Western Books

In the summer of 1863, the armies of the North and South fight at Vicksburg with some of the residual combat directly impacting civilians. For instance, local resident, teenager Ann Baxter barely survives a blast to her home that left her family dead and her arm amputated. After recovering in a poorly designed stopgap hospital, Ann realizes that as a homeless orphan her life in her hometown is over. She decides to leave Vicksburg and start over out west.

On the trek, Ann meets fourteen-year old Jim and his three younger siblings including a baby. Jim's parents just died leading to Ann, Jim, and the others to quickly rely on one another. In Kansas, Chalk, a drunk with little to live for, meets Ann and her merry band. As he observes her courageously face danger and trying situations, he finds he now has something to care about, his beloved Ann.

CHALK'S WOMAN is an exciting Reconstruction Era romance that centers on the lasting aftermath of the Civil War. The engaging story line works because of the depth each important character contains, which allows the audience to feel what the prime cast feels. David Ballantine provides sub-genre fans with a powerful debut novel that will leave readers anticipating future works from the author.

Harriet Klausner

When a rich villain prevents Charlie Sunday from transporting his recently acquired 300 head of Texas Longhorn cattle by truck or rail, Charlie organizes an outfit of colorful characters to drive them home - the old-fashioned way. The trip also presents him with an opportunity to provide his 10-year-old grandson, Henry-Ellis, with a character building adventure. Existing "livestock right-away statutes" supply plausibility for what would otherwise seem an unrealistic plot, but the drovers still encounter plenty of other natural and man-made obstacles along the way.

Action packed scenes devoid of gratuitous language and violence create an enjoyable read for the entire family, but this doesn't mean that the story is bland. The author's flair for witty dialog keeps the reader engaged: "Used to be in Texas a man settled his own problems," Charley said. "But that was when due process was a bullet."

Reminiscent of a quality western in the style of Louis L'Amour, Charley Sunday's Texas Outfit! draws a clear distinction between the good guys and bad guys. Readers longing for a family tale where justice prevails will be thrilled with this modern day saga.

Ms. Tam understands the style of Hong Kong and China (especially Shanghai) like few others; the best of that style is all here. She writes with enthusiasm and love for many essential aspects of the appeal of a culture known for its centuries-old aesthetic and for its mass-production and other mass sensibilities.

Tam's education at the Hong Kong Polytechnic gives her a unique vantage point for isolating Chinese chic. She can view Cultural Revolution paraphrenalia with the eye of a designer, collector, and artist, rather than with painful memories. In a show of global sophistication, she understands East-meets-West sensibility (her chapter on Chinglish is told with an appealing tenderness). The text comes off without a shimmer of self-consciousness or compulsion to 'be Chinese.' There is camp, sex, zen, pizzazz and beauty, exploding off of every page and augmented by Tam's tales of exploration and appreciation.

Bonus interviews with composer Tan Dun and choreographer/visionary Danny Yung are painfully short, but the reader still gets a healthy dose of young Chinese intelligensia. The text is endearingly personal, Vivienne Tam sharing with the reader what her senses take in. It's quite delightful.

Great keepsake for people who have visited Hong Kong or Shanghai!

Beautiful pictures throughout. What a wonderful book!!

Ever wanted an approachable and informative guide to Western Literature? Have you ever tackled some purported classic that left you wondering why those damn nymphs and fauns keep proliferating? Your quest has ended: this book is the Baedeker of Western European Literature that all you literature addicts have been looking for.

First of all, the author is dazzlingly erudite; he is apparently at home in Greek, Latin, English, French, Spanish, German, and Italian at least. Its primary purpose is to show the hidden scaffolding of Greco-Roman classics in Western literature, age by country, by selecting a choice group of writers with his personal preferences attached. The result is remarkably readable, never ostentatious, and his thesis rarely imposes strain on belief because the proof is always at hand. Thus the reader learns the overtones of classics in Shakespeare, or is made to see the hidden Doric column in Byron's passions fairly concretely.

But in my opinion, this book is truly excellent (1) for the list of influential writers in all ages that he had himself hand selected (I've never heard of Abraham a Santa Clara and now I'm itching for a translation), and most importantly, (2) because it gives the necessary cultural backdrop that anchors a given author to an era with all its advantages and limitations. For example, the book gives a reason why the Augustan poets (Dryden, Pope and friends) were driven to mincing affectations (partly a reaction to the Renaissance, partly a particularly Baroque censorship of vulgar words that comes from a misunderstanding of the classics. Highet provides some choice sample of Juvenal's trenchant and vulgar satires as a counterexample).

Of course, all books must have some faults. First, this book is very anglophillic; when works of two nations are compared, the British are crowned with the laurel with somewhat suspicious frequency. Whether this represents the truth is far beyond my capacity, only I submit that if I were a Frenchman, I would contest some of the outcomes. Second, his preference is certainly open to criticism. I may be alone in this, but I never found a single page of Gibbon's magnum opus soporific. I don't agree with his encomiastic treatment of Byron, either. I thought Coleridge was ushered off the stage too speedily. And sometimes you do get the feeling that an author with extensive classical training is definitely favored in the eye of a very classicist author.

The nettlesome issue of a hierarchy in writers is bound to cause some clashes with readers' opinions. But no matter: I am very certain that this book will still provide an addictively informative read to anyone with an interest in reading a sweeping survey of European literature. This book is a MUST READ for amateur/professional literati, world literature bookworms (me), and ...

... especially the classicists. Because the book's final and most salutary influence is that it reintroduces the Greco-Roman classics to our age where the classics field is increasingly untilled. If the very fact that a millenium of writers have turned - whether coerced by social convention or not - continuously to the Greco-Roman classics does not convince us, after rading this book one can't help but wonder whether, beyond the frigid marmoreal busts that say nothing and the wild raging toga party orgies, the ancients really have something very urgent to say to the present, or that they say it better than any of us alive.