With a Hammer for My Heart

Average customer rating:

The whole package!

A Great Novel for Everyone!!!!

Kentucky Treasure

Good, but not realistic characters. Could've been better.

a book for those who enjoyed Fried Green Tomatoes

With a Hammer for My Heart
George E. Lyon
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Send Me Down a Miracle

Literacy in the Information Age: Inquiries into Meaning Making With New Technologies

Innovative Approaches To Literacy Education: Using The Internet To Support New Literacies

Where I'm From (Writers' & Young Writers' Series #2) (Writers & Young Writers Series, #2)

Belle Prater's Boy

ASIN: 0380732173

Amazon.com

Deep in Kentucky's Appalachian Mountains live a handful of down-to-earth, loving, zealous, confused folks. All of them are in search of a shade of truth (though some seek deeper shades than others) and the right to live their lives according to particular rhythms. Lawanda, a teenager who is afraid she'll get stuck in the Appalachian hills, wants to go to college. Come hell or high water, she'll go--even if she has to sell magazines to get there. As George Ella Lyon gloriously reveals, that's where things start to go haywire in this small Kentucky town. On her magazine route, Lawanda meets a crazy old man named Garland. Who could have foretold that the two would become such good friends? More important, is it proper? Lyon allows these fine Kentucky folks to ring in with their opinions, and a few of them reveal their hearts and secrets to us, too. Along the way, readers will discover what shades of truth are necessary to help the crazy to become sane, the young to become strong, the zealous to be believed. Older teens and adults will appreciate the subtle awakenings revealed in With a Hammer for My Heart.

Book Description

You never know what will fall from the sky...

In this remarkable novel, George Ella Lyon creates characters rich and vibrant as the Kentucky landscape they call home, touching that secret place in all of us where we wait for love's transforming power...

Customer Reviews:

The whole package!.......2007-03-28

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Sometimes I read books just for the plot, sometimes for the characters, and occasionally for the writing itself. I enjoyed all three aspects of this book.

Highly recommended.

A Great Novel for Everyone!!!!.......2001-07-01

With a Hammer for my Heart was one of the greatest novels I've ever read.It was passionate,poetic & just a really lovely book.I gave it five stars because it was so greatly & beautifully written. George Ella Lyon is a literary genius. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel & hated to see it end.I would absolutely recommend this novel to anyone looking for a really great read.The plot is fantastic & I just loved the story.

Kentucky Treasure.......2001-02-19

If you like a good story told straight from the characters' mouths, then you will enjoy this book. As a Kentuckian, I enjoy stories with a decisively Appalachian flavor, and in With A Hammer For My Heart, Ms. George Ella Lyon (yes, the author is a SHE) weaves a deceivingly simple, yet powerful, story about family, friendship, and forgiveness. Told through the voices of its many characters, the story centers around the friendship between a young girl, LaWanda, and a war-ravaged veteran, Amos Garland. Determined to make her way to college, LaWanda charges into Garland's life selling magazines. Although he does not welcome company, Garland finds that he has become (somewhat unwillingly) a friend to LaWanda. However, through a series of tragic events, LaWanda's loyalty to her family and Garland are tested. Yet, in the end, LaWanda's strength and courage brings about powerful changes in the people around her. Ms. Lyon's first attempt at adult fiction is a success and I look forward to reading more of her adult work. She is truly one of Kentucky's treasures!

Good, but not realistic characters. Could've been better........2000-01-05

This book is about a little girl named Lawanda. She starts out trying to sell magazines and earn money for college. It's by selling these magazines that she meets Garland. Garland is an older man who lives in a bus, he is generally known as the town's hermit. He chases all strangers away until Lawanda comes along. As Garland and Lawanda get to know each other better, they each encounter conflicts that will forever change their existence. I found this book to be quality reading, but I really couldn't get into the characters. They had such fictional personalities, that it was hard to identify with some of their feelings. The descriptions are exceptional, and I think that's why the book is a Young Adult Book Award Nominee. Somehow I just don't think that Mr. Lyon did his best though. Perhaps another book would help him to create realistic characters.

a book for those who enjoyed Fried Green Tomatoes.......1999-02-18

A friend gave me this book to read. Since Lyon is known as a children's author, I wasn't that eager. But when I opened it, I was hooked! I have since recommended it to everyone I know. It's a story of love, anger, and reconciliation. And more, it's a fable about faith; faith in the capacity of humans to forgive and go on. The story is written from the point of view of each of the main characters-a device that makes the reader feel as if you are sitting at the table listening to each person tell his/her version of the story. That the author is able to create five distinct voice is a credit to her ability. I won't go into much about the story except to say that Mawmaw is the most interesting character with her believe in God the Mother, Daughter, and Holy Ghost. I read a great deal and this book has stayed with me more than any in recent times.

Customer Reviews:

A gorgeous supplement to "A Door into Ocean".......2004-02-26

Following a couple centuries after "A Door into Ocean", "Daughter of Elysium" revisits the planet Shora, home of the ocean-dwelling Sharers and the city-dwelling Elysians. Raincloud Windclan came to Elysium accompanied by her family to help avert a war. Her scientist husband was invited to assist in delving into the secrets of Elysians' longevity and in solving the Elysians' inability to bear children. The technologically superior Elysians live a pleasurable existence surrounded by their robot servants, who are slowly gaining sentience despite various precautions. In this epic sci fi tale, various threads entwine and produce a glorious and compelling exploration into compassion and humanity that fascinates as it entertains. Slonczewski deftly portrays the complex nuances of the bevy of characters, leading readers to explore their own human natures and giving us much to ponder.

Excellent cultures.......2002-07-12

Slonczewski does a fantastic job of creating different cultures in this novel. Many SF novels suffer from poorly thought out cultures; a particular problem is that of monoculture, when the various cultures presented in the book have only superficial differences. Ms. Slonczewski avoids that completely. There are, by my count, four main cultures in this book: the ageless Elysians, the Clickers from Bronze Sky, the Urulites, and the Sharers. There are also several other cultures which play a less important part in the book.

Each of these cultures is completely distinct from the others, with regard not only to manners, customs, and dress, but also some of their fundamental assumptions about how human society should be organized. The interplay between members of these cultures -- their conversations, arguments, and differing opinions -- bring to life a novel which might otherwise have been tedious. Excellent reading!

Unique.......2000-12-07

I am not a big fan of sci-fi books (mainly secluded to Kurt Vonnegut), but this book was engrossing. It wasn't a great literary feat, but it kept me interested. It is good FICTION.

Horrible book.......2000-06-07

I was given this book for Christmas. I read it and was terribly disapointed. It was too long, and as a former review put it, preachy. When I read the cover, I thought it sounded good. I was wrong. When I got to many parts, I was shocked. I am a Christian, and I didn't agree with th author putting all those gay couples in the book. As I was reading, I thought it was bad enough that she was showing me they were married or whatever they called it in the book. ........................... And all the Sharers were gay, too. Eventually that gets old! I don't recommend this book to anybody.

Terrible.......1999-02-26

I really despised this book. I thought it was boring and preachy. Don't waste your time on this one.

Average customer rating:

Daughter of Elysium
Joan Slonczewski
Manufacturer: Avon Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000QHGPKQ

Average customer rating:

Best book for newbies, experts, historians, and foodies

Delicious recipes

Excellently Deep Survey of Jewish Culinary Holidays.

Joan Nathan's Jewish Holiday Cookbook
Joan Nathan
Manufacturer: Schocken
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books
Kosher | Special Diet | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books
General | Jewish | World | History | Subjects | Books
Kosher Foods | Judaism | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Jewish Cooking in America: Expanded Edition (Knopf Cooks American)

The New York Times Jewish Cookbook: More than 825 Traditional & Contemporary Recipes from Around the World

The Children's Jewish Holiday Kitchen: 70 Fun Recipes for You and Your Kids, from the Author of Jewish Cooking in America

The New American Cooking

A Treasury of Jewish Holiday Baking

ASIN: 0805242171
Release Date: 2004-08-17

Book Description

Jewish holidays are defined by food. Yet Jewish cooking is always changing, encompassing the flavors of the world, embracing local culinary traditions of every place in which Jews have lived and adapting them to Jewish observance. This collection, the culmination of Joan Nathan’s decades of gathering Jewish recipes from around the world, is a tour through the Jewish holidays as told in food. For each holiday, Nathan presents menus from different cuisines—Moroccan, Russian, German, and contemporary American are just a few—that show how the traditions of Jewish food have taken on new forms around the world. There are dishes that you will remember from your mother’s table and dishes that go back to the Second Temple, family recipes that you thought were lost and other families’ recipes that you have yet to discover. Explaining their origins and the holidays that have shaped them, Nathan spices these delicious recipes with delightful stories about the people who have kept these traditions alive.

Try something exotic—Algerian Chicken Tagine with Quinces or Seven-Fruit Haroset from Surinam—or rediscover an American favorite like Pineapple Noodle Kugel or Charlestonian Broth with “Soup Bunch” and Matzah Balls. No matter what you select, this essential book, which combines and updates Nathan’s classic cookbooks The Jewish Holiday Baker and The Jewish Holiday Kitchen with a new generation of recipes, will bring the rich variety and heritage of Jewish cooking to your table on the holidays and throughout the year.

Customer Reviews:

Best book for newbies, experts, historians, and foodies.......2007-03-29

Jewish Holiday Kitchen is/was my favorite Jewish cookbook to use and to give, and this is the revised version. I don't know if it has all of her recipes from the first, plus some from her baking book, or if some from Kitchen have been left out. Unless you are looking for specific recipes from the first book (see below) this new one is a safe bet.
Great Gift: the descriptions of holidays include both the basic (for those without much Jewish education), and the deep, fascinating details of traditions unique to regions, history, etc.
Great recipes for the basics: yes, Holiday Kitchen had the best cookie dough hamentaschen of dozens tried, challah, and more. The hamentasch recipe is different from the one in her Holiday Baking, and in her Kids Jewish cooking. I don't know which made it into this revised version.
Great recipes for foodies: I've eaten my way across Morocco and tried dozens upon dozens of recipes for bastilla, the fillo pie from Morocco often filled with pigeon and dusted with powdered sugar. Her version, with chicken, is absolutely positively the best. Her potato kugelettes are another favorite; they are an elegant, simple, delicious addition to Passover, Hanukah, or any meal you want to look special.

Delicious recipes.......2006-01-09

I absolutely love using this cookbook. I use one of the recipes weekly, for Shabbos Challah and, I have also made Rosh Hashana sweet Challah from this cookbook. I have also made other side dishes from this book and everything comes out delicious, with good reviews from my guests! I highly recommend it for any Kosher home.

Excellently Deep Survey of Jewish Culinary Holidays........2006-01-08

`Joan Nathan's Jewish Holiday Cookbook' by the `Paula Wolfert' of Jewish cooking, Joan Nathan, is an updated composite of two of her earlier books, `The Jewish Holiday Baker' and `The Jewish Holiday Kitchen' on the 25th anniversary of the publication of the latter volume.

I have reviewed only one other book of Jewish cooking, the big `New York Times' book of Jewish recipes and I can unequivocally say that as a first book on Jewish cooking, Nathan's book is a far, far superior starting point. The only reason you may want to buy the `New York Times' volume is if you are already so thoroughly knowledgeable about Jewish cuisine that all you want is a big book of good recipes.

I get the sense from this book that the fact that it deals only with `holiday' cooking does very little to limit the scope of the recipes, as it not only deals with the yearly holidays but also that cooking which is particular to the restrictions on observing the Sabbath.

I think it is no accident that in my survey of cookbooks so far, there are far more Jewish holiday cookbooks than there are for any other ethnic cuisine, as long as you don't count Christmas cookie cookbooks. In my somewhat limited experience with only English language cookbooks, I know of seven for Jewish holidays and only two for that great culinary dynamo, Italian cooking. And, Joan Nathan has written four of those titles!

Not only on holidays but also throughout their whole life, food and religion are more tightly intertwined for the Jews than with any other culture I know. The Christian use of unleavened bread and wine in their most important sacrament pales in comparison to the strictures of orthodox kashrut, the laws governing kosher, parve, and unclean foods and food combinations. I know the Muslims, being fellow Semites from the Middle Eastern deserts have similar strictures against pork, but I believe their rules are not nearly as pervasive.

The book provides seven (7) chapters on the major holidays, Rosh Hashanah, Sukkot, Hanukkah, Purim, Passover, and Shavuot plus a chapter on `The Minor Holidays' including Israeli Independence Day. The first and longest chapter covers the Sabbath which, in orthodox tradition, requires prohibits any cooking between sundown on Friday evening and sundown on Saturday evening. It's a bit more involved than that, in that what is really prohibited is lighting a flame during that time. That means stoves or ovens can be turned on before sundown to start slow cooking dishes, but no flame can be started in that 24-hour period.

For people who are simply interested in culinary folkways, the book is an excellent study in the intersection of culinary laws and the seasons. Not only were Jewish folk constrained by extreme poverty and the barrenness of winter, they were prohibited from access to the single most tasty and most easily preserved source of fat and protein, the pig. This was an even bigger hardship for the Jews of central Europe who lived outside the range of cheap olive oil, since it forbade them from using the very best animal fat for cooking. Even butter was proscribed in that one could not use butter together with any meat product, due to the kashrut prohibition against mixing meat and dairy. This more than explains the central role of chicken fat in the culinary traditions of Jewish cooks.

Ms. Nathan does not spend much time exploring the anthropological sources of kashrut, but she does an excellent job of showing us how it affected Jewish cuisine.

Not only does she give us dishes appropriate to the various holidays, we are also treated to menus which reflect differences in the Sephardic (Iberian) and Askanazy (Central European) traditions.

I find it eminently satisfying that the very first recipe is for challah bread, the braided egg bread typically made for Sabbath. I also find it very interesting that much more attention is paid to recipes for the American bialys than to the European bagel. I am also interested in the fact that Hanukkah is much more of a culinary and political holiday than it is a religious feast, since, according to an Orthodox Jewish friend, there are not even any standard rituals for the Synagogue for Hanukkah. This is hearsay, but Nathan does confirm that until the late Middle Ages, Hanukkah was a relatively unimportant date on the Jewish calendar.

I have yet to review some other Jewish holiday cookbooks, but for a good understanding of the traditions behind the culinary facts, this book is excellent.

Highly recommended.

Beni's Family Cookbook for the Jewish Holidays

Average customer rating:

Beni's Family Cookbook for the Jewish Holidays

Manufacturer: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Judaism | Religions | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

Cooking | Sports & Activities | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

Holidays | Special Occasions | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0805037357

Book Description

What better way to celebrate the holidays than to cook-- and eat-- the delicious foods so important to Jewish tradition. Here's a sumptuous collection of recipes for every Jewish holiday through the year.Jane Breskin Zalben has gathered treasured mouth-watering recipes from her family and friends. Such favorites as matzoh ball soup, noodle kugel, and gefilte fish are here, as well as kasha varnishkas, hamantaschen, and macaroons.Each section of the cookbook features a different holiday and includes notes on its religious and cultural importance. There are also amusing introductory notes for every recipe. Ms. Zalben's festive, detailed pastel-watercolor illustrations of her beloved bears grace the pages, making this a feast for the eyes as well as the tummy.Full of homespun charm and warmth, Beni's Family Cookbook is the next best thing to Bubbe's recipe box-- the perfect holiday gift for the whole family.

Book Description

Believe it or not, bees are one of the oldest species of domesticated animals. Archeologists have found evidence of beekeeping, or apiculture, in the Middle East dating back more than five thousand years. If you’ve ever tasted good clover honey, it’s not hard to understand why. But it’s not just for the honey that more than 125,000 people (and growing) in the United States, alone, keep hives. Anyone interested in nature can’t help but be fascinated by those buzzing yellow bundles of energy and the exotic world they inhabit, with all its weird rituals and incredible efficiency. Also, dedicated gardeners appreciate the extra bounty that pollinating bees bring to their fruits, flowers, and vegetable gardens.

In this easy-to-follow guide, Howland Blackiston, one of the nation’s most respected authorities on the subject, takes the mystery (and the sting) out of beekeeping. Taking a step-by-step approach to successful backyard beekeeping, he gets you up and running with all the information you need to:

Build a hive
Establish your first colony
Inspect your hives with confidence
Maintain healthy colonies
Deal with pests and fix common problems
Harvest and enjoy fresh homemade honey
Bottle and market your honey

Howland Blackiston covers all the bases, from bee anatomy, society, and behavior, to identifying and healing common illnesses afflicting bees. He also offers inventive solutions to most common and many uncommon problems you’re likely to run into. Among other things, you’ll discover:

Where to put your hive, basic equipment you’ll need, and how to assemble a hive
The best and safest way to inspect and enjoy your bees
Year-round tasks a beekeeper must perform to maintain a healthy colony
How to recognize and deal with common problems with brood production and the precious queen
How to harvest honey and decide what kind of honey you’d like to make
Making products from beeswax and propolis

For both fun and profit, beekeeping has become a booming enterprise. A real honey of a book, Beekeeping For Dummies gets you on the road to enjoying this ancient, highly-rewarding, and oh-so-tasty hobby.

Customer Reviews:

A very easy to read and informative book.......2007-10-09

This is a very good and easy to read book and I believe you will learn a lot and enjoy reading it!

This book is very good for any beginner or anyone just interested in beekeeping........2007-09-30

After you get started you'll soon realize that there is a lot of information not in this book, so I think you'll naturally go out to seek for more knowledge, I know I did! For getting people interested and well informed this is a fantastic resource! Couple this will a membership in a local bee club and a saving account for more books, videos, and magazine subscription and your well on your way in wonderful world of beekeeping!

Beekeeping for Dummies is awesome!!.......2007-07-25

I'm new to the world of beekeeping and this book has got to be one of the best resources available. I would definently recommend it for beekeeper of all experience.

Cannot wait to get started.......2007-07-11

I loved the book and cannot wait to get started. Unfortunately, I will have to wait till Spring 2008. The book is very inspiring.

recommended reading.......2007-07-11

There is not a single "tell all" book for beginner beekeepers, however this is a must in the beginner library. My recommendations are
#1 Beekeeping for Dummies by Howland Blackiston
#2 Beekeeping-A Practical Guide by Richard Bonney
#3 Hive Management by Richard Bonney
in that order.

Average customer rating:

Beekeeping for Dummies

Manufacturer: HUNGRY MINDS (TWLD)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000GM6Q1O

Average customer rating:

Great book for professionals

The Shade Book: Roman, Cloud, Balloon, Roller Shades, Shade Toppers, and More
Judy Lindahl
Manufacturer: Palmer/Pletsch Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Crafts & Hobbies | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
Sewing | Crafts & Hobbies | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
Decorating | Interior Design | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
Windows | Interior Design | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Curtains, Blinds & Valances (Sew in a Weekend Series)

Sunset Curtains, Draperies & Shades

Make It with Style: Window Shades: Creating Roman, Balloon, and Austrian Shades (Make It with Style)

The Ultimate Curtain Book: A Comprehensive Guide to Creating Your Own Window Treatments

Window Treatments for Every Room

ASIN: 0935278559

Book Description

Featuring beautiful and functional shades, blinds, swags, and valances, this home decoration guide provides an in-depth look at a wide variety of non-drapery window coverings. Instructions for creating and installing many styles of shades are provided with both the beginner and the expert do-it-yourself homemaker in mind. Included are tips for creating countless variations on classic styles, including roman shades, cloud shades, balloon shades, Austrian shades, and shade toppers. The environmental advantages of shades are also stressed, with detailed information on each shade's ability to conserve energy by holding heat during the winter while reflecting the sun in the summer. Tips on care and upkeep, plus yardage charts complete the book.

Customer Reviews:

Great book for professionals.......2006-06-27

Great book for seamstresses. Not as good for sewing-challenged consumers. I would have preferred less technical info and more illustrations -- especially color photos of the different shades in finished rooms.

Book Description

Plan and design alternative work environments with ease. More and more businesses are looking to redesign or re-engineer their existing workspaces to boost employee productivity and reduce, or contain, their corporate real estate holdings. New Workplaces for New Workstyles, by Marilyn Zelinsky, arms you with the instant expertise you need to grab your share of these fast-growing, lucrative interior design opportunities. It walks you step-by-step through every aspect of creating alternative work environments (AWEs)--from selling the concept of AWE to senior management of investing in the right technology and equipment to planning, designing and managing alternative offices. You get case studies of 27 major companies--including IBM, AT&T and Pacific Bell--that have implemented or are implementing AWEs. These real-world examples, floor plans, sample designs and how-to photos are a goldmine of ideas and inspiration for selecting the best AWE strategy for your needs...setting up onsite offices...equipping mobile and home offices...understanding corporate-culture issues like productivity, territoriality and employee interaction...dealing with traditional and new lasws and policies...and much more.

Customer Reviews:

Great resource about the office of the future........1999-07-15

My firm needed information about designing a new workplace and an architect recommended we read this book. Now, we are thinking about hoteling because this book helped us to understand what it was all about. It was easy to understand and easy to read--there are tons of statistics, too. Great read.

Flexible workstyles.(New Economy - The Workplace): An article from: Canada and the World Backgrounder

Average customer rating:

Flexible workstyles.(New Economy - The Workplace): An article from: Canada and the World Backgrounder
Linda E. Taylor
Manufacturer: Taylor Publishing Consultants Ltd.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

Workplace | Organizational Behavior | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Telecommuting | Business & Culture | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B00093LEYY
Release Date: 2005-07-28

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Canada and the World Backgrounder, published by Taylor Publishing Consultants Ltd. on March 1, 1995. The length of the article is 2023 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: Flexible workstyles.(New Economy - The Workplace)
Author: Linda E. Taylor
Publication: Canada and the World Backgrounder (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 1, 1995
Publisher: Taylor Publishing Consultants Ltd.
Volume: v60 Issue: n5 Page: p20(5)

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Book Description

A writer renowned for his insight into the mysteries of the body now gives us a lambent and profoundly moving book about the mysteries of family. At its center lies Sherwin Nuland’s Rembrandtesque portrait of his father, Meyer Nudelman, a Jewish garment worker who came to America in the early years of the last century but remained an eternal outsider. Awkward in speech and movement, broken by the premature deaths of a wife and child, Meyer ruled his youngest son with a regime of rage, dependency, and helpless love that outlasted his death.

In evoking their relationship, Nuland also summons up the warmth and claustrophobia of a vanished immigrant New York, a world that impelled its children toward success yet made them feel like traitors for leaving it behind. Full of feeling and unwavering observation, Lost in America deserves a place alongside such classics as Patrimony and Call It Sleep.

Customer Reviews:

Lost in America.......2007-10-19

WHAT A GREAT AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL PIECE. I WAS ALMOST THERE WIN YOUNG SHERWIN AND FAMILY. HOW DIFFICULT IT AL MUST HAVE BEEN!
I LOVE NULAND'S BOOKS AND IF HE IS AS GOOD A SURGEON AS HE IS A WRITER I ENVY HIS PATIENTS. I would consult him any time

A powerful memoir .......2007-06-03

This powerful and moving memoir tells the story of the childhood and growing- up years of the physician- author Sherwin Nuland. While the greatest emphasis is on the author's relation to his father, his relationships with other family members that shared the same household, his mother, his Bubbe, his Aunt Rose, his older brother are also described.
The book opens with Nuland's description of himself in total depression, and about to receive a lobotomy, when a young psychiatric student prevents this, and instead prescribes an alternate treatment. Nuland receives twenty shock treatments and they take him out of his depression.
He then by implication relates the depression to the story of his difficult childhood, and relation with his father. His father Max who worked as a tailor , was completely alone in America aside from his wife's family. He was a difficult suffering hypersensitive easily humiliated, easily outraged parent. Nuland tells the story of life in a home where his Bubbe and aunt did not speak with his father, and in which his beloved mother was the center until she passed away. Nuland tells of the years in which he accompanied his father,supported him as he limped along, and was ashamed of him. He quotes at length his father's Yiddishized English, a language which appears somehow grotesque and awkward without redeeming humor.
Nuland also tells in a most moving way of dramatic moments in the family's life. The day his father comes home broken and weeping, carrying with him a Jewish Forward account of how in his native city the entire population had been murdered, machine gunned to death by the Nazis.
Another moving tragic day is the day of Nuland's mother's death.
One beautiful moment is the one in which Nuland is told that he has been made Chief Surgical Resident at Yale Presbyterian. He races to his father's hospital bed and tells him the news. And he feels his father's sense of triumph and justification.The older immigrant generation, his father, his mother, his Bubbe, his aunt had lived for the 'hope' of what the younger generation might become in America. And Nuland's success as a doctor justifies the father's life to himself. The person who had always felt insulted, humiliated comes a short time before his death to feel that it all has been worthwhile.
This is once again a tremendously moving story. What I missed and what I have questions about are the other aspects of Nuland's life which are not written about. For instance it must have taken him an incredible amount of work and dedication to arrive at where he arrived in his studies. Nothing is said of that.

And you thought YOUR parents were weird?.......2006-06-28

Dr. Nuland thought his immigrant father was simply weird or peculiar or just never adjusted to life in America until he was well into medical school, and diagnosed his father's tertiary syphilis by reading about it in a textbook. It explained everything, and in the tradition of the day, his father was never told the truth - not that anything could have been done. By the time he received treatment, his nervous system was already permanently damaged.

Interwoven are colorful stories of his own growing-up years (my personal favorite: learning the F word from older boys in the neighborhood), and the tragedy of his mother's death from cancer when he was 11. The type was never specified in the book; I had come to a conclusion that it was cervical or uterine cancer, and a Google search revealed that it was colon cancer. Either way, the results were the same. His father never remarried, but lived a platonic existence with two older female relatives (I read it a while back so don't recall the exact nature of their relation).

He kicks off the book with his own episode with mental illness and the resulting institutionalization which destroyed his first marriage. I first heard about that in a Book TV interview where I learned about this book as well. How much of this might have been precipitated by his childhood experiences is unknown.

It's a roller coaster ride of a story.

A Winner.......2005-10-12

Haven't read this one yet, but my friend & neighbor said that this is the best book that she ever read!!

Moving, marvelous reading.......2005-07-28

A most moving, thoughtful, disarmingly candid, disarmingly honest perusal of what it was to grow with an immigrant father apparently deffective in every respect, however full of love for a son both as he was and as he came to be, almost a dissection of human emotions yet a most loving one; we share the awe, mixed love-shame and adventure of the author in discovering the scope of what is a human being and what a human being can be, as he uncovers a past ultimately bountiful with the reward for him of overcoming hindrances and prejudices in a new world. I don't think the author aimed to show this, but by overcoming hindrances and prejudice he ends gaining his own rightful place in that new world and in the process makes his father triumph. The book, and the journey, is a triumph of the human spirit.

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books