California Books

Once again Samantha Dunn takes me to another place. She makes me laugh with her candid clumsiness and her determination to never fail. This is a woman that would be a wonderful best friend. OPRAH you should be reading Samantha Dunn!!!!!

When I read Sam Dunn's fabulous book, I felt exhiliarated -- not only was the writing so exciting, but she made me feel as if I, too, could be sexy, wild, a salsa dancer, maybe (despite being the much-harried mother of three children). Her writing is both vulnerable and wise, poignant and clear-headed -- I read the memoir in one sitting and then went to buy her other books.

I enjoyed this book. Her depiction of the evolution that a person undergoes when they commit themselves to learning how to dance salsa well was very accurate. I also loved how she accurately depicted the mentality of salseros on the salsa scene. It was dead on!

I loved this book so much - it's well written, insightful, and fun. I read the whole memoir in one sitting - I simply could not put it down! It's rich in metaphor and meaning: a must read!

I bought Faith in Carlos Gomez because it was selected by my book club for March, but I've already plowed through it and just ordered the author's other two books! For some reason, I was expecting a book about the life of a dancer, but the salsa world is merely a colorful backdrop for this heartfelt, lyrical, wildly funny book about one woman's search for love, identity and understanding. You will love this book if you've ever searched for love in all the wrong faces, lusted after a gorgeous stranger, found understanding in unforeseen places. SPOILER ALERT!!! There is an unexpected chapter about love and loss that will leave you in a puddle on the floor. I loved it!!

Great overview of the valley history and key players who influenced the culture and its success. Ashley's recommendations on restaurants are eclectic and fun as well.

Highly recommended. I bought some for gifts as well.

Larry Laurich, CEO DRC Computer Corp

This book delivers as advertised. A great summary of Silicon Valley. If you've just arrived in the valley it is indispensable. Pick up this book and spend your time learning, visiting and eating through the locales mentioned. (They should hand this out to incoming students at Stanford, and at the immigration line at SFO.)

Minor quibble, the book suffers from "young journalist syndrome," where its history, anecdotes and insights are a synthesis of the bibliography in the back. However, kudos to the author for reading more valley history than 99% of other writers. He is headed for greatness when he finds his own voice.

I've been involved with the tech business for 15 years and know my way around the places and companies in the valley. I found this book hugely entertaining and informative. At first look, it seems more like a travel book or specialized city guide than anything else - which is fine and a worthy accomplishment. However, there's a whole lot more....Ashlee lays out the history of the valley and the reasons why it has developed into the technical center of the world. Along the way, he provides easy to understand explanations of the technology and how each invention and advance launched new ventures or opened new markets. Finally, he delves into the personalities of both the key individuals and companies, which, for me at least, ties everything together and makes it a much more interesting and enjoyable read. Highly recommended....

Like technology? Like history? Like good writing? OK. This is your book. A little bit travel guide, a little bit history and a lot of fun, Ashlee Vance brings his truly unique and refreshing writing style in a book that is required reading for anyone involved in the technology industry.

I suspect they will be using this as a text book for some course or another at Stanford, and then Ashlee will become a full professor and his head will get really big and, well, that will be that. But read it anyway.

This is a great little book. Part historical overview, part travel guide, it's written in the breezy, easy-going style of Vance's columns in The Register, the best of the online IT rags (except that the book has been carefully proofread, unlike a typical Register story). In less than 250 pages Vance has covered almost all of the important historic events and personalities behind Silicon Valley, and provided a great set of tips of places for visiting, dining and drinking. There's even a good list of books and web sites for further reading.

I've lived in the Valley for nearly 15 years, and yet learned a fair amount from this book, including several places to visit that were new to me. There were only a few curious omissions: e.g., Halted gets a mention, but Fry's does not; neither does Buck's in Woodside; and surely Frank Drake should be mentioned in the section on the SETI Institute? - but otherwise the text is remarkably accurate, despite having condensed many complex histories, each worthy of a book in its own right, into paragraphs or pages. Vance clearly did his homework. My only historical quibble is with his description of the demise of SGI. I thought it was mainly done in by cheap graphics chips from Nvidia and the like; Itanic was just the icing on the cake.

The book mentions his web site and claims additional information can be found there, but so far there isn't anything new. Hopefully that will change over time. Another concern is that quite a bit of the information in the book will date fast; I hope Vance and his publisher refreshes the text (or the website, or both) regularly.

If you live in the Valley, visit the Valley, or you just want to know what the heck the place is about, this book is for you. And if you're a geek too, it's a must-read.

I checked this book out of the library, and enjoyed it so much that I'm buying my own copy. Great pictures and really great stories. The mostly one-sided feud between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford is a great example. I love Bette Davis as an actor, her sharp mind and acid tongue, but, oh, what she was like to work with!

This book is not only beautiful to look at, it is so beautifully written! The text gives great insights into the genres of classic horror films and fills them with little-known details of how the films were made. Vieira understands that films are made by people and he explores the personalities behind some of the most indelible cinematic creations ever. For any fan of horror films, this is a must own, must read!

I read everything published on the horror movie genre, and a lot of it is repetitive (there is almost nothing new to be unearthed after so many decades), but Mark Vieira has written anecdotes and observations that are fresh and lively. With a slightly wicked delight in gossipy tales of professional jealousy and schadenfreud, he has also gotten access to the clearest most beautiful pictures I've seen on the subject. His interest and knowledge of photography is outstanding. Where did he get the juicy tidbits of personal knowledge he relates about the great figures of genre filmmaking?

It is one of the most familiar faces from Hollywood: huge, boxy forehead, heavy lidded eyes, railroad-track surgical scars, and bolt through the neck. Frankenstein (or more properly, Frankenstein's monster), in a gorgeous, detailed black and white photo (which for all the fussing over its production would have been called a glamour shot if the subject were someone else) stares from the cover of _Hollywood Horror: From Gothic to Cosmic_ (Harry N. Abrams) by Mark A. Vieira. In his Acknowledgements section, Vieira thanks his dad for letting him watch horror movies "on the Early Show, the Late, Late Show, and everything between." He also thanks him for making trips so he could buy _Famous Monsters_ magazines. One cannot doubt that he has a lifelong enthusiasm for his subject, and the format of his book makes this clear. It has large, glossy pages filled with black and white images of celluloid nightmares, and most of them are by the studio photographers (some of them famous, like Ernest Bachrach) who were responsible for the stills that would sell the film to the public. Although for many the pictures will be the show, Vieira's intelligent text and cataloguing of the films is worth reading on its own.

Vieira has chronologically divided the genre into the Gothic, Psychic, Atomic, and Cosmic. Boris Karloff's career stretches over them all, starting from his Frankenstein role, for which his costume weighed all of 48 pounds. Dracula and Frankenstein made lots of money, with violence and the sexuality (both of which seem wonderfully understated in our times) before the Production Code came out drew the "grandstanding censure of women's clubs, clergymen, and politicians." The Psychic section of the book is largely given to the films of Val Lewton, who refused to go along with any previous horror formula. Cutting in mere suggestions of horror into a love story about normal people was just what budget-conscious RKO went for. The Atomic years were a reaction to the atmosphere of the Cold War, and routine horror films "began to portray science as a tool more evil than Dr. Frankenstein had ever anticipated." The first of many films to show how nuclear devices could bring forth monsters was 1953's _The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms_, with a custom-designed dinosaur awakened by an atomic test. Vieira ends with the Cosmic films, paying most attention to a movie monster that is among the most realistic ever, and which has caused more serious analysis than even Frankenstein's monster: HAL the computer from _2001_. The years tick by and we have yet to make a machine nearly as smart (or fortunately, as diabolical) as HAL.

The final portion of the book also includes films that are quite dissimilar from the monster movies covered in other pages. In a book like this, one will always think of films that ought to have been included or excluded, but Vieira is calling the shots. He has included _Psycho_, which is not really a monster film but has plenty of terror. For real scares, read about how Alfred Hitchcock treated Tippi Hedren during the shooting of the filming of the climactic sequence of _The Birds_, or how Frank Sinatra treated Mia Farrow while she was making _Rosemary's Baby_. Also here are _Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?_ and _Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte_, in which the real monsters are the actresses Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, aging grandes dames of cinema, who were at each other's throats onstage and off. There are some eccentric choices here, but Vieira's book is a fine-looking survey of a genre of films that, like so many of their monsters depicted, just does not die, and if it does, it comes back with surprising transformations.

The horror movie has evolved from its origins in German Expressionism to our current day of graphic gore.Mr.Vieira is both entertaining and informative as he guides us along this shadowy path.We are offered behind-the-scenes anecdotes of the actors,directors,writers,producers and even the composers of some of the film scores.Quite fittingly we are given a glimpse of Universal's make-up wizard Jack Pierce.His painstaking creations persist more than sixty years later(even though we are told they did not look good in color).
All of the major as well as the lesser known works are covered.They are arbitrarily grouped under the titles of"The Gothic","The Psychic","The Atomic",and "The Cosmic".These unifying headings help the author to correlate relevant social and historical events with metaphorical images(eg 1950's Aliens as Cold War invaders).The section devoted to Val Lewton was especially enjoyable.I was able to better appreciate these artfully done low budget horror movies when viewing the recently released DVD collection.
I would highly recommend this book to the enthusiast and to the casual fan.Mr.Vieira obviously has a passion for this genre and it is infectious.An added bonus is the sumptuous black and white photographs many of which are rare studio stills.This is a book I was sorry to finish but I know I will be referring to it often in the future.

"~I would largely reiterate what the other reviewers have said: this book is the single most comprehensive reference for a partial or ground-up rebuild of your Z. I would have only a couple of negative things to say about it:"~ you are told to adjust the flange angle on the Johnson Rod strut, it can leave you scratching your head...

perhaps the last chapter should include a trailer shopping guide for the shear fact it would be sickening to restore a Z this much and then abuse it again by driving it. this book is worshiped more than likely by people who like trailer queens, and the author needs a hair cut.(buttttt) i did enjoy seeing someone else doing the work for once. and i would recommend the book to others for its various useful tips.

This book gave an excellent overview of how to restore your z car and a lot of interesting bacground stuff. But was technically weak. I still found myself going to the repair manuals for many things.

I saw this book long before I bought it, and after buying it, I was very sorry I took so long to get it! It covers most every aspect of the full restoration of this beloved car. From the frame-up or a little at a time. This book has the info you need, and more. The info inside can not be purchased, borrowed, or stolen for a better price! Alone, this book is not enough, but it's a great way to get the spark ignited. (No single book could possibly have everything, I know, I have bought almost all of 'em.)

This book is great, it takes you through almost all of the steps that you need to completely restore your car, but on a lot of things it merely mentions them and doesn't really tell you a lot about what your supposed to do. What I did was I bought this book and a haynes automotive repair manual(or Chilton's) and I used that for the more technical stuff. This book has 20-30 pages of exploded views of various areas on the cars and also has a list of retailers that sell parts and/or services for the z series. If your trying to restore your car get this book.

This was a charming book. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Living in the area it is nice to read about some of the history of the area.

It gives a nice feel for the way the locals lived along the Klamath River. Also, a good view of the Indians lives. I only wish the women had gone back. I came away feeling sad that they left the area when they did.

Great book about a great place. Lots of change in a short amount of time.

From early in the 20th to the birth of the 21st Century, little changed along the banks of the Klamath in 95 years. The path these women followed remains little altered from when they traveled tho now covered in asphalt, it is still a remote and rough territory for the uninitiated. They stepped off a ship in Humboldt Bay and then walked off the map into the unknown. Surrounded by wilderness, the Marble Mountains and the Trinity Alps, as spectacular and rugged peaks today as they were then. Great Grandchildren of some of those who taught these adventerous ladies the skills to survive in this wild country still live on the same piece of ground. This is the canvas Mary and Mabel painted a wonderful picture of the world they found here. Let them show you the neighborhood and see if you could follow those footsteps down the trail.

Since the world was created at Katimin, the Klamath River has been home to the salmon runs that fed the eagles and fattened bears and filled the smokehouses of the people. The river is the life-blood that flows thru the canyon veins, like a puzzle, each piece necessary to make it complete. A blood transfusion 150 miles away only slowing foreclosure on farmland in another state, no crops must die. Now less water flows downstream and is murky colored and too warm for the salmon to survive in but the life of a potato was saved! A river with no fish is a watershed dying, when the life of the river dies will life along that river follow? These hardy women managed to live without fries, but a river without salmon would be both unbelieveable and inconceivable to them.

Mary and Mabel wandered into my part of northern california to be schoolteachers. From their story you can see how they knew nothing of what the territory was like, how the people were, or any local customs. They seemed to have a vague sense that it was a 'wild' land. They fit in amazingly well in a land where killing another person meant you had to pay that persons family $100 and law was either non-existant or uneffective. They seem to throughly enjoy themselves and set to learn the culture around them and teach what they can. Surprises are around every corner, from rattlesnakes to mountain lions to injun devils. Surprises such as their trusted friend telling them he couldn't go into one town because he had to 'pay $500 last time.'
A great story that is easy to read and gives a glimpse of the hidden corner of northern california where the hupa, yurok and karuk indians reside.

This is an amazing account, by two very adventurous women, of their time spent in an extremely remote area of this country. Even with the speed of modern automobile travel, the tiny communities along the Klamath River, in Humboldt & Siskiyou Counties of northern California, are still remote. Mary & Mabel's sense of adventure, humor, tolerance & joy radiate from this book. It's been 20 years since I lived near the Company Ranch, in Orleans, and read this story. I'm looking forward to owning my own copy and re-reading it. Another reader recommended a wonderful book of similar format. It's exact title is "Tisha: the story of a young teacher in the Alaskan wilderness". It is available through Amazon. I lent my copy several years ago; it's time to buy another copy and re-read it, too. These books are very difficult to find in bookstores. Thank you, Amazon.

I purchased this book for the photography but found the information contained within quite informative. Entomology is a hobby. One I get little time to indulge in. This book is an excellent addition to anyone's library on these beautiful insects.

This is one of the most gorgeous books I own. I look at these pictures, and I think that human beings could not dream up jewelry that touches the beauty of these creatures. It is utterly unbelievable! Every time I page through this book my jaw is open in disbelief. They are so breathtaking they almost bring tears to my eyes. Okay. Confession time. They HAVE brought tears to my eyes.

The photographs by Lisa Watson are the first thing to catch your eye about this beautifully produced book. The majority are of museum specimens, which oddly is what makes the pictures so attractive: we're used to seeing high quality pictures of wildlife, but the displays here juxtapose many different beetles and have more impact than wildlife shots would.

The pictures are beautiful but the text is high-quality too. The authors start by reciting some statistics on the number of beetle species. Linnaeus, two hundred and fifty years ago, described 654 species; and Fabricius added another 4,112 species between 1775 and 1801. By 1876 Gemminger and von Harold's catalog contained nearly 77,000 species; and when Junk and Schenkling's catalogue was completed, in 1940, it listed nearly 221,500 species. It's now estimated that there are 350,000 described beetle species. However, recent work by Terry Erwin, extrapolating from detailed studies of a small area, suggests that there are more than eight *million* species of beetle just in the tropics!

The rest of the book is a fairly detailed survey of beetles in all their aspects. The authors are enthusiasts as well as experts, and it shows in their writing, which is crisp, clear and engaging. They cover beetle anatomy, fossilized beetles, habitats and niches, the beetle life cycle, and mimicry. There is also substantial coverage of beetles and humans: naming, appearance in mythology, use as jewels (really!), a discussion of pest control, and use in education. The book has more scientific depth than is usual for a coffee table book, without sacrificing interest value.

There is a website that appears to be maintained by one of the authors (Evans) that contains some material from the book; I recommend you take a look if you are hesitating about buying this. I found it by searching for the book title using a standard search engine; when I looked it was on the Lorquin Entomological Society's website, but it may have moved.

Recommended.

The website for this book and the general topic is:
http://www.fond4beetles.com

If someone said, "Ok, you're being sent to a colony on Jupiter's second moon and you only get to bring one picture book with you," this would be it. It is a stunning book. One reviewer mentioned being moved to tears, and it really is no joke. The photos of the beetles are gorgeous and the text is really well written.

People generally fear insects, regard them as pests, or don't bother thinking about them at all. Arthur Evans gives weight to what is frequently overlooked. Taking one order, Coleoptera (beetles), he uses it as a means to discuss the big picture on Earth--balance and biodiversity. Evans manages all of this with a sense of reverence and even spirituality that complements the statistics and hard data:

"...But viewing beetles simply as machines, without understanding their role in the ecosystem, is a narrow perspective that reflects intellectual, spatial, and temporal limitations. As the world's ecosystems continue to shrink in the wake of human exploitation--a direct result of our ever-burgeoning population--our approach to all the sciences must continue to evolve from an analysis of parts to a necessarily more holistic approach. We must learn to view beetles not as machines, but as conduits of energy flowing through the entire biosphere."

I'd always been fascinated by insects, but this book really honed my interest and since I bought it, it has inspired me to learn more about them and share what I've learned. I even had the great luck of meeting a weevil expert. Beetles are simply incredible little animals and I'm really glad that Evans has written a book about them that is so accessible and lovely.

This series set in Southern California with a down home Georgia protagonist just keeps getting better. The ensemble crew, all flawed and interesting, keeps the action going and the solutions complex. Bravo.

No, not a diet book... Another Savannah Reid mystery.... Killer Calories by G. A. McKevett. This is one of the earlier ones in the series (the 3rd), and it is definitely a fun read.

A disco movie star (who happens to run a "health spa") is found dead in a mud bath. All indications point to an accidental death involving too much heat and too much alcohol. But Savannah gets an anonymous note with a load of money asking her to investigate the death. The letter seems to point to either suicide or murder. Savannah, who loves her food and her size, checks into the spa to do some undercover work. But between the horrible food and the excessive exercise, she wants to wrap it up as soon as possible.

Everyone seems to have loved the dead star, but there are an abundance of suspects who would benefit from her death. The harder Savannah pushes, the more her own life seems to be in danger. Plenty of twists, and you don't find out the killer until the very end.

A shorter novel, a quick read, and excellent humorous writing and character development. I'm really going to hate finishing up this series...

This is third in the series with Savannah Reid the overweight female ex-cop. I haven't quite figured out the sex angle. She shares a bedroom with a gorgeous young female assistant and has three close male friends, two of whom are gay and one of whom she finds physically unattractive. I came to it after "Cooked Goose" which is more of a thriller. This is more of a classical whodunnit although no real clues to the killer are planted, and after I had finished I decided the murder method made no sense. It has the British cosy set-up of a closed community (a health spa) containing the detective and the likely suspects, but I don't think Miss Marples would have told the frog joke.

G.A.McKevett does it again. Savannah is a delight! This was my favorite book in the series. This series gets better with each book . I can hardly wait for the next one to come out.

This was my favorite book of the three Savannah novels. She is a great character. I can hardly wait for the next one !

Believe those of us who know Mr. Clem and his family - this book is true, comes straight from the heart, and was written to help others going through the same battles with addiction in their families, as well as to help in the healing process. Mr. Clem spends his time (and money) selflessly helping others, and wrote this book with that intent. He does not need to show pictures of Carren at rock bottom, or to prove that it actually happened. Anyone that lives in Northwest Montana, knows first-hand what he and his family have been through. Read the book, and be thankful if your own family doesn't have to go through this. Ron Clem's only agenda is to help others with what he has learned. Read the book, you will not be sorry, and you might be all the wiser.

This is not a book I wanted to read - but my wife talked me into it. I also live, like the Clems, in Montana and have always felt this is a very safe environment. The Clems do a fabulous job of showing both sides of the drama - that of the daughter and the father. As a father, I can relate to his side of the story better and I appreciate how Ron puts his mistakes in the book as well as what he did right. I found myself thinking "that's exactly what I would do..." as I read about his reaction to first picking Carren up after she had been raped. The painfully explicit and eye-opening description of the fall-out from that reaction has caused me to have a number of difficult but necessary conversations with my own daughters, some of whom are now teenagers.

I am most appreciative of and impressed by Carren and Ron for being willing to share such a painful story - pain that must be re-felt each time they talk about the experience or in writing the book. By sharing their pain, they may have helped me avoid the mistakes they made and know how to better help one of my daughters, if ever the same circumstances find us in our "safe" Montana home. It also gives me hope that despite the unbelievable process, Ron and Carren have re-created the bonds of father and daughter. The book helped my children - boys included! - realize the amount of pain to everyone around them their own drug use would cause. I think it opened their eyes as well and cut through a lot of the "sales hype" drug users or sellers would tell them.

One can only hope. I encourage every parent and teenager to read this book - they may not like what they read, but it could well save their life and that of those around them.

Loss of Innocence is one of the best and most compelling books I have ever read. After I found out my daughter was a meth addict and later came to find out the tragic circumstances surrounding her addiction, I began searching for books about drug addiction. Loss of Innocence is by far the best I found. The books makes very effective use of offering contrasting perspectives of the father versus the daughter. Neither one knows the whole story that is unfolding. While I could relate to the father's perspective, it was most helpful to see the daughter's.
Loss of Innocence is a must-read for every parent or future parent of a teen. It points out how parents can seemingly do everything right and a child can still be victimized by a very evil world. This book provides invaluable information on detecting drug abuse. Oh how I wish I had read this book sooner than I did.
This book helped my daughter and I to heal. Loss of Innocence will most assuredly save thousands of lives and families. Parents think something like drug abuse will never happen to their children or family. Please read this book so that you will not be as ignorant as I was.

No child comes with a "How To Raise" manual; parents do the best they can with the tools THEY have from their own life's experience. I greatly admire this family. When they realized they were in trouble, a comprehensive search began to find ways to correct the problem. Carren is no different then Teens anywhere in America in this day and age, in that she chose to take her own way. For every choice there is a consequence and these parents had the courage to make new choices to save their child's life. There is pain, suffering, laughter and positive growth between the covers of Loss of Innocense; this is a must read for every citizen! We all are involved with our youth in some way and this book gives great insight into positive interaction. We CAN make a difference!

This story was so amazing, I couldn't put it down. I have never written a review before, but this book compelled me to do so. This story is too true of so many of our teens today, and so many parents don't know what to do or how to help. Ron (the father) shows incredible courage and strength in trying to bring his daughter back. He refused to give up, and for most teens that is what it takes. I have recommended this book to everyone I talk to. I loved the way the story told both points of view - Carren's and Ron's. Carren is also a strong and brave individual, her story is chilling, yet shows her incredible determination on both sides of addiction. I love that they told their story together for the rest of us to read and learn about addiction, teen troubles and parents who fight for their teens. The support network and the programs like the one Carren went to in Jamaica are real and amazing. They are committed to making a difference for our teens, one child at a time. I am glad they were mentioned in the book. I absolutely love this book!!

I bought this to read for a class, but was taken aback by how good this book was. An excellent read for anyone.

Like a lot of university educated folks, I heard in Psych 101 that once you hit your teens, your capacity to learn languages takes such a nosedive that if you haven't learned by then, you'll never be better than "Me Tarzan, you Jane" no matter how hard you try. I'm not ashamed of accepting this "language expiration date" -- there was no reason not to, and besides, it tracked with my own frustration learning foreign languages. For decades, I accepted this Psych 101 nugget without question.

When I started reading A Man Without Words, I had no idea my old Psych 101 nugget's days were numbered. I heard about the book as something a fan of Oliver Sacks would enjoy, and I associated it with Oliver Sack's book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, about neurological dysfunction, not Sacks's Hearing Voices, about the deaf. I assumed until I started reading that the "man without words" was aphasic -- had brain damage that prevented him from understanding language. Turns out, though, the book's namesake is deaf and poor and had simply, at 27, never been taught any language. No one had ever bothered. Susan Schaller then proceeded to overturn the Psych 101 sacred cow I never knew I had by describing how she taught this young man the beginnings of ASL over the course of a few weeks. Then, so I couldn't think of him as a freak or fraud, Schaller goes on to show that many deaf people receive no language training and can also be taught to sign long after the Psych 101 "language expiration date."

Schaller claims that almost every deaf teacher, and most hearing teachers, of ASL know of adults who have grown up without language. While her book is anecdotal and therefore fundamentally unscientific, she makes a passionate plea for academic study of the acquisition of language by adults, which makes her more plausible than those who would brush science aside where it does not prove their case. A Man Without Words is a powerful request, and a strong basis, for further research in this area.

A Man Without Words is also very well written. Schaller is both artful and precise in her descriptions of sign idioms and grammar, to the point that I, who know little of sign other than what I read here and in Hearing Voices, felt I understood what I needed to and enjoyed learning it. Her narrative case study is better written than many novels, and besides being fascinated by the information Schaller imparts, I also became submerged in the story.

Learning that something I believed for decades may be dead wrong gives me a feeling of loss of equilibrium (I got the feeling a lot when I first started reading about urban legends). No matter how skeptical I try to be, I always seem to be assuming something. A Man Without Words is a convincing argument for skepticism about the "language expiration date," and it raises concerns that the "expiration date" idea may make us give up up too quickly on languageless adults. It is also a fascinating read as a story, which makes the loss of equilibrium easier to take. Now I just hope that since this book was published in the nineties, someone in academia has taken the hint and done some study on linguistic development in adults. I'm off to cruise the Web to find out -- which, I'm sure, is just the kind of reaction Schaller was hoping for.

This book really opened my eyes to the world of adults without a communication system. I just took for granted the fact that everyone had a way of communicating when in fact, this book shows clearly that there are many who don't have just that. In addition, this book is a real page turner and packs a lot of interesting information in just a little over 200 pages.

Wow! A must-read for parents of deaf children, linguists, and SLP's. The author expertly describes the isolating effects life without a shared language. She tells the story of a deaf man who grew up in a poor town in Mexico. The man was never provided any education and was never taught how to communicate. At the start of the story, the man uses only gestures and miming to express himself. He lacks the concept of "language" --a system of symbols (spoken words, manual signs, or written text) that can be used to express an individual's thoughts & experiences and be understood by a whole community of people. The author recounts her struggle to figure out how to teach language and the man's struggle to learn. In addition, she clearly articulates the need for social change, the need to develop resources & programs for teaching the many languageless deaf adults who exist today. While I thoroughly enjoyed the story, I found that the numerous quotes throughout the book detract from the overall story. In this respect, the book seems somewhat like a hybrid --it is a positive & triumphant story of two people embarking upon a difficult journey with no map to guide them, AND it is an informal dissertation on the needs of an overlooked segment of the deaf population. Either way, it is a great story and is well-worth reading.

I've read many of the previous case studies of languagelessness in children. We studied Genie and the Wild Boy of Aveyron in an education class on language and it's place in education. This was my introduction to this particular group of disenfranchised, neglected, and abused people...except I thought it was all children usually discovered in late childhood (around age 13). From my neuroscience classes I remember being taught that the brain continues neuronal growth (to targeted synapses in the brain) until about age ten, then begins to cut back. This was supposedly an explanation for why language learning is so difficult later in life. So coming across this book, with its story concerning adults with no obvious psychiatric problems (just a physical difference in lacking hearing) who had managed to survive to adulthood with no language, came as a complete surprise.

This book got put aside as I had to read other books for school and work, but I picked it up again and finished it. Schaller basically is providing a qualitative study, a case study, to draw attention to this apparent problem. This method of educational research is used more and more in writing dissertations, and I actually didn't recognize what it was until I took a qualitative research class myself. The writing and book tend at first to repeat itself. I am not sure what Schaller was doing in writing this way. Perhaps the book had to be a certain length or she felt readers might not pay attention to the seriousness of this problem for Ildefonso and other adults without language. This repetition caused the first half of the book to drag a bit.

After I picked the book up again, I finished it in two days. The addition of the search for other adults with no primary language, Schaller's introduction to other adults like Ildefonso, and then her search for Ildefonso really added to the pace of the case study.

This book throws a bit of a wrench in much of the things I have been taught in both neuroscience and education. There are a few things the book illustrates better than any other book I've read on this topic. First, given the amount of adults who were deaf and had no language that Schaller found in Southern California really illustrates this has to be a major problem internationally. If we are finding such a large group in our nation which pushes education and literacy, what about in countries such as China where there are many deaf (due to overuse of gentamycin) and there are many people with no access to education. Second, again, we obviously don't know everything there is to know about the pliability of the brain. Third, I am very concerned about discrimination against this group, and the possibilities that there are many of these people in psychiatric wards or prisons or other institutions, merely because they have no way to assert their rights. This possibility would be criminal.

I'd like to see more books by Schaller on this topic, and hope to learn more about this in the future. For the most part, this is a great book, and it definitely is a great story which needed to be told.
Karen Sadler
Science Education
University of Pittsburgh

I lived in Scheelite from about 1954 to 1957 while my Dad worked at the mine. I really didn't know much about the mine or history related to it until I read the book. I enjoyed the book because: it covered the entire history of the mine, provided a good overview of all aspects of the operation, and shared some interesting events that happened. The pictures were greatly appreciated and the author's style kept me reading. Maybe I'm biased due to my personal connection so I gave it a 5.

The book's cover is wonderful and my husband loves it. He told me that it brings back many memories of his childhood, when his family lived near the mine, where his dad and elder brothers worked.

The book tells it just as he remembers his life up there. The most often retold story of his is, when the school burned down, do to a heater.

The book is well written and I myself have a better understanding, how life was many years ago. So many men worked up there in the mine.

this is a wonderful book with a rich history of the land and people of the pine creek mine. I highly recommed this book to anyone that likes to travel around Mammoth, CA

My dad, uncle, and grandfather all worked in this mine from about 1953 into the mid 1960's. We lived in Scheelite when I was very young, and then in Red Houses, and Rovana. I went to Round Valley Elementary school. It was a wonderful life..and this book brought back many wonderful happy memories, and made me wonder what happened to so many people I used to know!!!!!
It is a good read for anyone..not just those of us who lived it!!!
Theresa

I was born and raised in Bishop. My Dad worked at Union Carbide in the 1930's and my husband worked there in the early 70's. I went to High School with kids from Rovana, including the author's brother, Danny. The mine was just a part of our everyday lives. This book represents a history of this area of the High Sierras that few people are aware of and I will read it again and again!!
Vickie Keough Taylor