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This easy read chronicles the reconsiderations of both spouses in the midst of a Dublin marriage. But don't let that fool you. This isn't a divorce book, or an angry book, or even a very sad book. Although it may be wistful, it is, at its core, a wonder book. Paul and Margeret, through their separation, rediscover the wonder in their lives, the wonder of their love, and the wondrous variety of life in Dublin.

Through their friends and acquaintances we see through to the heart of things, where sometimes there is kindness, sometimes there is hardness and greed, and sometimes there is something enduring and profound. These men and women illustrate the richness of the city and its neighborhoods, as they run the gamut from upper to lower classes, from conservative to liberal, from upright to criminal.

If you've been to Dublin, you'll see the character of the city in this text. If you've always wanted to go, you'll see the spirit of the place opening up to you. I just finished Roddy Doyle's _A Star Called Henry_ before I picked this up, and I'd say the two serve well together as Dublin bookends. Where Doyle is rough and dirty and biased toward the north side of the city, Adler is polished and quiet and more at home on the south side of the Liffey.

I am in awe of the incredible richness of this slender book -- of its artistry; its grand design; the breadth of its imaginings; the sometimes limpid,sometimes electric language; the hidden insights shing through twists of plot; the tricks, the jokes, the games.

Leviant is worthy of the inner circle -- the first ring of authors who need no first names. He's been compared,in his inventiveness, in his playfulness, in his freedom from the ordinary bonds of fiction, to Joyce, Kundera, Nabokov, Borges, Bellow.

But comparisons to the contrary, Leviant is an original. He's hard to categorize. He is a wildly mystical writer -- and more. He is a wildly comic writer -- and more. He is a deeply learned writer -- and more. He is an experimental post-modernist -- and more. This multiplicity of gifts makes his books rich and dense and rewarding.

Listen to Win is a foundational book for your library. It offers a wealth of detailed information that will take a lifetime to apply. It is not a workbook, but it provides material that is transferable into the workplace on a day-by-day, hour-by-hour basis. It is very useful as a tool to improve your own listening skills and those of your subordinates. Currently it is out of print and not easy to find, but it is well worth the effort.

I noticed Curt Leviant's novel, "The Man Who Thougt He Was Messiah", on your website and was fascinated by the title. The book too is fascinating, a page-turner full of exciting adventures, a great love story and loads of spirituality. The hero, Reb Nachman, exchanges melodies with Beethoven whom he meets in Vienna; he also has the ability to levitate. After reading the book, I looked for reviews, and they were terrific. The New York Times Book Review (Dec 16, 1990) and Publishers Weekly (Aug 24, 1990). And Elie Wiesel wrote (quoted on the dust jacket) "This beautiful and moving fictional narrative -- Curt Leviant's best -- deserves our attention. It is the work of a gifted writer. Read it and you will plunge into an enchanting spiritual universe -- filled with imagination, humor and warmth -- that to our deep regret exists no more."

This book really helped me on all my rides in Hawaii. Best of all, the book had sections on all 6 visitable main islands. The maps and trail descriptions were always right on... don't ride in the islands without this!

Original version published by Paul Fessler in H-Net Book Review for H-GAGCS listserv

An academic's recommendation of a book as a "good read", however, can often be regarded as suspect by undergraduates and general readers. Perhaps our overexposure to dissertations and monographs have perverted our sense of what constitutes an enjoyable and easy to read book. To counteract such biases and perversions, I asked my wife to read Hauser's book. This book passed my wife's test. If only all books published by academic presses could boast such accessibility.

Originally published in Germany in 1950, My Farm on the Mississippi was clearly written for a non-academic audience. In this brief, very accessible book, Heinrich Hauser, an opponent of the Nazi regime and wartime German refugee, turns his three years from 1945-1948 on a Missouri farm near the German-American community of Wittenberg into an engaging adventure story. This book caught the eye of Curt Poulton, a historical geographer and translator at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, who translated this work into English. Poulton argues that Hauser, as a German living among a German immigrant community in the wake of World War II, offers invaluable commentary upon this 1940s "postimmigrant America" where immigrants' native language and customs were still alive.

In 1939, Hauser, a prolific writer of fiction and non-fiction, escaped from Germany with his Jewish wife and two children. After unsuccessfully trying his hand at farming in upstate New York and then at city life in Chicago, Hauser and his wife yearned for the romantic fresh air of the proverbial American heartland. With no prospects or firm destination, Hauser set off for St. Louis and points southward in an old 1928 Packard in search of his dream farm. South of St. Louis and just north of Cape Girardeau, Hauser and his wife began passing signs to "Stuttgart", "Dresden", "Altenberg", and "Wittenberg". In Cape Girardeau, Hauser spotted a "Dr. Schultz" and paid this German-speaking physician a visit to inquire about the region and the German-sounding places. Working through the German-American subculture, Hauser soon bought a farmstead south of the town of Wittenberg, Missouri on the Mississippi floodplain.

Hauser recounts how his wife Rita and son Huc struggled to make the farm a working proposition for the next three years. Most of the profits, however, were used to provide care packages and other aid to their German friends and relatives back home. During the rest of the time, his family survives horrific floods, raging forest fires, and a comic shipwreck. During the summers, his son Huc devised plans and adventures such as making a boat with an outboard motor in ways reminiscent of a Little Rascals episode. By 1948, however, low crop prices and homesickness convinced the reluctant Hausers to return to Germany and abandon their Missouri farm.

Nevertheless, Hauser offers a useful window into this German-American society on the banks of the Mississippi. As Hauser notes, it is this region's rural isolation that permitted its German culture and language to survive both World War I and World War II and beyond. Hauser knew he was among his own kind when he saw women working the fields---a practice Americans generally avoided. In the local bars, these German-Americans would add salt to modify the sweet American beers like Falstaff and Budweiser. When the war in Europe was over, Hauser's family celebrated with a crowd of itinerant German-American lumber workers playing "schottiches" and singing songs such as "Am Brunnen vor dem Tore" and sea tunes like "In Hamburg da bin ich gewesen". Also particularly interesting (and useful for immigration and ethnicity courses) are Hauser's recollected interactions between these German-Americans and the nearby African-Americans.

Just as Alexis de Toqueville's Democracy in America offers an outsider's critique of early nineteenth-century America, Hauser's observations present a valuable perspective of postwar America, its rural traditions and ethnic relationships. Hauser is an "outsider/insider" within the postwar German-American community. Though an outsider as a recent German refugee, he can speak the language (both linguistically and theologically). This allowed him to enter into the culture and bring a unique perspective to bear upon it.

Because this book was originally written for a German audience unfamiliar with many aspects of American society and culture, Hauser's narrative is particularly instructive to an American audience today. For many undergraduate students in particular, Hauser's emphasis on the basics of everyday American life proves more fascinating to American readers today than when it was originally published. Approaching the daily life of the post-World War II America from the cultural distance of a foreigner is in many ways similar to the approach of today's readers and students separated from that cultural landscape by the passage of fifty years. Thus, Hauser's cultural observations, which may have seemed less interesting to an American reader in the 1950s when the work was first published are met with a much different perspective.

Without Poulton's sparkling translation, however, these observations would have lost much of their power to English readers. Poulton's work arouses comparisons to other recent and notable translations such as W.C. Kuniczak's translation of Heinrich Sienkiewicz's monumental Trilogy beginning with the novel "With Fire and Sword" (popular Polish nationalist fiction written during the late 19th century-a useful assignment for courses dealing with 19th century European nationalism, by the way). Poulton remains faithful to Hauser's intent to provide his readers with an adventure story. So dependent upon narrative flow and colorful description, this value and attraction of this work would have been irreparably harmed by a poor translation.

Readers interested in this approach should also see the superb collection of immigrant letters in News from the Land of Freedom by Kamphoefner, Helbich, and Sommer (Cornell University Press, 1991).

Even if you're not headed down under except via easy chair, you can pick up Aussie slang here, and amusing yarns as well. As the Vietnam War winds down, a Yank ("Tin Tank Hank") heads for the Australian outback where he finds a different sort of life altogether. A combination "fish out of water" and "finding self" story, there's plenty here to keep you traveling along with Hank (reading with map of Australia handy enhances the trip) as he discovers, among other things, how to keep one's head in a "shout," the different degrees of bastardy and the dangers of marrying a crop duster's ex.

My family has enjoyed this book for 15 years. While we own shelves of cook books this is always the #1 choice to turn to for cooking salmon. Recipes are down to earth, but produce superb results.

"Partita in Venice" is a tour de force, a carnival of language and feeling, both light and intense -- and immensely satisfying. It tells (at least) two love stories and -- not least at all -- of the love of Venice. Highly recommended for anyone who loves language and Venice -- and music, too, which is a recurring motif.