Henry Miller Books

This is an excellent christian therapy book that can be used both in a christian setting and secular. I have used this book for two intern classes and in my clinical assignment with clients and it was awesome. The application is easy and you do not need to have your bible with you because the scriptures you need are right there. I highly recommend this book to all Pastors, Counselors, Teachers and Parents.

As a Pastor and a Counselor, I have found this notebook to be a great help in my practice. The exercises are varied, with clear instruction and a definite Christian base. The contents are conveniently grouped for the various ages and stages of life, as well as individuals verses couples and groups. I have used several of the exercise with great success. I feel confident this resource would be of great value to any Christian-based counseling ministry. - Rev. Dr. Meg Bellows

I met and was counseled by the author Dr. Phil Henry during an eight month stay in Florida. He was the interem Pastor at the "First Baptist Church" as the congregation sought out a full time pastor. The people in the church spoke highly of his "Notebook" so I decided to buy it. Dr. Henry's book has many great applications to every day life and his words have changed my life. I would encourage any counseler to use this tool in their every day sessions as it has deeply affected my life. There are exercises and studies that address a variety of "issues" that we all face in our every day life.
David

This is a great tool to use. It is very easy to use and all of the instructions are clear. All of the different exercises give you a wide variety of choices for every situation. You would be a fool not to at least give it a chance. I guarantee that you will find something in it that you will be able to use. I got a chance to use two of the exercises out of it and they were very productive and helpful, and I'm only in the process of getting my Master's. Dr. Henry and company did a great job on this.

The Christian Therapist's Notebook is an essetial tool to have for anyone who believes that God and therapy can be interrelated. The activities that this book explores allows the client and therapist to discover new ways in which God can be incorporated into difficult experiences and daily matters that people may face. The Christian Therapist's Notebook is articulate and user friendly; it allows communication to flow more freely between the client and the therapist. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking to help others, as it uses God's guidance in a positive and supportive way.

After reading Stuhlmann's poignant introduction, it was impossible for me to read any further. Stuhlman included a few lines of the correspondence between Henry Miller and Anais Nin. After reading just these few lines and seeing the depth of love between these two people, I felt that reading their letters would be like taking a photograph that steals the soul of the subject.

Maybe later I will be able to read their letters, but not now.

("No, if I have not written about Louveciennes it is only because I am not writing history, I am making it. I am so aware of the fateful, destined character of this Louveciennes...What I was thinking tonight is that Louveciennes becomes fixed historically in the biographical record of my life, for from Louveciennes dates the most important epoch of my life." -- Henry Miller. We all have a Louveciennes. Mine was Pateley Bridge.)

Big fan of these two, but more of a Henry Miller fan personally. The letters bring Henry Miller out of his fiction/novels and bring him into the realm where Nin was in writing her Diaries. Good for that reason, two lovers but volatile ones. Testing sexual boundaries is a touchy thing, after all.

Forget Nin's works of fiction, the journals, letters, and life are truly worth experiencing over and over again for their honesty, passion, and viewing the internal turned external for our benefit. Everyone knows of Miller's and Nin's relationhip, through "Henryand June" if anything, but it is through this work that we see them less as romantic figures and more as humans capable of the idiocy, devotion, and prolongation of things we should all end and just don't for whatever reason. This is a great buy if you are a lover a letters. Reading "Fire" is a must, however.

Like many others, I have been fascinated with and frustrated by Anais Nin for many years, since reading the first volume of her expurgated diary in 1977.

This volume of letters enables the reader who has already read other versions of the Nin-Miller story to form additional conclusions about what might actually have happened. Because the letters were sent into the possession of others, they were less subject to the constant revision and reinvention that bedevils all attempts to determine objective facts about the mercurial Nin.

If you are not already an amateur historian of literary trends of the 1930's, fear not. The letters are worth reading as an introduction to Anais Nin and Henry Miller as well, for they depict a real-life romance conducted by two who absolutely relished the game and were highly articulate in dramatically different ways.

Whatever you may think of her writing, Anaïs Nin was definitely a femme fatale. Henry Miller was, he claimed, the "happiest man alive." Together, Nin and Miller created a literary language for sexual fulfillment; she in a diary whose original form still remains unpublished, he in novels banned in both the United States and England until court cases in the early 1960s permitted their publication and turned Miller into something Nin had already achieved: the status of a cult hero.

Nin and Miller met in Paris in 1931. Miller, an aspiring novelist, wanted to meet the banker's pretty wife who had sung the praises of D.H. Lawrence and whose books had been deemed "pornography" outside of France. Neither Nin nor Miller, at that point, had published much. Their mutual interest, as they freely admit, was in sex and in each other and, consequently, they began a long affair.

It was during this affair that both Nin and Miller produced their finest writing--the writings that would eventually become Nin's two diaries and her novel, House of Incest, as well as Miller's Tropic of Cancer and Black Spring. Each believed in, and nurtured, the others genius and Miller wrote that Nin's diary would take its place "beside the revelations of St. Augustine, Petronius, Abelard, Proust and others."

Miller, only forty-one, but already somewhat down-and-out, fascinated the twenty-nine year old Nin, whose vague yearnings filled the many pages of the diary she had been keeping since the age of ten. "He's a man who makes life drunk. He is like me," she mused. Nin and Miller, however, were not alike. One of their most essential differences was a difference typical between men and women--Nin censored herself, while the world censored Miller.

Published in 1963, Nin's diary caused a literary sensation. It was begun as a letter to her father, a man who abandoned the family when Nin was only ten, and it remained intensely private. Revised into frequent distortions, the diary was a record of a compulsion to conceal as much as of a quest for feminine fulfillment. A mixture of fact, fantasy and calculated lies, Nin's editor asserts that the diary nevertheless presents a "psychological" truth. Kate Millett hailed Nin as "the mother of us all" and the women's movement immediately embraced her writings. Author Erica Jong said that no woman had told "the story of women's sexuality" more honestly than had Nin.

Despite the praise, if we read between the lines, while still observing Nin's frenetic whirl from bed to bed, we come to realize that she was really never satisfied. Her insatiable appetite aside, Nin was, at heart, a prudish libertine. Her childhood molestation by her father, whom she, herself, seduced as an adult a year after meeting Henry Miller, seems to have contributed greatly to her private inhibitions. Although she flitted from bed to bed she sadly confessed, "I am hellishly lonely." Instead of sex, Nin longed for "what I give Henry: this constant attentiveness."

In the "Black Lace Laboratory," as Miller's apartment was dubbed, Nin and Miller conducted literary and erotic experiments, prompting Nin to write him a thinly disguised warning to herself, "Beware just a little of your hypersexuality!" Toward the end of his life, unable to write about women except as prostitutes, Miller claimed not to know what the sexual revolution was about, saying that he had always loved and honored women. Nin agreed, saying that Miller was a romantic, rather than a rake. At eighty, Miller confessed that far too many people engaged in sex without love.

Basking in the warmth of Nin's caresses, her skilled editing of his work, and the material possessions she lavished upon him, Miller wrote prolifically and with a rare genius. Eventually, his romance with Nin faded (or warmed) into friendship, but the legacy of their literary teamwork remained: In 1974, Nin was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters. The Los Angeles Times names her Woman of the Year in 1976, the same year Henry Miller received France's Legion d'honneur. The 1990 movie, Henry and June is a chronicle of Miller's affair with Nin, which later became a triangle involving Miller's wife, June.

Nin and Miller have become cultural icons. Nin is the focus of women's study courses as well as being included in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. Miller and his work need no comment. Although both Nin and Miller were pioneers of free speech and sexual freedom, and both helped to forge a new literature and a new culture, the ultimate emptiness of their lives, with its attendant lack of depth and meaning point to the futility of their attempt to wrest security and happiness from sexuality alone.

Walden Pond is a classic which everyone should be required to read. I read this years ago and wanted to add this one to my library. What a wonderful surprise it was. The pictures enhance this classic. I recommend this book to anyone interested in Thoreaus' works, Nature and getting back to the basics in life. In this busy life we live, it is relaxing to spend time reading this book.

Bought this as a gift for my husband and he really loved the photo illustrations. They are beautiful. Makes a nice "coffee table book".

* "I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion . . . I have thus a tight shingled and plastered house, ten feet wide by fifteen long . . . A lady once offered me a mat, but as I had no room to spare within the house, nor time to spare within or without to shake it, I declined it, preferring to wipe my feet on the sod before my door. It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil."
~ Henry David Thoreau; "Walden"

* "Walden has become as much a state of mind as it is a place."
~ Scot Miller; "Walden - 150th Anniversary Illustrated Edition"

For my birthday in 1984, my dear friend, Marty ("rhymes with party"), gave me the 1981 Avenel books hardcover edition of WORKS OF HENRY DAVID THOREAU. This compilation contained all of the famous transcendentalist's most significant writings and the thirty intriguing Herbert Wendall Gleason, black and white photographs that graced the 1906 publication of Thoreau's complete works.

My dear friend died in an auto accident five years later, but part of his legacy is the passion for Thoreau's philosophy that his gift awakened in me, and that book which occupies a prestigious place in one of my bookcases right between my Holy Bible and my 1st edition copy of Mark Twain's 1872, Roughing It. And my book, though yellowed now, looks pretty good for a volume 23 years without a dust jacket (I nearly always trash the things immediately), and for having been completely read twice, and thumbed through hundreds of times!

A couple of years ago, GFM (Good Friend Melanie) gave me a softcover copy of WALDEN AND OTHER WRITINGS, and I was glad to have it as it contained a couple of essays and excerpts I'd not previously read, and it provided me with a copy of Thoreau's best that I could loan out to others.

Therefore, when my friend, Pooh, and I flew into Philadelphia in late August 2005, to visit the birthplace of our nation, and then to drive north to visit Walden Pond and environs, I did not consider purchasing a copy of this 150th ANNIVERSARY ILLUSTRATED EDITION of WALDEN for myself while in Thoreau's hometown. I already had two copies of this true classic and couldn't see buying a third despite the stunning pictures included in this publication. I did, however, bring home a copy as a gift for GFM. (The woman in the bookstore in downtown Concord, Massachusetts, pointed out to me that the original publishing price - printed on the inside flap of the dust jacket - was $28.12, half a cent less than Thoreau tells us it cost him to build his little house at Walden's shore in 1845. (He officially moved into his homemade home on the appropriate date of July 4th, and an American classic was born!)

One day, shortly after returning from my memorable trip, I borrowed from GFM the copy I had given her, so I could gaze upon the nearly 100 SCOT MILLER photographs once again. And I was so awed by the indescribably gorgeous and practically breathtaking pictures of the Walden area and its flora and fauna, that I realized I needed to own this book like Thoreau needed solitude. And that's how I came by Thoreau's WALDEN for a THIRD time! While Marty's gift reigns for sentimental reasons, the 150th Anniversary Illustrated Edition is tops in exquisite beauty - a lovelier and more profound coffee table book is simply unimaginable; a richer gift for a valued friend couldn't be purchased at ANY price! This edition is simply a divine marriage of Thoreau's insight into the nature of Man and his place in nature, and Scot Miller's illustrations of the natural world wherein Thoreau made those treasured observations over a century and a half ago. Hey, I even left the dust jacket on this book despite the fact that the jacket's photograph is also reprinted on page 2, and it barely even hints at the wonders inside.

In Thoreau's WALDEN, the naturalist makes the following observation in the chapter titled, "Sounds": "I had this advantage, at least, in my mode of life, over those who were obliged to look abroad for amusement, to society and the theatre, that my life itself was become my amusement and never ceased to be novel. It was a drama of many scenes and without an end." And Scot Miller has brilliantly captured with his camera the splendor of that "drama of many scenes" at Thoreau's old stamping ground.

I'm not knowledgeable in the techniques of photography, so I can't explain to you HOW Miller was able to make photographs like these (it seems obvious to me, however, that he must employ an array of various filters and such). All that I CAN tell you is that words can't describe the virtual explosion of colors (like nature vibrantly celebrating that 1845 4th of July within Herself) and the uncommon degree of visible detail (staring at those rocks and leaves in "Still Life Under Ice", I can almost feel the bone-numbing cold that any one of those stones would penetrate my hand with). "Magical Fairyland Pond" is the perfect caption for that dreamlike picture of Walden's sister pond. I can almost hear a lonely dog barking from across the glittering snow while hidden deep in the distant, wooded shore, when I'm lost in the "Sunrise On Frozen Walden Pond." I'm not even going to attempt to describe the "Nature's Palette, Heywood's Meadow" photograph on page 32. Suffice to say that God is "The" Master Painter. Incredible! (And Scot Miller, you're a wonder, too!)

This five-star beauty of a book represents the pinnacle of the publisher's art, and it includes a shot of the exact site of Thoreau's 1845 cabin (previously obscured by a cairn), and Henry's simple tombstone, which I visited at the Author's Ridge section of the Concord cemetary where our hero's physical body gradually became a part of the nature that his spirit loved so much.

On a family vacation many years ago, I visited Walden Pond and walked all around it. In celebration of the 150th anniversary of the publication of Thoreau's Walden, the Walden Woods Project published, in 2004, this illustrated edition of the work with stunning color photographs by Scott Miller of Walden Pond and its environs. The Walden Woods Project is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of Walden Pond and to the legacy of Thoreau. I found this book a fitting memorial of my walk around Walden Pond and of my earlier readings of Walden. The lovely edition, photographs, and memories inspired me to turn again to Thoreau's book.

Henry David Thoreau (1817 -- 1862) lived at Walden Pond, Masachusetts from July, 1845 -- September, 1847, in a cabin he built himself on a tract of land owned by his friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson. He was two miles from Concord, Massachusetts and one mile from his nearest neighbor. A railroad passed near the pond, and it was frequented regularly by farmers, hunters, picnickers, and others. During the two years, Thoreau left Walden Pond at times to visit friends in Concord, to lecture, and to visit other ponds and sites in the area. He made no pretense of being entirely isolated. In his book, Walden, published in 1854, Thoreau described the first year of his life at Walden Pond (he tells us that the second year was much the same) and his reasons for living there. Much of the book was written at Walden Pond, and Throreau also wrote other works there.

The book is short but it is written in a dense, difficult and condensed style with many long, complex sentences. It is also highly allusive and shows Thoreau's learning in classical literature and his interest in Eastern thought and religion. It is filled with many short, pithy, and provocative comments which have become proverbial in American literature.

In the opening and closing chapters of the book, Thoreau describes his motivations for living at Walden Pond and abandoning the life of commerce. For Thoreau, most people are owned by their possessions. He saw a need to live with little encubrance in order to understand himself and find inner peace. "Simplify, simplify, simplify" was his goal. In one of my favorite sentences of the book, he states (p. 67) "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." Then, towards the end of the book, Thoreau recounts some of the lessons he had learned in the following passage:

"We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it, and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty. We loiter in winter while it is already spring."(p/253)

In the middle sections of the book, Throreau describes his life in the woods, again with recognition of his substantial interactions with other people during the time. (He was not a hermit.) He describes the books he read, his activites at his cabin, Walden Pond and woods, the changes of the seasons, and the plants and animals. The pond and its creatures are described with great detail, but Thoreau gives even more attention to internalizing his experiences and explaining their significance to his readers.

Scott Miller's beatiful photographs of Walden Pond add a great deal to this edition. They are well-placed to correspond with the discussion in the text, and they illuminate Thoreau's descriptive passages. The photographs, and the book itself, brought back reading and visiting memories and made me want to see Walden Pond again.

But much as Walden is revered for its descriptions of nature, the book remains for me primarily internalized and intropsective. Thoreau has many polemical things to say which will not, and should not, appeal to all readers. But the book documents the effort of an individual to try to understand his life, to reflect, and to understand change. As I have suggested, it is not an anti-social book as Thoreau was never far removed from friends and company. But it is a book about understanding one's life and learning not to be afraid of solitude or of being with oneself.

Robin Friedman

I'll not dwell on the author's content but on the publisher's choice of binding. Thoreau calls for a complete abandonment of possessions and to always choose the simpler, less expensive if something is needful. This beautiful coffee table book uses expensive glossy enamel paper with gorgeous photographs going way beyond necessity. Every time I picked it up to read, it's irony struck me first and weighed upon me until I set it down. It's a shame really, because with other content it would be luxurious.

A wonderful book, not just for writers or literature lovers, but for anyone interested in thinking and living creatively. Packed with well-worded wisdom. My favorite passages have become guidelines for my life. Some examples:

It should be borne in mind, of course, that there is an inevitable discrepancy between the truth of the matter and what one thinks, even about himself. * Writing, like life itself, is a voyage of discovery. * I began in absolute chaos and darkness, in a bog or swamp of ideas and emotions and experiences. * Good and bad dropped out of my vocabulary. * I talk now about Reality, but I know there is no getting at it. * I eschew all clear cut interpretations: with increasing simplification the mystery heightens. * What I know tends to become more and more unstable. * I find there is plenty of room in the world for everybody. * One can only go forward by going backward and then sideways and then up and then down. * My charts and plans are the slenderest sort of guides. * Understanding is not a piercing of the mystery, but an acceptance of it, a living blissfully with it, in it, through it and by it. * Every line and word is vitally connected with my life, my life only, be it in the form of deed, event, fact, thought, emotion, desire, evasion, frustration, dream, revery, vagary, even the unfinished nothings which float listlessly in the brain like the snapped filaments of a spider's web. * I had to learn to think, feel and see in a totally new fashion, in an uneducated way, in my own way, which is the hardest thing in the world.

If you read Henry Miller, you are well aware that his use of language is both poetic and direct. He does little apologizing, and this book follows that philosophy. The book is a gathering of previously and not previously published works concerning the art of writing. It is edited by Thomas H. Moore, who worked with Miller to complete it.

Throughout the pages we see Miller in familiar lighting as he stresses those things about his craft that are most important to him. We also read how Miller was sometimes so absorbed in his work that he couldn't get through a meal with scribbling out pages between bites. To that end, Miller gives his greatest lesson to would-be writers - Dedication and discipline are the pillars on which the writer lives. Without those, one merely writes. He even lists "Commandments" in part of the text, wherein he describes the requirements that he placed on himself. These include, basically, writing without bounds, living fully, and placing the art of writing above friends and hobbies. It is this reinforcement that shows how hard Miller struggled to maintain his place as a writer. He reminded himself to work on one piece at a time.

There is a section entitled "Obscenity and the Law of Reflection," and it defines Miller's view on what obscenity is why it cannot truly be debated or defined. All of this is treasured reading for the Miller fan. There are many fine chapters covering the various aspects of the life and the profession of Henry Miller. It is extremely well written and organized. If you enjoy Miller, this book will only enhance your opinions. If you do not care for his work, perhaps this book will explain why Miller chose to write what he had inside of him and how he shaped his style to fit his soul. Pick up a copy! Another book I need to recommend -- completely unrelated to Miller, but very much on my mind since I purchased it off Amazon is "The Losers' Club" by Richard Perez, an exceptional, highly entertaining little novel I can't stop thinking about.

An especially important book for any aspiring writers or students of fiction or the creative mind. Henry Miller on Writing shows Miller as he struggles to learn how to write and questions and wrestles with all the insecurities and self-loathing that is endemic to writing. As important as John Gardner's books on writing, only more readable and more fun.

I absolutely love, love, love, love, love, love, love this book! I agree with the person who said you don't have to be a writer to enjoy this book. I am a writer still "finding myself" in mid-50s and this book is absolutely MAGICAL to me. In the most atheistic and blissful sense of the word. I first got a hardback (New Directons Paperbook) copy at the local library. Then I had to renew it. And now I have had to order a copy for myself because I want to LIVE with this book -- touch it, read it, hold it, carry it, cherish it. Is it that good? Yes, it is that good. It is so good as a matter of fact I just spent all of next week's grocery money to get a copy in hardback. I feel as if I just bought a Ming vase or a rare coin collection. I cannot explain. Here is one of many awesome quotes in the book:

"By being crazy is understood losing one's reason. Reason, but not the truth, for there are madmen who speak truths while others keep silent,"

and

"'Je ne parle pas logique', said Montherlant, 'je parle générosité', I don't think you heard it very well, since it was in French. I'll repeat it for you, in the Queen's own language: 'I'm not talking logic, I'm talking generosity'. That's bad English, as the Queen herself might speak it, but it's clear. Generosity -- do you hear? You never practice it, any of you, either in peace or in war. You don't know the meaning of the word. You think to supply guns and ammunition to the winning side is generosity; you think sending Red Cross nurses to the front, or the Salvation Army, is generosity. You think a bonus twenty years too late is generosity; you think a little pension and a wheel-chair is generosity; you think if you give a man his old job back it's generosity. You don't know what the f**king word means, you bastards! To be generous is to say Yes before the man opens his mouth,"

and

"Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heart-ache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths."

If you read Henry Miller, you are well aware that his use of language is both poetic and direct. He does little apologizing, and this book follows that philosophy. The book is a gathering of previously and not previously published works concerning the art of writing. It is edited by Thomas H. Moore, who worked with Miller to complete it.

Throughout the pages we see Miller in familiar lighting as he stresses those things about his craft that are most important to him. We also read how Miller was sometimes so absorbed in his work that he couldn't get through a meal with scribbling out pages between bites. To that end, Miller gives his greatest lesson to would-be writers - Dedication and discipline are the pillars on which the writer lives. Without those, one merely writes. He even lists "Commandments" in part of the text, wherein he describes the requirements that he placed on himself. These include, basically, writing without bounds, living fully, and placing the art of writing above friends and hobbies. It is this reinforcement that shows how hard Miller struggled to maintain his place as a writer. He reminded himself to work on one piece at a time.

There is a section entitled "Obscenity and the Law of Reflection," and it defines Miller's view on what obscenity is why it cannot truly be debated or defined. All of this is treasured reading for the Miller fan. There are many fine chapters covering the various aspects of the life and the profession of Henry Miller. It is extremely well written and organized. If you enjoy Miller, this book will only enhance your opinions. If you do not care for his work, perhaps this book will explain why Miller chose to write what he had inside of him and how he shaped his style to fit his soul. Along with this novel, I'd like to recommend another Amazon pick, THE LOSERS' CLUB by Richard Perez, which is about a struggling would-be author -- a personal novel obviously influenced by the ideas and life of Henry Miller.

Ms. Miller's childhood was extremely hard. Her father was a self-centered and self-centered junkie. He didn't even see his family as real people who had their own thoughts and feelings. Her mother tried the best she could to do the right thing. But it was wrong to keep the family together. She need to leave him when the opportunnities arose but she chose to stay with her husband so she would be a 'good' wife and mother. She was paralyzed with indecision. It was important to her to be seen as 'good'. Maybe in the 1950's it was unthinkable to leave your husband or give up your kids to give them a better life. The worst part for Ms. Miller was the daily beatings that she suffered from her brother. How can you survive that unscathed? Ms. Miller wrote this without self-pity. Yet you can hear the emotions that she felt clearly in her beautiful prose. She doesn't talk much about her adult life beyond how she dealt with her panic attacks as an adult. I highly recommend this book to people who suffered during childhood to see that you can overcome it at least to some degree. Also for people who love someone who had a bad childhood to understand them better. Everyone should have a safe environment. Not only had Ms. Miller survived her childhood she has accomplished much in her life. An amazing feat!

In telling her riveting story, Miller invents a new, jazz-like, rhythm and sentence--riffing far away from the moment into its meaning, and then careening back. Her clear eye and psychological precision are breathtaking. I couldn't put it down--nor could the several people I've given this to!

When I read that author Susan J. Miller was devastated to learn her father had been a heroin addict, I thought this a slender premise on which to build a memoir. After all, haven't we heard just about everything about abusive parents, addiction, and that word that no longer means anything, "co-dependency?"

Instead, I found a "must read" and life-changing book. Ms. Miller writes in a straightforward prose without pretention, refreshing after the overly self-conscious styles that too often find their way into novels or memoirs. She leads the reader through the "unpeeling of the onion," as it's called in recovery circles, where layer after layer of the past are pulled off, only to reveal another.

Skillfully, Ms. Miller lets the reader participate in this process as the horrors progress. She is never self-pitying. One senses that her recovery will continue for the rest of her life, and she offers a snapshot of half of that life, the rest, one hopes, to be lived in a grander richer way. For example, she seems unaware that although her father stopped using heroin when she was thirteen, he continued to use addictive drugs up until his death (the morphine to quell the pain of dying not included.) She also seems unaware that all addicts are completely self-involved, her father no different, thus rendering more sad her longing at his deathbed for a little more than "no lo contendere." Addicts tend to see and treat the world as an extension of themselves, and to treat their children as if the child is the parent and must care for the addicted adult. As one addict told me, "Heroin is my mother, my father, my child, my God." The addict never really change. It is refreshing to hear Ms. Miller's honesty that she does not regret her father's death. By the time one has been ripped into shreds by an addict parent, death is a relief.

Ms. Miller spares herself no step in mourning. She gazes steadfastly at the ruins and horror of her childhood, and she heals. Subtle as this memoir is, I would rather recommend this book to adult children of addicts than chirpy and cliche-filled self-help guidebooks (although they too have their place.) In Miller's memoir, I finally understood the effect of addiction on children.

While the plethora of recent books penned by victims may have inured some to the stories of pain that human beings inflict upon one another, few will be unmoved by Susan Miller's trenchant family memoir Never Let Me Down. Her story causes one to ponder again accidents of birth and marvel at the remarkable resiliency within us.

Relating the secrets in her life very much as she must have unearthed them, the author cuts back and forth between childhood experiences and the agonizingly earned knowledge of adulthood - the awareness that her father was a 15-year heroin addict unable to love, and her mother, a withdrawn woman, was afraid to see the rage-driven brutality of her older brother, Aaron.

Raised in an ever changing yet congruent series of oppressive New York City apartments during the 1950's, the youngest child of a window dresser whose friends were Birdland musicians - Charlie Parker, Stan Getz, Al Cohn and George Handy, all junkies, Ms. Miller suspected nothing. She writes, "It wasn't until I was twenty-one, a college senior, that my father told me he had been a heroin addict, casually slipping that information into some otherwise unremarkable conversation." And then she knew that his addiction explained their acrid family relationships, their penuriousness, and their many moves.

That knowledge, she remembers, "...not only brought uncertainty to every memory but was also the key to my past." Thus, with the aid of therapy, she begins to explore the murky labyrinth of her youth, reliving the gradual escalation of her brother's persecution from pokes to arm-twisting torture to throttling to sexual abuse. As an adult she tries to convince Aaron to see a therapist, insisting that he can find help but he refuses. "That was how it was," she writes, "He couldn't imagine himself as anything but lost, and I always saw myself as on the way to being found." That may have been her life raft.

Nonetheless, for Ms. Miller "being found" was an arduous journey. She learned that dysfunction in her family had spanned three generations. Her father's mother, Esther, hated men. This grandmother so detested her own son that she never displayed a photo of him in her home, she ignored him in her will, saying he was no good, yet lavished affection on Sarah, his sister. Sarah learned her lesson well, boasting that she could get her husband to do what she wanted by refusing to sleep with him. Ms. Miller recalls, "Her husband, the manager of an A&P, could not afford the fancy dresses and shoes that were stuffed into my aunt's closet, but each visit, newly acquired items were brought out for display. You could have such treasures, too, Sarah advised my mother, if you just played your cards right."

A victim, too, Ms. Miller's father lay on his death bed and admitted that he did not know how to love. To a degree, that may have explained his treatment of her but there was more pain to come: when a social worker asked him what he would miss most when he died. His reply was, "...yeah, sure, I'll miss my wife and kids, but what I'll miss most is the music. The music is the only thing that's never let me down." A callous blow to Ms. Miller, an even crueler barb for his wife who had stood by him.

Eventually, there is the recognition that father and daughter are bound together by shared pasts, histories that neither has wished to acknowledge. Perhaps that explains but does it excuse?

Today Ms. Miller is married and the mother of two children. She takes medication to assuage her panic attacks, and lives in a house, a real house, an old wooden one "with white curtains blowing at the windows." There is a garden, enough money, and she cooks dinner every night. She has survived.

Never Let Me Down is a complex intimate memoir. It is a sad yet triumphant story. Even sadder and more triumphant because it is true.

So engorged has the memoir field become with gothic tales of apparently normal families that it¹s tempting to read Miller¹s book and think: Not another description of growing up with a father who is a monster of self-absorption, a mother who is lost, uncertain, uninvolved, an older brother who beats his sister and forces her to have incestuous sex. What saved Miller was her determination to tunnel her way to the roots and depths, to find what made her family ³four people so unhappy, so angry, so unable to help one another, to make anything work out, as if we all had been hit in the head, walking around stupid and enraged.² What saves the book and lifts it well above the psychobabble it readily could have become is the level of Miller¹s analysis and intuition, the remarkable quality of her insight -- the kinds of observations that make you gasp like reading good poetry does.She starts by putting the central piece of the puzzle in place. Her father, a jazz fan and friend of some of the outstanding musicians on the New York scene in the Œ40s and Œ50s, casually told her when she was a senior at Bennington that he had been a heroin addict for 15 years, starting when her mother was pregnant with her older brother Aaron. The way he drops his admission into conversation says as much about him as does the fact of his addiction, a habit which left Miller¹s mother immobilized with fear and caused the family to move from one depressing apartment and frightening marginal neighborhood to another in Manhattan and in New Jersey. More to the point, the instability made young Susan the only parent in the family. ³My two jobs, being hit by my brother, and listening to my mother...required skill.²Miller goes back and forth in time, telling her story in vignettes. She avoids martyring herself and demonizing her family. This is how it was, she writes, in a detached but vivid manner. Rational by day she grew up flooded with survival instinct that left her sleepless at night. What if there¹s a fire? A prowler? Lying in bed, she thinks she¹ll never have a child, that it¹s irresponsible to make another person go through childhood.Once she learned that her father had been a heroin addict when she was growing up ³The parts of the story were all around me, words flung on the floor, the gibberish I had been talking, but the difference was that now I might be able--I had to be able-- to pick up the words and put them together with other words, memories, feelings, and they might, they had to, make sentences, make a history, make sense.² She thinks about the Yeats line, ³In dreams begin responsibilities.² She thinks back, to the ponderous prewar apartment they lived in from the time she was five until she was nine, a place she knew was evil. She thinks ahead, to how she has to confront her father, tell him he is making impossible demands on her, drawing all the air out of the room, out of her life.Not for Miller the easy consolation of fiction and film. No single insight, no feel-good scene brings closure. But she comes to terms with what is endurable, draws the line at what is not. She rebuilds herself word by word and act by act in a description all the more inspirational for being real.

Another fine offering from author Ray Miller. Love for the car is palpable. Primary source documents are present. The photographs are excellent. I've had the pleasure of running across a couple of Miller's books about Chevrolet, and they are also wonderful pieces of work.

Probably the best book on the subject of the Model A Ford. In depth coverage of even the smallest detail of these cars.

The quality of the book is perfect. Of course the content is very well written and the pictures are very cool!

This book is a "keeper" for anyone with an interest in the Ford Model "A". All of the various body styles from 1928 to 1931 are covered in detail. High quality photos accompany descriptions of both "standard" and "optional" features found on each body style. Kudos to the author and the photographer for a high quality book.

As an owner of a recently restored Model A this book is a MUST. Contained in it are all the fine points regarding the various body types and accessories. No wonder this book serves as a primer for the expert judging of Model A's.

Preface -- A Letter by Henry Corbin. Introduction to the Second Edition. One: An Exploded Cultural Sphere: the Death of God and the Rebirth of the Gods. Two: The Golden Ring and the Growing Blackness: Monotheism, Polytheism, and Theologizing. Three: Sleeping Beauties: Theology as Faith Seeking Understanding. Four: Stars, Sparks, and Luminous Fish Eyes: Psychology as Understanding Seeking Life. Five: The New Polytheism Fifty-One Theses and Some notes. Postscript The Laughter of the Gods. Notes. Appendix -- Psychology: Monotheistic or Polytheistic by James Hillman. Index.

_The New Polytheism_ is a treasure. It's the kind of book I've been longing to find: an intelligent, scholarly and thought-provoking treatise on polytheistic ways of thinking and creating meaning in the modern world. This is a must-read for modern polytheists and Neo-Pagans who hunger for something more substantial than the all-too-prevalent shallow, academically- and theologically-challenged fluff that seems to permeate Western polytheistic communities these days. I especially appreciated the commentary on the experience of polytheism as at first a frightening loss of center, but then a widening of perspective that challenges, inspires and invigorates as one begins to appreciate the diversity and richness of multiple ways of relating and functioning in many different aspects of life. I would love to be part of a group book study using this book.

I first discovered this book 12 years ago, while writing a formal credo for a religion class in college, and I found the book invaluable. I had to fight the urge to quote whole pages at a time. Not only did Mr. Miller explain the complexities of a polytheist-centered world-view clearly, but he did so with a poet's light touch. The only regret I had at the time, and have now, is that I was reading the book with a deadline hanging over my head, and could not luxuriate in his writing as much as I wanted (it is only this fact that makes me uncomfortable giving the book a perfect "5 star" rating).

It is a great sorrow that this book is out of print... But perhaps it will be reissued one day.

It is a pity that this quartet of David Miller's books: The New Polytheism, Christs, Three Faces of God and Hells and Holy Ghosts are out of print. They are simply brilliant examples of Archetypal Psychology's eye (that is, a polytheistic, mythopoeic, psyche-logical eye) turned on the beliefs of a montheistic faith. Not possible you think ? It is absolutely necessary I think, necessary to turn the two Doctors of the Soul (Jung and Hillman's) eyes on a faith whose soul has been long missing. For those Christians who have experienced the polytheism of their own soul and are seeking to integrate this experience into their faith these books are tailor made. I don't know of any other books that have attempted to do what David Miller has done. His accessible style in explaining complex notions is at least equal to that of Thomas Moore (of Care of the Soul fame).

About a year ago a teacher/performer friend asked me who my first guitar teacher was. Larry McCabe, quite a few years ago. My friend looked surprised, and told me he uses Larry's books in his own teaching, and that Larry had written something like 80 books to date. I had no idea, as Larry was in the process of writing his first book when I had lessons with him. So when it came time to brush up on some basic blues licks for a band I'm in I ended up obtaining some of Larry's books.

This book of blues turnarounds is where I started. What a great book - full of excellent turnaround licks. At this point I've only played through about half of them note for note, but have used those as a basis for coming up with my own licks. And to me, that is the mark of a great book - lots of useful information if read note-for-note, but can also be used as a springboard for creating new ideas.

The licks I've learned from the book thus far are all in the key of C, but can be easily used in other keys if one has a basic knowledge of the notes on the fretboard. I'd highly recommend this book for a beginner wanting to learn stock blues licks, or intermediate players who need to expand their blues vocabulary.

An Excellent Choice for the Early Intermediate Blues Guitarist

A turnaround is a lick played at the end of a section of music. A blues turnaround would be played in measures 11-12 of a 12-bar blues, or measures 7-8 of an eight-bar blues.

Electric urban blues turnarounds are fairly easy to play, and the difference from one to another is subtle. Having the ability to play a variety of turnarounds is an important skill in blues guitar playing. This is the best book I know of that addresses exclusively the subject of electric blues guitar turnarounds.

This a book for a VERY ambitious beginner, or an early intermediate guitarist who has an interest in Chicago blues in the classic style of Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Jimmy Reed, etc.

The licks are all arranged in the key of C. This is for ease of analysis and comparison. The user is encouraged to transpose the licks to other keys - a worthwhile project for exploring and learning the fingerboard. Very, very good practice for learning the art of blues phrasing.

Great book from one of our leading authors. My students (and myself) have consistently benefited from the interesting instruction contained here.

My students and I work from several of Larry McCabe's guitar books and find that the books produce consistently high results.

This book, like the others, is exceptionally well crafted, specific in intent, and the guitar lines are accurately written exactly as they are heard on the CD. Larry McCabe books are the work of a dedicated teacher who has achieved a high level of respect nationally in the field of music education.

Larry asked me to write a review for this book, and I am happy to do so. The object of this book is to teach the art of playing blues guitar turnarounds to a guitarist who has some prior experience but is just beginning to explore electric blues.

If a student knows how to bend the strings and perhaps play slurs, slides, and hammers, blues turnarounds are not difficult to play. What is important is to play them authentically and with conviction. This book does a very good job in advancing those objectives.

A component of this book that is quite effective is that every phrase is written in the Key of C. The student should then transpose each lick to other keys, a desirable skill that encourages individual incentive and ability to solve arranging problems.

The turnarounds sound exactly like the ones played on classic blues recordings by the great artists from Chicago and other urban areas.

I know other teachers who swear by Larry's books, and I am one of them. Great book- effective in its aims, ambitious content, fun to work through, and a great value.

This very fine book has been in print in one form or another since the early-to-mid 1980s. Not many music books remain in print that long, but this is an exceptional collection of model solos in the urban blues style.

The book is quite popular with music teachers (as evidenced by the other reviews) and it is enjoyable and productive for students as well. The book is aimed at the ambitious early intermediate student, and a few of the solos will challenge an intermediate guitarist.

There are 25 full-length solos in the book, each written in notation and tablature, and each recorded note-for-note on the accompanying CD. The band on the CD is excellent. There are five solos in C, five in G, five in D, five in A, and five in E. The solos are played to standard blues progressions, meaning that they may be "plugged in" to similar blues progressions that are found in many, many songs.

The solos sound exactly like the solos heard on real blues records. They are varied and performed with taste, authenticity, and feeling. You can hear why the author was a columnist for Living Blues Magazine and why his work has received consistently high reviews in a number of guitar magazines.

Great book, highly recommended.

I wish all music instruction books were written in this format. The song tabs just go from one page to the next without a bunch of talking/writing in between, and the song numbers in the book actually match the song numbers on the cd...what a rare and unique idea! Of course, none of that would matter if the material were bad, but that's not the case, the solos are great - quite diverse too. There is a lot of helpful information in this book: theory, writing your own solos, a guide to blues styles and artists,etc. - but it's all in it's own section of the book, not sprinkled throughout the book here and there making it impossible to find. As a full time guitar instructor I would just like to say "great job", "great blues solos" and "great, easy to use format". Thanks.

The author of this book, Larry McCabe, is re-releasing books that have gone out of print for one reason or another. This particular book is an old friend. After I received it, I went into my library and found a copy. It has been in print in one form or another for 25 years. Most instruction books don't last anywhere near that long. First, this book (as the author warns) is not for beginners. You need to be familiar with the movable blues scales we all use. If you are playing out, and feel comfortable with the whole neck, get this book. The style of lead is closer to Gatemouth Brown and Freddie King than anyone else. If you don't know who these men are, buy their CDs. You are in for a treat. Please read the author's introduction. There is a lot of good info there. The Tab system is the older style. It should take about 30 seconds to adjust. It's actually easier to read than the current form. If you consider yourself a Rock guitarist instead of Blues, you really could use this book. If you use these solos as a "how to", instead of just memorizing them, they will give you some new weapons. You know, for scaring the heck out of other guitarists.

This is a great book for anyone who is a fan, but also a real treat for people living in the metro-Detroit area, as a few of the celebrities asked are local TV and radio stars. She wrote to a lot of people over the years and has a great collection of stars' heroes, from Soupy Sales to Les Paul and of course Davy Jones! It's neat to find out who inspired the celebrities to be who they are today.

Mary Guerra is an authority on fandom as she is a member of a fanclub or two herself. I know this since she belongs to the fanclub I run for Davy Jones, Davy Devotees. Though the concept of fandom is normally perceived as being something the nonfamous possess, Mary spent years contacting various celebrities asking them just who they consider themselves a fan of and what fanclubs they would join if they could! She received personal responses from legends in the field of entertainment like RoseMarie and Phyllis Diller to Les Paul, inventor of the electric guitar, Richard Petty, of racing fame, columnist, Liz Smith and "Mr. Hockey" Gordie Howe. Shirley Jones, Peter Noone and Mary's personal favorite, Davy Jones of The Monkees, are just a few of the many other highlighted celebrities. If you've been a fan of anyone at anytime, this book gives you an interesting look at who those we admire actually admire. At times the featured celebrities provide laughs and at other times intriguing revelations. Overall this is a fun read with a lot of heart!

This book is fabulous. My husband and I found it to be a quick, entertaining read. We particularly enjoyed the entry from Mike Clark, our favorite radio DJ. It's interesting to see what people celebrities find heroic, and it conveys more of an inside look into their personality as well.