With the aim of introducing a wider audience to classics of nineteenth century Latin American literature, Oxford launched the Library of Latin America (LoLA). English-speaking readers can now have access to important writers from the South. One such important writer was Jose M. de Alencar (1829-77), who was born in Brazil and served as that country's Minister of Justice. He is most famous for his cycle of three novels that explore Indian identity in Brazil. Alencar's most important contribution was to help Brazil form a unique national literary identity that would distinguish the new country after its independence from Portugal. Because Brazil had an indigenous population by which it could differentiate itself from the colonial power, Alencar, like many romantic-era lettered statesmen, immersed himself in the Indian oral tradtion and languages. Influenced by James Fenimore Cooper and U.S. narratives of pilgrims and Indians, ALencar looked to Brazil's native popoulation to form a coherent background shared by all who lived in the new nation. Alencar's "Iracema" shares many similarities with other mid-nineteenth-century romances: flowery language, sentimental plot, a brave hero, a blushing heroine, and a weepy tragedy. Readers who do not like Cooper should turn another writers' pages. "Iracema" has much to offer for those interested in allegory, foundational fictions, literary history, and exotic landscape. LIsten to the opening lines of "Iracema": "Green, impetuous seas of my native land, where the jandaia sings amid the carnauba fronds: Green seas, that gleam with liquid emerald in the rays of the rising sun, skirting alabaster beaches shaded by coconut trees." Here Alencar follows many Latin American novelists who intimately detail their countries in an effort to fix the landscape in the literary imagination. An anagram for "America," the heroine Iracema is the daughter of the shaman of the inland Tabajara people. She is a priestess for her tribe and has sworn vows of chastity. It is not hard to guess what happens when she meets a dashing Portuguese soldier named Martim. Iracema's love for Martim enrages the Tabajara chief, Irapua, not only because her love endangers her critical virgin status, but also because Martim is the spiritual brother of Poti, the chief of the Pitguara people, the Tabajara's enemies. In true Romantic convention, many turns of events prevent the lovers from uniting. Finally, they do escape together and have son, Moacir, the first mestizo child who thus represents a new race of people born in what will be a new country. However, tragedy follows inevitably. One of the most fascinating aspects of the novel is the daunting aspect of translation. The translator had to find a balance between a literal translation and an overly modern rendition. He has found an apt balance here, for he lets stand many Portuguese words that evoke an exotic landscape while maintaining a luminous, enchanting cadence to the words.

Jose de Alencar (1829-77) is an important figure in the history of Brazilian literature, and his book "Iracema" is a significant landmark in the literature of 19th century South America. A novel written in flowery, poetic language, "Iracema" tells the story of a romance between a South American Indian woman and a white man who has arrived on the continent. The novel has been translated from Portuguese into an elegant English by Clifford E. Landers.

As Naomi Lindstrom notes in her foreword to the book, "Iracema" is an anagram for "America." The story as a whole has a mythic, legendary feel to it. However, the melodramatic tone of much of the story also feels a bit like a contemporary soap opera. The endless pining and melancholy does get a bit tiresome. And the portrayal of Native Americans is problematic; they seem like stereotypically childlike "noble savages."

Still, "Iracema" is a fascinating tale of intercultural relations. The story contains some episodes of real power. And the book is an important document of the literary quest for a Brazilian identity. "Iracema" an essential volume for scholars of South American literature.

One final note: for an interesting book that effectively complements "Iracema," check out "The Vinland Sagas," translated by Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Palsson. This book contains two sagas about the Norse discovery of North America, and the early encounters between Europeans and Native North Americans. Like "Iracema," these sagas are landmarks in the literature of contact between alien cultures.

A mixture -- beautiful, sad, weird. But definitely worthwhile. I was disappointed not to be successful in finding books available by these authors.

The best two stories in the collection, in my opinion: You Never Can Tell by Gad Taub, and Idoletry by Yoram Kolerstein.

This book appears to be very similar to a book by Robert L. Whiteside who wrote "Face Language" and "Face Language II". Face reading works when you use the scientifically validated form of it called structure/function personology. This book shows parts and pieces of that method along with some color consulting ideas that she integrates.

Initially skeptical, I tried using the techniques in this book to make guesses on the predispositions of friends. I was astounded at the accuracy - running 80-90%. My friends think I'm psychic. More important, the advantages to business give me a whole new edge. Not as many charactieristics as "The Naked Face" but easier to use immediatly, more pragmatic, and less judgmental.

Phew. Judging by this book, Merton was a much better person than he was a writer. Maybe I went into this book expecting too much, but I finished the book utterly unimpressed with what it had to say. It boils down to a series of very discrete strategies for living one's life in a loving and satisfying way. I can't really ``disagree'' with it--yeah sure, ok, love is good, uh-huh--but that doesn't stop me from wishing Merton were a lot more explicit and rigorous in his prescriptions. As it stands, I don't know how anyone could possibly profit from reading this touchy-feely manifesto.

This collection of some of Mertons mature work from the 1960's covers, in essay form, meditations on love, life, death, Christian Humanism and more (you want more! ), always given the penetrating and broad social perspective of one very spiritual master, who chose to share with us. Still relevant.

I don't see a transliterated phonetic pronounciation. This dictionary is better than Meridian because at least this dictionary lives up to the promise of offering some grammar (Meridian claims to offer it, but does not). However, for the person who wants to learn Hebrew, this dictionary provides no phonetics. A big shortcoming. Also, I see no pronounciation key nor the Hebrew alphabet (with all its many quirks). A good dictionary needs this.

You can buy this one! I have bought many HEEH dictionaries. In the last 10 years, I must have used six different ones. I had the same problems with all of them. In most, the print was so small and blurry you could not tell the difference between and Nun and a Gimal or a Hay from a Het. Most were too small, under 100,000 words, to be of any help. All of them were bound in Israel, which meant they fell apart by the third use. Almost all of them were compiled over 20 years ago. They were good for biblical Hebrew. However, they are poor for Modern Hebrew, which is dynamic and changing rapidly. Every one of them seemed to be compiled by and for Hebrew speakers taking care to get the English correctly translated into Hebrew. However, they gave less attention to translating the Hebrew into English.

The NTC dictionary solves these problems. There are a few blurry pages, and some glaring omission of popular Hebrew words. However, it is head-and-shoulders above its competition. This is the last HEEH dictionary you will have to buy for a while.

This book is a reprint of the authors' _Mennonite Community Cookbook_ ... Every single page is identical, word for word (just a different cover, title, and typeface) - which to me constitutes gross misrepresentation since I couldn't find that mentioned anywhere in the book, and I obviously wouldn't knowingly have ordered a duplicate copy. However, if you don't have the earlier book, you will love it. (The reason I ordered it was because I like the original book so much, and was therefore eager to see a seemingly new title attributed to them.)
It is a compilation of recipes culled from Mennonites. Since the original book was written in 1950, the directions are nowhere near as explicit as they would be today -- and there are very few "warm, fuzzy" notes prefacing recipes, so you can't tell if something was included because it is quick and easy, cheap, uses readily available ingreadients (which may be expensive today and hard for you to locate) or because it is incredibly delicious. But the gems in the collection make it well worth owning, and I love the book. My one and only complaint is that this edition is not marked as a reprint of the original. Once again, if you don't already own the original, this one is lovely.

Our house burned down in June of this year, taking all my cookbooks with it. This was the first one I replaced and am ordering two more to give as Christmas presents. It is excellent!

After opening this book and seeing the excellent pictures, descriptions of the instruments and explanations of the correlation between the characters in the story and the instruments, I was very disappointed with the ending referring to the duck still alive inside the wolf. Most other versions of the story have the duck miraculously appearing safely at the end, an ending much preferred by my younger students.

The author has divided this book into three sections. The first section is devoted to the instruments and the characters they represent. The second, and main section, is Dewhirst's retelling of the story, which is more enjoyable for my children because of the slight deviation the author takes. Finally, there is a brief biography of Sergei Prokofiev, the composer of the piece.

A very strong point is the inclusion of an audio CD of the piece, narrated by Leonard Bernstein.

As a pregnant stay-at-home mother, I've experienced first-hand the extent to which society devalues motherhood and pregnancy. I therefore found the concept of Naomi Wolf's book, "Misconceptions," intriguing: Wolf purports to "show how the experience of becoming a mother ... [is] undersupported, sentimentalized, and even manipulated at women's expense." Sadly, the book's whiny, self-pitying tone and unrelenting negativity will undoubtedly alienate the people Wolf seeks to convince.
Let me start by saying that Wolf does make many valid points about the unsupportive and often negative way American society treats pregnant women and new mothers. For example, she rightly points out the stinginess of most employers when it comes to maternity leave; the unreasonable difficulty in determining important statistics like a hospital's rate of maternal death or percentage of patients who ultimately get C-sections; and the unwillingness of society to deal straight-on with the less romantic aspects of pregnancy and motherhood. And Wolf's critique of the patronizing "What to Expect When You're Expecting" (which is a minuscule portion of the book, but has received disproportionate emphasis in many reviews) is dead-on accurate.
Unfortunately, the important and thought-provoking parts of the book are far outweighed by the book's flaws: (1) for every one well-reasoned argument or analysis, there are at least two or three that are questionable or even plainly absurd. For example, is Wolf seriously suggesting that what a pregnant woman sees or does can somehow "imprint" on her unborn fetus? Consider her response to the morally ambiguous and extremely complex issue of selective termination: "What sort of violence might the surviving siblings remember in that place below memory?". In another case, she cites the statistic that women in "troubled" relationships have a much higher percentage of children with problems, in support of the proposition that a pregnant woman's "happiness" has a direct impact on her baby's health. Isn't it more likely that a woman without a supportive partner is less likely to receive adequate prenatal care, or is more likely to receive physical abuse from her partner or to resort to drugs or alcohol to deal with her problems? (2) The melodramatic and whiny tone that permeates the book. See, for example, this description of the ambivalence most pregnant women feel before the baby is born: "The maiden 'I' sometimes had to weep with the sure, coming death of the maiden-self, the self that could 'arise and go now' at will; the self that is not food for others but eats and drinks the world." Or Wolf's over-the-top, pages-long description of her labor experience (basically, she didn't like the hospital, had an epidural, and later, a C-section) - subsequently described as her "trauma" - that would make one believe the nurses shoved bamboo shoots under her fingernails for kicks (e.g. "What was left of me as a physical presence felt like a trapped, cornered animal"; "Drugged and pinned, that is what I remember of the birth"). Believe me, I am sympathetic to tough labor experiences - I pushed for 3 hours before my son was delivered by C-section - but the flowery adjectives, the ridiculous turns of phrase reflect an unending quest for melodrama, not to mention bad writing. (3) A related point - Wolf's wallowing in this self-imposed victimhood. For example, the angst that Wolf describes when encountering two cold and insensitive OB's is remarkable - but instead of moaning about how infantalized they made her feel, wouldn't it simply be more constructive to find a new doc and be done with it? Throughout the book, one senses this urgent need to feel victimized, even though by most objective standards, Wolf's experiences just weren't that bad. (4) Wolf's paranoia and suspicion of the medical profession, and American society in general, also undermine the effectiveness of her arguments. I wholeheartedly agree that women - pregnant or not - need to be educated and assertive health care consumers. And certainly there are many health care professionals who are not very good. But Wolf descends into a level of paranoia that makes one wonder how slanted her arguments are, how objective she truly can be in evaluating the system. (5) The unremittingly negative tone and focus of the book. Not because I don't wish to hear how [bad] society treats pregnant women and new moms - I've experienced (and still am experiencing!) that firsthand - but because it feels like Wolf has deliberately chosen to dwell on the most extreme cases, the most unpleasant birth experiences, the most angst-ridden and neurotic emotions she felt while pregnant. She attacks so many aspects of motherhood and so many ideological viewpoints that I was left wondering what, if anything, is left. And by including so many anecdotes from friends and acquaintances that are overwhelmingly negative, one wonders if she has chosen not to hear the positive ones.
Perhaps the ultimate flaw in the book is the most ironic: on the one hand, Wolf criticizes society for its refusal to discuss the blood and guts of pregnancy and motherhood in favor of a sanitized, "Hallmark card" version, but at the same time obviously believes that this idyll exists and that she was unjustly deprived of it. If you are interested in the subject matter, and wish to read a more sensible and convincing critique of the way America treats its mothers, you'd be better off reading Ann Crittendon's "The Price of Motherhood".

Poor Ms. Wolf. She had a horrible birth experience, and I can't say that I blame her for complaining, after I read about it. What I find disturbing, is that she seems to think it is really a universal experience, one that will occur to every woman.

As a Certified Nurse-Midwife, I know that birth should be an empowering, deeply personal experience. For some reason, women in our culture seem to feel compelled to share horror stories about birth (and pap smears) with other women, and this is Ms. Wolf's horror story.

I think it is vitally important for women to hear positive stories about the glorious experience of birth, not the negative, uncommon stories like this one.

I encourage any pregnant woman to read the newest book just released by Ina May Gaskin instead. And do your homework. There is no need to have a horrible birth experience. Educate yourself, and my (prejudiced, I admit) advice is to see out a Certified Nurse Midwife to help you have the birth experience that you want to have. Don't read any more horror stories, don't watch them on TV. Think positively about your body's ability to birth a baby, and believe in the process.

Sincerely,
Barbara Parker, CNM

Hopefully like many women who are pregnant or hope to have children, you are reading many different books with varying perspectives. I was intrigued by this book for its subject matter, but mainly because it was written by Naomi Wolf. If one is familiar with her ideas about feminism, her slant toward this subject wouldn't be a surprise.

If, however, you are not familiar with Wolf at all, you may find yourself thinking, "does she think she's the first woman to ever give birth?" -- I did not think this but remember her being slammed by listeners who felt this way during an NPR radio interview she was doing to promote this book when it first debuted.

You will enjoy and appreciate this book more for what it is if you keep in mind that this is just one, intelligent and caring woman's experience and that she was writing it from the perspective of wanting to help and inform women.

I think every woman who is pregnant or planning to be, owes it to themself to read this book. You may dispute some or many of her findings and facts, but there is a wealth of other information packed into the pages of this book. I am so glad I read it.

This book had a very good plot. The details concerning the history of the native people and the region could have been less; it kind of took away from the direction and the pace of the story. The book was good until the ending, which completely made me feel as though I wasted my time reading the beginning and the middle. It was as though the author's deadline was upon her and she wrapped up the ending all neat and packaged. Absolutely ruins the book.

I was seriously disappointed in the ending of this book. I couldn't wait to turn every page and find out what was going to happen next, although I was completely mystified as to why a Siberian tiger was left on the island and who put it there (I assume it was Lima, but that was never confirmed). I was also disappointed with the way the murders were "solved" (was the little girl's murder ever solved?). The imagery Ms. Stokes creates is undeniably spectacular, however, there were too many loose ends left at the end of this particular novel, and it seemed like she just got tired of writing and ended it too quickly, with not enough explanation. I must have told at least six people what a great book I was reading, and they all wanted to borrow it when I was finished; now I'm not sure I even want to lend it out! I haven't read the Tree People yet; I will though, as I would like to know if all her books end in a similarly disappointing fashion - I sure hope not! The Listening Ones sure had great potential, but the ending fell totally flat.

I felt this book was wonderfully done. Being from the Pacific Northwest I could relate to much of what the author was trying to portray in regards to the area and the people. What I enjoyed the most is an insight of our wonderful Native American culture. I was quite intrigued by such a beautiful outlay of one of the Indian cultures. I have just completed this magnificent book and have just purchased "The Tree People" this weekend. I hope to finish that very soon. To the author, please continue writing. I really have enjoyed "The Listening Ones", please don't stop now!

I've read other books by this author and couldn't even finish this one. It was an extremely depressing story and there was far too much philosophical mumble-jumble. Read her other books instead.

I typically love Naomi Ragen's book, but this one left a lot to be desired. I believe that she felt that she needed to write a book and this is the first thing that came out of her pen.

While the first half of the book is the story of Dave, the husband, the second half is the story of no one. Depsite the fact that the back of the book leads you to believe it is about the daughter, Sara, she is not the main character in any sense.

There is no story for you to follow and the characters don't develop well. Their characteristics just sort of "appear."

The Jewish thread seems manufactured as if she had to insert it somewhere.

If you want to read a bood Naomi Ragen book, read ANY of the others.

Naomi Ragen's four previous novels dealt with Orthodox Jews and their personal problems and struggles. These novels were intensely human, very frank and controversial. In a departure from these themes, Ragen's new novel, "Chains Around the Grass," focuses on the unfortunate Markowitz family and their myriad personal problems.

The time is the 1950's and David Markowitz, husband of Ruth, and father of three children, is again forcing the family to move, for the fourth time in ten years. He is a dreamer who thinks that one day he will strike it rich, and his family will then have the life that they deserve. For the time being, however, the Markowitz family is moving into a low-income housing project in Far Rockaway, Queens, while David plies his trade as a taxicab driver.

"Chains Around the Grass" does not succeed, mostly because Ragen has no central focus beyond describing the family's miserable lives. She touches on many themes, but they do not coalesce into a satisfying whole. Ruth Markowitz stays at home with the children, as was traditional in the pre-feminist fifties, although she has few domestic skills. Her considerable brains and talent are underutilized, which contributes to her depression and keeps the family income low. David is a charming but unstable man. He fights with his relatives who are better off than he, and he is simply unable to work at a steady job long enough to make good. None of these themes has enough resonance to make the novel come alive.

The book does have its poignant moments, especially those that center around the middle-child, Sarah. She is an excellent student, who believes that school and perhaps religion will be her ticket out of her dead-end existence. However, Ragen does not show us what is unique about this family and why their story is worth telling. "Chains Around the Grass" is little more than a very bleak story about a very unhappy family.