New York Books

WHERE TO WEAR is NOT just for tourists. I've lived in NYC for over 15 years and this is the book I've been searching for. It has every address, phone number and store hour that I could possibly need. It now sits right next to my NYC phone book and Zagat's guide beside my phone! This is a MUST for tourists and New York natives alike!

Without a doubt, the best written, best researched, most informative book of its kind. It includes all the basic information; but contains tons of witty and useful tips. Also terrific breakdowns of where to find what by category and neighborhood. Clearly, Ms. Melhado and Ms. Clason spend too much time shopping...but for our benefit. The best stocking stuffer I found this Christmas. Last-minute updates and website information are very useful. Look forward to each yearly edition!

My girlfriend and I used her copy to shop the after Christmas sales in Manhattan, and this handy little guide was THE BEST! We're just tourists from a few hours south, but I imagine that foreign visitors with even minimal knowledge of English would find "Where to Wear" helpful. Stores are conveniently grouped by district and type/category. We plotted our course through as many designer stores as we could fit into 2 shopping days and thanks to the accuracy in the descriptions, know we saved precious shopping time and shoe leather. I even found a great hair salon for my next trip!

The "Where to Wear" guide is like having your own personal shopper. I appreciate the guide's clever store descriptions, complete with store hours and locations. It's well organized, witty, and comes in a slim, easy-to-shop with, size. The guide's handy catagories, such as "best picks" and "best kept secrets" lead me to some real gems (like a pair of striped Louboutin mules!) This guide is a must for those who want to shop New York.

Heads up you shopping mavens and tourists alike! This is one jewel of a book you all must add to your collection of city guides. It's incredibly user-friendly, chock-a-block full of informational tid-bits and snappy commentary. Not only that but it's like having your own directory of all the stores in NY (addresses, telephone numbers, etc.) and it fits into your hip Fendi baguette, your Sergio Rossi tote or your Matt Nye cross bag! If you ever wonder where to go to find that special little something to fit the bill - this one's for you! It just makes you want to walk around in Melhado's and Clason's mules for a day...

Well done! It's a winner.

Skip the Empire State Building and Statue of Liberty! Mittelbach and Crewdson know their stuff and their share it in all the fun and interesting details you could want. This is the "big apple" down to the core. I used to live in New York and was excited when this book came out.

Excellent writing. Takes you back to very beginning of New York before man and lets your imagination take over to give you a very different historical perspective. The Michener style without the fictional story line. Terrific reading. Read it in one sitting. You will view New York with a different eye after reading Wild New York

This is, hands-down, the best book I've found yet on the non-concrete parts of this concrete jungle I call home. The illustrations are 1st rate, the maps are very helpful, and the travel directions even help you get there --- like most New Yorkers would --- by public transit. All five boroughs are included, and the book is chock full of tasty morsels about the City's natural side.

Whether a native New Yorker or visiting from out of town, if you have the interest or the inkling to find hundred foot trees, tidal pools, salt marshes, Native American caves, hilltop vistas, or even just learn which wildflowers grow between the sidewalk slabs or which trees are tough enough to stand up to the stress of city life, this book is for you.

Margaret Mittelbach's books is an excellent description of the one side of New York City that no one really knows about, the natural side. The graphics are excellent, providing brief and complete tidbits about the different time periods of New York City's geological and natural history. It is written wonderfully with a sense of humor and keeps the readers attention at all times. In addition, you come away pleased with the new and complete knowledge this book provides about New York City. The walking tours are clear and concise making the reader want to go on one of the walks immediately. Finally, the book design both on the cover and within the book, grabs the readers attention and keeps it throughout the reading of the book. Overall, I would recommend this book not only as a guide book for the natural side of New York but as an extremely informative and fascinating read.

This book is a must have for anyone who has ever lived in or visited New York. It is extremely well-written, witty, and as well it is filled with interesting facts about New York.

I picked up this book on a whim. I got late notice that Zoe was coming to my area to promote our annual MS ride and couldn't attend. I checked out her book here and the price was right so I ordered it just to sooth my curious nature. What a great book! I'm about as the last person you'd expect to read this book but I did and was moved by it. Zoe's story is compelling and the resolve that accompanies her sense of humor are truely insprirational. I'm registering for the New York City Marathon in 2004 and I hope to meet her in person. Great book!

This book is hysterical! I laughed so hard that I nearly wet my pants. (And I was in the waiting room at the dentist's office at the time!) Zoe reminds us that the attitude that she takes into each marathon, and the one that Multiple Sclerosis patients and others should take into the daily marathon called life, is not the importance of winning, but the importance of doing our best with a smile on our face and a song on our lips.

Zoe Koplowitz is a no nonsense, straight shooter, beacon of hope and inspiration to anyone facing life challenges. The 10-time NYC marathoner, the last place finisher each year, shows us that determination and pure will, coupled with human kindness and compassion can propel anyone to cross the finish line with dignity and glory...all their own. This book is the "Road Less Traveled" of the millenium. Pithy, smart, thoughtful, painful and joyous, all rolled into a wonderful, spirited read.

Zoe Koplowitz bursts out of the pages of her book like the marathon runner she is. Diagnosed with MS in her 20s, she started participating in the NY Marathon in her 40s. Its a dead last finish every time but with wry wit and the spirituality of one with a chronic disease Zoe illustrates her incredible spirit. Ice, gale winds, street gangs, threats of drive-by shootings and the race run on crutches in the dead of night are some of the events she has experienced. The NY Marathon on crutches? Yes indeed and thats only the beginning of Zoe.She unfolds sometimes like a tender flower and other times like a bamboo spike growing in some steamy SE Asian jungle. Her warrior spirit is infectuous even if one isnt coping with slings and arrows, A must read for those heavily involved in a pity party. A definite must read for those who explode in the joy of life.

After reading a synopsis in the Aug. issue of Readers Digest, I went out and bought the book. It's an absolute MUST read!

Ten times better than the Christopher Reeve book. I laughed. I cried. I wished it would never end. It's hilarious, touching and absolutely riveting. By the end of the book, you feel like a totally new person.

I've never written a book review before, so you've got to know how much I loved this book. Buy it, read it and pass it on to a friend. It's truly transformational.

I enjoyed this book. It was an absorbing, eye-opening look into the world of the ballet written by an insider - a young, intense and highly intelligent young woman, a dancer with the NYC Ballet, who exposes life in this elite and unique world.

I really enjoyed this book. It gave a wonderful glimpse into the real world of professional dancing. Miss Bentley told this story with beautiful language, her words flowed like water. I found it wonderful to know what it was like to live the life of a dancer, to know the struggles and the victories, the fantasies and the realities. I recommend this book for all who love dance and for anyone interested in show business or simply anyone who enjoys a good read.

With "Winter Season," Toni Bentley allows her audience to see a real picture of the incredibly tough, demanding and creative world of professional ballet. We see George Balanchine at the end of the career, and such greats as Suzanne Farrell and Peter Martins. The incredible, difficult, almost insane demands put on the dancers are clearly drawn, as is Ms. Bentley's love for her art. Especially evocative is her struggle with reconciling art with her demanding profession.

Often, artistic memoirs focus on the superstars, the Tallchiefs and Nureyevs, for instance. The view from the corps de ballet is all the more interesting for being so rare. This book is beautiful, wry, humorous and exquisitely-written. I wish Ms. Bentley had written several other volumes.

Winter Season: A Dancer's Journal is the exquisite chronicle of a ballet dancer's experiences with the New York City Ballet. The dancer, Toni Bentley, claims a certain naivetee, but I don't believe it's innocent ignorance as much as it is simple yearning for experiences she rarely has.

She has a delicate flair for words, and her prose couldn't be any less lovely than her pliees and tondus.

Dancing with a world-famous ballet company is gruelling. The dancers are overworked, underfed, and have little understanding of how the "real world" works, yet it would seem they like it that way. Ballet companies thusly have much in common with military outfits: soldiers and dancers work brutally hard, but have their concerns looked after by the higher-ups. Balanchine is the dancers' general.

With the incredibly long hours and the accompanying mental and physical exhaustion, how did Toni get the time to write this book?

She writes,

"We are hairless. We have no leg hairs, no pubic hair, no armpit hair, no facial hair, no neck hair and only a solid little lump at the top of our heads. Any sign of stubble must be closely watched out for and removed.

"That is not all. We don't eat food, we eat music. We need artistic sustenance only. Emotional, inspiring sustenance. Al our physical energy is the overflow of spiritual feelings. We live on faith, belief, love, inspiration, vitamins and Tab."

Toni eventually does break free of the NYC Ballet machine, but she's drawn inexorably back. After all, as she says, "We live only to dance. If living were not an essential prerequisite, we would abstain."

This is a beautifully written very open look at the world of a professional dancer. The difficulties and joys of life in a world class ballet company are clearly and thoughtfully laid out by Bentley. The pride she had for her place in NYCB, and the sadness of standing in the background while others danced in the spotlight in front of her. But ultimately we are allowed to see the great joy finds in her dancing, and the struggle and work it took to get her there, as well as the struggle and hard work it took to keep her there. Overall I thought that Bentley was very candid and very honest about her life in NYCB. Every dance student planning a life as a professional dancer should read this book.

"Wisdom's Children" is a landmark work in the history of Christian esotericism. Thought mainly to be the domain of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, Protestant mysticism has been marginalized for too long. Arthur Versluis takes us back 300 years and shows us that beneath its stern veneer, there has been, and still is, a vital current of the imagination and mystical understanding in and around mainstream Protestantism. Jane Leade, Johann Gichtel, Boehme, Freher, are all brought to life. The chapters on German theosophy, folk magic, and qabala in colonial Pennsylvania alone are worth the cover price. Highly recommended.

Well written and well thought out. For me personally, it filled in an enormous gap in my knowledge and greatly improved my understanding and opinion of Jacob Boehme. I would recommend Jacob Boehme's Way to Christ (Paulist Press) as a good "next book." Have fun with this; the vision is quite beautiful.

This book gives a great overview of the movement of christian mysticism which was essentially founded by Jacob Boehme. The only complaint that I have with it is that it does not have a section on Louis Claude de Saint-Martin.

Well written and well thought out. For me personally, it filled in an enormous gap in my knowledge and greatly improved my understanding and opinion of Jacob Boehme. I would recommend Jacob Boehme's Way to Christ (Paulist Press) as a good "next book." Have fun with this; the vision is quite beautiful.

Christian mysticism is generally associated with Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, but professor Arthur Versluis here casts needed light on the obscure Anglo/Germanic theosophical mysticism deriving from Jacob Boehme.

Writing in a style that is scholarly yet accessible, Versluis follows the influence of Boehme down through disciples such as Johann Gichtel, John Pordage, and Jane Leade, figures who remain little-known even in esoteric circles.

The "theosophy" of Boehme and his followers differs markedly from the later theosophy of Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society, a syncretistic theosophy which owes much to Buddhism and Hinduism. By contrast, the Christian theosophy of Boehme is thoroughly Christian and Christ-centered, deriving from his personal mystical visions rather than from readings in Eastern religion.

A main emphasis of Boehme and his followers is that religion be experiential rather than simply an intellectual acceptance of dogma or an assent to verbal expressions of faith. Boehme often described verbal religion as "Babel," signifying that it lacked the truly transformative quality of real religion.

Christian theosophy typically invokes the idea of "sophia," seen as a feminine personification of divine wisdom. Although present in the Old testament "Song of Songs," and occasionally referenced elsewhere in both the Old and New Testaments, sophia/wisdom largely went underground in the Christian tradition, and is more often associated with heretical groups such as the various gnostic sects of the first Christian centuries.

Indeed, Versluis takes up the question of whether there is a link between the Boehmian tradition and the earlier gnostics, and his conclusion is generally in the negative. First of all, there is no evidence of a direct line of transmission between the two traditions; secondly, the theosophers eschewed the elaborate mythical constructs of the earlier gnostics, relying instead on their own direct visionary experiences.

Versluis has tapped into a mystical thread in Christianity which bears further study, and I recommend his "Theosophia" as another laudable effort to elaborate the sophian tradition in Christianity - not merely as a historical curiosity, but as a living tradition that might have something to teach Christians to this day.

"The World before This One" was a motivating book for me. I wouldn't recommend this book for younger people, because the vocabulary and names are very challenging, even for me. It was also hard for me to follow what was going on in the book, so if you have a short attention span, this book isn't for you. This book is a good book for scholars in the literary area. It is a very good legend, but if you aren't interested in a novel told in legend, I would definitely not recommend this book.
The main characters in this book are a young man named Crow, and his grandmother. The setting is at a lodge, and in the forest. The climax is when grandmother asks Raccoon, Crow's old friend, to spy on him and see why he doesn't bring home hardly any books from hunting a full day in the forest. The plot is how grandfather stone tells Crow the legends of the world before this one, and it is up to him to see if his fellow villagers are ready to hear the legends.

I enjoyed this book very much. It touched my heart and mind by teaching lessons that mean something today as much as they must have in "The World Before This One." Certainly a worthwhile read - and then some.

In THE WORLD BEFORE THIS ONE a stone speaks, transporting the listening Seneca boy, Crow, and ourselves, to an older time; a world of myth and legend where integrity and nobility of action bring rewards. The stories Grandfather Stone tells Crow transform the listening boy, his people, and ultimately ourselves.

Rafe Martin, a gifted storyteller, posesses a rare ability to bring to life for adults and children alike the world of magic inherent in nature. THE WORLD BEFORE THIS ONE is partly a coming of age story, as Crow finds his true path as a tale teller and guardian of his people's wisdom. Martin's retelling of these Seneca legends reaches all of us to touch a deeper consciousness within, and imbues our present world with meaning.

If you are looking for a book to read aloud to your children, you'll love this one. The imagery and folk lore are as interesting for the parent as for the children. Because many of the Native American legends and customs are the same as my children are learning in school, this book was a great way to have fun while reinforcing learning.

This book is about a boy and his grandmother who have to move away from the village. He finds a rock that can tell stories. I like this book because it has different stories in it. I think it is part fantasy and part realistic fiction. I would recommend that other people should read it because it is good if you like realistic fiction or fantasy.

This book grabs you from the first page. The characters and the emotions are captivating. I literally could not put the book down. The way the author captures the beauty and essence of true love made my heart melt all over the pages. It was a delight to read! I can't wait for the sequel!!

This book couldn't have gotten any better! It was so good that i didn't want to put it down, literally! This is definitely one of my five favorite books, right up there with Gone with the Wind, and To Kill A Mockingbird! I am counting the days until the sequel comes out, and when it does, i will be the first in line to buy a copy from this gifted author! * :) *

I love love love this fabulous book! I thought it was the perfect read and i recomended this book to all of my friends! I hope that a sequel comes out for this awesome story!

This is a wonderful book! I had been looking for a book that would grab my attention right out of the gate and this was it. I am tired of trying to get into a book for so long that I am half way through it before I decide to continue or put it down... I wanted a book that would engage me from the first paragraph and this was it. The characters were believeable, and the premise of the story itself was such a breath of fresh air. I can't wait to see who plays the leading roles when the movie comes out! I am keeping an eye on this author; this is my kind of novel. What a feel-good read!

A great summer read, I couldn't put it down! The characters felt so real to me that I wished the book wouldn't end. I hope the author writes another one, and that the character of Ruby ( a beautiful, shallow, self-centered, cunning, social climber looking for fame, and a husband )comes back for an encore performance. Being a bad girl beats out being a good girl every time in my book! Bring it to the beach!

York's Journal: A Novel
By William Nichols

Review by Terry Davis



Oregon has been celebrating the 200th year anniversary of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The celebration includes lectures at universities, colleges, and other schools, exhibits, tours, music, with instruments of the period, and much more. Even now, a replica of Fort Clatsop is being built, after a fire recently destroyed the previous one.
York's Journal: A Novel, by William Nichols and published in 2005, is a creative addition to this celebration.
William Styron, a generation ago, wrote a novel, The Confessions of Nat Turner. The novel triggered considerable criticism and conflict regarding the author being white and trying to create the consciousness of a black man.
The same issue could be raised by York's Journal-a white author and a black main character speaking through the device of a journal. The resolution is that in spite of the racial difference, at least two important characteristics are shared. Both black and white share a common humanity and the potential for empathy. Through the power of the imagination, an author can shed beautiful and shining light on our common existence as humans. I believe that William Nichols has accomplished such a work.
York, a slave in the servitude of William Clark, was a member of the "Corps of Discovery" though never officially recognized as such. Earlier in his life, he had learned to read and write. How this unusual learning occurred is recounted in the novel. York's love of reading and writing is central to the novel. His perceptiveness brings out and develops many themes: the sheer adventure of the Expedition, with its hardships, illnesses, and humor, relationships with various aborigines and tribes, women and sex, the mystery of wilderness, spirituality, and the overriding tension between freedom and servitude.
The language, the voice of York, is impressive, consistent throughout, inventive, and often humorous. It sparkles with imaginative turns of phrase. Some examples give a taste of this highlight of the novel: "The master's fear is often the servant's opportunity" (p. 14). "The gold of evening" (p. 78). "Nothing is better than work one freely chooses" (p. 10).
The language is important to the novel not only for such characteristics but also for the importance of the journal and its writing to the characterization of York. When York has not had opportunity to write for awhile, he exclaims, "My journal comes alive again!" (p. 182). The journaling became almost an addiction for York, "like strong drink was to white men" (p.188). On the downside for York, "my journal was become a visible emblem of all the bonds that held me to civilization" (p. 188). On the other hand, his writing "gave shape to the joy I find in freedom" (p. 212).
These examples reflect and embody a central theme, a conflict both external and internal, between freedom and servitude. York never varied from his understandable longing for freedom. Yet he is honest enough with himself to see that gaining his freedom was not merely a matter of becoming legally free or of leaving the Expedition and staying with natives and making a new life with them. He "longed for civilization despite my hatred of servitude" (p. 166). The Expedition became for York a quest for his freedom. "On my journey westward I would be a man," he said, hoping to find freedom in the west (pp. 61, 62).
Along the way were all the adventures, joys, and trials and tribulation of this great physical adventure. As the Corps of Discovery made its way across the vastness of the continent, they encountered many native tribes, and their many differences are described. Because of his condition of servitude among the whites, York seemed much drawn to the natives and developed many interesting and valued personal relationships with them. Some of these were sexual relationships, which was an important part of York's adventures. In the Barocka Uanapa ceremony of the Mandan tribe, as an honored guest, he enjoyed the pleasures of intimacy with the wife of one of the Mandans. Later, he learned directly that "Clatsops couple more patiently and deliberately than any people I have known" (p. 149). He developed a close relationship of love with Keluk, of the Clatsops.
York felt drawn to the natives in part because as a slave in the white man's Expedition, he was lonely. Except for Shannon, a young white man, he could not be open with the whites. As York pointed out, "dissembling is a necessity of servitude" (p. 152). Shannon was "the one man on the Expedition with whom I did not have to pretend I was a dolt" (p. 28). Yet even with Shannon, York noted that he "was not foolish enough to share my dream of freedom with a white man" (p. 31).
He "longed to find a place where I could feel the presence of true companionship" (p. 41). Among the natives, he did find that true companionship. And because of his liking for them, he found his sympathies with them in the disputes and conflicts between the Expedition and the various tribes. The Clatsops, for example, feared a treacherous alliance between the white men of the Expedition and those of a ship arriving in the Columbia River. York's comment tells a lot: "Knowing what I do of white men, I saw no reason to dismiss their fears" (p. 149).
An outgrowth of his finding companionship with the natives was his hearing interesting stories from them, stories of mythological and spiritual insight. These stories, of Teahwit, Bear Woman, Talapus, and others, are engagingly narrated. They speak about truths relevant to York's emotional and psychological states and become integral and revealing parts of the novel.
They also point to what I take to be a central part of the novel. It is that the adventure becomes a deep spiritual quest. This aspect of the story is hinted at in the references to the mystery of the wilderness, at first just hints of the spirit, a feeling York "came to cherish" despite his fears (p. 72). The stories often related to such fears. As Keluk explained to York, the story of Awl Woman was a story of yas mesachie, that is, of great evil (p. 177).
The spiritual quest blossoms and deepens in York's encounter with Teahwit's story about seeking his tahmahnawis, the Clatsop term for the Holy Spirit, by going to the top of Saghalie mountain. This name refers to the mountain with the shape of a saddle. This mountain, now called Saddle Mountain, is a real mountain near the northern Oregon coast. It still, of course, is a place of great mystery and spirit. Teahwit's story led to York making his own journey up the mountain in search of his tahmahnawis. Significantly, there is just one path to the top. Also significantly, Mooluk, York's Clatsop friend and teacher, took York's rifle before showing him the way to the mountain. Nor did he take food.
As with any truly spiritual quest, York's ascension of Saghalie brought up the essential conflicts and troubles in his psyche and life. Central to these were his journal writing, so precious to him. But his writing was also the telling, as York said, "of a slave whose fortunes depended on the whims of others" (p. 188). His journal, he sees, had become "a visible emblem of all the bonds that held me to civilization" (p. 188). And that bond made his task more difficult. "In this vast wilderness," York says, "I knew I must come to feel at home" (p. 187).
York's resolution on the mountain top was to "forswear writing in my journal and if that failed to free my spirit to live among the Clatsops, I would throw its pages in the fire" (p. 188). The resolution to sacrifice the symbol of his bondage is at the heart of any true spiritual quest.
He did not, however, keep this resolution. The journey through life often hits us with the unexpected. For York, shortly after his quest on the mountain, Master Clark told him that he would free him on their safe return. "Then I understood the truth: I was not become a Clatsop" (p. 191). He could, York said, "think only of my joy and pride in holding freedom as a prize won on the Expedition to the western sea" (p. 191). But the inner conflict was so great that he was "filled with rage, knowing I would not choose to stay among the Clatsops" (p. 191).
Thus, he returned to civilization with the Expedition, continued writing in his journal, was freed as promised from the bondage of servitude, and given by Master Clark some land of his own to work.
How puzzling, ambiguous, and mysterious life is! York's return to civilization brought him "only sorrow" (p. 197). He concluded that "it had been an error to leave the land of the Clatsops" (p. 197). He remembered his farewell to Keluk and his promise to return "when I am free" (p. 197). She did not believe him.
The story of Talapus reverberates at this point with all the angst of life. Talapus, who must "guard against his habit of doing foolish things," had "grown to like his life among the shadow people" and he "tells the spirit he prefers to stay" with them (p. 199). Because of his disobedience, "The spirit never returns" to Talapus (p. 200).
Whether the story of Talapus applies directly to York is ambiguous. But York does say that in telling his story, he came to understand a truth: "this freedom and this land are not enough. It remains to tell what I have learned from writing my story" (p. 206). He understands also that he must "go to seek my way in the wilderness that once seemed to me only a terrifying land" (p. 216).
Perhaps he did. I hope so. Whether or not, he was indeed a man. True liberation of any person brings more light to our human condition. And this marvelous novel throws clarifying light on that condition. Well done!

York's Journal is intriguing partially for what it is NOT. The novel assumes that the reader is informed about the expedition or is able to look things up. So, as other readers have noted, it does not spread itself thin trying to cover non-fiction matters commonly available. One hardly senses, for example, the enormity of the distances and time (and drudgery) involved. Nor the trip's logistics, goals, funding, setbacks, and even its historical impact. And since its protagonist is something of a stoic, it doesn't dwell very long on privation, loneliness, and hardship.

Rather, York's Journal: A Novel is a fully imagined and unexpected trip into a trip. The language is magical; the locutions, vocabulary, and rhythms carry the reader back to our young nation's growth spurt and lend a compelling sense of authenticity. York gives us dark views of the leaders, esp. Captain Clark. Since York is Clark's black slave, his special position vis-à-vis his "master," his white company and the very different Indian nations they meet makes for some startling possibilities (and also some humorous and uninhibited sexual encounters). It offers York's troubling, mysterious dreams and nightmares as he becomes more and more alive.

Most important, though, is how the novel artfully explores powerful connections between writing, freedom and selfhood.

As a history reader and teacher, I am acutely aware that history is about "selection" of the available data. In this way many stories, often those of women and people of color are left out.
Nichols has done an amazing job of recapturing Clark's slave York's story from the Lewis and Clark Journals, never overstepping into flights of fancy but instead imaginatively giving us another insight into that incredible troop of explorers and their incredible journey. Good scholarship, excellent writing, a great read.

This book turned out to be quite a nice surprise. I have little interest in either historical novels or the Lewis and Clark expidition, but was intrigued by the fact that the journey did, indeed, include a slave, and in Nichols' book, the slave can read and write, and therefore we have, his, York's journal.

Fortunately, the author has spared us a day by day account of the journey West, and concentrated on the more notable events of the trip, including extensive interaction with Native Americans and the difficulties attendant on traversing a new and unknown part of the continent. This is all seen through the
eyes of York, who shares in the triumph of discovery as someone thought of as something less than a man. The book deals in detail with his interaction with the various tribes that are encountered, and the concept of freedom begins to define itself in York, until a promise is made to him which is revealing of both the tragedy and the sorrow of slavery, and the book ends with York's decision of how to deal with it.

This novel succeeds on all levels. It is an informative narrative of the journey as well as an excellent description of the white-and black-mans interaction with the tribes of the West. The passages dealing with Indian myth and legend are of particular interest. Most importantly it succeeds in its presentation of another dimension of the peculiar, and horrifying, institution of American slavery. Equally important, it is the story of a slave not broken at the wheel, and able to rise beyond circumstance to assert his right to humanity.

When I finished reading this book,I had to spend a little time thinking on it. This is the highest compliment I can pay any
author, and lament the fact there aren't more who can lead me to do so. For a modest investment, this is a very fine read.

Anyone interested in good historical fiction, especially about the American frontier, should read York's Journal, a novel about the Lewis & Clark expedition as told from the point of view of William Clark's slave. Nichols has created a plausible, dignified, often humorous and engaging voice for his narrator. Like an earlier version of Frederick Douglass, York keeps his literacy and intelligence secret from his white master. We experience his longing for freedom, his robust sexuality, his prowess as a hunter, his dignity and integrity. From his first glimpse of native people along the Missouri to his friendship with members of the Clatsop tribe at the mouth of the Columbia, York feels a deep kinship with the mistrusted, despised, yet resilient Indians, and he is forever scheming to run off and join them. He shows us the familiar heroes in an unfamiliar light, especially Clark's struggles with the English language and Lewis's struggles with the gloom and paranoia that would eventually consume him. Having read several accounts of the Lewis & Clark saga, including the official journals, I was intrigued by this fresh telling.

I am new to New York city and have been discovering good (and bad) places to eat in a hit or miss fashion. I was given this book as a gift and it has become more useful than the Vindigo guide I have been using on my Palm Pilot.

It cannot be missed on your shelf or bag when ever you want to have a wonderful dinner in NY. This book is deeply reliable even for a very demanding person for food as me. The formula of the book allows you to get to know whatever you are looking for in a few minutes. Comments are brief but give you the exact idea of the place. No other food guide book can be so reliable and useful as this one here. Try also the one on London and Paris which are fantastic too. We are all looking forward to the one on Milan.......

This book has a permanent place on every book shelf I own. A true New Yorker will live and die by this book. Tim and Nina Zagat began their restaurant reviews as a hobby for friends but it grew into a monster and now they reach out to diners around the world to rate and review any and all eating establishments in New York and around the world.

They have also branched out into rating hotels around the world. The reviews found in these books are very accurate as they are rated by real eaters (include this particular diner).

The book is arranged alphabetically however diners can locate restaurants divided by location, type of food, top ratings, most popular as well as by any special features. Always helpful and handy, I highly recommend this book for a fabulous meal in New York.

Among the plethora of guide books to New York restaurants and and nightlife, the Zagat guides (there is also a Zagat guide to Nightlife and a Zagat guide to specialty food shops)have always stood alone at the top- and with good reason.

No other book can came close to matching the accuracy of these handy little guides. Easily organized alphabetically in the main section and then reorganized again in the back by both type of establishment (type of cuisine in the case of the restuarant guide) and location (ie. upper east side, village, etc.) all the best restuarants are right at your fingertips.

Each establishment is rated on a scale of one to thirty in three categories (food, decor, and service in the restaurant guide) and then there is a small paragraph blurb below about the place and what its like. I have found these descriptions to be TOTALLY accurate and more than once have gone to a place and described it to my friends only to find that the Zagat guide had the exact same thing to say.

All in all, a very accurate guide. An indispensible tool whether or not you are visitng NYC for the first time or, like me, you live here and are just looking for somewhere new to go!

I'd give these suckers 10 stars if that was an option!

The Zagats put out a class A guide to New York City restaurants giving three ratings for each place: (1)quality of food, (2) decor, and (3) quality of service. The guide also includes what the average price of a dinner with wine is for each restaurant rated. There is no long description of the menu, ambience etc. However, the short blurbs are often humorous and the basic information is given.

The restaurants are listed in alphabetical order but there are extenssive lists of different categories, such as French (and every other ethnic category), vegetarian, kosher and just about every other traditional category you can think of. There are nummerous other categories as well, such as best places if you are eating alone, best "power" places, most romantic, best places for kids, for teens etc. I have barely scratched the surface .. the breakdown of categories is very extensive and I find them to be extremely useful.

Like I say, there is no extensive description of the restaurants rated but, there are a lot of them that are reviewed and this is a wonderful source for quickly finding the right place to eat amongst hundreds of choices. An additional feature is that the book is not restricted to Manhattan; good restaurants from all the boroughs are included. I highly recommend this book.

Anthony Papa, just one of the thousands of victims of the draconian drug laws that hit America in 1973, tells his tale of how he "painted his way to freedom." It is similar to Life on the Outside, by Jennifer Gonnerman, but unique in its first hand account. This is not your usual story of a notarized drug dealer from the streets serving his bid and coming home to stir up more trouble. This is a story of a family man who gets caught in the web of the penal system, but fights his way back to personal triumph. Commended by the likes of Russell Simmons, Susan Sarandon, and Jack Black, 15 to Life will have you singing its praises after the first few chapters.

This book is one of the besst stories I have read recently. 15 to life starts right out w/ an exciting beginning and keeps you hooked the whole time. Anthony Papa's story will shock you. Every law and sociology class should be required to read this book. Buy it and support the cause.

Anthony Papa only took one risk to find the $500 he needed to pay rent so his
family could live. Like being asked to do some landscaping for a friend, Papa
was to deliver four and one half ounces of coke for some quick money and quick
resolution to his financial crisis. The deal was a setup to break the fall of
a dealer higher up in the hierarchy of the drug market and Papa endured the
mandatory 15 year minimum in court. Thereafter Papa lived an ordinary story of
acclimation to prison life as a first-time offender, as well as an extraordinary
story of discovery of latent talent, and a strategic engagement of that talent
to pursue his freedom. Through the pages we see the scant resources prisoners
have for advocating for their freedom. We see those scant resources exhausted
as Papa becomes a jailhouse lawyer creating appeals that are manhandled to his
misfortune by outsider law firms. In the end, as the title suggests, it is the
resource of art that prevails. Both as an occupation that allowed Papa to
transcend his despair in the cell and the afflictions of civil bureaucracy.
Papa wins his freedom through playing the ooh's and ah's of the art world and
its media following. His builds his campaign for clemency from then governor
George Pataki on the moral/aesthetic arguments that only his art is allowed to
communicate. And `moral argument' ought not be confused with plastic sympathy.
It is no puppy dog stare from a pet store window.

Papa's story is a milieu of competitiveness and resigned cooperation with an
inhuman system of power. Papa is forced to wile and trick a system to gain an
advantage that should be afforded to him on the basis of human rights. Papa
competes against many characters: lawyers, judges, dealers, other inmates,
CO's, high society artists and critics. And the prize of this competition is
not the fame associated with hanging portraits in galleries. That is just the
means to the real finish line: the freedom those on the outside all readily
take for granted. Papa literally paints for his life; it may well be the
reason he paints ("I knew that participating in the show [at New York's Whitney
Art Museum] was the break I had been waiting for. As I re-read the lines, they
blurred into a single word: FREEDOM.").

So art, the aesthetic realm all too often valued as transcendent of the hard
truths of life, finds a very practical cause. Art's power is used for a very
focused and determinate end: to sow a campaign for public opinion. Papa's
sentence at Sing Sing faces the opposite direction Oscar Wilde experienced
during his stay at Reading Gaol. Whereas Wilde was an aesthete whose genius
was eroded by the toil of his imprisonment, Papa finds his genius because of
the toil, because the normal argumentative paths to pursuing freedom (court
appeals) in maximum security prisons ultimately don't exist in his favor.
While Wilde may view art as those things that are unnecessary, Papa makes art
(and maybe more precisely the outside world's mass-mediated appreciation of
art) the absolutely necessary path to his campaign for clemency and his
freedom.

15 to Life reveals the conflicts and cooperation between the artist's brush,
jailhouse-law study, and numerous letters from legal bureaucracy. Papa
struggles through them all, playing them with and against each other in hopes
that he can freely reclaim his humanity. It leaves a lot of questions for the
reader such as "What happens to the inmates who don't have talent or technique
to entice the sympathy of the free world, what about the rest of them?"
Fortunately, Papa doesn't take his freedom and run. As co-founder of the
Mothers of the New York Disappeared he uses his clout as a cultural and moral
sensation to campaign for the rights of those he left behind the gates of Sing
Sing. Papa leaves the story of 15 to Life with a strong and quickening gaze
toward liberation for the Rockefeller incarcerated.

Papa's memoir will be easy and important reading for those who want to figure
art as a politicizing and strategic resource for creating real change for
social justice. It will inform the reader not only about Papa's artistic
process but also the political process he must engage to make his art work for
social change and his freedom. This process includes mobilizing audiences,
critics, press, and other locations of power toward an ethic or political good.
Papa's art is great and can stand alone as a form of beauty. However, "How I
Painted My Way to Freedom" is a complex subtitle and ought not conjure an image
of the paintbrush as a mystical key to the cellblock latch. Papa's story does
not let one underestimate the amount of work and struggle Papa needed to endure
to direct his art toward political resolution.

In 1985, Anthony Papa was a 29-year-old small business owner living in the Bronx with his wife and young daughter. Bills were mounting, rent was due and tensions were rising in his marriage when a gambling acquaintance stepped up and offered him a quick $500 to deliver a package. Papa had doubts and misgivings, but he accepted the proposal. The package Papa carried was full of cocaine and he delivered it directly into the hands of undercover cops. To make matters worse, this particular event came with an added twist; namely New York's Rockefeller drug laws, which mandate a 15-year-to-life sentence for the weight of the drugs Anthony had delivered.

15 to Life details how Papa transformed himself while in prison, from a convicted drug courier into an artist and later into an activist. The first 80+ pages cover his dealings with a shady lawyer, codefendants turning on him and his initiation into the jail system. Papa reinforces that what you see in the movies about prison life is not far from reality. Sex, violence, drugs, deals made and deals broken all take place on a regular basis behind the prison walls.

15 to Life takes a turn from prison narrative to survival tale when Papa realizes that he is going to serve a good deal of his sentence. Papa finds his inspiration to not give up when he sees a prisoner painting in his cell and becomes mesmerized by the act. A short while later, emerging from a three-day lockdown Papa has an epiphany as he looks around his cell. He considers the ten paintings he has completed and sees his freedom on the canvas. At this point Papa becomes committed to his art, realizing it is the only way he can survive prison.

While Papa works on his art he starts to realize that his lawyer is not doing much to help him. While in the library studying his case, a prisoner tells him about the law that has sentenced him to 15 years to life. The Rockefeller drug laws state that a judge must impose a minimum sentence of 15 years to life to anyone convicted of selling two ounces or possessing four ounces of a controlled substance. Kingpin or first time bust, everyone receives the same minimum sentence. Papa now had another focus besides his art, his case and more specifically, the law that put him behind bars.

Papa gets a break in September of 1993 when the Whitney Museum contacted Sing Sing about a show they would be putting together. The Whitney was looking for art by a murderer for their show. Papa saw an opportunity and pursued it, telling The Whitney that he was a convicted killer. In his mind the lie would expose his are and hopefully get him closer to freedom.

After the Whitney show Papa received his first press exposure, an in depth piece in the Gannett Suburban Newspaper. An article in Prison Life magazine followed, then a NY Times letter to the editor penned by Papa in regard to the Rockefeller drug laws. Later, an Associated Press story that is printed in six New York newspapers follows. Papa welcomes the press; the prison does not and reassigns him to a harsher area of the prison.

Papa later learns of an opportunity to join a Master's Degree Program from the New York Theological Seminary. While he is enrolled in the Master's Program Papa starts the ball rolling on his plea for clemency from Governor George Pataki. Papa details his attempts at clemency and his joy at finally receiving the news that it had been granted.

After his release Papa tells of his days outside of prison. His major focus is on the group he co-founds, Mothers of the New York Disappeared, named for the mothers and relatives who have had family members disappear behind prison walls. The group is focused on repealing the Rockefeller Drug Laws. The efforts of the group have helped change public opinion on the law, however the public and the government that represents them are not on the same page and the laws remain unchanged.

The story of Anthony Papa is a great read and at points a heartbreaking story. Papa is a man that did not give up when he could have easily done so. Papa capitalized on every chance he had while in prison and his story is one of triumph. His story is also one that should make the reader think about the prisoners that do give up, that are not given any chances. 15 to Life should make you think about the prisoners that are left to rot behind bars due to unfair and restrictive sentencing guidelines. Papa's story helps the reader to realize that the Rockefeller Laws are not putting away the big dealers like they intended and need to be reevaluated and ultimately scrapped.