Street

I found this book fascinating to read. I am a former homeless person, myself having spent two years on the streets.

This book gave me a real insight into the world of the homeless and dramatically altered my perspective on exactly who these people are and how they have arrived at their situation. Before reading this book, I assumed that 99% of all homeless people were either drug addicts, alcoholics, or people with mental problems. Several ideas here really touched home. Living in DC for most of my life, I have been constantly surrounded by homeless people, and have noticed that each individual seems to come and go at an extraordinarily rapid rate. Joe Homeless explained that this is because most are dead within one to two years.

A few questions remain unanswered by the author, however, that continue to burn in my mind. Why do homeless people not on drugs and who are mentally stable remain in the cities. It seems that it would be easy to find work in a McDonalds or related place if given one new pair of clothes and a brief opportunity to clean themselves. Also, the author continually stated that he only needed a place to get himself together for a few days before he could get back on his feet again. Yet, when he finally does recieve a welfare check and this opportunity, he does not find a job. Why not? It seems that there are plenty of temporary or full time positions for untrained workers. Perhaps this did not apply in the 1970s. I hope that the author has the opportunity to read this response and has the opportunity to reply. I really don't expect that many other people have read this socially important work.

This book is billed as an "oral history," which it is, but it is much more than that. First, the author provides extensive background about each of the four urban ethnic enclaves her interview subjects then go on to describe from their personal perspectives. Second, she has selected four truly remarkable people, activists in every sense of the word. Third, she has created a narrative based on multiple interviews and letters that manages to present a clear, readable and appealing story while retaining the authentic voices of her four subjects. Though intended to be representative of the four key ethnic groups that occupied Chicago's Maxwell Street neighborhood for its last 100 years (Eastern European Jews, Italians, southern African-Americans and Mexicans), the four interview subjects are each fascinating individuals in their own right. Taking nothing away from them, Eastwood doesn't give herself enough credit for producing such compelling tales.

Maxwell Street, known to many in films like "The Blues Brothers" was a unique Chicago gathering place. Carolyn Eastwood captures the spirit and energy of this rich tapestry of Chicago life, that has slipped into history. Thankfully, her book preserves the voices and stories of that era.

Before checking out this book, I generally regarded Networking as some vague inside-ball type game in which everybody had to figure it out how to do it for themselves. This book dispelled that myth and explained exactly what to do to do Networking. This book demonstrates the fact that there is a systematic way to approach networking, and that it's not some moving target you either figure out for yourself or you lose.

Since there's such a lack of books on this important job-search technique, it's great that this book delivers all you need to know about networking. Richardson is both funny and informative

Growing up in this section of New Orleans, I was pleasantly surprised to see several homes of my childhood friends. No other city in the U.S. has such distinct and diverse neighborhood architecture. Another great volume in a GREAT series.

This volume in the N.O. Architecture series by the Friends of the Cabildo is, in my opinion, the best of the entire series. Perhaps it is because this is the section of the city in which I spend most of my time, a place to which I've become rather attached. Anyone who enjoys architecture will probably like this book, not just New Orleanians.

I bought this book many years ago when it was first published. It is a beautiful collection of black and white photos of New York City and its environs. Especially lovely are his pictures of the World Trade Center towers. There is a wonderful photo of them with dark clouds behind them and what is left of the sunlight shining on them. Below is the QE2 sailing out of New York harbor escorted by four small boats. He also has a memorable picture of the World Trade Center in shadow. This book is a must for lovers of New York and of black and white photography.

This is an excellent pictoral of the New York skyline (predominantly Manhattan), including many full-size pictures of the World Trade Center from various angles and at various times during the day. Includes the Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge, Empire State Building, etc. Mostly photos with a little commentary. Large book. Excellent photography! All black & white - very dramatic. Very collectible.

Yeah, some of the movies in the series were REALLY bad and made Freddy look like a psycho Bugs Bunny. This book brings you really spooky stories where Freddy Kruger shows everyone how bad he really is! Well written by various writers and fun, fun, fun!

Dark, evil, and lovely. Freddy is at his best in these stories, even if 2 or 3 of them don't follow the continuity.

I literally can't tell you how much this book meant to me. Everybody at the nursing home where I volunteer looked different today, as I recalled people in the book, their experiences and knowledge, and realized that the people walking down the hall across from all had their own stories. Even I looked different to myself as I realized I was behaving differently and looking deeper. And that's exactly what the author set out to do, isn't it?

I have just completed Veneta Masson's journal Ninth Street Notebook and am still reeling from the accuracy she describes the art of nursing. As a diploma graduate of the 60's and a master's prepared family and women's health nurse practitioner my career has offered many roles to intereact with the medical profession. Veneta describes very well our role as healers in the context of community and science. I highly recommend this book to the nursing community.

I wrote the Kirkus Review you will find under Editorial Reviews and I direct you to that. What I failed to note in that review was the wonderful bouquet behind the author's name, Stephen Bloom, which seems to me a conflation of the two heroes of Joyce's Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom. Since Ulysses was the artistic wellspring for the nonlinear New Wave French films of the sixties, in which editing dizzyingly rose above characterization, as in Hiroshima, Mon Amour and Last Year at Marienbad, it struck me that the same nonlinear mode of storytelling in No New Jokes, which digs into our subconscious sense of time and remembrance,was derived from Joyce and that Stephen Bloom is the pen name for some well-known writer who wants to publish something fresh without being reviewed for his earlier work rather than for this inventive new work. I'd like to know if I'm all wet about this or not, should someone know Stephen Bloom.

I nearly overlooked this, the best first novel of 1997. While Stephen Bloom's "No New Jokes" was published in the first quarter of last year, I didn't become aware of it until I read a review in the "Shepherd Express", an alternative newspaper in Milwaukee WI earlier this year.

To call this funny but heartbreaking short novel the best first novel of 1997 may be a disservice. I think it may rank as one of the best of the year, period. It lacks the epic sweep of Pynchon's "Mason and Dixon" and the pretensions of Delillo's great though flawed "Underworld". At 187 pages it is dwarfed by both of them in length. But it packs a wallop, nevertheless.

The story centers on Izzy, forty-something WWII veteran, and the variously aged men who hang out at Bald Sam's diner in 1949 Brooklyn. They talk baseball, current events (the Bomb, Communism) and endlessly recycle the many ethnic (mostly Jewish) jokes, which have formed the fabric of their lives in the shadow of the Holocaust. Stephen Bloom gives us a good taste of post-war New York, much as Delillo does in "Underworld".

Izzy is not quite right in some unexplained sense as a result of the war. He has a 90% disability pension, which he supplements by playing his concertina in the streets. But we soon learn in bits and pieces that what really haunts Izzy isn't the war but a Pogrom in 1919 back in his hometown in Poland. During this pogrom, Izzy's father is brutally murdered, so bloodied that Izzy doesn't recognize his father's corpse when he first sees it.

The foregoing is undeniably grim and it is worth noting that Izzy never tells the jokes, which are peppered throughout, the novel. Nevertheless, the novel is often quite humorous. The jokes themselves are a commentary on the life struggles, both major and minor, of Izzy and his friends. The jokes point up the fact that while jokes are often told at someone's expense, they also serve to cushion life's blows.

The novel ends as it opens: life (and death) goes on.

This book is like a hard punch in the gut. With its rough pictures and raw interviews, it is quite a tour-de-force by a great photographer. The people profiled really open their hearts up to Barbara Seyda. There is nothing on earth quite like this powerful book.

Barbara Seyda has eptomized the words, "...in the end only kindness matters..." a real look at homeless not only in Tucson, but everywhere...thanks Barbara Jo

If your looking for a book that gives you lots of information about the NYPD Emergency Service Unit, then this is the book for you. I am a fan of the NYPD and have been looking for a book like this. If your looking for more information you should look into "Anytime, Anywhere." Thank you very much Mr. Katz for this book. I wish you the best of luck with all of your projects.

NYPD is a fascinating, dramatic, high-speed ride-along with some of the best cops in the US. Katz must have spent a lot of time with the ESU team because he fills this book with the kind of personal information and adrenalin you'd get on the street, dealing with "perps." For my money, this book beats anything Ann Rule ever wrote -- much more exciting and intimate, rather than a dry narrative. If you like stories about real cops and real robbers, this one's for you.

Hans Halberstadt