Reviews (1)

Fascinating subject, not too good a book
The story of Floyd Olson's career is fascianting, but I think he could have had a better researcher and biographer than this book evidences. ... Read more

Reviews (32)

For those wanting a career in fire, this is step one...
Before anyone decides to dedicate their lives to becoming a firefighter, they would be wise to start their research here.Some 30+ years after it was first published, this book still shows remarkable insight into the lives, struggles, and emotions of a professional firefighter. When I started on the road to becoming a firefighter, being a volunteer and reading Dennis Smith books asserted in my mind that my life would be wasted doing anything else.For others, this may convince you that the job is not for you.It isn't for everyone. Either way, this is a very enjoyable read and worth the time and money for anyone, not just firemen and wannabe's.

Firefighting on the mean streets
This is an extremely well written and easy to read book.The narration draws you in and transports you to the streets to ride along with the author.You can almost smell the smoke...

While there are many aspect of this book that are seriously dated (such as the seventies-era street slang and some of the firefighting equipment and procedures), most of this story could still be written today.This is the gritty reality of firefighting in the toughest sections of an urban center.You can feel the exhaustion and exhileration mix together as we ride through the decaying ghetto from one fire alarm to the next.What really stands out in my mind, though, is that Smith never loses his empathy for the people of the South Bronx.Even with all the abuse he and his company endure, he still understands their plight and wishes he could make their world better.

Nothing in my experience can compare with the magnitude of serving an area like the South Bronx, but many aspects of this story still reflect my career.The commaraderie of the fire station is the same, as is the sense of duty and willingness to risk everything to save a life.This is a terrific book for anyone looking to understand what it takes to be a firefighter, especially on the busiest city streets in the country.

The Bravest
When I first read this book I was in grade school. My dad thought if I wanted to be a firefighter I might want to read this book. I sit here right know and look at the inside of the cover, which is a hardcover and there is a price tag for $4.16 from Boscov's (which is a department store).
This book brings alive the fire service in New York City in the 1960's. This was one of the most challenging times in the New York City. During this time there were riots,a serious drug abuse problem, and politically charged agendas. But through all this the firefighters of New York City still had to provide fire protection to the citizens.
How many people can say that they know how it feels to be going to a fire to only find yourself a target for rocks, bricks and beer bottles. The men of Engine Company 82 and Ladder 31 found themselves in the situation more then once. These men had to deal with the pain and suffering of people that they went to help, and found that children involved made the job even harder.
Every shift they could look forward to arsons, malicious false alarms and the uncertainty of what might happen next. Did these men do this job for the money? I can say no they did not. They did it for the love of the job. That is why most firefighters do it. Most people and even some firefighters today do not realize the history and the changes that have been in the past 40 years.
I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to reads a book that they do not want to put down. Once you pick it up, you will not put it down until you are finished.

I could not put the book down.
After finding out that the book was out of print, I was discouraged. Then finally finding it again on Amazon I could not wait to get the book in the mail. I have already finished the book two days after recieving it. Dennis Smith is a great firefighter who knows exactly how to depict his experiences on paper.

Still Relavent33 years
Report From Engine Cmapny 82 is required reading for students in Sociology, U.S History, American Studies and Urban Planning. Not to mention those aspiring to a career in the Fire Service. ... Read more

Book Description

As a young boy, Jim played "Cowboys and Indians." Then one day he was challenged by a Pioneer Cowboy to become the real thing and make a Big Roundup... and this is the story of how Jim rounded up and branded one-hundred million critters with the Pioneer Spirit. ... Read more

Book Description

The autobiography My Blue Heaven is a forceful and gripping story where fact is more unforeseen and unpredictable than an imaginary tale. ... Read more

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Fact Is More Unexpected Than Fiction
Sometimes the events in one's life seem to go beyond our plans and expectations and exceed beyond the best fiction of anyone's imagination. So it is with "My Blue Heaven" as the life and times of one lonely soul confronts reality in his pilgrim's journey to never stop learning.
It's a book that reads quickly and one that is difficult to put down once you start to read it. All the events progress rapidly as history is being made in parallel. ... Read more

Book Description

He was a vetran of WW1 who had returned to become a prominent orthopedic surgeon in his home town of Illinois. She was a young nurse from a small town in Indiana. The consequences of their love affair are revealed in this collection of his letters to her over a span of nearly six years. ... Read more

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Very interesting and informative book
This book covers a wide range of territory. The tangled love story, secret birth of a daughter at a maternity home in MO. Plus heart tugging stories of other women who gave up their babies because it would have shamed their family if they had kept them even though they were not married.

An easy read. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

It was if I was there - every chapter!
Anyone who grew up in Nebraska, either in the Sandhills or anywhere along the Platte River would identify with this book. She is a wonderful descriptive writer and takes you to the place she wants you to see. It also brings to mind long ago memories of times you may have experienced by the similarities associated with her writings. A friend gave me this book and as they say, "The best friend is one who gives you a new book as a gift". She was, of course, right. I loved it.

powerful...about the healing power of place
This book was so much more than I had anticipated. I initially bought the book because it's about an area of the country that I know well. I found it to be a moving narrative about recovery and growth. It's about coming back from the edge. The author does a masterful job of explaining the healing power of home. I look forward to what she writes of next. This is a book by a woman that will be very readable by women, but not limited to women. Highly recommended. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Detailed, candid, humorous, exceptionally well presented.
Alone Among Friends is the first full-scale biography of W. Robert Parks, the eleventh and longest-serving president of Iowa State University. The life of Parks and the evolution of his university are intimately intertwined compelling this biography to serve as a history of the nation'sfirst land-grand university as well. Alone Among Friends shows how apeople's college, under Parks' stewardship, went on to become one of thenation's great institutions of higher learning a the peer of even the moreprestigious European university systems. Alone Among Friends is a detailed,candid, occasionally humorous, exceptionally well presented and highlyrecommended biography of the man who, more than any other, is inextricablylinked to Iowa State University. ... Read more

Book Description

This volume records for the first time a fully documented family history and genealogy of the primary leader of Dutch immigration to western Michigan, Albertus C. Van Raalte, and his wife, Christina de Moen.

Drawing on previously compiled genealogical information, archival records, and family letters and photographs, the authors have worked diligently to "set the record straight" regarding the Van Raaltes' ancestors and descendants, as well as to provide a document that future historians and genealogists can build on. Beginning with a brief biographical sketch of their lives, the book then traces Albertus and Christina's ancestors and tells the story of each of their seven children who lived to adulthood and their respective descendants. Also included is an account of what happened to the Van Raalte papers and homestead.

Fully documented and filled with photographs of the Van Raalte family and homestead, "Albertus and Christina" will be a welcome source for anyone interested in the story of this pioneering family or in the history of western Michigan. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

A good read.
I proofread this book, and it was a pleasure. I learned a lot, and the subject matter (John Ruan's life, from his childhood to his first truck to recent times) was interesting. My work went by smoothly, and I know there will be at least two copies of this biography in our extended family! If you're interested in the Midwest, trucking, or the life of a self-made man, this book is for you.

wonderful......especially the index
An exceptional book about an exceptional man. The great index helps immensely to make this a quality product.

Great Biography of an Exceptional Person
Let me first disclose that I am a little biased in my review because the subject of this biography is my grandfather. For those of you considering reading this book I highly recommend it if you're interested in learning about a spectacular story of entrepreneurial success. I am an avid reader of business-related biographies and I can attest that this is near the top. In addition, the biography accounts for John Ruan's entire life to date, with details of his childhood, his family and related hardships, the founding of his many business, details on the inner-workings of those businesses and his many community/charitable efforts (the most notable of which is the World Food Prize). In all, the book sums up a man of tremendous impact in both Iowa, the U.S. as well as the world. John Ruan, as you will come to note after reading this book, is a unique individual whose 90+ years have had an exceptionally positive impact in our community, and in business. In my opinion, John Ruan truly embodies some of the fundamental principles upon which the United States was founded; the opportunity to achieve through hard work. On a final point, upon picking up the book, I read it straight through in four hours. Again, I highly recommend reading the book. ... Read more

Book Description

J. W. Childress loved farming but was lousy at it.His family—including his wife, children, and stepson—toiled as sharecroppers and migrant workers in fields of cotton, broomcorn, and peanuts in the Ozarks of Missouri and Oklahoma and were continually defeated by hardship and agrarian ineptitude as they struggled to stay united amid adversity.

In An Ozark Odyssey: The Journey of a Father and Son, William Childress recalls the life of his late, irascible but lovable stepfather—his bad decisions, his misfit marriage, his prickly personality, and his gypsying ways that impoverished the family. Stirred to recount humorous anecdotes from a peripatetic childhood, and including tales of coming-of-age in the Korean War and his own experiences with marriage and fatherhood, Childress tells a story of family bonds, wandering and struggle, privation and joy, quarrels, hard times, and the courage to brave the familiar. In doing so, he comes to terms with his enormous affection for a man who never expressed affection, while also coming to terms with his affection for the landscapes and lifestyle that ensured poverty and hardship for his family.

As Childress demonstrates through charismatic storytelling, wit, and a humor tempered by the ghosts of a hardscrabble youth, the Childress family learned that security is mostly illusion but that giving up is no solution. An Ozark Odyssey covers J. W.’s journey from age seven to his death at age eighty-two, through marriage and divorce and reconciliation, four children, extreme poverty, restlessness, bankruptcies, and at last, a little recompense. After escaping the Ozarks to California to become a pipe fitter when his stepson left for the war, J. W. eventually returned to Missouri. With his children raised, he gave farming one more try—and succeeded. Against all odds, he died well off, leaving his children a successful Ozark ranch. ... Read more

Book Description

Hoosier Democratic party boss and businessman Thomas Taggart is the subject of this biography, written by James Philip Fadely, an Indianapolis educator and writer. The book examines Taggart’s skills and success in both business and politics. Coming from a humble immigrant background, Taggart worked his way up from clerk at the dining hall at the old Union Depot in Indianapolis to proprietor of two hotels in the capital city. He also was widely known as the man responsible for developing French Lick Springs Hotel in southern Indiana into a world-class spa for the rich and famous. With his hotels and far-flung business interests, Taggart became one of the state’s wealthiest men. For a third of a century he also was the undisputed boss of the Democratic machine in Indiana. He made governors, congressmen, senators, vice presidents, and even presidents. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

masterful depiction of personalized politics in swing state
James Fadely provides a masterful depiction of personalized politics in a demographically swing state, then as now. Includes insider views of Taggart's critical last minute push for Senator Samuel Ralston's presidential nomination in the horrendous Democratic Convention of 1924. Serves as good contrast to Robert Murrray's "The 103rd Ballot: Democrats and the Disaster in Madison Square Garden". ... Read more

Book Description

Life of a little girl born in Oklahoma during the 1920s and her adventures through life ... Read more

Book Description

The famed flier's own vivid word picture recalls with warmth and accuracy the years before World War I on his family farm near Little Falls, Minnesota.The brief text is enhanced by many photographs from his personal albums. ... Read more

Book Description

We all dream of finding the place we can be most ourselves, the landscape that seems to have been crafted just for us. The poet Paul Zimmer has found his: a farm in the driftless hills of southwestern Wisconsin, a region of rolling land and crooked rivers, "driftless" because here the great glaciers of the Patrician age split widely, leaving behind a heart-shaped area untouched by crushing ice. After the Fire is the story of Zimmer's journey from his boyhood in the factory town of Canton, Ohio, and his days as a soldier during atomic tests in the Nevada desert, to his many years in the book business as a writer and publisher, and the rural tranquility of his present life.Zimmer juxtaposes timeless rustic subjects (tending the land, country people and their ways, the ever-changing beauty of his natural surroundings) with flashbacks to key moments: his first and only boxing match, hearing Count Basie play and discovering his lifelong love of jazz, his return to the France of his ancestors, his painful departure from the publishing world after forty years. These stories are full of humor and pathos, keen insights and poignant meditations, but the real center of the book is the abiding beauty of the driftless hills, the silence and peace that is the source of and reward for Zimmer's hard-won wisdom. Above all, it is a consideration of the ways that nature provides deep meaning and solace, and of the importance of finding the right place.

Paul Zimmer is a much honored and widely published poet and essayist, the author of eight volumes of poetry. His work has received awards from the American Institute of Arts and Letters and been selected for the National Poetry Series. He was a finalist in the essay category for the 1998 National Magazine Award, and for the past two years works by him have been selected as Notable Essays in the Best American Essays series. Zimmer lives on a farm near Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin, and spends part of each year in the south of France. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

AFTER THE FIRE
AFTER THE FIRE is a collection of essays that are compiled by a gifted writer. "The Blind World" is one essay worth the price of the book. Mr. Zimmer was a "guinea-pig" GI during the Atomic Bomb tests in Nevada,in the mid-1950's. He writes that when he covered his eyes with his hands, his hands became an x-ray because his company was so close to the fiery blast of the bomb. That one chapter would make one great movie.

But Mr. Zimmer also writes with insight and passion about his many loves, including his wife Suzanne, and his first-hand experiences with great jazz musicians, including Lester Young, Art Tatum, Thelonius Monk and Sarah Vaughn. Zimmer writes, "They even stuffed whole bands--Basie, Kenton, Herman--onto those small stages." That essay, "Young Jazz" is one of the best pieces written about American music this side of Down Beat.

We also learn that Paul Zimmer has had a long literary career as editor and director of several publishing houses, where he introduced numerous writers, including Gary Gildner, Richard Shelton, Gary Soto, Norman Dubie, Jack Anderson,and Bin Ramke, to the literary world.

This is a finely honed, remarkably insightful and humane collection of essays. I thought I would read one essay, put the book aside and savor it, but found myself reading the entire book in one sitting. ... Read more