Canada Books

I read this book and thought, yes this Frenchman makes many derogatory and embarassingly insensitive remarks about the Inuit. However, contrary to what one reviewer said below in "Good descriptions, bad insights, July 27, 2005", the author slowly develops a great respect for the intelligence, culture and abilities of these people so much so that he begins to emulate them. It is a subtle conversion story wrapped in a fabulous adventure; thoroughly enjoyable and well worth reading.

My good friend and I were talking a while back after I had watched the movie The Fast Runner, which he had recommended. Talk got around to my deciding to send him my old childhood copy (out of print, I believe) of Peter Freuchen's Book of the Eskimos, and his deciding to send me his old childhood copy of Kabloona. Neither of us had ever heard of the other's book. I must say, as much as I've always liked Freuchen, I got the better of the deal!

What a wonderful book. So well written, such nice storytelling, so enjoyable, refreshingly honest, and unexpectedly insightful. It is haunting. It really is in a class by itself, although I have trouble putting my finger on exactly why this is so. All I know is that I did not want it to end, as I'm sure the author did not want his time in the North to end. And, like him, I don't think it will be the same if I go back and try it again. And I know I also had a strange feeling throughout which only later I identified as a form of envy, envy for the experiences this man had and for his ability to experience them so deeply. I've seldom felt envy mixed with awe and admiration like this before.

Of all the book, I was most deeply moved by his account of the priest out in the middle of nowhere who had survived and kept warm in incredible cold merely through the power of faith and prayer. Humbling.

A man comes out of nowhere, lives these experiences, writes this incredible book, and disappears back into nowhere. Amazing. Read it.

The audio CD is outstanding...indeed the best I have ever listened to. For one thing, the narrator is marvelous in recreating both the 1930's world of France and Frozen Canada. I can't think of any other book or audio that so successfully transported me into an alien culture. Considering that there are quite a few films and books about Eskimos, why buy this one written 70 years ago? Answer: the literary quality of this work surpasses the prose of the last quarter century. When you listen to the narrator weave his tale, it mirrors the experience of hearing a tobacco chewing explorer slowly recounting his adventures in the wild. The story dives deep into the interior life of the author as much as it details an ethnographic examination of (primitive) Inuit life. The myths and values of the Eskimos contrast sharply with the borgeouis morals of a gentleman of Paris. For example, in Eskimo culture, there is little concept of private property...that's why an Eskimo man will let you borrow his wife or a snow knife. Language in the arctic is far more concrete. A polar bear is HE WHO HAS NO SHADOW. Far away, in the cold Arctic, author Grontran De Poncins learns what it means to be human, a man preeminently. This is a romance, a classic reminiscent of Robinson Crusoe. If you buy the audio CD, you will not be disappointed.

This is a magical book which I first read when I was young. It inspired in me dreams of adventure which I did not follow, but which became a part of my inner life. Now that I am old, I am reading Kabloona again so that I can remember that I once was young.

I looked up at the bookshelf over my computer and spotted the battered 1941 edition of Kabloona that has been in my family for 40 years since I first read it in the village of Coppermine (now Kugluktuk) when I was a 12 year old boy in 1961. I decided to do an AMAZON.com search to see if anyone else knew of this marvel that had so enchanted me as a child, and found the site you are now visiting.

We were much more civilized in the Coppermine of 1961 than the same village the author had visited 20 years earlier. We had electricity, and communication with the outside world by a Morse code key at the Department of Transport office, plus we had a scheduled visit by a single-engine Otter every two weeks. It was a magical time for me (adults found it a difficult time, but they simply did not understand things)

The book Kabloona gave me insight into the minds of the people around me. We were a community of 200 Inuit (Eskimos) and 35 whites. The whites had as many of the amenities of civilization as they could garner, but the Inuit lived much as described in De Poncin's book.

I was enthralled by the awesome hunters with their dog sleds and their magnificent huskies, not show dogs or racing dogs, but working dogs that made the difference between life and death. The men would bring back the carcasses of seal and caribou, and the furs they had trapped. The women sewed the furs into beautiful garments that kept man, woman and child warm in intolerably hard winters. It was also the women's job to butcher the carcasses, which they did with incredible speed and skill using only the ulu, or woman's knife. I regularly witnessed the activities of this way of life. De Poncin described all this in his book, but he also gave me insight into the underlying culture I was immersed in.

You can't live the life I led 40 years ago as a boy in the high Canadian arctic, but you can vicariously journey there to an even more primitive time, and enter into the incredible peace and stillness of an arctic winter night in an igloo, or the warmth and safety of a house made of snow as an unbelievable storm rages outside around you.

I recently spoke by satellite telephone to a man in Coppermine from my home in Missouri where I now live, and found that the village I once knew is now a very different place. But you can go back to an earlier era with De Poncin. I assure you, you won't regret your wonderful voyage with him.

I don't know if I'm permitted to speak of it here, but I have described my life in those years in the Arctic in a book, The Boy Who Fell To Earth. It is available at Amazon.com for those would like to buy a hard copy, or can be read for free on my warmbooks.com web site.

This book is a must read for everyone who wishes to understand why so many Canadians are disadvantaged, forgotten about, and labelled because teachers and medical professionals have deemed them as being lazy, having poor problem solving skills or products of bad parenting.
This book will provide new and MUCH needed accurate and uncanny insights for all those struggling with FASD.

This book has a spectacular impact. The examples of the lives of children living with FASD and their families struggling to cope are portrayed with accuracy and empathy that is rare and profound.

This book portrays the lives of children living with FASD and their families struggling to cope with accuracy and empathy that is rare and profound. The author's examples are so vivid and unassuming , they can change your life!

I am an adoptive mother of three school-aged children. I read an article by Bonnie Buxton re: her daughter, Collette. That article would change our lives. Our eldest, then 5, exhibited numerous secondary characteristics of fetal alcohol effects. I called Bonnie and she put us in touch with the fine people at St. Michael's Pediatric Clinic. Since then, we have been involved with a wonderful support group and are familiar with FASWORLD.
Bonnie's book is loaded with information for parents such as ourselves, not informed about our children's disabilities prior to adoption. It is a must read for all, especially your kids in their child-bearing years. I read it feverishly, as I reflected on the testimonials that appeared to reflect the complexities of our own lives. Buy copies and share them with your friends, doctor, children's schools, psychologist, etc. It is the one book that could literally save a child. Be informed. Pass it on!

Upon starting this book I found it was very difficult to put down.The story line even, though it was a biography, was very smooth and free of too much graphic detail. There was no feeling of "Ah, gee, poor me" while reading. Very professional.
This book should be mandatory reading material for all educators, legislators, CAS workers, medical practitioners and caregivers.
Would highly recommend as being up there with The Broken Cord.

I have read this book twice and I loved it. Mowat wrote as if the tug was a living thing. It was wonderful. I actually cried at the end when Franklin came into the harbor with barely any power left and covered entirely with ice, thus ending her life. The people who captained Franklin intriqued me as well. In the book they were the only ones that really cared for her.

Farley Mowat can make the stars sing with the sheer beauty of his writing. His writing is a little old-fashioned by today's standards, (all the better) but his craftsmanship is unsurpassed. You ARE there. You feel everything his characters felt, you see what they saw. The book ends happily and I know it, but I cry through the last chapter every time I read it because his writing takes me there. One hedge: the book does start slow, but if you keep plugging away, you will be richly rewarded.

This book is an unexpectedly riveting episode-by-episode story of the Foundation Franklin, a marine salvage tug that sailed out of the ports of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland in the 1930s and '40s. This working ship, built in Scotland in 1916 to craftsman's standards, eventually found itself unused in a Hamburg shipyard in depression-strapped 1930 where it was identified as a possible vessel for the Canadian maritime salvage fleet. From that day to its final heart-stopping drama, the trials of this unprepossessing high seas coal-fired tugboat are recounted in all their adrenalin-filled reality in Mowat's gripping and evocative prose. Managed by callous profit-seekers, officered by experience-hardened seamen and crewed by men desperate for employment, Foundation Franklin's story is, as well, a slice of social and commercial history. The mood is workaday danger, fortitude, struggle and courage, marred by a single passing dismissive remark about "union mechanics".

I first discovered "Grey Seas Under" about 15 years ago, appropriately enough as Able Seaman on an Ocean Salvage Tug. I was immediately enthralled. Out of the many books on the sea I have read, this one remains very dear to me (not that you have to be a mariner to enjoy it). Grey Seas Under is the true story of the ocean salvage tug, FOUNDATION FRANKLIN and the brave men who battled the North Atlantic to save hundreds of ships and thousands of lives. Farley Mowat, a master srory-teller, passionately desribes the exploits of FOUNDATION FRANKLIN with geat admiration and humor. Grey Seas Under is a true masterpiece saga of the sea. I've read this book probably 6 times in the last 10 years and I'm sure to re-read it for many years to come. I cannot recommend this book enough. I also highly recommend "The Serpents Coil" also by Farley Mowat, another first-rate tale of the sea.

The ocean-going salvage tug, `Foundation Franklin' was more than a match for the worst the North Atlantic could throw at her, including Force 10 hurricanes and Nazi U-Boats. Perfect Storm, eat your heart out! Here is the real book about the great-hearted men and their staunch little ships that survived blow after blow from the Atlantic and bobbed up for more.

If the author, Farley Mowat is sometimes guilty of over-the-top prose---well, he lived and worked on the Franklin, and he loved her sturdy lines, her jaunty roll, and every rivet that held her together while she rescued ships that were Goliaths to her chubby, little Baby Huey. No work could have been more dangerous; none required a higher degree of seamanship and courage than dropping a line on a berserk, lunging, steel-hulled freighter, and then towing her through the maw of a mid-December gale, or the shoals and `sunkers' of the Newfoundland coast---something the Franklin did so many times that her crew lost memory of all but their most freakish or man-killing expeditions.

"Grey Seas Under" will give you an interesting perspective on the true maritime heroes of World War II. Farley Mowat doesn't pull any punches when he describes the tension that existed between the expert seamen on the ocean-going salvage and rescue tugs, and their relatively `amateur' counterparts on Canadian and American naval warships. Some of the funniest scenes in the book involve convoys of merchant ships under the `protection' of corvettes and destroyers. Once a U-Boat had been sighted and the merchants steamed for cover, it was up to the Franklin to rescue the ones that ran into each other or shoaled themselves. Usually, the tug had to perform her duties without any cover from the warships.

"The days the salvors (tugboat seamen) spent tethered to fat and crippled merchantmen, crawling along on a straight course at a speed of two or three knots like mechanical targets in a shooting gallery, were the kind of days that would drain the courage from the most heroic man alive...The Germans knew, that for every rescue vessel sunk there would be a score of crippled merchantmen who would never make safe port."

This is a great book about men against the sea, even though the language gets very nautical at times. Read it and you will learn all about Lloyd's Open Form, and the tricks that wrecked merchant masters play to cheat tugs out of their salvage fees. You'll learn to tell the difference between `Monkey Island' and the poop deck---and the difference between `brass monkeys' and true seamen. You'll thrill to the dangers of sunkers, beam seas, and Arctic white-outs. You'll bite through your pipe-stem, just like the Franklin's captain did during those tows when his sturdy little tug steamed back into port with barely enough coal in her bunkers to "cook a pot of beans."

Someone ought to make a movie out of "Grey Seas Under." It's got everything---romance (between man and ship, at least); life-and-death adventures; heroism; humor; and the treacherous ice, wind, and sea of what the author respectfully refers to as `the Great Western Ocean.'

I can't really add anything substantive to what the other reviewers have said but wanted to add my five star review - this is just a beautiful book that any artist or any person interested in painting would love to have.

I love the book! I wanted a book with more paintings than text and that's just what I got. Beautiful paintings on page after page. You won't be disappointed.

After viewing a Tom Thompson art show in Ottawa, Canada, I became mesmerized and hooked on Tom Thompson.(Previous to the show, he was an unknown to me. No references in my art history classes!) I read about his short life and mysterious death. I became enamored of his style of painting, anxious to try it myself.
I bought my first copy of this book as a gift for someone else. After seeing what a lovely reference it was to T.T. and the Group of Seven. . . I knew I needed my own copy! A nice chunky overview of all these great painters, their styles, their visions. A thumb's up!

If there were no words at all and just this incredible trove of pictures, this book would be worth its price many times over. These painters had an incomparable way of taking the ethereal and ineffable and turning it into thick literal frosting; so many of these pieces just floor me, wordless. I have been in large US art book stores and found no mention of this group (typical American myopia/hubris), so it is great to find such a vast and thorough collection at last. In particular it's great to see Lawren Harris' early urban pieces. I've already bought two extra copies as gifts, and they were breathlessly received. Brilliant book, very happy to own it.

This is an exquisite book filled with amazingly beautiful images of some of Canada's most amazing painters' work. I'd recommend it to anybody who loves landscape art or who is studying to be a painter as I am.

Marshall McLuhan's _The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man_ (University of Toronto Press, 1962) is 45 years ahead of its time because not very many persons have understood it very well. With bold strokes, McLuhan has delineated how Western culture is different from other cultures in the world today. For Western culture is still a residual form of print culture, whereas other cultures in the world today are to one degree or another residual forms of oral cultures.

Drawing on Walter J. Ong's account of visualist tendencies in Western philosophic thought in _Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason_ (Harvard University Press, 1958; 3rd ed. University of Chicago Press, 2004), McLuhan also calls attention to visualist tendencies in Western thought.

In the late 1950s, McLuhan, a Canadian convert to Roman Catholicism, read _Insight: A Study of Human Understanding_ by the Canadian Jesuit philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan. Lonergan calls attention to the tendency in Western philosophic thought to equate knowing with "taking a good look." Thus McLuhan was drawing not only on Ong's account of visualist tendencies in Western philosophic thought, but also on Lonergan's.

In the 1994 "Introduction to the Transaction Edition" of his book _Belief and Unbelief_, Michael Novak, who studied under Lonergan as a young seminarian in Rome, nicely paraphrases Lonergan's critique of visualist tendencies in his own words:

"Rorty thinks that in showing that the mind is not "the mirror of nature" he has disproved the correspondence theory of truth. What he has really shown is that activities of the human mind cannot be fully expressed by metaphors based upon the operations of the human eye. We do not know simply through "looking at" reality as though our minds were simply mirrors of reality. One needs to be very careful not to confuse the activities of the mind with the operations of any (or all) of the bodily senses. In describing how our minds work, one needs to beware of being bewitched by the metaphors that spring from the operations of our senses. Our minds are not like our eyes; or, rather, their activities are far richer, more complex, and more subtle than those of our eyes. It is true that we often say, on getting the point, "Oh, I see!" But putting things together and getting the point normally involve a lot more than "seeing," and all that we need to do to get to that point can scarcely be met simply by following the imperative, "Look!" Even when the point, once grasped, may seem to have been (as it were) right in front of us all along, the reasons why it did not dawn upon us immediately may be many, including the fact that our imaginations were ill-arranged, so that we were expecting and "looking for" the wrong thing. To get to the point at which the evidence finally hits us, we may have to undergo quite a lot of dialectical argument and self-correction." (p. xv)

In summary, Western philosophical thought from antiquity down to the invention of the Gutenberg printing press around 1450 carried a strong visualist orientation, as Ong has detailed. Then with the advent of the Gutenberg printing press visualist tendencies were much more strongly culturally conditioned than ever before. As is well known, print culture in the West with its strong orientation toward visualism saw not only the spread of the Protestant Reformation, but also the emergence of modern science, modern capitalism, modern democracy, the Industrial Revolution, and the Romantic Movement. Thus the strong orientation toward visualism in the West has helped set Western culture off from other cultures of the world.

However, today modern capitalism as developed in print culture with its strong orientation toward visualism is being globalized through economic globalization. Thus capitalism today is making inroads into parts of the world where print culture did not have the historical impact that it had in Western culture. To varying degrees, the other cultures are residual forms of oral culture, as McLuhan describes oral culture in this book.

Thus McLuhan's pioneering study of print culture can enable us to better understand the world situation as we live through the upheavals of economic globalization.

--Thomas J. Farrell, author of Walter Ong's Contributions to Cultural Studies: The Phenomenology of the Word and I-Thou Communication (Media Ecology)

Definitely more of an academically written book than McLuhan's more famous "Understanding Media." For new McLuhan readers, I recommend reading "Understanding Me" or "Understanding Media" first.

This book expands on the views of McLuhan's teacher Harold Innis, who distingusihed oral and written cultures. The book argues that oral cultures are synaesthetic and work with synthetic logic, while cultures of writing push the mind toward singulation of senses, logic and 'perspective'.

McLuhan 'glosses' through a wide range of scattered historical pieces of information to show how oral, written and print cultures have different patterns. He ably shows how printing also transformed art, architecture, society and industry.

The book is thoroughly historical, dense and rich in informative detail. It forms the foundation for McLuhan's clearer theoretical articulation of his ideas in 'Understanding Media', but is more accessible to the layman.

This book belongs to a pantheon of books that revolve around similar ideas like Harold Innis's 'Empire and Communications' & 'The Bias of Communication'; Walter J. Ong's 'Orality and Literacy' and William J. Ivins's 'Print and Visual Culture' and 'Art and Geometry'. But this is the most sweeping, convincing, dramatic statement of the common theory proposed by these various writers.

And for those who love theory with a dose of history, this makes for really delightful reading.

The Gutenberg Galaxy, McLuhan's second book, is one of his best, but the reader should be forewarned that it is also one of his most difficult to read and does not make a good introduction for the beginner. One of the reasons for this difficulty is that it is written in mosaic style, in which McLuhan -- like Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project -- creates a text that is largely composed of quotations from mostly obscure authors stitched together with his own commentaries in between. These quotations are from works written in classical academic style, and none of them are easy reading. They require concentration and the book itself takes time to read carefully.

The book is a cultural archaeology of the effects of the rise of print upon Western society in the period between 1450 - 1850. It is concerned with analyzing the new kinds of social and cultural structures which typography brought into being, such as nationalism, the concept of individuality, the idea of authorship and intellectual private property, new genres such as the literary essay and the novel. The rise of the printing press, McLuhan points out, was coincident with the rise of the mastery of depth perspective in Renaissance painting, and this is not an accident, for both the new Euclidean space conception and typography had in common an emphasis upon the organization of the world around the eye favored as a sense organ at the detriment and exlusion of all the other senses. During the manuscript culture of the Middle Ages, the senses were still synesthetically woven together like a tapestry, and no single one of them was favored to quite the degree of exclusion which the favoring of vision brought about in the Renaissance. Illuminated manuscripts, according to McLuhan, have a textural feel to them that still relies heavily on the sense of touch, and Medieval art, with its disproportionate sense of space in which one character -- such as Christ -- will be represented as larger than everyone else primarily due to the emphasis upon his spiritual importance rather than his inclusion as one individual among many occupying the same field of homogeneous space, is similarly haptic. Gothic lettering, he points out, is hard on the eye and difficult to read because it is tactile and still appeals to the sense of touch. Roman lettering, together with Arabic numerals, was favored by print, and this had the effect of streamlining the ability to read such that silent reading became common. Printers began to do new things like number the pages, create indices and Tables of Contents, and this had the effect of emphasizing authorship since it now became possible to track citations properly. Typography, McLuhan never tires of pointing out, favors the eye at the expense of all the other senses, and it tends to favor an abstract view of space as a container within which objects are placed in an arrangement that takes all spatial relations into account.

All of this began to change in the nineteenth century with the rise of electric technology and the favoring of discontinuities brought about by the telegraph and the newspaper. This kind of syncopated feeling for space, in which each object begins to occupy its own space no longer held in relation to other objects, began to erode and change the old typographic world of the Gutenberg Galaxy. Electric culture, which McLuhan does not discuss much in this book, favors tribalism, spatial discontinuity, erosion of individuality and the rise of corporatism, decentralization and so on.

This book should be read together with Understanding Media, for the latter volume picks up where The Gutenberg Galaxy leaves off, at the threshold of the Electric Society.

It is a masterpiece of scholarship by one of the greatest intellects America has ever produced, an intellect that easily puts the French po-mo philosophers in the shade. You will get more useful ideas out of any one of McLuhan's books than you would out of a whole crate of books by postmodern French philosophers.

--John David Ebert, author of Celluloid Heroes & Mechanical Dragons: Film as the Mythology of Electronic Society

This is the first McLuhan book I read, back in the late 1960s. It took me about a month to get through, because each short chapter contained so many new ideas and insights I had to think about them before going on. I didn't always understand them, but what I did comprehend was intoxicatingly exciting.

Many readers of McLuhan treat his probes as absolute statements of truth. Then, if they disagree with him, they reject his whole approach. One important fact to keep in mind while reading this or any of McLuhan's books is that he himself refers to the clever slogans which sum up many of his insights ("The medium is the message" being the best known, of course) as "probes", not facts. Their purpose is to explore an idea in order to stimulate thought. Even if you ultimately disagree with the concept set forth, if it makes you think about it, the probe has accomplished its principal purpose.

Just thought I would redo my previous review. The main reason I got this book was because I got interested in Tom Green after watching Freddy got fingered. I think that film is possibly one of the funniest movies ever made, although I know quite a lot of people disagree with me on that one.

In my previous review I kind of referenced Howard Stern's private parts. In a sense they are somewhat similar. Both books deal with the theme of a somewhat ordinary guy rising to fame in a funny and lighthearted style. Green's book is a bit more personal though, dealing with both his illness, marriage and fall from grace.

There are some insider tidbits about other celebrities, although it is mostly nice stuff. The celebrities being painted the worst are probably Martin Short and Courtney Love. There is a segment about Courtney heckling Green's father during his speech at the Barrymore-Green wedding. I guess no-one would really contest the validity of that happening.

I don't think the parts pertaining Drew Barrymore are at all negative nor ill intended. Green's namedropping seem to not really be trying to capitalize off certain people's fame.

I think even people, even the ones that detested Green's other works, will find the book interesting. Especially if they would like to get an inside look at the Hollywood-elite's society. And the fans get an inside look at how some of the classic moments like i.e the moose humping and the bum bum song got created.

I couldn't be more pleased with the book, there's so much more depth to this man then most people realize. If you're even a casual fan of Tom Green's, this book is well worth picking up.

If you like Tom Green, read this book. If you hate Tom Green, read this book. Tom is a genuine talent. Amazing. I was riveted by Tom's story. I read this in one day.

Wow, this is now my favorite book, (Although that isn't saying much, I rarely read) It is a funny, but also serious book about Tom Green's life. I read this book in 1 day (I got home from a friend's house a 12 AM and read until 5 AM, went to sleep, then woke up and finished it) I just couldn't stop reading it. This is a great book whether you are a fan of Tom Green or not.

I was never a huge Tom Green fan, as I was a few years too old to appreciate his MTV show. I was intrigued by his story, which as I'd heard was that he was a small town Canadian boy who struck it big with gross-out humor and MTV.
After reading his biography, I have definitely changed any and all assumptions about him and his work. The insane rollercoaster of the best and worst luck in the world he experienced within a few years would be unbelievable were it not true. The decade of persistence that preceeded those huge years is in itself impressive. The anecdotes about giving a speech, a night with a rather wild woman, having and making use of a cell phone before cell phones were everywhere, plus so much more all adds up to one of the most interesting and captivating books I've ever read. Another point to mention is that in a world of gossip and salacious tales, Green gives more information and personal feelings than I expected, but never, not even once, uses the book to criticize anyone else or to try to make himself look like a hero. He shows a lot of appreciation and humility, and reveals an immense depth of character. I had intended to read this book over a period of time and started reading it on a four hour flight. As the plane landed I was only 30 pages away from the end. I exited the plane only to sit in the boarding gate and reopen it because I couldn't wait to finish the final little bit. It was that good. I highly recommend this book to fans, non-fans, and everyone else.

A wonderful variety of stories about those who followed the lure of gold - some who actually panned for gold, others who made a living supporting the gold hunters. Sometimes tragic, sometimes inspiring, always amazing!

I recently read this book for my economics class. This books gives a new dimension to what happened during the gold rushes. This book focuses on the Klondike, one of the last great gold rushes. It gives great details into the way people lived and survived in the destructive climate that is the Klondike. It gives the reader an opportunity to read about the many people who "made it" and the many people who "failed". From poor factory workers who find thousands of dollars in gold to the people that were standing upon a fortune and didn't even know it. You will learn about the rise and fall of the "dictator" of Skagway. It gives you a glimpse into the mindset of a person going off to find his or her fortune. Overall I think it was a very well written book. I found many parts interesting. There was one thing that I didn't like though. This was the fact there were so many little stories mixed in with the bigger picture. I felt that at the end of the book I didn't really remember the people mentioned in the beginning of the book. I give this book a four. Hats off to Mr. Pierre Berton

This is an amazing book containing thrilling stories based on the "last great gold rush". Berton tells these stories in so much detail, that you'd think that you were traveling the Klondike, looking for treasure. It makes you realize that these prospectors were playing a real-life game of "hot or cold" when they got so close to a strike and left to search somewhere else. A must read for anyone who likes adventure stories.

For those of us whose knowledge of the Klondike Gold Rush comes mostly from the 1950s radio drama, "Sergeant Preston of the Yukon" this is a fine book to read. (Trivia question: What was the name of Sergeant Preston's preternaturally intelligent huskie?) Originally published in 1958, "Klondike Fever" has proven to be a minor classic. (See note below concerning a new edition of the book.)

This Gold Rush, named after the Klondike River in the Yukon territory of Canada, was the last great scramble for gold in the old West. One hundred thousand persons, mostly from the U.S., set out for the Klondike in 1897, 30,000 or 40,000 got there, after an arduous journey through killing winter snows, and a few hundred found gold. The stories of the long, hard journey into this Arctic wilderness are often horrific. In one party of 19 men, 15 died or were killed along the route and the other four had eyes damaged by snow blindness. The gold seekers included author Jack London, Wyatt Earp, and poet Joaquin Miller.

The author tells a compelling tale of the men and women who participated in the Klondike Gold Rush. It was indeed a fever. The characters in this book include crusty old miners who suddenly became rich beyond their wildest dreams, stalwart, incorruptible Canadian Mounties, conmen like Soapy Smith -- who in the dramatic tradition of the West receives his just deserts -- prostitutes, madams, gamblers, angels of mercy, last-chance losers, rich adventurers, Indians, and missionaries. It's a fascinating read, based on research that included interviews with many of the oldtimers who lived to talk to the author in the 1950s. The author's standard of truth telling is high; he identifies a tall tale or an unlikely exaggeration when he finds them.

The maps could be better and the text would be enhanced if there were photographs, but I doubt you'll find a better book about the Klondike Gold Rush. However, "Klondike Fever" was revised in 2001 and the newer edition, called "Klondike" embodies new information and interpretations of the events that once took place in the land of the Northern Lights. All in all, I'd buy "Klondike" rather than "Klondike Fever."

Oh, yes, Sergeant Preston's dog was named "Yukon King."

Smallchief

Berton is one great writer! It was SOOOO entertaining to read the stories of all the different characters involved in the Klondike Gold Rush of 1898. This book NEVER GETS BORING!!! Read it for pure enjoyment or for writing a college history paper. This book is one of the greatest history books I've ever read! Check out "Ordeal by Hunger" by George R. Stewart too if you like miner/pioneer/gold rush history. It's fascinating too.

MY STORY HOW I ACQUIRED THIS BOOK:
I was in Skagway, AK (it was a port stop for the vacation cruise I was on) and I had been touring the area (ie, White Pass Train, car, etc.). I had this tour guide who was REALLY knowledgable of Yukon & Alaska history. I thought his storytelling was fascinating and asked him what ONE book would be the one to read concerning the 1898 Klondike Gold Rush. This was the one he suggested. (He also said Pierre Berton was an excellent writer...I must agree this tour guide was telling the truth!) I almost forgot to purchase it! I had to run back to the bookstore in downtown Skagway and buy it so I could enjoy it for the rest of the cruise. I swear I was the last one on the boat! I started reading this book right when I got to my cabin and I was finished with it before the cruise was over!

This book will open your mind to the plight of the aging population in our prison system.

Prisoners of Age is visually and intellectually stimulating. I was fortunate enough to see the actual exhibition in San Fran. Having the book to peruse through at my leisure is a bonus and brings back the vividness of the photographs on display in Alcatraz while in addition providing some very interesting reading. I recommend it for personal or a gift purchase.

apart from the magnificent photographs and compelling text,this book is powerful because it forces a reader to think about the shameful issue of america's prisons. at a time when most citizens would rather look at the latest celebrity du jour on the cover of every magazine, a work of art that presents real people -- most often old, a no-no in this society -- in grim situations should be applauded. "prisoners of age" peers into the abyss with courage and the result is the antithesis of fantasyland.

This was without doubt the most thought provoking body of work I have ever had the pleasure of reading. The pictures are haunting in their eloquence. There images leave you with a sense of despair that at first overwhelms, but then touches you in pity for those poor wretches staring back from their miserable confines.

I found the book Prisoners of Age to be a very powerful and revealing collection of portraits and photo essays. The images were on par with the photography of Richard Avedon and Mary Ellen Mark. This book forces you to slow down and think about our aging prison population not just as a number but as real people with hopes and dreams. This book does not attempt to pass judgment about the incarceration of the aged but lets the viewer draw his or her own conclusions. The overall quality of the book is outstanding with first rate printing and cutting edge design and layout that showcases the photography.

This book, my all-time favorite novel, was Anthony Hyde's first novel and to appreciate it you have to remember that in 1984, when this novel was published, there was no Internet, no Google, very few electronic methods of getting information. Hyde's protagonist, Robert Thorne, a former journalist, is a Russian history expert who is drawn into a mystery that consumes him to the end. Thorne is a very likable gentleman, no quirks, utterly normal. When Thorne probes the mystery surrounding him, he uses time-honored methods of finding information, such as the Bettmann Archive, talking to people involved, etc. whereas today most journalists can simply Google someone.

As for the plot, if you've ever read Graham Greene's "The Third Man", you'll find some similiarities. Because Hyde uses the 1st person, we get every thought that Thorne is thinking, and so you get a sense of an updated Mickey Spillane "hard-boiled detective" novel, too.

Because Hyde was writing his first novel, he avoids many of the "hack" techniques other writers often employ, there are no cliches, no gratuitous sex scenes and no inane dialogue.

You can see where Hyde gets some inspiration, though; there's a little bit from "The Godfather", a scene where Thorne is in a restaurant in Leningrad, talking to a Russian KGB agent, that is straight out of "Casablanca".

But, these are quibbles - I love this book and it's replaced "Doctor Zhivago" as my fave novel of all time.

I've destroyed my copy from having read it over and over. This used to be in my father's bookshelf until I was bored as a young lady and absconded with it (SHHHHHHH. That was about ??(mutter mutter mutter) years ago.

I love Soviet history, particularly anything to do with the Russian Revolution and execution of the Tsar. This dances around it through the whole book. There's unrequited love and history and political intrigue. How can you go wrong there? Wonderful intelligent and captivating.

THere's my two cents.

This is a very readable book. The storyline is ever developing and doesn't necessarily lead you where you think it will. It also was refreshing to read a story in the first person, that did not spend enormous amounts of time building themselves up to be experts in this or that or telling you how with-it they were by wearing name brand clothes.

It is a mystery story that is believable in its development and execution. You can identify with the main character, because it could be your next door neighbour. And as an added bonus, there is a lot of information about the Soviet Union that is interesting to know. Good book!

I've read well over 1000 novels in my life, but after this one, I felt compelled to write a review. I'm not saying it's THE best story I've ever read, but it's the most engrossing book I've tackled this year hands down. The well-conceived plot is absolutely impossible to guess and the settings are unique when compared to the cliched L.A. or N.Y. settings of most of today's bestsellers. Get this one before it's out of print.

This is one of my favorites of the cold war fictions. I loved the location descriptions and choices; you start in North American and just keep going east. This is a smart, fun book that gives the reader a great story and a lot of interesting historical facts about Russia. This really is a book that has two - three very well developed and written plot twists that makes you stay on your toes. I have reread the book and it is something how well he places the road signs. This is a great book; unfortunately he was not able to keep up this form into his next.

Having read a lot of WWI books and books on sniping this one takes the cake. It's written in the autobiographical tradition of Teddy Roosevelt and will impress the old and young alike with its vivid imagery and colorful prose. Great read.

Mr. McBride has written a book that nearly perfectly talks about what can be expected from a modern infantry man. He talks about sniping, putting in a properly sighted machine gun, raids, and patrols. Honestly, this book is so good that most Army ROTC and Marine Infantry instruction may want to have their future officers and NCO candidates read this book.

I will give you a story that really stuck me as being ahead of its time. Now, this book was written in the mid-1930s. However, Mr. McBride knows the problems of lugging ammunition. A soldier with .303 British (about equal to modern NATO 7.62 ammo) could only carry about 200 to 300 rounds. So, Mr. McBride thinks the armies should carry ammunition of about .27 caliber. That is almost exactly 6.8 mm. This is exactly the same solution the US Army discovered after 5 years in Iraq.

I liked this book. Mr. McBride thinks both the British and Canadian Armies did much better with their training time than the US military. Indeed, he thinks the US Army and military is overly tied up with paperwork. And that observation was made in 1918.

This is a five star book by a soldier who knows his field craft. Pay attention to his anti-sniper traps. They are still useful today. Also, the book is great for telling about how the Germans would leave abandoned grenades after an attack. Some were rigged to go off if picked up.

As written before, this book is five star. Mr. McBride writes a book about the birth of the modern infantry man. Indeed, their is little difference between a Tommy of WWI with a Lewis gun and a Grunt in Vietnam carrying an M-60 machinegun. In 50 years little had changed.

The modern professional soldier can learn a lot from this book. Some university military history departments may want this book for an individual study of a hard infantry man.

A thoughroughly enjoyable, mesmerizing, collection of a soldier's WWI remembrances. Somehow manages to be more than the sum of its plainly told, shy, politically incorrect, wars is hell but you get used to it parts. It ends up assembling and describing bit by bit the remarkable character of the author.

Also notable to me for how it reaches across 70 years to contrast how we've changed as a people. For example, I don't think this book would be published as written today. The editor would have probably added more polish, removed some of the namecalling and stereotyping and would have thus diminished the book.

As a rifle shooter with a historical interest i bought this book. If your looking for an overly dramatic or gruesome account of life in the first world war trenches dont by this book. From what i can tell it is a written collection of memories by the author. These memories are written in a matter of fact, straight talking way which does not hide the authors zealous approach to his task of being a soldier.

Although at times slightly rambling i found this an interesting read and at times amuzing. A good reference if you are interested in rifle shooting or battle history.

It might not be written in perfect English, and it's not always politically correct, but it's definitely always enjoyable.

You get the whole WWI experience from the author's point of view, including enough "war stories" to satisfy any reader.

McBride includes technical details, anecdotes, and just good old story telling, in this tale of a machine gunner / rifleman in the Great War.