Washington University Books

An interesting twist about how to represent Nixon's persona while being tapes on TV programs speaking to the 'people', the masses.
Not bad. Not great. But different.

My interest in this particular book began with the press on the anniversary of the death of Robert F. Kennedy. Although I heard about this book, I never read it. Until now. It was a good read on the genesis of political campaigning in the modern day. It's manifestation, however, took place in 1980 with the election of President Ronald Reagan. McGinnis takes us into the back room of the political campaign to illustrate how Richard Nixon, politcal pariah of 1960, evolves into the Republican nominee a short 8 years later. The names of individuals involved in the process in 1968 have relevancy to this date (i.e. Roger Ailes, Patrick Buchanan) and infamy in the past (i.e. Dwight Chapin, John Mitchell). McGinnis also illustrates the movement away from the importance of the print media to the new media of television in political campaigning. When viewed today, we may shrug our shoulders. However, back in 1968, it was revolutionary. The Selling of the President 1968 is a good beginning to understanding political marketing of candidates for office.

It's amazing that Joe McGinnis was allowed access so close to Richard Nixon's inner circle. One of the drawbacks to this kind of journalism is that people learn from it and shut off these opportunities later.
For an audience in 2005 this book will shed light on some of the same media handling that goes on now. Nixon's campaign guys treated him as a product, not a politician, and staged a number of televised "meet the public" type get togethers with regular people before the election. But they hyper controled his message even to the point where they get pretty scared if one of the members of the public go off topic and Nixon starts to look like he can't handle a question on civil rights or some hot topic of the 1960s.
Same thing is going on today with Social Security forums. President George W. Bush goes up on a platform and meets with people to talk about his plan to save Social Security. It's pretty staged.
Many of the names today are the same also, and the key ad guy that worked for Nixon -- Harry Treleaven -- helped get the first President George HW Bush elected to Congress in 1964.
It's a slim book, only about 170 pages of text and another 30 or so of Nixon campaign memos. I read it in about two afternoons.
Anybody interested in politics today or the Nixon era would love this book, but it's a fascinating look at how modern advertising and political campaigns merged. You can see how politics came to be what it is today through this book.

Joe McGinniss joined the Nixon campaign as an observer, and wrote this book of connected stories. Nixon's team had a number of advertising and TV professionals. The book lacks and index and a table of contents. The cover shows Nixon's face on a pack of cigarettes - an apt metaphor. They are heavily advertised, and bad for you in the short and long run. People know this, but they buy them anyway!

Chapter 1 shows Nixon taping commercials for varied markets. "I pledge an all-out war against organized crime in this country." But investigations into organized crime was later halted. Chapter 2 tells us that politics, like advertising, is a con game! Both promise more than they deliver. McGinniss says Nixon lost in 1960 because the camera portrayed him clearly (p.32). I think the TV audience judge he was lying, the radio audience took him at his word. By 1968 Nixon learned how to act sincere. He would appear mellow, not intense; respected, if not loved (p.34). Page 36 explains how this works: saturated TV advertising showing the candidate and giving the desired impression, followed by public appearances where he doesn't say anything. TV would be controlled to transmit the best images (p.38). Chapter 3 tells about Harry Treleaven, who worked on the 1966 campaign for George Bush; he was elected because he was likeable, and none knew his stand on the issues. More people vote for emotional than logical reasons (p.45). Chapter 4 explains the power of TV. "The press doesn't matter anymore: (p.59). Painting Nixon as mellow was their way to overcome the old Nixon. Chapter 5 tells how the TV shows were staged for each region. Page 64 explains the politics for a panel of questioners. The selected audience applauded every answer. Chapter 6 says that if Nixon could not act warmer they would produce commercials that made him so!

Chapter 7 tells how a commercial would "create a Nixon image that was entirely independent of the words" (p.85). "The secret is in the juxtaposition" (p.88). (Was this parodied in that scene in "The Parallax View"?) Once complaint was of a picture of a soldier who had scrawled "LOVE" on his helmet; a new picture was found with a plain helmet. Later they received a letter from that soldier's mother - Mrs William Love (p.92)! Page 99 tells why you never saw a farmer on this show. Or a psychiatrist (p.100)! Chapter 9 gives an insider's view to the commercial images and what they meant. Chapter 10 tells of seeking Wallace voters with a ballad. Another trick was to be seen as a friend of Billy Graham. Chapter 11 tells of Nixon's shrinking lead. How could a slick production lose to a rough-edged show? Chapter 12 rates a Humphrey commercial as "contrived and tasteless" (p.138), but also "most effective" since it showed HHH as a real person in open air, not being kept in a TV studio. Chapter 13 explains how a TV show worked. People would call in with questions; these would be passed to the staff. They would be scrapped, and prepared questions and their answers used (p.149).

The Appendix contains various memos from the campaign; relevant extracts from "Understanding Media" and its analysis. Page 187 notes the good appeal of "reagan". Reagan's personal charisma is noted on plage 189. Pages 218-220 explain the benefits of print advertising over TV. Page 233 mentions the strategy of a challenger: the candidate stands for change (you assume what that means). These memos concern Nixon's run, but are applicable to other candidates today. How much has changed since 1968?

This was a very well research historical view of George Washington that is not presented in normal history classes. While it is known that he owned slaves, this book provides a gateway to allow the reader to step back through time to get a true sense of what it was like to be "owned" by General Washington.

The photocopies of actual hand written letters about recapturing his runaway slaves shows him to be a vindictive person who had no conflict over being a staunch freedom fighter while owning slaves at the same time. Duh!

While some apologists for him say that he was a benevolent owner, the fact remains that his "employees" worked over 12 hours each day, seven days a week with neither a salary nor a 401k.

The book also points out a very clever concealment of the "fugutive slave law" in the constitution. (Section 2 article 4) that George spearheaded.

After reading this work one can see that his slave plantation was every bit as horrific as anything to be found in Treblenka, Bergen-Belsen or Dauchau.

This was an excellent text, rivaling the great "Founding Brothers - The Revolutionary Generation" by Joseph J. Ellis. It addresses the fundamental question I have always had; how could slavery continue (thrive) in a "free" nation? I have been reading a lot about the Founding Fathers with the central purpose of answering this very question. This book "George Washington & Slavery" includes many quotes and letters from the general that specifically addresses the slavery issue. It uses Washington and his contemporaries own letters to paint a story of our most famous founding father and his viewpoint on Blacks and slavery.

It begins by discussing how Washington obtained his large slave population through his marriage with Martha. It tells us that Washington was your typical (although meticulous) plantation owner. The Mount Vernon Estate was the most envied in the land. This was due to not only Washington's management but also slave labor. You get a strong since of how important slavery was to the every day needs of our most esteemed founding father.

However, Washington changed his views about Blacks during the Revolutionary War when he initiated enlisting Blacks into the Army (in the North not the South). Unfortunately, this was only done as a last resort after British Lord Cornwallis had announced that Black slaves could seek freedom if they took up arms with the British. It was then that Washington, faced with a mounting slave force with weapons, decided it was a smart strategy to allow Blacks to serve for the colonies.

What was most disappointing about Washington is that he was well aware of several Blacks with courage, intelligence and character. This book tells us about the Black poetess Phyllis Wheatley who was highly regarded for her literature (Washington once wrote her and he did addressed her with respect). There were several slaves that fought valiantly in the Revolutionary War and won recognition from Washington and other generals. He was always known to be fair on the battlefield with both his White and Black soldiers. There are several notably slaves such as his own Billy Lee that stood side by side with Washington through even his military battles. Frenchman Marquis de Lafayette often wrote Washington about the abolition of slavery? In fact, Lafayette wrote Washington about the large-scale emancipation of slaves in the French colony of Cayenne, the capital city of what is now known as Guiana. Therefore, Washington not only had first hand knowledge that Blacks were capable individuals, but also that slavery could and had been abolished in another part of the world. Washington still was willing to sit idle while hundreds of thousands were destined to a life of bondage.

At one time the Washington estate housed over 400 slaves (including children). They catered to the every needs of the Washingtons. Martha Washington had personally eleven slaves to perform her cooking, cleaning, sewing, etc. This book was full of letters by the Washington's regarding their slaves. It indicated that the Washingtons were fair and reasonable with their slave labor. In fact, the only time George revolted punitively was in regard to runaways.

The last will and testament of George Washington was to free his slaves. This is good, but in my opinion is not enough to remove the stain of slavery in his life. Even though he was fair to his slaves, he could have set in motion (or at least continued the existing momentum) emancipation in this country. The original impression I had before was that Whites during our revolutionary time lived in an environment where slavery was an unchallenged institution. This book and others indicate that there was a growing abolition movement in this country that began at the nations' founding.

I get the impression from Washington and the other Founding Fathers that they realized slavery was wrong. Of course it would have been hard to move towards abolition. It is always difficult to give up status and an economic advantage. Power and privilege are always difficult to give up. And even if Washington could give up the Presidency of the United States he could not find himself to give up the comforts of slavery while he was living. This was a question about power and the need to feel superior to others. Emancipation would have been challenged by his fellow southern plantation owners. Of course it would have been challenged and certainly unpopular, but many ideas are challenged. The Founders including Washington could have provided freedom for slaves after they reach an appropriate age. This was a strategy employed by the northern states. He could have been more outspoken and introduced a plan to gradually rid the country of this egregious sin. The question is whether this is worth fighting for. There are many examples where Washington put his life on the line for ideas he felt were worth the fight. Was the fight was worth it? Fighting a war against the world's largest Army was hard and many thought suicidal. But you fight for things that you believe in and ideas that are worth it. That was one of the themes of the revolution. In Washington's opinion (and most other key leaders of our nation at that time), the plight, hopes, dreams, viewpoints, feelings and freedom of Blacks were not worth the fight.

Mr. Hirschfeld has put a lot of time and research into this work and has turned out a good look at Washington the slave owner. He like the writers of recent attacks on T. Jefferson however forget to tell the whole story. Early in the 21st century it is easy to look back and see what an evil slavery was. The fact that we weren't raised being told that slavery was not only acceptable but a positive good makes our viewpoint much eaiser. Washington like Jefferson was raised by people who told him slavery was indeed a good thing. The society he grew up in and probably even his ministers told him the same thing. Hirschfeld's work is lacking in that he doesn't point out that by ever beginning to see the wrongs of the slave system Washington had shown a great deal of moral growth. Otherwise this is a fine book that examines an area of Washington's life that does deserve attention.

The author's work is certainly exhaustively researched, and thus has much to offer to any student of Washington, and of slavery itself. However, I take umbrage to the notion of conducting a limited analysis on the character of Washington, as inferred solely from his reluctant acceptance of the institution of slavery. Had the author been born into a southern plantation family in the late eighteenth century, I wonder if his intractable views on slavery would have been quite as pronounced.

Shawn Wong. Great asian author that should never beoverlooked. This book encompasses love, sex, relationships and asianstereotypes.

I think that this book is an extremely introspective piece about a young Chinese American boy who is discovering the balance between the Chinese heritage he has denied his entire life, as well as the American that he could never be. Wong's poetic nature surfaces in this prose through his lilting descriptions that disclose the connection Rainsford seeks to find between his heritage and this country who was so unaccepting of Chinese immigrants, and how possibly the nature of society has never really changed no matter how hard he tries just as his ancestors did.

I was assigned to read HOMEBASE by Rainsford Chan in a American Ethnic Studies comparative literature course and I was so glad that I did! The author, Professor Wong, who was the head of the English department at the University of Washington, gives the Chinese Exclusion Act and the generations who followed it a face, a name and a story. Rainsford Chan, the main character, bridges three generations as he takes a look back at his identity as a Chinese-American in an adverse culture that will not accept him as truly "American" because of his Eastern features, the color of his skin and his last name. Though, his great-grandfather literally helped to build America, while constructing the Trans-Pacific railroad, Chan still feels he has no real place amongst the Whites who continue to question his authenticity.

Wong's style is intense, poetic and frank. This novel also brings up very important and timely points about cultural and social identity, and the connection between men, their fathers and the legacy they carry on even three generations down the line. Rainsford excels in American sports, earns a letterman jacket and must become the "man" in the family after his father dies, and also helps his mother in her flower shop. The duties of manhood and caring for his family are part of his identity that he must live up to, as well as the pressure of justifying his "American-ness" to everyone who insists he must be from Hong Kong. Even though he comes from the "home where the buffalos roam." Such an important book for anyone interested in cultural identity in the United States, and for those who are still struggling for fair treatment in a White world.

Shawn Wong's homebase deals with a topic not widely discussed in literature. The author's early work (before American Knees) delves into his relationship between his father and heritage. the lesson I walked away was that by looking back at your heritage, you always can find a place you can call home. Whether it is in your family or friends, there is a special place you can go when you are seeking solace from the outside world. The language is magnificent and he has a strong writting style which draws you into his stories.

I am a huge Terry Davis Fan; I had the honor of knowing him and his work while a student at Mankato State (mankato, mn). This book appealed to me bacause I am a motorcycle rider and a product of 70's and 80's arena rock and roll. Davis has a way with "tortured" young men's voices that make them real and accessable--even to a woman; if you've not read his seminal work Vision Quest--for shame. I like that there is always an inanimate object or concept attached to the evolution of each young man in the book. I recommend him for young adult readers struggling with growing up and thinking their parents "suck" and life is unfair. Try Davis's friend Chris Crutcher too for similar "boy" books with a bite and good plot.

When Bert was young, he remembers being very smart and not afraid to show what he knew. He was bursting with confidence and happiness. Then he spent two years, fifth and sixth grade, with Mr. Lawler as his teacher. Lawler seemed to really have it in for Bert, and he encouraged the entire class to help Bert to "change his ways." Bert was subjected to two straight years of public humiliation, which left him very quiet, with a stutter and nearly no self-confidence.

Now Bert is a junior in high school and is cut from the football team. He needs to find something else on which to focus his attention. He decides to buy a motorcycle.

Buying the motorcycle introduces Bert to a whole new group of people, who are able to help him on his way to rediscovering who he is. The most important is Scott Shepard, the man who sells him the bike and then gives Bert a job in his motorcycle shop. He sees something special in Bert and is determined to help Bert himself discover what that something is. Eventually Scott may help Bert to face his biggest demon--Mr. Lawler himself, still the same after all these years.

I liked the Shepard family. They were a very tight-knit group but at the same time they were so open to include a guy like Bert. I also liked Bert's English teacher and his sensitivity. Bert needed some sort of support system. Much of the time, Bert seemed to just float through his life, and his parents were almost nonexistent after their first fight about the motorcycle. I would have thought they would play at least some role in his life.

I first this book when it was first published, and I was in the 8th grade. I remember it b/c I rated it an 8 out of 10 in my reading journal for school. Ten years later, I've reread that book so many times that my copy is dogeared. "If I changed once for the worse, I can change again for the better." These words are Bert Bowden's new mantra as he faces old demons and struggles to define himself. Davis' language is poetic, full of colorful phrases and thoughtful prose. I'd recommend all of his books, but this is the one that touched my heart.

Davis does for raquetball what he did for wrestling in VISION QUEST. The raquetball court becomes the three dimensional metaphor for the complex obstacle that Bert Bowden must overcome if he is to get on with his life.

Well-paced, with language that soars at times, IF ROCK N ROLL... places Davis in the upper echelon of adolescent fiction writers. The central images, the sleek powerful motorcycles, a child's terror and the athlete's development are so well-drawn that they will not let go of you easily.

In these lectures the author opens a whole universe which is unknown to most comtemporary readers. Fascinating discussion of how we recapture the past - is it possible, for example, to arrive at a vision of rural stetl life that is not colored or distorted by the holocaust that followed? The Jewish secular life of Odessa and the institution of the Heder are poignantly depicted. Not only are the intellectual rewards considerable but the prose is quite wonderful. I recommend this book highly.

This was a really good book and well worth reading. However, I do not think the book is for everyone, as I think you need to already have some understanding of Russian Jewish life. You may be misled by the title, as I was. I thought the author would describe the daily life of the Russian Jew, how he lived, what he thought about, what his environment looked like. This he did not do at all. Instead he picked four topics and compared how time, distance or opinion may have colored the historical event. He cites many examples from newspapers, books, movies, etc. One really good example is how American Jewry has romanticized the Cheder. My mother even has a picture hanging on the living room wall of a boy getting his ear tweaked (hard!) by the Melamed. The author did a very good job of explaining how fifty years later we could come to feeling nostalgic over events such as these.

I didn't care for it. The author seemed to have put together a bunch of old lectures and made them into this book.

My stupid teenage cousin got on my computer while I was in the bathroom (I was half finished reviewing this book)and he changed my review and sent it to you. He is an idiot. I don't know what he said, but since he was mad at me about something else, I'm sure it was stupid. I loved this book (as he well knows), and HE has not read it. He reads comic books. Please don't publish the review he sent you. It is a fake. I give the book five stars.

Sento(bath house) is a place where Japanese people communicate with friends and neighbors, as well as enjoy in a hot bath. When the Issei Japanese emigrated overseas around 1900, they made Sentos near their new residences.
This is a book that show us about prewar Japanese-American heritage (such as Sento, school, temple...) on the West Coast. And also, lots of interviews with (mostly) Nisei people are included. Very interesting...

I've just had a chance to see this Sento in Panama Hotel, Seattle. I was totally lost for words. Old bath tubs, "TAKE OFF SHOES HERE" sign, store ads...everything there was just as they used to be in '30s. Today, it's rare to see such a thing even in Japan.
If you visit to Seattle, please drop by Panama Hotel's cafe (at 6th and Main) and just take a look. They have lots of old pictures and furniture. You'll learn Japantown's history while enjoying nice coffee.

I saw the a copy of this book in Seattle at the Panama Hotel (that the book is named after) but decided to buy it on Amazon for less. I didn't realize until I got it that it's not the same book, it's been reprinted. Not as nice as the original.

Sento at Sixth and Main is beautifully written and executed. This book is not only historic and academic, but culturally elegant and articulate. Studies like Dubrow and Grave's are much needed in ethnic communities. I enjoyed learning about these different sites, as well as experiencing the artistic and honorable way they are presented.

The following review written by Richard Engeman appeared in Arcade 20.3, a journal of architecture and design in the Pacific Northwest:

No longer is history created solely from the written word. No longer is historic preservation justified solely by esthetics. We will be seeing a very much more layered look at our past, as new research combines evidence from unexamined data along with different ways of analyzing the information it holds. In Sento at Sixth and Main, Gail Dubrow and Donna Graves have created a striking work about Japanese American communities on the Pacific Coast from the 1890s into the 1990s. It provides a novel way of understanding the past by carefully observing the buildings of the physical present, and by imaginatively analyzing a wide variety of historical evidence.

What Dubrow and Graves have tried to do is to recreate some aspects of the daily lives of residents of Japanese American communities, using the buildings and structures that remain and that represent archetypal activities of the communities. The ten chapters/structures might be characterized: industrial work/housing; farm; store; theater; bath; school; temple; clinic; urban district; entertainment hall. Each chapter details the story of a building or structure in the Seattle or Los Angeles area: its history, its significance, its place in community life. The books makes extensive use of oral history interviews, personal snapshots, archeological findings, and such paper ephemera as merchandise catalogs and newspaper clippings, as well as more traditional historical sources.

This is a rich and dense production that will cause you to look more closely at the everyday world, to wonder what it says and what it represents. A building may give sign of its significance away at first glance, as Emmanji Temple in Sebastopol seems to do. But you would not know by looking at it that it was originally built as a railway exhibit building for the Century of Progress at Chicago in 1934, intended as of a replica of a Buddhist temple of the Kamakura period (1185-1333). Many other structures betray little if anything that would associate them with an ethnic community. An example is the deserted and largely demolished milltown of Selleck, Washington, where the differences between the housing for Japanese American workers and that for white workers are not distinguishable in the absence of the residents, although they were readily apparent when the town was active.

The book weaves text and illustrations into a convincing whole, where photographs are not merely illustrations but are a vital and integrated part of the argument and the story. Alas, a few of the most striking photographs do not directly portray what one thinks they do. The evocative cover image of a woman in a sento (bath) was taken in Japan, not Seattle, and quite recently. The timber workers whose image anchors the section on the town of Selleck, were photographed in Oregon, a hundred and fifty miles from Selleck. As historical evidence, the first photo fails to represent either the time or the location that its placement suggests. The second example misleads only in terms of place, and not significantly for documentary purposes, but its placement within the book suggests it was taken near Selleck. Caption notes at the back of the book tell most of the story, but fail to note that the cover photo was in fact shot in Japan.

I hoped there would be a chapter about a garden, but there is not. I was thinking of the remarkable Kubota Gardens in Seattle, a vernacular construction that is the result of an intersection of esthetics and business. Interestingly, Fujitaro Kubota worked at the Pacific Coast Lumber Company mill in Selleck not long after his immigration to the United States.

Small criticism for a book that is beautifully conceived and produced, and that makes such a pointed case for the value of structures in documenting the history of communities. It gives the cause of historic preservation good reason to examine the values of vernacular architecture, and for all of us to examine the values of community.

_________________________________

Richard H. Engeman is public historian at the Oregon Historical Society in Portland. He was at the University of Washington Libraries 1984-1999, where he was the archivist in charge of historical photographs and architectural plans and drawings.

Wild By Design: Two Hundred Years Of Innovation And Artistry In American Quilts is an impressively informative exploration of American improvisational, asymmetrical quilting experiments provides a fine history of evolving designs, colors and motifs from the early 19th century to modern times. Of particular note here are insights on regional American and modern art quilts from local communities, as well as surveys of the collections and holdings of the International Quilt Study Center. A gorgeous analysis which includes a concurrent history of women and the textile arts in America, this is studded with color photos.

I am a huge fan of Janet Berlo and bought this book primarily because of her involvement. I wasn't disappointed. Her essay, which precedes the catalogue of quilts and the dialogues with the other editors, is first class. It challenges a lot of the "myths" of quilting - for example, that women used re-cycled fabric for a lot of their quiltmaking. Berlo contends that, from her study of these quilts, and letters exchanged between quilters, there is evidence that most of the fabrics used were new, and some bought in considerable amounts specifically for quiltmaking. She also does a lot to discredit the myth of quilts being used as complicated signals on the Underground Railroad.
I have always tended to think of traditional quilts being beautiful but utlitiarian, and art quilts being beautiful but artistic. This book has opened my eyes to the fact that traditional quilts can be art quilts too.
I would recommend this book to anyone who really loves and appreciates quilts.

Unlike other reviewers, I was really disappointed in this book. Because of the cover picture, I was expecting another book similar to Quilt National or Quilt Visions, but it's not like that at all. There are only a couple of quilts in the book similar to the cover quilt. The rest are variations on traditional quilts--very nice but not my cup of tea. The dialogue on each quilt was interesting, but I'd suggest taking a peek at this book in person to be sure you want to order it for your collection.

Quilts used to be things that your grandmother made and either ended up on your bed keeping you warm at night, or were put away as family heirlooms. Some quilts, it turns out, are much more than that: works of art, either intentionally made as such, or defined as such after the fact, thanks to their daring and beauty. There are many books on quilts, and this is a welcome addition, focusing on a wide range of quilts from the historic to the modern. Authors Berlo and Crews give quilts careful academic study (Berlo is a professor of art history and Crews a professor of textiles and director of the International Quilt Study Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln). They provide useful context for the heart of this book: wonderful full-page reproductions of forty-eight quilts from the early 1800s to the present. The selection is breath-taking and inspiring. And the way the authors discuss each quilt is smart: it's in the form of a dialogue between them and three other cognoscenti in the field, which removes any potential for academic dryness. But Wild by Design isn't for academics: it's for all of us who can look at the wonderful range of art that women -- and a few men -- have made in the last 180 years and be astounded by the homespun beauty.

This is absolutely essential for anyone going to British Columbia or Alaska. It gives a brief description and explanation of almost all the important outdoor totem poles you'll come across, taking you through the poles figure by figure. I found it invaluable when in Victoria's Thunderbird Park and Vancouver's Stanley Park and Museum of Anthropology. A real gem you'll read over and glance through again once you're back home.

This book is mainly an anthology of totem poles found in the world. As such, it is rather dry and starved for content. It describes various poles with accompanying photos but does not venture much into technology, artform, etc. I can't really recommend the book unless you are a traveller wishing to visit and view various totem poles found in the Pacific Northwest.

No frills, no gimmicks, just an excellent written and graphic profile of totem poles as a symbol of a North American people. Allows you to enter a community where beliefs in the earth, sky, oceans, mountains and animals continue to be spiritual.

This is a harsh tale about a harsh land, in a difficult time. The heroines are interesting, but their lives are dismal. One wants a little hopefulness. Torvig stretches credibility with multiple pregnancies, rapes, and women who adandon their children while hoping for a better life for them. The men are hapless, drunkards, or die early deaths. The historical and political information is valuable and well-researched, but the story is told in a tone of bitterness that overrides what could be a fine tale.

If you are of scandinavian decent, this is a must read. I purchased three books for gifts. I plan to purchase more.

With my Finnish ancestory, I found "Niklolai's Fortune" quite an eye opener into the difficult times that my ancestors had to live in. Even though it was difficult to read some of the hardships that the women had to encounter, it was somewhat inspiring to see how perservering they were. Many times men felt so defeated with not being able find work and bring food to the table, that they handled their depression with alcohol. It was educational to read some of the historical facts of war that took place and how the citizens dealt with it. I think that the writer could have left out a few unwanted pregnancys. Other than that it was a book I would recommend to anyone.

This book is great for those taking or teaching a class that uses cat dissection. This book does an excellent job of comparing and contrasting human and cat structures. The only problem is that it doesn't include every muscle in the cat and the human.

This book is great for the price but really gives short shrift to the cat anatomy. The pictures and descriptions would be much more helpful if it emphasized more of the cat anatomy.

I am taking a course in human anatomy. One night, my cat decided to crawl up with me and look at the book. I started to wonder, what is the difference between human anatomy, and my cats?

My vet suggested this book. It's good for someone who doesn't know much about anatomy, and it does compare kitty's with your own. My only gripe is I wish the book had been in color.