Pittsburgh Books

I very rarely stop reading a book in the middle, but this one gives you little reason to see it through. The characers are so poorly developed that each time I picked up the book, I would totally forget what was happening, and have to read two pages back. Don't waste your money. If you like the series, go to the library.

In this 5th book in the Leigh Koslow mystery series, Leigh once again finds herself in the midst of a murder mystery. At first, it appears that a wealthy eccentric cat lover has died in a plane crash and has left a rather bizarre will. Leigh's father, a respected vet, has been named to be one of the cat's caretakers, and has been granted a rather large retainer. However, he quickly starts receiving threats at his clinic, and his overly curious daughter jumps in to help stop the threats. Also being investigated by Leigh is the fact that mentioned in the will is a missing/unknown heir that stands to inherit big if he/she comes forward within 5 years. Leigh sets out to solve the mystery, and stumbles on another dead body in the process. This is a delightful mystery with many twists.

I enjoyed the latest book in the series about Leigh Koslow Harmon. Most of the time, I can solve the case before I am finished reading the book, but in this case, I was clueless up to the point that Leigh solved the case. I would recommend reading this book even if you had not read any of the four previous books in the series.

The first book in the series is "Never Buried". Enjoy!

I was pleased to see this series improve a bit with the last installment. However, this one just spirals back down.

I could figure out no reason for Leigh to be as involved in this case as she was, and to continue her "investigation" for as long as she did. She didn't know these people, she wasn't involved in any way (other than the remote connection of her father being named to care for the cats in the will), and it made no sense that she would continue to stick her nose into other peoples' business and put herself in danger...and even less sense that they'd allow it by continuing to answer her questions and give her information.

Characterization has always been this author's low point, and she's done nothing to improve that. Earlier in the series, I was put off by how quickly Leigh went from seeing Warren as her old college buddy to being in love with him and then seeing them married by the next book. This installment did the same thing with whether or not she was pregnant (after the fourth time she got dizzy, I really didn't care anymore). I read series because I like feeling like I know the characters and watching them go through all the important things in their lives. In this series, everything happens "off-camera" -- Leigh's falling in love with Warren, their wedding, their house purchase and attempts to have a baby. By the next installment, I figure she'll have three kids already in middle school and Warren will be President of the United States.

I was also disturbed by the author's choice to have Leigh keep pestering her best friend's mother, who's confined to an assisted living facility with Alzheimer's. Was this really necessary?

Leigh is unlikeable, does stupid things, seems to have no purpose or directions in her life, and there's nothing that makes her stand out or gives her reason to be involved in the cases she is. Warren and Maura dislike her sticking her nose into other peoples' business and discourage her all the time, but neither hesitates to tag along when she interferes or continues to involve herself in things that don't concern her. Why hasn't Maura thrown her ... in jail for interference?

Ms. Claire really should work on character development and realism. Perhaps then I might consider reading another one of her books. Until then, I'm done with this series.

Very entertaining book. Easy to follow but with lots of twists and turns, This is definitely an author that I will follow.

Edie Claire has created a very memorable and believable character in Leigh Koslow. As a 20-something female with a cat who lived in Pittsburgh for 5 years, I could relate to all of Leigh's adventures in this and Claire's previous books. The Leigh Koslow series features quirky characters facing strange circumstances - murder and mayhem - with both humor and heart in everyday settings. Never Tease a Siamese was another winner, and I hope Ms. Claire gives us another offering soon!

What a great, comprehensive book this is. The late Connors was a great historical writer, and this book provides a wonderful, thoughtful, provocative look at the history of the discipline of composition.

For several weeks now, I have been considering how to defend the utility of Robert Connors's book - Composition-Rhetoric: Backgrounds, Theory, and Pedagogy - without sounding like a die-hard partisan, a rabid fan, or a closet sexist-racist-capitalist-non-radical pig-dog. To be blunt, Robert Connors is such an easy target that, at times, it seems like everyone wants to take a shot at him. In May of 1999, for example, I first noticed the nasty review on this web-site. And even for those scholars like Sharon Crowley who believe that the involvement of approximately four million first-year college students each year makes composition-rhetoric worth caring about, Connors routinely and invariably finds a pressure point. At conferences, he asks gadfly-ish questions in which he implies that radical pedagogical approaches and, indeed, most theoretical approaches of the last thirty or so years may well be "fads." In College English, he asserts that "the world of pure epistemological theory is not the world we live in," argues that there is a need for men's studies, too, and expresses sympathy for the men's movement (Pagan!). He seems to want all teachers in the academy to be, and be seen as, learned scholars (Idolatry!). And finally, he has the audacity to doubt the academic commonplace that "we live in a postmodern world" (Heresy! Blasphemy!). Not surprisingly, as of November 10, 1999, no composition studies peer has felt motivated enough to add a positive review to the Amazon site. However, the book is useful to practitioners of composition-rhetoric because each chapter presents enough evidence (what he calls "shareable data") to encourage practitioners to articulate and strengthen the rationale for their current practices.

Early in the book, Connors justifies his work with a plea for contextualization: "We can, I hope, come to understand in a richer way the reasons rhetoric has been what it has, how it has changed, and how it is changing today." That last concern over contemporary changes in rhetoric stands out as a useful reminder to those of us trying to rest our practices on a disciplinary foundation, while at the same time trying to preserve our ability to improve those practices. Connors' contribution here is to establish how the discipline of composition-rhetoric evolved inseparably from its "host" society, and his book is a worthy attempt to tell the history of composition-rhetoric from a moderate-to-conservative intellectual stance.

Having been a student of Professor Connors as both an undergrad and grad student in the 90's, I can only sing his praises. Reviewers who dislike and/or disregard Connors' esoteric essays simply do not understand the tongue in cheek man that he was (i.e. the 'men's movement'.) In the fields of historical linguistics, teaching writing, the art of composition, writing process theory, and transcedental literary review, Connors was an absolutely brilliant scholar -- and yet as down to earth as anyone. He wore his hair long and patches on his courderoy jacket elbows and was a devoted Beatles fan. He rode a motorcycle to classes during the period of time he was restoring a Victorian era home. [Unfortunately he died in a motorcycle accident] The most important thing he taught me was that thinking was good, speaking effectively was better, but writing was an art accessible to every human being. I am a middle school English teacher, and I rely on the pedagogy of the "NH Greats" for my philosophy of reading, writing, and literacy. His work is the 'how come?' of all the writing theories we apply, just as Elbow and Murray and Graves are the 'how to' of writing. Connors was a great man, a great scholar, and a great influence, and he is sadly missed in his world of academia. (By the way - he would have laughed his head off at these reviews. A 'self-important' man? Nothing could be further from the truth.)

The book examines the development of a compositional trend nobody but this obscure and self-important author recognizes or really cares about. It might contain some valuable information for those willing to wade through Connors' bombastic pseudo-victorian prose. The cover is lovely, though.

Whatever the literary merits of this short essay might be and keeping in mind the author himself reminds us that history is fiction and has no pretense of being a historian, I caution readers who, misled by the title, might think of this as somehow "art history". It is not. But I still have to point out that there are several errors that not even a dilettante (or non-historian) with -as he states- access to the Internet need make. For ex., it was the Cárdenas not Calles regime that censored O'Gorman's airport mural, and not because that regime was "flirting with fascism"; the Rivera-Kahlo studios are 1930 not 1936, and there is no Taxo (maybe Taxco: what about a spell check?). The "history" that gives him a story and helps him sell the book is sloppy, so much so that one is led to dismiss all the other other dates and points, like the gossipy innuedoes that are "retracted" sentences later, though the mud sticks. I don't blame O'Gorman's family for being less than enthusiastic.

This book's striking cover caught the eye of many a potential juror as I read it while spending a day waiting to be placed on a panel of prospective jurors. What's more striking than the cover, though, is the prose inside and the artful way in which Masters has created scenes with the same photographic skill that has made his memoir, Last Stands, an American classic.

The book is aptly described as part history, part fiction, all essay and one can't help but wonder that if the father of the essay had written a novella, this is surely what it would havve looked like.

Time and memory and the way in which memory allows us to travel in time (but always in an altered, often better, condition) are often the subject of Masters's work. Here, though, one sees the inner workings of his process as he forges a coherent narrative out of scant details and very few recollections. Reading this book is like watching an accomplished mathematician work out a solution to a famous unsolved problem. Except, the solutions here are presented as scenes of what might have happened.

And like a mathematician, Masters has the same up-front honesty: he acknowledges where his answers might be lacking. He hastens to add, however, that the truth is rarely as interesting as fiction, as what we remember: "My old friend and mentor Wright Morris once told me," he writes, "pass any fact through the human mind and it immediately becomes fiction."

Artists, affairs, robber barons and one giant attempt at a meaningful narrative produce a great read that never disappoints and often surprises.

It is disturbing to see Maria Carstensen using the good offices of Amazon to discredit my essay on her father Juan O'Gorman and the "merchant prince" of Pittsburgh, E.J. Kaufmann- "Shadows on a Wall--Juan O'Gorman and the Mural in Patzcuaro."
Number one: My essay is an imaginative account that attempts to understand why what could have been a mural masterpiece in Pittsburgh was never painted but resulted in the masterpiece that was painted in Patzcurao.
Number two, as the member of a family that has been frequently written about, I can well understand how perspectives may differ.
Hilary Masters

This book was certainly interesting reading. Although as Juan O'Gorman's daughter I was very offended by Mr. Masters portrayal of the relationship my father had with me.
Our relationship was far from the "chilly" one described by Masters. I do not know where Mr. Masters got his facts, but when he contacted me he was only interested in what happened in Pittsburg which occured prior to my birth. Mr. Masters did not collect any information from me, about my full lifetime with Juan O'Gorman and Helen.
Masters carries on about a surgery my mother had, she had gallbladder surgery, not an abortion as he contends.
Another falacy was that Juan and Helen were divorced at the time of Juan's death,they had divorced and remarried pror to my birth, but I took care of all the legal affairs following my father's death and nowhere was there anything about them being divorced at that time. Helen did not leave Mexico and Juan to move to the US with me, she had come to the U.S. for medical care related to lung cancer, she returned to Mexico only to find he had commited suicide. These many "inacuracies" are hurtful to myself and my family.

This book about former Pittsburgh Pirate Voice Bob Prince could have been so much better. It was not in depth at all; like author Jim O'Brien's book on Bill Mazeroski, it is mostly reflections of those who knew the man, and a ton of appreciations written by others when Prince died in 1985. It also contains some glaring errors (ie Bobby Thompson's playoff HR was in 1951, not '52, and it's the Florida Marlins, not Miami Marlins.) Also, some more detailed history would have made this a better read. I think more of the Gunner's time with former partner Rosey Roswell would have been classic. And, if you are not from Pittsburgh, many of the references will go over your head. Curt Smith's one chapter on Prince in "Voices of the Game" provides much of the same as this book.
That said, with a personality such as Prince, it's tough to go wrong, and there are some amusing tales (some told many times throughout the book, however.) And, O'Brien does a nice job covering The Gunner's controversial firing in 1975. But there wasn't much about after that, such as Prince's time with ABC (with Warner Wolf and Bob Eucker!) or his time doing the Bucs' cable broadcasts in the early 80's. As Prince himself would say, "Kiss it Goodbye!"

OK, so this isn't a comprehensive, chronological life of one of the greatest baseball broadcasters of all time. SO WHAT! The fact is, anything on Bob Prince brings me back to my childhood, when i would listen to "The Gunner" root the Bucs on to another win. And this book does the job just fine. I stopped rooting for the Pirates, in fact, when they fired Prince (I'm an Orioles fan now, and they did the same stupid thing with another great, Jon Miller). Iron City Beer was the first beer I ever drank -- thanks to Bob Prince. This guy could call a game and make the experiemce a memorable one. I'm just grateful that his art has not gone unremembered; and this book brings back the memories.

To veteran fans the title can suggest only one thing: Bob Prince, The Gunner, who did the broadcast of the Pittsburgh Pirates from the 1950's through 1975. You don't have to be a fan of the Buccos to enjoy this book, but it helps to be familiar with Prince as he rooted unashamedly for his beloved Bucs. Like other announcers, he had his pet phrases such as "We have a bug on the rug." "You can kiss it goodbye. Home run!" "Let's spread some chicken on the hill with Will." And, of course, at the end of a close game in which the Pirates were victorious, "We had 'em allll the way." Bob was Pittsburgh's answer to Harry Caray. He was colorful, controversial, and a people person. Most importantly, to me, Bob was a giver of himself to others, and I think it is exciting to know that we go through our life not knowing how we helped someone in some way. An incident that may be totally insignificant to us in behalf of someone else, may have a profound effect on the life of the other person. We live in the memories of our friends, and The Gunner touched the lives in a positive way of those he came in contact. To those of you not familiar with the Prince of Pittsburgh, you missed out. He will always be a treasure to the city of Pittsburgh, and to those who follow the game of baseball. The book is over 400 pages long and full of colorful anecdotes such as the following when he and his wife Betty were going to go out one evening. Bob said, "Betty, your stockings are all wrinkled." Betty replied, "Bob, I'm not wearing any stockings." Another from relief pitcher ElRoy Face" "I remember one game at St. Louis. I threw a forkball down and away and Musial hit it over the right field roof. And I think I'd been 21 innings without giving up a run and we lost the ballgame on that, a good pitch. After the game I'm sitting at my locker and Murtaugh, who had this dry sense of humor, comes in and slaps me on the back and says, 'Relief pitcher, my ass!'" Finally, here is a great quote I would like to share with you from the book. "When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life in such a manner that when you die the world cries and you rejoice."--Old Indian Saying

I have been a Pittsburgh Pirate fan for close to 40 years and I absolutely loved Bob Prince. I expected this book to be a history of Bob Prince's career with the Pirates. What I got was a series of rememberances and reflections by people about Bob Prince. And many of these rememberances are repeated over and over throughout the book. The book also never establishes any kind of chronological pace or order, making it a very disjointed read.

This is one of the first books I have ever stopped reading before I was finished. Maybe my expectations were too high, but I was very disappointed.

I is crap , just dont read i

Very well prepared. Miller and Castles not only provide the basis for understanding this complex issue, they provide thoughful analysis that takes this beyond what one would find in an introductory text.

This will serve as strong college textbook, while well-written enough to please those with a more casual interest in the subject.

Two experts are writing about their main focus of research. The result is a well-written introduction into int'l migration. A must for everyone interested in int'l migration.

This is a must read for every teen or adult that believes history is simply about boring dead white people and inconsequential dates. Can you write a "real" history book that has valid arguments about.....SWIMMING POOLS? Dr. Wiltse has caught the attention of the young people of this nation who believed that history, real history, has to be about a President, King, or a General, and has taught us all that seemingly mundane events in the lives of common people, often overlooked, are history too!

So far I am a quarter of the way through this book and it has repeated the same information several times. As soon as the author progresses into the 1900s he quickly shifts back to the 1890s and then up to the 1900s and then back again. The information could have been a little more carefully strung together and not so repetitive. I look forward to finishing this book to see if this gets any better. Despite the irritating repetition the information presented is interesting.

Here comes summer, and Americans will head for a trusted way of getting rid of stress and heat: they will jump into swimming pools. But pools themselves have been a source of stress to many communities within the nation; indeed, Jeff Wiltse has written a history of the social tensions pools have caused (and sometimes eased) in _Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America_ (University of North Carolina Press). It is surprising that what might seem a trivial subject, a pastime in which millions of Americans have innocently indulged for over a hundred years now, might even have a history. But Wiltse, who teaches history at the University of Montana, has driven from town to town to draw information for this book. His travels were mostly in the north, for he did not want to range too far and write separate regional histories, although he says the pattern of social use of pools is consistent within the towns he surveyed. He amassed a huge amount of data from newspapers and civic documents about who was using the pools, with statistics often kept by race and sex. Wiltse has shown beyond doubt that pools have reflected and generated our feelings on sexual and racial matters, and although his book is a serious academic history, it is by turns amusing and sad as America came to an incomplete understanding of how we ought to treat pools and the swimmers who use them.

We didn't have pools originally, going down to swim in the river or "the old swimming hole". The swimmers often had no running water at home and this was a way for them to wash away some bodily grime; their Victorian betters strongly agreed with bathing for this purpose, but not with the way it was being accomplished. The problem of how to get those underclass clean without letting their pastoral cavorting offend others resulted in a solution, the first municipal bathing pools. Remarkably, there was not racial segregation in these initial pools. Pools changed again when they became not centers for training but locales for play. The huge pools were viewed as resorts, places where a family might come on vacation, and they had sand around them for artificial beaches. Pools had been segregated by gender, but these were not; because of fretting over what might happen if white women saw athletic black bodies, or if blacks started appreciating the displayed bodies of white women, racial segregation of pools began. There was violence in many cities when black people tried to use the pool. The way one city after another attempted to exclude black people in different ways makes for uncomfortable reading.

Desegregation eventually happened, but the victory turned out to be Pyrrhic. As blacks were admitted, white swimmers stopped going to the public pools, and so it became easier for cities to reduce maintenance on the pools, which fell into disrepair and were closed. Cities had financial crises in the 1970s, further reducing pool budgets, and have never started up another building surge. White swimmers went to private pools or home pools, and Americans aren't putting a high value on public recreation as much as they used to. Suburban communities are building water theme parks, which are busy places for kids, but do not foster the socialization that families used to find around a public pool. It may not have worked out to be the best outcome for either blacks or whites, but that's the way history works out sometimes. Wiltse's readable history gives a surprising outlook on important aspects of American culture, and shows that swimming pools are far more consequential than you'd expect.

This is the sort of negligible and pedestrian collection that gets published as the result of the writer's entering a competition and having his or her submission adjudged to be better than the other contest entries. In most cases, the winning entry gives the reader a sense of how god-awful the other entries must have been. The Drew Heinz Prize has a long history of duds and dogs, and this collection is another. It's not that it's outright terrible; it's just that it's a collection of formulaic workshop-style exercises. The prose is uniformly drab. The plots are mechanical. The characters are pale echoes of people you've read about, too often, elsewhere. Prizes like the Drew Heinz are ensuring the increasing marginalization of serious literary writing.

This is a fabulous book of short stories. Very complex and engaging.

I'm guessing that the writer of the previous review probably is disgruntled because he or she entered the Drue Heinz contest and lost... Who knows. I, on the other hand, think Brett Ellen Block is an imaginative and smart writer. Her debut collection is vibrant at every turn. She evokes complex emotions superbly, without breaking a sweat. She also happens to be very, very cute. How long will I have to wait to read a novel by Brett Ellen Block?

Reviewed by Olivera Baumgartner-Jackson for Reader Views (05/07)

Reading Paul Stein's "The Glass Forest" was a little bit like picking at a scab when you are a child. Sure, it hurts; sure, it is ugly - but somehow you can't stop. Stein's book is powerful and immensely engaging. In it we follow a boy, growing into a man, who is perennially divided between various emotions and thrown into turmoil time and again.

When Harry was growing up in working class environment in Pittsburgh in 1950 and 1960, the turmoil came from both his high-strung Catholic family with an abusive, yet powerless father and highly disturbed and self-pitying mother as well as from the highly chaotic environment of his Catholic school. The only one of his siblings, who was any support to Harry, died at an early age after being pretty much forced to leave their home if he wanted to survive. The rest of the motley crew members are no more stable than their parents and taunt Harry mercilessly. Harry himself is not really sure what he wants to achieve in his life. Does he want to be a football player? An artist? Or simply an Indian?

Once Harry marries, it does seem that his life has changed for the better. But even there Harry finds no real contentment and no safe harbor. His marriage falls apart - and in a very ugly way. His child is taken away from him and Harry's life is once again in shambles.

Harry moves to Arizona and starts working at a service station. He goes through a series of bizarre phases, each one a bit stranger than before. Then he meets Ellen, and it seems that life could finally have some meaning again. Will it finally all come together for Harry?

Well, the question really is - will it all come together for Harold, Harry and Happy; the three people inhabiting Harry's body and soul? The book is namely written in three parts, each of them a gospel according to one of those personalities. Through them we learn how immensely shattered Harry really is and how huge are those issues he is trying to deal with.

Paul Stein does not preach and moralize. He simply writes and lets the reader make his or hers own conclusions. His prose is beautiful and flows wonderfully. His characters come alive on the pages. A reader could not help but feel immense compassion for every character in the book, even for the bullies themselves.

This was not a happy book, not even a very hope inspiring book, yet I would highly recommend it to anybody who loves a well written and emotionally engaging novel.

This book is like Angela's Ashes but with its own unique twists. A hard childhood with far reaching consequences. You feel for the characters and keep turning the pages to see what happens. It has humor, pathos and is superbly written. I recommend it highly.

As I started to read The Glass Forest I felt confused and disoriented, in fact I almost stopped reading. Am I glad I moved on to the second chapter the next evening. Actually, I wish I had started a bit earlier because it was 4:45 am before I could put the book down again. Even the nagging of my wonderful wife about having to work the next morning was not enough to stop me. The story is absolutely compelling. Paul Stein has a way of making the characters so engaging, the situations so real, and the drama so powerful that once you become involved with Harry, Harold, and Happy, you just don't want to stop until the amazing conclusion.

The mark of a great story IMHO is that it makes you think, and think I did. Without giving away the ending I can say that I didn't get it at first. It was the next day at work (over a bleary eyed cup of coffee) that I suddenly realized the significance of that final act. It was a brilliant albeit brutal act that summed up the book and began Harry's future in a way that I could never have imagined. Take my advice, start this book early as it will be hard for any but the most disciplined, or the most jaded to put down.

I read this book hoping for insight into the life of steel titan Charles Schwab equal to Wall's great biography of Schwab's benefactor, Andrew Carnegie. I found some interesting facts but not a lot of color. I wasn't quite sure whether there just wasn't that much genuinely interesting in his life, in addition to his being a successful corporate sort of guy, or whether things were being left out by the author, who is or was part of the Hoover institution at Stanford. I hope Kenneth Warren's life of Schwab (2007) has a richer story to tell.

I first became aware of Charles Schwab when reading Andrew Carnegie's autobiography. Carnegie regarded Schwab as a prominent up and comer in industry for both his people skills as well as his work ethic; thus I knew he was someone I wanted to know more about. It is not often that a business book is difficult to put down, particularly one in the steel industry. Hessen delivers an emphatic success as Steel Titan kept me engrossed from start to finish.

Schwab earned recognition by putting together the conglomerate that produced US Steel, the largest steel corporation in history. By convincing Andrew Carnegie to sell his business interests and joining the original JP Morgan to finance the giant new company, Schwab displayed a shrewdness that elevated him to elite status among the kings of deal making.

Schwab became the first man on record to receive a million dollar annual salary in 1901 with US Steel, but left the company within two years due to the inefficiencies he saw being permitted. He purchased Bethlehem Steel, a near insignificant operation at the time, and built it into a giant of its own, second only to US Steel for many years.

Ironically, outside of the business world, Schwab's outlook on life could not have been further from the view of his original mentor, Andrew Carnegie. Schwab was a player, a partier, a high roller, and believed wholeheartedly that it was more morally just to spend frivolously than to give to charity; a thought based on the fact that he was giving back to the economy no matter how he spent his money, something hard to argue. As a result, Schwab, who at one time was worth millions and millions of dollars, spent himself into a near penniless stage dying without any money to his name.

Schwab lived a bold and adventurous life, compounded by all encompassing free spirit and cunning business acumen. If you enjoy the life of business tycoons and earnestly enjoy exploring the ups and downs of a hard lived life, Steel Titan will be of interest to you.

Excellent book to read if you are interested in one of the lesser-remembered "Robber Barons," protege of Andrew Carnegie, and really an extraordinary person. Many of Schwab's business principles would serve executives well today. I enjoyed reading it.

I found this book extremely helpful for a report I was writing. I wouldn't recommend it as a casual read, or for anyone looking to get a comprehensive history. It is part of The Pittsburgh Survey series and, as the name implies, it is a survey- a cross-section of a narrow group of people at a specific time. I'll admit to a fascination with the history of Homestead and therefore a bias, but I liked the book so much I would like to buy a copy for myself.

The good point of this book (and the only one) was that it showed how difficult life was in the olden days (1910 to be exact), defting conservative notions of a golden age better than Stephanie Coontz has done. The bad points are that the language is dated ("Slav" is considered a race, as is "Colored") and the book is rather boring. Not much duller than most sociohistorical works but not as informative either. Slightly recommended.