This is probably one of the worst books I have read in a long time. Mr. Ellis travelogue fails to on so many levels it is difficult to list them all here. He provides little historical context, his opinions are pompous, his anecdotes are trite, his personal life stories are self-absorbed, and his grand attempt to define what it means to be 'Southern' fails. I can only attribute it to my Yankee's perseverance that I did manage to make it through this tripe. I believe that if General Sherman wanted to inflict true pain on the South, rather than burning his way to the sea, he should have forced the rebels read this book.

On his 1994 attempt to re-trace William Tecumseh Sherman's trek from Atlanta to Savannah, Jerry Ellis searches for vestiges of that traumatic time reflected in the people he meets along the way.

This book is an unsuccessful hybrid of social history and an "on-the-road" travelogue. Ellis uncovers no previously undiscovered traces of the effect of Sherman's journey in the New South and after a while it appears he loses sight of his goal. This book has one saving grace: Ellis's natural story-telling ability which captures the spirits of the people he encounters. However, this bright spot isn't enough to compensate for Ellis's failure to achieve his original objective; it just turns this into a passable diary of someone's hike.

In 1864, General Sherman, Union general, began his infamous (or famous) trek through Georgia, vowing to make Georgia howl. Howl it did. And still does. More than a hundred years later, Jerry Ellis walked the same path. It was a trek in search of his own Southerness, and an homage to his father who had died not long before. Along the way, he met people who still remember Sherman and the devastation he and his army left in their wake as though it were yesterday. He found Southern hospitality. He found a South that finds it hard to forget.

This is a personal story, not meant to simply tell the history of the places and people he finds along the way. Their histories are interwoven with his own, their presents forming a framework for Ellis' coming to terms with the possibility of losing the woman he loves because of the journey, and with the death of his father. It adds to what he knows about himself and who he is, a Southerner with ties to the War Between the States, and part Cherokee with ties to a past unrelated in many ways to that war.

This is an interesting view of history and how it affects people's lives, even generations later. At times, Ellis becomes too bogged down in his own problems and we wonder if he misses telling about other things we might have found interesting. But all in all, this is a book for Southerners who know and understand their ties to the South, or who are still trying to find those ties and weave them back into their lives.

Readers who like this book might also want to read other of Ellis' journeys. Also "Womenfolks: Growing up Down South" by Shirley Abbott might be interest. They might also like to read an account of Sherman's march to the sea, such as those included in the nuemrous Sherman biographies, or sets of histories of the war, including the Time Life Civil War volume "Sherman's March."

There is an enormous amount of detail in some apparently unimportant topics (for example on how to get a green card for your maid) and very little on very important ones (for example on labor certification). The topic of labor certification is a subsection in the chapter for "Live-In Domestic Workers" !

This book may be good if you are trying to get a green card for your maid, though.

i wish going to usa to be with my brother hosam

I believe this book may be of interest to many readers.
First of all, it explains how visitors from abroad can legally prolong their stay in the USA. It's possible to apply for an extension of one's visitor's status without leaving the USA. And this book guides well through this procedure.
Secondly, those who are interested in applying for a green card, should find the most suitable category if they want to succeed. The book describes qualifications and outlines the application process for each of them.
Many people don't know that they may be inadmissible for one or another reason even if they otherwise meet all the green card applicant requirements. Someone already in the US, and still may not be allowed to proceed if he or she falls into one of the inadmissible categories - as a violator of immigration rules in the past or for health reasons, for example. Some people find this out only after passing a medical exam. But you may want to learn about the regulations in advance. The book covers this issue in detail, including who and how can apply for a waiver of inadmissibility.
Another sensitive chapter is on cancellation of deportation. How and in what cases this may be done...
Also, you'll find some important information on how and who is eligible to claim status as a refugee or political asylee.
In all, I think the book is pretty informative and filled with practical advice. It's also easy to read and understand.

This is obviously beginner fiction and it is very good by that standard; unfortunately, beginner fiction really isn't deserving of the money we pay to read it. I've been in several writing workshops at an undergraduate level (I just graduated,) and you wouldn't believe how horrible most aspiring writers are (myself included). I mean, even in the best manuscript you found uneven pacing, semi-developed characters, incoherent ramblings, and a few (and I mean a few) redeeming images. The truth is, writing is very hard. I enjoyed reading these stories to see how the writers tried to get themselves out of tight spots where they might be stuck and not know how to get from A to B or B to C (other beginning writers will know what I'm talking about.) I agree with the other reviewers that some of these stories are without substance, but I don't think it is acceptable to say that a story is bad because the characters or the author's vision is bleak. Perhaps these young writers are only being honest about what they see around them?

Sherman Alexie has done an excellent job in selecting stories for what, regrettably, looks to be the last in Scribner's Best of the Fiction Workshops. Though I have at times been guilty of blasting many stories written in graduate school as being unpublishable, I rank 12 of these 19 as at least "above average," 5 of those 12 as "good," and Adam Johnson's "Death-Dealing Cassini Satellite," which begins the collection with a tale of a young bus driver's interactions with cancer patients, as truly excellent.

Alexie certainly allows the reader to take a journey throughout the literary world, as tales from Vietnam, to the Pacific Islands, to Nepal, and back to the States are presented. Along with Johnson, the University of New Hampshire proves its students are on the right track with Laura E. Miller's "Lowell's Class," concerning a poet whose struggles and successes in the field are deftly covered from workshop study to the brink of old age, as well as Clark E. Knowles's haunting tale of abduction and fear in "Little George." The other all-star short stories include Dika Lam's "Judas Kiss" and Kim Thorsen's "Alien Bodies."

Though there are a few clunkers in the mix, Alexie's decisions have been justified with SS collections published to much acclaim by Johnson, Christie Hodgen, and Samrat Upadhyay, all of whom first gained national exposure through this series, which Scribner would do itself a favor by renewing.

I love this anthology--it's filled with great stories. My favorite is "Judas Kiss" by Dika Lam. It's beautiful, innovative, and original; this series of anthologies refutes the idea that there is such a thing as a "workshop" story.

This book proports to walk you through the process step by step, but provides only one badly done overview/decision tree. This means, at any given step, you are sent off to other chapters to hunt down yet another required form or set of instructions. The writer seems to have spent more time on glib commentary than on crafting a cogent, step-by-step guide through the labyrinth of forms, if/then instruction sets, and filing processes. I should have been alerted by the cover blurb that "Divorce Helpline Services" are avaialble. Use this book and you'll surely be ponying up extra cash to their phone support service, as wading through this "guide" will require, surprise, their expert help. I guess book sales don't pay well enough. After spending months with this book I have two ideas for the author's next edition:
1)A REAL decision tree that walks the reader through his/her uniqiue situation, and,
2)Junk the vast majority of the text in favor of consise bullet points and or checklists.
The forms are worthwhile, though none of the data is savable. Print it out and close the doc, and it's gone--Ouch! I can't imagine why this book is such a big seller.

The forms software, which is necessary if you want to generate your own court forms, comes on a CD entitled "BONUS PAC", a legal harbinger of the disappointment to come. I can just imagine them saying to the judge, "Well, what did plaintiff expect from a free BONUS PAC?" Anyway, the software only works with the Ancient Acrobat 4.05, and most computer professional folks like me have to install the latest version (5.x) of Acrobat in order to function. Unfortunately, it initially *appears* to work with Acrobat 5.x. Consequently, and WITHOUT WARNING, the software proceeded to lose hours and hours of painful work I did not particularly want to repeat. To my surprise, tech support responded that they have known about the bug for a long time, and somehow implied it was my fault to have not checked the website. [Which I had checked, by the way, and was somehow not astute enough to read through all the technical bulletins to find this one.] Too bad they couldn't see fit to put some kind of sticker or label on this book or 'BONUS PAC' to warn me before I invested and lost a lot of time, particularly since the book is dated 1/2003 and Acrobat 4.x went off the market more than 2 years ago. How much could it possibly cost them to correct the bug and make it available for download? Apparently, too much for them to consider spending. No plans to repair the problem have been reported. And don't think about using the forms standalone in Acrobat; they are secured and automatically DELETE ALL OF THEIR OWN DATA when you try to reopen them, a particularly noxious security measure that prevents anyone from working around the bug.

Although this book alone doesn't cover all of my issues, it and its companion book on contested divorces contain all of the current family law forms and provide excellent descriptions and discussions of how to use the forms. The process is complex however and I do have to read sections over and over to figure out what to do and how to do it. I also I have used many other resources including the California statutes, rules of court and case law.

I don't quite understand the difficulties other users have experienced with the forms provided on cd-rom. The forms are all .pdf files and can be opened in Adobe Acrobat 5.0 (full version), data can be entered, and I have had no trouble saving the forms. I suspect those using just Acrobat Reader are unable to save the forms and have to print them out immediately, which would be an inconvenience. The California Courts site also allows forms to be downloaded, filled out, printed out, but not saved. Those wishing to save forms may want to purchase Adobe Acrobat (full version) which is kind of expensive but a great program or one of the cheaper third-party programs that create, open, and save .pdf files.

Much of the advice in this book is incomplete, outdated, or misleading. After spending many hours attempting to use these forms to do my own divorce, I was tossed out of court by a rather displeased judge, and wound up hiring an attorney to re-do everything anyway. This might be a good reference for someone who is thinking about getting a divorce and curious about what the process is like and what is involved, but for actually using it to go to court by yourself, I can't recommend it. It caused me one heck of a headache.

the book did not contain all the forms necessary for my divorce, such as the judge signature portion for the pauper's oath.

The book is a little confusing at first, because the subject matter is so complicated, but overall it was very helpful. It saved me a lot of money in legal fees. Anyone with a no-fault divorce should find it very helpful and simple to use. I had no problem with having my divorce granted. I highly recommend it.

I was very surprised when I ordered this book and found out that yes, indeed, it was merely a very tiny portion of what I had expected. I suppose I should have known from the price, but the description (at least at that time) did not make it clear that it wasn't the entire dictionary.

While this may be a very thorough source for the words it covers, it should be noted in the basic information that this is ONLY 128 pages of a 15,000 page work. The description above is very misleading.

itz a dictionary. what more can i say

The blurb for this book says the author wrote it after traveling in Central America -- that's hard to believe. The main part of the plot for the second half of the book revolves around the supposedly common kidnapping for ransom of a Honduran citizen by "Sandanistas [sic]." The backcover also refers to the hero being in the "killing fields of the Sandinistas" -- huh, wha?! In the 1980s ( the book is set in 1989) Nicaraguan contras were based in Honduras for their attacks into Nicaragua; no Sandinistas or armed Nicaraguan force of any political stripe before or since has been entering Honduras or any other country and kidnapping people.
The book is riddled with absurd inventions like this. Take one example: anyone who's been there will laugh at the long description of Tegucigalpa International airport as 2 concrete strips among barren hills, where passengers are separated by chicken wire(!!). In fact, the hills are covered with pine trees that you smell as soon as you arrive, and the terminal is like a regional U.S. airport, except for the spectacular 100 ft. mural of Copan (that's been there over 20 years). If you've ever been to Central America, much less if you're a Honduran, you'll eventually get angry at the stupid portrayal of Hondurans and Honduras inflicted by the author. Statements like the fantasy that someone was sacrificed every day at Copan during the Mayan kingdom is one in a series of the most ridiculous fantasies and stereotypes that permeate the book's portrayal of Honduras. Steer clear of this loser.
Look out Florence, they say you're next!

I just finished reading Honduran Summer, Honduran Spring and recommend it to anyone in the 18-40 age group. It just really spoke to me. You get on a roller coaster ride on page one that takes you through a sexual and exotic world that entices every desire you can imagine. I can imagine Joel Lee Sherman to be one of America's next great writers.

Children are a blessing from God. Planning not to have them is stupid. That's like planning to be poor. Don't buy this book.

I found the book insightful and helpful. It addresses some really important issues that I think are becoming increasingly relevant.

This book glorifies the unnescessary and cruel practice of genital cutting. Not suitable for children.

Jewish books are cool but when I read this one it was one of my favorites. Its a great book for kids under the ages of 10. Judy Silverman is my librarian at Temple Shalom, my sunday/hebrew school. I hope she sees her first 5 star review sometime!

The title suggested that this would be a action based expose of a dynamic law enforcer. Instead it turned out to be a book about prison policy. The writer is apparently a sheriff and they have some control over local jails.

Most of the book is a description of how the author wanted to keep more people in jail but he had a shrinking corrections budget. He basically set up a concentration camp for low level offenders. (More serious offenders appear to have been kept in a normal jail)

The author has purchased a series of tents and set up a wired perimeter. Around this he has a few guards, enough to keep people in but not the normal number you would have in a prison. To complete the economy measures he has reduced the amount of money spent on food. The average cost of meal provision is 30cents. To be able to have such cheap food the author has to purchase food that is not for sale on the normal market. Meat sausage that has turned green and the like.

The writer has then spent most of his time showing news reporters from current affairs shows around his new prison.

All of this could only happen in America. Some of the book is humerous in a bizarre way. Thus the author restricted the types of films available to prisoners. He for instance was keen for them to see promotional material for conservative politicans. He allowed the prisoners to see one "drama" a corny old film called "Old Yella". This film is about a loyal dog which dies in the end role. The author was of a view that this was a touching and moving film. The prisoners however thought that the film was so bad they cheered when the dog died. The author to pay them back banned all "drama's". I'm a bit with the prisoners on this issue.

The author basically seems to be a person keen on publicity and is willing to use the vulnerable, prisoners in his care to achieve his ends.

If you want to read the story behind the U.S. Sheriff with the highest approval rating, then this is the book for you. A man that has made being in jail exactly what it should be, a punishment, not a country club with cable t.v and nautilus. Sheriff Joe has sent out a clear and concise message, "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime" The Law abiding citizens of America salute you!

This book takes a hard look at the criminal justice system in America and makes honest and realistic assesments. It offers proven solutions to the problems faced by law enforcement agencies nationwide. It is well known that people of the liberal persuesion dislike Sherrif Joe Arpaio, but the PEOPLE of Arizona have given him the highest approval rating of any law enforcement official in the country. This speaks for itself.