5 comments about Diana, An Amazing Life: The People Cover Stories, 1981-1997.

1. THIS WAS AN EXCELLANT BOOK WITH BEAUTIFUL PICTURES AND ARTICLES AND IT LEFT YOU FEELING LIKE YOU KNEW THE PRINCESS FROM THE BEGINNING OF HER LIFE TO THE END. AN EXCELLENT TRIBUTE TO HER LIFE.



2. I really enjoyed this re-visit to the People covers! It was a great way to look back!



3. Hi, I bought my People Magazine Tribute to Diana at local B&N Bookstore and i am so happy that I did!!! I love the history of Diana,s life from the begining as alittle girl, meeting Charlas, the engaement, the births of William and HARRY,diana,s sister in-law Sarah, her marriage troubles and diana rising up a Pheonix the fire bird.I am so glad Dodi made Diana so happy. I love all the colour photos!!! BIG CHEERS TO PEOPLE MAGAZINE!!!!



4. Kind of a start to finish collection of selected People Diana covers/articles. It's nice to look through and read (would make a nice keepsake for the Diana fan)- especially if you missed some issues like I certainly did- but not really worth buying if you still have the original copies in good condition. I don't regret buying it but had hoped for just a bit more than a buyer gets here. There was a paperback edition out at first, haven't seen it recently, only slightly cheaper but this version would be the one to get for durability.



5. This is the book to own. I enjoyed every bit of it and would recommend it to everyone.

5 comments about Blowing My Cover: My Life as a CIA Spy.

1. Oh lordy. That book was bad. Really, really bad. It's taken me a week to stop gnashing my teeth over the fact that anyone can get a book deal if they have a semblance of a story in which the mouth-breathing masses will be interested.
   
   She's a *horrible* writer! No amount of repeating that her Harvard professor told her she'd be doing public service by writing will change that. Nuggets of gold that just drove me nuts include lines such as "The singing, dancing, and hugging multicolored creatures were incongruous, not to mention distracting" or "I half expected to find a flask of Jack Daniels in my own butt crack when I went to bed that night." I'd like to point out the use of the word "incongruous" is incongruous in that sentence! (She was talking about Teletubbies.)
   
   But worse than the bad prose was the terrible structure. Granted, memoirs are difficult to write. And I can only guess that writing them about an something that you need to be somewhat circumspect about can be tricky. But there were gaping flaws in the actual structure. Take, for example, the "nemesis" in the book, Jin Suk. "...I became JS's unwilling nemesis, our polar personalities simultaneously drawing us together and pushing us apart."
   
   Ah ha! I thought when I read this sentence. Now, finally, the conflict will begin. There will be some interesting dialog. Some descriptive language about the psyche of other people. A give and take between two characters. However, the payout never comes. In order for the author to be the unwilling nemesis, she must be someone who cannot be bested or overcome. That would assume that JS is trying to overcome the author. I expect to see fierce competition, hand-to-hand combat, girl fights in the middle of the night in the bathroom. But JS isn't like this. And the relationship, if there even is one, isn't such that even a nasty comment is made.
   
   The author reference's JS driving off the road into a ditch, but not trying to drive the author off the road. She describes JS as going into a meditative state under a tree, another time. Doesn't seem too awful to me. In the end, the author doesn't best JS--she finishes second to her. And later, JS sends a friendly letter to the author, who treats it with sarcasm and disdain.
   
   In the end, the author can only describe JS as "sitting as though she has a teacup on her head." I misread it, however, and thought she said that JS *HAD* a teacup on her head. "Now that's just going too far!" I thought to myself, "It's ridiculous that this perfectly normal person would have a teacup on her head!"
   
   The author sets us up to believe she's going to be someone who can't help excelling beyond her classmate, and that the classmate will be nasty and snarly about it. In all truth, JS is the author's unwilling nemesis. JS seems not to notice the author's jealousy--or, if she does, she doesn't respond to it.
   
   Throughout the book we see just how immature the author is. "I have a hard job and I miss my private life of boozing and carousing, wah!" she seems to complain throughout. Instead of behaving like a mature adult learning how to seriously work towards securing knowledge, she whines about not being able to do what most kids did during their college years. Seriously--she sounds like I did when I was 22!
   
   Anyway, it was a rotten book. It was only because I was sick in bed that I finished it. I figured if I was throwing up anyway, I might as well read it.



2. I am fascinated by the split reviews here. They read like a David Brooks column on what is dividing America.
   
   I am on the "fan" side of this book. Mainly because the book is honest, and what else counts? She could have easily have written a book that tries to make herself look better, or read like a scholarly assessment of the CIA, but there are plenty such books and such scholarship. Perhaps that is what some of the readers were expecting, but you have to, in my mind, judge a book by what it was trying to do. She was trying to give an honest account of her life in the CIA, and that's what you get. If she was thinking about who she wanted to date - well, people do actually spend time thinking about that kind of thing.
   
   The people who think they are better prose stylists that Lindsay Moran are free to have their preferences but are obviously over their heads. She may not be Nabakov but the prose has a light flow and gentle honesty. As most readers remarked, they read the book in a single sitting. Writing that kind of prose is actually alot harder than it looks. Try it sometime.
   
   My criticism, if that is what it is, is that the book really is a bit too light, a CIA croissant of sorts. I suspect the publishers and the editors had a role in this - they have too much a tendency to shove books into categories, and here Devil Wears Prada and similar books were probably in mind. Like some, I would have liked a little more analysis or insight into actually reforming the CIA -- it all is shoved in at the end, and far too quickly.
   
   But then again roughly its all there for you to figure out: too much spending on wasteful projects, too much of the means replacing the ends (like the number of agents being taken as more important that quality), and too much ease of manipulation by the Administration.
   
   Finally as for those who this Lindsay was disloyal or unappreciative, she is honest: she could easily have made more money and had much more freedom in various other careers. Since when is wanting to go to fun parties in your 20s unnatural or a sign that you're a bad person? Last time I checked James Bond made it to plenty of parties --
   
   In fact from this book it seems to me obvious the CIA will have trouble recruiting independent thinkers and some of the most talented people in the U.S. given how unattractive the job is, comparatively.



3. I've read a few non fiction spy novels, and this by far, had to be the worst one; I kept on waiting for the action to occur, but it never did; probably the most interesting part of the book is towards the end, when the author talks about how she and colleagues felt about 9/11. Normally I can read a book in a day or a week, but this one took me over a month as the story was not captivating enough for me; as far as being a funny book, I did laugh a couple of times about the eastern european lifestyle, as it brought me back a few memories of the homeland living. I must admit that at least the author is honest enough to admit that taxpayer money is being wasted in following dead leads.



4. Quirky autobiography of Ivy League overachiever's venture into the CIA sometimes borders on pretentious and annoying, but the writer's self-deprecating sense of humor and humility keeps it grounded.
   
   As a case officer, she recruits foreigners to provide information, not actually spying herself, a distinction which erases Moran's fiction-driven misconceptions while raising ethical dilemmas about providing money and other inducement to convince desperate people to rat on their own countries.
   
   In the end, the failure of the CIA to detect, predict, or prevent September 11, and the unwillingness of the CIA to redirect its activities in the aftermath, drive Moran to realize the purposelessness of the dislocation of her whole life for this career. Hence, her leaving, and this book, the second I have read recently which tell a similar story from different gender and personality standpoints (see review of Overworld: The Life and Times of A Reluctant Spy by Larry J. Kolb). In fact, in retrospect, Moran's more matter-of-fact telling confirms the essential truth of Larry Kolb's overwrought story.



5. I was really torn between a two or a three on this one. I stuck with the two. I will start with the good side. Lindsay has a refreshing writing style. Her wit makes it a fun read. But this is not the biography of an intelligence insider. Moreover, such a person would never write a book like this. With the exception of some descriptive details about the CIA bootcamp (which appears to be about as challenging as the boot camp phase of any of our nation's military academies), there was not a whole lot of new information to be found. And much like the rookie cadet who may have gotten more than she bargained for, Lindsay finds herself out of her element but manages to pull through. My sympathy level is low. While she complains about being sleep deprived, as occurs in many real military training scenarios, she and her buddies prefer to make prank calls rather than grab a cat nap in the corner. She comes across as a debutante in boot camp. I would recommend this book as a primer to anyone who is considering (seriously or not) applying to the CIA. But anyone who is looking for inside information on the workings, procedures, or techniques of the Agency should look elsewhere. In fact, they may not even be available in any unclassified form.

5 comments about Walking in the Shade: Volume Two of My Autobiography--1949-1962.

1. I love biography. I never thought I would abandon a biography unfinished and feel no desire to pick it up and continue. I found this dull, self-serving and boring. Lessing seems to be busy making excuses and justifications for her 'fellow travelling' with Communists in 1950s London. Oh, pleeeze! So what? Heaps of people were members of the party or fellow travellers. many have also renounced or reassessed their former positions, but they don't feel the need to go into tortuous self-denial as Lessing does. I find her cold as a person - that's fine, one doesn't have to LIKE the subject of a biog/autobiog to be interested in them. But her writing is cold and detatched as a cold-water flat in misty wintry London!



2. Cold? No way.

   Although volume 2 lacks the profound personal revelations found in volume 1, it is a fascinating collection of her memories and point of view of England in the 1950's. She talks quite a bit about her life in a brutally honest way that few writers, let alone people in general, would be willing to admit.

   Her witty observations of society and what makes it tick are very entertaining, as well as many insights into what later became The Golden Notebook.

   Cold & self-serving? Not this book. It's an oustanding autobiography by one of the most brilliant minds of our time. I think negative reviewers of this book have gotten carried away with their own agenda. Doris Lessing never caters to expectation which makes her writing even more compelling.




3. I didn't enjoy this book nearly as much as Volume I, UNDER MY SKIN. But it's a fascinating book for 2 reasons.

   1. The light it sheds on the relationship between fiction & autobiography, & the glimpse it gives of the novelist's mind, how experience is tranformed into descriptions of people, places, events which are placed in the kaleidoscope of a particular work of fiction, shaken up, & emerge forming a different pattern. I probably would have said the same about UNDER MY SKIN, except I haven't read the CHILDREN OF VIOLENCE series yet, which corresponds with the period covered by Volume I of the autobiography. In Volume II, one sees many ingedients that went into THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK.

   2. Lessing's observations of the period 1949-1962 in London, & comments on "the States" as she calls us.

   It is funny in places, too. I think there's more humor in both volumes of Lessing's autobiography than in anything else I've read by her, and I wonder why this is.




4. I didn't enjoy this book nearly as much as Volume I, UNDER MY SKIN. But it's a fascinating book for 2 reasons.

   1. The light it sheds on the relationship between fiction & autobiography, & the glimpse it gives of the novelist's mind, how experience is tranformed into descriptions of people, places, events which are placed in the kaleidoscope of a particular work of fiction, shaken up, & emerge forming a different pattern. I probably would have said the same about UNDER MY SKIN, except I haven't read the CHILDREN OF VIOLENCE series yet, which corresponds with the period covered by Volume I of the autobiography. In Volume II, one sees many ingedients that went into THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK.

   2. Lessing's observations of the period 1949-1962 in London, & comments on "the States" as she calls us.

   It is funny in places, too. I think there's more humor in both volumes of Lessing's autobiography than in anything else I've read by her, and I wonder why this is.




5. This second part of Doris Lessing's candid biography, which depicts her difficult beginnings in London, is a more bitter report than the first one. It is full of personal and ideological disappointments.

   Like so many young intellectuals in Europe, she finds shelter in the leftist Church (with capitalism as hell, Lenin, Stalin or Mao as Christ the Saviour, and Utopia as heaven) and becomes a believer in heart and soul. She still has difficulties to believe why she was so blind (even after a trip to Russia) and stayed like many others so long with the communist movement.
   The agonizing psychological struggle to become an apostate is very emotionally told.

   What saved her was art, in which she has a limitless belief: it can overthrow world powers.

   This is a moving, uninhibited and realistic work, exemplary for many idealistic but wilfully deceived young people in the ninteen fifties and sixties. Outsiders willing to write her biography will not have many more 'secrets' to reveal.
   Not to be missed.

5 comments about Long Ago In France: The Years In Dijon (Destinations).

1. Between 1929 and 1932, young M.F.K. Fisher (later a famed chef and memoirist) and her husband Al Fisher lived and studied in Dijon, France. Here she discovered the people and the food of Burgundy, and she describes both with warmth, sensuality, and humor (without becoming overly sentimental: "It was there, I now understand, that I started to grow up, to study, to make love, to eat and drink, to be me and not what I was expected to be."

   Her writing is crisp and evocative. "He took the apple slices from the bowl one by one, almost faster than we could see, and shook off the wine and laid them in a great, beautiful whorl, from the outside to the center, as perfect as a snail shell. We said not a word. The music trembled in the room." Fisher helps the reader discover the beauty of our appetites. She writes of an old soldier who offers her chocolate: "The chocolate broke at first like gravel into many separate, disagreeable bits...Then they grew soft, and melted voluptuously." Then a doctor offers her bread, admonishing, "Never eat chocolate without bread, young lady!" There is a delicious denouement: "...in two minutes my mouth was full of fresh bread, and melting chocolate, and as we sat gingerly, the three of us, on the frozen hill...we peered shyly and silently at each other and chewed at one of the most satisfying things I have ever eaten..."

   This was a time of great importance for Fisher, and she generously shares her experiences in a richly satisfying book. It's a small treasure.




2. MFK Fisher holds a special place in the hearts of all `foodie' Americans. She was perhaps the 1st person to see the sense of writing food-based literary books and articles, and of course it's now a genre unto itself. But few have rivaled her beautiful prose, and I recall reading that she once said she considered it a day well-lived if she'd managed to compose one perfect sentence. To consider her just a food writer is to do her an injustice; she is a writer, first and foremost, who happens, sometimes, to write about food.
   Long Ago in France is a memoir of her years in Dijon in the 30s, a book full of rich wine, rich ideas, character portraits filled with rich detail. It's about Life, a life filled with joy, experience, food, travel, and memorable people. This book is a paean to a lost era.
   Highest recommendation.



3. `Long Ago in France' by premier American food writer M.F.K. Fisher was one of her last autobiographical memoirs of life in France. She may not have invented the `American in Europe' memoir exemplified by Peter Mayle's `My Year in Provence' and Frances Mayes `Under the Tuscan Sun', but she certainly helped define the genre with this work as well as `Map of Another Town', `A Considerable Town', and parts of many of her other autobiographical works such as `The Gastronomical Me'.
   
   The events in this book, covering much of the first three years of Ms. Fisher's life with her first husband, Al Fisher, spent in a private boarding house in Dijon while hubby Fisher was completing his doctoral dissertation at the University in Dijon. The period of this book occupies a scant seven pages in `Poet of the Appetites', the biography of Ms. Fisher by Joan Reardon, yet the original book reveals practically nothing about the life of husband and wife Fisher. It certainly does not give any clue to why they ended up in Dijon, since their original intention was to study at the more prestigious university in Strasbourg.
   
   This is the first complete work of M.F.K. Fisher's I have read and I feel just a little disappointment. The word pictures of living and eating in Dijon are certainly illuminating, but there is practically none of the humor you find in the books from Mayles and Mayes. There is also less of the scintillating writing I have sampled in some of her more famous pieces. By the author's own admission, much of this material is also a reworking of material from earlier published works as much as it is new stuff mined from her journals of this period.
   
   The most obvious omission is a sense of the troubling times in which these events take place. The three years covered in the narrative are from 1929 through 1931, yet there is virtually no mention of the great depression as it affects Dijon, let alone how it affects the writer and her husband. Oddly, the same is true of Fisher's life as described by her biographer. Fisher's father was the editor, publisher, and owner of a small newspaper in California who did much to subsidize the student life of the young Fishers and of Mary Frances through several difficult years between marriages. Yet, there is practically no mention of this in the writings by and about Fisher.
   
   This book is essential reading for anyone interested in Ms. Fisher's life and the influences on her writing, as she is easily, in the twentieth century American culinary world, the Wittgenstein to Julia Child's Einstein. That is the much lesser known theorist of culinary desire matched with the incomparable practitioner of culinary technique, both of whom got their inspiration from the food and cooking of France.
   
   Yet, compared to similar works by probably less talented writers, this book is just a bit flat and dusty, befitting its recollections of events over sixty years before in the author's life. The stories of life are illuminating. The stories of people are a little empty, as all characters other than Mary Frances herself are long gone from the stage.



4. This is an enjoyable, tantalizing book, with some dull spots in the earlier chapters. It is an account of Fisher's 3 years in Dijon, where she moved in 1929 so that her new husband could pursue a doctorate. She was 20 years old, bright, pretty, charming, in love, and most of all, enthusiastic. The reader gets caught up in all this, so as to overlook the book's serious drawback. Fisher can write very nicely, but you learn much more about her landladies than her husband. Fisher says of her sister Norah, "she TOO speaks always with reserve" (caps mine). The book is written as if you are already acquainted with Fisher, as no doubt many readers are, but for the rest I would recommend, before starting the book, that they look up M.F.K. Fisher in Google and thereby get to the site about Fisher sponsored by Les Dames d'Escoffier International.



5. With her usual wit and style, MFK Fisher brings the food and atmosphere of Dijon alive. It is a fun book, perfect as an introduction to a way of life that is both foreign and dated. The delights of the table set by an eccentric landlady and shared with a variety of characters from the building, are extravegant. Fisher also draws a picture of the town's restaurants, markets, and life.
   
   A good read.

5 comments about Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics (California Studies in the History of Science).

1. Ruth Sime's, Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics, is a tribute to one of the most outstanding women physicists in the world's history. Sime's includes a detailed account of Meitners childhood, career, trials, tribulations, misfortunes, and fulfilling accomplishments through a collection of Meitner's personal papers, correspondences, and interviews with her contemporaries and friends. The reader enjoy's learning about the young girl in Vienna, who travels to Germany with only the ambition to learn and breathe physics. The reader enjoys Meitner's accomplishments, as she is promoted to being Max Planck's assistant in Prussia, despite her gender, and feels the betrayal when she is not credited with Otto Hahn for the Nobel Peace Prize.
   All in all, Sime's does an excellent job of telling Meitner's story and providing insight on the historical and scientific contexts. The scientific explanations of both Meitner's research and of her contemporaries is hard to understand for those who are amateur physicists and are not cognizant of many basic principles of chemistry and physics. However, for a woman who was not given her credit where it was due, Sime's biography is truly telling of her life and just how remarkable this physicist of humanity really was.



2. This is the story, well told, of one of the world's most important achievements by one of its finest scientific heroes who was forced to suffer the indignities of both racism and sexism.
   
   Against improbably long odds, beginning with her family who did not want her to become a Physicist, to Nazi persecution for being a Jew, to her eventual need to flee Nazi Germany to exile in Sweden, Lise Meitner's career progression led her to be among the logical choices to discover how to split the atom and to infer that it could lead to a chain reaction, and eventually to the development of the fissional atomic bomb.
   
   This gripping story tells of how her less able male colleague, Otto Hahn, a Nazi Chemist, rather than a Physicist, effectively stole her ideas and went on to win a Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1944) for an achievement that should justly have gone to a Physcist, and Meitner in particular.
   
   In fact Hahn had no idea how to interpret the experimental data in his hand until Meitner, through correspondence from exile in Sweden interpreted it for him. Based on her continuous advice via mail, Hahn was eventually able to take credit for her ideas. And although this egregious error was never formally corrected, Meitner, with great dignity and strength remains larger than life and stands as a towering monument to what the human spirit can accomplish in the face of racism and chauvinism. Five stars.



3. I first learned of Lise Meitner from a book on atomic energy when I was a kid. I remember the illustration of her and her lab partner Otto Hahn staring at an apparatus in which they discovered the tell-tale signs of radioactive fission. But when I went through science courses in high school and college, she was hardly mentioned. This book has put her in her rightful place in the history of the atomic age. While it is always easy for a biographer to skew the importance of the individual being chronicled, that is certainly not the case here. Given the obstacles placed in her path by her gender, her religious affiliations, and her citizenship, her story is all that more remarkable for a view of our world which has been papered over in the last half-century.
   
   That she would persevere despite everything is a testament to will and the desire for knowledge. Girls growing up in this day and age are not encouraged to pursue the scientific disciplines, but I think if a young girl today were to read Lise Meitner's story, she might just be inspired. I fully intend to give my copy to my daughter some day, in the hope of stirring a passion for science and the knowledge that if she applies herself, no matter the obstacles, she can become someone great.



4. Lise Meitner may not be particularly well known outside of scientific circles today, but the same could be said of a lot of other great scientists, mathematicians, etc...Anyway, she is one of my favorite scientists of all time. This book helped cement that for me...
   
   One of the reasons for her fame (or slight lack thereof) is that she never recieved the Nobel Prize for her nuclear work. It went to Otto Hahn. Had Lise shared in the prize, as many think she should have, she would almost certainly be better known today. I mean, the Nobel Prize sort of separates "known scientists" from "unknowns" as far as the general population is concerned (not counting popularizers like the late Carl Sagan and Stephen J. Gould). She was however, briefly famous in the US after WW2 as the "mother of the atom bomb" or some such - a title she rather disliked...In the late 1990s, the element 109 was named "Meitnerium" in her honor. And I beleive the element named for Hahn ("Hahnium"?) has been renamed something else.
   
   I won't go into the plot of the book since its a biography and we know about whom. I will say she faced huge obstacles in her life, most notably being a young female who desired a high education at the turn of the century (1800s-1900s I mean) and who managed to obtain it; also being a Jewess scientist during the Nazi takeover of Germany and Austria - this time as a middle-aged woman (almost 60), forced to rebuild her life. She perservered ! These obstacles are well documented and discussed in this excellent book.
   
   There is a brief but fascinating look into Vienna in the late 1800s that really enjoyed. It showed how the Meitners came to be in Vienna and what their world was like. I would have liked to have known more about her siblings, where they went and what they became (particularly her little brother Walter, who is tantalizingly mentioned several times as Lise's favorite - but no details are given. The two are buried near each other in Bramley, England).
   
   If there is a negative to the book, it is that there's a certain amount of strict science (numbers, math, sci-jargon, and calculations) in the book. BUT - don't let that turn you off ! I just skipped past those parts that were over my head, and focused on the "biographical" part - the parts about Lise herself, which in fact, make up the majority of the book. Author Sime made it easy to do that in the way she wrote the book.
   
   I highly recommend this work. I believe this will be the definitive Bio on Meitner, barring any unknown letters, secret love-child, or other stuff coming to light....Kudos to author Dr. Ruth Sime for the great work!



5. It is well known that in the fields of both science and math, women are less visible than men. Ruth Lewin Sime, a woman of science herself, wrote this excellent book about a tiny Jewish woman who escaped the Nazis after World War II and was deprived of the Nobel Prize she clearly deserved. Meitner never married but physics gave meaning to her life, she was responsible for nuclear fission. This is a book that should be part of the reading lists in women's studies and in all high schools. It can serve as a magnet in attracting females to study science. Lise Meitner broke the patterns of women denied equitable access to education. This book is not only well written but it is also rich in fotos with an appendix full of interesting scientific data. You don't have to be in the field of science to understand this historical biography of an incredible woman.

5 comments about Polite Lies: On Being a Woman Caught Between Cultures.

1. Having lived in Japan 4 separate times, I loved returning because things worked somehow and at the same time confused me as to how they worked. Mori by sharing her personal experiences -- through her mother's suicide, her stepmother's evil intent, her transition to life in Green Bay, her divorce to her husband, and more -- offers a lot of insight into the thinking that makes Japan's culture such a magnetic source of confusion for me. Although this represents more the author's insights from her personal experiences more than whatever "average" there may be to Japanese life, the reader can still learn from her unique experience of being "Japanese."
   
   Also, coming from the Chicago area, I learn from Mori's comparison of her understanding of Midwestern Green Bay culture and Kansai Japanese culture. It's a comparison that other sociological books and more quantative readings fail at. In terms of writing quality, maybe I'd give it 3 stars, but the way Kyoko Mori shares so much personally, this open honestness encouraged me to give it 4 stars. This book might also be useful for couples with a Japanese or Japanese-American partner.



2. I really enjoyed reading this book. Mori, as befits a writing instructor, writes beautifully. Her essays have a wonderful flow about them and are peppered with interesting details. I think they would serve as great instructional pieces on writing personal essays.
   
   However, I found some un-evenness in the actual content of what Dr. Mori had to say. Her observations about what it's like to be a person caught between or maybe with one foot in each of two very different cultures struck me as very true and perceptive, as this is also my life story.
   
   The problem is when Dr. Mori talks about Japan. She is one of a fairly typical group of adult-immigrants to the US, who moved here because they disliked their life in their home country. And since she has been here for 20 years and has been very successful and lived a full life, all her stories about Japan are going to have a goal of saying 'I am so glad I left Japan.' In addition, as the other reviewers have said, Dr. Mori had an extremely unhappy childhod in Japan, which probably colors all of her perceptions of that country. I found her descriptions of her feelings in flying closer to Japan on a rare visit there very revealing -- to her, Japan is not a home, not even a happy place, but instead a place full of terrible memories that she is only too happy to have escaped from.
   
   Nonetheless, I think this book is worth reading both for its writing and its observations about being a person who is bicultural by choice.



3. I loved this book. I am not surprised that there are bad reviews. Some Japanese and japanophile readers could be offended by the revelations about Japanese culture. But, Kyoko is giving the reader tremendous insight into the social structure of Japan. She points out quite a few similarities to American Midwest culture. Best of all, her stories draw the reader in and keep reader wanting more.



4. As a half-Japanese raised in the Midwest by an old-fashioned Japanese mother born and raised near Tokyo, I could really relate to much of this book. Mori's personal story and her eye-opening revelations of traditional Japanese culture vs general American culture are fascinating, however she did lose me a bit in her comparisons with the Midwest which I did not fully buy into. Others may argue that Mori discloses the "old" Japan, but there are plenty of books out there trying to teach Americans how to negotiate the Japanese social terrain which is extremely complex and still quite traditional and conservative. Mori is an unusually independent and practical woman, so much so that she discovers marriage even to a good man who gives her space is too constricting. It seems her own childhood experiences have thrust her into the extreme. I hope she finds happiness.



5. I picked up this book hoping that I might find some similar experiences. Like this author I immigrated to the US when Iwas 20 and have been in the US for more than 20 years and living in two cultures: Korean and American.
   
   I didn't mind reading the author's comparisons about two cultures, saying "in Japan....but in Midwest ..." But her voice is getting too much negative and so angry then it becomes that she sounds arrogant: no personal warmth from the author.

2 comments about A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains (Dover Value Editions).

1. In 1873 a middle-aged Lady Bird, acklaimed horsewoman, spent the fall through winter travelling in the Rocky Mountains. As a 10 year resident of Colorado Springs and growing up riding, I was intrigued by her travels. What most people find amazing about this book are her very detailed and beautiful descriptions of what she saw. I have to agree, I did find myself wallowing within what she saw. Especially, since I have seen many of the places (in modern day) that she went. What I, myself, found truly interesting was how she describes in her rather off-hand, like it's mundane, way about the daily hardships she and the settlers had to endure. This isn't the old Grandpa had to walk 10 miles, up hill, in 10 feet of snow, in 60 below weather, both ways to school. It's a true representation of what "Grandpa" had to endure. It breeds a new-[t][/t]found respect for our ancestors and makes one wonder, "Could I endure it?".



2. This is one of the best known and most highly respected travel accounts of a foreigner to the western region of the United States during the 19th century. Isabella Bird, a spinster world traveler, upon returning to her native England from an excursion to Hawaii, decided to stop in America and make a three-month tour of the Rocky Mountain region of Colorado. In a series of letters written to her sister in England, Ms. Bird told in fascinating detail her experiences during this "tour."
   
   Going by train from San Francisco to Cheyenne (except for a brief hiatus near Truckee Pass, which she traversed by horseback), she was in Fort Collins, Colorado, by September 10, 1873. Her travels took her to Denver, Colorado Springs, South Park, Boulder, and Estes Park, where she climbed Longs Peak. Her observations, whether about the people she encounters or the natural wonders all about her, are acute, objective, and highly personal. She will complain about the annoying insects in one letter and then calmly relate taking a tumble off her horse when surprised by a bear in another. She is astounded by the natural beauty of the region and never seems to get enough of it; she also believes, as the saying then went, that "there is no God west of the Missouri," and that the "almighty dollar is the true divinity" (these observations made while in Denver). She recognizes the (especially) English prejudice against all things American, and refuses to go along with it. What makes Ms. Bird's book so enduring is the direct though lighthearted tone she maintains: she is an astute observer but never gives the impression she's "studying" the people or places she sees. The book can be read often and will remain entertaining each time. It's a classic - in a good sense of that word. Highly recommended.

5 comments about American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood.

1. I looked forward every night to reading Arana's way with words. Not only was the subject matter a great story -- duality on many levels, and she explored all the layers -- but she told her story with excellent prose.
   
   Having studied Latin America for years I've always been envious of my follow classmates & friends who have multiple identities...this book opened my eyes to the deeper challenges of multicultural identity, beyond the obvious racism/segregation to the more internal challenges; Arana's description of how she developed not just her gringa identity, or her Peruvian identity but her "faking it" identity fascinated me.
   
   I hope to see more of her work.



2. My wife grew up in Ecuador and moved to the United States 8 years ago, at age 31. I am always interested in better understanding her cross-cultural transition and that's why I picked up "American Chica". But actually this book is more of a family memoir, describing the difficult marriage of Arana's parents. The majority of the book is about her early childhood years growing up in Peru with her father's aristocratic family. The last couple of chapters do recount her family's move to New Jersey. But, while her father was miserable living the "gringo" lifestyle, Marie and her siblings appeared to make the transition quite easily - as children often do - despite facing racism as the only latino kids in their school system.
   
   I prefer my non-fiction to be straightforward, with clear and concise writing. But Arana tends toward artsy pretentiousness, with descriptions and details that I found to be flowery and overly wordy. Obviously, many folks like her style of writing, as demonstrated by the numerous positive reviews. But, for me, it just didn't work.



3. As a native Spanish speaker and ESL/bilingual education
   teacher I was surprised to find so many
   Spanish mistakes in "American Chica." Given Ms.
   Arana's claims of bilingualism, I don't understand how
   this could have happened. A Spanish speaker, for
   example, knows that the word for an indigenous person,
   regardless of gender, is always indígena. Also, no
   fluent Spanish speaker would omit 'te' from "Te tengo
   a ti..." Nor write "proprio," "creatura," or
   "estranjera." And the problems with written accents
   throughout the book are serious! This is not
   nit-picking. As students and speakers of Spanish
   know, an accent's presence or absence can completely
   change the meaning of a word.
   
   While these mistakes were probably corrected in the
   paperback edition, I find it somewhat disrespectful
   that Ms. Arana took such a cavalier attitude with
   Spanish, particularly in a memoir about biculturalism.
   This sloppiness, as well as the author's rigid,
   outdated observations about Latin America vs. North
   America and all that made-for-gringos exoticism was
   very irritating to this particular American chica.



4. This is a heartfelt book; I can't think of another book that spells out the bicultural life so clearly. Arana has cut a new path here. This is not so much about being Hispanic American as being a new and different kind of American: split, with differing loyalties, and with all kinds of doubts along the way.
   I've just read the galleys of her new book, "Cellophane," which make me think that she's building something something new in her opus. This is a strong American writer with a great deal to say about what it means to be a person of the hemisphere. There is much inclusiveness here. I am struck by the largeness of her world.



5. What a generous offering from a talented writer with a keen eye for the nuances of family life! Yes, she writes her own story, but she also writes her mother's and father's stories. And her siblings, though more sparingly drawn, also command her careful observation.
   
   She and her immediate family are described as they came up against the cultural norms, first in Peru in the 1950s, where the family spent 12 years, and then in the United States in the 1960s. Arana is a descendant of Peru's upper class, and while the story is one of growing up with economic 'privilege', we also see how that same class privilege imposes social restraints.
   
   One of my favorite passages describes Arana's observation that it is mothers who lovingly mold their sons into "machos", the archetype of the Latin male.

5 comments about Morgan.

1. Much new primary source material. Stunning photography and much more. Something for the scholar, the architect, the homeowner, the dreamer...and anyone who craves beauty.



2. This is a great addition to the Julia Morgan literature. A lovely intro by her god-daughter gives some new biographical information, and there are more pictures and discussion of her private home commissions than in any of the other books I have.



3. This book is an exceptional coffee table book for oneself or as a gift. It is one of the most comprehensive books I have seen on Julia Morgan and her architecture with a wonderful compilation of photos.



4. While this is clearly a comprehensive book at JM's work and the photographs are exquisite, the prose could have used a bit more editing.
   For example, the introduction, written by JM's niece is a stream of consciousness of memories vs. a more concise piece on Julia Morgan's relationship with the goddaughter and the mother (who was Julia's assistant).



5. I have both this book and Sara Boutelle's "Julia Morgan, architect" ISBN 0-7892-0019-8. I give a slight edge to the Boutelle book for the writing, but both books are excellent and each provides information, images, and insight not in the other. I wouldn't give up either one.

No comments about Hazel Scott: The Pioneering Journey of a Jazz Pianist from Cafe Society to Hollywood to HUAC.