Joyce Dyer is a masterful writer, and In A Tangled Wood is some of her very best work. Though many find the subject of Alzheimer's Disease to be taboo or distasteful, Ms. Dyer presents her family's journey through her mother's AD years in such loving and personal terms it is impossible to feel anything but tremendous respect for everyone involved.

Dyer uses cunningly descriptive metaphors throughout the book, as well as well-placed bits of comic relief in what could have easily become a much too depressing story. She reveals enough of herself personally to allow the reader to understand how she and her mother developed the relationship they had. While this is a story about a woman who has AD, it's also a story about a daughter's relationship with her mother - regardless of any illness. It reveals what we children can and will do for our parents when the tables (ultimately) turn.

It is a tale of courage and faith, of patience and hope, of acceptance and love.

Ms. Dyer's account of her own mother's illness is really what made the difference for me in this book. I am not touched by alzheimer's disease yet, so I have no basis of engagement or interest. But something about this book told me I'd enjoy it, and I was right.

Ms. Dyer's MO is to simply present her story about her mother intertwined with the stories of other people in the home with her mother. She reflects on her mother's past, on their shared pasts, on her own past. She doesn't ever get overly weepy, but Dyer does present her feelings as her mother decays further and further away from her true self. Overall, though, you feel that Dyer was happy to be able to experience this trying time with her mother, and you get a glimpse of the strength that it must have taken to come back to the home each day.

It's clear that writing about her experiences is therapy. But reading about them is therapy, too; it forces you to think about "something else," something more grave than whether you should handwash that plate and whether the lawn needs another cut. In reality, Dyer reveals many issues of the basic human condition that are grounds for thoughtful discussion and planning.

I enjoyed every bit of the book. The personal account format really drew me in, and the reality and emotion kept me reading.

I've read them all and this is the best. Don't be afraid to read it thinking it will be "depressing". This book is uplifting, funny and very human.

These sixty portraits of American strangers are rich with an intelligent, questioning beauty. I was dazzled by the exhibit in San Francisco, but now I'm especially glad to have the accompanying book. I rarely find it worthwhile to purchase museum exhibit catalogues, but what I love about "Stranger Passing" is that I can ponder a given image as long as I like, "reading and re-reading" it as I would a really good short story. Indeed, many of these portraits seem as laden with interpretive possibilities as a story by Chekhov or Alice Munro or T. C. Boyle. From a grizzled woman selling papers in the middle of a Colorado boulevard, to a solitary New York banker having dinner, his aloneness matched by a single tulip in front of his little bistro table: I found myself deeply moved by the lavish yet subtle artistry Sternfeld has bestowed on these people and places--each one unique yet somehow familiar--that he encountered in this strange and wonderful country of ours.

This is the best photographic testament to the USA since Robert Frank came to shore and showed us how strange and beautiful our country was nearly fifty years ago. The subject of these photographs are both ordinary and extraordinary people, who we may cross paths with during any given day. The brilliance of Sternfeld's art is the way these images draw you into the world of each subject. Even the most superficially mundane subject such as two suburban kids standing in a cul-de-sac is cause for reflection. Most of these portraits economically use the scenery to define the world of each individual. In the end, the images are a celebration of anonymous Americans (one can't say "typical" because this collection shows you that there is no such thing as a typical American) in common settings. In my mind, the best images here evoke the mystery and power of a Vermeer painting. The way they heighten our experience of everyday images is what I think they call art.
A side note: If you have the chance, you must see the exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The hyperreal poster-size prints are a wonder to behold. And the cumulative effect of these images leaves one exaltant. (Oh yeah, there's also a pretty good Ansel Adams exhibit curated by John Szarkowski on the floor above.)

Joel Sternfeld travels the roads of America, and takes pictures with his large-format camera. Although all his pictures include people in various situations (attending a party, selling coffee, hanging out in their own homes, vacationing, promenading, relaxing, observing, working), what he is really interested in, is the depiction of landscapes and soft outplay of the mid-afternoon light. There is an overwhelming sense of loneliness. His composition style is superb; his depiction of quality of light reflections of the industrial surfaces is without precedence. In my opinion, Sternfeld really stands on its own. Not since Robert Frank's "The Americans" have I seen such a collection. His compositions are best reminiscent of Philip-Lorca diCorcia's; but somehow people are not the center of attention (and sometimes not even of focus), what is important is the quality of landscapes and how they shape human lives.

The 1997 Best American Essays is probably my favorite volume in the Best American Essay series. Ian Frazier did a superb job in selecting the essays in the volume. For anyone who is looking for satisfying essays to read, this volume would be the ideal one to choose. A reason perhaps why the essays were selected to be "the best" is that each one touches upon a common cord that readers can easily empathize with. Family, memory, history, and politics are the most obvious underlying themes that run through each essays that I picked up on. My favorite essays included: Hilton Als's "Notes on My Mother," Verlyn Klinkenborg's "We Are Still Only Human," Luc Sante's "Living In Tongues," and "Charles Simic's "Dinner at Uncle Boris's." The other essays are all equaly great.

I used to subscribe to Granta, New Yorker, Double Take, The Sun and other magazines but I found I really didn't have time for all of them. Best American Essays provides many of the same great reads in one volume. In the 1997 issue I particularly enjoyed Joy Williams "The Case Against Babies", and Paul Sheehan's essay "My Habit" is sheer genius. Each writing is wonderful though, and I often enjoy reading other works by the authors after I am introduced to their talents through the "Best Essays" series.

This is a great book in so many ways...

1. Some great step-by-step how-to sequences that show you how these designers created some truly impressive work.

2. Enjoyable insight into the creative process of the designers. This is an important area that goes way beyond the mechanics of the production process.

3. Beautiful page design! This book is not designed like most books with a rigid template of predictable layouts. The designers obviously took the time to design the pages of this book based on the text, screenshots, and photographs. Very well done!

4. I can't think of anybody better than Deke to pull all this content together and Russell Brown to stir the creative juices!

I personally didn't think I would enjoy this book, until I picked it up and started reading it. See, it was a present to me for my birthday. I couldn't put it down. I kept reading and reading. I never wanted to stop. It is interesting throughout the whole book! It only took me about 2 days to read it. I am about to go pick it up and read it again. Please take the time to read this wonderful book!

This collection of essays from Frazier's work at the New Yorker is pure delight. First published in 1979, the material dances on the edge of "dated" without ever falling in. The content of his essays range from a trip to Oberlin, KS to an interview with rather eccentric Russian artists in New York. Frazier has a gift for making the mundane somehow sublime, a gift for picking up the previously unnoticed detail, turning it over in his hand, showing the facets to the reader. If you have enjoyed Frazier's work before, this selection will not disappoint.

This is a great collection of American treasured landmarks and items. It serves as both a historical review and a great presentation piece.

This book is an exploration and attempted explanation of how white Anglo-Saxon Protestants fell from grace through American history. E. Digby Baltzell's "The Protestant Establishment" was a drier, more social scientific survey made decades ago. Nelson Aldrich's "Old Money" was, like Frazier's "Family", a more personal account, but dealt with the very rich of the East Coast. In "Family" you can follow the history of several WASP families that lead to Frazier's nuclear family. The various Frazier forebears went from being biggish to medium-size fish in the small bowl of 19th century Ohio to typical middle-class suburbanites in the mid- to late 20th century. I watched this steady dimunition with more empathy than I thought I would feel.

Frazier's style is almost telegraphic through certain passages where each consecutive sentence includes a story in miniature about some member of the family during a particular historical time-slice. For the most part this works as a way of imparting a lot of information in a condensed package and suggesting much more than is actually told.

The chapters of the book that I found the least interesting were those concerning the Civil War. Two of Frazier's Wickham ancestors happened to be participants in several pivotal battles, most notably Chancellorville. Frazier devotes a great many pages to Stonewall Jackson because the Confederate general's deathbed words ("Let us cross the river and find rest in the shade of the trees") come to represent the most important theme in American history for Frazier. He makes a case for the hypothesis that a belief in salvation and a promised land were the organizing principle for his ancestors and the gradual dimunition of that faith is at the root of our collective modern malaise. It seems like a hypothesis worth fleshing out, although not by supplying so many details about several Civil War battles.

This is a remarkable book. Frazier did a monumental job of researching his family history and produced an eloquent family history that parallels the country's history as well. The book can be read as a beautiful and fascinating family history, a meditation on the role of religion in U.S. history, and as a portrait of many memorable figures both within and without the author's family. His descriptions of his brother, father and mother brought tears to my eyes.

In "Family," Ian Frazier manages a literary coup seldom attempted, much less achieved:the telling of a personal tale with such sensitivity and imagination that the personal is transcended to become, quite possibly, the universal. The story -- of his family's migration, settlement and flourishing in America -- is at once both epic and allegorical. Equal parts history, autobiography, and geneaology, the story takes us from Frazier's family's early haunts in colonial Connecticut (and a host of other places) all the way into the contemporary interior lives of his parents, siblings, and of course, himself. Along the way, we are treated not just to stories of family life, but to grand meditations upon the meanings of history, family, and the ever-longed-for (in our time) "community." A generous book from a brilliant writer ("Great Plains," "Dating Your Mom") and regular "New Yorker"contributor, "Family" is a work of American narrative that should take its place alongside other masterworks such as Alex Haley's "Roots"and Norman Maclean's "A River Runs Through It"as an offering of passion and insight on the notion of belonging -- to our own families, and to the often fractious and ever elusive "American family." --Bronson Hilliard Boulder, CO May, 1996

This book is a collection of her earlier anonymous columns for 'The New Yorker.' They were written in 70's and early 80's, so the subjects are old. For instance, Sting (and the Police) and Boy George (and Culture Club) were gaining popularity in the book. But she already established her crisp and dynamic and music-like prose style. It's my pleasure to read her candid and sometimes sarcastic comments about snobs. It's my pleasure to read her stories about her native country, Antigua, and her parents. She wrote the stories as her friend's stories (remember that those were anonymous columns), but they were of her own prose style.

I read all of her books, and I don't like much her previous book, 'My Garden,' but I enjoyed 'Talk Stories.'

Jamaica Kincaid describes, in her terrific Introduction, her beginnings as a writer in New York in the '70's. She made a few great friends, and one brought her to the attention of William Shawn, beloved and legendary editor of the 'New Yorker.' He invited to submit short pieces. That magazine, which Kincaid points out was "a magazine that has since gone out of business, though there exists now a magazine by that name," was her home for over ten years. Kincaid's brief acid note and comment introduces an unignorable subtext: there existed a deeply valued and memorable world, now gone.

These pieces were Kincaid's apprenticeship in writing. They are a pleasure to read.

All were unsigned (giving writers a freedom she valued) when they first appeared in the magazine. Here they are arranged chronologically. If you are new to Jamaica Kincaid's mind and writing, they are a great introduction. If you are familiar with her amazing novels (or gardening essays for that matter) they are fresh, many are very funny, and all are examples, in varying ways, of how to write.

Great book.

This book is not a tourist book of the Great Plains but rather some interesting vignettes of the area as perceived by the author, Ian Frazier,about a vast expanse of 'big sky' territory.

Although not a history book, Frazier, weaves some interesting historical facts on a variety of people, places and subjects. Thus, we read about the great Indian warrior, Crazy Horse (a firm Frazier favourite), his adversary, Custer,and outlaws such as Billy the Kid and latter-day villains such as Bonnie and Clyde who all made appearances across the grand stage of the prairies.

We also learn of the impact of the railways and the effect of migration on the region with the rail companies preferring German workers over the French or Italians.

The miltary might of the USA is also portrayed as the author describes how parts of this seemingly tranquil territory has the capacity to effectively demolish the rest of the world, if American fire-power was ever fully unleashed. However, one thing the Russians were able to penetrate the US with was the humble tumbleweed. Frazier describes how they came originally from the Russian steppes. The author is something of a tumbling tumbleweed himself, moving as effortlessly from place to place in his rambles over this quintessential part of America.

Such a book can only give a flavour of the many states that constitute the Great Plains region.What Frazier has done for this far-away reader is to interest me in reading the history of the region in greater detail. Perhaps Walter Prescott Webb's similarly named book, (The Great Plains), will provide the detail missing from Frazier's cameo piece.

Great Plains is a cross between Kathleen Norris' "Dakota" and William Least Heat Moon's "Blue Highways." It's a road book about the high plains -- that semi-arid, often treeless region covering 10 states lying between the Rockies and the Mid-West. Rather than a day-by-day log of a single journey, it is an account of many trips, as its author criss-crosses the terrain, jumping from place to place and from one historical period to another. When you are done, you have a sense of a vast land and a great 200-year swath of history.

Fragments of times and places that we may know from movies and text books come together in a sweeping tapestry containing: Indian tribes, buffalo herds, cattle drives, railroads, homesteaders, droughts, blizzards, grasshoppers, long rivers, sand hills, badlands, small pox epidemics, black settlers, missile silos, strip mining, the Dust Bowl, the Ogalala aquifer, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Custer, Bonnie and Clyde, and the experience of driving a van along straight, empty highways in all weather, picking up hitchhikers, sleeping overnight by the road, and stopping to talk to ordinary people living extraordinary lives in a depopulated landscape most travelers know only as "flyover," that featureless land seen from above between East and West Coasts.

It's a great enjoyable read that meanders over its subject, sometimes with a sense of wonder, sadness, amusement, and even -- at a fashion show in Nicodemus, Kansas -- unadulterated joy!

Starting with a chance meeting with a Sioux native American and somehow leading to an exhaustive visit to the Great Plains, Ian Frazier travels just like Charles Kuralt meeting people, places and history along the way. He doesn't see everything but he describes what he sees just like anyone else that travels the backroads and highways. He adds tremendous history about the places such as the history of the west from Custer, Sitting Bull to Billy the Kid to the 20th century to Bonnie and Clyde to the present day. Vivid historical perspectives such as Brents Fort a once major rendevouz for trappers and now for reenactors, pictures and grand detail on the Sioux Indians particularly Crazy Horse. All told vividly with wonderful dots of humor. All taken from the vantage point of a man traveling in a rusty van who often sleeps by the side of the road. Like his off road trip to Sitting Bull's last lodge site, it's not a tourist book, it's a excursion through the plains that's strictly freelanced. This book is the the springboard to "On the Rez".