No comments about Communicating in the Third Space (Routledge Research in Cultural and Media Studies).

1 comments about Dark Tunnel, White Light: My Journey to Death and Beyond.

1. Don't let the title mislead you into thinking this is a book about a Near Death Experience! It is a generally interesting account of the author's battle with a life-threatening illness. He apparently did have some form of NDE that was transformative for him, but it is described in very vague terms and occupies a very small portion of the book. His account of his illness and its impact on his life was interesting enough that I finished the book, but the title is UTTERLY misleading.

No comments about Caught in the Middle: Contradictions in the Lives of Sociologists from Working-Class Backgrounds.

No comments about Nationalism, Social Theory and Durkheim.

No comments about Frederic Le Play-- Biografia Intelectual, Metodologia E Investigaciones Sociologicas.

No comments about Man of Mana: Marius Barbeau, a Biography.

No comments about Culture Clash.

4 comments about Torn from My Heart: The True Story of a Mother's Desperate Search for Her Stolen Children.

1. I went through the book in one days time. It is very well written. The author managed, no matter the damage done to her and her family, to remain objective in her story.



2. Read this book in two days. Pretty bad when all these fathers and mothers have to write books like this to establish their belief. To be arguing over God with your child is a twisted idealism that reeks of narcissim. This should have been agreed upon before the relationship and if two adults cannot agree or do not agree on worship then why did you have children? Books can seem immature and childish and this book was both.



3. Read this book in two days. Pretty bad when all these fathers and mothers have to write books like this to establish their belief. To be arguing over God with your child is a twisted idealism that reeks of narcissim. This should have been agreed upon before the relationship and if two adults cannot agree or do not agree on worship then why did you have children? Books can seem immature and childish and this book was both.



4. Yes, this book takes TWO days to read, because it cannot be put down!! A story of a marriage gone awry by domestic violence and the final violence of the father abducting the children and hiding them away.

   The author painstakingly describes her 6 year search for her children. She finds them absorbed into a religious community that resists their return.

   This book is beyond differences of spiritual beliefs but the inhumanity of stealing children and withholding their return without justification.

No comments about Caroline Bartlett Crane and Progressive Reform: Social Housekeeping As Sociology (Garland Reference Library of Social Science).

3 comments about Little Sister: Searching for the Shadow World of Chinese Women.

1. This tells you more about the author than it does about China; the writer claims to know Chinese but commits some obvious howlers ("horse-horse camel-camel" for "ma-ma hu-hu") that shows she speaks very little. Much better books about China include Kristoff & WuDunn's China Wakes, the Tysons' Chinese Awakenings: Life Stories from the Unofficial China, or Jan Wong's Red China Blues : My Long March from Mao to Now.



2. I've read stacks of books on China--both before, during, and after living there--and I will certainly add this one to my recommendation list. There are plenty of writers comfortable with giving pure "reportage" on a foreign country they have lived in, supposedly factual accounts of dramatic encounters or distanced anecdotes about the sights and sounds, but few willing to speak honestly about how they are personally affected by that place and the people they grow close to--or the complicated reasons that motivate them to go in the first place. Why travel to another country if you aren't willing to be changed by it or admit the concerns and questions you bring with you? Why read a memoir if you want just the facts or a large scale "objective" account and not something of the writer too? Read an encyclopedia or history book if that's what you're after, although these won't give you a sense of what it is for you as an individual to be in that place. Checkoway's beautiful account of her year in Hebei Province and the lives of the Chinese women who were brave enough to tell her their stories enriched my own understanding of the women in China who had befriended me, leaving me longing to return and at the same time profoundly aware of the way travelers are constantly compelled, each for their own reasons, to try to connect across cultures and political divisions. There is a haunting, respectful quality to Checkoway's prose. She admires these women for their courage, determination, and insights, and by the end of the book, I admire them--and Checkoway--too.



3. This novel is even more trite, than the authors boring monologues on mail order brides. Rather than familiarize the reader with the subject matter at hand, the author pumps her own ego repeatedly. What I did find amusing were the multiple references to the author's own homoerotic, incestuous, and pediphilific tendencies. In a word this novel blows. literally.