Foreigner Books

Not worth the time or the effort.

Dan Jenkins is usuallly great--not this time.

Don't waste your time or the money...This one just doesn't cut it.

DAN JENKINS IS DAN JENKINS....HE IS MY PERSONAL TIGER NICKLAUS MEREDITH...I HAVE READ MANY AUTHORS BUT MR JENKINS STRIKES OUT ALL OTHERS ... HE IS MY HOSS BUBBA

Ms. Morris' American animus is a leitmotiv throughout the book. The idea that Lincoln was gay is ludicrous. I've read several books on Lincoln from Vidal to Sandburg and this loose psychoanalysis from a smug Brit is not worth the paper it's written on.

I don't know much about Jan Morris, and I am probably not going to learn more about her. But I was cautiously optimistic when I picked this book up. I forgot I had it until just after I finished Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals, which may not be the perfect book on Lincoln (I am still learning) but which rings much truer than this absurd little book. Which is a shame because I came away from Kearns's book feeling so inspired by Lincoln that I couldn't believe anyone could be as basically decent and good as Lincoln seems to be.

The travelogue part is actually the most interesting part of the book, because the history is apallingly bad. Others have cited the numerous errors, ranging from the site of the Donner Party's "cannibalism" (itself recently debunked) in the "Rocky Mountains" to some aide to Lincoln by the name of "Nicolai." The idea of Lincoln reading "ticker tape" at the War Department is charming but impossible, since the ticker wasn't invented, I think, until the late 1870s or 1880s. There's really nothing wrong with the book that some serious fact checking couldn't have fixed. And no amount of off-hand theorizing about Lincoln's sexuality can compare with the careful treatment--within the proper social context--that Kearns gives the subject in her discussion of the mode of male fiendships in the mid-1800s.

The book is fine as entertainment, but is a failure as history.

Lincoln by Jan Morris is no doubt the worst book that I have ever attempted to read. Ms. Morris attempts to put down America and Mr. Lincoln with very scathing and pompous words throughout the book. In the first chapter she visits Mr. Lincoln's birthplace in Kentucky and uses the normal stereotype words to describe Kentuckians which I found very offensive. She states that she could not find a bookstore in Kentucky. Ms. Morris I have news for you. I bought this book in Kentucky, and believe it or not, at a bookstore. The bookstore thought so much of this book that I paid $2.00 for it. I wasted my money. This book should be used for firewood. Ms. Morris if you do not like America, please keep your pompous self in England.

Jan Morris starts off rolling her eyes at the Lincoln she received in school books in her native England. She travels Kentucky and Illinois and scoffs at the obese men and women waddling about the aisles of rural Wal-Marts and 7-11s. Is this the legacy of Lincoln's backwoods Kentucky? She notes that Lincoln's parents was the 19th century embodiment of "white trash" and that had Lincoln been born in the 20th century, it would have been in a trailer (the log cabin equivalent of today). She calls them as she sees them: her Lincoln is a backwoods man, a know-it-all, who became a big business lawyer and used the slavery issue as his ticket to the White House. She sees a gangly oddball of enormous drive who miraculously remains a "nice man" despite of his melancholia, burning ambition, dreadful wife, sneakiness, and distinction of presiding over more American deaths from war than any other President. Morris writes well, at times lyrically, and when she conjures up Lincoln receiving a visitor in the White House, or trudging up the street for yet one more Matthew Brady photograph, you are there with her. She also imagines a meeting, at the end of the war, between the "marble model" Robert E. Lee, and the "gorilla" Lincoln, a meeting that never actually occurred but is fun to think about nonetheless. She falls under the spell this long-dead man still casts and becomes an admirer, though offers the caveat that Lincoln started America on its path to constantly playing global cop - a thesis she offers as an aside but is certainly worth thinking about. The American soldier occupying Baghdad is a linear descendent of the Union solider occupying Richmond in her view. This is a short, thoughtful volume that adds another angle to the Lincoln story. You might disagree with her assertions that Lincoln was essentially an artist but this should not stop you from reading this quirky, essentially personal book.

Morris spins an interesting tale, a mixture of biography, travelogue, and historical fiction. While it reads nicely, it has enough errors that I had to double-check the publisher. Expecting a small publishing house, I was shocked to see "Simon & Schuster" on the spine. A few sloppy typos caught my eye, but the author began to lose credibility when I found the glaring error others have noted about the Donner Party. When I find an error in a book, I wonder how many other errors I do not realize because the information is entirely new to me. In fact, I found several other events in the book where her version of history didn't match mine.

The book has a rather awkward ending. After what I consider a balanced (though not entirely accurate) assessment of Lincoln throughout the book, Morris declares that Lincoln's presidency fomented America's imperialistic attitudes and policies. She follows with a harsh assessment of American militarism in the twentieth century. This is an interesting idea, but it doesn't fit with the rest of the book. In hindsight, I can see parts of the book that might argue for this conclusion, but such an indictment deserves better support. Instead, it comes across as a strong opinion without much corroboration. It is as if she slapped a proposal letter for a different Lincoln book on the end of this one.

Overall, this book provides a brief overview of Lincoln embellished by visits to the places he knew. While I enjoyed it, I wouldn't particularly recommend it. Though entertaining, it misses the mark. Someone less familiar with Lincoln might get lost in the author's non-chronological organization. And while Morris hits most of the highlights, there are important things left out or glossed over. At the other extreme, a Lincolnologist would find little value here. In other words, it is too scattershot for students and too frivolous for scholars. For those of us in the middle, it is a nice read but not a good history.

Dr. Karol Janicki has actually some straightforward and challenging explanations to give on the current trend toward communicative syllabuses based, as he argues, "far too little hard evidence to justify the claim made for them". The recent rising concern about the interaction between sociolinguistics and foreign language acquisition has given rise to some linguistic considerations. The author tackles sociolinguistic deviance in the foreign language and touches upon error analysis and interlanguage. He focuses on what to teach and how to teach, and on what to study and how to study. Even though this work is basically theoretical, the author tries in the final chapter to foresee the implications for classroom practice cannot fail to give both theoreticians and practicing teachers cause for serious reflections.

This is presented as SF, but rather is a detective that has been sprinkled with some sf-ish sauce to hide the fact that it is a backthrow to earlier days. As for the rest, format is not really clear. Likely the main character is a Captain Parry (he is the only one consistently present): an elderly englishman with a tendency to lie to himself and his surroundings. It is unclear if there is an actual storyline.

Only to be recommended for people with lots of time on their hands and a desire to critize a poorly written book.

I bought this set recently and was extremely disappointed when it arrived. The book looks like a bunch of photocopies in a glossy paper paperback binding, the learner's guide is not actually a book but a spiral-bound collection of A5 photocopies, and the CD's look like they've been copied at someone's home. They actually have paper-stickers with the lesson numbers on them!
Not to mention the lay-out: this item is written on a typewriter!!!
Please save your money on this way too expensive language set by Audioforum. It's practically from the stone-age! Go for the more recent versions of the book and CD-set instead, they're available in Norway.

I really hope the contents of the language course will make up for this tremendously poor presentation.