5 comments about Naked on the Page: The Misadventures of My Unmarried Midlife.

1. It's okay to be middle aged, and single, and naked! Thank God! Or there would be millions of folks out there thinking the good days are behind us. Not true! Ganahl writes with such humor, compassion and understanding, it's as though she's talking to me as a best girlfriend. I loved this book. It made me feel that it's not so bad being middle aged, single and (gulp) even naked.



2. I laughed out loud more than once within the first chapter. The author's commentary is so real and insightful with a continued sense of humor. I bought this last weekend and am half-way through, but don't want it to end!



3. It's okay. It's taking me time to read it, it has not sunk in to where I want grab it and read. I see it and oh yeah I'm reading that.



4. An easy read with a feel good ending. It's a chick-book, like a chick-flick.



5. I woke up in the middle of the night and just had to pick up this book and dive in again despite the complaints from my spouse about lights on at 4AM.
   
   Jane Ganahl's writing is refreshingly straightforward. She speaks with humor and clarity about the fears and the joys of being a single woman who has reached midlife with plenty of experiences, accomplishments and relationships to be proud of but who still longs for true romantic love. She doesn't try to downplay the inevitable pain in every life path and yet she always remains hopeful. Every minute of this read was great.
   
   I was left feeling awe over her strong friendships and loving family ties. I hope to have aquired half Jane's wit, grace and panache when my fiftieth rolls around in about 5 years.

5 comments about My Name Is Iran: A Memoir.

1. This autobiography is incandescent with the luminous spirit of the author.
   
   She is articulate and honest about the experiences and uncertainties she encountered in the journey of her own life to date. Look at the photographs in the book: she radiates intelligence, light, and compassion--and so do her words.
   
   The details of her Persian cultural legacy are fascinating, as are the dynamics of her supportive, closely knit family. The latter provides an example of how the values of immigrants can enrich the fabric of American society.
   
   If you are attuned to pick up the more subtle energies (so to speak) of spirit, this book will be quite rewarding for you.



2. Iran has a story to tell, story of a young woman coming to understand who she is and within that context I appreciated the book. I did not care for her need to name drop on so much of the book to establish her identity. At some point in the book Iran feels the need to mention that the grand father of the neighbor of her niece was someone important in US Navy and somehow unsuccessfully she tries to establish a link from there to her present partner. Some of these kinds of name dropping and her need to mention them seem completely out of place and takes away from her story. Over all it is an average book.



3. From an American perspective, Iran is a far-off desert land filled with oil fields and industry. Iran's rich history dates back thousands of years nearly to the beginning of civilization. Yet, we know so little about Iranian lifestyles, cultures and religions. To many, their people and their lives are a mystery to us. Interested in learning more about the country once known as Persia? Let me suggest an excellent place to start.
   
   Born in the United States to Iranian parents, Davar Ardalan is the perfect tour guide to this part of the world. Her fascinating biography, `My Name is Iran' has both literal and figurative meaning. Her proper first name actually is `Iran.' What a fine ambassador she would make for either country.
   
   Davar's book chronicles her quest seeking a true and self-satisfying identity. Her complicated and tumultuous life has seen her morph between a modern American woman and a subservient Iranian willingly locked into an arranged marriage. Her book follows her long search for a place to comfortably rest her soul. Although the perspective is from a personal point of view, Davan's biography also serves as an authoritarian primer about life in Iran.
   
   She has adopted many, many places as her home. A very complicated and diverse life she has led. Davan comes from an enormous family that was very influential in the establishment of modern society in Iran. Several family members of her generation migrated to The United States in search of a richer life. All have experimented with lifestyles both traditional and modern. Some chose one; others chose both. Davan could not decide.
   
   As you read, you will understand how her deep heritage in the Middle East has altered the direction of her life. She seems nearly taunted by both sides of her fence. During most of her young adult years, Davan could not resolve where to go or how to ultimately live. You feel her struggle. Her understanding of both her cultures is so full. If she could only embrace one to call her own!
   
   'My Name Is Iran' is filled with many studious footnotes further explaining the history and the stories behind the many people mentioned in her tales. The book is a masterwork. Not only is Davan a great student of her family's legacy and homeland, she shows sensitivity to her readers with in-depth explanations providing all the background you may need to understand her life in whole. Her tireless work has created a gem which may open her ancestral world to an audience otherwise blind to all of Iran's cultural wealth. It is an unusual and interesting read.
   
   This is not a dry and dusty history book. The tone is personal and passionate. Much is to be read about Davan's personal life: her two marriages (one to a second cousin,) her children, the beloved members of her family and all the things that bubble and cook in her pot of life. What a cast of characters are to be found in all her relatives! Follow her life as she matures from a young girl to a woman immersed in American culture. Later, she returns with conviction to a harshly structured lifestyle. In the end, she becomes a producer and correspondent for National Public Radio working with renowned journalists like Jacki Lyden and Daniel Zwerdling. Quite an amazing life!
   
   Invest some time and read this book. You will begin to understand the spirit within the souls of Davan's people. She'll take you to the site of Solomon's Mosque, the Alborz Mountains and the lands once ruled by Cyrus the Great. Learn about her father's renowned architectural blending of styles both old and new. Feel the excitement in a place half way around the world. Will she ever find balance between the two distinct cultures of America and Iran? Davan offers much to discover. Her pages combine into a journey you won't forget. Salam!



4. I know that a journalist is suppose to write only about facts when describing an event; However, I do expect more from a memoir, especially if it is written by a journalist. I cannot believe that one can go through life without coming with an insight of who she is, and what she stands for. From the book she appears as if she has no control over her destiny, she just follow the flow with no question of who she is. For her last page she justify herself through her boy-friend who tells her that he loves her, not through a realization of who she is, or what her name Iran means to her.
   Bette Davis, with only high school level education, came much more genuine in her book, than Ms Ardalan. She was shallow, and she did not try to pretend to be anything more than than. While Ms. Ardalan is shallow but pretend to have depth.



5. This book is poorly edited, and not very effective. The author's story is not that fantastic that it can stand on it's own, and as a producer for NPR, she's just not that interesting. She spends so much time tip toeing around anything that might cast her family in a bad light, that the book feels half baked.
   Yes, she went back and forth from Iran a couple of times and had a couple of bad marriages, but so what? She should have written the book about any single one of her ancestors, each of which had a more interesting life than she did.

5 comments about An Alphabetical Life: Living It Up in the World of Books.

1. I'd never heard of Wendy Werris, but this woman writes like someone who's been doing it all her life. It must be all those books she's read, a kind of osmosis. Her life-long love affair with books is so obvious that I immediately recognized a kindred spirit. But this is not JUST about books; it is a finely nuanced and moving memoir of the first order. Werris's descriptions of her unorthodox Jewish home life, her father's show business connections and success - followed by a long slide into oblivion - are all so perfectly rendered you can feel the joys and sorrows. And she doesn't shrink from the more painful times either - her personal battles with drugs and alcohol, her brutal rape by a stranger, the long slow declines and deaths of her parents, and the sad dehumanizing changes in the book business which she bears witness to over more than thirty years. In her on-line blog, Ms. Werris notes she's currently working on a bio of her dad, Snag Werris, once a chief writer for Jackie Gleason. Write on, Wendy. I'll read it. - Tim Bazzett, author of the ReedCityBoy trilogy.



2. Anyone who has worked in a bookstore or in publishing will find much that resonates in this book, especially the sales reps. Her stories of initiation by fire struck a chord with this former rep; I'm glad I'm not the only one to once show up without a pen (makes it hard to write orders, it does). Werris couples this inside scoop on how books are sold with her tales of her father's show biz connections and the horrendous ordeal of her rape. It took Werris a long time to grow up but she seems on the right track now.



3. I was attracted to this title after spending many years as a book lover to the nth degree as well as being a writer and a former publisher's rep. It seemed like a Reader/Writer match made in heaven, especially given the geography Werris and I share.
   
   Werris was a trailblazer, a professional female publisher's rep before this was common. She learned her stuff in the trenches while participating in all the expected revelrie of the 60's and beyond.
   
   The characters that accompanied her life journey were as colorful as the books they peddled, expertly and lovingly. The book brought laughter and tears, bittersweet moments as we saw the book industry change as we turned page after page after page.
   
   My only criticism was the boxy chronology. It was almost written as separate books - here is Wendy Book Rep, here is Wendy in the rest of her life. The parts that engaged me the most were her parents' deaths, her survival after a rape, little bits and pieces about her spirituality and then looping back around to the reunion of most of the original Pickwick staffers.
   
   I would have preferred to have more personal life stuff interwoven throughout, but that is simply my taste.
   
   Great quotes include:
   
   "We never know what may happen when we pick up a book to read. The turning of a page might actually change the course of our existence. There is something very miraculous about this. Truth strikes at the very heart of books and the readers who turn themselves over with great trust to finding the essence of them selves."
   
   "Life has revealed itself in a language known only to me, comprised of my own private alphabet. You, too, have such a language. The discovery of it is found in the sum total of every experience we have known - all the loves, losses, agonizing pain and ecstatic joys."
   
   And then there is the quote in the very front of the book, not from Wendy Werris but from Charles Bukowski:
   
   "Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must live."
   
   I shared this with Emma and we both laughed and nodded. How wondrous that a nine-year-old gets this!



4. A contender for "Best Read of 2007" and it's only March!
   Her anecdotes are funny where they should be, and serious where that's important. This one and Buzbee's "Yellow-Lighted Bookshop" complement each other perfectly for anyone who loves books.



5. This book was in excellent condition and was delivered promptly and in good condition.

2 comments about Thirty Years in the Trenches Covering Crooks, Characters and Capers.

1. What a fasinating book.I knew Chicago had a past history but to see through the eyes of one of the true beat reproters.Great reading.What a character Mr Drummond is.Just wonderful reading.



2. Drummond, a reporter with CBS-owned Channel 2 in Chicago for many years, is best known for covering the "Outfit" in Chicago. As any Chicagoan can attest, he also covered many characters and other crooks, besides the big fish that hogged the headlines. Although there is a chapter on Tony "Big Tuna" Accardo, Drummond wisely focuses on the little guys that many of us forgot. This is a smart choice, for much is already written about the big guys like Accardo and if Drummond wanted to cover them right, he would of had to have written a separate book on several people. The only thing missing in the book is more on Drummond himself, for if you are a personal friend of his, as I am, you know that he is more interesting than any of the crooks and capers he ever covered. Read this book and try to learn as much as you can about John Drummond - a living Chicago legend and a journalism institution!

5 comments about Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her.

1. For the feminist historian looking for a book length essay on Nancy Drew's influence on Betty Friedan, this book is a must read. For the casual fan of the world's greatest girl detective and anyone interested in the prolific Stratemeyer Syndicate roughly half of this book will be interesting. Unfortunately the history of Miss Drew and the heavy handed feminist rhetoric are intertwined in alternate pages and sometimes alternate sentences. Fans of Nancy rather than Betty will probably find themselves scanning through pages of social commentary looking for the next mention of their heroine.
   Those who preserve will be rewarded with the story of Nancy's two literary mothers and an inside look at the declining years of the greatest children's book mill ever created. Unfortunately, the story of Edward Stratemeyer and his struggles to become the king of the juvenile serial are glossed over in the rush to get to his invention of Nancy Drew which came very late in his life.
   In the final analysis, this book is a worthwhile read however those peering over the fence from outside the author's world view will find the reading dry and often tangential.



2. This is a well-researched account of the Nancy Drew book series. The writing style is dry along the order of a graduate thesis. The larger print of the book makes for slower reading since it's hard to breeze along. It is not until after the first hundred pages that the author gets to the story of Nancy Drew. Along the way, there are long side trips depicting the woman's movement. In fact for a while I thought I was reading the history of the women's movement in the USA instead of the account of the Nancy Drew books. However, the reader does finally learn how the books came to be written and how the series was continued. After a slow beginning, I did enjoy reading this account.



3. If you had asked me, when I was twelve years old, who I wanted to be when I grew up, I wouldn't have hesitated an instant.
   
   "I want to be Carolyn Keene!" I would have said. "I want to write Nancy Drew mysteries!"
   
   So you can imagine my surprise and delight when I picked up the phone one day in the mid-1980s and heard the question, like an echo of a nearly-forgotten dream, "Would you like to be Carolyn Keene?"
   
   Would I like to be Carolyn Keene? Would I like to win the lottery, hang the moon, be queen for a day or a lifetime? Or as Nancy would say, "Now, that's the silliest question I've ever heard!" Of course I would love to be Carolyn Keene! I felt as if the universe had suddenly opened up and smiled straight down at me. I was about to join the magical, mystical, mysterious team of writers who created the most famous Girl Detective of all time. I was going to be Carolyn Keene!
   
   As a result of that phone call, I wrote five Nancys and a pair of Hardy Boys, working alone or with my husband, Bill Albert. And as a result of that apprenticeship, I went on to be a writer of many other mysteries, a profession and a vocation that I am still happily pursuing twenty years later.
   
   So it was as Carolyn Keene that I happily opened Melanie Rehak's biography of Nancy, Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, and Mildred Wirt Benson--and I wasn't disappointed. Rehak's book begins with the first chapter of Nancy's adventures, with the story of Edward Stratemeyer, boy literary wizard and his remarkable children's book syndicate, which got underway with the Rover Boys (1895), carried on with the Bobbsey Twins (1904), and produced the Hardy Boys (1927) and Nancy Drew (1930). Stratemeyer produced the concept, the plot outline, and the publishing contract (much of his work was published by Grosset & Dunlap), and hired out the writing to nameless authors who did the actual work for a flat rate of around $125, under a series pseudonym: Franklin W. Dixon for the Hardy Boys, Carolyn Keene for the Nancy Drew series.
   
   Stratemeyer died just twelve days after Nancy's launch, and his daughter, Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, took over the Syndicate. Harriet, who graduated from Wellesley and married a stockbroker, had been raised to enjoy life as a well-to-do socialite. She didn't find it easy to take over Stratemeyer's desk, for (believing that women's place was in the home) her father had kept all of his business dealings separate from the home he made for his now-ailing wife and two daughters. What's more, Harriet had young children at home, and had to juggle her work with her family and social obligations. She had a lot to learn, but learn she did, and under her direction, the Syndicate not only stayed afloat but prospered, even through the dark days of the Depression.
   
   But it wasn't just Harriet that kept the Syndicate from going under; a young writer named Mildred Augustine Wirt (later Benson) played a major role in its survival and success. Mildred was a small-town Iowa girl with one compelling passion: "I . . . wanted to be a writer from the time I could walk. I had no other thought except that I would write." Her motto was "Thou shalt not quit." She didn't, either. Aiming for a career as a writer in a time when the words women, career, and writer were rarely spoken in the same sentence, she graduated from the University of Iowa's School of Journalism at the age of 20, got her master's two years later, and the next year, 1926, landed a job with Stratemeyer's Syndicate.
   
   It is to Mildred Wirt that Nancy owes her original feistiness, pluck, and never-say-die determination, for Mildred wrote 23 of the first 30 Nancys: Books 1-7, 11-25, and 30. She would have written more, but when Harriet reduced the writers' pay to $85 a book, Mildred quit, and Walter Karig filled in the gap. Mildred returned for a second stint, then left for good in 1952. After that, Harriet assumed full responsibility for the series. She rewrote many of the earlier books and herself wrote most of the later ones, making Nancy into a rather different character, more tentative, more polite, a little less sure of herself. Harriet later testified: "I felt that she [Nancy, as Mildred had written her] was too bossy, too positive. . . she spoke to people too sharply" (Girl Sleuth, p. 296).
   
   Mildred Wirt also recognized the conflict: "There was a beginning conflict in what is Nancy . . . Mrs. [Harriet Stratemeyer] Adams was an entirely different person; she was more cultured and she was more refined. I was probably a rough and tumble newspaper person who had to earn a living, and I was out in the world. That was my type of Nancy. Nancy was making her way in life and trying to compete and have fun" (Girl Sleuth, p. 297).
   
   None of this came out until the spring of 1980 (a scant five years before my incarnation as Carolyn Keene), when Harriet Adams tried to accept a lucrative offer from Simon & Schuster to publish all future books in the Stratemeyer list. Grosset & Dunlap sued, and the ensuing trial made clear to the public what the Syndicate had tried for years to conceal: that Harriet Stratemeyer had not written all the Nancys (as she claimed); that Mildred Wirt (who like the rest of the writers in the Stratemeyer stable had signed a pledge not to reveal her authorship) had had the most enduring influence over the shaping of the character; and that if anybody was going to wear the title of the "real" Carolyn Keene, it ought to be Mildred.
   
   Melanie Rehak's book is a fascinating study of the cooperation and conflict between the two women who shaped the most famous Girl Detective in the world--and who, in turn, shaped many of us. Speaking for myself, as a young reader I much preferred Mildred's Nancy to Harriet's, for I was growing up in a rough and tumble world where I (no socialite) knew I would have to make a living and compete: Nancy--self-assertive, self-confident, self-reliant Nancy--showed me how to do that. And speaking for myself as a writer, both as Carolyn Keene and as the author of my own three mystery series, I have to say that it would have been a lot harder to learn what I had to learn about making mysteries if it hadn't been for Nancy the indomitable, for never-say-die Mildred, and for Harriet, who saved the Syndicate and kept it going through the dark times.
   
   Thank you, Nancy, Mildred, and Harriet, for making it all happen. And thank you, Melanie Rehak, for telling us their story.
   
   by Susan Wittig Albert
   for Story Circle Book Reviews
   www.storycirclebookreviews.org
   reviewing books by, for, and about women



4. Though I was a huge Nancy Drew fan as a kid, I was rather underwhelmed by this book. I thought the writing was poor and the book as a whole was pretty boring.



5. As an avid Nancy Drew fan, this book did not disappoint! I had known about the Stratemeyer Syn., Harriet S. Adams, and Mildred Wirt Benson, but to be able to take the journey back into history and see how the Nancy Drew books came to be, as well as many others that the Syn. wrote, was priceless. The incredible amount of time and effort that author Melanie Rehak took to research this book shows and Girl Sleuth a definate MUST for any Nancy Drew fan. I only have one question for the author . .where is Mildren Wirt Benson's only daughter, Peggy Wirt, now?

5 comments about Glamour, Interrupted: How I Became the Best-Dressed Patient in Hollywood.

1. I too have had a kidney transplant 2 years ago for a different reason. Cojo's book shows how everyone is different and that the words "Thank You" just don't seem to be enough for your donor(s)and your family.
   
   Good reading - some funny, some sad but all true feelings!



2. Although the subject was serious, Steven Cojokaru dealt with his potential life ending illness just as he does most of his star reviews - like so much fluff and stuff. He is a divia and that is what came through
   here, not all the sacrifices made by a dear friend and then his mother. The book was barely average in quality.



3. This book was incredible. I couldn't put it down. I could relate to his anger, depression, and finally happiness. He really made me open my eyes to the issues I have at hand. I recently had major back surgery, and I went through all the emotions he did. (all though my wasn't life threating) I do not normally read these kind of books, but a friend told me to read it, due the fact that I was in a deep depression myself. He really made great light of a bad situation. I would recommend this to book to everyone.(which I already have)
   
   Thank you Cojo you really made me feel that things can get better no matter what the situation.
   
   Y. Schuck
   Pennsylvania



4. I have enjoyed watching Cojo on TV for years. His sharp wit always makes me smile. Since as he says he can't do anything without a television camera recording, it was a natural for him to write this book. What impressed me most is the honesty and personal experiences he shares with the reader. Sometimes I felt too much humor took away from his incredible story, but in the end it all came together. I already have an organ donor sticker on my driver's license, but I hope this book inspires many to become donors. Great job Cojo!



5. Only Cojo could turn his personal tragedy of being diagnosed with PKD into an entertaining, witty, and creative story! After picking up this book, I was a little curious about what the story would contain, considering that Cojo has already given us his biography in a previous book. I was also afraid that the story would be entirely too depressing.
   
   Boy was I wrong! I loved this book and wasn't the least bit disappointed. Cojo delivers in true Cojo fashion as he bares his soul and still keeps you laughing out loud, all while take you along on the journey of his own personal hell.
   
   I highly recommend this book to anyone who's a fan of the Entertainment Tonight fashion guru. This is definitley Cojo at his best! What an amazing and talented man!

5 comments about Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch: Tales from a Bad Neighborhood.

1. I loved this book, as you may have guessed from my rating... the author is alternately funny, touching, and insightful, sometimes all in the same sentence. A good read that you can pick up and put down without too much commitment- I like the vignette style which suits my "read a little before bed each night" style. Hollis had me laughing out loud more than once as I read this one... and that's unusual for me with a book. Funny stuff!



2. People compare Hollis Gillespie to David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell and even Erma Bombeck, and I love all those writers, but I have to tell you, I love Hollis Gillespie even more. Do not expect any cutesy little acerbic observations all packaged in a palatable wrapping. This book is raw, funny, enlightening and delightful. It is also sad, maddening and heartbreaking at times. In the end, you don't want it to end, and that is the sign of a good book.



3. I couldn't put this book down for the 2.5 weeks it took for me to finish it-- I've read lots of biographies and autobiographies, but hardly any of them ever captivated me the way that Hollis' twisted madcap humor and sarcasm filled outlook on her own life experiences did. Some of the instances I can't relate to at all or simply can't imagine it, other ones I related to perfectly...though I bet with these book sales she indeed has found her own true home after all, truly making it all poetic justice.



4. Ugh, she's friends w/ Sean Hannity's wife. Nuf said...



5. Hollis Gillespie is a modern-day...I can't even come up with a comparison. She is hysterical, and above all things, honest; at times, poignant, painful. The books are essay format, much like her column in Atlanta's Creative Loafing: collections of musings, incidents, and anecdotes from her colorful life. Her books celebrate life, friendship, and dysfunction, out loud, in the midst of cold, hard reality, as if to say: Everybody is broken, but somehow, if you find the pieces of yourself in other broken people out there in the Big World, you'll still be dysfunctional, but you just might be all right.
   
   Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch, the psuedonym by which she is known in her edgy, crack neighborhood (the price was right), is about finding her place in the world, and buying her first home in an up-and-coming (although not nearly fast enough) intown neighborhood in South Atlanta. She introduces her best friends, Grant, Lary, and Daniel, and relates their eccentric misadventures and relationships. She is brutally honest about her itinerant past, the broken dreams and dysfunction of her parents, an alcoholic traveling trailer salesman (Dad) and a bomb-building rocket scientist/hippie artist (Mom), who carted her and her siblings all over the world. In Atlanta, as an adult, she finds family in her collection of misfit friends, settles down, buys her first home...and continues her outrageous tales of life in her second book, Confessions of a Recovering Slut & Other Love Stories. (Buy them together!)
   
   Sherri Caldwell, co-author, The Rebel Housewife Rules: To Heck With Domestic Bliss!

5 comments about Ghost Light: A Memoir.

1. I can't believe how much time this author spent unsupervised in NYC. Memoir? seems a bit far fetched to me.



2. 
   Ghost Light by Frank Rich; Random House, 2001. New York.
   
   
   Frank Rich's memoir, Ghost Light, embodies the feelings of hopelessness and struggle one undergoes in childhood; Rich writes about these feelings with a wisdom that could have been gained only by experience. The author begins the novel with his early childhood, which rivaled "Leave it to Beaver" in the perfection and blissful ignorance in which he and his younger sister came to perceive as "normal." Somerset, Maryland was a typical 1950's suburban neighborhood, where new parents came to raise their families with high hopes of a new life filled with prosperity and contentment. While given all the props and the perfect setting to carry out a happy family life, Frank's parents "dropped in and out of the role of parents at whim, like novice actors improvising from a script still in rough draft." His parents did share an intense love of music however, and often incorporated it into the lives of Frank and his sister, Polly. He grew up listening to the captivating and consuming music of shows like South Pacific and The Pajama Game. Thus began his love of the shows on Broadway, and the escape they brought him later in life.
   All too soon, Frank's fairytale childhood comes crashing to an end when his parents introduce a new word into his vocabulary, one that had never been spoken about in a voice louder than a whisper in his sheltered neighborhood, and one that had been as shunned and feared as the plague all around the country: Divorce. In a new apartment, new neighborhood, and new school the young Frank realizes a new terror, insomnia. In the dark of his room, while all is quiet, Frank has no choice but to think about the gaping hole in his heart which family used to fill. These restless nights lead to an insatiable rage that fills him until he erupts in a fury of destruction and tantrums. Frank soon learns to internalize his feelings for the sake of his desolate and distant mother. Eventually Frank's mother finds a new man, Joel. His step-father is unlike any person Frank or Polly has ever met, he is loud, obnoxious, and demands the best of everyone. His own two children, John and Sue, are already familiar with the way Joel behaves when he doesn't get his way, but the first time Frank is hit for disobeying an order, he is shocked and dismayed that his mother married this monster. Along with the bad, Joel brings a great deal of good to Frank's life. He opens up a whole new world for Frank, taking spontaneous trips to town or overseas, demanding the best in restaurants, and most importantly, giving him the opportunity to go to the shows on Broadway and off, which later become Frank's life.
   Rich documents his life and his growing passion for theater, his only distraction in a house where he is never certain of safety. He narrates his own story as his new family moves to Washington, as he meets his first girlfriend, and is accepted into college. All the while theater keeps him going, he collects Playbills, listens to every musical record he can get his hands on, and gets a job in the local theater as an usher.
   This book personifies the feelings of anguish and hopelessness that everyone has felt at one point or another in their life and gives character to the universal joy of theater. I found this book to be unique in the blatant and honest portrayal of a child dealing with divorce and a violent stepfather in a time when things like that were not talked about publicly. Rich tells the story of an escape in theater that saved his sanity and preserved his faith in humankind.



3. This is a beautifully written, sensitive memoir of a painful childhood and coming of age. Anyone who has ever listened to the original cast album of a Broadway show and been transported in their mind to a theatre will find a kindred spirit in Frank Rich. Rich grew up in a home which had an abundance of material goods but also contained an abundance of pain. His love of the theatre and some lovely people he met along the way helped him to endure until he went away to college and his adult life.
   Mr. Rich was for many years the very astute theatre critic for the New York Times. He now writes incisive OpEd pieces for the Times. This memoir is very courageous in light of the private pain that it reveals which helped to mold this public man.



4. Ghost Light is a compelling memoir about the life of Frank Rich, the acclaimed theater critic for the New York Times and long time theater lover. The memoir commences when Frank is ten years old; he is living in Somerset, a model neighborhood. Frank's parents get a divorce and in this 1950s setting, divorce was something that was simply not acceptable. Throughout Frank's entire life, his parent's divorce affected him in so many ways. Frank was forced to move away with his mother and sister, Polly, away from Somerset, the one thing in his life that seemed regular at that time. Frank, his mother, and sister are constantly moving until his mother gets remarried to a man named Joel. Frank, Polly, Frank's mother, and Joel all settle down together in Washington, D.C. In the end, Joel proves to be abusive both physically and mentally. He beats Frank constantly and makes his mother cry every night. Although Frank does not realize this at the time, Joel turns out to be a very important person of Frank's life. Joel was a lawyer with many connections, especially with airlines. These connections allowed Frank and his family to travel all around the world, something that they would not have been able to do if Joel had not come into his life: "Each time Gypsy reached Tulsa's song, I tried to fill in more details in the story it told. What did the dance look like? How old was Tulsa? What did Louise and June look like? Did he ever get his nightclub act?" (110). Frank's writing through out the entire book continues with this curious attitude. Frank is constantly questioning the shows and aspects of his life around him. From all of his `curiousness' he is able to find more meaning both in the shows and in his life. Ghost Light is an accurate account of how a young boy's life was saved by the theater.
   Through all of the harsh changes in Frank's life, he always has a home at the theater. The theater became an obsession for Frank even before his parent's divorce. His father used to bring home records to Broadway shows, and Frank would sit and listen to them for hours, memorizing every lyric, imagining what the show would look like in real life. As Frank became older, the theater became a way for Frank to escape from the everyday traumas of growing up in a "broken home". As Frank's life gets more distressing, he relies further on the theater as his haven. Frank went into every little detail about countless shows, from Gypsy to The Music Man to Mr. President. Frank went into detail about many shows that I have not seen because they are no longer running and I thought that it was really interesting to compare the theater of today to the theater of the 1950s and 60s. As Frank grows as a person, his knowledge in theater also grows; he starts collecting Playbills to both shows that he has seen and others that he hasn't seen that were discarded in the trash. Frank starts reading Variety, a popular magazine filled with reviews of all of the current Broadway shows; he is able to get a lot of information about the shows from this magazine. Frank also reads the scripts of many of the shows. Following the theater so closely helps Frank have something concrete in his life since everything else seems to be changing so much.
   I thoroughly enjoyed this book. At times, it was a bit slow to read, and some parts were more graphic than I would have liked, but every time I picked it up, I got lost in the story. This book is a very intriguing account of a young boy's life in the 1950s which was very interesting to see what it was like, since I am a child of the next generation. Ghost Light taught me many new things about the theater that I had not known before. As a lover of theater myself, it was really wonderful to follow the theater in such an intricate way. I felt myself growing as a person while Frank did just the same. I would recommend Ghost Light to anyone who enjoys the theater thoroughly and would like to see it from someone else's eyes.



5. Frank Rich's boyhood story was touching, and I found I couldn't put it down! He gave a very good account of how the theatre saved him from a very loney and confusing childhood. I was fascinated with the parallels he saw in his own life and the characters in the plays he enjoyed so much. The story is told through the eyes of a child. Mr. Rich does an excellent job of providing details of life in Washington during the late 60's and the people he met along the way, and the influence they had in his life, good or bad. I look forward to his next book.

5 comments about The File: A Personal History.

1. This book was one you couldn't put down. It was such an interesting look into such an intriguing time. Especially contrasted against today's era of homeland security it makes you wonder what does go on in "civilized" countries.
   
   The insights from the informers, Stasi Agents, and MI5 are riveting. I am waiting for a book totally from their perspective.



2. In The File Timothy Garton Ash confronts the people who informed on him after opening a file that the Stasi kept on him during his time in East Germany (GDR). He gains access to the files of the individuals who informed on him to the Stasi and also to the informants themselves by first stating that he has a professional interest as a historian and secondly, a personal interest because they participated in keeping records on him. When questioning the informants he often inquiries whether they remember informing on him, how they became informants, what these informants felt about informing and themselves while they were doing it, and how do they feel about informing and the East German government now. Often when confronted the informants seem to want to project blame elsewhere. To them they either did no harm or they were just doing their job. It was the Stasi or GDR who deserved to be blamed.
   
   The only thing that within the book that I wish was done differently was the author's placing blame on people or to find them as either good or bad. The questioning of whether they felt blame or guilt was quite different then him asserting these characteristics on these individuals. Although it is unfair to fault him for this, his personal investment somewhat diminishes the historical, objective approach I desired from the book. I would have preferred him to allow the reader to decide for him/herself the guilty or not guilty verdict.
   
   The File is a historical analysis of one file and one person's experience with the Stasi and East German Government. Because the author is analyzing his own life there is a deal of personal bias when it comes to how an particular informant/person should be viewed, however, this does not diminish from the book. Instead, it offers greater insight into how this individual felt about the GDR, the role of the Stasi in East German society, and the role of the East German citizens as informants. Furthermore, the personal approach The File offers allows the audience to experience for themselves the emotions and events of the author's life.
   All in all The File is an excellent case study into East German Society, the East German Government, the Stasi and the experiences of a captalist foreigner residing temporarily within a communist government/society.



3. This well written book describes the author's encounter with the Stasi, the East German Secret Police. In the late 70s, Garton Ash worked, and for a short period of time, lived in East Berlin. Not surprisingly, he was under surveillance by the Stasi. At this time, East Germany had the most elaborate internal secret police system in the world. The Stasi itself had thousands of employees and an estimated 2% of the population of East Germany were informants for the Stasi. After re-unification, most of the Stasi files became available for review by the former subjects of Stasi surveillance. Garton Ash obtained his file, over 300 pages in length, and compares it with his recollection of events and the apparently extensive diaries he kept during this period of his life. He also sought out and interviewed several of the individuals listed in the file as informants for the Stasi, and the Stasi officers overseeing the informants. The result is an revealing look at the nature of life in a totalitarian state. The discussions of, and interviews with the former Stasi informants and Stasi officers are the most interesting parts of the book. These sections show well the mixture of intimidation, appeal to careerism, and even residual idealism about socialism that underlay the whole system. Even these revealing anecdotes fail to convey the extent of moral corruption that pervaded East Germany. As Garton Ash points out, he did not really suffer from the Stasi and as a Westerner, he could leave or be expelled. The unfortunate citizens of East Germany were trapped in failing society shored up by implied violence, systematic undermining of family and professional ties, and hypocritical lip service to Communist ideals.



4. This is essentially an internal adventure story: it is the story of one man returning to his past and revisiting his younger self by reviewing his East German security service (Stasi) file. Ash, a Briton, was a graduate student at Humboldt University in the late 1970s-early 1980s. As a foreigner in East Germany, he was monitored by the ever-thorough Stasi, which managed to keep records on millions of East German citizens as well. Reading his Stasi file (made available after German unification) forces Ash to remember incidents from his past and reveals to him the identities of numerous Stasi informants -- some of whom were his friends. Ash then visits these informants and confronts them with evidence of their collaboration. In perhaps the most interesting part of the book, Ash visits the Stasi officers in charge of his case.
   
   While Ash's writings caused him to be banned from East Germany, he was never imprisoned, nor was he subject to the depradations faced by average citizens of the GDR. Ash acknowledges that as a foreigner, he was always free to leave, and this makes his file less interesting than those of true dissidents. Ash describes, however, the story of an East German dissident who discovered that her own husband was informing the Stasi of her activities and discusses his friendships with brave East Germans who bucked the regime, and paid the price for it.
   
   This is not the definitive work on the Stasi. It provides some background of the agency, but if you are looking for a more thorough treatment, look to "Stasi: The Untold Story of East Germany's Secret Police," by John Koehler. This book is worth reading, however, to understand, through the file of one man, why men joined the Stasi and how the Stasi turned so many ordinary East Germans into informants. Ash also raises important moral questions about spying and intelligence agencies, which are relevant to free societies as well.



5. While this book provides detail to what everyone knows (the Stasi spied on everyone, including the sixth of the population that worked for it) it offers very little else. Missing is any sense whatsoever of the psychological effects of living in this kind of society or any kind of nuanced understanding of what it has meant to confront these files. Ash gives some small indications of what his own responses were, but as a Westerner who expected to be spied on for his activities, his experience is not very instructive. Garton Ash has many things to be proud of, but this book is not one of them.

5 comments about H.L. Mencken on Religion.

1. Even a cursory reading of this collection reveals interesting nuances to Mencken's views on religion that both fans and foes may have missed. It is soon evident that Mencken was more of a religious skeptic or agnostic than the atheist he was frequently taken to be. He certainly did not believe in a personal god, and believed that positive evidence for the existance of a god is unlikely to appear. Nontheless, he was willing to grant the bare possibility of a god. It would seem that like Sartre's grandmother, Mencken's scepticism kept him from being a thoroughgoing atheist.
   
   What really stirred Mencken's bile was the behavior of much of God's fan club here on Earth, many of whom he experenced as being at least intellectually dishonest (if not worse) and dishonorable. Mixed with this was a kind of bemused wonderment at the gullibility of the bulk of his fellow Americans, who seemed ever eager "to believe that Jonah swallowed the whale, or vice-versa." His early career as a Baltimore newspaper reporter observing the Christian nuisances pestering the skid-row bums (see his "Christmas Story"), 'working girls', saloon habitues, and all-around plain folk seems to have ground his rapier to a permanent sharp edge. Was he fair? I don't think he ever pretended he was. His mission, as he saw it, was to apply the lash of verifiable truth to the backs of pious frauds and their dupes. They were perfectly free to reply (and they did) using whatever sort of arguments or language they pleased.
   
   Still, he was not an "anthopophagous atheist of the sort who goes around scaring old ladies", as he once put it. In tones that curiously echo Santayana, he expresses fulsome admiration for the Catholic Church, finding the 'poetry' of the Mass to be enchantingly beautiful; and Church insistance that doctrine was for Rome to decide to be shrewd policy. More interestingly, for a man reputed to be a sour misanthrope, he formed real and lasting friendships with clergy such as Bishop James Cannon of the United Methodist Church--an ardent Prohibitionist! (Normally Mencken consigned Prohibitionists to the lowest circle of his Inferno.)
   
   If Mencken was neither terribly original nor especially profound on the subject of religion; still he--like Mark Twain--put the case for doubt in a frequently hilarious and unforgettable fashion that still serves to kick open otherwise seemingly-closed arguments and minds. This is probably a greater service to civilization than any number of tomes written by philosophers that fell dead-born from the press.



2. If we spoke of blacks and Jews like the other commentators speak of Christians, they would no doubt be blacklisted and widely renounced. As it is, Mencken offers nothing to the intellectual study of religion and philosophy except for an eloquent way to say he "doesn't like it." None the less, it would appear from the reviews of others that if you agree with Mencken's athiest world-view, you will indeed enjoy having him fuel you fire. For me, I like a little more philosophy and a little less rhetoric.



3. Considering most of the articles were written in the 1920s, one is shocked by how timely, fitting and appropriate many of his comments are. The rise of fundie thinking at the turn of last century lasted until the Scopes trial - which is brilliantly covered in this book. (Mencken attended the trial, and covered it with scathing wit) Then, it collapsed. it took the fundies until the late '80s, the 1980s that is, to return to their destructive power that they again hold in our society.
   
   This collection is entertaining, amusing and to some extent, it makes one angry. Why? because we are having to battle with half-wits, nit-wits, baptists, and other witless religions as they try to force their ideas onto others, just as they tried and failed before. Mencken provides an interesting slice of history, as well as a wonderful view of faith healing, the inability of the fundies to hold a rational thought and the dangers of religious leaders impacting political and social policy.
   
   I would strongly recommend this book for anyone thinking about home schooling or considering sending their poor offspring to a religious school. This book will help make up your mind.



4. An excellent read if you are looking for confirmation of the fact that all religious extremists are insane. This would, of course, include Muslim as well as Bible Belt loonies. Mr. Mencken was a long ways ahead of his time in recognising this and savages ALL religious dingbats, home grown or imported.



5. I've read numerous Mencken anthologies, and I think this one is the best. His commentaries on fundamentalist attacks on both evolution and the wall between church and state are as relevant now as they were when he wrote them in the 1920s and 1930s. Moreover, as anyone who's ever read Mencken can attest, the man was a brilliant stylist and frequently hysterically funny. Oh, how the man could write! In contrast to the intellectually lazy media hacks of today, Mencken is sound and fury signifying something.