Wallace Books

Sadly out of print, "The Nympho and Other Maniacs" is more than just a sleazy look at historical tramps. If you can get your hands on a copy, ignore the stares and raised eyebrows. Irving Wallace looks at women who for whatever the reason were considered outside of the norm from their times.

Yes, females who exert their power through sex are discussed. Pauline Bonaparte and the courtesan known as Ninon are two examples. The imfamous ancestress of the former Ambassador Pamela Churchill Harriman, the Honorable Jane Digby and her adventures is a particularly interesting chapter, making the reader race for the biography section of the local bookstore or library to learn more about a women who enchanted men up until her death.

But sex is not the only mania covered. The latter chapters cover little remember figures such as Anne Royall (placed on trial for being a scold), Victoria Woodhull (the imfamous financial "wizard" who was accused of prostitution and ran for President before women had the vote) and the woman who spent her life trying to prove William Shakespeare was only a cover for writers such as Francis Bacon and William Spenser.

Once you'll finished "The Nympho and Other Maniacs", you'll be longing to find out even more about these intriguing women.

I have this book in my library and read it 3 times already. Being a woman I am interested in the lives of other women, especially famous ones who I can live thru surreptitiously only because Mr. Wallace is that good an author. Each life is well researched, but short and to mention a few Aspasia, Lais,Cleopatra, Heloise, Lady Hamilton,Claire Clairmont and Caroline Lamb. The title is deceiving because it is a factual history of these women not merely the author's opinion of a psychosis they had in common and I feel the writer used it to lure a portential buyer or reader as it did me. I only bought it after I skimmed thru it. He is, after all an author of many novels - not a psychiatrist. This volume is well written; a fascinating read and makes a reader want to learn more about these women and their contemporaries. I don't feel it got the credit it deserved when it was first published in 1971.ERIN MARIE SULLIVAN

George Wallace has written an insightful, seminal work that challenges every belief and every value you have ever held.

He has managed to offend every aspect of faith and religiosity. His observations are both outrageous... and true.

No religion, no doctrine, no faith, no evangelist, no leader, is spared his razor-sharp wit, his keen intellect, and his knack for cutting though all the BS that infects religious thought.

The talking heads of religion are squirming in their pulpits... and some are already calling for the head of George Wallace on a stick.

Reviewed by Rhiannon Kelly Fionn for Reader Views (1/6)

In "Oh! God? Is That You? I Have A Question.", George B. Wallace encourages his readers to look beyond the "truths" organized religion, family, and society have fed us and, instead, reach for our own truths with the aid of questions and logic. This book represents Mr. Wallace's personal image of God. He is endearingly wise enough, however, to include a disclaimer stating that he could very possibly have it all wrong. Simultaneously he reminds us how important it is to seek our own answers versus blindly and naively accepting any homogenized, censored, revised details presented to us as the one path to God.

Conversational with an occasional sarcastic or silly jab, Mr. Wallace explains key points with vivid, charismatic description. For instance, in reference to a soul being banished to Hell he writes, "Burned souls would give God indigestion." Or when discussing the life and times of Jesus he says, "Jesus' life was not about magic, or mumbo jumbo; it was about love, but it is likely that later writers added a lot of decoration to the icing on the cake".

As someone who enjoys the study of various religions and spiritual paths, I found myself dog-earing pages while making mental lists of people to steer toward this title. I am impressed by Mr. Wallace's purposeful and pointed examination of God taking his readers beyond the obvious so that we might better connect to and clarify the role of God, and his (or her) motivations, in our lives and world.

This book is for all thinking souls; a brilliant reminder to not only question authority but to also question the answers authority returns. This book may not be for the deeply indoctrinated for, I fear, their minds may well explode. If you prefer to wrap yourself in a cloak of groupthink and play follow and finance the leader-put this book down and go back to covering your eyes. On the other hand, if you enjoy asking "Why?" you will savor "Oh! God? Is That You? I Have A Question."

ONE GOOD PUNCH is a sure-fire winner for any teen. Just short of 120 pages, it is a fast-paced, page-turner with suspense and humor. I predict it will end up on most Best Teen Books and Quick Reads lists soon.

Michael is a senior. An ambitious cross-country and track runner, he is hoping to use his talent as a stepping stone to a decent college. His part-time job at the Scranton Observer writing obituaries is giving him valuable experience as he dreams of someday writing novels.

Trusted by his parents, Michael leads the life of a typical 18-year-old. When not working or running, he spends most of his time with his best friend, Shelly. Mostly they hang out and talk or take in a movie at the Cultural Center downtown. Lately things have moved a bit more in the romantic direction, which Michael feels is a bit weird, but at the same time, it feels sort of right.

Life changes overnight for Michael when four joints are discovered in his locker during a routine drug sweep of the high school. Put there by his friend, Joey, they represent the possible end to Michael's future dreams. He did ask Joey to get him a couple of joints, but he never dreamed the kid would be stupid enough to put them in his locker.

Michael gets advice from just about everyone he knows that he should rat out Joey as his supplier. Even school officials suggest things would go easier for him if he tells. Torn between giving up his future plans and staying loyal to a longtime friend, Michael's world is turned upside-down.

Reviewed by: Sally Kruger, aka "Readingjunky"

Michael is a dedicated athlete, captain of the track team, and has never been in trouble - until the police find four joints in his locker in Rich Wallace's ONE GOOD PUNCH. The choices he will make next will affect his career and his future in a story of would-be champion struggling to find his winning way in the world. Teens at the middle school level in particular will find it engrossing.

This work is a technical introduction to evolutionary developmental biology and introduces a very different perspective on evolution from what one is used to in the usual biology texts. In spite of its moderate difficulty, to a non-specialist, it is actually much clearer than simplified versions of Darwinism, and one can recommend it strongly as a perspective on the separate current to the Neo-Darwinian synthesis that has flowed from its nineteenth century origins parallel to Darwin. In the age of the Genome this dark side of the moon as to theoretical paradigms is coming into full view. The book starts with an exhortation to the reader "to believe that current evolutionary theory based on natural selection and adaptation in natural lineages is, at the very least, incomplete..." The author asks, did "evolution really have an early 'morphogenetic' phase during which most major body plans originated?" The difficulty of explaining the fact that no phylum-level body plans have arisen in the last 500 my becomes one of the starting points of the book. In general this perspective asks for the creative aspect of development beyond the destructive aspect of natural selection models. From there the book proceeds to the issues of cladism, body plans, genetic regulation, and many other topics in a comprehensive presentation. The crucial significance of all this for understanding evolution and extricating oneself from disinformation in the Darwin debate are obvious. Much of the boilerplate and blah-blah of the public discourse on evolution can be left behind in a fast getaway into some better fare than the current offerings. We are beginning to catch a glimpse of a new world of evolution, one that has been with us all along in embryo, as forseen by such biologists as Soren Lovtrup in Darwinism: Refutation of a Myth. That day is now arriving.

Let's see, my take on the book in a nutshell: the conditions under which evolution operated during the Cambrian/Vendian times were different from the conditions following that time in two main ways, and these differences can potentially account for the origin of the many animal body plans during those early periods and the lack of new ones since.

First, ~550 million years ago most animals were very much simpler (fewer cells, for example) than they are today, so changes to their developmental programs would have been better tolerated. The more complex any system is (the more parts it has, the more coordinated and well-matched those parts must be, etc.), the more rigidly constrained and less amenable to a given magnitude of change it is. So the simpler developmental processes (simpler adult-form end product, fewer interactions between developmental genes, etc.) of early animals would have allowed for a 'large-scale' change to be incorporated into that animal's ontogeny, though if a change of the same magnitude were to occur today, it would be too disruptive to the complex developmental program and would be eliminated (note that 'large-scale change' refers to the adult form: the actual change that caused that altered end result could be a typical small scale mutation, in an early developmental stage). The author is not proposing Goldschmidt's "hopeful monsters" that occur due to 'macromutations', but rather an intermediate position between that and the "only micromutations" view of gradualistic neo-Darwinism. And, as just mentioned, mutations in developmental processes (even ones that resulted in 'macromutations' in the adult form) would have been more tolerated in the simpler animals that existed ~550 mya than they would be in today's.

Second, ~550 million years ago animal diversity was extremely more limited than it is today, so there was a huge number of open niches: a plentitude the likes of which has never again existed on our planet. An organism that happened to find itself in one of the multitude of open niches (by means of a "semi-macro" mutation, the product of a change in a developmental gene) would have faced little if any competition. The reduced external competition would potentially allow the morpholigical variation(s), that would otherwise likely have been eliminated, to persist. (The sudden change could leave the organism with a lower level of internal coordination: over time, internal cooadaptation could evolve to 'catch up' with the change in morphology: these internal adjustments would leave no trace in the fossil record).

Combining these two ideas produces a reasonable explanation of the 'explosion' in new body plans in Vendian/Cambrian times.

Of course there's much more to the book than my above "nutshell" presentation. The Evo-Devo perspective presented in the book allowed me to view evolution in a new way: it gave me a better understanding of the "creative" side of evolution than I had before when viewing things solely from a gradualistic, neo-Darwinian frame of reference.

PS: The book is "aged" (1997) but is not outdated.

In Passionately Human, No Less Divine, Wallace Best describes the difficulties blacks faced in migrating from the south to the north during the first half of the 20th century. Not only did they suffer from economic hardships and homesickness, but perhaps most daunting was the cultural transition from rural to urban life. Rather than portraying these migrants as vicitms, Best aptly focuses on the agency of these rural blacks in both their religious and everyday lives. Through an enlighening study and analysis, Best takes tremendous pains to show how rural blacks, and particularly black women, were not merely puppets in an established order, but agents in a rapidly shifting social order they themselves were bringing to pass.

Best dispels the myth perpetuated by many modern day sociologists that class differences were the main cause of divergent preferences in church membership and demonstrates that differences in church preference were largely determined by familial and community relationships that were brought with them from the south. In other words, one was most likely to attend the church one's relatives or hometown community attended, regardless of denomination.

Best highlights the work of two prominent black female ministers, Lucy Smith and Mary Evans, who, while very different in style and approach, each had trememdous impact on black culture in Chicago. With her more reserved style, Evans seemed to appeal to the more educated black population while Smith's more down-to-earth and emotional style seemed to captivate the hearts of southern blacks in a manner which reminded them of home and was a balm to their homesick hearts. Smith's focus on first tending to the physical and material needs of newcomers brought the masses to her doors. Best closes the book with a description of Smith's funeral which counted over 100,000 attendees including some of the city's most prominent citizens.

Through colorful descriptions and revealing photographs, Best makes a tremendous contribution to the existing body of work on this era. It is must-read for anyone interested in the history of Chicago, the Great Migration of blacks from the south to the north during the first half of the 20th century, the role of black women in church and community, or contemporary black religious life in general.

First, let me say that this book is so much more than a book of religious history. It is an interdisciplinary exploration of urbanization, migration, and religious change. It tells the story of the encounter of poor black sharecroppers with urban industrial life, and how both were transformed in the process. It tells this complex story through the lives and experiences of a handful of extraordinary men and women of faith--people like gospel singer Mahalia Jackson and preacher Elder Lucy Smith, whose 1930s radio hour was among the first to broadcast live worship services. Together they formed what Best calls `a new sacred order' in Chicago during the Great Migration.

Best knows the history of the black church like no one else. And he does not shy away from examining this transformation in all its complexity, including the tensions created by issues of gender, class, and sexuality. Indeed, Best maintains that one of the innovations of Great Migration religious institutions was an integration of the sacred and the secular--a church that struggled to be "passionately human, but no less divine." These were places of worship, but also places for meeting the more worldly needs of congregations. Women dominated many of these congregations and at least one was a major stop on the gay nightlife circuit of the 1930s. It was truly a time of cultural transformation, when the very meaning of "church" was up for grabs.

On finishing this remarkable book, you can almost hear the refrain of "sweet home Chicago" wafting out of a South Side storefront church. Amen.

A Children' Lit. class at the University of British Columbia selected "Pookie" as our all time favorite pre-school book as remembered from childhood. Pookie, a little white rabbit with bothersome wings sets out to seek his fortune, not knowing what a fortune is or where to find one. He has adventures and finally as he is bemoaning his fate, lands on the doorstep of Belinda who loves him and his wings.
The prose and vocabulary are challenging (I only remember this as being read to me, not reading it myself) and it conveys a lovely message about our differences from others being blessings, and the power of unconditional love. I love this book!

This is a wounderful fairy tail filled with imagination. As a small child I would study the pictures finding little details I didn't notice at first. The copy I have now was my mothers as a child, it was very worn when it was given to me - the sign of a good book. I'm now going to buy new copies to read to my children and pass the story along to them. It is a fairy tail- with fairies, no witches nothing that I remembered being scary, unlike some stories I've tried reading to my two year old. It is heartwarming, simple to read and understand. Fun to look at the pictures(in my old book, I hope to new one is the same).
In all a great story.

In many ways, this mature work resembles his "BEN-HUR": it covers
a period of many years, and its plot is built by putting together
historical and geographical facts, and by weaving in a thread of
romance. The "boat race" introduced in this story suggests the
famous "chariot race" in "BEN-HUR". This property has value in
awakening interest in a fascinating period of history, and fixing
in the mind of the audience many historic events and customs,
while its treatment of the religious questions involved is both
broad and comprehensive. (Helen Rex Keller)

This novel recounts events leading to the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453. The legendary "wandering jew", in guise of a "Prince of India" aids in bringing about the downfall of the city and its empire by aiding and advising the Turkish Sultan Mehmed II.

The viewpoints of both the Greek and Turkish sides are shown in detail, with sympathy for both. Added to this are many vivid descriptions of the city and the important characters of the day. All in all, an interesting read.

The central character of the Jew/Prince is a fascinating portrait. I found it much more effective than the other 19th century treatment of the legend by Eugene Sue, "Le Juif Errant."

I took this book from a neglected stack in an Acupuncturist's office, and was struck by the repugnant cover (imagine the worse possible detail job on a van from the 70s - it was an earlier edition than the one you see on Amazon). But the information is solid. Good understandings of time, healing, choice and destiny are woven throughout the material. Simple exercises are presented with direct and encouraging language that does a good job addressing the problem of doubt.

Not at all pertinent to this book, yet Interesting to note: this Amy Wallace is the author of The Sorcerer's Apprentice, a memoir of her years as a follower of Carlos Casteneda.

This book contains simple, straight forward information about how to understand and utilize your psychic abilities. It is helpful for beginners and practioners alike, as it covers a great deal territory on just about any subject you can think of in the psychic arena. Most important of all, it teaches the ethics and responsibilities of being psychic, far too many books leave out this important information, which can lead to all kinds of complications for the unwary. So if you are a seeker, looking for information on being psychic and what it means to be psychic, as well as how to get started on this path, this is your book. I am a practicing psychic and this is one of the books I recommend to my clients.

Would love to see this book in paperbook so I could afford to order it for our library. Anything by this individual should be high on your list. Having personally been a student of Sexson's, I can vouch for the fact that he has an intriguing and often Dionysian take on whatever is set before him (read: fun). Not to mention that Wallace Stevens is amazing in his own right. If you don't own his collected works, well, start there, please. If you've never met a man who is fully awake, read Sexson.

Michael Sexson displays a tacticle familiarity with the throbbing heartbeat of the human psyche.

Enjoy reading this book, has very useful info regarding how xrays are produced and what goes into making them. It also explains what factors go into making an image correctly as well as incorrectly. Great book if you are interested in this field.

Very good book. It has know how in radiology practice. As a Biomedical Engineer and many years in the radiologic field, I found this book very didatic for a guide to teach other professionals and for learning. In a simple manner all the important aspects are showed, except the production of X-rays and inside the machines.