5 comments about Gonzo: The Life of Hunter S. Thompson.

1. This is a very good book. I recommend it to any people who are inspired by Hunter S. Thompson. Good read.



2. You'd think that what is essentially a biography of one of the greatest writers in our time would at least be well written. It's not.



3. 
   I'm of two minds about this book. Hunter gave his life keeping Raoul Duke and the Gonzo image alive. Is it fair to draw back the curtain and peer into the wings after the last act? I don't know. I am a huge fan of Hunter's writing, and that is what is important. That's what Hunter would want us to cherish and remember. His brilliant prose did not come easily, it was crafted carefully, and arduously. All great writers benefit from great editing and criticism. Jann was a part of the process and seeks proper recognition for his efforts toward that end. Without Jann, and Rolling Stone, who knows what would have become of Hunter. Many wanted to believe that Raoul Duke was real, that he could just keep on tripping, forever young, and indestructible. Hunter Thompson was an addict, an alcoholic, a narcissist, and a user in every sense of the word. He was a troubled soul and an extraordinarily difficult person. His life was filled with enablers. Could he have written without them? Could he have stopped using? Sadly, his fans were his greatest suppliers, free drugs pushed at the addict from every direction, an impossible situation. I found it hard to read this and not feel we had all been complicit in his destruction by applauding his self-immolation. Would Hunter have wanted us to read this book? I don't think so. This book shows him to be just a pathetic and pitiful addict as a man, with all that entails. I want to remember the incredible talent and brilliance, not the clown act, or the drug addict/alcoholic, or the narcissist who was cruel and manipulative to most of those near to him. If you really want to know, read the book. Otherwise, read Hunter's work, and leave the man to rest in peace.



4. The truth is this man was difficult, selfish, irresponsible as a father and a husband and as an employee. I enjoyed like everyone else Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas but my admiration for this man is really limited after reading this book. I abide by the fact that it's important to be a good dad, to leave your children a good legacy both financial and emotional, and to me Hunter Thompson was important to himself only,that's the gist of it, face it folks, the man was not easy to live with, made so many people miserable, and quite frankly is not the stuff heros are made of.



5. This book presents Hunter Thompson, the good and the bad. Everything in this guy's life was extreme: his writing, his moods, his activities (drugs, alcohol, explosives, etc.). Frankly, my only negative comment about this extremely entertaining biography was Johnny Depp's overly saccharine introduction. Oh, how Johnny loved Hunter. I guess people don't want to speak ill of the dead, but, let's face it, someone who absorbs so many substances on a daily basis is not going to be Mr. Nice Guy all the time. Johnny all but canonizes the guy.
   
   I'm sure Hunter Thompson was a party animal extraordinaire. I admit it - I've daydreamed about hanging with Dr. Gonzo. This book will cure you of those pipe dreams PRONTO. His long suffering wife Sandy goes into depth about how it was to live with this out of control individual for 17 years. She typed his stuff, made the phone calls and kept the writing machine running and put up with abuse along the way. When her own sanity was at stake and she had to walk away, Hunter turned on her like a rabid dog.
   
   Hunter's son, Juan, also has a running commentary which is less explicit than his mother's. You've left with the feeling that there's a lot left unsaid. What struck me, as pointed out by his son, was how unusual (and from my view, selfish) it was for Mr. Thompson to shoot himself in the head while his family was in the house after he couldn't tolerate his pain and deterioration.

5 comments about Rain or Shine: A Family Memoir.

1. The author was a schoolmate of mine from Montana. I sent the book to another classmate knowing she would enjoy it as much as I did. She loved it! Pat



2. After reading her wickedly satiric THE SERIAL, I decided to spend some time with some other authors before diving into this. This one's the Pulitzer nominee, so I assumed something even more hilarious. Instead, I got reality. Still wickedly witty, but factual rather than satiric.
   
   (Same thing? Maybe. Don't make me think too hard or I'll never finish this review.)
   
   It's a very different animal, showing us that McFadden has quite a range. She lived a very interesting life with a very interesting family, and here it is. She's observant, insightful, clever, and well worth reading.
   
   I've read many memoirs and enjoyed them while I read them, then forgot them a week or a month later. Heck, I can't remember most of my own memoir these days. But this is a memoir I will remember. It's a great book. That's all I have to say. If you want to know why, read some other review. I know they're out there. I'm just agreeing with them, okay? It's what I do.



3. It's about time this book was back in print. In my opinion, "Rain or Shine" is the gold standard for memoir writing. I read it back in 1986 when it was first published (and a finalist for the Pulitzer that year) and reread it again just recently. Even though I have little or no interest in rodeo announcing, trick-riding, or the old (or even recent) west, I have an addiction to good writing. "Rain or Shine" is so luminous (and humorous) that it immediately captured my attention. And held it. This one's a sleeper. It would make a great movie. It reads like one already.
   
   The story of Ms. McFadden's parents, Cy and Pat Taillon, comes to life immediately and everything they do seems fraught with such passion and abandon that we know, before they even realize it themselves, that this couple will not end up in rockers at 80 talking about the good old days together. He's a rodeo announcer who likes a drink. She sublimates her own ambitions and becomes a trick rider to be with him. Early on, we are told by members of the supporting cast (chiefly, Pat's sister, Ila Mae, and Cy's best friend, Roy) that Cy and Pat Taillon are starcrossed and mismatched, recklessly piloting their Packard down Satan's driveway and taking their vulnerable little girl with them. However, we don't quite see it that way, as young Cyra is always in her backseat bedroom (they live in the car on the road), humorously showing us that there may be a little envy involved as Cy rises to the top of his game early and stays there. Slowly, the family begins to enjoy some measure of success. Inevitably, setbacks occur.
   
   The couple's eventual flameout is a shock, even though it isn't particularly unexpected or spectacular. One day, Cy Taillon simply unhooks his Packard from the family trailer and drives away, leaving mother and daughter sitting by the side of the road. As the Packard disappears on the horizon, Cy's "best friend" Roy materializes and hooks the trailer up to his car, taking both mother and daughter home with him. Roy has an ulterior motive. He and Ila Mae have been diligently attempting to wrest Pat away from Cy so that Roy can have Pat for himself. It works -- Pat's emotions and security are in disarray. She needs a steady hand, something concrete in her life. Cyra, on the other hand, is never fooled by Roy's betrayal and ulterior motive. She's astonished at how easily he stuck the knife in her father's back. Soon Roy and Pat are married and thus begins one of the most hilarious sections of this memoir -- life with Roy. In a reversal of lifestyles, young Cyra must now adhere to a strange set of rules and regulations intended to foster good health, including the proviso that each bite of food is to be chewed exactly 28 times "to get all the goodness out of it." It is clear, in her shaky state, that Pat has settled for Roy, who is about as boring as he is devious. But is Cy completely out of the picture? Ila Mae and Roy's plan to snatch Pat away and save her from eternal damnation looks like it has run into some kinks.
   
   Cyra McFadden was Cy Taillon's first born child, his namesake, a female replica of him. She was blessed with his almost-impossible-to-feminize name (pronounced "Sigh'-rah"), which is actually quite nice. He loved her and she adored him. Who wouldn't? Not only was he a respected, handsome man, he had the most soothing voice west of the Mississippi, possibly even west of the Atlantic. As a little girl, Cyra could be found at his side, a minature version of him in custom made cowboy boots, her father's jacket over her shoulders to keep her warm as he announced the cowboys. By the 70's, however, Ms. McFadden was marching for peace in San Francisco while her father was promoting the Vietnam war from the crow's nest at rodeos. They hardly spoke. When they last saw each other, father and daughter argued about racial intermarriage, politics and the whole range of topics that fractured families in the early 70's and still does today. After a long estrangement, they made up. On his terms, of course. Cy was a stubborn man, as stubborn as his daughter, and he now had a wife and two sons who treated him in a way his daughter couldn't, with blind respect. It seemed that, in the end, Cy Taillon settled for less just as his first wife had. I found it heartbreaking that, when he died a wealthy man in 1980, he erased his only daughter out of his life so thoroughly that his will, in which she was left nothing, arrived at her home postage due.
   
   Far from depressing, "Rain or Shine" is absolutely hysterical. Ms. McFadden seamlessly weaves actual correspondence into the text that not only advances the plot -- Ila Mae sends out a stream of letters full of moral judgment and condemnation -- but is screamingly funny. When it turns out that Ila Mae isn't exactly a tower of moral rectitude herself, the reader wants to say "I told you so!"
   
   Fans of Cyra McFadden remember "The Serial" from the mid-70's (a rich and enlightened left hook to the rich and enlightened folks in Marin County). She brings the same humor, airtight prose, and bullseye characterizations to the proceedings here as well.
   
   "Rain or Shine" is simply a classic.



4. The reference in the title is to the dedication of the author's father, a celebrity rodeo announcer, who never missed a day's work because of the weather. It's also a shorthand reference to the old song "I'm gonna love you like nobody's loved you. . ." Her book is not only a tribute to her famous father but an account of a difficult father-daughter relationship that soured from worshipful love to bitterness and eventually to a kind of grudging respect in his last years before dying in 1980.

   The book is also a family memoir, characterizing the lives of those awkwardly related to her by blood or marriage: the author's mother and stepfather, an older aunt and her husband, and her father's second wife. Each of them is as vividly drawn as the larger-than-life Western luminary at the center of the story - Cy Taillon, whose golden voice and gentlemanly manner won the devotion of rodeo cowboys and fans from San Francisco's Cow Palace to Madison Square Garden from the 1940s to the 1970s.

   Not surprisingly, what the author's story reveals casts her father in a somewhat different light, first as the hard drinking, gambling, womanizing ne'er-do-well who married the author's singer-dancer mother after a one-day courtship. Following the rodeo circuit out of a home base in Montana, they fought and loved each other passionately, a Scott and Zelda of the Western plains, and then broke up. Following a spectacular crash at an air show in Great Falls in 1946, at which Cy used the microphone to calm the startled crowd, he became the hero he was destined to become. Assuming a life of rectitude with a new devoted wife and two new sons, he was finally launched in the career rodeo people will always remember him for. Meanwhile, his first wife languished in a miserable second marriage, and his daughter grew up, loving her absent father deeply while stubbornly unwilling to come to terms with the man he had become.

   Thanks to the University of Nebraska Press for reprinting this wonderful memoir. It offers a fascinating window into the world of the rodeo circuit, at least as it once was. For rodeo-going readers, it does much to explain the evolution of the role and persona of the rodeo announcer and the elevation of rodeo cowboying into a kind of gallantry. It's also an entertaining story told by an author with a gift for both sentiment and satire. With her eye for the absurd detail, she can unerringly find the irony in an often rueful story. The many family photos are also a wonderful addition to the book.




5. Yay! Cyra McFadden's memoir is back in print! I had snapped up all the used hardcover editions I could find a few years ago when I heard it was out of print. But why?

   Because this slim memoir is the kind of story that unfolds in the reader's head like a gorgeously-shot film, one that's perfectly cast and shot on locations that evoke the internal emotions of its characters to stunning effect. Cher once actually owned the movie rights on this book, then I heard nothing more of it. Her instincts were right on. If there was ever a book that cried out to be adapted into a film or a play, this is it.

   McFadden grew up in the West, the daughter of Cy Taillon, a legendary rodeo announcer and his wife Pat, a one-time showgirl with charisma enough to match her husband's. Cyra grew up a little cowgirl gypsy, as the family roamed the Western rodeo circuit together by car in the 1940's.

   McFadden's eye for detail in regard to smells, sounds and her childhood consciousness is extaordinary, as is her realistic depiction of her parents' tumultuous love for one another that is the basis of the story and McFadden's adult questing. The smell of cattle, the sonorous voice of her father, the taste of all-hours road food and the touch of sequins on her mother's old costume gowns....this book is filled with details that will linger in your imagination for years. Old family photos accompany the text and they are intimate and haunting. All is told in a voice that is unsparingly honest, as well as sympathetic. McFadden cherishes her vagabond childhood and gives us a technicolor look at the richness of its place and time.

   Buy this book if you love a well-written memoir. Or buy it because you love the West. Buy it because you love cowboys and showgirls and all-night trips down dusty highways. But buy it, and many copies of it, because you will want your friends to experience its cinematic poignancy after the movie in your head ends.

   Obviously, one of my all-time favorite pieces of writing. Woefully under-read and underappreciated, I encourage English teachers to consider this in a curricula on memoir writing. It is lasting stuff.

5 comments about Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media.

1. A big thanks to Jeff Cohen for confirming that I'm not crazy. He "found inside cable news was a drunken exuberance for sex, crime and celebrity stories, matched by a grim timidity and fear of offending the powers-that-be -- especially if the powers-that-be are conservatives. The biggest fear is of doing anything that could get you, or your network, accused of being liberal." If you keep in mind, it's not news (never was), then it makes it easier to swallow. After reading Cohen's account, you realize that Walter Conkrite would never get hired today in the face of fools like Chris Matthews, Sean Hannity, and Biff O'Really.



2. I really enjoyed reading this book, and highly recommend it to everyone...especially people who don't really understand what a joke this all is..and how it became to be such a complete farce and and absolute threat to Democracy and so many other things sane human beings 'round these parts cherish.



3. A good read. Although the book felt a little short - I guess I'm used to novels - Cohen does get through his points without a lot of extra, unneeded pages. Some good anecdotes and references, and kept the story going at a good pace. You probably won't read this cover to cover in one sitting, but it still works read over a period of time.



4. An excellent insight into the inner workings of cable news. I had no prior understanding of the increadable bias that exists on cable TV news. I highly recomment this book!!!!



5. For anyone who watches cable news, Jeff Cohen's book is essential reading. He reveals how much corporations that own news outlets shamelessly distort the news. I hold this up there with Howard Kurtz's 2000 book "The Fortune Tellers."
   
   Cable news has harmed the world, and reading these books will show you one of many ways they do so.

No comments about Beginning to See the Light: Sex, Hope, and Rock-and-Roll. 2d ed..

5 comments about The Murrow Boys: Pioneers on the Front Lines of Broadcast Journalism.

1. Stanley Cloud and Lynne Olson's THE MURROW BOYS is very well researched and sourced. The writing is lively, and propels the reader happily forward. In this book, Cloud and Olson treat a fascinating and important subject that is largely forgotten in the contemporary world of news-as-entertainment.
   
   Edward R. Murrow had drawn together an erudite, talented group of thinkers and writers to form the first cadre of broadcast journalists. His crack team of radio reporters covered the tragedy and triumphs of what became known as World War II, in a way both immediate and personal, both intimate and emblematic, and above all literate. Occasionally, television journalism rises above popular tastes and pretty talking heads to inform and move the viewer on truly critical issues of the day, but never with the consistency and depth of insight of the Murrow Boys.
   
   The Murrow Boys, however, by and large shared a weakness with their later television counterparts: they were vain and egotistical, in short, "stars." Cloud and Olsen, aside from skillfully explaining the revolution in mass communications that radio journalism was, devote quite a bit of their book to the celebrity status of these prima donnas. This underscores the Murrow Boys' ultimate self-deception and hypocrisy: while they railed at the shallowness of television news production, programming, and personalities, they positioned themselves--each one out for himself--to grab as much limelight as possible. Ultimately, celebrity triumphed over journalistic integrity.
   
   Thus THE MURROW BOYs does come off as a fast-paced celebrity biography. As a celebrity biography, it is very successful: it is engaging and sophisticated. From that perspective, one might well treat it as one does an intelligent "beach read": light, entertaining reading that one does not have to hide.
   
   However that may be, the book gives one an appreciation for the significance of the Murrow Boys. Too bad, though, that the authors did not choose to include more text from the reporting of the Murrow Boys; that would have given the reader a greater appreciation of their eloquence. Better yet, a CD with some of these broadcasts would have made a nice accompaniment.
   
   And too bad that the authors did not choose to go beyond the Murrow Boys' celebrity to explain the impact of their reporting on the American public as well as how they may have helped to shape history. As an example of the misplaced priorities of the writers: There is an instance described late in the book about how Charles Collingwood was invited to North Vietnam in 1968 and how his reporting from Hanoi helped lead to the peace talks. This half-page is then followed up with three pages on the relationship between Collingwood and his wife, Rita, at this time.
   
   Despite these limitations, the book is still fun and informative. And it really ought to read as a reminder of the tremendous service delivered by Murrow's proud pioneers of the airwaves.



2. Written in lively and engrossing style, the Murrow Boys covers the salad days of Edward Murrow and his pioneering changes to war news broadcasts. Only after understanding how great a patriot and journalist Murrow was acknowledged to be in general public opinion, does it become clear how and why Murrow was able to take on Joe McCarthy virtually single-handedly. In addition, the internal politics of Bill Paley's CBS become even more riveting. So if you liked the movie, you will love the book.



3. What combination of forces put Murrow and "the boys" at the forefront of creating the style and format of the network news that is part of our daily lives? "The Murrow Boys : Pioneers on the Front Lines of Broadcast Journalism" by Stanley Cloud and Lynne Olson appears to promise an answer to the question. While the book is well written, exhaustively researched, and filled with anecdotes, Cloud and Olson fail to deliver any new insight. After an introduction which sets the background, the authors structure the book around one-chapter biographies of the newsmen, often succombing to the temptation of wandering off into the byroads of celebrity biography, losing overall focus. In many cases, such as the commentary on Howard K. Smith, the biography presented here pales before the honest, understated drama and insight offered by the subjects in their own autobiographies--as in the case of Smith's totally riveting "Events Leading to My Death." And when the last mini-biography has been recounted, the book ends. I'm reminded of Snoopy writing his novel and saying "In Part 2 I tie all this together." Except the writers never tie it all together. Thus, it is an well done book, and for those unfamiliar with the biographies of the players, it will be an interesting book. When one considers the historical information to which the authors had access, the book could have been so much more. None of the newsmen celebrated in this book would have closed the broadcast without cogent commentary into the meaning of these facts and anecdotes before closing with "Good Night and Good luck."



4. This look at the "Boys" who covered World War II for CBS radio is quite moving. I liked reading of Ed Murrow's battles with the CBS brass, and the portraits of William L. Shirer, Eric Sevareid, Larry LeSueur, Myra Breckenridge (the Murrow "Girl"), Charles Collingwood, etc. How odd that such talented journalists were often wracked by jealousy and self-doubt. How predictable that CBS eventually dumped most of the Boys - along with their high standards - after the advent of television. By forsaking such talent, CBS helped usher in the image-conscious, bleeds-it-leads mediocrity of today's news. Fortunately, Howard K. Smith, Shirer, Sevareid and several others left a rich legacy in books and memoirs, and at this writing one can still hear Richard C. Hottelet report for National Public Radio (NPR). This book should be required reading for all journalists and corporate news executives.



5. The names Murrow, Sevareid, Collingwood, and Shirer have created standards that have been forgotten. Thought has been replaced by good looks. Read this book to see how CBS News became a news operation of mythic proportion with brilliant, yet terribly troubled men creating such high standards that have become forgotten. (You'll see no one on your local five pm television news here.) For these men, the importance was in writing, not pictures. You'll also see how these legendary men were racked with insecurities and self-torture. It's also uncanny in terms of how each had a rise and fall at CBS. Sadly, it's all true. The authors didn't need to resort to poetic license. (Read other accounts of these figures and you'll learn that.) When you're done with this book, you'll wish Howard K. Smith or Robert Trout were still on television today. You'll wish that instead of having happy talk on the news, you had thoughful, intelligent people who respected their audience doing reports that provoked the viewer's intellect and not pander to him. Read how Howard K. Smith was fired from CBS, what prompted it way back then, and realize the standards have been steadily declining since then on all networks. It's an enjoyable, easy-to-read book that describes the creation and erosion of impeccable standards.

3 comments about Let Truth Be the Prejudice: W. Eugene Smith, His Life and Photographs.

1. In the mid-70's, I attended a slide lecture by Smith at Northern Michigan University in Marquette. I didn't know a thing about him, but the presentation haunts me still. He was helped onto the stage, a very old man, and quietly, he narrated the Minimata work in a slide show. The audience, a bunch of party school undergrads and townspeople, were completely silent the entire time. It was almost as if Smith knew that if the slightest emotion showed in his voice, his audience would be lost in sobs. He didn't editorialize, he just spoke, simply and quietly. At the end of the show, he put up one last slide. It was of a blackboard with the words in chalk, "Thank you, all you lovely people." It brings tears to my eyes almost 20 years later.



2. The life of W. Eugene Smith is none the less; inspiring yet depressingly so... A reflection of the truth in life, man and society.



3. In the fall of 1985 I drove down from Northern New Jersey to the Philadelphia Museum of Art to see the retrospective show of W. Eugene Smith's work for which this book was the catalog. I walked through the rooms and people stood in front of his Minamata photographs, weeping. Smith paid for those pictures with his eyesight, probably the better part of his sanity. If he drank before, the stories are that after his return from Japan he plunged into the bottle full-bore. If one can talk of a man's life and work in religious terms, W. Eugene Smith's career was a prolonged and self-willed crucifixion, a sacrifice in the name of a Truth that I'm not sure we're ready for yet.

   I haven't photographed seriously in quite a few years, but whenever I made a print, there in the darkroom I could feel Smith's presence saying two things to me: "You're lousy at this" and "Don't ever stop."

5 comments about Naked in Baghdad: The Iraq War and the Aftermath as Seen by NPR's Correspondent Anne Garrels.

1. National Public Radio's Iraqi correspondent Anne Garrels stirred an uproar in October 2007 when she aired a story based on information extracted by torture, propelling her memoir of the war's early days back into the spotlight. Garrels has remained controversial among American journalists for her ability to cultivate sources close to the insurgency and the Ba'ath regime. She was one of few Western journalists to remain in Baghdad after the American invasion, assisted by a taxi driver who routed her around the government restrictions normally placed on reporters. She transmitted stories to Morning Edition via an illegal cell phone, often broadcasting in the nude (hence the title) because Iraqi police would not barge in on an unclothed woman, buying her time to stash her equipment in the event that she was apprehended.



2. The only way this book could be enhanced is to have a CD of her broadcasts for NPR. Unfortunately I live in a part of the country where NPR broadcasts are hard to get and it could have made it even better. Unfortunately because I didn't get to hear the broadcasts I could only guess at their content from what the book mentioned. She writes well and seems to find the "hidden stories". Her husband's e-mails are a great voice from the other side of the correspondents life. Itr only adds to the pleasure that he is also a great writer. He had me laughing at some points I certainly hadn't expected to laugh. Overall though the book is great and highly recommended, however I'm sure it's even better if you've heard her NPR reports.



3. Enough good words have been said about the book. But ultimately, this book is not about the war. That's why readers who expected to get detailed war stories will be disappointed.
   
   It's about true journalism. Annie showed us the grace under fire, the courage to pursuit the truth, the genuine care for the people she reported on, and above all, the dedication to give a voice to the people who couldn't speak for themselves.



4. As a listener to NPR, I feel so much closer to Garrels after learning the backstory behind her reports from the trenches of Iraq. She has extreme skill and intuition at conducting herself in a foreign country, at making people willing to talk, at befriending the right people.
   
   I learned a lot about how much the Iraqi government practiced supression in the old regime. People were terrified for their lives if they talked to foreign reporters, and Garrels had to pay many bribes to get press credentials. When leaving Iraq, corrupt officials invent tests and fees for Garrels and her assistant to pay. Her stories humanized the Iraqi conflict for me--I met both crooks and good guys through Garrels.
   
   Garrels has a great storytelling style. She'll tell an anecdote and then end with a biting one line zinger. She's as taltened on paper as she is on the air, and I'll be watching for more from this amazing woman.



5. Learning Iraq from her is totally different than Television. This is another perspective to war. It is possible to find Iraqi individuals feelings about all situation. Book gives you Iraq before the war, during the war, and after the war. This historical event is explained very well. Book name comes from her naked reporting. Because, she was hiding her satellite phone from Iraqi officers. During the broadcast she reports naked and if officer comes she will say them she is naked and gets extra time for hiding the phone before open the door. Also she slips away from AIDS test due to her age.
   
   This is another must read book for Iraq war.

3 comments about Always the Young Strangers.

1. What can you say about Always the Young Strangers, other than it reads as well in 2004 as it did in 1953. Sandburg's look at his boyhood in Galesburg, Illinois has all the elements of opening a time capsule and looking back at the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
   I am most fascinated by Sandburg's relationship with the Krans family who lived outside of Galesburg on a small farm. The respect that Sandburg accords the Krans' sturdy immigrant spirit permeates the entire book. Read the description of John Krans' death at the end of the book. It brought tears to my eyes.
   Sandburg's shakey relationship with his father also attracted me to the book since I had the same type of relationship with my dad. August Sandburg never appreciated his son's writing talent. It took the mother, Clara, to nurture her son's mighty pen.
   When I worked there in the 1970's, natives of Galesburg would tell me how much Sandburg hated the city. Always the Young Strangers tells a much different story. The love that Sandburg had for Galesburg and western Illinois jumps off the pages of this book. What a great read!



2. Carl Sandburg's Always the Young Strangers is not a new book but that is what makes it such a compelling read. In an era marked by the popularity of the memoir, Sandburg's tales of growing up in Galesburg, IL at the end of the 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s allow the reader to hear a distinctive voice no longer with us speak again. This is not any ordinary voice either but voice of a poet clearly in love with words. Though his boyhood stories are simple, they are rich with detail that allow us insight into Sandburg's future as a poet and as a most notable biographer of Abraham Lincoln--in it, for example, Sanburg recalls attending a funeral procession (probably one of many held across the country in a time long before TV allowed the nation to mourn together as we did when JFK was buried) for U.S. Grant and watching from atop his father's shoulders as the various mourners passed. Clearly, this event, along with others he mentions, fed Sandburg's curiosity about the Civil War and led him to write his many volumes about Lincoln. If, like me, you enjoy autobiography and memoir, you will enjoy Always the Young Strangers.



3. If one hears the name Sandburg, the first thing to come to mind is probably "Fog" or "City of Big Shoulders." But in reading this wonderful memoir, we are reminded of what a fine prose writer the man was. The tale of his struggling Swedish immigrant parents finding their way in late nineteenth century America and young "Charley" as he liked to be called, as the name Carl marked him as a foreigner, is a fascinating glimpse of a bygone time and place. The interesting jobs that young Carl took on, such as traveling the back roads selling stereo-optican views, and his conversations with a civil war vet are rewarding and insightful. I believe this is a wonderful read for anyone with a love of biography, history, or simply good storytelling.

1 comments about The Making of FDR: The Story of Stephen T. Early, America's First Modern Press Secretary.

1. THE MAKING OF FDR: THE STORY OF STEPHEN T. EARLY, AMERICA'S FIRST MODERN PRESS SECRETARY tells of one of the most influential men in mid-20th-century America - the press secretary who got Roosevelt's image and message out to the press, helping shape his image and programs during the Depression and World War II. More than just another FDR biography, this highlights the actions and approaches of the behind-the-scenes man who helped not only publicize FDR, but furthered programs that were to change America. Any high school to college-level history holding needs this.

2 comments about A Sole Survivor: Bits of Autobiography.

1. This excellent collection of Ambrose Bierce's writing, organized to replace the autobiography he never wrote.

   BUT, this is certainly not a biography. Bierce is not always fun to read. If you're looking for a fun biography, look elsewhere. If you've read enough of Bierce's writings to know what you're getting, give this book serious consideration.




2. This is the first book where the reader is taken through Bierce's life in his own words. From his experiences in the Civil War until his mysterious disappearance into Mexico in 1913, "Sole Survivor" tells Bierce's tale through his stories, newspaper work, and personal correspondence. A must-have volume for anyone interested in the great American journalist and author.