "Polar Bear Night" isn't my favorite picture book of 2004. But it tells a sweet message and gives young young kids a good idea of what kinds of animals live on the North Pole.
A baby polar bear cannot sleep. Instead, she stares outside into the bright wintery moonlight with the undeniable feeling that something is out there. Something that is calling to her. Leaving her warm and sleeping mother's side, the polar bear cub passes a variety of different animals, all asleep and out in the open. Then she goes to the top of a mountain of snow and waits. All of a sudden, the night sky is filled with softly falling stars. In the star shower the other animals wake-up and watch in amazement. Then, when it is done, the cub is finally tired and returns home to, "mother bear's soft, warm fur". The last image in the book is of the mother softly nuzzling her baby's head.
I can see why people love this book. Thompson, who until now was content to write nice but not particularly overwhelming picture books, hones her simple words into something akin to poetry. Consider these two sentences that describe the cub as she watching the star show. "The light up everything the little bear loves. And the little bear shines bright with light too". Thompson skillfully conveys an emotion children can identify with while also making the words easy one-syllable descriptors. With this page, Thompson caught my admiration and never let it go.
Savage is different. I'm the first one to admit that the pictures here are, in their way, stunning. But there's something (forgive my phrasing) cold about the book as well. Savage places the lighting and the pacing of the illustrations in a kind of hazy dreamscape, while keeping the images here crisp, clear, and sharp. The result is a beautiful book that will please some children, but not all. This is not crime, of course. It is the rare book indeed that makes every kid happy. But for all its beauty, "Polar Bear Night" is bound to bore those children that want color and tension rather than muted tones and geometric polar animals.
It's a great book and if you know the children that you are giving it to very very well (and know them to be dreamy types from time to time who can sit and listen to moderately paced tales) then this is the purchase for you. If, on the other hand, you are thinking of passing this along to reluctant readers or kids with the attention spans of sparrows, think again. It's a nice book but linocuts are not everyone's cup of tea. It's beautiful but for some it may turn out to be a rather hard sell.
Calming, soothing.......2005-05-20
I bought this book for the daughter of a friend, and now I want to give it to everyone I know who has a pre-schooler! It is a charming tale about an adorable little polar bear on a nighttime quest. The story offers an interesting cast of characters, a spectacular meteor shower, and a happy, contented ending. The illustrations are lovely and captivating. Delightful!
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One Child
