Elmhurst Books

This book, out-of-print but still easily found, was an important and unique book when it was published. Now, with the author's passing on New Years Eve, 1999, it gains even more importance.Richardson is primarily remembered as the Attorney General who resigned instead of following President Richard Nixon's orders to fire the special Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox; Richardson's resignation ignited the firestorm of public outcry -- the Saturday Night Massacre -- that resulted in the President's resignation a year later. While this is not a Watergate memoir, Richardson does devote a chapter to his role in that traumatic event (many people have forgotten that as Attorney General, he simualtaneously headed up the prosecutions of both the Vice President Spiro Agnew and President Nixon, negotiating Agnew's plea of no-contest and resignation, clearing the way for Gerald Ford to become VP prior to Nixon's resignation).Richardson began writing the book after his resignation while serving as a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center and finished it shortly thereafter while ambassador to Great Britain. The book appeared during the 1976 presidential campaign during Richardson's tenure as Ford's Secretary of Commerce, his fourth cabinet post. The review in the New York Times by Stephen Hess said Richardson was "less likely to seek Federal solutions than those Democrats who have spent most of their careers in Washington, but...he is not traumatized by national Government." The reviewer spoke of Richardson's "almost religious fervor to his feelings for the civic virtues," concluding that the book illustrates that Richardson "has given more serious thought to the processes of governance and knows more about its purposes, functions and operations than anyone now seeking support for national office."Richardson sprinkles personal accounts from his extraordinary life of public service throughout the book as he covers a wide range of ground. From the Founding Fathers to the role of the individual as a citizen, from the dangers of cynicism to the importance of rebuilding trust in government. He calls for a "more thoroughly considered approach to change - a perspective that sets the attractions of potential benefits against the background of potential harm, an approach that seeks a creative balance between innovation and conservation." Such a balance, reasons Richardson, will get America to its goal of being "a society in which all of us can be and become our whole selves -- a society which enhances individual dignity and self-esteem, the ultimate values for whose sake our political processes exist." Now that America has lost one of her most brilliant public servants, this book and his other writings, continue to shine a light for Americans looking for a balanced and reasoned approach to effective government and citizen participation.

Collaboratively written by equestrian expert Sarah Pilliner, freelance illustrator Samantha Elmhurst, and equine nutritionist and consultant Zoe Davies, The Horse In Motion: The Anatomy And Physiology Of Equine Locomotion is an extensive and authoritatively examination of equine anatomy and how horses walk, trot, canter, and jump. Profusely illustrated with numerous black-and-white photographs and sketches, and offering invaluable tips to avoid hindering a horse as well as a wealth of information about how horses move, The Horse In Motion is very highly recommended reading, especially for equine enthusiasts and for anyone with an interest in painting or animating these robust creatures. Also very highly recommended is Sarah Pilliner and Zoe Davies' earlier work, Equine Science, Health And Performance (0632039132; [money]).

This book had all the key characteristics of a good book on running. Not only was it truly inspirational it had in it the time and splits that you should be running for a mile, 2 mile and an 800. This is definitly a must buy for any coach or runner looking to get better.

The World Hoax

243 pages crammed with long neglected facts and checkable references, The World Hoax is an outspoken examination of the Jewish role in Bolshevism after Red Russia's first twenty years. Individual chapters on Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Litvinov, as well as on the international Communist movement. One of the best of its kind. (Noontide Press)

A great overview of an ethnography of a neighborhood within Queens. This is a great book to help Anthropologists and students understand how techniques can be applied to modern day societies.

I had the pleasure of taking several classes taught by the author over 15 years ago when I was a college student. This book reminds me why he was such a special teacher. He goes inside the neighborhood (literally and figuratively) to seek the common ground which unites the many people of diverse backgrounds in the pursuit of the American Dream.

I grew up in Queens in the 1960's and my wife grew up in Corona. We enjoyed the opportunity to recall the neighborhood as it was and to consider how and why it changed. This was a great book. It should be read by students of urban sociology everywhere.

Sanjek's book provides a wealth of information for anyone concerned (some would say mad) enough to understand how urban politics take their shape from individual events, groups and people.

Although the sociology language has its discontents (events like the Colombian Independence Day festival become "rituals"), the perspective it brings speaks volumes of the impact of ethnicity. Sanjek shows how individuals overcame historic racial antipathy to recognize different people as, well, people. I certainly hope the future of us all does mean that we stop identifying ourselves as black, white or other and start recognizing ourselves as part of a local and very real community.

Sojourn at Elmhurst is a sequence of poems about Frank Goldin, a middle-aged biochemist who is admitted to a mental hospital, Elmhurst, with the chief complaint, "I hear a thousand voices and must respond to each." In the first poem Goldin confesses his sins, but simple confession doesn't get to the root of his dilemma, the existential ambiguity that plagues him. During Goldin's dark night of the soul, his scientific self struggles with the mysterious longing within. Dr. Hudspeth, the Elmhurst psychiatrist, directs his support to the part of Goldin that says, "I am the restless biochemical cycle / that pours out glutathione in buckets." In essence, just straighten out the chemicals and you'll get better. Throughout the book Goldin waits for his wife Helen to visit Elmhurst, but she never appears. He ruminates over the matter of confessing that he had an affair with a woman named Da-ling during a professional meeting in Osaka. If he confesses, if Helen comes, Goldin hopes that things will return to the way the way they used to be. However, the mysterious side of Goldin is looking for something else. He has visions of the ancient Rabbi Yehuda of Smyrna, who asks, "Why do we not even know how to ask a question properly?" After several weeks Goldin leaves Elmhurst with the feeling that he has made progress, but not in any discernible direction. Goldin concludes that he should be grateful, but he asks, "to whom?" Goldin's sojourn at Elmhurst reveals itself in a variety of forms, ranging from formal verse (e.g. villanelle) through free verse to prose poems. On one level these poems simply present Goldin's observations, dreams, and reflections during his several weeks of internment. Nowhere is there a burst of inspiration, an epiphany, a miraculous cure. His stay in the mental hospital ends as ambiguously as it began. At another level, though, the different sides of Goldin-rational and mysterious, Jewish and Catholic, thesis and antithesis-engage in a dialectic, which does, in fact, achieve a new perspective, a synthesis.