No comments about Sophisms of the Protectionists (Large Print Edition).

No comments about Ned Myers (Large Print Edition): or, A Life Before the Mast.

No comments about Betrayed.

1 comments about When You're from Brooklyn, Everything Else Is Tokyo.

1. I know there was some controversy about whether the author really knew some of the people he mentioned he grew up with but for anyone from the NY area, especially if you grew up in the 50s or 60s or are interested in these eras, this book is a wonderfull trip down memory lane. Great nostalgic look at NYC and what made it so great during the heydays of the great city.

1 comments about Traveller on Horseback in Eastern Turkey and Iran (Ulverscroft Large Print Series).

1. From the title, one might expect the author to be making a long horseback ride through Turkey and Iran. Actually, the book is about riding buses across the countryside and taking a horseback ride whenever possible. It isn't until the last quarter of the book that an extensive ride, where the author actually purchases a horse, takes place.
   
   This is a little less romantic, but the adventures on the bus are very interesting. The primary theme is dodging Iranian revolutionary guards. The author is arrested in 4 or 5 towns and in each case, she out wits her captors and gets released.
   
   In the meantime, we get to know a wide number of local tribes, a lot of ancient history and a personal insight to places too dangerous for a European male to wander.
   
   If you want to visit Iran and/or Turkey, this isn't a bad way to keep the interest alive without risking your neck (literally)

No comments about Pearls of Childhood (Lythway Large Print Series).

No comments about Out of the Depths of Hell: A Soldier's Story of Life and Death in Japanese Hands.

No comments about Expelled from Spain (EasyRead Large Edition).

5 comments about Farewell, Jackie: A Portrait Of Her Final Days.

1. My husband claims that I've never met a book I didn't like. But two Edward Klein books that I've recently read have to be the exceptions. The Kennedy Curse was bad enough, but Farewell, Jackie: A Portrait of Her Final Days is a true dog.
   
   Klein gives us the details of the diagnosis of Jackie's fatal illness and follows through to her death. In between, he regales us with short stories about her childhood, her lovers, her husbands, her children, her friends and her job. Jackie was fiercely protective of her privacy, and one thing that she demanded of her friends was complete loyalty. Edward Klein used to be a friend, until he wrote an article about her. After that, she cut him off completely. As a result, we're not really getting his "inside" story, but the story of dozens and dozens of Jackie's "anonymous" friends. I question how many would willingly provide him with intimate details of Jackie's deathbed scene (one that he called "her masterpiece").
   
   Farewell, Jackie isn't much of a book. Weighing in about just a little over 200 pages, the chapters are short, the pages are small, and there are often two or three blank pages between each chapter. I read Farewell in a little over two hours, and I'm not a speed reader. At least with The Kennedy Curse, Klein provided us with some interesting information about the little-known Kennedy-Fitzgerald patriarchs. Unfortunately, Farewell, Jackie has little to redeem it. I think Klein has milked this cash cow (the Kennedy's) to the extent that the cow has run dry. It's time for him to find some new material.



2. The author was once a friend of Jackie's, until he had the audacity to break one of her cardinal rules...writing an article on her for Vanity Fair in 1989. Like many people, he has cashed in quite nicely on noteriety of the Kennedy's, and Jackie in particular. Hence, Jackie banished Klien from her circle as she did with many people that she felt breached her privacy. You can hardly consider Klien a true insider, he is more like a vulture picking at scraps already chewed over by many, many other gossip columnists, writers, and fans like myself.
   This book is really just a re-hashing of many things that have already been published and little of it is new. I must add that most of the details in this book on her illness and treatment h were widely published in tabloids like "Enquirer" and "Star" when she died 10 years ago. The chapters on Jackie's private moments during the last months of her life-when she is in church, in the doctor's office, with her children, and even on her deathbed are hard to believe, if only because we know Jackie would not have allowed Klien within a block of her presence. Most of his sources for these are a "secret" and I really have to wonder if anyone that Mrs Onassis truly considered a friend would speak with Mr. Klien.
   
   This book, I hate to admit, is a guilty pleasure but one that I regret indulging in, knowing disgusted the subject would have been with it.



3. I enjoy reading books about the Kennedys and Jackie Onassis, but this book, which was supposed to give a chronicle of sorts of the last 10-11 years of Jackie's life, did not do a very good job of that. It was a cut-and-paste biography from previous books and interviews. I didn't learn anything new from this book, and that's the biggest disappointment. It will be a nice addition to my extensive library, but it won't be the first one I pull off the shelf for anyone who wants a good narrative of her life and on who Jackie really was. This is an "okay to read if you're lonely" kind of book.



4. I think that this book was a well writen portrail of Jackie's final days, with a moderate vocabulary it well conveys the beliefs of the author



5. Edward Klein needs to find a new family to write recycled books about. After peddling such ghastly books as "The Kennedy Curse" and "Just Jackie," Klein engages in literary graverobbing with the putrid "Farewell Jackie: A Portrait of Her Final Days."

   His primary focus is the final illness and death of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, of non-lymphoma cancer that seemed easily treatable. By this time, Ms. Onassis had transcended her tabloid-speckled former lives and had a good job, a man she loved, and grandchildren she adored. But when her cancer spread, Onassis tried to die with the illusion of dignity she had maintained in her life.

   Reading "Farewell Jackie" is a bit like watching someone break open a grave to frisk the bones of the dead. Padding the story of Jackie's illness and death are stories of her earlier life -- primarily her second marriage, and various love affairs she had (one of which has been denied by the man involved). Dirt-dishing, anyone?

   Jackie Kennedy Onassis is portrayed as downright saintly in this book; Klein glosses over the hypocrises and flaws in her personality, such as being "religious" yet ignoring tenets of that religion. Even the volatile nature of her relationship with her second husband. Oddly enough, this adoration doesn't extend far enough, especially at the end. Any semblance of dignity is shredded when Klein goes into grotesque detail about Onassis's final mental and physical deterioration.

   What's more, Klein's writing is deplorable. He transcribes private conversations and moments when Onassis was alone -- all obviously faked. Not to mention that Klein is in desperate need of an editor for this book's many errors. On one page, Klein informs us, "Jackie a wreck." Verbs? We don't need no stinkin' verbs.

   Farewell, Jackie. Too bad Klein had to write this book and peddle it as a memorial volume for you. "Farewell Jackie," thankfully, is clearly destined to sink into the mire of obsequious, poorly-written Kennedy books.

2 comments about My Mark Twain (Large Print).

1. this is a must book for anyone really interested in mark twain... thank you for publishing it...



2. If you really want to know Mr. Clemens, don't stop with the modern biographies. Read this one by his long-time good friend and consultant. Howells wrote this book in 1910, the year Clemens died. It is a fond recollection of the 44 years he had known the author. Clemens was a complicated man and Howells admits that he did not always understand him. But Howells, a great writer himself, comes close to describing the multi-faceted person that Clemens was. Yes, he was Mark Twain, but that was just one part of a man who surely must be one of the most interesting Americans who ever stood in the spotlight of the world. He was a superstar before radio, TV, and movies. This is certainly not an unbiased account of his life. Howells was clearly in awe of Clemens, a man who was unlike himself in so many ways. He was fascinated by Clemens and drawn to him. How lucky we are that we have this insightful and personal biography, beautifully written by someone who obviously wanted to get it right. Howells put Clemens at the top of the list: "Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes - I knew them all and all the rest of our sages, poets, seers, critics, humorists; they were like one another and like other literary men; but Clemens was sole, incomparable, the Lincoln of our literature."