5 comments about Losing Jessica.

1. It was very sad to see Jessica leave her adoptive parents in 1993. The DeBoers had waited so long to have a child and when they finally get the chance this has to happen to them. I kind of felt for Dan Schmidt too since Cara gave up his child without talking to him about it. How could she do a thing like that? It was digusting and it was the main cause of all the trouble that ruined other people's lives. She caused alot of pain for herself, Dan, the DeBoers and Jessica. If she had never wanted to give Jessica up in the first place I would have been more understanding and supportive of Cara. However, no one forced her to give up her baby, it was her decision. I'm not sure if she even wanted the baby back. It is hard to say but it sounds like Dan and her mother had some influence on her. I know her mother wanted to Cara to keep the baby, but she should let it be Cara's choice. If Cara wanted to let her mother help raise the baby fine, but Cara should know if that what she really wants, not her mother. Of course, she should have let Dan know that she wanted to give the baby up for adoption and see how he felt about it since he was the father. If she had, none of this would have happened. Now Dan and Cara are divorced and Jessica and her sister Chloe are living with their father. I'm not surprised that Dan and Cara are divorced because I had a feeling they weren't getting married for the right reasons but it's very sad. Someone said that it would have been better if the DeBoers had let Jessica go back. Well, look at what she has gone back to. A home where she is raised by single parents. OK, no family life is perfect but knowing what she had with the DeBoers she could have had it so much better.



2. Ok, there are a few things I would like to say,(and these are in part are directed to the previous reviewers of this book). First off I haven't read the book, but I have seen the movie. You say the book is biast, of course it is going to be biast even to some degree common look who wrote it, need I say more. With that being said, how much facts do you actually know about the case, I'm sure don't know every explicit detail about the case nor are my facts 100%, but I see to think that there is some missing information here. Ok, well I would just like to bring up the fact that the birth mother had more than ample time to not go through with the adoption. Her own mother told her multiple times don't give the baby up for adoption, don't do it that she would/wanted help her raise the child, and yet she told her she was going to go through with it anyways, that it was the right thing for her to do. Also, Before the baby was given up for adoption the birth grandmother (the one who told her daughter not to giver her up) wrote in a journal or something to her granddaughter and sent it with her. I mean come on folks. If that doesn't speak volumes, she purpously went to a man she absoultly knew wasn't the father and told him (now here is where facts are slightly amuck) either she told him to lie and say he is the father or she lied to him and told him he was the father, and she did that so she could easily have the child adopted. Then later (when you claim she went 3 weeks after the adoption and wanted "her" daughter back) which seemed to be longer than that. Anyway, she went to the actual birth father, the real birth father this time and told him about her daughter and giving her up. That might I add incase anyone can't figure it out was only done because she being her usual selfish self, wasn't thinking about the child or anyone else for that matter, as we can see from her pattern of behaivour to get her child back "an out clause". Yet, the adoptive parents Jessica wasn't ever there child, they shouldn't have been attached to her, nor should Jessica have bonded with them that is just crazy. They should have just handed her over like she was and ment nothing because someone who in there own mind made a decision they didn't like and decided I have an out clause let "us" just go claim our piece of property. Please explain it to me I am having just a little trouble understanding. Should we not put children first, should we not think of what is in their best interest. They can't fight for themselves, "we" all need to fight for them. Had I had been the adoptive parents they would have had to come in with tanks and run me down before I would have given her back, how could u even think "if they had handed her back when she was an infant". That would be right, someone can just play with the fate of a tiny, innocent and vunurable human like that cause it suits them. Ok, it might have been different had she not lied about the father and he knew from the start, he or they togther could have kept the baby. People are forgetting the fact that she not only lied but she purpously lied and maid a point to do so, she went out of her way to do so. like I said had she done the right thing from the begining there probabally not been a problem at all. Also, she could possibly should have taken her mother up on her offer, I believe the grandmother wanted the baby. I just don't know with some people



3. I picked up this book for free at the library, not sure what it was about. As I read the book I was slightly put-off by the author's writing style, and her sugar-coated and twee recollections of Jessica. But, like the previous reveiwer, I became more and more irritated by the author's refusal to accept her role in this tragedy. The fact that she and her husband kept Jessica from going back to the Schmidts as a baby and then argued that the girl was bonded to them as a toddler was completely and totally selfish on their part. They put their needs before Jessica's. And her self-proclaimed naivete about the media, movie deals and such was too much to believe. This book was just another opportunity to paint herself as the angel mother, and make a few bucks in the process. I'm putting my copy back on the give-away pile.



4. This is a book likely to be loved by people who enjoy having their heart-strings tugged. But I am currently going through an adoption, and I have worked in the adoption field for years. In my experience, adoptive parents like the DeBoers are looking for trouble. When the bio mom came back after only a few weeks and said she wanted to contest the adoption, and then the it came out that bio dad had been lied to by bio mom, it was time for the DeBoers to say, sadly, "Well, I guess this isn't meant to be,", and try again. But to hold on to this baby for two years and keep fighting to keep her when they could have let her go back, at the same time saying, "How can you take this baby away from us after 2 years...."! THEY are the reason it took 2 years! Sure they loved her, and sure, it was heart-breaking, but how much better for the child to let her go back after only a few weeks, rather than hang on for 2 years. They were clearly meeting THEIR needs, not hers. I, too, hope that one day Anna meets them again. I hope she can tell them, "Look, I'm fine now, don't worry about me anymore. I appreciate your caring for me, but it would have been better for everyone if you had just let me go back." It was certainly a tragic story, but because of the DeBoers, not the Schmidts. I understand they have adopted another child, and I certainly hope they have been happy this time.



5. While reading this book about the "Baby Jessica" adoption saga written by Robby Deboer, the woman who wanted to adopt Jessica (now Anna Schmidt) it became increasingly clear to me that Robby and Jan Deboer created the situation which caused them and others so much grief. They hid that fact under the guise of "watching out for Jessica's best interests" when in reality, they were doing everything BUT that. I wanted to keep an open mind, but the more I read, the more angry I became with the Deboers. They were in the process of adopting a baby. When the baby was with them for less than 4 weeks, the birth mother changed her mind, and also admitted that she had lied about who the baby's father was. Yes that was terrible of her, but no, it wasn't the end of the world, and the Deboer's should have accepted that this adoption wasn't going to work out. The birth father hadn't known about the baby. Now that he did, he wanted his child. He never gave her up for adoption, never signed any documents. Instead of allowing Jessica (the baby) to be placed into foster care, while the proper authorities investigated the birth mother's lie, the Deboers fought her and the birth father immediately. They dug into the birth father's past, trying to paint him as a bad man and father to his other children. The adoption process was not complete. The Deboers were not that baby's parents. Robby Deboer can write and say all she wants that "being a mother is an action," but her actions only proved that she was a very BAD mother. She and her husband chose to fight with Jessica's birth parents when court after court told them that they were in the wrong, that Jessica would go back to her birth parents. They chose to keep fighting, allowing Jessica to grow older with them, to get attached to them. Then they used that fact against the birth parents, as way to keep Jessica with them. They used that fact to manipulate the media and the public, saying that it was in Jessica's best interest to stay with them, because she had grown attached to them. They used the media to villify the birth parents. The whole thing is disgusting to me. The book reads as if written by the mother of all mother's- as if there is no mother better than Robby Deboer, no father better than Jan Deboer, and no family more perfect than theirs. Reading the book made me feel terrible for the Schmidts- how could they possibly compete with that?
   And the terrible shame is that the Deboers truly don't believe they did anything wrong. After reading this book, I looked online for information on Jessica now. Jessica is now Anna Schmidt, and she is quite happy. I saw an interview with her and she said that if she could say one thing to the Deboers, she would say: "its over." I found that to be very good advice for them.

No comments about The False Nun (EasyRead Large Edition).

5 comments about Warren Beatty: A Private Man (Random House Large Print (Cloth/Paper)).

1. Everything a great bio needs - a compelling subject, exhaustive research, good storytelling - is here. There are flaws, but they are largely outweighed in this excellent book that really made me think.
   
   True, it's a bit repetitive at times, and like so many chronological works, falls into the trap of being front-loaded. The biggest casualty here is Bening - a woman worth a more thorough treatment in the book in the context of what the relationship says about Beatty.
   
   In the end, I disagree with two of the author's main themes (one of the best things about this book is that it's thought provoking): first that Beatty was driven by a fear of failure. I simply can't believe that a man who has failed so spectacularly and so publicly so many times, in his relationships, his business ventures and his political causes, is afraid to fail. In fact, I think it's quite the opposite.
   
   I also don't think Beatty is any more "private" than most of us, and what appear to be the characteristics of a private person are in fact clues into what makes him so successful. Being elusive with the media is not necessarily about privacy - in fact I was surprised at the number of very personal statements cited from media interviews over the years - it's about control.
   
   He does what the most seductive people do so well - he makes every person he encounters, professional or personal, feel like they are special, a theme repeated throughout the book by the many people who have known him. His self-created image only furthers the seduction, as everyone he touches flatters themselves that "he's a very private man; I know him better than you do."
   
   He even achieves this illusion at a very public level by presenting a series of autobiographical films - leaving each person to decide if he's George Roundy or Jay Bulworth or John Reed or Bud Stamper or Joe Pendleton or Dick Tracy, or some complicated combination of all of them. That's not a private man - that's a man who knows how to manipulate his own image, and to get what he wants out of life in the long run, both personally and professionally.
   
   Loved the book, really made me think, will now read others by the same author on this basis.



2. Gets really boring at times. Jumps all over the place and keeps on repeating......... But otherwise informative.



3. Is an objective look, at the man who captivated audiences around the world. Beautifully written, honest and poignant, the book takes the reader deep into the lives and backgrounds of a family that spawned not only one star-but Two. Suzanne Finstad's "A Private Man" gives the reader perspective as it takes you through the inner workings of a boy's life as he grows up to be one of Hollywood's most charismatic and influential leading men. Gracefully structured and truly the definitive Warren Beatty biography...A Must Read! J.J. Gillock (Easy Company Productions)



4. It took me days to finish this book, and I'd say you get your money's worth by halfway through, and the rest is gravy. Oddly enough, however, the book feels a bit topheavy, so that the bulk of it is spent on Beatty's difficult period between meeting William Inge and making LILITH about four years later, and then all of a sudden the last 40 years are rushed through at a clippety clop.
   
   WB isn't quite as entertaining as Suzanne Finstad's previous biorgaphy, the sublime NATASHA, which really did bring Natalie Wood alive again for her fans; and it's likely that the parts of the present book with the most emotional resonance are the years Beatty spent with Natalie, trying to cheer her up after Wagner betrayed her. Finstad does an admirable job of showing us the psychological underpinnings of Beatty's affairs with Joan Collins (almost persuading us that Collins is a real person, not just a glitzy British sex bomb--almost, but not quite), Natalie Wood, Leslie Caron, and Julie Christie. But when she gets down the list to Michelle Phillips, her pretense at analysis ends. She doesn't even try. I wonder if the book wasn't originally twice as long, and she was asked to curtail the later years into a series of briefer chapters. I mean, she could have written 100s of pages on Mary Tyler Moore and Isabelle Adjani, but instead they're reduced to ciphers.
   
   As a boy, Beatty was enraptured by the original cast album of OKLAHOMA! by Rodgers and Hammerstein and Finstad successfully shows us that, subconsciously or not, Beatty succeeded again and again in replicating the Curly-Laurie romance in his own adult life.
   
   It does seem as though Beatty was propelled to stardom by a clutch of gay visionaries including Inge and Tennessee Williams, and crypto gay figures like Joshua Logan, who signed Beatty to a personal contract and had him screen tested kissing Jane Fonda from morning to night. Inge wrote not only SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS, but A LOSS OF ROSES and ALL FALL DOWN for Beatty, and apparently never asked him for a thing in return. The stage production of A LOSS OF ROSES turned out to be a true nightmare of conflicted egos and desperate desires, what with Barbara Baxley threatening to jump off the cliffs of Malibu if replaced by Carol Haney, and Shirley Booth quitting on opening night. Joey Heatherton, the one and only, was also fired, thus setting the scene for a long and poignant second act that never quite came.
   
   Would Joan Collins have been effective in the movie version of DH Lawrence's SONS AND LOVERS? Would Warren have succeeded playing Tony in WEST SIDE STORY? The book gives us crazy dreams of movies that might have been. Afdera Fonda, the former wife of Henry Fonda who dallied with Beatty briefly in 1963, said that he was "naughty, charming and playful. He smelled like honey, and he came and went like a shadow in the night."



5. I love and collect biographical books. This book was totally disappointing. The entire book was an effort to "elect" Warren to some future office. I had hoped to gain some insight to his personal life and was left entirely with mindless minutiae. A total disappointment for such a large book...little or no new information of any value.

5 comments about A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America.

1. This is a well-written and actually funny book. The energy and joie de vivre of Franklin drove this book. You learn that Paris during the American Revolution was chaotic. Everyone was spying on everyone else. Its a miracle that Franklin got the financial support he needed. Paris loved Franklin and you can see why. I loved this book. In fact i gave my copy to a friend and had to buy a replacement.



2. A Great Imporovisation is the third leg of a triangle that has long been incomplete. Though several books on Ben Franklin's stay in Paris have been written, none see through the Parisian lens the way Schiff does. None have her flair for physical context and dipolomatic nuance that reflects in their style. Schiff's treatment of this important and even weighty subject may not please the most exacting historians, but it's the way history should be written. Dreary is as dreary does, and none of that will be found here.



3. Despite enjoying a lot of books from this genre, I found this book to be almost unreadable. The author is too intent on bowling you over with her writing to write clear and interesting prose.
   
   Here's an example:
   "The slippery stew which was a Paris thoroughfare accounted for the city's most singular danger. No man who had the means walked through the filth of the streets, and no man who had the means hired a driver with any respect for the individual who did."
   
   I think I understand what this means, but I'm not even sure I do. In any case, I think it is an arrogant exaggeration to make a statement like this. I guess she knew about every man in Paris.
   
   For what it is worth, I am in a book group and there seemed to be universal dislike of this book for similar reasons. I didn't attend, however, because I could not force myself to read past page 80.



4. This is a wonderful biography of Founding Father, diplomat, and inventor Benjamin Franklin!
   
   Author Stacy Schiff is a talented researcher and author who writes with a great deal of passion and humor. Her life of Franklin is filled with many, many interesting stories and individuals.
   
   Schiff emphasizes the important role played by the French in the American Revolution. They financed Washington and the Continental Army and sent no less than two fleets, some 50,000 French soldiers, tens of thousands of muskets, thousands of cannon and barrels of gunpower, tens of thousands of uniforms, and millions in hard currency to support American independence.
   
   Had it not been for French support, the war, which lasted seven years, would have ended quickly and with a British victory. But that same French involvement caused the French King to overextend his country financially, contributing to his downfall and the French revolution that followed.
   
   Franklin, who was lionized by the French when he arrived in Paris to assume his duties as the Ambassador to France, was instrumental in soliciting military and financial support for the war. Without him there would have been no French involvement and without the French no American independence.
   
   Unfortunately, like many of America's founding fathers, Franklin's greatest enemies were other Americans - small minded men, like John Adams - and especially the Continental Congress. He died without proper recognition of his important role in Paris.



5. In my British ignorance, I had led myself to believe that there was only one version of the life of Benjamin Franklin - that of the unique and unparalleled polymath and all-American hero, born in the British Empire but buried at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the great republic that he helped to create.
   
   But Stacy Schiff's extremely readable and obviously well-researched book that covers the period of Dr. Franklin's life when he was an envoy of the second Continental Congress to the Court of King Louis XVI of France also covers the controversy that surrounded this amateur ambassador, stirred most particularly by the brothers Arthur Lee and William Lee of Virginia and John Adams of Massachusetts, later to be the second President of The United States. The former seem to have been motivated by Southern superciliousness and arrogance, 'qualities' battered out of their kind in the later 'War for Southern Independence' by the descendants of the likes of the latter, possessors of their own special sort of sanctimonious superiority complexes.
   
   I can forgive the Lee family for almost anything, for one of my all-time American heroes is General Robert Edward Lee, but it is clear that his older relatives, Arthur and William, disgraced themselves, Virginia and their infant nation by their constant sniping at the one man who was winning over French opinion and, more importantly, attracting French cash and much, much more, for General Washington's army. As to Adams, his distaste for the venerable Dr. Franklin is sufficiently well-documented not to be doubted. The motive for this distaste can reasonably be attributed in part to his narrow and God-fearing New England background, especially when contrasted with Franklin's leading and learned role in enlightening America. The one was old Massachusetts, through and through, whilst the other early 'escaped' to Philadelphia.
   
   I don't suppose it suited some of his critics that Benjamin Franklin was a 'liberal,' not only in his personal and family life but also in his general tolerance of others and his enjoyment of the female attractions of the French Court and of Paris. Of course, they might just have been jealous of the old boy, who, well into his seventies, was getting away with what a twenty-year-old might not have dared to attempt.
   
   Not all were detractors of the good doctor: I was delighted to read - and will remember - the marvellous quote (which I hope is not apocryphal) of the Virginian who was to become the third President of The United States. Mr Jefferson, upon arriving at Versailles in May, 1785, is said to have been asked: "Is it you, Sir, who replaces Dr. Franklin?," to which another of my all-time American heroes replied: "No one can replace him, Sir; I am only his successor."
   
   But, for me, the most surprising portion of this book is its thorough cataloguing of the ingratitude of America and Americans towards Franklin and towards France, without whose financial sacrifices and physical support in the shape of armies and navies, the War of Independence was more likely to have gone the way of innumerable other local revolts. In the absence of French help and of the efforts of Franklin, King George III and his successors would likely have remained the supreme governors, based in London, of all of the squabbling colonies.
   
   Indeed, it seems that it was not until 1917 that the American Government realised - even if it did then - that a deep debt of gratitude was owed to France. By then, of course, Dr. Franklin and King Louis XVI were long dead, but the damage of unpaid debts had been done. France, her treasury depleted by the equivalent of the many billions of dollars spent in the name of America, was riven asunder by her own dreadful revolution that has coloured the judgements of world statesmen and French politics ever since. I well remember, back in the 1960s, when my wife and I first took our young children to visit the areas of northern France that had been fought over so many times in two great wars. We stopped off in a small and attractive village to buy a newspaper and all that was available was "L'Humanité," the Communist party's organ. Some sections of the left-leaning French peasantry still contrast sharply with my right-facing fellow peasants of rural England, a reflection of our different histories.
   
   By my British lights, perhaps Dr. Franklin should have done that which his contemporary critics claimed he was doing - fail. But succeed he did, and America and Americans, at least, can and should be grateful for that, to him and, of course, to France, as well as to her eminent foreign minister at the time of Franklin's vital assignment, the half-forgotten Comte de Vergennes.
   
   On balance, I believe that Benjamin Franklin deserves his place on the face of the $100 bill, and Stacy Schiff's first-rate and five-star book deserves to be read; and not only read, but marked, learned, and inwardly digested.

No comments about Desert Nurse (Lythway Large Print Series).

No comments about Terry-Thomas Tells Tales: An Autobiography (Transaction Large Print Books).

No comments about Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune (Large Print Edition).

No comments about Recollections of My Childhood and Youth (Large Print Edition).

5 comments about Dishing: Great Dish - and Dishes - From America's Most Beloved Gossip Columnist.

1. As the subtitle of DISHING states, author Liz Smith is "America's most beloved gossip columnist." By now, she's probably also the longest working practicioner of this medium, which she helped to form into its modern incarnation.
   
   If there is one problem with her columns, it's that she's so nice. Yet it is clear from reading her books that this must be her basic personality, a personality which is clearly formed.
   
   Having read all of her books, I can say that her wit, her shrewdness and her kindness all shine through the pages. Her claim that she is much-loved seems accurate, and this love also seems to be well-deserved.
   
   Though her pages (and her life) are peopled with names that most of us only can imagine knowing, she remains realistic about these friends and their foibles, even as she is compassionate.
   
   So many names are mentioned here--not dropped, but described organically, as very much part of Ms. Smith's everyday existence--that the width and breadth are dizzying. What a life she has led!
   
   The recipes may be best of all. Where once I cooked my way through the books of Julia Child, I am now considering cooking my way through DISHING.
   
   DISHING is delicious.



2. 
   What's better than gossip with your gnocchi, tell-alls with your tea, or rumors with your rib roast? Everyone loves to eat and, whether we'll admit it or not, we all enjoy hearing the lascivious latest. Liz Smith, who well knows her way around a table and a tantalizing tale, has combined dish with recipes in her latest book. The title is "Dishing," and it's all gravy.
   
   You gotta' love a gal who schmoozes with the rich and fabulous admitting that she once took a children's course in table manners after being flummoxed by a finger bowl during lunch with Mrs. Vincent Astor. It was during this class at the Plaza that she learned the appropriate way to leave a table: "......"we must never explain why we are leaving the table if we do. Simply get up and say `Excuse me," and fold the napkin across the back of the chair so the waiter will know you plan to return."
   
   This came as news to the former resident of Fort Worth, Texas, whose constant childhood dish was milk toast, and where her mother insisted that she and her siblings eat watermelon in the bathtub because it was easier to hose them off afterwards. However, Texas is, as we know, where the stars are big and bright - there must have also been a lucky one for Miz Liz to be born under because one of the first to become her friend in New York City was Sirio, a waiter. Later, Sirio Maccioni would own a famous restaurant, Le Cirque.
   
   Another famous restauranteur, Henri Soule, taught her the proper way to eat caviar, and she hilariously recalls the time he gifted her with an expensive case of wine. Having no idea of the value of this rare Chateau Petrus, she served it to her friends along with chili.
   
   There's very little, whether it's food or the famous, that this author has missed. There's a memorable dinner in Paris with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and she sat with Nicole Kidman as the svelte star polished off every roll and bread in the table basket.
   
   Amongst all the glitterati with whom has she shared the most unusual meals? Malcolm Forbes. "My first meeting with Malcolm, she writes, "was at a private dinner given by Barbara Walters where Malcolm roared up on a motorcycle and came in wearing black tie, carrying his helmet. He offered me a ride home but I dislike flying through thin air at sixty miles an hours."
   
   Theirs was a mutually beneficial friendship, as he enjoyed the publicity she offered his magazine while she enjoyed being a guest on his yacht and visiting the Forbes chateau in Normandy. (Who wouldn't?) Nonetheless, according to Miz Liz the most outstanding meal they shared was a breakfast at his office building which housed his museum quality collectibles. On this occasion Forbes had the table decorated with his Faberge eggs, scattered about among the napkins and silver.
   
   "Dishing" is subtitled "Great Dish - and Dishes - from America's Most Beloved Gossip Columnist." And, dishes there are - recipes for everything from Elvis's favorite potato sandwich to "Chipped Beef a la Krupp Diamond" courtesy of Liz Taylor.
   
   With her column now syndicated in more than 70 newspapers, Miz Liz knows how to write, and even though she's been thinking about "turning her apartment kitchen into a closet," she knows what to eat and where to eat it. "Dishing" is a fun feast - pull up a chair and enjoy it.
   
   - Gail Cooke



3. This book is wonderful! Warm and witty, with awesome recipes describing why they're so special - and it is great fun to read about the celebs who loved them, served them, etc. A fun read and awesome resource. (There is more text than recipes, but more than enough recipes to make it well worthwhile for cooks.) My one and only quibble is that there isn't an index, so when you find a recipe you're dying to try (I found several while just flipping through the book when it arrived), affix a post-it note if you want to be able to find it again. But the book is wonderful!



4. I love the recipes! You'll enjoy the "dish" about famous folks but the reason you'll keep this book is the recipes. I grew up in Texas so I love Liz's recipes for Chicken Fried Steak and Frito Pie and red-eye gravy. I've never served a meal like Nora Ephron did but after reading Liz's book I'm hot on the trail of Chateau Suduiraut so I can duplicate that dinner party! From down-home food to extraordinary meals you'll grab a pencil and paper to make your shopping list and when you serve the food you can tell your guests, "This is Ann Richard's favorite" or
   "Liz Taylor made this chili famous." Buy the book. It is a keeper!



5. I loved this book. Its a page turner. Liz writes with such down to earth humor that it feels like my favorite aunt passed down her favorite recipes. I also like the fact that Liz seems so warm, funny and kind. Filled with my two favorite subjects: food and celebrities. I read this book on a Saturday, finished it by Saturday night and was cooking her recipes Sunday. And regarding the past review, I did not find the part about Rao's offensive at all. I just bought an additional copy for a Mother's Day gift...It's is a great read.

No comments about Vailima Letters (Large Print).