Richard Ford Books

First a word about the "Major Problems" line: it is designed to be a text in college history courses. Each chapter is divided into two parts: 1) Primary sources 2) Two or three scholarly articles (usually written by an expert in the field). Each source or article is designed to act as a springboard for classroom discussion lead by the professor. In all, I like the format of the line of books and enjoyed it when a professor assigned it as a text. I'm so nerdy, in fact, that I've bought a couple books from the "Major Problems" lines to read for pleasure. This particular title in the series was compiled by a former professor of mine, Steven Riess. He succeeds in putting together a series of documents that enlighten, challenge opinions and, in all, provide a wealth of information while leaving no clear cut answers. Favorites include essays on why sports were restricted in colonial New England (because of religions reasons or for practical/safety reasons?), the interview with Muhammad Ali, and Chapter 14: The Business of Sport (highlighting the benefits, drawbacks and inside deals involved in big money major leagues). Riess also succeeds in giving legitimacy to the study of sport--think of all the money spent on tickets, all the air time, advertisements, etc. that are involved in modern sports. Sports IS a major part of American society and Riess helps to present its rich history and evolution. This is a college text book--not something one would take to the park with them on a Sunday afternoon to read under a tree, but this was not Riess' intention. Clearly, he hit the mark he was aiming for.

There are some amazing stories in this anthology, and not just from the usual suspects. Sherman Alexie, Mary Gaitskill, Robert Stone, Julie Orringer, Matthew Klam, George Saunders, Denis Johnson, Lorrie Moore -- each story is good, each is completely different, and there has got to be something for everyone.

Highly recommended - would make a great gift as well. I'm ordering the first collection as soon as I finish this review. The introduction, though well written, is probably only for story writers. Everyone else, dive right in.

This issue has some very intriguing stories in it. One of the best is about a woman who cleans hotel rooms. Another is about the death penalty used with regularity in Trinidad. The photo essay on Sierra Leone is quite profound. I highly recommend looking into the issue and discovering the surprises for yourself. Maybe you are another Overachiever.

The Palace File should be number one on Hamid Karzai's reading list! The promises made in secret between one nation's leader and another have little value, it seems. Some would argue that such secret pledges should never be made by the elected leader of a true democracy. "Our" sincere pledges never to abandon an ally and never to waste the blood sacrifices of American troops are well-documented in The Palace File. The documents speak for themselves.

Those who doubt American staying power in the "war on terrorism" will find much ammunition for their arguments in a quick read of this sad tale of failed adventure in Vietnam. Our new but familiarly avid "nation builders" need to study The Palace File before they charge full-speed down the same slippery slope toward ignominy.

This book has also been published in the Vietnamese language, and is a wonderful learning tool for students of Vietnamese who are preparing for official assignments in Vietnam.

The title comes from Graham's support for every American war since Korea, but I found the civil rights material most interesting.

Cecil Bothwell portrays Graham as the political opposite of Martin Luther King and says the historical record does not support Graham's recent insistence that he was a friend of King's and of integration, pointing out that Graham "was absent from every civil rights march, rally or celebration over the years."

Sample paragraph: "Graham's frequent claims about King's approval are at odds with King's widely circulated exhortation from the Birmingham jail, in which he categorically condemned the position of clergymen who opposed civil disobedience, took them to task for obeying unjust laws, and spoke at eloquent length about the necessity for those of faith to demand change. He could have been directly rebutting Graham when he wrote, `You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations.' "

Bothwell notes that when King was killed 200,000 people attended the funeral. A long list of notables from every field came, the Academy Awards were postponed, and the start of major league baseball was delayed, but Billy Graham did not attend.

I found The Prince of War to be well worth reading.

General Robert Selden Garnett, the first general on either side to die in the Civil War, and his cousin General Richard Brooke Garnett (who remains the only soldier of general's rank whose body was never found and identified) have long been overlooked by Civil War biographers. Burton gives an in-depth look at their early lives, their educations at West Point, and their pre-war military careers, as well as insight into their motivations for fighting and dying for the Confederate cause. Highly recommend.

Now I moved to MO for a year went to this book store that basically was in the middle of no where and saw the book with a 50 Ford crashing through a heart...and was like hmmm this looks cool that is when it just came out and he was just around little stores in MO...now this book is about a teen who is well off in a Missouri town during the 50's he is a rebellious teen and drag races... it is written very well and well the cars in it are beautiful...I've read it close to a dozen times and love it every time... for all who love hot rodding its worth the 25 and then some...

Even though it was written about 40 years ago, I suppose the subjects are always up to date. Richard Yates describes human faults, such as
prejudice, conventions, male chauvenism, dishonesty, insipidity etc.

Notwithstanding, he has a gift of telling a story, describing situations and composing reliable monologues. Revolutionary Road is a book which one reads with suspense, and keeps thinking about it after he finishes it.
Highly recommended!

Revolutionary Road is a masterpiece of a genre that's largely considered played out--the novel of suburban malaise. It's a social novel about The Way We Live Now, only in this case Now is over 40 years ago and Yates' take on the plight of the poor souls marooned in corporate/suburban America has long since been digested and superseded. It still persists to some degree--in films like American Beauty, novels such as Tom Perotta's Little Children, and the brilliant TV show Weeds. But, American Beauty aside, contemporary takes on suburbia tend to be much less tragic and portentous.

Frank and April Wheeler, Yates 20-30-something protagonists are, in their own misguided way, dissidents struggling against certain stereotypically oppressive aspects of American life in the 50's: conformity; the tedium and banality of life in the suburbs and the mid-century corporate workplace (they live in Connecticut, Frank works in New York); in April's case, against a life of homemaking and childrearing. The problem is they don't seem to have very good intellectual resources for waging the struggle. The practical, material resources are probably there--they are well educated (at least Frank is), intelligent, they make a good impression, while not rich they are far from destitute. But they are hampered by all kinds of romantic illusions, illusions that keep them from coming up with a plausible escape plan, or making the most of the hand they are dealt. They are tormented by the idea that they are not living up to their best selves (and this is true) but they have utterly self-deluding notions about what their best selves are or how to bring them into being. They are so afraid of being corrupted by their environment that they hold themselves aloof from the life around them. Their aversion is largely aesthetic, but the pop psychological and sociological theories they use to explain to themselves why they are alienated are inadequate to the task. They want to lead lives of significance, but the best they can do is to concoct a vague and implausible scheme of moving to France, where the plan is for April to work as a secretary while Frank sits around the apartment trying to figure out what to do with himself. I mean, if they want to do something worthwhile with their lives, Frank could become a teacher, or, at the other end of the scale, go to work for the kind of high-powered advertising firm portrayed in Mad Men (he graduated Columbia and has a way with words). April could have, at the very least, volunteered to work at the NAACP.

Yates is an extremely accomplished prose stylist. He's a master of the vivid, transparent prose style that is the gold standard for writers of realistic fiction. He nails the details of life among the white middle class in the mid-to-late 50's, while at the same time painting it as a more complicated and conflicted time than popular stereotypes would have you believe. He has an extraordinary ability to make you feel like you are deep inside the consciousness of his characters while at the same time watching them from a great distance. And the central dilemma his characters face--how to live a worthwhile life in a world that often conspires against it--is not one that will go out of fashion any time soon.

Post-modern realism at its finest. Truthful writing and a story that seems unimaginable, yet close-to-home at the same time.

Somehow, this is what it truly means to be an American as we cycle through new progressions of modernity, fear and hope.

Richard Yates is a writer's writer. Every paragraph, every sentence, every punctuation mark seems relentlessly perfect. His unusual, unnerving realism, which has captivated Andres Dubus, Richard Ford, and so many others, lacks the fireworks of a DeLillo or the intricacies of a Pynchon, but offers the accessibility and the density of an American Tolstoy.

Revolutionary Road is a classic account of America's historic infatuation with joining in, but distancing from, the middle class. Yates give us a perfect book that proffers chills as well as thrills to any reader who has the fortitude to give its middle class characters a fair hearing.

No American writer has made occasionally unsympathetic, always unexceptional characters more interesting or more intelligible.

Not merely scary good, but truly scary great.

There is nothing more human then the raw emotional validity experienced when reading `Revolutionary Road'; a novel so steeped in what makes us a society you almost forget your reading a work of fiction on not the monologues of your own existence.

The novel introduces us to Frank and April Wheeler, a young family living in Connecticut in the mid-1950s. Frank works an office job he loathes and doesn't even completely understand, but the pay is good and that makes up for it. April, once a free spirit, has become trapped in her suburban life with children she didn't plan on having and friends she can't remember liking to begin with. Both Frank and April are living the American Dream, but that `dream' is not their own but the one forced on them by the consensus of society. It's what everyone around them aspires to for reasons they can't even finger. The apathy and frustration brought on by this unhappiness has begun to fray their marriage and so when we meet the Wheelers they are really at their breaking points. In fact the first few pages bring about an explosive and violent argument that sets the tone for the rest of the novel.

`Revolutionary Road' is the type of story that reaches to the pit of a person because it is so real and so believable that you find yourself instantly relating to the premise. No relationship is perfect or `holy' and so when you read of the Wheeler's problems and concerns you realize that many of them are your own. Their regrets and longings can be found in many of us and so that helps make this novel all the more `important'.

At times `Revolutionary Road' can read like a black comedy for there are many details that play quite humorous, but like I've seen in novels like Tom Perrotta's `Little Children', it's the humor that ends up being the most heart breaking. Most of life's humor is just a mask to hide the pain and frustration of reality.

As Frank and April tackle the decision to pick up and leave this life behind, escape to a life that is better suited to their own dreams they find that this life is not so easy to leave behind. As much at it repels them it refuses to let them escape and they find themselves enslaved to it in a way, prisoners of their own existence. No one they talk to understands their motives for leaving everything behind. They look at them like they are crazy; but most of these reactions are selfish in themselves. As Frank and April seclude themselves their relationship becomes misleading as they appear to draw closer to one another; but unhappiness always leads to bitterness, and bitterness can only be masked for so long before it bares itself in disastrous ways.

The ending of `Revolutionary Road' is as stunning as it is horrific, as fitting as it is unmercifully unjust. It will leave you speechless yet elicit much debatable conversation.

What makes truly great literature is the ability to connect with a person, and Richard Yates obviously understood that. `Revolutionary Road' borrows beneath the skin and exposes our deepest darkest secrets. It becomes a part of us, or we become a part of it; and that, my friends, is what a remarkable treat.

Though Benjamin Franklin never suggests that all the words are his, his assembly of commonly used phrases and sayings provides the reader with material that will make them think. Do remember, that this doesn't read like a novel.

Given as a gift so have no input. Recipient did not care for the format of the book.

Ben Franklin's book is loaded with tips just as relevant today as they were centuries ago. You will truly be surprised at the amount of knowledge, useful knowledge, you get from this book.

Love this book. I am a fan of Benjamin Franklin. He is so witty and thoughtful. I also like Henry David Thoreau.

So to start, there is a huge problem with this page. If you utilize Amazon's Search Inside feature for this version of the book it is actually showing you the inside of a different copy of Poor Richards Almanack. What you see is definitely not the inside of this book and I'll tell you why later.

Another problem with this page is the fact that people are reviewing the content of Poor Richards Almanack and giving you, the consumer, a history lesson on the book. But come on... the content of the book is pretty much a given. If you're not familiar with the Poor Richards Alamanack, then it's probably a good idea to check it out from a library before you buy it. You would want to own a copy simply for novelty's sake.

So onto the review of the actual product... This is a very poor copy in terms of quality (just like this review). This is just speculation, but it literally appears as if someone from the publisher went to the copy machine with an original copy of the book, pressed the "Enlarge 150%" button, photocopied the entire original book onto larger paper, bound it, put a cover on it, and sold it as the copy you see here. The black space you see on the cover is about the size of the margins within the book. This creates an obnoxious amount of white space around the paragraphs which in turn makes the book difficult to read. On top of this, some of the pages are slightly crooked.

So as I've stated, the content is exactly like the original, but you can easily find a better version than this one. Unless the book was intended for people with impaired vision, there is no reason the original book should have been blown up and placed on 2 inch margins. I would steer clear of this version and find a better one.

As a side note, there are several versions of Poor Richards Almanack. Some have his quotes reorganized into categories and some versions have his quotes re-written into more modern language. And there is, of course, the original. For Christmas, I got my Mom the original as well as the one with the organized quotes. So I guess it's whatever your preference is.

This manual helps not only the new recruit, but the veteren firefighter to enhance their basic training or to review techniques on tasks & operations.

This is a must have for anyone who aspires to being a firefighter. Vivid descriptions, Helpful tips, How-to Skill Sheets, and Clear illustrations help the student master otherwise difficult material. I'm currently going through firefighting class and would not be able to live without this book.

i've taught the fire academy using the textbook. it is a very good book for beginning firefighters as well as those who been firefighters for a while.

jim davis

I recently joined a volunteer fire department and this book
truly helped me through the six months probationary period.

The book is excellent in its layout. Is easy to follow and is a very imformative piece of necessary literature for any firefighter taking firefighter 1. Is very informative on NFPA regulations and guidelines. I was impressed with the detail that was given in the book, our instructor was impressed with this book as well.