California Books

Valeria Belletti was an energetic, intelligent young woman who came to Los Angeles from New York and worked as a secretary to some of the most powerful and interesting people in Hollywood in the late 1920s. During this period, she wrote dozens of letters to her best friend, describing not only her experiences at the movie studios, but her personal feelings and day-to-day life in southern California and on an extended trip to Europe. These letters make up the bulk of this short book, which left me liking Valeria very much and wishing there had been more. Well-written background notes are provided by editor Cari Beauchamp.

While Beauchamp supplies some valuable padding-out of the events and personalities Valeria described, she tends to give the compilation a modern feminist point of view the author of the letters did not seem to have in mind. In contrast, the letters indicate that rather than being the victim of an "iron ceiling" (Beauchamp's term), Valeria, although a high school dropout, had opportunities to grow professionally beyond being a secretary, but chose not to pursue them. Furthermore, rather than half-heartedly marrying a man she was "only fond of" (Beauchamp again) as a sort of economic expedient in an oppressive patriarchal society, Valeria was an independent woman who went where she wanted to go and did what she wanted to do. She had no trouble supporting herself comfortably, and she enthusiastically married a man of modest economic means, of whom she wrote, "The more I'm with him, the more I love him."

I have the paperback edition and find it odd that the name of Valeria Belletti, the delightful author of the letters comprising this book, does not appear on the front cover or the spine, while Beauchamp's name is displayed in large print. For enthusiasts of early Hollywood or 1920s southern California, Valeria's letters are well worth reading, while taking her editor's feminist leanings with a large chunk of salt.

Fabulous Book. If you want to know the inner-workings of the star-studded Hollywood Machine in the 1920's then this is the book for you. An insider's account with all the trimmings. Cari Beauchamp does it again. BRAVA!

This is a very fascinating book if you're into Hollywood history, specifically of the 20's. Although written as letters to a friend, they a lot like a diary, and as such it's a look at Hollywood of that era from a viewpoint we've never seen: the regular employee. There are plenty of books by and about the stars, directors, executives, etc., but this is the first one from a secretary, and while that may not sound as exciting as, say, a book about Buster Keaton, it really is interesting.

What's great is that these were just casual letters, not something their author (Valieria Belletti) expected anyone but her friend to read, consequently she speaks her mind with an openness and honesty you just won't get from someone who's expecting to be quoted. The letters are full of comments and incidents about major stars and directors, but are presented in a casual way, not jazzed up as they would be upon later reminiscence or if they were being told in an interview.

The only thing I didn't like, and this is to be expected from the private letters of one young woman to another, is that the "search for a husband" stuff gets a bit tiresome. It's still interesting in terms of being a window on the mores and social life of the time, and therefore some readers might find it better than the movie studio parts, but I came at the book through an interest in the movies not an interest in how women dated in the 20's. (As I said though, I did find this stuff interesting, it's just that it started to occupy more space than the studio stuff. And in Valieria's defense, it sounded like she was wearying of it after a while too.)

So I'm glad I read the book and I definitely recommend it, just don't expect wall-to-wall insights and revelations about Hollywood. Not that I expected that, but just be sure you don't either.

This book is not only for film buffs, it is a window to a world that is long gone. It is a bird's eye view of Hollywood at the end of the silent era and transitioning into the age of the talkies.

Aside from the great Hollywood dish, of which there is plenty, Belletti was remarkably candid and refreshingly not star struck. Although, I must confess that I can totally relate to having a crush on Ronald Colman. In the end it is the delightful, matter of fact, take no prisoners Valeria Belletti that you come so much to admire in reading her letters. She was a wonderful letter writer and these letters are, indeed, treasures. At the turn of each page you are delighted anew with some insight or adventure. She was one spunky girl and wrote letters that are filled with details of her days and nights in Hollywood. We need to bless her beloved friend Irma for saving these letters and presenting them to her many years later.

We must also thank Cari Beauchamp for bringing these letters to light and annotating them carefully with her own delightful and informative prose. As I said before, this is a window to a lost world. More than that, it is a celebration of an independent young woman making her way in a man's world and celebrating her life at the height of the jazz age. This will be a volume I will turn to again and again. Don't miss it, this will brighten the gloomiest and dampest spirits on a rainy day.

This is a very informative and comprehensive guide to hiking in Orange County. There are a very broad range of hikes, from Easy to Strenuous in here, suitable for a broad range of abilities, and each hike is clearly marked regarding the difficulty, length, and terrain.

Another feature I like is that the guide gives you information on the trail use and the best times. The trail use tells you whether that trail is good for kids, dogs, mountain bikes, horses, etc. And the best times gives you an idea of what the best time of year is to take that particular hike (e.g. November through May).

The maps in the book seem pretty good. They could be better, but I think they get the job done, particularly for experienced hikers. There is an overall map that breaks down the different areas of Orange County, which correspond to different chapters. Then, each chapter has its own map that shows all of the different hikes within that chapter. I would like to see a map of each individual hike, but I suppose that would make the book a lot longer. They do reference USGS maps for each hike that are either optional or recommended. For a particularly difficult or long hike, it would be good to get those maps, but for most hikes, you will be just fine without them.

What I really like are the descriptions. Each hike has a narrative that gives you some background on the area, and takes you through each point in the hike. It's very informative and helpful.

Overall, this is an excellent book and reference for Orange County hiking. I would highly recommend it for avid hikers, families, and beginners alike. Enjoy!

1 to 18 mi. hikes, easily accessable to all. Easy to follow directions make getting to start by bus, where available, simple.

I like the comprehensive nature of information covered more than Robert Stones book on the OC, and look forward to using this book in 2008.

In my Guide to Dayhiking in Southern California I listed the Orange County Volume of Afoot and Afield as the best in the series. It still is in this new edition, but quite a bit has changed, both in format and layout and in hike selection over the previous two editions. In general, these changes are improvements, and enough has changed that you should buy the third edition even if you have the other two.

Most of the changes are along the Orange County coastline where Schad has added 8 new hikes. This is a big plus for coastal walkers and reflects a real commitment on the part of residents of Orange County to preserve their beautiful coastline. The other area receiving lots of additional coverage is the Santa Rosa Ecological Reserve. This place is an absolute hikers' mecca, especially in the spring when wildflowers abound. This edition triples the number of hikes found in previous editions.

In terms of layout, maps are a little clearer than previously and pages for each region of Orange County are tabbed. This will surely help in locating nice walks close by. Gone, however, are the little icons that made the Afoot and Afield guides so distinctive. I found these useful in trip planning and was sorry to see them go.

On the whole, this is an excellent guide for those seeking a wilderness experience in what has to be one of the most urbanized areas in the Western US. I've done over 1/3 of the hikes described and am looking forward to doing more. This is truly the best of Orange County and this book deserves extended sales.

No Orange County hiker should be without this guide. Where and when to go, how to get there, what to expect - everything you need to know for the most rewarding hiking experience in this beautiful region.

I read this book for a medical anthropology class and found it incredibly interesting in its discussion of the politics and racism involved in the US treatment of AIDS in Haiti. It delves into how the American presence and influences lead to and exasperated the widespread AIDS and poverty problems in Haiti.

Farmer's excellent historical ethnography of Haitian illness (as seen through the contemporary context of the world AIDS epidemic), proves the necessity of developing anthropological approaches to understanding health systems and implementing medical care. The diagnosis and analysis of sickness, disease, illness, and treatment should go hand-in-hand with the cultural understanding of local systems of blame, accusation, causation, and cure. Where most approaches to medicine are based on the "Westernized" first-world nations' understanding of the causes of illness (tainted as well, as Farmer shows, by systematic "blame the victim" and shame techniques), the adoption of these approaches in treating the illnesses of other peoples can be catastrophic. Three ethnographies make up the structure of a detailed historical inquiry )

The longstanding tradition of conceiving of illness through the lens of powerlessness shapes the contemporary lives of the people in Haiti with whom Farmer worked. Although they could see the effects of the illness, people in this region were obsessed with the cause of the illness, and felt the need to understand AIDS through a constructed narrative of blame. A deep belief in their religion led villagers to look for the source of witchcraft that could possibly be harming them, and elaborate stories about neighbors, jealousies, and rivalries flourished as a result. Any improvement in the standing of one member of the society (through wealth, status, relationships, acquisition of property or food, or political power through employment or marriage) adds to the structure of distrust and blame.

Farmer's book shows how disturbingly complex and deep the layers of mistrust, misinformation, and the effects of racism, are. Among the medical hypotheses for the probable exposure is the theory of Haitian sex-workers' contacts through gay tourists to the early strains of HIV. Farmer outlines the long history of Haiti as a gay tourist attraction, and Duvalier's encouragement of tourism as a boost to the domestic economy. Although the possible cause of the gay sex trade for HIV exposure has not been confirmed, medical establishments in the U.S. based their theories of causation on other factors, such as Haitian religious practices. These theories were, in truth, reinforcing longstanding ignorance and racist misunderstandings about Haitian vodou. Stereotypes and racial profiling of Haitian citizenship as a "risk factor" (one of the "Four H's" along with hemophiliac, homosexual, and heroin user), contributed to public policies against Haitian immigrants. Haitians' belief that they are being attacked by some evil sorcery in the guise of a fatal illness called sida falls into place amidst the context of extreme antagonism and injustice.

While reading this book, I was compelled to ask myself if there isn't some truth in Haitians' understanding of AIDS as the result of malicious sorcery. Haiti was the only American society to successfully result from the direct action of a revolution against slavery and colonialism. As such, the small nation governed by creoles and black ex-slaves presented a threat to North and South American colonial societies, which were firmly entrenched in slave labor economic systems. Historically, the threat of a repeat of the Haitian revolution must have terrified white European landowners. This terror of African power and strength has been passed on in a racist legacy, adapted to political policies and nationalist agendas, and still exists in ignorant beliefs about AIDS and its causes. Haitians believe that they are victims of a longstanding racist agenda, and they may in fact be right. Farmer's book begins to illuminate some of the complicated historical and ethnographic realities of the overlapping connections between illness and racism, and between causes and effects.

This book dispels the common myths of Haitians and AIDS. It also shows very clearly the heavy involvement of the United States in creating the poverty Haiti has faced. This book makes use of statistics well, but unfortunately, at this point those stats are many years old. When Farmer wrote this book, only three people in the village of Do Kay had died of AIDS. Now, with huge percentages of Haitians exposed to HIV, the picture must certainly look different. This book is a geat candidate for a revised edition some time in the future.

I read this book for a medical anthropology class and found it incredibly interesting in its discussion of the politics and racism involved in the US treatment of AIDS in Haiti. It delves into how the American presence and influences lead to and exasperated the widespread AIDS and poverty problems in Haiti.

Yes, it's old. Yes, much of the data is outdated. But what isn't usable is at the very least amusing.

Okay, so I read this 1989 book about 5 years ago. It still has good advice for all but the most seasoned traveller.

I read this book back in 1989 when it came out. I was sitting in some airport east of the Colorado river waiting for a connecting flight when I stepped into the gift/book shop to get a soda and a candy bar. Somehow I spotted this book and bought it, and spent the rest of my waiting period and flight reading it.

The book is full advice regarding air travel that was excellent at the time. I haven't read the book since then, so I'm sure that a lot is out of date. But, I still use some of the major principles from the book when I fly today, particularly those relating packing and boarding and exiting the plane.

One example of the out of date nature of the book is that the author suggests that wheeled luggage will never catch on because they are just too noisy and embarass the user. While that statement might have been accurate for an older person in 1989, wheeled luggage is common now, and there are few people alive today who would avoid a wheeled suitcase for that reason.

The book is well written and the author has quite a sense of humor. It had a lot of helpful information at the time.

Interestingly, at the end of the book, the author asks people to write to him (c/o the publisher) and states that he intends to update the book periodically. Its too bad that he didn't.

If anyone knows what happened to the author, please let me know!

OK, let's put some things in perspective here. This book was published in 1989 and the first three chapters on choosing your flight are totally out of date. Consider those three chapters a history lesson at best.

However, this book is extremely well organized and does offer good tips and advice. The writing is direct with no fluff unlike some of these new travel books. The author displays a good sense of humor which a nice bonus.

If you can get this out-of-print book for a couple of books somewhere, I believe it is well worth it.

It gets 5 stars from me not because it is a completely up-to-date book, but for the value I got out of it. How I wish this book would be revised for curent times!

This books captures the spirit, the history and the grandeur that is Cypress Point Golf Club. Alister Mackenzie was a golf architect extraordinaire. The black and white photo's capture the essence of a dream and the genesis of one of the foremost courses ever built. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and recommend it to anyone that has a deep and abiding appreciation of the game and it's history. Makes a great "Coffee Table" book.

if you have ever visited the monterrey peninsula and are a golfer, you should read this book. great history. amazing stroy.

An excellent read, great historical pictures, this documentary of the building of Cypress Point takes one back to another era of golf deveolpment. If you are a historian of the golf course, this piece of history is a must, Geoff has done a great job of putting it together. The book is timeless.

If you have any interest in Alister MacKenzie's genius, or the great golf architecture of the 1920s, you must have this book. Called by many the Sistine Chapel of Golf, Cypress Point is one of the most exceptional courses on the planet. This book is an exceptional document of how it began. Magnificent full page b&ws show every hole of the early Cypress Point Club, while the text, much from the contemporaneous hand of Robert Hunter (MacKenzie's partner), tells how the course design and construction came together. Shackleford has done a wonderful service for golf historians everywhere by compiling this masterpiece.

My mother is one of the patients featured in this book, which gave me more understanding, insight (as well as compassion) for what she and others are going through and the sort of enlightened care that Pomerado and its staff are providing. Besides the words, which have the gift of simplicity yet communicate the essence of Alzheimers, the photographs are marvelous and serve to transport you to that person and place that they are in as well as to teach you about the person being photographed with few if any words.

This book is a gift as are all the people featured in it. Thank you.

I read this book this week and was impressed with how well it captured the spirit of the residents and staff at Silverado. My father has lived there for about a year--my mother did too until her death in February--and the place is truly amazing. Just like the book describes, I have had many chances to sit and talk with residents who didn't at first seem able to carry on a conversation. But with patience and love, you can find a way to enther their world. With the recent death of President Reagan,people should use this book as an opportunity to see what the world of Alzheimer's is like. When I come to Silverado, it is not with the dread so many people feel when visiting a nursing home. Instead, I come into a place filled with love and always have occasion to share a laugh, dance with a resident, or sit and enjoy an ice cream with my father. It is a wonderful place, as the book makes so clear in both pictures and text, and I hope it will encourage other facilities to change their way of dealing with residents.

Alive With Alzheimer's is a moving pictorial portrayal of the lives of individuals with Alzheimer's who are living in an innovative residential setting in which the emphasis is on living rather than dying. The pictures do a wonderful job of showing the essential humanity of the victims of the illness, even those in the advanced stages. The text is insightful as well-- I read the book cover to cover twice and found it very uplifting. Definitely worthwhile, especially for those who have loved ones with dementia.

This book was fantastic! It really captured life (real life) with this disease. In fact, it made me feel as though I knew the residents and was appreciating their quality of life along with them. I suppose working in the same setting encourages those thoughts. And, for those who have or are taking care of a loved one now, I imagine they also will be able to relate.

I, as a program director of Hearthstone Alzheimer Care, was encouraged to do better at my work, your book was refreshing. I got some ideas and was reminded the importance music has with this disease.

My sister, who has very little knowledge or interaction with people having this disease, read through the book and was touched.

The pictures really did say it all. I liked that you had a number of sequence pictures. I think the book shows the genuine reality of Silverado. The residents are happy, they are excited about life and engaged.

I enjoyed getting to know more of the culture and practices (both past and present) of area Native American groups: the Kumeyaay, Cahuilla and more briefly other groups in the Baja and SoCal area. The case is made repeatedly for an inclusive view of a desert "wilderness" as more than just a park untouched/left alone, but skillfully stewarded by the desert's first human inhabitants.

A near-perfect blend of anthropology, geology, human and natural history, it is the thorough overview of the Anza-Borrego Desert that I was looking for. There is no preaching or strong advocacy for either conservation or exploitation of the region, but rather a balanced presentation of the various viewpoints of a surprisingly large number of stakeholders. The easy-going tone and pacing make for an enjoyable read. There is a storytelling quality about the writing that drew and held my attention firmly but pleasantly. There was enough technical detail to flesh out the themes but not so much detail that I felt overwhelmed. The only exception was the chapter on the Salton Sea which included, perhaps necessarily, quite a bit of information on past and current politics regarding the handling of this unique area. While there were parts of the book that challenged my previous impression of the desert as "untouched" and "pristine" - and made me wonder if I really wanted that impression challenged - ultimately my attraction to the desert became more informed, not spoiled.

There must be more biomass contained in the paper that makes up all the copies of all the books in print about the American desert than there is left in the same desert.

A decade after his pancreas gave out, Ed Abbey's books fairly fly off the shelves. Terry Tempest Williams seems to come out with a new book every several months. From lyrical evocations of some guy's weekend hikes in the Superstitions to the yearly raft of new books on running the Colorado, a legion of tomes from the masterful to the mediocre seems to have said just about everything there is to say about the hyper-arid west. Nonetheless, new titles seem to hit the shelves every time you turn around. If John the Baptist had come out of the wilderness into a modern writers' workshop, I do believe he would have been contracted, in print and remaindered before the last locust leg stopped twitching in his beard.

In a less crowded field, Lawrence Hogue's All The Wild and Lonely Places; Journeys in a Desert Landscape might have attracted the attention it deserves when it came out in 2000. It's fairly popular in the San Diego area, which makes sense, given that most of the action takes place within sight of Anza-Borrego State Park. But I've not seen it in nature bookstores north of Mount San Jacinto.

That's a shame, for Hogue has offered up an intensely important book, relevant far outside the sun-drenched confines of San Diego and Imperial counties. All the Wild and Lonely Places may appear to be a collection of musings by a veteran desert hiker - and it is, one of the most appealing such in some time - but it's also a stealth polemic. It's not much of a stretch to call Hogue's work one of the most important books of the last decade on California's environment.

That's not to say the book isn't a pleasant, diverting read: it is amply so. Hogue's matter-of-fact voice and intimate familiarity with the land are refreshing, and he doesn't spend a lot of time using the desert as an excuse for introspection. Rather, he spends his time (and ours) trying to find out just how the Anza-Borrego area came to be the way it is. A quick tour of the land's tectonic origins and botanic paleontology sets the stage for the subject in which the book finds its true strength: the history of human interactions with - and attitudes about - the land.

European colonizers brought much more than cattle, cholera and Christianity to California when they arrived here: they also brought with them a distinct collection of attitudes about wilderness. Originally a negative, fearful abstraction whose sole value lay in the resources that could be civilized out of it, wilderness was partly redefined by nineteenth and twentieth century environmentalists into a source of inspiration, communion, meaning. Other than the signs at the boundary fence, there's not much to distinguish the new, benevolent wilderness from the menacing version feared by our great great great grandparents. Both are valuable for what can be taken away from them, whether timber or solitude, gold or grandeur. And both are, by definition, untouched by people; outside the walls of human society.

Problem is, in California - and elsewhere in the west - it weren't necessarily so. The summits of high mountains may well have been avoided as sacred places. It's hard to picture people getting much use out of wide alkaline playas. But most of the rest of California - valley grassland, Sierra forest, coastal oak savanna - was intensively managed by the people living here. This isn't news: Kat Anderson and Thomas Blackburn devoted their book Before the Wilderness to these practices almost a decade ago. Native Californians set fires to clear encroaching brush, they moved plants from one place to another, they built dams to turn small creeks into seasonal wetlands. Very little of the state was unaffected by native land management practices. There wasn't much wilderness in the state until the white folks brought it here.

Hogue writes at some length about the Kumeyaay, whose traditional territory stretched from the coast to the Algodones sand dunes, and across what's now the Mexican border well into Baja California, as well as about the Cahuilla, the Kumeyaay's northern neighbors.

By regularly burning over their land, the Kumeyaay maintained thriving grasslands now in retreat throughout the southland. (A wetter climatic cycle that ended around 1900 probably played a role as well.) They may have introduced the "wild" California fan palms to the oases they now grace, bringing seeds or seedlings from Baja. They hunted and killed the occasional puma - after giving the cat fair warning - thereby helping sustain populations of the now-endangered peninsular bighorn.

They also committed acts of agriculture. This will come as surprising news to those of us brought up on the canonical observation that California Indians never farmed, aside from the irrigated gardens of the Yuman tribes. The Kumeyaay didn't plow the earth, but they did engage in a form of no-till agriculture that might as well have been taught by Masanobu Fukuoka. They planted grasses, harvested and saved seeds, and planted again the next season, slowly breeding large-seeded cultivars about as wild as red winter wheat.

This is the landscape that the colonists found. Calling it a wilderness is a bit of a stark judgment of the prior inhabitants. When you call a forest a wilderness, despite the clear fact that it's been intensively tended, you're saying something about the people that tended it. If it's land untouched by human hands, then clearly the hands managing it have been something less than human. We moved into this house and said the builder never existed.

Gary Nabhan, who for years has written about the Tohono O'odham and their neighbors in the Sonoran Desert, tells of the oasis at Quitobaquito, once a thriving settlement right on the US-Mexico line, now part of Organ Pipe National Monument. When the Tohono O'odham lived there, the spring-fed pond was a spectacularly diverse assemblage of bird and plant life. Under the protection of the National Park Service, biodiversity has declined to the point that on a visit a few years back, I saw perhaps five bird species there in two hours. A similar oasis across the line in Mexico, still fringed by small O'odham family farm plots, still bears diversity like that Quitobaquito once hosted.

When the Kumeyaay, the facilitators of San Diego's biodiversity, were denied access to most of their land, says Hogue, that biodiversity likewise started to decline. Grazing cattle had something to do with that decline, of course, as did a litany of other environmental events Hogue catalogs. There's tamarisk, the bane of desert wetlands, imported as an ornamental windbreak and now sucking the life out of watercourses from Texas to Torrey Pines Reserve. The US military used part of the Anza-Borrego area for target practice; live ordnance is now a permanent addition to the landscape. Off-road vehicles scar much of what the Pentagon left alone, though an observer less charitable than Hogue might suggest that unexploded bombs pose a potential solution to that vector for damage.

The ferocity with which Anglo-Californians treated the landscape was reflected in their dealings with the Kumeyaay. Hogue gives a brief but compelling description of the Jacumba Massacre, sparked by a few missing cattle, a two-hour gun battle that may have killed a dozen or two natives, and certainly drove any survivors out of the Jacumba area. In an ironic twist, even belated attempts to protect the land compounded the damage to the Kumeyaay, who made up much of the ranching population barred from Anza-Borrego State Park a quarter century ago.

Though the material compels anger, Hogue is no browbeating ideologue. He's sympathetic to the white settlers who populated the land. That's sensible, as he's one of them.

He may not get that sympathy returned from all quarters. In a day when environmental activism is still informed by long-discarded ecological concepts such as the "balance of nature" and ecological "communities," pointing out the capricious, stochastic nature of environmental change in the Far West can earn you green detractors.

Nonetheless, the nature of nature in California has far less to do with stable climax forests and regular predator-prey cycles than would be the case in the Pine Barrens or the Schwartzwald. Out here, it's all landslides and flash floods, lakes drying into toxic chemical flats and rivers changing course. Hogue does a great job conveying the consequences of the last two in his chapter on the Salton Sea, avoiding the tempting easy answers. Do we spend billions to restore the accidental lake to non-toxicity, providing habitat for white pelicans and real estate speculators? Or do we let the sump dry up, sending the water to the critically ill Colorado River Delta? Either way, we may well be trying to make a decision that's best left to the river, which has filled the Salton Sea (Lake Cahuilla) at somewhat random intervals over the millennia, then changed course to let the sea turn to sun-baked mud.

We would do well to consider the native way of looking at this natural unpredictability, and Hogue's portrayal is an enjoyable shattering of common preconceptions on the subject. The most prevalent of those preconceptions is the one that leads people to speak of Indians in the past tense, but those native ways of looking at the land aren't entirely lost. The Kumeyaay Campo Environmental Protection Agency is restoring wetlands on tribal land using traditional techniques, and the plants and animals are responding. Far to the north, a consortium of tribes works to restore the Sinkyone Intertribal Park on the Lost Coast. The California Indian Basketweavers' Association is changing the way land managers use herbicides in wildlands throughout the state, and the Timbisha Shoshone may yet win the right to tend much of the landscape in their traditional territory in Death Valley National Park.

Mainstream environmentalists often ignore these initiatives, if they don't actively oppose them - as has been the case with the Timbisha. This is unfortunate. No one would be served if environmentalists uncritically adopted policies just because Indians said we should. But the least we can do is agree that the homebuilder exists.

We might even ask for a copy of the blueprints.

Vastly expanded my consciousness regarding the desert I love. A beautifully written book based on a tremendous amount of personal experience, research, and soul searching.

Melody Ermachild Chavis' book has proved to me that one person CAN make a difference. This story stayed with me, and I can't wait to read "Finding Freedom" by Jarvis Masters, the Death Row inmate Melody befrinds in "Altars." Chavis tells the story of a crumbling South Berkeley neighborhood with realistic hard-edged truths, taking the reader along with her as she struggles to fight back against the drug wars and violence taking over her community. You'll find yourself sharing her pain, joy and frustration with every page you turn. I recommend this book to anyone with an inkling for the possibility of social change. To those who are skeptics, I say give "Altars in the Street" a chance to change your mind--and your life--forever. Bravo to Melody. I just hope she continues to publish her work.

Melody Ermachild Chavis writes a thoughtful and compelling account of her commitment to an inner-city neighborhood. Weaving family, community, and personal stories, Melody recounts the joys, triumphs, and struggles she encountered in this Berkely neighborhood. Interspersed are the beginnings of her Buddhist faith which provide the graceful style of her writing. This is one of those books that will remain floating around in my brain for quite some time. It was required reading for a senior Social Work class, but I found that it speaks to all of us who find ourselves in neighborhoods or communities. We all face challenges of living closely together and this is a testament that these difficulties can be overcome in a harmonious fashion.

Alters in the Street slices through the jaded, bunker-mentality of urban life by seeping us in the war zone, giving a poignant face to the brutalized and brutalizing who are our neighbors, and delivering renewed committment and a path to making peace and quality of life right where we are. I experienced the whole range of emotions, cried while reading every chapter but ended up wanting to extend myself further into my community. I almost wanted to become a Buddhist! A moving example of travelling through discord, through the elements that separate us from ourselves and our community to reach a more integrated, whole and hopeful self.

As owner of GAIA Bookstore in Berkeley, I read many books and I'm often being asked to read many more, as you can imagine. So when ALTARS IN THE STREET arrived at GAIA, I packed it along with many books to take on a weekend trip. Thinking I might read a few pages, I was immediately engrossed by this beautifully written book, rich in detail yet capturing the essence of human struggles and resourcefulness. Melody portrays the horrors of life where drugs and violence are daily visitors. Yet rather than feeling depressed or overwhelmed by the problems, I was filled with hope, learning how much there is that we can do when we engage our hearts and face the suffering courageously and creatively. The actions she and her neighbors took were heroic, but things any of us can do to solve community problems, to improve the quality of life where we live, to restore kindness to our streets, to provide our children with a future to look forward to. PATRICE WYNNE, Owner of GAIA Bookstor

I love Kate Delafield! It s not too often when a dectective series starring a woman can hold it's own book after book. Kate's character is fully formed and not at all one dimensional. You see how she struggles to remain tough in what was definetly a ma's job in the 1980's. You also see her struggle with her sexuality and how it affects those around her. Thank you Katherine V. Forrest for a great series.

Where have I been all these years? I missed Katherine Forrest, I missed Kate Delafield -and now that I've found them both, this is it - I want them all!! What a marvelous read! Thank goodness its summer and I can read all I want, so here goes. I'm buying all I see, reading all I can. Forrest is an excellent author, I'd read other things, just not the Delafield series. I'm the biggest fan these days.
VERY contemporary, don't let the date throw you. Its very NOW and hot.
Read read read!

If I'd read the Delafield series in order, I'd have given this a higher ranking, but Nightwood and Malibu are better. Great start for the series though. Good mystery story, and nice portrayal of the "love story."

If you haven't read the Kate Delafield books, now is the time to start! Ms. Forrest puts more effort into character development than any other author I've read, bar none. Each book in the series is chock full of intriguing, plausible suspects, and the returning characters change and grow throughout the series. Great work! As for the who-dun-it aspect, I've solved only a couple before the final secret's revealed. I figure most mysteries out around the half-way mark.

This is the first book in a remarkable series. Women, lesbians and mystery-holics are bound to enjoy it... as is any intelligent mind.

This book provides an excellent overview of the history of the dust bowl Okies and the culture they (we) have created in central California. Gregory explores the religion, music, and politics well in clear language. The book is short enough to be enjoyable and while goes into some depth on a few issues, it is not so filled with unimportant details as to be muddled. Gregory sprinkles the text with brief excerpts of the many interviews he conducted with the Okies.

James Gregory has put together a outstanding history of the migration and culture of the dust bowl migrants who settled in California. I have probably read Grapes of Wrath four or five times since first reading it in high school, but after reading Gregory's description of the way these poor south-westerners struggled with poverty and at the same time maintained family unity and cultural pride, Steinbeck's book takes on a whole new meaning. Gregory goes step by step to show what motivated many to move, and then what motivated them to stay even though they suffered great privations and predjudice. I especially enjoyed learning about the influences of country music not just upon the migrants, but on the entire nation. A must read to make Grapes more clear!

Overall a good study of the last great westward folk migration in American history. I would add that many of their predecessors in the "classic" frontier period were just as broke and hungry as these migrants, but there was little mass media around to record them. An interesting, well-done slice of folk Americana.

I thought that this was a good book. I read it for a history course on the Great Depression and it was definately worth reading. It can get a little bogged down in detail or a little dull ocassionally, but overall it is a good view of "okie culture". It really helped be to understand the diversity and impact of the migration. And it contains a few interesting personal stories as well!