_Carver Country_ is a fascinating look at Raymond Carver's personal life. Warning: one feels like a snoop reading through this book. There are photos of Ray's desk, complete with ashtray and paperweights; his childhood home; various landmarks in and around Yakima, WA and Arcata, CA; and portraits of Ray's family and friends. These last are especially powerful. But aside from the photos, there are words - unpublished letters written by Ray, an excerpt from a 1983 interview for _Poetry_ magazine (which includes my favorite line - "That's the last Christmas you'll ever ruin for us!"), and a substantial introduction by Tess Gallagher. It is wonderful and strange to see the places that were turning points in Carver's life, and the accompanying text is haunting. Gallagher's introduction is especially fine, and worth reading many times. Get this book.

Carver was a wonderful, wonderful writer. It's great to see his house, his study, his wife and friends photographed so beautifully. It's great to read his stories, his poems, more than 10 years after his death and to find them as powerful as ever. This book is very moving.

The words of 1998 MacArthur Fellow Charles Johnson's ccoupled with the poignant photographs of Bob Adelman climax in this excellent literary work that chronicles the life and legacy of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The wonderful photographs and literary prose compliment each other beautifully throughout this masterpiece, detailing the life and democratic stuggles of King. Beginning from the early childhood of Mr. King to his untimely death,
Adelman's photographs depict a very young King with his family. It provides insight into his his upbringing and illustrates the foundation that culminates into the life of the great civil rights leader. It continues to depict his educational pursuits and ultimate marriage to the lovely Coretta Scott.

The books carries the reader through the voyage as a young King rises to prominence as a preacher, his continued quest for racial equality, and mainly
his persistent call for agapic love in conjunction with nonviolence. Also, shared in this tome is intimate photographs of King's time spent with his loving family and information about King's life that may not be well-known.

Although nearly 300-pages, this book capitvates the reader from cover to cover. All in all, Johnson and Adelman are to be commended for their efforts! This liteary piece is nothing short of superb!

Reviewed by Nedine Hunter
...

I have many photography books in my personal collection, and I have several on the civil rights movement, but this book is by far the best I have seen. The book combines the work of several photographers - including Alfred Eisenstadt, Charles Moore, Henri Cartier Bresson, plus some lesser knowns - who have been individually recognized for their own work. The photographs are a true documentary of Martin Luther King's life and death with many photos I have never seen before.

I read this book yesterday. It was awesome. It presents all the sides of an issue--life in Camden, Alabama in general, racism and segregation specificly--from the direct words of the people there. Accompanied with beautiful photographs of the people which make you want to read what they say. (Even if the people are ugly, the photographs are beautiful.) And I really came away from this book understanding the civil rights movement, slavery, racism in 1970, segregation, and racism today a lot better.

I was doing an exhibit for the library where I work to celebrate diversity in children's books and came across this one. What a great (true) story of two friends and their days on hanging out on the streets of New York. The photos are excellent! They portray a wide range of emotions and responses the two boys share in their adventures. The way Vincent and Danny work through their disagreements with compassion and kindness is a lession we could all learn from. The fact that the boys are of different races matters little to these two. I can't say enough about this wonderful book.

granted, I believe that Ira Glasser and the ACLU can do no wrong.. . but this book is a fantastic introduction to the Bill of Rights and fundamental freedoms, especially helpful to those with little background in American history or Constitutional Law. With succinctly structured explanations, Glasser explains the establishment of rights in America and their extension via judicial review. beautifully illustrated by Adelman, the photographs ought to interest even those who could care less about the topic. recommended as a reference for any student of american history, constitutional law, etc.

A cool examination of the conception, creation, execution and referents of a beautiful piece of public art.

I originally bought this book for my husband, who loves Roy Lictenstein, to read to our son. I bought it because I thought that my huband would love it. In fact, my son, who is a year and a half, also LOVES it, and it helped him learn the alphabet as well as some words. For those familiar with LIctenstein's work, it is interesting because all of the work existed and was put together for each letter. For example, the letter O has a picture of the oval office. It is an easy way for children -- of all ages -- to learn about words and art.

...Interesting academically, perhaps, or as a cultural artifact, but if you're a fan of erotic cartoons and are after genuine wit or bawdy humor, try something closer in time to the present, such as Dark Horse Comic's new edition of "Little Annie Fanny: Vol. 1." These cartoons are mostly like the scribbles you passed around in grade school, and their erotic impact is lost, nearly a century later.

From the 1930's through the 1950's, small eight page underground comics were distributed all over the United States. They were crudely drawn, even more crudely written, and usually involved popular icons of the day engaged in sexual acts, accompanied with some very blue humor in the form of dirty jokes and puns.

These were called Tijuana Bibles, and also known as Eight-Pagers, Two-by-Fours, Gray-Backs, Bluesies, Jo-Jo Books, Tillie-and-Mac Books, Jiggs-and-Maggie Books, and F**k Books, this according to introduction writer Art Spiegelman.

Author Bob Adelman has collected dozens of these rare bits of cartoon history and republished them here, adding a commentary by Richard Merkin, and putting these into a quasi-historical and sociological context.

Ever wonder what Popeye looked like while having sex? What about Donald Duck and Minnie Mouse talking dirty while going at it? What did Cary Grant and Alger Hiss look like during gay love? All of this and more are here.

This book does a better job of reprinting the Tijuana Bibles than anything, but reading a bunch of them in a row gets very tedious. The introduction warns against this, as well. The drawings are often very crude, and the humor is very old, since their prime era was in the 1930's. Also, all but a few of the artists were anonymous, and the printings were not done in the exotic locales of Havana, Tijuana, or London (as the little booklets claimed), but probably in some basement with a mob type watching over the production.

This is not just a book of dirty pictures, but a very interesting look at what the author calls early sex education. While body parts are rather exaggerated, young men could look at these in the days before government and school sponsored sex ed and have a vague idea of what to do.

If you have any of these dirty little books around, then hold on to them, they are rare. If you have this overview of the history of Tijuana Bibles around, keep it away from the kids, unless they are curious about the sex life of Dick Tracy or Dagwood Bumstead. I recommend this thin book to anyone who claims to be a fan of underground comics, or erotic art and cartoons.

I quite agree with the 6/10/99 customer review from Melbourne, Australia. This interestingly packaged (and heavily illustrated) collection will alternately amuse and offend most everyone. While some of the art is decent (or even good), much of it is crude but somehow apropos to the subject. The packaging is very good, and the book's price is a bargain for what you get. I'm 50 and didn't even know these "Tijuana Bibles" existed until I stumbled across this book. Very educational as well as entertaining. I first bought a copy last summer and enjoyed it so much I bought another for a friend, who enjoyed it as much as I did.

I was told to read this book for a business class on what not to do and I think that Al Dunlap is in no place to be dishing out any advice. If you study the companies that Dunlap took over you realize that all of his improvements were nothing more then accounting wizardry. Besides he destroys the company's employees just to give him self and his wife first class plane tickets to Philadelphia. Just think before you buy a book about management style that you pick a manager that you want to be like.

I read this book when it first came out in hardcover, and was very impressed by Dunlap's beliefs and methods. Now that the smoke has cleared with Dunlap's fiasco at Sunbeam and the recent biography "Chainsaw", I find this book to be fairly shabby. For one thing, Dunlap only seemed to be concerned with the price of the stock, rather than the rate of return on the investment. He says that one should not cut jobs just to increase the share price, yet he boasted about improving the share price (which at Sunbeam, crashed after he was sacked). A share price should reflect the profit which a company makes, not by what type of actions the chairman makes. He sold Scott to Kimberly Clark for a fairly hefty sum, but now that buyout seems to have less value than originally anticipated. Rather than building up what's best in a corporation, he seems to cut them down to size (which speculatively increases their value) and sell them off while the going's good. Good value for him, provded that he sells off his shares, but for the long term shareholders, it's a rip off. Second, I admire the idea of corporations streamlining the management process, and thowing away the corporate toys. He feels that executives should not be excessively paid, and i admire the idea of executives being paid in stock, having to buy stock out of their own pocket, and accepting term limits and conflict of interest rules. However, according to "Chainsaw" he seemed to have many of the perks (like a bodyguard and room for his dogs at a hotel) which he claims an executive should be denied. He feels that executives should not be excessively paid, and I admire the idea of executives being paid in stock, having to buy stock out of their own pocket, and accepting term limits and conflict of interest rules. Yet, his infatuation with the value of the share (rather than the rate of return) forces the executives to focus more and more on the short term, rather than the long term. This seems to be in contradiction to his marketing idea of a high margin, rather than an high volume of sales. Third, his autobiography seems to be a fraud. According to Chainsaw, his father was not a dock worker/union steward, but a boiler maker. The family had a nice middle class lifestyle, not the poverty which Dunlap has described. Dunlap makes no reference to his sister, his first wife, to whom he seemed abusive, or to his son Troy, to whom he refused to help with his college tuition and whom he wrote out of his will. Finally, Dunlap claims to have admiration for his parents, yet he did not even attend their funerals. Mean Business really hints at what type of ego Dunlap has, through his continual boasting about his accomplishments in creating shareholder value. Chainsaw, on the other hand, expands on this, showing what type of a tyrant this man is, ruthlessly screaming at employees for hours on end (and even sexually harassing one of them) and expecting them to at his beck and call. In theory, his ideas seem fairly sound, but in practice, I feel that focusing exclusively on the value of a share price will have extremely dire long term consequences.

Having read many reviews of the book, I began it thinking it would be everything that I do not believe in. I was wrong. Al Dunlop's style is not one I admire, approve of or emulate. However, as a straight cost cutter there is probably no one better. The problem is that after cuttiing costs, most businesses want to stay alive and grow. When Mr. Dunlop is finished, there is only a business to sell. Through Share Price Growth 100, we now know that there are ways to significantly grow stock price, have very happy shareholders and manage costs as a core competency. We can now have very happy shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers and the communities in which our businesses operate. There are now real 2,000 percent solutions to most business stalls.

Willie Stargell wrote of this book in his autobiography "Willie Stargell, An Autobiography"- "Adelman and Hall had approached me a few years before about writing the book. I entered the situation with an open heart and I got trounced on. Adelman and Hall traveled with the club for the majority of a season, gathering interviews and researching. What they produced was not the type of book I expected; it was filled with horror stories about the players and their personal lives. I feel fortunate that the publisher listened to my comments on the book.

That's why it's important to read the Author's Note on this book. It's almost like what would happen if you had Howard Stern write about a major league baseball team. "'Shocking' may be too mild an adjective for it" wrote the Pittsburgh Press when this book first hit the shelf.

And why not? Out of LF has great baseball subject matter. It was written in the season following the death of Roberto Clemente, and the feel of his absence is felt on every page of the book, as well as the standings for the '73 Bucs. The temporary demise of a great team, and Stargell doing everything he can to keep his slumping teammates in the pennant race until the very last day of the season. A managerial firing, the mysterious demise of a star player (Steve Blass) and the birth of a future star (Dave Parker).

But this book is not about on field action. It is about how rowdy, how spirited, how lecherous, and how profane a baseball team of the 1970's could be. The Pittsburgh Pirates of that era had the reputation of being the loosest and loudest of big league clubs, and this book only helps fuel the fire of that reputation.

Some of the most shocking stories of the book come from a five page diatribe from a baseball Annie named Gayle who makes Annie Savoy look like a nun. But when you see her picture; well, let's just say that if her stories are true there were a large number of major league baseball players who were slumming in 1973. Now, like any book of this nature, the reader must wonder how many of the stories are true, and how many are sensationalism or taken out of context. The Author's note at the beginning of the book also does little to establish credibility.

Still, like Ball Four before it, Out of LF shows that baseball players are human beings, and certainly not immune to temptation. And perhaps the highlight of the book is not the look in to a pivitol time in Pirates history, nor the shocking baseball stories. It is Dock Ellis' hilarious rant and theory that the Bible and Star Spangled Banner were written by the same person (p. 187)!