Biography Books

This was a great purchase. I haven't finished it, but wish I would of known about this sooner.

I had never heard of the StoryCorps Project until recently. Since I am facilitating a memoir writing group, I ordered Listening Is an Act of Love.
I loved it! Every page was a gentle focus on real people's lives. I highly recommend this book. Don't miss it!

StoryCorps is America's largest oral history project and was begun in 2003 by Dave Isay.

I became aware of this book while listening to the StoryCorps excerpts that air on NPR Friday mornings. One morning in particular I heard the story of the unofficial spokes people for StoryCorps, Annie and Danny.

Their love affair is told in the final pages of the book, the chapter entitled "The Story of StoryCorps." When my daughter and I heard their segment on NPR that morning on our way to the coffee shop, we were held mesmerized until it came to an end. It was one of those "transfixed in the parking lot" moments. We sat there, tears streaming down our faces until the end. We didn't go inside for our time of coffee and conversation until we could compose ourselves. That was the day I heard about and decided I had to have this book.

There are two versions, one which comes with a CD and one without. I made the mistake of saving a buck and going without. I recommend getting the CD. I suspect it makes the experience all the more enjoyable. Don't get me wrong, the book is fabulous and full of stories that fill your heart with light and love.

Every section of the book has heart-wrenching pieces. Stories that will define the American experience. The section entitled Fire and Water is particularly emotional as it deals with stories from the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001 and Hurricane Katrina.

I will recommend this book, and give it as gifts to my parents and others.

These are great stories from everyday people. If our legacy is the stories of our lives that we share with others, then this CD is what we should all be recording for our family and friends. I only wish there were more than the 20 included.

wonderful! can't wait for another to read! opens your eyes to the great people in the U.S.-their challenges, hopes, and happy times

This book is the true story about Stephanie and how she battles losing weight at "Fat Camp." I think teenage girls would enjoy this most. I found it somewhat interesting, but it did not really hold my attention in the second half of the book. Not all that bad but nothing great either.

I wanted to love this book. I heard the author on NPR and she sounded interesting. It was also recommended in Women's Health magazine. After reading it, however, I was extremely disapointed.

The story of the fat camp experience was mostly good, but I have to say I was HORRIFIED when the author detailed exactly how she made herself throw up after eating too much. She seemed to recognize bulemia was a bad thing, but then gave detailed instructions on how to do it. Does she not realize that young people will read her book? So MAYBE I could look past that (probably not, but maybe) and then I got to the end of the book and it really didn't seem like the author had actually learned anything from her experiences as an overweight child. I was waiting for the epiphany, the bit about how she got over it and managed to live a healthy life, but it wasn't there. She talked about extermely unhealthy eating habits she still had as an adult, is still blaming her father for insensitive comments he made to her when she was a child, blaming her mother for not showing enough affection and had to be forced to eat more food when pregnant with twins.

Mostly, when I finished the book, I was just thinking that this person was someone I never wanted to know and that I hoped no one else would read the book and be influenced by her dysfunction. I hope her kids turn out okay if she can ever get over giving them butter on their bread, I hope she has a good pediatrician that explains to her that children need fat in their diets to develop properly, but mostly, I hope she doesn't write any more books. I know that I will NOT be letting my teenaged nieces or my daughter ever read this book.

I wanted to love this book. I heard the author on NPR and she sounded interesting. It was also recommended in Women's Health magazine. After reading it, however, I was extremely disapointed.

The story of the fat camp experience was mostly good, but I have to say I was HORRIFIED when the author detailed exactly how she made herself throw up after eating too much. She seemed to recognize bulemia was a bad thing, but then gave detailed instructions on how to do it. Does she not realize that young people will read her book? So MAYBE I could look past that (probably not, but maybe) and then I got to the end of the book and it really didn't seem like the author had actually learned anything from her experiences as an overweight child. I was waiting for the epiphany, the bit about how she got over it and managed to live a healthy life, but it wasn't there. She talked about extermely unhealthy eating habits she still had as an adult, is still blaming her father for insensitive comments he made to her when she was a child, blaming her mother for not showing enough affection and had to be forced to eat more food when pregnant with twins.

Mostly, when I finished the book, I was just thinking that this person was someone I never wanted to know and that I hoped no one else would read the book and be influenced by her dysfunction. I hope her kids turn out okay if she can ever get over giving them butter on their bread, I hope she has a good pediatrician that explains to her that children need fat in their diets to develop properly, but mostly, I hope she doesn't write any more books. I know that I will NOT be letting my teenaged nieces or my daughter ever read this book.

The book definitely shed some light on what overweight children go through. I think Ms. Klein is admirable for not being afraid to expose every detail regarding what she went through at this time in her life.

I read Stephanie's first book and loved it. Her writing style is/was exactly what I look for in a book, especially a memoir. I was waiting for this book to hit the shelves because I was very much looking forward to not wanting to stop reading. My husband bought this for me at Borders, hard cover, and that night I dove in. He mentioned it was in the nutrition section, which kind of caught me off guard. Regardless, I dove into it that night, and was surprised to find myself wanting to put the book down after the first 10 pages. Perhaps the subject isn't for me. After all, I wasn't an overweight kid. I guess I couldn't relate. And it wasn't just that -- I coudn't relate to how she wrote it. It was way too long -- and I know this because I made myself finish it (expensive hard cover that it was).

I enjoyed this book very much. Amazing to read about one man's dreams and hard work from 4 generations ago still leaves a legacy and a still-running store to this day. I was broken-hearted reading about the treatment of the Chinese during the railroad building era of the West. Bigotry and racism are not new to America, and not limited to just Africans. I got confused sometimes with all the names, and had to refer to the family tree in the beginning of the book, but it was a wonderful story.

I had read "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan" and just loved it. This book is just as absorbing. The reader is transported to another time and place. I enjoy historical fiction. This is a good story based on the history of Lisa See's family. It was obviously a labor of love for her. I would recommend it especially to those who are interested in West Coast history, from the late 19th century to WWII-era.

I cannot express what wonderful storytelling of 100 years odyssey this book was. It was filled with historic detail, from China to the United States, as they referred to it as Gold Mountain. The patriach, Fong See was a merchant, and you will learn plenty of the business side of the family. He rented furniture to Hollywood studios. The many descriptive characters stories are well-tracked, and clearly identified. There is no confusion.

Lisa is with interracial heritage, which makes the telling of the past more interesting as we learn that aspect of her family's life. Although a long read, it was insightful, informative, intriguing with mystery, concubines, romance, business, immigration, travel, etc. This book is an enthralling read with every chapter advancing to more.

I read On Gold Mountain slowly, with days between chapters to think about new ideas. On Gold Mountain was many things to me. A true story, it captures the diversity of life: hopeful and heartbreaking; success and failure; riches and poverty; love, courage and pride. In the many lives of the See family and other Chinese immigrants, opportunity, danger, effort and chance all play a role in deciding who will be rich, who will live and who will die.

It was an eye-opening revelation to me of how racist our laws and immigration policies were towards the Chinese, up until our recently.

It was an amazing journey into Chinese society both in America and in China.

It was an uplifting and hopeful account of how, in spite of everything, Chinese immigrants were able to come to America, work, and prosper.

It was a heart-breaking indictment of the treatment of the Chinese by our government and big business, particularly the railroads. The suffering and death of so many people has gone too long unnoticed in our history books.

It was an amusing commentary on the foibles of human nature, and how love truly can triumph over it all, down through the generations.

It was an incredibly well-researched, well-documented and remarkably frank story of one Chinese immigrant and his numerous descendants.

In the developing field of social history, and using social history to illuminate a genealogy, On Gold Mountain is a seminal work, published five years prior to the ground-breaking "Bringing Your Family History to Life through social history" by Katherine Scott Sturdevant. As such, it is a remarkable example of the professional standards to which the social historian/genealogist may aspire.

Although the family history is rife with bi-racial marriage, multiple wives and concubines, infidelity and divorce, Lisa See presents the story in a sympathetic and factual manner, and avoids sensationalizing her family history. It is as much about the family business of importing Asian art, furniture and folk items, and other businesses the younger generations developed, as it is about the personal history of the family.

I would recommend Lisa See's book to anyone planning to write a social history; to all high school and college students in classes on U. S. Government, sociology, immigration, and capitalism. I would also recommend it to anyone who likes a good work of non-fiction about real people.

There's not much magic realism or mystic exoticism about this blunt, detailed, multi-generational history of an immigrant family. If you're looking for a novel, you'll find that Lisa See has written several. I repeat, this is a history, and it will be of interest chiefly to historians and other social scientists, professional or arm-chair.

Ms. See's great-great-grandfather arrived in America in 1867. The shabby treatment that he and other Chinese immigrants received is part of American history, but here in this book it becomes more vivid because See includes the reader in her "family album." Suffice it to say that the Fong/See family shrugged off indignities, worked hard, brought kinfolk to share the work despite arbitrary and unfair hurdles, took root in America, and succeeded more or less to the measure of their immigrant dreams. So it was with my mother's immigrant family from North Europe, and so it has been with every immigrant complement to America's cultural universality. Quite a few of the Fong/See second-comers spent time at the detention center of Angel Island, as described in the book "Island" which I reviewed a few days ago.

The drama in this history of the branching See family - what makes this book memorable - is a love story, the secret and perilous marriage of Fong See, the son of the 1867 immigrant, to a woman of European heritage, Letticie Pruett. Interracial marriage was illegal for decades in California, as in many states, and the penalties were a lot more severe than mere annulment. The Fong See clan ran the risk of deportation, and the couple had reason to fear ostracism and personal violence.

There's a sheaf of family photos in the center of the book. There's a snapshot of Richard See - fourth generation, I believe - with his buddies in Levis and Pendletons, getting ready for a fishing trip. Then there's Lisa herself as a girl in Chinese silks, but gasp! Lisa has wide European eyes, long blonde hair, and freckles!

My mother's sister and her Norwegian-American husband Jim, the last of my Minnesota kin to live on a homestead farm, came to visit me in San Francisco in the 1970s. One evening I took them, with other relatives and friends, to a Chinese restaurant. Jim is not what you'd call loquacious; he was sitting with his back to the room and paying more heed to the talk at other tables than to us. Just behind him, a family was talking about visits to colleges, arguing the merits of Cal Tech versus MIT. Jim got curious and turned around - discretely? oh yeah! - to see what the family looked like. Then he gaped at me and whispered "them folks are Chinese!" "Well," said I, "what do you expect in a Chinese restaurant?" "But they're speakin' English!" quoth he.

The heart and soul of Lisa See's history of her extended family is exactly what my uncle didn't understand. The Chinese who came to America were not insidious strangers and inscrutable menaces to European American culture. They were just plain folk.

James Rosen has tackled an interesting subject. John Mitchell's role in the Nixon administration ordinarily is glossed over. He's characterized (or caricatured) as a hard-line conservative, law and order guy. Rosen brings him to life. His descriptions of Mitchell's softer side and of his relationship with his second wife, Martha, are illuminating.

Rosen could have used a tougher editor, however. He repeatedly de-emphasizes Mitchell's role in the abuses of the Nixon administration. He lets Mitchell off the hook for his own abuses of power, giving Mitchell the benefit of every doubt and highlighting any exculpatory evidence. It's a slanted portrayal, and obviously so.

The editor also might have helped eliminate some of the self-congratulation that Rosen engages in, citing repeatedly his use of unpublished notes from HR Haldeman and other recently declassified or released sources. While those sources are important, Rosen reminds the reader ad nauseum that only he is looking at these events with those sources at hand. At best, it's distracting; at worst, it's further evidence of his interest in redeeming John Mitchell in the face of strong evidence that he did commit crimes -- or at the very least looked away while others committed crimes.

It's a solid read for anyone interested in Watergate and the Nixon administration, but it has flaws, too.

This is a heavily detailed book on John Mitchell and Watergate. Not a page turner, but interesting particularly if you lived through that era. It will give you a different perspective on many of the principal characters.

I am still reading the book and I find it fascinating. I like the way James Rosen writes.

'The Strong Man: John Mitchell & The Secrets of Watergate'

With, `The Strong Man', James Rosen makes a remarkable contribution to Watergate literature. This one and only in depth look at John Mitchell, perhaps the most important figure of the Watergate-era, succeeds not only in it's deep historical insights, but demystification of long held assumptions of this turbulent time in America.

This book organizes, with great skill, the several scandals surrounding the Nixon presidency, including Vesco, ITT, The Chennault Affair and obviously Watergate. By segregating these stories and breaking down the context of each with great care, the roles individual actors played and the aggregate scandalizing effect is elucidated as never before in the denouement of Watergate prosecution. Mr. Rosen's research of these events is absolutely superb, his descriptions easy to follow, illuminating in it's `warts and all coverage' and an overall romp of a fun read.

`The Strong Man' should be read by anyone even remotely interested in the `60's and `70's, especially the Nixon presidency. The insightful conclusions the author arrives at are magnificently well thought out and will be an eye opener to even the most ardent fan of the Watergate era. The prose is smart and incisive; the story gripping and funny; the contribution immense. In addition to the skillful writing, `The Strong Man' was clearly well edited and to be enjoyed by any fan of contemporary American history.

- JC

James Rosen has written the defining biography of the Watergate era. This incredibly detailed and painstakingly researched book is worthy of a Pulitzer. Rosen's writing is eloquent, informative, and impossible to put down. His observations are spot on. Reading this reminds me very much of the late David Halberstam who was one of America's greatest authors. This book is a must have for any political junkie. Mitchell was a truly fascinating character who was without question one of the most brilliant political minds of the twentieth century. Anyone who could take Richard Nixon who had self imploded politically, and get him elected twice to the White House is worthy of serious study. Rosen has written a brilliant book about an fascinating character.

A friend at work turned me on to Fleckenstien's articles during the peaks of the housing bubble, and all along he predicted the housing market crash. The only thing he had wrong was the timing as thought it would happen sooner. This book sheds light on Greenspans role in two ecenomic bubbles and does so with Felckenstien's unique sense of humor. It is tough to make subjects like this interesting, but this book is a good read. Felckenstien predicted both "bubble bursts" in his columns when everyone else was screaming about the next tech stock that was going to take over the world or talking about how "real estate never goes down." If he says the sh-t is going to hit the fan and you are standing in front of the fan, you should probably move.

Why is this country in this mess? Thanks to you, Mr. Greenspan. Just read Fred Sheehan and Bill
Flekenstein's book. It's is written well and explains why... Greenspan.

Alan Greenspan, called The Maestro, has almost singlehandedly created the two largest financial bubbles in world history. Federal Reserve is the worlds biggest central bank, and should have understood the nature of the both the it-bubble in the last half of the nineties, and the housing bubble in the naughties. But it didn't.

Instead, Alan Greenspan has been the cheerleader for both bubbles. He consistently cut rates when the stock market was in turmoil. He was bragging about the productivity gains in the 90s (which turned out to be a scam). He kept on insisting that it is impossible to know if there is a bubble in a market, before it is pricked. During the housing bubble, Greenspan was talking about the benefits of securitizing mortgages. Even today, Greenspans biggest worry is that the crisis will lead to tighter regulation of the financial industry.

The book is short, to the point, and well researched. It is extremely timely. Fleckenstein is deeply engaged, and it would do him well to give Greenspan a nudge from time to time. Still, it is well worth reading.

The book appears to contain a few things of substance, but you have to look so hard to get past the vitriole it's almost not worth the effort. I'm not a big Greenspan fan and certainly not his apologist, but Fleckenstein appears to be pissed beyond reason. I get the impression Fleckenstein thought he should have been appointed Fed Chair and hasn't gotten over it yet. If Greenspan was as imbecilic as Fleckenstein tries to paint him, he wouldn't be able to find his way to the men's room without a GPS. Come on Fleck, get over it. You've got something to say. Could you possibly say it without all the name calling and innuendo. Why not take Greenspan out on the playground and you two can duke it out? Take a deep breath. Count to ten. Have a glass of wine.

It's taking me a long time to read this because I become so angry that I have to put the boook down. This well-documented collection of mistakes at the highest financial levels, and the following "spin", demonstrates that the bigger the job, the more likelihood of error, and the greatest likelihood is that the person in charge maintains arrogant ignorance and shovels it out to the unsuspecting public.

This book is a good Focused Look at Detainment in Cultural Revolution. Most of the book is told while she is in a detainment camp (not prison, she never actually was sentenced to anything). Basically, all her problems were owing to the leftists in the communist party lead by Jiang Qin and the gang of four, who wanted to elicit a confession from her that she was a spy, which in turn would have to the downfall of several of their political opponents (zhou enlai if i am not mistaken). I most admire her persistence in never admitting fault even after 6 years and some mild torture. It reminds me a lot of Joseph Smith who persisted in claiming that he had spoken with God in person, even when many many people called him a liar or a false prophet. I have always admired those who are true to themselves and don't give into the social pressure to change just because they face persecution.

A true life personal account of the experiences suffered by Nieng Cheng, during the horrors of the Cultural Revolution in Communist China in the 1960s.
It gives us some scope on the total madness and cruel destruction of the Maoist regime which was responsible in 27 years for the death of over 50 million people and the destruction of countless lives.

The type of speech railing against "reactionaries", "counter-revolutionaries" and "running dogs of imperialism" is chillingly close to the rhetoric still used today left wing regimes today, and on left wing university campuses around the world.
The same mass hysterical hate rampages described during the Cultural Revolution remind me of the hysterical "anti-war" rallies (in truth pro-Saddam Hussein rallies) that gripped world when the USA liberated Iraq from Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Nien Cheng was a cultured and educated lady who had worked in Shell's international offices in shanghai after the death of her husband from cancer in 1957.
In 1966 the Maoist Red Guards who held China in their grip of terror, swept into her house and destroyed all she had, before she was thrown into a Chinese prison, tortured and beaten and starved for six and a half years, by the Maoist authorities who tried to force her to confess to being 'an imperialist spy'.
She refused to relent and maintained her innocence until her release in 1973, and her rehabilitation in 1976.
When she was released from prison she discovered that her daughter had been beaten to death by Revolutionary Guards.
Ultimately her struggle to survive allowed her to alert the world to the horrors of Communist China, through this true life classic, "Life and Death in Shanghai", a must for anybody who is interested in human rights or in the indestructibility of the human spirit.
Millions of innocent people were forced into "cowsheds"- gulags where they would be dehumanized and often die, by the hands of the Chinese Communists.
Note both the destruction of human life and of China's ancient culture, where all that was good and beautiful was destroyed in a campaign to correct the "four olds"- old culture, old customs, old habits and old ways of thinking.
Today despite the economic liberalization that has taken place, Red China still remains one of the greatest tyrannies on earth, with no sign of political liberalization, and in which thousands of political and religious dissidents still languish and die in laogai prisons, where today there organs are harvested in a sick and evil industry directed by the Chinese Communist Party.

Nein Cheng lived a comfortable middle class existance...in Shanghai during the height of the Cultural Revolution. Big mistake. Her comfortable lifestyle and connections to the West (via Shell Oil, her former employer) make her a target of the Red Brigade. Imagine if you will, waking up one morning to find a bunch of politically jacked up teenagers suddenly given the freedom to ransack your home, determine whether or not you are a danger to society, and beat you, arrest you, humiliate you and arrest you. Ms. Cheng is imprisoned and everything she has is taken away...rare works of art, priceless porcelains. This irreplacable beauty is, for the most part, destroyed by the loutish thugs -- the 14 and 15 year olds who ran amok, brandishing their political clout -- who made up the bulk of the Mao Cult that was the Red Brigade. Cheng is arrested and sent to a hellacious prison. Beaten, starved, subjected to brutal interrogation, Chen is indomitable. She does not confess, she does not kowtow, she sticks to her guns and even dares to lecture her captors and, in the process, drive them crazy. She lives this nightmare year after year, never budging from her declaration of innocence, never seeing or hearing from her beloved daughter. But no matter what they do to her, Cheng does not give in. Give in? She doesn't give an inch. We learn, though her, fascinating lessons in the political subtlties that fomented chaos and laws during this period. Through hints and reading between the lines of the official propoganda that the prisoners were forced to listen to, she pieces together much of the political climate and events. Her tenacity, stubborn contrariness and refusal to make any concessions to her captors is inspirational, astounding and, frankly, almost unbelievable. Even when the political climate changes and she is given her release, she insists that the prison "confess" its error. This is not a lady to trifle with. Upon her release, she immediately begins to search for her daughter, and for the restoration of whatever of her property has survived the Red Guard. The second half of the book -- Ms. Cheng's "rehabilitation" is as compelling as the first part. It's a book that is impossible to put down and certainly the best of a spate of first-hand accounts of this horrible "Through the Looking Glass" period of China's history. Nien Cheng is one hell of a tough lady, her book is moving, thought-provoking and compelling.

Nien Chang's account of her encounter with the Cultural Revolution is the best book of this kind that I recall. Many others have written about their experiences, some in memoir form, others in fictionalized form. NC's is the most accessible to the Western reader, she can relate to our expectations better than some of the others, and she writes more specifically for a Western audience. Her personal background made that easier for her than for many others, she had this working history with a large foreign corporation (no product placements in my reviews!).
The sad fact is that the subject interests non-Chinese or 'Overseas Chinese' substantially more than the population of the People's Republic. Books like NC's are often talked down because they are successfull in the West. That fact seems to be a negative mark. This applies also to Jun Chang's Wild Swans, while her later bio of the great helmsman is taboo.
The desire to forget about the past is so overwhelming, that many shut their eyes and minds to the recent past. (Actually not that recent any more.) With this strong wish to close the chapter, and in a situation of overwhelming success and progress for the country as a whole, the ruling elites find it very easy to put the Cultural Revolution into a kind of frozen state of taboo: it is not denied, but it is not visited with the purpose of understanding and digesting it. The man who provoked it is sacrosanct, he can not be touched by criticism. The negative things are assigned to others, like the Gang of Four.
(Who was it who wrote here recently that history does not change?)

Nien Cheng's admirable book, with its lucid and objective account of her dreadful ordeal during the Cultural Revolution, deserves to be widely read. This brutal and destructive period of Chinese history began more than forty years ago, but many of its tormenters and their victims are still alive; people like the "militant female guard," who makes Cheng's life so miserable, must be senior citizens today, watching, or even participating in, the victory of the "capitalist-roaders." Other readers have already bestowed every form of praise on "Life and Death in Shanghai," so I'll merely offer this additional insight. To more fully understand the scope of the Cultural Revolution, I think it's useful to read other accounts of it as well. Cheng's account is from the perspective of a well-born, highly educated, affluent woman, one who chose, with her husband, to return to Shanghai in 1949 because they felt that the Communists had the capacity to reform and restructure Chinese society. In short, they were patriots. An interesting and very different perspective is presented in Anchee Min's "Red Azalea," as it is the account of a young woman whose family has little money and no connections. As a result, she is buffeted by forces she often cannot control, and she grasps at opportunities for release from the collective farm and for an education as if she were being swept down a powerful river, occasionally grasping at a branch that pulls her out of the current. Then there is Jung Chang's "Wild Swans," which is quite different. To my mind, the most interesting story in her memoir is that of her parents, true believers in the communist revolution. Their gradual fall and bitter disillusionment is the central story of "Wild Swans." Read "Life and Death in Shanghai," then read the others, and you'll gain a complex and complicated picture of life during the Cultural Revolution.

Emotionally powerful and beautifully written, this account of the author's search for information about six relatives murdered in the Holocaust raises profound questions about the nature of historical and personal memory. The author's reconstruction of his relatives' deaths -- at the hands of SS Einsatzgruppen, gas chambers, and their own Ukrainian and Polish neighbors -- is graphic, horrific and difficult to read. But the author always emphasizes remembering his relatives' lives more than their deaths. At the heart of his story is a tale of heroism, by a Polish Catholic boy, which makes it possible for the author (and the reader) not to hate. On the negative side, the account overuses repetition, and the author frames his account with somewhat pedantic commentaries on Genesis, often having, as far as I can see, only tenuous parallels with the principal narrative. Even with these minor blemishes, this is a masterful work of Holocaust literature. I highly recommend it.

There were parts of this book I liked a lot, but it had a lot of problems.

The book is repetitive and dwells on many useless details that do not add to any aspect of the various stories being told.

The author does not seem to be able to decide what he's doing. He says that he wants to know what happened to lost relatives but what he really wants to do is reminisce about his grandfather; visit and describe holocaust survivors without ever telling much detail of their stories; and comment upon biblical and classical texts in an effort to draw meaning from the holocaust. Although logically starting his search by visiting the town in which the relatives resided, the author apparently arrived without a plan. He randomly runs into an old woman who tells him a snippet about what she saw happen to some Jewish people. Then he leaves and spends years traveling all over the globe to talk to survivors who would have no way of knowing what happened because they left or were in hiding. In the last pages of the book he returns to the relatives' home town and again, randomly, runs into people on the street. This time he is lucky and finds someone who knows what happened. If he were really trying to find out what happened to his family, he didn't need to travel around the world to do that. He just needed to stay in town a little longer and do some investigative work.

I found the story telling precious. There are a couple of instances in which the author tells you that characters about whom he's written at length told him stories that he can't tell us. I hate being told repetitively, "I know something you don't know." It's insulting to the reader and should just be left out.

Summary: The effort to develop a greater context for the story of the author's relatives is legitimate but executed so heavy-handedly that the story of the lost relatives is diminished. A good editor with a hatchet could have cut a couple hundred pages out of this book and made it much better.

I gave this book only three stars , because it bills itself as a holocaust story when it is not. If this book were touted as a story of search and self discovery, it would have received five stars. The writing quality was five stars. This author is a gifted essayist. If you want to read a 500 page essay, then you will like this. Like many Jews, Mendelsohn grew up with grandparents from the old country speaking heavily accented Yiddish inflected English. They told colorful tales from their Shtetles. They told stories within stories in the Yiddish tradition. The author was most entranced with his grandfather and loved hearing his tales about growing up in Bolechow. Bolechow was a village at times part of the Ukraine and at others part of Poland not far from Lvov. All of Mendalsohns grandparents' siblings came to the states. However, one brother, Shmiel, returned to Bolechow to make his life there. He prospered, married , and had four daughters. His youngest was 13 when the nazis arrived. All six perished during WWII. With snippets of information, a few photographs, a few documents, the author goes on a mission to discover their exact fate. That is he wanted to know exactly how they lived and how and when they died. He learns that Shmiel had at least one and probably two trucks which the Nazi's coveted. He learns that the prettiest of his daughters, Frydka, was the most charismatic and lively of the girls. He learns that their Ukrainan and Polish neighbors felt a seething anti-semitism towards them. He learns that the Poles and Ukrainians often joined in the nazi brutality. So what else is new? In his search he forges a new and stronger relationship with his photographer brother, Matt, delves into biblical texts, rebbinical interpretations of those texts, and travels the globe seeking survivors from Australia, Scandinavia, Ukraine, and Israel. Along with snippets of information, mere wisps that only flesh out the characters of his search minimaly, we read his thoughts on a myriad of subjects. This author clearly wanted to enlarge the barest of historical data into a book long tome. The information he gleaned in his search could be written in no more than 20 pages. There are numerous repetitive references, descriptions of turns of phrases and meaningful glances. He digresses into comparisons between the story of Noah and Soddom and Gomorrah with the destruction and death of innocents in the Holocaust. I did not find the comparisons convincing justification for the evil perpetrated in the Holocaust. He further compared Rashi's and Friedman's interpretations of these parts of the Talmud as well as the story of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Issac. He delves into the Lech lecha portion of the Talmud which was his Bar Mitzvah Torah portion. He throws in the Homerian classics like the Iliad and the Oddysey as a comparison of his journey for the truth. Over and over we get the message that the story is in the journey and not what he discovers about these 6 relatives. He quotes and refers to Proust as an ideal to whom he aspires. I have to say that I really don't care for Proust. I think his writing is entirely too verbose and flowery. Sadly, each of the six family members who perished could have been saved had his grandfather been able to provide $5000 for each of them to guarantee that they would not have become a burden on the U.S. Unfortunately, he could not. Nevertheless, it is merely academic that any of the six would have been allowed to leave Poland and get a U.S. visa at that time even if he had been able to provide the financing. Mostly, the U.S. state department was then and probably still is anti-semetic. They threw up barriers at every turn to keep Jews out of our country. History will not look kindly on them including and especially Joe Kennedy who as the English ambassodor under Roosevelt refused to give the fleeing Jews visas to the states. Roosevelt refused to allow the St. Louis to dock with its fleeing desperate Jews many of whom paid dearly to board the ship. They were the rich and educated. Yet they were returned to the ovens in Germany. Germany planned the incident and used it to prove that no one in the world really cared what he did to the Jews. For the most part he was correct. One can read Constantine's Sword to see that the Catholic church turned a blind eye. Yet instead of being a Holocaust book of great depth and information, we are led on this journey of self discovery recounted in enough detail to fill a 500 page book. Mendelsohn is a talented author. He can turn a phrase. He can make the detailed descriptions of his journey interesting to the reader. I actually think that children of survivors might find this book interesting as a suggestion of what they too might do before all the surviviors are dead. If that is what you want then you will be satisfied. Otherwise, you will be disappointed. This is not a holocaust story.

I am so thankful to have read this story. I read many reviews here and some seem to have missed the point completely. They definitely saw a tree or two, but the forest is really where it's at! This book, in my opinion, takes patience, just as it took patience for Mendelsohn to travel and interview all of those people along the way.

Early on I figured out that he intended to tell more than the story of those lost six. In telling their story, he was telling the story of the six million. In telling the story of these memories, he told the story of his own journey. In telling about his family he showed me things about my own family. His inclusion of scripture showed how the stories of our time are really the stories of all time. He was no great Jew - but he discovered his faith and heritage along the way. In our fast food society (no longer eating the same foods made by our grandparents and great-grandparents!) we just want the bottom line now. This story was more than just a period at the end of Uncle Schmiel's life.

I do agree the book could have used a bit of editing (so do I so I should know!) and I would have enjoyed captions on Matt's photos, but I definitely liked having them woven throughout the story. I'm not Jewish and I'm not a writer, but after reading this book I would very much like to be the main character of a good story!

"To be alive today is to have a story to tell. To be alive is precisely to be the hero, the center of a life story. When you can be nothing more than a minor character in somebody else's tale, it means that you are truly dead." This is where it's at. Mendelsohn wasn't bragging about what a great story teller he is! He just knew there was a story to tell and wanted to tell it in a different way that would teach us along the way. If you just want morbid Holocaust stories, try the evening news. This book is about life.

One of the best and most treasurable books on the subject of memory and the Holocaust, this is a book in particular of and for the second generation, the children and grand-children of Holocaust survivors who bear--like Mendelsohn who, spitting image of his murdered great-uncle Shmiel the subject of this book, could make his older relatives cry just by walking into the room--so much of the burden of memory and loss. I won't repeat the premise of the book which has been amply covered by the other reviewers, except to add that this book in many ways is designed as a kind of Citizen Kane of Holocaust literature, in which the author finds witnesses who tell their stories, each a slightly different refraction as though through a prism of an ultimately unknowable truth, and thereby pursues the many threads of a mystery buried in the recesses of the past in order to discover, reveal and clarify, to bring closure and permit one to live on. In doing so, the author gives a final, and enduring dignity to the lives of his great-uncle and family who would otherwise have disappeared into oblivion with the simple epitaph, "killed by the Nazis." The writing is very personal, but to see it as self-indulgent as some reviewers have suggested, is mistaken. This is a personal quest as much as it is an archeology, and the author's mental landscape is thus very much a part of the unraveling, and in light of his erudition and expert writing, highly enriching. Yes, the reading demands patience, but that is the nature of a quest, whose value lies as much, if not primarily, in the process--in the arduousness of the pilgrimage, as it were--as much as in the attainment of the destination. A survivor remarks, in one of the vignettes, "There were the Egyptians with their pyramids. There were the Incas of Peru. And there was the Jews of Bolechow." Every personal tragedy is all-encompassing for the one who endures it, every loss of an individual the loss of a world. It is a tribute to the powers of the author that he makes us care--very much--about the life, and the death, of the Jews in the town of Bolechow more than half a century ago, sitting astride modern history, leaving but faint traces in the memories and the lives of the survivors, of a great, vanished civilization.

I don't believe there can be much more to be said about the Charms of Frank McCourt. Even when he is divulging his shortcomings, his wit and bare-knuckled honesty draw you in.

"Teacher Man" is, to me, quite different than his previous two works, but completely enjoyable down to the last tale. I think it makes a great gift to every teacher who has ever struggled with their profession and the demise of their idealistic vision. It stands out as a shining beacon that you don't have to be "perfect" to make a life changing difference in the lives of a student.

A fellow teacher and friend recommended this book to me; I had never heard of it previously, surprisingly. I knew I would like it just by looking at the cover and first few pages: Frank McCourt's sense of humor and finesse with teaching really shows through with two photographs there especially. He takes the reader easily through the span of his teaching career with a string of hilarious anecdotes and shares invaluable, yet typical, insight along the way. McCourt really refreshed my sense of what teaching was, is , and can be along with putting teaching situations and education in perspective. As a teacher of high school Language Arts, I often wonder whether or not it's me, the kids, or both. Whether he intends to or not, McCourt reassures educators like me that educating youth is an ongoing, if not sometimes stifling, doubting, and frustrating struggle. Kids have always been kids, so to speak, and the best teachers have always been just that too. A true reality check for public school systems in a time of No Child Left Behind. It does a stunning and long-lasting job of reminding us that making kids think is what we yearn for and that, sometimes, we realize that yearning, in spite of ourselves. Thanks Mr. McCourt for revitalizing a part of me that had been a bit bogged down!

I am puzzled by this book. The first paragraph stated McCourt's pride over having made something of himself after a terrible childhood. He then proceeds to tell the story of his teaching as part of this. He admits himself that he felt like a fraud much of the time. I can see why! Most of the anecdotes cover stories of his childhood and he admits to not having control over the students. (He seems to waver between intense pride and self loathing.) Although I enjoyed many of his anecdotes(the assignments to write a suicide note, a excuse note to God from Eve, and reading recipes to music), I spent a lot of time wondering how he could have been a wonderful teacher and had kids flocking to the classroom. I must assume that there is something key to McCourt's charming classroom manner that he left out.

I was very surprized about this book. Frank McCourt was not the jovial , funny loving man I thought he would be. In this memoir, Mc Court writes briefly about his college education, his early years teaching at vocational high schools, and finally with pride some interesting lessons he taught at Stuyvesant High School.McCourt writes honestly about the difficulty of teaching . There is some humor in his story ( McCourt developed his students' writing skills by having them practice writing excuse notes). McCourt also had some sexual affaires before and during his unhappy marriage.

I liked this book. It was honest.I came away from the book thinking that we shouldn't give up on ourselves. No matter how old we are we can still make a differnce. Frank McCourt was 66 years old when he wrote his first book.

I purchased this book with the hopes of having something fun and enjoyable to read, but ended up struggling to finish it. I have never read Angela's Ashes or 'Tis, but at this point I don't think I want to!

The book started off with McCourt being a teacher trying to find his way in the teaching world and trying to figure out what works with the students, but then it seemed to stay there. Throughout the entire book it seemed that he was more worried about the students liking him than actually teaching them anything. And even after 30 years of teaching apparently he still has no idea what he's doing and still just wants his students to like him.

As I haven't read his other books I didn't mind the flashbacks to his childhood in Ireland, although he seems to repeat the same types of situations over and over. But his stories about his students and their parents were even more repetitive. At one point I thought i'd put my bookmark on the wrong page because I was sure i'd read a certain part already, but, no, he was just telling a "different" story that was exactly like the others.

As this book is only 257 pages long I expected to finish it in a day or two but it took me almost a week because I just didn't WANT to read it. Maybe if i was a teacher i'd find it more amusing, but I say don't waste your money buying this!

How does anyone explain the murder of hundreds of thousands by other human beings? Whether it's Armenians by Turks, Poles by Germans, Soviets by Soviets, Rwandans by Rwandans, Cambodians by Cambodians, Croats by Serbs, Serbs by Croats, Bosniaks by Serbs, Darfuris by Sudanese; the cruelty involved in the murders far outweights the "reasons" for the crimes.

No matter how angry one is with his fellow human beings, the systematic murder of ones neighbors is unfathomable. The murders in the ex-Yugoslavia are as random and systematic as those by Nazi Germany. Ethnic cleansing (to give it a title like a TV commercial) is no less horrendous than religious zealousness. To search out you fellow human being, and then murder them without rhyme or reason, except for their religion or the language they speak (is Serbo-Croatian that different from Croato-Serbian?) or the religious hierarchy they follow seems as absurd as to murder all the left-handed blonds with blue eyes.

Primo Levi spent the forty years after the Holocaust trying to fathom how one (anyone) survived in the "Lagers" (his name for the Camps). He was 'lucky' in that he was taken in 1944, when some prisoners were kept for their 'knowledge' as opposed to the immediate extermination of all who came off the trains. But even then, how does one live with the knowledge of what one human being can do to another, sometimes out of no other reason than boredom?

What is interesting in this volume is his discussion of the reaction of 'everyday' Germans, to the original volume, "Survival in Auschwitz". While most of his letters of from 'young Germans', born during and after The War, those by the older Germans are most enlightening. This book is important in the unbridled descriptions or the uselessness of torments for no use other than the pleasure of the torturers.

Zeb Kantrowitz

Just a note to correct the Amazon book description that states that Levi committed suicide. He did not. He fell to his death down a staircase in his apartment house.

"The Drowned and the Saved" by Primo Levi, is different in one aspect from his earlier works dealing with his experiences in Auschwitz: in the previous books, he was still an impassioned young man, racing as it was to record his memories and experiences. For later in life, memory can become less exact and true, as he recounts in this book, a collection of reflections and observations about his experiences and what they have to say about that time and humanity in general. "The Drowned and the Saved" is a bibliography of sorts, an examination of one man's search to make sense out of the senseless, to open the eyes of those who were not there, to make sure that this horror is never forgotten, or repeated.

Primo Levi, while Jewish by birth, was agnostic by the time he was taken as a political prisoner to Auschwitz. He survived, thanks in part to his job as a chemist, but was still just as affected by the savagery around him. Levi explores different topics within the Lagers, and while distanced by time and experience, his observations are still cutting. Levi deftly talks of various topics - the useless violence inflicted upon prisoners, the shame that they felt in their situation, how language itself became degraded within the camp system, and how there are grey areas where blame and judgment are not necessarily easy or concrete. Levi closes his book with a look at correspondence he has received from Germans after the translation of "Survival in Auschwitz": almost all of them try to explain away their lack of knowledge and courage, and while Levi may be able to forgive, he isn't able to forget.

Primo Levi and other writers who share their experiences about the Holocaust are often referred to as witnesses: but Levi insists that the true witnesses of the darkest horrors are those who did not survive. It is truly impossible to know what their experiences were like because they are not here to tell. Levi also admonishes the easy and placating stereotypes that have arisen in recent times, offering that the actions of the Germans and the world during WWII cannot be judged by the standards of today. "The Drowned and the Saved" is an informative and thought-provoking book, offering insights into lessons that should never be forgotten, but existing in a world where this is a very real and terrifying possibility.

Primo Levi's final memoir about the Nazi Holocaust is among the most provocative and compelling accounts of the Shoah in the entire literature. Indeed, it is one of the great political memoirs of recent years. Levi was an Italian chemist, anti-Nazi activist, and Jew who was sent to Auschwitz and famously documented the atrocities that he experienced in `Survival at Auschwitz,' one of the first memoirs to be widely read in Germany. This book is a profoundly introspective rumination, not on the particular horrors of the camps, but of their philosophical implications for human beings as a whole. In `The Grey Zone,' Levi explores the moral ambiguity of this moment in history, both in terms of the work of the Kapos and the rare but meaningful resistance from the Germans. Levi is open to the possibility of a moral spectrum, yet he remains unequivocally vociferous in his condemnation of National Socialism, and of the German people's complicity with this movement. There are many striking and haunting moments in `The Drowned and the Saved,' such as Levi's discussion of the Musselman, or the experience of palpable shame on the part of the Jewish victims. This book is a special memoir because Levi refuses to draw the reader via an explicit recollection of the litany of horrors that he experienced, but because he is willing to penetrate into the meaning and truth of the holocaust as human abomination. A true masterpiece, both in approach and in execution.

It is redundant to praise this book or describe its background, which has been done very well by other reviewers. This was Levi's final wrestling with the implications of what he called the Lager (he didn't use the term 'Holocaust'), not only as he experienced it, but more generally.

Just a few points that may be less obvious. Levi never uses the phrase "survivor guilt," and his choice of terms was never without consideration. Rather, he uses the term, "shame." The chapter that goes by that name is an enormously subtle and evolving one. Levi continues to probe the feeling as he recalls it after "liberation," and there are at least five different concepts of what that "shame" entailed, no one of which did Levi think was definitive. By the way, none of Levi's definitions are the same as the popular notion of "survivor" guilt - that one feels guilty simply for having survived while others did not. The closest he comes is to talk about surviving "in place of another," which is a more complex idea. It refers specifically to the nature of the camps themselves, a horrific "laboratory," as Levi put it, in which selections, influence, luck and more did mean that one's survival always came at someone else's cost. This is a sociological point. It would not the case, for example, for the survivor of a tornado or earthquake.

Second, the "grey zone" is very often misinterpreted to suggest that perpetrators and victims met in some "middle ground" somewhere. Levi is definitive about this. The responsibility of the killers and the victims are in no sense, and in no context, equivalent. But in the squalid and horrific world that was the lager, there was an enormous range of types and characters. Levi is arguing mostly against what he calls "stereotypes" - convenient simplifications.

Finally, it may be of interest that "the drowned and the saved" was intended by Levi to be the title of his first book, If This is a Man (known in the U.S. as Survival in Auschwitz). His publisher disagreed, although there is a chapter in If This is a Man called Drowned and Saved. Levi's preoccupation with the role in the camp of differences in power, privilege, luck, and alliances-of-convenience runs throughout his work. It is a topic that still deserves much more attention than it has received.