Wallace Books

Okay, we sort of tell kids that art is a good thing. We tell them that artists are to be admired. We sort of tell them poetry is a fine thing, but God forbid anyone really teaches this stuff any more! When looking through this book I was awed and angered. Presented here are some of the most influential artists, of nearly every medium, that worked in America during the late 20th Century, but I would like to see how many of these names have any familiarity to people.

I conducted my own little experiment. I asked people to tell me who Allen Ginsberg was. I chose Ginsberg because I thought he had the most recognizable name. Out of the 20 I asked, three were able to tell me they "thought" he was a writer. One told me he was a poet, but when I asked if he wrote "Howl!" or "A Coney Island of the Mind", he didn't know. (He wrote "Howl!" Lawrence Ferlinghetti wrote the other.)

Get this book and let it lead you to dozens more books and see the depth of artistic experiment that Wallace Berman encouraged. Then go get outraged and start loudly reciting poetry on the train platform while you're waiting to get into the city for your job at the bank.

This beautiful coffee table book is an intriguing study of the people and their lasting contributions to our culture. It should be in every library and in every school that claims it is educating our children.

Brent Howard has been asked by his good friend, Senator Adams, to kidnap his daughter in order to keep her from marrying her fiancé. Brent usually isn't attracted to shorter women, but when he sees Sophie Adams at an art function, he can't help himself. When her fiancé comes near her, he watches her body language and decides then and there that he will do what his friend wants. He is going to kidnap the senator's daughter.

Sophie Adams is getting married tomorrow amidst rumors of her fiancé's harsh ways and business dealings. Knowing first hand the type of man he is, Sophie doesn't have a choice. She has a senator to protect; her father.

The Senator's Daughter was actually a very good book. The kidnapping of Sophie went off easier than, I think, a real life kidnapping would, but it was believable. I found myself becoming just as enthralled with Brent Howard as Sophie. He was loyal without being overbearing and I loved how he took care of Sophie in spite of his supposed role as a mean kidnapper. Sophie's devotion to her father was plain to see given her engagement to a dangerous man.

You won't go wrong reading The Senator's Daughter. It was romantic, suspenseful at times and just an all around good read. Thumbs up for Debbie Wallace!

Talia reviewed for Joyfully Reviewed

Drawing on his own childhood experience of rootlessness, moving about in western North America, Stegner digs deeply into our connection with place. Much of it is an account of personal history. From there he moves into a very touching analysis of living in the west and the impact we are having on the ecosystems of the west.

Stegner's use of the language is powerful. We've listened to the tape several times, while traveling, and it never ceases to move and to inform.

This is one of the great books in philosophy of mind in the 20th century -- admittedly a low moment for the philosophical study of the mind. Writing at the same time that Thomas Nagel's classic piece on bats came out, Matson asks what it's like to be a cat [one presumes the two philosophers had conversed on the topic] -- and unlike Nagel offers an illuminating and philosophically powerful proposal in analysis of what it's like, in terms not of sensation but of the activity one's species allows for. In the same chapter he harnesses Wittgenstein in an attack on privacy, still useful in these days of qualiaphiles. Matson presents the book as a defense of materialism, and unlike most materiophiles grounds the argument in an extended consideration of identity and necessity. In a chapter on machines, Matson argues in the context of Turing's famous test of intelligence that materialism doesn't imply that men are machines. You'll only irritate someone in AI research if you ask for a computer that can get a joke, he says, and it would never occur to a machine that man is a machine. Matson introduces a chapter on sentience with a full-scale analysis of the Greek "noein" as used in Homer etc. since he believes it's equivalent to the current verb "to size up". The brief book concludes with a chapter on freedom in which Matson offers an analysis consistent with his version of materialism. -- It doesn't all convince me; I think materialism -- Matson's central thesis -- is deeply wrong; but this book displays a wit and an intelligence we have seldom seen in the 30 years since its original publication, and in their service resuscitates some of the most useful insights from Wittgenstein and the Greeks, giving a wide berth to most of the usual suspects in between.

It has been many years since I read this book, and as I recall, it was quite controversial for its time. A certain person of prominence, using a fictitious name, writes a novel regarding a woman's sexual experience and what she thought about during this encounter. The book becomes banned, and then there is a court trial to determine if the book is pornography or not. The court trial is awesome, and the ending is a complete surprise. All I can say is that when this book ended, I was so upset because I just wanted to keep reading. This was definitely a book which was next to impossible to put down. As I said, I read this many, many years ago, and it still stays in my mind. To say this novel is well worth the read is definitely an understatement.

I have been a principal for 16 years and have read "Shadow in the Snow" aloud to at least one classroom a year since it was first published in 1984. The book can also be found under the title, "Danger on Panther Peak," published by a different company. This book is ideal for 3rd through 6th grade as a read aloud. The kids just hate it when I stop at one of the 'good' parts of the book and they beg me to read on. It is one of the best read alouds I have ever found. The kids are spellbound and clamor for more books by Bill Wallace. We have a whole school library full of them! One girl in the fourth grade this year went to the local public library and checked out the book so she could finish it on her own ahead of my reading!

Nancy Elizabeth Wallace's SHELLS! SHELLS! SHELLS! tells of Buddy and his mother, who spend a day at the beach collecting and learning about shells. The two bears have a fine time and kids also receive a fine introduction to the magic of shells and shell collecting, but in an easy picturebook form.

or should I say 'complements'..? Compiles interesting, some little known, facts about: people, history, America, the law, war, language, inventions, transportation, sports, money and food..
Here are little known facts, curiosities, and amazing-but-true stories from the best of their weekly Significa column in Parade Magazine - over 400 entries in all. Significa: unusual or little known facts which have too much significance to qualify as mere trivia.

This book, which is a survey of both the author's own collection of English silver drinkiing vessels, and the very fine collection at Colonial Williamsburg, provides a terrific overview for anyone interested in the history of these objects, their use, their forms and changes of forms, and their functions. More importantly, the author, who was for many years one of the leading collectors of English silver in the world, provides his personal thoughts and opinions on the aesthetic qualities of many of the items in the book. While it is a shame the photography isn't better, the reader still gets enough of an impression of the object, and enough information about the object, to share the author's enthusiasm.

IF YOU'RE A BIG MYSTERY FAN ALL OF THE SISTERS IN CRIME ARE A MUST READ