Average customer rating:
|
Your First Thirty Days: Building a Professional Image in a New Job (Fifty-Minute S.)
Elwood N. Chapman Manufacturer: Crisp Publications ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Similar Items:
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:
What Every Worker Needs to Know.......2006-01-05
Average customer rating: |
Jobs After War: A Critical Challenge in the Peace and Reconstruction Puzzle
Manufacturer: International Labour Org ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback ASIN: 9221138100 |
Average customer rating: |
Dear Eagle: The Civil War Correspondence of Stephen H. Bogardus, Jr. to the Poughkeepsie Daily Eagle
Stephen H. Bogardus , and Joel Gregory Craig Manufacturer: Scuppernong Press ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback ASIN: 0970172621 |
Average customer rating: |
German Indologists: Biographies of Scholars in Indian Studies Writing in Germany
Agnes Stache-Rosen Manufacturer: South Asia Books ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback ASIN: 8185054975 |
Average customer rating: |
Economic And Social Survey of Asia And the Pacific 2006: Energizing the Global Economy (Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific)
Manufacturer: United Nations ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback ASIN: 9211204623 |
Book Description
The principal policy issues and challenges facing the region over the next 12 months are concerned with the course of oil prices, the threat of global external payment imbalances unwinding precipitously, the impact of higher interest rates and the potential for the avian influenza to develop into a human pandemic. Longer-term issues relate to the ongoing challenge of poverty reduction, utilizing the benefits of home remittances to simultaneously improve social indicators and macroeconomic fundamentals, and re-energizing the trade liberalization agenda following the Sixth World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference, held in Hong Kong, China, in December 2005.
Average customer rating: |
New Zealand households lose confidence.(consumer confidence survey on the economy) : An article from: Market Asia Pacific
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale ProductGroup: Book Binding: Digital ASIN: B000FIM0SW Release Date: 2006-04-26 |
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Market Asia Pacific, published by Thomson Gale on April 1, 2006. The length of the article is 457 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.
Average customer rating:
|
L. Frank Baum: Creator of Oz
Katharine M. Rogers Manufacturer: Da Capo ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback Similar Items:
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:
Well researched, but dry and ultimately unsatisfying read........2003-10-20
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.
Competent Biography.......2003-01-10
Hagiography for devoted fans.......2003-01-01
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.
A wonderful tribute to the man who created The Wizard of Oz.......2002-12-08
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
Remembering Civility.......2002-12-02
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.
Average customer rating: |
L. Frank Baum: Creator of Oz
Katharine M. Rogers Manufacturer: Da Capo ProductGroup: Book Binding: Paperback ASIN: B000OT0AC0 |
Average customer rating:
|
The House Where the Hardest Things Happened: A Memoir About Belonging
Kate Young Caley Manufacturer: Doubleday ProductGroup: Book Binding: Hardcover 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.Customer Reviews:
How Does It Feel To Be Left Out?.......2005-01-15
A Healthy Engagement with Pain.......2003-06-03
Maybe, Just Maybe..........2003-05-27
"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.
Awful.......2003-01-27
Refreshing Story of Hope.......2003-01-16
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.
Books:
Recommended Books