California Books

This is the finest book I have seen produced that catalogs the greats of the Hackamore and Stock horse industry. Its got them all. The photos are stunning and the description of this kind of training is first class. Great book!

This book is excellent for both the novice and veteran horseperson. There are a few mistakes that the editor didn't catch (some spelling errors of people mentioned in the text), but overall a very attractive and informative book. This book has a deep personal meaning for me because in the late 1970's I was fortunate to have been a "student" of Bobby's at his ranch in Pleasant Grove, CA. Even as a young girl I admired Bobby's talent with horses and one should especially take note of how he uses his hands when he rides. As a horseperson I also tried to immitate his light touch on a horses' mouth. It's very fitting that the cover photograph is a picture of Bobby's hands!

Bobby Ingersoll has written not only the perfect training manual for starting young horses, but a beautifully illustrated and informative coffee table book as well. He has given credit to the talented artists who braid these hackamores and what is unfortunately becoming a lost art. His soft and gentle style of starting the young colt through feel rather than demanding submission through force will benefit everyone who truly loves horses and strives to be a real horseman. His tribute to the true horsemen and horsewomen of past and present makes you want to just stand up and cheer. Bravo, Bobby Ingersoll!

Beautiful!! Beautiful!!


The Mexican Traditions on starting green horses has been handed down from generation to generation. The Jaquima came first, with it the colt was taught to handle himself to perfection and bridling is the last step.

Training horses is a serious business..., the Bible of training colt with Hackamore is Ed Connell book, but if you want to tune some details of your training with the hackamore, this it is the book that you need.

The legendary California Hackamore and the stocke Horse is another great book with enormous tips and knowledge, beautiful pictures!!.

Right Now I'm looking for the Benny Guitron DVD, the Master on training horses with Jaquima.

El Vaquero Mexicano "El Charro" ---- The American Cowboy "The Gentleman".

¡Hermoso! ¡Hermoso!

Al Hakma --- Jaquima --- Hackamore

Las tradiciones mexicanas en iniciar caballos verdes son de generación en generación dentro de la tradicion oral. El Jaquima vino primero, el potro educado para llegar a la perfección por ultimo se embridaba.

El entrenamiento de caballos es un negocio serio..., la biblia del entrenamiento de potros con Jaquima, es libro del Ed Connell, pero si usted desea afinar algunos detalles de su entrenamiento con la Jaquima, esto es el libro que usted necesita.

Ahora estoy buscando el benny Guitron DVD, el amo en caballos del entrenamiento con Jaquima.

"The Legendary California Hackamore and the stock horse", es otro gran libro con enormes consejos y conocimientos asi como hermosas fotografias!!.

EL Vaquero Mexicano es "EL Charro" --- El vaquero Americano es "El Caballero".

Wow! He's almost as smart as his son

Uelmen writes as few can, a legal professor and scholar who himself was part of defense team of this trial.

He provides healthy, worthy set of lessons to be taken from this experience. This is more vital than disputing the outcome, for it must be all about a legal system with the best chance for a true and fair outcome for all parties, including society.

Agree with the author that biggest lesson is that trials as this are flashpoints for what is really on culture's mind at the time, here race, decreasing attention spans and bias without basis, spousal abuse, etc.

Further, we learned that tv and courtroom don't mix well. That massive DNA data without certifiable collection/preservation. Uelmen also contends that this trial was an aberration of the real, normal trial system.

Well done, and fascinating, insightful read.

Professor Uelmen is doubly blessed. First, he has one of the finest legal minds in the country and, second, he writes in such a clear, cogent style that one need not be a lawyer to understand him. Despite knowing the outcome from the start, this book is a real page-turner. One cannot help but think that if the prosecution had a lawyer nearly as capable as Uelmen they might have won instead of the defense. But the best part of all is the insider's view: no other book on the trial comes close to explaining how the defense won a case that seemed at the outset to be unwinnable. Whether or not you agreed with the defense, this book demonstrates their superior lawyering.

Gerald F. Uelmen is a professor and former dean of the School of Law at Santa Clara University. He was part of O. J. Simpson's defense team from the beginning, and can speak with authority about this trial. The sixteen chapters contain the lessons that readers may learn. There is no index. You should be familiar with this case or have read some other books before reading this overview of a Trial of the Century. After the jury verdict there was an abundance of proposed solutions which were thoughtless and wrong (p.1). A knowledge of history would correct these errors for those "unhappy with the verdict" (p.3). These proposals have led California to intellectual, fiscal, and moral bankruptcy in the criminal system, which is weighted heavily in favor of the prosecution (p.4). Many innocents have been convicted because of mistaken identification, police perjury, or simple incompetence by a defense lawyer (p.5). The foolish call for reforms have occurred in the past (p.7). The first lesson from this trial was how the Corporate Media fooled the people and fueled this controversy (p.8). [Joe Bosco said the trial he witnessed was different from the trial broadcast by the media.]

The media blitz led by DA Garcetti affected public opinion. But this allowed the defense to bypass the grand jury and go to a preliminary hearings (p.23). The double-dealing of the prosecution's grand jury is described on page 25. Fuhrman and Vannatter "contradicted each other on many key points" (p.35). Page 39 tells of the effect of the exclusionary rule, and why judges won't do anything. Do judges lack "moral courage" (p.45)? The "narcissistic personality disorder" (p.47) is defined as "a grandiose sense of self-importance, a need for excessive admiration, and fantasies of unlimited power and brilliance". [Does this remind you of some of your managers?] Uelmen shows his wisdom on page 65, unlike the critics. The need for press interviews by defense lawyers is explained (pp.69-70).

Their concern about evidence tampering and forging is explained (p.72). California law allows a lawyer to protect his client from prejudicial publicity (p.75). The foolish actions of "knee-jerk" politicians is described on page 77. The "National Enquirer" is more honest than "TIME" (p.78). A juror's race is part of their life experience, which affects judgments (p.81). Uelmen explains the death penalty (pp.82-83), and why selecting jurors is very important (pp.88-89). Video recording of trials could be a good teaching tool, but television allows reporters to comment as if they knew what happened (p.94)! The bias of commentators is explained on page 95. They had no idea! Television helped to find witnesses (p.99). But TV is for entertainment, not justice (p.101).

The murders of Nicole and Ron had nothing to do with domestic violence, based on the evidence; it was smear tactics (p.103)! The problems with the blood evidence and its collections are on page 122. The prosecution delayed the defense's testing of the samples (pp.123-4). The flip-flop testimony about OJ's blood sample is on page 126. The Fuhrman tapes were "the most devastating evidence" to completely destroy the credibility of this police officer (p.129). Fuhrman had been extolled as a model officer. When the Prosecutors learned of these tapes, they tried to get a mistrial (p.145)! I think the original intent of the Fifth Amendment was to prevent torture by forcing a person to testify against himself (p.155). "Third degree" methods were still used in the early 20th century. The Prosecutors would do anything to convict (p.165). A defendant can be convicted on the basis of circumstantial evidence only if no other conclusion is possible (p.167). Were the threats to Cochran meant to force him to accept guards (p.171)? The jury quickly said "not guilty", there was "something wrong" with the prosecution's case (p.180). Watching a trial on TV gives the illusion of actually being there (p.182). Uelmen explains the difference between a criminal trial and a civil trial (p.195). [The example of Lizzie Borden shows flawed research (p.196).] A trial isn't a search for truth, but to have a vision of truth prevail 9p.199). Civil liberties in America are documented in the criminal courtrooms, where the Government infringes on the individual's rights for the weak and powerless (p.205). Chapter 16 summarizes the lessons from this trial.

Gary Kern is the Dostoevsky of the Inland Empire! If you've lived in Riverside, California, or even if you haven't, these stories will draw you in with the urgency of an accounting of life as we really experience it, with its true smells and textures, without any sugar coating. Kern has a way with words, and keeps the pages turning as we follow his various encounters with the tormented, the damned, and the merely strange. Yet his narrative never descends into a freakshow, as freakish as many of the characters and situations may be. (This is a trap Joan Didion falls into in her otherwise entertaining essay "Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream," about a 1964 murder trial in San Bernardino).
Highly recommended. It made my morning and evening public transportation commute pass by like a dream.

The other reviewers are right about this book's readability.

But I would also like to alert readers who love their books in short, encapsulated chapters to this book as well.

Each transcribed letter ties into others, but the characters are painted memorably enough to allow lapses of days between readings.

A great book for vacation or business travel.

It is a true story of a Princeton scholar who moved to California and soon lost all he had - his professorship, his family, his career - as told through transcriptions of letters sent to friends on audio cassette. Kern's style is masterful, verging on magical: I cannot otherwise explain why this book is so captivating. There is no plot, since it is a series of letters, and being a dean in an institution of higher education, I can certainly identify with the vagaries of the Academy and it's disregard for the individual, as visited on Mr. Kern. Yet none of this explains how or why this book gets under the skin. My only conclusion is that through an intelligent yet accessible style, Kern presents himself as a modern day Everyman and the story of his life is a morality play of the nineties. In this story he encounters a series of strange individuals (too bizarre to have been made up!), searches for work, searches for love, and ultimately, finds the woman who takes him away from the human swamp known as Dwight street, from which his letters are sent. One can only hope that, if visited with similar circumstances, one would respond as rationally, and ultimately publish a book about it! I am giving copies of this book to intelligent and insightful friends who I know will appreciate it.

- Dan Angelo

This is an incredibly interesting series of letters written by an ex-professor of Russian who, through a series of misfortunes, finds himself forced to live in a ghetto in Riverside, CA, along with an incredible parade of oddballs and freaks too unbelievable to have been made up. This book is both serious and hilarious. I couldn't put it down! When I finished I passed it along to my wife and friends, all of whom reported that, they too, could not put it down.

This book is meant to be savored. It is all things wine and the appreciation of wine. Johnson's actual presence, his life's tale wanders in and out of the narrative. We learn about his schooling, his early university days, about his wife, his early work and publications but that's just part of the beauty of reading this book.

Imagine if you had a friend who not only spoke eloquently but who could talk at great lengths about a subject he held dear to his heart. Imagine this friend to be well-traveled, with many connections and stories to tell. Hugh Johnson might be that ideal friend. He doesn't talk down to the reader, he doesn't namedrop the way some wine writers do, glorifying personalities in the wine trade. Johnson is certainly living a comfortable life but his presentation of facts, experiences and meetings with great wine and great winemakers is lively and surprisingly modest.

The book is divided into several sections: Prospects, Bubbly, White, Red and Sweet. Throughout these sections he explores past episodes of his life, the people he met and the wines he encountered. His style is direct, light, poetic and friendly, an approach in prose that both informs and involves the reader. You never feel like you're being lectured to, mostly that he is here to mentor, to share and express his love of the great fermented grapes of the world.

I would recommend this book to all kinds of readers, especially the wine lovers. If you're starting out or know the difference between a Pouilly-Fusse and Pouilly-Fume, then read this. For wine writing, this work is a treasure. I wish there were more writers like Johnson working in the industry.

A Life Uncorcked is a celebration of the vine. It is a fun read and very informative. I especially love his take on the current wine rating systems, finally someone with sense!

I recently published a brief review of this wonderful book in the print edition of The Washington Examiner newspaper (www.examiner.com -- April 29 & 30th Weekend Edition). Here is that review:

Recently, I had the opportunity to catch up with world-renowned wine writer Hugh Johnson as he breezed through town promoting his new memoir on the inner workings of the wine world, A Life Uncorked. This is a deeply personal book. Yet, as Johnson admits, it is not an autobiography. Rather, this memoir is a personal journey, as much about wine as it is about his life.

For Johnson, wine is essentially "a social game" not merely an interest or a hobby. Wine is "about human relations, hospitality, bonding-all the maneuvers of social life-and all under the influence, however benign, of alcohol." Who can argue with that?

This social experience is richly transformative: "However good a wine may be, sentiment can make it better" and "with the right companion, a single wine can be a continuing conversation." In person, as in his writings, Johnson comes off as witty, personable, and charming, and his approach to wine is wonderfully infectious.

Never one to shy from a fight, Johnson (a Brit) takes issue with Robert Parker, the preeminent American wine critic. Johnson criticizes Parker's wine scoring system, which treats wines "like American high school students"-50 points just for showing up, 60 = dreadful, 70 = pretty poor, 80 = not bad, etc. Johnson decries the effect this approach has had on the wine industry, where wines are Parkerized to get higher scores.

Ultimately, Johnson's unpretentious and highly enjoyable attitude towards wine appreciation is compelling. As he plainly explains, "It depends on whether you see wine primarily as a drink or as a recreational substance. In a drink you look for something refreshing and satisfying without too loud a voice, not too intrusive on your food or your thoughts each time you take a sip." So take a page from Hugh's book, and enjoy a jolly good read with glass in hand.

I must admit that I've never followed the author's wine advice but I cut my wine teeth on his fantastic wine atlas. I bought this book on a whim and it's taken me months to drift through it - not because it's a hard read rather it's sort of a wine vacation experience best experienced without haste.

If you're a wine fan who needs a vacation but can't get away; read a chapter or two and live vicariously.

btw, yes, there is an oft-quoted sentence disparanging GWB and RP in the same whack. Not entirely off the mark though, is it?!

This was a great book. Berriault is a superb writer. She draws her characters with incredible skill and pulls you into the not-so-happy life of her main character. Every line of this book is beautifully written. I haven't read any contemporary authors better at crafting a sentence than Ms. Berriault. On top of all this great writing is incredible insight into the nature of human existence. Worth reading for the writing, the story, or the philosophical insights, and you'll get to appreciate all three! Though the story is a bit depressing at times, it does provide some hope in the end, which, it seems from the reviews I've read, Women in Their Beds does not.

This is a deeply affecting and exquisitely written book. I've gone from Women in the Beds to The Son to The Lights of Earth and feel priviledged to have spent reading time with such a talented writer. What troubles me is that I didn't know about her until she won the National Book Critics Circle Award and that I might never have known of her if Counterpoint Press and Northpoint Press before them hadn't had the courage to publish her.

This is a great little book: a rare combination of great writing and deep emotional and intellectual insight. There are people writing today who are accomplished prose stylists but who just don't have a lot to say. And, conversely, there are writers of great depth whose writing is, well, adequate. Gina Berriault is one of a few great writers alive today who can write and think at the same time. Her honesty and complex literary style which help make her a great writer probably hurt her popular acceptance. She is not a part of the "you go girl" kind of Stalinist social realism that is so popular today which portrays things not as they are, but as they should be in order to be politically correct. Nor is she a pulp fiction romance novelist. She is more interested in reality and writing great fiction. She is not perfect and I do have some small criticisms. In The Lights of Earth, Ilona, the main character, receives a couple of notes from her neglected brother who is apparently mildly retarded. My criticism is that the notes seem a little too well written for even a mildly retarded person. Also, I believe she may be a little too generous sometimes towards her male characters , giving them a compassion or understanding that in reality may be something more controlled and manipulative. I want to emphasize that these are small criticisms of a wonderful book. As I said at the begining, her writing is beautiful, and dense with emotional and intellectual meaning. At her best her writing is poetic, even Shakespearean. If you love great writing, then buy and read this book.

Gina Berriault's "The Lights Of Earth" is a wonderfully intimate novel which explores feelings of guilt, pain and betrayal in a woman novelist Ilona on the verge of losing a lover who's taken off to high places. Using beautifully lyrical prose, she insinuates and entices, then reels and draws you in. Ilona's sense of foreboding when she meets the hosts of the dinner party she attends with Claud foreshadows not so much her breakup with Martin but more significantly her discontinued relationship with her older semi-retarded brother Albert whom she had deliberately left behind. The feelings of guilt, pain and loss that these later chapters evoke are so real and true they moved me to tears. Berriault's genius lies in the economy, intimacy and emotional accuracy of her writing. I think Ilona realised at the end that the world isn't made of two kinds of people, those "blessed" and those not. Ilona's distress from Martin's departure is mirrored in Albert's hopeless pining for his sister to make contact and this is what gives the novel a balance and roundness that makes "The Lights Of Earth" such an excellent novel. I don't know if this is the place to discover Berriault. I do know however that I enjoyed it immensely and if the proof of the pudding isn't in the eating, where then lies it ?

I really love this book. I have the original smaller version from 1981, published by Chronicle Books. This first edition is featured in a separate section on Amazon with two reviews--and I'm shocked at the hostility of both reviewers, who seem to think there was and is no literary accomplishment in Los Angeles. The expanded third edition, as shown here, is much more appreciated, given the good reviews it has received. It's fascinating to read about talented people like Huxley, Thomas Mann, Jack London, Jack Kerouac, Somerset Maugham, etc....and how living and working in Los Angeles influenced their careers and personal lives. These bohemians-in-exile were free-thinkers, ahead of their time while living creative lives in and around Hollywood. Read this book if you're interested in the literary tradition of Los Angeles. You'll especially like it if you're an Aldous Huxley fan.

Lionel Rolfe's book is a delightful meandering journey through the past and present of LA literature. At first glimpse, it's not constructed along the lines of an argument. That's because it is not, by Rolfe's own admission, an academic treatise. But after a good read, one finds that a consistent message does come through. And argument or not, it's a great book to curl up with because it gives readers a chance to revel in the past.

As one of its most important themes, the book outlines several strains of the Bohemian movement as expressed in Los Angeles. Stressing that Bohemians came from a variety of political backgrounds, Rolfe nonetheless shows the radical strains informing their activities. He also laments that these days, there's not much going on that could be considered truly radical in LA literature, a loss he traces in part to the decline of the coffee house.

Literary LA also gives a geographical tour of many of the sites around the city which feature connections to past literary greats. Who knew that Monrovia and Pasadena housed some of America's greatest writers, let alone a small house off an alley in Hollywood where Jack London MAY have slept?

Maybe the best chapter is the one on Bukowski. Here Rolfe talks about spending time with the great poet, and here the book gets most gritty. And delicious.

If you have an interest in LA literature (and if Rolfe is right, more American literature than you think is Los Angeles-connected) you need to buy this book.

Lionel Rolfe's In Search of LITERARY L.A. is meticulous, catholic, personable and intimate. Refreshingly undetached. One senses the intelligence and love smiling behind each careful stitch of this work.
The book does not grind academic axes, shadow box with genres or `dominant traditions' (or grant money or department heads ad nauseum) all the while pretending scholarly aloofness. It does not eschew opinion. How could it since the author has as they say `been around' - as L.A. journalist, writer and bohemian - and knows of which he speaks. And, of which he speaks is
spoken with integrity, insight, and a touching charming boyish wonder. And compassion.
Rolfe reports, extrapolates, describes the indescribable fabric of a city without one - then or now - and this fabric's effects on an art much tied to, and determined by, time and place: Literature.
Literary L.A.'s third edition, like its previous ones, is written in a fierce journalistic style, with ample and eccentric quotes woven in, dates, names, places - whos whens wheres - about writers as different from each other as their respective reactions to Los Angeles. Love and Hate; Sickness and Death; Nightmare and Eden. (Macolm Lowry hated it but it was
the place he met and was delivered to B.C. by his beloved Marguerie, a native; Nathaniel West suffering on his back with prostate saw the hills burning from his stifling Aptos-Sed room and wrote one of the most powerful scenes of L.A. in Twentieth-century literature; Bukowski talked of Europe and Art as he stumbled the trashy wine-hazed alleyways of central L.A,)
The gang's all here - West, Lowry, Faulkner, Huxley, Bukowski and so many many others. (Had I not picked up this particular book I would not have become aware of a tapestry I barely knew existed.) The gang's here. And so is Lionel Rolfe who chronicles their love/hate relationship with the sprawling
Klieg-lit backalley that is Los Angeles.

By Paul Lappen, Dead Trees Review

Based on a series of newspaper pieces written in the late 1970s, this book profiles some of the people who made Los Angeles' bohemian culture in the 20th century. Many people think that San Francisco, with the Beat Generation, was the "center" of bohemian living, but the City of Angels had quite a thriving culture of its own.

It all grew out of the coffeehouse scene, where a constantly changing group of poets, literary gypsies, writers in exile (real or self-imposed) and others, would get together and weave pieces of the literary tapestry of Los Angeles. Rolfe profiles the famous, and not so famous, including Theodore Dreiser, Charles Bukowski, Henry Miller, John Steinbeck, Aldous Huxley and the Mann brothers (Thomas and Heinrich). There is also a piece on Upton Sinclair's 1934 campaign for Governor of California. Running on the Socialist Party ticket, he received 45 percent of the vote despite a major smear campaign against him.

As part of a musical family (the virtuoso violinist Yehudi Menuhin was an uncle), Rolfe grew up in a household that offered a place to go for musicians and other artists-in-exile. This book was not written as some piece of dry literary history, it was written by someone who was there and lived through that era, and has spent much of his life writing about it.

As a lifelong voracious reader, I very much appreciated Rolfe's putting a person and life to the names I have seen on book covers my whole life. Anyone with an interest in 20th century American literature will enjoy this book. I think I'll visit my local library and see how many of these authors are in the stacks. Meantime, this book is highly recommended.

This books has helped our students enormously! It serves as a guide for them in the learning proces as well as goes with them to the workplace along with the updates and gives them a real edge as a new employee in a law office setting. Some say their boss (the attorney) uses the guide too!

With this book we have saved hundreds, probably thousands of dollars in legal fees. It guides you (even if you have no legal background) through the process, form and necessary schedules needed for civil legal procedures and litigation.

Highly recommended!!

I have been teaching paralegal study courses since 1992, and have used a variety of other texts and resource material during those years. Litigation By The Numbers is a much better teaching tool than other publications previously available. In
fact, it is the best text currently on the market. The book is well organized allowing students, legal secretaries and paralegals to quickly reference forms and state procedures.
The chapters are thoughtfully organized and easy to understand. Each chapter is compact, allowing the reader to quickly find state forms and answers to procedural questions such as filing and service deadlines. Students and legal professionals will find the book to be a handy and quick resource for tasks most common to a law office.

I highly recommend Litigation By The Numbers to anyone who is involved in civil litigation in California. It has step-by-step instructions on how to take a case from filing all the way to enforcement of a judgment. There are numerous easy to understand illustrations. The book brings together the applicable Code of Civil Procedure, Rules of Court, and Judicial Council forms. It takes a very complex process and makes it simple and easy to follow. The book is well worth the price.

This review was published in the fall 2001 issue of _The Pacific Reader: An Asian Pacific North American Review of Books(..) Central to Bonus’ argument is that although Filipino Americans are the second largest Asian American group in the nation, and the largest in California, there is a common complaint that they are mostly invisible from mainstream history, scholarship, media and positions of power. (...)

Locating Filipino Americans by Rick Bonus is by definition an ethnographic study. Having said that, ethnographic studies carry with them the benefits and risks of undertaking such a project. As most ethnographic studies of this nature are concerned one is able to push forward an agenda without really stating one's agenda up front. In this case, however, bonus is clear that his agenda is plainly descriptive. He deftly moves to describe the Filipino American communities in both Los Angeles and San Diego. Bonus is also clear that he is working within a multi-disciplinary framework and he is examining the connection between identity and space. Bonus posits that particular spaces allow Filipino Americans to react to and oppose the ways in which the dominant discourse has throughout history and via hegemonic institutions have removed this group of agency, hence voice. Bonus zeroes in on three particular "spaces." [1] "Oriental" stores, [2] the community centers (where the pinoys practice "palengke" politics), and [3] through the media via the local newspapers.

Identifying the spaces and articulating our mechanisms of resistance Bonus does us a big favor. First, he allows to see what it is we are doing. In this sense he makes us more self-reflective. Second, through this articulation we can now be self-reflective of how we use these mechanisms of resistance to our advantage. Self-reflexivity then allows us to move forward more aware of our actions and move towards some form of positive change. Bonus is also good at showing us how we "invent" ourselves (although the fetish for liminality does not really allow us to pin stuff down in any definite way) and through a reverse sense of "Orientalism" (see his references to Edward Said) in that we tend to appropriate what is needed and exclude what is not useful in an effort to cope with the situation at hand. On the other hand, it seems like Bonus is flirting with the idea that migration becomes a homogenizing experience - which the next generation is losing touch with their roots and becoming more "american" or what they perceive "american" to be. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing but that it is part of an ever-changing landscape of self-identity. Bonus alludes to several really key things that he does not really follow through with. What is missing is the complexity within the community itself. Bonus begins to write about the 150+ sub-groupings under COPAO in San Diego and another 200+ sub-groupings in San Diego. He alludes to a historical development in terms of migration (with a link to colonialism) and intra-ethnic division and loyalty that undermines social as well as political unity. Consider this work then a seed to even further complexity and exploration. Locating Filipino Americans is unique in that Bonus is grounded in a theoretical framework that allows us to get a better understanding of the state of affairs.

As much as labels allude to a sense of clear-cut definitions, Filipino Americans are the second largest Asian-American group in America just behind the Chinese. The Filipino-American community should be grateful and use this book in an effort to get a better understanding and potential that is clearly self-evident. Bonus has done an important piece that is as informative and thought provoking as it is inspiring.

Miguel Llora

This review was published in the fall 2001 issue of _The Pacific Reader: An Asian Pacific North American Review of Books_.

Why do I feel such a deep sense of comfort when I am rummaging through dried fish, canned sardines and Spam at one of the many corner groceries along Jackson Street and Beacon Hill? What social function could "Filipino Time" (i.e., being perpetually late for meetings) serve for Filipino Americans? Or why is it that many times community meetings proceed like chaotic and politically-heated yelling matches?

Perhaps one of the more auspicious experiences of a reader is the time when something, whether a written or visual work, empowers one to see the everyday world freshly and with new eyes. Moreover, for someone like myself, who was a student of Asian American Studies, it is additionally gratifying to witness a new generation of Filipino American scholars making significant contributions to academia in such an original manner. Rick Bonus is currently an assistant professor of American Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington, and he obtained his Ph.D. in Communications at the University of California, San Diego. His first book, Locating Filipino Americans: Ethnicity & the Cultural Politics of Space, is a highly accessible ethnographic study that analyzes the seemingly mundane worlds of Filipino "Oriental" stores and strip malls, community newspapers and beauty pageants in Southern California, and uncovers a powerfully rich and complex network of community building and resistance to racialization by Filipino American women and men.

Central to Bonus' argument is that although Filipino Americans are the second largest Asian American group in the nation, and the largest in California, there is a common complaint that they are mostly invisible from mainstream history, scholarship, media and positions of power. This systematic form of exclusion on the basis of race and ethnicity has encouraged Filipino Americans "to respond to and resist invisibility, exploitation, silencing, and racial constructing, by history and by institutions, as well as a desire to claim a `space' within the rubric `American' on their own terms."

His analysis of these "spaces" in stores, community centers, newspapers and pageants shows Filipino Americans attempting to construct an identity that is both Filipino and American while interrogating it at the same time. This dynamic of resistance and interrogation is something that has historical roots in the Philippines' colonial history and a people's cultural attempts to flourish and define themselves despite oppression, categorization, and tremendous regional diversity. Bonus argues that these particular cultural practices directly challenge these forms of exclusion and invisibility while also reflecting an effort to claim a self-determined space in America.

In his study of these commercial establishments, Bonus combines oral interviews, multi-disciplinary theories, history and ethnographic fieldwork and provides sophisticated and thorough analyses of his findings. What is refreshing is not only the telling Taglish (i.e., a combination of Tagalog and English) responses by interviewees to his questions, but his scholarly commitment to the interviewees of the study. One can see that he understands the art of the interview because he is successful in having their rich voices and concerns speak for themselves. He preserves the excruciating details of the interviews so well that I can imagine them taking place before me - facial expressions, hand gestures and all.

Furthermore, I appreciated his conscious admission of his own location as an ethnographer in relation to the interviewees, and how his facility in Tagalog, his education and generational status opened certain doors to him that perhaps would not be open for other ethnographers. Bonus' scholarly eye roamed in these spaces being very much aware of his position as both a critical observer and a Filipino American, absorbing the meaningful details in his encounters with great openness, depth and reflection. Throughout the book, there are numerous instances where he lyrically describes the bustling in a community center before a big pageant, the cramped quarters of a small newspaper's offices and a reporter's passion to cover a story, or the noise and pungent smells of the market. Such descriptions capture a particular cultural spirit, setting the foreground for the poetic and political voices of the community members and their own views of what these spaces mean to them as individuals and as a collective.

Bonus' first book is an important contribution to interdisciplinary studies on the politics of race and space, and how identity is constructed and communities are enlivened on a daily basis. I don't think I will approach an Oriental store or participate in a meeting in the same manner anymore because this book has provided a sophisticated articulation of what such individual activities mean on a local, national and international scale. Now that this promising scholar is currently teaching at the University of Washington, I am very eager to see his research relate to Filipino Americans in the Pacific Northwest.

This review was published in the fall 2001 issue of _The Pacific Reader: An Asian Pacific North American Review of Books_.

Why do I feel such a deep sense of comfort when I am rummaging through dried fish, canned sardines and Spam at one of the many corner groceries along Jackson Street and Beacon Hill? What social function could "Filipino Time" (i.e., being perpetually late for meetings) serve for Filipino Americans? Or why is it that many times community meetings proceed like chaotic and politically-heated yelling matches?

Perhaps one of the more auspicious experiences of a reader is the time when something, whether a written or visual work, empowers one to see the everyday world freshly and with new eyes. Moreover, for someone like myself, who was a student of Asian American Studies, it is additionally gratifying to witness a new generation of Filipino American scholars making significant contributions to academia in such an original manner. Rick Bonus is currently an assistant professor of American Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington, and he obtained his Ph.D. in Communications at the University of California, San Diego. His first book, Locating Filipino Americans: Ethnicity & the Cultural Politics of Space, is a highly accessible ethnographic study that analyzes the seemingly mundane worlds of Filipino "Oriental" stores and strip malls, community newspapers and beauty pageants in Southern California, and uncovers a powerfully rich and complex network of community building and resistance to racialization by Filipino American women and men.

Central to Bonus' argument is that although Filipino Americans are the second largest Asian American group in the nation, and the largest in California, there is a common complaint that they are mostly invisible from mainstream history, scholarship, media and positions of power. This systematic form of exclusion on the basis of race and ethnicity has encouraged Filipino Americans "to respond to and resist invisibility, exploitation, silencing, and racial constructing, by history and by institutions, as well as a desire to claim a `space' within the rubric `American' on their own terms."

His analysis of these "spaces" in stores, community centers, newspapers and pageants shows Filipino Americans attempting to construct an identity that is both Filipino and American while interrogating it at the same time. This dynamic of resistance and interrogation is something that has historical roots in the Philippines' colonial history and a people's cultural attempts to flourish and define themselves despite oppression, categorization, and tremendous regional diversity. Bonus argues that these particular cultural practices directly challenge these forms of exclusion and invisibility while also reflecting an effort to claim a self-determined space in America.

In his study of these commercial establishments, Bonus combines oral interviews, multi-disciplinary theories, history and ethnographic fieldwork and provides sophisticated and thorough analyses of his findings. What is refreshing is not only the telling Taglish (i.e., a combination of Tagalog and English) responses by interviewees to his questions, but his scholarly commitment to the interviewees of the study. One can see that he understands the art of the interview because he is successful in having their rich voices and concerns speak for themselves. He preserves the excruciating details of the interviews so well that I can imagine them taking place before me - facial expressions, hand gestures and all.

Furthermore, I appreciated his conscious admission of his own location as an ethnographer in relation to the interviewees, and how his facility in Tagalog, his education and generational status opened certain doors to him that perhaps would not be open for other ethnographers. Bonus' scholarly eye roamed in these spaces being very much aware of his position as both a critical observer and a Filipino American, absorbing the meaningful details in his encounters with great openness, depth and reflection. Throughout the book, there are numerous instances where he lyrically describes the bustling in a community center before a big pageant, the cramped quarters of a small newspaper's offices and a reporter's passion to cover a story, or the noise and pungent smells of the market. Such descriptions capture a particular cultural spirit, setting the foreground for the poetic and political voices of the community members and their own views of what these spaces mean to them as individuals and as a collective.

Bonus' first book is an important contribution to interdisciplinary studies on the politics of race and space, and how identity is constructed and communities are enlivened on a daily basis. I don't think I will approach an Oriental store or participate in a meeting in the same manner anymore because this book has provided a sophisticated articulation of what such individual activities mean on a local, national and international scale. Now that this promising scholar is currently teaching at the University of Washington, I am very eager to see his research relate to Filipino Americans in the Pacific Northwest.

There's a sea-horse race in this book. Not just a sea-horse race, but a sea-horse race inside a giant diamond-shaped tank of oxygenated fluid that also holds a beautiful submerged woman dancing and creating music with the movement of her locks of hair, sometimes enhancing the gyration of her head with sudden tosses and jostles of her hips. There's not only that, but several automaton devices that use flotation and buoyancy to drive their mechanic parts and act out various historical and mythological scenes. Like Voltaire suddenly doubting his atheistic doctrines, or Atlas kicking a celestial object, or Pilate being branded on the forehead.

All of that takes place inside the gigantic diamond-like tank of oxygenated fluid. A very lustrous fluid.

By the way, the English translation sometimes calls the sea-horses "hippocampi." Don't be confused: in context, it means sea-horses. It's not talking about parts of a brain. You might be thinking, "well there's no possible room for confusion there!", but au contraire. Because inside the tank is also a floating head/face of Danton, composed exclusively of the preserved nerves and musculuture, without any bones or skin. And re-animated with expertly applied electrical currents, courtesy of Canterel and his cat.

And they're not just any sea-horses. They're sea-horses equipped with "setons" attached to a shining golden sphere that they themselves created by kneading together small globulets of golden wine that Canterel pours into the tank and lets float down to them.

The entire episode I'm talking about took place long after the book had already left my jaw on the floor. In short: read it. You know that "dream-like" quality that hyped books supposedly possess? Say, like "Amnesia Moon"? Well Raymond Roussel accomplishes all that without any narrative tricks, without any deception, without any ill-defined or sensationally blurred "boundaries between dream and reality" or any of that nonsense. Roussel accomplishes his feats the old fashioned way: with elbow grease, and imagination. He accomplishes it by giving everything to you, not hiding things from you.

Who is the Canterel I mentioned above? Canterel-- a name that one should never utter aloud except on bended knee-- has the wealth and quirk of Willy Wonka, combined with the wealth and ingenuity of Bruce Wayne. Which makes for a very rich, very marvelous fellow. His estate and private collection puts both of those men's assets to shame, quite extravagantly.

As you already know, the book is a narrated trip through some of Canterel's exhibits. He aims to please, though. So don't think that the book will lack character, plot, or suspense just because it's a sort of museum-tour. There's stories within stories that explain the exhibits. And they have everything that archetypically good "stories" have, and more: love, betrayal, forgiveness, fantastic magnanimity, loss, disgrace, lust, vindication. I was breathless waiting for the resolutions of certain tales, practically jumping off my reading-bench to cheer for the characters, or otherwise immobilized by the revelations and vicissitudes.

Did I mention that nerves/musculuture of Danton's head are set into physiological motor motion by an electric current provided by a swimming cat whose hairless body acts as a battery after eating a specially-designed pill and is trained to stick its head into a long metal hat-like cone which becomes its electrode terminus?

And it's all described soberly, no tricks. By the way, Roussel (though there's a chance it's the translators doing, since I haven't and couldn't read the original French) tells his stories, tells the motivations and actions of characters, with a very skillful use of words, using strong descriptive verbs and nouns. The sentences held together with a unique power. Many times I took great pleasure in re-reading certain sentences, because they were said so absolutely perfectly. Of course, that should be the hallmark of a professional writer, but I don't find it too often.

So anyway you'll feel like you're there. You won't even have any disbelief to suspend. At certain points, like a particular early exhibit that I won't name, I said to myself, "There's no going back, this is too fantastic, there's no POSSIBLE EXPLANATION of this, Roussel has crossed the line, this is uncanny and totally unrecoverable at this point, I feel exploited!," and I kept reading, kept reading-kept reading, "by god, no, by GOD HE'S DONE IT!, he's doing it, by god Canterel, Roussel, you've done it, my good holy god unbeliEVABLE!!! Whew. Wow." I had to close the book for a minute and lean against a fence, nodding my head uncontrollably. When you close this book and put it on your shelf when done, you'll keep suspecting that it's about to burst open and spill out its contents all over your room, neighborhood, and city-- and you'll feel like an angry god for actually having the ability to close the book and contain it.

Book will take your breath away. If not check your pulse. Or, try something else. Bye.

I used to have so much fun reading this book. I remember I miraculously found a copy in some book shop on the far southside of Chicago for $8. One night I was drinking with some classmates shortly after class and I made the mistake of lending this irreplacable book to one of them, which of course the fool never returned nor probably ever read or if he did appreciated. May every curse be piled upon your perfidious little name, punk, which it is a blessing I can't remember it was so long ago.
I remember the first time I read Impressions of Africa, right after graduating high school. I was a naive young admirer of Duchamp at the time, and I kept seeing these references to Roussel, and the description of Impressions made it sound like a travel book. Had I known him then I might have expected something like a French William Cobbett. Ha! I don't think I realized something definitely strange was going on in those pages until I reached the part with the father and his sons echoing their voices off of each other's chests with their shirts being stuck to their skin "by some sticky substance", -- the word "substance" somehow set me laughing for a solid twenty, thirty minutes, and all the hilarity, the absurdity of the Incomporables' show that had gone on before were finally apparent to me. I have been a lover of Roussel ever since; the only casualty was my perspective of Duchamp's accomplishment, which is as Duchamp himself admitted greatly indebted to Roussel's.
Locus Solus is the book Roussel wrote after Impressions and the two make a pair unlike any other in literature. Locus is presided over by Martial Canteral, a figure right out of Jules Verne, who Roussel once said was a name that should not be spoken aloud "except on bended knee," -- hm, yes -- Canterel is a famous scientist and inventor, and the book is set at his estate where a group of distinguished figures have been invited to a tour of guided by none other than its owner and director. The book follows the tour as one of the eyewitnesses, and the sights along the way are so bizarre, the machinery so complex and beyond any reasonable utility, it quite defies any attempt to describe the effect here. One impression I think that merits a word or two is the apparent lack of emotion in the book. I would say that there is a great amount of sadness and tragedy in the book that adds a kind of under-layer parallel to the encoded sentences of Roussel's method. The vitallium episode, in which Canterel invents a "certain chemical" that makes the bodies of the dead become animate again (but are still dead) has a very particular strain of anguish and loss inherent in its concept. And then there is also the weariness of the visionary experienced by the reader, the author, and the characters being audience to so many impossibilities one after the other piled up so high there is an actual physical exhaustion after the conclusion. And then of course there is also the tragedy of the author himself, who had both novels lavishly adapted for the theater, and created two of the most colossal failures in the history of drama, causing riots and scandal at the showings and humiliation to the author. He ended up a pitiful man, addicted to drugs and having spent all his fortune, he killed himself in his forties with a great dream "of a glory that shall outshine that of Victor Hugo or Napoleon."
This is not a book for everyone, perhaps even for very few. However there is no good reason these two books are out of print. It is long past time they are reprinted and Roussel be given the honor he deserves.

i read this book when i was about 13 and i have been wanting to read it again for 17 years. i remember it only vaguely, but i know it was good. please mister publisher, print it again.

Roussel's novels are giant puzzles, in which he describes images and stories that have a unique carnival logic. Punning relationships generate textual rebuses (rebi?), in a way that makes the reader aware of the book as a mechanism, but Roussel gives too few clues to really understand it. In Locus Solus, Roussel gives a tour of the museum garden of an eccentric millionaire, who, like Roussel himself, collects with a frenetic and psychedelic rationalism. Please, Riverrun Press, reprint this book.

This is an up-to-date, concise, bitingly humourous, and thorough L.A. guide for anyone with kids. The L.A. Zoo piece was hysterical and while I didn't agree with the Getty center piece (I loved it with my 3 year old daughter) the book is very helpful for all los angelian residents and visitors with kids in the stroller years. Highly recommeneded!

This book goes beyond the hype most other gudieboks engage in. It is a practical, insightful book for anyone, parent, nanny or auntie, who gets out and about with small children.

Brutally honest and highly effective, it tells you exactly what you need to know and not a bunch of hype. Easy to use and read, it's also a fun read with biting satire and good old common sense.

Living in Los Angeles, I have always had out of town guests that have wanted me to show them the sites. It was easy before my sister visited with her three children. I was at a loss of where to take them. Toddlers are not the night club crowd. I searched book stores everywhere and found a handful of travel guides with single chapters on "things to do with kids in Los Angeles". Despite the lack of info, we still managed to show my neice and nephews a good time.

A couple of years later and I had my own toddler. Thinking back to the difficulty that I had with my sister's kids, I went back to the bookstore hoping that there were better books out there. I found a lot. But out of all the new titles, Los Angeles by Stroller was absolutely the best.

This book is wonderful, whether you call Los Angeles your home, or whether your visiting for only a few days, Shelley-Anne's "five strollor" grading scale makes it extremely easy to find the type of outing you want. The best part about it is that she has already done all the work for you, and I have agreed with her every single time.

You can search outings alphabetically, by category or type of outing, or by area of Los Angeles County. The only thing that I would add is a the ability to search by grading scale. For quick reference I have gone into the index and penned in how many strollers, (0-5) she graded each place. This has made if very easy for me to try to take my son to all the places Shelley-Anne thinks are "the best."

I love this book, I recommend it to everyone with a stroller.

I'm expecting twins this fall & although the information in this book will serve me well in a couple of years, it's less directed for pre-toddler stroller activities. This book is great for when your children are approximately 1 ½ - 2 years old. I will use this book as my "Toddler Guide Bible" when they are a bit older.