1 comments about Close Encounters of the Bovine: Recollections of a Rural Veterinarian.

1. One gets the idea that Dr. Cooper-Chase feels truly blessed and humbled to have been "chosen" for her profession as a veterinarian and that she has been privileged to witness the interaction between man and beast and the gifts that each has to offer the other. Her observation and explanation of procedures gives the reader a feeling of being at her side as she tends to the needs of her very fortunate patients. Told with lots of wit and sometimes bluntness, you feel her tenderness, outrage and diplomacy as she handles situations concerning her bovine patients and their owners. It's a wonderful collection of life's lessons through an animal lover's eyes. Looking forward to reading about her encounters with the feline and the canine!

5 comments about Bad Girl: Confessions of a Teenage Delinquent.

1. A must read book! I sat down and read it cover to cover.
   Not to be missed!



2. Just because Vona dabbled in drugs or other "bad" things as a teen, she's labeled a "bad girl." I can relate to much in the story because the writing is so raw and real I am ripped open as a reader with the writer's brutally honest words.
   
   Like the books CONFESSIONS OF A CATHOLIC SCHOOLGIRL and PROZAC NATION this is a must read for any teen or young woman that struggles to find herself in a mixed up world.



3. Not a memoir of delinquency but a chronicle of Vona's incarceration in a juvenile "boot camp." Atrociously written by someone who comes across as a spoiled rich girl with a fondness for stereotypes, and whose "delinquency" seems to have involved nothing more heinous than dating a drug dealer and indulging in a brief "runaway" period to a vacation cabin with friends. Not recommended. (For a more compelling story written by a more sympathetic narrator in less painful prose, see Daphne Scholinski's The Last Time I Wore a Dress.)



4. My Daughter did 13 Months at Peninsula Village and it was her saviour as well. This is one of th emost respected centers in the world. At a cost of $9600 per month it had better be. We are pleased with the staff and Peninsula Village and they gave us our child back after 13 months a totally better person. The person who wrote this book trumped it up to sell books bottom line. Their is a lot of non truth items in this book.



5. An advertisement for an abusive facility that breaks kids and then puts them back together as brainwashed robots... as told by one of their so-called 'successes'. Shocking only in the way that the author seems to truly believe that being isolated from human contact, allowed no friends and no conversation, and spending most of the day sitting on her bed (not being allowed to talk or even look at things), truly helped her 'recover'.

1 comments about Covered Wagon Women 5: Diaries and Letters from the Western Trails, 1852 : The Oregon Trail (Covered Wagon Women).

1. Once again, these diaries and letters of the "Covered Wagon Women" series detail the extraordinary stamina of early day pioneers traveling the Oregon Trail.
   The year 1852 not only had the heaviest trail traffic westward, but it was also rife with hundreds of human cholera deaths. As Parthenia Blank solemnly relates, "it makes it seem very gloomy to us to see so many of the emigrants buried on the plains". At the end of her journey, Martha Read had counted 750 graves, "but I suppose that a small part, for there were so many campt off from the road and buried their dead".
   Life on the trail also took its toll on livestock. Martha Read further notes the tally of "600 dead cattle and 50 horses" from "hollow horn"(anthrax), alkali water, poisonous plants, "want of good care", little food, lack of foot care, etc.
   Even in the early stages while crossing the Iowa River, Polly Coon is quoted as saying, "What a brittle thread has life and how uncertain that another moment is ours" after witnessing three men drowning during the river fording.
   Seventeen year old Abigail Jane Scott's lengthy diary is complete not only of daily routines, observations of the countryside and the many hardships associated with trail life, but also the vivid and harrowing descriptions of the deaths of her mother and brother during the journey. She further says, "If it wasn't for hope, the heart would fail".
   Editing by Dr. Kenneth Holmes and David Duniway brilliant. Introduction by Dr. Ruth Moynihan excellent.

No comments about Letters of a Woman Homesteader (Dover Books on Americana).

5 comments about Intimate Enemies: The Two Worlds of the Baroness De Pontalba.

1. Having grown up in New Orleans i have a love for it's history.i've heard about the story of Baroness and it caught my attention. i wasn't disappointed having read this book.



2. Having grown up in New Orleans and visiting the Pontalba buildings on many many occassions, I thought I knew a bit about the countess. This book has brought up many aspects of her life and the lives of her family that I was totally ignorant of. It is quite fascinating even though there are times when the pace is a bit tedious. It is a bit academic at times, but it is afterall a biography and not a work of narrative fiction. There are aspects in everyone's life that tend to be less than thrilling.
   Regardless I will recommend it to my many friends, paticularly those who grew up in New Orleans.



3. Vella brings to life with splendid detail the life in New Orleans and Paris in the 1800's. Vella is unquestionably a tireless scholar who has dedicated much time and passion into assimilating an astounding amount of archival materials to bring to life the realities and sensibilities of the different ranks of the aristocracies. Sophisticated, realpolitic, Machiavellian. A wonderful work and a great read. This is how history should be written (for non-academia). Well footnoted & bibliographed.



4. Intimate Enemies: The Two Worlds of the Baroness de Pontalba, by Christina Vella, is one of the best books that I have ever read. I took Professor Vella's class at Tulane University in the Spring of 2000. This book was the basis of the class. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in thorough documentation of facts about a dynamic woman and her family, as well as two great cities, New Orleans and Paris.



5. Intimate Enemies: The Two Worlds of the Baroness de Pontalba, by Christina Vella, is one of the best books that I have ever read. I took Professor Vella's class at Tulane University in the Spring of 2000. This book was the basis of the class. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in thorough documentation of facts about a dynamic woman and her family, as well as two great cities, New Orleans and Paris.

No comments about Solitaire.

5 comments about The Mountain of the Women: Memoirs of an Irish Troubadour.

1. In our household, we were "bread and buttered" listening to the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. The 33-1/3 rpm Columbia records were scratched and worn from overuse. We would play the records on family occasions and holidays. We would play favorite songs in the mornings during breakfast and as we made ready for school. In hindsight, I am surprised that the neighbors never complained or called the police.
   
   Tommy Makem died last summer. The two eldest members of the quartet, Tom and Pat Clancy predeceased him. Liam Clancy is the sole surviving member of the recording group. This book is a sketchy and incomplete attempt at an autobiography, but it is as good as we are likely to get from this Clancy. Its strengths far outweigh its deficiencies. Readers should count themselves fortunate that Liam remembered anything at all after so many long nights and sexual misadventures. Perhaps, Tommy Makem, who abstained from drinking for most of his life, should have been taking notes for him (Makem wrote some wonderful essays, but I do not know if he ever published a full length book).
   
   Liam Clancy was the youngest of eleven children. One of his problems when the recording group was formed in the USA was that his two much older brothers scarcely knew their youngest sibling at all. They had to introduce themselves to him when he arrived in New York. The Irish ballads and rebel songs (the Irish rebellions always seemed more successful in song than in reality) that the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem performed proved to be immensely popular. In addition the Irish diaspora, the authentic songs gained wide acceptance among fans of the Greenwich Village Folk Music scene. Liam Clancy became a fast friend of Bob Dylan.
   
   There is a lovely story of how Clancy dropped his given Christian name while working as an actor in an Irish theatre company. A fellow actor chided him for answering to Willie, telling him that it was an "English" sounding name. He adopted the Gaelicized form and has been "Liam" ever since.
   
   Pour yourself a drink and enjoy this book. Be thankful that the next generation of Clancy and Makem family members have taken up the songs that their fathers helped popularize internationally. Imagine how quiet our homes would have been if Clancy had kept up his father's plans and became an insurance agent!



2. Liam Clancy's has great literary talent. His bio is a tribute to his family and to his native land. Catholic schools greatly contributed to his native talent for the stage----I am not sure why he makes a critical remark of the Church.



3. The Clancy Brothers albums opened by ears to traditional celtic music in the 60s, so it was a treat for me to read Liam Clancy's account of how the group evolved. The family background and his personal development as an student, actor and musician were very enjoyable reading.
   If you liked Angela's Ashes, this will certainly appeal.



4. I never heard Liam Clancy sing until a couple of months ago, when I found a copy of an album called "The Lark in the Morning" that looked interesting, given its cover and its date of the mid-50s. Growing up, The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem were heard of but not heard by me--I associated them with Aran knit sweaters, hearty shour-an'-begorra singalongs,novelty tunes, and the kind of kitsch that the previous generation had listened to complacently before the revival in the 70s of a tougher trad scene out of Ireland shook it all up again.
   
   Well, I heard the tracks on "Lark" in the car without knowing who was who since I could not see the CD case listings. But when I finished it, I noticed that the songs that had stood out from the rest were all by Liam C. Impressed, I read the liner notes about one Diane Hamilton, who I had never heard of, and Tradition Records, the label for which "Lark" was the debut issue. But the whole story was not clear, given the brief notes, until I read "Women of the Mountain."
   
   From the title, I expected a tale of lusty drunken couplings and riotuous escapades from the "Folksmen"/"Kingston Trio" era. Instead, an evocative tale of growing up eating mortar and chalk for nutrition during WWII, poverty, clerical abuse, and hardscrabble small-town life in Waterford's Carrick-on-Suir unfolded smoothly and eloquently. Sure, the blarney sometimes is laid on a bit too thick for less glib me, but the stage Irishman tendencies are kept mercifully in check by realism: the death of a sibling, the estrangement from mother and Church, the entanglement with Diane H. (who turns out to be a Guggenheim nearly as neurotic as her relative Peggy G. did for Beckett!), and the adventures on the road, in theatre, and on stage.
   
   One surprise and a reason for four stars is the lopsided nature of the book: the singing takes decididly second fiddle to the stage in the dramatic sense. This was fascinating for me, but it misleads the reader perhaps who by the back photo of the group harmonizing might expect far more about Clancy's musical experience. He mentions, for example, as if offhandedly that he learned the tin whistle. Yes, but how? As a musician, did he find it easy after the guitar? How did it help his reportoire? Did he learn it so the group could expand its range? How does it sound to him? How does he play it? Here, music as enacted comes rather late in the book, in not a lot of detail, and seems rather superficially treated as opposed to other incidents and events.
   
   I do commend Clancy on his delicacy with relating his own romantic and emotional engagements with women and men--he reminds us of the fragility we all possess and the need to recognize humanity in each other. And he makes his point after having earned the right to say so after his own checkered past. He comes off wise without sounding pious, intelligent without acting snobbish, and flawed without playing it up as maudlin. He handles people and places with stamina and wit, and his own coming-of-age here, while cut off while he's not even thirty yet, needs however fuller exposition than is given here. The New York Greenwich Village years deserve more depth than they're given here; the book's unbalanced in favoring much more from his pre-NYC years (nothing wrong with that) and again this may mislead misinformed readers as to its actual coverage of many more early situations predating the group's rise to fame. I also got little sense of how he got along with his fellow group members--granted that two are his brothers--but how the three Clancys got along with Makem who was from Keady in the north and from a different region, musical tradition, and political regime seemed like the sort of detail that could have enriched the book.
   
   I guess a sequel is in the works. Like recent Irish memoirs by Frank McCourt and Hugo Hamilton, the autobiographical account stops suddently, at the height of a self-realization by the author in his formative years. I do not know if this book would have been published if McCourt had not led the way, but resilient Clancy's tale too deserves a wide readership for dispelling (as do McC and HH in their accounts--also see John McGahern's memoir) the myths of recent Irish life, while advocating a return to the more durable and more feminine myths that inspired Yeats, Behan, Synge, Joyce, and the Slieve-na-mBan/Sleivenamon that gives its rounded breasted mountain shape to the landscape that rose above Clancy's hometown.



5. 
   First of all,there are 17 other reviews;most of them excellent and all deserve to be read.I read a fair bit of modern Irish Writing.The McCourts,Roddy Doyle,Brendan Behan,Morgan Llywelyn,Brendan O'Carroll,just to name a few.What I really like about these writers is their magical use of language.Although I have been a fan of Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers for at least 30 years,I have never read anything about them.I had no idea of how much they were involved in acting;let alone that any of them had such gifted writing skills.What a surprise;Liam's skills are as good as his musical talents.
   Though not a Clancy,I heard Tommy Makem perform here in Toronto at an intimate club a few months ago.He did "Oh, me name is Dick Darby,I'm a cobbler.";mentioned on page 102.That had to be the best recitation I ever witnessed.
   I would like to quote something Liam wrote about his experience in North Carolina in 1956 and he was writing about it nearly 50 years after the fact.
   From page 170....
   "South Carolina in the spring was seductive with scents of growing things,of magnolias and hibiscus,the air heavy with noontime heat and the swampy buzz of katydids and flying critters.The nights there belonged to the frogs and bats and flying beetles and the countless mingled smells of a land at rest after a burgeoning day's work fermenting life." Imagine the thoughts of a 21 year old,written 50 years later.
   I also had no idea of Clancy's involvment with the people like Oscar Brand,Bob Dylan,Woody Guthrie,Pete Seeger,Odetta,Barbara Streisand,Lenny Bruce,Jean Ritchie,Ramblin' Jack Elliot,Brendan Behan,Diane (Guggenheim),Josh White,Alan Lomax,Mary O'Hara and on and on.
   Liam gives a great insight into the world of acting and folk music of the 50's and the 60's. Now that I have read the book,I am looking forward to listening to the tape.
   I also have no idea if Liam has a second book planned to cover the last 40 years.I am sure it would be a great follow up.How about it Liam,you're only 70 ,and you must still have lots to tell us.
   Thanks.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

5 comments about Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans.

1. After 10 years of research, Stoll has shown that Menchu's book is an imperfect biography. How shocking! She went to sixth grade! She didn't witness her mother being tortured and murdered (although it did happen)!! There is no record of one of her brothers dying of malnutrition!!! For a time she participated in the unarmed political wing of the Guerrillas!!!!

   As one who has spent several years living and working among Guatemalans who (barely) survived army massacres, tortures and disappearances, and who was in Guatemala when Stoll's book came out, I find these revelations to hardly be capital crimes.

   Rigoberta's book was an attempt to bring international attention to the Guatemalan army's genocide campaign against the indigenous population. To that effect it was successful, although not nearly successful enough.

   Is Menchu's book a perfect account of her life? Apparently not. Is it an accurate portrayal of what happened to millions of other indigenous Guatemalans? The UN-sponsored Truth Commission, and the Catholic Church's REMHI report have definatively answered in the affirmative.

   In the end, you could say that Rigoberta's book is more accurately the story of "all poor Guatemalans" than it is her own. What Stoll sees as a fault is really one of the book's main virtues.

   There are many stories that urgently need to be told about Guatemala. That Stoll would choose to spend his professional career attacking someone who has tirelessly fought for the human and cultural rights of Guatemala's indigenous people is the real mystery here. Instead of focusing on Rigoberta Menchu, a marginal, if noble, figure in Guatemala's sad history, why not undo the country's more dangerous mythic figure, Efrain Rios Montt (killed tens of thousands during his 16 month reign of terror, and now currently runs Guatemala's Congress and ruling party).

   How many as-told-to autobiographies would stand up to 10 years of background checking? Personally, I'm waiting for Stoll's account of his own life story...




2. Stoll doggedly and biasly challenges Mechu's authenticity. By focusing on discrepancies within her testimony as told to Elisabeth Burgos-DeBray and drawing minimal attention to Menchu's actual and substantial political work on the behalf of indigenous people world wide, he paints the picture of an alternately manipulative and naïve puppet of the left. Furthermore, he suggests teachers who use Menchu in the classroom have bought into a romantic myth about virtuous Latin American rebels.

   Stoll's argument is three-fold: Firstly, he balks at the
   Postmodern notion that view "truth" is subjective, and, through a laundry list of discrepancies, aims at exposing Menchu's truths as false. Secondly, he frets that teachers present I, Rigoberta Menchu, an Indian Woman in Guatemala as a stable, simplistic, and de-contextualized account of the massacres of Guatemalan indigenous persons. Most significantly, Stoll argues that in fetishizing Menchu we not supporting the cause of "all poor Guatemalans," as Menchu suggests in the opening lines of her testimonio, but the cause of Marxist-indoctrinated guerillas. Stoll even goes so far as to assert that the testimony of the Nobel Peace Prizewinner may have extended the violence in the Guatemalan highlands, prolonging "an unpopular war" (p.278).

   Like Dinesh d'Souza's extreme right-wing book Illiberal Education, Stoll's poses a critique of the academic left. Unlike d'Souza's rant, Stoll's book is in turn a fascinating, but infuriating read, but ultimately mean-spirited, academically disingenuous and far from "objective."

   For example, when Stoll points to debatable discrepancies within the testimony, he offers other voices and political contexts. He interviews people from Menchu's village El Chimel; he interviews I Rigoberta Menchu editor Elisabeth Burgos-Debray and the ambassador who survived the army-induced embassy fire in which Menchu's father ---who along with protesters had taken the ambassador hostage---dies. A chapter is devoted to fragmented interviews with women who allegedly attended a convent school with Menchu. Stoll relishs each detail that invalidates Menchu's claim that, like many other Mayan children, she did not attend formal school and only learned Spanish as she became an activist.

   In many respects, Stoll's fieldwork seems exhaustive. It starts to pay off when Stoll deviates from his from his attack on Menchu's authenticity to historicize Guatemalan politics and trace the alliances of peasant and indigenous organizations. However, these discussions tend to break down as condemnations --- and conflations --- of Menchu and Marxism. Stoll's motives appear particularly ominous when it is revealed that, despite ten years of work in Guatemala, he listens to a mere two-and-a-half-hours of the eighteen hours of recorded testimony Rigoberta Menchu gives Elisabeth Burgos-Debray. And Stoll was right there in Burgos-Debray's apartment.

   Many years have passed since the week in 1982 when Menchu, a political refugee, gave oral testimony to the Argentine anthropologist. Until recently, that week long meeting represented most of what the public gleaned about Rigoberta Menchu. Since the testimony concludes at the point of exile, it does not reveal Menchu's constant lobbying for indigenous rights and Guatemalan peace treaties at the UN, prior to winning the Nobel Peaceprize. It is fortunate that months before the Stoll hatchet job, Menchu's own account of her political work, including life after the Peaceprize, and episodes that were obscured in the first work, was published. Stoll's self-serving book should only be read along with its source material and her second book. Considered together, the three books fashion an intriguing matrix of truth-making, of interpretations and re-interpretations that shift based on political circumstance and personal positioning.

   Still, my fundamental feeling is that Stoll was out to frame Menchu at any cost. It saddens me to see so many people jumping on his bandwagon, serving the purpose of further empowering the wealthy and privileged, and casting doubt on one of the rare voices of Central American indigenous people to reach us. Her story of oppression, resistence and survival is more important than any minor discrepencies Stoll so relishes. Stoll's book is pure careerism and is nasty to the core. Menchu's meaningful life work speaks louder. It inspires while Stoll's knarled intentions digust.




3. My wife is Guatemalan, so I have a special interest in the case of R. Menchu.

   Long before this book appeared I found it odd that I couldn't find a single Guatemalan who believed the popularized story of Menchu. I had doubts myself since the historic highway of leftism is paved with the remains of frauds and tyrants.

   This book lays my doubts to rest. Menchu is a fraud. She has been used by the Left to bash the U.S., and she used them and a gullible international media to become a star. Menchu is to the misty eyed utopian dreamers what Fabio is to lonely, yearning readers of romance novels, or what Miss February is to adolescent men. Rigoberta is the socialist pin-up girl.

   But the fantasy of the left always turns violent and ugly. In the Guatemalan case the author also demonstrates that the indians were used as pawns to further the objectives of the Left and their guerilla surrogates. The Left pushed the mostly uninterested indians into the face of the repressive right-wing government while shouting, "they say you are fascists murderers." Wedged between the bloodthirsty Left and Right, the indians got slaughtered.

   Menchu, like Lenin, Castro, Foucault, and so many before her, is a symbol of the moral corruption of the Left. People drawn to utopian reformism are also ideal candidates for the cult of personality. Menchu became (and still is) a useful invention of those who build castles in sand saturated with the blood of innocents.

   One thing is certain, this book will cause no general reassessment by the Left. Few leftists will ask themselves, "How did I get taken in by the myth of Menchu?" The Left merely steps over the bodies and havoc it precipitates, moving on to the next big religious crusade. After all, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, can you? The thousands of innocent Guatemalan eggs cracked in the leftist guerilla war merely join the millions of others around the world. Yet very few leftists have found that mass murders associated with their beliefs are reason to rethink. Even one prior reviewer of this book reduces his rating because one of the rare leftists who rethought his views has given support to the conclusions of David Stoll.

   Several thousand people were sadly murdered during the Pinochet regime in Chile, and the Left pursues this relentlessly. Millions were killed in the name of socialism in the USSR and China, and the countries they subjugated, yet the Left demands no trials, no accountability. Why?

   Have you ever heard one leftist suggest that Castro should be tried for torturing, murdering, and filling his prisons with dissidents, homosexuals, etc.? Castro is merely making socialist omelets, thus he remains a hero.

   The reaction to this book by the Left has mostly been to repudiate it as rightist disinformation (despite the fact that the author is on the Left), or to ignore it. Menchu remains a useful myth for those who detest the U.S. and still harbor utopian dreams that require more broken eggs.

   If your teacher makes you read "I, Rigoberta," read this book as well and ask some hard questions. You will be branded a racist, anti-third world, anti-multicultural, reactionary, but you will at least know the truth and it will set you free . . . especially when you flunk the course!




4. David Stoll's book makes important points. To what extent can the testimony of a single person represent the situation faced by a larger community? What happens when a single figure comes to embody a movement, and that figure has conveyed misrepresentations of the truth?
   Stoll does not claim that many poor Guatemalans did not face unbearable oppression, or that they were not massacred by para-military death squads. However, he does note that, like 1980s and early 1990s Peru, the indigenous sometimes felt trapped. He suggests that both the military and leftist guerrillas would use murder as a means to coerce the indigenous into subordination.
   Although Stoll pats himself on the back for having waited until Guatemala's lengthy civil war ended, one must question whether his timing was appropriate. His book provided ammunition for the military government to negate claims of torture and disappearances at a time when United Nations Truth Commissions were investigating military abuses.
   The issues brought up by Stoll are important, but could be addressed in a less slanderous manner. As Victor Montejo points out, the picture of Rigoberta Menchu on the cover is inappropriate. If Stoll is in fact claiming not to be an iconoclast, why is the photograph on the cover? Why is Rigoberta's name in the title?
   Let there be no doubt that Rigoberta did have a political agenda. However, if there are several exaggerations, the story should not be discredited. Consider the genre: testimony. Rigoberta was interviewed for hours a day, for about a week (I believe). Rigoberta did not edit the text. Also, we do not know what questions were asked, and how they influenced Rigoberta's responses. We do know that Burgos-Debray has marxist connections. An interviewer can have a profound effect upon the interviewee, in this case a young twenty-three year-old.



5. To start from the proverbial beginning, Rigoberta Menchu, the Mayan Guatemalan who graced the world with her autobiographical account of the terror of the countryside of that land during its lengthy civil war, lied. The author was curious how one person could have done all that Menchu claimed to have done. It turned out she hadn't. She wasn't the eyewitness at her brother's murder; her father wasn't the organizer of various rebel groups. Indeed, witnesses who knew him claimed to have known a very different personality from the one described by Rigoberta. Further, while Rigoberta was allegedly forming various political organizations in her home village--wherein she claimed she was illiterate and monolingual--she was really the scholarship student at a girls' school and quite fluent in Spanish as well as in her native, Mayan tongue.

   The consequences of that myth? romanticism? are among the analyses of Stoll's work. And I must commend him on the depth of his analysis. But...

   The Guatemalans have gone through a devestating civil war in which hundreds of thousands of civilians, most of them poor, have "been disappeared"--for which that new use of those verbs was created. It means, simply, that they don't exist any more (and that they're buried in one of those body dumps in which most were thrown and are now the subject of exhumations by forensic anthropologists). Stoll agrees that the Guatemalan army, civil patrols, and vigilantes have an inexcusable history. He doesn't seem to evade that. But...

   Contemporary American and European leftists have made that war a battle between the victimized Mayan indigenas, and the nasty, unscrupulous, and, of course, wealthier ladinos (known elsewhere in Central America as Mestizos). Stoll points out that Rigoberta's father's major conflict was not with ladinos--with many of whom he got along just fine, thank you--but with his in- laws who were, like him, Mayan. But...

   A number of guerilla groups infiltrated the countryside. Stoll examines that the bulk of Mayan and other poor were not supporters of the guerillas. Rather, they saw the guerillas as just another faction with arms. But...

   I had some struggles with the book. I, like the author, am critical of white middle and upper middle class analyses of armed struggles--as if those doing the analyzing could tell the difference between a trigger and a plate of Brie cheese. At the same time, as one who is fairly well-versed in the history of the war there and is familiar with many who've suffered as a result of it--and who has been there and stopped by the army for no reason--I find it difficult to so easily exonerate the army. Sure the guerillas were not saints, despite what some of their supporters would have us believe. But desperation leads to armed conflict when there is no hope but to fight. That strikes me as common sense, and has provided the basis for any "revolution" including the American, French, Russian, etc. It's not necessarily "right" let alone "good," but simply fact.

   In short, Stoll acknowledges that the Guatemalan army has, in a relative way, rivaled the Nazis (my comparison rather than his). But he clearly--and repeatedly--implies that the army's brutality was instigated by the actions of the guerillas. For instance, a couple of ladinos were killed by guerillas therefore the army became vioent and wiped out villages. Doubtless there was some guerilla activity that stimulated a violent response. But the extent of the army's violence--the formal, objective report issued less than two years ago says that of the violence, the army was responsible for 97 percent leaving little to blame on the guerillas--so overshadowed that of the rebels that the latter's is negligible, barely exists in a statistical sense.

   Further, I was turned off by Stoll's overuse of the word "Marxist." Whether Stoll is a right wing activist, I don't know. (As he claims to be a scholar, I hope not.) But the words "the right" came up seldom while nearly everyone, from Allende in Chile to most of the guerilla groups came up as "Marxist." And that's all too often a devil term used to classify as "enemy" rather than to examine one's political or economic policies.

   Still, I recommend the book's analyses. I agree with Stoll that even the human rights movement is compelled to draw a good vs. evil distinction rather than examining the complexities of an issue; the academy these days has too much influence of the post-modernists who love to designate others as victims (thereby often freeing those who've done the designating from amending their own comfortable lifestyles to do anything about it).

   Indeed, to his credit, Stoll, in at least four places in the text, tries to examine why Rigoberta would have manufactured her story. He asks others too why they think she would do so. He niether frees her from the fallacy nor indicts her for perjury but examines. That attempt to understand her is particularly well-taken.

   I must confess too that, despite my appreciation for his analyses, I can give him at best three stars due to guilt by association. That right wing demagog David Horowitz in one of his tracts uses Rigoberta's fabrication as an excuse to refute human rights causes in general. Perhaps--again, ideally--Stoll did not intend that with his examination. But I can't help thinking of Horowitz's reference which I read before reading this work. And that doesn't help Stoll's credibility.

   If nothing else, if you read this volume, learn from the technique that the author uses to investigate a story, who he talks with and how he reaches a conclusion. If you come to different conclusions, as I have, more power to you.

3 comments about Jane Austen: A Companion.

1. It covers various aspects of life in Jane Austen's age using examples from Jane's works. I'd recommend it to people who are interested in Jane's world's life.



2. This review was originally written for the hardcover edition, but on the assumption that this is fairly similar, I'll repeat it here.
   
   This book is a Companion in the sense that it attempts to give the reader context for reading Austen's work, not in the sense of a reference work listing all her characters, etc. It is perfect for anyone beginning to read Austen's works, especially if they have little knowledge of the era. It would also be helpful as a basic guide to the late Georgian period, which is the setting of so many historical and romance novels.
   
   Ross starts off with a brief (44 page) biography, followed by 8 chapters on the era: "The Common Daily Routine", "Of Lovers and Husbands", "Politics and Public Events", etc. In each, Ross discusses the era in general terms, and also relates the topic to Austen's life and writings. I read the book straight through, but it appears that each chapter could stand on its own: information is sometimes repeated if it relates to more than one topic. Lydia Bennett's finding ornaments in a book store is mentioned in both "The Present Fashions" and "The Subject of Books."
   
   There are numerous plates of well-chosen pictures relating to both Jane Austen's personal life and the era in general.
   
   There are no notes, but there is a helpful, but admittedly not exhaustive bibliography and an unusually detailed index. This index isn't perfect, it only lists one of the references to Lydia mentioned above, but it is much more thorough and in depth than most indexes, and helpfully has little notes after some of the entries that may be enough in themselves to refresh the reader's memory.



3. This book is a Companion in the sense that it attempts to give the reader context for reading Austen's work, not in the sense of a reference work listing all her characters, etc. It is perfect for anyone beginning to read Austen's works, especially if they have little knowledge of the era. It would also be helpful as a basic guide to the late Georgian period, which is the setting of so many historical and romance novels.
   
   Ross starts off with a brief (44 page) biography, followed by 8 chapters on the era: "The Common Daily Routine", "Of Lovers and Husbands", "Politics and Public Events", etc. In each, Ross discusses the era in general terms, and also relates the topic to Austen's life and writings. I read the book straight through, but it appears that each chapter could stand on its own: information is sometimes repeated if it relates to more than one topic. Lydia Bennett's finding ornaments in a book store is mentioned in both "The Present Fashions" and "The Subject of Books."
   
   There are numerous plates of well-chosen pictures relating to both Jane Austen's personal life and the era in general.
   
   There are no notes, but there is a helpful, but admittedly not exhaustive bibliography and an unusually detailed index. This index isn't perfect, it only lists one of the references to Lydia mentioned above, but it is much more thorough and in depth than most indexes, and helpfully has little notes after some of the entries that may be enough in themselves to refresh the reader's memory.

5 comments about Sexography: One Woman's Journey from Ignorance to Bliss.

1. I found Carly Milne's powerful memoir almost impossible to put down. It is profoundly moving, at times humorous and often heartbreaking, but just as the author comes to feel gratitude for the strength she's gained from her life's challenges, the reader too will feel thankful for the courage and honesty of this book. Even if you haven't personally experienced sexual abuse, every woman (and man) will recognize the issues raised here--the struggle to move from sexual object to sexual agent, to find nourishing intimacy with others, and to love and respect ourselves and in a society that is often hostile to these goals. Milne reminds us that when we write thoughtfully about sex, we're also writing about all of the deep, dark, scary and beautiful reasons we do it. Popular magazines these days are full of broken promises to reveal the secrets of sex to readers hungry for the truth--Sexography actually delivers some genuine answers. Highly recommended.



2. When I picked up my copy of Sexography, the store clerk said to me that she had read it and had met the author, and was "proud of her"... I thought that was a funny thing to say so I asked her what she meant -- did she know Carly? She said no, but "I just think she's so brave." I wasn't sure what to make of that, until I read the book for myself.
   
   Time for some full disclosure: I've known Carly for several years and have always known her to take a more or less "open book" approach in her writing. So I wasn't surprised to find the same quality in Sexography. But I do think it's a brave book, for a couple of reasons.
   
   For one thing, I think it takes courage to talk about sexual abuse and rape when one has had the experience (as Carly did) of being disbelieved by your parents. But the other place her courage really shines through is in her remarkable resilience. This book tells the story of a woman who comes through some pretty intense emotional stuff, and who isn't content to just stop feeling bad -- she pushes well beyond that to a place of real wholeness and health. It's inspiring, and a story well worth telling.
   
   Before reading this book, I knew Carly well enough to know that she had some battle scars from her past; but I didn't know quite what a survivor she is. Actually, survivor is the wrong word -- she's a thriver.



3. Carly's book left a strong and lasting impression on me. I found it to be a journey that every woman should travel, as I felt myself grow in strength and resolve as she does, overcoming the odds to find her voice--and one with an amazingly discerning eye and superior sense of humor.
   
   It's an inch, by inch description of how one young girl, then woman searched and earned her own sense of self, and self esteem. There are no short cuts or platitudes that can erase an abusive past--the secret to healing really lies in hard work and perseverance. Struggling to create your own anchor, (one's sense of self, and a grid of values of your own making) is a universal, coming-of-age-and-beyond struggle. What makes this book so intriguing is that the subject matter, a "Sexography" throws in sharp relief many of the issues women face, from wanting and needing a man who is not good for them, to how to fathom and take advantage of the great experience sex can be. But basically, this book is about LIFE, how to make peace with the one you've got, and embrace all the possibilities it has to offer in the midst of sacrifice, pain and disappointments...this should be required reading for every young woman.



4. With a title like SEXOGRAPHY and a cover image so enticing, if one is to judge this book by its cover, one might guess that this book is filled with lurid, shocking, and downright naughty stories about sex, sex, sex!
   
   And while there are some very naughty stories indeed, notice line underneath the title of the book: One Woman's Journey from Ignorance to Bliss!
   
   This is not just a book about sex; it's an honest account of Carly's sexual journey through her first three decades of life... the good, the bad, and the ugly... set in the context of how her sexuality affected her life in the larger picture. Instead of a one-sided analysis of her sex life, Carly delves deep into the various aspects of all the emotions, behaviors, life-changing decisions, and other ways that sex gets wrapped in our lives.
   
   I hope that in another 30 years, Carly will consider a follow-up sex memoir book to tell all about her next 3 decades!



5. Carly Milne has penned an unflinching portrait of molestation by her father, an honest look at dealing with herpes and surviving sexual assault, homelessness and alcoholism all before turning 18, and the comedy that ensued from working as a sex toy tester.
   In her first book, "Sexography: One woman's journey from ignorance to bliss," Milne has recorded both the hilarious and harrowing visions of her sexual self, with a frank tone and unpitying wit.
   No excuses.
   Milne dove into memories starting with the childhood comfort in her own naked form, and the long years spent trying to reclaim that feeling.
   The scene of the first time Milne was raped, after taking a ride home with a stranger during her early teen years, is a disturbing portrait of the assault, made all the more horrifying by Milne's internal dialogue. It's hard to remain distant from the rape while reading the victim's thoughts. And that's just as it should be.
   Although it may leave readers with a taste of the nauseated feeling of being violated, or at the very least squirming in their seats, the rawness of even the most painful memories is what makes the book work, from those heavy moments, to the lighter side.
   Early explorations, including discovering the difference between boys and Ken dolls and practice make-out sessions with Milne acting as a stand-in for Rick Schroder, are written in a playful tone.
   And a scene where Milne tries to Create A Mate, casting her then-husband's penis in "buddy batter" goop for a personalized dildo, is laugh-out-loud funny.