Being of a younger generation, my acquaintances are generally surprised to find me reading a collection of essays. This provides me with a golden opportunity to share the wealth I have found in this book. Not only have the essayists here provoked thought and surprising emotion from me, but this art has pushed me in a new direction. Witnessing all of the unexpected beauty pouring from this book has made me want to write essays. I cannot wait to get my hands on the rest of this series. Fiction has been moved to the back burner. I am forever grateful.

I found this series a couple of years ago, and each issue is a treasure to enjoy. I often find myself reading about things outside my experience, outside what I expect to be interested in - and every time I learn and think and imagine and am given pleasure in the reading. The essay form, in the hands of these writers, is a grand and various opportunity for thought and exploration of grand themes and of the minutiae of human life.

I'm really glad to meet this place. Now I am defencing these on Thomas Pynchon. So I wish you could send me a new list on Pynchon. Thank you.

The West : An Illustrated History by Geoffrey C. Ward, Dayton Duncan has got to be one of the most "Can't put down" type of books I've had the wonderful pleasure of owning, ever! The illustrations, to many to count are of the finest quality I've ever seen in a book not to mention that the editorial choices were perfect. The photos depict the exact expressions that capture those lost moments in time... If you can get this book - buy it! It is for all ages and you could never grow tired reading it, as well. A certain coffee table type book! I rate this book a 5 STAR!

The world has known the American West as the wild and untamed land of cowboys and Indians that Hollywood brought along with it's movies. The real story of the West is much more amazing than at first sight. Ward's story is beautifully illustrated with magnificent text that makes it a worthy successor to the movie series. He tells the story through the eyes of those who lived it and that is something very important in the history of the west. Without first hand accounts our knowledge would be vague, but this book captures the essence of all the west had and has to offer: adventure, a beautiful landscape, and a great mysterious past...

Being sucked into this book is not hard at all. With it's wonderful photographs of Native Americans and western pioneers, you get a true feeling of the life and culture. Geoffrey C. Ward is an excellent writer, and has put together one of the finest books of early American history and culture. I highly recommend the reading of this book to anyone whose roots derive from this era.

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.

What a wonderful honest account of the struggles of a man, Hugh Gregory Gallagher who at his peak suffered a tremendous loss as a result of polio. Yet in spite of it, and in part because Mr. Gallagher was blessed with a smart mind and strong spirit, overcame the obstacles, making a statement to society about his worth as a human being, as he pursued his dreams, then ultimately made the world a better place for thosewith disabilities. As a polio survivor and one who is facing the challenges of the late effects of post polio, I applaud Mr. Gallagher for his courage and have read and re-read his book to help me gain my strength and courage to face the challenges before me.

From Jack Trombadore Book Reviews New Jersey Polio Network
NEWSLETTER, Fall, 1998.

In this collection of essays, journals, writings and personal recollections spanning almost half a century, Hugh Gallagher courageously reveals himself in a compelling autobiography as both protagonist and antagonist in a drama with countless scenes in three acts. Throughout the first two acts he forces himself to overcome the role of emotional anti-hero until he achieves final freedom from the talons of clinical depression at the beginning of a long, ongoing and productive third act.

Stricken with severe paralytic polio at nineteen, Gallagher never walked again. A freshman at Haverford in the spring of 1952, he was young, beautiful and free; he was in love with a beautiful girl, the novels of Thomas Mann, Italian opera, politics, and with life. He was young, strong and invincible.

Polio, My Account, was written twenty years "after the event" and never previously published. Here, he tells us what it "felt" like to have had a life sentence of disability imposed without hope of pardon or parole. The physiological aspects of his polio were just representative of the inward tragedy of the collapse of a young life. He saw himself watching his own deterioration from outside his body. He saw the horrific progression of the disease the first days: legs, trunk, breathing, arms, hands, neck, double and quadruple vision, the tracheotomy on a body too weak for anesthetics, the rush down corridors in the arms of non-medical personnel to the iron lung, the108 degree fever, last rites.

His body was the battlefield for the doctors and his presence was "accidental." No one disclosed what his ravaged body would be like if they succeeded in keeping him alive. The overwhelming question became: stop or go, yes or no, live or die. He decided to live.

After a year in hospitals, he was admitted to the Warm Springs Foundation in Georgia. He spent nine months there, learning the "functional" tricks of the trade that would enable him again to live in the outside world. He was physically independent, healthy and in a wheelchair. He still is.

He obtained his American B.A. in 1956 from Claremont McKenna College in California. It was the only college of the forty to which he had written that was fully accessible. His first application for a Rhodes Fellowship to Oxford was returned unprocessed; Gallagher was not "fit in mind and body" as required by the will of Cecil Rhodes. His was the first application Oxford had ever received from a disabled person. However, he did attend Oxford with a Marshall Fellow scholarship and studied there for three years at Trinity College, the only one of Oxford's thirty-five individual colleges that was "wheelchair accessible." He was the only person at Oxford in a wheelchair. There he endured unbelievable hardships.

The water closet was a block away, down a ramp and up a ramp, nearly always slippery from the constant rain. The bath facilities were inaccessible and he did not bathe or wash his hair for a year at a time. His legs turned blue from the cold and stayed blue until the late spring. Despite having acquired an outstanding education and lifelong friends, Gallagher now looks with awe and disbelief at the hardships he willingly endured in those three years.

In 1959, as a member of a senatorial staff on Capitol Hill he was once again the only person there in a wheelchair. There was no handicap parking, there were steps everywhere, and the bathrooms were not accessible.

In 1962 Gallagher began his life's work, the search for equal access and equal rights for disabled persons, when he joined the staff of Alaska's powerful, popular and supportive Senator Bob Bartlett (D. Alaska), a member of the Appropriations Committee. The Senator authorized him to work on disability issues and agreed to support this work. Gallagher drafted the Federal Architectural Barriers Act of 1968, the first legislation anywhere to treat equal access of disabled people as a civil right, and the precursor to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

One is thrilled by the account of the political maneuvering, and the political blackmail engineered by Gallagher and the ever-willing Bartlett in the Johnson years to achieve accessibility to the Library of Congress, the National Gallery of Art, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, federally funded hospitals across America, and many more sites.

On Bartlett's death in 1968 Gallagher went to work for British Petroleum, Ltd., where he acted for five years as that Company's chief political officer in London and Washington. The discovery of vast oil reserves by BP on its Alaska holdings made it the holder of the largest crude reserves in America. Gallagher tells us he was playing with the "Big Boys."

On the 4th of July weekend, 1974, Gallagher left his office and never returned. He was in total mental and physical collapse and spent the rest of the decade recovering from his clinical depression. It had begun two years earlier at his 40th birthday party when he realized that "youth was past." He had been frozen with fear as he felt a giant black buzzard flapping its wings high above him. The experience was repeated in a few months. He continued working until he could no longer do so, filled with dread and unable to go out.

"The great black buzzard sat heavy on my shoulder. It would not go away." " ...the pain of acute paralytic polio in no degree equaled the agony and despair, the abject helplessness of depression." This period of Gallagher's life ended after a long and successful course of psychiatry and psychoanalysis.

Gallagher has long since assumed center stage in the Third Act of this heroic human drama, writing (FDR's Splendid Deception), traveling, speaking, and advocating nationally for the rights of the disabled. A must read.

This is a wonderful book for anyone who loves tigers. It is packed with spectacular photos of tigers, most in their natural environment. There are also some pictures of other wildlife & of native peoples.

There are pictures of tigers with their cubs, ready to pounce & many close-ups. Sadly, there are others of tigers in captivity. I loved the pictures of the white tigers especially a rare one with orange stripes instead of black.

If you can tear yourself away from the pictures the text is equally impressive. The author tells of his adventures in national parks throughout Asia.

He also discusses the plight of tigers & other animals of the area being killed for there furs or horns and what is being done to protect them. There is a list of conservationists in the back if you want to help.

I thought that this book was remarkable in the explanation of the year of the tiger and with what cultures that it pertains to.

Every year since 19??, a book is published that celebrates the best essays of that year. These essays range in topic from science to law, from art to sociology. Reading this year's edition, I am particularly impressed. Of course, not every essay is for everyone. However, even the essays that have nothing to do with my background I have found to be interesting at the least, compelling and mind-rattling at best. It is worth buying the book for even a few: 'The Art of the Nap,' 'The Trouble with Wilderness' 'Influenza 1918'.

Having visited Ms. Suckley's home and the nearby Roosevelt home and library, I felt as though I were along for the ride as I read Daisy's accounts of their picnics and "tea dates" at various sites along the Hudson. In this day of "tell-all" books and seemingly unlimited voyeuristic snooping into Presidential private lives, this book was a pleasant departure from the norm. It also offered new insights into the life of a much-studied President, but one about whom there are still many unknowns. Margaret Suckley, even while preserving much of the account of her longstanding (but unknown to most contemporaries) relationship with FDR, took care to take the more private elements of their friendship to the grave.

Ward's first 2 book's on FDR's life are a masterpiece. When will he finish this epic account?

Elisha Hunt Rhodes diary gives a very exquisite perspective of the Civil War not often found in historical works. Obviously moving, it provided much of the "color" commentary in Ken Burn's masterpiece documentary, as one of the few existing books that represented a soldier's view of the conflict from start to finish. Rhodes was with the Army or the Potomac for the whole ride, suffering the disasters in the first few years, then seeing the success of his comrades at Gettysburg, and determining to stay to "see it through". If you're really into learning about the Civil War, this is a book you shouldn't miss. An easy read, even for the occaisional history buff.

The diary and letters of Elisha Hunt Rhoades is very aptly named "All for the Union," as that is the way that he lived his life. Rhoades was with the Union army from the beginning of the war to the end, and he fought in almost every one of the major battles. Throughout this book, I laughed, I cried, and I now feel that I really know what a Civil War soldier's life was like. The only problem with the book is putting it down! Rhoades' personal integrity and commitment to his country make this book a definite winner!!!

When Ken Burns's popular documentary series on the Civil War was shown on T.V. the Civil War diary of E.H. Rhodes who was aPrivate from Rhode Island was used various times to describe the attitude of "war fever" at the beginning of the war, to the boredom of camp life, to the fear and carnage of battle. Rhodes had an elegant yet easy prose when he wrote to his family his account of the Civil War. From Private at the beginning of the war, to promoting to the Officer rankings, E.H. Rhodes describes the mood of his mind, his fellow soldiers and the feelings of the Union. I really enjoyed his diary and also the information of what happened to him after the war, like being very active in the G.A.R. reunions. This man fought in almost every major battle of the war and his diary is a definte asset to the understanding of the Civil War. Highly Recommended to all Civil War Scholars and Enthusiasts.

This book fills a glaring need in history books. Not many people know more about Susan B. Anthony than she was one the dollar coin. This book corrects that oversight, and then some. Not only does the book give a balanced and well thought out look at Anthony and Stanton, the reader is also introduced to many, many other women who worked so hard for women rights.
I especially liked that the book didn't shy away from some of these women's more controversial stands, such as taking on the black person's cause.
All in all, a very good book.

This book provides insight and history on the struggle that women went through to get the right to vote. It includes all kinds of interesting background and perspectives. It was a real eye opener for me and I'm giving it as a gift to all the young women I know.

This book was an eye opener for me. Every woman should read this book to understand the fight for our right to vote. These women devoted their lives to something they knew they would never even see in their live time! Its a story of courage and strength. It's makes one feel proud to be a woman.