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by Lou Ann Walker
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Harper Perennial (1987-09-23)
ISBN: 0060914254
EAN: 9780060914257
Dewy Decimal #: 362.420973
Paperback: 224 pages
Release Date: 1987-09-16
SKU: 102908056
Condition: Used: Good
Comments: very few markings...minor wear on cover
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
From the time she was a toddler, Lou Ann Walker was the ears and voice for her deaf parents. Their family life was warm and loving, but outside the home, they faced a world that misunderstood and often rejected them. "A fascinating personal testament."--Chicago Sun Times Book Review
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Customer Reviews
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Book Club Loved it!
Rating  (5)
Date: 2007-07-24
We chose this book for our book club and EVERYONE LOVED IT! What great insights into the deaf culture.
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honest and open
Rating (5)
Date: 2006-06-12
Honest, open, and very well written. Authors parents and my parents are long time friends. Although I do not know the author, we probably met as kids. The deaf community is a very close knit group. Deaf parents are very caring and loving. It's a one day, cover to cover read.
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Boring
Rating  (1)
Date: 2006-03-31
0 out of 9 customers found this reveiw helpful
I was supposed to read this book for my Sign Language class, but I started the first chapter, and was incredibly bored. This book is slow, and boring.
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Candid, Easy Reading
Rating  (4)
Date: 2006-02-02
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
I went to high school with Lou Ann. We were not good friends, but I knew her parents were deaf. At that time, I felt that Lou Ann was diligent with her studies and way too mature for us to be friends. I read this book many years ago. I loved the book and knew some of the people she mentioned. I am in a book club now and I am going to recommend this story. I think it is a good read for anyone. Lou Ann was a kind person and I'm sure she has helped many people in the deaf community. Even today, I think there is a great variance in how different members of the deaf community interact with the hearing population.
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Honest insight into our world
Rating (5)
Date: 2006-01-02
7 out of 8 customers found this reveiw helpful
As the oldest child in a family with deaf parents, I can totally relate to what the author went through. I was disturbed by a few of the reviews I read though. People are so quick to judge when they don't have a clue about the world that hearing children of deaf parents live in. I went through all the same experiences that the author did as well as many more. As the oldest child I too was responsible for all the interpreting and basically felt as though I was "raising" my parents instead of the other way around. It is not a fun way to grow up. I found myself annoyed by the reviewer who said they found deaf people to be "fun" and that the author was too dour and negative about the deaf culture. Don't be so quick to judge until you walk in our shoes. The deaf community I was exposed to was not a "fun" one. They were, as a whole, a very distrusting, backstabbing, and gossipy group. I am NOT saying all deaf people are this way! I can only relate what MY personal experiences were. The reviewers who said that it seemed to be the author's own "personality quirks" that made her experience life with deaf parents the way she did don't have a clue either. We are basically products of our upbringing and the life we live as a child. Yes, we can choose as adults to move forward and overcome much of the damage that may have been done, BUT you cannot change who you are nor can you erase the person you are completely. And much of that is formed in childhood, a childhood that is VERY different from mainstream society if you grow up as a hearing child with deaf parents. I suffer from anxiety I believe it is because of the overpowering sense of responsibility I was burdened with as a child, which I cannot seem to shake as an adult and mother of 4. Anyone studying ASL or truly trying to gain insight into the deaf world would definitely benefit from reading this novel.
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by Amos Oz (Translator: Nicholas de Lange)
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Harcourt (2004-11-15)
ISBN: 0151008787
EAN: 9780151008780
Dewy Decimal #: 892.436
Hardcover: 544 pages
Edition: 1
SKU: 103008038
Condition: Used: Very Good
Comments: ...no markings or highlighting......some slight shelf wear on dustjacket....
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
Tragic, comic, and utterly honest, this extraordinary memoir is at once a great family saga and a magical self-portrait of a writer who witnessed the birth of a nation and lived through its turbulent history.
It is the story of a boy growing up in the war-torn Jerusalem of the forties and fifties, in a small apartment crowded with books in twelve languages and relatives speaking nearly as many. His mother and father, both wonderful people, were ill-suited to each other. When Oz was twelve and a half years old, his mother committed suicide, a tragedy that was to change his life. He leaves the constraints of the family and the community of dreamers, scholars, and failed businessmen and joins a kibbutz, changes his name, marries, has children, and finally becomes a writer as well as an active participant in the political life of Israel.
A story of clashing cultures and lives, of suffering and perseverance, of love and darkness.
(12/27/2005)
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Customer Reviews
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Memoirs are made of this
Rating (4)
Date: 2008-09-15
This review was published in The Australian, August 16, 2008. Greg Sheridan is the Foreign Editor.
[...]
Memoirs are made of this
OPINION: Greg Sheridan | August 16, 2008
A FEW years ago I experienced a severe addiction to travel literature.
With the contemporary serious novel in such a mess, travel writing, like biography, offers many of the traditional pleasures of the novel: story, character, good dialogue, development, resolution. But I can't say I discovered any great literature there, much as I enjoyed Bill Bryson's wit and Paul Theroux's misanthropy.
Now I am immersed in a frenetic bout of memoir reading and here the story is different.
When Tom Wolfe was promoting the new journalism, which has been with us several decades now, his essential insight was to bring the techniques of the novelist to bear on journalism: exploring the subjective elements of a story, the characters' inner lives and interior monologues, with the advantage that the events had actually happened.
A novelist's memoir can achieve this supremely. A Tale of Love and Darkness is the childhood memoir of Amos Oz, Israel's greatest novelist and surely soon a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
This is an incomparably good book. Perhaps it is the best book I have read. It tells of growing up in Jerusalem in the 1930s and '40s. Oz conceives life as one part comedy, one part tragedy, one part humdrum, quotidian concreteness, and if you are Jewish, the chance always of utter disaster.
His life proceeds against the backdrop of the Holocaust and the birth of Israel. Oz is an only child and his life is also shaped by the suicide of his mother when he is 12. This colossal roadblock dominates and shapes the book and yet does not distort the loving portrait of his father, a frustrated academic, out of his depth and at his wits' end with his wife's melancholy.
Oz's technical accomplishments in this book are dazzling. He writes of his grandfather:
It was not easy for him to go out. Grandma had a highly developed, super-sensitive radar screen on which she kept track of us all: at any given moment she could check the inventory, to know precisely where each of us was, Lonia at his desk in the National Library on the fourth floor of the Terra Sancta Building, Zussya at Cafe Atara, Fania sitting in the B'nai B'rith Library, Amos playing with his best friend Eliyahu next door at Mr Friedmann the engineer's, in the first building on the right. Only at the edge of her screen, behind the extinguished galaxy, in the corner from which her son Zyuzya, Zyuzinka, with Malka and little Daniel, whom she had never seen or washed, were supposed to flicker back at her, all she could see by day or night was a terrifying black hole.
This passage is instructive. First, there is a lovely metaphor for domestic life. How many grandmas have their perfect family radar screens? Then, everyone is mentioned by name. There is the accumulation of small details of location that give the passage life. But suddenly, at the end, the shocking reality of the Holocaust explodes this domestic tableau, as it does intermittently throughout these beautiful memories.
Almost every page of this book contains an observation or metaphor so striking you cannot let it go, or rather it will not let you go. Oz writes: "Both my parents had come to Jerusalem straight from the 19th century."
The contrast, indeed conflict, of east European Jews trying to recreate an idealised Europe, one free of anti-Semitism, in the hot, dusty climate of Israel, surrounded by hostile Arabs, is mined by Oz as much for comedy as tragedy. And there is endless comic delight in the crazy clash of expectation with reality. For bookish, intellectual, urban Jews such as Oz and his family, the kibbutz pioneers were a new kind of Jew. Oz mocks his own earnest idealisation of kibbutz pioneers, yet somehow affirms it as well:
Tough, warm-hearted, though of course silent and thoughtful, young men and strapping, straightforward young women ... I pictured these pioneers as strong, serious, self-contained people, capable of sitting around in a circle and singing songs of heart-rending longing, or songs of mockery, or songs of outrageous lust ... (people) who could ride wild horses or wide-tracked tractors, who spoke Arabic, who knew every cave and wadi, who had a way with pistols and hand grenades, yet read poetry and philosophy.
Oz is free of self-pity. Instead there is a generous human solidarity and understanding for everyone. But there are passages of aching melancholy and pain. The night the UN votes to establish Israel is the happiest night imaginable. Though it too is tinged with fear, as the Jews of Jerusalem are always in dread of a second holocaust. But the recognition of the Zionist dream is a fulfilment of generations' desires.
In all his life, Oz never sees his father weep, except that night. The father crawls into bed beside young Amos and tousles his hair:
Then he told me in a whisper what some hooligans did to him and his brother David in Odessa and what some gentile boys did to him at his Polish school in Vilna, and the girls joined in too, and the next day, when his father, Grandpa Alexander, came to the school to register a complaint, the bullies refused to return the torn trousers but attacked his father, Grandpa, in front of his eyes, forced him down on to the paving stones and removed his trousers too in the middle of the playground, and the girls laughed and made dirty jokes, saying that the Jews were all so-and-sos, while the teachers watched and said nothing.
Now, the father tells Amos, people may bully you, but not because you are a Jew: "Not that. Never again. From tonight that's finished here. For ever." Most of the book is not political in that sense. It's full of jokes, though its genius is to blend comedy and tragedy. Oz recounts how as a kid he talked all the time, but that was fine because everyone in Jerusalem talked all the time. A professor tells Oz that the odds of there being an afterlife, as there is no conclusive evidence either way, are 50-50. For a central European Jew in the generation of Hitler, those chances of survival are not at all bad.
When a great novelist writes a memoir with all the technique of the novel at its best, you get a superior art form. If I could recommend just one book to tell you something about the human condition, this would be it.
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The Eternal Jewish Mother
Rating (4)
Date: 2008-07-08
Amos Oz's A Tale of Love and Darkness is a memoir of his life and the life of his family up until the time of his mother's suicide at the age of 38 in the early 1950s. Oz's mother's suicide, never treated fictionally in his other work (as far as I can recall) is treated here with great care and thoroughness: there is anger, guilt, shame, sadness, loss, a sense of regret, and penetrating understanding. Without a doubt the book is strongest when Oz discusses his mother and her family. His mother, brought up on a romantic, Hebrew education in Rovno, was not ready for the tawdriness of life in Palestine, "the rough terrain of everyday life, diapers, husbands, migraines, queues, smells of moth balls and kitchen sinks." The story of his mother's mental decline and suicide is also the story of the convergence and divergences of Jewish life in the 20th century; the outline of the gap between the real and the ideal of the Zionist dream. That said, A Tale of Love and Darkness is generally overwritten. There is much useless repetition here which drags down the trajectory of the memoir. I do not recommend this work as the first work of Amos Oz to be read, but the last. It makes for an instructive book end with Where the Jackal's Howl and Other Stories on the other side.
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A beautiful and moving memoir
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-01-27
This is a beautiful and moving memoir from a sensitive and humanistic writer of great skill and style. The reader will feel that he or she is personally experiencing growing up with the author in the most modest and simple circumstances, in the young State of Israel, from before statehood and into its early years, getting to know as friends and neighbors some of its intellectual leaders who were the writer's family members and friends. The book is a sheer delight, and highly recommended.
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history and biography
Rating (4)
Date: 2008-01-12
This mixture of biography with the history of the birth and growth of Israel is a wonderful, warm , and poignant tale--well worth one's time.
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Superior Autobiography
Rating (5)
Date: 2007-12-29
This memoir by the Israeli novelist Amoz Oz is a fascinating depiction of both European and Israeli Jews. Although the author was born in Israel, his parents and relatives were all European Jews displaced by the events leading up to World War II.The graphic depiction of what anti-semitism does to an individual explains the need for a Jewish state more fully than any essay could, and the history of the first war against the Jews by the Arabs, aided openly by the British army which then controlled Palestine, and which started the very evening in November, 1947 of the U.N. vote to establish a Jewish homeland, not, as I previously thought, in May, 1948, when the state of Israel was officially declared, lends credence to the unfortunate belief that the Arabs will never accept the state of Israel. This makes the book sound incredibly sad, and of course it is in one sense. But in another, by creating the milieu of these early settlers in Jerusalem and their intellectual strengths and interests, and also the new Jew of the kibbutz, to which Oz went after the death of his mother and his father's remarriage, and where he lived and wrote for 30 years, the book turns out to be the best one I have read about this frantic period of Jewish history.
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by Eleanor Shipley Duckett
Product Group: Book
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (1958-10-15)
ISBN: 0226167798
EAN: 9780226167794
Dewy Decimal #: 942.0164092
Paperback: 228 pages
SKU: 090808013
Condition: Used: Good
Comments: ...no markings or highlighting...crease in cover
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
Filled with drama and action, here is the story of the ninth-century life and times of Alfred—warrior, conqueror, lawmaker, scholar, and the only king whom England has ever called "The Great." Based on up-to-date information on ninth-century history, geography, philosophy, literature, and social life, it vividly presents exciting views of Alfred in every stage of his long career and leaves the reader with a sharply-etched picture of the world of the Middle Ages.
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Customer Reviews
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A useful but limited narrative
Rating  (3)
Date: 2008-09-12
Eleanor Shipley Duckett's biography is a useful introduction to Alfred the Great, the Wessex monarch who effectively created the kingdom of England. She begins with a description of the politics of eighth-century England, a world of maneuvering between regional kingdoms and invading Viking armies. It was in this dangerous and fluid environment that a young Alfred came of age, watching his father and two elder brothers deal with the threats Wessex faced before gaining the throne at the age of 22. From here her focus is on his struggles against the Danes, though other chapters also address his kingdom, his education, and his years after his many martial triumphs.
While enlightening, the book suffers from an excessive focus on narrative. As readable as Duckett's prose is, Her focus on recounting the chronological development of events too frequently comes at the cost of a clear understanding of Alfred's character and the significance of the developments of his life. Readers wanting to familiarize themselves with the basic details of Alfred's life will find this a useful and enjoyable book, but those seeking a more comprehensive analysis of the great Anglo-Saxon king would be better served by Richard Abels's more recent Alfred the Great: War, Culture and Kingship in Anglo-Saxon England (The Medieval World).
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Great biography for a great figure in history
Rating (4)
Date: 2006-12-31
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
Duckett's biography of King Alfred is an enjoyable and interesting read. We are drawn a picture of Alfred that shows how great a king he was to overcome the Danes from what little he had left. Duckett takes us from when he was a boy to his death with a fluid grace not easily found in biographers and their writings. Additionally, Duckett does well in interpreting the many stories and legends and presenting them in a way to give a real picture of Alfred, one of what really happened and one of what the stories and legends of the time thought of him. Her short commentaries of the travails that befell the Continent at the hands of the Vikings added a lot of insight and perspective as well.
There did seem to be two chapters out of place. King Alfred and His Earlier Translations and Later Translations. Both, it would seem, are important to King Alfred's life since he devoted much of it to translating texts into his native tongue. But analyzing the meaning of the books as well as the lives of those author's whose books Alfred translated did nothing more than take up space and waste time. Granted, it is important and would have been a great appendix, but it didn't seem to fit into the style of biography that Duckett wrote.
I, too, as Duckett mentioned at the end, would have liked to have seen some of Alfred's flaws interspersed with his attributes. But this isn't something that one can find easily, leaving us relying on what is available, notably Asser's rendition of Alfred. That being said I would definitely recommend this biography to everyone. If it weren't for the two chapters on translation I would have rated this a five star.
4 stars.
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Read them together
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-08-29
4 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
I chose to read a book about King Arthur followed by one on Alfred the Great. Talk about putting the post Roman period into perspective!
Both books are old ones, Leslie Alcock's Arthur's Britain (1971) and Eleanor Shipley Duckett's Alfred The Great The King and his England (1956). Both are superb, but of the two, Alcock's is the more thorough. Although there are doubtless things which have come to light about the time period of the two, roughly 400-900 A.D., I suspect that the general content of the history of the period is still unchanged by virtue of the lack of any substantially new information.
For Arthur there is still little more than the later medieval legends that we still enjoy hearing to illuminate his character. Whether he was a Romanized Britain serving a local king in the fight against invading Angles, Saxons, Juts and others, or a king as he is described in the later chronicles, we will probably never know. Even whether he was one man or a composite is up for grabs, although Alcock makes no bones about where he stands on this issue. Arthur's significance in his own time was dictated by the needs and interests of the period; his significance in ours is his model of a true and heroic king. These two aspects have little to do with one another.
What Alcock does in lieu of concrete data on Arthur the man, is to define with great clarity the character of his time. Alcock is an archaeologist and it shows, for he brings to life the information produced from habitation and defensive sites in a way that makes silent stones speak. His study of the character of pottery finds, their distribution, source and manufacture through time, suggests that the England of Arthur's time had lost much of its native industry and returned to local cottage industry. The absence of coinage suggests that a money economy had evaporated as the Roman Empire pulled out of the country to defend itself closer to home. The failure of cities suggests that they were no longer needed and that the population wasn't there to require them. The integration of economy, education, elaborate political and judicial structures could no longer be supported and it disappeared. Without the core of Roman establishment to support it, society returned to simpler forms perhaps even declining in numbers
He also points out that the tale of carnage and barbarity that the history of the time portrays may not have been quite the reality of those living then, but more the convention of heroic poetry. Like many archaeologists, he questions the motives of the sources for the period. Little evidence in the form of burned and destroyed layers in settlements suggests to him that the time was as violent as it has been believed to have been. Instead, the movements of continental people into England are envisioned as having been of some long standing, beginning in the time of the Romans as a matter of defense against the same areas of military difficulty that presented William the Conqueror with problems in his time: Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. That the inhabitants of England moved back and forth between the island and the continent is surely suggested by the fact that when prospects arose for adventure and advancement in Europe during the decline of the Empire, the young men of England crossed the channel. That Vortigern was able to encourage continental people to move to England to settle and defend the land suggests that a great deal of exchange was possible. It also suggests that Vortegern felt he could trust these people and that his greatest concern for the safety of his society came from the same sources it had always come, from Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. Certainly the concept of a national identity in this region was well in the future, and allegiance was more to the person and character of an individual leader than to a set nationality. Even in Alfred's time almost 300 years later, individuals tended to collect at the court of a victorious and virtuous leader.
Alfred on the other hand is an historic figure about whom a fair amount of information is at hand. Professor Duckett does an excellent job of pulling together the events of his reign, making a coherent story of the defense of England against the Danes. Here we make an about face of some note. Instead of being the dreaded pagan outsiders, invaders of the island, and despoilers of British society, the Saxons are seen as the center of society, defenders of the realm, supporters of the faith against the pagan Vikings. In something like three hundred years, the Saxons have become the people of England. That there were battles between Britains and Saxons during Arthur's time is very likely. But there were battles between individual British kings as well. It was an age of struggle between leaders of various groups to see who would serve whom. It was sort of the "wild west" of Europe. By Alfred's time, these issues had largely been settled. The island had been subdivided into kingdoms, whose borders fluctuated with the abilities of the reigning monarchs vis a vis one another, but for the most part, society itself was stable. Enter the Vikings, however, and again things are up for grabs. It seems likely, although Duckett doesn't mention it, that the climate of the period had changed enough to bring about population movements. Certainly the political climate of the northern countries had changed, which she does mention, as Harold Fairhair began to reorganize them into his own large domain. This left a large body of people at lose ends and brought trouble to the shores of both the English isles and to the coasts and fluvial plains of Europe.
Duckett is an historian and classicist. As such she focuses on the written history of the Angles and Saxons. It would have been enjoyable to have had more information about the material remains from the period, a la Alcock, to throw the story of Alfred into greater relief against the background of what remains. One would especially like to have known if the violence and destruction was really as wide spread as suggested and if the people living in Dane held and Saxon held lands were really as distinctive as their national identities suggest. Were they treated any differently by their masters. Did they mix more freely than indicated, etc. This type of information is likely to come from archaeology than from written records, most of which come from biased sources.
Altogether two wonderful books that go a long way toward making a murky period clearer. Read them together.
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Duckett's book makes this ancient king three-dimentional.
Rating (5)
Date: 1997-10-09
40 out of 40 customers found this reveiw helpful
This book is outstanding. It draw a vibrant picture of a king whose life is otherwise obscured by the mists of time. Duckett presents a picture of a man who is simultaneously legendary and very human. This book is a wonderful choice for anyone interested in medieval times or the roots of British culture. Duckett's writing style is clean and consice, free of the usual scholarly jargon. It is a must for any student of history, amature or professional.
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by Eleanor Shipley Duckett
Product Group: Book
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (1958-10-15)
ISBN: 0226167798
EAN: 9780226167794
Dewy Decimal #: 942.0164092
Paperback: 228 pages
SKU: 090808013
Condition: Used: Good
Comments: ...no markings or highlighting...crease in cover
More Product Infomation
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
Filled with drama and action, here is the story of the ninth-century life and times of Alfred—warrior, conqueror, lawmaker, scholar, and the only king whom England has ever called "The Great." Based on up-to-date information on ninth-century history, geography, philosophy, literature, and social life, it vividly presents exciting views of Alfred in every stage of his long career and leaves the reader with a sharply-etched picture of the world of the Middle Ages.
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Customer Reviews
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A useful but limited narrative
Rating (3)
Date: 2008-09-12
Eleanor Shipley Duckett's biography is a useful introduction to Alfred the Great, the Wessex monarch who effectively created the kingdom of England. She begins with a description of the politics of eighth-century England, a world of maneuvering between regional kingdoms and invading Viking armies. It was in this dangerous and fluid environment that a young Alfred came of age, watching his father and two elder brothers deal with the threats Wessex faced before gaining the throne at the age of 22. From here her focus is on his struggles against the Danes, though other chapters also address his kingdom, his education, and his years after his many martial triumphs.
While enlightening, the book suffers from an excessive focus on narrative. As readable as Duckett's prose is, Her focus on recounting the chronological development of events too frequently comes at the cost of a clear understanding of Alfred's character and the significance of the developments of his life. Readers wanting to familiarize themselves with the basic details of Alfred's life will find this a useful and enjoyable book, but those seeking a more comprehensive analysis of the great Anglo-Saxon king would be better served by Richard Abels's more recent Alfred the Great: War, Culture and Kingship in Anglo-Saxon England (The Medieval World).
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Great biography for a great figure in history
Rating (4)
Date: 2006-12-31
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
Duckett's biography of King Alfred is an enjoyable and interesting read. We are drawn a picture of Alfred that shows how great a king he was to overcome the Danes from what little he had left. Duckett takes us from when he was a boy to his death with a fluid grace not easily found in biographers and their writings. Additionally, Duckett does well in interpreting the many stories and legends and presenting them in a way to give a real picture of Alfred, one of what really happened and one of what the stories and legends of the time thought of him. Her short commentaries of the travails that befell the Continent at the hands of the Vikings added a lot of insight and perspective as well.
There did seem to be two chapters out of place. King Alfred and His Earlier Translations and Later Translations. Both, it would seem, are important to King Alfred's life since he devoted much of it to translating texts into his native tongue. But analyzing the meaning of the books as well as the lives of those author's whose books Alfred translated did nothing more than take up space and waste time. Granted, it is important and would have been a great appendix, but it didn't seem to fit into the style of biography that Duckett wrote.
I, too, as Duckett mentioned at the end, would have liked to have seen some of Alfred's flaws interspersed with his attributes. But this isn't something that one can find easily, leaving us relying on what is available, notably Asser's rendition of Alfred. That being said I would definitely recommend this biography to everyone. If it weren't for the two chapters on translation I would have rated this a five star.
4 stars.
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Read them together
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-08-29
4 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
I chose to read a book about King Arthur followed by one on Alfred the Great. Talk about putting the post Roman period into perspective!
Both books are old ones, Leslie Alcock's Arthur's Britain (1971) and Eleanor Shipley Duckett's Alfred The Great The King and his England (1956). Both are superb, but of the two, Alcock's is the more thorough. Although there are doubtless things which have come to light about the time period of the two, roughly 400-900 A.D., I suspect that the general content of the history of the period is still unchanged by virtue of the lack of any substantially new information.
For Arthur there is still little more than the later medieval legends that we still enjoy hearing to illuminate his character. Whether he was a Romanized Britain serving a local king in the fight against invading Angles, Saxons, Juts and others, or a king as he is described in the later chronicles, we will probably never know. Even whether he was one man or a composite is up for grabs, although Alcock makes no bones about where he stands on this issue. Arthur's significance in his own time was dictated by the needs and interests of the period; his significance in ours is his model of a true and heroic king. These two aspects have little to do with one another.
What Alcock does in lieu of concrete data on Arthur the man, is to define with great clarity the character of his time. Alcock is an archaeologist and it shows, for he brings to life the information produced from habitation and defensive sites in a way that makes silent stones speak. His study of the character of pottery finds, their distribution, source and manufacture through time, suggests that the England of Arthur's time had lost much of its native industry and returned to local cottage industry. The absence of coinage suggests that a money economy had evaporated as the Roman Empire pulled out of the country to defend itself closer to home. The failure of cities suggests that they were no longer needed and that the population wasn't there to require them. The integration of economy, education, elaborate political and judicial structures could no longer be supported and it disappeared. Without the core of Roman establishment to support it, society returned to simpler forms perhaps even declining in numbers
He also points out that the tale of carnage and barbarity that the history of the time portrays may not have been quite the reality of those living then, but more the convention of heroic poetry. Like many archaeologists, he questions the motives of the sources for the period. Little evidence in the form of burned and destroyed layers in settlements suggests to him that the time was as violent as it has been believed to have been. Instead, the movements of continental people into England are envisioned as having been of some long standing, beginning in the time of the Romans as a matter of defense against the same areas of military difficulty that presented William the Conqueror with problems in his time: Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. That the inhabitants of England moved back and forth between the island and the continent is surely suggested by the fact that when prospects arose for adventure and advancement in Europe during the decline of the Empire, the young men of England crossed the channel. That Vortigern was able to encourage continental people to move to England to settle and defend the land suggests that a great deal of exchange was possible. It also suggests that Vortegern felt he could trust these people and that his greatest concern for the safety of his society came from the same sources it had always come, from Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. Certainly the concept of a national identity in this region was well in the future, and allegiance was more to the person and character of an individual leader than to a set nationality. Even in Alfred's time almost 300 years later, individuals tended to collect at the court of a victorious and virtuous leader.
Alfred on the other hand is an historic figure about whom a fair amount of information is at hand. Professor Duckett does an excellent job of pulling together the events of his reign, making a coherent story of the defense of England against the Danes. Here we make an about face of some note. Instead of being the dreaded pagan outsiders, invaders of the island, and despoilers of British society, the Saxons are seen as the center of society, defenders of the realm, supporters of the faith against the pagan Vikings. In something like three hundred years, the Saxons have become the people of England. That there were battles between Britains and Saxons during Arthur's time is very likely. But there were battles between individual British kings as well. It was an age of struggle between leaders of various groups to see who would serve whom. It was sort of the "wild west" of Europe. By Alfred's time, these issues had largely been settled. The island had been subdivided into kingdoms, whose borders fluctuated with the abilities of the reigning monarchs vis a vis one another, but for the most part, society itself was stable. Enter the Vikings, however, and again things are up for grabs. It seems likely, although Duckett doesn't mention it, that the climate of the period had changed enough to bring about population movements. Certainly the political climate of the northern countries had changed, which she does mention, as Harold Fairhair began to reorganize them into his own large domain. This left a large body of people at lose ends and brought trouble to the shores of both the English isles and to the coasts and fluvial plains of Europe.
Duckett is an historian and classicist. As such she focuses on the written history of the Angles and Saxons. It would have been enjoyable to have had more information about the material remains from the period, a la Alcock, to throw the story of Alfred into greater relief against the background of what remains. One would especially like to have known if the violence and destruction was really as wide spread as suggested and if the people living in Dane held and Saxon held lands were really as distinctive as their national identities suggest. Were they treated any differently by their masters. Did they mix more freely than indicated, etc. This type of information is likely to come from archaeology than from written records, most of which come from biased sources.
Altogether two wonderful books that go a long way toward making a murky period clearer. Read them together.
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Duckett's book makes this ancient king three-dimentional.
Rating (5)
Date: 1997-10-09
40 out of 40 customers found this reveiw helpful
This book is outstanding. It draw a vibrant picture of a king whose life is otherwise obscured by the mists of time. Duckett presents a picture of a man who is simultaneously legendary and very human. This book is a wonderful choice for anyone interested in medieval times or the roots of British culture. Duckett's writing style is clean and consice, free of the usual scholarly jargon. It is a must for any student of history, amature or professional.
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by Eleanor Shipley Duckett
Product Group: Book
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (1958-10-15)
ISBN: 0226167798
EAN: 9780226167794
Dewy Decimal #: 942.0164092
Paperback: 228 pages
SKU: 090808013
Condition: Used: Good
Comments: ...no markings or highlighting...crease in cover
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
Filled with drama and action, here is the story of the ninth-century life and times of Alfred—warrior, conqueror, lawmaker, scholar, and the only king whom England has ever called "The Great." Based on up-to-date information on ninth-century history, geography, philosophy, literature, and social life, it vividly presents exciting views of Alfred in every stage of his long career and leaves the reader with a sharply-etched picture of the world of the Middle Ages.
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Customer Reviews
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A useful but limited narrative
Rating (3)
Date: 2008-09-12
Eleanor Shipley Duckett's biography is a useful introduction to Alfred the Great, the Wessex monarch who effectively created the kingdom of England. She begins with a description of the politics of eighth-century England, a world of maneuvering between regional kingdoms and invading Viking armies. It was in this dangerous and fluid environment that a young Alfred came of age, watching his father and two elder brothers deal with the threats Wessex faced before gaining the throne at the age of 22. From here her focus is on his struggles against the Danes, though other chapters also address his kingdom, his education, and his years after his many martial triumphs.
While enlightening, the book suffers from an excessive focus on narrative. As readable as Duckett's prose is, Her focus on recounting the chronological development of events too frequently comes at the cost of a clear understanding of Alfred's character and the significance of the developments of his life. Readers wanting to familiarize themselves with the basic details of Alfred's life will find this a useful and enjoyable book, but those seeking a more comprehensive analysis of the great Anglo-Saxon king would be better served by Richard Abels's more recent Alfred the Great: War, Culture and Kingship in Anglo-Saxon England (The Medieval World).
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Great biography for a great figure in history
Rating (4)
Date: 2006-12-31
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
Duckett's biography of King Alfred is an enjoyable and interesting read. We are drawn a picture of Alfred that shows how great a king he was to overcome the Danes from what little he had left. Duckett takes us from when he was a boy to his death with a fluid grace not easily found in biographers and their writings. Additionally, Duckett does well in interpreting the many stories and legends and presenting them in a way to give a real picture of Alfred, one of what really happened and one of what the stories and legends of the time thought of him. Her short commentaries of the travails that befell the Continent at the hands of the Vikings added a lot of insight and perspective as well.
There did seem to be two chapters out of place. King Alfred and His Earlier Translations and Later Translations. Both, it would seem, are important to King Alfred's life since he devoted much of it to translating texts into his native tongue. But analyzing the meaning of the books as well as the lives of those author's whose books Alfred translated did nothing more than take up space and waste time. Granted, it is important and would have been a great appendix, but it didn't seem to fit into the style of biography that Duckett wrote.
I, too, as Duckett mentioned at the end, would have liked to have seen some of Alfred's flaws interspersed with his attributes. But this isn't something that one can find easily, leaving us relying on what is available, notably Asser's rendition of Alfred. That being said I would definitely recommend this biography to everyone. If it weren't for the two chapters on translation I would have rated this a five star.
4 stars.
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Read them together
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-08-29
4 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
I chose to read a book about King Arthur followed by one on Alfred the Great. Talk about putting the post Roman period into perspective!
Both books are old ones, Leslie Alcock's Arthur's Britain (1971) and Eleanor Shipley Duckett's Alfred The Great The King and his England (1956). Both are superb, but of the two, Alcock's is the more thorough. Although there are doubtless things which have come to light about the time period of the two, roughly 400-900 A.D., I suspect that the general content of the history of the period is still unchanged by virtue of the lack of any substantially new information.
For Arthur there is still little more than the later medieval legends that we still enjoy hearing to illuminate his character. Whether he was a Romanized Britain serving a local king in the fight against invading Angles, Saxons, Juts and others, or a king as he is described in the later chronicles, we will probably never know. Even whether he was one man or a composite is up for grabs, although Alcock makes no bones about where he stands on this issue. Arthur's significance in his own time was dictated by the needs and interests of the period; his significance in ours is his model of a true and heroic king. These two aspects have little to do with one another.
What Alcock does in lieu of concrete data on Arthur the man, is to define with great clarity the character of his time. Alcock is an archaeologist and it shows, for he brings to life the information produced from habitation and defensive sites in a way that makes silent stones speak. His study of the character of pottery finds, their distribution, source and manufacture through time, suggests that the England of Arthur's time had lost much of its native industry and returned to local cottage industry. The absence of coinage suggests that a money economy had evaporated as the Roman Empire pulled out of the country to defend itself closer to home. The failure of cities suggests that they were no longer needed and that the population wasn't there to require them. The integration of economy, education, elaborate political and judicial structures could no longer be supported and it disappeared. Without the core of Roman establishment to support it, society returned to simpler forms perhaps even declining in numbers
He also points out that the tale of carnage and barbarity that the history of the time portrays may not have been quite the reality of those living then, but more the convention of heroic poetry. Like many archaeologists, he questions the motives of the sources for the period. Little evidence in the form of burned and destroyed layers in settlements suggests to him that the time was as violent as it has been believed to have been. Instead, the movements of continental people into England are envisioned as having been of some long standing, beginning in the time of the Romans as a matter of defense against the same areas of military difficulty that presented William the Conqueror with problems in his time: Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. That the inhabitants of England moved back and forth between the island and the continent is surely suggested by the fact that when prospects arose for adventure and advancement in Europe during the decline of the Empire, the young men of England crossed the channel. That Vortigern was able to encourage continental people to move to England to settle and defend the land suggests that a great deal of exchange was possible. It also suggests that Vortegern felt he could trust these people and that his greatest concern for the safety of his society came from the same sources it had always come, from Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. Certainly the concept of a national identity in this region was well in the future, and allegiance was more to the person and character of an individual leader than to a set nationality. Even in Alfred's time almost 300 years later, individuals tended to collect at the court of a victorious and virtuous leader.
Alfred on the other hand is an historic figure about whom a fair amount of information is at hand. Professor Duckett does an excellent job of pulling together the events of his reign, making a coherent story of the defense of England against the Danes. Here we make an about face of some note. Instead of being the dreaded pagan outsiders, invaders of the island, and despoilers of British society, the Saxons are seen as the center of society, defenders of the realm, supporters of the faith against the pagan Vikings. In something like three hundred years, the Saxons have become the people of England. That there were battles between Britains and Saxons during Arthur's time is very likely. But there were battles between individual British kings as well. It was an age of struggle between leaders of various groups to see who would serve whom. It was sort of the "wild west" of Europe. By Alfred's time, these issues had largely been settled. The island had been subdivided into kingdoms, whose borders fluctuated with the abilities of the reigning monarchs vis a vis one another, but for the most part, society itself was stable. Enter the Vikings, however, and again things are up for grabs. It seems likely, although Duckett doesn't mention it, that the climate of the period had changed enough to bring about population movements. Certainly the political climate of the northern countries had changed, which she does mention, as Harold Fairhair began to reorganize them into his own large domain. This left a large body of people at lose ends and brought trouble to the shores of both the English isles and to the coasts and fluvial plains of Europe.
Duckett is an historian and classicist. As such she focuses on the written history of the Angles and Saxons. It would have been enjoyable to have had more information about the material remains from the period, a la Alcock, to throw the story of Alfred into greater relief against the background of what remains. One would especially like to have known if the violence and destruction was really as wide spread as suggested and if the people living in Dane held and Saxon held lands were really as distinctive as their national identities suggest. Were they treated any differently by their masters. Did they mix more freely than indicated, etc. This type of information is likely to come from archaeology than from written records, most of which come from biased sources.
Altogether two wonderful books that go a long way toward making a murky period clearer. Read them together.
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Duckett's book makes this ancient king three-dimentional.
Rating (5)
Date: 1997-10-09
40 out of 40 customers found this reveiw helpful
This book is outstanding. It draw a vibrant picture of a king whose life is otherwise obscured by the mists of time. Duckett presents a picture of a man who is simultaneously legendary and very human. This book is a wonderful choice for anyone interested in medieval times or the roots of British culture. Duckett's writing style is clean and consice, free of the usual scholarly jargon. It is a must for any student of history, amature or professional.
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by Margot Palmgren
Product Group: Book
Publisher: PublishAmerica (2006-02-20)
ISBN: 1424105757
EAN: 9781424105755
Dewy Decimal #: 920
Paperback: 344 pages
SKU: 060208007
Condition: Used: Good
Comments: ...No noticeable Underlining or Highlighting...
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Product Description
Seven-year-old Anneliese sees a synagogue burn in Frankfurt. Neighbors disappear. German soldiers parade, the war starts, bombs fall. Fear is constant. Evacuation camps. Indentured servitude. A young child grows up fast in a country under war. Loving grandparents support her. She survives while many others do not. The bombing stops, artillery starts. American tanks. Fear is replaced by hunger. She returns to Frankfurt. School starts. With her new skills—typing, shorthand, and English—she helps support the family and seeks a better future for herself!
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Customer Reviews
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Anneliese
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-05-02
I loved this book. The author made you feel like you were living it too. It gave me a lot of insight into the feelings of the German people. What a tragedy for all of mankind. I really like the way this author puts her words together it make you feel like you are there. Jeanette Gardner
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Anneliese: A Child of War
Rating (5)
Date: 2006-03-06
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
This book is a must read for everyone. The author vividly describes her life as a child growing up in Germany during WWII under Hitler. Once you start reading you will not be able to put it down. This book needs to be shared with school children and adults everywhere!
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by Barry Paris
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Berkley Trade (2001-09-01)
ISBN: 0425182126
EAN: 9780425182123
Dewy Decimal #: 790
Paperback: 464 pages
Release Date: 2001-09-04
SKU: 052008062
Condition: Used: Good
Comments: ...No Underlining or Highlighting...edge wear on cover 333
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
The most ambitious and personal account ever written about Hollywood's most gracious star-Audrey Hepburn by Barry Paris is a "moving portrayal" (The New York Times Book Review) that truly captures the woman who captured our hearts...
With the insights of family and friends who never before spoke to a Hepburn biographer-and never-before-published photographs-Paris has created an in-depth portrait of the actress, from her childhood in Nazi-occupied Europe, through her legendary career, and into her UN ambassadorship.
"Rich and definitive...fascinating." (*Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
"Illuminates the complex inner life of the highest-paid actress of her time." (San Francisco Chronicle)
"Certainly [Paris's] account seems more personal than other recent biographies of Hepburn have been. In part, this may be because Paris had better access to family and friends, but he is also a very good writer, and his mix of anecdote and observation is just right." (Booklist)
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Amazon.com Review
Barry Paris loves Audrey Hepburn, and who can blame him? His exuberant profile of the movie star traces Hepburn's life from her childhood in the Netherlands (where she aided the Dutch resistence) through her Hollywood career (from her Oscar-winning performance in Roman Holiday to Steven Spielberg's Always). Paris, a veteran of Hollywood biography books, wants to free his readers of any false impressions that might sully the late star's reputation. The impression that Hepburn was a snob, he persuades us, was the result of an introverted character formed by her experiences during the war. This wartime experience both fed Hepburn's love of the spotlight and inspired a concern for the poor and powerless that compelled her to campaign for UNICEF from 1988 until her death in 1993. Some of the most fascinating material in this delightfully readable volume concerns the impact the ever-elegant Audrey Hepburn had on women's style and self-conception. If you don't already love her, Paris's book will at the least evoke admiration of her, if not enlist you in a movement for her beatification.
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Customer Reviews
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Riveting Bio Of a true legend
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-01-08
Having read most of the other books about Audrey Hepburn, a woman whom I respect and admired since my youth, I chose this particular one by Mr.Paris as the most engaging (besides the book by Sean Ferrer which I thought was essential). I could never tire of anything A.H., with that being said it was important to me that I had a sense of how she lived. This book was hard to put down and wasn't full of colorful writing like some of the other so-called biographies done on her. For me, it brought me closer to this person as if she were someone I knew personally and combined with her son's book provided me with an insight into the world that was Audrey. She was and still remains a huge inspiration for me, and this book should be read by every young 'actor' out there today. Kudos to Mr.Paris!
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Audrey Hepburn was a fair lady of stage and screen who is well served by Paris
Rating (3)
Date: 2005-11-03
2 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993) was born in Brussels the daughter of a Dutch woman and an English father. She was raised in Arnhem Holland suffering through the Nazi occupation. Audrey was a thin, sensitive child who excelled at ballet.
As a young woman she migrated to London appearing in British films until she was exploded into fame with her first US film
Roman Holiday (for which she won as Oscar as Best Actress)
Hepburn appeared in such films as "Charade"; "My Fair Lady"
(her singing voice being dubbed by Marni Nixon"; "Two for the
Road"; "Breakfast at Tiffanys"; "Sabrina: "Robin and Marion" :
"Wait Until Dark" and several other films.
Her gamin pixish face and figure was a revelation in the 50s era of Monroe, Ava Gardner; Sophia Loren and other well endowed film goddesses.
Audrey had a long but troubled marriage with stolid Mel Ferrer and had other husbands and a few affairs along the way most notably with film star Albert Finney.
She worked with such noted directors as Willie Wyler, George
Cukor and Stanley Donet. She lived in Switzerland in an isolated
village where she raised children and loved animals.
There is little dirt to plow in these pages1 Audrey was an
adorable and kind person! Her work with starving children on behalf of the UN is heartwarming.
Barry Paris (previous biographer of Louise Brooks and Greta
Garbo) does a fine job in this well documented biography.
The most exciting chapter deals with life in Holland during
the horrible Nazi occupation,
This is a good biography of the film star.
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A book so well researched and written that it flows like...
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-04-02
4 out of 8 customers found this reveiw helpful
A book so well researched and written that it flows like a meandering river. The prose is wonderful. Very difficult to stop reading the book until the reading is completed.
May Audrey Hepburn be in the Kingdom of God as I surely want to meet her and talk with her.
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A tribute to Audrey and to Barry Parris' writing skill
Rating (5)
Date: 2004-08-02
9 out of 10 customers found this reveiw helpful
What is the true test of a biographer's skill? Creating a riviting, insightful book about a subject who had no scandal in her life and who seems to have be beloved by everyone. Material that, in lesser hands, could have been saccherine or written with the usual "movie star bio" template is instead moving, wise, very informative, and beautifully written. Check out Mr. Paris' other biographies of Garbo and especially Louise Brooks for more great writing.
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Excellent
Rating (5)
Date: 2003-04-23
7 out of 9 customers found this reveiw helpful
A biographer shouldn't lower your opinion of the person they're writing about (as if you could ever
have a low opinion of Audrey Hepburn!) and Barry Paris certainly does a brilliant job of depicting
Audrey's life from age 15 until her death (age 64). The author blends his words so you don't loose
interest even once. The book has lots of quotes, from and about Audrey, and several pictures of
her throughout her life. There isn't a down side to this book, except for a few subjects where the author
should have elaborated on a bit more than he did. You can clearly see that Audrey was a truly
wonderful person, a real lady. After you read about what a hard childhood she had, in the middle
of WW2 and the miscarriages she suffered and basically being deprived of love from her parents,
it is amazing that she was still such a beautiful person, a beautiful soul. She traveled to countries to
help dying people and did things that few other people would do...she seems to have been an
angel, and certainly was to several people. This is a book that you don't need to read before buying, it's wonderful.
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by (Editor: Robert P. Kennedy) (Editor: Kim Paffenroth) (Editor: John Doody)
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Lexington Books (2006-01-28)
ISBN: 0739113844
EAN: 9780739113844
Dewy Decimal #: 809
Paperback: 420 pages
SKU: 081608020
Condition: Used: Good
Comments: ...No noticeable Underlining or Highlighting...light shelf wear on cover
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Product Description
The influence of Christianity on literature has been great throughout history, as has been the influence of the great Christian Augustine. Augustine and Literature explores Augustine's influence on literature from the Middle Ages to the present day and discusses the implications of expressing Augustine's religious themes both in literature and in more directly theological works.
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by Paramhansa Yogananda
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Crystal Clarity Publishers (2005-12-25)
ISBN: 1565892127
EAN: 9781565892125
Dewy Decimal #: 294.5092
Paperback: 516 pages
Edition: 2
SKU: 102008022
Condition: Used: Good
Comments: ...no markings or highlighting...edge wear on cover
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One of the Top 100 Spiritual Books of the Twentieth CenturyNew Bonus Materials added to this edition include The last chapter that Yogananda wrote covering the years 1946-1951 that wasnot available in the original edition. The eulogy that Yogananda wrote for Gandhi. A new afterword by Swami Kriyananda, one of Yogananda's closest disciples.This is a new edition, featuring previously unavailable material, of true spiritualclassic, Autobiography of a Yogi one of the best-selling eastern philosophytitles of all-time, with millions of copies sold, named one of the best and mostinfluential books of the 20th century.This highly prized verbatim reprinting of the original 1946 edition is theONLY one available free from textual changes made after Yoganandas death.This updated edition contains bonus materials, including a last chapter thatYogananda himself wrote in 1951, five years after the publication of the firstedition. It is the only version of this chapter available without posthumouschanges.Yogananda was the first yoga master of India whose mission it was to liveand teach in the West. His first-hand account of his life experiences includes childhoodrevelations, stories of his visits to saints and masters in India, and long-secretteachings of Self-realization that he made available to the Western reader.
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Customer Reviews
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Stolen Goods?
Rating (1)
Date: 2008-11-14
1 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
This is NOT THE REAL MCCOY! The Real McCoy is the orange copy published by Self-Realization Fellowship and has the footnotes that I got as much out of as the text. Many explaining the essential oneness of western and eastern religions through biblical passages, etc. This blue copy does not have those invaluable footnotes!
This author, J. Donald Waters (aka Swami Kriyananda), was expelled by the board of Self-Realization Fellowship in the 1950's. Self-Realization Fellowship is the only authentic organization that Paramahansa Yogananda himself established and worked tirelessly for. Kriyananda made off with Yogananda's writings and started publishing them himself under the name Crystal Clarity Publishers.
Anyone interested should investigate the differences between Yogananda's Self-Realization Fellowship and Kriyananda's Ananda. Also, I suggest one should further research why Kriyananda was asked to leave SRF and some of the subsequent trouble he has gotten himself into.
Yogananda's Self-Realization Fellowship organization continues to thrive and expand worldwide. I recommend only purchasing genuine, original, not-copied books published by Yogananda's Self-Realization Fellowship. They will have the name Self-Realization Fellowship inside as well as the SRF emblem (which is a star within a circle within a lotus).
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Changed my life
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-11-02
I can honestly say this book changed my life. A previous book, There is a River by Thomas Sugrue, changed my thinking but this one changed my behavior and my life completely. It is a must read for anyone who wants to move past theory and into the practice of a spiritual life.
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The Original, more material, more photos.
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-09-28
2 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
This is the first edition with more material and more photographs than the current edition.
It is in original and unedited form. If you have enjoyed the current edition of Autobiography of a Yogi, then treat yourself to this even more comprehensive version.
A truly magical book which will inspire and awe even the most cynical person.
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Excellent! Thank you seller!
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-08-18
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
It was a gift sent to someone else. They received it, and that's all I know. Thank you!
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Everyone interested in yoga should read this book.
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-07-19
10 out of 10 customers found this reveiw helpful
I bought this book to share. I already have a ragged copy, and wanted one in good condition for my library. Paramahansa's life story provides an intimate look into India's culture, and spiritual and mystical roots. An historic read, it contains an enormous amount of information and inspiration.
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by Malcolm x
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio (1992-10-01)
ISBN: 0671793667
EAN: 9780671793661
Dewy Decimal #: 320.54092
Audio Cassette
Edition: Abridged
SKU: 111908001
Condition: Used: Good
Comments: aug 4 audio tapes with the box showing some minor wear. up to date info for todays politics.
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Product Description
Through a life of passion and struggle, Malcolm X became one of the most influential figures of the 20th Century. In this riveting account, he tells of his journey from a prison cell to Mecca, describing his transition from hoodlum to Muslim minister. Here, the man who called himself "the angriest Black man in America" relates how his conversion to true Islam helped him confront his rage and recognize the brotherhood of all mankind. An established classic of modern America, "The Autobiography of Malcolm X was hailed by the New York Times as "Extraordinary. A brilliant, painful, important book." Still extraordinary, still important, this electrifying story has transformed Malcom X's life into his legacy. The strength of his words, the power of his ideas continue to resonate more than a generation after they first appeared.
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Amazon.com Review
Malcolm X's searing memoir belongs on the small shelf of great autobiographies. The reasons are many: the blistering honesty with which he recounts his transformation from a bitter, self-destructive petty criminal into an articulate political activist, the continued relevance of his militant analysis of white racism, and his emphasis on self-respect and self-help for African Americans. And there's the vividness with which he depicts black popular culture--try as he might to criticize those lindy hops at Boston's Roseland dance hall from the perspective of his Muslim faith, he can't help but make them sound pretty wonderful. These are but a few examples. The Autobiography of Malcolm X limns an archetypal journey from ignorance and despair to knowledge and spiritual awakening. When Malcolm tells coauthor Alex Haley, "People don't realize how a man's whole life can be changed by one book," he voices the central belief underpinning every attempt to set down a personal story as an example for others. Although many believe his ethic was directly opposed to Martin Luther King Jr.'s during the civil rights struggle of the '60s, the two were not so different. Malcolm may have displayed a most un-Christian distaste for loving his enemies, but he understood with King that love of God and love of self are the necessary first steps on the road to freedom. --Wendy Smith
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Customer Reviews
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Should be Required Reading!
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-11-09
This is a truly outstanding book. You don't have to like or agree with Malcolm X to learn from it. Martin Luther King Jr. was undoubtedly the more effective civil rights leader, and King's thought in many ways is more profound. But without Malcolm X, the true depth and meaning of the black American experience cannot be fully grasped, with all the brutality of racism - the injustice delivered in a land where democracy is promised. Malcolm X did tell it like it is - he lived and told the story of the black man's justifiable rage and disappointment. This book tells of Malcolm's own life of disillusionment - first with the life of crime, then with the Nation of Islam and Elijah Muhammad, until finally at the end of his life the deeper meaning of his Muslim religion and of racial justice began to dawn upon him. Tragically he was gunned down before he could remake the image of a militant black man, which twelve years of service in the Nation of Islam had given him. Malcolm X was an extraordinary man, and has truly a remarkable tale to be told. To remove the scars of racism, the reading and understanding of this book should be an essential journey towards bettering race relations, and alleviating racial misunderstanding. Obviously Malcolm was not right about everything, and confesses his own wrongs. But he also points quite vividly to the wrongs he faced as an African-American.
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A revelation.
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-11-06
Along with 'Souls of Black Folk'-W.E.B. DuBois, 'Invisible Man'-Ralph Ellison, and 'Visions for Black Men'-Naim Akbar...this book is required reading for all African men in America, as well as any other persons serious about getting past the 'race' question that continues to plague us as a nation.
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anglo-saxon reader
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-07-26
first off i want to thank malcolm x for his thoughts on race after visiting mecca.he saw that persons of all races got together to worship and were colorblind.i will see this man in heaven he saw past racism in america to be a great christian!also i would like to give a big F to public schools in america for not teaching everything about slavery and who was involved,for example it wasn't until i went to college to major in history that i learned the truth about slavery.the white man didn't just go to africa with a big gun and round up black people as slaves,they established trade with the local tribes who traded goods with tribal leaders who had their own slaves as spoils of war and traded them with the white man as just another trade good so the tribes that traded were africans tradeing off other africans to the white's.try to find this in high school history or elementary school history,not likely.it is true that some white slave owners treated slaves horribly and i'm sure african tribes even treated some of their slaves horribly also.wrong is wrong no matter what your skin looks like!slavery is wrong!racism is wrong!!!!! ! ! "everyone" should be able to live free and should be able to worship freely and have pride in their people without being called racist! i'm guilty of being white, i love my race,does this make me a racist! no i don't think so. LOVE,RED
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Important book of self discovery, resemption, and vindication
Rating (4)
Date: 2008-07-03
I read this book along time ago and still retain alot of what I learned from it. There is no beating around the bush in this from the beginning he tells of his life as it happened. He tells of an early career in crime to his time in prison and he does not attempt to sugarcoat anything. He does explain his reasoning for having done what he had done in his youth, but he does not claim to be innocent.
He did manage to find a better way to fight his enemies during his incarceration, and anyone who has ever seen any footage of Malcolm X will understand what I mean. The man was a very acticulate and confrontational speaker. He was the spark that ignited the engine of the civil rights movement in many respects. The civil rights movement began as far back as pre-civil war and was slow to develop with minor progress for each generation. Malcolm was the man brave enough to say enough and to make his voice heard over the many voices of the nation that tried to rise over him.
Here is a man that took it upon himself to correct a society that had become accepting of the crimes of their ancestors and simply ignored them. It is only a stonesthrow back in time if you think about it and yet it is painful to imagine people could be so cruel.
I recommend this to anyone who hasn't read it as it is an excellent book and is a document of the life of a man who managed to play a pivotal role in changing the way America viewed itself.
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I know something Malcolm didn't
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-06-07
Despite the dispiriting revelation that this book was almost totally written by Alex Haley, "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" remains one of my favorite books. Which is a little strange, since his well-known struggles with civil rights, the police, Black identity, and Islam have little or no relevance to my life. Sorry.
The part of this book that affects me most deeply is where Malcolm is in prison educating himself, studying on the floor of his cell in the dim night light. I can't think of another tale about the birth of an autodidact and the rewards of reading that is as uplifting and memorable as Malcolm's. I first read this book about twenty years ago, and that's the part that always sticks with me: the power of books to change your life, regardless of who you are or what you've done. And much of the rest sticks with me too, for example the poignant case of "West Indian Archie."
I would like to advise, however, that you buy this edition: Autobiography of Malcolm X (Penguin Modern Classics), rather than the Ballantine edition, as the binding on the latter has proven unreliable, to say the least. I have gone through three different copies of the Ballantine edition of Malcolm X and the binding has fallen apart on all three of them -- to the point where the covers have come completely off, even though I don't really mistreat books. It can't just be bad luck.
Malcolm X was said to have been a formidable debater, yet it's curious to me that none of his opponents ever made the obvious, unanswerable point: that whatever crimes and horrors the West can be charged with vis-à-vis the African slave trade, those of Islam have been even more extensive and bl | | | |