Reviews Books

Unmasking Terror is an excellent purchase for anyone interested in learning more about global terrorism. The breakdown of the book is by country, which makes it very easy to navigate through. I was delighted to see that a large percentage of the authors actually live and work in the countries they reported on. Unfortunately, it's not often you find a book which offers so many different perspectives outside of the American one. In addition, the interviews were tremendously insightful since many of the interviewees are privy to the inner workings of these groups. In my opinion, this is the best compendium of articles on terrorism in existence.

By Michael Scheuer, Author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror

"If it's not classified, it's not intelligence." Sadly this operating assumption is all too commonly held in the highest policy-making levels of Western governments. U.S. and European policymakers -- appointed and elected -- are beguiled by the thought of reading materials collected in the ether or via spies, and often ignore information just as pertinent to their pending decisions simply because it is unclassified. To their countries' detriment, they miss much because of this condescending attitude, and the excellent new book from the non-partisan Jamestown Foundation -- Unmasking Terror: A Global Review of Terrorist Activities -- provides a superb example of the kind of quality information policymakers tend to ignore.

Jamestown's 600-page volume captures the worldwide dimensions of Islamic terrorism and insurgency and does so in short, digestible articles based on indigenous press sources, personal interviews, and the substantial experience of their authors. Multiple articles on al-Qaeda that give readers a clear view of the organization's durability and lethal potential are followed by similar multi-essay sections on Chechnya, Pakistan, Central Asia, the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, and Europe and North America. The volume's editors succeed not only in providing a region-by-region review of Islamic terrorism, but have constructed their book in a way that affords the reader an understanding of how the groups -- of which al-Qaeda is only the most prominent -- increasingly view themselves as part of a worldwide movement.

Jamestown's Unmasking Terror also presents the reader with what seems to me a unique set of interviews with some of the world's top experts on the war being waged by al-Qaeda and its allies. Peter Bergen, Jason Burke, and former National Security Council Senior Director Daniel Benjamin speak on the capabilities and evolution of al-Qaeda, while Sa'd al-Faqih, the London-based leader of the Movement for Reform in Arabia, discusses al-Qaeda's role within the context of opposition to the al-Saud family in Saudi Arabia. Other interviews in the book also add to our understanding of the growth of Islamic militancy in Europe, Central Asia, Iraq, the Arabian Peninsula, and Afghanistan.

I would recommend Unmasking Terror to any specialist or lay reader who is interested in an erudite but manageable survey of Islamic terrorism around the globe. The book will leave the reader with a solid if unsettling view of the dangerous historical period into which the West has entered. It may also leave the reader angry that the policymakers tasked to defend us against the terrorist threat far too frequently fail to exploit the kind of fine, objective, and unclassified scholarship on the issue that is contained in Unmasking Terrorism.

Michael Scheuer served in the CIA for 22 years before resigning in 2004. He served as the Chief of the bin Laden Unit at the Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999. He is the once anonymous author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror and Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America. Mr. Scheuer is a regular contributor to the Terrorism Focus, a publication of the Jamestown Found

This is a very detailed volume, it's a useful reference. i'm not sure about the average reader who knows very little about the actual issues involved, this is really the meat and bones of terrorism and security. i have suggested it to other collueagues in Sweden too. If you want details without opinion, this is a good buy.

I remember the year, if not the month and day, when I became hopelessly hooked on "trash cinema". It was sometime during the Summer of 1986 when, out of boredom, I decided to watch "Spawn of the Slithis" on the "Elvira, Mistress of the Dark" midnight movie show. I couldn't believe what I was seeing!! How could I have been missing out on this great stuff for so many years?

Since then I've made it my mission in life to watch as many of these "underground" classics as possible, i.e., without getting divorced; everything from silly TROMA splatterfests to "subversive" spaghetti westerns. Naturally, this gives me a licence to bore my friends and co-workers with my latest discoveries (every week), but they tolerate me pretty well.

I've always had a tough time, however, deciding what to rent or buy next; and those masive paperback video guides by Leonard Maltin and Roger Ebert were of limited use to a geeky, twisted son-of-a-bitch like me. I've relied mostly upon the kindness and patience of video store owners and passing strangers.

But now, here it is! In addition to being a former video store owner, Scott Phillips is a sucessful screenwriter and director ("Drive", "The Stink of Flesh", "Science Bastard") who is eminently qualified to dish the dirt on trashy gems such as "Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park" and "Shriek of the Mutilated"; two of my all-time favorites. His cinematic knowledge is STAGGERING, and all of his reviews are funny as Hell, and often heartwarming to boot. For the most part, he concentrates on "overlooked" classics of the 1960's through 1990's, but his takes on selected mainstream oddities like "Porkys" and "Xanadu" are howlingly funny! His love of the art form and the moviemaking process shines through on every page.

This could not have come at a better time for me! At my (middle) age, I was beginning to think that I'm a "lost cause" because I remember kooky characters like Bert Convy (that swingin' hepcat), or that I'm the only guy my age who has a crush on Fairuza Balk. Now I feel better!

This book should be required reading for all film students. Please, Mr. Phillips, keep it up - we want more!

This book of video and movie reviews covers some classic and some long-forgotten so-trashy-they're-awesome flicks. I had heard of a lot of them, but there are many more that, after reading about them, I'm definitely going to have to find somewhere! Even the reviews of the mainstream movies are pretty hilarious.

It almost doesn't matter what this book is about because the writing is just so fun to read. Scott Phillips is a low-budget filmmaker reviewing other people's low-budget films, so you really get an insider's perspective from someone who has seen a LOT of movies. This would make a great stocking stuffer for anti-Hallmark Chrismakkah friends and loved ones. I would prefer to give it 13 stars but 5's as high as they go.

If you like to own some really cool prints of Bugs Bunny, Tweety, or just the old folks from the Warner Bros. Studio, this is the book! It goes through the history of the animation studio and its founders. Chuck Jones is similar to Walt Disney, he had his own crew of animation masters to create a whole new perspective of cartoon.
One disappointing about this book is that its published date is 1997. Sadly "The Iron Giant" (released 1999) and "Cats Don't Dance" (1997) did not make it to the book; two of the most successful WB animated feature film. However, it is still a book to own and look for inspiration.

It provides the information about different types of animation art such as production cel, sericel, limited edition. The reader can use this book to check the original prices and edition size of many WB limited edition cels.

This book was well done and very appealing to the eye and informational to read. It gives the reader some good history of Warner Bros. cartoons and the rarely credited artists. Through-out the book there are pointers on how to draw various characters, but unfortunatly they are not as complete as one might have it. However, the overall is terrific.

Lichtenberg truly observes and thinks, forgive my cliched phrase, with a child's wonder. Thinking and Observing are, for him, downright entertainment not, as for most of us, labour-work. Even such strict critics as Schopenhauer and Nietszche have to off-hat to this unusual man.

One point to note for this translation: Mr. Hollingdale sometimes omits some part of an aphorism without obvious reasons. Take the first aphorism as an example: the translation reads:'the great artifice of regarding small deviations from the truch as being the truth itself is at the same time the foundation of wit...'; while the original is 'Der grosse Kunstgriff, kleine Abweichungen von der Wahrheit fur die Wahrheit selbst zu halten, worauf die ganze Differentialrechnung gebaut ist, ist auch zugleich der Grund unserer witzigen Gedanken...'; why the phrase 'worauf die ganze Differentialrechnung gebaut ist' is not translated? Sometimes Lichtenberg's idea just keeps rambling, and it makes sense on the translator's part to cut it short, but in some cases Mr. Hollingdale's chopping puzzles me.

All the same, this edition is a valuable one, supplementing the "Lichtenberg Reader" translated, edited and introduced by Franz H. Mautner and Henry Hatfield. Readers who have German can consult the 4-vol. "Schriften und Briefe" edited by Wolfgang Promies (with 2 useful vol.s of "Kommentar"; Hanser Verlag, 1967).

I guess any lover of Lichtenberg would often murmur to themselves: 'May this wonderful man be better known!' And I think this translation has served well to make Lichtenberg better known in many parts of the world.

"The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery." This is a cynic notation considering the fate of the Red Indians. "A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments..." sounds like George W. Bush - but is written down by Professor (not Condoleezza Rice), by Professor Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, 1742-1799. He has been a philosopher, but his writing-style was more comfortable to any reader, than the work of the other German genius of that time: Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Lichtenberg loved the ideas of the French Enlightenment and he tried to explain the ideas of empiric science with humor. He was critical against Christian dogmatics. He once shortly noted: "An Amen face." Or longer: "Nothing offers me such clear proof of how things stand in the world of learning than the circumstance that Spinoza was for so long regarded as an evil, worthless person and his opinions as dangerous." Lichtenberg has been a philosopher - but writing with esprit. If you can tolerate his bile, buy his book: "Who has two pairs of trousers turn one of them into cash and purchase this book." But bear in mind: "A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it, - an apostle is unlikely to look out!"

"The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery." This is a cynic notation considering the fate of the Red Indians. "A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments..." sounds like George W. Bush - but is written down by Professor (not Condoleezza Rice), by Professor Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, 1742-1799. He has been a philosopher, but his writing-style was more comfortable to any reader, than the work of the other German genius of that time: Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Lichtenberg loved the ideas of the French Enlightenment and he tried to explain the ideas of empiric science with humor. He was critical against Christian dogmatics. He once shortly noted: "An Amen face." Or longer: "Nothing offers me such clear proof of how things stand in the world of learning than the circumstance that Spinoza was for so long regarded as an evil, worthless person and his opinions as dangerous." Lichtenberg has been a philosopher - but writing with esprit. If you can tolerate his bile, buy his book: "Who has two pairs of trousers turn one of them into cash and purchase this book." But bear in mind: "A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it, - an apostle is unlikely to look out!"

Francisico is my cousin, and I absoultly love his book it was,intresting {One of those books that you can't put down } funny witty and partially autobiographcal but you really would'nt know that unless you are related to {javier} Francisco.So I give this book 5 stars not because he's my cousin, but because the story itself is so good .please if at allpossibly give Francisco my email adress lolik@peoplepc.com or please send my email adress to him.thank you from the bottem of my heart. loli

Though I have a few favorites in iconic literature, I'm not much of a reader of fiction and I've never felt a need to read in Magical Realism or Latin American literature. I was led to The Way of the Jaguar by a bit of a synchronicity -- not a possibly "New Agey" title I'd normally pick up -- and was deeply rewarded for paying attention. A Columbia educated attorney who studied Latin American Literature at Harvard, Francisco's coming second and third novels surely will win him the widespread recognition in contemporary literature that he deserves. A prize winning and heartbreaking loosely autobiographical first novel, The Way of the Jaguar is a work of a rare knowing integration of sharp humor, deep intelligence, deep sexuality and deep spirituality -- the journal of successful but lost Boston attorney and "inmate" Ismael Diaz on a near magical, tragicomic death row not likely seen before in world literature. Evidently thus far overlooked by Hollywood producers, with an easily well cast Ismael, The Way of the Jaguar is a deeply sexy and poetic Latin American Shawshank Redemption (for lack of another comparison) and intensely engaging ironic and heartbreaking read. Enter romantic Francisco's jaguar way of knowledge on death row soon; highly recommended.

On the surface, this is a story about "making it" by renouncing your roots. In all these stories, the character is later brought down by not belonging to any culture. But this is not merely a story of a "home boy" rejecting his roots to make it. The message of these "stick to your own kind" stories is to stay put. What makes this tale different is that it supports the opposite view-- cultural amalgamation is possible and one can be successful in different cultural environments.

At the beginning of the book, our hero, Ismael, is on death row--Huntsville, Texas, where else?--so we know he must have been involved in some major mishap. Ismael's life moves back and forth on two oposite points of a personal pendulum: youthful passion for Armanda and his later love for his beautiful, upper middle class, professional wife. Ismael's narrative goes from one side of the pendulum to the other until he upends his legal career and marriage and tries to regain his lost love in Texas. Instead of recovering his lost world, he unleashes a chain of events that lead to death row. In the book we get to know Ismael in a manner similar to forming a new friendship-- a tidbit of childhood here, a recounted professional experience there-- until we grasp him well. The narrative reveals a great sensitivity to popular american culture. As one follows our hero's journey from mexican immigrant; to success in a catholic college; to his final entry into the inner core, Anglo-American big leagues-- Harvard, old boston law firm, beautiful episcopalian wife-- the reader cannot help but savor the wonderful texture of time and place that the author weaves into the story. Somewhat Navokovian, all the places and events that the author describes are vivid and familiar: the jesuit Spring Hill College, two lane roads in leafy Boston suburbs, Juarez bars, etc. The author skillfully captures a lot of the mood and feel of society...and yet those times and places are disappearing. His story leads us to a new cultural reality. One in which cultures and backgrounds amalgamate. As Dylan used to sing, "the times, they are a changin". Yesterday, success meant achieving Ismael's dream: the country club, the bow tie,and the gin and tonic. Things are changing..our new billionaires are from Bombay, Jennifer Lopez and Denzel Washington are our sex symbols, and America's sweetheart is Michelle Qwan. This is a country in which half the kids in Chicago's public schools are black baptists and in which Andover students aspire to attend jesuit Geogetown. Ismael's America of the 50's, 60's, and 70's is goin, going..and almost gone. The change to a more open society-- one in which one's culture and background will not keep people in their predetermined place-- may be brutal but worth the price. The novel ends with our hero's brahmin wife uniting with him in an effort to help him avoid the death penalty. It is this act of fidelity and solidarity by his wife that makes the final resolution of this tale different than the other "home boy rejects home in order to make it" stories. The Way of The Jaguar gives us the hope that Ismael can have his cake and eat it too-- he can make it and be accepted for what he is: an intense, intellectual, sexy guy who happens to be a Mexican dude.

Many of these stories have been republished in anthologies, most recently, 'UNDER THE FIFTH SUN,' 'VEUS CHICANAS' (Spain), and high school, college textbooks. They run the spectrum from a child's point of view- young, homeless boys in current time Mexico- to a man dying of old age many centuries from now. Each story connected by the image of a seashell, a transformation.

This book is a serious of short stories that provoke extreme emotion and pulled on my heartstrings, with an interesting approach to the culture of Latin America and the world. I fell in love with the strong characters and scenes, and I found myself rereading each story over and over. A truly amazing piece of writing.

I thought this book was really good. My favortie story was The Sand Castle because I thought it was neat the way that the author told it in a futuristic way about a world with global warming!

A great resource for therapists. Compilation of Family therapy research. Useful reference.

This book would lend itself well to a research oriented graduate course on clinical psychology and treatment. It is also an excellent resource for writing lectures. Practicing clinicians should find it invaluable. It is concise and synthesizes an extensive body of research well (with appropriate and useful references). Selling points include specifics on clinical description, prevalence, co-morbidity, and history for each disorder covered. Reviews (and summaries) of treatment efficacy are excellent. -W. Born

The book by Roth and Fonagy is a comprehensive and balanced summary of research on psychotherapy. Principly it covers outcome studies and is organised according to DSMIV diagnostic groups. It also covers a bit of process research, particularly the research on therapeutic alliance. There is much to recomnd the book: it is accurate, comprehensive, well written and balanced. It also offeres excellent summaries and impications ections at the end of each chapter. I don't know of a better summary of psychotherapy outcome research.

If you are a woman or know one, don't miss owning this book. In the spirit of the Whole Earth Catalogs, this book is an incredible collection of cutting-edge information and ideas for women. Beautiful graphics, original reviews of over 2,000 resources and eye-opening articles grace these pages. With contributions by Anita Roddick, Joan Jett, Mary Daly and more than 200 women from around the country, this is one book you don't want to miss

If you are a woman or know one, don't miss owning this book. In the spirit of the Whole Earth Catalogs, this book is an incredible collection of cutting-edge information and ideas for women. Beautiful graphics, original reviews of over 2,000 resources and eye-opening articles grace these pages. With contributions by Anita Roddick, Joan Jett, Mary Daly and more than 200 women from around the country, this is one book you don't want to miss!

If you want to get the flavor of this great resource, check out the website for The WomanSource Catalog at http://www.womansource.com. Not only can you sample the introduction, table of contents and many pages selected from The WomanSource, but you can also find a terrific assortment of women-powered links. There's even a place to share your own resources or submit links for publishing on the site

Most readers will first of all be most drawn to the photographs of the sixteen women writers interviewed in The Paris Review's Women Writers at Work. But there are other visual clues to the personalities of the women whose words we are about to read, including a swift evocation of the writer in her lair--her view, her books, her style, her looks--along with a page from a work-in-progress, often heavily annotated.

Rebecca West's page is decorated with line after line of a script so microscopic it looks like miniature embroidery while Anne Sexton's poem is uncorrected and drifts definitely eastward. The manuscript page submitted by P.L. Travers has a drawing of a snail posed against a beach of text while Elizabeth Bishop's page looks untidy and musical. Mary McCarthy's page, on the other hand, has been typewritten, and of its five corrections, three have been typed in, with the consequence that we are given very little sense of how she works when she's alone and feeling spontaneous. And yet the interview with McCarthy is marvellously opinionated and candid; she also gives an intriguing answer to the interviewer who asks her what she thinks of the category "woman writer" by first defining a certain kind of "woman writer" (WW, as she puts it): "I think they become interested in decor. You notice the change in Elizabeth Bowen. Her early work in much more masculine. Her later work has much more drapery in it."

And so it's with apologies to Mary McCarthy that this reviewer is going to do what the WW's do and describe--in the present tense although many of the writers are now dead--some of the living arrangement of several of the writers in Women Writers at Work: P.L. Travers' front door is pink, the same pink as the cover of Mary Poppins at Cherry Tree Lane, and in her hallway there's an antique rocking horse. In Rebecca West's hallway there a drawing of her by Wyndham Lewis, done in the thirties. ("Before the ruin.") Toni Morrison's office at Princeton is decorated with a large Helen Frankenthaler print, pen-and-ink drawings that an architect did of all the houses that appear in Morrison's work, a few framed book-jacket covers and a note of apology from Hemingway, a forgery meant as a joke. Susan Sontag lives in a nearly unfurnished apartment in Manhattan, but she is the owner of over 15,000 books. Eudora Welty will not discuss her private life and is, in any case, interviewed in a hotel room. And Maya Angelou can only work in hotel rooms; she insists that the staff take down all the pictures and she will not permit the maids to come in to change the pillow cases and sheets.

Are any of these writers poor? They don't seem to be. With the possible exception of Dorothy Parker who says, "I hate almost all rich people, but I think I would be darling at it." Parker also shares a small New York City apartment with a youthful poodle that has the run of the place and has caused it to look, as she apologetically says, "somewhat Hogarthian."

In their opinions of other writers they are both scathing and generous; Dorothy Parker says she so much wants to write well, "though I know I don't. But during and at the end of my life I will adore those who have." Marianne Moore says of William Carlos Williams, "He is willing to be reckless; if you can't be that, what's the point of the whole thing?" Susan Sontag responds to being asked if she minds being called an intellectual by saying "Well, one never likes to be called anything. And I suppose there will always be a presumption of graceless oddity--especially if one is a woman." Nadine Gordimer feels that the solitude of writing is "quite frightening. It's quite close, sometimes, to madness.. the ordinary action of taking a dress down to the dry cleaner's.. is a very sane and good thing to do." Elizabeth Bishop tells us that when she was a student at Vassar she believed that if she ate a lot of cheese before going to bed she would have fascinating dreams; this conviction led to her keeping a huge hunk of Roquefort cheese in the bottom of her bookcase. Anne Sexton, speaking of Robert Lowell's gifts as a teacher, says that he "worked with a cold chisel, with no more mercy than a dentist. He got out the decay, but if he was never kind to a poem, he was kind to the poet."

Marianne Moore talks of her longing to write plays. "To me the theatre is the most pleasant, in fact my favourite, form of recreation."

INTERVIEWER: Do you go often?

MOORE: No, never.

Rebecca West, at the time of her interview, is in her late eighties. She wears a bright caftan; her eyes are penetrating; she wears two pairs of spectacles on chains like necklaces; she wears beautiful rings. She is also too old to monitor herself, and so she's a particular delight to read. She thinks T. S. Eliot a poseur and says of Somerset Maugham, "He couldn't write for toffee, bless his heart." But when the conversation moves on to Arnold Bennett and the interviewer tells West that her reviews of Bennett's work were absolutely sparkling--"I love the essay you wrote about The Uncles"--West says, "Oh, Bennett was horrible about it. He was a horrible, mean-spirited, hateful man. I hated Arnold Bennett."

INTERVIEWER: But you were very nice about him.

WEST: Well, I thought so, and I think he was sometimes a very good writer. And I do think The Old Wives' Tale was very good, don't you? He was a horrible man.

INTERVIEWER: Was he in a position to make things difficult for you then?

WEST: Yes, he was not nice....

And so it goes. Katherine Anne Porter is scathing about the nineteen-twenties: "A horrible time: shallow and trivial and silly. The remarkable thing is that anybody survived in such an atmosphere--in a place where they could call F. Scott Fitzgerald a great writer!"

INTERVIEWER: You don't agree?

PORTER: Of course I don't agree. I couldn't read him then, and I can't read him now.

Mary McCarthy is brutal about Simone de Beauvoir, calling her "pathetic" and "odious"; Susan Sontag who was, early in her career, compared to Mccarthy says she has no desire to write like Mary McCarthy, "a writer who has never mattered to me." Nary McCarthy admires Tolstoy, but Rebecca West considers Tolstoy overrated. Alexander Woollcott says of Dorothy Parker's work that it's a "potent distillation of nectar and wormwood, of ambrosia and deadly nightshade", but Dorothy Parker is mainly charitable towards the writers of the twenties and thirties and says that they might have seemed like flops, but they weren't. "Fitzgerald, the rest of them, reckless as they were, drinkers as they were, they worked damn hard and all the time."

Two very different writers--Anne Sexton and Nadine Gordimer--both quote Kafka, and not only do they quote Kafka, they quote the same words from Kafka: "A book ought to be an axe, to break up the frozen sea within us~" And Katharine Anne Porter gives us a brief but fine lecture on the pleasure (and esthetic necessity) of using simple words, while Joyce Carol Oates speaks bracingly about the writer's life: One must be pitiless about this matter of "mood". In a sense, the writing will create the mood. If art is, as I believe it to be, a genuinely transcendental function--a means by which we rise out of limited, parochial states of mind--then it should not matter very much what states of mind or emotion we are in. Generally, I have found this to be true; I have forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I've felt my soul thin as a playing card, when nothing has seemed worth enduring for another five minutes...and somehow the act of writing changes everything." These consoling words about the writing process are just one of about four hundred reasons for buying this spirited collection of credos and opinions.

This book of interviews with women writers, originally done for the Paris Review, is the finest book I have ever encountered on women writing or doing any committed creative work. There's really nothing like it out there. It is a prize in itself.

Most definitely needs more stars!

If you read (have read) or admire any of the sixteen writers profiled in this awesome book, then this little jewel will not disappoint you in the least. It's enlightening, inspiring, encouraging and instructive; a voyeuristic peek into the minds and writing habits of some of the best women writers of our generation. I loved what Anne Sexton told the interviewer when asked if she had any advice to young poets. She said, "Put your ear close down to your soul and listen hard."

The writers interviewed are: Dorothy Parker, Marianne Moore, Maya Angelou, Susan Sontag, Anne Sexton, Katherine Anne Porter, Simone de Beauvoir, Nadine Gordimer, Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, Joan Didion, P.L. Travers, Eudora Welty, Rebecca West, Elizabeth Bishop and Mary McCarthy.

I received the book promptly. The material was in new condition without any flaws. I was very pleased. Thank you!

She tries to help you understand the reality of her life. It is much more than you can imagine.

What beautiful writing! It's pointed out in the intro that, more than most of us, her world was shaped with WORDS. I've only read about four essays so far, and am profoundly touched. I've always admired Helen Keller, but am newly re-impressed with her wisdom and vision, and touched that she can write so clearly as to make me feel how little she felt limited by her handicap. If Helen Keller had simply learned to behave and ask politely for her food, etc, it would have been an impressive accomplishment. The fact that she grew to fully embrace her intelligence, her world and her potential . . . wow. I know so many people who are content to just do the bare minimum, to not stretch their limits at all, to not show any intellectual curiosity . . . she had the perfect excuse to exert the least effort, yet she didn't. Once she was given the key, the entree to humanity, she didn't let her handicaps stop her. I love that even all these years later, she is still able to share that.