Your First Thirty Days: Building a Professional Image in a New Job (Fifty-Minute S.)
Average customer rating: 5 out of 5 stars
  • What Every Worker Needs to Know
Your First Thirty Days: Building a Professional Image in a New Job (Fifty-Minute S.)
Elwood N. Chapman
Manufacturer: Crisp Publications
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1560520035

Book Description

This newly revised guide for career development during the first month on a job is for anyone just hired or anticipating a new position. Get off to a good start in a new job using this book's practical advice on grooming, timeliness, and productivity. Learn the secrets of surviving office politics, building a professional image, and using your attitude to shape your ultimate success.

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars What Every Worker Needs to Know.......2006-01-05

I made this assigned reading for new employees. It covers topics (in a slim 77 pages) that many new workers just don't know, such as appropriate attire, being on time, etc.
"Your First Thirty Days" gives tips on building co-worker relationships, coping with skill deficiencies and improving work habits.

Jobs After War: A Critical Challenge in the Peace and Reconstruction Puzzle
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          Manufacturer: United Nations
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          Book Description

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          New Zealand households lose confidence.(consumer confidence survey on the economy) : An article from: Market Asia Pacific
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            Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
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            ASIN: B000FIM0SW
            Release Date: 2006-04-26

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            Citation Details
            Title: New Zealand households lose confidence.(consumer confidence survey on the economy)
            Publication: Market Asia Pacific (Newsletter)
            Date: April 1, 2006
            Publisher: Thomson Gale
            Volume: 15 Issue: 4 Page: NA

            Distributed by Thomson Gale

            L. Frank Baum: Creator of Oz
            Average customer rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
            • Well researched, but dry and ultimately unsatisfying read.
            • Competent Biography
            • Hagiography for devoted fans
            • A wonderful tribute to the man who created The Wizard of Oz
            • Remembering Civility
            L. Frank Baum: Creator of Oz
            Katharine M. Rogers
            Manufacturer: Da Capo
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            Binding: Paperback

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            ASIN: 0306812975
            Release Date: 2006-07-07

            Book Description

            Since it was first introduced over a hundred years ago in the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum's world of Oz has become one of the most beloved creations in children's literature and film. But who was the creator? Born in 1856 in upstate New York, Baum was a classic "late bloomer" who tried acting, selling, and editing. Finally, in his late 30s he took the advice of his mother-in-law, suffragist leader Matilda Gage, and turned his attention to selling the stories he'd been telling to his sons and their friends. After a few books were published with varying success, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (originally titled The Emerald City) was released in 1900. It quickly became a bestseller and has remained so ever since. Frank Baum's myriad theatrical and entrepreneurial ventures almost bankrupted his family on several occasions, with wife Maud's business acumen providing the sole relief. But when Oz became a "traveling musical extravaganza" that earned raves across America, it created a windfall. Baum was to pen thirteen more Oz books and see the production take the stage in both Chicago and New York. Katharine M. Rogers at long last gives Baum the man and Baum the writer his due in a book Library Journal enthusiastically recommends "for all who love the marvelous land of Oz."

            Customer Reviews:

            3 out of 5 stars Well researched, but dry and ultimately unsatisfying read........2003-10-20

            Although this book seems a bit on the dry side, it is nevertheless a well researched biography of a very influential writer almost forgotten (although obviously his Oz works continue to be important- albeit mostly due to the MG film).

            Rogers does well to show how his background involvement in the suffragette movement most likely helped to inspire him to write one of the few female protagonist in fantasy literature (one only has to look to Harry Potter to see how little progress the genre has made in the past 100 years). One wonders if Rogers stumbled upon the curious fact that Baum's mother-in-law was a prominent member of the New York state women's movement at the turn of the century when she was researching some of her other books.

            But over all the book seems to fall flat in giving the reader s true sense of the man and his times. While there is a fair amount of background on Baum's involvement with the women's movement and Theosophy neither aspect is fully developed for the reader. Rogers seems to feel that the reader ought to know exactly how these movements fit into turn-of-the-century life and what they were all about. Granted 1900 America is not exactly foreign to today's readers, but many of the ideals that people in that time subscribed to are all but forgotten. The women's movement is not feminism as we understand it today, a little more detail and background would help.

            Over all one does not get a sense of the time and place Baum existed in. Granted, his life was fairly boring, routine and seems, despite constant money troubles, fairly well off. However context would help establish a reason to care about Baum other than the fact one might enjoy his writing. There are plenty of text synopses, but little delving into where the stories came from. Was he simply trying to modernize the fairytale? Based on Rogers book one gets the impression Baum was something of a hack, simply grinding out tales for children. I feel that there is more to his writings than that.

            Kudos to Rogers for exploring fully Baum's non-Oz works. Again, a little more follow up (beyond the four or five paragraphs at the end) about what happened to the Oz series after Baum died and what happened to his copyrights etc (is the book in public domain? What happened to his original publishing house as I do not recall they still exist...?) His influence has been great ( C S Lewis owes at least a small debt to Baum) but Rogers seems to attribute it all to the MGM movie.

            4 out of 5 stars Competent Biography.......2003-01-10

            L. Frank Baum, Creator of Oz is a necessary books for fans of Oz. Katharine M. Rogers provides a clear, balanced examination of the details of his life and includes analysis, and relates it to his life, of his writings, both Oz and other. The most important aspect of this book are the sections describing his other (often) successful series for children, such as Aunt Jane's Niece, which are little known today. The weakness of the book is the fact that outside of his writing, Baum's life is not particularly exciting. It seems very pleasant and homey and I could not be happier for him, but it does not always make for thrilling reading. Still, Baum fans will be delighted to have his entire story told so compentently with the added bonus of the author's informative analysis.

            4 out of 5 stars Hagiography for devoted fans.......2003-01-01

            Katherine Rogers, like myself and thousands of others, is a fan of L. Frank Baum and his books about Oz. She is also a scholar and has written a truly detailed and well-documented biography of this interesting and influential man. It is a valuable addition to the body of literature, both fiction and nonfiction, about Oz.

            For those who have never read an Oz book, this is still an important book. L. Frank Baum was an intriguingly different man for his times and reading about his life gives wonderful insight into America of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His feminism and respect for children and animals become some of the endearing features of his fiction and what make his Oz series classics of American literature.

            He married Maud Gage, the daughter of Matilda Joslyn Gage, one of the leading women suffragists. So the information that Katherine Rogers provides on his relationship to his mother-in-law and his home life with Maud is invaluable to students of the women's movement. Gage's own 1893 book, WOMAN, CHURCH AND STATE, has just been brought back into print by Humanity Books in their Classics In Women's Studies series. Her belief that christianity and the Western state are the very basis of the oppression of women, which is detailed in this work, was radical at the time. Her own spirituality found a home in Theosophy which became the religious practice of Baum and was influential in his writings.

            Baum took his family to the Dakota territory where three of Maud's siblings had settled. The book's account of their life on the northern prairie will be of interest to those who study the history of 19th century Dakota. As first a merchant and then a newspaperman, Baum's views on life in the Dakotas are well represented. It is in this section where we first encounter Baum's racism. He wrote an editorial where he called the native Americans "a pack of whining curs" who should be totally exterminated [p.259]. Rogers doesn't develop this aspect of his personality very deeply saying that for Baum these were "thoughtless lapses, in which Baum unthinkingly went along with contemporary attitudes [p.272]." Her treatment of his racism is confined to the Notes at the end of the book.

            For those who are avid readers of Baum's fiction, the book is a wealth of information. Each of his novels are analyzed and related to the events in his life. When possible drafts are compared with completed works to gain insight into Baum's creative process. His relationships with his illustrators W. W. Denslow and John R. Neill are described. The close relationship he had with Denslow is contrasted by the distance he maintained with John R. Neill. His dispute with Denslow, who illustrated The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, over the ownership of the characters may have contributed to his reluctance to know Neill better. Baum and Neill only met once. He relating to Neill mostly through the publisher, which accounts for some of the mistakes that exist between Baum's descriptions and Neill's pictures.

            The book contains 35 pages of Notes, many of them long and detailed additions to the text. A six page listing of Baum's published works will be a joy to collectors. The 13-page index makes it easy to find any details quickly in the text. This is a wonderful work with a positive perspective on Baum, his writings, and the time in which he lived.

            4 out of 5 stars A wonderful tribute to the man who created The Wizard of Oz.......2002-12-08

            When I was little, Oz lust made a thief of me. My grandfather ordered a dozen books in the series at a time, doling them out to me on birthdays or when I had tonsillitis. I found out in which cabinet he hid them and temptation took control of me. Although I was caught practically in the act, I went unpunished. Who can spank a child for wanting to read?

            There were a total of 40 Oz books on my shelf (only the first third --- THE WIZARD OF OZ (1900) and 13 others --- by L. Frank Baum) and an Emerald City built of green glass and construction paper in our basement. Oz was a world intensely real to me; the boundary between its wonders and ordinary existence was noticeably porous. If Dorothy could be blown by a tornado into fairyland, why (to paraphrase the song) couldn't I?

            Katharine M. Rogers understands my passion. In L. FRANK BAUM: CREATOR OF OZ, Rogers, an early Oz aficionado herself, combines a scholar's detachment with a child's delight. She is also a revisionist critic, bemoaning the Oz books' exclusion from the haughty scholarly canon of "good" kids' literature. In this book, the first full-length adult treatment of Baum's life (although there is a lengthy biographical essay in the centennial edition of Michael Patrick Hearn's THE ANNOTATED WIZARD OF OZ), Rogers undertakes to follow the Yellow Brick Road to the origins of Baum's imaginative universe and establish his works as genuine classics.

            Baum didn't immediately become a full-time writer. For years he was the very model of a self-reliant, entrepreneurial American. He was involved in a number of different businesses, including poultry breeding, china selling and newspaper editing. While none of his enterprises ever really took off, his spirit of adventure, his independence and egalitarianism, his healthy skepticism and persistent optimism are all reflected in the characters he created and the land they inhabit. The novelist and critic Alison Lurie once called Oz "an idealized version of America in 1900, happily isolated from the rest of the world, underpopulated and largely rural, with an expanding magic technology and what appears to be unlimited natural resources." Rogers develops this idea further, offering some splendid insights into Baum's pastoral vision, individualistic values and ambivalent relationship to science and technology (which, in his books, are closely identified with magic) --- marvelous in their power, but dangerous if misused.

            Baum was also very American in his industry and ambition. However, in marked contrast to our sequel-crazed age, he did not originally think of THE WIZARD as the first in a series. For some time he continued to invent new fairylands; when none of them really caught on, he finally resigned himself to a yearly Oz book (a pattern that would continue until his death in 1919). He also wrote adult novels, plays and non-fantasy series for children under pseudonyms like Edith Van Dyne and Laura Bancroft.

            The female pen names are not as incongruous as they might seem. Rogers, whose field is women's studies, is particularly enlightening about Baum's feminism: his wife, Maud, was the daughter of a major figure in the fight for women's right to vote. She, not Frank, was the disciplinarian and financial manager in the family, an arrangement that seems to have suited them both. Oz itself verges on the matriarchal --- girls are the heroes of ten of the fourteen books and they are brave, strong, honest, practical and unpretentious. There are no frogs being transformed into princes here. In the LAND OF OZ, second in the series, Baum turns the gender tables on traditional fairytale magic when the boy protagonist, Tip, turns out to be the lost princess, Ozma.

            Because Rogers' biography is a pioneering effort, it can't afford to skimp on any detail of Baum's life --- so there are, inevitably, tedious moments. There is also a great deal of dutiful synopsizing of each volume this very prolific author published, not all of them of equal value or importance. Still, on the whole, Rogers does a fine job of combining biography with an intelligent and balanced literary/social assessment of Baum's work. She doesn't pretend that his writing style is "poetic or beautiful or especially distinctive" (and she rightly criticizes his annoying penchant for dialect), but she is persuasive in her advocacy of his talents: "Baum's greatest gifts were the two most important ones for a writer of fantasy: he could create a wonderful world and he could make it believable." Underpinning this credibility was a vast respect for his audience. "Father never 'wrote down' to children," Baum's son Harry said. "They were his friends and companions and he always treated them as such."

            L. FRANK BAUM: CREATOR OF OZ is likely to be sought out principally by those who already love Baum's work. People who know Oz only through the 1939 Judy Garland film will be less enchanted, for Rogers doesn't like the movie very much. Above all, she disparages the idea (entirely absent in the Baum original) that Dorothy's trip to Oz was nothing but a dream. For true believers like Rogers and me, this is nothing short of sacrilege.

            --- Reviewed by Kathy Weissman

            5 out of 5 stars Remembering Civility.......2002-12-02

            Katherine M. Rogers' L. Frank Baum: Creator of Oz is an excellent biography of the American writer, one that should generate new interest and encourage further scholarly research on this neglected and still underrated American author.

            A decent, hardworking, and ambitious gentleman, Baum (1856-1919), who all thought "exceptionally sweet-natured and easy-going," lived a full and adventurous life, even in his later years, when most of his adventuring took place in his colorful and far-reaching imagination. The confident, plainspoken Baum, an epitome of civility, was a modest Renaissance man, almost something of a wizard himself. Before discovering his talent for writing children's books and creating Oz, the young Baum worked as a an actor, a playwright, an oil salesman, a "frontier" storekeeper, a newspaper editor and a publisher. Later, he was also the producer of `radio plays' and, in the very early days of cinema, films based on his Oz creations. Happily chasing rainbows, Baum moved from one part of the country to another as the spirit and his intuition moved him.

            Married to the daughter of suffragist leader Matilda Gage, Baum was an active and life-long supporter of women's rights. As Rogers clearly shows, the free-thinking Baum never ruled the roost in his own home; domineering, no-nonsense, feet-on-the-ground wife Maud consistently provided the necessary ballast that kept their home, finances, and Baum's career afloat. In one hilarious episode, Baum makes the mistake of enthusiastically introducing a dozen donuts to the household; for daring to insult her cooking, pantry, and shopping habits, Baum is browbeaten and given a chilly reception for a full week, until he comes to understand that he's "not to buy any food whatsoever unless asked to get it" by his wife. From the early days of their marriage, Baum comes to understand that "around the house," Maud "is the boss." When their very young son cheerfully throws the family cat out the second story window, Maud dangles the child from the same window as the neighbors watch on in horror, an incident the boy never forgot. As Rogers points out, Oz was a matriarchy.

            Never very close to his own mother, who frowned on his "disregard for conventional religion," both Baum and Maud were devoted adherents of Theosophy, another of Matilda Gage's intellectual interests. In Theosophy, Rogers says, Baum found a belief system and a vision "of the cosmos in which physical and spiritual reality were part of one great whole, filled with beings seen and unseen," one that was to bear fruit for Baum in his numerous fairy books. Rogers believes that the reason both his fairies and fairylands are "so concretely realized" is because Baum honestly believed fairies "had spiritual or subjective reality."

            In her introduction, Rogers, who was devoted the Oz books as a child, relates her dismay in finding, as new college English instructor in 1958, that the Oz books were not taught by "responsible teachers," who only taught "good" children's literature, something Rogers equates with "literary pretension." As recently as 1994, Rogers says, the books were rejected for their "blandness," which suggests that the author of that study, scholar Gillian Avery, had either bad taste, dead senses, no imagination, or simply hadn't read the series. Rogers provides the minimum of a brief synopsis for each of the Oz books, as well as for each title in Baum's numerous other fictional series for children, including The Boy Fortune Hunters, Mary Louise, and Aunt Jane's Nieces.

            Roger's 22-page analysis of the first and most famous book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, is exceptional; even the most devoted Oz enthusiast will find something new in her discussion. Comparing Dorothy and Carroll's Alice, Rogers find Dorothy the more admirable role model, as "responsible, self-reliant, brave, sensible, honest, and self-confident" Dorothy is "able to make sense of the confusing world she is plunged into," and "can act effectively and resist unreasonable authority." Rogers illustrates how the laws of the land of Oz illustrate the values of self-accepting individuality, self-respect, respect for others, and equality; how the book teaches "a wholesome practical morality through examples." She notes that Oz has only female witches, all of who bear real power, while the lone wizard is a powerless humbug and a fraud. Referencing Baum's earlier how-to-decorate book, The Shop Window, Rogers underscores Baum's principle that while misleading people is wrong, it's an almost necessary evil, as people demand "gratification of impossible wishes." Thus the Wizard's Emerald City is largely an illusion, as are his hopeful solutions to the Scarecrow's, Lion's, and Tin Woodman's problems; "how can I help being a humbug...when all these people make me do things that everybody knows can't be done?" Rogers places the book in its proper historical fairytale context, and, in an accurate, happily non-politically correct psychoanalytical passage, claims that Dorothy is allowed "the opportunity, enviable to any child, of killing the bad mother without guilt." Rogers also interprets The Wonderful Wizard of Oz within the context of its Americanism and the age in which it was written, and provides the etiology of the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman.

            Later chapters contain extended, equally interesting interpretations of the Gump, Jack Pumpkinhead, the sex-changing Tip, Ozma, the Woogle Bug, both Nome Kings, Tik-Tok, Scraps the Patchwork Girl, even Billina, the cantankerous hen. Fans of both W.W. Denslow and John R. Neill will find the sections discussing each highly satisfying.

            Rogers' writing is confident, crisp, detailed, and clear. Her touch is light but thorough throughout. She clearly loves her subject, about which she has a ready sense of humor. The left-handed Baum was `the Royal Historian of Oz,' and with L. Frank Baum: Creator of Oz, Rogers has become Baum's own Royal Historian, a position too long vacant, and now gracefully filled.
            L. Frank Baum: Creator of Oz
            Average customer rating: Not rated
              L. Frank Baum: Creator of Oz
              Katharine M. Rogers
              Manufacturer: Da Capo
              ProductGroup: Book
              Binding: Paperback
              ASIN: B000OT0AC0

              The House Where the Hardest Things Happened: A Memoir About Belonging
              Average customer rating: 4 out of 5 stars
              • How Does It Feel To Be Left Out?
              • A Healthy Engagement with Pain
              • Maybe, Just Maybe...
              • Awful
              • Refreshing Story of Hope
              The House Where the Hardest Things Happened: A Memoir About Belonging
              Kate Young Caley
              Manufacturer: Doubleday
              ProductGroup: Book
              Binding: Hardcover

              AuthorsAuthors | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
              GeneralGeneral | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
              ReligiousReligious | Leaders & Notable People | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
              Family & ChildhoodFamily & Childhood | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
              MemoirsMemoirs | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
              AnglicanAnglican | Protestantism | Christianity | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
              ASIN: 0385502982
              Release Date: 2002-06-18

              Amazon.com

              The House Where the Hardest Things Happened is the best kind of spiritual memoir. It tells a great story, has a reliable narrator, and teaches enormous lessons about Christianity and spirit without once faltering into preachy, "spiritual" language. When Kate Young Caley was a young child her family belonged to the First Church of God in Moultonboro, New Hampshire. "Back then the sounds of Sunday mornings were sounds that meant everything was all right," she writes. "That we were all together. Cleaned and dressed up.... When we walked into the church everybody loved us."

              But when Caley's father is diagnosed with cancer and is hospitalized for months, Caley's 29-year-old mother needs to support the family by waitressing in town. Because the restaurant sells liquor, the mother is breaking the church's covenant, and the church community votes the family out of the church. This cruel banishment, when the family most needed a spiritual community, becomes the defining moment of Caley's childhood. More than a beautifully written personal story, this is a lifelong exposé of the hypocrisy inherent in many church communities. Ultimately, we see that the problem isn't Christianity, but the people who control and manipulate it. --Gail Hudson

              Book Description

              Fusing an intimate memoir with an outspoken critique of organized religion's failure to welcome all into its community, The House Where the Hardest Things Happened is the moving story of one woman's search for a sense of belonging.

              Growing up in a small town in New Hampshire, Kate Young Caley attends a strong community church where everyone is treated like family, members selflessly help one another, and all the kids are made to feel special. Then, suddenly, everything changes. Her father is hospitalized for many months and her mother is forced to take a job as a waitress to support the family. But the job requires Kate's mother to serve alcohol, which goes against the church's covenant, and the family, banned from attending services, soon finds itself emotionally ostracized from the community.

              In The House Where the Hardest Things Happened, Caley recounts the hurt and confusion she felt as a young girl and her long search for a religious community that would comfort her spiritually, support her emotionally, and respect her intellectual ideals. As she chronicles her journey, she candidly discusses her problems with the way the Christian faith is expressed and with the people who lay claim to it. Her exploration of religious teachings on homosexuality is especially powerful as she explains why she is unwilling, and unable, to deny the love she has for her gay brother.

              At once the story of a family profoundly transformed by tragedy and an incisive exploration of the meaning of spirituality, The House Where the Hardest Things Happened will appeal to readers of Joyce Carol Oates’s We Were the Mulvaneys and Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies. Beautifully written, it brings to life Caley's inspiring determination to reclaim her right to practice her beliefs–the most basic human right of all.

              Customer Reviews:

              4 out of 5 stars How Does It Feel To Be Left Out?.......2005-01-15

              I am relatively well read in religious memoir, and more often than not, I find they follow either one of two paths. The first can be an "Amazing Grace" path where the person has made several serious errors in life and comes to faith, much like John Newton, the author of the words of the song of the same title who went from being a slave trader to an abolitionist. The other common theme is a person who has faith as a child, looses or abandons the faith, and then rediscovers its richness. I see the validity of both paths, find the stories moving, and usually gain a new insight into the ways in which God works. I assumed that Kate Young Caley's THE HOUSE WHERE THE HARDEST THINGS HAPPENED would follow one of these two well worn paths. It follows neither which gives it a unique flair from the beginning.

              The story behind this memoir is distinctively different. Kate Young Caley did not loose or abandon her faith. The Young family belonged to a small, seemingly fundamentalist church that had strict rules about congregants' behavior. When the mother of the family took a job to support her sick husband and three young children, the congregation voted her out because her job involved serving alcohol, which was against church rules. Suddenly, the child Kate, who loved church and Bible lessons, could not understand why church was no longer part of her life. As she grew, she learned the story of what happened, the effect it had on her parents, and learned what it means to be left out of a community that is supposed to be loving and welcoming. Years later, she found a welcome in the Episcopal Church, but still had a longing for the church of her youth and still felt the wounds inflicted by this congregation. Yet it also taught her to be welcoming and non-judgmental.

              I've tried to think about who could benefit from this memoir most. My guess is that the book is aimed at people who have been ostracized by faith, either blatantly as this congregation did, or those ostracized in ways that may not be as obvious, but still painful. Kate Young Caley's journey can be an inspiration. Yet I can't help but wonder if the group that this book could help most, would be those active in churches today. The book makes the reader realize the pain of rejection in general, but how that rejection is even more compounded when it happens in the context of faith. The book challenges us to see the Christ in others and remember how hurtful the wrong action can be. Kate Young Caley is happily a member of a congregation. Far too many people have been hurt or have seen loved ones hurt by churches and are not in the pews, perhaps never to return, even though they have so much to give.

              My only criticism of the book could be its lack of completeness. I would like to know a bit more about why Kate Young Caley selected the Episcopal Church as well as how her faith helped her when she battled various illnesses. These topics are part of her present book, but I would love to see them fleshed out a bit. The only way this can be remedied would be by another book or two which tells these stories. This would be wonderful since we would once again be exposed to the truthful and beautiful writing of Kate Young Caley.

              5 out of 5 stars A Healthy Engagement with Pain.......2003-06-03

              Most of us live out our childhood losses and hurts well into adulthood--some of us until we die. So it's encouraging to see such a healthy engagement with pain as Kate presents in this book. She allows the anger but rejects bitterness; she asks questions but with hope, not cynicism. Anyone who has been wounded by a faith community will find value in this moving story. But Caley's story will offer wisdom and companionship to anyone who simply wants to wrestle with the "ordinary" wounds of life--the grief that visits all of us, the losses we can't avoid or ignore. This is definitely adult reading in the sense that it requires a person to grow up even while in the process of healing.

              4 out of 5 stars Maybe, Just Maybe..........2003-05-27

              Caley's book is a beautiful memoir with an arresting title and a melancholic cover. Within five pages, I was entranced by her lean, effective prose. I can relate to her church scars, and I anguished with her telling of the tale. To see her young mother and cancer-weary father ousted by well-meaning Christians...it's a sad and not uncommon story. Along life's path, Caley shows us that she has found some sense of peace regarding those years. She never sugarcoats the pain or misdeeds, but she chooses wisely to hold back the bitter words of revenge.

              "The House Where the Hardest Things Happened" starts with such clarity of vision, proceeds smoothly through defining moments in Caley's life, then closes with a scene or two that bring redemption full circle via her own daughters and her new church home. Somehow, though, in conclusion, the book loses the steam that it builds. This may be a reflection of Caley's own slow release of anger. Or a symbol of her forgiveness at work. For me, having come through similar frustrations in a religious upbringing, it seems that she holds back on facing those final, deepest anguishes. She only brushes up against the subject of her gay brother. She sheds little light on her siblings' reactions to the same mistreatment. She shows so much grace--and for that I can only commend her--but she helps expose wounds many of us have faced, then leaves us only partially soothed.

              Hey, Caley's writing can serve unapologetically as a balm. You will appreciate every word. If, however, you're hoping for soul-surgery, you'll still seek the aid of a Physician.

              And maybe, just maybe, that's Caley's intent.

              1 out of 5 stars Awful.......2003-01-27

              What, exactly, was the point of this book? While I can appreciate the difficulties the author faced, the book felt like sitting through a bad therapy session.

              5 out of 5 stars Refreshing Story of Hope.......2003-01-16

              Anyone who has been around the church (regardless of denomination) for most of their lives will appreciate Kate Young Caley's experiences and journey through the pitfalls of man trying to do God's work man's way. Young-Caley presents her own story of a young girl in a very harsh world, who tries to make sense of wrongs and hurts from those whom she trusts and admires.

              Male or female, this is a book that you must read and take to heart. Young-Caley's story is easy to read and easy to internalize. You will laugh and cry at the gripping presentation of how to see life, and God's place in it. I could not put this book down. What a refreshing story of hope and how Jesus can once again help us claim victory.

              Please do not miss out on this most excellent work! Thanks Kate for helping me.

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