Biography Books

This book is phenomenal and is filled with scripture. John MacArthur does a great job of making these women's lives parallel to our current culture and easy for anyone to relate. Each woman has her own personality but all have lessons to learn from. I have just started the book and am about half way through already and each page has spoken to me that most of the book is underlined and commented on. If you're looking for God to move in your life and teach you some great lessons pick up this book!!!

We have been studying this for the past few months slowly due to only meeting once a week. We have discovered fascinating new details about some of the women of the Bible that we did not know. While we have found a few discrepancies, they are minor and we talk it out as a group. Overall, we are finding this study to be enlightening and are looking forward to the rest of it.

It helped me so see and understand how important these women really were in the lineage of Jesus. How God can change the seemingly impossible. Wonderful book!

I could only get through the first two chapters before I had to put it down. I sought this book out for inspiration, but found it was sexist and insulting. I write this not because I one of those "new fangled feminist types", but because I posses a brain - a God given one. What I glean from the way the stories are presented is that the author's belief is that women exist only through men and have no real intrinsic purpose or value to God or the world, except through men.

Eve is portryaed as a pathetic figure, the author writes patronizingly about Eve's sin: "As the weaker vessel, away from her husband, but close to the forbidden tree, she was in the most vulnerable position possible..." and "...Adam's sin was deliberate (when he took the apple) and willful in a way Eve's was not. Eve was deceived". So, the author doesn't even think she deserves equal billing in the "downfall".

In chap. 2 about Sarah, when explaining how Sara and Abraham lied when they entered Egypt, saying that Sara was his sister so other men would not kill Abraham for her the author concludes: "...Abraham's motives were selfish and cowardly, and the scheme reflected a serious weakness in his faith. But Sarah's devotion to her husband is nonetheless commendable, and God honored her for it..". So, she is not a whole person in this author's view - they both lied, he calls it "cowardly" on Abraham's part, but believes God commends Sara, because she it was good she supported him - EVEN when he did something "selfish and cowardly".

As a Christian I found the simplistic and ridiculous for the 21st century.
I cannot recommend this book to anyone with a brain.

I have led numerous Bible studies, and this book has been a real disappointment. The writing lacks balance, is often disorganized, and even has an "anti-women" tone to it. I find myself having to work all week to plan our study, to supplement what he's written. I would not recommend this book.

What can be added to what has already been celebrated about this book? I'm only embarrassed to have read the abridged version, somewhat mockingly--even if authorized by Solzhenitsyn--referred to by the author as offered to those too busy in our modern world to read the entire text.

Nonetheless, this abridged *Gulag Archipelago* is as powerful a document of human evil and the capacity...if we dare...of the human capacity to transcend that evil as has ever been written. Part horror story, part Russian history, part holy book, *The Gulag Archipelago* is virtually an alternate Bible penned by a man who has the moral authority of an Old Testament prophet.

With savage satire and a well-earned bitterness that makes absolutely no attempt to conceal his unmitigated contempt and outrage, Solzhenitsyn vents the long-repressed, apocalyptic anger of a man whose witnessed--and suffered--first-hand the worst indignities that man can inflict upon fellow men.

*The Gulag Archipelago* isn't only about Stalinist totalitarianism, it's about totalitarianism as it exists everywhere--even within our own hearts. Solzhenitsyn appeals to his readers to examine--honestly and uncompromisingly--their conscience to see the wrongs we've committed and the wrongs we've been complicit by turning the other way. Evil is not "out there" in some other government, some other people, or person--it's a potential within all of us, all the time, as is the good we might access instead to stand up to it.

*The Gulag Archipelago* was a dangerous book when it was written and it's still a dangerous book today--dangerous because of its universality, its individuality, its radical apolitical morality. It's a book that should be required reading in every school--but never will be--because it teaches us to beware, not of this or that political regime, but of *all* political regimes, of all power, of all concentrated authority, of all complacency in the face of injustice and the oppression so often committed in the name of the "common good."

If you don't have time to read the unabridged text, this shortened--not quite 500 pages--version will be more than enough to convince you that someday you should, that *The Gulag Archipelago* is, indeed, one of the greatest, noblest, most important calls to conscience ever written.

"A stone is not a human being, and even stones get crushed."

This was an absolutely brutal, yet enlightening read. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a young, decorated Red Army officer who served bravely during the war, only to be arrested, tortured, and sent to the Gulag Archipelago (the forced labor camp system) to do a ten year sentence, followed by permanent internal exile. This book is a combination of his own personal experiences, and a general history of the gulag system which he has gathered from research as well as other personal stories sent to him by other inmates.

For privately criticizing Stalin, the author was clearly guilty of being a dangerous "enemy of the people" worthy of torture and death,(Solzhenitsyn writes with a brilliant sense of sarcasm) but the fact is, many were arrested quite arbitrarily, many simply because of a need to fill quotas. I'm reminded of a quote by Stalins right hand man Molotov, when speaking about the randomness of arrests, years after the war: "a man could have been a right-winger, and not realized he was a right-winger. We had to be sure." Or something to that effect. These enemies of the people would feed the "sewage disposal system" of the Soviet state.

In his sarcastic, metaphorical writing style, the author describes all the horrors of the system, beginning with arrest and torture, *ahem* interrogation, and all through the stages of the camp system where death and cruelty became the only certainties. Ruthlessness, Solzhenitsyn writes, was the measure of a Bolsheviks worth. The more single-mindedly cruel he was, determined his dedication to the state. Any form of kindness toward the accused was seen as a sign of weakness and lack of zeal. Most disturbing was his descriptions of the torture, he claims that there were 52 different methods at the interrogators disposal, to ensure they don't become bored of course! 14 hour work days in subzero temperatures with inadequate clothing and pitiful food rations were also the norm. People were often beaten, terrorized and shot out of hand for the smallest infractions, or occasionally for the mere amusement of the guards. Such is life in the Archipelago!

Although some have accused Solzhenitsyn of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, i.e. condemning communism as a whole because of Stalinism, he is absolutely right when he claims that the brutality and terror were started under Lenin and Trotsky. While one can split hairs and argue that things might have turned out differently without Stalin, I see no reason to believe that things would have been THAT different. He also makes a consistent point of comparing the Soviet state to that of the Tsars, claiming that whatever their faults, life in Imperial Russia was never even close to this harsh. I specifically appreciated how he pointed out how easy the Bolshevik revolutionaries had it when they were arrested under the Tsar. Two, maybe three years in lenient exile for trying to overthrow the state! Yet under the Soviets, you would get 10, maybe 25 years of hard labor for practically nothing, which you would probably not survive anyway. All in all, this is a disturbing but brilliant and essential read for understanding the Soviet state. 5 stars.

The title of this review is truly the way I feel about this book. The first volume relates stories of arrest and interrogation, the second volume tells of life in the camps, and the third talks of life in internal exile.

The second volume, in particular, is at times haunting and at others uplifting in ways that are absolutely beyond description. The story of the woman who was set aside to starve to death simply because she "wasn't worth her bread ration" is one of the many that will stay with you forever.

The book was absolutely earth-shattering when it was published as the Soviet Union was still at the height of its power, but in bringing forth reports of Stalin's brutality it creates universal, timeless themes. Anyone who wishes to understand the human experience and to truly examine one's own soul must read this book.

In this book Solzhenitsyn describes the intelligentsia as those who are preoccupied with the spiritual side of life. Reading this book will focus you on the spiritual in ways you could never imagine. A beautiful, stunning work. Monumental.

The original three volumes of this book changed my life, my world, my soul. There is little I can add to what others have already said except for one thing. This bitter humor, the voice of incredulity, the moments when Stalin's mask slips (for instance a scientific article are about the discovery of a frozen mammoth in the Siberian tundra and the casual reference to how it tasted - only Gulag prisoners would eat a 10,000 year old mammoth).

Overall let me put it this way. This is the greatest exercise in SUSTAINED IRONIC TONE in the history of literature. The derisive, incredulous, witnessing voice never stops digging for the Truth.

The stuff that makes this book amazing:

1) Searing portrayal of the horror and corruptness of Stalin's Soviet Union
2) Top-notch prison vignettes and descriptions of human hope (and hopelessness) in the face of atrocity
3) Moments of great psychological insight
4) A million snapshots into a time and place so unlike any I know. If you want to read a true insanity nightmare, this is your book!

But the big weakness:

Solzhenitsyn throws out the baby (The Russian Revolution, Lenin, and the ideals of true socialism) with the bathwater (Stalinism and reaction to the Revolution). He builds a long, tangential, and overall stilted case for lumping them all in together and pasting on top the label of evil - Evil Communism. If he'd only stuck with writing about his own experiences and those of his fellows, and not been so heavy-handed with the historical background information, this book would have been a knockout. Funnily enough, I think a modern editor could easily tease out this wheat (60% of the book) from the chaff (40%).

But in part I let Solzhenitsyn off the hook, because he was a tortured, innocent Soviet prisoner in the 1940s, and clearly has residual bitterness. To use an imperfect analogy, can I understand why a raped woman might hate all men? Yes. But do I agree with her assessment of my gender? No.

Not only is this story a memoir of the three-week trip around the world, it is an autobiography of their childhood. So many great humorous scenes - several I just had to read to my husband! I did not feel the detatchment to the parents as some readers described, but I got a clear picture of parent/child relations in the generation before me. And although I do not having siblings I grew up with, I did not feel alienated and was genuinely drawn into the friendship between them. Several parts had me in tears - and not just from laughing.

I want my husband and his older brother (who are close) to read this - I think it will spark their memories of childhood.

All in all, a fantastic book! For anyone - men and women alike, with or with out siblings, younger or older.... something for all.

I just finished this book this morning and I have to say it was just average. Having just come back from a trip with my own brother and being of similar age to the Sparks brothers, I connected with this book on some level, but not completly. For instance, they refer to each other as "Brother" or " Little Brother". I have never really heard brothers regularly refer to each other in that way. I also never realy connected with the family as a whole, so I wasn't vested in the loss of his father or mother as there was a sense of detachement for both throughout the book. His sister's struggle and ultimate death was hard to read due to my own relationship with my younger sister, so the last third of the book gripped me more than the first 2/3s.



All in all, it is an average book. If I were to rate it, "Tuesday's with Morrie" was a 10 on a 10 point scale, the "Tender Bar" was a 9 while this book was an even 6.

After having 4 kids, most books would put me a sleep. I could not put this book down. What a great true life story about this fantastic author.

Nicholas Sparks -- author of novels-turned-into-movies like "Notebook" and "Message in a Bottle" -- uses an around-the-world trip with brother Michah Sparks as the catalyst for this autobiographical work. It is largely about pain, ranging from Nicholas' pain over feelings of emotional neglect because he was the "middle child" between an older brother and a younger sister to the childhood pain of seeing his close companion drifting away from him as the boys moved in different circles of friends during their school years. However, pain also strengthened the bond between the brothers as they faced the loss of loved ones; no one else had the memories they shared, so no one else could understand the depth of their hurt. Sparks's clear and simple style makes for easy reading so that the emotions are not obsured by language.

Warning. Don't read the front cover flap of this book. It is a plot buster.

This book is for anyone who ever had a brother or sister or ever wanted one. It describes a trip around the world in three weeks to some of the oldest buildings on this planet. While it seems like they spent more time on the planes than actually in the countries, and they saw more museums than they could handle, they also stood in awe of the world's greatest man-made treasures. Interspersed with the stories of old buildings, there were stories of old relationships: between two brothers, to their parents, to their sister, to their spouses and to their own children. In short a great read.

Just don't read the front cover flap before reading the book.

Ron Chernow is one terrific writer. Hard to put down his books, including the biography of Alexander Hamilton and the House of Morgan.
His in depth research and writing ability are superb.

"The House of Morgan" by Ron Chernow gives full reign to the author's access to never-before seen material and lively prose as he majestically takes the reader on a tale that spans two centuries and intersects global events. Despite being a historian without an insider's knowledge of Wall Street Chernow has sculpted a book that covers not only financial happenings but their political and social contexts. Chernow doesn't flinch as he discusses the larger-than-life John Pierpont Morgan Snr's controversial role in shaping early corporate America (not to mention his penchant for attacking hostile media with his cane), the House of Morgan's role in World War I and II and the movement of Morgan Stanley and its associates into the hostile takeover arena as the clubby world of investment banking gave way to the democritization of capital. The only question left is whether Mr. Chernow may continue the book from 1990 to the present as great changes in the Morgan House have been wrought such as Morgan Stanley's disastrous merger with Dean Witter and subsequent management upheavel as well as JP Morgan re-entering the investment banking game and the buying of Bear Stearns. In short - a classic and a must read especially for those looking to enter into the world of high finance and "do business in a first class way."

This book is an excellent expose on how the Morgan bank has shaped the United States into what it is today. If you are curious as to how capitalism empowers individuals and allows them to build the economy, read this book.

I work for JPMorgan Funds and I have found some interest facts about how this financial institute all got started.

This book took me a long time to read. I started the book and found the first half of the book regarding Pierpont Morgan's life, his family and the bank he built quite interesting. The book drags on with details at points throughout the last half of the book and focuses much of its time on Morgan Stanley, but the author's strong research and writing ability stays constant. The last several chapters were more interesting to me and dealt with the changing face of investment and commercial banking through the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s in contrast to the gentlemen's code of banking that dominated the banking dynasties for more than a century. It's almost a shame that this book was completed in 1989 and missed the growth of JPMorgan Chase as it consumed giants such as Chemical Bank (and Manufacturers Hanover) and eventually became JPMorgan Chase Bank. In the end, this is an amazing piece of work, for any one person to achieve.

Natural selection is the idea that shaped a science and altered our understanding of life. It is also, unfortunately and too often, misunderstood and/or used to justify moral beliefs. This book, edited admirably by Philip Appleman serves two purposes. First, the reader is given Darwin's idea of evolution and the context in which it developed, from the scientific environment before the publication of "The Origin of Species" to selections from Darwin's various works. Second, there are a number of excerpts that show how natural selection influenced later thought. This includes not just the fields of science and theology, but also sociology, philosophy, and literature.

It can be difficult to just sit and read Darwin if you are not a biologist because it seems a little dated and obvious (at least if you are familiar with natural selection, as you should be). Additional material provides perspective and helps to see in what ways Darwin's work was revolutionary. Such material can also show how evolutionary ideas have been modified over time by different people. Appleman has obviously read widely on Darwin and evolution, and the readings he provides represents an array of influential and important works. With this book, a person can develop a much deeper appreciation of Darwin's ideas than from simply reading Darwin alone.

I am reviewing the second edition. The third edition is 100 pages longer and includes more recent material, especially concerning the dispute between creationism and evolution. I would not hesitate to recommend even the dated second edition to anyone interested in Darwin and Darwin's influence on scientists and other thinkers; this third edition should be a must-have.

I agree with Gould that this is the best Darwin anthology on the market. It contains a significant amount of new material and details the profound change in scientific and intellectual thought in the past few decades. Darwin is constantly misquoted by creationists, but this book sets the record straight. For example, the chapter on "mainstream Religious Support for Evolution" includes leading religious opinions on evolution, illustrating that many mainline Christians and Jews do NOT subscribe to the antiscientific propaganda of the fundamentalists and creationists. New threats to Darwinism and science are also covered. This is an enthralling read and I highly recommend it.

I have not read the 2nd or 3rd editions of this book. But based on the table of contents that I have seen they are even better. Appleman does a great job of organizing the material. I've often thought that the amount of religious material was a little bit overwhelming. I will probably try to pick up the 3rd edition when I can because of the addtional material. One thing that I thought was a weak point of the first edition that came out in 1970 was that there was a serious lack of current scientific thought. That seems to have been shored up in the later editions and, with some New Humanists thrown in, I definitely think this would be a very good pick.

This is one of the first Holocaust survival stories that I read. It is by far one that has stayed with me in the most detail.

What a strong girl Gerda is. she was told to never give up her boots and in the end it is one thing that saved her life after marching in a blizzard half frozen to death. How she survived is nothing short of a miracle.

Reading this when you are in a hard time reminds you that you do have the inner strength to survive. If she can do that then I can face my problems. It is quite graphic and tells the truth of really happened in the holocaust.

I'm not going to give the story away I'm just going to say you will cry and rejoyce in this story. It will touch you to core of your very being.

I must read for EVERYONE!

I have read many of the holocaust books out there but this is the one I pass on to friends to read. Especially moving is the liberation of the prisoners at the end of the book. I wish all schools made this mandatory reading. What a way to learn history! This author is quite an incredible woman.

This book was gripping and I could not put it down until I finished it. It's so hard to believe the hardships so many endured for being Jewish. A must read. Beautifully written with rich detail.

I read this book a long time ago and just got done listening to the book on tape for the second time. It is the most powerful representation of the Holocaust I have found. Please read this book if you want to learn about the Holocaust from a gifted author and survivor.

Despite the horrors around her, and fellow prisoners dying and becoming mentally unbalanced every day, young Gerda Weissman managed to survive several Nazi camps from the late 1930s through the grisly end of World War II.

Imagine being a teenager, wrenched away from your beloved parents, older brother and home -- and never seeing any of them ever again. It would be enough to make anyone unstable, not to mention bitter. Yet somehow, Gerda emerges from her horrifying ordeal stronger than she began. As her body heals in a hospital run by the Allies during the spring of 1945, Gerda begins a relationship with Kurt Klein -- a young soldier who urges her to tell her story.

Now an elderly woman living in Arizona, Gerda Weissman Klein is able to see just how far she's come from the young Jewish girl living a priviledged life in Poland. Yet at the same time, her writing style allows readers to see clearly just how that same persona has managed to live such a rich, eventful life to the fullest all of these years.

I've read many Holocaust memoirs, though I must say that Gerda's story is beautifully and distinctly told.

This book gave me hope for those mired in the public school system. It brought to mind another teacher book with heart, The Tales of the Dolly Llama, by Guy Kuttner. These books are inspirational and provide the appropriate tonic for those tired out by the system.

I was very pleased with my book. It was in the exact shape as the site described it and it arrived right on time! Thanks Amazon

I thought this book was good. It gave me some good ideas to use in the classroom. I think teachers should always be looking for new ways to teach.

Ayers approach to teaching is holistic and densely worded. He is a true veteran of the academic trenches having taught for almost 40 years at every level from K to college. He shows the utmost respect and concern for his students. Inextricable from his profession and unshakable in his conviction about what is greatness in teaching.

I really appreciated this book. Ayers is very passionate about a teacher's responsibility to help their students become complete human beings. Reading this book, and Grant Wiggins Understanding by Design, in a graduate class renewed my passion for teaching, which is really a passion for learning. Education should be about the big questions of life, not just the details and basic skills that are tested and required by the state and federal government.

Ayers is committed to developing whole and complete human beings, not automatons.

My only issue is with his emphasis on social justice as the focus of education. While I agree that a concern for social justice will emerge in people who think for themselves, it seems as if his recommendations force this concern on kids a little too heavyhandedly. If we are to be independent, complete people, then naturally what concerns us will not always be the same. Nevertheless, his emphasis is better than many who want us to just teach kids to read words and add and subtract, but don't really care if they can think for themselves.

On a side note, while I am disgusted by Mr. Ayers' past and his continued lack of repentence, I don't believe that it invalidates his philosophy of education.

From a avid classical music advocate's point of view, I never understood the Lang Lang's aberrant interpretation of pieces and his motivation behind his acclaimed success. This all changed when I learned where he came from. Reading his stories was truly inspirational. Lang Lang never had a normal childhood. He was surrounded my competitiveness and was pushed to become best. He was destitute but his passion for music was unparalleled. His father was so ambitious that Lang Lang was forced to practice 6-8 hours/day from early age. He thought of life as maze of competition. Winning piano competition was the only yard stick for musician's success in China. And he competed against tremendous odds to become who he is today.
I recommend reading this book for couple of reasons. It answers many questions regarding the competitiveness of piano playing and what it takes live your passion as a musician. Lang Lang was raised by a very strict father who's authority was never questioned. Nevertheless, Lang Lang is who he is today by his choice. He is the product of his will, not his father's. It also shows that if you don't complain and just work harder, the opportunity will find you.
It was a genuine pleasure reading this biography.

Overall this book was an easy and good read... This is Lang Lang's autobiography, in it he talks about his parents' sacrifice and what it took for him to get to where he is today. Lang Lang started off by giving a brief history of his family background, his parents' survival through the Cultural Revolution and the impact it had on his parents, and how it shaped their determination to push him to become Number One. This book touched me in so many ways... as he described his parents' drive and fortitude and their willingness to sacrifice anything and everything to guide his career was absolutely touching. His parents' missed opportunities because of the Cultural Revolution and how they put all of their hopes and dreams on him. Lang Lang's tumultuous relationship with his father and his love for his mother also touched me deeply.

I read half the book through tears... tears because I can feel his pain as my parents are survivors of the Cultural Revolution, and I've seen how much they've sacrificed for my brother and me. Tears because he battled through obstacles and through his tenacity he was able to achieve his goals and dreams. Tears because I am a fan of classical music and as he described his approach to each piece of music he played... I can hear it as though the piano keyboard was under my finger tips and I was the one that was pouring out my heart and soul trying to interpret Mozart's sonatas and Bach's concertos as if they told me themselves how they were feeling when they composed each piece and exactly how I should play it so that I can convey what's in their hearts to the audience.

I was a bit disappointed by the ending... I was hoping for a little bit more punch at the end... what happened with his mother?

When he burst into the classical music world as a seventeen-year old pianist from China, it was more than his piano playing versatility, and repertoire that caused a sensation; it was also Lang Lang's personal history and background. That a seventeen year old student at the Curtis Institute of Music, alone with his father in America, and away from his mother, etc, etc. This book is Lang's answer to the thousands of times he has been asked the same questions. He did a credible and honest job of describing his life and hardship in China. However, his telling of his growth and maturation in America in the last quarter of the book is superficial and shallow, as what one would expect from a 26-year old.

However, as a Chinese-American reader I am also struck by several aspects of Lang's book. First, it must have been a catharsis for him to retell the relationship with his father, the conflicts and mental and physical abuse (in American eyes, but not necessarily to the Chinese) he suffered. He has violated one of the most important Chinese canons, that is: "don't publicize family dirt." It must have taken a tremendous amount of courage and maybe some American rebelliousness to write a tell-all book about his father. Second, he appears to be challenging the musical, maybe even the artistic hierarchy of China, that winning competitions, especially international competitions is not the measurement of musical or artistic achievement. Third, Lang Lang's fierce personal drive and desire to succeed is not often evidenced in Chinese-American artists. This book explains his love of fashion, hairstyles as well his flamboyance and showmanship (good or bad) and, in turn, his success in America.

I highly recommend this book, especially to Chinese-Americans and readers who wish to better understand and appreciate Lang Lang.

Okay... Lang Lang is a phenomenon; Young, talented and entertaining. Be that as it may, wanting to be "Number One" is a reasonable pursuit for an athlete---NOT for an artist. It's a shallow aim, and speaks nary a word about vision, individual expression, or artistic integrity.

This book absolute blew me away by the powerful experiences related by this equally brilliant musician. I read it 3 x times within the first 3 weeks after release. I will cherish and read this book over and over again. It feels to me as if Lang Lang is standing or sitting next to me telling me his life story personally.

I believe reviewer "G. Hansman "jakebc" (Vancouver, Canada)" was reviewing an altogether different book when he wrote his review of this same phenominal title. I hope to have Lang Lang sign my book in the near future to cherish even more for years and decades to come. I have and will continue to recommend this outstanding book to any possible real reader of good books. Not only is the content extremely moving and moved me to tears on every reading whether Lang Lang achieved success or whether he failed, but the presentation style is extremely accessible and of a deeply personal nature.

Lang Lang absolutely bared his soul to readers and lovers of his brilliant music CDs & performances. I will also forever in future when I see, watch or hear any other talented person - not only in music - remember that the artist I'm enjoying may have gone through an often brutal training and preparation phase to produce that which I'm enjoying now.

To every person who loves reading good Non-Fiction: Buy this book immediately - I can hardly imagine anyone not getting his/her value for their money and time reading this amazing book!!

When asked about weather related events that incur the deaths of hundreds of people, most think of hurricanes, floods, of large tornado outbreaks. Few would think that summer heat would bring on the deaths of over 700 people. As a weather buff, I'd have enjoyed reading more about the atmospheric conditions that brought about the heat wave. But, that's not the authors intentions. His focus is on how a large metropolitan area can be brought to it's knees by a sustained heat wave. It's also largely a story of the "have's" and the "have nots". People in poverty-stricken areas or living on a low or fixed income suffered the most. Deprived of relief from the heat in any way, some literally suffocated to death in their apartments. While a heat wave like this is almost an annual occurrence here in Oklahoma, for the residents of Chicago, it was indeed a tragic yet forgotten disaster of historical proportions.

If you like nonfiction that reads like a page-turner, you will love this book. Klinenberg examines this amazing event in Chicago's history from every possible perspective: meteorological, historical, political, economic, sociological, anthropological, geographical. It's a brilliant work and reads a lot like "The Perfect Storm" in that you learn about a fascinating and true event, but you learn so much more, in unexpected directions. Highly, highly recommended.

On Thursday, July 13, 1995, the temperature in Chicago climbed to 106 degrees Fahrenheit. Over the course of the next week, while the city sweltered in the stifling heat, and power grids failed, people began to die - often senior-citizens that felt trapped in their own homes. Before long, the nation was treated to images of the Cook County Medical Examiner's office storing bodies in refrigerated trucks donated by a meat company, while city officials sought scapegoats. By the time the heat wave ended, after July 20, some 739 more people had died in Chicago than was statistically to be expected, at least 485 of whom had died directly from heat-related causes.

In this book, author and assistant professor of Sociology, Eric Klinenberg, looks at what happened during that long and torturous week, what were some of the root causes of the disaster, and what can be learned from it. Overall, I found this to be a very interesting, if somewhat dry and academic, book.

I do, though, have two minor complaints about the book. First of all, while the author excoriates then recent city-wide reforms that were still in the process of being implemented during 1995, he does not address the problem of Chicago's lack of a health diversity of political opinion (the last non-Democratic mayor was elected in 1927). The problem of Chicago's one-party rule has made it a byword for incompetence, corruption and downright criminality to this day! Secondly, while the present Bush Administration's tepid response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans has drawn much criticism, Mr. Klinenberg fails to mention the then Clinton Administration's complete and utter disregard of the events within Chicago.

But, that said, it is an interesting book, perhaps the only one on this terribly tragedy that is now almost completely forgotten.

Klinenberg's investigation of the conditions and outcome of the 1995 tragedy deals with issues of human interdependence and examines the importance of local and regional communities in preventing future catastrophes of this kind. Heat Wave takes a natural phenomenon and penetrates to issues of economic and social depravity, the echelon of neighborhood that one resides and the solitude that extends from those circumstances.

The only think I would add to what has been said already is that this book should be strongly considered for courses that emphasize the interaction between medicine and public health. Unlike other books written about the urban condition, this book focuses on a single public health problem and presents it from both scientific and sociodemographic perspectives. Medical and public health students alike stand much to gain by reading this book.

This unique tome is worth every penny because it can connect us with Dorothy Day more intimately than I ever imagined possible. She is no longer inaccessible to me. In fact I had been a little afraid of her in the sense I had been afraid like the whiskey priest in one of Dorothy's favorite novels, "The Power and the Glory" by Graham Greene. I had always been afraid to end up like him, despairing over missing the boat. Here is the scene on the night before he was executed by a Mexican Communist firing squad:

"What an impossible fellow I am, he thought, and how useless. I have done nothing for anybody. I might just as well have never lived..It seemed to him at that moment that it would have been quite easy to have been a saint. It would have needed a little self-restraint and a little courage. He felt like someone who has missed happiness by seconds at an appointed place. He knew now that in the end there was only one thing that counted - to be a saint."

Well now after reading 700 pages of "Duty of Delight" I am no longer afraid. Dorothy makes it look possible to be a saint. I believe without a doubt that she is now with God in heaven. What she did to get there, I can do. Reading her diary showed she slogged it out just like the rest of us with doubts, setbacks and sorrows. Through it all she remained faithful to daily prayer and the sacraments, including frequent Confession. She knew that it was in the little things that we find God, something she learned from one of her favorite saints, Therese of Lisieux.

Dorothy didn't always "suffer fools gladly." No matter. She was quick to apologize and always harsher in judging herself than she was other people. She always stayed focused on the pearl of great price, even as she paid her bills and worried just like the rest of us.

This doesn't mean she was an ordinary person. What ordinary person would devote her life to voluntary poverty in order to serve the least among us, literally serve them, with food and shelter? Flannery O'Connor, whose letters she was reading near the end of her life, said one time, "The Truth shall make you odd." Dorothy was never afraid of being thought to be odd if that was the price you had to pay to live the Gospels. And it was and it is the price you have to pay.

During the many days it took me to read this book, she was constantly on my mind. No other book ever did that for me. I wish I had known her like so many did. She affected all of them for the better, whether they were cardinals, famous writers like W. H. Auden, or street people.

Miller's classic biography of Dorothy Day ends wtih her funeral and his final passage tells it all:

"The funeral was on December 2 at the Nativity Catholic Church. An hour before the service people began to assemble in the street. There were American Indians, Mexican workers, blacks and Puerto Ricans. There were people in eccentric dress, apostles of causes who had felt a great power and truth in Dorothy's life...At the appointed time, a procession of these friends and fellow Catholic Workers came down the sidewalk. At the head of it Dorothy's grandchildren carried the pine box that held her body. Tamar (her daughter), Forster (Tamar's father) and Dorothy's brother John Day followed. At the Church door, Cardinal Terence Cooke met the body to bless it. As the procession stopped for this rite, a demented person pushed his way through the crowd and bending low over the coffin peered at it intently. No one interfered, because, as even the funeral directors understood, it was in such as this man that Dorothy had seen the face of God."

There are few people who have done more to keep Dorothy Day's words before the public than Robert Ellsberg. As both editor of her writings (By Little and By Little, 1983; Dorothy Day: Selected Writings, 1992; A Penny a Copy, 1995) and publisher (Orbis) of books by and about her, Ellsberg continues to remind us of Dorothy's vision of a Christianity that is orthodox in theology and radical (in the deepest sense of the word, as a return to roots) in social activism. His credentials are good: he knew Dorothy for the final five years of her life, and served as managing editor of "The Catholic Worker" for two of them.

Now, in The Duty of Delight, Ellsberg continues to enrich us with an edition of the diaries Dorothy maintained from 1934 to a few days before her death in November 1980. The manuscript of the diaries, housed at Marquette University (my alma mater, by the way) and sealed until 25 years after Dorothy's passing, is over a thousand single-spaced pages. Ellsberg has reduced the material by half by whittling away unessentials. Providentially, Dorothy's diary entries for the final year of her life, missing from the Marquette archives, was discovered after Ellsberg took on the editorship.

Ellsberg's Introduction to the diaries provides a nice overview of their content. Arranged by decades, the entries from the '50s through the '70s make up the bulk of the work. I began reading in the '70s section, since this is the decade in which I first became aware of the Catholic Workers, and gradually worked my way backwards.

Three things especially strike me about Dorothy's diaries.

The first is the sheer richness of the activities she chronicles: serving as the dynamo that kept the Catholic Worker movement energized; raising her daughter Tamar; dealing with Tamar's father Forster and Forster's common law wife Nanette; continuously writing; travels, both domestic and abroad; retreats and daily masses; public demonstrations and peace witnesses; and dancing with officials from both the state and church. In recording her activities, Dorothy not only gives us a good idea of her dedication, but also provides us with cumulative sketches of many of the co-workers (including Ellsberg) and clients with whom she came into daily contact.

The second thing that's impressive about the diaries is the breadth and depth of Dorothy's reading, as well as her love of music. The authors and composers she mentions in her diaries, when compiled, make up an impressive list, and her asides about them (as when, for example, she calls Solzhenitsyn a "holy fool," p. 626, or states that it's actually sloth, not Cassian's avarice, that is "man's abiding sin," p. 364) are frequently insightful.

Finally, the self-examinations, self-recriminations, and resolutions to be more prayerful, patient, compassionate, and nonjudgmental with which Dorothy liberally sprinkles her diaries are fascinating. On one level, they provide a cumulative portrait of a woman who is deeply troubled by what she perceives as her inability to practice what she preaches--a self-doubting that probably both feeds and emerges from her "long loneliness." At another level, though, these passages strongly suggest something that Dorothy perhaps never fully appreciated: that what she took to be spiritual and personal weaknesses in fact were also the very strengths that enabled her ministry.

In August 1952, for example, she writes (p. 177): "When I say, Lord, that I am too sensitive, it is truly that--my senses, exterior and interior are too thin-skinned. I am tormented by people's moods, their unhappiness. I must live more in my own heart, with Thee. Then when I go forth I have at least serenity." But what Dorothy interprets here as a moody over-sensitivity that inhibits contact with God might perhaps more accurately be described as an empathy that connects her with other people's suffering, and consequently with God's as well. Surely it's her "thin-skin" that allows for compassionate entries such as this one from February 1972 (p. 501): "I have been harried and worn out all day by the consciousness that we were inundated by an ocean of unemployed and unemployable, black and white human beings, searching for food, warmth, comfort, momentary surcease from suffering."

The Duty of Delight is yet one more wonderful gift to us from Dorothy, and it will prove to be an invaluable scholarly and spiritual resource. Robert Ellsberg and Marquette University Press are to be commended.
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* Entry from Easter Sunday, 1968 (p. 418) that could easily serve as the epigram for Dorothy's diaries.

Dorothy Day is the quintessential radical Catholic with a lifetime of arrests and writings to make her stands known. Few can equal her courage, as this book so aptly demonstrates. She chides herself constantly for being critical and speaking up, yet no one has the stamina to do so with her insight gained from experience. A comrade of Mother Teresa, Cesar Chavez and Fr. Dan Berrigan, she is in good company.
Who can not be impressed with her achievments and ongoing diary entries
of a litany of prayers? Life had no soft way out for her. Living among the poor, she endured the company of the homeless, drunks, addicts and insane persons. Likewise, coping with ongoing discomforts of noisy interruptions, lice, and ringworm, she proved her commitment to the otherwise forgotten members of society. She is best known for publication of the socialist newspaper,"The Catholic Worker", but
her personal memoirs and conversion story are not for the feint of heart. Truly she is a saint of our times.