5 comments about Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora.

1. Lam's writing is deeply moving. Going beneath an often impenetrable silence Lam reincarnates with passion, not only for himself and his family, but for many others as well, what it `feels' like to be an immigrant in America from Vietnam.
   
   The stories are touching and genuine; the burning of the family memoirs and photos... painful. Trying to assimilate in American culture by telling wartime stories to assume popularity with classmates...tear-jerking, along with his first act of betrayal asking his brother, "Are you sure that's what you want me to say?" ...I had to laugh here however... reminded me so much of something I would have done/asked. And then the others; the Nguyen brothers, the long tearful flux of stories pouring from the detention center in Hong Kong, and his grandmother in the convalescent home... loved her however.
   
   Tremendous & heartfelt writing. And indebted to the passage, "Home is portable if one is in commune with one's soul. ...For mine is a landscape where Saigon, New York, and Paris intersect, where the Perfume River of Hue flows under the Golden Gate Bridge." Astonishing. Outstanding!



2. Andrew Lam writes with such great passion and sensitivity that one becomes totally absorbed in his essays that are in his award winning book "Perfume Dreams". Truly a gifted effort that delivers a literary image of what it feels like to be a Vietnamese-American immigrant. His essays are like a coming of age story with so much more depth than most you read today. This book is amazing and inspiring--it will leave you in an emotional state long after you put the book down.
   
   The author writes about his culture and his struggles for identity. He has roots in two countries not only physically but also spiritually and emotionally as well. His observations, along with his reactions, thoughts and his musings about life and other people are both insightful and entertaining; his essays are important chronicles. The book can be read in an afternoon but it may take a lifetime to fully appreciate what the author has lived and written about.
   
   The book is worthy of your time to its read. I give this book my fullest personal recommendation. This book is a FIVE STAR BOOK!



3. The telling of this most personal journey avoids any and all hyperbole or belittling. Boldly Andrew Lam presents the opportunities found by the exile who chooses to leave his homeland as well as the demanding adjustments he must undergo if he is to succeed in his adopted country.
   
   Back in Vietnam he is viewed as one who is exceptional, a person who has achieved the highest level of sucess. Those opportunites, he finds, do not exist in fact or spirit in his native land.



4. 
   Perfume Dreams is a must read book for all Vietnamese Americans. Andrew is a gifted writer, a gate keeper / history teller for Vietnamese American who are living in America. He has never lost his touch with his root.
   
   The Perfum Dreams touches all sides of experiences the Vietnamese refugees and immigrants. The "haves and not haves, the fortunate and unfortunate" lives of Vietnamese-Americans.
   
   I am looking forward for more of his future books. We should all feel proud to have someone like Andrew to keep us in touch with ourselves and remind us of the challenges in living in America.



5. Andrew Lam has been writing about the Vietnamese diaspora longer than anyone I know. Since the early 1990s his works have appeared in national publications. "Perfume Dreams" is the amalgamation of his perspectives, ones that many of us former refugees can relate in our own lives. I had the pleasure of taking part in book events in NYC and LA with Andrew. In a way we've come full circle since our last elementary school day in Saigon when a defecting South Vietnamese jet bombed the Presidential Palace a few hundred meters across the street. Pick up this must-have book to better understand the Vietnamese identity in America.

5 comments about Broken: My Story of Addiction and Redemption.

1. As in any memoir of addiction, this is the author's story. To people who do not suffer with addictions, memoirs like these can help make sense of the nonsense. Here is William Cope Moyers, raised in a "proper" family, with more advantages than most kids can imagine, and he ends up a hard core drug addict. His first person explanations of the how, why and what it feels like are hard to believe, but offer some understandding of the disease. His honest revelations allowed me to have more sympathy for alcoholics and addicts. Moyers also describes his path to sobriety which involved repeated attempts at treatment. Again, for me it was helpful to understand that there is no easy 28 day cure. Other reviewers have criticized the religion in Moyers message, but this is his memoir and he is describing what has worked for him. For me, as a non-addict, memoirs like this, "Tweak," "A Million Little Pieces," "Dry, " "A Beautiful Boy," etc., put a real face on this disease, help me to understand some of my friends and family, force me to examine the costs of this disease on our society, and even help me look critically at issues in the present health care debate. For anyone trying to recover from addiction or just trying to understand it,this is a great book.



2. I'm sorry but I've read a lot of memoirs about addiction and recovery and Moyers' book is boring. That may sound terrible because it must be hard to expose yourself and your own personal struggles as he did, but quite frankly, it put me to sleep. He repeats the same ideas and feelings over and over and over. His journal entries made me want to bang my head against my desk. I've only read half-way into the book. I can go no further. Poor little rich boy who's parents cared to much. He had no real reason to propel himself into the depths of addiction like he did. He was obviously bored with life-maybe because he got handed everything and anything he wanted. I have no sympathy for him. He isn't broken. He was never beaten or raped or forced into a way of life against his will. He was able to attend college and sleep in a warm bed any night he chose to. He got handed job after job making more money than the first...
   If you want to read a real story about a gritty struggle with addiction..read something like "A Piece of Cake" by Cupcake Brown. Leave this guy on the shelf.



3. Having been sober for 21 years in AA and 20 years of AlAnon, this is one of the best descriptions of the recovery process that I have ever read. Bill is so insightful and honest about the feelings and thoughts of an addict - no matter of whether it's to drugs, alcohol, food, people, etc. His story and insights were both harrowing and inspiring. Thanks so much for you honesty and for keeping on - one day at a time!



4. This book has been recommended to me by my friends. It is a good and honest book. It is well written and can be very useful for the people affected by addiction and their family members.



5. A fine example of how some AA members blame everyone else for their addiction while shouldering none of the responsibility. Blaming his 'disease' while never acknowledging that it was his own actions that caused his addictions.
   
   William Cope Moyers targets his father's success for his inability to get his own life together. He also blames his parents for not seeing through his lies and getting him into treatment earlier, how it might have saved him from going through the situations he put himself in.
   
   He whines about getting jobs simply because he is the son of Bill Moyers and sabotages each one of them. He glosses over the lies and the pain he puts his family though and ignores that it is his father's name and money that gets him out of situations and into some of the most expensive treatments available.
   
   Moyers is now a Hazelden Foundation spokesman, another job where being Bill Moyer's son helped. Perhaps by staying isolated from the real world he will finally be able to maintain his sobriety.

5 comments about Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number (The Americas).

1. Although Timerman gives the best description of torture possible, I found this book to be a lot like reading a really long newspaper article. As a journalist, Timerman often gets caught up in the socio-political environment rather than the experience of torture and prison. This is supposed to be a memoir, not a political commentary on the situation in Argentina. I appreciated what Timerman wrote, but in all, I found the writing to be rather dry.



2. This book blew me away. So much goes under the radar and this book exposes some real evil. A must read, but also pretty hard to take.



3. I read this book, here in Brazil, about 20 years ago.This book was writen by an argetinian and jew, about thirty years ago.This book is against Argetina's government, in late 1970 decade.This book isn't a communist's book, but a book against torture and other bad things.The main problem of this book is that we aren't in 1970 decade.Argentina's processo is over since 1983 and we must remember that in Argentina, there was less than 0.05% of murders that were did in "socialists paradises" such as China or former USSR.



4. I used this book in my introduction to Latin America course as a supplementary text. The writing is moving and heartfelt while being historically and politically relevant. Most students read this book in one sitting finding it impossible to put down.



5. One of the most harrowing books I've ever read. An amazing entreaty against violence of both the left and the right, and a heartbreaking analysis of contemporary anti-Semitism. Comparable at some points perhaps to Koestler's Darkness at Noon, except that it deals with torture in a more direct (and horrifying, since it's nonfiction) way. I wish this were required reading in schools.

5 comments about Under the Table: Saucy Tales from Culinary School.

1. We choose this book for our book club without reading any "real" reviews about it. BIG mistake. All of us wished we wouldn't have wasted our time.
   
   The narrator is catty, rude and gives away the fact that she graduates first in her class (a big part of the mystery in the storyline) in her bio on the jacket. I can't believe that some publisher even thought about printing this book. I guess she still has friends in the business?
   
   Don't waste your time. I hear there are lots of great cooking school books out there!



2. I could not stand that typical New Yorker style. For someone from the West Coast, this is so unbelievable stuck-up, it's bordering on the ridiculous. Her condescending descriptions of her co-students, the eagerness to judge people by the brand of their clothing, made me hate the author.
   ok, she learns how to cook, but is she a chef? As far as I could find out, she is a writer for a food magazine now.
   Well, I am not surprised that someone with her snobby attitude can't hack it in the business



3. There are things I like a lot about this book. These things include that parts of it are quite well-written, there are some genuine insights into what attending the chef programme at FCI is like, and the recipes work pretty well.
   
   There are things I hated about this book. These things include that other parts of it are ludicrously poorly written, that the author very often comes off as a petulant child, that stories are started but not finished (or told in ways that lessen their impact).
   
   Overall, even when the book works well, it seems like a string of amusing anecdotes about culinary school, rather than a coherent narrative about attending culinary school. Perhaps the subtitle of the book should have warned me about this, but I was still disappointed by it.
   
   One of the main points the author makes is that prior to attending FCI, she was a skilled cook who didn't really understand cooking. She skipped steps in recipes, without realizing what effect that had on the dish. She learned that there's a reason you let dough rest, for example, and when she did it, she found that the resulting pastry was better than when she skipped that step. Well, there's a whole mountain of accumulated knowledge about how to construct memoirs so that they offer more to the reader than a string of memories presented in chronological order. It appears to me that the author is as ignorant of that body of knowledge as she was about the mechanics of cooking before her culinary education. It shows in this book. Much like her pre-FCI omelets were inferior to what she learned to make in Level 1, this memoir is far inferior to what it might have been, had she only known.
   
   Anyway, not a total waste of my time, but I think that this author would have written a better book about this experience had she let it simmer for a few more years.



4. The writing in this book is so bad it is funny. There are entire paragraphs that could be entered in a bad writing contest. Didn't anyone tell the author that cliches sound like, well, cliches? It should have been a red flag when there were no reviews or quotes from other authors on the back on the book. Also, the author is not particularly interesting and her story is dull. The most exciting parts of the book involve squabbles between cooking students that sound like they belong in junior high school. I read a lot of books in this genre (cooking and food-related memoirs) and there are many much better books out there (e.g., The Sharper Your Knife is a much better read and a similar kind of story).



5. This book is entertaining if you have a fairly wide culinary experience. However it's not what I'd call "gripping." The author occasionally has moments of self-depreciation, but it's not believable. Her ego comes thru loud and clear. The description of culinary school is interesting to one who has never attended and always wondered. The author tries to make you like her and admire her culinary skills, however by the end of the book, she was irritating and incredibly "perfect." Entertaining but not fascinating....

5 comments about Perfect from Now On: How Indie Rock Saved My Life.

1. As much as I love the genre of music John Sellers writes about, I was underwhelmed by this book. There are a few moments that I thought "yes- I totally get it!", but for the most part, this is the story of someone who wants other people to think he's cool SO BADLY that he ends up coming across as condescending yet insecure - and, to be honest, a bit of a bore. Kind of like the guy down the hall who always thinks he's the first one to discover everything, and looks down on everyone else for being oh so ignorant.
   
   One unbelievably annoying thing is that there are times where there are literally three lines of text and then the rest of the page is a footnote. This goes on for pages at a time. Seriously? As a previous reviewer said, a better writer could have figured out how to incorporate the elaborate, ranting footnotes into the actual story.
   
   I wanted to love this book, but heaven knows I'm miserable now.



2. it's not Rob Sheffield's "Mixtape" but it's a pretty good read, made better by the fact our musical tastes overlap. If you are not a fan of the same music, most references would be lost on you



3. This book would make a better blog. It just seems to ramble on and on, without making any point or being that entertaining. The author uses footnotes constantly, which I do like, except for some footnotes will go on for multiple pages. It would have made reading this book more coherent if these were just included in regular succession, rather than making seem as they are separate point.
   
   If you really want a personal memoir book recalling music and pop culture from the 80's & 90's just read Chuck Klosterman and Rob Sheffield. It is obvious what Sellers writing is trying to be, but it just is not there. If you have already read the aforementioned authors' books, then this is readable, but nowhere near as good.



4. ergh..i disagreed with many of mr. sellers opinions, but i'm not holding that against him. he wouldn't do the same for me, but that's fine. the good: this is an easy read, is mildly amusing from time to time, and may provide some music trivia answers to store in your brain for later use when playing trivial pursuit-music edition. the bad: gets repetitive, author contradicts himself more than once and offers no explanations, excessive footnotes (supposedly to pay homage to his favorite writer) seem either irrelevant or like lazily thrown-in afterthoughts, and too much of the book consists of mr. sellers trying to convince the world that he is the biggest and best fan that a band could have. alright alright! i'm convinced! you win! i'd have preferred the focus to be on what made these bands so great instead of how great he is for appreciating them.



5. Since Mr. Sellers can't seem to help himself when it comes to lists, I think a review which parrots that particular form is fitting.
   
   
   
   TOP 5 REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD AVOID BUYING "Perfect From Now On" by John Sellers:
   
   5 - Sellers (by his own admission) is more interested in appearing "with it" than actually enjoying the music. He bases his musical choices/obsessions on how 'obscure' they are, and how knowledgeable he can be regarding the band in question.
   
   4 - His holier-than-thou (and occasionally hypocritical) approach to:
   - drugs (although he abuses alcohol like a fiend)
   - other parts of the world (although he grew up in Michigan?!)
   - any music he doesn't deem 'worthy'
   
   3 - The (sub)title of the book... nowhere is there any indication that 'Indie Rock' did anything greater for Sellers than give him a soundtrack to his studies and drinking. That isn't "saving" your life-- it's what EVERYBODY uses music for.
   
   2 - Guided By Voices. Sure, I love them too, had an intense period of listening/collecting/concert going. But come one man... enough. It's just downright embarrassing reading about Sellers' slavish idol-worship. Plus, he didn't even get on board with GBV until the end of 2002? For somebody who seems desperate to be on the 'cutting edge of music', there is simply no excuse.
   
   1 - The condescending tone of the book. Sellers doesn't just come across as a passionate music fan (really- who isn't?). No, reading this book, Sellers comes-across as a snippy, shallow know-it-all. His barrage of pop-culture references and "I'm-right-you're-wrong" writing is tiresome and provides little more than what you might find on a teenager's blog.
   
   This book ends-up being little more than one sad person's attempt to brag about a shared, collective experience (enjoying/obsessing over music). It's the sort of paper-thin observation that can be read for free on-line; it's the literary equivalent to Sellers standing in front of a mirror and rhyming off his favourite artists (and why he enjoys them more than you). Really - why waste money on it?

5 comments about Another Life: A Memoir of Other People.

1. Korda chronicles his thirty-year career in trade-book publishing at Simon and Schuster at breakneck speed and with great enthusiasm. He's met a bazillion celebrities, both distinguished and tawdry. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of this page-turner.
   
   A previous reviewer, Peachaggi, says Korda never mentioned THE LOVE MACHINE. Pea must have skipped Chapter 19 in Part 4, where THE LOVE MACHINE is mentioned at least thirteen times. I counted.
   
   I have just three complaints: Korda seems ignorant of the subjunctive mood, neglects to make his pronouns agree with their antecedents, and splits his infinitives unnecessarily throughout. Of course, there's more to trade publishing than grammar and usage, subjects about which few people seem to know very much and care even less.



2. Michael Korda's family biography, Charmed Lives, remains one of my all time favorite reads. This book, Another Life: A Memoir of Other People, came to my attention while doing research on the web regarding the meaning of memoir/biography. There has been some recent controversy over whether a memoir is based on facts or simply on subjective opinion. I will take Michael Korda's facts, and subjective opinion, anytime. He has a balanced point of view, and the gift of seeing us all as people. He also understands the nature and the nuturing of creative talent.
   
   Another Life is a memoir of the publishing industry; it presents a view of how publishing used to be in the old days, the Golden Age of the famous name publishing houses. Though I think we are in another and very different Golden Age at present. I am entering the publishing business myself, and it gave me insights into truly how the business operates on a personal level.
   
   I am now reading his biography of Ulysses S Grant, and am very much interested in his assessment of Grant. It stays with me. I hope Mr. Korda continues to write historical biographies. He has a lot to share with the world.



3. This dreadful piece of pap should be pulped. It is rife is factual errors so embarrassing one wonders if Mr. Korda has become senile, yet is still so hungry to publish that he is willing to lie ruefully in order to sell a book. Fact-checking will bear out appalling errors. Mr. Korda's memory requires a make-over, and his style is unbearable. Don't waste your money.



4. This book is a fascinating read and hard to put down. The reader gets a whirlwind tour through the editing side of publishing and a multitude of witty and entertaining brief caricatures of people famous in the world of books. But the only person, of the multitude vignetted in the book, who comes through even vaguely like a real human being, is Dick Snyder, one of Korda's bosses. Korda goes through paternity, divorce and prostate cancer with nary a whisper of an emotion. At the end one is left wondering what was the purpose of the whole exercise.



5. I really enjoyed this pleasant and often humorous insight into the world of publishing. Korda supplies his readers with interesting and often poignant anecdotes about the many famous celebrities with whom he's worked over his long career, including Marilyn Monroe, Jacqueline Susann and Claus von Bulow, to name just a few.

5 comments about North Toward Home.

1. I read Morris's charming little book about his boyhood, MY DOG SKIP, about ten years ago and rather enjoyed it. That book led me, if a bit belatedly, to this more comprehensive memoir, NORTH TOWARD HOME. The book is divided into three distinct parts: his boyhood and youth in Yazoo City, Mississippi; his college years in Texas (UT Austin) and his years as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford; and his early years in the publishing world, with Harper's Magazine, in NYC.
   
   In order then, I was quite charmed by the first part and could relate easily to his descriptions of a small-town childhood, then high school and the English teacher he tried hard to impress, telling of how kids made fun of her seriousness about literature and books. "She had little patience with the slow ones, or the ones who refused to work, but for those who tried, or who performed with some natural intelligence, she was the most loyal and generous of souls." This description matched that of my own HS English teacher here in west Michigan back in the late fifties. Morris even tells of how the kids tried to "cheat," by reading the Classics Comics versions of the books assigned, rather than the real thing. That was a ploy still used in my own wayward high school days.
   
   Part two, the college years in Texas, began to drag very quickly, as soon as Morris gets involved with the college newspaper and seems to lose his way in details of Texas politics, the governors and board of regents and the whole "good ol' boy" system then holding sway in Texas. I began skimming here, and skimmed through most of the middle section. Perhaps the high point of the Texas section was a quote attributed to a young liberal politician who came within 25,000 votes of being elected governor. This candidate, who is not named, says: "Any man who can get the money necessary to be elected Governor of Texas doesn't deserve to be Governor of Texas." If I hadn't known this book was published over forty years ago, I'd have sworn Morris was thinking of Dubya himself.
   
   After his college years, when Morris finally arrives in New York, things picked up considerably and he told much more interesting - to me - anecdotes about authors, publishing and the whole literary scene through the 1960s in the Big Apple. Morris has much to say here about his friendship with the writer, Ralph Ellison, who called his craft a "stern discipline." From this, Morris makes his own comment that "A young writer's work rests in a very real way on his own private ego - on his own personal faith that what he has to write and the way he writes it are importan in themselves, important to his own time and to future generations. Why else subject oneself to the miseries of writing." Well said, Willie. Why indeed?
   
   I know that Morris did go on to quite an illustrious career in writing and publishing world, but this book, while it has its bright moments, came off as just a little too uneven. The Texas part in particular seems dated and tedious. But I'm still glad I read it. Truth be told though, MY DOG SKIP was a better book - and made a sweet family film too. - Tim Bazzett, author of PINHEAD: A LOVE STORY



2. The late Mr. Morris was truly a gifted writer. This memoir is broken up into three sections; his childhood in Yazoo, Mississippi, the college years and early career in Texas, and finally, his move to New York City. Each area evokes strong images about their times. Though this classic memoir only entails the first thirty years of his life (circa 1935-1965), the author covers a great deal of ground in the political and social arenas. Southern and Northern racism, President Johnson, the John Birch Society, Senator Barry Goldwater, a private tour of the Oval Office, the ease in which demagogues could (and still do) manipulate the public are just a few of the topics covered. His section about commuting by train from the suburbs into New York City is a true work of art. Mr. Morris' brutally blunt recreations of his youth in Mississippi are astounding. His insight into bare-knuckles, myth-driven Texas politics should give anyone pause about voting in another President from the Lone Star State. The author's descriptions of the dehumanizing effects of working and living in New York City and hobnobbing in its snooty literary circles made me happy as hell to live in Maine. This nonfiction book is a sumptuous treat for the reader who is looking to better themselves. Though this masterpiece was published in 1967, it holds up extremely well. It's a darn shame the guy's dead.



3. My Dog Skip and My Cat Spitz Mcgee were excellent works. Unfortunately his autobiographical work North Toward Home deviates into liberal philosophy to the point of distraction. I enjoyed some of the background material about his life and admire him personally for what he did with his life. I don't really need someone preaching liberalism. We get enough of that on the Evening News.



4. I earned a bachelor's degree from the UT Dallas with hopes of one day going on to UT Law in Austin. Instead, after a diversion of 4 years into the US army, I went to UT to begin and complete an undergrad degree in nursing. For me, the best part of the book was Morris' impression of Texas politics back in the 60s when we had only one party to speak of: the Democratic party. At the state level the Republican party would eventually emerge to dominate the legislature and all statewide elected offices. Most folks who had been the old style conservative Democrats of the type Morris writes about quietly and without fanfare "moved their letter" to the GOP in the early days of Ronald Reagan. Its fair to say that most of the legislature's conservatives back in the day when Morris toiled away at the Texas Observer were earlier incarnations of Tom DeLay or Warren Chisum. And when I attended a Gubernatorial inaugural ball for George W Bush, tellingly one of the old "conservative Democrat" governors was there ensconced in a wheel chair to celebrate W's ascendancy to the largely ceremonial Texas Governor's job.
   
   
   
   I particularly enjoyed Morris' writings about his early days as a student at UT. It is a vast campus today and I'm sure it was equally intimidating to a young man from Yazoo City Mississippi. Morris' references to various dorm bldgs and campus activities held special significance since I had either been in any of them or walked by them regularly. Unlike in Morris' day, today the campus dominant political viewpoint is Democratic, although a strong libertarian movemt continues to attract all who've grown disenchanted with the superstate
   
   
   
   Aside from the period piece on UT and the politics of the mid50s, early 60s what I most found valuable was the agonizing dilemma Morris and so many other Southern writers faced: they loved their home states and all the quaint slow ways they'd known growing up there, but they were rightly repulsed by the segregation and race-hate which surfaced with the beginnings of the civil rights movement. Tellingly, when a black female (they called them Negroes in them days) confronted Morris' description of life in the delta she told him rather bluntly "Your delta wasnt mine" and perhaps at that and other moments Morris realized he hadnt been as observant of the world around him as he thought he had been. Like Germans in the decades just after World War II, Morris and other southern men of letters were almost reflexively apologetic for being from the South.
   
   I cant help but wonder how the nation and Mississippi would view Morris had he and other southern writers been willing to lend their name and fame to an organization akin to "They Dont Speak for Me" wherein the so-called liberated Southern writers could openly distance themselves from Lester Maddox, Orval Faubus, George Wallace and other race-baiting demogogues. Instead, when Morris and other southern literary men were on the radio and could have easily taken such a "they dont speak for me" line, they chose to divert the interviewer away from integration or other issues to more trivial things.



5. "North Toward Home", by Willie Morris, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1967.
   This is the autobiography of a small town boy who went to the big city and became editor-in-chief of Harper's, once the oldest magazine in America. The book, 438 pages in the 1967 edition is broken up into three sections:
   (1) Mississippi: 146 pages.
   (2) Texas: 163 pages
   (3) New York: 125 pages.
   
   It is in his description of his young life in the small town of Yazoo City, Mississippi, that Mr. Morris really achieves his most memorable scenes and the most interesting writing in the book. His family is "old" and he explains that on his mother's side he is related to the Harpers who founded Harpers Ferry, Virginia.
   The section on university studies emphasizes his time at the University of Texas, where he over-committed himself by trying to become involved in just about everything. In this university section, the writing of Mr. Morris degrades towards the usual descriptions of fraternities, football and fornication, common enough for the colleges of the later fifties and early sixties.
   
   Finally, in the third section, dealing with New York City, his writing becomes even more mundane as he recounts his experiences, which could be entitled "Only In New York". this kind of thing is so common that late night TV talk shows use it as a fill-in staple. The redeeming quality of his writing is his ability to being the point of view of a Southerner to his New York City anecdotes. He calls NYC the "Big Cave".
   
   But, it is Morris, himself, who makes it clear why he is working in New York City, and not Mississippi. Morris recounts an anecdote concerning Robert Frost that sums up the intellectual achievement of his book and the South:
   
   "Once I had escorted Robert Frost in a taxicab to Rhodes house for a talk.
   `Where are you from, boy?' he had asked.
   `Mississippi', I replied.
   `Hell, that's the worst sate in the Union', he said.
   But, I argued, it had produced a lot of good writers.
   He said, `Can't anybody down there read them'". (Page 196).

No comments about Between Two Worlds: My Life and Captivity in Iran.

5 comments about In the Hot Zone: One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars.

1. This is an excellent book that deserves to be read by a very wide audience. Sites was a freelance war correspondent for NBC News in Iraq when his controversial story concerning a marine shooting in a mosque led him to leave network reporting and take on a much riskier assignment. Working as a internet reporter for Yahoo!, Sites established for himself the ambitious plan to cover every armed conflict in the world in one year. My immediate reaction to this idea was, I admit, quite negative. I could not see how he could possibly do justice to any of the stories and the idea, seemed a case of the most blatant sensationalism and ambulance chasing. Having read the book now cover to cover, I am pleased to be able to say that my reaction was entirely mistaken.
   Sites begins by admitting that in such a short time, he cannot provide the details and background to every conflict that one might wish for in a longer work. Instead, his goal was to offer small personal details and "character driven narratives" that might in some way make the conflict meaningful to his audience. I am not familiar with how the internet site worked, but if his book is an accurate reflection of it, I would guess that he was extremely successful. His stories are about "ordinary" or "extraordinary" people, their struggles, and how the conflict affected them on a daily basis. He tells of their lives in a way that makes us care about them and explains in culturally sensitive ways what they think about us as Americans, and why they may or may not care about us. Moreover, while his focus is on conflict zones, he is conscious of the danger that his reporting "will become this deluge of tragedy" or what others refer to as "poverty porn." Therefore he deliberately reminds us that his subjects also have moments of happiness, laughter, and love and that "people are more than just the sum of their misery."
   While Sites' chapters on such places as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Israel, and Colombia are among my favorites, Sites is at his best not when he is speaking of people and places but of himself and his role as a journalist. His work has made him deeply aware of the ethical dilemmas and standards confronting all citizens of this world, but in particular those who work in the journalistic profession. He admits that he has not always met those standards to his own satisfaction, though I suspect that he is no worse and rather better than many of his peers. Nonetheless, it is precisely his willingness to discuss those dilemmas through his own examples so openly that makes his book so intriguing and so valuable. In fact, I would consider this book a "must read" for any students considering a career in international journalism, but it is equally useful to all those with an interest in the world outside their immediate borders.



2. Sites is right that Americans don't know much about the world they live in. He takes us to third world nations where conflicts rage and people die of war and hunger. This is a dangerous world and Sites makes us aware of this. I think Sites is a talented journalist, who takes his work very seriously. I enjoyed the writings, and I remember well his report for NBC about the slayings in the mosque. However, you can't have it both ways. Later when a Iraqi man if shot in the head and dying, Sites poses with his camera as a Marine comes forward. When the Marine asks him if he is going to film him while he puts this fatally wounded man out of his misery, Sites says of course. What happens is the man endures an agonizing death from a fatal head shot, and people let him suffer.
   
   I enjoyed this book. I think Kevin is a little self righteous. However his points about the US relates to the rest of the world are very true. A good read.



3. Kevin has achieved what he said his goal was; we, the public, watch war, destruction and misery on tv from the age we start to watch tv. Sad to say we usually have grown ourselves a shield against it. After reading Kevins book, you will not watch those images the same way again; now you really know the common people's suffering behind it, and the stories on his DVD and in his book, stay with you and reappear every time you watch the news and see images of war in some far away country.
   Besides that it opens your eyes, it's also easy to read and at times even fun. A must read!



4. The short attention span and corporate management of mainstream media has pushed serious investigative journalists to the fringes, with good ones like Kevin Sites forced to work independently or in unsustainable online operations. The subject of this book is Sites' year-long project for Yahoo! News in which he visited 20 war zones in a single year. The project led to some unexpected results. With so much traveling Sites did not have the time to report from each combat zone with a great amount of in-depth investigation, but on the other hand the project is a sobering illustration of how much senseless violence is taking place in the world at any given time. The rapid schedule also led Sites to dispense with standard action news coverage and to concentrate on the innocent civilians and overworked soldiers who have to take the brunt of bad decisions by politicians and demagogues. In the process, Sites comes up with incredible insights on war and politics that are as compelling as they are low-key, and his skills as an investigative journalist are complemented by a writer's gift for reaching powerful insights in few words.
   
   America is full of pundits who think they can make big statements about wars and humanitarian crises that they have not seen in person and about which they've only heard propaganda. Kevin Sites and other courageous old-school journalists like him have really been on the front lines. Too bad the mass media is too yellow to give them the airtime that they, and their subjects, deserve. [~doomsdayer520~]



5. This book shows both sides of conflicts without taking any side's point of view. With today's extremely biased and one sense oriented media, Kevin Sites breaks this ongoing trend, and shows the American public unheard sides of unheard wars. Most importantly he sows the sufferings of the people in wars, in the humanitarian terms and not dramatic terms and exaggerations, as we see in the mass media. Most have book and DVD in each household.

3 comments about Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones.

1. This is the story of the person whose London grave is located immediately to the left of Karl Marx's. She was, as the authors point out, "left of Marx" in another, more important, way; although she was a loyal member of the Communist Party, she "pushed the envelope" with regard to consideration of women's special oppression as well as that directed towards people of color. Thus, she was ahead of Marx, who did not address either of these major issues.
   
   I would have liked this book a lot more, were the authors not wholly infatuated with the current postmodernist cant. Rather than reading about "locations" and "voices" and "geographies," it would have been nice to read a straightforward biography written in normal English. This is why the four stars; insofar as the information in the book is concerned, it merits five stars for telling the story of this interesting woman, ahead of her time in understanding, articulating, and promoting the concerns of the multiply oppressed--people of color, and women.



2. Carole Boyce Davies delivers a stunner in Left of Karl Marx, a deft and thorough analytical treatment of the political life of Claudia Jones, "Black Woman Communist of West Indian Descent." Neither Pan-Africanism nor Black Women's Studies can begin to do without this book, not to mention a host of other fields and constituencies. It brilliantly performs the task of resurrection made intellectually necessary when the status-quo takes such important figures away from us and then tries to erase their memory, to boot.
   
   We should not be forced to think and struggle in ignorance of Claudia Jones, and now we certainly don't have to with such a powerful and impressive study.
   
   Critically, Boyce Davies treats not just the politics of diaspora, but deportation as well; not just "political" activism, but cultural activism (such as Carnival) as well; not just bookish intellectual production, only, but polemics, speeches and journalism (in the spirit of Ida B. Wells) as well; not just "women's rights" or "worker's rights" or the rights of colonized peoples, but all of the aforementioned and then some. Perhaps most crucially, she recovers the "radical Black female subject" in a fashion that immediately calls for pretenders to the titles of "radical," "Black," etc.," to walk the walk talked and walked by Claudia Vera Cumberbatch Jones.



3. This is what intellectual life is all about...Carole Boyce Davies *rocks* our understanding of the left, black feminism, transnationalism, and more. Boyce Davies carefully re-narrates the life of black communist, activist-intellectual Claudia Jones--identifying Jones' political and creative struggles as a black woman who *radically* hopes for, strategizes, thinks through, a *just* future and was thus consequently rendered a punishable, deportable, subject...
   
   These women, these ideas--Carole Boyce Davies, Claudia Jones, Left of Karl Marx--are what intellectual life is all about. Inspiring and challenging...
   
   katherine mckittrick