History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)

Book Description

Recorded history is a finely-woven magic fabric of intricate lies about events predating the sixteenth century. There is not a single piece of evidence that can be reliably and independently traced back earlier than the eleventh century. This book details events that are substantiated by hard facts and logic, and validated by new astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient sources.

Customer Reviews:

Calculations are only as good as your numbers.......2007-08-03

Yes, we can all agree that mainstream history is nearly 100% BS due to politics, economics, ego, problems with dating techniques, and various conspiracies. Agreed. But, I've been researching the distinct possibility that human history (in terms of civilizations) are much more ancient than we've been told, so coming across this book was very interesting to me. I wondered how Fomenko could be wrong (if at all) because he is very persuasive in his presentations. Then it dawned on me. If at previous times in prehistory, due to the various catastrophies that are well documented (comets, asteroids, planetary disruptions, plasma discharge, pole reversals, etc) the Earth was in a different position in relation to the sun, different tilt on its axis, different orbit, different rotation (in terms of velocity and DIRECTION), and the continents were in different positions, then would this not cause the ancients to see the sky (constellations) differently? In other words, is Fomenko making erronious assumptions about the physics of the Earth in pre-history, which then corrupt his data with regards to dating the relevant astrology? The last event to seriously disrupt our planet occured roughly 3500 years ago, according to other good researchers, so is it possible Fomenko has been confused by this? The vastly different physics of our planet in the not so distant past may explain this confusion, which is not to say the "mainstream" version of history is correct; on the contrary. I am not an expert in these fields, but wanted to see if this idea could spark discussion.

Pants on fire?.......2007-07-19

Will people ever read before spamming? Yes, Jesuits could not rewrite world history alone, they had help. Anyway, Dr Prof Acad A.Fomenko does not point to jesuits as the driving force of world wide history manipulation in published volumes 1,2,3;, actually he barely mentions the poor devils. Check it with 'Search inside' feature, please. China is rarely mentioned either, in fact, Dr Fomenko is completely eurocentric. Right, his theory contradicts all mainstream schools of history, because in their actual state they are all built on blatantly erroneus chronology. You don't need a mysterious cabal (conspiracy) to falsify history, the falsification is its modus operandi. It is inherent to history(ians) to falsify (distort) events, as it is inherent to humans to boast as it is inherent to power (authority) to legimize itself by referrring to glorious past made to its own order. Dr Prof Fomenko and team have identified scores of instances of such manipulation in Russian, European, etc.. history, and delivered valid statistical proof thereof. His own 'reconstruction' is completely another story. Forget c14 as a valid method of dating. W.Libby has initially discovered a brilliant method of INDEPENDENT dating. Too bad, c14 method has become a joke after a forced marrige with dendrochronology with consensual chronological scale inbuilt. Radiocarbon method can't stand blind tests, but is so very productive as a rubberstamp.

Accepted History & Chronology Must Be Changed. .......2007-04-09

There is no doubt that history as most know it is a sham, & institution's version of History both University & Church is fradulent & inaccurate. Everything was established with an agenda, The real "Dark Ages" are now when we have access to incredible amounts of information past authorities & more important 'common folk' didn't have but our institutions & educators are slow to evolve because of what has ignorantly & arrogantly been taught for too long. This is on many subjects not just Chronology.

For anyone to question "Why would a Mathematician have anything credible to say of History?" The answer is from Dr. Fomenko's preface in the book: "It would be worthwhile to remind the reader that in the XVI-XVII century Chronology was considered to be a subdivision of Mathematics." These volumes could possibly be some of the most important works to date & should be read by everyone with an interest in History, especially professors & educators who have a duty to the public. I have read both books & must say that 'Chronology 1' has some very eye opening & revolutionary information. Even if these volumes are part true the implications are profound & opens the doors to further investigations & questions which must be done. I speak several different lanquages & must say the logic Dr. Fomenko uses with "inflection" of words & words being read from left to right in one region & right to left in another then written backwards, the removal of vowels & get down to basics of words, or different cities & locations having the same name etc. is correct. Vowel usage has always been optional & varied, actually complicating linquistics & study. The first thing one has to understand is that words never had a fixed spelling in history like we do now, the spelling of words was mutable & regional, as well as names & titles of people were vast, varied & changed, NOTHING WAS FIXED or understood linear. Matters of Life & Death as well as financial profiteering yesterday & today were & are made with ignorant, illogical & conspiratorial views of history & reality, it's time people get closer to the Truth & society collectively grow up.

Very Interesting.......2007-03-07

It is a good proposal and I believe it will mature into something even better in the future. I think it deserves to be read.

History as Science Fiction.......2007-01-10

Anatoly Fomenko has written a very intriguing book, full of pictures, charts, and computer 'proof' of his thesis: backwards of AD900 we don't really know what happened or when. Between AD900 and AD1600 there is more certainty, but there is still a lot of fuzzy ground, and things don't get reliable until we get past the 1600's where the printing press made it very difficult for the perpetrators of this timeline manipulation to change anything that had been committed to print. The Dark Ages did not happen. Books were burned for a reason. One organization has doubled the actual length of its existence by expanding the real chronology. Read why.

I had always wondered why Christ died about AD33 and yet men waited until the 11th century to form the Knights Templar, the Cathars, etc and go after the Holy Land by force. Why the 1000 year gap? Turns out there wasn't more than a 10-12 year gap and he proves it using astronomy. This also implies that the planet is not as old as we have been told, and current Christian and other creationist scientists are already championing that idea without being aware of Fomenko's book. The two groups, creationist scientists and the Russian mathematical analysts corroborate each other. Fascinating.

Of course, all this flies in the face of what we have been told traditionally is the 'proper' chronology of western civilization, and most readers will experience 'cognitive dissonance' in reading this book. It means that our history going backwards from AD1600 becomes progressively more incorrect and unreliable until it cannot be trusted at all... in the space of 700-800 years.

Naturally, the curious, open-minded reader will want to know WHO did this, WHY, and did any of the events we think of as really ancient ever happen?
Dr. Fomenko is a respected scientist/mathematician at Moscow State University who has already answered these questions to the satisfaction of his initially skeptical colleagues. Most of them are now believers, a few still refuse to believe (the usual diehards), and of course the western press has ignored Fomenko's work -- for obvious reasons when you read the book. The ones who perpetrated this chronology ruse have a lot to answer for. They are still with us. That's why this book is a well-kept secret.

I gave the book a 4-star rating because I was unable to check out some of his claims; those I checked were as he said. But if even 1/3 of his claims are true, this punches a big hole in what we think is our history, the meaning of western civilization, our educational process (for repeating the ruse as gospel), and the trustworthiness of the organization that perpetrated this ruse, well-intentioned or not.

This book relates to current research into a Young Earth paradigm, to John Keel's discoveries about our planet, and Fr Malachi Martin's insights (in his now out-of-print books). We are indeed sheep who are manipulated and kept ignorant -- for a reason. While knowing what these men have to say may be the "booby prize" (as in: 'what can you do with this knowledge?'), it will provide interesting reading. Didn't someone say: "...and the Truth will set you free."?? For you to judge if this book contains the truth.

The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere: a Memoir

Average customer rating:

Searing and funny memoir of coming of age in North Dakota.
This book touched my heart!
The farmers daughter
Farm Girl Agrees: This Book is AMAZING!
Dazzling Memoir

The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere: a Memoir
Debra Marquart
Manufacturer: Counterpoint
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Authors | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Family & Childhood | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Memoirs | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 1582433453

Book Description

In the tradition of John McPhee and Kathleen Norris, a wry, moving memoir about a family farm, a father, and a daughter, and why it's so hard to go home again

Debra Marquart grew up on a family farm in rural North Dakota-on land her family had worked for generations. From the earliest age she knew she wanted out; surely life had more to offer than this unyielding daily grind, she thought. But she was never able to abandon it completely.

In this distinctive, beautifully written memoir, she chronicles this process of flight and return-not only from and to a particular landscape, but to respect and admiration for her father. Complex, lyrical, utterly unsentimental, often funny, Marquart's singular voice offers a deeply intelligent rumination on the meaning of native ground, on freedom and security, and on the forging of identity. It brings to mind the very best of those who have written about the natural world and a sense of place-John McPhee, Wallace Stegner, and Kathleen Norris among them.

Customer Reviews:

Searing and funny memoir of coming of age in North Dakota........2007-05-31

Funny and bittersweet, this memoir captures the difficult relations between children and parents and will resonate with many American young women who took a path their parents didn't anticipate and struggle for recognition both at home and in the equally tough wider world of adulthood. Debra Marquart's a fine, fine writer--one to watch.

This book touched my heart!.......2007-01-10

Wow! Debra Marquart very accurately portrayed the essence of growing up "wild" in North Dakota in the 70's. She touched my heart and validated my experiences and memories of that time, too. I want more, more, more!

The farmers daughter.......2007-01-08

Is the name of a dress shop in our town. There are somethings that I know little about so I read this book. I did not learn much. Dakota weather is changing even if we don't realize it. Marquart must want to have her book read and I wanted to read it. I spose I always wanted to be blond and fresh faced from a square state but somehow this book did not reveal much Dakota truth for me. I did grow up wild and whoever chose that title might have been trying a little to hard to captivate readers.

Farm Girl Agrees: This Book is AMAZING!.......2006-12-08

As someone who grew up in the middle of nowhere I can attest to the fact that Debra Marquart's writing is spot on. She describes a very specific subculture of the U.S. (i.e., the upper Midwest) with humor, grace and uncanny truth. She gives voice to a kind of life that is rarely spoken of by those who have endured it. Her insights made me alternately crumple on the floor in tears and laugh out loud shouting "Yes!" Simply put, she gets it right. To top that, she's done her research, too; she mixes lots of interesting background information with excellent storytelling. I am giving this to all my exiled Midwestern friends for Christmas!

Dazzling Memoir.......2006-11-10

This is the most engaging book I've read in several years. Written with all the power that could be expected of an Iowa Writers Program Professor, it tells it's own story while exposing the desperate truths of all who've violently wrenched themselves out of home ground to find a life that fit. Blunt, funny, ironic and wry, its bravely openhearted look at a younger self made me look clearly at my own 20-year-old self, that I've disowned for over 35 years, and invite her back in.

Average customer rating:

Should this book ever have been written?
bad press; good book
Brave and unsparing
Maynard - Memoir
Unveiling the Secrets

At Home in the World: A Memoir
Joyce Maynard
Manufacturer: Picador
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Authors | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Women | Specific Groups | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0312202296

Amazon.com

Joyce Maynard's memoir At Home in the World is an attempt to make peace with herself. At times, however, it's hard not to see it as an act of war--on her parents and, most notably, on J.D. Salinger. Maynard's account of her year-long relationship with the reclusive writer is the centerpiece of the book and the publicity pivot on which it turns. And how not? She first encountered Salinger when he wrote her a fan letter following her world-weary but not necessarily wordly wise New York Times Magazine cover piece, "An Eighteen Year Old Looks Back on Life." He was then 53 and, as Maynard paraphrases, wanted her "to know that I could be a real writer, if I would just look out for myself, as no other person is likely to." By the time she was 19, she was living with the increasingly controlling Salinger and doing her best to adhere to his regimens, from homeopathy at any price to a mostly macrobiotic diet heavy on frozen peas. (Lamb burgers, formed into patties and then frozen--before being cooked at a dysentery-friendly 150 degrees--also figure heavily.)

What's worse, he does his best to turn the hugely driven young woman into a mistrusting, publicity-shy prig, not to mention helping her perfect her already anorexic bent. Maynard is such a skilled writer that it's hard not to take her side as the relationship falters. In fact, even when it's going well, it's not easy to sympathize with a man whose idea of an endearment is, "I couldn't have made up a character of a girl I'd love better than you." But Maynard is as hard on her younger self as she is on the great man. Though she had published intimate essays since her early teens, and long been feted for her "honesty," it has taken the overachiever many years to realize that she had carefully left out her most personal burdens--her father's alcoholism, her mother's nighttime "snuggling" and overwhelming intrusions, the distance between her and her older sister.

Still, At Home in the World is more than a clearing-house for past parental and amorous wrongs. It's a cautionary tale about using language and the pretense of truth to obscure key realities. One of the many curiosities in this discomfiting book? Salinger dreamt that he and Maynard had a child together: "I saw her face clearly. Her name was Bint." The World War II veteran then looks up the word. "What do you know," he says. "It's archaic British, for little girl." Maynard never, even now, has questioned his definition. In fact, it's slang, used especially in World War II, for prostitute. When Salinger forced the 19-year-old to clear her things out of his New Hampshire house, she was still unaware of the word's force. "On the window of Jerry's bedroom, where the glass is dusty, I write, with my finger, the name of the child we had talked about: BINT." --Kerry Fried

Book Description

The house where I grew up, in Durham, New Hampshire, is the only one on the street with a fence surrounding it. That fit. Our family--my mother, my father, my older sister, Rona, and I--never belonged in that town. Or anywhere else, it seemed to me, but in that house, with one another, like a country unto ourselves, a tiny principality with a population of four. Arguably three, since my sister tried to remove herself as much as possible. There was a phrase we used in our family: "one of us." We didn't use it often, but what it meant was that we'd encountered a person who might get inside the fence and enter the fortress of our family. No one ever did, fully. The only ones who were truly "one of us" were ourselves. My father comes into my room just after six every morning and wakes me with the snap of my window blinds. "Time to get up, chum," he says. Four decades since he lived there last, you can still hear England in his voice. Years later, when I'm in my thirties and beyond, and he's long dead, I will sometimes be at a movie and Sir John Gielgud appears on the screen, and, though he looks nothing like my father, the sound of his voice will be enough to make me cry. There's no unkindness in the way my father wakes me. He simply believes it's anunconscionable waste to stay in bed when the sun is shining. Or even if it's not. My whole life, I have been unable to sleep late. Every morning, my father brings my mother coffee in bed, then comes back down to make his breakfast. He'll be eating it when I come down the stairs. Porridge, maybe, or an egg. He always reads while he eats breakfast. It might be the letters of Harold Nicolson, or the journals of Simone Weil. Although he knows Paradise Lost by heart--eighteenth-century literature is his field of specialty, and he teaches it at the University of New Hampshire--he may still read over a passage from Milton that he'll be lecturing on today. Sometimes my father will read the Bible at breakfast--another book he knows well. My father's parents were British Fundamentalist missionaries who left the Salvation Army because of its excessively liberal teachings to join a sect known as the Plymouth Brethren. The second to last of their seven children, my father, Max Maynard, was born sometime around the year 1900, in India, where his parents had come to proselytize. Of the many mysteries that surround my father's family, the first concerned the date of his birth. He claimed his parents told him they were so occupied with the Lord they hadn't written it down. I never met my father's parents, or any parents so consumed with God that they'd forget the year of their child's birth. If nothing else, the story told me something about my father's perception of them. As a small child, my father had loved to act and sing, but his deepest passion was for painting. He had known for a long time that he wanted to make art, but hadn't dared ask his parents for paints. When he was ten, he finally got himself a paintbox, which becamehis most treasured possession. He painted and read constantly, and with so much reckless abandon that he broke the inviolate rule of his household, to observe the Sabbath with no activity but reading of the scripture. His older brother saw him painting and reported the news to their parents. His father called him to his study. "Bring me your paints," he said, and when my father delivered them, his father placed them in his desk drawer and slammed it shut."For one year, Max, you shall not paint," he said. My father broke with the church and with most of his family when he was a young man, having emigrated from England by now and settled in British Columbia. While most of his brothers and sisters pursued a life within the church--one, Theodore Maynard, becoming a moderately well-known Catholic theologian--my father took up with a group of early modern artists in Victoria who were regarded as a radical bunch. One, a much older woman painter named Emily Carr, would become the mentor and inspiration of a group of young modern artists in the twenties and thirties. Several among this group would later become celebrated in Canada,part of what was known as the Group of Seven. From the little I've been able to gather of those early years of his--decades before I came on the scene--my father led a bohemian life: making art, making love, making poetry, and waking up with a terrible hangover the next morning. He was a handsome, dashing man--blue-eyed, blond-haired, compactly but athletically built, with the broad shoulders of a powerful swimmer. He had a cleft chin and a strong jaw, but what probably melted the hearts of women, more than his good looks, was his ability to draw and write for them. He could dash off light verse or a romantic sonnet in flawless iambic pentameter, illustrated with a funny or erotic drawing of a couple in mad embrace, or a caricature of himself, on bent knees, holding out an armload of flowers. When I was sixteen I learned my father had been married once before his marriage to my mother. Although that news came as a terrible shock, the stories of my father's many flamboyantly romantic escapades in Manitoba and British Columbia were almost a source of pride and legend in our household. I think my mother actually derived some pleasure out of the sense of my father's romantic and rakish past. He used to say she had probably saved his life; it was all so reckless and undisciplined before she"whipped him into shape." He met her in Winnipeg, where he had fled, on the lam from some romantic disaster. He was hired by the University of Manitoba as a last-minute replacement for another professor--the only reason he could have gotten an academic job with no more in the way of credentials than a bachelor's degree. His lack of formal training in literature hardly kept him from establishing a reputation as a riveting lecturer. My mother--at nineteen, in her senior year as the English department's top student--was assigned the job of being his assistant, with the task of reading student papers. Partly, it was supposed, she was serious and sensible enough to withstand his attempts at seduction. She had already earned a reputation as a single-mindedly driven young woman, headed for a brilliant academic career. My mother labored over her first batch of essays with elaborate corrections and comments. After she'd delivered them, he stopped her outside his classroom to compliment her on the job she was doing. "But you mustn't trouble yourself with tracing plagiarisms as you have," he told her. "I didn't trace them," she said. "I recognized the sources." Where my father's story has tended to be murky (relatives we never meet; an ex-wife I learn of only well into my teens; vague talk of a former career as a cowboy, a radio announcer, a diving instructor), my mother's is so well known to me, from her own rich retellings, it has taken on the aura of mythology. She was born Freidele Bruser, the second daughter and last child of Jewish immigrants who fled the pogroms of Russia for Canada in the early part of the twentieth century. Her father was a shopkeeper and a dreamer--a tender-hearted, not particularly practical man who once opened every box of Cracker Jack in his store to give my mother the particular treat (a tin ring) she longed for. The store--a whole series of them, always named The OK Store--went bankrupt regularly. My grandmother, a woman of fierce ambition and pride in her children, particularly my mother, launched Freidele in the study of elocution, the oral presentation of poetry, popular in rural areas during the Depression. From the age of four, my mother was hustled to the front of grange halls to recite verses--sometimes comic, sometimes sentimental and tragic--in a voice that was not simply loud but strikingly clear, and capable of bringing the crowd to great laughter or tears. All through my growing up, my mother recited poetry to me. In the middle of dinner or drivi

Customer Reviews:

Should this book ever have been written?.......2007-10-11

One central question which bothers a lot of readers of this book is, "Should it have ever been written?" Or to say this another way. Doesn't the very writing of it involve a betrayal, and an exploitation, the betrayal of the strong desire of J.D. Salinger for privacy, and the exploitation of his legendary secrecy by Joyce Maynard in order to promote herself and this book?
The answer to this question is not a simple or non- ambiguous one. For as Maynard claims in this book she herself was misled, betrayed and abandoned by Salinger. When he a world- famous author wrote to her a seventeen year old prize- winning essayist , and invited her to visit and live with him- wasn't he exploiting her? And didn't he exploit her by taking her out of the environment normal for a person of her age, promise her a long- term future with him, and then kick her out?
Maynard clearly feels that Salinger used and exploited her. And many will feel she is right. Many too will take pleasure in seeing the legendary writer shown to be petty, selfish and just as phony as the adults Holden Caufield condemned.
Maynard in this book tells her own story. She tells about her relation to her brilliant alcoholic father and her poetry reciting and teaching mother. And too she tells of her older sister from whom she was long estranged. Her story is written with clarity and quiet correctness and it is of interest in itself.
Yet the real interest in this book , and the reason for its publication is what it tells about Salinger. And this suggests that the ambitious young woman and would- be - writer who went to live with the older man is now an ambitious- would- be more popular writer.
And this leads to a painful truth for Joyce Maynard if not necessarily for her readers.
Though so many years have gone by, and she has published memoirs and novels and is a known writer, she is still nowhere close and never will be to what Salinger was long before she met him i.e. a legendary writer a unique one- of - a - kind writer whose books are specially loved.
Maynard may have listened to Salinger's writing- lessons and learned something including to be true to her own experience- but she could not learn his genius from him. And she does not in this book rival or replace or cancel it.
He may not have been wonderful to her, and this especially so in the chilling moment when she after all the years of not seeing him , returns to his Cornish New Hampshire home and confronts and accuses him of having exploited her. ( His response is tremendous anger at her.) But he remains the legendary writer. And she will never have anything like the voice, the humor the ability to bring sheer delight to readers the way he does.
If Maynard is to be blamed for writing about someone who cared above all not to be written about, perhaps we readers too are to blame for wanting to know the 'sordid details' and the true nature of Salinger. And this when our not necessarily kind curiosity goes nowhere near to explaining the Salinger genius.

bad press; good book.......2007-09-04

Ms. M has every right to write the book she did.

though i would not like to be in a relationship with Ms. M, i find her books interesting and educational.

Brave and unsparing.......2007-07-07

Memoir writing has become a cliche nowadays but this was one of the first I'd ever read, based on an excerpt I saw in a magazine -- plus all the publicity surrounding the publication of the book. I've reread it a few times and each time I am struck by her bravery in not just exposing Mr. Salinger for what he is, but for her showing how her own naivete and insecurity contributed to the whole affair. This book bashes no one person, and as she has pointed out, the affair is only part of her story. I found her account of her relationships with her parents, husband and children equally fascinating and I applaud her for speaking her truth as a woman. Many women can relate to her overwhelming feelings of shame and inadequacy even in the midst of stunning achievment and even more importantly, to how she took control of them. Not in some kind of magaziney, self-help fashion but in a truthful way. I read Catcher in the Rye in college and failed to see what the big deal was. Since reading this book, I've seen Ms. Maynard's work in several magazines and enjoy the honesty she brings to them.

Maynard - Memoir.......2006-02-22

At Home in the World is a very disturbing, yet very fine book. It is an honest account of a talented, but emotionally challenged woman trying to keep her head above water. Maynard does an excellent job of portraying her family, something that many do not have the ability to pull off. Objectivity is usually not a trait when a child becomes an adult and begins to have a fuller understanding of her parents.

Because Maynard sometimes contributes to her own problems doesn't take away any of the value of the book. Her writing is suburb as always. The book also shows that success at a young age does mean happiness. Hers is a sad story, but one that should be read. She is, without any doubt, a brillant woman.

Unveiling the Secrets.......2005-02-23

This book tells the story of a young girl who was preyed upon, seduced and then abandoned by an older man. Of some interest is that the older man, in this case happened to be well-known, the author J.D. Salinger, although that's not the focus of the story. Maynard was a precocious writer. Both of her parents were English teachers, and Maynard as a young girl sat in on many a writing lesson that her mother used to give at home for her college and high-school students. Thanks to this early training, as well as her innate talent, Maynard had published articles in Seventeen Magazine and The New York Times while still a teenager. After the Times article, which included a picture of her, came out, she received hundreds of letters in response. One of those letters was from J.D. Salinger, who warned her that there would be those who would complement her writing and then once they had gotten her trust would exploit her. She wrote back to Mr. Salinger, and they were soon engaged in frequent correspondence. One thing led to another, and within the year, Maynard had dropped out of college and moved in with Salinger, some 35 years her senior. Unfortunately, although Maynard was deeply attached to Salinger, the feelings weren't exactly mutual, and within another year, Salinger, without explanation demanded that she leave. Maynard was to spend the next 25 years trying to understand what had happened to her. When her own daughter turned 18, the same age she had been when Salinger first approached her, she felt she had to share her story at last, so that others might learn from it.

In the book, Maynard describes some of the personal turmoils that left her vulnerable to such an experience. She relates some of the advice that Salinger shared with her about her writing. She lets us see the good side as well as the bad side of the man, but this book is primarily about her-looking back to see where she came from and make sense of where she has arrived. Overall, the story is engaging and compelling.

Average customer rating:

A real rags to riches fairytale
Michener sets high standards in writing and life
great read
Mr. Ambassador
uplifting; thought provoking

World Is My Home: A Memoir
James A. Michener
Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Authors | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0679401342
Release Date: 1991-11-26

Book Description

JAMES MICHENER was "a Renaissance man, adventurous, inquisitive, energetic, unpretentious and unassuming, with an encyclopedic mind and a generous heart."* Now, one of America's most beloved novelists gives us the story of his own remarkable life . . . .
(*The New York Times Book Review)

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Customer Reviews:

A real rags to riches fairytale.......2007-03-04

From a beginning that was awful Michener very matter of factly found his way to what he calls 'luck'. I loved his tale of epiphany at forty, and beginning his writing career in an empty warehouse with another soldier providing encouragement. He imparts a great deal of good advice for the aspiring writer, and provides a good story at the same time.

I would keep this on my bookshelf for inspiration alone.

Michener sets high standards in writing and life.......2006-06-11

I have read and loved many books by James Michener and I was happy to run across this book (on audio cassette from the library). It was interesting to learn about his life and to learn from his example. For example, even though he faced deprivations as a child, he made a choice to be a sunny, optimistic person all his life. He made a choice not to harbor grievances or dwell on negative thinking. Also, he was a great student all his life. He loved art, opera, literature and for anyone who has ever read his books, you know he had an insatiable curiosity about nearly everything. The nice thing is that when he learned new things, he shared that knew knowledge with the world and everyone was enriched.

Also, he was a high-principled (moral) and generous man and his generosity began long before he became a famous author.

He didn't become a writer until he was forty. Many of his great works were completed well after that. He wrote into his eighties! All writers and aspiring writers would enjoy this work as well as the general public.

great read.......2005-11-09

Everything you ever wanted to know about Michener? Probably not! He wont step into the gutter about his personal failures but a terrific book.

Mr. Ambassador.......2004-05-15

When the extraterrestials finally touch down and exit their spaceship I hope we have a man like James Michener, an "average" brilliant man of great wisdom and wonderful humanity, to represent our species. He would no doubt climb aboard, ingratiate himself with his new found friends, and write a highly entertaining epic of our galaxy.
Michener has always been my personal favorite. His humanity shines through in this memoir.

uplifting; thought provoking.......1998-09-12

Equally entertaining to Michener devotees and casual readers alike. Although often accredited as America's "master story teller", not much is known about this orphan from humble beginnings. Michener weaves a captivating story of his youth followed by his WWII years in the U.S. Navy, which of course brought us "Tales of the South Pacific". He then relates real down to earth experiences as a would-be writer seemingly trapped as editor. Through it all his humbleness is refreshing. His appreciation and respect for the arts and culture is most noteworthy and no doubt will have many readers running to the nearest record store well stocked in opera and classical music. He relates as only he can the various stimuli involved in the undertaking of his later massive works, many accomplished well past the age of 60. If nothing else, upon finishing this remarkable auto-biography, the reader will have an immense respect for the writer and a stirring curiosity to explore his many works and indeed, the several fine pieces of literature that influenced him.

On the Ice: An Intimate Portrait of Life at McMurdo Station, Antarctica (World As Home, The)

Average customer rating:

At Home at the Bottom of the World
Simply Horrid
Her visit was intended to research the landscape; her book is about the crazy people she found there
Horrible...Sorry, Really Horrible
Should be titled "How I became infatuated with Ruth (in Antarctica)"

On the Ice: An Intimate Portrait of Life at McMurdo Station, Antarctica (World As Home, The)
Gretchen Legler
Manufacturer: Milkweed Editions
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Memoirs | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Essays & Travelogues | Reference & Tips | Travel | Subjects | Books

Antarctica | Polar Regions | Travel | Subjects | Books

Nature Writing | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books

Reference | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 157131282X

Book Description

Travelogue, cultural meditation, and love story, On the Ice casts a panoramic view on one of the oddest communities in one of the most extreme places on earth. Sent to Antarctica as an observer by the National Science Foundation, Gretchen Legler arrives at McMurdo Station in midwinter, a time of -70 degree temperatures and months of near-total darkness. A lesbian struggling with a tumultuous past, she hopes to escape her own demons and present an intimate view of a place few will ever visit. What she discovers is a community of people stripped of any excess by the necessities of existence in a harsh land, where revered scientists are referred to as “beakers”; where cherished belongings are left without regret in a communal lost-and-found; and where women are rare but lesbians in high proportion. Forced to confront her own fears, Legler experiences firsthand how landscape and community allow a life to reset.

Customer Reviews:

At Home at the Bottom of the World.......2007-07-19

Nature writing is changing. The surest mark of that change is the fact that Gretchen Legler's book, On the Ice: An Intimate Portrait of Life at McMurdo Station, Antarctica, was chosen as the best book of environmental creative writing published in 2005-2006 by the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment.

On the Ice is the story of what it means to find home, and heart, in the frozen place at the bottom of the world. With other artists, Gretchen Legler was offered the opportunity to spend a season in Antarctica under the auspices of the National Science Foundation Artists and Writers Program, to tell the story of the land, to try her hand "at making some human sense of its vastness and its terrible beauty." It was a quest, she says, not only to explore and discover new lands, but also inner worlds, "places that I hoped being so far from my ordinary self would help me find."

Antarctica as a place is extraordinarily far from the places our ordinary selves inhabit, and Legler wants us not just to know but to feel the distance, and to feel it as the explorers of a century ago must have felt it. She sleeps in a room that is only a stone's throw from the hut where Robert Scott set off in 1911 for his tragic bid to reach the Pole: "Good God, this is an awful place," he wrote. She spends time with other explorers who are looking even farther back, into the unthinkably remote geologic past of the Polar region, into samples of sea floor at Cape Roberts, goes naked into the coldest water on the globe, and ventures into ice caves in the Erebus glacier, blue caves, blue, blue "like an endlessly deep hole in your heart . . . a color that is like some kind of yearning, some unfulfilled desire, or some constant, extreme joy." And then there is the sea ice, glowing "peach and pink, nearly neon, buttery yellow, lavender, jade, and indigo," colors painted by Edmund Wilson, Scott's chief scientist, whose watercolors, she says are filled with, focused on light and color, color and light. And finally, there is the Pole, a "sacred destination," she says, not only for explorers but scientists and, yes, artists and writers, who find it the perfect place to look down into the mysteries at the earth's heart and up, into the mysteries of the universe, "the very farthest edge of darkness."

On the Ice is a luminous study of a remarkable place, a place that is so sublime as to almost defy human description. But as humans, we must place ourselves: we long to live in place and to make even the remotest place a home. And so the book is also about the men and women who live there, about the scientists, support staff, builders, workers, engineers, electricians, cooks, communications technicians--all the people it takes to make a home in an inhospitable place. These are people, by and large, who are willing, perhaps even anxious, to shed their ordinary selves and live in an extraordinary way, coping with the isolation and the cold and the loneliness, building a community of fellow-travelers, each with his or her own sometimes desperate reasons for coming to a place so unimaginably distant and different from the places where the rest of us live. These are funny people, weird people, misfits, heroes, people who live on hope and thrive on hard truths, people who have come away from the "real" world to invent themselves in a different reality.

But On the Ice isn't just about the place or the people. It's about Legler's own journey to the frozen wastes within herself, into her own frozen heart, which is thawed, incredibly, by the power of love. "How do you come to know place?" she asks. "How do you come to know self? . . . How do you let go of wounds and resentments and fierce anger, not begrudgingly, but as an act of grace?" She finds the answer to this age-old question in her relationship with Ruth, an electrician who helps her to shed "all that junk . . .all those layers of old self" and discover a new and loving self, a warm and passionate heart, in this frozen world. Some readers, particularly those who believe that books of natural history ought to exclude the historian's experience, may think that this part of the journey should have been omitted, as not quite worthy of the heroic spectacle that is the Antarctic. But that's the way it's always been, Legler reminds us: the personal has always been defined, she says, as "somehow gossipy or small, beyond or below the reach of proper recording." But why? Why do we deny the human perspective of place, since this is the only perspective we have? And why exclude the innermost experience, merely to focus on the outer? "Why obscure the intimate?" Legler asks. "Why shorten the story of the glorious complexity and depth of the human in order to make a neater, grander tale?"

Legler's journey--and her record of it--is all the more remarkable because it is an intimate journey, not only to the farthest place on earth but into the deepest desires and dreams of the human spirit. It's a singularly brave journey, as heroic in its way as the journeys of Scott and Shackleton and Amundsen, one more exploration of the truest human question: what it means to be at home on this earth. There are a great many books that will give you the cold, hard facts about the Antarctic. But as a book about place, a chronicle of life at the bottom of the world, and an intensely honest record of a spiritual journey, On the Ice is the most richly illuminating of all.

Susan Wittig Albert, co-editor of What Wildness is This: Women Write About the Southwest, University of Texas Press, 2007

Simply Horrid.......2006-12-27

I read this book while in Antarctica last year and had to force myself to finish it. It became a contest of wills to see if I could red the entire book. McMurdo is a weird place, no doubt about it. But somehow, while the author perhaps had the best intentions, it veered off into something that becomes rather incomprehensible. I spent over seven seasons on the ice and there are so many other stories to tell; the people, scientists, raytheon, projects, science, bureaucracy, idiocy, etc., that would make a great story. This book is unfortunately not a great story. Buy another book, any other book...

Her visit was intended to research the landscape; her book is about the crazy people she found there.......2006-05-20

McMurdo Station, Antarctica is home to freezing temperatures, months of nearly total darkness and regular near-hurricane force winds. It's also home to a permanent station, McMurdo, and for a season was home to author Gretchen Legler, who tells of this season and those who have journeyed to Antarctica to escape life. Her visit was intended to research the landscape; her book is about the crazy people she found there. ON THE ICE is thus about an exploration few others will make: you'll have to read the book to live her discoveries vicariously.

Diane C. Donovan, Editor
California Bookwatch

Horrible...Sorry, Really Horrible.......2006-05-15

I'm sorry to say this, but this is simply a horrible book. Gretchen Legler is too self-absorbed, too self-pitying, simply too selfish. Her grant from the NSF Artist and Writers Program surely wasn't intended to fund this whining drivel about how much her parents don't love her, about how she found lesbian love in Antarctica, about tangental ramblings that meander into nothingness.

Surely, it can't be about the prose, either. This writer, simply, uses, too, many, run-on, sentences...the overuse, of, the, comma, is, almost Shatner-esque, in, a, way. Here is a quote...one sentence, mind you, wherein even she has to remind herself TWICE what she's writing about midway through:

"When the first bit of core, real core, not just mud from the surface, came out of the drill, says Brian Reid, one of the bearded, bright-eyed New Zealanders at Cape Roberts, telling a story over tea in the camp's galley - when the first bit of real core came out of that noise, yellow-engine-pounding room full of small, tight men with hard hats, gloves, and mud-splattered faces, when that first long roll of dark clayey material came up, and when driller Pat "The Rat" Cooper, who's drilled all over the world, when Pat himself brought the core into the drill site lab, people started yelling all around, "He hit the hard stuff, He hit the hard stuff," well, you should have just seen it - "Pat and Peter holding it and jumping up and down just like kids, just like kids, just like kids."

Good Lord. That is ONE SENTENCE! Pages and pages and pages of this. It's maddening.

If you really want to read about life on "the ice," I strongly suggest Rolf Smith's excellent "Life on the Ice: No One Goes to Antarctica Alone," or Nicholas Johnson's "Big Dead Place: Inside the Strange and Menacing World of Antarctica." Both are wonderful accounts of the mysterious land down south. Neither will frustrate you, nor do they care one damn bit about why some self-absorbed writer's daddy won't call her. Boo-hoo.

Should be titled "How I became infatuated with Ruth (in Antarctica)".......2006-01-07

I completely agree with the comments made by the reader from Cleveland. This book is horrible! Roff Smith's book "Life on the ice" is infinitely better. NSF got ripped off funding this author.

Letters Home: Memoirs of one Army Nurse in the Southwest Pacific in World War II

Average customer rating:

Letters Home: Memoirs of one Army Nurse in the Southwest Pacific in World War II
Sally Hitchcock Pullman
Manufacturer: AuthorHouse
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Memoirs | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Nursing | Medicine | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1418427896

Book Description

This book is the story of just one newly graduated nurse told in her own words in her letters home saved by her parents and friends. All these collected letters, oppressed memories, and commentary, which spell out the details and background for Letters Home. It is one of the few stories of nurses in the Pacific area. In the centuries greatest war, one nurse, one boxful of letters, photos, drawings and documents - and a broken leg at the age of 19, came together here in a warm, honest, sometimes graphic description about a time in history that is slipping from our collective memory. Battles are forever documented, troops heroism is scribed and caught on news clips and film, but the role of nurses has not until recently been well recorded. Nurses too are part of "The Greatest Operation" facing unknown places, unknown dangers, extreme physical discomfort and physical exhaustion. They served alongside America's finest troops, cared for them when they were sick and injured. They mourned for those who could not make it home. Finally recognized by the opening of the Women Memorial in Washington DC, October 1997, are women who served and are serving in the uniform of the United States are being honored and remembered for their service in the many branches of the Armed Forces. This book gives a glimpse into the Southwest Pacific area in WWII through the eyes of one nurse who saw and recorded how it was.

When It Was Our War: A Soldier's Wife on the Home Front (Shannon Ravenel Books)

Average customer rating:

A young wife learns of the world
A Delightful Piece of WWII History
If you haven't discovered the GEM
Hubba Hubba!!!
I entered the world of World War II

When It Was Our War: A Soldier's Wife on the Home Front (Shannon Ravenel Books)
Stella Suberman
Manufacturer: A Shannon Ravenel Book
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Military & Spies | Professionals & Academics | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Women | Specific Groups | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Memoirs | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 1565124030

Book Description

When Stella Suberman wrote her first memoir, The Jew Store, at the age of seventy-six, she was widely praised for shedding light on a forgotten piece of American history--Jewish life in the rural South. In her new memoir, Suberman reveals yet another overlooked aspect of America's past--the domestic side of war.

Her story begins in the Miami Beach she grew up in, when hotel signs boasted "Always a View, Never a Jew" and where a passenger ship lingered just off shore carrying hundreds of European Jews hoping for--but never finding--sanctuary. It was a time of innocence, before that war in Europe became our war.

Stella was nineteen when America entered the fighting. By the time she was twenty-three, the war was over. She married Jack Suberman the week he enlisted and set out alone to join him in California. She was kicked off trains to make room for soldiers, her luggage was stolen, she was arrested for soliciting, but she was determined to follow her husband. And she did so for the next four years as he was sent from air base to air base, first training to be a bombardier and then training others. It wasn't until he was sent overseas to fly combat missions that she finally went back home to wait, as did so many other soldier's wives.

This remarkable memoir renders a double understanding of war--of how it matured a young woman and how it matured a country. By personalizing the patriotism of the 1940s, Stella Suberman's story becomes the story of all military wives and serves as a powerful reminder of how differently many Americans feel about war sixty years later.

Customer Reviews:

A young wife learns of the world.......2006-06-01

I read The Jew Store and was actually looking to see if she had written another book. Thankfully, she did! I read this before getting married, which turned out to be an appropriate time. This was a transistory period for the writer becoming of age, married and realizing how different her image of people were in comparison to the likeness all people share. I have used this in my classes with high school age children.

She has a gentle way of making us laugh at her mistakes and cry at her pain and teaching us that it is okay if we have not gotten to perfect at the ripe age of 20-something, as long as we are still trying to attain it.

A Delightful Piece of WWII History.......2005-02-27

When It Was Our War is so informative. It describes many aspects of WWII and the American culture at that time. It is extremely enjoyable because the author adds a humanistic aspect by telling her own story of following her husband around the country as he trains to become a bombardier, and by describing the people she meets along the way.
People come in and out of Stella's life, and some make a great impact on her. Truths are revealed and her eyes are opened. Suberman's whole perception of the world changes.
War has a way of making people come face to face with reality. Suberman's writing is a window into the realities of WWII, and what was happening at the home front. She draws vivid pictures of the time period.
I was captivated by how touchingly personal she got when she described the persevering love her and her husband had for each other. It didn't matter that they were far apart. It didn't matter what was happening in their lives. Their love never faltered.

If you haven't discovered the GEM.......2004-10-20

that is Stella Suberman, you must read her books. Absolutely delightful writer--the kind of person you wish was a personal friend. Flawless, seamless, writing that will wrap you into her narratives. Glorious.

Hubba Hubba!!!.......2004-09-02

Earlier reviews are all excellent! Stella Suberman and her family were prolific letter-writers; their contemporary correspondence obviously provided vivid details linking her journey into marriage and her growing insights into the social patterns existing in our country to her account. Suberman's book provides a vivid historic backdrop of American lives and attitudes during the war. She is unflinching in her honesty! I recommend this book for anyone interested in the home front, women's history, or vivid pictures of how Americans viewed the war, including reactions to the Doolittle raids, the songs sung, the experience of traveling by train and car. It is an incredible social history. And, as the guys said when a pretty girl walked by,''HUBBA HUBBA!"

I entered the world of World War II.......2004-03-25

For all of us who have wondered how Americans dealt with World War II, this is a book that tells all. It is an unusual book in that nothing is sacred. It is not just a feel-good Greatest Generation book (even though it is written by someone from that generation), but one that recounts with penetrating clarity the the good things and the bad. There is a surprising amount of actual war activity information included along with a timeline that is fascinating. There is also much that is light-hearted - the songs, the reunitings, and so forth -that make the book warm and inviting. I highly recommend this book.

Average customer rating:

Brilliant
Realistic of the 1940s and 1950s-----Funny, Sad and Charming
A summing up
I Wish It Hadn't Ended
An America Neither more Glorious Nor Less Evil, But Simpler and Incredibly Different

When All the World Was Young: A Memoir
Barbara Holland
Manufacturer: Bloomsbury USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Authors | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Women | Specific Groups | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Journalists | Professionals & Academics | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Memoirs | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Women Writers & Feminist Theory | Books & Reading | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Women Writers | Women's Studies | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

All Deals | Blowout Books | Stores | Books

Biographies & Memoirs | Blowout Books | Stores | Books

Literature & Fiction | Blowout Books | Stores | Books

Nonfiction | Blowout Books | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 1582345252
Release Date: 2005-02-10

Book Description

The author deemed "a national treasure" by the Philadelphia Inquirer finally tells her own story, with this sharp and atmospheric memoir of a postwar American childhood.

Barbara Holland finally brings her wit and wisdom to the one subject her fans have been clamoring for for years: herself. When All the World Was Young is Holland's memoir of growing up in Washington, D.C. during the 1940s and 50s, and is a deliciously subversive, sensitive journey into her past. Mixing politics (World War II, Senator McCarthy) with personal meditations on fatherhood, mothers and their duties, and "the long dark night of junior high school," Holland gives readers a unique and sharp-eyed look at history as well as hard-earned insight into her own life. A shy, awkward girl with an overbearing stepfather and a bookworm mother, Holland surprises everyone by growing up into the confident, brainy, successful writer she is today. Tough, funny, and nostalgic yet unsentimental, When All the World Was Young is a true pleasure to read.

Customer Reviews:

Brilliant.......2007-05-28

Nostalgically deep yet painfully honest account of a young girl who never quite fit in set in the halcion days of America's golden age.

Realistic of the 1940s and 1950s-----Funny, Sad and Charming.......2007-04-05

WHEN ALL THE WORLD WAS YOUNG is an immensely readable book. Barbara Holland's story kept me interested from start to finish. She left me wanting to know more about her writing career, her marriages and mostly her children. The story had added interest to me because, like Barbara, I also grew up in the Washington, D.C. area.

I could also identify with the distress that she experienced during her school years. So many children are happy until they start school. I guess it's a major awakening when the world intrudes into our lives for the first time. We're on our own with opinionated teachers and other children who may not like us for reasons that we don't understand.

This is a memoir and so not everything is answered, but the true measure of any good story is not wanting it to end.

A summing up.......2007-02-03

"Growing up is the process of learning how many things you can't do and how many people you can't be. When you've winnowed them out, what's left is you." - Barbara Holland

I've said before of author/essayist Barbara Holland that she has a remarkable talent for perceiving the small details of life and living. Or rather, a talent for remembering what she perceives and subsequently bringing it to the attention of the lumpish rest of us.

In mid-2006, Holland wrote a piece for the magazine AARP, "Being 70: The View from Up Here." So, published in 2005, WHEN ALL THE WORLD WAS YOUNG can perhaps be taken as Barbara's final word on the subject of her formative years. Somehow, I don't expect a sequel.

This volume is Holland's episodic narrative of her life from shortly before the beginning of World War II, at which time she was about six, to her first job in the display department of the Hecht Company in her (apparently) very early twenties. Measured against the comparatively happy memoirs of other female writers - Laura Shaine Cunningham (Sleeping Arrangements) and Doris Kearns Goodwin (Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir) come to mind - WHEN ALL THE WORLD WAS YOUNG is surprisingly bittersweet. The author is not reticent about her sternly authoritative stepfather, a self-absorbed mother disengaged from maternalism, her shoplifting phase, her high school abortion, and her wretched first marriage.

As in all of Holland's books that I've read to date, her wry, iconoclastic humor is a joy. She relates how, in the fourth grade, she was given the assignment of reading a passage from the Bible to the class every morning.

"I read my classmates a psalm a day, looking for the most rousing ones to hold my audience. ('Thou hast also given me the necks of mine enemies, that I might destroy them that hate me. They cried, but there was none to save them: even unto the Lord, but he answered them not. Then did I beat them small as dust before the wind. I did cast them out as dirt in the streets.' Psalm 18, perfect for the playground.)"

Because of her talent for perception, she comes across with unorthodox snippets of insight, such as: "Peculiar relatives make good stories in later life, but to a child they're a wobbly rudder." Or this: "Down below the grownup eye level, even the best-kept suburb seethed with action."

I wished WHEN ALL THE WORLD WAS YOUNG was two, three, four times as long. As a child, Barbara was an awkward loner who found companionship with only one or two really close friends, and who otherwise found escape in books. I soon realized that she and I, when growing up, were much alike. And my affection for her has grown accordingly.

I Wish It Hadn't Ended.......2007-01-23

I wish it hadn't ended -- but it ends, just the way it begins, with the perfect sentence. OH my gosh, where to begin. I can only say that I adore Barbara Holland's phrases and analogies. This is memorable stuff, turning me right into an annoying cheerleader along the lines of "You HAVE to read this book!" I feel it's my duty, as a friend and relative, to recommend it to others, especially my three sisters. We were born in Washington, D.C. (post-war), raised in the Virginia suburbs, and frequently visited our aunts in Maryland, in what's now a neighborhood more dangerous than Fallujah, so "When All the World Was Young" has the added allure of familiar nostalgia. But mainly, it's just a perfect memoir: rich, comic, dark, fearlessly honest, revealing, highly comforting. With two children in public high school in the much-touted Fairfax County School System, I feel great heaps of despair over the whole shebang (for lack of ability to better describe our personal education woes and utter lack of "school spirit"). Just reading Ms. Holland's reminiscences about school has bucked me up enormously, really more than anything else ever has. For this alone, I owe her much gratitude, but I'm also thankful for laughing my head off over subjects like the 1950 government's instructions on dealing with nuclear attack. I don't want to give anything else away; incidentally, be forewarned about reading Lynn Harnett's review because she basically gives the whole book away - yikes! For me, "When All The World Was Young" is right up there with Betty MacDonald's memoirs and Cornelia Otis Skinner's "Our Hearts Were Young and Gay", and that's high praise. Highly recommended; thank you, Barbara Holland! (Please keep writing)

An America Neither more Glorious Nor Less Evil, But Simpler and Incredibly Different.......2006-06-13

Unlike many autobiographies, this one avoided two frequent mistakes. First, it did not read like a boring recitation of events which plaques so much nonfiction. Barbara Holland is a gifted and interesting writer. But more importantly, she does not make excuses for, sugercoat, or gloss over her sometimes none too stellar behavior. She avoids the mistake of portraying herself as a heroine, always right, at the mercy of the mistakes of others. Her hobby of shop lifting as a young child is described and explained forthright, not excused. Even at the end of the book as life whirls out of control, she never whines. She always accepts responsibility for her behavior. Although she explains why she was misunderstood or why she was just plain acting badly, she never (like so many autobiograhers) blames anyone and everyone else for her troubles. This is an insightful look into the disturbed life of a sometimes happy, but mostly unhappy childhood, and a brilliant portrayal of the times. Growing up in the late fourties and fifties myself, this book jogged my memory over and over. It truly was a time like no other, an atmophere in American that our children and grandchildren, unfortunately, can never experience. Kids went out to play without supervision and had free rein of the neighborhood. We did not wear bike helmets and knee pads and globs of suntan lotion, and we certainly didn't carry music and cellphones. An innocent (and, as one reviewer says) a not so innocent time, when the world was neither more glorious nor less evil, but truly simpler, quieter, and incredibly, gloriously different.

Average customer rating:

Harrowing, rewarding.
Brilliant book that touches and teaches
Brilliantly original, moving and funny
"This Girl's Life"
Amazing Book

The War at Home: A Memoir-Novel
Nora Eisenberg
Manufacturer: Leapfrog Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Historical | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0967952042

Book Description

"Remarkable. Thrillingly well-crafted. A brilliant novel."-Robert Olen Butler

Lucy Lehman has a secret. Everybody loves her eccentric family but nobody knows what's really going on. Her mother is a respected dance therapist, able to calm the most incorrigible delinquents in the Bronx. Her father, just returned from WW2, is a working class hero. On a good night they'll eat snack food for dinner, do the dishes in the tub while the kids are taking a bath and sing old labor songs. But on a bad night, when dad comes home in one of his dark moods and mom retreats to her bed, surrounded by the empty bottles of pills she's charmed out of neighborhood pharmacists, the insults fly along with the furniture.

Told with wit, understanding, and remarkable pluck, The War at Home is a warts-and-all autobiographical novel in the tradition of The Liar's Club, in which an inseparable brother and sister thrive in spite of the crazy household created by their parents and learn to raise themselves to survive.

The War At Home evokes the more innocent world of New York City in the 1950's, where lonely teenagers can find a safe haven in the Botanical Gardens and the Bronx River speaks of freedom as surely to two Jewish run-aways as to Huckleberry Finn.

"This is a profoundly moving and intelligent evocation of the magnificent terrors of family life, the ones that bind us to childhood forever: beautifully written, deeply felt."-Vivian Gornick

Nora Eisenberg is a Professor of English at the City University of New York. Her work has appeared in the The Partisan Review, The Village Voice Literary Supplement, and Tikkun. She is the co-author of four popular books on writing, most recently The American Values Reader (Allyn & Bacon, 2001). She lives in Manhattan.

Customer Reviews:

Harrowing, rewarding........2004-06-09

This is a coming of age story of a girl and her brother living in a dysfunctional home. There were definitely times when I wanted to shout, "enough!". Still, the novel rings true, emotionally, and the protagonist is exceptionally well drawn, slowly maturing before your eyes. Thankfully, Eisenberg has a great sense of humor and there are some wonderfully lyrical passages. When the characters are briefly happy, so most definitely is the reader.

Brilliant book that touches and teaches.......2002-03-14

This is a brillant book, tracing a young kid's passage through family violece, addiction, pain, and love. The narrator blends the child's immediacy with the adult's wisdom, both touching you and teaching you. It's a real story that engages, reaches into your heart, and reminds you of your own pain and strugges. I love this book. Lucy is a winner, defying all odds--like David Copperfield, but from the Bronx! I can't remember when I read book I liked this much and that stayed with me this long.

Brilliantly original, moving and funny.......2002-02-26

Nora Eisenberg has written a book about growing up that is both achingly moving and hilarious--quite a feat to pull off! The small vignettes about her childhood gave me entrance into her family and neighborhood, and more than that, into life in New York in the 40's and 50's. I loved the honesty and compassion, the beauty and humor on every page of the book. A delicious read!

"This Girl's Life".......2002-02-12

The "War At Home" is a beautifully written menoir-novel of a child, Lucy, struggling to grow up in a chaotic home where her parents are not up to the job in which they find themselves. The author writes in the child's voice with sensitivity and humor, the challenges growing up in a disfunctional family. The bond between Lucy and her brother Nicky is particuarly poignant, as they each find different ways to cope with their family's plight. The author, also, is adept at presenting a balanced picture of her parents, their strengths and weaknesses that gives depth to the story. I loved this book, and reccomend it highly. It stays with you long after you are finished with it.

Amazing Book.......2002-02-08

This is an amazing book. It is the story of children who have to parent their parents. It made me cry but it also made me laugh over and over again. Once you start it, you can't put it down because you're rooting for the kids so hard. It is beautifully written and emotionally so true and satisfying. If you've experienced family violence, alcholism, drug addiction, or madness, you'll connect immemdiately; and if you haven't, you will feel like you have! If you liked This Boy's Life or Angela's Ashes, you'll love The War at Home.

Average customer rating:

The World Is My Home: A Memoir
James A. Michener
Manufacturer: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Authors | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0812978137
Release Date: 2007-01-30

Book Description

James A. Michener was “a Renaissance man, adventurous, inquisitive, energetic, unpretentious and unassuming, with an encyclopedic mind and a generous heart” (The New York Times Book Review). Now, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of this literary legend’s birth, here is the story of his remarkable life, told by the man himself.

In this exceptional memoir, James Michener describes the people, events, and ideas that have shaped his life. Moving backward and forward across time, he writes about the many strands of his experience: his passion for travel; his lifelong infatuation with literature, music, and painting; his liberal credo and his adventures in politics; and the hard work, headaches, and rewards of the writing life. Here at last is the real James Michener, plainspoken, wise, and enormously sympathetic, a man who can truly say, “The world is my home.”

“A sweepingly interesting life . . . Whether he’s having an epiphany over a campout in New Guinea with head-hunting cannibals or getting politically charged by the melodrama of great opera, James A. Michener’s world is a place and a time worth reading about.”
–The Christian Science Monitor

“There are splendid yarns about his wartime doings in the South Pacific. There are hilarious cautionary tales about his service on government commissions. There are wonderful inside stories from the publishing business. And always there is Michener himself–analyzing his own character, assessing himself as a writer, chronicling his intellectual life, giving advice to young writers.”
–Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Michener’s own life makes one of his most engaging tales–a classic American success story.”
–Entertainment Weekly

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books