Dean Books

In his new biography Joseph Jefferson: Dean of American Theatre Arthur Bloom captures the life of one of the most compelling figures in the history of American Entertainment. As a comic actor and producer, Joseph Jefferson stood alone at the head of his art. In terms of financial and critical success, Jefferson had no rival. He built this success, for the most part, by perfecting a stage version of Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle". A role which Bloom shows Jefferson lived off-stage as well. Like Will Rogers and comics who followed, Jefferson traded on a home-spun simple image. For years and years audiences packed houses to see the simple character Rip experience the extraordinary. However, behind this mask was a man who lived a luxuriant life, and cultivated fame at the cost of artistic growth. In his life, Jefferson was filled with contradictions. He was the common man in public, and a pampered man in private.

It is the contradictions in Jefferson's life that Bloom reveals for the first time in this biography, and captures with great detail. Before he died, Jefferson had published and enormous autobiography which is charming and seemingly the last word on the subject of Jefferson's life. Fortunately, Bloom penetrates the amiable facade of Jefferson without viciousness. Indeed, the contradictions which Jefferson would have hid from the public, make him all the more appealing as subject for biography. Jefferson's response to the civil war, his relationship with his wives, his temperament as a manager, his impoverished childhood--all of these subjects keep this book from falling into the realm of the dry theatre biography.

Born into a theatrical family in 1829, he made his debut as an infant in crowd scene. His work as an actor would end only with his death in 1905. In his lifetime, Jefferson was praised as an actor of comedy touched with pathos. Like Robin Williams of today, this sentimental side was embraced by some and rejected by others. In this biography, the praise and criticism co-exist with dynamic results.

Wisely, Bloom has found a way to balance the details of Jefferson's 76 years of life at a swift pace. His method is to present the narrative followed by a large appendix. The core of the book is 300 pages, but what follows is another 200 pages of footnotes and performance information. While the appendix is not needed to appreciate the book, it holds additional colorful stories and odd bits of information. Bloom's style is straight-forward, clear, and he supports his work with details. At times, the biography is even quite fresh and witty. In discussing Jefferson's All-Star production of "The Rivals" , Bloom quotes a letter from Jefferson: "We all lived in four cars which were provided for us and during the whole four weeks of the trip, I never heard a cross word". Bloom responds: "If Jefferson never heard a cross word among ten star actors living together for four weeks in a railway train, it is probably because he was going deaf'. Bloom then provides evidence that there was much unhappiness on that tour.

Another strength of the book is the description of Jefferson's acting style. As an artist, Jefferson was consistently praised for his natural style. He achieved humor without artifice. His work as a comic actor seems to shatter many stero-types about 19th century theatre. He was an innovator. There is no question of Jefferson's artistic ability, but even here Bloom does not take anything for granted. Using criticism, promptbooks, and recordings, he is able to communicate Jefferson's unique artistic accomplishment in a clear way, without becoming clinical. In his autobiography, Joseph Jefferson wrote with great eloquence about the craft of acting...communicating with great clarity and passion. Arthur Bloom proves to be Jefferson's equal in this area.

While the first quarter of the book moves slowly, the momentum picks up and the picture of Jefferson emerges with contradictions, frailties, strengths and more. His life spanned from the days when actors were denied burial in a church (Jefferson's view of religion is colored by this, another delightful contradiction), to the days when, at the end of his life, successful actors had risen to be honored men in society. By focusing closely on the life of Jefferson, Bloom indirectly captures the evolution of theatre in America.

Although one wishes for more information on the relationship between Edwin Booth and Jefferson, and for more details about Jefferson's relationship with his children, it is difficult to fault the author. Jefferson's life was so long, and there is so much to cover that one is grateful for the amount of compelling detail Bloom is able to present. This biography will stand as a cornerstone for future works on Joseph Jefferson and the American Theatre. "Joseph Jefferson: The Dean of the American Theatre" is as innovative and compelling as its subject. Who could have imagined that the real life of Joseph Jefferson was more engaging than the story told in his autobiography?

While shopping for my grandchildren I found this title. It is one which I have purchased hrough the years, and in fact owned it as a child. Dean Pollock so accurately tells the story of the last stand of the Nez Perce. The battle of Clear Creek, one which is tudied at the War College to this day is well decribed for the young reader.The illustrations are excellent and the story so poignant. I am so thrilled that the book is still in print and that my grandchildren can enjoy it Julie, Oregon

The Journal of Scott Pendleton Collins is a historical book.The book is a journal of a soilder who landed on the bloodiest beach of all, Omaha beach.The soilder records our ups and downs of the war.He learns friendship,endurance,family,and most of all war is not a game. Will he and his comrades survive?Read this book to find out.Good luck soilder!!!!

Beautiful vignettes by friends and family members of what it was like to be a part of Bob Benson's life, interspersed with excerpts of his teaching and writing. A warm, wonderful memorial to a warm, wonderful man. Buy it -- it will bless your life.

The four Guthrie children, Edith (Dit), Alan, David and Winnifred (Winkie), live in a cramped city apartment with an irritable landlord who dislikes noise. When one of the children's uproarious games goes awry, a downstairs visitor agrees to help their parents locate a more suitable home.

A little over one month later, the family arrives at their new home in a remote village in the middle of a measles epidemic. Since all of the local children are ill or in quarantine, the four siblings decide to amuse themselves by exploring the surrounding countryside. The children are surprised and delighted to find an invisible island in the middle of a field---a large piece of land completely surrounded by brooks and a pond. The children, who enjoy reading stories about shipwrecks and deserted islands, decide to play castaways for a week. They establish a campsite and arrange for the regular delivery of "rations" from the "wreck"---the house inhabited by their mother, father, and family cook, Hester.

The following week is full of interesting experiences, as the children swim, discover a spring, pick luscious wild strawberries, build a stone hut, find a cave, and have two close encounters with skunks. Their pleasant sojourn is then punctuated by a series of strange mysteries. Who replaces Winkie's lost pink soap on a rope? Who sends a waterproof crate of books floating into the waters surrounding the island? Who leaves a pail full of domestic strawberries in the campsite's icebox? Is Winkie suffering from an overactive imagination, or did she really see a dryad? Finally, where does the enormous, six-toed footprint on the beach come from?

This engaging tale has a very satisfying plot that would appeal to children who dream of adventure with minimal adult interference.

"Karen and Company", is a powerful novel that gives you a first hand look into the tormented mind and soul of a young woman and how she copes with her psychological and real life ordeals. Rarely have I read a book that has the ability to wrench my emotions up and down with such intensity. At times I almost had a visceral reaction to some of the incidents portrayed.
Merged with the extremely well written prose are numerous poems that amplify the force of this book. The author has an amazingly fluid way of painting the anguish and despondency of a soul in torment.
I applaud this book for opening a window into an extraordinarily tangled world that I have never had the chance to share before.

This book would have to be my favourite. Great anti-climaxes and so believeable. Great setting and interesting characters. Great book

So cute! Not just a "lift the flap," but "lift and look surprises."

And naming the bad guy, Uriah the Heap? Well, years later I couldn't get through David Copperfield without smiling. Love how the bad guy reforms at the end.

I absolutley love this book, California is so beautiful, and Mr. Dean captures it beautiffuly!

The NST/Engineers, Inc. reviewers have relied on the prior editions of this classic handbook for decades. We believe this 1999 fifteenth edition of Lange to be a close-at-hand, bookshelf necessity for science students, chemists, chemical engineers, and for others whose sphere of interest intersects with that of chemistry. Every industrial library and most general interest libraries should have a copy. For those unfamiliar with Lange, it serves as a first reference for questions dealing with "chemicals". Rather than chemicals we should refer to elements, molecular compounds, radicals, and mixtures of compounds, among other definitions of matter. (The properties of water, a molecular compound, are well covered in the book.) If you have been using a copy of the thirteenth edition, or earlier, you should upgrade now to this fifteenth edition. Division of the handbook contents into eleven major sections helps in searches. Lange Sections 1 and 3 are probably used most frequently to find densities, melting and boiling points, and solubilities in various solvents of organic and inorganic compounds. For the organic compounds, at the foot of the data page, alternate names are listed. Also there, structural formulas show details of the more complicated structures. For those who need in-depth information on any listed compound, the Beilstein reference is also given. There is an "Empirical Formula Index of Organic Compounds". Thus if you know the number of carbon, hydrogen, and other atoms in a compound's formula, you can readily find the properties of the one compound or a few specific compounds that match that formula.

Section 2, "General Information, Conversion Tables, and Mathematics", is worthy of review by all who want to know where to find the recommended symbols, latest definitions, and SI (international or metric system) values for chemical and physical properties. For those of us still steeped in British and U.S. unit usage, there are conversion factors to and from just about any unit of interest. Section 4, "Properties of Atoms, Radicals, and Bonds", gives the electronic configuration and properties of the elements, bond lengths, radii, dissociation energies, a table of nuclides, and much more. Section 5 on "Physical Properties" goes into many other properties than the earlier organic and inorganic sections. Vapor pressure, viscosity, surface tension, and a host of other properties, are listed for the more widely used compounds and their solutions.

Section 6, "Thermodynamic Properties", begins with an introductory explanation of enthalpy and entropy changes and heat capacity. Explanation of Gibbs energies is missing. However, all four of these properties are then listed for organic and inorganic compounds. Critical properties are also given. There are 138 pages of data together with some spectrometric property explanations in Section 7, "Spectroscopy".

The 168 page Section 8, "Electrolytes, EMF, and Chemical Equilibrium" covers those topics and then even includes standards for pH measurement of blood and biological media. In an in-depth, October 1999 paper on electrolytes in Chemical Engineering Progress, Lange was the only broad-coverage handbook cited among 56 references.

Section 9, "Physicochemical Relationships", gives a brief description of linear free energy relationships and the Hammett equation and the Taft equation. There is a table of Hammett and Taft Substituent Constants, and other tables with constants for the two equations. Section 10, "Polymers, Rubbers, Fats, Oils, and Waxes", contains, in addition to 67 pages of data, a good bit of descriptive information about the relationship between polymeric structure, functional groups, and the values of a polymer's mechanical and physical properties.

The closing 150 page Section 11, "Practical Laboratory Information", covers cooling and heating baths; drying and humidification compounds and mixtures; chromatography; gravimetric and volumetric analyses; and thermometry and thermocouples. Those frequent users of past Lange editions, and new users, will not be disappointed with this 15th edition.