No comments about Frank's Way: Frank Cass and Fifty Years of Publishing.

No comments about Am I Dead Yet?: A Journalist's Perspective on Terrorism.

1 comments about Bertha Von Suttner: A Life for Peace (Syracuse Studies on Peace and Conflict Resolution).

1. Bertha von Suttner is little known in the United States. Despite the fact she won the Nobel Peace Prize - and was the first woman - she is often overlooked. This book helps to inform those who read it about how she was instrumental in having the Nobel Peace Prize created.

   Born into Austrian nobility, Bertha von Suttner saw firsthand the military buildup in Europe during the decades preceding World War I. She and her husband, Baron Arthur von Suttner, worked tirelessly for the cause of peace in Europe. Her close friendship with the inventor Alfred Nobel helped to establish a strong structure to the peace movement, with the annual awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize.

   This book is an excellent reference to Baroness Bertha von Suttner's life. Syracuse University did our society a great service in publishing the book in English.

No comments about Over My Shoulder: Reflections and Recollections of a Newspaper Columnist.

1 comments about The Soldiers' Voice: The Story of Ernie Pyle (Trailblazers).

1. I read this book to my son when he was 5 years old. Not only did he understand what was read to him, he retained a lot of information about Ernie Pyle. Ernie was a very interesting person, and my son was absorbed with the book. Now that he is beginning to read, it won't be long before he reads it again on its own. Barbara has a way of making a story fun and interesting.

No comments about Wide-eyed in Medialand: A Broadcaster's Journey.

5 comments about Thin Ice: Coming of Age in Canada.

1. This book was one of the best i've read in years. Bruce McCall is so great at his craft. he pays attention to every word. Making it impossible to read this book fast. it would not be doing it justice. You need to sit back and savor every single word.



2. As a Canadian coming of age in Canada, with all the small town yearnings of the U.S. in all it's glory, I could certainly relate to Bruce McCall's book, but I would have loved it anyway. I am buying copies for friends.



3. Thin Ice is one of the best books I have ever read. I also grew up in a large, dysfunctional family in southern Ontario in the fifties and sixties with a tyrannical, alcoholic father in a tense, cold emotion-starved environment. It wasn't until I was in therapy many years later for an anxiety disorder that I even realized that my childhood was far from normal, and all the feelings of inadequacy and inferiority I had carried all my life stemmed from my childhood.

   Thin Ice was a very painful book for me to read, because it is a tearful, emotional trip back in time, but a journey that was necessary for me to understand what happened to me and to finally stop blaming myself. Thin Ice is also uproariously funny, and I am reading it a second time. I, too, yearned to leave Canada behind and move to the United States. I left Canada over a decade ago to raise our children here and have never looked back. After therapy and Bruce's book I can finally leave it emotionally behind, also.

   Canadians get very upset when they are poked fun at, and Bruce does it like a pro. If you are a Pierre Burton nationalist, prepare yourself to be indignant. Bruce "tries to create a time when things were very different indeed - a time when a Canadian, certainly this Canadian, felt himself to be two thirds American, with the other third composed of a grayish ball of chaff: hockey/plaid/butter tarts/earmuffs/CBC/Mounties/toques/wheat/fish/lumber/God Save the King/Queen".

   I bought Thin Ice to be entertained and I not only laughed until I cried, I also really cried and gained a priceless insight into my complex childhood and the key to my personality today.




4. Wanting to know more about Canadian perspectives on the United States, and attracted by quotes indicating that P. J. O'Rourke and Peter Jennings found it very humorous, I bought this book. Unfortunately, I was once again reminded not to attribute too much credit to quotes from reviews printed on a book's cover. This is a far from humorous work; rather, it is a painful read.

   McCall's memoir is a bitter reflection on his childhood in Canada. His depiction of the Canada in which he was raised seems to arise from inductive reasoning: since his was a poor, emotionally uncommunicative, and disfunctional family he attributes those same attributes to the entire nation. Since McCall's personal life only took an upturn upon his immigration to the United States in retrospect everything American in his youth was bright, colorful, luxurious and exciting; things from Canada on the other hand were grey, utilitarian, and boring. Americans were fun and vigorous; Canadians dour and laconic.

   McCall's memoir constitutes an unrelenting denunciation of his parents' rearing of their children. His mother is depicted as a tragic, downtrodden, alcoholic who withdrew into alcohol as an escape from the burden of six children and a domineering, unsupportive husband. His description of his father is severe: mean, tyrannical, selfish, belittling. The denunciations are so excessive that about two thirds through the book the one wonders whether McCall doesn't regret missing the opportunity to drive a stake through his father's heart. He describes a stark childhood entirely devoid of love, happiness, or material comforts and attributes all his failures and personality quirks and those of his siblings to their upbringing.

   This was a hard book to plow through, much less finish. It is a sad, depressing memoir which would have been better kept within the McCall family; the writer makes an apt observation in the beginning of the book when he expresses concern about how his siblings will receive this recollection of their childhood.

   I really regret buying this book and the time I invested in reading it. Under no circumstances would I recommend it to others.




5. It helps to appreciate this memoir if you have an idea of who Bruce McCall is. The best way of doing that at one stroke is to read his cartoon collection, _Zany Afternoons_, which is out of print. _Thin Ice_ is a tale of a joyless family ruled by a loveless, inconsiderate father, seen from the viewpoint of the artistic child. By all rights, I should dislike this book, as I think giving one's parents the "Mommy Dearest" treatment is ungrateful, unless they were downright abusive. As the psychiatrist said to the centaur, "Stop blaming your parents." Yet he recreates his childhood homes and family climate so winningly that the story overcomes such resistance, and we are transported back with him. All those witty zingers about how dull Canada was are entertaining, too. The book ends just as he is on his way to revive his career in the States. Since that is where, by his own definition, the "good part" of the story lies, let's hope he produces the next installment soon.

1 comments about Never Dull: From Washington Editor and Foreign Correspondent to Country Publisher.

1. This book is just fascinating reading. I liken what I read to a string of pearls - one after another comes floating by with wonderful insights and color. It was never dull - but it was so much more than that. I loved the stuff about the Soviets inviting Estabrook to lunch to plant ideas. And the Khrushchev interview was a corker. I now am much more in awe of Russ Wiggins. Talk about a guardian angel! This book does a wonderful job of giving readers a look behind the scenes of one of the great newspapers in the U.S.

No comments about Will Thrall and the San Gabriels: A Man to Match the Mountains (Adventures in Cultural and Natural History).

1 comments about A Journey for Our Times.

1. The book itself is well written but it is really the amazing first hand accounts that this one person was witness to that kept me reading.

   Another interesting point was in the first part of the book. Mr. Salisbury talks about the regional economics of his early years. It was very similar to the experience that we were living at the peak of the dot com expansion. He describes the inconceivable crash in wheat prices in 1920. Tells how the depression hit Minnesota in 1920 and stayed through 1930's.