Long Books

Oh my gosh! I am so excited to have found this book! I used to read this when I was in grade school. (I am now 27.) I remember checking it out of the library on a regular basis along with 'Wagon Wheels'. I love the illustrations as well. I'm buying them both A.S.A.P.!

The Long Way to a New Land and The Long Way Westward are companion books that chronicle a family's journey from their Swedish farm, which is suffering from an extended drought, to a new home in Minnesota. The books describe the difficulty and dangers of the journey in a way that is non-complaining and full of optimism for a new life in America. Teachers, these books are wonderful for integrating with other subjects and topics, such as immigration, westward expansion, steamships, trains, geography, and American life in the 1860s.

This sequel to The Long Way to a New Land was the perfect choice for our family's unit study about the Westward Expansion. My first grader was able to read aloud easily, and my four year old was able to comprehend the story well when read to. The characters (Carl Erik, Jonas, and their family) are easy for children to connect to. With so many books written about this period featuring girls as the main characters, it was refreshing to offer my son interesting male characters.

The Long Way to a New Land and The Long Way Westward are companion books that chronicle a family's journey from their Swedish farm, which is suffering from an extended drought, to a new home in Minnesota. The books describe the difficulty and dangers of the journey in a way that is non-complaining and full of optimism for a new life in America. Teachers, these books are wonderful for integrating with other subjects and topics, such as immigration, westward expansion, steamships, trains, geography, and American life in the 1860s.

My main reason for buying this book was because my father was in the PT Squadron that Mr. Cave wrote about - his name is listed in the back of the book. He was a Radioman chief and his name is in the book several times. He is 92 years old and can tell me the differences between fiction and truth in the book. It is so wonderful that he still has all his faculties and can remember these things about his exciting and dangerous career on PT boats during WWII. It is nice that someone wrote about how dangerous it was to serve on these small boats and what a contribution they were to the war effort.

My grandfather was a member of Squadron X (Gavin J Hamilton, chief radioman). This is a personal account told by three members of the squadron -- two captains and the executive commander -- and it is the most compelling tale I've ever read on the subject. What 80 men managed to do with 8 plywood boats is almost impossible to believe. Patrol torpedo boats were only 70 feet long, armed with two fifty-caliber machine guns, a 20mm machine gun and four torpedoes, and powered by three Packard airplane engines. Almost nightly, they went up against Japanese destroyers, cruisers and transport ships. For months, they helped protect the Marines entrenched at Guadalcanal and racked up an amazing number of kills, helping to turn the tide and defeat the Japanese in the Solomons. The "mosquito boats" were never glamorized by the Navy, but they should have been. Their contribution to the war is awe-inspiring.

Custer proves again that his cunning and straightforward approach toward doing his duty make a successful combination when riding into battle. This book includes enough detail to make the reader feel as if the they were sitting aound the fire with Black Kettle, or riding into battle with Custer himself.
A must read if you like very descriptive reading. A bit gory, but it helps to feel the realness of the events.
I could've gone without the love scenes, too.

I love everything that Terry C. Johnston writes, but this book is by far the best yet! The story of Genl Custer's winter campaign to find the Indian tribes that had been looting and killing is so realistic....I could almost feel the cold wind and the snow as I read! The love story woven in among the army story was great. I ordered the next book in this series today, and can hardly wait for it to get here!

This was assigned as a text book and it was a good one. This text is packed with information on the various ways long-term care is delivered in the US today. After one reads this book they will understand the complexities of the long-term care health care system. Pratt discusses, funding, organizational structures, regulation, accreditation, and how the different types of long-term care fit into the whole system.

Each chapter builds to provide a complete picture of long-term care and understanding how all the parts fit together to make a whole system. This book is strongest is in its discussion of funding structures and how funding impacts service delivery. The strongest chapters were on quality and the various ways that quality is currently measured. Pratt points out that measuring process and systems as is currently and most commonly done does not always guarantee quality outcomes.

Chapter 2 which discusses the "ideal" long-term care health system and Appendix A: Criteria for Designing or Evaluating a Long-Term Care System are worth the price of this book because the information contained in these pages can assist long-term care administrators strengthen their facilities and service delivery and policy makers in understanding the complexities of long-term care systems.

I am a student studying health services. This book gives so much information on nursing administration, elder care, insurance, OBRA, etc. I found it very helpful with my class work, as well as, my own personal issues with my elderly parents. It's a book that's worth having in your home library because it has so much to offer schoolastically and personally.

Robert Butler is THE most prestigious and vocal advocate on aging in the world. His contributions to gerontology are without comparison. Now he has written an academic book on longevity that contributes to the subject and informs the reader of studies, status of the subject, and data that has not been available prior to this publication. His unique and professional opinions are invaluable and provide the curious as well as the professional with material that is new as well as important. This is a major contribution to the understanding of logevity in a relatively sparse field.

Dr. Bob Butler's Longevity Revolution is truly a masterful piece of work. No individual has done more, here in the US - or throughout the world - to raise awareness of the challenges and opportunities, the fears and hopes of our longer lives. Serving as both physician and philosopher, Dr. Butler brilliantly charts the landcape of an increasingly longer-lived 21st century.

What a great book, very very sad. Can't recommend it enough, best book I have read in years.

Jackser yer a bollix.

This is a biography of a girl growing up with mother, step dad and small brothers and sisters. Step dad is abusive and drinks a lot. Mom swears at children, and does nothing much except staring into space. The only income the family has is social support, charity and Martha's brightness. Martha doesn't have anything (not even shoes) and no one takes care of her since very small, yet she manages not to give up and finds happiness in tiniest things we seldom notice, repeating to herself "I won't be like them, I'll be grand and respectable when I grow up". Her determination and sharp mind is amazing and I was greatly inspired. It's hard to believe she's so young, she's actually smarter than grownups. Really wish there was a sequel!!

This is a book that was pure fun to read. It is about a woman who goes "back home" and all the memories that come back to her. It made me laugh,and cry and made me wish I had lived there. I really enjoyed reading it and wish she had written more.

Well-written in everyday language, Main Street, tells the stories of real lives and lessons learned. It is as though you've shaken hands with the past, with just an extra squeeze on the end of that handshake.

I still pick up this book often to gawk at, even after owning it for several years. This has to be one of the most visually captivating books I have ever seen. Savage and Long succeed in bringing back to life a magnificent array of extinct mammals in this plentifully illustrated work. This is not an exhaustive, comprehensive textbook, but more of a glorious introduction to the history and evolutionary inteagues of major mammal groups. Even so, the book is very ambitious. It contains thought provoking commentary, family trees and charts, illustrations of fossil specimens, and best of all, drawings of all sorts of extinct mammals as they might have looked in life. Marvelously educational, and seriously fun.

A well written and beautifully illustrated coffee table book, or reference resource. I have found the book facinating to read. I especially have enjoyed the well executed drawings and paintings throughout the book. It gives the reader factual information, yet alludes to common theories and hypothetical possibilities. One possiblity it poses is; what if primates had not been the evolved species, and instead had been dominated by reptilian type species?

Billy D Templeton`s book, Manila Bay Sunset: The Long March into Hell, is the remarkable story of an ordinary man thrust into extraordinary situations. Essentially a memoir, it is at once highly personal, immediate and informative. Yet it also stands as history, an important record of events that should not be forgotten.

Mr. Templeton was one who was there. He was there when, mere hours after the attack of Pearl Harbor, Japanese bombs rained down on the Philippines, destroying both his bomber and its home base. He was there during the long retreat into the Bataan Peninsula. He witnessed the remarkable unpreparedness of the United States at the beginning of World War II. He was there during the infamous Death March, forced to endure unbelievable acts of Japanese cruelty. He rode on the "Hell Ships", surviving inhumane conditions only to be find another nightmare awaiting him in the cold depths of Manchuria. Finally liberated after the end of the war, he suffered serious wounds on the return voyage to freedom.

In common with other survivors of unimaginable horror, his rendering is in a matter-of-fact style. Like "Woman in Berlin", and "Shoah", stories told by other people helplessly caught in the vice grips of war, he tells his story in a remarkably dispassionate way. As he reflects on the Death March: "I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. I had no choice. I was twenty years old. I wanted to stay alive. I retreated into myself."

Still there is certain pathos that creeps into the text. His sense of abandonment is clear. America placed him and thousands of others in harms way. With the fleet laying on the bottom of Pearl Harbor, there were no longer the means to rescue them. Mr. Templeton and his comrades paid the price. Circumstance arose where Americans unwittingly added to the danger. An American submarine fired on his Hell Ship, unaware of its cargo of American POW's. Later, American planes bomb his camp in Manchuria. Once home, he suffers the final indignity of the denial of a battlefield promotion.

Mr. Templeton's story stands as a triumph of one human being over the inhuman acts of others. Although it chronicles a personal victory, it stands as something more, a victory of the human spirit over evil. Although perhaps not meant to be, this book is inspirational, a story nearly as inspiring as the man himself.

Author Billy D. Templeton's World War II memoir "Manila Bay Sunset: The Long March Into Hell" is a very personal look into what it was like for those who survived being captured by the Japanese in the Philippines. He is a hero no matter how much the author underplays his tale of survival. His war experiences as a young man changed his life forever in ways most people may not fully understand. There is just not many people alive today who could put themselves into his shoes and emotionally go where he has been. It was a path that lead him to hell and back. He talks about things that no matter how many years have gone by will always be a part of his spirit and a part of what makes him who he is today.

Templeton takes us across the Pacific as we follow the exploits of his younger self just before the outbreak of World War II. He is a young crew member of a B-17 bomber that heads to the Philippines for duty. His arrival there is just weeks before Pearl Harbor. We learn a little about the kind of man he was before the war and get some glimpses as to what his life was before he was on a forced death march and before he spent the best years of his life cruelly imprisoned by the Japanese. The real story is about his survival and how he manages to endure things that would have killed lesser men. His will to live comes through with great passion.

The author does a good job of sharing events and creating the images that allow the reader to feel and not just read about what he endured. He gives insights to how he felt and how he hurt. His compassion for his fellow POWs comes through as well as his anger at his captors; several in particular who were exceptionally cruel and mean. You can feel his story inside you as you read the words. They reach down into you as you try to absorb the extent of abuse, and inhuman acts that he had to witness. There is just no way you are not moved by his story.

The ending of his book does not bring the comfort or warmth you wanted to read about as an American. It is hard to learn how callous and insensitive our nation was to him and others when he came home. His home town at least honored him but there wasn't much of any kind of spiritual or emotional support for our ex-POWs. They were set free to roam America and make their own lives as best they could.

The book is hard hitting and engrossing. The MWSA gives this book its top rating of FIVE STARS.

Posted on the Book Review Pages of the Military Writer's Society of America