Georgia Tech Books

This is my first atempt at this author and I was not disapointed. I found the book very engaging. They had well rounded characters and a great plot. I would not call this book a "Romantic Suspense" tho. I found the romance lacking. Kate and Mitch did not seem to spend alot of time together, but I still enjoyed this book fairly well. I do like to mix up my reading between romance and mystery. But I was told it was a romantic suspense but found it not to be so. But given that I will be giving her a try again. Good suspense. Good characters. Good book

Two thirds of the way through this book I gave up and read the ending because I had long ago guessed the conclusion and was tired of how slowly the plot was unraveling--not a good aspect of a "ghost story." In addition, authors run a big risk when writing about writers and the process of writing and Heggan does not pull if off here at all. There is a tone of know-it-allness that I found too annoying to get around. The most damaging thing of all -- this book wasn't scary.

"Suspicion," by Christine Heggan, is both romantic and suspenseful. The characters are well-developed, the dialogue easy to follow, and, the plot exciting. A very thrilling combination.

John Savoy
Savoy International
Motion Pictures Inc.

Story moved right along. I liked suspense but thought the author could have eliminated the ending chapters. Once reader knows "who done it" the ending chapters seemed unimportant.

I was so happy when I came upon, "Suspicion." I love mystery novels a lot and I was running out of them to read. Luckily, I discovered Christiane Heggan. "Suspicion" was my first Heggan novel and I loved it so much that I already am beginning another one right now.

Kate Logan, a tough defense attorney, is selected to represent two separate people. One is her ex-husband who is charged with killing a prositute and the other person is Kate's housekeeper's son, who is charged with killing his girlfriend. Kate knows that both are innocent and decides to start her own investigation. She soon becomes suspicious and feels that the prositute and the girlfriend was murdered by the same person. Soon Kate is being stalked and attacked by the murderer. Kate along with police officer, Mitch Calhoun, must bring down this group of murderers before Kate's friends who are charged with murder go to jail for life. Congratulations to Mrs. Heggan because she made it to my list of favorite authors!

Brad Stonecipher

I found this book on the coffee table of a friend in northern Michigan. I started to read a few pages of it, and within an hour I knew that I was going to buy it when I got home. The author tells the tale in a way that
you don't hear your own voice as you read, but the author himself. He tells
a story with some political commentary, but you understand the issues from his perspective as he proceeds. He begins at about 1900 and moves to about World War 1. Many anecdotes about the Civil War as well. I perceived some current event relevance that are note worthy, (he who does not remember the past is doomed to repeat it). All in all a very pleasant book to sit down and read to relax.

Bruce Catton made a name for himself writing some of the most comprehensive books on the Civil War. As an educator and writer, his career will forever be viewed by formal academic standards. However, in Waiting for the Morning Train, the formalities and objectivity are swept away, and we are left with a wonderful story of a boy growing up in rural Northern Michigan. He captures a moment in time, not only in the historical sense, but also from the perspective of a young man coming of age. He substitutes facts and discipline with observations and thoughts, and along the way, creates what is my favorite piece of his work.

This book is generally considered a memoir of growing up in rural northern Michigan in the early 1900's, and it is; but it is also a lament for the 20th century. Catton contrasts the optimism of the America of his youth--it's faith in progress and in the future, it's belief that Americans could solve any problem with hard work, right thinking, and the guidance of Divine Providence--with the reality of national and world events that transpired from World War I through the Viet Nam era.

The mood of the book is reflective and even melancholy at times. I felt Catton was a concerned and discouraged man as he wrote this. He saw unlimited technological power as a frightening development and he had little faith in the ability of America or humankind in general to exhibit self-discipline in the use of such power.

It's a very thought-provoking book, and extremely relevant to today's world even 35 years after publication.

Bruce Catton was born in 1899 in Bezonia, Mich., a town of about 300 people then and now. Catton tells a lot about lumbering, tho he himself had little to do with lumbering. He graduated from Bezonia Academy in 1916, there being 11 in his class. The Academy closed in 1918. The book ends when Catton goes to college. It is a pleasant book to read, since Catton is a fine writer. But Jimmy Carter's book on his rural childhood I thought a more fetching read.

I never met Bruce Catton, but I corresponded briefly with him in the mid-1970's. The same qualities that marked him as a correspondent--courtesy, graciousness, and gentle humor--illuminate this lovely memoir of a great historian.

Catton grew up in Benzonia, Michigan, "a city upon a hill," as he correctly notes, very close to Lake Michigan, where the old certitudes held seemingly invincible sway over virtually every aspect of one's daily life. Catton's father was the superintendent of Benzonia Academy, whose main building is now Benzonia's library.

The memoir, which recalls the years between the author's birth and his graduation from high school, is a series of reflections on what it was like to be a boy just as Michigan's logging era was drawing to a close, when sleepy Benzonia, along with the rest of the nation, was about to drift into the maw of the violent twentieth century. Catton writes of boyhood ambitions and boyish pranks, of the rich history that made Michigan's Lower Peninsula what it was, and especially of the Civil War veterans whose stories would later prompt Catton to devote years of his life to recording the history of that great conflict in rich anecdotal detail.

Though unabashedly nostalgic, "Waiting for the Morning Train" is neither saccharine nor bitter. Catton was far too experienced a writer and historian to let his emotions get the better of him. This is, nonetheless, a rich and moving memoir of a time which, though it may seem virtually within reach, we will never see again.

I recommend this book highly as a gift for yourself and, perhaps, for that reflective friend who can appreciate personal history told with universal appeal. Bruce Catton was, quite simply, one of the greatest writers and historians this country has produced, and in many ways this deceptively modest little volume represents the zenith of his literary achievement.

I was so sad to hear of the death of this gentleman last year. I read this book, and his earlier books too. wrt:/'That they may face the rising sun', I agree with other reviews that now't happens in this book that you could recount to anyone, but the prose, the mood, etc makes it one of my favourites. Life affirming, gentle, genuine. Being irish myself I think I can relate to that disappearing world of decent, friendly humble and genuine people who built our country, like my own parents. For me, this book was an absolute joy to read, and profoundly moving, although I don't know why. It's on my favourites list, but once again I was genuinely gutted that the author passed on suddenly last year. May you rest with the angels Mr McGahern.

As someone who was growing up in rural Ireland in the same period the novel is set I keep getting this feeling that McGahern was there with me at the time. Each carachter contains traits and elements of people I personally knew.Joe and Kate are left to remamin in the background as though they are the stage on which the others play . If you really want to know what life is like, and was like 10-20 years ago in rural Ireland this is the book. As someone who normally does not like novels without a fast moving plot or excitement I was amazed at how I was so drawn into the simple little plots. If you want to understand how people in rural Ireland think... this is the one... What Tarry Flynn was to its era this is to ours.

First the book, then the author.
this book is a description of ordinary, Irish rural life, set in the 1980s. There is very little by way of plot, it reflects the effect of the changing seasons on rural life and is interspersed with random events that do not form `plot points' but more resemble the happenings in real life. The beautiful descriptions of the changing face of the countryside, through the seasons, is the main draw of the book for me (but what is sedge?). The characters range from the strange yet endearing to the the hostile and repulsive. I think that both the central characters - Joe and Kate, and some of the more peripheral characters lack depth and credibility. Joe and Kate, are the perfect couple, accepting, living the rural `good life', having withdrawn from the sophisticated urban lifestyle.
The book itself has a curious emptiness, a passage describes Joe as believing his current contentment and absence of pain is what he will remember as happiness in the future, if and when, things take a turn for the worse. With the
core emptiness, comes a foreboding about the future. The character best drawn, in my view, in a simpleton - Bill Evans - who calls to Joe and Kate each day on his way to the well. Bill lives in the eternal present, neither reflective nor judgemental. I believe he is the metaphor for the book as a whole.

John MaGahern, is the last of the Greats. His early work, featuring clear eyed
descriptions of the abuses which were a hidden part of Irish life, were banned
in Ireland in the 1950s. Such was the power of the banning that MaGahern lost his teaching job and spent many years in hardship. His early work has been described (in retrospect) as the clarion call to honesty in the face of the unacceptable, which is the basic function of literature (think Solzhenitsyn).
Through the ordeal of his life - relative poverty, official rejection - he has maintained
a lack of bitterness towards official Ireland (church and state) which can either be
regarded as the product of brain-washing or magnanimity of a Mandela. This book has been described as his attempt to indicate how Irish society may work out a
reconciliation between its tradition and its reality, i.e. the traumas of modernisation and the revelation of official corruption have dethroned officially-defined church and state, and yet nothing has replaced the need for community spirituality. It has been said that this book is MaGahern's proposal in this regard.

This wonderful book is a delicate and honest snapshot of rural Irish community life on the brink of extinction. The young have moved on and the countryside is home to the ageing remnants of a people that survived hardship and poverty only to find that the modern world has no place for them. This is not a bitter book, but rather a requiem for a way of life that McGahern knew intimately. His prose style is understated and beautifully lyrical and its apparent lack of plot perfectly catches the circular nature of life. A haunting and beautiful read, I loved it.

I was given this book as a present and not sure what to expect. As I read it I could relate to many of the images and idiosyncracies of the people. I initially was disappointed with the book but as I reflected on it, I thought in fact that I was the problem and not the book. In this age of fast living and hustle and bustle, this book is a superb gentle reminder of easy living and what life is all about. It captures rural living exactly as it is and was many years ago, and all in all an enjoyable reflective read. Life will not pass you by reading it.

. . .of an outstanding series.

In "Advise and Consent", Allen Drury brought us into the inner workings of the US Senate. In "A Shade of Difference" he brought us into the inner workings of the United Nations. He continued his excellent "Advise and Consent" series with a book that touched upon the overwhelming power of the media to form and force public opinion, and did so in a context (that of a violently divided Presidential nominating convention) which resonates true today.

When Mr. Drury was writing, his main fear was the communist threat. His books need to be read and understood in that context. However, don't think for a moment that his books are not timely today. Take a look at the political and journalistic situation surrounding the 2000 Presidential election, and one can easily see how insightful Mr. Drury was. (20 years in the newspaper business did him some good!)

I'm sorry that we have lost Mr. Drury -- I would have enjoyed his take on recent events in the US.

If you can't understand why conservatives still complain about the liberal media in this day of talk radio and cable news shows, read this. Published in 1966, this is a great characterization of the way the mainstream media--primarily the major tv networks and newspapers--attempted to set the parameters of acceptable political opinion in America at the time. And why many conservatives believe that, for those two news sources at least, not much has changed.

It's nothing short of uncanny how this political novel written from December 1964 to December 1965 anticipates the violence and passions of the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. Here the scene is the Cow Palace in San Francisco (Daly City, actually), where the party in power is trying to renominate its current President, whom we already know from the two earlier books in the series. The first one, Advise and Consent, is one of the great political novels, perhaps the greatest one of all even, while the second, A Shade of Difference, is readable but tedious. This one, which shares most of the same characters of the first two books is nearly as good as Advise and Consent and is just as unput-downable.

One of the great strengths of Advice and Consent and, I think, the reason for the fascination that it holds on the reader, is that the author appeared to be deeply ambivalent about Robert Leffingwell, the man nominated to be Secretary of State. For 100 pages he shows the reader just why he *should* be accepted by the Senate. Then new information comes out and there are 100 pages of why of he *shouldn't* be confirmed. Then *more* information comes out and our viewpoint shifts yet again. In other words, Leffingwell was mostly an attractive character but with some very human character flaws. Right up to the very end the reader genuinely doesn't know whether he should be confirmed or not. The other main characters in the book were similarly depicted (except of, course, for the despicable Senator Fred Van Ackerman).

In A Shade of Difference Drury lost his compassionate and understanding viewpoint and drew his characters in much clearer black and white tones. There were good guys and bad guys and in spite of the book's title there really weren't many shades in their characters. They were all good or all bad.

Here in the third book Drury to some degree recaptures the skill and humanity he brought to Advise and Consent. Robert Leffingwell is back as a semi-major character and this time he seems to have moved out of Drury's disfavor into a far more positive role. And one of the other major characters of the book, the Governor of California, who first seeks his party's Vice-Presidential nomination, and then the Presidency itself, is also depicted in first quite favorable terms that then gradually shade off to gray. It is a believable portrait of a basically good and decent man who is, nevertheless, an overly ambitious politician.

The other main strength of the book is the narrative tension that Drury creates as he depicts the struggle for the nominations. There is genuine tension here, because it's a real struggle for real goals, just as it was in Advise and Consent. And just as it was *not* in the second book, in which the various votes and rollcalls at the United Nations were clearly contrived and struggled to capture the reader's interest.

The *real* problem with this book, and why it's only a 4-star book instead of a 5-star, is the totally unrealistic hatchetjob Drury does on the liberal media. I myself am fairly moderate in my politics, and in the days in which Drury wrote (and was depicting), I was a Kennedy Democrat-Rockefeller Republican. I *lived* through those years, and I can tell you that the liberal media absolutely did not run things the way Drury insists in this book that they do. Here he has invented a Walter Lippmann-type parody of a newspaperman-philosopher named Walter Dobius who is known as Walter Wonderful and who, because of his political column in 436 newspapers, is the quasi-dictator of the liberal movement, which, according to Drury, is nearly every newspaper, magazine, and television chain in America. Satire is fine, and in the hands of a capable satirist wonderfully illuminating. But in the hands of Allen Drury it is heavy, tedious, repetitive, and totally unrealistic.

One question that Drury skirts is the key one: If Dobius and his ubiquitous allies are *so* powerful, then why aren't the President and all the Congress precisely the ones they want? If they are so united in picking their candidates and shoving them down the throats of the ignorant American electorate, then why isn't the world being run to suit their tastes?

The answer, of course, is that Dobius et al are clearly exaggerated far past any pretense at realism. As the years passed, Drury evidently became more and more obsessively anti-Communist (nothing wrong there, I was then and am now anti-Communist also), to the point where anyone short of being a 1964 Barry Goldwater Bomb-'em-back-to-the-Stone-Ages type was pretty close to being a traitor to his country. And this is clearly exactly what all of the media types in this book are portrayed to be.

But if you can suspend your disbelief, or maybe just irritation, about Drury's heavy-handedness and just stick with the narrative, I think you'll find the book a real page-turner.

One other caveat that makes you wonder just what Drury was smoking while he wrote this book. One of the main characters and troublemakers of the second book, the Panamanian Ambassador to the United Nations, is also the brother-in-law of the California Governor who is running for President. In this book he suddenly vanishes to Panama and leads a revolution to throw the United States out of the Canal Zone. A physical, violent revolution, not just one of words. Drury doesn't tell us whether the rebels actually seize the Canal or not, but he tells us that American troops are killed and that our planes are shot down. He also tells us that the rebel leader leads this revolt from the veranda of his well-known, enormous planation, a sort of Panamanian version of Mount Vernon. And yet the United States, which has gone to actual *war* in Panama to put down this rebellion, is unable, or unwilling, to send a squadron of bombers, or even a plane full of Green Berets, to kill or capture this character?

And his brother-in-law, the Governor of California, with this war going on, is *still* able to run for the Presidenial nomination and come within a handful of votes of being chosen?

You tell me: Is Drury kidding?

At first glance one might look at this tale of a bitterly divided political convention centered around America's Cold War commitment in a Third World country, and the ensuing violence as a conservative's reaction to the 1968 Democratic Convention. But what makes this novel so remarkable is that it was written nearly two years *before* the spectacle of Chicago in 1968. Drury's blatant political conservatism has often caused his works to be sadly overlooked for their prescience and insights into American society given the prevailing bias of critics, but "Capable Of Honor", like the rest of the "Advise And Consent" is a masterpiece of political novels.

The sequence "De Jure Belli ac Pacis" ("of the laws of war and peace": the title of a work by Hugo Grotius) in this volume is one of the finest things Hill has written: an elegy which branches between the private and the public voice, accusing the "high-minded / base-metal forgers of this common Europe, / community of parody" at the same time as it laments the loss of what "[w]e might have kept" of the more humble, inhibited high-mindedness of the poem's dedicatee, Hans-Bernd von Haeften (a member of the Kreisau circle of conspirators against Hitler).

The poem asks whether the "witness" of those who stood not only against Hitler but against the politics of Hitlerism ("wild reasons of the state", as Hill's poem on Bonhoeffer has it) is safe in Europe's keeping, when its tributes to the murdered conspirators "compound with Cicero's maxims, Schiller's chant" (Beethoven's Ode to Joy, presumably) the silencing of von Haeften's "silenced verities". More ominously, it speaks of the "new depths of invention" to which the Nazis sank in the torture and execution of members of the Kreisau circle, suggesting that the bestiality of the SS is another part of the disavowed inheritence of modern Europe. The interrogators played records of children singing folk music to drown out the screams of their captives; does not our culture also have recourse to "children's / songs to mask torture" (cf Benigni's _La Vita e' Bella_)?

Not all of _Canaan_ is as good as this. Hill's "Psalms of Assize", for instance, read like marginalia on marginalia, simultaneously clenched and lyrical: the "singable remainder" of a calcinated theology, perhaps, but too brittle to last in the reader's imagination. But much of the volume is more than worth sticking with. The poems are more often than not about the disappearance of their own referents - "the names / and what they have about them dark to dark" ("Sobieski's Shield") - but this is the very opposite of a willed obscurity: Hill's language calls after lost things into the darkness into which they have fallen, and sometimes manages to recover "lost footage, / achieve too late prescient telegraphy" (another name for 20/20 hindsight?). Perhaps this marks Hill ineradicably as a grumpy old modernist: whilst other poets, other poetics, have devoted themselves to exploring and even celebrating the contingency of language and meaning, _Canaan_ remains anachronistically committed to an elegiac mode. But in fact its particular glory is that it shows what the elegy can be and go on being even amid a society and culture besotted with the evanescent and continually on the make, yet afflicted with a deep and inscrutable nostalgia for a loss it has little way of knowing how to confront.

I'm a great fan of Hill's work--the Mercian Hymns, for instance--and of the Blakean early poetry, but this book, I think, is Geoffrey Hill at his worst. I say he is at his worst, not because of the allusions and the lack of notes that allow us inside the particular cloister he inhabits (the culture allows us to uncover such things), but because he fails the first obligation of all poets, and that is to the mother tongue. We do not find the old burly force of Hill at his best, but instead encounter effete language, lost in a perfumed cloud of erudition. Lacking memorable language, we search for mastery of poetic form, but even that is denied us. Hill sticks to a kind of slack, unrhymed counting of syllables, and we are all the worst for it. Go back, Geoffrey Hill, to the vernacular. Tell us more about that grandmother who made nails for a living, and leave the dons to their obscurity, and the priests to find God among the worm-casings and the dust. Look at the best of R.S. Thomas, if you need to see again. Look again, for God's sake, at William Blake before you sit down with your editor at Penguin.

Despite the extreme difficulty of these award-winning poems--difficulty for which Geoffrey Hill, considered by some to be England's greatest
living poet, is notorious--I like them very much. And there I find myself hoist on my own petard, having frequently raged against the
obscurantism of authors like James Joyce, but now endorsing a poet who is nearly as impenetrable at times. So, first, let me acknowledge that
I am willing to forgive more from Mr. Hill because I favor his dark moral/religious/political take on modern England, than I would be from
someone who was just being obscure for obscurity's sake, say Joyce or Pynchon. Second, I do think we, justifiably, tend to give poets more
leeway than novelists; after all, by the very effort they have to put in to achieving a chiseled brevity they earn some right to ask a little more
effort of us readers. The nearly forty poems here do not fill even eighty pages, so if you have to read them once or twice, or ten times, it
doesn't seem as onerous a task as trudging through hundreds of densely printed pages of a novel.

Mr. Hill's themes and methods are signaled early on, in the title of the collection and in the epigraph :

...So ye children of Israel did wickedly in the
sight of the Lord, & forgate the Lord their God,
& serued Baalim, and Asheroth ... Yea, they
offred their sonnes, and their daughters vnto
diuels, And shed innocent blood, euen the blood
of their soones, and of their daughters, whome
they offred vnto the idols of Canaan, and the
land they defiled with blood. Thus were they
steined with their owne inuentions ... o
Canaan, the land of the Philistims, I wil euen
destroy thee without an inhabitant.

Judges 3:7; Psalm 106: 37-9; Zephaniah 2:5
(from the Geneva Bible of 1560)

The Geneva Bible of 1560? Okay, so he's delving back into the past, to a vibrant and impassioned form of ruggedly fundamentalist
Protestantism and a Bible written by Brits in exile (note that Professor Hill himself is and has been at Boston University); comparing modern
England to ancient Canaan, and casting himself in the role of doomsayer. The reader has been warned.

Here's an example of one of the more accessible pieces :

DARK-LAND

Wherein Wesley stood
up from his father's grave,
summoned familiar dust
for strange salvation:

whereto England rous'd,
ignorant, her inane
Midas-like hunger: smoke
engrossed, cloud-encumbered,

a spectral people
raking among the ash;
its freedom a lost haul
of entailed riches.

I've no idea who Wesley and his father are, though I assume it's John Wesley (1703-91), the founder of Methodism, but can tell you that this
bleak vision taps into three of Mr. Hill's favorite themes : of England as having become excessively materialistic, even hedonistic; of
hard-won British liberty as a thing of the past; and of post-War Europe as an ash heap. That much I think I follow.

Or consider just two of the images from a poem, most of which I didn't understand, DE JURE BELLI AC PACIS, which is written in memory
of Hans-Bernd von Haeften, who plotted against murder and was executed in 1944. The first :

Could none predict these haughty degradations
as now your high-strung
martyred resistance serves
to consecrate the liberties of Maastricht.

followed later by :

To the high-minded
base-metal forgers of this common Europe,
community of parody, you stand ec-
centric as a prophet.

Even without being able to follow every elusive allusion in the poem, and without knowing anything of von Haeften, you can easily discern
the message that Mr. Hill is contemptuous of the new European Union, based solely on economic integration, with no thought given to the
unlikelihood of ever turning these disparate nations into a genuine community, and little regard given to the surrender of sovereignty and
freedom it will require.

Even if you are unmoved by the specter of England subjugating itself to French and German bureaucrats and indifferent to the economism of
modern British society, you may have trouble figuring out why Geoffrey Hill sounds so angry, so much at times like an Old Testament
prophet. But think on this quote from Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor :

It does seem in our countries in Britain today, especially in England and Wales, that Christianity, as a sort of backdrop to people's lives
and moral decisions - and to the Government, the social life of the country - has now almost been vanquished.

or this one from Dr. George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury :

A tacit atheism prevails. Death is assumed to be the end of life, bleak though that thought is. If we need hope to clutch to our breast at all
it will be in such greatly scaled down forms, such as our longings for family happiness, the next holiday or personal fulfilment. Our
concentration on the here and now renders thoughts of eternity irrelevant.

All of which brings us back to the Biblical Canaan, where the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and so were sold into slavery. Simply
as a literary matter, Geoffrey Hill's poems here are a powerful evocation of the idea that something similar is happening now to England and
the British people, that they have become a post-Christian and demoralized society. And if, like me, you agree with the specific charges he
levels here, however oblique the terms in which he couches them, then you'll like the book very much and be honored to put some effort into
reading it and wrestling with his meanings.

GRADE : A-

The sequence "De Jure Belli ac Pacis" ("of the laws of war and peace": the title of a work by Hugo Grotius) in this volume is one of the finest things Hill has written: an elegy which branches between the private and the public voice, accusing the "high-minded / base-metal forgers of this common Europe, / community of parody" at the same time as it laments the loss of what "[w]e might have kept" of the more humble, inhibited high-mindedness of the poem's dedicatee, Hans-Bernd von Haeften (a member of the Kreisau circle of conspirators against Hitler).

The poem asks whether the "witness" of those who stood not only against Hitler but against the politics of Hitlerism ("wild reasons of the state", as Hill's poem on Bonhoeffer has it) is safe in Europe's keeping, when its tributes to the murdered conspirators "compound with Cicero's maxims, Schiller's chant" (Beethoven's Ode to Joy, presumably) the silencing of von Haeften's "silenced verities". More ominously, it speaks of the "new depths of invention" to which the Nazis sank in the torture and execution of members of the Kreisau circle, suggesting that the bestiality of the SS is another part of the disavowed inheritence of modern Europe. The interrogators played records of children singing folk music to drown out the screams of their captives; does not our culture also have recourse to "children's / songs to mask torture" (cf Benigni's _La Vita e' Bella_)?

Not all of _Canaan_ is as good as this. Hill's "Psalms of Assize", for instance, read like marginalia on marginalia, simultaneously clenched and lyrical: the "singable remainder" of a calcinated theology, perhaps, but too brittle to last in the reader's imagination. But much of the volume is more than worth sticking with. The poems are more often than not about the disappearance of their own referents - "the names / and what they have about them dark to dark" ("Sobieski's Shield") - but this is the very opposite of a willed obscurity: Hill's language calls after lost things into the darkness into which they have fallen, and sometimes manages to recover "lost footage, / achieve too late prescient telegraphy" (another name for 20/20 hindsight?). Perhaps this marks Hill ineradicably as a grumpy old modernist: whilst other poets, other poetics, have devoted themselves to exploring and even celebrating the contingency of language and meaning, _Canaan_ remains anachronistically committed to an elegiac mode. But in fact its particular glory is that it shows what the elegy can be and go on being even amid a society and culture besotted with the evanescent and continually on the make, yet afflicted with a deep and inscrutable nostalgia for a loss it has little way of knowing how to confront.

George Plimpton, an accomplished writer and a fine raconteur, has gathered in this book all of his writings that he considered to be his best and each story is superb. His recounting of taking Marianne Moore to the baseball game is one of the most finely-crafted portraits of both Moore and Plimpton that I have had the pleasure of reading. Interestingly enough, the second account of meeting with Marianne is not quite as jewel-like. If you read only one item in the book, I recommend "Music: An Address at a New York Philharmonic Lunch," It paints some hilarious images in my mind that even when I've stopped crying from laughing so hard only two hours later I'd think of some image again and start laughing. Thank you, George Plimpton and Leonard Bernstein for the "Winnipeg Effect".

I rank Plimpton as a top five non-fiction writer of the last half century. Unlike a considerable number of these new age "creative non-fiction" writers, his ego is not all over the page nor did he have to stretch to introduce a literary flair to his prose. Plimption can make seemingly boring subjects such as bird counting contests or fireworks museums endlessly fascinating. He also does ample justice to racy subjects such as swinger conventions and his stay at the playboy mansion.

Plimpton's writing is not pretentious and he always shows considerable respect and humor towards his subjects. A great writer and a great man.

Plimpton's writings tend to be scattered in numerous different and dissimilar publications, thus making an anthology like this particularly useful.

Plimpton is perhaps best known for his "participatory journalism," where he writes about his amateur forays into professional worlds, mostly of an athletic nature. But his appeal would be minimal if there were not a lot more to his writing than just this one gimmick.

Certainly he handles that particular schtick very well. Sometimes he proves reasonably competent as the "amateur professional," and sometimes things deteriorate into what Hemingway called "the dark side of the moon of Walter Mitty," but at all times his writing is crisp and insightful. He is decidedly not an amateur when it comes to his powers of observation, interpretation, and articulation.

Take, for instance, his discovery that playing in a symphony orchestra is inherently more stressful than participating in professional sports in at least one important respect, namely that in sports, mistakes and failures-as much as they might make the athlete feel momentarily embarrassed, as much as they might cause the coach to go into a tirade, and as much as they might cause fans to boo and criticize-are a part of the game. Every athlete frequently throws incompletions, misses free throws, strikes out, etc. The superstars are those who fail slightly less often than others. But mess up just once playing in a symphony for a perfectionist conductor like Leonard Bernstein and you'll find out pretty quickly that the level of tolerance for errors in that field is quite different indeed. The book is full of interesting insights like this.

But I found that the other writings, on average, held my interest at least as well as the "amateur professional" participatory writings. There were pieces that, based on the subject matter, I might have guessed would be among the least interesting to me, that instead turned out to be among my favorites. Those pleasant surprises included two pieces about family and children-one about JFK playing with daughter Caroline on the beach in 1962, and one about Plimpton's experience of taking his own daughter to see his alma mater Harvard's classic rivalry football game against Yale. Also intriguing was a piece on poet Marianne Moore that introduced the reader to her unconventional mental world by, among other things, revealing the sorts of things she notices at sporting events. I could cite several other examples.

I do have some minor quibbles with how the book is organized. The pieces are not consistently identified in terms of when the events in question occurred, when the piece itself originally appeared in print, in what publication it was originally published, whether the version of the piece in the book is the same as the original or has been altered, etc. Sometimes this type of information is stated, sometimes it can be inferred, and sometimes not even that. Some of the pieces have separate introductions; some do not. Overall, I would have appreciated a little more clarity and a little more background information.

But there is far more to like than dislike about this book, many gems amongst the three dozen or so selections. It's a fine book for the sports fan with some intellect and depth, but it deserves a wider audience than just sports fans. I'd rate it no worse than a high 3 or low 4.

"Artists are notorously circumspect about the origins of their work. It is difficult enough to describe to oneself the mysterious process by which a poem or painting comes into existence, let alone to an apprentice or public audience. How fortunate we are, then, to have John Poling's account of painting with Georgia O'Keeffe. Here is a portrait of an aging artist discovering ways to create even after she had lost her sight. Painting, she said, is "like the thread that runs through ..all other things that make one's life." And for one magical season John Poling helped her to find that thread again".

Christopher Merrill, College of the Holy Cross; Book Review Editor, EL PALACIO.

I've not read everything about O'Keeffe but Poling's easy read, page-turning narrative certainly gives perspective to this remarkable lady. His very personal association, that of "servant", student, errand boy, you name it, gives a warmth to her that has not always been revealed. Clearly, the author's good sense of humor, his openness with her and the quick retorts to her candid, frank observations cannot help but bring smiles to readers. The chronology here is a very nice contribution to the history of Georgia O'Keeffe. Douglas C. Billian, Publisher, ART & ANTIQUES

A fascinating story of the intertwining of art and life, of a remakable woman, of his painting with her for a season and finding his own life transformed...he offers helpful insights into O'Keeffe's aesthetic world and beautifully evokes the personal inspiration he found in O'Keeffe's life and work.

John J. Compton Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, Vanderbilt University.

Obviously, one of my first priorities, when I went to interview John Poling, was to try and determine whether he was seeking some kind of personal gain by going public with his story. We spent, I would guess, at least 10 or 12 hours, in a series of meetings. I backtracked and criss-crossed over the facts again and again, and he remained absolutely consistent, down to the smallest detail. By the end, I believed that his motive was one of ethics, and nothing more.

I found it quite a beautiful story--the relationship between this young maintenance man and the aging artist. I enjoyed the writing.

Hope Aldrich, Staff writer and later Publisher of the SANTA FE REPORTER.

It's hard to imagine anyone who admires Georgia O'Keeffe's art(and who doesn't)not being fascinated by these recollections of the philosopher/handyman who helped paint both her house and her canvases. John Poling reveals insights into the character of the artist herself and of Juan Hamilton, her controversial agent/companion.

Tony Hillerman

There is no end to books about O'Keeffe and to the interest in her life and work. This book, howver, has an unusual story to tell. O'Keeffe who had stopped painting in 1971 because of loss of most of her vision never lost her desire to paint. In 1975 she decided to do something about it by creating new paintings.In order to do this she had to use someone else to paint her ideas on the canvass but under her direction. John Poling was a young man doing odd jobs for O'Keeffe when he was called upon to be a substitute artist. The ethical questions that arose when O'Keeffe passed those works off as her own original work caused a furor when a local newspaper published the story. Nearly 25 years later,Poling tells his side of the story. Whatever readers may decide about the ethics,this book gives a first hand look at O'Keeffe's daily life in her later years. It also offers additional insight into the role of Juan Hamilton in her life. The original newspaper articles that broke the story in 1980 are reproduced in two appendices. There is a bibliography and an index. There a photographs of O'Keeffe and related subject matter. There are no photos of the paintings because Poling was denied permission to use them.Now a professor at St. Olaf College, Poling still regards O'Keeffe as a mentor and an importnt influence in his life.

Reviewed in ENCHANTMENT,Book Chat with Marcia, Mutt, Oct. 1999 (120,000 circulation)

I found this book a fascinating confluence of ideas and life themes that allow O'Keeffe fans insights into her personal life and her approach towards artistic expression -- as a well as the real-life story of a young man's coming of age in search of his place in this universe.

It is filled with observations and insights that allow the reader to consider what it would be like to work with one of Americas' greatest artists - and to appreciate the solitary and disciplined life-style that she led -- especially in her final years.

I also found this story to be very sad yet poignant. O'Keeffe was obviously manipulated by her personal affairs manager, Juan Hamilton, and apparently fearful of his reaction to the close relationship that blossomed between Mr. Poling and Ms. O'Keeffe one summer while he was away in New York City.

I have also know the author as a personal friend since childhood and find this book to be true to his nature as an individual - insightful and honest. I would recommend it highly!

Like many other readers of Joyce, I considered Trieste to be merely "anywhere but Dublin" -- i.e., it was significant to the author only because it was where he began his self-imposed exile from Ireland. In his writings, I felt, Joyce never really left Dublin, and he could as well have been in Mombasa or Ulan Bator for all the effect that his city of residence had on his work. So this book was a revelation to me: although Joyce originally landed in Trieste by happenstance, he quickly grew to feel at home there, and the city provided a cosmopolitan, ethnically diverse, and culturally rich environment in which his art grew to maturity.

McCourt provides ample and convincing evidence of the degree to which Joyce's experiences in Trieste influenced his most important works, from the Triestine puns in "Finnegans Wake" to the main characters of "Ulysses," and how productive he was as a writer during his years there. What I found especially fascinating were the details McCourt unearthed about the rest of Joyce's life: in his perennially unsuccessful pursuit of financial stability, he was (inter alia) a partner in a cinema, a bank clerk, and a would-be exporter of Irish woolens; his domestic life was continually in uproar (Nora lacked his facility at learning languages, and was marooned at home with a series of babies and, from time to time, Joyce's transplanted siblings); but he was a good English teacher, and, through his private tutoring, he became acquainted with many financially and intellectually influential members of Triestine society. (The influence went both ways: the writer/businessman Ettore Schmidt was on the verge of giving up his literary ambitions when Joyce convinced him not to, and he went on to write several classic novels under his pen name, Italo Svevo.)

This book was originally a doctoral dissertation, and it suffers at times from the graduate-student tendency to include Absolutely Every Detail relevant to one's subject (I sympathize: been there, done that). But, in general, it's readable, clearly written, well organized, and, although the basic structure is chronological, the author gives each chapter enough of a thematic focus to make it more than a mere recitation of dates and events. I found the book entertaining as well as informative, and I feel it's a valuable resource for anyone interested in Joyce or, for that matter, in early 20th century European literary history.

John McCourt's The Years Of Bloom: James Joyce In Trieste, 1904-1920 is a remarkable and original contribution to Joycean studies. McCourt was able to acquire information never before published about Joyce's activities in the years he resided in Trieste, and which influenced his career as one of the truly great writers in the English language. Superbly researched, accessibly written, thoroughly documented, and impressively presented, The Years Of Bloom is a major work of outstanding scholarship and a welcome, enduring, seminal contribution which will be part of every college and university reading list and reference collections on the life and writings of James Joyce.

Yes this is the book that the recent movie was based on. No I have not seen the movie. The author is a journalist, and it shows. The depth of research and detail in this book is amazing. It outlines in many layers the diamond industry, its history, and its relation to West Africa. I had no idea what to expect from the book, and was shocked to learn the horrid details and atrocities that have been occurring for decades there. Obviously, like the bumper sticker says, "if you are not appalled, you are not paying attention."

The Western world has no idea what people are suffering for this made up commodity industry. Campbell shows how elite people literally fabricate the demand for diamonds, and its price points. Everyone seems to believe that diamonds are the most precious thing you can give a loved one. Why is that? Have you ever wondered? Why is it better than any other gem or gift? The answers are very interesting, and are laid out in this book.

When you learn the origins of many diamonds, the process they go through and the conditions of the people who mine them, you may want to return it. I know I do. It made me sick. We live in quite a bubble about so many things. I am glad that someone is bringing a conscience to the public about horrible human rights situations like these. The sad thing is that it also makes you wonder why countries like our own are just ignoring it. If we can justify attacking other countries for made up reasons, why can't we take on true issues that are so well documented? It is all politics while people die.

This book is one of the best written books I have read in a long time. Campbell's writing style is intelligent, vivid, and picturesque. His depth of research and personal involvement in making this book is astonishing. I appreciate descriptions that make me feel like I am actually with the writer. Such is the case with Blood Diamonds. An excellent read if you can handle its gruesome reality and deep network of connections to follow.

I GOT THIS BOOK AS A GIFT ONLY TO HEAR FROM THE PERSON I GAVE IT TO THAT THE BOOK WAS MISSING PAGES!?! IT WASN'T THAT THE BOOK HAD PAGES TORN OUT, JUST THAT IT WAS PUT TOGETHER WRONG, THE SAME CHAPTER WAS IN THE BOOK 3 TIMES, IT SKIPPED FROM PAGE 18 TO PAGE 30, RESULTING IN A BOOK THAT MAKES NO SENSE!!?!?! BEWARE OF BUYING!!! MAKE SURE YOU CAN EXCHANGE IT FOR A NEW ONE IF THIS HAPPENS TO YOU!!

Blood Diamonds was a good book. I wanted to read it before seeing the movie on HBO. Very well written.

The author is trying to sensationalize the bloodshed that resulted from the diamond trade in Africa. His allegations that the smugglers or the people who buy the product as jewelry are somehow culpable is unsubstantiated. In any other part of the world, such resources would've been a stabilizing factor that enriched the nation economically, bringing jobs, added tax revenues, better schools, etc. This is really a book about the inability of a populace to police itself and the author's focus on the "guilt" of the West is just bullcrap. The one chapter on Al Qaeda and the diamond trade was interesting but short on concrete facts. This is lousy journalism.

Mr. Campbell (no relation) has an engaging style and has written an informative, though skewed, account of the forces at play in the Sierra Leone tragedy. He skillfully describes how the greed for diamond sale revenue enabled this country to descend into chaos and unspeakable horror. However, he attempts to make this a Western guilt trip by emphasizing how willing market players are to look the other way, thus absolving themselves of any culpability for the bloodbath. Campbell builds on a thin reed indeed, and fails to make analogies with other resources from other strife ridden African countries, such as Angola and its oil, that would more accurately demonstrate how free markets work in an amoral, rather than immoral, environment. I don't see Campbell advocating boycotting Angolan oil because of the atrocities being committed in that conflict. Nor should he, because those transactions occur outside the frame work of a nation's internal affairs, no matter how unjust or cruel those may be. The fact is, African countries have been pursuing the path of self destruction for 5 decades now with no other incentive than for one ethnic or ideological group attempting to acquire wealth and power at the expense of the nation. Attempts to lay this at the West's feet are misguided, disingenuous and unhelpful on many levels, but especially for the average African themselves. While I recommend Campbell's readable volume for its conciseness and wit, please do not limit yourself in seeing other dimensions to this, especially the corruption of ECOWAS and its military mission as well as the ethnic jealousy involved between natives and the economically dominant Lebanese.

This is a true page turner. Ms. Llywelyn keeps us interested from the very first page. Her historical novals are always well written and exciting. The story line in Grania is interesting and plausible. It felt like I really knew the characters. Grania's strength, courage, forward thinking and willingness to change with the times are to be admired. The history helped me see where the contention was between the Irish and English. I could not put this book down. I highly recommend this book.

Grania: She-King of the Irish Seas
Great little history lesson that's not a history lesson. In spite of the cheesy title, this book is worth the read.

I don't actually have a lot of words to describe how much I enjoyed this book. It has certainly inspired me to read more Llywelyn. Grania comes off the pages of this book and has been brought back to life in an exciting and terrific way.

What a piece of garbage! I was mortified to learn of the vile sexually charged writing in this book after I gave it to a young lady as a gift. This kind of writing is completely unneccessary and ought to bring shame to the author.

I've always been fascinated by the story of Grace O'Malley (sp) the Pirate Queen. Or Granuille. (The book actually covers the different names and spellings but I have forgotten them already). I love anything by Morgan Llewelyn. I wasn't disappointed. It's a well-written and intriguing tale of a fascinating life. It's entertaining, interesting, and seems historically accurate. Llywelyn's writing brings her to life. If you like historical novels, if you are fascinated by Irish history, you will like this book.