Curtis Books

What a great book! As soon as I put it down, someone else in the family grabs it and is soon chuckling.

This book I read many years ago. What Dale has done with this book is he had asked kids and adults that have questions about the game of baseball to step forward and ask away. He answers all of the question with answers that actually make since to the kids who asked. If a 10 year old asks how can I improve my swing, he does not go into the concept of speed of the bat, angle of the bat, etc. etc. He talks about practice makes perfect, look at yourself in a mirrior and correct what doesn't look right. Mr. Murphy was my hero as a kid, and when I read this book it convienced me even more, that Dale cares about what people see him as. The book was easy to read, and I recommend it for any kid that is interested in the game of baseball.

...Author David Korn reveals a compelling tale of how Arafat and his PLO organization kidnapped and assasinated two American diplomats. In the minutes before 7 p.m. on March 1, 1973, a routine diplomatic reception was breaking up at the Saudi embassy in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. But as the ambassadors left the party and disbursed to find their drivers, a volley of machine-gun bullets suddenly interrupted the quiet scene. Eight masked gunmen of "Black September", a covert Palestinian organization, burst into the embassy's main reception room. There, the diplomats were forced to sit on the floor and identify themselves by nationality. The masked men then proceeded to release most of the reception attendeed, keeping just five: two Americans (Ambassador Cleo Allen Noel, Jr. and Chargé d'Affaires George Curtis Moore), a Belgian, a Jordanian, and a Saudi. The gunmen then sent out a list of their demands, which included the freeing of jailed Palestinian terrorists, including Abu Daoud, a leader of the "Black September" organization; the freeing of Sirhan Sirhan, Robert Kennedy's killer, from jail in California; and the freeing of "Palestinian women in prison in Israel."

Twenty-six hours of feverish negotiations then went by. On the evening of the 2nd, the Beirut headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) sent an order of execution to the terrorists via radio broadcast: "Why are you waiting? The people's blood in the Cold River cries for vengeance" ("Cold River" was the code word for executing the captives). Yasir Arafat, chairman of the PLO then as now, personally delivered this order to murder. Soon after he did, the two Americans and the Belgian were bound, lined up against a basement wall, and executed in gangland fashion -- all eight gunmen simultaneously pulling on their triggers.

A decade earlier, the author David Korn, had worked Moore, one of the two dead Americans. During the siege at the Khartoum embassy, Korn worked at the Department of State's Operations Center, doing what little he could to save the lives of his two colleagues. Unsuccessful in that effort, he kept the story in mind and now, twenty years later, has published a study which suitably remembers the victims and honors their memory.

But Assassination in Khartoum does more: it has a current significance the author could not possibly have anticipated. Korn's meticulous inquiry into the killings at Khartoum raises important questions about the PLO as an institution, the character of its chairman Arafat, and American policy towards them.

Bringing the murder of Noel and Moore back to public attention highlights the unpleasant fact that the PLO has on a number of occasions attacked American citizens. Probably the best-known of these attacks took place in October 1985 when Leon Klinghoffer, an elderly invalid, was shot in the chest, and the other passengers were forced to throw his body and wheelchair over the side of the cruise ship Achille Lauro. In contrast, the most costly incident in terms of American lives is also one of the most completely forgotten: the bombing of TWA flight 707 in September 1974 en route from Tel Aviv to New York. A high-explosive bomb went off in a rear cargo compartment, sending the plane into the Ionian Sea and killing all eighty-eight persons aboard.

Korn's work clearly reveals that Americans have their own, serious problem with the PLO quite independent of Israel's.

Let me now say a few words in praise of a great writer and 1949 Grinnell College grad Curtis Harnack. I finished Harnack's "The Attic, a Memoir" a while back and was deeply impressed for two reasons. It brought back memories of my years in Iowa and it's a well-written appreciation of the heritage that forms a person's character.

The Iowa experience may be, as my English professor told us back in '60, "soft cultural primitivism"--simply nostalgia for the good old days. Those days may not have been very good or even very old, but being at Grinnell was an academic oasis not unlike that portrayed by Herman Hesse's fictional "Magister Ludi." Today, my life is relieved by the Internet and confounded by computer viruses, made safer by medical breakthroughs but scared into insensibility by TV commercials for spurious pharmaceuticals. I wonder at times if I'm really ready to continue into the 21st century, or whether I could go back to a softer time when the big decision meant ordering corn showder or a pork loin sandwich. Happily, Harnack seems to appreciate these choices too.

My classmates from the '60s would ask if I'd read Harnack, who went on to take a Master's at Columbia and become executive director of Yaddo, the artist's colony at Saratoga Springs. I hadn't. A former classmate mentioned him again last year, so I finally bought "The Attic." I'm not a great fan of memoirs, although I've written some. "The Attic," however, successfully defines and then fulfills its mission: "One writes a memoir," Harnack states, "to discover what recollection of a time or particular event might reveal, seeking to make the personal into something universal to which unknown readers might relate."

The book's form introduces the reader to his hometown and farm through the journalistic device of closing up his family's homestead. It devolves somewhat lengthily into an examination of relatives he grew up with--including a genealogical table--but this offers perspective from many different points of view.

There may be a third reason for appreciating the book and author. Harnack is the solid and memorable writer I wish I could be. Describing "The Glorious Fourth," he writes, "Once upon a time we citizens felt impelled to demonstrate with Fourth-of-July hoopla that America had been strong enough to make a country for itself, and the smallest popping ladyfinger suggested the shots fired at Lexington and Concord. Now [World War II] nobody in the world needed to be told."

I wish I'd said that.

Beautiful photographs, poetry, and a stunning original orchestral soundtrack that just makes you want to fly to Australia. The CD also incorporates soundscapes from where the photographs were taken that truly immerse you in the images with the live orchestral music. The music expresses the grand expanse of Australia's landscape, and captures the emerald rainforests in track 3. The sounds immerse you in rain storms, gentle thunder, night time in the outback and pristine rainforest streams. It is a hardcover coffee table book with the CD inside the front cover.

I loved this book because not only did it offer up cool factoids I never realized - like Rahab the prostitute being in the line of Christ - but because it's not told with all the pomp and circumstance of most Christian books. Higgs is down-to-Earth and totally relates to her audience. Pick it up - and see Bible tales for the first time.

I love the humorous true life *adventures* that are tucked within the pages of this book. Only in real life do these sorts of things happen. You can randomly open the book to almost any page to get an infussion of humor when time is limited for *proper* reading.

It is a great value with three volumes in one.

Steven Curtis Chapman is not only one of the best Christian music artists out there but one of the best guitar players as well. If you love his songs and wished you knew how to play them this book is a must. It's all chord charted and easy to read picking paterns and strumming patterns. It has all the lyrics as well. You'll have a blast once you've mastered the songs and you'll be stoked to play them over and over. If your a Steven Curtis Chapman fan and play guitar it's a must get. Have fun. Justin Jacobs

This is the best book I've ever read on the subject of book publishing, especially the author-agent, agent-editor, editor-author relationships. Although a bit dated (most references are to mid-'80 events), Curtis is thorough, humorous, and above all insightful.

BEYOND THE SCREEN is an apt title; it describes this book both literally and metaphorically. Nancy Berliner and fourcontributing writers dissect both the life and furniture of sixtheen and seventeenth China in a work that combines art, craft and social history. My husband, an amateur woodworker, was fascinated with descriptions of workmanship and digrams of joinery. I preferred the sections that talked about the people -- both the craftsmen (usually anonymous) that made the furniture and the elite who commissioned it. But the focus point of the book is undoubtedly the photographs of the furniture itself -- some pieces which are classically simple, others that are intricately carved. Berliner comments at length on each piece. For collectors of antique Chinese furniture -- or reproductions -- this book is an absolute must-have. It gives the story behind the craft and makes sitting down so much more interesting!