American-International Encyclopedic Cookbook
The American-International Encyclopedic Cookbook
Green gingham and great recipes!
An inspiration
fabulous guide to family literary travelThe books and sites included are:
The Adventures of Pinocchio, Tuscany, Italy
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Hannibal, Missouri and environs
And Now Miguel, Taos, New Mexico
Anne of Green Gables, Prince Edward Island, Canada
A Bear Called Paddington, London, England
The Black Stallion, Belmont Park, Long Island, New York
Brighty of the Grand Canyon, Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona
Child of the Owl, San Francisco, California
Eloise, New York City, New York
From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, New York
Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates, Haarlem Amsterdam and environs
Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, London, Windsor and Durham, England
Heidi, Graubunden, Switzerland
Hill of Fire, Paracutin Volcano, Michoacan, Mexico
Island of the Blue Dolphins, Channel Islands National Park, Ventura, California
Kidnapped, Isle of Mull, Scotland
Linnea in Monet's Garden, Paris and Giverny, France
Little House on the Prairie, De Smet, South Dakota
The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge, New York City
Little Women, Concord, Massachusetts
Madeline, Paris, France
Make Way for Ducklings, Boston, Massachusetts
Maybelle the Cable Car, San Francisco, California
Paddle-to-the-Sea, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada
The Pied Piper of Hamelin, Hamelin, Germany
Ramona Quimby, Age 8, Portland, Oregon
Song of the Swallows, San Juan Capistrano, California
The Tale of Peter Rabbit, The Lake District, England
The Watsons Go to Birmingham -- 1963, Birmingham, Alabama
Yolonda's Genius, Chicago, Illinois
You can tell moms wrote this book. It's entertaining AND practical. The material is fascinating, well written, and tells you everything you could want to know (except maybe where the bathrooms are located). The contact information makes this an invaluable resource. I hope the authors will continue to write more of these wonderful family travel guides.
Highest recommendation.
GRANDPARENT OF 10
the collected martin millar
Absolutely superb
original, witty and very cinematic
amazing insight
WRITING ON WRITINGAt last! A sensible rational book on the graffiti sub-culture. This book presents established sociological schools of thought uniquely re-interpreted in a reader-friendly down to earth methodology. Should be compulsary reading for any student of Culture or Sociology, or indeed anyone with an interest in this controversial artform.I think it would be enlightening reading for those who continue to make political mileage about the deviance of graffiti , and force them to examine the roots and different branches of the sub-culture. I only wish I'd owned it at the beginning of my degree course but will be fully utilising it in my last year of essays. It is rare to read a book which balances academic strength with such clarity on the little studied role of female participants of sub-cultures.
Unique and compellingTo cap off an already-essential book, Macdonald had the courtesy to hand the book back to the writers who contributed and helped. Their comments (in the back of the book) only enforce that this book is accurate and genuine - and for that alone, Macdonald should be applauded.
For anyone interested in graffiti - whether it's reading quotes about yard missions, or wanting to know the reasons behind why people write on trains and walls - this book is vital reading.
Perfect BalanceTHE BACHELORS has a lot of both--the "medium" Patrick is one of Spark's most chilling portraits of evil. The scheming Spiritualists resemble more typical Spark "villains" (like the literary circle in LOITERING WITH INTENT), but are perhaps even more harmless in and of themselves. However, unwittingly they touch on something far grimmer--Spark demolishes the Spiritualists by showing that the only thing worse than their nonsense is when they stumble upon something genuine.
The "good" bachelors' interactions with this group provide an entertaining and equally true view of things, preventing the chill from permeating the book.
Wickedly Funny, As Is The Norm For Ms. Spark
Great Tools for Dream Interpretation
Sweet Dreams
The Day Comes AliveBut it is much more than history. It is a story of people and how several strong minded people, especially Mr. Bodenwein, shaped the paper into a community institution and made a difference. It is a story of the survival of The Day as an independent institution as it weaved its way through the Depression, two world wars, the death of Mr. Bodenwein, disinherited heirs, the paper's subsequent bureaucracy, the machine politics of this very ethnic town, the Internal Revenue Service and its reinvention as a modern institution.
Greg Stone, a native son, made New London come alive through his many anecdotes and opinions. And importantly, The Day (its writers, its management and directors) deserves accolades for enabling Greg Strong to write this book. No wonder it is the paper of record for New London and the surrounding county. As a former Day paperboy and New London native who reads theday.com from his desk in Los Angeles, thank you.
A "Day" to RememberSometimes you approach a book with great anticipation, and at other times, with an equally great apprehension. I approached THE DAY PAPER, by Gregory N. Stone, with both of those two mind sets in full operational mode. I was eager to read it, because the history of any daily paper that has been around for almost 120 years has the potential to be interesting. In addition, as a regular reader of The Day, and someone with a particular interest in the history of the area it covers, I had a built-in bias towards the subject. But there were good reasons to be skeptical, too. A history that's published by the same paper it chronicles? It didn't sound promising. What kind of objectivity could I expect? I braced myself for what might well turn out to be an eyeball-glazing puff piece. Well, I need not have worried. THE DAY PAPER is not only a good book, it is a sensationally good book. Gregory N. Stone has somehow managed to distill in its pages the whole multifaceted story of The Day and the community it serves in a way that literally pulls the reader along. There are surprises on every page. Gossip. Jokes. Wry insights. Even the occasional tug at the heartstrings, for the sentimentally inclined. Most significantly, there is no pandering, no glossing over of the more embarrassing details, nothing to slow down the pace or cause the reader to wonder what "really happened." The credit for this wonderful book (and I mean that--it really is wonderful) must go to its author, who has somehow found a way to piece together an extraordinarily diverse saga covering thousands of lives, hundreds upon hundreds of incidents, occurring over a century and more, and to give it a shape and a dynamic that impels the reader to want to know what happens next... and next... and next. The author has certain advantages going for him, and he has made good use of them all. First, he has been blessed with publishers who had the wisdom and taste to keep out of his way. As Stone describes it in his introduction, he was instructed to tell the story of the paper "warts and all," and he has done just that. Second, he has a subject that is compact enough to be seen whole, rather than piecemeal. He is able to treat the New London area and its newspaper intimately, so that the reader can follow a remarkably coherent story of the city and The Day as together they pursue their combined destiny from the post-Civil War era to the present. The third advantage Stone has going for him is that he has a hero, an extraordinary, almost legendary hero, the remarkable Theodore Bodenwein, whose rags-to-riches biography and lifelong commitment to New London gives the story its thrust, its moral center, and finally, its remarkable resonance. Bodenwein, who ran the paper for almost fifty years, from 1891 until 1939, was a newspaperman of remarkable ambition and brains, who grasped to a degree few others matched, the symbiotic relationship between a newspaper and its community. Like the more famous immigrant publisher, Joseph Pulitzer, he had a strong sense of public responsibility, and felt obliged to serve those to whom he sold newspapers. Bodenwein died in 1939, having fought innumerable battles to improve the city and to outsmart competitors (in 1900 there were three dailies in New London), but he was determined that his newspaper would not die with him. By the terms of his will, he made The Day as close to immortal as human ingenuity and the laws of inheritance could devise. Essentially, he disinherited his heirs, and locked the newspaper's ownership in a trust, so that it might always be able to protect itself from being gobbled up by some predatory chain. As Gregory Stone makes clear, Bodenwein's legacy is still very much alive, and a remains a cornerstone of the newspaper's culture. But as he also makes clear, his hero was a human being, not a plaster saint. Bodenwein led a full life, and Stone lets us in on a lot of interesting details, including his roving eye, his various real estate schemes, certain personal pecadillos, and the alacrity with which he was able to switch political affiliations when it suited his purposes. What does the book cover? Just about everything. It begins, in the style of Citizen Kane, with the death of the press baron Theodore Bodenwein, then flashes back to his arrival, as a five year old immigrant from Dusseldorf, to the little city of New London. Stone paints a beguiling picture of what it must have been like in the 1870s, when local boosters were already promoting New London's healthy climate, deep water harbor, railroad connections and strategic location as the perfect combination of factors for the metropolis of the future. (Sound familiar?) I was particularly taken by the description of Bertie LaFranc, the star attraction at Lawrence Hall, who billed herself as a "pedestrienne," and entertained local audiences by walking fifty miles in less than twelve hours along a course within the hall that had been marked out by a surveyor. (Apparently, it didn't take a whole lot to attract a crowd in New London in those days.) Stone's story continues at a rollicking clip, chronicling the ups and downs of New London and The Day, identifying seemingly unconnected events, and tracing the way things grow and change. We see how an apparently insignificant U.S. Navy coaling station, established after the Civil War, gradually grew into the most important submarine base in the world; we witness the launching, in 1904, of the world's largest ship, the Minnesota, at the Groton shipyard, which eventually metamorphosed into Electric Boat; we see how the advent of electrical power led to the development of trolleys, which in turn enabled The Day to expand circulation; how the founding of Connecticut College and the Coast Guard Academy improved the city's academic profile (while simultaneously playing hob with the tax base)....
Being Amitava MalkovichSeveral photographs adorning the book give an air of authencity to the prose. The book brings a sense of immediacy to the forgotten places in india in a way that was never done before.With this book he has created a portal to his brain, reminding me of the movie "Being John Malkovich".
request informationThank you: Keith
Whither Arnold's "Sweetness and Light?"Milvain identifies as vulgar the most lucrative market for the product of the man of letter's labor. The vulgarians, or "quarter educated," drive the market (479), and since they have been determined to desire nothing more than chatty ephemera, they have successfully opened an insuperable gulf between material success in writing and artistic success. Reardon's psychologically penetrating novels just aren't in demand. Therefore, there emerges quite an interesting conceptual shift within the nascent hegemony of the quarter-educated as established by their purchasing power: what was once considered healthy artistic integrity has transmuted into a peculiar kind of petit bourgeois hubris, if, in the new paradigm, the writer is more an artisan than an artist. Therefore, Reardon's artistically-compromised and padded three-volume novel, written with no other end in mind than to pander to the vulgar reader, nonetheless achieves only modest success because, the fact that it is indistinguishable from countless other similar works glutting the market aside, his novel is infected from his irrepressible integrity, and thus his novel becomes a strange sort of counterfeit, a psychological narrative masquerading as a popular novel. Reardon thus becomes a sort of Coriolanus among writers.
Milvain, on the other hand, is a sort of Henry Ford among writers; he reveals his particular genius when offering advice to his sister Maud about how to write religious works for juveniles: "I tell you, writing is a business. Get together half-a-dozen fair specimens of the Sunday school prize; study them; discover the essential points of such a composition; hit upon new attractions; then go to work methodically, so many pages a day" (13). In other words, Jasper has managed to streamline and to mechanize the writing process. He studies previous works, abstracts formulae from them, isolates the elements of these formulae, and then deploys and rearranges these elements to give his own writing a patina of originality. By treating writing as an exercise in manipulating formulae, Jasper exchanges "authenticity" (whatever that word means anymore) for the convenience and efficiency of not having to grapple with his own potentially mutable and recalcitrant genius. Jasper did not invent writing, just as Ford did not invent the automobile. But like Ford did with automobile manufacture, Milvain discovers those aspects of writing that lend themselves to mechanical reproduction. Thus he is able to capitalize on his time and effort, and effectively becomes the very machine Reardon believes himself to be but never actually becomes because of his lingering notions of artistic integrity (352).
Also of interest is the fact that Albert Yule is a sort of synthesis of Milvain and Reardon. Like Milvain, Yule attempts to streamline his own literary production by delegating some of the labor to his daughter Marian. However, like Reardon, Yule clings to the superannuated notion of the necessary individuality of writing: "[h]is failings, obvious enough, were the results of a strong and somewhat pedantic individuality ceaselessly at conflict with unpropitious circumstances" (38). In other words, Yule fails to recognize the obsolescence of the lone, learned genius within the realm of literary production. A market of vulgarians who demand occasional literary confections simply does not expect Works of individual genius. Moreover, even if they were in demand, works of individual genius are too ponderously inefficient to keep pace with the rate at which they are consumed. Therefore, Yule straddles the either/or proposition personified by Reardon and Milvain: One may preserve his artistic integrity and write "for the ages"--hence Yule, Biffen, and Reardon's fetishization of Shakespeare, Coleridge and authors of classical antiquity--and starve in the process, or one may write "for the moment" and actually turn a respectable profit.
The shadow of Charles Darwin indeed looms large over the events and characters of New Grub Street. The growth market brought about by the advent of the "quarter-educated" vulgar class, and their discretionary income coupled with their callow aesthetic sensibilities and truncated attention spans, represents a nascent economic, if not ecological niche, for certain social creatures to occupy. However, it's not simply a matter of being able to adapt one's skills to the tastes of these consumers. One must also be a prodigious enough writer to keep pace with an equally prodigious rate of consumption. Individuals like Milvain and Whelpdale are adequately adapted to this niche in that they satisfy the demands of this niche in terms of both content and output. Reardon panders to the vulgar taste only grudgingly and after long resistance and thereby cannot meet the production demands of this niche. Biffen absolutely refuses to pander at all. Alfred Yule does attempt to pander, but his mode of literary production is too inefficient to meet production demands, and he is also largely ignorant of vulgar literary taste. While more in touch with the vulgar reader than her father, Marian Yule is as inefficient in her literary production as her father. Therefore, each of the characters named above are equally maladaptive, albeit for various reasons, and thus their extinction by the novel's end strikes the reader as somehow inevitable. Whereas Milvain and Reardon's widow Amy are left to come together as the triumphant niche occupants and thus reproduce themselves in their offspring, should they decide to produce any.
The Hateful Spirit of Literary RancourThe anti-heroes of "New Grub Street" are presented to us as the novel begins - Jasper Milvain is a young, if somewhat impoverished, but highly ambitious man, eager to be a figure of influence in literary society at whatever cost. His friend, Edwin Reardon, on the other hand, was brought up on the classics, and toils away in obscurity, determined to gain fame and reputation through meaningful, psychological, and strictly literary fiction. Family matters beset the two - Jasper has two younger sisters to look out for, and Edwin has a beautiful and intelligent wife, who has become expectant of Edwin's potential fame. Throw into the mix Miss Marian Yule, daughter of a declining author of criticism, whose own reputation was never fully realized, and who has indentured his daughter to literary servitude, and we have a pretty list of discontented and anxious people struggling in the cut-throat literary marketplace of London.
Money is of supreme importance in "New Grub Street," and it would be pointless to write a review without making note of it. As always, the literary life is one which is not remunerative for the mass of people who engage upon it, and this causes no end of strife in the novel. As Milvain points out, the paradox of making money in the literary world is that one must have a well-known reputation in order to make money from one's labours. At the same time, one must have money in order to move in circles where one's reputation may be made. This is the center of the novel's difficulties - should one or must one sacrifice principles of strictly literary fame and pander to a vulgar audience in order to simply survive? The question is one in which Reardon finds the greatest challenges to his marriage, his self-esteem, and even his very existence. For Jasper Milvain and his sisters, as well as for Alfred and Marian Yule, there is no question that the needs of subsistence outweigh most other considerations.
"New Grub Street" profoundly questions the relevance of classic literature and high culture to the great mass of people, and by proxy, to the nation itself. For England, which propagated its sense of international importance throughout the nineteenth century by encouraging the study of English literature in its colonial holdings, the matter becomes one of great significance. The careers of Miss Dora Milvain and Mr. Whelpdale, easily the novel's two most charming, endearing, and sympathetic characters, attempt to illustrate the ways in which modern literature may be profitable to both the individual who writes it and the audiences towards which they aim. They may be considered the moral centers of the novel, and redeem Gissing's work from being entirely fatalistic.
"New Grub Street" is a novel that will haunt me for quite some time. As a "man of letters" myself, I can only hope that the novel will serve as an object lesson, and one to which I may turn in hope and despair. The novel is well written, its characters and situations drawn in a very realistic and often sympathetic way. Like the ill-fated "ignobly decent" novel of Mr. Biffen's, "Mr. Bailey, Grocer," "New Grub Street" may seem less like a novel, and more like a series of rambling biographical sketches, but they are indelible and lasting sketches of literary lives as they were in the original Grub Street, still yet in Gissing's time, and as they continue to-day. Very highly recommended.
Grimly Realistic Novel of Literary Life in 1880s London"New Grub Street" is the contrapuntal narrative of two literary figures, Edwin Reardon, a struggling novelist who aspires to write great literature without regard to its popular appeal, and Jasper Milvain, a self-centered, materialistic striver whose only concern is with achieving financial success and social position by publishing what the mass public wants to read. As Milvain relates early in the novel, succinctly adumbrating the theme that winds through the entirety of "New Grub Street":
"Understand the difference between a man like Reardon and a man like me. He is the old type of unpractical artist; I am the literary man of 1882. He won't make concessions, or rather, he can't make them; he can't supply the market. I-well, you may say that at present I do nothing; but that's a great mistake, I am learning my business. Literature nowadays is a trade. Putting aside men of genius, who may succeed by mere cosmic force, your successful man of letters is your skillful tradesman. He thinks first and foremost of the markets. . . . Reardon can't do that kind of thing, he's behind his age; he sells a manuscript as if he lives in Sam Johnson's Grub Street. But our Grub Street of today is quite a different place: it is supplied with telegraphic communication, it knows what literary fare is in demand in every part of the world, its inhabitants are men of business, however seedy."
Gissing brilliantly explores this theme through the lives of his characters, each drawn with stunning depth and verisimilitude. There is, of course, Reardon, whose failure as a novelist and neurasthenic decline destroys his marriage and his life. There is also Reardon's wife, Amy, a woman whose love for Reardon withers with the exsanguination of her husband's creative abilities. While the manipulative and seemingly unfeeling Milvain pursues his crass aspirations, he also encourages his two sisters, Dora and Maud, to seek commercial success as writers of children's books. And intertwining all of their lives are the myriad connections each of the characters has with the Yule family, in particular with the nearly impoverished Alfred Yule, a serious writer and literary critic, and his daughter and literary amanuensis, Marian.
It is Marian--struggling to reconcile the literary demands and expectations of her father with the desire to lead her own life, struggling to escape the claustrophobic world of the literary life--who ultimately, pessimistically challenges the verities of that life while sitting in its physical embodiment, the prison-like British Museum library:
"It was gloomy, and one could scarcely see to read; a taste of fog grew perceptible in the warm, headachy air. . . . She kept asking herself what was the use and purpose of such a life as she was condemned to lead. When already there was more good literature in the world than any individual could cope with in his lifetime, here she was exhausting herself in the manufacture of printed stuff which no one even pretended to be any more than a commodity for the day's market. What unspeakable folly! . . . She herself would throw away her pen with joy but for the need of earning money. . . . This huge library, growing into unwieldiness, threatening to become a trackless desert of print-how intolerably it weighed upon the spirit."
It is Marian, too, who ultimately becomes the romantic victim of Milvain's aspirations, the powerful language of Gissing's anti-romantic subplot twisting into almost gothic excess as he extends the metaphor of London's fog to Marian's sleepless depression:
"The thick black fog penetrated every corner of the house. It could be smelt and tasted. Such an atmosphere produces low spirited languor even in the vigorous and hopeful; to those wasted by suffering it is the very reek of the bottomless pit, poisoning the soul. Her face colorless as the pillow, Marian lay neither sleeping nor awake in blank extremity of woe; tears now and then ran down her cheeks, and at times her body was shaken with a throe such as might result from anguish of the torture chamber."
"New Grub Street" is deservedly regarded not only as Gissing's finest novel, but also as one of the finest novels of late nineteenth century English literature. Grimly realistic in its depiction of what it was like to be a struggling writer in late nineteenth century London, it is also remarkable for its historical accuracy and its literary craftsmanship. If you like the realism of writers like Harding and Zola, then "New Grub Street" is a book you must read!