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JFK for Beginners 2 Ed
Errol Selkirk
Manufacturer: Writers & Readers Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0863162770 |
Book Description
Fully revised, JFK for Beginners provides a comprehensive look at the life and principles of one of the 20th century's great politicians.
Book Description
When David Roberts came across a reference to four Russian sailors who had survived for six years on a barren Arctic island, he was incredulous. An expert on the literature of adventure, Roberts had never heard the story and doubted its veracity. His quest to find the true story turned into a near-obsession that culminated with his own journey to the same desolate island. In Four Against the Arctic Roberts shares the remarkable story that he discovered, perhaps the most amazing survival tale ever recorded.
In 1743 a Russian ship bound for Arctic walrus-hunting grounds was blown off course and trapped in ice off the coast of Svalbard (Spitzbergen). Four sailors went ashore with only two days' supplies to look for an abandoned hut they knew about on the island. They found it and returned to tell their shipmates the good news, only to find that their ship had vanished, apparently crushed and sunk by the ice.
The men survived more than six years until another ship blown off course rescued them. During that time they made a bow and arrows from driftwood (Svalbard has no trees) and killed nine polar bears in self-defense. They survived largely on reindeer meat, killing 250 of the animals during their ordeal.
Fascinated as he was by this remarkable story, Roberts wondered how it had dwindled into obscurity. For two years he researched the tale in libraries and archives in the United States, France, and Russia. In Russia he traveled to the sailors' hometown, where he met the last survivors of their families, who knew the story from an oral tradition passed down for more than 250 years. Finally, with three companions he organized an expedition to the barren island of Edgeøya in southeast Svalbard, where he spent three weeks looking for remnants of the sailors' lost hut and walking the shores while pondering the men's astonishing survival.
Four Against the Arctic is a riveting book about man versus nature and a delightfully engaging journey deep into an obsession with historical rediscovery. But it is more even than that: It is a meditation on the genius of survival against impossible odds that makes a story so inspirational that it still fires the imagination centuries later.
Customer Reviews:
Decptively titled, yet still a good book.......2007-08-28
Note: this review is based on the audio book. I have not read the paper version.
I agree this book was deceptively titled and marketed as another pure frozen wilderness survival story, yet in its own right (and once I had identified the book's real purpose), "Four Against the Arctic" is a captivating story of world travel, historical obsession, devoted research, and yes, an amazing if not scantily documented survival story in the arctic. Admittedly, I imagine the book would not have sold as well if the cover gave a more accurate description of its contents. If you are looking for a great survival story at the end of the earth that is surprisingly well-documented, I would recommend Shackleton's adventure as written up in "Endurance" by Alfred Lansing. David Roberts' book, "Four Against the Arctic," takes on a tone resembling (to this reviewer) that of Simon Wincester's "The Professor and the Madman", with just enough details of the pumori sailors' adventure to qualify the book simultaneously as a survival story. Roberts' book also proves to be a decent regional history from around the tenth century to the present of the Arctic family of islands that serve as the setting for the pumori adventure.
While listening to the audio book, I noted to myself how beneficial it would have been to have the paper version in hand so that I could consult the maps I assumed would be included. Though I now see some reviewer's criticisms of the paper version for not including enough maps. While I agree that Roberts takes some tangents in his narrative which distract the reader from the real story, those portions of the book can be skipped or skimmed without losing the flow of the story.
"Four Against the Arctic," read in proper context and with appropriate expectations as to its intent, is an engaging and exciting story of a man's obsession for getting to the truth of a story that at first hearing seems to be only a result of the exaggeration of oral history. Yet truth is often grander than fiction.
An absolute waste........2007-08-19
Only about 1/4 of this book is about the Russians shipwrecked for 6 years. The rest is about the story of researching the Russians. Roberts has nothing but vitriol for authors who have come before him. Roberts' way of detailing his research is so painstakingly boring that you'll think you're reading an accounting textbook. If Roberts sent a FAX to someone seeking the translation of a map, he'll not only tell you about the FAX but how fast he received a reply. Adventure has here been turned into how words have been translated into different languages and lost their original meaning. Of the dozens of Arctic and Antarctic survival books available this is among the worst.
Somewhat Interesting Book with a Misleading Title.......2007-05-18
If you were to go by the title and the summary on the back of the book, you would believe that you were getting this great long story about the four people who lived on an Arctic island for six years. Now that would have been a great book!
But what we get instead is the tale of Roberts' search for information about that tale of survival, which is something completely different. We hear about his exhausting search through libraries here and in Russia in minute detail. We get the run-down of every person he hires to help him with his search. Every hoop the Russian government makes him jump through.
It was kind of interesting to me anyway, because I would like to write a book so I paid attention to the process he went through. But I had thought this would be a good book for my father--NO WAY! He would have been bored to death by Roberts' literary exploits.
He does include as much of the story of the four men as he can figure out, which isn't all that much, and certainly not an entire novel-worth. But in the book he does detail how much money he spent researching the story so it isn't that surprising that he wrote this book anyway. So we learn about the islands area and surviving in the Arctic wilderness somewhat.
I just wish the title wasn't so misleading. It should be: "Searching For an Arctic Survival Story in Russia."
History as detective story.......2006-12-22
In 1743, a Russian ship was blown off course near Spitsbergen in the Arctic Sea north of Norway. While four men searched for a hut built on the island by a previous hunting party, the ship was blown away from the island and sunk by the ice. The four men were now stranded on the island. The men somehow survived for the next six years before being rescued.
When author David Roberts, who considers himself experienced in surviving in rough conditions, comes across a reference to this story, he is incredulous and instantly intrigued. And thus begins his detective story tracking down all he can learn about the men and their ordeal, and finally going to the island himself in search of the hut the men lived in or anything else that might tie the men to the island and thus make the story provably true. There are all kinds of twists and turns, from maddening unexplained details in the printed source of the account (two of the survivors were interviewed a few months after they returned and a book was written from this interview) to the bureaucratic red tape needed to be waded through to get to Spitsbergen, and Roberts relates them all fascinatingly. He finally discovers ruins of an 18th-century hut on Halfmoon Island that he acknowledges MIGHT be the same the men lived in during their 6-year ordeal. It's an almost unbelievable story and Roberts, by becoming a part of it, in a sense, makes it truly compelling. Anyone who likes a good detective story as well as true accounts of historical events will enjoy this book immensely.
Not enough information for a book.......2006-05-14
This is an amazing story. However, most of the book is about writing the book. I don't care who he spoke to and where he read things. He should just tell the story. However, there isn't enough material for a book. Quite a disappointment.
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Guide To The PCAOB Internal Control Standard
A. Wayne Avellanet
Manufacturer: Warren Gorham & Lamont
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0791353168 |
Customer Reviews:
Museum rarities in a book.......2007-03-22
100 Greatest Comic Books100 Greatest American Currency Notes: The Stories Behind The Most Colonial, Confederate, Federal, Obsolete, and Private American Notes
I found this book to be a very interesting read. This book should be in every numismatist book collection. The updated version is a plus, what with the constant fluctuation of prices and weekly auction sales. Even top coin conventions are referencing this book when rare coins are on display and showcased. It was neat to see the "number 52 listed coin" at the recent Long Beach Coin Show. It put things into more perspective for me.. just a little bit more tangible that these coins "really" exist and can be viewed from time to time. Whitman also has top 100 lists for comic books and paper money that are very informative and fun to read.
It would have been nice to see the published coins in their encapsulated form (if slabbed)in my opinion. Overall an awesome coffee table book.
100 Greatest U.S. Coins.......2007-03-21
Just an incredible book. Beautiful color pictures and very interesting information on each coin. A complete history on each coin, market value and a very detailed description of each coin. This book isn't just for coin collectors. This book is for anyone who has an interest in the history of U.S. coins. A truly excellent addition to anyone's library.
Perfect for any coin lover.......2007-01-18
My husband dabbles in coin collecting and while Christmas shopping for something coin-related for him at Amazon.com I found a review of this book that sold me. When my husband opened the gift he was thrilled, saying "this is exactly the kind of book I love!" As a long-time admirer of the beauty in coins, not just the collectability, he is in seventh heaven when perusing the pages of this well-written and beautifully photographed book.I would highly recommend it for anyone with an interest in coins.
Worth every "penny".......2005-03-06
Pardon the pun but I couldn't help it. Why Amazon shows this as a just-released book is odd; I saw it in a bookstore some time ago. It is, without a doubt, one of the most beautifully realized works to appear in some time. Its 200 pages are divided into description and a stunning photograph. The book appeals to all levels.
At a dinner party its placement on the coffee table is sure to engender conversation..."May I top off your drink while we review the Earring Dollar?" As a historical tome it presents the social, political and economic forces at work when these were minted. And for the coin lover it is pure "gold", a work that is simultaneously interesting, informative and pleasing to the eye.
The list, from a survey of the Professional Numismatists Guild, includes some well-known and some not so popular coins. One may argue with the list but it was composed by the best experts in the field and based on a criterion the uninitiated cannot understand. Of course there is the 1804 Silver Dollar (which we now know was not even minted in that year). There is also (in my opinion) an abundance of gold vs silver and copper. Yes, they are stunning coins and yes they are exorbitantly priced but they are not as well known. How many folks, for example, are aware that a four dollar gold piece was once issued?
Needless to say, the coins presented here are beyond the reach of the ordinary layman - or even the extraordinary one in some cases. But you can look and dream to your heart's content with this edition.
Amazon.com
Delicately pretty florals adorn boxes, plates, a birdhouse, and a floorcloth in this easy-to-follow guide. Each of the 10 projects features a complete pattern template, a full-color photo of every step, and a color-keyed chart of all the required paints. The coverage of general techniques is quite brief, but the individual project how-tos explain the specifics of rendering asters, daisies, tulips, chamomile, thyme, apple blossoms, pansies, lilacs, poinsettias, holly, and fruits, plus foliage, branches, plaids, and wicker. Decorative painting naturally complements a country-style decor, and the items demonstrated here would make attractive accessories for such a setting. A glossary, source list, and small gallery of other painted objects round out the presentation. --Amy Handy
Book Description
If you love to paint flowers and fruits, you'll adore the ten projects in this book. Painting Blooms & Blossoms features the fresh, easy-to-learn style of one of today's most popular teaching and design teams, Judy Diephouse and Lynne Deptula. Just follow their friendly, step-by-step instructions to create elegant birdhouses, baskets, floorcloths, recipe boxes and more. You can even mix and match these pretty motifs to create your own original designs!
Book Description
From an exceptional collection of outstanding examples of German ironwork comes this rich source of royalty-free images for artists and craftspeople. More than 270 illustrations depict a wide range of magnificent ironwork from the city of Düsseldorf, with finely rendered examples of the craft ranging from elaborate castle gates to ornate weather vanes.
Book Description
From acclaimed designer and art therapist Lucia Capacchione comes a practical and sensitive guide to sharing our mind, body, and spirit with our own feelings.
We cannot control our emotions; however, unless we recognize and express them, they can end up controlling us. The author of ten self-help classics, including Recovery of Your Inner Child and The Power of Your Other Hand, Lucia Capacchione now introduces us to the methods she has developed in workshops and with private clients for achieving an emotional equilibrium through artistic expression.
It is only through letting our emotions come forth and understanding them that we can further the process of self-acceptance and healing. The simple exercises outlined by Capacchione teach us to express pent-up anger by drumming, release hurt feelings by molding clay, and contact our inner child by writing with our non-dominant hand. Clearly, self-discovery has no limits.
Illustrated throughout with art therapy projects of her clients and rich with inspiring stories of personal triumph, Living with Feeling presents the key to making peace with our emotions by giving them a voice and the power of creative expression. Bibliography. Notes. Index.
Customer Reviews:
Good practical book for learning to work with feeling through artistic expression.......2007-02-03
This is a very practical book for working with feelings in a non-cognitive way. It is especially geared toward reclaiming buried feelings through the use of artistic expression. It contains many useful activities using a variety of mediums and for many people this type of work is quite powerful. I work in the psychology field and while I don't focus on this area as a specialty, I have witnessed the power of these techniques first hand. These ideas have also been useful to me in my own self-development work.
Living With What...?.......2002-04-30
If you were raised, as I was, with parents who believed it was simply not all right to feel certain feelings; then, as I have, you will find this book liberating and very helpful. After reading the book, I wanted to particapate in a workshop session based on these writing and lead by the author. Because it took place with art therapy students at a graduate school in New York, NY where I live and practice psychotherapy, I was able to attend. What happened during the workshop class seemed nothing short of amazing as everybody in the group discussed their experience of new feelings while doing exercises from the book. Being given access to new parts of our feelingful life is a very useful gift -- that's what this book delivers!
Dr. Capacchione vividly describes the nine different areas of feeling and put forth ways that each of us, through simple, doable, exercises might bring forth those feelings in our own experience. I realized, while working with the ideas in this book, how I have avoided experiencing certain feelings that I surely must be having during a work day. But, why was I not able to feel all my feeling, all the time, and use the whole range of them to construct a better way of living? Dr. Capacchione's has written a guidebook for living in a new way, for engaging in a new process which is constructive and developmental in core ways .
Like many baby boomers, I, too, was trained from early childhood that any sign of certain feelings; curiosity (killed the cat), anger (bad), self interest (selfish), thoughtfulness (sullen) would make me into a "not nice person". This old notion from my youth, methodically suppressing and repressing whole areas of feelings, within me, in order to be a 'nice' person, became a very bottled-up, unhealthy way to live. It has become clear to me from reading this book that my living must include the art of feeling as I go into the fullness of adulthood and maturation.
The good news is that the work of learning to live with feelings is not too difficult. In fact, a lot of feelings are just plain fun, as I think you'll find this book to be. Take heart. Living life more fully and more naturally will bring about change for the better. This wonderful book has opened up a whole new area of understanding and healthy expression for me, my colleagues, students and patients. I highly recommended it to you. Marilyn H. Hamlin, PhD.
A Unique, Complete, and Effective Approach to Emotions Work.......2002-04-27
This is like having a series of workshops in a book. One can have his own workshop experience in whatever arts media and feelings arena he desires. Capacchione invites, indeed encourages the reader to experience, accept and express his emotions using an entire menu of sensory, experiential exercises. Offered for our pleasure are drawing, collage, painting, clay, music, dance, mask making and voice dialog. She explains the positive outcomes of using arts media to express feelings, useful examples from her workshops participants and invaluable resources for further study. This author is an artist with a background in psychology. She has done an extensive amount of work in the expressive arts field, including authoring many self-help books in this genre. I found this book to be a very positive, hands-on tool to use myself and to use with my clients.
What we all need to help us with the turmoil of last year.......2002-04-26
Lucia Capacchione uses all of the artistic modalities to touch those emotions which are often difficult to express. She leads the reader through a series of easy to follow directions and exercises which helps you tap into emotions and then interpret your own words and pictures. Whether you are an artist or a novice, you will be guided through this self discovery process and given samples and testimonials along the way. Capacchione helps you capture, express and understand the your feelings which will release you and allow you to move on. I loved the format of her books, unlike most of the therapuetic books on the market, she offers you exercises that you can do without needing an instructor, follow up projects to expand the process and sample drawings and stories which anyone can relate to. If you are still feeling the effects of the 9-11, this book allows you to process those emotions in the privacy of your own home.
old concepts presented without feeling.......2002-01-02
Lucia Cappachione has written a number of reasonably good books for the popular press over the past decades-- unfortunately, this newest book indicates that she has nothing left to say that is new or innovative. The exercises and examples are tired and over-used and are not "pioneering" as she claims. I am disappointed that a fine publisher like Tarcher fell for this material and added it to their line of self-help books.
The reader who is looking for something substantial on how art taps emotions might look to Pat Allen's Art is a Way of Knowing. Living with Feeling lacks both depth and feeling and substance. I hope that Cappachione will someday take a risk and really dig down deep for some new material that will help readers once again use art as healing in a meaningful way and that she will quit rushing to get another book out onto the shelves just to make a quick sale.
Book Description
A leading literary critic-and the author of World of Our Fathers-looks back on his life from the early 1930s through the 1970s. A perceptive account of Howe's intellectual growth. Index.
Customer Reviews:
The most interesting intellectual biography I have read........2005-05-26
This is a superb work examining post-war ideology and political and social thought in the United States. Howe writes with authority as someone who not only watched Socialism evolve and ultimately decline, he also offers a marvellous vantage point for those of us who are fascinated by the rise and fall of American liberalism. You can understand how events both foreign and domestic altered the thinking of so many members of the "New York School" who remain salient and even sagacious voices in modern America: Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer, Irving Kristol among others. Howe takes you through conversations with Lionel Trilling and Hannah Arendt and you feel as you "listen" that these giants of post-war thought are just a little more human and familiar. In my opinion, that is a gift. There is also a wonderful moment where Howe speaks of discovering the fictional work of Isaac Bashevis Singer while editing a Yiddish literary anthology in the early 1950's. What a discovery! If you have not read either Singer's novels or stories, do!
If you are an aspiring academic or life-long student, Howe's peregrinations through the university environment are thought provoking and his engagement with the New Left vanguard in the 1960's expresses the cultural and intellectual divide between older Leftists (some loyal, some not) and their youthful counterparts. For example, men like Howe found it difficult to relate to the privileged "bourgeoisie" reformism of young lions like Tom Hayden when his own generation had seen first hand the depradations of working poverty. Irving Kristol, notably, has written about how poverty inspired he and his comrades to work harder to pursue and receive the blessings of the system. Kristol has noted, as has Glazer, that their generation saw opportunity in the American business and intellectual communities and pursued it finding redemption in the ability to work toward success. This is borne out by Howe who observes the transition from ther pre-WWII anti-Semitism in higher education toward the more egalitarian epoch that began in the early 1950's.
This is engaging dialogue and I say "dialogue" because Howe has a discursive style prompting you to think out loud and to wish (I did) that the professor was still with us to field questions. I would also add that for liberals like myself, this is an excellent tour of what liberal thought in America was and has become. I have often wished that some scholar would do for the Left what Russell Kirk did for conservatives and that is write an authoritative history making our intellectual "tradition" a heritage waiting to be claimed. As far as I have seen, this is one of the best books we have to do just that.
Whether you are a socialist, liberal, progressive, conservative or none of the above, stumble into this book if you've a moment. It is hardly dry but rather crackles with the wit and avuncularity of its author.
Five stars. This book is a rare breed of intellectual autobiography not to be missed for those who want to become more culturally literate.
A man of accomplishments .......2005-02-06
Irving Howe was a man of many accomplishments. He is perhaps best known for his political writing, his founding of Dissent magazine his championing of a Socialism which did not degenerate into radical hatred of the West and of America. For close to forty years he was at the intellectual center of American life. He was also a great Yiddishist one of the main people in presenting the Jewish secular writing of Eastern Europe to the world. And he was a skilled literary critic , a man of broad knowledge and careful judgment whose special understanding was the realm where politics and literature interconnected. As a writer he was clear and competent. This autobiography it seems to me has very much the flavor of his general critical writing. It seems to me it lacks a deeper dimension of confessional feeling that the greatest autobiographies have. But it is a very workmanlike, responsible piece of craftsmanship.
An intellectual odessy.......2003-08-02
Though my own inclinations, politically speaking, trend toward the right, I have nevertheless been impressed by the writings of Irving Howe, a socialist who denounced Stalinism, rejected much of the radicalism of the new left, and stayed true to his literary commitments. In short, Howe was a leftist who did not lose his capacity for self criticism. This memoir is a thoughtful look at his life and his relationships with a great many intellectuals of his time, mainly leftists or reformed communists. As the founder of Dissent magazine, Howe is a major force in the history of American letters. And though I still find his ideas on socialism left rather vague (to create a more just society? How, and what, would that be?)he is nevertheless one of the few leftist voices that does not seek to destroy tradition and the past in the name of constructing impossible utopian visions. He also does not have the knee jerk anti-Americanism so prevalent among his successors on the left. His memoir will take readers through his years as a student in New York and an emerging literary power in the world of New York intellectuals. He touches on writers such as Edmund Wilson, Alfred Kazin, Lionel Trilling (and many others), not to mention the editors at Partisan Review, for whom he wrote at one time. An interesting read.
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