No comments about Clare: The Honolulu Years.

No comments about Elvis: A Celebration in Pictures.

No comments about Fool's Enterprise: The Life of Charles Page.

No comments about Ivana Trump: A Very Unauthorized Biography.

4 comments about Hemingway's Key West.

1. Hemingway's Key West provide a quick, interesting read for those traveling to Key West. The island's atmosphere and history twinkles like a Hemingway smile. And the reader gets quick but enlightening peeks at Hemingway's temper, his wives, his buddies (The Mob) and his fishing techniques.
   
   Not for the library-bound scholar, this book treats the reader to the highlights of Key West and Hemingway. You'll get in-depth descriptions of his haunts. You'll find out tidbits about his life (a converted Catholic, a sometimes vindictive right-wing Republican, and a man willing to begin various love affairs instantly).
   
   Overall, a fine read.
   
   by Larry Rochelle, author of the hurricane thriller, GULF GHOST



2. I think a freshman in high school could've written a more cohesive book. The author repeats the same thing just about every chapter. The book probably contains a magazine article in information, if you can find it. It boggles my mind that this was printed, obviously no one edited it.



3. Stuart McIver's HEMINGWAY'S KEY WEST is a classic example of history and literature neatly combined. McIver intends to just describe Hemingway's life in Key West, however, he also tells a lot about Hemingway as a family man (a role which Hemingway did not play well) and as a writer. His description of Hemingway's life and actions in Key West is done so well that it helps the reader picture himself in Key West at the time Hemingway lived there himself. McIver also does a splendid job in describing how Hemingway influenced Key West beyond the time he lived there. I have been to Key West twice, and on both occasions, I visited Sloppy Joe's Bar which is full of "Hemingway paraphernalia" - when you are at Sloppy Joe's, it is as if Hemingway were right there with you.



4. Although this work is informative for anyone going to Key West to visit Hemingway sites, McIver's book reads like a confused hodgepodge. This would not be a problem if the chapters addressed Heminway's time in the Keys chronologically. However, the facts seem to skip around. Many chapters repeat events addressed earlier in other chapters making it appear as if each one was written by a different author without the benefit of reading each others's work, and then combined into one book. McIver's research on Hemingway seems to be of quick, incomplete work with sources easily obtained and poorly investigated.

No comments about J. P. Morgan: Banker to a Growing Nation (American Business Tycoons).

1 comments about Roots of the Rich and Famous.

1. On page 30 the author reveals a "well-kept secret". JFK's first wife was Malcom Durie. His father Joseph P. Kennedy had enough money to squelch information about this marriage. It is doubtful that even Jackie knew. (I can guarantee you that Nixon did not know.)

   Yet, on the Internet, I could find no search results on any of these things. Still, this is an interesting book. The author was an attorney with the Justice Department so his revelation should have some validitity.

5 comments about Sara and Eleanor: The Story of Sara Delano Roosevelt and Her Daughter-in-Law, Eleanor Roosevelt.

1. I am one of those that thinks that the Roosevelts' marriage would have been COMPLETELY different had FDR even ONCE, told his mother to lay off Eleanor. The Memoir of Norman Littell, Asst. Attorney General and confidant of the Roosevelts' daughter quotes Anna as talking about all the times when they were kids how at the dinner table Sara would talk about "all the pretty girls dad could have married" and Eleanor would leave the table in tears and FDR - the one person who could have brought it to a stop - let it happen. Eleanor must have thought after years of this that FDR agreed with Sara.
   
   FDR and Sara saw to it that the kids associated them with fun and Eleanor the sole dispenser of discipline. In fact, even in the White House FDR made Eleanor fire household staff he wanted fired and to do so while he was out of town. Clementine Churchill thought that FDR was the most self-centered, selfish man she'd ever met. That's saying something. And Sara was a big part of that aspect of his character.
   
   One reviewer here talks about the problems in the Roosevelt marriage and how Sara picked up the slack, but this view assumes that Sara's interference with the kids - regularly over-ruling FDR and ER in their discipline, etc. did not contribute to the disruption in the R's marriage or their kids' lives. This undermining of parental authority continued into the White House. Sara's generosity was not without its price.
   
   Groups of three are always unstable. Hell, ask the Supremes and the Andrews Sisters. They don't work.
   
   As others here have said: there's no purpose served at this point trying to use one to trash the other.



2. If this book contains any accurate information, it is, sadly, smothered in an overpoweringly cheesy sauce of conjecture, misrepresentation and fabrication.
   
   This book has oppositional-defiant disorder; every positive (and painstakingly researched) piece of information we have about Eleanor Roosevelt (from a long list of books written by a stable of better researchers and writers than Ms. Pottker) is systematically twisted, distorted, inverted and stood on its head in order to make Eleanor Roosevelt look like the wicked witch of Val-Kill while/by making Sara Delano Roosevelt appear to be the Mother Theresa of mother-in-laws.
   
   (Okay. That was an exaggeration. But, not a gross exaggeration. There are many facts in the book which are verifiably true: Sara Delano Roosevelt was FDR's mother, Eleanor Roosevelt was a woman, the three of them shared meals on at least three separate occasions, Eleanor's children were, in fact, Sara's grandchildren...etc... But it seems to me that an awful lot of the book is, to put it charitably, less than trustworthy.)
   
   However, you might want to take a look at the book in a library or bookstore in order to see what the "notes" on sources section looks like. I have never seen a more stunning example of incompetence or contempt for one's readers than this haphazard list of sources.
   And that's all it is: a list. No way to figure out which quote or fact came from which source, just a list. If Columbia could revoke degrees, this list of sources would be a powerful reason for the university to consider de-doctorating Pottker, and returning her tuition as quickly and quietly as possible.
   
   I still can not believe St. Martin's published this fictional revision of history and dared to call it biography.
   
   One can't help wondering whether Ms. Pottker has a daughter-in-law of her own and a very, very dull axe. (the kind that gets lots of grinding)



3. I really wanted to like this book more, since I have several books about the Roosevelts (both the Hyde Park clan and the Oyster Bay contingent). I did enjoy the story of Sara's background and her interesting childhood, not to mention the history of the Delano family and the "color" of some of the events, like the royal visit. I also appreciated a text that did not demonize "Mama." Eleanor's half of the story, however, reveals nothing new--her sad childhood, her depression and insecurity because of it, her slow rise to independence--and suffers at the expense of the author's efforts to improve Sara Roosevelt's image. In addition to the historical errors mentioned in Sylvia Jukes Morris' featured "Washington Post" review, there is an extremely grievious one: Pottker talks about the events of March 1911, then follows with two paragraphs about the "next month," concerning an oceanic calamity: the sinking of the Titanic! Except the Titanic sank in April *1912*. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. Does no one edit these books any longer?



4. I started to read this book with hardly any opinion about the two main characters. I soon started to realize the author's bias towards Sara and against Eleanore! She uses subjective snide remarks about Eleanore to promote Sara. In her book Sara can do nothing wrong while everything Eleanore does is questionable and fraught with ulterior motives.



5. As a long-time student of the lives of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, I am always eager to expand my knowledge of these two important Americans. Thus, when I stumbled across this book, I immediately ordered it. However, it didn't take me long to discover that this read more like a book report based on Geoffrey Ward's excellent biographies of FDR than an original work. I respect the author for her turning the viewpoint around and taking a sympathetic look at Sara Delano Roosevelt, but her historical perspective lacks rigor and does not agree with any of the other major historians who have offered razor-sharp looks at the lives of the Roosevelts. Indeed, this book reads like a piece of fluff and the author's uncompromising adoration of Sara Roosevelt leads to unsupported conclusions and apologetics in Sara's relationship with her son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren. Sara comes off in this book as simply too good to be true, a paragon of virtue, and an angel-made-flesh. There is little critical information related here, just a retelling of the same old story in a revisionist vein. This is not the book for serious students of history and anyone else seeking factual information on the subject.

3 comments about The World I Live In (Classic Books on Cassettes Collection).

1. I received the book promptly. The material was in new condition without any flaws. I was very pleased. Thank you!



2. She tries to help you understand the reality of her life. It is much more than you can imagine.



3. What beautiful writing! It's pointed out in the intro that, more than most of us, her world was shaped with WORDS. I've only read about four essays so far, and am profoundly touched. I've always admired Helen Keller, but am newly re-impressed with her wisdom and vision, and touched that she can write so clearly as to make me feel how little she felt limited by her handicap. If Helen Keller had simply learned to behave and ask politely for her food, etc, it would have been an impressive accomplishment. The fact that she grew to fully embrace her intelligence, her world and her potential . . . wow. I know so many people who are content to just do the bare minimum, to not stretch their limits at all, to not show any intellectual curiosity . . . she had the perfect excuse to exert the least effort, yet she didn't. Once she was given the key, the entree to humanity, she didn't let her handicaps stop her. I love that even all these years later, she is still able to share that.

No comments about Al desnudo.