5 comments about Witness.

1. I've never given much thought to Whittaker Chambers, although I was sympathetic to him in the Hiss case. His book, however, is powerful and insightful. Even though the Soviet Union is gone, the forces at work that are trying to undermine Western Civilization are still present. Now more than ever we need a "Witness".



2. During a recent vacation, I was able to finish reading Whittaker Chambers' startling eight hundred page autobiography, "Witness". And I must say that I feel both well informed and somewhat disturbed by the experience. Perhaps I may be allowed to explain.
   
   Whittaker Chambers is the name finally employed by the very strange character, born as Jay Vivian Chambers. This man was raised by a rather odd set of parents, his father, a failed artist and bisexual, and his mother, a never launched actress. Now despite the failings of his parents at their chosen professions, they nevertheless had the audacity to look down upon their economic peers, among whom the Chambers boys grew up. And, though much of the personal information included in the early chapters of this book, relative to Chambers' formative years, is excruciatingly boring, it is also instructive.
   
   Chambers was a diffident, slovenly young man, though evidently somewhat gifted academically. As a consequence, he was able to gain admission to Columbia University. There, his academic career was singularly unsuccessful. First expelled for publishing a blasphemous play about Jesus Christ, he later returned, but was unable to complete his basic degree. With this, we see a very odd, but recurrent aspect of Chambers' unique personality. Though unable to complete even a bachelor's degree, due to lack of discipline, he had the audacity to style himself as an intellectual. He began then, as his parents had done before him, to sneer condescendingly at those more disciplined and accomplished than he was. And, finally, he found a rationale for his rejection of discipline and orthodoxy in the writings of Marx and Lenin. Chambers became then a "dedicated" Marxist.
   
   Our "hero" then went to work for a number of Marxist journals, and pursued a deviant lifestyle. Finally, he joined, quite willingly, the communist underground, and became an asset of Soviet intelligence. In this role, Chambers recruited numerous government officials, including the noteworhty Alger Hiss, and was associated with such men as Soviet agent and US Treasury Department official Harry Dexter White.
   
   The cowardly Chambers eventually "broke" with communism, ostensibly on the occassion of the Soviet Union's treaty with Nazi Germany. In any case, Chambers then turned on his former colleagues. This turncoat behavior of the traitor brought him finally before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and enabled him to establish a strange professional relationship with a hard charging young congressman on that committee, Richard Nixon of California.
   
   Having charged Hiss, and others, with that which he had been guilty of, being a communist, Chambers spent years as a cooperating government witness. Hence, we have the title of this book. In a stunning admission in this, his autobiography, Chambers allows that he perjured himself before a grand jury on the question of whether he had personal knowledge of espionage activity done in the United States on behalf of the Soviet Union. Hiss was later convicted of perjury on essentially the same set of facts. But Chambers was spared conviction, as a cooperating government witness.
   
   Given the above, it is stunning that the bisexual, cowardly, and deceitful Chambers has become a hero of the American "right". But perhaps this represents an essential aspect of the dialectical materialism of the "left/right" dichotomy of top level American politics. The despicable Chambers "broke" with communism. Hiss, equally despicable, never renounced this hideous ideology. American "conservatives" have since made a fetish of comparing Chambers to Hiss. To this reader, this comparison appears rather like trying to determine which is the taller of two midgets.
   
   Despite the above, the book is worth reading. It is overly long and terribly turgid. And the author is surely no hero. But the history contained within this account is well worth knowing.



3. This reads like a great spy novel, but (of course) it is true. After one has finished the last page there is a feeling of loss ... where are giants like Chambers these days?



4. I read this book when it was first published. I was fourteen or fifteen and in high school. It made a profound impact on me. Besides being beautifully written, its tale of a man who leaves what he calls the winning side (Communism) and joins the losing side (God) in the great conflict of the 20th Century influenced the course of my life.
   
   I am now 69 and still have memories of reading Chambers' autobiography. I became a lifelong anti-Communist even before I became a conservative. I come from a family of blue-collar Irish Democrats but even at a young age felt the call of the other party and when I registered to vote at age 21, I immediately registered as a Republican.
   
   Read this book and be astounded (as I was) about Chamber's life first as an overt Communist writing for the Daily Worker and then as an underground Communist working with cells in our nation's capital. We meet Alger Hiss and other important figures in the Roosevelt administration who led other lives as traitors and spies for the USSR. Doubtful as to those individuals? Then read the many books chronicling the findings in the Soviet archives after the fall of the Soviet Union (the Venona Project).
   
   My only regret is that Whittaker Chambers did not live to see the collapse of the USSR. He would have been pleased.



5. Witness is among the most haunting books that I have ever read. The reader who picks it up expecting only a combination spy story and courtroom drama is likely to be as profoundly surprised as was I.
   
   I had somewhat absent-mindedly placed Witness on my birthday gift list, in deference to the frequency with which it is cited as one of the indispensable political books of the 20th century. Upon receipt, I assigned it to the "to-read" stack, failing to note that it was a daunting 800 pages long. Shortly after I began it and realized its length, I feared it would prove too dense for me to enjoy. How wrong I was: when I at last closed the book a couple of weeks later, I knew that it would haunt me, possibly for all the years I have left.
   
   Many conservatives regard this book as a seminal founding charter, a characterization that not only underrates its literary quality, but which also erects a needless barrier before others who would appreciate it. This book is must-reading, regardless of political persuasion. I myself differ from Chambers in several fundamental ways: I am as predisposed to optimism as he was to pessimism; I relished elementary school as greatly as he was tormented by it; and I do not share his religious faith. But these and other differences do not inhibit a reader from appreciating this magnificent book.
   
   This book not only tells a riveting story, it does so with a poetic, melancholy beauty reminiscent of a great Russian novelist. Something about his writing reminded me of Nabokov (an inexact comparison, given that the style exhibits none of Nabokov's exuberant, puckish wordplay). But Chambers's fluid, graceful sentences, and his gift for reconstruction of sensory and emotional states, are comparable to those of the brilliant Russian emigre. Suffice it so say that this book does not read like a bestselling memoir, but rather as a great work of literature.
   
   The story of Witness is of a man originally alienated from his society, and of his struggle to find good and meaning in his world. Chambers's account of his early life is deeply saddening. One suspects that the entire family was genetically predisposed to depression, considering his brother's suicide, the narrator's own similar attempts, and his parents' many self-destructive actions.
   
   Attending school only accentuated young Vivian's (later Whittaker's) sense of isolation. One story he relates is hard to forget: on one of his first school days, he witnessed three boys urinating on a lollipop, and then tricking a later-arriving fourth boy into putting it into his mouth. (The incident itself is gloomy enough; equally so is the fact that Chambers later remembered it as emblematic of his school experience.) Young Chambers is traumatized by the pervasive cruelty around him. He struggles through the ordeal of school - the mockery of his name Vivian, the taunts of being a "sissy," and being compelled to fight.
   
   One is hardly surprised that such an alienated, secretly intelligent, unappreciated youth, convinced of the intractable injustice of the world, would be seduced by communism. In the central section of the book, Chambers details his gradual descent into that world, first as an open party communist, later as a practitioner in espionage. It is in this section that he meets Alger Hiss, and collaborates with him in betraying his country.
   
   This middle section of the book is probably the most arduous reading. At points, many of the figures and spy escapades seem to all run together. But stick with it, because the final 300 pages or so, detailing the Hiss case, are among the most gripping you will ever read.
   
   Chambers at some point realizes that the actions and amorality of communist agitation offend his still-living conscience. He finally responds to that conscience, and begins a further personal journey to where he locates the spiritual comfort he previously lacked: in truth, in family, in working the land, and in religious faith.
   
   Ultimately, Chambers's break with the party compels him to inform on Alger Hiss and others during a Congressional investigation of communist infiltration of the executive branch. Chambers chooses his title of "Witness" advisedly, meaning "witness" in quite the literal, religious sense - a moral compulsion to testify to what he knows, in spite of the danger to himself, in order to help save the world around him. Indeed, Chambers is convinced that he is defecting from the winning to the losing side when he makes his break, but feels he cannot rightly do otherwise.
   
   Popular memory of this period in American history has been, unfortunately, blurred by the excesses of Joe McCarthy. McCarthy's crude and reckless actions have made him a convenient whipping boy for subsequent Hollywood treatments of the Cold War. It is too little remembered that prior to the McCarthy debacle, it was revealed that in fact, there were many communists who had ensconced themselves in the highest levels of the American government, where they practiced a treasonous espionage. The Chambers-Hiss case, much more than the buffoonery of McCarthy, is the truly dramatic and relevant parable of the age.
   
   Much of the final chapters of Witness is told through transcripts of the Congressional hearings. Reading them, one can only wish for a skilled Hollywood treatment of these scenes. The events included every dramatic turn one could hope for - the steady unraveling of a senior State Department official as his lies are exposed on the witness stand, the relentless and skilled probing of Congressional investigators, dramatic personal confrontations, the discovery of critical evidence midway through the proceedings, and even the secreting of classified material in a hollowed-out pumpkin.
   
   What is sobering to realize is that the case would be likely to play out in much the same way today: the press reflexively sided with the urbane, politically-approved Hiss, while the slovenly, seemingly-shady Chambers was subjected to every calumny imaginable. But it turned out that it was the schlub who was actually the man of intelligence and integrity. Appearances are often deceiving.
   
   One thing that leaps out from these pages after the fact is just how pathetically incompetent a liar was Alger Hiss. You follow him weaving and revising and hedging, and not very convincingly. But so blinding were the ascendant political assumptions of the time that he was the one who was initially believed.
   
   One needn't share Chambers's views on politics, religion, or even of the mind of the typical communist subversive, to find his memoir to be a story of surpassing poetry and haunting resonance. Few people have had such an important story to tell in their memoirs, and almost none have told them so lyrically. Few are the books that are virtually impossible to forget. This is one.

5 comments about A Pirate Looks at Fifty.

1. I was prepared to hate this book. If you have ever spent much time in Key West or even walked up and down Duval Street a few times, you become sick of Jimmy Buffett. It seems there is a Buffett song being played in every bar and there are three or four or more bars every block. However, I had read Tales From Margaritaville a while ago and seem to remember liking it. This is not the autobiography I thought it would be. Buffett comes across as likeable and not shallow. He can write and this book tells the reader more about him than anything else he has done. While still not a fan of his music, I recommend this book as well as Tales From Margaritaville.



2. It was a fairly good book but not as good as his other novels. Some of the stories were not that interesting and I'm not a big fan of journals. It did provide some insights into the pirate.



3. this book was interesting enough if you want to know more about fishing
   than Jimmy. Yes, I know he loves to fish, but I wanted a little more
   background.



4. I haven't reached 50, yet. I hope that this book is a primer for when I get there. I hope that 50 is that great!



5. My husband brought with him on vacation. He loves Buffett's books & this was no exception. Very entertaining.

5 comments about How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else.

1. I gave this book three stars. I found the overall book good, and it does make you sit back and think a bit about your own life, and your priorities. I found the style of the book, with constant flashbacks got annoying after a time. It was easy to lose the thread of the discussion. I think if the book was 2/3 it's size, it would be excellent. I would also reduce the price 20%



2. Let me start out by saying, as others have, that I really wanted to like this book. Unfortunately, while the premise was interesting, the actual book was a chore to read. Also, as it went on, I found myself liking Michael less and less.
   
   The constant namedropping quickly begins to wear thin, especially when he mentions meeting Queen Elizabeth and Frank Sinatra within only a few pages of each other. It's as if he needs to constantly remind the reader that he was once "somebody", in order to validate his existence.
   
   To me the entire tone of the book, even the title, seemed condescending.
   I wanted to stop reading it about half way through, but I forced myself to keep going, hoping for some revelation or insight. The last fifty pages were particularly painful, especially those poems to his coworkers--and this guy was supposed to be a great writer?
   
   I gave the book three stars because I do believe it was written with good intentions.



3. Michael Gates Gill's "How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else" is a story of how the author who had to work in Starbucks as a barista after being laid off from a major corporation. He subsequently lost his family when he cheated on his wife. Overnight, it seemed as though Gill lost everything that matters to him. With no prospect and lots of bill, Gill took a job as a barista in Starbucks. The book chronicled how the job changed his outlook in life, and helped to make him a better person.
   
   The premise of the book was interesting. However, I did not enjoy the frequent flashbacks of his WASPy lifestyle or his encounters with various celebrities or famous individuals. It seemed as though the author was too eager to show he was *somebody* who had connections with those individuals. The book started out very promising, but very quickly it lost its appeal. It was also not well written or edited. Mostly, the book was too much of a cliche for me.



4. Great book -- couldn't put it down. Very thoughtful -- made me consider how I was living my life and my true purpose. One of those books that you would read over again, to remind yourself about life's meaning.



5. I finished it in one day! I thought he sent a very clear message; it does not matter your age, or the background you come from, you can find happiness in your work, friends, and life. It is never too late to start over, and be who you might have been...happy and fulfilled. So what if he found it at Starbucks, and promoted them. It is a story about how Starbucks saved his life!!! Hello..Starbucks is going to be showcased! He still took the time to talk about all the wonderful people he has met, and even shared the life lessons he learned along the way to where he is now, and yes that means working at Starbucks. Think how you would feel if a company helped pull your life back together. I know I would not mind building them up as much as I could, and announcing to the world all the great things they have done for me and others. I will keep a copy of this book on my shelf! Loved it!!

5 comments about Truth & Beauty: A Friendship.

1. wonderfully written. if you put a gun to my head and ask who was a better writer, patchett or her friend lucy grealy, the friend that makes completes this companionship, i'd say grealy. much more forceful, passionate and wild writer, hence grealy is not alive now, but patchett is. good book however. check out grealy's writings too.



2. I don't like memoirs, but I read this one in one day. The two writers Anne Patchett and Lucy Grealy meet at Sarah Lawrence and later are roommates while pursuing Master's Degrees at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. Fate deals them both great success as writers, yet their personal paths take completely divergent courses. The bond of friendship spans two decades and countless heartbreaks. Anne Patchett does portray herself to be the 'saint' in this friendship but you would almost have to be to endure the suffering that being friend to Lucy Grealy demanded. The themes of friendship, art, loneliness and love are rendered with realism and depth. Patchett's obvious love for writing and her poet friend is shared in this gift of a book.



3. I'm giving this book 3 stars because I like Ann Patchett's writing very much, but the story isn't as interesting to me as a woman in my mid-40s as it would have been had I read this in my 20s. In my 20s, this would have been a grand sweeping tragedy - a life changing book, a standard by which to judge loyalty and friendship. In my 40s, I went "eh." I read this as the story of two highly dysfunctional people in a suffocating relationship. It feels like Patchett wrote it as a way to exorcise her grief; and also perhaps examine her own less than healthy behavior. It did make me want to read more of Patchett's fiction. I picked up a copy of Patron Saint of Liars and am going to give that a try next. Part of me wants to say, Ann just forgive yourself already. We've all been there and done that. Maybe not in such an extreme way or for so many years... but we've all been sucked in by a charming selfish user. Learn a lesson and move on.



4. Readers will likely recognize the author's name from her previous novels, including Bel Canto, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award, and The Patron Saint of Liars, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Readers also may recognize Ann Patchett from her articles that appear in such publications as Gourmet, the New York Times Magazine, and the Paris Review. No doubt, some readers will recognize Patchett's friend, Lucy Grealy, as the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, Autobiography of a Face.
   
   Truth & Beauty is the story of the friendship shared by Lucy Grealy and Ann Patchett. It is at once tender, heartwarming, heartbreaking and complex. Truth & Beauty is neither the story of Lucy nor the story of Ann, but of the parts of each life that were shared. What one lacked, the other offered for the relationship. What one shared, the other reached out to receive.
   
   Ann and Lucy met in the early 1980s while attending college. At the Iowa Writers' Workshop, they began a friendship that would become a lifelong process. This is no ordinary friendship. It is one riddled with emotional upheaval, creative successes and disappointments, health crises, and ultimately the lecherous hold of drug abuse.
   
   This is a phenomenal look at the way in which two exceptionally creative people lived, loved, wrote, and grappled with the realities of life. It is also an extremely sensitive description of the way a woman wrought with illness, despair and depression can one minute create beauty and the next minute search for ways to destroy herself.
   
   Truth & Beauty is the story of two friends who loved one another through the best and worst of times. It is a portrayal of loyalty and devotion over more than twenty years of friendship, and a haunting, heartbreaking portrait of the belief in the invincibility of one who lives so largely despite their diminuitive size. Only to find that no one is invincible...no one.
   
   by Lee Ambrose
   for Story Circle Book Reviews
   reviewing books by, for, and about women



5. The reason I even looked at reviews for this book is so that I could gage how trustworthy other book reviews on here are and how seriously I should take them. Now that I look at the negative, totally ridiculous critiques of Truth and Beauty, I'm never trusting another sour review on here again! When somebody asks me, "What's your favorite book?" I used to say something by T. Capote or M. Angelo, but now I reply, without hesitation, "TRUTH & BEAUTY by Ann Patchett!" Seriously. This book is awesome and I'm annoyed even reading other bad reviews on here about it. Patchett writes in a way that makes me stop, re-read the page, and then say to myself, "Damn, this is great stuff! Why didn't I think of something like that?" I think if you are an aspiring writer, or just somebody who appreciates intelligent, well-written prose, then you should read this one. Do not trust the other reviewers on this page - they're probably the kind of people who'd give a Harlequin novel 5 stars.

5 comments about Journey of a Thousand Miles: My Story.

1. Reading this book makes me think Lang Lang is crazy. Let's start with the back cover. Lang Lang talks about "number one" being drilled into them, but it gives the feeling the book is all about him, and no one else. Sure, there are stories about his family, but when you read this book, you just get a lot of angst, which suggests that Lang Lang is probably good entertainment when he is at the piano, but probably wouldn't be an interesting person to talk to or relate to because the only thing he knows is piano. He is an incredibly boring person. The stories are concocted, and ghost written by someone other than Lang Lang.



2. A truly inspiring story about Lang Lang who comes from nothing and yet persevered to achieve what he has achieved. Despite all the hardship, there is a sense of optimism in his voice and his passion for piano comes through clearly. Excellent writing also. Highly recommend.



3. When he burst into the classical music world as a seventeen-year old pianist from China, it was more than his piano playing versatility, and repertoire that caused a sensation; it was also Lang Lang's personal history and background. That a seventeen year old student at the Curtis Institute of Music, alone with his father in America, and away from his mother, etc, etc. This book is Lang's answer to the thousands of times he has been asked the same questions. He did a credible and honest job of describing his life and hardship in China. However, his telling of his growth and maturation in America in the last quarter of the book is superficial and shallow, as what one would expect from a 26-year old.
   
   However, as a Chinese-American reader I am also struck by several aspects of Lang's book. First, it must have been a catharsis for him to retell the relationship with his father, the conflicts and mental and physical abuse (in American eyes, but not necessarily to the Chinese) he suffered. He has violated one of the most important Chinese canons, that is: "don't publicize family dirt." It must have taken a tremendous amount of courage and maybe some American rebelliousness to write a tell-all book about his father. Second, he appears to be challenging the musical, maybe even the artistic hierarchy of China, that winning competitions, especially international competitions is not the measurement of musical or artistic achievement. Third, Lang Lang's fierce personal drive and desire to succeed is not often evidenced in Chinese-American artists. This book explains his love of fashion, hairstyles as well his flamboyance and showmanship (good or bad) and, in turn, his success in America.
   
   I highly recommend this book, especially to Chinese-Americans and readers who wish to better understand and appreciate Lang Lang.



4. Overall this book was an easy and good read... This is Lang Lang's autobiography, in it he talks about his parents' sacrifice and what it took for him to get to where he is today. Lang Lang started off by giving a brief history of his family background, his parents' survival through the Cultural Revolution and the impact it had on his parents, and how it shaped their determination to push him to become Number One. This book touched me in so many ways... as he described his parents' drive and fortitude and their willingness to sacrifice anything and everything to guide his career was absolutely touching. His parents' missed opportunities because of the Cultural Revolution and how they put all of their hopes and dreams on him. Lang Lang's tumultuous relationship with his father and his love for his mother also touched me deeply.
   
   I read half the book through tears... tears because I can feel his pain as my parents are survivors of the Cultural Revolution, and I've seen how much they've sacrificed for my brother and me. Tears because he battled through obstacles and through his tenacity he was able to achieve his goals and dreams. Tears because I am a fan of classical music and as he described his approach to each piece of music he played... I can hear it as though the piano keyboard was under my finger tips and I was the one that was pouring out my heart and soul trying to interpret Mozart's sonatas and Bach's concertos as if they told me themselves how they were feeling when they composed each piece and exactly how I should play it so that I can convey what's in their hearts to the audience.
   
   I was a bit disappointed by the ending... I was hoping for a little bit more punch at the end... what happened with his mother?



5. This book absolute blew me away by the powerful experiences related by this equally brilliant musician. I read it 3 x times within the first 3 weeks after release. I will cherish and read this book over and over again. It feels to me as if Lang Lang is standing or sitting next to me telling me his life story personally.
   
   I believe reviewer "G. Hansman "jakebc" (Vancouver, Canada)" was reviewing an altogether different book when he wrote his review of this same phenominal title. I hope to have Lang Lang sign my book in the near future to cherish even more for years and decades to come. I have and will continue to recommend this outstanding book to any possible real reader of good books. Not only is the content extremely moving and moved me to tears on every reading whether Lang Lang achieved success or whether he failed, but the presentation style is extremely accessible and of a deeply personal nature.
   
   Lang Lang absolutely bared his soul to readers and lovers of his brilliant music CDs & performances. I will also forever in future when I see, watch or hear any other talented person - not only in music - remember that the artist I'm enjoying may have gone through an often brutal training and preparation phase to produce that which I'm enjoying now.
   
   To every person who loves reading good Non-Fiction: Buy this book immediately - I can hardly imagine anyone not getting his/her value for their money and time reading this amazing book!!

5 comments about Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood.

1. For starters, the fact that you can get this book for a penny is a testament to how anxiously people are holding on to their copies of it. Unfortunately I paid full price when it came out.
   
   I don't need to rehash all of the pros and cons that everyone else has already mentioned. I'll simply say that this girl got her contract through nepotism and has less reason to bitch than almost anyone I've ever known.
   
   She grew up spoiled, supposedly had low self-esteem, couldn't relate to "boys" and portrays herself as a victim through the whole book. She never takes responsibility for her actions because this book has led me to believe that she's never had to. It was never her fault. It was demon alcohol!
   
   She fancies herself a great writer and isn't. If this book were not repetitious it would have been about 50 pages long. It think that her editor should be fired and taken before a select group of furious bastinadoes.
   
   This book is self-indulgent claptrap for our already slagheap of disposable culture that will soon be a mountain of books such as this blocking out the sun for the rest of us.
   
   The gimmick of this book is that it should be read because her case is so common. It is common. That doesn't mean that it's worthwhile reading.
   
   I'm a long term recovering alcoholic and I could have written a far superior book at the age of fifteen. Where's my agent!
   
   This is a good read for masochists.
   Kevin



2. This is one of my favorite books. I have read it twice already. I received this shipment very promptly. I love it!



3. I definitely had my party years and some of Koren's life experiences seem to match my own. She doesn't hold back anything and her honesty about the Greek system is accurate. I feel a little less guilty now that I know someone else had the same thoughts running through their head that I did during these less than virtuous moments. I enjoyed this book, but there is a constant sadness in her writing that makes you want to hug yourself and say, "It will be better tomorrow." If you like reading about Greek Life,then you should also read COLLEGE LIFE EXTREME: Lies, Sex, Drugs and Violenceand Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities. Thanks Koren for sharing so much about your life with us! Your book will always have a special place on my bookshelf.



4. This book isn't about alcohol abuse, really. It's about a girl from a priviledged family who grows up with lots of friends, becomes a college cheerleader/sorority sister, interns in New York, makes and maintains friendships along the way, and should be an all-around productive, happy citizen. But this girl, from an early age, wants to be a writer. She is especially awestruck by tortured female writers, like Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf. I think she assumed that to be a great writer/poet, suffering is essential. Her driving force isn't alchohol, it's the pretense of alcohol abuse because it makes her appear to be tortured. She thinks misery drives creativity. Many great writers/artists are and were indeed lost souls, many with mental health problems. But the author's problems are all self-inflicted. "Look at how much I drink...I'm so tortured! Feel sorry for me!"
   The more I read this book, the more I got the feeling that she had created a character in her own mind and was living it out. Maybe she should have gone into dramatic performance instead of writing. I wonder if the feminists she so hopelessly wants to impress with her smug treatment of men, are indeed impressed by her? She is certainly impressed enough with herself, blaming her actions on everyone around her.
   I got the impression that once she felt that she had suffered enough, she had a book to write. If you continually choose to place yourself in stupid situations, that just makes you stupid, not deep. If you continually remain emotionally and physically detached from "boys," and play mind games with them, guess what, they're not going to stick around. It doesn't make you smarter than them, just more pathetic. This story is like a whiny love letter the author wrote to herself--"See, you are so tortured and filled with angst, you have suffered so greatly, you are a writer!" Making stupid choices and employing the overuse of simile and metaphor doesn't create a great writer...just an annoying story that is written in an annoying manner.



5. When I first picked up the book I thought it was fiction. I got into bed and at first was disappointed to find out it was not. However I decided to give it a chance. I was hooked right away. My breath was stolen while I connected to the writer. At my age now I look at my adolescence and young adulthood as if it was someone else but while reading that book it brought back so much emotion. I encouraged my friends and sister to read it because I felt we all could relate and everyone has loved this book. The stories may be shocking, sad, and/or appalling but it happens. It is very real.

5 comments about Unbowed: A Memoir (Vintage).

1. Wangari Maathai is such an inspiration because she is identifiable to so many groups. She is empowering to women, to mothers, to advocates for education, for biology, for equality, and most importantly she is an inspiration to anyone who ever thought their one voice could change the planet. Maathai writes with a sincerity that can be identified in any language! Read this book, to learn about Africa, about plants, about women, about everything. Most importantly read this book to learn about a rather amazing woman who never backed down from a fight for what's right. Let the greenbelt movement, move you.



2. This person is exceptional, but don't let that stop you from emulating her! She has courage, integrity, and intelligence to spare--and she used it to save her country's ecological health as well as struggling for democracy and the rights of women for equality and dignity. She went through very perilous circumstances, but fortunately for us all, she still continues to this day as a voice for democracy and honesty in government. We need more like her!



3. Reviewed by Charles Shea LeMone [...]
   
   Nobel laureate, Wangari Maathai was born in Nyeri, Kenya, in 1940. Her earliest memories of the highland country are of a paradise of fertile soil, lush forests and abundant crops. The land was rich with rivers and streams. However, returning home from college in America, one of the first things she noticed was how deforestation and the mass cultivation of cash crops had devastated the countryside, causing severe top soil erosion and many creeks and streams to dry up. Furthermore, the people in her region were no longer as robust and strong as she recalled. Instead, having changed their diets to eat like Europeans, they now appeared weak and undernourished. She found the same to be true of the animals that her people raised.
   
   As a professor, a biologist, and a Kikuyu woman, she turned to the women of her country to help restore the decimated forest. Launching the Green Belt Movement to plant trees--more than 30 million since 1977--she was subjected to beatings, arrest and death threats. Nevertheless, she and her women followers remained unbowed. In fact, the discrimination she faced for merely being a woman, led Maathai to question all human rights abuses that the corrupt government was guilty of perpetrating.
   
   She also fought for free elections, which further alienated her in the eyes of the local leaders. Despite all of their efforts to discredit her, though, in 2002, she was elected to Kenya's Parliament. A year later, she was appointed assistant minister for the environment; and in 2004, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. She continues to live and work in Nairobi.
   
   On the back cover of "Unbowed a Memoir" there is a quote from former president Bill Clinton. "Wangari Maathai's memoir is direct, honest, and beautifully written--a gripping account of modern Africa's trials and triumphs, a universal story of courage, persistence, and success against great odds in a noble cause."



4. I agree with the other reviewers about this being an amazing memoir of a brilliant, undaunted woman, and I highly recommend it. I found it intriguing and instructive for other reasons as well: it's an eye opener into Kenya from British colonial times - when the author was a child in an indigenous society close to the land and animals. Her village seems very much like a Native American village surviving (or trying to survive) through missionaries, reservations, racism and harsh, coerced cultural assimilation, etc. Many of her memories are strikingly parallel to my own, growing up in the Arctic in Inupiaq culture colonized by whites but maintaining much of its old collective ways and animistic ties with the land.
   
   The effects of this colonial legacy are still with Kenyans today, for better or worse. Maathai does not romanticize her indigenous, tribal roots. She admits her father beat his wives and Kenyan women had somehow lost their ancient role of authority, but she evenhandedly points out beneficial aspects of polygamy - for example, children were well taken care of and loved with multiple mothers, so she grew up with a powerful sense of security and groundedness. She describes British farmers who were kind and friends with the locals they used as serfs. Life is full of moral ambiguity and she does not deny the good aspect of missionary boarding school where they beat her for speaking her native tongue: it launched her into her a western education and knowledge of the greater world, which she put to such good use.
   The memoir continues through the Mau Mau uprising (which was a rebellion against the cruelty of British taking all the good farmland and forcing thousands into far off impoverished reservations, and pitting the many tribes against one another). Maatthai proceeds into current times, always with keen insights into the increasing degradation of the ecosystem with climate change, the introduction of foreign species to turn Kenya into plantations, and the destruction of the old native wisdom/stewardship which helped keep things in balance.
   "Unbound" was published before the current conflict that is spiraling into full civil war, with ethnic cleansing and the use of mass rape as a terror instrument. I am sure that Maathai would have plenty to add about this in her memoir if she updates it, with equally keen insights. She would point out that the conflict has its roots in colonial rule and the destruction of a sustainable ecosystem and native life ways, as we see in so many parts of the world now. She would surely have some advice on how to stop the violence.
   I really admire this woman, and hope a lot more will read her book. It seems very important!



5. Maathai is the first African woman and the first environmentalist to win the Nobel Peace Prize-in 2004.
   
   Masthai's life is inspiring-from her humble beginnings as a child laborer on the plantation of a white English colonial farm with her family, to her early education in the primitive Ihithe primary school at age 8, to further education at St. Cecilia's at the Mathari Catholic Mission, to college in the United States. She taught at the University in Kenya, and was active in the National Council of Women in Kenya (NCWK) for many years.
   
   Many failures are scattered throughout her life: she was divorced by her husband; she lost her job at the University when she tried to run for office, and she was arrested many times for her work in promoting democracy in Kenya. One of the projects she worked on was to stop the construction of a huge 60-story skyscraper in the middle of Uhuru Park in Nairobi; another was to obtain the release of over 50 men who had been imprisoned for agitating for a multi-party system. She held a hunger strike with their mothers, in Uhuru Park, and then they all retreated to a nearby Anglican cathedral to continue to protest after being routed from the park by armed police (Along with many others, Maathai was beaten and taken to hospital). Eventually the men were released.
   
   Maathai started the Green Belt Movement in 1977. In 2002 Kenya finally held free and democratic open elections and Maathai won a seat in the Parliament. See the Green Belt web site for extensive details of her grassroots tree-planting program. The act of planting a tree is helping women throughout Africa help the environment. The GBM has planted more than 40 million trees across Africa, resulting in reduced soil erosion has affecting the critical watersheds
   
   Everyone can make a difference. Just today I watched a report on the news about the devastating drought in the Southeast United States. Hard times are coming. We need to learn about climate change and what we can do to manage it.
   
   Armchair Interviews says: One woman helping other women and her country.

5 comments about Life Beyond Measure: Letters to My Great-Granddaughter.

1. I thoroughly enjoyed Sir Sidney Poitier sharing his very personal life story with me and the world. What a legacy and gift that he will leave to us as his fans and admirers and to his great granddaughter. I would recommend this book to anyone who needs wisdom and quick life lessons.
   
   Thank you so much Mr. Poitier for sharing yourself with me and the world. Because of you, film and industry has come of age.
   My favorite movie of yours is "A Warm December" but I cannot find it anywhere! what's the deal on that? (smile)
   
   Anyway, thanks again and God bless you.
   
   Sincerely,
   Rene' "Olufemi" Alexander
   [...]



2. Very good book to read. He always did look shy. The book is very relaxing.



3. I must say thank you to Sir Sidney (as we call him in the Bahamas)for looking back over his life and sharing all the wonderful memories. We can all learn from his advice along with his great - granddughter. He has lived a fantastic life which would have made Horatio Alger proud. I have had the good fortune to have met him and he is always gracious and charming.
   You will enjoy this book from cover to cover and get to peak inside the life of this great man who is respected all over the world.



4. I love this book, it is so personal, I wish I was not so lazy and do the same for my grand/greatgrand children.



5. For months, I've wanted to share some of my experiences with my granddaughters specifically and my grandchildren in general . . . but where to start, how much to share, which topics are taboo, how to share without influencing or preaching, etc.??? THANK YOU Mr. Poitier! I've only finished half the book, but already I know that I want all of my grandchildren to read it! In fact, I want everyone to read it.
   I was struck by Mr. P's loving, honest and forgiving thoughts about life. I was warmed because he has struggled with many of the same notions most dreamers ponder: GOD? Relationships, hardships, money, self-discipline, determination, respect . . .
   I'm sure I'll have more to type after I've finished the entire book, but before life happens, I wanted to say thanks and advise everyone, this is the book to read and share!

5 comments about God Grew Tired of Us: A Memoir.

1. In a book-buying market flooded with simple, homespun philosophy and content-free theology, reaching back to Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, to the Chicken Soup series, to The Tao of Pooh, and Living Buddha - Living Christ, to Deepak Chopra's entire body of work, right up to the nauseating Eat, Pray, Love, comes this pleasing book by John Bul Dau.
   
   It's a true story of his life growing up in The Sudan, his travels and death-defying hardships escaping that country's civil war, his friendships, and his final emigration and fairly successful assimilation into The United States. Peppered throughout his memoirs are nuggets of African tribal wisdom and bemused observations about modern American life.
   
   However, what shines through most is his indomitable spirit, his positive attitude, and his gratitude toward America for giving him, first, a "hand out", and then allowing him to work his way up through a series of minimum wage jobs, and finally to go on to college, graduate, and find a job commensurate with his KSA's.
   
   Therein lays the reason for the ambivalent reception this book has received! If he had written a book highly critical of the United States and especially of the evil Bush administration, the liberal hoards, to include the mainstream media, would have carried this guy around on their shoulders like he just scored the winning touchdown - or better yet, the winning goal, in "the world's game", futball. He would have been brought up on stage at DNC's Mile High coronation confab, during Obama's speech, and been given a standing-O!
   
   But the fact that he's calling the world's attention to the two million black Christians, who have been killed by light-skinned Muslims in Africa, is not nearly as important as say, Abu Graib, or "warrant-less wire-tapping." The latter two being true crimes against humanity!
   
   For that reason I admire this guy. Also because of his faith, his work-ethic, his will to live, and his (almost) total lack of malevolence towards the murderous despoilers of his land. Furthermore he seems downright appreciative to the people of America who have welcomed him with open arms and given him a new lease on life; something impossible for the truly aggrieved, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, to grasp "Where's the outrage?" I hear him ask. "GD AMERICA!, GD AMERICA!, It's in the Bible"
   
   I applaud his English language skills, they're better than my Dinka. Still, it did make for some strained reading. Overall, an inspiring story, well told, by a man who is happy (and lucky) to be alive!



2. God grew tired of us was too me a very strong story it's hard for me to rate a memoir of someone's life reason being it makes me realize how u think you have problems and reading memoirs about people from different countries and what they go through there's no comparsion



3. Every comfortable American should read this book. It's a quick read and a moving one. As other reviewers have mentioned, even though life was horrifyingly grim for much of John Bul Dau's adolescence and young adulthood, the gentle humor he brings to so many of his experiences makes the book an easy read. More important than his humor, however, is the overwhelming sense of hope that shines through even as he details some of the trials he and others in the refugee camps experienced. It is that hope that continues to be seen in his life as he speaks to people around the country to raise awareness of those still caught in the misery the decades-long conflict continues to cause.
   
   Read the book, rent or buy the DVD (winner of two major Sundance Festival awards), and then check his website to find out where he might be appearing in your area.
   
   (You can learn more at [...])



4. GOD GREW TIRED OF US
   
   Reviewed by Charles Shea LeMone www.allwordman.com
   
   In 1987, John Bul Dau was 13-years-old when civil war disrupted his peaceful Sudanese village and his heartbreaking and inspiring 14-year journey began. That night he was forced to flee for his life from Islamic soldiers, having no clue as to whether anyone else in his family had survived the attack. So began a tortuous 1,000 walk, barefoot, to Ethiopia, back to Sudan, then on to Kenya where he lived with thousands of other "Lost Boys" in a refugee camp until the age of 27 when he immigrated to the United States.
   
   This graphic and poignant story traces Dua's experiences through terror and violence, dodging ambushes, massacres and wild animals. He writes, "I have witnessed my share of death and despair. I have seen the hyenas come at dusk to feed on the bodies of my friends. I have been so hungry... that I consumed things I would rather forget. I have crossed a crocodile-infested river while being shelled and shot at. I have walked until I thought I could walk no more. I have wondered... if my friends and I would live to see another day. Those were the times I thought God had grown tired of us."
   
   Once he reached the refugee camp, four years later, he began his formal schooling. He also took on a leadership role, mentoring younger refugee children and reminding them of the strong values of the Dinka culture.
   He arrived in the United States in May of 2001, and a whole new cultural journey began, as Dau was introduced to the modern wonders that American take for granted, such as the telephone, the light-bulb, running water, grocery stores and plethora of new experiences.
   
   With the same strength of commitment and faith that helped him survive the horrors of war and its aftermath, he has since worked tirelessly to help the countrymen he left behind--while working two jobs at times and attending college. His goal is to one day work with the United Nations here or in Africa. Meanwhile, he has set up two foundations, one of which is raising funds to build the first medical clinic in the Duk County, where he was raised as a boy. The memoirs of this trailblazing visionary is one of terror and triumph, and the hard-won wisdom of a young man who has turned adversity into advantage and has steadfastly refused to be defeated by despair.



5. When you consider that John Bul Dau started the first grade when he was eighteen, scratching his first A-B-C's in the dusty ground of a refugee camp, his memoir is inspiring by any measure. It's hard to imagine anyone surviving what Dau describes, much less flourishing once he had the opportunity. By the time he started copying books from the refugee camp library, learned English and Swahili in order to understand the instruction, passed the Kenyan high school exam, then made it to Syracuse, New York, he had wandered upwards of a thousand miles over fourteen years from his bucolic village in southern Sudan.
   
   Sudan is not only the largest country in Africa, and one of the most complex (572 tribes that speak 114 languages), it's also one of the most war-torn. The Darfur genocide in western Sudan rightly grabs our attention, but for twenty-five years civil war raged in the southern part of the country. The "white" Arab and Muslim government in Khartoum has tried to impose strict Islam as the state religion for the entire country, but the black and Christian south rebelled. In 2005 a Comprehensive Peace Agreement was reached.
   
   When the Khartoum government bombed Dau's village of Duk Payuel in 1987, he fled with thousands of other displaced Sudanese. He was thirteen years old. Rape, disease, pillage, daily burials, wild animals, famine (they sometimes ate mud and drank urine), government troops, and hostile tribes did not prevent Dau and some 265,000 Sudanese from reaching refugee camps in Ethiopia to the east. Most of them were young boys and a few men, as women and girls could hardly survive, and so they became known as the "Lost Boys of Sudan." When Ethiopian troops started slaughtering them, the refugees trekked 500 miles south to safety in Kenya. By then Dau was eighteen. Nine years later he was one of only 3,600 Sudanese refugees in Kenya who were resettled in the United States.
   
   Dau is the first to thank the many people who helped him in America, but it bears saying that by his account he was totally self-sufficient about six months after he arrived. He finished community college, entered Syracuse University, met and married a Sudanese woman from his Dinka tribe, started several foundations to help Sudan, sent most of his hourly wages back home, and was featured in the award-winning documentary film God Grew Tired of Us; The Story of the Lost Boys of Sudan (Sundance Grand Jury and Audience awards in 2006). It's only fitting that Dau's improbable story ends with reconnecting with his mother, father, and siblings. "God," he writes, "had not forgotten me after all."

5 comments about Standing Tall: A Memoir of Tragedy and Triumph.

1. I received the book in a very timely manner, it came exactly as it was stated it would. I would purchase from this seller again.



2. I was so moved by C. Vivian Stringer's account of her rise to stardom in the competitive world of college athletics. The predjudice and personal tragedies she endured and her ability to keep balance in her life and focus through it all is truly inspiring. She is an amazing woman.



3. There are 2 things I absolutely HATED about this book...I hated having to put it down, and I hated when I finished it! Vivian Stringer's story is truly an example of courage in the midst of challenges. It's not just for sports fans. Anyone can be inspired by it.



4. I enjoyed the book. Not life changing but there are some life lessons to be learned through the reading



5. This book was absolutely fantastic. I'm not really into sports but have enjoyed basketball from time to time. Though, I've never really been into college basketball and didn't even know who C. Vivian Stringer was before the Imus incident, I was able to gain a tremendous insight into the life of a strong, confident, and resilient woman and the women she lends a hand in raising. To learn all that she has been through and how she mustered the courage to "Stand Tall" through every adversity was so inspiring, and not just for Black women but for every woman and human being. I certainly recommend that every person take the time to read this incredible story.