Letters & Correspondence Books - Page 12

Great Personal Letters for Busy People: 501 Ready-to-Use Letters for Every Occasion

Dianna Booher

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Terrific resource 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Dianna Booher has compiled an exhaustive collection of sample letters. From the busy person who just needs some help getting started, to those who find themselves in a situation where they know something in writing is warranted but just can't seem to find the right words, this book is a tremendous help; the letters are long, detailed, and anticipate many different possible situations you might be facing. Even if you think you are already a good letter writer, you will find good ideas galore. A very good reference book for anyone's bookshelf.

Amazing 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I am a writer. I have written many letters for all sorts of reasons, so I thought, "How could someone write letters for me?" And then I opened the book. It was as if I had written the words on the pages. Amazing, truly amazing. I now have in my library a book that will save me hours in thinking up my own original version, and because letters now require much less time, I will be more likely to the send one that may otherwise have been put off. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Buy Dianna's book. Letters get action far more than phone calls or emails.

Editorial Review:

Write the right letter or email--fast--with this handy reference guide

Since 1997, Dianna Booher’s Great Personal Letters for Busy People has been the go-to reference for anyone who is just too busy to sit down and write. The completely revised edition of this successful book updates all the letters and notes, making them ready to use for any business, personal, or social situation.

Wahhabism: A Critical Essay

Hamid Algar

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Total reviews: 32 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Wahhabism, a peculiar interpretation of Islamic doctrine and practice that first arose in mid-eighteenth century Arabia, is sometimes regarded as simply an extreme or uncompromising form of Sunni Islam. This is incorrect, for at the very outset the movement was stigmatized as aberrant by the leading Sunni scholars of the day, because it rejected many of the traditional beliefs and practices of Sunni Islam and declared permissible warfare against all Muslims that disputed Wahhabi teachings. Nor can Wahhabism be regarded as a movement of “purification” or “renewal,” as the source of the genuinely revivalist movements that were underway at the time. Not until Saudi oil money was placed at the disposal of its propagandists did Wahhabism find an echo outside the Arabian Peninsula.

The author discusses the rise of Wahhabism at the hands of Muhammad b. ‘Abd al-Wahhab, a native of Najd in the eastern part of the Arabian peninsula, the doctrines he elaborated to serve as the basis of the Wahhabi sect, and the alliance he concluded with the Saudi family, then rulers of the principality of al-Dir’iya. An early result of this union was a creeping conquest of the Arabian Peninsula, misnamed as jihad; it culminated in the sacking of Taif and the occupation of Mecca in 1803. This first Wahhabi occupation was short-lived but Wahhabism triumphed anew with the foundation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1925. Among the extensions of Wahhabism beyond Arabia must be accounted the perverse and brutal regime of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Immigrant Voices: New Lives in America, 1773-1986

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

U.S. immigrants ARE U.S. history 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Through primary source material from each American immigrant, Dublin presents a book that spans the American immigration experience from Revolutionary America to 1986. From a motley crew of different American immigrants, we see the drama and lives of different peoples who come to America to become Americans. We hear the voices of John Harrower, an indentured servant in Revolutionary America; the Seyyfardts, who migrate to 1850s Michigan; Rosa Cassettari, an early 20th century Italian immigrant who wants to go back home; and the Nguyens, Vietnamese War refugees granted a safe haven to live in America. These different stories all show us what type of people come to America, the reason why they come, and the reasons why they leave their original countries. It also gives insight into the reader's own personal identity, and what it means to be American. Dublin's book also presents the underlying, similar characteristics of all immigrants to America. Highly recommended.

A good place to start 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

If you're trying to find great individual stories of immigrants to America from many parts of the world and at many points in American history, this is a good place to start. A number of the stories are excerpts from longer amazing autobiographies of people like Rosa Cassetari (Italian, late 19th century) and Ernesto Galarza (Mexican, early 1900s). If you're trying to round up some of the best, this book will help you do it. Check out the table of contents. Nutty to Meet You! Dr. Peanut Book #1Take Me With You When You Go

Turkish Embasy Letters

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Academic, but a good view of British Orientalist literature 4 out of 5 stars.
4 of 10 people found this review helpful.

I read this novel for a class in British Orientalist literature. It's a series of letters written by a woman who travels to the East. Read it in conjunction with _Arabian Nights_, _Vathek_, _Rasselas_, and some other Orientalist tales, and you can get some interesting insights in eighteenth century England and the exotic/erotic elements of the East.

Editorial Review:

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was described by a contemporary as "one of the most extraordinary shining characters in the world." Her letters, collected here, tell of her travels through Europe to Turkey in 1716, where her husband had been appointed Ambassador. Her liveliness makes them delightfully readable, and her singular intelligence provides us with insights that were exceptional for their time. Her ability to study another culture according to its own values, and to see herself through the eyes of others, makes Lady Mary one of the most fascinating and accomplished of early travel writers.

Kerouac: Selected Letters: Volume 2: 1957-1969

Jack Kerouac

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

Kerouac - Selected Letters Review 4 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Good book. I knew that Jack had his problems later in his life but this book really shows that he got off track in the late 50's rather than the 60's. This book reads real fast in that you can't put it down. It reveals the relationships that Jack had with the other Beat Poets among other people. I recommend this book to all interested in Kerouac and the Beat Generation.

Editorial Review:

The first volume of Jack Kerouac's selected letters, published in 1995, was hailed as an important and revealing addition to Kerouac scholarship. This second and final volume of letters, written between 1957, the year On the Road was published, to one day before his death in 1969 at age forty-seven, tell Kerouac's life story through his candid correspondence with friends, confidants, and editors--among them Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Philip Whalen, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Joyce Johnson, and Malcolm Cowley. Documenting his continuing development as a writer, his travels, love affairs, and complicated family life, the letters also reveal Kerouac's amazing courage in the face of criticism and his never--ending quest to be the best writer possible.

Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters 1957-1969 offers unparalleled insight into the life and mind of this giant of the American literary landscape.

Kerouac: Selected Letters: Volume 1 1940-1956

Jack Kerouac

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

An essential read to understanding the genesis of his work. 4 out of 5 stars.
20 of 22 people found this review helpful.

Much has been made about Kerouac's philosophy of spontaneous prose. The immediacy of it's impact. It's flawed honesty. The sheer weight of his all-too-real emotion as it flowed out of him and stained the page. Like Van Gogh, Kerouac was an artist who did not concern himself with "sentimental melancholy" but looked to express the true sorrow and joy of his life in his works. These letters are a vital piece of the Kerouac puzzle, fore they show us the genesis of the man's method and style. From his early emulation of novelist Thomas Wolfe, through his meeting of first Allan Ginsburg, who was really more of an intellectual influence than a literary one, and subequently, William Burroughs, and Neal Cassady. It was Cassady's influence that was paramount to Kerouac's creation of his style, and in his letters to Neal, we are shown first hand how Jack sought to withold nothing, to seek out the details of living. These letters are startling in their honesty and emotion. They reveal a man who sought not only a vision of and for himself, but for the rest of us living, dead, and unborn. Maybe he was uncomfortable in his own skin, maybe he couldn't cut the apron strings that bound and stunted him emotionally to his mother, but these letters prove the essentialness of the artist in this world. Those souls like Kerouac who sought to express the unknown, that the reasons for why we all go on living in this world where "all life is suffering," outweigh the reasons why we should just give up and not live at all. Jack may have suffered too much, smoked too much, and drank himself to an early, lonesome grave, but he left behind works of beauty and sadness that changed the landscape of modern literature, whose directionless direction sought the innocent, lost heart in many of us. Like Jack said, one must "live, travel, adventure, bless and don't be sorry."

Editorial Review:

The life and craft of Jack Kerouac are traced through some of his most personal and mesmerizing letters. Written between 1940, when he was a freshman in college, and 1956, immediately before his leap into celebrity with the publication of On the Road, these letters offer valuable insights into Kerouac's family life, friendships with Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs, and others.

Behind the Lines: Powerful and Revealing American and Foreign War Letters--and One Man's Search to Find Them

Andrew Carroll

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Bringing the Atrocities of War Home 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 9 people found this review helpful.

BEHIND THE LINES is a powerful collection of fragments of thoughts that were initiated over the past two hundred plus years of war scars. Andrew Carroll continues his commitment to bring the reality of war to the forefront of our attention and I know no better manner for anti-war statements than the words found in this illuminating and horrifying book.

Carroll approaches war as a panacea - an evil that has been with us around the globe for centuries and just continues unabated. Many poets and writers are struggling to make the public cognizant of the horrors of war, but Carroll scans American involvement in wars from the Revolutionary War to the present and in doing so he demonstrates the madness that we must learn to stop.

Letters, documents, memos, soldiers' notes as well as civilians' responses fill these pages, some eloquent, some simply pitiful, and some stoic as well as some encouraging. The messages are not skewed in a way that makes Carroll seem like he is ranting. Rather he lets the words of the living and the dead speak truths far larger than fiction.

This is a beautifully conceived volume that for the sake of the survival of civilization belongs on the reading desks of everyone. Tough reading, this, but enormously informative and important. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, August 05

Editorial Review:

Andrew Carroll spent three years traveling throughout the United States and around the world to seek out the most powerful and unforgettable letters ever written during American wars.

Behind the Lines is the result of that extraordinary trip and represents the first book of its kind: a dramatic, intimate, and revealing look at warfare as seen through the personal correspondence of US and foreign troops and civilians who have experienced major conflicts firsthand. From handwritten missives penned during the American Revolution to e-mails from Afghanistan and Iraq, Behind the Lines captures the full spectrum of emotions -- exhilaration, fear, devotion, despair, courage, heartache, patriotism, rage, and even humor -- expressed in times of war.

Letters of a Nation

Andrew Carroll

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Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Letters reveal the true character of a person. 5 out of 5 stars.
13 of 13 people found this review helpful.

This book is a must read for anyone interested in the inner qualities of our nation's most well-known and respected figures and the lesser-known, who were the people who shaped our country. From the early settlers and our founding fathers to people of the present, this book offers a touching and rewarding look into the lives of people during war, hardships, family life, and many other aspects of life. Letter writing truly reveals the inner part of ourselves. A wonderful book!

Editorial Review:

Letters of a Nation is a unique and timeless collection of extraordinary letters spanning more than 350 years of American history, from the arrival of the Pilgrims to the present day. Many of the more than 200 letters are published here for the first time, and the correspondents are the celebrated and obscure, the powerful and powerless, including presidents, slaves, soldiers, prisoners, explorers, writers, revolutionaries, Native Americans, artists, religious and civil rights leaders, and people from all walks of life. From the serious (Harry Truman defending his use of the atomic bomb) to the surreal (Elvis Presley to Richard Nixon on fighting drugs in America), this collection of letters covers the full spectrum of human emotion, illuminates the American experience, and celebrates the simple yet lasting art of letter writing.

Lord Chesterfield's Letters (Oxford World's Classics)

Lord Chesterfield

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Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Stark truth, from Lord Chesterfield's point of view 5 out of 5 stars.
28 of 28 people found this review helpful.

"All you learn, and all you can read, will be of little use, if you don't think and reason upon it yourself". This is merely one of the advices Lord Chesterfield gave to his natural son, Philip, in the many letters he wrote to him from 1737 onwards, and that this book compiles.

Chesterfield was an important stateman, who wrote these letters only for the eyes of his son, not for the general public, so he did express in stark terms what he truly thought about many controversial themes. It is, in my opinion, very interesting to read what he considered to be general truths, and to get to know his conception of life, society and politics. Whether you agree or not with his opinions, you cannot remain indifferent to this controversial book.

Lord Chesterfield places great value on appearances. He tells Philip that "If your air and address are vulgar, awkward, and gauche, you may be esteemed indeed, if you have great intrinsic merit; but you will never please; and without pleasing you will rise but heavily". The author is, evidently, a cynic who doesn't believe that the world can be improved. He points out that "The world is taken by the outside of things, and we must take the world as it is". Chesterfields profession is fairly evident at all times, for example when he advises his son "...to be upon your own guard, and yet, by a seeming natural openness, to put people off theirs".

"Lord Chesterfield's Letters" has been considered a noteworthy classic by many, but it has also been strongly criticized. For example, Samuel Johnson said that it taught "the morals of a whore and the manners of a dancing-master". I really don't agree with Johnson: I happen to like this book, and a lot. It is not only very easy to read, but also informative. The reader feels as if he were talking with an old but very experienced person, who played an active part in an enormous number of significant events, and who wants to transmit his knowledge not only on diplomatic affairs, but also about life and education. He often displays great insight, for example when he says that "You must look into people, as well as at them. Almost all people are born with all the passions, to a certain degree; but almost every man has a prevailing one, to which the others are subordinate".

All in all, I strongly recommend this book. It includes a high number of subjects, and I think you are highly likely to find it very appealing. If more is needed to convince you, I'll just leave you with one of the phrases written by the author, and I'll let its excellence to speak for itself: "Mind, not only what people say, but how they say it; and, if you have any sagacity, you may discover more truth by your eyes than by your ears. People can say what they will, but they cannot look just as they will; and their looks frequently discover, what their words are calculated to conceal". What else can I say?... Enjoy this book!.

Belen Alcat

Editorial Review:

Not originally intended for publication, the celebrated and controversial correspondences between Lord Chesterfield and his son Philip, dating from 1737, were praised in their day as a complete manual of education, and despised by Samuel Johnson for teaching "the morals of a whore and the manners of a dancing-master." Reflecting the political craft of a leading statesman and the urbane wit of a man who associated with Pope, Addison, and Swift, Lord Chesterfield's Letters reveal the author's political cynicism, his views on good breeding, and instruction to his son in etiquette and the worldly arts. The only annotated selection of this breadth available in paperback, these entertaining letters illuminate the fascinating aspects of eighteenth-century life and manners.

For the Love of Letters: A 21st-Century Guide to the Art of Letter Writing

Samara O'shea

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Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Have you ever wanted to write a thank-you note and suffered writer's block? Considered penning a passionate letter to your beloved, but had no idea where to begin? Needed to send a sympathy message, but couldn't find the right words? Fear not. Professional letter writer Samara O'Shea is here to spark your creativity and answer all your letter-writing questions in this charming guide.

For the Love of Letters is an anecdotal primer on letter writing, with tips on how to write all types of notes: love letters, break-up letters, apology letters, thank-you letters, erotic letters (oh yes!), and more. It's filled with moving, funny, and embarrassing stories about letters Samara has written and received, including an apology from a guy who addressed her by the wrong name, a good-riddance e-mail to a capricious boyfriend, and multiple apology letters after getting fired from an internship at O: The Oprah Magazine. With a fresh, contemporary approach, Samara weighs in on appropriate methods for every situation—for example, when to handwrite, type, or e-mail (yes, e-mail) your letter. There is also a fascinating collection of engaging personal letters written by historical and literary icons such as Marie Antoinette, Beethoven, Edgar Allan Poe, Susan B. Anthony, and Emily Post.

For the Love of Letters will show anyone who has ever shuddered at the idea of sitting down and putting pen to paper—or fingertips to keyboard—how to craft persuasive, interesting, and memorable letters.