Control Your Personal Finances: A Practical Guide to Wealth Accumulation, Wise Use of Credit and Investment Decision Making in Seven Easy Lessons

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Control Your Personal Finances: A Practical Guide to Wealth Accumulation, Wise Use of Credit and Investment Decision Making in Seven Easy Lessons
Elindoro Suarez Rodriguez
Manufacturer: Finance Solutions
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Budgeting & Money Management | Personal Finance | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Credit Ratings & Repair | Personal Finance | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 096845240X

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Another one bit the dust.......2006-11-28

More than 200 men died in the coulees along the Little Big Horn River on June 25, 1876. One was George Armstrong Custer. Another was the only man at that time who had won two Congressional Medals of Honor, both for service in the American Civil War. That soldier was Thomas Ward Custer, the general's younger brother.
Much has been written about the general, about his youth and flamboyance during the Civil War, as well as about his controversial career in the West as an Indian fighter. In most of those stories, we learn that George wasn't the only Custer riding with the Seventh Cavalry. He had two brothers with him, both Tom and Boston, as well as some cousins and in-laws, some along more or less as tourists. Tom himself has never been written about in a book length treatment until now. The reason for that is simple enough. Although he was the first man to win two Medals of Honor, as far as history itself is concerned he was not a history maker. He was, as it were, along for the ride.
It was quite a ride, starting with his enlistment in the Army at the age of sixteen in 1861. He served for a while in the west, but was soon transferred to the east at his older brother's request. From then on, their careers were closely linked. Again at the general's request, after the Civil War ended Tom went over to the Seventh Cavalry, and ten years later he rode with it to the great Indian encampment where his life ended.
Tom was brave enough to win medals, but he was no saint. Alcohol got the best of him more than once, and he reputedly sired a boy out of wedlock. The author does a good job with the slim resources available to describe this soldier's life, but, perhaps because he was such a minor player in events and because those resources are so scarce, he has a harder time putting the flesh back on his bones (although the removal of that flesh by the victorious Sioux is spelled out in graphic detail). For those of you interested in all aspects of the Custer myth, this book offers you one more coulee to explore.

Tom Custer: It's about time........2002-11-20

Let me begin by saying I wrote the book-so I am a little biased. This started as my Master's thesis in history and I found it impossible to stop writing. It was very difficult and took a great deal of time-some ten years. I met a great many wonderful people and had a great time. I tried to tell a story of a man with many faults, but whose love of family overcame his weaknesses. It is a tale of courage, love, and sadness. Sadness for a great many people whose lives were destroyed by war. Is it the greatest book of all time, no, of course not. But I am proud of it and hope that it brings enjoyment to all who read it.

Book Description

Morley Nelson is one of the driving forces behind the wildly successful worlwide effort to save birds of prey from extinction. His television work with Disney, John Denver, Nell Newman, Vanessa Redgrave and Marlin Perkins helped bring the plight of the world's raptors into the national consciousness and in doing so fueled subsequent conservation efforts. His status among falconers and those concerned with the preservation of birds of prey is legendary. But his story is much more than this.

A decorated member of the Army's 10th Mountain Division, Nelson was wounded during the 10th's famed assault on Nazi positions in Italy's Appenine Mountains. He has traveled the world advising and teaching school children, Saudi kings, presidents, politicians and Hollywood celebrities about the beauty and power of the birds of prey that he loves. He has worked intimately with American business to show that saving raptors can be good for business. Most importantly, he has contributed mightily to the preservation of one of our nation's most beautiful resources. Morley Nelson is indeed an American hero. This is his story.

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About a gifted naturalist with a special love for raptors.......2003-01-06

Cool North Wind: Morley Nelson's Life With Birds Of Prey by Stephen Stuebner is the compelling story of Morley Nelson, a gifted naturalist with a special love for raptors, and a man whose work in falconry, nature films, raptor-rehabilitation, and the recovery endangered peregrine falcons (among other achievements), has long distinguished him as an exceptional and respected conservationist. Highly recommended reading for environmentalists and wildlife enthusiasts, this deftly written biography presents a complete picture of a World War II veteran, dedicated environmentalist, raptor expert, and truly remarkable man.

Wonderful, fast-paced story about an amazing man.......2002-12-22

I laughed, I cried; two thumbs up!

This is a fast-paced story about an amazing man who has, through hard work, tenacity, and strong vision, accomplished more in his life than most people ever will. The life lessons he learns are lessons for everyone, and his outlook on life and philosophy are words to live by.

From his boyhood on a North Dakota Farm, through fighting the Germans in the mountains as a ski trooper in WW II, his scientific exploits, flying falcons with the royal families of the Middle East and making movies with Walt Disney - raising a family all the while - Morley's life story is hard to put down.

The only improvement I could have asked for was a little tighter editing of an already-tightly written book. But the story is so strong, you'll revel in each moment regardless. Steubner deserves huge credit for capturing the essence of this great man.

A Cool North Wind.......2002-11-17

There is a great story in the life of Morley Nelson, and Steve Stuebner tells it well in this fascinating biography. Nelson has dedicated his life to the rehabilitation and protection of raptors--those big birds that are really into eating meat. When an eagle pierces Morley's chin through to the roof of his mouth with its talons, Morley reasons that the bird hadn't done it with malice. It had simply mistaken his tongue for a snack. This book is loaded with "bits" like this--on Morley's life as a film maker, conservationist, family man, and soldier. Stuebner deftly relates incidents from Morley's service in the 10th Mountain Division during WW II, his grievous personal losses, and his professional triumphs. This is a book that anybody--not just raptor wonks--can enjoy.

Book Description

Inspecting air conditioners can be challenging, so this book provides a step-by-step description of normal air conditioner operation before delving into components, conditions and inspection strategies. Differences and similarities between air conditioners and heat pumps are summarized to help inspectors distinguish between these systems that share many components but perform different tasks.

Book Description

As the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth, a short-lived but extraordinary cultural phenomenon spread throughout Europe and the United States-"Salomania." The term was coined when biblical bad girl Salome was resurrected from the Old Testament and reborn on the modern stage in Oscar Wilde's 1893 play Salome and in Richard Strauss's 1905 opera based on it. Salome quickly came to embody the turn-of-the-century concept of the femme fatale. She and the striptease Wilde created for her, "The Dance of the Seven Veils," soon captivated the popular imagination in performances on stages high and low, from the Metropolitan Opera to the Ziegfeld Follies. This book details for the first time the Salomania craze and four remarkable women who personified Salome and performed her seductive dance: Maud Allan, a Canadian modern dancer; Mata Hari, a Dutch spy; Ida Rubinstein, a Russian heiress; and French novelist Colette. Toni Bentley masterfully weaves the stories of these women together, showing how each embraced the persona of the femme fatale and transformed the misogynist idea of a dangerously sexual woman into a form of personal liberation. Bentley explores how Salome became a pop icon in Europe and America, how the real women who played her influenced the beginnings of modern dance, and how her striptease became in the twentieth century an act of glamorous empowerment and unlikely feminism. Sisters of Salome is a dramatic account of an ancient myth played out onstage and in real life, at the fascinating edge where sex and art, desire and decency, merge.

Customer Reviews:

An interesting slice of history.......2004-11-16

This is not really a book about dance. It's an informal work of history that focusses on 4 women who were prominent erotic dancers in the early 20th century, but the book sets out to describe the lives of these women in all their various aspects instead of just their dance careers. The common background for all 4 of these women is a peculiar cultural phenomenon, a widespread popular obsession (triggered by Wilde's play "Salome") with the dance of Salome. All 4 of these women exploited this Salome craze for their own advantage and self-aggrandizement, but in quite different ways (and often with tragic results). The book has a refreshingly informal style and the prose is direct and clear.

My kind of history.......2004-03-12

As a painter I've always loved the image of Salome, so emblematic of the fuzzy line between manipulation and exploitation (the line we walk so proficiently these days.)
I'd had a vague notion of these women who danced the part of Salome at the turn of the century (Maud Allen, Mata Hari, Ida Rubenstein and Colette) but I had no idea how fabulous and frankly whacked, they were. None of our Madonna's or Paris Hilton's has anything on these girls.
But the thing I loved most about this book is that though it is literate and historically informative, it still manages to be personal in a way unlikely for any historian. It's a story that pretty much had to be written by a woman not only with dance credentials (Toni Bentley danced for Balanchine for ten years and wrote what is considered to be the definitive book on what it's like to be a young dancer (Winter Season) but someone who understands the particular mix of art and exhibitionism that was called upon by these strange and remarkable women. A lovely book written with a light touch and a unique perspective. I look forward to Ms Bentley's next book.

If only I could give negative stars..........2003-10-26

While I agree with the other one-star review here that this book is not worth reading, what astonishes me is that the reviewer considers Bentley's book "a very scholarly history" when there is nothing scholarly about it. Bentley's narcissistic introduction and glamour shot on the book jacket reveal this to be little more than a vanity project. While the book has some usefulness in terms of providing details that aren't often found in dance histories about these women's lives, Bentley's purple prose makes it difficult to discern which details are accurate and which fell victim to her embellishment. A pastiche of factual but sensational details and farfetched comparisons and conclusions regarding the psychological and cultural implications of Salome, this book bears little resemblance to real contemporary dance scholarship. If it did, she would have engaged in the ongoing discussion of gaze theory and its advantages and disadvantages when applied to dance. OR, she would have discussed more deftly the role of exotic imagery in the age of late imperialism by way of Said's concept of orientalism and other subsequent postcolonial theory. OR, she would have utilized poststructuralist theory and considered how such acts of exhibitionism as striptease actually maintained dominant power structures. Instead, she falls victim to free associations that to some readers may appear like a kind of truth, but really are not. In one passage, Bentley ruminates on the significance of the veil, jumping from one culture and religion to another as if the symbolic and social meanings of "the veil" are universal: "In Eastern harems, women are veiled like nuns, while their bodies are receptacles for male desire. Veils conceal but are penetrable. Opaque, translucent, and diaphanous, they allow light to be filtered through the threads, building illusion while implying truth. They allow for fantasy and mystery and suggest the ultimate veiling-a naked woman still conceals the darkness where life begins. The hymen veils the womb, the womb veils the origin of life itself." The conflation of the veil and the woman below it with the hymen and the womb deploys the same kind of rhetoric 1970s feminist theory was guilty of, which essentialized "woman" as an archetype of fertility and sensuality. And sure, why not jump from Salome to nun to harem girl? Yeah, that's all the same thing. By the way, I thought we all learned in fifth grade science class that materials were either opaque, transparent, OR translucent. Something cannot be both opaque AND translucent. There's either light filtering through, or there's not, Ms. Bentley. So, yes, as you can see, Bentley's book has put me in a very cranky mood, precisely because on both a scholarly AND a writerly level, IT'S JUST PLAIN BAD.

By the way, one of the reviewers seemed impressed that Bentley's book was published by such a prestigious press as Yale U P. Look, if you want to read good and cutting edge dance scholarship, Yale is not the way to go. Check out the presses at Indiana U, Wesleyan, Routledge, or the University of California.

Also, a good general hint for discerning whether a text is "scholarly" or not--if the author continually refers to her subjects by their first names (i.e. "Maud" instead of "Allen"), chances are, it's not all that scholarly.

The Strange Origins of Striptease.......2002-07-27

Oscar Wilde is responsible for striptease. Well, not directly, perhaps, but there is a surprising connection drawn in _Sisters of Salome_ (Yale University Press) by Toni Bentley, an examination of four women who interpreted Salome around the turn of the last century. Wilde took his story from legend (not the Bible story), and invented the famous "Dance of the Seven Veils" for his French play _Salome_. It initiated the craze for "Salomania" and there was even a school for Salomes that churned out dancers to go into the variety halls. Bentley's introduction inserts herself into the history of striptease, and she gives a good account of ending her career as a ballerina and going onto the stage (just once?) as a stripper. She felt power; "... there was no victimization on either side of these footlights." It was a revelatory experience: "I was unmasked and, for a miraculous minute, thrilled in my body, unafraid of my life. I was in - for me - Paradise."

Her research into how striptease originated centered on four women who had initially interpreted to the theatrical Salome. Maudie Durant was the sister of a serial killer, and escaped to Europe and to the stage as Maud Allan as a way to free herself from disgrace. She became "the least dressed dancer of our time," and she then portrayed Salome in 1906. She became involved in a ridiculous trial which she lost in large part because it was shown that she knew what a clitoris was. Ida Rubenstein was the child of Russian aristocrats, and the only Salome here who had few worries about money. She liked expensive, self-aggrandizing shows and ended up derided for her vanity. She did, however, sponsor artists of real ability; Ravel composed _Bolero_ for her. Everyone knows the name of the spy Mata Hari, but everyone knows wrong. She performed all over Europe, and took lovers; she had a special weakness for those in uniform. As a result, she did take money for spying, but didn't do any. She was framed and executed in France in 1917. With Colette, perhaps Bentley is guilty of over-application of her theme, because Colette never played Salome, although she did once perform on the same billing as Mata Hari. Unlike the other three women profiled here, Colette had a genuinely happy and long life. She graduated from virgin bride to lesbian, to happily married housewife, although she did seduce a former husband's son. She used her success in scandals, including her stage nakedness, to become an author whose fiction and memoirs have inspired far more readers than just Bentley.

This is a book of a peculiar history, not only of four dancers, but of one period of the dance itself. None of them were very good dancers, but nakedness and scandal made up for that. All four reinvented themselves and used the Salome role for gains in power and money, although such gains were mostly temporary. None had a conventional life or marriage, and perhaps there is some sort of lesson in the sad ends most of them experienced. Bentley has not forced any didacticism from the four stories and her own. Her research and bibliography are good, and she has a light and amused way of telling the stories, full of detail. "Why did these women dance naked?" she asks, and the answers she gives, far from simple, but satisfying while undoubtedly incomplete, are wise and fun to read.

Toni Bentley triumphs again.......2002-07-06

With an intimate knowledge of dance, keen eye for historical detail, enticing premise, and droll prose (many turns of phrase made me grin), Toni Bentley has taken what could have been a bone-dry, pedantic topic and infused it with wit, humor, and rigorous scholarship. The result: one smart, sexy book about four sexual rebels. Here's hoping the success of "Sisters of Salome" brings "Winter Season," Ms. Bentley's haunting memoir of her Balanchine dancer days, back in print.

My Sister, My Spouse: A Biography of Lou Andreas-Salom-E (The Norton Library, N748)

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A woman to admire
A new approch to life.
A new approch to life.

My Sister, My Spouse: A Biography of Lou Andreas-Salom-E (The Norton Library, N748)
Heinz Frederick Peters
Manufacturer: W W Norton & Co Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

German | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0393007480

Customer Reviews:

A woman to admire.......2002-02-28

As a reader, I don't frequent the biography sections of bookstores. But I chose to buy and read this book, because Lou Salome's name was familiar to me from Irvin Yalom's book "When Nietzsce Wept". She was the infamous femme fatale who played a very signinficant role in lives of some of the most remarkable men, intellectuals of 19th-20th century Europe - Nietzsce and Rilke to name just two of them. Though she might have destroyed them emotionally, she also inspired and guided them intellectually and creatively. That's what makes this biography such a fascinating read - Lou Salome had a life filled with most exciting men and most extravagant choices. This book grabs you with its light writing style, eventful "plot", and interesting yet not overwhelming insights into the people and spirit of that era. This a book I enjoy to go back to, and re-read certain parts of it.

A new approch to life........2000-01-30

An excelent book, it reminded me that historical figures such as Rilke, Nietszche and Freud were also confronted with fear and angst. I read this book in spanish and I guess some of the things I did't like from it (like the translation of Rilke's poems) had to do with the translator, not the author. Thou, I found the book quite interesting; the life or Lou Andreas-Salomé (her courage to live by her rules and believes) has to be known by every person who feels every now and then that life is some place else.

A new approch to life........2000-01-30

Piotruszek: How Little Peter Got Into Heaven

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Piotruszek: How Little Peter Got Into Heaven
Salome. Sister Mary. O.S.F.
Manufacturer: Polanie Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000KCZI1E

My Sister, My Spouse A Biography of Lou Andreas-Salome

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My Sister, My Spouse A Biography of Lou Andreas-Salome
H. F. Peters
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company, Incorporated
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000MGR5NW

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Sisters of Salome
Toni Bentley
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000ORTCLM

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