No comments about Legwork: An Inspiring Journey Through a Chronic Illness.

5 comments about You Have To Stand For Something, Or You'll For Anything.

1. This woman can not write, her book has no substance, there is basically nothing to review. What is interesting is how much weight she has lost from then to now. Star claims she has not had a gastric bypass......... could have fooled me. My friend tommy met her, he said she is rude and smelly. She is the most annoying person on the view. who did she screw to get on the view?



2. Star Jones is an inspiration. Her bravery and courage, I'll call it "bravage," is the standard to which every American should hold themselves (and possibly some Canadians). In this book she chronicles her struggles with IBS, HPV, lycanthropy, fear of elves, crossing guard's elbow and having been born without humility. For the first time really, we see that Star's not just fabulous in fur, she's fabulous in print. If I could get my arms around her, I'd hug her. Star's spirit cannot be held down by her lack of any discernable talent! Bravo!



3. It is unclear what and why the author writes. She obviously has nothing of importance or substance to impart, and her personality is uninteresting by all standards. Most people overcome stronger adversities in life and they do it with infinite more grace. Why the author feels her life is more remarkable than others is really mind-boggling. Reading this book is a waste of time and buying it is a waste of money. There is really no message in this book and the author, despite her much self-praised legal training, fails to build any minimal argument on any of her potluck of topics.
   Simplistic, at best; merely stupid.



4. The first two chapters were extremely boring. She talks about a white lady who wants her black friend buried in the white cemetery. The lady stands for something, Star says. She also talks about her mom, who got pregnant with Star, then dumped her off on a crew of some very obliging relatives in North Carolina while she finished college at Rutgers University. Once graduated, and having obtained a "good" job she reclaims 6 year old Star and they live in the projects along with Star's new baby sister (who had not been dumped off on relatives). While living in the projects, little kids run back and forth across the street to the store, unsupervised. When Star is eight years old, she sees a little boy hit by a truck and killed. She's proud when her mom is arrested at a sit-in on the street to protest the lack of a light signal. Later, her mom marries and Star says that at first, her mom and her husband both have "low-paying" jobs. What happened to the "good" job? And if it's such a good job, why are they living in the projects?
   
   The rest is basically a brag-fest. Her whole family has done nothing but praise her to the skies her entire life, so that's why she's brimming with supreme self-confidence. So why is she writing this book? Well, to tell you that you too can be a diva. Star gives fashion lessons (but for full-figured women only - and she hates that term but adores her 42DD's) - wear a chiffon duster over your clothes, and never ride in a white limo because they are tacky, a black Mercedes limo is the best, but if you have to, a Cadillac will do. A red SUV will also display you to the best advantage. Star's role model is Erica Kane from the soap opera All My Children, which says something about her priorities.
   
   I do have one question. Star says she is disappointed one Christmas because her dad (who lives in NC) promised her a stereo. Her mom, seeing that no stereo is about to materialize, runs out in the middle of the night to purchase one for her with money that they don't really have. This would be about 1974 - before 24 hour Walmarts and KMarts. So where did she find this stereo in the middle of the night?
   
   But most of the book is about how great and wonderful Star is, and if you ever do anything to hurt her or make her mad, she'll never forget it. And she doesn't care who doesn't like her because her step-daddy told her she is fine!
   
   I think Star is leaving out a lot she doesn't want us to know.



5. I read this book before Star was popular I don't recall The View even being on the air or at least I wasn't watching it. But as an aspiring attorney I was compelled to read this book. I enjoyed it greatly; I understand why she was such a successful lawyer. In a day and age where "anything goes." The title of this book is excellent. It's a good read and gives you great insight into her life, before the glitz and glam. Great read and inspiration to someone that wants to "be somebody."

5 comments about The Rose Man of Sing Sing: A True Tale of Life, Murder, and Redemption in the Age of Yellow Journalism.

1. "Morris, a former journalist, a historian and teacher, has done fine work recovering the melodramatic story from a variety of contemporary sources. . . Morris foreshadows Chapin's tragedy skillfully in the first chapter, then drops back and sticks to chronology. He keeps the narrative crisp with telling bits from the journals of the day and Chapin's own writing. . .
   James McGrath Morris has done journalism -- and armchair psychiatry -- a fine service by rescuing this melodramatic tale."



2. If you looked at the January 1925 issue of that arbiter of domestic taste, _House and Garden_, you would have seen a photo layout of a rose garden that would have been the envy of any socialite or country club. The garden was tasteful, with fountains, a pool of water lilies, and blue spruce trees in addition to thousands of roses. Besides the obvious beauty of the garden, there was one other thing that made it unique. At one end of the garden was an old execution chamber. The garden was in the middle of the infamous prison, Sing Sing, in New York. It was the creation of a prisoner who, before he murdered his wife, was a legendary newsman who worked directly for Joseph Pulitzer, and often himself handled coverage of society murders. The term of Charles Chapin as city editor of the _New York Evening World_ was full of spectacular tabloid stories, and James McGrath Morris, himself a former journalist, has brought back Chapin's forgotten story and explained how the press worked in the early parts of the twentieth century in the astonishing book, _The Rose Man of Sing Sing: A True Tale of Life, Murder, and Redemption in the Age of Yellow Journalism_ (Fordham University Press). It is a story at times as lurid, melodramatic, and spectacular as any of the stories Chapin himself published.

   Chapin started delivering the local paper at age fourteen. He was determined to get himself an education, and although he could not attend school, he read ravenously and well. A kindly editor selected books for the boy, classics that Chapin drew upon all his life. He was thrilled to become a reporter in Chicago, but eventually made his lasting mark in New York, where at the _Evening World_, he presided over a technological revolution. The new telephone allowed Chapin to give orders to reporters in the field, and to shape the stories. Field reporters would call in the details of a story, and the new "rewrite reporters" would write it up for the paper. As a result, Chapin gave the _World_ unrivaled immediacy in reporting New York's news. Especially fascinating is the story of how Chapin got the news about the sinking of the _Titanic_. Chapin was recognized as the best of city editors, but he was not easy to work for. He was merciless on himself, and extended this treatment to his reporters. His abilities made them tolerate working for him. He was devoted to his wife, and seems sincerely to have wanted to put her out of prospective misery when his investments failed; he had planned a murder suicide, but only killed her, and turned himself in. He was convicted of murder in 1919 and given twenty years to life. In Sing Sing, the warden took particular interest in him, which is not surprising given how different Chapin must have been from the usual criminals there. Chapin had never been a gardener, but began to cultivate a small plot; he became obsessed with his plants, solicited donations from those he knew in the business world, and commanded inmate assistants with the same fervor he had used on reporters. Ladies clubs came to take the tour of the grounds, as did celebrities like Booth Tarkington and Houdini.

   Chapin thus proved to be a model prisoner, and applied for pardon, but no pardon ever came. He was involved in two mostly postal romances with women on the outside, neither of which ended well, mostly because of his lifelong inability to see or accept ambiguity; it was as if he expected a well-chosen headline to cover all the underlying details. He died a convict in 1930, and was buried, according to his wishes, with the wife he had murdered twelve years before. This story, never told before in full, is full of engrossing detail about the competitive working press of the time. Chapin's life, that of a brilliant and limited man who eventually found horticultural redemption, is almost operatic in its sweep, and makes an unforgettable story.




3. For those who loved the novel Ragtime or Caleb Carr's potraits of New York at the turn of the 19th century, The Rose Man of Sing Sing is a real treat: a behind-the-scenes peek at murder and mayhem in the Gilded Age. The detail is extraordinary, the writing fluid and engaging, and the psychological portrait of Charles Chapin acute. A book that is very hard to put down.



4. The book is very well researched, and it does give you a history of journalism in NY at the last turn of the century. However, I found it really lacking in suspense. It was easy to put the book down! In fact, I read up to p. 150 a year ago, and decided to have another go at it recently. The author failed to detail the actual relationship between Mr. Chapin and his wife. Besides the fact that they went on a lot of vacations together, what was their emotional life like together? What were her hopes and dreams? How did she spend her days? Why didn't they have any children? Was she intelligent, funny, warm, outgoing, etc.? Did they fight often; what were her hobbies? Also, when it comes to the actual killing of Mrs. Chapin, it was actually very boring. I thought this would be the climax of the book. For example, Ann Rule would have attempted to bring some drama into this scene, and would have given more details of the actual room in which it took place, and would have gotten into the emotional aspect of this crime. It was a very dry and dull account of what I thought would be a page-turner of true crime. I mean, for God's sake, the man killed his wife! The writer seems like an historian but does seem to have taken all the life out of this true-life story. A sharper editor would have made him condense the newsroom stuff and moved it along at a faster pace. All in all, he's a good writer, but it lacked drama and suspense. Recommended only for history buffs as a history of yellow journalism in NY.



5. Author James Morris has done his research well on his subject, newspaperman Charles Chapin. Chapin was a stern taskmaster with his employees in running the New York World. Chapin probably picked up on this attitude from an early editor named Fred Hall of the Chicago Tribune. Some called Hall a "slave driver" who was, as Chapin related, "a demon for hard work and a slave to his profession and intolerant toward shirkers." Author Morris follows Chapin's career through the years in detail. An interesting anecdote is related when Chapin was firing a reporter because he was, as Chapin said, "too sentimental for your own good." The reorter shot back at Chapin with, "True for you, Chapin! But when I die, there'll be a hell of a lot of people who will come to the funeral." Chapin winced at the verbal retort and turned white and spent considerable time contemplating the remark. Later in life when Chapin was in debt he felt it necessary to kill his wife to spare her of any future difficulties. Chapin felt he would receive the electric chair for his dastardly dark deed. Having been sentenced to Sing Sing prison he found himself the editor of the prison newspaper. It is finally on page 302 that we get to what the title of the book is all about, namely Chapin and his flower gardens on the prison grounds. I found the book to be interesting, but more time could have been spent on what the title of the book leads us to believe it is about.

1 comments about Combat Reporter: Don Whitehead's World War II Diary And Memoirs.

1. Edited by University of Tennessee-Knoxville teacher John B. Romeiser, Combat Reporter: Don Whitehead's World War II Diary and Memoirs is the true story of two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Don Whitehead, who served the Associated Press in 1942 by covering the Allied drive against Erwin Rommel's tanks in North Africa, in Whitehead's own words. Collecting and organizing Whitehead's personal journal and unfinished memoir with the rare editor's note in brackets for clarity, Combat Reporter covers events that Whitehead witnessed from 1942-1943 in Cairo, Libya, Tunisia, and Sicily. Combat Reporter offers an evenhanded, front-lines view of the European Theater and an unforgettable self-portrait of a one-of-a-kind reporter. A foreword by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Rick Atkinson and an afterword by Whitehead's colleague Command Sergeant Major Benjamin Franklin (U.S. Army, Ret.) round out this highly recommended memoir.

No comments about Filming With Attenborough: The Making of Cry Freedom.

2 comments about Crusaders, Scoundrels, Journalists: The Newseum's Most Intriguing Newspeople.

1. I've been lucky enough to see the uncorrected proof of this work: It's excellent -- by the editor of the Newseum, a truly amazing news museum in the DC area -- his previous work, The News History Gazette, is used by professors in some of the best journalism schools in the country, like Missouri. Includes great essay by Tim Russert. Loads of "corrected history," and "did you know."



2. I was in bliss, paging through these journalism greats when I suddenly realized the author left out Charles Kuralt. As a journalism student, I'd so much rather read about beloved people like Kuralt than 15-minutes of famers like Matt Drudge. The authors even included his replacement, Charles Osgood. What gives, editors? Shunning him because of his affair?

1 comments about A Sportswriter's Life: From the Desk of a New York Times Reporter.

1. great anecdotes and interesting observations about changes in the sports world, journalism, and American culture.

1 comments about Conversations With Willie Morris (Literary Conversations Series).

1. As part of the legendary "Literary Conversations Series" this one falls a few notches below the standard set by the volumes on Steinbeck, Anais Nin, abd Ishmael Reed, to say nothing of the magnificent Gore Vidal book that Mississippi brought out a year or so. Now there's a man who knows how to give a good interview. Not that this is the fault of the editor, Jack Bales, who seems to care sincerely about Willie Morris and to have dug up some genuinely rare, if uninvolving, items from the trunk. Most of the interviews appeared in pretty osbcure places; however if you're actually FROM Mississippi the venues may be far better known, household words in fact.
   
   I wound up liking Willie Morris more than after I read the recent biography by his friend, Larry King, not the talk show host. That biography was written to bury Willie, not to praise him. These interviews give you Willie in a more reflective form and occasionally let you glimpse the magic of what it must have been like to know the impish Southern sprite. If Ariel or Puck had been born in Yazoo City Mississippi, he might gave grown up sounding Shakespearean, like Willie Morris. "Writing is memory," he says, "the burden of memory. It's a big burden. You exorcise the demons." I had never heard it phrased exactly like that.
   
   Some of the interviewers are a little frosty towards Willie, although around the middle of the book they start kissing his ass in a big way. Wayne Pond, in one of the never before published interviews, will be roundly embarrassed to find some of his infusions repeated verbatim: "I don't mind telling you that your new book brought tears to me eyes, and I thought to myself, 'My goodness, you all are evoking this incredible sense of innocence and wonder.'" (139) Studs Terkel, ordinarily a great interviewer, seems bored here. Did you know that Elizabeth Hardwick's review of NEW YORK DAYS (1993) was the longest review ever published in the NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW? You'll find this, and a thousand other facts, in this volume, which is the largest and best compendium of Willie Morris trivia I know of.

No comments about Kafka Love and Courage: The Life of Milena Jesenska.

5 comments about California Dreaming : A Smooth-Running, Low Mileage, Best-Priced American Adventure.

1. It's the kind of book you have to renew after three weeks at the library---to go through again....Funny in kind of a non-neurotic, non Spaulding Gray style....If you've ever lived in California, it adds to the fun. This book was just a pleasure to read, to get myself out of myself...Informative about the used car buz....funny, realistic and enjoyable.....

   I was here again, buying a copy of the book, looking at the reviews, agreeing with this one, and discovered it was mine.....
   Oh Scooty!!!!




2. A highly amusing look at California from the vantage point of a Scottish visitor: the criminally underfunded public institutions, the money-grubby dot com crowd, the veracity-challenged used car dealers, all against a backdrop of perfect sunshine.



3. It's a tale of the author's travels from Scotland to the Silicon Valley. Originally, Donegan came to the Bay Area was to work at a friend's business, but after finding that opportunity to be less than desirable, he supported himself and his girlfriend in one of the most American of occupations, a used car salesman. What really makes the story unique is that this story of chasing the American dream is retold through the perspective of a Scot, and a pretty clever and witty one at that.

   I actually have more in common with the author than most, as I too came to the Silicon Valley to start a sales career about a month after Donegan came. I came from the Midwestern United States, which isn't a whole lot like California either, so I could relate.

   While I had a special pleasure of knowing the euphoric Silicon Valley circa 2000 and the various places Donegan refers too, everyone is going to have blast reading this book. The author begins to wrestle with his conscience, as he slowly becomes the sleazy salesman he once despised. The fact that he becomes more successful as he gets sleazier becomes troubling. But this is likely to be the most fun you've ever had watching a man struggle with an ethical dilemma.




4. While I did finish reading this book, I'm not sure why. I didn't find it very amusing.
   
   For its length, one doesn't really learn very much about the used car business, the author, life in California, or much else.



5. Have you ever met a used car salesman with a conscience? British journalist Lawrence Donegan tries to put his ethics behind him when he turns down the chance of a hot corporate job to find the 'real America' by selling used cars. This is a very funny book and yet poignant as well. It's beautifully written and you find yourself quickly absorbed with Donegan and the bunch of cohorts who work alongside him, trying to pounce on anyone who dares to walk on to their used car lot. Definitely recommended.