5 comments about Selena - Como LA Flor.

1. When I got this book I was so happy because I needed to know more about Selena and this book has it all. Great pictures and it get you the inside scoop on Tejano Leading Lady.



2. Although it's an unauthorized biography, "Selena: Como La Flor" remains the definitive book about the life and death of Selena. Patoski does a good job of explaining the history and development of Tejano, or Tex-Mex, music prior to Selena y los Dinos' arrival on the scene. Patoski also covers in detail, much of what the 1997 film bio skipped over: primarily the decade between Selena's beginnings as a regional performer, and her signing with EMI Latin/Capitol Records.

   Patoski also covers the rather strange goings-on during the final months of Selena's life: her relationship to her fan club president and murderer Yolanda Salvidar; her possible infatuation with a doctor in Mexico; and the possibility that Selena may have been ready to ditch her singing career to persue her interest in selling fashion.

   Of course, Selena's murder and Yolanda's trial are also dealt with in the book, but it was the events immediately preceeding her death that intrigued me the most. It's clear from "Como la Flor" that, unlike the movie, everything wasn't coming up roses for Selena near the end of her life. Although Patoski gives a balanced portrayal of Selena's father, Abraham Quintanilla Jr., it's pretty clear that Mr. Quintanilla figuratively sacrificed his daughter to fuel his own stiffled musical ambitions.

   As other reviewers have already mentioned, Mr. Patowski has done an excellent job of researching the slain singer's life. There are comments from many past associates of Selena in the book, and raises interesting questions of what directions Ms. Quintanilla's life may have taken if she hadn't died.

   If your only source of information about Selena is the Jennifer Lopez film, you owe it to yourself to read "Como la Flor," because this book is far more interesting. (In case you're wondering, I think JLo doesn't hold a candle to Selena in terms of singing!)




3. I first became a fan of Selena's when she was killed. I was, at that time, 15 years old. I have been extremely interested in anything I could find about her since then. I got Dreaming Of You for Christmas that year and constantly listened to it. She just totally changed my life. Ever since then i'd done everything I could to find out as much as I could about her, and after a while I thought I knew pretty much everything there was to know about her. She lived a life I only could have dreamt about. But when I bought this book and read it, I realized I knew practically nothing about her. It really touched me how down-to-earth she really was. She never let fame get to her head like a lot of celebrities do. For that I honor her. She was a real inspiration to other latinas out there. Viviras Selena! We always have and always will love you.



4. This book was a shocking wake up call for me. I love Selena with everything that is real and unreal. Joe Nick Patoski is a pure genious! It documented how shocking and sad the death of Selena Quintanilla Perez was. I miss her terribly and if i could, i would read this book over and over again. This is truly a keepsake and all selena fans will cherish it.



5. I think that this book by Joe Nick Patoski is a phenominaL book ! Even thought I'm 14 years old you could feel what she was going through . And you could visualize the whole story . I'd say this is one of my favorite books since The Cat in the Hat !

No comments about Perch Hill, a New Life.

No comments about T. R.: the Last Romantic (Unabridged Audio).

No comments about My Early Life.

5 comments about Diana's Boys: William and Harry and the Mother They Loved.

1. This is a great book, but like other reviews I agree it focuses less on the boys. It paints the pictures of Diana's pain. It does give you some good insight to the boys lives, and is very interesting. It's shocking, and sad as well.
   It does speak to the realtionship of Diana and Charles, and Camilla as well. It also questions the paternity of Harry.
   Diana led a fascinating and yet tragic life. It speaks to the events that occured during her untimely death as well.
   There are many books about Diana, and this is a good one to read.



2. this is a great book i found so much information about diana charles and the boys and everything that went on behind closed doors it will make you cry i promise a+++++++++



3. I really liked this book but it talked more about Diana and Charles Marriage and Diana's childhood than the boys. It was good but I think that it should have talked more about the boys than their marital woes and about members of the royal family. If it didn't emphasize so much on the royal family and the maritial woes, and talked more about the boys, it would have been a better book. Certain parts of this book was similiar to Diana by Andrew Morton



4. Frankly, I'm tired of the re-play concerning Diana's alleged antics. If I read one more time about her alleged comments to Tiggy or her alleged harassment phone calls to Oliver Hoare's house, I think I'll scream.
   Actually more is written about Charles and Diana in this book than either William or Harry, until the later chapters then we hear about Wills in Eaton, his gap year and alleged romances. We also learn both boys are "coping" remarkably well with Diana's sudden death. And their approval rating of Mrs. BP assuming the public role as Papa's companion so soon after Diana's death, is troubling or at least to me it was.
   Then too, Harry is kept in the shadows even by the author. While everyone within the system admits to feeling sorry for Harry (as the spare), no one really tries to change the status quo. Instead they treat Harry much the way Princess Margret was---rather with indifference.
   While William is treated with interest and respect--even by the queen. Very sad situation for Harry. My heart goes out to him.
   William's alleged romantic antics are troubling. He did not appear concerned with his steamy behavior being caught on video tape at a bar and the possibility of the press publishing pictures. And I was distressed at the manner he subjected his body guards.
   Tending to the heir and the spare is probably going to make the police protection squad old before their time.



5. Anderson's book is 342 pages in length and it's a decent primer for those who know very little about the sons of the world's most famous princess. Anderson stays focused on the boys, for the duration of the book, talking about the relationship between William and Harry and the important people who influence them.
   
   There are some new tidbits of information in this book that I hadn't heard before, like the strained relationship between William and Harry, and Camilla Parker Bowles, the woman who was instrumental in the breakup of Prince Charles and the boy's mother. But other than this, there isn't a whole lot of new information to be found in this book. Most readers already know about the cold indifference on the part of the Queen and her husband, when Diana was killed; the incorrigible antics of the young Prince William; the boy's love of blondes; etc. For the most part, Anderson just rehashes old news.
   
   One other thing I didn't like about this book was the way Anderson wrote it, in "snips". Basically, Anderson just keeps pointing out little facts and quotes from the members of the royal family, jumping from one incident to another. When I read a book that's supposed to be a biography, I prefer something that digs in a little deeper into the lives of the people whom the book is written about. I don't care so much about hearing silly quotes made by prince Harry while fox hunting. I would rather hear more information about the boys thoughts, feelings, etc. to get a better feel for what makes William and Harry tick. I don't think Anderson did a good job in this area.
   
   Another thing that bothers me is the fact that Anderson doesn't even bother to title his chapters. There are eight of them, but they are unnamed. Given the way the book is arranged, with so many "snips", I assume that Anderson had a difficult time deciding on titles for the chapters, so he just left them out completely. If Anderson had focused more on specific topics, he would have had no problem coming up with chapter titles.
   
   So, my bottom- line on this book is that it's not that great or that memorable. It might be interesting to those who like to read about the royal family. But for the rest of us, it's a mediocre work of non- fiction.

5 comments about Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

1. Susan Hertog's biography of Anne Morrow Lindbergh can in many ways be read as a cautionary tale: Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it. The overwhelming impression given by Anne Lindbergh's life is one of unhappiness. It seems clear, in fact, that she had some sort of clinical depressive disorder. She very, very rarely seems happy at any point in the book. On one hand, she was indeed the victim of a domineering husband whose own personality was full of strangeness and distortions. But she also had the opportunity to have many incredible adventures, as well as the wealth to write and live in luxury all over the world, and she seems not to have appreciated any of it. Once you have completed the book, you may want to turn back to the pages of Anne's youth, before her wedding to Lindbergh, and scream at her not to make the mistake of marrying him. She certainly might have been much happier had she married someone else. I found myself torn between pity for her and frustration with the passive stance she adopted throughout her life (and marriage). Anne's was a complex character, and it would have been hard to find a personality LESS suited to that of Lindbergh. But of course they did marry, and Anne's life was what it was, with all its tumult, and though she may have made the wrong choice we are reaping the benefit of it with the chance to read the fascinating cautionary tale of the choices she made as a woman, a wife, and a mother.



2. This book was so insightful. Anne's book "Tending Roses" is one of my favorite books and to read about the author and all that she was going thru at the time was so cool to read. She was quite a lady.



3. This is an very well researched bio of Ann and her family and all of the others players. I was a little put off by the reference to Ann as having had a blue collar life. She was surely from the privileged and wealthy. And having a $1 million wedding gift in 1930's would make her a very rich woman. Ann's life was facinating and her books have endured for more that 75 years. I do believe the author tried way too much to tell us what Ann was trying to say in her books and read more into the subtext than Ann had in mind. Ann's stories can stand on their own and her prose is memorable and appropriate. Some times a great story told well is just that a great story.



4. Susan Hertog takes full advantage of ten audiences with her subject, Anne Morrow Lindbergh. She manages to capture the complexities of Mrs. Lindbergh's character and the contradictions of her marriage to an American icon, Charles Lindbergh. The fact that the Lindbergh family has largely disavowed the book doesn't detract from Ms. Hertog's insights.

   Unfortunately, the lengthy book, published almost 20 years after Charles Lindbergh died in 1974, virtually ends with his death...when Anne Morrow Lindbergh was 68 years old (she lived on until 2002). Almost nothing of Mrs. Lindbergh's life in widowhood is mentioned, which gives the unintended impression that in the final analysis, she was simply Charles Lindbergh's wife, not an accomplished woman deserving of her own biography.

   In fact, the middle-aged Anne Morrow Lindbergh became a role model for working women, albeit she was always too self-effacing to occupy a leadership position in the gender wars.




5. Having read Anne Morrow Lindbergh's diaries, her daughter Reeve's first memoir, Berg's biography of Charles, and Gift from the Sea, I was truly looking forward to this biography. Knowing that the author had interviewed Mrs. Lindbergh, I was expecting new insights into someone who, I believe, was one of the 20th century's most remarkable women. What I found instead was a rehash of all the material I had previously read linked together with lame "psychological insights" and platitudes.

   Another thing that bothered me was her considerable reliance on the published diaries without taking into account that they were edited for publication, and by Charles at that, who saw them as a way to refurbish his public image, using his wife's popularity following the publication of Gift from the Sea.

   In short, there is no depth to this book at all.

No comments about We Remember D-Day.

5 comments about State of A Union: Inside the Complex Marriage of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

1. Bill and Hillary Clinton's marriage is perhaps the most scrutizized in the world. In this book, Oppenheimer presses his opinion that the Clinton's marriage is held together not by love as in a normal human marriage but by ambition. It is interesting to see how he has put together such a incredulous argument. I have to agree that his argument is logical. However, much of the evidence is unreliable. Such stories as one would find in a supermarket tabloid. It is an interesting but hard to believe perspective?



2. Unlike Peggy Noonan's trashy tome about Hillary Clinton which I lambasted in another review, this book was excellent, being factual, carefully researched and well written. The author delves into family histories of both Clintons, which helps the reader to better understand how their upbringing shaped their personalities. Oppenheimer interviews numerous friends and relatives who were close to the Clintons, and disputes some inaccuracies found in other Clinton biographies.
   Of all the books I've read on Bill and Hillary, this one portrayed them the most objectively and fairly. It is not a one-sided, gossipy tell-all but a careful study of the Clinton's marriage and an analysis of their very diverse, but complimentary personalities: Hillary as a strident, intense, ambitious perfectionist from the Midwest and Bill, an affable, laid-back, shrewd, womanizing Southern boy. Their strengths helped them to achieve their goal of the Presidency; but their weaknesses proved to be their undoing.
   Theirs is not a marriage of love but one of raw political ambition and power, a business partnership in which a deal was struck before their nuptials. Of the two, Hillary comes off the worse. Her foul mouth and vicious "go-for-the-jugular" attacks against opponents and friends are legendary. Bill, clearly eclipsed and overpowered by his strong-willed wife, resorts to behaving like an oversexed school boy, unzipping his fly at the drop of a hat. Possibly his excessive womanizing is because Hillary castrates him on a daily basis, so poor Bill has to make sure his equipment grows back and is in working order....hmm, that sounds like a familiar Greek myth, only instead of entails being ripped out by a vulture and growing back overnight, we have...,well you get the picture.

   This book is out of print, but if you can snare a used copy here at Amazon.com, you're in for an intelligent, enjoyable read.




3. I first saw this book referenced in Michael Tomasky's Hillary's Turn. Tomasky described this book as a hatchet job. State of a Union is far from a negative attack on the former First Couple, and actually paints a more sympathetic portrait of the Clintons than their most fawning sycophants usually do. State of a Union is little more than fluff but gives a good overview of a complex and nuanced political partnership. Jerry Oppenheimer manages to give childhood and marital details without dabbling in pure psychobabble, but this is a beach book and not history---and doesn't pretend to be anything else.



4. Okay, so it's a small thing, but on page 92 of the Harper Collins hard-cover edition, the author states that one of Hillary's relatives graduated from Stevens College in COLUMBUS, MISSOURI. NOT! Stephens College is in Columbia, Missouri, which is also the location of the University of Missouri, touted by many, ironically, as the leading journalism school in the country. I really do not understand errors like this. Is it just plain sloppiness or carelessness? In the presence of a stupid mistake like this, are there possible other research mistakes, larger ones, perhaps? I will add that this book, notwithstanding the fact that after page 92, I read with some degree of skepticism, was fundamentally a good read, well organized, informative, and interesting.



5. I'm not familiar with the author but having finished most of the book by now, I consider it to be about 20% truth, and 80% fiction. To be honest, it is one of the most seedy collections of anecdotes I've seen on the Clintons matched only by the "accidentally revealed" impeachment depositions and documents of his second term. If ever there was evidence of grudge and harrassment against Hillary, this surely speaks for itself. How much is accurate is debateable, of course, but even a reasonably careful reading shows the book to have incorporated every negative possible of the interpretation of Clinton's Presidency and his wife's influence and involvement. Even a logical reading indicates that most could not be true, or if true, is such a distorted picture of the two lives that it renders it both inexplicable and unbelievable that anyone would spend time constructing supposedly factual information such as this and marketing it as nonfiction. For anyone who was even the most casual observor of the two terms, it will surely bring forth concerns of how authors use their writings to distort events, personalities, and circumstances to create an illusion of truth based upon circumstantial evidence and assumption. To the gullible, it can be quite damaging since it is presented as truth, and due to the quotations, reads like truth. If I had written the book, and was trying to discredit the subject, I couldn't have done a better job. No one knows exactly how much of previous books and materials published contain accurate information about the Clintons, events, or their relationship together, this is not likely to be one of them. But each person will have to decide for himself/herself. Good luck!

2 comments about Black Mutiny.

1. Black Mutiny is a well-written, highly interesting account of the events surrounding the Amistad. It is an excellent companion piece to Spielburg's movie, AMISTAD (this is the book on which the movie was based). The reader should be cautioned, however, that this book is a work of historical fiction. It is not a scholarly account of events, albeit an interesting and -- most probably -- factual one. For me personally this did not detract from the book. But then I am only an amateur historian and enjoy historical fiction if it is done well and does not embellish extensively, and Owens did not. Nevertheless, if the reader is expecting a footnoted text, then this is not the book for you. William Ownes, the late folklorist and English professor, wrote "Black Mutiny" in 1953. To make the book more appealing to today's market, two brief essays by black activists/historians have been added. I recommend not reading either essay until after reading the text, or possibly not reading them at all. They add nothing to Owens' story of Cinque and the Amistad and both essays are bigoted, racially charged and are of interest to only a select audience.



2. I set upon to read this book to read a real account of what happened on the Amistad before I saw the movie which I heard was historically flawed. I don't know if that is the case because I have not seen the movie, but this book enriched me in ways I never could have foreseen. This book made me question the "inherent morality" and goodness of America envisioned in the "City on a Hill" analogy invoked by so many people. This book described in vivid detail the plight of Africans that were captured by the Spanish along the Slave Coast and their transport to Cuba. In addition, the book speaks of the complicity of the United States in allowing and, in fact, looking away as the slave trade continued in Havana long after Spain and England had signed a treaty declaring the trade illegal. How ironic that the nation that the United States broke from because of tyranny was the nation almost soley responsible for rescuing captured Africans from their Spanish captors. Owens also tells in the book of how horribly blacks were treated IN THE NORTH being driven out of towns and neighborhoods by people claiming to be Christian. This book makes one take a look at the hipocrisy that fills the history of the United States and how the case of the Amistad underscored the American paradox of "all men are created equal" and the institution of slavery. This book taught me that America has much to be sorry for though HER PROMISE is inspiring. It also taught me why many black people wish to be called African-American...it is the only way to acknowledge a heritage that was lost when upon arrival in Cuba they were given Spanish names denoting a European heritage that is not theirs.

No comments about Flashing Before My Eyes: 50 Years of Headlines, Deadlines and Punchlines.