5 comments about Rescuing Patty Hearst: Growing Up Sane in a Decade Gone Mad.

1. I thought this book we tell me something new that I didn't know about mental illness but it didn't really do that.



2. Holman's autobiography of her childhood abuse at the hands of a schizophrenic mother is surprisingly tame: Holman writes with considerable emotional distance, as if she's still uneasy about approaching the memories. This tone makes the book read more like fiction than reality at times. Unlike many memoir writers, Holman talks little about her childhood emotions, instead opting to probe into the "why's" of the events: why her father didn't "save" her from her crazy mother, why Holman herself didn't flee, etc. It makes for an interesting psychological tale. However, by the same token it prevents readers from getting too emotionally tied to the book and its young, suffering Virginia.
   Holman's tactic of switching abruptly back and forth between the present and her childhood also does some major damage to the book's flow. The same goes for the book's structure: Holman divides her story into short chapters, many of them only 2-3 pages long.
   Still, anyone with a relative suffering from a mental illness--particularly illnesses as quirky and unpredictable as schizophrenia, will find a familiar voice in Holman's childhood self and will recognize all too well her adult frustrations with finding logic in the illogical waters of her experiences.



3. When she was eight years old, Gingie was forced to leave town with her mother Molly, a schizophrenic under the delusion that she was needed to set up a makeshift hospital for war children. Molly took Gingie and her baby sister Emma, who was only a year old, to the family's Virginia summer cottage, and for several years, forced Gingie to humor her in collecting supplies, adapting their home and going along with a variety of delusions as she began to descend more and more into the illness.
   
   Meanwhile, Gingie's father remained in the family's original home, visiting on weekends. After he requested a divorce, he told his daughters he couldn't take them, because the law usually ruled in favor of the mothers. That may have been true in the mid-1970s, but what jury could possibly recommend two little girls remain in the custody of a schizophrenic? It seems odd, how the girls' father knew first-hand what they were undergoing, but did nothing to remove them from the situation.
   
   All the while, Gingie keeps thinking of Patty Hearst, the heiress who was kidnapped and found robbing a bank with her captors the previous year. She wonders what really happened to Patty; did she cooperate of her own free will? Was she brainwashed? Did she want to get away? Gingie figures it's not too different from her own situation.
   
   Interspersed between Gingie's recollections are brief comments from the adult Virginia. Although happily married and doing well in life, she's unable to stop thinking about her childhood. Why did it have to happen? If it happened to her mother, well after she entered her thirties and had children, could it happen to *her*?
   
   An intriguing read, giving a vivid picture of life with a mentally ill person in control of the situation...



4. At first when Gingie's mother begins to show signs of becoming delusional, it's a bit like an adventure. Gingie and her sister Emma is one. When their mother, in the early stages of schizophrenia, announces they must be vigilant and look for clues, it seems to Gingie that they are plunged into an exciting world, like Nancy Drew, where anything could mean something important. They walk though the woods, examining the trash they find, and Gingie's mother records everything in her notebook.
   
   Life continues to get stranger and stranger, though. Gingie's mother moves her daughters into their summer cottage and paints the windows black, confiding in her that they have been chosen to create a field hospital for the war orphans who will be arriving any day. For years Gingie endures night maneuvers and quizzes on the contents of the first aid book her mother expects her to learn, so she will be able to help treat the war children.
   
   Despite this weirdness in her childhood, other parts of Gingie's life are remarkably normal. She plays with her cousins who live nearby, attends school and worries about making friends. Nobody seems to be concerned with her mother's increasingly strange behavior.
   
   Although Gingie's experience was worrisome, I didn't get a feeling of urgent danger from her story. She described some of the crazy things her mother did, like refusing to leave their cottage during a flood, or giving her sister a glass of bleach to drink, or, much later, physically attacking Gingie when she was visiting from college, but she didn't give the impression that the situation was dire. I think this made the story less dramatic than it could have been, because the narrator didn't seem overly horrified by the effects of her mother's mental illness.



5. This book chronicles the experiences of one family when the mother develops schizophrenia after giving birth to her second child. Unable to convince the mother to get psychiatric help and without the legal means to force her to do say, the family is instead forced to simply stand by as her delusions slowly take over their mother's life, and, in the process, also their own.
   
   Quote: "I think about this now: I was seen at my worst and loved. Forgiven. This still astounds me. And it makes me want to be kinder to people, more compassionate. I begin to wonder: Can I find a way to forgive my mother for being so sick?"
   
   
   I thought this book was extremely interesting and also very saddening because, as it is written by the family's older daughter, the reader gets a glimpse into how schizophrenia affects both the person who is diagnosed with the condition and the people who love and surround the individual. The daughter finds that she is able to connect with her mother less and less until she is forced to choose between having nothing to share with her mother or being a part of her mother's delusions.

4 comments about I Shock Myself: The Autobiography of Beatrice Wood.

1. Being a potter and a Beato fan, I truly enjoyed the time I spent with this autobiography. I was fascinated by how her life unfolded from her relationships with those in art to her own creation of art. How her world which was largely centered around the men she knew, changed as she found herself in clay.
   I loved how this story unfolded and I was sad when it ended.



2. I am going to be honest and say what this autobiography meant to me.... Starting with her early days as an artist to an actress breaking from her mother's shell. To her associations with Duchamp,Roche,Varese,Reginald Pole,Krishnumarti and other well-known men. And it tells of the struggles she went through in paying the price to learn of life and her amazing stories in India,France..etc; were very interesting to read. I enjoyed her stories with the beloved Arensbergs' for they were very important in her life. Before this book I didn't have knowledge of most of the artists in her life. She has opened new doors! I laughed hysterically at her descriptions of her years with Pole and Steve.She is a riot!

   An amazing woman really. This book will remain with me forever and I will read it again and again. For someone like myself can't beleve there is so much adventure in life. She died this spring at 105,in her heart 32. I would have loved to meet her.All I can do now is remember her and try to learn more about her life and art. I loved her and she is an inspiration to all humanity with her marvelious statements on the facts of life.Afterall,she lived 105 years and paid the price. A definate book to add to a collection for any Beato fan or curious book reader!




3. As a potter, I'd hoped to learn more about her art. However,there were some gems to be found in the text. I really enjoyed the stories about several other famous people in her life. She is brutally honest in her opinions and I like that. On the downside... it was a bit too "socially conscious" in places, for my own taste. Overall, I enjoyed the book and will read more by her. I wrote a personal letter to her, regarding her book and she answered me promptly... twice! Great lady! Wonderful clay-artist! :-) An interesting read, for sure.



4. Highly recommended, artist Beatrice Wood's autobiography, "I Shock Myself" gives the read a glimpse into her illustrious life and art. I could not put this book down

3 comments about French Seduction: An American's Encounter with France, Her Father, and the Holocaust.

1. Let me admit upfront that I was not aware of Eunice Lipton before reading this. I saw this book at my local library and was intruiged by the title. That turned out to be a mistake.
   
   The book's title "French Seduction: An American's Encounter with France, Her Father and the Holocaust" (233 pages) lead me to believe that this book would be about just what the title implies. And there is some of that, although the "Her Father" aspect is mostly misleading, as there are some, but not nearly enough, insights on the author's relationship with her father (just about as many observations as with her relationship with her mother, actually). Furthermore, there are endless deviations on art, including a whole chapter on Impressionism, for no apparent reason, but observing "But to paint only sunny days, again and again and again, was, well, compulsive. The myth of a sunny Paris is mighty and Impressionism has contributed mightily to it". I did like the dissertation on Albert Camus' book "L'Etranger" (The Ousider): "Is The Outsider a new religious parable that tells of a man who does not sufficiently honor his mother and therefore must be put to death?".
   
   The author does come back often to the anti-Semitism that exists in France, overtly or under the current, and it is clear that she (as a Jew) is grealy troubled by it, but at the same time still wanting to be in France (she splits her time between Paris and NY). But in the end, this book was just all over the place, and I had trouble at times making myself reading through the book. An interesting, yet flawed, book.



2. The hype for the book indicated that it was an insight into the factors leading to French antisemtisim by a Jew in France. It is not. It is rather a a semi pretentious autobiography and a boring one at that. I` say semi pretentious because the emotional feelings the author shares seem to be deeply felt but this effort should have remained a private diary...it is not a teaching vehicle in my opinion.I give it two stars for wanting to please.



3. of views on feminism, French anti-semitism, father-worship by the author and mother-worship by the French, art and art history, contemporary problems and solutions on North African race-relations in France, Proust, French kings and Madame Pompadour, "voluptuous" models, resorts in the Catskills, Riga, French food, and almost anything else you might like to throw in the mix. I could not "get" exactly why she was writing this book.
   
   I really don't like panning a book. She's probably a very good writer when she stays "on-topic".

2 comments about Profiles in Audacity: Great Decisions and How They Were Made.

1. Some of the vignettes were interesting insights into history. But it seemed like the plurality of them were over-hyped in the CEO-worshipping management book style of leadership assessment. If the decision led to a successful conclusion, it was a great decision and therefore the leader had audacity. Yet, some of these tipping points in history could just as easily failed. No audacious decisions that failed were reviewed. Even those that succeeded didn't mean that there weren't better decisions that could have been made. Some weren't even decisions at all. Did Galileo really decide to rethink the universe? Or did he just assess the many different mental models of the solar system and conclude that the sun-centered model (proposed earlier by Copernicus) best explained his observations?
   
   I usually recycle my books by passing them on to friends or family who might find them interesting. But I can not think of anyone to pass this book on to.



2. 
   This is a collection of vignettes explaining how some of the most influential decisions in history were arrived at; from Galileo's decision to publicly support Copernicus' solar-centric version of the universe to President Truman's decision to drop the A-Bomb to Bill Gates acquiring the rights to DOS. Though the book does cover events spanning a period from Cleopatra to Flight 93, 70% of the book is dedicated to American decision makers so for a strict historical survey for pedantic historians, it falls woefully short.
   
   However for the casual reader of history, it is a very interesting and engaging coverage of many of turning points of history and not merely the boring, behind the scenes red tape kind. "Decisions in Crisis" covers Elizabeth I's standing up to the then overwhelming might of Spain and JFK's finding a middle ground in the Cuban Missile Crisis. "Decisions to Venture" covers such diverse topics from the Lewis and Clark expedition and the Race for the Moon to Charlie Goodnight's first cattle drive and Ted Turner's creation of CNN. "Decision of Conscience" I found to be the most stirring with examples such as Gandhi's use of non-violent resistance, Branch Rickey's hiring Jackie Robinson to play for the Dodgers, W.E.B. Du Bios role in the creation of the NAACP, Daniel Ellsberg's decision to leak the Pentagon Papers and Betty Friedan's decision to look into and beyond her own dissatisfaction with what society prescribed a woman's life should be to what women had the potential to achieve. "Decision to Risk Everything" of course included such famous examples as Hillary and Norgay's ascent of Everest and Washington's Delaware Crossing, but it also includes such lesser known moments such as the Berlin Airlift and Nixon's decision to open relations with Communist China.
   
   The final section, "Decision to Hope", was the weakest. It does contain some excellent examples, such as Begin and Sadat's work for peace between Israel and Egypt (which is one of my first memories of world events as a child), Carnegie's philosophy of modern noblesse oblige. However, the other examples feel misplaced and the book strikes a very sour note here by including Chief Joseph' surrender at the Battle of Bear Paw mountain as a "Decision to Hope. "I want time to look for my children and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I will find them among the dead. Hear me my chiefs, I am tired, my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever." How does this sound hopeful to anyone? After watching his tribe be decimated by U.S. troops, freezing temperatures and starvation in a conflict started by American settler's greed it does not sound at all hopeful to me. It sounds like surrender which is not an act of hope, but resignation. A "decision" forced down one's throat at gun point is not a decision at all.
   
   But that stumble aside, it is otherwise an good overview of some of the more momentous moments in history, especially the modern ones that shaped the world we live in today and can introduce even more knowledgeable history readers to historical figures not usually mentioned in the grand scale of most historical work.

5 comments about Confessions Of an Art Addict.

1. I became curious about Peggy Guggenheim, when last year, I visited her former home - Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, on the Grand Canal in Venice. Now a beautiful and exciting museum, made up of a great collection of paintings and sculptures.
   I was very impressed by the famous artists I found there - Dali, Picasso, Max Ernst, Brancusi are just a few names. So I thought that such a woman must have had an interesting life.
   
   But I have to say that the autobigraphy she wrote has no literary value whatsoever. Instead, it is a very honest, uninhibited story of a life dedicated to collecting pieces of art and their authors. Her motto was "buy one paiting per day" and she got much of the fame for her many affairs with artists. However, the efforts she made to promote XXth century art, by organizing exhibitions and art galleries can only be laudable.
   
   A definite non conformist, she decided to quit college and left for Europe, where most of the American literary "nomads" of the time were going. Bohemian life style suited her perfectly. The vivid literary and artistic life in London and Paris, made her fall in love with these places.
   
   I can only say "chapeau" to such a woman who was neither an artist, nor a critic, but loved art and artists, and who spent all her fortune to create what is today the most important museum in Italy for European and American art of the first half of the 20th century.
   
   The story flows nicely and I also got the chance to find out a lot of interesting details about famous artists. The book can only be a pleasant and light reading on an intercontinental flight or on your coming soon vacation.



2. Guggenheim doesn't seem to gilt her "Confessions" in velvet (or gold); she comes across as an honest soul wanting to relate her experiences--an influences--in the art world. Some of the things mentioned are her childhood, her marriages, Max Ernst, Brancusi, Kandinsky, Pollock, and Motherwell (to name but a few). Worth a read... and another read.



3. Undoubtedly, Miss Guggenheim led a colourful and interesting life. She had either great artistic insight and intigrity or a bratish desire to boost of her wealth.
   I didn't reach a conclusion having read this book, but then maybe she was doing a bit of both and wanted to keep us guessing? I found the book enormously entertaining and informative if a little disrespectful of it's subject.
   One cannot help but to consider that this disrespect and the virtual anonymous space she occupies in history, might be very different had she been Peter and not Peggy.
   A great read for modern art lovers, a fairly good one for anyone else.
   Though it cannot be helped nor altered, it is a book very heavy on characters, plot, and at times, weighty information; which can be very offputting and confusing.



4. Here's the story of a woman that knew them all, felt the earth move under her feet with many of them, and bought their art for pretty much nothing. She recognized them when they were starting, and this makes her a Princess. This book is her equivalent to Gore Vidal's "Palimpsest" and Lillian Hellman's "Pentimento". This is one of those books that almost transports you to a long gone era, and makes you wish you could have been there to see it all.



5. Peggy was a trip. She also apparently had no editor, or so it seems, which adds to the air of entitlement and oblique charm that permeates this book. Her accounts are interesting historically, though PG's slant on history is sometimes its own beast. This is a quick read and some of her observations will make you laugh out loud ("I was worried about my virginity--I was twenty-three and I found it burdensome..."), while others are chilling, especially the question of which Jews she deemed worthy of her efforts to help them get to the States. This may be more entertaining than informative, but it's both.

5 comments about Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Biography.

1. I am not much of a reader of biographies as many of them read like text books. Meade has managed to do a superlative job in creating a biography that I found myself unable to put down.
   
   I have read the critics stating the book is more fiction than history. Without personally researching every document Meade used to develop her book (a task I am sure the critics did not perform), I felt able to easily understand where Meade made conjectures about Eleanor's thoughts and motivations for the actions that she took, most of which were well documented by Eleanor's contemporaries - particularly in the accounting department. It is apparent to me that Meade's conjectures were based on these solid facts along with a good dose of understanding what it much have been like for a women of means and will to be constantly under the thumb of men.
   
   Critics also state that Meade painted a woman without faults. Obviously they did not read the book. The description Meade gives of Eleanor's second attempt to regain Toulouse with her land hungry second husband shortly after a friendly truce with her ex-husband was gained, amounted to Meade basically stating in so many words, "What was she thinking?"
   
   Rather than faultless, Meade gives a detailed description of a complex woman; a woman of intelligence, but also a woman easily succumbed to flattery; a woman of independent will consistently struggling against a society clipping her wings.



2. "Meade's history [of Eleanor] is full of color, but based on facts," a reviewer wrote in 1999. As indeed it should be. Those qualities are not antithetical: history is often colorful and always based on facts. Reading reviews of Marion Meade's "Eleanor of Aquitaine: a Biography" (1977) is to discover that this writer is defending Meade's book against comments such as: "[It's] a very good read, but one suspects it is a poor history." And, under the heading "Entertaining fiction, not history" a reviewer describes Meade's book as, "indeed entertaining, and paints a vivid portrait... one that many readers have complained is missing from other biographies of this most fascinating queen." But then the reviewer changes direction, adding: "A substantial proportion of that portrait is conjecture."
   
   Some conjecture is essential to a quality biography from a faraway time. (Where would a jury be without connecting facts?) Meade's book is readable, superbly researched--as one expects from an accomplished journalist--and colorful. It is what a lengthy biography of an amazing woman should be, especially when the adventure of that long, exceptional life was so extraordinary.
   
   Marion Meade's diversity of interests is intriguing. She has written biographies of Buster Keaton, Woody Allen, Dorothy Parker, and tales of the roaring twenties under the title "Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin." On the other hand, here is this well-researched, compelling biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine, a rebellious life, to be sure, but a life pushing forth from the stony soil of the straightened, misogynistic twelfth century. Eleanor's life and times clearly made an impact on the author. Two years later (no doubt using some of the same hard-won research) she gave us the tale of Eleanor's near-contempory in "Stealing Heaven: The Love Story of Heloise and Abelard." Eleanor may have heard Abelard preach in Paris. Like Heloise, in Meade's capable hands Eleanor of Aquitaine comes across as the mistress of her life--even, be it said, of her life's many frustrations.
   
   Robert Fripp, author of
   "Power of a Woman. Memoirs of a turbulent life: Eleanor of Aquitaine"



3. This book provides a detailed, insightful and thorough examination of a woman whose life would have been radical by modern standards. However, Eleanor lived nine centuries ago, in an age when patriarchial attitudes, values and mores were completely dominant. In such a world, Eleanor not only survived, she thrieved. The wife of two powerful Kings, Eleanor was a match for any man. She floutted convention, wearing armour and riding a charger on crusade, Eleanor remained sexually attractive enough to have the King of England, a man fourteen years her junior, marry her without regard for her lack of the normal virginal requirements of a queen consort.



4. This was a wonderful book. I would read as much as I had time to each day and then spend time thinking about Eleanor until I could get back to her story. I have read other accounts, one historical, of Eleanor of Aquitaine, but this one brings her to life more than anything else I have read about her. She truly was a remarkable person by any standards and Meade made me feel as though I was right there watching it all unfold. I would highly recommend this book, particularly, if you have not read anything else on Eleanor and I guarantee you will want to find out more.



5. This is a comprehensive story of one of the most interesting women in history. Marion Meade gives us everything we would ever want to know about Eleanor of Acquitaine. Of course, what makes the book more interesting is the huge cast of supporting players in Eleanor's life. The story begins with her father and his castle of courtly romance. We then see Eleanor married to Louis Capet, King of France. He takes Eleanor on crusade to the Holy Land where their marriage falls apart. This sets the stage for her marriage to Henry Plantagenet - one of the greatest kings of England.

   We get the full story of Henry's struggle with Thomas a Beckett. We see the gradual dissolution of his marriage to Eleanor, and we see the famous children they sire - especially Richard Coeur de Lion.

   This is a long book but it is a well-written and fascinating read for anyone with even the most casual interest in history.

4 comments about Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: A Political Marriage.

1. If there was anyone who truly bestrode the 1980s like colossi, it was Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. While they acted upon the world stage, the other nations were forced to deal with them - were forced to react, while they acted. Together they reinvigorated their nations, challenged and defeated the Soviet Empire, and reshaped the modern world in ways that are still being felt some twenty years after their passing from power.
   
   In this fascinating book, author and journalist Nicholas Wapshott, draws on interviews and hundreds of personal correspondences to give a full view of their relationship. Theirs was not the simple, distant relationship enjoyed by most national leaders, instead their relationship was more like a marriage. They shared deeply-held values, they talked out and often fought over policies, and proved impervious to any attempts to set them against each other.
   
   I must admit that I really loved this book. I came of age (politically) during the Carter malaise, and remember the Reagan era with great affection. Plus, what Conservative does not fondly remember Britain's Iron Lady? This book does an excellent job of giving the reader an inside view of the relationship between Reagan and Thatcher, and really explaining what happened between them and what it meant for the rest of the world.
   
   I think that this book does a great job of giving the reader an insider's view of the 1980s, informing and explaining. This is one of the best books I have read in a while - and I read many good books - and I do not hesitate to give it my highest recommendations! Buy this book!



2. Nicholas Wapshott gives us a dual biography of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and what he calls their `political marriage' during the 1980s when they were the hugely popular leaders of the United States and Great Britain. He shows us their childhood and the unlikely careers that finally lead to the White House and #10 Downing Street. It is interesting to remember that Thatcher's period as Prime Minister began before and ended after Reagan's Presidency. However, Reagan seemed to leave office with greater comfort than Thatcher did. Of course, Reagan was term limited while Thatcher ended up being undermined by her party as well as the accumulation of political missteps.
   
   Wapshott presents their careers and lives in a largely positive light, but does not shy away from criticism. Nor does he favor either Reagan or Thatcher. He shows the strengths of each as well as their blind spots. What the book excels at is showing their friendship and its being stronger than their sometimes vehement disagreements. These periods of confrontation are fascinating. The book bills itself as featuring previously unpublished correspondence, and it delivers these very interesting letters, but there are not as many of them as I had expected. This doesn't detract from the book in any way, but I just thought you should know that this isn't primarily a book of correspondence between the two world leaders.
   
   Were Thatcher and Reagan as important a global leadership team as Churchill and FDR? Maybe not quite, but their partnership during a critical period of the Cold War certainly helped it become a period LATE in the Cold War. Wapshott is not so sure that they caused the fall of the Soviet Union as much as they were in office when the USSR ran out of gas. While I am not a scholar of the period, I lived through most of the Cold War and followed it closely. I have no doubt that Reagan and Thatcher led the West and made things sufficiently more difficult for the Soviet leaders that they did contribute to its demise. And I am delighted each day that they did. You can't point to the way the West has muffed the post Cold War relationship with Russia to judge it any more than you can say that the Cold War makes our victory in WWII less victorious.
   
   A solid, concise, and interesting telling of these two lives on the world stage.
   
   Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI



3. This dual biography details the remarkably parallel lives of two of the late 20th Century's most influential world leaders. Both were raised "above the store" as children of merchants, though Thatcher's father owned the store, whereas Reagan's hard-luck father never did. Both were insurgents and change-agents in traditional, staid political parties. Both were freedom-promoting anti-totalitarians deeply committed to breaking the legacy of Yalta and, in Reagan's words, "transcending" Communism. Both enhanced their reputations for firmness by staring down powerful unions -- PATCO in the U.S.; the National Union of Mineworkers in the U.K. Both furthered national restoration, in part, through controversial, but ultimately successful military expeditions.
   
   Making use of newly released correspondence, diaries and phone transcripts, journalist Nicholas Wapshott mines the depths of the Thatcher-Reagan political partnership. Like any marriage, they did not always agree. And at times, the disagreements were quite contentious. For example, the iron-willed Thatcher is seen upbraiding Reagan in strong terms over U.S. resistance to her Falklands action; Reagan's decision not to consult Thatcher before launching the Grenada invasion, and U.S.-led restrictions on Western companies supporting the Soviet Siberian gas pipeline. Reagan's zero-option nuclear gambit at Reykjavik also drew a stern post-mortem rebuke from Thatcher. Reagan is seen parrying these hot critiques with charm and diplomacy.
   
   Reagan and Thatcher, of course, came to dissimilar ends. Reagan quietly disappeared from public life (even before the onset of Alzheimer's), while Thatcher, felled in an intra-party coup, remained an outspoken, if somewhat embittered commentator on world events.
   
   Wapshott's book is not an authoritative biography, but it does provide revealing insights into the most intimate and successful trans-Atlantic political partnership since Roosevelt and Churchill.



4. Seldom have two heads-of-state been better matched to work for common goals than were Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. However, neither their personal relationship nor their political one was as placid as usually portrayed for benefit of the general public on both sides of the Atlantic. Nicholas Wapshott's dual biography, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: A Political Marriage, offers a more realistic look at the personal relationship that helped change the course of world history by so directly contributing to the end of the Cold War.
   
   Reagan and Thatcher, whose terms in office overlapped by the eight years of Reagan's presidency, first met in 1975 at the suggestion of a friend of Reagan's who believed that the two would be natural political allies. At the time of their meeting, Thatcher had just been elected Conservative leader and Reagan had just finished his second term as governor of California and was being pressed by some for a run at the presidency. On that eventful day, the pair found their political views to be almost identical and they forged an alliance, both personal and political, that would remain strong and productive throughout Reagan's entire term as President of the United States.
   
   Margaret Thatcher saw Ronald Reagan as an inspirational figure but Reagan's tremendous respect for her political skills, and his willingness to listen to her and to take her advice on a regular basis, placed Thatcher in the unusual position of being almost an unofficial member of the Reagan Cabinet. As a result, Thatcher influenced American international policy like no world leader other than Winston Churchill had ever done before her. She was not afraid to make demands of Reagan and she found him a willing listener who could often be moved in the political direction that she preferred as British Prime Minister.
   
   That is not to say that Ronald Reagan always gave in to Margaret Thatcher's arguments, but she knew that she could always count on Reagan to give her point-of-view a fair hearing. Together, the two leaders hastened the demise of the Soviet Union by keeping the "heat" on its leadership and by engaging their two economies in a spending war for military weapons that the Soviets could not long sustain.
   
   On the surface, the two seem to have had little in common. Thatcher's formative years as a shopkeeper's daughter, with a religious father who seldom allowed alcohol in his home, was very different from the childhood endured by Reagan, son of an alcoholic father who could barely afford food and shelter for his family at times. But remarkably Thatcher and Reagan ended up with the same strong beliefs that nothing was more important than family and religious faith. Both believed in hard work and developed a true appreciation for those who made their living in "trade," producing a strong belief in each of them that everyone deserves respect and fair treatment regardless of social class or financial worth, lessons that served each of them well in their political careers.
   
   Nicholas Wapshott's use of the treasure trove of hundreds of recently declassified letters, notes, transcripts of telephone conversations and recollections of many who witnessed the relationship as insiders has resulted in an effective political history of the eighties and the kind of dual biography that political junkies everywhere will enjoy. Taken alone, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher would have likely been recognized as remarkable politicians, but taken together as a unified team with common goals they enjoyed the kind of success that the pairing of George W. Bush and Tony Blair could only dream about. What they accomplished by joining forces was astounding.

5 comments about Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe.

1. Portrait of an Artist is just that - a portrait of a powerful, unique artist. Refreshingly, for those of us who have an interest in art and some knowledge but are not familiar with technicalities, the book is very direct and honest. One comes away with the feeling they have met and experienced a fascinating woman - one who is not always pleasant and kind, but one who is always open and honest. Her art is used as a lens into her deepest feelings, although the only representations of her art are in photographs where she is posing in front of one of her paintings. Her devotion to her art was inspiring, although it seemed to overwhelm everything and everyone that surrounded her. I walk away from this book very glad to have met and experienced Georgia O'Keeffe, but also glad to have experienced her from a distance and not had to endure her intensity personally. This is a great compliment for a fascinating book.



2. When author Laurie Lisle advised the artist, Georgia O'Keeffe, that hers was a story Lisle "wanted to tell," O'Keeffe, as was her wont, elected not to participate but told Lisle, "you are welcome to what you find." ("Forward and Acknowledgments.") Lisle, equipped with a passion for her subject and steadfastness of purpose - qualities similar to those governing O'Keeffe's own work and life - pored through museum bulletins and exhibition catalogue notes, magazine and newspaper articles, memoirs about O'Keeffe's artistic peers (including her husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz), and O'Keeffe's letters preserved in Yale's Beinecke Rare Book Library. She spoke with O'Keeffe's schoolmates, in-laws, and friends. And, of course, she viewed O'Keeffe's creations.
   
   There is not one spot of color in this book except for the auburn and gold lettering on the jacket of my paperback. The sixteen pages of photographs in the book, only four of which show O'Keeffe posing with her art, are black-and-white. One imagines, had the artist participated in this project and accepted that a literary work, with an artist as its subject, could be as beautiful and fascinating as the flowers, skulls, rivers, and stones she captured in her own paintings, O'Keeffe would have appreciated the lack of color. For much of her life, O'Keeffe's signature garb was black with a touch of white, due to a belief that admirers ought to focus on the art, not the artist.
   
   While reading this book, one obviously is tempted to take occasional breaks from Lisle's gorgeously plain, non-effusive prose to google O'Keeffe's paintings. After I read about O'Keeffe's initiation into the jet age, where she was surprised to peer down from her airplane window and "see so many rivers, tributaries, and deltas undulating through the earth's deserts" ("Chapter 13: Clouds"), I just had to view "It Was Red and Pink." However, this book clearly is not an art critique. Paintings are discussed insofar as they provide insight into O'Keeffe's mind, heart, and soul. Most of the time, while reading, I stayed far away from the computer. I was riveted by tales about family, femininity, marriage, the artist's apparent struggle between remaining dedicated to painting and perhaps having a baby, the conflict between how she and the public perceived her work, intimations of mortality, and a devotion to the splendors of New Mexico even after her eyesight failed.
   
   I would recommend this book to anyone who relishes art, history, New Mexico, femininism, humanity, or just would love to read a great book.



3. For so many years to me, Georgia O'Keeffe was just a well-known woman artist who painted flowers. Thanks to this book I came away feeling that I got to truly know and admire this artist and now I can look at her pictures differently with a deeper understanding and appreciation for them. Thanks to this book I think I have learned to look at the beauty in nature in a different way and feel that this book has taught me much about people and truly opened my eyes in many ways to the world around me and made me curious about different areas of our wonderful country. Very enlightening in many ways and definitely worth reading.



4. There are parts of New Mexico that, if you know of the woman, just scream This is Georgia O'Keeffe Country. This honest and admiring biography lays out the story of this incredible woman who lived to age 99. That's a long, long, long life. Her life found its trajectory when, in 1916, a friend sent some of her drawings to renowned photographer Alfred Stieglitz. He proclaimed her to be "a woman on paper." Furious (as only O'Keeffe could be furious), she confronted him, became his lover, and eventually married him, initiating an emotional and artistic collaboration that endured until his death.
   O'Keeffe became a feminist before the word was even invented. When she realized that it would be impossible to become her own person while working in his shadow, she established the pattern of spending 6 months with him in NY and 6 months on her own in New Mexico, a place she always referred to as her spiritual home. Stiegitz died in 1946, and O'Keeffe lived on for another incredible half a century.
   If you have the opportunity to visit New Mexico, don't miss the O'Keeffe museum in Santa Fe - and my all means visit her home in Abiqueque. To say it's Georgia O'Keeffe country is to put it far too mildly.



5. Having just seen the Georgia Okeeffe exibition at the Phillips Gallery in Washington, DC, I had to run out and buy a biography to learn more about this incredible artist. This book gives deep personal insight to Ms O'keeffe's life and work.

No comments about Thrumpton Hall.

2 comments about Woman of the River: Georgie White Clark, White Water Pioneer.

1. A biography of one of the pioneers of commercial river rafting on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. Georgie--adventurer, raconteur, eccentric--started by swimming the rapids in the river, and continued running large commercial trips into her 80's in the 1990's.



2. You may be as surprised by this book as I was - I bought it thinking that I OUGHT to read it to learn more about a river-running legend, but I didn't expect to enjoy it all that much. I was wrong. Author Richard Westwood engagingly tells the story of Georgie White Clark and how she came to be one of the most celebrated pioneers of Western United State river-running, especially on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. In surprising detail (including the names of many of her passengers and boatmen) this book describes the trips, travails, and triumphs of Georgie's long career here in the United State and elsewhere. The book gives brief details of Georgie's early years, but focuses on her river-running years starting in 1945 when she and Harry Aleson swam from Diamond Creek to Lake Mead, through 1992 when she died.

   To the author's credit he does not dodge the controversies that have marred Georgie's legend. Westwood frankly acknowledges and, in some instances, documents the validity of some of the criticisms leveled at Georgie over the years. He states what he knows or what his considerable research revealed, and leaves the conclusions up to the reader.

   Through this book you will get an unvarnished portrait of a unique individual, someone who left her imprint on a sport that largely didn't exist when she started and was a multi-million dollar industry when she died. You'll learn about an incredibly complex person: alternately engaging or aloof, compassionate or driven -- but always a pioneer. This very readable book includes over 50 photographs and maps that bring to life much of what is written, and give the reader a glimpse of Georgie's world.