Fuller Books


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Fuller Books sorted by Average customer review: high to low .

Fuller
Military Swords of Japan 1868-1945
Published in Hardcover by Arms & Armour (1986-08)
Authors: Richard Fuller and Ron Gregory
List price: $29.95
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Average review score:

This is a good reference guide for WWII era collectors.
Helpful Votes: 12 out of 12 total.
Review Date: 1999-07-15
If you're looking for a comprehensive reference guide to the samurai sword, keep looking. This book is solely for collectors of W.W.II era swords and older blades that were fitted for military service during that era, and even bearing in mind the way the authors narrowed their topic, the book is a bit thin considering the subject it attempts to cover. The tang rubbings are rather random and of little use as a guide for collectors. I think the most valuable service the authors provide is to publish letters (and accompanying photographs) from Japanese soldiers to the men who they surrendered their swords to. This is sword history at its finest, and some of the emotions conveyed in the letters are heart-wrenching. And the picture of workers shoveling anonymous blades into the fires to be smelted? It's enough to give blade fanciers a coronary! What a tragic waste of a culture's military heritage.

Very good portable reference for collectors at shows.
Helpful Votes: 6 out of 6 total.
Review Date: 1998-11-20
Very good, highly portable reference for the beginning collector to know what they'er looking at at gun & knife shows, auctions and flea markets. While not the most complete tome on the subject, it is worth the price paid just for the gangi tables of the arsenal ID stamping marks.

Fuller
News Values: Ideas for an Information Age
Published in Paperback by University Of Chicago Press (1997-11-08)
Author: Jack Fuller
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Superb!
Helpful Votes: 10 out of 10 total.
Review Date: 2001-03-09
This is simply an excellent book written by an obviously very bright, perceptive and experienced writer and editor in the newspaper industry. I have been practicing and/or teaching journalism for 20 years--and therefore have read a lot of books about journalism (the newspaper industry in particular)--and yet was quite impressed. The book's section on why journalists need to be better-educated, better-trained and more specialized alone justifies the book's publication. If only there were more evidence of Jack Fuller's insights, skills, philosophies, and conclusions in his company's Chicago Tribune--which in many ways does not, on a day-to-day basis, live up to its reputation.

The Big Debarcle
Helpful Votes: 2 out of 36 total.
Review Date: 2000-04-21
Look the book did touch on the basic ideas of news valus & relationships to simiology etc. but it failed in adiquite explination.

The conclusion were equaly febal not really touching on thing like an authors personal idiologies and how they may effect an article.

Fuller
The Origins of Things: Sketches, Models, Prototypes
Published in Hardcover by NAi Publishers (2003-08)
Authors: Konstantin Grcic and Marc Newson
List price: $35.00
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Average review score:

A companion to the study of design and design philosophy
Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2007-06-11
This book does not assert itself as a literal translation of history. The purpose of the book is to demonstrate shifts in thinking at the point in time when the proposition was entirely new and profound. Imagine being confronted with the humble paperclip - it is far too obvious to be important but indeed at one time it was very important and by the same logic it gives rise to the competing paperclips.

There are many me-too books showing the same drafts, models and concepts year after year. This is a book about being unique and essential - a point of origin. There is no attempt made here to offer a plagarism source for design school students - it is a mindspring for deeply philosophical elements in the design process and one which is strongly associated with numerous essays in social shaping and the nett-gains of being independently constructive.

It attempts to strike at the heart of great moments in design. It is a notepad / journal / concise-dictionary. If you want to take things further on any given topic there is ample material in any research library to do so. If you expect a literal step-by-step explanation of how everything has become meaningful through design then this book will not write that essay for you.

a mixed blessing
Helpful Votes: 7 out of 7 total.
Review Date: 2004-01-18
Can a book be deeply flawed and still be worth having? The Origin of Things delights and disappoints with every page. The book consists of a collection of design objects across the years, along with the sketches and related items used to achieve their final design, and the images are fascinating. The lowly paperclip gets the same treatment as the Frank Lloyd Wright vase, giving it the warhol treatment and reveal its beauty. The text, however, fails. It's often hasty and incomplete, or obtuse, or dry. The result is a tease that makes you hunger for more, or mystifies leaving you alone to look at the drawings and results. Often one sense a thrilling story behind the design process-- such as with Wim Gilles scooterette project, in which he fought to do a personal project to build a lightweight folding scooter/moped that got to final prototype then was killed preproduction-- but the story doesn't shine through. Not bad, but unsatisfying.

However, I've really enjoyed the book, no matter how disappointed I've been with an incomplete story, because it *is* so neat to look at beautiful, well crafted objects and their creation artifacts: the prototype kettle made of two pans soldered together, the x-rays that informed a silverware set, the raw and elegant drawings that became Lloyd Wright's vases.

Decide for yourself.

Fuller
The Oxford Book of Sonnets
Published in Hardcover by Oxford University Press, USA (2000-12-14)
Author:
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Average review score:

Working within the (Oxford) Form
Helpful Votes: 3 out of 4 total.
Review Date: 2001-04-21
A good one-volume introduction to sonnets in English. John Fuller's strategies for selection are rational, given limitations imposed by his publisher; I'd have prefered inclusion of modern sonnet sequences and more selections by American poets. Perhaps John Fuller will publish a second volume of North American poets; the Oxford "Companions" follow this pattern. Solid, but, oddly for the Oxford Press, neither a comprehensive anthology for scholars nor a compendium for the general reader.

Alive and Well
Helpful Votes: 9 out of 12 total.
Review Date: 2002-04-06
Although most people would probably argue that the sonnet is "dead," this anthology proves that it is alive and well and thriving. Yes, the sonnet is more than 450 years old now, but, as a poetic form, it's definitely a survivor.

"The Oxford Book of Sonnets" contains only 328 sonnets, so cannot be said to be a comprehensive study. In his introduction, John Fuller tells us that considerations of expense limited him to including only one sonnet per represented poet still under copyright, with the exception of three (Robinson, Millay and Auden). This fact alone is definitely going to detract from the book, for I certainly would have liked to have had more of Robert Graves, Dylan Thomas, Richard Wilbur, and others.

On the other hand, Fuller does give us eight of Shakespeare's sonnets, eight of Wordsworth's, seven of Milton's, five of Donne's and five of Keat's, three of Yeat's, though only two of George Herbert's.

Female writers, usually forgotten or neglected, are well represented in this book, in particular, the wonderful Christina Rossetti. "The Oxford Book of Sonnets" contains the full text (14 sonnets) of Rossetti's, Monna Innominata, A Sonnet of Sonnets as well it should. This is a gorgeous work.

I'm something of a purist; I like octets, sestets, quatrains and couplets, so I was a little dismayed at some of the more "modern" selections included here, but that's my problem, not Fuller's and not this book's. Some of the works included did seem a little fanciful though. Take Leigh Hunt's Iterating Sonnet. Each of its 14 lines ends with the words, "United States." It was a little too much for me, at least.

What I liked most about "The Oxford Book of Sonnets" was its history of the sonnet as a poetic form. No foreign language sonnets have been included in this book; Fuller sticks to English sonnets here. And he traces the sonnets from the 16th century to the present day.

Purist though I am, I did enjoy Richard Murphy's, Beehive Cell and Jamie McKendrick's, A Shortened History in Pictures. In the latter work, each of the 14 lines evokes a famous painting...very inventive.

This is an anthology and, like all anthologies it cannot be all-inclusive. I am sure other readers will miss some of their favorite sonnets, just as I did. But, we can always buy a volume of our favorite poet to remedy that. Overall, I found this little volume to be quite instructive and informative and I liked the small size as well. It's easy to slip into my purse to read on the bus, on the train, on a plane, anywhere, really.

Those who can't bear anything but Shakespeare would best skip this book; they'll only come away annoyed. But those who are looking for something enjoyable and informative may find what they're looking for in "The Oxford Book of Sonnets." I did.

Fuller
The Scotch-Irish of colonial Pennsylvania
Published in Unknown Binding by Genealogical Pub. Co (1979)
Author: Wayland Fuller Dunaway
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Scotch is a drink, not a people!
Helpful Votes: 4 out of 10 total.
Review Date: 2002-08-19
You would think that a writer would know the proper name of the group about whom he is writing....we are SCOTS, not Scotch. Ask any native of Scotland--- they will tell you that Scotch is a drink; the people are Scots.
The information in this book was very interesting and well documented, but it was tiresome to read. The author repeats himself over and over again within chapters and even within paragraphs.....restating, in different form, the same thoughts and facts.
If you can get through the duldrums of the writing technique, you will gain much valuable information.

The Scotch-Irish of Colonial Pennsylvania
Helpful Votes: 8 out of 8 total.
Review Date: 2002-12-16
So, Scotch is a drink. Big deal. Genealogists have grown up with the term "Scotch-Irish" and it will probably stay that way. [Yes, it should be Scots-Irish] This book gives an excellent understanding of this group of people, why they came to America and especially why they headed for the "back country" - westward and southward to the Valley of Virginia. This book clearly explains why these people were so important to the colonization of America. [I apologize to the Native Americans, but this group was instrumental in expanding the white man's territory.]

Fuller
A Sense Of Siege: The Geopolitics Of Islam And The West (Rand Study)
Published in Hardcover by Westview Press (1995-02-12)
Authors: Graham Fuller and Ian O Lesser
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Average review score:

Required Reading for the Politically Naive
Helpful Votes: 4 out of 8 total.
Review Date: 2000-10-03
This is an excellent treatise on both past as well as present state of affairs/relations between Islam and the West. The author should be commended for his forthrightness and bluntness in stating these differences, very close to the level Huntington himself articulated in his Clash of Civilizations.

What is important to understand is the role Saudi-funded pet projects like the American Muslim Council play for the State Dept. and for U.S.-Islamic relations. A Must read for those [who] believe that there exists no fundamental difference between the U.S. and Islam, or that any differences that do exist can simply be overcome with "dawah".

A Sense of Siege
Helpful Votes: 9 out of 14 total.
Review Date: 2001-07-25
Fundamentalist Islam has been a growing presence in the Muslim world for a quarter-century, but only in the past year or two has it become a major policy issue for Americans. Should the U.S. government engage in dialogue with fundamentalist groups seeking power? Is there such a thing as a moderate fundamentalist? What steps should be taken to prevent fundamentalist-inspired violence within the United States?

While many scholars and journalists have written books on fundamentalist Islam, "A Sense of Siege" may well be the first full-length study of relations between it and the West. The study offers the excitement and the flaws characteristic of such initial efforts. Fuller and Lesser take up a wide range of policy-related issues and handle them with knowledge and sophistication. For example, they note that while fundamentalists have no basic hostility to the free market, "[r]ealistically, the Islamists will face immense pressure to adopt a populist set of policies." Less impressive, the authors adopt a position of moral relativism on the matter of troubled ties between the West and the Muslim ("no one side is more right than the other") Worse yet, they urge Americans to see the fundamentalists not as power-hungry ideologues but as spokesmen for legitimate grievances; this leads them to advise in favor of a soft policy toward fundamentalism. Agree with them or not, however, Fuller and Lesser have done much to advance the debate with this insightful volume.

Middle East Quarterly, September 1995

Fuller
The Supervisor's Big Book of Lists
Published in Hardcover by Prentice Hall (1994-04)
Author: George T. Fuller
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Average review score:

Far better than I expected
Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2005-03-06
I had read reviews both here and other places, that made me think this would be a great book to use as an example of POOR methods for supervision/management and certainly for leadership. I bought it strictly for that purpose. What I found was a far more realistic and useful view of the world of work--and working with and through others--than I expected. It is arranged by sections: Avoiding Time Traps, Supervisory Communications, Improving Employee Performance, Improving Group Productivity, Coping with Problem Employees and Employee Problems, Dealing With Your Boss and Others, Personnel Matters, Crisis and Panic Situations, Day-To-Day Details and Self-Improvement. Each section has 10-15 "How To" lists that are, for the most part, quite useful in most settings. Yes, some of the thoughts are intuitive--but all are handy reminders, especially for a less-experienced supervisor.

What I particularly like about the book is that Mr. Fuller doesn't write as though the readers are saints, great communicators or spectacular leaders. He writes to ordinary people who are wondering how-the-heck to handle THIS situation. I don't rate it as highly as the Supervisor's Standard Reference as a basic book, but this would certainly be a good addition to a supervisor's library. You never know when one of the lists might come in handy!

Too much of the blindingly obvious, and too Theory X
Helpful Votes: 2 out of 2 total.
Review Date: 2001-03-06
This book's filled with lots of ideas that are going to be common sense to anyone who's been around the block. "Don't talk bad about people", "Don't discipline employees in front of others", etc. If the book were half its size, and weeded out the painfully obvious exhortations, it would be much better.

Fuller
Web Service Faceplates
Published in Paperback by Wrox Press (2002-03)
Authors: Stephen Mohr, Michael Corning, Erik Fuller, Donald Kackman, and Michael John
List price: $29.99
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Innovative but rough around the edges
Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2002-07-22
I was attracted to this book because I read Stephen Mohr's earlier book designing distributed apps a few years ago. This book doesn't disappoint if you're (deep) into XML / network applications and architecture. Although it is stimulating and provides several eye-openers, I could only reward this book 3 stars because it is way too Microsoft / .NET centric. If you don't have a full scale, recent Microsoft box running, you'll need to download all kinds of .Net (framework) stuff. On top of that, the samples do not run with all installations of msxml (I only got them going by installing msxml3sp2). Major headache, wasted quite a bit of time on this because of the cryptic microsoft debugging info - almost made me throw the book out of the window. Next time a python version please!

A Real Idea Generator
Helpful Votes: 1 out of 1 total.
Review Date: 2002-10-23
Unless you are looking for a book on how to add a GUI to a Web Service (that you likely are not providing), then there will probably be little direct relevance in this book to what you are doing.

However, this book is very thought provoking in that it explores:

* Using XML as your code format. (They present JSML or the JavaScript Markup Language.)
* Using XSLT to generate your source code.
* Using State Machines to handle application flow.
* Schema-Based Programming (SBP) aka declarative programming.

There are a few minor complaints:

* The same "Petri-Net" examples are here -- regurgitated from two other books.
* They still get the Model-View-Controller pattern wrong. What they describe is the Mediator pattern.

But, I quibble. I found the book valuable solely for the thought-provoking ideas, not for the methodology they espouse. Viewed from that angle, it is a good book.

I agree with the previous reviewer that it is VERY Microsoft- and .NET-centric. So, if you are looking for a widely applicable resource -- look elsewhere.

Fuller
The New Strong-Willed Child
Published in Audio CD by Tyndale Audio (2004-06-21)
Authors: James Dobson and John Fuller
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How much better off this world would be if parents would read this book!
Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2008-08-04
I appreciate Dr. Dobson's insight into children. This book has absolutely helped me not to be a "screamer" anymore and to be a more confident parent to my two-year-old. He is not as strong willed as some of the examples in the book, but my husband and I can definitely already see a positive difference in his behavior. Even if your children aren't all that strong willed, I'm sure they enjoy testing the boundaries. Please, please read this book.

A Good Book for Frustrated Parents
Helpful Votes: 1 out of 3 total.
Review Date: 2008-04-24
This book by Dr. Dobson is another great read from a godly expert. I appreciated his no-nonsense approach to correction and his specific instructions for dealing with childhood behaviors. My almost-2 year old son has been throwing tantrums and displaying typical "terrible 2's" behavior. Dr. Dobson showed me how to deal with it in firmness and in love. Dr. Dobson always directs the reader back to God's love for us, and the connection between a parent's love for his child and God's love for us. An excellent read!

3 year old with a strong will
Helpful Votes: 3 out of 6 total.
Review Date: 2008-05-17
I have a 3 year old that I have had trouble dealing with from the time she was born. She held her breath out of anger when the nurse gave her a bath and put that tiny shirt on her just one hour after birth. She cried for the first 4 months from a combination of colic and wanting to be able to do whatever she wanted to do, like walk. I thought after she learned to roll, then, sit, then crawl, then walk, etc that she would be less cranky; well that didn't happen. She continues to be fussy, demanding, and insists on getting her own way. She wants to control the people in her world. Discipline and punishment have been difficult and have yielded little results; at home and at preschool. I have suspected for some time that she is strong willed and her teacher this week, after a full week of time outs from not listening, stated she did not know what to do with my daughter. I have read Dr. Dobson's book. It has great insight into how these children think. I don't fully understand how they think because I do not think that way. Dr Dobson opened my eyes on some issues and brought to my attention the fact that my daughter seriously needs direction, before her teen years. I liked the book, but wish he had been more specific and listed more detailed ideas/tools to use when punishing/disciplining besides spanking. I am not opposed to spanking but I find most discipline, including spanking, timeouts, taking privileges away, and offering rewards, do not work for my daughter. My daughter wants to do what she wants to do and that is the bottom line for her. This book has opened the door for me into her world and I have since been researching the subject online and have ordered 2 more books to help teach me how to deal with her. All the opponents to spanking, that I have read, use inflammatory words to get their point across. I was spanked as a child. I very vaguely remember maybe one of them. What I found harmful and hurtful to me was the yelling, screaming, being put down, controlled, belittled, and being worried when I would have to endure any of those things again; not being spanked. I can understand their passion, but controlled spanking needs to be put into perspective. All children need to be punished differently according to their temperament.

READ THIS REVIEW!
Helpful Votes: 4 out of 6 total.
Review Date: 2008-04-05
First, before purchasing the book, don't be surprised when Dr. Dobson throws in his faith/religious beliefs into his parenting style. That is part of being a Christian. Allowing God to direct your actions in every aspect of life. I've read several 1-2 star reviews that don't like that....well, you should have researched the author a little more before purchasing....or read a few more reviews.

Second, MANY of the 1-2 star reviewers forgot the title of the book....The Strong-Willed Child. It seems that they think Dr. D's approaches are to be used with EVERY child. NOT SO!!! When you read the book, keep reminding yourself of the title of the book and what kind of a child his strategies are meant for. You obviously wouldn't use these strategies with your average or compliant child. In all sincerety, I believe that Dr. D's wisdom in the book is flying right over the heads of numerous 1-2 star reviewers who forgot the title of the book while reading or who aren't thinking deeply enough about the things he's trying to teach.

Here's my final note and my disclaimer.....After saying all of the above....no one approach or style works with every strong-willed child; I'm a 6th grade special education teacher....I've got several years of proof. There are however several ingredients that help strong-willed children through to success; many of which do not involve the child directly. I was one of them myself and I had several teachers tell my mother I'd end up in prison; so you can imagine how I must have behaved....well, look how the Lord used my difficulties to strengthen my heart for my profession and Him. There IS hope in Him! Happy reading.

Willful? Or being a child?
Helpful Votes: 7 out of 14 total.
Review Date: 2008-04-02
I was given this book by a helpful relative. Please read with a grain of salt - some of the ideas, like hitting a child with a small belt or paddle if they do not stay in bed, and then telling them you love them, are really off the wall. Bedtime is one of the most precious times in the world, and the idea that you would hit a child with anything as you send them off the sleep has to be wrong. We have had to deal with this on occassion and find the "Nanny way" works best, little talk, be firm and put them back in bed.

would not recommend this book to anyone.

Fuller
American Bloomsbury (Unabridged)
Published in Audio Download by audible.com ()
Author: Susan Cheever
List price: $19.99
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American Bloomsbury
Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2008-10-06
Ah! This was a delightful book with historical significance! I had no idea of the literary talent concentrated in Concord, MA during an important time in our nation's history--the 1840-60's+. Susan Cleever wrote an entertaining "story" about our most prominent storytellers.

Pleasant, gently informative reading
Helpful Votes: 0 out of 0 total.
Review Date: 2008-04-17
AMERICAN BLOOMSBURY is a study of the "genius cluster" centered in Concord, Massachusetts, 1835 - 1888, beginning with the arrival of Ralph Waldo Emerson and ending with the death of the last of the neighborhood's classic writers in the neighborhood. With the inheritance from a short-lived first wife from a wealthy family, Emerson largely supported friends like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, the Alcott family and Margaret Fuller as they launched their careers. They shared Transcendentalism and a passion for intellectual pursuit. As in most close-knit communities, they had their intrigues, jealousies and fall-outs. The hope and beauty of a New England spring day is reflected in their early ambitions and again in their salutes to one another at the end of their lives. The themes they drew on, the events they witnessed at home and abroad, and the impact of the Civil War articulate the greater American experience of the 19th century.

Though I'm very familiar with the writers' works, I hadn't studied their lives closely and this was a good general introduction, often full of surprises. Cheever vividly evokes the personages and setting with a storyteller's skill. I did not realize how fully she developed them until I felt the pang of loss as their mortality set in. This is by no means exhaustive biography or history; in fact, Cheever moves through it rather breathlessly. Her style is intended for a very general audience, not an academic one.

The book is not perfect. Although she moves from 1835 to the last death, of Louisa May Alcott who is only a child at the outset, Cheever chooses to order her information around themes or events in their lives, which do not necessarily flow chronologically. She kind of swirls around and around as she moves through the 19th century. In one chapter, even one paragraph, she may bounce back and forth between several years. The coming of the railroad is experienced more than once, though from slightly different perspectives. Poor Margaret Fuller drowns at least 3 times. Sometimes you are left asking, now when exactly is this happening? Her chapters are quite short, 3 - 5 pages, which makes for a rather breakneck pace through the facts. She provides a time line, plenty of research notes and citations and an extensive bibliography at the back of the book that help answer questions that may arise.


What your textbook never told you!
Helpful Votes: 0 out of 2 total.
Review Date: 2008-03-31
Ms. Cheever makes you want to read...or perhaps reread and understand for the first time...the works of writers who shaped American thought and history.

American Bloomsbury is an intimate look at the lives of the nineteenth century New England Transcendalists
Helpful Votes: 1 out of 3 total.
Review Date: 2008-02-19
Susan Cheever has written a short book on the lives of the famed New England transcendentalists who were in the vanguard of the literary renaissance of nineteenth century America. The book is not profound but makes for good bedtime reading.
The less than 300 page book focuses on the literary geniuses who lived in Concord west of Boston in the mid-nineteenth century:
1. Ralph Waldo Emerson was the father of the transcendentalist movement in America. Emerson (1803-1882) left he Unitarian pulpit due to his unorthodox views even for that liberal denomination. He was a great essayists and orator who travled widely in America and abroad. His great friend Thoreau may have been in love with Emerson's wife Lidian. Emerson died with alzheimer's disease. He was a relatively wealthy man who aided many of his poorer transcendentalists. He believed in Nature and the divine in each human being as preferable to belief in the God of the Bible. His work was influenced by such writers as Thomas Carlyle and philosophers such as Immanuel Kant who believed in the moral imperative.
Emerson was sometimes called the "American Plato".
2. Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) is famous for "Walden" reporting on his life near Walden Pond in a cabin owned by his friend Emerson. Thoreau was a Harvard graduate, a naturalist and an opponent of slavery. He was friendly with the mad abolitionist John Brown. Throreau was jailed for failure to pay his taxes. He condemned the Mexican War as a land grab which would add slave states to the Union. Thoreau never married; he and his older brother John were in love with the same woman who dumped both of them! He died of TB at a young age.
3. Margaret Fuller died at age 50 being drowned in a shipwreck near Fire Island. She had returned to America with her Italian lover and her baby. Margaret was an early feminist who may have had affairs with both Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Her book on the life of women in the nineteenth century has become a classic. She was the probable model for the character of Hester Prynne in the Hawthorne classic "The Scarlet Letter."
She was brilliant, beautiful and a woman living before her time!
4. Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)was born in Salem site of the infamous witchcraft trials of the seventeenth century.
Hawthorne married Sophie Peabody one of the famed women rights and abolitionists sisters. In his early married life he lived in the Old Manse owned by Emerson. He was involved in politics supporting his Bowdoin college friend Franklin Pierce. After Democratic candidate Pierce was sworn in as the 14th president his friend Hawthorne was appointed as US Consul in Liverpool. Hawthorne had a happy marriage and loved his two children. he did have an amorous interest in the fetching Margaret Fuller.
Hawthorne is best known for his novels "The House of the Seven Gables,"; "The Scarlet Letter" and "The Marble Faun." His novel "The Blithedale Romance" is a roman a clef based on the months he lived at the utopian experimental Brook Farm. The character of "Zenobia" in that work is also a picture of Margaret Fuller. Hawthorne could be cold and reclusive but is one of our first great authors. Herman Melville's "Moby Dick" is dedicated to Hawthorne in token of their friendship.
5. Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888) was the tomboy daughter of the eccentric Bronson Alcott who established the utopian community of "Fruitlands." Alcott grew up in a poor family which was often supported by friends most notably Ralph Waldon Emerson. Louisa May served as a nurse in the Civil War writing "Hospital Sketches" of her time in New York nursing Union wounded. She contracted mercury poisoning and died a few days after her father in 1888. She is best known for the immortal "Little Women."
Cheever reports on her love for the transcendentalists and their friends. She tells us how she enjoys their work and relates stories of the visits she and her family have made to Concord.
This book is not a scholarly dissection of the works of these New England intellectuals. It is one woman's loving account of the personal lives of these New England geniuses.

An intriguing imaginative reconstruction of the intersecting lives of transcendentalists in Concord
Helpful Votes: 10 out of 11 total.
Review Date: 2008-04-28
This book has a lot to recommend it as an introduction to several brilliant individuals whose lives crossed paths in Concord, Massachusetts between about 1840 and 1870. It is an enjoyable, easy read -- with very short chapters that are organized around themes and encounters rather than strict chronology. The book brings these characters to life, reading between the lines of letters, books and journals to capture their unspoken thoughts and feelings for each other. It shows how the lives and thoughts of these thinkers, who rarely mention one another or acknowledge their debts to each other in their published works, are deeply intertwined. It also makes a serious effort to take them out of "ancient" history and show how their concerns and conceptions are not so far away from our own.

It is this concern, however, to show the relevance of the lives of people like Thoreau, Emerson, Fuller, Hawthorne, Bronson and Louisa Alcott, that also accounts for several of the major weaknesses of the book. Ms. Cheever tries so hard to show that these individuals are just like us that the book reads almost like tabloid journalism -- especially in the first several chapters. I was reminded several times as I read the book of Goethe's maxim that "no one is a hero to his valet" -- that from a certain perspective even the most distinctive individuals look like ordinary folk who have passions and drives and needs and just happen to be in the right place at the right time. Only rarely does the book give a hint at what makes these individuals remarkable -- although the author is obviously fascinated by them, her descriptions of them make them seem just like peculiar and idiosyncratic folk with a sense of grandeur and peculiar ideas that made them stand out against the norm but not much more. I never got a clear sense from the book of how the ideas of these thinkers connect with their lives, and the book never gives a clear sense of what their ideas were beyond very superficial descriptions. The account of Emerson suggests again and again that apart from being charismatic and a clever writer, his most important contribution was to have inherited enough money from his first marriage to enable him to be generous with the others and create a community around him. I never saw any indication that Cheever had any idea how powerful and radical Emerson's thought really was. (Her suggestion that Thoreau and the rest of the transcendentalists were leeches on Emerson is one of many examples where Cheever chooses which of the many existing rumors to believe and report as if it were fact rather than making sure it is -- at least in the case of Thoreau, this rumor is clearly false -- as Walter Harding has shown in his excellent biography, Thoreau was very careful not to owe anything and worked hard in his father's pencil factory or later in life at surveying or even manual labor to take care of his needs, and even made sure to pay rent when he was living in his parents' house as a boarder, and had agreed with Emerson to do work around the house in exchange for room and board when he lived with him).

Part of the problem is that Ms. Cheever can't seem to decide whether she wants to write a tabloid style expose of the love lives of the Concord geniuses, or a popular history, or a personal account of her own fascination with that history. In the last half of the book Ms. Cheever figures more and more prominently in the book -- her personal feelings and responses to the history begin to overwhelm that history. For example, she can have no sympathy whatsoever for (and no clear understanding of) the Concord thinkers' admiration for John Brown -- because she cannot understand why they would have seen him as anything else than what she sees him to be: a cold-hearted murderer, whose passionate ideals led to outrageous and insane actions. In the end, I think that the best way to describe this book is not as a genuine history, but as an imaginative attempt to tell the story of these characters that Ms. Cheever had come to love in a way that made sense of them to her. While there is value in such an approach, it should not be mistaken for an accurate history. As other reviewers note, she invents a great deal and reads a great deal into things that may not be there (e.g. Alcott's admiration for Thoreau and Emerson is read as her having fallen in love with her teacher and her father's friend). The book is also in need of some serious editing -- there are several parenthetical points or asides or statements of fact irrelevant to the paragraphs or chapters in which they are included. Several words are misused consistently throughout ("insure" is used when she means "ensure," for example).

I did enjoy reading this book quite a bit -- I'd read Emerson and Thoreau and read biographies of both, but had never read an account of all the remarkable people whose lives connected in Concord. It is a quick and easy read -- and gives a valuable shorthand version of the period that I will definitely want to flesh out by reading some of the other biographies and history that she relied upon and mentions in her notes at the end. Ms. Cheever obviously cares about the people she writes about -- and it would be hard to walk away from this volume without likewise caring.


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