New York Books

The first half of the twentieth century was filled with constant change and development; it was an exciting time to be alive. "A Journey into Dorothy Parker's New York" is a focus on the woman herself, but a bigger focus on the city she lived in and its constant change through two world wars, a great depression, and so much more events. Filled with countless photos, both color and black and white, "A Journey into Dorothy Parker's New York" is a seminal look at the woman and the city, sure to please fans of her work and New Yorkers alike. "A Journey into Dorothy Parker's New York" is highly recommended for community library biography collections and students of the history and culture of New York City.

This book provides an armchair walking tour of the meaningful places for the writer Dorothy Parker in NYC. It is also an excellent accompaniment to the Portable Dorothy Parker.

You hear the words "Dorothy Parker" and you think of New York.
I really enjoyed this book and it was a pleasure reading about Dorothy's apartment's and frequented locations. I knew a bit about Dorothy, from her works and "What Fresh Hell is This", but did not know about New York - I did not know where Uptown was or where Downtown was (I think NY is the only place that has both) but now I do. Plus with all the other interesting items and photographs makes this an essential book for a Parker enthusiast to have and use on their visits to New York.

(A good book for a novice,like me, wanting a nice introduction regarding the life of Dorothy Parker---with photos)

This is a well-written and well researched book about Dorothy Parker.
This book is very compact and therefore this is a wonderful introductory book about the famous writer.

This book is filled with photos of all the places that Dorothy Parker lived throughout her life. Dorothy moved ALOT & therefore the author had to research all the places that Ms.Parker frequented & resided at during her entire lifetime. Also, the author interspersed information about Dorothy's life ,the famous places she loved to visit (eg: THE ALGONQUIN)and all the people that she associated with (eg: Hemingway, F.Scott Fitzgerald,etc...).

There are no places or points in time like New York in the 20s. Dorothy Parker wrote about it, and now we write about her. I wish I could slip into a time machine and drink a martini while spying on the Round Table. Amazing. I would love to take the tour.

Visser, as I stated before has done a great job in explaining the works of Ken Wilber. Yet Wilber denounces this book because of Visser's affinity for Theosophy. Wilber is not a theosophist or a Alice Bailey follower even though his first two books were published by the Theosophical Society. Interestingly, Wilber wrote the forward to this book. Wilber, and rightfully so does not want to be catagorized as a Theosophist. He has worked many years to bring legitimacy and validity to transpersonal studies through hardcore analysis and synthesis of the sciences, the humanities, and philosophies. Some think he is overly sensitive to being labeled a new ager or even a theosophist, but given the trashing he has received concerning many of his books, it is probably founded. Anyway, please read this book, but know that the Theosophical connection in the last chapter is solely Visser's.

I bought this book b/c I was interested in knowing more about Ken Wilber and his theory. I came away with both so I would consider the book a success. I did find it ironic that Wilber purports to read 3 books a day but did not read this book while providing the foreward to it. I almost felt that he didn't want to endorse the book, not b/c he didn't read it but b/c then he would give others fresh ammo to attack his theory. Nonetheless, I felt the author was complete and performed a remarkable feat in compiling and organizing Wilber's material and theory. Recommended if you are interested in a theory that expands on psychological theories to include the spiritual realm.

March 04, 2004

If you want a well researched, thorough overview of the work of Ken Wilber, then Frank Visser's Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion is a great choice. It covers a broad scope and is a relatively easy read. That's the short version.

The long version must take into account Wilber's five periods or models to date. Visser's book nicely introduces the first four periods in a general way, and sets the stage for further study of the oeuvre. Wilber-5, so-called, has emerged in the last few years and will be published for the first time in the upcoming Kosmos, Vol. 2 (whose working title is Kosmic Karma and Creativity). One of the novel aspects of Wilber-5 is what he calls a post-metaphysical approach (among other things), which relies on empiricism in the three great domains of body, mind, and spirit. So the jury is still out on the niggly details of Wilber-5, and how its critic's will respond. But one thing is certain, once published it may be easy to misconstrue criticism of this Visser opus because it's NOT Wilber-5 and appropriately focuses on the influence of the perennial traditions in Wilber-1 through Wilber-4. But to Frank's credit, he mentions Wilber-5 several times and acknowledges that Wilber's views continue to develop.

Having said that, if you really want to get inside Wilber's head, or at the very least, into his heart, then it's appropriate to study his work beginning with Wilber-1. Why? First, Wilber is a developmental, evolutionary, transcendentalist thinker and doer. It's apt to see how his theory developed as it was informed by his own bodily, mental, and spiritual growth. Second, even though Wilber no longer recommends his first two books, The Spectrum of Consciousness (1977) and No Boundary (1979), they're required reading because we can trace the "integral impulse" at work from the very beginning along with what are now acknowledged flaws (the so-called pre/trans fallacy in particular). That integral impulse included nascent awareness that the three great domains of body, mind, and spiritual science must be included in any integral approach. Put another way, it reflected Ken's precocious understanding that transcendental experience is not solely pathological, and properly developed could greatly inform human development. He also refined transpersonal psychological theory to include the full spectrum of consciousness, from body to mind to soul to nondual spirit, along with identifying appropriate pathology and therapies.

Thus, Visser's book handles Wilber-1 through Wilber-4 with the skillful means of one who is far more than a journeyman with the material. In fact, Frank includes a great deal of biographical material that provides a human face and heart, background in the transpersonal field in general to situate Wilber's oeuvre, major critics, a summary of their differences, as well as his own critiques. He also includes a thorough bibliography of Wilber's work that alone is worth the price of the book! In the closing chapter Visser offers further insights and suggestions that may help refine the inchoate Wilber-5 model based upon his theosophical background.

In summary, if you're seriously interested in learning about Wilber's work, this is a great place to start. Ken personally recommends A Theory of Everything (2000) because it's concise, and A Brief History of Everything (1996). Together, they give a full accounting the major insights of Wilber-1 to Wilber-4, now called AQAL: all quadrants, levels, lines, states, types (and the kitchen sink. It is a thorough model :-).

All in all, let's give Frank Visser a hearty congratulations for a job well done!

I have read most of Ken Wilber's work and have been studying his thought for years. The breadth of his work is incredible and difficult for the average person to wrap their arms around. It is also very difficult to know where to start or to position any particular work in the evolution of his thought. This book is an excellent roadmap in this respect.

In a nutshell, this work provides an introduction to Ken Wilber's most important ideas and the man behind them. Ken is a popular figure, but he doesn't attend many conferences, appear in public, do a lot of interviews, etc. This makes it difficult to understand him as a person and contextualize his work with his own personal evolution. This book will give you a good feel for Ken Wilber the person, the major milestones in his life and how they correlate to the evolution of his ideas.

While this is an excellent book and fills in some important gaps, it is not a comprehensive introduction to Ken Wilber's body of work. This would be impossible in a book of this size. However, if you purchased Kosmic Consciousness or A Brief History of Everything to go along with it, you would be in excellent shape to move forward and make good decisions about what to read next. You would also be very well prepared to speak intelligently about Wilber's thought and the development of his Integral Model.

Another product that could be very useful as an accompaniment to reading more of Wilber's books would be Embracing Reality, which is sort of a Cliff's notes of Ken's major works. If you got all three of the resources I mentioned on this page and Integral Spirituality: A Startling New Role for Religion in the Modern and Postmodern World, you would have a good end-to-end sense of Wilber up to his most current thought.

I personally think Ken Wilber is a very major figure and will go down in history as an extremely important thinker. Among other things, he has a 20 year track record of writing and 30 books which have been in print continuously since he wrote them -- a rare achievement for a largely academic writer. In addition, Random House is compiling the collected works of Ken Wilber who is a living author! It is very unusual for a major publishing house to undertake such a large project while a prolific writer is still living. I think this speaks for itself in terms of the quality and enduring impact of his thought on this period in history. In short, I think what we are seeing now is only the tip of the iceberg. In my opinion, Ken's work has the potential to transform how we do business, medicine, education, ecology and every other major human endeavor.

While I don't think Ken Wilber is flawless and above being human, he is an intellectual giant with a lot to offer modern society in a search for meaning and a model to apply to solve contemporary problems. I am glad to see that he is getting more and more traction in the marketplace.

On a critical note, I think that Wilber himself has evolved into a major figure and I would love to see more editing and organization in his books going forward. In much of his work, there is a lot of repitition, overlap and unnecessary meandering. This certainly does not reflect upon the quality of his thought, but Visser's book certainly helps someone new cut to the chase and get a handle on the best way to navigate the voluminous Ken Wilber body of work.

I've tried to read K.Wilber in the past, i've never got more than through the first few chapters. I realize i ought to come to grips with his ideas and this book is an excellent place to start. For not only does it carefully look at the thought but is stimulating enough to get me (i hope) through some of the hard spots in K.Wilber's writings, in the near future. That makes it an outstanding book, not just informative but inspirational, nice job.

The book is basically a chronological look at the evolution of K.Wilber's transpersonal philosophy/psychology. It is not strictly intellectual but rather does a rather nice job of presenting K.Wilber as a man, as a mediator, and in the tear provoking chapter on his wife Treya, as a care giver for a terminally ill spouse. All in all much more satisfying a look then a strictly intellectual examination of a philosophic system. The major point of the book is that K.Wilber is interested in synthesising the Western scientific viewpoint on human development with the Eastern, primarily Tibetan Buddhist, in order to reach a syncretism of what human beings know about themselves. The book presents his thought as a dialogue with pieces of each world, what K.Wilber was interested in understanding, in the overall context of the development of his systematic philosophy/psychology. The structure is both accessible and interesting, rarely did i find interest flagging, more often i had to set the book down for a minute to think about what i had just read and try to make connections. This book, like the philosophy it outlines is not easy, nor simple, nor without dozens of references and rabbit paths to wander down, it is well documented, both in the text and in excellent endnotes, and as expected a substantial index that i for one used many times.

As for a chapter to read to get an idea of the book, i don't think this is a book you can pickup in the middle and profitably read, i'd stick to either of the first two chapters, introduction and who is ken wilber, although the chapter 5, Love death and rebirth, about his wife is worth a try to read by itself, if only for the window into his soul it presents. Generally, it is a read from the beginning, take notes, run to the computer to google a word or phrase, run to amazon to look at customer reviews of books cited, hightlighting on every page, some pages more than 1/2 coated, etc type of book. It took me about 3 times as long to read as a "normal" book of it's length, mostly because of the constant dialogue with the author i was mentally involved in while reading, not an argument as much as a constant series of questions and desire for more background and explanation.

Well, "who is Ken Wilber?" and "why should anyone care to read him?"
He has for 25 years set himself to a daunting task that only few authors have ever attempted, a comprehensive analysis of what human beings know about themselves and how all these systems can be unified (integrated) into a system that allows them to genuinely talk and interact with each other, rather than catfighting forever. To that endeavor he has read several books per day for decades on end, produced a flow of readable words that fill 11 volumes of his collected works, mediated several hours per day until he had a spiritual vision of non-duality that remains a constant companion. A lifetime apparently well spent in pursuit of his goals.

He has ideas and pictures that are valuable to anyone thinking about these issues. How do people grow and develop? How do cultures grow, is there a similarity between the two? What are we made of? What can i do to develop (although this is not a major goal of the book) further? How do different systems interact, like Western psychology and Eastern mysticism? Can this knowledge be unified so that we can remember it, deal with things that are similar in the same ways while avoiding putting different things into the same unappropriate boxes?

It is questions like this that make a comprehensive system like K.Wilber's worth studying, even if you disagree with several or even all of the basic assumptions and goals. Thinkgs like: the 3 eyes: physical, mental, spiritual; the great chain of being; development from prepersonal, personal to transpersonal, interiority vs exteriority on the same graph as individual vs collective; etc. are all useful conceptions and maps that i can use, certainly a gift from a dynamic and fruitful mind.

So i think this a very good introduction to K.Wilber and i am interested in getting into a few of his books now. with this background i hope it will be a little easier and less confusing then in the past. thanks to the author for a very good book.

This must be one of the visually most pleasing books in my posession. Lovely photos and a great backcast to the history of the Catskills Fly Fishing.

This is a wonderful book and the photos are fantastic.

If you fish the catskills, this book is a must. I have never seen such a great mixture of photographs and text in a fly fishing book. The books takes you through all the rivers, then presents the region's historic people, their fly tying, and their rods and reels.

This is by far the most interesting book I have ever read about fishing in the Catskills. Fly Fishing in America pretty much started there and this book explains in great detail everything there is to know about the History of Fly Fishing. Beautiful pictures on every page only add to the value of this book. Coming from someone who never takes the time to read through a 240 page book, I could not put in down. This happened during fishing season.

As I opened the package that contained my copy of Land of Little Rivers I expected a great book. I had read Mac FrancisÕs earlier book, Catskill Rivers, twice. Within minutes I realized the word "great" was wholly insufficient to describe this exquisite volume. At first I was caught by the, near mystical beauty of Enrico FerorelliÕs photographs--by themselves, more than worth the price of the book! But it is Mac FrancisÕs words that captured my heart and imagination completely. They carried me along, hour after hour, through this absorbing, beautifully told story of the birthplace of American fly fishing.

The author ends his introduction, trying to define the almost supernatural power inherent in the Catskill fly-fishing tradition, with these words: "I believe it is this power -- call it passion, dedication, commitment, vision, love, or what you will -- that has inspired the myriad fly fishers who in small ways and large have created, fought for, and extended a great sporting tradition in a hallowed land, and I respect the honor of presenting them, their feats, and their little rivers in these pages."

With this book, Mac Francis does more than simply honor a great tradition; he and Land of Little Rivers become a part of it.

I have to say -- I got this book in the mail yesterday, and stayed up hours past when I really needed to go to bed in order to read it. I couldn't put it down. Amanda Stern's style is clean and crips, she isn't overly wordy, has a great vocab, and speaks of a time and era I know so well... being in your 20's in the 90's. She had he highs, but they really aren't covered in this incredible, but short, piece of work. I can't wait until the next book!

For the record, this isn't really my genre of book. I'm more into the horror book featuring zombies or some historical work from world war ii... but Stern's work was INCREDIBLE.

I heard Stern read at my college in Nashville. She was stellar, a total rock star. Witty, energetic, enthusiastic and utterly charming, but I hadn't read her book yet. I have since read it and can only say, more! Please! She speaks to my generation (college aged, struggling) with a vibrance and freshness that is ferocious in its orginality of language and brutal in its honesty. She's something else. A must read. A must see her read. This girl has me totally whipped.

What amazes me about this book is that it's gotten so little attention. In a way, I'm pleased, I'd like to keep Amanda Stern a secret for a while. Unlike the privileged and over hyped women writers in Ms. Stern's generation (you know who i'm referring to) Ms. Stern is the real thing. She has clearly written this novel from her heart. It is brave and courageous and she has guts. I too see the comparisons to Denis Johnson (this is the one article I've found on Stern floating around out there) but she is very much her own stylist and manages to imbue her novel with such substance and free-spirited language that she arguably stands in a class by herself. No comparisons necessary. She is a writer to watch and savor. Let's hope she has a lot more of this in her.

It was impossible to put this book down. I was compelled to learn more about these two tragic souls and their destiny. Life, love, tragedy and co-dependency come in so many forms and Ms. Stern has revealed them so cleverly. It was a pleasure to read something so expressively written, yet succinctly stated. It leaves you feeling so many emotions and sensations. Bravo Ms. Amanda Stern, I can't wait to read your next offering.

Amanda Stern isn't pretty and that's exactly why I love this book. She doesn't cover her narrator's co-dependency, depression, anger, rage (all the fantastic range of emotions) with cheapened exposition, precious images and sing-song prose. Rather, her prose is sharp, short and powerful and the dialogue or sometimes the lack thereof between the unnamed narrator and the "Alcoholic" really tells it all. Engaging, I sometimes winced over several scenes (the heroin needle in the stomach, the attempted rape scene in another story), however, this is the true gift of the writer...the ability to shake me and propel me forward, wanting me to read more. Far from a precious book, this novel sustains, engages and sucks the reader in. Brava! And I cannot wait for the next novel.

On a side note, why is this fantastic book paired with the horrible James Frey novel?

I enjoyed this book very much and only wish it were bigger in size to display the pictures better and that more could have been included. Of course spanning 75 years and so many balloons and events with each parade is a daunting task. I gladly would have paid more money to have more pictures and info especially I would have liked to know more about the marching bands and talents represented over the years. This book does a good enough job to give the highlights though through the years.

I love this book....BUT it has a big lacking...there's no complete listing of which balloons were in each year's parade. I chatted with the author awhile back and he said such a list was forthcoming....but then we lost touch and I don't think it ever appeared. Does anyone have such a list so that I can insert it into the book....and then it will be a 5 STAR book! Thanks!

When I ordered this book, I thought it was another one, which I'd seen in a Barnes and Noble bookstore some years ago. That one had pictures of a number of the "hosts" of the parade-like Jackie Gleason, etc. It was closer to a coffee table size. However, I was surprised when this one arrived. This has many more pictures than that book, and mainly of the balloons(which is really the best part). Plus it documents the history of the parade and its high points. This is, by far, the best thing I've ever found on the parade, in any form of media, whatsoever. I'll keep my eyes open for the other book, but this is the ONE to definitely get.

This book is a WOW! The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is the Miracle on 34th St and this book is a miracle too. That for the first time the glorious history of the Parade is presented in a fantastic mix of photos, ads, and a very enjoyable and readable text. The authors present their history in a conversational manner that encourages you to read the book from front to back and all over again! The images in black and white and color bring the parade to all, and year round too! Great for anyone planning on seeing the parade in person, or whom have seen it in person or watched on TV. A keepsake and collectible that does the Parade proud!

Being a Macy's Parade fan forever it is always sad when it is over for another year. Now with this book you can enjoy the Macy's Parade throughout the entire year. The book is chock full of glorious vintage ads and totally awesome pictures. The NY Daily News images are stunning and all of the images seem to leap off the pages. The writing is done in a conversational manner that draws you in and the parade is presented decade by decade and year to year with many interesting facts along the way! Then after the feast of glorious pages of text and black and white images the book ends in a splash of color and what color it is, eye candy indeed!

A very enjoyable book. Just the high quality reproduction of the covers would make this a great book.
A richly savory festival of imagination, creativity, insight (cultural, sociological, philosophical, etc.) and, of course, delightful humor and splendiferous transcendental artwork. Lots of charming tidbits including photos, extra art reproductions, etc.
Thanks Frank and The Usual Gang for this inundation of funshine and good cheer!

(After you've seen the covers you'd probably like to peek inside). Check out: Absolutely MAD Magazine - 50+ Years

If there are better sight gags than those on the cover of Mad magazine, then I have yet to see them. This book is a collection of the first 400 covers and some of them had me hysterical with laughter. My favorite was the one where Alfred is holding a hard taco shell behind a Mexican dog that is straining mightily. Others were just as funny, although some did require explanation. The producers of the magazine were not above applying a little duplicity when creating the covers.
The only drawback for younger readers will be that knowledge of the current events of the time is a precondition if you are to get the joke. For example, some covers feature political figures, and if you don't know anything about them, the joke is lost. Other covers are spoofs of hit movies of the time, so the explanatory captions are a welcome addition. Having lived through those times, I understood most of them, but there were a few times when I didn't understand the joke until I read the caption.
This book is very funny and you cannot help but be impressed by the quality of the artwork and the zany intelligence that went into the covers of Mad. The producers of Mad constantly lampooned themselves as idiots, but they were without question geniuses.

this book is well designd and gives all the information about the covers over the years, including notes about the spacial covers.
i highly recomand this book to any mad reader.

I loved this book , mostly because Im a mad magazine FAN!!! BUY THIS BOOK!!!!!!!! GREAT BOOK

The first copy of Mad I saw was issue 29 in September 1956 (still got it too) and I was hooked. How could a magazine be so funny and be so spot-on with its satire? Easy, just employ the `usual gang of idiots' that's how. I kind of grew out of it when I discovered the National Lampoon, how could a magazine be so funny etc, etc. But I have always had a soft spot for Mad and this book of covers is a super addition to my back issues and other Mad books.

All 399 (up to November 2000) covers are in this well designed and printed book Mostly one or two covers to a page sometimes with Frank Jacobs' commentary and with a lot of the latter covers you get to see the preliminary cover roughs. As the years go by you can see how the covers changed from simple visual gags into ones that are much more graphic and busy because they have to work harder on the newsstand. The ideas are still very funny after all these years though. My favorite is issue 35 (October 1957) a wraparound that celebrated the fifth anniversary with a great painting from Norman Mingo showing a few dozen very famous American merchandising characters seated round a dining table, Alfred's at one end grinning. I would love this as a poster.

I think it is worth mentioning for Mad fans the seven CD-ROM `Totally Mad' set, every page from the issue one thru to December 1998, the interface is very user friendly and the discs have a lot of additional aural and visual surprises.

BTW, Robert Silver's photmosaic book cover, made up from the magazines covers, is stunning.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

Beign the son of an Ironworker I really found this book entertaining and educational. I learned a lot about the east coast gangs and read a lot of similarity with the mid-west union. Anyone interested in knowing more about the men building cities in the sky will want to add this to their reading list.

This book brings the reader into the world of an aspiring family, the Koch family. It begins with a beautiful story of an immigrant family trying to fulfill the American dream by creating a great empire of steel. But with their greatest task of all you witness the family's division and the fall of a great enterprise. This book is allows you to see what went on behind the scenes of the World Trade Center, the problems it had and the problems it caused. I recommend this book to anyone who wants a better understanding of how much one building meant to one man, Karl Koch III. Not because of it's beauty but because of how it changed him forever.

Very easy to read, You are easily caught up in a family's struggle to survive a new life in a new world. It is easy to admire their spirit and determination to make it as they build their company from the ground up.
They consistently remain true to the values of hard work and honesty while truly living the American Dream. It makes the World Trade Center even more of an american symbol.
The facts regarding how they built the trade center and how they even received the job are fascinating in of themselves. The author's personal family struggle only make it more amazing that it ever happened at all.

As a contractor/developer in the Baltimore area who shares the same last name and German heritage, but is no relation, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and could not put it down. It was as much an education of the New York contracting industry as it was a history of one family's trials and tribulations.
I enjoyed this book so much that I bought 15 copies and gave them to family and friends as Christmas presents. Each review from the recipients mirrored my enjoyment. I would highly recommend this book to anyone even if they have no conception of the contracting industry.

Subtitles that promise more than the book delivers are far more common than they ought to be. This book is a refreshing exception to that pattern. It's subtitled "the story of the family that built the World Trade Center," and that's *exactly* what you get. _Men of Steel_ is the story of the rise and fall of a family construction company and the stormy relationships among the men who built it. Koch treats both sides of the story--family and business--honestly and in detail, and the results are gripping. It hits many of the same notes as John Steinbeck's _East of Eden_, Arthur Miller's _Death of a Salesman_, or Ken Kesey's _Sometimes a Great Notion_... but in _Men of Steel_ you know that the narrator's pain (both physical and emotional) is real.

You learn a lot about ironworking in this book: About how the steel frames of buildings are put together, and about how the tools and techniques have changed over time. You also learn a lot about construction management: Estimating costs, writing bids, dealing with suppliers and unions, and keeping things running smoothly on the building site. Koch writes from the manager's perspective more than the workers, but there are other books (say, Mike Cherry's _On High Steel_) to give you that. Even dedicated civil engineering buffs are likely to learn a lot from Koch and Firstman's sure-footed narrative. The chapter (or so) on "kangaroo cranes" alone is worth the price of the book.

Koch and Firstman also give a unique view of *one* aspect of the World Trade Center project: How the framing and flooring was erected and what the process did for (and to) the company. They reveal things about that aspect of the process that no other book does--much of it critically important. This is exactly the right approach to take: ironwork is Koch's (and his family's) business, it's what he knows, and it's what the rest of the book is about. It means, however, that _Men of Steel_ is *not* a book about "the building of the World Trade Center." Rather, it's a book in which the ironwork that went into the World Trade Center is one of several key threads.

The epilogue, dealing with the 9/11 attacks and the collapse of the Twin Towers deserves special notice. It is short, concise, and unflinchingly honest: a model of how we *ought* to learn from the unexpected failures of less-than-perfect structures. If I could figure out how to do it, I'd make those 15 pages required reading for the engineers-in-training that I teach. They could have far, far worse role models than Karl Koch III.

How much you like this book will depend a great deal on what you want to get out of it. If you want THE book on the building of the World Trade Center, you may well be disapprounted. If you want a great family saga, a great business story, or a gripping insider's history of ironworking in America (including the WTC), you may well have a hard time putting _Men of Steel_ down.

A noir mystery with political intrigue. Comparing anyone to Chandler or Hammett is expecting an awful lot, but Mazel does have that potential. There's a real presence to the setting -- Manhattan becomes one of the characters, and the protagonist, Alex Rada, is infused with a dry wit that makes you smile to yourself. A wonderful achievement and a great book. Highly recommended

Fans of the hardboiled genre, there is a new private investigator in New York City, Alex Rada, a former NY police officer. Katharine Raines, a college professor and political consultant to Delaney Lynch, candidate for the U.S. Senate in New York, hires Rada to investigate the disappearance of grad student, Susan Blake. Upon discovering that she has been murdered in her apartment, Rada is determined to find out who committed the brutal murder. There are a number of twists and turns in this plot. And the ending will surprise the reader. Mazel writes action scenes that keep readers sitting on the edge of their chairs in suspense. The scene of Rada chasing a suspect through the streets of New York was riveting. The prologue introduces the reader to Alex and sets the stage effectively for the story. I particularly like titles for every chapter. I am looking forward to Alex Rada's next investigation and to finding out more about Alex.

Engrossing intriguing novel with interesting characters, dialogue and intricately woven plot. Alex Rada is someone I'd like to know: a little flawed, tough and good. I look forward to another read from this author.

This is a great mystery with a terrific lead character. The story kept me guessing, and the minor characters are very well drawn. The political part of the book seemed so real, I thought the author must have been in politics. A really terrific read, and it makes you think of the moral ambiguities in our own lives.

Henry F. Mazel has accomplished something his first time at bat few mystery writers manage even after a lifetime of writing -- he's brought a fresh voice to the mystery field. . . One of the best things about this book is that it has been written by someone who's obviously "been around." There is a certain cynicism and worldliness to Mazel's words that is lacking in the majority of mystery novels published today. Read Mazel's description of a political rally, and how a candidate needs to wait for the right moment to make her appearance:

"About forty-five minutes -- that's what it took to let the excitement really build, to allow the gathered throng to generate a feeding frenzy. Less time and they wouldn't peak, any more time and there would have been that bead of anxiety that leads to restlessness and the first signs of resentment. And you couldn't have that."

. . .This book is both different and fun. Recommended for all types of mystery fans -- and especially for those favoring hardboiled/noir fiction.

Murphy Dog Bedtime Story is just plain fun for children to read! The original art work enhances the text and helps children remember or figure out the words. The rhyme is fun and easy. Children will want to read it over and over!

Not only is this book a great story to read out loud to your child at bedtime, but it is highly educational. The rhythm of the story is perfect and at the end of the book is a dictionary to help younger readers learn their words. Read this book with your children and eventually they will be reading it TO you! And Murphy Dog totally makes you laugh remembering your own favorite dog. It's a very sweet book!

My son loves to read this book, and feels great because he can read it by himself. The story is good, and the pictures are wonderful. We look forward to many more Murphy Dog stories.

I love this book! I am a dog lover and think this is so unique! This book is written from Murphy Dog's point of view. The message for all of us is great. Murphy likes who is and he likes his place in life. He gets great satisfaction from just "being" with his family, and takes his role within the family very seriously.
The illustrations are wonderful--very warm and loving. The text is easy and my daughter loves to say some of the phrases as we read together.
The dictionary and definitions at the end of the book are so well written. Words are defined in easy to understand ways. This author clearly understands how children think.
My daughter and I give this book two thumbs up!

Murphy Dog is not just another fluffy book about dogs or animals. The story is an engaging tale of a real dog doing real dog things. As a special education teacher for first graders, I feel that this book is powerful because the text is rich, yet very easy to relate to. The illustrations transform this great book into an absolutely fabulous book. They enable children to feel Murphy Dog deep in their spirits. This book will give you immense satisfaction at the end of a long day. It is sure to be a book that will make your child plead for you to read "one more time." I personally can't wait for the next Murphy Dog book to be available.

My Fine Feathered Friend
By William Grimes
North Point Press 2002
$15 USA, $24.95 Canada
85 pages, illustrations
ISBN: 0-86547-632-2

Reviewed by Karen Davis, PhD, President of United Poultry Concerns

"I looked at the Chicken endlessly, and I wondered. What lay behind the veil of animal secrecy?"

My Fine Feathered Friend is a bittersweet tale that leaves you aching after you put the book away. In part this is because the main character, a large handsome black hen who appears mysteriously one winter day in the writer's yard in Queens, disappears as mysteriously as she arrived. This is a true story. The author, William Grimes, a restaurant critic for The New York Times, is intrigued, fascinated, and finally haunted, by this hen. He perceives her as a kind of Earth Goddess, as solid as a tree trunk, rugged, compact, able and enduring, yet elusive, vulnerable, and, ultimately, as ephemeral as a fairy princess. She vanishes when he comes to love her. He calls the hen, simply and archetypally, the Chicken.

When I first started reading My Feathered Friend, I was put off by the tone. Grimes refers to the hen for a number of pages as "it," while referring to his and his wife's cats as "hes" and "shes." His style is pat with similes and cultivated assurance. I thought, okay, Grimes wants to make sure that no one, including himself, gets emotionally involved with this chicken. He's keeping the lines drawn. But I was wrong. The story reflects his growing tenderness for the Chicken, moving through levity and wonderment to love, sorrow and loss.

The Chicken has an aura of the "familiar" in folklore, an enigmatic being regarded as both a homely acquaintance and a supernatural spirit embodied in an animal that links that animal to a particular person while retaining an inviolable otherness. Grimes's Chicken is like a visitor from another planet (exotic and ineffable) who probably escaped from the local poultry market in Queens (squalid and local). She is a hero and a survivor -- "a brave little refugee"-- who flouts false stereotypes about chickens. "I'd look out back and see a cat chasing the Chicken across the yard," Grimes writes. "Ten minutes later I'd see the Chicken chasing a cat." She is at once endearingly personal and profoundly impersonal. She has her own projects. She is self-possessed. She projects an arch authority, like the author himself. She dominates Grimes's yard, his cats, and his consciousness. She is, he confesses protectively, "a hard read."

The Chicken tracks through the universe by way of a residential patch of earth -- a "pocket paradise" reclaimed from a "wasteland of weeds" in New York City. She captures the eye of a beholder who becomes a Witness driven to Inscribe Her Being. Grimes attempts to fit what he "knows" about chickens (he eats them and makes his living writing about them as food; otherwise he says "the humble chicken was foreign to me") with his deepening perception of, identification with, and ultimate yearning and mourning over this particular hen. She moves him. He is affected by her "air of mystery," her "appetite for play," her "brilliant evasive maneuvers," her "genuine courage," her "character," her "willful high-spirit," her evocation of what the poet William Wordsworth inestimably versed as "something ever more about to be."

Grimes reads up on chickens, passing on to us pieces of information (some accurate, some not) about Gallus domesticus in folklore, history, and poultry manuals, as a backdrop to, an explanation of, the Chicken, a creature so definite, and infinite, so solid and numinous, she eludes classification. He muses:

"Was it pure coincidence that she liked to sneak up on Yowzer, the cat most likely to develop a nervous twitch when caught unawares? Time after time I saw the Chicken trot up delicately when Yowzer had his back turned, squawk a couple of times, and then watch as the cat leaped a couple of vertical feet. The Chicken, after a successful ambush, would run off jauntily, with a cackle that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle."

At other times, "I'd see Bruiser and Crusher snoozing in the basket, Yowzer draped along a nearby wooden bench, and the dark, shapeless form of Midnight filling out the sagging seat of an old sea grass chair we had bought for a couple of dollars at a yard sale. And in the midst of the group, perfectly content, sat the Chicken. It was a heartwarming sight."

One night a police helicopter hovers over the yard, causing the pine tree in which the Chicken is roosting to sway violently under a wind of hurricane force. "Somewhere, deep in the branches," Grimes writes, "the Chicken was holding on for dear life. I couldn't begin to imagine what was going through her tiny mind. By now, I figured, she had either suffered a fatal heart attack or had been dashed to the ground. But no. The next morning, amid wreckage out of Apocalypse Now, the Chicken reappeared, brimful of vim and vigor."

But one spring day, the Chicken is gone. She does not return. Grimes and his wife Nancy look everywhere. They wrack their brains trying to remember if there were any behavioral signs they failed to notice. "The previous afternoon I had watched her resting comfortably in her nest beneath the pine tree," Grimes writes. "I searched for signs of violence but did not find any. The only trace of the Chicken was a single black feather near the back door. The Chicken was definitely, profoundly missing."

It is hard reading the final pages of this book. The depression Grimes describes is not roguish but real, though he tries to make light. "We had grown to love the Chicken," he says. We believe him: so had we. "She really was a big presence in the backyard," Nancy sighs. You go back to the book cover and study the jet black sweet bird face with its rosy comb and pert expression, framed in an oval mirror. If you know chickens, you know the look of that bright round eye, so attentive yet pensive.

My Feathered Friend is like an exquisite blade sliced across your bowels in the midst of a light-hearted romp that won't heal. The book ends with unappeased longing and unsettled questions (unhappy questions on many levels), not "closure," nor should it. Though Grimes says the story is "at an end, at least for us," still, he wonders and hopes, maybe the Chicken will come back. Maybe she's on a journey. He bought things for her. He and Nancy wait for her. They keep a light in the window. Maybe he'll wake up one morning, look out the window, and see "a large feathered form bustling around the patio, scattering cat food and clucking."

But for now, as Alice Walker said about a horse named Blue, in her excruciating essay, "Am I Blue,"* let us not let the animals whom we piercingly perceive become for us merely "images" of what they once so beautifully expressed and are. The Chicken is every chicken. One like no other. Take the next step.


*In Living By the Word: Selected Writings 1973-1987. This book of Walker's essays also includes "Why Did the Balinese Chicken Cross the Road?" ("[T]o try to get both of us to the other side.")
_________________________________________________________________
Karen Davis, PhD, is the founder and President of United Poultry Concerns, a nonprofit organization that promotes the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl (www.upc-online.org). She is the author of Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs: An Inside Look at the Modern Poultry Industry; A Home for Henny; Instead of Chicken, Instead of Turkey: A Poultryless "Poultry" Potpourri"; More Than a Meal: The Turkey in History, Myth, Ritual, and Reality (Lantern Books, 2001); and The Holocaust and the Henmaid's Tale: A Case for Comparing Atrocities (Lantern Books, 2005).

I ran across this book at the library looking for substantive books on chickens--the cute cover caught my eye. This is a very entertaining and enjoyable read!

I'd recommend this book as one you'll finish quickly, share with a friend or two, and want to read again yourself one day.

This is an absolutely adorable story about a man who comes to know and love a chicken who suddenly appeared in his backyard. I first read the authors article about the enigmatic and willful chicken in the New York Times and I actually saved that article because I enjoyed it so thoroughly. My Fine Feathered Friend is just as charming as that article was and better since the author is able to elaborate more on the chicken's fantastic personality and the personalities of the numerous cats that interact with the tenacious bird. The author really knows how to describe animals and the cats encounters with the chicken are truly vivid and terribly amusing. You will not forget this chicken. Its personality lingers long after the final page. The book is a joy and I highly recommend it. Thank you, Mr. Grimes, for sharing such a delightful story!

A poignantly told memoir of a season spent in the company of a somewhat bohemian chicken. I gave a copy of this book to my vet after we tried for several months to save the life of one of my pet chickens. She hadn't much experience with chickens, more so with the fanicier hookbills often found in one's the parlor, so I wanted her to know what it was like to know a chicken on a more personal level. The author accomplishes this very well, sharing valuable chicken lore with his affectionate and often respectful look at the life of a chicken and life from The Chicken's point of view.

This extremely short book really qualifies as more essay than "book," and as much as I enjoyed it, I wondered who would shell out hard-earned cash for its slim contents.

Then I found myself handing it around to people as I would share a cartoon or funny email. "Zip through it over lunch," I said, "Take it instead of a magazine while you're waiting for your oil change or dentist appointment."

And so I learned what this book is best for: for a few bucks, you can pass a smile around to your friends. The eye-catching cover is hard for anyone to resist, and the illustrations are great. If you know someone who's been adopted by a stray animal, this is perfect for them. But if not, pass it on anyway. It's a light, funny read that will make anyone smile.

In Grime's hands this unusual bird manages a truly universal appeal. I loved the pleasure it seemed to take in sneaking up behind a skittish cat and sending the cat vertically airborne with a sudden cackle. Then there's the pet store employee who tries to explain that they don't carry chicken feed, because a chicken is not a "particular animal." Grimes has an eye and ear for gem moments like these.