Jean Arthur Books

Jean Stern did a superb job documenting the history of this important California artist. As one of America's foremost buyers of Franz Bischoff paintings, I highly recommend this book. www.LawrenceBeebe.com

Before the pure delightful world of natural foods turned into expensive junk food using refined flours, ORGANIC sugar and chocolate, people were creative and truly health minded.
Uprisings is an example of this time when brilliant and delicious recipes were truly healthy. This book is a collection of most popular recipes from whole foods bakeries around the country (and world even) who created delightfully delicious treats to be baked in our kitchens using TRUE natural and whole ingredients.

Truly valuable and hand lettered and decorated in the tradition of the Moosewood Cookbook, this book is a treasure.

WINTER TRAILS provides wonderful excursions for any snowshoe enthusiast. The descriptions are accurate and after reading it, it will be hard not to grab your shoes and get going!

Lots of info about Jean Arthur's life and career. Well researched. But a depressing read. Arthur was her own worst enemy. She had a love/hate thing about her acting career.
I love Jean Arthur on the screen. As a person, she was very screwed up, IMHO. And all the booze didn't help, in her later years.
I read this book, then Rachel Roberts' diaries then a bio of Kim Stanley, one after the other. Afterwards, I felt like shooting myself. Three enormously gifted actresses who had great success. All 3 had drinking problems and ambivalent feelings about their careers. In the end, all 3 kind of threw their careers down the toilet.

I was really glad to get some information on Jean Arthur (hard to find) She had a sad long life but that wasn't John Oller fault. Don't blame the messenger. She was a great actress and I will still love her in all the movies that she was in..But you know her and Mary Martin did look alot alike (single white female) remember the movie. Scary!!

Jean Arthur would seem to be an impossible subject for a biography. The actress, who died in 1991 at the age of 90, was so reclusive she made Garbo look like a party doll. Interviews exist, but not many; fan magazine profiles inevitably puzzled over her, disgusted by an actress who refused to promote her own career. Her autograph is probably rarer than Garbo's, and she left little in the way of writings, no diaries and not much correspondence. Her stage career was based more on quality than quantity, consisting of a mere 17 appearances, some of which were in plays that closed after a single performance.

Fortunately for author John Oller, Arthur made a substantial number of films (89) and, more importantly in trying to unravel this tricky subject, she made a strong impression -- negative, positive, sometimes both -- on practically everybody she encountered, from fellow actors to her stage and film directors to students in her teaching classes to secretaries and stage hands. They've provided Oller with a wealth of history and anecdotal detail. What emerges is a surprisingly detailed, highly readable account of a complex woman whose integrity and perfectionism -- and sometimes pettiness and even arrogance -- both fueled her work and undermined it at almost every turn.

Arthur's high reputation persists on the basis of stage triumphs in Peter Pan and other plays, and supremely of unforgettable performances in screwball comedies like George Stevens's The More the Merrier, Capra films like Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and You Can't Take It with You, and Borzage's dreamy History Is Made at Night. Behind her luminous face and trademark husky voice, according to Oller, was a woman tormented by self-doubt and neurosis who could be charming one minute and a harridan the next. These qualities surfaced quite early in her career before she developed her loathing of the fan magazines. In 1928 she told an interviewer, "I'm hard-boiled now. I don't expect anything" -- harsh words indeed for "a girl of 20," as she said she was. (She was actually 28; like most stars, Arthur wasn't above lying about her age.) Each rejection -- and there were many early on -- was accompanied by crying jags and nervous fits that would only get worse as time went on. Arthur's early films must have been difficult for the highly intelligent, well-read, sophisticated woman Oller portrays; they were mostly horse operas and slapstick comedies, along with walk-ons in bigger pictures. Hollywood didn't know how to use her at first: in Paramount on Parade (1930), the musically ungifted actress performed two numbers.

But Arthur's striking personality shone through by the early 1930s, and she gave memorable performances in a series of films that are remembered today as much for her presence as anything else. In spite of consistent success and critical raves, though, she continued to struggle with anxiety. Capra says she threw up before and after every scene in one of his films (in an inspired phrase he says "those weren't butterflies in her stomach, they were wasps!"). She was as intransigent as some of the Warners women like Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland in fighting the studios' manipulations. Being contracted to Columbia, she had it worse, having to fend off mogul Harry Cohn's capricious career choices and his crude sexual advances. Here her stubbornness paid off in 1938 with a new contract that was one of the body blows to the studios' control over actors.

Arthur's disgust with the machinery of stardom led her inexorably to the stage; more respectable, perhaps, but equally or even more problematic for an actress of her skittish sensibilities. Much of the book is taken up with the wildly dramatic struggle of producers, directors, and friends to get Arthur to go on stage and stay there through the run of a play. This was mostly a vain effort. Arthur gravitated to the counterculture and agreed in 1967 to do a play called The Freaking Out of Stephanie Blake. Riddled with pot-smoking stage hands, props that wouldn't work (one nearly fell on Arthur's head), and actors who didn't show up, the play closed after the first night. Oller's account of these events is hilarious, particularly his description of a crazed Arthur kneeling before an audience begging them to let her leave the stage. She alienated so many of her coworkers that the author probably couldn't list them all without doubling the book's page count. Still, she had her defenders who forgave her endless disappearing act from life, and this was equally due to her winning personality (when she wanted it to be) and her fierce talent.

Her Peter Pan, the best ever according to some observers of the time, made her more enemies than friends but was a huge success while it lasted. It was not a smooth production, however; Arthur nearly crippled it when she came down with one of her many "viral infections" that she seemed able to will into existence in times of stress. Besides the obvious mental relief she got from running away from innumerable commitments, she could spend time indulging her favorite activities: interior decorating, reading, philosophy, and playing with her animals. She found little solace in religion but pursued self-realization through mentors like Erich Fromm. She was also an eloquent observer of politics from the left. "The wrong people are running the country," she said, speaking of Nixon and his cronies. "You only have to look at their brutal faces to know that."

The author doesn't delve too far into Arthur's alleged lesbianism (which writers like Boze Hadleigh have taken for granted). Several things point in that direction: her slightly masculine manner and voice, her lack of interest in motherhood, her almost pathological refusal to wear a dress even when a role demanded it, and most of all the fact that she spent the last decades of her life with devoted "unmarried army nurse" Ellen Mastroianni. But Arthur was so secretive about everything, even with Mastroianni in some areas, that this will probably never be verifiable.

The book attempts some psychoanalysis on his mysterious subject -- perhaps appropriate given Arthur's fascination with therapy and her friendship with Fromm. But these sections are the only labored note here, adding an unnecessarily speculative touch to a book that's well grounded in the topsy-turvy reality of Arthur's life and art.

I grew up in Carmel, California, and my mother used to drive us along Scenic Drive and point out to us where Jean Arthur lived. We'd sometimes see her walking along that oceanside road, her face always wrapped in a scarf. Mom would talk about the actress being a recluse ("hermit" was the word used then) in a framework that assumed pathology: there must have been something wrong with the actress. And she could not have been happy, either: she never even had children! How could someone do without constant company?
All my life I wondered about this enigmatic recluse. I was fascinated by her reputed traits, which seemed very normal & healthy to me and with which I strongly identified (including her obsessive love & protection of animals). I bought this book more for an understanding of Arthur's personality than her career, although I also loved her movie presence. I was delighted to see the author NOT oversimplify her personality but instead explore all possible causes of her withdrawn nature & sudden walkouts, including the positive causes, and emphasize her fierce individualism and solid integrity, even though on the surface she paid dearly for both. (On a deeper level, she probably became truer to herself.) Oller presents all plausible theories objectively and leaves it to the reader to choose (although I couldn't help but wonder about the additional possibilities of hypoglycemia, of which she had many symptoms, and panic attacks, conditions that might have been treated if diagnosed, maybe relieving some of her suffering). I prefer the theory that she simply did what she wanted and followed some inner direction and that she was predominantly content.
This is a thorough, well-researched account of her career and her place in Hollywood and stage history. But to me, it was even more valuable as an affirmation of her brave values and strengths and her search for meaning and truth in a time where such search, for women, was discouraged.

I can't imagine a tougher classic star to write about; nobody really knew Jean Arthur as the title implies. John Oller is to be commended for successfully championing her story and bringing it to light for classic film fans everywhere. It's an easy read by virtue of Mr. Oller's flowing narrative and ample research, and difficult to read emotionally at times because of the nature of Miss Arthur's sad yet intriguing Hollywood exisistence. Get to know Miss Arthur ~ read this book!

Gastronomy, in strict definition, studies the culture of food. Therefore, the Physiology of Taste, unlike a myriad of other volumes, stands out in it's attention to all aspects of gastronomical study and understanding. Not only it is incredibly detailed in an eloquent exploration of Sicilian history but compliments this journey with relevant recipes and gastronomical description. At the heart of the matter lies the subtlety with which the author connects the text and taste to indulge any person interested in the true depth of Sicily.

After reading some of the reviews concerning this book, I can certainly agree with much of the praise as well as the criticism. Filled with pithy euphimisms, chunks of this wonderful adventure in gastronomy are a revealing look at the life of the well-to-do author; other morsels seem be out of place, dry of wit, and ill-seasoned. Nonetheless, this is still a good read--there are some fascinating ancedotes as to life in the "new" United States which Savarin reports on after an adventure in the newly independent colonies. Worthy of any well-stocked bookshelf.

You cannot say you love gastronomy without having ever read this book!

Full disclosure: I admit I read this book based on juicy rumors from gastronomy sources that it was considered an "underground classic" and summarily treasured by modern (and well-placed) gourmet cooks. And to complete that thought, I'll spare you, dear review-reader, some suspense: this book disappointed me. I even found the notes (glibly called "translator's glosses") by the esteemed M.F.K. Fisher a bit dry. Maybe the late Ms. Fisher got caught in the same trap; her notes refer almost constantly to the author's fame and wit in *other* contexts but they're uneven in the current text.

Still, I stand behind the three stars. Brillat-Savarin is not a brilliant author, but his insights into at least a few well-chosen subjects shine across the nearly two centuries since these "meditations" were penned. Long before the Atkins craze gripped American nutrition, for example, one can find here (in Meditation #21: "On Obesity"): "... the principal cause of any fatty corpulence is always a diet overloaded with starchy and farinaceous elements ..." One wonders how our 20th century nutritional experts missed this--especially since the good author's book has been out nearly two hundred years and very popular across Europe for much of this time.

Other nuggets of wisdom are equally remarkable. His analysis of taste manages to turn the standard teeth-chew-the-food, stomach-takes-the-food scientific tract into a celebration of good flavors. A long meditation "on food in general" gives any reader new perspectives on coffee, chocolate, and especially truffles. But physiology is never far behind; the aforementioned tasting discussion includes a prophetic note about the contributions of smell. Fisher's contributions to--and obvious loving translation of--these bits bring the gastronomical poetry up to date.

Unfortunately, I've given you all the highlights. The remainder of this book is stuffed with essays either having little to do with gastronomy ("On Exhaustion?" Death? Hunting Luncheons?) or rambling on with little factual basis. Brillat-Savarin wrote this as a journal and it shows far too often; it's disorganized, didactic to the point of annoyance, and only occasionally stays true to the scientific promise of its title. And poor Ms. Fisher usually ends up as a bystander.

With these critiques in mind, I'd recommend 'The Physiology of Taste" as selective reading. A few of the essays are timeless and beautifully written. Most are turgid and make little sense to a 21st century food lover. Given Ms. Fisher's pedigree I'd hesitate to blame the translation; the author gets full credit and blame.

The standard edition of this work in the US, and a lively one. Jean-Anthelme de Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826) is known for this book and for pithy maxims like "Adam and Eve sold themselves for an apple. What would they have done for a truffled fowl?" (That of course in the days when the truffles that most people heard of were real ones, not chocolate candies that look like them; and also when the real ones were much more plentiful and less expensive.) Memorable are the wonderful anecdotes of the kindly old priest and his "austere" meatless menu ("The Curé's Omelet," with "theoretical notes" afterwards) and of Brillat's scheme at a country inn to enhance a humble dish. This wide-ranging book established its author as an original and knowledgeable voice in French food writing, to be compared with Carême and Grimod de la Reynière.

Brillat-Savarin, among other roles, was the basis of Marcell Rouff's _The Passionate Epicure,_ a fictional book gently combining food and sex (naturally, as a friend of mine remarked, since it's French), which was widely read in English when the translation appeared in 1962. Marcella Hazan and (I believe) Julia Child cited it in their cookbooks. In his preface to the 1962 Rouff, Lawrence Durrell (himself a fashionable author at that time) explained that many in the Brillat-Savarin family "died at the dinner table, fork in hand" and that Brillat's sister Pierrette, two months before her hundredth birthday, spoke at table what are to food fanatics easily the most famous last words ever: "Vite! Apportez-moi le dessert -- je sens que je vais passer!"

Fisher's translation and notes are a lively part of this edition of Brillat-Savarin (happily reprinted recently). Some booksellers offer newer editions by different English translators; I don't know why. This semi-scholarly translation and editing, executed in France during the post-war period described in her autobiographical _Two Towns in Provence,_ was the work that established Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher among US gastronomic writers. Her later status as Official Food Celebrity encouraged journalists to cite her automatically (whether they had read her work or not), but at least this time, publicity and merit coincide.

A refreshing take on Arthurian legend, literature, history, mythology and their intersection. Markale offers theories on how different societies constructed their history and mythology (for any historiographers in the crowd) as well as a synthesis of different versions of Arthurian legend. The French courtly romances of the 12th and 13th century are not excluded, but Markale places more emphasis on the earlier sources (both extant and interpolated) for the Celtic tales. A compelling portrait of Arthur and the Celts emerges.

No other book covers the legend of King Arthur better than this!! From the political aspects to the mythical, this book is great for any who find King Arthur of interest. It undermines the myth and trys to dig at the truth, and on the way you will find that many of the stories about Arthur were for political gain during the time they were written. This books goes VERY DEEP, and if you get discouraged by heavy books do not get this! But if you are inpired to search the endless wonders of King Arthur, then get this book and enjoy!

I have three books by Markale (The Celts, Women of the Celts, and this one), and this is the only one that impressed me in the least. Despite its stupid title, this book is full of valuable information, historical, political, and mythical. Arthurian lore and speculations about the historical Arthur are not one of my favorite things of this sort, but for someone looking for a professional study of it, this is your book.

This is the motherlode. As of this moment there is a French tri-colour upon the pinnacle...the very tip of the iceberg in that chaos of polar ice and night which is Rimbaud at his best. I read all Rimbaud scholarship, and I haven't missed a thing of note for the past 35 years, and I give the nod to Mssr. Steinmetz for achivement becoming a "genie" of synpathetic understanding and scholarly rigour. There will always be need for more on Rimbaud, and just because this book is the greatest so far...I implore you...still read it all beginning with Isabel and her husband, and Delahaye up until this day March 2, 2006. It is the Greatest Story Ever Told. No serious person should miss it. "By the brother's boot it stinks fresh."

The presence of an enigma, the enigma of presence: The Steinmetz book oscillates between these two poles, revealing one as it obscures the other, before begining the process over again. A clarifying agent -- yes, certainly; the culmination of decades of research -- no doubt. Authoritative, provocative, at times compelling, Steinmetz has returned to us the challenge of a poet and a man that we continue to face, facing ourselves as we do so. And this, I believe, is the final worth of this book. Mirror and lens, it reflects and refracts as much as we care to give into it; as much as we care to take the challenge of Rimbaud seriously for our place and our time.

I realy enjoyed this book, good resource for most players. The book is available online free from TSR's homepage. Good luck in finding it.

THE book for all who wish to build castles in the ADND world. With complete instructions for building your castle from the conception stage to the random encounters whilst building it. Numerous examples are evident, and there are even sections on the history of castles, chilvary, and even special racial castles are included. There is only one problem ... and this is that the entire book is available in electronic form (scanned & OCR'ed), from the TSR Inc. homepage at: www.TSRInc.com/Games/ADND/Core/Scanned/DMGR2/CASTLE.ZIP

This is a wonderful book for the person that loves military history and insightfulness

A very intresting first hand account of a young soldiers rise through the wars and rank to become a general. Associated with different calvary units, he comes in and out service to Napoleon and ADC to many great generals and marshals. Some action but alot of interaction.

This volume contains exceptional philosophical articles on the philosophy of Sartre. It covers every and all aspect of his life and thoughts. The critiques pull no punches and omit nothing. This work takes a hard look at the soundness of Sartre's philosophy. To find out if they hold up, read this volume. p.s. The interview with Sartre durring his later years is worth the price of the book alone. If you like Sartre, you will love this book.

(I was introduced to philosophy through the work of Thomas Nagel and Jean-Paul Sartre.)

An excellent introduction to Jean-Paul Sartre's work, both chronologically and conceptually. Sartre has much to say about everything from love and art to consciousness and personal identity. His insights are profound and in many ways have much relevance to every day life. I would recommend his work to anyone, but especially philosophers, psychologists and ministers/priests.