No comments about Hadrian: Empire and Conflict.

No comments about Critical Thinking Thoughtful Writing 4th Edition.

5 comments about Don't Pee on My Leg and Tell Me It's Raining: America's Toughest Family Court Judge Speaks Out.

1. I got this book at the libary and I was so disapointed. From the title I thought it was a book of funny cases. Its not.Its a book on how she became a Judge. there may have been cases ,but I don't remember any.



2. First off I love Judge Judy, I think she is brilliant, funny, and right on the money with her quips and viewpoints.....secondly, i found this book absolutely tortuous to read, and gave up after about 70 pages of it, for some reason I just could not go on with it anymore....Judy's ideas on how to solve what ails our society are insightful, and worth taking note of. However, the book is so poorly written, i couldn't continue to finish it. maybe its just the way it was put togther, but this was not at all what i was hoping it would be.



3. I am a fan of Judge Judy. I like her no nonsense approach to life and the legal system. Having myself grown up in a family of police and police chiefs, I know full well the crap that goes on in life as well as the legal system. Having just gone through a legal fiasco of being accused of something I didn't and wouldn't do, I prayed to have a judge like Judge Judy preside over the case. This drug out for 2 years while the other person smeared my name in every media outlet she could think of - even the FBI - and every place where I was scheduled to give talks about my book. I finally had to sue her to shut her up and then she hid like a scared @*&%$! Well after dragging this out by not providing us with their evidence and discovery - which I am sure she didn't have, they decided to settle out of court with a public retraction and an apology as to what she had said about me. So I never got my day in court, but oh I wish I had just to hear Judge Judy tell her "you can't fix stupid and dumb is forever!" I recommend her books, they are funny, comical and down to earth legal approches to life in the court system. You will get a whole new perspective on the way things are done and they might get you fired up to get a wrong you have been dealt righted. Read Them!!



4. Judge Judy didn't disappoint in this book with her life's experiences as a judge in New York. It helps you realize what the justice system is like and the people they see on a daily basis. There are some very shocking cases!
   
   People seem to surprise you whenever you turn around. Her career as a Judge in New York must have many stories and she shares some doozies with you in this book...
   
   Definitely worth it!
   
   Merna
   
   Pocket of Pearls: A 30-day pocket workbook to start hearing a softer voice inside of you!



5. I just finished reading this book and it was amazing! I couldn't put it down. Judge Judy is so honest and has many incredible positions on the justice system that each state should take note. I personally agree with her on all of her stances toward welfare, incarceration, and law in general. A must read for all politicians!

5 comments about A Year in Van Nuys.

1. This is a good - not great - book that generally entertains, but goes too far in an effort to keep the reader amused and interested. The author writes at a higher intelligence level than your typical best selling author does. The downside is that she knows it, and it effects her work. More importantly, however, is the prevalence of eye bag references that nearly made me throw this book in the trash, something I have never done in my life. Six weeks after having finished the book, I sit here editing this review with one prevailing thought in my head, the less-than-enjoyable eye bag references.
   
   The book is presumably about a year in the life of the author. While I don't know how much resonance there is between her real life and what we read on the pages, you can tell there is some. There are too many passionate outbursts for all of this to be fiction. After all, what writer doesn't reveal some of their soul in the words they create? This is what makes it so real and easy to read. As someone once said somewhere, write what you know. But then, what if you know nothing? I digress.
   
   The author clearly knows more than nothing and for the most part, the contents of what she does know are enjoyable to read. Some of the events in the book are resonant with things I've experienced in my own life, despite the fact that I'm a man. I'll go ahead and say the eye bags are *not* one of those things. Still, the struggle to be an author and her ultimate decision in that endeavor are thoughts close to many I have had before. Her final decision, entirely contrary to the fact she authored a book, is something I've also come to adopt. Maybe it this freedom has led her to this work? Again, I digress.
   
   It's a refreshing book, light yet intelligent to a point. It's a quick and enjoyable read. You could certainly do a lot worse. What's more, it has diagrams for those slow on the uptake. All in all, it's generally entertaining and contains real-life insights that can be applied to life and used to learn a little about yourself. Well worth the time spent reading it.



2. I am flabergasted that so many people liked this book. I had to force myself to keep turning the pages to get through this whinning drivel, and in the end I regretted not giving up sooner. Most of Sandra's problems appear to be entirely her own fault. She gets too drunk at a Fox party and screws up her sitcom deal. She gets a new editor at her online magazine who doesn't like her style. Welcome to the real world - none of this is special or interesting because it's Van Nuys and the entertainment industry, and not just some shmuck in a cubicle. And here's a shocker - in real life, Loh was fired from her cushy radio commentary job for cursing on the air, and has blamed everyone at the radio station for it. No one feels as sorry for her as she apparently feels for herself.
   I like one reviewer's comparison to the comic strip Cathy - this was like having to listen to Cathy complain in complete chapters instead of a few frames. By the end of the book I not only wanted the $5 I paid for it at a used bookseller back, I wanted to personally find this woman and give her a good slap across the face.



3. I've been told that it's important to "step outside your comfort zone" every once in a while, and that's exactly what I did by reading this book. The experience was, well, a little bit weird.
   
   FULL DISCLOSURE: Sandra's female, I'm male. She's Asian-American, I'm your basic WASP-American mongrel. She's a product of life in metro LA, I'm a Midwesterner living in a small city. I don't particularly care for southern California and I'm sure she'd be bored to tears by Battle Creek, Michigan. And so forth.
   
   For me, reading "A Year in Van Nuys" was like stumbling on a diary that someone accidently left at the airport. Sandra is spilling her guts throughout most of the book about her marriage, career problems, friends, therapist, money issues and somewhat desperate life in suburban LA. She mixes regular narrative text with e-mails, cartoon drawings, diagrams, photos, confessional essays and some other strange stuff to make it read like a confidential journal. I loved the use of "strike through" type to show earlier versions of her thought process.
   
   Whether you like it or not, Sandra forces us to be voyeurs. That can be funny and also annoying. For example, her take on the role of religion in weddings is hilarious, as are her riffs on life as a freelance writer. On the other hand, her obsessions about eye bags and cosmetic surgery are just kind of boring. The last few pages of the book bring some sense of resolution to her free-floating self-loathing, but not enough to matter, in my opinion.
   
   Ultimately, "A Year in Van Nuys" is a quick, silly, moderately entertaining read -- just right for that wait between flights. To find Sandra's REAL comedic talent, you'll have to listen to one of her commentaries on NPR.



4. Tsing Loh is a new talent in the essay genre, and she will appeal to anyone in their 20's or 30's who is post-college but still searching for themselves, while watching annoying overachievers from college become television anchors. Some readers find her a bit too whiny, but she really hit home with me, and I loved her way of examining the world. The book has some terrific hand-drawn illustrations and diagrams expressing Sandra's feelings (one winner is a pie chart comaring ideal time spent together by a married couple, actual time spent together by hetero couples, and actual time spent together by gay male couples).
   
   The end of this book didn't sit well with me, because the message seemed to be to abandon your dreams, and it was depressing. The journey to the end definitely had its high points, though.
   
   Tsing Loh has some other great books about living in LA, and anyone from the area will be able to identify with the places and events she talks about. Fans of Tsing Loh will love essayist Laurie Notaro, who writes about the same age and experiences, but definitely in a less whiny voice. Check out Notaro's The Idiot Girls' Action Adventure club.



5. To be honest, there's so much stuff in this book, subjects all over the map, that I'm having trouble writing a review. Every subject hit me a little differently. I found myself getting extremely bored on one tale, and then immensely enjoying another. That I had trouble getting past the first 30 pages had no bearing on how much I enjoyed the middle 10, or indeed that story about the writing workshop, which came near the end and was one of the best. R.A. Salvatore said that you know you are really a writer only if you just can't stop, and Sandra Tsing Loh makes this point wonderfully.
   
   One reason I read this book is because it was apparently about Van Nuys; however, that suburb of Los Angeles did not figure into the book nearly as much as I thought it would. The author devotes too much time and energy on Hollywood, which is a very different place from the San Fernando Valley (which Van Nuys is part of), so the title may be misleading.
   
   You don't really need to know much about Los Angeles to understand this book, but a good knowledge of pop culture of the time helps. Recommended if you like those things and amusing streams of consciousness as well as the subjects of writing and aging.

5 comments about Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience.

1. I used to think anyone who was stupid enough to wear a swastika and call themselves a Nazi, regardless of their actions, deserved nothing less than the most heinous punishments the human mind could ever conceive. While I still believe this is true in many cases, reading the story of Franz Stangl, as revealed though Gitta Sereny's amazingly meticulous journalism, has made me think twice about it.
   I dock her one star because of an error she made in reference to Jean François Steiner's astonishing masterwork, Treblinka, which she speaks of with undue contempt. Gitta says that Steiner had written in his book that SS man Max Bleias had a harem of Jewish boys liquidated on a whim one day when he became bored with them. This is not the case at all. In Steiner's Treblinka, the harem was liquidated by order of Kurt Franz only after Blieas' assassination by a prisoner.
   Despite my deep and utter hatred of the Nazis I still found myself, as a man, and more importantly, as a human, able to sympathize with Franz Stangl. One asks themselves, "What would I have done in his place?" That should speak volumes about the quality of this book of incredible journalistic merit.



2. I want to clear something up ~~ I don't "love" this book (that is what 5 stars stand for) but I do appreciate this book and it is definitely one of the best books I have read on the Holocaust. That is why I gave it a five star rating. It really is a thought-provoking book and very insightful. The author did a great job of following through with loose ends and she writes in a very detailed way that is not dry. History came alive in these pages.
   
   I also appreciate the fact that while she didn't gloss over the horrors of the extermination camps, she also didn't dwell on them. Yes, it happened. Yes, it is horrorifying and too awful to think on, but it didn't need to be a sensationalized case where every single detail had to be graphic. She left it to the imagination of just how horrible this was. She was tasteful and respectful of the dead's dignity.
   
   Sereny detailed everything. She wrote about Stangl's childhood, his demeanor while being interviewed especially when he had to answer questions that he was not comfortable about. She made sure that if anyone contacted her later with a clarification of something, she added it in the book. She interviewed the witnesses and toured the camp. She never stopped asking questions. She covered the Euthansia program that was in effect during the 30s when Hitler first came to power. She queried the clerics in the Catholic Church and Stangl's family members. I don't know how else to describe this other than Sereny really did a thorough investigation to the best of her abilities to produce this book. She brought up issues that I had never thought about. She covered it all.
   
   When I have read about the extermination camps before, I usually got them confused with the concentration camps. I never realized that all of the extermination camps were in Poland. I also never really realized that there were such an Anti-Semitic viewpoint in Poland. Things that I never really understood before was clarified in this book. Not only was this book a historical investigation of the Nazi regime and the extermination camp, it was also insights into different personalities throughout the period, other than Franz Stangl and his wife. There were survivors of the camp and how did they manage to survive. There were underground freedom fighters who witnessed these horrors with their own eyes. A common question among my generation is, why didn't they just get out? This book goes a long way into explaining that.
   
   It is definitely an interesting book. While the main focus was on Franz Stangl, the Kommandant of Treblinka, the largest of the extermination camps, it covered a whole range of issues. It definitely did show the way into the darkness, the darkness of every human soul. While Sereny did her best in answering the question of why he stayed on, it is still unfathomable in its entirety.
   
   6-06-06



3. Gitta Sereny's book is as powerful now as it must have been when if first came out. She manages to give the reader a real sense of one of the men who was a key part of the Nazi killing machine - Franz Stangl supervised the killing of at least 750,000 men, women and children but the total is very probably more like a million. What is clear is that he was a perfectly sane, happily married man who allowed himself to be drawn 'into the darkness' and then felt unable to escape when he was eventually asked to supervise mass murder (and historical research confirms that people in his situation were not actually threatened with their lives if they decided to change roles). This shows how easy it is for those in authority to bend others to serve their purposes, especially if their true motivations are dressed up in pseudo-science and a veneer of legality (as was the case with the Nazis). He isn't a monster which makes his story all the more chilling as it shows that it is possible for any one of us to end up doing what he did.
   
   The only problem with this book (which makes it 4 rather than 5 stars) is that Sereny allows herself multiple digressions, some of which do help to better explain background context, but some of which simply distract from her narrative of Stangl's struggle to acknowledge his guilt.



4. Sereny interviews Franz Stangl and other Nazis such as Franz Suchomel, Jewish escapees from Treblinka, and a member of the Polish Underground. There are many contradictions between different accounts, which she explains as follows: "This is less the result of failing memories or deliberate manipulation, than because most people now represent these events and their part in them with a view to seeming--to themselves even more than to others--what they would have liked to have been, rather than what they were. And this applies to Germans as well as Poles, Christians as well as Jews, West as well as East Europeans." (p. 171).
   
   Polish authors have commonly been criticized for not portraying Polish Jews as Poles. But the shoe is also on the other foot. Sereny comments: "Polish Jews always refer to non-Jewish Poles as `Poles' and to themselves as `we' or `Jews'." (p. 121; see also p. 199).
   
   To her credit, Sereny recognizes the fact that Poles had nothing to do with the German death camps built on their soil (p. 100), and that Poles faced the death penalty for the slightest form of aid to Jews (p. 117).
   
   There were no windows in the Sobibor-bound trains (p. 122). This helps refute the myth of doomed Jews looking out and beholding throngs of indifferent or hostile Polish onlookers.
   
   There is a fascinating interview (pp. 149-156) with Franciszek Zabecki, a member of the Polish Underground who was also the traffic superintendent at the Treblinka railroad station. He points out that there was limited Underground communication between different regions of German-occupied Poland (p. 151). Consequently, the events unfolding at Treblinka were not immediately related to those at Belzec and Sobibor. (This may address David Engel's accusation of the Polish Government in exile's "tardy" report on Jewish deaths). Zabecki kept a tally of all the trains arriving at Treblinka along with the numbers written on each train. From this, he arrived at a death toll of 1.2 million (p. 250) which, if correct, would cause Treblinka to surpass Auschwitz-Birkenau as the world's largest Jewish cemetery.
   
   Ukrainian collaborators played a central role in the operation of Sobibor (p. 122, 124) and Treblinka (e. g., p. 148, 166; see especially p. 224). Lithuanians (p. 155) and Russians (p. 164) were also involved. So were Jewish Kapos (p. 123, 158-159)--the depravity of some of whom rivaled that of the Germans and Ukrainians (p. 188).
   
   Treblinka-escapee Berek Rojzman commented: "We got to know from people around that the Germans were sending Ukrainians who pretended to be partisans, into the woods to look for Jews." (p. 243). How often was the "Polish" participation in German posses, "Polish" killings of fugitive Jews in forests, etc., actually the work of Polish-speaking Ukrainian collaborators (not only around Treblinka, but also elsewhere in otherwise Ukrainian-free regions of Poland)?
   
   Stangl rebuts Holocaust-uniqueness arguments (that posit that ALL Jews were targeted for extermination) when he alludes to certain deliberately-protected Mischlinge and full-blooded German Jews: "That racial business," said Stangl, "was just secondary. Otherwise, how could they have had all those `honorary Aryans'? They used to say that General Milch was a Jew, you know." (p. 232).
   
   To the extent that the Vatican had been "silent" on Jews, it had also been "ineffectual" in its occasional statements on murdered Poles (pp. 278-279).
   
   Not content with maintaining an exclusively Judeocentric focus, Sereny examines the planned extermination of Slavs: "Historical records in the public domain prove beyond any doubt that the Nazi extermination of the Jews, and concurrently of large numbers of Gypsies, was intended as only the first step in a gigantic programme of genocide of all so-called `inferior races' of Europe. A beginning was made both in Russia...and in Poland..." (p. 93). Treblinka-escapee Richard Glazer adds: "This is something, you know, the world has never understood; how perfect the machine was. It was only lack of transport because of the Germans' war requirements that prevented them from dealing with far vaster numbers than they did; Treblinka alone could have dealt with the 6,000,000 Jews and more besides. Given adequate rail transport, the German extermination camps in Poland could have killed all the Poles, Russians, and other East Europeans the Nazis planned eventually to kill." (p. 214).
   
   Finally, Sereny discusses Stangl's flight to Brazil. She contends that few Nazis escaping from postwar Europe benefited from the aid of conspiratorial organizations such as Odessa, whose effectiveness had been greatly exaggerated to begin with (p. 276). And, against the blanket condemnation of the Catholic Church, Sereny shows that aid to fleeing Nazis was given almost exclusively by German and Austrian clergy (pp. 285-286).



5. This is three books intertwined:
   1. an incredible book about the banality of evil. What is truly horrifying is how ordinary Franz Stangl is.
   2. This also is a terrifying account of the slippery slope from Euthanasia to Genocide.
   3. This is also a disgusting well-documented introduction to how the Catholic church assisted high-level Nazi's in escaping from Germany.
   
   
   The book is understated, factual, and well-written. I highly recommend that everyone read this book as a very clear window on our world.

5 comments about Lives of the Musicians: Good Times, Bad Times (and What the Neighbors Thought).

1. I got this book for my daughter who is a music teacher. I thought it would be a good reference and teaching tool for her.



2. My daughter's piano teacher gave her the assignment to read about Mozart as she started her first Mozart Minuet. My daughter was 7 at the time, and although she was reading at above 3rd grade level, I was shocked to find that there was NOTHING available on the internet or in her school library that give her information on composers at HER level. I finally found "Lives of the Musicians" and have actually purchased the book. It's just that good. She is able to read about each composer (for the most part the language is about her level, although she DOES need help with some of the words), and each section is engaging enough to keep her attention.
   
   This book is a must for anyone with a child that wants or is assigned to learn about the great composers.



3. This is a great book! My piano teacher checked it out from the library and loved it so much I had to buy her a copy! The illustrations are adorable and the bio's are so interesting. A lot of interesting stories that really give the great masters a very human quality! I love reading about the musicians that I'm currently playing! If you are into music and want to know just how human they really were this is a great book!



4. My daughter has been studying piano for two years and she is fascinated by the people who score the compositions she learns to play. In school she learns about a different composer each month and always wants to know more when she comes home. She also has a love for anything historical. This book was a great addition to our reference collection because it reaches her on several levels. We happened to come across it at the library and, after reading a few entries, we decided we'd like to buy it. Lots of bookstores stocked the paperback edition, but only Amazon had the hardcover in stock. This is the kind of book you really want in hardcover so that young children can more easily flip through the pages and study the humorous illustrations.
   
   The book includes entries on 20 musicians from a wide range of styles, backgrounds, and historical periods. The entries are engaging for adult readers, yet accessible for a younger audience. My daughter is six and was totally engrossed in the stories of Chopin, Mozart, Clara Schumann and others. I know we will come back to this book again and again.



5. A pleasure to read this book. I listen to a classical music station which includes interesting facts about the musicians' private lives. One day a guest mentioned that she knew where the host was obtaining these interesting facts. So it is a secret no longer; it's this book. Lives of the Musicians is light reading with approx. 2 pages of facts per musician, so it is not an in-depth look at their private lives; however put it on your "Fun" reading list. It is a highly amusing book and a great source of dinner conversation. Also Check out Lives of the Artists:Good Times, Bad Times (and What the Neigbors Thought)

1 comments about The Autobiography Of An Ex-Colored Man.

1. This is a work of fiction, not Johnson's autobiography. Johnson was a major figure in African-American arts and politics. He did not, as the title character does, spend the last half of his life "passing for white" as a Wall Street investor!

2 comments about Reckless Faith: Let Go and Be Led.

1. I really enjoyed this book. The stories of God's intervention in the lives of these Mexican children are very heartwarming, but also eyeopening to the conditions there. The stories really illustrate how we can benefit from stopping our endless planning and just trusting God to provide. He will exceed our wildest dreams!



2. Reckless Faith: Let Go and Be Led
   
   Beth's Reckless Faith is a tremendous account of God doing truly amazing things in the lives of people with 'hearts touched by orphans', particularly in the lives of Monterrey's orphans.
   
   God gave Beth and Todd a 'way outside the box' model for demonstrating the life-changing reality of Jesus Christ to His children, who through no fault of their own, find themselves in desperate situations.
   
   Beth is a gifted story teller, whose stories are gifts to her readers.

5 comments about On the Edge of Nowhere.

1. Jimmy Huntington wrote the best read I have seen in awhile--not too flowery, just basic truth. I loved it!!! Bonnie



2. I think I bought the last eight copies, so please order more, Amazon. I teach high school in the Alaskan bush, and it is extremely difficult to find books that my non-readers enjoy reading that also have academic value. This book, and "Shadows on the Koyukuk" by Sidney Huntington, Jimmy's brother, have given my students insight into the transition between traditional Native culture and current native culture with its White influence and inclusion. My copies are going into the Alaska History tub of materials from our district resource center, to be shared by the other schools in our district. We will need more copies.



3. Recently, I have been fascinated by Alaska and the people that inhabit(ed) its interior. The life of Jim Huntington is to be admired by everyone. This book was a fast read and a real page turner. It is more adventurous than many fictional tails I have read. Excellent and should be read by everyone.



4. I spent time in the village of Huslia and actually taught in the school Jimmy started there. I met Jimmy's brother Sidney, who also wrote an awesome book, SHADOWS ON THE KOYUKUK. This is a beautiful, but harsh country where survival was not a given. This is a marvelous book..... unforgetable........ a must-read for a lover of adventure and the wilderness!



5. What a great read! Awe Inspiring, Alaskan all the way. Does not get more raw than that! I grew up in the bush hearing tales of the good old days. This is a story worth every word.

5 comments about Tecumseh and the Quest for Indian Leadership (Library of American Biography Series) (2nd Edition) (Library of American Biography).

1. This book is a good overall view of the life of Tecumseh, the Shawnee chief. Also mentioned are his brother, the Prophet, and important historical events of the time. A good resource for those interested in the subject, a little dry for an everyday read.



2. Tecumseh was a powerful warrior and a powerful man. He led his people in what he thought was right, yet he did not stand for the massacre of those who took his people's land. This book gets that message through, but it is tedious. It reads like a high school textbook (and that is not a compliment).



3. This book is a textbook companion of the author's biography of Tecumseh's brother, Tenskwatawa or the Prophet. R. David Edmunds is known for both his combination of ethnographic material, oral tradition, and traditional historical research with good storytelling. His unique contribution is highlighting the importance of the religious message of revitalization to Indian resistance in the Old Northwest. This book is a good introduction to Indian experiences in the Old Northwest during the Revolutionary and Early Republic Periods. Those really interested in this title may want to continue their reading with "The Shawnee Prophet" by the same author, "A Spirited Resistance" by Gregory Dowd, and "The Middle Ground" by Richard White.



4. I read this book for a college Ohio History class. I hadn't had any previous knowledge about Tecumseh other than he was an Indian leader. Overall it was a very interesting book. Some may run into some problems if they do not fully understand the history of the War of 1812 in Ohio. Some of the battle descriptions go into detail. There is a chapter in the book that describes some of the Shawnee cultures and customs that I found very interesting.
   All said, this is a very good biography of a very respected Indian leader.



5. This thin book is surprisingly rich in detail. It is well written and does a very good job of separating legend from fact. It also acknowledges the situations where very little, or nothing, is accurately known about Tecumseh.