No comments about Henry Hotze, Confederate Propagandist: Selected on Revolution, Recognition, and Race.

4 comments about On The Road With Charles Kuralt.

1. I've never seen Charles Kuralt on television. This book is my only experience with him, and that may explain the review that is to follow.
   
   This is the most insipid, cheese-ridden pile of bushwah I've even had the displeasure of picking up. Perhaps Kuralt has an indefinable quality that somehow brings some authenticity to the words that are printed on these pages, but the material itself is just terrible.
   
   I was reminded of a Simpson's episode in which Bart Simpson wins admiration from everyone by peddling schmaltzy "human interest" stories on a children's news program they've started. Now, the fact that I watch Simpson's and am criticizing Kuralt may be indicative of a generation gap that is the root of the problem, but I don't see how anyone of any age could give credence to the heavy-handed moralism that Kuralt trots out, not just occasionally, but in virtually every single segment.
   
   A truly do appreciate the value of nuanced, small town life and the individuals who dare to go against the grain in some way. But is it necessary to spotlight someone who has given their nine children rhyming names (Terry, Sherry, Jerry, etc.)?
   
   There's something about Kuralt's line that seems insincere. Clearly, at times, he's stretching to find greater meaning in something that is maybe a little interesting, but ultimately meaningless. This leads me to think that all of it is insincere, that Kuralt is going to find the cuteness and greater meaning in everything, truth be damned. Even aside from the heavy-handed schmaltziness, it seems like a lot of the people portrayed in this feature are being capitalized on. Some of the people will certainly be ridiculed by most of the viewers; at any rate, they have had their quirky individuality processed and used for the very corporate interests that they flout.
   
   If you are a fan of Charles Kuralt, I think that the tv segments that you fell in love with should probably be where your love affair ends. Kuralt may be a winning personality and a good salesman; if that's true, I recommend that you stick with the news broadcasts, where you can enjoy him as he grew famous: a little bit at a time.



2. Charles Kuralt had the gift of seeing a story in the littlest thing. He took the thread of everyman's life and wove a tapestry of America and then gave it as a gift to us.



3. After reading this book, I felt a sense of renewal and satisfaction that there are still candles lending their beams to the world. I picked up this book for a report at school. I thought that it would be just another boring book that we are often forced to read in school. Wrong-O! I loved it! From the team that had lost every single one of its games to the train depot that served soldiers during WWII, I found myself emersed in each of the stories. Each of these average Americans had a not so average story to tell...



4. This is a wonderful book that recaptures the many stories from his on the road segments for TV. He finds the most interesting people and places; his stories tell of the inner passions of ordinary people. Another great book with similar stories--and great pictures--is Positively Connecticut by Diane Smith. She says she was inspired by Kuralt's work.

   Terry

3 comments about The Journals of James Boswell: 1762-1795.

1. I know John Wain is a credible Boswell scholar, but I do not have this edition of the Journals. I do have a complete run of the journals, a dozen or so volumes, of which I have read every word. In my mind, Boswell is easily the most astonishing diarist of all time. The clarity of his self-analysis is almost startling, I truly feel more acquanted with him than almost any person I know in person. Additionally, if you have any interest in history, sociology, or philosophy...Boswell knew and acosted almost everybody you've heard of from the 18th Cent. Got drunk with Hume while Dave was on his deathbed, screwed Voltaire's wife...his adventures, drunk or sober, are unending. I picked up the London Journal twenty years ago in a used book store and from then on it was like eating peanuts. This collection seems like a good idea for those who want a taste of the whole.



2. John Wain condenced 17 volumes of autobiography into this taught, energetic, flowing narrative. I was captivated!



3. James Boswell has been called everything from an engaging gentleman to a vicious scoundrel. A true man of his times, Boswell combined naivete with crudity, tenderness with violence, courtesy with thoughtlessness, enthusiasm with snobbery, true religious feeling with wanton depravity.

   But how can so many contradictory traits exist alongside each other in the same man? And how does that man see himself? This selection of Boswell's journals attempts to answer that question. Editor John Wain tells Boswell's story in Boswell's words, through excerpts from his journals, letters, legal pleadings, and published writings. We learn about his love life (in some detail), his marriage, his career, his impossible relationship with his domineering Whig father, and his emotional struggles in writing the _Life of Johnson_. We also get a concrete feeling for Boswell's emotional instability, his sense that he would never be good enough for his father (and he was right, unfortunately), and his tremendous guilt over his infidelity.

   This book is an excellent introduction to James Boswell. I definitely recommend it.

1 comments about V. S. Pritchett: A Working Life.

1. An outstanding biography, and a worthy successor to Jeremy Treglown's previous books on famous English novelists. Pritchett wasn't much of a novelist, but as a short story writer he attained the sort of sterling reputation that nearly went out with Queen Victoria. Even as he grew older and older (he died at age 96) his skills and powers grew and grew, and the books he wrote in his seventies are probably his best.
   
   Pritchett married twice; his first marriage, to Evelyn, collapsed after years of bitterness, and later he married Dorothy, the "marvellous girl" of his fiction. Unfortunately their fifty year union was often marred by him having numerous affairs and her being a heavy drunk who, finally, turned to this newfangled thing called AA in 1957 and it really helped her. And finally when he got too old to cheat, they attained their happiness all over again. Some of their early letters have that obscene James Joyce-Nora Barnacle tone to them--very rousing.
   
   You wouldn't believe how many women wanted to have sex with him! For he was not very attractive--a little man, round as a billiard ball, with funny teeth and a total narcissist who would, of course, being a writer, make life difficult for you afterwards by writing you cutting letters or painting horrid portraits of you in his fiction.
   
   There's a lot of high-toned gossip passing for insight: "At the Vienna Hilton, Victor and Dorothy were kept awake by violent quarrels in the adjacent bedroom between the playwright Eugene Ionesco and his wife."
   
   And some of the most amusing contretemps in the biography arrive from the differences in American and British usages of our common tongue. When an earnest coed at Smith College confided that she was an "English major," Pritchett did a double take, telling a friend that mentally he "decorated her with moustaches and gave her gout."
   
   Hitchcock fans will go bananas when they learn of the extent that Pritchett changed the script of THE BIRDS, when a disgruntled Hitch asked the visiting English prose master for some revisions to Evan Hunter's script. Treglown claims that at least one major scene was written entirely by Pritchett, and any number of smaller script changes and character developments. Annie, the school teacher played by Suzanne Pleshette, given more grit to make her less "goody goody," and Melanie Daniels now makes references to a childhood with unsatisfactory parent figures in order to balance out the (possibly over-Oedipal) relationship between Rod Taylor and Jessica Tandy. In addition, Hitchcock apparently toyed with the idea of making a film version of one of Pritchett's 50s short stories, "The Wheelbarrow." Or was he just toying with Pritchett to get him to produce more pages on THE BIRDS script? Hard to say. But anyhow I've read dozens of books on Hitchcock and THE BIRDS and never once heard anything about the involvement of V.S. Pritchett so this was a real coup for Treglown if you ask me.
   
   Elsewhere Sir Victor doesn't come off so heroically. Treglown details a trip the British Council paid for, sending Pritchett and Vladimir Nabokov to India in 1960. The awful truth is that neither great master could tolerate Indian people, their soft-spoken voices, which could so easily be mistaken by the lordly ones for obsequiousness. Nabokov shouted out in the hotel bar that "there is a Russian phrase for their [Indians'] writhing whispering manner which, translated, is 'working your finger up your arse without soap.'" Of course both VN and VSP had a vulgar streak and their trip to India brought it out of both of them in a thoroughly unpleasant way.
   
   Treglown states that Harold Pinter learned his way of sketching out mood and character from similarly oblique strategies of Pritchett's, but gives no evidence of why he says this.
   
   His relationship with THE NEW YORKER in the 1950s and 1960s is fairly grim, though one hand washed the other, and Pritchett became known as a British writing genius through his association with the magazine. Roger Angell, the New Yorker editor, totally censored all the sexuality out of Pritchett's stories, and the magazine's policy precluded any favorable allusion to homosexuality, so odd when you consider the parade of gay men and lesbians who worked so hard for the magazine, putting their queer shoulders to the wheel. It's a lesson in social history I suppose, but it makes for difficult reading.
   
   The only reason I don't give this one five stars is that he never really convinces me that Pritchett is anything other than a fair to middling writer. It seems as though, since his death, Pritchett's reputation has diminished. I'll try some of the books and make up my mind myself. That much Treglown has done for his subject, aroused the curiosity of a new generation of putative readers.

4 comments about The Education of a Yankee: An American Memoir.

1. I had tried for a long time to get this book. The service that was provided by Amazon was great. It took less than a week from the time the book was ordered till it was in my hands. This is a superb autobiography. I regard this book as must reading for anyone who enjoys Yankee Magazine and The Old Farmer's Almanac.



2. I had tried for a long time to get this book. The service that was provided by Amazon was great. It took less than a week from the time the book was ordered till it was in my hands. This is a superb autobiography. I regard this book as must reading for anyone who enjoys Yankee Magazine and The Old Farmer's Almanac.



3. Very well written humourous and moving account of a remarkable family and a young boy who grew up to become quite normal in spite of it.Captures theunique qualities of rural Washington county Maine residents very well indeed .Great book!



4. For those of us who search for first-rate autobiographies, Mr. Hale has given us a rare gift- a fascinating account of his growing up in a most unusual setting, even by the standards of New England eccentricity. Raised by loving, extremely wealthy parents who abided by - and built a community based upon - an ahead-of-its-time Swiss educational philosophy, Mr. Hale enjoyed a mostly halcyon boyhood which Tom Sawyer would have envied. There is a dark side to his life as well, and Hale doesn't shirk from the harsher realities. This is a first-rate read - a genuine piece of Americana by the editor of Yankee magazine.

2 comments about Terror on Highway 59.

1. Seller's documents the torture and corruption in San Jacinto County Texas in the eighties. The use of Chinese water torture by the Sheriff's department brought in the Federal government because the local and state government would do nothing. What makes this book most relevant is that many of the same corrupt practices are going on in 2006 in the County. ABC 13 news reported in 01/17/05 "Deputy stops man for traffic violation, but ends up seizing his cash and jewelry", if your a person of color driving up Highway 59 the robber you encounter might be the local law. The book exposes the coziness between judge and prosecution that is endemic to small-town Texas justice. As stated in an internet archive "This is imaginary law," (as stated by a Professor Gillers), "this is not real -world law. This is Alice in Wonderland law." when referring to a current district judge. The importance of this book is that it is the basis to understand what is unbelievably current corruption and cronyism which seems to go back to post civil war reconstruction. It is inconceivable to find that this level of government corruption and abuse exist in 2006 yet one must read the work of Steve Sellers to understand that this is how such communities survive. A great read if you can find it.



2. A very good book about the San Jacinto County sheriff's department. This book spells out in detail the tactics and antics employed by the San Jacinto County sheriff's department on High- way 59 . Their activities eventually brought on investigations by the federal government. The use of the Chinese water torture is explained in detail by the author. It is also shown that out of town traffice was targeted by the San Jacinto County Sheriff's Department. The star of this book was Sheriff Humpy Parker.It is also shown how the federal investigation brought about the downfall of the Sheriff's Department,Sheriff Parker, several deputies, as well as a former State Representative(Jim Browder). A very good book. Be sure to read it.

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

1 comments about Blood and Banquets: A Berlin Diary 1930-38.

1. I was very much looking forward to reading this book because I am very interested in the Jewish experience during the Holocaust. According to the cover summary, Bella Fromm was a Jewish journalist who moved in very exclusive Nazi circles, while in the background managed to save hundreds of non-Aryans. Again according to the summary, she is a very charming character, and once interrupted a Goering anti-Jew speech to remind him that she was Jewish, whereupon he said he would decide who was Jewish. This book is her diary, which chronicles her experiences from 1932 to 1938 in Germany.

   Unfortunately, I did not enjoy this book at all. The cover summary is very misleading in many respects. Although Bella Fromm was indeed a witness to the rise of Nazi power, her diary entries are very detached as a general rule. One gets no sense of Bella Fromm as a person. Her diary entries are merely a description of parties and events she has attended, with very few editorial comments. In addition, there are so many characters coming and going, that the reader can't keep track of them all.

   In addition, the comments regarding Goering's speech and his interactions with Fromm are completely false! Although Fromm does state that Goering did make this comment once (that he would decided who was Jewish), it had nothing to do with Bella Fromm. In addition, the claims of her savings hundreds of lives are only mentioned in passing. Only 2 or 3 sentences in the books actually refer to these claims, and give no detail at all about how they transpired.

   I still gave this book a 3-star rating because I feel it is important to remember what happened in the 1930's and 1940's. And there are several poignant stories in the book about the treatment of non-Aryans. However, I was rather disappointed by this book, because I had high expectations.

   I guess you can't judge a book by its cover....

4 comments about The Camera Never Blinks: Adventures of a TV Journalist.

1. This is a great insider's perspective into network televison. For those potential readers who are blinded by religious dogmatism and a belief that most journalists are liberals who want to destroy America, may be this is not for you.



2. Dan Rather writes excellent stories, including those which are completely fabricated. Take the new "memo" which Rather seemed to have come across. Not only was the memo found to be false, but Rather is a suspect for writing it. Rather should resign and at least keep his dignity, and rid the american public of at least one liberal news anchor.



3. The Prologue tells about the time DR was at a news conference and was asked by President Nixon "are you running for something?". DR replied "No sir, Mr President, are you?" (a classic response to an accusatory question). Nixon had a habit of diverting or asking for a repeat to give himself more time (p.10). But this interchange gave DR a reputation, and recognition.

   Chapter 1 is about his beginnings, and learning journalism at Sam Houston State Teacher's College at Huntsville TX. DR grew up in the Houston area, the oldest in the family. His father read a lot of newspapers. His college professor didn't "teach", he gave them assignments and kept them writing stories. Learning by doing certainly worked for DR. The rest of this chapter has interesting stories about his college life. Chapter 2 has DR at a CBS affiliate TV station in 1961. The most important ingredient was live local coverage; this attracts and holds viewers. DR was sent to cover Hurricane Carla on the gulf, the biggest and most dangerous of the century, which caused high tides and flooding rains. The warnings and the evacuation of 350,000 people, minimized the loss of lives. Afterwards DR was hired by CBS News, even if he didn't rescue a drowning horse (pp.47-8). Chapter 3 tells of his reporting from Oxford Miss on 9/30/1962 when James Meredith went to the University, and other places. Chapter 4 tells of his reporting on the civil rights issue. DR doubts the authenticity of the secret tapes on Dr ML King (p.101).

   Chapter 5 tells of his assignment in Dallas on 11/22/1963. He was stationed beyond the triple underpass to pick up film; something happened and cars sped by. DR returned to the station to cover the news. This shows reporting behind th scenes (pp.124-8). After a confidential viewing of the Zapruder film, DR went back to the station and told of its contents (p.133). Checkbook Journalism? In England paying for news was a way of life (p.141). Magazines were doing it for years. Chapter 6 continues the reports from Dallas, and the behind the scenes events in news reporting. The conflict at the local TV station was resolved. DR then tells about his years as a foreign correspondent in London and elsewhere. Chapter 10 summarizes his year in Vietnam, 1965-6. "By the time the information is passed up the chain of command, everyone puts the best possible face on it." Chapter 11 starts with his meeting with HR Haldeman: DR was a "Lyndon Johnson, Texas liberal Democrat". No need for facts since they knew everything! His meeting with Erlichman and Haldeman (pp.248-9) does not honor this pair. Does it reflect unfavorably on Nixon's judgment? Page 250 tells of the effect of Chappaquiddick: Nixon moved further to the right. Was it an accident? After their loss in the 1970 elections Nixon used other Dirty Tricks to try to hang on to power.

   Chapter 12 is about Watergate, "the greatest political story of your time". The Washington PD is closely controlled by the White House, as in a one-industry town. Page 264 tells of the coded questioning used with government sources: they won't lie, but they won't tell you anything unless you already know it. The story of President Nixon shoving Ron Ziegler, then denying it after the film was shown makes me wonder if Nixon was psychotic? That would explain some of his actions, and why he was pardoned (p.273). Chapter 13 says television news is a "headline service"; anyone who depends on it entirely for news is not doing their best. "Many Americans really do not want to be told what their government is doing, any more than they would want to know what went into the grinder to make the hot dog they are eating" (p.336). A rather sad commentary on some Americans! Do they deserve their higher taxes and perhaps illnesses? Page 338 tells why print is superior to broadcast in preserving the news.




4. For those of you who want to know how it was to be a reporter back in the 70s and 80s, this book should be interesting to you. As a reporter of the 90s myself, I found it to be entirely a different world.

1 comments about The Making of an American.

1. This book is worth the wait it takes to find it. It not only tells Riis's story of his battle with the slums, but it is also the story of a simple man's journey to America and how he fell in love with her. Intertwined is a love story that if not for history would be quite unbelievable in its romance and ending. The book shows what the faith of one man can accomplish in our world when that faith is put into action. This is a heart-warming and positive book that should be reprinted.