The Plaza, First and Always: 75th Anniversary

Book Description

In the beginning, it was a hog farm. A cow pasture. A trash dump and it was located so far south -- 50 city blocks -- that downtown Kansas City merchants would not deliver goods to the area. In the mind's eye of young real-estate visionary Jesse Clyde Nichols, this eyesore sprawl was perfect for his master plan for a grand Country Club district.

Book Description

The more familiar elements of Warhol's oeuvre touch on subjects ranging from religion to women's shoes, from celebrity to death, and so here, finally, are sex and bodily fluids. Gathered together are a group of works that include Warhol's rarely exhibited erotic male nude drawings from the 1950s, the Torso and Sex Part paintings and drawings (1977-82), and the conceptual alchemy of the abstract Oxidation and Piss paintings series (1978).

Andy Warhol/ piss and sex paintings and drawings

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Andy Warhol/ piss and sex paintings and drawings

Manufacturer: Art Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000GRO7VU

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Andy Warhol/ piss and sex paintings and drawings

Manufacturer: Art Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000GRO7WY

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The living aura: Radiation field photography and the Kirlian effect
Kendall L Johnson
Manufacturer: Hawthorn Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

General | Photography | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0801543126

Customer Reviews:

enjoy.......2007-09-21

(first off, excuse tha way i write, i write how i speak, [young reader]) :) ok, well..i really enjoy mary b's work, and this novel is addicting, because there's drama, and we all know that er'body enjoys readin bout somebody else's drama. :) i mean, it has like a "soap opera" feel almost, a black soap!! just cuz ur taken back n forth thru tha book. but, i would reccomend this novel to anyone who wants to read it, cuz theres a chic in this book thas CRAZY and this guy's mother is nuts too!! so, i say read it, with tha rest of tha line. (this one is tha last episode of this story line)

Crazy Ashlee.......2007-09-16

This was a good book, I will not spoiled it for anyone, but I have to say Ashlee and Darius is something else. Fancy need to get herself a better man and leave Darius alone. Ashlee need to be locked away in a crazy house.

gale's review.......2007-08-04

THIS WAS AS GOOD AS I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE,AND CAN NOT WAIT UNTIL BOOK SEVEN COMES OUT,DARIUS WILL HOPEFULLY GROW UP AN START TO BE THE MAN THAT HIS MOTHER TRIED TO RAISE.FANCY I HOPE SHE GETS THE HELP THAT SHE NEEDS TO BECOME A GOOD WIFE AND MOTHER.

LOVE HER BOOKS.......2007-06-27

THIS BOOK IS OFF THE HOOK LOVE HER BOOKS I HAVE READ ALL HER BOOKS KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK

A Must Read.......2007-04-16

This book was off da hook. I couldn't put it down. It leaves you wondering what will happen next...

Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch (Stories to Go!)

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Mr. Hatch
The Best Author
Heartwarming!
Best Valentine Story Ever
Great story for children of ALL ages

Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch (Stories to Go!)
Eileen Spinelli
Manufacturer: Aladdin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 1416912355

Book Description

Mr. Hatch leads a lonely life until one Valentine's Day when the postman delivers a huge, heart-shaped box of candy with a card reading "Somebody loves you." Knowing he has a secret admirer gives Mr. Hatch a bright new perspective on life -- until it turns out there's been a terrible mistake. But Mr. Hatch's new friends rally to show him that a lot of somebodies love Mr. Hatch.

Customer Reviews:

Mr. Hatch.......2007-03-09

The book is wonderful. I used it in a classroom lesson about Valentine's Day. It has a lot of good lessons on feelings and emotions too.

The Best Author.......2007-01-18

All 4 of my grandchildren, especially the 4 yr olds, loved the story and illustrations kept their attention. Eileen is the best author for children, she really relates to what they appreciate.

Heartwarming!.......2006-10-25

This beautiful book is perfect for young and old! Although not religious it would be a great asset to any church library for Sunday school or even adult collections. I fell in love with this book!

Best Valentine Story Ever.......2006-02-22

This book has such a wonderful message. Everytime I read it to my first graders I cry. It is what love is supposed to be about! Thank you Eileen Spinelli for this fantastic story.

Great story for children of ALL ages.......2005-02-15

I am 41 years old & just heard this story Sunday in church. I have told everyone I know about it & will never forget it.

Everyone has the potential to love & be loved.

Don't You Want Somebody to Love: Reflections on the San Francisco Sound

Average customer rating:

A rambling account that could have been better
Great personal account of 1960's San Francisco scene
Always read the stuff by the experts who really were there!

Don't You Want Somebody to Love: Reflections on the San Francisco Sound
Slick
Manufacturer: SLG Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0943389089

Customer Reviews:

A rambling account that could have been better.......2000-12-04

My brother-in-law kindly loaned me his copy of this book. I was looking forward to reading about the genesis of the San Francisco music scene from a real insider's perspective. In it we learn that Darby Slick authored the first of the "hippie hits", Somebody to Love, and was in the vanguard of the embryonic San Francisco psychedelic music scene. We get to meet Bill Graham, Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, Jerry Garcia, and others while they were still nobodies just trying to follow their dreams. Unfortunately, the book needs massive editing to make it more than a rambling collection of anecdotes that often follow one another without segue. The author's priceless stories are often less than coherent, and it seems that he rarely finishes a thought before jumping to another in a stream of consciousness style. What we do come away with, though, is a tantalizing picture of some of the key players and events that somehow managed - without a plan - to push American culture from straight to hip (at least for a while!). I'm sure that nostalgia freaks will forgive the typographical errors and loose copy editing, but we all would have appreciated a sharper focus.

Great personal account of 1960's San Francisco scene.......2000-01-08

Darby Slick, guitarist for the Great Society and brother-in-law of Grace Slick, has written an autobiographical account of the rise of the San Francisco Sound. Don't You Want Somebody to Love is a distinctly personal perspective on those times -- part self-deprecating, part self-aggrandizing, it's a priceless account, written in an authentic voice by an actual participant.

Much of the text concerns Darby's views on the development of the 1960's scene in San Francisco, and on the rise of the counter-culture in the USA in general, about which he often provides thoughtful commentary. There's also plenty of stuff on the music of the Great Society -- how they rehearsed, how and when songs were written, and who played what, on which song.

There's also a great Stanley Mouse cover, a bunch of reproductions of Great Society concert posters, and a decent, if somewhat random, selection of black and white photographs.

Always read the stuff by the experts who really were there!.......1999-04-20

What a great afternoon-and the book "Do You Want Somebody to Love;" the Reflections of the San Francisco Sound-this is what you have to read-to really put yourself into the picture. Both author Darby Slick; & artist, Stanley Mouse... "MADE" the scene here in the City. You'd see a poster by Mouse, (or compatriot) on a ubiquitous telephone pole-and stand there staring, trying your darndest to decipher the message. If you had gone in the early days to one of the shows around town-you probably would have bumped into "THE GREAT SOCIETY" which figured very prominently in our rounds. We just got left class on an afternoon like today-and were being driven by a buddy who just got a gig chauffering-in the Mecerdes, over to Darby's new place in ForestHills, they had just got back from India, the place was clean & airy. Splendid in its decor; a Tiger-Skin Rug hung on the plaster wall, there were Persian Carpets on Hardwood Floors and light colored Silk Curtains everywhere. And this was a nice place to set up the new studio with a magnificent looking Sound-System, the fancy Control Panel took up about half the room. It was a nice visit-with the local emerging music!

SomeBody to Love : A Guide to Loving the Body You Have

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Writing is baring one's soul and this book helps you to:

SomeBody to Love : A Guide to Loving the Body You Have
Leslea Newman
Manufacturer: Third Side Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Beauty & Fashion | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

Eating Disorders | Mental Health | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books

philosophy hope in a jar daily moisturizer

ASIN: 1879427036

Customer Reviews:

Writing is baring one's soul and this book helps you to:.......1998-10-06

give you the groundwork to use a pen instead of a fork, to rebuild your esteem, but also see how you came to the point where you are! I am in the process of doing the exercise, where i form two characters one fat, one thin. Fun exercises that give you a new twist on perceiving your view of food and your body

Average customer rating:

Entertaining story with same old ending.
B*A*M
Hooray for Love
An example of what life should be like 'When Somebody Love's You Back'
Buy This Now!!! - With Urgency!

When Somebody Loves You Back
Patriece
Manufacturer: Pressin On Publicatons
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0977809609

Book Description

Nikki, had no idea that accepting an invitation would impact her life so thoroughly. Dinner and a movie thrust her into womanhood. There was no time for immaturity and nostalgia. She had to grow up, get it together and keep it together. She knew about abandonment from her mother. She knew about strength and coldness from her grandmother. She learned that love is best when somebody loves you back.

Customer Reviews:

Entertaining story with same old ending........2007-05-26

Characters were entertaining. But the main character, Nikki, could have used more depth. I feel like I've read this book many times before. Same old story about a young woman who makes all the wrong choices about a man, only to have her knight in shining armor come along and rescue her and her children. Whatever happened to a sista pulling herself up?

B*A*M.......2006-08-11

I read this book in one day. I could not believe how lifelike these characters were. Patriece, you are definitely a talented woman and I appreciated this book. I understood Nikki's struggles. I felt Big Mamma's love. I've known a mother-in-law like Colleen. And I've prayed for some of Phil and Black's qualities in my own relationship. Thank you for this experience and I do know how it feels When Somebody Loves You Back.

Hooray for Love.......2006-06-13

Here's a story about human nature with lessons to be learned by both men and women. Nikki has human flaws that, I guess, many women possess because it seems she can't distinguish being alone from being lonely. But it's a good read and if you like happy endings with character resolution (cosmic closure), you're sure to love this book. It's a feel-good kinda thang.

An example of what life should be like 'When Somebody Love's You Back'.......2006-04-28

I absolutely loved this book!! It wasn't hard for me to imagine the characters. I felt as though I lived through "Nikki" and like her children I felt the struggles she continued to go through. I'm soo happy she has finally learned what it feel's like 'When Somebody Love's You Back'.

Buy This Now!!! - With Urgency! .......2006-04-22

Once you pick it up, you can't put it down, if you have ever been in a relationship with or without reciprecaton you need this book! It's like looking in a mirror; you're bound to see yourself or someone you know.

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Somebody Loves You
Lucile Johnson
Manufacturer: Covenant Communications Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 1577346580

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Change Your World, Michael W. Smith

Manufacturer: Word Music / Davis Brothers Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 3010239491

Product Description

Songs: 1)Color Blind 2)Cross of Gold 3)Friends 4)Give it Away 5)I Wanna Tell the World 6)I Will Be Here For You 7)Love One Another 8)Out of This World 9)Picture Perfect 10)Somebody Love Me 11)Somewhere Somehow

If You Love Somebody Who Smokes: Confessions of a Nicotine Addict

Average customer rating:

Most entertaining book on addictions I've ever read!

If You Love Somebody Who Smokes: Confessions of a Nicotine Addict
Cynthia Morgan
Manufacturer: City Miner Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Psychology & Counseling | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0933944144

Customer Reviews:

Most entertaining book on addictions I've ever read!.......1999-08-16

Cynthia Morgan enlightens the reader on so many interesting facts about the history of tobacco, she uses excerpts from Christopher Columbus' diary, a quote from Ben Johnson who speaks for his friend Shakespeare (and may be the closest we have ever gotten to how Shakespeare thought about anything), and there is even a bet waged between Sir Walter Raleigh and his queen, Elizabeth. A warm hearted, funny, funny book. I loved the section on the history of advertising cigarettes, but what I liked best was that she took us on the adventure of her own quitting process by making it a story. Has she written any other books? She should write a novel!

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SOMEBODY LOVES YOU
HELEN STEINER RICE
Manufacturer: HUTCHINSON
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000S59S64

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Somebody Loves You
Helen Steiner-Rice
Manufacturer: Frederick Muller Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 0091746744

Book Description

The author of A Rumor of War recounts his harrowing tales of life as a foreign correspondent. (SEE QUOTE.)

Customer Reviews:

Another solid book from Mr. Caputo. RECOMMENDED.......2007-04-17

I'm going to post the Publisher Comments and also the Kirkus Reviews here because it will better tell you what this book is about and because there are no other reviews and I'm a lousy reviewer. I've read A Rumor of War (loved), Horn of Africa (loved), Delcorso's Gallery (didn't care for), The Voyage (Loved), Acts of Faith (loved) and of course Means of Escape (Loved)
Mr. Caputo's been through some mighty harrowing experiences in his life as a war correspondent and soldier. I love his writing and his views.

Publisher Comments:
Philip Caputo has been a witness to the most important struggles of our time, from the hot green hell of Vietnam to the dusty mountains of Afghanistan and the bloodstained streets of Beirut. In Means of Eascape, Caputo intersperses imaginative retellings of events he witnessed with true accounts of how he became a writer, and what happened when he was sent to some of the most dangerous places in the world. He begins with his childhood and budding career in Chicago. Soon after, he was deep in the Sinai Peninsula searching for the last authentic Bedouin, and reporting from the front lines of the Yom Kippur War. In an eerie parallel to journalist Daniel Pearl's tragic murder, Caputo was held hostage for a week by Islamic extremists while reporting in Beirut. Caputo's palpable descriptions of the captors and fellow cellmates in this razor-thin existence are as compelling as any escape stroy before or since. As he emerged from captivity, Peter Jennings congratulated him on his eventual escape, and on the Pulizer Prize he'd won while imprisoned. While continuing his work as a reporter in Beirut, he was singled out by a sniper, and received a bullet in his ankle and a chunk of wall in his head. In Afghanistan in the 1980s, he joined the Mujahideen for a clandestine mission and was nearly captured by Soviet forces. Few authors have put themselves so squarely in the center of the 20th century's great conflicts, and even fewer can describe what they saw as well as Philip Caputo does in this important memoir. (6 x 9, 416 pages)Philip Caputo is the author of the New York Times best-seller A Rumor of War and three novels: Indian Country, DelCorso's Gallery, and Horn of Africa. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 as part of an investigative team for the Chicago Tribune, and his coverage of his experience as a captive of Palestinian guerrillas won him the Overseas Press Club's George Polk Citation.

Kirkus Reviews
An intensely personal, albeit consistently affecting and frequently riveting memoir of years of living dangerously. Caputo (A Rumor of War, Indian Country, etc.) has witnessed much of the worst violence that marked the latter half of the 20th century. A combat veteran of Vietnam, he went on to cover trouble spots throughout the Third World as a roving correspondent for The Chicago Tribune. Describing himself as drawn to history (if not to the sound of the guns), the globe-trotting author has reported on insurgency in Eritrea, civil strife in Lebanon, Israel's October War, the fall of Saigon, and a host of lesser belligerencies. Looking for a "good war" several years after having quit the journalism trade, Caputo accepted an assignment from Esquire that took him deep behind Soviet lines in Afghanistan. Venturesome to the point of rashness, he has paid the price of boldness on many occasions. Though he made it through Vietnam without a physical scratch, for example, the author was imprisoned by Palestinian guerrillas in Beirut and later sustained severe wounds (at the hands of Christian militia) in the same city, leaving him with a still-painful limp. Peacefully settled in one place now, he's content to let a workroom window overlooking a salt marsh on the Long Island Sound serve as his new means of escape. Caputo nonetheless looks back on his days as a rolling stone with some relish and few apparent regrets. Indeed, he retains a rueful sense of barracks humor neatly summarized in an ultrarude anecdote whose moral is: "the final indignity is that there is no final indignity." An episodic, impressionistic, and dead-honest narrative that affords memorable as well as consequentialinsights into a chaotic era's noteworthy conflicts.

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A satisfying read
Dream Shepherdess
Not What Traditional Admirers May Expect
very off beat and odd
Elegant, odd, short stories about odd, intriguing, people

The Means of Escape
Penelope Fitzgerald
Manufacturer: Mariner Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0618154507

Amazon.com

In her final book of fiction--published, alas, posthumously--Penelope Fitzgerald allows us a present of several very strange pasts, her narratives ranging from the 17th century to the late 20th. The title tale, set in New Zealand in 1852, seems to resemble a cautionary fable about a spinster and an escaped con. But in Fitzgerald's hands, it is infinitely more. When the prisoner ambushes the rector's daughter, disputation and attraction soon surmount fear, and yet with each bit of information he reveals, Alice Godley is on shakier ground. "I'm not innocent," he asserts, "but I was wrongly incriminated." He admits that he had meant to frighten her, "but that is no longer my aim at the moment." And, as a gesture of good faith, "He told her that the name he went by, which was not his given name, was Savage." Over the course of just 18 pages (which make it the longest in the book), Fitzgerald plucks comedy from terror, sadness from hilarity, and the surreal from the seemingly concrete. Here, as elsewhere, she gently but decisively upends her characters, and readers. And Savage is only the first of many uninvited or inopportune guests in The Means of Escape.

None of the eight stories collected here leads to a decisive or luminous moment. In fact, resolution is not the object of these slant, rule-breaking pieces. Fitzgerald wrote "The Axe," her first published work of fiction, for a ghost-story contest (judged by the unlikely trio of Kingsley Amis, Patricia Highsmith, and horror actor Christopher Lee), and it was printed in the London Times and then in The Times Book of Ghost Stories (1977). Taking the form of a letter from someone charged with a recent round of dismissals, "The Axe" concerns the layoffs' effects on one ancient clerk:

The actual notification to the redundant staff passed off rather better, in a way, than I had anticipated. By that time everyone in the office seemed inexplicably conversant with the details, and several of them in fact had gone far beyond their terms of reference--young Patel, for instance, who openly admits that he will be leaving us as soon as he can get a better job, taking me aside and telling me that to such a man as Singlebury dismissal would be like death. Dismissal is not the right world, I said. But death is, Patel replied.

In "Beehernz," the title character is still alive, though even fans of his conducting may have assumed otherwise, owing to his disappearance from the English musical scene long ago. Fitzgerald composed this lighter but no less twisting 1997 comedy of aspirations at the invitation of the BBC, for a series of stories on musical themes, and read it aloud on Radio 3 that year. In her nocturne, a deputy musical director decides to coax the reclusive Beehernz out of Scottish isolation by giving him the chance to conduct Mahler once more, despite the fact that he had fled London some 40 years earlier after hearing that he was to conduct Mahler's Eighth. His objection? "It is too noisy." (The author previously had her comedic way with the BBC in Human Voices, and here, too, she seems to be tweaking it over the mammoth 1959 staging of Mahler's "Symphony of a Thousand," which it mounted to wipe out an unwanted budget surplus.)

"The Red-Haired Girl" (published in the Times Literary Supplement for September 11, 1998) also explores what happens to the uninvited, as five British landscape students make a pilgrimage to Brittany. But Palourde (lacking as it does good food, good weather, and any notion of the picturesque) is not a painter's Platonic ideal, as its inhabitants well know. Only one artiste, Hackett, even manages to find a model, and she confounds him utterly before she disappears. The multilayered closing piece, "At Hiruharama," matches this story and "The Means of Escape" in violent economy and depth and contains yet another person who appears out of the narrative blue. First published in 1992, this roundabout New Zealand family history offers ever more proof of Fitzgerald's late, great flowering. --Kerry Fried

Book Description

The last book and only collection of short stories by Penelope Fitzgerald fittingly showcases her at her wisest, her funniest, her best. Like her novels, these stories are "mordantly funny, morally astute . . . [as] they plumb the endless absurdities of the human heart" (Washington Post Book World). Roaming the globe and the ages, the stories travel from England to France to New Zealand and from today to the seventeenth century and back again. Now featuring an introductory essay by A. S. Byatt and two newly published stories, this Mariner edition of THE MEANS OF ESCAPE "serves as an elegiac gift to dedicated fans of her award-winning novels and a tantalizing introduction for new readers" (Entertainment Weekly). It memorializes a writer guided by a generous but unwavering moral gaze and proves once more "why [Fitzgerald] will endure" (Los Angeles Times Book Review).

Customer Reviews:

A satisfying read.......2001-06-20

I first encountered Penelope Fitzgerald when her novel, The Blue Flower, was introduced to my daughter's book club. That book did not set well with me. I found it to be dull and flat. What a nice surprise to find her collection of short stories in The Means of Escape brilliant and contoured. Ms. Fitzgerald's stories held my attention from beginning to end although I think The Means of Escape and At Hiruharama are the best of the lot. Ms. Fitzgerald has a keen eye for detail, weaving those details into the quirky, yet rich texture of her "story stuff." As a result, she's able to elicit a wide range of human emotions (happiness, sadness, joy, disdain, pity) from her readers. This slim volume is a satisfying read. Don't miss it.

Dream Shepherdess.......2001-04-10

These short stories are handsome. Handsome as in seeing an old woman who still has a certain spark. But they are wily handsome old stories, tricky, like dreams you wake up from before they're over (or maybe they really are over). That's the point, it's hard to tell if the stories are neatly over and a useless exercise to try. And things are not as they may seem. It's much like thinking, as you're falling asleep, counting sheep, wow, these fluffy little sheep jumping gracefully over me really are matted and full of odd little particles.

Not What Traditional Admirers May Expect.......2001-03-16

Ms. Penelope Fitzgerald was one of the greatest new Authors that became known to me over the last year. While I have read all of her novels, I have read only one of her three non-fiction works. I have commented on all, and with one exception I wish she had started writing about 4 decades sooner than she did.

Her novels all had several common denominators, their quality, the scope contained in the length she used, and their length, or more accurately their lack of length. So when I encountered this book that offered 8 stories over a diminutive 117 pages, even as great an admirer as I was incredulous.

The 8 stories are not equal, some are extremely clever, and one or two seemed more like thoughts that were abruptly cut off. Some of her novels ended with the finality of a guillotine blade crashing down, however this was after a good bit of reading had been done. When the stories average out at 14 small pages each, the word abrupt is too tame. Two stories in particular stood out, "Desderatus" and "The Axe". Of these two one showed a side of this woman's writing I never expected. Stephen King easily could have placed "The Axe", in a collection of his short stories, and it would have fit beautifully. Had this woman made the decision she may have been a writer that brought us classics in the Genre of "Frankenstein" and "Dracula". Lights definitely go on and stay for, "The Axe".

This is not a five star work by this wonderful Author. However I rate it as such for all the great writing she shared in her all too brief career. Taken as a whole this is probably a 3.5 to 4 star work. I miss the lady's exercising of her craft too much not to give the work 5 stars. Think of it as a thank you for all she gave readers.

very off beat and odd.......2001-01-30

I'm sure most people will come to Fitzgerald through her novels, so I have to excuse myself as a first time reader who just happened to pick up these short stories. I still haven't decided if I enjoyed the collection, but they are unique. I thought the first story was by far the best, but after that, the quality varied widely. Unlike a classic short story writer (someone like Guy de Mauppassant), these stories have NO resolution for the most part. In fact, they leave you with that feeling of listening to music and waiting to shift back into the major key. Discordant is the word I'm looking for. The settings take the reader all over the globe and across three different centuries. I suspect most would enjoy her novels more (I am certainly heading in that direction to read them next), but I can't say since I haven't read them myself. Overall, I found this collection a bit unsettling, but still well written. I'm sure her fans will enjoy them more than I did on this first encounter.

Elegant, odd, short stories about odd, intriguing, people.......2000-10-10

Penelope Fitzgerald died earlier in 2000. She was one of my very favorite authors. Starting in 1979, she wrote a series of short, funny, often bittersweet, novels about odd, intriguing, people in odd, intriguing, places. The most famous was her last, _The Blue Flower_, about the German Romantic poet Novalis and his love affair with a very young girl.

This posthumous book is her only collection of stories. They are like her novels in being about odd and intriguing people in odd and intriguing places. The writing is as ever with Fitzgerald elegant and clear and beautiful. The focus is just slightly off-center. The stories are very short, and I miss the space she had even in her rather short novels for looking at her characters from all sides. But these stories are still rewarding and worth reading.

The title story is about a young woman in mid-19th Century Tasmania, the organist at her church, who encounters an escaped prisoner. The resolution is quite unexpected, and wholly true. "Beehernz" tells of an eccentric old conductor living in near squalor on an isolated Scottish island, and an attempt to lure him back for one more performance. Again, the view is off-center, intriguingly so. "At Hiruhamara" is set in 18th Century New Zealand, as two young people sent out from England start to make a place for themselves. The story is neatly told from the point of view of a descendant of the two, and as such a theme about pioneers comes through.

The other stories are similarly neat. Recommended.

Average customer rating:
Code of practice: Means of escape in case of fire : houses in multiple occupation : section 16 of the Housing Act 1961
Greater London Council
Manufacturer: Greater London Council
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Building Construction | Construction | Civil | Engineering | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0716809699

Average customer rating:
GET IN THE WHEELBARROW! CAUTION: DON'T GET OUT!: OUR ONLY MEANS OF ESCAPE FROM HOPELESSNESS TO HOLINESS
JACK MARSCH
Manufacturer: AuthorHouse
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
Memoirs | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1418453730

Book Description

There are numerous stories taken from the author's many experiences, and the experiences of others, that are contained in this book. - Some fascinating - Some funny - Some sad - Some romantic - Some adventurous - Some serious-All exhilaratingly interesting ! It includes many messages, which the author hopes will motivate the reader to perform a sincere self-examination. This new insight could lead many to make a liberating and life-changing commitment This book boldly challenges every reader to seriously contemplate, absorb and apply its9 countless truths to their own lives. Furthermore, it contains many extremely meaningful lessons describing the indisputable need for everyone to seek God's divine guidance in their lives to nurture, lead and empower them in their exciting journey through life.

Average customer rating:

MEANS OF ESCAPE

Manufacturer: Harper Collins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000GR9ARQ

Average customer rating:

Means of Escape
Hugh Brody
Manufacturer: Faber and Faber Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Average customer rating:

Means of Escape
Philip Caputo
Manufacturer: HarperCollins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000PRCY02

Average customer rating:

The Means of Escape
Penelope Fitzgerald
Manufacturer: Flamingo
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Average customer rating:

Means of Escape
Spencer Dunmore
Manufacturer: Pan Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000KS2ALY

Average customer rating:

An Imagined Memoir, as if all memoirs aren't imagined
Means of Escape
He tells it like it is
One of the most powerful biographies I have read

Means of Escape
Philip Caputo
Manufacturer: HarperCollins Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Journalists | Professionals & Academics | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0060183128

Customer Reviews:

An Imagined Memoir, as if all memoirs aren't imagined.......2006-07-01

Philip Caputo is probably one of our nation's best writers to emerge from the Viet Nam War, up with Tim O'Brien and James Webb. Caputo's reputation rests on his memoir A Rumor of War, and several novels he's written since, all of which deal with people whose lives are impacted, in some way, by military service. This book is a series of vignettes, a sort of fragmented memoir, of the author's experiences throughout his life. The one area where he doesn't spend much time is Viet Nam, having covered that pretty thoroughly in A Rumor of War.

The author grew up in a working-class suburb of Chicago, the child of Italians who weren't far from the old country (they or their parents had immigrated) and he apparently suffered from a wanderlust for much of his early life. He imagined seeing an individual, a sort of magic character who appeared to him in various disguises (a recruiter for the Marine Corps, a hobo on a passing train, an editor offering him an oversees assignment) but his real name was Oneway Ticket, and old Oneway regularly convinces our hero to hop a plane, bus, train, or other conveyance and go off and see the world. By the time he gets shot in Lebanon (after having already been kidnapped, on a separate occasion) you begin to wonder about the author's sanity. When he follows up the Lebanon fiasco by limping into Afghanistan on a leg still pained from the Lebanese shooting, I was certain he was nuts.

Regardless of his sanity, though, Caputo's strength is that he can write. This book is divided up into a series of these accounts of his adventures in exotic corners of the world, separated by short fictional pieces the author has written, apparently for this book. The result is the author's depiction of war as a complex, random, vicious catastrophe that ought to be avoided at all or most hazards. While he doesn't outright condemn war or the impulses that drive men to it, he does come close, and he is very eloquent in describing the human cost of war. He's also very eloquent generally. From his comparison of the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the Ventura Freeway at rush hour to his description of terrorist interrogation techniques as "Applied Kafka", the author's a wonderful prose stylist, and you wind up enjoying every page, the narrative moving along quickly and the characters standing out, interesting, weird, or bright.

I enjoyed this book a great deal, and would recommend it to anyone interested in modern conflict and journalism. While the book is a bit dated (the forward is dated 1989-90) the subject matter is relevant anyway, and the writing is wonderful.

Means of Escape.......2001-02-16

What a book!! Caputo brings us to the REAL battlefield in flesh and blood. Caputo's narrations are more alive than any live coverage of CNN or BBC. The book offers a great "means of escape" from boring routine in those of us who are living in average industralized societies.

He tells it like it is.......1998-02-03

I picked this book up, after someone suggested it to me. I couldn't put it down. It is a very honest account of what war correspondents went through. Mr Caputo seems to have led a rather interesting life. All I can say is that I am glad I have never been to war, and hopefully never will. It gives an interesting perspective into what human nature can be. I urge you to read this book.

One of the most powerful biographies I have read.......1998-01-06

Mr. Caputo's book is an incredibly moving analysis of the tragedies of war and its devastating effect being forced to live with war can have on the human persona. I applaud Mr Caputo and thank him for sharing his experiences with us in such a moving history.

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