Wormworld Book and Tank

Average customer rating:

A book that helped me to travel in the style to which I would like to be accustomed

excellent tips

Five Pages of Information and Endless Egotism

Groundbreaking

Great Tips

The Penny Pincher's Passport to Luxury Travel: The Art of Cultivating Preferred Customer Status (Travelers' Tales)
Joel L. Widzer
Manufacturer: Travelers' Tales
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Guidebooks | Reference & Tips | Travel | Subjects | Books
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Guerrilla Travel Tactics: Hundreds of Simple Strategies Guaranteed to Save Road Warriors Time and Money

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Mileage Pro: The Insider's Guide to Frequent Flyer Programs

ASIN: 1932361049

Book Description

Although its emphasis is on getting a good deal, this no-nonsense guide steers people firmly away from no-frills travel and points them toward the wonders of first-class accommodations and preferential treatment. Readers will acquire an intimate knowledge of the art of luxury travel: how and when to visit the most desirable destinations; the role frequent-user programs play; the importance of building long-term relationships with elite travel companies; avoiding scams; and finding shortcuts through the labyrinth of airline and hotel rules. The result? Exceptional service and amenities, hotel and airline upgrades, and the sense of empowerment and freedom that comes from avoiding inhospitable employees and the annoying hassles regularly inflicted on the masses. Written in a refreshingly down-to-earth style, the book explains exactly what to do and how to do it, and is filled with engaging true-life travel anecdotes. Appendices list important phone numbers and websites, and compare major frequent-user programs.

Customer Reviews:

A book that helped me to travel in the style to which I would like to be accustomed.......2006-06-04

You might find this note from a reader helpful:

Thank you. I read your book about almost two years ago, but I didn't believe that I could really travel in luxury on the cheap. Well your book helped me. I have been travelling for years and I always though frequent flyer programs were just gimmicks. After reading your book I signed up for the frequent flyer program of the airline I always fly-American and I can't believe it!!!! A year later I was flying first class without even paying for the full fare coach ticket. I have never been a big fan of self-service so when American got those new kiosks in front of their ticket counters, I was a little irritated. Then one day I was in a hurry and I used the dreaded thing. I was offered an upgrade to first class for a hundred dollars! Of course, I jumped at the deal. Since I could not afford the full fare coach ticket to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. There was a net saver special for Milwaukee round-trip for $178. I was offered the upgrade on both segments so I paid $378 for a first-class trip to Milwaukee. That's a few hundred less than full-fare coach and several hundred less than a first-class ticket if I purchased it out right. In the year that I have been travelling first class through this method, I have only not been offered an upgrade one time. I arrived at the airport late.

As for hotels, I'm being offered suites for the price of regular rooms and I haven't earned my gold status yet. It's great and I have you to thank.

Subrina McDowell

excellent tips.......2006-05-15

Excellent tips and advice for finding the best value and travel deals. Useing the tips I saved a few hundreds dollars on a five star trip to Hawaii.

Five Pages of Information and Endless Egotism.......2005-10-04

All of the useful information in this book could have been condensed into a travel magazine article. The remainder of the book is comprised of the author bragging about his free upgrades.

The author has the annoying habit of constantly stating that he's about to divulge a secret to discount luxury travel; then, the author (a) fails to provide any tips on the topic, (b) provides general common sense advice (make friends with the gate agents) or (c) provides anecdotes too specific to his situation to be applicable to most readers.

This is a revised edition of a previous book. Yet the author will occassionally imply that the earlier edition contains additional luxury travel secrets -- so you should run out and buy that book, too.

I was not at all surprised to find on this web page a series of content-less yet five-star reviews which read suspiciously like the book itself.

Avoid. Your time is better invested learning the details of actual frequent flyer and hotel loyalty programs on the various web pages devoted to the topics.

Groundbreaking.......2004-09-12

Although many books proclaim to be unique and groundbreaking, this one really is. All previous attempts to understand travel and upgrading psychology and its importance simply pale beside this work.

Great Tips.......2004-07-28

I used the authors bargaining techniques at The Pierre (New York) last week, and beat the Internet price, and got an upgrade and free breakfast. Thanks for the tips!!!

Book Description

Arranged by region, this illustrated collection includes stories, legends, poems, and traditional craft projects of Native American peoples from the Arctic to Mexico. The glossary will help students understand the various peoples and their languages. Winner of the 1995 Book Builder's of Boston Award for Excellence in Graphic Arts.

Customer Reviews:

Outstanding content! Used as a curriculum guide + reference........1999-07-02

From the Arctic Circle to MesoAmerica, Native Peoples traditions are celebrated and explored for teachers & young readers, parents, storytellers. Beautiful illustrations enhance many facets of this valuable resource guide! Anthology of many authors works including many American Indian writers.Exceptional resource!

Book Description

"Buildings whose walls and ceilings grow with their own flesh and skin . . . including shining heating coming through the veins delivering the oxygen necessary for breathing."-Alberto T. Estevez

Genetic Architectures provides a bilingual (English / Spanish) manifesto and anthology demonstrating the -theory, pedagogy and practical experiments of the Genetic Architecture Program at Barcelona's International University of Catalunya.

Founded in 2000, this unique program focuses on ecological-environmental architecture and design based on biomimetics, digital visualization and machine manufacture. Going beyond the use of computers as mere substitutes for conventional architectural production, Genetic Architecture conceives and visualizes whole projects digitally, beginning with botanic and other natural sources, then building maquettes and architectural elements, without human intervention, directly from software files fed into the school's Thermojet 3D Solid Objects Printer or the CAD/CAM milling machine. New visions of architecture materialize when ecological-environmental and advanced visualization merge in the media itself. This architecture is not merely visual or virtual: it is real.

Six sections take the reader through the history and development of Genetic Architecture as a theory and an instructional method. Among the other topics, all richly illustrated, the book's contributors touch on ecology and construction, biomimetic development of forms, digital visualization and machine production. Contributors include Alberto T. Estevez, Alfons Puigarnau, Ignasi Perez Arnal, Dennis Dollens, Alfonso Perez-Mendez, Joaquim Ruiz Millet and Ana Planella.

Dennis Dollens is the author and editor of six books about digital architecture and design, including D2A-Digital to Analog, Exodesic, and The TumbleTruss Project. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico and teaches in the genetic architecture program in Barcelona.

Book Description

Genetic Architectures II comprises some of the contributions resulting from new lines of research in the Masters and Doctoral programs in Genetic Architectures, founded by Alberto T. Estevez in 2000 at ESARQ, Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (UIC) in Barcelona. For this second volume, whose contents coincide with the VIII Annual Foro de la ESARQ, entitled "Biomorphic Architecture" and directed by Karl S. Chu, we have collected essays by professors in the program: Karl S. Chu, Evan Douglis, Alberto T. Estevez, Sylvia Felipe, Achim Menges, Ignasi Perez Arnal, Francois Roche, Jordi Truco, and Mike Weinstock. Genetic Architectures II also presents examples from ESARQ's annual exposition, which recognizes projects and research undertaken during the year; and, at the same time, the book illustrates ESARQ's commitment to the technology essential to this work.

We already confront the reality that digital organicism is the architectural vanguard of the twenty-first century; digital organicism is the new architecture of the third millennium-as illustrated throughout this book.

Book Description

Astrological expert Joyce Jillson shows readers how to uncover their dog's sun signs and understand their cosmic characteristics.

Book Description

In the well-established aviation system, the importance of sound human factors practice, based on good aviation psychology research, is obvious from those incidents and accidents resulting from its neglect.

This carefully structured book presents an up-to-date review of the main areas in the field of Aviation Psychology. It contains current thinking mainly from Europe, but with input from Australia and North America, from specialists involved in research, training and operational practice. Spanning six parts, the book covers: Human Engineering, Occupational Demands, Selection of Aviation Personnel, Human Factors Training, Clinical Psychology, Accident Investigation and Prevention.

Looking at the six parts - in human engineering, the reader learns about human-centered automation as well as human factors issues in aircraft certification. Results derived by job analysis methods are presented in the next part and serve as basic information in the design of selection and training programs. In selection, computerized testing or behaviour-oriented assessments are challenging approaches for personnel recruitment. Cost-benefit analyses in selection reveal convincing results, enabling organizations to save huge amounts of inappropriate training investment by the application of proper selection tests. The NOTECHS method is described which helps to assess CRM capabilities in training and can also be used to measure training effects in systematic validation studies. Although operational personnel in aviation are usually able to cope with stress more efficiently than other occupational groups, individual problems might develop as reactions to traumatic influences. Either a psychological evaluation or a proper treatment or both is then required as described in the "Clinical Psychology" part of the book.

The readership includes: aviation psychologists and flight surgeons, training, selection and recruitment specialists, instructor pilots, CRM facilitators, personnel managers, accident investigators, safety pilots, air traffic controllers, aircraft engineers and those dealing with human-machine interfaces.

Average customer rating:

Gorgeous series

Tomatoes (A country garden cookbook)
Jesse Ziff Cool
Manufacturer: Unknown
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Baking | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books
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Apples: A Country Garden Cookbook

ASIN: 0002553430

Book Description

A beautifully photographed book demonstrating the versatility of the tomato.

Customer Reviews:

Gorgeous series.......2003-11-24

I own this and all the Country Garden series of cookbooks. They are all visually gorgeous, and all written by professional chefs. Each book surrounds a featured ingredient which is seasonal. I must admit that many of the recipes could be considered "chi-chi," but for cookbook collectors, this series is really wonderful. I'm sorry they stopped adding to these books, and very sorry that they are going out of print.

Onions: A Country Garden Cookbook (Country Garden Cookbooks)

Average customer rating:

Gorgeous series

Onions: A Country Garden Cookbook (Country Garden Cookbooks)
Jesse Ziff Cool
Manufacturer: Unknown
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Baking | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0002554526

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Gorgeous series.......2003-11-25

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Gorgeous series

Herbs: Country Garden Cookbook
Rosalind Creasy
Manufacturer: Morrow Cookbooks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0002554534

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Gorgeous series.......2003-11-25

Average customer rating:

Gorgeous series

Lemons: A Country Garden Cookbook
Christopher Idone
Manufacturer: Unknown
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0002551659

Book Description

Beautifully designed and exquisitely photographed, this unique series showcases sensational recipes that exhibit the wonderful versatility of fruits and vegetables, fresh from the garden or greengrocer's basket.

Customer Reviews:

Gorgeous series.......2003-11-24

Potatoes: A Country Garden Cookbook (Country Garden Cookbooks)

Average customer rating:

Gorgeous series

Potatoes: A Country Garden Cookbook (Country Garden Cookbooks)
Maggie Waldron
Manufacturer: Unknown
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Cooking, Food & Wine | Subjects | Books

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Gorgeous series.......2003-11-25

Berries: A Country Garden Cookbook (A country garden cookbook)

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Berries: A Country Garden Cookbook (A country garden cookbook)
Sharon Kramis
Manufacturer: Collins Pub San Francisco
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Binding: Hardcover

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Average customer rating:

Gorgeous series

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Christopher Idone
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Gorgeous series.......2003-11-24

Cooking with Oats: Oat Bran, Oatmeal, and More / Storey Country Wisdom Bulletin A-125 (Storey/Garden Way Publishing Bulletin, a-125)

Average customer rating:

Cooking with Oats: Oat Bran, Oatmeal, and More / Storey Country Wisdom Bulletin A-125 (Storey/Garden Way Publishing Bulletin, a-125)
Cornelia M. Parkinson
Manufacturer: Storey Publishing, LLC
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ASIN: 0882666746

Book Description

Since 1973, Storey's Country Wisdom Bulletins have offered practical, hands-on instructions designed to help readers master dozens of country living skills quickly and easily. There are now more than 170 titles in this series, and their remarkable popularity reflects the common desire of country and city dwellers alike to cultivate personal independence in everyday life.

Making Quick Breads: Storey Country Wisdom Bulletin A-135 (Storey/Garden Way Publishing Bulletin ; a-135)

Average customer rating:

I expected more.
Beyond banana bread

Making Quick Breads: Storey Country Wisdom Bulletin A-135 (Storey/Garden Way Publishing Bulletin ; a-135)
Barbara Karoff
Manufacturer: Storey Publishing, LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Customer Reviews:

I expected more........2007-05-13

It is just not much of a book. It has two variations of the same bread repeated twenty times. Check your old "Betty Crocker Cook Book".

Beyond banana bread.......2003-05-02

If you have ever made banana bread, you can bake the recipes in this book. For the novice, Karoff gives advice for getting it right. She also offers the more adventurous a basic recipe with guidelines for successful experimentation. Most of these recipes also make excellent muffins (and other shapes) with cooking time adjustments.

Quick breads rise using baking powder or soda (meaning no kneading and rising) and they offer some of the easiest baking out there. They need not be relegated to breakfast or dessert, either. There is a section on savory quick breads that would be appropriate alongside soups or entrees. Take a quick bread to your next gathering and you may well receive more credit than is due!

Book Description

The rich soil of Northern California's wine country produces more than just distinctive grapes and flavorful wines. The Mediterranean climate has also been put to good use to create stunning garden designs at wineries and visitor destinations throughout the region. In BEAUTIFUL GARDENS OF THE WINE COUNTRY, author Jennifer Barry and world-renowned travel photographer Robert Holmes present a beautiful and serene collection of words and photographs featuring the valley's glorious spectrum of gardens. Showcasing unusual garden themes and creative use of water, fountains, and sculptures, this small-scale coffee-table book is a fount of inspiration for home gardeners as well as a precious keepsake for wine country aficionados. Distinctive botanical designs include formal rose gardens, lavender fields, classical Japanese gardens, and organic fruit, flower, and vegetable gardens, offering a glimpse into the rich cultural heritage of this fertile locale.

Customer Reviews:

Fabulous biography about a not very likeable person.......2000-03-21

I found the biog hard to put down, unlike White's fiction which I find easy to put down! Marr has written a scholarly yet entertaining biography, and you really feel you come to know something about an Australian icon - our only Nobel laureate in literature.

In everything i have read (including White's own portrait of himself, Flaws In The Glass) he comes across as a horrible man - a misogynist, but with some political principles with which I might agree.

Nevertheless, that is not the point of literature, or art, to be loved by one and all. White's voice certainly added immensely to the cultural life of this country, and it is worth getting to know something about his life and works. Marr's book is an excellent place to start.

Average customer rating:

The Visionaries

Down And Out Down Under

perserverance is key.

The richest novel in the world

The amazing richness of literature and mysticism

Riders in the Chariot (New York Review Books Classics)
Patrick White
Manufacturer: NYRB Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

British | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books | 18th Century | 19th Century | 20th Century | Classics | Contemporary | General | Historical | Humor | Letters & Correspondence | Middle | Old | Poetry | Renaissance | Shakespeare | Short Stories
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Lilian's Story

ASIN: 1590170024
Release Date: 2002-04-30

Book Description

Patrick White's brilliant 1961 novel, set in an Australian suburb, intertwines four deeply different lives. An Aborigine artist, a Holocaust survivor, a beatific washerwoman, and a childlike heiress are each blessed—and stricken—with visionary experiences that may or may not allow them to transcend the machinations of their fellow men. Tender and lacerating, pure and profane, subtle and sweeping, Riders in the Chariot is one of the Nobel Prize winner's boldest books.

Customer Reviews:

The Visionaries.......2007-08-18

What makes a great novel? Many things, but among them I would certainly list Scale, Characters, and Moral Vision. All three of these qualities are to be found in this towering novel by Patrick White. It is the first book by the Nobel laureate that I have encountered; it will certainly not be the last.

This is a long book (640 pages), but a very easy one to read. In any case, when speaking of scale, physical length is less important than breadth of implication. White concentrates on a small group of people living on the outskirts of Sydney after WW2, but makes them seem emblematic of the entire continent. There is also a wide range of origin and social class; the characters include the last survivor of a once-rich aristocratic family, a German Jewish professor fleeing the Holocaust, a poor washerwoman who emigrated from England as a child, and a half-aboriginal painter. Since each character is given almost 100 pages of back-story, the novel is by no means confined in place or period either; the section set in Germany between the wars can hold its own with the best Holocaust writing anywhere, with particular insights into Jewish social, intellectual, and spiritual life. But the most important aspect of the book's scale is the feeling held by each of the four major characters that the universe is an immensely greater place than anything they may see around them.

White has the great gift of loving his characters. Each of the four is something of an outcast. Miss Hare, the faded aristocrat, is clearly mad; Himmelfarb, the professor, now chooses to work in a menial job, without possessions or other signs of status; Mrs. Godbold, the washerwoman, lives with her many daughters in a tumble-down shack; Alf Dubbo, the half-caste painter, works by day as a janitor and is given to fits of drunkenness. And yet White writes so convincingly through the eyes of each that we do more than feel sympathy for them; we begin to see the others around them as impoverished of spirit, living only partial lives. White is brilliant in creating a gallery of semi-comic secondary characters -- some bad, some well-meaning, some merely lacking in imagination -- to set off the qualities of his principal quartet, but even these have dimension and are far from caricatures.

One of the curious aspects of the book is that the four characters hardly ever meet, although they recognize an immediate kinship when they do. For all four are religious visionaries. Their visions may occur only once or twice in their lives, but the image is the same for each: the approach of Ezekiel's fiery chariot, both wonderful and terrible. I can think of few books that are so successful at portraying the mystical dimension while being so firmly rooted in the mundane. This is clearly a religious book, but not at all a sectarian one. It is White's strength that he endows his visionaries with everyday failings, and gives each a very different religious background. Miss Hare's religion, if she has one, is a pantheism rooted in the plants and animals on her moldering estate. Himmelfarb has returned to Judaism only after years of secular life, and considers himself morally unworthy. Mrs. Godbold is a staunch evangelical, but her religion shows more in her practical kindnesses to others than in any doctrinal fundamentalism. And Alf Dubbo, though raised by a preacher and especially inspired by religious subjects, is dissolute and virtually autistic in his day to day life.

A fourth quality that I might have mentioned is Style. White's writing, as I say, is easy to read, but very varied and always appropriate to the tone of the moment. While he can neatly skewer the social pretensions of the Rosetrees (the employers of Himmelfarb and Alf), he can also shift to the kind of description that portrays everyday things as symbolic of eternal conflicts or reflections of the infinite. His descriptions of Alf Dubbo's paintings, for example, are equaled by no author I can think of except perhaps Chaim Potok in MY NAME IS ASHER LEV, in their ability to convey a truly incandescent artistic vision. Such mastery of style is essential because, as loners, his characters cannot interact much together in terms of everyday plot, and in narrative terms the concluding section of the book is less compelling than the long set-up. But where the characters do meet is in their common vision, their unspoken sense of rightness, and it is precisely in White's evocative language that this sounds, resonates, and resounds.

Down And Out Down Under.......2005-10-30

This is not a particularly cheery book. It deals with the lives of outcasts and what we today would, callously, call freaks. The book, while it does go into meticulous detail of the biographical material of the main characters' respective lives, is not primarily concerned with these elements. The book is centred around the visionary, otherworldly qualities of each, particularly a shared vision each of the four main characters has of a chariot mentioned in the book of Ezekiel.-This quality separates them from the world and people around them, which are clearly meant to be disparaged.-As Miss Hare cogitates in regard to the danger one of these normal people, Mrs Jolley: "But she did sense some danger to the incorporeal, the more significant part of her."-That significant part in all the four characters is the essential matter of the book.

Other people in the book are given to insubstantial matters, cruelty, and obliviousness, frequently rendered comically by White:

The other ladies glanced at her skin, which was white and almost unprotected, whereas they themselves had shaded their faces, with orange, with mauve, even with green, not so much to impress one another, as to give them the courage to confront themselves (p.323)

All very well. But it is this Manichean dualism between the saintly four characters and, well, everybody else which leads me to refrain from giving it five stars. Anyone who has encountered the world in its chaos of identities, acts of kindness, visionary aspects, thuggish and sadistic aspects knows that we all carry in us both the visionary, sensitive private individualism of the main characters, on the one hand, and the thuggish herd instinct of----everyone else in this book.

Still, it's well worth the read. White is a remarkable writer, and the work, despite my misgivings, is one every thoughtful person should not merely have on his or her bookshelf, but have read, from beginning to end. Its insights into prelinguistics subconscious perception are not to be surpassed---anywhere.

perserverance is key........2005-10-07

I must admit that I didn't' choose to read this book myself, it was placed on our reading list for Literature so it was with slight apprehension and curiousity that I approached White's nobel prize winning novel. Reading the first few chapters made me realize why it was a nobel prize worthy, White's style was so different and at times confusing - it had never been done, it was strange, so it won. Of course as i slowly ploughed my way through the eccentric shadows of Xanadu which was Ms. Hare's home I gradually grew to appreciate the novel.
The novel centres around four main protaganists in post WWII Australia: Ms. Hare, Alf Dubbo, Himmelfarb and Mrs. Godbold. All of whom in some way are seeking redemption as outsiders. His novel is strongly critical of our society and it's one of those novels that makes you ask rather than answer questions that it poses. It highlights the cruel abuse of Aborigines and Jews within our world, showing the perhaps inevitable traits of humanity, that any country at any time must inexplicably have a scapegoat to fall back on.
It's a powerful novel and although slightly relieved when I was finished I was glad that I had read it. Raising many questions about human nature, White is a skilled writer that doesn't reach the finish line in the biggest, most obvious path but takes his time, weaving subtly and skillfully through metaphors and symbols to take you by surprise, emotionally and mentally to the finish line.
However it is not for those without patience, but give it a go and I can guarantee you will be hooked after the first 70 pages.

The richest novel in the world.......2005-06-07

Riders in the Chariot, Patrick White's international superseller at the time, was born from an incident in the late 40s, when a taxi driver, demanding the full fare of the journey from Sydney's Central Station to Petty's Hotel, was refused by White and began screaming "Go back to Germany!" White later confessed: "I think it was this more than anything which persuaded me to write the novel Riders". Fortunately, such germ was the foundation of one, perhaps the greatest, of the 20th century literary monuments, dense as the greatest novels are, but fleshy in the end, too much indeed. It is a plotless novel-as are most works by White, and if there's a plot, its one of living and surviving. The novel traces the lives of the 4 characters from their origin to their ends (something White is an undoubtful master doing, and White puts his hand on marvellous devices of narration as stream of conscioussness, epiphanies and of course, the wonderful and hillarious use of adjectives, though sometimes the image, nearer to incongruency but finally well put, is difficult to convey.
The chariot, itself, was familiar to Blake, Ovid, the apocalyptic writers of the Bible and to Redon. In White's chariot, as David Marr reported, "the riders are those who have known illumination as he had experienced it in mystical ecsatsy, in creation, music", etc. White wrote, according to his letters (to his Viking editor Ben Huebsch in February 1959): "What I want to emphasise through my four "Riders" - an orthodox refugee intellectual Jew, a mad Erdgeist of an Australian spinster, an evangelical laundress, and a half-caste Aboriginal painter- is that all faiths, whether religious, humanistic, instinctive, or the creative artist's act of praise, are in fact one". And for example, is a brilliant detail that in general, the novel is a study of GOOD people pitted against EVIL; nowadays... how nice!
Riders in the Chariot is not a novel easy to read, neither meant to be read to relax. As one of the 40 best Australian books ever, it's a work of pleasure for the deep and restless mind. A novel written to music, something important to the writer and the reader, and like a baroque piece exhibiting a down-to-earth accumulation of detail, this work is a must for anyone interested in the best literature of the past century and an innovative psychological narrative art that, in the hands of this Australian Nobel Prize winner, soars to the highest ranks.

The amazing richness of literature and mysticism.......2005-04-21

About a quarter of the way into this book I realized I was reading a brilliant treatise on mystical theology written in the form of a novel. This is a magnificent piece of work that brings together several realms of meaning, various settings, and divergent attitudes and dispositions about what it means to be truly human and live among other humans. There are four major protagonists of widely differing backgrounds. Each represents a peculiar moral stance that makes them capable of some unexpected actions and disables them with regard to others. Most of the action takes place in and around Sydney, Australia, but there are "lead up" sections in England and Germany. Mary Hare is ugly, less than intelligent, and stark raving mad. She lives in a crumbling mansion and experiences difficulty in trying to communicate with other people. For her, words are fragile and sometimes breakable and people use them in cruel ways. Yet she is an attractive personality whom we come to like because she is described from the inside. That is, we know what she feels, suffers and, most of all, remembers. Himmelfarb is a German Jew, a brilliant professor of philosophy whose father inexplicably converts to Christianity, thereby causing his mother to fade slowly away from sadness and a sense of being betrayed and victimized. He escapes the "final solution" by immigrating to Australia and taking a meaningless job in a factory owned by another German Jew who has also "converted." Ruth Godbold, a saintly laundress who lives in a shed with four daughters and an abusive husband, communicates mainly through acts of kindness. She nurses Mary Hare during a long illness and takes care of Himmelfarb in his last agony when some redneck thugs at the factory try to crucify him. Alf Dubbo, a native Australian brought up by religious people whose religiosity is questionable, develops his talent at painting and communicates through art. His ability to make moral decisions is confounded by his early experience with the preacher who kept sticking his hand into Alf's trousers.

These four have little contact and less communication with each other. None of them understands what the others are saying, except in a pre-linguistic sense. At a certain level, they already know what the others are saying, but they know it on a non-conscious level, like the prophets of the Hebrew Bible (whence the book's title is derived).

These four major personages suffer physically and morally and profoundly. This book zeroes in on the reality of human suffering and shows that we suffer or cause others to suffer because of some flaw in our own characters, in the sense of Sophocles. This is not, of course, the "message" of the novel (novels don't have messages; we all know that). More importantly, we see throughout the book the collective and communitarian dimension of suffering and its intellectual connections to some prophetic books of the Old Testament that emphasize the unitary nature of humankind and the need for a "suffering servant" to atone and expiate for the sins of others.

As a prose stylist, Patrick White is impressive, maybe supreme. This is the most well written book I have read in many years. His sentences are beautifully fragmented and fractured. His language (use of adjectives, etc.) is extraordinarily rich. In fact, it is gorgeous. Words and ideas have colors and smells. He omits unnecessary direct-object pronouns and even definite articles. Even the sound of his prose is amazingly satisfying: he makes liberal use of alliteration, especially in initial consonants, but in other contexts as well. Figures and tropes abound, even zeugma. And finally, if anyone wants an example of a memorable sentence, let me offer this one from page 26:

Mrs. Hare had soon taken refuge from Mary in a rational kindness, with which she continued to deal her a series of savage blows during what passed for childhood.

German Images in Australian Literature from the 1940's to the 1980's (European University Studies Series XIV, Anglo-Saxon Language and Literature)

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German Images in Australian Literature from the 1940's to the 1980's (European University Studies Series XIV, Anglo-Saxon Language and Literature)
Irmtraud Petersson
Manufacturer: Peter Lang Pub Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Australia & New Zealand | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 3631422601

Life Is Not Black and White: 27 Lessons from a Funny, Flightless Bird at the Bottom of the Earth

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Life Is Not Black and White: 27 Lessons from a Funny, Flightless Bird at the Bottom of the Earth
Jonathan Chester , and Patrick Regan
Manufacturer: Andrews McMeel Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Photography | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

Nature & Wildlife | Photography | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0740772295

Mountie in Mukluks: The Arctic Adventures of Bill White

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THE WAY IT WAS: LIFE IN THE OLD NORTH
Mountie in Mukluks

Mountie in Mukluks: The Arctic Adventures of Bill White
Patrick White , and Bill White
Manufacturer: Harbour Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

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Canadian | Historical | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Polar Regions | Australia & Oceania | History | Subjects | Books

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

Essays & Travelogues | Reference & Tips | Travel | Subjects | Books

Arctic | Polar Regions | Travel | Subjects | Books

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General | Travel | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1550173529

Book Description

But readers of Mountie in Mukluks will soon realize they are in the presence of one of the most un-cop-like cops who ever built an igloo. And by the time they have finished they will never be able to think quite the same way about the fabled Redcoats, or life in the far north.
During the 1930s, Bill White gave up trapping and joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, volunteering for arctic service. Arctic life was so dodgy in those days of the Mad Trapper and The Lost Patrol, the force couldn't send you there against your will, so volunteering was the only way to get there. Bill started out crewing on the historic RCMP patrol ship St. Roch under the command of the legendary Captain Henry Larsen, but hungered for greater adventure and requested a posting ashore upon reaching Cambridge Bay.

Adventure he found: Mountie in Mukluks includes hair-raising accounts of a near-death experience under the ice on a frozen river; of a 1200-mile dog-sled chase after an arctic murderer; and of numerous fascinating encounters with shamans, telepathy and an Inuit way of life that has now vanished from the earth. White's absorbing oral accounts of life in the old north, molded into lively prose by Patrick White, place Mountie in Mukluks among classics of arctic literature like Kabloona by Gontran de Poncins and People of the Deer by Farley Mowat.

Mountie in Mukluks is sure to cause a stir among enthusiasts of police and Arctic lore. As a cop who chose to adopt a Native lifestyle and was honoured with his own Inuit name, Bill White makes a devastating critique of the white settler way of life and its red-coated enforcers who disdained the traditions of the Inuit while simultaneously relying on them for survival.

Customer Reviews:

THE WAY IT WAS: LIFE IN THE OLD NORTH.......2004-12-23

I have a whole passel of personal connections with this book. Not only did I once live on the arctic coast for several years, I've fished the mouth of the river that almost took Bill's life. I was still living in Toloyoak in 1974 when Bill White made his return trip to Cam. Bay after 40 years, though I didn't know it at the time. I've walked and crawled all over the St. Roch in its permanent berth at the Vancouver Maritime Museum and visited Pasley Bay on the Boothia Peninsula where it once overwintered in the ice. Thanks to James Eetoolook and Pat Lyall I've visited almost every landfall along the ice coast the St. Roch stopped into the summer of 1930.
Then, while living on the Sunshine Coast in 1975, the author's father, Howard White (they aren't related to Bill), loaned me a copy of Bill's original 175 page manuscript. I thought it a dry read, historically questionable in places and grossly over opinionated. In fact, when Bill asked me what I thought of it, I told him I figured his opinions were as valid as anybody else's'. Holy poop! "Opinions," he bellowed, and that was the end of that politically incorrect conversation.
Jim

LIFE IN THE OLD NORTH

"I never wanted to be a cop. Christ, I didn't want to spend my life handing out traffic tickets. I joined the RCMP so I could get up north. There was nothing more to it."
So opens this illuminating book about fours years in the life of Bill White, one of the most unlikely of cops ever to build an igloo.
Written entirely in the first person by Patrick White (no relation to Bill), this tale will captivate arctic buffs, RCMP enthusiasts, historians and everybody else interested in a first hand glimpse of "the best years of my life;" how it was in the central arctic in the early 1930s. Life in the old north.
"I decided to join up with an eye on getting to the Arctic as soon as possible." After basic training in Regina: "...really nothing more than a modified Boy Scouts program," Bill began his career herding naked Doukhobours and chasing bootleggers along the US border in Saskatchewan. He applied for arctic service and was transferred to Vancouver, there to await transport north.
Bill shipped out of Vancouver aboard the St. Roch under the command of the legendary Henry Larsen in June 1930, bound for the arctic.
The book dishes up a smorgasbord of written and visual delicacies (there are 80 some black and white photographs throughout); snapshots of the old police posts at Herschel Island, Baillie Island, Bernard Harbour, Coppermine and Cambridge Bay as the St. Roch flounders in frigid swells, scrapes through pack ice, bounces off reefs, dodges bergs and slams across sand bars.
Bill meets arctic veterans like trader Charlie Klengenberg and his son Patsy, Ikey Bolt who married Charlie's daughter Etna, Gjoa Haven Canalaska trader George Washington Porter, Tree River Hudson's Bay trader Otto Binder and Mrs. Pannigabluk Stefansson. He befriends Sam Carter, Mahik and L. A. Learmouth. In fact, he and Learmouth once liberated three quarts of alcohol from the compass of the good ship Maud, by then a half submerged derelict in Cambridge Bay, and the two'm ended up having a fine old time.
Learning to live in the country, Bill was taught how to build an igloo, hunt caribou and seals. He spent the better part of each summer in a fish camp at Wellington Bay. And he got to go trapping too, albeit illegally, bringing in $3,500.00 in white foxes one year; quite a boost to his $700.00 annual salary.
A census took him over 700 miles by dog team to count 750 northern folk widely scattered over a wide chunk of real estate. Another trip took him a thousand miles by dogs to retrieve a body and witnesses in an alleged murder case.
Returning south to another land and another life, Bill finally revisited Cambridge Bay in June of 1974, went fishing with Bill Lyall and had tea again with Angulalik and his old friend Mahik.
"On a windy autumn day, snow crunching underfoot, two active Mounties, a priest and two Inuit elders stood on Mount Pelly, the hill overlooking Cambridge Bay, with Bill's ashes." It was the fall of 2001. Constable Dean Larkin let the wind scatter Bill's mortal remains in the one place in the world where he had always felt he belonged. Bill White was home.
This may Patrick's White's first book but he's sure enough learned how to use his tools. Patrick has done a bang up job of rendering Bill's adventures imminently readable, historically sound and immensely enjoyable. Feet up beside the wood stove, Mountie in Mukluks was a fine trip for me.

Review by Jim Green

Mountie in Mukluks.......2004-10-22

This book is incredibly refreshing and honest. Finally, a man who is not afraid to speak the truth and who really immersed himself in the Inuk culture to be able to understand these Canadians. A book well worth buying as youw will want to read it over and over.

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Patrick White - A Life
David Marr
Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000KKBKOK

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Patrick White - A Life
David Marr
Manufacturer: Jonathan Cape
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000QRPZH0

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PATRICK WHITE A Life
David Marr
Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000OEACLY

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Patrick White, a Life
David Marr
Manufacturer: Alfred A. Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000ONTGMQ

Patrick White: A Life; Patrick White: Letters

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Patrick White: A Life; Patrick White: Letters
David Marr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0091832691

Product Description

A two-volume boxed set of "Patrick White: A Life" by David Marr and "Patrick White: Letters" edited by David Marr.

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