Washington Books

The story of an immigrant seeking the American dream and also the story of an American striving to meld her conservative heritage with Western freedom, Ms. Sultan's tome is a modern day reckoning of the experiences of all peoples who sought bridgehead on the shores of the United States -- set against the backdrop of a war in the backyards of both her past and future, a war where the casualties she experienced were family members, freedom, and in many senses identity. From the embarassment wearing home-made clothes to public school as a child of an illiterate mother, to breaking out of the strangulation of an arranged marriage in her teenage years - to the triumph of influencing the Afghan Constitution in the name of women's rights as an international leader, Ms. Sultan's story reverberates with both common humanness and hums with the timbres of early greatness. Ms. Sultan's book pushes envelopes most other authors don't even know exist. Her story is uniquely American and Americanly unique. At not yet 30, she has already begun to change the world, and this relevant, engaging, provocative, fun, sad, and sometimes disturbing tome are easily a first volume of a life meant to meaningfully impact the planet we inhabit. "My War At Home" is a book for the present and the future.

I was astounded from the first page of this amazing account and was not able to put the book down until I'd finished it and the issues she raises in her book now have me tied in knots and puzzled as to the solutions. Masuda herself told us she is confused and who in her shoes would not be? How many people would risk even their most precious thing...the relationship with her family in this case, to tell a story that needs to be told? It is even more amazing because Masuda is only 28 years old. Such wisdom is seldom found in people twice Masuda's age; her courage and honesty are exceedingly rare and should be applauded rather than scorned and mislabeled as pandering for attention. Masuda blames noone for what happens to her. In fact that is her point...we have people living in the same country but on completely different planets and people stuck within their own cultures and unable to transcend it even when they themselves are hurt by their beliefs or actions. Afghanistan has impoverished itself with its own denial of education to its people and especially women. At the same time this does not make it right for the United States to impose its culture and kill innocent people in the name of moral superiority or freedom. A messy and complicated story told in a very eloquent and moving way. My head is spinning and I am wondering what I personally can do to help Masuda in her cause. Bravo!!! This book is a must-read for almost everyone and I am sending it to all my friends this year for their birthday.

Masuda's story is incredible. I couldn't put it down and have already recommended it to dozens of people. Masuda for President!!

If you've ever seen an American Muslim woman walking down the streets of New York or anywhere else in the US and wondered about the many Americas in which we live, this book is for you. How do these people live and think in a USA that is as much theirs as it is ours? My direct experiences of my own country couldn't be more different than Masuda's. I grew up in the mid-west and most of my friends were white mid-westerners. Growing up, I knew on an intellectual level that there are a lot of different ethnicities that make up our country but every time I passed a Hassidic Jew, an American Hindu wearing a turban or an American Muslim woman covering her hair I wondered what their lives were like and how they experienced America. This book offers amazing insight into how this specific minority lives and thinks. What's more, upon meeting Masuda (disclaimer - I have) you could also come to the conclusion that no one is more quintessentially American. She seems to completely bridge the gap and can relate to me as much as I imagine her being able to relate to a shop keeper in Kabul.

The more people like her that we have helping us understand our interlocutors in the Middle East the better off America will be. Masuda shows us that we're all human and that understanding the perspective of the other side is key to reaching any long-lasting mutually beneficial relationship with their countries of origin.

This fascinating book gives the little-known history of the growth in the first half of the twentieth century of a vital community of visual artists in the Greenwich Village -- in the two blocks just north of Washington Square -- and the inevitable gentrification that followed. Using real estate records and other contemporary sources, the author provides an illuminating account of the often collaborative -- and very successful -- effort by landlords and artists to develop and renovate property here. Many of the renovations remain today as highlights of one of New York's most famed and picturesque historic districts. Especially noteworthy is Ms. Budny's illustrated accounts of the transformation of part of one particular block by the use of stucco, glazed tiles, and window boxes to evoke a Parisian charm, and of the artists who animated those spaces.

This gem provides beautiful photographs and fabulous documentation of the interwoven influences of art, artists, and art patrons. Context is rarely provided in discussions of artistic excellence, but Budny gives us the spirit of the time and opens the frame of reference to the broader international and provincial levels that compose the vibrant early 20th century art world. This work is an important link between the fabulous Parisian scene and the emerging American dominance of the avant-gard.

This little book is meticulously researched and rich in historic detail and human anecdote. The text is eloquent--spare and clear; the illustrations--many previously unpublished photos--are stunning and arresting. It tells the story of the conversion of a Greenwich Village neighborhood north of Washington Square at the turn of the 20th Century into a creative mecca evoking the Latin Quarter of Paris. Our knowledge of these artists and their families is enriched; a must have addition to any library, personal or public, that is serious about American art history.

A thoroughly enjoyable read about an exciting artistic time I did not know existed. Well researched and illustrated with a clear love by the author for the groundbreaking artists that inhabited this forgotten area of New York City. Clearly a time of extraordinary artistic sharing between artists like Noguchi, Manship, Lachaise and Hopper and many other characters that fully comes alive with colorful stories from the day. The book is both a redefining of the historical beginnings of America's avant garde in the art world and a poetic call to arms for the need for such a nurturing artistic community in New York City.

Almost anyone familiar with publishing will enjoy this book. It may be a little too painful if you are still a midlist author.

This group of 104 cartoons features works by Charles Barsotti, Roz Chast, J.B. Handelsman, Ed Koren, Victoria Roberts, and Jack Ziegler. The cartoons capture the wittiest New Yorker views, and leave you with a wry taste in your mouth. Selected by Bob Mankoff (cartoon editor of The New Yorker since 1997), this collection is one of the best that has been produced recently from the past offerings of that venerable publication. If you like authors, books, and reading, you'll love this book!

I graded down the book because of the inexplicable lack of an introduction. What better subject for one than literary cartoons? The books in the series which featured such introductions are clearly more interesting than the ones that don't.

It was hard for me to pick a few cartoons to feature for you. I was tempted to include all but a few.

Author humor

(1) Man leaving home wearing suit and carrying a brief case: 'Wait a minute. Where am I going? I'm a writer.'

(2) James Joyce's refrigerator to-do list: 'Forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.'

(3) Raven says to Poe: 'Nevermore. And you can quote me.'

Publisher humor

(1) Editor to Dickens: 'I wish you would make up your mind, Mr. Dickens. Was it the best of times or the worst of times? It could scarecely have been both.'

(2) 'It doesn't work as a novel. But we're willing to publish it as a desk calendar.'

(3) 'Chicken Vindaloo for the Hindu Soul is but the tip of the iceberg in our initial strategy of global expansion.'

Book Seller Humor

(1) 'Let me get you another copy. Someone left a slice of salami in this one.'

(2) Book shelves organized by length of attention span.

(3) Book shelves organized by size of author advance.

Reader humor

(1) 'I do want to solve all my problems, but I'll wait till it comes out in soft cover.'

(2) 'Lately, I've been reading Jane Austen -- just to clear my palate.'

(3) Fan to author: 'I really enjoyed your hype.'

Media humor

(1) Talk show host holding enormous tome, addressing author: 'If you were to boil your book down to a few words, what would be its message?'

(2) 'Oprah is definite, Barnes and Noble is giving you front windows and Norman Mailer has agreed to a feud.'

The others are just as good or better. These are just samples to whet your appetite.

After you have read, chuckled, and enjoyed these wonderful cartoons, consider why we find these cartoons to be funny. Is it because books have become a commodity, rather than works of important ideas and art? Is that really so funny? What should we do about that? If you find these questions provocative, read The Business of Books.

I purchased this book for my favorite english professor in college and took a glance in it myself and fell in love with it! You do not have to be a professor to get this--the humor is for all!

No matter how jaded, how cynical, how hard-boiled you may think yourself to be, at least one of these cartoons from the archives of The New Yorker will make you smile! Mr. Bob Mankoff, cartoon editor of The New Yorker since 1997, has put together a classic assortment of 104 drawings from the archives. "The New Yorker Book of Literary Cartoons" captures the cachet of the City, while poking fun at writers, editors, publishers, booksellers, and, most of all, at books, and those who read them. From the bookstore browsing Bibliophile Bikers Club to Mme Sartre's empty mailbox ("Sacré bleu! Again with the nothingness, and on my birthday yet!") to the hilarious note magnetized on "James Joyce's Refrigerator," one will find sterling examples of the wonderful satirical wit which has graced the pages of this magazine for 75 years. Buy this book for yourself! (Highly recommended for writer's block.) Better yet, buy this book for your editor or for your bookworm friends!

This is a great story!! It is a story about the Kimball kids. They work all year long to buy a stove for their Mother. Hester has to work all summer at her Aunt's terrible hotel. So she can earn enough money for the stove that costs $27.00. Big surprises happened when I least expected them. I loved the story the whole time I read it. I felt like I was there. But can they get all the money before christmas? Read and find out.It is neat how she bases her characters on real people. Lots of the stuff that happens in the book really happened! And the book also shows what you can do if you work together. If you like this book, try Beatty's Melinda Takes a Hand,and Turn Homeward Hannalee. They are all great books.

The "Nickel-Plated Beauty" is one of three companion books by Patricia Beatty set on the Pacific coast of southwest Washington State at the turn of the 20th century. The other titles are "O the Red-Rose Tree," and "Sarah and Me and the Lady from the Sea." When recommending them to students in our elementary school library (in Washington State), I compare them "The Little House on the Prairie" series, by Laura Ingalls Wilder. In my opinion they are written as well.

After reading these books years ago, I took my family on a vacation to the Long Beach (Washington) penninsula where the stories are set and we were able to locate many of the landmarks mentioned in the books. There is the ring of historical accuracy, as well as the cold wet climate of this region.

For any students looking for historical fiction from a locale not usually written about, these books are to be recommended. They should appeal to fourth grade students and above.

All three of these titles were recommended reading by the Washington State Centennial committee in 1989. I still think they're wonderful and so do the students willing to give them a try!

I read this book when I was in third grade. Some thirty years later I remember this experience as being my introduction to the world of literature. The inspiring story of a family working together for a common goal pulled me in and kept me there. Now I am giving it as a gift to another young reader.

I was a child when I read this book.Just a little while ago, I wanted to recommend it to one of my nieces, so I checked it out of the library to see whether it was as good as I remembered.It was!

Beatty's tale of seven spirited pioneer kids who hatch a plan to earn money for a brand-new stove has suspense, humor and affection. You're turning the pages eagerly until the very end, wondering whether they'll be able to come up with the money for the stove before the hard-headed general store manager sells it to somebody else.

Young readers will love the spectacle of kids taking charge and making things happen -- while keeping everything a surprise for their parents.

As for the big payoff scene when Mom and Dad are presented with the stove on Christmas morning, well, it doesn't get much better than that. Worth seeking out, for sure.

"No more cherry blossoms" is a brutal dive into the tangled hearts of a select but varied group of Asian American characters, from sisters returning home after the internment to a 1919-Hawaiian potter's apprentice to a Hollywood-obsessed mother-daughter team of actors.

This collection of plays crosses decades & perspectives--each one exploring a specific Asian American experience/theme (post-internment, the civil rights movement, asian fetishism/objectification)--but in each play Gotanda tunnels through overarching broad, political climates to unearth the most intimate and beating core of the character and her individual challenges and questions.

Each of these plays has been and should be staged again and again, as their relevance lies in the human themes and not within any specific timeframe or ethnic affiliation (I know that's probably obvious to most). But these plays are also plays to be read on the page; reading the book cover-to-cover is an absorbing experience, and you feel almost pummeled by the end (or at least I did). In experiencing this particular book, I was reminded that reading a play is an entirely different experience from watching one. In reading a play, you are able to imagine the setting and the possibilities, to see these plays and the intent of the playwright, before they are shaped and changed by a director's eye and an actor's interpretation.

"What I try to do," says Gotanda in the book's preface, "is get up each day and give my body the chance to speak. In whatever format, language, medium it chooses." The plays of "no more cherry blossoms" live out this approach: each play speaks in its own unique voice and moves to its own distinct rhythm. The reader can hear the everpresent musical clamor in The Wind Cries Mary, see the cinematics of Ballad of Yachiyo-it's clear from the varied composition and structure of each piece that the playwright's professional/creative background encompasses film, music, and poetry as well as theater.

At times, you might find yourself yearning for more self-determination in the women characters in particular, but the complex relationships and dynamics throughout generate an insistent energy that makes these plays resonate regardless. "No more cherry blossoms" is an arresting and powerful volume, one that, after reading, will work its way into your consciousness, and whose themes and questions will surface again and again. These stories stay with you.

As an Asian American man, I've been familiar with Philip Kan Gotanda's work that centers primarily around the Asian American male in plays such as "Yankee Dog You Die." Knowing his work in this way made me curious to see how a man, who writes so well about men, would choose to write about women. And not just any women, Asian American women.
"No More Cherry Blossoms" spans decades from 1919 Hawaii in the aching "Ballad of Yachiyo," to the post World War II release of Japanese American internees in the beautiful "Sisters Matsumoto," and even to 1968 in the play "Wind Cries Mary."
The breadth is evident but what is truly exciting is the voice that Mr. Gotanda gives to each of his female characters. Each has something specific to say and no matter how different their actions or their attitudes, they are always honest, uncompromising and because of this, surprising.
The title itself, "No More Cherry Blossoms," breaks the long perpetuated stereotypes of Asian women as submissive, demure, and delicate. Each play successfully presents Asian women that are far more complex than any cherry blossom stereotype. It is an interesting choice that Mr. Gotanda chooses to end this collection of plays, about Asian American women, with a modern white male's "how-to" discourse on getting them into bed in the final play, "Got Rice?" It seems Mr. Gotanda is saying that as far as things may have come, we still have a long way to go.

There is remarkable breadth to this collection. Not only do the four plays span the 20th century of Japanese-American experience, but they range widely in style and tone as well. From the quiet, bittersweet beauty of "Ballad of Yachiyo" to the rock n' roll defiance of "The Wind Cries Mary," Gotanda's plays showcase heroines who search for identity in vastly different social climates, and with vastly different voices. The collection will move you at times with its lyricism, surprise you at times with its wit, but always engage you because of the unapologetic honesty of the author. Avoiding melodrama at every turn, Gotanda crafts characters who lust for something more than they are prescribed. In doing so, this truly gifted playwright at once honors a culture's experience while creating works that are universal in appeal.

This rich collection of works by one of our country's foremost playwrights reveals an incredibe breadth of vision. From the achingly poignant, exquisitely lyrical "Ballad of Yachiyo"; to the elegant, Chekhovian "Sisters Matsumoto"; to the ruthless honesty of "The Wind Cries Mary;" to the boldly political diatribe of "White Manifesto;" Gotanda continually surprises us with his uncanny ability to paint the truth of human experience with candor, wit and grace. His compact language, solid command of form, and daring willingness to articulate the uncomfortable realities of social engagement -across the lines of gender, race and class-- truly set him apart among contemporary playwrights. This is a must-have collection for any serious theater person, and one that will surely lead to many more productions for this already widely-produced playwright.

Award-winning poet Nance Van Winckel presents No Starling, a brief yet evocative selection of poems utilizing a variety of rhythms and soundscapes. Subtly community-building in its reminders of human responsibilities for each other and the world at large, No Starling touches upon spiritual and political issues alike, singing aloud in a crystal clear voice that deserves to be heard. "Leastways": The ship had a bar, listing. A porthole / awash. Loyal drinkers swearing they'd seen / the giant squid. Sheer genius, they said, / to survive the millennia, the depths. // I blinked into that window at only / my face... all splash and dissolve. // Days under the white sails, over / cruel swells. Days taken / like aspirin. Hard little fact / of the body: if it goes down, / I go. And the bar raised. The bar / tilted. A tentacles here-on portends / a hereafter. I hang on. Rain clouds / pretend to take the lead.

No Starling is the fifth book of Van Winckel's poems I've read over the years (Bad Girl, with Hawk, The Dirt, After A Spell, Beside Ourselves) and is a dazzling demonstration of her mature poetic skills.
Take, for instance, the poem "Passing Through the Shadows of Great Buildings": "The beggar in plaid blankets wanted to kiss my hand / when it lowered the shiny franc. His eyes sleepy, pleading. // How long would I stand there considering...the metal / warming, the light waning. My hand dangling...." Compressed, potent, telling. Just two couplets!
Like in her fiction (Quake, Curtain Creek Farm), in No Starling Van Winckel interweaves and propels multiple narratives from poem to poem, chapter to chapter. The epigraph to her book reads, in part: "My coming, / my going -- / Two simple happenings / that got entangled." Van Winckel weaves her way through these "entanglements" of life using myth and parable, folktale and dream to inform her poems' elucidations, indictments, portents.
Moreover, in these times of political shapeshifting, of national chauvinism/denial, Van Winckel's poems like "The Rattled Hymn of the Republic" and "Let Us Remind You You Are Still Under Oath" seem especially pertinent . They are brave and unflinching. They speak truth.
Finally, though, no matter the poem, it's Van Winckel's imaginative leaps (and the heights to which those leaps rise) that amaze and awe. From the likes of the primordial love-poem "White Bridges, White Mistresses" to the heart-wrenching "Winter Cow," you can't believe what you just read - where you began, where you ended -- so you re-read. And again and again, No Starling rewards you.

Nance Van Winckel splits literary and existential hairs with the confidence of a master. Her poetry teases fear and denial with equal insouciance. I was captive, once I began reading, as the poems pulled me each to the next with growing delight. Her ability to distill the humor from the macabre, the everyday from the awful and the transcendent from the everyday is delivered with incredible control and, though it may sound strange to note, with humility. This poet's voice doesn't boom, it whispers and shimmers and runs like a river through so many aspects of this earthly life: the personal, the literary, the ways of nature and politics. And yet, as she dances in darkness, the effect of reading Nance Van Winckel is one of inspiration, for she comes back, again and again, to the power of work, of observation, of showing up. She never shirks from the job, as in the poem "Waking, Working" where she describes the visceral call of unfinished business: "Already then there was this idea/ of work. The body moving like a scythe/ over its broad gold day."

All of Nance Van Winckel's books of poetry demonstrate her unique blend of keen, precise wording and insight mixed with vibrant imaginative leaps (balancing artfully, as Stevens would say, imagination and reason). But if you only purchase one poetry collection this year, buy Van Winckel's latest, No Starling, which is a truly breathtaking book. The collection begins with the poem "Slate," where the speaker is hauling a dead body named "Nance" to be dumped in a quarry. This kind of premise--surreal, edgy, with slivers of humor--is characteristic Van Winckel, complete with her usual dead-on images, impeccable sonics, and profound revelations. Where she shows her particular genius is how she can stretch a poem to absurdist limits, yet deftly reel it back to a warm, universal conclusion, as in "The Winter Cow." The poem begins with a cow standing in a frozen field with all four of its hooves sawed off (it's not explained why), and moves to a boy arriving to very tenderly milk her; the boy hums while doing so, as he fears he can't sing without weeping. Here's the final stanza:

The body is a great boat that knows the way
through iced blue distances. Gravity's small hands
tug at the hull. You get in
and you close your eyes, and you go.

There are so many exquisite moments like this one in the book, I couldn't possibly list them all. Clearly, Van Winckel has paid serious attention to structure, as themes reverberate from section to section. For instance, "water" and "shore" are both used metaphorically (though differently) in the closings of two of my favorites, "Mister" and "Verlaine in Prison." Death is another theme, found mainly in a fine cluster of poems in section one. No matter what the theme, though, Van Winckel's verbal dexterity and wisdom abound throughout.

Suffice it to say, I read this book from start to finish in one sitting because I couldn't wait to see--from page to page, line to line--how Van Winckel would dazzle me next. There seems to me not one wrong move or weak moment in the entire book. No Starling is simply stunning.

This is a touching portrait of difficult lives. Beautiful without being "precious"; a must for every history buff.

My first introduction to Jana Harris' poetry was in a writing class in which her "I canned those pears" was used as a example. The poem was, I was told, something that came out of research with the migrant fruit workers. True or not, that description fits Oh How can I Keep on Singing?: Voices of Pioneer Women.

I was raised partially in the Okanogan so I can't claim to be impartial in my praise of these poems. They do a wonderful job of bringing forth the dirt, hunger, poverty and violence of the pioneer days in the Okanogan. Therefore, the poems nicely counterbalance the tendency to idealize the pioneer era - this is no House on the Praire.

Jana Harris has done an excellent job of giving the pioneer women individual voices - these are poems of a collection of individuals not of a homogenious mass of "pioneer women".

Finally, as tightly written poems, the stories have more emotional impact than they might have had in prose.

(I will confess that I also recommend anything by Jana Harris but this or Mahattan as a Second Language is the place to start.)

Beautiful and haunting, this tiny book has been read and read again and now stands in a place of importance in my bookshelf. As deep as "Wounded Knee," it is very special.

"Although this is a book of poems and the author is most definitely a poet, she also writes - and this is meant as a complement - like a journalist. From meticulous research, Harris has reconstructed in verse the world of women living in Washington State at the turn of the century. So vivid are the voices of the pioneer teachers, missionaries and the original Native Americans that you occasionally need to turn to the author's notes to be reminded that this collection was written by one contemporary woman. The tone of the pieces is undeniably feminist - the women are earthy and frank, honest about the drudgery of their lives and the ironies of being socially powerless members of their society. But their concerns are not entirely insular. In accessible, not overly poetic language, Harris includes accounts of Native American and white settler distrust and racism, and such real-life events as the Salmon City flood of 1894 and the cattle-killing winters not uncommon in those parts. It's too bad that poetry almost automatically gets shunted into the hardly-read category; this collection belongs in the enlightening historical fiction department. - Sara Nelson

This book is indeed a true friend to the intellectual who knows the Socratean dialauges by heart. Some may take this book as a literal text but there is a vast philosophy to it. It's about human nature and pure emotion. It defines the the line between "love" and "in love". How is it that the story of but a few people can relate to everybody. It is but a grain of sand in the ocean that is the mind of God. A house without love can not be a home. This book had me hooked from the begining with a story of love. Though the times were changing the charactors stayed the same throughout and overcame the obstacles as one. Love is when two bodies share but a single soul. In the end they are freed from deception and lead to the truth. I sent a copy to my friend who teaches anthropology at Columbia. He wants to have his students read it as a testimony of humanity.

I will never forget this book. The realness of it all, the charactors and the love they shared through the natural hardships of life and love for life itself. This book is a classic for the present and should be a required book for students of humanities. I feel as though the book is now a part of my soul as are the charactors that I've come to know and love.

A really fine read. Sheila Horder is an absolute sorceress of text. The begining hit me in the hart and the lives of these people made me feel great to be alive. This book is FANTASTIC! I recomend it to anyone.

This book is one of the finest masterpieces I've ever come across, it's a story about love happyness and arcitecture.This book made me laugh yet in also left me in tears.I reccomend this book to anyone who enjoys a all around good read.

I ordered "Any Day". You sent me "One Man's Garden" which I already own. So, I sent it back and you charged me for the shipping as you claimed I had ordered it. "One Man's Garden" is a wonderful book and would really have liked to have added "Any Day" by Henry Mitchell to my Collection.

This collection of Henry Mitchell's essays, mostly from his Washington Post gardening column, should stand as an example of how to write. Mr. Mitchell wrote as he spoke; simply, but eloquently and with a wink. His wry sense of humor and disdain for posturing are evident throughout his work. I believe his essay on sunflowers to be the most enjoyable piece of garden writing in existence.

Okay, it's the middle of winter, Christmas is past, and now is the time to break out the gardening catalogs and begin plotting the new growing year. According to Henry Mitchell, we can enjoy the garden year-round if we plan strategically and the middle of winter is a good time to begin.

Mr. Mitchell wrote two weekly columns for the Washington Post for a number of years--one of them a garden column I never missed reading. His garden columns have been preserved in several books. ONE MAN'S GARDEN follows his first book THE ESSENTIAL EARTHMAN which spread his well-earned reputation as a garden guru far beyond the Post market area. These two books were published while he was alive so one must assume they were collections of his favorite essays. The essays are arranged by season and correspond to the months he wrote them.

Mitchell can be read by gardeners living anywhere. Although his essays contain information helpful to those working in Zone 7, the reader can glean sage advice applicable anywhere. He shares anecdotes about his experiences in his own backyard, and while that might seem far from novel as every other Tom, Dick, and Henrietta is writing a garden book these days, his essays are the best. His writing is funny, philosophical, useful, and a joy to read, especially on a cold winter day when you need to be reminded of irridescent dragonflies hovering over lily ponds (former horse troughs).

In his essay on dragonfiles (July) he informs us they require lily pads for landing, they can't just plop on the water like a pelican. This little item helped me understand I needed to do more to make my back yard friendly to butterflies, dragon flies, and their insect kin. I now have shallow spots in my birdbaths where they can dip their tiny feet.

Mr. Mitchell shares all sorts of interesting insights from his adventures with clinging vines--planting them where they will not grow, growing native variants such as the American Wisteria. The American Wisteria is often overlooked by those who grow the "Oriental" kind from China which Mitchell says if left untended can form a 20-foot clump in the middle of your yard. The Chinese Wisteria is very ornate, and the U.S. Park Service has planted it all over the National Gallery of Art on the Mall, but the American Wisteria is a pretty little thing better suited for the back yard. Mitchell says you can see this Wisteria in bloom at the Henry Botanical Foundation in Philadelphia.

Mitchell's essays range far and near, from Jefferson at Monticello to flower shows in faraway places. He writes in December of bananas, not a local plant in Zone 7 by any means, but one Mitchell considered a "great good plant" nevertheless and he grows one in his back yard in a pot. Although MItchell died several years ago, his essays are every bit as timely useful and funny as ever, and not to be missed.

This book is a delight and a pleasure to read aloud. The author has helped us focus on spring planting even though the wind chill factor has been -35 degrees most of the weekend. One Man's Garden helps "cure" the cabin fever that rages at this time of year in the northeast. Well worth the money it's a refreshing window into the love of gardening.

Dr. Wright's presentation of the nation's first national debt is both engrossing and informative. Perhaps it is his background as an historian, but regardless, his presentation of economics is straightforward and makes for a good read from the layperson's point of view.

Wright shows Alexander Hamilton as the genius that he truly was. While critics of Hamilton tend to focus on his behind-the-scenes machinations during the 1800 election, Wright allows Hamilton's financial wizardry (which should be this founder's true legacy) to shine. Indeed, Hamilton grasped that a national debt and the eventual assumption of states' debts was necessary not only for the new nation to survive practically, but to maintain its international public credit.

I would recommend reading this book in concert with John Miller's biography on Alexander Hamilton, Portrait in Paradox. Both authors show that Hamilton was well ahead of his time.

The chapters read easily, with an early focus on the Dutch and English international finance models of the early and late 18th century. The chapter entitled "Life," which concentrates on a few individual Virgina debt holders, is also engrossing. Wright spotlights the stories of a few individual patriots to show that these debtholders were just as vital to the nation, with their willingness to take a chance on the early United States, as was both France and Holland in their initial financing of the War of Independence.

All in all, a great read.

Dr. Dennis Edwards
Associate Professor of Economics

Anyone intersted in US history will enjoy this book, it was an easy read on what I thought would be a complicated subject.

The author keeps the subject interesting by mixing the "big picture" of international finance with political skullduggery at home and shines more light on the much maligned Alexander Hamilton's role in safeguarding America's first years.

This book provides rare insight into the financial foundations of the US economy. Supporting data, trends, and documentation add additional color to this thoughtful commentary on early american economic history. This obviously knowledgeable author writes in a very readeable style. The book was fantastically insightful.

Why do governments go into debt ? How do they pay for it ? Is that debt a good thing or a bad thing; that is to say, is a national debt a blessing or a curse ? Just what was the breakdown and nature of America's first national debt ? These are just some of the questions answered in Robert Wright's latest work.
It would not be bad bet to wager that few of us in the United States know how and why we incurred our first national debt. Maybe more importantly, even fewer of us probably realize just how much there is to contrast between now and then. Just after the adoption of our Constitution, our debt became, under the care and genius of a young Alexander Hamilton, a relatively temporary and useful tool for putting the credit of the United States on solid footing with Europe; while simultaneously serving as a a positive example to our merchants and businessmen, on whom so much of our finances were dependent. Today, our debt would appear to be nothing more than something for career politicans to continually run up for the sake of votes. Indeed, in today's modern American Nanny State, our so-called care takers seem to have no thought to paying the debt down, nevermind off. A far cry from some 200 years ago ! In Robert Wright's new book, such unfortunate differencees between now and then become all too clear.
There is even something for the more socially minded Historian in Wright's breakdown of those who were our nation's very first creditors. He sheds light on just who these first true patriots were.
In sum, this is a well written book on a very important subject matter.

Bob Wright's tenth book proves once again his keen ability to link our economic history to present trends. In these times of economic instability, one owes it to oneself to become educated. This does not mean education in regard to the current and near future "guesses" of what may come financially, but more importantly on how we have arrived here.
A must read. Regards... Michael W. Vasta