I am very impressed with the time spent to research the subject matter. The authors obviously had the perserverance and energy to devote a significant number of hours to the data collection and analysis phases.

Since I like history, I particularly liked the interesting items about indiviiduals that I have read or heard of in other media. There are some lessons to be learned from the lives of the people included in the book.

Also, the statistics bring out some interesting points regarding education, field of endeavor (Occupational Groups)and differences between the sexes and races. For example, the list of names in Table 1-4, "The Overall Apex of Fame: The Longest Obituarties," remind one of the people that have gone before us and have made a difference.

The authors are to be congratulated for providing a great read of a subject that some people shun. (Personally, I get up each morning, check the local obits and if my name is not included I go to work)

Master writer and researcher Jill Jonnes is back, this time teamed with the venerable John C. Ball. Fame At Last is the culmination of an unlikely look at a five-year history of New York Times obituaries. The New York Times obits are a veritable who's who of the recently deceased; only those who've been pioneers in their chosen field earn a coveted spot in these pages. This odd subject matter makes for fascinating reading.

Jonnes and Ball developed a database for the ten thousand or so obits in their study, classifying them by occupation, education, income level, obit length, and more. When massaged, their database reveals interesting patterns about these chosen few and highlights the value of higher education, particularly at renowned ivy league schools. Chapters are broken down by field of expertise--artists, politicians, writers, inventors, criminals, musicians, educators, etc. There's something for everyone.

For each chapter, Jonnes has culled a sampling of the most compelling obits, and devotes a page or two to anecdotal musing on each. In its essence, Fame At Last is a collection of short biographies on some of the world's most creative, intelligent, productive, or infamous personalities, some of whom we're familiar with, some we're not. Surprisingly fun and illustrative. Christopher Bonn Jonnes, author of Wake Up Dead.

'South Bronx Rising' pulls no punches and painstankingly charts the penultimate urban destruction of the South Bronx.In someone else's hands, this story that charts the downfall of what was once a bountiful hinterland north of Manhatten, could have got bogged down in accusations and boring political meanderings. Instead, the story of the utter deveastation of what was at one time the playground of the princes of Manhatten, comes alive with a depth of feeling and poignancy, only someone who got into the blood and guts of the people of the Bronx could have written.
Kudos to Jonnes for evoking the 'neighborhood.' For that is what permeates this story of the downslide of a dream.
The Bronx started out as an oasis for countless immigrants who clawed there way out of the lower Eastside tenemants of NYC. First the Irish and the Germans, then the Jews and Italians.
The Bronx, with its verdant parks, luxurious apartment buildings and vibrant neighbrhoods offered a safe haven for aspiring immigrants to do good by their children and offer them a better way of life. As these immigrants 'moved on up' to the middle class and further north, the next wave moved on in. As it had always done.
But by the early sixties, existing housing was growing old, plumbing and heating systems needed to be replaced, but the culture of rent control saw landlords not able to afford the renovations.Welfare housing was a temporary boon to the coiffers, but in the end, was the end of the South Bronx.

The destruction starts, and it is as harrowing in the descriptions as it is in the photos. Acres of housing are abandonned by landlords. Heat, hotwater, electricity become things of the past. Junkies rule the streets and begin literaaly tearing buildings apart as they scavange for whatever copper and piping they can find to sell to suport their habits. The landlords realise they can make more money by burning their properties than by selling them. And the South Bronx begins to burn. And Burn. Until it is no more than worthless acres of rubble.
Jonnes chronicles the steady downfall of the Bronx in many compassionate stories, but her hard hitting investigative jouranlistic traits shine through as well. You are left in no doubt that the politicos of the South Bronx definitly were fiddling as the Bronx was burning.
I was there. I grew up in the South Bronx. This book is as real as it gets.
The final chapters deal with the rise of the South Bronx, but one wonders, at what cost? --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Jill Jonnes' debut book will be of interest to all residents of New York City, past or present. It also contains important lessons on failed welfare policies and insurance practices.

She delivers sweeping historical background on the creation and ethnic make-up of the Bronx, overloaded with names and statistics, showing her abilities as a researcher. The Bronx was once a well-kept borough, but over the decades the ethnic mix changed and with it, the average income level. The Bronx began a long decline, unchecked by politicians. By the mid 70s, fueled by rampant crime, drug abuse, and a welfare policy that paid out $2,000 to $3,000 in emergency funds to victims of fire, the city was set ablaze. In a ten-year period, a staggering 80% of structures in the South Bronx were damaged or destroyed by fire--predominantly by arson. This left a city landscape reminiscent of nuclear holocaust.

But as the title, We're Still Here, hints, the city still lives, and a motivated group of concerned residents and politicians fight to resurrect their home. It's worth trying to locate a copy of this out-of-print book for the fascinating and complex history of this storied borough. -Christopher Bonn Jonnes, author of Wake Up Dead.

Jonnes does a good job of chronicling America's history with drugs and drug use. She provides great detail in where drugs were and how they got there. However, her approached is biased and clouded by anti-drug inferences and conclusions throughout. After reading the second page, I knew exactly where her argument was headed. This might be fine for an opinion piece, but she presents this work as historical. It clearly is much more than that.
Jonnes also focuses on opiates as the standard for drug use, giving only passing references to marijuana, yet concluding that marijuana falls into the same category amid considerations of legalization or decriminalization. She makes some erroneous claims, like her implications that once you try opiates you'll be hooked soon after, very much a reefer-madness approach. She only casually alludes to Anslinger's corruption. She also only uses those studies that support her position, completely ignoring studies that have at least equal, and sometimes more, scientific soundness and validity. She never even mentions the government studies by Laguardia in 1944, or Schaffer in 1972, for example. But had she done that, it would have conflicted with her completely biased view. She even goes so far as to imply that Nixon eased drug penalties and presents him as a common-sensical figure in this, completely ignoring his demand that marijuana be classified as a schedule 1 narcotic, which it isn't (it's not even a narcotic, and it certainly doesn't fit the critera of schedule 1).
Unfortunately, this book is like much of anti-drug works - political in nature and deceptive in detail.

This book is a great read if you want to know about the interesting history of drugs in the United States. However, Ms. Jonnes provides "answers" at the end of her book that are not consistent with the material she previously exposed. For example, she says that one solution is to stigmatize drugs; yet in the sixties the older generation was wholly antidrug and that did not stop the counterculture from using them. She also does not seem to want to acknowledge that alcohol use is another important part of the drug epidemic (even if it is now legal, remember Prohibition days), indeed, most people start with alcohol as a pathway to illegal drugs, not with marijuana. Also, she wholly refuses to accept that there could actually be people who use illegal drugs in a recreational way and that this does not affect their lives, work or relationships, something I find disturbing because in reality this is quite common. So, all in all, read this book for its greatly researched and detailed history but form your own opinion about the current situation and how it should be handled.

It's frightening to consider that most of the politicians and bureaucrats responsible for establishing illegal drug policy in America will have never read Jill Jonnes' book. Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams should be mandatory reading for all such people, not necessarily because of the conclusions she reaches--there tends to be dispute in these--but because of the incredible wealth of historical information she has packed in it.

One surprise for the average reader of Hep-Cats is the rich history of illicit drug use in America. Drug use connotes Timothy Leary and the turbulent sixties, or the more recent crack cocaine epidemic. But in reality, numerous waves of drug abuse-illegal and otherwise--have swept the country, each with their own unique origins, consequences, and solutions. One of the benefits of studying history, is the opportunity to learn from past mistakes and avoid repeating them. It appears that America has been repeating its errors in using and controlling drugs for centuries. We're a liberal, open-minded society of fun-loving risk-takers. We delude ourselves into believing the latest and greatest drug has no consequences, or that we're at least of strong enough character to master it. The inevitable result is the vicious cycle of addiction (or dependency), crime, finger pointing, and policy experimentation.

Does the answer lie in prevention, treatment, education, law enforcement, stricter sentencing, or all of the above? We don't always agree, but Hep-Cats provides a thorough and accurate background, a wonderful educational foundation on which policymakers could base decisions and hopefully control arguably the single largest contributor to crime in America: drug abuse. But this is no textbook. Meticulously researched, thoughtfully constructed, and very well-written, Hep-Cats is an entertaining read for all. -Christopher Bonn Jonnes, author of Wake Up Dead.