Home Reviews Directory FRAMED?
FBI Profiler
Candice DeLong
Following 10 years of psychiatric nursing, handling difficult male patients twice her size, Candice DeLong seeking more adventure joined the FBI in 1980 when women were first accepted as agents in law enforcement's all-male bastion. Among other traits, FBI recruiters liked DeLong's ward management experience. Divorced because of her career choices, DeLong and her ex-husband are still admirable for their amicableness and their continued involvement in their son Seth's life, adding much to world betterment by jointly raising a fine person as Seth. Being the only mother at show-and-tell carrying a gun during her lunch break, DeLong contributes to her community by helping capture a serial rapist and by taking dangerous pedophiles off the street. While most law enforcement officers hide their guns from their children as a forbidden subject, DeLong brings hers out in the open for Seth to examine and familiarize himself with. It's not a toy, DeLong says as Seth goes "cwoo, cwoo" careful not to point it at his mother. DeLong takes Seth to the firing range for practice. Soon Seth's a better shot than Mom is!
The high quality of DeLong's work, along with her diligence, team play and thoroughness earn her the respect of her peers, including women who entered the FBI after she did. One friend in particular and whom I'd like to see write her own memoirs is Ice Woman, still one of DeLong's closest friends although DeLong is now retired from the FBI. Together they did surveillance and often went undercover posing as their partners' wives. DeLong trains as a profiler when it was first used to narrow the suspect search. This means if there's bicycle tracks nearby, the suspect obviously rode a bike. Special Agent, highly readable, ends with a chapter of tips on child safety you can skip if there's no children in your life. Already familiar with this book from a Reader's Digest excerpt, I saw it on a library table and grabbed it. Barely a year old, the book already suffers from inside separation.
Up from desperation
Bernard B Kerik
Bernard Keric's uncle rescued him from a disfunctional situation, returning him to New Jersey for a normal life. Spending his school years hanging out with friends and partying, often stealing money to finance his martial arts habit, Kerik later found the teacher who predicted Kerik's future as a vegetable himself lying deteriorated in a pool of vomit on a bench in the town's drunk tank. Learning discipline in the army, Kerik went on to join New York City's police department and eventually become its chief. Retiring with Mayor Rudy Galliani Kerik writes his autobiography, culminating in 9/11's tragedies in which he lost several department friends who responded to the attack.
Kerik's book is in readable story format without the dry statistics of formal narratives. Readers follow him through persistent, lifelong childhood nightmares to carefree high school days to the army and to New York's police department after stints in Saudi Arabian security details, accompanied by Army buddies who later joined him in New York, without losing interest. Photographs and memoirs from childhood days to the present include his quest for a solution to the mystery of his mother's death in Ohio at 34. Kerik poses with detectives and with his son Joseph and Mayor Guliani and accompanying President Bush inspecting WTC's rubble. While undercover friends deteriorate from the strain of maintining underground identities and drug connections and remaining alive, Kerik survives intact to relay information and methods to other law enforcement agencies both local and Federal. I got lucky when I found this book returned and shelved and grabbed it, quickly hustling it home to read.
Native American historical novel
Don Worcester
Kill the Indian and save the man. That was the late 1800s policy as Indians were assimilated into white society at the cost of their Indian identity and culture. So-called Friends of the Indian knew nothing of Indian issues. Congress far away in Washington passed more bills, alternately throwing money at Indians and denying them benefits. Their rations were cut again and again, diverted to agents for sale on open markets. Starving Sioux tried to raise small plots of corn in a land and culture more suitable for ranching, to please the government and obtain benefits. Billy's journey by train East from the reservation to Carlyle School and his 4-year stay there are chronicled in the first two chapters. Their deathly fright when the train speeds toward the moon and relief when it's finally behind them could really happen.
Following chapters drag on about Sioux land cessions to nearby ranchers and then to the Ghost Dance, which declined after its failure to end invasion and assimilation, ending in 1890's Wounded Knee massacre of warriors fleeing to their reservations after a dance. The story only slightly differs from historical fact. Oglala Sioux medicine man Black Elk is absent from the story but Sitting Bull's murder and the ensuing battle with vengeful 7th Cavalry troops, in which many Indians close to Sitting Bull lost their lives, is outlined. The book drags after Billy returns home to work in the reservation store but it's still readable. You want to stay on and see how things turn out.
God made Indians for world betterment. We're lucky to have them around.
Civil War
Irene Hunt
In Irene Hunt's early days the Civil War was still remembered by living men. This novel, based on her grandfather's stories, is set on a southern Illinois farm instead of on battlefields. Its early chapters, longer and slower-moving, are about the Creightons, their neighbors, and the nearest town, Newton. Later chapters, shorter and more staccato, are news stories and letters home from those fighting the war. The story ends with half the family's sons returning to take up where they left off. The tragedy of President Lincoln's assassination turns war's-end jubilation to sorrow and grief. One likes these characters more and more as war and sickness draws them closer. Neighbors pitch in and help when they're needed. One shares their joy and sorrow as if they lived next door.
Not the first or the last
Spencer Dunmore, with forward by Robert D Ballard
Somewhere in prehistory a man looked out at the sea somewhere and said, "A boat traveling underwater unseen would be a formidable weapon." Alexander the Great viewed undersea life from inside a glass barrel that qualified as a submarine of sorts. During the Revolutionary War the primitive wooden 1-man sub the Turtle tried to blow up the British Man o' War HMS Eagle in New York Harbor. The Civil War sub Hunley sank in Charlston Harbor trying to blow up Union ships. Since then, subs sank by the dozens due to technical and other problems up through both World Wars and today. Charles B Momsen, dissatisfied with the inevitable fate of sailors and submariners, invented the Momsen lung and other rescue devices.
American nuclear subs Thresher and Scorpion were imploded by faulty torpedoes supplied by a Navy anxious to purchase large quantities of them quickly. The Kursk, sinking on August 12, 2000 during Russian naval exercises in the Barents Sea, had similar problems. Where to buy a decent torpedo? Photos and diagrams show how these lost submarines were found and raised from thousands of feet underwater.
If you liked this book, and I'm sure you will, you'll also want to read Iron Coffins: A Personal Account of the German U-Boat Battles of World War II by Herbert A Werner. While Germany lost sub after sub Captain Werner survives to surrender his ship to the Allies in specified ports. After the war Werner moved to the United States, married and worked as an engineer.
Thanks for the Memories
Bob Hope 1903-2003
Around the world in 100 years, edited by his daughter Linda Hope. Born in England, Hope moved with his family to Cleveland, Ohio at age 4. His father seldom found work as an old-fashioned ironworker. Hope and his 6 brothers, growing up poor, did everything they could to turn an honest dollar and help out. Standing on a corner, ready to give up on show business and catch a bus home, Hope ran into a classmate whose agent friend got him his first real gig. The rest is history. From vaudeville to radio to movies, Hope got his start with GIs in 1941 when soldiers, then sailors, laughed at themselves as well as at him. Every Christmas was spent with the troops until the last. His wife Dolores often accompanied him and sang. Hope's jokes, autobiographically chapterized by each decade of his life, drawn from his earlier books and files, cover America's presidents from FDR to Clinton. Hope was a golf nut since his troupe the Diamonds reintroduced him after playing poorly and giving up on it. Each chapter opens with a photo of him during that decade. Hope gave his jokes to the Library of Congress for future generations to read and study. His costumes went to the Smithsonian Institute.
A gathering of detectives
Albert A Seedman
12 classic episodes relived by old detectives spanning Seedman's 30 years as a NYPD detective offer insight on good, accurate, thoughtful detective work. These 12 cases range from 1947 to 1972 involving black, white, Italian and Hispanic suspects. Born in Brooklyn in 1918, Seedman wanted to be an officer not to enforce rules but to bring order to a chaotic world. His study of accounting helped him keep accurate accounts of his work. Seedman serves in World War II France as a civilian detective, capturing many enemy spies. This experience gets his foot in NYPD's door for a long, profitable career. Also included is his classic detective work tracing the identity of a corpse found along the freeway. As their chief, Seedman spends a lot of time in the field but mostly remains in the background letting his well-mannered, articulate crew do its job and build rapport with people they encounter in the community. Told mostly in third person to a collaborator a year after his retirement, this book is a must read, the classic detective short story collection adaptable to stage or screen.
I liked when at a meeting about the Sniper (see below) an agent quoted a phrase from this book and another agent immediately jumped up and left the room. "I blew it!" thought the agent who gave the quotation, but then the second agent returned with his own copy of Seedman's book. Joyfullest joy when this wonderful classic arrived from San Francisco's library.
Washington DC sniper
Charles Alexander Moose
Chief of police in Montgomery County, Maryland, alternates autobiography with October 2002's 23-day hunt and capture of the Beltway Sniper. Lots of whining about racial slights such as being taken for a servant in a DC subway station. Born in New York and growing up in North Carolina after his parents moved to a better environment to raise children in, Moose fell into police work by chance and by accident after being cut from his high school basketball team. Moose moves up through the ranks across the country, taking the chief's job depicted in the book after being offered more money than he made in Washington state. The snipers are introduced near the end, when they're captured on a trucker's tip at a rest stop late at night.
Another view
Sari Hororwitz and Michael E Ruane
Two Washington Post reporters follow the snipers from their birth, history and travels all the way to their spree along Washington DC's Beltway and earlier shootings. There's no autobiography here, just the facts of the case as they saw it. Seamless and readable, SNIPER offers an insight into the motives for this crime spree lasting 3 weeks and taking 14 random victims after taking 5 along their route from Alabama north to DC.
Book and movie
Truman Capote
First true crime book in story format instead of a dry narrative. Fascinatingly follows two Kansas ex-cons' murder of a Western Kansas farm family of four, following a half-baked rumor heard in prison of a safe full of money located in Mr. Clutter's office. The Clutters live the last day of their lives as if nothing is about to happen, while the culprits prepare for the drive across Kansas to commit cold-blooded murder for enough money to retire like kings in Mexico. The book is set in November but the movie is set in the summer, an easier time of year to film. Leaving Mexico because of its shortage of pay for their work as fishing tour guides, they return to Kansas hounded by detectives along the way. They return to Kansas in custody, riding in separate cars continuing their separate interrogations. Both book and movie are well written and acted, intimately showing the two murderers and their relationship and feelings toward each other, as well as townspeople and the Kansas state detectives chasing them all the way to Nevada.
Capitol ideas
Marion Fisher Murphy
June Oxford
Two capital books about the history of California's state capitol. The word Stars in the title refers to maps marking state and national capitols with a star instead of just a dot. Stars, only 75 pages including maps and drawings, begins in California's New Spain days. California's first Capitol was Monterey. Next were back and forth between Los Angeles, San Diego and Monterey. July 7, 1846 following the war with Mexico and the short lived Bear Flag revolt, U S Commodore John Drake Sloat raised the U S flag over Monterey and took posession of it for the U S. The capitol moved to San Jose, Vallejo, Benicia and Sacramento, where it remains today. Americans locate their state capitols away from their largest cities and commercial influences on State government, as in New York, Pensylvania, Florida and Louisiana.
Capitol begins in detail with the refurbishing and expansion of California's state capitol building in Sacramento, followed by a history of each capitol in turn. San Jose was first as a U S state, lasting only 2 years before succumbing to heavy rains in which a small boy drowned at First and Santa Clara Streets, and all the mud slogged through to arrive at legislative meetings. The men drank heavily regardless of their regular drinking habits at home. 300 Sacramento men moved on Benicia to deliberately clog its scarce available housing, leaving legislaters homeless. Oct 18, 1850 the steamship Oregon sailed into San Francisco Bay swathed in bunting, flags and banners proclaiming the good news: California at last a state! All California rejoiced as messengers fanned out across California. Peter Burnett, California's first governor, shares some of his life's details. George Pardee's office serves as a model for restoration of his 1906 office rooms as the capitol's museum.
Sacramento is almost as big a photo op as San Francisco. Its history, classics and capitol building are great camera fodder. These books are a mustread for anyone interested in staring fascinated at California history and classics. Sacramento, once a railroad hub for points East, remains an agricultural port and a manufacurer of goods sold statewide.
Back in Them days
Ruth Goode
Surveys prehistoric tribes from Africa through Europe and eastweard across Asia to the New World across the Bering Land Bridge to 5000 BC. Tells how they ate and lived during their travels. Facinating and readable.
Passed right through . . . here, just about
George R Stewart
This is how Moses (Mose) Scallenberger (1826-1909) arrived in San Jose and built his house there. It's been restored since, for SJSU office use. The Stevens wagon train arrived 2 years before the Donners did, over the same pass but without the hardship and tragedy. The reasons for their better luck: They didn't argue with each other. They got along well with each other and with Indians. They took good care of their animals and equipment. They had Captain Stevens, a good leader. They stayed calm and never panicked and did rash things. The whole party survived to reach California with 2 healthy daughters born along the way. All their wagons reached California in good, salable condition. Mose thereafter kept a wheel from one of them as a souvenir.
Mose joined a wagon train to California in 1844. He learned to hunt buffalo for camp tables and worked hard at camp chores. He spent winter 1844 in a mountain cabin he helped build, guarding wagons left behind for easier travel through the last mountain pass into the Promised Land. At first arrival he lived in Monterey and worked as a store clerk. During the Gold Rush he sold supplies to miners at high prices, then moved to San Jose, built his house, married and had 5 children. His memoirs were burned in a fire but another copy was preserved by Horace S Foote, published in 1885 by the University of California Press as Pen Pictures, a history of San Jose. Today Rte 40 passes over the Stevens trail, still used in traveling East through the Donner Pass from California. Many of their campsites are where cities stand today, including Reno, Truckee and others along Sacramento's American River.
I'm grown but I still love and read Landmark Books. What a happy, wonderful surprise to find this frabjous book and read the story of one of my own neighbors! What fine, courageous, strong, joyful people existed throughout this book. My admiration goes out to them. The world needs more people like them, both Indian and white.
Comb the giraffe
Michael Allin
An upper Nile giraffe was captured as planned before her birth, taken downriver to Alexandria and shipped to France as a peacemaking gift from Egypt's admiring non-French-speaking ruler. This is the story of her 2-year journey from the Meditterranean Sea to Paris' zoo by foot, traveling mostly by night with her attendants to avoid attentive fans along the route. In Paris, with her good nature, she started a national craze. Everybody wanted to look like and be like Zarafa. She lived there 25 years, Europe's first live giraffe. Towards the end of her life she was given a companion but never a mate. Zarafa was stuffed and placed in Paris' National History Museum, still staring back at visitors today. Nearly 200 years later I read this fascinating book.
Logotberapy
Reflections
Viktor Frankl
Reflections is Frankl's autobiography, written two years before his death in 1997 aged 92. Born in Vienna in 1905 Frankl went on through medical school and served in various Vienna hospitals. In his biography Frankl doesn't write much about Nazi concentration camps, having already covered the years he spent there in Meaning. Frankl, not seeing the importance of writing his autobiography, hastily wrote it in German on request of a student of his from Vienna who knew German. Starting with his parents Frankl tells of his mother's ancestor, Rabbi Low who lived during the 1200s in Poland. He continues to his own generation with his brother and sister. His family (besides him) perished except for his sister, who escaped to Australia. Readers cling to Meaning as saving their lives. Frankl during his 3 years in Nazi labor camps discovered that inmates with a purpose in life were the ones who survived. His chosen purpose was to survive to tell the story and of his theory, that one's attitude, the one thing nobody could ever take away, was the clue to survival under the most adverse conditions provided one was given the chance to survive in the first place. Many times Frankl's own life was saved by fellow inmates. Frankl gave many lectures about his theories of logotherapy, the search for meaning, which inmates greatly appreciated and followed as their own lives' meaning. Frankl knew his purpose when he suddenly visualized himself lecturing before a distinguished audience about his life in the camps. After losing his first wife there he remarried soon after leaving the camp at the end of the war, having a daughter and 2 grandchildren during a long, distinguished medical career. His favorite recreational pastimes were rock climbing and flying. Welcomed warmly everywhere, he made many world tours guest teaching and lecturing.
Timeless American classic
Dale Carnegie
Personality 101. Other business schools teach business history and theory, how to crunch numbers and push pencils but the bottom line, what customers grade on, is service. Without it you can't succeed at work or at home. This book and the courses it accompanies, along with its twin volume How to Stop Worrying and Start Living tell all. Students keep their books handy to refer to in their daily tasks. Life's too short to memorize them all so if you can get the basics down you're lucky. Carnegie even says so. It's good to know people's names. Being remembered by good people, not the snooty kind, feels good. Remembering their names feels even better. Why not just carry and update a list and study it? This book takes advantage of the principle other magazines since learned to use, that of stories of everyday people as well as celebrities. I'd like to see a sequel featuring success stories through the years since this book was first published. These courses are expensive, out of reach of most people. I'd like to see this course offered on campus. I don't see how these ideas would work against what is known as "difficult" people but they should work on those who can and will intervene in your behalf. Their website dalecarnegie.com is mostly in HTML but its history of Dale Carnegie pages are in pdf, making it inaccessible to those who still can't read pdf. I'd like to see the forums and weekly advice more accessible and archived for lifelong need for these topics.
Ancient personality
Peter Dickinson
Well-liked, likeable Presh leads a tribe of sea-apes of 4 million years ago. They live on the shore, spending most of their time in the water and living in caves on shore. Their diet is mostly fish caught with the help of dolphins. The tribe throws part of their catch back to the dolphins to reward them for their help without which it's impossible to catch enough fish to last a few days at most. This and how Presh keeps up with the doings and welfare of the tribe's families by visiting them every day and when offered food in deference to his position he takes a bite and returns it fascinates me. Nobody likes Greb, Presh's opposite. The tribe won't accept Greb as their leader even after he beats Presh in an unfair fight. Greb returns with a wife and a small tribe of his own to take over. He kills Presh and his niece takes her half of the tribe to live inland. A landslide buries Greb along with those afraid to leave Greb's side. 4 million years later an archaeologist takes his daughter along for the summer to assist in the dig. She's fascinated by the sea apes. We the readers are fascinated too and by the likeable personalities of Presh, his niece and her boyfriend.
Matt Damon, Ben Affleck
Math genius in disguise Will Hunting (Damon) works at M I T as custodian, afraid to break away and go out into the world. He's the night shift phantom who solves advanced, complex math problems on hallway blackboards as if left out for squirrels. He rides around with his best friend Chuckie Sullivan (Affleck) and others from blue-collar Irish South Boston. Yes he's got it all down pat, beyond the ability of his professors.
LIKEABILITY and RESPECT. Will gets along will with his buddies but is distracted by all that math going through his head. He's good for a few beers with the guys. Women also like him amost as much as they do Chuckie, but he's not impressed by any. Yet. Until he meets Skylar in a tavern with a few Harvard classmates doing pre-med chemistry homework. She inherited $250,000 and plans to go to Stanford med school. Cut to Will's apartment littered with books and clothes. Will's asleep but at the door the minute Chuckie arrives to drive him to work, throwing rocks at walls to break them up.
COMFORT with DISCOMFORT. Will doesn't mind all the math, he's just reluctant to do anything with it other than as MIT's hall phantom, despite a faithful following of recruiters. He's happy where he is, in South Boston with his friends. Math is a hobby for Will, something he's interested in like sports or politics.
ABILITY TO CONNECT. Will gets the better of phony, ersatz shrinks he's required to meet once a week to stay out of jail. One by one they run screaming and crying down the hall and out. Professor Lambeau wants Will to get a grip and stop wasting his life and get a job where he'll use all that math he's endowed with. Finally he finds the right one, Lambeau's old schoolmate and friend Sean (Robin Williams) Unlike the others, Will and Sean connect and Will looks forward every week to his appointment.
CHALLENGE. Will leads a long string of faithful recruiters around like old shoes offering him the moon and guessing which of them will get the prize. Out on a date with Skylar he sends in his agent (Chuckie) to receive his National Security Agency visitors there to recruit him for code breaking. Next day Will tells Lambeau he's not really interested in exploiting people this country could instead befriend. Skylar leaves for Stanford soon. For his 21st birthday the guys raise funds for parts and purchase to give Will an old Chevy Nova. Will ends up driving it to California "to see about a girl."
FLEXIBILITY. Will tore apart the whole world except Skylar. Her he wants to impress. He can switch from math to O-chem to baseball and back again at will. He can throw rocks too and get paid for it.
COMMENTS. This screenplay has too many "beats". Actors are trained to do their own staging and not need much direction in the script. The guys are likeable, a good bunch of friends. This movie was written by two good friends traveling to Hollywood from back East to do a film. Even while doing other films they meet and continue work on their screenplay. The story has a 70s look and feel to it's portrayal of the old neighborhood and M I T classes as they were then. You almost think you're in another century, the late 1800s (not the late 1900s) Either way you're in a time warp, World Series and all. Will had a Larry Bird Celtic Pride poster on his wall (Bird played in the 1980s)
A year in the life
Judith Guest
Evanston IL.
Viva Lance
Every Second Counts
Lance Armstrong
Lance Armstrong travels through life with his mother, who looks more like his sister, and his wife Keek and their son Luke and twin daughters Isabel and Grace. Bike tells of his early years snd his first Tour de France victory, his years of cancer treatment and his frinds' conspriacy to get him back where he belongs: on the bike and in the peloton. I liked his definition of peloton so we'd know what a peloton is, and hos they stop and wait for a fallen rider to get back on his bike anc catch up, before moving on to beat him. I liked the gossip that went on in the peloton. I liked the teams, each rider with his definite role in the race. I liked Keek's comebacks to everything Lance said. I liked the Viva Lance still painted on the mountain road where Lance once trained. I liked Lance doing it all by diligent practice and without drugs - after 4 cycles of chemo he's not about to take drugs. Second tells of more Tour wins and about his life overseas with his bike and his wife. I liked reading of Lance's further adventures, victories and friends. These are truly readable and likeable books. I liked his devotion to fellow cancer patients and his foundations. I'm put off by laf.org's lack of content other than fundraising. I don't like the lack of contact info except when ordering merchandise or donating money. lancearmstrong.com has slightly more content but still no contact but at least both sites navigate.
American hero
Anthony Lewis
Drifter Clarence Earl Gideon, born in 1910 in Hannibal MO eventually found his way to Florida where, accused of his 5th felony, he stood up in court and said the U S Constitution says he can have a lawyer defend him. Not so says Florida's courts, only allowing counsel for capital cases, leaving indigent defendants on their own. After Florida's Supreme Couert upheld the lower court Gideon wrote in pencil on prison stationery to the Supreme Court in Washington for a write of certiorari. The first time he wrote they sent him a copy of the procedure and a sample affidavit of indigence to file in modus pauperis.
With 20th century social and technological advancement came the emergence of a new American ecomomy, the emergence of the United States as a world power, a population boom and more new felonies on the books than God has green apples. Even following the 1932 Scottsboro case in which SCOTUS allowed counsel, 1942's Betts vs Brady decision upheld the special cases rule for allowing court-appointed lawyers for indigent defendants.
After arguing Betts back and forth it was finally proved useless and obsolete, as was Plessy vs Ferguson a few years earlier in Brown vs Board of Education. Now it was time for a unanimous vote in favor of Gideon and the many others tried without lawyers. The question now was one of individual opinions from each of 9 justices. Rogue states sat nervously anticipating the wholesale opening of prison doors. Actually it entitled such prisoners to new trials,m with coulnel provided. Many of them did go free after aquittal they couyldn't obtain without counsel.
Gideon was aquitted in his new trial. Fred Turner was a local attorney who spent the day before interviewing witnesses, which being in custody Gideon couldn't do. Clue 1: Wine was found in the allegedly stolen items from the poolroom. Gideon didn't drink wine. Clue 2: A cab was called and picked up Gideon from outside the poolroom. From this evidence and other facts Turner showed Gideon as wrongly accused and got him aquitted.
This landmark 1964 book is a true mustread for those interested in civic affairs. It shows how this landmark decision was reached to cancel out obsolete Supreme Court decisions.
Leonard L Richards
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Likeability, respect Comfort with discomfort Ability to connect Challenge Flexibility Other comments