2 comments about Walking to Mackinac.

1. I picked up this book with eager curiosity having traveled to upper Michigan and the U.P. with my family many times. I would usually come across Bonior's book in the Michigan outdoor sections of bookstores, and finally had the opportunity to read it when I discovered it again at my local library. Reading Bonior's book this winter made me yearn for a summer camping trip with my family once again.

   David and Judy Bonior weave together a tale of hiking, exploration, learning and love of the outdoors. Being a native from Michigan, I was delighted to read the interesting trivia, tidbits and facts about many of the places we have toured in my home state. I look forward to redsicovering many of those places Bonior writes of with my family when we venture "up north" again.

   Bonior's love for the people of Michigan, love of his home State, and his love for the great outdoors shines through each page turned. You learn something of Bonior's character and integrity --as well as the strength of support that he has in his wife Judy, who traveled with him on this journey. I recommend this book to anyone seeking to discover Michigan, learn Michigan's rich history, and meet some of the great people past and present that make Michigan that great state that it is.

   I wonder if the Boniors will ever attempt this walk again and/or encourage others to travel with them across the State...The book is truly an inspiration to those that love hiking, camping and the gift of nature as well as to those who have a fondness for Michigan.




2. I found this book to be very interesting. I know of David Bonior, but didn't know that he was such a good writer. I commend him and his wife for completing this long hike!

1 comments about Freedom Writer: Virginia Foster Durr, Letters from the Civil Rights Years.

1. Virginia Foster Durr's letters tell the story of her work for FDR, for the Civil Rights Movement, for an integrated South. I was riveted.

No comments about Haile Sellassie I: The Formative Years 1892-1936.

3 comments about Saturday's Child: A Memoir.

1. Wow. Morgan survived child stardom but didn't become an alcoholic crazy; she took out her rebellion in progressive activism (civil rights, feminism) and saved her soul through a passion for language. It's very evident here that she's a first-rate poet--yet also capable of writing this friendly, funny, unpretentious, vulnerable, personal, and wise memoir. With sex,too! And high-grade gossip--about behind-the-scenes TV lives, the feminist movement, and the literary world. I confess that I LOVED every word.



2. If you ever doubted that the personal and political are intertrwined, Robin Morgan's new book shows that they form a dramatic and dynamic interplay in her amazing life. It is a gripping story of a brave and funny and tenacious child-turned-woman who sees the world with the clarity of a great novelist and the sensitivity of the poet she is. But you don't have to read it for any of these high-falutin reasons. It's just a wonderful read and a juicy story.



3. I picked up Morgan's "Saturday's Child" because I remembered her fondly from her acting days on "I Remember Mama," and I wanted to learn more about how she evolved from a child actress to a feminist activist. But I got more, much more. Full of insights, suspense, and wit, "Saturday's Child" captures
   the many lives of Robin Morgan, all of them more vivid than fiction. But be careful not to start this book when you have miles to go or promises to keep because it's impossible to put down. Consider yourself warned!

5 comments about Nothing But an Unfinished Song: The Life and Times of Bobby Sands.

1. very good book a great life story of a irish hero



2. This is a meticulously researched and gripping biography of the hunger-striker who gave his life in the struggle for political recognition of the Republican struggle in Ireland. Bobby Sands transformed politics in Irish society and became an inspirational and internationally respected figure for his selfless political activism. He later became renowned for his transcendent poetry and rousing songs that captured key episodes in Irish history. But few knew this man intimately even as he became an icon of the Irish struggle for self-determination and a member of the British Parliament while he lay in a prison hospital.
   
   Denis O'Hearn has put this to rights in a historically informative and yet intimate account of Sands' short life that included community and military activism and a harrowing journey through a gruelling and oppressive prison system. Through sheer bloody-mindedness, mental and physical resolve, and the capacity to recognise 'opportunities' in the most brutal forms of detention, Sands changed the trajectory of Irish politics. O'Hearn reveals a character full of ceaseless energy, buoyancy, sensitivity as well as political vision in a brisk, gripping and deeply moving account of Sands' life.
   This book challenges complacency, urges activism and rejects thinking within the narrow confines of mainstream political discourse. Bobby Sands, the activist, has been revealed to a new generation and continues to inspire.



3. Every now and then a book comes along that can transport you inside a moment in history, or an aspect of human experience, that had seemed remote, or unimaginable, and bring it close in a way that changes how you see the world. Nothing But an Unfinished Song is such a book. If you are old enough, you probably remember the hunger strike and Bobby Sands' death, perhaps as your first awareness that something was terribly wrong in Ireland. If you are like me, your memory is colored by a sense of unreality - the dual shock of men starving themselves to death as a political statement, and of this somehow being acceptable (at least to those in power) in the latter part of the twentieth century in a country as culturally, politically, and historically close to the U.S. as Ireland. And yet, while the thought of prisoners being kept in conditions that drove them to such lengths was cause for enormous outrage, there was another source of confusion and moral discomfort. After all, these were IRA men, and the IRA was waging a military campaign. The Brits were killing people, but the IRA was too. So who were these men and what did they die for? This book is an extraordinary gift to all who asked this question. O'Hearn's exhaustive research, including interviews with many of the men who were imprisoned with Bobby, makes human and comprehensible the development of political consciousness that led Bobby from an unremarkable life to one that inspired millions. For those who continue to struggle against any form of oppression, it is as inspirational as it is heartbreaking. With truly nothing, behind prison walls, Bobby never ceased to think, learn, and create - and to strive to reach beyond those walls. Any group struggling for change must make choices about how their part of the struggle will be waged - however limited the range of possible means may be. By illuminating one moment in one struggle, O'Hearn's book offers much for all of us to ponder.



4. The life in the Northern Ireland Prison system was a horrible existence. What these men and women went through for their people is something any student of history or of the cuase of Irish freedom should know about.
   
   The details of the "Dirty Protest" are enough to make a person cry. What the British government did should never be forgotten. The author does a great job showing how Long Kesh and the H-Blocks became a school - a place where people learned what the definition of freedom really is... and how Irish freedom was just like the freedom of all colonial peoples in the world.
   
   The death of Bobby Sands and the other 9 men who followed him is a story that needs to be told again and again and again.



5. All of us have a story to tell. There's few though whose life, cut short at 27 years of age, can be said to have impacted so dramatically on the course of Irish politics and to have become such an internationally recognised icon as Bobby Sands. Guerrilla fighter in the Irish Republican Army, he was elected a member of the British parliament shortly before his death on hunger strike in the H Blocks of Long Kesh/Maze Prison on 5 May 1981.
   I shared a prison wing with Bobby for nine months in 1979. Later I joined the hunger strike that he had just died on. I approached Denis O'Hearn's biography of Bobby therefore with a little trepidation. I should not have been concerned. It is an excellent book. It tells not just the story of Bobby, the prison protest and hunger strikes but accurately captures the atmosphere of the prison - the good times and bad, the hopes and despair, the pain, the joy and the totally selfless love that is rarely witnessed between a group of males. The strength of the book is that O'Hearn does not attempt to tell what he thinks happened behind prison walls (as other academics have) or to interpret events within his own ideological paradigm. Instead he facilitates others - friends, associates and comrades of Bobby - to tell of the person they knew and allows that person to become alive and vibrant on every page.
   Most importantly, the book traces the development of a very ordinary, young, politically naive, high-spirited boy from a working class background on the outskirts of Belfast to the highly politicised, articulate, prolific, competent revolutionary that he became in later years. In this way O'Hearn informs a new generation of political activists in Ireland and elsewhere that they too can become a 'Bobby Sands' but hopefully never have to make the life and death decisions that he was faced with.
   This year, the 25th anniversary of the hunger strike, it is timely for this biography to appear. It demonstrates the global interest that is retained in events that happened over a period of 217 days in 1981 when ten men died one after the other in prison cells in a struggle to be treated as the political prisoners they were. No wonder that states tremble before the power of such an idea that cannot be conquered, quenched, bought off or tortured into submission. No wonder that from the lips of oppressed peoples around the world the name, Bobby Sands, is uttered with such fondness and admiration.
   Dr Laurence McKeown, former hunger striker and co-author of 'Nor Meekly Serve My Time: the H-Block Struggle 1976-1981.
   Nor Meekly Serve My Time: The H-Block Struggle, 1976-1981

3 comments about On the Make: The Rise of Bill Clinton.

1. This is, next to David Maraniss' bio, the best one available. Although Oakley spends too much time glorifying Arkansas Democrat Editor John Starr, she does present a look at Clinton from his home crowd, the people who have known him longer than anyone else. At times she seems almost jealous of Clinton's success. This remains, however, a definite book to read if you want to get inside Bill Clinton's head and stroll around for a while.



2. Great Bio. Here's an excerpt from page 68. Taken from a statement made by Clinton's friend, Clifford Jackson during their student days at Oxford. " One incident stands out very clearly in my mind," Jackson said. "We were talking about politics. Bill recounted a story he told to be true. He had heard a ... staff member telling about a White House secretary walking into the Oval Office...to find Lyndon Johnson and a certain attractive young woman...engaged in sex on the Oval office floor. She was on top of the president ,and she had a peace symbol on a chain dangling between her breasts." Jackson recalled the look of amusement on Clinton's face as the anecdote unfolded." Sure..it was a funny story...but the impression I got was that Bill thought it was so neat that Johnson could get away with something like that."

   So, as I said, great book!




3. This bio of Clinton is not as easy to read as the Maraniss book; however, the effort to plough through it is well worth it. Because Oakley had covered Clinton for so many years, she offers far greater detail and insight into the inner workings of his years as governor. Sometimes she provides too much detail which, unless you are a true policy wonk, you may find tedious.

   The result is an insightful and generally balanced view of our most gifted politician who is also a complicated and enigmatic man.

No comments about Legacy to Power: Senator Russell Long of Louisiana.

1 comments about Wayne Aspinall and the Shaping of the American West.

1. This is a masterful biography of a congressman who was a central figure at mid-20th Century, when our national conservation policies were being transformed to protect natural values of the land. Wayne N. Aspinall (Democrat of Colorado) was chairman of a committee that handled the Wilderness Act and many national park laws. The author makes it clear that Mr. Aspinall never understood the public's desire to protect irreplaceable wild places, and the concept of ecology never entered his thinking. To his dying day he regarded parks and wilderness as frivolous. For 15 years he used his power as chairman to delay every conservation measure, and he extracted concessions favoring mining, logging and grazing industries. It's worthwhile to read how he did it, because there are still a few legislators with his viewpoint in Congress.
   
   For a contrasting biography, read "Mo: the Life and Times of Morris K. Udall," by Donald W. Carson and James W. Johnson, about a legislator who followed Mr. Aspinall as chairman and led Congress in adding more land to the National Park System than ever before.

1 comments about The Life of Abraham Lincoln ( Vols. 1&2 ).

1. Before you order this book, first enlarge the photo. You will then see you are ordering only vol. three and vol. four. (You will be missing vol. one and vol. two).

No comments about The Last Lincolns: The Rise & Fall of a Great American Family.