Lewis Books

Dr. Lewis has written yet another informative compilation about the Middle East. I only wish that he could have included more about Sultan Bayezid II and his acceptance of the Spanish Jews expelled by Ferdinand and Isabel; the Afghan Jewish community in Herat; or the travels of Joseph Wolf, 1795-1862.

I love this book. You read main primary sources from the last 2000 years, reflecting on West Europe-Islamic Asia/Africa relations and perceptions. The book can be read eclectically. It shed lights on how things were, and how they led us to where we are today!

I would like to start out by saying that I am a huge fan of Bernard Lewis. All of his books I have gotten my hands on thus far have been superb and this is no exception. In this case, Lewis opted to collect various writings and excerpts showing the interplay between the Middle East and the "west". After starting out with misconceptions and prejudices (on both sides), he goes on to show differing views on travel, government, society, arts, science and even food and drink. Interestingly enough, relatively little focused on the early period, despite the immense glory of Egypt, Persia, Mesopotamia and other Middle Eastern nations. There is a great deal of historical material though, including the early Islamic era, the Byzantine Empire and even the Roman Empire. Much of the material focused on the last few centuries though, which I suppose is natural given the increased contact between Europe and the Middle East. The sources come from a truely vast array. There are excerpts from the Qu'ran and the Bible, as well as sayings attributed to the Prophet Mohammad. These stand beside the works of Shakespeare, commentary by T.E. Lawerence ("Lawerence of Arabia") and Sir Richard Francis Burton, and messages delivered by Imam Khomeini. However, not all historical figures would be so well known to western ears. Excerpts from the great traveller ibn Battuta and the historian/philosopher ibn Khaldun also appear here. The vast amount of events and places is astounding. It records the Ottoman Empire at its height (indeed, many of the excerpts do deal with the Ottoman Turks), Napolean's entering north Africa, the Crimean War and the Crusades. Indeed, theres a small selection of passages dealing with the Assassin sect, of which Lewis has written an entire book. In addition, theres even a few pages which give some examples of words of Arabic, Turkish and Persian origin which have made their way into the English language.
The sheer volume of material contained within this book is simply amazing. Although they don't give as much information as one might like, the passages, excerpts and quotes included in this book provide windows into Middle Eastern life and history. Ultimately, I must strongly recommend that any student of Middle Eastern or Islamic history at least give this book a look. You won't regret it.

Missionaries and colonialism go hand in hand. There is are many accounts of missionaries paving the road for colonial powers. Some of the teaching was that the kingdom of Africans was to be set up in heaven if and only if they would be slaves to whiles. Many twisted ideas. Missionaries are truly evil because they knew what they were doing. Many many missionaries were caught for pedophilia in Philippines and Thailand and other areas of the world. Two years ago, a child prostitution ring conducted by missionaries was broken in Peru...there are many examples of atrocities committed by missionaries around the world.

A brave, intelligent and socially responsible account of the dastardly work of recent North American missionary organisations, often in cohort with morally corrupt government officials, in their quest to "civilise" or exterminate "less Godly" ancient cultures in remoter regions of the world. The book focuses on South America but has many ramifications for other parts of the world where - frighteningly - such atrocious activities are ongoing today in different forms but essentially with the same bag of tricks, most recently in several tsunami hit countries in 2005. The author calmly exposes the extent to which supposedly Christian organisations are prepared to go, possibly in pursuit of their own very contorted, self serving ideals. A rare fascinating look under the skin of modern missionaries, the book deserves wide coverage.

This book reveals the scandalous abuse of indigenous tribes from all over the world but especially South American. It leads one to believe that all US non-conforming off-the-wall religious sects should be banned from all foreign travel. I thought that such barbarity in the name of religious conversion had ended centuries ago. This book should be serialised in a broadsheet newspaper of repute so that it can be brought to general attention the criminality of the US missionaries. All South American governments should prohibit their activity and put an end to their preying on innocent people of the world

An unbelievably thorough, yet concise distillate of the whole of classical biological patterning theory. The bibliography alone is priceless.

I used this book, authored by my professor, while taking developmental biology in my final semester of a Cell & Molecular Biology degree plan. The book reflects my professor's very interesting approach to learning development: skeptical examination (in the iconoclastic tradition) of the principles underlying various models, which is more important than traditional undergraduate memorization of -say -mammalian embryonic fate maps (bo-ring!). His work is the first to hold developmental mechanisms up to the light together for a discriminating view. Don't forget your mental climbing boots when you read this- there's not an ounce of fluff.

Dr. Held has done a fantastic job distilling pattern formation processes to a collection of model classes. The bibliography alone is priceless - an superb piece of scholarship. Thank you, Dr. Held.

I always appreciate the careful reviews of Mr. Marold. I see he has fallen into Mr. Thorne's trap. I myself did until I figured out that Mr. Thorne is a bona fide crank. He is a cranky writer and a bitter observer of the food scene. Hence his appreciation of bitter marmalade. And then he turns right around and gives you new direction on good jams and preserves that he now prefers.

Now that am poor again, "Mouth Wide Open" is the perfect book for me in these miraculous times of ours. I have not yet bought this latest book of his, I but keep renewing from my library as I slowly work through it. He makes hash of our cult chefs and turns on the kitchen sink disposal for our kitchen celebrities. He is looking to pick a fight. He does not like to spend money. He wants to play with his food. Bravo!

There is nothing much more fun than a food fight. So long as you hang in with his extended diatribes, Mr. Thorne eventually gets around to his points. He got me so excited with something he got from a box of De Cecco fusilli pasta that I went out and bought a box. I had been buying boutique pasta at three times the price, but there it was with the same dang "Fusilli with Tomato and Green Olive Sauce" on the back. Thorne turns the makings inside out and upside down (NO TOMATOES!!), but he works into a variation that rhymes pretty well.

His chapter on Cod and Potato is for the ages. This is a book for reading, argument (even if only alone) and only then cooking. He likes powerful cooking concepts that can play out in different ways without quite loosing touch.

Try his fooling around with making mayo on a plate with a fork. You could learn sumpin'.

What finally sold me on him and this book is how often he sent me scurrying for more information before making anything. Two dozen searches on the internet and nearly as many in the local low brow market. He gives credit to all who have helped him on his way and lets fly against all those who presume and posture.

Spend much pre-cooking time with him and argue along the way, but never fail to give a fair hearing. I notice tag suggestions include Alice Waters and California Cuisine. Guess again...

At the end of each workout has transformed an inspiring recipe into a new incarnation. His hope is that you can develop the same knack. Worth every star.

What a truly pleasurable book. John Thorne continues his ongoing conversation about cooking, food, and life, and the rest of us are privileged to listen in. His intellectual rigor is notable, but there is no element of pretention in it. Rather, he tuns his attention to good things and gives a great deal of careful thought to their history and how best to do them justice. It is also a very funny book, and the best antidote I've found to the current depressing parade of egomaniacal chefs'compendiums and "smile big and get your cooking over with in a hurry" non-cookbooks. Highly recommended for any serious cook and for anyone who likes to think about food. Lovers of good essays will like it too.

`Mouth Wide Open' is John Thorne's fourth book, each volume being a collection of articles from his self-published journal `Simple Cooking'. I cannot be more delighted in seeing this book, as I was just recently wondering whether we would ever see any more from the good Mr. Thorne and his distaff collaborator and wife, Matt Lewis Thorne.
Even more than in all his previous books, Mr. Thorne validates exactly my approach to reading and reporting on cookbooks. At one point, he states that the most interesting kind of writing a professional chef can do is to describe how they cook at home. This fits exactly my feelings about books such as Jacques Pepin's `Chez Jacque' and `Fast Food My Way', Alice Waters' `The Art of Simple Food', and Eric Rippert's `A Return to Cooking'.
Thorne's own food writing embraces an approach to recipes which matches my own reading and writing, and which probably drives some of my readers to distraction, when I don't get around to actually cooking the recipes. This approach may be compared to Biblical textual criticism, where scholars adjudicate the authenticity of many different versions and fragments of versions for the canonical works in scripture. My favorite Thorne exercise of this sort is his essay on New England clam chowder in an earlier book, `Serious Pig'. If there is any lesson to be learned from his many exercises in this form, it is that one may never find the `genuine' version of any traditional recipe, but it is certainly fun to make the journey. You come out the other end with an enormously improved understanding of a cuisine and the needs of the people who created it. Thorne's essays in this genre in this book start with that rather unfamiliar sauce native to the Piedmont in Italy, bagna cauda. Among his researches are `depositions' from twelve different modern recipes for the sauce, including such notables as Elizabeth David, Faith Willinger, and Jeffrey Steingarten. And, lo and behold, each one is different from one another, and different from Thorne's eyewitness of a preparation in Piedmont.
It is no surprise that Thorne cites David and Steingarten, as his work owes much to David's style of writing, as is also allied to the writings of Patience Gray and Richard Olney. As the title of his newsletter attests, Thorne is a great proponent of `simple cooking', which, however, is different from either fast or easy cooking. Thorne presents an excellent exercise in `simple cooking' when he describes his first exposure to making homemade mayonnaise. Like an omelet, it is utterly simple, involving nothing more than an egg, oil, some lemon juice, and some dexterity.
Another evidence of Thorne's great orthodoxy is that his conception of good cooking is to make the best with what you have. This is virtually identical to Tom Colicchio's elegant description of cooking creativity in his `How to Think Like a Chef'.
In the course of my rambling, I have not taken the time to point out that Thorne's books are definitely meant to be read from cover to cover and enjoyed in their own right, and not from the incidental recipe one may glean from it, as you might do from a celebrity chef cookbook. In doing so, we may discover that Thorne may actually have some opinions with which we may rightfully disagree. Thorne takes issue with the replacing of books (and TV cooking shows) by cooks with books (and TV shows) by `entertainers' such as Rachael Ray. I am sympathetic with his primary point that the TV Network approach to food has tended to drive out the kind of writing done by Thorne and Steingarten and (formerly) by Gray and Grigson and David. I disagree on two counts. First, Thorne and Steingarten and Nigel Slater and Amanda Hesser are still going strong in this kind of writing. Second, people like Rachael Ray address a particular audience who has no time for a contemplative approach to cooking, and Miss Rachael does have some reasonably serious credentials as a food professional. She is NOT just an engaging talker who fronts culinary staff who do the real work.
In spite of those little quibbles, I am enthusiastically in Thorne's camp when he talks about a meditative approach, as profound in its own way as Alton Brown's metaphor of culinary teaching which replaces the directions of the recipe with the explanations comparable to a map of the whole city. While Brown gives us a map, Thorne gives us a history, seen from a very personal point of view.
Thorne includes in this book some reviews of notable books on culinary subjects. Most notable are reviews of Eric Schlosser's `Fast Food Nation', `Amanda Hesser's `The Cook and the Gardener', and Raymond Sokolow's `The Cook's Canon: 100 Classic Recipes Everyone Should Know'. I'm delighted less by Mr. Thorne's opinions of the books, all of which I reviewed, than by the fact that approaches each review in a manner very similar to `The New Yorker' style, which I often consciously emulate.
The book does contain many recipes, and Mr. Thorne does us the great service of listing them all at the beginning of the book. And, unlike recipes in other culinary memoirs, these are integral to the story and need to be read; however, they are `examples', almost footnotes to the main line of narrative. One reads the book for how John Thorne got there, not for a description of the destination.
A really, really great read for foodies.

Murder on Old Mission is a thoughtful, well-layered story with beautifully drawn characters and a suspensful plot line. There is something for everyone here: courtroom drama, a love triangle, a tragic loss of life, even racial tension. This book is a 'period piece' loosely based upon an actual event. Mr. Lewis successfully takes the reader on a journey into the past with rich, descriptive language. This is a great escape read!

Steve Lewis evokes powerful images in this suspenseful murder mystery. A definite page-turner, the pace builds with each chapter to its climatic ending. Beautifully written and character driven, this novel will appeal to all readers, not just mystery enthusiasts. This is the best book I've read all year.

Inspired to look beneath the quiet surface of a local cemetery, Lewis creates a window into the past where a turn of the century village comes to life in the midst of personal tragedy, public scandal and murder.
Filled with his descriptive gems and thorough attention to detail, this emotionally charged story develops into a living, multi-layered drama showing different perspectives of a heart wrenching situation.
Very interesting work and good reading. I also recommend his trilogy of mysteries set in Colonial times which feature Catherine Williams, mid-wife and Massaquoit, a Pequot Indian leader: The Sea Hath Spoken, The Dumb Shall Sing and The Blind in Darkness.

This book is a wonder. And I mean just that. It's about people who have second or third or fourth homes on an island that has been purposefully developed to house them in privacy and various definitions of splendour. Not exactly appealing to all, right? But this book IS appealing, it's the embodiment of the capitalist dream: get the money and THEN what do you do with it? Build or buy a house on Mustique. BEST is the text, a well-written account of how this all happened. And the PHOTOGRAPHS are lovely, chosen to evoke the mood. Yes, the book is expensive (no where nearly as the real estate!), but it's worth every penny. May not be my dream, but it a serious chronicle of some important other dreams in the late 20th/early 21st century.

This is an excellently written book about one of the world's most expensive "developments," a scrub island turned into a multi-millionaires' paradise. Mr. Vaughan has done a masterful job of capturing the whimsy and the vision (albeit sometimes slightly cock-eyed) of the man who dreamed this all up, as well as bits of the lives of those who are now availing themselves of the private, secure, and demonstrably exquisitely beautiful end result. The photographs are lovely, this is an altogether great book to have lying around on any cofee table; it's sure to spark conversation ("is that really Mick Jagger?" et cetera).

I think this book captures the true essence of the island of Mustique. It shown all the wonderful beaches and the beautiful water. I believe that the photos of the people that live on the island and the photos of their town make Mustique a place I would want to visit for years to come.

If you've ever wanted to be friends with someone who doesn't want to be friends with you, then grab this book! It puts everything in perspective! The reader senses that Mary Ann Rodman understands not only the joy of friendship but the fact that it can often be difficult, too. Illustrations by E. B. White are a treat for the eye. This award winning book should not be missed!

Understated and never preachy, MY BEST FRIEND delicately portrays the heartbreak of fickle friends and the importance and joy of finding true ones. The text of this award-winner (Ezra Jack Keats Award for best new picture book, Charlotte Zolotow Award for best text for a picture book) is beautifully complemented by its illustrations, which capture the essence of childhood and summer.

I love Mary Ann Rodman's insight into childhood in this book. Her sparse words speak volumes about a child's social life. In her seemingly simple story, she shows a depth of emotion that will help children cope with callous and unkind kids.

Our three year old LOVES this story. Although we bought it thinking it would be a Christmas time book it is now May and we are still reading it. Hoping for more from this fantastic children's author.

The story is perfect for Christmas. The stuffed penguin is just like the one in the book. We were very pleased.

My five year old got a gift certificate for his birthday and - being rather fond of the penguins - picked out this gift box for himself. My first thought was, "Great! Another penguin." but then when we curled up together to read the story, I was quite delighted with his choice, and so was he. The illustrations are very good, the layout reveals the story very cleverly and, for a wonderful change, the story is more than just a trite collection of cliche and aphorism. Highly recommended for any young child.

Our three year old LOVES this story. Although we bought it thinking it would be a Christmas time book it is now May and we are still reading it. Hoping for more from this fantastic children's author.

The story is perfect for Christmas. The stuffed penguin is just like the one in the book. We were very pleased.

My five year old got a gift certificate for his birthday and - being rather fond of the penguins - picked out this gift box for himself. My first thought was, "Great! Another penguin." but then when we curled up together to read the story, I was quite delighted with his choice, and so was he. The illustrations are very good, the layout reveals the story very cleverly and, for a wonderful change, the story is more than just a trite collection of cliche and aphorism. Highly recommended for any young child.

This story, set in Tanzania in the 1960's, is about a boy who wants a bicycle to help his mother carry loads of produce to the market. The boy saves up his money to buy the bicycle, occasionally getting the money out of his secret box, putting it into neat piles, and counting it up.

There are a couple of places in the book where the boy is laughed at as he tries to accomplish his goal. The reader feels for the boy as he goes to the market to buy the bike and is laughed at because he doesn't have enough money. The author helps the reader to understand that there may be obstacles that you have to overcome in order to be successful.

A good picture book to use with 3rd and 4th graders to discuss character traits, cause and effect, sequential details, plot. Drawing conclusions- at the very end of the book it shows the boy counting up his money again- students can conclude that he will buy his mother a cart for her load. Themes in the book: patience, perseverance, helping others, determination.

The young boy in this story shows exceptional selflessness and a touching concern for his mother's well-being when his dream is to get a bicycle so that he can help her carry their load of goods to market. Truly a wonderful storyline.

The illustrations are superb; not only do they accurately depict village life, but they are simply beautiful in their own right, and convey the emotion of the text, for example, the look on the father's face as the boy falls off the bicycle.

The familial love in this story is extraordinary, without being the least bit saccharine. A gem.

This book is so beautifully illustrated and written. The story line of saving money for a desired purchase (a red and blue bike), took me back to my own childhood. Readers can feel the child's disappointment over not having enough money. As a wonderful addition, the child wants to save for a bike in order to help his mother carry her heavy loads. This was a truly enjoyable read.