Book Description

Reviews (2)

a really thoughtful read
I really enjoyed this book, and found myself returning to it whenever I could sneak some time in over the weekend. The message is simple, and poignant in light of the life of Mark Phillips. I have already passed it on to a male friend that I think would really appreciate this book in relation to his father and his son, and I have several others I will continue to pass it on to. It is good enough to recommend, and is a great gift for men who enjoy hunting and the outdoors.

Very Good. I enjoyed it!
I just finished this book last night and enjoyed every word. I am glad I did not read the above review first, though, since it gives away most of the drama. The book shows, in essence, that there is drama in all of our lives, and this one was very well written. In the search for "heroes" you hear about these days, there is surely one in Mr. Phillips' father, just a good American that did his blue-collar job despite mind-numbing conditions and, later, enormous pain. If you like this book, and the memoir genre, try also Rick Bragg, All Over But The Shoutin'. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Immigrants - Why?
Read this book if you want to make sense of what is happening in the world today - It is funny, magical, strong and sometimes bewildering. Why do some immigrants find it hard to become Americans? Read it and find out.

People need to have this kind of experience
November 17, 2003
I really appreciate the opportunity to read Geraldine's
book over the past few days. I can tell you this, it has been a long,
long time since I was able to "feel" a book I was reading. I was "in the
picture" the whole time. I guess the time span (which pretty much matched
my own) helped because I remember so much of what those times were like.
I found that being a Sicilian-Scotch Catholic wasn't so different from
being Irish Catholic in America. We all had so many of the same

experiences that we are truly all nearly the same. Geraldine's book
unfolded in my hands and I felt excitement and worry for Michael Joe as he
followed his heart and became a renegade and a hero. I would love to have
met him. Everything was so counter balanced by Nellie. It broke my heart
a little when he lost her and followed soon after. What a testament to
love and "being one". I feel like I've learned so much about what Ireland
must really be like....not the travel stuff that we all know, but the true
heart, spirit and geography of what must be an incredible land......What a truly delightful clan. I hope this
book does very well. People need to have this kind of experience...My
only regret, having finished the book, is what now?
Thanks, again, to you for bringing the book to me and, certainly, thanks
to Geraldine for putting it all down on paper.
Don Senger

houston, texas ... Read more

Book Description

They are the men who fight the fires -- face to face, day to day, life or death. And this is their story. A powerful collection of in-depth interviews with the firefighters of New York City -- a city where eleven fires are reported everyhour.

Dramatic, intense, and often terrifying, here is an honest, unflinching look at real-life heroism, told by the men who live it. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Really Hot..
A Great novel, written "as it is", as you hear it in the station house... as it is on the run... as it is, when you go it and it's time to rock and roll... ... Read more

Book Description

This is the unforgettable true story of a family torn by divorce, and how they manage to struggle through the Depression years of the thirties and the devastations of World War II.The account centers around Chuck, the second of five children.He tells about Growing Up in Lincoln County West Virginia.They eat wild game and grow their own food to exist.Chuck and his younger sister scavenge for food under a neighbor’s apple tree.They carry home half-rotten apples for the evening meal.There is laughter, tragedy and hard discipline while being educated in a one-room rural schoolhouse.He fills the role of caretaker to his brother and sisters and prepares meals on a wood-fired cook stove.Finally, separated from his family, living with his grandparents, and sleeping in the smokehouse, his quest is to find family and home. ... Read more

Book Description

If America had a heart, one might call it Brooklyn. This story is a small piece of that heart, told with verve by a young girl who dreams of becoming a writer. In these pages, she records her travel from fourteen through "sweet sixteen" (1929-1930), mixing the routines of her neighborhood life in Flatbush with poems, radio song lyrics, her love of books, regular trips to the theater to watch the latest "pictures," illustrations of her Jazz Age clothes, and her romantic notions about boys. Here, at the beginning of the Depression, she reluctantly shortens her education to learn marketable skills at a business school—typing, shorthand, letter-writing—and finds her first job in Manhattan at a fan manufacturing firm for $15/week. Though the novel she is co-writing with her girl friend is ultimately burned in the winter woods, this, the truer, fuller story, survives. It is, at heart, a coming-of-ages narrative. Posthumously published, this book finally fulfills her girlhood dream. ... Read more

Book Description

Reflections From The Shield, depicting the author's career as a member of the New York State Police, provides an exciting expose of true criminal cases, while offering a glimpse of NYSP history and examination of a criminal justice system severely lacking in justice. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Reflections From The Shield
Once I picked up Reflections From The Shield I knew I better give notice to my family that dinners might be late and household duties would probably be put on hold...because I just couldn't put this book down! Mr Beyea invites the reader into his life...making this book come alive with action, intrigue, humor, and the human touch...real life stuff! I felt like I was "right there", personally involved in these criminal sketches, humorous insights, physical challenges, and the myriad of situations and that this book uncovers. Also, each chapter of this book is able to pretty much stand alone,which made it easy for me to say to someone..."Here, you just HAVE to read this chapter!", without me having to give up the book for longer than I was willing to be without it! I am very enthused about getting the follow-up book by Mr Beyea! I definitely give this book a 5 star rating!

Arizona and NY Reader
"Reflections From The Shield" by Author Wayne Beyea is an outstanding autobiography. It is a book that can be read by able readers and the journey that you will take is a rare one in this complex society. You'll soon find out that "Donuts" are not the comedial substance. The gauntlet runs from Larceny to murder(homicide) and Retd Senior Investigator Beyea is there in your face with his able associates showing you first hand what it is to be a law enforcement officer charged with a responsibility that pulls on your nerve endings. This is the real world folks without the glamour of the television screen.

The author threads the love he has for his family throughout the story line. He displays his compassion for people as a gentleman and performs his sworn duties with dignity.

This retd. officer looks you in the eye and tells you how it is. This book CONTAINS ALL THE EMOTIONS FROM HUMOR TO HORRIFIC CRIMES. When I started reading this book of 533 Pages I could not put it down. Congratulations Author Beyea!! A Great Read!!
I learned a great deal from your literary efforts. ... Read more

Book Description

An exciting memoir describing the coming of age of a teenager and her friends in the fifties in the streets of Manhattan. There is also rich historical background here the reader will not find elsewhere. ... Read more

Book Description

Graduates of the Class of 1959 write their memories of growing up in an idyllic town in central Pennsylvania and the good times of the 50s as well as the challenges they faced later in their lives. Written with candor and honesty, the stories are a tribute to family, courage, and faith. ... Read more

Book Description

The story of L. Frank Baum's early years is a journey which meandered around Upstate New York, to the oil fields of Bradford, Pennsylvania and back, before he left the area for good in 1888. ... Read more

Book Description

Infused with intelligence and charm, Back Then is an elegant reflection on transformative years in the lives of two young people and New York City. Marked by their youthful passion, this double memoir marries the authors' distinct literary styles with a riveting narrative that captures the density and texture of private, social, and working life in the 1950s.

Reviews (3)

Doubly delightful
This memoir is doubly delightful because it's written by two of the wittiest and most interesting contemporary writers. We see two visions of New York City life in the 1950's--one male, one female--and have the fun of watching how these two separate lives end up intertwining. (The authors are husband and wife.) The writing is bright and rich--you're in the hands of masters of style from start to finish.
Although anyone interested in the world of publishing will find the book riviting, BACK THEN will appeal to a broad spectrum of readers. It's an intriguing record of what the working world was like for educated women in the 50's (it's easy to forget today how things were before the Women's Movement!) and it's also a charming love story.
The two authors grew up wealthy and privileged, but in spite of this, they were clearly not spoiled. They knew and rubbed shoulders with a dazzling array of famous people (Bernays, for instance, is a great niece of Freud; Kaplan got to dance with Marilyn Monroe at a party,) and they bring us into their world with warmth and openness. There's no arrogance here. Both authors are able to smile at themselves and able to make us smile along with them. And smile we do! This is the kind of book that will keep you up reading late at night and make you want to wake your spouse so you can read aloud your favorite sections (if you haven't woken him or her already with your laughter.)
BACK THEN creates the best kind of reader dilemma: youll want to gobble up the story and at the same time you'll want to savor every line.

Great read!
This is a fascinating look at a world most of us never get to see, by two people who know it intimately and write about it with both love and a highly refined sense of the absurd.

Glimpsing this world is like window-shopping on Fifth Avenue at Christmas. I couldn't put it down...

Two incredibly superficial lives in the 1950's
For two people who both began their professional lives in editing and publishing, it is striking how this book, which describes that very beginning, is in need of a heavy editorial hand (Wachtel -- your hand ain't that merciless). The kind of repetition that is regularly encountered (how many times, and in how many pithy formulations do I have to be informed of the cliche that, "this generation" was the generation of freud fans) is not of an interesting artistic kind produced due the fact that there are two alternating narrative voices. Rather, each writer, repeats him and herself within his and her own narrative.

Stylistic quarrels aside, I was struck by what the authors say in their joint introduction about their first collaboration on an article; the piece, about walks in New York, they say, conveyed, "... too much immersion in fashion magazine prose." While, the authors' claim that they are intent on trying to not let "hindsight, regret and reconsideration" distort their account is too ridiculous to even critique, I do believe that they have successfully conveyed the extent to which the people that they were "back then" (if we are to believe them, this has no bearing on the authorial voice which represents these people!) were "too much immersed" in a certain kind of fashion magazine prose, or at any rate, a certain kind of "let's talk about shoes, hair and makeup and throw in a heavy dose of literary names and references for good measure"-prose.

It has to be admitted that Bernays and Kaplan err on different poles of this prose continuum. Bernays treats us to more excitable detail about socio-fashion related facts, Kaplan leans heavily on name-dropping, french-literary-phrase-dropping and posh-literary-gossip. Bernays tells us more about sex (hers and others'), divulges more about familial structures (though where, oh where, has her sister gone, and for that matter, how come I only find out close to the end that Kaplan has an older brother!). Essentially she's very much the charming hostess of this work, while Kaplan lives up to the character created (by both him and her) of being the somewhat taciturn but serious/serial literary insider (the sense of humor which both he and B claim he has, is something which he keeps very much under wraps in actually formulating his account.)

This book (as laid out in the intro) sees it self as being not in the memoire genre, but rather, as a glimpse into "lives" of a certain kind (class?) "back then." However, perhaps due to the authors' insistence to not let hindsight in, a potentially illuminating critical account is blocked (though to give her credit, Bernays slips up, and occasionally tries) -- such that I am given neither "two lives" (in the sense of two strong personal narratives) and nor am I really given the tools to understand the "everyman" of the world which K and B portray. So, basically the book reads to me like a peep into a cocktail party to which I'd never be invited (wrong class, wrong age, wrong clothes, wrong interests etc.); I can smell the delectable food, glimpse the martini glasses, and discern some muffled conversation and laughter -- but I can't quite make it out, the people seem artificial, out of date, and frankly, not all that interesting, and there's a better party going on round the corner. ... Read more

Book Description

The memories of the pranks, woes, and joys collected in this small volume were drawn from cadet life at The Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, VA. Here is a sampling:

Double Trouble

RB Lane, ‘75

I have two brother rats who are identical twins, Barry and Larry Lineback. When I say identical, I mean identical. I roomed with Larry for two years and it took me awhile to learn to tell them apart.

During our first class year Larry would wait for a rat to come along and head up one of the stairways in barracks. HeÂ’d get up in the ratÂ’s face, flame him a bit, and challenge him to a race up the stairs to the third or fourth stoop. If the rat won the race, Larry would let him out of the ratline for the day, or something to that affect. Larry and the rat would get side by side at the bottom of the steps and they would begin the race. Larry would purposely fall behind and visions of victory and a day free of the ratline would begin to form in the ratÂ’s mind. If course, and unbeknownst to the rat, Barry was waiting for him at the top of the steps. The look on the ratÂ’s face upon seeing his competition at the top of the steps waiting for him was priceless.

All the proceeds of this book are donated to the VMI Museum.

Amazon.com

Roll up your sleeves and settle in for a rough and tumble story of the hard life and fast times of an original Irish American rogue. Read by the author in his thick and hearty brogue, A Monk Swimming expands on the up-from-your-bootstraps tale of the McCourt family, which was so beautifully detailed in his big brother Frank McCourt's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Angela's Ashes.

Reared on "warm words, serried words, glittering poetic, harsh, and even blasphemous words," McCourt has storytelling in his blood. In this life-affirming recording he carries on a vocal tradition learned at the knees of family and friends as they "spun out the silver-gold yarns and, by sheer eloquence, made our miserable surroundings disappear."

From his arrival in America wearing patched clothes and broken boots, McCourt swore he'd fight before ever tasting the bitterness of poverty again. In this heartfelt memoir he pulls no punches and carries the listener along as he climbs up through every level of society: from the flop houses of Calcutta to the swank poolside cabanas of Beverly Hills. A celebrity barkeep, society darling, Hollywood striver, and world-class drinker, McCourt has lived a life of outsized adventure. In A Monk Swimming, he shares each hard-knock lesson in the passionate cadence of his uniquely Irish voice. (Running time: three hours, two cassettes) --George Laney ... Read more

Reviews (24)

Insightful in some places; spotty in others.
Like others, I'm sure, I wanted to read Malachy McCourt's book as a companion/comparison book to his brother's bestseller. My guess is that it will sell well -- it is already on the NY Times best seller list -- primarily because of his brother's reputation via Angela's Ashes.

While Malachy's writing is entertaining and occasionally insightful, I think he relies too much on the stereotypical Irish blarney rather than on truthfully exploring his life.

My impression is that by the time he got to the last few chapters, Malachy was running out of steam and depended too much on (inflated?) memories of his sexual encounters.

My 3-star rating is sympathetic -- I think this book actually is closer to a 2+!

How do I give zero stars?
The worst book I've ever read. Alcoholic pomposity and constant name-dropping does not a good book make.
Holy smokes was this bad. Can I have my time and money back?
I wish I could give negative stars, much less zero.

Good Read
Malachy is not Frank, and thus has a very different style. I have recommended this book to others. Worth the read.

No humor here!
I'm sorry that I wasted my money on Malachy's book. Unfortunately, the author did not inherit any family talent for story telling.
His stories of habitual drinking, raw language usage and continual celebrity name dropping over and over again made for an extremely boring read.

Audacious Audio Treat
Stunned at the opening expletives, I was prepared to dislike listening to this in my car. Since I don't travel long distances, it took me awhile to hear this abridged 3-hour version, but I savored every syllable.(Found myself running back to the store just for an excuse to listen.)His brogue is delightful, his self-depricating, roguish tales "picaresque" and raucously funny, his masterful use of the language nothing short of inspirational. I am now ordering the book so I can study his lilting Irish phraseology and colorful vocabulary (no, not the curse words) and am looking forward to hearing the unabridged tape for another round of laughing out loud while driving. (What must the other drivers think?) ... Read more

Book Description

Honed by poverty, harsh weather and the bitterness of British rule, Ireland’s children left their native land by the tens of thousands at the turn of the century. This is the story of the Finns, the McCanns and the Kellys, three families who battle their way from the New York City ghetto to the respectability of Astoria, Long Island. As their prosperity grows, so too does a fierce love for the country that took them in and gave them opportunity to be free of the degradation of poverty. When that country calls during World War II, they answer with enthusiasm and learn to love, fear, live and die far from the land they have grown to love. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A must read....couldn't put it down.....WOW
Smith brings you back to the War years, and gives them life. Whether or not you were alive, you feel like you lived them. The characters are rich and well developed. I didn't want the book to end. Looking forward to the sequel. ... Read more

Book Description

This is astory about the rites of passage of a young boy growing up in the Catskill Mountains, an area occupied by the Ku Klux Klan, before it became the "Borscht Belt." The author shares his lusts and loves, his young hopes and dreams, his fears and feats of bravery. He writes of a time when there were no fancy hotelswith elaborate meals and famous entertainers. It was a time of small entrepreneurs opening boarding houses to accommodate city folk who could not afford to vacation in hotels.The author looks back nostalgically at the interdependence of siblings despite their rivalries, and the unquestioning love and cooperation within a family struggling to succeed through emergencies, catastrophes, and aggravations.It is a well-rounded history of love, hope and aspirations, and the down-to-earth experiences of dealing with life in the not so long ago past. ... Read more

Book Description

As an undercover house officer of the Helmsley Palace, Steve Peacock had taken a unique five-year peek into the lives of the wealthy, the powerful and the “lower” classes that serviced their every desire. This experience was a rare chance to immerse him in the subculture of the privileged. But more importantly, it was an occasion to witness the underbelly of greed and gluttony existing side-by-side with despair.

Peacock watched carefully and quietly as the pampered Palace guests spent vast sums of money on decadent pleasures. Likewise, he served as a buffer between the so-called elite and the hookers, thieves and street people who were drawn to this glass-and-steel luxury tower.

Hotel Dick: Harlots, Starlets, Thieves & Sleaze reveals what went on behind the closed doors of New York CityÂ’s former playground of the rich and famous. The story of the rise and fall of Harry and Leona Helmsley has already been told; however, Hotel Dick is the first book to provide a secret window into the lives of the other bizarre and lust-filled personalities who roamed this notorious Manhattan landmark.

Reviews (3)

It is always crazy in New York.
Mr. Peacock brings us into a midtown temple of despair. It is for the most part a sad place with the workers being the well-adjusted individuals in the neighborhood.
It is easy to read and sometimes funny.

"Harlots, Starlets, Thieves and Sleaze"~Fantastic Book!
When this book caught my attention I decided to order it and see how interesting it was. Never did I think that it would keep me at the edge of my seat wondering what would happen next at the Helmsley Palace. Mr. Peacock's writing, honesty, humor and wit made for a fantastic book. I highly recommend this book to all that want to know what goes on behind closed doors of these very famous hotels. I will also look for more work by Mr. Peacock and can not wait for his next book!! A+++++

Harlots, Starlets, Thieves and Sleaze INDEED!
Mr. Peacock's anecdotal memoir takes readers inside the Helmsley Palace, a world of contradictions where the wealthiest and poorest exist symbiotically ... most of the time. The author, rather than writing a self-serving vehicle, has instead showed with intelligence and humor the perversions of many who checked in and the desperation of those undesirables who were kicked out. He marries these amusing tidbits with somber vignettes to create an enjoyable, good read. I would absolutely recommend it. ... Read more