Century 21 Acct. 1st Yr-Dictionary

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Based on the premise that our sense of meaning and fulfilment comes largely from the work we do, this book recognizes the sense of disappointment many people experience in their careers, and looks at what they can do to bring purpose and self-expression into their job. Drawing heavily on stories of real people and offering practical exercises, the book covers topics such as self-expression through work, assessing all our skills, defining essential criteria for meaningful work, creating a work environment in which you can flourish, embracing change, and building a new relationship with money. This book will be welcomed by all those feeling frustrated in their work and wanting help in finding true meaning in what they do each day.

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History forgets the small and powerless. It is to South African historian and journalist Charles Van Onselen's credit that he has remembered one of them in a sprawling biography: an illiterate black South African tenant farmer who lived out his days under apartheid. The existence of Kas Maine (1894-1985) had hitherto been formally acknowledged only in official state records, and then only once, for having been arrested in 1931 for not having a license for his pet dog. From that sketchy base Van Onselen creates a powerful life study of a man who lived as best as he could under the most trying circumstances. But he does much more than that: he reinforces Maine's story with a long and fluent account of South African history in the last century.

Book Description

Winner of the Sunday Times (South Africa) Alan Paton Award for Nonfiction
Winner of the Herskovitz Award from the African Studies Association.

'The seed is mine. The ploughshares are mine. The span of oxen is mine. Everything is mine. Only the land is their's.'--Kas Maine

A bold and innovative social history, The Seed Is Mine concerns the disenfranchised blacks who did so much to shape the destiny of South Africa. After years of interviews with Kas Maine and his neighbors, employers, friends, and family--a rare triumph of collaborative courage and dedication--Charles van Onselen has re-created the entire life of a man who struggled to maintain his family in a world dedicated to enriching whites and impoverishing blacks, while South Africa was tearing them apart.

Customer Reviews:

Learn more from one man's life than from any history book.......1998-09-02

The daily life of Kas Maine over 90 odd years on the high veldt of South Africa says more about the history of that part of the world than all the history books and newspaper articles and military actions that could ever be recounted. I felt as though I myself had lived those same 90 years, breathed the dust, lost my crops, driven my livestock from farm to farm trying to find sharecropping work, put up and taken down my corregated metal shack, been hounded by bureaucrats, maintained my dignity and kept my family together against incredible odds. Although the place names and indigenous family names were difficult and their abundance presumed some familiarity with South Africa, I learned to visualize rather than pronounce them, and they became like one of Kas's stony fields in the story and I liked the "rough footing." A unique experience in book form.

A gripping look at an ordinary man........1997-11-07

I have been taking my time with this book, savouring it while I can. The rhythms of the prose and the world it describes are so seductive, that I have often found myself reading "just a few more pages" at 3AM despite having to get up for work the next day. If you wish to have a sense of what life in rural South Africa was like over the past century, I can't think of a better book (or any other book for that matter). Kas was an exceptionally gifted farmer, a traditional herbalist and healer, and a patriarch who struggled against the almost impossible odds of being a black man in South Africa. As the insanity of apartheid took hold, he and his family were forced to move from place to place, his dreams of agricultural success and land ownership gradually eroding. Yet the book also portrays the rich, multicultural environment of the Transvaal, the varied relationships between Blacks, Boers, Englishmen, Jews and Asians; the shift from a paternalistic but, in many ways more egalitarian society to a racist police state. Kas is a complex man: wise, cruel, patient, tender, pragmatic, apolitical, opportunist, and honourable. The portrayals of his relationships with his ever expanding family are as complex and engaging as one could wish from a fine novel. Van Onselen makes no apologies for him: he simply gives us the man and, above all his humanity. Perhaps his greatest achievement with this book is in bridging the gap between the Western reader and an illiterate African farmer, in underlining our human commonalities rather than our differences. Despite occasional passages that are a tad purple, the author's prose is clear and flowing. He manages to make the ebb and flow of the seasons with their triumphs, tragedies, and ignominies absolutely gripping. I never thought that I could be enthralled by descriptions of the complexities of plowing and harvesting, or the purchase of agricultural equipment, but I was. No it's not too long as the reviewer in the New York Times claimed. In fact one often wishes that one could know more about this extraordinary yet very ordinary man.

A celebration of a "real" life.......1997-06-18

I was fascinated throughout. Sounds and looks "dry" when you see it on the shelf, but so full of juicy bits that make his life very real. You cheer for him when he manages to think his way around the obstacles that apartheid and his own nature put in his way and you are continually forced to confront the "What would I have done here?" question.

Yes, it is long. But when you are through you want to know still more. What has happened to the rest of the family since the book was published? What was the effect of those years of scrutiny on their "real" lives?

I stared at the pictures and studied the faces. I have been selectively pushing the book on all the thoughtful people I know. It wakes up your brain.

The Seed Is Mine: the Life of Kas Maine: A South African Sharecropper 1894-1985

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The Seed Is Mine: the Life of Kas Maine: A South African Sharecropper 1894-1985
Charles van Onselen
Manufacturer: New Africa Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Social History | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0864862512

THE SEED IS MINE: THE LIFE OF KAS MAINE, A SOUTH AFRICAN SHARECROPPER, 1894-1985. (book review) : An article from: The Oral History Review

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THE SEED IS MINE: THE LIFE OF KAS MAINE, A SOUTH AFRICAN SHARECROPPER, 1894-1985. (book review) : An article from: The Oral History Review
Christopher J. Lee
Manufacturer: Oral History Association
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

Book Description

This digital document is an article from The Oral History Review, published by Oral History Association on January 1, 1999. The length of the article is 1392 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: THE SEED IS MINE: THE LIFE OF KAS MAINE, A SOUTH AFRICAN SHARECROPPER, 1894-1985. (book review)
Author: Christopher J. Lee
Publication: The Oral History Review (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 1999
Publisher: Oral History Association
Volume: 26 Issue: 1 Page: 132(1)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Book Description

The book contains the worked out lecture notes of the courses delivered at the summer school in Les Houches. They address graduate students and are of interest for researchers as well. The book can be used as an introduction into three closely related fields: anyons and fractional statistics, fractional quantum Hall effect and knot theory. The theoretical papers are occasionally completed by reports on experimental techniques, and besides of physics some application to biological systems can be found.

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Consisting of 300 problems which challenge the user in terms of providing reasonable mechanistic interpretations of sets of experimental observations. The problems cover all major areas of modern organic chemistry. The idea is that the user tackles a problem by first, if necessary, revising the basic principles of key types of reactions referred to in the setting of the problem, and then attempts to devise a solution. literature references are available.

Advanced Problems in Organic Reaction Mechanisms

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Advanced Problems in Organic Reaction Mechanisms
A. McKillop
Manufacturer: Elsevier Science
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OGWAKS

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Advanced Problems in Organic Reaction Mechanisms
A. McKillop
Manufacturer: Elsevier Science
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OH08NS

Book Description

Numbers alone are enough to describe the importance of DC/DC converters in modern power engineering. There are more than 500 recognized topologies, with more added each year. In their groundbreaking book Advanced DC/DC Converters, expert researchers Luo and Ye organized these technologies into six generations and illustrated their principles and operation through examples of over 100 original topologies. In chapters carefully drawn from that work, Synchronous and Resonant DC/DC Conversion Technology, Energy Factor, and Mathematical Modeling provides a focused, concise overview of synchronous and multiple-element resonant power converters. This reference carefully examines the topologies of more than 50 synchronous and resonant converters by illustrating the design of several prototypes developed by the authors. Using more than 100 diagrams as illustration, the book supplies insight into the fundamental concepts, design, and applications of the fifth (synchronous) and sixth (multiple-element resonant) converters as well as DC power sources and control circuits. The authors also discuss EMI/EMC problems and include a new chapter that introduces the new concept of Energy Factor (EF) and its importance in mathematical modeling as well as analyzing the transient process and impulse response of DC/DC converters. Synchronous and Resonant DC/DC Conversion Technology, Energy Factor, and Mathematical Modeling supplies a quick and accessible guide for anyone in need of specialized information on synchronous and resonant DC/DC converter technologies.

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For decades, a great number of Americans saw Alger Hiss as an innocent victim of McCarthyism--a distinguished diplomat railroaded by an ambitious Richard Nixon. And even as the case against Hiss grew over time, his dignified demeanor helped create an aura of innocence that outshone the facts in many minds. Now G. Edward White deftly draws together the countless details of Hiss's life--from his upper middle-class childhood in Baltimore and his brilliant success at Harvard to his later career as a self-made martyr to McCarthyism--to paint a fascinating portrait of a man whose life was devoted to perpetuating a lie. White catalogs the evidence that proved Hiss's guilt, from Whittaker Chambers's famous testimony, to copies of State Department documents typed on Hiss's typewriter, to Allen Weinstein's groundbreaking investigation in the 1970s. The author then explores the central conundrums of Hiss's life: Why did this talented lawyer become a Communist and a Soviet spy? Why did he devote so much of his life to an extensive public campaign to deny his espionage? And how, without producing any new evidence, did he convince many people that he was innocent? White offers a compelling analysis of Hiss's behavior in the face of growing evidence of his guilt, revealing how this behavior fit into an ongoing pattern of denial and duplicity in his life. The story of Alger Hiss is in part a reflection of Cold War America--a time of ideological passions, partisan battles, and secret lives. It is also a story that transcends a particular historical era--a story about individuals who choose to engage in espionage for foreign powers and the secret worlds they choose to conceal. In White's skilled hands, the life of Alger Hiss comes to illuminate both of those themes.

Customer Reviews:

Why Did He Lie?.......2006-12-22

Those who believe that that human understanding progresses over time may take comfort in the fact that for all but the most ideologically besotted and intellectually corrupt the question of Alger Hiss's guilt is no longer of much interest. For G.E. White, the Traitor Hiss was self-evidently just that and the real issue instead: why did he lie, lie for 40 years after his conviction and imprisonment for perjury, lie to his supporters, lie to his friends and, most of all, lie to and thereby debauch his own son, enlisting filial devotion in his selfish and ultimately futile quest for a thoroughly underserved vindication? White, the David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, organizes his study around these psychological questions, but also he supplies an admirably concise review of the Hiss case, and, most importantly, describes the intellectual climate in which the traitor and his allies succeeded for a time in muddying the historical waters, not least for a younger generation of Americans raised on tales of America's Cold War perfidy.

Alger Hiss, for those schooled after the Vietnam War persuaded much of the American Left that anti-Communism merely licensed McCarthyite hunter-gatherers to trample civil rights and cut doe-eyed New Dealers from the pack, transcended relatively humble origins to fashion an identity as a rising star of the old Eastern Establishment. As Clerk to Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Boston and New York attorney, and Agriculture Department price regulator, Hiss cultivated the erect posture, firm handshake and sincere bearing that carried him to the Department of State, where he again rose through the ranks, numbering among his friends future Secretaries of State Edward Stettinius and Dean Acheson, attended the Yalta Conference, then presided over the San Francisco Conference that created the United Nations, then as now the collective repository for mugwumpish internationalist idealism.

Hiss also was a Soviet agent, and eventually was fingered as such by former Party operative Whittaker Chambers. Chambers was portly, religious, dentally challenged--- hardly the sort for whom John Foster Dulles would arrange, as he did for Hiss, a golden parachute at the Carnegie Endowment when Alger's State Department career dimmed. But Chambers had stashed away typewritten copies of purloined State Department documents, as insurance against retribution when he broke with the Party. Those copies, the FBI concluded, had been typed
on the Hiss family typewriter. A perjury conviction and 44 month jail sentence followed, after which, in 1954, Alger Hiss began his life-long campaign to re-write the history books.

White's calls this campaign Hiss's `looking-glass wars.' A natural spy, Hiss "appears to have taken pleasure in the pursuit of covert goals and in the creation of devices to shield that pursuit from others." His strategy was to cultivate a persona of temperate reasonableness; in other words to convince others that "he was not the sort of person who could conceivably have such secrets." White traces this theme through four phases of Hiss's life: his Supreme Court Clerkship, when he dissembled his way past Justice Holmes' mandate that clerks remain unmarried during their term of employment; his `pillar of the establishment' defense to Chambers' charges; his term in Lewisburg federal penitentiary, where Hiss gradually earned the respect of his fellow prisoners; and finally, the serene countenance he subsequently presented, an invitation to all who gazed upon it to conclude that a man so at peace with himself (so different in this respect than his two principal tormenters: the at-times suicidal Chambers and the tenebrific Nixon) surely was innocent.

To the extent that internal peacefulness was genuine, its true source was of course Hiss' ideological commitment to Communism and political loyalty to the Soviet Union. A traitor to the end of his days, Hiss adhered to the standard Moscow demanded of all its agents: if exposed, deny; if convicted, maintain innocence all your life. Thus, while White is persuasive on the tactics of Hiss's campaign, the most interesting parts of his book explain instead how Hiss persuaded so many of his innocence in the face of mounting evidence from U.S. and Soviet archives to the contrary. The Hiss defense, it helps to recall, amounted to the assertion that Hiss was more credible than Chambers, toward whom the Hiss forces directed a notably vigorous whispering campaign alleging among other things Chambers' homosexuality, coupled with the lame hypothesis that it was all a set-up, involving the FBI and assorted other baddies (one that rather improbably required a duplicate typewriter and a decade-long conspiracy, all to frame one self-important mid-level official). Given the weakness of Hiss's case, the thorough and damning 1978 study by Allen Weinstein (appointed Archivist of the United States by President Bush in the face of an ad hominem attack not unlike the one Hiss's allies launched against Chambers), the documents that became available after the fall of the Soviet Union and finally the release of the "Venona Papers," transcripts of coded Soviet transmissions deciphered by the National Security Agency, all of which supported Chambers' allegations, the question remains: how could any one have been taken in?

As Hiss recognized from the very first, he at least was fortunate in his enemies. Chambers was a quixotic character, and his supporter was the Prince of Darkness himself. A Democrat congressional staffer once remarked "I don't think we can clearly nail Nixon as a liar, although he undoubtedly is one, in this instance, as in all others." Given the sheer venom that much of what we today call "Blue" America directed at Richard Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover and their ilk, Hiss shrewdly positioned himself as one of their many victims: were his accusers' reputations to suffer, ideally for misconduct toward real victims, Hiss would benefit. By depicting himself as the victim par excellence of rabid anti-Communism, Hiss similarly reaped the post-Vietnam rewards when American liberalism, with a few honorable exceptions, went AWOL for the balance of the Cold War.

By draping his cause in ideological standards, Hiss freed his supporters from contesting the still unfriendly facts of the case. And there should be no doubt that those supporters cared about defending Soviet Marxism and not the truth. When Allen Weinstein began work on Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case, he was somewhat sympathetic to Hiss and expected to argue for his innocence. When the evidence persuaded Weinstein otherwise, friends of Hiss regretted bitterly their decision to cooperate with the project. "Weinstein came to see me under false colors," said one, "I never would have said a word to him if I'd known he was friendly to Chambers." Another announced tartly that the purpose of his assistance was "to prove that Alger was framed and a victim of McCarthyism. Otherwise, I was given a bum steer and my time and trouble was for nothing."

Hiss's campaign sought far more than his personal vindication. Were he to persuade Americans that prosecution of a Communist and genuine traitor was instead anti-Communist persecution of a liberal New Dealer, he would discredit anti-Communism as fundamentally illiberal and serve his Soviet masters even beyond their own ignominious demise. Among the segments of American society most susceptible to this anti-anti-Communism were the academy and the liberal media. While White does not address the former, John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr's Denial: Historians, Communism and Espionage more than amply plumbs how some American historians continue to prostitute themselves, debase their profession, and sully the cause of truth, the better to brand opponents of social collectivism as "McCarthyites" and worse.

White devotes considerable attention to "mainstream" media coverage of Hiss, contrasting nicely PBS's 1983 Hiss-friendly American Playhouse offering with the Reagan Administration's
decision to award the Medal of Freedom posthumously to Whittaker Chambers. Still worse was the Pavlovian response to the 1992 Volkogonov incident. In that year, Hiss cleverly wrote a number of Russian officials, asking that they attest he had never served the Soviet Union. One, the historian and former General Dimitri Volkogonov, on the basis of a mere two days research in the KGB archives (Hiss had spied for Soviet military intelligence, not the KGB) and after some prodding by a Hiss confederate issued the desired clean bill of health, which Hiss's allies released to the press on October 29.

With the publication of Volkogonov's letter, the liberal media was quick to trumpet Hiss's triumph. All three "major" television networks reported the story that very evening and CBS followed the next morning with the assertion that Hiss had been "apparently exonerated." "Hiss never spied," added USA Today while Newsweek announced the "bittersweet vindication." CNN aired a commentary asking why the U.S. government had not yet exonerated Hiss. The New Yorker afforded Tony Hiss a platform for "My Father's Honor," and, least surprising of all, National Public Radio reached into its stable of "experts," finding one who duly confirmed that the "vindication" of Hiss revealed the excesses of anti-Communism.

Unfortunately for the media pack, it only took a few weeks for Volkogonov to issue a damning retraction. "What I saw gives no basis to claim a full clarification," he wrote on November 24. His motives for writing the letter had been "primarily humanitarian" and an accommodation to Hiss's agent, who argued that Hiss "wanted to die peacefully" and "pushed me to say things of which I was not fully convinced." None of the television networks that reported Volkogonov's first letter, White observes, ever covered the retraction. No newspaper mentioned the retraction until December 17. As late as December 13, The New York Times still reported that Volkogonov had exonerated Hiss and that Chambers had never been a Soviet agent. The Palme d'Or, though, must be reserved for Peter Jennings, favorite news mannequin of Americans who otherwise take their news from the BBC. On Hiss's death in 1996, Jennings reported: "Hiss... protested his innocence until the very end.... And last year, we reported that the Russian president Boris Yeltsin said that KGB files had supported Mr. Hiss's claim."

Alger Hiss had the good sense to pass away just before the floodgates opened. In 1997, Allen Weinstein published the second edition of Perjury, grounded in primary research in the Comintern archives, and a subsequent analysis of KGB files. By 1999, these and the aforementioned VENONA transcripts had put paid to all but the most slippery claims for Hiss's innocence.

Even so, the name Alger Hiss retains enormous significance. Stripped of any respectable claim to innocence, Hiss remains a useful tool for those who would discredit his opponents--- not for accusing an innocent man but for defending freedom from a murderous ideology and the United States from an aggressive totalitarian adversary. For this reason their successors--- academic fellow travelers and media dupes--- seek to muddy the historical waters. We must not let them.

Hiss's Betrayal, espionage, and fight for vindication.......2005-07-07

With the release of declassified materials in Russia and the United States, there is no doubt that Alger Hiss was indeed a Soviet spy. However, Mr. White goes beyond the evident conclusion of Hiss's guilt and explores the convict's tireless campaign for vindication. Since others have posted review links at this site, I would reccomend that readers consult Dr. Stanley Kutler's review at: http://www.hnn.us/blogs/entries/7050.html

Dr. Kutler, one of the foremost historians of our time and hardly a rabid conservative(infact Ann Coulter calls him the "liberal luminary."), provides the best scholarly review of "Looking Glass Wars." He also makes an important point:

"The mystery White adeptly explores is why some liberals persisted in reacting so defensively and for so long - especially when the result was to hand a victory to the opportunistic characters who went beyond Hiss's particular guilt to indict and convict a generation of New Dealers and liberals. A rotten apple did not spoil the barrel; liberals and leftists could and should have conceded Hiss's guilt; instead, they harmed their own credibility by maintaining his innocence."

What if Truman and Acheson had not foolishly defended Hiss? Would there have been a McCarthy era? Would Truman have had more bi-partisan support in shaping his foreign policy? We will never know because Truman and many New-Dealers ruined their credibility be defending a Soviet spy that would end up having a damaging effect on the U.S. for fifty years.

Excellent book...highly reccomended

Alger Hiss is laughing last, again!.......2004-11-18

Historian Jeff Kisseloff has written an excellent debunking of G. Edward White's poorly researched and argued book on Alger Hiss. It can be found at this link: http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/wars.html. To summarize:

* White never bothers to re-investigate the case, and substitutes a re-indictment for a re-trial. He presents only the evidence for the prosecution, and omits the defense. White has looked nowhere for new facts, and has instead been content to reassemble and rearrange from secondary sources all the accusations previously leveled at Hiss. His retelling of the case against Alger Hiss is a stripped-down model, thoroughly cleansed of complexity, and dismissive of any materials that might exonerate Alger Hiss. Factual errors, errors of omission, and errors of interpretation abound in the book.

* White (without the benefit of a certificate in psychoanalysis) devotes the bulk of his book to constructing a psychological profile of Hiss. White, who never met or spoke to Hiss, made no attempt to get in touch with anyone who knew Hiss well, such as his son or stepson. Hiss's lifelong quest for vindication, in this reading, somehow becomes further evidence of his guilt.

* U.S. government documents summarizing the substance of many of Chambers' interviews have been released. They contain numerous contradictions and demonstrably false allegations, so many in fact that even the FBI questioned Chambers' credibility. Hardly any of these issues, however, are examined by White.

* Regarding the search for the Woodstock typewriter, White claims that the defense didn't want it to be found. Instead of damaging Hiss's credibility, however, defense files actually support his story - consistently. Defense file documents suggested investigators check on a number of places where it might be found.

* White repeats Chambers' claim that Hiss had been a member of the underground organization the Ware Group. But while White points out that Hiss's former colleague, Lee Pressman, was an admitted member of the group, he omits Pressman's testimony before HUAC that Hiss was never a member. Two other admitted Ware group members, John Abt and Nathan Witt, said that Chambers both exaggerated the scope of the Ware group and also his own relationship with it.

* In 1992, Russian historian Dmitri Volkogonov stated that he had examined govt. archives in Moscow and determined that Hiss had never been an agent of the USSR. White erroneously claims that Volkogonov later "retracted" his statement, acknowledging that he had spent only two days looking in the KGB archive. White misrepresents both Volkogonov's research and his subsequent clarification for the press. In a follow-up interview Volkogonov was specifically asked whether he had looked through military intelligence files. Volkogonov responded, "Yes, we also asked to examine the military intelligence files and there, too, no traces of Alger Hiss have been found." Some months before the publication of "Looking-Glass Wars" - in time for White to include the information in his book, had he chosen to do so - General Julius Kobyakov, a retired Russian intelligence official, revealed that he had been the person who actually searched the files for General Volkogonov. Kobyakov in his postings said that he prepared his 1992 report that there was no indication that Alger Hiss had been either a paid or unpaid agent of the Soviet Union only "after careful study" of KGB archives and "after querying sister services" (military intelligence).

A Very Timely Book.......2004-06-24

Everyone should read the devastating Alger Hiss's Looking Glass Wars and ponder its implications. White does not waste our time speculating about Hiss's guilt or innocence; Hiss, it is now as firmly established as it seems possible to establish, was guilty. Instead, White concentrates our attention on the implications of Alger Hiss and his saga that are of profound and timeless importance.

First, there are human beings who live among us with no conscience and who are utterly devoid of morality. Not everyone has something good and decent about them. And such people are not limited to the dictators, murderers, and rapists. Alger Hiss lied brazenly, publicly, and repeatedly, and as a matter of course over nearly 60 years, he took shameless advantage of the trust and affection of his countrymen, his friends, his co-workers, and his family. He was a thoroughly evil man.

Second, liberal institutions - academia and the media - have become purposefully blind to the mendacity and depravity of anyone deemed to be a friend to liberal causes (or an enemy to conservative causes). The extent to which such institutions go to re-write history and manipulate public perceptions of such cases has become bold and radical. Hiss represented a pinnacle of these efforts, as his reputation was resurrected by the time of his death - with, as White points out, not a shred of exculpatory evidence. Only the irrefutable evidence of his un-encoded name discovered posthumously in the Soviet GRU archives ended the charade for most, but not all (e.g., Bard College), of his defenders. And, as is becoming routine, our liberal institutions betray no remorse, no shame, and no soul-searching for having been so wrong and having contributed to such deceit.

And so, the cycle repeats itself. Before his name was uncovered in the GRU archives, Alger Hiss was the noble victim of a psychologically imbalanced accuser, Whitaker Chambers, and an out-of-control and paranoid right-wing prosecutor, Richard Nixon. Before the blue dress, President Clinton was the noble victim of a psychologically imbalanced accuser, Monica Lewinsky, and an out-of-control and paranoid right-wing prosecutor, Kenneth Starr. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

While not suggesting anything about President Clinton, Amazon should offer Alger Hiss's Looking Glass Wars in tandem with his My Life.

An Excellent Historical Work.......2004-06-02

This is one the best books ever written about the treason case of Alger Hiss. It is also the one that does the best job of explaining just what Hiss's motives were. According to White, Hiss had an incredible knack for manipulating people and took huge risks and literally thrived on living on the edge. In other words, Hiss's espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union was motivated as much by the thrilling experience of being a spy as much as any ideological sympathies that he may have had for Communism.

This book is recommened reading for everyone with an interest in recent American history.

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Alger Hiss's Looking-Glass Wars : The Covert Life Of A Soviet Spy
G. Edward White
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OKSPOY

Book Description

It took surgery for former newspaper reporter, Patti Pfeiffer, to turn author. It was during her own recovery from a hysterectomy that she wrote this enlightening and entertaining book detailing her experiences with endometriosis, laser surgery, laparoscopy, vaginal hysterectomy, surgical menopause, hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and gynecologists. Through chapters titled "Hystery in the Making" and "The Long Gurney Home", readers gain insight into the emotional, physical and mental aspects of surgery, preoperative to postoperative. But more than surgery, "Bearing the Big H" is about the peaks, perks and pitfalls of womanhood.

Any woman whether healthy or hindered will relate to the satirical stories describing the experiences exclusive to the childbearing gender. If you have personally shared the author's experiences, or know someone who has had, or is about to undergo a hysterectomy, this book is priceless, upbeat, hilarious - and required reading!

Customer Reviews:

Learned alot while laughing.......2007-03-16

This book was wonderful. Not everything applied to my situtation but it was very helpful in knowing what to expect. There were even some great tips that I shared with my husband. We even had some interesting chats regarding specifics of the book.

What Nobody Talks About.......2004-11-04

As a retired nurse, I think the vast number of women who undergo removal of their uterus are usually well informed of the surgical procedure, the possible risks, and anatomical changes, but only a rare few are prepared for the hormonal frenzy that follows. Patti Pfeiffer's humorous--and sometimes heartbreaking--account of her surgery and the weeks that followed is a must read, not only for those who have had, or will have, a hysterectomy but for their spouses, too. Even those not involved in this medical dilemma will be amused by Ms. Pfeiffer's journey.

Bearing the Big H.......2004-10-30

My wife and I purchased "Bearing the Big H", at one of Pattis' book signings. I was the first to read it. I was pleasently surprised and read it in a couple of nights. The " big H", is not something a man is normally knowledgeable about but it can drastically affect your relationship with loved ones. Ignorance is defenitely not bliss. My review? I've decided to purchase additional books for my parents(in their 80's), sister, and brother for Christmas gifts. Loved the book Patti!

LAUGH 'TIL YOU CRY!.......2004-10-28

Wanna laugh?..READ THIS BOOK! Wanna cry?.....READ THIS BOOK!
This author's wit and humor are both hilarious and heart tugging! This is not a medical journal on Hysterectomy, this is a very real and funny account of a very real and funny woman's journey through the BIG H. Laugh at her, laugh at yourself, but READ IT and be encouraged. Honest feelings and earthy humor make this book a delight!

Hysterical Hysterectomy.......2004-10-26

This book was both entertaining and enlightening! I would wholeheartedly recommend it for anyone facing the surgery, or anyone who just wants a good Venus/Mars laugh!

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