Memorials Books

This was the story of a young woman who became an old woman living in exile on Kaulapapa. While it was not well written, it was written by someone who through no fault of her own, left what she knew to build another life.
At times I thought it focused on a lot of details, but then its the details that make our lives what they are. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to see the personal side of forced isolation.

This is a quick read, not well written, but excellent nevertheless. Heartbreaking and uplifting at the same time. Olivia Breitha was a living breathing person, who had the worst happen to her, and yet she was able to find great joy, and a good life.

This was a sweetly written, poignant story about the life of a women sent to Kalaupapa Leper Colony. Written in her later years very simply at times recalling the story of her life there. Not highly educational but somewhat enlightening. Very brief almost a pamphlet.

This was a great book that details a common disease that is often overlooked, leprosy. It is the autobiography of a truly inspirational person. The book captures my heart every time I read it. I often need to have a box of tissue nearby when my tears begin to flow as they often do as I read this book, my most cherished possession

I live in Hawaii on a island very close to the island where this book is set. Never before did I know of this story. This book is an emotional roller coaster that took me for a ride. As I turned each page I often had to reach for another tissue as I found myself in tears. Page after page, chapter after chapter brought me closer to my inner self. The emotions that this book brought out in me taught me the meaning of my life. This book is more than a mere book to me, it is my most precious treasure

This is the second of Delderfield's Adam Swann during the late 1800s and features his children growing into their various interests including the family haulier business established during the British industrialization age 1860+ Adam's wife, Henrietta, had taken the business reins while Adam fought in a war and lost his leg. Now she is attending their 9 children while they choose schools and vocations.

As with all Delderfield books, this is a real winner--a hard to put down book.

Adam Swann, founder of transport giant Swann-on-Wheels, sits beside his aged father's deathbed as this sequel to God Is an Englishman begins. His family with wife Henrietta is growing up - indeed, his two oldest children have already left the nest. That leaves six at home. Adam and his beloved Hetty have their hands full with the challenges of rearing the rest of their brood, and of continuing to provide help and guidance to those they've already launched. For Adam there's also the challenge of guiding the business he built from nothing, using a stolen ruby necklace as his starting capital, through an era in which technological advances are driving social change at a sometimes dizzying rate. Does this book take place in the 20th Century? Not at all. It plays out between 1878 and 1889.

Adam Swann is a surprisingly complex character, a man of business who nevertheless cares deeply about the social ills of his Victorian world. His relationship with Henrietta, and with his company's regional managers (whom he considers his other family - not at all the typical attitude for an employer of that era!), drive many of the story's threads. The rest are taken up by the Swann children's passages into adulthood. This richly detailed and wonderfully authentic historical novel can be read on its own without difficulty, as I can attest because I read it without first reading God Is an Englishman. I'm now eager to do that, however!

This is one of those "family saga"/"sweeping epics" that I would have eaten up when I was in high school. There is more interwoven historical detail than bodice ripping, but otherwise this book is right up there with John Jakes's Bicentenial series and other books of the 1970s school of historical novels. Meaning that the men are all strong, the women are all lusty, the hero is moral but misunderstood, the villans are evil and usually deformed. The characters don't have much depth, but there are a lot of them, and separate plots involve each of them. Unfortunately, while the story is interesting, the writing is a little much. This is a typical sentence (yes, one sentence):

"It was only then that he remembered the fearful risks Avery was running by coming here, a man with a double murder charge hanging over him and no means, at this distance, to establish his innocence, for who would be likely to believe that a rake like Avery had shot a man in self-defence after a whore had squeezed him dry, and afterwards fled into the night in the back of one of Swann's frigates as far as Harwich, where he had bribed a Dutch skipper to carry him to the Continent."

Whew!

I gave it three stars because I think it is a two-star book for adults, but would be a four-star book for younger readers. If younger readers stil read historical fiction, this would be appropriate -- it is definitely PG and the history is interesting.

If you enjoyed 'God is an Englishman' by the same author, you will want to continue reading about the saga of Adam Swann and especially his family in this sequel. Both novels are what one might label `industrial fiction,' or books that treat England's economic transformation during the 19th century and its social consequences, along the lines of a Dickens novel. Although I was attracted to read both novels for this reason, even if one isn't interested in the economic and social aspects, the story itself, based on the interpersonal relationships of a varied list of middle and lower class characters and especially the entrepreneurial Adam Swann, is intriguing enough to keep reading to the end. And `Theirs was the Kingdom' was the stronger of the two novels in this sense, especially in developing how Adam's children reached adulthood, the career paths they followed, and how they came to meet their spouses. If you want to learn the basic story line, see the reviews for 'God is an Englishman.'

There have been many legends about this strange place located in a remote area; Henry James' opinion was that it stands lonely as it does on the great plain. It was so old (now 3540 years) that its true history was forgotten by the classic times. Not until the Dark Ages did the old stones begin to stir man's fancies. It is certainly unique.

John B. White says that its history is real and imaginary. In Gerald Hawkins' study, Stonehenge Decoded, his analysis was that the circles of stones are not modified circles. They are true ellipses. And ellipse is an advanced mathematical figure. Prehistoric Brits had a good working knowledge of elementary geometry. Some thought that this circle of pretty large stones was a Druid temple to worship the sunrise and sunset. It was actually a sophisticated astronomical observatory, a Neolithic computer to predict eclipses.

I wonder if a certain expert on slaves in England would agree that they in actuality hauled those huge rocks out there as they did when the Pyramids were built. Brits had slaves before we did. It seems that white slaves go back a long way to Iran. Perhaps aliens came in UFOs and arranged these stones for future reference. Who knows? I am certain that he has visited them as he did the Egyptian pyramids. Maybe he got to the Mayan ones as well, as he is a great traveler and scholar of the Old School.

This is not the easiest book to read. John North is so painstakingly detailed that I occasionally had to set the book aside and let my mind rest a while. Once I finally was able to get all the way through, however, I was very glad I had made the effort. North has given us a definitive look at Stonehenge.

North starts with a fairly simple premise: In order to truly understand Stonehenge one should first study the many other comparable structures built in Britan and Europe during prehistoric times. North slowly works his way through these structures before finally arriving at the ultimate destination: Stonehenge.

The conclusions he finally reaches about Stonehenge are at once startling and fascinating. For instance, he shows that observations were not done from within the Stonehenge circle, but from a point many meters outside the circle.

I could go on, but suffice it to say that if you have ever been curious about Stonehenge, North's book is a must read.

the skys more closely than other writers give them credit for. What sets this book apart from other stonehenge interpretations is this author takes the time, lots of time to support everything with astronomical alignments,time-dating, and mathematics.
Some other authors books claim only solar summer and winter solstice alignments for stonehenge whereas Mr. North shows there is far more to stonehenge than that.
This book is not a light fast read, so plan on spending alot of extra time to read it from cover to cover. This book covers great details missed or ignored by others.
If you are looking for just one book to read on this subject this is the book! 5 stars

Although John North is to be congratulated on his diligence and tenacity in researching and producing this book, I have to say that it is heavy going and his infinitely detailed measurements and conclusions are so mutually entangled that it's very hard to form a clear picture of his conclusions and hence determine whether his science is really as soundly based as he claims. Part of his trouble is the very wide scope of the book. There is material for several substantial books crowded into this one and I feel sometimes the wood gets lost for the trees. Moreover the many drawings of alignments scattered through the pages are frequently lacking in clear notation. This is a pity, because I would like to believe most of the conclusions that I understand. His argument for rising star alignments on many monuments appears to stretch credibility; what about the obscuration of stars by atmospheric density close to the horizon? And for the Uffington White Horse, which I've visited many times and know well, he claims an alignment along a modern road, citing that it may well have followed an earlier track? Proof?
But it is a serious attempt to understand the minds of early architects and their society's relationship to the heavens, and as such is a very welcome addition to the growing archaeo-astronomy corpus.

Mr. North exceeds my expectations in his book on the inhabitants of this magnificent area. Although it was at times tedious and heavy in the astronomical sense, I am an amateur astronomy buff so his interpretations were not totally lost to me. The most amazing breakthrough noted by Mr. North is our arrogance as a literal society to assume their intelligence as minimal due to the lack of a written legacy by these brilliant and sensitive people. Additionally, he subtley proposes that we should not judge the Stonehenge people as one because of a few isolated finds of deviant tribal rituals. The cosmological affect on the beliefs and practices of this era is well documented in Mr. North's book. Aristotle would have understood their aptitude given the tools and skills of the time. Nature is the most perfect teacher and the most accurate. Bravo Mr. North

What a great book! It gave quite an insight into the yearly services for "The Great Lover", as well as entertaining reading about those who attended them. I highly recommend this book, it's fascinating.

This is a wonderful addition to Rudy Lore. Not very well edited, but full of new facts/info and many never seen photos. Detailed accounts of EACH yearly Memorial Service since 1926! Well worth the price. Thanks to the author for such a well-researched Labor Of Love. thank you, Tracy!

This book delivers exactly what it promises. An asset to any Valentino collection. I'm planning a visit to the mauseleum after reading this!!!

"Valentino Forever: The History of the Valentino Memorial Services" is a terrifically entertaining and informative book for anyone intrigued with the fact that Rudolph Valentino's death has been formally recognized by generations of fans since his untimely demise in 1926. Tracy Ryan Terhune has amassed a wonderful array of documented details and a plethora of rare photographs pertaining to the evolution of this quirky Hollywood tradition and put them into highly readable, present day perspective. I particularly enjoyed reading about the original "Lady in Black," a legend in her own right, and her successors. Just when you think there's nothing new to learn about the legend of Valentino, Mr. Terhune surprises and delights with a story decades in the making.

For nearly 80 years, a memorial service to honor the memory of Rudolph Valentino is held every August 23rd at Hollywood Forever (formerly Hollywood Memorial Park). What may seem as a bizzare ritual to some (over the years, it has been just that), it is also a heartfelt tribute to a silent star who, it really seems, will*never* be forgotten.

Tracy Terhune has taken great pains to take us back through the years to experience the grief and remorse felt by family and fans in 1926 and onward through the decades as the memorial services continued amid acrimony between competing factions of Valentino fans and the drama of the mystery of the original and one and only "Lady in Black." Having amassed an amazing collection of original materials that belonged to Ditra Flame, the Lady in Black (it appears she never threw anything away and thank goodness she didn't), Mr. Terhune sets out the story, the highlights, the bitch fights all in an entertaining and very readable fashion. One cannot help but be impressed with the photographs in the book. It is profusely illustrated, many of the photos are one-of-a-kind and have not been seen since they were used in the newspapers in August 1926 (if they were previously published at all). It's fun to see all the players through the years and all the new faces who were born decades after Valentino died, who take part in paying tribute to this day.

While books on Valentino's life abound, the story of the ritual of the only annual memorial held in Hollywood for a departed star was a story that needed to be told. With a literal cast of thousands, Mr. Terhune does just that, he tells it like it is, warts and all when warranted! Ultimately, the book is quite touching and heartwarming to think that there are still so many people who are touched by this silent and shadowy figure. It is a unique phenomenon, a story that needed to be chronicled and Mr. Terhune wove a tale that is quite an entertaiing read. Anyone who loves old Hollywood would love this book.

Richard Francis Burton is one of the great unknown figures in history. And what people do know unfortuantely are the scandals of his private life. This is an account of what should have been at the time an impossible trip. Burton should never have attempted it and the odds were against him surviving it.

What you get in the book is an extraordinary document of travel into one of the blank areas on the map by a true renassanice man. Its a true adventure story about how far a man can go on a combination of intellect and raw courage. This book is Burton the adventurer and explorer at his best.

Perhaps it was my high expectations before starting, or Burton's unscrupulous and merciless exposition of topics dear to him, but while he seemed lost many times during his journey, he lost me every time he made some anecdotal observation on some obscure point, now lost in total oblivion, which is perhaps where Burton rescued it from in the 1850s. Perhaps he should have left it there.

Perhaps this is too harsh. There were occasions leading to his visit to Harar, the forbidden city of Somali-land, where I indulged a hearty chuckle, but this only lasted long enough to bring me upright in my sleeping chair, formerly a reading chair. Not until he reached Harar did he seize my interest and full attention, yet as he was not permitted pen and paper while there, for 10 full days the description relies on his memory. In comparison to the journey there (the entire first volume, over 200 pages), he writes with exacting prose every time his wayfarers or guides resisted the mission, and every other sundry related to the journey.

The descriptions of Harar, its culture, its people and Burton's condition are excellent, but unfortunately are too brief, almost marginal in a work that contends mainly with desert travels. I enjoyed hearing about the lions visiting camp, the difficulties on the route, and other jokes made against his guides, yet I thought I was about to absorb a more entertaining exposition on the forbidden city, rather than an exhausting diary of a mission that perpetuates in a cloud between the send-off and the return.

Just to show that I paid attention, I noted with disapproval that Burton repeats twice the datum that "red pepper" is THE condiment of East Africa (I was satisfied on this particular the first time.) Prepare for a thick shell for a core subject Burton laid on too thinly.

The reviews of some of Richard Burton's books, as well as those of other 19th century explorers, strike me as hilarious. It's as if people expect that these books to be written in a style that would make for some blockbuster Hollywood movie. This is the REAL DEAL people! Burton didn't write this or other books with the idea in mind of entertaining 20th century couch potatoes starved for action. Apparently people's attention spans get seriously taxed when detailed observations about a country's people and culture are brought into play. When in fact, what could be more important in a first hand account of previously unexplored (at least by Europeans) regions? If you want action at every turn and tailor made story lines then stick with Tom Clancy novels or some such. Maybe faketion turns some would be adventurers on, but not me. This book is a truly incredible account of a larger than life adventure!

Sir Richard F Burton is one of the most famous of unread authors. Nearly everyone can tell you about his scandalous doings with native women, his marriage to an ultra-Catholic Englishwoman, and the latter's destruction of the author's private papers after his death.

Ever since I read Fawn Brodie's excellent biography, THE DEVIL DRIVES, I have collected some 20 different Burton books and read most of them. If you make allowances for Burton's diabolical thoroughness (involved footnotes, appendices, foreign language quotes, tables, etc.) and his Victorian circumlocutions in dealing with taboo subjects, he is a truly wonderful read.

Although FIRST FOOTSTEPS is not his most famous book, it is probably the best one to start with. The action is not only more focussed, but Burton did feel he needed quite so much of a scholarly carapace to report back to the scholarly organizations back in Britain. And it finishes up with a stirring postscript about an attack on Burton's camp by Somalis in which the author barely escaped with his life.

Perhaps this is a book that Presidents Bush and Clinton should have read before committing U.S. troops to the region: Burton shows us that not much has changed in the region in 150 years. He was in constant danger, and survived only because his knowledge and guts were more than an a match for his enemies.

This is an exciting book and deserves to be better known.

Gentry does an excellent job of getting the reader involved in the daily dramas that make up Grady Hospital. You could not begin to make up the tales of some of these characters! Riveting.

I found this book hard to put down.

I constantly kept thinking of what the main characters might pull next.

This book demonstrates that life can be stranger than fiction.

What an amazing book! Jerry Gentry studied the patients, nurses, and doctors that make up the Grady Hospital Maternity Ward in Atlanta. He follows several mothers on their journey through prenatal care, pregnancy, and the births of their children. He then follows up after the babies are born. I found this book compelling because it demonstrates every aspect of its subjects' lives. You feel like you personally know the people discussed. It is an emotional and monetarial journey of hardships for most of the mothers involved. Being an Atlanta native this novel has given me new respect for Grady hospital. A great ethnography for anyone interested in the subject and/or social behavior.

This book is very different. The stories themselves will urge you not to put it down.

Although these true stories are sad, the compassionate author weaves the storylines expertly. You know he looks at his main characters with empathy, not contempt.

All Atlantans know Grady Hospital and will understand and appreciate these stories. All others will find Grady Baby fascinating.

"The Memorial Hall Murder
By Jane Langton
8-1 hour audio cassettes
Read by Michael Prichard
Books On Tape, Inc.

THIS GRIPPING STORY TAKES PLACE DURING REHEARSALS FOR A CHRISTMAS PERFORMANCE of Handel's Messiah, and each chapter is introduced by a selection from his masterpiece.

When someone bombs Memorial Hall, Hamilton Down, the corpulent and beloved choir master, disappears in the rubble.

Fortunately on hand to help the local police set to work is Jane Langton's famous sleuth, Homer Kelly, present at Harvard as a visiting lecturer in American Literature.

Kelly carefully baits his trap.
It snaps shut during the Messiah's thrilling finale, a fitting conclusion to the story and a proper orchestration for justice."
[from the back cover of the audio cassette case]

This is the first Homer and Mary Kelly book that I've read. When I come across a mystery that I really enjoy, I try to read all the other books by the author. So I look forward to enjoying the other 16 mysteries that Jane Langton has written in this series.

If you like mysteries with lots of local color and humorous Tom Wolfe-like situations and observations, you won't be disappointed.

This book is one of my favourites. It combines my liking for mysteries and love of classical music. Homer and Mary Kelly assist some students at Harvard to find their lost and loved professor. We follow the rehearsing of Handel's Messiah, and I laughed out loud by the description of a characters tries to learn the music, playing the violin. (probably not as funny for non musicians though) Good book.

This is the book that launched Jane Langton's fame as a mystery writer. She has written much since that time, but I suspect this may be her best work. It has a light touch, a really interesting mystery, and a nice background of Harvardiana and classical music. The university setting is well done, which is unusual among "murder on the campus" books. Current Harvard students may be a bit puzzled (Memorial Hall was completely redone in the mid-'90's, years after this book was published). The plot is expertly constructed, and there is a strong sense of place and time, which allows the reader to care about the action and the characters. I give it 4 stars rather than 5 because I reserve 5 stars for something like The Hound of the Baskervilles.... This book is disappearing from library shelves, but there are still a lot of used copies about. Buy one now, before they are gone, too!

Neil Elliott knew exactly how to get a good story from a man who had first hand knowledge of Al Capone. Presenting the recollections in interview form lends credibility to the information provided by an aging man recalling his "glory days" with Chicago's legendary crime boss. This book shows Capone in a different light, casting a much smaller shadow of the paranoid man who became the gangland leader, and showing a noticeable difference from the glitter of all those Hollywood versions. Elliott's ability with interview skills will make his 2003 interview with Jesus a "must read." The bookstores will need to stock a big supply of the latest--The Autobiography of Jesus Christ As Told To: Neil Elliott. It will be even better and well worth the wait in line.

Of course it's well known that Jack Woodford had nothing to do with this supposed interview of him. Great and hilarious fiction tho!

The author of this book claims to have been a piano player for Al Capone. Al often would request him to play Al's favorite song, Roses of Picardy. The author claims to have been taken along to witness the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and provides interesting details of what took place. He claims some of the victims were swearing while others cried because they knew what fate awaited them. He also claims to have been in a barbershop with Capone and Machine Gun Jack McGurn when it was reported that Capone torpedos John Scalise, Albert Anselmi, and Joe Guinta were killed. He reports that Capone was upset with this while McGurn told him it had to be done. He exonerated Capone who it is often claimed clubbed the trio to death with a baseball bat following a party in nearby Hammond, Indiana. Interesting details are provided in this book, and we as readers are left to decide whether or not they are true.

Bill Emblom says that the author claims to have seen and been with Capone. Bill Emblom should have read the book more carefully. The author does not claim that, instead, he interviewed someone who experienced those things, which, if I may point out, are factual. This book gets 6 stars from me.

This is an extraordinary work, let modern liberal critics say what they will of their 'mass movements' and 'diversity'. Long after they and their productions have bitten the dust, Carlyle will continue to speak to the enlightened few, and perhaps one day, it is to be hoped, to the enlightened many.

This work is much more than just a study of various influential men in history. Carlyle has very interesting notions of the historical process itself, the spread of religions and their demise, the importance of "true belief" in things, as opposed the unbelief that merely follows rituals and procedures. For Carlyle, true belief, is the beginning of morality, all success, all good things in this world; Unbelief, scepticism, the beginning of all corruption, quackery, falsehood.Unbelief, for instance, is at the root of all materialist philosophies, eg Utilitarianism which find human beings to be nothing more than clever, pleasure-seeking bipeds. It is also at the root of all democratic theories: faith in a democratic system means despair of finding an honest man to lead us.

Whether one agrees with Carlyle or not in his appraisal of democratic and other systems, one must admit, at least, that very little good is to be gotten from "the checking and balancing of greedy knaveries." If we have no honest men in government or in business, but only a bunch of self-interested quacks, then we cannot expect any system, however ingenious, to save us. Even the most skilled architect will not be able to construct a great building, if you give him only hollow, cracked bricks to build it with. Find your honest men, says Carlyle, and get them into the positions of influence; only then will it be well with you.

Six lectures delivered by Carlyle in 1840. He classifies six kinds of heroes: as Divinity (Wotan, paganism); Prophet (Mohamed); Poet (Dante, Shakespeare); Priest (Luther, Knox); Man of Letters (Johnson, Rousseau, Burns); and Ruler (Cromwell, Napoleon). The trait that defines a hero is: absolute sincerity and firm belief in his principles.

In his highly rhetorical lectures, Carlyle highlights and reinforces the role of the individual in the social process, as opposed to the role of the masses. And he did that precisely when the foundations were being laid for the most influential "pro-mass" movement in History: Marxism. The tragedy of Marxism, at least one of them all, is that, when translated into action, the blind masses were also led by "heroes" of the most authocratic sort. Not properly the work of an historian, these lectures are vivid, inflamed and enthusiast. Their uselfuness for our present age is precisely that they remind us of the crucial role significant individuals play in history, to accelerate or slow down (and even reverse) the process of social change, which is usually more gradual, diffused, and diverse.

Carlyle is not properly a historian or a philosopher, but a moralist, a fervent admirer of excellence, and a prose-poet of the first rank. Six meditations deal respectively of the hero as: Divinity, Prophet, Poet, Priest, Man of Letters, and King. If this book can't rightly be shelved with philosophy or history, it belongs in Literature with a capital "L," and Poetry. Carlylye loved the English Language and used it masterfully, energetically, and reverentially, without a trace of the trivial overindulgence of self-conscious and self-absorbed "poets."

There are not many books sold at Amazon.com that were written almost two centuries ago. There might be a few written a few millenniums ago but they are mostly translations. There is something special when one reads the spoken word untranslated. Only in its original form, words have the mysterious effect that let the reader have a special connection with the author.

Carlyle was Scottish and lived in England, but he had close relations with the "New World" and had readers in United States. He had a lifelong friendship with an influential American Philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson. At his time, there were not many philosophers who witnessed the industrial revolution but still kept a transcendental and not a materialistic view of the world. In the 19th century, Materialism was in full swing, and the people in the West were mesmerized by the scientific technological advances of the times and running away from God like herds of cattle, just like the way intellectuals of the East did a century later. Carlyle, Emerson, Thoreau and a few others were the only exceptions in the West that still tried to keep what is beyond the "apparent" in focus or at least in search of it. Bediuzzaman tried to do the same with the voice of Qur'an and called the people to what is beyond the apparent in the face of materialism in the East in the 20th century. One interesting observation I have to point out, is that one common theme among these Western Philosophers; many were all influenced by Emanuel Swedenborg, famous 18th century Swedish Philosopher

In Heroes and Hero Worship Thomas Carlyle makes an attempt to draw a picture of the development of human intellect by using historical people as coordinates. There are people who has a perspective of history in terms of "environment" and "times" and "causes" while others like Carlyle has the view that human advancement was not continues but discrete and these jumps were mainly due to specific individuals he calls "Heroes". This is like the wave - particle duality of the "nature of light". In some phenomenon Light behaves like a wave in others like a particle. One can write a history based on ideas, cultures and mediums in which people lived, or the same history could be written by taking certain individuals and following them and their actions.

Writings of many other authors of that time and Carlyle's of course are very perceptive. Carlyle does not really care to be objective on the matter. He has an idea and he wants to tell you that idea and when telling you what that idea is, he uses whatever his hands and mind get hold of. Being so passionate about what you are telling is probably a good thing. But if one overdoes it, one cannot help but show wild swings in appreciation of the historical person in question. If we use the drawing analogy, his historical person becomes no longer a point on the painting but a thread on the brush. But that should not prevent us from benefiting from his writings.

Muhammad (PBUH) has a special place in the book under the chapter title "Hero as a Prophet". In the book Carlyle declares his admiration of Muhammad (PBUH). Carlyle's answers to pointed questions on Islam and Muhammad (PBUH) showed interesting similarities to Bediuzzaman's line of answers to similar questions. ......

Considering the fact that while the West and East were at odds and the means of communications were quite inferior to our times, seeing Carlyle having such an open mind to the "other" puts him in a category of his own with others like Swedenborg, Emerson and Thoreau. I think when we are trying to build bridges between the peoples of the West and the East we should not overlook these early historical representatives of that dialogue, as Bediuzzaman foresees in his writings.

it wasn't what I expected to receive with the English to Spanish stuff in it

Though many statements Thoreau has made seem a little flakey around the edges, when it came to free will and individual choice he had the right idea and the courage to see it through. The importance of centralizing power within oneself is perhaps more important today than ever when unrestrained government in partnership with multinational corporations weild enormous destructive power. A book that has not lost its relevance.

His opening paragraph says it all: "That government is best which governs not at all."

He ends with a brief stay in the local jail for tax evasion.

Prose on the state, government, patriotism, taxes and politicians.

Have not we all wanted to stand up at one time, then only to leave it as an afterthought, then to be forgotten.

This was the first Thoreau's book I read, and it inspired me to read some other of his writings. They are all inspirational, above average, writings. Well, about this book, a strong critic to United States government of his time (why not to extend that to ours, since it seems not much has changed...). He takes a position against slavery, as well as the war with Mexico.
I believe this is one of the most well written works fighting for the liberty of expression and against slavery I ever read.

His ideas about an unexistent State are at least discussible, since it seems very difficult to people live without any organizational structure. But, of course, we SHOULD discuss about State's authority, as well its limits...
Thoreau's own natural life was his inspiration, and (as we can see in his texts) he loved nature, and he spent a lot of time of his life around it. He liked freedom, and in this work he depicts his ideas about freedom, and how it should be applied to him, as well as all mankind.

Civil Disobedience is one of the most importance works of philosophy ever written. Like all great works of philosophy, it is as relevant today as it has ever been, as it transcends space and time. Don't let the abolitionist nature mislead you: this book is not merely about abolition and slavery. Rather, it is about Man Against the State, individuality, and Thoreau's philosophy of how one man can stand up to government and society, driven by his own convictions of right and wrong, as summarized by the timeless quote "Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already".

Thoreau's main point is that the best - and many times, the only - method for fighting injustice is through passive disobedience. By refusing to cooperate with the machinery of injustice, the individual can become the friction that stops the machine. Active resistance is bound for failure, as the machine (the State, society, etc.) is too formidable for the individual to fight. But, by refusing to cooperate, justice can be achieved and injustice toppled.

If you are looking for a marvelous primer on individuality and the fight for justice, start with this book.