James Merrill Books

I first read this book when I was in elementary school and enjoyed it just as much when I recently read it again. Born Mary Ludwig, her nickname of Molly was given to her when she was a child. Her famous last name was earned in battle, where she would bring fresh, cool water to troops of the American Revolution. She braved gunfire to do so and she was so active that a wounded soldier had to merely shout, "Molly Pitcher" and she would tend to them. When her husband, who fired a canon, was overcome with heat, she took over the loading and firing of the weapon until the battle was over.
One of the greatest women in early American history, Molly Pitcher was brave, intelligent and resourceful. At a time when women were expected to faint at the sight of blood, she risked her life to save others. This story demonstrates how the pioneer women were far tougher than they are given credit for. In general history was written by upper class men who knew only upper class women. Therefore, women were depicted as frail and unable to function under stress. The women on the frontier were quite different and this is a story of one that has gone down in history as a heroine of her country.

Kind of hoped for a hardback, but guess that soft cover is the only way comes.otherwise I was very well satisfied.

Initially as I skimmed the book looking for what it was, I thought it a useless waste of money. As i picked it up and read it, the book had plentiful information on each of the cards. Also very interesting spreads were included for each of the cards and the suits. This is a cool book. It is one of the more unique books of the several available for the famous Crowley deck.

This is a curiously dispassionate book, at least in tone. Given the author's connection to radical causes over the years and his persecution during the Mc Carthy period, he apparently harbors few grudges. It would seem that his regard for press freedom is stronger than any commitment to radical doctrine, there being precious little of that anywhere in the book. This, of course, is contrary to usual stereotype of the radical journalist as propagated in the popular media. Still, I'm not sure whether his detached style helps or hinders the book's message; nevertheless, it contrasts unexpectedly with the more impassioned and ironical style of Chomsky and Herman, two academics who cover much of the same ground.

Most of the text retraces familiar material concerning Cold War journalism. Perhaps the best chapter is the one characterizing the liberal mentality that reported from Vietnam, paticularly during the early years. Skeptical of official versions and wary of top military brass, reporters such as David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan were raised to near heroic dimensions by liberal critics of the war. And while their skepticism toward Pentagon duplicity and a corrupt client government in Saigon never wavered, not once did these fabled journalists question the basic moral correctness of America's involvement. In short, when push came to shove, they refused to follow the logic of their own facts to the appropriate conclusion. No doubt consistency in this regard would have cost them their jobs and maybe careers. Even so, Aronson's account makes clear just how opaque the enemy and their cause was to these quondam rebels and how wedded Halbertam and company were to official illusion. Far from being heroes, their real function, as Aronson emphasizes, was to project the illusions of nation-building into yet further spheres of foreign intervention. A second point of interest comes at the book's conclusion. According to pollsters, reporters and media generally are held in low popular esteem; the reason, Aronson observes, is not because of the supposed power of the media, as the political right-wing prefers. Rather it's because the public senses, correctly, that this power is not being exercised in their behalf. Indeed. Marred only by an occasionally flat style, Aronson's is a revealing book by a journalist who demands no less of others in his profession than he does of himself.

I inherited a 1915 ed. copy of this book. Nearly a century after it's printing (and more than a century after the first printing) the book is highly browsable, a light but meaningful read in one or several pages at a sitting. Poetry that truly stands the test of time.

The little old poem that nobody reads
Blooms in a crowded space,
Like a ground-vine blossom, so low in the weeds
That nobody sees it's face-
Unless, perchance, the reader's eye
Stares through a yawn, and hurries by,
For no one wants, or loves, or heeds,
The little old poem that nobody reads.

The little old poem that nobody reads
Was written - where?- and when?
Maybe a hand of goodly deeds
Thrilled as it held the pen;
Maybe the fountain whence it came
Was a heart brimmed o'er with tears of shame,
And maybe it's creed in the worst of creeds-
The little old poem that nobody reads.

But, little old poem that nobody reads,
Holding you here above
The wound of a heart that warmly bleeds
For all that knows not love,
I well believe if the old World knew
As dear a friend as I find in you,
That friend would tell it that all it needs
Is the little old poem that nobody reads.

Target Tokyo, The Halsey-Doolittle Raid, written by James M. Merrill gives readers an insight to the lives ofthe men involved in the Tokyo rais. Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle. Much of the book is devoted to the intricate details of the raid. In the first parts of the book he tells us about the planning and training the soldiers went through to learn how to do the job right. Merrill made it clear how important it was that the mission be carried out correctly, and he also made sure that he showed it was the perfect plan of attack. Merrill also showed that many of the men involved in the Tokyo raid had little or no experience, especially with planes. He gave examples of each man's bravery and unwillingness to step down from the attack. Merrill showed the anxiety of the soldiers begining to rise, and how difficult getting each of the planes light enough was a great challenge for the raiders. Merrill also spent much time telling about the raid itself. He gives the storys of each of the different planes, throughout the bombing and the flight back to China. Targert Tokyo, The Halsey-Doolittle Raid gives a very good acount of the Tokyo raid. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn about the importance of good planning in war. This book does a great job of giving facts adout the Tokyo raid, and explaining many of the major and minor components.

I seldom read fiction, but I've enjoyed three of Alison Lurie's novels. After my attention fell on the work of James Merrill, and I saw that Alison Lurie had written about him, I ran, not walked, to the library to get her book. It was everything I expected: a wonderful gossip, a further stimulus to read James Merrill's poems, and a work of insight about the literary culture of Key West--which I found even more interesting because I once talked with Alison Lurie and several other writers there at a Key West Festival.

Alison Lurie knew James Merrill and his lover David Jackson for many years. She doesn't allow us to understand why they befriended her, but we have no trouble understanding why she befriended them. They were fun, cultured, intellectual, supportive, and moneyed, and shared interests with Alison Lurie. Jimmy often swam with her and David cooked with her. If this book seems to contain gaps and mysteries, it's probably because Alison Lurie has held back in her account in respect of their friendship. She has done us a favor to tell as much as she does. I was less interested in the theories about the Ouija Board and actually skipped some of her deconstruction of Merrill's poetry. Her defense of David Jackson as co-author of Merrill's work has merit. Jackson, although she doesn't seem to realize it, was (is) a self-destructive personality. His deterioration is self-evident in the anecdote about his angry driving in Italy in 1978, years before Peter Hooten entered Merrill's life. One is forced to wonder how Merrill died of AIDS and the other two remained untouched by it.

The story is strongest when she is most generous to her characters and most fully shares her own story within theirs. At times, she writes out of her anger at those who hurt her friends, at them for not staying true to love and beauty, and at the world for its unhappiness. She doesn't have nearly enough distance from JM's spaghetti western svengali and DJ's young black hustlers to write about them for publication.

How could two so full of love have come to such a sad end? The answer, it seems at times, is that gay marriage in our world doesn't have the structuring social context to do the work we expect from marriage. But we need to know more about her, her own loves, her children and her novels in order to speak honestly with her about the long haul.

The ouija board saves the marriage by holding it together under the burden of professional success and failure. And it destroys them both. It ruins JM as a poet -- he writes a beautiful "Book of Ephraim," then two more fat, quick and unreflective books of spirit-writing, then not much else. It draws them away from friends and life into a compelling fantasy they only partly believe in, are afraid of, and that becomes gradually coarser and uglier. As she sees it, James dies bewildered and ruined, while David loses his mind and soul to the devils.

She paints beautiful, vivid portraits of her friends in their youth.

How unfortunate that the self-appointed biographer (though she terms it a memoir) of James Merrill should take such a dull and dreary approach, ploddingly setting about trying to debunk James Merrill & David Jackson's decades of experiences with a Ouija board that so beautifully resulted in Merrill's masterpiece, The Changing Light at Sandover.

Alison Lurie, by her own admission, recognizes Merrill as "supernaturally brilliant," but his intelligence is so other than or beyond her own that she literally likens him to a Martian. Apparently unable to comprehend the content of Merrill's epic work, and making it clear that she doesn't even like it, Lurie instead settles for a tedious dissection. Smoke, mirrors, string, simplistic attempts at psychoanalyzing Merrill; surely something besides the truth of reality must be behind all of this communicating-with-spirits hocus-pocus. And, contradictorily, her broad condemning brushstrokes at once paint the Ouija experiences as the mere summoning of Merrill and/or Jackson's unconscious mind(s) (she's offended by what the spirits have to say about her) and the dangerous communing with devils and demons.

Perhaps if she had actually read Merrill's books, instead of mining them for ammunition against him, this mean-spirited little book would have had something of value to offer.

Alas, this book reads as little more than a paean to Lurie's dislike of Merrill, and is ultimately more about how SHE feels about her subject than it is about Merrill himself. It's rather sickening to imagine her years of "friendship" with the man, which seem to have been little more than the collecting of criticisms and private details for future use in this petty volume.

This book does a disservice to the passion, commitment and spiritual intensity of the lives and work of James Merrill and David Jackson as so eloquently and painstakingly communicated in Merrill's work. I recommend interested readers go directly to The Changing Light at Sandover, and skip this diluted and negatively biased "memoir."

This is a beautifully written long view of the lives of James Merrill, poet, and his lover and uncredited collaborator David Jackson. They dabbled through the ouija board in contact with unseen spirits that supposedly provided the material for Merrill's largest poetic works. The cost to both men of this eerie devotion is trenchantly narrated by Alison Lurie, their friend of many years. The charge that Ms. Lurie is using her connection to Merrill to enhance her own reputation is absurd, as she is far more well known in general than Merrill.

In spite of the fact that the author reveals a bit too much of herself in this book (a fact which makes you like and then dislike her sometimes) she does weave an interesting theory about the inner workings of Merrill and Jackson's minds. I didn't feel she presented these men dishonestly, though some fans of Merrill's obviously resented the fact that their god was made to appear as a mere mortal---and a somewhat foolish one at that.

Juicy, gossipy, lewd, audacious at times, you had to imagine she was indeed capitalizing somewhat on her friendship with Merrill because she did not wait for her friend David Jackson to die before she began revealing what a mess he had become. Why? If she were afraid SHE would die without having a chance to add her two cents she could have written the book, but not published it until after Jackson's real death.

I guess it's hard to quarrel with her motives as I read it in one sitting, lapping up all the strange, weird revelations about these men. My respect for them was not diminished by her lurid details of their intimate life. Nothing in Key West is ever ordinary...

What was most fascinating about the book though was the fact that Lurie herself became an equal part of the mystery. Was she obsessed with these men? Secretly in love with Jackson? Jealous of them? Twice she had to say that "they were rich and could buy anything they wanted". Twice!

Sadly, Lurie never did manage to do what she wanted---to comprehend these men. This goal never got quite satisfied, so in the end the reader of this book is not quite satisfied.

It is an important memoir though because it is the ONLY one right now offering any insight into Merrill, the man and the poet.

I think you have to accept the book for exactly what it is, one woman's perspective about two men she was close to---but not close enough to truly understand them. It was an honest attempt on Lurie's part and a courageous one even and it did reveal Lurie's writing talent. For better or worse, she certainly did create a very vivid yet terrifying tale about two utterly amazing lives.

Terrible book. doesnt explain very well. i had to have my dad help me learn it. ...

My rating for this textbook is five stars because this textbook has sections in which show how mathematics can be applied to modern-day jobs, and have easy-to-understand examples of the featured lesson. This textbook also have selected answers in which may help the student to understand the featured problem a little-bit better. This textbook is not always good---there are some things which might confuse the student, in which it confused me. The example on how to figure out arithmetic sequences have confused me for quite a while until I realized that was my method of figuring it out! I recommend some study guides to go with this textbook.

This is one of worst math schoolbooks I've ever seen. Impression that book is written by mathematically illiterate people. Topics are placed chaotically. Complex issues are not properly explained. A lot of logical errors. Calculation of the cone's surface (p.502) - an awful example of mathematical fraud. Many problems are solved in a non-efficient, "brute force" way instead of showing powerful and elegant ideas.

This is a really good book because it shows you algrebra in a slow and easy way, kind of like adding and subtracting, but harder. I would recomend this book for anybody who thinks that pre-algrebra is hard.

We're using this book and the algebra and trig books in our homeschool. I like this series better than any math book we've used. The explanations are clear and there are excellent projects in the back of the book. It does seem to skip steps occassionally, but it's nothing serious. There are good test-taking skills taught, connections to algebra and geometry, critical thinking and writing opportunities. The books are very thorough.

The depiction of the contemporary cultural functionality of poetry here is rather oversimplified. The domesticated modernity of Eliot and his neo-symbolist reactionary Romantics on one side, the "academic" obscurantism on the other: this dichotomy presumes that 1) one is less amenable to the often redoubtable motives of academia; 2) there is some edenic endgame wherein poetry becomes a representative art (a weird nationalism, really); 3) most importantly, that neither tendency, even in these generalized formulations, is currently doing cultural work. If by "cultural work" we mean generating cultural moments and effectively shaping that culture, I can't see how the synchronic angle signaled by the first word in the book's title (and exploited as though a comfortable given throughout the argument) has any sway itself. Ultimately, the book is as defeatist for me as it is a rallying cry for others.

You know nothing about poetry until you read this book

in shetley's ruk we check a negotiation of da various and deeply contradictory propositions fa ow poets and critics can wurk to "save poetry" from cultural irrelevance. unlike da inflated rhetorics characteristic of da various poetry wars familiar to readers of recent american poets, shetley advocates a middle ground betweun da extreme claims of manifestoists (whetha new formal or lingo poetry, academic or beat, etc.) dat tend to eitha idealize their opes fa poetry based on nostalgic longin fa a mass audience, or, alternately, advocate a program fa poetry da readerly trainin fa which would isolate da genre to an academic coterie. crucial in da house is shetley's distinction betweun a desirable "difficulty" (located in da wrestlin betweun reada and text) and a dangerous "obscurity" (that relies too eavily upon culturally predetermined allusinevess). usin george steiner's typology of forms of poetic difficulty to nuance is distinctions, shetley argues dat da mostest effective poets since igh modernism ave pursued "some kind of middle way betweun da alternavites of a poetry descended from eliot, which did ave become all too well accommotaded to its readers' abits and strategies, and da oppositional poetics of a figure dig ginsberg, which seemed too much da negative image of da academic mode..." in a numba of fascinatin readings, shetley goes on to demonstrate ow elizabef bishop, james merrill, and john ashbery each pursue different strategies dat exploit da readerly dongs established by da modernists, but avoid da text-centered obscurity and da "no longa plausible notion of cultural eroism inherited from da modernist generation." shetley goes on to show ow bof da new formalists and da lingo poets fail to offa viable models fa a culturally relevant approach to da difficulties of contemporary poetry and concludes wiv a discussion of wurks by poets includin robert ass, thylias moss, and alan shapiro dat might serve as models fa a poetics capable of winnin back an brainiest, engaged audience. i found myself agreein again and again wiv shetley, and i can't think of a book dat betta spells out da story in which american poetry still checks/loses itself.

I realized after placing the order that I wasn't quite ready to buy the book and my money was refunded instantly.

Great customer service and quick response time.

Currently I am taking an AP Human Geography class in my high school and this is the book we were assigned to buy. This book has wonderful charts and pictures along with descriptions. This book goes into depth and doesn't only touch the surface. I recomend this book to AP Human Geography teachers and students!

Although I recognize the intelligence of the author, I would not recommend this book to anyone who is not assigned to have it. The book does very little to help the reader comprehend the information beyond the "Key Terms." I, too, am taking an AP/IB Human Geography Course, and I found this textbook utterly useless. Please, save your money and time and buy a better book. Of course, if you are in college and like to waste your time reading tedious books, then this is your ticket!