history

My own grandparents came to Ohio around 1900. "Rose Street" brought to narrative life all the stories my father, uncles and aunts have told me over the years.

I wonder if Carmen Leone realized that by telling his story, he was telling mine, too, as well as the stories of countless others. They might Italian, but they don't have to be. In fact, the soundtrack that came to my head while reading "RoseStreet" was the song "Tradition," from "Fiddler On The Roof." How can the story of an Italian immigrant couple and their American-born children have anything to do with Jewish shtetl life?

Read the book.

Ever look in the mirror and just examine your own eyes. Ever see the faces of your relatives in your own?

"Rose Street" is, too, such a mirror.

Cardinal Ratzinger is forthright in his pessimistic assessment of the time ahead. "The danger of a dictatorship of opinion is growing, and anyone who doesn't share the prevailing opinion is excluded, so that even good people no longer dare to stand by such nonconformists [i.e. Christians]. Any future anti-Christian dictatorship would probably be much more subtle than anything we have known until now. It will appear to be friendly to religion, but on the condition that its own models of behavior and thinking not be called into question." (153) The Church must attorn to the zeitgeist in this scheme. These themes are explored in Michael D. O'Brien's "Children of the Last Day" novels.

It is time for the faithful, Cardinal Ratzinger says, to form "vital circles." [T]here are great, vibrant new beginnings and joyful forms of Christian life that don't figure much statistically but are humanly great and have the power to shape the future." (143). "Particularly when one has to resist evil it's important to not to fall into gloomy moralism that doesn't allow itself any joy but really to see how much beauty there is, too, and to draw from it the strength needed to resist what destroys joy." (69)

In his autobiography, the novelist and historian Russell Kirk wrote, "Not by force of arms are civilizations held together, but by the threads of moral and intellectual belief. In the hands of the Fates are no thunderbolts: only threads and scissors." Throughout this book, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger shows that in most parts of the world that the Roman Catholic Church is the last defense against the decay of human civilization. By defending revelation and sacred tradition against the moral anarchy of the age, the Church withholds disorder of the soul and the commonwealth, the idolatry of man as god, and preserves man, as a creature of God, against transitory and often violent popular passion. The ambitions of those men who would bring about and celebrate her demise are dangerous. Implicit in Cardinal Ratzinger's words and lifetime service is the message that it is time for serious men of serious purpose to come to her defense.

The descriptions of Love's parents (especially his dad) and how they cut their teeth in the ranching business on the unforgiving landscape proved the most entertaining for me. The time spent looking for lost sheep, and moving herds put David Love on a path to his ultimate passion.... The geology of Wyoming. For Love, the Wyoming landscape appeared more interesting and mysterious than anything else. To his credit, Love is the only person to build a complete geological survey of an entire state. Not to mention probably one of the most complex.

McPhee wraps up the book by looking at the challenges that face a place rich in resources such as coal, shale, and uranium. As a geologist, Love reflects on the interesting role his life work plays in this regard. For me, the story reveals two competing forces. One being how a land like Wyoming can influence and shape a man's entire life, and conversely how that same man's life work can change our view and understanding of a complex landscape such as Wyoming.

As a teacher, I'm first of all impressed by how McPhee makes an academic and scientific subject (geology) not just interesting but gripping. For the most part, he personalizes it, introducing an eminent field geologist, David Love, who takes him and us on a tour around Love's home-state, Wyoming, describing over 2 billion years of the geological past as revealed in the cuts along Interstate 80 and in a side trip to Jackson Hole, outside Yellowstone Park. Love is very much a product of his upbringing on an isolated ranch in central Wyoming, his mother educated at Wellesley, his father an immigrant from Scotland who quotes William Cowper and Sir Walter Scott.

Love is independent, old school, hands-on, tireless, scrupulous, an innovative thinker who has made a significant impact over a lifetime in his field, choosing to work for the US Geological Survey after a short period of unhappy employment for an oil company. McPhee captures his very individual point of view, his dedication to science, and his Western perspective in character sketches and fragments of conversation between them. He has a dry sense of humor, colorful turns of phrase, and a toughness that goes along with long periods of field work and sleeping rough under the stars. He's also a grand-nephew of John Muir.

The book actually begins with his mother's wintery journey by horse-drawn coach from Rawlins to central Wyoming, where she has accepted a teaching job at a one-room school. It segues between the story of his parents' courtship in the first decade of the 20th century and his travels with McPhee over 70 years later, finally devoting a long section to Love's own boyhood, growing up on his parents' ranch, with an older brother, among cowboys raising both sheep and cattle. The accounts of surviving blizzards and floods that nearly wipe them out, the visitors passing through who may or may not be hunted killers, even an appearance (possibly two) by Butch Cassidy make this compelling reading for anyone with an interest in the early days of ranching in the West.

There's a brilliant section late in the book as McPhee describes Love's fascination with Jackson Hole while he's still a graduate student at Yale, and after many years of walking the ridges and summits around it, developing a scenario of how it was formed over the eons. McPhee's rendering of this scenario in words is vivid, and in the mind's eye, you can see mountain ranges and seas rise and fall in all manner of climates from tropical to ice age, until the topography assumes its present configuration, which is still changing.

I highly recommend this book. As companion volumes, I also recommend Loren Eiseley's memoir "All the Strange Hours," Geoffrey O'Gara's book about water rights in the Wind River basin, "What You See in Clear Water," and James Galvin's novel, "Fencing the Sky," in which a modern-day cowboy fugitive travels much of this same terrain on horseback.

The Romanovs consists of four parts: Muscovite beginnings (1613-1689), the Rise of an Empire (1689-1796), Empire Triumphant (1796-1894) and the Last Emperor (1894-1917). The first three parts each consist of several chapters, with the first covering biographical details of the Tsars and Tsarinas in that period, followed by chapters on political and cultural changes in that period. There are only two significant problems with what is otherwise a superb presentation: a non-chronological methodology and a lack of a single supporting map of Romanov domains (there are two maps of St Petersburg's layout). In the first case, Lincoln tends to keep coming back to Tsars in subsequent chapters on culture, politics, etc which is very confusing. Indeed, he seems in a rush to plow through the biographies of the Tsars, then revisit their cultural accomplishments, then come back again and discuss their political accomplishments, and then maybe discuss a few scandals or wars. As for the lack of maps, it makes it extremely difficult for the reader to evaluate the territorial expansions of the various Romanov rulers or Russia's growth over three centuries.

Despite these two flaws, the Romanovs is a delightful read for anyone with a scholarly interest in Russian imperial history. Perhaps the three most significant rulers that Lincoln assesses are Peter the Great, Catherine the Great and Nicholas II. Most histories tend to elevate Peter to hero status, but Lincoln's evaluation is more mixed. While Peter gets great credit for pushing Russia to modernize, the costs he incurred may have been too great. In particular, Lincoln questions Peter's obsession with building his capital on totally unsuitable terrain; the fact that the Russians were able to eventually succeed in constructing Peter's dream capital often disguises the fact that the human and financial losses were exorbitantly wasteful. The reader will be left to ponder the question that if Peter had built his capital elsewhere, Russia's development might have been much less painful. As for Catherine, Lincoln prefers to minimize the scandal and corruption associated with her court and view this as the golden age of Russian cultural development. Finally, Nicholas II appears as even more of a fatalistic dolt bent on self-destruction than he did in Lincoln's previous books. In sum, The Romanovs provides a solid and very readable account of Russia's development under the Tsars and Tsarinas.

This book is very thorough and incredible in its vast sweep. But it is broken apart into major periods. Each period is further broken down into topics, such as political history, economic history, social history, and so on. This format makes the book quite useful as a reference as well as enjoyable to read. This is the best book on the story of the Romanov family in the English language to date. And I can see this book firmly establishing itself as a timeless classic, alongside Shelby Foote's "Civil War," or Gibbons, "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire."

For antebellum Americans, voyaging to the Pacific via Cape Horn was "the equivalent of a modern-day trip to the Moon," Nathaniel Philbrick writes in "Sea of Glory." Mr. Philbrick has made this trip before with "In the Heart of the Sea" (2000), his book about the Essex, a whaler rammed and sunk by an irascible whale. The Essex was a model for Herman Melville's Pequod. In "Sea of Glory," Mr. Philbrick reprises the "Moby Dick" theme by focusing on the Exploring Expedition's monomaniacal commander, Lt. Charles Wilkes, who may have been a model for Captain Ahab.

Wilkes was a driven man who overcame enormous obstacles, including his own incompetence as a seaman, to bring the voyage to a successful conclusion. Unfortunately for his reputation, he was also a martinet who made bitter enemies of his own officers.

The depth of this enmity is vivid on the pages of "Sea of Glory," not only in Wilkes's words but also in those of a midshipman named William Reynolds, who began admiring Wilkes but quickly grew to despise him (as Reynolds's journal shows). The rancor between Wilkes and his subordinates sparked an ugly controversy that tarnished the expedition's reputation and obscured its feats, which were considerable.

The Ex. Ex. surpassed Cook by establishing the existence of Antarctica; it also surveyed the lower Columbia River, charted hundreds of Pacific islands and collected so many scientific specimens that Congress eventually created the Smithsonian Institution to house them. It thus helped put American science on a sound footing -- an unlikely result for an expedition conceived to confirm a crackpot theory that the Earth was hollow and that a voyage to the South Pole would discover a hole through which the globe's interior might be explored. But Mr. Philbrick is less interested in the Ex. Ex.'s scientific accomplishments than in its political context.

This was the era of Manifest Destiny and of eager claims for the full reach of the Oregon Territory ("Fifty-four Forty or Fight!"). By sponsoring the expedition, the U.S. asserted itself as a nation to be reckoned with, especially in the Pacific. Wilkes returned home in 1842 (one year late and with only two ships of the original six). By 1848, the U.S. had planted its flag in Oregon and California and become a Pacific power.

From this newly acquired coast, the Ex. Ex. had already blazed a trail westward across the Pacific. Wilkes surveyed Pago Pago, the future capital of American Samoa; he surveyed the mouth of Hawaii's Pearl River and proclaimed it an excellent site for a harbor; his charts of Tarawa would serve Adm. Chester Nimitz well in 1943. He even surveyed the Sulu Archipelago in the southern Philippines. Wherever Wilkes went, it seems, other Americans would eventually follow.

Before gold was found in California, the sea was America's main frontier. People read "Two Years Before the Mast" and dreamed of rounding the Horn on a clipper ship bound for China. Mr. Philbrick is an experienced guide to this lost world, and "Sea of Glory," with its evocative prose, is a worthy successor to "In the Heart of the Sea." Here, for instance, is the New York of Wilkes's childhood: "Manhattan was surrounded by water, and hull to hull along the waterfront was a restless wooden exoskeleton of ships, their long bowsprits nuzzling over the busy streets, the eyes of even the most jaundiced New Yorkers irresistibly drawn skyward into a complex forest of spars and rigging. This was where a boy might turn his back on all that he had once known and step into an exotic dream of adventure, freedom, opportunity and risk."

Mr. Philbrick does drag anchor occasionally. The U.S. merchantman attacked at Sumatra in 1831 was from Salem, not Boston. The huge "Peacemaker" cannon that blew up on the U.S.S. Princeton in 1844 was designed by Robert Stockton, not John Ericsson (although Stockton did base it on a gun of Ericsson's design). And it is odd, in a book that stresses the Ex. Ex.'s political context, to find no mention of the 1837 Caroline incident, in which a British force attacked a steamer on the U.S. side of the Niagara River, sparking a mild war scare. A reference to this episode would have helped explain the Navy's reluctance to divert six ships to a scientific errand and the reluctance of its officers to accept the command. (Wilkes, a mere lieutenant, ended up with the job because no one more senior would take it.)

But these are quibbles. This is at heart an adventure story, and Mr. Philbrick tells it well. Wilkes dodged icebergs off Antarctica and lava flows in Hawaii, waged war on a Fiji Islands village and returned home to face a court martial instigated by his own officers. He survived that, too, and finally won the fame he craved during the Civil War, when he was lionized for seizing two Confederate diplomats from a British mail packet. But the prickly Wilkes squandered this glory by annoying the secretary of the Navy, who soon beached him. Some people never learn.

There were unprecedented logistical tasks in assembling the expedition, which at its start consisted of six ships and 346 men (including nine scientists). Senior officers had trouble putting the expedition together, and the Navy gave the task to the forty-year-old Lieutenant Wilkes. Philbrick writes, "Wilkes was a great man. But he was also vain, impulsive, and often cruel." He took offense easily, and would not be placated by offenders. He remained aloof from his officers. When things went wrong, he was quick to assume that his men had been incompetent or malevolent. Philbrick concludes that a more self-confident and capable leader probably would not have brought the expedition greater success, although it could have brought greater on-board contentment and post-expedition fame. With his enormous flaws, Wilkes was resilient and resourceful, and the list of accomplishments chalked up by the expedition is long. For instance, they brought back forty tons of biological and anthropological specimens, many of which became the foundation for the collections displayed at the Smithsonian Institution. But upon his return, Wilkes was court-martialed for his many real abuses, and some that were not real, such as a charge that he falsified surveying sightings. While he got off lightly, and became recognized as a naval hero in the Civil War, and even an Admiral, he is not the recognized hero that, say, Scott or Shackleton is.

His flaws brought on his obscurity, which Philbrick's engaging volume will at least partially correct. There are literary theorists who say that Wilkes was the model for Ahab, and Melville did indeed know of the expedition and its outcome. A closer literary fit, because of his distrust of his subordinates, would be Captain Queeg of _The Caine Mutiny_. Philbrick, in _In the Heart of the Sea_, previously made exciting the tale of the doomed whaleship _Essex_, and there is plenty of nautical excitement in his story of this expedition as well. There is less of a tale of men against nature here, though, and more of the conflict of commander against officers, and of a man against himself.

"Sea of Glory" is truly a spectacular rendition of events, as Philbrick portrays the deterioration of the relationship between Commander and his men, while journeying through some of most inhospitable seas in the world. Wilkes comes across as a near megalomaniac and odious character (almost immediately after beginning the expedition, he promoted himself Captain!), belittling the achievements of his underlings and inflating his own. It is a miracle that he was succeeded in bringing the expedition home largely unscathed. Nor does the story end there. The final chapters reveal the trials and tribulations of Wilkes (and other members of the expedition) as he realizes that he may be held accountable for his actions. Upon return of the expedition, there were no fewer than 5 court martials involving Wilkes and officers of the vessels comprising the expedition, largely petty incidents raised by Wilkes as revenge for perceived slights by the officers.

Philbrick writes extremely well, in a very fluid and easy manner, and it takes little effort to read. Large portions of the book are based upon the journal of Midshipman Reynolds, once an ardent admirer of his commander but by the conclusion of the expedition despising him. Philbrick superbly brings this out, contrasting parts of the journal from early on in the voyage to sections of the journal written much later, the journal's author much jaded and embittered by the actions of his commander. But Philbrick does not focus only on Wilkes; the achievements of the expedition are also discussed, and the sometimes incredibly imposing situations the expedition faces, such as the attack by natives on the expedition in the Fiji Islands which resulted in the death of Wilkes' nephew. A book of this type benefits from having illustrations and maps, and on neither account does it fail. There are a number of maps produced in the book, although I have to say the main map (in the preface), which traces the voyage of the expedition throughout the 5 years it spent abroad, is a little hard to follow due to the back and forth nature of parts of the expedition, and also when the expedition split up for short periods of time. There are two sections of very nice illustrations which show the main characters involved and some events that occurred.

"Sea of Glory" is a true story that ranks alongside the best of adventure books, and I cannot recommend this book highly enough. A worthy addition to the library.

I LOVE THE WAY THAT LORI BROUGHT 2 STRANGERS TOGETHER SEAN AND CHARLIE AT FIRST AND THEN BY THE END OF THE BOOK THEY WERE WHERE GOD WANTED THEM AND DEEPLY IN LOVE. IT MAKES ME BELIEVE THAT WONDERFUL MARRIAGES DO EXIST ESPECIALLY WHEN GOD IS AT THE BASE OF IT.

This small volume is a treasure. In hardcover, the pages are silver, the dark blue typography is a beautiful old-style Roman, perhaps Garamond or Times, good-sized and leaded out for easy readability. And the illustrations are unsurpassed.

First, the illustrator: Gustave Dore was born in 1832, sixty years after the birth of Coleridge. He died in 1883. Coleridge preceded him in death by 49 years. Coleridge was born in 1772 and died in 1834. Dore was born in Strasbourg, and was a renowned illustrator who was doing lithographs at the age of thirteen.

The fact that Dore was a near contemporary of Coleridge is important because we can be assured that the characters' costumes in his illustrations reflect the actual dress of the time Coleridge was describing. The ships also are correctly drawn and beautifully detailed.

To say that his illustrations complement this classic epic poem is an understatement.

As to the poet, some wag said once of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, that "a half-great poet had a wholly great day." I have also heard that Coleridge is supposed to have written his epic in one sitting, in a great burst of inspiration. I can't vouch for that, but it is truly a masterpiece--of that there can be no doubt.

I recall trying to memorize it when I was in high school, about sixty years ago. I loved it then, and I still do now.

For the price, this book is an absolute steal. No library is complete without this poem, and of all the renditions I've seen of it, this is by far the most beautiful.

This oversized edition by Dover Publications reproduces all 42 Dore engravings in their original size. Gustave Dore's illustrations are absolutely mesmerizing. I enjoy slowly turning the pages and examining the phenomenal detail in these famous Dore engravings.

Every aspect of this edition is great. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is an imaginative, haunting, and captivating narrative poem that has no parallel in the English language. The engravings by Gustave Dore - the open and endless sea, the vast icy reaches of Antarctica, the calm tropical sea with monsters swirling about, and the dead seamen sprawled on the ship's deck all translate the evocative words of Coleridge into unforgettable images. And the introduction by Millicent Rose is excellent.

Buy a copy. You won't be disappointed.

On the surface, this may just seem to be a simple poem by an English Romantic. But there is so much more. There is a lesson to be learned, one of respect for God's creatures and for all of creation. This is certainly a Romantic point of view, and Coleridge puts it forth very nicely in this poem.

This is a great beginning poem for novices of poetry, for beginners and for people who dislike poetry if it doesn't rhyme and have a definite rhythm. This is definitely Coleridge's best poem, one that everyone should be familiar with. This version with the woodcuts makes for a very attractive package--the illustrations add nicely to the poems overall effect.

Over the course of this book's nearly-250 pages, Tarkovsky addresses these questions and many others - and at the same time, gives the reader invaluable insights into the thoughts that inspired his amazing films. The work progresses roughly in a straightforward time-line - unlike some of his films - and lays out the director's beliefs as well as his methods, but not in a cold step-by-step way. Instead, I came away from this book feeling that I understood Tarkovsky as a human being much more than I did before - and, as a result, I now feel like I know him better as an artist as well.

Without employing standard plotlines, characterizations, overdone (and overused) special effects, or any other low-ball devices so prevalent in film, Tarkovsky's works reach into the very soul of the viewers and touch them on the very deepest level. Far from being cold and emotionless and surreal, his works are some of the most moving I've ever experienced - and, true to his vision, they do so by actually being ULTRA-real, evoking the feelings that we carry around at our core. Words cannot really convey the power of his works - they have to be experienced. I recently came across a reference to Tarkovsky's work in the booklet of a cd of contemporary classical music - the note-writer likened his films to a 'cold landscape, devoid of human life'...! I couldn't believe it - and I had to wonder what 5 minutes of which of Tarkovsky's films the writer had actually seen!! This was one of the most ludicrous references I've ever read.

There is a spiritual quality and undercurrent to Tarkovsky's films that runs very, very deep - and is extremely moving. This spirituality never comes across as 'preaching' or 'sermonizing' - it's simply there, as a foundation for his outlook and philosophy of life. He draws from numerous schools of thought, combining his influences into one of the most gently - and truthfully - humanist outlooks I've ever seen expressed.

The book is a revelation - and I know it will bear repeated readings. I've seen all of his films - but after reading his thoughts so eloquently expressed here, I know that they'll affect me even more deeply now.