One Man's Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey

Book Description

To live in a pristine land . . . roam the wilderness . . . build a home. . . . Thousands have had such dreams, but Richard Proenneke lived them. Here is a tribute to a man who carved his masterpiece out of the beyond.

Customer Reviews:

True to the man.......2007-09-29

Ten years ago I spent a summer volunteering for the National Park Service at Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, in Alaska. My remote rangers cabin was located at Twin Lakes. Being on the lower lake, I was about 9 miles from my nearest neighbor- Dick. We spoke daily on our walkie-talkies, checking in about the weather, any visitors, or interesting wildlife viewings. I trekked up his way several times over the summer, and enjoyed a few meals with him. I can't remember if it's in his book, but his favorite sandwich was the "Twin Lakes Special": sourdough flapjaks, raw onion, and honey; don't knock it 'til ya try it! Just like his book, he was a gracious, thoughtful man, a true naturalist. Also the most spry 82-year-old I think I'd ever seen! I was saddened to hear of his death several years ago, and was grateful the NPS kept his cabin as a historical site; it is a cozy place, dark inside, smelling faintly of woodsmoke and 1948 sourdough starter, with wonderful decorative touches throughout. Dick was truly a special person, and this book captures his voice, his no-nonsense manner of talking, as well as his appreciation of the beauty of the natural world, perfectly.

A modern day "Thoreau".......2007-09-16

You cannot visit Alaska without reading this book FIRST! Just the photography alone will make you want to go. I dentify in many ways with Dick as I lived in a cabin in the White Mountains of NH for many years. He didn't intrude on nature...he simply lived in harmony with it. He appeals to all of your senses in his simple but beautifully written words, never mind the pictures. He is definitely portrayed as a "loner" but that is a good thing..for a loner has much higher self esteem and sense of character than those who can't survive in the world without people around them all the time. Dick is a true steward of the land because of his deep, abiding love and connection for this piece of God's Creation. His beautifully chronicled life in Alaska will remind you of Robert Frost's words.."We love the things we love for what they are." Enjoy!

Just as Good the Second Time.......2007-09-12

I was telling my husband about this book as I started reading it. He said, "Don't you remember, we read that many years ago when Alaska Magazine published it"? I knew that Babe, the pilot, seemed familiar. It didn't matter. I was happy to read it a second time which is unusual for me. Oh, how I would have loved to have been able to do what Mr. Proenneke did and to live where he lived. There is nothing dull about this book and I suspect the people who find it dull haven't any interest in living in the wilderness without Blackberries, i-pods, automobiles and restaurants.

Even though most of us who enjoyed the book probably don't begin to have the skills that Richard Proenneke had which made what he did possible (and a pilot friend who delivered for free) I think we all wish we could do what he did. I know I do. I didn't realize that a sequel exists. It costs big bucks, but if it's anything close to as interesting as this book, it's worth it. Maybe I'll find out if the Mission Girls ever showed-up.

Homesteading in Alaska.......2007-08-16

The year was 1968. The setting, the Alaskan bush. The mission, to live simply, deliberately, and self-sufficiently off the land, free of the trappings of contemporary society. The protagonist, clearly not what you might expect given the era. He was not some young, free spirited hippie, luddite, or draft dodger. Rather, he was a skilled hard working machinist/woodsman, who at age 51 decided to permanently leave the rat race behind.

Why this man, Dick Prenacke, suddenly left behind his conventional existence to live in a remote and unforgiving section of Alaska is never fully explored in the book. While snippets do reveal his distain for modernity, it never fully embellishes on what ultimately drove the author to do what few would ever conceive of doing. Perhaps Dick realized that at 51, the physical and physiological fortitude required to make such a transition would soon be out of his reach. More likely however, he foresaw the end of an era. No more than a few years after his departure into the wild, Alaska would enact laws prohibiting trappers and homesteaders from freely trudging off into the woods to live the quintessential "Alaskan experience." Soon Alaska would become like the rest of the lower 48, where people like Dick would be considered trespassers and evicted from any land that they did not rightfully own. Fortunately for the author, the laws were grand fathered in.

While the book is essentially a personal account of Alaskan homesteading, the author episodically weaves social commentary into his writings. He laments a society that is wasteful and superficial. The hunters that come into his Alaska, products of such a society, leave garbage and animal meat behind, unaware that the author cleans up after as well as makes use of their squander.

The author also reveals his anxiety for a society that is increasingly consumed by materialism. He feels that man is entrapped by things that he doesn't need and he seeks to avoid the superfluous at all costs. To the outsider, surviving in the wilds of Alaska would seem to require an extravagant amount of equipment and gear. One can only imagine the bill the average suburbanite would amass at the local REI in preparation for such an endeavor. Yet the author demonstrates just how little is required to not only to survive but also to prosper in such an inhospitable region.

The book closes with some thoughts on technology, and the rapidity of change that comes with it. The author's words are both haunting and prescient as he elaborates on his first year in Alaska and how his experience conflicts greatly with society at large.

inspiring.......2007-07-14

Inspiring book. Diarist was over 50 when he began this journey. Helps me look to the future for myself.

Average customer rating:

Perfect gift for young & old
Beautifully Done!
A beautiful and interesting book
Delightful Journal
Thank You,Miss Potter

Beatrix Potter: A Journal
Beatrix Potter
Manufacturer: Warne
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature
At Home With Beatrix Potter: The Creator of Peter Rabbit
Miss Potter
Beatrix Potter Complete Tales R/I
The Making of Miss Potter: The Official Guide to the Motion Picture

ASIN: 0723258058

Book Description

This lavish, illustrated journal describes Beatrix Potter's life as a young woman in Victorian England as she struggles to achieve independence and to find artistic success and romantic love. Using witty, observant commentary taken from Beatrix's own diaries, the journal features a wealth of watercolor paintings, sketches, photographs, letters and period memorabilia to recreate the world in which she lived.

Customer Reviews:

Perfect gift for young & old.......2007-09-19

My three year old loves to open all of the flaps and envelopes in this beautiful book & look at the pictures, while my mom & I have enjoyed reading it. Anyone who is a fan of Beatrix Potter, or just anything fanciful will enjoy this. There is also a wonderful suprise in the back cover.

Beautifully Done!.......2007-09-11

This book was beautifully done. Shows wonderful drawings, letters and pictures of Beatrix, her life and family. This is a wonderful book for any Beatrix Potter fan. Hope you all enjoy yours as well.

A beautiful and interesting book.......2007-08-03

This is possibly one of the most beautiful books that I have seen. In addition it is extremely interesting as you can better understand Beatrix Potter through seeing the reproductions of her notes and letters as well as reproductions of some of her art. It is a great addition to the movie "Miss Potter." The Journal is a great element to add to the movie. They go very well together. I have put this book out on the coffee table and within a period of just a few weeks had many compliments on it even by some of my more jaded friends.

Delightful Journal.......2007-05-15

Charming journal utilizing Miss Potter's journals and letters as sources. A unique book that appeals to me as a writer, and as a total fan of her stories and illustrations. My mother read Beatrix Pottter's books to me over and over, because I would rather hear them again than hear new ones. I used to pore over the illustrations.
The movie Miss Potter is a work of art, and most of us in the audience sat mesmerized at the end, absorbing the heartwarming film. And I spoke to the stranger next to me as I left the theater, and told her to go to the bookstore and find this book. It is wonderful. I plan to give it as a gift to my grandchildren as well.

Thank You,Miss Potter.......2007-05-10

We are given a peek into the enchanting world of rabbits and mice and shady meadows and charming stories and inspirations as Beatrix Potter comes alive on these pages. My 6-yr-old granddaughter and I loved opening tattered envelopes with "real sketches" enclosed.We read notes and secrets shared between loved ones.Glimpsing into the frontier of women writers as they dared to go to print. Total delight...a treasure to pass on in the family.

Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love" -The Unexpurgated Diary of Anais Nin (1931-1932)

Average customer rating:

Wow!
Brutally and beautifully honest!
If D.H. Lawrence were a barracuda. . .you'd have anais nin.
It's alright
The sexual awakening of Anais Nin

Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love" -The Unexpurgated Diary of Anais Nin (1931-1932)
Anais Nin
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Similar Items:

Incest: From "A Journal of Love" -The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin (1932-1934)
The Diary of Anais Nin: Vol. 1 (1931-1934)
Tropic of Cancer
Delta of Venus
Fire: From "A Journal of Love" The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1934-1937

ASIN: 015640057X

Book Description

This bestseller covers a single momentous year during Nin’s life in Paris, when she met Henry Miller and his wife, June. “Closer to what many sexually adventuresome women experience than almost anything I’ve ever read....I found it a very erotic book and profoundly liberating” (Alice Walker). The source of a major motion picture from Universal. Preface by Rupert Pole; Index.

Customer Reviews:

Wow!.......2007-10-03

From the very first few pages you know that you have entered a fascinating world -- if you are reading these reviews and haven't yet purchased the book, don't wait any longer. It's an easy read -- you should be able to read it in one setting -- maybe one weekend, and you will be totally amazed.

This diary only covers one year, but it is clearly her "coming-of-age" year.

Brutally and beautifully honest!.......2007-02-16

A very honest account of a very dishonest period in Nin's life. Highly entertaining, at times liberating (at least for women) and often times very scary (mostly for men). Psychologically fascinating! Interesting peak into Henry Miller's life.

If D.H. Lawrence were a barracuda. . .you'd have anais nin........2006-11-02

Read this interspaced with Tropic of Cancer. You find a more accurate image of Henry Miller's second wife/muse June this way.

I love Nin's work, especially the vast prose of House of Incest. However, at this point in her writing, I just see her clutching copies of D.H. Lawrence's works and using her sexuality to figure out the rest.

I empathize more with the June who inspired the myths, rather than the sanquinary authors lusting after her degredation and ruin. . .and lastly, her love.

Nin was a rebirth to water in terms of literature and her timeframe on earth, but she was flawed. However she was never destroyed by her flaws. A psychic vampire way beyond Warhol proportions, I still adore her.

This is just my vision of the artist. Don't be lazy. Read for yourself. Research in spite of what you read.

It's alright.......2005-09-25

The main thing to remember about this book is that it is a journal. So if you are looking for a beginning, middle and end you won't find it here. I kind of felt like "what is the point?" after I read it. It was also hard for me to understand how Anais Nin could write all these words of love about Henry Miller. I tried to read Miller's TROPIC OF CAPRICORN but I had to stop because he is such a misogynistic jerk. I couldn't believe the feelings of hate he had towards his poor first wife, and the way that he saw all women as trash. I had a hard time not thinking that Anais Nin was crazy to risk her marriage to a wonderful man for a horrible man like Miller. This is not a great book, but the one good thing about it is that it is very sensual and erotic.

The sexual awakening of Anais Nin.......2004-03-15

Anais Nin is the author of over a dozen novels and a very famous diary that is now available in "expurgated" and "unexpurgated" form. All of her works concern one primary theme: women attempting to understand themselves and to make themselves complete human beings after having been psychologically and emotionally stunted in early life. An understanding of Anais Nin's life reveals why this theme preoccupied her: she had a very painful childhood. Her mother married a younger man of lower social pedigree, the parents were in constant conflict (" ... in the house there was always war: great explosions of anger, hatred, revolt. War." - WINTER OF ARTIFICE), her father frequently beat the children and allegedly molested Anais Nin, and her parents eventually separated. The mother took 11-year-old Anais and her two brothers, and the four moved from France to New York. It was on the ship that carried them to their new country that Anais began her diary.

Anais Nin did not keep a diary in the conventional sense, jotting down things that happened to her on a particular day and then offering a few reflections and interpretations. Rather, she portrayed her life in her diary as an unfolding story, positioning herself as the main character of course. The diary became not a mere reflection of her life, but an intense focus of her life. It was as if things had not really happened until she had written them down and read them back to herself. Nin explained that viewing her life as a story made bearable occurrences that would otherwise devastate her. The diary therefore gave her a sense of control over her life (remember, this was the 1930s when women had far less control over their lives than they do now). And as with the fiction, the search for self-understanding and completeness dominated the story she told the diary.

HENRY AND JUNE, based on the diaries 32 through 36, finds Anais Nin in her late 20s and early 30s living outside of Paris with her husband, banker Hugo Guiler. Anais is bored with life and feels unfulfilled, for while Hugo's substantial paycheck can afford a glamorous home, what she longs for is excitement and to be a part of the literary world, not an ornamental and silent companion to social functions. Luckily, she soon meets an unknown writer named Henry Miller. He is opposite to her husband in just about every way: he's older, penniless, irresponsible, and like Anais he is interested in literature, as well as that other Nin preoccupation: sex. (A perhaps revealing detail is that Hugo, though well endowed, occasionally struggled with impotence.) In fact, Miller has been working on a manuscript for about a year. The rest, as they say, is history ... a history revealed in HENRY AND JUNE that I do not want to spoil for the prospective reader. You'll have to get the book. But I must suggest that while reading HENRY AND JUNE it may be beneficial to view the story in the context of Anais Nin's prime preoccupation: the search for completion after having been emotionally stunted in early life. Indeed, on the very first page of the book, Anais tells her cousin, "I need an older man, a father...."

Book Description

The Indian princes of the British Raj lived lives of unparalleled opulence and luxury. Made for Maharajas returns readers to that resplendent era, presenting a selection of one-of-a-kind objects crafted to order by the outstanding European luxury goods manufacturers, fashion houses, and decorators of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Here are the custom-designed cars, jewelry, and extraordinary objéts d'art commissioned by maharajas, nawabs, nizams, and sultans from Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Boucheron, Harry Winston, and others, accompanied by anecdotes that illuminate this sumptuous way of life. Many of the illustrations in this book have never been previously reproduced outside of India, making this not only the first volume of its kind, but a remarkable keepsake that may never be duplicated in our lifetime.

Customer Reviews:

"Made For Maharajas" is especially recommended for academic library collections.......2006-12-09

Dr. Amin Jaffer is a curator in the Asian Department of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London where he specializes in Indian art and culture during the era of European influence during the British Raj period (1857-1947). With "Made For Maharajas: A Design Diary Of Princely India", Dr. Amin has compiled with narrative commentary an impressive historical overview of art and luxury goods in all manner of media and associated with the aristocracy of the maharajas during these centuries. Superbly illustrated with 290 images (150 of which are in full color), the representative and custom-made artifacts range from private airplanes and luxury cars, to chandeliers, gold dinnerware, couture fashions, fine leather goods, houses, furniture, jewelry, and more. Dr. Amin drew upon the archives of firms that included Louis Vuitton, Boucheron, Chaumet, Cartier, and Hermies, he had access to palace and private collections, and employing his own extensive expertise, has written a text that is as entertaining as it is informative in revealing the extraordinarily varied works commissioned by princes whose personal wealth was exceeded only by their eccentricities. As an impeccable work of scholarship in a coffee-table art book format, "Made For Maharajas" is especially recommended for academic library collections and would make a superb choice as a community library Memorial Fund acquisition.

Average customer rating:

The Danger of Drugs
entertaining, true that heroin doesn't affect atleticism
Transforming the ugly into the beautiful
Don't pollute your mind or give it any artistic credence
My favorite

The Basketball Diaries
Jim Carroll
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Forced Entries: The Downtown Diaries: 1971-1973
The Basketball Diaries
Fear of Dreaming: The Selected Poems (Poets, Penguin)
Living at the Movies
Void of Course (Poets, Penguin)

ASIN: 0140100180

Customer Reviews:

The Danger of Drugs.......2007-04-12

This odd mix of biography and novel takes some terrible situations and turns them into a quest for purity. You won't be able to put it down.

entertaining, true that heroin doesn't affect atleticism.......2007-04-02

fun story, sure it's dark but you know what you're getting when you pick it up. I like that this book despite being a novel shows how heroin use doesn't cause health problems other than its addiction. too bad he became a thug on it, which also doesn't need to go hand in hand with drug use despite popular misconception. loved the movie, the book is about as good. can relate to more of this book than probably anyone on amazon (nyc, prep school, former precocious poet & dope user, successful shooting guard, thriving today). not saying that to brag but to say it holds up enjoyably as hell well as an odd mix of biography and novel.

Transforming the ugly into the beautiful.......2007-03-07

This is the best book that I have ever read. It is so well written that it takes your breathe away. In this book he transforms horrible awful situations into a quest for purity. I didn't want this book to end.

Don't pollute your mind or give it any artistic credence.......2007-02-01

Overcompensation for his fundamental assessment that he is unredeemed trash. Tedious, self absorbed, and boring in a way that only a life of getting a next fix or hustle can be...which means that the majority of Carroll's worldview is the stall of a public bathroom. The lame narrative contrasts with Trinity School days and the clean-cut world of athleticism and basket ball versus his rough trade street life is such an obvious transition anyone else would have fallen asleep before making it up as their effort to construct his life as a work of art. One suspects this poetry was originally written on toilet paper and should have been flushed. Unfortunately it was preserved; and the whole disgusting mess is served up here. Don't pollute your mind or give it any artistic credence.

My favorite.......2006-12-31

I absolutely love Jim's style of writing. So I'm a big fan of the "basketball diaries". Overcoming my own addiction issues I can relate with some of the stories in the book also. Read the book, skip the movie.

Charles Burchfield's Journals: The Poetry of Place

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Bountiful insight into a talented, sensitive artist

Charles Burchfield's Journals: The Poetry of Place
Charles Burchfield
Manufacturer: State University of New York Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Charles Burchfield's Seasons (Essential Paintings Series)

ASIN: 0791409910

Customer Reviews:

Bountiful insight into a talented, sensitive artist.......1999-05-04

Organized by topic, this is a must-have if you wish to understand Burchfield. Beautiful production job.

The Diary of Anais Nin: Vol. 1 (1931-1934)

Average customer rating:

Should be read simultaneously...
A womans heart ...laid out boldly in words for all to see.
A great read
Wonderfully delicate and erotic
Worth reading

The Diary of Anais Nin: Vol. 1 (1931-1934)
Anais Nin
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Similar Items:

The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume 2 (1934-1939)
Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love" -The Unexpurgated Diary of Anais Nin (1931-1932)
The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume 3 (1939-1944)
Delta of Venus
The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume 4 (1944-1947)

ASIN: 0156260255

Book Description

This celebrated volume begins when Nin is about to publish her first book and ends when she leaves Paris for New York. Edited and with a Preface by Gunther tuhlmann; Index.

Customer Reviews:

Should be read simultaneously..........2007-09-09

...with "Tropic of Cancer." For newbies, read the synopsis of Anais Nin and Henry Miller at "wikipedia." Then start reading Volume 1 of Anais Nin's diaries (1931 - 1934). After a while, maybe 30 - 40 pages you will want to take a break. So, pick up "Tropic of Cancer" and read the first couple of chapters. Anais had Henry read her journals; Anais and Henry helped each other with each others works. The preface to "Tropic of Cancer" was written by Anais Nin (at least it was signed by her; legend has it that Henry actually wrote it). "Tropic of Cancer" was published (and immediately banned in the United States) in 1934. (By the way, off topic, Henry Miller reminds me a lot of Hunter S. Thompson, at least "Tropic of Cancer" and "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.")

A womans heart ...laid out boldly in words for all to see. .......2005-12-31

ANAIS has been someone who has carried me through some tough times in the past...I read her at twenty...and twenty-three and twenty-six. Her troubles were my own and we were kin. She is meant to be read by anyone who loves life...in it's full fleshy sometimes heart rending reality. She writes with the open-heart of a poet, and leaves the reader feeling more than fed. READ ANAIS NIN!

A great read.......2004-10-08

I recomend reading Anais Nin's diary. The book is such poetic prose. Some sentences really took my breath away, the way she can captivate something so beautiful and human in simple words. Since it is a diary, its main focus is her life, but its not selfish, infact she mentions herself very little. The main focus is Henry (Miller) and June, his wife. When Ananis Nin falls inlove with someone, so does the reader. Her descriptive skills gave me goosebumps, you really can see it in your minds eye, hear the music or feel the softness of skin. I highly recomend this to anyone thinking about reading this book, you will come away with a slice of life from 1930's France.

Wonderfully delicate and erotic.......2004-07-30

This is one of the most profound works of literature I have ever read. Nin leads you directly into her life, the nature of the people around her, her feelings and internal conflicts. She writes delicately and powerfully and womanly. Everyone should have a chance to read this.

Worth reading.......2004-04-11

A bit long and occasionally dense, but overall, a worthwhile and insightful glimpse into the life of a remarkable, thoughtful writer in 1930s France.

A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City--A Diary

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A subtle reminder...
Powerful but Uplifting
Raw, Ragged Reality
stepping into her shoes
Apologist for Communists?

A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City--A Diary
Anonymous
Manufacturer: Metropolitan Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Suite Francaise
A Writer at War: A Soviet Journalist with the Red Army, 1941-1945
Memoirs of a 1000-Year-Old Woman: Berlin 1925 to 1945
Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945
Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939--1945

ASIN: 0805075402
Release Date: 2005-07-14

Book Description

An astonishing find-the landmark journal of a woman living though the Russian occupation of Berlin-which has already earned comparisons to diaries by Etty Hillesum and Victor Klemperer For six weeks in 1945, as Berlin fell to the Russian army, a young woman, alone in the city, kept a daily record of her and her neighbors' experiences, determined to describe the common lot of millions.Purged of all self-pity but with laser-sharp observation and bracing humor, the anonymous author conjures up a ravaged apartment building and its little group of residents struggling to get by in the rubble without food, heat, or water. Clear-eyed and unsentimental, she depicts her fellow Berliners in all their humanity as well as their cravenness, corrupted first by hunger and then by the Russians. And with shocking and vivid detail, she tells of the shameful indignities to which women in a conquered city are always subject: the mass rape suffered by all, regardless of age or infirmity. Through this ordeal, she maintains her resilience, decency, and fierce will to come through her city's trial, until normalcy and safety return.At once an essential record and a work of great literature, A Woman in Berlin not only reveals a true heroine, sure to join other enduring figures of the twentieth century, but also gives voice to the rarely heard victims of war: the women.

Customer Reviews:

A subtle reminder..........2007-10-01

Not just a woman in Berlin at the end of WWII, but in any city, at any time, under armed conflict, this book reminds us of the atrocities derived out of human incomprehension, irracionality, ambition, etc. as anonymous as the author is, the actors are too, given the fact, they're all gone today, but not so their legacy... which has stayed with us (and hopefully with future generations). Interestingly, the way the author describes every infamous episody will make you notice the way things have changed too, for even physical abuse under war circumstances had certain brush of "decency" inexistent among today's savagery.

A just in time wake up call you can't afford to miss...

Powerful but Uplifting.......2007-08-08

I read this book together with An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin (Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiographies) in anticipation of a trip to Berlin. They are both relatively short reads, and the combination of the two seemed especially powerful.

I thought that "A Woman in Berlin" might be too harrowing to endure (it _is_ a relation of the plight of defenceless women facing a conquering, vengeful, rapacious (yeah, like, RAPE) male army. However the author's determination to survive and to make the best of what quickly becomes her powerfully oppressive circumstances salves the reader. It's an enlightening description of what happens to an advanced western civilization when completely reduced for a time to life and death armed confrontation.

The author has interesting observations on the 'feminization' of Berlin _in extremis_ -- all the able-bodied men were at the fronts. Other than women of all ages, there were only disabled or very old men and children left in Berlin. [Of course there were also a few remaining men of the rapidly crumbling elite ruling class and their camp followers buried in Berlin bunkers who were utterly irrelvant to life in Berlin in April/May 1945.]

A Woman in Berlin confronts female / male sex in the context of armed male oppresssion and a woman's enlightened understanding of how to maximize her limited opportunities under very straightened circumstances.

An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin (Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiographies)celebrates male homosexual sex in the context of unimaginable oppression and tragedy. The author's exuberance about his sexual encounters and conquests in the face of this oppression and tragedy lightens what might otherwise be a harrowing read -- this book is part of a series celebrating the lives of gays and lesbians, after all, and so may not have been intended for the general heterosexual reader -- worth it, nevetheless.

I can't put into words the impact on me of reading in close proximity these two stories of "sex in wartime Berlin". I still ponder that impact.

Raw, Ragged Reality.......2007-07-11

Some books appeal to your intellect, others to your heart. This one hits you hard right in the gut. The author's shock, fear, suffering and revulsion are delivered relentlessly through her perceptive eyes, with poetic expressiveness and biting wit.

Along with the horrific experiences she recounts, some of the most searing passages are the reflections of her heart and soul. In the original German, they are particularly touching and thought-provoking. Her character, humanity and indomitable spirit transcend the pages that she wrote.

At the end of the nine-week period covered in the diary, I was struck by this true "Triumph des Willens" - the will to survive.

stepping into her shoes.......2007-07-03

perhaps because this is a diary, it is raw and allows one to step into the shoes of the author. It gives one a first hand look at what life was like for the German citizens living in Berlin immediately prior to and during the Soviet troops occupation. Although hard to read it times, it is as though one is right there. Very true first-hand look. A book one can't put down, and leaves one thinking about the suffering of the masses.

Apologist for Communists?.......2007-06-21

Warning, be prepared to guffaw while reading the Introduction by Antony Beevor. In it he states, "Stalin was merely amused by the idea of the Red Army soldiers having 'some fun' after a hard war. Meanwhile, loyal Communists and commisars were taken aback and embarrassed by the mass rapes." Weren't most of the army who partook in the rapes the very loyal Communists he claims were appalled by rape?!
The book itself was very thoughtful and well written by the anonymous female author.

Brokenburn: The Journal of Kate Stone, 1861-1868 (Library of Southern Civilization)

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Stone versus Chesnut
An Extraordinary Lady in Extraordinary Times

Brokenburn: The Journal of Kate Stone, 1861-1868 (Library of Southern Civilization)
Kate Stone
Manufacturer: Louisiana State University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0807120170

Customer Reviews:

Stone versus Chesnut.......2007-02-07

Like Mary Boykin Chesnut, Kate Stone wrote her diary during the Civil War. They were both members of the slaveholding planter class and at the start of the war both were surrounded by servants who met their every need. But twenty year old Kate Stone's life would be more directly affected by the war. Her young uncles and brothers went to join up at the onset and before the war ended several were dead of injuries or disease. Kate Stone's Louisiana home was occupied by the Yankees forcing the family to flee to Texas. Both describe the deprivations of the war years, lack of shoe leather, lack of cloth and the unavailability of new books, and both were at times cheered by false reports of great southern victories. The two diaries complement each other.

An Extraordinary Lady in Extraordinary Times.......2001-03-26

Kate Stone is one of my favorite Civil War diarists. She is an admixture of a great privilege, passionate beliefs, lover of literature, keen social observations and amazing fortitude. Her Civil War was dangerous, turbulent and life changing.

Brokenburn was a large plantation containing over 150 slaves in Madison Parish, LA. From 1862 on, it was in the center of the Union Army's fierce assault to gain control of the Mississippi River and divide the Confederacy in half. Plantations were commandeered and slaves were encouraged to revolt. The civilian population was helpless before the demands of military control. Madison Parish had a population of approximately 9,000 of whom 7,000 were slaves. After 1861, the Parish was emptied of able-bodied white men, most of whom had been sent to far-off Virginia and Tennessee, leaving none to protect the civilians.

In 1861, Kate was 20 years old, her immediate future being beaus, courtship, and a gay social life before she settled down to become a proper southern matron. She was unsure whether this route was ideal, as she remarked, "women grew significantly uglier in wedlock and ignored and abandoned their former female friends." This comfortable world was turned upside down, never to reappear again. With great enthusiasm and some trepidation, she watched her three older brothers go off to war. Her widowed mother made it clear that 14-year-old James was now in charge of the running of the plantation and the protection of the rest of the family. I was amazed at the serene assumption that a young teenager was thrust in this role, but it seems that was the custom of the times. If you had to grow up fast, you did. Yellow fever was a constant in the area, and longevity was not a norm. Both Generals Grant and Lee wanted their troops out of these areas during "the seasons of pestilence." This was not to be, and both armies suffered devastating losses to disease. Kate treated the "fever season" as a fact of life, and planned around it with remarkable briskness.

By 1862, the Stone family was desperate. The Federal leadership demanded that they stay on their property; yet there were serious slave insurrections that threatened the lives of the plantation holders. Those slaves who were not hostile were running off, and there was no labor to farm the crops. Many southerners could not believe that their "loyal" slaves would run away. Kate was not among them, saying, "If I were in their place, I'd do the same." She was by no means sympathetic, just practical.

The family finally escaped through the bayous in a rickety canoe with nothing, not even underwear, and finally made it across the border into Texas. They were refugees along with many other prominent Louisiana families. Kate was convinced they had arrived at "a dark corner of the Confederacy." Upon noting the barefoot but hoop skirted frontier ladies, she sniffed "there must be something in the air of Texas fatal to beauty."

Amazon.com

In the decades that have followed Sylvia Plath's suicide in February 1963, much has been written and speculated about her life, most particularly about her marriage to fellow poet Ted Hughes and her last months spent writing the stark, confessional poems that were to become Ariel. And the myths surrounding Plath have only been intensified by the strong grip her estate--managed by Hughes and his sister, Olwyn--had over the release of her work. Yet Plath kept journals from the age of 11 until her death at 30. Previously only available in a severely bowdlerized edition, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath have now been scrupulously transcribed (with every spelling mistake and grammatical error left intact) and annotated by Karen V. Kukil, supervisor of the Plath collection at Smith College.

The journals show the breathless adolescent obsessed with her burgeoning sexuality, the serious university student competing for the highest grades while engaging in the human merry-go-round of 1950s dating, the graduate year spent at Cambridge University where Plath encountered Ted Hughes. Her version of their relationship (dating is definitely not the appropriate term) is a necessary, and deeply painful, complement to Birthday Letters. On March 10, 1956, Plath writes:

Please let him come, and give me the resilience & guts to make him respect me, be interested, and not to throw myself at him with loudness or hysterical yelling; calmly, gently, easy baby easy. He is probably strutting the backs among crocuses now with seven Scandinavian mistresses. And I sit, spiderlike, waiting, here, home; Penelope weaving webs of Webster, turning spindles of Tourneur. Oh, he is here; my black marauder; oh hungry hungry. I am so hungry for a big smashing creative burgeoning burdened love: I am here; I wait; and he plays on the banks of the river Cam like a casual faun.

Plath's documentation of the two years the couple spent in the U.S. teaching and writing explicitly highlights the dilemma of the late-1950s woman--still swaddled in expectations of domesticity, yet attempting to forge her own independent professional and personal life. This period also reveals in detail the therapy sessions in which Plath lets loose her antipathy for her mother and her grief at her father's death when she was 8--a contrast to the bright, all-American persona she presented to her mother in the correspondence that was published as Letters Home. The journals also feature some notable omissions. Plath understandably skirted over her breakdown and attempted suicide during the summer of 1953, though she was to anatomize the events minutely in her novel The Bell Jar.

Fragments of diaries exist after 1959, which saw the couple's return to England and rural retreat in Devon, the birth of their two children, and their separation in late 1962. An extended piece on the illness and death of an elderly neighbor during this period is particularly affecting and was later turned into the poem "Berck-Plage." Much has been made of the "lost diaries" that Plath kept until her suicide--one simply appears to have vanished, the other Hughes burned after her death. It would seem rapacious to wish for more details of her despair in her final days, however. It is crystallized in the poems that became Ariel, and this is what the voice of her journals ultimately send the reader back to. Sylvia Plath's life has for too long been obfuscated by anecdote, distorting her major contribution to 20th-century literature. As she wrote in "Kindness": "The blood jet is poetry. There is no stopping it." --Catherine Taylor

Book Description

First U.S. Publication

A major literary event--the complete, uncensored journals of Sylvia Plath, published in their entirety for the first time.

Sylvia Plath's journals were originally published in 1982 in a heavily abridged version authorized by Plath's husband, Ted Hughes. This new edition is an exact and complete transcription of the diaries Plath kept during the last twelve years of her life. Sixty percent of the book is material that has never before been made public, more fully revealing the intensity of the poet's personal and literary struggles, and providing fresh insight into both her frequent desperation and the bravery with which she faced down her demons. The complete Journals of Sylvia Plath is essential reading for all who have been moved and fascinated by Plath's life and work.

Customer Reviews:

insightful.......2007-05-30

i watched this thing on tv once about sylvia plath, & this college professor said that every single year she's taught, at least one out of a class full of girls studying sylvia plath will feel that she is sylvia plath reincarnated. and what's funny is that after reading this, i absolutely understand why! that in itself really explains what i'm trying to get across here. something about this really affected me - everything she says sounds just like something i've written, thought, or experienced in the past. this is most definitely worth your time & money.

If you're literate, this is a must own........2007-04-29

As a woman deeply affected by poetry and great literature, of course I would stumble across Plath. However, it wasn't in my studies that I came to know her work, but through the charming compliments of someone who felt I earned her poems as a description- I believe he was nuts- but the work, the words, no, no, THAT was brilliance! These journals are an archive of mid 20th century America and a veritable gold mine of insight into one of the world's premiere writers (female or no). The entries, although privately recorded and oft scandalized by the Ted Hughes/marriage fiasco, come off as less of a personal musing than a practice run for print. Plath does a darling job of explaining the mundane but the undercurrent of inferiority and rapture for writing come through like a beacon in her quest for talent in a sea of self-doubt. Plath is a prolific writer (the volume is a heap of dead weight paper) and not a page is wasted with her thoughts. For anyone looking to understand one woman's intelligent foray into her own psyche, collegiate literary yearnings, and the basis of her thoughts and feelings pre/antedating her marriage: BUY THIS! This is one set of pages that will alter your perception and it is made all the more poignant by her publicized suicide. Plath, thank you!

Wonderful content: terrible editing.......2007-03-19

Plath's journals are an excellent read. I gave it only 3 stars because the editing is terrible. I find myself constantly flipping to the back. Kukil included notes in the back instead of at the bottom of the pages where they would be more logical. She also included journal fragments in the appendix (there are 15). Plath's journals could have been edited much better.

Incomplete Journals of a monomaniac........2007-01-22

I wish I could have given this book 5 stars, the content is riveting, but I decided to give it four because of the editing by Karen V. Kukil.
The Journals of Sylvia Plath as we all know are incomplete, they were edited (sanitized) by her husband Ted Hughes. No doubt whatsoever that the material he 'lost' was detrimental to him. The only thing he allows in the book is her account of his dalliance with a student, after which she begins to see him in a different light. It leaves you at the end of the book feeling very sorry for this woman, and wanting to find out more. (Which one can't help feeling was a marketing ploy by Hughes, who sold the rights to her book the Bell Jar to the Americans after her death in spite of her mother's objections, so that he could raise the money to buy a third home).

Sylvia Plath was brilliant, sexy, vivacious and sociable. She was also completely obsessed with analyzing the working of her mind, her emotions and sensitivities. She was narcissistic, selfish and critical to the point of meanness. The rawness of her emotions is hard to take sometimes. What a normal person would consider to be a rough sea of life and cope accordingly, she turns into a force 10 hurricane. One cannot help feeling that the journals were written to be published, that the author KNEW someday they would be discovered and read by everyone. The writing is beautiful. The very first entry July 1950 is a delight:-

"I may never be happy, but tonight I am content. Nothing more than an empty house, the warm hazy weariness from a day spent setting strawberry runners in the sun, a glass of cool sweet milk, and a shallow dish of blueberries bathed in cream......"

Once started, it is hard to put the book down.

A word now about the editing. I think the book could have been better organized for the general reader, it is formatted like a text book. All the cross-referencing! I had to use two bookmarks all the way through the reading of the book. The 'Notes' could have been at the bottom of each page instead of hidden at the back of the book. The Appendices could have been Notes at the end of each appertaining journal section, and the Index could have been better arranged. The section on Sylvia Plath (which takes up 5 1/2 pages of the index) should have been separated from the rest, to make it less confusing.

An idiosyncratic pure beat and melodic force.......2006-08-28

Whether you read The Journals of Sylvia Plath as a writer's notebook, as scenes from a marriage, as social history, or as daily bulletins from one of the most star-crossed love stories of all time, the journal's words help to keep alive the writer who has been called "the literary girl's Elvis" while also bringing us news of how she thought, how she taught, what she read, how she wrote, along with the most primal news of her legendary marriage, a marriage that so often seemed golden, closer than close, but whose ardent claustrophobia was more precious to Sylvia than it was to Ted, and whose tragic aftermath also turned out to be notorious, horrible, with Assia Wevill (the woman Hughes left Plath for) killing herself in a copycat suicide, and also killing their little daughter, and with even Hughes's final wife (the non-writer and therefore the one who was supposed to be stable) threatening to kill herself when she discovered, not long before Ted's death, that he not only had a mistress, he had also over the years been the lover of a fair (no, make that unfair) number of others.

Plath also had to suffer the pain of seeing less gifted writers beat her out for literary prizes: "All I need now is to hear that GS (George Starbuck) or MK (Maxine Kumin) has won the Yale and get a rejection of my children's book..." And what reader (writer or not) will not empathize with "Must not be accusing, although I feel like it..."

As it turned out, George Starbuck did win the Yale and, reading this, I found myself wanting to say to Plath, "Listen, Sylvia, when we here in the twenty-first century hear the word `Starbuck,' we think of coffee, we don't ever think of George," and then not long after thinking this I discovered her similar wish to offer writerly comfort to Henry James ("I long to make known to him his posthumous reputation").

And how can you not to love a writer who, in notes to herself about a story she wants to write (in this case about George Starbuck and his mistress, the poet Anne Sexton) begins her notes this way: "The story about George, Anne and the children. An insufferable woman (myself of course) gets involved..."

The Journals also bring to vivid life many of the great (and also some of the less great) poets of the twentieth century: W. H. Auden ("his coarse, tweedy brown jacket and burlap-textured voice"); Ralph Rogers, with "his slick, nervous smile, his jittery huckster hand jiggling money in his pants pocket"; Adrienne Rich ("round and stumpy, all vibrant short hair" under a tulip-red umbrella).

As for the poems Hughes wrote to Plath in Birthday Letters, although they often seem clumsily self-justifying and garishly homespun, they do also contain moments that feel incredibly emotional, hacked out of real feeling. Plath's poems, on the other hand, are of a more stunning order, even the notoriously grandstanding poems like "Daddy," but this is even more true of the absolutely incandescent and astounding poems--"Sheep in Fog," "Letter in November," "The Rabbit Catcher," "Poppies in July," "Tulips," "Poppies in October," among many others--poems that move far beyond craft to the most startling and idiosyncratic pure beat and melodic force.

www.elisabeth-harvor.com

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