Fletcher Books

This autobiography, supported by extensive documentation, depicts the Wetherill brothers as men who became totally committed to the scientific study of the Anasazi culture of Mesa Verde.Unlike the portrayal of early 20th century histotians, who accused the brothers of plundering the dwellings and felt the Wetherills were mere pot hunters, Al sets the record straight, and supports it with factual materials. Another interesting volume (not in the Amazon inventory) is "Anasazi, the Biography of Richard Wetherill." As a distant relative of the men, I found both works to accurately depict life in the Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon areas in the 1890'

This is a great book for older children who love Alvin Schwartz's "Scary Stories to Read in the Dark." At my elementary school library scary stories are very popular and tales from this book have been well received at storytime. A fourth grade teacher reported that he was somewhat surprised at the content of the tales (they are very descriptive and sometimes quite bloody), but that his class was spellbound when he read the stories aloud. A sixth-grader told me this is "a very, very good book." Not for the squeamish. A good addition to folklore collections, but not for very young children.

This is the story of Catherine of Braganza, the Portuguese princess who married the merry monarch, Charles II of England. It was a political alliance that the Portuguese made in hopes that the marriage would keep Spain from Portugal's shores. In return, Charles II was promised a large sum of ready money. The fact that Catherine was Catholic and Charles was a Protestant in a Protestant country was not a bar to their marriage,

This was no storybook marriage, as Charles II was a notorious philanderer noted for his long term affair with Lady Barbara Castelmaine, a woman with whom he had a number of out of wedlock children. This would cause Catherine great heartache, especially as she would ultimately prove to be barren. Still, Charles II and Catherine were eventually to achieve an affection and respect for each other that would enable Charles II to disregard the importuning of his advisers to set aside his barren, Catholic, Portuguese wife and marry another.

This is an interesting account of the relationship of Charles II and Catherine of Braganza, set across the backdrop of the Restoration, as well as the religious strife and political upheavals of the day. Although primarily historical fiction, there is an element of romance to the book. Those who like romantic historical fiction will certainly enjoy this book.

Fletcher's work on victims' rights parades the major criminal cases of the past couple of decades: Dan White, Rodney King, Yankel Rosenbaum, and Mike Tyson. Sadly, Fletcher ignores the cases of everyday victims such as the elderly, people living in poverty, and children. However, by exposing these exceptional, high-media cases, Fletcher is able to deduce 10 recommendations that would assist all victims of crime in stepping inside a criminal system that constantly disregards them as an "outside party." Fletcher correctly concludes that criminal courts should envision each victim as a member of an organized group, seeking vindication. I recommend this book to anyone searching for a practical and academic resource for possible changes in the criminal justice system for the inclusion of victims.

This is a good, somewhat comprehensive book with nice pictures. However, don't buy it if you already have Koi: Living Jewels of the Orient. A lot of the text is the same, word for word, as are a lot of the pictures.

I just finished reading Bias and now see the "news" through a new perspective. This book is full of great examples of how the information we receive from the major news outlets, whether it be from TV, magazines or newspapers, is most always slanted from the side of those reporting it and by their own personally held beliefs and views. Surprisingly enough, the people reporting the news don't see it this way and are in fact very much in denial of it.

Goldberg was ostracized by his industry after telling the truth, even though many other insiders agreed with him, but were afraid to go "on the record". Some examples include how the following were totally misrepresented so as to convince the audience of the view held by the liberal media - the exploding AIDS epidemic that heterosexuals would be facing, partial birth abortion, the "sinking" economy, gun control, the Clinton years and others.

The story here is about THE STORY THAT DOES NOT GET TOLD. Simply put, because we develop our opinions on the information we have, having incomplete information most often leads to incorrect opinions.

Surprisingly, who is probably the WORST facilitator of misrepresenting a story ? None other than The New York Times. As Goldberg mentions, when everyone you associate with has the same worldview you think that particular view is the mainstream one. While this is obvious when stated, it becomes dangerously apparent to neutral reporting and cannot but help prejudice a reporter into interjecting their own prejudice when writing and/or reporting about an event.

After reading this book, I paid much closer to the mainstream news when reported and, low and behold, Goldberg is right on the mark with his book.

To sum up, get this book from the library or buy it here, but this is definitely a book I would judge as a "must read". I got it first at the library but after reading it
I bought a copy for my own personal library.

Emmy Award winner Bernard Goldberg has thirty years of experience as an acclaimed reporter at CBS. But he turned that keen intellect and discerning investigative eye inward - seeing that the media avoided objective reporting on stories that didn't fit their left-wing agenda. Goldberg supplies numerous anecdotes about this left-wing tilt, fitting the news to PC agenda and viewpoint. And who suffers? The viewer and the reader who don't get real news but manufactured viewpoints. The corporate culture's closed mind about reexamining how their own agenda has damaged their profession is Goldberg's key point. Over and over again, he demonstrates how their agenda destroyed hard news reporting. This endemic attitude is demonstrated time and time again with the scandals at the New York Times over their racial preferences hiring which promoted an unqualified man to a position of power who created news stories. Dan Rather's rush to judgement - `Rathergate' - is another indication of left-wing bias. And, unbelievably, false reporting by Rather's producer Mary Mapes did not bring any shame or ridicule but I believe an award by her peers after the scandal. Goldberg is a whistleblower who deserves to be read, remembered and revered for his efforts.

Michael Mandaville, Author - "Citizen Soldier Handbook: 101 Ways For Every American To Fight Terrorism"

Only the very naive or out of touch really doubt anti-conservative bias within the major media but Bernard Goldberg in his book Bias offers credible evidence in this incisive and revealing report on his own industry. Should you remain skeptical in the light of the specific examples covered by this well-respected CBS insider, you should at least ask yourself why he would lie. Many Americans appear to be sleeping through some of the most dangerous times our beloved United States has ever faced, willing to take whatever the talking heads present in the evening news as truth without question, consideration of opposing opinions, or checking the facts and making a decision on their own. A very timely topic, and a book that brings to light the serious dangers in being naive about what we believe from the six o'clock news. If you're prone to casually absorb news and information blindly from the mainstream media and assume it must be true because "you heard it on the news", this book is a wake up call!

Most of the book contains Goldberg's outrage for how he was ostracized at CBS news, according to him because he had the temerity to point out the obvious liberal bias in the news offerings of CBS and those of nearly every other major media outlet. However, even a cursory look at Goldberg's op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal that touched off the controversy shows quite plainly that his colleagues at CBS felt betrayed not because Goldberg had pointed out bias permeating all of journalism, but because he had dissected a CBS broadcast segment and named names.

Goldberg could easily have chosen any of hundreds of similar segments broadcast on other networks that would have had the same illustrative power as the example he chose, but which would not have left his coworkers feeling like he had pulled the rug out from under them. Goldberg was thereafter suspected of disloyalty by the others at CBS news specifically because he had betrayed them.

Similarly, earlier in the decade, two women who worked in editorial capacities at women's magazines were fired because they issued rants about their employers via blogs -- and this is important -- they mentioned their employers by name.

Goldberg tries to make the case for liberal bias in the media, but it is too obvious that he doesn't understand it's not his tubthumping on that issue per se that led to his downfall but the way he chose to make the point.

This book was required reading in one of my high school English classes. I was against the very idea of the book from the very beginning, and I admit that. However, I found this book not to be agitating or contrary to my political beliefs, but humorous and almost completely devoid of substance.

Let me first say that many of the examples that Goldberg uses to illustrate his points are vague and he fails at many points to give specific information or credentials about the people he's quoting. Even worse, many of his little stories seem thrown into the book haphazardly, not really supporting any point at all.

Goldberg is only "Blunt and to the point" if blunt means longwinded and the point is to blather incessantly.

Also, be prepared for endless attacks on Dan Rather. It often appears that Goldberg has a deep, endless hatred and/or unnatural level of affection for the man.

Bottom line- this book proves absolutely nothing. You will not be able to reference this book in any argument on any subject. The yarns that Goldberg unwinds in heaps upon the reader are actually worth less money than the paper and ink used to record them. This man is a fool.

This is a great book. I haven't read in years, so I was surprised when I was so into it. At times you feel like you are in Ford County, Mississippi with the characters, thinking you know what's coming next when the story takes a turn. It's a good book by Grisham.

I enjoyed this book because it was a great look at a small town in a very trying time. Grisham writes so very well and has a good sense of what it was like in those times not so very long ago. As some of the editorial reviews said, the book tells of a time, it doesn't necessarily fill with actions. One feels like you really got to know the characters. A slightly above average vacation read.

The Last Juror is a delightful story about Mississippi in the 1970s. The characters are well developed and fascinating. Don't miss it.

After giving up on John Grisham's books as all being rehashings of the same plot (I hadn't read one in a decade) I picked this up in a used book store on a whim. I was looking for something easy to read and predictable (something Grisham usually supplies) but instead found a thought-provoking, well paced book that exceeded all my expectations and made me remember why I liked A Time to Kill so much that I read 6 more of his books hoping he'd live up to it. Well, he finally has. The Last Juror is a study in the changes that have affected small town America (particularly the southern part). From forced integration and busing to an analysis of the impact of a thinly disguised Wal-Mart this book manages to be fair and judicious. I can see Grisham's own political opinions and leanings but he somehow manages to be respectful of those whose politics differ from his own. That's a gift. As I was reading the book I recognized Harry Rex and Lucian from having read about them almost 20 years ago. To be able to create characters that stay in the memory that long is also a gift. I hope he keeps it up, I just might buy another of his books if he does.

I have read most of the Grisham books but in a completely random order. This one is good, set in Mississippi beginning in 1970. It is the story of a young man who becomes the proprietor of a small newspaper, of course he is befriended by lawyers and law enforcement. This is the story of a brutal crime that rocked the county and continued for 9 years.

A beautiful young widow is raped and murdered by a younger member of a notorious crime family. The young man is convicted but does not get the chair due to some hold-outs in the jury. When he is released on parole (life imprisonment can be very short), jurors start being murdered. The convicted murderer seems to have good alibies, and Grisham gives us one of his classic surprise endings.

The events in the original murder and subsequent juror killings are literary bookends for the life of the newspaper publisher in this small town. He buys the paper out of bankruptcy as a very young man, builds it up over the years, but never gets too far from the murder that built his circulation.

There is a lot of fun here also. Grisham knows small towns in Mississippi, and takes us through some of the toughest times of integration. The newspaper business has its moments also, with an unusual focus on obituaries and religious news.

I read this book several years ago and absoluately hated it, mainly for reasons other reviewers have listed. The more I read, the more I was unable to like, connect with or care about the main character. A few weeks ago when I was complaining about havning nothing to read, a friend suggested that I read it again, this time with the mindset that I did not have to like the main character. So I did, and I found myself enjoying this book a whole heck of a lot more - it was much easier to read about an egocentric dislikeable character whose life is falling apart around him. Yes it's too long, yes the editing should have been better, yes sometimes it crawls, but once you realize that you don't have to LIKE Talcott Garland, it is a much easier and enjoyable read.

I read The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen L. Carter a few years ago in hardback and in eager anticipation of his second book, New England White, I re-read it in paperback over the summer. I would preface my review by saying that I am an avid fan of the mystery genre (I'm currently working my way through Ian Rankin's brilliant Inspector Rebus series) as well as a former international chess player and avid Supreme Court watcher. These interests are clearly shared by Carter, who when he is not writing mystery novels is Professor of Law at Yale Law School, which is probably the best law school in the country.

Interestingly, the main character in The Emperor of Ocean Park happens to teach at a prominent law school on the Eastern Seaboard. The character's name is Talcott Garland, whose father Judge Oliver Garland was an unsuccessful conservative nominee to the United Supreme Court and whose wife is in the running for a judgeship on the United States Court of Appeals.

When his father dies unexpectedly, Talcott risks his marriage, his career and possibly his own life in order to uncover the secrets unearthed by his father's untimely death.

The book is an engrossing but somewhat phlegmatic read, due to its length (over 650 pages) and subject matter. I look forward to reading Carter's New England White, and I hope that he doesn't take another five years to write his next mystery novel.

GRADE: B+.

The author seems to have writing skills, but they seem to be wasted on this overwritten and unoriginal bit of uselessness.

The characters are all cardboard stereotypes (or archetypes if you wish to be more PC). It's like he put a list of all the extreme liberal and conservative types together and assigned each one a name. It's old, it's trite, and it's boring. Yes, stereotypes have a basis in truth, but I've been around many folks of both political extremes and you just don't find that many draw by number people together.

Then there's the father. A pure bogeyman out of too many kids' stories. Nothing in the back story makes him seem more than a plot device.

Then there's the length. Maybe Carter would have liked it better in the 1800s, when Melville digressed for chapters, and others did likewise. The author spends so much time describing backs tory, events and trivia in such a boring way, he managed to turn what might have been a reasonably interesting 200-250 page book into more than 600 pages of drivel.

Finally there's the "hero". I do enjoy fallible hero's better than perfect ones, but this guy's just a fool -- especially in his spineless private life. I won' say more, in order to leave it to folks foolish enough to still read the book, but he's just not someone to root for.

Too many characters fly in and out of the story in implausible ways, the characters are cardboard cutouts, the hero a fool and author keeps repeating the same phrases too many times. Avoid this book.

I dare you to finish this book! I did, but you cannot. A simple interesting plot is destoryed by effusion, diffusion, confusion. Agggh! Give us a break. Tedious is the best word I can think of to describe. Save your time . . . and it takes a lot fo time to get through this, I assure you.

This book needed serious editing especially the narrative. Carter did not get the hang of thriller writing. The plot was confusing. No character in the entire book was worth rooting for. I practically flipped through to the end as I had run out of patience to read.

I honestly did not finish the book-I only read maybe 50 pages. Every other paragraph was filled with a who's who name drop of the mid 1990's, which may be fine for exemplification of the story, but did little to entertain, especially reading it 10 yrs after it was published. The mixing of chapter parts had the potential to be interesting; I just didn't care enough to continue.

From word one, you are dunked under the surface of reality and submerged into Victor's world. The book holds your head under while you struggle against the name-dropping onslaught of party boy conversations and narration. Ellis paints the 90s like a photograph.

Just when you think you know the book's tone, just when you've become accustomed to vacuous Victor, cloying Chloe, antagonistic Allison, dangerous Damien...the book flips you on your head and the entire thing changes. I'd give too much away if I said anything else.

Man, is it cold in here to you? Clean up that confetti over there before you go.

This book goes by really quickly in the first half, and I was hooked. The second half went a little slower, but it seemed deliberate. There's so much imagery in this book that keeps re-occurring, and the author did an excellent job in setting moods with each "portion" of the book. I say this because it's structured in three small portions---one with our protagonist in New York living a fast and glamorous life, one where he is stuck on a cross-Atlantic ship in a dreamlike state, and one in Europe, where he's almost catatonic as everything around him spins out of control. I don't want to spoil the plot here, so I'll conclude with a definitive "Read it." It's not a "Must Read," but still very enjoyable.

This book is very much like American Psycho (although American Psycho is the superior novel). Victor Ward and Patrick Bateman struggle with the same issue of individuality and identity in an image obsessed culture where the glamorous veneer masks a bloody, disgusting underside. This book takes the idea of insanity to the max, with a spaced out vibe that works if you decide to go along with it. Although, at times at the end this book seems to just be random episodes that make no sense. This book is kind of like a Salvidor Dali painting in written form, it's surreal at times. I recommend the book only to fans of Ellis' other works, especially those who have read American Psycho and who can see Pat Bateman and Victor Ward as two sides of the same coin. The one difference of course is that Bateman is more philosophical and makes some sense of his situation, whereas Ward is entirely vapid. Pay close attention for a number of cameos by previous characters from works by Ellis and McInerny, especially a brief encounter with Pat Bateman!

Didn't even finish the book. I didn't care enough about the characters to continue. What do I care about what happens to a witless, self indulgent male model? I couldn't relate to it and it wasn't original enough for that not to matter.

Ellis always gets thrown into a litery catagory with Chuck Palahniuk but at the end of the day, Palahniuk's books feel fresh and original whereas the Ellis novels seem redundant and not all that interesting.

This isn't exactly a page turner, for that you should check out Hawthorne's short stories. However, the writing here is very good and the story is interesting. What struck me most of all about this book, however, is how funny it is. Not funny in a joke-cracking way, knee-slapping kind of way, but Hawthorne has a very dark sense of humor, and in this book he deals with dark themes like death, curses, witchcraft, and old age in a surprisingly humorous and deadpan manner. He writes the best death scenes! I don't want to give away any details, but you need to look past the image of Hawthorne as a stuffy dead white guy in order to appreciate this book.

Purchased in anticipation of a trip to Salem, MA to visit the actual House of the Seven Gables, I have to admit that I enjoyed this book far more than I thought I was going to. Written in 1851, The House of the Seven Gables is at once both a period romance and history of the Pyncheon family, focusing on a several week period of the lives of the current owner, Hepzibah Pyncheon, her brother Clifford, cousin Phoebe and their lodger, Holgrave. Themes of guilt and retribution run throughout the novel, as the histories of both the house and the Pyncheon and Maule families are all brought to light.

Hawthorne relies heavily on not only his own family's history to help him build some of the plots in his novel, but also on the general history of the area, with aspects of the novel dating back to the Salem Witch Hysteria of 1692. The house has stood for centuries as a spectator to these happenings, and seems to be haunted by the ghosts of the suffering that has occurred within its halls.

While suffering from many of what I see as familiar plot devices for its time (family secrets, hidden identities, convenient deaths and sudden marriages that let everyone live "happily ever after"), Hawthorne was still able to craft and wonderful and imaginative novel. While some of the descriptions may seem extraordinarily long by todays standards, I felt as though this added to the books charm. Some may find it hard to read, but if you let yourself be picked up by the story and not try to think your way through the book, you'll soon find yourself completely engrossed in poor Hepzibah's trials and tribulations.

I've had a copy of the House of Seven Gables sitting on my bookshelf for a number of years. The poor little book is slightly out of place between a plethora of fantasy and science fiction novels. Every once in a while I try to venture into a different realm of subject. That's the reason I finally picked up this book to read. I would have read it sooner but I was forced to read "The Scarlet Letter" in high school and never had the heart to read another Nathaniel Hawthorne novel.

Not expecting much, I have to say I was very impressed with this book. The details got to be a bit much at times. I have to admit there were parts of the book that I scanned quit quickly because I just didn't need to know that much description about a certain thing.

That being said, Hawthorne was very good at clearly painting a picture in my head. I could smell the mustiness of the house, feel the joy when Phoebe entered a room, and feel Clifford's sadness and confusion. What took me by surprise was the sharp wit throughout the book and intellectualness of this wit. Quit often I found myself laughing out loud at some of the dry humor in this book. Also of course there was the mystery of the book which kept you hanging on until the end.

I don't know that I will read any additional Hawthorne novels but I would recommend this as a good example of his work. It is much more interesting and engaging than the Scarlet Letter.

Dusty classics of this type when assigned to poor high-school kids typically elicit a wave of one- and two-star reviews consisting mostly of complaints that the work was "boring", usually for the reasons of too much description or most commonly, "no plot". They have trouble simply getting through it, but their school deems the work edifying, or at least did the last time anybody bothered to review the reading lists, so it's off to SparkNotes and the sham continues.

I claim boredom for this work but not in that sense, having read it voluntarily after all. Two novels I have ploughed through in the last year, namely The Idiot and Tale of Two Cities were more "boring" in the sense of being hard to get through, though both were greater novels by far I thought. I had no trouble on the other hand getting through Seven Gables. The boredom for me rather arose from finding nothing particularly compelling about Hawthorne's observations. Only a ponderous "behold my pronouncements" style. Rendered the more dull read so soon after that marvel of deft wit and light touch, Gulliver's Travels. Hawthorne is the anti-Swift--no travels for him! His lumbering, self-important prose reflecting his stolid, adventure-free life.

An indiscriminate deployment of minute analysis unto every topic that wandered into his view--the chickens, the getting of Phoebe out of her bedroom and down the stairs (3 pages), as examples. And to what end? A dubious premise--that the sins of the ancestors are visited upon the descendants. By what mechanism--karma? The kind of God who keeps a ledger of credits and debits? Some mysterion he couldn't be bothered to elucidate, just woooo--ghosts! Then a banal and predictable outcome, in which all live happily. Half-baked trends such as "mesmerism" offered but not defended.

How the novel might have been improved by Hawthorne getting out the damn house and down the street. Wade into the hubbub down at the Salem wharfs five minutes away--plenty of real adventure and drama to be found there, no need to resort to spooks. Dickens walked miles and miles in London. Melville went whaling. But this recessive little piggie stayed home, and the book suffers for it. Humorless gasbag, I say.

"Half-way down a by-street of one of our New England towns, stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables, facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst." And this solid and antique house contains many things - memories of those who lived and died there, and the terrible secrets that haunted those long dead, and haunt the living to this very day. This is the story of Hepzibah Pyncheon, an old maid who carries the weight of the past like a millstone about here neck; Clifford Pyncheon, whose past has left him a broken and haunted old man; Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon, a veritable echo of all that is good and bad in the Pyncheons; Phoebe Pyncheon, an unspoiled country cousin who finds herself sucked into the mysteries contain in the dark and sinister house; and finally Holgrave, a daguerreotypist and an outsider, perhaps the only one who truly knows the secrets of the House of the Seven Gables.

This is a classic of American literature, written in 1851, when railway trains were still a novel and exciting invention, when spiritualism was the rage, and when mesmerism had everyone...well, mesmerized. It was also a time when books came out slowly from the presses, and people expected long, flowing books that gave them more for their money and kept them entertained through the long pre-TV days. As such, it must be admitted that the modern criticism that the book is ponderous or slow-moving, does have some justification.

But, in spite of that, if you can keep at this book, you will find yourself rewarded with an extremely interesting story, a mystery set in a strange setting that is sure to keep you on the edge of your seat. I enjoyed reading the deep and winding plot, watching the mysteries unravel in a seemly inevitable manner, like doom itself. I really enjoyed this book, and don't hesitate to recommend it!