Kennedy Books

This is a review of the 1974 edition of BILLY BALDWIN REMEMBERS which was dedicated to his love Woodson Taulbee. More anecdotal than his previous book BILLY BALDWIN DECORATES, it provides influential background information that formed his distinctive sense of style and gives the philosophy behind his designs. Also, some clients are profiled; the identity of some others is kept confidential, especially in association with the less-than-flattering remarks. There are numerous sub-headings, but the main chapters are telling as to the spirit of the book: Romance at Wye House: The Orangery, 1925; The Wonders of Evergreen House, Baltimore, 1925-1935; The Years with Ruby Ross Wood, 1935-1950; Pleasure Dome in Palm Beach: The Wolcott Blair House, 1936; Fantasy in Jamaica, September 1938; Take a Room; El Senor Puerco: Pre-Castro Cuba, 1957; Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert Miller, 1945-1974; Two Walks: Jackie Kennedy, 1963, Jackie Onassis, 1968; Metamorphosis, 1946-1973; Stars in My Crown; Thorns in My Crown; Miss G.; The Fairy-tale Bedroom of Mrs. Tobin Clarke; Landmarks in Decorating: Revivals and Innovations, 1947-1973; Nostalgia; Green Mansions; An Arabian Night: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Centennial Ball, 1970; A House in the Country, 1974; Apartment in the Sky: Mr. and Mrs. Harding Lawrence, 1973.

The reader will realize why almost every successful male -- and many female-- American interior designers today considers Billy Baldwin an important influence in the development of his own style. Despite the passage of 34 years since publication, and the realization that young adults might have no idea who any of these people were, this book is a must-have for anyone interested in residential interior design.

Es un excelente libro que sirve de guia de referencia para la identificacion de las aves de presa, ademas de la ubicacion de las mismas a nivel mundial; por otro lado, las ilustraciones son extraordinarias, en verdad es una obra que vale la pena.

Yo tenia la obra, fue un regalo de cumpleaños, pero lo preste y nunca me lo devolvieron y he estado buscandolo los ultimos tres años.

Illustrations are very good as is the detail provided to each species (1 full page) and includes similar species comparisons for easier identification. Well organized and decent sized print. Showed it to a couple of life-long birders and they plan to purchase it.

Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger. By David M. Kennedy. 320 pp. New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1970. $30.

David Kennedy is the McLachlan Professor of History at Stanford University and a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Reflecting his interdisciplinary training in American Studies, which combined the fields of history, literature, and economics, Professor Kennedy's scholarship is notable for its integration of economic and cultural analysis with social and political history.

Professor Kennedy teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in the history of the twentieth-century United States, American political and social thought, American foreign policy,
American literature, and the comparative development of democracy in Europe and America.

He has had ten books published to date and written over twenty articles with two on Margaret Sanger. He has received numerous awards including the John Gilmary Shea Prize (for Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger, 1970 and the Bancroft Prize (for Birth Control in America), 1971.

His 1970 book, Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger, embraced the medical, legal, political, and religious dimensions of the subject and helped to pioneer the emerging field of women's history. It is a highly critical study of Sanger's pre-World War II career that can still be appreciated by readers in today's society. It is not a true autobiography
of Margaret Sanger but a chronological listing and explanation of the events that occurred involving the American birth control movement which she was a crusader for. To fully
understand Sanger's involvement in the birth control movement the author lets us know who Margaret Sanger was and the events that caused her to become a leading birth control advocate,
feminist, and activist.

Margaret Sanger was born in 1879 in Corning, New York, one of eleven children of Irish-American parents. Her mother was Catholic, her father a radical follower of the freethinker Robert Ingersoll and single-taxer Henry George. Sanger later attributed the family's lack of prosperity and her mother's death at forty-nine to her parents' having had so many children.

The inequality she observed between them stimulated her
lifelong social activism.Margaret, with help from her sisters, attended Claverack College, after which she went to nursing school. She did not immediately use her medical training because, she later wrote, William Sanger "pressured" her into marrying and leaving school in 1902. William Sanger, an
artist and architect, moved the family (soon to include three children) to suburban Westchester.

While he commuted to New York, Margaret grew restless as a result of her isolation and full-time housekeeping. In 1910 the Sanger's moved back to Manhattan, and Margaret began working as a visiting nurse on the Lower East Side. She became active in radical politics, joining the Socialist party and working with the Industrial Workers of the World in supporting several militant strikes. From this network she absorbed feminist ideas and came to agree with Emma Goldman that women had a right to control their sexual and reproductive lives. Her work as a nurse with the poor further convinced her that birth control was vital to women's health and freedom.

In 1912 she began to write and speak on sexual and health issues under socialist auspices and was encouraged by her enthusiastic reception. The censorship of one of her columns by the U.S. Post Office in 1913 brought her more publicity. In 1914 she published several issues of the Woman Rebel, a radical feminist newspaper, and Family Limitation, a pamphlet intended for mass distribution and containing explicit instructions for contraception. A warrant was issued for her arrest, and she fled to Europe, where she studied with Havelock Ellis a sexual
psychologist.

She returned to the United States in 1915 to find a nationwide birth-control movement under way; the charges against her were dropped. In 1916 she and her sister Mrs. Evelyn Byrne, who was also a trained nurse, and a third woman, Fania Mindell
established a birth-control clinic in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn as an act of civil disobedience, since providing birth control remained illegal. Clinics were now opening throughout the country, in defiance of the laws against them, and attracted many clients. Sanger became increasingly angered by the Left-wing party's refusal to make birth control a priority and decided on a strategy of making legalization of contraception a single-issue campaign. Distancing herself from her left-wing friends, she now sought support from physicians and academic eugenicist's. Their influence replaced that of the feminist and socialist movements, then in retreat, and Sanger sometimes used eugenic arguments for birth control that it could help reduce the birthrate of "inferiors."

In 1921 she established the American Birth Control League, a national lobbying group, which became Planned Parenthood in 1942. Very much needing personal recognition, Sanger thought of birth control as her own invention and her leadership as irreplaceable. Her aggressive campaigning, however, did play a large part in the legalization of contraception by many states
between the 1920s and 1960s. This movement was not the true success she had fought for, because contraception became understood, not as a woman's right, but as a medical matter
requiring a doctor's prescription.

This book was extremely well written, well researched, and well organized. The book was fair to the material it was interpreting. The author points out that "despite all her defects of posture and policy, Margaret Sanger, it could be argued, had been indispensable to the ultimate success of her cause. Mrs. Sanger then slipped quietly from the position of leadership after twenty-five years. So effectively had she educated society that it seemed no longer to need her."
This book held my interest all the way to the end. It reinforces my belief that Margaret Sanger should be considered a hero for women's rights. This book is a real contribution to the subject of birth control and to Sanger and helped me understand Margaret Sanger more as a person and a female.

Rachel Dvorkin
Roosevelt University
Schaumburg, IL

This is not the Captain Bligh of the Nordhoff and Hall novels. Nor does it tell of the Captain Bligh of Charles Laughton's characterization in film. This is a look at the real Captain Bligh of history and Gavin Kennedy gives us a man who was significantly flawed but fundamentally a decent, even caring, commander who lost his ship to the villainous madness of Fletcher Christian. This may be one of the better "pro-Bligh" histories and definitely worth the read. Its style is not dense and its breadth is considerable.

This is a great suspense using the psychic powers of intuitive, Dare Murphy. A great first novel by Joy Jamison and Carole Kennedy. Kennedy has first hand psychic experience in crime solving and it all comes to fruition in this fast reading page turner.

Charlie Jones shows he is a master of cutting to the chase and teaching us the lessons of History that are found in the individuals that make it. Read it and see why Charlie is one of my heroes. Now, do yourself a favor and order it. While you are at it, buy a copy of "Life is Tremendous." It Is and the book is too.

This book could be enjoyed by both children and adults. Kennedy indulges his wicked sense of humor with this collection of tightly rhymed verses. Each poem is only 4-6 lines long, and tells the tale of some mischievous child and the outcomes that follow. An example: "At the laundromat Liz Meyer - Flung her brothers in the dryer. - Round and round they've whizzed for years, - Not yet dry behind the ears." Teachers may use these pithy gems to interest kids in poetry - everyone loves to laugh!

William R Kennedy is a literary genius. I know this because he tells me so everyday.

For fans of intense political thrillers with love interset mixed-in, this is a classic.

Brighton Beach Badlands is William R Kennedy's finest novel!

BRITAIN'S WITHDRAWAL FROM ASIA: Its Implications for Australia.

Proceedings of Seminar Conducted by the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, The Australian National University, 29 - 30 September, 1967.