Butler Books

I picked up this book to do a little background research on the movement of Food Not Bombs, so that I could set up my own Bikes not Bombs organization. So what I was looking for was a lot of core philosophies and history of Food Not Bombs.
Anyway, enough about me...since what you really want to know about is the book, right?
Well what I found was a manual for starting your own organization complete with recipes and advice on what to do to get it all started. This would be really helpful if that's what you were looking for, for me not so much.
The history and tales of the organizers tended to really focus on the clashes with police, which I found pretty disappointing. I'm really not much of a protestor or celebrator of clashes like that, and although I understand it played a role in the history of the movement it seemed brutally overemphasized. It was to the point where it almost seemed more clebrated than the greater cause, to feed the hungry...not elevate themselves to martyrdom beause they got arrested making miso soup.
There are some goodies in here, but in general I was disappointed with the focus the book took. After reading the forward by Howard Zinn I was expecting a heapload more than I ended up with.
I came from a different angle than most, so take that into consideration. If you are about to set up your own Food Not Bombs organization or enjoy war-stories of elevating your cause because of clashes with riot police this book is the ticket for you.

As for me it left a disappointing taste in my mouth.

This is an excellent book, detailing this group (Food Not Bombs, which grew from a small anti-nuke collective into a decentralised international organization, with autonomous chapters throughout the world. This book is an indispensable resource for challenging capitalism, through the direct redistribution of food. Includes stories of specific actions, recipes, and clip art. Try to find this book through a small independent bookstore, not a ultra capitalistic dot-com. Don't buy into consumerism, get involved! "The Revolution Will Be Catered!"

I thought this book would be a dry recital of facts. I thought, what could be more boring than the story of editing stories for a small city paper? Instead I got an indepth look at the vibrant personalities that shaped a newspaper -- including some very interesting personal stories about the editors, publishers, and reporters for the news that I'm not sure we should be reading. All in all a great book.

"From Butler to Buffett" is a must read for anyone interested in the ownership style of billionaire Warren E. Buffett or for serious students of American journalism.

Long-time Buffalo News Editor Murray B. Light tells the story of how he guided this hugely successful regional newspaper into the modern era from the age of copy boys, manual typewriters and telegraph editors with green visors.

With the help of Buffett and his close friend publisher Stanford Lipsey, Light engineered the transformation of Buffalo's Gray Old Lady into a modern metropolitan daily in a city noted for its hard-hitting journalism, hard-drinking journalists and demanding newspaper junkies.

Light's research into the founding Butler family reveals insights into the outgoing founder and his reserved son that were not known outside of a select circle.

But "From Butler to Buffett" comes to life when Warren Buffett purchased the financially struggling enterprise, placed managing editor Light firmly in charge and took on the city's morning paper which had the huge financial backing of a national newspaper corporation.

Light and his newsroom colleagues never seemed to notice that "the guys down the street" with the big Sunday paper (The News was a six-day evening paper), and the guys who delivered in the morning should have won one of the last great Northeast newspaper battles of the 20th Century.

This book is full of the little tales and quick anecdotes that bring 20th century daily journalism to life. Light's newsroom is a newsroom of living characters, described in broad strokes by an editor who spoke the way he writes.

Even though it becomes obvious Light relished the Buffett years, it is just as obvious that he never lost sight of his mentor, the legendary editor Alfred H. Kirchhofer.

This is a journey well worth the effort for anyone who lived through -- or wished they lived through -- the second half of the 20th Century in an American newsroom.

After reading this book, I felt a renewed vigor for creating new hope and new ideas in my own church. I cannot say that I would use of these ideas specifically (they don't really fit my church), understanding the struggles and challenges of starting new things is vital. This book allows us to see the trials and the joys of successful idea planting and I really appreciate the way it is compiled and the submissions that were chosen.

Our entire parish has been reading this book together. Some of the practices the author describes are exciting to think about adopting. I am especially grateful to note that these practices are rooted in Christian tradition rather than church-marketing strategies. The greatest danger to mainline denominations today is striving to increase membership at the cost of faithfulness to the Gospel. The things that bring crowds into churches are not necessarily of God. Jesus wasn't popular in First Century Palestine, and faithfulness to the Gospel today can make Christians unpopular with those whose definition of Christianity has more to do with personal success and achievement than with compassion and sacrifice.

Though the writing is clear and lucid, his overall argument lacks clarity. The theories presented are interesting, but often a bit of a reach. The detailed nature of his accounts, though at times is fascinating, it can elsewhere contribute to the soporific tone of the book. However, it is evident that the author has a great deal of affinity for his subject, which contributes to an enthusiastic basis for the book, but cannot justify the obvious biases that he let seep into his writing.

Fascinating in every respect, The Hand of Cicero uses the life and career of Rome's most famous orator in order to illuminate the centrality of writing and documentation to the ancient Latin world, long thought to be an almost exclusively oral culture. The book is elegantly written and persuasively argued. But in its extended meditations on Cicero's life, it is also utterly engrossing, as all great stories are. This is the best book that I have read about Cicero or about ancient rhetoric, aesthetics, and law in the last five years. I recommend it with unstinting enthusiasm to academic and non-academic readers alike.

Hayflick's book "How and Why We Age" is an excellent, first hand account on the research that has been conducted up to now on the biology of aging. It is of note that Hayflick is one of the pioneers in the field. The book is well written and can be enjoyed both by the scientist and the layperson. One flaw, in my opinion, involves Hayflick's personal- and highly biassed- account of the supposedly erroneous conclusions of Alexis Carrel regarding the immortality of cells cultured in vitro. After presenting what seems conclusive evidence opposing Carrel's claim, Hayflick describes a conversation with a technician who worked at Carrel's lab in New York in the thirties, who discloses highly questionable procedures, and describes threats to her when she reaised issues with the lab directors. It is clearly suggested that there was scientific negligence and even misconduct, and yet, the identity of this technician is not revealed, and the accusations, half a century la! ter, are foggy and impossible to challenge. This is a very serious issue, as Hayflick himself claims to have proven Carrel wrong, through his discovery of a fixed maximum number of divisions in cells grown in vitro. However, some even more recent experiments suggest that it is Hayflick who is wrong, because the cell culture conditions he uses are highly artificial, while Carrel's more primitive, but also more robust method (cultivating a chunk of tissue) are closer to physiological conditions. The issue at stakes is by no means trivial: are cells intrinsically immortal, ageless, or do they age and die like whole organisms?

This is the best book on aging I've read. In a lucid, even-handed style, Hayflick discusses the scientific discoveries that have been made about the aging process, and presents the evidence behind a variety of different theories of aging.

This sort of unbiased approach is rare in books on the subject. So many books on aging turn out to be mere commercials for some vitamin regimen or some rejuvenation scheme. But Hayflick isn't selling any lotions, potions, or contraptions - so on most scores, he can be trusted to be more objective.

Hayflick himself is famous for having contributed to discovering that the progressive shortening of the ends of our chromosomes (the telomeres) is associated with cellular aging. However, he doesn't advance telomere research as an exclusive gateway to understanding the aging process. He gives equal time to other theories of aging, such as the theory that it's a simple matter of wear-and-tear.

Hayflick even goes back to basics and discusses whether or not we actually are living longer than our ancestors, or whether we just seem to be because of a decline in infant mortality. He also offers clues to aging from the varying life-spans of other species. He presents a number of telling but rather depressing findings that tend to confirm the theory recently advanced by a number of authors - that our bodies are designed to repair errors and malfunctions only long enough to allow us to reproduce. After that, we are dispensable and so no further time and energy is wasted on our up-keep. We coast downhill into old age.

Hayflick continues with some telling facts about cancer that I hadn't heard before. He points out that the incidence of cancer peaks during people's sixties, then declines. Also, autopsies reveal that one-half of all their subjects have cancer when they die, although cancer wasn't what killed them. Then there are good pages on the immune system and the fact that early exposure to various antigens produces more effective immunity against those foreign bodies and possibly a heightened resistance to cancer.

I was reminded here though of the opposite opinion held by Gerald Dermer, author of "The Immortal Cell." Dermer suggested that the key to fighting cancer was to weaken the immune system in order to allow various viruses to attack. It's in the nature of most viruses to specifically invade and kill rapidly dividing cells, which defines most cancer cells. When some cancer patients contracted mumps, their cancers were eradicated.

This all goes to show that there still is no consensus about what causes aging, or about how to combat some of the diseases that strike people down before they can become jolly centenarians. So you might not live longer as a result of reading this book. But you will garner some lively, possibly fruitful information. And you might save money. You might find yourself being convinced that expensive regimens of supplements and exotic lifestyle changes have been shown to contribute little or nothing to longevity.

I am new to the internet so I needed a book written for a dummy. This book was not as easy for me to understand as some of the other books I checked out from the library. I got lost and fell asleep.

This book can take you from ground zero to up and running your own web page through its clear consise graphics and explanations. There are also plenty of easy-to-follow exercises that put the subject matter to use. I learned more in less time than with any other book I have seen on the subject

Other books have covered Hubley toys in their text, but this is the first book devoted entirely to Hubley toys, at least those produced between 1946 and 1965. What it doesn't cover is the early cast iron toys produced as far back as the turn of the century, which is unfortunate since some of the rarest and most valuable Hubleys are those produced before WWII. For what it does cover, "Hubley Toy Vehicles: 1946-1965" provides excellent full color photos, accompanied by informative text and current values.

Other books have covered Hubley toys in their text, but this is the first book devoted entirely to Hubley toys, at least those produced between 1946 and 1965. What it doesn't cover is the early cast iron toys produced as far back as the turn of the century, which is unfortunate since some of the rarest and most valuable Hubleys are those produced before WWII. For what it does cover, "Hubley Toy Vehicles: 1946-1965" provides excellent full color photos, accompanied by informative text and current values.

A Kiss in the Dark by Mary R. Butler is a story of friendship, betrayal, love and redemption. Billy Ray is a young boy whose mother dies when he is a young child. Billy is left in the care of his father, Darrel. Darrel falls in love with a woman who does not want his child and he betrays his son by abandoning him. Darrel is particularly vicious in what he says to Billy prior to leaving, telling him he never loved or wanted him. He also tells his son he is cursed and his children will be cursed. The abandonment and words will affect all of Billy's relationships, particularly with women and with God.

Billy is left in the care of his best friend, Travis Malcolm's family. Travis is a young boy in the comfort of a two-parent home who is raised as a Christian. Throughout the boys childhoods they are there for each other. The Malcolms raise and love Billy as their own son, providing him with the same opportunities as Travis. Billy, however, is always troubled and in trouble and Travis is always there to pick up the pieces and prove his love for his friend. At age ten, Adrienne Mitchell moves to their hometown of Silver Rock, Georgia. Both boys are enamored with her.

As adults the men become successful lawyers though on different paths. Travis is working to be strong in his faith and Billy is a notorious womanizer. He marries Adrienne and within weeks a series of events turns his life upside down. Travis, as always is there for his friend, though he has a secret of his own. He is in love with his best friend's wife.

A Kiss in the Dark is a dark story filled with betrayals, fears and people seeking and needing redemption. This book would have touched me even more if I had gotten to know the characters a little better. I recommend this novel to readers who enjoy stories of flawed people who ultimately realize all problems can be resolved through faith.

Angelia Menchan
APOOO BookClub

This book is actually one of the best books I've read in a long time. The story line is good and the characters have depth. I only hope that there is a sequel since there are some unanswered questions at the end. Good Job Mary!

Now that Lucent Technologies is gone, swallowed up by the French Telecom giant, this history of Western Electric could be completed. For now, we'll have to do with this comprehensive edition written when Lucent Technologies still had an apparently bright future. What becomes clear is that Lucent's downfall stems from a series of decisions beginning nearly a century earlier in which the manufacturing unit's interests always took second place to those of the Bell operating companies and AT&T.

On the downside, it's a bit of an "official" history from the point of view of the corporate higher-ups. It would have been interesting to contrast their veiw with those of the regular employees. Still, it's probably the best available history of this important institution.

I'm actually an analyst of the telecom industry, so I come to this with a special interest. Nonetheless, I would highly recommend the book for those interested in some real foundations to understand the communications revolution. (and not just sound-byte Internet history). It's a pity that the name Lucent Technologies isn't in the title, because that's the real subject of the book. It's a history of Western Electric, which after a 120 year "pit stop" at AT&T ultimately spun out to become Lucent. The best part is the early chapters where we learn about the competition between the telegraph and Bell's telephone, the coalescing of local telephone companies under Bell's leadership, and ultimately the emergence of AT&T (with Western Electric)as the "Bell System" that most of us grew up with. Don't be put off by the fact that Lucent commissioned the book. It's a throughly documented, balanced, and obviously professional undertaking.

This is a very unusual little book of Wisdom,Proverbs or whatever name one wants to give these words that the sages have used to teach people what values are important. The unusual thing about this book is that it comes to us from at least the period of the Middle Ages. Even then, it is likely that many of these thoughts came from centuries before that. The ideas in this book are not particularly new,but what is important is they ring as true today as they did so long ago in the past.
The other interesting point is that these words of wisdom are expressed in the language of the day;but say essentially the same as similar proverbs today.Here are a few examples;

"Better to light a candle than to stumble in the dark."
compares to,
Better to light a candle than curse the darkness.

"'Tis but another plate will satisfy the glutton."
compares to,
The poor man always has plenty,but the rich man never has enough."

But some are new,at least to me;

"Look to the light and shadows fall behind."

"Stones build walls but so to bridges."

"The evil lie is the word not spoken."

"Down no man's faith that your own is better."

"A good anvil shall not fear the hammer."

and one of my favorites;

"Truth shall not fear question."

A wonderful little tome to own,leave around for others to peruse,and some pretty wise ideas that are applicable today as in the "days of yore".

As the Great Fire of London burned the city to ashes in 1666, this book was read to distraught onlookers by a man named Jospeh Van dar Lippen. It is said he inherited it from his great x2 grandfather and that it orginated in medieval times. It is a book of wisdom intended to give people insight into their life's situations. It has an interesting layout as described above.
It is valuable as a curiosty and nothing more. The "pearls" of wisdom are mostly common sense--though it is good to be reminded of them sometimes--and are easily understood despite the archaic phrasing. You will probably read through it once and put it on the coffee table as a discussion peice. I can't see how it can be used as a tool to help you with your every-day life.
If you collect things of this nature, then I say it's worth the purchase. Othewise see if your local library has a copy.