This is a fascinating book which tells you in the most pleasurable way the history of Mexico and how one enduring symbol, the plumed serpent, connects ancient Mexico with modern Mexico. Great illustrations matched by a restrained text makes this a delight to read.

A beautiful book! The little ceremonies of writing, the love of books, rituals and inspirations from some of the best writers of our time. I wish this book whould be taught in high schools. it could be a great way to introduce kids to the beauty of writing and reading.

YES - The essential facts put forward by Baldwin are correct: Ford was a major anti-semite and he gave money to the German Nazis, helping them into power.

Yet, Baldwin's research is pathetic... a great deal of it was his imagination. He fails to present facts put forward by Kurt Ludecke's I KNEW HITLER; or Bennett's WE NEVER CALLED HIM HENRY; with any accuracy - he simply makes up what he wants.

For example, Baldwin states that the day after Nazi fund raiser Kurt Ludecke visited Ford, and Ludecke was turned away, a telegram to Lukecke arrived the NEXT DAY stating that Ford wouldn't give money through Ludecke to Hitler. Yet - READ Ludecke's I KNEW HITLER - the only primary source available on Ludecke/Ford. In this ONLY first hand account, Ludecke writes that several WEEKS (not ONE day) passed between his meeting with Ford and arrival of the telegram in question.

Baldwin has failed here as he does throughout the book to provide an accurate account of events. He makes no mention of the difference in Ludecke's primary source account and his own secondary account. Baldwin has shown himself as incompetent.

I have researched this subject for over 2 years. Baldwin makes a
serious error on virtually every page. His errors show an incredible degree of sloppy research. He seems to have only half-read his sources. His book is a joke as a serious work on Ford, anti-semitism, German inter-war history, and Hitler A far, far, better book is Albert Lee's Henry Ford and the Jews (1980). Interestingly, in the forward of Baldwin's book he writes that he put Lee's book (the one with the SAME title which inspired him) on the "shelf" while writing his book. YET, he quotes Albert Lee's: Henry Ford And The Jews, often throughout his book. How on the shelf could that book have been, since he was citing it so often?

Baldwin is a professor of poetry, not a historian, and his lack of understanding of the sort of research that goes into such a work is evident to anyone who has bothered to read the sources he cites. Baldwin constantly takes liberties; invents events that didn't happen; embellishes, and novelizes. He fails to demonstrate that his work is anything but the work of someone who should stay with what he has done very well in the past: writing books on poetry.

This is, bottom line, an appallingly ill-researched book - one of the worst I've ever seen that claims to be a serious work.

The only thing good that can be said about this book is that it helped to bring Henry Ford's support of anti-semitism, Nazis and so forth to the public's attention - but that is all.

If the material were not so important to discuss, I would give this book 1 star. As it is, I give it 2 because he did make an attempt (albeit pathetic, as it is) to take on a very hot subject.

Again... the broad facts in Baldwin's book are very correct, but the specifics are nearly all wrong. Baldwin wrote a historical fiction novel masquarading as a historiograhy.

Bottom line: get Albert Lee's Henry Ford and the Jews (1980) instead of this ill-researched "novel."

Neil Baldwin's look at Henry Ford and his anti-semitic views is an important one. Most people know something about Ford's anti-semitism. However, with this book one gets a full picture of the nature of his prejudice, the way it was expressed, and it's root causes. In addition, Mr. Baldwin has added to the value of this story by covering, in some detail, the responses of various members of the Jewish community to this very big problem. Mr. Ford was an extremely influential American, and as such, it was very important for Jewish leaders to respond to the outrageous and harmful ideas that were expressed in publications (such as The Dearborn Independent) that he was associated with. However, leaders differed with regard to how to best deal with this problem, and indeed it was something that had to be handled carefully.

In some ways, this is a very sad story, for it shows us some of the worst aspects of a man who was and still is revered by many. It also reminds us of how prevalent anti-semitism was in America during the first few decades of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, this is an important story, and Neil Baldwin has told it in a book that combines good writing with outstanding scholarship. I don't think that it will disappoint the serious reader.

While Henry Ford's anti-Semitism was not unknown before Neil Baldwin's terrific new book, it was always considered a small aberration of personality, nothing to stop Ford from keeping his valued place in American history. No longer.

In Baldwin's devastating account of the "Flivver King's" biases and how they grew, the reader is invited not merely to understand Henry Ford but the culture around him that fostered and nurtured his prejudices.

The cast of characters in this astounding book, from the hateful men in Ford's inner sanctuum to the leaders of American Jewry, are a fascinating lot. Baldwin also includes depictions of others who attempted to sway Ford from his chosen path, including the European feminist-pacifist Rosika Schwimmer and the labor leader Aaron Sapiro, whose lawsuit finally caused Ford to issue an apology for his misdeeds.

Among the most compelling facts that Baldwin has amassed are those tying Ford to the Nazi movement. I won't give away the particulars of that sordid story. Suffice it to say that America was linked more closely than we ever knew to Hitler and his henchmen, thanks to Ford's reckless behavior.

This book is much more than an embellishment of a footnote in the life of a great American: It forces a total re-evaluation of Henry Ford. Whatever his business triumphs, they have been neutralized for all time.

This is an important and timely book, gracefully written.

A Separate Peace is a book with a deep message for all the people about the real meaning of friendship, values and consequences of the World War II in American teenagers. It is easy to read, because Knowles places the time and settings with a particularity as he knows how to do.It is sad and dramatic story, however you learn the real meaning of FORGIVENESS with Finny and Gene friendship. We really recommend the book, but it is necessary to get time and patience for a good comprehension of the message that Knowles wants to transmit it. Give a chance and create your own opinion about the book. We give it four stars, thanks Mr. DeMaria!

I read A Separate Peace when I was in eigth grade. It touched me then, and now -- nearly twenty years later -- it is still one of my annual reads. The characters of Gene and Phineas are so well-developed that you feel you know these two boys and the special relationship they share. Despite the terrible thing Gene does to Finny, it is virtually impossible to dislike Gene, just as it is impossible to dislike Finny. If you're looking for cars exploding, guns blazing, and curse words every other page, the book is not for you. However, if you're trying to take a realistic peek into the workings of the adolescent male mind in 1942, then you would not want to miss this book. It is truly tragic, and I recall twenty years ago that when I read the words, "Your friend is dead" from the novel, I had to put it down and did not read the last few pages for nearly two weeks. It's a sensitive subject addressed in a sensitive manner.

This book is an absolute work of art. I'm 16 and had to read this book for my english class and loved every minute of it! I spent hours reading at a time. If you want to read the most incredable book ever written, this is the one for you. A Seperate Peace is a more complex novel than it first appears. It makes for good reading taken simply as a story about two boy growing up; but the novel, if read by an attentive, critical, active reader, says much more about life than human condition. I have seen people rate this book very low, obviously they did not pay any attention to what they were reading, and if they had actually sat down and read the book, and try to understand it, they probably would of gotten way much more out of it. Please, if you are going to read this book take note of everything that is happening in the novel, and I can garantee you that you will not be sorry. Personally when something tragic would happen in the story, I felt like throwing that book accross the room because of the fact I was so p.o. But that is what made the book so good, it kept me reading, and eaven though to be honest I don't like to read, this book just kept me reading, and I WANTED to read!!!!

Edison may very well be on of the best business men of his century but he certainly did not "Invent the Century". His inventions are already being made obsolete by others. The light bulb is second to the flouresent light, the phonagraph was bettered several times, and also Edison took a lot of others ideas and called them his own. He was a cheat and a liar and this book very poorly described him.

I stopped reading this book after about 150 pages, and resolved to find a better Edison biography. I had two problems with the book:

1. The writing is a bit muddled. For example, we find Edison at age 23 running an "invention factory" with 50 or so employees housed in a four story building in Newark. There is almost no explaination of how he got the backing to set up such an enterprise.

2. The author does not seem to have much understanding of the science behind Edison's work. He makes no attempt to explain how any of Edison's inventions operated - no diagrams or drawings, and he seems confused about the difference between electricty and magnetism.

The author's background is in poetry. At the risk of sounding mean-spirited, I think that an Edison biography is not a good fit for him.

"The electric light is the light of the future- and it will be my light, unless some other fellow gets up a better one." - Thomas A. Edison

The author of lives of artist Man Ray and poet William Carlos Williams, Neil Baldwin chose to devote his third biography to a practical-minded genius: Thomas Alva Edison, one of America's most venerated icons. Beginning with the history of Edison's ancestors in the new world, this thick, 500-page volume has its subject come to life on page 17, and chronicles his prodigious accomplishments until his death in 1931, with numerous highlights on his two wives (the first of whom, Mary Stilwell, died at 29), children and in-laws.

The tone of the book is generally sympathetic, though Baldwin deliberately attempts to eschew the hero-worshiping of some earlier works in order to achieve a more "balanced" and sober view of the man. A lot of stress is laid on the consequences of Edison's incredible working habits on his family life and the emotional development of his children, and one cannot help thinking that the author blames him for his single-minded devotion to the pursuit of technological progress. Indeed, the metaphors used to describe Edison's industriousness and concentration are often borrowed from the vocabulary of pathology: he is presented as a "workaholic" rather than a hard worker, with "obsessions" rather than ambitions or passions. Even the division of labour in Edison's West Orange research center, says Baldwin, "physically epitomizes the schisms in Edison's psyche".

The book is not overladen with technical minutiae, as the author seems to be more attracted to period detail than to hardware. His understanding of the science underlying Edison's experiments and theorizing did not strike me as particularly deep, anyway. Quoting Edison's speculations about the origin of the solar system, for instance, Baldwin exclaims that he was "tantalizingly close to the fringe of a Big Bang theory". Of course, one should not demand too much from a PhD in Modern American Poetry.

The author's political philosophy is not too intrusive, but it annoyingly crops up at some points. For instance, he says that the great industrialists of the late nineteenth century might as well be called robber barons, "depending on which side of the dialectic is preferred". His presentation of Edward Bellamy's utopian novel, *Looking Backwards*, as part of his attempt to convey the intellectual flavour of the age, is extremely positive: Bellamy's society is described as "a place of abolished inequities and cultural efficiency, not wasteful production and underconsumption" where "the venerated 'unremitting toil' so characteristic of the competitive, unorganized and antagonistic 1880s would be supplanted by a commitment to equal sharing of the nation's wealth". This is more than slightly disturbing, considering that what Bellamy had drawn was a communist blueprint for America (see for instance Clarence Carson's *Flight from Reality* for an interesting analysis.)

But whatever the author's biases, they are completely overshadowed by the brilliance of his subject. Edison is simply a delight to read about, forcing admiration from his early childhood exploits to his discovery of an indigenous source of rubber in his seventies.

Everybody should read at least one biography of Edison, to acquaint himself with the possibilities open to man. Having only read this one, I cannot say whether it is the best choice. Edwin Locke, the author of *The Wealth Creators*, seems to favour Matthew Josephson's *Edison: A Biography* (1959), which is apparently less ambivalent in its admiration for its subject. As for the ABC-Clio CD-Rom on *American Business Leaders*, it also lists Ronald William Clark's *Edison: The Man Who Made the Future* (1977); Robert D. Friedel's *Edison's Electric Light: Biography of an Invention* (1986); Ray Phillips's *Edison's Kinetoscope and Its Films: A History to 1896* (1997) and Wyn Wachhorst's *Thomas Alva Edison, An American Myth* (1981).

Edison has been an inspiration to many, including the greatest of all businessmen, his friend and admirer Henry Ford. But perhaps the most significant tribute that was ever paid to him, and the best characterization of his personality, was Ayn Rand's. In a letter to Tom Girdler dated 1943, she wrote: "No humanitarian ever has [equalled n]or can equal the benefits men received from a Thomas Edison or a Henry Ford. But the creator is not concerned with these benefits; they are secondary consequences. He considers his work, not love or service of others, as his primary goal in life. Thomas Edison was not concerned with the poor people in the slums who would get electric light. He was concerned with the light."

I think this book was horribly mis-advertised. I expected essays written by the National Book Award winners themselves, describing their own literary loves and inspirations. Instead, this book is a collection of extremely mediocre interviews with these otherwise interesting and remarkable talents. There are precious few pages in this book that themselves inspire anything beyond ennui. To add insult to injury, the featured writers and every true bibliophile will be appaled at the poor quality of printing and materials used for this book. The mass-market paperback stock used seems highly inappropriate, even considering the marginal quality of the content.

I thought this was a pretty good book - but not what I was looking for. I was hoping to read about books that changed these authors' lives, why they were so important, etc. The book is really more of a discussion of the authors' different views about literature in general, their approach to writing, how they develop characters, etc. It might be a good gift for someone really interested in the art of writing, but I was hoping for something else.

Diane Osen has done it again! In a brilliant followup to her previous book The Writing Life, Osen interviews National Book Award winners about the books that changed their lives. Each interview is a gem and it is clear that Osen has approached her subjects with the utmost scholarship and thoughtfulness.