5 comments about Laughing Without an Accent: Adventures of an Iranian American, at Home and Abroad.

1. I loved this book as much as I loved Funny in Farsi, a book our whole book club enjoyed immensely. If I had to pick one person to sit next to on a plane it would be Firoozeh Dumas. She's witty, warm, honest, and very real.



2. I just purchased this book and read it while commuting on the NY subway. It made my commuting experience a pleasure.
   
   Both books are very human and also very funny. Almost every paragraph has a surprise. She is finely attuned to the differences between Iranian and American culture. She does succeed in having us "laugh with her." I have read both of her books and highly recommend them.
   
   I have zero sympathy with the Iranian regime, but we do need more "cultural ambassadors" like Ms. Dumas who can maintain perspective and a sense of humor, and fewer Reading Lolita in Tehran's.



3. This book is jam packed with hilarious, sad, hopeful and inspiring short stories which I really enjoyed. My favorite one is when she spoke before a bunch of evangelicals at Palm Spring. Honestly, I can't think of many writers that can describe an experience as neat as her....
   This book is addictive! You just can't put it down until the short story ends and then next one is even better than the last ones.....so, I was caught reading "Laughing without an accent" skipping my lunch and laughing hysterically in my office!!
   What a fantastic follow-up to "Funny in Farsi"....Can't wait for another marvelous book by Firoozeh....



4. I just had the privilege of meeting Firoozeh Dumas and her stories are so real. Laughing without an Accent is a great follow up to Funny in Farsi; it's a bit more serious and brings us to into Firoozeh's family in recent years. She is a master storyteller, sharing her thoughts, her perceptions and most importantly, her feelings about life, family and the American way. Reading Laughing is like spending a few hours with the author. It leaves you wanting more.



5. As an expatriate like Firoozeh Dumas, but not Iranian and in my case living in Europe, I was thrilled to hear that Firoozeh had written another memoir.
   Laughing Without An Accent continues to delight and amuse, much like her earlier book Funny In Farsi. Each of the stories seem to somehow touch the heart and can connect with people of any culture. She tells her stories about her family with wit and affection.
   Many of my friends live outside of the country they were born in. All found Funny In Farsi to be right on the mark and they could really relate to the situations and family issues in the book.
   If you're reading Laughing Without An Accent as you relax on vacation, you should know that people will constantly be asking what you're reading that's so funny.

5 comments about The 33-Year-Old Rookie: How I Finally Made it to the Big Leagues After Eleven Years in the Minors.

1. I bought this for my husband for father's day. He's a huge Phillies fan, but he's said that even if he wasn't he would love this book. It's an inspiring story and a quick read. Would recommend to anyone, even if you're not a Phillies fan.



2. I tore through this book on the beach in less than 2 days. A credit to his wife Marcia for sticking with him and making sure he never gave up on his dream. Anyone with, or who once ad, major league dreams will appreciate this book. A great beach read.



3. Sadly the business of baseball is painted in this self penned tome by Phillies catcher, Chris Coste. Certainly if Coste had been a professional football (American) player, he would have been in much worse shape. But spending a few years being a professional, albeit by today's standards underpaid, baseball player on his hometown minor league baseball team, the Fargo Morehead RedHawks, precluded Mr. Coste from being exposed to MLB as a teenager; as most who enter it are. The trials and trevails are explained to both the novice and the not-novice alike. A little like Muhammed Ali, making a movie while still a professional boxer, you hope the ending of this book is really just the beginning of a great career. Especially if you are a Phillies fan.



4. THIS IS A GREAT READ AND A TRULY HEARTWARMING STORY. A TRUE TESTAMENT TO PERSEVERENCE. AN EXCELLENT BOOK FOR ALL BASEBALL FANS, NOT JUST PHILLIES FANS. TOO BAD THERE AREN'T MORE PROFESSIONAL ATHLETES WITH THE ATTITUDE AND VALUES OF CHRIS COSTE.



5. I am typically not a reader, but finished this book in 4 days. couldn't put it down

5 comments about The Complete Persepolis: Now a Major Motion Picture.

1. This is my first Graphic Novel, but not my last. I loved the story and I felt that the book had a really nice flow. Marjane Satrapi as an exceptional story teller and has a very strong voice. I read this shortly after seeing the movie, and though I loved the movie, I felt that it left alot of important stuff out. The book really helped fill in some of the gaps, and you also got to see Satrapi's personality a bit more. I look forward to reading her other works. If you have never read a Graphic Novel, this is a great place to start.



2. I was surprised to find it was in comic strip format, but I enjoyed the lite reading.



3. Without harping too much on what has already been said about the political observations that Satrapi makes or her commentary on the limits faced by everyone (and most especially) women in Iran, the truly inspirational achievement of this work is how honest she can be about herself in the story. That with everything whirling around her, the fact that she can be honest about both the good and the bad of the relationships she'd been in, the despair both at home and abroad, the flickers of hope that she clung to during the darkest times and how (true to the reality of a hopeful young woman) the very worst thing that can happen is ultimately to let down yourself and to let down your loved ones is stark and amazing. The scene where she loses the trust and the good standing with her grand mother is heart-breaking and yet could happen to any teenage girl anywhere in the world. That it's depicted in basic drawings doesn't detract from the power of the moment in the least.
   
   And not that graphic novels these days have any trouble being seen as legitimate art, but Persepolis certainly puts a nail in the coffin of the arguments made by detractors.
   
   Trust this book for it's emotion, for it's personal honesty, for it's attempts to always find something good even under the most extreme circumstances. It is not a history book. It is a personal history book. And it is one that deserves applause.



4. In the chapter "The Shabbat", set before she leaves for Austria in 1984, Marjane describes how Iraqi Scud missiles start raining down on Tehran, killing her Jewish childhood friend and neighbor, Neda. However, according to Jane's Intelligence Review and other sources, no missiles reached Tehran before Iraq's Al-Husayn missile programme in February 1988. Why would she lie about this?



5. This book can join Art Spiegelman's "Maus" and Joe Sacco's "Safe Area Gorazde" as yet another graphical masterpiece. Very enjoyable book, couldn't put it down.

5 comments about A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties.

1. A bit repetitive and poorly edited, but still a fun social history reaffirming a great time in American musical development...



2. This book is for the most part, but not entirely, about the time that Rotolo was lovers with Bob Dylan. She's an interesting person so I was also interested in the stories about her time in Italy, her life as an artist, her upbringing as a working class red diaper baby, her experiences in Greenwhich Village, the people she knew in the folksinging world there in the Village. Then, of course, there's Dylan. Interesting stuff. However, her writing was often flat and the ending was disappointing. She skips chunks of time. I would have liked to know more about her evolution as an artist and the ways she may have struggled to keep being a creative person.
   
   I do recommend it to those of you who are interested in that period of time and Greenwhich Village.



3. This is a really good read--whether for a look back at the early folk scene in Greenwich Village (starring Bob Dylan, of course) or for a casual history of that still important time that spawned the "youth movement" in the U.S.
   The hook to read this book is that it is written by Bob Dylan's girlfriend during his early career. But soon into the book, the reader realizes that it is not going to be a tell-all about the famous singer with anecdote after anecdote exposing Dylan's life at this very crucial stage. So, should the reader continue? I wasn't sure if it would be worth the time investment to hear Suze Rotolo's story. I did continue on and am I glad I did. What we have here is the story of the '60's by a remarkable, sensitive, intelligent,loyal girl who refused to be swallowed up by the cult of celebrity worship so prevalent in our society today. Yes, it was certainly alluring for her to be Dylan's girlfriend--with all of its glamour and power-- but she knew that she would lose her soul and never discover her own self-worth if she were to remain with him, despite being in love with him (and he her).
   Rotolo writes in a breezy style with the vernacular of the early sixties. She captures well what is like to be a teen/young adult during any epoch and adds the specifics of the turbulent sixties. A long list of characters(most from the folk and music scene) make an appearance in this story: Dave Van Ronk, Ian and Sylvia, Joan Baez, Trini Lopez, Phil Ochs, John Hammond, Jerry Rubin, Raul and Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Ramblin Jack Elliott to mention a few.
   My favorite anecdote in the book is a short one that reveals a most endearing quality of Rotolo. Speaking to an audience in Cuba just after the Revolution, she tells them that she is alienated with the constant use of the terms the proletariat, blue-collar workers stating that she was the only one among the American speakers who was actually from a blue-collar background. "My father,who had worked in a factory, never referred to himself as 'a proletariat'."
   Highly recommended for those who were young during this period, or anyone interested in the genesis and milieu of the young Dylan and his art.



4. Great book! Fabulous! The author really catches the time, the move from a black/white world to one of color and an array of choices. Her own story intertwined with that of Dylan's is well written. Her writting style, vocabulary and personal insight make this a must read.



5. I've always had a fascination with the folk movement centered in Greenwich Village in the early 60s, especially the incredible rise of Bob Dylan in that milieu. So, when I heard that Suze Rotolo, Dylan's girlfriend from that era, had written a book about her experiences during that time, I quickly placed my order. My feeling on completing it was that she is too guarded and careful here. She admits she doesn't want to upset Mr. Dylan and I also think that she doesn't wish to reveal too much of herself. Not that I wanted more dirt. I just wanted to know more things like what it felt like to have your famous boyfriend write and record a song lambasting your mother and sister (Ballad in Plain D). Yes, we do learn she had "mixed feelings" about the occurrence but I kinda coulda guessed that. She is too understanding when she hears from a third party about Bob's career-enhancing affair with Joan Baez. Come on Suze, go ahead and call him a two-timing [...]! Ms. Rotollo is careful to focus mostly on her life and not Bob's. Even though she has not achieved anywhere near the kind of things Dylan has, this could have worked if she had bared her soul. She describes some wacky dead ends she's taken (e.g. macrobiotic diet) but she does it with out tying it back to any flaws of her own. Suze seems like a lovely person, reminiscent of many of my best friends over the years. Fanatic that I am, I'm not at all sorry for having read her book and would suggest the same to like-minded folks. Just don't expect too much. Not to compare, but Dylan's own memoir "Chronicles Part I" stands on its own for anyone to read. Suze's book is for interested parties only.

5 comments about Slash.

1. Slash
   Slash is very honest in his book. It was a real page turner. I bought this book for my hubby for christmas. He finished it in 3 days. Then I got it and finished it in a week. Love it!! I hope to read more from this author in the future!!



2. Finally got aroudn to ordering and reading this book, and I am certainly glad I did. Being a big GNR fan, I've always wanted to know what the band was really like and why they fell apart so quickly. Until Axl writes his own book, this book will be the best one about Guns N' Roses and their rise & fall. Slash decribes his upbringing, first learning to playing a guitar, and how GNR came to be in fluid detail. The making of AfD also is described with the source of every song.



3. Even if you are not a GnR fan, this book has alot to offer. I highly recommend!



4. Slash tells his story from his funny and adventurous childhood through his Guns N Roses days to his present work with Velvet Revolver. There have been many unofficial biographies of Slash and other GNR-related books, but finally we have something from the man himself.
   
   
   Besides, Slash is a really smart guy, so this is not just another average rock book. It's a captivating story. His style is honest and easy to read, his comments and conclusions are backed up by nice rare pictures. The guy sure has great sense of humor, too!
   
   It's one of the best books I've read this year. The top-hatted guitar hero has become a legend, played with many other rock legends and experienced the evolution of rock music from the 80s until present day. He's been there, done that and has a lot to tell about life and the music business. Here's our chance to hear it straight from the source.



5. Book was received in good condition and on time but thought shipping was a little high.

5 comments about Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp.

1. The book arrived in good condition. It's a very good story; I'm glad that
   I ordered it.



2. As a psychotherapist I read Moose expecting it to be helpful in understanding some of my clients who were heavy during adolescence and still carry the stigma, fighting inappropriate eating daily. It was so much more. The story is intersting and at times funny. It captures the feelings of being an adolescent who is awkward and a little different; someone who is not in the popular group. Klein does a great job of decribing her parents reaction to her weight issue and their subtle messages as well as direct and great advice. It is well-written, descriptive and openly describes the emotions of most adolescents.



3. I wanted to love this book as much as the other reviewers. I just couldn't. This book could have been half the length if it was just about being an overweight pre-teen at fat camp. The rest of the book is about an oversexed pre-teen. I had no idea young girls were that into porn and that type of porn. The description of the magazines while she is at the "doc's" office was more than I needed to know. I had a hard time believing that the magazine guy would sell tons of porn to an 8th grader...that was shocking as well. I'm just having a really hard time finishing this book and I'm only half way through. It would have been a really good story without the sexual stuff. Be forewarned....this book gets sexually graphic.



4. Very entertaining and revealing. As a weight loss counselor, I see young girls who are being teased about their weight and now I can identify more closely with what they are going thru. Easy read and humorous take on a serious subject.



5. This book was funny and sad and oh so true to life. I'm no fat camp champ (you need to read the book to find out what that means) but so much of this book is a reflection of what I remember my teen years to be like. Great book and I can't wait to read her other book.

5 comments about Here If You Need Me: A True Story.

1. This was a wonderful book. I think it represents well some of the basic tenets of the Unitarian Church.



2. I found this book to be a lovely affirmation of moving through a devastating loss to contentment and new life. If our lives and our luck depend on an optimistic and grateful attitude, Kate Braestrup guides us to simple and rewarding acceptance of day-to-day ups and downs. All things come to those who wait--what a novel idea in our society that craves instant gratification!



3. Author Kate Braestrup is pastor with the Maine Department of Natural Resources. She is there to minister to friends, family, etc. when a loved one has been involved in some type of misadventure - drowning, accident in the woods, missing child, etc. Her journey is interesting and compelling. Her husband - a policeman -- was killed in a random car accident. Suddenly widowed with four children, she decides to carry forward her husband's dream of attending seminary. She does so in the Universalist Unitarian faith.
   
   Bastrop offers vignettes of how she attempts to give comfort and aid to those in difficult situations. At the same time, she tries to cope with her sense of loss, juggling the demands of single parenthood with her own unusual ministry. Tragedies in the great outdoors confront us often with questions of, "How could a merciful God allow this?"
   
   Braestrup offers no pat answers and struggles with the question as well. Part of the answer she sees in the redemptive communities that coalesce to express support to those who have suffered due to accident and calamity.



4. This was a really great read! Although not outwardly religious, I find it exciting to read about those who live their lives trying to follow God's plan. For Ms. Braestrup, that involves working as the chaplain for a group of Wildlife Search and Rescue Operatives.
   
   This book isn't just about religion -- it's about the author's desire to both follow her heart and honor her deceased husband's dream, and about helping others in the only way she knew how.
   
   Very encouraging and uplifting, this is basically just an all-around good read.



5. 
   
   
   
   by Kate Braestrup
   
   
   This book was not quite what I expected. Knowing that Kate Braestrup was a minister, I still expected the book to be about Kate and her life as a single mother with an extraordinary career as minister to the Game Wardens in Maine. And so it was, more or less.
   
   The book is chock full of bible references and quotations. Too full in my opinion. While the book is written in a charming and easy going way, and Kate and her family and friends are portrayed in what you know is a real and even amusing way, the Bible references become intrusive.
   
   I wanted more of Kate! I kept hoping that th next chapter would have more about her experiences in the Maine woods and as a single mom. Clearly she is an amazing and down to earth woman. Obviously her job leads her into difficult and fascinating situation. She uses a self deprecating approach to describing herself in situations that is often endearing.
   
   All too often, what I found was more of the Bible. What I missed in purchasing this book was what became all to obvious in the end, the title is a double entendre. What I took as She would be there if needed by the wardens, and her family was true, but I believe that it also means that God is there for all of us.
   
   Finally, the ending came to quickly. I felt that I was swooped from the middle of her story, to her current life all too quickly. It felt almost as if she woke one morning feeling as if she had done enough writing and and basically wrote that they all live happily ever after.
   
   I am not anti-religion at all, I am just a reader who is somewhat disappointed in a book that I had looked forward to reading.

5 comments about Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life.

1. Steve Martin has written a surprisingly sad look back at his life that glosses over most of the major things he is known for while focusing on his dysfuncational family, his inabilities with women and his bad relationship with his father. The book is not very funny, a bit depressing and not as revealing as you would hope an autobiography would be.
   
   The book is very short--at 200 double-spaced pages it takes only a couple hours to read--and the first half of the book is devoted to his life to age 22. He then quickly goes through his early TV years without really telling any stories about the famous people he worked with, then doesn't get to his movie career until 20 pages before the end. He doesn't mention his marriage--but doesn't once alude to his divorce. And doesn't mention anything about family except his distant parents and sister.
   
   It sounds like he just look through some old scrapbooks and started writing his minimal recollections of what happened 40 to 50 years ago. There aren't a lot of details and little insight into how he developed his comedy. Jerry Seinfeld writes on the back cover that it's "One of the best books about comedy and being a comedian ever written," but that is so far from the truth that it's doubtful that Seinfeld even read the book.
   
   There are a few interesting tidbits--like his continued crush on his first girlfriend, who turns out to be Christian prayer book author Stormie Omartian. And some of the photos in the book are great inclusions. Plus Martin opens up about his serious anxiety disorder, which leads him to come across as aloof when he is being interviewed on talk shows.
   
   But this is not a book about his entire career--it's a book about his recollections of being a stand-up comedian decades ago, so there is almost nothing in it from the past 30 years. If you are looking for inside stories about Saturday Night Live or Sonny & Cher or his movie successes you won't find them here--just a rather sad story of a man who never really got his dad's approval, who concludes that true comedy is really very serious.



2. this book was a delight, a fascinating look at the way Martin developed his craft. For anyone who loves comedy or anyone who does public speaking it is a great primer.
   
   Martin is a gifted writer and observer of life, and this book reflects both of those gifts



3. A 2008 Summer Reading List Mini Review.
   
   Comedy, Steve Martin, once surmised, is not pretty. I just finished listening to his memoir Born Standing up: A Comic's Life and I must beg to differ.
   
   May I please differ? Please oh please could I differ? I haven't differed in such a long time. May I please have your permission to differ? (That's me, begging)
   
   Well no one said anything, so I am going to differ.
   
   Steve Martin made comedy pretty. As the premiere stand up comic of the late 70's early eighties, he made being funny an art form. It does not surprise me that he is an avid art collector. Martin does an excellent job of describing his life and the part he played in the comic landscape of the sixties and beyond.
   
   Listening to his book was a revelation. Martin does an excellent job of describing his life and the part he played in the comic landscape of the sixties and beyond. If you have not yet read his book yet, I would highly recommend listening to it. Instead of reading as he describes his routines, I actually was able to hear him perform some of them. And if you don't like listening to books? Well, in the words of Steve Martin: excuse me!



4. In this book, Steve Martin writes about his former career as a stand-up comedian. He struggled for many years before he finally made it big and quit at the height of his popularity. He details all the highs and lows of his on stage career in a very entertaining style. If you are a Steve Martin fan, you will definitely enjoy this book.



5. I bought the CD version, which is read by Steve Martin himself. I listened to it while commuting to work. It was so funny, interesting, and touching! My only sadness came when it ended, because I was so absorbed in it.

5 comments about Apples and Oranges: My Brother and Me, Lost and Found.

1. Marie Brenner tells us right away in her author's note that she is untrustworthy, with her comment that "conversations, events and dialogue have been reconstructed." Reconstructed events? Come on. Not only that, but she doesn't seem to care about accuracy even to the geography of the area of Central Washington she's describing, such as calling the Wenatchee River the Columbia. Maybe this could be excused if she told a good story (and it was marketed as fiction) but she tries to cover her lack of a true story by fragmenting the chronology, dating some chapters, leaving others without dates, and jumbling the whole mess. There is a lack of insight or attempt to draw the reader closer to either of the characters. By the end, you can see why her brother was so annoyed with her.



2. While her journalism has always been great, this memoir is a small masterpiece, must reading for anyone who has a sibling, or doesn't. Thanks to Marie Brenner, Carl Brenner will not die. He becomes an unforgettable character. So does she. Sensitive, witty, poignant, absolutely elegant. I cannot recommend the book too highly.



3. This is a really uninteresting chronicle written by an elitist intellectual who makes no effort to connect with her audience. She seems to find her own navel more intereting.
   
   
   Very sorry for her loss- but is this really something which needs to be in print?



4. I did not like this book. It was hard to find out where she was going with her story. I would not recommend it to any of my friends.
   Mary Pichette



5. This is writer Marie Brenner's intimate memoir about her brother and their incredibly complex and fraught relationship. I find myself overwhelmed with admiration for Ms Brenner, not only for accomplishing the sheer task of getting this book down, laden as it is with generations of family history and scientific and psychological research, but also for the intense struggle she documents as she attempted to forge some kind of common ground, an essential connection, with her very strange sibling.
   As the title suggests, Ms Brenner and her brother, Carl, are not at all alike. Chalk and cheese, in fact.
   She's an investigative journalist, highly intelligent, happy and successful. He is similarly smart and successful, but also anal and controlling, a cold fish who sends his sister a tray of fruit from his orchards every year with a note that says: 'I picked them myself. Don't give them away.'
   A right-wing lawyer from Texas who has in his mid-life moved into growing apples in a big way in Washington State, he has always kept his younger, more lefty, liberal-intellectual sister at more than arm's length. It seems he has no love for her, and his attitude towards her and her smart, New York life is obnoxious and condescending. And really weird. 'You always have to show off and tell us what you know, Carl said.'
   Anyone of us in the same boat, faced with such a dour character and such direct put-downs, would be forgiven for turning our back on him. Yet she doesn't cast him off as a bad egg or a black sheep, but instead, when she discovers he has cancer, she puts her life on hold and moves across the country to go into bat for him, hoping to find a way to save his life, and also to spend their last few months together and fix what ails them both.
   It must be said that she probably does this as much for herself: in many ways her opinion of herself seems coloured a little by this blighted relationship:
   
   'Why can't I just be easy with my brother, the way I am with my friends? That we are not close seems a badge of shame, a personal failure, a mark of my inabilities, bossy nature, and tendency to exaggerate. Carl thinks of me as the human flaw.
   'I'm going to give you a quiz.
   'This is how Carl starts many of our conversations.
   'I wish I were kidding.'
   
   
   Since she is a journalist as well as an author, she digs deep to get to the bottom of what ails them.
   
   'A research study on siblings breaks down the percentages: 52 percent of all brothers and sisters have a close relationship, 12 percent have no relationship, and 21 percent are something called "borderline." I am a borderline, defined by and against my brother, locked into some ancient and immutable feud. There is a moat around our conversations. Why? Why did we spend years locked in struggle with each other? I had to believe there was a chance that some of the answers could be found in the past, in letters and facts and research, in new interpretations of patterns held up to the light. I was operating with a strtict sense of Freudian principles, that the past could yield insights and applicable truths, if only one understood the sexual rivalries, the aggression, the scant affection. I could spin out a sound bite that might make you think I knew what I was talking about, had read the experts on nurture and nature, birth order, peer influence, mirror neurons, attachment theory, DNA.'
   
   
   The story of these two is a good enough by itself, but what makes this such an extraordinary work is all the other ... stuff .. that she packs into it: information about siblings in modern psychology, about her complicated family, about apples and the entire US apple industry, and about medical science.
   It's also touching, a deeply moving book. I loved it.

5 comments about Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth.

1. Often when you see books written about the life of black people in any point and time before the 1960's its main message is "My life was hard because white people are terrible," and that gets very redundant. However this was quite refreshing, as he did not harp on racism on every page. This is a very well written and intresting account of this man's unique life experiences and all the strange, crazy people he encountered within his family and outside them as well. People who have a few or several nuts on their family tree will be able to relate to Black Boy.



2. The best autobiography EVER, in fact I am not even sure it should be called autobiography because it is much more than that for many reasons. Autobiographies are often flat and either self pitying or glorifying, but this one is completely at another level. I was so impressed by the brilliant mind that shines through all obsacles, and his writing is just so natural, logical and insightful, not just about his personal life experiences, but about human suffering, senseless oppression, and unyiedling human spirit. Wow!



3. I ordered this book because it was on my nephews book-report list. It's a good book. But it is full of bad language. I think it's an adult book--with a very compelling story. But completely not for kids. I know kids hear bad language all the time. But to have it presented to them by a 'trusted' adult--gives it a kind of condoning that it doesn't need.



4. Every time I read a book about the plight of blacks in the South in the early part of the 20th century as Jim Crow society solidified I have to shutter in disgust. I have just finished reading communist Harry Haywood's autobiography Black Bolshevik. I have read Malcolm X's words on the fate of his forebears in the post-bellum South and now I have read Richard Wright's autobiographical sketch Black Boy. I will make no defense of the unequal treatment of blacks in the North. There is none. However, Wright's descriptions of the physical and psychological damage, as presented by his own experiences of Jim Crow, done to blacks by Southern whites are positively feudal. There was no room for illusions about the goodness of humankind in that world. To believe so was to face personal humiliation, or worst-the lynching tree.
   
   Wright, after great personal struggle within himself, is able to reflect on his experiences and to articulate the effect that Jim Crow had on him as a black, as a man, as a human being. It was not pretty. One can only image the fate of those less articulate than brother Wright as they try to comprehend a world not of their making but which they early on must learn to navigate. The description of this grinding struggle is heart of the first part of the book.
   
   Wright goes back to the mist of time in his early youth to dissect the hunger, psychological as well as physical, than never was far from his door; the effects on him of a sick and helpless mother; of an absent ne'er-do-well father; and, an overbearing and religiously-driven grandmother on his early development. And those are just the problems in the house. Once Wright steps outside those comparably comfortable confines he faces the outside world of Mississippi reality that he must put on a mask in order to survive in a world that will literarily cut him down if he does not learn the code. Although Wright gives many examples of how this system robbed blacks of their personality the most graphic descriptions, by far, are those that deal with the need to have to put on the mask when whites are around. And the consequences if one did not.
   
   And what of the great escape to the North (via Memphis) to Chicago-the Promised Land that forms the basis for the second part of the book? We have seen that urban story portrayed in other locales as well, for example, in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Claude Brown's Man-Child in The Promised Land. That is where my statement about the treatment, or rather mistreatment, of blacks in the North comes into play. In effect, Wright articulates the contours of a psychological feudalism in the North where the special oppressions of blacks as a race are met with indifference by whites. What makes Wright's case special is that through self-education and willpower he breaks out of the endless and destructive turning in on oneself to articulate his experiences and those of other blacks like him displaced from the rural life of the South to the uncertainties of urban life.
   
   On the face of it seems incongruous that Wright would find a solution to his angst in the American Communist Party during the heyday of the `third period' in the early 1930's. I have mentioned elsewhere, most recently in my review of Harry Haywood's Black Bolshevik (part of which also deals with this period in the American party), that on reading memoirs and autobiographies of the older generations of radicals and revolutionaries I am looking for the spark that broke them from the norms of bourgeois society. I have found that there is a great range of reasons from racial and class hatreds to intellectual curiosity. I find that in the end that Wright's relationship to communism, not without some bumps and bruises along the way, came from intellectual curiosity as much as any sense of racial or class injustice.
   
   In Chicago, in many ways the embryonic black proletarian core of the country in this period, Wright continued his struggle for physical daily survival and for intellectual understanding. His fortuitous linking up with the local John Reed Club helped, at least initially, stabilize his intellectual life. His description of the inner workings of the Communist Party and its role in its own front group creations, like the Reed Club, jibes with other accounts that I have read. The tremendous pressures to conform to party life and the party line are chilling for what, in the final analysis, was a voluntary political organization and not a cult. Moreover, one of the characters portrayed in this section bears a striking resemblance to the above-mentioned very real Harry Haywood. Wright's take on Haywood is very, very different from how old Harry portrayed himself in his autobiography. Surprise.
   
   One of the charges brought against Wright by fellow black party members was that he was an intellectual. Self-taught, yes, but an intellectual nevertheless. One would think that recruiting such a fairly rare person, black or white, would have had the comrades spinning cartwheels. No so in Wright's case. Tremendous pressure was placed on him to conform to party dictates. Or else. This seems counter-intuitive. The relationship between communism and intellectuals and artists has always been a somewhat rocky one. But know this-then and today we need as many intellectuals as we can get our hands on to write, think and lead the struggles of humankind. Ignorance never did anyone any good. Enough said on that. If you want to get a real feel for what that old expression Mississippi God Damn from Nina Simone's song really meant read this well written and thoughtful book.



5. Not only did I reaceive the book on the promised delivery date, but I found it to be in perfect condition. It was purchaed for my grandson who is really enjoying it.