5 comments about Half The House: A Memoir.

1. This book seems slightly shrouded by its sensational elements. 'Boy has troubled life - is abused, grieves the death of half of his family, suffers from alcoholism, etc.' These reviews and synopsis are accurate, and have probably/hopefully given the book a wider readership that it so deserves.
   I hope the inherent wisdom and subtlety beautiful writing have not been brushed aside in favor of the memoir's striking subject matter.
   I don't think I've ever felt aspects of childhood so perfectly captured in the innocent, yet curious mind of a child than in this book. Hoffman's inherent wisdom is deepened only by his perfect portrayal of how it feels to be young. Anyone who has considered their own childhood can relate to his delicate observations. The complexities and simple misunderstandings, yet intuitive honesty, of a child are the strongest parts to this book.
   I highly recommend it to anyone. The writing is straightforward yet elegant. Hoffman is a brilliant man and you can see his brilliance come together through his experiences. It truly is "a book of unsparing and at times brutal candor," consistent throughout the entire courageous memoir. There is true depth to this piece, beyond its traumatic subject matter, and Hoffman is truly speaking to everyone in his modest bildungsroman. Definitely a captiving book that you want to read all at once just to absorb its strength.



2. Without flinching from the truth, this book shows that it IS possible to break the circle of abuse: to understand, to love, to forgive, to recover, and to go on loving and nurturing those who are dear. The story of Hoffman's growing up with two terminally ill brothers, a father sometimes unable to control his rage, a mother who copes by shutting out memories, and a sexually abusive coach, is painful but ultimately hopeful.



3. This book was easy reading. I read this book in one night. It thankfully left out the details of the child abuse. Though it tends to jump around, and over many years, it is quite clear as to what happened. The author is telling his story, a very brave one to tell. But the importance of this book is really about how TELLING your story, can set others free. Its also about confronting your abuser, and how THAT can set yourself free. Free of secrets. Free of lies. Lies you tell others, and ones you may tell yourself.



4. Richard Hoffman is a brilliant writer, and quite a good teacher as well. My friend David says that he finds the book arousing. hehe Way to go Mr. Hoffman. The New York State Summer Young WriterInstitute Rules! Shout out to all of my peeps! AAAmennn



5. In Half the House Mr. Hoffman, like any good writer, is intimately concerned with truth, the minute, daily, specific reality of his experience in the rustbelt of Allentown, PA, in the nineteen fifties in working class America. His style is careful, descriptive, direct, and poetic -- but not personal. Half the House is written, as Mr. Hoffman is also a well-published poet, with detachment, technique, and maturity. Of the several memoirs I have read this year, only Half the House resolves its issues, its grimness, its pain in a health-promoting, realistic, peace-giving redemption. That final, moving scene between defensive father and guilty son, wherein each gives a little, then alot, then communicate genuinely and respectfully dissolving forty years of impediment to love, is the kind of real life forgiveness all of us only dare dream of. Half the House does it. As Nabokov once said it takes a deep spiritual sense to create a masterpiece. Half the House has the depth. Ron Morin

2 comments about Celebrating Irving Fisher: The Legacy of a Great Economist (Economics and Sociology Thematic Issue).

1. Few American economists have the reputation Irving Fisher has--he is probably second only to Henry George as an economist of whom the American public was aware in the early twentieth century--and no other economist has undergone such dramatic reversals of fortune over time to achieve his reputation. Fisher's ideas and life seem, in some ways, stranger than fiction....
   
   Fisher was always more than a theorist. Like other public intellectuals, such as the late Milton Friedman, he often engaged in supporting public-policy positions. Unlike Friedman's policy advocacy, however, Fisher's concerns--which ranged from good eating habits and life extension to public health, eugenics, and Franklin Roosevelt's monetary and gold policies--often interfered with his ability to perform his teaching duties. He was away from Yale more than he was there. Toward the end, he did little teaching. Fisher's driving passion to engage in public political debate, to run businesses on the side--he invented a card index system and sold it the company that became Remington-Rand, and he published a weekly index-number newsletter that at its peak reached 7 million readers (p. 51)--and to raise Yale's profile even as he raised his own rankled many of his Yale colleagues. No doubt some were simply envious of his pre-1929 crash wealth (he was a millionaire), and others were jealous of his celebrity. Many also doubted the wisdom of his positions on issues such as backing 100 percent reserves for banks and setting up a mechanism that he claimed would produce absolute price stability.
   
   Fisher's personal ideological proclivities were all over the political map and sometimes changed as circumstances did, especially after the Great Depression suggested empirical difficulties with his quantity-theory approach--an approach that Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz resurrected in 1963 and argued had been true all along. Even though Fisher had studied with William Graham Sumner, he was never an advocate, as his professor had been, of total laissez-faire. As Joseph Dorfman mentions, "he opposed any all-out laissez-faire. He supported such liberal measures as high inheritance taxes and wider dispersal of corporate ownership through profitsharing, employee ownership, and co-operation. As examples of existing types of activities which were neither pure private ownership nor pure government ownership, he cited `government regulation; leases to private capitalists with reversionary rights to the city, state, or nation; subsidies; price-fixing; guaranteeing prices, underwriting against loss; taxes on profits or on excess profits'" (The Economic Mind in American Civilization [New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1969], 5: 298). To this list, one may add Fisher's sometimes-successful Progressive Era crusades for pure food, abolition of alcohol consumption, human eugenics, government manipulation of the international gold price, and even national health insurance.
   
   At the height of his fame, Fisher did something of which economists should always be wary: he made an economic prediction. Two weeks before Black Friday, in October 1929, he proclaimed that stocks "have reached a permanent high plateau." Ouch! One has to admire, however, the fact that Fisher, unlike so many of his contemporary colleagues in the quirky discipline of economics, at least put his money where his theory was: he then went completely broke in the market crash. Only Yale's forgiveness of the rent on Fisher's New Haven residence, which had been sold to the university, prevented him from declaring personal bankruptcy. His prestige took a huge blow, and he found himself ridiculed, his reputation diminished. Even the economics profession in later years seemed to agree that he had become a fascinating curiosity. At the first Fisher commemorative conference at Yale in 1967, however, another famous economist, Paul Samuelson, made his own prediction: professional economists would ultimately come to recognize Fisher as "this country's greatest scientific economist" (p. 54). Unlike Fisher's unfortunate prediction, Samuelson's has been borne out. Today, most of the citations to Fisher's work pertain not to the history of economic thought, but to his theoretical work. He is, among other things, the father of the Federal Reserve's problematic quest for "price stability" and hence of the entire field of contemporary monetary policy....
   
   Had Nobel awards in economics existed during Fisher's lifetime (he died in 1947, and the first Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded in 1969), there is little doubt he would have been a recipient. His wide-ranging theoretical ideas have influenced modern neoclassical theory probably more than any other individual's ideas, and many remain relevant for policy decisions today. Most conference proceedings are mixed bags, at best, but Celebrating Irving Fisher is a happy exception: the level of analysis is high and the discussions always on point. Any reader interested in the life and ideas of one of the nation's foremost economists will find much of value in the book. Whether your interest is the history of ideas or Fisher's analytical contributions, Celebrating Irving Fisher is a wonderful place to begin to understand why Fisher continues to be widely regarded as a pioneering economic theorist.



2. This volume of collected essays on Fisher,edited by Robert Dimand,establishes that he was in fact one of the greatest economists of the 20th century.What has hindered Fisher's historical reputation was the problematic,incorrect,notorious forecast he made in late 1929 that the stock market was on an upward path.The Great Crash of October,1929 cost him 11-12 million dollars in losses personally.His response to this catastrophe was to publish his debt-deflation theory of depressions which correctly points to the debt load in the economy as a whole as the best indicator of a possible depression resulting from some exogenous shock that starts the snowball rolling downhill.The excessive debt loads get worse as the price level falls.This leads to a first round of personal and business bankruptcies and home foreclosures .These bankruptcies force furthur rounds of bankruptcies as the debts of one individual were the assets of another.There is no substantial difference between Fisher's analysis and Keynes's General Theory conclusions.Unfortunately, Fisher's work was ignored in the rush to accept Keynes's work.This volume reestablishes Fisher's overall standing .It has great relevance today given the excessive debt loads that have again been created since 1981 in America.

2 comments about I Don't Want to Be Inside Me Anymore: Messages from Autistic Mind.

1. I would take the previous review with more than a "grain of salt". It seems as though the reviewer has some strong emotions relating to the subject matter that bleed into the analysis of the book. This amazing work is up there with "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat" by Oliver Sacks in terms of redefining the range of what makes us human. To be so suspicious of methods used to obtain Sellin's inner dialog and reflections seems questionable itself. Should we also question the memoir of Jean-Dominique Bauby because he had "locked in" syndrome? No, overcoming this great communication obstacle should be viewed as an immense achievement.



2. The opening of this book really irritated me. The very statements that people on the autism/Asperger's (a/A) spectrum don't relate to others and that nothing registers are not only illogical, but are harmful fallacies. People with autism, which is a neurobiological condition have difficulty communicating and responding to stimuli based on the severity of the condition. Suggesting that nothing registers with people who have autism is a crock.
   
   I also didn't like the way people with autism were compared to Rain Man. Seriously, I wish that 1988 movie had never been made because I am really sick of the savant stereotype being dumped on the autistic population! The term "Rain Man" has become a slur in many a/A circles for this very reason. The irony of it all is that savantism only affects less than 10% of people with autism! I also wish I had an umbrella with the Autism Puzzle design, with the logo "Rain Man Busters" to ward off these tired misstatements. Saying one knows about autism based on one fictitious character is tantamount to saying that one has been to Paris when they've only been to Charles De Gaulle Airport!
   
   Tired, disproved myths about autism such as refusal to speak due to trauma and having no desire to communicate were rampant throughout this book. Bull manure! The desire to communicate is inherent in all people regardless of neurobiology and autism affects that part of people's lives. The irony of it all is that Dr. Asperger, the man who first described this form of autism in 1944 wrote many works IN GERMAN about it as well as its spectrum partner, autism. When Birger was born in 1973, the ironic claim that "little about autism was known in Germany" at the time is all the more reason to question the veracity of this book. Niko and Elisabeth Tinbergen's writings are cited and they, too have touted questionable claims. They support the asinine and disproved "refrigerator parent" theory and claim that forcing people with autism to endure hugs against their will is a sure-fire cure, which it most emphatically is not. If such were the case, then "curing" autism would have a 100% success rate!
   
   Many parts of this book really bothered me. The "facilitated communication" technique is praised throughout the book as the key to Birger Sellin, an individual with severe autism. Sellin is nonverbal and has allegedly been able to communicate via poetry through this method.
   
   There are too many unanswered questions about facilitated communication. This book fails to mention that in the majority of cases, the facilitator's hand is typing the messages and that it is the facilitator's thoughts that are being expressed, not those of the person with autism. In 99% of the controlled studies performed on this method of communication have shown this to be the case. In many instances, the facilitator forcibly holds the person with autism's hand down on the keys to make it appear that the the person with autism is doing the typing.
   
   Small wonder Sellin's meltdowns and extreme frustration appear to be exacerbated since the advent of facilitated communication in his life. One wonders if Sellin is actually doing the typing. At no time are these questions addressed in this book.
   
   Don't just take this with a grain of salt. Take it with a whole BOX of salt!

5 comments about When Life Calls Out to Us: The Love and Lifework of Viktor and Elly Frankl.

1. I was only slightly familiar with Viktor Frankl prior to reading this book. I read a short review in the Pietesten and it sparked my interest and prompted me to buy it. I recently lost my father and somehow this book has helped me in the healing process. It is written with such respect yet objectivity that you feel the Frankls are your neighbors. I recommend this book for people who enjoy reading about the personal aspects of celebrity. I use celebrity in the most respectful terms of Dr. Frankl and his wife Elly. Their lives will inspire you and prompt you to want to learn more about Dr. Frankl's teachings and writings.



2. It is now 14 years since Haddon Klingberg hosted Viktor Frankl and his wife Elly in Chicago, and was asked by the couple to write their personal story. He accepted the challenge and gave seven years to faithfully researching and recording a remarkable love story, interwoven with the professional accomplishments of one of the towering figures in 20th century psychiatric practice. Klingberg's foreward, introduction and first chapters give a comprehensive overview of the European psychiatric landscape into which Dr. Frankl emerged and upon which he left his indelible mark, after years of incarceration in Nazi concentration camps.
   Frankl's logotherapy, which shone a light in my own life forty-three years ago, becomes more than an inspiring theory in author Klingberg's hands. Logotherapy's founder is enfleshed with a genuine humanity of weaknesses and flaws as well as the ideal of self-transcendence to which the noted physician aspired. I learned, and I laughed and cried alternately in this wonderful read. I'll never be the same after being led by the author into the private lives of the two remarkable Frankls.



3. As one of Dr. Frankl's medical students at the Poliklinik in 1948 I found this book of great interest. It is well written and detailed. Although I had always admired Frankl for not falling victim to hate after his concentration camp experiences I was unaware of the profound influence his second wife Elly (the first wife,Tilly, died in Bergen-Belsen) had in his recovery from the tragedies and the help she had given him in the propagation of logotherapy.
   Anyone who is familiar with some of Frankl's book will enjoy reading about the fascinating and colorful personal lives of these two truly extraordinary people. Dr. Klingberg is to be congratulated for his efforts in making them available to us.



4. This history of Frankl's life, thoughtfully and respectfully told, provides much of the context which breathed even more life into Frankl's work for me.



5. I odered this book a LONG time ago from one of the used Book Dealers.

3 comments about The Good Listener: Helen Bamber, A Life Against Cruelty.

1. Why does this book have only 2.5 stars? One German reader doesn't like it, the other reviewer doesn't think it's political enough, and every reviewing publication gives it a very high recommendation. It seems that the stars are very simplistic and robotic.



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3. This book like Schindlers List creates heroes which can be used to characterize the offical enemy as evil, much like a t.v. melodrama, while ignoring the complicity & collaboration of Britain & the U.S. in the very crimes they chronicle, when it suits their colonial ambitions. While Six Million Died. by, Arthur D. Morse a more substantive history, describes Britain in a far less innocent manner, but apparently the publisher could not afford Amazon's asking price for a prominent spot on their home page.

No comments about The Long Week-End 1897-1919 : Part of a Life.

2 comments about Going Down for Air: A Memoir in Search of a Subject (Great Barrington Books).

1. I thought reality TV would be a fad for a season or two -- boy, was I wrong. When I tune into The Apprentice or American Idol, I am faced the immense and lasting allure, but also the banality, of these shows: we want to see how other people behave, think, deal with success and embarrassment, how they make love and how they fail. What disappoints me about these shows is that, except in rare moments, we rarely actually get to see this. What we see, instead, are real people acting out plot lines as tired as old sitcoms and presenting themselves as flat, stereotypical characters--much less interesting than they real people (whom I presume) they are.
   
   Derek Sayer's Going Down for Air presents, in all its voyeuristic glory, the memories of a middle-aged, heterosexual English university professor. Sound boring? It's not. Sayer digs deep, and looks at his life and past squarely in the eye, and in doing so, he ends up asking the enthralling, sometimes disturbing question of how much we can ever know about ourselves, how we remember and forget. My favorite images in the book include a five-year old Sayer on his tricycle, unwittingly causing what might have been a fatal motorcycle accident, unabashedly homoerotic memories of being caned as a schoolboy, and a stark recollection of a hospital visit to Sayer's aging father--a hilarious and malicious character--that is ironic and deeply touching. This is reality TV better than as seen on television.
   
   The book is in two parts, with the memoir followed by a more conventional and scholarly essay exploring the processes and functions of memory. While not as thoroughly engrossing and addictive a read as the memoir, Sayer deftly incorporates the viewpoints of philosophers, sociologists, psychoanalysts, writers and artists from Durkheim and Lacan to Baudelaire and Edward Hopper into an argument about why we can't take our personal and collective memories for granted.
   
   The whole book is illustrated with Sayer's own pleasing and provocative photographs of places around the world and from his childhood, which would form a striking photo-essay in themselves but here go a long way in bringing both texts to life in a manner which is distinctly Sayer's own, highly personal, ironic and communicative.



2. I thought reality TV would be a fad for a season or two -- boy, was I wrong. When I tune into The Apprentice or American Idol, I am faced the immense and lasting allure, but also the banality, of these shows: we want to see how other people behave, think, deal with success and embarrassment, how they make love and how they fail. What disappoints me about these shows is that, except in rare moments, we rarely actually get to see this. What we see, instead, are real people acting out plot lines as tired as old sitcoms and presenting themselves as flat, stereotypical characters--much less interesting than they real people (whom I presume) they are.
   
   Derek Sayer's Going Down for Air presents, in all its voyeuristic glory, the memories of a middle-aged, heterosexual English university professor. Sound boring? It's not. Sayer digs deep, and looks at his life and past squarely in the eye, and in doing so, he ends up asking the enthralling, sometimes disturbing question of how much we can ever know about ourselves, how we remember and forget. My favorite images in the book include a five-year old Sayer on his tricycle, unwittingly causing what might have been a fatal motorcycle accident, unabashedly homoerotic memories of being caned as a schoolboy, and a stark recollection of a hospital visit to Sayer's aging father--a hilarious and malicious character--that is ironic and deeply touching. This is reality TV better than as seen on television.
   
   The book is in two parts, with the memoir followed by a more conventional and scholarly essay exploring the processes and functions of memory. While not as thoroughly engrossing and addictive a read as the memoir, Sayer deftly incorporates the viewpoints of philosophers, sociologists, psychoanalysts, writers and artists from Durkheim and Lacan to Baudelaire and Edward Hopper into an argument about why we can't take our personal and collective memories for granted.
   
   The whole book is illustrated with Sayer's own pleasing and provocative photographs of places around the world and from his childhood, which would form a striking photo-essay in themselves but here go a long way in bringing both texts to life in a manner which is distinctly Sayer's own, highly personal, ironic and communicative.

No comments about D.W. Winnicott: A Biographical Portrait.

2 comments about American Odyssey: Letters & Journals, 1940-1947.

1. Wilhelm Reich was many things in his lifetime- a student of Freud, a political activist, a research scientist, and an inventor. His work was decades ahead of its time and is finally being rediscovered and reevaluated by the public. If, like me, you are interested in Reich and his work, you might want to check out a novel called We All Fall Down, by Brian Caldwell. it draws heavily on Reich's theories, particularly Listen Little Man and The Mass Psychology Of Facism. It's a great introduction to Reich's work and the entire novel draws heavily on his theory. It's very interesting watching an author explore his theories in a fictional setting. Well worth reading.



2. American Odyssey is a lush garden filled with the innermost thoughts of Wilhelm Reich during the period he was establishing himself in America in the 1940's. He will have you smiling one moment and welling up with tears the next as you follow him through the maze of his lifework that evidences his being one of humanity's most creative and harrassed thinkers. Reich's concepts are certainly in line with free-thought today. His legacy of leaving his archives to the "children of the future," since they alone would most likely be the ones to understand and accept what he discovered, is falling nicely into place - exactly as Reich knew it would.

1 comments about Do Justice and Let the Sky Fall: Elizabeth F. Loftus and Her Contributions to Science, Law, and Academic Freedom.

1. This is an edited book which includes articles by a fair number of well-known friends and colleagues of Beth Loftus. Some articles provide reviews research topics while others provide personal details.
   
   The list of authors is impressive. Most of them are well-known cognitive scientists. I might add that these are REAL cognitive scientists, and not the over-zealous activists who pose as scientists in order to combat Loftus' solid scientific conclusions about memory. Here is a list of the authors/chapters: Preface (the editors). (1) Elizabeth Loftus, "Memory Distortions: Problems Solved and Unsolved." (2) Gordon Bower, Tracking the Birth of a Star. (3) Greg Loftus, Elizabeth F. Loftus: The Early Years. (4) M.S. Zaragoza, R.F. Belli, K.E. Payment, "Misinformation Effects and the Suggestibility of Eyewitness Memory." (5) Stephen Ceci, M. Bruck, "Loftus's Lineage in Developmental Forensic Research: Six Scientific Misconceptions About Children's Suggestibility." (6) H. Hayne, "Verbal Recall of Preverbal Memories: Implications for the Clinic and the Courtroom." (7) Henry Roediger, III, M.A. McDaniel, "Illusory Recollection in Older Adults: Testing Mark Twain's Conjecture." (8) D. Strange, S. Clifasefi, M. Garry, "False Memories." (9) J. McMurtrie, "Incorporating Elizabeth Loftus' Research on Memory Into Reforms to Protect the Innocent." Mahzarin Banaji, "Elizabeth F. Loftus: Warrior Scientist." Carol Tavris, "The Cost of Courage."
   
   The cover is amusing, It includes a photo of BL (beaming, beautiful, highlighted in purple) with a bunch of her colleagues --all men and most now famous -- from Stanford in the 1960s. Fortunatetly, the editors fall short of calling this a Festschrift (it's a "Bethschrift.").
   
   Many of the chapters provide excellent new summaries of research on specific topics. For instance, the Roediger & McDaniel chapter provides an excellent, brief discussion of research on memory distortions in older adults. The chapter is not about Loftus, but rather it is about a line of research that she inspired.
   
   Loftus has had a powerful effect on cognitive and clinical psychology. The ongoing controversies and debates surrounding recovered/repressed memories are understandable. As a cognitive scientist and a clinician, I can certainly understand why these are volatile topics because I find myself in the middle of them frequently. But Loftus remains one of my heros, even when I don't like what she has to say. She's a first-rate cognitive scientist and experimentalist, and she tackles tough, important issues with insight and guts. All this was true BEFORE she took on the recovered/repressed memory issue, but she essentially stepped on a land mine when she took on that topic. She's one of the greatest psychologists of our generation, as far as I'm concerned.
   
   Some of the following media (some of which I use in my classes) may be helpful when you are reading this book.
   
   "False Memories" - (~1999), Discovery Channel, Films for the Humanities & Social Sciences (51 minutes, DVD)
   
   Quicktime video of Loftus, UCI Today website (~2006) 2 minutes
   
   "Beyond Belief" (Session 6), Quicktime video, Edge website, Bingham's The Science Network, 2006 ~20 minutes
   
   "Contributions from the Study of Law and Psychology: Memory Research Applied to Real World Problems" 120 minutes, 1994, Quicktime, CCDL libraries
   
   There's an Alan Alda special featuring Loftus, which may be available online...
   
   There are plenty more... To be continued