The First Lady of Hollywood: A Biography of Louella Parsons

Title: The First Lady of Hollywood: A Biography of Louella Parsons

Author: Sader, Luke

Source: Quarterly Review of Film & Video; Jan2009, Vol. 26 Issue 1, p51-55, 5p

Abstract:
The article reviews the book "The First Lady of Hollywood: A Biography of Louella Parsons," by Samantha Barbas.

Review: The First Lady of Hollywood: A Biography of Louella O. ParsonsSo much of journalism today depends on celebrity—whether Angelina's womb is full or Lindsay's stomach is empty. Despite famed gossip columnist Louella Parsons' flaws as a writer and a person, she was essential to how our nation became drunk on fame.

Children at Play: An American History

Title: Children at Play: An American History

Authors: Musher, Sharon Ann

Source: Journal of Interdisciplinary History; Winter2009, Vol. 39 Issue 3, p437-438, 2p

Abstract: This article reviews the book "Children at Play: An American History," by Howard P. Chudacoff.

Review: Filled with intriguing stories and revelatory insights, Children at Play provides a chronological history of play in the U.S. from the point of view of children themselves. It highlights the transformations of play that have occurred over the last 200 years, paying attention not only to the activities of the cultural elite but to those of working-class men and women, to slaves, and to Native Americans.

The Stolen legacy

Title: Review: THE STOLEN LEGACY.

Authors: Williams, John A.

Source: African Presence in Early Europe - African Civilizations; 1986, p83-89, 7p

Abstract: The controlling scientific, religious and political mechanisms of Western Civilization are to be found rooted in South European Greek thought, from Thales to Aristotle. But the late Professor George G.M. James in his work The Stolen Legacy dismantles the long-accepted argument that civilization as we know it originated in Greece.

Review: The book is an attempt to show that the true authors of Greek Philosophy were not Greeks, but the people of North Africa, commonly called the Egyptians; and the praise and honor falsely given to Greeks for centuries belong to the people of North Africa.

Title : Democracy

Author: Powell G Bingham Jr

Source: Journal of Interdisciplinary History; Winter2009, Vol. 39 Issue 3, p402-403, 2p

Abstract: This article reviews the book "Democracy," by Charles Tilly.

Review: This book examines the electoral experience of the countries of South Asia, from a comparative and developmental point of view. It involves a consideration of the different roles and functions of elections in various South Asian states in an area where electoral experience has varied greatly and the contributions of elections to the political development or political decay of the countries of South Asia. Dustjacket slightly damaged otherwise in good condition.

American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon.

Title: American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon

Authors: Byrne, Julie

Source: Church History; Mar2006, Vol. 75 Issue 1, p234-236, 3p

Abstract: The article reviews the book "American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon," by Stephen Prothero.

Review: It has been observed that religious liberty in America has benefited greatly from the strict separation of church and state. Without a powerful government attempting to define and impose religious orthodoxy on the people, significantly more religious pluralism has developed in America than in most other places. This has allowed people to create religious groups based upon personal experiences and divorced from historical traditions or orthodoxy.

Dog Soldiers

Author: Robert Stone
Title: Dog Soldiers
Imprint: New York : Penguin Books, 1973,1974
Review: A masterpiece! The best novel I've ever read!If you came of age in the late 60's and early 70s (as I did) and found yourself at the center of the counterculture (in my case, Madison, Wisconsin), you'll recognize all of the characters who people this extraordinary story. In no book I've read are they rendered with such precision and invested with such uncanny life. Charmian, the heroine dealer

Dinner at the homesick restaurant

Author: Anne Tyler

Titel: Dinner at the homesick restaurant

Imprint: London : Vintage, [1992], c1982

Review: What can I say about this book that so many others seem to love? Well, there are books about dysfunctional families that have some sort of redemptive ending, and then there are books that are just about dysfunctional families. This book falls into the latter category for me.
I read this book for my Booksamont reading group on yahoo and had heard such great things about the book. I wanted to like it, I really really did.

Biplane

Author: Bach Richard

Title: Biplane

Imprint: New York : Dell Book, 1990

Review: If you read Illusions or one of Richard Bach's later books first, as I did, you will find this to be quite a different read. This story of trading a modern plane for a WWI biplane and then flying it across the country was written by a pilot for an audience of pilots. His way of looking at the world comes through, even though it seems he was trying to write a book for persons who like biplanes. If you liked one of his later books and just want to read every sentece he wrote (as I did after Illusions) this is not such a bad read. If you also like biplanes, you got it made!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/product/0025046705/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt/277-3836280-9982927?%5Fencoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

Battle Cry of Freedom

Author: McPherson, James
Title: Battle cry of freedom : the civil war era
Imprint: New York : Ballantine Books, 1988
Review: For more than 15 years, there's been a single book that every Civil War buff must own: Battle Cry of Freedom, by James M. McPherson. Yes, I like Bruce Catton and Shelby Foote — quite a bit, in fact. I also have a complete four-volume set of Battles and Leaders of the Civil War. My bookshelves creak beneath the weight of these volumes and others by William C. Davis, David Herbert Donald, Douglas Southall Freeman, Margaret Leech, Stephen B. Oates, Stephen W. Sears, and Jay Winik — to pick just a few.

http://www.nationalreview.com/miller/miller200311120815.asp

Bachelor Of Arts

Author: R.K. Narayan
Title: Bachelor of Arts
Imprint: Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 1978
Review: This is the story of Chandran, a young man in his last year at college when the novel opens. Life, half-planned, is before him. Love, as yet half-glimpsed, like the fleeting green sari on the river bank that sends his imagination running, makes of Chandran for a long while an exile from Malgudi, from his friends, his family and from life itself. And love is the catalyst that makes him turn back to all that which he had turned his back on. Narayan's characters are fully alive in their doubts, their affections and aspirations - concern shown with assumed carelessness, Hindu customs observed as often as they are ignored, shown with gentle and wry humour. The reader enters a subtle and rewarding world bright with the colour of difference.

http://www.flipkart.com/bachelor-arts-narayan-rk/8185986010-bw23fe4kud

An American Tragedy

Author: Theodore Drieser

Title: An American Tragedy

Imprint: New York : Signet Classic 1964

Review: Theodore Dreiser is considered to be the leading American practitioner of Naturalism--which consists of writing about sex and violence in the lower classes in order to reveal what I gather were supposed to be shattering truths about the bleak aspects of modern industrial urban life. To that end, Sister Carrie tells the story of a pretty small town girl who uses her feminine wiles to sleep her way from the factories and saloons of Chicago to the New York stage. Along the way, the tavern owning married man who stole to fund their escape to Chicago, kills himself after being abandoned by Carrie and ending up in Bowery flophouses. Meanwhile, An American Tragedy tells the story, based on a sensational true crime, of a young man who is working his way towards the American dream and refuses to let a pregnant former girlfriend stand in the way of his chance for romance with a wealthy woman. He takes the slattern out in a boat & clobbers her, but is tried and executed for the crime.

http://brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/880/American%20Tra.htm

Old Heart

Author: Plumly, Standley


Title: Old heart : poems


Imprint: New York : W.W. Norton & Co., c2007



Review: This capstone collection by one of America's finest poets was recently nominated for the National Book Award. Elegant, alert, and wise, these poems are informed by a lifetime of thought and feeling expressed with masterly poetic skill.

On Christmas Eve / Ann M. Martin

Author: Martin, Ann M

Title: On Christmas Eve / by Ann M. Martin ; illustrations by Jon J. Muth

Imprint: New York : Scholastic Press, 2006

Review: Eight-year-old Tess is convinced that if she believes and stays aware of the magic around her, she will meet Santa Claus on Christmas Eve of 1958, when she will thank him for his gifts and ask him to use his magic to cure her best friend's father of cancer.

Mother Tongue / Bill Bryson

Aurthor: Bryson, Bill
Title: Mother tongue : the English language / Bill Bryson
Imprint: London : Penguin, 1991


Review: A merry and bright Baedeker to the English language, its history, character, and probable future. American expatriate (to Britain) Bryson proves a witty and knowing guide here, with scarcely a trace of the sneer that spoiled his popular tour of small-town America, The Lost Continent (1989). Instead, a gentle humor, enamored of oddities, warms his discussion of the origins of English, its evolution and current world dominance (so that even in Tokyo, he says, one will find English warnings to motorists: "When a passenger of the foot heave in sight, tootle the horn"). Constantly striving to amuse, Bryson at times seems to be compiling merely a Ripley's of English as bizarre facts stream by in dizzying array: a list of weird American place-names including Dull, Tennessee, Ding Dong, Texas, and "the unsurpassable Maggie's Nipples, Wyoming"; a list of some of the 1,685 words that Shakespeare donated to the language (including "critical," "fretful," "obscene," and "gust"); and so on.

Literature / Peter Widdowson

Aurthor: Widdowson, Peter
Title: Literature / Peter Widdowson
Imprint: London : Routledge, 1999

Review: This introductory volume provides an accessible overview of the history of 'Literature' as a cultural concept, and reflects on the contemporary nature, place and function of what the literary might mean for us today. This volume:* offers a concise history of the canonic concept of 'literature' from its earliest origins* illustrates the kinds of theoretical issues which are currently invoked by the term 'literary'* promotes the potential 'uses of the literary' within an millennial cultureWith Literature Peter Widdowson provides a thought provoking essay on the contemporary relevance of the 'literary' for students.