In 1999, Christine Chase is living up to her last name --- she is chasing 1970s songwriter/actor Richard Gault, who has dropped from the limelight decades ago. She decides to do a documentary on this man she has never actually met, nor seen a photo of him more recent than 1989. But Christine suspects that she is in a premillenial lull, and filming a documentary on finding Gault will shake her out of it. Her marriage has ended, her career is at a standstill, and her best friend and object of desire is William, who runs the newsstand where she buys her weekly fix of ...celebrity magazines.

Christine teams up with William and Jennifer, another newsstand regular whom William is in lust with (Jennifer is a 22-year-old It girl, Christine is a 35-year-old transplant from South Boston who has spent 10 years in LA behind the camera.) They start looking for leads to Gault any which way they can, more for lack of something to do. But it becomes an actual quest to Christine as Gault reaches mythical proportions in her mind.

This is a great book, you feel like Christine is your cool smart friend as you go along on this crazy ride (indeed, her best friend in the book is the heroine of Wolper's first book, Elizabeth West, who is in the man's world of writing scripts for action movies.) Wolper captures the ephemeral quality of relationships and the fine dance we all play but especially when with celebrities (am I his girlfriend if he openly dates 5 other women and I see him in People magazine with another woman?) It has bite but also heart and will keep you enthralled.

Wolper has done it again. This book is just as fun and insightful as Cigarette Girl. I highly recommend this book as an entertaining read but also very wise and witty. I will absolutely be giving it to my friends at Christmas.

From Marisa D'Vari, author Media Magic, Presentation Magic, & Script Magic

-- Glamor gal Carol Wolper has captured the Tinsel Town I know and love in this delicious romp of the classic Hollywood novel. As a very young studio exec at MGM I'd expected "Hollywood" to be as glitzy as a Carol Wolper novel. Increasingly corporate, Wolper gives color and spice to an industry much more fun to read and fantasize about than live in reality.

Edited with an Introduction by Marlene Smith-Baranzini, The Shirley Letters: From The California Mines 1851-1852 by Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe presents the contemporary reader with vivid first-person accounts of what it was like to live in the midst of the great California gold rush. Written in the form of letters by a doctor's wife who lived through the thick and thin of boisterous events, The Shirley Letters encompass mob violence, summary justice, a duel to the death, a rowdy July 4th celebration, and much, much more. A first-rate primary source, The Shirley Letters offers especial insight to American history and is highly recommended for both personal reading lists and academic reference collections.

This book is a marvelous true story of what it was like, in California, during a time which will never come again. The author's detailed descriptions and wonderful style of writing takes the reader there, to the Old California, when it wasn't a state, it was a wild untaimed country unto itself. Truly beautiful.

I have one of under 200 original copies, signed by the author, it is my treasure. I am so glad to see it here, offered to the general public. I obtained it just last month, and wanted to share it with every woman, man, child I know! I thought I was going to have to type the entire book just to give a copy to my mother. I thought that because of the small number printed that there wasn't any way I would find another one, but low and behold, here it is, reprinted only this year, on Amazon. A must for any Californian.

Dame Shirley's classic (and often humorous!) letters portray the California gold rush in all its excitement and ethnic diversity. At last an edition has appeared that sets her writings in context! Editor Marlene Smith-Baranzini has done students, researchers, and history buffs a huge favor by putting together THE definitive Dame Shirley collection, complete with excellent introduction, interpretive footnotes, maps, photographs, and even a glossary. Reccommended for anyone interested in California history or just in search of a good read.

MY WIFE AND I WERE FORTUNATE ENOUGH TO HAVE HAD THE UNLISTED RESERVATION NUMBER AND ENJOYED THE WONDERFUL FOOD AND AMBIANCE OF MA MAISON.

THE FACT THAT THE RESERVATION NUMBER WAS UNLISTED AND THE STARS WERE THE INVESTORS AND PATRONS MAKES THIS ONE OF THE GREATEST MARKETING STORIES EVER AS WELL AS AFFORDING THE READER AN INSIGHT INTO THE HOLLYWOOD OF THE TIME.

WILLIAM REITER, TELLURIDE COLORADO

Ihave rarely read a story of a restaurant that enthralled me from the beginning to the end. It was sincere, happy and sad. I learned a great deal of lessons both in management and in cooking from the great recipes. I recommend this book to all persons who enjoy dining out,so they can better undertand what it takes to run a restaurant.

It was fun seeing the restaurant scene in Hollywood in the 70 and 80, as well as seeing the wonderful picture asnd recipes. I enjoyed seeing where Wolfgang Puck and many other chefs got their start. An easy read and fun holiday gift.

Great cookbook for those special occasions where you want to spend the time and resources on making something special. The recipes are a little more time-consuming, the ingredients a little harder to find, but the result is wonderful. Jacques Pepin is simpler (and excellent) and French Laundry Cookbook is even more complicated (but also excellent) - Terra is a great in-between.

I've cooked over 10 of their recipes already and every single one has turned out really well. They're not simple nor for a beginner cook, but if you have a little experience, it'll make for some very memorable dinners.

The desserts are especially great, as are the appetizers.

For those of you fortunate enough to have dined at this world class restaurant, Hiro & Lissa'a book needs no introduction. I was fortunate enough to have found Terra shortly after it opened in 1988 (living in St. Helena at the time) & have been hooked ever since. The BEST dishes of their menus past & present are included in this beautifully illustrated book. Most importantly the instructions are well detailed & the dishes turn out exactly as they do in the restaurant. What more can I say? THIS IS A FABULOUS BOOK!!!!!

Much like it's worthy counterpart's book (Tra Vigne), this wonderful piece should not fail to delight and please all those who happen across it.

First, if you are lucky enough to have dined at Terra, you'll already understand the beauty of (and behind) this book. Quite simply, this is a work of art. Why is that the case? Well...

Design--Beautiful graphic design and photographs. The layout is incredible and the photos are enough to make you drool.

Dialogue--Add to that delightful text and dialogue. Much closer to what this book achieves is the word "prose" as opposed to merely "text." The stories and dialogue are true pleasure to read. It makes this much more than simply a "cookbook."

Recipes--The recipes are, much like the food at the restaurant, exquisite. They are just delicious. Their difficulty ranges from relatively easy to moderately difficult. But, they are very easy to follow, making even the harder recipes accessible to the average "joe."

I strongly urge those considering this one to just go ahead and make the purchase. You will not be disappointed. It will be book you will treasure, and will reach for time and again.

Also, look into the Tra Vigne cookbook. It too is on the same level as this piece.

A young woman on her own in the not so urban area of wildcat county. Living a life of gambling, gossip, and scandal. Taking a risk, getting her self into trouble, and adventure. But not minding much of any thing at all. Untill she falls in love with one of the riches men in town. But who can this man be? After all, every man would love to court the scandalous Eden Moran. I love the book it's Romantic, Adventurous, Intriguing, Exciting, and of course. . . SCANDALOUS!

The plot was fascinating, kind of like the picture brides of the past. Fierce women are shipped to a town, believing it's a large city, only to find it be be out in the middle of nowhere. Females will love these romances, adults may also. Very graphic at times, but nothing raunchy.

If you're going to read this, you need to read all the books in the series. One is not complete without the others.

Eden and her father have always gone from country to country, city to city, earning a living from gambling. But one day, Eden's father leaves her, so she sets out for California to find a husband and start a new life. But there, she can't keep from gambling again, and she falls in love with a man that doesn't love her back - and when he finaly returns her love, Eden's father shows up, and he could result in Eden losing all that she has gained.

Harvey is at his best in many pages of this book - he is also at his worst on more than a few. The passion that has been repsonsible for great books like the Condition of Postmodernity and Justice, Nature and the Geog of Difference is more than evident - it is this passion that I beleive is Harvey's greatest asset. When talking about concrete things (like the employment conflicts in Baltimore) he is not only intellectually rigorous, but also emotionally engaging. More of this required. The chapters on the body seem rushed and an afterthought - as ever, Harvey's ambition seems to outstrip his (quite considerable and very impressive) capabilites. Overall, this is a quite personal (the introduction and conclusion are extremely moving) and intellectually impressive volume from a writer who continues to be instrumental to my thinking.

There's a lot of theory here.
Don't let it scare you away.

This book is a brilliant examination of ideas that run modern society in America--and ideas that could have, but didn't. Harvey asks hard, delicate questions that poke at the very framework of modern society and makes you question assumptions about people and cities that you didn't even realize you had. Utopia has never been so interesting.

The appendix, in which Harvey delineates a society wherein he uses the ideas he describes in the book, is extremely interesting and contradictory. Worth the price of the book alone.

In his introduction to "Spaces of Hope," David Harvey relates how much the times have changed since he began teaching Marx's Capital in the early 1970s. Back then, he didn't openly specify the content of the class in the course catalog -- he felt sure the powers that were at Johns Hopkins at the time would shut him down. At that time, he tells us, no one in U.S. academia (except for a few foreign professors) had ever really read Marx. The interest at that time was directly related to the recent "revolutionary" fervor time of the late 60s/early 70s wherein Mao and Che Guevera, the Weather Underground, etc., were countercultural icons and Marx's Captial was seen to be the source of their revolutionary program. When the Berlin wall came down, Marx's reputation as came down with it. Now, thirty years after he started teaching it, Harvey finds he has fewer students than ever, but that the text itself is perhaps even more relevant now than it has ever been. He notes that convincing others of its relevance is a difficlt task these days partly because there is no political apparatus to give weight to Marx's ideas, but also because post-modernism and identity politics have tended to denigrate mass political movements as "master narratives" that cannot be trusted. Harvey thinks it's time to get a new revolution going, and he thinks Marx's observations go a long way toward helping us think clearly about the world in which we live and how we might change it.

After the personal note sounded in the introduction, Harvey then takes up his real program which is a history of the production of space and under capitalism in the service of trying to create his new revolutionary consciousness to ameliorate, sabotage, rewrite, or replace the prevailing capitalist discourse with new ways of seeing our bodies, the spaces we create and live in. He discusses our impact on the earth and other species and explores new forms of consciousness that grow out of that new sensitivity. At the center of the book is an examination of how deindustrialization has gutted his Baltimore over the past 30 years he's lived there, the rise of the racialized service economy, the rise of the real estate speculators in cahoots with city planners giving massive tax abatements in mostly failed attempts to revitalize the city. This is a subject Harvey knows intimately, and in his description of Baltimore's woes he tells the disheartening story of so many mid-sized American cities which have been struggling to stay afloat during the exportation of blue collar jobs starting in the 70s. Harvey's chapters on the body as an accumulation strategy (quoting Donna Haraway) offer a good history and discussion of the post-modern rejection of the Des Cartes body/mind duality. He considers the body in the Foucauldian sense of society and its spaces and regimes enforcing discipline and docility, and also considers how our bodies are shaped by capital -- work hours, repetitive acts, the food we eat, the tobacco we smoke -- but interestingly, also discusses the body in terms of variable capital, Marx's terminology.

Harvey does a credible job of resurrecting a classic for a new generation, showing how it relates to current postmodern themes. One of his best ideas is to see that we have been in the process of creating utopias in two main ways over the past 500 years or so. The grounded utopias of Sir Thomas More and others, who draw maps and imagine the human relations that might occur in the spaces they create, and the "process utopias" like Adam Smith's view of the invisible hand of captilism making us all better, clothing us, feeding us, improving us. Harvey's most powerful explorations have to do with how capital has created the spaces that capital requires, mostly to the detriment of people, but to the benefit of capital.

It is easy to forget what it was like before Roe vs. Wade. This important work reminds older women and shows younger women the tremendous impact the issue of choice has on lives. It reads like a mystery and develops into a can't-put- it-down good read.

Sometimes people forget that mid-twentieth century California was not just Hollywood, but a large, sparsely populated state, with hundreds of small rural communities. In _Staying Under_, Carol Alma McPhee recreates that California for readers. As a woman who grew up in a similar environment, I want to vouch for her accuracy of detail as well as her ear for dialogue. Maureen and Joann, her two main characters, sound just the way my friends and I did fifty years ago.

McPhee uses her setting to provide a sense of what frightening challenges might face young women emerging from such a protected rural environment in 1948. She also uses the setting to show how all kinds of isolation and separation affect the development of women: isolation from knowledge about themselves, isolation from sensible help from the community, isolation created by the lies told each other.

Though Staying Under is not a mystery, it reads like a mystery. The answer to the question of what Joann is going to do about her pregnancy in 1948--before Roe vs. Wade-- and how she might find help becomes more and more frightening as you read on. This is especially true as McPhee contrasts the life Joann has led as an adult and her strong and passionate character as an adolescent. In general, characterization is one of McPhee's strong points. Maureen, the friend who tries to help the teen age Joann, hasn't changed as much as her friend as she has grown older, but she has developed into a competent and active woman who loves to make fun of herself. Of the men in the book, Paul Ridley, Joann's father who pursues strange religions is the most interesting, though Collie, who keeps an imaginary frog in his pocket, adds to the suspense at the end.

The book was written in 1940. I read it in February 1943 at the U. of Wisconsin. Unaware that I needed glasses, I had been rejected by the Army Air Corps as a possible fighter pilot. I stumbled into weather forecasting as a bad second choice, having no interest at all in weather. This small book, given to me by the Army, instantly converted me into an avid, aspiring meteorologist. I am so glad Amazon.com recently found a used copy for me.

The novel is unusual in its construction. The storm called Maria (this book started the custom of giving storms feminine names) is the all imposing, domineering character in the story. There are 12 chapters, one for each day in the life of the storm. Each chapter has 6-12 subchapters that tell of the two or three dozen human characters who are in the plot. We know most of them by job title, not by name. Maria connects them all together in an ever rising crescendo that reminds me of Ravel's Bolero.

For most, weather happens! It affects our lives in countless ways and sometimes wreaks havoc on them. Unless one personally experiences the sheer violence of weather like a tornado or a hurricane, we go along just being inconvenienced by it and muttering how it forced cancellation of the picnic or the golf game. Stewart's novel is a wonderful story of the seeming innocence of an obscure storm system developing far, far away that eventually will dramatically impact men's and women's lives in western United States. The people stories are poignant and suspensful as each is tied to this relentless and powerful storm as it develops and makes it's way to our shores. One gains tremendous appreciation and respect for the patterns, intensity and often times the unpredictable nature of weather -

A must read for anyone who knows and loves the big california storms- you know who you are. For the rest of you, it chronicles the lifespan of one of the big pacific storms.

I don't know how the novel of crime (no use calling it a mystery because this book does not follow the standard mystery format of crime, suspects, detective discovers identity of criminal, at all) has become a favored method by which writers examine society. It probably says something about our society that here the killer and the bureaucrats seem equally souless.

Abigail Padgett has a message. The message is that the mentally ill are more often the victims than the perpetrators of criminal acts. Her positive characters are all survivors. Bo, her main character is a manic depressive, the sole surviving member of her family. Eva Boussard, a psychiatrist, is the survivor (so far) of breast cancer. Rombo is a surviver of alcoholism and hatred by his father. Andy became a pediatrician after his daughter drowned due to neglect.

And all of these people go on doing the best that they can, sometimes getting side tracked from their own purposes because of their basic humanity in an effort to save a little girl whose sister was raped and whose mother committed suicide, free an innocent man and stop the real killer. And they do it with grace, humor and much humanity.

Highly recommend.

I have read every one of Padgett's books, and enjoy them all tremendously. These are mystery stories written for literate, thoughtful people, and I can't understand why Padgett's books are so hard to get! Abigail Padgett is a thoughtful, lyrical author who assumes her readers will "get it" without spoonfeeding. I read this book "out of sequence", but am grateful to get my hands on anything this talented woman writes in any way I can.

Abigail Padgett is one of today's best mystery writers, right up there with Laurie R. King. "Strawgirl" is the second in her series about Bo Bradley, a manic-depressive child-abuse investigator. Sounds like a downer, but it's not. Ms. Padgett's literate writing, deft storytelling ability and complex characterization make this a most enjoyable read. Bo Bradley is an admirable, courageous and likable character, as is the psychiatrist and cult researcher Eva Blindhawk Broussard, who is introduced in "Strawgirl." I had to seek out a secondhand copy of this book, and it was well worth the effort.