First book I've ever read that I feel compelled to recommend as a MUST READ for everyone. It's extremely eye-opening (at least to this reader) on the subjects of physical limits, our relationship to our physical selves, and even the meaning of life. You don't need a spinal-cord injury to appreciate Hockenberry's perspective on friends, family, work, American society, or journalism. This book is intelligent, reflective, funny, tragic, introspective, and, as far as I can tell, brutally honest. When John Hockenberry is the lens, the photo is exquisite

For those who enjoy true accounts of people's lives, here is your book. Moving Violations is an account of journalist John Hockenberry's life. The trick is he is paralized from the waist down and is in a wheelchair. The words on the pages are spiced up with hilarious details of his life. The part of his life he reveals to us about the first time John moves into a rehabilitation house tells us about mischief we all can relate to. I enjoyed reading about how John overcomes his difficulties. I would recommend this book to everyone who has compassion for others

Reflection on "Moving Violations" Ellie Widmer

Moving Violations, the memoir of John Hockenberry-- is a very moving story. It is frank and honest, inspiring and also surprisingly entertaining. Mr. Hockenberry uses a style that works well--he starts at the end, goes back to the beginning, and blends the story very nicely. He is a seasoned reporter; he sure knows how to keep his audience's attention! But it is not only his story that intrigues me. It is a pattern of human behavior that I have noticed before, in real life relationships as well as in autobiographies. At some juncture in the lives of a great number of people, the courage, the desire, maybe even the need for honesty appears and manifests itself in a variety of ways.

After major life events, be they catastrophes or spiritual enlightenment-or any number of other life changing experiences-to relate to readers or listeners the formerly hidden or "avoided " side of one's life, the mistakes if you will, the things one would ordinarily suppress is often a significant aspect of writings and speeches. In biographies in which family secrets, for instance, are aired in public, a reader can wonder if the subject is angry or embarrassed, or even if all the facts are accurate. But in biography, when a public figure reveals the sins of his or her youth, the transgressions against the formal law or the social norms, it is usually after a significant event in that person's life has occurred. Sometimes it may be when the writer is approaching or has reached old age; but more often it is something that literally wakes one up to a new sense of priorities, a new value system, a need to be as open honest with oneself, and consequently with everyone else. Self-disclosure can be freeing, healing and energizing.

But my interest in this whole issue is not just that it seems to happen, but rather why does it happen? Is it even a deliberate attempt at openness, or is it a natural instinct after a significant life experience? Is it a debt one owes to oneself to represent one's life as it really was, with the good the bad and the in between, rather that use the selective memory that sheds only positive light on the teller? Does traumatic or life jolting experience remind us so much of our finite condition, that we can no longer abide superficiality? Do we then care more about getting in touch with our true selves than what others may think of us? But most of all, is this a conscious thing? I think it may not be, but rather this behavior may be part of a growth process--a very positive one-- that many but not all people achieve in their lifetime. Could these phenomena be considered a sort of spiritual evolution in the context of a single life span? I would think there have been studies about this sort of thing. If so, I would like to know about them. I thank Mr. Hocenberry for his gift to all readers who pick up this book; it is a treasure.

Recently released in paperback, this bestseller is written with compassion and understanding by a physician who has had Crohn's Disease since her early teens. Simply the fact that she became an M.D. in the face of such adversity is an inspiration. She relates true stories of healing, coping, and offers her experiences with IBD and other medical problems we all face in life. The stories she relates really motivate and help develop the faith in your ability to better heal yourself. A touching, uplifting book. I highly recommend it

I like to read mostly just before bed, so for this nightowl I am usually reading pretty late after midnight. Sometimes I find a book I just can't put down, I like those kind. Since it is the beginning of a new year according to western calendar anyway, I find the book by Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D. Kitchen Table Wisdom - Stories that Heal very appropriate for this time of year. I must say the title was the hooker but as I get more into the book, I see it is really much, much deeper than any talk that has ever gone on around my kitchen table. The chapters are rather short & sweet with stories of humanity & love, growing experiences, healing & yes even death experiences all of which end in a message for the reader to ponder on. I don't mind writing in books I buy, you know good spots where I want to come back to later or that I want to remember, & this book is turning out to be filled with those pencil marks! When the author herself makes a personal discovery regarding her life & her soulful purpose, she states "Although I could be analytical & pragmatic, by nature I was an intuitive, even a mystic. I was my grandfather's granddaughter, I had remembered & I was going home. .." It was at this point the author moved from her traditional medical career, into the mind/body health field & we are grateful for her inspiration.

I first read this book when it was given to me as a gift and again more recently as I went through a difficult time in my life. Both times I was struck by the true stories, beautifuly and simply related, that demonstrate over and over our own capacity to improve our lives and the lives of those around us. Dr. Remen's medical credentials combined with her own history as a patient give her a deep understanding of healing and disease from both sides. I would recommend this book especially to anyone who is suffering from a physical or emotional illness. But even more so, I recommend it to the doctors out there who realize that your patients are more than just a compilation of symptoms and who are looking for a better way to relate to them.

The Scrambled States of America
By Laurie Keller
Reviewed by Jason P. (age 8)

"There's no place like home". That's what all 50 states learned in this hilarious, slightly romantic tale.

It all starts when Kansas (who was very angry) decides to invite all the states to a "states party" to meet new states.
At the party, Nevada and Mississippi fell in love. Later, Virginia and Idaho suggested that all the states switched places. All the states agreed to this, so they all changed places through the day.
Will our fair country stay like this? Find out in The Scrambled States of America!

I liked this book because (like I told you) it was hilarious! I really liked the part when all the states went home.

I recommend this book to kids who: 1) like fiction, 2) can read picture books.

Read this book to find out the funniest U.S. story ever!

It isn't often you come across a children's book that's unique in it's story, fun in it's presentation, and a delight to read. Laurie Keller accomplishes this with "The Scrambled States of America". The unique idea of each state having it's own personality and voicing it's opinions on his place in the country, is both comical and creative. This book brings together colorful illustrations and a geography lesson, which will have children learning the names & shapes of the states after reading the book for just the first time! I highly recommend this book as a source of knowledge, imagination, & fun.

Joi M. Lasnick

As our students read their way across America by earning miles, I decided to read "The Scrambled States of America" to every class in our school from grades 1-6. There is not a class that hasn't enjoyed this hilarious book.

It's been interesting for me as the librarian to see how the different ages respond to the text and pictures. The first class that heard it, fifth grade, had just completed their state reports, and they were in tune with the book from beginning to end, adding all kinds of information they had recently learned. It was a wonderful discussion.

My favorite illustration in this book is where "states all over the country were waking up, having their first cups of coffee, reading the morning paper, and enjoying the beautiful sunrise." When I ask the students to look closely, they first laugh at silly things like Florida shaving, but then they notice that our state, Washington, is still asleep. Pretty quickly, the kids pick up on the time zones, and we end up talking about the time differences in our country.

Our kids get mockingly upset that Washington hasn't arrived to the big all-state party, because they are convinced we'd either bring apples or water (from all our rain)!

The students' favorite page is when they get to see the states all scrambled up. They love searching for our state, and other states they've studied or visited!

This is an entertaining book, one that I never would have predicted to be a hit with all grades. I took a gamble, and I was pleasantly surprised. They love it, and they learn something about geography while they're at it!

We tested all the features of this book on our vacation last month. This book is definitely our first choice of all the Kauai guides. It proved itself a great alternative to all the package tours that can run up to over $100 per person for one outing. The authors provide easy driving directions, accurate trail descriptions, hike degree of difficulty, potential hazards.

It was a big help knowing where to go the minute we hopped off the plane and was responsible for us having one fantastic time.

This book served as our primary field guide for finding hiking routes. We had heard Kauai was known for its uncrowded spaces and this book proved it very true. No other book lists so many trails. It is well written and contains precise directions and maps that made driving to the traiheads easy. During our two week trip there was never any down time which is amazing for a family of five. When the boys wouldn't walk another step, we hauled them to recommended beaches where they could boogie board and build sand castles. We're lending this treasure with all our underlining and notes to the family next door and plan to buy their Maui book for our Christmas vacation next year.

I bought KAUAI TRAILBLAZER for a recent trip to the Garden Isle and found it a friendly companion to have tucked under my arm. It's got explicit directions, so if you get lost, it's because you want to be lost! There is a soft subtlety in the photography--like snapshots in my memory, evocative. Imbued in the text is a sensitivity to the land and peoples of Hawaii. I was struck by a certain reverence that allows witness without disturbance. There is a marked dry wit to Sprout's writing style; he lightly peppers his guide with humor without detracting from the densely packed info he delivers to anyone wishing to visit Kauai--whether they want a useful first-time tour of some well-known sites, or desire to stray off the beaten path. The book definitely helped me and I highly recommend it. Aloha & best wishes, Doreen Sinky, BC, Canada

Where Blue Highways sprawled across the continental United States in a macro-view of America, William Least Heat-Moon reverses the lens and concentrates on (mostly) walking and (sometimes) driving a tiny subsection of the USA: Chase County, in the Flint Hills of eastern Kansas. The people he meets--the old timers who've seen the river rise and fall and mined the quarries, the feminist restauranteur, the female ranchers determined to succeed in the face of declining small-farm agriculture and chauvinism--are people who might make unlikely subjects for straight fiction, but Least Heat-Moon's gift is to make us care about their personal stories and worries anyway. The ecological, social, and political sides of Chase--and the personal issues and flights of fancy of the author's psyche--come into sharp focus under Least Heat-Moon's eye, which misses little; and his writing is clear enough to make you forget that you're reading something fascinating about something commonplace. The kind of book to make you wish the author was just a little more prolific

Having read BLUE HIGHWAYS several years ago I was excited when PRAIRYERTH came out and couldn't wait to read it. Even though itwas a huge book of about a thousand pages, my admiration for William Least Heat Moon was such that I knew I wanted to read this book.

When I began to realize we were never going to leave one county in Kansas I was already near the end of the book and wished that it wouldn't end.

I don't recommend this book to casual readers, for I think they will miss the beauty and fascination contained in these pages. But for those who love poetry and the sheer beauty of words mixed in with simplicity of spirit in story telling, there are few books that can come close to this one. I also have read RIVER HORSE and am hoping that William Least Heat Moon is writing his fourth book as I write these words!

I first picked up this book when a job change brought us into the Tallgrass Prairie region of Kansas. As it turns out, we settled in Cottonwood Falls, Chase County, Kansas! It was extraordinary to read PrairyErth, knowing that we would soon be experiencing this place first-hand.

There is truly nothing like living in this community and experiencing the sights, places and people described so richly in PrairyErth. William Least Heat-Moon knows this place well, and paints a picture that is as vivid and timeless as Chase County itself. As a "local", I've returned to this book time and time again.

Unfortunately, my job is now taking us away from here. If you've read the passage about Spring Street in Cottonwood Falls, then you know our home. This is truly a beautiful and extraordinary place; unique in the world. If you would like to experience the sense of community that my family and I have been so blessed with, give me a call.

This was really a great book. It had a interesting plot. It lagged only once when Frances,the oldest,did something for her job requering going on the streets. I thought it was page turrning when the children were being seperated. I liked the fact that the charicters were going through such in intence situation that i could never relate. I will warn you that I think the book "stops short". I wouldn't let that stop you from reading it. Infact I read it in the car dispite the fact it made me car sick. I recomened this to anyone who likes books on slavery or the west. I congradulate Joan Lowery Nixion on a job well done!

I thought that A FAMILY APART was a really good book. It helped me to understand what a poor teenager's life was like in the mid 1800's. The story was mainly about a thirteen year old girl named Frances, who lived with her mother and five siblings in New York. After Frances' father died, the family lived in poverty. The mother worked at all hours of the day to support her family. Therefore,she never had time to properly care for her six children, so she sent them on an orphan train to St. Joseph's, Missouri to live with farm families who could feed them and care for them. The children were very upset to leave their mother. They were upset because they would be separated from their brothers and sisters also. Frances did however get placed in a home with her six year old brother, Petey. Frances learned to cope with, and love her new family. Frances had some very exciting adventures while she was living with her new family in Missouri. This book helps the reader understand love, sacrifice and trust. If I were you, I'd sacrifice a little bit of time to read A FAMILY APART.

I thought that this novel was extremely well written. I actually did some research about orphan trains and I could tell that Nixon didn't just dream up the orphan train riders lifestyles. I think that Frances Mary Kelly (the main character) was very lucky to have a mother and a shelter. Most poor children at that time didn't have parents or a shelter. Until Charles Loring Brace founded the Children's Aid Society in 1853, children were living on the streets making their living as pick-pockets. He established the orphan trains to send homeless children west to find new families. In my educated opinion, I think that this book is great for a historical fiction report and also a good curl-up-with kind of book.

Lost Rights sets the record straight on almost every issue making headlines today and exposes how often the government has lied in issues ranging from gun control, the war on drugs, and government officials using their power in office to usurp power from ordinary citizens and transfer it to themselves. Lost Rights is backed hundreds and hundreds of references leaving no doubt of the validity of some of the shocking revelations revealed in the book. This book should be required reading for everyone who cares about their rights and freedoms.

Bovard's classic eye-opener belongs on the shelf of every American. Rather than serve merely as a warning, this book serves as a slap in the face. The violation of rights that this book documents (with stellar scholarship) and explains are not things that are about to happen -- they are things that have already happened and are happening all around us. Want to know "what's the problem with big government, anyway?" Just read this book. It is easy to read, even if it is not easy to accept. Bovard is a great writer and takes polemics and journalistic writing to a new level.

Buy this book and read it. Let it make you really, really angry about where we are. Read "Common Sense" by Paine and read the Constitution of the United States to figure out where we were. Then read "1984" by George Orwell to figure out where we're heading. Then read "The Road to Serfdom" by F A Hayek and realize why we're heading there. Then read "For A New Liberty" by Murray Rothbard and a host of other books to figure out what you can do about it. Then do it.

The United States of America is the greatest country in human history because it is the only nation ever founded on the noblest political principle possible: the principle of inalienable individual rights. But today this principle is undergoing an all-out assault by the enemies of liberty, and the United States is being destroyed in the process. This book presents, in terrifying detail, just how far the destruction of American liberties has gone. Bovard presents a wide range of examples of the arbitrary, viscious use of government power against defenseless citizens, and of the cost in death and ruined lives that this power produces. It is shocking to discover how far the destruction of freedom has already gone in America. Any person interested in protecting liberty ought to read this book.

Grant here gives a consistently interesting account of his role in many of the major campaigns of the Civil War. His prose is clear and his accounts of battles and strategies quite readable, even to those without particular expertise in military history. He sticks to the story, making few attempts to even scores with his numerous critics in the Army or the press.

One thing that should be noted is that these 'personal memoirs' are in many ways remarkably impersonal. There is only a quite brief account of Grant's youth, and his wife, to whom he was apparently quite devoted, is barely mentioned. Grant tells the story of his career as an officer with increasing levels of responsibility, but says little about himself. Also, the memoirs end with the assassination of Lincoln, and do not at all discuss his presidency.

The edition I read was lacking in maps, which was a serious drawback, however it was a different edition than the one discussed here. Because so much of the book focuses on the tactics of specific campaigns, a good set of maps is a very valuable addition, and would be advisable to check for in any edition you consider reading or buying.

No less an eminent man of letters than Mark Twain called Ulysses S. Grant's "Personal Memoirs" "the best [memoirs] of any General's than Caesars." Having now read this outstanding work along with those of Julius Caesar, William T. Sherman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, Colin Powell and H. Norman Schwarzkopf, I must agree with Mark Twain's assessment. For sheer honesty, humility, and simple but powerful language, U.S. Grant's memoirs are without peer.

Grant allows the reader to go along with him and live once again his experiences during the Mexican War and American Civil War. He interjects his own judgments and opinions sparingly, yet always honestly. Where he feels he made mistakes, he admits them freely, and his criticisms of his colleagues is always tempered by an obvious attitude of professionalism. The fact that Grant wrote a memoir of such eloquence while dying from cancer makes it all the more powerful a book.

I found this modern library edition especially outstanding. The introductory notes by Caleb Carr and Geoffrey Perret, while brief, are extremely informative. Maps and etchings from the original 1885 Charles Webster & Co. edition are included, as is General Grant's report to Secretary of War Stanton on Civil War operations during 1864-65. This appendix makes fantastic reading by itself!

I highly recommend this outstanding edition to all Civil War and military history enthusiasts. It is simply the best military memoir I've ever read.

I have never been much of a Civil War fan, but after reading "The Killer Angels" by Shaara, a historical fiction about Gettysburg, I was interested in following up with some non-fiction about the most important event in US History. This book kept me turning the pages from end to end. Despite its bulk (some 618 pages) I simply couldn't put the book down, as Grant's matter-of-fact description of the events that surrounded him was completely engrossing.

Grant was not an extraordinary man or brilliant tactician, his soldiers did not have the same obsession with him that the South held for Lee, he simply saw the war for what it was, a campaign against a rebellion. He looked at the entire war in its entirety, from battlefront to battlefront, and he repeatedly used that to his advantage. Many times he makes reference to deploying troops to no clear end other than to occupy an enemies flank, this often as a junior with no authority over the battle as a whole. Grant was a man of action, who realized he had to take a step in order to walk a mile. He took the battle to the enemy, divised clear and necessary steps which were needed to win the war as a whole. He was a general who did not just see the war as independent sets of battles, but saw those battles as a means to ending the Civil War.

One of my favorite parts of the text was watching the scope of Grant's vision widen. Starting with his actions in the Mexican American War his vision is very limited: he sees only the immediate battle, and his descriptions focus on minutiae reflecting his low rank. His vision escalates with his rank, until the end of the book, with the surrender of Lee, he sees and describes the entire army, and battles that would have once taken chapters to described are now dismissed in single sentences.

My one disappointment with the book was that it ended with the surrender of Lee at Appomatox. I would have liked to learn more about his actions after the war, and especially learned more about his presidency. I wish that there were similar autobiographies by other presidents, and certainly feel that this one elevated my expectations of all other autobiographies!

Favote Excerpts:

"It is men who wait to be selected, and not those who seek, from whom we may always expect the most efficient service." - Grant (page 368)

"All he wanted or had ever wanted was some one who would take the responsibility and act, and call on him for all the assistance needed, pledging himself to use all the power of the government in rendering such assistance." - Grant on Lincoln (page 370)

"Wars product many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true." - Grant (page 577)

"To maintain peace in the future it is necessary to be prepared for war." - Grant (page 614)

"The war begot a spirit of independence and enterprise. The feeling now is, that a youth must cut loose from his old surroundings to enable him to get up in the world." - Grant (page 616)

This was the first novel featuring Hammett's short story character, The Continental Op, and it's well worth reading. The Op is sent from his home in San Francisco to Personville, Montana on the request of a client. The fact that Personville is pronounced posionville by its residents will tell you the kind of town he enters. The violence is so bad that the Op never actually sees his client alive, but he sticks around to avenge his death. The deep plot is as convoluted as any detective novel, but the basic plot of a man playing two sides against each other proved to be important in the history of film even more so than literature.

The Op was the original Man With No Name. Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Western borrows both the stranger concept and the plot from Red Harvest. Though the credit is usually given to Akira Kurosawa for his film Yojimbo, both films actually borrow their essence from Hammett.

It's not necessary to have seen either film to enjoy this story. Overshadowed by the classic Maltese Falcon, Red Harvest deserves more ink than it gets. It's here with Hammett that the noir detective novel was born. The romantic notion of a poor detective who would rather live up to his own standards of justice than take a big payoff is a very American outlook. I can only figure that such a character comes from the many assignments that Hammett got working for the Pinkerton detective agency and the many times that Hammett wasn't allowed to do the right thing. Our detective is so virtuous under the standards of his own ethics that you admire him even when he is creating a bloodbath.

The most surprising thing is how well the whole book flows and quickly I read it. Hammett has a great way of leaving each chapter with enough questions that you want to immediately read the next one. He'll leave you with the conclusion of a boxing match and with a fighter that falls over with a knife in his back. How can you go to sleep on a chapter like that?

Any fan of detective novels and film noir should do themselves the justice of reading all the Hammett they can get. Red Harvest is a good start to that goal.

Of all the books written by the chronological trio of Hammett, Chandler, and MacDonald, only Red Harvest seems as honest and truthful now as I am sure it did in 1939. Although Hammett lacks Chandler's writing flare and sarcasm, his style makes for fast-paced, edge of the seat reading. As his Continental Op escapes harrowing situation after another, I was left with a disbelief, but this novel is not about whether the Op could ruin an entire town with merely a scratch. It is instead a commentary on society, and on the cutthroat nature still evident in us all. In so many ways, this novel reminds me of Shirley Jackson's haunting story "The Lottery" because the evil in our world is within the system, and in each person. Just as the Op confesses to wanting to join the killing spree, Hammett has made us want to read about more killing. He dupes us into playing the Op's game. This novel is so much deeper than what can be read in the text. In his own way, he tells us to look out for a system corrupted by greed and a quest for power. Much like Chandler, Hammett always has a message. Heed this one readers, but enjoy the enchantment of this amazing novel.

Hammett's Red Harvest is probably the most devastatingly brutal good novel you'll ever read. It's not like slasher movies -- all blood and gore and no content. It's a book about brutal people, both gangsters and politicians, who will do anything to keep their hands on the power that they've managed to get hold of. The Continental Op, Hamett's anonymous detective, finds that the only way to clean up Personville is to join the fray, and though his conscience bothers him, he fights fire with fire and matches the scummy crooks machiavellian move to machiavellian move. What makes the book tick is precisely the bleak, realistic, nihilism of its main characters, who remind one so much of real politicians and crooks, but without any of the spin-doctor sheen that covers their tracks in the media. Red Harvest is a book I read every couple of years to marvel again at fantastic writing and the no-nonsense view of humanity's common, unadorned, ugliness.