Washington Books

Hubertie Pruyn Hamlin was born into an influential Dutch family in Albany, New York near the turn of the century. Her first hand account both of her priviledged life and the dynamics of her family's influence in Upstate New York affairs is absorbing.

For homeschoolers using the Charlotte Mason method, this book offers an invaluable first hand glimpse into New York State history.

Highly recommended!

I truly loved this book. I am a twelve year old girl who on my way home from camp last summer stayed in a hotel called the Desmond in Albany, NY. In the gift shop, I picked it up and my mom bought it for me. I have read all 370 something pages and it is really hard to put down. It tells of "Bertie" and her childhood. She associates Lent with her cousin's birthday because her cousin is now older. I felt the grief she felt in losing her father, for last Spring, the same thing happened to me. She tells of being so happy that she finally got a dress that was red, and not mourning colors. You wish that you had a brother as nice and kind as to buy you treats for good report cards as Jack was. You see the influence Hattie and Jack had on her life. Gosh, it seems like your'e just there

Eisenberg's prose is poignant and percise. She cuts through the circumstance and gets right to the heart of what it really feels like to be alive. The stories are vivid, easy to read, touching and above all real. In particular Mermaids, The Girl Who Left Her Sock on the Floor, and Rosie Gets a Soul hit a resonant chord within me. I finished the book the night I bought it, and had re-read half of it by morning. One of the most satisfying purchases I've made in years.

Just when I was sure Deborah Eisenberg's short stories couldn't get any better than the genius found in her earlier collections, I read this perfect book of short stories. Her use of dialogue is more innovative than any I've seen in contemporary writers and the depths of her intelligence and sentiment are staggering. I would reccomend this book to anyone and everyone. Some of the stories demand rereading and all are classics of contemporary literature.

In laughs, this book has both quantity and quality. Ver didn't spare even a single paragraph from his uniquely cynical sense of humor. He also understands that the funniest stories plausibly combine human avarice and stupidity in a way that makes us feel confident in our own superior wisdom. To this end Ver spawned a very elaborate alternate history from a single common blunder: A general (George Washington) accepted the crown which his troops offered to him. Because of this America became a third-world rathole ruled by a misreable line of despots and demagogues. Their Machiavellian plots are a comedy of errors, but the people are a herd of sheep who refuse to see how their leaders manipulate them. They gladly abandon prosperity and happiness in order to advance the scams of a few craven, petulant chimps. We laugh because this happens all the time, but we Americans love freedom and we're too smart to be tricked into giving it up- aren't we?

i had to read this book for year 8 english class. our teacher, mister cambell, usually gives us boring hifalutin stuff to read, like "grapes of rath" or "to kill a mockinbird", so i must say i expected the worst. but this book was really hilarius and great, i love it! its about a prince called prince johnny, exept this prince isnt from one of those snotty european countries like england, hes the prince of the U.S.A! thru some amazing coincidense america became a kingdom and now they have a big palace in philadelphia with lots of servants and guards and everything, its amazing! there are also some evil religious fanatics called enochians who want to distroy america, they are really nasty and remind me of dr laura. johnny sets out on a crusade to blow them to kingdom come and show them whos the boss. i recomend this book to everyone who likes funny parodees my mom is calling me to dinner i have to go now

This brief essay, completed by professor Róheim just before his death in 1953, is a good source of information about Hungarian and Vogul material, since there are lengthy transcription from ancient Latin, Russian and Hungarian documents, not avaiable otherwise. (Róheim sustains that the Hungarians are identical in origin with the Vogul in Western Siberia).

However, the analysis of all these material, based on Freud's psychoanalysis, isn't very memorable. Indeed, it is shalow and without interest.

The book has 6 chapters:

I. Hungarian myth and Hungarian history, p. 1
II. The Hungarian origin myth, p. 11
III. The meaning of world-surveyor-man, p. 30
IV. North American parallels of Vogul themes, p. 38
V. Totemism and shamanism, p. 48
VI. Individual "double" - clan "double" - national god, p. 51

After the sixth chapter (p. 69), Róheim summarizes his conclusions:

1. Fragments of ancient Ungric mythology survive under the guise of history in the Hungarian Medieval Chronicles;
2. All these fragments are totemic origins myths;
3. The mythology of the doe, of the Milky Way, and the returning hero god who was also the chief of the migrating birds was the common property of the Hungarian and Vogul tribes;
4. A peculiar feature of the exogamous two-class system of the these tribes was the identity in name of one moiety and the tribe as a whole;
5. Dual-hero myths in this area frequently represent two tribes, or nations, or moieties;
6. The Magyars originate from the Mós moiety of the Vogul;
7. The representative hero of the Mós moiety is Gander-Chief or World-Surveyor-Man, and he is probably identical with the God of the Hungarians;
8. Analysis of the Vogul Gander-Chief reveals that myths are composed of two elements: a) the son in the Oedipus complex, and b) the flight and return of the soul, and the dream origin of the shamanistic flight myths;
9. Ethnic stratification of Gander-Chief: The relation of the Ungric shaman and the North American culture hero;
10. Dream origin of the myhts of the Mylky Way with the primal scene as myth motivation.

(86 pp.)

Geza Roheim lifts Hungarian and related cultures' mythology from its hiding place, and brings it to light in an academic paper bound as "Hungarian and Vogul Mythology (American Ethnological Society Monographs, No 23)." His approach is scientific and methodical, and his arguments hold throughout.

This hard to find volume, as short as it is, is a valuable research tool for any student of Hungarian literature. Early Hungarian literature was not recorded, and so their mythology is difficult to pinpoint. Unlike the Greeks, and even the North American Indianns are abound in material to draw from, but Hungarian mythology is fragmented.

This isn't an anthology, but a connecting of the dots, how similar Hungarian mythology is to Finnish and others, but also how the archetypes of story are just as present as they are in other cultures. It is a mixture of folklore, liguistics and anthropolgy, with occasional looks at psychoanalysis.

Roheim cites as he can from the myths. He explains the symbols, themes and origins. His research is multilingual, as seen in his bibliography. German, Finnish, Hungarian and English sources are listed.

An excellent feature is his appendices of Uralic, Atltaic, and Paleo-Siberuian Peoples and Languages; The Hungarian Chronicles [discusses four early historical texts]; and Ugric Ethnic Names. These each shed light on Roheim's thesis, and

There are a few good texts out there reviewing and analyzing Hungarian literature after 1600, but few take on the task Roheim has.

I fully recommend "Hungarian and Vogul Mythology (American Ethnological Society Monographs, No 23)" by Geza Roheim.

Anthony Trendl
editor, HungarianBookstore.com

Introduction: Alison Lurie, a professor at Cornell University wrote the preface. She sums up a hundred years of American Fairy Tales and introduces the stories in two pages.

Organization: There is a table of contents and the stories appear to be arranged chronologically. The illustrations by Michael McCurdy are simple black and white ink drawing and scratch boards that remind me of illustrations I saw in hundred year old periodicals.

The stories themselves: The stories vary as much as the authors. Some, like Feathertop, are quite literary. Here is an example sentence. "'Poor fellow!' quothe Mother Rigby, with a rueful glance at the relics of her ill-fated contrivance." As written, these stories may be better read than told. The stories are also fairly long so a teller might need to trim them.

Source Notes: Each story starts with a lengthy source note that includes some critique and history. The Afterword by Neil Phillip is long, detailed, and scholarly. Phillip states that he chose to look at literary tales with a named author for this collection. He critiques and puts the stories into their historical framework. He looks at the broad changes seen in the hundred years that he covers.

Final Thoughts: This is a very scholarly look at American fairy tales. Sadly, most Americans are probably not familiar with more than one or two of these stories. This book would make an excellent text book for a high school or college English class and should be required reading.
Karen Woodworth-Roman

Just having returned from 18 days in the UK two of those spent in jet and bus travel and eight more getting the most out of an eight day Brit Rail pass that we could I must say that even though I have stopped running I feel like I am still running in place. That is how I get some of my best ideas. Those of you who know me know that I sort hang at the margins of the formal academic study of literature. I do this because language and literature study are really sort games which you have to learn the vocabulary (lexicon) if I were presenting at a conference or writing for blue noses.

Well one of the hottest games now in the world of literature is the study of the postcolonial literature of the former European colonies, South Africa, Algeria, Vietnam, or what ever. If you were a young academic then it would be well to focus your study in this area. This is especially true if you want work in something other than the house keeping and food service industries as your ultimate career goal.

That got me thinking as I re-read and loved Rip Van Wrinkle by Washington Irving in this wonderful collection that I was reading perhaps the archetypal work of post colonial literature, old henpecked Rip (a subject of George III), has a few beers with some very serious 120 year old Dutchman as he falls in with them in their the secret Hudson River Valley meeting place.

Twenty years later he wakes up to find he is an American Citizen. I don't but know for sure but, I bet a lot of post colonials feel like that They share with Rip one very large hangover. Well I could go on and play the game further but I think you have the idea, and as a dear friend of mine once said sometimes Philip a little of something goes a long way. So let me get back to this wonderful book , as I urge you to add it to your collections

American Fairy Tales is a collection has something for everyone .It is a collection of American tales, which really serves three publics. First of course the adolescent reader who may miss or only seen fragments of these wonderful stories. Next the eternal Adolescent likes my self at age 55 who loves a good story. It also serves any serious students of children's literature, this medley of stories progresses chronologically across a century, from Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle" to Carl Sandburg's "How They Broke Away to Go to the Rootabaga Country." From the Maleficent Witch, Mother Rigby, in Hawthorne's "Feathertop" to the ethereal fairy in "The Lad and Luck's House," Book List had some good things to say about it "A patriotic-looking jacket with blue stars and red stripes adorns this collection of 12 stories drawn from an emergent American literary tradition that includes such characters as bee-men, goose-girls, kings, fairies, and wizards." Editor Neil Philip provides an introductory essay about the "American fairy" tale" and briefly introduces each selection.

I loved the variety of stories and the collection of famous writers, including Hawthorne, Sandburg, Alcott, and Baum. McCurdy's woodcut illustrations give the stories a sense of the past yet still allow plenty of room for fantasy, woodcuts have a haunting timeless look about them. Theses stories are made to read aloud. But it must remembered that because of the time they were written but a few contain language or allusions that now seem politically incorrect. But we must be careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. American Fairy Tales is a beautifully Illustrated book you may have to work a bit to find it.

Philip Kaveny, Reviewer

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Seeing important historical original documents that you would otherwise have to go to Washington, DC to see (if on display), was a delight. My teenage son also enjoyed seeing and reading about the documents in this book. Highly recommended for people interested in historical archived documents.

Wonderful vignettes of American history are illustrated in this book with brief descriptions and a picture of the archival document around which the story is built.

It's all here from the Louisiana Purchase to the Emancipation Proclamation to the telegram notifying FDR of the raid on Pearl Harbor to a photo of Neil Armstrong on the moon to the infamous picture of Nixon and Elvis (the US Archives most requested document I understand).

The format is a document and description to a page. This is a great book to flip through or to introduce the young teen reader to interesting snippets of US history.

I really love Lone Pine field guides. Each book has its own style, but every Lone Pine guide I've read, including this one, has more than just identification tools - they actually teach you about the species they describe. That being said, the keys included in this book are very helpful - no matter how great the pictures, salamanders still confuse me. However, the key included makes it easy to identify a salamander (assuming you get more than a fleeting glance) or frog. Another hit for Lone Pine.

No scaley 'ol reptiles here! Just everything and more that you frog and salamander hobbyists want to know. Great quality color photos throughout, and book is organized so it is easily referred to again and again. I was especially impressed with the identification keys, photos and illustrations of egg, tadpole and juvenile (as well as adult) forms of most species.
Much of the information is applicable to the rest of the United States. This book just knocked my socks off--and I collect books on amphibians!

This was one of my favorite all-time books. I purchased one as a gift for my sister also. I love to read about other cultures, and this was an enjoyable read.

I really enjoyed reading this book - even though I will probably never try the recipes. I read the whole book through in one sitting (although, to be truthful, it's a small book.) Besides being an interesting memoir of the author's childhood in Egypt during WWII, in a wealthy Jewish family, it's also an honest account of her alienation from her mother, which really spoke to me. The author is a good writer, which makes the book easy and rewarding to read.

I bought this book from the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

I have been fascinated with Native American tribes in South American for most of my life, particularly Panama and Colombia. This book is so thorough in expressing all aspects of life for the Kuna (or Cuna) that I would almost say this is the only book you would need to learn about the Kuna. It truly is incredible in its information as well as its photographs. It is VERY well done! Bravo Senorita Salvador! Espero ver mas libros de usted!

I agree that this book is an authentic documentation of one of the world's most fascinating group of Indians.

Anyone who is interested in having a well rounded collection of books of African Art should really try to track this wonderful "Handbook" down! It is really more than a handbook. It is the work of the late Dr. Paul Gebauer, who lived in Cameroon, and was a major collector of it's art. Dr Gebaur just doesn't give you a book of pictures. He Knew the artists and saw the actual pieces used in various ceremonies. His passion leaps off the page. The pieces in this book are from his collection, and are considered to be some of the finest examples of Cameroon Art. Of particular interest was the combining of traditional artistic styles with modern applications, such as the entrance doors to Nkwen Chapel. This is a splendid book!

A superb reference book for collectors, galleries, and africanists scholars for african tribal art of Cameroon ! http://home.att.ne.jp/red/koroli