Thank you Mr. Leepson for "Saving Monticello". I found it a very enjoyable read and very interesting. As a Virginian, we are proud of all our historic sites and heritage and the story of the Levy family is one of the best that I have read in a long time. Anyone who reads this book will discover that Uriah and Jefferson Levy deserve a lot credit for "Saving Monticello". Preserving Monticello was the Levy's way of keeping the memory of Thomas Jefferson alive. If it wasn't for the resources of the Levys, the many treasures of Monticello would have been lost to future generations.

In his compellingly readable book, Marc Leepson gives long overdue credit to the Levy family for saving Monticello. Monticello, the greatest architechtural icon of America, would likely not be standing today if first Uriah Phillips Levy and then his nephew Jefferson Levy had not poured their money and their passion into preserving Monticello. Marc Leepson skillfully tells the dramatic story of how the Levys took proprietorship of Monticello and became the saviors of Jefferson's "essay in architecture." I discovered while reading Leepson's book that most of my suppositions regarding Monticello and Jefferson's role in preserving Monticello as an architectural shrine were false. It amazed me that I knew so little of the story of Monticello, and it further amazed me that Marc Leepson had ferreted out so many fascinating facts with which to dazzle the reader in this masterpiece of detection and research. If you read only one American history book this season, read this one!

Marc Leepson has written the first truly "honest" and "complete" story about the saving of Thomas Jefferson's wonderful home, Monticello. This story about how Uriah Levy, an Jewish-American Naval Hero, and his nephew Jefferson Levy, a merchant banker and stock investor early on in their liveunderstood the importance of preservation, especially America's treasures like Monticello and even Mt. Vernon,George Washingon's home.

Not many American's in the 19th century really cared or understood preservation, and Jefferson's Monticello almost was destroyed through neglect and the horrors of the Civil War.

The Levy family for more than 80 years were the ones singly responsible for saving Monticello. From fighting off law suits, tresspassers, anti-semitism and simple vandals wanting a piece of Thomas Jefferson's tomb, the Levy's keep the dream alive that Monticello would be there for future generations of American's to see and visualize what Jefferson had in mind.

Uriah Levy, and Jefferson Levy deserve this honest rendering of their story, and so do all Americans.

Michael A. Schwartz
Bethesda, Maryland
8/27/02

It doesn't matter whether or not your Jewish thyis story of

The Seventh Telling is a remarkable book that "works" on many levels. It introduces and explains kabbalistic thought in a very accessible way, and demonstrates how the theory can be put into practice by modern people. However, unlike other guides, this one is also a gripping story, in several layers, whose characters are compellingly human and complex. As we engage in the multiple narratives, we experience the power of the "telling" to open our consciousness to new insights. We are invited to accompany Moshe Katan, the protagonist, as he explores the relationship among the worlds of action, feeling, thought, and pure emanation in his daily life, as well as through the practice of kabbalistic meditation. For those who, for whatever reason, will never directly experience the power of this practice to change oneself and the world, reading The Seventh Telling the next best thing.

Ruth Goldston

Certain books call to me. Most books I won't buy until I've read and analyzed all the reviews on Amazon, but this book I picked up in a bookstore, read til the store closed, and then at every opportunity until I finished it. The narrative is real enough to be believable, but strongly tinged with the mystical, and works at many different levels. The telling of stories to teach and heal is an art and science, and Mitch Chefitz has mastered both ends of the spectrum with this extraordinary work.

For many Jews and non-Jews, religion (or spirituality) is a lifelong search or course of study. Personal reactions to events, crises or otherwise, coupled with appropriate readings and sound teaching moves the individual forward, toward some of the answers to some of "the big questions". The events and incisive reflections thoughtfully presentd in "Seventh Telling" activate the intellect and touch the heart. This is an excellently conceived book that weaves spiritual knowledge in the body of a reader-friendly novel, with many remarkable and accessable insights. The author, at times in a not so quiet voice, hints that God (or religion) is too deep and precious a subject to be left only in the hands of the religious. As a "good read", and a "can't put down page-turner","Seventh Telling" deserves at least a "Second Reading", and maybe more.

This was one of my favorite movies growing up now I don't remember it at all and would give anything to see it again. If any Disney Execs are reading this PLEASE RE-RELEASE SONG OF THE SOUTH. You have the right to. Many people want this movie again please re release it.

I wish Disney would re-release this video. I am thirty years old and remember watching the film numereous times as a young child. It was one of my favorite childhood movies. It also contained some of my favorite childhood songs. I think it is a disgrace that Disney would remove this movie from circulation due to pressure from a small minority. I think most people would find this movie entertaining and its a shame that the majority must be ignored to appease a small segment of the population. For anyone to say that this movie was racist is ridiculouos.

Please re-release Song on the South, It was the very best movie in the world.I am 56 years old, and I took my children when they were small, and they remember the film so well. I even still sing Zip a dee do da, to my grandchildren,Please who ever reads this at Disney, Please re-release this film.It is really a classic...Thanks,Diane

Katherine Martin has created a wonderful resource book for women. There is hardly a story in the bunch where I wasn't moved to tears, as an ordinary woman, faced with challenging circumstances, made a set of extraordinary decisions.

Facing fear head-on, so many of these women found a courage that is often undiscovered in most of us. It seemed to me that in many instances they were fulfilling some part of what their soul was sent here to do and learn. In some cases I think they would have preferred that it was someone else's destiny to make it happen, none of their stories are about easy painless solutions, but the choices they make in the face of their respective situations make them "poster women" for what courageous women look and act like in today's world. They take responsibility and ownership for issues/circumstances and most importantly for themselves in ways that remove them from victim status and put them in conscious leadership of their destiny. Because of these women, my daughters can think differently about how they can contribute to the world they walk through. A must read for women, their daughters and the men who love them.

I am a twenty-one year old who is emerging into the excitement, confussion, and power of womanhood. I was incredibly blessed in the sense that I was exposed to Katherine's book in its' early stages. "Women of Courage" moved and touched me in ways that nothing else has. I would finish a story and feel blessed as well as excited to be a woman. I also had the potent experience of hearing Katherine speak at my college last month. The event reinforced the power that this book holds between the beautifully written stories. I know that after the event my peers walked away feeling a little bit stronger, prouder, and more courageous. I truly encourage all women, especially women my age, who like my myself are beginning to shed the layers of the little girl, to read this book. I also encourage you to write her, e-mail her, invite her to speak at your school and share her book more intimatly with you and your peers. Most importantly, this book will teach you and inspire you to cross lines that you once believed to be boundries.

Katherine Martin has compiled a very diverse group of women's stories - most didnt set out on some courageous quest - but rather found themselves in circumstances where they could not take the easy road - either because they chose not to or there was no alternative - their courage sometimes shows up in how they decided to respond to their situation - they could have been victims and left it at that - instead they got proactive - even in the face of grave consequences for themselves - This book provides a model for women and should be required reading for Women's Studies across the country.

I found Sandys book very revealing and honest.I am obese and I have always felt that people dont understand the challenges obesity causes. Her struggles with the weight loss has given me hope that someone does understand me and that there is hope for me. Thanks Sandy for a job well done.

I read Sandra's book when it hit the bookstores and now I am getting ready to read it for a second time for updated inspiration. Being someone myself who was thin at one time, gained weight through pregnancy and life, lost it, then gained it back by revisiting old behavior, I am finding what Sandra wrote is so true: reaching and maintaining a healthy weight is a lifelong journey, not a journey that ends the day you reach goal weight. And, the successful approach is not with fad dieting but instead with slow, sure, steady steps just as the title suggests. Sandra was so honest in exposing details of her life and her thoughts that you feel like you've known her for a long time.

If you struggle with your weight, you want to feel better, you want your health back, you are interested in a common sense approach without false promises, then I encourage you to buy this book. You will feel inspired. I just wish I lived in Michigan so I could be in Sandra's exercise class!!!

Many readers have contacted me and asked if I've kept the weight off. Well, the answer is "yes, mostly!" I did gain a few pounds back, but I took them off right away the "slow but sure" way. I took them off the same way my book suggests. Let me share something with you! Being healthy and fit is a life-long journey. And to be successful, you must sign up for the long haul. My book is a good tool for successful weight loss. It promotes healthy eating and regular exercise. There are no fad/fast diets that lead you to failure. I'm now 56 years of age and I've never, ever felt better. Even as a chubby young girl, I didn't have the energy I have today. Get this book, read this book and then join me on my journey. I'd love to have you as a traveling companion, but, more important, I would be thrilled if you, too, were successful. IT CAN BE DONE and I show you how! Make a resolution now (you don't need to do this just on January 1) to be the best you can be. Make health a priority and, once you lose the weight, what you see in the mirror will be an added perk. SLOW BUT SURE is surely for you. YOU CAN DO IT! You are special and you are worthy of success. SLOW BUT SURE will help you. This I promise you!

Lisa Birnbach's The Official Preppy Handbook is a bible for every Brooks Brother and Lacoste Polo Shirt wearing man and woman in the country. Birnbach's sarcastic approach to the preppy world makes you stop to consider how ridiculous some of the things we do are, or at the very least provides for a little dinning hall humor!

When I was in prep school in Massachusetts, my roommate and I were invited to an afternoon lawn party with several of the deans. Not knowing what to wear to such an occasion, we consulted "The Handbook" then headed off to J. Press. Although we were two of the only people wearing seersucker suits, we were confident in our attire and received many compliments throughout the afternoon.

Although the true prep will have a hardbound first edition in the top drawer of his or her desk, everyone who has ever thrown on some topsiders to wear to class will love and cherish this book.

I begged Mummy and Daddy to let me go board, but they said they were saving for the Ivies. I ended up at an Ivy and wished it were one of the schools listed as a party school in OPH. Man, talking about literature imitating life. Holden Caulfield, eat your heart out! When I tell people about the way I dressed and how I spent every dime on those Gucci loafers they just look at me like I have three heads. People still sweat the cashmere blazer. Who wouldn't?

You will love this book especially if you were one of the few people that grew up in the eighties that still has pictures they aren't embarrased to show others!

My copy is from the library. It seems I lost it...;-) The fine was only 10 bucks and was worth every PREPPY PENNY!

I am hard pressed to recall a humor book that was so very well done, that academics routinely cite examples from its pages. The Official Preppy Handbook has achieved that.

Lisa Birnbach and company, successfully documented the lives of the Prep School set, from youth to retirement. Along the way they explore in a brilliant and witty way, the mindset and lifestyle of this group. You learn immediately that being a Preppy is well beyond going to a private school. Preps exude Noblesse Oblige, while wearing Lacoste polos and drinking Bloody Mary's. You learn about their cars, colleges, clothes, food, jobs, music, pets, what they read and how they decorate their houses. You learn what "To Summer," REALLY means. You even learn their speech patterns, and prep vocabulary. Along the way you have a lot of laughs, while getting an education about what makes these people tick. Years later, I still pull out my pristine copy not only for laughs, but for reference as well. In recent years others have tried to follow this groundbreaking formula only to have missed the mark. You will find many books with: "In the traditon of The Preppy Handbook" in their titles. They do not even come close.

Sadly, this artifact is out of print. Perhaps someone will start a letter writing campaign to Workman Publishers, begging them to reprint it. It is REALLY that good!

Laura was a nine year old girl who had dark brown hair and eyes. She lived in the prairie of Minnesota with Ma, Pa, Mary, Carrie and her pet bulldog,Jack. Laura's family worked very hard in their everyday life. Pa would tend the garden,Ma would do the house work,and Mary and Laura would help after they came from school. Sometimes storms struck the prairie and it was devastating. The author,Laura Ingalls Wilder, wanted to let people know about pioneer times. On the Banks of Plum Creek is a very well written book,it made me feel as if I was part of the story.

Laura and her family have moved to a small farm near Walnut Grove in Minnesota. They will have to adapt to Minnesota, the sod house, and a lot more. Laura Ingalls is a seven year old girl who loves to explore the creek, and is daddies little angel. Laura lives with her Ma, Pa , her two sisters Marry and Carrie, and their loyal companion and bulldog Jack. Pa goes out to get lumber and builds a beautiful new house with windows and he farms wheat to earn money. One day Pa said that in a couple weeks the wheat would soon be ready to pick. Then they see this peculiar sparkling cloud that filled the sky. Shortly after countless numbers of grasshoppers cover the field, the creek, and the rest of the farm, including Laura and her family. The grasshoppers consumed every plant including the wheat that Pa worked so hard to grow.
Mary and Laura start to go to school and on their first day they met many friends and some foes. one of their rivals was named Nellie who had a party and invited all the girls from school. Nellie was very rude and very cruel to Mary and Laura. Laura decided to have a party as well, and invited all the girls from school. Laura invites Nellie particulary to get back at her, and boy did she do a clever and a funny prank on Nellie. Then the Ingalls experienced blizzards, storms, and prairie fires which were very devastating. After all the work the family put into the farm and the wheat, their work finally payed off.
This book had lots of surprising, unpredictable, and very exciting events. If I could rate this book on a scale of one through ten, I would give this book a ten. Once I started to read this book I couldn't put it down, because I was so hooked on it. This book is fantastic and is great for every age, and great for every age, and should be enjoyed by everyone. If your looking for a great book that will excite, delight, suprise, and grasp your attention, On the Banks of Plum Creek is just the book your looking for.

A very exciting book
Everything is going great at Plum Creek. Pa makes a new house out of wood and it has glass windows. a will pay for the wood with the money from their first wheat crop. One day a huge cloud covers the praire and grasshoppers fall from it. Laura is very exciting and daring while Mary is more ladylike than Laura is. Pa and Ma are very loving parents. Read this book to find out what happens next. This is a very catching book. Once you turn the page you'll never want to stop reading it. I liked this book because after every chapter you just want to keep going. I also liked thes book because it told what real people had to go through. The characters do amazing things. I would rate this book from one to five a six. The age group for this book I think is 8 and up. I hope you read this book!

The first of Michael Lesy's books, 'Wisconsin death trip' is as harrowing and breathtaking today as when it was first published, back in the early 1970s. Utilizing a veritable treasure-trove of miraculously preserved glass negative plates taken in rural Wisconsin during the period of the 1880s-early 20th Century, and combining them with newspaper clippings and other snippets of local news from the area and era, Lesy has pieced together an amazing (if bleak) view of life in that day and age. Times were hard, and the challenges faced were many and daunting -- anyone bemoaning the state of life in America today should read this book...anyone who wants a truer sense of American history should read this book. You will never forget it.

On a related note, readers might be interested to know that this book inspired Stewart O'Nan's great novel 'A prayer for the dying' (also available through amazon.com).

I was able to read this book in one day, and wanted more. Being a former resident of this area of Wisconsin made it even more interesting for me, but all that aside, it was one of the most intriguing books I've read in a long time. The photographs are a wonderful testament to life in that era & locale, if you're a collector of old photographs & post-mortem shots this is a great book for your library. Reading about all of the madness surrounding these people, their bizarre and sad behaviors really makes you think. The author's conclusion really draws it all together for you.

There is relatively little I can say about this book.

The book is essentially photographs and news clippings from a newspaper in Wisconsin from about 1890 to 1910. Interspersed are snippets from novels dealing with life during the period.

Turning the pages, reading the articles, and looking not at the pictures but into the eyes of the people in the photographs, one gets a sense not of some sterilized, backward glance at these people as some great societal force, not as a band of pioneers, but as very human people, who die in childbirth, die as children, die of diseases that sweep through whole towns and infect the entire state with fear, go insane, murder, and still maintain enough inner dignity to be able to look into the lens of a camera and mask most of their emotions long enough for the half-second exposure but not long enough to pierce the heart of people living a century later. It is pain. It is a death trip.

The book speaks for itself. Actually, it doesn't. The people in word and image speak for themselves.

Nathaniel Lachenmeyer's The Outsider - A Journey into My Father's Struggle with Madness is a unique book for many reasons. Written from the perspective of a hapless onlooker, it encompasses the full gamut of emotions suffered by the relatives of a person who is mentally ill. Furthermore, in the author's search for rhyme or reason for his father's demise the author eschews political grandstanding or heated rhetorical calls for "something to be done". Instead this is ultimately a book about acceptance - the acceptance of the vaguries of life, of the fact that nothing is guaranteed and ultimately, that sometimes when we face life's challenges we find ourselves incapable of rising to the occasion.

Written, as the title states, about the author's father's struggle with mental illness, the book also details the reaction of his family, his father's colleagues and the people: Social Workers, Caregivers and Cops, who came into contact with his father while he suffered from the illness which inevitably drove him onto the streets. In this the book is refreshingly frank - the author refrains from assigning blame and instead - perhaps as a result of his own lingering guilt over his own inability to deal with his father - examines the difficulty of dealing with a person suffering from mental illness. Lachenmeyer doesn't gloss over the conflicting emotions that people who deal with the mentally ill have, nor does he try to glorify those who are forced onto the streets because of it. Lachenmeyer is instead refreshingly unsparing in his examination of the problems associated with people suffering from mental illness, their impact of their illness on those around them and the questions surrounding how to adequately care for them.

Perhaps one of the most important points made throughout the book is about how so many mentally ill people end up on the street. Lachenmeyer is one of the few writers in this field to acknowledge that the whole concept of "deinstitutionalization", a hold-over from the ethos of the 1960's is largely responsible for the huge number of mentally ill homeless people on the streets today. In this Lachenmeyer definitely takes a chance at losing the part of his audience that is content to blame conservative governments and rapacious landlords for today's state of affairs. Further still, Lachenmeyer is surprisingly accepting of the role of police in dealing with the mentally ill, refraining from charged, politically-motivated commentary and instead accepting that the police too are responsible for, yet ill-equipped to deal with the mentally ill on the streets.

All too often reviewers label a book as "important". This is one of those books that truly is important; it is a sensitive, objective and heartfelt look at the problems surrounding mental illness and those that suffer it. Written with compassion and yet accurate in its analysis this book is an excellent reference source as well as an engaging and thought-provoking read. This book deserves a wide audience as it offers the potential to bring balance and objectivity to the on- going debate over the homeless and the mentally ill.It is definitely a must read for anyone who is even remotely associated with this issue. However, as a story alone it is one not to be missed

A son's attempt to come to understand the schizophrenic illness that struck his father when the son was a small boy. He had had little contact with him after that, but he came to know in later times his father's story, the downward spiral caused by his illness. What comes through, too, is the dignity with which his father attempted to cling to his humanity, even though he was tortured by a convoluted paranoid delusional system. Eventually the people in a Vermont town were able help him, ironically, by getting him convicted for panhandling, a move that got him off the streets, where his weight, at a height of 6'4", was 140 pounds, and where he was suffering frostbite during a bitter winter, and into a mental hospital where he was given medication that improved his condition and undoubtedly saved his life. The author writes about the pros and cons, then, of our society having criminalized mental illness; in this case the father's life was saved after he'd been arrested for a petty crime, determined to be not guilty by reason of insanity, and sent to a mental hospital where he got the care he needed. A riveting book.

Why aren't there more books like this? I heard about it on Fresh Air and have been surprised it hasn't been more widely reviewed. Does the Ny Times Book Review or the Washington Post or Newsweek or Time just not care about mental illness or Lachenmeyer's compelling story?

Anyway, I feel as if I have been searching for books like this my whole life. Both my mother and my sister suffer from schizophrenia and I have felt lost and alone. So many books seem to make fun of the illness, or to not really get it. By it I mean what it is like for the families of those who suffer.

Though this book is a wonderful first step, my own wish is personal. I wish for a book that really tells what it is like for family members who try to deal with a schizophrenic family member day in and day out. Lachenmeyer's book is a reconstruction. Lachenmeyer wa estranged from his father and journeys back to "find" his father posthumously. It's close, and compelling, but it doesn't adequately capture an experience that many of us must endure: daily care of a severly ailing family member. That said, this is a marvelous book and a tremendous first step to opening up a discussion of mental illness in this country.

Long heralded as a monumental portrait of American society in the early decades of the 20th century, John Dos Passos' U.S.A. trilogy is, if nothing else, an amazing display of intellectual endurance. Few novels that I have come across are more ambitious or broader in scope. In 1240 pages, Dos Passos attempts to characterize a vast, growing nation in one of its most dynamic periods in history. While he gloriously succeeds as a sociological study, it is unfortunately at the expense of producing a mediocre work of literature.

It is important to point out that while the three installments of this trilogy were written several years apart from each other, this is most definitely one book, not three. The first and second books, The 42nd Parallel and 1919, have no proper conclusion, and The Big Money, the trilogy's final installment, is a logical progression in terms of style and chronology, if not plot. So reading any of these books on their own, or reading them all out of sequence, would be a thoroughly unsatisfying experience.

It is clear from early on that Dos Passos has bitten off more than he can chew, at least from a literary perspective. His goal is to capture the essence of an America caught in the throws of industrialization and fervent capitalism, and the inevitable wealth gap and social class struggle that result from this economic expansion. He also tackles the difficult task of explaining this country's painful ambivolence towards the war in Europe and the sense of euphoria in the years following it's conclusion. But these themes are vast and unwieldy, far bigger than any one character in the novel, and as a result, the characters themselves become forgettable and quickly get lost. In a sense, there is only one main character in this novel, and it is America herself.

But America is not a person, it is a country and society, and as such the U.S.A. trilogy at times takes on the feel of a social inquiry more than a work of fiction. The other characters, through whose experiences we study the social landscape and fabric of early 20th century America, lack depth and dimension. They are mere stereotypes chosen by Dos Passos to represent various segments of society. There is the down-and-out vagabond, wandering the country and living hand-to-mouth, bitterly condemning the economic wealth all around him from which he is excluded. You have the quintessential rags-to-riches success story, the boy who started with little more than a dollar in his pocket and a whole lot of ambition, and amassed an economic fortune, but at the expense of his humanity and health. We also find the New York socialites, the Communist activists, the labor union organizers, the proud and rowdy GI soldier. But there are no real people, as such characters would not serve the greater purpose of defining American society in the way that Dos Passos sees it. And as a result, the experiences and interactions among these characters are also stereotypical.

Despite its shortcomings, the U.S.A. trilogy is worth reading, as it constitutes an important contribution to the understanding of our nation and its history. And in many ways, the great ambition of this novel encouraged other writers to strive to create works of fiction that were not just of literary merit, but also of important social significance. However, for a far more satisfying literary experience, Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy accomplishes on a micro-level what Dos Passos attempted to achieve on a broader scale. But unlike the U.S.A. trilogy, Dreiser's work is a true pleasure to read.

This is the true American Epic.

Dos Passos wrote this trilogy almost as a documentary. It is a history lesson, with newspaper articles, biographical sketches, beautiful train of thought prose poems, and, in the midst of it all, fictional but brutally realistic characters who each experience the times through a unique set of eyes.

Since I have read this book it has become one of my favorites, and there are few titles with more meaning to me than _U.S.A_.

Dos Passos' trilogy is important reading for anyone intersted in American History. In particular, Dos Passos chronicles the history of the labor movement in the US and the revolt of working class worldwide.

It is intersting to note that at the time that this book was written, Dos Passos was a frevent socialist/communist. By the time of his death, he had renounced the communist idealogies for a more conservatine viewpoint.

Although, the fictional prose is simplistic and the dialogue somewhat cliched, a powerful story is told. The world is seen through the eyes of several ordinary citizens, all with different backgrounds and from different classes. The characters lives interwave through important world events such as labor unrest, Mexican revolution, World War 1, and the Russian Revolution.

Interwoven throughout the fiction are snippets that attempt to educate the reader. The 'Camera Eye' passages are newspaper headlines and attempt to capture the mood of the day. There are sections of Dos Passos's own thoughts of the day, some of them written as Dos Passos as a child might have seen them. My favorite sections were the short autobiographies of important citizens- among them Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Eugene Debs, Woodrow Wilsoon, and Emma Goldberg.

If you are lookiong for a passionate or suspenseful fictional story, this is not the book for you. But if you are intersted in history, especially American History, this book is excellent in capturing the mood of first third of the 20th century.