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In this collection of essays, Patricia Hampl attempts to explain the lure of the memoir. It is today one of the most popular literary genres, but not long ago, readers would have been hard-pressed even to find memoir sections in their favorite bookstores. Hampl, who herself is a memoirist of note (A Romantic Education and Virgin Time) opens the book with some of her own memories. She recalls a bus trip during the Vietnam War era to visit her "draft resister" boyfriend in jail. When the bus stops along the way in a small town, she notices a large, middle-age woman passionately kissing a very handsome, much younger man, or is it the other way around? The woman boards the bus while the young man runs along outside, blowing her kisses. She takes the seat next to Hampl and says with a sigh, "I could tell you stories."
This small event sets the stage for the rest of the book--it draws a narrative out of a mostly mundane moment and underscores the complicated nature of remembering events as they actually happened. She writes that because "everyone 'has' a memoir, we all have a stake in how such stories are told. For we do not, after all, simply have experience; we are entrusted with it." In the balance of the book, Hampl examines the autobiographical writings of St. Augustine, Anne Frank, Sylvia Plath, Edith Stein, and Czeslaw Milosz. In each instance, she attempts to uncover the writer's intentions and reveal the true secrets that lurk in the shadows of what's on the page. I Could Tell You Stories is an excellent investigation into what makes a story essentially worthy of being told and ultimately read--a good companion to whatever book is currently in your hands. --Jordana Moskowitz
Book Description
Memoir has become the signature genre of our age. In this timely gathering, Patricia Hampl, one of our most elegant practitioners, "weaves personal stories and grand ideas into shimmering bolts of prose" (Minneapolis Star Tribune) as she explores the autobiographical writing that has enchanted or bedeviled her. Subjects engaging Hampl's attention include her family's response to her writing, the ethics of writing about family and friends, St. Augustine's Confessions, reflections on reading Walt Whitman during the Vietnam War, and an early experience reviewing Sylvia Plath. The word that unites the impulse within all the pieces is "Remember!"--a command that can be startling. For to remember is to make a pledge: to the indelible experience of personal perception, and to history itself.
Customer Reviews:
Here is what I mean, here is what I really mean + examples.......2004-01-25
This multi layered book shows, tells and illustrates in an intriguing fashion.
It tells you about memoir and memory and shows you, actively, of Hampl's writing journey and then illustrates through her essays.
Her description of "re-vision"... literally revisiting the "scene" in one's memory and her description of memoir writing as "travel writing" -- notes taken along the way -- give you a flavor of Hampl's unique fingerprint.
Read and study this one if you are at all interested in writing and actively reading memoir.
The Faces of Memory.......2004-01-15
What is memory? One and the same amid East Europeans and the Western world?
Outstanding among Patricia Hampl's essays, I COULD TELL YOU STORIES: SOJOURNS IN THE LAND OF MEMORY, is "Czeslaw Milosz and Memory," a brilliant discussion concerning this Lithuanian and Polish poet, whose personal history and that of his fellow citizens pivot around that of the nation per se. Memory, for a small country, is the ntion itself.
Therefore,the past, the history of a nation, plays a primary role for the East European. Compare this to the American memoirist whose primary focus is the family: "The self is the story; history is just a landscape," writes Hampl. The American (and West European) memoirist is swayed by an intrinsic, not an extrinsic process.
We can say that this held true until 9/11. And thereafter? One might say of the West: Erstwhile, the self was the story, History, beyond the landscape, has begun to touch our lives.
ESSAYS WHICH WILL ENCHANT YOU.......2003-10-24
This is one of the MOST insteresting books I have ever read. I go though several of Ms. Hampl's explorations upon people and life which I found both intriguing and informative. I especially enjoyed the chapter about Edith Stein. (Try reading at least that chapter and see if it entices you too.)
All about the art of the memoir.......2003-06-18
Indispensible reading for writers and thinkers.
Patricia Hampl is both, and we are the richer for it. This collection of essays attempts to explain the art, depth, breadth, fact vs fiction, role of memory, and the allure of the memoir. Hampl shows and explains how it's possible to create a narrative arc within the genre of memoir writing from the most commonplace and seemingly mundane occurrences.
Superb book written thoughtfully, quietly, lingeringly - meant to be savored, not gulped down all at once.
Typical 1960's attitude.......2002-01-25
It's time for these 60's people to move on and admit that they did not invent anything new or important. They were as much insulated from life as the generations before and after them. They all wore the bell bottoms, used the drugs, and thought themselves avant garde. This book shows another side ---- their attempt to make themselves seem better by tearing down someone else. How can the author ever forgive herself for what she did to her mother when she exposed her epilepsy? How she laughed to herself as she made fun of the nun. Always she acted as if she herself was perfect. No one is, of course. Always she found something in the persons she met to judge them and find them lacking. She comes close to admitting that memoirs are not always accurate.
How can she be so highly rated?
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Air & Space Power Journal, published by U.S. Air Force on September 22, 2004. The length of the article is 1206 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: The Soviet Strategic Offensive in Manchuria, 1945: "August Storm".(Net Assessment)(Book Review)
Author: Gilles Van Nederveen
Publication:
Air & Space Power Journal (Refereed)
Date: September 22, 2004
Publisher: U.S. Air Force
Volume: 18
Issue: 3
Page: 115(2)
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
Prescot Bush and Rockefeller's Standard Oil had been in business with the Hitler regime and the Nazis since 1933, and in 1942, three Bush businesses were seized by the U.S. government, for violation of the Trading With the Enemies Act.
Three generations of the Bush clan became members of a German secret society: the Yale chapter of the "Order of Skull and Bones." In Germany, the Order of Skull of Bones --also known as "The Brotherhood of Death"-- gave rise to Hitler and the dreaded SS. Prescot Bush, through his shipping company, became a special "Friend" of Himmler's SS--the same SS which, in conjunction with IG Farbin, ran the concentration and slave labor camps.
The Bush clan and Rockefeller's standard Oil, were in business with IG Farben, as well as with the Saudis who had also partnered with Hitler.
At the conclusion of WWII, and Germany's defeat, thousands of high ranking Nazis and SS agents were recruited, by Bush-Rockefeller lawyer, Allen Dulles, into what would later become the CIA. Allen Dulles, and later, George Bush, would become directors of the CIA...
...IG Farbin, a consortium of companies that included Bayer, conducted horrible experiments on concentration camp inmates to discover an "ethnic biological weapon" --a deadly disease that would target specific ethnic groups... Drs. funded by the Rockefeller foundation directed this research.
In 1957, a scientist who completed his medical training in Nazi-occupied Poland, and who was funded by the Rockefeller foundation, injected 300,000 Central African men, women, and children, with an experimental polio vaccine--a vaccine that contained a deadly AIDS-like virus, monkey HSIV. Years later, Central Africa would become "Ground Zero" for the AIDS/HIV epidemic...
...Three generations of the Bush clan have been in business with governments and people who kill Americans, and on the morning of 9-11-2001, Bush Sr. was in business with the bin Ladens and other Saudis who had helped fund Osama bin Laden and the attack of 9-11-2001...
The attack of 9-11, would transform an inept, seemingly incompetent president into a war time leader who would attack not Saudi Arabia but Iraq and then steal its oil...as well as attack American Civil Liberties and the U.S. constitution...
"Key FBI Headquarters personnel had to be spies or moles ... who were actually working for Osama Bin Laden....Key FBI HQ personnel... continued to, almost inexplicably, throw up roadblocks and undermine Minneapolis' desperate efforts... to stop terrorists...." who planned "to take control of a plane and fly it into the World Trade Center." --FBI supervisor, and Coleen M. Rowley, FBI Special Agent & Chief Division Counsel...
...and it goes on and on...
Customer Reviews:
The Truth About 9-11. Bush Knew and Let it Happen........2004-04-12
The Truth About 9-11. Bush Knew and Let it Happen. This is the conclusion of America Betrayed: Top officials in the FBI, CIA, and Bush Administration knew in advance that al-Qaeda was going to highjack commercial jets and crash them into targets in New York and Washington. "It was as if Usama bin Laden, hidden in some high mountain redoubt, were engaging in long-range mind control of George Bush." --United States Counterterrorism Chief, Richard A. Clarke. The Bush team allowed it to happen not because they were incompetent but for the sake of power and money. Consider: In June of 2001, Osama bin Laden openly boasted of a horrific attack that would soon take place in the United States. In July, Kenneth Williams, an FBI agent in Phoenix reported that Osama bin Laden's followers were training in U.S. flight schools. In July, 2001, Attorney General Ashcroft quit flying on commerical jets. On August 6, 2001, Bush received a memorandum titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," and which warned of hijackings and that New York might be a target. Two weeks later, CIA Chief Tenet and his top deputies received a briefing paper labeled "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly." Bush and Cheney were notified and did nothing. They knew in advance and welcomed the attacks. They let it happen in order to make Bush into a war-time leader, to take away our rights, and to justify a war on Iraq. They did it for power and money: Billions of dollars would flow into the coffers of companies directly linked to the Bush family, the Cheney family, the bin Laden family et al. They not only knew and allowed 9-11 to happen, but they knew in advance about the anthrax attacks. Bush, Cheney, the White House staff, began taking Cipro, the anti-anthrax medication on 9-11-2001. Three weeks later, the nation would be under anthrax attacks. The Bush team lied about Iraq and they lied about 9-11, and they did it for power and money.
The Future is the Past. Those Who Don't Learn from the Past.......2004-03-24
The Future is the Past. Those Who Don't Learn from the Past Are Condemned to Repeat it.
In the second half of this farsighted book, the author levels some hard hitting charges backed up with some pretty incriminating data indicating that the Bush administration ignored warnings about 9-11, and then allowed 9-11 to happen in order to attack Iraq. AND THIS BOOK WAS PUBLISHED BEFORE THE IRAQ WAR! And it was published before the recent revelations of Dick Clarke and O'Neil which have sent the Bushies into a tizzy...shocking revelations which were also detailed in this rare and difficult to find book, months before O'Neil and Clarke went public. A real eye-opener! Because it opens eyes, some might consider this a dangerous book, especially since it is election time--which may explain why it is so hard to come by.
It's All Here.......2003-04-09
America Betrayed provides an in-depth look at what lurks behind the facade of the United States government. I've had unanswered questions regarding bits of information that occasionally slip through the filter of the U.S. media, but are never followed up.
This well researched and documented book fills in the blanks. It gives a comprehensive overview of where we've been, where we are now, and what "influential" people have been there all along. It gave me an eye-opening tour through three Bush generations, and how the political stage has evolved into what it is today.
I highly recommend America Betrayed to anyone who wants to see beyond the smoke and mirrors of the United States government, and get a clear view of it's role in world politics.
Book Description
A scientist debunks the hysteria and distortions created by the environmental movement and emphasizes America's need for social improvement.
Author R. G. Williscroft, who served for 23 years with the U.S. Navy and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, firmly establishes that the sky is not falling--the global greenhouse is not out of control, the ozone layer is still there, and the Cold War is over. This fascinating and accessible book reviews the scientific evidence of environmental concerns such as global warming, the dangers of nuclear power, and shortage of water. The author argues that most of these concerns are misplaced and emphasizes instead the real crisis in education, the intrusion of big government, and the decline of morality.
Customer Reviews:
Refreshingly Logical.......2007-09-22
Chicken Little Agenda: Debunking "Experts'" Lies
What a wonderful book! Using scientific facts, Williscroft explains away the would-be dire issues trumpeted by today's alarmists. To my delight, he applies that same good sense to a wide variety of other subjects, including morality and ethics, that are extremely relevant to the manner in which we live.
This is a "must read" for anyone who seeks the truth in this upside down world. I highly recommend it.
What a great book!.......2007-09-03
I would like to recommend this book. It covers a wide ranging canvas of topical subjects.
It is written with zest humour and authority. The author holds degrees in oceanography meteorology and engineering. He was worked in all those areas giving him, I would argue, the perfect blend of knowledge and experience. He covers everything from the global warming myth, to nuclear power, nuclear weapons and the US education system.
I laughed out loud at his letter to the IRS.
It is a true debunking of "Experts'" lies.
No scientific training is necessary to follow his arguments and it will give you ample ammunition against the "The End in Nigh" doomsayers.
An Encouraging Book.......2007-07-25
We are being constantly bombarded by predictions of environmental doom, coming at us from various media and from people with a political agenda. Apparently, anything needed to sustain our standard of living, and mercy be, even extend it to the rest of the world with its 6 billion population - is hastening the destruction of planet Earth.
Dr. Williscroft says, "Not so fast!" His account of the environmental gloommasters needs to be read and digested in the light of scientific reason. Yes, there are problems, but not to the degree predicted. Yes, we can have clean energy, if we are willing to overcome prejudices against nuclear reactors. Their track record isn't that bad. It's well to have some scepticism towards the doomsayers, and a trust in human ingenuity.
Agenda confusing........2006-11-06
The book has much information debunking various hazards to mankind and has good examples of real solutions to modern envoirnmental issues. Chicken Little Agenda is a little hard to read because it is not smooth flowing in it's construction. It's a good document but a slow read.
It's About Time.......2006-08-25
Finally, a book that debunks hysterical hype on a host of hot button social issues for the left in easy to understand, logical, and scientifically accurate terms. The author also takes on other left-wing sacred cows with the same attention to detail.
Book Description
In recent years, Earth systems science has advanced rapidly, helping to transform climate change and other planetary risks into major political issues. Changing the Atmosphere strengthens our understanding of this important link between expert knowledge and environmental governance. In so doing, it illustrates how the emerging field of science and technology studies can inform our understanding of the human dimensions of global environmental change.
Incorporating historical, sociological, and philosophical approaches, Changing the Atmosphere presents detailed empirical studies of climate science and its uptake into public policy. Topics include the scientific, political, and social processes involved in the creation of scientific knowledge about climate change; the historical and contemporary role of expert knowledge in creating and perpetuating policy concern about climate change; and the place of science in institutions of global environmental governance such as the World Meteorological Organization, the Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Together, the essays demonstrate fundamental connections between the science and politics of planet Earth. In the struggle to create sustainable forms of environmental governance, they indicate, a necessary first step is to understand how communities achieve credible, authoritative representations of nature.
Contributors:
Paul N. Edwards, Dale Jamieson, Sheila Jasanoff, Chunglin Kwa, Clark Miller, Stephen D. Norton, Stephen H. Schneider, Simon Shackley, Frederick Suppe.
Book Description
"With clarity and grace, Stephen Bocking tackles the complicated question of the role of scientific expertise in environmental policy making. Nature's Experts is a timely and important book."—David H. Guston, author of Between Politics and Science: Assuring the Integrity and Productivity of Research
"This book by Stephen Bocking is as much about deliberative democracy as it is about science and the environment. Stephen Bocking's treatment is deep, perceptive, and profoundly wise. He has caught the heart of present and future environmental science, politics, and democratic governance."—C. S. Holling, The Resilience Alliance and emeritus professor, Arthur R. Marshall Jr. Chair in Ecological Sciences at the University of Florida
"If knowledge is power, how should expert advice be deployed by a would-be democratic society? This perennial question is newly illuminated by this timely and wide-ranging review of the role played by science in the making of environmental policy."—William C. Clark, Harvey Brooks Professor of International Science, Public Policy, and Human Development, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government
It seems self-evident that science plays a central role in environmental affairs. Regulatory agencies, businesses, and public interest groups all draw on scientific research to support their claims. Some critics, however, describe science not as the solution to environmental problems, but as their source. Moreover, the science itself is often controversial, as debates over global warming and environmental health risks have shown.
Nature's Experts explores the contributions and challenges presented when scientific authority enters the realm of environmental affairs. Stephen Bocking focuses on four major areas of environmental politics: the formation of environmental values and attitudes, management of natural resources such as forests and fish, efforts to address international environmental issues such as climate change, and decisions relating to environmental and health risks. In each area, practical examples and case studies illustrate that science must fulfill two functions if it is to contribute to resolving environmental controversies. First, science must be relevant and credible, and second, it must be democratic, where everyone has access to the information they need to present and defend their views.
Books:
- I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933-1941 (Modern Library Paperbacks)
- ICE BOUND: A DOCTOR'S INCREDIBLE BATTLE FOR SURVIVAL AT THE SOUTH POLE
- In Search of the Promised Land: A Slave Family in the Old South (New Narratives in American History) (New Narratives in American History)
- Intimacy With Christ
- Into That Darkness: An Examination of Conscience
- It's My Party Too: The Battle for the Heart of the GOP and the Future of America
- Joan of Arc: Her Story
- Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions (Enriched Classics)
- Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest
- Letters from Burma
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- Christianity for Dummies
- American Psycho
- To the Last Man: A Novel of the First World War
- Tony Hillerman: The Leaphorn & Chee Novels: Skinwalkers, A Thief of Time, Coyote Waits
- Who Built America
- A Statistical Approach to Genetic Epidemiology: Concepts and Applications
- A 20,000% Gain in Real Estate: A True Story About the Ups And Downs from Wall Street to Real Estate
- Manifesto: A Century of Isms
- This Land: A Guide to Central National Forests
- Know your grasses: The key to successful range management
Authors
| Arts & Literature
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative
Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir
Modern American Memoirs
Blue Arabesque: A Search for the Sublime
A Romantic Education
