5 comments about The Compleated Autobiography.

1. I had never read Volume 1 of Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, so I didn't know what to expect when I bought Volume 2, which was compiled from Dr. Franklin's diaries by one of his descendants, Dr. Mark Skousen. I really thought that because 200 years had gone by, it would be rather dry with way too many historical details and that I would never finish it. A good book to help me fall asleep at night. But I was wrong. I simply loved it.
   
   Dr. Franklin was quite a character and this book shows in his own words what he thought of his fellow 'founding fathers,' (especially his opinion of John Adams!!) how he managed to keep some of his English friends in the midst of the Revolutionary War, and the woman who got away (quite possibly the only one).
   
   This is not a book just for a history class. It is most, most entertaining and I finished it in record time. I wish Ben had lived to 100 instead of just 84.
   
   Highly recommended if you like history and even if you don't.
   
   Heidi Walter
   [...]



2. This is a review of the audio version of this work.
   
   I found this to be a great disappointment, bordering on annoying. The author was attempting to complete Franklin's autobiography which doesn't cover the second half of his life. I found two very difficult problems with the work.
   
   First, the opening of the audio book presents the author's background including why he wanted to do this. This introduction was distractingly self-serving and provided quite a bit more about the author than any reader would probably expect. He is a descendant of Franklin, which may spurn his motivation....but failed to make the experience any more enlightening.
   
   Second, the book is written "using Franklin's own words"...or so says the notes from the publisher. What it does is try to use the language of Franklin's day including quickly worn out expressions and lines. I tired very quickly of the authors attempt to turn every phrase like a Poor Richard quip. What he may have gained in accuracy, made the audio experience painful.
   
   I do not recommend the audio edition for those two reasons, nor would I recommend the book. One would be better served with Isaacson's (BF: An American Life) book for a look at the second half of Franklin's life....it's simply written better and it offers more insight.
   
   The idea of getting inside Franklin's head and finishing the autobiography is compelling....but this attempt failed in it's lofty goal.
   
   --Cudo



3. Let's just say I am a Franklin buff. If you really like Franklin or history this is a worth while read. If you want to learn more about Franklin you should start with the Autobiography and then move to one of the many Bios, the most recent of which is Walter Isaacson's "Benjamin Franklin." If you get through those, you may be well ready for this read. To be honest, in my opinion, the author stands in the way of this work a little but it is not bad.



4. Book received timely and in excellent condition. Am still in the process of reading it.



5. I gave this as a gift to my mother. My father read it cover to cover and enjoyed it and my mother is in the process of doing so. It is written in an older style and can be a bit dry, but history buffs (my parents) are really enjoying it.

No comments about Cameras on the Battlefield: Photos of War (High Five Reading).

3 comments about Why Women Need Chocolate.

1. This is one of the best diet or nutrition books I have read. Its main premise, which is the focus for the first several chapters, is that you shouldn't feel guilty eating, and you should eat what you're body really craves. She says that doing this will stabilize your mood, give you more energy, and help you lose weight. Many people who have said this in the past have been called flakes and faddists. But this author is a real nutritionist who shows you why eating like this makes sense, and how to do it, as well as how to work it into a very healthy diet with lots of vegetables, how to eat many meals a day, and how and why to exersize. (This book has given more and better reasons to exersize than any other book I have read.) She tells how to eat what you want, eating five tiny meals a day, having one piece of chocolate when you feel like it, and how to focus on the first three bites of what you're eating. She devotes a great deal of space to why restricing yourself doesn't work, and how someone trying to restrict himself or herself will likely eat much more of that craved food later. Towards the end, the book felt a little disjointed, because she was talking more about what you're diet should look like, rather than how to make such a diet, or why diets don't work. Plus there aren't any footnotes, and I think footnotes are very important in a book like this, to make its claims seem more sensible. For example, the book claims that the only study that linked chocolate with pimples was one where the teenagers smeared it on their faces rather than eat it. I want to know what study that was, and to see the list of the rest of studies, otherwise no one will believe me! But other than those two shortcomings, this was a very complete, consistant, and very logical book, and I would reccomend it to anyone, men or women, who want good reasons to exersize, a good way of eating, and to feel better about eating what they want.



2. Debra Waterhouse has researched and written a practical work which dispels numerous myths of female food cravings. She brings a practical understanding to the complex body chemistry of women while elevating America's favorite food ... chocolate ... to its place of national prominence!

   DON'T JUST BUY ONE COPY! ........ BUY TWO AND MAKE A FRIEND!

   Karl W. Grube, Ph.D., Editor of Games By Grube




3. This book takes a revolutionary approach to a woman's nutritional needs and how they affect her energy level, mood, and actual weight loss. The author encourages women to learn to follow food cravings and satisfy them within reason. Her view is that denying a food craving is denying your body what it really needs at a given time. She also details a simple exercise plan to coincide with an eating schedule that will produce optimum benefits for women. I highly recommend this book for women of all ages, whether dieting or not.

No comments about Thora Hird at the BBC (BBC Radio Collection).

2 comments about Italian Backgrounds (Classic Books on Cassettes Collection) [UNABRIDGED] (Classic Books on Cassettes Collection).

1. Italian Backgrounds is comprised of nine, loosely coupled travel essays written by Edith Wharton over a four year period (1901-1904). Few readers are likely to possess her remarkable knowledge of Italian paintings, murals, frescoes, sculpture, and architecture, and in the hands of a lesser writer, these essays might easily have become tedious and overly detailed. Wharton's essays achieve a singular balance between scholarly analysis and captivating memoir.
   
   Italian Backgrounds begins not in Italy, but at a small alpine posting-inn in Switzerland close to the Italian border. She contrasts a picturesque "toy chalet, with its air of self-conscious neatness" with the untidiness of nearby Italian villages. Despite this negative comparison, with little effort Wharton convinces us that we must take the dusty, windy road downward into that land where church steeples become campanili, liberated vines wrap themselves around mulberry trees, and far off across the hot plains domes and spires, painted walls, and sculptured alters await us.
   
   Italian Backgrounds is not a conventional travel book. Edith Wharton's discursive essays are not arranged geographically, nor chronologically. The chapters could be read in any sequence with little loss of continuity. They might compare favorably with an extensive mural, one that draws your attention first here, then there, then elsewhere.
   
   Despite the passage of 100 years, Italian Backgrounds should be mandatory reading to anyone planning to visit Italy, especially those with aspirations to write travel essays. Likewise, Italian Backgrounds would be ideal supplementary reading for a general art appreciation class, as well as targeted reading for art and history majors.
   
   The chapters are titled An Alpine Posting-Inn, A Midsummer Week's Dream, The Sanctuaries of the Pennine Alps, What the Hermits Saw, A Tuscan Shrine, Sub Umbra Liliorum, March in Italy, Picturesque Milan, and Italian Backgrounds.
   
   Ecco Travels specializes in re-publishing rare and hard-to-obtain travel writings by exceptional authors like Henry James, Charles Dickens, Andre Gide, Freya Stark, Augustus Hare, Aldous Huxley, V. S. Pritchett, Evelyn Waugh, and Edith Wharton.



2. "Italian Backgrounds" by Edith Wharton is a somewhat charming travel book (a quick read) about her time in Italy as its veteran traveler. The piece is not written in a narrative, but is rather more thematically arranged. Wharton doesn't write about the Doges Palace or the Duomo, her milieu is the deeper background of the dedicated traveler.

   The title comes from her theme derived from an analogy that traveling in Italy involves various areas of a painting. Italian paintings, she writes, have fore- middle- and backgrounds. The two-or three-day tourist in Venice spends all his or her time in the foreground, traipsing the well-established routes and keeping to the guidebooks. If one has more time, one can go farther into the "painting" by discovering more, and, of course, finally, as Wharton herself has done, one can dwell in the backgrounds, knowing the country well, understanding all its eras and its different brands of beauty.

   Wharton is a harsh art critic, and much of the book deals with her assessments of lesser known (to me as the foreground tourist of Italy) artists and their works. My favorite chapter retold the story of her identifying some mislabeled statuary in Tuscany as belonging to a different artist and era altogether.

   It was pleasant to read. For me, I am a fan of Wharton, so enjoyed this look into her experiences and the life of her mind.

No comments about Steven Spielberg : A Biography.

5 comments about Chosen Forever.

1. having so enjoyed Chosen By A Horse, Chosen Forever was even a braver and stronger memoir.
   I didn't want to put it down.



2. I read Chosen by a Horse several times and gave copies to many people, so when Richards came out with a second book, I was excited but a bit nervous. Would this be a sophomore effort, written quickly and thrown on the market? Imagine my relief, then, to actually read it. This book keeps the quiet, thoughtful, bare-bones-honest tone that I loved so much in her first book, but grants the reader a different--if equally powerful--look at the possibilities of transformation in life.
   
   Here is a woman who lived a relatively solitary existence of grief and healing and then, in her late fifties, becomes a New-York-Times-bestselling author in love with an internationally-renowned artist. I'm interested in that transformation and how someone of Richards' temperament handles it. It takes a talented writer like Richards to explore such an evolution without arrogance or artifice. I admire her ability to see the possibilities of change in such different situations--the rescue of a needy animal and the catapult to sudden fame and love--and to write of both so beautifully.



3. Maybe it's my fault for thinking this book would be a continuation of the Chosen by a Horse story. When I bought the book, I was looking forward to catching up what had become friends to me: Hotshot, Tempo, Georgia, Allie, and Dr. Grice.
   
   Well, all the horses are dead, Allie and the author barely speak, and Dr. Grice has moved on.
   
   So what is this book about? Book tours. A tedious account of each book tour the author goes on to promote her first published book. We get a weather report for each day of every reading, an audience count, and whether the author went directly to her hotel or out to dinner afterwards. If I had a fork, I would have stuck myself in the head with it, but I kept thinking: Maybe it gets better. It doesn't.
   
   The first book, Chosen by a Horse, was poetic and filled with love. This book, Chosen Forever, is filled with whining about a difficult childhood and has none of the magic of the first book.



4. Susan Richards' fluid writing style gracefully transitions between the present -- the book tour readings in which she speaks from her precious and towering debut memoir, Chosen By A Horse -- and the ever-threatening past which looms darkly in the form of a very real sense that she doesn't belong and is undeserving of this praise for her writing, and then fears, what if no one should come (to a book reading)? Never forgotten in this her second book is the shining effect of her fallen horse heroes who, constantly share mind space in the stiller water moments of her daily life. Where human caregivers often abandoned her as a child, the horses carried her in those dark days following a second failed marriage. Although not untrammeled by her life's many despairing moments, Richards unexpectedly finds romance at one of her readings in the form of a man captivated by her as so many readers were by the sheer heart and inspiration found in the expression of the author toward her horse, Lay Me Down, in her debut memoir. Richards overcomes her self doubts and unbridled fears and embraces this man with a sense of destiny, as she explains it. And the way she ultimately chooses to her heart -- to both of theirs -- is through the comforts and smells and swishing tails of horses in a show barn while out on a casual date.



5. If you loved Chosen by a Horse, and I did, then you'll want to read Chosen by Love, the story of what Susan Richards did after the death of Lay Me Down. Susan's childhood and youth were dreadful. She only pulled herself together for the sake of her beloved pets and it was only due to Lay Me Down that she was able to break free of her horrid past and actually live. Living let's her write the original memoir, promote the book, meet a decent man and have the courage to trust and love him. Reading Chosen by Love is like seeing a hard luck relative FINALLy cAtch the break you always knew they deserved. It's a triumphant end.

5 comments about Landing It: My Life on and Off the Ice.

1. You might think that Scott Hamilton led a charmed life in the world of ice skating. Not so, he had many setbacks; but his determination to show the world that he is somebody and his talent (plus hard work) let him enjoy comebacks and show his mettle. Overcoming many personal obstacles, he proved that no one could surpass him on the ice.
   
   He was grateful to his adopted family and was able to provide vacations in Hawaii and fishing in Alaska. Always on the road as his continued search for excellence kept him striving to improve his skills, using Denver as his home base, he was actually a 'Star on Ice,' an Olympic champion, and a friend to his competitors.
   
   A few years ago, he put on a spectacular show (out on video) with his skater friends, along with my favorite singer providing the music. Not Buble, the other Michael! After the 1994 Olympics, I had become sated with too much t.v. coverage of figure skating but a dear friend, Eva Ezell, loved Scott and all the elaborate outfits the girl skaters came up with. Scott was honest in his presentations with no deceit; he was authentic. He was true blue and God saved him from an illness few would have endured. Some of us can rise above the pain. It takes a special person, and he truly is one.



2. I loved reading this book. I am a big ice-skating fan and have watched it since I was a kid.
   The book starts off in chapter one talking about his cancer discovery already. You start to get a feel for who he is based on the way he handled the news of his illness etc. Then he talks about his childhood and the sacrifices his mom made to drive him for miles to get to competitions. He goes on to talk about his actuall career (and this is the reason for losing a star - because he talks too much about his routines and the types of jumps and the scores. Enough already, just let us learn about him). He even includes a chapter about Sergei Grinkov (one of my other favourite skaters who died tragically and unexpectedly on the ice) which is nice and moving.
   Scott has a real upbeat personality and a very positive attitude which will take him a long way. He is a great guy and a brilliant skater and I enjoyed reading about him and his career (just not all the endless jumps). I recommend this to all skating fans and cancer patients looking for a bit of inspiration. It's really good.



3. I found myself reading the previous reviews, and agreeing with all of them. Even the negative ones. At the same time, I enjoyed this book. Maybe because he speaks so candidly and with such sincere affection for many of my favorites (especially Ekaterina Gordeeva & Sergei Grinkov).
   
   He does "dish" dirt at times, in a way that made me cringe. If I were, for example, Dorothy Hamill, I would not be happy with this book. That said, he crosses that line in only a couple of cases. I have no problem with him sharing stories of other people's bad behavior in a professional or a public setting. It is only the truly private unflattering incidents (in hotel rooms, for example) that I think should have been kept to himself - especially as they were not incidents that needed to be told as part of the story. Skaters are only professionals when they are working. Their private behavior in their private lives is not our business unless THEY choose to share it. Scott DID cross that line, but only a very few times, IMO. I got the sense once or twice that Scott was trying to apologize for his own behavior, but in the process, he ended up revealing too much detail about someone else's private life (which was unfair to them).
   
   That said, by and large, this is a highly enjoyable book with interesting anticdotes. It is certainly honest and Scott obviously made no effort to whitewash his own behavior. I respect that. I wouldn't want a young kid reading it, but it's not written for young kids. I thought it was clear enough that the bad behavior didn't really work for him in the end, and I don't think that sends the wrong message. "Yes, I did this, and it was really stupid" is an honest and positive way to deal with questionable behavior, and that is, for the most part, what Scott does.
   
   For a skating fan, particularly a fan of Stars on Ice or of Scott, this will be a highly enjoyable book. If you can't stand Scott as a performer, think about skipping it. As a biography, it is also interesting and very personally revealing. But, if you aren't big on biographies as a genre and you aren't a big skating fan or a big Scott fan, then this book isn't for you (and I'm not sure why anyone in that boat would ever think that it was! LOL!)
   
   There are times that it reads a bit like a gossip rag, which is why I didn't give it five stars. But, it is a very enjoyable and entertaining book that gives you an eye-opening and not always flattering look at the world of skating as Scott experienced it. It is also as honest an autobiography (including the unflattering sides of the subject) as I've ever read. A fact that I, personally, appreciate. Too often we put stars up on pedestals, and I enjoy anything they are willing to do to force us to see them as human beings.
   
   The message really is that you don't have to be superman to achieve great things. And you don't have to be a saint to overcome hardships and achieve greatness. And even the best in the world face seemingly insurmountable problems from time to time. Those are all positive messages from a man who is often refered to as the "God of Figure Skating".



4. Excellent Book for any fans of Scott's a well writen story about his life. Few pictures of himself and friends and family. Recommed to any one that likes to read. Ages around 12 and up.



5. This book tells the story of a man who showed the world that anything can be done with faith. I had a hard time putting this book down. I highly recommed this book for anyone.

5 comments about Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway.

1. If you love Dave Barry, you'll love this book; very, very funny look at America's political system and how it really works, or in most cases, doesn't. If you're a Dave Barry fan but not into politics don't worry, Dave can make anything funny!



2. Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway is funny for the Washington-themed humor. Add to this a section on the history of our government, a pinch of South Florida politics, and add the great, great narration, and you will laugh, laugh, laugh.
   
   As Dave Barry states, if he wanted this to be a real good book on Washington politics, he'd have to spend a lot of time in Washington. So this is not going to be a really good book!
   
   The jabs at the US Department of Agriculture (not sure whether it should be permitted to call dried plums "dried plums"), the driving habits of older Floridians, and the Clintonian escapades are all fair game to Barry. And wait till you hear the attorney arguments in the 2000 elections!
   
   Read it and weep... from laughter!



3. Not as funny as his "Book of Bad Songs" -- nothing could top that. Not quite as funny as "Dave Barry Turns 40", but about on a par with "Dave Barry is Not Making This Up". Definitely a book that you won't want to miss, if you enjoy Dave's irreverent style (and who doesn't?).



4. Dave Barry once admitted to being a libertarian in an interview for "Reason" magazine, and nowhere more than "Below The Beltway" does his libertarian cynicism shine through. The commentary is just plain brilliant, besides being side-splittingly funny. Not a single D.C. institution escapes Barry's razor --Democrat or Republican, Congress, the President, the Supreme Court, or any one of the thousands of alphabet soup agencies that nobody voted for; all are deservedly skewered with just the right blend of satire, cynicism, outright nonsense and --most distubing of all-- actual quotes and references from real Federal agency "mission statements." Barry even openly admits that most of his material is made up on the spot --he even steers us to P. J. O'Rourke's "Parliament of Whores" for anyone who wants an even mix of humour AND verifiable fact-- but every so often he'll get to a part that He Swears He Is Not Making Up. And that's when the reader really starts to see government for the out-of-control, self-aggrandizing, eternally-consuming beast that it really is. I note with some amusement that some Amazon.com reviewers are taking Mr. Barry to task for his unrelenting attack on the silliness that is the Federal government, and it is those reviews that I can only conclude are either written by big-government apologists or actual Federal employees. As Barry himself says, only in Washington, D.C. is the phrase "Federal Worker" not considered funny. This book makes the WHY all the more obvious. Bravo, Mr. Barry, and keep making fun of the government for as long as there's juice in your word processor (or until Homeland Security forcibly shuts you down, whichever comes first). I have no doubt the self-important denizens of the nation's capital will continue to provide you with a never-ending supply of fresh material.



5. The cover shows an irreverent funny man, and this book is written for macho men as he takes on any and everyone in the federal government from the president on down. It must be his New York years to make him look down on the important people who run the government in Washington, D.C. What he is forgetting is that the states elect those people and send them there -- at least, some of them.
   
   One truthful thing, which other columnists and nonfiction writers won't admit: "I sat around and made the stuff up." His chart explaining how Social Security works is informative, and just might be true -- truer than he thinks. He hates old people, thinks they're more interested in having sex than those able to produce a baby! Has he looked around and seen all that skin young people expose now in today's way of dressing?
   
   "To compensate for the lack of facts, I have included ... snide remarks." So true. Making fun of the words which came out of JFK's mouth into a parody "in the course of human events (that's Lyndon's thinking) it behooves us, the people, not to ask 'What can our country do for us. anyway?' but rather, whether we have anything to fear except fear itself" (FDR) -- the original phrase which moved the Sixties Americans came from a smart speechwriter.
   
   It wouldn't hurt the privileged of today to consider what they can do for this country. Dave Barry does his best to keep people laughing. Being too serious about serious matter we can't do anything about only causes you to feel bad. Who wants that?
   
   He should take on district, regional, etc. government offices, especially GSA, the glorified housekeeping department of the U. S. Govt. I've tangled with two in Tennessee who are tough old soldiers (one even had military training as a "Ranger" and now he spends his days worrying about how to get rid of pigeons). The other, his superior, in Nashville takes off to Louisiana, Florida, Mississippi (who really knows) to be deployed while leaving his Nashville office unattended. These are old men living off the government worse than welfare people.
   
   "Hitting below the belt" doesn't mean his crude, bathroom humor and words; it's what the Baptist preacher did when he attacked the Methodist ritual of sprinkling -- then says that only Baptists will get into Heaven. Seems I heard some other group say that in the past. I wonder if even Dave would go there.
   
   Other significang pardoies include DAVE BARRY SLEPT HERE, DAVE BARRY IS NOT TAKING THIS SITTING DOWN, and DAVE BARRY DOES JAPAN.

5 comments about Fighting Fire.

1. Love this book; have read it over five times. The best part is her description of fighting fires..you can actually feel the heat of the fames as she fights the fire from the nozzle point. She could be a Joseph Wambaugh or Gina Gallo of fire fighting if she wanted to be. I think she's trying to go in a more literary direction, but I'd really like to see more fire fighting books out of her. The part of the book that surpised me was the "east coast" idea that a fire fighter was a "lowly" blue collar job. I'm from San Francisco, and here everyone looks up to the position of fire fighter as a very special job, that only a few chosen can do. It never occurred to me that people looked at fire fighters in any other way.



2. This and other books like this that focus on the minorities are the types of books that try to destroy the brotherhood of being a fireman. All the othe men that have had books written about them did something heroic to get that book about them these women did not when they do i will be more then happy to read their book.



3. I really enjoyed reading this book. I think everything that was written had it's place in the book. It was her book her story, told the way she felt it needed to be told. I think this would be a good book for anyone interested in becoming a firefighter.



4. This book had all the potential to become one of my favorites. As a young, aspiring female firefighter I anticipated finding in Paul a trailblazing mentor I could look up to. Instead I found myself faced with a colossal disappointment.
   
   First of all, she begins the book by mentioning her sexual escapades with a girl in college. Is that really necessary to the tale of becoming a firefighter, or did she just throw that in to sell a few extra copies of this book?? Next, not only does she take her testing with SFFD lightly, she repeatedly insults the profession throughout the book, all the way to the end. She grimaces with distaste and embarrassment that it is "blue collar work", god forbid! What will her Stanford friends think? Gasp!
   
   Furthermore, she seems high maintenanced and hyper sensitive when relating to the men of the department. She waxes on for years about some stupid fire station prank that a captain pulled on her. In my department, if you never have any good natured pranks pulled on you, you basically are not perceived as part of the family! It's a GOOD thing to be part of the jokes, and a healthy boost to morale.
   
   For a Stanford graduate, she seems to really have a hard time grasping simple concepts. "What does this mean?" seems to be her mantra throughout the book. This is not rocket science, it's firefighting. While academy certainly gives us a lot of information to process, it's pretty basic concepts!
   
   Finally, I find it hard to like her as a person due to her seemingly high level of conceit, which she unsuccessfully tries to disguise as modesty. She never fails to inform the reader of how beautiful or talented she is. Granted, the female firefighters of yesterday deserve to pat themselves on the back for making it a bit easier for us now, and I am truly humbled when in the presence of those female captains today. But Paul is a far cry from those aggressive women who refused to let a boys club like the fire department keep them out, fighting for their profession because they saw it as a noble and meaningful one. Paul is the opposite of the kind of women I seek out to train and mentor me, and I feel she gives women in the fire service the kind of negative press that anti-diversifying departments crave.



5. I would recommend this book to anyone in the field who has friends that are curious about the profession. While it's certainly one person's opinion, look past that and it's still a good read. Overall, it gives a good picture of what it's like to fight fire, save lives, and most importantly- live with the tragedy that you witness. I've given this book as a gift to friends who wonder what my job is like. It's entertaining and well written.