This book takes an amazingly balanced view. It describes the complete dynamics of all types of incest, including Father-Daughter, Mother-Son, Father-Son, Mother-Daughter, and extended family. It also has an excellent chapter on suggested modifications to our legal and social system that would help the problem.

I do not agree with the review that the book describes the aggressor as always being some kind of horrible person. Sometimes this is the case, but the book shows a more significant social issue in that the aggressor is often "the average joe" with a significant boundary crossing issue that must be resolved. She indicates that incest may be a much more prevalent problem than most people are willing to admit, particularly if you extend the definition of incest to include inappropriate sexual behaviors beyond intercourse, and may affect up to 40% of women in the U.S.!

I found Susan Forward's suggestions that our social outrage and reactions to the incest taboo are very destructive to society, in that it prevents disclosure of incest, and makes positive and effective treatment of the victim and the aggressor very difficult; that our reaction in this particular kind of crime, society and the family are almost always better served by modifications of our legal system to better treat the entire family dynamic as well as the personal issues of the aggressor, who she claims is the "most easily rehabilitated" of all of the sex offenders. I was surprised to learn that she has seen success rates of up to 90% in reuniting entire families after incidents of incest, which would be impossible if the offenders were the stereotypical "heartless scum" that we see in the popular media.

All this from a person who herself was a victim of incest.

I think this book should be required reading in our high schools.

This book is very well written and helped me through a tough period in my life when I read it in the 80's. I had been having flashbacks and decided to see if I could figure out what was going on. It provided me with a blueprint and a course of action, which helped me find myself and do something about what had happened to me. I would recommend this book to any victims of childhood sexual abuse.

This is the best book I've read. Very easy to read. It describes the characteristics of a child molester. It explained that these people have no compassion or empathy for others and that's how they are able to do such awful things. I highly recommend this book.

This book faithfully recreates the world of Frazier Robinson and the Negro Leagues. Outstanding and fascinating. It would make a perfect gift for any baseball fan. Paul Bauer inserts nothing between you and his subject. It is a must have book for any serious fan of the game.

This is a wonderful book that needed to be written. I had the opportunity to meet Frazier while living and I am so glad that his stories live on in this book. It brings back the memory of the time when players played the game for the love of the game and not for what they were being paid. And worrying about what deal they could acquire in the off season. Also in a time when color mattered over talent it should remind us that never again should we engage in human exclusion

Being a baseball history buff (addict) for the past 42 years, I've read just about everything I could get my hands on. I cannot now think of an autobiographical book to which I could attach a higher recommendation that "Catching Dreams" by Frazier "Slow" Robinson. This true gentleman travelled the dusty roads that connected the sites of Negro League baseball during the 30's, 40,s and even the 50's. Although produced by the University of Syracuse press, there is no attempt to make the book erudite or complicate it with an assortment of exotic literary techniques and obscure words. Instead, the publisher and co-author, Paul Bauer have presented the story of Slow Robinson in language truly spoken by the man himself. When you read this book, you will feel that you are seated beside Mr. Robinson as he speaks with words, terms and expressions uniquely those of a man with little formal education, who gained his lessons in life on the fly and had to learn his own language. His ability to recall a voluminous list of names and anecdotal material from his experiences, and to relate them descriptively, suggest a man who would have had little trouble dealing with a formal post-secondary school education. His relationships with such Negro League stalwarts as Josh Gibson, Cool Papa Bell, Leon Day and Satchel Paige are detailed with humour, insight and compassion. He is forthright without offending his old friends, as in Ball Four by Jim Bouton. In his own words, his goal in life was to be remembered as a nice guy; he passed with flying colors. If you choose only one book to read on this subject, you simply cannot go wrong with Catching Dreams.

I have been able to have only a cursory glance, so far, but the remarkable contents of this book have enabled me to confirm a theory on which I am working, relating to the palaeopyschology of links between natural phenomena and the emergence of belief in divinities. I look forward to having a much more detailed browse. The size of the font in this reduced facsimile is indeed small. I have poor eyesight, with thick multifocal lenses in my spectacles, but have little trouble reading the book.

Since writing the above, I've used the book often in searches for IE cognates, particularly Sanksrit, and have found it very useful.

Brian Barratt...

I was initially disappointed by this book, since I have a particular interest in Persian (Farsi or Iranian). Alas, Persian is almost completely unrepresented, although Irish seems to be everywhere. Basically, this book is very weak on any Indo-European language east of Suez.

Still, it's a splendid reference and a great achievement.

You can pick this book up and flip to any page at random and learn something that will make you go "huh!". I recommend this book for anybody at all interested in language or thought, either just getting into linguistics or a tenured professor.

The entries are from basic vocabulary, grouped by topic (food, familial relations, etc.), though there's an alphabetical index in the back. For each entry, Mr. Buck gives the word (sometimes a couple different words) in Ancient Greek, Modern Greek, Latin, the Romance languages, the Celtic languages, the main Germanic languages (incl. Old, Middle, and Modern English), Balto-Slavic, and usually Indo-Iranian (occasionally Armenian).

But the cool thing is that then he gives an always-enlightening discussion below on how they are related, what ideas lie behind different word-choices, how they've changed, and so forth. This discussion is usu. about 2-3 times the length of the list and is the best part.

This book used to be a big hefty lieberry book, but the University of Chicago has reprinted it into a handy paperback, with four of the old pages on each new one. One reviewer said you'd need a magnifying glass, but I have terrible vision and I can read it just fine.

It's a great book to read on the toilet, or whenever you're just sittin' around waitin' for somethin' to happen. You'll learn something every time you read it, and at this price it's one of the best book-deals you'll get anywhere.

It is hard to know where to start. The book is elegantly written, it is full of interesting history of the early church. But more importantly, it speaks to a deadness in the church today. Often members of the church have learned to live distant from problems of their "neighbors" be they down the block or down the street in the challenged neighborhoods in our cities.

In the early church, members were the challenged people, they reached out to each other, but now much of the church is isolated and distant from the needy stranger. Read Luke 14 - decide if you have responded to principles in those scenarios described by Jesus. If you come up short, then this book will help with a compassionate analysis of our dilemma in reaching out to "the least of these."

In addition to setting the stage for individuals to learn to reach out to needy strangers, the book creates a context for the faith-based social service discussion. While members of congregations may not exhibit the skills of professional social workers, they have an important role to play in being present and responding to neigbors in their communities who need the touch of grace in their lives.

The book is a good read, but it requires more than one pass. If you invest in the book deeply, you will be called to action.

I read this book in preparation to interviewing Dr. Pohl for a magazine. It's terrific -- a thoughtful examination of practices that used to be considered an essential component of the Christian faith but which have, over the years, been institutionalized and removed from our everyday lives. How do we recapture the Biblical imperative toward hospitality in the reality of a modern world? This book doesn't give pat answers, but it does give you a framework for asking the right questions, and some suggestions that might point you in the right direction.

In her book, Pohl makes an excellent case for the lost ministry of hospitality. She explores the tradition of welcoming stangers into our homes while discussing the ways in which Christians can offer practical hospitality to the poor, homeless, and refugees in our communities. I am impressed that Pohl is careful not to confuse the challenging ministry hospitality with entertaining.

This is the best book and eveyone needs to read it

~ CjTeller

B.J. Teller is a cross between Hunter Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut, and Mark Twain! He can make you laugh out loud, cry, and say "why didn't I think of that?" all in the same story. And I know his real name!

BJ Teller is at his comedic best when he writes of his zany family and their exploits on the Gulf Coast. Even if you're not from the area, you can feel the sluggish breeze as you sit on the pier at Perdido Point, and fish the afternoon away with his characters.

...

Between 1910 and 1940, when Frank Buck, the big jungle man, did most of his work, cruelty toward wild animals was generally condoned in the name of "hunting" or "sport."

That his trademark motto, "Bring 'em back alive," made him famous, however, indicates that even in his day human consciousness was high enough to appreciate his respect for animals. Today this consciousness is so widespread that no one could become a hero of his stature by trapping jungle animals for profit.

But he understood animals and respected them, even displayed toward them the care of a mother for her child. When they were injured or sick, he personally tended them, a risky business. A 600-pound tapir he was treating almost killed him. A python saw him as a meal, and a cobra spewed deadly venom in his eyes. Attacked by another cobra, he threw his coat over the snake and pounced on it. He held it beneath him as it wriggled to get free until aides could get a grip on its head and pull it out, like a bird extracting a worm from the ground. The python that had him in its grip was one of the very few he had to kill. He managed to get one arm free enough to reach his sidearm; then he put three rounds in the giant reptile's brain.

From his headquarters at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, he operated a collecting network that spanned the lush jungles of Malaya, Borneo, Sumatra and India. Over the years, he brought back hundreds of thousands of birds and animals of all kinds for sale to zoos, circuses and private collectors. In 1922, he provided Dallas with an entire zoo of more than 500 specimens. In 1948, he returned to his hometown of Gainesville, Texas, to dedicate the Frank Buck Zoo and the Frank Buck Zoological Society.

From Mr. Buck's eight books, Steven Lehrer has selected the "best" of the material. He has fine sensibilities as an editor. However, the books are so full of good, old-fashioned, movie-serial-type adventures in wild, exotic settings, that Mr. Lehrer could have closed his eyes and picked 19 chapters that would make a good collection. The surprising thing is that, until now, no one else has.

What few could have done better, however, is write the illuminating introduction summarizing Mr. Buck's early interest in animals and birds as a boy in Plano and along Turtle Creek, and his brief dalliance with crime, marriage and other enterprises before setting out on his lifelong search for "the source of the wind, the mouth of the river, the oceans to which the fish swam, and the far lands to which the birds flew."

Free-lance writer and reviewer Tom Dodge lives in Midlothian; his new book is Tom Dodge Talks About Texas.

November 2000, p 554 History of Science & Technology

38-1532 QL61 99-86898 CIP

Buck, Frank. Bring 'Em Back Alive: The Best of Frank Buck, ed. by Steven Lehrer. Texas Tech, 2000. 248p bibl index afp ISBN 0-89672-430-1, $28.95

In many ways, this is a delightful book. Buck was a familiar and heroic figure to many growing up in the 1930s and 1940s; the numerous illustrations recapture those days. The great zoos of the day owed much to him, partly for the specimens he obtained for them but even more for the publicity he generated and shared. His exploits could not and should not be repeated today, but that should not detract from the sense of adventure his stories evoke. His persona was mirrored in the white hunter in King Kong (the Fay Wray version), but his real life adventures were even more thrilling. The comments by Lehrer (Mount Sinai School of Medicine) are interesting and useful, and his choices of episodes from various of Buck's books are well done. All in all, this is an extremely entertaining book, illustrating a different time and written in a way that brings that time to life. General readers. -F W. Yow, emeritus, Kenyon College

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The author does and excptional job on cleaning up some of the objectionable language, and brings to the readers a truly enjoyable book on early "African safari" type activities. Something that young readers as well as old can enjoy.

So much of Janet Bucks poetry resonates with the reader. Few people who have spent time with her poems are not personally touched by them, and her voice never leaves me wondering or unsatisfied. She is, in short, one of the best poets on the Internet or the book shelf, and deserves to be everyone's library who appreciates a strong poetic voice.

I first knew Janet's work online, and have featured several of her poems at VLQ (vlqpoetry.com). She is one of the finest poets I've read, translating grit to beauty through stirring images. Hers is a voice well worth listening to. I guarantee you'll learn something about yourself in the process. I did.

Truly a collectors item from the internet's most widely published poets. Janet turns disability into ability. The strength of these words stay with you. I've never read a better poet.

... and will remain so after you read this book. Everything in Buck's book is useful but it is tough to remember all of his rules without a solid grounding in meteorology. The cover's subtitle "a practical book on flying in all kinds of weather" is accurate. This book is about practice, not theory. However, after finishing the book, I was disappointed to find myself as ignorant as ever about weather and completely at the mercy of the FAA briefers.

I got my instrument rating 25 years ago, and Buck's Weather Flying recommendations are still fresh and pertinent. A friend just shared that she is going to tackle an instrument rating, and Weather Flying came to mind as the perfect gift to make a safe pilot. I still use his practical recommendations in my infrequent IFR flights, and feel that it has contributed to making me a safer pilot. Sorry if this sounds a bit corny, but few books have stuck with me like this. PS: If you're interested, try T.R. Fehrenbach's "The Reckoning" or "This Kind of War" if you want something that will also stick with you through life.

Tom

Buck entertains and teaches. Alone, that is a talent, but add to that Buck's experience and his ability to observe and anticipate our weaknesses as pilots, and this book becomes a valuable down and dirty reality check. If you are a high-time pilot or just getting under the hood for real, read this book.

There is a particular joy to flying with the clouds. The style of Buck's writing captures this uniqueness. It also warns the pilot of the consequences of not preparing for the same event.

Weather Flying is a fast read, yet might just save you from being tangled up in a ball of scrap aluminum.

This second volume to the "House of Earth Trilogy" takes off right where "The Good Earth" ends. I was fortunate enough to find a copy with all three books in one so for me there was no space between the two. Written in the same style of the first novel, this story begins with the lives of three sons of Wang Lung: Wang the eldest (Landlord), Wang the second (Merchant) and particularly, Wang the third (The Tiger). By far the most important and interesting character in this book is Wang the Tiger, who became a powerful war lord. Much was written about his life and how he longed to live the life of a soldier, having nothing but disdain for the farmer's life his father wanted for him. It's an interesting irony, how none of the sons respected what Wang Lung, their father, had left for them. The eldest only interested in the façade of the rich life, the second only interested in money, and of course, the Tiger, whose main purpose was to be a strong and powerful leader.

It's an exciting and sad novel. Reading the evolution of the Tiger's rise to power made the Merchant's and Landlord's lives pale in comparison. Wang the Tiger was a most fascinating character, always obsessed with control not only of others, but of his own inner feelings. It was as if he was driven to be more than human...strong and willful, void of any weakness, void of any softness of heart, setting impossible standards for himself.

Once his son was born, he transferred all of his focus from warring, to raising his son as a warrior like himself. His love for his son, like his love for power, was unwavering, unbending, and suffocating. For example, this was evident in the times when the Tiger noticed that his little boy was so grave and quiet for one so young. Also, though his son did whatever he was told to do, he lacked any spirit or enjoyment in his tasks. Unfortunately, every time the Tiger saw this, he had a moment of clarity, but was quick to ignore or bury it, and thus never really attained the wisdom to forsee what would become of his only precious son.

This was a wonderful and exciting novel to read, very different and lively feeling to that of "The Good Earth." Yet it's absolutely necessary to read it as part of the trilogy. Once you finish, you'll be anxious to know what becomes of the Tiger's son, and how the coming revolution will change their relationship.

Sons is actually a book about the differences between the three generations. Wang Lung died peacefully in the beginning. The story continued with the three different kinds of life the three sons of Wang Lund led. All of the three sons were concisely portrayed, with a slight emphasis on the third, Wang the Tiger. He rose slowly to the position of a warlord. In order to pass his position to his son as he was growing old, he sent his son to a military school to learn western war techniques. However, his sons turned against him by joining the New Revolutionary Army which was against all old lords.

The story is a little bit long, in a way. However, it wis certainly worthy to be read as it shows me how men, no matter how "straight" they are outside, have after all been self-centered. The book is also not in very difficult language. It needs a little bit patience, bit will make a difference in people's life. Give it a try!

An absolute and thoroughly interesting saga and drama of the sons of Wan Lung. The book mostly follows the life of the departed son, Wang the Tiger. His mission is to have his own army and a son of his own. Pearl S. Buck skillfully details Wang the Tiger's desires, emotions and thoughts. Wang the Tiger removes his son from his sisters and mother to ensure the lad's education and guidance & preparation to follow Wang the Tiger's footsteps. This book is as excellent reading as "The Good Earth" and completely to the end!

"Stacey's Broken Heart" is a book that focuses on Stacey, the treasurer of the Baby-sitters Club. She will be gone for a week and is confused about her boyfriend, Robert. She thinks she might be afraid of loosing him.

Poor Stacey! Robert broke her heart. I liked how it showed that even though Stacey's heart is broken, she goes on with her life. I liked how supportive her mom was. It tells you that, no, not all romances are "happily ever after"...only a tiny percent of teen romances last a lifetime. I have the feeling Mary Anne and Logan are next in line for splitsville...just a gut feeling.

The book was good and thick and suspenseful. It was a well-written and enjoyable book. I can't really decide if my favorite book is Stacey's Broken Heart or Claudia and the Terrible Truth. They're both good stories but Claudia and the Terrible Truth is too short.