5 comments about Lobster Chronicles, The: Life on a Very Small Island.

1. I read this after I read F/V Black Sheep because it was also about lobster fishing in New England. It was entertaining and had some very funny moments but it wasn't especially exciting. I liked her stories about the strange characters who live on that island but when it was over I thought she seemed like a lonely person



2. This book chronicles the life of Linda Greenlaw, the author, during a lobster fishing season. Living on a small island off the coast of Maine, the author allows us into her downeast life. We learn some great information on the lobster fishing industry, as well as the lifestyles of the residents of Isle Au Haut.
   
   Some funny anecdotes and a glimpse into life off the coast of Maine make up this short, quick read, book. Being a resident of Maine, myself, I always like to read authors from here. I have yet to be disappointed.



3. I bought and read this book because my Grandfather, Asbury Arthur [Bob] Gray, was borned in Stonington, Maine; just behind the Opera house on Highland Avenue. His Aunt Millie's stove is still on displayed in the General Store and when I walked through the town for the very first time back in 2001, there were people who looked strangely like my Grandfather all over the place. He was a dear old man, with terrific story telling capabilities, many about the sea since he, like Linda Greenlaw, come from a long line of fishermen. There were tales of exploration, and of terror (like the Great Storm of 1873 where his Grandfather, James H Gray, and the crew of the DH Webb survived by hiding out in the Bay of Chaluer, off the coast of the Prince Edward Islands), and of family (although he lost his mother when he was only 10 and was forced to move to Bath and work in the Iron Works because his Dad and his two brothers were at sea). This book is every bit as good as a conversation with Grandpa Gray, the humor and the charm shines right on through. So does the boredom and the chowder... Thank you Linda for letting us share your little island and your great big hospitality! I enjoyed it immensely.



4. I laughed alot! Anyone who has ever lived in a small town will relate to this book. If not you will wish you lived in a small town just for the comedy of it! Linda is a good writer. If you have red any of her other books you already know this! I highly recommend this book!



5. In her debut memoir, The Hungry Ocean, Greenlaw recounted a monthlong swordfishing expedition off the coast of Newfoundland and discussed what it takes to be the world's only female swordfish boat captain. In this second memoir, Greenlaw confronts the joys and perils of living at home. Over forty, with her biological clock ticking, she returns to Isle au Haut, the tiny Maine island that is her birthplace. With hopes of reaffirming ties to her parents and starting a family of her own, she invests in a lobster-fishing business because it is a much "safer" career than swordfishing. But lobsters are scarce, and eligible men are even more elusive. Greenlaw writes about island life with the same plainspoken lyricism and self- effacing humor that elevated her first book to bestselling status. In the middle of the book, she begins to address her fear of loneliness and old age without a spouse or children, as well as the loss of her mother to cancer and the quickly dwindling island population. Unfortunately, she bails out before fully developing any of these compelling themes.

5 comments about Ronald Reagan.

1. Dr. Diggins seems to be an erudite, intelligent man who put some serious time into researching his book. The other reviewers have rightly praised his efforts to look at Reagan through the lense of history and not idealogy, and for his ranking of Reagan with Roosevelt and Lincoln among our greatest presidents.
   
   At the same time, I must confess that having recently read the Reagan Diaries as well as other books dealing with the Reagan legacy like Victory, Bill Bennett's recent second history volume, Reagan "In His Own Hand" etc., I must find that some of the conclusions drawn in this book diverge from the facts and tread familiar academic paths of thought about our great President.
   
   The final negotiations that ended the Cold War occured PRECISELY because Reagan worked on every front to thwart the Soviets. This included Bill Casey flying all over the world covertly, actions to stop Soviet technology acquisition, efforts to make them spend money they didn't have on defense, and a lot more. Reagan mentions anti-communist efforts on a daily basis in the diaries. Also, the preposterous comment that Reagan did nothing to support Solidarity is false on its face - not making speeches about something (even though he did) does not mean inaction. Again, his diaries reveal many efforts on behalf of Solidarity, and Walesa himself gives Reagan great credit for his support. The fact remains that Reagan didn't alter or change his demands on the Soviets when Gorbachev came to power - the final agreement reached was the US STARTING POSITION on disarmement years earlier. His strong stance in negotiations and the arms build up (laughably described as starting under the Carter administration in the book - are you kidding?) drove the Soviets to the table because they literally could not afford to fight anymore. Fighting them on every front was intended from the beginning to realize this result. It is as Reagan described before he became President - his view of the cold war was "we win and they lose".
   
   On a philosophical point, Diggins rightly remarks that Reagan often acted against the conservatives of his time's wishes. This does not make him somehow "less" conservative - just proven right in the argument. All idealogies are constantly in these debates, and Reagan comments on his reviews on the right constantly in his diaries as well, since he was such an avid reader of their writings. Just because the greatest conservative of the last fifty years didn't agree with every midget wonk at National Review or in congress is a comment on the midgets, not him. The line between "classical" and contemporary liberalism also seems to blur in his discussions. Yes, many current conservative thoughts on freedom and liberty are classicly liberal views (as many liberal statist views are classicly conservative), the modern distinctions are all that really matter in current discussion.
   
   I started to read this book with great enthusiasm, as its take on Reagan seemed fresh and interesting, but as I saw conclusion after conclusion follow other tired academic views on Reagan and contradict what I had read him say in his own hand were his views and thoughts, I found it ultimately unhelpful.



2. The dust jacket of this biography claims that John Patrick Diggins is one of America's "most interesting intellectual historians". This description gets two things right - Mr. Diggins is interesting, and Mr. Diggins is undoubtedly a historian. Whether he is much of an intellectual is another matter.
   
   Mr. Diggins' thesis is a peculiar and engaging one - that Reagan is one of the greatest Presidents of our nation, and also one of the most Emersonian, classically liberal Presidents of our time. Diggins, however, does not quite manage to provide definitive proof for either claim, though he does a better job of proving Reagan's intellectual roots than of proving his greatness. The reason for this failure, unfortunately, is not a problem with Diggins' scholarship, but rather an unfortunate case of self-sabotage which begins to show in the latter half of the book. During this section, one wonders if Diggins himself doubts his own thesis. In fact, one wonders if Diggins actually wanted to write a book with said thesis, or if the original argument he wanted to make was as follows: "Ronald Reagan is not a conservative, but even if he was, conservatives can't beat communism in the long run, anyway. Ha ha ha. Neener neener neener."
   
   To this end, many passages within the book are unabashedly, obnoxiously didactic. In fact, one often feels as though one is reading a philosophical essay meant to impugn the purity of American conservatism, rather than a biography of a conservative figure. One of the more absurd of these moments comes near the very end, when Diggins tries to impugn Reagan's conservatism by contrasting his vision with that of Edmund Burke. There are two problems with this analysis - firstly, Diggins misinterprets Burke's quote about the necessity of restraint for rights as implying that a paternalistic government is required to stop people from being greedy. What Burke was actually talking about, of course, was the tendency of people to believe they have a right to everything they want - a dangerous tendency, which often leads to things like the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights (which contradicts itself numerous times). The second problem with this analysis, however, is that Mr. Diggins is assuming that conservatism's nature has not changed at all since Edmund Burke. It is not as though Burke sat down and wrote out a "Constitution of Conservatism". Many conservative thinkers, in fact, believe that deriving a contemporary position from Edmund Burke's writings is impossible. It doesn't help, of course, that Burke was from England, and the conservative tradition in England is almost completely non-applicable to America.
   
   Furthermore, Diggins seems determined to convince his audience that Reagan was not really all that religious, as though there is something shameful in one of our greatest presidents being religious. Diggins also seems fixated on Reagan's fiscal policy, which he often links with the words "greed" and "selfishness." Finally, though Diggins initially credits Reagan with ending the cold war, he later throws in backhanded implications that it had more to do with Gorbachev than Reagan. It is as though Diggins wrote his thesis that Reagan was one of our greatest Presidents and then choked on it and had to go back and assure his readers that while Reagan was one of our greatest Presidents, he was still the selfish, shortsighted clod that Academics envision him to be.
   
   The existence of these flaws is unfortunate, because the book is historically excellent and so readable that it almost rivals a Harry Potter novel. Ultimately, I must recommend the book, with reservation. I give Mr. Diggins three stars for interesting history, and no stars for his intellectual pretensions. It is a pity. If Mr. Diggins had the courage to stick to his original thesis rather than frantically reassure his audience that he was not one of those awful Reagan-loving freaks, we might be reading the best Reagan biography yet.



3. There is already a vast amount of literature on the life of Ronald Reagan, and it shows no sign of abating. The 40th President of the United States is a continuing subject of fascination as the man who reasserted his country's superpower dominance, engineering the fall of communism and the end of the Cold War.
   
   His domestic policies, dominated by his passionate belief in small government and the ability of individuals to shape their own destinies, earned him the enmity of liberals, yet even on his own side of politics he is not the unquestioned hero as for example his contemporary, Margaret Thatcher, is among British conservatives.
   
   I recall a conversation with a retired American diplomat who preferred the unsuccessful 1964 Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater as the true founder of the modern conservative movement in the US, dismissing Reagan as an opportunist, a former Democrat who could see the way the wind was blowing, jumping on the bandwagon in the right place at the right time.
   
   John Patrick Diggins seeks to dismiss this argument. For him Reagan deserves to be rated alongside George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt as one of the greatest presidents of all time. He believes history will vindicate Reagan in the same way it did Lincoln, whose reputation was besmirched for many decades after his death, but more about that relationship later.
   
   The problem that Diggins and any other biographer of Reagan face is proximity. As the author states with some exasperation in the bibliographical notes, more than 80 per cent of the material in the presidential library remains classified and can be obtained only through the laborious and often unsuccessful method of applying under the Freedom of Information Act.
   
   Undeterred, he turns to other sources, notably the evidence emerging from Soviet archives of the relationship with the Soviet Union's last President, Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as the burgeoning amount of literature discussing the origins behind the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union two years after Reagan left office.
   
   The result is a scholarly, meticulously-researched book that seeks to understand not just the president of the 1980s, but the film actor of the 30s, 40s and 50s, the California Governor of the 60s and 70s and the man who passionately believed in a new beginning for his country - a rebirth that came to be called "Morning in America".
   
   For Diggins, the man who took office in January 1981 had three dragons to slay: the nuclear arms race that threatened the world with extinction; the expanding welfare state that increased dependency and lowered self-esteem and the third, most controversially "a joyless religious inheritance that told people their kingdom was not of this world and they needed to be careful about pursuing happiness in case they enjoyed it".
   
   This was hardly the language that the increasingly influential religious right would have wanted to hear but Reagan could see no conflict in embracing the rewards of this world - after all, it was what trade unions had been advocating for their members for half a century. He may have been ushering in the decade of Wall Street and `Greed is Good', but it is the author's insistence that the president wanted Americans to enjoy the pursuit of wealth and not be ashamed of the bounty they accumulated. It was, Diggins asserts, a necessary step in order to restore Americans' confidence in themselves after the debacle of the Vietnam War, Watergate, the Iran hostages humiliation and a decade of economic malaise.
   
   Diggins does not hold back on the obvious black marks of the Reagan presidency, most notably the Iran Contra scandal, occurring deep into Reagan's second term and at least partially resorting from the arrogance that comes from years of unbroken power.
   
   As with the Nixon presidency 15 years previously, there had been the subtle growth of a macho `can do' culture with little regard for moral or ethical objections. The difference being that Reagan quickly shouldered the blame in a televised mea culpa address in which the Great Communicator was at his best: "A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not...what began as a strategic opening to Iran deteriorated in its implementation into trading arms for hostages."
   
   I take issue with the final chapter in which the author seeks to link Reagan even closer to Lincoln by likening Reagan's battle against communism to Lincoln's struggle to free the slaves. It is for readers to follow Diggin's closely argued reasoning and come to their conclusions, but the fact is Lincoln went to war not to free slaves but to save the Union and that the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 was a ploy to turn foreign opinion against the Confederacy and disrupt it internally at a time when the conflict was going badly for the North.
   
   However, it is certainly worth noting that the Cold War was won bloodlessly while the Civil War resulted in the deaths of more Americans than have been killed in all conflicts combined in the century-and-a-half since.
   
   There are times when this book stumbles into academic denseness, and I am unconvinced that Diggins has made his case for Reagan to be elevated to the heights of the presidential pantheon, but for those seeking an insight into the mind of the man who radically altered the face of American politics, it is to be recommended.



4. For the most part, the biographies that have been written about Ronald Reagan in the years since he left office have suffered from one of two defects. Either they have been overly critical and dismissive and failed to grasp the truly revolutionary aspects of the Reagan Presidency, or they have been overly worshipful, something more akin to adulation than real scholarship. In both cases, the differing interpretations of Reagan have likely been based on ideological differences and political resentments of the 1980s and beyond.In Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History, John Patrick Diggins takes a worthy first step toward moving beyond either the worshipful or the hate-filled evaluations of the Reagan Presidency and gives America's 40th President the respectful, if not always positive, evaluation that he deserves.
   
   Reagan's singular achievement, Diggins argues, was the role he played in bringing a peaceful end to the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Though he came into the White House with a promise to rebuild the American military and confronted what his advisers contended were Soviet-sponsored regimes in nations ranging from Nicaragua to Angola, it's clear that, very early in his Administration, if not before then, Reagan became committed to the idea of drastically reducing, if not eliminating, nuclear weapons.
   
   Much to the consternation of his neo-conservative foreign policy team, Reagan made overtures to the Soviets as early as April 1981, when he wrote a letter to Leonid Brezhnev while recovering from an assassination attempt. The Brezhnev dialog never went anywhere, largely because Brezhnev was apparently too stubborn and too ill to actually pursue serious negotiations. Similarly, the short-lived reigns of his two immediate successors made pursuing peace impossible. As Reagan himself once quipped, "They keep dying on me."
   
   It was only with the rise to power of Mikhail Gorbachev, who required reduced tensions with the U.S. to pursue his ultimately doomed strategy of reforming Communism, that Reagan was able to pursue his desire to bring both countries out of the horrifying doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction.
   
   One interesting thing that Diggins' book brings out is the extent to which many of Reagan's conservative supporters became convinced in the late 1980s that their leader had sold America down the river. Many of the same people who, on the occasion of his funeral in 2004, lionized him as the man who had "won" the Cold War. Among the critics were William F. Buckley, Jr., George Will, and Henry Kissinger, all of whom seemed convinced at the time that the Cold War and the tensions with the USSR were a permanent and irreversible fact (Jeane Kirkpatrick had in fact said as much in her writings prior to being named U.N. Ambassador).
   
   Reagan, Diggins, argued, never accepted the neo-conservative view of history and rejected the idea that the Cold War was a permanent fact of life that could only end with an exchange of nuclear missiles that would destroy both nations, if not most of the civilized world. In fact, rather than being a true conservative, Diggins persuasively argues that Reagan was really more of a traditional old-style liberal, what we would today call a libertarian, and that his ideas were influenced more by the libertarianism of Thomas Paine and the romanticism of Ralph Waldo Emerson than conservative hero Edmund Burke. While Reagan courted social conservatives and neo-cons, he did not share their views on the inherent sinfulness and fallibility of man.
   
   Diggins goes criticize some aspects of Reagan's record, most notably, in the domestic sphere, and he rightly criticizes him for the mis-handling of the Iran Contra affair. But, like I said, this is a biography not a hagiography. On the whole, though, Diggins does an excellent job of rescuing our 40th President from his detractors and his worshipers. Hopefully, other historians will follow suit.



5. "Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom and the Making of History" is a philosophical study of Ronald Reagan and his place in history. It is not a true biography but employs biographical details to support its points.
   
   Through much of this book I was unsure whether its purpose was to praise Reagan or to debunk his myth. Author John Patrick Diggins cites facts about Reagan to dispute many of the conventional wisdoms about him. He claims that Reagan was not as conservative or as hawkish as is widely believed. He delves into Reagan's days with General Electric, his confrontations with campus radicals in Sacramento, negotiations with Gorbachev, his flirtations with Nicaraguan Contras and Jonas Savimbi of Angola. He presents Reagan as an Emersonian idealist whose distrust of big government guided his political career. At times it is not clear whether Diggins is concluding that Reagan is a hero or a failure. Ultimately he finds Lincolnesque qualities in his subject.
   
   This is not a first book for one searching for the Reagan lore. For biographies, look elsewhere. After you have absorbed those, look here for a deeper dip into the philosophical underpinnings of the Reagan Revolution.

No comments about Dear Tom (Radio Collection).

No comments about Boss of Bosses CST.

5 comments about Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal.

1. I have always been facinated with the old west and its heroes. This book by Stuart Lake was very well written and exceptionally entertaining. I am in the middle of reading it for the second time. Especially interesting are the quotes from Wyatt Earp himself. The legends own words bring a sense of realism and authenticity to the writers story. I would recomend this book to anyone and hope the publisher puts it back in print.



2. A tremendous amount of research went into this book and it shows. Very well done.



3. I just finished this most interesting biography of Wyatt Earp and I found myself both fascinated and a bit skeptical. I was fascinated by the life of Wyatt Earp as it was written by a man who interviewed him over a period of time. I was impressed with the research that the author, Stuart Lake, appeared to have put into his project. He had interviewed a number of surviving witnesses to the life of Earp. He also had a number of newspaper accounts and appears to have located a number of valuable documents in the course of his research. The book wasted little time in getting to Wyatt's career in law enforcement in the American West. The bulk, and I mean just about ALL, of the book is spent on his career in Wichta and Dodge City, Kansas as well as Tombstone, Arizona. The many famous (and not so famous) outlaws and lawmen of the Old West move in and out of the story on a regular basis. Stuart lists an almost endless number of feats of daring by Wyatt Earp in the process of making his case for Earp as the greatest of all men of the American West. Many of the events are depicted in great and compelling detail. Many of the parties are quoted, presumeably, from the memory of Earp himself. There is never a dull moment in the life of our hero, especially considering that all this action took place over a relatively short period of time. The book, at times, reads like a well-researched dime novel. For a chance to re-live the wild, wild West, it has little competition.

   As for my skepticism, I came away wondering first of all; did all this really happen? Perhaps it did but our hero (and I am not trying to be facetious, Wyatt Earp truly is a hero) does it all seemingly with one hand tied behind his back. My other reservation has to do with the politics of the times and places. There are only good guys and bad guys and no exploration as to the motivations of either side except for good and evil. I found myself wondering if I were the only source of information about the events of my time and I had to relate to the world in 50 years or so the events I had witnessed. Take the Invasion of Iraq, the presidential election of 2000, or the impeachment of President Clinton. I certainly could make a claim as to who was the "bad guy" and who was the "good guy" while somneone else of a different political persuasion could make the opposite claim. There is no one to speak for the opposing view in this book. The author quotes frequently from the Tombstone "Nugget" but always prefacing the unreliability of the source. I found myself wondering if there might not have been something of another side to the events in Tombstone. The labor strife in mining communities of those days was very significant; just study the history of Butte, MT. Is it possible that Earp supported the powers that be and the miners looked for support from wherever they could get it? Maybe not, but it would have been helpful if the author tried to give a bit of an impartial look at the motives of the opposing side in Tombstone. That said, and realizing that this is about Wyatt Earp, not the miners, this is a book well worth the time of any fan of the American West.




4. It's long been suspected that either Wyatt Earp embellished the stories told to Lake, Lake embellished the stories Earp told him OR Wyatt's WIFE encouraged Stuart Lake to embellish the stories through her own exaggerations and what not... whatever the case, this story is not the true tale of Wyatt Earp, the man.
   
   It's a decent fictional account and contains many of the legends that made him famous, but ultimately time has revealed it for what it is... a yarn.
   
   Read it to be entertained, but don't read it if you're wanting to know the true Wyatt Earp.



5. Wyatt Earp Frontier Marshall starts with a bang and just gets better! It tells the amazing story the man and the legend. The forward starts with:
   
   "Wyatt Earp was a man of action. He was born, reared, and lived in an environment which held words and theories of small account, in which sheer survival often, and eminence invariably, might be achieved through deeds alone. Withal, Wyatt Earp was a thinking man, whose mental processes were as quick, as direct, as unflustered by circumstances and as effective as the actions they inspired."
   
   This book is a story of a time gone by, of adventure and amazing people such as Wyatt Earp, Virgil Earp, Morgan Earp, Doc Holliday, Bat Masterson and more. The place was the old west. The men were a breed of hearty soles who survived by their wits, cunning and athleticism. Some died young; others (such as Wyatt) lived to a ripe old age. All had amazing stories to tell.
   
   Stuart Lake worked closely with Wyatt Earp in the closing months of his life to prepare this book. He also interviewed scores of eyewitnesses to verify circumstantial details, studied hundreds of document and files of frontier newspapers, and exchanged thousands of letters between competent old-timers in preparing this work. In other words Lake did his homework!
   
   It is obvious Lake is deeply impressed with Wyatt Earp and takes on the job with a humble attitude. In the closing lines of the forward he says: "... --my own feeling in offering the life-story of Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal, is one of notable inadequacy in the presence of the material of which this book is made."
   
   Wyatt Earp's adventures are at the frontiers outposts of Dodge City, Wichita, and Tombstone. The story of the O.K. Corral in Tombstone is a highlight, but there are many other highlights as well in this great work. Highly recommended for anyone with a yearning for real life adventure!
   
   The Re-Discovery of Common Sense: A Guide to: The Lost Art of Critical Thinking

No comments about Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare.

3 comments about The Truth at Last.

1. Good light reading and revealing for someone who grew up in that era. The other side of the story.



2. The main problem with Christine Keeler's version of the truth is that it has come far to late. Most of the named participants in the Profumo Affair are dead and cannot verify her accuracy. I am always suspicious of any ghost written autobiography being the actual words of subject, rather than a few taped conversations padded out with names, dates, facts, and figures gathered from newspaper archives and spiced up to sell more copies. This book has the style of a diligent journalist who has combed through the 60's archives and thrown in references to some of the more notorious underworld figures and celebrities, sex orgies and perversions, cloaked it with 60's nostalgia and social history of the times, and added the names of people whose paths might possibly have crossed, but not necessarily at the same time.
   
   Given that it has taken 40 years for the book to appear, one can only assume that Ms. Keeler is supplementing her old age pension. The scandal she become involved in is very well documented. Christine Keeler was the early 60's party girl whose involvement with the War Minister and a Russian spy at the same time brought down McMillan's government. Not only was she was THE icon of the early 60's, but she was the kind of girl your mother warned you about.
   
   It is hard for anyone who was not raised in Britain in the middle of the last century to understand just how rigid and close knit Britain's class structure was at the time. WWII notwithstanding, the system had reverted to its pre-war elitism, and no one with the wrong connections, and certainly not the wrong accent, no matter how well educated, could ever cross that barrier except by an exceptional stroke of good luck. The country was run by an elite club who had been to the "right" schools" and had the "right" background, and the system was well designed to keep the lower classes out - just try getting a clerical or secretarial job with the Foreign Office if you were not a debutant or otherwise very well connected! Likewise, the moral code was equally strict. Divorce was difficult to get and a shameful secret. Unwed pregnancy was hushed up, abortion was still illegal, and drugs were only to be found among underworld characters. The strongest four letter word one heard was damn! The porn industry was deep underground and not mainstream at all. Homosexual activity could send the perpetrators to jail. When a teenage girl from a working class background fell into association with the wealthy, the titled aristocracy, leading politicians and other celebrities, her head was understandably turned. The sixties revolution was just about to begin.
   
   Prior to reading her story I had always felt sorry for Christine Keeler, feeling that she was a sacrificial lamb taking the heat for a sophisticated group of men who had closed ranks against her - "used up and discarded" came to mind. Instead her story, whether in her own words or ghost written, reads like one of those salacious "tell alls" in the Sunday tabloids: "I took a lorry ride to shame!" My slavish heroin habit led me to the gutter!" "From choir girl to vice girl", and totally shatters the impression of an innocent naif. The constant theme of the book is poor little stupid me, repeated ad nauseum. Oh woe! She was cheated and used by all who came along to exploit her notoriety. Her husbands, her lawyer, her agents, her friends.
   
   Rather than the innocent naïve young teenager, in her own words, Christine was a hard-living party girl by the time she met Steven Ward and a seasoned veteran of one night stands, casual sex, abortion, and survival in the demimonde London drinking and night clubs. She admits to purchasing drugs, skipping out on the rent, passing bad cheques, stealing a car, and helping to fence stolen jewellery, not to mention hanging out with West Indian thugs, accepting money for sex now and again, and being the notorious Peter Rachman`s mistress on and off. Sounds as if she was well on the way to being a career criminal! While trying to establish a modelling career she was working as a semi-nude showgirl in a glorified clip joint where the dancers were expected to persuade the clients to purchase grossly overpriced drinks, and also charged a fee for sitting at their table. Although she drops the names of many celebrated members, there is no evidence that she actually met them.
   
   There are a number of questions:
   (a) why would any woman, even after 40 years, admit to sleazy activities that were just not done by anyone who wished to be considered even half respectable at that time. Interracial affairs, drugs, casual sex etc. It is hard to have any sympathy with a woman who at the time would be considered a "bad lot".
   
   (b) If, as Ms. Keeler claims, her IQ is 141, then why has she never learned how to earn an honest living. A woman can only be the glamorous sex symbol for a certain number of years, then the looks begin to fade and younger women move in. With the £23,000 she earned for the sale of her story to the News of the World, at the time a secretary was making about £600 a year, she could have at least taken a class in investments, or basic business management, rather than sign everything put in front of her without reading it as she claims. But perhaps that would have involved some effort on her part. Even after taxes, Christine had more money than the average working couple would see in a lifetime, but within a few years she was living on welfare in a council flat far outside central London. After her release from prison, she went right back to the hard party scene, and two brief marriages. She had a good chance to rebuild her life, and she blew it.
   
   Maybe Ms. Keeler should have just kept quiet, remained an icon and let everyone think what they will.



3. I ordered this book after seeing the movie. I enjoyed the movie more

No comments about A Corner of Paradise (Reminiscence).

5 comments about Katharine Hepburn.

1. To quote Dan Ford, the grandson and biographer of John Ford, who for not good reason plays a large part in this biography, Leaming's book is a "cheap, exploitive work of fiction that pretends to be a biography; it's a romance novel that uses well-known and therefore marketable names for its characters. . . ." New York Times, May 14, 1995

   With regard to the purported thoroughness of the research, the author of an upcoming biography of Spencer Tracy, Selden West, said in part in the same New York Times edition:

   "Of the many instances of Ms. Leaming's distortions and omissions, perhaps the most egregious relates to the cache of love letters to Ford that forms the back bone of this book. As Ms. Leaming tells us "it was during the several weeks I spent in Bloomington studying the Ford papers that Katharine Hepburn first came alive for me in a way that made this book possible to write. Day after day, I would arrive at the library as the doors opened and begin to read Kate's letters to Ford -- letters unlike any others of hers I was to see. I read at breakneck speed all the while marking pages to be photocopied, pages I was later to read countless times until the words and phrases were carved in my memory."

   These are the facts. The Lily library in Bloomington owns five letters from Ford to Ms. Hepburn and sixteen communications from Ms. Hepburn to Ford. Of these sixteen several are postcards and telegrams and half are dated after 1960 (Their serious involvement was in 1936-37, long before Ms. Hepburn met Tracy.) At most there are two love letters. The day after day regimen that Ms. Leaming describes is only possible if she is the slowest reader alive, she is reading the same letters over and over again or she is misrepresenting the Lily holdings.

   The last seems clear when one re-examines Ms. Leaming's story. "In the spring of 1940 when Kate returned to Los Angeles . . . . her relationship with Ford was still somehow unresolved. Their correspondence shows that they never stopped caring for each other. Gradually the lovers became loving friends. Yet there was no demarcation, no definite unambiguous yes or no. To read their letters from that time is to watch them struggle, sometimes uncomfortably to forge a new kind of relationship."

   There is no correspondence between Katharine Hepburn and John Ford from the spring of 1940 -- indeed from the entire 1940s - at the Lily library, or to my knowledge, anywhere else. In the Lily library there is no correspondence between Ford and Ms Hepburn at all dated between 1939 and 1954 - both those years are represented by single letters; the first a thank you note, the second a film offer. The next contact is a postcard in 1960. Ms. Leaming has bent the fact to establish a romantic triangle that simple never existed."




2. To quote Dan Ford, the grandson and biographer of John Ford, who for not good reason plays a large part in this biography, Leaming's book is a "cheap, exploitive work of fiction that pretends to be a biography; it's a romance novel that uses well-known and therefore marketable names for its characters. . . ." New York Times, May 14, 1995

   With regard to the purported thoroughness of the research, the author of an upcoming biography of Spencer Tracy, Selden West, said in part in the same New York Times edition:

   "Of the many instances of Ms. Leaming's distortions and omissions, perhaps the most egregious relates to the cache of love letters to Ford that forms the back bone of this book. As Ms. Leaming tells us "it was during the several weeks I spent in Bloomington studying the Ford papers that Katharine Hepburn first came alive for me in a way that made this book possible to write. Day after day, I would arrive at the library as the doors opened and begin to read Kate's letters to Ford -- letters unlike any others of hers I was to see. I read at breakneck speed all the while marking pages to be photocopied, pages I was later to read countless times until the words and phrases were carved in my memory."

   These are the facts. The Lily library in Bloomington owns five letters from Ford to Ms. Hepburn and sixteen communications from Ms. Hepburn to Ford. Of these sixteen several are postcards and telegrams and half are dated after 1960 (Their serious involvement was in 1936-37, long before Ms. Hepburn met Tracy.) At most there are two love letters. The day after day regimen that Ms. Leaming describes is only possible if she is the slowest reader alive, she is reading the same letters over and over again or she is misrepresenting the Lily holdings.

   The last seems clear when one re-examines Ms. Leaming's story. "In the spring of 1940 when Kate returned to Los Angeles . . . . her relationship with Ford was still somehow unresolved. Their correspondence shows that they never stopped caring for each other. Gradually the lovers became loving friends. Yet there was no demarcation, no definite unambiguous yes or no. To read their letters from that time is to watch them struggle, sometimes uncomfortably to forge a new kind of relationship."

   There is no correspondence between Katharine Hepburn and John Ford from the spring of 1940 -- indeed from the entire 1940s - at the Lily library, or to my knowledge, anywhere else. In the Lily library there is no correspondence between Ford and Ms Hepburn at all dated between 1939 and 1954 - both those years are represented by single letters; the first a thank you note, the second a film offer. The next contact is a postcard in 1960. Ms. Leaming has bent the fact to establish a romantic triangle that simple never existed."




3. I wish I could give it a big fat zero but anyway...
   The author is delusional and puts forth her own agenda totally ignoring facts. She has this unrequited love between John Ford and Katharine which only she has ever wrote about. Unfortunately since them other writers take it as truth.
   Kate herself said in her "All About Me" documentary that despite what many thought she was never romantically involved with him. Yet according to this author this was the love of Kate's life when everyone knows it was without a doubt Spencer Tracy who this author totally deems a horrible human being.
   A total BS book lets hope someone out there can write as close to the truth book on this great lady not this trashy drivel????



4. It may be truth or fiction, as other reviewers complained, but the book is written well and makes for a good read.



5. In light of the fact that Ms. Hepburn has now been revealed as a lesbian whose affair with the gay Spencer Tracy was a big beard for the public, I find all these reviews objecting to any love relationship with John Ford because Spencer was her great love fascinating.
   
   Barbara Leaming is a brilliant biographer. She somehow missed what William Mann et al. picked up on once Ms. Hepburn died - that is, that she, like everyone else in Hollywood's golden age was gay. If Hepburn was a lesbian, then Tracy was definitely gay. Gee, I wonder how Barbara missed that. Tsk tsk all that research, all that work and somehow that just never came up. She must not have talked to the right anonymous and inside sources. She probably depended on things like interviews with people who knew Hepburn, her private papers, studio documents, etc. She didn't know that in order to get info on Spencer Tracy, for instance, you have to go to secret gay flop houses.
   
   As for John Ford - in a recent documentary about John Ford, we hear a tape recording between Ford and Katharine Hepburn made while he was very ill in which he tells her he loves her. Dan Ford was taping an encounter with them, went to get something in his car, and left the recorder running. The documentary states that Ford worshipped her (of course, you have to realize that Ford has now been outed as well). Since I head the tape recording, why should I believe any of you that there was no relationship? Was it love on Hepburn's part? I don't know. There was something, though.
   
   Why people find all this endlessly fascinating, I have no idea, especially when one book contradicts the other. I'm supposed to believe that she and Spencer were gay, that Spencer was the only love of her life, that she was a big fat phony. Frankly, it's hard to believe anything.
   
   I do, however, believe that Barbara Leaming is a wonderful writer and biographer. Her bios of Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles were excellent. I have no respect for James Robert Parrish, who is third rate, or people like William Mann who push forward their own agenda - as long, of course, that the person is dead. Wouldn't want a lawsuit now, would we.

1 comments about Adventures of Big Foot Wallace.

1. Big-Foot Wallace is a true Texas icon. He was on the famous Miers Expedition which explored West Texas. He also served as one of the original Texas Rangers. The reader does't know if what he reads in the story actually happend. Much of if did, but Duval added some stories to make it a better yarn. The humor is dry and understated fitting with typical West Texas sensiblity.