Fitzgerald Books

Categorized as "An I Can Read Book" EMMA'S STRANGE PET is perfect for readers in grades 1st and up.

Max wants a puppy like his friend Josh, but his sister Emma is allergic to animals with fur. All seems lost until Emma tells her parents that she too wants a pet. So for her birthday they take her and her brother, Max, to the pet store where she adopts a lizard they name "Stranger." Max relates to Stranger as he is adopted too.

This book is wonderful in many ways as it talks about the affects of life-long allergies, adoption of children and pets, as well as the special bond siblings share, parent love, and how to compromise without giving in or creating hurt feelings. I found EMMA'S STRANGE PET by JEAN LITTLE inspirational, heartwarming, and fun to read with my younger children ages 7 & 8. After reading this book, my children asked several questions regarding adoption and different kinds of pets.

This splendid book would make a wonderful addition to any library and classroom for discussion on any of the topics I have mentioned here.

This reviewer (and her children) highly recommends Little's book EMMA'S STRANGE PET.

This book is a wonderful guide for self-improvement.It teaches how to understand virtues and vices in yourself and others. It is an incredible help for marriages and family in general.

Now this is definitely something worth having, whether you are a historian or not. Not only does this contain full color photos of the items auctioned at Sothbys back in 1996, items that came from the estate of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis but there are vintage photos of President and Mrs. Kennedy (usually those that show her wearing or using an item from the catalog). On p. 536, for example, she is shown eating a meal with the President along with Sentator Cooper and his wife, using the Wedgwood Creamware featured on the facing page. On another page, she is shown wearing a gorgeous multi-faceted necklace.
Glancing through this 565 page catalog is like paging through pieces of history, especially since so much of history resides in the items surrounding those who make history- from a favorite rocking chair to the artwork that graces their walls. I particularly liked the portraits of the Kennedy children which were featured towards the end of the catalog, drawings which revealed John Kennedy Jr and his sister, Caroline, as young children. They are simply charming.
Don't miss a chance to get this one while it is still available for it is truly a collector's item!

Fantastic work - highly recommended! Truly insightful and inspired

Televisions rocky development is captured in this wonderful book. It covers the start of TV and the types of shows that were on. It comes in just after the game show scandals and focuses on the more violent programs that Newt Minow the head of the FCC tried to regulate. IT looks at children programming development and the idea of news. You get a sense of the presidential debates and how they brought TV in as a popular medium but the touching tribute comes at the end. When Kennedy is killed the major networks stop programming and realize their responsibilities to the country. This book is wonderfully written and is a great addition to any post world war 2 historiography.

A man by the name of Howard Leslie Brennan was an important figure in American history. Mr. Brennan, who passed away in 1984, wasn't famous for being a politician, or an inventor, or a top-flight athlete, or a movie star. He was, instead, an ordinary 44-year-old man in the fall of 1963. He had a wife, two children, one grandson, and a very ordinary job as a steamfitter for a construction company in the city of Dallas, Texas, USA.

Howard Brennan became famous when he, by pure chance, witnessed one of the most shocking events of the 20th century -- the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on Friday, November 22, 1963.

Mr. Brennan watched as a gunman took aim at JFK from a sixth-floor window of an old building (the Texas School Book Depository) across the street from where Brennan had positioned himself to watch President Kennedy's motorcade as it slowly zig-zagged its way through Dealey Plaza.

Brennan would later identify the gunman he saw in the window as 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald, a minimum-wage warehouse worker who was employed by the Book Depository Company.

And while it's true that Brennan did not immediately identify Oswald in a police line-up on 11/22/63, it is also true that Mr. Brennan's initial description of the assassin that he gave to the police (and in his November 22nd sworn affidavit as well) was certainly a general description that would not have EXCLUDED Lee Oswald......

"He was a white man in his early 30s, slender, nice looking, slender and would weigh about 165 to 175 pounds." -- Howard L. Brennan; November 22, 1963

And when Brennan testified in front of the Warren Commission in 1964, he added a height estimate......

"To my best description, a man in his early thirties, fair complexion, slender but neat, neat slender, possibly 5-foot-10, from 160 to 170 pounds." -- Howard L. Brennan; 1964

Sure, Brennan's first description of the assassin was not a perfect description of Oswald. But it was also an eyewitness picture that does not exonerate Oswald either. It's a description that "fits" Oswald in a general sense -- a slender, fairly-young white man.

In fact, given the relatively-brief glimpse that Brennan had of the gunman, his description actually matches Oswald fairly well in most crucial respects. Because.....

1.) Oswald was a "white man".
2.) Oswald had a "fair complexion".
3.) Oswald was "slender".
4.) Oswald was 5'9" tall (so Brennan was off by just 1 inch here).
5.) Oswald was 24 years old (but, IMO, he looked older than 24).
6.) Oswald weighed an "estimated 150 pounds" (per his 11/24/63 autopsy report). So, either one of Brennan's weight estimates wasn't too far off either.

And when Brennan's initial description of the assassin is coupled with his later positive identification of Lee Oswald as the gunman -- and then is added to the very large batch of additional physical and circumstantial evidence which shows Oswald to be guilty of killing President Kennedy (and policeman J.D. Tippit too) -- it becomes quite clear that the man who owned that rifle found on the Depository's 6th Floor (a Mr. Lee H. Oswald) was the same man who was shooting at President Kennedy on 11/22/63.

Given all the evidence in the case that corroborates Brennan's being RIGHT when he identified Oswald as the TSBD sniper, the odds that Brennan actually saw someone OTHER than Lee Harvey Oswald in that window are extremely remote....to virtually non-existent.

And to the conspiracy theorists who think Brennan was lying when he positively fingered Oswald after initially not being willing to do that, I'd like to now submit a courtroom-like imitation of author and former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, who is a man who said this in 1986 when speaking of the JFK assassination:

"Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination of President Kennedy. The evidence is absolutely overwhelming that he carried out the tragic shooting all by himself. In fact, you could throw 80% of the evidence against him out the window and there would still be more than enough left to convince any reasonable person of his sole role in the crime." -- Vincent T. Bugliosi

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[Vince Bugliosi "Mock Final Summation" courtroom imitation turned on]....

"Why didn't Howard L. Brennan positively identify Lee Harvey Oswald on the day of the assassination, you ask? The reason for that, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is a reason that Mr. Brennan forthrightly gave in his Warren Commission testimony and in a separate sworn affidavit, dated May the 7th of 1964, wherein Mr. Brennan said, and I quote, "I felt that my family could be in danger, and I, myself, might {be} in danger". Unquote.

Howard Brennan, therefore, did not provide a positive I.D. of Lee Oswald on November the 22nd, 1963, NOT because he didn't recognize Oswald as the sniper in the Depository window....but, instead, because he feared for his life, ladies and gentlemen of the jury! That's why!

And who among the twelve men and women seated in this jury box today could honestly say that you, yourself, wouldn't have reacted the exact same way as Mr. Brennan with respect to witnessing the murder of the President? And fearing you might be the ONLY witness who was able to say with a good deal of certainty that this man sitting at that defense table, Lee Harvey Oswald, was the killer of our nation's President, you clam up...but not out of indecisiveness...but, instead, out of fear and concern for yourself and your family.

Because, ladies and gentlemen, if it HAD been out of indecisiveness on Mr. Brennan's part as to whether he could or could not have identified the defendant, Lee Harvey Oswald, as the President's assassin -- then WHY did Mr. Brennan swear before Almighty God during his Warren Commission testimony that he COULD positively identify this defendant as the President's assassin?! Why would Mr. Brennan put himself through that ordeal if it were not the TRUTH?!

In other words, why didn't Howard Brennan just simply take the easy way out? He could have done so...very easily. He could have just kept his mouth shut and refused to positively identify the defendant as the person he saw firing a rifle from that sixth-floor window.

But he did NOT do that, ladies and gentlemen! And the reason he did not do that is because he's an honest man, with integrity. And he KNEW he had to come forward with this ultra-important information regarding the murderer of President Kennedy -- even though he KNEW he would probably be hounded by the critics for the rest of his life!

He still felt it important enough to come forward and tell the truth about who he saw point that gun at the President on November the twenty-second, 1963. And he felt it was important enough to swear out a second official affidavit in May of 1964, wherein he repeated his reasons for why he had not initially positively identified the defendant as the President's assassin.

Did he HAVE to do those things, ladies and gentlemen?! The answer to that question is an unequivocal 'No'! He didn't have a gun to his own head, being FORCED to positively identify Lee Oswald as JFK's murderer. And this defense team is 100% wrong when they attempt to spoon-feed you the ridiculously-absurd lie that Mr. Brennan WAS somehow being FORCED to twist his story into a convenient "Oswald's Guilty" tale of deception.

And this unscrupulous defense team sitting at that counsel table across this courtroom is also 100% wrong when they also assert the alternative notion that Mr. Brennan deliberately lied when he told the Warren Commission on March 24th, 1964, that he HAD, in fact, been able to identify Lee Oswald as the man in the Sniper's window!

And this defense team has absolutely no proof to back up the despicable allegation that Mr. Brennan would have done such a vile, rotten thing as to intentionally give known-to-be-false information regarding the investigation into the murder of the President of the United States!

These defense attorneys should be ashamed of themselves for even suggesting such a thing to you folks here in open court! Because there is not a shred of verifiable proof to back up the idea that Mr. Brennan is anything but what he appeared to be on that witness stand -- and that is an honest citizen of these United States, who came forth with THE TRUTH concerning the man he saw shoot the President .... even when he didn't have to come forth and tell that truth.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen."

....[/V.B. mode off]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A large percentage of the American population firmly believes that a vast conspiracy of some sort was afoot in Dealey Plaza in November 1963 when JFK was murdered. And most of these people also believe that multiple guns were used to assassinate America's 35th President.

Those conspiracy believers have "faith" in their belief that a conspiracy took place in Dallas in '63. But there's one not-so-little thing they do not have, and never did -- and that's the raw PHYSICAL EVIDENCE to back up the conspiracy theories that they place their faith in.

All of the ballistics evidence in the John F. Kennedy murder case spells "Lee Oswald Was A Presidential Assassin", because every scrap of "bullet" evidence in the case can either be conclusively traced to Oswald's very own Mannlicher-Carcano rifle (#C2766), or is bullet evidence that is consistent with coming from Oswald's rifle.

I'd then ask any "CTer" this question -- What are the odds of the above occurring if President Kennedy had, in fact, actually been struck by bullets from one or more additional guns on 11/22/63?

The odds must be virtually nil (in such a multi-gun scenario) of having all of the bullet trace evidence leading back to only Lee Harvey Oswald's one weapon, or even being generally "consistent" with having come from Oswald's Mannlicher-Carcano, instead of from other types of guns.

And from the conspiracy theorists I've encountered over the years, a goodly number of them do believe that other types of weapons (such as a "Mauser" rifle, or a "Fireball" pistol, or other kinds of guns, even low-powered weapons) were, indeed, being utilized in Dealey Plaza during JFK's assassination by any number of assorted (always-unidentified) "professional assassins".

And yet (per the CTers who buy into such nonsense), somehow, some way, ALL of the trace evidence from those other non-Oswald guns simply disappeared off the face of the Earth, without any definitively-identifiable non-C2766 bullets or fragments entering the official record of the JFK murder case. Mighty convenient for the "conspirators", huh?

And to think that all of those potential non-LHO bullets and fragments were picked up and disposed of by evil "plotters" after the assassination is a theory that belongs in a fairy-tale book. (Especially when you consider how many ordinary doctors and nurses could have easily seen and handled many of those "unwanted" bullets and fragments at Parkland Hospital within just minutes of the shooting itself.)

In a nutshell -- If things didn't boil down to that "Lone Assassin" conclusion that the Warren Commission arrived at in 1964, we would certainly have a lot more verifiable, usable stuff on the "Conspiracy" table after 40-plus years of conspiracists trying day-in and day-out to prove that a multi-gunmen "plot" ended the life of John F. Kennedy in 1963.

Sup all you book people. If you like reading, this is the book for you. Dr. Rose Adrianne Gallo is a magnificant writer. I have met her, and not only is she a wonderful writer, but she is an eloquent speaker who adds charisma and grace to any conversation. I give it 5 stars.

This is a great collection of short storys. But Alexander Scourby does a wonderful job reading them are helps bring the characters to life... a great tap to listen to on the way to work.

F. Scott Fitzgerald capture the atmosphere of the decadence and liveful jazz-age. The book is very well written and you almost float through the book.

There is a reason why this is required reading in advanced literature classes throughout the country. This is without a doubt one of the best tales ever told. It should be used as an example to any aspiring writer of what great writing can be. The thing that makes it so great is Fitzgerald's ability to formulate characters, both large and small, and his ability to have them interact in a manner that is at once both imaginative and realistic. This makes the story, which in and of itself is not more amazing than other books, more amazing because you are compelled to believe the plausibility of a story that is incredible. Even if you are not a literature student you will find this book an enjoyable read that is intellectually stimulating, yet easy reading for those reading to relax. Many have copied this story directly and indirectly because of the lesson it teaches (that in the story about life and that about creating a story) and many will continue to do so in the future.