Chamberlain Books

This was the first book that I read by this author, but definitely not the last. I still think it is her best; I was completely taken into the story. When I need a book that provides a good visit with old friends, I pick up this book again.

I've read five of Chamberlain's books that sealed the deal for me being a fan (Secret Lives, Summer's Child, The Courage Tree, Cypress Point and especially Breaking the Silence). Private Relations missed her mark and is sub-par of her skill. I'll skip the story line - Amazon supplies that - and recommend Diane Chamberlain as an author, but only die-hard, going-to-read-all-of-her-books fans should spend their time on this novel. Don't judge her by this one.

I don't know how this book got on my shelf, but it did not interest me to continue reading after the first chapter. It is a 'saga'. It doesn't seem like a 'bad' book, just not one I am interested in.

Back Cover:

They agreed to share their lives...but what about their hearts?

To Kit Sheridan, Chapel House is a haven. A Jersey Shore mansion overlooking the ocean, it is inhabitied by a group of close friends and seems the perfect spot to recover from her divorce.

When Cole Perelle, a young doctor, arrives at the beach house, he and Kit immediately strike up a special, close friendship.

It is a friendship so valuable that neither is willing to risk it by acting on the intense attraction that develops between them. Their intertwined lives begin to echo the rhythms of the waves on the beach as they come together, pull away and come together again. But like a forceful wave, Kit and Cole's passions inevitably crash, forcing them to choose between certainty and doubt...between love and all else.

The problem with this slender book is the title ("Killer Diets"). The text of the book is perfectly reasonable, because it examines low carb diets in a fairly neutral way and concludes that actual deaths are extremely RARE...only a handful of examples are known of, and those could have had outside contributing factors.

The real "skinny" on low carb diets is that they don't work long term any better than other, more balanced diets. When they DO appear to work, it's largely because eliminating carbs also eliminates sweets and other tasty things that human beings like to munch on -- many people will lose weight simply from eliminating desserts and sweets, and no other restriction. It is still unclear what the long term effects of eating most meats and saturated fats will be, but it certainly is NOT to kill the person on the diet, as the title here proclaims.

It's sad to see a publisher ruin a perfectly good article (it's really more of a long article than a short book) with such an exploitative title. If you want to try the Atkins or South Beach diets, please go ahead -- they are probably quite safe, have been around a long time and most people go off them simply because they get sick of the limited food choices (and bad breath and constipation).

NIH studies have shown that low carb diets like Atkins produce more short term weight loss than the Ornish diet or the highly touted LEARN diet or Weight Watches -- all "sensible" diets with moderate carb intakes. HOWEVER, in the long term....ALL WEIGHT REDUCING DIETS FAIL. Most people on weight reducing diets have a "rebound effect", where after weeks or months of deprivation, they are starved for whatever they cut out (carbs, sweets, protein, etc.) and since you NEVER LOSE ANY FAT CELLS (they shrink but never go away), your fat cells quickly inflate, and you regain all the lost weight plus a couple extra.

97% of all dieters eventually regain all the weight they lose over about 3 years. So the articles and books you read with all those wonderful testimonials -- they are either fake OR they are people who just lost the weight and simply haven't regained it YET.

That's the real "killer". Obesity is bad for you, no doubt there. But so are a lot of other things, like poverty, bad genetics, being of certain ethnic background, war, famine, political unrest. We can't always "cure" the things that are bad in life, we usually have to do the best we can to cope with them.

I wish there was a simple, easy answer to obesity as all the diet books "proclaim". There isn't.

Nonetheless, there is no reason to scare or alarm people. The title of this book is ridiculous, though Ms. Muha's actual text is a reasonable look at the pros and cons of low carb diets. Read it if you are interested, but ignore the sensationalistic title.

This book is truly a gift to share with others. Just like my new beverage of choice that replaced my morning brew. Its called s oyfee and taste so wonderful with no caffeine or acids. Organic and made from soya! Bye bye acid stomach and hello healthy tummy! Google it under "acid free coffee"

Certainly the theme of Ruggiero's work is convincing. However this book reveals nothing new, and saftely treads through the old predujuices seeking to lay entire blame on the shoulders of Chamberlain. The work is convincing in this aim, only if you fail to take a step back from the argument. As with all historical works it is important to have a look in the authors other hand, the one behind his back. It is here that the authors own preconceptions fanish and the truth is clearer. Opinions on History cannot be wholly lifted from one source, and it is important to examine historians who feel different to Ruggiero if a whole understanding is to be gleemed on the topic. Roggerio work is very powerful, but with all my reading around this subject there is nothing in it that I have not heard before, ultimately it is nothing but a refined "guilty men".

Boy! What an eye-opener this book was. I thought I knew quite a lot about history {a history buff}, but now I know a lot more. I always knew that Chamberlain and Co. were appeasers, but I never expected them to sell out their country the way they did. I was especially astonished at the way a single person could exercise so much power under a democratic system of government, and how that person can use that power to advance his own personal agenda. Now I can understand why and how decisions are made in our own country on such questions as the most -- favored -- nation treatment for China, exchange of nuclear technology, the world trade organization and other more subtle forms of appeasement. These decisions, I believe, in the hands of a skillful and unscrupulous politician, are made to preserve the domestic status quo {and hence his power}.

I am glad to read it for the valuable lessons that I learned from it.

Frank

Our bodies, and those of other warm-blooded animals, are wonderful chemical laboratories in which most marvelous chemical reactions are constantly taking place. So long as the body lives these reactions continue without fail. But they can continue only as long as there is brought to the body what we call food and also only as long as the body is breathing in air which contains oxygen. And our food, what is it? The product of another series of chemical reactions taking place in some plant or in the body of some animal which in turn has had its daily food. The plant, too, can live only as it has food supplied to it , and the plant/'s food comes from the soil, meaning thereby not only the earth material commonly meant, but also the water and air with which the plant is in contact.
Agricultural Colleges and Agricultural Experiment Stations are hives of activity in the effort to understand the wonderful cycle of chemical changes, to the end that the framer may continue to solve one of the greatest problems of all times, the problem of producing from the soil, through plants, the food for the human race. The stories of how this has been done are told in the pages of this book by men who, themselves, taking part in the work.

What's more Christmasy than that ideal Christmas puppy sitting under the tree, his neck tied with a beautiful red bow, his gleaming large eyes gazing soulfully at you?

The ideal puppy is just that, idealized, since he's more likely to be knocking the ornaments off the tree, tearing open the presents, or leaving his own "present" on the rug. But that's a puppy and that's why we love them.

This book has the cute Christmas puppy in a Santa hat on its cover and I'd like to say the text lives up to the cover, but this book in general comes off as a bargain-basement version of a "Chicken Soup for the Soul" book (in fact, the first story is actually from a "Chicken Soup" volume).

Not that most of the stories aren't touching. Several stories, including "The Christmas After the Wildfires," deal with animal agencies helping both animals and people and are very sweet. There's a Christmas-themed chapter from MY DOG SKIP and the final story, the one bit of fiction in the volume, is the lovely "Christmas Eve" chapter from ONE HUNDRED AND ONE DALMATIANS by Dodie Smith, which most people are probably more familiar with as a Disney film. The Shel Silverstein poem included is amusing.

But so many of the stories are odd or just dull. I couldn't make out heads or tails (pun intended) of "Nice Doggy," which begins "The other day my Welsh springer spaniel, Cooper, gave me a manicure," and just gets odder from there. "Christmas Memories," taken from Southern Fried Divorce, I guess was supposed to be funny. I thought it came off like a bad skit on BLUE COLLAR TV. The one rock-hard reliable offering was the James Herriot piece about Tricki Woo, but that doesn't even take place at Christmastime. Neither does "Neighbors," from DOG IS MY CO-PILOT, which mentions a Christmas card, but that's about it.

I'd say this was a "buy off the bargain table" type book if the price is cheap enough, but that's just me.

The Donovans, a three-generation family of seven, all have their phobias (coupled with a seeming lack of common sense): whether it's the dark, spiders, window envelops, noises in the dark, doctor's shots, or shadows, they combine to make for a pretty dysfunctional bunch.

So naturally, they go to the pound to get a dog to protect them from their assorted fears. They end up with, Hero (what other name did you expect?) a sprawling, gangly cross between a wolf hound and a Great Dane that doesn't exactly embody the characteristics they hoped for. The twist, as you might expect, is that in seeking to comfort their fearful dog, the various family members learn to deal more effectively with their own odd fears.

The dog comes across as the most-developed character in a somewhat lackluster story that never quite solidifies.

This book was OK. There was nothing spectacular about the story, and the text was pretty boring, as were the illustrations. I think I could have given it a 4 star rating if the illustrations had been similar to the quality and style of those found in One Potato, Two Potato (ISBN: 0374356408). There are 12 scenes (2 pages each) in this short and simple book.

The story is about Tom and Alice who are starting a new school year. Tom is older and has attended school before, but Alice is new to the experience. Tom didn't really want his sister to go to "his" school and the book is about how he copes on that first day when both he and his sister attend the same school.

I would have liked the book better if the father had been left out of the story. And I also would have liked the relationship between Tom and Alice to be developed more. Of course, as I say above, I would have liked illustrations that were not so boring. 3 stars!

The conclusions of the book are based on the premise, 'Corporations, above all, have a responsibility to make a profit and sustain themselves. Other considerations are secondary.'

The preface asks "What contributions can business be expected to make to the amelioration of contemporary social problems, for the existence of which it must assume some responsibility?"

"We cannot rely on corporations for social reform [p4]."

"The individual corporation is powerless...[p5]" "Large corporations constitute the dominant force in our society, but their aggregate power is not unified... and they have no way [of doing so] [p7]." Uh, business lobbyists unite against common welfare all the time, these days.

"The mass of consumers will itself insure the flow of material gratification is not curtailed by 'excessive' regulation [p11]." "The average customer will pass upon the product that offers reliability and good service at a higher price [in favor of the cheap stuff, so caveat emptor][p28]." Chamberlain encourages the enterprising corporation to sell faulty and substandard goods, if it can make a great profit in doing so. Because, of his premise -- profit comes first.

"Industry's responsibility to the environment is limited by society's concept of the good life [p31]." Chamberlain encourages the exploitation of the commons in the name of corporate profit. "The dominant role of the corporation in American society derives from it's ability to satisfy a mass-consumption appetite, not from it's contribution to an unpolluted environment [p57]." "The continuations of the growth psychology will sooner or later brings us hard up against the pollution problems from which technology is supposed to save us[p77]."

"If electric power were made to bear it's full social cost, it would become more expensive, and so would products made with it and products that used it [p61]." Efforts to juggle market prices to reflect external costs are compared with Communism. The corporation 'shouldn't worry' about using up resources, as market forces of scarcity will still make rarer products retain value. These positions struck me as counter-productive and short-sighted as we reach Hubbard's Peak with oil, and most of the world has ratified the Kyoto Protocols.

The corporate position on it's own employees is clearly stated on page 92. Chamberlain endorses this position. I don't. "Employees are being paid to produce, not make themselves into better people. Employees are human capital, and when capital is hired or leased, the objective is not to embellish it for its own sake, but use it for financial advantage. The large corporation has become a *user* of people without regard to the effect on those people, except as this is registered on the balance sheet."

"In short, the individual corporation... can do little to aid the present educational system [p115]." Back to the profit motive again. Apprenticing, internships, and scholarships are examined, but that is the ultimate conclusion reached.

On civics, "...no community corporation or city government is capable of decision-making power. It remains dependent on the goodwill of the [larger] corporate hierarchies, whose basic interests lie in corporate rather than community development [134]." It is the job of the government to protect, the job of the corporation to exploit for profit. This will eventually 'Balkanize our region's finances and Africianize our economy,' if unchecked by government, the only political authority which can deal with national corporations. Of multi-nationals there is no mention in this context. NAFTA, today's economic decline, and the uncertain job market are natural outgrowths of this philosophy espoused in the 1970's.

There is a whole bunch on how the corporation evolved from a governmentally sanctioned body to one beholden to stock holders to one beholden ONLY to a president loosely controlled by a board of director he himself appoints. In each step, the profit motive and exploitation has become more pure. As multi-national corporations become larger and richer, the following is no longer true: "It would be absurd to assume that business, even though dominant, can control government authorities and contain opposition pressure groups [p151]." In the 1970's Chamberlain couldn't conceive of a time when national objectives were not in line with corporate objectives. He never dreamed of our current American health insurance industry.

"The global firm seeks it's own advantage on the countries in which it operates. It can't possibly serve them all [p159]... governments have [therefore] abdicated important economic decisions to the boardrooms of these [multi-national] companies [p161]." And Chamberlain is prescient with regards to what has happened with multi-nationals: "The corporation may bargain for concessions from a country, control unionization, transfer production elsewhere [for greater profit], and win tariff or tax advantages, exclusive position, or import quotas as the price of their continuing business in a country [p164]." This is seen as perfectly responsible, given the corporation must survive above all other considerations. The issue of nationalization of subsidiaries is not discussed. A multi-national corporation "has no concern with boundaries, national interest, local cultural pride, regional idiosyncrasies, etc, except as they favor or hinder the performance of the corporation [p174]." Operating opportunistically, the multi-national corporation is presently unconstrained by any coequal public authority {p178]. I find this scary.

Chamberlain finishes up by advising for spin and regulator capture. "Contradiction between social value and institutional advantage must be rationalized... [use] the stratagem of *inviting* regulation by a government which can be counted on not to press for radical changes [p206-7]." He does warn in the face of great social pressure, 'temporizing may not be enough [p209],' however he is unspecific regarding what might happen to corporations at that point.

Overall I found this book educational, but I did not agree with many of it's positions and conclusions.

It always amazes me that humans have such a short attention span when it comes to history that we have to relive it every generation or so at horrific cost. The anti-war movements over the years are always finding ways of ignoring the lessons of history when bad guys are given free rein long enough to cause immense pain and suffering along with millions of deaths. Chamberlain was one of those so scarred by WWI that he would do anything to avoid another battle, even if it meant that nipping Hitler in the bud would have saved scores of millions of lives. His single-minded focus on appeasement (before it became a dirty word) was the absolutely last course that should have been followed when the Nazis came to power and started to violate all of their treaty obligations of WWI.
Admittedly Chamberlain was more of a follower than a true leader, following public sentiment instead of shaping it and counseling about the dangers of feeding the beast that was Hitler's Germany in the 1930's. In many ways he was very much out of the Bill Clinton mode of using his own focus groups of public crowds and newspapers (before they were to become a science) to justify allowing Hitler to become far stronger than he became after years of ignoring the problem. The parallels between bin Laden and Hitler in this context are chilling.
Fuchser wrote this book over 20 years ago, and had access to letters and documents that no other scholar had up to that point, but he was not allowed to copy them, only summarize them, so that only a few true insights into the mind of Chamberlain come out. But those few passages reveal a deeply flawed man, so obsessed with avoiding conflict that he guaranteed it. His desire to follow in his father's and brother's footsteps as a great statesman led him to take the world into a war that really could have been avoided if he had been a true leader.
While this book is not a waste of time, it really does not have the kind of historical perspective, going into greater detail about the forces at work while Chamberlain did everything he could to bring "peace in our time." I don't know if it is because Chamberlain seems to have been a really cold and lifeless man, or because Fuchser is not a very good author. This is a rather unmoving book, with little of the suspense that the period involved. It does provide the greatest insight into the man and the events earlier in his life that shaped him that I have ever read, so from that perspective it was worth reading, but Kagan and Fromkin have written much more detailed and gripping accounts of this period and how the forces of evil nearly prevailed because of a seriously flawed and weak Chamberlain. This book is actually more of a study of how the wrong man in office at the wrong time can result in great tragedy. Whether you think that leaders are naturally born vs. shaped by their life experience, or the other way round, this book shows that Chamberlain failed on both counts.

Don't look for any realities in this biography. It is pure gossip especially in the light of facts that have come out later.