Bernard Books

Faustus in Pasquack: On-the-Hudson by B. B. Rotmil is an interesting novel exploring the questionable level of contemporary morals in America. While the plot bears an eerie resemblance to a certain publicized scandal between an American president and a White House intern, the author's story outline was in fact established in detail well before that infamous and highly publicized scandal became common news fodder. Faustus In Pasquack is recommended for its wry look at the fallacies and foibles of human nature.

A fantastic look at retriever training at the end of the 19th century. This book is only available from Kevin Fitz-Gerald as an ebook reproduction. This is a digital ebook reproduction of FETCH AND CARRY, the landmark book on retriever training, written in 1894 by B. Waters, and published in 1895 by Forest and Stream. This is a high-quality digital book in two formats on one CD-ROM; Adobe PDF ebook and MP3 audio. In the PDF version, the entire book is included; from the front cover to the last page, every word and every picture has been painstakingly reproduced in beautiful digital detail. In the MP3 version, the text from each chapter is read using the latest AT&T Natural Voices® technology. Download it to your iPod or other MP3 player and listen on the road, in the airport, while you are running, or wherever you have some time to spare, or just listen on the computer.

The year was 1895...
...Grover Cleveland was President
...Custer and his men had been wiped out at the Little Big Horn a mere 19 years earlier
...The Wright brothers were still eight years away from their historic first flight
...The Labrador and Golden retriever breeds did not exist in the 44 states that comprised the United States of America
...Women could not vote
...The American Kennel Club was ten years old
...Babe Ruth was born
...Frederick Douglass, American ex-slave and author, died
...Buckminster Fuller, American architect, was born
...The first professional football game was played in Latrobe, Pennsylvania
...Booker T. Washington delivered the Atlanta Compromise Speech
...George B. Selden was granted the first U.S. patent for an automobile
...Wilhelm Röntgen discovered a type of radiation later known as X-rays
...Forest and Stream published FETCH AND CARRY, the first retriever training book ever written!

One hundred eleven years after it was first published, FETCH AND CARRY is not an easy book to find, and surviving copies are frequently in poor condition. For the retriever trainer, whether pro or amateur, the book is an absolute treasure. It was the first book ever published specifically dealing with training retrievers. It's all here: marking, memory, force-fetching, blind retrieves using hand signals, field trials, and more. This milestone book is now available and accessible to all retriever enthusiasts on computer CD-ROM. FETCH AND CARRY is a must for every retriever trainers library. You can see more information at home dot windstream dot net forward slash krfitz

Bernard Yack's "Fetishism of Modernities" is one of my absolute favourits when it comes to literature on multiple modernities and the like. Intelligent, clear, and incisive, Yack's book makes a powerful argument for not treating "modernity" as a totalizing conception - not only there are as many modernities as "as there are understandings about what is most distinctive about modern life and experience", but to conceive of modernity as a coherent and integrated whole blinds us of "what is most unexpected, incongruous, and just plain interesting in our experience". This flawed strategy is what Yack, following Marx's celebrated "fetishism of commodities", calls "fetishism of modernities". Yack's undertaking is simply to provide a way out of this problem, something he does with unparalleled grace and persuasiveness. In short, if you want a well-argued, highly original, and fresh look on what Charles Taylor has called "the number one problem of modern social science", then Yack's "Fetishism of Modernities" is a must buy book!

This and its predecessors are books for all seasons about a man for all seasons. We all owe our lives to him. It is a book for the hard working and the pampered, for nations that cut funds for their Veterans Administrations like the United States has almost continually done, and for parents who wonder how much more to pamper their little darlings so that they will be loved as fathers and mothers. Montgomery beat the best that Hitler could send against him and us, and he did the same wherever he was sent. His expertise was strategy, not politics, not taking advantage of interns or skipping out on his wife. We need a few more like him.

Did you know that Beau Bridges appeared in a film with Robert Mitchum when he was a kid? Did you know that Kevin Costner starred in a B-grade sex romp when he was barely out of his teens? Neither did I until I read this fascinating book that digs up the first time some actors were in a movie. You'll see why some of the actors don't want audiences to remember that they were involved in some of these projects, as well.

The issues examined in the short stories and novellas that make up the two-book set of Five Card Draw range from high-society fatuousness ("Beagle Tea") to criminal mental sickness ("The Artist"). In between, the spectrum includes science fiction/metaphor ("The Cat's Messiah") and detective/adventure ("Drew Danger"). These are the works of a writer who's not afraid to be brutally honest and to probe deep hurts and dark urges. Like a smorgasbord, the fare of these two books is wide and varied, and you're apt to find something you like. My personal favorite is "Beagle Tea," in Volume II, because it comes so obviously from Chamberlain's own experiences as a child of a father who struggled to be socially significant and a mother who came from New York's socially elite stock.
I must say, in the spirit of full disclosure, that I knew Chamberlain 40 years ago when he began realizing he wanted to be a writer, and our friendship was rekindled only a few years ago after being out of touch for several decades. In the years we were lost to one another, he worked on communications equipment for oil companies in the Gulf of Mexico, he raised a family, lost a wife to cancer, had an unfortunate and brief second marriage and found a soul mate in Barbara Jean. What impressed me immensely upon our reacquaintance was that in the decades we were out of touch, Chamberlain held fast to his writing - novels, short stories and some highly thoughtful essays. In recent years, he has collected and published his vast output (Phoenix Flower, Don't Look At Girls Who Drive Volvo Station Wagons). The Five Card Draw set is a continuation of his prodigious writing life.
Charles Schultz, the creator of "Peanuts," once remarked that if you read his comic strip for a few weeks or months, you would know everything there is to know about Charles Schultz. If you read the Five Card Draw series, plus Don't Look At Girls, you will know everything there is to know about B.P. Chamberlain. And he is worth knowing.

The issues examined in the short stories and novellas that make up the two-book set of Five Card Draw range from high-society fatuousness ("Beagle Tea") to criminal mental sickness ("The Artist"). In between, the spectrum includes science fiction/metaphor ("The Cat's Messiah") and detective/adventure ("Drew Danger"). These are the works of a writer who's not afraid to be brutally honest and to probe deep hurts and dark urges. Like a smorgasbord, the fare of these two books is wide and varied, and you're apt to find something you like. My personal favorite is "Beagle Tea," in Volume II, because it comes so obviously from Chamberlain's own experiences as a child of a father who struggled to be socially significant and a mother who came from New York's socially elite stock.
I must say, in the spirit of full disclosure, that I knew Chamberlain 40 years ago when he began realizing he wanted to be a writer, and our friendship was rekindled only a few years ago after being out of touch for several decades. In the years we were lost to one another, he worked on communications equipment for oil companies in the Gulf of Mexico, he raised a family, lost a wife to cancer, had an unfortunate and brief second marriage and found a soul mate in Barbara Jean. What impressed me immensely upon our reacquaintance was that in the decades we were out of touch, Chamberlain held fast to his writing - novels, short stories and some highly thoughtful essays. In recent years, he has collected and published his vast output (Phoenix Flower, Don't Look At Girls Who Drive Volvo Station Wagons). The Five Card Draw set is a continuation of his prodigious writing life.
Charles Schultz, the creator of "Peanuts," once remarked that if you read his comic strip for a few weeks or months, you would know everything there is to know about Charles Schultz. If you read the Five Card Draw series, plus Don't Look At Girls, you will know everything there is to know about B.P. Chamberlain. And he is worth knowing.

This is a great book! The author is the same person who wrote the Foundations of Mysticism and the Growth of Mysticism. The subject of mysticism tends to produce a lot of mediocre writing--many people think that as long as they are spiritual people, they naturally understand what every other mystic is writing about and they can just write whatever comes to their mind, without any attention to detail or history. McGinn's approach is more historical and scholarly--he treats each mystic as a distinctive person with his/her own message and special gifts. But he also manages to give a sense of the spirit that unites them all. There really is no other book of its kind out there. It's a book that can be read for inspiration and for scholarly insight. I enjoyed it so much I read it straight through, but if you don't want to read it from cover to cover, you can also use it as a wonderful reference work--I recommend it to my students all the time as a way for them to get a completely reliable picture of important figures in the field, in an interesting and readable way. In short, no matter who you are, you'll love this book.

This is a textbook for one of those "boring" junior college courses on planning your life and marriage. Funny thing is, it's also a fantastic wealth of advice and homey insights most of us desperately need. Centers on finances in marriage, always a problem area, but plenty of other good stuff. I think with the right literary agent and a lean rewrite, this would be a bestseller. Most Americans should take Prof. Poduska's course.

Knight's "Forensic Pathology" (2nd ed) is now the standard text in the subject in English. Popular in Europe, USA and Australasia, it has now become the "Bible" of forensic medicine elsewhere, especially Japan. Based on forty-three years of hands'on experience, it is notable for its practicality and caution in avoiding over-interpretation, the primary sin of many pathologists.