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Washington Books sorted by Average customer review: high to low .

Testing the Current

Published in Mass Market Paperback by Pocket Books / Washington Square Press (1985-06-01)

Author: William Mcpherson

List price: $4.95

Used price: $0.01
Collectible price: $10.00

Average review score:

Compelling visit to a vanished time

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2007-09-24

I picked up the novel at a garage sale a few years ago and read it only this summer on a whim. From the opening paragraph I was hooked. Set in the summer of 1939, the book portrays a privileged Midwestern family in the minutia of daily living. The storyteller, eight-year-old Tommy MacAllister, is surrounded by such an array of well-drawn characters, readers will want to jot notes as they meet each one. The book is strong for its depiction of everyday events and the subtle interactions within the boy's mind as he contemplates the grownups who comprise his world.

brilliantly probes kid's mind & heart as he maps his world

Helpful Votes: 2 out of 2 total.
Review Date: 1997-05-18

Reading reviews of Seamus Deane's new novel about growing up in Derry reminds me of how I haven't yet gotten over the disappearance of this brilliant book from the publisher's active list. Tommy McAllister, the main character, reads his upper midwestern world and people in it. He uses both heart and mind to probe each word he hears and gesture he sees to map out his world of loving, dangerous, sensible, and eccentric people, most of whom try to keep him safely in the dark

Beautifully written, wonderful rich characters, timeless

Helpful Votes: 5 out of 5 total.
Review Date: 2001-12-05

I bought this book a long time ago but it's still on my bookshelf (I don't save many books when I'm done with them) and I am pushing it for my book group (if we can find enough copies). I've read it many times and it never fails to grip me. The story is pretty simple -- a boy growing up in a small midwestern city right before WWII -- but what's great about this gentle book are a)the characters -- each one a believable, fully-developed, eccentric (but not cutely so) HUMAN, even the minor characters, and b) the wonderful sense of time & place. It's not a lovely place -- it's rife with class, race and other perennial American problems -- but it's full of life, humor, love, hate -- and it has fantastic women characters. Another plus for the book is that it takes place in (I think) someplace like Duluth MN, not the usual East, South or West coast location. The novel also features Native Americans in contemporary roles (circa 1936) -- how often do we get to read about regular old people who happen to be Indians?

Their Dogs Came with Them: A Novel

Published in Paperback by Washington Square Press (2008-10-21)

Author: Helena Maria Viramontes

List price: $14.00

New price: $11.20

Average review score:

Viramontes looks to roots for setting of her gritty novel

Helpful Votes: 12 out of 16 total.
Review Date: 2007-04-15

In 1985, Arte Público Press published Helena María Viramontes' first book, "The Moths and Other Stories," which has become a classic in Chicano literature. Since then, her short stories have appeared in more than 80 anthologies.

Viramontes published the novel "Under the Feet of Jesus" (Plume Books) in 1995, about a makeshift family of migrant workers. It was met with great critical acclaim and now graces many high-school and college reading lists.

Now, fans of Viramontes' writing can delight in the publication of her new novel, "Their Dogs Came With Them" (Atria Books, $23 hardcover). It possesses Viramontes' trademark poetic grittiness, with well-drawn characters who almost leap from the page.

The novel is a heart-rending but hopeful portrait of lives that are rocked by the turmoil and violence of East Los Angeles during the 1960s.

Asked whether she saw some form of redemption arising from her mostly female protagonists' struggles with poverty, bigotry and governmental abuses, Viramontes responded with characteristic candor:

"If I didn't want to recognize the redemption of their everyday ordeals, why write about them in the first place? I marvel, truly marvel, at the everyday, ordinary ordeals of human life, and I want to give justice to an existence that very few people or readers acknowledge."

In many ways, this sentiment is emblematic of Viramontes' perception of writers and their role in society. She asserts that "serious writers have the responsibility to try and disrupt patterns of thought and behavior that damage the integrity of life. That's why most writers do their best work while living on the fringes of a society."

With respect to writers of color such as herself, Viramontes provocatively adds: "Because our communities are constantly bombarded with inhumane violence and racism, I think we writers write with greater urgency." She takes this role seriously: "The greatest compliment to a writer is if a reader is disturbed enough to begin questioning his/her own beliefs."

In choosing the setting and era for her new novel, Viramontes did not need to stray far from her roots. She was born in East Los Angeles into a large family that always extended to relatives and friends who had crossed the border from Mexico to California.

While attending Immaculate Heart College, she worked part time at the bookstore and library to help pay for her education. Viramontes eventually earned her master of fine arts degree from the University of California at Irvine.

She has gone on to win many awards, including the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, a Sundance Institute Fellowship, and the Luis Leal Award for Distinction in Chicano/Latino Literature.

Today, Viramontes is a teacher and mentor to many young writers. She is a professor of creative writing at Cornell University.

Despite well-deserved acclaim, Viramontes does not pretend that writing is easy. "Their Dogs Came With Them" was more than a decade in the making because teaching and life's other demands often devoured her attention.

When Viramontes could make time to return to her novel, she sometimes suffered from writer's block. But she did not give up:

"I just kept my fingers close to the keyboard, walking distance close, just in case something would happen. I had to pay close attention. I reminded myself that a novel begins by one word following another."

Viramontes also observes: "Writing novels is certainly not for the fainthearted, and writing them on a university schedule can be brutally challenging."

We can be grateful for her perseverance. "Their Dogs Came With Them" establishes that Viramontes is simply one of our finest chroniclers of the ordinary but heroic ordeals of human life.

[This review first appeared in the El Paso Times.]

Response to Publishers Weekly Review

Helpful Votes: 22 out of 28 total.
Review Date: 2007-03-08

As a graduate student at Harvard in literary studies, I was shocked and saddened to read such an ill-informed review of Viramontes' second and astoundingly luminous novel.

Not only was the review factually incorrect--for this is Viramontes' second novel (not her first, as the reviewer claims), but, far more gravely, utterly incapable of appreciating the artistic power of a truly original and monumental novel. American literary scholars have already heralded Viramontes' new work as the "Middlemarch of Los Angeles," justly comparing it in power and scope with the greatest works of nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature.

Viramontes stands out among the even most talented of contemporary writers, and her work (including her first novel, "Under the Feet of Jesus," and her many wonderful short stories, including the widely anthologized "The Moths") has already earned her an unforgettable place in the canons of American and world literature. Her work is regularly taught alongside that of Joyce, Steinbeck, and Cisneros, and she is legendary for her innovations in prose and poetic intensity. "Under the Feet of Jesus" has been cited as a "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman," and is now an indelible part of our literary heritage and one of the most groundbreaking novels in decades.

"Their Dogs Came With Them" is Viramontes' "Ulysses"--a contemporary, multi-lingual, prismatic epic that bears no resemblance to the flat, one-dimensional easy-read novels that Publishers Weekly review seems to favor. The Publishers Weekly review seems to have read the novel haphazardly or perhaps not at all, as it gives no sense of the Viramontes' careful construction and dynamic interweaving of multiple narratives and perspectives--the novel is not 'loosely constructed' (a complaint that was, incidentally, often leveled at Joyces' "Ulysses" when it first appeared), but rather innovative, unconventional, and poetic in the best sense of the word.

Viramontes' novel grows out of its characters and the brute materiality that affects them, and its style is as complex and materially present as the story of Los Angeles life that it tells. The alleged "difficulty" of the novel lies in its challenges to the traditional tropes and characters of American literature--in its original voice, unique form of storytelling, and in the brilliance of its form. Viramontes' rich language demands our attention and, like other great writers, challenges the conventional ways in which we have learned or become accustomed to read.

While Viramontes' first novel was a lyrical tour de force, this current work is of a darker and textually different tone. The depth of the novel lies in its ability to characterize and describe in ways that surprise and illuminate, to render without merely 'reporting.' Traditional tropes of American and Latino literature are displaced, meditated on, and reworked, while Viramontes' lucid and ever-metamorphosizing style evokes the unique subjectivity of each of her characters and the fractured temporality of their experience. Any serious reader seeking unconventional beauty and innovative form will appreciate the texture of "Their Dogs Came With Them," as well as its refusal to conform to conventional storytelling.

Yet Viramontes, like Joyce, never sacrifices content for form, or a powerful portrayal of characters for her ever-deepening linguistic artistry. In its texture and intricately imbricated layers of narrative, it is constructed with genius and care. The ethical and esthetic value of this novel lies in its refusal to sacrifice or to romanticize the baffling, 'frustrating' and incomprehensible violence of urban life in twentieth century. The novel's form demonstrates and reenacts the violence it describes, revealing and rehabilitating the difficulties and frustrations of trying to tell stories about the ignored and the oppressed.

To read and review this novel with no ear for artistry or innovation, and with utterly no appreciation for Viramontes' rich legacy in American literature, as Publishers Weekly has so unfortunately done, is not only to do a great disservice to Viramontes and potential readers, but also to miss what may be the first true masterpiece of twenty-first century literature.

The Novel We've Been Waiting For

Helpful Votes: 5 out of 8 total.
Review Date: 2007-04-30

In her two previous books, Helena Maria Viramontes stuns readers with her precise language and uncompromising insights. Their Dogs Came With Them has been long in coming but worth the wait. With this novel Viramontes has certainly created something new and powerful. She offers up the talents and gifts of her first two books and adds a breathtaking use of structure, all of this in the service of a striking story. Many writers are defeated by Los Angeles when trying to write about the city because it suffers, for sure, from muliple-personality disorder. But Viramontes is a master, and in her hands, she turns L.A.'s kinetic energies into a tool for her own purposes. In this vision, the city and the characters are scarred, but not hopeless; battle weary, but resilient. Indeed, Viramontes has written a novel for each of us who have fallen to our knees, but knowing we would stand again, and taller.

Then Darkness Fled: The Liberating Wisdom of Booker T. Washington (Leaders in Action Series)

Published in Paperback by Cumberland House Publishing (2002-11)

Author: Stephen Mansfield

List price: $9.95

New price: $5.72
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Average review score:

An Amazing Man

Helpful Votes: 3 out of 4 total.
Review Date: 2007-05-02

This book is one of those rare gems that, if you're really fortunate, you come across from time to time. I received it as a gift from one of my mentors, Charlie Jones, who had, for some time now, been speaking of Booker T. Washington as one of his heroes. Having only a very surface knowledge of Mr. Washington - knowing that he was born a slave and went on to become founder of the famed Tuskegee Institute - he was a hero of mine, as well. After all, one could only imagine what he had to overcome to have achieved all he did.

However, after reading this book by Pastor Stephen Mansfield, the greatness of Mr. Washington simply came alive for me. He was a man of character, a man of faith, a dreamer and a doer; a man who moved mountains and moved hearts.

He had a plan - he had a dream - for taking his people from a horrible situation and helping them to move up and become successful in every way.

Unfortunately, as the author points out, he was fought every step along the way - often most by those he was trying to help and, in time, and long after he died in 1915, was disparaged by many as simply naïve, foolish, a misguided optimist, betrayer to his people.

Of course, none of this is true. Reading the story of Booker T. Washington in 2007 we can look back in hindsight and see that everything he taught - regarding the importance of character, thrift, knowledge, wisdom, forgiveness, love, persistence, delayed gratification, humility, etc. - is the way to build oneself, one's people and one's nation.

Only now is this man's wisdom and greatness beginning to once again be recognized and embraced. This book should be read by anyone and everyone looking to achieve greatness in their life. Read this book and you'll have the roadmap for doing so.

Booker T. Washington was a wonderful man; a hero. And the author, Pastor Mansfield, did a superb job in telling the story.

P.S. By the way, if you get an opportunity to read the booklet, "Character Building" by Booker T. Washington it will also be WELL worth your time. It's a reprinting of a number of his "Sunday Evening Talks" to his students and faculty members. The advice and wisdom that Mr. Washington shared is simply amazing.

Outstanding biography of an outstanding Black American.

Helpful Votes: 6 out of 10 total.
Review Date: 2000-03-03

Then Darkness Fled is a celebration of the life of Booker T. Washinghton and tells of a man who dined with heads of state and became the first Afro-American to receive honorary degrees from Harvard and Dartmouth. Chapters survey both his achievements and his life in this lively coverage.

Terrific

Helpful Votes: 7 out of 8 total.
Review Date: 2003-06-26

In another sterling volume of the Leaders in Action series, Stephen Mansfield here outlines the life and character of Booker T. Washington. In vivacious voice and moving magniloquence, Mansfield traces Washington's path from slavery to his founding of Tuskegee Institute. He shows the difficulties Washington surpassed in reaching his goals, and the principles that helped him make it. In the words of Washington, "Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succed." By this standard, Booker T. Washington was an astonishingly successful man.

Washington wrote his own autobiography, _Up From Slavery_, which must certainly not be neglected. But Mansfield's biography is also a criticial read because he includes facts that the autobiographer was too modest to mention, and he highlights wonderful aspects of Washington's character that humility prevented him from including. This biography doesn't contain the wonderful self-analysis and insight of Booker himself - but it does contain all the benefits of a third person account.

One thing I really appreciated about this book was its terrific analysis of slavery and inter-race reconciliation. Expounding Booker's opinion, Mansfield blames both whites and blacks for the problems that cropped up after the Civil War. Whites needed to repent of their brutal treatment of slaves and actually begin considering blacks more than mere animals; and blacks needed to repent of their spirit of bitterness toward their white enslavers, and begin working hard and leaving no excuse for disrespect of blacks. Too many books on reconciliation have practically advocated bitterness, hatred, and laziness when what is really needed is Washington's outlook of forgiveness and hard work. This book offers relief from such pride.

To wrap up, this is a great biography. Good history, good style, and good content. Buy it.

Tony Visits Washington

Published in Paperback by Tate Publishing & Enterprises (2007-06-05)

Authors: Mona Conder and Patti Kelsey

List price: $12.99

New price: $7.78
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Average review score:

Great for PNW Families!

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2007-07-02

I live on the east coast, but am originally from the Pacific Northwest. This book is a great, fun way for my daughter to learn about my hometown. I hope that the authors will do more children's books from other regions of the country (and even international). It is a great idea, well-executed.

Exemplary writting for children's learning.

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2007-06-05

Both my children loved this book, they are 5 and 8. I bought the book to give them an idea about where we are going to move this summer. They are excited to visit the places in the book, especially to see the shrunken heads at "ye olde curiosity shoppe." It was a perfect start for my 5 yr old to practice reading since it came with a downloadable audio file, helping him sound out the words and keep pace. Overall it was entertianing and a good buy!

Great child's book about Washington State!

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2007-06-02

We just visited Seattle and Mt Rainier with our children for vacation and found this wonderful book. Not only is it a great learning for our kids, but also an awesome souvineer from our trip. Our kids were so excited that "Tony" vists some of the same places we did. This book keeps on giving every time we read it and teaches us all about the neat things in the great state of Washington. Go Seahawks!

Trees of Seattle: The Complete Tree-Finder's Guide to the City's 740 Varieties

Published in Paperback by Sasquatch Books (1990-02)

Author: Arthur Lee Jacobson

List price: $16.95

Used price: $16.46

Average review score:

Great for planning ahead

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2008-07-27

We use this book whenever we are thinking about planting a tree in our yard. For some reason, everything seems to grow far bigger than the nursery tags indicate, and many species look far different when young than as more mature trees. It's great to be able to see not only pictures, but to be able to drive to specific locations to see the tree in a mature state, as it may look in our own yard in many years. That's prevented a few "mistakes" in selection.

Comprehensive and easy to use

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2007-10-19

This book is great. We use it at least a couple of times a week for ecological restoration.

This was a classic book

Helpful Votes: 6 out of 6 total.
Review Date: 2006-02-20

When this book was published in 1990, it virtually created a new genre: the local tree guide. By combining clear, simple descriptions of hundreds of local area species (about 30 native, and the rest ornamental) and providing information on where you could go see the tree, it became possible for people to both learn a wide variety of trees and to learn more about the natural heritage of a place - in this case, Seattle. A second edition of this book has just (February 2006) been published; it contains almost twice as many species, many more color photographs, and a far longer list of specimen trees.

Trench Warfare under Grant and Lee: Field Fortifications in the Overland Campaign (Civil War America)

Published in Hardcover by The University of North Carolina Press (2007-09-24)

Author: Earl J. Hess

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Average review score:

Important Work of Civil War Scholarship

Helpful Votes: 17 out of 19 total.
Review Date: 2007-09-09

Earl J. Hess's new "Trench Warfare under Grant and Lee: Field Fortifications in the Overland Campaign" is as good a piece of Civil War scholarship as I have read in years. It is at the most fundamental level a narrative history of military operations in the Overland Campaign of May and June, 1864: the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, North Anna, and Cold Harbor, but it is a narrative history that focuses particularly on how field fortifications evolved over the course of those six weeks of heavy combat and it details how the use of field fortifications influenced the course of that campaign. In his earlier volume, "Field Armies and Fortifications in the Civil War," Hess dispelled the old myths that such entrenchments were a direct consequence of the power of rifled-muskets or that their use suddenly sprang into being in the spring of 1864 (he documented three years of field fortifications, although not on such a scale as became standard by the end of the Overland Campaign) and that these entrenchments were somehow merely the fruit of the teaching of Dennis Hart Mahan at West Point. Or to quote the author: "The use of field fortifications evolved during the Civil War not due to some irrational fear, but due to a real and potent threat: the continued presence of an enemy army within striking distance. Their use was a rational and logical response to that threat."

Hess reserves most of the technical details of entrenchment and breastwork design for an appendix, leaving his main narrative fast-moving and compelling. "Trench Warfare under Grant and Lee" is an important contribution to Civil War literature and should find a ready spot on the bookshelves of any serious student of the era. I look forward to his planned third volume, to examine field fortifications during the Petersburg campaign.

Inevitably, it must be asked how Hess views the Overland Campaign in balance. Was it a Union or a Confederate success? Although Hess does not absolve Grant of errors in too hastily ordering attacks or in failing to recognize the power of impromptu fieldworks, Hess concludes: "Grant's most significant achievement in the Overland campaign was not in capturing territory, or in positioning his army close to Richmond, or in reducing the fighting strength of the Army of Northern Virginia by 50 percent; rather it lay in robbing Lee of the opportunity to launch large-scale offensives against the Army of the Potomac. In laying claim to the strategic initiative, Grant won an important physical and emotional victory over Lee, and he did it with fewer losses than his predecessors had suffered in attempting the same goal ... Most important, he did not give up the strategic initiative and thereby brought the war to an end. The Overland campaign was as much a watershed in the strategic course of the Civil War as the Seven Days."

The War Changes

Helpful Votes: 5 out of 5 total.
Review Date: 2008-01-02

By the time of the Overland Campaign, the star of Earl Hess's second volume on Civil War fortifications, the idea of bravery that most soldiers had when hostilities began had just about fizzled out. In that more innocent time, soldiers and officers thought it cowardly to hide behiind entrenchments, or anything else for that matter. Battles were about sticking out your chest and, in plain view of the enemy, marching and shooting. (For a good account of this transition, see Linderman's Embattled Courage.)

Three years of the harsh reality of war changed all that, and by the time of the Overland Campaign, troops on both sides were digging in fast and furiously whenever they got the chance. Aside from the Vicksburg and Petersburg campaigns, nowhere was the entrenchment so obvious as in the Overland one. Most Civil War buffs know about the entrenchments at Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor. But many will probably be surprised (as was I) that entrenchments were also dug in The Wilderness and at the Bermuda Hundred.

Hess' account of the evolution of fortifications in this stage of the war is well-written and entirely accessible to the nonspecialist. He tends to protect Grant from the general's worst critics, arguing (much as does James McPherson) that the huge cost of federal lives in the Overland in fact did succeed in strategically defeating Lee.

The photographs are priceless. I've actually never seen most of them before. Moreover, the line drawings of fortifications and entrenchments are brilliant. All in all, highly recommended.

DIG, DAMNIT DIG!

Helpful Votes: 9 out of 13 total.
Review Date: 2007-10-10

This is the second book in a series on fortifications in the eastern theater during the Civil War. The first book covers the war up to this point, while reading the first book is not required; it is worth taking the time to do so. 1864 produced a major revision in how digging in and fighting behind entrenchments is viewed by both armies. Open field battle gives way to fighting from behind entrenchments as both sides maintain close contact for months. The war is no longer open fields with a mile between the armies. Both sides dug into the earth often closer than skirmish lines were in 1862. The book details this change and the impact on the commanders and men.

The author continues working fortifications into the overall campaign giving the reader an excellent history of the Overland Campaign in the process. This presentation keeps the subject fresh while presenting the nuanced tactical differences in a logical sequential manner. This is very much a battle history but the emphasis is on how fortifications changed the campaign even as the campaign changed fortifications.

Earl Hess is one of our best authors. In this series and this book, he manages to give the reader a rich learning experience coupled with an enjoyable read. This is not a beginner's book but can be enjoyed by anyone with some knowledge of the Civil War.

The United States Capitol: Its Architecture and Decoration

Published in Hardcover by W. W. Norton & Company (2005-04-01)

Authors: Henry Hope Reed and Anne Day

List price: $50.00

New price: $30.75
Used price: $24.71

Average review score:

Magnificent

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2007-06-08

If your after a book on the Capitol Building, then go no further than this beautifully photographed and well layed out book. Full of rich detail and architectual illustrations.

CAPITOL PERFECTION

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2006-10-24

This building is the perfect imbodiment of the American Democracy, it is an iconic symbol of America the world over. This book does this great building justice, the images are crisp and vivid and the text is almost scholarly. Everytime i enter this building i get a shiver and feel the tingle of goose bumps, and am reminded of what a spectacularly beautiful building it is, and how the building seems to hold the most awesome power. The history in its halls and the majesty of its presence makes the most incredible impression, if you are not moved by this building then frankly you need to check your pulse. If you have any interest in this iconic building or just appreciate beautiful books then i cant imagine you being disappointed in this book.

God Bless Henry Hope Reed

Helpful Votes: 4 out of 10 total.
Review Date: 2005-10-20

This is a wonderful book for a number of reasons: its beautiful illustrations, its wealth of detail delivered in a reverent and infectiously enthusiastic narrative, and (most of all) its unabashed defense of classical architecture and passionate call for a return to the style in our great buildings. One has merely to open this book to thank his lucky stars that most of monumental Washington, DC was built before the Marxist-inspired so-called "International Style" and its degenerate stylistic descendants inexplicably washed away centuries (nay, millenia) of Western art tradition. It's appalling to read the sort of vindictives that were hurled against the last exponents of the classical style, men like Bacon, Russel, and Gilbert, by so-called "modernists" when they designed stunning masterpieces like the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, and the Supreme Court Building. And it's galling to see what "modernists" offered the nation as an alternative to classical design: can anyone look at the Museum of American History on the National Mall and not shake his head in sadness? The place looks like an annex to a New Jersey shopping mall.

Reed is a wonderfully able partisan of the classical style, and dismisses so-called "modern" architecture as the "Anorexic" style for its lack of decoration. That may be overly harsh; great architects can indeed produce great buildings even in non-classical styles - the Kennedy Center in Washington is a fine example of non-classical yet non-Anorexic design. But Reed has one undeniably true point: we as a civilization have allowed ourselves to be cheated our of our millenia old Western art tradition by so-called "artists" that have translated their lunatic fringe political views (the International Style was nothing but applied Marxism, designed to reflect the "means of production" to quote standard leftist gibberish) into drab design originally meant for "worker housing" and now applied (ironically) to US government and corporate structures. This "artistic" rabble still to a large degree indulges its proclivities towards lunatic fringe politics, and continues to so savagely attack the classical style (because they in fact hate Western culture and all it stands for) that it has become unthinkable to build a classical structure in the US today. Some are ignorant enough to claim that the classical style makes them "want to throw up," but the best they can come up with is the travesty of soulless design that is present day Houston or any number of Asian cities like Seoul.

The closest we are allowed to claiming our Western heritage anymore is the so-called "Stripped Classical" applied to the new WW2 Memorial in Washington. I suppose we should thank our lucky stars that that we at least got "Stripped Classical" instead of some appalling metal and glass gimmick that - like most "modern" structures - would rapidly deteriorate into a shabby pile of rusty metal, stained concrete, and peeling paint. But like Reed points out, "A building without decoration is like the heavens without stars." Why is "stripped" all we are allowed to enjoy anymore? Because leftist "artists" that can't stand the West, can't stand America, and most of all can't stand the culture from which it sprang browbeat us into standing glumly in "modern" museums looking at unintelligible and ugly "art" (a melting toilet at the Whitney comes to mind) and won't allow us to erect magnificent Corinthian or Ionic columns anymore. Really, it is sad. This magnificent book, at least, shows us what we once had, and what might have been. Let's hope future generations of Western civilization have more courage than we do, and spend their days recovering their own cultural heritage. Perhaps they will once more build for the sake of beauty rather than that of Marxist anti-Western hatred.

The Used Book Lover's Guide to the Pacific Coast States: California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska and Hawaii (Used Book Lover's Guide Series)

Published in Paperback by Book Hunter Pr (1995-11)

Authors: David S. Siegel and Susan Siegel

List price: $19.95

New price: $4.00
Used price: $0.47

Average review score:

Excellent guide for book lovers!

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2000-10-28

Very comprehensive guide for those of us who love to haunt used bookstores in CA (et al). Useful information such as inventory sizes, specialities, phone numbers, special services, and more. Organized by state, city, and also several indices.

An invaluable take-along tote for bibliophiles!

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2000-05-03

An invaluable take-along tote for any who consider a used book store visit an essential part of the trip. Choose the revised, expanded Used Book Lover's Guide To The Pacific Coast States if traveling in California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska or Hawaii: it includes number of volumes, store specialty, and candid comments if the store was visited.

Essential guide for bibliophiles & antiquarian book dealers.

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2000-04-04

This newly updated and expanded addition of The Used Book Lover's Guide To The Pacific Coast States continues to insure its preeminence as the most comprehensive and important guide to the used bookstores and dealers in California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii. Featured are 1,500 used book dealers conveniently grouped by location and category; a Specialty Index to help locate dealers specializing in a particular area of interest; easy to follow travel directions for getting where you want to go; twenty-four city, regional and state maps to aid in planning book hunting trips; and practical comments about shops based on the David and Susan Siegal's personal visits. If you are a true bibliophile or antiquarian book dealer traveling the area, don't leave home without your copy of The Used Book Lover's Guide To The Pacific Coast States!

Vanity in Washington

Published in Hardcover by Sherman Asher Publishing (2001-01-01)

Author: Peggy Van Hulsteyn

List price: $9.95

New price: $1.93
Used price: $1.83

Average review score:

PURRfect reading for CATaholics

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2001-03-02

Vanity in Washington by Peggy vanHulsteyn, published in December 2000, couldn't have been more purr-fectly timed. Yes, it was making its way to booksellers just as gift-givers were making up their minds about what to get the cat-lovers in their lives. But it was the embattled race for the White House that made anything with a Washington, D.C. dateline in demand...

VanHulsteyn's cat Vanity provides both the inspiration and the voice. Vanity's trials and tribulations of touring a particular city are from the feline's unique perspective. Through Vanity's travels, we humans get a tour of our Nation's Capital's hot/top spots. One of my favorites is when Vanity coughs up a fur ball in the cab when the fare seems excessively high because the driver didn't understand English and took them needlessly out of their way. She also pokes fun at bureauCATS and fat cats and other political animals...

Vanity in Washington is light-hearted, and vanHulsteyn's humor makes this a fun and funny read...Its 112 pages make it an easy one- or two- sitting reading for the cat-lover in your life -- you or someone you know. Susan Bard Hall, Pet Times

The Puurrfect Gift

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2001-02-16

This delightful book is my choice of a gift for every one of my cat-loving friends. Van Hulsteyn knows cats, their idiosyncracies, their foibles, and their lovingly inattentive ways. Cat owners will readily see their own pet in Vanity and her antics. Upon receiving the book as a gift from me, my friend in Seattle, a 3-cat owner, e-mailed, "I can really relate to her description of Vanity getting into her suitcase that's open on the bed....Just what mine do before I go on a trip. They camp out in it and leave cat hair all over whatever I have already packed!"

And cat owner or not, everyone will spot their favorite bureaucrat in the Washington characters van Hulsteyn deftly delivers, along with enough cat puns to keep them in puurrspective. Her eye for distinctive details, as well as the charming illustrations, enhanced my pleasure as I chuckled through her droll descriptions of Vanity facing the frustrations we all deal with daily, from weather-challenged traffic to rude parking attendants to power-hungry "friends." Few of today's manners, mores and tastes escape her sharp wit.

I had met Vanity in van Hulsteyn's first book about her, "Diary of a Santa Fe Cat," and was pleased to find I could continue my acquaintance with this witty kitty--and have a second round of gifts that please my friends so thoroughly!

Charming fun for cat fans

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2000-12-15

"Vanity in Washington" is just the prescription to laugh our way out of our recent national political quagmire. (Shall we at least all agree we could use a good laugh about Washington?) Imagine "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington" with a feline cast. No, it's more sophisticated, more light-hearted than that. OK. Imagine "Auntie Mame" as a cat. That's closer to the level of hilarity. Readers will be "amewsed " (this book is chock-full of cat puns) no matter which political party has their support.

"Vanity in Washington" offers up a charming view of our nation's capitol through the eyes of an adventurous calico named Vanity (thus the title) recounting her attempts to navigate the metro, take in an Orioles home game, attend a formal state dinner, and become the Czar of Snooze as the new director of the FBI (Federal Bureau of Inertia). It's a timeless send up of bureaucracy and a great gift for those who accept that cats already run the world and we humans are just here to open cans. Recommended.

Victory Gardens & Barrage Balloons: A Collective Memoir

Published in Hardcover by Perry Pub (1995-08)

Author: Frank Wetzel

List price: $30.00

Used price: $3.28
Collectible price: $33.54

Average review score:

Thanks for the great memories of growing up in Bremerton

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 1998-08-14

Though 4 years younger than the author, Frank Wetzel, I knew many of the people he talked about in Victory Gardens & Barrage Balloons and experienced many of the same places and events he writes about. The girl used as the model on the cover lived not too far away from my family during WWII. I would definitely recommend this book for all Bremertonians but especially those living there between 1930 and 1945. Others may enjoy it as well

Washington Post: 1/30/96

Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 1996-01-31

Former editor Harwood of The Post has written a 3-page review of the book in the health section re: the importance of oral history. Good reading

A collective memoir of Bremerton, WA residents during WW II

Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 1996-01-22

The following text is from the back jacket of the book:

World War II changed everything. For a kid growing up in Kitsap County (Washington) it meant living at the focal point of the war. It was to Puget Sound Navy Yard that the ghosts of Pearl Harbor returned for repair and renovation. It was a time of astonishing unity and common purpose. For Frank Wetzel and his contemporaries, these years were formative. Look back with them as they recall . . . . Victory Gardens and Barrage Balloons. A history of Bremerton and Kitsap County during World War II.

Frank Wetzel was born in Bremerton, Washington in 1926, the grandson of Kitsap County pioneers. He graduated from Bremerton High in 1944 and the University of Washington in 1950. He was an infantryman in Europe in World War II and an infantry officer in the Korean War.

He worked as a newsman and executive for the Associated Press in Salt Lake City, Denver, and Portland, OR. He was editor of the Journal-American in Bellevue, Washington from 1977-1986 and was the ombudsman of the Seattle Times from 1987 to 1990. This is his first book.