I've never read a Jackie Calhoun book, so I decided to try this one to see how I'd like the author. The book starts off pretty well by bringing you into the frantic goings on of the bicycle accident. But from then on I felt like the book was more about how a broken neck gets mended than about the relationships between the women. I started getting bored with all the hospital details, but read on hoping for more personality details. But even to the end of the book I never got a good idea of what kind of personality each character had, not to mention there were too many characters. I really enjoy getting into characters' heads, to see what kind of person they are and how they react to different situations. This book seemed to consist of lots and lots of short scenes connected choppily together, which probably helped to give it a fragmented feel that is hard to feel close to or identify with. I was sorely dissappointed and am very unlikely to be buying any more Jackie Calhoun books.

I can not tell you how close to home this book has been to me, it was like reading my life. I have read this and all of her other books, can't wait for the next ones to come out after I have finished her books.

In this outing, Calhoun introduces several characters each carrying their own brand of baggage. The book's central character is Danny, newly divorced and newly attracted to women. Her life is complicated by Maureen, Chris, and her best friend since grade school, Kara. The ebb and flow of Danny's relationships with these women is the plot of the book.

Calhoun doesn't skimp on the secondary characters either. There's the gay couple who ostensibly open a bed & breakfast but it caters primarily to AIDS patients and there is the Wisconsin scenery.

Calhoun is a very good writer who has the talent to be an even better writer if she would stretch to write more complicated plots. Granted, I've only read three of her books, but the characters, while well-drawn in each book, are interchangeable. For instance, Danny could be the central character in any of Calhoun's books - in other words, the names change, but the story remains the same. Her publisher should do Calhoun and her readers a favor and let Calhoun stretch her talents.

As someone who has read all of Jackie Calhoun's books, I would have to rate this as better than most of them. The story is more detailed and develops over a period of months. This allows the characters to present themselves more fully and the outcome of the book isn't obvious from the beginning. At one point you will wonder how exactly is Danny going to figure out her situation with Maureen, Kara and Chris. And how long can she keep her numerous "evenings out" and what's really going on during them secret from her mother and daughter. It's a pleasant short read, full of sexy passages, and not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

John Niven, professor emeritus of American History at the Claremont Graduate School, has shed new light on a statesman that history has long viewed as just another inconsistent headstrong Southerner, John C. Calhoun. Niven convinces the reader that this prominent politician of the antebellum south was much more consistent and levelheaded in both his public and private lives than his typical portrayal as a protean, stubborn hot-head from South Carolina would suggest. A lifelong advocate of the South, John C. Calhoun served as a member of Congress at the time of the War of 1812, secretary of war under James Monroe, vice president with John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, secretary of state under John Tyler, and then as a senator from South Carolina until he died in 1850. The key to Niven's success in bringing to life to this "cast iron man" is drawing on Calhoun's personal life and experiences in order to gain persuasive insight into the motives and stances of his political career. (back cover) Instead of telling the classic tale of Calhoun's shift from nationalism, during the War of 1812 and the tariff of 1816, to sectionalism and states' rights in later years, on the issues of the protective tariff and slavery, Niven convincingly exerts the original contention that Calhoun had always stood behind individual liberty and states rights. In Calhoun's view, as supported by his own papers, his apparent nationalistic support of the war and the tariff of 1816 was actually an effort to "provide for the common defense and to utilize the resources of all to strengthen the states as individual entities." (p. 127) When national policies began to benefit northern states at the expense of his home, the South, is when his states' rights sentiment began to manifest itself as sectionalism. The weakness of Niven's otherwise masterful biography is that "as a northerner, born and bred in New York and Connecticut," Niven is never able to completely shake his own predisposition against slavery and present Calhoun's feelings on the issue as being valid views with their own arsenal of support. (p. xv) Although he obviously attempts to be completely objective, Niven's own views show through in his portrayal of the slavery problem as Calhoun's resistance against the antislavery movement as opposed to the antislavery movement threatening Calhoun's southern way of life and ingrained teachings. John Niven's somewhat unconventional view of the career and motives of one of the leading spokesmen for the Old South, John C. Calhoun, is convincingly and understandably expressed in this original biography. He succeeds in depicting Calhoun as a very consistent man with a humanity and complexity entirely devoted to the preservation of the South.

In his opening remarks John Niven makes the promise that he would not undertake psychoanalysis of John C.Calhoun, Much to his credit, he is true to his word. What Niven has delivered is an eminently readable and straightforward account of South Carolina's greatest political figure. We forget all that he did: senator, secretary of war, secretary of state, and vice president, in a distinguished career that began in the early days of Madison's presidency and concluded during the Taylor-Fillmore administration, a span of nearly four decades.

Niven's disclaimer, however, is telling. There is a tendency to use Calhoun's career as a sort of national inkblot. For constitutional scholars and ideologues of many stripes Calhoun's writings survive as either the last great stand of states rights or as a subversive manifesto for the tragic secession that would follow. For politicians and observers of human behavior, Calhoun is either the consummate patriot or his own worst enemy.

From the data Niven provides, it can be said that while Calhoun may have been eccentric, he was not crazy. Everyone born in primitive eighteenth century America survived with a history, and Calhoun, born in 1782, was no exception. His family and his colony shared a history of terrible suffering at the hands of the British [those were Calhoun's people slaughtered in Mel Gibson's "The Patriot."] Calhoun himself was orphaned as a young teen and appears to have spent a studious but lonely existence until he studied law at Yale under the famous Timothy Dwight.

Calhoun arrived home with his diploma just in time to ride a wave of strong Carolina resistance against the Virginia-New York axis that seemed to control presidential elections. This handsome, passionate, articulate favorite son soon found himself elected to Congress where he naturally became a leading advocate of war against the hated British. On June 18, 1812, Calhoun and other hawks got their war, but the thoughtful Calhoun quickly ascertained that the United States was woefully unprepared. Calhoun regretted his impetuousness, and nothing would absolve his guilt for this nasty war.

Calhoun would do penance for his sins by serving as Secretary of War under Monroe. Niven commends him for an outstanding tenure during which Calhoun reformed the army's purchasing policies, developed stronger defense outposts in the west, and crafted an almost enlightened Indian policy. An ambitious man, Calhoun not unreasonably expected his War Department success to catapult him toward bigger and better things.

But here one of the major themes of the book emerges: Calhoun was an unlucky politician. It was his bad fortune to reach his prime concurrently with an unusually large class of outstanding statesmen: Henry Clay, William Crawford, John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Andrew Jackson, and Martin Van Buren, to name a few. While he could console himself with the role of "everybody's favorite second" in the 1824 election, that convoluted contest left him tainted goods in the eyes of many, and an outsider in the Adams cabinet to boot.

Calhoun reluctantly threw his lot with Jackson in 1828, but by this date the South Carolinian was having long thoughts about his home region. Cotton prices were low, and protective tariffs seemed to him to exact a crushingly heavy toll from southern growers like himself. And although he shared some of Clay's enthusiasms for internal improvements, most notably transportation systems for the inner reaches of the Carolinas, Calhoun became increasingly suspicious and hostile of the federal government, dubious about its ability and will to protect slavery and Calhoun's idyllic picture of the agricultural southern life. A highly sensitive man, he internalized what he saw as the political treachery of Clay, Van Buren, and especially Crawford, who raised Calhoun-baiting to an art form, for reasons never precisely spelled out.

Calhoun began to write prodigiously on the subject of states rights and federal encroachments. As Niven observes, his writings were alternately brilliant and contradictory. Potboiler states rights speeches and pamphlets were common in America as the young nation sorted itself out. But how far could a politician really go on the matter of a state's autonomy? Until the Jackson era there seemed to have been a gentleman's agreement that the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions represented the boundary of political good taste. Calhoun crossed that line in his defense of nullification, increasingly preoccupied by perceived threats to his beloved South Carolina, In doing so Calhoun lost his national political base and a sense of the national pulse. No longer viable as even a regional candidate for the presidency, he assisted President Tyler by his skillful negotiating with Great Britain on the Oregon border question. But he objected to the Mexican War, not on humanitarian grounds but because he feared the socioeconomic consequences of the acquisition of Mexican territory, i.e., new free soil states. He was correct in his assessment that the consequences of the Mexican War would bring political turmoil to the United States. He had few horses to trade on the floor of congress as the Wilmot Proviso was debated, but his style till the end was magnificent.

From Niven's account it is fair to say that Calhoun was never a universally recognized spokesman for the South during his own lifetime. The Richmond Junto despised him. Unionists were still a majority in the South at the time of his death in 1850. Moderate southern businessmen even in his home state found his philosophy antiquated and at times deleterious to their state's economy. Many found him unbearably pedantic. Only later, as the nation polarized, would his political philosophy become a revered creed for those who dared to think the unthinkable.

Niven's work is a fine presentation for the casual reader and a more than adequate primer for those eager to delve into the mind and works of the consummate antebellum apostle of states' rights.

This romance features a large cast of characters including Jenny, recovering from the death of her lover, Rita, recovering from the death of her parents, and Pam, recovering from leaving her lover. Two of these women get together but only after the other seduces one of them.

Sorting the characters out is, initially, difficult. I couldn't figure out why until I realized that they are, essentially, interchangeable. Beyond that, there isn't much of a story line.

Despite the book's shortcomings, I enjoyed the author's writing, and wish she'd try a more difficult plot in one of her future books. I'll try her other books in case this was just a fluke, but I hope she tries to challenge herself. Her locale descriptions are wonderfully drawn - so much so that you'll be hunting for a sweater as fall turns into winter in the book even if you're sitting in 100 degree weather.

This was my first JC book. It was light and easy reading. The intimate moments between her characters were sketchy and left plenty to ones imagination. Not a get "hot and bothered" kind of read but enjoyable just the same.

I adore Diana Palmer for the most part. I can't relate to the "modern" heroines that have been coming out of books in recent years and hers are usually old fashioned and virginal and the men bring them out of their shells. I have a similar personality to those basic qualities. But there is a such thing as being too stuck on the same story.

First of all, does she watch soap operas and think that's how people really talk? I have never once said to a man, "It's so sweet!" when being kissed and yet every one of her romantic characters says it at least once in every book I've ever read by her. And every hero I've ever read by her calls the heroine "little one". These women are innocent to the point of being ridiculous! Particularly Shelby who was the eldest and the most immature. I couldn't figure out why a guy like Justin would even be interested in her! 27 years old is a bit old to be embarrassed and completely imbecilic about sex. Abby and Nell were reproductions of the same character and has anyone else noticed that in nearly every book DP writes her heroines end up staying home to have kids? And of course then they talk about it like it's the best thing that's ever happened to them. I love melodrama - it's why I continued to put up with her half-hearted efforts in every book over these past few years - but this is suspending disbelief a bit too much. And does she have an Oedipus complex? The heros treat the heroines almost like children, but then the heroines ACT like children. Still, at least the stories were interesting enough to get me engrossed even as I was wincing at the silliness of her heroines. That's why it got two stars rather than one.

Three great stories in one. This trilogy has a little bit of everything and will surely please every romance novel fan. In the first story, Abby, the not-quite step-sister of Calhoun and Justin spends her days dreaming of the playboy Calhoun. He finally sees her as a woman but still fights the idea of marrige. In the second story even though Justin believes six years ago Shelby broke their engagment to date a richer man, when bankruptcy hits her, Justin offers to marry Shelby to give her a roof over her head. He fears intimacy with her because he doesn't want to risk his heart again and she fears it with him because he loses control around her. But, in the end, they cannot resist each other. In the final story Nell believes herself unlovable and unattractive men but Tyler is bound to set her straight. Overall a great novel

Well this is six years and eight months later and these stories still have the same appeal.

Calhoun is 32, with a great build?, blond streak hair and extremely handsome with Abby, his ward just 3 months shy of 21.
Justin is 37, tall dark and rugged and Shelby Jacob is 27 with black hair and green eyes [just like her brother, Tyler].
You can see that all the men have issues and the women [Oh God forbid, according to you] are virgins.

Such a refreshing pattern after all the immoral and progressive? women being written about. You do not get the impression that these women devalued their virginity or were easy and available to any man. I will admit that I am ashamed of the general run of the mill, so-called women of today.

These stories were originally written in the Desire series, therefore the length of the story was limited and not enough space given for expanding the story line. All in all, not bad for '88.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED for very refreshing stories with attempts but no bed hopping. [grin]Thank God. Has anyone got a cover they would part with? Mine from 94 is entirely different. Love them cowboys.

I found this book very hard to read, since the author jumped back and forth continuously from past to present. Not only that, but he would make a statement and then go off on a tanget and back it up with two or three paragraphs worth of filler; sometimes making a comment that would give you a glimpse into either the past or the future, and sometimes not, thus making it hard to follow. As for the content, I was not impressed. Here is a 35 year-old man who emotionally hurts his mother, wife, and daughter over and over again, all the while condemning himself and saying he realizes what he's doing to them is wrong, but he can't seem to help himself. However, if the author's literary goal is to get the reader to read the whole book, then he was successful in that. As hard as I found this book to read and follow sometimes, I saw it through to the end just to see how it would turn out. Unfortunately, it was not the type of ending that made the time and effort of reading the book worthwhile. I thought it was very disappointing, to say the least.

Reynolds Price writes of incest and pedoohilia in such a courtly style that I had to re-read certain passages to verify the recitation of unspeakable acts committed on children by people whom they trusted. The "hero" is not a likeable person and it is difficult to comprehend how his mother, wife and daughter continue to give him so many "second" chances. His weaknesses are apparent, as is his awareness of the hurt that he inflicts; however, he doesn't redeem himself by being aware since he continues to pursue his own desires even while knowing how hurtful these actions are. Reynolds Price is an author I have liked for many years. He doesn't fear to tread where others might, but his style is under-stated and very southern in tone so that the reader is sometimes taken unaware. This is not his best effort, but I will continue to read what he writes.

It is just a matter of opinion but i didn't like this book. I guess insest is a touchy subject for me, and I didn't care to read about it. THe book was well written. If you want to read a book that goes straight to your heart, read Stolen Moments by Barbara Jeanne Fisher. . .It is a beautiful story of unrequited love. . .for certain the love story of the nineties. I intended to give the book a quick read, but I got so caught up in the story that I couldn't put the book down. From the very beginning, I was fully caught up in the heart-wrenching account of Julie Hunter's battle with lupus and her growing love for Don Lipton. This love, in the face of Julie's impending death, makes for a story that covers the range of human emotions. The touches of humor are great, too, they add some nice contrast and lighten things a bit when emotions are running high. I've never read a book more deserving of being published. It has rare depth. Julie's story will remind your readers that life and love are precious and not to be taken for granted. It has had an impact on me, and for that I'm grateful. Stolen Moments is written with so much sensitivity that it made me want to cry. It is a spellbinder. What terrific writing. Barbara does have an exceptional gift! This book was edited by Lupus specialist Dr. Matt Morrow too, and has the latest information on that disease. ..A perfect gift for someone who started college late in life, fell in love too late in life, is living with any illness, or trying to understand a loved one who is. . .A gift to be cherished forever.

I taught from an earlier edition of this book at Ivy Tech in Bloomington, Indiana while working on a PhD at Indiana University. Ivy Tech had already selected this text. Too bad. While that was around 1994, I can still recall a number of FACTUAL ERRORS. I had to tell my students that the text was wrong. Among the errors: The clear implication (though not explicitly stated) that the algebraic numbers included all the reals - that is they didn't even seem to be aquainted with the transedentals; there was another error regarding conditional probabilities... I can't recall exactly, but I can remember showing the errors to fellow doctoral students (now at UN, Reno and UC, Davis) for a good laugh. What were the reviewers doing? I guess they're a bunch of incompetents as well. To the publisher: Have some real mathematicians review math books.

I have been teaching out of Angel & Porter for the last three years. It has quite a few good examples, though I agree with the first reviewer's comment that it does need more challenging problems.

Among the topics I have covered are: inductive reasoning, set concepts, symbolic logic, truth tables, algebra, applied geometry, probability, statistics, and mathematics of finance. Though the examples are laid out fairly well for those who are mathematically inclined, the teacher who happens to have quite a few students with weak mathematical skills is often finding himself or herself in situations of having to create ways to become an effective expositor of mathematical theorems and applications. In other words, by trying to explain what the authors are providing in their examples, the instructor is frequently shouldering the added burden of making this book come to life not only from a mathematical perspective but also from a communicative standpoint.

On a positive note, however, there are several excellent applications, and the range of topics is quite broad. Oftentimes there is a gap between the level of advanced high school mathematics and that of a four-year university that is so serious that even a student who performed A's in high school will struggle in the type of college math course he or she is placed in. Fortunately, Angel and Porter have been able to fill in quite a few of the missing pieces.

This book does the job of teaching some mathematics to those with liberal-arts majors. However, over at Wayne State, we are constantly bemoaning the lack of extra problems for students to practice what they have learned (especially in light of the fact that we cover only half of the chapters of this book in a single one semester course). This is especially apparent with the probability and statistics chapters. Overall I can see this text being a commendable effort on the part of Angel and Porter to bring mathematics to those who would normally shun it.

In this outing, Calhoun introduces Joan McKenzie, living alone, holding down two jobs and attracted to her life-long best friend, Diane. While on the surface she acknowledges that a relationship with Diane is impossible, she can't seem to establish a committed relationship with another woman.

Calhoun is a talented writer with finely drawn characters. Unfortunately, you only need to read one or two books by Calhoun to know what the plots of all her books will be. In each book, there is the main character who is attracted to her best friend who is not interested so the main character turns to other women for physicality and a gay man for a secondary friendship.

Calhoun needs to stretch her talents to be the best she can be. If she does, that's when we'll have some very, very good lesbian novels come out of the mainstream lesbian publishers.

Calhoun is a good writer and because I grew up in Wisconsin I enjoy reading about lesbians in settings I grew up in. I ordered Birds of a Feather after enjoying the novel By Reservation Only. That book had a happy ending. Birds does not. It leaves its women unable to form relationships for realistic and common reasons. But as someone who is like these women, myself, I look to the fictional world for successful everlasting bonding. So instead of escape, I got a book to identify with and think about.

A starter book for readers and writers of lesbian fiction.

Hard to really get close to the characters - I finished it mainly for my own sense of closure. Viable situation, but the book needed more character development. Seemed like a story sketched out pretty well but not worked fully. The antagonist was not "large enough," and the steps taken to counter the antagonist were naive.

I will probably read more Jackie Calhoun, but more from her reputation than this particular book.

This is definitely NOT one of Jackie Calhoun's best books. Calhoun creates one of the great mistakes in literature, you don't care about the characters at the end of the book. Carly, who discovered her lebianism late in life, comes home to find her younger lover in bed with another woman. She runs off to live in the family home at Tamarak Creek with her gay brother and meets the new neighbors, Serena, also a lesbian, and her abusive husband Jess. Carly and Serena start an affair, threatened and made violent by Jess. Reads like pretty powerful stuff. The problem is that you can't develop any connection to the characters and there's no passion except when Jess is nearly killing one or both of the women. It took me three days to plod through 204 pages. For a contrast, read Love's Melody Lost by Radcliffe. Ironically, it's only 187 pages, but, by the end of it, you really care about what is going to happen to the central characters. Jackie Calhoun, who can be an excellent writer, should read that book to get herself back on track.

The Gilded Age by Charles C. Calhoun describes itself as a collection of essays on the origins of modern America. The book offers information on the various categories of people living in America during the so-called Gilded Age, a time of rapid change, a time of accumulation of vast fortunes, a time of growing social discontent. Editor Charles C. Calhoun collects the research of numerous scholars. Therefore the positions of industrialists, laborers, women, African Americans, Native Americans, farmers and politicians are all covered with equal enthusiasm. This is a good way to do it because the focus of the overall book is more inclusive and less narrowly focused. This allows the reader to form his or her own opinions on the data presented. Photographs and illustrations help to shed light upon the landscapes and lives of the characters living during the late 1800's and early 1900's. My favorite pictures are found in the chapter titled "Urbanizing America". There are some great shots of how our cities used to look. Overall the book is informative and you might find yourself saying, "Oh, so that is why things are the way they are today."