5 comments about Mean and Lowly Things: Snakes, Science, and Survival in the Congo.

1. "To understand the world, we must understand mean and lowly things." - Aristotle
   
   Kate Jackson recounts her expeditions with the flare of the best natural field scientists from Jane Goodall to Frank Buck - every bit as fascinating and courageous. Scientific exploration - hardships, danger, daring, mysteries, accomplishment, exotic cultural surprises. Including a glimpse into modern scientific camaraderie around the world and government bureaucratic malfeasance. Highly recommended glimpse of an intrepid person enjoying herself physically and intellectually.
   
   "No person who is enthusiastic about his work has anything to fear from life." -Samuel Goldwyn



2. Kate Jackson is a much-accomplished scientist at a releatively young age. I do happen to know Kate on a personal level...yet her blend of skills still amazes me. She is one part curiousity, two parts courage, and three parts intelligence. Her most impressive skill to me (with my more literary bent) is her sure ability at narrative---her descriptions pull you into the jungle and make you feel your rotting socks in the jungle heat. I think everyone should read Kate's book, as I am sure you have never met anyone like her either.



3. The reason that scientists don't know much about the reptiles and amphibians of the Congo, we learn in Kate Jackson's gripping Mean and Lowly Things is because it's a very difficult place to live and most scientists would rather work in places less remote. As a new Ph.D., Kate Jackson doesn't have much of a choice; she can go to the Congo and find snakes on her own, or she can play second, third, or fourth fiddle to some other researcher in a place with running water. Choosing the road less traveled seems to have made all the difference because Jackson turns out to be made of exactly the mettle needed for surviving in climates of perpetual damp, heat, bureaucracy, poverty, and, oh yeah, maggots, biting ants, malaria, sleeping sickness, foot long millipedes and of, course, cobras.
   
   Reminiscent of Raymond Ditmar's very out of print Snake Hunter's Holiday Jackson plunges into the submerged and remote forests of the Congo with a resolve and story telling ability that keep readers on the edge of their seats. Whether cheering along as she captures venomous snakes, or cringing as she describes discovering that maggots are growing under her skin, either way, it's a gripping and enjoyable book that makes you appreciate those people for who intentionally choose the difficult path, try harder when things seem hopeless, and persevere.



4. Mean and Lowly Things is a gripping firsthand account of Kate Jackson's adventures as a herpetological fieldworker in the Congo. While the book provides the reader with scientific detail it's written in a style which brings the experience of conducting field research vividly to life, and as such it mirrors the best travel literature. Keen observations of culture and life are balanced by frank description of the frustrations, fears and feelings of inadequacy which all travelers undergo when venturing to the fringes of the map.
   
   It becomes obvious within the first few pages that Jackson passionately believes in the epigram from Aristotle that opens the book: "To understand the world, we must understand mean and lowly things." Every page of the book breathes the excitement of discovery and the wonders of the forest, and she returns again and again to the message that there is indeed great value in studying toads and snakes.
   
   The opening chapters deal with Jackson's early years of study and work in museum collections, which provides a fascinating insight into the world of hard science with a personal angle. But we really get into the meat when she finally organizes her own expedition to a remote field camp deep in the African Congo. The skills needed on such a venture weren't taught in graduate school. They were simply things that had to be figured out for oneself through a process of trial and error. And when dealing with venomous snakes, errors can be costly. We travel with her as she learns the ropes on a trip marred by civil war, cultural barriers, and a medical evacuation due to raging infection caused by a scraped leg that came into contact with contaminated swamp water. Despite this experience, she comes away with "an altogether irrational longing to return."
   
   Jackson goes back to the Congo for two more expeditions, which are also described in the book. Her focus is on the work and on the phenomenon that she observes, and in that sense, as well as in the way she brushes aside discomfort and understates real dangers, her writing style takes one back to the great 18th and 19th century explorers who first described Africa's mysterious interior. In camp she slept beneath a patched orange tarpaulin on a simple groundsheet, covered in a mosquito net: a situation that caused her Bantu guide to quit because the living conditions were too harsh. The inedible food prepared by her cook - bland manioc which tasted like "a cross between a chunk of wood and an overcooked potato", and soup made with smoked fish which was often half rotten and infested with maggots - caused her to lose 10 pounds in the course of 5 weeks. And then there were the seemingly insurmountable cultural barriers.
   
   But all of that discomfort and frustration is eclipsed by the wonders of discovery and by the thrill of the chase. It's a message of life lived passionately, with purpose, and to the fullest. All of us could benefit from that.



5. "Mean and Lowly Things" is a phenomenal account of the trials and tribulations of herpetological field work in one of the most remote places of the world. Jackson tells her story of collecting amphibians and reptiles in the swamp forests of the Northern Congo without bias and in a way that highlights and accentuates the reasons why someone would long to camp in a secluded swamp forest to catch these creatures. "Mean and Lowly" gives down-to-Earth and easily accessible insight into the little-known area of herpetological field work. Jackson shows exactly how mundane things such as drinking water and dry clothes can be hard to come by in the field, yet how tenacity, passion and curiosity can overcome just about any seemingly insurmountable odd. From impossible government bureaucracies and maggots that grow in your skin, to traditional village customs and published scientific data, "Mean and Lowly" truly covers everything one has to deal with as a scientist in the field in an easy and enjoyable read meant for anyone. It is a wonderful and tantalizing book filled with stories that will make you want to leave for the rain forest tomorrow.

5 comments about Behind Rebel Lines: The Incredible Story of Emma Edmonds, Civil War Spy.

1. Disguised as a union soldier, Emma would risk her life for her country. Emma Edmonds was born in Saint John, Canada in 1840. When she was sixteen years old she ran away to the United States. When she was twenty one, President Lincoln made a request for seventy five thousand men to volunteer for the Army. She decided that she wanted to be a field nurse for the Union Army but those jobs were so dangerous that they were only given to men. So she cut her hair short, dressed up like a man, and enlisted under the name Franklin Thompson. Emma was assigned to the Second Regiment of Michigan Volunteers. The next day she and all the others in her Regiment were off to training camp. Upset at hearing the news that one of her friends had died in the war, Emma went to go see a woman named Mrs. Butler who lived on the camp with the soldiers. Emma started talking and she ended up telling her secret identity. After that day, Mrs. Butler became Emma's closest friend and the only one who new here secret. One day news came to the camp that a Union spy had been killed at a rebel camp. Now they needed a new spy and Emma volunteered. So she disguised herself as a black slave named Cuff. She snuck onto a rebel camp to gather any valuable information. She found out how many weapons they had, where people were hiding, anything that would help the union defeat the rebels. Once she had gathered enough information, she snuck back to the Union camp. With this information, the union began to fight. Emma became very busy in the hospital as more and more got injured. As the union reached a river, they had to stop and make a bridge across it which would take weeks. The Union army didn't have enough information to make an attack. It was time for Emma to become a spy again. This time she dressed up as a middle aged peddler woman. In this disguise she had no trouble at all getting into the camp and she was allowed to walk around freely. She found out a lot of useful information including the fact that the rebels had an ambush waiting for the union troops. She then rode away on a one of the rebel's horses. They were so impressed with Emma's work that they made her a messenger during all the fighting. For many months Emma was sent off on spy missions and was successful on all of them. Emma returned to being a nurse as the war went on. She was then struck with malaria. She couldn't go to the hospital she worked at because then they would find out she was a girl. So she decided to leave, get the help she needed and then come back. So she left and checked herself into a hospital. Once she got her malaria under control, she saw a union poster in a window. It said that Franklin Thompson was absent without leave. He was known as a deserter. Emma was upset but she continued being a nurse under her rightful name. Later on, after she was married she petitioned the war department to review her case. She had her military rights restored and received and honorable discharge. Other troops were surprised to find out that their old friend Frank Thompson was actually Emma Edmonds. Emma lived in La Porte until her death in 1898. This is a good book full of adventure and suspense.
   
   I thought it was cool how Emma was able to pull off so many disguises. Emma's biggest disguise was being a man. She was able to fool everyone, even her fellow soldiers who she became friends with, that she was a guy. She pulled it off without anyone ever asking questions. Also, there was her favorite disguise, the black slave named Cuff. She was again pretending to be a guy and she was able to come up with something to make her skin look dark. She was able to fool everyone in the rebel camp. Another disguise was as a peddler woman. Even though she was dressed up as a girl, no one ever thought that she actually looked like a real girl. She was even able to fool them then.
   
   Emma was brave and took many risks during her life. One big risk was just signing up. She could have gotten into a lot of trouble if they found out that she was lying and was a girl. And being in the middle of a war is dangerous too. Another risk was when Emma disguised herself as Mr. Mayberry. She was supposed to lead a man, who was leaking union information to the rebels, into a union ambush. If anything went wrong she could've ended up dead and no one would have known. Also, when she was dressed up as a black slave woman, she could have gotten killed. She found secret rebel documents and was going to take them back to her camp. But if she was caught with them they probably would have killed her.
   
   When ever Emma made a decision she stuck to it and didn't turn back. For example, when she decided to run away. She was only sixteen and was afraid of her dad. But she set her fears aside and made the decision to leave and she was happy about it. Another example is when she decided to volunteer for the Army. She was scared and worried that they wouldn't believe her disguise. But she made her decision and wasn't going to second guess herself. Also, when she wanted to become a spy. It was dangerous but she wanted to do it anyway. And even after Mrs. Butler tried and tried to convince her not to do it, Emma stuck to her decision.
   
   This is a great book that will make you not want to put it down. I would recommend it to most people who like biographies and adventure story. This book may not interest everyone but overall it was good.
   
   C. Chapman



2. Emma Edmonds is a young girl from Canada, living in the North during the Civil War. She's always been outgoing and bold- never able to stay in one place at a time. So when she feels a calling to join the Union army, she does what any rebellious girl would do- cuts her hair, gets the uniform, and joins up. At first she's awkward and unsure- terrified that she'll be discovered. She sees the whole thing as a big adventure-that is, until an old love interest of hers is killed in the war. She decides to really take a stand and looks at the war in a whole different way. She fights with all her power-until she gets word that a Union spy was recently killed by the Confederates. She quickly lands the job of replacement. She goes across the rebel lines, a different disguise each time, and collects useful information which helped to save many battles.
   Emma Edmonds, whom I had never heard of before reading the book, is a facinating character. How she summoned the courage to join the army I will never know. A very good book, but a little slow in places.



3. I didn't really like this book. I didn't really like the author's writing style, it was a little hard to understand and follow. The subject wasn't very interesting to me. I think that it would have been hard to try to re-create a story about the civil war. I think that the author did good on that.
   
   I wouldn't really recommend this book unless you are interested in things about the army. I think that it was cool though that a woman would take that kind of risk just to be in combat. Also it was cool that she was that passionate about serving her country.



4. My grandma forced me to read "Behind Rebel Lines". But it turned out to be an awsome and interesting book!



5. Behind the Lines is an adaptation of the Emma Edmonds story for young adults. Emma Edmonds was a native of Saint John New Brunswick, Canada who left for the United States several years prior to the war. She eventually found her way to Michigan where, following the outbreak of war, she under the alias Franklin Thompson enlisted with the 2nd Michigan Infantry. She served with the unit as an orderly for about a year before she volunteered herself as a spy, and during the course of the next year went on eleven assignments. Not only were her spying activities dangerous, but she always had to remain vigilant among her comrades as well, lest her identity be discovered. This is a very interesting and entertaining bit of history, one that is sure to interest even some of those who insist that history is "bo-ring".

5 comments about The Concubine's Children.

1. Received my order quickly, the book was is the advertised condition and I loved the book.



2. I couldn't wait to read this book after it arrived. But I was disappointed. Althought the topic was fascinating, the writing was not. I became bored and at times found it hard to follow which person was doing what. I had to re-read some paragraphs to make sure I knew which person I was reading about. If the writing had been better, it would have been a far more captivating book. Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter was much better.



3. 
   THE BOOK WAS A VERY GOOD BUY....SERVICE WAS OUTSTANDING I RECD
   THE BOOK IN A HURRY. BOOK WAS IN GREAT CONDITION AND EVEN MY
   WIFE PICKED IT UP AND READ IT. THIS IS THE SECOND BOOK I
   PURCHASED FROM AMAZON. I WILL BUY AGAIN VERY SOON. KEEP UP
   THE GOOD WORK.



4. In this fascinating tale, Denise Chong deftly writes the story of her migrant Chinese family on two soils - Canadian soil, and Chinese soil. Her grandmother ("concubine" May-ying) moves to Canada following Chan Sam, her assigned husband. Times prove not to be so easy for the Chinese in "Gold Mountain". Their isolation and institutionalized exclusion from mainstream Canadian society stifled any progress. May-ying moves almost constantly from Nanaimo to Vancouver (the two Chinatowns) waitressing to support her husband, Hing (the third daughter and author's mother), and also the family left in China. Following relations in this book is key to understanding how the story unfolds.
   
   Denise Chong tells the story of May-ying's taut life in trying to fulfill the obligations of a Chinese wife in a polygamous setting. She also gives historical accounts (political and cultural) both at home and in China. When family and history are intertwined, both become inseperably tangible. I don't think that this book is an exploitation of Chinese culture as one reviewer pointed out. I think this book will be enlightening to many a reader with sparse knowledge and misconceptions about early Chinese migration to the New World.



5. For those of you who think polygamy works when it is culturally supported, this is the book that will give you a new viewpoint to consider.
   
   This book was written by the granddaugther of a concubine, a second wife taken while the first wife was still in the picture. Culture and practicality allowed and supported concubinage in China of the 1920s, yet this family suffered greatly for generations under the practice. It is the history of her grandparents' marriage, a second marriage. The grandfather took a concubine to be his wife in the New World while he worked to make a better living from his At Home family and to elevate his social status in his home community.
   
   The story tells of the struggles of being a "second family," of the depravation that had to go hand-in-hand with supporting two households, with the shame of having parents who were together for the convenience of sex and income, of the pain of being separated from siblings who were being raised by the first wife. It's about the descent from being a merely disfunctional family unit to being essentially an out-of-control single-parent household when the bonds of dependency and culture were broken by the stress of having two wives and two families.
   
   I couldn't put this book down once I started because it's like watching a train-wreck. I could anticpate the troubles and sorrows, as could the family involved, yet they were just as powerless as I to change things.

5 comments about Various Positions: A Life of Leonard Cohen (Jewish Life, History, and Culture).

1. The condition of the used book was just as described, shipping was quick. I am very happy with the purchase!



2. Very insightful reading about a very gifted writer and performer of poetry and music. Also provides interesting details of personal life experiences of life during the sixties and seventies. An interesting view of the development and maturation of a genius.



3. This is a fascinating book. However, it is not a conventional biography, in that the author (Ira Nadel) does not fully succeed in weaving the events of Cohen's life into a flowing narrative. The story proceeds disjointedly, and the reader follows it with a feeling of uneven coverage and missing pieces. Ira Nadel is clearly in personal awe of Leonard Cohen (as any of us would be, I suppose), such that he shies away from offering much analysis (psychoanalysis?) of his work and conduct of his life, beyond what the work and facts of his life suggest readily. For example, Cohen's long, tortured relationship with his wife Suzanne is described by a series of vignettes, as cold as news reports, spiced only with relevant-seeming quotations from Cohen's work. Nadel doesn't do the interpretive work of suggesting was going on in Cohen's mind, and what was causing that, which is what biographers usually do for us (and we judge them on whether they do that well or badly). There are ocassional Freudian interpretations, as when Nadel compares Cohen's relationship with his lovers to that with his mother. But we don't get a feel for how the relationship developed and began to sour. In fact, we barely get any feel of "development" in Cohen's life at all, which makes it seem like disconnected reportage rather than a biographical narrative. This quality could be seen as a plus, as it gives the book a cryptic feel, rather like the work of Leonard Cohen itself. I learned a lot, and enjoyed the distant quality of Nadel's writing for what it was, but I was left wanting to know more. Perhaps Cohen, whose work often veers into playful impenetrability, perfers it that way.



4. I much prefer autobiographies to other biographies. Biographies tend to be clumsily assembled or stitched or thrown together and filled out with plodding prose. And so this biography. Well, at least you get some kind of overview of Leonard Cohen's life and here and there some fragments of Leonard Cohen's incisive wit. Two samples:

   Author: My publisher wants to know if this can be considered an authorized biography.

   L.C.: It can be considered a tolerated biography, benignly tolerated.

   Leonard Cohen is interviewing his famous actress girlfriend Rebecca De Mornay:

   Rebecca: The great advantage to having you interview me is that I won't have to field questions about Leonard Cohen.

   L.C.: Yes, let's talk about Leonard Cohen. What's he really like?

   Recommended: PENTATONIC SCALES FOR THE JAZZ-ROCK KEYBOARDIST by Jeff Burns.




5. While Leonard Cohen's music, writing, and intreaguing life are enough to satisfy any romantic, this book manages to give a clear and accurate depiction of Cohen's motivations, influences, and understanding of life. From his innovative novels to his influencial and engrossing music and poetry, Cohen's life is portrayed as a constant exploration into the soul and the true meaning of love, sacrifice, and isolation. However, it is impossible to convey the passion and emotion that Cohen transmits in albums such as "Death of a Lady's Man" and "Songs of Love and Hate." In only this aspect does "Various Positions: A Life of Leanord Cohen" fall short of possible expectations. But perhaps Cohen's emotion is something that prose writing simply cannot capture. Leonard Cohen's life is certainly something worth reading about.

2 comments about Memoirs of Montparnasse (New York Review Books Classics).

1. John Glassco writes about the Paris arts scene of the 1920s, telling the story of an artist as a young man. It's not always true, but it is always fun, as fiction and autobiography blend to create a good read. Has all the sex, boozing and pathos that was typical of 1920s Paris as its been memorialized in literature, whether that's a good thing or not is for you to decide.



2. It was 1927; John Glassco was 17 when he left Montreal to go to Paris with the intention of becoming a famous writer. He kept a journal of his life there for the next five years. He was convinced he was a genius who would one day produce a masterpiece. The irony is that the masterpiece turned out to be these memoirs edited and published when he was 59.

3 comments about The Wilderness World of John Muir.

1. I really enjoyed this book as it was focused on plants and animals. My favorite chapters were "The Water Ouzel" (a bird) and "Stickeen" (a dog). However, the whole book was interesting and enjoyable, including chapters about different people he met along the way ("The Robber" and "The Blacksmith"). This book is titled as "a selection from his collected work." I enjoyed his writing so much that I will look for a complete volume of his works so I don't miss out on any other great stories.



2. I am often asked for a recommendation of what among Muir's writings, or writings about him, one should first read. After spending more than 30 years appreciating both his writings and most of the books about Muir that have been published during that time, and after ten years editing the John Muir Exhibit online, I can only turn to the same book that originally enthalled me with John Muir: The Wilderness World of John Muir, edited by Edwin Way Teale.
   
   This book was edited by someone who was himself an able naturalist and nature-writer, and therefore someone who could understand Muir in a way that most academics, whether professors of literature or historians, cannot. Edwin Way Teale (1899-1980), has been ranked as a nature writer with been ranked with Henry David Thoreau, John Burroughs, as well as John Muir himself. His honors include being elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, receiving the John Burroughs Award in 1943, and the Pulitzer Prize in 1966. He was the author of 32 books. Teale's sympathy for Muir's message is shown in the book's Dedication page, which is "Dedicated to The Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society, The National Parks Association, and all those who are fighting the good fight to preserve what John Muir sought to save."
   
   This book serves as both an anthology of the very best of Muir's writings, and also a biography, compellingly provided by Teale.
   
   The biographical value of this work is often under-stated, even by the publisher. The book is typically viewed as an anthology, and indeed it is, primarily; but it also contains a wealth of biographical information, far more than the typical anthology.
   
   Teale commences his book on John Muir with an authoritative 10-page Introduction, that not merely identifies the key events in Muir's life, but provides an assessment and perspective of how Muir stacks up with other nature writers. He provides facts you won't find elsewhere: "While visiting friends, Muir sometimes would talk four hours at breakfast." Teale, writing in 1954, was able to talk with several people who knew Muir personally. He noted that everyone he talked to had a different view of which phase of natural history held first importance in Muir's mind. Some thought it was trees; another thought it was geology, another plants. Teale points out the fourth view, probably the nearest right of all: "... the whole interrelationships of life, the complete rounded picture of the mountain world. Today, Muir probably would be called an ecologist." Teale 's assessment of Muir as an "ecologist" pre-dates the "ecology movement" of the 1970s by at least 15 years. Teale admirably tells of the scope of the places, glaciers, plants, and animals named after him, and Muir's contributions to science and conservation. Although public appreciation for Muir has grown dramatically since Teale's book was first published in 1954, The Wilderness World of John Muir still provides the best introduction to Muir's life and writings.
   
   Following the admirable Introduction, each of the 51 excerpts from Muir's writings commences with a preface by Teale, of up to a page in length, presenting in chronological order the story of Muir's life, and putting each of Muir's writings into context.
   
   Although serving as a biography, the Wilderness World is, in fact, primarily a superb anthology. Rather than simply re-printing the full text of such of Muir's works as The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf, My First Summer in the Sierra, Travels in Alaska, Our National Parks , and the Journals, Teale provides short snippets from the best of Muir's writings, arranged into seven broad categories:
   
   I. Memories of Youth - reprints Muir's writings about his boyhood in Scotland, life on the Wisconsin Farm, seeing immense flocks Passenger Pigeons, nearly dying of choke-damp while digging a well, his inventions, and his enrollment at the University of Wisconsin.
   
   II. University of The Wilderness - Excerpts from A Thousand Mile Walk, including people by the way, camping among the tombs of Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, Georgia, and Muir's visit to Cuba and New York.
   
   III. The Range of Light - Muir's adventures in the Sierra, including his first glimpse from Pacheco Pass and crossing the bee pastures of the Central Valley, his first visits to the High Sierra, climbing on the brink of Yosemite Falls above the Valley, tributes to wildlife including bears and grasshoppers, and his telepathic experience sensing the presence of his former University Professor Butler in the Valley.
   
   IV. The Valley - Muir's glorious tributes to Yosemite Valley's waterfalls, the water ouzel, the earthquake, and Ralph Waldo Emerson's visit.
   
   V. Forests of the West - Including Muir's adventure high atop a Douglas fir during a wind-storm, and writings about Silver Pine, the Douglas Squirrel, Sequoia, Nevada Nut Pines, and Muir's clarion call to protect the forests, "Any Fool Can Destroy a Tree."
   
   VI. Glacier Pioneer - Muir's discovery of the Sierra glaciers, his climb of Mount Ritter, his perilous night on Mount Shasta, and his travels in Alaska, including his discovery of Glacier Bay and his adventure with Stickeen.
   
   VII. The Philosophy of John Muir - excerpts from many scattered sources focusing on Muir's views on mankind's relationship to Nature. For many, this is the favorite part of the book, the part one returns to again and again for inspiration.
   
   Despite this, the book does have some failings. The book belies the importance of Muir's family and friends, which becomes so evident upon reading his extensive correspondence. Nor does the book do more than barely mention some important places in Muir's life, such as his global travels to such places as the glacial mountains of Europe, the forests of Siberia, the Himalayas and forests of India, Australian and New Zealand forests, and, the fulfillment of his life-long dream, his last trip to see the forests of South America and Africa. The book emphasizes Muir's appreciative writings about Nature, and only briefly mentions the conservation battles which consumed so much of his life, including his long campaign to protect Hetch Hetchy. To obtain a whole picture of Muir, the reader will need to also read another work about Muir's conservation campaigns, such as Roderick Nash's chapter on "John Muir: Publicizer" in Wilderness and the American Mind, Stephen Fox's John Muir and His Legacy: The American Conservation Movement, or John Muir and the Sierra Club: The Battle for Yosemite by Holway R. Jones.
   
   Since the book was originally published in 1954, it is not informed by some of the more recent research resulting from Muir's unpublished journals and correspondence, published in the John Muir Papers in 1980. Given the popularity of this book, fifty years after its first publication, the publishers should consider a second edition, again using a nature writer rather than a literary critic or historian to update the book.
   
   Overall, in this book Muir comes alive, as someone who can can at once write inspiringly and poetically about trees, storms, mountains, glaciers, and forests, but yet also show the attention to detail of an analytical scientist. Muir is revealed as adventurer, a lover of nature, a person who can still excite the imagination of readers. As Teale concludes, "Rich in time, rich in enjoyment, rich in appreciation, rich in enthusiasm, rich in understanding, rich in expression, rich in friends, rich in knowledge, John muir lived a full and rounded life, a life unique in many ways, admirable in many ways, valuable in many ways.... In his writings and in his conservation achievements, Muir seems especially present in a world that is better because he lived here."
   
   August, 2004



3. Whether you are interested in John Muir specifically or just want to read about an interesting life, this book is an excellent place to start.

   John Muir had an incredible and important life, and it is told here succinctly in his own words, excerpted to emphasize the profound. It is a glimpse into a lifestyle 99.9% of us will never know, yet it is truly important to our times. His love of nature, adventure and exploration is a reminder of why we need to experience more than our 9 to 5 workdays and why we need to apply ourselves to the protection of the Earth.

   Muir was a gentle but strong man, a genius with simple needs, solitary yet influential. This book is a terrific way to look into his life and his time and to gain some inspiration into our lives and our times.

5 comments about Wolf Willow: A History, a Story, and a Memory of the Last Plains Frontier (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics).

1. Stegner once again reveals his writing prowess, This time in a self-indulgent adventure to haunts of his youth.
   
   I have some qualms about this work, however. In particular, I was not so keen on those parts where Stegner relied heavily on book-based history that never directly touched his own life. To be frank, his writing in these parts surprisingly got a bit stodgy.
   
   His thought on sense of place and belonging, however, are remarkable, hitting me right between the eyes. Indeed, he had me wistfully recalling my own childhood in what seemed a remote area of the world with the archaeological junk heap and all. In measuring his boyhood to my own, I noted how little times had changed in that interval of 60-70 years and how much has changed for kids in the last 40. It had me wondering how my own sons lives would be different were it not for the MAFIA (mother's against fun in America).



2. This book has no right to be so absorbing. Though the topic of this forgotten book by Wallace Stegner reeks of self-indulgence-- A writer returns to where he grew up, reminisces about his youth and the history of the frontier town his transient childhood most identified as home and concludes with a 100-page fictionalized account of a the terrible winter of 1906-- he manages to tie his past inexorably to ours, linking his nostalgia for his youth with our own, and exploring the promise and inevitable waste of the American Dream lived out on our frontiers.
   
   Stegner, like Proust, experiences an "ancient, unbearable recognition" spurred by a return to the sites, sounds, and most importantly, smells of his childhood. He dreams of this period and is "haunted, on awakening, by a sense of meanings just withheld, and by a profound nostalgic melancholy." Everyone has some awareness of a deep meaning lurking in our past that has not, or cannot, be fully interpreted.
   
   Perhaps the best part of the book is section three, the novella length exposition on the hope and danger of the high plains that does a superb job of creating looming dread as the winter drops hard on the land. Near the end of section three, Stegner expounds on what it is to be an American pursuing the Dream:
   
   "How does one know what wilderness has meant to Americans unless he has shared the guilt of wastefully and ignorantly tampering with it in the name of progress? One who has lived the dream, the temporary fulfillment, and the disappointment has had the full course.... The vein of melancholy in the North American mind may be owing to many causes, but it is surely not weakened by the perception that the fulfillment of the American Dream means inevitably the death of the noble savagery and freedom of the wild. Any who has lived on a frontier knows the inescapable ambivalence of the old-fashioned American conscience, for he has first renewed himself in Eden and then set about converting it into the lamentable modern world."



3. This wonderful collection of essays and fiction about the last Western frontier is both romance and anti-romance. Writing in the 1950s, Stegner captures the breath-taking beauty of the unbroken plains of southwest Saskatchewan and the excitement of its settlment at the turn of the century. Part memoir, the book recounts the years of his boyhood in a small town along the Whitemud River in 1914-1919, the summers spent on the family's homestead 50 miles away along the Canadian-U.S border. His book is also an account of the loss of that Eden and the failed promise of agricultural development in this semi-arid region with thin top soil.

   Stegner is a gifted, intelligent writer, able to turn the people and events of history into compelling reading. The opening section of the book describes the experience of being on the plains and specifically in the area where Stegner was a boy. And it lays out the geography of that land -- a distant range of hills, the river, the coulees, the town -- which the book will return to again and again.

   The following section evokes the period of frontier Canada's early exploration, the emergence of the metis culture, the destruction of the buffalo herds, the introduction of rangeland cattle, and then wave upon wave of settlement pushing the last of the plains Indians westward and northward. A chapter is devoted to the surveying of the boundary along the Canada-U.S. border; another chapter describes the founding of the Mounted Police and its purely Canadian style of bringing law and order to the wild west.

   The middle section of the book is a novella and a short story about the winter of 1906-1907. In the longer piece, eight men rounding up cattle are caught on the open plains in an early blizzard. Stegner builds the drama and the peril of their situation artfully and convincingly. The final section of the book returns to Stegner's memories of the town and the homestead, ending with his family's departure for Montana.

   Stegner lived at a time and in a place where a person born in the 20th century could still experience something of the sweep of history that transformed the American plains. I've read many books about the West, and because of his depth of thought, his gifts as a writer, and his unflinching eye, Stegner's work ranks for me among the best. I heartily recommend this book.




4. Part history and part dreamy reminiscence, this book is an account of a boy growing up in Southwest Saskatchewan in the early part of the 20th Century. The central portion of the book is pure history, and the long chapters on cowboys are particularly challenging because they require an intimate knowledge of cowboy terminology. Stegner does not mince words about the difficulties of life on the plains--extremes of heat and cold, wind, hostile topography, lack of cultural amenities--the result of which is that most who grew up there moved elsewhere. But he also shows a passionate attachment for the country of his childhood. The narrative often seems rambling because, like James Michener, the author tries to incorporate so much besides history--including the biology and geology of the nearby Cypress Hills, the biologically diverse area nearby--and even his poetic musings have elements of fact, as when he describes the wind, or the gophers, or his swimming hole, or his school, or his family's homestead, or the problems involved in the town's incorporation.



5. Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Wallace Stegner grew up on the prairie frontiers of North Dakota, Saskatchewan, and Montana, and in the mountains of Utah. As is indicated by the subtitle, this volume combines history, a memoir, and historical fiction. Readers who have spent significant time on the snow swept northern steppes may find a small part of themselves, and of this land, in Wolf Willow. ...
   "On those miraculously beautiful and murderously cold nights glittering with the green and blue darts from a sky like polished dark metal, when the moon had gone down, leaving the hollow heavens to the stars and the overflowing cold light of the Aurora, he thought he had moments of the clearest vision ... In every direction ... the snow spread; here and there the implacable plain glinted back a spark - the beam of a cold star reflected in a crystal of ice." (The scene evokes in me a powerful memory, as I recall often standing alone on just such "murderously cold" snow blanketed prairies and gazing into those "miraculously beautiful" night skies.)

3 comments about PANZER GUNNER: From My Native Canada to the German Osfront and Back. In Action with 25th Panzer Regiment, 7th Panzer Division 1944-45.

1. For those of you who are keen to read about the fighting on the Eastern Front 1944/45, from the point of view of a German tank crew member, then look no further than this book!
   
   The author was born to ethnic German parents in Canada, and was promptly shipped back to Nazi Germany in early 1939 with his brothers, to help the Third Reich! He ended up learning German, joining the Army, and serving with a Panzer Division fighting the Russians.
   
   This account is humourous, and also detailed, with plenty of technical information about the two vehicles in which the author served, the Panzer IV and Jagdpanzer IV tank hunter.
   
   There are plenty of gems of information, and superb accounts of tank combat against the Russians at the end of the war, about which very little has been published in German or English. Highly recommended, particularly for those interested in armour tactics at the small unit level 1944/45, and for understanding in detail how German tank crews operated their vehicles.



2. Some good insight on personal experiences but not much more. A lot of extra material added to beef up the book. There are better books on the personal experiences of a German soldier. This rates way down on the list of being really interesting.



3. Lots of info about the panzer IV and Jagdpanzer IV and how the crews operated them.

5 comments about Red China Blues: My Long March From Mao to Now.

1. An enthusiastic young activist, Jan Wong left Canada for Beijing in 1972, in hopes of simultaneously aiding Mao's cause and pursuing her ancestral roots. This well-written, enlightening account of her "journey from Mao to now" takes readers through her six years as a student and subsequent six years as a reporter in Red China's capital city.
   
   Wong was uniquely qualified to write this book, which privileges readers with deep insights into why things were the way they were then, and are now, in China. Having Chinese parents, but being raised in the West, rendered Jan part of both worlds. She experienced the Cultural Revolution and post-Mao China as both an insider and a "foreigner," resulting in a perspective on those periods that only a few can claim, and fewer still have written about.
   
   The first part of the book tells the story of the author's Beijing University days. In 1972, armed with only the vocabulary she had acquired in Mandarin 101, Wong left the comfort and security of her Montreal life to spend a summer in China. Inspired by what she observed in Red China, she found it a natural progression to move from worrying about feminist issues to supporting Maoism. So she petitioned and won permission to stay in the country to study at Beijing University for the next two years. Anti-establishmentarianism was "in," and "China was radical-chic" at the time, she explains. Western youth looked to the East for answers and antidotes to racism, "exploitation" of the masses, and materialism. Becoming a journalist seemed like the perfect job for a young woman seeking to change the world, so she decided to remain in China to learn Mandarin, Chinese history, and Maoism. Her goal was to bring knowledge of all that she thought China was doing well to the West.
   
   As a starry-eyed young Maoist, Wong did not realize how miserable people really were. Instead, when she discovered that she and the other foreign students were being given better rooms and special food privileges, they protested until they were allowed to eat the miserable starvation-level rations given to the rest of the students in their dingy canteen. Then she and her foreign friend petitioned to join their Chinese classmates in undertaking the required physical labor projects they had been exempted from. She was finally allowed to dug ditches, haul bricks, and harvest crops with everyone else.
   
   The author's first clue that Communist China might not be the paradise she had dreamed of came when the school asked her to end her friendship with a young Swedish man or be expelled. The school actually played a distressing mind game with her over this issue. From this experience she learned that in China people were not only unable to do what they wanted, but they were also not free to think what they wanted.
   
   Yet, Wong remains zealous in her attempts to prove that she is a good Maoist. In fact, Part One of the book culminates in her informing on two students who asked for her help to leave China for the US. At the time Wong thought she was doing the right thing by turning them in, but now she regrets her decision and feels great remorse for the terrible fate that probably befell these people after that.
   
   In Part Two, Wong returns to Montreal to complete her McGill University degree. Still supportive of Red China, she lectures locally in an effort to muster public support for the country and its political agenda. After graduating in 1974, Wong won a Canadian government scholarship to study at Beijing University, and off she went for more of the same. In addition to learning more about her school experiences and deepening understanding of what was happening on a personal and political level, the author meets and marries Norman Shulman---an American. After her studies end, she takes a job as a foreign correspondent for the New York Times. She finds that her Chinese appearance and fluency with the language give her a unique ability to get the local people to open up to her, when other reporters are unable to get interviews or comments.
   
   Wong reaches a turning point when Madame Mao and the rest of the Gang of Four are arrested. As she watches people rejoice in the streets, it dawns on her that the people hadn't believed in the Cultural Revolution for a long time. She feels betrayed and foolish because of her blind faith.
   
   Wong left China in 1980 to pursue a journalism degree at Columbia University, and then worked at various prestigious publications in the US and Canada for seven years. But in 1988, she was too curious to know what was really happening in China, so she asked her employer, the Toronto Globe, to transfer her. The third section of the book thus covers the late 1980s and early 1990s. The highlight of her career was covering the Tiananmen Square protests, the resulting massacre, and resulting fall out. This event served as the catalyst for shattering the last of Wong's illusions about communism in China. She declares herself no longer naïve and believes that she finally has a clear view of the "real" China.
   
   The last portion of the book presents some of Wong's most interesting interviews and perspectives on life in China, centering on human rights issues and social problems like how to uncover how many people really died in the Tiananmen Square massacre, poverty, the effects of the economic boom, retardation, drugs, prisoners, kidnapping women as brides, and the new robber barons of China.
   
   Wong left China in 1993 with no regrets. She concluded that without having spent 12 years living in and observing Red China, she would not have realized that what she was striving for all along was the socialist life style she enjoyed in Canada.
   
   Filled with interesting stories and well told, this book is a must read addition to your "good books about China" collection. As more and more people with Chinese roots return to this country, hopefully more voices like Wang's will emerge to give us perspective on what's happened between 1993 and the present, picking up where she has left off.



2. This is a beautiful book to read. It's well written and you can hardly put it down. Jan Wong let's us be witnesses of her life choices and their consecuences. It's interesting how and why she decides to go and live in communist China, how she strugles to get adjusted to that kind of political system and way of life. She then turns into a great journalist and let's us see some unknown aspects of modern China. It's a good book to learn more about China's history. I enjoyed it a lot!



3. If you want to understand China, you will need to read a considerable range of titles in order to see the country, its history, people, culture and so on from numerous and unique angles. Jan Wong's RED CHINA BLUES offers a very unique angle. Jan was born in Montreal. Her father owned a popular restaurant in that city and by the time he was thirty, he had made his first million. Jan herself, apparently suffering from an identity crisis, became disenchanted with Canada/Western culture and decided to head to China to find herself and her roots - during the height of Maoism.
   
   Young and impossibly niave, Wong hurtled herself into the Chinese world. She learned the language, demanded not to be given preferential treatment, shoveled manure on a pig farm/re-education camp, and worked in a machine factory. Ever so slowly, her idealism faded, but, as other critics have noted, this took a very long time. At one point, for example, she mentioned how at the machine factory the workers spent half their time going to political meetings as opposed to producing. One of the primary tenets or aims of Marxism (to which Wong subscribed) is to creat a "superabundance" so as to achieve economic surplus over material necessity. Only then will art, politics, philosophy, etc. be able to reach fruition. When factory workers ask Wong about conditions and money re a similar job in the West, she is reluctant to tell them. But such isolated inconsistencies didn't dampen her idealistic fervor; not for something like six years anyway. Wong returned to China in 1988, and from here the book really gears down. Because she looks and can speak Chinese, she is able to to go places and do things that real outsiders never could. Her visit to a labor camp is interesting and her first hand account of "the Tianmen Incident," (people being shot right outside her window) is, as you might imagine, chilling. This was either the first or second China book I read, and it made a lasting impression. I highly recommend it.
   
   Troy Parfitt, author



4. Red China Blues is the story of a woman who, in her youth, idealizes communism. This idealization is partly a lack of understanding about how communism in China really worked, and partly rebellion against her own Canadian culture.
   
   As she goes to China and slowly comes to understand the horror of China under Mao, we too see and understand both the regime itself and the ways in which the people dealt with their lot. She wants so much to believe in the dream-China she's created in her head that it's painful and difficult for her to see reality. This is a sin most humans commit at some point in their lives, and many readers will wince as they're reminded of their own delusional moments.
   
   Ms. Wong does not attempt to censor any of her own sins. From simple arrogance to participation in active thought control, she tells us everything she did and leaves it to us to decide what to think of her. The same is true of the people around her: she honestly talks about the good and bad in all the people she describes to us. This lends a wonderful humanizing touch to the book and turns it from the story of a regime into a story about people *in* the regime, living as best they can. You will not be able to forgive some of them, while others will move you. Mostly, Ms. Wong leaves you to decide for yourself which people fall into which category.
   
   In other words, this is a book that lays out facts and lets you decide your opinion for yourself. She gives you the facts, tells you her opinion, and leaves the rest to you. For a clear, honest look at China's people under Mao and after his death, read this one.



5. Jan Wong,a Canadian journalist of Chinese ancestry, in this illuminating volume writes of her experiences as an ardent young Maoist in the early 1970's who actually went to China to work and study.
   She hauled pig manure in a Chinese re-education farm, and at Beijing University she turned in a fellow student who had begged her help to escape to the West.
   Slowly she realized the evil of the Communist system in China and was repatriated to the West in 1978.
   Wong returned years later as an undercover journalist to China where she covered the Tianmen Square Massacre, in which three thousand pro-democracy students were mowed down in cold blood by Red China's army, on the orders of dictator, Jian Zemin.
   She also covered China's contradictory development into a capitalist state under a Communist dictatorship, or a Communist dictatorship with a capitalist economy...akin to Fascism!
   She covers the Tianmen Square Massacre of 1989, letting the the reader know of some of the lesser known details, and how the Communist army opened fire on the students after they began leaving the square:
   "A [...]girl was killed and they just brought her body back...After the third barrage I counted more than twenty bodies. One cyclist was shot in the back right below our balcony. There were two big puddles of blood on the Avenue of Eternal Peace. People carried the body of a little girl towards the back of the hotel. After twenty three more minutes, a few people gathred up enough courage to aproach the wounded. The soldiers let loose another blast, sending the would be rescuers scurrying for cover. The crowd was enraged. I grimly kept track of the time. An hour later, the wounded were still on the ground, bleeding to death.
   She speaks of the great poverty of the new Red China, with inequalities far greater than anything in the liberal democracies of the world, and crushing poverty in the rural provinces. Despite economic changes, China remains a brutal dictatorship, with no political liberalization or democratization having been allowed by the iron grip of the Communist Party.
   Peeople are still opresed in day-to-day life. People are not allowed to own dogs, and to deal with a fad of people acquiring dogs as pets in the early 1990s, special police squads swept through the neigbourhoods, strangling dogs with steel wire looped at the end of metal poles.
   The author recounts some regret at buying into the Communist lie, with the realization that "The Western world, especially Canada, is far more socialistic than China has ever been, with it's free public education, universal medicare, unemployment insurance, and government funding for television ads against domestic violence. China has made me appreciate my own country, with it's tiny ethnically diverse population of unassuming donut-eaters. I had gone all the way to China to find an idealistic revolutionary society, when I already had it right to home."
   She ends of on a positive note, predicting, in 1997, a great change in China , and the death of the Communist Party, and real democracy.
   Ten years later, this is not close to being realized, with a tightening of political control by the Communist dictatorship having taken place.
   Despite being one of the most brutal dictatorships on this planet, China has gained international acceptibility, without improving democracy or human rights!
   Nobody bats an eyelid at the Olympic Games for 2008 being set in Beijing.
   The worst abuses of the Communist regime has it's apologists in the WEst.
   The Stalinist Workers World Party in North America, (which has praised Stalinism in the Soviet Union, and applauded suicide bombings against Jewish women and chidren in Israel) congratulated the Chinese regime after the Tianmen Square Massacre, for having 'won a battle against imperialist and counter-revolutionary forces."
   The fact that such sentiments can be uttered makes one wonder how far the world has actually come.

No comments about Champlain's Dream.