LITMIR.BIZ

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This lavishly illustrated volume examines the major figures of the Transcendentalist movement and explores the places that inspired them. Beginning with Transcendentalism’s birth in Boston and Cambridge, the book charts the development of a movement that revolutionized American ideas about the artistic, spiritual, and natural worlds. At the same time, it creates a vivid sense of New England in the nineteenth century, from its idyllic countryside and sleepy towns to its bustling ports and burgeoning cities. The book is divided geographically into chapters, each focusing on a town or village famous for its relationship to one or more of the Transcendentalists.

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This book introduces readers—whether they are native New Yorkers or Mad Men fans who have never set foot in the city—to the places, both famous and not so famous, that play a role in the historical and dramatic tapestry of Mad Men, from the famous Madison Avenue ad agencies that inspired its setting to the taverns, restaurants, and hotels that host so many of the series’ memorable scenes through Season 3.

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"I felt as numb and emotionally exhausted as every other American struggling to make sense of the stunningly brutal murder. My own grieving, however, would have to wait. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy had asked that I deliver the eulogy for her husband–and my friend." – Archbishop Philip Hannan Whether parachuting behind enemy lines…jumping into a Secret Service sedan for a White House meeting with JFK…or navigating the swirling flood waters of a hurricane…New Orleans' Archbishop Philip Hannan knew only one way to operate: totally committed and full speed ahead! The embodiment of «The Greatest Generation,» Archbishop Hannan's intellect, wit, generosity, and work ethic were unparalleled when fighting for what he believed in: the dangers of fascism, the preservation of the Faith, the inherent, if unforeseen, pitfalls in advising politicians on Church doctrine. Grab a front row seat on this extraordinary man's always fascinating, ever-humbling journey as he makes his mark on the pivotal events of the 20th century–the second World War, the Kennedy presidency, Vatican II, the integration of the South, Hurricane Katrina. Go behind the scenes as Archbishop Philip Hannan–at age 97, still the quintessential priest and American–details the events, pressures, decisions, and emotions of his one-of-a-kind experiences…proving, once again, the impact that one human being can have on history.Read an excerpt here.

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Joseph Levy leads a quiet life in rural Wheaton, Arizona. Retired from a long career in psychiatric research and practice, he reads, writes, and walks in the mountains and hills near the Native reservation. His quiet life ends, however, when a dental crown replacement causes trouble just before meeting an internet date in California. Thus begins a year of back-to-back nightmare infections, a drug overdose, and two failed relationships. At every step, Levy is confronted by matters of life and death, love and hate, faith and doubt, trust and betrayal. Most of all, he faces what it means to be sick and to be healthy. He prays to his God, relies on his friends, examines his dreams, and entrusts his psyche to a new therapist. Joseph Levy Escapes Death is a tale of perseverance in the face of adversity. Strassman uses several lenses to view Levy’s life: medical, psychoanalytic, and religious—both Buddhist and Jewish. Pathos and humor fill the tale, while enlightening detours examine the Holocaust, cardiovascular physiology and microbiology, and Jewish-Christian relations.

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Mindy Rohnert is bored while studying for an exam. She accepts an offer to have a drink from a good-looking fellow she meets in the university library. She has a good time knocking back a few beers with her new friend and his companions at a local watering hole near campus. Feeling comfortable and safe with her new friends, she drinks too much and allows herself to be driven to a secluded house in the hills where she meets two more friends of her new acquaintance. Mindy loves the charades and contests she plays with her three new companions. Unwisely, she continues to drink with them until she passes out. When she regains consciousness, her new acquaintances are stimulating her sexually. She is unable to resist their advances. Have they seduced her cleverly or was she forcibly raped? The police refuse to find the men who gang-banged her and infected her with the H.I.V. virus because it’s a weak case to prosecute. Mindy expects detective R. C. Bean to find the men who abused her and bring them to justice. Thus begins a dangerous hunt for a diabolic group of sadists who prey on naïve and susceptible college coeds. As R. C. Bean unravels the nefarious motives and identities of the murder club members, he and the dazzling women he employs to entrap the sadists become the club’s new targets. The sensational plot is riveting and full of bedazzling twists and surprises. This fast-paced, hard-boiled thriller will keep the pages flying faster than a roller-coaster ride and the reader screaming for more.

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TABLE TALES takes you step-by-step, with tips on cookware, keeping recipes as “green” as possible, but more importantly how to do it well beforehand, leaving the barest “finishing touches” just prior to serving or earlier that day. Presented are 15 dinner parties, appetizers on to the finale. In addition to the do-ahead recipes this book is sprinkled with suggestions about hosting the perfect dinner party: from graciously handling early or late arrivals…unwanted gifts for the hosts…a wine glass spilled on the table…flower and candle decorations that don’t block eye contact. Ray Repp and Richard Alther, musician and novelist, entertain at frequent dinner parties in their homes in Vermont and Palm Springs, California. TABLE TALES begins each chapter with an amusing conversation–usually funny, a few sobering–that occur at their always vibrant gatherings. Their ideal is six to eight guests so that everyone has the chance to chat one-on-one, if desired, by dinner’s end. Usually there are fresh characters for folks to meet and to become possible friends. Ray is the master chef from a lifetime of serious cooking. Rich does the desserts, flowers and place assignments (generally to separate spouses or to ensure an engaging mix). When they throw a dinner party, they themselves have a blast because from the second people arrive everything has been done in advance! Does it take time? Are the recipes sometimes complicated? Yes, indeed to both. This is a cookbook for foodies who can spend an hour here and there, relax and not rush, and freeze enough for two, three or four future occasions. Or, prepare 20 or 30 individual Beef Wellingtons and keep them frozen for the elegant dinner party planned in one month or so. The menus are typically more interesting than the fare at even the best restaurants. Isn’t this why everyone loves when friends pamper guests with a dinner party? Unusual food, festive dress, lively talk, and no work! Incredible Canapes: choux puffs with avacado and goat cheese filling; mini-clafoutis with shrimp; mushroom duxelles in pastry shells… Savory First Courses: slices of rare tuna steak with Catalon caper sauce; sweet potato and ginger soup; spinach lasagna roll-ups… Eye-Popping Entrees: turkey breast roulades stuffed with cranberries and walnuts; individual seafood Wellingtons; tagine of spicy kefta… Unforgettable Desserts: fresh ginger layer cake with lime zest and Macadamia nut cream cheese frosting; six-layered buttermilk chocolate cake with raspberry puree and dark chocolate ganache; apple cheddar crumble pie… TABLE TALES is the perfect cookbook to help busy people plan fantastic dinner parties and, especially, to relish their own entertaining!

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And above all, Pete Najarian, of whose “Wash Me On Home, Mama” one wants to cry, Perfect! One puts down the book with rinsed eyes and clear heart. How does it happen? Formally the novel is simple: a few pages at a time devoted to the inner moments of a handful of characters living loosely together in a sort of commune, a line to indicate forward movement drawn lightly by an italicized paragraph between each section. The sensation is strangely and liberatingly of space, created by rhythm perhaps, the timing of one quality of thought and being and then another. This is not the device familiar as “multiple points of view mutually commented upon, criticizing, and reducing one another. Something new is happening here. The completeness and validity of each heart and mind opens world on world moving in free relations to each other. Yes, here, in this book, is the dance. These characters are given to us below the level of their self-conceptualizing. There is no surface to cut through or interpret: these characters have simply to be known, not outguessed: they are seen and shown without the defenses, self-deceptions, self-fantasizing that comprise ego and what we are accustomed to think of as personality. The mail girl eating her peanut butter sandwich in the box during the rain, a man’s sudden terror at nightfall walking his dogs, the secret pleasure of manure in the garden, the kitchen before anyone’s awake, the girl putting in her earrings before she sets out for her abortion, the dream of fresh bread—it is not only the precision of the moments, the transparency of language (one is wholly unaware also of Najarian himself), but that a spring is touched where everything is still pristine, significant, free, even the terrible (the political prisoner overseas, the failed commune, the broken loves, the unhappy child, the polluted bay), for all its modesty and even, judging from Najarian’s covering paragraph, fiction takes a new turn in the little volume. Qualities we have come to think essential to the novel are unimportant if present at all, and what we have given up as impossible—space, light, air, time, joy—flower, not in the text but in the reader. The invocations to home and the sea that keep the beat are appropriate, for a locus of perception has been found where the heart is at home. This is quiet and consummate art, to be read like a piece of music slowly and luxuriously and then over again. (Harriet Adams Transue, associate professor and Director of Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Toledo. For The American Book Review, 1981)

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Who was Fay Abrahams Stender? A giant among Movement lawyers from the McCarthy Era to the 1970s intent on forcing society to change. Friends could easily picture her as the heroine of a grand opera. A child prodigy, she abandoned the concert piano to become a zealous advocate for society’s most scorned and vilified criminal defendants: from the Rosenberg espionage case during the Cold War to militant black clients, Black Panther Party leader Huey Newton and revolutionary prisoner George Jackson to prisoners in the “Dachau” of maximum security. Stender achieved amazing legal successes in criminal defense and prison reform, before she ultimately refocused with similar zeal on feminist and lesbian rights. In May 1979, an ex-felon invaded her home and shot her execution-style after forcing her to write a note saying she betrayed George Jackson. She barely survived. Wheelchair bound and under 24-hour police protection, she then became the star witness in her assailant’s prosecution. Awaiting trial in a secret hideaway in San Francisco, Fay told the few friends she let visit her there to “call me Phaedra,” a tragic heroine from Greek mythology. Shortly after the trial, like Phaedra, she committed suicide.
Set against a backdrop of sit-ins, protest marches, riots, police brutality, assassinations, death penalty trials and bitter splits among Leftists, this book makes for a compelling biography. Yet it delivers on a broader goal as well – an overview of the turbulent era in which Fay Stender operated under the watchful eye of the FBI and state officials. We not only relive Stender’s story, but that of a small cadre of committed Bay Area activists who played remarkable roles during the McCarthy Era, Civil Rights Movement (including Mississippi Freedom Summer), the Free Speech Movement, Vietnam War protests, and the rise of Black Power. Besides revolutionaries Huey Newton and George Jackson, Fay’s life intertwined with: Jessica Mitford (who dubbed Fay her “frenemy’), Bob Treuhaft, Charles Garry, Bob Richter, Stanley Moore, Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda, Stokely Carmichael, Cesar Chavez, Mario Savio, George Crockett, Joan Baez, Willie Brown, Ron Dellums, Jerry Rubin, Max Scherr, Jean Genet, Elsa Knight Thompson, Kay Boyle, Bobby Seale, David Hilliard, Angela Davis, Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver, and Mike Tigar, among others.
By the fall of 1970, Stender had gained international press coverage as the most sought-after Movement lawyer in America. She had just achieved spectacular successes against all odds for two black revolutionary clients. The book also describes Stender’s ultimate failure to surmount class and racial differences to make her clients’ cause her own and how, as in a Greek tragedy, hubris led to her downfall. Fay’s tragic end served as a sobering lesson to her Movement friends of the personal risks many of them had run. For many, her death symbolized the end of an era.

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