Interviews Books

These interviews with 12 notable gay authors are powerful meditations on literary creativity and gay identity. The deeply insightful questions--Canning read everything by each of these authors before interviewing them--draw thoughtful, at times surprising responses from a wide range of authors. Readers are left to draw their own conclusions about the sum effect of the interviews, but one result for myself was fresh respect for these men and for their hardworking devotion to art. I am eager to read further volumes of Canning's interviews; it is such a pleasure to read intelligent commentary about novels by gay authors, when so much of what we get is filtered through annoying celebrity-obsessed, therapy-thirsty media like The Advocate and Out.

Wow! I just got hold of this book, and it's a must for allreaders of gay fiction - in fact, for all readers. It's a collectionof interviews with the novelists you've most probably read, and talksabout how to write, literary influences, reputations. There's somehigh quality literary gossip but lots of serious analysis too. Youcan't believe some of the stuff is 'on record'! The conversations arelively, funny, never repetitive or boring, and they sort of all linkup. You can read the whole thing in one go - it's like a chatroom withall your favourite gay writers. Why has nobody done this before? Icould quibble about some missing authors, but they may turn up involume 2... Meanwhile, this book gave me a massive reading list that Iwant to check out.

UCLA sociologists Edward E. Telles and Vilma Ortiz write:

"Despite sixty years of political and legal battles to improve the education of Mexican Americans, they continue to have the lowest average education levels and the highest high school dropout rates among major ethnic and racial groups in the United States. ... However, leading analysts, apparently believing in the universality of assimilation, argue that this is the result of a large first and second generation population still adjusting to American society. ... These and other scholars predict that Mexican Americans will have the same levels of education and socioeconomic status as the dominant non-Hispanic white population by the fourth generation."

Mexican Americans are new to the East, but they've been in the Southwestern U.S. since before there was a U.S. The 1920 Census found one million Hispanics in the U.S. -- that's an ample sample from which to draw conclusions.

While social scientists in the mid-20th Century paid intense interest to European ethnic newcomers and African Americans, Latinos were largely overlooked. Telles and Ortiz note that Mexican Americans "were well off the radar screen of the largely Eastern and Midwestern-based social sciences. At best, they were viewed as some inexplicable frontier anomaly."

Telles (of UCLA Chicano Studies Dept.) and Ortiz conclusively debunk the conventional wisdom that Mexican Americans close the gap by the third or fourth generation.

During the Great Society, UCLA organized the first major survey, the Mexican American Study Project. In 1965, UCLA academics interviewed 1576 individuals of Mexican descent in the two largest Mexican American metropolises of the time, Los Angeles County and San Antonio.

The respondents were classified into first generation (Mexican-born immigrants), second generation (American born children of immigrants), and third generation (grandchildren of immigrants).

Fortunately, workers in 1992 stumbled upon the 1965 survey forms in a storage room at the UCLA library. Sociologists affiliated with UCLA's Chicano Studies Research Center came up with the audacious notion of searching out the original respondents, then interviewing them again, along with some of their children. This would turn the old 1965 cross-sectional study into a much-needed longitudinal one.

What's really interesting, though, is that they also interviewed in 2000 about 700 of the 1965 respondents' children, who were born 1946-66, roughly during the Baby Boom. The 700 Baby Boomer children were all American-born and represent second through fourth generation Mexican-Americans.

To keep things simple in my summary of the findings, I'll ignore the original respondents and just report on these 700 Baby Boomer children of the old respondents (or, in one case, the Baby Boomer children's Generation X children).

Their multiple regression analyses show that the key factor, driving all the others, is education. They conclude:

"Throughout this book, our statistical models have shown that the low education levels of Mexican Americans have impeded most other types of assimilation, thus reinforcing a range of ethnic boundaries between them and white Americans."

As is well known, American-born Mexicans average more years of education than do their Mexican-born immigrant ancestors. Unfortunately, as Telles and Ortiz report, the third and fourth generations of Mexican Americans do not continue to close the gap relative to non-Hispanic whites:

"In education, which best determines life chances in the United States, assimilation is interrupted by the second generation and stagnates thereafter."

The fourth generation (whose grandparents were born in America) was particularly unaccomplished:

"Sadly and directly in contradistinction to assimilation theory, the fourth generation differs the most from whites, with a college completion rate of only 6 percent [compared to 35 percent for whites of that era]."

The fourth generation Baby Boomers averaged 0.7 years less schooling than the second and third generation Mexican Americans born in the same era.

Telles and Ortiz found:

"...the educational progress of Mexican Americans does not improve over the generations. At best, given the statistical margin of error, our data show no improvement in education over the generations-since-immigration and in some cases even suggest a decline."

In 2000, the UCLA interviewers also asked the Baby Boomer children of the original subjects about their own children (i.e., the grandchildren of the 1965 respondents). These grandchildren (who are third to fifth generation Mexican Americans, Generation X-ers born in the 1960s and 1970s) "seemed to be doing no better than their parents" at graduating from high school.

Their book is a monument to disinterested, objective social science.

Telles and Ortiz provide us with a remarkable combination of theory tested against data in a book that is carefully and clearly written. They look at theoretical perspectives on Mexican immigration to America, ranging from the optimists who see Mexican-Americans as just the latest ethnic group to arrive and assimilate into American society to the pessimists who see Mexican-Americans as a racialized group that is treated as non-white and whose members largely remain at the bottom of the economic ladder. They provide a useful review the history of Mexican-Americans, demonstrating both the past injustices and racial segregation imposed on them and the changes that have taken place in recent decades, noting that continuous immigration from Mexico results in a very different situation from previous more time-limited immigration from European countries such as Italy. Then they carefully examine the results of two surveys, an original survey of Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles and San Antonio done in 1965 and a follow-up survey with original survey respondents and a sample of their children done in the late 1990s. The description of the work involved in finding the original respondents is fascinating in itself.

Their unique data set enables them to portray a complex reality, which combines substantial assimilation on some dimensions, especially language and politics, with a mixed picture of major initial economic and educational progress in the first two or three generations followed by relative stagnation in the area of education and the accompanying harmful effects of limited education on upward economic mobility in subsequent generations. They conclude with an appeal focused on the importance of education, and improving educational opportunities in order for Mexican-Americans to continue their economic progress and to continue to ensure that they are able to fully take their place in American society and are not held apart as a different "race". The title seems somewhat misleading, but I guess "Generations of partial exclusion and partial assimilation" would not grab anyone's attention, and this book deserves the attention.

The writing is very clear and the authors are also clear about what is supported by their data and what is speculation. No one can claim to speak or write about immigration issues or more general issues of race and ethnicity without coming to grips with the material presented here.

Get Talent! by Paul C. Green, Ph.D. is the answer to an interviewer's prayers. In this unique book, Dr. Green has virtually eliminated the guesswork from the interviewing process. He has created an easy, fool-proof, step-by-step style of interviewing that helps the interviewer predict job performance in a fair and defensible way. By utilizing the practical information and questionnaires included in this valuable book, the interviewer is able to stay focused while bringing out the best attributes in the candidate and by removing the intimidation factor that oftentimes is present in an interview. This book has been a godsend to me in my recruiting endeavors, and I feel it will be to anyone else in charge of hiring employees...from personnel recruiters in the corporate world in charge of hiring dozens of employees to the business managers in small businesses who hire only a few employees.

Behavior Speaks Louder Than Words...Paul Green, Industrial Organizational Psychologist, has compiled many years of extensive behavioral based interviewing research into his book - Get Talent. I work in the Real Estate Industry and found the information in this book to be highly valuable in my own style of working with people. Including, timing my own questions based on behavioral information and what to look for in creating my own approach to client centered evaluations.
Thank you Mr. Green!
This is a Winner---10+++

Lee Streater, M.Ed, Realtor Associate, EcoBroker

An interesting book, it is based on the transcript of a series of interviews Judge Buckley did in the mid 1990s in connection with a legal oral history project. The book takes the form of a question and answer session, "annotated" by Judge Buckley to clarify and expand upon some of his answers. The book follows Buckley's life from his youth through college, his service in World War II and beyond.

Buckley is the brother of William F. Buckley and as such got caught up in the burgeoning conservative movement in the 1950s and 60s. In 1970, he found himself elected to the Senate as the candidate of the New York Conservative Party, winning a three way race. After being defeated for reelection in 1976, in the early 1980s he joined the Reagan administration, most prominently as president of Radio Free Europe. One of his former campaign volunteers was responsible for finding potential judicial nominees, so Buckley found himself on the DC Circuit, hearing appeals mostly from administrative law issues. Through it all, he found time to raise a large family, help run his family oil business and indulge his love of nature.

What is most fascinating about the book is that all of it was unplanned. While serving in the Pacific during World War II, Buckley decided he really wanted the quiet life of a country lawyer in rural Connecticut. He never got his wish, but seems to have had no regrets. The book is an interesting memoir on one of an obscure, but important, figure in American post-WWII history.

Besides a very good read of his varied life as a US Senator, US Circuit Judge, US Under Secretary of State, Judge Buckley's memoir is best when he discusses his life after Pearl Harbor. He was all over the South Pacific on an LST (Landing Ship Tank)and his memory of the action in the Battle of Leyte Gulf is amazingly vivid these 60 years later. In more than 2 years at sea, he slept only 5 nights ashore. His fondness and expertise in birds is amazing as well as touching. He comes across as a very humble person. His service to his country is an inspiration. One might ask: how many Yalies go to war now...or in Viet Nam ??????

Alright, I just finished gushing about book one and HAVE to do the same for this one. This picks up where the first one left off - the inspiration and discipline needed to create.

You ever go to a booksigning and wish you had the time to ask the author all the questions you have about such issues? Imagine over 100 of them sharing with you, in a fantastic volume you can refer to again and again.

When I read this book, I get so excited that I rush to finish whichever "glimmer" an author is sharing and RUN to get back to work on my own stuff. I just threw the book down so I could sing both their praises this minute, and I will fvcking STALK the editors at Writer's Digest if I have to in order to make sure Volume 3 is on the way! LOL

You *must* own both of these books. You can read them again and again, just like I plan to, and because they are so hefty, you are bound to rediscover thoughts from the authors that resonate anew the second and third time around.

Can't get ENOUGH.

Adroitly co-edited by Susan Burmeister-Brown and Linda B. Swanson-Davies, "The Glimmer Train: Guide To Writing Fiction - Inspiration And Discipline" is a compact, 444-page compendium of contributions by professional authors and writers on the subject of their personal and philosophical approaches to writing for a living. The second volume of the acclaimed 'Glimmer Train Guide to Writing Fiction' series from Writer's Digest Press, "Inspiration And Discipline" focuses upon the more private aspects of a writer's life including family, friends, the incorporation of autobiographical material into their literary work, the responsibilities associated with writing professionally, the artistic nature of a writer's vocation, and so much more. From dealing with writer's block, to writing as therapy, to how reading shapes writing, "Inspiration And Discipline" is engaging and informative, as it is thoughtful and thought-provoking. Anyone aspiring to write professionally should take the time to read (and re-read) "The Glimmer Train: Guide To Writing Fiction - Inspiration And Discipline".

I've never played baseball but the game fascinates me and I read everything I can get my hands on.

WOW! This book was a great surprise. It is one of the most informative baseball books I've ever read. So many people from the game talk about this career from different perspectives. Since reading it, I look at players differently, with a kind of appreciation of what they go through.

It's an easy read and lots of fun. I felt like I was talking with such baseball giants as Frank Robinson, Andre Dawson, Bob Feller, Mark Grace, Robin Ventura and, well, that list of names is long and reads like a who's who of baseball.

It's one of those rare books where you read along, have a great time, then realize you're learning a lot at the same time. It definitely lives up to its name and kids who want to go pro really should have it as a reference.

My copy was a gift. Now all my friends are getting one for Christmas.

FIVE STARS for sure!

There's a lot of books out there ABOUT baseball and its players. Go Pro BASEBALL WISE is a baseball book BY its players.

This book doesn't focus on baseball's greatest moments, the endless comparison of stats, or the controversy of sod over turf. In fact, there's no mention of any game in particular.

What is in this book is baseball discussing baseball as a career. Author PJ Dragseth made a tremendous effort to interview a wide variety of baseball people across the country, from Hall of Fame players to rookies. He talked to some of the greatest players in the game. As a result, his book not only entertains, but could accurately be called a "baseball career handbook" for those who love baseball as well as for those who want to play the game professionally.

This book is a great accomplishment and Dragseth is to be commended for his effort. I recommend it highly and give it five stars.

Steven Boxer

Georgetown University, Washington, DC

This is a great guide for doing your homework before going into the recruiting season. I feel well prepared to face my interviews in the fall. I recommend this along with the other wetfeet guides to anyone who wants to work for one of these big national firms.

Whoever wrote the Goldman guide for y'all did a fantastic job. The writing is smooth, the reasoning is strong, and it's clear the author did his research--a good thing for me as it made my task of researching the company much easier. I went into the recruiting sessions with both guns firing, with the ammo furnished compliments of WetFeet. I felt good about my chances at snagging an internship with Goldman, but I felt like I got a leg up on the competition, having read through your guide. Thanks much!

This guide is the most informative and helpful book on interviewing Ive ever seen! As a new college graduate, I had no experience with interviewing in the real world. I looked at some books in the career center at school, but they were way too basic. My sister bought me this book, and reading through it helped me feel prepared to handle any interview situation. I put the "success stories strategy" to the test and got the job! Also, great sample resumes and cover letters are included, so I was able to overhaul my resume just in time...

I worked in boring, low-paying jobs for two years after graduating from college, and I wanted to jump-start my career. This interview guide definitely helped me during my job search. The book provided detailed information about all types of interviews (so I wasn't thrown for a loop when I had to endure a panel interview), as well as a lot of other useful job information, such as suggestions for improving your resume and advice from professionals in different fields. I found the chapter on creating and using a network of contacts particularly useful -- if not for my network, I might not have gotten my current job. I would highly recommend this book.

I was lucky enough to study with one of Mme. Marcus former students (a graduate of Julliard and a Carniege Hall Almuni), and the book really helped to capture a side of her I had only heard about. Plus, the interviews are wonderful!! Very insightful!

I was lucky enough to study with one of Mme. Marcus former students (a graduate of Julliard and a Carniege Hall Almuni), and the book really helped to capture a side of her I had only heard about. Plus, the interviews are wonderful!! Very insightful!

Full-color photographs on every page display a vast and diverse variety of fishing flies (with each one having been developed especially for various local waters from Michigan to California), in Guide Flies: How To Tie And Fish The Killer Flies From America's Greatest Guides And Fly Shops. Advice by fly-tying expert David Klausmeyer for making and tying each fly, along with its most practical uses, pack the pages of this exciting, superbly illustrated catalogue for dedicated anglers ready to move beyond plain store-bought flies to creating more adventurous, artistic, and effective lures.

This book is exceptionally written. It captures the essence of the flies that have been gathered from guides and fly shops from all across America. The photograhy brings out the abilities of the fly tyers that were fortunate enough to be included in the book, as well as the inclusion of the recipes for the fly patterns.
This book is highly recomended for both the novice and professional fly tyer.