Walsh Books

This book describes how parents and teachers can assist children in their social, developmental growth. It is remarkably simple, but shows how self-direction and self-discipline can occur. Of course, it is not that this material has not been presented in other forms or ways, but that people keep searching and seemingly never pay attention to what practices can help promote self-discipline. I loved this book.

Pliny's letters give an eminent impression of the life of a wealthy barrister at the end of the 1st century and the beginning of the 2nd one in the Roman Empire. He was also an honest civil servant of his country.

Pliny was a tolerant (`anyone who hates faults, hates mankind'), honest and loyal man. He loved liberty (which was regained in Rome with Trajan after the harsh dictatorship of Domitian) and profited as much as he could of his wealth, because `nothing is so short and fleeting as the longest of human lives'.
Politically he was a staunch defender of the state religion (he condemned Christians) and an opponent of secret ballot, because it lead to `wanton irresponsibilities'.
His view on mankind was rather pessimistic: `very few people are as scrupulously honest in secret as in public, and many are influenced by public opinion, but scarcely anyone by conscience.'
Also, he saw his country as a state, `which has long offered the same (or even greater) rewards to dishonesty and wickedness as it does to honor and merit, and `the prevailing habits of the day and the laws judge a man's income to be of primary importance.'
He understood the all importance of education.
As a big lover of literature (`no book so bad that some good could not be got out of it') he saw the greatness of his friend Cornelius Tacitus: `I believe that your histories will be immortal.'

Most of the letters are rather unimportant exhortations, recommendations, discussions about wills and legacies, or about the Roman bar, with barristers speeches of 5 hours, `sold counsel', fake lawsuits, `compulsion' pleading, `dinner-clappers' and `bravo-callers'.

This book is only for historians and lovers of classical literature.

If you want more than the free folders given out by the tourist information office but not the hefty Story of Galway by Seán Spellisy, this is a recommended purchase. It does demystify the Lynch window malarkey effectively, shows off in photos and brief but sufficient text the main sights, the history of the town, and suggests the high points for a visitor. Galway's lacking in the plethora of guides available for Dublin, but this meets the demand of anyone curious about its legends and its facts. Although apparently out-of-print in the US, it's easily found at airport booksellers, any bookshop in Ireland, or many of those tourist info offices. It'd be a good souvenir or gift for those wanting to visit Galway to study up on before their own journey.

The editor commissioned these stories from Irish-born (or in one case, Irish American) writers, all under 50, who try to put into their imagined settings the real unease experienced by Irish within the past generation. Not all of the stories directly take place in or even address Ireland; the common thread only that there's an Irish provenance to their authors. This makes for a more diverse collection than the subtitle might suggest. Such diffusion, therefore, makes also for a less than satisfying impact as an anthology with a central unifying theme.

Aidan Mathews, whose novel "Muesli at Midnight" is a rarely acknowledged gem, gets all too infrequent coverage; his two story collections are worth seeking out. He, earlier than others, brought a European dimension into his fiction as the "Celtic Tiger" was no more than purring. Taking James Bond's cinematic incarnations as a link across the 60s into the 70s, a barber and his surgeon customer carry on a conversation over the years that makes for a more traditional character study echoing the mid-20c masters of Irish short stories.

Blanaid McKinney's tale takes a while to work its magic. A priest has ditched his school post for a fling in London with a woman who may or may not lead to his leaving his position. His disillusionment with London's relentless adverts and the tawdry culture they and his lover embrace and celebrate leads to a moment of decision for him. It reminds me of what Kieslowski could have filmed as one of the parts of his film "Dekalog."

Eilis Ni Dhuibhne embeds in many of her stories folkloric elements, and Riding Hood sports a new tailor in her offering. Again, a slow starter, in three at first seemingly disconnected parts, this follows a librarian from a country like Sweden or Denmark into a place like Vienna. She meets an Italian man who claims a recent separation from his wife and grown daughter. The bond they tenuously share does not work out in predictable fashion, but it does satisfy for its link to Europe's wider traumas against which the protagonist must measure her own pack of troubles.

Sean O'Reilly's novel set in his native city of Derry, "Love and Sleep," offered little of either but a lot of post-modern angst, brutal if infrequent coupling, and a main character who'd you'd hope never to meet in a pub. This all applies again to his story, "Playboy," and if this is your type of milieu, O'Reilly's for you. He writes well, but seems too smitten with the demi-monde. Sort of like Celine or Genet stuck in an Irish theme-pub.

Which leads to the twist, an Irish pub tarted up as an Aussie one in Judes Cross, where a market-town trying to become the next Tidy Town (like real-life Adare?) makes for one dissatisfied publican. Tom Humphries' "Australia Day" works more as a commentary than a full-fledged story, but it does elaborate well this relentless and soul-draining plundering of the tourists' purse that inescapably accompanies Ireland's own marketing of itself as both authentic, pricy, and au courant.

Joseth O'Neill's "Ponchos" never addresses Ireland, but many of those on the barstools in the NYC pub could've been transplants from the two previous tales. His tragicomic story reminds me of those of Matthew Klam, author of "Sam the Cat," in their common examination of threatened males in an Sirens-like reverie of increasingly assertive, tempting, yet unattainable (unless in fantasy or a brief moment) women who make for all the wrecked and lonely people--once lovers and now only couples--today. It's simply told but moves quickly and with needed banter and wit.

Keith Ridgway's "Grid Work" takes a more successful (at least in his bank account and status) alpha-male who, seven-foot-two, lives in planes, so it seems to him. At least not in economy. His outpouring of anxiety, his refusal to talk on planes, and his globalized deracination all remind me of Michel Houllebecq's males in similarly technologicall advanced environs but reductively primitive, self-constructed, cages of rationality.

The rest of the stories did not work for me. Claire Keegan gives what felt like the never-ending story based on a mad priest, a tale of "feet water," a bachelor farmer, his quondam mate, and heaps of rural melancholia. John Mac Kenna's "Maps" imitated the insular studies of John McGahern if with more expletives; the father-son struggle needs a lot of originality to propel still another short story. Molly McCluskey's story of two girls growing up and apart on the East Coast was respectable enough for her MFA-type of writing that is so plentiful, but felt out of place in this anthology when technically she's outshined by O'Neill and McKinney's analogous relationship studies.

Finally, Mary Morrisy's tale of a instructor and her students alumped on the page and never roused itself. The set-up all too familiar, but more than character sketches need to add up for a story to gain its own momentum and impel the reader further. That's why, as a whole, the dialogic energy of Mathews, the insight of McKinney and O'Neill that manages to avoid the predictable endings you thought you were headed towards, and the corss-cultural scope of Ni Dhuibhne, to name the four best, only somewhat off-set the acceptable nature of the middle stories listed and the drudgery of those last described.

Many Americans have grown increasingly disenchanted with the quality of national news coverage and journalist Kenneth Walsh is one of them. Taking aim at the vindictiveness and sensationalism that pervades coverage of the White House in particular, Walsh attributes much of the blame, not surprisingly, to shorter news cycles that encourage reporters to "advance the story" with "hard-edged" analysis and predictions, fierce competition for ratings, and the public's appetite for entertainment over hard news. The strength of the book, I believe, lies in his interviews with White House reporters and network news anchors. Their reactions to Walsh's questions struck me as running the gamut from surprisingly self-aware and candid to hopelessly defensive, sarcastic and naive. The weaknesses of the book, while not outweighing the strengths, are manifold. Walsh takes too much time to detail how, at the outset, Clinton and his youthful press secretaries needlessly antagonized the press; in the end, he concedes that Clinton's aversion to "gotcha" journalism is well-founded, and that even deft handling of the White House press would have done little to curb rampant negativism. And while he criticizes the Clintons for failing to reveal enough of their private personas to the media, Walsh also acknowledges that the unquenchable press appetite for this sort of information exceeds the limits of human toleration. My most serious reservations concern the author's conclusions. After identifying the competitive pressures that drive the news business, Walsh seems to forget about them as he lamely calls on journalists to restore professional standards. And although many would agree with him that Washington reporters often seem out of touch with the public, his cliched recommendation that reporters reconnect with the "real" America, MIddle America, seems to contravene his own agenda. If Middle America had a greater predilection for hard news and reasoned presentation, as offered for example on public radio and TV, it seems to me that commercial news sources would be only too happy to oblige them.

Easy to read and comprehend...clear and to the point. Not as in depth as a pathophys. text.

This book is full of very short stories. Just when you start to get interested in a certain story...it's over! The author doesn't seem very curious about any of the stories as if he couldn't be bothered to do any research and just copied the story from somewhere else. Some of the stories are extremely interesting though and the book is worth buying just for that reason. You will want to mark certain pages for later research on your own though. But this book at least gives you a head start on some fascinating stories.

i got this book from one of the authors who contributed. i really like the first half of the book, seems like something totally new to me, then the second half seems like just different people repeating the same things. basically all the stuff in this book are just thoughts and other things taken from all the first career coaches/authors such has napolean hill-think and grow rich and the portable coach but each with a different slant on it.

This man certainly led an interesting life and it is a fascinating read. I picked this up because he served at that the same time as my father, and in the same ship and establishments, so I was hoping for another perspective that would enable me to correlate some of events and story discussed by my father. Unfortunately the detail was not sufficient in this tale for me to accomplish that. The earlier years a better told and more detailed accounts than the events in the later years, and the time line fast forwards and jumps considerably. Some of the early antics and incidents sound fantastic and incredible - but the later incidents ring true against accounts of the Navy from my father. So I suspend belief and take them at face value, and found the account a satisfactory and engaging read.

Tons of case studies that explain the topics. However, don't cover basic concepts too well. Need some other reference points or things like instructor notes to fully understand the material in this book.

If you are reading this book for school, better make sure your instructor provides good notes.