Pitt Books

The book contained some good ideas, but for the most part, commonsense. I'm a current manager of 20 employees and already knew most of what was described in the book. I guess if you know nothing about managing people, then it would be a good book for novices.

I published this book because I like it so much.In 2003 Hal Pitt contacted me asking if I would publish it. I had no interest in publishing someone else's work, but I invited him to send me the manuscript. He did, I read it and decided it would provide a great balance to my own books.

It really is a page turner - a management book is a page turner! Hal has a compelling style that creates anticipation and the information is solid. I published Hal's book because I liked it so much. It gets managers off on the right foot with true priorities. I quote Hal a lot when working with managers for example, he says the number one job of managers is to get employees to do the job they are hired to do. So if an employee is not doing his or her job, the manager is not doing theirs. Now, I know that sounds obvious, but it's amazing how many managers lose focus on that. This book is chock full of wisdom that lead to manager success.

Robert McDowell, whose Quiet Money and The Diviners showed him to be a master of narrative poetry, reveals his lyric gift in this new, long-awaited collection.

McDowell's latest collection shows his skill as a story teller. There are both lyric verse and narratives in this collection, but the narratives are the true gems here.

While this book gives some good insight as to the life of the bomber crews outside of their planes, the author does tend to ramble in his discriptions of life on the base. There is little as to the actual descriptions of the missions which he and his crew carried out. If you want to learn about life on the base and the training and preparations the men went through I would recommend this book.

Jesse Pitts was one of the relatively few aviators who survived and blazed a pathway for the successful Allied air campaign against Nazi Germany during the early days of American involvement in WWII.

His account in this book brings to life the heroism of those who were pioneers in what was essentially an experiment in so-called "pin-point" daylight bombing--without fighter escorts.

His early aviation training experiences were especially interesting to me as a private pilot. His descriptions of those days show us all how brave and motivated Jesse's generation was.

His book is a very moving tribute to the spirit of patriotism and courage, which I recommend to all.

I would say that this book tells of the cruel actions committed onto slaves. It gives not very descriptive details of what is happening in the book in certain places, but manages to still sum up what's going on. I would recommend this book for people who like reading historically told books and for peopl ewho might need to get an image of what slavery was and how it affected peoples lives.

I live just a few short miles from the historical homsestead where Mum Bett served as a slave, and yet I did not know her story until I met Mildred Pitts Walter at a convention. This story does not simply tell of the cruelities of slavery, but more than any other children's book on this subject, it describes the harsh realities of the times for all peoples, the illnesses that took life early, the difficulties encountered in child bearing, and the shortages brought about by the revolutionary war. Although the reviews above criticize the story for its meadering plot, I appreciated the window it gave me on daily life at the time of the American revolution. Ultimately, it is a book about the courage of one woman who fought for what was rightly hers. My adult friends keep borrowing it ...this is not a book for children only.

Alexeyeva has done a marvelous job of combining personal tales with Soviet political history in this fascinating collection of memoirs. The result is an unexpected page-turner that provides a solid overview of myriad dissident movements from the days of the Decemberists to Gorbachev's Russia.

The story follows Ludmilla Alexeyeva from her childhood, in which she believed she lived in the greatest country of all time. It is clear from the first few pages that Alexeyeva intended to invoke her private life only when it could feasibly add to the reader's comprehension of the historical events and movements being discussed. Alexeyeva the activist is openly presented, while Alexeyeva the person is shrouded in mystery. I found myself wondering if the two characters had become indistinguishable from one another.

Although the sheer number of characters mentioned in passing and centered upon is startling, many brief summaries are provided to jog the reader's memory, and the index is thorough. I found the text slightly disjointed, but not excessively so.

Overall, this is an effective introduction for novices in the study of the Soviet dissident movement from about 1956 to about 1975, and a good summary for those with expertise in that area.

Explains the why and how of the Russian dissident movement after Stalin's death, focusing on Alexeyeva's personal involvement. It combines the beauty of Russian memoir with light political analysis--all without the awkwardness of translation, thanks to co-author Paul Goldberg's excellent prose style. A must for any amateur historian of this period/people.

Debra Allbery, Walking Distance (Pittsburgh, 1991)

I figured it was high time for a re-read of this volume (one of the first, if memory serves, I ever reviewed for the Barn) after a span of years. Allbery is a rural poet, focused mainly on small-town life and the horrors, however existential, of childhood therein. Her lines remind me of these annoying Ohio winters; sparse, unforgivably cold, but the heavens open up and dump on us so rarely that it's still safe to venture out now and again for the sheer joy of basking in below freezing air. It's not thrilling for those who have to do it every day, but it's a refreshing change from the desiccation of survival in an office building.

Few enough poets today are even attempting spare, and of those, fewer still know how to do it right; the art of minimal poetry is knowing what to cut out and when. Cut out too much and you run the risk of being indecipherable; cut out too little and you run the risk of being William Carlos Williams (toward the end of his career). Allbery walks the line from first page to last in this book, and she never once falls into the safety net. There is great beauty here, for those who know the landscape about which she writes (both the physical landscape and the emotional); like most truly wonderful American poets working today, she is almost unknown, and that is a tragedy. **** ½

One glimpses an amazing inner life in Walking Distance, a dark sense of humor--the real, somber music of midwestern childhood. One of my favorite lines: "Back then I prayed nights out of the same superstition that kept me from using the coffee table Bible as a coaster..." These are stories as well as poems, songs which resonate with and retrieve forgotten smirkings and smiles at the constant, odd, beautiful sadness of life. Excellent!

*White Boots* is an uneven collection of poetry. Though all of the poems flow well and work. I found the connection they make with the reader sometimes lacking. Some of the poems in the collection are down right great, such as "CRAFT" in which Root fleshes out what the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest have lost in just over 200 words...and it really sticks with you. And, in "ABOVE BLACKHAWK WHERE AIR GETS THIN" he captures the essence of forest wildlife in even fewer words. Other poems such as the title poem, "WHITE BOOTS" work well and leave a bit of an after thought behind.

But other poems in this collection just left nothing behind for me...an important trait in a good poem. The read well, the prose works, but the connection is just not there. When I acquired this book, I had looked forward to reading it based on a few poems read in the store...unfortunately, the collection as a whole was a bit of let down on the emotional connection.

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A Guide to my Book Rating System:

1 star = The wood pulp would have been better utilized as toilet paper.
2 stars = Don't bother, clean your bathroom instead.
3 stars = Wasn't a waste of time, but it was time wasted.
4 stars = Good book, but not life altering.
5 stars = This book changed my world in at least some small way.

What you will find in William Pitt Root's White Boots is "the stuff of fields and forests/ the odor of earth freshly stirred." This is poetry by an American master, offering one man's lucid vision of what Allen Ginsberg named "Planetary News." As an added benefit, Root's writing offers wisdom--quite a bargain; ten bucks gets you music and magnificent language, plus directions on finding those elusive handholds without which our existence is barren; "no leaf is the tree, no tree the land." These reflections cast by his words mirror the treasure all about us, uncover the seep that quenches us as "blinking our way blindly into the dark canyon," we go on. While there is the temptation "to remain among stones/ a stone" there is a greater pull for "the living [to] keep hold of the things/ that bind them to those gone."
White Boots is a work of illumination by a writer who urges us "to stay in touch while the sun burns on." In "Above Blackhawk Where Air Gets Thin," a cat and mouse game takes place between ferret and chipmonk. The struggle is over quickly; we're told "No drama at all." On the contrary, Root has fashioned the great drama which we witness in all of his work, the elemental, everyday struggle that engages us whether we participate or not. He reminds us constantly of the sanctity of the beasts--he is insistent on this-- who share equal footing with humans in his life and his art. Slugs, wolf dogs and owls are featured and it's rare to find judgement passed by the poet. Perhaps that is what shocks when reading the ending of the brilliant "At the Foot of Holy Mountain"--"all the idiots of appetite/ pursue each other blindly/ by the jeweled light of their jeweled eyes." Is he speaking of predator and prey as described in the poem or is this line the succinct portrait of 21st century man and woman?
William Pitt Root does keep his "tools sharp" (check out his other books to see what I mean) and he instructs us that "we shine, and the world/ everywhere around us/ gives us back/ our shining." Buy this book (this work of love and humanity) and journey with the poet through the American West and beyond "utterly ablaze in the ark of the skull."

Dirk Pitt and his lifelong friend, Al Giordano, get out of unbelievably dangerous situations regularly. While it's impossible to believe most of their close escapes, suspension of disbelief makes these Dirk Pitt novels quite entertaining.

Every character maintains his traits throughout all of Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt. Admiral James Sandecker, Rudi Gunn, and the rest of the NUMA crew are steady characters that are often the last and only chance the U.S.A. to stop a madman's plot to take over or destroy the world. He is a straight man of honor that will not stand still while a human being gets hurt, but has no problem crushing those who do the hurting.

Cussler's books are filled with excitement in parts of the world from one solar cap to the other...and all points inbetween. His books are hard to put down! i've read most all of his 19 books. they're ALL good! enjoy Dirk Pitt, Admiral Sandecker, and Al Giordano, along with the NUMA crew. I know I did. --john g

It book helped me to write my thesis on the topic Marketing in Banking. It was very good

Kenneth Pitt was David Bowie's manager from 1967 (the year of David's debut album) to 1969 (the year of David's first hit single, "Space Oddity"). In this book he describes in detail the events that took place in that short but pivotal period of David's career. By now, of course, Pitt's accounts have been exhaustingly recycled in other Bowie books. If you're a casual fan who just wants a good, comprehensive biography, you're better off with the recently released "Strange Fascination", by David Buckley (available only in Britain at the time of writing). But if you're a bona fide "Bowiephile", this book is mandatory. And it will never be outdated, since it covers a time span in the past which will always be history and can never be changed.