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Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression

Studs Terkel

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Informative. But It Dragged. 3 out of 5 stars.
14 of 21 people found this review helpful.

There is undeniable value in recording the memories and perspectives of people who have lived through something as remarkable as the Great Depression. The Internet of the future may provide the best possible compilation of such raw materials: only then may we see video and hear audio of the actual event, culled from tape recordings and home movies of the 1970s and before, and from film reels of the 1920s and after. Compared to resources like those, the relatively brief excerpts that Studs Terkel offers in this book cannot help but feel tailored, managed, and limiting.

I say the Internet of the future may be the ultimate resource. But in an important sense, that is exactly wrong. The ultimate resource would have been to have lived during those times -- to have experienced the event firsthand, and to have interviewed people and recorded information as it was unfolding. Do we, indeed, obtain a more compelling, a more visceral impression of the Great Depression by reading these timeworn memories, from the 1960s, of events that had taken place some 30 years earlier?

In some ways, no decade in the 20th century could have been farther away from the 1930s than were the 1960s. We had newfound suburban materialism; the race to the Moon; John Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.; the Great Society; LSD; rebellious youth and college as one's real home; American global supremacy; Vietnam and the Cold War. We were *so* far removed from the 1930s, by then. When Americans looked back from the later decade to the earlier one, they could not help but do so through very colored lenses. The values of the 1960s -- the things that people would tend to speak about, in the 1960s -- did visibly flavor the way that Terkel's interviewees spoke about their distant past.

Terkel's work is not history. It is a compilation of raw materials that a historian could use for some purposes. No doubt the historian would have to work through heaps of old material that might frequently repeat itself or express the same general impressions, just as Terkel's increasingly tedious interviews tend to do, as one progresses through the book. But a good historian would find a way to condense that material, to extract its most telling points, and to organize and present them in an intriguing and highly thought-provoking manner. This would be true even of the historian whose written work rested heavily upon verbatim quotations from primary sources. You have to make a point. You have to say something provocative if you expect people to get excited about your work.

I do recommend skimming this book, dipping occasionally into its anecdotes and observations. There is much to be learned here. But I don't believe it is going to give many people just what they want for the Depression. Instead, consider reading a novel about the 1930s, or one written in the 1930s; browse old magazines and, particularly, old newspapers, including both the big ones (e.g., the New York Times) and the small, local ones -- if you can find any of the latter that have been preserved in your area.

Gather your own data from these sources and elsewhere, and don't restrict yourself, as much of Terkel's book does, to one city. The 1930s was a world unto itself. This book does not do it justice.

Editorial Review:

Studs Terkel's classic history of the Great Depression.

In this unique re-creation of one of the most dramatic periods in modern American history, Studs Terkel recaptures the Great Depression of the 1930s in all its complexity. The book is a mosaic of memories from those who were richest to those who were most destitute: politicians like James Farley and Raymond Moley; businessmen like Bill Benton and Clement Stone; a six-day bicycle racer; artists and writers; racketeers; speakeasy operators, strikers, and impoverished farmers; people who were just kids; and those who remember losing a fortune.

Hard Times is not only a gold mine of information—much of it little known—but also a fascinating interplay of memory and fact, showing how the Depression affected the lives of those who experienced it firsthand, often transforming the most bitter memories into a surprising nostalgia.

The World Without Us (International Bestseller)

Alan weisman

By: Harper Perennial, Toronto Canada Amazon Marketplace: 2 new & used starting at $9.74

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 246 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Wiesman preaches the tenants of animism 1 out of 5 stars.
0 of 7 people found this review helpful.

Weisman refers to many less-complex life-forms as our ancestors.
Weisman prays to "Mother Earth" at the very end of the book.
These are tenants of Animism or worshiping animals because they are your ancestors.
Weisman proposes that watching animals and plants is more enjoyable than having raising children.
Weisman anthromorphsizes evolution giving it or animals the power to design their genetic mutations.

I won't even go into the way he practically deifies "Natural Selection" as if it actually could create new genetic information.

The two interesting things I took from it were that "science" doesn't know how the oil deposits formed under the ocean and that "science" claims there are actual tree parts multiple millions of years old that have not fossilized.

I also thought his description of the "Church of Euthanasia" was telling. Especially the four pillars of their faith.

Not withstanding, I'm guessing that the "science" in the book was probably mostly accurate in capturing what "science" at the time of the writing was. Now that "Global Warming" has universally changed to "Climate Change" much of his references to rising oceans seem as quaint as discussions of light being conducted by the ether.

Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus: A Practical Guide for Improving Communication and Getting What You Want in Your Relationships

John Gray

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Total reviews: 401 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Popular marriage counselor and seminar leader John Gray provides a unique, practical and proven way for men and women to communicate and relate better by acknowledging the differences between them.

Once upon a time Martians and Venusians met, fell in love, and had happy relationships together because they respected and accepted their differences. Then they came to earth and amnesia set in: they forgot they were from different planets.

Using this metaphor to illustrate the commonly occurring conflicts between men and women, Gray explains how these differences can come between the sexes and prohibit mutually fulfilling loving relationships. Based on years of successful counseling of couples, he gives advice on how to counteract these differences in communication styles, emotional needs and modes of behavior to promote a greater understanding between individual partners. Gray shows how men and women react differently in conversation and how their relationships are affected by male intimacy cycles ("get close", "back off"), and female self-esteem fluctuations ("I'm okay", "I'm not okay"). He encourages readers to accept the other gender's particular way of expressing love, and helps men and women learn how to fulfill each other's emotional needs.

With practical suggestions on how to reduce conflict, crucial information on how to interpret a partner's behavior and methods for preventing emotional "trash from the past" from invading new relationships, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus is a valuable tool for couples who want to develop deeper and more satisfying relationships with their partners.

Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays

David Foster Wallace

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 48 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Smart, eclectic, and hilariously funny. 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Full disclosure: I have a major intellectual crush on David Foster Wallace. Yes, yes, I know about his weaknesses - the digressions, the rampant footnote abuse, the flaunting of his amazing erudition, the mess that is 'Infinite Jest'. I know all this, and I don't care. Because when he is in top form, there's nobody else I would rather read. The man is hilarious; I think he's a mensch, and I don't believe he parades his erudition just to prove how smart he is. I think he can't help himself - it's a consequence of his wide-ranging curiosity. At heart he's a geek, but a charming, hyper-articulate geek. Who is almost frighteningly intelligent.

The pieces in "Consider the Lobster" have appeared previously in Rolling Stone, The Atlantic Monthly, the New York Observer, the Philadelphia Enquirer, Harper's, Gourmet, and Premiere magazines. Among them are short meditations on Updike's `Toward the end of Time', on Dostoyevsky, on Kafka's humor, and on the `breathtakingly insipid autobiography' of tennis player Tracy Austin. An intermediate length piece describes Foster Wallace's (eminently sane) reaction to the attacks of September 11th. Each of these shorter essays is interesting, but the meat and potatoes of the book is in the remaining five, considerably longer, pieces. They are:

Big Red Son: a report on the 1998 Adult Video News awards (the Oscars of porn) in Las Vegas.
Consider the Lobster: a report on a visit to the annual Maine Lobster Festival (for Gourmet magazine).
Host: a report on conservative talk radio, based on extensive interviews conducted with John Ziegler, host of "Live and Local" on Southern California's KFI.
Up Simba: an account of seven days on the campaign trail with John McCain in his 2000 presidential bid (for Rolling Stone).
Authority and American Usage: a review of Bryan Garner's "A Dictionary of Modern American Usage" , which serves as a springboard for a terrific exegesis of usage questions and controversies.

Here's what I like about David Foster Wallace's writing: I know of nobody else who writes as thoughtfully and intelligently. That he manages to write so informatively, with humor and genuine wit, on almost any subject under the sun is mind-blowing - it's also why I am willing to forgive his occasional stylistic excesses. (Can you spell `footnote'?) You may not have a strong interest in lobsters or pornography, but the essays in question are terrific. The reporting on Ziegler and McCain is amazingly good, heartbreakingly so, because it makes the relative shallowness of most reporting painfully evident. Finally, the article on usage is a tour de force - when it first appeared in Harper's, upon finishing it, I was immediately moved to go online and order a copy of Garner's book (which is just as good as DFW promised).

How can you not enjoy an essay that begins as follows?

"Did you know that probing the seamy underbelly of US lexicography reveals ideological strife and controversy and intrigue and nastiness and fervor on a near Lewinskian scale?

....... (several other rhetorical questions) ......

Did you know that US lexicography even *had* a seamy underbelly?"

And which later contains sentences such as:
"Teachers who do this are dumb."
"This argument is not quite the barrel of drugged trout that Methodological Descriptivism was, but it's still vulnerable to objections."
and - my personal favorite -
"This is so stupid it practically drools."

Not everyone will give this collection 5 stars, but I do.

Editorial Review:

Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? What is John Updike's deal, anyway? And what happens when adult video starlets meet their fans in person? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in essays that are also enthralling narrative adventures. Whether covering the three-ring circus of a vicious presidential race, plunging into the wars between dictionary writers, or confronting the World's Largest Lobster Cooker at the annual Maine Lobster Festival, Wallace projects a quality of thought that is uniquely his and a voice as powerful and distinct as any in American letters.

God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

Christopher Hitchens

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 806 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

logical, but superficial to some extent 4 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

I read "God is not great" relatively quickly, despite many thoughts rushing throung my head while I was reading. I am happy I read this book, which is one of many recently published in the never-ending polemics between believers and atheists. I feel that it is hard to review a book so popular, and I am aware that my review will probably drown in the sea of others, but I could not resist the temptation to share a few thoughts.

Christopher Hitchens tries to take an angle different from Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, and reviews the whole spectrum of atheist arguments, with a personal flavor, perhaps attempting to win a broader, more general audience. He did not need to win me, because I am a skeptical scientist, but I was curious what his arguments would be.

The book consists of 19 chapters with provocative titles like "Religion kills" or "Religion as an original sin". These are misleading, as is the title of the whole book. Hitchens makes an argument, that much is true, but it is not an argument against God or faith per se - it is an argument against organized, institutionalized religion. If we do not remember it, the meaning of the whole book can be lost. Hitchens himself admits it, somewhat nonchalantly, here and there, for example at the end of chapter six, "Arguments from Design" (which, in itself, is not the best, and serves only and a reference for those interested in biology and evolution): "...we no longer have any need of a god to explain what is no longer mysterious. What believers will do, now that their faith is optional and private and irrelevant, is a matter for them. We should not care, as long as they make no further attempt to inculcate religion by any for of coercion." The people in the hierarchies of various religious organizations, not faith, turn out to be the whole problem, and here Hitchens makes his case very well.

I was a little disappointed by the initial chapter, which I found very superficial and not very original - up to (and including) chapter six (although there was some anecdotal info, which was interesting or new to me - like the answer to the question "if you were in a strange city at night, and you saw a group of men approaching you, would you feel safer knowing that they had just come out of a place of religious worship". The middle chapters I found best, and towards the end I was a bit bored - I am not sure if this was the intention of the author...

I appreciated very much many references to specific works of philosophers, as well as the literary associations and the reference list at the end of the book. For those wishing to explore the subject it is an excellent source. Hitchens relies very much on his area of expertise, having done a lot of work and written books on Thomas Paine and Mother Theresa, and these fragments of the book felt for me the best and the strongest. The biological arguments were not the most impressive part (better left to Dawkins). Some of the language can be perceived as offensive by the religious people, too. I liked the logic and the comparisons of religious organizations to the infamy of Nazism and Communism (sad but true).

All in all, I think it is a book, which can be a useful voice in a discussion for beginners making first steps in the world of the battles between the religious and the non-believers, and trying to figure out what is good for them.

Editorial Review:

In the tradition of Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian and Sam Harris's recent bestseller, The End of Faith, Christopher Hitchens makes the ultimate case
against religion. With a close and erudite reading of the major religious texts, he documents the ways in which religion is a man-made wish, a cause of dangerous sexual repression, and a distortion of our origins in the cosmos. With eloquent clarity, Hitchens frames the argument for a more secular life based on science and
reason, in which hell is replaced by the Hubble Telescope's awesome view of the universe, and Moses and the burning bush give way to the beauty and symmetry
of the double helix.

Difficult Conversations

Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 133 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Great Book 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book is a wonderful tool to assist you in crafting a good response to a difficult conversation or work on training your management team to converse well. The contribution ideas are priceless, its a bargain for the price and a must have in any executive's library.

Looking forward to great results! 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book helped me to recognize where some of my previous conversations have gone wrong and should help me gain the foresight I need to avoid repeating the same mistakes in the future. Also a book that have a great chapter about this topic is I Love You. Now What?: Falling in Love is a Mystery, Keeping It Isn't

Editorial Review:

What is a difficult conversation? Asking for a pay rise, saying 'no' to your boss or spouse, confronting a friend or neighbor, asking a difficult favor, apologizing. We all have conversations that we dread and find unpleasant. But can we develop the skills to make such situations less stressful and more productive? Based on fifteen years of research and consultations with thousands of people, "Difficult Conversations" pinpoints what works. Use this ground-breaking, step-by-step book to turn your difficult conversations into positive, problem-solving experiences.

Culture Warrior

Bill O'Reilly

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Total reviews: 494 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Bill O’Reilly is the very embodiment of the idea of a Culture Warrior—and in this book he lives up to the title brilliantly, with all the brashness and forthrightness at his command. He sees that America is in the midst of a fierce culture war between those who embrace traditional values and those who want to change America into a “secular-progressive” country. This is a conflict that differs in many ways from the usual liberal/conservative divide, but it is no less heated, and the stakes are even higher.

In Culture Warrior, Bill O’Reilly defines this war and analyzes the competing philosophies of the traditionalist and secular-progressive camps. He examines why the nation’s motto “E Pluribus Unum” (“From Many, One”) might change to “What About Me?”; dissects the forces driving the secular-progressive agenda in the media and behind the scenes, including George Soros, George Lakoff, and the ACLU; and dives into matters of race, education, and the war on terror. He also shows how the culture war has played out in such high-profile instances as The Passion of the Christ, Fahrenheit 9/11, the abuse epidemic (child and otherwise), and the embattled place of religion in public life—with special emphasis on the war against Christmas. Whatever controversies are roiling the nation, he fearlessly confronts them—and no one will be in the dark about which side he’s on.

Culture Warrior showcases Bill O’Reilly at his most eloquent and impassioned. He is an unrelenting fighter for the soul of America, and in this book he fights the good fight for the traditional values that have served this country so well for so long.

The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective Teens

Sean Covey

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 209 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

It was ok, I guess..... 2 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Well, I'm 14 and perfectly authorized to write a review for this book since it IS for teenagers. The entire freshman class is being required to read this book as a part of our 48 Books Program and some of us like it and some of us absolutely can't stand it. I would give it the fact that it's remotely interesting but it's mean in a way that if you do something wrong you're totally undermining your self-esteem and I think that's just plain wrong. To make this book better he should have put more in that are popular that people actually know about and are funny, not just being used to prove a point. Also, the way he wants us to write in the book and stuff just doesn't appeal to ANY of us because of the way it's phrased before a line to write. Most of us just kind of think about it and go on. It's hard to hold my attention on it for very long because just reading through Habit #2 makes you read over a hundred pages of boring text. My school is in the top 36 elite high schools in the nation and they expect us to read this boring book that's of little or no help to the majority of it's freshmen? I mean, my math teacher thinks it's the best book on the planet, but seriously, he's kind of old. Us teens (who the book was actually written for) think it's not all that great. Whatever. Read it yourself and see what you think, this is only my opinion after all, not that a whole lot of people are going to read it or anything.

Editorial Review:

Being a teenager is both wonderful and challenging. In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens, author Sean Covey applies the timeless principles of the 7 Habits to teens and the tough issues and life-changing decisions they face. In an entertaining style, Covey provides a step-by-step guide to help teens improve self-image, build friendships, resist peer pressure, achieve their goals, get along with their parents, and much more. In addition, this book is stuffed with cartoons, clever ideas, great quotes, and incredible stories about real teens from all over the world. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens will engage teenagers unlike any other book.

An indispensable book for teens, as well as parents, grandparents, and any adult who influences young people, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens is destined to become the last word on surviving and thriving as a teen and beyond.

Trickster Makes This World Mischief, Myth, and Art

Lewis Hyde

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

The Trickster's crucial role 4 out of 5 stars.
26 of 27 people found this review helpful.

The Trickster is a mythological or archetypal character found in stories throughout the world. The best known in Western myth are Hermes and Loki. In this fascinating study, Lewis Hyde gives equal time to the Native American Coyote, the Chinese Monkey King and India's Krishna. At first glance, these characters are merely pranksters; humorous, sometimes annoying and occasionally dangerous ne'er do wells who disrupt the normal flow of things. As the title of this book suggests, Hyde believes tricksters are much more than this. He makes a convincing case that tricksters are essential in both preserving and transforming societies. Without their disruptions, cultural stagnation would result. He points out that tricksters can either help to maintain the status quo or bring about radical transformation. An example of the former case is illustrated by carnivals such as Mardi Gras, where social customs are predictably and temporarily ignored or reversed. This allows people to vent their frustrations and unleash their inhibitions before returning to normal life. Hyde mentions the abolishionist Frederick Douglas as an example of the more radical sort of trickster who brings about permanent change. Within the institution of slavery, slaves were allowed one week of freedom and revelry. Douglas was not satisfied with this; he wanted to completely overhaul the status quo and indeed helped to accomplish this. Trickster Makes this World describes the antics of both actual (e.g. Douglas, the artist Marcel Duchamp) and mythic (e.g. Hermes, Coyote, Krishna) tricksters. This, of course, suggests a worldview similar to that of Joseph Campbell and others, who see the mythic as the foundation of real life. This book isn't easy reading; Hyde has a trickster-like style of zig-zagging his way all over a very expansive intellectual terrain. It doesn't so much make a case or present an argument as suggest a way of seeing the world. At the center of this worldview is not the all-powerful Zeus, but the slippery messenger/thief/trader Hermes (or one of his counterparts). Getting back to the provocative title, Trickster does not make the world in the conventional way (as the God of the Bible, for example). Rather, he (tricksters are usually male, an issue Hyde devotes a chapter to exploring) remakes and readjusts the world in which he finds himself. This is arguably a task as important as creation itself, or an essential part of creation.

Editorial Review:

Always out to satisfy their inordinate appetites, lying, cheating, and stealing, tricksters are a great bother to have around, but paradoxically they are also indispensable culture heroes. Here Lewis Hyde's ambitious and captivating study brings to life the playful and disruptive side of the human imagination as it is embodied in the trickster mythology.

Collapse (Allen Lane Science)

Jared M. Diamond

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Total reviews: 401 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In his runaway bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond brilliantly examined the circumstances that allowed Western civilizations to dominate much of the world. Now he probes the other side of the equation: What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to fall into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates? Using a vast historical and geographical perspective ranging from Easter Island and the Maya to Viking Greenland and modern Montana, Diamond traces a fundamental pattern of environmental catastrophe—one whose warning signs can be seen in our modern world and that we ignore at our peril. Blending the most recent scientific advances into a narrative that is impossible to put down, Collapse exposes the deepest mysteries of the past even as it offers hope for the future.

“Diamond’s most influential gift may be his ability to write about geopolitical and environmental systems in ways that don’t just educate and provoke, but entertain.” —The Seattle Times

“Extremely persuasive . . . replete with fascinating stories, a treasure trove of historical anecdotes [and] haunting statistics.” —The Boston Globe

“Extraordinary in erudition and originality, compelling in [its] ability to relate the digitized pandemonium of the present to the hushed agrarian sunrises of the far past.” —The New York Times Book Review