Used price: $0.01
Collectible price: $2.64
Buy one from zShops for: $0.75
I wish there were more books like this. It was fascinating and humbling to learn of the challenges the disabled meet and overcome everyday. It was also fascinating to see up close and personal a very interesting sport: wheelchair racing. It's easy to be condescending and think that wheelchair sports are not "real" sports, but this book will forever shatter that myth. Wheelchair athletes are proven to be as worthy of respect and awe as their ablebodied counterparts.
As I said, there should be more books like this. Then we could see as well an exploration of the moral issues Ms. Robinson shows that the disabled face: such as in their intimate relations, and in the procreation of children.
Beyond all this, A MAN LIKE MAC is simply a great story. Keely overcomes her self-image of being "only a runner" and learns to be a woman. And Mac learns to trust that a woman can love him even through the difficulties his condition presents. (I don't think I've ever laughed and nearly cried through a more unlikely scene before, but I did when Keely voided on Mac.)
Read and savor A MAN LIKE MAC. Then encourage the publishers of popular fiction to publish more books like it. Brava, Ms. Robinson!
List price: $29.99 (that's 30% off!)
Used price: $19.95
Buy one from zShops for: $20.12
This is a fantastic, awesome, excellent, outstanding, wonderful, terrific, splendid, fabulous, marvelous, magnificent, first-rate, brilliant, tremendous (and any other possible synonym of fantastic) book that should be purchased immediately.
List price: $26.95 (that's 30% off!)
Used price: $7.39
Collectible price: $12.71
Buy one from zShops for: $9.45
A Massachusetts native, art school graduate, and teacher, Wegman got his first Weimaraner in 1970. He named him Man Ray, and an oeuvre was born as Man Ray became the centerpiece of the artist's photographs and videotapes. In 1986 a new dog found the artist; he dubbed her Fay.
Still stricken by the death of Man Ray, Wegman was at first reluctant to photograph Fay. But, as he watched her develop he realized that her personality was almost the polar opposite of Man Ray, and this sometimes coy, often diffident, always charmingly eager to pose Weimaraner became the focus of his work. Fay chronicles the working relationship and love story between a man and his dog.
There was a time when Wegman suffered the slings of animal rights protestors who accused him of misusing his pets. Looking at his photos one can only marvel at the rapport, the affection, the symbiosis, if you will, between man and dog. If ever there was a four-legged champion, it is Wegman. He writes of photographing Fay, "I zoomed in on her amidst another rush of swirling gray. She had the eyes of a jungle cat, round, opalescent, yellow, unfathomable, a young lioness by Rousseau."
Fay is an irresistible package - the story of Wegman's life and work, unforgettable photos of Fay, and a moving tribute to the bond between man and dog.
Buy one from zShops for: $19.95
The Temple hadn't been involved in any significant political movements for quite some time; the civil rights struggles had mostly depleted the community of the majority of its white residents and those who had remained in the neighborhood were as liberal as was our congregational membership. In the past those members who had been the most outspoken for integration of the public beaches and of the schools and for free polio vaccinations and bettering the conditions for prisoners were either hounded by the House Un-American Activities Committee or had since then been honorably distinguished by Gary's Hall of Fame committee. What threats if any the Temple had received in the distant past, when our intellectual rabbis had struggled for timely social improvements, were long forgotten to the deceased or perhaps had been filed to memories of denial? This most recent threat coming on Easter was a time old anti-Semitic standard, and yet a very real and dangerous relic of the pre-enlightenment era when non-thinking and superstitious peasants were easily rallied into violent action and a pre Vatican II legacy which just won't go away.
I read Greene's tome about the Civil Rights activist rabbi Rothschild in Atlanta and in conjunction with Louis Rosen's 1998 publication 'The South Side: The racial transformation of an American neighborhood' and about a Chicago Jewry which made a striking comparative between the general civil standards reserved for American blacks between the South and North respectively, neither of which were honorable. The Pill Hill neighborhood Rosen portrayed was one I knew intimately and I remember the trouble, the nervous conversations following the riots and the passive yet panic driven moves to the suburbs. In the Miller Beach section of nearby Gary, Indiana, rabbi Carl Miller at the same time had led the call for civil rights unlike the departing rabbi in Rosen's Illinois story and yet a flood of moving trucks nevertheless crowded the beach community streets with too many families fleeing under the premise that the public schools had deteriorated. However, the Indiana rabbi had made an impact because many families did remain and enough to sustain the Temple but ironically not a single member has even today a child enrolled in the Gary public schools.
Having read both tomes, I discovered Greene's book on the shelf of a friend's Mother's home when visiting them in the American Southwest and then learned that Greene had portrayed my friend's maternal Grandmother. A discussion pursued, my friend challenging his Southern belle Mother on her passivity with regards to the poor standards reserved for blacks in the South of her youth, and yet while we knew she, a merchant, had at one time pushed the social norms for a Valentines exhibit of women's lingerie in their storefront windows, that had caused a sad public out crying over what would be as innocuous as a 'Victoria's Secret' display today. As my friend hounded his Mother for answers, I could only think of those members back home in Indiana, in the more tolerant North, and in the 'City of the Century' whose prosperity had been stalled because of the FBI's allegations of communist activities and whose patriotism had been challenged because they had outspokenly called for social justice or their having been blacklisted by the Medical community when they had lobbied for free polio vaccinations! I also thought of my own Mother's childhood friend whose father the Chicago police had murdered in the infamous Republic Steel Strike of 1938 and who is one of the dead men for who Meyer Levin dedicated his novel "Citizens.' My friend's Mother had not been a political nor spiritual leader, amongst those professions that should have advocated social change, but for as many years as I have known her, a merchant who had pushed as much as she could in her own field, she has not only stood by but had been supporting their community's most liberal rabbi whose sermons demand more changes in our own times for prison reforms and other unpopular causes. Both reads of 'The Temple Bombing' and the 'South Side' reminded me of my favorite James Madison quote: "Measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and over-bearing majority." And of my GGG Grandfather's epitaph "Freedom, Justice and Liberty, Do right and Trust in the Lord." Which in itself explains perhaps in my favorite UJA slogan an adaptation of an Disraeli quote from Alroy (1833): Great civilizations rise and fall but we few, we Jews we do survive! How lucky we are to have had a Rabbi Rothschild in Atlanta, and for a Melissa Faye Greene to tell us the story of this American patriot who spoke out for unpopular but just causes! Make this tome next year's Pesach gift, a chapter of our American Patriotism!
List price: $17.95 (that's 30% off!)
Used price: $3.00
Collectible price: $7.99
Buy one from zShops for: $4.00
Also recommended: The Thief, Megan Whalen Turner The Queen of Attolia, Megan Whalen Turner The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman
From the very first sentences you're drawn in by the vivid, almost poetic prose: "I could wander all day along her banks and she would always lie there, like a silver string behind me, to lead me home in the dusk." The author blends foreshadowing, atmosphere and imagery without a single wasted word, with sentences like "I thought he would murder like a saint prays, and with the same hope of blessing," and "On the edge of the surf, in the white foam, in the place that is neither land nor water, he was killed by his uncle's spear and his blood flowed into the waves."
The plots are also much more compelling and carefully crafted than those of most other Arthurian novels. It's fascinating to see these well-known events through the eyes of characters who usually don't get a voice, such as Merlin/Myrddin's love Nimue, Mordred/Medraud, who is almost always portrayed as hate-filled villain and is never allowed to show why he might resent his father, and lady-in-waiting Gwenhwyfach, who dropped out of sight in modern versions altogether. When you're reading about those familiar events, you suddenly see a new interpretation and a new motivation for those events; on top of that, the author imagines new events that somehow make the legends even more real. So that's why Nimue turned on Myrddin, you say, or Oh, that's how Owain/Lancelot wound up married to Elen/Elaine. Not a detail is wasted or out of place -- everything that happens matters later in the story, or in another narrator's story.
The book leaves you feeling as if you've finally read the real version of the King Arthur legend. The details of the Welsh setting are carefully researched and woven in so skillfully that you feel you're there, not just reading about it; the motivations of the characters are so well explored and convincingly told that you finally understand why characters like Nimue, Morgan and Medraud did the things for which they have been vilified by later writers who could only manage one-dimensional, black-and-white versions of the tales. It says something that to this day, when I'm remembering or talking about the King Arthur legend, I find myself thinking of the events in this book as "canon" -- that's how strong an impression it left on me.
List price: $21.00 (that's 30% off!)
Used price: $11.50
Collectible price: $24.99
Buy one from zShops for: $13.68
Here comes the "however". However, when reading this, and related books, the reader gets the feeling that, for millenia, parents did not quite know the right way to parent their children, and the authors have finally discovered it for us. The theories and techniques get applied to every situation, with case histories of success. This is an over-simplification. Cline and Fay do have research backing up their ideas, but there is nothing really new here, except for some of the phrases (some of which are very useful: "Not my problem", "What do you plan to do about that?") There is a zealousness to the writing that, without directly stating it, gives the reader the feeling that "THE ANSWER TO ALL PROBLEMS" has been found. Some of the case histories sound like testimonials on an infomercial.
I am a practicing clinical psychologist who works with children and families. There IS valuable material in this book. If the methods are stated clearly and applied consistently, children's behavior will probably improve. However, any benign theory of parenting involving well-researched behavioral techniques, if applied clearly and consistently, will have the same results. Read the book, use it well, but don't expect it to be a panacea.
Used price: $5.49
The author says that this approach is very successful, but it seems to me more than a little formulaic. But if it works, that's great!
I think the idea of having the seeker read the Scripture passages himself is a good one. Although I certainly wouldn't even think of putting a limit on what God can do through the reading of His Word, I wonder what a person would think about the Bible passages if they put no stock in the Bible as the Word of God. There are people who won't be convinced by what the Bible says about itself, and those people might possibly be persuaded by outside sources such as the writings of Josephus and the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Mr. Fay does a good job of telling you what people's objections to the Christian faith might be and how to answer them. He clearly outlines the Scriptures that you should share with those you're sharing your faith with. The appendices are very helpful and William Fay's testimony is fascinating, to say the least....
Used price: $1.01
Collectible price: $4.24
Buy one from zShops for: $4.95
I have read more interesting books about this theme; adding to that, I find this book somewhat boring.
This book shows how to start with little financial backing and build with the monies earned.
By following the advise given, many of the stops and starts of a new business can be avoided.
Highly reccomended for a small town successful business.
Buy the book and see for yourself!
List price: $13.95 (that's 20% off!)
Used price: $6.19
Buy one from zShops for: $9.30
Keely Wilson, a successful Olympic runner, is involved in accident which doctors predict will end her Olympic career. Refusing to accept the doctor's grim diagnose she turns to her former coach, John "Mac" McCandless. She believes Mac will provide her the rehabilitation she needs to get her back on track for the Olympic gold. In finding Mac she is devastated to learn he also has been involved in an accident and is confined to a wheelchair.
Mac McCandless has always held a secret infatuation with his once young track star Keely Wilson. Delighted to be given the opportunity to help Keely recover from her injuries he is unprepared for the reaction she has when she learns of his disability. Reviewing the medical records, he finds there is no hope for her to have a complete recovery. Now the challenge he is faced with is (1) to get Keely to accept her limitations, and (2) to get Keely to accept him as a man.
This book illustrates the true meaning of love and romance as well as to the phrase "Love Conquers All." Be warned, the tears and laughter are sure to flow once you open the first page of this book. Not only is the romance wonderful, it also provides insight about the challenges the disabled face on a daily basis.