Gracias: A Latin American Journal

Customer Reviews:

Stepping Beyond Security.......2000-09-25

September 24, 2000

In Henri Nouwen's journal entries, he captures each moment and thought of his struggle to find God's calling during his journey through Peru and Bolivia. Not only does he describe his own feelings, but also the joys and struggles of the people he came in contact with. His journal depicts the true venture of stepping into mission work or at least stepping outside of our everyday life in search of our place in this world. He gives encouragement to those who are searching and have felt a calling to go out and help others. He opened my eyes to show me that it is not the number of people you help but it is the one heart that you touch that counts.

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An inspirational and moving Christian salsa CD.

I enjoyed listening to latin style christian music.

Gracias: A Latin American Journal
Henri J. M. Nouwen
Manufacturer: HarperCollins Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Inspirational | Spirituality | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
General | Nouwen, Henri | ( N ) | Authors, A-Z | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
Paperback | Nouwen, Henri | ( N ) | Authors, A-Z | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0060663286

Customer Reviews:

An inspirational and moving Christian salsa CD........2003-07-30

This was one of 1998's best salsa releases but it went mostly unnoticed as it did not have commercial appeal. Obviously influenced by the inspirational salsa style of Richie Ray and Bobby Cruz, Alex gives some very moving performances here. It's shameful that this CD did'nt do better.

I enjoyed listening to latin style christian music........1999-09-14

This spanish latin style christian music is song very well by Alex D'Castro. I enjoyed listening to the message and the music. Me gustó mucho oir musica christiana con este sabor de musica latina.

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GRACIAS! A Latin American Journal.
Henri J.M. Nouwen.
Manufacturer: HarperCollins Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Book Description

In the last days of World War II, the Japanese unleashed a new breed of warrior. They were the kamikaze-idealistic young men believing there could be no greater glory than to sacrifice their lives in suicide attacks to defend their homeland. But what of those men who took the sacred oath to die in battle-and lived? Soon after the 9/11 attacks, ethnographer M.G. Sheftall was given unprecedentedly intimate access to the cloistered community of Japan's last remaining kamikaze corps survivors. The result is a poignant and unforgettable glimpse into the lives and mindsets of former kamikaze pilots who never completed their final missions.

Customer Reviews:

Fine history, compelling story, insightful cultural observations.......2007-04-14

There are several things one can gather about Sheftall by reading "Blossoms in the Wind". Foremost is that he can write a good story. In this case, the usual skills must be supplemented by patience and the keen ear of an excellent listener. He is one who can actively elicit long forgotten or painfully repressed memories from the haze of time and the maze of survivor's guilt, crushed expectations of victory, humiliation of defeat, and suspicion of one who is both from the enemy camp, so to speak, and young. It implies Keeganesk respect, genuine and deep, for the profession of arms and the special esteem reserved for those who sacrifice for what they consider a worthy cause. But in the end it requires an ability to write well and this Sheftall can do.

Sheftall has skill in description. An example, minor to the main thesis but which provides setting and tone is his easy use of the vocabulary of architectural historical styles, aesthetics, and ornamental and functional details. Images of the people he writes about are brought to the mind's eye in a few words with perhaps special solicitude on behalf of the female form - the caressing recreation of the semi-salacious angels in "Chinkon no Mitsugi" being a pointed example. His descriptors give character and life to the people and events narrated in the book yet serve also to remind the reader that this text is documentation. He is fastidious about the machines of war, worrying over evolutionary development in aircraft or model changes in watercraft. Yet these delineations do not burden the reader but rather clarify or move the action of the story. These salutes to accuracy are reassuring in an historian and no doubt his recordings and photographs will serve as important primary sources on this topic well into the future.

Like de Tocqueville, whose broader vistas into American culture stemmed from his study of US prisons, Sheftall provides insights behind what is often the inscrutable face of Japanese culture beyond the title's subject. The men and women who live to tell the "kamikaze" tale seem to me a character study of rugged individualism not typically thought of as a Japanese virtue. These survivors, after the war, take risks, establish businesses and in general seem to behave in a manner beyond what might have been indicated by their caste. To the extent that this is true, might the phenomenon be explained as the self-liberation claimed by those who have embraced the inevitability of death only to be given, by grace or chance, an indefinite reprieve? May it represent the need to achieve for those comrades whose crowded hour was their final hour? Perhaps it is a cultural idiosyncrasy credit given to those whose loyalty and commitment to the emperor and collective are proved beyond doubt. Whatever the case, there is a certain irony at work in that the "tokko" program's systematic reduction of individual qualities that could hinder total dedication to the mission would create in the survivors the moral fortitude to find their own way. Contrast them with growing number of "hikikomori", marginalized young men who, like Japan itself often enough, choose voluntary isolation in the confusion of stifling cultural expectations and fear of the new.

Sheftall provides a carefully evolving narrative that sustains a reader's belief in what is nearly unbelievable. His challenge is to explain these young warriors' embrace of death and the lingering reverence for their sacrifice in an age where such fanaticism is mostly associated with terrorism. He does this, sometimes touchingly, sometimes with humor, through incisive observation, careful reconstruction of the mood and perceptions in Japan at the time, and a humane sympathy for the very real people who tell their stories.

Outstanding!.......2007-02-15

Really an outstanding book from a rather unique point of view. This book would make an excellent addition to a high school reading list - in both the US and in Japan.

A finely balanced work that demystifies the 'Kamikaze'........2007-02-11

M. G. Sheftall has produced a very finely balanced account of the Japanese suicide attack programs of World War II. This is a major feat, as the Tokko ('special attack') program is a field so larded with biased and poorly-researched work that a serious historical approach must require doubting or discounting a great deal of what has already been written.
Sheftall has done what any responsible historian should when dealing with such a recent set of events: he went and talked directly to those involved. Unlike accounts of the same events from the Allied side, however, this was something he could only achieve by first learning to speak Japanese, behaving correctly in the presence of very sensitive people and leaving his own agenda at the interview room door. Sheftall happily has a strong grasp of effective techniques for this work, and the result is a very good read presented in a style that mixes skilfully-wrought historical accounts with gentle first-person reportage somewhat reminiscent of Bill Bryson. Sheftall visits and describes the shrines and societies that today perpetuate the bonds forged among the wartime Tokko personnel - both the successful and the survivors - and manages neither to sneer nor fawn; he meets and travels with men who in their youth accepted self-willed extinction in defence of their homeland without once judging them or sensationalising their accounts, and he leaves at least this reader with such a clear picture of the Tokko program as to make one wonder why so much mystery and myth surrounded it for so long.
As Sheftall points out near the end of the book, twentieth-century history is simply not taught in Japanese schools. Japan nowadays is gradually shedding its MacArthurian post-war sackcloth, however, and in view of the actions and pronouncements of its neighbors it is understandably keen to reassert itself in the region before the balance of power tilts too far towards some very unwholesome regimes. A steady supply of dispassionate, balanced accounts of Japan's recent history will help reassure the world that it is not unaware of its dark past, but the shortage of serious native scholarship in such matters still means that these will have to come in large part from foreigners. With this great book, Sheftall steps up to join John Dower, Herbert Bix and the many others who are quietly helping Japan get its historical house in order.

A unique moment in time (and its human consequences).......2006-11-08

The concept of the Kamikaze warrior has always been looked upon with horror and fascination in the West. In many ways, it seemed to Americans, these "brain-washed" pilots were a natuaral offshoot of Bushido-inspired Banzai Charges and the National Death Cult that gripped Japan more and more as the tide of the war turned against it.
Author Sheftall has done an outstanding job of breaking through these sterotypes to tell the very human side of Japanese suicide corps. Motivated by desperation and love of family and country, driven by subtle coercion, scores of young men swore to give all they were and ever would be for their country, and the ripples from those decisions still affect lives to this day.
This is an outstanding book and a must-read for any serious student of the Second World War.

The true stories of Japan's kamikaze corps survivors .......2006-07-10

Blossoms In The Wind: Human Legacies Of The Kamikaze presents the true stories of Japan's kamikaze corps survivors - pilots who were slated to sacrifice their lives in battle during World War II, but who survived through chance or fate. Now after the September 11th attacks, in an era when suicide attacks are becoming an increasingly serious threat in the present, Blossoms In The Wind explores what can bind a human heart and soul to commit to the ultimate sacrifice, as well as the bonds of brotherhood that remain between fellow warriors after sixty years of peace. A profound and directly relevant testimony, often directly recounting the survivors' perspectives in their own words.

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Blossoms in the Wind: Human Legacies of the Kamikaze
M. G. Sheftall
Manufacturer: New American Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000N74XUI

Book Description

For many Americans during the Vietnam era, the war on the home front seemed nearly as wrenching and hardfought as the one in Southeast Asia. Its primary battlefield was the news media, its primary casualty the truth. But as William Hammond reveals, animosity between government and media wasn't always the rule; what happened between the two during the Vietnam War was symptomatic of the nation's experiences in general. As the "light at the end of the tunnel" dimmed, relations between them grew ever darker.

Reporting Vietnam is an abridgement and updating of Hammond's massive two-volume work issued by the Government Printing Office. Based on classified and recently declassified government documents-including Nixon's national security files-as well as on extensive interviews and surveys of press war coverage, it tells how government and media first shared a common vision of American involvement in Vietnam. It then reveals how, as the war dragged on, upbeat government press releases were consistently challenged by journalists' reports from the field and finally how, as public sentiment shifted against the war, Presidents Johnson and Nixon each tried to manage the news media, sparking a heated exchange of recriminations.

Hammond strongly challenges the assertions of many military leaders that the media lost the war by swaying public opinion. He takes readers through the twists and turns of official public affairs policy as it tries to respond to a worsening domestic political environment and recurring adverse "media episodes." Along the way, he makes important observations about the penchant of American officials for placing appearance ahead of substance and about policy making in general.

Although Richard Nixon once said of the Vietnam war, "Our worst enemy seems to be the press," Hammond clearly shows that his real enemies were the contradictions and flawed assumptions that he and LBJ had created. Reporting Vietnam brings a critical study to a wider audience and is both a major contribution to an ongoing debate and a cautionary guide for future conflicts.

This book is part of the Modern War Studies series.

Customer Reviews:

This book should be read by everyone. FANTASTIC!.......2004-03-11

This is a terrifically important analysis of the way the military and the press interacted during the Vietnam War. Mr. Hammond covers most of the important media events and reports important details of the statements and actions of those in the government and the military as well as those in the press. He also provides keen insight into the implications of those interactions and the effects they hand on later events.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I wish I could give it six stars. It is a book that anyone who wants to understand anything at all about the Vietnam War simply has to read. The articles in the two volumes of the Library of America series provide valuable background for this book and I think they should be read first. But even without them any reader would get a great deal from this book.

There are nearly fifty pages of notes, and index, and a generous number of pictures of the main events and participants. Just a wonderful achievement. Thanks to Mr. Hammond!

Packed with Details on Military and Media Relations.......2002-11-21

This book is simply outstanding for anybody who has an interest in how the military manages media relations or who wants a different perspective on the Vietnam War. An abridgement of Hammond's two-volume set, this book is still packed with details covering the war from start to finish, providing lessons that remain relevant for today's changing battlefield. As one who is involved in media relations for a living, there's hardly a page in the book that isn't highlighted for future reference. And as one who has read several books on Vietnam, covering everything from tactical operations to strategic objectives, this book put the war in perspective for me as no other book has. However, as I was pouring over every page and sharing what I learned with those around me, one of my colleagues said he had read it as well and found it one of the most laborious books he had ever opened. So perhaps it is not for everybody, but it's a book I will return to again and again as I continue to study the unique relationship forged between the military and the media. And I am also ordering the two-volume set so I can find the even greater detail that was left out of this book.

The Uncensored War: The Media and the Vietnam

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The Uncensored War: The Media and the Vietnam
Daniel C. Hallin
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Vietnam War | Military | History | Subjects | Books

Southeast Asia | Asia | History | Subjects | Books

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All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
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ASIN: 0195038142

Book Description

Vietnam was America's most divisive and unsuccessful foreign war. It was also the first to be televised and the first of the modern era fought without military censorship. From the earliest days of the Kennedy-Johnson escalation right up to the American withdrawal, and even today, the media's
role in Vietnam has continued to be intensely controversial. The "Uncensored War" gives a richly detailed account of what Americans read and watched about Vietnam. Hallin draws on the complete body of the New York Times coverage from 1961 to 1965, a sample of hundreds of television reports from
1965-73, including television coverage filmed by the Defense Department in the early years of the war, and interviews with many of the journalists who reported it, to give a powerful critique of the conventional wisdom, both conservative and liberal, about the media and Vietnam. Far from being a
consistent adversary of government policy in Vietnam, Hallin shows, the media were closely tied to official perspectives throughout the war, though divisions in the government itself and contradictions in its public relations policies caused every administration, at certain times, to lose its
ability to "manage" the news effectively. As for television, it neither showed the "literal horror of war," nor did it play a leading role in the collapse of support: it presented a highly idealized picture of the war in the early years, and shifted toward a more critical view only after public
unhappiness and elite divisions over the war were well advanced. The "Uncensored War" is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the Vietnam war or the role of the media in contemporary American politics.

A groundbreaking study of the media's influence on the Vietnam War

Overturns the conventional notions about the media's role in the war
Draws directly on a huge body of newspaper and TV coverage

Women War Correspondents in the Vietnam War

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Women War Correspondents in the Vietnam War
Virginia Elwood-Akers
Manufacturer: Scarecrow Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Military | History | Subjects | Books

Southeast Asia | Asia | History | Subjects | Books

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Women's Studies | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Media Studies | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

General | Words & Language | Reference | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0810820331

Book Description

More than 75 women served as war correspondents in the Vietnam War, covering every aspect of the war from human interest to combat. Elwood-Akers skillfully weaves all of this together into a story worth telling...admirable. --JOURNALISM HISTORY

Unsung hero: with his ahead-of-the-curve reporting from Vietnam for Time magazine and influential management stints at the Los Angeles Times, Sacramento ... An article from: American Journalism Review

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Unsung hero: with his ahead-of-the-curve reporting from Vietnam for Time magazine and influential management stints at the Los Angeles Times, Sacramento ... An article from: American Journalism Review
Marlena Telvick , and Jason Felch
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

Book Description

This digital document is an article from American Journalism Review, published by Thomson Gale on June 1, 2004. The length of the article is 5612 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: Unsung hero: with his ahead-of-the-curve reporting from Vietnam for Time magazine and influential management stints at the Los Angeles Times, Sacramento Bee and San Francisco Examiner, Frank McCulloch was one of the great journalists of the past 50 years. Unfortunately, far too few people know that.
Author: Marlena Telvick
Publication: American Journalism Review (Magazine/Journal)
Date: June 1, 2004
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 26 Issue: 3 Page: 56(7)

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Book Description

A thorough update of the only guide to apply the full spectrum of weather effects to aircraft pilotage and flight. An understanding of weather is as critical to pilots as stick and rudder skills. No resource supplies a stronger how-to-knowledge of this often tricky proficiency than this now expanded bestseller. Turner provides matchless coverage of the causes and workings of weather conditions and apply weather data to actual flight. This classic features new insight into weather theory, reporting procedures, flying techniques, and technology-plus the latest on hazardous weather conditions, high-altitude and regional weather, and seasonal variations.

Customer Reviews:

Needs editing.......2002-12-03

The book is, I think, intended to add depth to existing federal advisory circulars. But the huge number of errors in it defeat it. Most are typos and homonyms and are probably not going to lead a pilot into a dangerous situation, but they are pretty tedious and confusing.

Weather, Records, Patterns and Phenomena (Maine Geographic Series)

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Weather, Records, Patterns and Phenomena (Maine Geographic Series)
Joe Cupo
Manufacturer: Delorme
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Reference | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0899330673

Weather Patterns and Phenomena: A Pilot's Guide

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Weather Patterns and Phenomena: A Pilot's Guide
Thomas P. Turner
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill Companies
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OFBJ6A

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Weather Patterns and Phenomena: A Pilots Guide
Thomas P. Turner
Manufacturer: Tab Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OFAPCE

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