1 comments about Kidnapped in the Amazon Jungle.

1. I read this book over a decade ago. I just can't believe no one has reviewed it. I just remember that it was really good. I'll try my best review it. It takes place in the Peruvian Amazon region during the rubber boom. Manuel is a young teen living in a dull town and anxious to join his uncle in the rubber tapping business. He goes against his mother's wishes. When sailing down the Amazon they are attacked by hostile Indians who resent the encroachment. Manuel is captured and very slowly integrated into the tribe. He assimilates their customs, including using hallucinogenic drugs for visions. He is eventually bestowed the honor of becoming the apprentice to the shaman, healer.

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1 comments about The Apache Diaries: A Father-Son Journey.

1. To read The Apache Diaries by Grenville (1907-40) and son Neil Goodwin is to enter a portal to another dimension. Through a dialogue of contemporary and historic diaries and related photographs, a vivid landscape haunted by blood, pain, fear, suffering, passion, and ancient enmities emerges. In this world all tales are entwined by tones of sorrow, loss, and a relentless quest for the understanding and peace of the dead. There is also fascination, pride, and great heroism. The plight of the Sierra Madre Apaches intrigues the youthful Grennie, destined to become a singular if short-lived ethnographer who partially chronicles their ambiguous fate. That unfinished life task is taken up by his son Neil in the research and writing of The Apache Diaries. In an effort to reach out and perhaps even touch the father who died when he was only two months old, the author recreates the journeys made by his father when he wrote the original diary entries in the 1930's. The Apache Diaries is, as intended, a dialogue built between Neil and Grennie in an exploration of the dual enigmas of the nature of the man himself and the mysterious fate of the Sierra Madre Apaches he studied. It is as though Neil, the son, hopes to uncover a mirror experience of both the true life essence of his father and the inconclusive, mysterious fate of the "wild" Sierra Madre Apaches. It is fitting that he is joined in his quest by his wife, son and his son's future wife. The Apache Diaries is a classic quest riddle, filled with real unquenchable anguish and courage mixed with evil and cowardice. It is bitterly poignant. True to life, it never resolves completely; but there is a partial lifting of the veil. The key to experiencing this strangely compelling, haunted world of the blood- feuding Mexicans' and Apaches' history is, perhaps, acceptance of the pain and wrong, the incredible wrenching anguish that is called forth again and again. But there is a second step that is as yet unfinished. One quickly learns to guess at an outline of forgiveness, perhaps ? a future resolution that still may loom yet several generations away. The deaths and the kidnappings are so brutal and vivid. Though Grenville Goodwin was a respected ethnographer and Neil Goodwin is an accomplished film-maker of Native American documentaries, the reader does not need to be fluent in either medium to appreciate the depth and complexity of The Apache Diaries. It resonates in the heart. It breaks the heart. Perhaps it remakes the heart, or the heart's vision. This is a profoundly moving book. Perhaps the book reflects the spirit of the crown dance of the Chiricahua, a holy ritual Neil witnesses in 1987 when he accompanies two grandsons of one of Geronimo's warriors on a commemorative visit to the location of Geronimo's near surrender to General Crook:

   Later during that trip the Chiricahuas conducted their holiest of rituals, the spellbinding crown dance. It begins with an immense leaping bonfire. There is a line of drummers and chanters. Shockingly, out of the darkness, come the dancers. They circle the fire wearing masks with high, antlerlike crowns, short kilts, painted bodies, a thousand tiny bells, a sword in each hand - they reel, hover, sway, and as they do, they become the mountain gods. The assembled Apaches are witnessing the first crown dance held in these mountains for a very long time. It is at long last a dance for the peaceless dead, and it is overdue by a hundred years or more. (page 236)

   Nancy Lorraine Reviewer

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5 comments about Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat.

1. It's true that Gunn Allen's work doesn't fit neatly into any of the normal western categories of biography or history, but then again she's not working within the western tradition to begin with. In order to appreciate what Gunn Allen has accomplished, you first must have a knowledge and appreciation of the Algonquian oral tradition, which embraces a wide range of Indian nations across most of the eastern half of North America, including the state of Virginia, where native communities persist to this day. To begin with the oral tradition, then, is to begin with living communities that still retain the memories of their historical ancestors, such as Pocahontas. From this perspective, as Gunn Allen demonstrates, the story of Pocahontas is less of a romance and more of an adventure, one in which the protagonist is an extension of women's roles and powers in the Powhatan Confederacy. As such, the story of Pocahontas is the story of Native America's fateful encounter with the European powers that would eventually--not annihilate them (though many died, particularly from disease)--but colonize, relocate, and oppress them. In the end, Gunn Allen's eloquent and insightful book is a potent reminder that it is the spirits, the manitou, who ultimately control the world. I highly recommend this book.



2. Dr. Gunn Allen opens our eyes to the roots of modern American culture that are too often obscured, whether intentionally or not. A reader who approaches this work "in good faith" will be regaled with the astonishingly open, clear, and unique viewpoint she cultivates and communicates. She chooses to stand between two cultures and knowledgeably observe them interpenetrate--rather than take the customary political or religious stances of taking one "side" or another. Only a woman with a solid grounding in both cultures (and a tremendous ability to write beautifully), as Dr. Allen has, can accomplish in her work what she is also showing her readers historically. A discerning reader who is willing to admit--and agree to suspend--culturally-programmed judgment can come away from this book with a much richer, smarter, more beautiful and especially more genuinely compassionate sense of REAL purpose this country's citizens might choose to see in their ancestors' having come here, as well as in the direction they would really like this country to take NOW. In addition, I find that it is an honor (still and despite the rude and terrible behavior the English showed towards the interesting and knowledgeable people already living here) to be so respectfully invited into sharing indigenous views of this world, this land, and the Western Europeans who came here. On top of all of this, the book is a truly great read for most anyone who has an intellect that enjoys exercise, and a love of exploring and rediscovering the past in new ways.



3. The feeling the book gave me was one of disjointed-ness, I couldn't fully submerge myself into the book because it didn't seem like the writer could decide how she wanted to present the material. It read like conjecture for a lot of it, with "could", "would have" , and it also read like a lecture given by a professor, at the same time, it was too conversational, and in all just poorly written. The material was interesting enough, and her conjectures intriguing, it was just the presentation that was faulty. It would also have been better if she could have given logic for her conjectures, as it is...she would have done better to have written the book as a fiction novel, and it would have carried better.



4. I don't ordinarily write reviews, but I feel the need to steer people away from spending money on this book! This was a horrible waste of money, and of time spent in reading the first third or so I read before I quit. Patricia Gunn Allen is not simply hooked on Political Correctness (which I could deal with). She substitutes it for decent scholarship and for writing ability. After the pointless detours into the legends of her own New Mexico Native American clan and 21st Century Physics, the attempt to relate the "myth" of Pochahontas to the Legend of one of the Kngihts of the Round Table (I think it was Gawain and the Green Knight, but I'm honestly not sure) did me in. I wanted to know something about Pocahotas -- the Woman! Or, as the title of the book says, the Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepeneur and Diplomat! And that is what I could NOT glean from this book at all.



5. Pocahontas Was a Tobacco Priestess
   When I was a little boy, my grandmother told me that we were descendents of Pocahontas. The idea aroused my fantasies. Having Indian blood was a special blessing. It endowed me with certain spiritual qualities, psychic perceptiveness and magical abilities--in my imagination. Later I was disappointed to learn that it was fashionable among past generations to claim a blood tie to Pocahontas. I suspected my grandmother's story was of this origin. Much later I realized that a fascination with things Native American was a symptom of a certain affinity. I valued the Indian fantasy as a call of the wild from within. It was to be answered, but in my own, indigenous terms, not in terms borrowed from other cultures. I recently read a book that has added great depth to this perspective.
   Pocahontas: Medicine woman, spy, entrepreneur, diplomat (HarperSanFrancisco), by Paula Gunn Allen, Ph.D., tells an entirely different history of this American icon than the one we cherish. This award winning author, retired professor from U.C.L.A., credited with originating Native American literary studies, has taken the usual sources, plus those rarely referred to, and re-interpreted the data within the context of the Native American mythical world view. The result is a fascinating account of the transformation of "Turtle Island" into "America the Beautiful."
   Dr. Gunn Allen begins by explaining the spirit-centered worldview of the Native American at that time. The "manito aki," which pertains to the supernatural, paranormal, spirit inhabited world, was the Native American waking reality, more real to them than the physical world. We might say that they were good "Jungians" at that time, because they respected the experiences of the imagination as real and worthy of attention. The natives at that time also realized that their world was coming to an end. Their calendars and mythologies had prepared them. The coming of the white men was part of the fulfillment of this prophesy. Evidence points to the fact that Pocahontas was a high priestess, initiated into the mysteries of the spirit world and charged with responsibility to these spirits. Based upon her evidence, the author came to the startling conclusion that Pocahontas, rather than falling in love with Captain John Smith, was actually on a pre-planned mission taking advantage of him as an unwitting pawn. Her objective: to insure that the spirit of tobacco would find a home in the new world. Tobacco spirit, the essential shamanic power of the Native American world, needed to find a way to be a part of the coming materialistic world that was being born. This mission was crucial if the spirit of the Native world was to survive destruction of its manifest existence. Pocahontas was the channel by which the transfer of power was achieved. Pocahontas' connection with John Smith was the means by which Native spirituality was preserved, even though it would have to hide for centuries within a plant that would be marketed, traded, consumed, and vilified within a purely materialistic consciousness, until such time as this ancient spirituality could one day be reborn in the awareness of the European mindset, as is beginning to happen today.
   What is this newly emerging mindset? Gunn Allen writes, "...the construction of Pocahontas in American thought, while often historically inaccurate, is an indication that the imagination of America is as connected to the manito aki as it is to the land. The problem that Americans face in harmonizing our modern American consciousness with the ancient psyche of the land we inhabit is the dominance of a paradigm that assumes material, measurable existence to be all there is."
   The lesson for us is to respect the intuitive nature of the imagination." We need to experience and to understand the imagination as a channel of intuitive realities. The mind and its ambassador, the imagination, is quite real although it inhabits a different plane of existence than the world the senses recognizes. It is real because it makes a difference in our lives. It is in this realm of the imagination that we can find our highest ideals, that we intuit our interconnectedness as spiritual beings, that we encounter non-material beings, and discover the patterns in the creative forces that shape our lives. Our fascination with all things Native American is evidence of our connection to this non-material world. Yet this connection is something that sadly we do not recognize within ourselves, but project onto these indigenous peoples. Gunn Allen re-connects us with our heritage. She joins us in gratitude to the people who came before us, who built a spiritual time capsule that would survive the materialistic, destructive stage of our history, preserving for the future our endowment as spirit's children. Pocahontas is truly America's godmother. [...]

5 comments about Just the Two of Us.

1. Read the first chapter- the rest is only great but the first is a complete dream come true. Enjoy- I did.



2. I loved the adventure described by Ms. Blodgett. The first half of the book was very captivating, but the author seemed to fizzle out towards the end leaving a lot of unanswered questions.



3. A few weeks back I was stuck in JFK during a travel mess caused by software and weather. During the long, long layover, I met an interesting fellow, Bill Blodgett, the wife of the author. What an amazing and modest man. At some point he asked if I had interest in sailing and one thing led to another before he mentioned a seven year honeymoon around the world. One result of the trip was this wonderful little book. Although we will likely never meet, I have to say "Thank you Alicia!" for sharing your wonderful story and thanks to Bill for telling me about it.



4. So well written...I did not want to lay it down. It is a wonderful story about two newly married people on a voyage around the world on a sail boat. I found it so interesting and informative. If you are thinking about an around the world sailing adventure...please read this first!



5. This is the story of a rich woman with a husband that takes a sabbatical, so he can sail around the world. They start out with a good boat then decide that it is not big enough and by a brand new "big" one. Lots of stories about other peoples shipwrecks and pirates, playing golf and tennis along the way.
   It is not a bad book but she does not have much to say other than she enjoyed the voyage and loved to live the good life.

3 comments about Once Upon an Island.

1. I LOVED THIS BOOK. I READ IT IN ONE NIGHT. IT IS THE STORY OF A YOUNG COUPLE WHO SCRAPED TOGETHER ALL THEY HAD TO BUY AN ISLAND. THE STORY TELLS OF THEIR FORTUNES AND MISFORTUNES OF TRYING TO MAKE IT AND BUILD THE PRIMITIVE ISLAND INTO A HOME AND EVENTUALLY A SMALL PRIMITIVE RESORT. THEY TELL OF THE BEAUTY AND PRIVACY AND PEACEFULNESS OF THEIR OWN ISLAND AND THEIR DAILY LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF FIXING IT UP TO BE HABITABLE. I WILL PROBABLY START READING IT ALL OVER AGAIN!



2. This was one of the best reads I have had in a long time. David Conover lived his dream and was kind enough to write a book and share his trials and tribulations. "Once Upon an Island," is a pleasure to read. I agree with the other reviewer that it was hard to put this book down. I turned the pages with anticipation, waiting to see what new adversity the family would undergo, and how they triumphed. This is great movie material--too bad Hollywood wastes their time with special effects movies.



3. This is a MUST READ for anyone here in the Pacific Northwest or planning to cruise up into the Candian Gulf Islands.
   
   It is a tribute to a couple with a dream, more his than hers at first, love, hard work and support of a community known as Ganges.
   
   I read this book back in 1968 and was delighted to find it again today.
   
   If you have a chance to got to Wallace Island, walk ashore and see the old buildings that they built. You can go back in time and recapture each chapter in your own eye.
   
   
   Many of us today wish we could do what that they did back then. Would you be willing to take the risk?
   
   This would be a wonderful gift to give to any boater, since it is a treausre to have aboard!

5 comments about The Remarkable Life of William Beebe: Explorer And Naturalist.

1. This is a wonderful book - a really engrossing story about an amazing man who was both an explorer and a scientist during the last century. If they made a movie about him, he'd probably be styled as an Indiana Jones type character, as he really did look death in the eye a few times in his lifetime - particularly during the dives he made in `the bathysphere' off Bermuda in the 1930s (the bathysphere being a sort of cast iron bubble with tiny windows, which was winched off the side of a boat, and dropped down to a depth of half a mile underwater). But in my mind's eye Beebe was more like a David Niven sort of person, because as well as having a passionate interest in exploring the natural world, he was a really gifted writer, had an enormous sense of humour, and was quite dapper and a great believer in cocktails all round in the late afternoon! And when he wasn't travelling the world, he was feted in New York society circles by people like Katherine Hepburn, Noel Coward and Rudyard Kipling. The book is really enjoyable and easy to read, and quite inspiring too - transporting you back to a bygone age. And it has LOADS of pictures, which bring it to life all the more. Lovely - good antidote to grim winter weather!



2. William Beebe was at one time as famous as any naturalist can be, and justly so. Today, few have heard of him. It is no surprise that fame is fickle, and that a latter generation forgets the heroes of the former, but Beebe's is an extreme example. In _The Remarkable Life of William Beebe, Explorer and Naturalist_ (Island Press), Carol Grant Gould has given a full, big biography of one of the most amazing men who ever lived. Beebe worked in zoos. He took expeditions to identify and capture specimens from Indonesia, South America, and China. He broke records in deep sea diving in the bathysphere that was designed for him. He wrote two dozen books that were best sellers, widely appreciated by the public and by professional scientists who shared his realm of study. He was so famous that in the original play of _The Man Who Came to Dinner_, the hot-tempered protagonist receives an octopus shipped from Beebe, and audiences immediately understood the joke, as they do not, now, when they see the play in revival. If time has passed Beebe by, his influence is still substantial, and Gould has performed a useful service in bringing him back for us to wonder at.
   
   Beebe was born in Brooklyn in 1877, when his neighborhood had wild woods that he could explore. He was a prodigy. Many kids set out to collect things, but the young Beebe kept snakes, learned taxidermy to keep snake and bird specimens, bought or traded for exotic specimens, and camped and hiked to get more. School was a breeze for him, but he loved being out in the field. In a final entry in an 1893 journal, he wrote, "To be a Naturalist is better than to be a King." The exuberance which this youthful manifesto exemplifies never left him. He became Assistant Curator of Birds at the new Bronx Zoological Park, but his career of exploring for the sake of discoveries in natural history took off when he left with his wife for an official exploit to Mexico. The press and public were enthusiastic about his account of the trip, the first of his bestsellers. Sometimes being a popularizer detracted from appreciation of his scientific work, but there was plenty of both. His voyages made him fascinated with sea life, and he became an adept diver, applying the same principles of studying a broad, three dimensional swath rather than individual inhabitants. In 1930, he and his engineer were "sealed in a spherical steel coffin and thrown into the ocean." Especially on initial dives, as the readings approached 800 feet, he had to be scared; he wrote, "Only dead men have sunk below this." Eventually, he was to broadcast his observations live from such a descent, a radio event that caused a sensation.
   
   Beebe died in 1962, always grabbing as much of life and learning as he could. He was an entertaining friend, and among the visitors to these pages are Noël Coward, Gertrude Lawrence, Rebecca West, and especially Teddy Roosevelt. More important, he inspired biologists such as Rachel Carson, Ernst Mayr, and Edward O. Wilson. His emphasis on studying an ecosystem as a whole was original and vastly influential. Gould obviously admires his popular writings, many of which are quoted here, but shows that his scientific work is monumental. Calling his a remarkable life is indeed an understatement.



3. Adventure travelers interested in both nature and action will relish biographer Carol Grant Gould's Remarkable Life Of William Beebe: Explorer And Naturalist, an armchair biography which tells of one William Beebe, who became the first to see the ocean depths in a bathysphere, trekked the Himalayas and Malaysia in the early 1900s to study ecology, and brainstormed with Roosevelt and other naturalists of his times. A remarkable life and a series of remarkable contributions comes vividly to life in this memorable, entertaining, and highly recommended biography.



4. This is one of the most remarkable and enticing biographies I've ever read. I am a professional biologist and have always wanted to be able to express my enthusiasm for my work in words than transcend the sterility of "modern" science and politics. This work does this and I could only hope to express my own work in such an elegant way. I think Carol Grant Gould has done an exceptional job. Despite the restictions imposed upon her, I am mystified how she managed to pierce the veil that clouds the achievements of many scientists behind veils of scientific and religious intolerance. A remarkable work.



5. I read the editorial review above for this book and almost didn't read it. I have to say I disagree with it. The biography does not necessarily focus on all his Beebe's personal issues, but it is a vibrant and gripping read about a very unique man. I thought it was extremely well done.
   
   Born in the last quarter of the nineteenth century in Brooklyn, it was still a world of forests and wildlife nearby for him to explore. This love of nature, and comfort away from the trappings of civilisation stayed with him all his life. But he also had this almost supernatural ability to dissociate himself from his possible fate - or even his reality and instead go beyond that to look at what was happening around him. So his observations were extraodinary.
   
   He was the first person to be travel down to 2000ft in the ocean in a small metal capsule. The enormous pressures could have caved in the tiny craft - it did even start leaking at some stage. Yet he broadcast live from it, and managed to make some ground breaking observations about his time there and the strange animals which dwelt there - some of which have never been seen since.
   
   Gould has divided this biography into four distinct sections which followed his life, Naturalist, Ornithologist, Marine Biologist and Tropical Ecologist.
   
   this is illustrated throughout with printed pictures on each page, the only drawback is that these pictures are all of poor to fair quality - a problem of matt paper combined with size of pictures and that they are all in black and white.
   
   Beebe's life is worth reading about and I think Gould's biography is an excellent reference, readable and engaging.

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1 comments about TEX JOHNSTON PB.

1. This is a great historical accounting of the life of an American aviation pioneer. Tex Johnston's life was a colorful mix of barnstorming through the flight testing and air racing of WWII fighters, and finally the experimental flight testing of the Bell X-1 (prior to Chuck Yeager) and the Boeing aircraft when the jet age was underway. The book is a little scant in his accounting of the famous (infamous?) barrell rolls of the 707 prototype over Lake Washington, which is disappointing. Overall, a great book and must reading for any fan of the early years of experimental flight testing.