Lifestyle Books

I want to let readers know this is a truly must read for all ages. Pre-teens, teens, young adults and adults alike will gain truth and insight into themselves; reminding them that freedom is not free. Having not heard of this author before, I can honestly say this writer has heart and wants to reach his readers on many levels. I cannot say enough good things and what a wonderful feeling I walked away with after reading it. My hope is this is not a one-hit wonder. If you like the work of Nicholas Sparks or Nicholas Evans, you'll enjoy the likes of David Dudley even more!

An excellent read from start to finish. It is wonderful to see an author who takes the time to develop characters and drive the plot without offering two-bit explanations and inch-deep resolutions to conflict. Dudley does not try to solve all of Carissa's problems, and presents good lessons on life's hardships and the need to know what is worth fighting for. A solid work for all ages, especially for young people developing their sense of moral character and integrity. Highly reccommended.

Having moved to a small rural community when I was young from a larger city, I was really able to identify with Carissa and her difficulties fitting in and making friends. A wonderful example of when to stand up for yourself and also when to move on and not let people drag you down to their level. I enjoyed the interactions of the characters and the glimpse into hardships of the time period. I'm looking forward to other books by the author!

Wonderful book for Children. Great Photography. A must for the Christmas Stocking from Santa Claus

Living in Boston, you are constantly affected by Big Dig-related twists, turns, and upsets. One day the one-way street heads east; the next it has been re-routed west. Few of us venture into the heart of this truly amazing engineering feat, but this book shows us why we should pay more attention. Vanderwarker's spectacular photographs are thrilling to see and they give a glimpse of just why so much money has been poured into this project. We get to see things only the workers would normally see. But perhaps best of all is the glimpse it gives of cutting-edge engineering and technology. Seldom have I seen so clearly how yesterday's sci-fi has become today's "sci" and tomorrow's business as usual.

This book is so much fun to read. The photography is wonderful. Vanderwalker has such a good "eye" for beauty, even in construction.

A must buy for the kids at Christmas

Big Doc's Girl is a classic of its genre. Mary Medearis is an Arkansas native currently living in New York. You can purchase paperback copies of her book at WordsWorth Bookstore in Little Rock, AR., 1-800-880-0122.

I accidentally happened upon this book and will be forever grateful that I did. Although the novel is unique in having strictly one point of view throughout, the heroine is engaging enough to hold the readers interest. I loved how the author painted the picture of what was going on. The writing style is reminiscent of the old "classics" with a lot of attention to detail. The setting, the story, the characters, and the writing are all excellent. I loved the book, have recommended it to many, and am looking to purchase. A rare treat that I will read time and again. Absolutely beautiful.

This novel is told from the point of view of Mary Clayborne, the teenage daughter of a small-town Arkansas doctor during the Depression. When tragedy strikes the family, Mary must choose between her dream of attending the music conservatory, marrying her father's young resident, or staying and becoming head of the household for her younger siblings. A deft portrayal of life in rural Arkansas, a fine translation of the back-country mores, and a convincing dose of teenage angst and ennui.

I bought this book because I had read another book illustrated by Ted Lewin and found him to be a remarkable artist.

This book captures the sights and sounds of New York City; the reader will feel he or she is right in the kitchen with the steaming woks.

Most importantly, both the adult reader and the child listening (or reading on the second to third grade level) will be interested. And if your child likes books reread many times, this book will hold up. Among other things, there are so many details and subtleties in the artwork that the adult will be looking at every nook and cranny of the pictures.

I think Ted Lewin as as good an artist as Normal Rockwell.

I think this a wonderful book and a up close view of what it's like in the kitchen of a Chinese take out restaurant! The book starts out on a very early Saturday morning as the owner's son comes downstairs into the back room of the restaurant as the vegetables are arriving for the day. The cooks he calls his "Uncles" are getting the woks ready and begin chopping up the chicken, pork butt, spareribs, flank steak, vegetables, and getting the noodles and rice ready for the day. Then there is folding menus until the metal shutters open at 11 am. The boys whole family works in the restaurant even his Mother & Aunt who work the counter and the phones really fast and sometime at the same time!

The author also illustrates this beautiful book! The pictures seem s real, just like the photos he took and then drew the photos from these photos. The restaurants menu is on the inside and back page of the book and also shows the author with his take out bag!

This is a fantastic book, and even more so since it's based on a real Chinese restaurant Kum kau pronounced "Gum Kow" which in Chinese means golden globe in New York and I hope one day when our family visits New York that we can visit and get some food there! All the while knowing how much work went into our food! It's a wonderful look inside a restaurant kitchen, especially since we order it ... and it magically appears! The only thing that would make this book better would be if this family was actually real and not fictional!

The award winning children's book illustrator loves to eat Buddha's Delight at the Kum Kau take out chinese restaurant in Brooklyn's Fort Greene/Myrtle Street neighborhood. Based on photos he took and sketches, he has created extremely realistic watercolors (worthy of a gallery show) that capture a day in the life of the take out restaurant through the eyes of the fictional son of the restaurant's owners. The inside front and back covers, alone, are worth buying the book for. They consist of the recreated takeout menus from the restaurant (with reasonable prices). The book opens with a young boy waking up on a Saturday to help out at the restaurant. As the shutters are still closed on the take out shop, the cooks receive deliveries, chop and dice, and chop some more. Menus get folded, water gets boiled, woks get washed. Customers arrive, and the whole family, cousins and uncles included, all help out. Interesting neighbors pop in, including a fire truck and its engine company crew, all ordering various favorite dishes. Who knew so much work went into the preparation of your child's take out Moo Goo Gai Pan? Later, it is evening, the neon lights comes on, and it's time for the family to order their own dinner for takeout and delivery... What will it be?? Read and find out. This is a must read for parents and their kids as they wait for their dinner to be delivered

This book is the most honest book I have ever read about the modern black woman's experience. My mother read it because it was given to her by a friend in her Master's program, some years ago

Then when I was a sophmore in college she gave it to me and I read it.

I would encourage women who have sons especially to read it, I have a daughter, a toddler, and she will read it too,probably in high school.

If we are to end the cycle of abuse and torment and empower black women in America we must start with all the issues she addresses.

This is an account of Michele Wallace's experiences with the civil rights movement and growing up in the late 60's. Judith Wilson, who reviewed this for Ebony Magazine, has since said, "it was a pioneer work. Angela Davis's book 'Women, Race and Class' wasn't published until 2 years later. Ntozake Shange's play 'For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide' had moved to Broadway but it's approach was poetic rather than analytical"

Wallace mentions of the ladies in her family, "It was understood, you were either going to be a bright success or a desperate failure, and it was your job to proclaim which you were going to be at as early an age as possible."

She recalls how she was taken out of private Catholic school when her mom found posters of Richard Nixon in the bedroom she shared with her sister, "can you believe it? we were that brainwashed." Things would be entirely different at the NY school where she transferred. . .

This book, about Black women being shortchanged, is probably most relevant for women who came of age during the period of time from the 1960s to the 1990s, tho it has some relevance today, as it probably would have before the 1960s as well. Written in 1976, it was way ahead of it's time, well, ahead of the 'PC', politically correct, beliefs of it's time.

Black Macho is an odd read and yet a modernly familiar one, in that at times, one is struck with a feeling Wallace is trying to say something completely opposite from what is literally on the page. This is both a sensationalist book and a subtle book at the same time. For the most part Wallace implies black women are oppressed and almost never tells us they are. It wasn't until later, reading about this book and reading other Wallace, that I understood more what it was about. This work could be subtitled, 'Why I became a feminist'.

Wallace is either a master propagandist or she knows her audience and wants to keep them reading: she begins each chapter repeating a true-ism, for instance, this genuine one, "white men were always the ones making pronouncements about everything" and ends up at the end of the chapter quoting a figure proclaiming, "Kill Whitey." This is almost an expose' of the civil rights movement.

Some of the assertions Wallace does make are that black men and women have a sometime dislike for each other stemming in part from black men/white women relationships, and she asserts a lack of confidence he'd, "come home."

For Wallace, the civil rights movement meant, literally, "A white woman in every bed and a black woman under every heel".

Wallace was presenting ideas that no one else was at the time. She must have felt pressure to go along with the ideas people did believe in at the time (or perhaps felt a desire to be understood), and I think what is going on here with this work, is that it is an example of the 'Wilson Rule' (If you have one un-PC idea {here the idea being that black women are the ones being taken advantage of}, you have to smother this offence in 6 politically correct ideas). Countless books have been written in this manner (tho only a minority of those at the library), each examining one un-PC idea the author believes in, and, so the author can sound reasonable, accepting every other popular convention of the day. The problem with this, is that at the end of the day, best case scenario, a young reader's learned 6 lies and 1 thing that's true.

Michele Wallace was criticized for what she does say here (and perhaps for what she implies), and one has to wonder: is this criticism (of a work claiming black women are treated unfairly) simply proof of her thesis?

Wallace doesn't ignore the media in her book. She asks, was there a conscious effort to keep young minds focused on sports, guns and violence, and off business, education and the stock market?

She begins her treaties on 'Black Macho' (the 2nd half of the book) with, "imagine for a moment that there was a part of your body, an organ, that by the very nature of the society in which you lived, existed under immense pressure. Imagine that this organ, placed in a conspicuously vulnerable position on your body, was to expand, rise, and remain erect at will. Imagine that your status in society depended upon your ability to control this organ. Imagine that if you couldn't get the dam thing to work, the very importance of your existence would be in question."

This is a sensationalist, titillating book filled with the 'F' word, 'Redneck', the 'N' word, and lots of people saying, kill the bigots. I imagine Wallace secretly enjoyed writing this even as she's mentioned, she, secretly enjoyed listening to Norman Mailers rants about the civil rights movement (Wallace was a journalist for the Village Voice a paper Mailer founded). I don't think she enjoyed writing this as much as I enjoyed reading.

Wallace was criticized for Black Macho perhaps because she strays just too far from blaming all problems on white men. In a sense, in saying, black men, too, are oppressing black women, she made black men, too equal. 20 years later she says, "In some ways I'm still being punished today." Feminist Tammy Bruce in California was fired for coming out against OJ Simpson, who in her mind was an abuser at the very least. To be honest, 'Sexism', was, a huge issue. Well, if you were the wrong person it was. It's been said, President Bill Clinton being accused of sexism did a lot to reduce some of the perception of it.

Wallace was in one of my college textbooks, quoted for her reaction to gangster rap. For her, the solution for women everywhere will be found, when, "...women rap back." Not long after I noticed Queen Latifah with a big video out. Eminem followed.

To be fair and give my own views, my background is in reading old -old- school conservatism. In fact, I'm somewhat of an 'anti-feminist'. Perhaps I'm just a chauvinist. I'm not wedded to any particular ideology tho - I do find them all interesting. Guess I'm a sympathizer too.

Michele Wallace is paid to be a feminist. After Black Macho, Wallace would edit a work titled, "All the women are white. All the blacks are men, but some of us are brave." She teaches a great number of courses at CUNY, and a seminar in film studies, 'Performance and Race in Cinema 1890-1930's' where she says, "Despite the many objectionable features, this is a body of work which is collectively unforgettable and irreplaceable."

I would trade all these films for 'Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman'. I couldn't help but like the voice of woman who wrote this book. I was in awe of Wallace. No. I was in love with the woman who wrote these words.

I read this book when it was originaaly published in 1976. Although Michele Wallace was a relatively young black woman (still in her twenties as I remember)I was most impressed by the maturity of her insights regarding both black men and black women. Her intent seemed to be to point out areas that both genders needed to look at if the race as a whole was to make any progress.

In both sections of her book, Wallace focused our attention on "male privilege" and how it translated into black "macho-ness", with the resultant effect that black men are as guilty of taking for themselves unearned advantages over black women as white people are guilty of taking for themselves unearned advantages over black people. She pointed out that black women continued to nurture the race physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and that the convenience of the self-sacrificing "superwoman image" (which black women willingly accept) allowed the predominatly male leaders of the civil rights movement to discount the interests and issues of black women, much like white slaveholders did; the typical black superwoman served only as an ancillary utility for black men. Wallace revealed to the world that black women, more often than not, were still "sleeping with the enemy."

Wallace was virulently attacked by almost every black "leader" who could get herself (yes, even women) and himself heard. However, if you re-read the book today, you cannot deny the fact that she was prescient in her observations and conclusions. The problems which she identified then still exist today.

I would recommend this book as a basic text for every black women's college. It should be discussed whereever concerned black people convene.

I only read this because my mother gave it to me because my name is Susan. I was surprised at how much I wanted to know how Susie was going to cheer up her mother. I was surprised at how much I liked it's tone and style. It is warm and thoughtful. But very simple and straightforward.

Black-Eyed Susan is a book adults and children will enjoy equally. The seeming simplicity of the tale belies rich poetic images that took my breath away. The tenderness and love with which the characters interact with one another will make you feel warm all over, and maybe a renewed hope for humankind. The theme is also unusual for a children's book - Susan's mother is suffering from depression, although no one at that time knew what it was. How her daughter rouses her out of it, with the help of a chance encounter with strangers, is extremely powerful and moving.

Armstrong has thoroughly researched the time period this story takes place in, and it flows naturally so the reader feels she is right there in the story. Lovely illustrations add to the mood.

This book is so cool !!! It is very educational yet very good also, I would recommend this book to anyone out there.This book is a real page-turner.I also think this author has a lot of potential

This book was named the Golden Kite Award Honor Book for picture text for 2001 by the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. It was also named a Notable Book in the Language Arts by the National Council of Teachers of English.

This is a beautifully illustrated and touching story to share with kids - and other adults, too. I'm a teacher and I really appreciated the information about bluebirds that is included.

My mother loved to garden and this book makes me think of her. It's a beautiful story for children, but also a special book to give to adults who have recently lost someone. The illustrations are just beautiful.

Simply astonishing. This is an encyclopedic work with so much fun, depth and data..full of ideas, rich depiction of the events that shapped our present and likely to shape our future. Who are the greatest leaders and politicians of our time? Best countries? Worst countries? Best systems? Greatest opportunities for success and where to find them? The answers are in this book. Every single book written by Maximillien de Lafayette is a signature of excellence. I am addicted to his books! He opens my eyes on our world...Rating: 5 stars!

My Favorite Book of the Season!



With great interest and enormous joy I read this book and could not put it down. It is fun, fun, fun. I did not know that Estee Lauder perfume "Country Mist" failed miserably in Germany because the word MIST means manure in German, until I read this book!

Surprised to read in the book that some French names raise red flag In France. For instance, Chantal means barracuda, Bernadette is innocent, Angele (Angela) in decent, Brigitte is unpredictable, Lou Lou is a teaser and Maurice is a playboy!



The book is filled with captivating stories from around the world. The author in a bursting simplicity explains the characteristic features and personality of Americans and people in 135 countries! WOW! It is overwhelming. Ranging from tradition, social etiquette and love to the bizarre, the secret and taboos.



I was particularly taken by the list of the outstanding people of our time and those who made a direct impact on our life, starting with George Bush and Hillary Clinton and ending with Madonna and Al Pacino. The roster of the most important American celebrities and the best and worst of our politicians is a coup de grace. Read the book. You got to read it; it is enjoyable and so much entertaining. This is my favorite book of the Season.

The world at your fingertips; this book presents on a silver dish all the important stuff you need to know about foreigners, their countries, lifestyles, taboos, politics, dating and way of life.

In addition, it offers an intelligent analysis of the American way of life, how we do business, our relationships with each other, techniques we use to succeed in our career. In brief, a most informative, and fun book I have read in a decade. One particular section is unusual: The roster of names (national and international) of the most important personalities and events of our time. It is a serious work, however, the great sense of humor of Maximillien de Lafayette adds an extra dimension of delight and fun to the book. It is a wonderful book. You will love it. I give this book 5 stars.- By Shoshanna Rosentein, WJNA.

0n the TV show, YOUNG LOVE Sweet Valley Middle School kids are on it. Yep, that right! They get to be on TV!...

This book is GGGGRRRREEEEAAAATTTT! A Super duper BOOKKKK! I say, if you're a Sweet Valley fan, e-mail me at mimipony38@hotmail.com. This is a great book! Makes you want to read, The Boyfriend Mess! Trust me, that one is even better!

This book was so funny I almost laughed my head off. I can't believe the twins really switched parts, and it was so funny the way Elizabeth acted. Especially Sophia Rizzo's boyfriend, how he mixed up those words! This book is one of the most funniest books I have ever read.

Of the books I read when I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2001, this was the one that seemed most objective. It was also most challenging to blind acceptance of what the medical establishment might have us believe. Cancer treatment is NOT a black-and-white process, and this book shows why. Patients have the right and responsibility to participate in decisions about their health care, and this book gives information to help in the decision-making process. I very much hope that Steve and Cathy will soon publish an update, as the statistics, surgical options, drug regimens, etc have changed dramatically since 1994. Notably absent is mention of DIEP flap breast reconstruction. Nonetheless, this book will never be totally irrelevant, since the process of acquiring knowledge, and the concept that we ARE free to choose our health care, are timeless and liberating.

As a naturopathic physician, I have never seen any book on any type of cancer as well thought out and executed as this. What a fantastic resource. I have found answers to questions I've had about this disease over and over again. I can only hope that they'll do a 2nd edition to update the research.

The husband and wife team give an excellent view of he treatments and follow up of what to do after treatment. He is the doctor who does the research. She is the person with breast cancer and her choices, and why she chose as she did. And what she is doing now to try and prevent a reoccurence.