Williams Books

It is an endearing story and it had me laughing one minute and crying the next. The characters were so strong until you felt as if you knew them and actually felt their joy and pain...or like myself you actually have people in your life that are so similar to them until you couldn't put the book down without knowing the outcome. It isn't often that you read a novel about a black woman and black man giving each other unconditional love....or as my grandparents called it...that bible love, the kind that only runs from one heart to the other one...lol. There is joy, wisdom and knowledge in the pages for every reader to grasp and hold tight. There aren't many families that haven't been touched by a terminal illness, unemployment, old age, broken hearts, generational curses and even a forever kind of love so I know you will be able to identify with and learn something from William McMcCall and Linda "Lucky" Woodson. We are all given a choice as to how we live but it's not often that we are given a choice as to how we die....it really makes you think.

I recommend TAAR to serious readers like myself that are ready to read one of the best of the best. It is definitely a five star story.

William Fredrick Cooper, with the stroke of his pen , resuscitates the hearts of men and women......while enticing them to believe in love again.

Wow this is the saddest book I have read but also one of the most uplifting. Its good to read a book like this from a man's perspective and does teach us sisters a lesson not to be so judging on brothers who do not have materials things. Linda and William are a couple made for each other, I have not read the first book but will do so and hope a third book will bring us up to date on Williams life, his ex and former mentoree need to their comeuppance in book 3 and William needs to find true life long love again.

The best book I have ever read thus far. I highly recommend anyone who is looking for a very inspirational and life changing book, to purchase this. I think one of the best things about this book is that it is so relatable. Everyone have to endure struggles at some point in their lives and this book definitely provides examples of ways to get through them. Sometimes all it takes is one special person to help you get over that bump in the road. The 2 main characters, William and Linda, met for a reason. Both of them had something that the other needed to help them get through their hard times. Not going to spill the beans because I really want you all to read it for yourselves, but the two of them really went through some things that I could never imagine going through. Actually, their problems made my problems seem small. Anyways, purchase, purchase, purchase. I assure you that you won't regret it. Also, please check out other books that he have written as well.

Affairs of the Heart are perceived differently from various walks of life, from a variety of people, based on their experiences with love and the pains and pleasures of what love and life have to offer. With that being said, please meet William McCall, a sensitive managing law clerk who has the world on a string, in love with the perfect woman, until one day his world is rocked by the ultimate deal-breaker, Infidelity.

Rarely do we get into the heart and mind of a black man and his quest for true love, which proves to be nourishment for a man's soul. He is never portrayed as a delicate creature, with intensity, sincere anxieties and sufferings of the normal human condition.

William Cooper does a wonderful job in portraying a love story that is refreshing, heartfelt and embraces all that encompasses love, and affairs of the heart.

One of the best I've read so far this year.

There's Always a Reason is highly recommended.

Congratulations to this author for daring to show the vulnerability we all possess as people in our quest for true love and happiness.

Yes, there is a reason why I recommend this great book for those who love a good story with well-rounded characters and engaging story. Cooper's latest book continues to display his gifted talents at crafting a story from the male perspective and showing that men feel the pains and heartaches of relationships. There's Always a Reason offers the reader a captivating story that will keep you turning the pages. It offers romance, setbacks, steamy dialogue, wisdom, humor, betrayal, and heartache.

Kudos to William for putting his heart and soul in this book and he takes romance and the readers to a whole new level. I highly recommend There's Always a Reason to everyone who enjoys a well-written, heartfelt story.

This is an excellent, straight-forward, sensitive book that deals with a topic that is difficult. It is written so that it can be easily understood and is incredibly helpful to victims as well as therapists who treat them. The author validates the victim's world and encourages the victim to get help and talks about the many males who have survived and are healing.

A thoughtful book re sexual abuse of people who are trying to get past the victim ideology. The writer has had much experience in treating these people and his suggestions are helpful.

As a spouse of a survivor, I read this book which also offered advice to partners and spouses. This book gave way too many examples and other info for the first 4 chapters. Most of us already have an idea of what sexual abuse against boys can entail, there were just way too many stories of survivors that were disturbing and difficult to read. It did however give important insight and ways to get help and help yourself but it came along with a lot of unneeded information. If you have the time and patience it is a good tool towards recovery.

I gave this wonderful book to my husband who is in recovery from childhood sexual abuse by his father. He cried and read , cried and read from start to finish. The book is empowering, healing and filled with truth that heals. I recommend it as an essential read for those in recovery and for those who love them. Kate

If you or a loved one have been the victim of childhood sexual abuse then this book is an excellent resourcee. It deals primarily with Male Survivors and provides great insight into how coping mechanisms have become a way of life. It allows survivors to carefully examine their feelings and relationship choices in a positive and affirming manner, and begin to make changes to a healty lifestyle. If you have decided to read this book, well done!!! You have taken the first steps to reclaiming your life!

I was given this book as a gift from my son. I read it on an airplane and laughed and cried so much that at the end of the flight, the man sitting next to me said, "you are quite an emotional lady!" I bought a copy of this book for the lady that helped me when I got stranded when the flight was delayed a day. She read one of the stories in it while I was changing clothes and I found her in tears when I returned. It's a great feel-good book.

In this collection of stories from and about mothers, there is something for everyone. Whether you need to be inspired, comforted, or amused, whether if you are looking for a laugh or a cry you can find a story for your mood. The Chicken Soup authors always know how to pick a collection of stories that truly brings the subject to light, a tear to your eye, and a smile to your lips! This time, what a worthy topic: mothers. As a positive psychologist in private practice I certainly know the powerful and permanent importance of our mothers in all of our lives!

I CAN NOT PUT THIS BOOK DOWN! Some real tear jerkers too. A must for all moms.

my family got this as a gift about 8 years ago. I don't remember much about it but I remember the stories about the mother losing her son during a skiing accident, the girl who bought her mom bobby pins for her birthday and the story where they're celebrating a grandmother's birthday and she dies at the end of the party after seeing her entire family at the celebration.

AFTER READING THIS I AM REASSURED THAT GOOD HONEST BOOKS ARE FINALLY MAKING A COME-BACK!!!!!!

The Complete Works of Shakespeare / 0-673-99996-3

Every play, every sonnet, every scribble is here - and much more. This volume includes useful background on the theatre, politics, morality, and social mores of the day. The level of detail here is absolutely stunning; the footnotes are numerous and incredibly helpful, especially to 'translate' obscure sayings or particularly unusual English usage. Each play is prefaced with an introduction containing the complete 'cliffs notes' of the play, providing useful insight into character motivation and development. I highly recommend this volume, both for Shakespeare enthusiasts and for students just wishing for enough information that they can passably demonstrate familiarity with the Bard.

This was the text for my college Shakespeare classes over 20 years ago (different edition of course) I still have it and still use it. A wonderful book for students and those who want not only the complete works but some well written and authoritative information about Shakespeare and the world in which he lived and wrote.

The texts of the plays are well foot-noted and the type is easy on the eyes. Well worth the investment.

While reading reviews of this edition elsewhere on the Web, I came across this review by David Allen White, professor of English @ the U.S. Naval Academy and editor (with Charles Boyce) of Shakespeare A to Z:

"Re-writing Shakespeare is nothing new. The Nahum Tate version of King Lear--with the happy ending--held the stage for nearly a century and a half. The great actors of the romantic age, Kean and Booth and Macready, not only spotlighted the heroes in the tragedies but felt free to beef up their roles. Directors began more than 50 years ago to monkey with the historical settings of the play, often with imaginative and instructive results. Scholars, critics, and directors have ridden various hobbyhorses through the plays for years, introducing us to Freudian Hamlets and Marxist King Lears and feminist Tamings of the Shrew.

"Recent Shakespeare production and scholarship, however, add a perverse twist to this long tradition. We no longer care what the Bard actually wrote. Years of deconstructionist theorizing have taught us that words are needy and we, readers or actors or scholars, have the right, indeed the obligation, to give them the gift of meaning--our meaning, the more bizarre the better.

"For the 23 years that I've taught Shakespeare at the United States Naval Academy, I have always used the same text, The Complete Works of Shakespeare, edited by David Bevington of the University of Chicago. Professor Bevington is an old-school scholar with a distinguished career. The book he edited had many advantages: large print, full character names before each speech, specific indications of settings, modernized spellings, solid introductions that connected the plays to the students' experience of love and politics, morality and order, passion and faith, and comprehensive but not overwhelming notes. Every few years a new edition would appear, and I would open it with interest and a little apprehension. But the changes would be minor--thinner paper (approaching the substance of tissue, a malady afflicting many recent books), hints here and there of encroaching academic perversity in the notes--nothing sufficient to make me seek another text. The 4th edition's introduction to The Tempest caused me to swallow hard: We learn there that Prospero's authority "is problematic to us because he seems so patriarchal, colonialist, even sexist and racist in his arrogating to himself the right and responsibility to control others in the name of Western and Christian values." But this is an imperfect world, and I soldiered on.

"Notified that a 5th Edition would appear this fall, I took time to examine it closely. Many of the introductions remain the same; but new editors and commentators have significantly altered others. Despite the myth of progress that reigns in all the disciplines of modern academia, "new" is often far from "improved." Apparently, Professor Bevington has either ignored the changes or allowed the young scholar-colts to have a romp. In some of the new introductory essays, especially under the guise of new brief histories of stage performance, questionable judgment, to put it mildly, has crept in. For example, the introduction to Othello ends with the following observation:

'In another recent development, Emilia has stood out in several productions as the raissoneur and heroic figure in the play, speaking as she does on behalf of maltreated women, urging Desdemona to stand up for her rights. One recent Chicago production went so far as to rewrite the ending: Othello and Iago both survive unpunished for what they have done, while Desdemona and Emilia lie dead as their innocent victims. This deliberate and provocative overstatement might seem extreme to some viewers, but unquestionably did signal the direction of recent performance history of the profoundly disturbing play.'

"It may be time to stop buying tickets to that great play.

"The current obsession in academia is "queer theory," and the homoerotic is everywhere, not just in Shakespeare studies. But this particular perversity fills the introductions to the new Bevington, especially the introductions to the comedies. Compare the following passages, the first from the introduction to As You Like It in the 4th Edition, essentially a carry-over from earlier editions:

'Rosalind's disguise name, Ganymede, taken from Jove's amorous cupbearer, has homoerotic connotations that are easily misinterpreted today. Shakespeare delicately acknowledges the suggestion, to be sure, both in Phoebe's pursuit of a young lady (but really a boy actor) in male attire, and in Orlando's courtship of "Ganymede" as though addressed to Rosalind. Yet this innocent titillation, found also in Shakespeare's source, is not meant to hint at homosexual attraction as we understand it. On the contrary, the point is that Orlando can speak frankly and personally to "Ganymede" as to a perfect friend, one to whom he can relate in platonically spiritual terms without the distracting note of sexual interest.'

"These are eminently sane and sensible remarks. Now from the Introduction to As You Like It in the 5th Edition:

'Rosalind's disguise name, Ganymede, has connotations that suggest ways in which human sexuality can be partly understood as socially constructed. If Rosalind in disguise as Ganymede wins the affection and eventually the love of Orlando, while her father and the others are equally taken in by the disguise, are maleness and femaleness chiefly matters of sartorial convention and superficial appearance? When Phoebe falls in love with Ganymede, is not her infatuation a way of showing that the roles of the sexes can be put on and off? Theatrically, the device of having a young male actor play Rosalind who then disguises him/herself as a young man adds to the witty confusion of sexual identities by introducing homoerotic possibilities. Not only can the roles of the sexes be put on and off, sexual desire itself is unstable...'

"This is ideology masquerading as interpretation.

"To be sure, the range of possible interpretations of Shakespeare's work is wide, for he encompasses all of humanity and tells profound and mysterious truths about human life. Such inexhaustible expansiveness invites discussion and dispute and differences. At the end of the Introduction to Richard II in this volume, for example, there is a brief but superb account of various interpretations of that rich role by leading actors. Professor Charles Forker of Indiana University provides that account; another old-school scholar, he knows more about that play than any other living soul. Too many of the revised introductions, however, are more interested in advancing the latest academic-political orthodoxy than in discovering and illuminating the natural and conventional moral order so abundantly on display in Shakespeare's works. Nothing is more orthodox--still--among contemporary literary critics than the alleged truth that there is no truth, that all interpretations are valid except the author's own.

"Thus Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream can be presented as "the denizen of a drug culture, with the love potion as the weed he gleefully distributes. The experience of the forest becomes a drug-induced 'high,' for audiences as for the actors. The fairies, sometimes played by adult and hairy males, can exhibit a streak of cruelty." And, indeed, in a recent production at the Shakespeare Theater in Washington, D.C., the fairies were hairy males who carried something like miners' lights. So much for lightness and charm and magic. This same Dream introduction gives the game away in words that are echoed in many of the other essays: "These modern interpretations are arguably neither more nor less 'true' to Shakespeare's text than earlier or more 'traditional' versions. What they do demonstrate is the play's remarkable permeability and openness to differing views."

"The new Bevington retails for $90; in good conscience, I cannot ask students to fork over such a sum of cash for a book that is now rife with nonsense. So next fall I'll assign The Riverside Shakespeare, which fortunately is still in its 2nd edition. I fervently hope it is not soon updated.

"Of course, the Bevington volume has come to reflect the universities it serves, where young students pay small fortunes to be taught that there is no enduring meaning or beauty to be found in the poetry of Shakespeare, no tradition worth preserving, no "truth" other than personal whim and innovative foolery. If the price of the new Bevington is petty theft, the tuitions charged by these institutions have become, at least for the study of the humanities, highway robbery.

"I know a father who gave his son the equivalent of a year's tuition and told the lad to go to Europe, to travel, to observe, to learn for as long as the money would hold out. The young man came back after two-and-a-half years, mature and educated, and instantly found a good job. The time has come for imaginative, alternative learning. I talked recently with a very intelligent young woman who loves literature; she is completing her sophomore year at Yale, where she had hoped to pursue an English Literature major. She informed me with sorrow that she was abandoning that plan. Her reason was quite simple: she had already sat through too many classes where lunacy prevailed. She mentioned the possibility of looking at traditional Catholic convents. Could this be the first refreshing drop of a wave of the future? It would not be the first time that civilization was preserved in the convents and the monasteries. Nymph, in thy orisons, be all of Academia's sins remembered."

(Allen, David White, "An Unweeded Garden," The Claremont Institute, http://claremont.org/publications/crb/id.959/article_detail.asp [originally published March 22, 2004])

I guess it's safe to say that, based on his review, Professor Allen'd give this edition 1 star...right?

I purchased this book as a birthday present for a graduating high school student who is a big fan of Shakespeare.
This volume has a lot to offer to both students and casual readers. In addition to very readable text of all the plays and sonnets, the fifth edition provides historical and literary context, including drawings and photos, as well as insightful essays on each of the plays. The essays include background, plot summaries and discussion of major themes and would be very useful to anyone seeing a play, especially for the first time. The helpful glossary is extensive, so the reader doesn't have to look up unfamiliar words or feel intimidated by the language. Professor Bevington's fifth edition of the Complete Works is a gem, authoritative and attractive. The birthday girl thinks so, too-- she gives it an A+.

This is truly a great book. Not only does it contain all of Shakespeare's works but it also has an enormous amount of information. There's a little bit on his life and a bit more about the theater during his time. There are also some great drawings in the beginning of the book.

Carl Anthony has presented an excellent and well-researched book on Florence and Warren Harding. Unlike the books by Robert Ferrell, which are a combination of surmise and invention, that are best left to coffee-table-book readers, Anthony tells it like it really is. Anthony has dug deep into the documents that are now available, (with more coming out as the years pass), to present a balanced and fair assessment of President and Mrs. Harding. Highly recommended for any who want the unvarnished truth.

The Washington Times wrote a terrific review of this book, which follows:

A President Of the Peephole
By Carl Sferrazza Anthony
Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, June 7, 1998

Fearing revelations about his illicit affair with a young campaign volunteer - which included sex in an Oval Office hideaway while under the guard of Secret Service agents - the president realized that stonewalling was ultimately futile. He stunned a private party of reporters at the National Press Club by confessing his carnal desires.

"It's a good thing I am not a woman," the president said. "I would always be pregnant. I can't say no."

In this administration, the scandals never seemed to end. There was the strange suicide of an administration official, made even more mysterious by a note that disappeared. Then came an investigation into payoffs and coverups connected to a notorious land deal. The president's friends launched smear campaigns against his perceived foes. Dossiers were compiled; private eyes and snitches deployed. Affidavits were drafted in which various women denied liaisons with the president. Jobs were arranged to keep people quiet.

Through it all, a steel-willed first lady kept the press at bay and did whatever was necessary to defend her husband's reputation - even if it meant destroying evidence.

The scandals erupted at a time when technological advances in communication were feeding a nation hungry for distraction, and the economy was booming. Sex sold - and the ravenous press corps was all too happy to name names and offer seamy details. The president and his wife boosted their public image by bringing Hollywood stars to the White House; they knew the value of glamour and the power of celebrity. It also helped that he was a genial populist and inveterate shaker of hands, fond of golf and cards, a man of the people.

Ladies thought him virile and handsome; he photographed well.
For some reason, all of this seems familiar. Whatever else may be said of Warren Gamaliel Harding - whose tenure as 29th president ended with his peculiar, premature death in 1923 - he was a truly modern politician. His administration, which reeked of corruption, offers a prototype for Washington scandals. Whitewater, Iran-contra and Watergate are better known today, but the granddaddy of them all was Teapot Dome, a political maelstrom that broke 75 years ago this month and is still hard to top in terms of sheer outrageousness.

Harding, a small-town Ohio newspaper publisher, was uniquely unsuited for the job of president - and he knew it. "I am not fit for this office and never should have been here," he once said. But he "looked like a president," as one major backer put it, and his wife, Florence, was instrumental in shepherding his political career. (The press considered Florence, known as the Duchess, to be the power behind the throne; one cartoon depicted the couple as "The Chief Executive and Mr. Harding.") Harding, a one-term Republican senator, won the job by promising Americans a "return to normalcy" after World War I.

Though his legacy was soiled, his domestic achievements were substantial: the 40-hour work week, improved health care for new mothers, the first balanced-budget bureau, a focus on technology. And we have to give Harding credit for establishing a venerable institution: the Washington gossip mill. Based on new documentation, here's a reprise of the Harding era.

I love your back, I love your breasts
Darling to feel, where my face rests,
I love your skin, so soft and white,
So dear to feel and sweet to bite. . . .
I love your poise of perfect thighs,
When they hold me in paradise. . . .
-- A Harding poem to one of his mistresses, Carrie Phillips

No president had more "women scrapes," as his attorney general put it, than Warren G. His first affair, three years into his marriage to Florence, was with Susie Hodder - his wife's best friend from childhood - resulting in the birth of a daughter. His second affair was with Florence's closest adult friend, Carrie Fulton Phillips. It lasted 15 years. His third enduring mistress was his Senate aide, Grace Cross.
Number four was the most infamous and the first presidential mistress to write a memoir: In the large Oval Office closet, the president had at least one tryst with Nan Britton, a campaign volunteer who had started having sex with Harding when he was 51 and she was 22. Their assignations, facilitated by Secret Service agents James Sloan and Walter Ferguson ("Harding hated to have them around, for he despised being watched," reported the chief usher), came to an abrupt stop when another agent, Harry Barker, tipped Florence off, and she ran down for a confrontation.

It was in Harding's Senate office, late one night in the winter of 1919, that Britton claimed she conceived their daughter, Elizabeth Ann. They disrobed because Harding wanted to "visualize" her while he worked there during the day. Britton worried that they lacked the "usual paraphernalia which we always took to the hotels . . . and of course, the Senate Offices do not provide preventive facilities for use in such emergencies."

He had assorted other flings, including one with Rosa Hoyle, said to have conceived his only illegitimate son, and one with Augusta Cole, whose pregnancy by Harding was terminated. He bedded a Washington Post employee known as Miss Allicott, and former chorus girls Maize Haywood and Blossom Jones - all procured by Harding's crony, Washington Post publisher and owner Ned McLean. And then there's the string of "New York women" - including one who committed suicide after Harding wouldn't marry her, and another who had a stash of incriminating love letters purchased by Harding loyalists.

The president even publicly ogled Margaret Gorman, the first Miss America, in Atlantic City, days after her crowning.

Follow the Money

Just weeks after his inauguration in 1921, Harding approved Interior Secretary Albert Fall's request to transfer oil reserves from the Navy Department to Fall's control. Fall then secretly leased the reserve at Elks Hills, Calif., to oilman Edward Doheny and the one at Teapot Dome, Wyo., to Harry Sinclair - in exchange for a "loan" of cash and stock worth nearly $400,000, delivered in a small black satchel, and a "gift" of $100,000 from Doheny. Fall became the first Cabinet member to be thrown in prison.

Col. Charles Forbes, the first director of the U.S. Veterans Bureau, created by Harding, was particularly close to the first lady. She saw to his appointment, and entrusted him with $450 million to build hospitals and provide decent medical care for the thousands of disabled veterans of World War I, on whose behalf the Duchess was a national activist.

Instead, he bilked tens of thousands out of building contractors and medical supply companies. He was eventually imprisoned - but not before Harding personally throttled him against the Red Room wall in the White House.

Although Attorney General Harry Daugherty, a Harding crony and campaign manager, eluded conviction on a variety of pardon-selling and influence-peddling charges, his Justice Department was riddled with malfeasance, kickbacks and payoffs. One of the department's central tasks was to intimidate any Harding mistress who threatened the president with blackmail.

High Officials

Evalyn McLean, the Post publisher's wife, was a confidante of Mrs. Harding and an admitted intermittent morphine addict. Despite Prohibition, she also was a heavy drinker and speakeasy regular - but then, so were her husband and other ranking government officials: Albert Fall, Col. Forbes and the president's chief aide, George Christian. In the Veterans Bureau, stories eventually broke about flapper secretaries and young officers having a regular cocktail hour, with shakers and glasses at the ready, overseen by Forbes.

The president served liquor freely in the present-day Yellow Oval Room to his guests. Alice Longworth - a regular at poker - recalled that the first lady mixed the drinks. "No rumor could have exceeded the truth. . . . [T]rays with bottles containing every imaginable brand of whiskey stood about," she remembered. And, according to recently declassified FBI reports, Harding was drunk on whiskey during an Oval Office confrontation with railroad union leaders during their 1922 strike.

At the center of the capital's most elite bootlegging service was Jess Smith - who, even though never an employee or even a volunteer at the Justice Department, used official letterhead, cars and staff, and sat in on private meetings with FBI Director Billy Burns. Smith enjoyed these perks as the bachelor companion of the attorney general. Smith also served as the first lady's favorite escort and arbiter of her jaunty '20s fashions.

Through the Justice Department, Smith had access to whiskey supplies confiscated by Prohibition agents, and some of the booze went directly to the White House, and to the McLeans, while the rest was kept for parties at the "Love Nest," the small house shared by Smith and Daugherty, complete with a pink taffeta bedroom.

Hollywood Values

Working closely with Republican National Committee Chairman Will Hays during the 1920 campaign, Florence Harding conceived of recruiting Hollywood movie stars to support her husband. Al Jolson was drafted to head the Harding-Coolidge Theatrical League, and on Aug. 24, 1920, the marriage of politics and entertainment was forged forever when Jolson brought 40 movie stars to the Harding home for a campaign rally.

The White House became a little Hollywood. On any given day, D.W. Griffith, the Gish sisters or Tom Mix might pose for newsreel cameras with the Hardings. When Hays left his job as postmaster general to become president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, he developed a "project to link the White House with the motion picture industry" by providing a movie library. All of this was nothing short of immoral to old society. The religious press took even greater offense to Florence's ringing the stately halls with jazz for the first time. The Biblical Recorder excoriated the Hardings for "setting a bad example by joining in the modern dance with its 'jazz' music."

Squelching the Bimbos

There was a good reason for Jess Smith having a vaguely defined association with the Justice Department. In this way, he was able to act at the implicit direction of the attorney general and FBI director and carry out a systematic intimidation of Harding mistresses who threatened to do as Carrie Phillips did and demand blackmail for their love letters. At one point, in exchange for apparently small amounts of money, affidavits disclaiming rumors of their liaisons were wrestled out of Evelyn Ruby, Augusta Cole and Cecilia Hoyle, and made their way to the first lady.

In April 1921, Ned McLean officially became an agent of the FBI, and did his utterly unethical best to destroy any anti-Harding efforts he heard about as publisher of The Post. Such responsibilities included ripping the blouse of Nan Britton to try to snatch letters she claimed to be carrying - in the privacy of his editorial office.

Even on the eve of his inauguration, Harding was providing more trouble for his troubleshooters. He had arranged a late-night rendezvous with Grace Cross, his Senate aide, in a Willard Hotel room. Some of his friends, recalled Olive Clapper, a reporter's wife, "ordered her to pack and get out of town, threatening to put the FBI on her trail if she didn't go at once. She was so frightened she left immediately."

Psychic Guidance

Mrs. Harding's diary, discovered last year at an Ohio barn auction, revealed her to be a true believer in crystal ball readings, the zodiac and clairvoyance. In February 1920, as a Senate wife, she had her first consultation with capital society's seer, "Madame Marcia." The psychic predicted that if Harding ran for president that year, he would be nominated - but that if he won the election, he would not live through his full term and instead die of "sudden, peculiar, violent . . . death by poison."

Knowing that the blackmail price of $25,000 demanded by Carrie Phillips for the love letters could never be met unless her husband became a presidential nominee, Florence pushed him through the primaries on to the nomination, ignoring the ominous prediction. During the Harding presidency, Madame Marcia was regularly fetched by the first lady's Secret Service agent, brought through the back entrance and escorted to the presidential bedroom for zodiac updates. Madame Marcia also did horoscopes for the president's public appearances; the first lady was trying to protect him from numerous assassination and bomb threats.

When Florence got early inklings of the Teapot Dome, Veteran's Bureau and Justice Department scandals, she asked Marcia to do astrological charts of Cabinet members - and used the results as evidence to remove some of the crooks from the administration.

Blackmailers' Delight

Newly discovered documents now prove that Harding was the only president successfully blackmailed by a mistress. Once he was nominated as the Republican candidate, the national GOP committee paid off Carrie Phillips's lump-sum demand of $25,000 and monthly stipend of $2,000, funneled through a secret bank account kept, apparently, under Jess Smith's name (the records were burned by Attorney General Daugherty).
Once Harding became president, Phillips returned from an all-expense-paid trip abroad and demanded that her brother and son-in-law be given federal posts. It was done. Harding even circulated the name of Phillips's husband to be ambassador to Japan - before word got out why he thought a dry-goods salesman from Marion, Ohio, deserved the post and the idea was quashed.

One night, when he was a senator, Harding had such a row with aide Grace Cross that she cut his back and the police were called. Thereafter, Cross went around town talking about a "birthmark" on the president's back that she could identify - undoubtedly the wound - which became part of her arsenal in unsuccessful attempts to get blackmail money. However, former Democratic attorney general Mitchell Palmer would later use his knowledge of the Cross affair to force Harding to drop a Justice Department prosecution against him.

Crossing a Friend

After a failed attempt to frame Cross with a phony affidavit claiming she was a liar and blackmailer, Smith approached Bertha Martin - a friend of Cross's - to try to get possession of the aide's love letters from Harding. Martin said she would turn on her friend on the condition that she was given the job of society editor at The Post. Smith went to McLean, who gave his nod. Martin took Cross to lunch, asked to see the letters, snatched them away and bolted out of the restaurant. She was made society editor - and still managed to stay friends with Cross, taking her on a European vacation, courtesy of the secret blackmail fund.

Deadly Sins

During a party at Smith and Daugherty's "Love Nest," some New York chorus girls were brought down to entertain a stag party. In attendance was the president. When glasses and bottles were being flung off the table so the dancing girls could perform, one Washington prostitute, identified only as a Miss Walsh, was knocked unconscious. Harding was hustled out. The woman died and was buried in a potter's field.

In recently discovered transcripts of her taped revelations, Evalyn McLean recalled that the FBI director "railroaded" the woman's brother into St. Elizabeths mental hospital when he suggested a blackmail payment.

Censorship by Book Burning

"The Strange Death of President Harding," written in 1930 by the notorious perjurer and former FBI agent Gaston Means, implied that Florence Harding poisoned her husband in retaliation for his adultery, but the book has long been dismissed as a fabrication. New evidence shows that while Means lied in details, he told general truths. He said that he was part of an FBI effort to seize and destroy a small, privately printed book, "The Illustrated Life of Warren Gamaliel Harding," that revealed Harding's affair with Carrie Phillips, the RNC blackmail payoff and Florence's out-of-wedlock child by a common-law first husband.

This turned out to be the only book suppressed by the government in peacetime. The entire action was illegal, and thus the boxes of books and updated manuscript inserts were taken not to any government property but to the McLean estate, where they were all burned. Well, not all: An original with the author's notes sits with none other than Evalyn


Spying

Among Gaston Means's other sensational charges was that he spied for the first lady on Nan Britton. In fact, it was probably Grace Cross - for at least one letter sent to her from the president's office was purloined and found its way into the file on Cross in the McLeans' private papers. Post reporter Vylla Poe Wilson later admitted that both "Mrs. Harding and Mrs. McLean were very jealous women, and they hired Gaston Means to follow Harding and McLean and report on their actions." In congressional hearings on the Justice Department, it was confirmed that Agent Means not only spied on Cross but the president's physician, Charles Sawyer, and his mistress, the first lady's housekeeper.

Suicides

Congress first heard tales of gross corruption at the Veterans Bureau in February 1923. Col. Forbes's colleague in kickbacks, Charles Cramer - the bureau's chief counsel, and the purchaser of the Hardings' Senate home - wrote out a letter to the president in his dining room, then stood before the bathroom mirror and shot himself. The letter mysteriously disappeared.

At the start of the summer, the first big Harding scandal broke with the news that Jess Smith was found in his room with his head in a trash can, and a bullet in his head. The official word went out that it was a suicide due to health and emotional problems. Bertha Martin of The Post recalled that it was "noised about" town that Smith was a known homosexual, and that he was heartbroken over Daugherty's sudden rejection of his friendship when the president learned of Smith's nefarious activities. Others, like Evalyn McLean, simply believed Daugherty, Means or Burns had Smith killed because he knew too much. As for Martin, after a second career bootlegging whiskey to embassies, she was found dressed in her fur coat, pearls and white gloves with her head on the gas range, another alleged suicide.

Negligent Homicide?

Beginning on June 20, 1923, the Hardings sought to escape the heat and scandal of Washington on a 15,000-mile transcontinental train trip and voyage to Alaska. The president was 57 at the time. The recently unsealed diary and notes of naval physician Joel Boone reveal Boone's grave concerns about the president's heart condition. The warnings were ignored by longtime Harding homeopath "Doc" Sawyer, who made no effort to stop Harding from speaking in the blistering heat, driving the golden spike to complete the Alaska Railroad, or doing other arduous tasks. In this Sawyer had the absolute approval of the first lady, who was now enjoying the height of her national popularity and didn't want the trip canceled. She viewed the incompetent Sawyer as her own Rasputin, who'd miraculously kept a chronic kidney ailment from killing her.

When Harding suffered a bout of food poisoning from tainted crab meat at Cordova, Alaska, Doc Sawyer ultimately weakened the president's sick heart by treating him with heavy doses of purgatives to flush out the toxins. On Aug. 2, 1923, when Boone was out of the sickroom in San Francisco's Palace Hotel, Sawyer plied one too many purgatives - in Florence's presence - and Harding died. There was a quick coverup regarding who was in the room and at precisely what time the president died. Mrs. Harding refused to permit an autopsy or a death mask, protecting her beloved Sawyer. "Now that is all over," she told Evalyn McLean after Harding's death, "I think it was all for the best."

Evidence Destruction

At the McLean estate, aptly named Friendship, Evalyn permitted the widowed first lady to bring from the White House wood crates full of government documents (which may have been incriminating to Harding) and helped burn them. Even though Mrs. Harding was being spied on and her phone was tapped during the congressional investigations of the scandals, she was able to keep destroying documents within the privacy of her Willard Hotel suite.

Four months after leaving Washington, Florence died at age 64 in Marion, Ohio. She was staying in a cottage on the grounds of the Sawyer Sanitarium "for the treatment of nervous and mental diseases," amid signs that read: "Please do not stare at the Patients."

This article is adapted from Carl Sferrazza Anthony's just-published biography, "Florence Harding: The First Lady, the Jazz Age and the Death of America's Most Scandalous President" (Morrow).

The Harding administration is buried in 20th century obscurity. Aside from the words "Teapot Dome", which few laymen know anything about, and the overriding scandal that dogged Harding's reputation after he left office, there are few people who would even know the name of the first lady.

Florence Harding portrays the image of a plain, dowdy hayseed, but the author brings her to life in the context of an amazing time in our history.

The 1920's were a time of a burgeoning economy, a rich underground economy with speakeasies, amazing jazz, racial awareness, and a recovery from World I. Florence Harding worked behind the scenes to prop her husband up to the challenge of the presidency. Recent revisionist historians have re-examined his presidency to look at his leadership, and his vision beyond the republican side of the aisle.

Florence Harding welcomed in the Jazz Age, consulted "spiritual advisors", and looked at feminist causes long before many of her contemporaries. She also loved and adored her husband, looking past his infidelities, and his out-of-wedlock children.

Warren Harding was in over his head as President. He was an innocent idealist who was thrust into a dark horse candidacy by unscrupulous men who he believed were his friends. He was also a popular and beloved President at he time of his death.

This book, however, is about his wife. She was a tirelessly driven woman, cannily intelligent, with a strength that propelled her to the pinnacle of American leadership.

It is a story few would undertake to tell, and it is riveting. While Florence Harding never comes off as likable, she is portrayed as loyal, admirable, and visionary beyond her time. There is a touching passage, as she sits next to Warren's open coffin, when she tells her husband "nobody can hurt you now, W'urrn".

She clearly understood the power of the office, and the damage it had done to her husband.

An engrossing biography, on an unlikely subject.

How to make a fairly dull and unpleasant like Florence Harding come alive is a difficult enough feat, however the author does a splendid job of doing it! Expertly researched and pleasantly told, Mrs. Harding comes off far better than she has ever been depicted before - and perhaps even better than she deserves.

Writer Carl Anthony has composed an outstanding biography in his work Florence Harding. Harding Florence Harding been one of the more easily understood or admired First Lady's in this nations history, this book would have been written years ago. However, Mrs. Harding's legacy has been in the past told and retold more as a tabloid story than factual account.

When approaching this book, one needs to understand how Mrs. Harding's legacy was tainted by three men, none of which was her husband Warren G. Harding. First, Gaston Means - a grifter and one time low level FBI agent - did a master job at maligning the deceased Mrs. Harding in his book, The Strange Death of President Harding, a ghost written work that was penned by a tabloid jouranlist who sued Means when he failed to honor his obligations to the writer. In this book, Means paints the picture of Mrs. harding that is pervasive in American Pop Culture: that Mrs. Harding was clueless love lorn hag, who spent her time with mystics plotting the Presidents next moves in star charts. This is an image that the public bought, hook, line and sinker.

The other two men who betrayed Mrs. Harding were her doctor, Charles E. Sawyer and his son Dr. Carl Sawyer. The Sawyers held Mrs. Harding in their sway - she believed that they were great medical doctors, however it was the elder Sawyer's mis diagnosis of President Harding's heart condition as food poisoning. When Charles Sawyer discovered that the widowed First Lady's kidney ailment acted up, he travelled to Washington DC and demanded that Florence return to Marion Ohio for treatment at his private Sanatorium rather than seek treatment at at the better suited facilities in Washington. Mrs, Harding was placed in a cottage at the facility, and then kept at the facility by Sawyer's son Carl after the elder Sawyer died. Following Mrs. Harding's death, Dr. Carl Sawyer assummed total control of the Harding Memorial Association and maintained an iron grip on the Harding legacy until his death in the 1960s. As with all great dictators, Carl Sawyer controlled all aspects of the Harding legacy. As a result, the public never had a fair opportunity to study the Harding's, but rather were fed a steady stream of "approved" information about the couple.

Anthony's work goes the distance in seperating the negative myths from the honest truths in her life, which by any standard was not charmed. However, the author does take liberties in communicating his emotions about Mrs. Harding. He believes that she has been mis-portrayed and his passion about correcting that sometimes overstates her case. However, his book is very well documented by copious endnotes and reliable first person accounts and primary documents.

This book will never be a New York Times best seller - the public would rather believe that Harding Myths inseatd of the facts - but for those who care to learn more about the truths of the 29th President and his most remarkable wife, this is a satisfying and accurate book to read.

I enjoyed this book a lot. It makes you think a lot even after you've finished it. There are many lessons to be learned from this book. For example: choosing between your ideals and the loved ones (when of course they are in conflict), God vs atheism, love and hate (how one can possess both of them towards the same person), ideals and the will and determination to fight for them.

...if I live or if I die." Tremendous drama, capturing quickly the complexities of human development in so many camps. This book had me excited to turn the pages.

It will take some time to understand the intent of the author's finish, but she may have created something different than she intended. Soviets could not have understood what they were pushing!

This story is of the same quality as 'Tale of 2 Cities,' so I expect it will become more available soon.

Read this book for the first time in Russian when I was 12 and it had been my favorite book ever since. Was able to read it in the original language just some years later, realizing that:
1. The Russian translation is wonderful:)
2. The book is still my favorite one.

It's amazing how Voynish manages to write a book which countains a love story, yet not boring nor sexual, a fight story, yet not overpatriotic/stupid. The continuation book feets perfectly ("An Interrupited Friendship" and may be should be read between the 1st and the 2nd parts of "The Gadfly" (I read the "Interrupted Friendship" some years after "The Gadfly" and it was still perfect).


BTW, Ethel Lilian is a daughter of mr. Bool - for those of us who know what boolean algebra is - that's her father's doing! I know it's a piece of useless information:)

It's rather a mystery to me that this book has never gained the kind of popularity in the US that it's always had in Russia. And yes, one can put it down to its political background and revolutionary theme, especially in what is a "lesser" known milieu of Italy in the 1840's, but really this is entirely the outer shell that could easily have been set elsewhere more "popular." I think the problem after all is that this book has been judged by its cover, as it were. But setting aside, it is the most profoundly human and tragic book you may ever read. Much was said of the themes of the book in the other reviews, and it is all true, so I will only say that the ending of the book caught me riding home on the subway, and I wept like I have never ever wept in my life. People stared at me as if I were insane, but of course I didn't care - I was being affected by something most people would never imagine feeling for anything, and certainly for no "thing" like a book. I wept for two hours afterward. And then I couldn't touch another written word for months. If ever words produced raw, overwhelming feelings, surely it is between the pages of The Gadfly.

This work is pure treasure and a great place for someone who wishes to begin reading fine literature to start. I cannot believe that I never heard of this book until I was 50! It ended up on my large "reading list" and I had to order it online to find a copy -- then (I kick myself) it laid around here for a year before I opened it. When I finally did, I discovered that I could not put this one down -- a quintessential page-turner. It's a very personal saga of a very good man, and, a Priest who betrays him during an Italian rebel uprising period. I savored "War and Peace" and "The Brothers Karamazov", and while "The Gadfly" is that sort of book (much shorter), it's not such a tough go as the former titles. Voynich was brilliant. I read an average of three books a week, and have done so for many years, and this one is one of my top 3 reads ever. Don't miss this one and if you wish to double your pleasure, get a copy of Dmitri Shostakovich's sountrack to "The Gadfly" movie and allow it to play as wallpaper as you read. Incredible stuff!

I haven't read the book it was for my daughter who just raved about it

I ordered this for my granddaughter and she loved it. It's the 2nd book she's read by this author and eventually wants to read them all.

I know at first the writing style of the text in the book may throw some people off... but it is what gives the story the actual feel of being there and exploring the crazy chaotic world of meth... great book, wish it was a bit longer, i read it in 6hrs

If you read Crank. The first of this two book series or any other of this authors book. You know how amazing she is. This is just another amazing book to add to this wonderful authors collection.

The sequel to the popular novel "Crank" definetly strikes your heart. I found myself constantly doing things that books normally do not make me do. For instance I found myself yelling at the characters and raging on about what was and wasn't fair. The characters hit me with full force and now I'm more attached to them than ever.

All though "Glass" can be quite depressing it truly unleashes the truth about the drug meth or as Kristina/Bree calls it - the monster. This monster comes in different forms but the outcome is always the same - it will ruin you.

Something to note is that all of Ellen Hopkin's novels are written in poetry format. I was very surprised after reading her first book at how talented she is. The format is original and even though there aren't as many words as a normal book, it still puts a lot of things into those few words.

Kristina used to be a good girl - used to have real friends - until she met the monster. In this second book crank/glass/the monster has officially taken over her life. While trying to raise her baby boy, Hunter while dealing with her deadly drug addiction, life is rough as ever. Soon even a loving family and friends becomes scarce. But of course do you really need a friend while you're having such a blast with glass? Bree says no but Kristina says yes.

Bree is the part of Kristina that's wild, wreckless, and not well. Kristina is the side that is good, has common sense, wants to stop. Will this girl do what's right or will her bad decisions lead her into even more trouble?

More than a sugary biography of Walt Disney, it's an insider's look into the magic of Disney. Or rather the creation of it. Hard work, paying your dues, never saying quit are all values that make the greats great, but they defined Walt Disney, and the proof is definitely in the pudding. It makes a perfect read if you're just looking for interesting non-fiction, but a great book for anyone looking to learn some core values on the way up!

I could go on for pages and pages about what was so great about this book, "How to Be Like Walt". But in the end all I really mean is this book is a must read for anyone who has ever had dreams; wants to be astonished; loves anything Walt Disney created; and likes to read a book they won't want to put down. Part biography; part self-improvement; part fascinating facts. Lots of quotes by Walt Disney, his family, Disney imagineers that worked with Walt; and more. Learn where it all started. Read about the failures, the triumphs, and the Walt Disney philosophy EVEN after success hit - Walt called it: "plussing". TEN STARS!!! No make that 1928 STARS!!! "It all started with a Mouse."

This is the best book about Walt; and on how to get that magic in your everyday life. I strongly suggest this book for everyone looking to improve their leadership and make magic everywhere they go.

One of the best "self help" books I have ever read. The author uses Walt's real life experiences to drive his points home. I could not put this book down. You don't have to be a Disney fan to appreciate the messages in this book. And if you are a Disney fan, you will LOVE this book!!

With my life-long admiration for the creative genius of Walt Disney, a book with the title "How To Be Like Walt" proved irresistible and became the first book I chose to read about Walt Disney. I couldn't be happier with my choice.
Whether you are a Walt Disney fan - or a person who wants to live boldly and creatively - or someone looking for inspiration in adversity... this book is going to impact you in a beautiful way.
Both biographical and inspirational, Pat Williams not only tells you the personal story of Walt Disney (which I found surprisingly full of difficulty and heart-wrenching moments) but weaves it into an engaging how-to manual on living your life fully and at full-throttle. Without getting preachy or fawning, the author (who's a pretty accomplished and unconventional guy himself) allows Walt's own infectious energy and joy to permeate the pages and the reader.
I truly believe there isn't a soul who won't be better for reading "How To Be Like Walt"...because who among us doesn't have dreams lying dormant, waiting to come true? Who among us doesn't need a little more magic in our everyday? If a man who came from so little could find the will to accomplish so much despite the resistance of so many...why not you?

Out of print book came quickly and condition was very good, service was quick. I will be back.

I loved this book! The entire time I listed to this book on cassette I felt I was hearing privileged information...yet Jess Oppenheimer shared his intellectual jewels freely as if they were common everyday thoughts. Well, for him, they were. What a genius. And what a witty, creative, generous, and responsible man! If he were alive I'd write him a fan letter.

This is an excellent informative book about the "I Love Lucy" show and a must have for any Lucy fan! The cd that is included is worth the price of the whole set alone. In the cd it includes hours of hilarious episodes from I Love Lucy and My Favorite Husband starring Lucille Ball, you will also receive lost scenes from the shows on the cd. I am not much of a reader but this book you just can't put down because it is so good and of course I love Lucy! The book doesn't look thick on the picture shown on Amazon but it is a nice thick paperback book and includes lots of wonderful pictures of the cast of I Love Lucy and fun information that you may have not of known about I love Lucy and how it became to be produced.

I THOUGHT THE BOOK WAS VERY INTERESTING AND INFORMTIVE! IT WAS HILARIOUS AND I JUST COULDNT PUT IT DOWN. IT ONLY TOOK ME THREE DAYS TO READ IT. I THOUGHT IT WAS INTERESTING HOW IT TOLD ABOUT THE LIFE OF JESS OPPENHEIMER AS WELL AS THE LIFE OF LUCILLE BALL AND OTHER CAST MEMBERS FROM THE SHOW I LOVE LUCY. I REALLY LOVE THIS BOOK AND I THINK EVERY I LOVE LUCY FAN SHOULD READ IT!!!

I'd like to start with a clarification: this book is not a biography of Lucy, it is the creator's (Jess Oppenheimer) memoir. As such, there are many parts of the book that have nothing to do with Lucy, including episodes from Oppenheimer's childhood and young adult life.

However, this is still a GREAT book! It is well-written and full of entertaining annecdotes. "Laughs, Luck, and Lucy" follows Oppenheimer's slow rise to the top in the Hollywood radio industry. He describes Lucille Ball's program, "My Favorite Husband," which became the basis for "I Love Lucy." The book also includes some behind the scenes information about the making of "I Love Lucy."

The included audio cd is fun because it has clips from both "I Love Lucy" and "My Favorite Husband."

If you are only interested in information specifically about Lucille Ball, this might not be the book for you (try her autobiography, "Love, Lucy"). However, if you (like me) are fascinated with everything surrounding "I Love Lucy" and the Hollywood entertainment industry of the 1940s and 1950s, this is a great read!

I loved this book. It is chock full of the type of details about the life and times of Gurdjieff that anyone interested in the man will relish. Despite it's title this book was not for me so much about the student teacher relationship as much as about the massively difficult task that confronted Gurdjieff in attempting to awaken anyone. The details provided about Ouspensky Orage Bennet etc make it very clear that having a great intellect is not enough to ensure success in esoteric work and in fact if too great can be the greatest impediment to that success. Such was the case with Ouspensky and I was left with a feeling of immense sympathy for Gurdjieff and admiration for his patience, love and devotion to people who could not understand the gift he was offering them.

Struggle of the Magicans is a wonderful book for those just learning about the ideas taught by both Gurdjieff &
Uspenskii. I found this book a great campanion to reading Gurdjieff's Meeting with Remarkable Men.
Struggle is presented in chronological order so the reader gets an idea about the time period in which these remarkable men lived.
The author uses many quotes from Upenskii's In Search of the Miraculous, this approach helps the reader understand the importance of the Work presented in Upenskii's book. In addition the reader is able to contemplate and process difficult concepts such as the importance of the true I and objective observations of the self. A must read for all interested in working on the self.

'I' could not put this book down and devoured in in one afternoon. I have read several of Gurdjieffs books and Uspensky's 'in search of the miraculous' - an exceptional book for any truth seekers. It does help to have prior knowledge of fourth way work in reading the struggle of the magicians since some of the analysis involves inferences that may be inaccessible to those yet to have found this path of understanding and personal development.
I was very moved towards the end in the discussion of Uspensky's death, the loss of all of his immediate family seems to have placed an impenetrable protection mechanism against the attempts by Gurdjieff to free him from his fears and as a result he lost his way.
Personally the book ties in very well with the concepts of Narcissism, see my other reviews. - Since Uspensky had never dealt with the traumatic events of his childhood he was unable, despite incredible intellectual capacity, to fully develop. You need to love yourself before you can love others and you need to understand yourself before you can fully develop and evolve.

I only heard of Gurdjieff in passing or read mentions of him in varies of literature, but the first time I truly came across the understanding of Gurdjieff's concepts was in P.D. Ouspensky's In Search of the Miraculous: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching (Harvest Book) and found myself wanting to know more. Soon thereafter, I picked up William P. Patterson's "Struggle of the Magicians," which shed light on interesting dynamic or rather intensive relationship between Gurdjieff and his students, including Ouspensky.

This book is truly, without question, a profound insight into the life and the work of Gurdjieff, and revealed how unique was the teacher-student relationship like that of Gurdjieff and his pupils. Not only that, from this book, one would understand oneself better through the interactions between the teacher and the students. Also, I found Patterson's historical perspective to be quite fascinating and well presented.

This remarkable book is