The Big Book of Business Quotations: More than 5000 Indispensable Observations on the World of Commerce, Work, Finance and Management

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The Big Book of Business Quotations: More than 5000 Indispensable Observations on the World of Commerce, Work, Finance and Management
Perseus Publishing , Basic Books , and Perseus Publishing
Manufacturer: Perseus Books Group
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
General | Reference | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Quotations | Reference | Subjects | Books
General | Reference | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0738208485
Release Date: 2003-08-14

Book Description

From Peter Drucker to Jack Welch, Karl Marx to Groucho Marx, a compendium of the most memorable, insightful, and amusing quotes on business, management, leadership, and the economy.

Business is an indelible part of our culture, inspiring humor, deep insight, scorn, and even poetry. The Big Book of Business Quotations showcases more than five thousand short takes on business, covering the gamut from high finance to advertising, from the qualities of leadership to the impact of technology, ethics, strategy, and the will to succeed. From John D. Rockefeller to Will Rogers, Bella Abzug to Jack Welch, The Big Book of Business Quotations illuminates the art and folly of business through the observations, witticisms, and commentary of the writers, pundits, and pioneers who have left their mark on the world of business. The Big Book of Business Quotations offers a glimpse into this world that is at once amusing and incisive, and will serve as a handy reference for anyone looking to spice up conversation, reports, or presentations.

Book Description

The abundant weed growth in the humid and sub-humid tropics is one of the most serious constraints in producing crops, establishing pastures and maintaining water resources. This book presents historic and recent data on the biology of weeds and their control, within the general context of the husbandry of crops and the management of pastures and aquatic situations. The first seven chapters cover the nature of negative values of weeds, principles of weed ecology, weed control and establishment of farming and cropping systems in tropical regions, performance of crops in the tropical ecosystems, main weeds in the forest regions, and main weeds in the savannah regions. Chapter 8 deals with weed control methods in general and chapters 9 to 14 with weed control in various crops. Chapter 15 covers weeds and their control in pastures, and chapter 16 covers aquatic weed management.

Improving Weed Management (Plant Production and Protection Papers Number 44)

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Improving Weed Management (Plant Production and Protection Papers Number 44)
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Manufacturer: Unipub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

Horticulture | Agricultural Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 9251013357

Weed Management for Developing Countries

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Weed control book for agricultural workers & scientists

Weed Management for Developing Countries
R. Labrada , J. Caseley , and C. Parker
Manufacturer: Food & Agriculture Org
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Reference | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 9995128861

Customer Reviews:

Weed control book for agricultural workers & scientists.......1999-06-24

WEED MANAGEMENT FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

In the Preface to this completely volume it is pointed out that smallholder farmers may spend more than 40% of their labour on weeding, yet still suffer serious losses. The aim of the book is to ensure that the most relevant information on weed management is available to all involved in helping farmers around the world. The volume comprises 18 chapters offering the latest opinion and information on virtually all aspects of weed management. Early chapters explain the basic principles of weed ecology and biology, population dynamics and competition, as well as those of weed control in the context of integrated pest management. There are then short sections on 20 individual species or genera of relevance, with colour plates, information on biology, and specific control methods. Chapters on weed management practices discuss cultural, biological and chemical approaches in some detail, also aquatic weed management and the economic principles involved. Finally there are chapters on weed control in selected crops, grouped under cereals, legumes and vegetables, root and tuber crops, fruit, oil and fibre crops and industrial crops (sugar cane, coffee, tea, rubber and tobacco). There is a comprehensive species index. So far as possible emphasis has been placed on cultural and other non-chemical methods, but the chapter on chemical control provides a thorough up-to-date review of the topic and the possibilities for herbicide use are indicated wherever appropriate.

Book Description

Over the course of five decades, Dick Schaap carved out his own legend with his reportorial verve, his indefatigable curiosity, and his irrepressible wit. This memoir, the last book from the former ABC correspondent and host of ESPN's The Sports Reporters, recounts a charmed career in which he met almost everyone and saw almost everything. Schaap walked with sluggers and senators, cops and comedians, authors and actresses. The sights he saw and the words he heard are all here in stories that will make you laugh and cry.

With an introduction by Tuesdays with Morrie author Mitch Albom, Dick Schaap As Told To Dick Schaap offers the ultimate highlight reel of the last fifty years and makes a compelling case that if the revered journalist wasn't there to see it, it didn't happen.

Customer Reviews:

An Icon in Sports Writing.......2004-05-07

Dick Schaap was the Forrest Gump of sports. Always around fascinating personalities from the 50s to 2001, Dick Schaap had the reputation as quite the name dropper. And he acknowledges this participating in the joke early on. This book is an accumulation of anecdotes from his life. His early life and how he gravitates to sports journalism is quite interesting with many great stories of the writers he worked with like Jimmy Breslin and Thomas Wolfe. Then, he spends some time on well-known sports personalities. This was the weakest part of the book for me as he retells stories that further the reputation of already known figures. But the last third of the book turns into classic Dick Schaap with story after story written with his dry wit. I would strongly recommend this book if you have interest in sports or pop culture from the 60s on.

Schaap is the ultimate storyteller.......2003-11-17

Reading this book literally changed my life. I changed my major in college to journalism when i read this account of Schaap's life and his work. This book is a must read for sports lovers, people who enjoy great stories and people who love great writing.

Role-Model.......2002-09-27

I have to say that I thought this book was absolutley amazing. Not only was it funny and well written, but Dick Schapp has an uncanny way of giving you an unofficial history lesson while name-dropping the entire way. I think he has lived a unique and amazing life and the entire time I was reading I was inspired and dissapointed. I was inspired by Schapp's work ethic and attitude, and by the awesome people he was able to encounter, but I was also frustrated knowing that when I am a sportswriter in his position, I will not be able to work in the same sports world Schapp did. The Muhammad Ali's and the Jim Brown's and the Joe DiMaggio's of the world are gone now. It is a great read even if you aren't a sports fan. I recomend this to anyone who likes to laugh and enjoys excellent writting. My only regret is I will never get to meet the man himself. Though, I am sure he is mingling and name dropping in Heaven right now.

Six Degrees of Dick Schaap.......2002-03-30

Dick Schaap knew everyone, and everyone knew Dick Schaap. For further proof, one need only scroll down to the bottom of [amazon.com's] page about "Flashing Before My Eyes", to the section which reads: "Customers who bought titles by Dick Schaap also bought titles by these authors". There, you'll find the names Don Zimmer and Mike Lupica (two other recent sports autobiographies)... as well as Mario Batali, and J.K. Rowling. Clearly this was a man with distinct crossover appeal.

I regret that I cam to read "Flashing Before My Eyes" only after Mr. Schaap's untimely passing at the end of 2001, for it had been on my Wish List since its original publication date. "Flashing" is a witty, urbane read, a book you can polish off in a couple of hours and yet one whose anecdotes will remain with you for quite some time. Schaap's nature was to listen and observe, and after a half-century of journalism, he collected anecdotes about everyone from Bill Clinton to Bill Lee, Bob Knight to Bobby Kennedy, from Norman Mailer to Reggie Jackson.

Along the way are some terrific insights into writing and the state of journalism today, but never once will you feel as if you've been bashed over the head with the author's personal opinions. It's easy for a longtime sports figure to turn his autobiography into a political manifesto (after reading Nolan Ryan's book, I was surprised to learn that he wasn't running for office), but like Don Zimmer's book, Schaap's is remarkably issue-free and hatchet-free, wry but never bitter. He was a terrific observer, who saw everything but kvetched about little. And yet, you still get into Schaap's head and understand what he was really thinking at all times. He walked that fine line remarkable well.

If nothing else, read this book for the stories. The most revealing moments are the chapters on the Watts riots, Bobby Kennedy, and gay Olympic decathlete Tom Waddell. My favorite quote is from Reggie Jackson, as I once heard Schaap relate on ESPN Classic... "The magnitude of me". If Dick Schaap hadn't been so modest and self-deprecating, that line could well have been this book's title.

A story of a wonderful man and the life he lived..........2001-12-28

Dick Schaap (may he rest in peace)had speant his life writing about teh stories of other people. Finally, he got to sit down and look back on those memories while sharing them with anyone who reads this. Many people have said this book is one giant ego. How can you not like this book if you are a sports fan. Schaap takes you through all of his wonderful memories and tells you all about the people he knew. For half a century he did this, don't rag on him for finally writing his own autobiography. He always put others before himself, and now he is finally sharing a life time of memories in one book. I for one thought this book was great and i can't understand how someone could put this title to shame.

Book Description

A pink-skinned, fair-haired child of Canadian missionary parents, Daniel Coleman grew up with an ambivalent relationship to the country of his birth. He was clearly different from his Ethiopian playmates, but because he was born there and knew no other home, he was not completely foreign. Like the eucalyptus, a tree imported to Ethiopia from Australia in the late 19th century to solve a firewood shortage, he and his missionary family were naturalized transplants. As ferenjie, they endlessly negotiated between the culture they brought with them and the culture in which they lived. In The Scent of Eucalyptus, Coleman reflects on his experience of "in-between-ness" amid Ethiopia's violent political upheavals. His intelligent and finely crafted memoir begins in the early 1960s, during the reign of Haile Selassie. It spans the king's dramatic fall from power in 1974, the devastating famines of the mid-1970s and early 1980s, and Mengistu Haile Mariam's brutal 20-year dictatorship. Through memoir and reflection, The Scent of Eucalyptus gives a richly textured view of missionary culture that doesn't yield to black-and-white analysis. Coleman has stepped back from the evangelical Christianity of his parents, although he respects their faith and works. At the same time, with unique double vision, he shows their constant negotiation of in-between-ness. At a simple level, they translated between ferenjie time and Ethiopian time -- Ethiopians follow the Julian calendar, they count thirteen months in a year, and they number the hours of the day beginning at dawn. At a more profound level, the missionaries' religious certitude assumed their superiority over their Ethiopian neighbours. During the Marxist revolution, diplomatic immunity kept them safe when close Ethiopian friends were imprisoned, tortured, and executed because of their missionary connections. Even the famine relief that poured into Ethiopia was two-sided, giving Coleman and his family a taste of luxury in the midst of devastation.

Customer Reviews:

A Thoughtful Exploration of MK Identity.......2004-08-24

This thoughtful and beautifully written memoir by the son of SIM missionaries is much more than an autobiography, for it delves into the complexities of identity and self-understanding that are so much a part of the experience of many missionary children. After growing up in a small village and becoming fluent in Oromifa and Amharic, Daniel makes the transition involved in attending the mission boarding school in the capital city where his primary peers are now MKs like himself. During the tumultuous years of political upheaval following the overthrow of Haile Selassie in 1974, the rising hostility toward foreigners is directed on a number of occasions to Coleman and his pink skinned friends. The discovery that he will always be a "ferinjie," or foreigner, in the land of his birth is a shattering one that makes him determined to forge a new identity and to forsake his past when he returns to Canada at the age of seventeen. From that point on he tells people he is from "Wheatley, Ontario," his Dad's home town. The book begins when Coleman returns to the land of his birth after an absence of fourteen years. Now, as an academic, he reflects on how his identity, faith and outlook on cultures have been shaped by the formative experiences of his African past.

The eucalyptus symbolizes for Coleman the complex interplay of cultures. This tree, native to Australia, was transplanted to Ethiopia as a quick-growing source of firewood and building materials. Though a foreign specimen, it thrived and replaced much of the native vegetation. Like the eucalyptus, missionaries seek to flourish by negotiating between the culture they bring with them and the culture to which they have come. Coleman has an appreciation for the many facets of this interplay and is critical of some of the stereotypes of missionaries perpetuated by media and social scientists. His final chapter, "Babies in the Colonial Washtub" is a brilliant exploration of this complexity.

Coleman allows his readers to enter into his own struggle to affirm the same certainties about God that he imbibed from his family during his formative years. While not afraid to voice his doubts, he maintains a genuine admiration for his parents' and his Ethiopian friends' faith, sacrifice and commitment to their task.

This book is a delight to read. The author's masterful use of the English language applied to a subject that evokes deep emotion is engaging from the first page onward. Readers who are particularly interested in issues relating to the well-being of missionary children will find this extended case self-study to be very insightful.

Contrasting The Zanzibar Chest with The Scent of Eucalyptus.......2004-02-27

If you were born in Africa of foreign parents or spent most of your childhood years in Africa, you owe it to yourself to read these two books. Whether your experiences were positive and you have returned to Africa as an adult, or whether you need catharsis from emotional wounds Africa is so adept at administering, these authors will provide contrasting mirrors in which to search for your reflection.

The Zanzibar Chest describes a Reuters war correspondent's life-experiences (mostly Africa), including the meandering description of a colonial officer's death, as described in a diary left to Hartley in his deceased father's carved Zanzibar chest. The Scent of Eucalyptus uses the foreign gum tree, widely planted in Africa, to symbolize a missionary child's nostalgic return, as an adult, to Ethiopia; the last part of the book is spent attempting to debunk the widespread academic view that missionaries were inept, short-sighted religious fanatics that spread cultural disarray in Africa and like places. Both books have much insight to offer those who would understand the world-views of Europeans raised in an African setting and who then spend a lifetime striving to amalgamate the various cultures that make up their characters.

Given the first person singular that dominates these non-fiction efforts, a certain amount of narcissism is to be expected. Both books suffer from a lack of focus, since neither have a readily discernable central plot. They jump between present and past, between what the authors perceive is their African story and the story of others around them. Anyone who has suffered culture shock or it's lifelong after-tremors can relate to this sense of what I call "socio-cultural netherness". The experiences these authors relate explore the trauma of self-imposed (in Hartley's case) or childhood (Coleman) African experiences that flash back uninvited for all of us Africans of foreign blood, long after they are relegated to suppressed memory. Sitting at my desk I can relive a decades-old Angolan war scene in crimson detail yet forget what was said at my last annual job evaluation. This lack of plot in both books, therefore, is understandable to me personally but makes categorization of these books difficult.

Having read these two books at the same time, I was struck by the contrast in world views from authors with fairly similar childhood backgrounds. Both were born and raised in Africa, fluently spoke, at one time, at least one African language, while growing up in strongly colonial (or neo-colonial) family settings. The privileged backgrounds of private schools and relative wealth contrast with the stress of social and emotional disconnect with everyone (including non-African raised parents) except those similarly lost.

Both authors portray, in unusually gentle terms, their parents' failure to change Africa. Coleman's missionary family's calling to evangelize Ethiopia's ancient Christianity is portrayed as sincere by an author who himself appears to have rejected their brand of theism. He even goes to great lengths to deflect the cultural imperialism his academic colleagues in Canada attribute to the entire missionary effort of the past few centuries.

Hartley, by contrast, minces no words describing his parents' failure to protect Africa from itself, first as British colonial servants and then as post-colonial development workers in the service of "do-gooder" foreign organizations. But, for a war correspondent, his writing is almost sympathetic as he describes his father's failure as agriculturalist, husband and parent, contrasting these with physical and social sacrifices in remote regions that eventually lead the elder Hartley to "go native" by starting an ultimately failed parallel African family. Both the newly arrived Canadian missionaries and the long-established British expatriates are well-intentioned Europeans who, if they change Africa, do so in completely unintended ways. Africa, it is clear, changes those who come to change it.

There the similarities end, however. Although Hartley is no saint, unapologetically describing his debaucheries while constantly living on the edge in Africa's hellholes, he appears more attuned to his own immortality than Coleman. During several occasions in which Hartley assumed his life was prematurely ended by violence, accident or disease, he finds comfort in the spiritual realm. He also searches for humanity buried in the inhumanity surrounding a war correspondent. Coleman, living the quiet, sheltered life common to most Westerners of the northern hemisphere, hints at agnosticism that does not require religion to get him through the drudgery of a predictable day-to-day.

Coleman describes his surprisingly detailed African experience through the rose-tint of a returning, long-absent son. His rejection of an absorbed (if not genetic) Africaness, as implied by never having returned to live there as an adult, leads him to choose the sedentary, colorless life of a Canadian academic. No surprise, then, that he describes his childhood experiences and defends his missionary roots with seemingly little understanding of the broader impact his culture, his nation, and his family have had (intentionally or not) on Africa. Yet one can tell from his ramblings, inspired by a short visit to his childhood haunts, that Africa has never quite left him.

In violent contrast, Hartley over-loads his writing with realism that describes, in mind-numbing detail, the atrocities Africans commit on each other as the world feigns disinterest while simultaneously devouring Hartley's gristly Reuters reports. Ethiopian, Rwandan, or Mozambican post-colonial traumas spill out in maggot-infested, visceral stench. If your African experience ended twenty years ago with picturesque village scenes and verdant boarding school rugby pitches, Coleman will help you catch up on what you have missed in the mean time. It may even temporarily cure your chronic nostalgia.

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Catholic Insight, published by Catholic Insight on May 1, 2004. The length of the article is 647 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The Scent of Eucalyptus: a missionary childhood in Ethiopia.(Book Review)
Author: Kathline Nitsch
Publication: Catholic Insight (Magazine/Journal)
Date: May 1, 2004
Publisher: Catholic Insight
Volume: 12 Issue: 5 Page: 41(1)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

The Scent of Eucalyptus: A Missionary Childhood in Ethiopia

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The Scent of Eucalyptus: A Missionary Childhood in Ethiopia
Daniel Coleman
Manufacturer: Goose Lane Editions
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000MCR8PQ

Book Description

A step-by-step guide to researching and writing a business plan for statup companies.

Customer Reviews:

Roger Rocks!.......2001-09-07

This book is "the book" for writing a business plan. Although it is 324 pages, it was fast reading and easy to skim through to find the elements that pertained to my business. The author covers every business imaginable. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a business plan to help take their business to the next level.

The Quintessential Business Plan Book.......2001-08-26

"This business plan book is head and shoulders above the others because it's written for entrepreneurs. If you're new to the game and unfamiliar with the business plan writing process, this book's for you."

Book Description

In The Year's of Living Dangerously, leading Asia writer and commentator Stephen Vines paints a vivid picture of excess and ignorance, challenging some of the well-established myths about Asian economies, governments, companies and markets. He also highlights the fundamental weakness of Asian companies - a subject little mentioned in discussions about the Asian crisis.

Customer Reviews:

good overview for those who were asleep during the 1990's.......2001-09-05

This is a pretty good book for those who were not paying attention to Asia during the 1990's. It is quite similar to Asian Eclipse by Backman. Indeed Vines even quotes Backman in 'Years'.
Vines has compiled lots of humourous anecdotes, but which will already be very familiar to those with any Asia experience.
Two areas which are weak: a few factual errors when Vines gets into the specifics of characters, esp. in areas he is obviously less familiar with, ie. Thailand. Also the book often contrasts 'bad' Asia with 'good' Japan, indicating that perhaps Vines could do with spending a bit more time studying Japan. Its not all good...

But a good overview of a very interesting period in a fascinating region of the world.

A superbly written, wide-ranging analysis.......2001-01-11

In The Years Of Living Dangerously, Stephen Vines puts into perspective the events which propelled Asia's economies into an unprecedented period of growth, and authoritatively exposes the myth the notion that foreign investors were primarily responsible for the massive capital flight that precipitated the crash of the Asian markets and economies. Rather the responsibility lay with governmental excesses, nepotism, corruption, ignorance, and ideological inflexibility. A highly recommended addition to professional and academic economic studies and international studies reading lists, The Years Of Living Dangerously is a superbly written, wide-ranging analysis, and presents an ideal introduction to, and explanation of, recent and continuing Asian economic woes.

Book Description

"MORBID CURIOSITY: Celebrity Tombstones Across America." It is a fascinating book about celebrities, their tombstones and final stories.

Although there have been various books of the same genre, MORBID CURIOSITY approaches this topic in a whole new way. This book is not about obscure faceless people from years ago. All the celebrities in MORBID CURIOSITY are well known personalities from television, movies, music, comedy, etc. Also these tombstones (like most available "grave" related books), are not just from the "big three" cemetery locations being: Chicago, California or New York, they are as the title states, from "across America."

Although the topic may appear to be "morbid" in nature, the real purpose of this book is to satisfy your "curiosity." It is unfortunate and a reality that some mega-stars cannot handle fame and excessive fortune gracefully. It is the sensationalism of their lives and deaths that makes them icons forever. MORBID CURIOSITY, merely tells the story in intimate details about their abuses, exhumations, corpse thefts, hearse jackings, unusual funerals, alleged last words and reported hauntings.

Along with my children, I traveled over 30,000 miles around the United States so that I could bring to my readers, beautiful black and white photos of their favorite celebrity's tombstone, along with explicit directions to each grave.

Customer Reviews:

My Review of Morbid Curiosity.......2004-12-05

I love cemetery surfing and try to visit a new site as often as possible. I am also a teacher and the spelling errors in this book made me cringe. The information and pictures were outstanding but I just felt like I was reading a very unprofessional book because of the horrible spelling errors.

I recommend this book for information and pictures.

Awesome Book of CelebrityTombstones and Stories.......2004-03-16

What can I say? This book is the best around and extremely addicting. I couldn't put it down. Of all the books on this genre that I've read, no book does it as well as Morbid Curiosity. The photos were great, the directions -superb, the stories -all very factual and as far as the trivia goes, Ms. McCarthy could write for the game "Trivial Pursuit!" This is the most essential book for anyone's collection, that is as long as you are interested in celebrities and what has happened to them. Very tastefully done, I might add.

The REAL where are they now book!.......2003-08-05

This book was absolutely addicting. It is filled with trivia, interesting and unusual stories about all the people we have watched on television and/or the movies, not to mention musicians, criminals, etc. Elaine McCarthy tells these celebrity stories with juicy details that keep her book riveted to your hands for hours, only to leave you asking for more when you've read the entire book. Then she adds beautiful detailed black and white photos for each and every person. I would recommend this book to anyone that loves biographies, entertainment, celebrities, television, music, etc., etc.
And before I forget, it is a great summer vacation book with detailed directions to each and every grave. I tried finding 10 California graves here in Los Angeles, in three different cemeteries and Ms. McCarthy was right on the money with "dead-on" directions!

Makes a great gift....for yourself!

Fun for the morbidly curious.......2003-07-24

Fun book in an obvious morbid kind of way. Extensive list of pop culture icons and thoroughly researched. Typos and sentence alignment problems could have been avoided with a good proof-reader. Perhaps a picture of what the person looked like in addition to the picture of their tombstone would help in recognizing some names, though most images immediately come to mind when reading their names. Author is working on a second book that I would buy also.

Assists in any pilgrimmage --.......2003-02-07

While this book has a definite "home brewed" flavor, it's exhaustively researched with minute details on how to visit celbrity gravesites. I'm especially taken aback by comedian John Candy's last days of self-destructive behavior ....

Morbid Curiosity: Celebrity Tombstones Across America - Calendar 2002

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Morbid Curiosity: Celebrity Tombstones Across America - Calendar 2002
Elaine McCarthy
Manufacturer: Morbid-Curiosity
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0970937202

Amazon.com

It's always a pleasure to read a memoir about the 1960s that doesn't rationalize or recriminate but instead concentrates on conveying the texture of those wild times. Micah Perks's matter-of-fact re-creation of her counterculture childhood makes it clear that living without rules had severe consequences, but she also captures the anarchic pleasures of that life. Perks was 6 weeks old in 1963 when her parents borrowed $20,000 to buy 550 acres of land in the Adirondacks and establish the Valley Commune School. They took in troubled teens referred by the courts and children disabled by mental illness, aiming to help them grow up "free from the suffocating values of mainstream society." "We're changing the established order," her charismatic, feckless father asserted, handing out guns to juvenile delinquents and organizing a "war" between Romans and Celts in which the retreating Romans set fire to a pagan shrine. Micah's best friend, she learned 20 years later, was sexually abused by an older boy and his girlfriend; her father slept with students and virtually any other woman he ran across; in retaliation her mother began an affair with the man who would eventually become her lifelong partner. Readers may well be horrified by the grownups' abdication of responsibility, but Perks herself is unfazed by the vagaries of human nature and seems to bear no grudge, though her adult attitude toward her parents is wary. "That was the best part of my life," she concludes, adding in a properly parenthetical aside: "(best is not quite accurate, but I don't know what other word to use)." Judging by her scrupulous, evenhanded narrative, we can guess that for all the terror and uncertainty she endured, she values her childhood for the intensity and honesty she experienced watching a bunch of principled misfits live their convictions. --Wendy Smith

Book Description

For fans of Geoffrey Wolff's Age of Consent and Mary Karr's The Liar's Club, a wrenching and beautiful memoir of a child's life in a sixties commune.

"Sometimes it seems like I've spent my life searching for the words that will open my childhood for you. It's always the same-even as I'm trying to use my story to knock down the wall between us, I can see that I'm turning myself into a freak, my childhood into a sideshow." Pagan Time is the story of Micah Perks's struggle to make comprehensible her unorthodox childhood. She was raised at her family's commune in the Adirondack wilderness, and at the core of her book lie memories of and feelings for her wildly eccentric father, a self-proclaimed pagan intent on demolishing conventional boundaries and morality. This complex memoir mixes a moving celebration of the utopian spirit and its desire for community and freedom with a lacerating critique of the consequences of those desires-especially for the children involved. How could the campaign for a perfect home and family create such confusion and destruction? The sixties, for many, became a laboratory of hope and chaos, of good intentions run riot. "There is breathtaking beauty in this memoir... Micah Perks writes with great sympathy, subtlety, and precision about the explosive paradise of her youth." -Joanna Scott, author of Make Believe.

Customer Reviews:

Lovely.......2004-02-03

I came across this book by accident when I happened to walk into a bookstore just as Micah was doing a reading and booksigning. I was immediately taken by the stories of her unusual childhood and ended up buying the book and reading it several times. It's filled with love, tragedy, and a lot of wild characters. Perfect for anyone who's familiar with alternative lifestyles, or just interested.

fine memoir style and subject matter: hippie communes.......2002-08-16

Micah Perks' strategy is to write a present tense memory narrative of her youth in Vermont where she witnesses the folly of hippy commune living and her father's tyrannical moral relativism, which he uses to justify a rather Billy Goat existence, at the expense of his wife. Perks never preaches, analyzes, or tells us much. Instead, she narrates strings and strings of memories. The only problem with this approach is that there is not much dramatic tension, no roller coaster ride, but a sort of flat line throughout the 160-page book. However, her style and language are sharp and immaculate.

A Great Memoir.......2002-08-01

Whenever I crack open a memoir, I'm worried that it's going to be one of those naval-gazing autobiographies that will serve to distinguish our generation of American writers by our wholehearted lack of self-consciousness about how insignificant we really are. I have this vision of memoir (with its better potential for prurient scandal and book sales) sucking away the creative lives of writers, luring them from the greater art of writing that more tenuous form of autobiography known as fiction. Occasionally, I am forced to abandon this prejudice, when I stumble on a memoir like Natalie Kusz's ROAD SONG, or Paul Auster's INVENTION OF SOLITUDE: I'll see a portrait of character so carefully drafted, so astute, so detailed, so true, that it astonishes me. I feel the memoir's characters standing behind me, breathing over my shoulder as I read, more real than life, bigger even than their own lives.

PAGAN TIME is such a memoir. The character at the heart of this book is the narrator's father, co-founder of a `60's Utopian collective and a school for schizophrenic and delinquent teenagers. This is a man who moves his family to an isolated spot in the Adirondacks, imports a handful of disturbed and dangerous adolescents into their midst, and proceeds to live in a world governed by alliance with or against his boisterous, lawless character. His force of personality allows him to persuade whole groups of teenage delinquents, grown men and his own children to dress up as Romans and Celts fighting battles in the woods; to chant and sing at overnight pig roasts; to orchestrate a flower-child wedding with himself and nine boys decked in eighteenth-century Royal Navy uniforms offering a ten-gun salutes with muskets.

Perks's father's spontaneity, energy and ingenuity allow him to recreate life as he goes along - to build a world not just big enough for himself but also for those around him - and one which, ultimately, provides perfect camouflage for a person who may be no more than an ephemeral and shadowy personality, a trick of mirrors, a man with a slim conscience and the most fragile ability to form lasting connections with any other person, including his wives, lovers and children. Perks's memoir unravels with a Great Gatsby-like elegance, an agile sleight of hand - its conclusion reminds me more than anything of Henry Gatz's arrival at his son's wake, to tell us all about the other Gatsby. PAGAN TIME Time leaves you just as unsure about who its central character might really be - when, for example, he faces the reader and narrator recreated as a butler who lives as a parody and embodiment of all the rules of civilization , a butler who, with a wonderful twistiness, pronounces himself a Buddhist who "does not cling." It is in the final few encounters with him and with his family and their spare words about him, that he emerges as whole and wholly believable.

Perks writes with such a clear eye - without self-pity or self-importance, without moralizing conclusions, with a lively sense of curiosity about life and people. This is a smart, novel portrayal of fatherhood and father-daughter relations, and an exuberant portrait of the world of the sixties as well. The memoir's energetic writing sustains the reader right to the end, and every passage is deft - at times exhilaratingly dramatic, at times breathtakingly spare.

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Pagan Time, an American Childhood in a Commune in the Adirondack Wilderness
Micah Perks
Manufacturer: Counterpoint
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000NDMVJC

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Micah Perks. Pagan Time: an American Childhood.(Book Review) (book review): An article from: Utopian Studies
John Sill
Manufacturer: Society for Utopian Studies
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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ASIN: B0008G74VE
Release Date: 2005-07-30

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This digital document is an article from Utopian Studies, published by Society for Utopian Studies on March 22, 2002. The length of the article is 675 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Micah Perks. Pagan Time: an American Childhood.(Book Review) (book review)
Author: John Sill
Publication: Utopian Studies (Refereed)
Date: March 22, 2002
Publisher: Society for Utopian Studies
Volume: 13 Issue: 2 Page: 194(2)

Article Type: Book Review

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