5 comments about Shadow of the Almighty: The Life and Testament of Jim Elliot (Lives of Faith).

1. All too often people remember Jim Elliot as one of the 5 who were killed trying to take the message of Jesus to a stone age tribe. This book shows that Jim Elliot was more than that one event. In the book you see that he lived for God to the same degree that he died for God. A reader of this book will see that they too can live a totally dedicated life for God. This book is a real apathy killer.



2. This is my absolute favorite book of all time. In an age when I struggle to find like-minded people around me, Jim Elliot encourages and inspires my heart. In an introduction recently added to the book, Elisabeth Elliot says it all. She describes how HUNDREDS of young men over the years have come up to her at conferences or book signings and told her "that book changed my life." God answered Jim Elliot's prayer that he would be "A testament to the value of knowing God." It's so amazing to me to think how God could use this one man to reach so many people. Great book. If you are a young guy like me and wanting to live earnestly for Christ, you've got to read this book.



3. Shadow of the Almighty is by far the best biography I have ever read!!! It has been said that "You will be the same today, except for the people you meet and the books you read", I have found this to be very true in my life.
   
   I feel you can glean so many spiritual nuggets from this book. From raising kids, praying for them, allowing God to use them, the importance of eating healthy and exercising, the value of education and when education is taking the place of God and true knowledge of Him....
   
   Reading this book, almost makes the movie End of the Spear seem shallow. Unless you know the history of these men's lives before they went into missions it is easy to be disillusioned and think that a group of over zealous guys decided to go and reach the savage Auca Indianans, which is not the case. It was an absolute calling of God on each of their lives that God had been preparing them for most of their lives (at least this is the case with Jim Elliot). Even Elizabeth Elliot, Jim's wife, had the calling on her life. They were spiritually, intellectually, and physically prepared. Yes, they were a group of young, good looking, and fun guys, but they also were spiritually mature beyond their years and they knew their calling.
   
   Elizabeth Elliot began compiling journal entries and letters of Jim's immediately after his death to begin the writing of Shadow of the Almighty, while the hurt and sting of her lose was still fresh! You will not find regret, resentment, bitterness or anger in her writing; only a life devoted to God even unto death. So while the book focuses on the life of Jim, remember it was his newly young widowed wife who wrote the very words contained within its pages.
   
   I guess what so impresses me about this book, is that it is more than the retelling of Jim's life. Throughout the book are original writings of Jim's, you see what makes his heart beat, his passion, his frustrations, his surrendered obedience, his incredible faith. You will see God's sovereignty, His hand, leading and weaving Jim's life and death.
   
   The story begins with his childhood, and continues on up to his death. Really his story still carries on today. How many people has Jim's life impacted even now 50 years later? While in college ,Jim at one point lets His grades suffer a bit so that he can focus on earning the Degree of A.U.G. (Approved Under God). I am so impressed with chapter 3, here you will find a handsome, athletic, intelligent young man keep his focus on the Lord in an atmosphere that pulls most people away. At this point he doesn't even take his parents advice, if it is not what he is hearing from the Spirit. His obedience to Christ makes him a true leader among his classmates.
   Following is a journal entry of Jim's, it show the wisdom and insight he had as a young man. "No one warns young people to follow Adam's example. He waited until God saw his need. Then God made Adam sleep, prepared for his mate, and brought her to him. We need more of this 'being asleep' in the will of God. Then we can receive what He brings us in His own time, if at all. Instead we are bloodhounds after a partner, considering everyone we see until our minds are so concerned with the sex problem that we can talk of nothing else when bull-session time comes around. It is true that a fellow cannot ignore women-but he can think of them as he ought-as sisters, not as sparring partners!"



4. The insight, sensitivity, and nobleness of character found in these pages would be notable if they were found in the words of a novel. The fact that they also serve as a historical record and the loving tribute of a devoted widow make them profound. The challenge offered to the reader by the example and set by Jim Elliot further enhances this book to palce it among the very finest I have ever encountered.



5. I highly recommend reading this book. The passion for being a missionary starts here in Jim Elliot's life. Don't miss this wonderful story and testimony of Jim's passion for witnessing about Christ.

2 comments about Israel Through My Lens: Sixty Years As a Photojournalist.

1. As a photographer, I loved this book. As good as the photographs are, the writing is even better. Great stories about working as a Time photographer in the Mid East, growing up in Europe during WWII, and wonderful vignettes about Israeli leaders. Highly recommended.



2. David Rubinger has laid it out as he saw it and lived it. This is a VERY personal book with little if anything held back. From his youth to the present, Rubinger gives a verbal as well as photographic picture of himself and the Sate of Israel growing up, maturing and "getting on". From his time in the British army to the horrific death of a woman he cared for deeply, this book tells it all. It is easy reading yet compelling. I was carried into a very personal environment and felt as if I were at each event, meeting each person, taking part in each "adventure". David Rubinger's life appears to be a string of wonderful and not-so-wonderful experiences. And you are right there. The country comes alive through the eyes and life of this exceptional man. I have read it twice and have given it as gifts to friends. Oh, yes, I highly recommend this book!!

5 comments about Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare.

1. A TERRIFIC book!
   The author has succeeded in sifting through a wealth of incidental knowledge and historically-based inference to provide any attentive reader with a coherent, chronological life of the Bard that reads like an epic novel.
   Is every shred of it factual and unable to be presented in a different light?
   No.
   No biography is.
   But such is perhaps especially the case with Shakespeare, extant documentation being as fragmentary as it is. In uncountable details he will forever be a mystery, but what a blasted good interpretation Greenblatt has given us here.
   Everywhere, and by that I mean on practically every page of these 390, the author employs phrases such as "it seems likely that," or "this being the case, Shakespeare would have," or "Then, sometime in the mid 1580's," or "it is possible that hints may lie..." in order to get the point across. In this sense, there is nothing positively dishonest in these pages, but rather, we see an almost constant reference to the author's need to be speculative.
   His method is to begin each chapter with some bare-bones or otherwise undisputed sort of "fact" [if you will] and then proceed onward, enfleshing this skeleton with the sinew and muscle of corroborating evidence.
   Is some of it hearsay?
   Indeed, yes!
   But for me, [someone who is convinced that being any sort of Shakespearean purist is a waste of time], I just merrily flip the pages, reading like a voracious tiger. And tiger-like, blissfully oblivious of what I do not know. When it comes to Will-ology, if someone like Harold Bloom is frustrated "not because we do not know enough, but because there is not enough to know..." then, surely I myself am not going to lose any sleep over the issue of Bard-bio accuracy!
   Greenblatt's Shakespeare emerges as a man capable of forming the most passionate love stories and poems, while he himself endures an unhappy marriage, and enjoys few amorous adventures. Here is a man who creates the raucous Falstaff, and is himself not necessarily the life of the party. A man who associates with the greatest revelers of his day, and yet does not seem to succumb to the same depths of debauchery and criminal low-dealings as did they. A man who rose from ignoble beginnings to the heights of fame, success, and riches. An enigma in so many ways, from start to finish. The glovemaker's son, destined to command entire sections of modern-day bookstores, four centuries on. That is who you meet here.
   I could go on and on about specifics of the book, but I won't. There are many synopses you can find that would be better than mine. Perhaps the most useful thing I can say is that reading literary biography can be about as exciting as eating a bowl of dust. This book was not like that at all. It was exciting, and engaging, from page one to 390. And fun.
   Not that I've read very many, but for now I am going to conclude that this is the best book about Will.
   In the world!



2. This book illuminates the underpinnings of coded language and its place in American literature and contemporary culture. If the reader takes away only that, one will be open to better understanding the artistry of so many writers, musicians and painters. The extreme violence of daily English life in the 16th and 17th centruries is also well told - again offering greater insight into not just the motivations, but the personalities of the people who would begin the European settlement of America. By creating an accessible story about the western world's celebrity author, Stephen Greenblatt exposes the ferocity of the historical entaglement of religion and political power to many outside academia, and explains some of the historical context of the religious and political conflicts of our own century.
   
   Will of the World also gives insight into American social and cultural history and I found that it deepened my understanding of jazz and hip hop - two musical forms that evolved from as a response to violence and cultural supression by a majority in political power.
   
   Reading Will of the World only as a literary biography is limiting. Greenblatt created a story that has the power to enlighten as much as Shakespeare's own work does. Living in New England where so many English settled, I inherited a culture with traditions and rituals that have held power because they are rooted in the needs of humanity - our need to see on a stage the range of human emotion, the complexity of feelings and behavior that we all live with every day.
   
   I enjoyed Greenblatt's suppositions about Shakespeare's life, but I found myself caring less about who the man was, and more about not just his own cultural legacy, but the legacy that Americans inherited from him in a broader sense: our ability to use words to question power, authority and evil; to use theatrical expositions as a starting point for politcal and social discussion; and especially American's ability to create art from a multiplicity of sources so that the weaving of pagan rituals, religious spiritualism, cultural and economic realities, and social and political conditions combine in an effort to help humans to progress toward a more fair, just and pleasurable life. Greenblatt wrote an important book. I hope it is read and discussed widely.



3. I have been a Shakespeare scholar since college, and I am 68 Years old. This was the best book about the Bard that I have ever read. The writing is clear, he relates the times to the plays, and his criticisms are cogent.



4. William Shakespeare (1564-1616) was the greatest playwright ever to grace the stage and page in the English language; he also remains the most elusive of biographical figures. Biographers who tackle the Bard undertake an exercise in conjecture, for even though by the seventeenth century England was a record-keeping society--the better to busy subsequent scholars--huge gaps remain in even the most basic reconstructions of Shakespeare's life. Greenblatt's subtitle, then, is a misnomer, for we really do not know how Shakespeare became Shakespeare, how a person from a provincial town, a modest family, and no wealth or personal connections, chose his vocation and "wrote the most important body of imaginative literature of the last thousand years" (p. 12).
   
   The exact date of Shakespeare's birth (April 23 or 26?) is debated, and as for his death, we have no surviving account of the details of his last days, final illness and passing. All points in between, too, are matters of hypothesis and speculation. We think we know the name of his Stratford school teacher. The decade or more after he presumably finished school, and before he left Stratford for London, are known as the "lost years" because we know virtually nothing about this period of his life. Was he apprenticed to be a butcher? Did he follow in his father's footsteps as a glove maker? Perhaps he did a stint as a private tutor? Ambiguity qualifies all suggestions. We do know that at age eighteen (November 1582) he married Anne Hathaway, age twenty-six, and by the time he was twenty-one he had three children. Some time after that he left his wife and children and moved to London, although exactly how, when or why we do not know. Similar ignorance clouds our knowledge about his written work. We have, for example, only one manuscript autograph that was written by Shakespeare. Were his 154 sonnets written to a certain gay lover, or to a wider audience of men and women? "There is no way of achieving any certainty," writes Greenblatt, for "no one has been able to offer more than guesses, careful or wild." We have none of his personal letters, none of the books he surely owned, and nothing that is overtly self-revealing in his writings that otherwise revealed more about the complexities of human interiority than any other texts. After roughly twenty years in London, Shakespeare returned to Stratford and the family he had left behind, but even the date of this return is a matter of speculation.
   
   How can we explain the breadth and depth of obscurity that hides even the basics of Shakespeare's life? It might simply be the result of historical accident and chance. Four hundred years is a long time. Perhaps more practical considerations, like avoiding trouble with political and ecclesial authorities, caused him to keep a low profile; to the former playwrights were subversive and to the latter immoral. Still, Greenblatt suggests that in Shakespeare's life and writings there is a deliberate "act of erasure" (p. 255) that prevents us from knowing him.
   
   What Greenblatt does in his book is "to tread the shadowy paths that lead from the life Shakespeare lived into the literature he created" (p. 12). His views on anti-semitism, for example, emerge from consideration of his relationship with Christopher Marlow (who wrote The Jew of Malta) and his own play The Merchant of Venice. The death of his son Hamnet at age eleven and his father elucidate Hamlet and Shakespeare's genius at portraying human interiority and especially "tormented inwardness." King Lear connects with his return to Stratford from London's limelight and the last five years or so when he returned to Stratford and embraced the inevitability of old age, loss of power and identity, and family tensions. Greenblatt also shines in explaining the socio-cultural essentials of the day, such as the emergence of sixteenth century theater in London, the horrible violence that engulfed England as it alternated between Catholic and Protestant royalty, the literary nature of a sonnet to both hide and reveal, and so on. As the founder and leader of the New Historicist movement in literary studies, some have criticized Greenblatt for the notion that literature and art emerge mainly as a construct from society and less from a single individual's effort, the result being that readers learn more about Shakespeare's context than about the writer himself.
   
   Greenblatt, professor of humanities at Harvard and one of the leading Shakespeare scholars today, has written an elegant book about a fascinating figure. Twenty or so color and black and white plates compliment the text.



5. Not much is known about the life of William Shakespeare. Even though by the seventeenth century England was a record keeping nation, gaps remain in even the most basic reconstructions of Shakespeare's life. The surviving traces of his life are abundant but thin. The decade or more after he presumably finished school, and before he left Stratford for London, are known as the "lost years" because we know virtually nothing about this period of his life. We have no surviving account of the details of his last days, final illness and passing. All points in between, too, are matters of hypothesis and speculation. We have none of his personal letters, none of the books he surely owned. The author, Stephen Greenblatt, a Harvard professor and Shakespeare historian, thus asks us to imagine certain aspects of Shakespeare's life. The book is thus more assumptions about Shakespeare's life than a true biography.
   
   The author succeeds in taking the reader back into the Elizabethan world in which Shakespeare lived. One needed to obtain a coat of arms from inheritance or university education (Oxford or Cambridge) to become a gentleman, which was almost impossible without money. It was a world where the Queen was ex-communicated by the roman Pope, where the Jews were unjustly kicked out of England (by the end of the 13th Century all Jews had been deported from England), where Catholics were publicly and brutally executed, where people died of the bubonic plague, and where women were burnt for the crime of witchcraft and magic. It is a great introduction to that era for those not familiar with it.
   
   There were some amusing parts I really enjoyed. For example, I found myself laughing at the playwright's relationship with Robert Greene (discussed as a chief source for the character of Falstaff). Those passages were really entertaining.
   
   For a man who succeeded in writing such beautiful love prose, it seemed that his life was lacking of love. Shakespeare (1564-1616) was 18 and his wife, Anne Hathaway, 26 when they got married in November of 1582. By the time he was twenty-one he had three children. He married her because she was pregnant. For the times, he was considered to be underage. In most likelihood Shakespeare did not love his wife. He bequeathed her only his "second best bed" in his will, after more than thirty years of marriage!
   
   Were his sonnets written to a male lover? Homosexuality was accepted at the time. Since man was considered superior to women it was not surprising to anyone if men fell in love with each other. It was also the custom at the time that no writer ever wrote love sonnets to his wife. Most writers wrote of the hellish enterprise of marriage. Some, like Francis Bacon, refused to marry.
   
   We learn much about his father. The author analyzes Shakespeare's father's rise and fall as a public figure in Stratford. At one point his father went bankrupt, and his dreams of ever getting the `coat of arms' vanished. However, with Shakespeare's success and fortune, the `coat of arms' was bought.
   
   We learn about Christopher Marlowe, the most prominent playwright of the time, who died in a bar fight at age 30. Some say he might have been a spy. Shakespeare was inspired by his play Tamberlane, and wanted to equal or surpass him. Marlowe was thus an inspiration to Shakespeare.
   
   Surprisingly, actors were seen as whores and vagabonds. Shakespeare wanted to be a gentleman. He paid later for the coat of arms with money earned from his theatre in order to gain the status of gentleman. Costumes were very important and very expensive, and the playwright's most important assets. Actors were allowed to wear them only on stage else be arrested for impersonating gentlemen.
   
   After roughly twenty years in London, Shakespeare finally returned to Stratford and the family he had left behind. His wish was to live with his daughter and her husband, and his grandchild.
   
   Shakespeare was a master at the ability to use words to question power, authority and evil. He had a rich vocabulary and had invented many words. He borrowed a lot from real life and other sources, but his words were unique. He went to court and witnessed executions, held a skull in his hand in a cemetery and wondered who this man could have been and what clothes he wore.
   
   Some suspect that all the works attributed to Shakespeare weren't really by him. However this was not addressed by the author. Greenblatts seems confident of the authenticity of Shakespeare's authorship. (Shakespeare wrote 39 plays that scholars know of between 1590 and 1613 including a play that was lost and 154 sonnets.)
   
   Until his death at the age of 52, Shakespeare wrote The Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, All's Well That Ends Well, Othello, Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Taming of the Shrew, Titus Andronicus, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Winter's Tale. Some of the plays were actually co-authored by other writers.
   
   One reviewer writes the following very enlightening comment I thought I must include: "In the jungles of Yucatan, our mystical guide, Pepe, opined that most, if not all, very successful individuals were visitors from outer space who rose above the strivings of ordinary earthlings because of their extraterrestrial powers. Pepe's explanation is most tempting when one seeks to comprehend how an Elizabethan playwright and poet, Will Shakespeare, so far eclipsed every mere earthling before or since the time he visited our planet. But if one isn't satisfied with Pepe's facile philosophy of greatness, read Stephen Greenblatt's masterful biography, Will in the World. He comes closer than the thousands of previous biographers and commentators to a recreation of Shakespeare in the Elizabethan setting, and his outstanding accomplishment may lead some of us to believe that he, too, is an extraterrestrial."
   
   For Shakespeare, all the world did become a stage!

5 comments about Lament for a Son.

1. My sister lost her son six years ago. She has read every grief book on the market as part of her own grieving process, her therapy. She sends many of them to me to read. Of all the ones that I have read this one was the best. I read it in one sitting one, I couldn't put it down, if you can imagine not wanting to put down a book about a father grieving for his son.
   
   I have since bought about ten copies to give away.



2. My son died from injuries suffered in a fall while serving in the Peace Corps in Zambia in 2005. This book has put words to many of my own feelings. It is raw and heart wrenching. I have quoted many of the passages in this book. I highly recommend it for any grieving parent. We have a copy in our Compassionate Friends library, where it will serve as a comfort to many others.



3. Having lost our son last year, this book was recommended to us. You think you understand what a loss means, but you really don't until you are there. This book identified so many emotions I have been through and touched my heart at the love and compassion shared. If you know anyone who has lost a child, read this book and then you will have a better understanding to walk with them through this journey of grief.



4. This book was recommended to me by a wonderful lady by the name of Mary who owns a bookstore in Sandwich, MA on the Cape. I was curious as to how it would fare due to how thin it was but I began reading it immediately. I could NOT put it down. I read it in one sitting as it's very easy to read due to it's journal style. Nicholas Wolterstorff is a master at writing about all the feelings one goes through after a loss. Feelings that leave you scratching your head and wondering how you arrived at them and yet mange to still function as part of society. Feelings that leave you numb and wounded from the heavy burden and pain. Feelings that if you wanted to capture you would struggle to form concise sentences from the sheer overwhelming nature of them. Nicholas manages all of the above and more. He will touch you with his heart-wrenching understanding of grief. I cried, I nodded my head, I marveled at just how much my pain was not only recognized but acknowledged and validated. My pain is still with me, you will never be rid of it nor should you want to be (a notion mentioned in the book) but I have a feeling of peace more so than before I read it. This peace I think comes from not being alone in my pain. And while I wouldn't wish the loss of a child on anyone, I'm so blessed to have had the chance to read Lament for a Son because it has allowed me to feel part of a community of mourners. A community where I am allowed to suffer and grieve, but also clearly be aware of why I suffer and that is because I LOVE. Sadly in the real world we are made to feel we must 'get over' our loss and as a result are outcast in society. Through his words Nicholas Wolterstorff shows just how much of a force death and grief affect the loved ones left on earth. This book is a gift for those in pain from loss and is also a gift for those who want to help family or friends but don't know what to say. My son was stillborn and while this loss is diffeent from losing a 25 year old child, it is still a loss that has forever changed me. Lament for a Son has helped me in my grief, and I hope it helps your pain too.



5. I have not lost a child. In fact, I'm not a parent. So, admittedly, much of the power of this book, as expressed by other reviewers, is simply lost on me. I cannot empathize with the author's experience in any way.
   
   However, I am still glad to have read this compact book. Though one reviewer suggests that it is too academic, it is no such thing. Intelligently written? Yes. Academic? No. Instead, it is a strikingly authentic expression of the pain and suffering that the author experienced immediately after and further past the event of losing his 25-year-old son to a mountain climbing accident.
   
   The greatest asset of this book is the author's brutal honesty. All Christians would do well to follow his example of opening our emotional landscape for God and others to see, rather than somehow trying to stuff our most "unChristian" feelings behind some facade of strength. When things hurt, I am confident that God allows His people to hurt. In fact, Wolterstorff suggests that God hurts with us.
   
   This book is not filled with Christians platitudes, so spiritual sounding but ultimately so silly, that we often offer to each other to try to help with despair. Instead, it sits in that grief, analyzes that grief, admits the brokenness, and still reaches for the comforting hand of a loving God. Especially for those who have lost a child but even for any Christian who wants to learn how to honestly grieve, I recommend this book as worthwhile.

5 comments about Writing Your Life: An Easy-to-Follow Guide to Writing an Autobiography.

1. This book is so easy to use and interesting. I love the sample writing from real people! I gave the book to my mother and got her started writing. The results were so meaningful. She loved both the book and her family's response to her writing. What a great way to get families to communicate!



2. I am an older adult educator. This is an excellent tool for teaching my students to write their life experiences.



3. Lucid and inclusive, Writing Your Life: An Easy-to-Follow Guide to Writing an Autobiography, help me to navigate my way through most difficult moments to recall. To get the right answers one must ask the right questions, and that is what this book is all about. Everyone no matter how insignificant should write an autobiography because that is the way to be remembered without being president or a movie star or whatever makes someone to be famous. You may not be a professional writer, but so what? Give it a try, do it for your amusement. You may find it more of a learning experience than a simple writing. Love the book and enjoyed at the same time.



4. Teacher and writer Mary Borg has done a great service to anyone who wants to write about their life. Neatly condensed into a simple, easy to maneuver `work book'; this "Guide To Writing an Autobiography" is a real find. I've always `thought' about writing about my own experiences, but never had a good way to put my thoughts down on paper. This guide covers everything you will need to write about your life experiences. Besides the basics of giving great practical tips, there are questions, simple advice and reading suggestions to help you remember and consolidate your memories. There are also reading references for topics including family, ancestors, team lines, romance, love, family life, like and dislikes, turning points and the list goes on. In fewer than 160 pages, the author has managed to cover just about any category of life experiences that one could imagine (or live). It also includes a great section on how to actually put it all together and get your book made. It is truly an encouraging and well organized guide and a must read for anyone who even entertains the idea of writing about ones experiences.



5. I've jump-started many a Senior Citizen into telling the stories of their lives by turning them on to Mary Borg's WRITING YOUR LIFE. That's been a pleasant & encouraging surprise. It's exactly as the subtitle says "easy-to-follow." It's also light on the lecturing & language, & the spiral bound edition let's you lay it out flat as you work on those memories.

5 comments about The Invisible Woman: A Special Story for Mothers.

1. The book is trash, its boring... who wants to read this crap... Pick up somethig like how to talk to libral (If you must) now thats a good read



2. "The Invisible Woman" is a small book with only 3 chapters. It could appear to be a quick read but don't read it quickly. Take your time and meditate on what the main character, Charlotte Fisher, discovers...small sparrows carved into a beam that no one but God will see...builders who began but would never see the finished work...people who were unknown to man but not to God. Author, Nicole Johnson understands the real power of invisibility as do many others whose names remain unknown to us.



3. Excellent book, even for men to read. Great seller, too.



4. This book affirms what we already know...that women can so often become invisible...or feel that way. Treat yourself to a deeper understanding of life as a busy woman.



5. This is an excellent book for women - especially young mothers who are trying to understand the importance of the work they do in caring for their families. I gave a copy to five mothers, young and old, for Christmas gifts. The author has wonderful insights into her perspective on this important work that mothers perform.

5 comments about Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman (Arkana).

1. Malidoma Some's book is truly a mixed blessing! He writes about his personal experiences and life journey, about the spirituality of his people and the contrasts between the African Mindset and the ideas and pre-conceptions of Western people/white people.
   
   Some parts of this book truly deserve 5 starts, other parts deserve 0! The most important part of this book is indeed Mr Some's return to his own village and his struggles to re-claim his own roots. Every practitioner and every seeker of African religions should have a look at this section of the book. It clearly shows that the western mindset can hinder us from fully embracing what African spirituality has to offer and how different the TRADITIONAL African mindset is to the mindset of western people. Just like Mr Some, who in the course of his journey realized that his "Europeanization" hindered him from fully embracing his own tradition, so should many Europeans who search for "greater powers" within the African traditions examine their own preconceptions and ideas. This part alone deserves 5 starts!
   
   Other parts of the book read much like a fiction story and should be take with a big pinch of salt. This being said, some of the things Mr Some describes can still be found within African Traditional Religions in the West - visible spirit manifestations being just one example. However, others are rather dubious...0 stars for that part of the work!



2. A riveting and beautiful mystical story that encompasses many lessons that we all could learn from. I could feel Malidoma's pain in his struggle with the evil criminals that complicated his life. This book is absolutely wonderful for all who appreciate the mysteries of existence but it also has many very important lessons that the Africans in America and the diaspora would do well to take notice of.In my opinion,this book should be in schools.



3. I read this book in the midst of discovering the myriad of hidden truths about african history. Being African American myself I have spent many years trying to undo the backwards education that I was subjected to about my culture in this country by doing extensive research.
   
   If for anything, read this book alone to gain an inside experience of what horrors Africans suffered at the hands of missionaries who felt it was their duty to "save" african children from their "barbaric" roots. They stole these children away from their villages to bring them up in seminary schools where they were subject to brutal treatment and the brainwashing of their religion. I feel it is people's duty to understand the raw effects of these events as it has also happened to indigenous cultures all over the world.
   
   As some reviewers say below, there is a lot about this book that seems fantastical. Malidoma takes us far into the magic and ritual of his culture. It takes an open mind, one that recognizes that the destructive path of colonialism was not only physical but emotional and spiritual. Take time if you will to reflect that if you think colonialism was a destructive force, it also took it's toll on our openess to the possibility of realities other than our own. There isn't hocus pocus in this book, Malidoma a very grounded, extremely well educated gentlemen who has experienced the western world and his traditional one inside out. What he offers in this book is an invaluable opportunity to see the remnants of a culture that we have lost touch with and just how important it is to reconnect to the possibility that what we experience as solid reality is only that which we have been brought up to believe in. It does not mean that it is the only one.
   
   Malidoma's writing is also beautiful and engrossing, I couldn't put it down. I was left with a more solid sense of who I was as an African American, I have learned about the advanced architecture and maths that africans had but I had never had a chance to look this deeply into our spiritual history.



4. I am an advocate reader of anything pertaining to African culture and spirituality. I had heard of the many reviews of this book from many people, and all of them being positive. But what stood out in all those reviews is the fact that those who read it admitted "I couldn't put the book down". Well, I read the book and just by reading the introduction alone made me not want to put the book down. I knew that i was in for a reading that would be mind-boggling, thought provoking, powerful and profound. Brother Malidoma did not disappointment me at all.
   
   Every chapter had a lesson behind it. The most impressive and powerful was when Malidoma returned to his village and his elders sanctioned him to be initiated. Eventhough he couldn't go into great detail, the experience that he could share was priceless. This is one of those "rare" books in which you use as a basis to measure the quality against others. Honestly, 5 stars is not enough to rate this book.



5. One of the best books ever written...In fact I've read none better...It is a book I buy for friends and strangers alike...I think I've bought it 5 times now

5 comments about Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India (Vintage).

1. Any fan of Indian cooking well knows the name of Madhur Jaffrey: in addition to hosting a TV show she's also published numerous cookbooks - and acted in many major motion pictures. Here's something different for the Jaffrey fan: a memoir of how she came to be equated with Indian cuisine in "Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India". Her memoir blends food memories with overall impressions of India's social and political changes, making for a wide-ranging coverage recommended as a pick not just for cooks, but for anyone with an interest in India's complex history, culture, and cuisine.
   
   Diane C. Donovan
   California Bookwatch



2. I know the author by her association with Said Jaffrey, an actor of some repute
   in India, and her famous cookery show and books in the same domain.
   Apparently, at one time the author was married to Mr. Jaffrey, but has since
   divorced and is now re-married to a gentleman in New York and settled in the
   same city. I presume she still writes books on Indian cooking. In any case,
   the Jaffrey name and the title were enough of a ruse to get me to read the
   book. What emerges is a tale of a priviledged childhood in pre-independence
   India: her family traces its roots back to the time of emperor Aurangzeb
   (the last Mughal ruler of India) in whose court Madhur's ancestors used to
   ply their craft as writers. The emperor gifted land to her ancestors in what
   would later became New Delhi, enabling Madhur a luxurious childhood by Indian
   standards. Her family was well to do: grandfather was a barrister, father
   owned mills, the family took trips to Europe and possessed two American cars -- and
   this is in pre-independent India, mind you. The book itself is composed of short
   chapters, each one detailing some memory of childhood: cousins, siblings, aunts and
   uncles, grandparent, summer trips to Simla, train rides, traumas, first love, the
   travails of a joint family, etc. A common thread that runs through all the chapters is
   the association of food with the memories. Madhur (which means "sweet, honey-like" in
   Hindi) draws upon her strength -- food -- to permeate each chapter. The writing
   style is informal and colloquial, but enjoyable nonetheless. As an added bonus, the
   last portion of the book contain her favorite recipes. (July 2007)



3. This book brought back wonderful memories of a lovely 6 years spent in India. Her portrait of the lives of the wealthy and privledged of that era were hauntingly familiar. An excellent read.



4. Madhur Jaffrey is one of the foremost authors of indian cookbooks. This book is a memoir of her childhood in northern India during the 40s and 50s. It is packed with all the joys and flavors of an extended family with liberal food descriptions and delightful flavors of multi ethnic indian cuisine. She obviously had a very rich, privileged up bringing which is perhaps not what every indian born child is privy to, but her writing is compassionate, mindful of the privileges she had in comparison to the rest of the country - and allows the reader to really travel visually and enjoy a taste of the same. One cannot help wishing though that she had dealt with, at some length, on some real struggles with a dysfunctional uncle (Shibbu dada), the changes in the family during the post independance era (all families went through a lot of struggle then, particularly privileged ones) or for that matter anything that lets the reader know that the journey was not always a happy or easy one. Read it anyway, and particulary if you are from India, it is truly a delightful nostalgic journey into the joys and flavors and family love that is so typical of extended family life in our homeland and sadly getting to be a rarity for even those who live there.



5. Madhur Jaffrey is a personal favorite - I loved her reading of Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance (Oprah's Book Club) & it's a delight to see her pop up unexpectedly in movies like Prime (Widescreen Edition) in small but juicy roles. So, it was a pleasure to read about the author's childhood in this enjoyable remembrance of an India past.
   
   Ms. Jaffrey's family was obviously prosperous and privileged, as attested to by the grand house ("Number 7") that was the center of her early life. You quickly take that standard of life as a given. We get a look at the 'joint family' style of living - all the incomes pooled & the family living under the extended roof and paternal care of her respected and successful grandfather ('Babaji').
   
   You'll want to rush out and order Indian food every night. Each remembrance is embraced with recollections of specific foods and the preparation that goes into making those dishes for a large family. There's a full 50 pages of family recipes that follow the Epilogue.

5 comments about The Greatest Generation.

1. I was amazed on how i can personally relate to the characters life story.. eventhough i never went to war or are a veteran.. the living style of back in the days and current life style is so different.. it opens your eyes on how it was and how WE made it.. quality of life has gone down..



2. I doubt that Mr. Brokaw will see this review.
   I bought the book but have not read it because I cannot get past the title.
   I am 85.
   I was a 20 year old, 128# kid out of North Dakota when I joined the Air Corps, the United States Army Air Force in 1942 and after an excellent training I went over to the Mediterrean and flew 94 missions in three different airplanes. I was one of 17 that came back of the 45 that went over.
   
   I do NOT agree that we were "The Greatest Generation". We were an "Ordinary Generation" faced with an "Extraordinary Problem". Yes, we rose to it.
   
   But the implication I get from his title is that the present generation would not and I repudiate that. I think the present generation would do what we did and I think calling us "The Greatest Generation" insults all other generations.
   ----------Maj. Charles E. Dills USAFResRetInvol.-------
   
   I was a thoroughly broke orphan with little to no prospects.
   Using the GI BIll, I got an MS at the George Washington University and a Ph.D. in Physical Organic Chemistry from Harvard University. I got a home 43 years ago from the GIBill and we still live in it. I was well thanked. I dress up at least twice a year and attend local ceremonies to remember the 28 other kids that were not as lucky as I was. I give talks to whomever will listen giving the warts as well as the fun. I don't remember their names but I will never forget what they did.
   I am not a hero. I am an average person that was caught in a certain niche of time.
   [...]



3. Tom Brokaw did a great job of showing how ordinary people faced with seemingly insurmountable challenges became extraodinary.



4. I think Tom Brokaw should be applauded for writing this book. A lot of reviewers have commented the contents, which I will not say much.
   
   This is not a book that I can read in one-shot as it is a collate of several stories. Some people have complained about the book for lacking in substance. But, I think the beauty of the book is the "awareness" or appreciation created by these short stories. If people are intersted WWII history, they can always consult their history text books or some of non-fiction books devoted exclusively on the topics. I think the theme of this book is very different from those "well-researched" book. And, I think it will probably reach a wider audience as the book is an easy reading without some details that you will probably not remember after reading them.
   
   So, I will say, for someone who look for poetic writing, go to Shakespear. If someone look for exact facts/figures in WWII, go to their history text book. For those, who want to have a picture what the previous generation, it's a nice starting point.



5. How hard would it have been to compile some couple-page biographies of heroes who served in WW2?

5 comments about Out of Africa (Modern Library).

1. It's tough to bungle a memoir set in Africa - early 20th-century, a hilltop coffee plantation, with lions, hyenas, giraffes, zebras and views of Kilamanjaro - and Karen Blixen largely avoids it. Surrounded by offbeat adventurers and Kikuyu retainers, the author has innumberable sources of interest to draw from.
   
   I saw the movie when it premiered in 1985 and, maybe because of my youth, found it to be quite a sleeper. Some twenty years later, I find the book, as is often the case, to be significantly better. But, this doesn't disguise the fact that Blixen's written work can be somewhat disjointed. She skips hither and yon and too often casts aside a recollection before it's much anticipated completion. Kamante, a cherished and endearing Kikuyu child, a seemingly essential component, disappears without trace though ostensibly remaining within the author's immediate employ. One is left disappointedly pondering where this disarming youngster has gone.
   
   All things considered, however, the period and place overpower any literary shortcomings. Blixen's scattershot approach still manages to bestow a palpable sense of wonder. It feeds the pull a person feels for the savannah, the safari, the elemental mystique which is the continent of Africa. I recommend it. 4+ stars.



2. The book, "Out of Africa," is a memoir of the Danish Baroness Karen Blixen's habitation near Nairobi in Kenya from 1914 to 1931 on a fertile 6000-acre coffee plantation, "at the foot of the Ngong Hills" (1992: 3). Blixen writes under the pen-name Isak Dinesen. Karen Blixen went to British East Africa (in a location in present-day, Kenya) to join her German husband (Baron Bror Blixen), and upon separation she stayed in Kenya to manage the farm by herself. The extent of her adventures in Africa, and to what extent she is a feminist is borne out by the book, as well as the film "Out of Africa," that is based on the book. This piece will examine such, as well as comparisons between the book and the film.
   
   Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) presents geographical detail, oftentimes comparisons and contrasts within this fertile land of the Kikuyu people that would several decades later be the crux of the Mau-Mau rebellion over whites' displacement and dispossession of natives from their land. Dinesen also compares features with those of her native Europe. Dinesen writes of the equatorial habitat, "Everything that you saw made for greatness and freedom, and unequaled nobility...Up in this high air you breathed easily, drawing in a vital assurance and lightness of heart: Here I am where I ought to be" (1992: 4). Dinesen writes of "heavy-scented lilies," of "long-rains," "ever-changing clouds," of "hills from the farm [that} changed their character many times in the course of the day, and sometimes looked quite close and at times very far away" (1992: 4). Dinesen, in precise and elegant language displays love and fascination for the geography, the clean air, the animals, the beauty of this African environment; she becomes possessed by the place.The movie captures the large, picturesque, mysterious, and varied eastern equatorial Africa where the eland, the buffalo, and the rhino are quite common sights; the movie impressively and unanimously earned, Oscar, "Best Picture of the Year."
   
   In the end Dinesen is forced to give up her plantation, this scenario elicits a heartache and sadness. Dinesen's memoirs, years after she had left Africa could be a reflection of her nostalgic dealing with her loss of the farm as well as overall experiences in Africa. Dinesen stands out as a courageous and strong woman, one who is in the feminist direction. She lost her philandering husband, but stayed on bravely, for nearly 20 years in a foreign harsh environment, one with languages and cultures far-fetched from her own. Dinesen worked well at being appreciative of an environment that was new to her, during an era of colonialism in Africa, a time when Darwinian relegation of black Africans to the lowest of human species and elevation of whites to the upper rung was very strong. Dinesen cuts through the female traditional roles, she tries flying in planes, the goes on safari, she learns how to shoot and even shoots and kills game. She is open and welcomes countless visitors from all over the world to her home and farm. This was an age of exploration and acquisition of "Dark Africa," by Europeans and Asians. Dinesen is quite aware of her feminine strength. She rescues and adopts a wounded antelope she names Lulu; Lulu becomes a celebrity on the farm; Dinesen searches, discovers and celebrates the feminist strength in Lulu: "But Lulu was not really gentle, she had the so-called devil in her. She had, to the highest degree, the feminine trait of appearing to be exclusively on the defensive, concentrating on guarding the integrity of her being, when she was really, with the force in her, bent upon and defensive" (1992: 74). Also, "Lulu of the woods was a superior, independent being...she was in possession. If I had happened to have known a young princess in exile, and while she was still a pretender to the throne, and had met her again in her full queenly estate after she had come into her rights, our meeting would have had the same character" (1992: 78).
   
   The book displays that Karen Blixen exemplified the Europeans with the upper hand in colonial world conquest and politics. It is to be recalled that the three weapons used by Europeans to subjugate Africans were the gun, the Bible, and the anthropologist. Karen used guns to protect herself. Catholic (mostly Belgian and French), Protestant (mostly British), and Muslim (mostly Arabic) agencies vied for power in Africa. The Germans were in present-day neighboring Tanzania (German East Africa) to the south. They would be ousted during this significant, "Scramble for Africa." The book illustrates how Karen Blixen took great interest in which religious group the young natives (some of whom served her) adhered to. Many native followers, taught to kneel and pray to an invisible white Almighty god, became converted to the political/ religious groups, as they became dispossessed of their land resources. The anthropology aspect, as mentioned, involved relegation of black Africans to the lowest rungs of evolutionary mankind...the white was relegated as the superior, the master, the savior, the benevolent, the genius. The movie is great at casting Meryl Streep as the beautiful, rosy-cheeked clean, statuesque woman amidst muddy, black African paradise! The real Karen Blixen likely had more rugged looks and likely often got "down-and-dirty," than is depicted in the movie. An equatorial Africa of long and heavy rainy seasons, of continuous tropical sun, and of limited running water would not leave the Danish heroine so clean and collected.
   
   It is to be recalled that Dinesen is writing from an overly European point of view, hence, negative criticism of her will not be short. Her attitude to black Africans is racist and condescending. In the movie, Denys Finch-Hatton (Robert Redford) rebukes her for instructing native porters to get off her belongings by "shooing," them off!. Finch-Hatton, in shock, remarks to her, "Shoo?" as if telling her, "I do not believe you addressed these people that way!" Finch-Hatton (who became Dinesen's lover) knows the native languages (Kiswahili and Kikuyu), and goes on to communicate her instructions to the porters. Black Africans are prevalently depicted in the movie as poverty-stricken servants, laborers and porters, as helpless people close to animal nature. In tune with the movie, here Dinesen writes, "They were poor people, small and underfed; they looked like a pair of badgers on my lawn...I could hardly distinguish them against the grass. They were sank in deep grief; their bereavement and their economic loss melted into one overwhelming distress" (1992: 108). Dinesen is surprised that the, "Natives," are strikingly open, adapting, welcoming and unprejudiced. Yet, as prevalent in the colonial fashion, she does not attribute this to the inner traditions and workings of indigenous African society, but from influence from foreigners including slavers! "The lack of prejudice in the Natives is a striking thing, for you expect to find dark taboos in the primitive people. It is due...to their acquaintance with a variety of races and tribes, and to the lively human intercourse that was brought upon East Africa, first by the old traders of ivory and slaves...and...by the settlers and big-game hunters" (1992: 54).
   
   Dinesen wishes the natives would understand and appreciate her more. It is always presumptuous to be confident of having fully understood a foreign culture and people; she does not seem to believe she is prejudiced and why the natives to a good extent regard her as a foreigner far different from them, and difficult to comprehend. She writes, "If I know a song of Africa,---I thought,---of the Giraffe, and the African new moon lying on her back, of the ploughs in the field, and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me?" (1992: 83). At the same time, Dinesen quite often acknowledges that newcomers from Africa are from a noisy and rushed world, they do not have the patience and connectedness of native Africans. European colonialists imposed on the natives an alien system of forced dispossession and displacement and of monopoly. So much of this colonial intrusion was quite new to the prevalently communalist and family-oriented, egalitarian way of native African subsistence.
   
   Karen Blixen's marriage starts out as more of a convenience than of romance. She left Denmark to marry the German Baron Bror Blixen (Klaus Maria Brandauer) and start a dairy in Kenya. Bror is actually the brother of her lover. Karen is offering her fortune for companionship and adventure (and for the title of, "Baroness") much more than for enjoying the security of a man. So, from the outset, Karen's feminist inclinations are strong. The husband changes his mind about the diary, and instead invests her money in a risky venture of growing coffee. The husband is unfaithful, philandering, gives her syphilis that will disable her from having children; the marriage breaks up. Karen is left to manage the farm, she has to battle with floods and fire. Hardly anything of British big game hunter Denys Finch-Hatton's romance with Dinesen (Karen Blixen), is mentioned in the book; the movie likely borrows from other sources depicting the life of Karen Blixen. Unfortunately the English accent of Denys Finch-Hatton is not conveyed by Redford, compared to Karen's excellent outflow of a Scandinavian accent. Yet, the movie depicts their chemistry, Denys is impressed by her strength and independence, Karen's ability to tell and weave stories, they kiss, and in one scene have sex. Karen does seem to desire long-term companionship and commitment from Denys, desire for a man who will sacrifice to be with her. She stands against having a man like Denys who wants to be "free-wheeling," one who will come and go depending on need and desire, he loves the African outdoors. Finch-Hatton is mysterious, elusive and emotionally distant, but he is miscast in that in the movie: he seems to represent an all-American jock that waywardly found his way into Africa. Karen was wounded before, and this encounter with Denys is only a brief moment of ecstasy, but she bravely soldiers on, appreciating more of what is around her. Karen is indeed confident, stoic and creative in face of the odds. She did resist going on safari with Denys, but she eventually succumbed to his quite undeniable invitation. Eventually, they got closer, she broadened her horizons, she better adapted to and better accepted foreigners and their ways.
   
   In conclusion, the movie emphasizes the romantic issues and episodes in Karen Blixen's life in Africa (romance and sex sells in Hollywood), much more than the book does. The book seems to be constructed from a breadth of notes of what Blixen put together while in Africa, and weaved them into a good fairy tale. The truth is that Blixen dealt with aspects like fluctuating coffee prices, sometimes drought and heavy rains, discontented dispossessed natives, scrambles for Africa amongst several European agencies, African diseases and sometimes unsanitary conditions, wildlife from untamed neighborhoods. The movie does display the exquisite beauty of tropical Africa which Blixen did dwell on, but not on the colonial wranglings. There is lyrical beauty in Blixen's writing, and the movie does elicit an African peaceful mood through the excellent music. Blixen, in both the movie and the book is a strong and opinionated woman, yet flexible and open to ideas, people, and adventure. She is a significant precursor of modern-day feminism.



3. This was the first of many books I've read about Africa. At the time, I had a romanticized view of The Dark Continent, a naieve view.
   After doing some more research, I realize Karen Blixen's view was VERY romanticized....to the extent that many of her contemporaries thought her somewhat odd and out of touch with reality.
   If you want a lyrically told story colored with emotion...this is for you.
   If you're interested in Africa as it really was, read the many accounts extant by settlers who spent far more time, and ranged over a wider area.



4. The two-cassette abridgment was way too limiting for such a magnificent book. Also disappointing was the fact that the product was a rejected one from a public library, and the second tape was stretched and half of the second tape was not able to be heard. This product should never have been sold in this condition.



5. Out of Africa is Karen Blixen's memoir about her years in Africa, writing as Isak Dinesen. She recounts the world of Africa, specifically Kenya. It is, like the England of her friend Denys Finch-Hatton, "a world that no longer existed" even then and certainly as she left it. The memoir is a slow read, yet a book with prose in which you can luxuriate, or languish perhaps as it seems to mirror the mammoth African landscape. Reading like a pastoral novel, the narrator interested me with her myriad experiences. It presents people, cultures, landscape, and wildlife through her eyes, sometimes noble, sometimes paternal. The culture of the various tribes and religions with whom she had contact on her coffee farm became almost real, so that as I read certain moments became funny or sad or wistful. The reader comes to view animals differently, the fecundity of life struck me particularly. The different forces at work are both natural and foreign; the paradoxical nature of the presence of two churches (Roman Catholic and Church of Scotland) is sometimes presented as working for good yet other times it is in conflict. Blixen's memoir is truly literate and the importance of books and writing is evident throughout. Early in the memoir she tries to explain her wirting a book to a native. Near the end of her stay as she is selling off the furniture and other estate provisions their is a poignant moment when, as she sits on her remaining books, she comments:
   "Books in a colony play a different part in your existence from what they do in Europe; there is a whole side of your life which they alone take charge of ... you feel more grateful to them, or more indignant with them, than you will ever do in civilized countries." (p.373)
   Blixen's memoir of this "uncivilised" land is both memorable and effective in sweeping the reader away into a very different world. Definitely a worthwhile read.