1 comments about Elena Poniatowska: An Intimate Biography.

1. Elena Poniatowska: An Intimate Biography is an amazing window into the life and work of socially conscious writer Elena Poniatowska, a descendant of the last king of Poland, whose voice is best known in Mexico but deserves to be known everywhere else. Written by Poniatowska's friend of fifteen years Michael K. Schuessler, Elena Poniatowska: An Intimate Biography draws upon numerous interviews to reveal a multiplicity of perspectives - from fellow writers, literary critics, her nanny, her mother, and herself - upon Poniatowska's remarkable life and works. 40 black-and-white photographs, an annotated bibliography of Poniatowska's writings including those translated into English and those yet to be translated, and an index round out this "must-have" companion to any college library or literature shelf featuring Poniatowska's work.

No comments about A Summer to Be.

No comments about Rosalie Bertell: Scientists, Eco-Feminist, Visionary (Women Who Rock).

1 comments about The Mezuzah in the Madonna's Foot: Marranos and Other Secret Jews: A Woman Discovers Her Hidden Identity.

1. Anyone interested in reading several excellent reviews of THE MEZUZAH IN THE MADONNA'S FOOT, (re-issued in 2006 by AUTHORS GUILD BACK-IN PRINT in this larger print edition, including an added photograph) will find them listed under the two (hard-cover and paperback) earlier editions above. This book is the first of Trudi Alexy's HIDDEN IDENTITIES TRILOGY, followed by THE MARRANO LEGACY, and, finally, IN SEARCH OF FORGIVENESS.

5 comments about After Sorrow Comes Joy.

1. Whether one is interested in the plight of children, or simply wanting an interesting read, this book is for you. I was never familiar with the name of Cherie Clark, but now I am, and feel like a better person for it. This woman demonstrated incredible passion and love for the helpless when no one else would - or could. There are probably no monuments or special trophies established in Cherie Clark's name - but there should be. This book accompanied me on a trip to Hawaii, and I found myself unable to detach myself from it while in paradise! The famous biblical verse, "Greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for his brother," was probably written with Cherie Clark in mind!



2. I was born the year Cherie Clark left Vietnam with a plane load of babies. A remarkable woman. Her words describe life for a Humanitarian Worker in Vietnam so matter-of-factly, so astoundingly matter of factly! There is no time for sorrow it seems, only for action, and for bringing joy and changing lives. Must be something to change 200 babies lives forever, but to sum it up in 200 pages of simple language, eloquence is not needed in a battlefield. Wonder why there is no movie about this book? Emotions are generated by the reader vision of the bleak scenary of war, a fight of life against death, and of activisim against evil and maddness. Her anger, sorrow, happiness are all suppressed by the overwhelming events she chose to be part of. A remarkable book by a remarkable woman. Can't wait to get hold of the rest of the trilogy. Her Sorrow, other's joy.



3. This book is truly awe inspiring. We are adopting a child from Vietnam and hopefully will have the pleasure of meeting Cherie when we travel to pick our baby up. For anyone who has adopted or is adopting from Vietnam it truly puts perspective on what happened during the war. I simply could not put this book down. Make sure you have plenty of Kleenex when you read this.



4. Cherie gave 100% of herself to the children of VietNam and, later, India. I couldn't put this book down. I also have adopted internationally and want so much to drop everything and go to work with children without families overseas. The difference: I don't have the courage, Cherie did. I only wish she had the time or resources to write the sequel she had planned to this wonderful book.



5. This book is necessary reading for anyone who wants a complete picture of the Vietnam War. Cherie Clark's memoir succeeds where so many other memoirs, histories, and journalistic accounts fall short. While most books lose interest in events after the final American troop pullout in 1972, Clark's book provides a vivid depiction of life in South Vietnam during the frantic final years of the war. The book also fills the gap left by so many accounts in its description of the desperate conditions endured by regular Vietnamese caught in the middle of the conflict. While issues of global politics and military strategy comprise the vast majority of books published about Vietnam, Clark's book is exceptional in its unflinching view of how the consequences of those issues affected the lives of so many women and children. From beginning to end, After Sorrow Comes Joy is gripping, honest, and interesting. But perhaps its most valuable contribution to the field of books about Vietnam is the surprising level of decency and hope evident amidst all of the suffering. Many of the Americans and Vietnamese described in the book go on to use their wartime experiences as launching pads to careers in humanitarian work throughout the world. And for that hopeful quality alone, Ms. Clark's book is a rare standout. As a Ph.D. student concentrating on Southeast Asian history, I would recommend After Sorrow Comes Joy as an important contribution to the canon of works on America's involvement in Vietnam. I would also recommend it as a great read for anyone interested in stories of unheralded but heroic Americans doing the anonymous humanitarian work that is so often overlooked in books about soldiers, protesters, and policy makers. It is a different Vietnam story, but it is one that should have been told a long time ago.

5 comments about Florence Lawrence, the Biograph Girl: America's First Movie Star.

1. This slender volume is fascinating because it finally paints a well-researched picture of the long forgotten Florence Lawrence. I've always been fascinated by her after seeing publicity stills of her from the mid-1900s. She appeared to be warm, charismatic and fascinating. Her greatest tragedy is that none of her films have been shown in eighty years. I have one of her shorts, "Flo's Discipline" which only lasts about twelve minutes but it gives you a hint of how dazzling she was before the cameras. While her cohort, Mary Pickford, went onto a spectacular career that included mind-boggling salaries and a world-famous Hollywood castle, Pickfair, poor Lawrence was living in a small, hotel room, being paid a few dollars a week as an extra at MGM. Her life would make a wonderful movie--and a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of how fleeting fame is, and how fickle is the public when it comes to remaining faithful to the flavor of the month.



2. Florence Lawrence was "big" before there were movie stars. She was the original "Biograph Girl" before Mary Pickford was given that name by movie fans. After losing her job at Biograph, she was hired by Carl Laemmle's IMP company (later Universal). As a publicity stunt, Laemmle started a rumor that she was dead. Then she made a personal appearance in St. Louis and was mobbed by fans.
   
   Unfortunately she was pretty much out of work in five years. Poor managemet by her husband Harry, as well as a painful injury forced her into bit parts. She was still acting in very small parts into 1938, when she gave up on life and committed suicide.
   
   Kelly Brown has done an incredible research job. Using Florence's surviving correspondence, as well as trade magazine artices and advertisements, she has reconstructed Florence's life. The book has many footnotes noting sources, and there is a very detailed filmography. Instead of a book full of dry facts, Ms. Brown keeps Florence's story interesting. If you are interested in early cinema, or even important women actresses, you should definitely read this book.



3. Florence Lawrence was an enigma I had always wanted to know about, having been interested in silent films for many years. Information on her was scarce, save for some still photographs in silent movie history books. Kelly Brown really did her homework, in what must have been a difficult task, digging up information about a star whose heyday was almost 90 years ago! Congratulations, Kelly, on a job well done! I can't recommend this book highly enough!



4. I always enjoy a good biography, especially those of the nearly forgotten silent screen stars. This biography of Florence Lawrence was well researched and had many wonderful photos. The author did a good job with the resources available. Most of the films and people involved in silents are gone now, so the job is doubly difficult. Although pricey, this biography is well worth reading.



5. A nicely researched and insightful biography of Florence Lawrence, one of the most shadowy yet important figures of early cinema. Many things about Florence's life and career will perhaps always remain vague, but Kelly Brown gives a worthy account of America's "first movie star." It is refreshing to know that Flo is finally getting the recognition she deserves. This book is a must for the true film buff.

No comments about Eminent Nuns: Women Chan Masters of Seventheenth-Century China.

4 comments about Hands to Work: The Stories of Three Families Racing the Welfare Clock.

1. Different approach to the welfare-system. Long term study of three women struggling in NYC, one immigrant, one born and raised in Brooklyn, and one drug addict. Not comparable to NICKLE AND DIMED, but sheds a lot of light on Presidential Hopeful, GIULIANI.



2. Although this book is well written and flows well, the content is at times laughable. The author paitnts a picture of these poor women as totally helpless. They go about missing appointments making excusses, as to why they can't make appointments or fill out papers. I thought it was halarious when the author wanted the reader to fell bad because one of the women didn't know how to eat pizza. She kept going on about how hard it is to get welfare and that the government shoudn't ask for ID or proof of need. Hey, while there at it why not just drop bags loads of money out of the sky?
   I think the author did these women a disservice as she made them out to be so helpless and stupid.



3. Journalist LynNell Hancock has produced the book that finally tells the story of the people affected by former President Bill Clinton's promise to "end welfare as we know it." Anyone interested in social policy should be extraordinarily grateful for Hancock's eloquent, evocative work. Following the lives of three women for several years and documenting their struggles to get off welfare, Hancock details the bureaucratic difficulties and the every day obstacles -- like the lack of affordable, decent child care -- that make this goal so elusive. With a journalist's careful eye and graceful prose, Hancock interweaves each woman's story with detailed analysis about the history of national and NYC welfare reform. In the tradition of Jonathon Kozol, her work is page-turning, deeply moving, and intellectually astute. As the clock is about to run out on the five-year limit set by Clinton's legislation, Hands to Work couldn't be more important -- or timely.



4. Finally an antidote to five years of endless conservative cheerleading about how wonderful welfare reform has worked to get the unworthy poor off the public dole. The Personal Responsibility Act of 1996, signed by then Pres. Clinton, launched a massive remaking of how federal, state and local governments aid the poor and define who is deserving of help. By one measure, welfare reform has been an unmitigated success: it pushed millions of poor people off the rolls and into a limbo of dubious workfare programs that offered street cleaning, for one example in New York City, as a job training. What has this all meant for poor people buffeted by welfare reform? The policy wonks and elected officials have paid scant attention to that critical question.

   Luckily, journalist LynNell Hancock has trained her sights on the impact of welfare reform on real people--not the statistics we're usually offered. The women she shadows for several years in researching her book are as different as they could be: a Puerto Rican mother with a drug addiction; an African American mother fending off a ex-husband with a murder conviction; and a Russian immigrant with the drive to become a doctor. Hancock is our medium as we visit their lives and witness the absurdities, the indignities, and the incredible work invovled simply in being poor. All these women, Hancock included, deserve a merit badge for having confronted the welfare bureaucracy and survived its limitless hurdles, its rules crafted by people who live in mahongany paneled offices, not roach infested apartments.

   With careful, sharp-eyed reporting and lively prose, Hancock lets these women's stories--with all their flaws and strengths--come shining through. They are not heroines for being poor; these women are heroines for keeping hope alive in the face of countless humiliations and degradations and for continuing to fight for better lives for themselves and their children.

   As Congress prepares this spring to reconsider the 1996 welfare law, every member who will cast a vote should read this book. Beautifully written, politically astute but with no finger-wagging, Hands to Work is a must read for all who think they know anything about the poor among us.

5 comments about A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock.

1. A very short review of this incontournable book, for all those that want to better know the scientific world or that have interest in the female conditions throughout the 20 century. Those thinking that scientists are a bit "crazy" or mystical will probably find unvaluable arguments in McClintok's personality!
   The book is well writen and easy to read; even for people that do not have a background in genetics. From my point of view, those people will nevertheless have more interest in the aspects of "McClintock's as a female revolutionary scientist" rather than in "the genesis and communication of new ideas in life-science".
   Most of the information provided about McClintok's life and thoughts seem acurate, even if some authors have pointed out several speculations made by Evelyn Fox Keller.



2. Bare in mind as I begin this review that I am not interested in science. I read this book as part of a philosophy course interested in "ways of seeing." We looked at this books to discuss scientific ways of seeing and the fact that McClintock saw scientific things that her colleagues didn't see. The book is very interesting, if a bit wordy, and would probably be fascinating to someone actually interested in the topic. If you need to know about the life and work of Barbara McClintock- then the title does not lie. This book will give you a very in depth look at the woman's life and struggles and triumphs.



3. "A Feeling for the Organism" is much closer to memoir than biography. When McClintock denied Keller access to her letters and notebooks, Keller chose to rely on McClintock's recollections. Consequently, we learn how McClintock wanted others to see her, and perhaps how she wanted to see herself, but not the truth. McClintock is portrayed as a genius struggling against a world too stupid to appreciate her brilliance, but the existence of transposition was never in serious doubt; it was McClintock's theory of genetic control that was controversial, and later discarded as incorrect. For a better understanding of McClintock's work and its reception, read The Tangled Field by Nathaniel Comfort, which manages to tell the real story without diminishing the scientific importance or originality of McClintock.



4. People talk about glass ceilings, but the ceilings Barbara McClintock broke through were much colder than that. Evelyn Fox Keller, one of the most insightful writers who deals with issues of gender in science, conveys both McClintock's solitude and anguish and her passion for analyzing and understanding her organism's genes and how they affected the corn plants. The holistic approach to the organism is possibly a feminine approach to science, but in her day, admitting to female qualities was a no-no of the most chastised form. She never got tenure, never married, and finished her career as an isolated scientist at a research laboratory. But she never lost the passion for science. The Nobel prize was almost an after thought, certainly received for work completed and presented to dead silence much earlier in her career. Fox Keller sensitively conveys both what she thinks is important and what McClintock herself thought was important (just the science, ma'am!).



5. Barbara McClintock was a maverick from the very beginning. Her parents did not consider education as the best option for a woman. Her relationship with her mother was particularly frictitious. She made the decision to study botany at Cornell, and her love of the genetics grew. She worked on maize at a time when most cytogeneticists were working on Drosophila. It can easily be argued that nobody understood the maize plant and its genetics as well as she did at the time.
   
   The book can get quite technical midway, and will be appreciated best by those with a background in genetics. McClintock was a woman way ahead of her time, in fact, decades ahead. She could not be promoted to certain positions at several institutions simply because she is female (despite a superior knowledge in cytogenetics).
   
   It took approximately 5 years for McClintock to finish and publish her results on transposable elements in chromosomes (transposons). She gave numerous presentations on her discoveries and nobody understood - at a time when molecular biology was taking over the field of cytogenetics. This book shows that science is not always objective. It also brings up legitimate points as to whether the prevailing Western view of Science (i.e. the scientific method) is efficient enough in scientific research and discovery.
   
   I highly recommend this book!

3 comments about Sarah Hughes Biography: Skating to the Stars.

1. It is much better than the other Sarah book by Ruth Ashby! It starts off with Sarah at the 2001 World Championships and chronicles her life better than any other Sarah book could!Then it tells a LOT about her main competitors and ends telling how prepared she is for the 2002 Olympics (which she won!!)
   I would definitely give it five stars in my book!!



2. Hi, I saw the book online and so I decided to try and go find it at the local bookstore. I was actually there to see if they had the May issue of International Figure Skating which I was very disappointed to find out they didn't carry. I went ahead and bought the book and I was so happy to get my hands on it, I read the whole thing start to finish in about an hour, stopping to look at the pictures of course :)

   The book overall was great! It had her ups and downs thru the years, her fight with her mom's illness, a summer she broke her hand and nearly all her competitions. It had a great look at the skaters Sarah has faced and how she did in her programs. She works so hard and is so dedicated! This is a great book to just sit and read, but its also a wonderful collectors items just like the wheaties I found today hehe :) Thanks for listening~




3. This book gives the WHOLE story about her life and competition leading up to the Olympics gold. It tells about private emotional times in her young life and the training and competitions. There's a nice appendix listing all her placings and some web URLs. I'm glad I got this collector's item before they ran out!