This is a fabulous book that truly depicts the down home feel of Indiana. As a life-long resident, I am able to reflect on the many places I have visited throughout the years. The photography was beautiful and made me proud of my midwest heritage. I first purchased this book for my daughter to take to her host family in Germany and have now purchased it for myself and for gifts.

Thom Jones' "Pugilist at Rest" is a fine collection of stories. The highlight of this book, however, are the three stories in the first section. Starting with the title story, these three pieces "feel" real. They all involve the same character and narrate his experiences in the Vietnam War.

What's so great about the Vietnam stories is the authenticity. Not just in the description of the war, but in the emotions and thoughts of the protagonist. Many reviewers noted the author's hard-edged voice, the roughness, confusion, and violence swirling just beneath the surface. But what most fail to mention is the voice of longing and hope that create the foundation of Jones' Vietnam tales. The steamy jungles of Southeast Asia have taken a tough, street smart kid and wrung every drop of humanity from him. All that remained was a near-crazed epileptic with a detailed knowledge of boxing and Schopenhauer. But there's a spark of life and joy that drives the narrator on, that turns him outward and gives him inspiration to write. He's a fighter, aching to find a peaceful moment.

The remaining stories are raw and amateurish, containing passages of wonder, but largely unauthentic. It's as if Jones churned these out in a writing class, inspired by an exercise on voice. I never got the sense that he actually believed in any of these stories.

But the collection is worth the price of the book just for the opening three stories. In the same league as O'Brien's "The Things They Carried," Jones' war stories will no doubt be long considered as essential reading on the Vietnam War.

Thom Jones' first collection of short stories is a good one. Eleven stories are included in "The Pugilist at Rest" and they average about 20 pages per story. The first three stories are brilliant Vietnam War stories (the best being the title story) on par with the best writing of this genre (see Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried" or Larry Brown's "Dirty Work" for example). These stories are engaging and occasionally graphic and the writing of such quality that the reader is pulled into the story. The remaining eight stories are relationship stories (lovers, friends, family) with the two most moving centered around debilitating illnesses (cancer and alcoholism). "I Want To Live" is a powerful story about a woman's effort to survive cancer as she contemplates death and beyond(the narrator's agnostic viewpoint makes this story even more painful) and the collection closes with a boxer dealing with his trainer's alcoholism. Many of these stories involve boxers (both those in the ring and those on leashes), epilepsy, alcohol, and philosophy. This collection is thought-provoking and well-worth reading. One of the better short story collections I have read. Highly Recommended.

I write this review with perhaps a unique perspective: that of having read all three of Jones' published short story collections first. I gave "Cold Snap" and "Sonny Liston" three and five stars, respectively. I have not read three books by one author consecutively since -- and I know it's becoming a cliche', now -- E. Hemingway, F. Fitzgerald and F. Dostoyevski. Even James Joyce required a break after two consecutives. Granted, Thom Jones is lighter fare than the red meat of the great European writers; still, I think this is high praise. Especially when one considers that Jones is swimming against a literary current. He is emphatically politically incorrect, and doesn't try (at least objectively) to please any fashionable political school of criticism. He writes intelligently, universally and boldly. I've read several criticisms centering on an imputed lack of thematic material. Yet, many of the stories in the books have absolutely nothing in common, and are written (save for the inescapable vulgarity of speech) in totally disparate voices. Recently, I read an article suggesting that Huxley, not Orwell, was right about the death of literature in future generations (i.e., people lacking the motivation to consume intelligent art, as opposed to censorship). One has to agree with this as the trend: with one ready exception: Mr. Jones. He has the capacity of making us care about literature again.

This collection of stories offers nothing new in the landscape of contemporary fiction. There is nothing unique in the prose, just the raw stuff you'd find in Tim O'Brien or Ellen Gilchrist. The title story is the only one I liked. I especially hated the one told from the perspective of an Australian, it detracts from the main themes too much. There are better choices, like Rick Moody or Annie Proulx.

Like _Pugilist At Rest_ which preceded it, _Cold Snap_ is an excellent work and should be considered and one of the most consistently outstanding collection of stories in contemporary American fiction.

Jones is an author who writes about what he knows. He is a former marine and an ex-boxer, and therefore marines and boxers feature largely in his stories. Jones' disappointing follow-up, _Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine_, unfortunately shows that this is not a formula with unlimited longevity. This collection, however, works splendidly.

I have a great appreciation for Jones' authenticity. He gets it right. The closing story "Dynamite Hands" is a masterpiece. Not a word out of place, a perfectly crafted gem. Jones depicts perfectly the complexity of boxing, and manages to successfully capture an amazing range of emotions in and out of the ring.

Another notable standout is "Way Down Deep in the Jungle" about a New Zealand doctor on an aid mission in Africa, and his unlikely companion: a pet baboon. Surrounded by death, AIDS, corruption, and despair, the baboon (vilified by the native staff) is his sole distraction.

Not pretty stuff, much of what you will find here; _Cold Snap_ is a blend of death, drug abuse, suicide, and various other dark elements of the human condition. But somehow Jones manages to craft some likeable characters and put them into situations which shed some light on our humanity. An excellent book.

Thom Jones is one of the best fiction writers in America. Joyce Carol Oates once said that reading Jones is like speeding down the highway in a car with the windows rolled down. It's better than that! People who come from the walks of life that Jones has come from are not supposed to be verbal, much less have the ability to write. Jones can not only write, he can create alternate worlds in the space of 2,000-to-5,000 words. In every one of the stories in "Cold Snap," he does just that. You'll come away wiser, changed. Only the best fiction can do that.

Although The Pugilist at Rest is one of the best books I've read, Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine is a real let down. Although there are some really good stories in here, there are others that are questionable at best. "Roadrunner", for instance, seems to be merely an excuse for an anecdote in "A Run Through the Jungle". "40, Still at Home" has its moments of humor but really goes nowhere in terms of story. Many of these pieces seem to be included (and published) because Mr. Jones is hot property. There are point of view problems and structural problems. He is a very talented writer--one of the best out there--but this is a weak collection with only a few shining moments. Buy it if you are a hardcore fan, but don't if you are not.

This new story collection shows a huge talent, cruising steadily at the height of his powers, three books in and still going strong. Easily as deft and accomplished as his previous high-water mark, Pugilist At Rest, this book seizes you with vividly drawn characters and the habit-forming tempos of Jones' brilliant, un-flowery prose. One of the only writers around who possesses the quintessentially American combination of being a seasoned, masterly stylist and also compulsively readable, Thom Jones is not only good, but he's good FOR you. And if you've come to expect this from him, then this book will in no respect let you down. Sonny Liston Was A Friend of Mine is Thom Jones being really ON. Some of the stories in this collection feature characters that, if you've read Jones' other two books (and, trust me, you should), you will have seen before. And you'll be glad they're back, they're some of Jones' sharpest creations. That Thom Jones languishes in a nether-world between (relative) obscurity and mass popularity while certain American authors without Jones' skill and without Jones' robust inventiveness sell inferior books by the truckload, is a travesty. This darling of the critics is one who truly does deserve the wide readership that other, lesser writers enjoy. If you've not read any Thom Jones before, what can I tell you? It's all good, and this is as perfect a place to start as any. For fireball prose that hits like a hammer yet cuts finer than a razor, Thom Jones is peerless.

Thom Jones' stories resist easy classification, and merely recapping the action of even a few does him a disservice. However those unfamiliar with his work will get a strong sense of his story-telling powers simply by reading the title story in this, his latest collection.

That story has the peculiar gem-like perfection of some of Hemingway's best, although I don't mean to suggest that Jones in any way mimicks Hemingway's style, except in the sense that he gains power by leaving details out.

Jones' hardboiled look at a Golden Gloves boxer whose "career" ends shortly after it begins does more than sharply catalog the rounds of training, the fear and exultation in the ring and the physical pain of boxing. It suggests a way of life ending and a new one beginning. Although we leave him late in his teenage years, it's easy to envision the protagonist at 30 on a barstool, hunched over a beer and confiding to a stranger the words of the story's title.

In its unsentimental look at amateur boxing, the story recalls Leonard Gardner's classic "Fat City," but the other stories range far beyond the ring, into mental wards, lonely apartments and grimy film projection booths. This is strong stuff, but Jones rarely hits a false note. "Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine" is a worthy successor to the equally well-done "Cold Snap" and "The Pugilist at Rest."

Gaskell's work is rather boring and dreary. Riffing on earlier precedents (most notably Sherman, even if this is not "self portraiture" per se) Gaskell's tableaux reek of a rather vapid revisitation of staged scenario a la her Yale professor and one time boyfriend Gregory Crewdson (check out his book on amazon.com "Twilight," and you'll see exactly what I mean) combined with a weak attempt at some kind of feminized fairy tale world gone wrong. Technically, the work is adequate, but c'mon'. is this the best that art world photographers in their 30's have to offer? If so, it's going to be a long, dry spell, indeed.

Anna Gaskell recently put up an exhibition in my school's art gallery, and I was simply floored. The vibrancy of her photos are what originally attracted me, and are still the most striking part of the photos, and the drawings are just creepy enough to keep a high-schooler such as myself interested. But when I picked up this book, the meaning behind the photos becomes clearer. Gaskell has created several photo essays with not only incredible tone, lighting, and subjects, but she also has a fine theory behind her pictures: of being uncomfortable with an adolescent body, the pressure of pre-teens, and the weirdier sides of Alice In Wonderland.

I'll admit I haven't had very long to think about why I like Gaskell's work so much - I just got home from the exhibit - but I highly recommend her, not just aesthetically but for the thoughts behind them.