5 comments about Voice for the Mad: The Life of Dorothea Dix.

1. I casually picked up this book, read the introduction, and was hooked. The idea that Dorothea Dix could fashion a political career -- sitting with legislators to draft laws, guiding bills through the House and Senate with personal patronage -- generations before women could vote, well, this amazed me. But more amazing is the whole first section of the book, in which Gollaher details Dix's terrible and depressing early life in New England. The strength in this book is how he connects the dots of her painful early life with her painfully successful career in Washington and dozens of state capitals around the country. I can't think of anyone who paid a greater psychic price for success. Her story is largely a tragedy, exquisitely told here.



2. This is a great biography, if somewhat exhastive in its detailing of Dorothea Dix's incredibly energetic and productive life. What captivated me was Gollaher's ability to evoke Dix's essential sadness, something that went back to her early childhood and that made her self-aware yet remote from other people. Ironically it was her self-possession, her sense of being different from everyone else, that enabled her to related to the mentally ill and create a unique career.



3. I bought this book after reading the following award citation it received from the Organization of American Historians: "VOICE FOR THE MAD provides more than a fine analysis of how and why a key northern antebellum reformer came to her reform, more than a well-written, sophisticated account of how a well-traveled reformer sought progress in Europe and the Americas, more than an illuminating account of how and why Americans created asylums for the insane. Gollaher's study also throws important light on how a woman outside the home could be an important lobbyist inside antebellum male legislatures; on how and why antebellum religion generated a white-hot reformist passion; on how and why reformist passion often stopped short, as in Dix's case, of anti-slavery; and perhaps most astonishingly, on how and why the Yankee woman as a reforming fanatic could succeed in Southern legislatures...[A] gem of a biography." Amazingly, the book is even better than this, because it reveals how a person was able to use her own demons -- her anger, her feelings of abandonment, her incredible nervous energy -- as sources of strength in the public arena of politics.



4. Gollaher paints a very dull picture of Dorothea Dix. There is not one colorful insight into this fascinating, world-changing woman. If there was even a hint of love or respect, or even curiosity about his subject, the author never reaveals it. There is an inexcusable failure on the author's part to make this famous lady 'touchable'. He discredits her faith with one stroke of his pen and rambles about the more cerebral parts of her life and work. Yes, she was interested in other things besides helping people but I don't care to know about how many bugs she collected and how many famous persons she socialized with. I want to know about Dorothea Dix! This was one of the most discursive, spiritless biographies I have read in many years. Read another biographer's account of this amazing woman, perhaps one that is written by a woman.



5. I have read many biographies of Dorothea Dix, and this one is the best of the best! She was a fascinating woman of her age. Devotedly religious, she found a life similiar in many respects to Mother Teresa of our age - although Miss Dix was much more effective using legislation as a tool in her relief work. Her work with the mentally ill has been studied by many professionals in the field. David Gollaher brings all the available historical documents together in an easy-to-read format for the general public. I hope this book will be rereleased for a new generation of students, social workers, nurses and doctors. Highly recommended for any public or private library.

1 comments about Margaret Bourke-white: The Early Work, 1922-1930 (Pocket Paragon Series).

1. Margaret Bourke-White was a leading photojournalist whose work for Fortune, among others, celebrated the machine age and whose later work for Life featured more of an interest in humanitarian concerns. MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE: THE EARLY WORK, 1992-1930 provides a new gathering with a focus on her earliest work, when she was an amateur. Her first photos were still lifes and images more characteristic of her times rather than her talents: one can see the transitions to her personal style in the photos made from 1928-30, and it's also notable that the some eighty photos reproduced here have seldom been seen outside their archives. A 'must' for any in-depth art library.

No comments about The Making of an American.

4 comments about In Search of History: A Personal Adventure.

1. In Search of History, by Theodore H. White is an excellent and well written book chronicling not only the life of this astounding reporter and writer, but also giving you an inside view into the U.S. from his birth in 1915 to the publishing of the book in 1963. In his early years (1915-1938) he details to a full extent the Boston in which he grew up, as well as going into a small extent about New England and the rest of the U.S. In these few fascinating chapters, he details the history of immigration to the U.S., and how the various ethnicities and neighborhoods functioned. For me in particular, who was only born in the last decade, this view of an America long gone and far removed was both fascinating and informative.

   In the next section, after completion of his education and after receiving employment as a reporter from Harry Luce at Time, White travels to Asia (1938-1945) to detail the three way struggle between the Japanese, Chiang K'ai-Shek (and his Nationalist forces), and Mao Tse-tung (and his Communist forces), with the U.S. supporting K'ai-Shek. While this era in China is all common knowledge and part of history, to see it the way that White writes it is to see it in an entirely new light. An example of this is when White takes the reader into the party conference (Communist), and reveals many details of Communist thinking that are rather unknown in the West. Also, here, as in almost any situation, White managed to ease his way into the confidence of these men of power, and therefore many parts of what he reveals in this book are not well known, such as how close the U.S. actually came to acieving harmony between the Nationalist and Communist forces. However, White's views on the matter of China differed sharply from those of his employer, Harry Luce (then owner of the Time-Life conglomerate), and so shortly after he left Asia he quit.

   He next found employment from a variety of small papers and went to Europe (1948-1953) to detail the demilitarization of Germany and the reconstruction of the occupied countries. This section provides an excellent look at an era in history that has been forgotten by the majority of Americans. Take, for example, the European Joint Defense Force. This was a proposal under which all of the armies of the European nations would be joined as one. Long forgotten, this book sheds some new light on this fascinating proposal.

   Next, White returns home to America (1954-1963), where he publishes several books. He next follows Senator John F. Kennedy through his campaign for president up to his assassination. He was an intimate of Kennedy's, and this section of his book provides an excellent look at that era. He tells of the tear-filled meeting between himself and Jacqueline Kennedy shortly after President Kennedy's death in which he wrote the story that was to label the Kennedy years as the "Camelot" era of American history.
   
   This book provides an excellent and in depth look at the world from 1915-1963, from White's (a liberal's) point of view. I recommend this book to the casual, interested, or scholarly reader.




2. This is a wonderful tour of the 20C, to about 1970, by a reporter who followed stories as they emerged in the most important places and with the most powerful people. White was entirely self-made, an energetic and talented man who had some luck but mostly worked very hard.
   
   Although many journalists came to scorn White for his nostalgic style late in life - rightfully in my opinion - there is no doubt that early on he was a great reporter of courage and idealism. You see him begin reporting for Luce (and Time) while on a fellowship in China, fresh out of Harvard, when he got into the innermost circle of communist leaders after becoming disillusioned with Chiang Kai Shek. There he met Mao, Zhou EnLai, and scores of others who would go on to great power - the reader feels like he gets to know them personally. He then wrote a bestseller on the experience.
   
   In a typical move that showed his nose for a great story and a pioneer of in-depth investigations, White then moved to Paris, where he chronicled the post-war reconstruction under the Marchall Plan. He then returned to the US and started his outstanding series on US elections, the Making of the President. After losing a job at Colliers, and at great financial risk, he made his living almost entirely from books.
   
   This is a amazing and trailblazing career, thick with historical detail, but this book is also a memoir that lets you in on what made him tick: he witnessed his father beaten down by the Depression, but heard from him that China would have a revolution that would change the world. This was the source of his original inspiration for China. There are many asides that are both charming and fascinating, such as the time he lost his virginity in China, but also about how he works and what he remembers of certain scenes, such as the moment Zhou EnLai got him to eat pork.
   
   Warmly recommended, in particular for aspiring writers (like myself when I read it!).



3. An incredibly broad overview of one man's very exciting career in journalism, Theodore White's "In Search Of History" puts us at his shoulder as he explores war-torn China and reconstructed Europe, does battle with leftist zealots and right-wing hoods, and apotheosizes the ephemerality of the world and the fleeting cast populating it. Any journalist, or one thinking of a career in journalism, owes it to him- or herself to read this.
   
   One might subtitle this: "Enough About Those Presidents, Let's Talk About Me." By 1978, he had ceased producing his widely-read and respected "Making Of The President" books, deciding he needed to figure out what it had been all about. Such a scenario would bode ill except White lived an interesting life he shares here with passion and candor, focusing always on what it meant for him to be a journalist, lighting on telling moments in time and raising questions about his own possible shortcomings and oversights that help lift this above most journalist autobiographies.
   
   Starting out a poor Jewish boy in Boston during World War I, White was a Horatio Alger story who made his way to Harvard with a gritty combination of hard work and belief in himself and the country that produced him. Though best-known today for "The Making Of" series, White had been a reporter for more than 20 years before that, cutting his teeth at Henry Luce's Time/Life, where the focus was always on individual "makers of history." Though he fell out with Luce, he held fast to that "compelling personality" concept throughout his career, latching on to various figures he met with a curiosity so immersive it bordered on idolatry.
   
   "What frightened me then, and frightens me still, is how very few men it takes at the head of any state to give it its character of good or evil, of freedom, tyranny, torture, butchery or benevolence," he writes, reflecting on postwar Germany but taking in the world.
   
   For those disposed to accept this viewpoint, White offers vivid profiles of such unique and complex characters as Luce, Chou En-Lai, Chaing K'ai-Chek, Averell Harriman, and especially John F. Kennedy, of whom White says: "Those who knew him well loved him too much...The man I followed wrapped me in such affection that I have never been able completely to escape." Those who note this was part of White's problem have to acknowledge the fact that they, like so many in the last 40 or so years, are drawing on White's own reportage in making their conclusions.
   
   What makes White great to read is the apparent absence of anything else interesting going on in his life. He writes a little about women, his first sexual experience and an early wife who kept him working by spending his money. But you get the feeling he was more devoted to us his readers than anyone he knew in his own life. No detail is too small or too squalid for White to bore in on, and stick with long enough to make come alive in our hands, whether it is poverty-stricken children being worked to death in a Shanghai filature or the quality of napery on a French dinner table.
   
   Reading him is like having a curtain pulled back on episodes that come off stiff and square in history books, discovering not only the pulsing, bleeding life behind them but something of the poverty of journalism today, at least where imaginative reconstruction and non-doctrinaire analysis are concerned.
   
   He also gets into the stories behind the stories, of his fights to get Luce and other editors to publish his view of the world rather than theirs, of the logistical challenges of being at the scene of great events, of helping Jackie Kennedy craft the enduring myth of her husband's Camelot, and his lasting belief in the importance of his work. Jayson Blair and Jared Paul Stern, take note: "Contacts are the only bankable capital on which a journalist can ever draw."
   
   I wish I could write this review with something other than a ponderous ministerial tone, give some hint of the joy and humor to be found, the marvelous turns of phrase sprinkled throughout this large book like sand on a beach, and properly credit "In Search Of History's" Dickens-like method of drawing you into the world he inhabits, until you feel like you know as well as he ever did his fellows and his surroundings.
   
   Suffice to say this is White's most enjoyable and readable book despite its length, and next to "Making Of The President 1968," his best. Along with that other White's book, "The Elements Of Style," this is something no writer of worldly affairs can be without.



4. One of the themes of this book is White's belief that history has heroes, individuals who make a real difference, and change things for good. White does not speak or think of himself as a hero, but I believe that many readers of this book will come to the conclusion that White himself was a kind of hero, a hero in serving the American public through first- rate eye-witness imaginative Journalism.
   In this fast- paced and often exciting recollection White tells of his boyhood on Erie Street in Boston. His father an unemployed lawyer dies when he is sixteen, and the family lives in great poverty. He works hard and goes from Boston Latin School to Harvard. He tells the story of remarkable people he meets along the way including his great mentor in Chinese Studies at Harvard John Fairbanks. White is a person who deeply appreciates other human beings, and one of the best features of this book is his portraits of many remarkable human beings. Among these are those he will meet in his first real journalistic assignment in the Far EAst , General Stillwell, Claire Chenault , General Douglas MacArthur.
   White has great sympathy for the Chinese people and tells the story of the inept war conducted against the Japanese by Chiang- Kai-Shek, a villian in White's eyes. One of the stories within the stories, and one which alone justifies calling White as hero, relates to the great famine in Hunan province. Singlehandedly White went to investigate this , and it was his reports to Time Magazine and a chilling conversation he had with Chiang - Kai- Shek which led to massive supplies being sent to the province, and the famine ending. White also tells of his visits to Mao, and in retrospect it can be said that he treats him far too gently. Mao has emerged as one of the most evil mass- murderers in human history and White does not even begin to hint at anything wrong with him.
   White's reporting on China, especially his criticism of the Nationalists leads him into conflict with his boss Henry Luce. White leaves off writing for 'Time' and eventually comes to write the four 'Making the President ' volumes which is what he will be most known for. Towards the close of the book he tells of his special relationship with President Kennedy who he deeply admired, and tells too of the famous interview the President's widow summoned White to , shortly after the President's death when she was deeply worried about his place in history.
   There are many extraordinarily well- written and moving passages in the book. One of the best is White's description of the Japanese surrender to General MacArthur and how at the very moment of the surrender there suddenly appears in the sky squadrons and squadrons of American planes, a signal of the great American power that won the war.
   White talks quite a bit about the craft of writing, and distinguishes the journalist limited in vision by being so involved in the factual realities as they are happening, and the historian who can through time and distance order and see things the journalist cannot. Clearly White himself combines both these capacities in this work.

4 comments about Dear Papa, Dear Hotch: The Correspondence of Ernest Hemingway And A. E. Hotchner.

1. I had a hard time rating this collection of letters, postcards and cables between Hemingway and A. E. Hotchner, Papa's friend during the last decade or so of his life. If I give "Dear Papa, Dear Hotch" 5 stars, what do I give my favorite book of all time - Hemingway's "In Our Time"? Since Amazon's rating system won't allow for more than 5 stars, I plead "nolo contendere." This book deserves 5 stars because it is the best it could be. Comparison with Hemingway's crafted work is not the point.
   
   That said, "Dear Papa, Dear Hotch" is a gift to all who love Hemingway. I congratulate DeFazio for a job well done. Gathering all the pieces of this intriguing story must have consumed countless hours and required lots of legwork. The process of deciphering Hemingway's penmanship and the necessary research to illuminate arcane references was surely daunting at times. A.E. Hotchner's Preface & DeFazio's Introduction are fascinating and admirably set the stage for what is ultimately a poignant story of friendship & loss.



2. In his Preface, Hotchner writes:"I was young and struggling and vulnerable." What these Letters reveal is that "Hotch" was ambitious, greedy and manipulative. Just read the exchange concerning the "True" article (pp 172-179).Though De Fazio and the University of Missouri Press are to be congratulated for their Herculean accomplishment, those familiar with other Hemingway letters/memorabilia and scholarship, published and unpublished, know why Hotchner "had fallen out of favor with Mary"(Preface 12), as well as with other family members, true friends and many Hemingway scholars. Conrad Aiken, who early on saw Hemingway's genius, wrote, on the occasion of T.S.Eliot's death 40 years ago, "that this is the age of the ex-wife and the editor."I would add a third category: the "so-called friend."



3. _Dear Papa, Dear Hotch_ is a triumph of precise editing: of scrupulous annotations that make this record of the final years of a great American writer come to life. The reader goes along effortlessly, instructed as necessary in diverse particulars-baseball trivia, the names of well-known trapshooters (!), the identities of guests at long forgotten gatherings, advertising slogans, specs for aircraft, Hemingway's confusion of a story by James Thurber with one by Ring Lardner. Those who have ever tried to run down one such datum will appreciate the scholarship, variousness, exactness, and energy of Albert J. DeFazio in presenting this collection.
   
   The 161 letters here were written in the final dozen years of Hemingway's life, in his decline, after he, arguably the most famous writer living, had said what he had to say. As such they make for increasingly sad reading. We see Hemingway's effort to recapture the vitality and tragic dignity that make at least two of his novels and several dozen short stories key documents in American literature and in American self-concept. The letters from A. E. Hotchner-at once a slick, opportunistic sycophant, a cheerfully dutiful factotum, willing to do whatever the once great man asks, and a competent adaptor of original work-do not brighten the picture, nor is it always easy to read "Hotch's" imitations of Hemingway's deliberately scabrous language ("Goddam but I'm glad about the [Nobel] prize," etc.) Sometimes the interplay between them has a sick fascination, "Hemingstein" trying to persuade himself "Everybody will be okay" and "Krotchner" feeding this illusion. One comes to the notes with a sense of relief. They are the real gen.
   
   A six page appendix, in which Hemingway objects to Hotchner's proposed deletions in _The Dangerous Summer,_ reveals more about the drift of Hemingway's writing practices than anything else I have read on the topic.



4. DEAR PAPA, DEAR HOTCH: THE CORRESPONDENCE OF ERNEST HEMINGWAY AND A.E. HOTCHNER isn't a light introduction: it's a scholarly collection recommended as a college-level pick for any collection strong in the works of either writer, presenting for the first time the collected correspondence between writer and agent. Hotchner adapted Hemingway's works for stage, movies and TV: these letters cover the final quarter of Hemingway's life and packs in nearly two hundred letters, cables and cards between the two. The result offers plenty of intriguing details and will prove a 'must' for any serious Hemingway scholar, in particular.

5 comments about Madame Dread: A Tale of Love, Vodou and Civil Strife in Haiti.

1. i LOVED it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I couldn't put the book down!!!!I could visualize each word she wrote!! I have a whole new perspective on Haiti!! Not only did I learn so much about the life, culture, and politics in this country, but about a women's personal journey in a place so foreign to her. Leaving the comforts and safety of the US behind to learn about and try to make a difference in Haiti speaks volumes about this woman!!! And then to face the struggle of what is best for her son, even if her personal choice was not to leave Haiti.This is a great read...i hope to see more from this author!!!



2. I read this book hoping to better understand the constant strife in Haiti. I didn't get the understanding I was looking for. The litany of changing leaders is given, but no real examination of why each one fails is provided. For example, Aristide wins the election and then does not follow up by doing anything to improve conditions. He eventually is driven from power, but no details about his lack of action are provided in this book. A good read, but not what I was hoping for.



3. After reading many of her articles which used poor fact checking and overt reliance on elites - I felt this book was boring even though it was not as overtly bias in its politics as her newspaper writing.



4. Haven't had a chance to read yet but have interest in anything about Haiti and Vodou.



5. While written with sincerity, the book is a starry-eyed cliche. A rich white woman falls in love with a poor black man. She glorifies him and his country, while never tackling anything of substance. She makes excuse after excuse for his lack of initiative in his own life, and credits it all to racism. Haiti and its people deserve a more indepth treatment than this frivilous little tale. If you have ever been to Haiti, you will not learn anything here.

5 comments about Walking Broad: Looking for the Heart of Brotherly Love.

1. He captures the great and not so great things about this city that only an insider that loves Philly can do. Honest, funny and compasionate.



2. Walking Broad is yet another contribution to the ever-growing literary genre that consists of gratuitous and unwarranted attacks against the city of Philadelphia. Sure Philadelphia has its faults, but Buschel focuses on Philadelphia's faults to the exclusion of its many merits. Any person who reads this book and lives in and loves Philadelphia will at some point have the urge to punch this hack in the gut.
   
   Buschel's book is based on his hypothetical stroll down Broad Street which serves as a very loose framework for him to tie together an unending and largely unrelated string of hackneyed attacks that consist of an exaggeration of every Philadelphia stereotype ever foisted upon the city and its residents.
   
   He is so consumed by his desire to attack Philadelphia, he even makes up facts. For instance, in to further his attempt to color Philadelphia with the brush of institutional racism, he writes that the Phillies - as the last all-white team in baseball - won the World Series in 1950. As any person who follows Philadelphia sports - he claims to be such a person - should know, the Phillies did not win a World Series in 1950. In fact, they won their FIRST and ONLY World Series in 1980.
   
   Buschel plays fast and loose with facts about the City he claims to love in a naked attempt to exorcise his own personal demons left-over from a very, very troubled youth. Whatever his personal history, it does not justify the mean-spirited gonzo-journalism perpetrated by this garbage.
   
   Sadly, people who are not familiar with Philadelphia will read this book and assume that the author has penned an accurate portrayal of Philadelphia. In their mind, this book will confirm the worst stereotypes Philadelphia has to offer. And that's just too bad. Because Philadelphia has a lot going for it - especially if the city could shake free from all the stereo-types foisted upon it by the likes of Buschel.



3. It's clearly the best thing ever written about Philadelphia, as it finally locates the city not as some colonial relic at the confluence of two rivers, or as a culturally ineffectual grid between D.C. and NYC, but as an urban metaphysic that tracks from north to south along the unique spine that is Broad Street, the spine that supports and defines all Philadelphians' relationship to the city, to themselves, and to each other.
   --Matt Damsker, former arts critic for the L.A. Times and Hartford Courant
   
   Like the Phillies, Walking Broad will bring you great joy and then break your heart. --Steven Levy, Newsweek writer
   
   Interviews with quirky Philadelphia characters aren't unexpected in a book subtitled "Looking for the Heart of Brotherly Love." Nor are evocative descriptions of the urban landscape. What does surprise about Buschel's chronicle is its complexity and elegance. His walk down Broad serves a larger psychic purpose. As Buschel concedes, the plan to find oneself by walking Broad Street can be "baby boomer perdition or Walt Whitman rapture." I tore through Walking Broad and laughed at almost every page. That I was pissed off when I put it down is a testament to how rich it is.
   --Liz Spikol, Philadelphia Weekly
   
   Walking Broad is a 13-mile journey filled with personal insights, a joyous overview, and a Marx Brothers attitude.
   --Robert Downey, a Prince and a Filmmaker
   
   
   In this charming book, Bruce Buschel returns home to the Philly of his youth to look back and remember those times of yore. Walking down the city's main drag, Broad Street, Buschel not only
   recollects the stories that defined him, he goes on to examine the soul of the city and the evolution that continues to change it to this day. Laced with humor and full of heart, Walking Broad
   is at once a history of a city and a passionate declaration of love to the place he called home.
   --The Strand Bookstore
   
   This painfully honest and blunt memoir reveals how Buschel's love-hate relationship with the city is inextricably connected to his painful Broad Street youth: the death of his father when Buschel was three, his troubled relationship with his hard-working and hard-drinking mother and the abuse he suffered after being sent at age seven to a city boarding school for orphans.
   --Publisher's Weekly
   
   Buschel is an amusing companion who successfully avoids the folksy lovability of, say, Studs Terkel. But ultimately, Walking Broad is not so much a coherent whole as a series of entertaining pit stops. Then again, as he might say, so is Philadelphia.
   --Los Angeles Times
   
   A gem. Very Philly. And great fun--jaunty, highly engaging, fast but never superficial.
   --Tim Whitaker, Philadelphia Weekly editor



4. This book range true to me, an ex-Philadelphian who chafed at its parochialism while I lived there but who remembers with fondness the city's refusal refusal to change its small-town mindset.
   
   I was there when Sally Starr and Gene London ruled TV, when Jerry Blavet and WFIL ruled the music scene, when Richie Allen became Dick Allen, when Rizzo was a character in "Doonesbury", when Rocky was installed at the Art Museum, and when the Phillies won the World Series; ah, good times. Then Wilson Goode bombed MOVE, I graduated from college, and left for New York. It was time to move for me, too.
   
   Any Philadelphian who was in the city in the 60s, 70s, and 80s will recognize the Philly Bruce Buschel remembers and discovers in this book, but Buschel and his brother are funnier than I and my friends could ever be. His transliteration of the Philly accent is pitch-perfect (Chapter 3), and he gets the defiant "We're not NY and we're not DC and we don't care" addytood of the natives just right (every chapter).
   
   I visited Philly in 2005 and was surprised that it finally did something with the waterfront. The historic area is unequal in its treasures (don't miss Elfreth Alley!) and will raise a lump in your throat with pride at what happened here. Sterile Veteran's Stadium has been razed and the Phillies now lose in a wonderful new old-fashioned stadium. Visit!
   
   But read this book before you go. You'll learn how people in Philly coped with living amid reminders that your hometown used to be the most important place in the colonies, but lost something somewhere for some reason. You learn to ignore the bad and shrug off the absurd, and the only thing that really matters is where the best cheesesteak is made. That's Philly, to me.



5. I truly don't know why the author didn't just say 'Philly Sucks' and be done with it. Why drag it on and on the way he did? I couldn't get past the 3rd chapter of this hatchet-job, lousy book. Hey Buschel, you owe me $18.00!!! What an utter waste of paper. Just Awful!!!

1 comments about Kate Field: The Many Lives of a Nineteenth-Century American Journalist (Writing American Women).

1. She was a trailblazer in more than one way. "Kate Field: The Many Lives of a Nineteenth-Century American Journalist" describes the life of one of the first journalists to gain celebrity status in her own right, in addition to being a pioneer female journalist and an advocate for black rights. She was friends with authors such as Charles Dickens and Mark Twain, and even became the inspiration for certain classic fictional characters. The extraordinary life of an extraordinary woman, "Kate Field" is a must-read for biography lovers.

4 comments about In These Hills.

1. Ralph Beer is one of my favorite Montana writers. In both fiction and nonfiction, he's hard to beat. This collection of short essays describes his life as a rancher outside Helena, Montana. Many of them are humorous and rich with Western wit; some have a melancholy undertone; all are very finely crafted.

   Working a ranch that has been in his family for four generations, Beer slowly comes to terms with the futility of maintaining a lifestyle that can no longer be justified as a way to make a living. As cattle prices fail to meet the rising costs of running a ranch, it is finally only humor, sentiment, self-respect and the well-worn romance of the rural West that keep him going. Beer's wonderful essays chart the gradual decline of ranching, even as he puts in new fences and throws himself into the yearly rounds of upkeep and improvements.

   Meanwhile, many of Beer's essays use humor to deromanticize the Western mystique. A trip into town becomes an occasion to reveal himself as a fish out of water. The descriptions of ranch work often reveal him struggling with uncooperative equipment and stock, often in brutal weather. A tongue-in-cheek discourse on pickups explores the special kind of love affair between men and their trucks.

   Other essays are rich with boyhood memories of his father and grandfather and the friendships of men who have been long-time neighbors and mentors. Some essays are celebrations of skills and craftsmanship no longer appreciated, the building of a log barn by his great-grandfather, the work of a hayfield irrigator, his own reconstruction of an old snowplow, the way a natural horseman rides a horse. In these, the essays become a balancing between a sense of people and times slipping into the irretrievable past and an embrace of what is still there to be cherished in moments of grace and pride.

   Many thanks to the University of Nebraska Press for keeping this wonderful book in print. May it find the many readers it deserves. For a sample of Beer's excellent fiction, get a copy of his novel "The Blind Corral," which tells a story very similar to his own, about a Vietnam veteran inheriting a family ranch.




2. I got this book from a friend a while back and just never really picked it up, but boy am I glad I finally did. Ralph Beers' prose is beautiful, and his descriptions of a way of life that's passing away are fit to bring tears to my eyes.
   
   If you have any interest in the West, especially the contemporary Western way of life, I recommend In These Hills very highly.



3. This man is a wonderful author and gives an authentic depiction of life as it was in that time era and under those conditions. We were neighbors with the Beers when I was growing up and truly,life was hard but good at the same time. The sense of neighborliness has gone by the way of subdivisions but I believe the author managed to capture the dying spirit of what was good and wholesome about the life that was led from the original homestead on. I would recommend this book to anyone.



4. I received this book yesterday, sat down to leaf through it, and scarcely budged from my chair except for meals until I had read the last word. The text simply grabbed me and wouldn't let me go. Yesterday was a day well invested.
   
   The text is very accessible and yet some paragraphs reach the level of great literature.

1 comments about American Prophet: The Life and Work of Carey McWilliams.

1. Applause for author Peter Richardson for his prodigous research and enlightening prose. Carey McWilliams, possibly more than any other person, influenced hot button social and governance issues in California and America during the mid-1900s. If one really wants to know what a multi-talented activist can achieve, "American Prophet" is a must read!