5 comments about A Drinking Life: A Memoir.

1. Hamill is the type of author that is becoming an extinct breed. He writes New York City just as well as anyone, and this book is raw and honest in all the right ways. I truly enjoyed reading it and will "forever" keep this on my shelf. Alcohol takes a backseat to his own life, but his ability to recognize his need for change is truly moving, even if it is in an untraditional way. All walks of life can indentify with this memoir and I consider it a must read.



2. Pete Hamill may be a good newspaper reporter, but he "buried the lead" with the title of this memoir. It has actually very little to do with drinking--at least the kind of egregious, alcoholic drinking that Fitzgerald did--and unless the author is not telling the whole story, it's not about alcoholism. Maybe it wasn't meant to be, but then, he shouldn't have called it "A Drinking Life".
   
   Aside from the fact that I found neither the story nor its style to be particularly compelling, the main problem is the author's lack of self-reflection. There is no agonizing over his problem, no soul-searching, no cataclysmic event in which a moment of clarity leads him to sobriety. It's as if he decides one day that he's allergic to peanuts and decides to give them up. In which case, there really isn't any story here worth mentioning, at least about drinking.
   
   Carolyn Knapp's "Drinking: A Love Story" is a much better first person account about alcoholism, and "Angela's Ashes" is one of the best books ever written on the insidiousness of alcoholism as a family illness.
   
   However, if you're looking for a memoir about an NY Irish kid who grows up to be a reporter, this might be the book for you.



3. I've seen a few people who have already reviewed this book bemoan the fact that Pete Hamill doesn't spend very much time going into great detail about the problems he dealt with as an alcoholic. How could he name his memoir "A Drinking Life" when it's not riddled with lurid tales of alcohol-induced drama? It's titled "A Drinking Life," I think, because it chronicles the portion of his life that happened while he was a drinker and surrounded by drinkers. The ending is dramatic because suddenly - poof! - he doesn't drink any more. Drinking problems usually creep up on people and are hard to shake; in Hamill's case, his drinking was inevitable, and the abrupt way he dropped the habit is remarkable and commendable.
   
   Oh, and the guy knows how to string words together.



4. Pete Hamill's memoir/autobiography eloquently tells the story of a drinking culture. It is set in New York, in a poor Irish immigrant neighborhood in the 1940's. Much of the story is similar to his bestselling novel Snow in August in that a boy comes of age in an environment that values ignorant thugs over curious students, corner bars over libraries, fighting over communicating. With few sober, involved fathers, most boys grow up in a household led by a mother with too many children who ends up working a menial job just to put food on the table while the fathers spend their wages in the bar. While I assumed that Snow in August was largely based on his own neighborhood and upbringing, after reading this memoir, it's amazing just how closely one mirrors the other. So the story moves through Hamill's life from boyhood through adulthood and marriage; the constants in his life seem to be running away from who he is (or seeking sho he is?) and drinking in order to deal with it. Though well educated and clearly bright, his use of alcohol as novacaine for life is not much different than his father's. Hamill wanders the world wherever his writing career will take him whereas his father only wanders the neighborhood. Still, they're both wanderers who use alcohol to forget, pretend, hide. As a young boy, he's wildly into comics, and he has this fabulous line: "Comics taught me, and millions of other kids, that even the weakest human being could take a drink and be magically transformed into someone smarter, bigger, braver. All you needed was the right drink" (10). Wow. What a commentary on the culture of alcohol or escapism or altered reality. This is a great book.



5. I love this man's books. I felt like I was there growing up in New York with him. So engrossing. So lovely.

2 comments about The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.

1. if this were not a land of liberty. I think every senior in high school should read this book though.
   
   I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, (Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. ILLUSTRATED. Published by MobileReference (mobi))
   A lot has been inferred about this great man's views of religion and politics, but letting him speak for himself has enlightened me the difference. I wonder if I am a member of that sect, "the Dunkers" that he mentioned.
   
   Reading this book and having it available at an affordable price is a great use for the Kindle.



2. I bought this book, the first book for my new Kindle 2, based on the great reviews and I was not disapointed. Humorous and wise, I amazed at his cleverness and detailed travels, his morality and his overall wisdom. This has sparked my passion for reading and learning about our country and the founders of it.

5 comments about Travels with Herodotus (Vintage International).

1. As a person who loves to travel, and who has lived in places where he didn't understand the culture and/or language, I could completely relate to Mr Kapuscinski's experiences portrayed in the first few chapters of this book. The dismal feeling of an inability to function effectively, the struggle to learn how to act local, etc. Beyond the first few chapters, though, my enjoyment of Travels with Herodotus waned rapidly.
   
   Mr K bounces from country to country, sharing smatterings of anecdotes, some interesting, others not so much. He then bounces to a story from The Histories which doesn't appear to be related to these personal experiences at all. It's altogether possible there is linkage between Mr K's travels in the 1950s and Mr H's writings from ancient Greece on some different level, but I was too groggy to catch them. That's unfortunate, but typical of my experience reading this book.
   
   Mr K feels Herodotus was more of a journalist than an historian; he retrospectively draws and relays lessons from The Histories relevant to his own career as a journalist - e.g., learn from first-hand experience, or directly from someone who was there. This is all fine and dandy, but doesn't necessarily equate to a riveting read, and didn't require summaries from The Histories to pad an undersized walk down memory lane (although these provided some of the better reading).
   
   A star for the first part; a star for some fun reading selected portions of The Histories... as an overall work, though, I didn't see the point, and can't recommend it.



2. 
   This is the title of the last chapter of this, the last book written by journalist, traveler, poet and philosopher Ryszard Kapuscinski.
   
   It is an excellent and a beautiful book, one that resonates on many levels, all at once.
   
   In 1955, Kapuscinski, an aspiring journalist in the oppressive post Stalinist environment of Cold War Poland, applied to go abroad. What he had in mind was a trip across the border to neighboring Czechoslovakia - anything farther afield seemed all but unthinkable.
   
   Instead, his editor sent him to India, and after that to China and one exotic destination after another. He took along a copy of The Histories, by Herodotus.
   
   Travels with Herodotus chronicles a lifetime of travels as the author juxtaposes his impressions of a world he could never have imagined from the confines of the closed Communist society of the fifties with the ancient explorer's first encounters with countries and cultures on the fringes of classical Greek experience.
   
   This is a deep and very well written book. Credit here must also be given to translator Klara Glowczewska for her artful rendering of the original text in English.
   
   The following snippet conveys something of the author's sensitive powers of observation along with his deft and clever description:
   
   "The paintings of Confucian artists depict court scenes - a seated emperor surrounded by stiff standing bureaucrats, chiefs of palace protocol, pompous generals, meekly bowing servants. In Taoist paintings we see distant pastel landscapes, barely discernable mountain chains, luminous mists, mulberry trees, and in the foreground a slender delicate leaf of a bamboo bush, swaying in the invisible breeze."
   
   Perhaps I was particularly seduced by this book as I read much of it on the African coast overlooking the Gulf of Guinea. But I think not.
   
   It's one of those books that will just captivate you, and will take you away...



3. I didn't know Kapuscinski before reading this book, so I cannot comment on the man's journalistic reputation. This book is really an amalgam of two books. One part is made of commented passages from The Histories of Herodotus. The other is the actual travelling of Mr Kapuscinski around the world as a journalist. The title is misleading because the places where the author travels are work assignments from Communist Poland, not a free journey that he planned in order to retrace the steps for Herodotus. Except for a brief visit to Persepolis and Egypt, they have no connection whatsoever with the Greek historian. He is first sent to India and Afghanistan, then China, Congo, Ethiopia, Algeria and Senegal. So don't expect it to be a voyage of discovery of the ancient world. It's not.
   
   The writing style, well the English translation at least, is engaging, gripping even. On the other hand, I was displeased with the author's poor knowledge of the places he visited. He doesn't understand the difference between Hindu (the religion), Hindi (a modern language), Indic (an ancient language and script) and Indian (general term) and talks about 'Hindu script' and 'Hindi writing system', or Buddhism being a 'Hindu ideology'. He talks about Chinese hieroglyphs and alphabet instead of pictograms or ideograms or just characters (hanzi, as they are known in Mandarin). He describes Kwangtung province (now spelt 'Guangdong') simply as "a place infested with crocodiles" - a rather distorted and limited view when we know it is, and has long been, the richest Chinese province in every sense of the term (economically, culturally, linguistically, ethnically).
   
   In the last chapters about Senegal, Kapuscinski expresses his aberrant opinion that Africa would be a more developed place today if the Europeans had not taken by force their strongest and most capable men to make them work as slaves in the Americas. Doesn't he know that African tribes enslaved each others and chieftains sold excess slaves to Europeans for profit ? If anything it only made these African chieftains richer. However you look at it I don't see how the lack of European interaction with Africa could have made it a more developed place now. Besides, the slave trade with the Americas only concerned a small stretch of coast in western Africa, a tiny part of the continent. Mr Kapuscinski also believes that the Senegalese descend from the ancient Egyptians.
   
   When commenting on the Greco-Persian wars, he keeps reminding the reader that it is a war between Europe and Asia, rather than just between Greece and Persia. I do not understand this standpoint considering that both the Greeks and the Persians were Indo-Europeans in language and culture, and that there were many important Greek settlements in Asia minor, including Herodotus' home town, Halicarnassus. Greece is not Europe, and Persia certainly does not represent all Asia (go tell the Chinese that they are Persians !)
   
   Apart from such weird commentaries the book is well written and enjoyable. I preferred the part taken from Herodotus. I made me want to purchase The Histories, which I think I would enjoy more because it is four time the size of this book and not tainted with someone else's opinion.



4. The absolute best travel books for armchair travelers like myself are the true fish out of water journeys. *An African in Greenland* by Michel Kpomassie immediately comes to mind. This is a story of a guy from Togo who decides he simply must visit Greenland after reading about in a book he accidentally obtained, and did it. In the Greenland book we have a narrator who is himself fascinatingly different than the reader (me, for example) writing about a place that is also unimaginably different than the places I know.
   
   *Travels With Herodotus* is similar in some ways, especially when Kapuciski makes his first journey from communist Poland to India; but as the book continues Kapuciski becomes a savvy, seasoned traveler (although he never loses his sense of wonder).
   
   When he starts out on his journeys he is given a volume of Herodotus' *Histories* and throughout *Travels With Herodotus*, as a sort of interesting gimmick, he muses about *Histories* throughout this volume, often juxtaposing ancient history / travel observations with his own contemporary experiences. I thought this technique worked well and made the book doubly interesting.
   
   His observations and writings are always fresh, unique, and well seen. This succinct book is captivating. Most highly recommended.



5. The Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski was one of the great journalists of the Twentieth Century. His beat was was the newly emerging nations of Africa and Asia. As a Pole during the Cold War, Kapuscinski had access to places that few Western journalists could visit. He was an immensely gifted writer who left us vivid portraits of peoples and nations leaving behind the the colonial world and disorientedly entering into the modern age.
   
   While traveling to the far reaches of the developing world, Kapuscinski's favorite travelling companion was the ancient Greek historian Herodotus. Kapuscinski closely identified with the ancient historian and traveller. Carrying his copy of "The Histories" with him, Kapuscinski spent many years teasing out the meanings and themes found in the book. In many ways, Kapuscinski saw himself as a modern day Herodotus visiting the world's obscure corners and bringing back to his readers what he had learned and experienced.
   
   "Travels with Herodotus" starts conventionally enough as an autobiographical tale of a young journalist leaving Poland in the late 1950's and visiting the newly independent nations of Asia and Africa. But as the book moves forward, the autobiography recedes and a literary appreciation of Herodotus begins to more fully emerge. Kapuscinski's portrait of Herodotus is heart felt and well written. However, as a long time reader of Kapuscinski, I wanted to learn more about him and I was dissapointed to see the character of Kapuscinski fade away. Nevertheless, "Travels with Herodotus" was a pleasure to read. Recommended.

5 comments about Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century.

1. This is a very strong work by a very strong artist. Even though it is a latter work of his, it's a great place for someone new to or for someone who has never heard of HST to be formally introduced. On second thought, no one has ever made it past page 1 of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and not finished it. That's his best work. Maybe this should be the second HST volume you read...



2. The is the best writing I have ever read from Thompson. This book reflects the very meaning of Gonzo. A must have for every Thompson freak.



3. My grandson is getting into reading and this is just the mind expanding material he needs to become a thinker.



4. Make no mistake the late, lamented Hunter Thompson was always something of a muse for me going way back to the early 1970's when I first read his seminal work on outlaw bikers, The Hell's Angels. Since then I have devoured, and re-devoured virtually everything that he has written. I have reviewed many of those efforts elsewhere in this space. As I noted recently in reviewing his 2004 work Hey, Rube, a screed on the misadventures of a gambling freak (himself), not all his efforts have been equally compelling. That was the case in my panning of Hey, Rube but here we are back on much more solid `gonzo' style from the old days. Maybe it is because this work is in the form of a memoir and thus intentionally places the good Doc's actions in the center of the writing that puts this effort in the mold of his better compilations like the Great Shark Hunt and Songs of the Doomed.
   
   Thompson uses his patented stream of consciousness trope to create amusing stories starting from the then present (early 2000's) and his then current doings and splices them together, in some segments randomly, to events as far back as his childhood in Louisville, Kentucky. Along the way we find him at age nine in trouble with the FBI, and none the worst for the confrontation. Later, it is down and dirty in Rio with the crazies. Throughout, we find him incessantly testing his beloved guns and various `hot' motorcycles at various and sundry appropriate and inappropriate times.
   
   Additionally, we have some compelling and insightful stories as this radical journalist tours the news breaking global spots, taking trips to places like Vietnam just before the fall, Cuba, Grenada just after the invasion and elsewhere wherever the journalistic action might be and a story, in the Thompson style, might develop. Needless to say there is plenty of ink about sex, drugs and rock and rock including his deeply affecting and traumatic tangle with the law in Aspen the early 1990's. That, my friends, was a close call.
   
   And throughout, as usual, there are pithy political comments about the various idiots-in-chiefs, their henchman and hangers-on that he spent his life hammering. Maybe not hammering your way, definitely not my way, but his way. His fateful run for Sheriff of Aspen on the Freak Power ticket in 1970 probably accurately set the tone as a lifelong description of his politics. For those who have read other works by Thompson some of the signature language may be old hat as he meanders along in this volume. For others it is a chance to learn the lingo. Damn, especially this election year, I miss him. Read on.



5. Mr Thompsons autobiography is somewhat lacking compared to his other works. It seems, that he in his later years didn't have that much new to say, and this volume shows it very clearly. It deals with the legend of HST, not the man Hunter Stockton Thompson, and only plays the same tune that we've been hearing since F&L in Las Vegas, only in a strongly diluded form.
   
   A great drawback is that he recycles a lot of stuff from his earlier work, which if you're a fan/reader of his you can't help but feel a bit cheated about. The book isn't that long as it is, but when half the material already has been printed before, and therefore probably, for fans at least, is on your shelf already, it gives the feeling of the good Mr Thompson not really making an effort writing this volume.
   
   It's not all bad though. There are highlights in the book. His description of his childhood is enjoyable and very biographical. The last chapter is also very enjoyable, although not that good as biographical material, it does for a good reading.
   
   It starts out legitimate enough, but quickly turns to his rambling and at times incoherent style of writing. Worth reading if you're a completist. I would recommend the compilations of his letters "The Proud Highway" and "F&L in America" as biography instead. They are much better.

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

1. The book arrived earlier than anticipated and in excellent condition. I purchased it for my father who was a Navy gunner in WWII. He has many memories and enjoyed this book immensely.



2. 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.



3. 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.



4. 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."



5. 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 comments about Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found.

1. Jennifer Lauck reminded me what it feels like to be a child. Her remarkable descriptions allowed me to enter into her world as a child, and I remembered the long-forgotten child within myself.
   Her book is a gift. Her strength and courage are an inspiration. Her writing a delight and revelation.
   I read memoirs all the time and this is one of the best. Because I work with children coping with loss, I can unequivocably say this book is a must read for anyone who wants to understand a child's experience of a world that is filled with loss and pain.



2. Just as I thought that I'd read everything about bad childhood, there comes an amazing memoir, Blackbird, by Jennifer Lauck. It's heart-wrenching beyond words, except that she manages to tell the story of her early childhood (ages five to twelve) without melodrama. Just the facts. Just the untainted view of a child who knows only her own life, who cannot imagine a "normal" life, starting with her daily full-time caring, at age five, of her very sick mother (e.g., washing and replacing the pee-bag a few times a day.) In spite of her weak state, her mother is loving, and the bond between them is strong.
   
   The tragedy of Jennifer losing her mother at age seven is only met by the devastating untimely death of her father of a heart attack before he is even forty. Jennifer, at age nine, is left as the burden of her new stepmother who is close to the embodiment of Cinderella's mother's open partiality for her own three children. Having revealed to Jenny that she had been adopted in the first place, her older brother, wrapped in his own angst, isolates himself from her. To read of the horrific events, I couldn't help screaming in my head that the stepmom should have been jailed for child neglect and endangerment.
   
   Ms. Lauck's prose is fabulous and fluid, and the voice of the child and the many details keep propelling the story forward. This is one rare book that I have been unable to put down and stole every free moment to read on until I stayed up half the night to finish it.
   
   And to think that the next book, after Jennifer is "rescued" by her aunt and uncle, is awaiting for me takes my breath away.



3. The moment I begin to read a page, I could not stop.Most of the time I was caught in surprise. Each chapter gives a poignant picture of a child who exhibits outstanding strength and unconditional love for her family.
   I found myself hugging the book at two in the morning..



4. This title was rec'ed for me after I purchased "The Glass Castle," which I found to be a well-written and moving memoir. I read about 30 pages of "Blackbird" and put it down; I almost didn't start again, but decided it just had to pick up before long. I finished it in one more sitting, waiting the entire time for the story to engage me, which it never did. Clearly the author had an unusual life, with more than her share of tragedy, and I would have found the facts about it interesting and poignant had I read them in a news or magazine article. The problem was her writing style. It was clear and coherent, but it was also, for me, amazingly flat. To borrow from the film "Beetlejuice," it read like stereo instructions, or perhaps like a journal kept by a high school-aged girl for a creative writing class. I was aware of the poignancy of the things that were happening, and undoubtedly felt sincere sympathy that anyone should have to go through what she did; but it was intellectual sympathy. The author's style made her seem so disconnected from the events of her life that I ultimately was, too.
   
   "I opened the door.
   I saw this happen.
   Then that happened.
   My eyes traveled over there, and I saw that.
   I left the room.
   I knew I would never feel the same again."
   
   That was the tone for the entire book. At first I thought it was just plain bad writing, which does indeed make the best seller list with surprising frequency.
   
   Then I read the Q & A with the author in the "Reader's Guide" appendix, where she discusses the "dangerous writing" technique. This explained a lot, and here's my take on what's "dangerous" about it: if you never leave the present tense and report entirely on the surface, it may be therapeutic for you and it may give a basic coherence to your narrative, but it lacks the poetry and emotion that provide depth and perspective, and unite you with your reader. The flat reporting style almost works in the very beginning as she tells about her earliest memories. The problem is that it never changes, even as she grows older. Her five-year-old "voice" is too old to be realistic and her 12-year-old (or whatever age she is at the book's end) "voice" is too young. And while she may have indeed been intellectually and emotionally frozen all that time, and who could blame her one iota, it does not make for the most engaging writing. When voice and perspective are unvarying, there's no sense of context, and I'm still old-fashioned enough to think that every good piece of writing needs one.
   
   Augusten Burroughs' writing has the same effect on me: it's told from such a sterile and distant place that I can only relate to the occurrences from afar. There's no magic in the words that compels me to really enter into the experience with the writer.
   
   Obviously his books sell very well, and many people love them - and judging by the bulk of the other reviews here, the same is true of "Blackbird." But it really didn't work for me as a successful memoir - it was an astonishingly flat read and I have to say I wouldn't reread it or recommend it. I feel somewhat like Attila the Hun for saying this ("Okay, you had a hard life, but you needed to tell it with more *feeling*!) but I don't imagine Lauck would care much for a pity-review. That much about her did indeed come across. :-)



5. I really enjoyed this book and blew through it in a few days. My only complaint (and why I didn't give it 5 stars) was that I feel the author made herself wayyy to smart for her age throughout the book. It was a memoir, so maybe she was smart, but I just felt that the way she portrayed herself in the book was always smarter and more quick witted than the majority of kids her age are.
   
   Other than that the book was great! I would definitely recommend it!

5 comments about Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America-and Found Unexpected Peace.

1. I appreciate how honest Lobdell is to share his experience. He definitely knows how to quote scriptures and knows what kind of experiences Christians have. Like him, I have been Christian all my life. As I am getting older, I start to have doubt. I am scared of the doubts and I blame myself for not having enough faith.
   The Catholic scandal opens my eyes. As a Protestant, I don't know much about those Catholic doctrines. Those priests use those doctrines to replace God's commands only makes me to have more doubts. I am lucky I am not a Catholic.
   I still want to believe in God. I hope God will somehow miraculiously save me from losing faith. For the time being, I need more time to rest. I can't force myself to use will power as faith anymore.



2. The thesis of this book is that God does not exist because, among other reasons, Christianity does not work--it does not make people any better. "If the Lord is real, it would make sense for the people of God, on average, to be superior morally" (271). Lobdell offers three major examples that they are not: Catholic priests who abuse children (abetted by their supervisors who cover up such crimes), corrupt televangelists, and Mormons who shun ex-Mormons.
   
   As a whole, however, the book is cast as a memoir describing Lobdell's own experience with religious faith over a period of about 19 years (1988-2007). On page one, the author describes himself as a reprobate, a 27-year-old man who has abandoned one wife without divorcing her and impregnated another woman without marrying her. He is unhappy with his life and his job. A friend counsels him to go to church, and so he does.
   
   Over time, he finds friends at church, strengthens his marriage, improves his health, and lands a better job (14-15). He attends an evangelical mega-church for about 10 years, changes to a progressive Presbyterian church in 1999, begins taking classes to become a Catholic in 2001, but completely loses his faith by 2006. Toward the end of the book, Lobdell describes himself as a "reluctant atheist" (269).
   
   The careful reader will notice that Lobdell was also a reluctant Christian for most of his life. Reared a nominal Episcopalian, he notes having heretical thoughts from childhood (6), finding church boring (7), deeming God unattractive (8), and being thrilled at 17 when he could stop going to church, sleep in, and have his Sundays free (7). So much for his youthful Christian experience.
   
   Ten years later, his life in shambles, he tries church again. But his motives are not entirely selfless--he expects the divine blessings to flow (26), prays for money and a better job (26, 31), and still likes to keep his Sundays free (14, 55). He prefers to keep his faith "private" (45) so no one will think less of him.
   
   Lobdell's description of his Christian journey strikes one as a bit fishy. It appears rather intellectual since he usually talks about it in terms of reading books, taking classes, and engaging in nominal volunteerism (13-14, 26). He attends church, but not on Sunday (55). He is loath to tell his colleagues at work he is a Christian (13) and, overall, considers the evangelical church he is attending to be a "simplistic" provider of "self-help" (54).
   
   The tell-tale evidence that his church involvement was minimal and superficial is found in this sentence: "We stopped going as a family one day and slipped away. Nobody noticed. That was the blessing and curse of belonging to a mega-church. No one knows you've arrived and no one realizes when you've gone" (54). That's like saying, "No one on the team noticed when the starting right tackle didn't show up for the game." Genuine, committed Christians simply don't make such statements. People at church notice when the active members leave after ten years.
   
   So much for Lobdell's mature Christian experience. It's little wonder he basically loses his faith over the next three years. One suspects that it is his job as a religion reporter rather than his spiritual angst that actually prevents him from opening acknowledging his lack of faith for yet another five years.
   
   Losing My Religion reads easily--like a feature article in the Sunday newspaper. It certainly contains insights into the foibles and paradoxes of American Christianity. But condemning Christianity because of predator Catholic priests is like condemning capitalism because of Bernie Madoff or condemning socialism because of Stalin. Greedy televangelists and rogue Catholic priests are hypocrites, not genuine Christians. And no one was harder on hypocrites than Jesus.
   
   Lobdell says of his disbelief, "Faith can't be willed into existence. There's no faking it if you're honest about the state of your soul" (244). I agree, but I would also say that atheism is not so much a logical inevitability as it is the product of a certain cast of mind. William Lobdell, by his own admission, has always had a skeptical cast of mind. Indeed, I would describe his "loss of faith" simply as a reversion to the mean. The youthful reprobate has matured into the middle-aged apostate.
   
   What I find interesting about this book is that Lobdell's own life seems to contradict his thesis. After all, his Christian years did restore order to his life and shore up his family relationships. He seems slow to admit that. It is as if the reprobate finds that, after he has matured, he no longer needs the help of religion to keep his life in order. After having exploited Voltaire, Frederick the Great famously said, "You squeeze the juice out of the orange and discard the rind." Lobdell's book, in the end, seems to me equally selfish and ungrateful. In the end, his current atheism (affording "unexpected peace") appears as self-serving as was his splash into the wading pool of Christianity.



3. I read this book after hearing an article about it on NPR sometime last year. And it didn't disappoint. It seems to be a rather uncommon type of book, one in which the author expresses all the reasons - based on personal experiences, some deeply heartfelt - why he goes against the pro-religious belief forces within society, his upbringing, his friends, his church, etc. There are, of course, other pro-agnostic or pro-atheism books out there, but this one reads less like a philosophical or intellectual treatise, and instead is more emotional and based on experiences, gut feelings, and perceptions of common sense. And admittedly, one's heart cannot help but be moved at least a bit by some of the author's accounts, such as the clergy sex-abuse scandals. The author is a good writer - his journalism background shows clearly here - and his writing style is engaging, interesting, and draws the reader in for a prolonged stay.
   
   Though the author's movement toward non-belief appears genuine and rather convincing, I wonder if certain aspects of it were arrived at too hastily, or without considering other key points. For example, large majorities of humans throughout every age and walk of life - from the early Egyptians onward, if not before - have believed in some version of God and/or spiritual beings, and an afterlife. If there is no God, then why is this? The author should explain. Perhaps it is something biologically rooted in humans - a "spirituality gene" built into us for a selective advantage. However, the "wisdom of crowds" argument suggests that anyone with atheistic beliefs should at least consider why the instincts of most human beings (both ancient and modern) have largely been in the other direction. Even if there is a "spirituality gene", that by itself would not negate the possibility of God.
   
   Another issue is the author's conclusion that, based on his new non-belief, death must mean the end of all consciousness and existence (p. 250 of the book). To be more convincing on this point, the author should address the numerous near-death-experience reports which abound in the medical literature and, of course, in popular books. As most readers may know, these reports suggest (but do not prove) something strongly contradictory to the author's conclusion. Perhaps an atheist or agnostic would dismiss the near-death-experience reports with an organic or scientific explanation, but such theories are addressed in the literature and have generally been unsatisfactory in explaining the phenomenon.
   
   Also, I think the author is on a bit of shaky ground in ascribing some of his non-belief to his having witnessed various abuses within various organized religious practices. These things are indeed reprehensible, and churches indeed sometimes do bad things and/or fail to live up to our expectations. However, for some reason I am not able to make the intellectual leap that, because churches and their members often are fallible, that must mean that God does not exist, or probably does not.
   
   I'm not saying the overall conclusion of the book should necessarily have been different - these are just some points to consider. Regardless, this is a thought-provoking read, and despite my counterpoints above, I would be willing to recommend it.



4. Like the author, I spent years earnestly living what I thought was a devout life, and like him the deeper I tried to go into my faith the further away from it I found myself growing. My own feelings about religion aside, I'm not interested in reading people's polemics against it. This book tells an honest story that spills the guts of religion without rubbing one's face in it - and I appreciate that very much. Lobdell has given me words to express my own experience very well: "I find myself being more grateful for each day and more quickly making corrections in my life to avoid wasted time." And my breakfast tastes better too.



5. This is the kind of story atheists relish, but I found it to be neither new nor enlightening. There are, after all, many Americans each year who claim to have either found God or who have found freedom in rejecting him and religion in general. There's no point in denying that stories of people finding God just don't sell (nor should they, necessarily). Haven't we all heard it before? I decided to read Lobdell's book to see if it offered anything new or insightful. Alas, it didn't. It's not a bad read if you're into agonizing, soul searching journeys of disappointment, but as a believer, I found there to be very little substance, nor did I find any reasons to question my own beliefs. Lobdell's observations aren't new, or, as I said, substantive, but more of the all too common loss of innocence that are found in too many of these yarns.
   
   I'm no psychologist, but I have noticed that many of these stories seem to be more about peoples' need to deal with their own decisions and to wipe the proverbial slates clean. Those searching for God tend to be of little interest to publishers, mostly, I assume, because there's little to take in that hasn't been seen and heard many times before. Ever since Augustine, and before, we've had to bear the anguished views of truth seekers. Some find God and some don't. Some find religion and then reject it. And some reject it and then find it difficult to flush from their systems. And these books, for some reason, find an audience, even when they're not particularly good.
   
   Camus and others (mostly philosophers) raised much better objections to religion, in my view, though it's interesting that Camus began to strongly doubt his own conclusions about religion just before his death in 1960. I find most modern works to be based on ridicule and a "prove it" mentality. What I read in Lobdell's book is that his early conversion to God was shattered by his experience with religion. That he didn't know that organized religion (in but few exceptions) were two whores short of Babylon was in itself surprising. That he didn't know that people used religion to make money, destroy their enemies, amass power, cover up their own foul deeds and, in short, fulfill all of Christ's warnings to future believers was, to me, also a bit shocking for a modern journalist.
   
   Lobdell does raise the primary weakness of Christianity, which is the necessity of a blood sacrifice, but wasn't the sacrifice of Jesus the entire idea behind the sacrifices of the ancient Hebrews and before, Christians ask? Or is it that God hates animals or enjoys the smell of burnt offerings? Why did the Jews up to Jesus' day sacrifice lambs without blemish. And what of Isaiah's prophecy in Chapter 53? Religion is more than just "feelings," and debunking it a bit more of a job for philosophers rather than journalists. Lobdell's work is more of a very long paper on "Why I Stopped Going to Church and Found Freedom in Rejecting God." If you like such books, go for it. But don't expect anything new or fascinating. Pick it up at the library if it intrigues you, but I doubt anyone will want to add it to their own library.

5 comments about A Writer at War: A Soviet Journalist with the Red Army, 1941-1945.

1. Grossman's dispatches from the front, spanning the time from the battle for Stalingrad to the capture of Berlin, provide the reader with a vivid sense of what it must have been like to have been a soldier in the Soviet army during that time. Sometimes Grossman chronicled the life of the low ranking soldiers, living as best they could in horrendous conditions, facing death and misery for years on end, caught between the Germans and the paranoiac Soviet political enforcers. Sometimes Grossman reported stories of the high ranking generals, sometimes the tank crews, artillery men, the snipers or the female night pilots. All in all, one comes away with the feeling of having a much more intimate, ground-up view that war.
   
   What also surprised me was the honesty of Grossman's reports and, largely due to the popularity of his accounts, his ability to write with much more freedom about the negative aspects of the Soviet army as well as the positive.
   
   Finally, it was during Grossman's reports on the discovery of the death camps, as the full scope of holocaust becomes clear to him, that his voice reached its greatest strength and power. I have read no account of the holocaust that made it feel more real or more personal than did Grossman's account.
   
   Get this book. Read it.



2. This is a review of A WRITER AT WAR: VASILY GROSSMAN WITH THE RED ARMY, 1941-1945. This is less an integrated narrative than a collection of Grossman's field notes from his service with the Red Army during WW II.
   
   To me, that made it both interesting and valuable as a research tool. Grossman made no pretense of being a "Soviet Hero", but the men he described and the ground they covered together are certainly heroic in their magnitude and impact on future generations.
   
   Grossman wasn't really a soldier. He was scooped up the by Red Army and shown how to fire a pistol and then sent out as a correspondent for the Red Army's newspaper. He did a great job covering the titanic maelstrom of battle on the Eastern Front. In that sense, he puts you inside the head of the average Red Army soldier wearing his characteristic headgear, the ultra-practical (for cold weather) Ushanka.
   
   Grossman is at Stalingrad. Grossman is there when the first Nazi concentration camps are liberated and his eyewitness of account of Treblinka is still evocative to the point of being painful to read.
   
   Although this isn't a narrative description of Grossman's service on the Eastern Front, it does a great job of describing it. Given the intensity of some of Grossman's experiences, I can see why he was never able to put his memoirs together in a conventional narrative form. The editors have done us a great service making these vignettes available to readers interested in the Eastern Front, the Holocaust, WW II, Stalingrad or any of the other major battles Grossman covered.
   
   I liked A WRITER AT WAR and gave it five stars.



3. An excelent book and recording of the count-less lives and experiences which unfolded as the Eastern front took it's course. No other book I've read gave so much insight to the millions of little stories that each person involved endured and sacrificed. I've read may accounts from the German side but not so many Russian, this is a new angle for me, and the scale of terror and human cost is better shown than ever expected



4. This book offers an interesting insight into the writer Vasily Grossman and contains a fine selection of some of his best writings during the war. A worthy publication that brings an important writer to life.



5. I purchased this book after reading Grossman's tour de force Life and Fate. This work consists of random snippets from Grossman's notebooks and correspondence as he traveled with the Red Army from 1941-1945. These snippets are placed into historical and geographic context by the translators of his work.
   
   At times, the text is captivating and at times horrifying. At others, it seems merely random and poorly organized. The chapter detailing the liberation of Treblinka and Grossman's interviews of the witnesses and survivors was chilling and was read into the record at the war crimes trials at Nuremburg.
   
   All in all, this book is a worthwhile read for anyone having an interest in World War II, the Red Army and war in general. Casual readers may not enjoy the experience.

5 comments about Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media....

1. What a fantastic book! In a clear, easy to read style, John Stossel opens up his life to the reader and explains how he went through the realization in his career that government is not the solution to problems, government IS the problem. This is a very convincing, first hand account of the author's career as a TV journalist, trying to get to the bottom of events affecting consumers, and their ultimate cause. It is entertaining and persuasive, a great read.



2. I travel back to the '80s in a time machine. Parking it behind some bushes, I wander onto my old college campus in Vermont. There I encounter a group of my college buddies. They stare at me wonderingly, noting my resemblance to my younger self. Remembering a scene in Back to the Future Part II, I say that I am my own father. Then I say that I have a rare power - the power to tell the future. They smile at me, a crazy middle-aged man, indulgently. There are about five of them, all college kids who listen to alternative music. I know them well, each one of them, but - after thirty years - I'm startled by their appearance. They ask me some questions about the future. For instance: what is the political scene like?
   
   I know they are all familiar with ABC's 20/20 (on the air since 1978). I tell them that in the future this show has an anchorman called John Stossel. He tends to criticize the government.
   
   They playfully react: "Wow! The future rocks!"
   
   After all, they live in a time when the media steadfastly refuses to criticize our elderly president, known lovingly as "The Great Communicator." There are rumors that the government plans to censor rock music, or at least label it. And our "Teflon" president has ties to the Moral Majority, a religious group which condemns all manner of sexual and social freedom. He is promoting a "Just Say No" campaign against drugs which exaggerates the dangers of recreational drug use. There can be no doubt in my friends' minds that the government is pure evil.
   
   Not just the government - these are desperate times in general. Most young people live in some degree of fear of nuclear annihilation at the hands of the Soviet Union. We don't support the escalating arms race, because we foresee that it will only worsen geopolitical tensions. While there are some who support leftist rebels in Latin America, most would not go so far as to defend communism. We know that, as Americans, we enjoy more personal liberties than Soviet citizens do. With our crazy hairstyles, our creative sexual practices, and our flirtations with male and female androgyny - and recreational drug use, we enjoy this freedom to the fullest. It is our moralizing government that threatens to end the party.
   
   I tell them that this journalist on 20/20 is wildly unpopular due to his anti-government stance. Upon hearing this, they roll their eyes. Typical. Republicans won't tolerate criticism of the government. Even now, there are rumors that the Reagan administration is practicing unconstitutional surveillance of private citizens to identify youthful rebels who dare to criticize the government. It's just like that popular song: "Every Breath You Take." It's really about surveillance; we know this. Some of my friends claim that the FBI is taping their phone conversations; they can hear the tell-tale clicks when they're talking on their phones at home. My friends are exaggerating, of course - trying to appear cool.
   
   No, I tell them. This guy, Stossel, gets the most criticism from the liberals of the future. My friends stare at me in confusion. Their "A Flock of Seagulls" hair-dos are ruffled. The earrings on their left ears (never the right!) catch the light as they wait for an explanation.
   
   I clear my throat. "The liberals of the future have a problem with people criticizing the government." They just stare at me uncomprehendingly.



3. This book is commendable for its veracity. It represents one journalist's world view being mugged by facts and reality. Anyone who is or wants to be either a reporter or politician ought to read this diary first. It seems to be an open, honest journey of one, very visible TV reporter.
   OK, that is the good news. The bad news: the writing is very sloppy to the point of being useless.
   I detect at least 3 very different, mutually exclusive threads:
   1) libertarianism. He has seen enough of the world to make a reasonable claim to this `-ism'. It is good to see this powerful political position verified by the real world.
   2) everything you know is wrong. A TV reporter can slant a TV news story to his will, and our perception of reality is, by and large, molded by what we see on the evening news.
   3) polemic and rhetoric.
   Sadly, the author randomly jumbles up all 3 threads throughout his book. It is difficult to know which of the 3 threads you are seeing when you come across a particularly interesting section in the book, affecting an important area of your beliefs.
   As such, yes: it is very important to read, but my recommendation is lukewarm at best.



4. John Stossel is a throughly undistinguished man with a tiny, vindictive mind. For years he was a Geraldo Rivera want-to-be but he never quite mastered Jerry's nauseating fake machismo and swagger. He makes up for that by braying like an old woman in books like this. His claim that he was "the scourge of the Liberal media" is pathetic and laughable. Stossel has fallen on hard times since his 20/20 glory days and has now become Bill O'Reilly's official shoe shine boy over at FoxNews. If you admire Anne Coulter, Sean Hannity, Glen Beck, and their stellar journalistic standards of "fair and balanced" you'll love Johnny Stossel.



5. John Stossel is a very entertaining person to listen to. He knows how to speak to his audience very well. He will tell you that he doesn't know everything, but he helps the average american by using his resources to find out what is RIGHT. He is someone in the media that actually understands morals and what's ethically right.
   I gave 5 stars for this book because I enjoyed reading about John's journey through his media career, and his discoveries along the way. Good, Quick, Entertaining, and Easy to Comprehend.

5 comments about An Education.

1. As the majority of people who are currently reading An Education, I became interested in this book only because of the Oscar-nominated version of Lynn Barber's affair with an older man - I simply wanted to know if there was more to her story than shown on the big screen. In some ways, there was.
   
   The movie is based on just one chapter of this very short book and, I have to say, the movie makers took quite a few liberties with the story. To my surprise, the real affair wasn't quite as dramatic as portrayed in the adaptation and the heroine wasn't quite that naive or that in love with the man.
   
   As far as the rest of this memoir goes, I probably would have never picked up this book, simply because I have never heard of Lynn Barber before. Barber is evidently a known in some circles interviewer and a journalist. Maybe I am wrong, but aren't you supposed to be a famous person to write and publish an autobiography, otherwise who would care to read about your life? I don't mean that An Education is a bad book, but it is the type of book that any person could write. This memoir is not particularly detailed or mind-blowing, but a succinct story of Barber's life which is pretty much ordinary. It contains a few anecdotes about her affair with a much older man, about her promiscuous youth, of her work at "Penthouse" and other publications, and of her marriage. And that's about it.
   
   Pretty much An Education is an engaging and short life story of a totally insignificant person.



2. I found this book interesting and engaging. It was a quick read that entertained me for an afternoon. I especially appreciated the way the author described her feelings and relationships with her family, and showed how those feelings educated her in her life.
   
   I won this book as part of the Goodreads giveaway program.



3. this is a great little book. Lynn Barber has had an interesting life which she shares with the readers in an engaging and humorous manner. Not overly long, this autobigraphy(ette) is just enough to pique your interest.



4. I picked up this book because it is the basis for the acclaimed film of the same name, which I have not yet seen.
   
   I soon learned that the movie is only based on one chapter of the book -- the most interesting one.
   
   In addition to the short chapter about her affair with an older man, Ms. Barber writes of her pretty normal life. She went through a promiscuous stage, went to college, got jobs, got married, had kids. It's not a bad life. But it's not particularly interesting, and does not make for a great book.
   
   Ms. Barber's career was interviewing interesting people. But that does not make her own life very interesting.



5. I read this in about two days during one of the busiest weeks of my semester. This book moves quickly; Barber wastes little time in describing each event and uses (relatively) spare language, yet the prose is beautiful and had me in tears at one point. Very little of it was used in the movie of the same name, but so much the better--what comes after the Simon story was much more interesting to me. Maybe I felt as though I could relate to Barber so I just liked her, but at every turn she comes across as self-aware, funny, and wise. I loved this book, and 5 days after I finished it, it's still in my head. My only regret is that I wish it had been longer.