Truman Books

There are those who form the catalysts in our lives, who lead in such a way
that they influence history. John Wilson was a keen observer of people who were genuine leaders and fairly portrayed their strengths and weaknesses.
As both an Indiana reporter, and a key player in the Justice Department, he
saw six decades of pivotal history in civil rights, Supreme Court rulings,
and tragic scandals. He reported at a time when reporters and office holders used tact and diplomacy before greedy scoops. His summations give credit to those who aided him through the years, instilling a sense of gentlemanly conduct. He longs for the days to return when both sides of a question are fairly debated. I could not put this book down and read it straight through.

Disclaimer: I was born and reared in Indianapolis and represented it in the U.S. House for 30 years. So naturally I savor this book about the people and places I know well. However, the book goes beyond the borders of my state, both because the author had two careers in Washington,D.C. and because the book is a beautiful ride in a time machine to palpable American history, styles, customs, attitudes, governmental policies and, yes, a fair amount of nievate about such things as tobbaco and slick sales scams.

A beautifully published and enthusiastically recommended collection of poetry by Rebecca Dunham, "The Miniature Room" showcases a true poetic talent and skilled wordsmith able to lyrically evoke detailed images that include an impressive diversity of concepts and a full range of emotional responses. 'The Tempest': Clouds orchard the sky, dangle/flush globes overhead. The storm/has not passed. There is no/rest, I know, just my son's cry//splintering the silence. A flash/both serpentine & bright./If sleep's slick waters could slip/their banks & cover me//like a sheet. If the telephones, tea/kettle, even the raspong green/sofa's slipcovered twill could be/quieted. Below the water's purled//surface, a stillness pours. Please./This, the uninhabited moment.

I am not a blurbist, so my comments won't be book-jacket worthy, but I will try to give you a sense of this book. One of the central devices that holds this collection together is that of the fine art miniature (think pages in illuminated manuscripts or the Thorne Rooms at the Art Institute of Chicago), but it would be a mistake to expect quaint little lyrics. Although there is a focus on the domestic, the voice is very much in touch with the vast darkness that lies on either side of life. In "Yard Elegy," there is "Everywhere, death," and this preoccupation infuses even the otherwise suburban picturesque of a toddler on a swing or trying to place fallen petals back on a branch. An ekphrastic that starts from Leonardo's "Madonna and Saint Anne," tells of Mary's birth and her mother's immediate feeling that loss would now forever hang over her, the infant's "fingers tipped with blue."

One of my favorite single poems is "In which I am the Serpent in the Garden," which ends with the following lines:

I pluck an apple from the fruit bowl & slice it,
luminous, a fan of moons flowering his plate.

The constant tension of death with the everyday makes such moments more beautiful and feel earned.

This reads much more like a second or third book than a first. Based on this book, Rebecca Dunham has the potential to become a major talent.

Long before "In Cold Blood," Capote mastered the form of the non-fiction novel with this stunning little work. This story follows Truman to Russia on the first cultural exchange between our two countires - a touring company of "Porgy and Bess." This book is much lighter in tone and premise than "In Cold Blood." Capote is in perfect pitch here. If "Breakfast at Tiffany's" is one of your favorites, as it is most assuredly one of mine, you will adore this book. Don't miss it.

This short book originally appeared in two parts in The New Yorker during the mid-1950s. A masterpiece of reportage, it reads like a comic novel as Capote tells delightfully the true story of an American theatre company's travels to the Soviet Union during the cold war to perform the musical "Porgy and Bess." With Truman and his perfect prose as our guide, every satirical detail is vivid, every personal eccentricity is slyly chronicled, and the portrait of a freezing cold Russia is humane and indelible. We finish the book not only charmed and amused but also feeling that we were there. The book is a rare pleasure, and predates the author's more famous "nonfiction novel" ("In Cold Blood") by a decade. Incidentally, over the years "The Muses Are Heard" has also been reprinted in several larger Capote anthologies: "Selected Writings," "The Dogs Bark" and "A Capote Reader."

This is an extensive account of Graham's influence on many President's attitudes and/or actions and has been needed for a long time. It is particularly appropriate in a time when so many mainstream religions seek to influence government actions. They have lost sight of the importance our constitutional provision--separation of Church and State. It details many incidents of the use of Graham's presence to provide endorsement for unethical decisions.

Joseph Haun
Asheville, NC USA

The title comes from Graham's support for every American war since Korea, but I found the civil rights material most interesting.

Cecil Bothwell portrays Graham as the political opposite of Martin Luther King and says the historical record does not support Graham's recent insistence that he was a friend of King's and of integration, pointing out that Graham "was absent from every civil rights march, rally or celebration over the years."

Sample paragraph: "Graham's frequent claims about King's approval are at odds with King's widely circulated exhortation from the Birmingham jail, in which he categorically condemned the position of clergymen who opposed civil disobedience, took them to task for obeying unjust laws, and spoke at eloquent length about the necessity for those of faith to demand change. He could have been directly rebutting Graham when he wrote, `You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations.' "

Bothwell notes that when King was killed 200,000 people attended the funeral. A long list of notables from every field came, the Academy Awards were postponed, and the start of major league baseball was delayed, but Billy Graham did not attend.

I found The Prince of War to be well worth reading.

Written by Richard St. John, The Pure Inconstancy of Grace is a compilation of free-verse poetry distinguished by the naturally elegant patterning of words and concepts. Both mundane and spiritual topics are touched upon, in the course of bemusing life's greatest mysteries. Highly recommended. "Heidegger's Pear": Imagine a pear. First, its freckled, golden / surface, then the freckles softening / to oozy spots of brown. The pear's dissolution / not a thing that happens to a pear, but one / with its very being, with it from the first / green node upon the stem. But, unlike man, / the pear cannot imagine / what its death might mean: not just / a world without the fragrance of this one pear - gone. Not just / a world without the fizzy orchards / leafing out in spring. The possibility- / the shock - of a not-a-world-at-all, / and no one to imagine one again. / The possibility that signifies "the measureless / impossibility" of anything - the absent / dark, dark soil, from which / these fragile blossoms grow.

Rick St. Johns' poems are beautiful, they tell stories, they sound good, they make me happy, sad, curious, interested. Most of all, they read well, over and over, and reward each reading.

Lyrical without being singsong, insightful and complex without being overly intellectual, these poems bring Paris, Pittsburgh, Toledo, Walden Pond - they bring place alive.

They tell stories of true love - not gooey or madcap or sex-in-the-city love, but a tender 30-years-married-and-he-still- wonders-at-her kind of love.

They tell of Friendship - not buddy-movie friendship, but the hardest kind, old friends who know us well, who act wrong or die.

These are good poems. This is a good man. I'm going to enjoy reading this again.

This book conincides with the interview I had with Will Fowler in 1999. It outlines his life as a Reporter and how different the reporter is today as it was then. I really loved the book as it detailed the life of him as a reporter in the days when newspapers were the main source of information. He is a credit to his family and his father before him, Gene Fowler.

This is an excellent book, highly recommended for writers, journalists or media of any kind. Fowler's style pulls you in as he tells his story in an enjoyable, gripping, humorous and often heartbreaking fashion. Is he still with us ??? ... because I want to tell him personally how much I enjoy this book.

Quite an interesting study, a nice mix of history, sociology and musicology.
The transcription of the countless blues texts must have been a hell of a job: all honour to the author. Don't forget to buy the interesting cd that accompanies this book.

Koos Hennephof, Holland

Ever since the Negro spirituals first reached a broader public consciousness in the years during and immediately following the Civil War, African American folksongs and their popular extensions in blues and gospel song have been viewed by listeners, critics, collectors, and scholars as expressions of an entire race within America, or at least of a vast portion of that race, one that had few other outlets of expression that left any lasting record. With few exceptions, the singers and composers of these songs were not the writers of poems, books, articles, and letters to the editors of newspapers. They were not leaders in politics, the church, and business. Many, particularly those involved mainly in secular music, were not even members of churches, labor unions, or other organizations. Yet they had opinions about the world around them, they served as organizers of the opinions of others and, with the help of mass media such as phonograph records, as spokespersons for millions of people from similar backgrounds. While their songs were created and intended almost entirely for hearing and circulation within their own social group, many curious and sympathetic listeners of a more formally educated and literate class have found these songs to be an invaluable key to understanding this group which otherwise often seems inarticulate, inscrutable, or threatening. These songs not only provide insight into another social world, but they entertain and please the ear with their artistry. Unintentionally perhaps, they bridge some of the great social and racial divides that America has created, as well as providing spiritual and artistic nourishment for the victims of these divides.
Writers and scholars have concentrated on three major domains in the study of the lyrics of African American folk, blues, and gospel songs. They have seen them as examples of literary expression, as reflections of daily life and living conditions, and as expressions of opinion and psychological states. Even when concentrating on one of these domains, most writers have shown some awareness of the others. In searching for literary expression, one can hardly avoid the social content of these songs, and with opinion and description of daily life often comes great artistry.
Early twentieth century writers and collectors, such as Howard Odum, Guy Johnson, Newman White, Dorothy Scarborough and John A. Lomax, saw the song lyrics as examples of the "folk poetry" or "folk psychology" of "the Negro." Although some indicated that they were struck by the power and artistry of particular performances and the personalities of some of their informants, for the most part they treated the songs as anonymous collective expression. Odum, however, felt compelled to create a composite character, a Black Ulysses, to be the voice for many of the songs he had collected in the South, and Scarborough consulted black songwriter W. C. Handy as an expert on the meaning of the blues. Lomax did provide the names of his informants along with occasional bits of biographical information. In 1934 he displayed his star informant, Huddie Ledbetter ("Leadbelly"), an ex-convict no less, as a living representative of the black folksong tradition, taking him around to concerts at universities. Little did Lomax realize at the time that he had unleashed a creative musical force with a mind of his own and a desire to build a professional career as a performing artist, a man who would, in fact, become an important voice on a variety of political and social issues, including the fight against Jim Crow.
It was the twin forces of musical professionalism and commercialism that forced writers and scholars away from the simplistic interpretation of these songs as expressions of "the Negro" and toward a more multi-faceted approach that would take into consideration the personalities and varieties of life experience and opinion of individual singers and composers. W. C. Handy himself served as a bridge to this new understanding. In his 1926 collection Blues: An Anthology and his 1941 autobiography Father of the Blues, Handy discussed the specific circumstances of his encounters with folksongs and his transformations of this material into his own popular compositions. In the former book he also included the works of several other blues songwriters. Handy viewed his source material as exploitable common property for musically literate composers like himself and his own compositions as works deserving the protection of copyright. Nevertheless, in dipping so deeply into the common well of African American folksong, he set himself up as a spokesperson for his entire race and his life as an example of progress from the status of anonymous "Negro" to that of an American household name.
Concerts by performers like Leadbelly, compositions by songwriters like Handy, and especially phonograph records by countless blues and gospel artists brought these songs to the attention of millions of Americans and interested listeners overseas. By 1960 enough records had been issued and enough large private collections built that a British record collector and scholar, Paul Oliver, could publish a book called The Meaning of the Blues. In this and several subsequent publications, Oliver examined the variety of themes and opinion in a large sampling of commercial recordings made between 1920 and 1943, showing how these songs reflected a black American working class culture with rural and urban, sacred and secular, dimensions, exhibiting change and variety over space and time, and studded with individual personalities.
The early folksong scholars and collectors had not ignored songs that dealt with themes of politics, economic conditions, wars, and race relations. Particularly noteworthy were John J. Niles' Singing Soldiers (1927) and Howard W. Odum's Wings on My Feet (1929), both of which discussed the songs and experiences of black American soldiers during World War One. But all of these studies were weakened by their authors' insistence on revealing the mood and expression of "the Negro." By the 1940s and 1950s the overwhelming number of blues songs on themes of love, romance, and sex, and gospel songs on themes of sin and salvation made it appear that there were few, if any, African-American songs on these broader sociopolitical topics. To remedy this apparent lack, left wing ideologues encouraged singers like Josh White and Leadbelly to create and record new "folksongs" of protest against fascism, racism, and economic exploitation. Some scholars, like Miles Mark Fisher in his Negro Slave Songs in the United States (1953), examined folksongs of earlier eras, claiming to detect coded references to historical events and messages of black resistance. While Fisher could not substantiate most of his interpretations with clear evidence and while Josh White and Leadbelly sometimes seemed like isolated voices of protest directed at sympathetic ears mostly outside their own communities, the need for new sociopolitical songs was eventually met in the early 1960s by the civil rights movement's adaptation of spiritual and gospel songs in support of its cause. In the arena of scholarship Paul Oliver's The Meaning of the Blues revealed a rich vein of sociopolitical commentary, including protest, in blues on "race records" that had been recorded and intended for sale almost entirely within the American black community.
Oliver and other scholars who examined these records in the 1960s and following years were hampered somewhat by an inability to acquire and listen to all of the known and possibly relevant recordings and by fragmentary background information on the singers and the historical events and social conditions underlying the songs. Not until the mid-1990s were all of the factors in place that would allow a more sophisticated and detailed analysis of the lyric content of this material. These factors were the reissue on LPs and CDs of virtually all of the African-American blues, gospel, and folk material recorded up to 1943 and a great amount recorded after that date; a worldwide network of research-oriented record collectors ready and willing to fill in gaps where reissue albums were lacking; comprehensive blues and gospel discographies running up to 1970; and an enormous new body of literature about singers, composers, and record companies and about African-American history and culture.
Exploiting these resources (and having helped to build many of them over the years), Guido van Rijn undertook to examine all of the recorded African American songs containing overt commentary on political events and issues during the years 1933-1945. His Roosevelt's Blues: African-American Blues and Gospel Songs on FDR (1997), with a foreword by Paul Oliver, arranges these songs thematically and chronologically, relating them to specific historical events, personalities, issues, and programs. Information about individual singers, songwriters, record companies, and recording sessions is all brought to bear, when appropriate, to explain particular song texts, and the latter are transcribed with great accuracy. Only a very small percentage of the total number of songs recorded during this period dealt with political topics, but van Rijn shows that such songs were recorded by a representative range of blues and gospel singers. Although they often mixed political opinion with humor, sexual themes, religious doctrine, and other highly personal concerns, and tended to view President Roosevelt as a benevolent and powerful patron or "bossman" able to protect and intervene directly in their lives, the singers nevertheless displayed an incipient political consciousness. That is impressive when one considers that these singers were almost totally shut out from the political process during this period except as recipients of government relief during the Depression and soldiers during World War Two. Roosevelt's willingness to listen to African-American voices and to take action on their behalf led singer Otis Jackson to memorialize him with the following lines:

Only two presidents that I ever felt:
Abraham Lincoln and Roosevelt.

In the present study Guido van Rijn has tackled the somewhat more problematical task of examining the blues and gospel songs dealing with political topics during the presidencies of Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower (1945-1960). Once again attempting to survey all of the known material, the author shows that these songs do not present a view of nearly total approbation as they did for President Roosevelt. Truman was seen as a sometimes fallible leader who, despite his actions and directives in support of equal rights, was not able to control fluctuations in the economy, could not hasten racial progress fast enough, and got America into an unwinnable war in Korea. Eisenhower, after an initial burst of enthusiasm for his arranging of the Korean armistice, came to be seen as unresponsive to the economic plight of black people as well as their growing demands for equal rights. By the time of his second term of office, singers were virtually ignoring him and his administration altogether, just as they had ignored the unresponsive presidents before Roosevelt. Having gained a hold on the development of political thought and an incipient sense of involvement during the Roosevelt era, blues and gospel singers, as van Rijn shows, displayed a greater awareness of abstract political issues during the Truman and Eisenhower years and less concentration on the personalities and deeds of the presidents themselves. His masterful study is one of the few lengthy examinations of any body of commercially recorded blues and gospel lyrics after World War Two. It prepares us for the momentous era of the 1960s. Let us hope that Guido van Rijn will examine the songs of that period with the same thoroughness that he displays here and in his previous work.

David Evans

I was very impressed with everything involved in the ordering, shipping, delivery and the product itself. My thanks and Kukos to everyone involved.

Truman Capote once said that he loved talking more than anything else. Inge's book is a collection of interviews with the great talker himself, covering the period from 1948, when Capote burst on the literary scene with his first novel, "Other Voices, Other Rooms," to a 1980 self-interview from "Music for Chameleons." It includes the complete texts of George Plimpton's important "New York Times Book Review" interview upon the publication of Capote's masterpiece "In Cold Blood" and Eric Norden's lengthy 1968 "Playboy" interview, both involving Capote's claim to have invented a new literary form, the "nonfiction novel." These interviews make clear why we must sometimes take Capote with a grain of salt, and why we must take his work as seriously as he took it himself.

i've been following walters work for a while, and am glad to finally be able to display his work on my coffee table!

You must buy it! It is the best book ever! It is a great photography book! It is amazing! Buy it! Buy it now!

This is an excellent book for understanding Biblical Christianity's central tennet of salvation. It mentions non-Christian and quasi-Christian beliefs only by way of dismissal. It focuses like a microscope on an absolutely Biblical (rather than doctrinal) examination of conversion and being "born again" (new life in Christ). Orthodox, mainline and evangelicals will all find this useful.

Gitt is a highly intelligent scientist with a very logical approach to Bible study. The book is broken up into chapters and subchapters that almost form a conversation with the reader. For example, subchapter topics include: "In Practical Terms, How Does Conversion Occur?," "False Views of Being Born Again," "The Features and Consequences of Sects," and "God's Grace: Unlimited Range?." Absolutely riveting reading. He leaves nothing out!

Nevertheless his prose is rich and extremely readable. For example, note how he answers his own title question on p. 57: "All religions are merely glimering mirages in the desert of lost mankind. To someone dying of thirst, a delusion of water does not help at all. In the same manner, all tolerance towards the human religious fantasies leads to perdition: 'There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death' (Prov 14:12). Why does man so often prefer false ways? The German doctor and author Peter Bamm (1897-1975) answered in this manner [B1]: 'Man loves to worship that which will ruin him.'"

The Bible is referenced extensively and many insightful comments are collected from other writers. (The book is a translation from German, so the other sources cited tend to be German in origin. There are also a few grammatical and/or copy-editor flaws that weren't caught in translation.)

As I say in my review title, the basic thesis is exploring the nature of "religion." His answer is that all "religion," save true, Biblical faith, is the imperfect invention of mankind enacted either in ignorance or rebellion. His is a watertight apologetic useful for academics, non-believers and believers.

I hightly recommend this essential volume for even the smallest Christian library. In fact, this is the first review I've every published on Amazon.com! I just couldn't let this book go by unreviewed. Buy it, own it, read it, share it. Now.

I read the original German text and really enjoyed it. I don't know wether or not the translator did it justice, but it is worth checking out.