Most of us know the genius of Dreiser, the lyrical capabilities of this author is astonishing. He humanizes literature, the characters posess complex personalities and physical appearances. He takes the aesthetic beauty of the surreal and the honesty of harsh reality and combines these potent elements into a story of life, almost more believable than our own. This story follows Jennie Gerhardt, a young German girl living with her poor family in Ohio before the turn of the century. Honest but hard work puts her into the path of Senator Brander a benevolent mature man, but his ardent passions soon destroy Jennie, and her life is tainted with shame. She leaves her home, and life take her on many journeys, mostly unpleasant. This story chronicles how one mistake can change your life, and the domino effect takes place, constantly misplacing your life as you try to escape the past. I would also recommend "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" by Thomas Hardy

It seems each time I finish one of Dresier's works I think it is my favorite. Such is the case with Jennie Gerhardt, at least until my next Dresier. This heart-wrenching saga takes the reader through Jennie's life from cleaning houses with her mother, bearing a child by a US Senator and living and loving a man beyond her society class. Lester (the man she loves after the Senator), for his part, is unwilling to marry Jennie and is cut-off from the family and it's millions for loving someone "below" his class in society. Jennie remains true to herself, following her heart and the dicates of a harsh scoiety. She makes amendes with her father and is the only child to nurture him through his final days and death. She takes her daughter away from Chicago and leaves Lester so he can reclaim his family fortune. Her daughter dies, leaving her alone but the strength of Jennie's character comes through when she adopts orphans, for if she isn't nurturing she isn't living. Dreiser drives home his theme of fate and how some can dictate it while others are a slave to it. But even this distinction isn't black and white. Lester seems not to care what fate has in store for him until he takes it into his onw hands and marries the society girl he arguably should have married before he hooked up with Jennie. Alas, Jennie never mastered her fate. She was punished for loving two men from the upper-crust of scoiety instead of taking the crusts that high-living classes would toss her.

As usual, Dreiser's writing style just amazes me. Just like SISTER CARRIE, this book is about a woman searching for a place in life. You can't but help feel her pain of how her first love dies, only to find out she's pregnant, and she's not even married! Then concealing this child from her next lover, who she lives on. Just like always, a grand and entertaining read.

I sought this novel to supplement the memoirs "Dawn" and "Newspaper Days" as a way to gain additional insight into Theodore Dreiser's intriguing personality. I was not disappointed. The book provides information about Dreiser's sexual appetite, motivations, and philosophy. It also is an engaging read in the way that "Sister Carrie" and "Jennie Gerhart" are. Sure, Dreiser can go on in detail in ways that an editor could have made more succinct, and his sentence structure could become byzantine or odd. But the plot is well structured and the sense of impending doom that crops up is mercifully relented so that the novel does not become as squirm-inducing as "An Amercian Tragedy." The reader's sympathy is evenly divided among the principles and the events are seen as fate intertwining with the forces and choices of the personalities. Dreiser even more than Sinclair Lewis is my favorite depictor of U.S. life early in the 20th century.

Dreiser is the second author recommended by H.L. Mencken I have discovered. In Carl Bode's Mencken biography, he describes the libertarian critic's affinity for authors of the same ilk. "The Genius" describes an individualist who exists like many of us creative types, sometimes successful but unwilling to leave our wonderful, interesting existence. Much like Axel Heyst in Joseph Conrad's "Victory," the artist in "The Genius" is a great guy, a wonderful, creative guy. But as happens to the Greek heros their hubris leads to the inevitable downfall. You feel sorry for the main characters in both novels, but you feel fulfilled by them as well, just as free-thinking souls become better humans after reading Mencken...

Clare Eby has written something new and provocative about Dreiser. This book is elegantly written, and argued with style and wit. Those who are interested in American studies, in Dreiser, and in Veblen while find some revelatory analysis. Professor Eby's book will stay relevant for many years to come.

Dreiser's second novel of a three book series, the first being The Financier, continues the saga of Frank Cowperwood's quest for power and wealth through the use of financial acumen found in only a relatively few individuals. While written as fiction, the novel is also a wonderful history lesson of the political structure and shenanigans employed by the political and financial mavens of that period. The characters and events of the late 19th century are brought to life through Dreiser's rich and descriptive prose. Relatively few authors are able to attain the degree of detail Dreiser devotes to his plot and characters, all the while employing word usage in such as a way as to create a virtual masterpiece.

One of the most extraordinary memoirs that we had the pleasure to read is John Walsh: tears of Rage, co-written by Susan Schindehette. This memoir begins with John Walsh convincing the reader how "emotionaly strong" he is. He does this by mentioning experiences that he had to deal with in the past. Although these experiences were heart breaking, John handled the situation and got the job done. John Walsh had to deal with many morrible experiences in his life, but it only made him stronger in what he could deal with.
John Walsh goes into the details about his son, Adam, who was kidnapped in 1981 at a local Sears store by an unknown assailant. In the memoir Mr. Walsh tells his readers all the things the police and him went through trying to locate his son. Mr. Walsh also worked on all cases that may have anyhting to do with his sons kidnapping. But in the end he couldnt do anything to save his son. He thought his neighborhood was safe so he couldn't understand how something like this could happen.
One of the main things that Walsh wanted to get across to his readers is that there is no where safe anymore. That everyone has to watch out and try to stop these horrible acts from happening to our loved ones.
Tears of Rage ended with a great and powerful conclusion. The conclusion is about how John deals with his son's death, and what he does about the loss. Mr. Walsh also said that he would devote all his time to the public from now on, he is doing this with his show, America's Most Wanted. The show tells the public about unsolved crimes by getting the faces of the criminals out to the public so they can identify them.
We rated this memoir a 4 star, and the reason for this is because it is a great read that talks about life and how to handle all the problems that are envolved with it. So, if you want an awesome read, pick up John Walsh: Tears of Rage, you won't regret it.

Every parent should read this book. The author makes us very aware of the scumbag by-products of abuse and neglect that walk this earth in search of innocent children to exploit for their own selfish pleasure. Instead of letting this horrible tragedy break them, John and Reve Walsh dragged themselves up from the absolute pits of their terrible nightmare to change the priorities of a foolish country that cares more about stolen cars than stolen kids. It is also gratifying to know that John Walsh joined forces with the incredible genius of ex-FBI special agent Robert Ressler (author: Whoever Fights Monsters). John Walsh is responsible for bringing to our attention that these pedophiles and lunatics are everywhere and must be stopped. THIS COULD HAPPEN TO ANYONE'S CHILD!! This book is emotionally hard to read. Your heart will go out to these two people for their grief and we can all be thankful that they cared enought to turn their tragedy around to help others.

John Walsh and Susan Schindehette have done an excellent job in bringing the nightmare of child abduction and lack of victim's rights into focus within the pages of this remarkable book.

From the moment I started reading, I was hooked and drug , sometimes unwillingly, into the reality that has been Mr. Walsh's life since his six-year-old son Adam was abducted and killed on July 27, 1981. The authors spare no details and I often found myself wondering how John Walsh was able to re-examine the past in such a way that I can only imagine was like pouring salt into a wound that can never heal.

The book reveals the extent that the Hollywood, Florida Police department bungled the Adam Walsh case, but even worse how this bungling occurs daily throughout the United States as victims of crimes continue to have little to no say in their own cases and investigations.

The graphic reality in this book may not sit well with all readers, but I guarantee that it is a necessar! y ingredient for opening the reader's eyes to the problems that existed and exist within our legal system.

The title Tears of Rage is an appropriate one for I found that the book started with tears and ended with rage, for both the Author(s) and the reader. Once you've opened the book and read the prologue, you'll find it very hard to put down.

The only negative thing I have to say about the book is that since finishing it, I haven't slept all that well, because I keep dreaming about being in a situation where I want to help some abducted kid, and I keep running into road blocks. Luckily for me it is just a nightmare, for Mr. Walsh and thousands of other parents it was and is reality.

The Financier says as much about the importance of the conjugal nuclear family (the Butlers and the Cowperwoods) and its struggle to put up just the right airs, as it does about America's love for building up its giants, tearing them down and rebuilding them. Through Frank Cowperwood's financial acumen and sheer grit, he raises his family's (father's) humble beginnings onto Philadelphia's loftier social fabric. But the railroads and city treasurer shennanigans are only part of his story. Determination, focus and most of all hubris make Cowperwood one part angel, three parts beast: providing the finer things for his parents and immediate family but sentencing his wife, Lillian, to a life replete with rumors, a city's preoccupation with his mistress and love compromised.

It is astonishing how many figures from recent headlines--Donald Trump, Michael Milkin, Bill Clinton and even Michael Jackson--come to mind by The Financier's end. More than a century later, Dreiser's commentary rings hauntingly true.

I must point out that Mr. Dreiser is one of my favorite authors. Sister Carrie, Jeanne Gerhardt (sp?) and An American Tragedy are the finest books on American society in the same manner that Anthony Trollope's works on Victorian England are the finest of their ilk.

The Financier takes the reader to Philadelphia just prior to and around the time of the civil war. Mr. Cowperwood starts small,dreams bigger and free-falls gigantically. The power plays and court trial are fascinating studies of human nature and a treatise on Dreiser's nature -vs- nurture views.

But far deeper in the story lies the its heart- Coperwood's love for one of his financial partner's daughters. The lengths they go to keep the relationship going matched with the lenghts her father goes to stop it (she is much younger and he is married) is a fine a redition of love against the odds as you'll read.

Its amazing how a sophmoric book like "Martin Dressler" can win a Pulitzer Prize while the journalistic genius of Mr. Dreiser remains on the fringes of mainstream of American Literature.

This book is not for everybody. If you have an above average IQ and executive ability to read between lines, you will learn a lot. About REAL dynamics of society, about world of high-profile players and politicians... the truth is striking. And most important of all - little (if anything) has changed since this book was written.

Theodore Dreiser's "Sister Carrie" is a complex novel of linear events. It is a study in cause and effect -- how a character's environment, or change of environment, affects his or her values, especially with regard to money and the iniquity it brings.

18-year-old Caroline "Carrie" Meeber, bored with her life in a small Wisconsin town, comes to Chicago in 1889 to live with her sister Minnie. The only employment she can get is a laborious, low-paying job in a shoe factory, and when she loses it and wears out her welcome with her sister's family, a well-to-do young man named Charles Drouet, whom she met on the train to Chicago, sets her up in an apartment where they pretend to be married.

Drouet has a friend named George Hurstwood, a man in his late thirties and the manager at a local upscale bar. Hurstwood's home life is stagnant and empty; he has a self-centered wife whom he ceased loving long ago and two materialistic children around Carrie's age. He is going through what many decades later would be called a midlife crisis.

Through Drouet, Hurstwood meets Carrie and they form a mutual attraction. Unlike Drouet, to whom life is all about social status, Hurstwood does not patronize Carrie; he makes her feel intelligent and important, and Carrie exhibits Hurstwood's ideals of youth and beauty. When Hurstwood's wife gets wise to her husband's affair and sues him for divorce, Hurstwood succumbs to the temptation to steal money from his employer and tricks Carrie into leaving Chicago with him. They go to New York and experience curious reversals of fortune -- Carrie becomes a rich and famous showgirl while Hurstwood drifts into inescapable poverty and a bitter end.

This is no Cinderella story for Carrie. It may seem like she is being rewarded for her innocence and integrity, but since she realizes that her success is more the result of luck than talent, her new life is not as fulfilling as she thought it might be. I found myself surprisingly engaged by the story because Dreiser presents his characters as real people with unsolvable problems and doesn't try to teach a morality lesson. I finished the novel feeling miserable about the world, which is not something that many novels can do to me. My only complaint is that Dreiser's prose is a little awkward and excessively wordy without the benefit of clarity; it longs for the smoother touch of D.H. Lawrence or Somerset Maugham.

Somewhere in the depths of time a critic once labeled playwright Eugene O'Neill a genius with no talent. It's a description that could just as easily fit Theodore Dreiser, an uneducated, mercurial man who, while still in his twenties, and with virtually no experience composing fiction, managed to crank out what I consider one of the greatest novels in American literature. Very few authors have ever managed to generate the raw power that Dreiser does over the 500 or so pages of "Sister Carrie." It is amazing how much of the human experience he has put into this book, how well he understands the hopes, fears, and desires--mysterious and contradictory as they often are--that drive ordinary people.

The conventional judgment on Dreiser puts him in the naturalistic, social-realist tradition of Zola and Hardy. There is much in this; but I think his real strength lies in depicting character--Carrie, Hurstwood, and Drouet really come alive in these pages. His characters possess a depth and complexity of feeling that one rarely finds in fiction. Dreiser has a melancholy, fatalistic sense that the world may be too vast and impersonal for people to live in it comfortably, and yet his world is vibrantly human as well.

I personally find Carrie a more likable heroine (if you could call her that) than many readers have. She is self-absorbed, yes, but also capable of compassion for others, and she is never intentionally cruel. Like all of Dreiser's characters she is somewhere between the angels and the devils.

This is by no means a perfect book. Dreiser's rhetorical flourishes can become absolutely ridiculous, and so can his habit of injecting philosophical commentary into the texture of the narrative. But the total effect of "Sister Carrie" is powerful, and more than compensates for any defects in the novel.

This book was incredible....Page by page, you go thru life with Carrie..I think at one point or another we have all had feelings of "wow" when seeing the exclusive lifestyles of the upper class..However we do not realize at that moment that money does not buy happiness...Carrie not only had those feelings but she was completely obsessed with it...The main morals of the story in this book is "things are not what they seem" , "the grass is not always greener on the other side" , and "money does not buy happiness"...We also see what circumstances Hurstwood finds himself in after he leaves his family for a "young lust"....In Sister Carrie we see how it is to go up the social ladder as well as to go down...and neither is a journey worth traveling ! I would have liked to read more about Carrie's family back home and Hurstwood's abandoned family.... This book was incredible......Dreiser is a GREAT GREAT writer, there were some lines that I reread 2-3 times because i was so touched by his writing... Read this book !

Dreiser does a very nice job in this novel of recreating early 20th Century America from the perspective of an ambitious young man, Clyde Griffiths. Through Clyde, we get a taste of what it's like to be poor, to be middle class, and even to be wealthy. Despite Clyde's weaknesses, we rather like him, and we genuinely care what happens to him, for the most part. Naturally, bad things happen to Clyde, mostly due to his own fault. It is a tragedy, after all.

Clyde, thanks to the family name, is quickly brought into the social scene of his new hometown. He develops a relationship with a co-worker (Roberta) but as soon as a young lady of wealth and social status (Sondra)shows favor to him, Clyde looses interest in Roberta. He and Roberta produce a baby and the situation spins out of Clyde's control. Eventually Clyde's self interests outweigh his sense of right and wrong, resulting in tragedy.

The Characters are pretty easy to relate to and the plot is very realistic. I liked this book mainly because it was easier for me to understand Drieser's style of writing.

I read this book faster than most other books that I read. I think it's because I didn't always procrastinate reading it. most books I read I will put off reading until I really have too, this book was a breeze to read. I enjoyed it and recommend it to anyone who enjoys a big plot line with twists.

Dreiser's epic novel is rare as classics go since it contains all the elements of a novel that my 12th grade English teacher said should be present - a well defined plot and a central theme moral.The only reason I did not rate the novel as 5 star is that it was at least 300 pages too long. Dreiser leaves little to the reader's imagination as he explains every detail with percision.

Clyde Griffiths is a young man with ambition who longs for a better life than that of his parents, who are street missionaries. First he flees his Kansas City home after getting into some minor trouble. By chance, Clyde meets his wealthy uncle by chance and secures a job in the family collar factory in New York State.

Clyde, thanks to the family name, is quickly brought into the social scene of his new hometown. He develops a relationship with a co-worker (Roberta) but as soon as a young lady of wealth and social status (Sondra)shows favor to him, Clyde looses interest in Roberta. The affair with Roberta produces a pregnancy and the situation spins out of Clyde's control. Eventually Clyde's self interests outweigh his sense of right and wrong, resulting in tragedy.

From the first few pages you get a sense that Clyde's ambitions will eventually be his undoing. Drieser leaves very little to the reader's imagination as he weaves you through 800 pages of intricate detail. At the end Clyde comes to terms with his deeds and confesses his sins to both GOD and himself.

This is truly an amazing book, well deserving to be on the list of all time great novels, and should be at its head. Like many people, I saw the movie "A Place in the Sun," first, so there weren't such huge surprises in the book for me, but even so, I could hardly put it down. So compelling and fascinating it is, at each and every turn of the page, it took me a week to read, but was worth every second I spent on it. The character development and pacing of the story are absolutely incredible. There were moments I was shaking my head in awe. I didn't find anything at all about it boring or dull or "wordy." Just a powerful, heartbreaking, treasure of a book. I truly doubt I will ever read a better, more well-written, or thought-provoking novel (and I've already read many classics.) Simply put, this is by far the most entertaining novel I've ever read.

That being said, let me address all those one or two-star ratings this novel has unjustly earned. I hardly know what to say about that, except - don't believe them! I seriously doubt that anyone who actually read this whole book (and I mean word for word, not skimming as so many people do nowadays) and made any attempt to understand what they were reading (easy to do) could honestly give it less than five stars. The other explanation would be the many youths who are required to read this for school assignments or what not, and end up hating the task so much they are immediately prejudiced and blinded to the book's fine merits. But again, everyone is entitled to an opinion, no matter how unfair or dishonest it may be.

Some of the harsh criticism leveled at this masterpiece refer to Dreiser's writing style and his slow, deliberate, pacing. It's true that Dreiser's writing style may seem a little old fashioned (at least at first) but remember that it was written in 1925, way, way, before people's attention spans got so short. At the time it was published, no one thought that his style or choice of words or phrasing was unusual or difficult, although the novel's length was criticized then as it is now. Those who immorally say that Dreiser "can't write" are simply too ignorant to make such a bold statement, plain and simple. For if such a statement is true, then we had better say that Shakespeare couldn't write, nor Defoe, Stevenson, Hudson, or Hawthorne, for that matter. Dreiser's prose is smooth-as-silk compared to Dickens, for example, although not quite as clever as Nabokov - but nearly so. Criticism aimed at "wordiness" and excessive length, are just completely baseless and unworthy of this classic. And comparing "An American Tragedy" to "Crime and Punishment" as many readers have done is senseless also, as Dreiser's novel is the better of the two, by far. It has much more depth, substance, detail, life, humanity, and realism than Dostoyevsky could have ever hoped for. That's just my opinion, but I read these back to back with a balanced viewpoint. At least Dreiser didn't name every third character "Petrovich." (Talk about confusing the reader!) But anyway, for those who actually prefer the movie version, "A Place in the Sun," all I can say is that I agree that it's a fine film, but in no way does it come close to the depth, power, and substance, of the novel - not even close! It's a mere shadow of what "An American Tragedy" is really about. It just scrapes the surface, and leaves many important aspects of the story untouched. And the characters seem stiff and unrealistic or even cliché at times as a result. None of that comes from the novel. So how anyone can prefer the move is a bit of a mystery, unless it has to do with the Montgomery Clift / Liz Taylor chemistry, but then again, it could just be those short attention spans at work.

People can say whatever they want about "An American Tragedy," but they can never diminish its distinguished place in American literature. It will always remain, nestled comfortably in a lofty spot, because between its covers lies a story as precious as pure gold. Dreiser has given us something timeless and enduring, beautiful, meaningful, and truly heartbreaking and deeply sad. He knew exactly what he was doing when he composed this masterpiece - each and every word! Thank goodness there are still readers who can appreciate him.