I would suggest this book to anyone who has ever read anything published by Harry Crews; specifically to those who haven't read anything by him, but who are interested in this magnificent author. After reading it, I found myself wondering how Crews was able to escape childhood, much less become of the the greatest Southern authors since Faulkner. Truly a fantastic book that will stand the test of time and inevitably cast Crews as one of the greatest authors of the 20th century!

I was assigned this book in a tutorial class on the "mind of the south" by a professor during my senior year of college. I was immediately drawn to the author's experiences with tenant farming; being the son of a mother whose own father was a farmer that oversaw several tenents to his own farming operation prior to, and shortly after WWII. Crew's accurate depection of tenant farmer life was valididated, to this reader at least, by his portrayal of an agricultural system that was difficult to not only rural agricultural African Americans, but their white supervisors. Crews has done a wonderful job of incorporating the distinctly southern phrases and dialogue of the rural, agrarian south. I though my own mother was the only person who pronounced "hurricane" as "harrakin". Charachters such as Willalee Bookatee and his family were strikingly similar to those poor blacks, and whites, described in my mother's stories of working in the tobacco fields of rural NC. This book will shed some much needed light on the fact that the hard-core, rural south is not so far removed from the remodeled "New South".

Although this book is not a typical work by the literate master of the hard South, it is a testament to his talent. This book made me see and feel the life of a 6 year old dirt farmer in Bacon Co, Georgia, and also give some insight into the basis of characters in Crews' fictional works. This is one of the best quasi-memoirs ever written, and even has a slight belief in human goodness not seen in his other work. Mr. Crews' more typical works (such as Feast of Snakes or All We Need of Hell) are very good novels in their own right, yet Childhood stands apart and above all of his other books combined. If you read nothing else by Harry Crews (which is not a good idea--you should read many of his books), this is the one to choose.

i didnt know what to expect from this book.at first i thought it would be a thriller/horror novel.i was half right/wrong.it was very thrilling.i felt bad laughing at some(MOST)of it.Mr Crews has an excellent flair with the trappings of southern culture,a very unique way of creating charactors.if the right director ever got his hands on this it would be the forrest gump on acid.maybe david lynch should read this.since i read this ive read all his other books and although they dont compare,they are still great reads.ok,''what the heck is this book about?'' you ask?im glad you did.its about.......hhhmmmmm,you can say its a love story of sorts.a group of people with 1 or more handicaps try and find a way to cope.the lead charactor has the gift of doing amazing stunts on his hands.he had to learn this because he has no use of his legs.he was born with non functioning legs and is a deaf mute.his parents leave him infront of a gym when he was 5 with a note attatched saying ''we caint take it''.and so if goes.i must reiterate that the other charactors in this novel are as involving as the main and that is where alot of the charm comes from.while the subject matter may not be humerous,Mr Crews leaves no choice but to laff dispite ourselves.

Obsession. I did not put it down, and still have not let it go. If you look you might catch an open space. Within is a chance meeting of masked insanity. Inside every person there is an edge where they tell no tales to anyone. There can be possible acceptance. This book holds a chamber into your own edge. Our prided, freakshow main character, who is the narrator, tells his accounts of the ignorances, hopes, and down fallings in a bright wasted world. Love historically continues to be the end of man. What can you do with a confession like this book? Find what you've been hiding behind stability.

A father and daughter team! It is rare enough to have a flying father and a flying daughter in the real world, but sharing the same passion so intensely and to write a book together on an all-encompassing aviation Bible, (yes, this book is a Bible for aviators!) is truly unprecedented!

When I said this book covers virtually all topics concerning flight operations, I meant just that. The most important thing is; this book is highly readable, rich in reference materials and data and yet "gripping" to read! A rare gem in terms of human factor topics. I have read other CRM or human factors books by other more renowned and authoritative people but none as good as the Orladys, probably with the exception of Tony Kern, who is also just as good a writer on aviation safety.

Okay, the book covers the brief history of air transport, the industry and its safety record,, a brief history of human factor and its development in aviation,, the physical environment and the physiology of flight, as well as those magnificent flying machines and their internal environment - sort of like a trip down to aviation memory lane.

It also discussed the social environment, basic communication, documentation - including checklists and information management. It went on to discuss on the Man's limitations, human errors, and information processing. Nothing is left unturned, the Orladys went on to talk about workload, automation, situation awareness and operating in today's environment. Of course, they did not miss out on crew resource management and the team approach.

Fatigue and stress were covered in depth, plus fitness to fly, even selection and training of pilots! Most interestingly is the coverage on the challenging roles of the flight attendants, this shift in focus of our cabin colleagues was most insightful.

I loved the chapter on non-punitive incident reporting.. the CHIRP and ASRS were great success stories in UK and USA respectively, I fervently hope that SIA will follow suit in our pursuit of excellence in aviation flight safety.

Another eye-opener chapter is "some ramifications of accident analysis", this is the first time I heard of the "Stop Rule" phenomenon in flight safety investigation - find it out yourself what it means.

In the last few chapters, the Orladys talked about the worldwide safety challenge in the near future, the current safety problems and the future of air transport too.

This is not a book to be missed by any pilot who wish to enrich himself. In fact, I recommend that every single commercial pilot should own a copy for reference purposes as well.

"HUMAN FACTORS IN MULTI-CREW FLIGHT OPERATIONS" co-written by Harry and Linda Orlady - Ashgate ISBN 0-291-39839-1 - Published in 1999

A father and daughter team! It is rare enough to have a flying father and a flying daughter in the real world, but sharing the same passion so intensely and to write a book together on an all-encompassing aviation Bible, (yes, this book is a Bible for aviators!) is truly unprecedented!

When I said this book covers virtually all topics concerning flight operations related topics, I meant just that. The most important thing is; this book is highly readable, rich in reference materials and data and yet "gripping" to read! A rare gem in terms of human factor topics. I have read other CRM or human factors books by other more renowned and authoritative people but none as good as the Orladys, probably with the exception of Tony Kern, who is also just as good a writer on aviation safety.

Okay, the book covers the brief history of air transport, the industry and its safety record,, a brief history of human factor and its development in aviation,, the physical environment and the physiology of flight, as well as those magnificent flying machines and their internal environment - sort of like a trip down to aviation memory lane.

It also discussed the social environment, basic communication, documentation - including checklists and information management. It went on to discuss on the Man's limitations, human errors, and information processing. Nothing is left unturned, the Orladys went on to talk about workload, automation, situation awareness and operating in today's environment. Of course, they did not miss out on crew resource management and the team approach.

Fatigue and stress were covered in depth, plus fitness to fly, even selection and training of pilots! Most interestingly is the coverage on the challenging roles of the flight attendants, this shift in focus of our cabin colleagues was most insightful.

I loved the chapter on non-punitive incident reporting.. the CHIRP and ASRS were great success stories in UK and USA respectively, I fervently hope that SIA will follow suit in our pursuit of excellence in aviation flight safety.

Another eye-opener chapter is "some ramifications of accident analysis", this is the first time I heard of the "Stop Rule" phenomenon in flight safety investigation - find it out yourself what it means.

In the last few chapters, the Orladys talked about the worldwide safety challenge in the near future, the current safety problems and the future of air transport too.

This is not a book to be missed by any pilot who wish to enrich himself, you may get this book from AMAZON dot com. Hardcover costs US$109.95! and papaerback costs US$44.95!

Credits:

Capt Harry W Orlady was a B747 captain for United Airlines, he has contributed a lot in the CRM research works with NASA's AMES Research Centre in California.

Linda M Orlady, a GA instructor pilot and an expert in organizational behaviour.

Eddie Foo

This is simply the best collection of esays that I have ever read (including Emerson, and I love Emerson). Unfortunately, the book is as difficult to find as it is skillfully composed. Crews takes on a score of seemingly unrelated topics--Charles Bronson, truck driving, drugs, wilderness intrigues with aggressive rednecks, etc. But taken together, these tales paint a vivid portrait of our society, in all of its peculiar manifestations. This book is fastidious in its detail, astounding in its perception, and generous in its comedy.

When it comes to sex-God-and-violence books, Harry Crews is one of the best contemporary southern gothic novelists that's still pumping out good books.

And after all, this is his first novel. No pretension, no inarticulate naivete, just a gradually and very-well developed plot that reminded me at times of book four of Vergil's Aeneid.

Perhaps the most intriguing element of the book was the complete lack of introduction; Crews assumes from the origin that you'll have a good idea what he's talking about (and enjoy it more) if he simply begins not with alot of character-developing tedium but rather launches into a self-explanatory dialogue that makes everything all the more real, dialectical spellings and all. Although Crews seems to "carve 'suk for honesty' on [his] chest," the entire atmosphere of the seting, Enigma, Georgia, is exaggerated to a squalid surreality of a seemingly ordinary impoverished deep-South town. Crews' sparse yet vibrant depictions of southern life ensure decades prior that, well, he's not gonna stop writing anytime soon.

The heroine of this novel is a beauty pageant regular who practices karate by smashing her knuckles against a wooden board in a dried-out Florida swimming pool. She is perhaps the least dysfunctional person in the book. Watching Crew's characters abuse themselves and their counterparts is a privilege.

what can i say about it that isn't said below, i just wanted to add my four stars

The perfect book for beginners. If you've never read a Harry Crews novel before, read this first. At under 200 pgs. it is a quick read but no less taut, brutal, incisive and humorous as his earlier works. At 1st morose and tragic then oddly funny until at the last almost spiritually uplifting. I love this book. If you do as well, take the plunge into hardcore Crews and try A Feast of Snakes. After that, you will be hooked.

I read All We Need of Hell about 10 years ago. Borrowed the copy from my local library. I rarely re-read novels at all. I not only re-read it, but I checked it out again and read it a second time, immediately after the first time. Then, I tracked down a used trade-paperback in good condition and paid a significant sum of money for it. Read THAT copy. Shelved it and took it down and did a FOURTH reading. This has the most interesting mix of characters and a protagonist who lives for order and discipline, finds his life spinning out of control anyway. It's a great read which--and I hope this doesn't insult Harry--cries out to be filmed.

I read this book while a junior in college in a Southern Lit. class. What words can I use to describe it? Twisted...Black...Funny...Entertaining?
I really enjoyed this book. What makes this work unique is that it is a story of a "highschool HERO/ real life ZERO" in a small town in Georgia. Crew's goes deep into the psyche of his characters and their respective alternative personalities (I use alternative instead of "Dark-side").
The characters have a real-life authenticty concerning their physical actions, attitudes, and thoughts. They are projected so well that one could apply FEAST OF SNAKES in lessons of psychology.

"Guns, guts and God made this country great," the bumper sticker read, or something along those lines. I bet that this same message is stuck on the back bumper of an old, beat-up pick-up truck in Mystic, Georgia, the setting of Harry Crews' A Feast of Snakes. It doesn't hurt to bring your stereotypes of the sticks-of-the-south lifestyle to this novel, because it's already here. But our attempts at parody are pathetic and shallow, for Crews brings a disturbing substance to the novel, a livelihood that is simultaneously funny and mean. A Feast of Snakes is a novel of bitter loss and subsequent redemption in the vein of other Southern writings. And Crews' characters are his strong suit; they are so ridiculous that they are all the more lifelike: From Joe Lon Mackey, a former All-American football star in high school who now runs whiskey for his father, a breeder and trainer of champion fighting pit bulls, to Lottie Mae, a young black girl who must face and defeat her ultimate fear, the "snake," all of the residents of Mystic and the guests who have descended upon it for the annual Rattlesnake Hunt are bitterly searching for themselves in a quagmire of dead ends. And Crews is a merciless writer, a slavedriver, for he offers no relief to his literary creations; just when you think that life has dealt its cruelest blow to the residents of Mystic, Crews undermines it with yet something worse. It makes salvation seemingly impossible. But like many great Southern masterpieces, redemption is possible, if only through violence. A Feast of Snakes is not a feel-good novel. It is, however, as humorous as it is disturbing. And if "Guns, Guts and God" did, indeed, make this country great, what the hell happened in Mystic, Georgia? You really should take the time to find out.

After reading this book I have decided that Harry Crews is the best author whom i have had the pleasure of reading from. Before I read this book I had only read a piece of harry crews Autobiography. Immedietly after reading Feast of Snakes I went out and bought Mulching of America, another Crews novel. This book was extremely twisted and weird but very entertaining. Quite honestly i felt like I was breaking some kind of rule just reading this book while I was at school. As odd as it was you couldn't help but laugh out loud at the sick actions of the protaganist. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys strange charachters doing strange things.

The first story of this book was a gripping read. I enjoyed it very much. He and I had far different backgrounds and grew up in a completely different world but at times Crews portrays his feelings and world and makes it both common and familiar. I highly recommend the first story of the book. The others do not get such high regard. They are worth reading but very strange. His imagination got away from him, I think.

Debates about the waning brilliance of Southern litterature can be silenced after reading Harry Crews (I recommend as much of his work as possible, but the Reader is a good place to start). There is none of the sentimental, 'local-color' work of, say, Fannie Flagg or Rebecca Wells in Harry Crews's work. Harry Crews's work is like a rabid pit bull that bites and won't let go. His brilliance and artistry as writer are coupled with a sharpness that cuts into institutions and beliefs, exposing them and questioning them. Few shibboleths of America can escape.

Find Harry Crews's work. Buy Harry Crews's work.

This was the first book I read by Harry Crews. After reading this I went out and bought every other Crews book still in print. After buying all the Crews books still in print I hit up the used bookstores for any of Crews's out of print titles. Harry Crews is excellent, and this is the absolute best place to start reading his work. He's an extremely descriptive writer, and a most entertaining storyteller, the best of both worlds. How Crews is able to think up the sort of characters he writes about is beyond me. He'll write about something so screwed up and whacked out that you know it could never happen, but at the same time makes you believe that what's going on really could happen. Crews has an excellent way of getting in your head and staying there, whether it be his novels or his essays Harry Crews is a true original. Once you read this I'm sure you'll start out on a search for anything and everything he's done.

Whoa! Would I ever like to meet this author. He has put together a wacked-out dark comedy that will keep you up reading all night. This fast-paced story is filled with bizarre, yet somehow quite believable characters that teach you an important lesson: you can change your physique, but not who you really are inside. The ending was a shocker. Definitely an interesting read.

This is a really fun novel to read. It is a tragicomedy about a female bodybuilder who is competing in a major bodybuilding contest and has completely re-invented herself from a redneck to a hard as nails bodybuilder. Unfortunately her redneck family shows up and this threatens to destroy her image and her chances of winning the contest. And they are a bunch of nutcases indeed. Its a really great novel that is funny throughout yet does end tragically. It also touches on the issue of female bodybuilding direction and struggle of whether the women need to pump themselves full of steroids and get as big and muscular as possible or whether they should stay drug free and stay more feminine looking. It is a real struggle for female bodybuilders today and its great that the book does touch on that issue.

Whatever you look like, you're still you.... In a world which has less and less time for those of us who are not 'perfect', this book reminds us in trenchant and pared english that we are still what we are, however much we change ourselves...

It's also funny and informative about the world of the body builder and a really involving story. I wanted to know what was going to happen next and kept turning the pages.