General Books - Page 6

No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II

Doris Kearns Goodwin

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 126 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Review of the FDR Era 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Being a Baby Boomer, I always wanted to understand the former generation's affinity to FDR and Eleanor. Doris Kearns Goodwin in her Pulitzer Prize winning book, creates a visualization of the people and the times quite well. Never knew FDR was such a ladies man, or that Eleanor overcame such a disfunctional early family life to become a leading example of feminism well ahead of her time.

Editorial Review:

No Ordinary Time is a monumental work, a brilliantly conceived chronicle of one of the most vibrant and revolutionary periods in the history of the United States. With an extraordinary collection of details, Goodwin masterfully weaves together a striking number of story lines--Eleanor and Franklin's marriage and remarkable partnership, Eleanor's life as First Lady, and FDR's White House and its impact on America as well as on a world at war. Goodwin effectively melds these details and stories into an unforgettable and intimate portrait of Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt and of the time during which a new, modern America was born.

War As They Knew It: Woody Hayes, Bo Schembechler, and America in a Time of Unrest

Michael Rosenberg

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Those Who Stay Will Be Champions 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

The story of sports is not in a vacuum and Michael Rosenberg does an outstanding job in delving into a pair of coaches in one of the college gridiron's most bitter rivalries during a tumultuous time in American history.

Woody Hayes of Ohio State - who was a student of military history - and Bo Schembechler - once an assistant to Hayes at OSU - started the "10-Year War" in 1968, with both teams so dominant in the Big 10, that the conference earned the moniker, "Big Two, Little Eight," during this decade.

But with the excellence on the field was the unrest that was growing on college campuses nationwide and on Main Street, USA, as such issues as the Viet Nam War, the rise of the New Left and the push of counter-culturalism against societal norms were dividing the nation. Rosenberg successfully juxtaposes the times outside the stadium with the game inside the vast edifices.

Hayes and Schembechler were successful in a time when it appeared - at least on the surface - that the times were changing rapidly and their form of leadership and teaching was quickly fading away. That they became iconic figures largely for what they accomplished during this time period is a story that Rosenberg succinctly tells, as if carrying the pigskin for a classic "three yards and a cloud of dust."

Editorial Review:

For many, the late 1960s/early 1970s meant a country in turmoil. Sit-ins. Vietnam War protests. Don't trust anyone over 30. Nixon was 'not a crook' - or so he claimed. At the other end of the spectrum was the intense rivalry between Woody Hayes, the legendary Ohio State football coach, and his nemesis, Bo Schembechler from Michigan. To them, the American heartland was still 'pure and sacred', and they were totally in command of their troops. Hayes idolized General Patton, the great war hero. Schembechler idolized President Ford, a former All-American football player. Rosenberg sets the stage brilliantly for this coming clash of cultural differences, as Hayes and Schembechler try desperately to win a national football championship while coping with a shifting political landscape. It all leads to a climatic, and in part tragic, downfall of an important era gone by.

Quiet Strength: The Principles, Practices, and Priorities of a Winning Life

Tony Dungy, Nathan Whitaker

Amazon Price: $10.19 List Price: $14.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Tyndale House Publishers Amazon Marketplace: 33 new & used starting at $9.00

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 213 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

2008 Retailer's Choice Award winner!
Tony Dungy's words and example have intrigued millions of people, particularly following his victory in Super Bowl XLI, the first for an African American coach. How is it possible for a coach--especially a football coach--to win the respect of his players and lead them to the Super Bowl without the screaming histrionics, the profanities, and the demand that the sport come before anything else? How is it possible for anyone to be successful without compromising faith and family? In this inspiring and reflective memoir, now updated with a new chapter, Coach Dungy tells the story of a life lived for God and family--and challenges us all to redefine our ideas of what it means to succeed.

The softcover edition of this #1 New York Times best-seller includes a new chapter! In it, Coach reflects on the 2007 football season and last year's successful hardcover release of Quiet Strength. Also features a foreword by Denzel Washington and a 16-page color-photo insert. Over 1 million in print!

Kitchen Confidential Updated Ed: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (P.S.)

Anthony Bourdain

Amazon Price: $10.17 List Price: $14.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Harper Perennial Amazon Marketplace: 91 new & used starting at $6.47

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 576 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A great read! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

It's amazing where writing talent is found. I originally discovered Bourdain via his "Les Halles Cookbook" -- one of the funniest cookbooks I have ever read. And then slowly, I began to remember -- hadn't this same guy written an earlier book, much more scandalous?

Well, this is that earlier book. You may not care for the tales it tells, or think very highly of the author, but the man writes like a god! Most of his best jokes are on himself, and all of the wimped-out sissy mistakes he made on the way to becoming a member of The Brotherhood, and its storyteller.

One of his bottom lines: "This stuff is EASY. My cooks are all recent immigrants from Latin America who had never tasted anything better than a taco in their lives. If they can learn, so can you."

It is also, for me, quite amazing to really sit back and think about a gang of five or six guys who actually manage to serve dinner to 600 people! Not once, but day in and day out! For this, you don't want no inspiration, you are not in the market for genius, man, you are a member of the freeping army/ballet corps, and everything depends on precise execution of tasks you have done a kazillion times before. (Oops, I slipped into quasi-Bourdain mode there.)

This book is really a lot better than Orwell's pretentious "Down and Out in Paris in London," especially when you learn that Orwell was basically a middle-class guy who volunteered to go slumming, and left when he got tired of it. This is not the case with Bourdain. This is HIS LIFE, and I for one really appreciate his gusto, his zest, and his willingness to work hard for what he wants.

Enjoy, enjoy (and don't order fish from a restaurant on Monday!)

Editorial Review:

A deliciously funny, delectably shocking banquet of wild-but-true tales of life in the culinary trade from Chef Anthony Bourdain, laying out his more than a quarter-century of drugs, sex, and haute cuisine—now with all-new, never-before-published material

The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible

A. J. Jacobs

Amazon Price: $10.20 List Price: $15.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Simon & Schuster Amazon Marketplace: 54 new & used starting at $8.49

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 404 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

From the bestselling author of The Know-It-All comes a fascinating and timely exploration of religion and the Bible.

Raised in a secular family but increasingly interested in the relevance of faith in our modern world, A.J. Jacobs decides to dive in headfirst and attempt to obey the Bible as literally as possible for one full year. He vows to follow the Ten Commandments. To be fruitful and multiply. To love his neighbor. But also to obey the hundreds of less publicized rules: to avoid wearing clothes made of mixed fibers; to play a ten-string harp; to stone adulterers.

The resulting spiritual journey is at once funny and profound, reverent and irreverent, personal and universal and will make you see history's most influential book with new eyes.

Jacobs's quest transforms his life even more radically than the year spent reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica for The Know-It-All. His beard grows so unruly that he is regularly mistaken for a member of ZZ Top. He immerses himself in prayer, tends sheep in the Israeli desert, battles idolatry, and tells the absolute truth in all situations - much to his wife's chagrin.

Throughout the book, Jacobs also embeds himself in a cross-section of communities that take the Bible literally. He tours a Kentucky-based creationist museum and sings hymns with Pennsylvania Amish. He dances with Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn and does Scripture study with Jehovah's Witnesses. He discovers ancient biblical wisdom of startling relevance. And he wrestles with seemingly archaic rules that baffle the twenty-first-century brain.Jacobs's extraordinary undertaking yields unexpected epiphanies and challenges. A book that will charm readers both secular and religious, The Year of Living Biblically is part Cliff Notes to the Bible, part memoir, and part look into worlds unimaginable. Thou shalt not be able to put it down.

Audition: A Memoir

Barbara Walters

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Total reviews: 242 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Young people starting out in television sometimes say to me: “I want to be you.” My stock reply is always: “Then you have to take the whole package.”

And now, at last, the most important woman in the history of television journalism gives us that “whole package,” in her inspiring and riveting memoir. After more than forty years of interviewing heads of state, world leaders, movie stars, criminals, murderers, inspirational figures, and celebrities of all kinds, Barbara Walters has turned her gift for examination onto herself to reveal the forces that shaped her extraordinary life.

Barbara Walters’s perception of the world was formed at a very early age. Her father, Lou Walters, was the owner and creative mind behind the legendary Latin Quarter nightclub, and it was his risk-taking lifestyle that gave Barbara her first taste of glamour. It also made her aware of the ups and downs, the insecurities, and even the tragedies that can occur when someone is willing to take great risks, for Lou Walters didn’t just make several fortunes—he also lost them. Barbara learned early about the damage that such an existence can do to relationships—between husband and wife as well as between parent and child. Through her roller-coaster ride of a childhood, Barbara had a close companion, her mentally challenged sister, Jackie. True, Jackie taught her younger sister much about patience and compassion, but Barbara also writes honestly about the resentment she often felt having a sister who was so “different” and the guilt that still haunts her.

All of this—the financial responsibility for her family, the fear, the love—played a large part in the choices she made as she grew up: the friendships she developed, the relationships she had, the marriages she tried to make work. Ultimately, thanks to her drive, combined with a decent amount of luck, she began a career in television. And what a career it has been! Against great odds, Barbara has made it to the top of a male-dominated industry. She was the first woman cohost of the Today show, the first female network news coanchor, the host and producer of countless top-rated Specials, the star of 20/20, and the creator and cohost of The View. She has not just interviewed the world’s most fascinating figures, she has become a part of their world. These are just a few of the names that play a key role in Barbara’s life, career, and book: Yasir Arafat, Warren Beatty, Menachem Begin, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Roy Cohn, the Dalai Lama, Princess Diana, Katharine Hepburn, King Hussein, Angelina Jolie, Henry Kissinger, Monica Lewinsky, Richard Nixon, Rosie O’Donnell, Christopher Reeve, Anwar Sadat, John Wayne . . . the list goes on and on.

Barbara Walters has spent a lifetime auditioning: for her bosses at the TV networks, for millions of viewers, for the most famous people in the world, and even for her own daughter, with whom she has had a difficult but ultimately quite wonderful and moving relationship. This book, in some ways, is her final audition, as she fully opens up both her private and public lives. In doing so, she has given us a story that is heartbreaking and honest, surprising and fun, sometimes startling, and always fascinating.

Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog

Ted Kerasote

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 191 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A Book Every Dog Lover Will Enjoy. 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I bought Merle's Door because the sub-title "Lessons from a Freethinking Dog" caught my eye. I was in Pet Smart buying a bag of Eukaneuba kibble for my nine-month old Standard Schnauzer puppy named Otto, who is about as freethinking a dog as you are ever going to meet.

Ted Kerasote leads the reader/dog owner-lover on a wonderful adventure into the hidden life of dogs; not simply "what dogs think," from a Pavlovian standpoint, but why dogs are the way they are.

On more than one occasion, this book brought a smile to my face, or tears to my eyes as I learned something new about dogs. This book will bring you closer to your companion animal in a way you never dreamed possible. Dogs are a lot more than pets we shape, mold, and train to our liking; they can be companions with whom we can connnect and share experiences with, if we will let dogs be themselves.

Editorial Review:

While on a camping trip, Ted Kerasote met a dog—a Labrador mix—who was living on his own in the wild. They became attached to each other, and Kerasote decided to name the dog Merle and bring him home. There, he realized that Merle’s native intelligence would be diminished by living exclusively in the human world. He put a dog door in his house so Merle could live both outside and in.

A deeply touching portrait of a remarkable dog and his relationship with the author, Merle’s Door explores the issues that all animals and their human companions face as their lives intertwine, bringing to bear the latest research into animal consciousness and behavior as well as insights into the origins and evolution of the human-dog partnership. Merle showed Kerasote how dogs might live if they were allowed to make more of their own decisions, and Kerasote suggests how these lessons can be applied universally.

Me Talk Pretty One Day

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 736 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Not as funny as I'd hoped. 2 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Sedaris describes vignettes from his life in this wry-humored self-deprecating autobiography.

He and I do not share the same sense of humor, so though I did find some of his stories throughout the middle of the text quite funny (particularly the way he described learning French and moving to France), I found the beginning and end of the book tedious reading. Perhaps I didn't read it in the right frame of mind. If I had approached it as a collection of short stories instead of a continuing narrative, I might have enjoyed it better, and I am willing to take the blame for that oversight, though I didn't see any reference to this book as a collection of short stories in any reviews.

In the beginning, Sedaris describes himself as a vapid and shallow child, and a pretentious and annoying art student. As a reader, I simply didn't care about him.

If you can stick with this novel until chapter nine, when Sedaris moves to NYC, his humor kicks into gear and the book becomes very amusing through chapter twenty-three.

After that, subsequent chapters about uncomfortable self-revelations and insomniac fantasies are at times both repulsive and tedious, and divorced from any of the previous text. But then Sedaris finishes with one of the funniest chapters of the whole lot which leaves the reader laughing, but does nothing to draw the whole book together in conclusion.

Many people have loved this book, but I did not find it very appealing or satisfying.

C.A.Wulff - author of Born Without a Tail

Into the Wild

Jon Krakauer

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1221 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Poorly Equipped Dreamer 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

It's ok to be a dreamer. It's ok to want to 'find yourself.' It's really ok to hike and backpack. I've done it myself, but I would never, never enter a wilderness area without, at least, a topographical map. Chris McCandless' story is nothing short of tragic.
Jon Krakauer does a fine job of getting you into the mind of this doomed traveler while also taking you into the adventure and beauty of the wilderness.

Editorial Review:

In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself...

"Terrifying...Eloquent...A heart-rending drama wandering of human yearning."--The New York Times

"A narrative of arresting force. Anyone who ever fancied wandering off to face nature on its own harsh terms should give a look. It's gripping stuff."--The Washington Post


From the Audiobook Download edition.