No comments about Echoing Voices.

5 comments about The Souvenir: A Daughter Discovers Her Father's War.

1. I have the hardback (2001) edition. This was an excellent read, especially for all of us that read war history. It was refreshing to read of the human side of a warrior and his daughter. You won't put this one down until it's read. This is an important book especially for those that may still hold hatred for a specific person or race.



2. The Souvenir is a marvelous book for book group discussions, and is especially appropriate for Jewish groups. Ms. Steinman writes poignantly about her father, her family, and herself in relation to the military experience of the World War II theater of operations in the Pacific, and its aftermath. This is a story that is relatively unknown, since many histories and memoirs of World War II focus on Europe. Although not a book about Judaism, this is a very Jewish book. It is very much in keeping with the Jewish storytelling tradition: of creating and telling a good story that is important for the audience to hear, and to feeling a connection to the characters and values in the story. The themes of repentance and renewal (tshuvah in Hebrew) are vital to maintaining and nurturing relationships of family and friends, especially at the time of year when the Jewish holy days of the New Year (Rosh HaShanah) and the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) occur. I was moved to tears a number of times. There are valuable lessons to share that will broaden our understanding and compassion for veterans, their families, and Jewish values.
   
   Rabbi Wendy Spears



3. You see all the reviews having 5 stars out of 5 stars--I couldn't bring myself to agree. This book starts being really quite good--it drew me in--but then it started to dddddddrrrrrraaaaaaaaggggggggg. I put it down for a while and tried again (I did this 3 times) when I decided to give it up for good. I think it could have been better. :(



4. Louise Steinman has hit it out of the park with this wonderful, moving memoir about her father, Norman Steinman, his war experiences, and the way those experiences shaped his life--and his relationships with his family. It is also about Ms. Steinman's own odyssey in experiencing her father's war, through reading hundreds of her father's war-time letters discovered after her parents' deaths, talking to other Pacific War veterans, and visiting long-forgotten battlefields in the Philippines. Ms. Steinman eventually makes a special journey to Japan to visit the family of a long-dead Japanese soldier. It involves a simple errand: she needs to give something back...
   
   Ms. Steinman shows that the scars of war run deep and the impacts are felt through succeeding generations. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.



5. Like so many in my generation, the author, like the rest of us, really had no clue as to what made her father tick. These men, and women, of the "Greatest Generation" were a different breed. I had to blink twice when the author described her father, his attitudes, work ethic, treatment of his family and on and on. She could have well been describing my own father.
   
   The author, after her father's death, discovers a box of letters written to his wife (the author's mother) during the war. Her father fought in the Pacific, taking part in some of its most brutal of battles. Amongst the letters, in an envelope, was a Japanese Flag, a "souvenir flag" which her father had sent home. The flag was of the type carried by many Japanese soldiers, which was a sort of good luck piece. The story is basically Ms. Steinman's search for the family of the soldier whose body it was taken from and a story of Ms. Steinman's search for her father, i.e. who really was her father, and how had the war changed him?
   
   Now I will be honest, there were parts of the book that disturbed me. I am not all that certain if the author ever did have a clue as to what made her father the man he was and how the war truly affected him. The author never actually says it, but after reading her description of her father, which gave us some idea of the kind of man he was, there is really no doubt where he got the flag, and how he got it. He did not seem the type of man who would simply pick up a flag off any old dead body and keep it. While this falls into the realm of speculation, I think it probably would have been better if the author had faced reality. Be that as it may, the author did quite a good job with her research and I certainly admire her objectives.
   
   The book is well written, easy to read, and quite informative. Like another reviewer here, I have the feeling the author actually found out more about herself than she did of her father, and that is actually a very good thing. I do recommend this one highly. You certainly will be richer for having read it.
   
   D. Blankenship

5 comments about The Brothers Bulger: How They Terrorized and Corrupted Boston for a Quarter Century.

1. This is an excellent true tale about 2 brothers who grew up in the south Boston projects and rose to the top of their vocations.Billy Bulger,pulls himself up to become a high profile lawyer and politician,and Jimmy(Whitey) who rises to the top of Bostons' Irish Mafia.Apparently Whitey had help from some government agencies such as the FBI because the bureau was at the time trying to wrap up the Italian Mafia and recruited members of the Irish Mafia to bring it about.Whitey played both ends against the middle, ratting out members of his own criminal organization while using his law enforcement connections to elevate his own position in organized crime.The book goes into alot of detail in regard to this and the author is a Boston newspaper reporter who worked closely with these investigations. His tale is highly credible.
   Whitey's brother,Billy Bulger,a high profile Boston lawyer,rises to the top and is conspicuously seen with all of the top New England politicians. The author is clear though that these other politicians probably had no knowledge of any of Whitey's criminal affairs. At the end of the book the reader is left pondering about how much of Whitey's dubious enterprises did brother Billy know about.Some of the members of Whitey's nefarious gang lived almost right across the street from Billy.
   There is also included in this insightful book an in depth expose on the forced busing crisis of the 1970's, that fits right into the book without distraction. The busing controversy involved busing students of color to different all white traditional neighborhoods.This caused alot of controversy and it is a vital part of the story in regard to the rise of the Bulgers in their prospective areas of expertise.Billy Bulger,the lawyer and his brother Whitey who was both user and used by the law.



2. This is a quintessentially American story that is both important and unforgettable. One reason it is important is that it affirms the adage: "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Another is that, the deep FBI and police corruption begged the question: Who guards the guards themselves? But also, no matter how distorted morally, this story is still somehow a perverse but generic template for ethnic "ghetto success:" Two brothers from a " "disposable" part of inner city Boston make good; one through "low hard crime" (Whitey was a serial murderer, bank robber, extortionist, and a "top echelon" FBI informant; while Billy, on the other hand, engaged in grafts and payoffs, illegal political procedural maneuvering, patronage, nepotism, "no show jobs," extortion, racketeering, sweetheart and unholy deals, arson and insurance scams, as well as political blackmail and business frauds.). The mantra of Boston corruption at the time was: "Nothing on the level; every thing a deal, and no deal too small."
   
   
   Another reason it is important lies more deeply embedded in the subtext of the book: Their two-man crime wave became, perhaps unconsciously, an existential way of redressing bitter and deep injuries to lower class Irish Americans, through the use and propagation of commonly accepted and tolerated patterns of inner city crime and corruption. During the 1970s, the experiment in social engineering transformed South Boston ethnic communities, from predominately law-abiding working classes to a festering backwater of lethal class and ethnic tensions, overlaid with drug and welfare dependency. All who could: fled to the suburbs. It was thus from the depths of these diminished circumstances, that each brother's pursuit of power became a wicked double-edged and twisted end in itself. In the leftover spaces of Boston society, and with "huge Irish sized chips on their shoulders," the Bulger brothers both became successful in their own perverse and irredeemably criminal ways.
   
   It is unforgettable because it shows the depths to which corruptions can descend when the rules of humanity and the rules of morality are perceived to both be irrelevant at the same time: Because the society was unfair and had basically turned its back on Boston's "Southies," in the subconscious mind of the Bulger brothers, Boston was no longer an entirely legitimately run society. It was therefore open at both ends to being "gamed" in ways that all angles could be played towards a ruthless and cynical kind of "get over" success. Power through corruption thus became, not just the signature route; but the only route to success; and more importantly, the only way "to get even with" a society perceived to be cruel, immoral, indifferent and dehumanizing to the "Southies.".
   
   The Bulger brother's crime wave thus could be rationalized as an existential avenue to societal revenge: a way of removing the ethnic chip on their shoulders by "thumbing their noses" at a society that had purposely dealt them a bad hand simply because they were lower class Irish. It was a way of calling Boston's illegitimate society to account through "power moves" already tolerated by Boston society, including crimes of all genres that terrorized the city of Boston for a generation. In short, this two-man crime wave taking place at opposite ends of the societal spectrum, proved both that the society that discriminated against lower class Irish was a "moral sham" and that lower class Irish (the Southies") were not deserving of their ascribed inferior status after all, but could play society's illegitimate games as well as (or better than) the next group.
   
   It is also unforgettable because it is a textbook example of how fragile and tenuous the moral fabric of our society can be. It shows for instance how "tolerated" inner city corruption can be "gamed" and "played" by two determined brothers and then used to take over the rest of a large urban city. Whitey Bulger became an FBI informant at an early stage of his criminal career, but then quickly realized that his FBI handlers were equally vulnerable to the same kind of immorality they expected and extracted from him as their "resident stooge." And just as they had captured and "turned him," he slowly reeled them in and "turned them in reverse." And they became "the bigger fish" without ever realizing what had happened to them. This small "reverse advantage," greatly assisted by strategic murders, FBI and police corruption, was soon parlayed into a incestuously corrupt web in which Whitey's informants, his FBI handlers, were "running interference" for the Boston crime wave engineered by Whitey himself.
   
   Billy on the other hand, operating at the other end of the political spectrum, realized that every angle he played had to be played precisely and opportunities had to be seized with "cold blooded calculation." And then, the gains had to be consolidated quickly through ruthlessness; that is through terror, extortion, graft, patronage, blackmail and punishing enemies. Both brothers thus were playing the same immoral game, at opposite ends of a chessboard stacked against them, with the same corrupt Boston officials. They just did so with different weapons.
   
   Although it was difficult keeping all of the names and nicknames together, this was a good read.
   Five stars



3. This book graphically details the separate lives of Whitey & Billy Bulger, showing the career paths available to kids growing up in Boston during the degenerate time period from the 1950's to 1980's. The book makes a good effort in detailing the seperate but connected lives of the brothers and the connections that they had with-in the political & underworld community, showing just how much of a gray area it was between the two. Howie Carr Does a decent job detailing these brother's lives, but at times the book is confusing and writing could have used a little more work in the editing department as some of the writing is misleading unless read over a coupe of times.
   
   I would suggest reading Black Mass before getting into this book to give a better understanding of what is going during the time period from when Rico from the FBI was courting Whitey, before he took over Winter Hill. It helps to give a better understanding as to why Zip Connolly was making Whitey seem a perfect informant.
   
   If anything this book can be looked at as an expansion to the story of Boston corruption and delving into the life of Billy Bulger, & just how the relationship with his brother had functioned through the years.



4. As a resident in Boston in the mid 90s and listener to Howie Carr's show, I can't thank Howie enough for going forward on this book. Seeing the semmingly good (Billy) and evil (Whitey) being basically the same - evil, greedy and corrupt. It is a great story about how people in positions of power may be just as criminally minded as the ones behind bars, just with a bigger expense account and showcase (Billy's St. Patrick Day's annual breafast).
   
   I confess I got a little lost with all of the characters in this true story. For future printings I would hope that there is a chart of some sort to show the different players in this real life drama of crime, corruption and politics in Boston.
   
   Highly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in politics. Interesting at the end, Howie credidted Mitt Romney for the outsting Billy from the UMass Highly Paid Post. This drama seems to continue with Whitey still on the lam.



5. Absolutely jaw dropping. Reading this book made my hair stand up. Couldn't put the book down!

5 comments about My FBI: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror.

1. This is one of the least political autobiographies of a public servant in a political position in Washington.
   
   That's no reason, in my mind, to doubt the veracity of most of what Freeh writes. Those looking for conspiracy theores or outright condemnation of political adversaries will be disappointed. Freeh writes deeply of respect for a large number of persons, most notably FBI agents and fellow prosecutors.
   
   It does make for an interesting, amusing, but very non-combative read.
   
   Even Bill Clinton, who receives most of Freeh's ire for being more a politician than a manager, is also described as the most charming and disarming statesman.
   
   It's not that Freeh is afraid to talk ill of any of his former co-workers, but rather this is an autobiography of his public career.
   
   He doesn't take the opportunity to hammer home points about policy, but rather berates mismanagement, favoritism, and a lack of ethical focus.
   
   This is a good read for someone looking for a shining hero. This is not a good place to find dirt.



2. Freeh comes across early on as pompous and a phoney and it carries throught the book. He keeps remniding us what a great father he is because he has his kids drawings in his office. He is twice politically appointed yet rails against Clinton for being a politician. He seeths about the investigation of a bombing on Saudi soil and why Clinton would not let him interview the suspects...? I kept thinking Federal applies to the United States, not Saudi Arabia. It's that kind of arrogance that makes this book easy to put down. Plus, He never goes into ANY interesting detail on ANY investigation. And he OFTEN points out how he never really knew FBI agent turned spy Robert Hanssen. Hanssen went to the same church, their kids were in the same school....YET the same Freeh who says his style was to be among the troops claims to have barely known who he was. (BS) He also rails against Anything Clinton yet, everything Bush is AOK... This book is nothing more than a Swift-boat FBI poison pen letter.



3. In writing My FBI, Louis J, Freeh has given us a microscopic view of how the FBI works and the numerable problems he faced during his tenure. He comes across as honorable and hard working, telling the truth as he saw it. I couldn't put the book down. I highly recommend reading this book to learn about how the FBI operates and about the terroism that we face today.



4. Louis Freeh provides an interesting look into the world of the FBI. The book takes an overview approach with specific vignettes of his time at the organization and how it evolved (or lack thereof) over the years. Freeh was director during a turbulent time when trust in the FBI was at a low and worked one of the toughest cases in its history with the Kohbar towers investigation. This investigation is the focal point of the book and done very well. He also covers a lot with the Bob Hansen treason as well as other stories. The main problem with the book is that it is light on details and the chapters often ramble on without focus. The book would have been better off from an organizational standpoint with shorter chapters more pointed towards the topics. I would like to have seen lesser stories but the ones told in greater detail. Overall it is a useful primary source but not the definitive history of his role in the FBI during those years.



5. "My FBI" was a quick read and a very interesting look behind the scenes at the FBI in the 1990s. Freeh discusses background on the major cases the FBI handled during his tenure. This book gives insight that you didn't get from the news stories. One of the controversial subjects in the book was Freeh's relationship with President Clinton. This subject may turn off certain people, but the bottom line is that Freeh did not like working for Clinton. That is not a result of politics- because Freeh went out of his way to be apolitical. Most of it stemmed from the many investigations into the Clinton administration like Whitewater, Travelgate, etc. Another small part of the book I found to be interesting was Freeh's take on former "Counterterrorism Czar" Richard Clarke. Freeh writes that Clarke was never a major player in national security in either the Clinton or Bush White House. Freeh writes that Clarke was a second-tier player that was rarely at any of the important meetings. This has somewhat of a ring of truth in light of the way Clarke has tried to recast himself as a modern day Paul Revere of terrorism, after the fact. Somehow I don't buy his self-promotion, see-I told you so attitude. Anyway, overall a solid book for those interested in the FBI and national security issues.

5 comments about No Mountain High Enough: Raising Lance, Raising Me.

1. Reading Linda's story I instantly knew I'd want to lend this book to my Mum after I'd finished it. Are high achievers born or made? You won't find the answer in reading this book, but you'll see how a determined young woman who had every reason to fail succeeded and raised a champion. More importantly I feel - this story isn't just about Lance. It's definitely hers, it's quirky and charming, easy to read and definitely gives you a feel for her character. I preferred It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life - but I definitely recommend this as a great follow up read.
   Kirsty Dunphey, Author Retired at 27, If I can do it anyone can



2. Linda Armstrong started out with enough strikes to doom most to a mediocre life - daughter of divorced parents and a drunkard father (stopped drinking when Lance was born), married at 16, mother at 17, expelled from high school for being pregnant, and abused by husband whom she eventually left. Instead, she raised (inspired, cheered, protected, funded, and assisted his early development and becoming a champion, and then added her inner strength to Lance's during a devastating cancer encounter) a world renowned bicycling champion and major force in cancer research and support.
   
   At the same time Linda went on to complete her GED and worked her way up to a high-level position within a large communications firm. It was not all success for Linda, however - she also had to go through two additional failed marriages (a philanderer, and a drunkard), before finally finding her "true love."
   
   After reading the book it is clear that both Lance Armstrong AND his mother, Linda, are very exceptional and inspirational individuals. I wish I had read this book myself before becoming a parent - my approach and perspectives would hopefully have greatly improved.



3. I am glad Lance's Mom decided to write her story. After I read It's Not About the Bike, I was inspired and eager to learn how a seemingly super-human came to be. Now I know: his Mom exudes energy, enthusiasm, and optimism without bounds: who could lose with such incredible and selfless support screaming in your ear on each lap of the race.
   
   This is a book that focuses primarily on Linda Armstrong Kelly. Lance plays a pivotal but supporting role in the story. She is honest and forthright about the men in her life; other women have just shriveled and become bitter. She is unabashedly supportive of her son, in spite of his adolescent fixation with speeding and dangerous shenanagans with his pals. And... she raised a smart son who loves and respects his mother, especially shielding her from some of the pranks that would drive many parents to pack their son off to some military academy. The fireballs come to mind as I write this.
   
   She is a mom that celebrates Mother's Day, everyday. Now, if she can figure out a way to bottle and sell her optimism and energy! Enjoy the read.



4. A very well written book bringing the reader the life of an adoring Mother and her son. Neither would give up on their individual dreams in their respective pursuits of happiness in their lives. Enjoyable, insightful reading start to finish. Many congrats to both, and a special congratualtion to Lance for winning his seventh Tour deFrance.



5. Funny, sad, interesting, well-written, inspirational. I have great respect and admiration for Linda Armstrong Kelly. She is a remarkable woman with an incredible ability to adapt to any situation life throws her way. What a great woman!

No comments about The Autobiography of Will Rogers (Transaction Large Print Books).

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1 comments about Constrained By His Love.

1. Constrained by His Love is a biography of the life of 19th century Scottish pastor Robert Murray McCheyne, originally written in Dutch and translated into English by Laurence R. Nicolson. McCheyne is best known for his godliness, his passion for Christ and his powerful preaching. McCheyne was also instrumental in the so-called Disruption in which the theologically conservative ministers and believers separated from the Church of Scotland to form the Free Church in 1843. Unfortunately, McCheyne did not live to see the actual Disruption, dying just two months prior at the age of 29 and having ministered for less than 7 years. That a man who did not live to see his 30th birthday could have such a lasting impact for Christ is astounding, but such is the case.
   
   Van Valen's biography has the feel of the old time biographies which emphasized the positive aspect of the subject--often to an abnormal degree--and ignored the negative. Even though this book approaches 500 pages, I was never able to really get a handle on McCheyne's true personality, his interests or real struggles. As a matter of fact the details of McCheyne's everyday and personal life are rather skimpy. Still we learn much about the times, McCheyne's minister friends, his love for God's people, his outreach to the Jews and his longing for revival.
   
   The book is also full of pictures of people and places of the times and contains excerpts from many of McCheyne's poems and letters.