Wallace Books

I had been an avid reader of Stegner for many years and lost all my books in the hurricane Iniki on Kauai. After reading this book, I'm buying all my old books again. This book, in providing the story of Stegner's life and career, and his writing, awakens the desire to re-read those books I've previously owned, and to read all the new stories I haven't. If you like Stegner, you should own and read this book.Wallace Stegner and the American West

A simply marvelous work. It flows like a novel, contains references that enhance the work and never strays from the subject. Wonderfully executed. A very keen insight to a complex personality. It renewed my interest in reading the books by Stegner I haven't yet read and likewise, makes me want to read more of Philip Fradkin.

Because I am jaundiced I probably have no right to comment on this book. Although I taught environmental history for a decade or more, I couldn't quite place Wallace Stegner when a friend mentioned his name a few weeks before I became aware of Fradkin's biography. Somehow my mind came up with a jumble of Wallace Stevens and Robinson Jeffers. Then I saw the author in a book talk and caught a bit of the Stegner conference in Pt. Reyes Station CA. I am bothered by all the hullabaloo. The word that comes to mind is chauvinism, western chauvinism. I haven't read novels in 30 or 40 years, so what right have I to comment. But Fradkin mirroring Stegner is a western chauvinist, though Stenger seemed to reject that in his adoption of Vermont as a place of realized landscape dreams in contrast to the West, a place of failed dreams, exploitation, and abandonment. This chauvinism, which so bothers me in California (when I say that I like going to New England in the deep winter, Californians look at me as if I am mad), was there in the Pt. Reyes conference, a praise of the surrounding landscape neglecting the fact that it is one of the richest communities in the US and its preservation both as pseudo wilderness and agricultural community is a direct function of its gentrification.

So what about the role of place? Stegner spent part of a childhood in southern Saskatchewan. Fradkin and Stegner would have us see that as the frontier a la Turner's hypothesis. Yet Turner's frontier had already closed and what Stegner's father was chasing was $2 a bushel wheat, a result of the prosperity after the turn of the century and then the demand created by WWI. Pointing to the massive creation of farms in those years was the revisionist historians' answer to the end-of-the-frontier theory. When the bottled up US was supposed to be turning on itself it was actually expanding at a rate equal to if not greater than before. Stegner's childhood in Saskatchewan influenced him but it is hard to see that in his pretty much middle class growing up and college years in Utah adorned with vacations fishing in the mountains near Salt Lake City. In reading Fradkin's biography, I have a hard time seeing the influence of those early years. In contrast, Farley Mowat's book about his childhood Born Naked: The Early Adventures of the Author of Never Cry Wolf a little further north is rooted in place and even as his father (like Stegner's) is peripatetic. Place is evident is a detailed description on nature and it effects on the author's life. From Utah, Stegner goes to Iowa where he is "'offended' by endless green of the Midwest." In his nostalgia he misses the nature which actually surrounded him. While Stegner was going to graduate school and teaching he is unaware that at the University the great ecologist Paul Errington was bringing the landscape of Iowa ponds alive in his studies of muskrats. He had a real sense of place.

Fradkin's book is odd in that, besides Stegner's childhood in Saskatchewan, the first hundred or so pages of the book are about a kind of bourgeois professor and his professional life. While reading I kept asking myself why writing about Stegner was such a celebration of the West. Stegner was obviously a great writing teacher and the list of his students is truly impressive. Yet besides Fradkin constantly emphasizing it, place in this aspect of his life hard to find. And from the quotes Fradkin gives, it is Vermont and not the West where Stegner expresses a sense of place. Yet Fradkin has to get in an anti-Eastern dig. At the Bread Loaf writers workshop in Middlebury VT in 1938 Fradkin tell us "they lived on top of a mountain--actually, more a hill by western standards..." Yet as much as Stegner is a romantic about mountains he chose to spend time in these hills and when he taught at Stanford for many years, the hills of Los Altos which was ex-urbia California, yes beautiful before Silicon Valley fancy houses spread into them but ex-urbia nonetheless. Place in my mind is very different from the rich people of Pt. Reyes loving to walk along the ocean or among the Bishop pines with little hands on experience in living in the place the way the last of the farmers there have or one of the world's best birders who since childhood has covered ever inch of Pt. Reyes and has an uncanny sense of where and when what species will show up and when it did for every season of the last 40 years, a sense of place like that of Wendell Berry (a Stegner student) who would neither let his name be considered for a Macarthur fellowship nor leave his farm for a full time position at Stanford. Stegner understood that Berry had a kind of integrity about place that Stegner himself lacked.

What Western chauvinists miss about American history is that Cape Cod was once the West as was Ohio when General Clark (the father of Lewis's partner Clark) came wandering in murdering Indians, burning their villages and clearing the forests to make farms. His son moved on like very very many of the pioneers: develop place to increase its value and sell it to the next wave of immigrants. Also cut down the forests, mine, the water and devil take the consequences. The destruction of the Merrimack River is no less the despoliation of the landscape than western mining and water ranching. And by the time Stegner began summering there, the seemingly eternal landscape of Vermont had already been so devastated by logging and sheep that its infertile, abandoned farms were beginning to recover. It is hard to make a claim for Stegner's connectedness to Vermont having only spent one winter because his hands got to cold. (Further his insensitivity to the people who really lived there came from his obvious unflattering references to real people in a novel. He wondered why he was never really accepted. What did he expect? He was a cosmopolitan like Edward Hoagland Notes from The Century Before: A Journal from British Columbia (Modern Library Exploration), passing through a place winning people's trust and then using them in his writing in a way that left them feeling betrayed.) This general behavior fits American romantic idea that one is rooted in the many places we visit or vacation in. It is a mixed bag and one earns one's existential spurs a la place by really living there. Few of us do. There are bits of it in Stegner's working with Vermonters or doing chores in his Los Altos Hills home. I know what he means when he spend a couple hours cutting wood as a break from his writing. I used to cut by hand my firewood every morning in the New Hampshire renovated chicken coop in which I lived. There was nothing like dressed only in shirt sleeves in first sunlight at zero degrees F., steam snorting from my nostrils, the back and forth of the Swede saw, then watching the frozen rock maple, fire cherry, and ash explode apart with the touch of my splitting maul.

Fradkin's biography turns interesting for me when Stegner worked with Stuart Udall and the Department of Interior. Stegner really seems to have effect on conservation policy. But he does not hang in there. He drops out of the Sierra Club when things become sticky. This novelist's aloofness comes out again in Stegner's rejection of the beat and then hippie revolution. He sees Stanford destroyed by the antiwar movement. (An opinion with which Fradkin agrees, taking no independent look at what was happening.) And Stegner rejects the literature and activism of his students like Kesey, taking a particular dislike of Gary Snyder (who in a Zen monastery in Japan was not hippie and when living in the Sierras for 40 years became one of the most authentic spokesmen for a sense of place). In this Stegner reminds me of Kerouac who couldn't stand being upstaged by the people he influenced. Maybe Stegner helped set off the environmental movement, but he then seems to have become bitter. He did defend open spaces in Los Altos hills but was that just another NIMBY by well-to-do people?

So what is the conclusion here. I suppose I will have to read some of Stegner's novels. I also have to give him credit for influencing so many contemporary writers. I would have wished a more balanced and critical biography from Fradkin and more sense of American history as a whole. (I had trouble with particular historical references like: in '37 at Madison, S. went to Young Communist League meetings whose "membership swollen by" NYC Jews barred from the ivy leagues. F. doesn't mention WI Wasp progressives, La Follette folk, the coop movement etc. or F. says S.'s book on Joe Hill in 1950 "was a victim of bad timing. A far-left leader did not have much appeal during the McCarthy era." Forgetting that in '50 there still were millions of left leaners. Or stating that in the 1990s Silicon Valley was the economic engine driving the Bay Area, despite San Francisco being a great financial capital, along with the huge mega-versities and a real-estate boom driven by a migration to the coast.) I would have wanted more explicit examples of the role of place in Stegner' life rather than just mentioning that it does. Otherwise, the Fradkin's book did opened for me up some interesting aspects of the cultural aspects of American environmental history that I need to further explore.
Charlie Fisher, author of Dismantling Discontent: Buddha's Way Through Darwin's World

Philip Fradkin, a Los Angeles Times reporter turned environmental historian, has given us a skillful biography of an important novelist, teacher, essayist, and environmental activist. Despite a tough childhood roaming the hardscrabble northern prairies and intermountain West, Stegner earned a Ph.D., taught at Harvard, and established Stanford University's creating writing program just after World War II. That program assembled a long list of fabulously gifted writers, and well before Stegner left it in 1971, he and his students (Ken Kesey, Larry McMurtry, Robert Stone, Thomas McGuane, Edward Abbey, Evan Connell, etc.) were thoroughly reimagining the literary West. Fradkin's work complements two earlier biographies by shifting the focus from Stegner's literary achievement to "the whole man ... set against the passing backdrops of his life." The attention to place is fitting, and Fradkin expertly reveals a canny, forthright figure in twentieth-century American letters. Highly recommended.

This amazing fourth edition is truly the Bible of the ceramics field. A fantastic resource for dealers and collectors alike. Al and Susan Bagdades' outdid themselves when they put this wonderful guide together. It is perfect for novice collectors or established dealers. This is an expanded edition of their classic reference with 10,000 new listings, 600 black and white photos, and 16 [ages of color photos. Plus there are new sections on Cottageware, Pilkington, Royal Winton, Ruskin, and Wade. Sadly, Susan passed away in 2003, while working with Al on this book. Despite his loss, Al persevered and completed this edition as a tribute to his beloved wife.

Warman's guide has been a real asset in researching porcelains. As a novice, my greatest challenge has been in identifying the origins of my pieces. The Warman's guide has been invaluable in identifying pieces and approximating dates, as the book illustrates each known signature/stamp, and often includes the dates associated with the signatures. The various B&W photos of plates, figures, etc., were only minimally helpful (you can only get so much info from small B&W pictures) but the real value for me has been in Warman's listing of manufacture marks. Warman's Porcelain is a good launching point for identifying unknown porcelain. (It is an encyclopedia). If you have an older porcelain and are curious to know more about it, its manufacturer (and value) Worman's is a good start for preliminary information. My only suggestion would be to have a separate index by manufacturer marks (if you don't know the maker associated w/your porcelain's signature, expect to spend some time scanning through this volume to find the particular illustration!)

This is a great book! A must have!! All the books by authors Susan and Al Bagdade are excellent.

This is an excellent reference book! It is in black and white with some pictures and a decent price list. The best thing about this book is the broad range of porcelain manufacturers listed and the histories, other references and collecting hints. Items are listed with good descriptions and price list. It also contains marks. It lists individual manufacturers and also gives histories on manufactureing areas. Altogether a very good book and valuable to porcelain collectors!

Phoebe Stone's hauntingly beautiful ALL THE BLUE MOONS AT THE WALLACE HOTEL stirs the heart and imprints the mind. Award-winning author and illustrator of WHEN THE WIND BEARS GO DANCING, this is Stone's first foray into the land of intermediate to middle school readers and she arrives radiant and appealing. Emotionally, her novel reads as if drawn from deep personal experience. Artistically, the story is vivid with the kind of imagery only an author with a tap root into art itself could manage. The book is a coming-of-age tale cast with luminous characters, hauntingly lovely descriptions and a poignant resolution that is both uplifting and plausible. I especially urge school librarians to purchase ALL THE BLUE MOONS and give book talks that include dialgue segments, interior monologues and scenic descriptions. Sensitive children will be drawn into the world of Fiona Hopper, her iconoclastic family and their responses to a world that first shuns then draws them to its breast. Burgess Needle, Librarian, Safford Magnet Middle School, Tucson Unified School District

comes a book this wonderful! This book made me laugh and cry and think. I loved the characters, particularly Wallace. Phoebe Stone uses language so beautifully and weaves a great story with surprising and gratifying twists. I strongly recommend this book to all girls who love ballet, or who have a sister, or who have a best friend...in fact, all girls!

I started reading this book one evening and was hard pressed to put it down! This is a great 'stay in when the weather is bad and read' kind of story. And it's not just a children's story either; I am a mature adult with no children of my own. I recommend this book to anyone with a passion to achieve a dream and an obstacle to overcome in accomplishing it!

The story and its characters is simply captivating! It only took a few pages before I found myself attached to the three main characters: Fiona, Wallace, and Kip. Their personalities take on real dimensions very quickly; I felt as if I actually knew them...they were so believably real! They most certainly could be young people any of us may have met in this present day.

Each of the children has an endearing uniqueness: Wallace - a precocious, unconventional, idealistic, and sensitive child - unaware of her desire for value until it is 'given' to her. One is immediately drawn to her character because she is so easy to like, even love...it was as much for her I wanted to read this book as it was for anyone or anything else in the story! Kyp provides all the boldness, daring, eagerness and self-assuredness oft equated with a youthful spirit. With his genuine honesty and acceptance, he is the balm that adds balance to the triangular relationship of these three children. Finally, Fiona's narration of this tale allows us to connect with her observations, her memories, her feelings, her desires, her hopes, her longings. She has been created with vividness and vulnerability! I think every child with an overriding dream in their heart can relate to her character...as can many adults. I know I did!

This is a great book for children and adults -- a timeless, magical house of exquisite animals that opens up a whole other world of possibilities for children to imagine. The images are really evocative, so even very small children will enjoy this book. Early readers can read along with ease. Adults will catch all the subtleties. I can't believe what a deal this beautiful hardcover book is! I'm buying it for all the children on my shopping list and for all my hard-to-shop-for friends.

How can something so visually exquisite be hilariously funny too? This thing is a treat! And beautiful enough to double as a coffee table book.

My nieces and nephew loved it, my nephew spending hours drawing 'alphabeast' animals after we read the book.
Thank you Alphabeasts!

I received this book as a gift and thought it would be just another alphabet book with the same old A is for Acorn-style drawings, but I couldn't have been more wrong. This book is filled with BEAUTIFUL, exquisitely detailed illustrations, many of which you wouldn't mind having blown up and framed.

"C is for Cat, who reflects on itself" shows a siamese cat gazing into a mirror at the tiger staring back at him. "E is for elephant, on the right track" shows a circus elephant playing with a toy train. "B is for bat, slurping ice cream" depicts a bat, carrying an upside-down hammer, flying up to a delicious sundae - many of the pages have this intensely original and dreamlike quality.

The day my 2 year old son first read this book, we read it 12+ times, and he still asks for it before naps and at bedtime. When he gets older I am sure the illustrations will serve as inspirations for his own art.

You will love this book!!

I bought this book used, and we've used it harder! My son loves it with a passion. He's always been a big fan of honey and very curious, so finding a book that explains how it's made was a natural thing for us. The pictures are adorable--they really enhance the story.

As a teacher who yearly goes to the library to get books about insects, specifically bees, this is the best book ever on the subject! (The bee is our school mascot.) For two reasons:
It takes a complicated subject, how honey is produced, and makes it simple enough for 5 year olds to understand; and the handcut collage artwork is something five year olds can handle in an art unit on collage. More, please, Ms. Wallace!

In A Taste Of Honey, Lily Bear asks her father a great many questions and in doing so a jar of honey is traced back to Mike's Market, the honey farm, the beekeeper, the honeycomb, and ultimately to the bees themselves! Author and illustrator Nancy Wallace uses brightly colored diagrams and sidebars in this delightful and entertaining picturebook story for youngsters 4 to 8 showing all the steps of making honey from beehive to dining table in clear, simple, and engaging detail.

This appealing book of pictures created using papercutouts tells The story of the bunny family's outing to the apple orchard. All the aspects of picking your own apples are presented. They get to ride out to the orchard on a wagon pulled by a tractor, have to choose which varieties to pick, and the farmer weighs the apples in the end. Information about apples is presented through the apple farmer. At home applesauce is made (recipe included), an apple craft is featured and an apple song is included as well. Should be perfect for before or after your next trip to the orchard or anytime of year. I think little ones will enjoy it as much as I did!

This is a great picture book with interesting cutout paper illustrations. It is a story of a (rabbit) family that goes apple picking in the fall. This is a New England tradition that I have enjoyed so the book is especially appealing to me. The family goes picking apples and the farmer goes along. The farmer explains some factual things such as how many seeds are usually in the apples and how they grow the trees from rootstock.

Each member of the family wants a different type of apple for a different purpose. The family cooks applesauce and the recipe is included. There is a song with music notations and directions for doing an apple printing craft.

This family enjoys learning about the apples and there are some factual pictures such as how the apple tree is grafted onto a root and a labeling of the parts of a bisected apple. I especially like how the story illustrates the children and parents as being interested in learning about the apples.

This is a fun storybook, a good mixture of story and facts with a few activities! This would make a great book for preschool or Kindergarten teaches, perfect for reading in the autumn or combining with a real trip to pick apples!

This is an amazingly illustrated book. The pictures are very captivating to young children.
The book not only offers a story, but great apple activities as well.
As a childcare provider, I highly recommend this book!

This is one of the most informative(from the player perspective) books on baseball I've ever seen. Good narrative riddled with excerpts from interviews and autobiographies of the players who've made this the most beautiful sport around. Highlights include Willie Stargell's harrowing brush with Texas racism in the minors, psychological terrorism tips from Ty Cobb, playing through agony with Gary Carter and Roberto Clemente, what if's from Judy Johnson and Monte Irvin and dealing with the loneliness of language barriers in a strange land by Juan Marichal.
Humor comes from a bit on illegal pitches featuring Gaylord Perry and Burleigh Grimes, as well as Joe Sewell's innovative way to deal with a bunt down the third base line...that one led to an overnight rule change. There is also an amusing debate over who threw the first curve ball and how corn cobs made Paul Waner a better hitter.
There is also tragedy. The Carl Mays fastball that killed Ray Chapman is dealt with in these pages.
The oral history is striking and wonderful, but the rare photos are even better. Clear photos grace nearly every page, many of which I have never had the pleasure of seeing. If you love baseball with even half the passion that I embrace it , you must own this book. It's time to see what was going on before sportscenter.

Despite claims to the contrary by previous reviewers there are no stories related by Barry Bonds and this book is not in chronological order. It is, however, made to order. Slip off the dust jacket and enjoy.

This book is a unique approach to examining the
national pastime of the USA. It is a picture book
that visits various eras of the game in chronological
order, along with quotes from the era's greatest stars,
many of whom are enshrined in Baseball's Hall of Fame in
Cooperstown, New York. You get to see the quotes of some
great players. The photography alone makes the book a
treasured keepsake. If you love baseball history, this
book is for you. The photography mixed with comments

about the game itself from those who participate in it
is a great concept in itself.

This is a different sort of "best" book and takes the concept of oral history to a new level. Previously the players in such collections shared a common theme, like a team or time frame. But Wallace wonders what it would be like to sit down old-timers with contemporary players for a discussion of their craft. Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds . . . Bob Feller and Greg Maddux . . . brothers of the diamond shooting the breeze. Using excerpts from old interviews, Wallace seamlessly blends the generations as they regale us in tales about the pressures a rookie faces, the joy of the cheers, and the heartbreak of realizing it's time to hang 'em up. The choice of illustrations works extremely well in enhancing the stories.

Daniel Wallace is a well known Greek scholar in the Christian world. This book is one that will show you why. I was recommended this book by my Greek mentor and I find this book very helpful. It's a concise version of his big grammar. I glad this book was recommed to me. I never thought of buying it. I thought it was going to be to advance for me, but instead it has advance my learning of Greek. But you should have at least a year of Greek under your belt.


Great Job Dr. Wallace

Having studied in detail the New Testament Greek syntactical the classical New Testament works of Dana and Mantey and A. T. Robertson's Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research I have found that Wallace has done an excellent job of simplifying the complexities of the Grammar of the New Testament and has written a book that has `re-worded' complex grammatical terms into language that will make it much easier for the serious Greek student to understand the original text. I especially recommend this book to students who have at least one year of basic Greek grammar on the college level. It will greatly aid in the study of the text.

Rev. Jonathan Beyer Graduate of Talbot Seminary and pastor

Daniel Wallace, by his own admission is a little bit long-winded. Peruse his articles on bible dot org and you will see that his footnotes often contain more text than his actual articles. So to shorten up the basic points of his 800-page second-year Greek grammar, Wallace cut it by about two thirds into this nice little book.

It is excellent for those who already have a working knowledge of Greek, and it can be used with the other Grammar if you get confused. A five-star job by a five-star theologian.

What a fantastic book, a totally unique approach on a difficult subject. It has certainly helped me and given me the strength to carry on, there is definately light at the end of my tunnel. Many Many Thanks. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who suffers from depression.

Everybody feels depressed at some time in their lives. If you feel, like I did, that you are currently "Diagonally Parked in a Parallel Universe"! Then this is the book for you, it helped me get back to the real world without pills or Dr Spock! Well written and enjoyable.

This is not a book by a doctor writing about patients,and it's not full of "self-help" platitudes -- it's by an ordinary woman who's suffered from depression herself and has some very practical advice on what to do about it. She knows it's terrible -- but she also knows you can get through it.

What should you eat when you're depressed? What do you do if you're just barely functioning? What if you're so depressed you can't move? What'll happen if you just hide under the covers and cry? (I tried this, thinking it would last hours, but I got bored after about 20 minutes. And I never would've tried it if not for this book.)

Best of all, there's a 14-day plan to get you back on track as fast as possible. Looking at the journal I kept while following the plan, I can see the external problems I wrote about haven't gone away -- but I'm not depressed about them anymore. No more obsessive misery -- that's what this book can help you to.

This is a fascinating book told by Beethoven himself. Considering the large volume of compositions written by Beethoven, it is amazing the amount of Beethoven's letter-writing. Many of his letters describe work-in-progress. Others talk about his patrons, fellow musicians, publishers, and personal friends. There are even some letters written to some of the women Beethoven admired. There are musical quotations of different compositions that were works-in-progress. Some of the pages show copies of some of Beethoven's actual scores. The translator lavishly uses footnotes to describe the historical background surrounding the period of Beethoven's life.

Beethoven's Letters
As a pianist, teacher, adjudicator, examiner, critic and author, I am often presented with performances of Beethoven's works that offer no insight or understanding of Beethoven the man or his music! When giving master classes, I encourage students to read his letters and analyze his music before attempting to perform it. Most consider Beethoven an unpleasant, angry, reclusive human being! Beethoven's letters prove these thoughts to be totally invalid! When writing to his brothers (Heiligenstadt Testament),Beethoven shows an essence of lament because he is so distraught about the false opinions of others toward him. In his letter's we find the true essence of this great man.
Beethoven was a man of morality, truth, and beauty very much like Schubert. Beethoven's deep love of nature is well-known and well documented in his letters and shows in his music too! He was a deeply religious man. Beethoven's attitude may have been more of conventional Catholic ecclesiastical views, but as his letters show, there are countless evidences of his spirituality.
In Beethoven's letter's the fundamental differences are clear. I feel the most important ones are these:
Purity. There is never one single moment of something demonic or unhealthy in his music.
Dignity. He is always completely honest in his music. And there is never a trace of something that might be interpreted as self pity. Pain and sorrow, yes, but nothing to suggest that he ever felt sorry for himself.
His letter's convey a very good guess that Beethoven's deafness may have been a result of his attempts to press his excellent hearing sense to the extreme in order to gain the ultimate understanding of music! The reading of Beethoven's letters is paramount for those who truly want to know the essence of the man and how to approach performing his music!

Author: Raymond Vacchino M.Mus.(MT) A.Mus. L.R.S.M. Licentiate (hon.)

How could it not be fascinating? The real thing - he was not writing with the thought that his letters would ever be published and as the editor says - how can we judge a genius by ordinary means?? His personal life was extreme, but his letters show us the real man with a true heart and extreme emotions. I just loved this book. I'm not a music specialist - this book is written for the general public - I love classical music and play the piano - but now as I play Beethoven his life rings out more meaningfully to me and I forgive him his sins of passion - as I thrill in playing the music of this genius.