No comments about Leo Baeck: Teacher of Theresienstadt.

No comments about Isaac Newton's Teacher.

No comments about Don Luis Leal, Una Vida Y DOS Culturas.

No comments about Noah Webster and the American Dictionary.

5 comments about Down in Bristol Bay: High Tides, Hangovers, and Harrowing Experiences on Alaska's Last Frontier.

1. This is a great little book and a fun read. It takes a lot of guts to do what Bob Durr did. His descriptions of the Alaskan bush and the people who live and work there are wonderful. Everyone should meet a person like Pope at least once in their lives. The philosophical discussions on board the fishing boat were sometimes tedious and less than believable, but somehow it all works. I hope Durr will write another book about the rest of his life in Alaska.



2. This book is a describes a man's struggle to break from the "creature comforts" world to live and fish in Bristol Bay, Alaska. It told a story that was captivating because when reading, you always wanting to know what was going to happen next. The story tells of a man who achieves having the best of both worlds ands puts the utimate dream to the test. I would highly recommend this book to all adventurists and those who would like to "escape" to the alaska frontier; if not in reality, then through this book.



3. While this is a better book that the second one, there is still something lacking. Depth I suppose. The fishing stories are good but I'm afraid the actual techniques and day-to-day trials are glossed over with tales of drunkeness. The characters are accurately portrayed, but each year is a rerun of the last, a quick summary of the same. Frankly, for all of Durr's qualifications this is the one theme that I can't help but think carries on to this day: The acid Leary professor drops out and stays out. But life is what happens between the parties. During this period, at least I know how he made a living, which is what dismayed me with the Coldman Cometh: thirty-five years of successful bush living on imaginary income, from the readers' perspective. He doesn't share finances here either though so we don't know what he made from the fishing trips.
   
   Staying in Alaska without money is tough. And with a family to support even more impossible, yet Durr seems to go about it as if there's nothing to it; the path of least resistence he describes to Pope, but in Alaska there is a great deal of resistence always. I can hear him try to justify the scheme to his late wife who never says anything or gives him a hard time about the difficulties of living on the edge like that, but Durr rarely reveals anything of this nature. He's very much secretive, which is a motivating force for the retreat to Chase and Back-Lake. I found the Durrs to be stand-offish in 1976, suspicious of newcomers to the land, even fellow "hippie" brothers. This may be due to personal paranoia and the more-people-coming fear, which is the message I got. As it turns out Durr managed to outlast the other '70s settlers in Chase of which I was one, albeit briefly. That evidently was what he wanted in the first place.



4. Great read for anyone who wants to get a flavor of the Alaska life and great figurative return for those who have lived it. It is also great literature because he was an English professor.



5. I read this book a little over a year ago, so it is not exactly fresh in my mind, but I must say I disagree with most of the other reviewers here.
   
   If you looked at every book's page on Amazon, you would see that the vast, vast majority of books have an average user ranking of 4 or 5 stars. I think this is because someone who picks up a book and think its junk won't bother to finish it, and rarely would bother to write a review. What ends up happening is that only those people who like a book rank it, and therefore almost everything gets a high ranking. Well, I didn't like this book, but I will take the time to write a review.
   
   Parts of this book are entertaining, especially those dealing with moving his boat from SE Alaska to Bristol Bay, and some of the discussion on fishing. Overall, however, it seems that the author does a poor job of describing the natural majesty of his surroundings nor about the internal conflict of a man embarking on a new life.
   
   Most annoying, however, is the author's slippage into the 3rd person when he describes drinking and 'adult partying' (don't know what words amazon will let me use here) when the rest of the book is in the 1st person. The narrator shows up at a party, and then all of a sudden it is someone else who is sleeping around on his wife.
   
   Anyway, if you want to read a good book about fishing up in Alaska, check out Joe Upton's 'Alaska Blues'.

4 comments about Teacher in Space: Christa McAuliffe and the Challenger Legacy.

1. As a friend of Colin's, I normally would disqualify myself from reviewing one of his books but I feel that I had to comment on this book.

   Colin has done a great job of cutting through the usual American sentimentality whenever the Challenger crew are mentioned and has done a great job in telling us about Christa. However, the book is not just about Christa. The ill fated Teacher in Space program is described in detail as is the launch and the short flight of the Challenger shuttle.

   A worthy addition to any space library. Teenagers in particular will like this book.

   Kate




2. This is not the first book written about Christa McAuliffe- but it may well be considered the last word on her. Many previous books have concentrated on the technical aspects of the Challenger explosion that took her life. Others were written about her as a person, but were written so close to the time of the disaster that it was hard for them to be objective and see her life and achievements in their entirety. With the passage of time, it has been possible to set the Teacher In Space Program and Christa's life in their true historical context, and Colin Burgess has here done an admirable job of doing so. The politically-inspired events that led to a teacher being offered a seat on a spacecraft formerly reserved for those with piloting or science tasks to undertake are outlined by Burgess with objectivity and clarity. But what comes through more than anything from this book is the remarkable strength of personality that McAuliffe had, making her the perfect person for a space flight, and how that strength has meant that, even after her death, her plans for space education have gone ahead. It seems that her mission to educate and inspire people to dream about spaceflight and act on those dreams was fulfilled even though she never made it into space. Burgess, having already authored an important body of spaceflight books, has added a work guaranteed to inspire and motivate anyone.



3. While much has been written about the engineering and management decisions that lead up to Challenger explosion, the mission, the Challenger crew and the whole Teacher in Space Program have received much less attention. In this book, the author, Colin Burgess, only devotes a few pages to the accident and focuses primarily on the teacher in space program, Christa McAuliffe, her teaching and NASA experiences and of course the aftermath of the accident. Since the book was written well close to fifteen years after the accident, it avoids much of the sadness, anger and the like which dominated many of the early works on this subject. As a result, the author gives us a wonderful book about the life and times of Christa McAuliffe and the Teacher in Space Program. There is also closing chapter on the next Teacher in Space Candidate, Barbara Morgan, who should fly sometime this decade.

   As someone who lives across the street from the Johnson Space Center (JSC), it is quite obvious to me that the author spent a considerable amount of time researching her life and experiences at JSC, since all of the places, buildings, etc., are named correctly (using the names in 1986), located in their proper places and the astronaut training she received is as it should be. In other words, not only are you getting a wonderful well written book, it is also well researched.

   One final thing to add, the book contains 32 pages of color pictures and all royalties from the book go to the Christa McAuliffe Fund.




4. I've read several books on Teacher in Space Christa McAuliffe and the Challenger tragedy and bought this book because the reviews described it as focusing on the Teacher in Space program. I am mostly interested in how the program came about, how it was announced and promoted, the application process, the selection process, and the training. The book certainly covers those areas but not in as much depth as I hoped. Much of the book is on the life of McAuliffe which is thoroughly covered in Robert T. Hohler's excellent biography "I Touch the Future..." While just over 100 pages with very wide margins, Burgess' work does offer information as well as a more comprehensive look into certain areas than I've found in other books which makes it definitely worthwhile to anyone interested in McAuliffe, Challenger, and the Teacher in Space program.
   
   Burgess describes the lessons McAuliffe was planning to teach in space better than any book I've read so far. This information is found in the chapter "Learning the Ropes." One of the demonstrations involved a screwdriver to show that, in space, the weightless astronaut would turn instead of the screw unless anchored. As to the programs to send civilians into space, Burgess covers the incomplete plans of choosing a journalist to go into space (Walter Cronkite was one of the forty finalists) more thoroughly than elsewhere. While Hohler's book is a better source on the application and selection process of the Teacher in Space candidates, Burgess offers several color photos of the ten finalists I have not seen anywhere else.
   
   Finally, with a publishing date of 2000, Burgess has the benefit of hindsight that most of the other books on Challenger do not have. He gives a brief update on Christa's husband and back-up Teacher-in-Space, Barbara Morgan. I had always thought programs to send civilians into space of any walks of life died with Challenger, but the Teacher in Space program has continued with Morgan taking the lead. She actually completed astronaut training in 1999 with an expectation that she would enter space as an "educator mission specialist." This book was completed before the Columbia disaster, so Burgess sounded very optimistic about her chances. Although delayed, fortunately, Morgan got the chance to live her dream on the space shuttle Endeavour. The book includes a section of color photos, an interesting chapter on "Space Objects Named for the Seven Challenger Astronauts," and a forward by Christa's mother Grace Corrigan.

No comments about Setting the Agenda: Jean Royce and the Shaping of Queen's University (Studies in Gender and History).

1 comments about A Palpable Elysium: Portraits of Genius and Solitude.

1. I have had a soft spot for Jonathan Williams' photographs for many years, since I first saw one of his wonderful photos of poets' graves in a long forgotten magazine. I was one of the lucky ones who got to "know" Williams in his later years, though only by correspondence, when I was researching a biography of one of the poets Williams had befriended and sponsored, and one day when I was least expecting it the mailman brought me a heavily stiffened package that I just knew had something grand in it! I used a scissors to hack away at the duct tape surrounding all edges of the reinforced cardboard square, and soon my little studio was littered with bits of rubber, plastic, tape and brown paper, and I was in hog heaven when the debris flew away and revealed a gorgeous print Williams had made for me of the man I was writing about. It was his way, he said, of encouraging me. I see this portrait reproduced in A PALPABLE ELYSIUM on page 149, the poet Jack Spicer, casual and nearly unrecognizable in jeans and what looks like an Eisenhower jacket with padded shoulders, one flung back, his hands held awkwardly at different angles, one nearly hidden behind his butt. He's balancing on a huge hunk of felled timber, one of many massive trunks in the photo, a swatch of white sky like a flag poking through the timber at the top center of Williams' composition. The photo is from 1953 and had that eerie fifties quality peeking through it, I suppose a question of the color film stock JW used (and perhaps the particularly romantic gaze of the Rolleiflex with which it was taken).
   
   Not all the photos in the book have this resonance for me, but many are remarkable in any light, and some have that archival quality of wow! Lorine Niedecker, Mina Loy, who else but Williams has given these writers both the high quality exposure their work deserved, or sat them down to give these uncompromising images for posterity. Actually there aren't many women in the book, and the "genius and solitude" subtitle might have been an indication that this was going to be a highly specialized, masculinist vision, but I couldn't help myself, I embraced this book as a memory of the late Jonathan Williams, for who could resist, in the captions that accompany each photograph, a man who tells us that in his youth Michael McClure was so beautiful that JW called him Allure McClure, and once took advantage of an overnight trip to pilfer, for erotic purposes, a pair of Michael's boxer shorts.... God bless him.

No comments about An Academic Odyssey: Natural Science to Social Science & Policy Analysis.

5 comments about A Degree of Mastery: A Journey Through Book Arts Apprenticeship.

1. A Degree of Mastery tells the story of one woman's journey through the education and apprenticeship necessary to become a book preservationist. Annie Wilcox, a bright woman with an impressive past in the field of English and writing, begins to take an evening class in bookbinding at the University of Iowa taught by a world-reknowned preservationist, William Anthony. Little does she know that not more than two years later she will become the first female apprentice ever to study under the direct supervision and teaching of Bill Anthony, an honored position granted only to six others before her. Through her apprenticeship, Wilcox learns the art of preservation and the dire need for conservation in every library, but especially those libraries that house an archives, manuscript or rare books collection. Through Wilcox's autobiography, the reader learns the basic process and means by which book preservation becomes possible as well as the importance and value of conservation in today's libraries. It is a wonderful piece of literature well-worth your time.



2. A practical person can read this book as an extended essay on how to approach an apprenticeship, and how to bind conservation texts. A spiritual person can add layers to the stories and extrapolate life lessons. Either way, the main character/author is extremely sympathetic character. Her teacher had amazing gifts, both as a conservator and as a teacher.

   The book is deceptively short. Looks like a quick read, but was so meaty and detailed, I found myself reading it for several weeks in order to digest all the material carefully.

   If your taste runs to the obscure, the "sleeper," I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did.




3. Someone who knew that I was in the Interdisciplinary Book and Paper MFA program at Columbia College Chicago gave this memoir to me. It's a really nice read---especially since the bookbinding world is a small one, and everyone in it knows everyone else, as people travel around the country giving workshops. Always interesting to read about people who you've had as teachers. I found it very well written, an evocative and accurate depiction of an obscure art/craft/lifestyle choice, an illuminated window into a small, specialized world.



4. Wilcox artfully narrates her experience as an apprentice for Bill Anthony, a famous book binder and conservator. She artfully interspeses observations about books she is restoring with phases of her life as an apprentice and other texts. She evokes the spirit of craftmanship, of taking many years, much time, and much patience to develop mastery of her craft. Great for book art students, art students, or those considering an apprenticeship of any kind. Of particular interest to those who've made books before, because they will understand vividly the technical descriptions of her project (thought these are accessible to the lay person as well).



5. This was a strange read, because the author continually expresses her surprise for certain techniques and methods of the book conservators craft as she discovers them during her early learning and apprenticeship. I find this odd, as I've done a bit of self-taught bookbinding, and have encountered most of this knowledge through reading, and that the author purports to be a reader and decent student.
   
   An element I found annoying was the typesetting of the book. In general, I'm tolerant of these things, but, as this is a book on book arts and the author worked as a typesetter for some time, one would think that more attention would be paid to this. Specifically, there is only a word space (1/5 em) between sentences, not the age-old standard of 1/3 em (or even the 2 spaces that is acceptable giving 2/5 em). Also, the excerpts are set in too small a font, which contrasts poorly with the main text face. This detracts from the pleasure of reading a book, and should have been more carefully considered. I suspect the publisher is to blame, not the author.
   
   The book also seems to lack a broadness to the characters; their personalities, life, and interests are confined to the conservation department. Although the book is clearly a loving tribute to a master book conservator, one doesn't really learn about the man (nor much about the author).