No comments about Victorian Lady Travellers.

No comments about America's First Ladies: Their Uncommon Wisdom from Martha Washington to Laura Bush.

5 comments about Barbara Bush: A Memoir.

1. Ordinarily, this is not the type of book that I would have chosen to purchase or read, but it was given to me as a gift.
   
   With all of the mass media infatuation with the Kennedy family, it is interesting to note that it is the Bush family that may have quietly assumed the position as the greatest American political dynasty since that of the Adamses: Prescott Bush was a United States Senator from Connecticut; his son, George Herbert Walker Bush, a certifiable war hero, relocated to Texas and served in the Congress before becoming Vice President and President; two of his sons, George W. Bush and his brother, Jeb Bush, have served as the governors of Texas and Florida respectively; George W. Bush is completing his second term as President.
   
   Barbara Bush's memoir is a political love story. It is remarkable to see what a great beauty that Mrs. Bush was at the time of her engagement and marriage. When her husband left the oil business to concentrate on politics, Barbara Bush became a valuable political asset. She possessed a sense of humor and steel backbone that allowed her to be a tower of strength when needed. There are some poignant recollections included in the book also: George W. Bush proved to be a great comfort to his mother following the childhood death of one of his siblings. Clearly, he inherited his mother's sense of determination and tenacity.
   
   It would have been interesting to imagine Barbara Bush as president.



2. Tugboat Babs has finally written her memoir. She is in the weird situation of having been married to one president and having spawned another. She is most informative on the Bush's early years together -- although she provides very little information on the family's connection with the Medellin cartel. She is also mum on Laura's vehicular homicide conviction.
   
   All in all, it is a tale to rank with that of the Sopranos.



3. While I admire the Bush presidencies, I found this book boring. It is written as a catalog of events. There seemed not to be any central theme or purpose in the writing other than that it happened. That made it about as appealing as if a cook went into the kitchen and put every available ingredient into one pot to make soup.



4. What a poitive, gritty, yet appreciative woman hlding dear the basic human values of life that hold our country together. Truly, she was one of our greatest first ladies--she put "first things first," meaning her family and husband first. A must read for all American women who think raising a strong family isn't worth it!! What a payoff! When walking through the George Bush Library at Texas A&M, etched on a wall is George Sr.'s comment that his greatest blessing in life is "that his children still want to come home" Now I understand why.



5. I'll admit up front that I am a fan of both 41 and 43--and have always admired "Bar". That being said, I loved the book. Mrs. Bush has such a gentle, warm way about her and this is certainly reflected in her writing. She is able to weave together the story of her life (including some not-so-wonderful moments) with wit, warmth and clarity--all without ever resorting to name-calling, self-pity or egotism. This book is a refreshing change of pace and should be taken for what it is: a remarkable woman's life story told from her (very sunny) point of view.

5 comments about Learning Joy from Dogs without Collars: A Memoir.

1. Bravo! a well written memoir. Thank you for taking the time to write about your life. I enjoyed the progressive chapters ---Lauralee's unique dance of life. I am sure it wasn't easy. You held my interest and my heart, Bravo to your mom--cause she was the backbone to your success.
   A very interesting novel, especially if you have a teeenager involved in wrestling. Imagine! the only female on the wrestling team at Harvard. Again, thank you for writing your story.
   t



2. I thought this book was enjoyable to read. Say, a decent book to read in the park on a nice afternoon. Nothing too intense. It was a little slow in the middle, but still had enough interesting stories to keep the reader going and find out what happened to this young woman. It picked up the pace toward the end, almost putting off too much for the end; the intense reunion with her father, graduating Harvard, and plenty of wrestling team metaphors for her growing self-realizations -- all within the last few chapters. Compared to other books I've read, it wouldn't be a 5-star because it wasn't particularly life-altering, funny, witty or original. A well-rounded 1st novel for Summer though.



3. This is one of those books that was hard for me to put down. I think I read it over a period of 1 1/2 days. However, I felt that Lauralee skipped over a lot of things. I hope that she writes more about her life. I can't help but wonder what life has in store for her!?!



4. Lauralee Summer's memoir moved me beyond words. It is so uplifting to read stories like hers that show the resilience of the human spirit.

   Despite her very unconventional childhood, Lauralee's mother was very loving and supportive within her capacity to provide for her brilliant daughter.

   An earlier reviewer mentioned her father. This chapter moved me more than almost any other. If there was ever a person who regretted his earlier behavior and genuinely tried to make it up, then her father would get my vote.

   Inspiring, moving, beautifully written in the same vein as ANGELA'S ASHES and FINDING FISH




5. Seeing is believing, or in this case---reading, as the adage goes that relates to the remarkable story of one such lady who in my opinion beats Frank McCourt's 'Angela's Ashes.' Don't get me wrong about McCourt's memoir of the Irish poor, but Lauralee Summer's oddly titled 'Learning Joy from Dogs Without Collars' has an extraordinary flair all it's own. When Lauralee Summer was at the age to enter college she never knew her life would make the newpapers and make radio airwaves nationwide. The headlines would read "Homeless to Harvard" and she even got interviews with the Boston Globe and other prestigious newspapers. When she was asked to make a network TV appearance, during the interview she was pressed for time, the host gave her only less than a minute to reply to the question: What was it like to be homeless? The short-moment media experience of her life in a nutshell prompted her to write the memoir.
   

   
   Summer's reveals in her memoir of a fatherless, nomadic-type life who lived with her mother who was known very little of being employed, eccentric---but loving and protective of her daughter. Summer and her mom were always on the move to one state or another. Life was far from easy of living in dreary, and even dangerous homeless shelters and delapidated welfare houses. They didn't own a car or a bank account and what little money they had wasn't enough for food or clothing. The sort of schooling Summer had she obtained here and there. And her joy came from learning to read and her love of books when she was a small child. It wasn't until she reached high school when she found the mentors she needed and a love for wrestling where she was accepted on the competitive all-male team! This was the time in life, Summer was able to move into her own acceptance. This would later build her foundation into the priviledged walls of Harvard. It was when Summer won a wrestling scholarship to Harvard, she was in the limelight of the press media of her unique story. Summer had come a long way from poverty and neglect, but everything paid off in the end. For everyone it always does in some way. Summer found her place in the world and made her own home. By constructing her life from the life of the streets and her Harvard education she is a mentor who paints a window of the dark, isolated and discriminating world of women and children in poverty. The house that Summer built was the one of a honest, courageous and compassionate heart who has found joy from dogs without collars.

2 comments about In Amma's Healing Room: Gender And Vernacular Islam in South India.

1. Since there is only one review at the moment, a slightly negative one, I felt the need to write a more balanced review of this very interesting book.
   
   "In Amma's Healing Room" is an ethnography centered around a Muslim spiritual healer in Hyderabad, India, referred to as "Amma" (mother), and her "healing room," or the room of her house where she sets up her healing practice and sees patients. Although the book is an academic, scholarly work that will be of primary interest to scholars interested in anthropology and south asian studies, it is written in a clear and fluid (jargon-free) style that makes it easily accessible to non-scholars as well. Those interested in Sufism may find the book particularly interesting, as Amma and her family are Sufis and her husband (Abba) is a "pir" or Sufi teacher. One of the many strengths of the book is its description of practices that take place around the periphery of what might generally be presented as the core of Sufism.
   
   Another strength of the book is Prof Flueckiger's evident respect for Amma, her healing system, her clients, and the cultural and religious milieu. She does not resort to some of the more common models sometimes used in anthropology to "explain" the effects of religious healing rituals through cultural, symbolic and cognitive models. Rather, she attends to the performative aspects of Amma's healing practices and narratives, and to the connection Amma establishes with her patients, in discussing how Amma's healing "works."
   
   The book is engaging throughout, and scholars and students interested in gender in Islam, feminist ethnography, and performance studies will find it of particular interest.



2. Would not recommend this book to anyone unless they were studying/majoring in this field. I had to read it for Anthropology 1001 and the book was so boring. All it talks about is this woman healing people.

No comments about The Women's West.

5 comments about Secret Girl.

1. This book was one of the best books I've read in a long time. It makes you want to count your blessings more often. The author is so honest and true to herself, she doesn't mince words with her feelings, even if it doesn't put her in the most favorable light. It makes you try and imagine what it would have been like if you had no family on Christmas, or your birthday, or to be institutionalized your whole life-how you would never really know what you were missing because you never got to experience it in the first place. Anyone who is ever feeling sorry for themselves or not appreciative of what they have in life, needs to read this book!



2. but it really wasn't. The cover and the subject of the memoir caught my interest..but it really wasn't worth my time to read it. Only a couple parts kept my interest long enough to keep reading. I thought the book completely lost momentum at the end.



3. I got through this book in 24 hrs, but can't say i will pass it on to any friends....its an interesting story but lacks the juice i wanted.



4. I thought this book a truly honest look at this Authors Cathartic experience through a life of unforgivable misfortunes. A truly sad story but I was glad that I read it. This book is a must read for anyone that has ever given birth to a child. This book more than anything was a window into the parenting choices that are made.



5. I picked up this book at the library, hoping for a good story, with some hope for the family involved. Instead I was treated to a self-absorbed writers account of her fight with alcoholism and little of her relationship with her sister.
   I work in a group home setting, and often see families who are not involved, for various reasons. I hoped this book would give me some insight. But it didn't. It offered cliches and explored the rest of the family's surface reactions only. I was disappointed to see that Anne was once more abandoned at the end, when she needed family desperately. The story offered within this book only served to reinforce why I work where I do and why what I am doing is important.

5 comments about Brush with Darkness: Learning to Paint After Losing My Sight.

1. It took an incredible loss for Lisa Fittipaldi to become a winner. Her inability to see the world from the outside forces her to look within. The author entices you from the beginning by intimately sharing her painful discovery into who she really was, and wasn't. A brilliant career woman channels her intelligence, determination, and resourcefulness into finding an answer, but not knowing to what. As her health continues to deteriorate she explores every dimension imaginable desperately attempting to discover her purpose in life. Miracuously everything seems to flow together and manifests itself in every stroke of her brush. It is difficult to conceive that her images come from an internal memmory bank, eloquently transfering onto canvas. Just as skillfully she takes the reader through this process managing to explain the impossible. After reading all night I finished the book feeling refreshed and inspired. A remarkable woman!



2. This is a well-written story about a woman who, after being suddenly plunged into darkness, struggling with denial and profound depression, ultimately triumphs and goes on to soar into a life she could never have imagined. This is a truly inspirational story which has lessons for all of us.



3. As Lisa Fittipaldi's "art dealer extraordinaire," I was honored to be included in her touching account of how she overcame going blind and went on to produce such moving realism in her paintings. As I read the book, I found myself unable to put it down, despite the fact that I have known the artist for more than five years and thought I knew her whole story. This book shows Lisa's journey to re-enter the sighted world after going blind and how she used art to find that path. The following quotes from the jacket cover indicate how this book inspired Natalie Maines, Heloise, Kinky Freidman, and Rick Riordan.
   
   "This book goes far beyond learning how a blind painter creates her works of art. It is an honest, heartfelt look at a woman who struggles to overcome her own faults and fears to find her authentic self."
   - Natalie Maines, lead singer of the Dixie Chicks
   
   "A truly inspirational story with highlights, lowlights, and lessons we can all learn from."
   - Heloise, international household hints columnist
   
   "Lisa Fittipaldi is a great artist who also happens to be blind. "A Brush with Darkness" is the story of how art imitates life, and how life imitates art, and how both are mirror reflections of the miracle that is the human spirit."
   - Kinky Friedman, singer, songwriter, and author
   
   "By turns poignant, enthralling, and uplifting, "A Brush with Darkness" is a tribute to human perseverance and creativity. Lisa Fittipaldi writes as she paints - with deft strokes and vibrant color."
   - Rick Riordan, Edgar Award-winning author



4. I recently had the pleasure of meeting the author and her husband. I thought she was inspiring after a short visit over breakfast. But until reading this book, I had only seen the tip of the iceberg! It is amazing that someone who has endured so much can remain so positive and create great works on canvas as well as create great impacts on the lives of others. There is so much inspiration in this book. This will be great for Christmas gifts!



5. A book and story like no other that I have read. The author becomes blind and then learns to paint, as the title indicates, but what the review and title do not reveal is that the author guides the reader through her personal journey toward self actualization. By her frankness in revealing the changes she endured, the emotions she felt and the methods that lead to her acceptance, the reader gets a great insight into their own life and how to handle personal problems. A marvelously insightful book by a mind that is creative, mature and certainly a genius. I could not wait to see what happened next and found myself reading the book late into the night.

5 comments about My Face Is Black Is True: Callie House and the Struggle for Ex-Slave Reparations.

1. Berry's brilliance as a scholar is exhibited in this text. She not only introduces the heroine Callie House, as a significant revolutionary who served jailed time for her leadership in this reparations movement, Berry uses House's story as a foundation to report how former enslaved Africans were mistreated systematically. Through use of a plethora of the state of Tennessee records, scholarly materials and various other documents, Dr. Berry introduces the first reparations movement to the reader.
   
   It was often painful to read how former enslaved persons were treated as freedpersons, since all 8 of my great-grandparents were born between the 1870s to 1890. Knowing that they were children when their parents were so sorely abused was a very vivid and poignant point.
   Dr. Berry is to be commended for creating this historiography that not only revealed House's story, it showed how callous the federal government was toward Black people during Reconstruction, and that this callousness trickled to the vicissitudes of everyday life and toil, from healthcare, employment, shelter, and a quality of life that all people deserve to have. Five starts to the senior scholar! - Colita Nichols Fairfax



2. This book really gives one PRIDE in knowing that people exsisted like CALLI HOUSE. Whatever ones ethicity, this is a book which should be read by all and the educational system should make this be a requiremnet. The population must be told and ugly story of what SLAVERY was and still is in the HYPOCRITICAL united staes.



3. As a historian and lover of obscure history in particular, I have to give Miss Berry (who I met in 1999 at a historian's conference in Toronto and found to be an excellent conversationalist) high marks for the untold story of Callie House.
   
   Callie House tried to form an organization to encourage the government to grant living ex-slaves (this was in the early 20th century when many were still alive). She tried to do this with many strikes against her, facing racism, sexism, and classism (she did not have much formal education). Unfortuantely, government harrassment tried to destroy her movement.
   
   As mentioned, little is documented about Miss House's personal life, but being a Tennesseean like Miss House, Miss Berry does a good job in using her knowledge of the area and historical documents to fill in the holes.
   
   However, in the last chapter Miss Berry links Miss House's movement to the modern day reparations movement. One can argue that there is a considerable stretch between the noble effort of a woman to get deserved pensions for elderly ex-slaves and the modern snowball's chance in hell Quioxtic endeavor to get reperations for the descendants of long-dead slaves, but Miss Berry tries to put a good face on the modern movement. She notes the 2002 reparations march, forgetting to mention that it was very poorly attended and almost universally dismissed for its outlandish and crackpot speeches and states that the reparations movement is mostly supported by the poor black masses (I have to disagree- in my experience it has usually been supported by a segment of black nationalists with some high school or college education).
   
   But that's another story, I'll admit. In either case, regardless of your opinions of the current debate, this is a VERY good and interesting read.



4. Since the Civil Rights Movement it seems most "Whites" and amazingly even some "Blacks" have bought the argument that slavery and its legacy were so long ago that no living African-American could rightfully claim being a victim of it.
   
   This book shows that argument as being just another shameless attempt to avoid owning up to our nation's original sin. The fact that "White" leaders right after the Civil War used other equally specious rationales to avoid paying the piper for their unconscionable crime is telling. Ms. Berry's book should definitely be taught in every school in our guilty nation. And broadcast on every so-called news show. I'll hold my breath until Hollywood decides to make the movie.
   
   "My Face Is Black Is True" is a must-read for any American who considers themselves educated.



5. This wellwritten and extensively researched book reveals not only the drive and persistence of post-Civil War African Americans in seeking reparations for ex-slaves and war veterans, but what can be accomplished with little more than a basic ability to read and write and a talent for organizing and motivating one's colleagues. Callie House is truly an American heroine and her efforts to help black citizens obtain what they richly deserved from the U.S. government, despite obstacles which would have made a lesser person roll over, should be recognized and remembered.

2 comments about Checkered Years: A Bonanza Farm Diary 1884-88 (Borealis Books).

1. I first read the diary of Mary Dodge Woodward several years ago. Because I love the sound of Mary's written voice, I've reread it several times. It never fails to enchant. Reading this book is almost like time traveling back to the Bonanza Farm days. I found this story so compelling that I actually searched out the site of this old farm and visited with it's current residents. The site of the old Dodge farm is just west of Sheyenne Road, a half mile west of the Garrison Diversion substation. I stood in the remains of Mary's old cellar, and showed my children the location of the old barn that had the skull and crossbones sign painted on it. The location of the machine shop continues to hold so much old oil from Mary's time that grass does not grow on the site. This is a wonderful book for anyone that likes to read about the early days of Dakota territory.



2. A friend loaned me The Checkered Years, and after reading it, I purchased two copies, one to give away and another to lend and ultimately to keep in my library. From the day-to-day writings of Mary Dodge Woodward, the reader begins to understand the central role of weather in the life of the early Dakota settlers - the awesome cold, wind, and heat; the blizzards, drought, and flood - all matter-of-factly but beautifully described in an unpretentious diary. The diary entries give a hint of the tremendous effort it took on Mary's part and that of her family to build up a large wheat farm, and along with that, the uncertainties she faced as a widow growing old. I wish the book had more background information in its introduction and more diary entries that, even though they probably would have seemed repetitive, may have given more focus to the people mentioned in the selections.