Cities of the World Books

Totally loved this book! I love to read about things that really happened and with such accuracy and attention to details. He makes history interesting! Now I just can't wait to go back to Chicago to see all the sites mentioned in the book.

Enjoyable book about a criminal who until this book has generally just merited a "mention" in books about serial killers.
Very interesting back/side story about the men who planned, designed and built the Chicago's World's Fair.
My only criticism of this book would be the development of the tie-in between the fair builders and the criminal. It wasn't wasn't well developed - it was difficult to discern what the author's point was using this style of writing and joining the two stories.
Overall, however, I would highly recommend this book. Fortunately, both stories are interesting in and of their own.

This is one of the best books I have read in a long time. It's a good example of truth being better than fiction. The accomplishments, connections, events, and action are almost too much to believe. It's a page turner with an easy format and readable style. The author deserves much praise for research, organization, and presentation of an event and era that I feel most of us know nothing about. I especially found the brief descriptions of Hunt, Olmstead, and others helpful as "behind the scenes" shapers of America. As a summer read, I just happened to be visiting both the Vanderbilt mansion and Chicago while vacationing. To be in the museum district of Chicago and recall the White City was terrific. I am on my way to buy his other book.

I must admit. I don't get it. Two books with grotesque murders related in gory detail against backgrounds of world historical events the intersections of which have little to do with each other. There is a bit of a problem with partially fictionalized history. It becomes a little like infomercials. How much info and how much mercial? And does the fiction begin to stand for the real history rather than admitting when it comes to history there is a lot we don't know and may never know as much as we would like our understanding of the past to read like a novel? It does not and maybe never can. I know a superb writer/historian/anthropologist who has filled an excellent book with words his hero might have said, and the hero in his old age came to believe that the fictionalized account was indeed what he had done. That is a touching confirmation but nonetheless a distortion. Holmes, the villain of this book may have gotten sexual gratification while listening to his victims being gassed to death and I guess that titillates the reader, but the author has no real idea of Holmes' state of mind. Also the Chicago World's Fair had little to with Holmes' murders and the reverse. Then as an extra the author throws in the murderer of Chicago's mayor by an unbalanced newspaper distributor. Yes there were nuts, as there have always been--- John Hinckley, Jr. shot Reagan because of a crush on Jodie Foster---and girls have always disappeared. Both Chicago's painted ladies and the Fair's commotion were not unique. So it is all a literary artifice. I am not sure readers would have been interested in the social history of the Fair without the murders.

As to that social history, it is interesting. Larsen has done a formidable amount or research and presents it in an interesting manner. But Larsen often lapses into purple prose. The biggest, greatest, etc. It gets a bit tiresome and is not true of history. That Westinghouse beat Edison with alternating current I don't think can be attributed to the Fair. And so it goes. Were it not for books on tape, grinding California traffic, and too many hours in a car, I would not have made it through the book. Fast forwarding helps. I must admit that I skipped a lot of detail such as Olmstead's various ailments and even his theory of color but found myself going back to the murder. Yet I could have done without some of the gory stuff. I don't quite understand how Holmes got away with it. But then I guess Larsen does a good job of conveying his charm even if that might have been somewhat fictionalized. With the murderer, he is so unimportant to history that it doesn't really matter. Lots of people who read fiction will like this book a lot more than I did and maybe they will thereby learn some history. I am all for that.

Charlie Fisher, author of Dismantling Discontent: Buddha's Way Through Darwin's World

not many books transport you to a time of great changes like this one does. for the too brief of period I have lived in the book I have lived the rise of a nation and the dawn of great evil and vision. wonderfull depictions, great people and amzing time.

John Kotter is a business professor at Harvard University who writes "Leading Change" as a guide to business leaders, helping them to transform their stagnant, ineffective, hierarchical companies into more effective, responsive, team-oriented ones. To help companies and leaders make this transition, he presents eight sequential steps that must be followed in order and done well.

These eight steps are:

1. Establish a sense of urgency (fight complacency)

2. Create a guiding coalition (both influential leaders and effective managers)

3. Develop a widely inspiring vision and strategy for achieving it

4. Communicate the vision, communicate the vision, and communicate the vision even more.

5. Give the employees authority to creatively experiment concerning how to best make the vision a reality

6. Make sure you point out things to celebrate as you make progress toward your goals; it rewards appropriate behavior and, besides, people need to celebrate once in a while.

7. Understand Bowen Family Systems Theory--that when you change one thing, everything else changes with it. Systemic change is difficult work that produces a whole lot of anxiety and unintended consequences.

8. Make sure that, once the changes are made, they become engrained in the new culture of he company; make them "the way we do things around here."

Kotter does get credit for being comprehensive and for being among the first to write a leadership book of this sort (copyright 1996). He appears correct in all of his arguments and this reader has difficulty finding flaws in his eight steps. He appropriately balances task-orientation and relationship-orientation and distinguishes between leading and managing. Furthermore, he is the only author I've come across that understands how Family Systems Theory plays out in an organization undergoing change.

However, the book is outdated. Newer authors like Jim Collins, John Maxwell, and Kouzes & Posner have refined Kotter's ideas and presented them in a more readable, more applicable, and more modern way (again, 1996 copyright).

Kotter limits his ideas and examples to the large, highly structured business world; other authors deliberately address leadership within smaller businesses, schools, non-profits, and other environments. Kotter writes before the internet was widely used; other books keep rapid communication advancements in mind. The obligatory quotes from people I've never heard of who praise the book say over and over again how highly readable Kotter's prose is; I found the prose dry and could cite many examples from this genre which are much more readable.

The ideas Kotter presents are not bad; in fact they're quite good and have blazed the trail for other leadership books. However, "Leading Change" could certainly use an updated edition. Other authors have taken many of Kotter's ideas, refined them, re-worked them, and present them in a manner much more helpful to a wider audience.

I neither recommend this book nor do I contest it. You would do well to read "Leading Change," but you would do better to read some of the authors listed above.

Very well written book and easy to read and follow. Since change is a modern requirement for any business, it simply makes sense to focus in on what it takes to provide the necessary leadership to do so.

This book is phenominal! An excellent guide for the leader experiencing change. If I had no other resource, this book would be enough for survival in the business world of change. Definitely worth the investment.

The book came right on time, and was delivered in the best of conditions. It is always very good doing business with you. I can trust that my books will arrive on time and the shipping is done with the urgency they deserve. Thanks once more. Teresa

The book I bought is a new copy.
It is in very good condition and also delivered in time, as mentioned.
When coming to the content of the book [It is a prescribed book for our course], It is good, worth reading once atleast.

The publicity director at Viking should be ashamed. If I had been skimming my BOMC catalogue with my usual nonchalance, I never would have noticed CITY OF THIEVES, and I would've missed one of the best books I've read this year. It should be at the top of the New York Times best-seller list.

CITY OF THIEVES starts out rather slow, with a deserter and "thief" being sent to find a dozen eggs for an NKVD colonel's daughter's wedding during the siege of Leningrad. Part of the appeal is the likeability of the two characters, seventeen-year-old chess wiz Lev Beniov and Kolya, a handsome young soldier who has been accused of deserting his army unit. They meet each other at the Crossing, a Leningrad prison.

It's the little things that make the book. Lev has a big nose and he's sensitive about it. Kolya is always writing in his journal. It's only later that we learn he's writing a novel entitled "The Courtyard Hound." He's also extremely funny. The third major character is a partisan sniper named Vika. She can shoot the eyes out of an ace of spades at a hundred meters. Of course, Lev falls in love with her almost immediately. Every good book needs a villain as well and CITY OF THIEVES is not lacking in that respect. In this instance it's Sturmbannfuhrer Abendroth who saws the feet off a prostitute who had tried to run away. He's not your one-dimensional villain either. He recognizes almost immediately that Vika is not a young boy, and that Lev, Kolya, and Vika are up to something.

Author David Benioff provides incredible detail. It's kind of hard to believe he knows this much about the siege of Leningrad. It's only in the acknowledgements that we learn he wrote the book with Harrison Salisbury's The 900 Days as his major source. Not only does Benioff know a lot about the siege of Leningrad, he also seems to be a chess expert. This is the first thriller I've read where chess plays an integral part in the climax.

I know nothing about chess and I still found the game involved to be riveting. I know one thing for sure. I'll be checking out Benioff's other novel, the 25th HOUR, which has been made into a Spike Lee movie.

Not often does a novel cover all the bases: wonderful storytelling, delicious language, well-drawn characters (both sympathetic and otherwise), and a history lesson thrown in. Difficult to watch this thoughtful tale come to an end because I was so enjoying the ride, although I actually might have preferred that the last chapter not be included--sometimes a little mystery is a good thing. On the other hand, if this really was based on the memories of the author's grandfather (as implied in the first portion of the novel), perhaps Mr. Beniov felt the rest of the story needed to be told.

Another excellent recent novel about the siege of Leningrad is "The Madonnas of Leningrad" by Debra Dean--these two will teach you more about this piece of history than you ever learned in school.

City of Thieves is a remarkable book. It is a pretty short book that has an impact beyond its page numbers.
Set in Russia during WWII during the Nazi invasion of Leningrad, the story follows a lovable Red Army soldier and a 17 year old boy who cross paths with Nazis to fulfill a strange quest. The story is by turns thoughtful as well as gruesome, heartbreaking as well as humorous.

Benioff is a gifted storyteller, with a straightforward writing style that lays it all out. The story is linear with no time jumping or other annoying literary props. The story just doesn't need them. The characters are revealed in their human imperfection with dialog that is realistic and at times very funny. The scenes are descriptive and intense. This may be a perfect novel.

Set aside some time for this book; you'll want to read it straight through to the end. A fast-moving adventure story with believable characters, it includes all of the elements that I love in a book: a backdrop of an actual time in history, excitement, danger, true friendship, love, a quest. It's a perfect book.

David Benioff's "City of Thieves" is something of a coming-of-age tale with a twist. The twist is the fact that the tale is set in the besieged city of Leningrad in January, 1941. It is a city at war surrounded by the German army. The city is under martial law but its people are starving and fighting for food and even cannibalism is the inevitable result. The two `heroes' of the story, Lev Beniov and Kolya Vlasov are each picked up by the Red Army for crimes against the state. Lev is caught looting (taking the knife from a dead German soldier). Kolya, already a soldier is picked up and accused of desertion. Both crimes are grounds for immediate execution but the two boys are thrown together and given a `secret mission' by a Red Army officer, Colonel Grechko, who agrees to release them on the condition that they steal two dozen eggs in time for his daughter's wedding. The two dozen eggs are essential to make her a wedding cake. If they fail, they will be hunted down and shot. And with that bizarre quest ringing in their ears they are let go and sent out to scour Leningrad and the surrounding countryside in a quest for enough eggs to save their lives.

I liked City of Thieves for a number of reasons. First, Benioff does an excellent job setting the story up. It begins as a narrative of his own life as a writer and then evolves into getting his grandfather Lev to tell him the story of his experience during the war. All the author knows is that "my grandfather, the knife fighter, killed two Germans before he was eighteen". The story unfolds as a narrative told to his grandson. Second, the characters of Lev and Kolya were well-drawn and engaging even if Lev and Kolya did play into a couple of stereotypes, Lev the shy, quiet, intelligent Russian of Jewish descent is scrawny, short, and horribly shy around girls and seems to be able to do no more than dream wistfully of some dreamlike romantic encounters when he gets older. Kolya is handsome, tall, athletic and an accomplished Romeo. He has, if even some of his stories are true, become quite accomplished in the art of seduction. Third, the plot is well designed and well thought out. This seemingly bizarre search for eggs takes them through the dangerous streets of Leningrad into German-occupied territory where they meet up with a local group of partisans. Each story unfolds as a self-contained vignette but each has its own climactic moment that propels the reader into the next chapter. Last, Benioff has done an excellent job in creating a historically accurate picture of Leningrad during its siege. I've read a lot of non-fiction accounts of life in Leningrad, Stalingrad, and Moscow during the early years of WWII and nothing in this novel strikes me as out of touch with life during the siege including the Colonel's request for two dozen eggs.

The outcome of the story may be thought of by some as predictable but I found the ending more than satisfying even if some of the `results' did not take me totally by surprise.

I think City of Thieves is an excellent story and well worth reading. L. Fleisig

I purchased this book as part of a reading list for my daughter who is entering 6th grade. So actually this review is her feedback to me -- DISAPPOINTING!!! She felt that the book's idea was interesting but that the writing lacked the richness of detail that makes a book interesting and that the plot took A LONG TIME to get going. Further, she is now reading THE GIVER and thinks that they simply copied a lot of that book. (BTW: She really LIKES The Giver). So for your sci-fiction buffs, try the GIVER and they might be more satisified.

Ok, so first i should say that I thought that the plot device of people living in total darkness and then discovering they were underground was brilliant, and that I thought the post apocalyptic setting and the use of technology was good, that said, Jeane DuPrau is a really bad writer who had a really good idea, sorry Jeane. I won't go into examples of inconsistent writing and childish plot devices, ugh.

I wish a good writer would take the plot and make an adult novel.

I enjoyed the book. It was a cool idea, a city shrouded in darkness, looking for a way out. It was well written, and it really leaves you hanging for the next installment.

I don't quite fall into the targeted age range for this book, but I must admit to enjoying it. Enough so, that I ordered the 2nd and 3rd titles. This one I feel got off to a rough start and didn't find its footing and rhythm until well into the book. (The 2nd book, "The People of Sparks", hits the ground running! I haven't finished the 3rd yet.)

There were many themes in this book. The author seemed to effortlessly intertwine them in away that I think would really stick with a young person. The story would provide a great opportunity for parents to read along and start discussions with their child on such issues as anger, true friendship, sacrifice and some others.

Another interesting aspect to the story was how male and female characters played equal roles. With fantasy stories I have ready it usually goes one way or another, but this one impressed me with it's "equality." The author didn't take an extreme woman's lib stance, but instead showed the 2 main characters working in equal unity. Thus, I think this story will appeal to both girls and boys.

As a Christian I found many parallels to the Christian faith, although I don't know the author's personal religious convictions. In some ways the story encouraged my faith, though it may not for everyone. The theme of believing in a creator beyond your own little world and the image of leaving the darkness for the light are strong.

In the end I recommend this book, as well as the 2nd, for pre-teens on up!

Fascinating read. Basically the same theme as This Time of Darkness (by H.M. Hoover) published 1980, which also features two kids escaping an underground city in a post-apocalyptic dystopia.

The difficulty in reading about centuries past is adopting the mindset of those who lived then; how can we, with our 21st century knowledge, grasp a world in which people washed their babies' diapers next to the local drinking supply and thought nothing of it? Yet, Johnson weaves such a detailed picture of London life at the time that the commonplace miscomprehensions held by both the academics and uneducated are understandable. Johnson's greatest narrative gift is capturing the extent of the devastation and its commonplace nature in 19th century London, where people lived with the constant threat of epidemic.
The last fifth of the book is given over to Johnson's theorizing about the future of city planning, trying to tie it into the work of the pioneering researchers of the cholera outbreak. This non sequitur weakens the overall book, but only slightly. The mystery is real, the medical discoveries ingenious and Johnson's research and narrative compelling.

The Ghost Map describes a series of events more than a centory and a half ago, but the warnings are still timely. Crowding vast numbers or people together without proper sanitation and with primitive understanding of medicine is a deadly cocktail, and cholera the villain of the book is still frequent killer in the underdeveloped world. WE must all stay alert to te potential ravages of lethal diseases. The book is a sharp warning against complacency and at the same time a captivating good read.

A fascinating read, in fact, the story line that weaves the two main characters together, Snow and Whitehead, has an almost cinematic sense of drama especially set against the Dickensian squalor of mid nineteenth century London.

Dan Mandish

This book should make you appreciate how far public health and sanitation have come in the past 150 years. Did you know, most of modern society's gains in life expectancy precede major medical breakthroughs like antibiotics? You can thank improvements in water, sanitation and housing. This book highlights the inviolable fact that preventing someone else's poop from entering your mouth is a good thing. Thank God and John Snow for water treatment plants.

Steven Johnson's Ghost Map is the fascinating story of the beginning of modern public health. It highlights the desperate search for the cause of a London cholera epidemic in the 1850's. The book has the pace and readability of a medical thriller combined with strong science/invetigational story telling. While the science end of the story shines, the reader still feels the human suffering of this tragic event. I liked the book so much I bought multiple copies to give to other teachers.

i was excited about this book...until i read it. there are too many GOOD books out there to waste time on this one.

SeedFolks By Paul Fleischman
Harper Collins Publisher 1997
Flesh Kincaid Index- 4.9
69 pages
Genre: contemporary fiction

Synopsis of plot: Seedfolks takes place in Cleveland, Ohio in a low-income neighborhood. The main setting is a small, abandoned and run down lot in the neighborhood. The book is narrated by a different character every chapter, although the presence and connection of all the narrators is intertwined throughout the chapters. The novel opens with Kim, a young Vietnamese girl struggling with the early loss of her father. To gain a connection to her otherwise estranged dad, she decides to plant some beans to honor his life as a farmer. She chooses the abandoned lot as her garden. The chapters that follow introduce other characters that end up planting in the lot as well, all for their own unique reasons. The reader sees the narrators from past chapters showing up in the new narrators' chapters. Each character has their own problem that essentially is solved by their participation in the growth of the garden. Strangers who normally do not acknowledge each other's existence begin to say hello, offer advice, and communicate across language barriers.

Address negative aspects of the book: One of the negative aspects of the book that I encountered was that the chapters are so short! Each character had their own personal story to share, but a few pages do not do them all justice! The author leaves you wanting more, but in a negative way. Another negative aspect is that I still had questions and concerns about each character when the book ended. The book concludes the same way it starts, with a narrator's story, and some strings are never tied up. This frustrated me as the reader.

Personal appraisal of the book: I thought this book was fantastic. It was quick to read and really hard to put down. I got attached to each character and really enjoyed seeing past narrators through the new narrator's eyes. The connection of all the characters was also really interesting. Seeing how Kim, the first character, is brought up in subsequent chapters and appears throughout the book was an appealing and unique quality of the writer. Living in a city like Cleveland, I can identify with how strangers ignore each other on the streets and feel they have nothing in common- even though they live within blocks and see each other every day! The diversity of the characters reminded me of my own neighborhood, and since reading the book, I've decided to say a simple hello to my fellow neighbors when passing them around the block. It's interesting to see how people react to kindness from strangers! You should definitely consider spending the couple of hours it takes to read this book to begin to think about how the book parallels aspects of your own life. I give this book 5 out of 5 stars!

It all started with one little girl. Kim's father died before she was even born, and she is afraid that he might not know her as he looks down from heaven. So she decides to do something to make him recognize her and to make him proud. He was a farmer back in Vietnam, so she takes a handful of bean seeds to a trash-covered vacant lot near her inner-city apartment and plants them. When he looks down and sees them, he will know she is his daughter.

Someone looks down from a window and is intrigued by this girl who keeps visiting the vacant lot in secret. Upon investigation she sees what is going on and decides to clear a little patch of land for a tiny garden of her own. Others observe and like the idea, and soon the vacant lot is covered with a patchwork of gardens from all sorts of people living nearby. Someone is able to bully the city into moving the trash off of this land. People who usually avoid eye contact at all cost are suddenly meeting neighbors and relating to one another. Through this garden project, a neighborhood of strangers becomes a real community.

I liked the characters in this story. They were all very vivid and their stories were well thought out. I also liked being able to see the different perspectives on this garden, and the different reasons people decided to plant things here.

I didn't like that each person's story was just dropped after it was told. I wanted the author to go back and write what the people were thinking. What did Kim think when her garden idea caught on? Was Sam able to stop the segregation he saw developing in the garden? I wanted some followup to each story.

Seedfolks is a book about a vacant city lot in Cleveland, Ohio that is abandoned until one day a Vietnamese girl decides to plant some beans as a way to become connected to her father who died before she was born. It tells the story of 13 different people who come together by this garden. They are all different ages and have different ethnic backgrounds and jobs. Somehow this garden brings them all together and means something different to each of them. The individual stories are interesting and touching.

My favorite part of the book is Gonzolo's Tio Juan story. He came to the U.S. with Gonzolo's mother and brother. Because he didn't speak English and couldn't work he would wonder around all day long with nothing to do and had to be baby sat by Gonzolo who who referred to him as a baby. One day he went off on his own in the neighborhood and came across the garden. The next day he went back and started working in the garden and planting seeds. Back in Guatemala he used to be a farmer and this gave him life again and he went from being a baby back to a man again.

I would recommend that you read Seedfolks. I think you will be touched by the 13 different people who are brought together through this community garden. In Reading Gonzolo's story it made me think about my Mom's parents who are immigrants from Portugal and how they too must of felt like Gonzolo's Tio Juan when they first arrived in the U.S., like they were babies and didn't know anything.

Paul Fleischman, Seedfolks (Harper Collins, 1997)

I've read a lot of books in the past few weeks, as I often do right around the new year for some reason. The best of them this year was Seedfolks, a kids' book about a community garden in Cleveland and how it came to be. (For the record, yahoo's map doesn't locate a Gibb Street anywhere in Cleveland; if this is based on a true story, Fleischman has masked the location of the garden in question.)

The story begins with Kim, a Vietnamese girl living in a Cleveland slum. In order to connect with a father she never knew, she plants a few lima beans in a junk-filled lot across the street from her tenement building. From this small act grows a community garden, complete with activist residents getting the city to come clean up the vacant lot, social workers using a plot to teach their charges about life, and, of course, a teacher who takes it upon herself to educate the entire surrounding community.

Sometimes, however, what makes a book great is not its overarching message, but how much latitude the author gives his characters in subverting that message. While the subject of the book is a good one, and it is presented in a novel way, where this book passes from the good to the great is when one of the gardeners notices the way the plots in the garden are panning out, and how everyone self-segregates. When fences start to go up around plots, he notes sadly that what was once Paradise is turning into Cleveland again. It's a passage that stands in direct contrast to the message of the rest of the book; Fleischman, who's been feeding us a steady stream of "wow, this garden has changed my life" stories, pulls the rug out from under us by subverting his own utopia. He doesn't do it again at any time in the book, though from this point on, we do get tougher stories about the various gardeners; still, that one moment of disillusionment colors the entire book, and makes it far deeper and more thought-provoking than it otherwise would be.

A wonderful, wonderful book. **** ½

For those without a Kindle this review will have little to offer except to say that this edition comes with a preface by Thomas Merton which for me was a welcome surprise. I usually don't bother with introductions.

Kindle users, I looked at every Kindle edition of this work and this is without question the best formatted version. The only drawback is the lack of titles for each "book" in the table of contents. Instead they are just numbered; I, II, III, IV, and so on. There are also hyperlinked "footnotes," which I did not notice in other editions.

I apologize to Kindle non-owners, but Amazon has not yet presented away to comment specifically on electronic editions, and many public domain books--classics--are not yet properly formatted for the Kindle (which despite a few hitches is a five star device).

This is not the most attractive edition of St. Augustine's monumental City of God but it is worth getting anyway for the introduction by Etienne Gilson. The translation is quite good and, though it is somewhat abridged, this doesn't pose too great a problem as Bourke has inserted into the text a brief description of the material that he cut out so you can go to an unabridged edition if you choose.

This is an apologetic text in defence of the Chritian faith. In this book, Augustine persuasively informed his audience (readers) regarding the history of creation from the fall of humanity to their redemption provided they recognized him as God of their lives. This is possible only as they abandon all forms of idolatries lest they experience a catatrosphe similar to what led to the fall of Rome. Augustine's concept of the two cities are in contrast to each other, viz, the city of God versus the city of Satan. The former is governed by God, and the later by the Devil that also governs the minds of many un-regenerated. Thus, Augustine appealed, in his 22 volumes that are now in a single volume, to join him "in rendering thanks to God" through this great work! Pastor Moses Oladele Taiwo, Ph.D. Professor of New Testament and Head of the Department of Urban Christian Ministry, New Life Theological Seminary, Charlotte, NC 28203. Tel: (704) 334 6884 Ext.106.

It took me about five months of off-and-on reading to slog through City of God--it was time well-spent. Here is one of the rare 1000-page books that not only deserved its length, but could have been longer.

What astounded me about reading St. Augustine was how relevant he is, even after 1600 years. The vast majority of what he discusses throughout this monumental book still matters--only the particulars have changed. In his day, pagans blamed Christians for wars and the collapse of civilization. Rationalists and materialists denied the supernatural, insisting that all religions were the same, and mocked those that believed in it. And Christians themselves, under pressure and guilt from what seemed to be the entire known world, expressed doubts about their faith. Sound familiar? Only the particulars of all these situations have changed--in the broadstrokes, Christianity is still fighting many of the same battles in which Augustine saw combat.

This edition from Penguin Classics (I fully realize that Amazon will post this review on the Modern Library edition and other places that it doesn't belong) is very good. Henry Bettenson's translation is smooth, fast-moving, and heavily footnoted. While I found the footnotes very helpful--especially in the hundreds of places in which Augustine quotes from scripture and other authors, like Virgil and Plotinus--some of them struck me as unnecessary, particularly those criticizing Augustine's etymologies and those pointing out which gods or goddesses are or are not found outside Augustine's work. The most helpful notes were those describing puns or other untranslatable portions of the book.

Like I said, City of God is very heavy reading and a great deal of work to get through, but the reward should outweigh the time it takes to read the book.

Highly recommended.

I read this for a book group I was in, and was rather peeved at being forced to blow so much time on what is essentially useful only to the Classical historian or Scholasticism buff. Realistically, Augustine is just a particularly eloquent proponent of a religious argument we all get in Sunday School at age 10: The things of this world are transitory and passing, but the things of the next world are eternal and more valuable. You can almost hear the monotonous cadence. If what you want is to add to your already-considerable knowledge of the particulars of late Roman civilization, then this is the book for you. If you're in seminary and reading Aquinas, and you're thinking, "I'd certainly like to know more about his major intellectual influences," then this is the book for you. But if what you want is an increased familiarity with the major ideas of Western civilization, then do yourself a favor and go pick up a pair of textbooks: one on ancient history, the other on classical philosophy. Augustine of Hippo will get a few pages in each one, and that's honestly all he's worth. Plowing through the entirety of The City of God for simple philosophical or theological curiosity would be like reading the complete works of Louis Agassiz just to see what scientific racism was like. Both efforts would be fruitful, in one sense, but in another sense you'd have spent an awful lot of time learning about antiquated theories.

Several people in my family recommended this book and I managed to avoid it until yesterday because the one asking was a young person. How could I say no to a kid telling me to read a book she liked? What kind of ogre would I have to be to say no? It turns out I'm the kind of ogre that realized I could have lived without reading this. There's not much that's new here or that someone other than a rich, spoiled sports reporter wouldn't have known about the importance of family and the necessity to find your own path to the waterfall. My guess is that there are millions of people with the money to buy this book but without the most basic idea of how to be human. This book is just some basic, simplistic rules about how to be a good person. Nothing drastic or thought-provoking here. Again, I wanted to like it, but I can think of dozens of other books that have really touched me in many more ways than this one. Morrie Schwarz sounds like he was a nice man, but I think I would have gotten more out of one of his sociology classes or from spending an afternoon with him just talking than from reading Albom's book.

This is a quick, easy read, all about dying but not a bit depressing, uplifting and cheerful. Give it to somebody who is having a hard year or having a hard time remembering their priorities.

this book reminds me a lot of Conversations with my dog by Ziglar.....if I had to choose one book out of the two.....it would definetely be Albom. Both books offer life lessons about many things in life....thought it would be better though....i am getting the DVD to see how the movie does.

After reading so many spectacular reviews, I decided to give this book a whirl myself, and I'm so thankful I did. First of all, I hate to read. Well, let me rephrase that. I USED to hate to read. Doing so much reading in college leaves me with little energy outside of schoolwork to read, but I quickly polished this book off in two sessions.

This book grabs you almost immediately and reels you in, and once you reach the first Tuesday conversation with Morrie, there's no turning back - you're anxious to see what lies ahead. In the midst of this beautiful story between two friends - Morrie, the former professor, and Mitch, his former student - you are taught valuable life lessons between the pages as Morrie battles Lou Gehrig's disease.

The best lesson I took away from this book is that love and relationships are the most important things in life. This book has really changed how I perceive life. I, at 25, was so convinced that life still seems so lengthy, so certain, when in reality, it could end at any moment. How do I want to be remembered? That's something that Morrie's words really make you think about. I tell my friends and family a lot more often now how much I love them, and I've let a lot of bitterness about petty things go because this book has reminded me how small those things really are in comparison with the big picture of life, and life is too short to be anything but happy.

In summary, this book reads quickly (so quickly!) yet there are hugely valuable lessons to be learned in its short length. If you're looking simply for a heartwarming story, this is the book for you. If you are perhaps one of those folks who takes life and those around you for granted sometimes, then this book is for you as well. You might even learn a thing or two. :)

Tuesdays with Morrie is about a professor (Morrie), his former student (Mitch), and their final "class" with one another as the professor is in the final stages of ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease). Mitch taped their discussions together and transcribed them into the book while throwing in slices of college memories of Morrie and other seemingly inconsequential moments that add to the humanity of this life-altering work.

Tuesdays with Morrie allows the reader to glimpse into someone's mind who knows he is dying. We all know we are going to die, but we don't necessarily act like it. Morrie addresses what is really important in life and says that if people lived like they were going to die, they'd live differently. They'd live better.

"How do you detach from the agony of physical and mental pain when you know you're going to die?" "How can someone with ALS be so incapacitated and yet still be happy?" "What would you do on your last day?" Morrie addresses these questions and they are what taught me the most from this book. I'll be writing on them in the coming days.

Mitch was able to learn lessons from a man he admired. I have been blessed with such relationships and of these I am eternally grateful. Dr. Bill Greenwalt was one of these men. We met every Tuesday so that I could earn my license as a professional counselor. He would encourage my good ideas and chuckle at those he knew wouldn't work. I didn't care because I valued his insight. He was patient and always thought deeply about everything I said. These two virtues (patience and thoughtfulness) are hard to find. Dr. Bill Greenwalt died suddenly of a heart attack in January of 2006. I envy Mitch in that I was unable to tell Dr. Greenwalt goodbye and how much he meant to me.

So we don't have to plow through every mistake in life, the Lord blesses us with people who can light our ways as we realize our potential. The person may be a teacher who always knows your name, or a supervisor who takes time for you no matter how busy he is. We need more people like this. I hope you will notice them around you and work to become one yourself.

A fine story telling in the context of a well-crafted historical novel. The small and difficult to read font is the only reason why I cannot make Sin in the Second city a 5-star read.

Really great book about turn of the century Chicago right after the World's Fair. There is no doubt that sin and crime were just as evident in the world 100 years ago as they are today. The Everleigh sisters did an amazing job of running a "decent" brothel and staying a step of two ahead of their competitors. I wish there had been more history on them from before they came to Chicago, I was surprised to find they grew up near the area I live in. The history of the religious movement to tame Chicago's Levee district was also very interesting. The only drawback is the book didn't flow quite as smoothly as a pure novel, but it is one of the most interesting non-fiction books I have ever read. If only my high school history books had been this good!

I seem to be swimming against the tide of opinion on this book. Plainly and simply speaking, I didn't think it was all that great. The subject matter was interesting, and it's fun to be a voyeur sometimes, looking into people's shady lives, but I just didn't think it was that well written -- kind of dry in the execution. I love history (it was my undergrad, grad and postgrad field) and I love history when it's written so that the general reader can read, relate to and understand it, but for some reason, her writing style just left me flat. Also -- my bone of contention is that she didn't have credible sources for the real story of Everleigh sisters, but went on to tell the tale anyway. Granted, she warns her reader of this fact, but still.

Long and short of it -- I liked the subject matter, though it could have been fleshed out quite a bit more. The writing (imho) was just flat. I've seen comparisons by readers of this author to the work of Erik Larson and (again imho) it doesn't begin to come close. I had to make myself finish this book and that's never good.

I love to read non-fiction historical books. Often, however, I find they can be bias or dull. "Sin in the Second City" was neither. Karen Abbott offers a broad and informative look into the under-belly of Chicago at the beginning of the 20th century. She paints an exciting picture of the Everleigh sisters, their "club," opposition and other interesting characters.
While I don't want to give anything about the book away I will say that it was a great book and one that I would highly recommend. The descriptions and characters make you feel like you are there. Several times I found myself laughing and at others picking my jaw off the floor. I am sure that you won't regret reading it. I haven't!!!!

This is a brilliant book- I am a "period piece" aficianado, and this is the best period piece type book I have ever read, for my money on a par with Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle." -Karen is the rare author willing to take a huge risk in tackling a project that involves a long ago period, with a dearth of available source data, and she knocked the ball out of the park. Being a Chicagoan and generally familiar with the Everleigh sisters ( check out the Chicago Chop House Restaurant for pictures of them on the walls!), I had yearned for a book on them but just assumed it would never ever happen- Her level of research is huge and shows itself throughout the book- That she could bring to such vivid life such a long ago time and place is a very major accomplishment. I have read over 5000+ books, this is one of the best 5 of those I have ever read. Clearly Karen has already established herself as a "name author"; I for one can't wait for her next book. Whatever that may be, hopefully it will be soon.

I was confused to read reviews that tried to refute Wilson's knowledge in this field such as misusing statistical data or ignoring other important issues within the inner-city. It made me wonder if there is a real denial to the problems that exist within the inner-city. Myself, having worked within the field, experienced very similar stories told by the personal accounts given by residents and general population. Wilson gives a purely rational and valid interpretation of both existing data taken from samples within the inner-city (mostly Chicago - I'm sure D.C. stats are there too;) and statistics he has personally obtained. He uses methods of the sociological, psychological, and economic nature. As a researcher, I see no serious error in his suppositions. This is how academics use the scientific method.
While I agree that Wilson was a little naive about his proposal to changing policy he still is able to point out his own limitations. In general, the job market is up but for a specific population the job market is still weak. I think the greatest message Wilson leaves for the reader is a feeling of empowerment by understanding the underlying issues that goes along with this phenomenon. It's definitely an important read for any urban sociologist.

Living in Washington, DC and seeing the changes in demographics in the city and surrounding area made me pick up this book at a sidewalk sale for 50 cents to see what Wilson's take on the "new urban poor" and his research correlating them to the loss of work opportunities. Reading this book should be mandatory at an advanced statistics course of how to come to bad conclusions through the use of selective and wrong data.
DC has never had a big industrial base, but it had a very strong and influential black middle class early in the 20th century up until FDR's New Deal when the city was swamped with undereducated and socially dysfunctional immigrants from the southern states. It is the same time that DC became a "black majority" city. This is the same time frame that Wilson uses to "prove" that there was a direct correlation with the loss of factory jobs and the explosion of the urban poor. In order to come to this conclusion, Wilson uses a lot of statistics taken out of context, manipulated to support his conclusions, and then come up with a rehash of "new" policy initiatives which are essentially a regurgitation of LBJ's "war on poverty" programs, which were an expansion and rehash of FDR's "New Deal."
What Wilson ignores are demographic shifts and trends that are much more easily explained and much more solidly supported by Charles Murray, Marvin Olasky, and others who were much more thorough in examining the trends that Wilson writes about.
The Washington DC area today has more jobs than ever before, yet the illegitimacy rate for black children is 90%. In the 1920's and 30's, the illegitimacy rate for whites and blacks was the same, even during the height of segregation and discrimination. The city now has a population base 25% smaller than its peak in the 50's. Even though job opportunities were expanding for minorities in DC, the black middle class abandoned DC and moved into Prince Georges County to get away from crime and other deteriorating social norms, but none of this is to be found in Wilson's research. The same is true for other cities where a combination of "white flight" and "black flight" of the middle class made these downtowns more closely resemble cities in third world countries than the USA. Similar problems can be found in Paris and its suburbs, and many other cities around Europe where immigration and a lack of assimilation have created huge ghettos of the "Urban Poor." There is indeed a much greater correlation to be found in the expansion of the size of the urban poor with the expansion of government programs designed to eliminate poverty. None of these alternative, and much more persuasive, reasons for the plight of the urban poor are to be found in this book. It was people like Wilson who "proved" Galileo to be wrong when he said that the Earth revolved around the sun, and this book is about as convincing.
There are many good statistics and arguments in this book. The problem is that Wilson has excluded any alternative explanations of the reasons for the urban poor, which makes this a very dishonest book.

This book is full of excuses and manipulated data that ignores the ultimate moral responsibility of a society. We can correlate joblessness with the number of innercity households that contain black ink pens if we want to. While Wilson presents an argument in an attempt to educate, his words are slanted in such a way that we are left feeling "sorry for them".

The essence of my reading of the book is that concentrated joblessness, not just concentrated poverty, is afflicting many people in old urban areas, and that prolonged joblessness, even more than prolonged poverty, is a profoundly disabling condition not only for individuals, but for communities, and has intergenerational effects.

Support for his theories is drawn from survey and ethnographic reseach with ghetto and non-ghetto residents and Us census data, as well as evidence from projects which involved relocation from ghetto to non-ghetto areas.

Focused on the American urban ghettos, with most of its data drawn from Chicago area studies, Wilson discusses the overlap of ghetto poverty areas, jobless ghettos, and the effects of living in each. He gives significant attention to the role of race- segregation, racially coded policy, ghetto culture, and attitudes of employers towards race and their employees. Of special interest is his aside on the opinions of black employers to black employees (reflective of the general pool of employers opinions towards black employees).

Wilson also examines ghetto related culture, the informal economies of the ghetto, and the place of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) in the decision making calculus of ghetto residents.

What is, IMHO, key to reading this book is keeping in mind that areas of ghetto poverty and ghetto joblessness are growing, deepening, and are not in a position to self-correct. Put simply, if joblessness is a key factor in the creation of ghettos, it needs to be addressed by supply-side solutions (job creation & employment of last resort, fostering adequate social supports (childcare, etc.)), and not simply reconfiguring the stick of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (the successor program to AFDC ).

If you're looking for a detailed set of proposals, Wilson retreads several good ideas (universal healthcare among them), but you'll be able to find far more developed versions of the same proposals elsewhere. If you're looking for a more in-depth look at poverty and joblessness in urban areas, however, this is an excellent place to start.

I found this to be one of the best discussions on urban poverty, and certainly one of the most balanced. I could go on about what I like about the book, but the other reviews do that justice.

I did not have much of a problem with his analysis of urban poverty. Wilson is right on when he blames a lack of jobs, transportation, adequate social support (including the lack of universal healthcare and childcare subsidies), and the cultural conditions created by unemployment as causes of urban poverty. However, like many sociologists and economists, he assumes post industrialist conceptions of these problems. For instance, he cites the "skills bias" as one of the major causes of a lack of jobs for poor, unskilled workers. He rehashes the common view that job loss can be attributed to our post-industrial economy that simply requires people to go to college and get more and more education. However, subsequent sociologists (namely, Michael Handel from the University of Wisconsin) have dismissed the skills bias as a bit of a myth that is used to distract people from the actual problem. If Wilson would have written his book a couple years later, he would have seen how job loss in the high technology sectors of the economy and the high unemployment rates for college graduates make it hard to believe that our economy has a skills bias. However, Wilson does acknowledge the other causes of job loss, including the trade deficit and off shoring production as more realistic causes of poverty.

My major problem is with his policy prescriptions, which like most establishment social scientists fall within the mainstream thinking. Wilson has excellent ideas concerning transportation, which should be a major policy issue in cities like Baltimore where most of the urban poor are without adequate means to get to work. Wilson's ideas about everything else are quite superficial considering the depth of his analysis. He basically advocates No Child Left Behind (national education standards) as a solution to our education problems. However, Wilson, like most scholars and political pundits, never advocates the obvious solution: more equal funding for inner-city schools to make them on par with suburban schools. Wilson himself acknowledges that problem, but it is not part of his solution. I think we do need to improve school instruction, but simply arguing for national education standards is too general. There are many problems with schools, but there are even more problems with students whom get their learning skills from the mass media.

Wilson also argues for more industry partnership with secondary education, and even goes so far to advocate allowing industry to shape curriculum. I think Wilson needs to examine the dangers in such a policy. While I agree that high schools do a poor job at preparing students for the labor market, I also think there is danger in using employer prescriptions as public policy. Employers are looking after what they need today in terms of workers, and by preparing students based on their prescription we might be shortchanging their futures when markets change (i.e. we were all told in the 1990s that computers were the way to go, but look what happened to the IT market). What we really need is to broadly educate students, giving them both skills and knowledge that are applicable to both the economy and in a democratic society where people are more than just workers. Only a broadly educated worker can adapt to this new economy.

Also absent from his education policy is the idea that we should have universal college education. I figured that was a given considering his views on education and joblessness, but it was absent from his discussion.

Wilson advocates creating a New Deal style Public Works program to give people jobs. I think that is essentially a good idea, but Wilson does not go far enough in justifying his arbitrary stance on setting public job wages below the minimum. The whole idea behind a WPA-style program is to decrease unemployment so wages rise, not just to decrease unemployment with no consideration of wages. Wilson shows a blatant disregard for Keynesian economics in this analysis. The problem is demand-side, not only the fact that people cannot find jobs, but because people cannot find good jobs that pay well. Industry is totally committed to keeping workers at poverty-level wages, and government policies for the past 30 years have ignored that struggle. Yes, Wilson advocates expanding the EITC, but why cut taxes? Taxes are not the problem, but the solution. Raise taxes for everyone, especially the rich.

What we need is for the government to create jobs of varying levels of skills and pay to compete with industry. The problem in the economy is that we have excessive amounts of labor slack generated by the decline of unions and the outsourcing of foreign labor. Wilson believes that by making the WPA jobs below the minimum wage it will give incentives for people to leave the WPA for higher paying private sector jobs. For what private sector jobs... McDonalds? How are low-waged WPA jobs going to influence the private sector to raise wages? Why does Julius not call for a higher minimum wage? Why is Wilson soft on making corporations pay their workers decently? Yes, unemployment is a problem, but so is job quality. Again, back to his analysis, the reason these women are on welfare is because it is more advantageous not to work than it is to work. The focus should be on raising wages through reducing unemployment and increasing labor's bargaining power. With a high paying public sector job, labor can tell private power "hey, if you're not going to pay me well, I'm going to go here...".

The last point of contention is where Wilson assumes that the globalization of production is "inevitable" and that protectionist policies are "undesirable". Of course, when discussing trade policy, the assumption is that job outsourcing is a phenomena associated with free trade. Transferring production abroad is not free trade; it is a protectionist policy corporations use to avoid the market discipline of comparative advantage. The phenomenon is the cause of the expanding trade deficit, and has disastrous economic effects. Public policy should aim to reduce job outsourcing by making it more expensive and by putting restrictions on capital mobility (and such restrictions were in place before the 1970s when everything started to go downhill). The federal government and state governments need to tell industry: "hey look, if you are not going to produce here, you can't sell here". That'll put them in line. These kinds of restrictions on capital mobility need to be implemented on a state level too to prevent businesses from fleeing the community anytime a local government creates a pro-labor policy.

It is interesting that private power is absent from Wilson's discussion. What responsibility do employers have to their workers in Wilson's book? None... In fact, public policy should aim to make everyone happy and not piss anyone off, according to the author. Well, the reality is that most of the policies that help working people are going to piss businesses off and may even hurt our competitiveness in the global economy. "Our" competitiveness in the global economy is based on exploiting third world countries and holding down the poor in our own country.