5 comments about Touching the Rocks: An Experience of Blindness (Audio Cassette).

1. I can't remember ever reading anything quite as compelling. I'm not going blind nor do I have any cognitive disabilities. However, if you are a practicing meditator as I am and are interested in the nature of consciousness itself, you will be quite intrigued with this highly descriptive account of both the visual and non-visual aspects of perception. If this book doesn't inspire you to start thinking outside the box, nothing will. That been said, the average reader will find this to be an unforgettable, beautifully written book well worth reading. Highly recommended.



2. In place of the word "unsentimental" often used to describe this book I'd use "Lynchian", as in David. Blindness is just the starting-off point: The book is really a luxuriant journey into the *other* four senses and the heightened reality one begins to feel -- for instance how the white noise of a sudden rain can throw your outdoor echolocation into turmoil and immobilize you at some random place. With all respect to anyone looking for a good book on the disability, this one is for the artists.



3. On the front cover Oliver Sacks is quoted: "Staggering. . . the most extraordinary, precise, deep, and beautiful account of blindness I have ever read." But this book is primarily a message of facing change and developing methods for coping. Of compensating, of reaching out, of accepting your plight and going forward. You sense the author's despair and frustration, but he manages to see his difficulties as challenges. He engages you in the struggles he faces and overcomes. After all, he has a wife and four children, he lectures and attends conferences. Perhaps the most fascinating chapter of all, for me, was how he faced giving a lecture when he could no longer read notes. He eventually learned how to write his speech in his mind so that he could simply read one page as the next ones were being formulated. I pictured it as something like the beginning of a Star Wars movie. John Hull has somelthing to teach us all.



4. Heard the taped version of TOUCHING THE ROCK by John
   Hull, a moving memoir of a university lecturer who slowly
   lost his vision over a period of several years . . . he recorded
   his thoughts in a diary, and I must admit to being touched
   about how both he and his family dealt with his
   condition . . . even typing this brings teary thoughts to
   mind . . . imagine having seen a child as a youngster,
   then not being able to see her again as she grows up . . . or
   never having seen another child from the time he was
   born . . . it makes me want to hug my daughter, Risa . . . and
   to appreciate all that I do have!



5. This book was given to me as a gift a few years ago, and while I am neither going blind nor am actually blind, I found many of the ideas and experiences and thoughts and feelings expressed in this book to be very similar to my own. I have some particular cognitive difficulties (prosopagnosia, often called "face blindness") which give me a rather different outlook on life from most people, and I was amazed to see just how much in common my outlook on life was when compared with the author's life experiences. Well, maybe I wasn't that surprized, but it was still an eye-opening (no pun intended) experience for me to read this book in that context.

   Needless to say, I enjoyed this book very very much. It reads more like a personal journal or diary than an actual book, and that gives the whole book a very personal experience when reading it.

5 comments about Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife.

1. The is the first of Mary's books that I read so I had no expectations. It is fun and funny and informative. Though not exhaustive, her research was pretty inclusive. The book has been called "anecdotal" but what else could you possibly call stories about this subject????? All they can possibly be is anecdotes. Questions aren't all answered but there are some pretty good explanations that themselves bring up more question.
   If you don't expect this to be the definitive book with a definitive answer waiting in the pages but more informative with humor about the biggest question that we all have then you will enjoy it. Any book that can make one laugh about dying is good in my simple mind.



2. It wouldn't be truly fair to say that Mary Roach has the sense of humor, maturity level and research skills of a fourteen-year-old boy - fair to a fourteen-year-old boy that is. Because I assume many of them are forced by their teachers to look beyond Google searches for their information. And surely many of them don't see the necessity of finding toilet humor in every odd name or tangential topic they happen to uncover in that research. (Consider this gem on page 73, when discussing phrenology, she suddenly finds reason to diverge into one of the subject's inventions, a "portable hydrogen gas generator [which she proudly references Google for, no less], and goes on at length to describe the machine's use to detect flatulence...I mean...is this really relevant information? And I'm being gentle. This is actually a fairly mild example of her constant and unnecessary deviation into detailed discussions of bodily functions.) This is how Mary Roach and fourteen-year-old boys are best distinguished; I'd be less worried about the 14-year-old embarrassing me in public.
   
   I can't rightfully rate a book lower than 3 stars if I actually *finished* it - which I did in this case. But it sure feels like a 2-star bomb thinking back on it. From such an intriguing title comes an awkward, displaced, meaningless and utterly irrelevant collection of chapters that are each just a quick editor's glance away from taking their rightful place as B-rate magazine articles. And, most poignantly, none contain the slightest bit of the actual intrigue so latent within the title. It's as though she wants to be a satirical writer rather than present any actual information on the alleged subject, and there isn't the slightest hint of a journalistic mind present in the writing. Here. Imagine David Sedaris had the "talent" part of his brain removed, and then tried to write a book on a random topic he had little or no previous knowledge of. Essentially, you would have "Spook."
   
   What Roach has done is simply recounted the most obvious hoaxes in the history of supernatural studies, and in other cases she's dabbled in some variety of modern science attempting to discover actual paranormal activity, all the while admitting how little she actually knows about what the experts at hand are talking about. In one case she mentions asking a researcher to respond to her by "pretend[ing] you are talking to a seventh-grader,"(p.105). Is this the level of authorship and topical knowledge that we've come to accept as publishable material? Apparently so, judging by Roach's high sales.
   
   Ultimately, this book is complete and utter fluff with not the slightest bit of substantial information that an average person with a laptop and internet connection could not find out for themselves in about an hour and a half on Wikipedia. The only sense of awe the reader of "science tackling the afterlife" is left with, is that an average college graduate with a B.A. in psychology convinced a publisher to fund a book on a topic that said author may as well have picked out of a hat of a hundred other subjects about which she admittedly knew next to nothing.



3. what a waste of time reading this book...poorly researched, and certainly not even close to a serious look at the 'afterlife'....the author attempts to use humor to get her points across, with little success....what a disappointing book!!



4. I think Mary Roach is a hilarious writer. Ever since I read Stiff, I've been waiting in anticipation for her next book. In Spook Roach jumps from the physical to the metaphysical. Whereas Stiff examined the ultimate fate of cadavers, Spook looks to the soul. In particular, the book examines scientists' efforts to to offer measurable proof of the existence of the soul, and their attempts to understand what happens to immaterial parts of personhood after death. To give a full picture of these efforts Roach's research takes her across cultures and continents. She brings us the story of the woman who could vomit large quantities of fabric on demand in the name of talking to the dead. She writes of doctors who attached dying consumptives to giant scales. As with her other work, Spook is infused with Roach's sense of humor and her clear fascination with the bizarre. The stranger it gets, the happier Roach seems to be. This book is, without question, a rollicking good read. Beyond pure enjoyment, Roach book also shows just how enmeshed certain sectors of the scientific community have become, in the past two centuries, in matters of belief. The very premise of this book, and what unifies these stories, is an attempt to merge seemingly incompatible thought systems. Ever since the arguments in Kansas and the Dover, PA school board case, the ability, and the desirability of merging these two thought systems in the name of education has become an issue of political significance. Roach's study suggests that scientists and lay people have been involved in efforts to merge the physical and metaphysical arts. It shows that at significant points in the past, large numbers of people have been drawn to efforts to apply science to faith; see, for example, her chapter on spiritualism. The experts involved, however, (scientists, doctors, etc.) have ususally been marginal figures, on the fringes of their fields, or at least respected only in their work outside of the supernatural. Obviously, the scientific question of the afterlife is never going to create the firestorm generated by evolution/creationism/intelligent design. The general consensus remains that afterlife is a matter of faith, not science. Public schools have little need or desire to teach about the fate of the soul. That is the work of clerics and philosophers. But here lies the great irony. It is precisely because there is such widespread agreement in the western world on the division of body and soul, that attempts to bring science to bear of matters of the spirit and the immortal may be able to proceed without the criticism and argument generated by by similar battles in which the divisions seem less clear.



5. I think that one of the best things you can say about a book is that it's entertaining and this one sure is. The author is very, very funny and makes learning about the various topics enjoyable. I'm going to have to get her other books as well.

1 comments about 84, Charing Cross Road.

1. Like many people I saw a movie first. Naturally due to media constraints, you expect certain amount of the book to be homogenized. So I wanted to read what was missing. To my amazement very little was missing or modified. I don't normally read this sort of book. So I was surprised at finding myself wanting more when it finished.
   
   Also until I read the book I did not realize that Charing Cross Road was a real place. The whole book is based on a collection of correspondence between Helene Hanff, an avid book reader, and Frank Doel an agent for British bookseller.
   
   My wife has taken this one step further and is collecting all the books that were mentioned in the correspondence. Some of these books appear to have been reprinted due to this publication.
   
   If you can find it there is a book called "The Library of Helene Hanff."
   I wonder what became of all the other people described in the correspondents after the book.
   
   The Library of Helene Hanff Limited Edition Signed

5 comments about Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician.

1. This is the weakest of the 3-part series... probably because Nixon wasn't that great of a President. He didn't achieve anything of note so there really isn't anything for Ambrose to tell up until Watergate. By far, the most interesting aspect of the second volume is Nixon's relationship with Kissinger and his mastery of foreign affairs.
   
   I think Nixon had some good ideas, but didn't have the political clout to pull it off. Instead, he spent his political clout making himself look better than he actually was. That doesn't look good when viewed through the writings of an historian like Ambrose.
   
   While this is the weakest of the three, it still is worthy of your time. I would suggest you check it out at the library though to save yourself about 50 bucks.
   
   It is a good bridge to the third book which is nearly as good as the first volume of this series.



2. If you are like me, you found Ambrose's first volume at a used book store or online for a reasonable price. Now you are looking for volume 2 and experiencing sticker shock. Don't worry, if you are patient, you can obtain a copy of this book at a reasonable price. Check Amazon and other online sites regularly and you'll eventually obtain a good reading copy for $30 - $50 dollars. And while the final volume is also hard to find, it's more abundant that the second.
   
   Now to the book. Ambrose provides a fair look at Nixon. He points out both his great strengths and weaknesses. The seeds of Nixon's destruction are evident throughout this book. In fact, Watergate itself occurs in this volume. The scandal occurs in the final volume.
   
   If you wish to learn about Nixon and politics in the post World War II era, you'll be hard pressed to find a better source than Ambrose's three volumes.



3. The American political system at its worst! This view of Nixon reveals a despicable man, doing whatever he could do to discredit his opponents, manipulate whoever he could, lie, and cheat to get elected. Hard-working, brilliant, but disgusting. Nixon even tried to undermine peace attempts in Vietnam just before the 1968 election. All that said, the incumbent president wasn't much better, as those peace attempts were really lies propagated by the LBJ administration to influence the election in Humphrey's favor. The 1968 campaign was absolutely horrid and unforgivable. What was different between Nixon and LBJ is Nixon's paranoia and vindictiveness.

   It's interesting how Ike never really endorses Nixon, even when his grandson married Nixon's daughter. Finally, from his hospital bed Ike endorses him before the 1968 election, but even then it was lukewarm. Ambrose - who wrote an Eisenhower biography as well - contrasted the two. He says Ike loved life and loved people, while Nixon was distrustful of people, and gave in to hate. Ike brought people together; Nixon tore people apart. Ambrose cites a diary entry from Ike's secretary during Ike's administration: "The Vice President [Nixon] seems more like someone acting like a nice man more than a nice man".

   The author commented how much different the Nixon administration may have been had Nixon had his first choice - Bob Finch, a genuine nice person - as his running mate. As it was Nixon surrounded himself with clones, all vindictive and paranoid. All fed his paranoia and anger and goaded his wrath. Their daily orders - delivered via comments in the margins of Nixon's daily news summaries - were very telling (and extremely interesting).

   Nixon's foreign policy accomplishments - the settlement with North Vietnam, the opening to China and détente with the Russians - were indeed exceptional. But could these events have happened sooner had Nixon not circumvented his own State department in order to increase the histrionics and guarantee the credit for himself? Also, regarding the China and Russian initiatives, the author poses an interesting rhetorical question - who could have done it but Nixon, since he did not have to deal with a Nixon critic!

   This is the middle book of a Nixon trilogy, so you don't get the childhood and Congressional years, or "Nixon in winter", but you get to know the man, and it is depressing.




4. As usual, Stephen E. Ambrose is flawless in this middle edition of the Nixon trilogy. The book is quite long and detailed to a fault. The detail includes huge quantities of actual quotes, painting a picture of Nixon about as clear as one can get on any man.

   The picture I got was of a man not well suited for the presidency. Intelligent, clever, creative, bold, knowledgeable on world affairs, yes. But he also had character flaws. Over-sensitive almost to the point of paranoia, Nixon was driven by an obsession to be President more than the desire to be presidential. His statement in the later David Frost interview that, "If the President does it, it's not illegal," is very telling. The ends justified the means. He had the ability to rank goals above consequences, and almost everything he did was for the acquisition or preservation of political power.

   The best example is Vietnam. He took four years to end a war he knew early on could not be won. His delays were to search for ways to avoid being the first American President to lose a war, and to prevent the staining of American honor. Both of which would have cost Nixon reelection in 1972. Ambrose makes the point that half the names on the Vietnam War Memorial are from the period of Nixon's futile attempts to foil Hanoi and fool America. People should never have to die to protect a politician's legacy.

   I see Nixon and Clinton, representing both political parties, as two good examples of why character matters when we vote. For some reason, the presidency attracts extreme or narcissistic personalities whose motivations are more for glory than good. After reading Ambrose's book, the simple question, "Why does this person want to be president?" will rank higher in my mind.

   Another eye-opener in the book was the lesson in political science. Nixon was neither an appealing candidate, nor a rallying ideologue. He scraped his way to the top because he was the consummate partisan politician. Ambrose shows a glimpse of the American political system's underbelly: maneuvering, manipulating, prevaricating, waffling, and backstabbing. He makes it easy to forget that despite the warts, our republican democracy is still the best system in the world.

   The irony and enigma of Nixon is that he also opened up China, warmed the Cold War with the Soviets, began nuclear disarmament, and other worthy and statesman-like accomplishments. The book, like Nixon himself, will mean different things to different people. --Christopher Bonn Jonnes, author of BIG ICE




5. Stephen Ambrose's second volume of Nixon:
   "Triumph of a politician" is just as good as
   volume one.
   This is the heart and soul of presidential politics.
   Surely we have the politicians we deserve, but some of them
   are complex, confusing, ruthless, criminal, fascinating,
   moving, grand and great - which kind of make it hard
   for us poor voters. Nixon was all of that! as is so
   clearly demonstrated in this
   portrait of the Nixon presidency.

   In 1962 Nixon held his famous last press conference
   after losing the California gubernatorial contest.
   The reporters wrote his political obituary.
   Five years later he had held hundreds of press
   conferences and was on his way to becoming president!

   He won the presidency over Humphrey in 1968
   partly by the not very statesman like behavior of
   namecalling and allegations about Humphreys neglect of
   national defense and his softness on law and
   order and his willingness to spend the country into
   bancruptcy. Or perhaps he almost lost because
   of these wild charges?

   I think the book explains how it all happened.
   Even the parts that are really unexplainable.
   Fascinating.

   -Simon

1 comments about Character Above All Volume 7 Robert Dallek on Lyndon Johnson and Hendrik Hertzbe.

1. This product features two audio tapes. One each on Johnson and Carter. Robert Dallek and Hendrik Hertzberg are the speakers. Their speeches from 1995 show great knowledge and insight into their respective Presidents.

   Hendrik Hertzberg was a speech writer for President Carter during his last two years in office. Hertzberg is a good speaker and often used humor to describe Carter and his administration. Hendrik describes Carter well. He portrays him as a loner and someone opposed to pomp and glitter. He also stated that Carter was no idealogue. Rather he handled issues one by one as they arose. And he spread himself too thin. Hendrik descibes some of the major events of the Carter Administration. The Panama Canal Treaty, the Israeli/Egyptian peace talks and the failed Iranian hostage rescue mission. Hertzberg portrays Carter as a courageous moral leader. But he also shows that Carter was not a great political leader.

   Robert Dallek is a successful author and he shows here that he is also a good speaker. Dallek studied Lyndon Johnson thoroughly and clearly understood him. He states accurately that Lyndon Johnson was a complex man with a seemingly contradictory personality. Dallek quotes several stories about Johnson to show his sense of humor and his temperament.

   Dallek provides data about Johnson's popularity over the years. As President, his approval ratings were good. As an ex President he's less popular. Dallek gives three reasons why he thinks LBJ's popularity has fallen. His assessment is probably correct.

   Dallek then proceeds to rate Johnson as a President. He gives LBJ high marks in the realms of vision, pragmatism and consensus building on domestic issues. And he states that Johnson was very successful in passing his bills through Congress. Dallek provides a whole list of good bills which Johnson pushed through. In summary, Robert Dallek's assessment of Lyndon Johnson and his Presidency is very accurate and well informed.

No comments about The Last Marlin: Library Edition.

1 comments about Vanna Speaks.

1. You've seen the TV show and read the book. Now get the book on tape. Vanna underestimates her own talent. "You have to know the alphabet", she says. If you have always wondered - what is Vanna really like (see answer number 3, below), this is the tape for you. It is fifty minutes of pure Vanna.

   Do not get this tape because you are looking for a literary masterpiece. Buy this tape because you are a Wheel of Fortune fan! How many of us can say that we are the best in the world at what we do? There is no question, Vanna is the world's best letter turner (now letter presser). She performs her job with a fluidity of motion that no other letter turner can approach. Yes, there are others who do this. I have seen substitutes for Vanna on Wheel of Fortune, and Wheel of Fortune equivalent shows in other countries. (The most amusing is the Hungarian version where there are more vowels than consonants.) Vanna is the best.

   I have to admit to some level of prejudice. I met Vanna when I appeared on WOF as a contestant. The answers to your three questions are: (1) $55,618, (2) the money is taxed as income, (3) Vanna is very nice, but we do not keep in touch.

No comments about Diana, Princess of Wales (BBC Radio Collection).

No comments about Lindbergh - Part II, Unabridged on 9 cassettes.

No comments about Elizabeth: A Biography of Britain's Queen (Unabridged).