Akron Books

Who knew that Akron, Ohio used to be the toy marble capital of the world? Or that sauerkraut balls are the official food? Did you know that Akron is the original home of the rock group Devo, singer Chrissie Hynde, the National Inventors Hall of Fame, nationally recognized artist Don Drumm, and much more. I'll bet Junior League of Akron member and Olympic skater Carol Heiss Jenkins knows. So will you if you invest in this most excellent cookbook. Delicious recipes abound in this hard-bound cookbook artfully named Beginnings not only for the Akron snippets, but for the appetizers it features. It would make a perfect gift for anyone. And you can feel good about buying it since profits benefit the countless good works of the Junior League of Akron. I love it!

What a great book for the home. I seem to turn to it more often than not, especially when bringing a dish to the home of a friend. It has recipes for every occasion and then some. There are fun tidbits that provide great insight to the town where the recipes were prepared. This book is a must for any kitchen!!!

What a fantastic and creative idea - tying the many Akron community as well as Junior League beginnings into a appetizer/hor d'oeuvre cookbook! The recipes highlighed in the chapter(s): Casual Beginnings are perfect for relaxed entertaining, Classic Openings are tried-and-true, and, Elegant Beginnings are exceptional for more refined gatherings. Congratulations to the Junior League of Akron!

As an avid collector of cookbooks, it's great to have one book solely devoted to appetizers. Rather than sorting through numerous books for recipes, Beginnings makes it easy to find ones just right for the event. The recipes range from easy to just a bit more special, but none are beyond the reach of the average cook. Strongly flavored by the midwest, this is a great book for anyone's collection!

At last! From elegant to casual, over 200 recipes for stunning appetizers that will impress your guests with taste and flair. There's a wide selection and the book is easy to use. It has a contemporary design and the recipes are scrumptious.

If you entertain for drinks and a bite to eat more often than you host formal, sit-down dinners, this book is for you. Every recipe is impressive, from the gourmet to the familiar. And if you just like to read cookbooks, this one is fascinating - there are sidebars featuring interesting tidbits about Akron, Ohio, and its sometimes wacky history.

Proceeds from the sale of these books support the community projects of The Junior League of Akron. It's a great gift and an indispensable addition to the kitchen of any modern hostess.

It's not often that a history book comes along that catches my interest. When first starting to read "Irish Secrets," I thought I would be in for another historical timeline reading. As I kept reading, I was captured with the informative and humorous, yet tragic stories. Mark Hull has put real-life incidents together to tell the truth, whether liked or not. You do not get lost in the first chapter with the events occuring out of place, instead, you are given an understanding of the German Intelligence Service and the tools used to achieve an ultimate outcome of events. For Example: agent basic training, radio transmission secrets, secret inks, a coding system, and the people that were chosen.

I am not educated with this part of history. Frankly, I find it boring in the classroom, but not with "Irish Secrets." You will get to know the people and feel their half achievements and full loss. You will go to Ireland and have landed in the wrong area only to come upon a long hike through the roads, I believe the gent walked about 70 miles...of which he was dressed out of sorts! He is very easily spotted as a foreigner - not too well planned. You'll have illicit affairs, entrapment, thrilling escapes and ultimately see the inside of a jail cell.

This book is beyond a doubt, one of its own kind and should be read for the classroom, but also for pleasure! A simple "Spies Like Us" all the way humor. The classroom reading list should include "Irish Secrets" for scholars to learn a bit of forgotten history and enjoy a well written bit of work on the authors part. Irish Secrets is very well written and thorough in its recalling of a time went wrong. I enjoyed the book from start to finish and urge others to do the same.

Irish Secrets: German Espionage In Wartime Ireland 1939-01945 by Mark M. Hull (Assistant Professor of History, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri) is a 383-page exploration of why World War II German intelligence basically failed in the Irish State, and offers the documented view that the german effort represented a genuine menace to the Allies (including Northern Ireland) as well as the wartime neutrality of the Irish Republic. So much more than a stodgy historical study, Professor Hull offers the reader a truly gripping and comprehensive account of the intelligence war in Ireland and showcases the story of a brilliant, creative, and ultimately successful Irish Military Intelligence in waging a counter-espionage campaign that would overwhelm the German intelligence operations. Strongly recommended for personal and academic World War II Military Studies collections, Trust Yourself To Transform Your Body draws upon newly released intelligence files in several countries, in-depth interviews Professor Hull was able to conduct with surviving participants, and other previously unpublished primary sources.

This book has amazing insight into the realms of Irish and German espionage history. I found the reading to be thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining. Dr. Mark Hull brings a bit of humor into a subject that is difficult to entertain. I have never been an advent reader of any type of historical writings and found that once I started reading, I honestly felt capitivated by the reconstruction of history in this book. Unlike most history books, Dr. Hull has brought to life a writing that is serious in depth of subject, yet could be viewed world wide on a theatre screen as thoroughly enjoyable (James'Bond anyone?).

I would recommend this book for a history class or just for the enjoyment of sitting down on the sofa with a good book and a cup of wine for a relaxing evening at home.

Irish Secrets provides a stunning insight into a now forgotten aspect of the Second World War - Nazi Germany's secret overtures to neutral Ireland, 1939-1945. Berlin sent a "dirty dozen" agents by parachute and U-boat to Ireland, whose wartime leader, Eamon de Valera, was striving to maintain strict neutrality in the face of strong pressure to join the war (mainly from British Premier, Winston Churchill).
Mark Hull, a professor of modern history at St. Louis University, has produced the most detailed study of the agents sent to Ireland by Germany. They included a German circus weight-lifter, an Indian and two South Africans. Most were en route for missions in England, but all were caught and incarcerated in Athlone army camp in the Irish midlands (luckily for them because they would have faced executiion if discovered in wartime Britain).
The most colourful agent by far was Dr Hermann Goertz, who parachuted into Ireland just north of Dublin in 1940. Goertz was wearing his Luftwaffe uniform and medals in the mistaken belief that he would be shot if caught in civilian attire. Goertz who was in his 50s and a First World War veteran, asked a startled Irish farmer if he had landed in Northern Ireland by mistake. The farmer asked the German agent "You wouldn't happen to know Ballivor?" (the nearest village), at which point the conversation abruptly halted as Goertz went on the run.
As Professor Hull points out, Goertz had the most success among the German agents, remaining at large for 18 months. But it's believed that the Irish Army deliberately kept him on a long leash, checking all those with whom he came in contact, including the German ambasador, Dr Eduard Hempel.
Goertz was unsuited to a spying mission, however, and spent his time in prison writing love stories, practising suicide drills, and dreaming about taking over the leadership of the IRA (Irish Republican Army). After his post-war release, he was so alarmed at the prospect of being repatriated to Allied-controlled Germany (he feared he would be tortured to death by the Russians) that he took a cyanide pill and died instantly, in 1947.
Professor Hull's book - which is destined to become a standard work of historical reference - will prove an invaluable read for anyone intersted in recent Irish history, Ireland's historical links with Germany and, in particular, Nazi Germany's attitude to Europe's neutral states (which included Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden and Turkey).
It is noteworthy that the foreword for Irish Secrets was written by none other than Enno Stephan (the former head of German Radio's French-language service), whose 1963 book "Spies in Ireland" did much of the spadework on this fascinating topic.

(Dr David O'Donoghue, Dublin, Ireland).

I was lucky to read some excerpts from this collection on the internet earlier this year. After reading some of her poetry I knew I had to get this book for myself. I am so glad I did. I have committed the first poem "Hymn for Two Choirs" to memory. Everytime I say it aloud it leaves me with a sense of hope that I can't put into words. It is rare that I come across a poem I like so much. The entire collection is a work of art. Oftentimes I carry this collection with me in my purse. I have read it through several times. I will be looking for her next book for sure. If you buy one book this year, buy this. I can't recommend it enough.

"I'm stunned by this poetry. Tried to write something to describe it, but it all sounded pompous and wrong. Just about everything I thought might not work here works;
everything that works is sublime.
I've already started to order copies for friends.
Read this poetry.

When I was young I liked to write messages, put them in bottles and then toss them in the river behind my house. In a not un-similiar but somewhat reverse spirit I like to pick up a book of poems now and then. I would recommend burning through this book, then going back and re-reading the ones that seemed to speak most directly to you. Here's to a very successful, intelligent, first book by Ashley Capps. I'm very glad I found it.

but lightning.
I first found these poems through "I Used to See Her in the Field Beside My House"--a poem, quite bravely, about a cow. But that poem--that hokey, pastoral thing you had in mind evaporates when you begin Capps "cow poem"
with the lines:
Perhaps it is the way your nipples,
long like fingers on an open hand,
and when the poem reaches its conclusion with a call to the
Cow, listen--forget the deep pools
of rain that pock the lit, green land-
scape of your youth. Forget the singing
man who rubbed your head. He's readying the rape rack...
until finally the killing concluding line:
Old girl, there is nothing
in this world that loves you back.
Then you really know you're dealing with a different beast entirely here. These poems dare and make good. They CPR the tired lungs of the poems you always wish they weren't and they aren't. What they are is electric, all alacrity and no wasted breath. (Which reminds me: Do not miss "The Nearest Simile is Respiration.")
These poems are on their way--with or without you, Reader. Where they're going, (on every single line) is where you want to be.
You saw it. You
were there--
that enormous claw, dangling
like a polite, ridiculous teacup.
No poem disappoints. Buy it. Read it. Quote it. Capps is for real.

This is a definitely the book to read for a new look at Iran and the Irani people. The author is telling her story - she goes to Iran in the late 1970s as a young wife of an Iranian man she met and married at college in the US. This isn't the story of forced conversion or one that makes life in Iran look terrible. Rather the author finds she loves Iran for its people and culture, but she has problems adjusting. Her new family is very accepting of her - a foreign, non-Muslim bride and her husband never seems to fall into the Muslim sterotype of repressing women. Actually he pays so little attention to that and to politics, that is hard for her to get his take on anything and thus certain issues she might have avoided come to pass. She starts teaching English part-time and is at home with her two sons, part time. On their first stay, it is the medical situation that sends her running back to the US. In her first stay in Iran, she feels no pressure to take the veil, cover her head, etc. For her, it is an emergency surgery that freaks her out. Her husband eventually comes back to the States as well, and they manage to work out their differences and they go back to Iran about a year later. By this time, Iran has a new government - the Ayatollah has returned. At first, this seems to be much the same Iran, and she goes back to teaching and starts working on a graduate degree. But mounting tensions with the US, mounting religious preseuctions and then the hostage situation continues to make life difficult for her. She really fights the idea of the veil even though for her it would mean protection. Her husband's family is extremely supportive through all of this, although they must have found her resistance to the veil extremely strange. The veil had not been mandatory until the return of the Ayatollah and the issue was that the author could pass for Iranian and so her American identity was not always clear - making her look like she was flaunting the government, rather than simply following her own cultural norms. It is eventually the tensions and hostile attitudes that make her use the veil in public as protection that makes her finally insist on leaving Iran with her kids. Her husband does join her in the States, but they can't manage to make it work and they end up divorced this time. She hasn't been back to Iran since.

This really is an important book to read because it gives a human perspective to the Irani people. Her in-laws and the people she associates with are all people she finds connections with and enjoys. She always feels accepted by her husband's family for who she is and not expected to change. Yet the changing government of Iran and their anti-American attitudes made it hard on her. Her opinions had to be shielded for fear of retribution and even her graduate papers got her into trouble.

I got it very quickly after the order. I am pleased with everything. The book looked good, brand new. I am very pleased.

Written by Debra Johanyak, Behind the Veil: An American Woman's Memoir of the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis is an outstanding personal testimony by a wife and mother with dual Iranian and American citizenship. Married to an Iranian man, she lived in Iran and taught English before and after the 1979 revolution, and watched the events of the American embassy hostage crisis with trepidation. Her husband's family embraced her warmly, yet the building pressure from Islamic fundamentalists placed heavy strain on her daily life and her hopes of staying. She also came to terms to her identity as a Christian in an Islamic country, and had to learn to balance acceptance of traditional customs with her own feminist values. Eventually, despite the support and good character of so many fellow individuals, she had to leave Iran due to threat of violence; Behind the Veil chronicles her physical and spiritual pilgrimage, her memories good and bad of the nation's people, and her insights into cultural and historical gulfs. Highly recommended for up-close and personal insight into Iran's dynamic character, as well as for the fascinating story of the author's search for her own path.

Since I have been a friend of the author, it provided some clues for me as to the origins of his unique personality, but likewise obscured (or referred obliquely) to some of his more curious and no doubt equally fundamental traits. Perhaps contrary to his central premise, the book demonstrates that artists are either born to insight, aloofness, solitude, singularity, uniqueness (take your pick) or, at least, become that way before they are aware of it. Hopes seems to have been a poet from his earliest memory, and it has influenced everything since; I would not credit or fault Akron, Ohio, nor would I invoke the holy spirit. No doubt that spirit (in whatever denomination) exists in all artists. As a result, I viewed the book as a special insight on what it means to Hopes to have been a poet growing up in a fairly unartistic community. I am glad to say Hopes did not bemoan any difficulties he must have experienced as a child in Akron, but instead shows us how his insights developed and were nurtured and tuned.

Hopes slices through his particular, peculiar boyhood down to a quirky, abyssal holiness in Akron, of all places, in the shadows of the rubber industry and a mile high glacier. He transforms Goodyear Heights Metropolitan Park into his "Maytree," a real madeup place where the Mother of Turtles lived and his sister became the Red Dancer, defiance herself rising and wheeling in the bitter rain. Here are the beginnings of a poet and a fierce worshipper of the things of a world most of us do not see, a glimpse of which he brings forth for us here. His prose is slick and quick as a slim-jim. He opens doors to places most of us never knew were there.

This book is a moving, remarkably eloquent memoir, an extended autobiographical essay that describes the author, the poet David Hopes. It is so beautifully written that it is almost a kind of poem. Highly recommended!

Robert Hass called this "one of the best books of poetry I've read in the last year or so." I agree. I can't say I always understand where Jon Davis is taking me in these poems, but I can say I'm enjoying and being challenged by the ride. I'm especially intrigued by the long sequence of poems the poet calls "The Ochre World." Here the poems work by juxtaposition and implication, each line sparking off the others, each section adding and enlarging the flame that eventually--how?--gives off enough light to illuminate the cave we're in at the poem's close. I don't know of another poet who tightropes along the edge of incoherence so beautifully. The sequence is unlike anything I've read, yet is somehow welcoming in its difficulties. On second thought, I'll go further than Robert Hass: This is the best book of poetry I've read since Hass's own Human Wishes.

Jon Davis was recently a recipient of a Lannan Foundation Award for his work in poetry. It couldn't have gone to a better person, having known and worked with Jon in Santa Fe, NM. However, without a biased personal relationship, this book is phenomenal. Whether you're an experienced reader of poetry or just looking to make your way into this form of reading, Jon's work is accessible on many levels, and will move and impress you, as it has so many others.

In the spring 2001 issue of "Rain Taxi," esteemed novelist David Foster Wallace not only praised this book to the skies, but even paid for an ad for the book in the same issue--an act probably unprecedented in book-reviewing history. In his review, Wallace said Davis's prose poems are "off-the-charts terrific."

This book is an entertaining and engaging remembrance of growing up in America in the 1940s and 50s. Whether this was when you grew up or not, the book brings back the innocence of childhood and that first loss of innocence that we all go through.

Ms. Brown has a good eye for people and how they interrelate. She shows that although we are different, we have much in common and this is what makes the book so enjoyable. As you read it, you will pause and remember your relatives and their foibles.

Recommended.

I really enjoyed reading the book. The author had a real understanding of events which took place during that time frame. There are sections of the book which makes you laugh, and some sections which makes you cry. Overall, the book explains key events, which will change things forever.

If you know Akron and you're a railfan, then the Images of Rail series' "Akron Railroads" needs to be in your railroad library. This book provides a highly detailed account of Northeast Ohio's rail history, and it is packed with great photos that are bound to bring back a pleasant memory or two...at least they did for me.

Excellent photos for rail fans and history buffs. I highly
recommend this book.

Though published through the regional University of Akron Press, the autobiography of Wayne Embry is essential reading for basketball fans, sports historians and those intrigued on how sports reflects the games played by the power brokers in society.

Embry was a professional player and climbed the corporate ladder in the NBA during eras when the racial divide was felt in locker rooms and in neighborhoods throughout the nation.

Perhaps mostly known nationally as the executive who traded Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - from the Milwaukee Bucks to the Los Angeles Lakers - Embry drew the ire of Cleveland Cavalier fans for the trading of Ron Harper, which is covered in depth.

But it's within the inside game on the hardwood floor of life - that needed the finesse of a swift ball-handling point guard and the sharp elbows of a tough power forward - where Embry ultimately excelled. He did not close the doors of opportunity when he maneuvered into a position to take advantage of a small opening, but has been a trailblazer by leading the way for many others into successful careers in pro basketball and the corporate world.

I just finished this book tonight, and it's one of the best sports autobiographies I've read in ages, and I read most of them. Wayne Embry is a pioneer, and a man that overcame a tremendous amount of racism and adversity in his life to become a power player (GM) of 2 NBA ballclubs.
I have had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Embry in passing at camps, and he was a kind gentleman. I always admired him but never knew all that he went through. To be fair in my review, I must say that in reading the book, he seems at times overly-sensitive in his analysis of some situations, especially those with Cavs ownership, and that he often seems to have felt slighted, when he may have just been a casualty of an underachieving ballclub, and NOT the victim of racism.
Either way, the man is an intellect, and also found success in business as a big-time McDonald's franchisee and sat on the BOD of several Fortune 500 companies, as well as a trustee of his alma mater, Miami of Ohio. A man who has been married to the same woman for almost 50 years. A man of conviction.
I say this for Embry, whether or not you agree or disagree with his views, he pulls no punches. He tells it like it is, and does not sugar coat things in this book. There's nothing worse than shelling out $20 or $30 for a book, and then you get nothing but cliche nonsense, or the same old fuzzy stories you already knew from the sports pages or internet.
This book is a must for old-time/vintage NBA fans or those who wonder what it's like to be a GM of a team. Wayne Embry was not only a physical specimen, but a cerebral giant of a man, and this is one helluva read. Kudos, Big Wayne. Regards, James R. Acho, Esq. www.cmda-law.com

These are remarkable, luscious, haunting poems. Beckian Fritz Goldberg writes with a musician's ear. There is silence and staccato in this work. And what is most astonishing about the individual pieces in the book is the pleasure of their syntax. Goldberg has found a new rhythm with her poetry that is not afraid to challenge language.

This collection was an absolute pleasure to read, reawakening my faith in poetry. Unpretentious and honest in its attempts to own language, it provides the reader, poem after poem, with stunning lines: "let the windows find their own faces, there is too much through them at night"; "Open the cupboard, cherries rounded up in the darkness." This is a book of revelations, daunting and exact. I had read some of this poet's work in Field and in American Poetry Review, so I was anxious to finally get my hands on this treasure of a book.