Bless Your Socks Off - couldn't put it down - it will uplift you and help give you insight to many of life's situations. You will be blessed and be able to bless others for having read this excellent book. Am ordering more to give as gifts!

I got this book as a gift from the first printing...you see, Lawson Aldrich was my grandfather. I re-read the book recently, however, and found that not only are the recipes sound, but the stories within are priceless as well; I believe that someone not of my family can enjoy the creation of good food contained in the book, and the exquisite tales too. (And darn if I didn't get some of those creative food skills from you grampa...we miss you)

The Collected Short Works is basically Bess Streeter Aldrich's stories that she sent in to magazines. She put some of those stories in her books, although she did change a few names, etc. I liked the way each story had a little note telling about when she had had it published, the magazine that published it, and other misc. information on the story. And I'd say that it truly does deserve 5 stars! Or, maybe 4 1/2. I would recommend this book for anyone who enjoys Bess Streeter Aldrich books!

Quilting took off in North America, from the need to make the best possible use of resources. Immigrants could not afford to be wasteful. So the cheapest way to having bedcovers and blankets was to sew cast-off and leftover materials into quilts.

Early on quiltmaking meant coming up with something not only practical, but also beautifully artistic. One of CRAZY FOR QUILT's many examples that particularly touched me was a small all-white doll quilt. It was machine-stitched more than 100 years ago. Over time black dots showed up from inside the cloth. These were cotton seeds. The quiltmaker, from a Southern state, might have picked her own cotton for batting! So this quilt was not only practical in giving a cool white night cover to a child's doll. It also left evidence for future generations of how one woman turned a child's gift into an elegantly simple, lasting work of art

These days quiltmaking has become a creative and practical outlet for probably around 20 million quilters just in the United States alone. This modern passion has also become a strong support to historical preservation, in this case in the collecting of antique quilts and in the use of traditional designs. In fact, many of the best-loved quilts have kept alive traditional patterns, such as crazy quilting, the double wedding ring, grandmother's flower garden, and the log cabin.

One of the book's more humorous sections was on the sayings that have passed down through quilting generations. The one that made me laugh, but also take note, was about giving a new quilt a good shaking outside the front door. The bad or good news was that the first man to then pass through that door should become the quilter's husband!

Margret Aldrich has also edited the equally fine THIS OLD QUILT.

I consider this book to be one of the best dollhouse references out there. Every page has color photos. Many of the furniture pieces are photographed individually. Each photograph is clear and detailed. The author is careful to note when a piece is original, antique, or modern. Everything in this book is well-researched and documented. You could carve replica furniture pieces from the photographs in here, they are that good!

Needless to say, the houses featured in here are gorgeous in their own right. My favorite part of this book are the great photos of the Grodnertal peg-wooden dolls. This book contains some of the best Grodnertal photos I've ever seen!

From One Single Mother to Another is written by Sandra P. Aldrich. In the short space of thirteen chapters she describes from the sudden death of her husband up to her children being grown the trials and joys of Christian single parenting. Her writing is down to earth and full of wit and wisom acquired only through experience. It is written one to one. It is written for the single parent, not for an organization. It's intent is to encourage single parents that the task is possible. One thing she taught her children that stood out to me, another single parent, is this: Single parent families are still a family. They are just smaller by the loss of a parent. She also states her pet peeve, that single parent families are "broken homes". She knows from experience that with God's help and lots of personal effort our homes are healed. As a single parent of many years I say a hearty Thank You! to Ms. Aldrich for her frank, compassionate, and sometimes humerous advice for single parents.

Max Hastings in The Sunday Telegraph 'Books of the Year' 2 December 2001 >

The Hidden Hand by Richard Aldrich (John Murray) is as good an account of Cold War Intelligence between 1945 and 1962 as we are likely to get for some time.

George Walden in The Evening Standard 23 July 2001 >

From riveting case-histories of individual operations to the furious intrigues of the transatlantic intelligence community , from the unsung role of the low-level agent to the evolution of electronic espionage - everything is here ... Aldrich has a gift for conveying a sense of living history, combing colourful detail of this or that episode with the grand strategies that drove the intelligence men.

Cal McCrystal in The Financial Times 1 July 2001 >

What makes Aldrich's book so delightful is its abundance of marvellous anecdote ... Miles Copeland, the CIA's new station chief in Cairo at the time of the Suez crisis, had little time for US ambassadors and was a bit of a cowboy. As station chief in Syria in 1950 Copeland was blamed for a series of army coups that "eventually led to an increasingly pro-Soviet dictatorship". He was moved to Cairo after a wild party during which guns were fired through the ceiling. Indeed, an Aldrich sub-theme is the extent to which British and American secret agents frequently unnerved their own governments more than the regimes they were supposed to monitor subvert or liberate.

In June 1914 Mildred Aldrich, an American writer, retired to a farm house above the Marne River. Two months later she was rudely awakened one morning by a picket of British soldiers at her gate, preparing to blow up the bridges across the river below. For the next two days she offered the soldiers and their officers food, water, tea, beds and the comfort of her home and watched from her garden the raging battles in nearby fields. Before the saga ended even German soldiers appeared, admiring her courage to remain in that isolated area and urging her to accompany them to explain the unfamiliar country side.

Equally as gripping as these episodes are her accounts of how she and her rural neighbors coped once their peaceful existence had been disrupted by this brutal war. This vintage and personalized narrative of those terrifying events ranks with the classic literature of World War I. We are fortunate that it has been reprinted.

This was a very good writing of the life story of Nelson A.
Rockefeller. This book tells you of the wealth that Rockefeller was raised in. It then takes him to adulthood. His years of government service are well covered by the author. His four terms as the Governor of the state of New York are documented. His term as Vice-President of the United States is also in this
book. His being dropped from the Republican ticket is also told
in detail in this book. Rockefeller's life is well covered in this book. His service is unquestioned. You will also notice that
Rockefeller was the force that brought several good people to government service. Buy this book and read it. You will not be
dissapointed.